”So I see here it says you’re... from Atlanta. No. Atlantis.” The Asian squinted at the piece of paper he was reading. ”Not very familiar with Atlantis. Guess we need to check how you line up with the other people in your grade, see what grade level maths you’re ready for. That right?”

The classroom was empty, save for the young mutant and his teacher. He was speaking loudly and carefully. He had been told that the boy was deaf.

The mansion seemed to have been getting an influx of people from Atlantis recently. Pity he didn’t know all that much about it. He’d been busy when that mission had gone down.

Relatively common, to test an incoming student who’d been out of school for a while, to see where they placed. Pretty uncommon, when they’re not from the same country. Or from on land. Dry land. All he could do was test him and see how he did.

Lit's arms wriggled behind his back at whatever the teacher was planning. Being called over by teachers was already something he'd learned was meant to be scary from other pupils.

He'd mention being excited to be in a full school, with actual teachers, and other students, not just homeschooling from his parents, and they'd question what he was on about, why having teachers was an exciting thing. Even if it weren't for how his parents had treated him thanks to his disability, new people was an exciting thing. 

But still scary; he had no idea what to make of this demigod. And demigods never seemed to be able to get past his mutation in Atlantis. People had been shockingly nice here. He'd got stares, sure, lots of them, and they'd called him weird nicknames he didn't understand (What was a "Gragen?"), but no one had yet tried shoving him around, and no one had yelled at him being meant to go back to the Necropolis. 

The twitching in his arms probably reflected his uncertainty at how to react far better than words could manage. 

>> ”So I see here it says you’re... from Atlanta. No. Atlantis.” 

As usual, understanding took several moments. If anything, it took longer now, with actual hearing aids, as he had two sets of input to decipher, and the time needed to get over the fact there were two sets of input. Hearing wasn't yet actually clarifying anything, but he'd worked out, on the rare occasions he had the patience, roughly what sounds actually correlated with the frequent corrections he got as a small child.

He appreciated the effort being put in to be easier for him to understand, but it was still frustrating to have this extra input he didn't get.

"Yes. I'p." Lit paused, concentrating a moment. His accent had to be pretty strong, with the combination of only having heard his voice at speaking volume for the first time a few days ago and not having learned English from Native English Speakers. "I'p. I'mmm from Adlantis."

>> ”Not very familiar with Atlantis. Guess we need to check how you line up with the other people in your grade, see what grade level maths you’re ready for. That right?”

Again, it took a few seconds to decipher everything for a response, but Lit managed it. Class was definitely going to be hard work to keep up with.

"I'p nod very familiar wif New York." Litan grinned, a little cheeky, but nodded at what they were saying. "I fink so. Mighd 'ave meen apout crates though."

The octopus arms continued to wriggle erratically as his actual hands played with each other, all clearly showing the equal mix of nervousness and excitement.

About ... crates. It took Shin a moment, but he got it. Ah yes, grades. Yes, that was what they were talking about. His accent was interesting, and not entirely indecipherable once you took a moment to actually get it.

Context always helps.

So he wasn’t very familiar with New York?

The octopus arms were slightly distracting. If they behaved more like jello and less like arms, he might have to ask for less wiggling or else he’d start getting motion sick... and that certainly wouldn’t help this boy get placed in the appropriate grade. All it would help was teaching him how to clean up a nasty mess.

Not that Shin ever let motion sickness progress that far, of course. And he never puked on students! Not every teacher at the mansion could say the same... Cold Steel.

”Maybe we can do an aerial tour later and I can fly you by the Statue of Liberty,” Shin noted. He smiled a small smile. A flyover might help with not being familiar with the city.

But that distraction of the sky in the future wasn’t helping them get anywhere with testing.

The Asian went over to his desk and grabbed a stack of papers. The papers were covered with complex equations and simple ones, ranging in difficulty. Some of the story problems tried too hard to be hip and cool, and as the kids say, “Lit.” That was the tea. Tetsuya Shinbo wanted to be more up to date with the youth, because he felt wholly out of his depths some times. He couldn’t even keep track of the new anime these days. He didn’t even like most of it.

He walked over and plopped the stack of papers down on the desk nearest the student.

”I’ve prepared a little test to test your math skills. Do you think you can manage?”

There was nothing little about the test. It had to be at least five or six pages.

>> ”Maybe we can do an aerial tour later and I can fly you by the Statue of Liberty.”

Litan mouthed the words himself, trying to decipher what was being meant when so many were unfamiliar. 

"You can fly?" Lit looked out the window, noting the time of day, and how bright it was. The wince at the brightness, even while solidly inside was probably enough to make his point without him saying anything. His extra arms twitched away from the bright light source, and how he had kept himself near the centre of the room to not get too close to it was probably obvious to an observant teacher. "Can you at night?"

Too late for any concerns about distraction, Lit's arms were already twitching with anticipation, and he had the same sort of mischievous grin he often had when he had an idea for a way to achieve something. Admittedly this particular thing could be managed by just... not ticking off the teacher. Probably the hardest plan he'd ever come up with. 

>>  ”I’ve prepared a little test to test your math skills. Do you think you can manage?”

"Math". That was a lot shorter than "μαθεματοκευμαι". A lot easier to work out what the word was too, and decipher from the ones around it, although the expectations of the rest of the word following didn't help at all deciphering the rest of what was said. It took him longer than usual to work out what was actually meant thanks to that.

"Yeah, I can banage." Lit didn't exactly go for sitting down in the chair the papers were placed at. It was more accurate to say that he sort of squelched into place, ignoring how limbs were meant to function entirely. Knees definitely weren't meant to be able to twist like that. He looked up once he had got into place, so if there was any nausea at the action, Litan would have missed it.

Lit scrambled around in his stuff for a few minutes, eventually returning a ratty-looking pen that had clearly been chewed on aggressively. Already. As the test started it became obvious how a new pen could already be so... destroyed-looking. Any pause in thought and Lit was fiddling as much as he could, including with his teeth.

Around half way through, thoroughly bored (as much as he liked maths, this was silent and with minimal fidgety ability), he started flicking through and reading all the questions again. One by one, six arms (of varying levels of octopus-resemblance) shot upwards. He didn't wait any longer than that to ask the questions.

"Why is "Julia" pudding cupes in pags? Why are 400 people following "Max"? And whad's the thing fey're following him on? Whad's "Hillfrosd" ant why does "Rory McDougal" want 300 boddles? Why toes this "x" loog all round? Can't "Michael" jusd time 'ow long id tages for his barrel to embty?" One hand lowered and he started doing other questions while still asking a near-constant flow of them himself. This did not help his already... bad handwriting. "Ant 'ow pany puppies "Sarah" 'as shouldn't change, pecause 'oo jusd gifes up puppies to anyone 'oo asks?"

When the kid asked if he could fly, Shins answer was a restrained nod. Because if he didn’t restrain himself while talking about flying, he would make a fool of himself due to nerdy glee and his ranting about how cool it is!

Just as restrained was Litan. His tentacular body language could have taught the Little Mermaid’s Ursula a thing or two about tact. If Shin hadn’t been so darn good at noticing wibbly wobbly tentacles and stuff, he may have missed how Litan avoided bright light. He might have even mistakenly assumed the man liked to be the center of attention.

He nodded again, at Litan’s second question. Yes, he could fly at night. It wasn’t solar powered. They moved on, to tests and far less interesting waters.

The way the octopus man sat was interesting, to say the least. Shin would have to watch him on test days. Mutant students always find unique ways to cheat, and eight sneaky tentacles would be on the same level as the monkey boy with a note card held in his prehensile tail.

While Litan took the test, Shin sat at his desk and watched. There really wasn’t anything else to do. At least, until the boy started asking all the questions. Shin answered him best he could. Difficult, when the questions come lightning bolt fast.

“Julia is bringing them to school for a project.” He said.

“400 people are following Max because he’s a mutant with the unfortunate power of making 400 people follow him and he hasn’t figured out how to turn it off.”

“They rented a giant-sized tour bus. For four hundred people. Yup.”

The rest of the answers came out pretty much like that. Culminating in a politely worded “Sarah loves puppies but Sarah can’t handle feeding so many puppies so she has to find them homes with people who love puppies just as much as her. Because who doesn’t like sharing there things they love? Like flying.” He added the last part pointedly, with a hinting smile. A ‘maybe if you ask any more questions it won’t happen’ smile.

He was a patient teacher but even a patient teacher can lose his patience. At least he hadn’t gone with the age old one size fits all answer of ‘because I said so.’

Litan smiled at the confirmation of what was said. Not a restrained smile, but wild and bright, like almost everything from him was. That was so cool!

The smile only grew at the confirmation that they could go at night too. He'd actually be able to see, then! He was already excited about being able to do a tour. Going at night on foot meant being less likely to find a willing tourguide, and being more likely to get lost and Lit was... not the best at remembering directions. He tended to get distracted. Going in the day meant not being able to actually appreciate anything due to the light levels. 

Lit stared at the teacher as he got answers back, trying to decipher what was said, and taking a significant amount of time to do so. Maybe he should have spaced out his questions. A little. But that would have taken delaying asking things he was curious about and that was worse than having to work out what was said.

Eventually he nodded, reasonably sure he'd finally got everything. Even the little pointed comment about flying. He didn't catch the tone, but he'd had enough adults get annoyed at his energy to be able to detect it from the facial expressions. 

There were a lot more questions to ask here ("What sort of project needs a bag with cubes in? Do people actually have that mutation? Does it make them a demigod or a gorgon? Are there actually busses that big? Busses are the big cuboid things with the windows and the patterns, aren't they? We don't have them in Atlantis. But there's different sorts of things you can share and I didn't think people shared their puppies!") which could probably all be sensed flickering across his face, but he just managed to restrain the urge to ask them all in a row this time - even if he did still mouth the first few. He wasn't sure he could manage the deciphering again that fast.

Litan got back to his work, and, when he'd finished he stood - again, employing the very abnormal bending movement to get back to his feet, and carried the stack of paper over to the teacher. 

"I'p done. I fink."

The teacher was unlikely to be pleased with the writing he just got handed. Litan was far more practised in writing Atlantian than English and it probably showed, even in Arabic numerals, as did the few minutes where he'd decided to try using an octopus arm to write near the end.

In full prose, his handwriting was not great. As soon as he had a thought, he wanted it down on the paper immediately, resulting in alternating periods of frantic spider scrawl and complete inactivity during any writing, and often large entirely scribbled out sections when any teachers demanded essays. At least it was all legible. Just. Depending on the reader. 

Numbers were less stressful on his brain for getting ideas down quickly. You could write at the same time as you thought and it didn't change the meaning of things. This test was likely to be the most legible of any of his placement tests, and it was still bad writing.

"I can say whad I wrode if it's hart."

There were... no more questions, shockingly. Either the boy had exhausted them, or else he’d decided to hold them back for some reason. If so on that last one, he’d have to work on that. No one should ever feel they can’t ask questions in a class. And it may have been something he’d said.

Again, the boy with the tentacles got to his feet. Shin focused on running multiplication tables in his head and it wasn’t as disorienting that time. He’d get used to it. Least it wasn’t jello.

He was done.

”Very good,” Shin said. He took the papers.

At a glance, the handwriting was... not so hot. That would take even more work getting used to. Maybe someone could help him practicing his English. He supposed they had a whole other language in Atlantis. He knew his scrawl had taken a while, after moving from Japan to America. Some people still thought it was too calligraphic.

>>”I can say what I wrote if it’s hard,” Shin translated.

The Asian smiled at the boy. ”If I have any questions, I’ll track you down and ask. But I think I can manage to grade this all on my own.”

“It isn’t the worst writing I’ve seen.” he added wryly. ”One student I knew had the unfortunate habit of charring the paper whenever they were frustrated... charcoal smudges terribly.” He laughed. He was serious, but still he laughed.

They were basically done. He let the boy know he’d get back to him with his grade. And if they wanted to fly later, they could hammer that out too.