Dear Diary,

Hump day! Time to get it on!

Yeah, no. Not happening. So far the only guys who have made an impression have been Bill, who I'm not sure even identifies as a guy, Larry, who is a douchecanoe, Marshall duBois, who's old enough to be my grandfather, and Loki, who now that I think about it might not identify as a guy either.

Y'know, it's unnerving to be doing the diary thing and have someone whisper, "I identify as your Patron," in your ear. I mean, at some point I'm sure I'll be happy that he's paying attention, but it's going to take some getting used to.

So yeah, I'm stuck in a sexless wonderland until I meet somebody available and interesting, get frustrated enough to see if Angel or Saffron are down for some girl-girl fun time, or get frustrated and creative enough to go after duBois, which sounds like a worse idea when I think it out loud with my own brain.

Today wasn't too bad. Wednesdays I have a two part class; Geography in the morning and World Cultures in the second. They're decent sized classes, and my crew is in both halves with me. All of them are some degree of 'good student', so even if I wanted to spend the class talking they wouldn't, but the instructor didn't seem to mind when I asked Angel or Saffron to confirm or clarify something. I think maybe I should be asking Bill too, but I get the impression he might twig to my unusual origins if I asked the wrong question. On the bad side of things, the Barbie Brigade are in there with us too, although in a class like this they wouldn't have nearly as much chance to throw something at our heads.

So in the morning we went over the local geography, if you consider the southern half of what I used to know as Jersey and the southeastern part of Penn's Woods, as they call it here, 'local'. The only places marked as 'cities' in that entire area are Phileo City and Camden Yards, which apparently is technically a client-state of Phileo City. There's no Trenton, no Atlantic City, no Harrisburg. Just 'farms and small farming villages'. She did have us read through a list of those and identify them on the map, but the names just slipped back out of my ears. I think I may have been in a bit of shock to see all the places I'd known growing up just... gone. On the flip side, Camden Yards is a lot bigger than Camden ever was; I think it's probably about three times as long north-south wise, and goes about four times further east from the river.

I played dumb for most of the morning, just keeping my mouth shut and never volunteering any answers. I wanted answers myself, but none of the questions I wanted to ask were something someone from Camden Yards would ask, let alone someone from Phileo City.

I heaved a sigh of relief when Doctor DeLeon dismissed us for lunch.

Stolen story; please report.

On the way to lunch Saffron stepped up next to me and said, "You don't like Geography?"

Fuck. I thought I'd kept it hid. "Not really. I mean, I don't dislike it, but today was just stuff that we've all kinda lived in, right?"

"I don't think any of us have been over to Phileo City more than a handful of times. I mean, before we got into the Heroic Academy."

"Yeah, but you lived in Camden Yards, Phileo City was right across the river, and pretty much everything else on the map is just... I dunno... irrelevant? Sort of all the same?"

Angel interrupted with, "All that irrelevant is where the food comes from."

I nodded as we went into the Dining Hall. "Fair point, yeah. I guess I just got a little weirded being taught stuff that I thought I should already know. Like I know it, but hearing it again is going to confuse me."

Angel and Saffron both gave me an 'okay, humor the crazy woman' look, and then we were at our table and chowing down. By the end of the meal we were all good and ready to go back and get us some Culture.

An hour in, with DeLeon having us recite names and numbers the whole time, both individually and in a signsong kind of way with the whole class, I'd had enough rote memorization and raised my hand.

"Yes, Cadet Diaz?"

I had a question, but I couldn't resist the smartass remark. "May I be excused, my brain is full."

He just frowned at me, tilting his head in an eloquent 'really, Diaz?' gesture I'd seen from every teacher back at Eastside, even the ones I didn't have class with.

I smiled and said, "I'm sorry, sir, but I did have a serious question. I get why we'd want to know the cultural background of the folks in a city, and knowing demographics could be useful, but why do we need to memorize Age of Consent and Age of Majority. For that matter, why are those two different?"

I ignored Larry muttering, "moron," in a stage whisper and focused on DeLeon. One thing seemed to hold as true here as it did at Eastside; if you asked a question and paid attention to the answer, teachers would let you get away with all kinds of shit.

"There are a variety of reasons the two are different, as well as a variety of reasons you will need to learn them as a Hero." He paused a bit, one finger up to silence the class while he thought. "The most succinct way to describe the difference is that when someone reaches the Age of Consent, they are legally considered an Adult in the eyes of the Law and the Gods, but they are not yet considered fully mature. They can sign contracts, including but not limited to marriage contracts. They are tried as Adults if they break the Law, although most Cities limit the maximum penalties which can be applied. Once they reach the Age of Majority, all active contracts they have signed previously are revisited, and they are required to reaffirm those contracts. In the case of criminals, they are released on probation, typically lasting as long as the difference between the Age of Consent and the Age of Majority." He looked around the ceiling a bit, like he was searching for more words, then nodded and looked back at me. "Does that answer your question?"

"I think so. You're saying that the Age of Consent marks someone as a Young Adult, and at the Age of Majority drops that 'Young' part?"

"A bit pithy, but I believe you understand the difference now."

I held back a huge sigh, but it was hard. Same shit, different universe.