"Friends," Yulia answered the irate-looking Stollwurm. "The Truth. Breaching the gulf between humanity and Omnids."

"Power?" I asked Kat. "What power are you expecting a human to accumulate?"

"I don't freaking know, okay!" The wheelchair-bound Omnid growled. "For all I know, you're could be here to steal whatever shit you can grab and get out of Dodge?"

"Absolutely not," I shook my head. "I intend to go to Arx with all of you to learn the nature of magic. Skyfall Academy and the Arx gate is the heart of all magic in Omnithornia, the nail on which everything is hanging, the place where all Kitlix come from. My goal is to become a wizard, to become the first human on Earth who can level up. I can only do this here and now with YOUR help."

Katherine choked.

"Daymn. Sheet just got real," Vespera let out, snapping her beak shut. She slowly stalked around me, clicking her beak and tapping steel-covered talons across me, sending sparks. "I knew it. I freaking knew it! You didn't read like a proper mixie! Ha!"

"What? You can tell if someone is human or not by touch and smell?" Io asked.

"Electrical impulses, actually," Vespera revealed. "Might as well tell you this since I been outed. I can identify lots of shit using electrical patterns. Every species has a unique bio-electrical signature. Humans have a very distinct one - kinda like static noise on an old TV. Mixies have a mixed pattern, usually favoring their Omnid parent. But this one..." She poked me with a talon. "Nothing but pure human static."

"So that's why you keep pawing at him," Cinder said with a bit of a growl to it. "You were checking if he was really human?!"

"He's very paw-able," Vespera grinned. "Plus... Em texted me a detailed report from her fam's Scrutimancer, Satosh. His scrying concluded that Alexander Glock is... human."

"Can you forward that report to me?" I asked her.

"Only if you tell me how you upped my mana," the Thunderbird offered a deal. "I still don't effin’ understand how you did that. That should be completely impossible for a human. Humans don't have crystalline heart cores for mana storage."

"The lighter," I said, pulling out the object in question. "It generates absurd levels of pure mana while the flame burns in a radius of about three-four meters. Got it from Zee Captain."

"Holy shit, gimme!" Vespera snatched the lighter from me, clicking all over it with her magisteel-clad talons, letting sparks dance along the surface of the interdimensional object. "You made a deal with that freaking thing and you got a rare item?! Effin' Abyss! I knew that something was off during our performance... I lost like several minutes of real time!"

Katherine looked between me, Vespera and Cinder.

"So... your name is... really Martin Kilborne and you're a human?" She asked. "This isn't some kind of an elaborate joke to mess with me?"

"Not a joke," I said. "You saw my passport. Kat, please just believe me. I'm gonna be as honest as possible with all of you from this point. You guys helped me beat an Archmage who would have torn my soul apart. I had no way of dealing with Zalimar Evernacht by myself."

Katherine pulled off her dark goggles. Her blue and dark-striped scaled face twitched as her green eyes examined me and ran across Vespera clicking away at the lighter, Io standing there looking dazed and then stopped on Cinder.

"Martin is a human, Kat," Cinder said. "It's the truth. I... used my Charmchain magic to confirm it."

"A human," Katherine repeated slowly, her glowing, deep emerald eyes burning into me. "You're telling me that a human somehow infiltrated Skyfall Academy, manipulated his way into forming a delving team, and just helped us yeet a teacher to another dimension? Do you have any idea how utterly absurd all of this sounds?!"

"Technically, all of you did the banishing part. I just provided the mana boost via the lighter," I said.

"This is a lot to take in," Io said. "So like... Em was actually right?"

"Yep," I nodded. "Em is one hundred percent right. I'm as human as they come."

"You're boned," Vespera clicked at me, waving her phone. "Quadratically boned! Em's going ham on Omnigram trying to out you to everyone she knows! #HumanInSkyfall. #DeportTheScab!"

"This is fine," I said. "We'll lean into it. Now where's that report?"

"Hol' yo beast cores. M' sending it... now," the Thunderbird said, tapping rapidly at her phone.

"Lean into it?" Katherine stared at me. "What?! You want to lean into being exposed as an illegal human infiltrator?"

I dug into my bag and handed her the team registration forms. "The motto of team 'I love you' is 'I'm with human.' We'll print it on our merch. My t-shirt is going to say 'Human'. It's a meta-joke, that's technically the truth. Em can scream as much as she wants to. I'm going to lean extra-hard into my ‘I'm a nulls who pretends to be a human for fun roleplay’."

Vespera barked a laugh, nearly dropping her phone.

"Oh, oh, no no no," she stammered between a waterfall of chortles. "Abyss! That is literally the funniest shit I've heard. Ha. Aah ha ha. You're gonna... you're gonna just... Ha. Pretend to be pretending to be human?! That's... that's like... meta-inception levels of trolling! Holy shit!"

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

She doubled over, clutching her sides as she laughed uncontrollably, chain mail jiggling wildly and her hand flailing. She laughed so hard that she started crying.

"I don't see what's so funny about this," Katherine huffed.

"What? No! Come on, it's hilarious!" Vespera wiped tears from her eyes still giggling. "Think about it - Em's gonna be screaming that he's human, and he's just gonna be like 'yeah, that's my gimmick' and everyone's gonna think she's effin' crazy! It's perfect! Nobody will suspect a thing!"

"What about the Scrut's report that Em is sharing via Omnigram?! And what happens when someone actually investigates him like you have... with a magic scan?" Katherine demanded. "Honestly, I'm surprised that the school nurse hasn't outed your ass already!"

"The nurse knows," I shrugged. "She's been patching me up since Em plowed me with a ball during dodgeball. She just doesn't care."

"What?!" Katherine asked. "She knows and she's just... okay with it?"

"Patient confidentiality and what-not," I shrugged. "If she exposes me, she loses her job and opens herself to a bigly lawsuit."

"And what if someone scans you with an Infix Kitlix?" Kat demanded. "What then? We all get mind-fucked by the Omnithean Bureau of Scrutimancy and go to prison for life?!"

Cinder tensed up beside me.

"Tsh," Vespera clicked. "Stop being such a drama darkhog, Kat. Plenty of humans work for my dad's research companies."

"Yeah, but I bet they're registered workers with permits," Katherine argued. "Not illegal infiltrators pretending to be students!"

"Actually," I pulled out more paperwork from my bag. "I do have a work permit, just in case. From the Triumvirate Slayer's Cathedral. Father Matthias signed off on it yesterday."

Cinder chortled from where she was standing beside me.

"This doesn't alleviate my concerns in the slightest," Katherine said. "What if someone scans you with a Kitlix?"

"Kitlix aren't the perfect end-all tool," Vespera pointed out. "They're born on Arx and don't work that well here on Earth. Depending on how much mana is nearby they can absolutely hell-a-glitch and provide completely wrong results. The further one goes from Leviathan's Cradle and the impact of the Wormwood Star, the more aetheric density drops and the more unreliable the Kitlix become. Plus, there are ways to trick ‘em."

"How?" the Stollwurm demanded.

Vespera pulled one of her head-feathers with a wince and stuck it into my wild hair mop. "This!"

"A feather?" Kat raised an eyebrow.

"Lexi is pretending to be the son of a Thunderbird, right?" Vespera said. "It's stupid easy to confuse magic scanners when you have genuine Thunderbird feathers taped to your butt."

"What?" Cinder asked. "Really?"

"The more you know." I commented.

"Yep!" Vespera clicked. "Dad's company has been dealing with this issue for years. It's not really solvable. It's like... an open secret in the magitek scanner-maker industry. As long as you have some genuine Omnid material on you, most basic scanners just register you as whatever species that material came from."

"That's... concerning," Katherine muttered.

"It's why the Scrutimancers get paid big bucks to investigate this sort of stuff properly, but even they can be fooled," Vespera shrugged. "Take my feathers, grind them into powder, sprinkle that shit all over your human ass and you're basically a Thunderbird. That'll totally fool any general evaluation."

"And for a deeper evaluation?" Kat asked.

"Eat the powder," Vespera said.

"What?!" Cinder and Katherine exclaimed simultaneously.

"Yep!" Vespera nodded enthusiastically. "Dad's R&D department discovered that ingesting powdered Omnid material along with some food can temporarily alter your bioelectrical signature. If the diet is kept up, building up Omnid strata deposits in a human body, it's enough to fool even mid-tier scanners."

"Vee," Cinder turned to her friend. "Why are you helping Martin, telling him all of this? I don't understand. What's in it for you?"

"Because it's fun!" Vespera grinned. "Things are boring as shit around here. I've been mostly coasting by, floating in the current, waiting to graduate to work for my dad's company as a CTO. The flow has been rather stale with exception for Em's shenanigans. This cheeky bug made everything fun and unexpected!"

She grabbed my cheeks and smooshed them.

"Like, look at this smug pink beast! He just waltzed in, completely human, no magical abilities, and BANISHED A TEACHER! Do you know how hard it is to get rid of a tenured Archmage professor? Like, impossible! And he was like 'I challenge you to a duel!' and Bam! - we don't have a snarky, effin' annoying delvin' prof no more," she laughed. "Like who the eff does that? Who outs me as the cleverest birb in class? Who has an AI in their pocket?"

"I do!" I grinned, smooshed-cheek style.

"Yes! You're like this... this tornado!" Vespera continued. "You just show up and suddenly everything's different, upside down! Em's troupe is done, Ci's wearing white, Kat's actually talking to people, and I don't have to pretend to be a total ditz anymore with my friends!"

Katherine pursed her lips.

"Don't be frownin' at me, Kat," Vespera said, mussing up my hair again, sparks raining from her talons. "This. This is the most interesting human specimen I've met and believe me, I've met lots of clever little humans. Dad's always introducin' me to human researchers and compsi engineers. But they're all so... boring! All 'yes sir, no sir, please don't electrocute me sir.' But this one?" Vespera hugged me from behind, making me twitch as electrical currents danced up my spine. "This absolute mad lad? He walks into the most prestigious Omnid school in the country, makes friends with the top predators, makes a deal with an unstoppable entity for a mana lighter and somehow makes it all work!"

The frown on the Stollwurm's face crept up.

"Look at him! He's got this whole 'I'm totally innocent and harmless' vibe going on while being an absolute agent of pure chaos! Like, look at his face! Would you ever suspect this pink meat-popsicle of social engineering an entire school? I sure as hell didn't!" The Thunderbird's feathers crackled with dancing lightning. "I thought that humans were all afraid of us Thundergods... but guess what? He ain't afraid of me! Like, I'm pawin' and zappin' him all over and he ain't freaking out in the slightest!"

"Oi, get your sparkly talons off him!" Cinder tried to pull the Thunderbird off me.

"Hol' up, damn it!" Vespera fought Cinder off with a strike of electricity. "Explaining a point! When I found him in the hallway, surrounded by like thirty art nerds, he shooed them all away with a friggin' thunder-popper and a few words. And when I asked him whether he wants to join History Club to get maced in the face by me and Sol... you know what he said? He said 'Sounds fun. Count me in!' Nobody effin' says that to me. Ever! Cus Em scares them all!"

Kat's lip twitched up into an almost-smile as she watched Vespera zap Cinder away, the Quetzi flashing a variety of annoyed colors.

"So," Katherine chewed on her words, "you're helping him because he's... entertaining?"

"Entertaining? Ha!" Vespera released me and did a dramatic spin, chain mail flashing with silver circlets and blue skirt flying. "He's a whole damn circus! Do you know how boring our lives have been? Em controlling everything, Zalimar terrorizing half-bloods, everyone just accepting the status quo? And then THIS human shows up and just... breaks everything, stands up to everyone like he don't give a shit! I'm totally sold, my dude. How are you not sold yet? Don't tell me he didn't stand up to your wheelie ass?"

A small, dark blush rushed across the Stollwurm's grey-blue face.