Sorry about the delay in terms of updates! Expect a new chapter either once or twice a week from now on. I will update on Mondays and Thursdays.

Also, a bit of irony that I noticed a month or so ago (yes, I've been writing this thing for a while): Gwen is impersonating a Wanda Maximoff while at Visions Academy.

If you don't get it, I'm not gonna explain it.

Anyway, enjoy!

Gwen blinked and rolled over. It was morning already, and she had a slight headache. She wished that night time could last a little longer.

Speaking of which, what time was it?

She lifted her phone from the table. It was 8:13 am.

Oh no. Class started at 8:30. She had forgotten to set her alarm.

Gwen hauled herself out of bed and threw on her uniform. It was a bit too big for her, but she didn't have the time to deal with any minor inconveniences.

She darted through a silent hallway to reach the hall bathroom. It was unnerving, going to a school as selective and rigorous as was Visions Academy. Apparently, you had to be super smart to even be considered for it, and Gwen wasn't exactly what one would call academically rigorous. But if this was where she was supposed to be, she had to do her best.

She wondered how that other girl, Wanda, whose identity she was borrowing, had gotten in. Was she just that smart? Was there trickery involved? Did it really matter?

Gwen dashed back to her room and stuffed the thick navy folder full of her back work into her backpack. It was now 8:24. Here was hoping that the trip to class wouldn't be too difficult.

ATOMIC DISJUNCTION

She fell flat on her face as she passed through the doorway.

It was just her luck.

How on earth would she stop people from noticing her atomic disjunctions during class?

She would have to figure that out on the fly, so it seemed.

As Gwen jogged through the halls, she thought about her veritable mountains of back work. There were slide notes from history (keeping two different dimensional timelines separate was not something she was looking forward to), worksheets about trig functions, a physics problem set, a set of questions about the book Great Expectations, and plenty of other things to do. If she actually was Wanda Maximilian, or whatever her fake name was, she'd be working on these assignments until kingdom come.

At least Gwen didn't technically have to work on any of the papers.

IMPENDING MORAL CRISIS

However, in addition to feeling bad for not turning anything in (curse her conscience a thousand times), she needed to at least pretend to be a normal student and not a trespasser from a parallel universe.

Gwen started to chuckle. Her life sounded like a story from a cheap sci-fi novelette, or worse, an amateur superhero fanfiction. But this was her reality. Truth was indeed stranger than fiction.

She managed to get to class right on time, thanks to her wall-crawling ability. Upon walking in, the teacher directed her to the seating chart. Gwen sat in the second row, near the middle of the room. There was an empty desk to her left.

The teacher scanned the aisles of desks and asked, "All right, does anybody know where Morales is?"

Nobody responded.

The teacher – her name was Mrs. Quinn, Gwen recalled – nodded. "That's an attendance deduction for him. Now, today is Technology Tuesday, so we're going to watch a fifteen-or-so-minute video about this cool new technology that's currently in development before we get to our lesson." She pulled forward a bulky television on a metal cart and slid in a DVD.

The video opened with a brief animated Alchemax logo sequence.

OCTAGONS

A young woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties walked onto the set. "Hi, everybody, my name's Doctor Olivia Octavius. I'm a theoretical physicist, chemist, and engineer at Alchemax, one of the world's leading research institutions. And I'm here today to explain the process of interdimensional transportation."

Gwen's heart skipped a beat. She wanted to yell out something, to express some form of shock, but she couldn't. She was in class; plus, she was undercover. She had to act normal, no matter what.

Gwen took out her notebook and pen and furiously jotted down notes as Dr. Octavius jabbered enthusiastically about spacetime and quantum mechanics.

The lady's name sounded eerily familiar. Maybe Gwen knew her other-dimensional counterpart somehow?

Was this lady the reason why Gwen was in this strange new world?

All of a sudden, the door squeaked open. Heads swivelled around as a young dark-skinned boy snuck into the classroom, tripping over his untied shoelaces.

MILES OF INTEREST

Gwen felt the back of her neck itch.

Mrs. Quinn paused the video. "I see you skulking around in the dark, there, Morales."

Morales froze, wide-eyed like a kid caught stealing from a cookie jar.

"Well, uh, Einstein said that time is relative, so maybe I'm not late. Everyone else is early?"

Morales grinned uneasily.

MILES OF INTEREST

So this guy was important. He didn't look particularly out of the ordinary, yet Gwen felt compelled to talk to him. Her head was aflame with ideas, with too many questions, with not enough answers.

But not in the classroom.

Nobody laughed at Morales' poorly-timed relativity joke. Both the sub and the students were stone-faced, watching him, unamused. Gwen saw one guy turn to the girl sitting next to him and whisper something.

Feeling as though noise might relieve her of some of her mental tribulations, Gwen chuckled. She immediately regretted it upon noticing people turn to look at her, including Morales.

"I'm sorry, it was just so quiet," she half-explained.

Morales, his cheeks a vivid shade of red, checked the seating chart, then sat down next to Gwen. Mrs. Quinn turned the video back on, and Gwen refocused her attention on it, trying to disregard her spider-sense's insistently repeated messages.

MILES OF INTEREST

Ten seconds later, Morales leaned over and whispered to Gwen, "You liked my joke?"

"Well, yeah, but not because it was funny," she truthfully replied.

His face fell.

"It was smart, that's what it was. I liked that."

Morales smiled and looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

All the while, Gwen tried to figure out what significance this kid had. His name might be Miles, which would make sense. Was he secretly a superhero? He didn't seem like it. Was he secretly a supervillain? Again, he didn't seem like it.

More than anything, the kid seemed normal. Perhaps that was the key. Maybe he wasn't quite as normal as he seemed.

Gwen decided to not dwell on the issue quite so much and to focus more on the interdimensional transportation video. The information in it was both oddly fascinating and much more pertinent to her problem at hand.