Looking around the mysterious common room again, Max immediately got several clues about his current location. To his right was a huge flatscreen TV hooked up to a half-dozen gaming consoles, current and retro. To his left were several bookshelves packed with manga and steamy-looking romantasy books. Behind him, above a navy blue couch covered in more empty Red Bulls and crumpled-up classwork, two huge posters of Mount Lady from My Hero Academia and D.Va from Overwatch loomed like giant billboards. Putting all of this together, it didn't take a genius to figure out that he had woken up in House Minerva—the sorority known to everyone else at Ventus as the "Nerd House."

 

If the jocks in House Diana were the strongest girls on campus, and the e-girls in Fortuna were the hottest, the nerds in Minerva were quite easily the smartest. They dominated every serious field of study, boasted some of the school's best and brightest alumni, and, as a direct result of their relentless course loads, were also frequently some of the slobbiest and least sexually active young women around. Most spent all their waking hours either obsessively cramming for classes or immersing themselves in their favorite games and anime, leaving little time for things like dating, partying, or good personal hygiene. In other words, despite their firmly established place in Ventus's top tier of well-funded, prestigious sororities, the majority of the house's undergrads were far from traditional collegiate popular girls. While they weren't nearly as bad as the straight-up femcels in House Prosperina, the general consensus was that they didn't get out much.

 

Realizing where he was, Max couldn't help feeling a little relieved. If he had any shot of finding a way back to normal, it would probably start with one of Minerva's many certified brainiacs—and in here, he didn't have to worry about overbearing jocks, kooky goths, bratty e-girls or fetid gooners. All he had to do now was get the attention of one of the house's residents, ideally a chemistry major or premed student, and hope they didn't mistake him for a bug.

 

As he thought about the few Minervans he had met during his first few weeks at school, he guessed his best bet would be Zoe: a fellow freshman in his Intro to Biology class and one of the house's newest pledges. Cute, curvy, pleasantly bottom-heavy and unapologetically geeky, the blue-haired Brazilian Comp Sci major was more or less everything he'd ever wanted in a girlfriend—and even though he'd never been great at reading women, it seemed like she liked him, too. They always sat next to each other in class, she always waved whenever she saw him around campus, and she occasionally even laughed at his deeply lame attempts at jokes. She also seemed to be friends with his roommate, Zeke, for whatever that was worth.

 

If Zoe was the best case person to find him in here, the worst case was probably Veronica—the 6'4", 300 lb, 28-year-old dorm mother of House Minerva, director of Ventus's Chemistry department and an unapologetic disciplinarian. Max had met her once at an information session for aspiring STEM majors a few days after classes started, and even at normal size, he'd found her staggering height, powerful curves and cold demeanor deeply intimidating. Now, he couldn't even imagine how he'd feel in her presence... or what she might do if she caught him here in flagrant violation of official house rules about unsupervised male visitors—rules she was rumored to uphold more strictly than any other dorm mother on campus.

 

The only other Minervan he could think of off the top of his head was Hanna Suzuki, a junior Mechanical Engineering major he often saw studying in the library. Mellow and studious but clearly somewhat misanthropic, her long black hair, blue eyes and plump but perky figure were hard to miss. She always seemed strangely familiar to him, but he had yet to piece together why. The truth was, he'd been seeing photos and videos from her online alter ego "Nyanna" (a cat-girl cosplayer with a penchant for building kinky gadgets to accentuate her outfits) for years—but until he made that connection, she was just another overworked STEM girl. Compared to the dream and nightmare scenarios of Zoe and Veronica, she was definitely the wild card of the bunch.

 

With all of that in mind, he could only conclude that he had to find his Intro to Bio classmate as soon as possible—but with no clue how to get to her room from here, that would be easier said than done. The idea of venturing into the hall in his current form seemed like a recipe for disaster, but the prospect of just sitting on the table and waiting to surprise the first person to come in wasn't terribly appealing, either. Fortunately, or unfortunately, before he could spend any more time trying to game the whole situation out, he heard the door open on the other side of the room.

 

When he turned around, he found himself face to face with...