Getting to the school wasn’t actually as complicated or problematic as one would think. It simply took time. Time that was enough for Micky and his crew to get control of their gawking enough to not look like bumpkins, though not enough to lose the wonder.

A few things became apparent though. One, there were two types of people that could ignore the walking only rules. One, was the people that flew through the city, Micky even saw a flying giant metal rod of some kind and a giant marble one too, even a metal disk with two glowing metal rods attached to another metal rod, wild! He wondered what kind of emperor rode around in such fancy enchanted things.

Two, there were people that ignored the laws entirely. They simply rode around in carriages of all kinds ignoring the laws. Oh they were stopped and accosted by knights and kingsmen, then fined tickets with more zeros than Micky could imagine. Then they would promptly ignore it and move on. Sometimes they would even ignore traffic and simply travel as fast as they could. This never ended well though. As they promptly veered off course and fell off the road, they did not stop and just continued to fall. Micky did not see where they went. It appeared this was one of those ‘it’s there for a reason’ laws. It explained why it was only young dwarves, elves, and high nobles that came from outside the city that did it. The ones that seemed even fancier, but older, tended to stick to the laws.

Micky did see several elves and dwarves, all of which had a varying amount of human or other races knights guarding them. It was clear that their species was treated superior here. Even ones that had fellow dwarves, or dwarves that were fully encased in metal had other knights around them clearly there just for their own dwarf’s protection.

But soon Micky finished his gawking and arrived at the academy. There was only one, not that their was actually only one, but the academy was in one building. This was enough to house every noble scion 100 times over, simply in the upper section alone. And that still left room for other schools such as ‘primary ed’ ‘secondary ed’ and ‘tertiary ed’ besides the academy for nobles. There were also schools in each of the building for the younglings of all the people living in the buildings, but Micky wasn’t sure what they did or why they spent 12-13 years of their lives doing it.

Micky arrived and found that navigating the inside of the building was actually worse than navigating the outside. Apparently, while there was only one academy the building, which was massive, was divided into thousands of ‘houses’ which was short for boarding house. Not all of these were actually boarding houses though, which it seemed that Micky’s was not. In fact, it was interesting since Micky’s house was actually apparently subordinate to Jimmy’s eventual boarding house. The counts had apparently done some finagling so that he wasn’t in direct competition, which was fine with Micky, he did not want to be competing with nobles. Unfortunately he would still have several lower ranked nobility rubbing elbows the wrong way with him.

Another thing that Micky quickly figured out was that he would need to secure secondary housing for the rest of his entourage. This was a normal thing, and luckily his house wasn’t one that was explicit with the boarding part. In fact, he got that deposit back. Maymay was apparently going to secure her own domicile and was only loosely subordinate to him anyway. However, the two that were going to be in retainer at the school, Maymay and Prin, did have to re-swear oaths before the school administrator and confirm them. It has become apparent that noble students have been put under duress by the retainer students they sometimes bring over the years that the academy has been around, who knew. Micky pointedly did not look at Prin during that particular info dump, he pointedly did not look at Prin during…

After getting a recommendation for a real estate agent Micky started shopping for houses with the stipend he had gained from The Academia, the proper pronoun if you wanted people to know what you were talking about, with caps, though if you just said the school, or place of education of any kind it was the first thing that came to the city dweller’s mind. He ended up finding a multilevel apartment with a small shop on ‘street level TM’.

It wasn’t actually on street level with any of the streets, that would have been exorbitant. That was also why it was so cheap for what he gained, it was a shop inside the main building, off to the side. It was confirmed that the cost to remodel the shop would be too expensive so both the original owners and the possible new tenants didn’t want to remodel with the price value it would bring to the house. So Micky got it at a relative steal, and the real estate agent ended up with an in office bonus for selling the place since it had been on the market for so long.

Micky still had to furnish the place, but he and the girls all had blankets to sleep on since they had been journeying so that wasn’t as much of a problem, though still a problem. The upstairs tenants were nice and had some an odd mismash of furniture that the neighbors got together to ‘allow’ him to buy. It became apparent that this was a good time to sell houses and buy furniture as the nobles were moving in and out at the start of the semester.

Micky’s own apartment wasn’t in high demand however, since it was too far and not high enough in the building to be within the nobles' sights. This didn’t mean that there wasn’t competition from the school however, the nobles attendants such as himself were all looking for similar apartments or less. However, they were only really looking to rent, not buy.

Micky simply didn’t look at all the money he just spent. Oh, he went over the numbers, but he specifically did not look at any of the actual money that he spent. He thought he might have a panic attack if he did, as is his mind was simply numb to the numbers he had just received and spent.

Luckily he still had several hundred gold left including his own contributions, meager they may be. Micky figured he might have to open a small enchanting shop on the side to make his dues fees and taxes. Some of his fellow tenants joked that he shoulda gone lower, don’t need to pay taxes and fees in the undercity with the underking. Just need to pay up protection money on time, and pay up protection money on time, and pay up protection money on time…

There seemed to be a joke going on there with the way they repeated it but Micky didn’t get it. Prin however, was laughing her ass off. Guess it was a bandit thing.

Micky got himself settled in in the next few weeks. Kux was having a field day. Apparently she had gotten herself an ‘apprenticeship’ lower in The Academia though she didn’t say much about it, apparently purposefully hushhush. It became apparent that spy/assassin retainers were both common and also seldom official. So they simply were trained deeper down into the undercity. Apparently she had already gone on an ‘expedition’ and gone ‘hunting’. She did not say monsters, Micky did not ask if it was monsters, Prin wanted all the deets but wasn’t getting anything so she was all pouty.

A few weeks in to his stay, before the semester started still he received unexpected guests. Apparently he was fairly hard to find too, but also fairly simple really. They simply paid a ‘guide’ to find him. The ‘guide’ had done some investigating though it didn’t take as much as one would think since he was going to The Academia, and yet there was still uncountable people to go through… The kingdom didn’t even bother with keeping a good census, it’ed be a waste of paper anyways, not that it stops them from wasting more by fudging the numbers and stating that they aren’t accurate anyway.

Still, Micky was not expecting Susan and Littlefoot. It was a good surprise, almost as much as finding out they are very pregnant, and without their spouses...