In addition to Sun, Matt and Ornuk who had been seen in previous strips, two new cadets are introduced:
- Ravi Chopra: avatar for Shakti, Hindu Godess for Women; in addition to transforming into a female form has numerous powers.
- Jai-Jai Floxizan: pixie (alternate dimension); flight, magic, tiny!
Like the others so far, both Ravi and Jai-Jai had brief cameos on page 6.29. Out of all the five freshers featured, Ornuk is the only one who we've already seen use his power of shapeshifting. Sun and Matt's powers of magnetism and sub-zero temperature control is fairly traditional superhero fare.
Ravi's power borrows from a number of traditions... the magical word transformation (as in "Shazam!" for Captain Marvel) and mystical transgenderism (most notably in Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki) - other than being transformed into an avatar of the Hindu Goddess for Women - I can't really say yet what Ravi's powers actually are.
Jai-Jai is a character from another comic I did some years ago, I quite liked her personality in that story and since that involved crossing dimensions I didn't consider it too much of a stretch to bring her into the Magellanverse. Is she naked? Yes! Why?? Well, you try making a costume that small! Also, as many of my readers may already know, her home realm was featured in my nudist themed webcomic The Bare Pit. That story is, for the time being, not online. How and why she came to be in the Magellanverse is another story altogether. To prove I've long considered her a possibe candidate for cadetship see History 3 and you'll see her (or at least one of her people) flitting around in the second panel!
