Briar hasn't eaten all day, which makes it especially confusing that she was a few grams over the limit when she weighed in, but at least it's convenient now. Her room has a void wall. She dumps her bag of yarn on the bed, but keeps her backpack; she has some things she's supposed to exchange with Jeremy, and some letters, and she's supposed to leave for the cafeteria right away, not sit around sorting her stuff.

Her room is 520B. She chants that in her head as she walks to the cafeteria. 520B. 520B. 520B.

His room is 782A, with a void floor. He hesitates, for a moment, considering whether to just leave his mice in his room, but he packed them in the bottom of the bag so Briar wouldn't notice them, and probably she won't. She will notice if he takes fifteen minutes to get to the cafeteria because he was repacking his backpack, and he can't even explain it away with the school's geometry, not when the entire freshman class is also walking to the cafeteria.

She doesn't seem to be literally in his hallway, at least, which is probably good. The less likely it is that she visits him, the less likely it is that she finds out about the mice.

Ribo takes stock of her room, it definitely needs more color. The yawning void in the wall is new and interesting though and there's people outside... people Mother isn't going to kill so she can maybe make friends with them. She exits her room, leaving a bit of wire to reinforce the lock and memorizes her room number of 525B before skipping off to the cafeteria. Smiling at everyone she passes.

The most wonderful thing about being part of an enclave is that while this moment is disorienting, his body is probably near the best it's ever been. No need to starve yourself when you've stayed lean for months. He has enough muscle to get by for a few weeks while he builds it back up. He does need some time to steady himself, but the nausea passes without any embarrassing work to clean up later. He ignores the incessant noise outside his room. Void wall. Not bad.

Ghassan glances around the room briefly, absorbing the conditions. He'll have to get used to living like this fast. With a slight sigh (he's allowed one) and a glance to commit his room number to memory (615A), he heads off with the rest of the new students toward the cafeteria. Hopefully he can run into some kids from other enclaves before he's lumped in with the Dubai crowd.

Masozi lands on hands and knees. He dry-heaves, but he hasn't eaten in a day - hardly inconvenient, getting food at all is the inconvenient part lately - or drunk any water since midday yesterday, and there's nothing to throw up. 

It's probably not even the worst he's felt in the past three months. He gets up, only swaying slightly, and then murders one of his precious dung beetles for enough mana that he can manage to check the room for mals.

There's some sort of - what even is that??? - under the bed. It's not hard to coax out; its mind is remarkably placid and not even very hostile. Ooh, and it's got some kind of outer carapace that sticks objects to itself! Neat. He could use that pen. Most of his personal supplies come from the two days he spent on the outskirts of the city, digging through the dump. (Which apparently has its own entire local set of gangs guarding their turf. He had to do a LOT of nudging and pushing to get them to leave him alone and let him steal their precious garbage.) 

There's also a nest of something nastier in the cupboard - why would you even have a cupboard, he's long since learned to be wary of anything that offers enclosed space, he actually prefers just sleeping out in the street for exactly that reason. Humans are much cheaper to discourage from bothering him. 

...No time to deal with either of those now, though, because there's already someone shouting out in the hallway. Masozi has only the sketchiest idea of what's supposed to happen next; the wizard enclave children don't like him much and Masozi has a feeling it's not even because of the thing where his clothes still (accurately) smell a bit like they were recently retrieved from a garbage dump. The adults only grudgingly gave him the basic minimal advice about memorizing his room number and joining the others in the cafeteria for some sort of orientation? At which hopefully more things will be explained? 

They did NOT warn him that the ceiling would be very much not a normal ceiling. He squints at it, trying to figure out if it's dangerous, but it doesn't feel like anything much to him. 

Shrug. He's not going to leave any of his possessions behind in here anyway, not before he's figured out a way to secure the door. He technically knows one shielding incantation and will probably use it tonight to go to sleep, but he'll need to sacrifice another dung beetle for that cause and he would prefer to preserve their numbers until he's actually eaten enough food to produce some food for them. 

He forges out into the hallway, stares hard at the number 132B for five seconds while grinding it into his memory, and then follows the mass of other children in the direction they seem to be going. 

Naima is very momentarily annoyed that there's no accessible void in her room that she can throw up into. She doesn't throw up much, though, and people say that void ceilings are the best, so the annoyance only lasts a second.

She's not gonna leave any of her stuff unguarded; she keeps it with her, and opens the door without wasting any more time. She's pretty sure she's going to be bottlenecked on time a lot, here, so she'd better make the most of what she has.

36A. That's easy to remember, anyway. She thinks it to herself several times anyway, making as much progress as she can through the crowd while the hallway is still empty enough for her to easily pass people.

Vernon is irritated to note that there is bile to vomit up, and probably he should have thought of inducing vomiting half an hour ago just for some extra fudge room for the weight allowance. Stupid. Too late to do anything about it, but stupid.

First, before anything else, he nervously checks his backpack. Nothing missing, nothing cut in half or mysteriously absent or anything? No? Okay, good, he hasn't screwed himself on his literal first day. Yet. That'll have to do. Now that this is sorted, he gives a glance over his room's interior. The grated floor over the void is convenient for ridding his room of the aforementioned bile, and extra healthy incentive to keep his only pair of (too big, in the hopes that they'll fit the entire time) shoes, which he didn't really need more of, but sure. His room will not be particularly tempting to poach, which for the record is extremely unlikely, and taboo besides, but still nonetheless a dumb fear stuck in his head anyway, for a technical independent like him. And the gore from the mals he'll be killing will be easy to clean, which is also nice, he guesses.

He locks his door before he goes, and stops outside of his room long enough to memorize his room number. 640A. Sure. Okay. Easy enough. Even numbers, skipping the 2. He is immensely grateful that his room number is so straightforward, because he didn't bring a pen or any paper to write on.

"Keep up the good work," he says to the door, tapping on it with a knuckle in a friendly sort of way. It pays to have a good relationship with the door to your room at Scholomance even if it might make you look a little dense. "Hopefully we'll be seeing each other for a while yet, eh?"

And then he turns and follows the crowd to the cafeteria.

Lissa goes tumbling and lands hard on her bag, hissing slightly when she realizes that she put all her clothes on the bottom and is now getting poked. She slowly sits up, looking up at...the ceiling? Is that a ceiling? She hears yelling, and calls to assemble at a cafeteria?

...a thrill runs through her. She dreamed, deep down inside of her, that there was magic out there, magic like in the stories she'd read and watched. And a magic school? Is this what it is? Standing up, she decides to keep her bag with her for now before stepping out of her door, glancing at the number. She takes some time to ruffle around in her bag for her notebook, quickly writing down "392A" before joining the crowd with a skip in her step.

...wow, why are so many people bald?

Murray lands in his room and focuses on breathing and clenching his teeth and does not throw up, and once he thinks he has it under control he relaxes slightly and does.  Void ceiling, too, but at least he successfully aims for the floor drain.  He will clean that up if it still needs it later, after he's come back from the cafeteria, so he just - no, he does not unclip the hydroponics-setup-containing portion of his backpack he decided to keep that with him for this part weeks ago.  He chastises himself for forgetting that but mentally undoes the come on, get it together as he heads for the door; things are going to be bad enough in here, and he should note where he can do better but it won't help anything to get caught up over the most minor of mistakes, the ones that cost him at most a handful of seconds when he's not even in active danger.  He's less effective when he feels yelled at, and that doesn't change when he's the one doing the yelling.  So three cheers for self-charity.

Out in the hall, he murmurs his room number to himself on repeat and watches out for mals rather than evaluating his fellow students, and writes 597b in the crook of his elbow only once he's reached the relative safety of the cafeteria.

Teresa stumbles as she lands in her room, and feels a little nauseous, but handles it relatively well, she thinks. She pulls the drugged rat off the top of her bag as she recovers, dumps the bulky parts onto her bed (lightly warded, they'll keep), and gets a pen. Void wall, at least it's not the floor. She goes to the hall, looks back at her room and scribbles the number (83 A) on her bag, and rips the malia straight out of the rat, in plain view of the hallway. It steadies her, and she's off to the cafeteria.

Theun does not handle the nausea well. Void floor makes this less of a problem than it might have been. On the other hand, it means he has a fucking void floor, worst option by far.

Well. Letters and food and water. And his room number. 790B goes in the riffle notebook and his memory. And he's off to the stairs, a little unsteadily. Dammit, he's on the lower level, too, that's going to suck in a year or two.

Della... falls to the ground with a slightly alarming thud, and vomits!

Her trick with her rollerskates doesn’t take much ongoing mana, but it does take a small trickle, and the induction process schlorped all of hers; no mana, no usable legs.

It takes her a minute to finish throwing up, and a long while after that to stand back up again; she observes that she has a void ceiling, which is convenient in general and inconvenient for the vomit. And now she’s - still in her dormitory, after everyone is supposed to be in the cafeteria, which is not a safe situation at all, so she should probably rectify it promptly.

She glides outside of her room, memorizes her room number - 312B - and heads towards the cafeteria!

... and then heads away from the cafeteria at high speed, with a large shadowy fuzzy thing in pursuit, which is not a situation that she approves of at all! And then she’s all turned around and unclear on where exactly the cafeteria is and the shadowy thing is very nearly as fast as her, even with her wheels and her tricks and her boundless optimism, so she can’t catch her bearings, and she spends a long while being chased in circles before she finally bursts into the cafeteria with the mal still on her trail and someone kills it.

He took meds half an hour ago, and he does not throw up. He's still kind of dizzy, but mostly this manifests as, like, half-falling towards his door, although by the time he actually opens it a second later, he looks like he totally meant to do that. He dimly notes that he has a void floor, but decides not to waste time caring about that; it would probably be pretty inconvenient to shove him out the trap door, so maybe it's better than a wall even if it's also more annoying. Anyway, nobody thinks this is the kind of thing that determines whether you graduate, so he's going to avoid worrying about that in particular. He has so many other things to worry about.

He memorizes his room number. 159B. He chants it to himself a couple times, already moving, knowing that he's not going to forget something important like that. He knows which way the cafeteria is - he's been pouring over the plans for this place for months - and the halls are mostly empty so far, because it's been literally five seconds and most of the kids will be busy throwing up, so he jogs until they fill up. Not having any mana is extremely uncomfortable, and he wants to fix the problem as soon as he possibly can. He's good enough at running that this doesn't help that much, but it helps a little.

He is eyeing EVERY grate and EVERY vent and EVERY crack in the wall and EVERY OBJECT that looks like it might have anything suspicious about it. None of them happen to be moving right now, though.

...well, his void is in the ceiling, meaning the rest of his room is something like a vaguely normal room, and that nobody can push him out unless they're very determined and probably have allies. So that's something.

He spends a few minutes unpacking the beetles. This is going to make him on the late side to the cafeteria, but you don't want to be carrying a sign around that says "obvious maleficer", and he hasn't actually done that much maleficing yet, so without them it shouldn't be at all obvious. Apart from the smell. Which is in this case completely natural and just because he's been carrying a container of dung beetles around. But he hasn't been carrying them that long, so hopefully it'll waft away by the time he gets to the cafeteria.

He memorizes his room number (462B, should be easy enough), and heads out with the stragglers. 

Wow ouch yikes bad no thank you.

Right, okay, what's his room number? 281B, easy, one digit off from a bad joke, he'll tell Sherry and they'll laugh about it. He heads for the cafeteria without pausing to look around for his brother, under the assumption that Sherry will have an easier time finding him there than he will have finding Sherry anywhere ever.

You have got to be fucking kidding him.

He lands, badly, and then spends a few minutes dry-heaving into the floor drain.

Awesome.

He checks his room number — 50A — and clicks his one precious Sharpie to ink the number on the back of his wrist, before gathering himself and heading for the cafeteria, letters in hand.

Sophie doesn't have anything in her stomach, and she's actually feeling much less nauseous than people said she would. "I really am harder than they think," she mutters, and stands. Void wall. She pats it gently, and it ripples. "You'll be good, won't you? I'm counting on you."

She's in room 196A. She locks the door and starts down the hall towards the cafeteria. Her task is to find people who can keep her alive until her sisters get here, and that starts by talking to people. Which she can do. Really.

395A, void wall. The commonest configuration. She wobbles a bit on her way out of the room, but gets herself straightened out before she's more than ten steps down the hall. Even as the crowd flows around her, she's keeping an eye out for mals. You never know.

The trip is overstimulating but not unbearable, and his void ceiling will improve his odds of making his Papa proud. So far, so good.

Jean fixes his hair in the mirror of his pocket compact, touches the rouge to his cheeks for charm and to hide any lingering nausea-green, and leaves 203B for the cafeteria.

Camillo has been on a roller coaster, once, for what were in retrospect practical reasons of preparation, and he didn't enjoy it.

He doesn't enjoy induction, either.

The Scholomance is terrifyingly unfriendly and is probably going to kill him. (He knows that's not true, really, he has good odds, but ... it feels true.) Everything here wants to hurt him. The walls want to hurt him, and the floor wants to hurt him, and the ceiling wants to hurt him slightly less actively but will still absolutely drive him stark raving insane if given half a chance. There is literally no safe place to stand or safe direction to look or safe thing to do.

This sucks.

His room number is 589B. He uses the tip of his pocketknife to score it very lightly into his upper thigh -- not deep enough to break skin and risk infection, just enough to raise welts that will last for the rest of the day at least. He's going to get it tattooed, even though his parents said that was a terrible idea, because Camillo knows himself and he knows he will forget his room number and that's just a stupid way to die and waste all of the work and time and expense his parents invested in him.

That accomplished, and his excess luggage dumped, Camillo follows the instructions currently being shouted up and down the halls and heads for the cafeteria.

Wil dry-heaves a couple times and then steadies himself. Void wall, 773B. He's got a good memory. 773B.

And okay now it is time for the cafeteria. He's fine. He's got this. He has to lean against the wall for most of the way so that he doesn't fall, but that's fine. The first day is the safest day of the year, all he has to do is not die before dinner.

Michel looks around. Startled by the normalcy. Then he looks down and retchs. Beneath his grated floor there is nothing, and it goes on forever.

He looks up and for a door and stumbles out of his room. He catches his room number and then heads down to the cafeteria.

Bobbie lands in a crouch. She manages to keep down her lunch (hah, like she's eaten.) and scans the room for danger. There isn't any, because it's the first day and this room was just created from scratch, she'd be really impressed with the mal that managed to sneak in already.

She does need to take a minute to psych herself up before she opens her door (312A) and marches down to the cafeteria, but when she does she's got her game face on. If people are staring at her as she moves through the halls, she is determined not to notice.

Ayla lands in 175B, which might be the most claustrophobic room she's ever been in, a state not actually helped by the empty coruscating hole that spans the ceiling. She signs the numbers and letter in her palm as she quickly unpacks - not everything, but her pack was optimized for coherent layout and not for being comfortable to carry, some pieces stick out and go from her head to her knees.

There's a roar outside and she's distantly afraid to leave. There can't be big mals this soon, but she can't guess what else would make that terrible noise. Bad plumbing or ventilation, maybe? Just her luck, nabbing a room this close to faulty pipes. She screws up her composure to open the door. When she does, the roar hits her like a wave and she sees - people, too many crammed into narrow halls - they're making the noise -

They're talking. They're all talking. Hands still and expressionless, or moving in nonsense patterns, and each voice carrying a different conversation --

It takes Ayla longer than she'd planned to get to the cafeteria.