Lysander fixes stuff. 

It's convenient for him, therefore, that he'd probably have gone for artificer even given the choice; but he didn't, not really. He had always been appalling at languages, at least in the way that mattered - he could understand most of the languages he'd met, which around an enclave was plenty, and speak them pretty well, but put words on paper? Forget it, you might as well ask him to jump to the Moon. In between a series of horrid, controlling mundane stepfathers he would never have forgiven his mother for if they weren't a transparent attempt to keep him alive, he tinkered with machines and ignored his mundane schoolwork while she drilled his sisters and his brother on things he'd never manage. He'd hoped, for a while, that maybe he could make mana that way, the process of writing effortful enough to count, but Mom had watched him do it with a critical eye and told him he wasn't even trying, what was wrong with him, did he want to die?, which told him that probably he just wasn't even making enough progress, like spinning a piece of yarn endlessly around your fingers without ever making a sock and calling it knitting. So he tinkered, instead, figuring that in the incredibly unlikely event he lived to see eighteen he might as well be useful somehow. He didn't really remember being young enough that anyone expected him to get a Scholomance slot, not when the Americans deigned to let them have about half as many as they needed and all the sixty-hour weeks of guard duty she could find wouldn't earn his mother more than two, out of her four kids. His next-eldest sister was fluent in nine languages by the time she was ten and wrote beautiful poetry and probably would have been fine in the Scholomance, if she had lived to see twelve, but she didn't. He'd considered saying no, let both his younger siblings definitely get to go, stick around and try to keep them alive, but eight more years would probably be enough for Mom to earn a third of those precious rationed slots, especially if he makes it back out and helps, and the littlest had cried, when he suggested it. 

He's wearing running shoes that are a little too big, over-long elastic-banded athletic shorts that he hopes might actually survive his last growth spurt, a sleeveless shirt, and a triple-wrapped necklace chain of mana storage gems, bought and paid for by the stack of letters tucked in his waistband. His hair is buzzed, and he didn't even bring a backpack, or a change of clothes, because there just wasn't the space for it. Not along with a heavy steel hammer-prybar-pickaxe on its canvas toolcarrying-belt, because if he was going to commit to the maintenance track that was his only realistic option - the kids from Berlin proper already knew to ask him first to cover their shifts - he was going to do it right, okay. 

The only other things he can carry past that are a handheld multitool and a pocket-sized steel case, lined with carefully cut foam. If he were a normal person he could perhaps have filled it with useful drugs, but instead that space is allocated to two needles, a roll of medical-grade thread, a tiny packet of caffeine tabs, a tiny three-year-old picture of his family, and three irreplaceable vials of factor nine, packed carefully in a foam-lined metal case. If he got grievously injured more than that he was doomed, presumably, there was no getting more inside for any price, but they hadn't been able to lay hands on any more even when Mom, in desperation, resorted to mind-controlling mundane medical professionals. He was mostly going to have to hope that (literally) thick skin and fast reflexes would keep his injuries just mild enough. 

"It's fine," he says, smiling with a confidence he absolutely does not feel, and hugging his remaining siblings for what is probably the last time. "I'll see you in four yea - "