you can't expect Julia to sleep in a shipping container
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Two down, maybe four to go? Six feels like a reasonable number of people to redecorate Julia's room. She's going to want to install light fixtures and shelves, break down the bookshelves, replace the desk with a sleek modern wall-desk, install a mirror and build a makeup station around it...maybe she needs more than four more. There won't be space in her room for all of them but some of the assembly work can happen in the hallway.  

 

She scans the room for more kids who don't look like weirdos and do look like they could use the favor of an invitation to hang out with some people and do something useful instead of standing here fretting.

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Over here are a couple of kids, a guy and a girl, huddling together looking shellshocked. The guy is still visibly wearing a Chicago power-sharer, the girl isn't. 

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Oh man, sucks to be them. The Scholomance-internal Chicago enclave is still intact, of course, but its freshmen would've been coming with supplies and now they aren't, and there are no spots to offer anyone on graduation, and also all their friends and family are missing, maybe dead!

 

Julia waltzes over. "Hey! Want to help decorate my room?"

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"--Uh--probably--you're New York, right?"

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"Yeah. I'm Julia. I think we met this summer at the lecture by Magnus's grandpa on low-powered detection spells? Or, uh, I don't actually recognize you but Chicago was there. Sorry to hear about your enclave! Hopefully they find whoever did it and feed 'em to a maw-mouth. We can take the salvage run by the graduating Chicago seniors's supplies, too, if you'd like, you guys must be shorter than expected."

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"I don't know if the new seniors will be interested in handing down the hand-me-downs, they cut us off the mana, they seem like they're scrambling pretty hard for every advantage they can get. But if you don't mind trying we'd be happy to come on your salvage run."

"We managed to fill a few crystals before word got to whoever it was who cut off the mana, and neither of us had anything critical in the bag of someone who didn't make it, we're not totally sunk," the boy supplies. "I think I remember you from the lecture, you were wearing this pale blue top?"

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"Yeah! I wanted to take it, tried to convince my mom that the extra Vitamin D in the cafeteria was worth some exposed shoulders especially since we've got Orion, but she pulled her trump card of bursting into tears about how I'm not taking anything seriously enough. They cut you off the mana? That's so mean! Well, we can swing by and see if they'll let us have stuff, and if not, we're going to be lugging furniture up eight flights of stairs, that's some mana right there." Julia doesn't herself intend to do the lugging; she will generously leave it to the people who need mana.

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"There is that. Got anyone else recruited yet?"

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"Yeah, Karen's on my hallway, she's a rando from Saint Louis who got pulled in when, well, and she's probably screwed but this project should be safe enough for her, Orion'll be protecting us, and she understands the aesthetic I'm going for, which is a big plus! And Vernon, mousy little kid over there, is coming in exchange for whatever no one in New York wants. Silas - he was at the lecture too, redhead, bit pudgy - will be able to grab the stuff other people in New York've laid claim to. Do you know anyone else who should come? And I think I need a couple more, many hands make light work and also that way we'll be able to make it back up even if Orion dies of someone dropping a bookshelf on him, which is pretty much the only thing that could hurt him.". 

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"We've identified a couple other Chicago survivors, I dunno if they'll have something else lined up by now though. We can ask. When're you planning on going?"

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"If I can get ten people together now, probably now? That way we can lug the stuff up before dinner, get dinner, decorate afterwards, get to know each other a little bit and have it out of the way before people have assignments and stuff to worry about."

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"Okay, probably not enough time to hunt down the other Chicago expats then."

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"I mean, I'm not at ten yet, I'm at seven, so by all means go looking for them. But plan on meeting me back here in - ten minutes?" She's having good luck on the minions front so far.

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"Ten minutes, okay." 

The two of them melt off into the crowd. 

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Julia looks for more candidates.

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This kid just finished delivering letters to the Paris enclave's upperclassmen and looks like he's practically itching to disassemble some furniture! He has a serious carpentry tool on his belt, and as he drifts through the room smiling at people, intermittently introducing himself, most of his attention seems to actually be on the grates, sunlamps, tables, dish-bussing mechanism, etcetera. 

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Oh, perfect! Julia does not hurry over to him, she's not in a hurry, but she does head in his direction. "Hello!"

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Nice outfit, power-sharer, carries herself with immense confidence. Yep, this calls for replacing the Generic Friendly smile with the Customer Service smile. "Hello! Lysander Vedelev, Berlin." He doesn't actually need to say that he's technically not part of the enclave; the lack of a power-sharer says that for him. 

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Yeah, she caught that. "Julia Sanderson, New York! I'm getting some people together to go down to the senior dorm where all the graduating New Yorkers dumped their stuff and help me decorate my room. We have protection covered, but we could always use more people to carry stuff. Want to come?"

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"That sounds like fun!" he says brightly, as he is given to understand that Americans quite like it when you pretend that they are doing you a great favor by purchasing your labor for the minimum reasonable price. "I'm great for carrying things." This is, for a fourteen-year-old who is not even taller than her, actually surprisingly true; he is wiry and mostly shoulder. 

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"I think it will be fun! I hope you still get mana out of it. We're gathering over there - " she points at Vernon - "in about ten minutes, once I get our numbers to ten. We're at eight now."

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"Great," he says, and makes a note of Veron's face, and scoots off to let her keep looking. 

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Zeke approaches Julia with Rebecca in tow.

”Hey. You look like you’re doing a thingy, do you need help with the thingy?”

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"It's nice to meet you, I'm Rebecca," chirps Rebecca.

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Of course Zeke found a hopeless girl in ten minutes flat. "Hi Rebecca! Yeah, we're going to make a run down to the senior dorms to pick over what the graduating kids left behind. I badly need to decorate my room. - seems like you might want yours a little snazzier, too?"

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"I could probably use some stuff! Especially if they have clothes."

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