"If getting lost kills you, definitely."

They head in that direction.

Masozi looks up as they approach. Makes eye contact, brief nods, then he completes the rest of his eyeball-sweep of the room while he's distracted from the map anyway. 

"I'm Masozi," he says. "Pleased to meet you."

He's tall for a freshman, very skinny, and holds himself as though expecting to have to fight off a murderer at any second. He's wearing cheap flip-flops and mismatched, poorly fitting clothes with some not-fully-cleaned stains and a definite whiff of garbage. 

Makes her think of the gang kids. The other kind, not the ones that swagger. She has a knife in the left jacket pocket and is standing ready to fetch it out if she has to, the body language of it is glaringly obvious to him.

"Wendy Kholer. New to all this, those fucked up rats weren't rats after all."

"See, I bet you'll get along. Sorta. And you do need to know the map. Kevin Astley, looking to set myself up as the trader guy. I've got leads on lots of stuff, by the way. Masozi. Am I saying that right? Anyway, likewise."

Masozi smiles at Kevin, though he's not sure he particularly likes the boy. "I have dung beetles that I might want to trade later but probably not yet. Um, if you know anyone who'd trade me their shit as food for them, in exchange for future favours -" 

He breaks off, because he's doing a scan again and someone dropped a crumpled piece of paper on the floor three yards away, near the wall - no wait that's not a– what the FUCK IS THAT. 

He spins around on the spot, instinctively positioning himself in from of the new girl, Wendy, who's presumably less experiencing at holding them off - though she's clearly not helpless, she's got the basic situational awareness, maybe she can get the other experience in time before she gets herself dead. Maybe.

"Mal. There. Look out." 

Out comes the knife, where exactly-

THUNK. Now there's a glittery butterfly knife spearing through the trilobite-thing that was disguising itself as rubbish. It crawls along the floor a bit, bleeding. He - looks around for any more before pulling his knife back with a tiny tendril of mana and stabs it from a distance again.

"Bleugh, hell. Nice catch. Also, very resourceful the dung thing, I'll keep it in mind. Anyone mind if I keep that?"

Shrug. "You can have it. ...What'd'you want it for? Is it useful for alchemy ingredients or something?" 

"Sometimes, and some people have things that can eat mal bits like your beetles."

"And when we're all stuck here together everything you can get is something, right?"

"The girl called Lucy will trade things for mal grubs," Masozi offers, in case this is helpful information. The rest of the room seems to be clear, so he goes back to intently studying the map. 

"I'll have to check if this thing has any eggs in it, then. Wendy, study the map. Oh, and when you hear a loud bell, five minutes to curfew. That's not for a while. Good luck!"

And off he goes.

...She looks at the map. Eyes Masozi a bit suspiciously. Something feels slightly off. He feels like he's always half a second from stabbing something, which, fair, but it makes her tense too.

Eh.

"Did you have any idea about all this before today?"

Her distrust is reasonable and Masozi wouldn't be even slightly offended if he were to consciously notice it, which he doesn't because mistrust is the assumed default state of affairs between strangers. 

The fact that Wendy is coming into this even less prepared than he is does leave him inclined to tell her more than he usually would. A little. He doesn't know which parts will be context she's missing. 

"I knew about magic - my parents were wizards too - but not much about the school. My parents died in the last few months and it seemed like going to Johannesburg was the smartest plan, I'd heard there was an enclave there, and they ended up not filling all of their spots for the school so they let me go along." 

Sigh. Complaining - won't be useful.

"Great. Yeah. What do you think I need to know most urgently? If you tell me to fuck off I will."

"- No. I don't mind giving you advice." He tries to smile reassuringly at her. Imagining he's comforting his little sister works; that's about the only time he ever goes for 'reassuring'. "Um, I - think you probably want to learn how to do some magic. Do you know if you ever have, before? I think the first times I did magic were by accident and it didn't - feel like anything special?" 

"Yeah I'm not sure I've ever actually done any magic? Unless fixing an old clock by hitting it counts, but that sounds like the wrong thing."

"Hmm. I - can try to trade favours with Lucy again, she wants mal grubs and maybe you can help me get her some, and I bet she knows a lot more about how to learn magic, her parents sent her and her brother in very prepared. But - in the meantime I can - show you my shield spell?"

He doesn't have that many actual spells that he's willing to talk about, but the basic door-shielding one, he learned from a kid in Malawi. "I can go do it for the school nurse, I heard one of the older students talking to her and she's mundane and can't do spells but it seems helpful to keep one grownup in here alive." 

"That's a good idea, hell, a nurse in here- But wait, what language is it in, you're not supposed to learn too many."

"- Oh, right. The one I know is in Zulu. Maybe you can plug your ears, and just - watch and see if you can feel how it's magical?" 

"Apparently I can ask my room for spells too, probably going to do that. And I'll follow you, got a nurse-y question anyway."

"Sure, all right." Masozi hadn't managed to quite catch the snippet about asking the room for spells - he'd been scheming so hard to get to the library - and it's very good to know! 

He heads over to the nurse's office, which now has a very makeshift sign on the door. Halfway there he glances back at Wendy. "- You've got good awareness but you should specifically watch the ceiling. They come out through the ventilation. And don't trust rubbish on the floor, mals can hide that way." 

And then he reaches the nurse's office and knocks. 

A young woman - though much older than anyone else in the Scholomance, maybe early twenties - opens the door, cautiously and with an ivory knife held in front of her and clearly very very twitchy. 

"Yes. Are you here for medical help?" 

"I'm Masozi and this is Wendy," Masozi says politely. "I was going to shield your door so she can watch the magic and so mals can't get in at you. ...Oh, there's no sink in here, that's smart, means they can't get in that way." 

"Also I got a medical question but I can fuck off instead, it's..." Shrug. "And I'm gonna plug my ears while he does it by the way, so don't be alarmed, learning only a little bit of a language is a bad idea because magic."

"No, no, of course, that's what I'm here for!" Marian ushers them in. 

"People can go in and out of this one but mals can't," Masozi explains. "It's only going to last two hours, but that should be long enough that we can figure out something better, the older kids must know more spells. 

He nods to Wendy to indicate that she can start, and then starts singsong-muttering in Zulu. The words aren't very complicated; the translation is mostly 'guard and protect, stand guard and shield'. It takes about a minute. 

Marian cannot tell at all that anything is happening! 

It feels like - intuition, like jiggling her gym padlock-

Once he's obviously done she says, "Yeah, I think I felt that. It's real subtle, isn't it?"

"That sounds right. And usually there's words but sometimes it's a song, and if you know it well enough you can sort of say the words without quite saying them out loud enough to hear." Or else it would be a heck of a lot more obvious when he nudged mundanes to stop noticing him. "And doing magic takes energy - it's called mana - and you can sort of pull that from nearby or you can use what's in you already. You should be able to feel it when doing something is giving you mana - things that take concentration or effort to do will let you build it up, especially if they're not fun."

Masozi actually overheard that in one of the recent conversations he spied on; he had never done it systematically enough to notice, before. He also overheard the idea of using something to store mana, and apparently the kids from New York have bracelets that let them share it amongst themselves? That's complicated to be getting into now with the new girl, though. 

"I heard that pulling it out of people's bad for you? And also you'll get murdered for doing that? I bought rubies to put my own in for later from that guy Kevin, though."

She glances at Marian. "...Uh, oh good, you have a knife."

"- Oh, you shouldn't pull it out of people. They fight back - I bet especially wizards do - that's why it hurts you, so it's not really worth it unless you're about to get murdered otherwise. And obviously we want people here to like us, right. But it doesn't have to be people, s'actually way easier to pull it from, oh, bugs. ...I brought some. I don't want to give you one for free but I'd trade you one to try it, if you can shit in a bucket in your room and bring it to me to feed them for the next, um, week? Or you could just get mana the other way." 

She makes a bit of a face. "-I'll think about it. Not to be squeamish because that'll get us killed but I want to learn more about the stealing mana thing? It'd suck if it's bad for you even with bugs, how would you even tell with all the rest of the stress fucking with our heads. Maybe I'll - do that and you can owe me some lookout duty or some other small favor when we're both more established. I have to think about it, appearing put together and clean is a resource."

...Huh. Masozi - well, it's not that he hadn't ever considered the hypothesis that even when it doesn't hurt in the moment it might still be damaging him, but - as far as he knows his parents did it too and they didn't die younger than you'd have expected or anything. Maybe it's why his mother got so sick, but having a dozen babies and never enough to eat is probably enough to explain that by itself. 

"That makes sense." Scan the room. Still no mals. Outside, though, he can see one of the New York girls approaching another girl whose name he doesn't know, but who he thinks also didn't know about magic until now. 

"- Um, I think there's people going downstairs for supplies now and I wanted to follow along so I could learn my way around. It'll be more dangerous though. Maybe you'd better stay and talk to the nurse? I'll see if I can grab anything and you could trade me for it later." 

"Yeah I am not up for a dungeon dive right now. Good luck, you're twitchy enough for it."

"Good luck." And he heads out. 

Marian turns to the girl. "So - it sounds like you sort of got kidnapped too, and just learned about magic now? I'm in the same boat, it sucks. I'm sorry." 

"Yyyyyep. Life sucks, tha's'afact. I bet you didn't want to end up here any more than me. Less even, I was this close to running away."

Not crying. Not crying.

Marian can tell when someone is about to cry and really really does not want to be crying right now. Also it's objectively a bad time to get stuck crying, and she's feeling fragile enough herself, she might just burst into tears too. 

"Well. Guess we'll make the best of it. Hey - at least you'll be able to learn magic! That's not nothing." Deep breath. "Anyway. You had a question?" 

"Um actually two. One I don't think you can- It doesn't look like there's much stuff here but there's this thing called, um. IUD? And two, I kind of took some of my mom's boyfriends pills out of the trash, they're not expired he's just - that - and I want to know what they do in case it's useful."

"...Mmm." Marian clears her throat. "I don't think I can safely put in an IUD, sorry, even if I had the supplies, and apparently the void is rude about giving us those - it's usually a doctor who does the procedure though. Um. I haven't done a full inventory in here, yet, so I might be able to get you the morning after pill? That's one you don't have to take all the time, just, er, after -" Vague handwave. "You know. If we're really lucky maybe I can get a Nuva ring or the implant - technically I'm not qualified to place that but it can't be hard... I need to figure out what I've got and what the void will give me, though. Um, and sure, you can show me the pills - they're wrapped or something, yeah? So they have labels?" 

"Well, I asked. Not like I- It's just, be prepared. Anywaymaybethere'sspellsforit."

She pulls out the pills. Zyprexa and Adderall, two weeks' supply in little individual foil packets.

Marian reads off the labels. 

"...You should keep this one," she tells Wendy while offering her back the Adderall, after a few seconds of agonizing over how it's definitely a losing-her-license level misdemeanour to tell a fourteen-year-old girl that she should take someone else's controlled-substance prescription. "It's a stimulant. They give it to kids with, y'know, ADD and focus issues at school, and - uh, lots of college students use it to study for exams. I don't know anything about what the classes are like here but it could come in handy." 

She frowns for longer at the Zyprexa. "I'm - not sure this'll be useful to you? It's, uh, an antipsychotic. If anyone here has a huge freakout and loses it - which I could see happening, the situation is completely nuts to begin with - it could be helpful then? Or if you really can't sleep and need to, but...I'm guessing you don't want to be conked out, here, if nasty things might fall on your head at night?" 

"Maybe. There's - wards? Apparently. And I could wait for someone to need their friend to chill the fuck out, have it ready."

Does she want to offer some of the pills to Marian. When she might need them later. It's goodwill, sure, but- She has no magic. Who's gonna be dead tomorrow? She should keep it all to herself.

"Um. Anything I can do as a small favor to you? Oh, I overheard that you can't necessarily trust the cafeteria food and the trick is to take what you see other people taking."

"Oh. ...More than just it might be a monster that can disguise itself? I'd been planning to poke everything with my knife, it's magic, but if the food is sometimes poison or whatever then that wouldn't help. And - hmm, I think what I really need right now is for people to spread the word that I'm around? And that I'd love to talk to any students who have healing magic, if that's a thing. So I can figure out, uh, what my team is here." 

"Disguised monsters seems likely? I don't know, I just heard 'get what everyone else is getting'. And I can try spreading the word but I'm not sure how far it'll go."

"Mmm. Well, thanks for the advice, and I'll try to let you know if I do track down any birth control that'd be safe to use here."

And now she doesn't know if the poor scared girl needs anything else or would maybe just like company and it's super awkward! But actually she kind of wants two minutes alone in here to feel sorry for herself. She's not going to be STUPID about it; she'll sit with her back against the void wall, it sounds like the monsters don't come out of there, and she'll keep her eyes open and her knife ready and watch the stupid stupid ceiling vent. 

"I'll - yeah, I'll go. Good luck."

Out she goes.