“I don’t super wanna give you, like, rags? But if there’s anything in that crate that you wanna have you can, like, take it. And the shoes look like they could maybe fit you if you wanna have more shoes,” Zeke says, to Rebecca. “Also I’m totally taking the quilt, the quilt looks awesome.”

Karen also moves towards the clothing crate, keeping an eye on whether anyone looks freaked out or like she wasn't supposed to do that. She picks up some items that strike her as interesting and holds them up for Rebecca to see. "Some of these could probably be patched, if you didn't bring anything else."

(Karen: also did not bring anything else.)

"Vernon gets first pick after New York's done, but I don't mind if the two of you take anything he doesn't want either," Julia says. She is aware that it's actually a big deal to not hold up your end of deals, around here. "Oh, and I guess I should find something for garbage heap kid, in case he does his three weeks and doesn't turn out to be a maleficer up to something evil, though I bet he will." She goes back to the clothes pile for things for garbage heap kid.

Huh! She honors her deals. He kind of wasn’t expecting that, but he’s pleased about it anyway. See, this is why it pays to be a spare minion, you get to learn who is good for the spirit of their deals instead of just the words.

Vernon, being a good minion, continues to be wallpaper. Wallpaper looking out for mals, of course, but still.

        "Garbage heap kid?" says the senior, who is doing pull-ups with a bar above their bed. He's very good at them.

"Uh, we got followed by this weird kid who just wanted to point out every mal around, he can detect them? I think he's maleficing, cause they're supposed to have bad vibes, right, but he also smells like a garbage heap and it's possible it's just that."

       The senior looks to Zeke and Silas and Orion for a perhaps more informed estimation of the situation.

Silas shrugs. "He seemed really weird."

Rebecca sorts through things. It's pretty dire, but if she can get fabric and sewing stuff she can sew and embroider it into passability. She is super taking the shoes.

“I dunno?” says Zeke to the senior. “I don’t wanna, like, be mean to him behind his back, if he’s just from a different culture or whatever.”

"He's good at finding mals apparently?" Orion remarks when people seem expectant. He's rummaging through random supplies without much focus.

Oh my god, Orion.

The senior, looking exasperated at all of them, swings down from the pullup bar. "The kid followed you here? Is he still here?"

"I mean, I doubt he wandered off on his own, he'll get eaten."

The senior steps outside to look for maybe maleficer kid.

Vernon probably doesn't want girls' clothes, but she feels like she should at least check. She looks around for Vernon and then realizes that she has no idea how to tell who Vernon is without asking. How do you ask in a way that doesn't sound stupid... 'who's Vernon' sounds bad somehow.... 'which one's Vernon' is even worse... 'vernon?' is ambiguous about what she's asking and also sounds kind of bad... oh!

"I don't think I've met Vernon?" Hopefully Vernon will take this as an opportunity to introduce himself?

Vernon isn't particularly offended by not being known, but it's not like Karen knows that. He perks up at his name, though, and looks attentive.

"Oh, hey. Vernon Durant. And you are?"

(And he can gently steer the both of them to be Out Of The Enclavers' way to quietly have this introduction, instead of being rude and thinking they're like the real people here.)

Masozi is still waiting outside the dorm room, back against the wall, going through his regular scanning-pattern. He's saving his mana by only doing it visually - he's got a pretty good position for that - but at this point he seems to be holding back an entire family of something spiky with too many eyes. They're very interested in coming down through the ceiling and he is burning through way more mana than he would prefer persuading them to, instead, not do that. 

He's very relieved when an older-looking kid pokes his head out! 

"Mals up there," he says, cheerfully enough, and points. "You'll have spells to kill them, yeah?" And he releases his push on their tiny but irritatingly stubborn minds. 

The older kid mutters something and fries them without much apparent effort, and then turns his attention back to Masozi, very coldly. "Get the fuck out of here, and stay off the New York freshmen. We will avenge them and we will be pissed about it."

Masozi stares at the older student blankly. "I– what?"

Then the contents of his words catch up and he's actually kind of angry, though this doesn't show much; if anything, he looks calmer and less scary, since less of his full attention is going toward situational awareness. He folds his arms and meets the senior's eyes, levelly. 

"Look. I dunno what you thought I was doing, but I came down here because that girl who wanted the rug wasn't looking where she was going at all and at least two of the others didn't know about magic until today and I didn't want anyone to die!" 

"Did I fucking stutter. New York does not consort with maleficers, I do not have time for this shit, and you are lucky I am letting you run."

Masozi does not have the slightest idea what this guy is talking about! 

He is maybe going to ask...someone else. Someone less shouty. He really doesn't like being threatened, and he doesn't-like it in a way that makes it awfully tempting to do something about it, but it's clearly not going to help his cause in the long run to make even worse enemies of this stupid enclave full of stupid people. 

He does not allow himself to look even slightly perturbed, just turns and walks casually away and up the stairs. 

(While extending every single sense he has in search of mals, because right now he is extremely not in the mood to let them come within ten feet of him, and at least trudging up eight flights of stairs while fuming lets him build enough mana to mostly cover it.) 

New York senior stomps back in. "He's definitely maleficing. You kids need to trust your instincts. Something seems off, someone's giving you bad vibes...being a bit of a dick to a random person is much less of a risk than letting a maleficer follow you around learning who he can peel off."

Julia puts the boys' clothes back. "I did tell him to fuck off! But he was really insistent and I didn't want to be, like, a bitch -"

"Be a bitch," the senior says, and jumps back onto his pullup bar. 

"Okay, mom," says Julia, but the senior shoots her a look more withering than her mom is even capable of, so she cuts that out. 

Silas is meanwhile sorting through New York's junk for the stuff the other enclavers requested. Chloe had wanted a sheet stripped off a graduating student's bed, to hang below her void ceiling, which freaks her out, and had also laid claim to some beanbags stitched together from spare fabric and stuffed with more spare fabric, which will be nice for hanging out in her room for study groups. She'd also expressed an interest in any excess art supplies, especially paint and stencils, for a mural on her wall. Magnus had requested a bright and reliable desk light, a better door lock, and some bookends that his books would like. Emma had wanted a quilt too, or if there weren't enough quilts to go around a box of fabric scraps she could get someone to quilt for her, and a well-behaved hairbrush and a light strip if available. Bennett had asked for a bunch of extra shelving, things he could use for padding to make his desk chair ergonomic, and at least two extra pillows. 

"What do these lights run on?" Julia asks the senior even though he's quite unreasonably pissed at her and is probably going to answer rudely. 

          "Alch oil, the good ones burn a couple tablespoons a day, the crappy ones will go through quite a lot of it. Should be in that crate."

"Spaceships are brightly lit," Julia says reflectively. "What I really want is a mirror with a light strip around it, so I can do my makeup, but I might need to make that."

"Do we have a way of cutting the metal sheets into new shapes, or do we need to be figuring out a solution there, too?"

How do you even cut metal, do you use, like, specialized circular saws? She has a saw, but she's pretty sure it's for wood and not metal. She's not seeing any circular saws here. They're also gonna have to fasten it together, if they want to make a desk, which - what is that gonna take, welding? She doesn't know how to weld things. But Julia seemed very confident that this was doable, so probably there's something here.

(Wow, she sure does seem weirdly confident that she can build a desk if she figures out what the right tools for it are and how people use them. That seems completely unwarranted, but maybe her earlier confidence that she couldn't build anything ever was also unwarranted? Probably they'll find out.)

"Does anyone already have a good solution for metalshaping or should we be looking for one?" she asks more loudly than Karen did, looking mostly at Lysander, who seems to be carrying some tools.

"I can't cut metal in precise rounded shapes yet," Lysander says, "unless you folks have a really nice saw, but those sheets look thin enough that if rectangular shapes are adequate we can definitely break 'em," he mimes marking a line and bending them back and forth several times, and then, patting his trusty spiked tool which he's hoping will hold him until he can start collecting things out of supply cabinets, "and I can punch holes for nails." This is more a summary of the procedure he would actually execute to make precise straight line cuts on sheet metal, there's also some magic and extra steps, but he figures they want a general idea and it's the minion's job to execute details. 

Oh thank God, someone who knows what they're doing. "I think spaceships can have rectangular furniture," she says, hoping this sounds uncertain enough that it's clearly an attempt at offering interior design brainstorming and not an attempt at telling Julia how she should decorate her room. "Especially if we could sort of do - a rectangle with some trapezoids on the sides that sort of hug you a bit, I feel like that could have a sci fi battle station vibe?"

Oh wait that sounds much harder than just a normal rectangle, maybe she should have thought of a case for normal rectangles as spaceship-y instead. Uh. She can help Lysander hold stuff when he's working to offset the inconvenience she possibly just created, maybe??

"Yeah, all right," says Julia generously, "we can do rectangles and trapezoids. Though the edges should be sanded down enough I can't cut myself by accident while I'm doing yoga - does New York have a sander," she asks the senior -

"Not right now, they're nasty when they get moody. Someone in artificing'll get it mid-semester and you'll have, like, a week."