Alyona's finished handing out letters and has been looking for an excuse to get to know people in her own year. She doesn't particularly need to pee or anything, but she could use this opportunity to fill the hydration sack in her backpack and have a store of water to keep in her room. Plus, always good to know where the bathrooms are.

She pushes past some people towards the girl who spoke up. "I'll come! My name's Alyona, what's yours?"

Sophie has not talked to anyone yet because she is a coward and she is going to die.

She suspects she can handle accompanying someone down the hall to the loo, though? If she can't then she is definitely a coward and definitely going to die.

She walks over, ignoring the powerful sense of impending doom, and says, "I'm in. I have to fill up a canteen anyway. - um. Sophie Hara."

"Count me in too!" says a nearby voice, attached to a girl of mildly ambiguous ethnicity with an approximately-American accent.

"I'm El," says El, wow, none of these people are making faces at her at all, amazing, is this enough people, probably, none of these people are obviously mundie-extracted doomy kids. She leads the way, she saw the bathroom on her way in.

"Elizabeth. Nice to meet you all!"

She feels so much less doomy as part of a group. Not quite not-doomy enough to speak up on her own, but -

"Nice to meet you too, Elizabeth. And El! Sorry."

A blue-eyed girl who had been standing quietly nearby, waving her arms around her in a way that looked more like a dance than anything else but still not very much like a dance, says to no one in particular, "five, that's good," and tags along after them.

"Likewise! So, where are you from?"

Alyona tries to size up the other members of the bathroom expedition. The girl who invited everyone - Elle? - is a bit... spooky... but better to be on her good side than not, if that's indicative. Sophie seems a bit skittish. Alyona doesn't have high hopes for her but tries to give her an encouraging smile. Elizabeth seems perky, though. Hopefully she's got the competence to back it up. The rando who is following after them... Alyona is not sure what to make of. She can make up rear-guard, she guesses, and they can put squishy Sophie in the middle of the formation.

As they head towards the hall, Alyona falls in behind El, on the right-hand side.

Sophie is on a roll. "I'm from Yorkshire. It's... nice."

"Wales."

(Sophie is not on enough of a roll to say "oh, I speak Welsh!" The words come to her but what if El thinks that she's trying to find some kind of commonality with her and doesn't appreciate it. She will die if she does not make friends but right now it seems easier than dying of embarrassment.)

Wales, great. Hopefully she doesn't bust out in Welsh, Alyona doesn't need another Celtic language right now.

"Ooh, that explains the cool accents. I'm from Santa Barbara, myself."

"Toronto," Elizabeth contributes.

"The enclaves or just the cities?"

"The city, in my case, although I've got my eye on the enclave. They'll love me, I'm an orphan."

Well, she doesn't seem too broken up about it, so far be it from Alyona to be. "Convenient! I'm from the enclave, but it's a bitty one, I'm the only kid in our year.

"I'm indie."

There is not an enclave in Yorkshire. Of course you're fucking indie, Sophie. What are you doing. She averts her eyes in shame.

...they land on... a puddle. They're not near the bathroom yet, why - it's iridescent.

"Mal," she says flatly, pointing. "Anybody know the breed?"

"Ugh, I've seen one but I don't know its name. I don't have mana, do you with the enclaver buddies have power sharers -" She's backing up.

"Ooze, of some kind? I've got a power sharer." Not that her enclave has a ton of mana banked up at the moment - most of it got used up during graduation, she guesses. But, this is what it's for, so she's not going to worry too much about pulling on what little is there. She can put more back in later.

There's a drain in the floor over there. It's probably where the mal came from in the first place. Alyona puts her index fingers and thumbs together, chants a short line in French, and whistles sharply through the frame of her hands. A spray of water shoots forth from them towards the suspicious puddle.

The ooze is shoved drainward; sparkly bits of it slough off but the rest of it slides into the pipe.

"Nice. I was going to have to figure out if electricity would touch that thing, I think water was a safer bet."

Paradoxically, Sophie seems much calmer now that a mal showed up.

"If somebody with the mana wants to slap a shield over the drain we can book it past and still hit the loo."

"I think I can cover it." She mutters under her breath, deliberately inaudible. The sparkles around the drain cover acquire a pressed-flat look.

El runs for it.

Alyona gives Elizabeth an approving look about her drain shield. She wonders what spell it was she used; it's not one Alyona recognized. But she assumes she couldn't hear the incantation on purpose, so she doesn't poke her nose in it.