After dinner - which is, honestly, pretty good? and it's almost trivial to grab way more variety and total calories than he's eaten in one sitting in his entire life? - Masozi starts trying to gather people for the supply run.
Raleigh is dispatched to track down Bella and see if she's still interested in getting herself some notebooks!
"...So, um, this kid from the Johannesburg crowd said he's going down to the supply room after dinner with someone called Sophie? Dunno if you met her, I haven't. Um, he - kind of has maleficer vibes, you know? But apparently his affinity's for finding mals, so it'd probably be safer on that front, and I don't think he'd try anything with either of us if we're in a big group?"
"Cool! I should probably track down Shannon, she - um -" and he's turning red again, shit, "...she doesn't have a lot of stuff. Since she, uh. Mostly brought in my extra gear. So I figure the least I owe her is helping watch her back while she stocks up." Aaaaaaaaaaaah this is so humiliating.
And there's Sophie! She's not hard to find, he just needs to keep a look out for the spot in his scanning pattern where his eyes want to slip away.
He ushers her over. "This is Sophie."
...And he doesn't actually remember any of the other kids' names, he just knows the boy from Sacramento and the girl by appearance. Hopefully they will helpfully introduce themselves?
"Pleased to meet you, Bella, Bobbie." Masozi says the words on rote, again, very briefly pausing to make eye contact with each of them. He's been distracted, circling the group to check the perimeter for mals.
"- Right. I'll go in front. Bobbie, you watch behind us?" She looks like the toughest of this crowd by far." And I'll yell if there's a mal I can't take, but shouldn't be, I haven't seen any big ones at all yet. ....All right, which supply rooms do we need to run by? Sophie wants fabric, I dunno where that's kept. Bella, you need paper? We can do the school supplies room first maybe."
"You might want the very basics in a mini-lab in your room. Some people tap their gas lines, for a burner. And you might want some containers you can carry, to collect any useful things you encounter unexpectedly. School supplies wise it's mostly notebooks and writing implements in your favorite format, whatever will help you in classes."
Why does he keep HELPING her this is CONFUSING. It seems rude to refuse, though, and the last thing she wants to do is offend the kid from the wealthy enclave.
Shannon takes his arm. "I guess I need a notebook, or at least some scrap paper, and I could do with more pencils - I don't like pens - and if you see any containers, that'd be useful..."
"Oh! I should just give you back the rucksack you brought in for me - I have a backpack already, I don't desperately need it or anything. Oh, and did you see if your room's desk came with drawers? You should dismantle those, they're just a mal hiding place, but then you can turn them into sort of square buckets and use them to carry things..."
Bobbie can't take too much before she's got something to carry it in, and she doesn't see any such things in the school supplies. She grabs paper and some pens but will have to come back another time for more, loose paper is not easy to carry without anything to put it in.
Shannon manages to hang back enough that Raleigh doesn't immediately start gallantly escorting her, and then glues herself to Bella's side before he can notice this and try to come back for her.
"....Hi," she says, feeling awkward and tongue-tied again. "Did you, um, get what you needed?"
"- Right. It's probably more dangerous to double back alone? I'm hoping the artificing supply room will have containers or bags or something."
Shannon chews her lip for a moment.
"....Ummmm, so - Raleigh is being really weirdly nice to me? And I don't know what he wants? He doesn't have to be nice to me, right, his parents already did me enough favours letting me have a slot here at all..."
Shannon considers this.
"- Yeah, kinda? I mean, the popular girls aren't friendly to me, but - it's the boys who make fun of my braces or my hair and stuff. And - I mean, I don't know if it's like this here, I went to a mundane school, but - at school if a boy was nice to a girl then his friends would decide he liked her and never let him hear the end of it..."
Shannon absolutely still has braces still attached!
"I have a strong healing affinity!" she explains. "And uh my teeth are awful - my dad went to some special medical seminars for orthodontists and made me memorize all his notes so I can do the adjustments myself..."
Probably this is some kind of stupid ignorant mistake and everyone is going to think she and her parents are ignorant idiots about it and her braces are going to turn evil and eat her or something -
Just in time, because -
"Shannon! I think I saw some mesh fabric in there, you could make a mesh bag if you know how to sew - do you? if not my mother made me learn - anyway, that's safer since you can see what's in it so mals can't just hide. Want to come have a look?" He holds out his arm. Again.
....Interesting. Masozi isn't sure what the Raleigh kid wants from Shannon either, but - apparently he's at all capable of situational awareness, at least when he's making an effort? Good to know.
He does a quick perimeter check on the supply room. Warns everyone about the nest of multilegged fluffy baby mystery-mals currently snuggled up fast asleep inside one of the bins, he doesn't see the mother - if they have one - anywhere near but he'll keep an eye out.
He's still curious about Bella of the many notebooks, and his eyes follow her as well.
Bella peeps at the baby mystery mals in case they are of a sort she might want to keep in a terrarium and try to poison. "Quattrias," she whispers, putting the lid back on. Might not be a bad choice but she doesn't have a terrarium yet and doesn't see here stuff that would make one. She collects some relatively fungible stuff that is currently abundant - screws, sandpaper - plus the beginnings of a terrarium - glass, caulk, some of the mesh once Shannon's had enough. Fits it all into her backpack with some effort and then watches the door while everyone else stocks up.
Masozi makes his rounds. Collects some screws and caulk, since those seem generically useful, and nabs whatever random extras he spots. He doesn't need anything specific, as far as he knows, but he's also increasingly aware that he's much less prepared than most of the other students here and has some catching up to do.
He exhausts the random extras at around the same time that Bella finishes her round, and finds himself hovering on the other side of the door. Running a visual scanning-pattern from here doesn't take much concentration.
"....So do you read a lot as well as writing a lot?" he asks her, not making eye contact because he's instead checking the ceiling vents.
"You must be really smart."
His English phrasebook didn't say this explicitly or anything, but Masozi's intuition is that it's a good idea to say nice things to strangers if you want to - well, not necessarily convince them to be nice to you, because that's way too much to ask, but - cultivate a general atmosphere of niceness and friendliness and maybe-we're-on-the-same-side...?
That didn't get the response he was expecting, but then again, Masozi isn't sure what he was expecting - when it comes to talking to other people from other countries, he's making up everything as he goes.
- everyone (who gives off the sense of caring about other humans, at least) seems to be really uncomfortable about maleficing, so...maybe this time he'd better check about that first?
"...Umm, can I - ask you a question about something? It - might be weird, sorry."
"So I - talked to some other people before, and...."
Damn it, he never felt like this was awkward before, and it's not like she's going to hit him about it, so why does it feel so hard....
"- and, have you read anything actually useful about how maleficing is bad for people? And - whether it actually - turns them into different people and makes them care about different things...?"
"Bugs actually aren't a big deal as far as I can tell. People seem to do fine if they stick to bugs, plants, inanimate objects. But I don't know if that's true if you've done smarter animals before, it's possible that if you've crossed the line into mice or whatever then you need to quit altogether at least for a while to clear up any damage you've done."
If he can't even use bugs then he's probably going to DIE and then he won't have any options for preventing all the less-paranoid kids from dying and so that's not acceptable, not right now. Maybe later. He'll see.
"...What kind of damage? That's what I don't understand. If it - just makes you weaker, like a broken arm - then that's just a normal decision? Trade one thing for another? But if it's– I don't know any other things that hurt you in a way that - changes what you think is important? That seems really weird! But if it's really true then it'd be really bad."
"Oh. There are some infections, or problems you can be born with, or things that can happen if you get hit on the head, that affect your brain, which is what does all your thinking. If you break your arm, your arm doesn't work as well; if you damage your brain, it doesn't work as well. A little cheating doesn't seem to do damage, or it does it so little that you can heal it, like - uh, have you seen white people sunburn, if we go in the sun too long we get red and itchy, but if we go out for just ten minutes we don't even get pink, if you do little enough damage it's almost like doing zero because you can heal. But serious maleficing damages you in a way that is harder to heal from, and it might be that you are now burned enough that you can't even go in the sun for five minutes without getting worse, I don't know."
(Bobbie is on a quest for fabric, first, to wrap everything else in. She looks for a sewing kit but no luck there, she'll have to trade for one later. She does get a hammer, which works as a weapon in addition to a tool, and a set of pokey things she doesn't recognize but is probably a specialized kit for something, hopefully something that needs a specialized kit such that someone would be willing to trade for it. Along with a swaddle of nuts and bolts and screws, she grabs some sheet metal because she has a comparative advantage in storing sheet metal in her room, and she wants to make some armor later. She tests it out, holding the sheet metal on her left shoulder and balancing everything else on top - it works well enough for now and she's still got one hand free if there's a fight.)
"I'm not sure how it cashes out on the most basic level. But it fits with what you hear about maleficers who go off the deep end. They kill impractical numbers of people, sometimes apparently just so they have enough malia to get through the fight with whoever's next."
"Most everyone who does a lot of it escalates to people eventually. It's like drugs, right, maybe you can do heroin once and not be an addict but if you're doing it regularly for years..." She is still stacking sheet metal and has her back to the two of them - there's no indication besides the content to suggest she's not talking to a cabinet.
“I don’t think I have any more trouble than most people? I just…” Masozi shrugs. “Maybe it’s fine here. There’s ten times fewer mals and there’s other people to help fight them. It - I wouldn’t’ve made it to Johannesburg at all if I hadn’t learned to pull mana from rats without hurting myself.”
"Yeah, I'm not mourning the rats, rats die for worse reasons all the time, but you might want to keep it down to an absolute bare minimum to give your brain a break from it before you start in on bugs and stuff, this is a good time since the mals are low and you can mostly travel in groups. I didn't know that there was technique to it, but I suppose that's not too surprising that there would be..."
Masozi takes a deep breath.
“I - don’t mean any offense, just - I’d be a lot happier doing that if other people here were more careful and better at seeing mals before they jump out? I - it’s my affinity, I can see them even when they’re hiding - but it takes mana and I’ve been doing it all day because I didn’t want any of the other kids to die just ‘cause they hadn’t learned to be careful yet, that’s - not right…”
“Maybe,” Masozi says noncommittally.
(Why is everyone just OKAY with it, that - most of the kids here won’t get out alive - it feels like some mistake must be happening somewhere, only - maybe there isn’t, maybe it’s just…like that…)
He goes back to scanning the room, and considering plans to search for books in the library that will give him some actually useful information about what kind of bad-for-you maleficing is.
"Doesn't he!" The half-stifled giggle bursts out of her like air escaping a balloon. "It's terrible, I feel terrible about it, but - I at least convinced him that he did need them. I think if he hadn't talked to me he would have carried on exactly as he was and just been mystified that anyone would notice his clothing when there are mals about - and, and he argues so you feel so silly for disagreeing even when he's just wrong -"
She collects herself. "I'm sorry, I - yes, my affinity is fairly useful."
"I think that anyone can look good in a hat if they have a good milliner. I think I'd put you in... hmmm... I wouldn't want to give you a cloche like mine, it wouldn't suit you nearly as well... a beret would look good but it might give the wrong idea... ooh, I could see you with a pillbox, actually? It'd have to be once your hair grew back out, it'd want pinning, but - oh, right, the enchantments. Mine enhances my working memory and gives me a slight but general mental edge, but really there's a lot of things you can do with a good hat. It could do reflexes, or concentration, or even just mana storage. There's few kinds of hat that can't take some crystal ornamentation."
To Roberta: "Yes! Yes, you did."
"The only thing is that the really good effects are expensive, even within affinity - it's not so hard to make cloth repel blades, but a hat that helps your reflexes would be a project if it was going to be any good. When Masozi asked about a hat like mine I said I'd want to charge him for materials, mana and labor, and none of them is cheap."
"Well, if you couldn't tell, I'm the one who showed up stark naked because of the weight limit. As things stand now, this - " she gestures at her outfit - the pants fit alright, but the shirt is a little small and the sleeves have been torn off - "is all I've got for the next four years. And I don't think I'm done growing. I haven't really got much to trade right now besides my talent for wrecking things that go bump in the night, but we should talk. Especially if you can do shoes." (Her current shoes are what used to be the sleeves of her shirt)
Shannon: "Oh, some really good healing potions would be lovely - I'm trying to get a base of utility supplies under me for my sisters. What's the best you can make?"
Roberta: "...I hadn't actually put that together. Nonmagical clothing is not difficult for me, and neither is resizing; as I mentioned, I promised Masozi an outfit for helping with this expedition, and next time I need a supply run, I'm willing to ask you for an escort first. If you wanted something that a mal would chip a tooth on, we'd want to talk once you had more capital."
"Um, right now I don't have anything that'll fix serious injuries, but I can make one that prevents wounds getting infected and generally helps you heal faster, and one that cures colds if you drink it right away when you first get sniffles, and a mouthwash that's better than brushing your teeth even if you only use it once a week. Oh, and one that treats morning sickness - and induction nausea, I was totally fine - but I guess that's less useful now that we're already here."
"Yeah. I definitely don't have enough extras now for that." Because she gave almost all of it to Raleigh. "It doesn't take long to brew, but ingredients might be the problem in here, I'll have to find out how bad alchemy supply runs are. And I really am hoping the school will give me some more powerful healing potions - those are all just the ones I could invent on my own."
"I would be delighted to trade escort duty for some more mundane clothing, schedule permitting. El has priority on that for the rest of the year, if I'd known I'd run into a clothing artificer on day one I would've just worn a blanket instead of trading for clothes right away."
"...I've met El. We're possibly having a study group. If I notify her of our shared debts we might be able to coordinate another run at her earliest convenience." Depending on how much she wants Bobbie she might even be able to give El some particularly nice clothes to replace the ones she appropriated and consolidate the debt, but everything's one step at a time. "Thank you for telling me."
"Um -" Counting. El Elizabeth Alyona Luna - can Luna be counted on to show up she seemed incredibly spacy - "Me, El and three others, one of whom seemed possibly flaky. The sharing languages are Latin and Welsh, plus we'll be doing some Latin tutoring to shore up a few weak spots."
"Noted."
Sophie isn't sure where this bitter feeling is coming from. She's right. Sophie shouldn't be hanging out with people who might drain the energy from her body and leave her a lifeless husk.
Masozi told her to be more dangerous. El looked - shocked, when Sophie offered to tutor her in Latin.
Maybe if that's all it takes to get her to let her guard down then she deserves to die.
(Maybe if a word from a stranger is all it takes to make her abandon someone, she deserves to go to Hell.)
Masozi overhears this conversation, of course, he's paying attention to everything. He doesn't comment on it and pretends not to have noticed.
Everyone seems to be done collecting supplies, so he starts gathering people for the return trip. "Back to the cafeteria? Or somewhere else?" he asks the group.