"I wish you luck. I wonder if you could do some interesting bullet artificing."

"I would usually rather do bullet alchemy - larger batches, more predictable results. I suppose I might be able to make enchanted molds, and cast shells from them? It sounds like quite a project, though, and I am primarily alchemy track. Perhaps if there is an engineer-artificer somewhere around I could talk to them about it."

"How does bullet alchemy work? Bullets are discrete little objects..."

"But they contain powder to be shot, and with the right bullets they can contain a payload. I have what I call my Greek Fire bullets, they burn things magnificently, and I have been working on some that might be effective against incorporeal mals. Only might - but it is better than not at all."

"Fair enough, I don't actually know a ton about guns. I know the basic principal of tube, chunk of metal, explosion, and I know what general shape bullets and handguns are, but it's all extremely layperson."

"There is more to it than that but you have the spirit. If you would like, and we hit it off particularly well, I may show you while I clean Milu."

"Sure! It's not like languages where knowing exactly the wrong amount will get you in trouble, and it's always better to have a skill than not."

"That is what I think! But I would have to trust you rather a lot, because while I clean Milu I do not actually have a gun, I have pieces of a gun. I could probably propel a bullet by magic - I should maybe ask the school for such a spell, come to think of it - but it will not be efficient."

"That's fair. I won't be offended if you never do. Perhaps it would make sense to acquire a spare, for such occasions--even if you're in alchemy track, you'll have to take artificing classes sometimes."

"...do you know why people do not bring guns to the Scholomance?"

"Because they're heavy and--oh. Okay, excellent point. It doesn't surprise me that you've thought about this more than I have."

"It is fine - people are very inclined to say 'you should have a spare, you should have a backup' and then not think about what the spare thinks of it. When it is something like a pair of scissors it is bad enough. A gun goes very bad when you do not let it do what it wants to do."

"You're right, that was thoughtless of me. I'm confident that my brother's scissors won't go wrong, same principle as your Milou, he's very good to them."

"Good! But you do not want a spare pair of scissors. It is not a good idea. - I also have a knife, but I use it for utility and only kill with it when it is absolutely necessary, so it does not have overly high expectations of me."

"I have a knife for killing things with; I do not expect to run into a dearth of things to kill with it. I suspect my brother could manage to keep more than one pair of scissors happy, but acquiring another pair would be less of a value add than having acquired the first one."

"Ah, but if I killed things with my knife regularly then I would not be killing them with Milu, and he would become lonely."

"Ah, but I do not have a gun."

"Precisely! So we are both equipped with the knife that will do best for us. Yours bloodthirsty, mine docile."

He pats his gun and his knife in turn. "Good boys."

"Yes, for us docile is my brother's scissors. They are for thread but have put up with quite a number of haircuts today."

"Well, is hair not a kind of thread? I imagine that is the use it will be put to, anyway."

"Very true! We're planning to trade haircuts for the resulting clippings later on; long strands of human hair are better than short but short isn't useless. But we weren't expecting it to be so relevant on the first day."

"What happened over there, anyway? I noticed the... odd concentration of long-haired people... but no one is really sure why."

"Oh, has that not made it into the Sinosphere yet? Someone destroyed the Chicago enclave right before induction."

"Shit. Really?"

"Yep. There were a couple of surviving freshmen who were outside the enclave when it happened, they brought in the news."