Tintin's brain shifts gears somewhat violently. "Um. Yes, is a gun. My a-fin-i-ty is them."

"Your affinity is guns. I hope you manage to make that awesome instead of terrible."

He shrugs. "I make - okay - you speak French or Chinese? Better at them."

"Oh, sure," she says, transitioning fluidly to Mandarin. "Sorry, I assumed--usually white people in the Scholomance speak English."

"Singapore," he says in Mandarin. "Via Belgium. No English to be found - my parents thought it would be easy for me, so they spent my childhood neuroplasticity on Chinese and Malay. By the time they tried teaching me English it was almost too late."

"Oh no," she says, half-laughing sympathetically. "Had your parents never learned English? It's absolutely insane."

"They learned it in school and for international business! It was so easy for them! They had no idea! What if we did not teach you English and you were rejected by the entire Sinosphere and had no allies at all! Ridiculous. I have found someone to tutor me, and I will hopefully get better, if not good."

"I don't think they were wrong to teach you English but I do think they were wrong not to start early. You can learn a lot of languages if you start early."

"Yes - they did not want to go for tutors in language, they sent me to a boarding school and it turned out the school only did two languages at once, because mundanes do not want four languages, it makes their heads hurt. Even though it was in Singapore! Where four languages are spoken! Five if you count Singlish but I have been told never to look at Singlish for my own sake."

"That's probably wise. Mum married a linguistics professor and then paid for tutors on top of that later, people keep swearing when I tell them how many languages I speak."

"Well now you have to tell me."

"Twenty-three."

"P- is one of them French."

"Sadly, no."

"I will swallow my obscenity and ruin your streak, then. Twenty-three."

"You're not the first one who didn't swear," she admits. "It's a bit absurd. I speak Basque? Which is not at all related to French linguistically but France is one of the countries where Basque speakers live."

"A pity I am not French but Belgian."

"A pity I can't help you there. ...Belgians speak German as well as French, don't they? No, wait, I'm thinking of Switzerland, or possibly Alsace."

"We are indeed neither of those places, but some speak German and some speak Dutch. The country is more or less divided along invisible lines of those populations, and my parents were from the French bit."

"Well, I speak German, but it looks like you and I are stuck with Mandarin. Which is not so bad, it's a lovely language."

"It is! And useful, especially here - though I am looking forward to seeing what I can find in Malay."

"Sadly that is not on my list either. At least I got to surprise a few people by sharing obscure languages with them."

"They are not so obscure, for me. Singapore is a strange place that way. I speak only the languages I am expected to speak, and some of them not well, and this means I am in good condition for the Scholomance! Along with, well, a lifetime of training."

"Sure. What are you planning to do with your gun affinity?"

"Well, you see, I have this gun."

After a fruitful pause, he continues, "It's enchanted already, and I am taking alchemy so I can keep it supplied with bullets and oil, and I am hoping there are spells to go with it - someone has to have done something in this vein, no? My ultimate goal is to take point in someone's graduation team, but of course nothing can be planned so early."

"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."

"That is... terrifying. Maybe I should tell Lan Xichen about this - he will probably know in a few days anyway, I suppose - fuck. To what end - I guess we wouldn't know."

"If we ever find out it won't be until next year at the earliest."

"Well. It is good to know what happened, anyway, even if it is not why."

Maybe he will tell Lan Xichen. It'd be bothering him about something he'd learn in a few days anyway... but he can't help feeling like this is the kind of thing you want to know as soon as possible.