Bella is claiming a table from Suze, who has already finished eating and is going to go get a jump on some work for the term. Suze helps her re-check the table just this once and then leaves her there alone. When Bella spots Raleigh she waves.

"Hey!" Raleigh waves back, and heads over. "Is this spot spoken for yet?" 

"Nope, sit right down. How's it going?"

"Pretty good, I think! No one from Sacramento is dead! That was a huge relief. I met lots of people and I got a pretty good start at organizing my room. You?" 

"Met lots of people. Some of the Mandarin kids are friendly, which is good because I'm not as solid as I'd like on it. Had to ask one how to say 'coconut'."

"- Tragically I should not be trying to learn Mandarin, so I shouldn't ask how you say 'coconut' even though I'm very curious!" 

"I don't think 'coconut' would snag you the coursework - most English-speakers know more than a handful of words that were at least originally in other languages! - but I do understand wanting to leave slack for less optional coconuts. What languages do you have?"

He thinks this might've come up before when they first talked? Maybe? It's hard to remember what he's said to who, he's met SO many people today and presumably so has Bella. "French and Spanish and Latin." And English but that's obvious, they're speaking it. 

"Right, sorry if I asked that already, I'm just ninety percent made of small talk scripts today."

"Yeah, I know the feeling. It's - been a pretty overwhelming afternoon–" 

He breaks off, and twists around to wave. "Shannon! Hey - want to come sit with us?" A slightly sheepish glance back at Bella, "- uh is that all right?" 

"Sure, that's fine by me."

Shannon comes over, smiling in a nervous-and-overwhelmed sort of way. "Hey. Uh, you're not sitting with Sacramento?" 

"Not tonight. I wanted to take the chance and talk to more of the other freshmen. And, um, the Sacramento table is kind of depressing." 

Shannon looks curious, at this, but nibbles her lip and doesn't ask. She has a very sad tray with only a bread roll and a carton of milk. 

"Here, you should have my meatloaf!" He slides it across to her.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy is he being so uncomfortably nice??? Shannon is so confused!!! 

"Were they out of sprouts or can you just not stomach 'em?" Bella herself has meatloaf and milk and brussels sprouts but no roll; someone was having a fight with a mal among the rolls when she got to them.

"I guess I should at least try them?" Shannon gives the extra sprouts on Raleigh's plate a dubious look. "They really don't look appetizing." 

"You'll have plenty of opportunities to try them later! - Bella, I grabbed extra bread, want some?" 

....Okay it's a little reassuring that Raleigh is apparently inexplicably generous to everyone, not just her. 

"Wouldn't turn you down." Bella takes the bread and assembles a small meatloaf sandwich with it.

Marcy shows up on Bella's other side, having just traded a roll to Kevin in exchange for half his applesauce. He managed to collect a nice big bowl of it while avoiding the slowly-dissolving lumps of unidentifiable undesirability scattered throughout, and also separately collected a few of the lumps to see if Abigail wants them. She said "What the hell, Kevin" but she can't even be that surprised because Kevin is always like this, and it's good that he's like this because now she has applesauce to go with her half-slice of meatloaf and pile of sprouts.

"Hello," she says to everyone, and adds "I don't think we've met" to Raleigh and Shannon.

"Hi, Marcy, these are Raleigh and Shannon."

"Hi Marcy! Where are you from? I'm from Sacramento, languages track. Shannon's from Canada but came in on our spare slot. She has an affinity for healing and is doing alchemy track." 

"Boston, languages and artificing--my affinity's projectiles--but my friend Abigail's doing alchemy and hers is sensory stuff. Healing is always a good one."

"That's a pretty good affinity! Mine's for...durability, as far as I can tell. I can do spells that boost other people's spells to last much longer with the same total mana input, and I can make things like books or artifacts or even clothes or furniture last for ages without any wear and tear. But all of that's on other people's stuff, right - I can't cast almost anything mana-efficiently just on my own." Fortunately he has an enclave and a power-sharer, but still. 

"Oh, wow! That's actually really cool." 

"Yeah, that sounds like a good one, given the givens. Having other people with different specialties around is so important." (Her own power-sharer is on her ankle, where it can be protected from miscellaneous mayhem by her eight-inches-hemmed-up pants being tucked into her socks.)

"It really is!" 

Approaching the table, someone clears his throat. "Raleigh? Any space left at this table?" Going by his height, muscled shoulders, and faint shadow of facial hair, he's probably at least a junior. 

Raleigh twists around. "- Tristan? What is it - I thought I saw you sitting with Sacramento...?" 

"I was, but," sigh, "Larisa's gone to finish her project, and I've got study group now. And Vanya, um, had something upset him again. I don't want to leave him there alone." 

Raleigh's shoulders are tensing and he looks kind of squirmy. "How about Cassie or Justin?" 

"Already headed out. Sorry." 

Raleigh sighs. Squares his shoulders. "Right." He turns to Bella. "Um, is it okay with you if one of the Sacramento sophomores sits with us too?" 

"...without all that leadup it would be an 'of course I don't mind' but now I'm... concerned?"

Tristan sighs as well. "Vanya is very quiet and polite and he won't start a scene. He just...had a bad time of it last term, so we're, um, trying to look out for him." 

An upperclassman who wants to sit with the frosh? Is he looking for minions or do his yearmates not want him or is he weirdly interested in Raleigh in particular or--he's got some kind of incapacitated squadmate, okay. Well she can hardly blame him for trying to look out for this Vanya person even if she might still blame Vanya for something.

"I'd like to know what his deal is but if he's not bad company I'm fine with him."

"It's - complicated." Tristan does not look at all as though he wants to discuss it. "There - was a really bad row between two minor enclaves, and Vanya was caught up a bit in it. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time, really, but he - lost a friend, and took it pretty hard." 

"Poor guy. Yeah, he can sit with us."

"Thanks, guys, I really appreciate it." 

Tristan leaves, and comes back ushering a younger boy by the arm, carrying the kid's tray in his free hand. The tray was clearly filled by one of the seniors during their initial run on the food line; he has a helping of almost everything, excluding the brussel sprouts. It's also barely picked at. 

That's kind of pathetic but it's not like Marcy has ever actually lost a friend such that she can compare her own reaction. And it's good that Sacramento hasn't decided he's the weak link and abandoned him; says good things about the prospect of building a relationship with them. She smiles reassuringly.

Vanya is small and very thin, almost frail; he's clearly not eating enough. There are dark rings around his eyes. He walks with his head down, sort of dragging his feet, and doesn't look at anyone. 

"Vanya, these are some of Raleigh's new friends," Tristan says, with forced cheerfulness. 

"Hi Vanya. I'm Bella."

"Nice to meet you," the kid mumbles, without actually looking at anyone. 

This is really awkward and Raleigh is not at all sure how to handle it! Also wow Vanya looks terrible. He probably weighs less than he did during his induction. 

"Vanya, this is Shannon. She has healing affinity. I think you'd get along." 

Mumblesomething. Vanya sits down, in a way that only looks slightly as though he's slowly collapsing like a building in an earthquake. 

"I'm Marcy." What the fuuuuuuck dude do you want to die or something.

Tristan is still hovering, looking worried. "Vanya, eat your food. There's applesauce, you like that." 

Vanya sighs and looks very miserable and put-upon, but starts poking at his applesauce. 

"Raleigh, try to make sure he eats, please? Thank you. I'll send Cassie or Justin as soon as I can." 

"Mmm-hmm." 

Raleigh watches Vanya push his food around without really eating it, and feels agonizingly awkward about this entire situation. To make matters worse, of course the others are going to be curious what happened, and he doesn't know. Larisa promised a full explanation later but later hasn't happened yet. 

If he finishes the applesauce before he gets to anything else she'll offer him some of hers in exchange for some of his meatloaf; she wants Protein and he looks like he needs Literally Any Calories.

"So, uh, what's your affinity?"

Vanya does, in fact, make significant progress on his applesauce without touching anything else except for the milk, which he drinks. 

...It seems to take him a while to realize he's been asked a question. He lifts his head. "Sorry, what was that," he says tonelessly. 

"I asked what your affinity was. Uh, it's cool if you don't want to tell me." She wants to know what his deal is but she doesn't want to exchange Sad Upperclassman for Pissed Off Upperclassman.

"Music." He sounds incredibly unenthusiastic about it. 

"But you've figured out how to do combat sung-spells, yeah?" Raleigh says. "Tristan mentioned you exploded a mal just before end of term. He said guts went eeeeverywhere!" 

Vanya does not want to talk about that even a little bit. He is looking slightly at risk of tears again. 

Marcy grins and hides it behind a hand. Guts everywhere is unhygienic and she shouldn't enjoy the image as much as she does but mals suck and it's so satisfying when they die. Too bad Vanya doesn't seem to agree.

Conversation conversation conversation how do you do small talk with someone that sad aaaaaaah - 

"So what track are you in, Vanya?" 

"Creative writing." He's started absently tearing his bread roll into tiny bits without eating any of them. 

"And you - compose song spells?" 

"Yeah." 

"Including spells for exploding mals? That's really cool!" 

Shrug. 

"Composition is neat! Hey, if you don't want that bread I'll trade you for more applesauce." She can hear her mom's voice saying "waste not want not" in her head.

"I overheard someone saying one of the muggleborns has that affinity too. The one who came in wearing music-note pajamas."

"Speaking of which, does anyone have a theory about what happened to Chicago?"

"I don't know that speculating is productive. I don't know who would even have wanted to."

Vanya looks SO MISERABLE about this choice of topic! Though this is really only a slight change from his default level of radiating misery! 

Clearly this calls for changing the subject! "So, did you ever end up being able to get a new instrument in here?" 

Heck. Better topic, better topic, okay yes instruments, that's a good one.

Vanya shrugs, looking very tired. "Yeah. But it - got broken." He blinks hard a couple of times when he says this, but does not actually burst into tears. 

Okay damn it is there literally any conversation topic that won't make Vanya look like a stepped-on puppy. 

"....You should trade your bread for Marcy's applesauce," he says, which is probably Nagging but is clearly needed. 

"I'm sorry to hear it," she says of the instrument, and holds out the applesauce while making a speculative hand gesture towards the bread.

"Fine." 

Marcy is slightly too far away to just pass the bread, so Vanya sings a line of some mystery language under his breath, and levitates it over to her without any apparent effort. 

"If I run into music pajama girl do you want me to send her your way? I know it's uncommon to collaborate across years much but with the same affinity it might be worth it."

"If you want." He sounds fairly indifferent to it. 

Blink. She knows juniors have more mana than freshman but that was still weirdly casual; maybe he's in better shape than she thought or maybe Sacramento collectively has buckets of mana. She accepts the bread and chows down.

"I'm in creative writing too but my affinity's metamagic," says Bella, to fill the pause.

This actually gets her eye contact! 

"Metamagic," Vanya repeats, thoughtfully. "What does that mean - is it like Raleigh's, where you can do things to other people's spells?" 

"Oh, you know what I bet you'll be great at? Spells for countering psychic mals. It's all blocking and redirecting and interfering with their magic." Marcy has extra special beef with psychic mals because of how you generally can't throw things at them.

"Yeah - I was able to learn a French generic counterspell New Orleans has kicking around, and I can also disenchant things, and I'm not sure how well it'll apply to making my own artifice or alchemy and I don't know how much it helps me write spells but I like it pretty well. Psychic mal spells seem like a good idea, maybe I'll ask for some once I know how hard coursework is going to hit me."

Vanya curls up and hugs himself and goes quiet again. 

Okay what was it that upset him this time. He seemed to be actually participating in the conversation for, like, point five seconds there. 

Awwwww, Marcy wanted to talk about coursework!

Maybe she'll just do it anyway. "I think we're supposed to have some time for doing projects on our own initiative? If you get assignments you hate, I'm open to homework-for-spells deals."

"Sure, I might be up for that." Raleigh has never once failed to do homework, but it seems friendly to show interest and he's trying to make friends here. (Even though Vanya is not making this easy.) 

"Are we all going to have mostly the same homework assignments?" 

"I might want to offload some math or history at some point! Assignments will differ - a lot, I think. More later on."

"Yeah, people get different projects in the same section of shop and what have you. Which is great for selling the projects and for avoiding everyone needing silver nitrate at the same time but does make it harder to do other people's work."

"Right, that makes sense. I'm good at history, I wouldn't mind helping with that." 

Vanya is very good at math but, one, he's a sophomore, and two, he really does not seem in any shape to be doing his own homework let alone other peoples'. 

Vanya pushes aside his tray. "I'm going to my room." 

"Not by yourself you aren't!" Besides the obvious reasons why that's a bad idea, Larisa specifically told him not to leave Vanya alone anywhere but his room, if he could help it. "I can walk with you?" 

Helping out with their mysteriously-incapacitated teammate seems like it could be a good way to earn some goodwill from Sacramento, and honestly she likes the Vanya kid fine, despite his constant misery. Plus he's got mal-fighting spells, apparently, and judging by his random casual use of magic, he must be pretty strong for a sophomore. 

"I'll go, I don't mind." She stands up. 

"You don't ha–" Raleigh stops himself. Smiles at Shannon. "Thanks, appreciate it." 

Vanya leaves the cafeteria with her, still dragging his feet but maybe a little less than before. 

Raleigh lets out his breath and relaxes. Slightly. 

"Uh, I'm - sorry that was weird," he says uncertainly. "He, um, wasn't like that when I last saw him." 

"No need to apologize for looking out for your people. I hope he feels better soon." She keeps putting sprouts in her face.

"I hope so too. ...Apparently it's been five months." He shakes his head, unhappily. "Also apparently he was worse than this before, though, so." Shrug. 

"He perked up for a second but then - I don't know, was it something I said?"

"- Uh, sorry, I'm trying to remember what that time even was. I feel like he looked upset at something one of us said at least five times. ...That might've been about psychic mals? I don't actually have any more idea what happened to him than you guys do, Larisa was going to fill me in later when she has time, but maybe he's got trauma about those too or something." 

"I bet there's someone in his year who knows what happened but wasn't personally there and doesn't mind talking about it."

"Cassie's a sophomore too. Maybe she knows, or at least knows who his friends are who I could ask?" 

"I could ask Suze, but I don't know if she knows them and she's gone back to her room for the night already."

"I should head out soon too; we still have some furniture mods to do before curfew." Also she wants to stop repeating small talk and grind mana alone for a while before sleeping.

"It was lovely meeting you, Marcy!" 

"Likewise!"

Bella forces down the last bite of her terrible meatloaf. "I need to take my furniture apart too."

"Right. Well, have a good night." 

"Thanks. See you tomorrow." She busses her tray with some trepidation and then catches a clump of students heading up the stairs to her section.