Masozi is up very early in the morning, and (quickly and efficiently) makes the discovery that the curfew at night also continues through until morning, and retreats to his room, where for lack of anything better to do he asks the void for a spell to fight mals. 

He gets a handwritten manuscript in Zulu, crudely bound in a folio with unidentified stains on it. It seems to be a package of spells, most of which are about mind-controlling mals into fighting for you? Which isn't really what he wants right now? Maybe someday when he has WAY more mana capacity. It would be useful for getting through the graduation hall, if he could make some of the mals fight the rest so they were distracted. Right now it's not realistic at all. 

One spell is for trapping a mal on the spot, which is at least not useless. It's not as mana-efficient as he would like, but it's cheaper than his standard sort-of-spell that he invented himself, and he ought to be able to use it a couple of times without resorting to draining beetles. 

He has time for a few minutes of attempting the meditation thing that Wei Wuxian described to him. It doesn't get him very much mana, though; possibly because he finds it too pleasant. It's....restful, feeling safe enough in a room to just sit still and pay attention to his breathing. 

And then it's time for a dash to the bathroom - no time to get mal grubs though he does check if any are hiding in the plumbing or down the drain and there are a few - and then he heads off to find 'Room 1' as described on his slip of paper.

There's a girl there who he hasn't met yet. He smiles at her, quickly, before scanning for mals. "I'm Masozi. Pleased to meet you." 

"I'm Rebecca. Oh, you're that guy who followed us down to get the hand-me-downs, right?"

"Yeah. I wasn't coming to get hand-me-downs, though, I mostly wanted to learn my way around the school better so I won't get lost later." 

...Did she also overhear the senior shouting at him? Masozi isn't sure what he would say if she did, and either way he's not going to be the first one to bring it up. 

"Yeah, I was gonna say, it didn't seem like they wanted to give you any stuff."

Bobbie jogs into the room, finds an open safe spot and sits. She keeps an eye on Masozi when she's not scanning for mals.

A timid-looking girl slinks nervously into the room, eyes darting around. She takes a seat that suggests nobody warned her about vents. 

"Hey. Don't sit under a vent if you value your neck"

She startles a little, then looks up, sees the vent, and moves to a safer seat. 

"Thanks."

"Aren't any mals in that vent," Masozi offers. "...Or anywhere, except there's a cocoon thing under that desk, we should warn people not to sit there. I checked. S'my affinity." 

"Should we... kill it? The cocoon thing?"

"Before it hatches, yeah. Don't think it's going anywhere today. I don't have a mana-efficient spell for killing it though."

And he is trying to be very good about not using malia until the school is back to being as dangerous as South African cities were for him. He also spent some of his earlier meditation time focused on trying to feel his magic and see if he could have less of the vibe-of-untrustworthiness on purpose. 

After he's deposited the mousy Shanghai freshman in his own homeroom (and checked all the corners and underneath every desk and issued stern instructions not to get near the air vent), Julian has just enough time to sprint across what feels like half the school and arrive entirely sweaty and out-of-breath. Brilliant first impression, right there. 

To tell the truth, he'd expected the Scholomance to look like one of those awful Victorian boarding schools straight out of David Copperfield or maybe Roald Dahl, but it's a still little unsettling just how on the nose he was. The bronze apple in particular has to be some long-dead Englishman's idea of a sick joke. 

Luckily, he's not the last one to arrive. He scans the room and takes a seat near the middle – not at the coccoon desk – with the giant girl between him and the door. 

"If it's a cocoon would it be hard to just... squash?" With..." She looks around for something that could be used to squash it. "Um..."

Masozi has a backpack full of books but he is absolutely not disrespecting his Mandarin library book on meditation or his spellbook of mal mind control spells - which he reminds himself not to think is horrible, the void might get resentful, the void was trying to give him what he asked for and it's definitely in his affinity and he should have been more specific that he wanted not that. 

"I don't know but it might have some sort of defence. If we bothered it. I haven't seen that kind before but some of the cocoons zap you or squirt acid if you try to squash them." 

"We don't actually have to come back here after today, do we? If it's not going to hatch, I say we leave it well enough alone." 

"But it will hatch, even if it's not going to do it right now, won't it?"

"Maybe one of you should tell Orion Lake at breakfast. He loves killing mals. He was really happy when I pointed them out for him yesterday." 

"Okay, I'll probably be sitting near him."

What. And who? And, also, what. 

"I think it's mostly just eggs and some of the very little ones, this early in the term. If he wants it, he's welcome to it." 

"Oh for fuck's sake."

She conjures up and bounces a small fireball under the desk in question.

"Are you all planning to just sit around gabbing when an actually dangerous mal shows up?"

Well that's... rude but at least the cocoon is burnt up now??

"Personally, I'd like to save my mana for when that actually dangerous mal does show up." Since they're going to need every last drop when things get really bad. "Thanks for taking care of it, anyway." 

"Eggs hatch. And it was cheap, I got more mana walking over here."

Naima has an almost kind of reasonable amount of mana, and is also dead inside. And kind of outside, in that all of her limbs are extremely angry with her and she doesn't feel like she could run very far or very fast to save her life. Hopefully she would turn out to be wrong if it would actually save her life. 

Walking across the school in this condition: great for building additional mana! Also great for making her want to kill something, though. Metaphorically. She's not really in any condition for actually killing things, either.

She sits down gingerly in a safe-looking seat and takes in the room. Smiles a little when she sees Julian, that's lucky. ...maybe she can manage to take a class or two with him, not that that's actually the most important thing to be optimizing for, here.

A grumpy-looking girl, well-fed and well-dressed and wearing for some reason not one but two power-sharers, walks into the room. She gives the place a quick once-over for mals and then takes a seat with a good view of all the other students.

Masozi is at this point kind of irritated with the tall girl! Not everyone has a combat affinity such that setting things on fire is mana-efficient at all! 

"I'm saving my mana for if a dangerous mal shows up," he mutters. "If that happens I have a spell to trap it where it can't move."

And he should probably get....a weapon? On the road, it was almost always cheaper on mana to nudge the more powerful mals into ignoring him and then run like hell before it wore off, but now he's stuck in a relatively confined space and can't just flee for the next town. 

"Oh, that sounds like a good spell, what language is it in?"

"It's in Zulu. Sorry. ...I'd teach you if you wanted but it's a 'tonal' language and apparently people who grew up speaking English find those really hard? - Also mals are my affinity so I bet it's more mana efficient for me." 

"I apparently already need to learn Latin and Spanish and maybe also German and French depending on how many songs make the school count it so I better not try to learn Zulu."

Oh, great, the maleficer has a mals affinity. That's not going to go terribly at all.

(Julian sees Naima and quashes the urge to wave. He settles for a slight smile, which hopefully just makes him look friendly instead of lonely and desperate.) 

"Sorry, your affinity is mals? Do you mean you can control them?" Note to self, do not offend that kid. Or ideally be in the same room with him at any point after this morning. 

To the Asian kid whose name he doesn't know: "- I can sense them even if they're hidden, mostly. The void gave me a book of spells to control them but I didn't really want that so I just learned the one for trapping them in one spot." 

Tall combat girl is giving him the LOOK again. The look that means he's apparently letting off vibes of evilness and untrustworthiness and wanting-to-murder-people. Or something. Masozi is starting to edge past just being confused about this and is, instead, getting kind of frustrated. 

What's her name again...? Right, Bobbie. 

"Bobbie," he says, voice lowered so it's clear that he's mainly addressing her even though the entire room will inevitably here. "I - you don't gotta like me or trust me, obviously, but - I didn't know what maleficing was until yesterday and I didn't know it was bad for you and now I know that and I'm not gonna do it. 'Cause I don't have to, here, it's way safer." 

The latest arrival is an extremely tiny ... boy? Probably a boy? it's hard to tell, especially with the little ponytail and the fact that there is definitely some makeup going on. They can't be over five feet, in any case, and their mana-sharing bracelet marks them as an enclave student.

New kid gives the room a once-over, smiles politely at most of the occupants, and starts doing a perimeter check that keeps a very careful distance from Masozi.

"Pardon me if I don't just take your word for it. If you're telling the truth - great, go strict mana and get a good alliance and on graduation day you can tell Patience to clear a path for you and then go sit in a corner and think about what it's done, I'll pin a medal on your chest myself. If you're not - we're not gonna be friends but there's no laws in here, you can suck mana out of your pet rats to your heart's content and nobody's going to throw you in prison. When you start going after other kids someone's gonna put you down, might be me, might not. But right now everyone with eyes has got a lot of reasons to think you're bad news and nothing but your word to say otherwise and the smart ones know to stay away 'till that changes."

Julian privately thinks that a kid who's willing to cop to going maleficer when things get desperate ....will probably go maleficer when things get desperate. Which he'd rather not happen in a confined space with him in it, please and thank you. 

"So!" He says brightly. "Anyone know when we're supposed to get our schedules?" 

Masozi is really tired of people thinking that just because he's willing to take mana from rats and grew up not in an enclave and lost his parents, means he's on board with murdering humans. He's not! He's technically killed people but not even by draining their mana, because doing a thing that hurts his head in the middle of a fight where he's trying not to get MURDERED is STUPID and besides there were always plenty of bugs nearby. 

Whether or not it's fair isn't the point, of course. Probably by default a lot of these kids will die because they're not careful or paranoid enough. And he can do his best to prevent them from dying, although that does conflict some with staying out of their way enough that they don't decide to murder him. 

...He does really wish that Bobbie liked him better, though. She would be a great person to point mals out to. Oh well. Maybe later on, if it's true that he feels less creepy if he goes a few weeks without even draining any of his beetles. (A good idea anyway; it'll give them a chance to lay some eggs and start multiplying in their drawer-nest.) 

Bobbie checks her desk - There is a schedule there.

"I got mine by arguing with him, you want to be distracted by something. I've got shop Friday afternoon, anyone got something earlier than that?"

"Is earlier better? I have Thursday morning."

"What time? Earlier in the week is better for shop and lab, but for shop especially you don't want the first block in the morning. Earlier in the week matters more if you're serious about that class, later in the day matters more if you're doing incantations and want the section with the lowest mortality."

"It does look like it's the first of the day."

This is a very weird way for getting class schedules to work, but Masozi will happily distract himself by getting up to pace the perimeter of the room and check it over for mals again. There are, unsurprisingly-at-this-point, no new ones. 

- and then he gets a class schedule! Huh. Neat. 

"I have shop on Wednesday afternoon," he offers. "I wouldn't mind trading, probably. Is it more dangerous later in the week because of mals?" 

"You don't have to trade, per se, you can request any classes you want. But there's not a list, you've got to guess what's available from what the other people in this room get suggested. It's more dangerous earlier in the day but you get better stuff earlier in the week. Supplies restock weekly, mals restock nightly. From what we've heard so far Tuesday morning's best for hardcore artificers, Wednesday afternoon's best for everyone else, unless it's right after lunch in which case anyone just planning to do the absolute minimal amount of artificing should take the Friday 2 PM instead."

"What's wrong with right after lunch?"

"Sometimes mals creep in during lunch. Not very many, it's not as bad as a morning spot, but right after lunch is notably worse than right before. You're from Chicago? Shop is on the bottom floor, you never want to be the first in if you can avoid it, much better to be showing up as another class is leaving. Same's true for lab, but lab's up one floor so it's a little safer on the mals front."

"I think I want to do artificing track so I probably want earlier in the week? But I don't mind first thing after lunch, since I can sense mals." 

Rebecca looks at Masozi. "Do you want to take the same shop section so you'll notice if anything's gonna eat me?"

"Um, does anyone else...what alchemy slots do people have?"

To Rebecca, "You wanna wait 'till everyone's got their schedules before you write anything down. Don't commit to anything before you know what all the options are."

and to Anna, "I've got wednesday before-lunch and planning to keep it, it's a pretty good slot."

"I can take the same shop section as you if you want," Masozi tells Rebecca, "but I do want it as early in the week as I can get, if they have better supplies that way. What track are you going for?" 

Jean is busily poring over his schedule, which has just arrived.

M, 8:45-10:45 AM
     Malice and Maleficaria in 18th-century French poetry

MW, 10:45-11:45 AM
     Remedial Algebra

MW, 11:45 AM-12:45 PM
     The Magical Feminine in Medieval English Literature

MWF, 2:15-3:15 PM
     History of Artificing

MWF, 3:15-4:15 PM
     Introduction to Mechanics

TTH, 8:45-9:45 AM
     Beyond King James: English translations of the Pentateuch

TTH, 10:45-11:45 AM
     Early Modern Continental Drama

T, 10:45 AM-12:45 PM
     Intro to Shop

TTH, 2:15-3:15 PM
     Diaspora Enclaves: A History

TTH, 3:15-4:15 PM
     Language Lab

TH, 10:45 AM-12:45 PM
     Western European History through 1500

WF, 8:45-10:45 AM
     Freshman Maleficaria Studies

F, 10:45 AM-12:45 PM
     Intro to Lab

"Incantations, since my affinity is singing."

"...Okay, you maybe shouldn't be in the same section as me then? Because I want to get as early in the week as I can, and I think that's not a good tradeoff unless you're doing artificing track." 

Masozi glances around the room. "....Hey, does anyone have a Monday shop class? I might run over to the nearest other homerooms to see if anyone there does." 

After no one answers him for thirty seconds, he shrugs and gets up and jogs out of the room. At least he can be pretty sure the hallway is free of dangerous non-hiding mals, since it's been traversed extensively by other students. And running while scanning ahead is a very good way to build up more mana so he can afford to use his mal-trapping spell if he has to. 

The room layout makes NO SENSE and so it turns out that the easiest other homeroom to reach while minimizing passing through danger zones is 409. Masozi arrives, out of breath but intact, and sticks his head in to scope out the students there and whether he knows any of them. 

Mal isn't running late, he's .... on his own schedule.

At least it means that the schedule in question is waiting for him when he arrives.

M, 8:45-10:45 AM
     Household Bookkeeping

MF, 10:45-11:45 AM
     Introduction to Probability

MF, 11:45 AM-12:45 PM
     Spells of Santeria

MWF, 2:15-3:15 PM
     Abacus Skills

MWF, 3:15-4:15 PM
     Language Lab

TTH, 8:45-9:45 AM
     Algebra I

TTH, 9:45-10:45 AM
     Early Modern Continental Drama

TTH, 10:45 AM-12:45 PM
     Intro to Lab

TTH, 2:15-3:15 PM
     Diaspora Enclaves: A History

TTH, 3:15-4:15 PM
     Applied Electromechanics

WF, 8:45-10:45 AM
     Freshman Maleficaria Studies

W, 10:45 AM-12:45 PM
     Intro to Shop

TH, 10:45 AM-12:45 PM
     Beyond the Quixote: Short Stories of Cervantes

Julian's schedule looks – quite good, actually. He has reasonably convenient and non-lethal slots for shop and alchemy, History of Artificing, and just enough math to keep him on track for advanced artificing without making his life excessively difficult. To make up for it, there's Magic and Ritual in the Hindu Vedas and Mystical Verse from Minnesang to Goethe. They both sound fascinating and shouldn't be too empty, but it means he'll be doing coursework in his two weakest languages. Ah, well, translating builds mana.  

When he's done, he leans over to Naima. "What's yours look like? I was hoping – " Wait, no, idiot, he can't tell her he hopes they'll have some classes together, she'll think he's exactly the sad indie loser he is– "I was hoping you'd have something interesting," he finishes lamely. 

"Rebecca?" a New York freshman asks, arriving at the door at a jog.

"- yeah?"

"New York compares schedules so that we can all take classes together, if we want. Zeke had some notes for you - some of them are secret, if you want to step outside with me for a sec -"

"Oh, sure, okay - why's it secret -" She gets up and follows him out.

He shows her Zeke's schedule. "The secret part is this bit. Some of us got shop first thing Monday morning. Usually that's an awful slot for freshmen, because the shop's dangerous, but Orion thinks he can handle it, and it's right after the supply cabinets refresh. So we're coordinating to take shop together in that slot. Now, you might not want to join us - language track kids usually take languages Monday morning, early-in-the-week artificing slots are really only worth it to artificers - but Zeke wanted you to know. And we don't want the whole school to know, because then we're all taking on all the danger and not even getting better supplies." 

"Oh - yeah, I'll - think about it? It's kind of complicated to shuffle around and I don't have scratch paper."

"Sure thing!" He has the rest of Zeke's schedule there so she can pick the ones she wants to share.

She notes things on the back of her own schedule.

- oh wait the kid from yesterday is hoping for something! Involving her! Did she successfully get someone to like as opposed to just, like, tolerating her.

"First shop slot of the week, so I'm obviously going to try to switch that to Tuesday. Wednesday lab is probably fine. Egyptian Books of the Dead, because there is a God, and he obviously loves me. - do you mind if I copy that History of Artificing, the school wants me to take a lang lab there but I really don't think I need it - "

She tilts her whole paper towards him; she's also got Writings of Avicenna - that'll be stuff in Persian - Algebra II, History of Alchemy, History of Magical Conflicts, Formal Logic for Spellcraft, and Intro to Incantations.

The Scholomance evidently loves Jean. He has a beautiful loadout of literature classes, not too much math, and a nicely placed shop class just before lunch on Tuesdays. He's really not sure he wants to bother changing a thing. It's almost disappointing, after all the time he spent practicing on mock schedules.

"...what the hell is an abacus skills," Mal wonders aloud.

Masozi is back after about fifteen minutes, very out of breath. 

(He ran into one of the Shanghai upper-year students on the way, apparently en route to bring him Wei Wuxian's class schedule, so now he might have MORE classes he wants to request.) 

He passes by Rebecca's desk first and lowers his voice. "There is a Monday morning shop class. So I'm taking that. If you wanna. It might not be a good idea for you though, if you're languages." 

He's speaking quietly enough that it shouldn't carry through the whole room, but Bobbie can probably overhear it. 

"Thanks," says Rebecca, considering and discarding responses like "I know, Silas just told me".

- Gosh. Bobbie is pretty confident that she can take care of herself, which means that rather than being a death sentence Monday morning shop is a great way to trade what she has (Vigilance and the ability to kill mals) for what she is sorely lacking (Literally any material possessions). If Masozi is also there and actually reformed it probably won't even be much more dangerous than a normal shop class anyways. And if he's planning to use the early slot to build a mal army instead of - whatever else he might be making in shop, it doesn't seem to fit his affinity so probably just miscellany - she'll be all the better placed to notice and put a stop to it. She stands up and stretches, which gives her enough leverage to see exactly which morning block Masozi is requesting - wow first thing in the morning hot damn - and writes that down.

Should she tell the rest of the room? Probably...not... there's a finite number of slots for each shop class and she doesn't want it filling up, and it'd get her a reputation as both a snoop and as someone who just blurts out secrets for everyone to hear. Giving common sense advice to the kids who need it is one thing, that would be another.

She will then also get to witness Masozi puzzling over what looks like a...mostly-Mandarin class schedule for some student called Wei Wuxian?

He is writing in that he wants to take a class called 'Street-fighting Mathematics', in Mandarin, during the Tue-Thu slot just before lunch. Shanghai kid's schedule also has 'Maleficaria from 1700 to the Present' in English, in the after-lunch block on Mon-Wed-Fri, and Masozi writes that in as well. 

Mal really can't think of anything he wants less than four math classes.

...if he puts intro to shop on Tuesday morning, that gets him out of algebra. And then if he puts intro to lab on Friday afternoon, that gets him out of probability. Then he just has to figure out something to displace whatever Abacus Skills are, and then he just has Household Bookkeeping, which he can handle -- "does anyone have anything after lunch on Mondays that's easy..."

"Double language lab?"

"Sick, thanks."

"No problem."

To Naima – "Go ahead. Oooh, Formal Logic for Spellcraft looks fun, mind if I take that? It has to be better than Materials Identification – " 

He tilts his schedule towards her. It looks like this. 

"Wow, development of the enclave, God must love you, too. Go ahead, I bet it'll be solid for learning how to make anything actually useful."

She fixes her shop and lab and requests History of Artificing.

"Okay. Now we just have to be distracted. Hear any good distracting things, lately?"

Well, right now he's distracted by the reminder that he might well not figure out how to do anything useful before graduation, which would seriously limit his ability to do anything useful after it. Keeps your mind off the little things. 

"I, uh, – did you know the Shanghai enclave has a monorail inside it?" 

" - wow, no, I did not, how many people do you need to have before having a monorail makes sense?"

"I don't think it needs to make sense, it just needs to show they can – the Shanghai Dominus, his affinity is large-scale constructs." Like me, I fervently hope. "It was really nothing before he came back home. I'd give anything to know how it works."

And, oh, the paper on his desk looks different.  

Oh hey is hers different too?

" - aw, nuts, it gave me exactly what I wanted and then replaced the death shop with Intro to Economics, in Mandarin. Probably getting back at me for trying to get out of language lab. Oh well. I can probably follow along."

"Why were you trying to get out of language lab - I have a lot of it, is it bad -"

He's not going to offer to give her Mandarin coaching because that's just a bridge too far. Even if it wouldn't cost him anything, really. He needs to concentrate on his own schoolwork every minute he can so he can make valedictorian and impress everyone and get a good alliance and live – 

"It won't be so bad," he says in Mandarin. "We can speak it and you'll get better." 

"Well, I'll probably train up quickly then," she tells him, in Mandarin.

Then she turns to Rebecca. "No, no, any normal person should take it, it's just I already have eight languages, and I should get language credit for every class because my native language is Arabic. I just want to load up on things that might have more spells. You're doing the right thing."

"Is that our schedules set, then? Because I'm starving." 

"Yeah, I think we're set! Do you have anyone to eat breakfast with? I was gonna see if I could find the girl from Istanbul I met yesterday, she seemed really cool."

He should really try to leverage his in with Shanghai, but he's done about 15 minutes of bodyguard duty and he'd be stupid to assume that comes with an automatic invitation to sit at the grown-ups' table. 

"I don't have a better plan." 

"Cool! If we hurry they should still have at least something resembling actual food," she says, and then it occurs to her that this isn't that clever of a thing to say because actually all of the food only resembles food.

Whatever. She's out.

Okay time to go then apparently!

Bobbie finalizes her schedule and jogs back to 222.