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[homeroom] Room 76
Basil, Bella, Della, Destiny, Shannon, Kanimir
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Welp, it's the first day of the rest of Bella's life. Hopefully the vast majority of it won't be in the Scholomance, and putting her head down to work on that starts with... room 76, apparently. She finds it, after kind of a lot of looking, backpack on her shoulders and magic shoes skating her down the stairs. It's next to rooms 7 and 700. Whoever did the room numbering here had some kind of problem.

The door to the room is already standing open, so that's kind of nervewracking; she listens, first, trying to hear in the gaps between foot traffic and chattering whether there's anything in there, but it turns out it's just a couple of students who got there first. The room looks like it might have been intended as an auxiliary lab; it lacks the specialized equipment, possibly cannibalized years ago, but it has tall stools and stained counters and the remnants of an eyewash station. Bella checks a counter, checks a stool, sits down and nods at her fellow students.

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Shannon was perfectly on time because Raleigh, yet again, showed up at her door and offered to walk her over. And apparently his dad made him memorize the entire school layout and would quiz him on it? 

She's kind of terrified of somehow horribly screwing up at getting her class schedule, not that she's sure how one would do that but it feels very high-stakes, and thus she's tense and on edge and not in the most chatty mood. She smiles tightly and does a little wave at Bella, though. 

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"Hi Shannon."

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"Hi. Sleep okay?" Wow what an inane comment. Did literally anyone sleep okay last night. 

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"Eh, not well not intolerably. But I foresee sometimes needing to catch a nap during work period if I don't get used to it here fast."

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"Yeah, same. Also the beds are really uncomfortable. I wonder if I could piece together some materials from the supply room and make a mattress topper or something." 

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Destiny arrives a minute later, hand in hand with Morty, who hugs her before dashing off to reach his own homeroom because of course they're not in the same room. 

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"Wouldn't hurt to try. Probably. Hey there, I'm Bella."

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"Hi Bella! Destiny, Oakland enclave, artificing track." She plops herself down in a chair with apparent carelessness, though in fact she checked it out when Morty was hugging her, and starts playing with her kukri.

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An unfamiliar blond boy with a power-sharer on his wrist slouches into the room and takes a seat as far from all the other people as possible without sitting at any of the danger seats. 

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"Nice knife. I'm New Orleans, creative writing."

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"Bought her on Ebay. Yeah, she's great." 

Awwww, standoffish blond boy is cute. Not that she's going to do anything, obviously, Morty is the love of her life, but a girl can still look

Destiny has some mini spiral notebooks with lightweight flimsy paper, which she's not desperately attached to. She sacrifices one to write out a little note. 

New boy, cute? Y/N 

Note is folded into a paper airplane, petted and flattered in a whisper for a second just to make sure it doesn't become a student-biting paper airplane in the next three minutes, and then sails across the room to land precisely on Bella's desk. 

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Bella murders the paper airplane in two lines of panicky Spanish. "Who the fuck did that," she says, when it's smoldering on her desk.

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The student just walking in the door points at Destiny as he pauses to check over the room.

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He walks in, eyebrow raised to show his unimpressedness. 

He settles in to a seat near the front of the room with a notebook and pencil, idly sketching out some enchantment ideas - really need to get more local ones down...

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Lily comes in after Basil, sees the smoldering remains of something on Bella's desk, and immediately her knife comes out. There's runes etched into the metal on the side of it, apparently it's spelled.

Her gaze flicks through the room, takes in the unconcern of everyone present, and the knife goes back into her belt sheath. 

"Morning everyone," she says. "Mal from a vent?"

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"As best I can tell, a simple scare with a practical joke, or some such." 

Her sword is by her side, waiting but clearly unactivated as she waits. 

Ah this is always awkward...

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Xue Yang got a piece of paper under his door, which he ignored, because he can't read and it's probably full of rules which he has no intention of following anyway.

Instead he found Lily and followed her stealthily to wherever she was going, which is apparently this room full of white people speaking some language he doesn't know. Not that he cares. He just doesn't want them to be getting any bright ideas about killing his candy supply.

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Lily looks over at Xue Yang and raises an eyebrow. It would be a bad idea to speak in Mandarin in an English homeroom as her introduction, so she leaves it at that.

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These guys have NO sense of humour. That's boring. Destiny sighs and goes back to playing with her kukri and eyeing cute blond boy. 

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Basil sits by the girl with the flaming wreckage in front of her because the flaming wreckage amuses him.

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Cute blond boy catches Destiny eyeing him and blinks in confusion. 

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She gives him a smile and a little wave. 

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Bella sweeps the dead paper airplane off the desk with her homeroom slip. "I'm Bella," she tells Basil, since he sat next to her.

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"Basil Stark, New York," he says in a decidedly non-New-York accent.

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He looks perplexed, then glances down at the power-sharer on his wrist with a look of resignation, then notices the power-sharer on Destiny's wrist and is back to confused. 

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"New Orleans." She doesn't have a sharer, there aren't enough of them for that to make sense.

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He nods.

"Pleased to meet you, and all that."

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"Likewise." She looks over her shoulder at Destiny. "If you wanted to pay me back for the mana I spent I can forget about one dumb prank in our first homeroom but that really wasn't okay."

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Destiny rolls her eyes, but okay, fine, maybe she can't assume these kids are all on the same page about what's objectively hilarious, this isn't home. 

"Sure, I'll pay you back the mana." Which is pretty annoying, Oakland can't afford power-sharers, but Morty will share with her at least and he's really conscientious about collecting more mana than he uses. 

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"It wasn't that much." Bella holds out her hand. "Go slow and I'll say when."

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Destiny will somewhat resentfully let some of her mana trickle over to Bella. 

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"When. No hard feelings?"

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"No hard feelings." 

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Good, that settles that. Oh look, her schedule is here.

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Della glides in, says “Bella!” upon seeing Bella, takes a seat, and immediately receives her schedule.

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Destiny's schedule is also here! Apparently getting distracted by offending another kid is a useful distraction for that. 

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...ah. Hmm. Yes. About that.

Okay, Sherlock Basil, you can do this. Just... close your eyes, for a solid five seconds, and pay attention to something that is not the flat surface directly in front of you where the schedule is supposed to appear. The sounds of everyone in the room breathing, that's a start. Wait, is the paper going to make noise when it shows up? Will it wait until he'd be incapable of hearing it? Is he going to have to step out into the hall and hope nobody takes his seat while he's out? Oh, his eyes are opening without permission. No. Bad eyes.

But his schedule has been successfully delivered, so that's all right.

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"Morning, Della. What've you got there?"

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Oh look, a schedule.

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Huh, he's not getting one of those pieces of paper.

Maybe the school learned better about giving him mysterious pieces of paper.

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Kanimir observes Xue Yang's lack of a paper and says something to him in English. 

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Della has this class and this class and these other classes! They don’t currently share any, Maleficaria Studies aside, but Bella probably wants to switch over to Della’s current lab class, which is in a drastically better time slot.

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She unfosues for a moment, palms a schedule, and hums. 

"Iron, Great Britain, incidentally." 

Navigating this is going to be tricky...

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"I don't speak whatever that is," he says in Mandarin to the person speaking to him.

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"Does anyone know why there seems to be someone who speaks Mandarin and not English in this homeroom?"

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"They seem inclined to do the 'hovering menace' routine, though I can't say too much as to why." 

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"I recognize him from yesterday, he was there when I was giving out chocolate and coffee." 

In mandarin, to Xue: "What are you doing here?"

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"You gave me chocolate."

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"Ah." 

She considers for a moment.

It's too early for the obvious maleficer to have gone to his own homeroom, gotten his schedule, and come back. Yesterday he threatened to murder her as if that was a sensible option. He ate her chocolate very very fast...

Hypothesis: This asshole has no idea how anything in the scholomance works, and doesn't care.

"Do you care what classes you take?"

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"I've never been to a class in my life and don't plan to start now."

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"Are you trying to die--wait. Don't the Chinese students have to pass an exam to get in?"

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"That's my understanding too."

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"I'm going to go make a couple social calls and if a piece of paper appears in front of you I'll trade you candy for it."

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"...does it have to be a paper that has the words on it like everyone else has?"

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"Yes, it does."

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Xue Yang stands up and walks out.

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Lily follows.

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"You already have a paper! You don't need another paper!"

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"It's important to me for bullshit reasons you don't care about. I'm not going to insult you by explaining a bunch of things that you don't want to know. Just get me your paper and I'll give you candy, that simple."

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"Has he got math in Mandarin, I kind of want math in Mandarin," Bella asks.

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"I don't know yet, but if he does I'll happily give you it."

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Destiny peruses her schedule. It's not awful? It's about what she was hoping for. Lots of language time, lots of writing classes, some history, the bare minimum of math (and what is 'Abacus Studies' anyway...)

M, 8:45-10:45 AM

     Language lab 

MF, 10:45-12:45 AM

     History of Magical Conflicts

MWF, 2:15-3:15 PM

     Abacus Skills

MWF, 3:15-4:15 PM

     Intro incantations

T, 8:45-10:45 AM

     Language Lab

T, 10:45-12:45 AM

     Western European History through 1500          

TTH, 2:15-3:15 PM

     Freshman comp

TTH, 3:15-4:15 PM

     Milton's Poetry

WF, 8:45-10:45 AM

     Freshman Maleficaria Studies

W, 10:45-12:45 AM

     Intro to Lab

TH, 8:45-10:45 AM

     Intro to Shop

TH, 10:45-12:45 AM

     Beyond the Quixote: Short Stories of Cervantes

She's happy to show her schedule to others in the class for comparison and trading, but she's probably not going to swap any herself. Too much of a risk to run over to Morty's homeroom and check with him; either the school will give them classes together or it won't. 

(She is definitely thinking, quietly, pretty please Scholomance put me in classes with the love of my life, I'll be SO grateful and tell everyone that you're wonderful...) 

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Shannon has no idea whether her schedule is any good or not! She starts going through it. 

M, 8:45-10:45 AM

     Malice and Maleficaria in 18th-century French poetry

M, 10:45-12:45 AM

     Intro to Lab

MWF, 2:15-3:15 PM

     Russian Literature Before Pushkin

MWF, 3:15-4:15 PM

     History of Alchemy

TTH, 8:45-9:45 AM

     Principles of Chemistry

TTH, 9:45-10:45

     Language lab

TTH, 10:45-11:45 AM

     Mathematics in Music        

TTH, 11:45-12:45

     Language lab

TTH, 2:15-3:15 PM

     Number Theory

TTH, 3:15-4:15 PM

     Milton's Poetry

WF, 8:45-10:45 AM

     Freshman Maleficaria Studies

W, 10:45-12:45 AM

     Intro to Shop

F, 10:45-12:45 AM

     Welsh Mythology

 

....Shavri looks around helpfully. "Uh? I - have a class about Russian literature? I don't speak–"

She stops. Gulps. "Oh goddamnit are you kidding me? I talked to him for, like, twenty minutes!" 

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"It might be a translation? You shouldn't have it thinking you already know Russian, though it might want you to study it."

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Shannon groans. "I bet it does want me to learn Russian. And it's my fault, for hanging out with that Vanya kid from Sacramento and letting him sing songs for me. I was trying not to listen to the words too much, but..." 

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"That wouldn't usually have it chucking Russian spells at your head but it might have cued the school that it should set you up to learn Russian, yeah. Did you want to do a different language?"

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Shrug. "I didn't have specific plans. And I'm pretty decent at picking up languages. ...Huh, I wonder if the Scholomance just wants me to be friends with Vanya?" 

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"I don't think it does that but it seems like he could use it."

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Xue Yang returns with his paper and puts it on Lily's desk.

It says:

M, 8:45-10:45 AM

     Introduction to Arithmetic

MF, 10:45AM -12:30 PM

     Functional Literacy

MWF, 2:15-3:15 PM

     Language Lab

MWF, 3:15-4:15 PM

     Functional Literacy

TTH, 8:45-10:45 AM

     World History

TTH, 10:45-12:45 AM

     Introduction to Arithmetic          

TTH, 2:15-4:15 PM

     Introduction to Arithmetic

WF, 8:45-10:45 AM

     Freshman Maleficaria Studies

W, 10:45-12:45 AM

     Intro to Lab

TH, 8:45-10:45 AM

     Intro to Shop

 

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Bella peeks. No Mandarin math. She will head to breakfast to see if she can get a good Mandarin math.

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He glances over his schedule.

M, 8:45-10:30 Advanced Geometry 

MWF, 10:45-11:30 Accelerated Algebra 

MWF, 11:45-12:30 Green Knights & Questing Beasts: Magic and Maleficaria in Medieval Literature

MWF, 14:15-15:00 Magical Pigments & Dyes 

MWF, 15:15-16:00 Poetry 

T, 8:45-10:30 Intro Shop

TTh, 10:45-11:30 Language Lab

TTh, 11:45-12:30 Calamities and their Consequences

TTh, 14:15-15:00 Number Theory

TTh, 15:15-16:00 Applied Electromechanics

Th, 8:45-10:30 Intro to Lab

WF, 8:35-10:30 Freshman Maleficaria Studies

He tches slightly, but smiles a little at the relatively reasonable hours, and the focus on at least adjacent interests of his. 

Quite workable indeed.

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"What does my paper say?" he says to Lily threateningly.

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Nothing she could actually try to swap into, if this guy can't even read.

"It says the school wants you to learn how to read, do math, learn about world history, and learn how to make potions and artifacts, along with learning how to kill mals really good." 

She fishes in her backpack, takes out a small snickers bar she got from Kevin, and passes it over. "Your candy, as promised."

 

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He devours it instantly. "I thought this was a magic school. Why would I need to learn math?"

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"It's useful for some kinds of artificing and alchemy. And for knowing when someone's cheating you."

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"I just steal things I want."

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You are so going to die.

"That generally works for you?"

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"Well, I have magic powers."

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"Everyone here has magic powers. You are going to die."

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"I've been about to die my whole life. I might as well have some fun. --I didn't ask to be here."

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"Well, you evidently didn't get in by the entrance exam. Were you in Chicago for some reason?"

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What's a Chicago.

"Yes."

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"How did you manage that, being illiterate and not speaking any English?" he asks, but he sounds more morbidly curious than suspicious. 

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"I lived in the Chinatown," Xue Yang says. He's pretty sure people immigrate to Chinatowns. 

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(Della also peeks at the schedule.)

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"Well, you may have my condolences for how doomed you are, much good they are likely to do you."

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"Don't worry, I'll have fun while I'm here."

He's already had more chocolate in the past 24 hours than in any day of his life he remembers.

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Kanimir gives him a steady look and says to Lily, in English: "You also have my condolences."

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"They are sincerely appreciated."

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"I don't think we've introduced ourselves, I'm Kanimir Kozlov. --Atlanta," he adds belatedly, fiddling uncomfortably with his power-sharer. 

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"Isabel Lillian Amber, but I go by Lily. Canada." Her bracelets are obviously enough not power-sharers to mark her out anyway. "Affinity is bracelets, and I'll gladly sell you one for blasting, shielding, or endurance if you're interested."

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"--Potentially yes. What are you looking to trade?"

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"Anything enchanted for healing or protection would be excellent. I'd also take mana or unfilled gems or wire or thread, and if you have something you're looking to get rid of I could almost certainly offer you something for it, I have luxuries, school supplies and superglue too."

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"I can get you gems and wire for a bracelet of endurance."

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"I'll want at least a dozen good quality gems and two spools of wire."

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Glower glower glower no one is going to murder his chocolate supply.

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"What size of gems?"

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"Small ones are acceptable." She shows her black wire and ruby storage bracelet, all twelve of its inset jewels glittering red. "They don't need to be large to serve as beads."

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"I can do that."

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"Do you need time to get that together?"

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"Yes, I don't have them on me. Lunchtime?"

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"Lunchtime works for me."