Basira is very firmly expecting that the first morning is too early for mals to have crept up the maintenance shafts that definitely don't exist, and checking everything is a good habit to start early. Technically getting to class first is itself a bad habit she needs to get out of. It's only when the next kid comes in that she realises she turned her back on the door.

"The front two rows are clear," having checked the one she's planning to sit at and the one behind her, "and I don't know who thought shelves needed a lip on them but they are real."

"Uh, cool, thanks." He checks the third row and then picks a seat in the second one. "I'm Caio."

"Basira." The last of randomly-stuck-together boxes proves clear, of course, so she checks the floor and sits down... next to him.

How does she sound competent.

"You know what you're looking for with your schedule?"

"My parents told me what to aim at, yeah."

"What're you going into?—I'm on incantations, creative."

Sleepy enclave kid trundles in, yawning.

"Alchemy, my affinity's probably in there somewhere, but I think we don't get that much specialization in freshman year."

Another enclaver arrival. She's small for a freshman, and looks like she wants to murder whoever invented mornings.

"Give me a boost," she tells the first enclave kid, after a brief initial circuit of the room. "I want to check the ceiling vents."

Blink blink.

"...hi, I'm Tony, what are you planning to do to the ceiling vents and why am I involved?"

"Look in. I'm short."

"...fair enough. Sure." He can hoist her up to ceiling level, he's not that tall himself but he's plenty strong.

Jaromira comes in, blinks at the two enclavers in a trenchcoat, does her own sweep, and sits down. 

Vents: clear, except for what she's pretty sure is a perfectly ordinary spiderweb. Wonder how that got in here.

"Thanks."

"No problem," he says, setting her down again.

She picks a desk near Tony and sits on it, cross-legged.

He looks back at his desk to discover a schedule sitting there. "Oh damn, I've got shop first thing on Mondays. This school wants me to have a very nice time for two weeks and then die."

"I have a Thursday, if you want that?"

"I'll probably take it but give me a minute to wrestle with temptation first."

This is the point at which a tall, very scrawny black kid in clearly-castoff clothes and plastic flip-flops reaches the room at a run and pauses in the doorway, out of breath. 

He looks around at the students for a moment. 

"- Does anyone have shop on Monday mornings?" he asks after a moment. 

"I am at this very moment grappling with the hard truth that I need to swap out of Monday morning shop or it will kill me! Do you have a way not to be killed by Monday morning shop?"

"My affinity's for finding mals. ...I don't have a good mana-efficient way of killing them, though. Do you?" 

"...Well, unless I very much miss my guess, he's in an enclave with Orion Lake," she muses. 

Masozi bounces a little. "Oh! Are you? Orion's really good at killing mals, I pointed some out to him yesterday." 

"...I am in an enclave with Orion but he's not here and I don't think I can ask him to clear out the shop every morning before class. I've got some stuff off my own, too, but like, we'd still probably die."

Basira closes her eyes for a moment so that her schedule will appear, and it does.

Masozi would consider just asking Orion, except that, one, he doesn't know where Orion's homeroom is, and two, New York apparently wants to never interact with him because he's a "maleficer".

...Which makes interacting with the other New York kid kind of fraught, but he's not going to say anything. He will instead - sort of stand against one wall and scan the room for mals and wait to see if the kid makes up his mind. 

Silas comes by about ten minutes later to show Tony all the other New York schedules. "Step outside so we can go through everyone else's schedules? I think 'Numbers' is actually one of the toughest freshman math classes, if you don't want to spend a bunch of time on math you could swap into algebra..."

Jaromira seriously considers stepping up to the door and pressing her ear against it and decides that this would be more trouble than it's worth.

Masozi really doesn't think it would be wise to piss off New York any more, and he can't remember if that kid was one of the people nearby when the senior yelled at him. He stays where he is and waits for the other freshman to come back. 

It turns out that the Scholomance can, in fact, still manifest your schedule on your desk even if you're sitting on it.

M, 8:45-10:45 AM
     Intro to Shop

MWF, 10:45-11:45 AM
     Ovid

MWF, 11:45 AM-12:45 PM
     Roman History

MWF, 2:15-3:15 PM
     Abacus Skills

MWF, 3:15-4:15 PM
     Rituale Romanum: Pre-1962

T, 8:45-10:45 AM
     Language Lab

TTH, 10:45-11:45 AM
     Babylonian Numerology

TTH, 11:45 AM-12:45 PM
     Magic and Ritual in the Hindu Vedas

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

TH, 8:45-10:45 AM
     Intro to Lab

Tony follows Silas out.

He tries to be appropriately quiet, but a cry of "God fucking bless Orion Lake!" might still be audible through the doorway.

She is still not going to eavesdrop but she is going to ask Tony about that when he gets back inside.

Tony steps back into the room looking just about as conflicted as he did when he stepped out. He stares at his schedule, deep in thought, then glances up at Masozi.

"I'm gonna take the Monday morning Intro to Shop, I think," Masozi says cheerfully. "If you're up for it." 

"I want to state for the record that Monday morning shop is still a bad idea that kills people," he says in a carrying tone; and then more quietly, to Masozi, "but if you in particular want to come along and spot mals, I'm cool with that. Just please don't invite ten more people who will come along and crowd the room and get slaughtered, okay?"

"Great!" Masozi looks so cheerful about this. 

He leaves and sprints back to his actual homeroom, building a good chunk more mana on the way and only having to dodge around one ceiling vent. 

Wow this schedule is terrible and she hates it. Obviously shop has to move, and hopefully that can displace some of these other classes, because all of them are bad. She does not want to wind up learning Latin and Greek and whatever the fuck they spoke in Babylon.

No way does anyone here have anything in Plains Apache. Instead, she nudges Tony. "Got any Spanish?"

"Uh, gimme a sec..." He pokes his schedule. "Looks like I've got some Spanish lit on Thursdays before lunch, if that's what you're after."

"Thanks." That gets her out of Babylonian and Hindu. Then she can put shop on Wednesday afternoon where it won't kill her probably and will take out Ovid and Roman history. Lab's fine where it is.

"Going to the workshop or labs first thing on any morning is a bad idea," she says to the class at large, in case someone doesn't know that. "And freshmen aren't allowed afternoon spots. Anyone got a shop class I can copy, Tuesday or later, right before lunch?" 'Artifice that improvises' being another way of saying 'nascent mal', she really doesn't care beyond that.

"My lab and shop are Tuesdays and Thursdays before lunch respectively."

Hmm. "I've got a Wednesday lab already and I'm not... yeah, I'll keep mine, it'd bump a nice history. Which workshop?"

"300."

She writes in the details of her request and offers Caio her schedule in return.

...gives herself one moment to regret losing the Cervantes class. It could have been fascinating. But she's not getting a better option for Intro to Shop; Friday would add a risk of not having the supplies to complete her projects. So it's only one.