"Hi! What's got you so out of breath first thing in the morning?"

(The kid Eliza might recognize as Kevin Who Has Tea sidles in and takes a seat - not a vent seat - efficiently after a cursory mal check, looking kind of bleary.)

Homeroom. One of the odder traditions. Theun looks around and recognizes a shy enclaver and one of the cloud going around the queen bee New Yorker. He sits two desks away, nods to each.

(She nods back even though she isn't sure she actually recognizes this guy.)

Hannah swans in a minute after Raleigh, not even breathing hard, and waves lazily to the assorted students, a gesture that shows off the power-sharer on her wrist. She does a cursory check of the room, and sits in an alright seat since there's still space.

Raleigh plops down. Nice, he got some mana from that, though of course it's just going into the Sacramento shared pool, and freaking Vanya is apparently contributing, like, half of that right now. Despite being a sophomore. He didn't have an unusual mana-generation capacity before so Raleigh is pretty confused about what happened there. 

"Walked my friend to her homeroom," he says. "She's indie. Carried in half my gear for me so I owe her some favours, and she deserves it anyway." 

"That's sweet. There's a lot of enclave boys who wouldn't be so considerate."

"....Yeah, I know. But - I mean - just because it's dangerous in here doesn't mean I'm giving up on being a good person, you know?" 

"There should be more people like that. It's hard to hold true to yourself in a place like this, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't at least try."

"Noble of you, and I mean that in a non-condescending way."

"I'm Raleigh, by the way. Sacramento enclave, doing languages track."

"Hannah. Toronto Enclave, Alchemy track. If you need something to help you focus for cramming I've got a solid recipie I've been using for the last two years."

"Eliza. Formerly Chicago enclave." 

"Evil is a path of short term gains. Kevin, artificing. Hey Eliza, weren't you interested in some tea? I have a few caffeine pills too. And allergy meds and Adderall and ibuprofen and like, lots of pills."

Zeke arrives! 

“I’m Zeke!” says Zeke, sitting down in a vaguely central location.

"I've picked up some minioning for a New Yorker and she wants tea for an enchanted teapot she inherited. If you didn't have tea my next suggestion for a substitute would be, like, herbal teas or hot cocoa, not caffeine pills. --Hi Zeke."

"I do also have tea. Hi, Zeke."

"Hey Kevin, you said you have caffeine pills? I can use those. If you provide materials I'll give you a 50/50 split of the resulting focus potion."

"You're alchemy track?" Raleigh says brightly to Hannah. "My friend Shannon's doing that too. Healing affinity and she's brilliant. I could introduce you?" 

“Hi! - uh, Eliza,” says Zeke, who heard her name on his way in, “I’m super gonna forget to do my homework if I try to do all of my homework, are you, like, available for general minioning or is it a monogamous thingy?”

"Oh, I'd love to meet her! Alchemy is my fucking life, only thing my parents ever drilled me on that I loved except maybe fighting."

"I am available for general minioning!" Especially for New York. "What in particular are you looking to offload?"

“History and math?”

"Sounds fine, what're you offering?" Maybe he and Julia will have the same history homework and she can pick up Julia's too and just copy everything over. 

"Oh, Shannon offered to help out with history, she likes it a lot, but I'm not sure if she's up for general minioning so I'd better check with her." 

“My affinity is for layering spells, so I could layer another ward on your room every time you did the homework, or whatever? Or I could give you, like, stuff, if you need physical stuff.”

"Wards sound great, deal."

"I've got lots of pills, Hannah. Could kind of use something directly for healing if that's on offer instead though. Would I have to find the other materials?"

“Cool!” says Zeke to Eliza.

"I have a decent stockpile of the basics, but if you want me to use them I'd have to take a larger cut of the results. How many pills of stimulants have you got? We might be able to work something out on the healing side."

"A few hundred. They're not that heavy if you pack 'em right."

"Anything stronger than caffeine, or is caffeine the best you've got?"

"Not much of a trader if I didn't. Adderall and Ritalin and more controlled things, what'cha want?"

"Adderall is ideal. You said you had two hundred pills or so of it? I'll trade you two healing cookies for that."

"Didn't say that, actually. I've got a hundred twenty of Adderall specifically, and even that's kind of steep unless those are flat-out amazing cookies. They're high-dosage pills."

"How many can you give me for a wind-up alarm clock?"

That's a no on the pills, then?

"Well, has it grown up in a nice home? Couple dozen, maybe, I can think of someone who could use an alarm clock."

This Raleigh guy is legit!

"Theun, Languages, Philadelphia. I'm with Eliza, most enclavers are... inconsiderate jerks. Including my own, alas."

"It's well-behaved, entirely mechanical. I'd take thirty of adderall for it."

"I dunno, I don't have a way of getting any more later myself."

"That's not what I said," she protests. It's very inconsiderate of him to say she did in front of Zeke. 

"Three healing cookies and the alarm clock for all one hundred and twenty."

"...You know what, deal."

He expected her to haggle back more but he'll take it! He unzips a side pocket of his backpack and starts carefully looking through it.

"If you're going alchemy maybe we can deal more in the future, I do light. Which means lasers and flashlights mostly so far."

She opens up her backpack and pulls out the alarm clock from on top, then counts out three healing cookies from a large tin of them. "Can you do ultraviolet? That would be useful for sterilizing lab equipment."

"I have a spell for it, shouldn't be too hard to get into a pen but I don't wanna make promises I can't cash."

"I'd be willing to trade a potion or two for one of those if you can get the enchantment to stick. Also if you come into any alcohol I could use that too." She'll just leave out that it's for her and not her lab equipment.

“I’m definitely super inconsiderate sometimes, I guess, I, like, arrive late to birthdays and stuff. You’re getting dressed and then something distracting happens and when you arrive people are mad at you! It’s super unfair and I dunno how other people do it.”

"True enough, I apologize for putting words in your mouth. They cause more than enough trouble coming from my own mouth. Clearly I should have included myself as one of the inconsiderate jerks, which is... not wrong."

Silas shows up for Zeke's classes, at this point.

"For sure, I'll work on it. No booze - or alchemical agents-" He apologizes to Hannah, "But I'll keep you in mind." He can carefully pack the healing cookies away and brush some dust off the clock politely after pulling out four sheets of 30 Adderall pills each. They're labeled as 50mg, a pretty heavy dose.

She carefully keeps her surprise at the monstrous dose off her face, and tucks the pills away in her pack.

Her schedule's shown up while she was otherwise occupied, apparently. She picks it up and has a look through her classes.

Ah hell, he probably could have gotten more out of that. They're light and meant for trading away, but that doesn't mean he can let it all go so cheaply. Hopefully it'll at least buy some goodwill.

"Pill filler's kind of heavy compared to the actual medicine, turns out," he mentions casually, in a quiet voice. Hopefully calm enough.

There. A subtle call to attention that she got a pretty good deal and he's not being very snippy about it, though it's his fault in the first place for forgetting about the intensity of most of these meds his Mom bought up-

Oh look, a schedule. That's distracting from feeling STUPID STUPID. And at least he has some emergency healing now. So, that much less likely to die in the next week. Yay.

(Zeke confers quietly with Silas, determines that he’s going to be in the shop class with Orion in it, and tells Silas that he should probably, like, find Rebecca and tell her that she could also take that class period.)

"If you want, but I mean, she's incantations, right? She gets the language lab Monday morning. Orion can probably keep the mals off her but I'm not sure she gets anything out of it." He will diligently go inform Rebecca if that's how Zeke wants it, though. 

Theun notices Hannah's schedule, and then observes that he has one as well. Heavy on literature and history, Monday morning Intro Lab - he's pretty sure he heard language track got language lab Monday mornings and this was much preferable to shop or lab to avoid mals. Thursday morning Intro Shop, not ideal but probably not worth burning a pick on it. Some vaguely interesting classes: Roman History just before lunch most days, Mystical Verse from Minnesang to Goethe - counts for German, hopefully some good spells there. Formal Logic for Spellcraft two afternoons a week, that might be very useful for the information-handling spells his affinity probably can do. Freshman Maleficaria, Freshman Comp just before lunch the other two days, a bunch of Language Lab.

"Anyone have Intro Lab before lunch Tuesday or Thursday? I'm trying to get out of having it Monday morning. I don't want to rely on asking for Monday language lab, though I think that's an option every year."

“She doesn’t, like, need to do it, I’m not the boss of her, she should just know that it’s an option and stuff,” Zeke says to Silas.

"Yeah, got it. Don't tell other people, if we get a bunch of copycat signups I worry Orion's gonna overstretch himself and people are gonna get eaten."

“Can do!”

Silas jogs off.

Raleigh distracts himself with introductions to other kids - Theun seems friendly and Raleigh makes sure to smile at him - and then, ta-da, schedule! He peruses it. 

Morty finally makes it to class! He is quite late because he walked Destiny to her room and then did not run because running in the hall is stupid and a great way to fail to notice mals. (Probably still fine this early in the semester, but he doesn't want to build bad habits; Destiny is careless enough for both of them.) 

And - schedule! Great! 

Hannah takes a more serious look at her schedule. 

On Monday she has Household Bookkeeping in the morning, followed by Anglo-Saxon Poetry, ew, but at least it's English, and "Freaks, Oracles, Jesters: The Malformed as Spectacle in Western Culture", which is honestly a pretty badass name for a class. After lunch, Abacus Skills and History of Alchemy. 

Tuesday... Intro to Lab first thing in the morning! Yes! Then a language lab, ew, and whatever "Calamities and Their Consequences" is, probably history, then in the afternoon - two alchemy-related classes? Damn! Magical Pigments and Dyes and Materials Identification. What a great schedule. 

The rest of the week is mostly repeats save Intro to Shop Thursday mornings. She will absolutely fucking take this. The Scholomance must like her or something. Maybe this is accommodation for her ADD? ... Like that would exist here. 

She laughs softly to herself and tucks her schedule into her pack.

Zeke’s ultimate schedule puts him in intro to shop, ovid, history of artificing, and a doubled up language lab, on Mondays, with shop switched out for maleficaria studies on Wednesdays and Fridays. On Tuesdays he has algebra, and five blocks of language lab; on Thursdays, he has algebra, intro to (regular) lab, and three more blocks of language lab. He’s going to devour Ancient Greek in a single semester and it’s going to be AWESOME, not being allowed to start any new languages for the past few years had been super unfair.

He informs Theun about the existence of lab on Thursdays, makes a brief detour to his room to collect a random shirt - Rebecca could probably still use a random shirt - and then heads off to breakfast.

Theun thanks Zeke as he goes. Weird time slot... frick, if he takes that he needs to arrange Shop late too. And actually, that lab time, either half the room will be there already and leave halfway through or it's the first time that room's used in the morning. Never mind, bad idea, good luck not dying Zeke.

Should he just... request a later slot and hope? No, wait, what you do here is go ask other homerooms to confirm. Right. He has the request for language lab Monday morning down, if he doesn't get back that request will still go through.

"Hey, I'm going to go check other homerooms about those lab slots, I think actually I don't like Zeke's. Anything simple you guys want checked for?" He particularly looks toward the indie and the nice enclaver guy, but it's loud enough to carry to a good chunk of the room.

"Nah, I'm good."

Raleigh goes through his schedule, wishing he had time to run back over and coordinate with Shavri but he'd better not risk it. 

He had a lot of advice from his father on how to optimize his schedule, but this...actually isn't half bad? Language lab first thing Mondays, and his lab and shop are both earlyish in the week - Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively - but not first thing, they're both in the block before lunch. 

Other than that he has THREE different history classes, for some reason? He's not complaining, though; he happens to know that Shavri is good at history, maybe he can trade with her for homework. 

He's more worried about the math, especially since the single person he knows who's best at math is Vanya, and....good luck getting useful help from him. Why is he in Algebra II. He is not up for that. 

...His father says that the best way to avoid this is to request a different, specific, easier math class, and then ideally find something that conflicts with the unwanted class slot. 

"Uh, does anyone have...Algebra I?" 

"I've got it! Uh, Tuesday and Thursdays, second period - the one that starts at 9:45?" 

"Oooh! Okay, that conflicts with my other language lab slots but I guess that's...fine? Either the school will give me a different block or it'll probably give me a writing class, my father said." 

He asks around and ends up learning of the existence of a Medieval Debate Poetry in the slot of his erstwhile unwanted Algebra II class, which he requests on the grounds that it's at least more related to languages and that way the school can't try to give him both Algebras. He pores over the rest of his schedule and asks around the room and pencils in a couple of other requests.   

"I think I might actually want that Algebra II you're trying to get out of," Morty decides after a minute. "Math's a prereq for a lot of artificing and I think I can keep up."

Shrug. "Better you than me? When've you got shop and lab?" 

"Uh, shop is...Monday before lunch, looks like?" 

"You're artificing track, yeah? That's...risky, but you'll get better supplies. And at least it's not first thing in the morning." 

Theun eventually circles back. He confirmed there was a Thursday before-lunch Intro Lab, and discovered a History of Artificing class in after the work period most days. With the big block of hands-on on Thursday, he should get a chunk of language lab Tuesday, if most classes followed the block plan the schedule suggested they did. And he gets back... Intro Incantations two evenings a week, a big block of Language Lab Tuesday morning and a little more Wednesday after Mals, that's time for Mandarin two or three hours a week and probably something else as well, seems good. He got bumped out of Formal Logic into a Freshman Comp session, but thankfully he got added to another session of Logic Tuesday before lunch, so that's ultimately a positive.

But the school now thinks he should have more math, apparently. Introduction to Probability in the third block Monday and Friday. He doesn't see how he could benefit from it with the artificing his affinity prefers, but maybe it'll come up.

He'll live. Well. If he doesn't live, it won't be because of this.