Yup, there she is, coming in from Korean history and, judging from how she immediately heads his way, already looking for anyone from Sacramento.

Raleigh makes a beeline for her. 

"Hey! Howwereyourclasses -" because he's not going to be RUDE by not saying the expected pleasantries but also he sure is distracted and in a hurry, "- also you got a minute? I - um - I... Cassie gave me the rundown on, on Vanya..." 

"Classes were good and I am specifically looking for Vanya logistics; how private do you want this conversation and should we grab food first?" She made sure to get here as fast as possible so she could get both food and information before either one became unavailable.

"Let's get food first." Raleigh received very firm instructions from both his parents that this is ALWAYS the priority and only the most critical negotiations should ever eclipse it especially early in the term. 

He walks close-ish to Marcy and is visibly shaken and disturbed, but doesn't say anything else while they're surrounded by other freshmen. 

It's a pretty shaking and disturbing situation! She puts just enough attention into her food to make sure it's edible and sufficient in quantity.

Raleigh is fully aware that he's not really up for the careful scanning called for here, so he mostly loads up a plate with brussel sprouts. 

"...All right. Want to, uh, go - find a spot in the hallway or something - I don't want to go too far if you're expecting Larisa to look for you...?" 

"I am, yeah, if she didn't delegate it to you. Hallway's good."

They can go hold up a piece of wall and she can eat one-handed with the tray on her other arm.

Raleigh ignores his sprouts for the moment, since his stomach is in knots and he's not even slightly hungry. 

"I, uh - I don't want this spread around, it's more political than I expected? ...I did see Malik in class and I explained I couldn't really tell her everything, but if you didn't mind telling your other friend later, I...feel like the two of them maybe don't like me or something?" 

". . . I don't think they'll mind you not telling them? I mean, they'll eavesdrop just because everyone wants to know anything that might be useful, but they won't be annoyed at you about it. Also, we're not, like, friends friends, we just had homeroom together and got some of the same classes and they seem smart." Telling Raleigh they were eavesdropping feels mean, but not saying anything would have been dishonest and unfair to Raleigh.

"....Oh. I see." The remembered voice of Mother is now yelling in Raleigh's head about Misjudging A Social Situation, but damn it, he can handle that later. 

He takes a deep breath. 

"So, uh, right - what happened is, uh, there were two small enclaves that - ended up having this really dumb feud - and Vanya was dating a boy from one of them, a junior, who had a twin brother..." 

He goes through the whole awful story, hesitant and occasionally with a tremor in his voice. Vanya's boyfriend's twin (Cassie wouldn't give him any names), pushed into the void to poach his room. Vanya's boyfriend's odd affinity for emotions, and the mental-link artifact he made for Vanya. 

Vanya, apparently, DIRECTLY EXPERIENCING his boyfriend losing his shit, going maleficer, and murdering half a dozen students before he, too, was slowly and painfully murdered in turn. Vanya nearly dying in the process, because apparently the boy who loved him was no longer even capable of noticing where or what or who he was draining malia from. 

He's almost in tears by the time he finishes. 

Okay so first of all, holy shit.

Secondly, that explains why they're acting like they expect him to recover. She's never heard of anyone having this exact reaction to partially getting their life force drained, but it feels intuitively a lot more like a broken limb (horrible and dangerous but healable and not inherent to your quality as an ally) than like a personality fundamentally unsuited to survival. For all she knows she'd be in the same state as him if someone drained half her life force.

Thirdly, Raleigh looks like he's going to lose it, so she had better say something. "Thank you for telling me. I hope he recovers further." That was at least something, though it would have been better if she had said something useful.

Raleigh swallows hard. 

"I - apparently - he, it, it - did something to his affinity? Or his mana capacity, or something, no one's sure yet. ...Just, apparently even in the first week, when he was still totally out of it, he - would sing something and blast a mal into powder. In his sleep! And he's....somehow generating like a third of all of Sacramento's shared mana, right now. No one's sure how, even, he - apparently doesn't say anything when people ask him...." 

Wow okay that solidly moves the needle on "is Sacramento insane or amazing" all the way to the latter end. No wonder Boston is apparently willing to make long-term loans of favors. Score one for trusting your upperclassmen. Also, yikes, because what if the reason he's so unresponsive is that he's breathing manually or something and generating mana from the effort of continuing to exist. 

"That's--better than not that? The whole thing still sucks, though."

"Yeah." 

A pause. 

A longer pause.... 

....okay apparently he is going to EXPLODE unless he says something to someone. 

"It's so awful! I - just - I mean, I shouldn't be scared that it'll happen again to our year, it was so weird, but - still.... And, I - aaah - I feel so bad for Vanya? He - we thought he had a 50/50 chance here at best. Because he's brilliant but he hates hurting anyone or anything. And...just...." 

Raleigh trails off because what is he even supposed to say. 

"It really sucks! And it's, like, a reminder of the fact that reality is finding new ways to suck for teenage wizards all the time. So it makes sense to be freaked out even if that particular thing is never going to happen again." That's not reassuring at all though. "But also--you have resources. You have the rest of Sacramento. You can fight back against the suck."

Raleigh is only slightly processing any of the words in there, but he can definitely tell that Marcy is trying to be comforting right now. And he doesn't want to be rude and he should be making friends with Boston - right - so, he should, what, pretend to feel comforted...? 

"- Thank you," he says softly, and sort of leans against her. 

She takes a few seconds to pull up the script for this--it's not one of the commonly needed ones--and then awkwardly pats Raleigh's shoulder.

Oh no - he was trying so hard not to be rude or to put anyone in an awkward situation but Raleigh can tell that Marcy is feeling awkward about this, aaah–

Deep breaths. 

"Anyway. Uh, the thing I decided on to tell, er, Malik - we had a class this morning - was just that I couldn't say much because of politics, but that the big parts weren't likely to happen again? And then, um, I did - I felt bad not saying anything helpful - I told her that mind-linking artifacts were probably a bad idea..."

Raleigh is trying to hide his feelings and failing abysmally; his expression declares very clearly that he's nervous about Marcy deciding he is Bad At Social Judgement.

"That sounds true and like good advice." Which is too bad because mind-linking artifacts would have sounded pretty cool in a different context. "Maybe don't tell her anything else, though; I don't know her well enough to say she won't gossip."

"....Fair enough." 

"I mean, you've got your own judgement, you can tell her stuff if you think it's good to tell her stuff, I'm just saying that if you thought I was vouching for her that was a miscommunication. Um. Anyway. I'm going to help; I signed up to help Vanya with his homework during work period." She needs to go find Larisa and talk logistics for that but she doesn't know how to politely end a conversation with someone she's awkwardly semi-hugging.

"- Oh. Right. Um, let's - go find Larisa, then....?" 

Awkardawkwardawkward he's so bad at this–

"Yes, let's. And thanks again for explaining."

Onward to wherever Larisa is! With no more hugging, because that would look weird and also she can only really manage two of walking, hugging, and balancing her tray at the same time.

It would look really weird! Raleigh is pretty content to back off from all the hugging. 

Larisa is sitting at the table they claimed for Sacramento, shoveling food into her mouth and waiting for Cassie to, presumably, haul Vanya over here from his latest class. Thought he really should have been here by now so maybe he ended up having a sobbing breakdown in lang lab again and has been dragged to his room instead?