It's safer here on the first day, Annaka does not say because then it'd be in the transcript for her parents to (hopefully)  feel awkward about later, that she didn't know how to do an interview without biasing the subject. "Did he say anything else about Johannesburg?"

"- not that I remember or wrote down. I told him I wasn't mourning the rats and this would be a good time to go strict for a while since the mals were low. I hadn't known there was technique to maleficing but in retrospect it wasn't surprising. He said he would be more comfortable with that if other people were being more careful, that he didn't want anyone to die just because they hadn't learned how yet - we were looking around, the run didn't have any of the Chicago mundies on it. I said most of us weren't going to make it out and strangers did not expect him to pull malia to check for them. Suggested he sign on as a lookout for an enclave that could give him a power-sharer for it. He said 'maybe', fortunately whether my enclave would do it wasn't at issue, there aren't enough of us to bother with power-sharers in here at once." - she has his room number, or what she said was his room number, but isn't going to volunteer that unless it seems like they're being reasonably fair about this.

She takes this all down, too. "Did you end up with the impression he meant to stop maleficing?"

"He seemed noncommital on that point."

"Did you see him use magic at any point?"

"Presumably he did so to find the baby quattrias, and probably at other points to confirm absence of other mals, but it was not otherwise obvious he was doing it."

"Did anything about interacting with him - feel weird, did you ever feel like you changed your mind about him for not a good reason, or does anything about what you said or did feel uncharacteristic in retrospect -"

"The incompetent flattery was incompetent flattery? Nothing about my reactions seemed odd then or now. I agreed to go on a run including him because my affinity is metamagic and I expected to stand a decent chance against a maleficer. And my retrospect is pretty good, I detected that the eidetic memory potion I took Friday morning was not working right by lunch while I was still on it."

"All right, thank you. Would you like a summary of what we're looking into and why?"

"Yes please."

"The afternoon of orientation, a bunch of our freshmen went down to the senior dorms to look over the stuff our graduating class left behind. Masozi followed them, and said he wanted to follow Orion specifically. They told him it was a private run, he said 'I'll be a lookout', they turned him down, he did not leave, pointed out a mal to Orion, eventually they decided to let him tag along, I think mostly because they weren't sure what else they could do to make him stop following them, short of attacking him. He followed them to the senior dorm. Frank heard about this and stepped outside, at which point the kid says "mals up there!", points, and a couple of jaculi lunge at Frank from the ceiling. Frank thinks the timing was uncanny and thinks the kid was using magic but it can't have been an attempt on Frank's life, they were jaculi. Anyway, Frank picks up on the maleficing vibe and tells Masozi that New York doesn't abide maleficing and he should leave. Masozi says he was just protecting our freshmen, who aren't cautious enough, Frank takes that as a threat and tells him to seriously get lost right now, he walks off. 

During homeroom, Masozi leaves his room and shows up in one of our freshman's homeroom, to ask if he had Monday morning shop. - New York freshmen are taking Monday morning shop. Orion Lake can handle it. Our freshman hadn't heard that the plan was a go yet, but told Masozi it's on his schedule, at which point Masozi apparently signed up for it.

All of which is consistent with any of 'he's really clueless' or 'he's trying to get Orion's attention specifically' or 'he's following our freshmen for some reason' and also with 'he maleficed when he didn't know better but is going to stop now' or 'he wants a New York powersharer very very badly' or 'he wants to know what happens if you try to pull malia off the most powerful wizard of our generation'. So, you know, I sit down with Johannesburg to ask some questions. And apparently he was a last-minute addition after a very unlucky mal attack killed a soon-to-be-inductee right in front of him and he acquitted himself very admirably, saving several younger kids." 

Annaka's gesture of exhausted confusion is very compellingly faked, if it's fake. "I don't have time to be the adults that everyone decided this school did not need, I want to be in the gym, but if he's stalking our freshmen, or if he's after Orion in particular, or if he has a mal-control affinity, which is Frank's theory, then we've got a problem. And one we evidently did not solve by saying "New York doesn't abide maleficers, go away". New Orleans will get an update on all of this if we decide any action seems warranted."

"Yikes. That's got to be very stressful. Uh, what's your next steps, here, just talking to more people?"

"Everyone who's had a substantial interaction with him, if we can. We're also trying to investigate the two freshman deaths so far, just to confirm they're unrelated. And we - might be getting some information on the mal-control theory any minute, we're chasing down a rumor that he coaxes mal grubs to him using magic.

And then we talk to Shanghai, because he's been very close with them and taking classes in Mandarin despite the fact he'd claimed to Johannesburg he did not speak a word of it and had only recently encountered English, and because until we know whatever the fuck happened in Chicago we and Shanghai are both trying very hard not to startle each other. 

And then -" Shrug. "If action seems warranted we'll reach out to all the US enclaves, you can do a lot of damage by going about this kind of thing unilaterally even if you end up being right. I'm not saying everyone will have a veto but we won't surprise you."

"I wouldn't expect me - or more to the point Suze - to have a veto but it's nice to know that it's not going to spiral suddenly out of control without warning."

"Thanks for your time, let me know if you think of or hear about anything else that might be relevant." And she stands up, taking her transcript.

"Thanks for taking point on this so responsibly."

"I have a kid sister in your year, I'm all worked up about you lot surviving." And out she goes.

"Is the question, do I think he mind controlled me, no, I don't think that, he's a freshman, maybe he tricked a lot of people but he didn't trick the school about whether he's fourteen. I let him come along because, like, what else was I going to do, order Vernon and Lysander to punch him in the face? I didn't know them well enough to be sure if they'd do it! And then that'd be a whole thing and you'd be on my case about 'Julia, why did you cause a fistfight on the first day' - what would you have done, if you were a freshman and someone were following you around and wouldn't stop -"

          "...probably tell him that it looks bad, and is going to have a lot of people wondering why he wants to be around people who don't want him around."

"He'd stopped listening to anything I was saying, he was very pointedly ignoring me and talking over me at Orion -"

        "Huh. You didn't mention that -"

"Well, it's not like pointed ignoring is a thing he did, so I didn't think of it - it was like, you know that lecture from Dad, it was like he'd decided I was a seagull who was pooping on his palace."

        "Julia, this is going to end up in a formal record somewhere."

"Maybe in a year but right now, you're the person who is going to use it to decide what to do, so I'm talking to you, not to the Domina, and that was what it was like, like I was trying to explain to him that he wasn't invited and meanwhile he'd decided I might as well not have been talking at all."

         "In a mind-control way or -"

"Not in a mind-control way!! Leave it off with the mind control questions!! - do you have any reason to think he can do mind-control?"

         "Well, we think he can mind-control mal grubs."

"I'm not a mal grub!!"

"This is about Masozi, I'm guessing? I don't think he's hurt anyone yet, we weren't planning to respond yet but we don't have New York's resources."

"Yep. We don't think he's hurt anyone here. We're fifty-fifty on whether he murdered someone to get in. Where'd you first run across him?"

"Supply run, first day. Was a little offputting at first - uh, he was wearing rags and smelled like shit, I don't think I noticed any maleficer vibes - but he was doing perimeter checks. Later in the workshop he started asking someone why it was bad pull Malia, I don't remember who, I think I added a couple of comments to the effect that it's like drugs. Tried to keep more of an eye on him after that. There was also a clothing artificer there, Sophie, I think? I was talking to her about buying some clothes, I didn't come in with any, she mentioned that she was making clothes for Masozi and I warned her off. I don't know how seriously she took it - wait, shit, I don't think I've seen her around at all in the last few days, fuck I should've been paying more attention!"

" - Sophie? Do you know her - last name, her room, where she's from, anything -"

"I don't think I got a surname, we walked back to our rooms together - one-ninety something I think? I've got it written down, I was planning to go talk to her again once I had more to trade..."

Annaka opens the door. "Ask New Orleans, check on a Sophie," she snaps at someone, and then sits back down. "Probably too late if it's bad at all," she says, as she does. "- ugh - that'd be - four freshmen dead already, we had better recheck the one that was supposedly a suicide - what else did you notice on Masozi. Particularly interested in uses of magic and in any interest he had in New York."

"I don't think I've seen him casting any spells, I think he's got something to notice mals but I don't know what it actually is. Claims his affinity is mals, claimed he could take anything he expected to come at us on the supply run. He's... close to one of the Chicago mundanes, Rebecca? But I haven't noticed him doing anything with anyone from New York. Heard about something at orientation but you've probably got firsthand reports of that and don't need my hearsay."