Lucy and her brother are sitting with some faceless NPCs, earnestly discussing the morning's classwork. 

Masozi heads over, moving fast because he doesn't want to be late for work period - actually he probably still needs to check if Shanghai wants him watching their library spot for mals...?" 

"Hi Lucy!" He hefts the bag. "I have a container I can give you now. For the mal grubs for your spiders to eat." 

"Oh! Thanks!" 

Atlach skitters down her arm towards her hand as she reaches out for the bag. 

He hands it over to her. 

"I got new clothes!" he says brightly, pointing at them. "From - Lan Xichen? Shanghai? And they watched my back so I could shower and stuff. It was really nice of them. I probably still want to trade for spider silk socks, though." 

"--Oh wow, Shanghai? Congratulations."

"One of their freshman forgot to write down his room number so his friend had to help him check every single room in the school, and I helped them do that and look out for mals, and then they said they'd be willing to let me trade doing lookout duty for them in the library for getting someone to teach me Mandarin. And then they took me to meet the head of the enclave and he - was so helpful and nice and said I was talented...?" 

Masozi has not really had much of a chance to process the last day worth of events, of which there were MANY, and wow, saying it out loud makes the overwhelmingness sink in more. 

"Wow, that's amazing. If the head of Shanghai enclave inside the Scholomance says he thinks you're talented--you know what, forget the rest of the grubs, you can just owe us a favor later, it would be a waste of your time collecting them. Also I bet Shanghai would rather you not go around carrying containers of mal grubs if you're going to be associating with them."

"Why not? ...They did say I couldn't go around wearing my old clothes. And that I had to learn how to shower properly which apparently has a lot of steps I didn't know about. But mal grubs are useful." 

"...To me and Wilbur, because we have spiders, but most people don't have spiders. If you don't know that there are good, spider-related reasons to carry around mal grubs then it just looks weird and, uh, you still have enough maleficer vibes to get less than maximal benefit of the doubt."

"...Oh. I - for some reason I thought they'd be useful as alchemy ingredients or something, I heard parts of mals are?" 

"Oh. Maybe? I dunno, they could be. If I heard someone was using mal grubs for that purpose I wouldn't be shocked, but I didn't think of it on my own."

"Mmm. ....Well, I maybe don't actually have very much time to help you with that, because I told Lan Xichen I could help with lookout and now I owe Shanghai a lot of favors since they gave me clothes and all. ...Are you sure it's all right to just give you this and pay back a favor later for the shoes? I don't want to make things hard for you." 

"I am completely sure," she assures him. "We weren't banking on anyone being interested in finding grubs for us so early on. We will be fine."

"Oh. All right. Thank you." And he should probably...say a few more things to be polite and show that he likes them and still wants to do trades with them even though Shanghai gave him clothes? "How were your classes? I got to do a geometry class and I learned so many things!" 

"I mostly had languages lab! It was interesting but I shouldn't go into too much detail. Wilbur had History of Magical Conflicts."

"The lecture was mostly just about what conflict is so far."

"- Oh? What did it say? Was it about - wars between countries, or just wizards starting fights with each other - or something else -?" 

"Conflict happens when different people want different things," he says, rolling his eyes. "Not even specific enough to name any particular examples."

"Oh. That doesn't seem very helpful?" 

"I'm hopeful it improves later on."

"Mmm." Masozi fidgets a bit. "....I sort of almost got in a fight with someone with New York before? I - guess it was mostly about the thing where I look weird and scary. I sort of hoped your class would - have something useful about that kind of thing." 

"--You almost got in a fight with a New Yorker?" And Shanghai have picked him up? Oh this could be very bad. 

"- Yeah. I - they were doing a supply run, with some of the kids who hadn't known about magic before they arrived, and the girl leading it was....really not careful. So I asked if I could watch their back and point out mals for Orion to kill them, because I really didn't want anyone to get killed on the first day just because someone from a rich enclave was stupid. And they sort of didn't want me to because they thought I was weird, I think? But then the girl said I could follow behind and spot mals, as long as I didn't go in the person's room, which seemed fair enough. So I was doing that! And then a senior came out and yelled at me really threateningly so I left." 

"Okay, so, New York is the most powerful English-language enclave in the world. First off, this means that they are extremely unlikely to get eaten even if you're not around. Secondly--every independent here wants to join an enclave. Given their choice, every independent who's affiliated more with the Anglosphere than the Sinosphere would pick New York. This means that if they let everyone interact with them as much as they want, none of the New Yorkers are going to have time to do anything else. So they filter pretty hard, mostly, and everyone knows that, and so inviting yourself along would have come off as pushy and rude. Also, uh, you give off maleficer vibes, and probably the senior was not happy about that, because if a maleficer is being pushy and rude that's a lot more dangerous than if a normal indie is being pushy and rude."

"....Oh." He squints, trying to follow that. "So - it's rude to have a conversation like that with them, because they're New York, even if it wouldn't've been rude if it were some other group of kids?" 

"It's not that it's rude to have a conversation, it's that it's rude to start one--like, if a New Yorker starts talking to you, you can respond, and it's not like starting a conversation with an enclaver is never a good idea, but inviting yourself along to an older New Yorker's room steps way over the invisible line."

"....That's really strange but I guess I can remember that's a rule here. It - makes more sense why they were so weird about it?" 

"Yeah. Um. Does Shanghai know you almost got in a fight with New York because you didn't know anything about the social situation inside the school."

".....I don't think so? Should I tell them?" He looks confused. "I - don't think I did anything that different when I talked to Shanghai? There were some kids looking for someone's room, he forgot to write the number down, and I asked if I could help them. I guess I would've gone away if they'd said no because by then I was less scared that someone was going to die for not being careful enough. There were ten times as many mals as this where I come from." 

"Okay. I don't know why that went better, particularly, it could just be that you ran into more easy-going kids from Shanghai than from New York. But you should absolutely tell Shanghai what happened with New York, because Shanghai is the most powerful enclave in the Sinosphere and so they and New York are sort of--rivals--and anything that complicates relations between the two is important and they should know about it."

"..........Oh." He says it in a very small voice, and sort of hunches up smaller as well. "I - I didn't mean to make a problem for him?"

What if he's angry. What if he decides that actually Masozi is a liability and shouldn't get any help from Shanghai after all, even if his affinity is useful? It's not like he actually knows almost anything, yet. 

"I know you didn't. But--it'll be a smaller problem if they hear it from you, now, than from New York, later."

"Thank you." 

He's really really really scared, but Lucy's right; it won't make anything better if he tries to delay this. 

He nods to her and then heads back toward the Shanghai table, with the empty rinsed container that he has to return anyway.