A girl who's pale even for a white person approaches him cautiously. 

"You're Shanghai, right?"

An exhausted-looking slightly-tan kid trudges through the door, sporting a purplish jaw bruise. 

"Yeah! But I'm fluent in English."

She sits down next to him; he seems friendly enough. "Cool. I'm fluent in Mandarin. How do you feel about spiders?"

Masozi walks in, and first checks the room for mals, before he bothers processing all his visual data to recognize people. 

- oh, that's Wei Wuxian! 

He waves, and heads over. "Hi! ...I should maybe not sit too close to you, I want to keep lookout for other people here too." 

"Sounds good!"

Lucy waves lightly to Masozi.

How nice that anyone else wants to keep a lookout. Good to know someone else might catch anything he misses, maybe, if he's lucky.

He isn't sure if it's rude here to ask about other people's bruises, and they have class anyway, so he doesn't say anything about it, but he looks a little longer at Alexius than he does at anyone else.

"I love spiders!" Wei Wuxian says. "I have cockroaches myself."

"Cool!" She holds up a hand for Atlach to skitter demonstratively over. "What do your roaches do? My twin brother and I have spiders because his affinity is thread."

"My brother's affinity is animals and mine is dead things, so we've kind of got them covered coming and going."

Okay, so one of the drama-laden Shanghai people and the creepy boy who seems to have fallen in with them (admittedly looking a lot less creepy now that he's had a day in an environment created by people from the first world), and some people she's never seen before, and the spidersilk person. She'll go sit next to the spidersilk person; proximity to Shanghai and creepy boy isn't that much of a cost because she wants to know what's up with them anyway and "in class with tons of witnesses" is as good a place to do that as any.

"Hi," she says, sliding into a seat. "What do you do with dead roaches?"

"Well, not much so far, I'm a freshman."

"We're freshmen, and Wilbur made all our clothes. Admittedly spiders are probably easier to use for silk than roaches are for...sorry, I haven't spent two years cultivating an interest in roaches, I know less about them."

"Fair point; what are you hoping to be able to do with dead roaches?"

"Get them to move again and then I can be followed around wherever I go by hundreds of zombie cockroaches."

...Lucy is not going to criticize that plan because he is from Shanghai and she is an indie. 

She will, however, take advantage of it. "Do you want to add zombie spiders to the mix? My brother's and my familiars are a breeding pair."

"I guess if you can get them to be lookouts and mal-bait that's pretty helpful." Not everyone can have an awesome affinity.

"Oh, man, that would be badass. Absolutely. Next time you have a dead spider send 'em my way."

"Okay! --Can you do anything with dead mals, because that has the potential to be really badass."

"Oh hey, Lucy, you should talk to my enclavemate Franklin, his affinity is containers and he's trying to convince it that armor is a type of container, I bet he'd be into the silk. Also wow, yeah, dead mals would be awesome if you don't accidentally terrify everyone."

"I haven't tried with dead mals. I should."

"If I kill a mal and it's in any shape to carry I'll sell it to you."

"I would love to talk to your enclavemate!" She would pretty much love to talk to anyone from any enclave at any time, enclavers liking her silk is very good for her survival prospects. "Armor should totally be a type of container, but that's an argument Wilbur is a lot more likely to win than I am."

"How come; is he good at arguing with affinities?" Is that even a thing you can be good at?

Connie remembers to check the air vents first when she arrives from the library, and oh hey, Wei Wuxian is in this class with her- aaaand so is Marcy Park.  She will... maybe go sit by Bruise Kid instead.

"Well, no, but he's an artificer and I'm not, I get the impression that being an artificer involves a lot of convincing objects that they have traits."

"Ah, yeah, that'd do it." That girl who just walked in looks familiar--oh heck, it's Connie Donovan. What's she supposed to say, "Long time no see?" Oh good, Connie's ignoring her,  what an excellent strategy. She's going to copy it.

He overhears the conversation but does not partake. Zombie cockroaches, that's a new one. And containers, hmm...

He does his best to nod politely at his new seatmate. His smile comes out a little tense. 

"Hi," Connie murmurs, and starts to check the basket under her seat for her textbook- no, she should check it for mals first- well, now she's thought about it too much and now there's no mals and also no textbook.  She looks away from it again.  " 'M Connie.  You?"

"Alexius. Nice to meet you." It's hard for him to muster the effort to be social after this morning, but that just makes it mana-building. He notices the lack of a textbook. "Want to use my book when I'm done with the reading? I'll pick it up fast." Thank you, potion-that-apparently-works-only-on-him.

Masozi, who was sufficiently distracted checking everyone else's desks for mals, now has a textbook! He will open it and start reading. 

"Sure- I'll check again in a bit, though, I don't wanna impose on you the whole class."  She has her mathematical modeling textbook with her but that's too distracting... is that the garbage clothes kid?  Is he sitting with Marcy and Wei Wuxian, or just by them?

"You doing okay, Masozi?" Wei Wuxian asks. "Do you need someone to help you read it?"

"The book is in English. I learned how to read English books in the library in Malawi so I think I'm okay."

Masozi is not the world's fastest reader and he occasionally has to sound out unfamiliar words under his breath but he can make his way. 

"I can read it out loud to you if that would help?"

Masozi can't tell if Wei Wuxian...thinks he's stupid? Or just really wants to read the textbook out loud– oh! Maybe there's subtext here and actually someone else here can't read but Wei Wuxian doesn't want to say that... 

Either way, probably it would be rude to turn him down. "Okay. Thank you." 

He follows Connie's gaze. "Friends of yours?"

Why is Zombie Lord being aggressively patronizing at that kid. Does Alexius sound that patronizing when he tries to help people? He hopes not. 

Wei Wuxian learned to read English recently enough that he's aware of PHONICS and he thinks that this is probably more important for Masozi to be solid on than whatever it is they're supposed to be learning, he forgot. 

Masozi is incredibly delighted to learn pretty much anything, it doesn't matter what! 

"Not exactly?"  Connie murmurs back to Alexius.  "Ran into the Shanghai kid at lunch, we talked math for a while."  Does that sound like she's namedropping? Probably not, it doesn't make sense to call someone by name to someone who doesn't know them.  "D'you have to fight something already?"  She nods toward his chin.

He snorts. "I wish. No, I - " you're going to have to explain this a lot, Alexius, might as well tell it like it is. "I sold some potions that had side effects that testing back home didn't detect. Some... pretty bad." Long sigh. "I refunded everybody, an upperclassman took it personal, thought my atonement needed some... physical component. I can't really blame 'em." 

Marcy happens to overhear this and privately thinks that's a very stupid way of going about things. If someone is admitting they wronged you you can use that cooperation to demand some compensation that actually benefits you. Violence is negative-sum and makes you look impulsive.

"Oh no, that sucks.  Rotten luck."  Has it been long enough- no, clearly it has been long enough, and there will be a book under her chair because that's where books go... ha, it worked.  

Oh good, she's got a book.

"Thanks, Connie."

He's just gonna memorize Chapter 1 while his eyes are still open, that seems good. 

Chapter 1 gives an overview of the observed trends in maleficaria in the last three centuries. Key takeaway: they're a lot worse. 

More specifically, modern maleficaria seem to be significantly harder to kill or avoid, more numerous, more mana-hungry, and less willing to go after mundanes than before the Industrial Revolution. Broadly speaking, this is thought to be a result of the Enlightenment making mundanes less willing to take the seemingly rules-defying creatures of myth and faerie at face value; the Industrial Revolution concentrating disbelievers together in cities; and a complex feedback loop involving mundanes becoming less appealing targets, weaker maleficaria being disbelieved out of existence, and stronger maleficaria increasingly subsisting on a diet of wizards and lesser mals.

In later chapters, the textbook promises to compare maleficaria populations and death rates in specific regions of the world and at different points in history. The author admits, in a slightly unprofessional tone of wry frustration, that by dint of changing belief patterns, such analysis can itself change the population dynamics of maleficaria being studied, and is therefore prone to "exponentially compounding complexity." 

"It is nevertheless hoped," concludes the introduction, "that reasonably sound conclusions may still be drawn from the observed changes in patterns of maleficaria activity over the recent centuries. This we shall endeavor to accomplish in subsequent chapters." 

The broader context is interesting and the regional specifics sound like they'll come with lots of excellent spells for making those specifics wish very briefly that they had stayed in their regions. She takes notes in her usual polyglot shorthand.

"I'm going to sound people out for language, spell, or homework trading," Alexius remarks to Connie as class wraps up. "You interested?"

Connie takes notes in small crabbed handwriting, draws some tentative sketchy curves at the part about feedback loops, then takes more notes over top of them to save paper.  

"Sure, definitely," she says to Alexius, folding her notes and tucking them neatly inside her textbook.  "I should avoid new languages this semester, I'm doing Mandarin history for my language credit, but I'm totally down to swap homework."

"I'm good at things that need memory, and a large subset of spells and alchemy. Terrible at artificing though." 

"Oh, huh-" is it rude to say 'convenient for me', probably it is.  "I'm artificing track- forces affinity, it'd be a waste not to.  And I can do senior level math, but instead of an extra shop period like I was hoping for I just got three lit classes."  

"Forces, oooh. Kinda want to do my own math because it'll come in handy, at least the courses I'm in. We could trade artificing homework for lit homework? I spent most of Intro to Shop struggling with the make-and-mend, my affinity actively fights me when I'm working on something that isn't me." 

"Mmmaybe?  I need to find a group to go down to the shop in work periods with before I commit to more than I can handle in class time- I maybe already did that kind of- and freshman shop I'm guessing isn't mostly going to be the sort of thing where composing it takes most of the time and you may as well make two copies.  But assuming I get that sorted out- oh wait, do you have Spanish, they're all three in Spanish."

"I do have Spanish. We can coordinate later once we've had a chance to see our classes in action. I'm room 191A." 

"Oh, I'm like way the other end of the school.  We could meet up at dinner, maybe?  What've you got next, I've got, uh, freshman comp."  She's not sure whether telling boys your room number is a bad idea- probably it's fine, he shared his without thinking- but she is going to stay on the safe side for now.

"I also have freshman comp next, but sure, dinner sounds good." Especially since he hasn't had lunch. "Walk to class together after this one ends?" Safety in numbers and all that. 

"Sure, sounds good."

"Neat. Let me hit up that other group first, need to ask something."

Alexius approaches Marcy near the end of class. "Hey, I heard you mention your enclavemate has a containers affinity? He should talk to Bella Swan from New Orleans. She's going to experiment with ways to poison the mal food chain and I bet she could use some good agglo holders." 

"Ooh, nice tip, thanks." Also that sounds like an interesting project Bella has going. Not immediately obvious how it turns into a graduation strategy, but worth asking about.

"Unrelatedly, I'm sounding people out for trades - language tutoring, homework, spells, especially personal spells, that sort of thing. If any of you are interested we can maybe talk this weekend?" He's not doing a great job of selling it right now, but just thinking is mana-building at this stage of sleep deprivation. He awards himself mental points for remembering to ask at all. 

"I expect I'll know by the weekend what kind of German tutoring I'll want to buy. I can pay in homework."

"I'm planning to pick up German this year myself, but it's not first on the list...well, let me know." She didn't mention spell trades, not sure if that's a rejection or just not-having-something-in-mind. There'll be other chances to offer, he supposes. 

Ghassan doesn't acknowledge Masozi, but nothing more than that; he has an obvious aura, which means associating with him in front of other people is a bad idea. He does hope he can catch up with him at some point in the first week. He's more interested in the class material; so far, all of his classes seem interesting, and this one will likely turn up more useful information than History of Magical Conflicts. There's- a lot here about maleficaria as though they're biological creatures, which doesn't seem like something they can be confident about. It's not an ordinary ecosystem- but no, it mentions belief, too. Interesting. Numbers are good too. Overall, it sounds like it could be useful for understanding how to manage their little local mal problem. If he can get at least one person interested in working with Dubai. He is thankful that the enclave hasn't had time to build a bad reputation yet, no matter how little success they've had at graduating students. It would take years of this rate to scare off potential allies of a similar position. They can't sucker New York or Shanghai, but maybe Kiev, Munich, Zanzibar...