She winds up in line next to a veritable giant.

"Hey. Bobbie Draper, Auckland."

Oh cool it's the extremely buff girl. "Hi Bobbie, I'm Marcy. Boston, affinity for projectiles."

"Mine is just straightforwardly for combat spells, as far as I can tell. Got lucky, there. A little unlucky with my growth spurt, but you win some and lose some."

"Yeah, I'm glad mine held off. Still, that's a totally awesome affinity. So are you incantations track then?"

"Yeah. Languages, I'm garbage at composition. But this term I'm planning to focus on shop more, try to catch up on having worldly possessions. I've got Monday Morning which'd usually be a terrible idea but I figure I can get the other kids to spot me the mana to clear the room and a little more on top, maybe get some help with the early projects, leverage a combat affinity into tradable resources early on. Or I die, but our enclave's not big enough to make survival a sure thing."

Raleigh catches up to them in line. 

"- Wait, did I just hear you say Monday morning shop?" Then he finishes getting a good look at Bobbie. "...I guess you might be fine. Hey, Marcy - how was work period?" 

"And my affinity's combat spells, so I've got options for the ones too acidic to rip apart with my bare hands."

"Heya Raleigh! Work period was mostly good. I hope Monday morning shop pays off for you; I've got a very languages-heavy schedule this semester but I'm going to be spending a lot of time in the shop the next couple terms; with my affinity it'd be a waste not to."

"Bobbie draper, pleased to meet you, by the way."

"Nice to meet you! I'm Raleigh. Sacramento enclave. I'm languages track too. Um, how were your first classes?" 

"I feel like a god-damned engineer, which is not really my thing. Physics, geometry, metallurgy, and history of artificing."

"- Huh. Yeah, that's a lot of not-languages. I was just completely loaded up on history. And History of Magical Conflicts was such a useless class. Maybe it gets more, uh, practical later on."

Raleigh has his tray loaded up and is ready to sit down. 

"Oh? What's that been like so far?"

Bobbie is unsure whether she's about to be invited to sit with Boston or Sacramento or if she'll have to find her own table among the indies again.

Marcy thinks Bobbie has a lot going for her and is making an interesting high-variance bet. "Want to come sit with us today?"

"It'd be my pleasure."

"Got tablespace for me?" Raleigh is, truth be told, somewhat avoiding the Sacramento table tonight, in hopes of also avoiding getting handed any more Vanya-bathroom-escort duties.

"For sure." She grabs the spot next to Abigail and makes introductions. "So I don't know much about Auckland."

"The enclave is still pretty small and the amenities suck, it was only established in the seventies. For a while we mostly didn't need it, apparently, they'd done a pretty thorough job of clearing mals off the island, so it was cheaper to just have combat wizards stopping anything from coming in at the ports and airstrips. Still had to worry about the aquatic ones if you ever went swimming in the ocean but - that's easy enough to avoid. Changed after the war though, too many deaths to keep the island clear and now we've got all the same nasties as Australia."

"- Huh, oh, wow. I guess maybe the school is giving me alll the history classes because I'm not very up to date on magical history - I had no idea New Zealand was doing fine without an enclave until recently! That must've been a big change." 

"Just the north island and - we weren't fine fine, but we managed well enough that buying an enclave didn't seem worth it."

"That's really impressive; I didn't know anywhere had done that. Do you know if any other islands manages it?"

"Some of the little ones in the pacific did, I think? Probably nobody's managing now, it wasn't just the war, there's a lot more air tourism now. I have no idea why mals like to hide in passenger planes but empirically they do."

"I hope none of them are smart enough to figure out the reasons it's actually a good idea."

"Planes are actually pretty safe, I think. Wizards don't fly much, a mal'd have to hide out in the cargo bay for a lot of trips for the chance to grab someone, and even so it's not a great chance with all the mundanes there convinced it's just a cat that got out of someone's pet carrier."

"Oh, sure, attacking people on the plane is dumb, the opportunity is the hard-to-access territory on the other end. But never mind; you said you were in History of Artificing?"

"Oh, yeah, some of them are absolutely smart enough to be doing it intentionally. Just. The mindless oozes do it too."

"I was in history of artificing. So far it has proven useful if I want to make a shield holder using a six-thousand year old design and I have an assignment to figure out how one might use artifice to bury tens of thousands of hittites under a mudslide."

A junior, not from Boston, sits down at the Boston table.

"Hey! I'm James, I'm a junior, just going around checking that all the new freshmen have settled in OK, see if there's anything any of you need?"

Is that….normal. 

Raleigh gives Marcy a confused glance. 

It's so not normal! "Excuse me?" she says with she hopes is the right mix of three parts confused to one part offended.

This kid is not giving off creepy maleficer vibes, but he's sure giving off charming maleficer vibes and why the fuck else would a junior be going around meeting all the freshmen anyways.

"... I will take that as, you six are fine and don't need anything?"

"We don't need anything." Not from you anyway. Whatever his angle is cannot be good or he'd be pitching it to fellow juniors in some more reasonable manner than pouncing on them while they're eating.

"Alright! Good luck with your classes!" And he's off to check on freshmen at another table.

"...Anyone know what was up with that?"

Helpless shrug. “…If he were really sketchy I think probably Larisa would’ve said something?”

"Probably trying to sell us overpriced garbage."

"Or looking for vulnerable frosh."

“You’d think he’d do better for himself by focusing on the indie tables.”

"Yeah, seriously."

One of the Boston sophomores leans in and says, "I think he's more insane than scammy, for what it's worth. After all the shit that went down last year he started climbing on a table every Wednesday and telling everyone all the gossip he'd heard. Apparently he thinks mutual common knowledge of stuff will help, which isn't itself nuts, but like separately he's totally nuts."

"That's... he knows what this place is like, right?"

"I don't know that he does!" says the Boston sophomore. "I heard he got kicked out of his enclave for using more than his fair share of mana!"

"What the shit? Did they not warn him or did they warn him and he kept doing it?" asks Marcy.

"I don't know but either way it's fucked up!"

"He did what? Which enclave?"

"...I feel like there's got to be more to the story than that. I guess if he was doing that and also - so out of touch about things that he was clearly a liability and putting everyone else at risk...? Still seems like a big deal! I don't - have you ever heard of someone being kicked out of an enclave like that before?" 

"Not like that. Probably someone'd get kicked out for poaching or maleficing, but enclavers aren't desperate enough to do that. Someone in my cousin's year raped one of his 'clavemates and they cut him off after that, but that's the only case I've heard of."

"And I really cannot picture that guy maleficing! He's so..." Raleigh glances around, lost for words. "Earnest," he decides, finally. 

"I was told that's something to watch out for, actually. Charming older students who are interested in the lives of freshmen."

"Yeah, I heard some maleficers can hide it. The worst ones."

"It was Seattle," says the sophomore, "and they generally to have their heads on straight, though of course lately it seems like you can't count on anyone to have their heads on straight. He wasn't even just wasting mana on himself, either, he kept doing random unreciprocated favors for people. Which, you know, if an indie wants to be an altruist and die, whatever, but he had obligations! And now I guess he doesn't, so if he wants to be an altruist and die, whatever. But anyway if they caught him maleficing I think they would have made that known?"

This seems plausible to Raleigh. Well, the entire situation is weird, but a student wasting mana and being insubordinate about it for long enough - especially if they were as...weird in the head...as Holden seems to be... Yeah, he could see an enclave with limited slack deciding that was a liability they couldn't afford. 

(It's still upsetting. It's the sort of thing Landon and Larisa would only ever do as a very last resort.)