He's actually just outside the food line, apparently looking for Alexius. He waves when he spots him.

"Hey! I'm just waiting for - that other girl who was with you, I didn't catch her name - my friends are holding some table space for us, and then we can go up as a group after lunch."

"Connie will probably show up. I'm realizing I didn't catch your name, I'm Alexius." 

"James! James Holden. Sorry about that, I met a lot of people last night and I guess I forgot to keep introducing myself properly. If you think she'll come find us, we can go sit down now?"

"Works for me." He collects nutrition, avoiding a suspicious clump in the peas, and follows James to his table. 

Said girl is about midway through the second counter over, it turns out- she gets a scoop of hash and a slightly bruised apple, loses out on the last brownie, and leaves the line.  She glances around for the other two, spots them, and heads over in their direction with a small wave.

Holden leads them to a table full of older kids. "Hey everyone! These are Alexius and Connie, the freshmen I mentioned who might want to help Naomi with her homework. Alexius, Connie, this is Alex, Joe, Amos, and Naomi."

"Welcome!" says Alex, a big smile on his face. "I hope you don't go by Alex y'self? I've been tryin' so hard to avoid havin' to differentiate, I'm sure my moniker wouldn't be particularly flatterin'."

"Hah. I sometimes do but I met another Alex at orientation and decided to stick with the long version. If you're feeling particularly generous you can also use 'Alexius the Great.' Pleasure to meet y'all." He nods to the assembled elders, doing his best to seem cheerful-and-unintimidated. 

Joe, leaning back in his chair with his feet on the table and a hat on his face, waves a small acknowledgement. Naomi pushes some peas around her mostly-full plate. Amos smiles - keeps smiling - and bobs his head. It falls to Alex to carry on the conversation.

"Alexius the Great. Didn't realize New York was giving seats out to legendary heroes! Where're you from, Alexius?"

"Jacksonville. My dad's Greek, though, hence the appellation. Not legendary yet but working on it!" 

" 'M Connie, like he said."  She gives a small wave and looks for a place to set her tray.  "I'm from Cambridge- Massachusetts, not England."  The faint Boston accent presumably makes that clear, but she's aiming to imply 'from Boston but not with Boston' where necessary without having to say it to everyone she meets.

Alex scoots over a bit to make space.

"The great state of Texas, m'self" in case the drawl hadn't made it obvious, "You're some kind of math genius? Our Naomi's not exactly a slacker, she hasn't been given easy classes for a freshman."

"Charter school, we got to race ahead if we could handle it."  Probably leaving 'and I can handle it' unspoken is a decent balance between confident and bragging?  "Did calc on my own so I could trade homework with people, I'm in Number Theory and Mathematical Models for Artificing now."

"Good for you! Does that mean you're doin' artificing track?"

"Yep- forces affinity, be a waste not to."

"And I've got an alchemically perfect memory, so I'm decent at the non-math stuff. Hit me up if you want to breeze through history with the good spells picked out." He's totally going to try to get more mana from the upperclassmen than he would for the same work from a freshman. They've got way more of it, comparatively. 

"Nice. Was that your parents doin' something permanent before you came in, or have you got more where that came from to sell?"

"...my own invention, actually, but it only works on me. Casualty of my self-centered affinity, I suppose; my going theory is that it has to be tailored to the individual person and I just automatically make it right for me. I should have some more alchemical wonders to sell after extensive testing later in the year, though." 

"Huh, that's a neat talent."

"We all ate already, so we're just waiting on you two before we head up to the library."

"Mm, right."  She should've realized that, really, juniors go through the line a half hour before freshmen, but it's still awkward to be the only couple of people eating.  She shoves the apple in her pocket and tries to get through her hash quickly but neatly.

"Speaking of- do you guys have, like, a spot, or...?" 

Having a bunch of other juniors willing to sit with random freshmen at lunch tips her guess back towards 'weirdly friendly or maybe desperate', but two freshmen are absolutely not going to get away from five juniors if the whole batch of them have malice aforethought, especially in the stacks where her one real offensive spell is useless. 

"I usually find a decent spot in the main room nobody's guarding, these kids just follow me around like lost puppies."

This from Joe, who has not said a word or shown his face otherwise.

Well, that seems safe enough. Alexius digs in, content to listen for now. 

That's probably fine?  Main risk is maybe that it's empty because everyone knows it's an enclave spot, but in that case the juniors who definitely know better would likely get the worst of the yelling-at, and being a little naive in the first week is probably not the kind of thing that gets you a reputation. She finishes the rest of her hash without trying to split the time with talking. 

And as they wrap up eating and bus their trays the older kids stand up and start heading for the stairs up.

Time to follow and see if it's a trap!

It doesn't seem to be a trap! It's also not the greatest library spot ever - There's a table, but it's kind of awkwardly high and there's no chairs around. James and Alex immediately split off to go look for some, Joe plops his bag on the table and starts pacing and murmuring with an open textbook in his hand. Amos steers Naomi over and helps her unpack her bag.

"Hey, Naomi, this is Alexius and Connie, Connie's going to help you with your math worksheets and Alexius is going to help you with your Russian."

"Спасибо." ('Thanks.')

The math worksheet is from the start of a multivariable calculus class; The Russian one for an intermediate speaker. Each one is flawlessly filled in for about the first third and completely blank after that.

That is a strange way to struggle in Russian. Did she end up on the wrong end of a forgetting spell or something? The calculating part of his brain is trying to figure out whether "flawless" is more indicative of honesty or a really long-term trap by someone who couldn't be bothered to do the worksheets badly. It's leaning towards the former, which is a good sign, at least. 

Naomi isn't doing her own haggling, James had said...he pulls James to the side to confirm that yep, this is absolutely something he can do, reasonable chunk of mana per worksheet okay? (It's about as much mana as a mid-term sophomore could gather in the same amount of time as the homework takes; relatively small for a junior but significant for a freshman.)

Connie chews on the end of her pen, reading over the worksheet and following a few of the completed problems through to make sure she's got a handle on it.  Did Naomi get struck by whatever it was that happened to her in the middle of this homework?  She doesn't speak Russian but she risks a glance at Alexius's worksheet- that one too.  So either she does all her work one line at a time, or she's got some kind of critical deficit of willpower or attention span or something.  Doesn't really bode well for her, but it's sweet that she's got friends who can pick up the slack in the meantime.  (Or trade it along to random freshmen, same difference.)

"Yeah, I can do this- you've got the textbook for this class?  Probably gonna want to look stuff up,"  she says finally.  Naomi doesn't look super up for talking right now, but she feels weird talking about her like she's not there- she settles for addressing the question of price to the worksheet, as long as James is within earshot.  "Thing I'm mostly after right now is wards- I can do, y'know, the standard baby one, but it'd be nice to have something sturdier and longer-lasting."

Naomi is just kind of standing there fiddling with some bit of handheld artifice. Amos speaks, though.

"Sure thing, after we're done here how about you show me where your room is and I'll put something up, keep it refreshed as needed so long as you keep helping Naomi with her math."

Hmm, wards are a good idea too. He'll consider trading for those after the risk goes up and he's paid off his mana debt for the Potion Debacle. For now: Russian homework. 

...she was not expecting that to actually work.  They're probably on the level at this point but she is suddenly less okay with them knowing her room number than she was when she was planning out what things juniors might be willing to trade for homework in theory... oh no and the mice.  Fuck fuck triple fuck.  They usually sleep during the day but not always, and what if he wants her to move the bed to go around all the walls?

"So- sorry, I should've thought- if this is, like, a long-term setup, they're going to be way more useful in a few weeks, right?  And the other thing I don't have is wire, are any of you artificing track?  If you do any out-of-class shop runs and I could tag along on one, that'd make a lot more sense to do in the first week when it's less dangerous rather than wards.  I wouldn't be an idiot and grab everything with my hands or anything."  That's enough you're babbling stop trying to fill the space.

"Sure, that works too. We'll probably do a run Wednesday work period after lunch. Or if you just want wire I've got some back in my room, you could swing by our table at dinner and pick it up."

"Sure, if it's a big spool-" she gestures at an amount that is hopefully less than a junior would charge without undercutting her future self too badly, "wire today, shop run for the next batch?  Is it weekly homework or every class?"  

Regardless, she leans on the table and gets a start on the worksheet- it might be a bad idea in theory to start something before you've agreed on a price, but it's a show of good faith and they don't seem at all inclined to play hardball.  Unless she shows up at dinner and there's no wire, but in that case they've shown their cards early enough she's only out one homework and they don't know where she sleeps, so far from the worst outcome, all things considered.  Partial derivatives: basically just like the regular kind, except you have to keep track of which variables are pretending to be constants.

Alexius dutifully fills out the Russian worksheet in moderately neat handwriting. When he's done, he looks up - should he hand it to Naomi, or James? He tries to catch someone's eye. 

"Yep." says Amos to Connie.

Naomi notices and takes it. She looks over it for a second and then sinks to the ground and starts sobbing quietly.

"S-sorry."

Alex stoops down next to her and puts an arm around her shoulder. Nobody seems particularly surprised at the crying except for a couple of freshmen at a nearby table.

If someone starts crying, you pretend not to notice and let them collect themselves, Connie knows that much.  She glances back at the worksheet- oh, fun, she missed a negative sign and has to go back over half a problem scribbling out and swapping plus and minus.  That doesn't take very long though, and once she's gone back and finished the last problem she slides the worksheet to the general Naomiward side of the table and glances over at Alexius and the bookshelves instead of at her.

They will tell you it is weakness to cry, his father had said, but they are wrong. There is no shame for a man to cry at evil, so long as that is not all he does. 

He's still a stranger here, and he hasn't much comfort to offer. Nor does it feel right to simply ignore the problem and make small talk. (Nice weather we're not having, his brain supplies helpfully). 

He looks for James - can he snag the upperclassman for a moment? 

"Need something?"

"I have a knack for finding personal spells," he says quietly. "I don't know what happened to your friend and it's not my business, but if it's the sort of thing that physical or mental healing magic could help, and Naomi is capable of casting in her state, then there's a chance I might find something that wouldn't otherwise turn up. Think it's worth looking?" 

"...I don't really think magic can help much, and even if it could I don't think she'd want that."

"Okay." He won't press the issue. They know their situation better than he ever could. 

They don't really need to stick around here and it's not like they need permission to leave.  Connie packs her backpack back up and hoists it.

...Naomi does not seem to have collected herself.  Connie will stop not-noticing enough to give her a little pat on the shoulder as she leaves, that much is free.