"- Annisa, hi. Were you planning on making something today or just a supply run?" She eyes the bagel and then pushes one of her orange juice cartoons over to Annisa; she'd grabbed two to swap with someone but none of her tablemates had wanted juice.

"I guess it depends what I find but I've arranged trades with quite a lot of people for practice dueling knives, the kind that won't really hurt you, so if the shop will cough up the means I might start in on those today. Julian wants the fanciest of fancy knives because he's going for valedictorian." Oooh, orange juice. "Malak observes I can set up a forge in my room and that'll save me a lot of time spent on the lowest level of the school if it doesn't kill me in its own right, so I might do that if the materials are available."

"I know a couple people who did that, it shouldn't be dangerous if you're careful. Anyway, I'm in, good to stock up while it's still early in the year."

That was easier than Annisa expected. "Great! They're over this way -" and she points out Naima and Malak, who look like they're maybe asking Bella?

"Hey Bella, we're running down to the shop to see if we can grab any extra supplies, want to come with?"

"Sure - Franklin, hey," she calls to the other kid she was accompanying back to the cafeteria that he might rejoin Boston before heading to the library, "shop run now?"

"I would love to."

"Happy to have you, of course. Franklin, this is Naima, healer from Cairo. Naima, this is Franklin, Boston." Just pretending breakfast yesterday didn't happen!

Naima is still not ENTIRELY clear on how all this interacting with enclavers stuff works, but probably this is allowed because - Bella is an enclaver, and Bella introduced them to Franklin, and probably the rules don't apply to Bella, because Bella is an enclaver, even though she is BASICALLY an independent, in that she doesn't have a power sharer or a power sink and wasn't even mostly raised inside an enclave, which is KIND OF what being an enclaver is.

None of this is how bears behave.

Anyway.

"Hi, Franklin."

"Franklin's from Boston and I have hired him to help me with agglo terraria."

"I have an affinity for containers. Pleased to meet you, Naima."

"That's an interesting one. Do you think it extends to things that contain mana, or is it just things that contain other physical objects?"

(Is this against the rules?? Can she glance at Malak to see whether this is against the rules??)

Malak's face is not the most readable in the world but she isn't shooting Naima any SHUT UP NOW deathglares, so maybe it's fine?

"Just the latter so far but I'm hoping I can stretch it. I'm hoping to stretch it towards armor, primarily." Mana storage would be a good idea but he already has really good mana storage but it would be rude to point that out.

Annisa approaches with Daria. - oh wow, power-sharer. She recognizes the kid from the Boston table.

But it - sort of makes sense, the Group is able to negotiate on an equal footing with small enclavers like Daria and Bella, and then Daria and Bella can say 'hey, Boston, you in', like it's nothing. Which it is. It's a supply run. Don't get excited.

Should be a very safe supply run, though, and a chance to talk about weapons in front of all the enclavers. "Daria, these are Malak and Naima," she says. "Malak, Naima, Daria's Kiev and I think also in your magical conflicts class, unless they're boring students to death in two of those at once. And this is Bella, New Orleans," and SHOOT SHE DOESN'T REMEMBER IF THIS BOSTON KID IS FRANKLIN OR KEVIN EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE ABSOLUTELY INTRODUCED TO HER.

"Nice to meet you, Daria," says Bella, completely unhelpful.

Oh good, he knew he had seen Malak before but he wasn't sure on her name. He's also not sure on this girl's name--Anna? It's not Anna. Hopefully someone else will say her name soon. He has met so many people in the last two days without even trying to meet people.

Franklin, she mouths at Annisa, face tilted so Franklin and Bella can't see.

It looks like Franklin doesn't remember her name either! This doesn't solve her problem as much as she'd like because it's much more defensible for enclavers to forget the names of indies than for indies to forget the names of enclavers in the specific enclave they are trying to suck up to. Also he might just be having the problem Americans reportedly have where they can't tell East Asians apart. Probably the ideal thing is for some third party to say "Annisa, [Franklin/Kevin]" but third parties are FALLING DOWN ON THE JOB there, possibly they too have forgotten Franklin/Kevin's name - oh God thank you Malak. "Hey Franklin!" she says cheerfully. "I'm Annie, we sat with you yesterday at breakfast so subjectively like a million years ago. How was your first day of classes?"

Thank you, Annie, for tolerating his suckage. "It was quite good! I'm enjoying my geometry class more than the rest so far."

Okay there is definitely not a tactful way to say that they should get moving. She's just going to have to stand here helplessly listening to other people make small talk for as much as an ENTIRE MINUTE and it's going to be agonizing.

Wow, Annisa's met a lot of people in three days, other than her and Ghassan Daria's been mostly sticking with the Russian enclavers she'd met outside. "Hi! We should be in the same magical conflicts class unless you two have some very convincing doppelgangers." she says to Naima and Malak.

"Well, if anyone cloned themselves so they could attend twice as many classes it'd be Naima." Do they have to wait for Franklin to start walking? Maybe she can walk just a little and see if everyone else starts walking too.

Bella walks! Walk walk.

Franklin will also start walking once Annie does, because he wants to go to the shop and knows he's supposed to be the person who says "Let's all get moving" but hasn't figured out how to do it right. (Also, Marcy would absolutely clone herself to attend twice as many classes if she could get away with it, and is in fact managing a partial substitute by taking point on doing Kevin's homework.)