"Can I borrow that stick to poke the copper rods?" Annisa asks Franklin. "I think there's something lurking behind them but if we knock a couple onto the floor we could maybe grab those."

"Sure." He's been coveting the copper too but didn't have the guts to try anything. He hands over the stick.

Annisa stands well back with the blade of her Swiss Army knife out and in her hand, and pokes. 

A copper rod falls off the shelf and onto the floor. 

A thing with too many teeth and too many claws unfolds from behind the copper rod and lunges. 

It gets the poking stick, which is what the poking stick was for, and now Annisa knows what you are supposed to do about this situation, you are supposed to run the fuck away. 

Franklin: also running the fuck away! In whatever direction has the most room to run without much attention to which direction that is.

There are a lot of kinds of mals, and they vary, but most of them are stealth predators; they want something they can take by surprise and have half-devoured before anyone else can react. Humans are persistence predators - chasing things until they get tired - but this is an unusual thing about humans. It is reasonably likely that the mal, its lunge having been wasted on the poking-stick, has retreated and isn't even following them. But it'd be stupid to turn and look so the thing to do is to run until you've passed some people who look alert and smart and who aren't running, or until you're on the other side of a door, just to be safe. 

"For fuck's sake," says a senior doing something complicated with glass, as the pack of freshmen streak past him (Bella in her magic shoes taking the lead). He drops his glassblowing stuff and turns around and incants in Sumerian; the mal shrivels up into nothing. "You, freshmen, the hell do you think you're doing, do you think we left that copper there because we thought it was ugly - is that a circular saw, hand it over."

- no, we thought we could outrun it if it was even the running kind, Annisa thinks, but does not say, because it's not the kind of question you're supposed to answer, and because evidently their running past his glassblowing operation messed up his glassblowing, which is the kind of consequence she wasn't particularly concerning herself with, and in hindsight should have been.

He can have the saw and also an "I apologize for causing a disruption." There goes attempt number two at getting reasonable-sized chunks of wood, and his poking stick has vanished entirely, but at least one of the copper bars got flung onto open ground.

The other ones are presumably also safe now that the mal's gone but Annisa doesn't know if they rightfully belong to the senior who killed the mal. She'll (check and make sure there's not a second mal and then) carry them over to the senior and raise her eyebrows as if to ask 'are these yours now?" The one Franklin scooped is their rightful salvage, she thinks.

"Callie, copper," the senior calls across to a friend of his. She goes and takes most of it, but leaves two.

Realistically she's not even going to be able to use large slabs of wood until she's had at least a semester getting familiar with the shop, but she's still disappointed. She really would've liked a chest mals wouldn't be able to notice that would be a safe place to store things - hey wait a second -

"Hey Franklin, my affinity is hiding things and I was thinking of trying to make a chest that mals wouldn't be able to find, so it's safer to store things or retrieve them - would you want to collaborate on something like that when we're ready for some more advanced projects?"

Naima fishes the cable saw out of her backpack. "Who else needs wood? This might take twenty minutes, but I bet it doesn't take an hour."

That looks horribly tedious but 1) mana and 2) it's her fault they're down the circular saw. "I'll help."

"I would enjoy that," Franklin says to Malak. "We could have one each. Also I can take a turn with the saw when you two want to stop." It's also his fault they're down the circular saw, after all.

"I can take a turn too," sighs Bella.

"Sure - I'm not sure what all these woods are but we should cut pieces of the hardwoods, they're better for most projects." There is no hardship, there are only mana-building opportunities.

They will have small amounts of wood and large (for freshmen) amounts of mana.

It's exhausting but in a satisfying way, honestly, and it takes more than twenty minutes but it's still not even mid-afternoon when they have as much as they can carry. 

SAWING IS TERRIBLE.

It's very terrible and that's great.

Franklin has sand and cement and wood and copper and some lighter bits and bobs and is going to try for a spot in the middle of the formation going back upstairs because while he is sufficiently muscular to deal with the consequences of his actions this doesn't leave him very maneuverable or possessed of a free hand.

They are not in much of a formation, almost like they have never drilled walking in formation at all.

Annisa's not even clear on how much formations are worth if you obviously aren't going to take any risks for each other. She thinks of them as an enclaver thing, where it's worth trying to keep another person alive because they'll reciprocate. But yeah, their formation sucks. They will just have to all individually check all flanks for mals.

Bella loads up on stuff for Franklin as part of her payment for the terraria.