"- 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.)

"Can we stop by my room? I didn't bring my bag with me."

"I suppose, where are you at?"

"263, it's that way."

To 263, then.

Annisa has her bag but will dump out her French and syntax textbooks so as to have more room for shop supplies.

She heaps most of the things in her pack onto her bed when they get there, and casts a protective ward that should take the place of the pack's wards for the next hour or two. "Sorry," she says to the objects arranged across her bed. "I need to get some things that were less important than bringing you in, I'll put you back in safe as soon as I can."

In a year or two Franklin is going to have a backpack that weighs less than the stuff in it and is twice as big inside as outside and can only be opened by people he authorizes and it's going to be great.

And down the stairs they go! Annisa knows she shouldn't really like school because she can't afford to get distracted and die but she really likes school! It has such neat people! And they hang out with her because she is part of the Group and can make them knives! And now they get to go to the shop and -

"So if I do make a forge in my room would anyone want to time-share on it?"

"Potentially, depends on how many metalworking projects I get."

"I don't know what I'm going to get in shop yet, yeah."

"I'm probably not gonna make that much stuff out of metal if I can help it? I'm much better at textiles, and I'm okay at wood. Armor's metal, though, how about you, Franklin?"

"Kevin is going to make me a forge and I will definitely think about selling time on it." Even though that would involve having people in his bedroom. "Marcy is going to get one too and she'll definitely sell time on it."

"Huh, I would have expected you guys to consolidate on one forge? Do you both plan on doing a lot of late-night forging?"

"More like a lot of forging generally and we don't want to deal with scheduling at curfew or other times." Also Kevin wants to mess with pipes four times instead of one time and nobody's going to try to stop him.

"I've mostly been focusing on textiles too but that's because it's easier to bring supplies, who knows what I'm going to get in shop. Maybe it'll assign me armor too."

"What's your affinity?"

"Wards, mostly anchored ones."

"Would Kevin mind if I helped him do the three of yours in exchange for learning how to do it so I can do mine?"

"Wards is a good one. Kevin probably wouldn't mind and I can pass on that you asked."

Annisa knows enough to be very wary of anything that even sort of looks like owing a favor to enclaver boys but it'd be worth it for a safe forge where she can make knives in all her free time. "Thanks."

Franklin keeps walking, blissfully unaware of any gendered implications of anything.

The workshop is technically all one stunningly expansive room, though there are enough dividers and drying racks and section divisions that in practice it's important to know which door you want to enter through for your class; some helpful people have painted numbers in places. It's brightly lit, and warm, and smells faintly of ash and iron. The enormous furnaces in the center are roaring distantly. 

Oh man if she didn't put a forge in her room she could just come down here to work -

- and then she would die. 

But she's here now! And by senior year maybe she can be here all the time!

"OK, let's stick together and not spread out too much, it's early but this is still the most dangerous place to be. What's our shopping list - stone or concrete for the people who want room forges, bronze for a headstart on the knife assignment, I am looking for rare woods and animal parts. And tools, of course, but I've heard the tool chests are pretty dangerous, I don't know if they're safer at the start of term..."

"Don't think we should chance it unless we see one of the older students go through a tool chest." There are some in here working on upper-level or graduation projects. "Copper and tin also work for getting a jump on the shop assignment, obviously, and if it's making a mold and casting a knife - which is what it used to be - we'll want sand and wood for frames. I will in general be delighted about iron and steel even if I think we're not allowed to use them for baby's first knife because we're using the little furnaces that don't get hot enough. Lead, don't breathe and don't lick it but it's not nearly as dangerous as people think, zinc for alloys..."

Bronze is made of copper and tin! Good to know. Are there...labels anywhere? Or is she going to have to try and guess the difference between tin and iron and steel and lead and zinc and - what other metals are there -  uranium? is that a metal? - anyways she cannot tell them apart by sight.

Annisa can but by default it's not going to occur to her to give anyone lessons on metal identification because she is busy evaluating things on shelves for probability of being mals and, once she decides they're clear, picking them up and playing with them delightedly and then stowing them in her backpack.

"I'm mostly here to help Franklin haul whatever he wants - you mentioned clay, right?"

"Clay works for some kinds of molds," says Annisa, distracted by trying to determine whether she saw eyes blinking out at her from behind that tantalizing pile of copper bars.

"Cloth, yarn, thread, any sort of raw fiber that looks like it could be convinced to become cloth or yarn or thread, and enough wood for a spindle and a hand loom." She's not optimistic about actual cloth, that seems like it's so useful it'd get taken immediately, but maybe other people don't want to deal with raw fiber as much, given how much of a pain it is. "And I guess nails, wood glue, sealant, paint, chalk, leather, beads, those are all good to have some of on hand, if they happen to be around."

"Hey Annisa, is this metal useful?" It's gray. She's pretty sure most metals are gray.

"Naima, I saw paint over there," says Bella, "but it was all orange and pink, I think all the other colors got taken."

"I can use orange and pink, that's great."

Bella grabs her a little can of each. "Painting a sunset?"

Annisa steps reluctantly back from the copper bars (she's still not sure about the eyes, but something's deterred everyone else from taking them, too, and it's probably not nothing) and looks over at what Malak's got. "Tin's useful, aluminum's excellent, you'll have to hand it over if you want me to guess which that is."

"I'd like paint too, thread, needles. I can do a little carving, there probably aren't tools but it'd be incredibly useful. There won't be any goldleaf but if you see some I'll trade for it. Anything that can be made into dyes is useful but that's probably in the alchemists' store room."

An orange and a pink for Daria too.

"Bella can you grab some paint for me too?"

She hands the chunk of metal over to Annisa.

"You know what would be nice to have? A - I'm not sure what it's called. Mechanical arm? Grabby stick? You know what I mean, right?"

Orange and pink! "What are you all going to do with orange and pink paint? What is there to paint?"

Annisa bites the metal Malak gave her. "Tin! Useful if we manage to get the copper, less so otherwise. I've been thinking I want a grabby-stick too - I think I'd be willing to chance the copper, if I had one -"

"My room! I don't know exactly what pattern I will do but it could use some color. Hopefully I can get some other colors later."

"Furniture and walls, for me, though I might wait to start any major projects until I have a couple more colors. If I get any discerning books I want them to have a nice house."

"I have gold leaf I'll trade you," she tells Daria. "Found it on an earlier supply run, under a stack of textbooks."

Under some textbooks? That was incredibly lucky supply run, wow.

"What do you want for it?" she asks Annisa. 

"Call it even on the mana for my wards."

"How much gold leaf is it?" She's got some stored up and needs extra mana urgently far more than she needs extra gold leaf, but you can't just say that.

"Six sheets, eleven by eight."

That'll almost double her stock, and if she stretches it and uses some of her other supplies she could do an anchor for a disorientation ward all around her room. "I can do half the mana, or I've got gems and some other supplies I brought in I can trade."

"If you need mana now much more than you will later, Suze's been willing to lend it to me at interest and I'd be willing to lend it further at, uh, more interest than that."

"Half the mana and - have you got something synthetic and cushion-cut, sized to fit into the handle of a dagger?"

"I expect St. Petersburg will lend to me at only one layer's worth of interest, if I need it that urgently." Ugh, she wanted to look like she didn't care that much about the gold leaf, not like she cared too much about mana.

"I don't know what a cushion cut looks like," she says to Annisa "but all my gems are synthetic except the amber. You can take a look when we're back by our rooms?"

"I think there's cloth under here?" She's by a stack of incredibly large slabs of raw tree wood, too heavy for a single person to lift and likely too large to carry up the stairs safely. "Canvas, anyway. Can anyone help me lift the wood off it?"

"I'll probably do you half the mana and one gem," Annisa says, and goes to help with lifting the wood.

Malak hurries over to help.

"This is bizarrely large wood, I don't know if trees grow that wide."

"Medang trees do. - and probably not just them, just, they're the ones I know of. Is it good wood?"

Franklin is cheerfully but quietly collecting sand and cement he can later mix with bathroom water to make concrete for forges. He's also got a bunch of pieces of iron that are sure to come in handy for terrarium locks and other projects albeit not with the knife. Fortunately his parents were aware of his packrat tendencies and his cargo pants are enchanted for durability and capaciousness.

"If one or more people will be my backup for a run on the tool chests and that run successfully acquires a saw I will cut up that wood into pieces of a better size."

"I have a cable saw, if we think that'll help. I haven't practiced using it, though."

"One of the two-person reciprocating ones? I'm willing to try it but it might take longer than desired."

"One of the upperclassmen just went for that tool chest over there and came out in one piece, I'll check it with you."

"Yeah, one of those. Maybe it can be plan B."

"Okay." He takes the longest piece of scrap iron, a bent and rusty stake, out of his pocket to poke the chest with.

Annisa will stand to his side warily, though obviously both of them are going to run for their lives if anything pops out.

Neither of them should be standing directly in front of the chest, but he can reach out from one side with his poking stick and trip the latch and give the lid a couple provocative raps before actually lifting it.

No monsters observably await them. Instead there is a circular saw, a bunch of drill bits (but no drill), a screwdriver, a ball-end glass cutter, a wooden plank with a metal attachment that's evidently meant to serve as a gauge, level and miter square all at once, and a bizarre s-shaped joint wrench.

Oooh, that glass cutter will be an asset for doing the better terrarium lids with grooves. It gets poked with the poking stick and then, when it fails to protest this, shoved in another pocket before Franklin starts hoisting the circular saw.

"Is anyone else after that screwdriver?"

Annie should probably have right of first refusal on the screwdriver since she helped with the chest but he's not going to appoint himself the screwdriver arbiter and anyway he's busy hauling the saw over to the tree slabs and checking if the batteries have any charge.

Annisa is in fact going for the screwdriver. "You can borrow it sometimes," she offers Bella.

"That'll do."

Oh good she hasn't horribly offended Bella. Probably.

There are six rolls of canvas lying squashed under the middle of the stack of wood, like there used to be more around them but the accessible ones were taken earlier. It's coarse, hardly fantastic for clothing and certainly not suitable for underwear, but it's fabric and it's beautiful and you can hardly ask for better material to make a set of floor cushions or a whole floor mattress out of. 

"Did you want fabric, too, Daria?" she asks, because you are supposed to be friendly with useful people who are talking to you, even though she would MUCH rather take ALL of the canvas for herself. - but also Malak said she needed to be more willing to squeeze out everything she could get? "There's a lot here, I don't mind handing off one roll of it for free." 

There, now she won't have to share fifty-fifty.

"Yeah, I could use a roll." She throws a chunk of nearby wood scrap into the pile, and then goes to poke the nearest roll with Annisa's knife when that doesn't disturb anything.

"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.

Dasha has drilled formations and is finding having to account for all directions and all these people very stressful, but she isn't well-positioned to start telling everyone which side to watch. She will take the left and keep an eye out mostly that way, if only because anything lunging from the right will have to go through the rest of the group.

Naima has five rolls of canvas (glorious, glorious day), three slabs of wood about the right size for her loom plans even though only one of them can actually become a loom, six pieces of frog leather dyed horrifying garish colors, about half a pound of tiny porcelain tiling, small cans of pink and orange paint, a jar of lanolin (whatever that is), some raw wool that only has a little dried paint splashed over it, a bunch of tiny fringes that are useless in their current form but which can at least be used for fiber, and as many soft dry reeds as she can fit in the rest of her pack. Plus she's almost full up on mana, which is actually useful instead of being a waste, because now she'll be able to put the excess into artificing projects.

It would be excessively charitable to suggest that she's carrying all of this safely. She is, however, paying close attention to anything her earrings alert her to which seems even slightly off. 

"Bella, did you want to do History of Artificing homework after we've dropped all this off?"

"Sure, sounds good. As long as it doesn't involve any saws."

("You were wonderful," she tells the cable saw, even though she doesn't actually think the cable saw has a personality right now, because in fact she thinks it was wonderful.)