Orion Lake bounces down the hall, leading a pack of New Yorkers behind him. "Good morning!" he says to Bobbie. "Is there something behind the door, or are you just...?" He waves vaguely.

"Hey. Waiting for everyone to get here before we head in. Anyone know anyone else in this section or is it just us?"

Orion shrugs and reaches for the doorknob.

"Hey, hold it a second? I hear you guys have some kind of mal-killing superhero?"

.........Orion waves.

Shit, vent kid is the mal-killing superhero? "Christ. OK, wonderboy, you know how to clear a room?"

"Do you mean besides... killing all the mals in it."

"I mean, how you sweep a room systematically to make sure there's nothing hiding and nobody gets jumped."

"I usually just go first."

"Of course you do. Usually you're supposed to go with a team or at least a partner so someone's watching your back. How about this, we open the door together, you sweep right, I sweep left, holler if there's anything real big, and once the open area is clear we'll check the vents and supply cabinets for this lesson. Then your buddies top me off for any mana spent securing the room for them."

Orion looks over his shoulder at Silas to see if this sounds weird to Silas. Silas seems like he might know.

"We're not supposed to share mana because there's a freshman maleficer going around and it could be anyone," says Silas. "If you manage to get to anything faster than Orion does you can have first shot at the supplies fair and clear, though.

Sweeping the room is - I guess it's a good habit to get into? So you can find and fight any mals right away instead of them jumping us in the middle of class," he adds helpfully to Orion.

"Fair enough, but once the seniors have caught him I'm going to want future mana expenditures covered, my uppers aren't going to be happy if I'm burning our mana to protect New York. Ready, wonderboy?"

"Yeah-huh," he says, and he opens the door and goes left.

God-damnit wonderboy. She'll just go right then.

- nothing out in the open in the right half of the room. "Clear!"

"O CALAMITY YOUR FATE IS RUIN," hollers Orion at the top of his lungs, and a digester explodes messily, blowing open the tool chest it was poking out of. He mutters something in French to get it off his clothes and then heaves the chest open to see if there's more, but he is disappointed.

What the fuck?

OK, wonderboy is probably good at killing mals but incredibly erratic and unreliable and she should've taken this into account.

"...OK now let's sweep the vents and cabinets, you - " she gestures at Silas and the rest of New York " - get in here and watch our backs while we do."

Orion is not sure how hollering when he saw it was helpful but at least that spell's in English. He trots over to the cabinets and starts opening them.

The rest of New York watches, unconcerned. Silas keeps an eye on Bobbie in case she needs shielding before Orion can go after something that jumps her.

Orion doesn't find anything in the cabinets. Well, he finds lots of things in the cabinets but not mals. He peers into drains and vents and comes up empty there too. Picks a seat, collects his assignment, bounces over to the cupboards for knife stuff.

Karen nervously peeks into the shop classroom and is surprised by the number of people already inside.

" - did all of you get stuck here, too?" This is not the most sensible question ever but it's at least in the neighborhood of whatever she means to ask.

One of the mundies slips in past Karen when she provides a distraction, trying to look uninteresting, having walked there a half hallway's distance behind the big Chicago troop just hoping they'd have cleared things enough following a minute behind is still safe - because joining them is out of the question, you don't just start walking with a gang or even ask if you can- Checks under her seat and workbench from a few feet away, checks the nearest cabinet with a knife out - picks a seat off to the side but not under a vent, sets down an ugly purple backpack feeling very very jumpy at the thought of this being a phenomenally dangerous time to have class.

“We’re doing a thingy, like, on purpose!” says Zeke to Karen. “- you’re, like, from Chicago, and you helped with Julia’s room and stuff, right, do you wanna sit with us?”

Ribo is still a bit subdued after yesterday and walks in cautiously. She offers a general wave to the room, gets her assignment and starts working.

Breakout thread for people sitting with Ribo

Orion starts carving his wax knife for the casting. He looks up and runs around a divider once when somebody shrieks but it's just a junior spilling something and setting herself back a week, not a mal, so he comes back and picks up the wax again.