The Starks enter the room at the tail end of the New York contingent, because Basil had to physically hang onto Tony's sleeve to stop him from rushing in right after Orion. Now Tony is bouncing excitedly and infodumping about metallurgy to his brother while they get started on their knives. Whether nearby students find this edifying or distracting is up to them.

"Thank you, I'd love to sit with you guys," she tells Zeke, and if there's a seat nearish Julia still then she'll grab that one. Then she - sees if she can figure out making a knife out if bronze? This would honestly be very cool if not for the many different varieties of impending doom around her. It's still pretty cool.

"Hey! You're really lucky we're all in Monday morning shop, you're supposed to avoid first thing in the morning shop classes until the older kids have come in and trimmed the mals down. But we have Orion so it should be all right." Julia has attractive silk-looking gloves that are, judging off how she's handling that crucible, also magically temperature-insulated.

Riley plans to arrive early to study groups, and late to morning classes. It's the best way not to court disaster, while he's still a squishy freshman. He's- not really sure what to make of how relaxed the atmosphere is. He waves at Wendy- it costs nothing to be friendly with fellow indies. That girl is definitely an enclaver, although he's not sure of most of the students that he doesn't recognize. He'll have to remember to suck up to her and her friends later.

For now, Riley will thank his mother and God that his potion gives him something of a buffer against random mal attacks, and look for a spot near a larger cluster of students. Not too close to Enclave Girl, but maybe near the girl with the magical multi-tool.

He goes to sit near Ribo.

"Yeah, I didn't know we could switch out of classes until it was too late. I was planning on not attending the whole semester, but I was also expecting I'd be alone, so maybe it's okay if everyone else is here?"

Karen... does not have gloves and should probably look for some.

Wilbur slips in not-quite-late because he REALLY didn't want to risk getting there before Orion Lake. He starts investigating cabinets as soon as it looks like New York won't be offended by the presumption. Heeeeeere fiber fiber. 

When the room is clear Bobbie starts working on her knife. She does some quick checks in her principles of metallurgy text and starts smelting way more bronze than a knife will need - she can leave it to melt while she works on her mold and then maybe have enough left over to get started on a helmet or something.

Wilbur stuffs some cotton and wool in his bag and starts actually working on Baby's First Knife. He has some vague ideas about how to maybe get thread involved but probably that should wait until he has been confirmed to have any idea what he's doing, he's never done this before and shouldn't start improvising right off the bat. 

"Yeah," Julia says to Karen, nailing the wood frame that holds her mold's two pieces in place with a hammer retrieved from an Orion-checked tool chest. "You'll be safe enough as long as you come to class after Orion and don't go after anything he hasn't checked. And Monday morning's after the supply cabinets refresh - well, it's not like they have a consistent inventory, and they almost always have enough for freshman projects, but they're more likely to have really good stuff. We're supposed to look out for -" She consults her list - "para-aramid fabric, aka Kevlar, mulberry silk, cervalt, vicuña wool, aluminum, platinum, rhenium, palladium, synthetic gemstones, mercury, cocobolo wood, wild olive wood, ivory, and mopane."

"Okay! Not sure I can recognize all of that, but I'll let you know if I see anything promising. Uh, if you see any fabric, just any kind of fabric at all, I'm still working on a first change of clothes."

"Right, of course! There'll totally be some, do you wanna go check those storage lockers over there now?"

Zeke has taken on the role of pack mule in return for a very slightly larger power sharer allowance, and had already been rifling through a separate set of storage lockers; he returns to his seat carrying an absurd number of odds and ends, dumps them in a pile next to his seat, retrieves a Cool Rock from the pile and puts it in his pocket, and starts working on his knife. His knife is going to be BRONZE, which is sort of like being ORANGE, and he approves.

"Yeah, I'd love to!"

Julia sets down her hammer and bounds over to the supply cabinets, talking the whole way. "There's actually been so much drama about this shop section? Like, first we got chewed out by the seniors, who were like, 'just because you have Orion and are safe doesn't mean you shouldn't be traumatized and miserable like everyone else!' and then it turned out Masozi - uh, the kid who tried to follow us down to the senior dorms the first day - had transferred into this shop too and so then everyone was like 'oh no is he stalking Orion?' and then that's how we figured out there's a freshman murderer which I guess means it's good that they were so worried!! But now, like, fuck, there's a freshman murderer! That's not normal, school usually has, like, monsters but it doesn't have crazy serial killer kids. We try to only give slots to kids who will be responsible!!"

"Oh yeah, the kid on the table said - four murders? That's, like, a murder a day. They don't have any idea who's doing it?"

"Well, it's not smelly kid? I think they're planning to scan every freshman shop class and so they should know by the end of the week, but still, scary stuff." She opens the cabinets. They contain: 

nine sheets of drywall 

a thick, smooth wooden board taller than both the girls and about three inches thick

a spool of barbed wire

six large burlap sacks that appear to have formerly contained rice

30 feet of interlinked chain

a pallet of copy paper

40 cardboard boxes, flattened and crisp.

"This place is the worst," she says cheerfully.

"Well... you could make clothes out of burlap, at least outerwear, but maybe we should check a couple more cabinets just to see if there are any other options?"

She'll grab some copy paper, anyway. All of her paper is lined and she's pretty sure she'll find a use for non-lined paper at some point in the next four years. ...maybe she should also grab the burlap, while she's here, Vernon seemed to think that fabric was actually pretty scarce.

"Yeah! Maybe it's like my rug, I had to wade through a lot of crap to find my rug."

Next cabinet is glass flasks of every conceivable shape and size including some that would not hold liquid. 

Third cabinet is thread, wire, and rope. 

"Well... thread is good? I don't actually know how to make cloth from thread, but you need some thread for sewing cloth together, so that's... still a step in the right direction, I guess." She will take some thread.

It is SO INCONVENIENT how you are not allowed to just approach groups containing enclavers because he is qualified to solve her problem. Maybe she will at some point be not talking to Julia and he can approach her. 

"Wire trades well," says Julia, taking it. "I don't see why there can't just be, you know, some stores in here. Normal high schools have stores. They sell school memorabilia and stuff. Sweatshirts. We could go to the sweatshirt store and buy sweatshirts, like normal people who live in the year 2020."

Fourth cabinet has a bunch of skittering little things eating the digester Orion blasted against its door. 

"Ewwwwww defendenosinproelio!" shrieks Julia and then she has a glimmery shield up, though the skittering things seem to find the two of them distinctly uninteresting next to digester-corpse.

She hides behind Julia. She sort of halfway tries to be moderately dignified about it.

..........does the fourth cabinet have anything in it besides the mals?

Ribo had looked over at the mention of wire and stands at the other declarations. She would go to help but she expects Orion will beat her to it and will do a better job.

Orion vaults over a desk to reach the things preying on the digester, sets them all on fire, and thumbs-ups at Julia.

Riley looks up, sits on the urge to go over and punch the mals (an urge which will inevitably get him killed if he indulges it, no matter how much he could definitely take these ones), and registers that none of the kids over there even seem surprised that a kid jumped over a desk to set some mals on fire. The blond guy is one to watch.