Julia has rejected her milk because it's 1% and she can tolerate skim or whole but 1% feels like it's trying to deceive her about which of those it is. She is eating sausages and waffles and taking down shop supply requests.

Orion is ravenously eating his own sausages and waffles. He is very hungry this morning and will even take Julia's milk.

"Hi?" says Rebecca to Marian, looking up from her oatmeal. It's buried under brown sugar and she's picked out some of the more oatmeal-compatible things from the fruit salad to add in.

"Hey! Good morning." 

Does she know that kid. Marian is starting to have a pretty hard time keeping of which people she's seen in passing versus which of them actually told her their name at some point. They should have NAMETAGS. 

"I, uh -" And she raises her voice to an Announcement Tone. "I've obtained some trade goods which I think you'll be pretty excited about. I want to talk to alchemists and artificers in particular, for medical supplies I want, but I need all sorts of things including, uh, wards and guards so I can go take a shower and stuff." 

"Ooooh, did you have any luck convincing it that candles and perfumes and snacks are therapeutic?"

Tony looks up from his oatmeal. "Did somebody say artificers?"

"- Uh, I haven't tried for candles or perfume yet because emergencies keep happening. But I got snacks! ....Well. 'Therapeutic food' nutrition paste, but it's calories and it tastes pretty okay? It's, like, peanut butter with extra vitamins added. I have eight crates of it and I want to trade it." 

She turns to the other kid. "And, yeah! ...Uh, mostly upperclassmen, though? I want to set up a proper ICU in here." 

"Medical tech is not my area of expertise but I've, like, done mundane engineering before, is the thing, I bet I can help out. What kinds of stuff do you need?"

"Uh, I maybe want you to coordinate with the Shanghai students, they've already agreed to help out with some stuff. I want monitoring and IV med delivery systems and–" Pause. "- Actually I want refrigeration, if that's at all possible. Can you do that here?" 

"Good question. Probably, the really interesting part is how..."

"Magnus has a keep-cold box in his room but I think he brought the artifice for it in."

Marian recognizes 'nerdsniped' when she sees it. Cute. 

She hastily checks her notes with the list of Stuff In Order Of Priority, and interrupts before he can get too engrossed. "Oh! And, uh, more importantly than that, I want an autoclave. I should be sterilizing and reusing as much stuff as I can, since the void sometimes just randomly can't get me something." 

"—oh, shit, yeah, of course— uh, I've got some ideas, if we're going for this I can work with whatever upperclassmen artificers are on the job. Uh, except I super don't speak Mandarin so if you want me collaborating with Shanghai I will need a translator." He looks around the table trying to figure out who he should be making puppy-dog eyes at. Please let's do the shiny artificing project??? The school nurse is a valuable resource, right?? Right????

"I.....think we're not supposed to look like we endorse any of Shanghai's choices right now? Which probably means no collabs," says Silas. "You can work on artificing projects for the nurse, though, especially if we're getting paid, though, uh, nutrient paste is not something we're short on, exactly. I guess if it's shelf stable it'll be good to have in the emergency supplies."

"It's shelf stable and it sooooort of tastes like dessert? Uh, here, I brought a sample, if you wanna try it." She takes the package out of her pocket and offers it to Silas. 

"I'd rather save it, honestly, but yeah, we'll trade you alch and artificing help and guards for pallets of shelf-stable food."

(Tony is now bouncing.)

"It's also loads more palatable than the cafeteria food, which manages to be worse than hospital food like half the time! I think it's designed to, like, help malnourished kids in Africa who might be sick and not want to eat gain weight."

She turns back to Tony. "- Okay, I can work with you just on stuff I didn't already ask Shanghai to do. Which I think is mostly the autoclave and, uh, I probably want to get an IV drug delivery system from you even if it's a duplication, just because I might want two and then I can find out which one of you does it better... Oh, and I need a ton of smaller more minor equipment, like, reusable drug syringes and stuff? Can artificers replicate random mundane objects that aren't magic, I have a really limited supply of IV cannulas right now and they're not especially reusable..." 

"I... will have to get back to you on specifics once you tell me exactly what you need, in, like, terms of engineering specs, but odds are decent that I can work something out for most stuff you might want. I'm not sure I can do anything that needs rare materials or super super precise manufacture or where there's a mechanism and you can't describe to me how it's supposed to work. And if you describe to me how it's supposed to work and you're wrong then I think probably you can guess how that'll go. Examples, also, examples are good, I can come by the infirmary and look at whatever you can coax out of the void and you can tell me what's the highest priority to duplicate?"

"Sure. I, uh - I'm not an engineer, sorry? I - might be able to get books from the void that have full design specs for medical equipment, though, I've - gotten weirder stuff."

Namely, the rather large stack of Buddhist self-help and meditation guide and therapy books that she's been steadily accumulating for Julia. 

A pale, thin boy steps near the table, looking toward Annaka and Olivia but waiting to be acknowledged.

"...Uh, hi? Sorry, I - are you New York too?"

"No, no, I'm from Pisa. Please, continue, I have a message but it can wait for you to be done."

Olivia stands up and walks over to the Pisa boy, puts a spell up with a mutter. 

"Yes."

....What's even happening here. 

"I don't mean to alarm you. Given the" - gestures - "news, we assume you'll be coordinating a search for the maleficer? We're willing to help. Our seniors have some expertise in the matter."

"How thoughtful of them." Olivia sounds like she's trying not to sound suspicious but not trying so hard as to camouflage that her first instinct was to be suspicious. She sighs. "We're staking out all the freshman shops to see if we can pick anything up off any of the kids, pull them aside for more questions. If they have expertise we'd be delighted to have their help."

"I don't know everything my eldest cousins know. But I'm sure they can recognize an aura from a greater distance than most, and probably with a better sense for whether someone killed one rat last month or four humans this week. Is there a good time for them to speak with your enclave?"

Tight smile. "I'm skipping my classes this week. When is convenient for them."

"At least one can meet you by the shop this morning." Hopefully, he didn't check in advance - but at C block, at least, even if not A. "Should I go tell them now?"

"Thank you."

She's clearly tense - man he is really not very cut out for diplomacy actually - so he just keeps his mouth shut and... nods enough that it is almost like a bow? Is that good? Probably it's fine.

Anyway he scurries off, back to the Pisa table before the seniors leave.

Olivia sits back down and says nothing about any of this.

Oookay, Tony is just going to ignore all that.

"Yeah," he says to Marian, "I'm not expecting you to be an engineer, don't worry. I can come by the infirmary maybe today after lunch if that works for you? And look at all your stuff and get all the specs written down."

"Okay, sure," Marian says distractedly. She's still peering after the mysterious boy. "What - was going on with that?" 

"We're trying to find the maleficer who has murdered three or four freshmen so far," Olivia says.