"Just being around is fine." 

"You might have to remind him to eat and do his homework and stuff, but he's not very chatty unless you happen to want to talk about music." 

"Music's fine, I don't mind music. Tell me more about the specs for the mana sink?"

"Of course. Cassie, over to you?" 

"It's my design. Made with a one-inch tungsten cube, because for some reason in my freshman shop class the supply cabinets showed up a box of, like, fifty of them. It doesn't have a huge capacity, that's the main downside, but it's small and convenient and it barely leaks..." 

"That does sound useful. And - hmm, but I can't agree yet, I've just talked with you but it's Vanya I'd be hanging out with - do you talk?"

"Me and Vanya? Yeah, I mean, we've got the exact same schedule. Vanya's pretty cool. He's, like, really smart? He's taking calculus already as a sophomore. - He randomly bursts into tears a lot but you shouldn't take it personally, we all know him a lot better and we still can't manage to avoid that." 

"...I'm glad he's very smart. Um, I mean, it sounds like an okay plan, but I don't want to definitely commit to it because we might end up not liking each other. Having at this point literally never talked to each other."

Aaaaaaaaaaaah he obviously needs to talk to this other person but Vanya wishes the enclave would STOP finding him BABYSITTERS. It's really awkward. He can't be mad about it, not really - it's true that he can't really be trusted to be left alone during the day, even when he's not constantly resisting the urge to find something sharp. 

He is failing to actually make himself open his mouth and say words. 

Cassie knows that look; it's the expression Vanya gets when he's too overwhelmed to make decisions, it just means he needs some external nudging. 

"Here, Vanya, swap places with me?" 

....Sure, he can do that. 

How does small talk WORK this is so unfair. "I - um - I'm Vanya." What a stupidly redundant thing to say. "I - what's your affinity? Mine is music." 

"Shields, I think. I wonder if there's any way to combine those usefully but it might be kind of a stretch."

"Ooh. I'm trying to think... Can you sing at all, I bet I could write a co-cast spell that boosted the shield power a lot, but usually when I write multi-person spells everyone needs to be in the song at least a bit." 

"I... can sing at all," he says, slightly wry.

"It might also work if you could play an instrument, even if it wasn't very well? Oh, hmm, I think maybe drums would work well for shielding. You can use rhythms for structure." 

"I didn't bring an instrument..."

"I didn't get to bring almost any instruments and music is my affinity! Weight allowance is brutal for that. I made a guitar in shop. I bet drums would be really easy to make, you just need a hollow cylinder and an animal hide or something to stretch over it?" 

"Yeah, I think not having an instrument is a pretty solvable problem. Maybe we could go down to the shop and work on that at some point, if that seems worth it."

Nod. "What track are you going for?" 

"Alchemy."

"Cool! Same as Killian, then. Oh, and have you met Shannon? She's a freshman, indie from Canada but we traded a slot for her since Sacramento only has Raleigh this year. She's alchemy track." 

"Yeah, I was going to trade for her healing potion. Maybe also her mouthwash. I wanted to pay in mana but I didn't have storage and Raleigh smelled opportunity."

"Oh. Yeah, that makes sense." 

Vanya feels like he did a reasonable amount of conversation but that was so much talking and now the cafeteria feels way too loud and bright. 

Rebecca ventures over. "Hi Vanya! Hi everybody else! Especially Landon! Who's this?"

"This is Val. He has a shields affinity and he's doing alchemy track."