“I dunno man, it’s all, it’s all fuckin’ confusing, innit. It’s all part of the fuckin’… Whatever, you know?”

"........can you elaborate on that," she finally says, so Hitomi doesn't have to.

“I mean, I didn’t really keep track. But I gotta, like, do what he says or whatever.”

The problem here is... well, there are a lot of problems here, that's part of the problem here.

The first part of the problem here is that it is very quickly becoming clear that any plan which relies on 1) Tommy having, and being able to provide, detailed or accurate information about anything, 2) Clay being willing to provide accurate information about anything, or 3) Tommy being willing or able to conceal from Clay that this conversation happened, is not a plan, it is a pipe dream.

From there it seems like the next move should be to talk to the rest of Manchester and demand to know why they're harboring a maleficer who's threatened one of Kyoto's freshmen, except that the second part of the problem is that from everything that's come up so far it really, really seems like that's just going to get the answer that none of them know what she's talking about and how sure is she that Ayako wasn't just spooked.

From there, the next move would be to go to the rest of the Anglosphere at large and make it publicly known that Manchester is harboring a maleficer who threatens freshmen etc, which just about every enclave is going to want to do something about-- it's really bad if one enclave suddenly gains from a war rather than losing everything-- except that the third part of the problem is that, well, Manchester has a maleficer, which means that they gain rather than losing everything if there is a war.

If it came down to a war between Manchester and Kyoto-- well, Hitomi is pretty sure Kyoto would win. Nobody wants to be in the version of the world where Manchester gets to do whatever they want because they have a maleficer senior. Nobody wants to be in the version of the world where enclaves, in general, get to harbor maleficers who in turn get to threaten everyone else.

Pretty sure is not, in fact, sure enough. Graduation is in seven months and if there's a war none of the Kyoto seniors graduate and probably most of the juniors don't either, they need to be focusing on graduation and not using enormous amounts of mana on fighting Manchester over an indie freshman who's not even allied with them, that's part of keeping her people safe. Graduation is in seven months which is not, if you think about it, that long to wait before Clay graduates and the problem solves itself.

Except it doesn't, actually, because if one enclave gets to go around threatening the others because they have a maleficer and nobody will confront them about it that's not in fact the kind of situation that just goes away, and another part of keeping her people safe is that she needs to not leave the juniors an unsolveable problem because she couldn't be bothered to figure it out herself.

And whatever she decides she has to decide it right now, because Tommy is not going to be able or most likely willing to keep from Clay that this happened and if they try to keep him away from Clay entirely that'll also be parsed as escalation.

Graduation is in seven months and she's so tired.

"Is there anyone who would have been keeping track." 

"Clay? And, uh, Toby."

Right. Okay. Not getting involved is not at this point an option. It would be wonderful if it was, but it isn't. This conversation happened, and it will be known to Manchester that this conversation happened, and so not responding to the information is approval; furthermore Clay threatened Ayako which she can't just do nothing about.

(If Clay hadn't threatened Ayako, Hitomi would have cut off this entire conversation with an announcement that this was ridiculous, obviously Manchester wasn't harboring a maleficer and obviously nobody would make a freshman give them mana, that would be an absurd thing for a person to do. If Clay hadn't threatened Ayako and contacted Hitomi himself she might even have believed it. They would have stayed out of it, and she wouldn't be considering whether or not to escalate to the point of war. But he did, and so she is.)

Okay, come on, stop panicking, and stop catastrophizing, she tells herself in a voice that sounds suspiciously like her own seniors. There's a process here, Michi would have said, and escalating directly to war declarations is not it.

"Right. I'll handle Manchester, Haruto I'm going to need you to find-- what's Toby's surname?" 

"Underwood."

"Got it," says a junior boy who'd claimed one of the chairs, and goes.

Hitomi doesn't need to say that Rin is keeping an eye on the reading room until she gets back. Everyone knows. Where's Manchester.

Rin, meanwhile, waits approximately ten seconds before she very visibly and deliberately stops watching everyone else and goes back to her own homework.

Tommy is just going to... Sink into his seat as much as possible, which is hard given that he's almost six feet tall and already kind of too big for it. "I didn't mean to--start shit."

Meanwhile: Manchester's reading room! Clay's not there; there are some older Manchester boys, though.

She knocks. 

"Hello, I'm Hitomi Inoue. Kyoto. Is this a good time?" 

"Yeah, come on in."

She does. 

"Are you aware that your clavemate has been maleficing from and threatening freshmen." 

"What? No. C'mon, that's ridiculous."

She is so incredibly not in the mood for this.

"Clay Tatum has a maleficer's aura. This weekend, he approached one of my freshmen to tell her that she should stop studying with the independent who's been hanging around with you, or else he was concerned that something violent might happen to her, and after all he was stronger than she was. And today Tommy Ingram showed up to their study session covered in bruises and, when asked about why, told me that Clay has been taking his mana from him for the last several weeks.

If it weren't for what he said to Ayako, and if I hadn't seen him for myself, I would have thought it was ridiculous too, since obviously Manchester wouldn't be harbouring a maleficer. However." 

"That doesn't--come on. I know Clay. I know he's been--maybe more than cheating, recently, but like, there has got to have been some sort of a miscommunication. I know Tommy, I've seen him and Clay. He's not maleficing from him. Clay's not always--look, I'm sorry about your freshman, Clay's stupid, you can let us know how to make it up to you and I'll make sure he's kept away, but he's not hurting Tommy. George wanted Tommy to be punished more and Clay talked him down 'cause he likes the kid, it doesn't make sense."

"I don't know how much of a miscommunication you're imagining can happen in, quote, 'that's just Clay, we've got this little ritual and I was being annoying about it, I'm supposed to give him my mana every day, but I said oh fuck you bastard you are just a big fucking bully so he had to take it, but don't be mad at him for maleficing he's my friend and only does it when I make him,' end quote." 

"To be fair, he is kind of a nuisance."

"Shut up George, this is serious. I don't--I can't believe Clay would do that, that's messed up."

"Fine. How do we know Tommy's not just lying?"

Who let this idiot make decisions about anything.

"He," and she nods to Nick, "just said that Clay has been doing more than cheating, which would be bad enough regardless of what is or isn't happening with Tommy." Does she need to spell out for them what it means when a maleficer is working closely with an enclave.

“I mean. It was just—recently, that he started seeming kind of, y’know, weird, we were trying to figure out what to do about it but we didn’t actually have—he hadn’t threatened anyone before or we would’ve done something, George is just being an idiot. We don’t want war any more than you do, we don’t want him involved with us if he’s going to pull this kind of thing, just, he only got an aura at all recently. This is the first I’m hearing that him maleficing from humans or threatening anyone is even in question.”