"Uh, sure, why not -" Sean looks at Ennis.

"Yes, I got a new recipe in Pigments that I've just got to make."

"Excellent. I can take point and poke about for mals in exchange for first pick of what we find?" Mals aren't thick on the floor this early in the semester, but it seems a reasonable trade. And it makes it clear that he'll do the dangerous work, if he's properly compensated, not just for goodwill with Real Enclavers. 

"If you want it to yourself and not just to turn around and trade to me, by all means."

"I just want to finish what I was assigned Tuesday so I don't have to go to lab for the next couple weeks, I already have the things in my locker."

"Yep, that's fair." True to his word, Alexius leads the way downstairs. He elects not to spend mana on buffs just yet; he still needs to pay back a lot of people for Friday. 

The enclavers follow. "Ennis, you've got Latin already, right? If I finish before you and hang about and did my Latin work it wouldn't bother you to think aloud sometimes?"

"Yes, I have Latin."

"No concerns here, either." Aside from a flat metallic object that scuttles away rather than towards them on the second floor landing, they encounter no mals en route to the labs. 

"Was that a - no, it wasn't. Poppy wanted some similar-looking mal's shell to make into an ioun stone."

He racks his memory for artifice references - "That's a kind of buffing talisman, right?"

"Uh, depends on the kind. She told me it's a word from Dungeons and Dragons for a thing that orbits your head all the time. I'm not sure what else she wanted it to do besides that."

He thinks about that while he scans the ceiling. Suspicious pane is suspicious, is that - no, it's just an ordinary discoloration. Gonna point the knife at it anyway. "Seems pretty distracting, honestly." 

"Her affinity is telekinesis, but, yeah, I'm not totally clear on her plan."

Okay, that sounds cool. Alexius avoids further commentary, focused on scanning the staircase and corridors for dangers. 

There's the lab! Alexius examines the door before opening it. 

"Oh, uh, I'm not positive we all meet in the same lab, do the lockers switch around to whichever one you're in?"

"You can get to any locker from any lab, yes."

Alexius chooses to behave as though this were completely normal behavior for a building. He's memorized the blueprints and the lockers aren't on them, so they could be anywhere, right? "Heading in," he announces, and starts doing a sweep of the room. He catches an agglo studded with gel tubes and tiny clamshells, but nothing attempts to eat his face. 

Ennis shoves the agglo out of the way with his foot and off they go to collect stuff out of their lockers.

Alexius completes his sweep and harvests some useful ingredients. There's a bit of mercury left over, that's nice, he doesn't want to run out of supplies for his memory potion even if he will be making one-dose batches for the foreseeable future. He finds some lye as well, a good base for the shampoo he's making as a trade with a Mandarin-speaking freshman with a Friday lab. 

He pauses to trap the agglo under a wastebin. If it's still there when he finishes, he'll keep it to donate to Bella's long-term project. 

"...why are you trapping the agglo?"

"Oh, an enclaver named Bella is looking for ways to poison or otherwise interfere with the mal food chain. Being harmless and at the bottom of said food chain, agglos are the obvious experimental subjects." 

"Huh. How much is the bounty on an agglo?" Ennis has quite a lot of things in his locker and starts setting them up; there's so much stuff he needs to make.

"Dunno yet!" Alexius was not planning to charge for this, but he at least has the sense to not say so aloud. He starts laying out materials as well. 

Ennis is going to make alertness eyeshadow in that amazing gold that pigments class covered!

Sean is going to mostly keep watch but also occasionally do a step in his soap project. Being very slow at soap projects looks a lot like keeping watch.

Would it be rude to make suggestions on the soap project? Maybe. Alexius leaves it alone for now, it's better to have a lookout who's paying attention. 

He glances over at Ennis while he waits for a mixture to boil. "Oooh, that's a color alright. I see why you wanted to use it." 

"Isn't it lovely? It's body-safe but unfortunately I'm pretty sure it would taste appalling so I can't make it into a lipstick without modifications. Eyeshadow, though!"

He briefly entertains the notion of trying to freewrite a spell for killing sense of taste, then shakes himself out of it. He does not particularly want gold lips anyway. "Made any more progress with the concealer recipe?" 

"Not yet. This weekend once I'm caught up on everything I'm planning to see if the void has any prior art for me on it."

"That's a good idea. I'm going to be relying on the void pretty heavily for a while, myself. I can try a different angle on useful ointments or creams, maybe get something to trade you." 

"Delightful. There's turning out to be a surprising amount of demand and Julia from New York had some excellent ideas about ways to push the affinity, but I've been talking up mal-hiding concealer enough that I really want to get it down."

"Good to know!" Maybe he ought to check with New York, their freshmen might have something to trade for his personal spells. But that seems like it would involve politics, not all the enclaves are Sean-needs-to-meet-people level of friendly. 

Oh, wait. Solution. "How'd you and Julia end up talking?" Wait, shit, was that an insulting question? They're both enclavers. 

"I was tipped off that she'd likely want makeup, which she does, I sold her a batch of nonmagical eyeshadow in exchange for samples of the magical cosmetics she brought in which I might be able to duplicate."

Alexius appreciates a fellow businessperson. (He is still not totally clear on Ennis' gender and it seems supremely awkward to have to ask.) 

"Sounds like a match made in heaven." Also, who the heck wears mundane makeup in death prison? Alexius is generally bewildered by cosmetics, but surely they're a genuinely bad priority in the Scholomance? 

Either way, it's not something one complains about to the cosmetics expert. 

"She pointed out to me that poisonous frogs are brightly colored to advertise their poisonousness, which would be a step past making a wound not smell delicious to our predators, and I don't know that I'll have gotten anywhere on that inside of a year but I plan to try."

Was that a metaphor? It sounds like a metaphor. If so, props to Julia for subtlety. "I should maybe ask the void for an untastiness spell, I bet I could get one. Probably wouldn't be able to cast it yet but I could almost certainly learn it." It might also be interesting to find a spell or potion that makes you actually poisonous to mals, but that seems like the sort of clever idea that you get to use exactly once. 

"Isn't that always the way. If you get a good one then you might be able to trade it up a class even if you can't cast it yourself."

"That's the idea!" 

Oops, there's the boil. And now he's preoccupied for a bit with stirring, pouring, and skillful use of tongs. 

Ennis finishes stirring and incants over his alertness eyeshadow, a process which takes four minutes and is in Latin but they have fortunately already established that everyone here has or is learning Latin.

Thankfully this particular recipe does not call for incantations, though he has a couple more potions to work on definitely do. One is luckily in English, but the other..."I should mention, I've got an Arabic chant coming up later, I can do it quietly but fair warning." 

"Oh boy. Whisper please, I don't want a new alphabet today."

"Can do."

When the time comes, Alexius lowers his voice as much as he safely can, and cups his hands around his mouth in a makeshift directional funnel. As he recites encouraging stanzas to his growth potion, a faint murmur is audible over the bubbling, but no individual words. 

Sean hums and takes a slightly wider perimeter in his pace around them to see if anything's coming their way.

Alexius wraps up without incident. "All done! Everything's English from here on out." 

"Bonum est."

"Okay, almost everything." 

Alexius continues to make small talk in between batches, in the manner of someone utterly new to the concept of makeup but willing to listen earnestly and intently all the same. 

Ennis is clearly very interested in makeup! After the alertness eyeshadow is done, he starts on some anti-thirst chapstick. Well, lip balm; he doesn't currently have the wherewithal to make it in stick form.