"What happened last year?"

"There were several maleficers. Some tiny Indian enclave hired a maleficer to hit a rival enclave, they poached for some reason, the targets retaliated, they killed a guy from the first one, his twin went off the deep end and maleficed his way through the entire rival enclave, just entirely wiped out everyone they had in the Scholomance, then someone from a British enclave went maleficer. Somehow this was in response but I didn't follow how; his enclave tried to put him down, but he panicked and jumped off the deep end and killed most of them, then his underclassmen figured out a way to take him out, hit him through the power sharer or something. A huge mess. A bunch of people went a little weird after that - the announcements guy started after that, and I hear he got kicked out of Seattle enclave afterwards too."

"...Wow, okay then. That sure is a thing it would be bad to have happen again."

"Yeah, that's putting it mildly. I heard last weekend there was some talk about war with the Sinosphere because someone thought Shanghai might be sponsoring an indie maleficer, which seemed like an overreaction until I heard about last year."

"Well. Shanghai."

"Yeah, they're... something. My Mandarin still sucks but I knew enough to understand the shouting."

Vague noncommittal nod.

Theun picks at his lunch, partly to keep himself from starting a rant about how they can just afford to pull dead weight and what the hell, but also it's not going to get any tastier if he keeps talking.

Yep, there sure is foodlike substance to consume.

Eventually, Theun finishes a bite and looks up. "So, anything you're good at you want to brag about, or something?"

"My affinity's shields, I think relative to other people I've put more of my prep work into actually fighting mals - for a definition of 'fighting' that includes making an opening to run away, but, you know - and I'm doing pretty well in logic class and I could maybe sell some homework for it, I guess."

"Is that Formal Logic for Spellcraft? I'm in a session of that. Probably not buying, though, I think I'll want to actually understand it for later on."

"Yeah, that's the one. Good to know."

"I'll keep you in mind if I hear anyone's buying from mine. Are you afternoon Tuesday/Thursday? I got bumped out of that session in homeroom."