"Forces!  As near as I can figure, anyway, we haven't been to a diviner or anything.  'S why I went artificing track."

"That's cool, what have you tried so far?"

"So my best spell is one of my dad's, this invisible net?"  She mimes scooping something up with both hands.  "It's finicky, because you can vary the shape and the power and- and stuff,"  she falters and glances around to check behind herself again, "Anyway, I got the hang of it before my first ward, and I started on the ward first."

"That's a neat one. What do you use it for?"

A blood-clinger turned into a thin red film on the asphalt

but it's not like she can ever tell anyone about that who doesn't already know, and nobody who knows would want to talk to her-

"Not a whole ton in here, actually?  The glove is less powerful but it's more mana-efficient for the stuff it can handle, and I've been, y'know, saving up in case.  I mean, uh, I did need to use it one time, so."

She should probably just tell Ribo, everyone is safer the more people know what to look for, it's not really the sort of information you need to charge for, but three middles of a sentence are tangling each other up and she can't find a beginning to get started with.

"Yeah, always better to have a contingency."

"Yeah, I.  Um."

Breathe.  Focus.  This isn't volunteering a weak spot, not really, it's a, a public service announcement.

"If you see- Asian boy, really skinny, about yea tall with hair like so-"  she gestures, and then gets briefly stuck on the verb phrase, "...keep an eye out."

"Hmm, I'll try to keep that in mind. Have you told anyone else?"

"One of the seniors from Mathematical Models, and the girls I do bathroom runs with."  She mashes beans against the edge of her bowl, one at a time.

"Alright, hopefully the investigation will figure things out soon and we'll know for sure. Though, someone can be unsafe but not a murderer yet."

"Yeah- like, he didn't even really do anything to me?"  'He stole my cookie' sounds like she's a kindergartener wailing on the playground, expecting the world to be fair.  "Just.  Vibes."

"I'll be careful, thanks."

"Do you have any interest in Applied Electromechanics or Mechanical Design? I'm enjoying both of those classes a lot."

Connie blinks at the subject change, but rallies relatively quickly.  "Those both sound like they'd be- pretty useful for artificing, yeah.  Dunno if my affinity would stretch as far as magnetism but it'd be pretty cool if it did."