"That's a neat glove. Oh, I'm Ribo by the way."

"Thanks-"  She snatches her hand away from the not-an-egg just in time, and it scuttles off behind the counter before she can grab something to squash it.  "Uh.  I'm Connie,  nice to meet you.   Made it before I got here, my dad helped some with the design."  

"That's cool. What does it do?"

"Short-range telekinetic reach extender, for when I want to move something but not touch it with my hands."  She extends her hand a bit to show off, as she scoots her tray down the line with a regretful glance at the remaining potentially-eggs.  There's three colors of wire wrapping around the wrist and back of her hand in patterns like a temari ball and magnetic field lines had a baby, extending along the backs of her fingers where the underlying glove stops.

"Neat, I can do something like that too but for mine I'm manipulating the wire to pick things up rather than direct telekinesis." She lifts her arm to show off her multi tool coiled there.

"Oh, that's neat- that's an artifice, right?  Or do you just have a really good spell for it?"  She pokes at the serving spoon, uses the spoon to poke at the beans, and helps herself to a bowlful.

"It's artifice. Mother paid an artificer to help design and build it after we figured out my affinity is wire." Ribo also serves herself some beans.

"Nice- mine's forces or something like, this is built around one of my dad's spells.  Are you going artificing too, then?"

"That's my plan, though currently I'm also trying to learn spell translation."

"Ooh, I've heard that's tough.  Especially if you're not specializing in languages?"  Who cut the last inch off a hot dog bun and left it in this otherwise empty tray?  Connie passes it up and grabs two slices of bread from the next tray down.

"It really is, I'm not having much luck so far."

"Mm."  'That sucks' is probably rude?  Connie scoots past another two empty trays before she says, "Well, it's early days yet."  Where did that come from, she sounds like a hundred-year-old children's book.  "Do you have a class in it?  Or maybe they keep those for the older students?"

"Poetry and Prosody might help but I only decided to work on this after setting my schedule."

"Oh huh- did you come in not knowing what you wanted to do, or something come up?  Bad luck, to settle on what you want that soon after you can't change it."  Connie checks behind herself again, and pokes dubiously at the milk cartons.

"Mother was a healer of sorts and I have a book with all her spells but most of them are too expensive for me to cast right now... maybe we could have saved Sophie if they were in a language someone else could use."

"...oh, shit, I'm sorry."  Sophie, Sophie... oh right.  "That's the girl they were saying the freshman killer got?  Did you know her?"

"Not really, but it's hard to see someone die in front of you when you spent a couple hours trying to save them, I'm also not sure she wasn't just sick... all her symptoms could easily be explained by the flu."

"...oh.  That... would really suck, yeah.  I'm sorry."  Aaaah she already said that once, she does not have a script for this.  Offering Ribo a hug would be weird... she takes two milk cartons and hands her one.  "Want to go find a table, or do you have someplace already?"

"Sure, I don't have any particular plans. And thanks."

"Want to keep talking about it, or want a distraction?"  Mostly seniors, under an air vent, full up, enclave table, smoking for some reason, also full, Not Pisa Vibes Girl, air vent, also full, also full... there, some upperclassmen are getting up and nobody looks to have dibsed their table yet.

"Something else. Are there any classes you're excited about?"

"Mathematical Models for Artificing!"  Connie brightens up appreciably, checks behind her and sets her tray down, then does a quick check for mals under the table.

"We've just been doing 'what is a model' and how to handle modeling something that doesn't like to be measured so far, but I read ahead in the textbook and it looks like there's some really cool stuff coming up."  Right, two sentences and then check whether the other person looks interested. 

"What kind of cool things?" Ribo is definitely interested.

"So it looks like next unit is on, like, tensile and compressive and- what's the third one- ehhh, sideways strength of different materials-"  she's illustrating with gestures as she talks, "-so my affinity's probably going to help with that, and then I don't know if we're getting to it this semester but it turns out sometimes you can model mana as a fluid-" 

"Huh, I wouldn't have expected that, about mana. Also what's your affinity?"

"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."