Misaki has a relevant blemish and a willingness to try high-variance strategies. Concealer sounds so useful. How long is it supposed to last? How is it supposed to be applied?

Ennis mixes a sample of Vat 1 it to match the color around the blemish. "I'll put it on for you this time and you can do it yourself after that," she says. "It should last all day if you put it on first thing in the morning, and maybe overnight too if you don't wind up rubbing it off onto your sheets. Obviously won't survive a shower." She taps it into place on the blemish. Taptaptaptap.

Wendy has had several close calls and is getting increasingly frayed nerves about it. She nearly stabbed a neighbor out of reflex last week. Still, working her butt off is the name of the game. Spending as much time as safely possible in the shop and hasn't really made anything worth calling artifice yet, and is still liberally making use of her early morning slot to sell rare materials, and has used up like... Half? Of her Adderall. (Fucking German, she had to crash learn a bunch of ancient dialects. At least the 'manse hasn't decided she needs French or Italian or Chinese or something yet.)

She still moves like a cornered animal most of the time. Dark circles are under her eyes only mostly concealed. She has nice and fairly well-kept clothes thanks to shop trading, at least, and a rough shock of hair a couple of inches long, the clear sign of having sold it all at the beginning of the year.

"Wendy, hi, don't think we've met. I'm not going to take any more risks than usual but assuming my poison check comes back blank I'm willing to try the thing."

"I'm not going to poison you, can you imagine? If for some reason I wanted to my seniors would've stopped me." She flips her bit of wood that she's using as a random assignment generator and marks Wendy down as Vat 2. "Where do you want this? It'd improve the," she gestures under her own eyes, "visually speaking but I don't know that mals are attracted to tired people in the first place."

"Yeah well uh, trust but verify and all got me this far. It's just like ten pushups. And in German, eff why eye, if you wanna cover your ears. I think if it's concealing my tiredness mals might think I'm less easy a target? You're the alchemist here, not me, though."

"I'm learning German, no worries. It might work on your eyes."

Her spell is a four line poem about telling this from that, spoken quickly and quietly.

"-Okay, got a 'maybe don't eat this but it's fine otherwise' which I mostly expected, great. Eyes it is, I suppose. For science! Even if for a proper classic double blind study you'd need people who don't know which is which giving 'em out."

"Yes, well, the only other person in the school who is good at applying makeup is New York and therefore expensive." Dabdabdabdab, she displays Wendy's face back to her in the compact mirror and writes a note about the first application being on dark circles rather than an injury.

She peers at herself. Yeesh, she does look bad, and the makeup is doing a good job hiding it. "Mmhm, makes sense. I'll keep you updated, and try to be at all thorough about it. Add mal behavior to my usual notes. Want to hear about all the mals I've seen in the last couple days for later comparison?"

"Wouldn't hurt." She starts a new page for baselines.

She hasn't seen anything too out of the ordinary mal-wise, except for the usual (for her) parade of mal-gore Orion Lake pulls every Shop class. She stays outside until he clears the place, anyway. She did have to burn something slimy that got through her room's ward two days ago.

"Good to know. I'm hoping to hear back from everybody in a week."

"Good luck. If this does any good - and I won't let it bias me against you if I didn't get the real thing and it doesn't, or if it doesn't do anything substantial 'cause I'm not hurt right now but it still works - I'll be in the market for it. I've got a good line on shop material."

She'll nod and wave and walk off if Ennis has no particular response.

"Pleasure doing science with you."

"Hey Ennis! I gave myself a paper cut." She waves her finger proudly. "On purpose. For science."

"- that was really uncalled for but I guess you qualify for the experiment! Congratulations!" She flips her disk and assigns Julia vat 2.

"I want to support you and your research. And if anything does go after me Orion'll be so delighted. He's perked up so much now that there's more mals about."

"Well, don't take any silly risks, you might have the placebo."

"Of course not! Annaka makes a constipated face whenever I get ten feet from Orion and I worry she's going to stick like that."

"If Orion manages to get a tiny nip on his pinky finger from charging into any fray he catches wind of he can have a dollop too."

"I'll drag him over for it." Off she goes.

Orion is not too hard to drag, since Julia is not a mal and he is not trying to kill her. He.... bit his tongue earlier? But that doesn't seem like a concealer sort of injury. Scraped knuckle?

That'll do. Dab dab.

Enclavers are taking advantage of this, which means it's not just something someone completely clueless would do. Wendy, too, which means anyone can. Orion's not a girl, so it's fine that it's makeup.

And, hey, Valiant has acne and a hangnail. He stops by to ask Ennis about the experiment.

"You know how mals like the smell of blood? They use it in honeypots. If you're just a little banged up that's not a huge eat-me sign but it's not nothing, so I have this recipe for concealer - my affinity's cosmetics - and I want to see how well it works. It's free to get a little batch mixed up for your skin tone but I won't tell you if you're getting the control or the real thing till you report your results on how much you get jumped this week."