"...Machine gun."

"Big gun, then."

She grumbles something that may or may not be 'a rocket launcher would be bigger.'

"I think we can help with that. It should be appropriately destructive."

"I'm good at weapons," she says, cheerfully. "And El's good at mass destruction. Bet we can make it a machine rocket launcher with a bit of creativity..."

"...Incendiary bullets, maybe. And the help I'm offering might not pay for that."

"You using a weapon like that during graduation might."

...She leans back. And, quietly: "We aren't in an alliance."

"No. But- It's getting close to the time to start thinking seriously about that."

"And I'd probably mess you two up less than I'd mess most people up."

Shinta is an insanely skilled artificer, with the kind of affinity that gets her machine guns as projects, with a not insignificant talent for divination.

She also survived freshman year by stubbornly refusing to believe in mals, with accidental spillover to most visible magic. She still can't do blatant magic, and she makes magic hard.

"Help keep me from blowing up the gates."

She laughs a little, startled. "That'd be a bad thing?"

"It would, at the very least, make it significantly harder to get out via them."

"And it'd make things harder for the younger years."

"Well, they've withstood over a century of desperate teenagers. I'm sure they can withstand you."

"Two words for you, Shinta. Supervolcano spell."

"Uh-huh," she says, in the tone of voice of someone who has more than once angrily informed a mal that she's tired and hallucinating it, and hallucinations can't hurt people, and forced it to believe her. 

"And that's why you'd be a good addition."

"Most people don't try to be less deadly."

"We're not most people."

"I've noticed."

"Yeah. So. We definitely appreciate your artificing. If you wanted to team up officially, we're willing."

"I'll have an answer for you before breakfast tomorrow."

"Fair enough."

"Anyone else you're thinking of adding to an alliance?"