The kids are so excited!

Oh good. She can test them for the ten affinities she has herself; her Ice translator and a Shadow are necessary for the two she lacks. The procedure does involve touching.

She hasn't done the reds, right?

"I have a group of elementals who jointly cover all the elements who are willing to touch the reds and stay out of places reds aren't allowed, so I don't have to spend five hours in the shower every time something like this comes up."

"...so you have not touched any reds or things they touched."

"Except elementals with material, refreshed halos."

"Okay." Kids will get affinity-tested.

The average is six zeroes, two just-barely, two decent, one good, and one best. She reassures those with fewer that their best is still going to be as good as anyone else's best and they can do anything if they befriend enough elementals.

They are suitably reassured. Is she checking the ones who got sent home?

It is the next day now, so yep, she will check them like everyone else.

"When I told my parents why I got sent home they bought me ice cream and a new computer game," one tells her proudly.

"No glass," she says. "We already know you have air, let's see how good it is..."

And then the two identical sessions start?

Yep. Morning session the reds are there.

Most everyone leaves. Three greens and three yellows and an orange stay.

Then they will get lots of individual attention when she teaches the class! And it happens that they all share a couple of affinities and that means they can all do the same exercises in those elements instead of having to divide up.

They are eager students!

Good.

Lunch elapses. Juin doesn't come back. Tiya does, clinging to her bodyguard.

All the kids who skipped the morning come back and look at her disgustedly. "The least you could do," someone says, "is pay attention in your fucking special session so you don't have to stink up the room all afternoon, too, you disgusting shitrag."

That kid is shooed. "In case it's not clear, all you have to do is ignore your red classmates to be welcome to stay," she says. "If you'd rather heckle them than learn magic you don't get to do either. Who else wants to leave?"

"We want them to pick one session so other people get the chance to learn."

"Yeah."

"They can have the morning or the afternoon, just not both."

"If Tiya does something disruptive I will send her away too. She hasn't. She's allowed to come to both if she wants, just like you."

Most of them leave.

Then Tiya and everyone else who stayed get plenty of individual attention while she walks through the day's concepts again!

And then she writes to everyone's parents. Ice translates appropriately per parent for her.

Everybody gets:

[Name of child] has the following affinity scores:

(Please note that affinity scores only reflect unassisted abilities and any mage can tap elementals where necessary to perform relevant feats of magic.)

But some of them also get:

I am afraid that there have been some disciplinary issues with [name of child]. While I can't force any two children to get along, outbursts of violent fantasies or name-calling aimed at other students are not conducive to the study of magic. If I have to continue to remove [pronoun] from the class for not meeting a minimum behavior standard with respect to their classmates they will have to learn by following along with video lectures instead, which I expect to be markedly less effective. This sort of behavior problem might also make befriending elementals for long-term arrangements more difficult. I hope you can help me convince [name of child] that learning magic is a better use of time than lashing out at other students.

None of Salali's teachers have ever had disciplinary problems with her. Maybe it's you.

Errie tells me that there are red mages in the class, despite red mages being prohibited in every jurisdiction, and that one of them has a Shadow elemental companion and will be learning shadow-stepping. I think this reflects an appalling lack of judgment on the part of the magic school and I commend Errie for her refusal to participate in such nonsense.

Maybe you shouldn't put them in a classroom with reds.

That sounds like such a hard problem to fix. I'm sure you've given lots of solutions due consideration. I favor putting the garbage out.

The kid who called Tiya a disgusting shitrag is the one whose grandma has custody. She writes back:

He shouldn't have to deal with that. Maybe there could be an evening session with no reds?