"Thank you." Shoes go back on RIGHT away.

Kareen is absolutely going to experiment later with more duplicates of them, because her ability to leave well enough alone is severely stunted, but if she hands out copies to anyone else once she knows what they do she’ll definitely make sure they’re unrecognizable, and she’s certainly not going to ask Bella to engage with Kareen’s inability to not snoop.

Meanwhile she’s going to head back to the library until it gets nearish curfew, while her pocket-dimension-side self starts studying mals.

People in the library are all happy to see her and sometimes make requests more or less tentatively on their own or others' behalves. One asks for a few crystalsful of mana and then flies away through the stacks, laughing. One wants some novels that aren't "literature class novels". One wants to know if she's ever had, like, a goldfish, in a bowl, and if so can she make one.

She has never had a goldfish. She has ever handled a pet-type fish, but she…cannot seem to duplicate it, sorry.

Aww, rats. He hastens to clarify that he is NOT a maleficer he just likes fish.

“No, I totally get that! I understand small rodents is the standard for maleficing anyway, I would have asked more questions if you had asked for a hamster.”

"- yeah totally. How about like a lava lamp, that's not a fish but it's sort of like watching fish."

“Lava lamps I can do you!” There are no outlets but she can do a battery operated one and spare batteries.

He smiles and runs off with his lava lamp.

Good. These poor kids need more nice things.

And eventually it is getting to be about curfew. Kids flow out of the library. This one is arguing with his clavemates.

"I've done it before!"

"And I would have said you were a lunatic then too if you'd told anyone! We rely on you, Orion -"

"Yeah, to do this."

"No! To show up when we hit our distress buttons, to take point in the hallway, to clear out the shop, not to stay up a few hours past curfew in the gym -"

"Well this time I won't be by myself, doesn't that help -"

"Not really! It's insane!"

Tooooo what extent should she intervene. She is the adult, even if she’s only a few years older than some of these kids.

“For whatever it’s worth, I have no intention of allowing him to come to harm.”

"You don't even have to worry about me, it's like, my affinity," says Orion.

"Yes and Georgina's affinity was divination and she didn't see the thing that got her coming! You can't count on that this hard."

"...well how are you gonna stop me."

That stumps his clavemate.

Kareen gets out the Dead Kids Notebook. “Tell me about Georgina?”

"- yes but I do need to be getting back to my room because I'm not like him -"

"We can walk you there on the way to the gym," shrugs Orion.

"Okay, fine, Georgina sold us poetry homework and -" He's not going to come out and say it but she was maybe his girlfriend.

Kareen writes down everything he has to say about Georgina in the time it takes them to walk him back to his room and makes a note to talk to him again later to get more.

It has not escaped her that The Rescuer makes for a truly excellent excuse to indulge her nosiness. But that’s fine because being nosy genuinely helps in this case. Kareen loves you, magic notebook!!!

Everyone is in their rooms with time to spare, except Kareen and Orion.

"Gym's downstairs!" he says, and he leads on with a quite incautious bounce to his step that none of the other Scholomance kids have.

It’s a good thing she has a guide because she knows significantly less precisely than he does where the gym is! 

Here it is!

They get there before the curfew bell. Everybody who's still alive in November leaves plenty of slack.

The bell rings, and Orion verses up a little light that hovers above his head and illuminate the space around them, the fake lawn green for a few feet and greyscale for a few beyond that before it's just blackness -

And then the mals start coming

Kareen uses Dragon Fairy Elf Witch on every single one before she kills it. It doesn’t take long before the darkness ceases to matter at all.

Between Lightfoot and the Battle trio, she pivots effortlessly out of the way of every single strike and lunge, slicing through an important blood vessel here, dodging just so that one mal’s attack hits another one there, rapier in one hand and harpē in the other. Occasionally one of them becomes embedded in a mal and it’s more efficient to let go and let her inner-pocket-dimension self pass her a new one.

It’s glorious. Battle Demon leaves her with a near-perfect comprehension of every point on the battlefield. She feels omniscient. She feels made of eyes. Her entire being is composed of taking information in and acting on it. She is not the impassive observer but she is a perfect watcher and she has never felt more alive.

Orion is likewise in his element. He slings spells, in English and French and Greek; he only has the one sword, so he hangs on to it. He's grinning like he's gotten permission to eat infinite ice cream and has room to hold all of it. Mals are as often chased towards him by other larger mals after their hides as anything deliberately attacks him.

Kareen does not yet know much in the way of combat spells and isn’t going to try to copy one of his. She doesn’t have any powers for not getting hurt by her own fuckups. She has (1) force spell that she picked up from Bella’s Chinese Mal Studies textbook, and that’s basically it. So she also occasionally herds a mal towards Orion, if her swords aren’t doing much damage.

YAY, PRESENTS THAT BLEED

Well, the immaterial ones don’t bleed per se, but he seems to be having fun with them anyway.

She’s not sure if he’d be Hunt or Slaughter, back home, but that’s okay because he’s never been to her universe so those Entities can’t touch him.

Hunt! Definitely Hunt!

The ones that don't bleed will die to "O CALAMITY, YOUR FATE IS RUIN" which is nearly as good.