"Oh! Like in Space Opera! Probably the trial is not Space Eurovision though."

"No, but I think Eurovision has clearer standards of what counts as doing well or badly."

"Oh? What was Have Spacesuit Will Travel's?"

"A very vague definition of not being warlike, which kind of has to be vague given that the people enforcing it do a genocide immediately beforehand."

"Well, no one thinks it's bad when they're the ones doing it."

"Yeah. I bet if there are really aliens out there they'll be at least this weird and obnoxious but probably in some way we've never imagined."

"I think they won't have concealed ovulation and they'll think it's very fetishy that we can have sex throughout the month."

Brenda turns slightly pink but says, "Yeah. Or they'll reproduce by fission and think it's weird that children exist."

"Or they'll turn into women when they're on top of the social-- a-Ning!"

A-Ning is about two years younger than Brenda and Wei Wuxian. He's very pretty and also very terrified. He gives Brenda a little wave. 

TACKLEHUG!!!!

Brenda gives him a little wave back, says "Hi--" and then cuts herself off because she just realized she doesn't know his actual name, just an affectionate nickname it would be rude for her to call him. 

Bounce bounce bounce while continuing to tacklehug a-Ning.

"Guess what we're doing, a-Ning! We're going to make a RAILGUN! This is Ada, she was assigned as my partner, she's really cool."

"It's nice to meet you, Ada."

"It's nice to meet you too. Thanks for helping us out."

Wei Wuxian disentangles from the tacklehug holding onto a-Ning's wallet. "Let's go pay."

Onward to the checkout! Brenda splits their hoard into two piles of equal price so they can each pay for one.

Wei Wuxian resplits the hoard so that they're each paying for half of the railgun stuff and he's paying for all his impulsive ballista-related decisions, which would be much sweeter if he wasn't paying for it with a-Ning's money.

Brenda smiles appreciatively and hopes [whatever a-Ning's proper name is] gets some joy out of the ballista or the general state of friendship-communism or both.

"Ooh! Can a-Ning help us make the railgun?"

"Uhhhh it's probably against the rules, but it would probably still be within the spirit of the rules if he just helps with the construction and not the design or the report?" Personally she would find it awfully constraining to work on building something where she wasn't allowed to have ideas on the design but maybe she's just a control freak like that and he'll be fine with it.

"Who needs rules anyway. We have a railgun, that's better than rules. Come on, a-Ning."

"I want to get a good grade though . . . " she informs her shoes as they finish bagging up their haul.

"Why, though?"

Why is any good thing good? "College admissions?"