"If we were trying to kill him he'd be dead. We are trying to determine if he needs killing, and we'd be delighted to learn you also want the answer to that question. Sir."

"You have the word of both myself and Lan Xichen that if anyone attached to the Shanghai enclave, whether ally or enclaver, uses malia we will kill them without you having to be concerned with the matter."

"Is that retroactive, the girl went missing Friday."

"His promise to not malefice anymore happened during orientation, so yes, we would take that very seriously."

"Cool! Maybe we can start with you looking into that and then you can drop us a line and say 'hey, thanks for catching that, New York, we almost allied with a maleficer, big ooops, we owe you one'." 

"We are aware he used to be a maleficer. He was unaware of the effects because he grew up with no education of any sort about magic, was frightened to discover the mind-altering effects, and was eager to quit since before we spoke to him. He continued to say these things under my truth potion, which an untrained freshman is absolutely not able to throw off. We believe that this is an exceptional circumstance in which forgiveness is warranted."

"There's forgiveness and there's alliance. I will entertain a case for forgiveness as much as the next guy, but I think I'd go for his having been clean for, I dunno, a month, before New York announced we're allies. Maybe a week, if we were in a really big hurry. - that's sarcasm, I feel like the actual minimum expectation here is several years. In case we're, you know, misunderstanding each other because of the cultural differences."

"I think," he says politely, "perhaps this should wait until Annaka's arrival so she's fully looped in."

It is incredibly fucking hypocritical for Shanghai to be acting like having Annaka looped in has in any sense at any point been anywhere on their list of priorities. But he can seethe in silence about it, sure.

"May I have an escort to the restroom?"

It's the third day, on the highest level of the school. What's he playing at. 

....Frank will rope in ten scattered sophomores and they can all go together, how about that.

Well, he wants New York not to think he's running off somewhere else in order to murder random freshmen. 

Once he's there, he whispers a spell very quietly under his breath and sets his thoughts to loop away from getting offended at anything New York is doing.

New York does not understand themselves to in any sense have custody of this Shanghai junior or responsibility for his murder habits!! To have that understanding they'd first need to look up sworn brothers really fast, at a very minimum! They can escort him back to the library, though. 

Annaka's been found by the time they get back. She's consulting in whispers with some people outside the door of the Montreal/Toronto reading room. She turns around to see Meng Yao and - visibly steels herself, a little, and then walks over. "Thank you for coming. Frank, can you canvass for resources we can spare the infirmary, apparently it's not a sure thing if Sophie's going to live or not." 

"Yeah. Uh, this is Meng Yao, Lan Xichen's ...sworn brother." He's still not sure what that is but apparently it's a big deal and he can avoid setting Annaka up to offend the guy by being unaware of it. 

Annaka is also not sure what that is. She has heard 'allies, but also you're fucking' but that seems probably homophobic? Also if it's a sex thing why would you call it 'brothers'. "I appreciate you coming here, Meng Yao" she lies very transparently, sitting down. 

"I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me, ma'am, I know your schedule must be very busy," Meng Yao says.

Annaka HAAAAAAATES Sinosphere diplomacy. The thing she wants to do is just hand him all of her goddamned transcripts and say "so, do we have any factual disagreements?' and then go from there but if she does that then everyone will die. 

"New York always has time for Shanghai," she says, instead. If she is any good at this STUPID SUBTEXT GAME that means 'POSSIBLY you should have considered talking to us WHEN YOU ADOPTED A MALEFICER ACTUALLY'. Maybe he will instead take it as 'I think you're important enough to get away with this'. See, this is how wars start, miscommunication. 

He's practiced at not poking at the thoughts that his thoughts are looping away from.

"From our perspective, ma'am," he says, "what happened is that Masozi-- who is quite young and, mm, not the most competent socially-- discovered from one of his friends that he'd offended New York on Friday. He came to Lan Xichen terrified and in tears with absolutely no idea of what he did wrong. We didn't investigate further because we wanted to apologize immediately, which turned out to be wise because to our complete shock New York is accusing our ally of murder and considering gearing up for a war. --I hope of course that this is a misunderstanding, some people can be quite careless with language."

"I, too, hope this is a misunderstanding. New York has no intentions of going to war, though I'll confess our uncertainty about what response to expect from Shanghai should we conclude that a maleficer represents a threat to our students and take action about that."

"I hope we can reassure you about that. Shanghai's policy in general is that use of malia by members of the enclave is punished by execution, and should Masozi violate this policy we will treat him as anyone else. If you have proof that he's used malia we would be in your debt for bringing to our attention this unforgivable error of judgment."

"I'm relieved to hear that." Now, maybe, she can set down the transcripts. "These are precise transcripts of conversations with eleven different students about Masozi's conduct leading up to Sophie's disappearance, and his conduct leaving up to the mysterious mal attack in Johannesburg that earned him his slot. I hope you'll forgive us for wanting to have a complete report before we disseminated it; until an hour ago when Sophie was discovered, we had only vague suspicions and didn't expect the situation was time-sensitive, and we thought it more considerate of your time to present a full report than a half-baked one.

The transcripts were collected in anticipation of the need for transparent, public, predictable handling of maleficers, after the fiasco last year. The first page is a summary. Underlined sentences in the summary have corroboration from at least three sources; highlighted ones have corroboration from at least two sources outside New York. These transcripts were private to New York until an hour ago, but in the last hour they have been shared with Kyoto, Seoul, Sao Paolo, Buenos Aires, London, Paris, and some American enclaves, as we've realized the investigation will need to rapidly transition from a private to a fully public one."

"Thank you very much for your carefulness and completeness," he says with very sincere gratitude. "Do you mind if I take a moment to read them thoroughly?"

"Of course. Note a handful of redactions on page 4 for sensitive information about one of our freshmen."

"Of course," he says.

This one is much less insulting. Maybe Julia and Frank were actually the New York equivalent of Wei Wuxian? He empathizes with Annika. He would be so excruciatingly embarrassed if a delicate political situation accidentally ended up handled by Wei Wuxian. 

Top-line summary:

Masozi is a freshman indie from Africa, here on a Johannesburg spot. He obtained his spot when a Johannesburg inductee died shortly before induction, during an incident where Masozi was also present and impressed Johannesburg adults by protecting younger students. The incident involved an attack by a kvenlik. Kvenliks are not endemic to Johannesburg. Masozi has stated that his affinity is mal sensing. He has been observed in using magic to control the behavior of mals, and evaluators consider it likely that his true affinity is for mal control spells. He has stated that he draws malia from animals, that drawing malia from rats is not difficult or painful for him, and that he did not know that drawing malia was dangerous, addictive, or taboo. He has stated that he might consider stopping because the Scholomance is so much safer than the outside world. A freshman who went on a supply run with him on Thursday and was noted by other participants in the supply run to be particularly friendly and trusting towards him vanished after the supply run. She was found insensate in her room on Sunday, having made him a perfectly tailored suit of clothes while dying. She is delirious but stated that Masozi was her friend and that she merely collapsed from a sudden severe flu. It is unclear at this point if she will survive or recover.

The incidents that incited the investigation are two incidents of Masozi behaving in an aggressive and erratic manner towards New York freshmen after having been directed to leave them alone; they do not themselves constitute sufficient reason for action, but prompted further investigation. Masozi has swapped classes in order to take shop with the New York freshmen after having been told 'we don't trust you, go away' and 'stay the fuck away from the New York freshmen'.

Masozi told Johannesburg he did not speak Mandarin but is taking classes in Mandarin at the Scholomance. It has been claimed that Masozi is acting with the backing and support of Shanghai. Shanghai's presumed denial will be communicated as soon as it's available. 

Silas Kowalski (New York, freshman): 

"He followed us out of the cafeteria and to the stairs; it was ambiguous, at first, if he was following us or just trying to stick to a crowd, but as we started heading down the stairs it was less ambiguous. I was trying to get Julia and Zeke's attention, to make sure they knew we were being followed, but Julia noticed herself, and told him, you know, 'we're not going to the library or the dormitories, we're going down to the senior dorms and you don't want to go there without an escort'. - I know Julia's not diplomacy track, so to speak, but she didn't sound hostile or anything, just - she thought he was confused about where we were headed, and she wanted to give him a heads-up. 

He said, well, I'll be a lookout, he said he's good at spotting mals. Julia said that the reason there were ten of us was so there'd be plenty of lookouts, and that we had enough of them, and that we were going to a private dorm room and the whole school wasn't invited, just people she could vouch for. 

He said "I won't go in the room, then". And then he ran right into the pack, past Julia - she kind of backed off - and right up to Orion and said "hey, Orion, want me to be in front? I'll point out mals!" Orion said "uh, do I know you -" I was pretty panicked at this point, he had a maleficer vibe and he'd charged right into the middle of us and - and there's the question of what a maleficer could do with Orion, right - some of the kids had backed off and were pressing themselves against the walls in a way that would itself have been super dangerous, week 7 - Julia said "look, kid, other people are as dangerous as mals, if you can't trust them. We don't trust you. Go away." He ignored her completely, he kept talking to Orion, who - you know Orion, he's faceblind, I think he wasn't totally sure the kid wasn't New York, never mind that none of us are black - anyway, the kid ...maybe did a bit of magic, standing right there in the middle of us? Don't - don't put that down as a sure thing -"

"On Orion? The kid did magic on Orion?"

"I don't know! I pressed the button on my power-sharer, for 'if I stop holding this down then assume there's an emergency at my location', and the kid goes "look! A mal! At the bottom of the stairs!!' and Orion charges off - that's not uncharacteristic, Orion really likes fighting mals, but then we're all just standing there frozen without Orion and Julia'd roped in two of the poor Chicago mundies, not that six of us shouldn't have been sufficient to keep an eye on them but our scout positions had gotten all messed up by everyone who knew things trying to be out of grabbing radius - I'm still holding the button down, and I inched ahead to try to keep Orion in my field of vision without losing sight of the kid either - we all just stood there dead silent, watching him, while Orion impales this little thing and comes back up -"

"Did the boy do more magic?"

"I don't think so."

"Why didn't you summon help -"

"I didn't want to overreact!! All he'd done was - well, everything I just said -"

"Follow you, repeatedly not leave when asked to leave, ignore Julia telling him that his conduct was threatening, run right up to someone and do magic, disrupt your formation in the middle of the hallway -"

"I'm not sure if he did magic. I had my finger on the button. Anyway, Orion came back, and we were all standing there, and one of Julia's girls said 'your affinity is mal-sensing?' and the kid said 'yeah' and then Julia told him - that he could follow along ten feet behind and tell Orion about mals, if he wanted - it was kind of that or, like, get into a potentially deadly fight? I was just glad that he wasn't in a central position but I was worried - that's not enough consent for a maleficer, is it -"

"'you can follow ten feet behind' shouldn't be, no."

"I switched off the emergency summon trigger. I took the back so I could keep an eye on him. We proceeded down the stairs and made it to Frank, who noticed the maleficing aura - none of us had been sure - and told the kid to scram. Frank can probably tell you that part better than I can."

Fuck fuck fuck he should have got Lan Xichen first--

"My apologies," he says, "I should have thought of this earlier but we're all frazzled-- may I fetch Lab Xichen? We thought this would be a simple apology but for an issue this complicated we need all of Shanghai's leadership on board."

"I thought about suggesting that myself but didn't want to presume on his time," Annaka says. Is that indirect enough for 'yes please do fucking do that'.