"Yeah, dunno. We could... tunnel through... the floor."

"I don't think I'd be comfortable doing that unless we had a really good way to close the tunnel behind us. I'm confident that you and I can handle the graduation hall, and I'm sure El could if she wanted to help, but I don't want to risk graduation mals getting up to the fourteen-year-olds, even the ones who've taken everything I've offered."

"Ooh I wonder if El has an idea." He remembers her name! She was unusually memorable, that one time.

"Maybe! I haven't asked her lately. People get weird when I start asking questions about getting into the graduation hall."

"It's not like we wanna do anything bad in there."

"Well, no, but they're all incredibly traumatized about the place."

"They've never been in it."

She shakes her head. "They haven't had to. Fear is like that." 

"I guess."

"They're not like you and me. Your prey is distinctly above them on the food chain, or it was; some of them are starting to unlearn that, but the fear of death cuts deep."

"But you've been handing out my affinity, right? So not any more."

Nod. "That's why some of them are starting to unlearn it. But, like, your clavemates didn't even want you coming down to the gym with me at first, remember?"

"Well, they're using the mana."

"They thought you were taking a bigger risk than you were, because it's not--obvious, at first--what all the implications of your affinity are."

"I grew up with them, I sort of thought they noticed."

"I can't really explain them. But most people here did not grow up with all this, so they're still weird about the graduation hall."

Nod nod. ....pasta. He could be eating all this pasta right now. He will go sit down and do that.

And a little while later, Kareen says, "Hey, El, I have a completely insane question to ask you." 

"That'll be a change of pace."

"Orion's getting peckish and I still want to clear the graduation hall well in advance of actual graduation and I figured if I asked you if you had any ideas for how to get down there you'd probably just swear at me and not look at me like I might spontaneously turn inside-out just for kicks and decide it'd be best to pretend really hard they hadn't heard me."

"...maintenance hatch on the wall, maybe?"

"Great! What's a maintenance hatch?"

"Portal thingamajig you can stick on a wall. I don't have one, I think they're only worth it for kids who're doing ten people's maintenance and trading shifts a lot."

"Do enclavers generally not know about them, I asked Orion if he had any ideas and his best one was 'tunnel through the floor' and I said we'd better be able to close the tunnel after us and this did not occur to him."

"Well, they're not doing their own maintenance, now, are they."