"Yeah..." 

Lucia does a quick poke through the cabinets, stabbing a few mals hiding there, and turns up a ball of sturdy twine that they can use to tie things together to make the one trip easier. 

And they and their macabre haul can head up the stairs.

The fact that people definitely see them hauling big ol' bones up the stairs does not stop one of the New York seniors from coming over to their table at dinner and informing Lucia in a simultaneously concerned and outraged tone that El was seen with an incredibly ominous column of darkness, and also a zombie argonet. 

Lucia stares at her until she starts looking uncomfortable. 

"--Those were both me," she says, in the slow tones of someone talking to an idiot or a very small child. "I got some stuff on me when I killed the argonet, so El gave me a concealing cloud of darkness until we could get back up to the junior hall to deal with it," the "stuff" being mana and glowyness, but she doesn't need to know that, "and the argonet wasn't a zombie, I was just dragging it out of the maintenance shaft so we could harvest its body parts. Aadhya is going to make me a sodegarami out of its teeth." 

"...Oh," the senior says awkwardly, attempting to pretend that this isn't incredibly embarrassing for her, "what...happened to the maintenance shaft?" 

"El and Aadhya put the wall right back with the phase-change spell. Anyone who wants can go see the result." 

(The conversation is happening loud enough that a small handful of Sanskrit-having seniors, including some but not all of the ones at the original demo, get up and leave, presumably to go look at the wall.) 

Hopefully they are simply good Samaritans.

"Good...for you?" 

"Yeah, see, I get better allies when I pick them. Shoo." 

The senior takes some more shooing before she leaves, but she does, eventually, shoo. 

"Sorry about that," she says to El. 

"I blame you entirely. I will never forgive you."

"Woe," she snorts, and then turns to Aadhya. "Do you think any of the argonet parts will be useful for the harp?"

"Yeah, there's enough spare bones that I can use them for tuning pegs."

"Excellent. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help, between that and the beads I know you've got a pretty full workload." 

"Remember you've probably been cut off from the New York homework minions."

"--Okay, yeah, that's true, I will have less free time than I'm used to." 

"Liu might not mind picking up some of your homework if you get swamped."

"Worst case scenario I'm sure I'm in a better position to fight my homework than most people are, but, uh, let's not let it come to that. I'll talk to her if it becomes a problem." 

Lucia has a harder time doing her own homework than she would have if she had been doing it all along, but she's reasonably good at bullshitting from extended exposure to New York, so she manages to muddle through. 

The four of them end up spending a lot of time down in shop, Aadhya using tools less convenient to bring to someone's room than a drill, and all the space, to work on the harp and the beads and the sodegarami; the other three of them lend her an extra pair of hands when one is called for, and otherwise do their homework, although Lucia gets up every five minutes or so to double-check the area for mals using her shininess spell. 

Lucia is between checks, and Aadhya is doing fine on her own, when a murmuring of voices becomes audible from the hallway outside. 

Well, if they're understandable without opening the door, El won't propose going for a water run, even though it's hot in here with the forges going and they're all sweating.

They aren't understandable from the bench they're sitting at. Lucia gets up and presses her ear to the door, her brows furrowing in frustrated annoyance. 

"We could use more water, if you don't think they'll notice us eavesdropping."

"I think they probably will. --They've bribed a maintenance kid, they want to open the shiny new wall with a maintenance hatch." 

"- and what, just leave it like that? Somebody'll take the free maintenance hatch if it's not instantly swarmed, those things take months."

"I'm not assuming their plan only has steps I happened to overhear." 

"Point. Does that mean it's not wise to go swipe the hatch when they've gone?"

"Not sure. I'd at least want to poke it with a nice long stick first." Pause. "I think I hear it going up." Pause. "I'm really glad that this is happening after the argonet incident." 

"Well, it could be we just barely missed the top half of an argonet comically poking out of the hatch, unable to get its hips through."

"May've done, but I'm not sure the hatches are that sturdy." 

"They probably aren't." Sigh. "I wonder if seniors in previous years have had this idea. It's not solely a smart move if you're personally killing lots of mals, any thinning the herd by letting them into the rest of the school would still be valuable."

“I think probably it’s only a good idea if you can be confident that most of the senior class is on your side. And if you’re not desperate—or only a normal amount of desperate—it’s only a good idea if you don’t have any younger siblings.” Snort. “Or an enclave. I don’t have many fond feelings for New York, but if the seniors destroy the school, the New York seniors are going to be in so much trouble.”