Lucia Walsh-Rhys is many things. Impetuous, stupidly heroic, generous to the point where anyone else wouldn't survive it. From New York.
Busting down El's door to get at this soul-eater.
Lucia Walsh-Rhys is many things. Impetuous, stupidly heroic, generous to the point where anyone else wouldn't survive it. From New York.
Busting down El's door to get at this soul-eater.
"- and what, just leave it like that? Somebody'll take the free maintenance hatch if it's not instantly swarmed, those things take months."
"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."
"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.”
"Well, that's only if they get caught. A hatch left behind could be a maintenance kid bolting from a mal, dying somewhere conveniently else, and never getting around to collecting the hatch on account of being dead."
“Well, the problem with that plan is that it creates an obvious incentive to eliminate the accomplice who provided the hatch.”
“—Yeah, but because the incentive is obvious, it makes it harder to recruit a maintenance-track accomplice.”
"I get that we are on this because we are the team who has Lucia who is both very heroic and able to spot people helping with this, but should there be... more... people."
She presses her ear harder against the door. "Well, I think the immediate answer isn't dismantling traps, because the seniors haven't left."
"If we do need to dismantle traps we're going to want Maria Riviera - the tall one - and Sanjay Reddy."
"We should probably also have a plan for if their plan is to just not leave until the mals start coming up."
"Well, yeah! But, like, I'm incredibly reckless and bad at normal-people precautions, so it seems totally likely that El is going to point out some obvious other feature to add to that plan to make it less stupid?"
"I guess if it looks like they're going to do that you should post - Liu, she's least recognizable - in the place they'll have to run past, so she can see who they are. And then kill the mals so they don't eat Liu."
"Would they have to run? They could have yankers. That would be safer, for waiting until the last possible moment to flee the ravening hordes."
"Oh, that would make sense too. In that case I have nothing to add to 'project kill the mals'."
"Fair enough. --It'll probably make a lot of noise when it happens, do you think it would be weird to just go back to doing homework?"