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being orion lake is right up lucy's alley
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"Good point. Do any of you have paint? I have some markers but I'd rather thicker lines." 

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"I have this weird puffy paint but honestly I think markers will look better."

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"Fair enough. Wanna go do it now?"

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Lucy pulls out her markers--she makes runs to the supply closets often enough, and there aren't usually really nice markers, but there occasionally are, so in addition to three black ones, she has a purple, a red, a green, and a metallic gold.

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"Ooh," Liu says of the gold. "- oh, you guys write your names first, I need to choose characters for all of you -"

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"--Oh, I have Mandarin, I use--" she leans in and murmurs the characters so as to not risk infecting Aadhya or El with a new language. 

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Liu nods, picks something for Aadhya and El, and then adds her transliteration to the Latin-characters side.

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Lucia picks the red marker to use, herself, and then beams and clasps her hands and bounces when all the names are up. 

 

"I've never been on a team I picked before." 

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"Happy to help."

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She looks up again at the names, all four of them in the different languages, and grins wide enough to hurt. 

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The next day she comes up to breakfast late--not "the line is closed" late, but later than she usually would, since she likes to clear the mals out of the trays before anyone can get hurt. 

"We have a problem," she says once everyone is sat down. She looks around, confirms that only juniors are in earshot, and continues, "a problem I would prefer to wait to discuss in its particulars until the seniors have left." 

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"Way to put me off my waffles." She's eating them anyway, of course.

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She pulls her current crystal out of her shirt. 

She had picked it up last night, almost empty. It's completely full now. "Not as put off as I am, I bet," she says grimly, and starts devouring her breakfast with the kind of determination usually applied to particularly irksome mana-building. 

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Aadhya sneaks nervous glances at seniors but applies herself to her French toast sticks and the lake of syrup she put on them.

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Eventually the senior bell rings, and they all clear out. 

Lucia says, "Remember what Todd Quayle said, about hungry mals coming up from the graduation hall that usually wouldn't? Some of the walls on the bottom level are getting battered in from the other side. Last night I was doing what was supposed to be a quick patrol after curfew, and one weak point caved in. I got a make-and-mend up on it, but it's not going to last forever." 

As an aside, to Aadhya, "On the plus side, I got lots of bone to make beads and other things out of. Plus some other stuff on your wishlist, I'll bring it up to your room later." 

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"- if you want to spot us I can make it known that I'll take bribes for accepting the maintenance assignment," Aadhya says.

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"I'm seriously considering the possibility of just staying down there until the problem is solved and letting my homework join the party if it comes down to it." 

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"You will die of sleep deprivation and then where shall we be?"

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“I mean, I could take naps! I’m pretty sure if I was right there anything busting through would wake me up.”

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"Not if it's gaseous, sneaky, soporific -"

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“…I mean, if they break the walls, that’ll make noise regardless…”

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"Oh, I see, so it's perfectly safe to sleep in a stairwell in the Scholomance as long as the walls maintain their structural integrity, because mals travel exclusively by burrowing through solid metal."

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“…Point.” Mals don’t attack her but they have ever been known to attack people she was guarding, which means it is absolutely possible something would step on her on its way to the freshmen.

”I wonder if we could—replace the walls in chunks? Make new sections of wall, take down the old ones in small chunks, I kill the things that come through until there’s enough of a break to put the new wall up…”

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"Phase change might help."

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