"You'll rot my teeth, shut your mouth."

She laughs and shoulder-bumps her affectionately. 

They get back to the shop. 

"Hi guys, everything's dead!" Lucia waves. "We're going to let them stew in how mals aren't flooding the school until dinner and then dramatically call them out." 

"Please don't make me stand on a table."

"I was considering glowing and floating, but not putting my feet on a table, let alone anyone else's." 

"Wow. Okay, glow and float as long as you're sure you can manage anyone taking potshots at you when you denounce them."

Snort. "A fight is the single thing I am most qualified to handle." 

"With mals. If someone shoots you in the back what's stopping them from getting you like that?"

"You." 

"Thanks for the heads up."

"You got it!" 

And up the stairs they go.

Ultimately, Lucia opts for neither floating nor glowing on the way up to the cafeteria. Instead, she simply storms through the doors, El by her side, holds up the rolled-up maintenance hatch, and says loudly, "Somebody left this behind on the shop level." 

This does not produce instant silence. Even most of the seniors weren't in on the plan. Lucia takes careful note of where the ripples of silent staring begin.

El watches her back. (Liu and Aadhya get in the food line, sticking close together.)

Lucia watches them out of the corner of her eye to make sure that nobody targets them for being her and El's allies. "The next time somebody wants to try to open up a great mucking hole in the school for mals to come flooding in and make the seniors the least tasty thing on the menu, I suggest checking where I am first. You imbeciles." 

There is muttering and shifting among the seniors. 

"It has come to my attention," Lucia says, folding her arms coolly, "that certain elements of the senior class--no, I'll be honest, uncertain elements, I don't actually know anybody's name or face--have decided that it would be better for the school to be flooded with mals. The logic being that, if the graduation mals have access to everyone, then the seniors go from being the entire menu to the toughest, least interesting bits." She raises a finger. "There's one flaw in that logic: I'm even less tasty than you are, and there would still be more than a week until graduation for me to make sure that nobody profits off that scheme." 

A ripple of alarm passes through the senior class, ranging from mild unease to serious concern. 

"In case that wasn't clear, that was, in fact, a death threat. I don't like killing people. But I have done it, and I will do it again if I don't have a better option. Do. Not. Corner. Me." 

El aims an apparently sufficiently quelling hiss at somebody on Lucia's six who looked like they weren't already cowed.

"I'm going to make one thing clear: I am aware of how bad the situation is in the graduation hall. I am not planning to simply let the senior class all die. But I will be doing that in a way that doesn't sacrifice every junior, sophomore, and freshman in the school, as well as everyone who's going to be a freshman next year, and everyone who would die of the Scholomance not being available anymore. You people could, you know, try something other than murder first! Do you know how hard I have worked to protect you for three years, and you were going to turn around and kill HOW MANY OTHER PEOPLE--" 

She cuts herself off, does a single round of box breath, and sets-herself-right. 

"I'm keeping this," she says, holding up the maintenance hatch. "My team and I are going to use it to do a controlled release of graduation mals, not into the entire school, but into one small corridor that I can turn into a killbox. Anybody who would like to contribute something positive to this project can try to improve the senior class's odds of survival that way. You have used up your warnings for any other method." 

She turns and stalks towards the food line, performatively trusting El to watch her back. 

El follows her, turning on the ball of her foot at unpredictable intervals. She gets as far as raising her hand to point at somebody but no actual attacks in either direction fly.

"You know, before I got to know you, I don't think I would have had any idea how to go off on people that effectively," Lucia muses, once they've collected their food and found a table with a better defensive position with respect to the other students than to mals. 

"I think it goes nicely with the moral authority."

"I completely agree." 

A senior approaches the table. Lucia glances up sharply, but she holds her hands up peacably; it's not the same thing as the mundane version of the gesture, none of them are ever unarmed when they're awake, but it at least claims peaceful intent. 

"Clarita Acevedo-Cruz," Lucia says neutrally, making cool eye contact with the senior valedictorian. 

"Lucia Walsh-Rhys," Clarita responds with, if not Lucia's borderline hostility, a composure to equal hers. "I want to help." 

"Hm." Lucia stirs something on her tray with a fork. "Do you. Well, I didn't happen to notice you in particular when I was looking out for suspicious reactions to the maintenance hatch." 

"I won't pretend I like the idea of buying everyone else's lives with ours," Clarita says, "but I don't like the idea of buying our lives with everyone else's, either." Lucia is pretty sure she'd say that regardless of whether or not it was true, so she doesn't so much as blink. "If I had been involved with whatever happened on the shop level, I assure you, I would not have neglected to find out where you were, first." Alright, that one Lucia would buy. 

"Good for you," Lucia says, taking a bite of something without breaking eye contact. She already checked everything for poison in the line, it's fine. 

Clarita doesn't flinch. "How many mals did you kill?" 

"Hm," Lucia says. "I don't know, exactly. I guess you could probably get some kind of estimate by measuring the amount of ash and horrible goo left behind, and then estimating what fraction of a given mal's biomass we obliterated, but honestly, I don't think you're going to get very precise numbers that way. Trying to figure out how fast the maintenance shaft can bleed off the graduation hall?" 

Clarita nods. 

Lucia drums her fingers on the table. "I know it was enough to fill the volume of the killbox completely at least once. Twice wouldn't surprise me. Admittedly, the killbox wasn't very large, but honestly, we were not, at that point, trying to optimize for number of mals killed, we were just trying to take down the damn maintenance hatch." 

"I can understand that," Clarita says neutrally. 

"Don't give me that look. We will, in fact, try to optimize for bleeding off the graduation hall, once we have time to optimize for that. Time to, you know, set up precautions and backup plans--I don't, actually, know if any seniors are going to want to help--besides you--" she lifts an eyebrow "--but I'm sure I can find juniors who'll be interested in helping." Her lip curls into a parody of a smile. "If nothing else. Some of us have siblings in your year, and won't want to leave you out to hang." 

Clarita doesn't look away. Lucia is a little impressed despite herself. 

"We?" she asks neutrally after a moment. Lucia takes a moment to parse that. 

She snorts. "You people really think I only joined a team--this team--because El and I are supposed to be boinking--" 

"Are you not?" Clarita asks interestedly. 

"Mind your own damn business. Because El and I are supposed to be boinking, and I'm falling aaallll over myself to take on dead weight to do my girlfriend favors. None of them are dead weight, but I admit, it was only El and me in the killbox." 

Clarita shifts her gaze to El. "Really." 

El waves, a little parodical finger-wiggle.

"Hm." She shifts her gaze back to Lucia. "Have you thought much about what kind of precautions you want to take?" 

"I was thinking of maybe setting up a honeypot," Lucia chirps, "so next time, if the mals haven't figured out by now that just 'cause the wall's real sturdy now doesn't mean it won't open up again, it won't take so much waiting until they start spilling out. And I want some people with shields at the end of the hall so El and I don't have to worry quite so hard about something small sneaking past us while we're frying something big." 

"Hm," Clarita says, "those are both good ideas. How much time are you planning to spend doing this?" 

Lucia props her chin on one hand. "Depends on how much time we have to spend doing other things. Why, are you going to offer to do our homework for us?"

"--You've been doing your own homework?"

"I meant it when I said I'm not with New York anymore." 

"I'll find someone to do your homework." 

"All four of us." 

Clarita makes a face like she's biting into a sour lemon. "Fine." 

"And let me know if you find someone with a syringe or something, I'm not afraid to use my own blood for the honeypot but I'd rather not just slice my arm open." 

Clarita purses her lips, nods sharply, turns on her heel and walks away. 

"Will your blood even work? Mals are scared of you."

"Good question! I think so? Like, mals generally won't attack a mal that's bigger and scarier than them, but a smaller mal will absolutely scavenge off a bigger mal's corpse." 

"I guess that might be what a honeytrap smells like."