"My dad thinks that all the little cheating adds up, that the population of wizards going up--wizards who aren't strict mana--is why the mal problem has gotten so much worse over the last few centuries."

I don't cheat either, but nobody with a power-sharer on their wrist ought to get credit for that."

"I've seen enclave kids cheat, if the others were breathing down their necks about ratio."

"Yeah, but that's worse than normal, not just the same." Sigh. "I shouldn't get up on my high horse about it. You could judge them all you liked, but I'm safer than the rest of New York combined, it's not my place to get snippy about what other people do to survive." 

"Wonder why the rainstorm, if you're strict."

"Not speaking to the side of the family that could tell me."

"Okay, I don't want to assume, but have you been implying that you are estrangedly related to the Oracle of Mumbai."

"My multiply great grandmother."

"I like her less than I did yesterday. --Not, 'because I like you and she doesn't,' because I think 'by the way, you're going to be a dark sorceress, get out of here,' is a really shitty prophecy."

"Well, she didn't have me chased down and infanticided."

"I mean, yeah, but that's, like, barely an accomplishment by normal people standards, let alone, like, Oracle of Mumbai standards."

"I hear they're lovely people. Strict mana, vegetarians, wouldn't join an enclave because the enclavers weren't strict too. I might or might not have rated as much consideration as the average farm animal if Mum hadn't hauled me out."

Lucia puts her fork down very deliberately so as not to stab it into something that shouldn't be stabbed. 

"Sounds like you're not missing much. Aside from, you know, resources that might make the difference between life and death." 

"Isn't that always the sticking point."

"Isn't it fucking just." 

She sighs. 

"Want me to bus your trays? It definitely won't kill me."

"Being definite about that sort of thing is risky," El remarks, but she pushes the tray over.

"I have to go hunting in order to kill anything; last night aside, I don't get attacked." She collects the trays.

El smiles at her slightly and sets about finding a gaggle of kids who are heading roughly her way for the next period.

Lucia skips most of her classes to hunt. She's not so philosophically opposed to the enclave-related hierarchies in the school that she doesn't recognize that most classwork is a waste of her time. 

She goes to language lab, because you can't pay someone to understand a language for you, and she goes to shop and alch lab, because they're in the deepest parts of the school and she does a lot of hunting there anyway. 

She kills things, and the things she kills won't kill anyone else, but they may have killed already. The thing in the eggs got that one senior. They call her a saint but she can't even save everyone. 

Wandering around the world randomly murdering things isn't going to save everyone either. 

Her fingers itch to pry a panel off the wall, to crawl down to the graduation hall and murder until she's the last thing left alive down there. She bets she could do it. But she isn't certain of it the way she's certain that bussing trays isn't going to kill her, and Mom would never forgive her if she died that stupidly. 

She'll wait until her own graduation to clear the hall. 

It won't last forever, of course. The mortal flame used to work in the graduation hall, and that didn't last very long at all. 

She needs a plan. 

Her dad has a plan, probably, but she doesn't trust that it's a good plan. It involved making her, sure, but even if he made her a half-mal hyperpredator, she doubts he had anything to do with her coming out herself. Coming out somebody who would quit killing agglos when she realized they were harmless and so many other things weren't. Coming out somebody who sneaks out of bed at night to brew healing salve to maybe save a few more lives, and the stimulants that let her get away with it. 

If her dad had a good plan, he would have told her what it was; and if her dad had judgment she could trust, he would have been right there with Mom bringing her agglos and paralyzed amphisbaena when she was a small child who didn't understand preferences more complicated than killing things, instead of hoping she would spontaneously take an interest in the growing dusty piles of dolls and legos shoved into her closet. 

The Oracle of Mumbai was someone who had crossed her mind before, but El's dark sorceress thing dents her hope that the Oracle has a great plan just waiting for someone with power and reasonable priorities to ask for it. 

Which doesn't mean Lucia shouldn't go talk to her, at some point. If nothing else, it might be cathartic to yell at her. She could yell, at an adult who's already shown that she cares about other things more than enclaves--hm. Maybe El gets it from her. Well, that's one good thing, anyway... 

She needs a plan. She can't just stay in a holding pattern forever. She refuses to accept a place as nothing more than a leaky dike to the bloodshed of wise-gifted children. 

(She thinks about Aadhya, and El, and incentives, turning things over in the back of her mind as she hunts.)

"You're an alchemist, right?" El asks Lucia, next time they run into each other in the lav.

"There isn't a murder track so I had to settle. What's up?"

"Shop project. It's interdisciplinary. I figure Aadhya's a shoo-in if you'll brew."

"I'll brew. What is it?" 

"Magic mirror."

"Oh, fun. --I originally meant that sincerely but, on reflection, I suspect it ought to be sarcastic instead."