"Thanks, sweetheart."

Smile. "I want to serve you. Not - stay behind."

"For what we're going down to the hall to do... The best way you can serve me is to stay. Keep a space clear for me to come back to."

"You can count on me, ma'am."

"I am, Jialin." Hug.

Hug!

Everything settled, then?

As it can be, with graduation still before them. 

They'll make it.

They'll get their chance to test that all too soon. 

El is ready. Hopefully the rest of them are too.

Seems so, at least, though pretty close to the finish line - they could in theory go down the afternoon before graduation, though there's disagreement on if they should instead go the morning of and do some extra drills.

That won't leave much room for error. If anything takes longer than it should.

(...Though going the day before leaves time for the seniors to pull any backup plans they might have. Probably not ones that will look good for the rest of the school.)

(Mrr. True.)

(Depends on if they're siding more with the seniors or with their own year, really...)

(That's not a choice, really. Their friends aren't seniors.)

(Yeah.)

(So. That morning?)

Morning. Get a good night's rest first.

There's push back, but... They can get everyone who really matters to this on their side. 

Good.

Good.

The ten biggest enclaves directly contribute power sharers to the effort, and everyone else contributes mana to them - a week solid of building mana like they'll all die if they don't. (Which, well...)

A lot of seniors chose to stake their survival on this. All the mana they've built, any weapons they've constructed. Anything useful. (More than half of them would be dead anyways. It isn't too hard to figure out which half you'll probably be in.)

The artificers spend even more of their time on the artifacts they'll be using - Shinta stays away from that, but she gets a pair of guns out in time to be useful for training. They're plain things. Simple. Hardly seem magic at all. 

When one of the five daily mal attacks comes for the artificers' heads, El's gun shoots even psychic mals like they're made of fragile flesh and blood. Like they're nothing more than the rationalizations mundanes make them into. It's not trivial to use, but - it's doable, and it barely takes any mana, and the time required is just enough to aim and shoot. (Luthien takes to it pretty well; the ranged option is something new to her.)

Every member of the team actually going gets consumed in endless drills, many of them in the obstacle course, and the gym obligingly makes the last week's course something out of a horrid nightmare. It even lets them take over the place without penalty, and the layout resembles what they'll be going through enough to be useful. 

The morning of, they'll be getting down through the very maintenance shaft the seniors earlier tried to throw El and Luthien down. 

If it's the best way in, it's the best way in. Doesn't mean El has to like it. Or that she's going first.

Jiana takes the lead, once they all have yanker anchors attached to them, and once the lead maintenance kid opens the tunnel up. (She'd prearranged their marching order for this nervewracking part, insisted on drilling both this and the walk across the actual hall.)

Her preferred plan, after much debate, actually puts El and Luthien towards the back. Her logic had been that they're best at covering everyone else.

She's not wrong about that. And it's much easier to cover the column when you can see the whole thing.