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Graduation prep is as much of a marathon Marcy's senior year as it always has been, but this time the whole school is running that marathon together. Instead of groups of four or six or eight seniors with their separate strategies to get out, it's a single grand plan to get all four years out--and bring a significant fraction of the entire planet's mals in. Marcy has been planning the exit order with Liesel's team, mapping mal populations and calculating how to adjust the pattern of portals if the school floods with monsters either too quickly or not quickly enough. Kevin has been running the conduit for the honeypot spell into nooks and crannies only he knew about, and possibly convincing the school to make those crannies deeper, ekeing out as many meters as possible before the horde wraps all the way around and descends upon them. Franklin and Abigail have been working on the coating for the cable, magically leak-proof and flexible and strong enough to survive trampling by every hoof, claw, and flaming tentacle of six continents. And every other enclave and every indie has been working with them, seizing the opportunity afforded by two once-in-a-generation powers in the same year to make the world genuinely safer. It's the kind of work that gives back almost as much as it takes out of you.
Graduation day arrives and--they do it. It works. It doesn't go exactly according to plan, but the flexibility built into the plan is enough to handle it. El calls the mals in by their hundreds of thousands, and when they fill the school and pour into the hall again Orion and the seniors' shield spells are enough to hold them off. Boston helps hold the line until it's their turn to leave, and then they run to the gates, their duty done, home free and triumphant.
