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The only thing that sucks more than the Scholomance is not going to the Scholomance
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He nods. "If it was the junior level, maybe it would be fine, but..."

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"...the gears are heating up, the vibrations only get worse from here, and with the graduation mals banging against the wall..." Scorpius realizes with dismay.

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"The first-tier gears engage this Sunday, that'll be very bad."

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"Okay. So something more extensive." Which means probably taking down some of what's already there, which'll obviously just let the mals right through, and furthermore it'll be expensive...

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"We are going to need to make some announcement, recruit other people, this isn't a small project—"

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"We can't tell the seniors," Liu says suddenly. "We can't let them know at all."

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...ah shit.

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... Because the seniors are about to be served up to the starving graduation horde. It would be so much easier for them if that graduation horde got distracted by all of those other, weaker students. Not all of them would go for solving their problems with what is basically murder, obviously, but the desperate ones? Some people would do anything to live, and it'd be so much easier to trip someone else when you're running from the monster that's trying to eat you. Like Todd. It's not smart long term to rip a hole in the school, but who cares about the long term when you're unlikely to last the next month?

"No. No, we can't. No announcement at all. Damn. Okay. Um." Most of her big spells are about ripping things apart, not putting them back together!!!! "... We don't have time to build something in advance and then move it down there, do we, that'd be too obvious..."

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...man he must be really tired to have missed that. He thunks his forehead against the table and says, "Let's not talk about it," in a low voice. "Just for a few minutes." Until the seniors are all gone. There might have already been eavesdroppers but there's no reason to increase the risk if there weren't.

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Yeah, fair enough. She'll just think in silence, while eating. Can't build something in advance... there might be something in the Sutras that could help, it's geared towards enclave building, but finding the correct spell that'll do repairs could take ages...

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It takes the last senior about ten minutes to file out of the cafeteria, during which time their table is silent as the grave. It would be awkward if this school hadn't burnt that kind of awkward out of their souls two years ago; it's tense instead, the kind of silence of prey trying to go unnoticed by its predator.

Or so Alexei thinks. He might be thinking too much, admittedly, he does that a lot, and with ten minutes of not being able to do anything but think and eat he can't help but wander.

As soon as the seniors are out of reasonable earshot Alexei says, "I... have an idea."

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Yvette looks at him with her full attention. He’s so great!!!

“Oh?” she asks, perking up from her own calculations of whether or not she could manage to find something else in the sutras that might help.

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He worries his lower lip for a couple of seconds then says, "I know of a spell to infuse carbon into melted iron so that we can turn it into steel." By which he means he knows someone who knows it and he can trade for it. "We could try to reinforce the walls, with it."

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"...with the phase change spell? Wouldn't that be a lot of work?"

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He nods. "We do it a little bit at a time. Scorpius will take out any mals that pop up. But..." He looks at Yvette.

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"How much mana would that take?"

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"... A lot. It'd be expensive, but probably not more so than any other thing we could try. I like it."

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He turns to look at Scorpius, whose forehead seems to have found its way to the table at some point in the last ten minutes and who looks to be more asleep than awake. "He can provide."

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"I don't think there'll be a sufficient stream of mals for me to create enough mana for this," he says without looking up.

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"Don't you have New York's mana?"

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Scorpius lifts his naked left wrist up in the air. "I destroyed it when Tebow—" He cuts himself off and looks up. "No. Not talking about enclave drama. I don't have a sharer anymore and we don't have extras that work for me lying around, I can't use a regular one." And let people draw their own conclusions from that. He's trying to be more honest with his friends but admitting that to everyone around is not a good idea. "And unless you want me to walk around glowing like a highly radioactive chipmunk announcing to everyone that something is up I can't bring that much mana. We don't even know how much we'll need in advance."

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...Ibrahim looks intensely uncomfortable with the idea that destroying his mana sharer is enclave drama.

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Yeah, it was really rather wasteful, he should have scrapped it for parts instead, like a reasonable person.

"Mm. We have my mana storage crystals if we need them, and I suppose it'll take time for us to get the specifics of the plan worked out anyway. If nothing else, I'll need to practice before we go attempting to reinforce the walls with it." Then she frowns. "... But you're exhausted and need a damn nap more than you need to go running around killing things for mana. Won't one of them let you borrow a sharer? You put most of the mana in the damn thing."

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"...Chloe or Jermaine probably would," he says, once again trying not to kick himself for not thinking about that.

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"Ahuh. After the nap." This is her judgement face. See? It's very judgemental.

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