Xunyu and her group meet them there. 

Is everyone prepared?

Luthien is. 

Shinta's got the latest refinement of her guns. 

Xunyu's team is ready to go. 

Let's do this.

Standard formation but with the juniors (and one sophomore) in the middle still the plan?

Unless anyone's had a better idea? No? El will take point.

Xunyu will take her usual position in the back.

And Luthien and Shinta both fall in to the middle.

Into the breach once again.

The course starts out much the same way it has the rest of the week - it's fairly well controlled for these runs at least; there's numerous enemies attacking them, small and large but mostly manageable even by people who aren't El or Lu, and Shinta's machine gun is effective against the crowds - a good demonstration of their systems, but not one where they're being pushed to the brink.

It's a very good practice run. Nice and smooth for younger students, even as a burst of mals towards the middle of the formation forces them to scatter - nothing that the seniors can't handle though - 

It'd be a shame if something were to... Happen.

Like, for instance, the machinery of the course screaming and falling quiet. Like, for instance, several actual mals that had been lying in wait to ambush them turning, shrieking, fleeing at full speed - 

Like the quietly breathing, roiling mass of viscera and mouths and eyes dragging itself laboriously up through tiny gaps in the gym's floor, over an access shaft that it'd forced partially back into existence.

Jialin is on the side nearest it.

She freezes, just like she did all those months ago - 

No. Not again. El will not allow it.

A mawmouth can't be hurt from the outside. El doesn't have time to get in front of Jialin this time. So she needs a different approach. Around her hangs the fabric of a spell that alters the local environment according to arbitrary rules. She rips it off its hinges and twists it into a spear to hurl at the mawmouth, a drill to bore through, a tesseract from the outside world to that pit of hell inside the writhing flesh. And down that tunnel she pours all the death she knows.

It bursts and dissolves!

And also the entire obstacle course collapses around them, leaving them in an ordinary gym - albeit one with ripped up floor tiles from where the mawmouth dragged itself through.

What's important is that her Jialin's okay. She is okay, right?

Shaking, but apparently uninjured.

Hug!

Hugs!!!

Fuck.

What the hell did she have to go and climb into the first one for, then?

...Also exactly how widespread was the destruction from El apparently - wrecking the entire gym to kill the mawmouth? - How did she even do that - ?

She only realizes she's said anything when she says, "What the fuck just happened - ?" out loud. 

"Another miracle, it seems."

" - We should get out of here, in case the wards were damaged."

A sound plan.

Xunyu will usher them out! And once they're out, dismiss most of the team - warn them not to gossip - then, to El and Lu: " - I think we need to talk."