"Yup!"

The Atlanta-shaped projection that Alicia's been speaking to up until this point vanishes in a puff of illusory smoke.

Atlanta--the real Atlanta--walks over to the couch across from the TV and flops down onto it.

"So. What spells did you get?"

"Well. Just one type of magic so far. Not sure if it's even a 'spell' exactly."

The forums said that while all MGs get magic, only about half of them get proper spells.

"Ahem. Let there be light."

Alicia makes an unnecessarily dramatic gesture and puts on a lightshow. 

Illusion Atlanta reappears, now wearing a reproduction of Alicia's current MG getup rather than a school uniform.

"Ooh. That's a neat trick."

The illusion waves her hands, and a near-perfect replica of Alicia's lightshow appears between her outstretched palms.

Alicia pokes a finger at the Atlanta Illusion's chest. Her hand sinks right through. It's more than a little disconcerting.

"It's a start. I've still got a lot of room to work with, making aesthetic upgrades. No telling what sort've magic'll crop up in the next few days."

The illusion goes up in smoke again.

"So. What now? It's um..." Alicia glances at her watch, and realizes she no longer has a watch.

Atlanta's spotlight eyes swivel off to the side for a moment as she glances at a clock in another building.

"Seven thirty three AM. Cafeteria's supposed to be closed but they're still letting in stragglers, if you're hungry."

"Thinking we might want to catch AP Chem."

The chemistry teacher's one of her favorites, it's a very fun subject, and Alicia has to admit she's kind of looking forward to showing off her apotheosis to her classmates.

"Try to catch it?"

An Atlanta Illusion appears in the lounge again.

Then a second one does. A third. A fourth.

"Who's to say I'm not already in class."

To her credit, it only takes Alicia a second or so to pick up on Atlanta's meaning.

"Well. I'll see you there then, I guess?"

Atlanta brings a couple of her finger-tendrils up to her mirrored lips and blows Alicia a kiss.

"Better hurry. He's already started calling roll."

Alright.

Time to see how fast this new body can go.

Alicia ducks back into the hallway, double-times it to the stairwell and descends four steps at a time.

She feels fantastic.

She was not slouch athletically before, but the way she covers ground now is simply superhuman.

The RA on duty downstairs does a double-take as Alicia scrambles by. Alicia laughs, waves, and makes for the door without bothering to explain.

(Doesn't she need her backpack? Pens? Paper?)

Eh. She can probably figure out a way to make her lightshow magic cover for that if she puts her mind to it.

(Or just bum some off a classmate. Right. Yes. That's probably the smarter play.)

No time to dwell on what's smart. She's pushed the doors open already, vaulted down the dormitory's front steps, and is breathing in the crisp morning air with abject delight.

This is living. She spreads her wings. It's all uphill from here.

On her way to class, she can detect a swarm, spawning some hundred yards off to her left. She can tell where all the individual bugs are; the swarm as a whole is drifting north, then apparently impeded by a wall it starts crawling up.

She skids to a stop, her wingtips plunging into the ground to serve as anchors. She turns in the direction her swarmsense indicates.

(The school hasn't had a swarm attack in months. And now suddenly, one pops up within minutes of her hitting the MG threshold? Kind of a big coincidence. Enough to make Alicia wonder if she and Atlanta might've somehow... caused this, with the way they went about things?)

No matter. She can mull that over later, when the monsters are all mopped up.

"Atlanta? On the off chance you've got eyes on me right now, I could certainly use some backup. Just scented a swarm near the gymnasium."

No illusions appear. No voices project from thin air. All signs point to Alicia currently being alone.

"Eh. It's freshly spawned. I can handle it."

Alicia's wings hurtle her body into motion again, now headed for the gymnasium. AP Chem can wait.

The swarm is still in its nascent exploratory phase when she reaches it. They're crawling up toward the window, now insectile, now myriapodal, now abuzz with wings, never the same shape moment to moment.

She could hit them with her eyes closed if she had anything to hit them with but she's still wearing pretty boring clothes.

She has her fists.

In the back of her mind, she understands that there is probably a reason why most newly minted MGs don't go hand-to-hand with monsters. But Alicia is very much the type of person to reflexively dismissive such understandings with 'it may not work for most folks, but it'll probably work for me because I am Just That Good.'

She races up to the edge of the swarm and punches the nearest swarmling. 

It squishes disgustingly on her fist. Her spell deteriorates noticeably. Its neighbor leaps onto her hand and sinks a circular mouth of teeth into the meat of her thumb.

Oh. Does the magic not think that 'covered in gore' is a great look?

Well. Alicia thinks it's a great look.

She skips back to create distance, lifts her thumb over her shoulder so that she can squish the swarmling stuck to it between two of her wing bones, and then jabs with her offhand to smack aside a third swarmling that's leaping for her.

She successfully deals with three swarmlings.

There are seven hundred of them and they're excited now, and moving faster.

She knows from sparring drills that (unless her apotheosis boosted her endurance somehow) she can fight all out for about a minute before she winds herself.

(That means about a dozen kills a second. She has to step up her game. Fists aren't good enough, not nearly.)

What about her wings? They're pretty pointy, and she's got a pretty good hang of how to maneuver them by now...

(Five seconds, then she'll back off and reassess her process. One Mis-sis-sip-pi...)

She stabs and slashes, keeping her arms back to protect her vitals while her new prehensile limbs do the heavy lifting.

She can kill a lot of them, but even newly augmented she only has eight limbs and there are still hundreds of them and they all have sharp parts when they want to. Right now they want to. She's festooned with swarm, bleeding freely from scores of wounds, and too gross-looking to put out one lumen.