She shows up at the squad truck with her stardarters loaded and her outfit in perfect condition.

"Hey there Margaret!" says the squad leader, who has a very put-together, pseudo-military look in burgundy going on and devil-themed mods (wings tail horns). "I'm Vanessa and these are Caroline," (lowkey griffin aesthetic, eagle wings and lion tail), "and Susan," fish scales in some but not all places, fin-like frills, very sheer diaphanous fabric.

"Pleased to meet you all!"

"Likewise!" says Susan. "What do you already know about this program?"

"So I know I ride along in the truck with you and wait for you to get called in somewhere, but I'm not sure if I'm supposed to join in if there's a swarm or just watch."

"You hang back a bit. You can take potshots at strays, or if it's outdoors and we can surround you can do that from a ways farther back than us. Do you have combat magic or just stardarters?"

"I don't have offensive powers, but I have a thing where I can see what the bugs are going to do before they do it, plus a danger sense that picks up on swarms before they start and may or may not be longer range--I haven't encountered a swarm since my outfit was significantly worse."

"The anticipating thing would probably work better against bigger monsters - if you have to communicate about a hundred bugs' behavior they'll be done doing it before you spit it out - so you should look into a rural squad once you have enough hours under your belt for that. Okay. Try real hard not to hit people. With stardarters and non-damaging magic you don't need the spiel about when you're allowed to cut loose, s'pose."

"A rural squad is a good idea. I can also see where people are going to move, if I'm in something enough like a fight for the sense to come on at all, and I'll definitely try real hard not to hit anybody. I wouldn't mind hearing the spiel just for educational purposes, if you wouldn't mind giving it."

"So if a swarm's more than six hours old, which almost never happens but it's not impossible if it manifests at the top of a tall building right after we pass by and there's nobody in the building, then we're allowed to do a lot more property damage to get it dead, if we have to. Also allowed to kill animals - I mean, nobody cares if you kill a pigeon anyway, but you can kill somebody's cat if you gotta if a swarm six hours old is behind it. If we're in a real pinch with a swarm over six hours, we're allowed to set fires too. The threshold's higher if you're in a building with specifically protected architecture or contents. I'll tell you which those are before we go in. By default you don't have to worry about breaking windows to get in places, or doors, and you don't have to worry about getting gunk or stardart dents on stuff outside the special buildings - sometimes we try to draw swarms out of those, it's riskier but you don't wanna get swarm gunk on the Mona Lisa or whatever, but you otherwise try to be a little conservative."

"Thanks." It's good to know what protocols everybody else will be operating on. "So now we just drive around and wait for a call?"

"That's right. A call or a sensed swarm. More of the former than the latter. If we get a call the sirens go on and we get there ASAP. You don't need wings to work local, they do insist on it if you're covering a bigger area and you can't fast travel otherwise."

"I only take 'em off to sleep."

"Yeah, but not all of us have them, so we take the truck, sirens on," Vanessa says. "Don't make more victims; don't wade in underhanded. Just because you and me and Caroline could leave Susan behind and get started doesn't mean it's a good idea."

"Oh, of course, I just meant that if I switch to a rural squad the wings rule won't be a problem."

"Yeah, just reminded me of the don't make more victims rule."

Margaret nods and then sits there in silence.

Around and around goes the truck, weaving through the town to cover the whole thing with their senses. The squad is on various devices. Susan is playing Pokémon.

Margaret will idly browse Wikipedia on her phone and listen to Susan's occasional happy or frustrated muttering.

Susan is apparently collecting Horsea.

This would be a great job if you didn't get carsick and had a lot of reading to get done.

Fortunately Margaret does not get carsick. This truck bed is actually spacious enough she could do homework in here; she'll bring it next time.

Her swarm-sense and her danger sense both go off at about the same time. It's a big one.

She stands up and looks to the others for cues.

Caroline bangs on the cab of the truck and shouts a heading to the driver. He turns his siren on and speeds where she tells him to. Susan drops her game and checks her stardarters. Vanessa stands up and starts charging some kind of power that gathers in her fist in a ball of yellow light, wings poised for takeoff.

"It's up," says Susan, "it's moving, that means it's older -"

"Only one of it, so it's probably big," says Vanessa.

"A stray lone bug would explain why nobody called it in," says Caroline.

"It might just have stayed high enough," Vanessa says. "Be prepped for a monster. Margaret, stay behind Caroline. Not just back, behind her, with her always between you and the monster. You don't shoot at it unless through tragedy beyond your control it's gotten around her and you can't get her between you again.
Got that?"

"Got it."

It's a big monster. It's a small swarm's biomass, but all melded into a single creature, flapping with surprising speed considering its number and type of wings changes from moment to moment. It has so many eyes, eyes in all directions.

The girls leap out of the truck before it's come to a complete stop. Susan's on the ground, running pell-mell to get under the monster, stardarters raised high. Vanessa launches herself into the air and throws her lightball at the monster; it glances off and bounces back to Vanessa's hand for another run. Caroline gets into the sky, staying in front of Margaret, and throws something invisible at the monster, slicing it open in a way that looks briefly impairing before it slides its flesh back together.