"Good to know. Shouldn't do it tonight, though, it's a school night."

"Makes sense. You need any help getting home?"

"That's nice of you, but no, I'll just walk part of the way until my wings are a bit more rested and then I'll be fine." She pries herself off the couch.

"See you later!" calls Susan.

And she part-hikes, part-flies home and collapses.

The next few weeks are really excellent. She kills swarms and becomes a better tactician and a more accurate markswoman and a stronger flyer. She eats lunch with the other magical girls and experiments with different jewelry designs. She gets a prophecy about a sudden downpour that lets the squad get the cover over the truck bed before the sky opens up, and one about what she should get her father for Christmas.

She gets an email from the organization behind the survey she took which wants to do a specific data collection on her. They'd like to pay her by the month to carefully note the contents and circumstances of each prophecy she gets.

She already had partial notes, but she starts being rigorous about them. Date, time, location, exact wording of prophecy, her interpretation of the wording, other people present, prior conversation topic if any, reactions of third parties, and any actions she took/predictions she made on the basis of the prophecy and how they turned out.

A typical entry looks something like this:

Time: January 7, 3:30 PM

Location: robotics club lab

Others present: 3 other club members, one involved in conversation

Prior conversation topic: why a certain circuit wasn't working

Prophecy wording: "the seventh is on the ground"

Interpretation: pin seven of the microcontroller was incorrectly connected to ground

Reaction: checked pin seven

Result: found misplaced wire, pin seven was in fact connected to ground

Reactions of others: nearest club member was mildly surprised (prior familiarity with prophecies)

The general themes that appear are that the prophecies happen a couple times a week on average, are generally relevant to the situation at hand, are generally helpful to neutral, and that she's better at interpreting them than random bystanders, though it isn't clear if that last is a magical effect or just practice and not being as surprised.

The money for this is pretty modest but it keeps coming as long as she keeps sending in prophecies.

She's honestly not in it for the money; between her allowance, the combat pay whenever she fights a swarm, and her general lack of expenses other than books she's not hurting for cash that much. She just wants to know what they find out.

So far nothing.

She wants to ask what hypotheses they're testing but she's worried that would throw off either her notetaking or the prophecies themselves. She mentions the connection to ongoing conversations and the fact that her first-ever prophecy was a self-explanation, and says that if they ever want her to come into the lab and talk about it in the hope of getting something else self-referential she's down to try it.

Unfortunately they are located hundreds of miles away but if she's ever in the Baltimore area she's welcome to drop in.

She's not likely to be in the Baltimore area any time soon, but if she is that's good to know.

A long weekend arrives; she celebrates by doing a full shift of patrol on a Monday. She's reading about epigenetics when the call comes in: the janitor at the local art museum went in to clean while it was closed for the holiday and found a swarm. The driver hits the siren and takes off while the squad locks and loads.

The janitor is waiting for them and gives them the keys. Caroline in front, they stalk into the museum.

The swarm is about four hours old--the bugs haven't started to merge yet, but they're rampaging around the locked gallery they started in. Margaret and Vanessa go in at one end, Susan and Caroline at the other.

As soon as the bugs notice them, they flow toward Susan and Caroline. Caroline fills most of the width of the doorway with a shield, bottlenecking their approach, so Susan has an easier time shooting at them two at a time. Vanessa charges up, and lets fly as soon as some swarmlings figure out that the shield doesn't reach the ceiling and start flying over it. Susan coordinates to stop shooting right as the ball of light hits them (harming some floor but not the artwork), and the swarm reverses course. Vanessa can get up to ten bugs in one shot and after the first throw doesn't bother charging up for long; these aren't tough enough to hold up to even a low-power toss.

Margaret plugs away, taking out some bugs with one shot and others with two if she foresees that the first hit won't drop them. She prioritizes the ones that are about to go for her or a teammate, then the ones that are about to go through an exhibit, and calls out directions so Vanessa can hit them in bigger batches where they clump up.

Vanessa finds that very useful! Eventually they've whittled down the swarm enough that Caroline drops her shield so she and Susan can attack too.

Moving forward would potentially let some of them get around or over her and out of the room, so Margaret stays in the doorway and takes out anything that gets close, herding what remains of the swarm into the open areas. When she's cleared enough space, she and Vanessa can advance into the gallery and shove the door shut behind them.

This leaves them with nowhere to retreat to, so they curve around to the side to get more space behind them, and keep firing. Caroline moves around more than anyone else; she can only erect shields in front of her, and does so as necessary to protect art and funnel the swarm around into convenient locations.

Eventually they have the whole thing pasted into goo. The benches and floor are disgusting and there is some damage to the paintings from before they arrived.

Margaret feels kind of bad about sticking the janitor with such a mess, but their shift is only half done. She cleans her boots and fixes a rip in her her sleeve, then they go out and tell him it's safe to come in.

In he goes. He sighs and mumbles a thanks.

They mumble a "you're welcome" and pile back into the truck. 

Margaret went through a lot of ammo and now that her aim is decent most of it is too filthy to reload immediately; does this truck have provisions for getting it clean, or possibly a box of spares?

It has a big box of spares, yep!