"I hope so too." And she'll switch to her book on rocketry and let Vanessa get back to the Vietnam War, at least until something happens.

Nothing happens that day. No bonus for Margaret.

Well, she's saved up a bunch of bonuses from the past couple months. She doesn't want to spend it all on one thing, but how much of Valenti's time will, say, six hundred dollars get her?

That's two and a half.

She can make it 720, get a round 3 hours.

His website allows her to make an appointment on Saturday morning at eleven for that long.

Then she shall book him from 11 to 2 and let Vanessa know how late she'll be to patrol. Since she's not coming straight from school this time, she can leave her backpack and just bring a plastic bag to hold everything she'll have to take out of her pockets.

Valenti's office is in a nice office building that also contains psychologists and dentists and real estate agents and things like that. He's on the top floor. She has to sign in at the front desk of the building; the receptionist guesses who she's there for.

The receptionist is correct! She'll sign the guest book. She's actually a few minutes early, and has his website pulled up on her phone to look at any pictures of his work he's got posted.

He has lots of pictures posted. Glorious magical girls, posed artfully or in action shots, in silver and gold, black and white, purple and brown, blue and lavender and yellow, taupe and red...

Oh wow. Three hours probably isn't enough to end up looking like her, or like her, or her, but wow. She heads up the elevator to the top floor.

Valenti has a receptionist, who may or may not have been playing a phone game thirty seconds ago but detected Margaret's approach in time to set it aside and smile at her as soon as she comes in. "Miss Perry, good morning!"

"That's me. Good morning!"

"There's a couple things I'd like to go over with you before Mr. Valenti sees you. First, while starscape allows you a lot of precision, it doesn't allow him a lot of precision. Sometimes he might indicate things to you by marking up your outfit or even sewing bits of it to indicate exactly where he wants you to put something, and then you replace his marks or alterations with permanent versions. Some magical girls are very protective of their outfits, so I try to warn people."

"That shouldn't be a problem. Thanks."

"Of course. Next, if you're attached to any specific element of your outfit, that's fine, he can build something around most single elements, but you need to prioritize. You might want to have what you prefer most to keep in mind before you go in."

"I'm mostly only attached to my body mods, and I'm okay with having those tweaked as long as I leave with all the parts I came in with." 

"All right. Mr. Valenti will be with you in a few minutes."

"Okay." She will twiddle her bracelets and admire the nice even lighting.

And eventually the receptionist gestures toward the door and says, "You can go in now, Miss Perry."

In she goes!

The lighting's amazing; it all seems focused on a clear spot in the middle of the room where it looks like she's maybe supposed to stand. There are tall panels around it sufficient to backdrop a girl as much as seven feet tall, draped currently in white but with other drapes visible in folds on nearby shelves.

Mr. Valenti is there, sitting on a chair that can roll and spin.

He's wearing a blindfold.

"You there? Come in. Before I look at you and get stuck on whatever you're doing, go stand in the booth and I'll get a few angles of photography -" The panels have little cameras perched between them at various heights, which appear to be feeding a rack of monitors on his desk. "So you can put it back if you're ever nostalgic, yes?"

"Okay." Margaret stands in the standing place with her wings spread and her arms held to make her jewelry clearly visible.

Valenti taps a few keys on his keyboard. There is a shutter noise.

"Now. Tell me what you need to keep, tell me what you're least sure about. Tell me when and where you most need to do magic, how much you move around and how. These are the edges of my canvas. I will not put you in plate mail if you need to fly at a hundred miles an hour or in six layers if you are likely to be deployed to Puerto Rico."

"I work emergency services, so I need maneuverability in flight and I need my outfit to be something I can sit and write in for hours and then switch to doing lots of magic on a moment's notice without having to change. I need to be able to carry, aim, and fire stardarters, in particular. I do a lot of moving around during fights, mostly on the wing but some on foot, so my shoes need to be at least okay for running and too cold is better than overheated."