"That's a good idea, especially if any of them have live chats. Are you suggesting I do that during patrols, or as a separate experiment?"

"During works fine, but either way would be interesting, yeah?"

"Yes, I'm definitely going to do it outside of patrols too now, I'm curious."

"Sounds good. You'd be here during the summer?"

"That's right. It's too far away for during the school year, but during the summer I could work the same hours as anyone else."

"You already talked about this with your folks?"

"Yes, they're fine with it." All she had to say was that it would look great on her college applications; it was an easier sell than dropping out of robotics club would have been if she had wanted to do that.

"All right, Margaret, I'm gonna send you some paperwork and we can take you on soon as the school year's out."

"Great. My first day of summer is June 3rd; I'll see you then!"

"Looking forward to it, Margaret!"

The call concluded, Margaret makes her dates of leaving and eventual return official with Vanessa and the others.

"We'll miss you," says Caroline.

"I'll miss you all too. But I'll be back in the fall with better skills. And possibly swarm-finding science results!" 

"Here's hoping," says Susan.

The rest of the school year goes by quickly; Margaret spends several patrol shifts studying for finals and a few more recovering from them. On the first day of summer she shows up at the Berkshire County emergency response building with her paperwork and a book on mechanical computers.

"Light reading?" comments one of the squad girls, not Marchessa. "Hey, I'm Lily."

"I'm Nora," says the other.

"Marchessa," says Marchessa. "Welcome, Margaret." She looks at the paperwork and files it.

"Hello everybody! I'm Margaret like she said, I'm here for the summer. So what are all your powers?"

"Fast flight," says Lily. "I can take passengers if we're all touching, you're gonna get acquainted with my feet."

"Bolts," says Nora, "not that interesting but they make noise and I can play Hot Cross Buns with 'em."

"Plant magic," says Marchessa. "If you see a funny looking tree around here I probably called it into service against our enemies."

"Cool!" She looks at Lily and Nora. "So did Marchessa already tell you what I do?"

"Yup," says Nora. "Sounds dead useful, but if you look that snazzy and it's not already working like a comic book I don't know how far it'll go in the field."

"Yeah, that's part of why I'm here--to see if the tactical aspect is more useful against against the bigger monsters and whether I can get the prophecies working like a comic book."

"Good luck on that," says Nora.

"Thanks. When's our first training day, and are we likely to have time then to practice coordinating fights using my tactical sense? With the other squad we needed to practice it for a while before we could do it well for real."

"We squeeze in training while we're on call, since we're not patrolling at the same time and aren't usually called up."

"That makes sense. Anything else I'm likely to need to know?"