They finish sliding the blocks down the ramp and Margaret starts doing the calculations with the numbers they've gotten. "Want to do this bit separately and compare answers?"

"Yeah, sounds good." They come to the same conclusion.

"Looks like we did the math right. I hear later this year we'll be making potato cannons, that'll be fun."

"Yeah, that sounds neat. I wonder if we get to shoot them or if that's a liability issue."

"They wouldn't have us build them if they weren't going to let us shoot them. They'll probably make us do it out on the sports fields and give us a lecture about not pointing them at anything, though."

"Yeah, that makes sense."

Margaret starts putting away their lab supplies.

Evangeline helps her and they go their separate ways.

"Why do magical girls always hang out with each other?" says someone exiting the classroom behind her, not to her but not trying to be quiet. "It's snotty."

She turns to look behind her. "Honestly I'm happy to hang out with whoever, I just like having a small-talk topic to lean on."

"You sat with one who wasn't even here last year at lunch," says the speaker's companion.

"Gotta sit with someone new on the first day! Would you like to sit with me tomorrow? We're in a class together, that's enough for a conversation topic."

"I was just talking about in general," says the first person. They scurry away.

Well, if they don't want to sit with her they don't get to complain that she didn't sit with them, eh? Tomorrow she can sit with the chess club people, she hasn't seen them in ages.

When school lets out, she goes to find the bio teacher instead of heading straight to robotics club.

There he is! "Hi, Margaret."

"Hi Mr. Laurens. I'm doing a project for the county science fair and I have a question about using school resources for it."

"Sure, what do you need?"

She explains her idea with the simulation and the historical epidemiology data. "And I'd like to try to replicate it again with bacterial cultures and bacteriophages. If I get some harmless species from a catalog, can I use the lab's plating equipment and store them in the lab fridge?"

"You sure can! Let me know if there's anything you need that only educators can order."

"Great, thank you!" 

She heads off to robotics club; this year's inter-school contest is to make a robot that can do a ropes course. They brainstorm design constraints for an hour and then Margaret leaves for patrol.

Caroline and Susan and Charity are there and happy to see her!

She's happy to see them too! She takes a seat in the truck and looks up the two strains of bacterium and one strain of virus she's going to need, and determines that they're all purchasable even if you say you're a student.

During this patrol, a cryptid - a girl so small that she's managing to fly on large dragonfly wings - approaches the truck, then sets down on the edge of the flatbed.

Oh, wow. "Hello," she says softly.

The little cryptid looks in her direction, smiling faintly, and blinks at her.

"That's Rivka Stievater, isn't it?" murmurs Susan. Rivka, if it's her, doesn't react to her name.

"Pleased to meet you." She reaches into her bag for a snack bar (chocolate coconut flavor), breaks off a piece reasonably sized for the tiny cryptid, and holds it out to her.