That's enough all by itself. She's got magic. Not much, because she didn't color coordinate her outfit with her scales when she got dressed this morning, but enough. Which means no going back now, but who wants that?

Not her! This is awesome. And she looks awesome, or she will anyway, once she gets out of these ratty jeans and into something pretty. What goes with royal blue . . .

Math test. Arrgh. She needs to stop admiring herself and deploring the state of her pants and get back to the classroom.

One of her classmates is distracted by her change and is staring at her.

That's a pretty reasonable response! Margaret smiles sheepishly (smiling with metal lips feels different!) and tries to get back to test-taking.

Between the time she spent in the starscape and the time she spends staring at her hands and tapping her fingers together to hear the soft clicking noise they make, there's no way on Earth she's passing this test. 

The teacher has also noticed the scales, and says, "The guidance counselor probably has a pamphlet about this," when she collects Margaret's test.

"Oh, thanks, good idea." She thinks about apologizing for not using her time well, but has to move out of the way for the kid behind her to hand their test in and then it's too late.

Next class is English, which Margaret spends doodling dress shapes. Fortunately this looks pretty similar to taking notes from where the teacher is standing, and she's with it enough to provide the occasional comment on The Tempest when called upon. And then school is over and she skips chess club to visit the guidance counselor.

The guidance counselor blinks at the scales. "Congratulations," he says. "What can I do for you - uh - I do know most of the students' names but the scales are throwing me, here -"

That gets a giggle. "It's fine, I probably wouldn't recognize myself in a mirror right now! Uh, Mrs. Hicks said you might have pamphlets? Or, like, advice on what I should be thinking about next?" She tries to fidget with her hair, remembers she doesn't have any, and goes back to fidgeting with her fingers.

"I do have pamphlets somewhere. Who are you please -?" He rummages for literature.

"Oh right. Margaret Perry. Sorry."

"Margaret! All right, congratulations, Margaret. Here you are -" He hands her a glossy pamphlet. So You Could Be A Magical Girl! it reads. "I don't have anything specific for people who've already taken the plunge - I'm assuming the scales count -"

"Yup, they count! I am definitely doing this. Pamphlet should still help though." She takes the pamphlet and opens it, keeping one eye on the counselor in case he has anything else to say first.

He seems content to let her read the pamphlet. It has the following sections:

The Ins And Outs Of Starscape - mostly stuff she already knows and has obsoleted for herself anyway, like that she has a week to decide, longer if she changes something, and a little chart of examples of things that she could fix if she had them (acne!) and things she could not fix without some research or expert guidance (asthma!). It explains how to get usable magic beyond what the starscape itself starts out by offering you need to change things about your body - enough, but not too much; there's a little infographic with a frowning girl with blue hair and no other changes on on end of the spectrum, a smiling girl with solid black eyes and wings in the middle, and a frowning girl who has turned herself into an octo-mermaid with pebbled cuttlefish skin all over herself on the right.

Magical Romance - a "so you're gay" introduction aimed at people who may be weighing the decision to become thaumosexual, written by someone who was trying to be PC but wasn't really sure how to do that.

Powers And You - vague and not particularly helpful, since powers vary so much, but it has examples, and it gives basic tips on how to dress for success - no copying more than a partial element of someone else's outfit but getting advice is fine, pick a theme and wear your theme hard, wear a skirt, hair emergencies are real emergencies, if your magic lends itself to anything visible you can get more out of it than you put in by using it to boost your costume, using "second layer starscape" effects for Technically Makeup is nearly as good as using "first layer starscape" effects for Actual Skin Repigmentation, the difference being that you're more likely to have to fix your makeup if it smudges but it won't cause more psychological changes...

Further Reading - a list of website URLs with names like elementsofstyle.com and swarmwatch.com and pairwise.com and inskirts.com, which are respectively "costuming tips" and "a community for swarm-hunting magical girls" and "magical girl dating site" and "magical girl fan and networking forum".

That infographic is cute but decidedly unhelpful when it comes to walking the tightrope between "more cool changes" and "should probably try not to die".

Magical Romance is uninteresting for the moment; she hadn't figured out which if any genders she was into before and it's kind of nice to have that nailed down now.

Powers And You will be more interesting once she's gotten some more magic and taken the time to figure out what it actually does.

Those websites look like an excellent next destination, especially Elements of Style and Swarmwatch, but she resolves not to look at the former until she's gotten as far as she can on her own ideas.

If the guidance counselor has no further input, Margaret will thank him for his help and start walking home.

The counselor is happy to answer questions but if she doesn't have any he's got nothing to spontaneously volunteer besides more paper (scholarship applications for magical girls: apparently a thing).

Sure, Margaret will take some scholarship applications on the way out. You can't not go to college, after all. Then home and into her bedroom for some uninterrupted designing time before her parents get home.

First off, how much more physical change is she willing to risk? Minor cosmetic changes should be no problem, so she lengthens her fingers and makes her face more symmetrical while thinking about the weirdest girls she's seen on TV.

Weirdest TV-going girls include "Dryad", who's skirting pretty close to turning into a tree; Laurie Brown (no code name) who is a rainbow mermaid; and "Aquila", who's still got arms and hasn't traded her face for a beak but is otherwise going really hard on being a giant bird.

None of those are her cup of tea, which is just as well given the plagiarism penalty, but they provide a good sense of where she'll have to stop. And it isn't yet. Next up, a tapetum lucidum. And slit pupils to go with it. And all this blue is a bit one-note, let's turn her irises and the scales where her fingernails used to be silver.

She does not turn into a cryptid on the spot! Good for you, Margaret!

There's just one more temptation she can't resist. Scaly dragon wings sprout from her shoulders, blue to match her skin at the base and shading to silver at the edges. Yes, she thinks as she stretches them, that feels just about right.

She looks almost cool enough in spite of the clothes that she can detect little bits of magic trying to come in. She could probably cast a spell if she were naked-and-scaly instead of schlubby-and-scaly.

Yeah, these clothes have got to go. The jeans and robotics club t-shirt Margaret is in were picked for being durable and free respectively and those are no longer concerns. Also she probably ripped the t-shirt putting the wings on. Anyway, now she's nude.

Magic!

...It's not doing anything, but it would be if there were something for it to do!

Well, that's not ideal, but magic!!! Surely it'll do something eventually. In the meantime, outfit!

She'll start with a white shirt that leaves her arms bare and stays on with a loop of cloth around her neck, the back scooped low to leave plenty of room for her wings. Then a matching skirt, ankle-length, as light as possible to make sure it billows and twirls.

Now to start adorning them. The skirt can be embroidered with hundreds of tiny blue gemstones, densest near the hem and swirling up like snow in the wind toward her waist. The shirt can be similarly bedazzled, with the stones densest at her throat and radiating out and down across her chest.

Now she has two spells that aren't doing anything!

Maybe one of those websites has tips for finding out what your powers do. Or maybe she'll never find out and just fight the swarms with the power of flight and the biggest blowtorch she can convince her parents to let her get. She'll just have to drown her sorrows in accessories. 

Silver wedge-heeled boots, check. Small silver tiara with more blue gems in it, check. Hmm, the bare arms look is cool, but maybe just one arm? She adds a band of white fabric cinched around one arm just below the shoulder, with more fabric spiraling down around her arm until the last six inches dangle from her wrist, then bedazzles it to match her shirt and skirt, densely sparkly at the top and fading out on the way down.

She thinks the final ensemble is totally gorgeous. Does the magic agree?

The boots are fine, the tiara's good, the arm thing is okay, better once it's jeweled. Now she has three spells that aren't doing anything!

Alright, this is getting super bogus. No more starscape, time for science! . . . In the backyard, in case one of the things that isn't happening is laser eye beams or something.

She tries throwing her arms out to the sides and calling out, "Magical girl powers activate!" She tries pointing imperiously at a tree and yelling "Magic, I command you to come forth!" She tries going back inside and doing an Internet search for "my magical girl powers won't turn on" and "how do I cast my first spell".

If your magical girl powers won't turn on, you probably haven't done enough body modification yet! Wings are always enough, do you want wings? You could also try Lu Jiu's Thirty Point Checklist for things you might want to modify!

Yeah, okay, she should have expected that. If "I can feel my spells but not cast them" and "do magical girl spells require incantations" and "magical girl spells with activation conditions" don't produce anything helpful, she'll try going outside again and flying around. It should be fun even if the only magic involved is the bit letting her wings handle her weight.

Some magical girl spells require conditions, like pointing at a swarm bug before you can fire a beam of energy, or a weak spell you're only just fabulous enough to unlock being finicky about how much of your own detail work you have to do and how much you have to concentrate. Some people have passive powers that do luck or defense or sensory things.

Some magical girls find incantations helpful! The swarms can't understand language so they don't telegraph what you're doing to the enemy, and if they're aesthetic they may or may not provide a boost (or that could just be a superstition) (forty page forum argument).

Pointing at a swarm bug seems like a good thing to try, as does being on the lookout for passive powers. The forty-page forum argument is fascinating but reminds her that she has a history essay to finish. Three more paragraphs on the industrial revolution and half a biology assignment later, Margaret makes a Swarmwatch account and looks at what they recommend for non-magic weapons and for one's first fight.

Swarm bugs aren't very tough when they first start out. If you want to fight the big ones that have been running wild in the ocean for several days gradually turning into a kaiju you get military grade stuff, but if you just want to be able to respond intelligently to a new spawn in your neighborhood, the popular model is something called a stardarter; it's got about the character of a Nerf dart gun, but heavier duty, so you can squash bugs but a shot gone wide poses little threat to people or property. They cost about $200 for a midrange dual-wielding pair, plus a starter batch of ammo (you can, if on a budget, collect the ammo, run it through the dishwasher, and reuse it), and are available in an enormous array of colors because they kind of have to be; for a little more you can get personal emblems engraved, embossed, or printed on their various surfaces.

Fighting a kaiju sounds amazing, but it should really wait until she's figured out what her powers do and gotten a lot of practice on the smaller ones. Her money will stretch to stardarters; she doesn't get that much of an allowance but she doesn't have much to spend it on either. Still probably best to ask a parent's permission first.

Actually, now that she thinks about it, she ought to call her parents as soon as possible, so they have some warning about her new appearance before they walk in the door.

Ann Perry is a bit worried because Margaret rarely calls her at the vet clinic unless there's an emergency; then she's more worried, because her daughter is going to go fight swarms and potentially get injured or fail her classes. Then she's proud. The news that her daughter took a huge pile of alterations surprises her not at all. "Well, you've never been afraid to be weird," she points out affectionately.

Jordan Perry needs a bit more reassurance about the details of "Dad, I look like a dragon". No, she doesn't breathe fire; no, she doesn't have fangs; no, she's not thinking about dropping out of high school and will probably even stick with robotics club. (Chess club is definitely getting dropped.) No, she won't go looking for fights alone, though no promises if anything spawns where she is. Yes, she knows he's only worried because he loves her. Yes, he can trust her to take care of herself and do her best. Yes, she will be awesome at it, thanks Dad. Love you too.

When they get home, they both want to see her fly. Flying feels just as great as it sounds and looks just as cool as it feels.

After the flying demo, they're happy to let her buy a pair of dart guns and some ammo. She goes for her shade of royal blue with no customization and the cheap shipping; they'll arrive sometime the following week.

The next morning she has an invitation on her homeroom desk to the school Magical Girl Club.

Sounds like a good place to make friends and/or swarm-fighting partners! Maybe one of them will even know how to make her powers do things. (She spent the walk to school examining her senses in detail and making random gestures, with no discernible result beyond looking even odder than her new default. She'll head there after classes are done.

The magical girl club meets in an offseason sports field, different ones depending on which sports are in session. There are six people in it besides Margaret; two of them go to a neighboring school that isn't big enough to have its own magical girl club. The members' themes are approximately "butterflies", "just barely not a TRON ripoff", "elf princess", "catgirl", "classic sailor suit plus wings", and "fire!".

Margaret will notice that they are all really hot.

Oh wow, that's new. Well, obviously magical girls looking amazing isn't new, but the amount she *notices* this is new. Thinking that the catgirl looks soft and pettable is definitely new, what the hell Margaret you don't even know her name yet.

"Hi everybody! I'm Margaret Perry, just activated yesterday. Nice to meet you all!"

"Hi Margaret!" says "fire!" girl. "I like your whole dragon kind of deal! I'm Hattie. Shiny lines is Josephine," (TRON girl waves), "long dress is Larissa, sailor senshi over there is Sumiko, the cat is Aaliyah, butterfly has a real name but she goes by Mariposa."

Margaret recites everyone's names back and adds, "Thanks, the dragon thing is a lot of fun. Your thing is pretty excellent too! Do you do fire magic, or just like fire a lot?" 

"Fire magic!" says Hattie. "My first draft was basically a prom dress and then when I figured out what I had I ditched it to do this instead."

"What have you got?" asks Aaliyah.

Oh no she has to admit to everybody (and especially Aaliyah) that she doesn't know what she's doing aaah. But this is half the reason she came here in the first place.

"So it's the weirdest thing, but I don't actually know? I have spells, I can feel them existing, but I haven't been able to cast any of them. I don't know if they only unlock under certain conditions or I'm not concentrating right or what."

At least if she gets kicked out of the club for having really lame magic she'll probably have set some kind of speed record. Also this armband thing is pretty great for nervous fidgeting.

"Huh," says Aaliyah.

"How many spells?" asks Josephine. "My second one only does things around swarms."

"Huh" isn't great but at least it isn't "you phony".

"I have three different things, and they're all like that. I haven't been near a swarm yet, I'm hoping that does it if nothing else does. What's your second one?"

"Swarm-seeking projectiles," says Josephine. "I'd show you, but, uh." Shrug.

"I don't have anything good for swarms at all," says Larissa. "I mean, I can sense them, but if I actually want to kill them I need stardarters."

"I've got a pair of stardarters in the mail! I'm planning on looking into maintenance and aftermarket mods, see if there's any way to improve on the commercial version. Got any cool tips?"

"They're pretty point and shoot," says Larissa. She displays hers; they're more crossbow-like models than the dart gun style Margaret got. "Recycle your ammo, it gets pricey if you aren't actually paid to kill swarms."

Margaret admires the crossbow stardarters and nods solemnly at the advice to recycle her ammo. She should make the time to mark each of her darts when they arrive, so she can't get them mixed up with somebody else's.

"So what sort of magic do you have, if none of it is combat stuff?"

"I've got basically magic GPS, and a thing in the radar-echolocation kind of genre that tells me where stuff is, which is useful for combat just not extra useful against swarms on top of swarm sense, and if I'm jazzed up in my less-comfortable-than-this outfit I can teleport short range," says Larissa, "but the outfit is actually so uncomfy I don't like to try aiming darts in it, I'm still trying to figure out what I can do that looks that good and doesn't cut into my arms."

"That's really cool! Not the uncomfortable part, I mean, just the rest of it." She kind of wants to see what the even prettier uncomfy outfit looks like, but it seems like a rude thing to ask.

Margaret doesn't know what this club usually does, but she's happy to listen to the other girls talk about their powers and similar for quite a while.

Mariposa says, "We have targets but if you don't have your stardarters yet that won't do you much good. Sometimes we do cardio so we're in better condition, that'll especially help with you since you can fly, Sumiko can stay in the air a lot longer than she could last year."

"Cardio is a good idea! I'll definitely want to use the targets when I can, but for now, Sumiko, do you want to go flying?"

"Yeah!" says Sumiko, and she takes a short running start and gets into the air. She has shorts on under the sailor skirt.

Margaret needs a few more steps of running start to take off than Sumiko did, but she gets in the air and does also have shorts on under her dress. Between the lack of practice and the heavy metal skin she's not the most maneuverable of airborne beings, but there's plenty of space out here. 

"You might want another couple inches of wingspan," says Sumiko, maneuvering into position ahead of Margaret so she can use her wake and craning her neck to see. "It can make a big difference, and you can shrink 'em back down when you land if you prefer."

Margaret checks that she has enough altitude to recover from a midair stumble and isn't about to crash into Sumiko, then tries lengthening her wings on the fly.

She does stumble; it's hard to fly when you can't see where you're going, little though it might seem to matter in the sky. But the change doesn't take that long and she has an easier time getting loft.

"I don't know if you've already cut scale weight as much as you can - what are they?" asks Sumiko. "It doesn't matter that much how scratchable or whatever they are since you can always fix them in starscape."

Margaret had gone for steel in the initial rush of excitement and hadn't remembered to update it when she took the plunge on wings. She lands, letting her wings drag on the ground for a minute (no pun intended), and swaps the steel for aluminum. Thin plates but not too thin, she wants a bit of built-in armor. The result is a fair bit lighter, though she still weighs more than any baseline human of her same (rather small) height and girth.

When she takes off again, she's still no hummingbird but she's a lot more graceful than she was. She gets back up to Sumiko's altitude and calls out, "Thank you, that did a lot!"

"No problem!" Sumiko calls back.

Margaret will enjoy her new airworthiness for a while before she gets worn out and lands, well before Sumiko needs to. Cardio: definitely a priority.

For that matter, she wonders if bulking up her muscles in the starscape will actually make her stronger. Something to experiment on when she gets home.

Back on the ground, they're all standing in a circle around Hattie, suggesting aesthetic adjustments for her to try and seeing what the magic thinks of them.

"No, that's not any better than the version with the brass fittings," reports Hattie, and then she opens her eyes. "Hey, we should do this for Margaret, she's new."

"Ooh, yeah," says Aaliyah.

"That sounds awesome! What should I try first?"

"What are you going for with that sleeve thing?" asks Larissa. "Asymmetry can work but you have to be pretty careful and I'm not sure the way it kind of wraps is working for you."

"Yeah if I were doing that I'd do the one sleeve in very open-work lace," muses Josephine.

"I didn't want to have nothing at all on my arms", says Margaret as she enters the starscape. "Hmmm . . ."

The arm thing disappears. After a bit, it's replaced with a sleeve in open lacework, in a diamond pattern that echoes but doesn't directly mimic the overlapping scales underneath. Select intersections in the lace get little gems, white this time to show up better against the blue.

She makes the sleeve bell out at the end to keep having a drapey wrist-thing. It was just too fun to fidget with to give up that easily.

"Ooh, that looks better to me, does it feel better on your end?" says Hattie. It does, a bit.

"You have to make a lot of really subtle changes at the high end, you get a lot of the low hanging fruit just by putting on a dress," says Aaliyah.

"Hard to say, it really is subtle."

She switches back and forth a couple times, "listening" carefully for any magical feedback. She also tries turning the gems on the lacework sleeve from white to green and back to see if that does anything.

It prefers lace to the swirl and it prefers white gems to black or green.

She'll go with those, then, she likes them best too. "The lace does help, yeah! What else should I try? Maybe different shoes?"

"Yeah, yours aren't very interesting - but don't go with heels if you can't run in them, you can't take off indoors," says Hattie.

"I just change my shoes real quick if I have to run," says Larissa, who is wearing high heeled sandals that do not look running-friendly. "Like this -" She quickchanges into snug high boots of soft leather with no fasteners. "Oh, and don't fall into the trap of making it so you can take them off, who needs that? If you need laces for the aesthetic you can do it for that without worrying about practical off-and-on."

Shoes are hard. Margaret hikes up her dress a bit so the others can see her shins better, and thinks.

The boots extend up above her knees, and get tight enough around her lower thighs to be self-supporting. Then they split into a collection of separate diamond-shaped panels held together by fine chains, each panel pierced with an elaborate swirl of small holes. 

Margaret is pretty sure this is either awesome or total garbage, but couldn't begin to say which.

"Hmm, I think something like that could work for gloves but it doesn't look great for shoes..."

Her magic thinks it's an improvement, but not much of one.

"Yeah, it helps a bit but it's not great. Gloves are kind of a pain in the neck unless you go fingerless, though, and I'm not sure this is a fingerless-gloves kind of outfit . . ."

Does it help to ditch the leatherworking but keep the panel structure? Add even more leatherworking but fuse the panels back together? Change the base color from metallic silver to something more opalescent?

Fusing the panels and upping the leatherworking helps, opalescent is a little worse.

"I like the opaly thing," says Josephine, "if it's not helping it might be because you're not doing much else with it yet..."

If she changes the silver bits of her body to the same shade, and adds a single opal to her sapphire tiara . . . ?

Substantial jump!

"Oooh, that worked great! You were right, I just needed to commit to it." She admires her newly opal bits from various angles. "Doesn't seem to have made my magic any less shy, but it did do something."

"Maybe you just got a really passive power theme," says Hattie.

"It's definitely starting to look that way! I'll just have to get into a lot of different circumstances and see if anything happens."

Does anyone else have aesthetic ideas?

They continue to troubleshoot - has she tried many hair options, how does she feel about belts, she could do a pretty stardart ammo bandolier, she could have a few of her scales inlaid with gemstones -

Any form of hair would look weird coming out of her scales and she doesn't want to add spines, but how about a pair of wraparound earrings shaped like tiny silver Japanese dragons holding opals in their claws?

She feels good about belts! She'll add a wide blue belt-and-bandolier combo with silver embroidery and a totally unnecessary silver buckle, and ask to borrow some of Larissa's darts to make sure it looks good loaded. 

Inlaid gemstones is a difficult question. First of all, her scales are already very shiny, and second of all, she's not sure whether sticking gemstones into what's already metal will push the mental changes any farther. But after a bit of dithering in which she makes more belt buckle tweaks than is really productive, she'll add a single opal in the center of her forehead and a smaller one on the back of each hand.

The earrings help! Sumiko lands and critiques the authenticity of the dragons.

Larissa loans her some darts. They're pretty, though hers are in the wrong color for Margaret's color scheme.

The opals help!

Margaret's family is sufficiently long-assimilated that she'll happily take dragon authenticity advice from someone who sounds like she knows what she's talking about, as long as the result looks good and doesn't fall off her ears.

If the belt doesn't help she'll ditch it and just have the bandolier. Also now she's impatient to get her own darts. And her own guns, she didn't pay any detailing and still doesn't have an emblem but she has a couple ideas involving masking tape and spray paint.

She makes a couple dramatic arm gestures that show off her hand-opals and grins.

The belt helps a bit. Josephine advises against DIY alterations; it's easy to screw up and make them look dumb.

That's reasonable. Better to play with things it's easy to revert than to mess with a nonmagical gun and risk permanent damage. If she was as comfortable with a paintbrush as she is with a soldering iron--but she isn't, and between cardio, target practice, and actual swarm fights on top of her existing schedule she doubts she'll have time to get there any time soon. Maybe a thing that clips to the gun and can be trivially removed if it doesn't work out, or maybe she'll just give herself a pair of really cool holsters. Yeah, the belt's going back on so she has something to attach eventual holsters too.

"You don't actually have to fight swarms, and it might be a bad idea if you don't know what your magic does," says Sumiko. "Not everybody gets combat relevant magic, and we can only sort of cheat at self-healing."

"I have healing spells," says Aaliyah. "But they can't fix everything."

"I want to try it at least the once, though! I won't know how well I'll do until I try. And anyway sometimes you don't get a choice, if a swarm starts at my house I want to be ready to do something about it."

"Evacuating and calling the emergency responders is always an option," says Hattie firmly. "One bug isn't very intimidating but if there's a thousand of them you really want a team, with experience, not a solo novice."

"Oh, definitely. And I'm not planning to jump into fights until I have my stardarters and some sort of usable combat magic and other people to watch each other's backs. But it never hurts to be prepared, if only so I know what I can and can't accomplish."

"Sometimes me and Larissa run around to see if we can catch any swarms before they get nine-one-one'd," says Aaliyah. "You could come with us sometime and we'll be able to cover you."

"I'd love to! I bet I'll learn a lot that way. Do you have a next time for doing it planned?" 

"Thursday after school," says Aaliyah.

"Do you have a bike?" says Larissa. "We usually bike, not literally run."

"Thursday works, I should have my stardarters by then. I don't have a bike but I bet I can borrow somebody's."

"If you're hurting for money there's modeling gigs," says Josephine, "they love hiring magical girls, you might want to take a bunch of photos of your current look so you can get it back after you do looks they want though."

"That would be great, I kind of spent most of a year's allowance on weaponry last night. Do you have any particular agency you'd recommend or for that matter anti-recommend?"

"I used to do Ricci's," says Josephine, "they're fine. Modeling's a skill, though, don't try to totally phone it in, you've got an advantage not a push-button-to-win."

"I've never been a fan of phoning things in", she chirps. "My skills-to-pick-up list sure has gotten bigger in the last 24 hours, though!"

"What's on there?" asks Hattie.

"Cardio, stardarter use, patrolling and battle tactics, healing myself and my outfit in a hurry, modeling, fashion theory, and if I still have time after all that I should probably learn to run in heels."

"Not worth it," says Larissa, "just have two shoe versions."

"Yeah, I've already got two wing versions for similar reasons." She adds "selfies" and "look up Ricci's" to her phone's to-do list and tries making her boots stilettos for a few seconds.

"Does anybody ever, like, practice healing with magic? Because on the one hand it seems good to do it in not-an-emergency before doing it in an emergency, but on the other hand, yikes?"

"Super yikes," says Sumiko.

"I'm sure people do it but mostly you just let it come up incidentally, you know?" says Hattie.

"Oh good, that is not something I wanted to add to that list and if everybody else was doing it I would sort of feel obligated."

"I mean, it could be an obligatory army training course for magical girls for all we know," comments Josephine. "But I know emergency responders don't have to just to get certs."

"Good to know." Margaret casts around for a less gross topic. "Oh hey, can somebody take some pics of me with my phone while the lighting's still nice? You mentioned I should document my look and It'll be easier than trying to get everything into bathroom-mirror selfies tonight."

"Oh, yeah, sure," says Aaliyah, and all the other girls take photos.

And now she has a thorough collection of pictures of herself! She probably isn't going to make any radical changes except for modeling, or if her powers stop being hidey and turn out to be come with cool visuals. But if and when she does, she'll be able to get back to "jewel-encrusted dragoness" with no trouble.

"Thanks so much guys!"

Does anybody else want to do costume workshop? It might be fun to be one of the people brainstorming suggestions for another girl's theme.

Aaliyah has four different costumes and can't decide which one to focus on! She's got an all-black ensemble and a black change of fur to match, lots of obsidian and ebony and black titanium and black gemstones in Art Deco patterns, excessively buckley boots. She's got an outfit to go with Siamese coloring, navy blue and white and beige, smart and professional-looking and with a three-diamond symbol. She's got a calico coat and a loud white and orange ruffly costume to go over that, with bows and ribbons and a pawprint motif - "this was my first tack, but I was eight," she says. And she's got a green and silver outfit to go with grey fur, long dress, silver claw caps, elaborate ear jewelry, malachite buttons and emerald beads. "I've got them all refined so I get the same spells out of any of them but I should really pick a primary for good or at least for a few years and start getting more subtle stuff out of it," she says, when she's modeled each.

"The black and the green-and-grey are both really great! If you've been refining since you were eight I doubt I'll think of anything you haven't tried already, but what do you think of gold detailing on the black one? Say, gold eyes and boot buckles and maybe also the claws?"

"I haven't tried gold claws, maybe that'd pull it together..." She changes into her black variant and makes the suggested change. "- it's a little better, maybe if I go a little harder on the gold it'd come together. I could make some of the embroidery gold, some of the jewelry metal..." She closes her eyes and tweaks things. "Yeah, that's not a big boost but it's a little bit."

Eeee, she helped! 

"Try making your ears more like a lynx's ears, you know, with the tufts? Maybe make the tufts gold too."

Aaliyah looks up what a lynx looks like, and tries it. "Nah, it doesn't like that as much. Maybe I can make my nose gold." She does that. "That doesn't help either."

"Gold tail-tip, then? And I don't know if ear studs would be uncomfortable but it could be worth a try."

"I've got earrings, they're just hard to see 'cause they're all black..." She tries the tail tip, reverts it, tries gold whiskers, keeps those, tries adjusting jewelry till she finds a local maximum.

"You have such good taste in jewelry! Try gold mascara or eyeliner to match the gold whiskers, and a belt that echoes your boots?"

"Mascara's worse," Aaliyah reports, "belt is better..."

"If the mascara didn't work, I'm not sure where to go from there. Roughly how much more did you get out of all of that, can you tell?"

"It's all really small at the high end," says Aaliyah. "At a certain point it gets hard to even tell if something's better or worse."

"At least the experimentation is fun!"

"Yeah! I feel sorry for people who just literally don't care how they look and get magic, it must be pretty tedious for them... I guess they outsource."

"I bet! Magic makes looking good so much easier, though. I used to pick clothes based on what was cheap and wouldn't wear out quickly. Now I can wear whatever I want and I'll never have to spend hours doing my hair and makeup by hand!"

"I think I make up for it taking forever to dry off after I take a shower," says Aaliyah, "but you're probably saving loads of time!"

"So much time! I'm never shampooing my nonexistent hair again!" That giggle was definitely about her hair and not about the mental image of Aaliyah's face shortly after a blow-dry.

"I don't dry my wings," says Sumiko, "I just remove one and then put it back dry, then the other."

"I don't want to get rid of half my fur! I'd look stupid!" says Aaliyah.

"I wouldn't want to either if I was you! I wonder if taking the layer of color off my scales and putting it back would dry them off."

"Might, I don't know much about scales," says Sumiko.

"Something to try tomorrow! So is taking the wings off and putting them on again, they're kind of awkward to reach."

"I'd expect yours to dry off if you flapped them," says Sumiko, "no feathers."

"My bathroom has approximately zero room to flap, but yes, I bet that'll work too, I'll just have to go out in the hall".

At this time Hattie has to leave to catch her bus, and shortly after that Josephine's mom arrives to pick her up.

Margaret will fly home for the first time! Her neighborhood looks pretty different from the air!

Dinner and homework are less exciting than flying and magical shop-talk, but the routine is kind of nice all the same. And the next day is a weekend.

Margaret looks up Ricci's modeling agency. What does acquiring a modeling gig as a magical girl look like?

If she is under 14 they need to talk to her parent or guardian instead of her, but since she's older than that she can directly phone them for a consultation!

She's not sure what kind of hours modeling agencies keep, but she'll give them a call tonight if they're still open.

She gets a machine that wants her to push various numbers for various purposes ("model inquiries" is 3), and then she can leave a message with her name, number, and hours of availability!

Her name is Margaret Perry and her number is thus. She is available over the weekend, on Tuesday any time after school's out, and every evening (except Thursday, in case patrolling goes late).

She gets a call back on Saturday morning.

She got up a little earlier than usual to get some flying in (so much better than gym class!) but she's home when the phone rings.

"Hello! Margaret Perry here." Huh, that was fast. She hasn't even done any research on modeling skills yet.

"Hi, Margaret! I'm Rosa Ferrari. We got your message about modeling, but you didn't specify - are you a magical girl?"

"Yes, I am! Very new at it, but yes."

"That's great! You've got a fantastic leg up in the industry. What do your powers do?"

"I'm afraid I don't know yet. I'm pretty sure they're all passive powers, and whatever sets them off hasn't happened." Hopefully this won't be a dealbreaker, there are probably other girls whose powers are useless for modeling but who do it anyway.

"That's all right, it's by no means a requirement, but if you happened to be able to do special effects I could slot you in for jobs that called for them. Are you interested in any work in particular?"

"I don't really know what the options are, and I'll probably be up for whatever you have, but work that takes advantage of my ability to do really out-there stuff with my body would be fun."

"Hmm, people mean different things by 'out there' - especially magical girls - can you go on about that a bit?"

"I'm guessing most clothes are designed for people with two arms and two legs, more's the pity, but I wouldn't mind an excuse to experiment with being made of different materials, or do animal heads, or, or grow gills and model stuff underwater, or whatever."

"Oh, models aren't just for clothing ads! If someone appears next to a car being advertised, they're a model."

"Oh, neat! Wow, I have so much to learn. What sort of things are you looking for magical girls to do these days, clearly there are more possibilities than I was imagining."

"It's not that we have a pile of standing requests we can't yet fill, it's that if you sign with us I can keep an eye out for opportunities you'd be a good fit for and then call you up if someone says they want an image with a girl swimming next to a submarine, say. Recent shoots that girls I agented for did include a perfume line - they wanted her to grow flowers all over herself - and a My Little Pony merchandise box photo. How old are you - if you only just got magic you'll be under 18, but for our records, if you wanted to appear in adult work later on."

"Okay, that makes sense. And I'm fifteen. What else do I need to do to sign up with you?" She . . . kind of really doesn't want to do adult work but that won't even be relevant until three years from now. And it's not like she's planning to make a career out of this anyway, it's just a better way to get money as a high school student than 15 hours a week waiting tables.

"I need you to spell your full name for me, and I need your date of birth and social security number and a few other things - if you're more comfortable giving those in person, that's fine, we'll need you to come in to the premises anyway to sign things, and bring a parent or guardian since you're under 18."

Margaret is happy to read off her various identifying information over the phone, and wants to know what times she can bring a parent to their office and how long she should expect to be there when she does.

The operating hours are supplied - they are open Saturday, but not Sunday - and it will probably take about an hour, not more than two.

If all goes well, she should be able to come in this afternoon. Anything else they should get to while she's on this call?

"If you have any limitations on what you're willing to work on besides things that would be inappropriate for your age, you may as well let us know in advance so I can get you the right version of the contract - some people don't want to advertise meat, or go against boycotts endorsed by certain organizations, or particpate in religious campaigns -"

She'd prefer not to advertise for tobacco or against same-sex marriage, but the former is probably irrelevant for under-eighteens anyway. Anything else should be fine.

"I can write that in, no problem," says Rosa.

Oh good. If there's nothing else then she'll see them in person in an hour or two.

In person they have a contract printed out for her! It is complicated. It acknowledges that she can quit at-will (and they can dismiss her at-will) but that while she works for them she has only limited discretion on assignments assuming reasonable attempts are made to make best-fit matches between work and model; her working hours are limited to evade child labor laws; part of her pay will be withheld for mandatory cryptid insurance to be paid to her next of kin; she relinquishes rights to the photos; she may be invited to wear things for shoots she is not welcome to copy with magic for everyday wear and will be notified at the time if this occurs; etc. etc. etc.

The cryptid insurance is a bit unnerving, but if they ask her to do anything that sounds significantly beyond what she's confident is okay then she can always quit, and looking at it another way it's proof that they're not going to ignore her full shapeshifting potential.

They're definitely not going to copy her current outfit and then say she's not allowed to use it, right? If they say they won't, then she's fine with this contract as-is.

"Oh, things you invent are fine. The problem would be knockoffs of name brands. It's a losing battle, if you want to know what I think, but people who want to keep their trademarks have to fight it anyway, so we have to put it in the contract - you model authentic Louboutins, you wear something else home."

This is reasonable, and it's easier to invent things custom than to fit copied pieces together anyway. She'll steer clear of IP shenanigans and sign their contract.

"Wonderful! I'll keep an eye out and call you if I find something I think you'll like," beams Rosa.

What a conveniently simple process. It's probably more complicated for non-magical girls.

And since Rosa doesn't have anything on deck for her right away, once all the papers are signed, she is free to go.

Then she'll have the rest of the day to get ahead on her English reading, practice getting pen marks on her clothes and clearing them up by magic while pacing back and forth without tripping, read the news on Swarmwatch and the FAQ on Elements of Style, sketch some thoughts on the control circuitry for robotics club's latest project, and go to bed at a reasonable hour.

Swarmwatch asks to know her location, and says a swarm in the nearest national park had time to coalesce into three dog-sized monsters before it was found and defeated by professional swarmhunting team Seraph Squad. Swarms were defeated before coalescing by first responders in the following pinned locations on the map of her area in the last week. People are invited to participate in a randomized controlled trial series on what causes swarms to spawn in homes and yards; compensation is available. Remember to buy your swarm manifestation insurance before the new year for tax incentive reasons.

The Elements of Style FAQ is like so:

Do I really have to wear a skirt? Some girls get good results with pants... but it's much, much harder. If you're going to try to be a heavy magic-user and you can't stand skirts, not even over a pair of snazzy leggings, you're probably going to need professional consultation.

Does my motif have to relate to my magic? Not necessarily. If your magic is strongly visual, a theme that cooperates with it will let you look cooler while you're casting... it won't affect how much magic you have available from a standing start. And if your spells can't be seen, then there's no there there for your motif to cooperate with!

How about drag? Avoid. Pants are hard enough already. We're not aware of any professional-grade magical girl costumes that don't look emphatically feminine. Note, of course, that there are all kinds of ways to be feminine - if eight year old girls can be little powerhouses without C-cups, so can teenagers who just don't want the extra ballast!

Do my clothes have to harmonize with my physical changes? Yes. A pair of plain feathered wings goes with almost anything, but if you're doing cool stuff with colors and textures, your clothes need to match for good results. Contrast can work, but do it advisedly and thoughtfully, don't just slap snakeskin on over seal fur and expect a second spell.

Does it matter if I'm pretty, as long as my clothes are? What does being pretty mean? We'd like to be able to tell you that everyone is pretty in her own way. But whatever we might think of your looks, you probably want to smooth them out before you expect the big spells. You will be fighting an uphill battle if you're sentimentally attached to pudge, acne, a unibrow, snaggle-teeth, or any but the very coolest-looking scars. That's not our judgment call - this is the same magic that has something against pants, for crying out loud. And if you're really determined, maybe you can pull it off - Maria Cordova weighs a hundred and eighty pounds, and she doesn't even have wings.

What counts as plagiarism? This one's still a subject of major research. You can draw on references and influences - it can even help you stay in-theme to do so. What you shouldn't do is look at something in a movie or a shop window, say 'that's part of my base costume now', and copy it. The rule of thumb is that you need to change at least two things: if you copy boots but change the color and length, that's fine, though it'd be better if you also adjusted the heel and added your emblem to it. If you copy a dress but swap the sleeves with some you saw on a different dress and add ruching to the bodice, that's fine, though it'd be better if you hemmed it and altered the neckline too.

Is Elements of Style affiliated with the Church of Thaumatology? Some of our writers are members of the Church but we're not a Church organization or affiliated with the Church.

Does Elements of Style provide style consults? We have a section where we post profiles of style consultants, but EoS itself does not provide this service and someone featuring on the site is not an endorsement.

How much is too much, when it comes to getting close to turning into a cryptid? If you're venturing into uncharted territory, all we can tell you is to be very, very careful. There's no warning when you're half an inch from the edge of the cliff, so even going slowly won't necessarily help. However, for common additions, we've got a "point system" that we think is conservative enough to trust. Stay under 325 points picking exclusively off that list, and you're golden. (Or whatever color you want to be!)

What else should I be reading if I'm just getting started? We particularly recommend these articles for newbies: Motifs 101, Visual Dictionary Compilation, Strongest Magical Girls Of The World - Photo Album And Detail Discussion, A Guide to Honing Aesthetic Intuition, and Playing Hotter And Colder.

The point system thing is pretty neat. Just for fun, are enough of the things Margaret's done to herself on the list that she can get a sense of how many points she's at?

Yup. Scales - full body is 145 points and Wings (with skeletal additions - e.g. bird or bat/dragon type wings) is 120 points.

Hmm, only 265. And the eye changes probably don't add much . . . how does the magic feel about extending her nails into claws? 

A mild positive!

 . . .yeah, she's probably not going to be able to fire a stardarter like this, is she. She certainly can't hold a pencil. The claws go. What else is there in the 40 points-or-so range? Fangs could be a good addition to a battle outfit if she can talk around them, even if she wouldn't want them at mealtimes.

Fangs are actually just 12 points. She could do various configurations of horns and head ridges for fifty points per individual or paired spiky bit (complicated ones go according to this formula, and it has a WARNING: SPECULATIVE plastered on the chart).

Ooh, horns! She'll go with a pair of slender opalescent ones, shaped like integral signs with the tips pointing outward. They add six inches to her height, but she didn't start out tall enough to put her at risk of hitting doorways. 

The fangs are kind of fun, but definitely not an all-the-time thing--they make her lisp. The horns she likes enough to keep unless they actively make her magic worse.

The horns are great! The magic likes the horns.

The magic has such good taste, if she does think so herself. She really should go to bed though, she wants to wake up bright and early tomorrow and get some more exercise in.

The magic has no opinion on this. Well, it has an opinion on pajamas (they're not great). Otherwise no comment.

She'll be back out of pajamas soon enough. Breakfast is a bowl of oatmeal and a banana and No Coffee even though it really couldn't matter less if she stunts her growth now, and then she'll take a jog around the neighborhood. Flying is great, but she shouldn't let her legs atrophy either. 

There's a swarm over there. She can't tell if it's new or not; it enters her range when she approaches, it doesn't start within it.

She should call 911, but they'll want to know how big it is, and if there's anybody else in the area. She heads a bit closer.

She can tell where the swarmlings are, but not how big. There are a couple hundred of them, and they are spaced closely enough that they could be new.

She'll get airborne, try to get a line of sight on them.

They seem to be inside that parking garage there.

That would be a really easy place to get trapped if you can't fly. Flap flap to the appropriate level of the parking garage, hoping there's nobody in there.

Nobody's in there! Just cars.

But can she see the bugs?

Around the corner, mostly clustered under a Jeep and adjacent Audi, yes, there they are, roiling across the pavement.

Okay, that's enough to be calling emergency services with. Cell phone out of disguised skirt pocket, dialing 911. 

And while she's doing that, she notices that what she's feeling is more than the combination of swarm-sense and ordinary trepidation. She *knows* the bugs are a threat to her the way she knows that water is wet and fire is hot.

The bugs have noticed her. They creep along out from under the cars in her direction.

Come on, 911, pick up.

It is at this point she realizes she has made a tactical error by landing in the parking garage. There's not enough room to take off in here. If she wants to get out of this building, she has to either get past the bugs, get all the way to the roof, or jump out the side and hope really hard that her wings catch air before she eats asphalt. And she knows that last thing isn't happening.

"911, what is your emergency?"

Some bugs sprout wings. They are plenty small enough to maneuver in here.

She realizes they must be about to sprout wings a couple seconds before they do, and the resulting moment of How on Earth did I know that? is enough to make her trip over her words. 

"I'm, uh, I'm in the parking garage at ninth and commerce, and there are bugs, I mean the black swarm bugs, between me and the exit, and I don't have any combat anything, please send somebody."

"Ninth and Commerce parking garage," repeats the voice, "all right, I'll send a swarm response team. You may be able to outrun the bugs, or get into an elevator they can't enter before the team gets there."

"Okay, uh, okay." She turns and starts legging it up the parking garage, awkwardly trying to keep her phone on her ear in case the dispatcher has anything else to say.

The bugs are not quite as fast as her, though they're getting faster. "What floor are they on?"

"Third floor, or fourth I think, they're following me up." Keep going, keep going, if she can get a decent lead on them maybe she'll have time to call the elevator on the next floor--

The bugs chase her faster and faster; she's still gaining on them but by less with every passing second.

"The girls are on their way. Just keep running."

Feeling the swarm flying and hopping behind her is weird. Her swarm-sense seems to be seeing double, with one set of bugs lagging a few seconds before the other. She gets around the corner and into the next level, the bugs gaining precious meters from going over and under cars she has to go around.

There's the elevator.

It doesn't come right away when she calls.

Of course it doesn't. But she can't stay ahead of the swarm for much longer; she'll make a stand here with a wall at her back and hope.

There's a moment of almost relief when she turns around and sees that the further-back instance of her "double-vision" is the true one. But a skittering nasty about to leap at her face isn't much better than one that already is. Now seems like a good time to put those claws back on.

Individual swarm bugs are not very threatening. She can geesh it. This deteriorates her magic on account of ick.

Yuck. She gets another two, then takes advantage of a second's gap to delete the claws and put them back clean. 

Where is the elevator???

Ding! The doors slide open much too slowly. The swarm can get in before she can, but only a handful of bugs, pretty easy to step on or smush into walls in a confined space. They keep flowing in even after she's pushed the door-close button, though.

Now would be a great time for elevator doors to start working the way they do in movies, where they slide shut super-fast and crush anything in the way into a pulp.

The doors do not start to work that way. But better to fight part of a swarm than the whole thing.

She tap-dances on the crawling ones and swings one wing through the air as fast as she can, trying to sweep a bunch out of the air at once.

She is able to defeat the elevator contents, but not without getting a little chewed up in a few places.

Outside the elevator she can hear magic noises and girls calling to each other.

Oh thank goodness. She hits the button for the ground floor.

Down she goes. She can feel the swarm dying as the response team hits it.

A girl meets her when she comes out of the elevator. "There you are! You okay?"

No longer being viscerally aware of how much danger she's in feels good. "I'm alright, I hid in the elevator--sorry I wasn't any help, I don't have any weapons yet--um--"

Aaaand there's the adrenaline crash. Her muscles are aching and she's covered in death and some of the bugs got pointy bits between her scales ow. Leaning on the wall time.

The girl supports her at the less injured of her elbows. "Bess has a healing spell, let's get you to her, okay? You don't have to be helpful with these things, I know it's tempting but if it's not your job you can leave it to us."

"Okay, healing, yes." She lets the other girl lead her along, swaps her wings out and back in to get the gross off, stumbles at the change in center of mass but keeps walking.

"Hey, you're gonna be okay, you did good. I'm Jennifer, what's your name?" The girl who met her has scales, too, though hers are gold and she still has hair. There's also Bess, the healer, who has very conservative physical changes - she's just supernaturally beautiful and her green hair defies gravity and anything else she's got is hiding; she dresses like a runway model displaying somebody's blue period; and there's one who introduces herself as Nora, has black angel wings, and is doing the pants thing in leather with extremely elaborate tooling on the material and very aggressive accessorizing on the theme of copper Celtic knots. Bess needs to touch each of Margaret's injuries to fix them, and it takes a while per, even though she changes up her shoes into something less practical and adds a long trailing cape first.

"I'm Margaret. I'm alright, or I will be soon at least."

"Thank you!" she says to Bess as the pain fades from one minor wound after another. "And thank you all for getting here so fast, it's good that there are people who do this."

"It's good you were here to notice it," says Nora. "If those things get out of hand they're much harder to stop."

"Huh. Yeah, I guess it's for the best that I came this way. And I've already got some dart guns in the mail, so hopefully if this ever happens again I'll be in less trouble than I was this time. I hope it doesn't happen again very soon, though."

"We cover the whole county eight hours a day and we get called out about three, four times a day," says Jennifer.

"Sometimes that's a false alarm though," clarifies Nora.

That's definitely enough information to do some math about, but she'll do it when she has pencil and paper and steadier hands.

"Alright. Thanks again you guys, I guess I should go home now. Good luck with the rest of your shift!"

"Thanks, Margaret!" says Jennifer. Bess offers her an application form with a wink. Jennifer and Bess board motorcycles; Nora jogs up to the roof.

Margaret takes the application form with a little smile and heads home on foot. By the time she gets home she's able to outline the series of events to her parents in a calm enough voice that they don't lose their minds over it. She resolves to go out jogging again tomorrow in the exact same area; she is not letting one bad experience give her a phobia.

She doesn't fill out the form, but it goes in her desk drawer where she'll be able to find it again easily.

The next morning at school is pretty normal. She isn't in classes with any of the other magical girls - Mariposa and Larissa are older than her, Sumiko and Aaliyah are younger, and Josephine and Hattie don't go to the same school. And their club only meets once a week.

Larissa and Sumiko have the same lunch period, though, and they sit with her.

"Hi Larissa, hi Sumiko! So, you'll never guess what happened yesterday."

"What was it?" asks Sumiko.

"So I was out for a jog and I sensed a swarm starting in a parking garage! I went in there, found out where it was, called 911 and then booked it back out, but I had to kill some to get out and got bit a few times. It was pretty scary. I got to meet the local emergency squad afterward though, they were super nice and patched me up really well." 

"Ooh, which squad, there's four," says Larissa. "For round the clock and holiday coverage."

"The one with Bess and Nora and Jennifer, I dunno if they have squad names or anything."

"I think they're called Team 44 and don't have a real name," says Sumiko.

"Huh. I'd've thought having a cool team name would be one of the perks of the job. I guess if you have enough of them trying to keep all the names straight and find new unique ones would get kind of impossible."

"Yeah. It's the same problem with code names, the good ones are all taken. There are probably dozens of Mariposas but our Mariposa doesn't like her real name," says Sumiko.

"Yeah, I haven't even looked at what dragon-related names are taken, there have to be like three of anything decent and I like going by Margaret."

"Margaret's a perfectly good name," agrees Larissa.

"So's Larissa! And I'm not sure what codename I'd pick with your theme, actually, do you know what you'd go with if nothing was taken and you had a real name you hated?"

"Oh, Larissa's actually my middle name," says Larissa. "I'm not sure what I'd do if I were on the hunt for an elf-themed name."

"Yeah, everything I can think of is either cornball or would have the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien hunting you down with swords."

"I don't think all his character names are trademarked but so few of his characters are women, there's like... three," says Larissa.

"Ugh, true, and knowing him they probably all die tragically. How about you, Sumiko, got any names you wish you could have grabbed dibs on?"

"Nah," says Sumiko. "I like my name. And I'm not very strongly themed anyway."

Margaret nods. "I like having a theme, but you take 'just beautiful' and make it work. Speaking of beauty, I talked to that modeling agency Josephine suggested, so maybe I'll end up doing something there."

"Cool, I hope that works out for you!" says Sumiko, while Larissa nods.

"Did either of you do anything exciting this weekend? Hopefully more the 'job hunt' kind of exciting than the 'minor injuries' kind."

"I met with my flying coach," says Sumiko. "She thinks I could make it to the Olympics but only if I drop everything else to practice."

"Church thing," says Larissa, "we're Thaumatologists."

"Oh wow, the Olympics? That's so cool, are you going to go for it?"

To Larissa, "I wasn't raised anything in particular, but that's neat. If it's not too personal a question, were you Thaumatologists before you activated, or did you start afterward?"

"I might but it'd take up so much time," sighs Sumiko.

"Magical girling runs in my family," says Larissa. "I have an aunt and a great-aunt who are magical, so my family's been Thaumatologists for a while. On that side. My mom converted."

Sumiko gets a sympathetic nod.

"Oh, nice, I didn't know any others until I activated. I bet you knew a lot more than I did going in."

"Yeah, maybe. Lots of it is trivia that isn't important though."

"I suppose. Do you have a favorite piece of unimportant trivia?"

"For a while my church had a cryptid living in it?"

"Woah! What did they look like, what did they do?"

"You say 'she' about cryptids still, it's polite. She was a lizard ferret thing but like really long, like a big python with lots of little rodent feet and some fur."

"Oh, oops. She sounds really interesting."

"She was neat. She'd sometimes go across a whole pew on people's laps."

"Awwww!"

"She was pretty soft. And she seemed to like it if we petted her, I mean it was hard to tell but she seemed to."

"Awwww. That sounds lovely.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you! While I was running away from the bugs yesterday I think my magic did something!"

"Oooh, what?" asks Sumiko.

"My swarm-sense was, like, predictive? I could sense where the bugs were, but I could also sense where they were about to be. It sounds confusing but it was actually really helpful, I needed to kill a bunch to get out and I could see which ones were going to get to me first."

"That's very cool," says Larissa. "Does it only work on swarms, do you think?"

"Hard to tell! I hear we're playing dodgeball in gym today, maybe it'll work for anything coming at me."

"If it does they make us rejigger teams so no side has a magical girl advantage," scowls Sumiko. "If there isn't another magical girl in your gym class - not all of them are in the club - then they just load up the other side with extra people."

"That's probably better than not doing that, I guess. Otherwise one team might give up and then it would be boring. There's no others in my class, so I guess we'll see if I have advantages in anything."

"I always used to love doing boys against girls and now I never will again," pouts Sumiko.

"Yeah, it is kind of sad. Maybe if you ever get a class with a lot more than half boys for some reason."

"Maybe. Whatever, I should be getting gym periods free to fly, but they won't even let me do that."

"They really should be more flexible. At least dodgeball is exercise, the days when it's just a lecture on stuff we all know already are worse."

"Ugh, yeah," says Larissa. "I used to wish they'd do that? Like I used to be super out of shape. But now I'm not, so I wanna move around."

"Exactly! I never really cared about athletics until it started letting me do things like fly around."

"Poor nonmagic folks," says Larissa.

Nod nod. "I can't imagine getting magic and then letting it go away without doing anything. Say, Larissa, does your church have an opinion on that?"

"On turning down magic?" asks Larissa. "I mean, it's not actually forbidden, but it's discouraged."

"That makes sense, I guess. If there's a God who gives you magic it's because they want you to have it, but they won't insist on it, or something."

"We say 'she'," says Larissa. "Anyway, it wouldn't work very well to forbid it, all you'd have to do would be ignore it for a week and not tell anyone."

"God being a she would sort of explain why it's only girls, wouldn't it. And yeah, it's a lot easier to hide ignoring the magic than taking it!"

"Some people do try to hide taking it," says Sumiko. "Try to keep everything under their clothes or under their hair. You can do it if you try really hard to get everything you can out of every square inch of skin, but I'm so glad I didn't have to hide from my parents or anything."

"That does sound awful. My parents were really cool about it, I called them at work and was like "don't freak out when you get home and see that I have dragon wings" and they didn't. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to let magical girling stop me from doing my homework."

The other girls giggle.

When gym class arrives it is indeed dodgeball time. The teacher asks Margaret what her powers are.

"Well, I can fly, but I can promise not to if you want. And I have some kind of precognitive thing that might kick in for dodgeball where I can see where things are going to move before they do it. That one I can't turn off and on, it just happens or it doesn't."

"You can turn it off if you wear gym clothes like everybody else," says the teacher, raising an eyebrow.

"I want to at least find out it it works for dodgeball, though! I'm still trying to get a handle on what I can do. And isn't the point of gym class to get practice using our abilities?" Also the gym clothes are grey and olive green, and after a few days in her color-coordinated gown she'd rather not be caught dead in olive green.

"You can practice running covered in tinfoil or whatever that is," says the gym teacher, "in gym clothes like everyone else."

Why is high school so bogus. She'll wear her gym clothes (actually a conjured set, laundry is for other people) instead of the dress. But she's keeping the boots and the jewelry and the tiara. It's not that much more than some of the non-magical girls in the class are wearing. . . . Well, all right, the tiara is, but it's an awesome tiara, so there. Hopefully the teacher has better things to do than watch everybody coming out of the locker room and complain about their jewelry.

"Perry! What'd I tell you?" he barks, totally watching her come out of the locker room with jewelry. "Tennis shoes, and get the sparkly rocks out of here."

Larissa and Sumiko should have warned her that Coach was as much of a hard case about outfits as he was about push-ups. Blue high-tops and no jewelry. And she'll adorn her chest with opals under her shirt, where nobody can tell unless they minutely inspected her boobs before and after. Pretty much just for fun, though; it's not like she expects to be capable of magic in this state.

Indeed she is not. Dodgeball teams are assigned; she is on the smaller one but not by a huge margin.

Then she will dodge some balls, and throw some balls, and do her usual tactic of sweeping ammo when it piles up in the back of the gym, and learn to keep her wings folded tightly to present a smaller target.

The gym teacher does not otherwise give her a hard time about anything for the rest of class.

Then she will revert to her previous level of gorgeousness the instant she exits the gym. Also, now she's really curious if her spell will do the prediction thing with arbitrary projectiles. Something to test at the next club meeting, if not sooner.

When she gets home she has a message from the modeling agency asking if she'd like to advertise vegan coconut ice cream; this would involve chest-up coconut shell texturing on her skin and being posed as though eating a cone, and comes with money and also complimentary coconut ice cream.

Well, that's about as awesome as gym class was lame! She'd be happy to. What's the time and place?

To avoid having to squeeze the shoot into an afternoon, they propose Saturday at nine in Ricci's studio.

Great, doesn't even clash with robotics club. She'll be there.

The next day her stardarters appear in the mail. They're heavy when they're loaded - the ammo needs some heft to it to reliably squish a swarmling more than fifteen minutes old - but they're very pretty.

Margaret is so! excited! to have a set of stardarters! Her wings actually provide a decent counterweight to the guns when she holds them at arm's length and sights down the barrel like the website says. Time for some backyard target practice!

She has no supernatural aim improvements at all! Even if she goes looking for a swarm to take potshots at, the swarm sense is not actually any better than looking at things, only more omnidirectional and independent of light.

She does not go looking for a swarm! She just shoots the trees a lot. She also gets her dad to throw baseballs skeet-style, which produces the interesting result that while hitting moving targets is very hard, she can in fact sense where they're going to go before they do! It sort of rides on her swarm-sense in a way that feels really weird for things that aren't swarm bugs.

On Thursday, Larissa and Aaliyah wait for Margaret to join them. They have their bikes.

Margaret also has a bike, albeit her bio lab partner's rather than her own. She has also tweaked her skirt to be a bit shorter and more generally bike-compatible, and put her stardarters and ammo on her belt and bandolier respectively.

"Hi Larissa! Hi Aaliyah, how's your week been?"

"Doing good!" says Aaliyah, and Larissa nods. Aaliyah's in her silver-and-green getup. "Do you wanna pick a direction?"

"How about east towards the library? It's pretty that way."

"Sure!" says Aaliyah, and they head east.

East is a park, and the elementary school, and a bunch of nice houses with really old trees in their yards!

And around the third block of nice houses, Margaret says, "I've got a bad feeling about this block. I think . . . that my magic thinks something bad's about to happen."

"...like a swarm, or like a mugging?" asks Larissa.

"Like something that could hurt me. Probably not a mugging? This is a pretty safe neighborhood. I think it's that way." She points into a cul-de-sac to their right and scrutinizes it for anything out of place, from a swarm to a mugging to a downed power line. Her magic keeps insisting that something over there is not safe to be around.

And - there's a swarm! They appear under and around a park bench and start creeping around.

"Okay looks like it was a swarm!" She points at them, rather redundantly since all three of them know exactly where they are. The predictive sense kicks in as soon as they appear.

Aaliyah and Larissa have already drawn their stardarters and start shooting. Larissa's the better shot.

Margaret gamely draws and starts in. She's a worse shot than either of the others, but she can pick ones that aren't about to make any sudden moves and take a little longer to aim at them, and she does pulp a few.

They have to back up a few times as the swarm moves sluggishly in their direction, and Aaliyah has to run to her bike to get more ammo out of her panniers, but they have the whole swarm killed before it accelerates past a brisk scuttle.

"That was a lot better than Sunday! Also, apparently I get advance warning on swarms, that's neat." Margaret starts sweeping her ammo, starting with the large majority of misses since they don't have any ick on them.

"Did you get warning for the Sunday one?" asks Larissa. "Or do you have a shorter range?"

"I think the swarm-sense goes further than the threat sense; I found the ones on Sunday with swarm-sense first. It had already started when I got into range, though."

"Huh. Maybe you can make it better if you get your outfit more finely figured out," says Aaliyah, materializing gloves so she can pick up ammo and bag it without getting her fur gooky.

"Yeah, that would be good," Margaret answers, shamelessly copying the gloves trick to get the rest of her darts bagged up. "Do outfit improvements always help with existing spells in addition to getting you closer to the next one?"

"Usually. If you have a spell that's already basically perfect at what it does, it won't change."

"Nice. I'm not sure how the prediction thing would improve--maybe working on more different things, or going farther ahead--but more range on the danger sense is a good prediction. And of course whatever my third thing is is still hiding."

"The third is truth when the time is right." she adds, in a voice that comes with its own echo.

"Okay, apparently it's prophecies. Delivered via my mouth. That's awesome and kind of creepy."

"Wow," says Larissa. "Spooky."

"Very spooky! Fits the theme, though. Except it's less combat-focused."

"Yeah. It's a neat powerset, that's worth pushing real hard, you should get a style consultant," says Aaliyah. Larissa nods.

"I really should! I could get information about all kinds of things, wow. Maybe the people at Ricci's will know somebody good but affordable, I'm doing a thing with them tomorrow."

"They might, but I'm not sure, they'll usually be going for things other than 'God's own artwork', you know?" says Larissa.

"Yeah. I'll look around a bunch of places, read reviews, all that. And keep working on it on my own, of course."

"There's a pro who goes to my church but he only works on other believers," says Larissa, "or I'd try to hook you up."

That seems like a weird restriction to have, but Margaret isn't going to judge. She just nods. "Something to look into tonight. Speaking of tonight, do we want to do more patrolling before we turn around? We've got some more time before it starts getting dark, even with sunset being so early."

"I think one swarm's enough for the day but we can figure out a route to all our houses and bike it together," says Aaliyah, "so there's more of us together for most of the trip in case there is another manifestation?"

"That works!" She gives directions to her house, which isn't in this neighborhood but isn't that far off either.

Aaliyah's house is farthest away and Larissa's only slightly out of the way between Margaret's and Aaliyah's, so Margaret gets home first.

Where she does her homework and shoots at the trees some more and studies for the bio exam and goes to bed.

Friday morning, she gives her lab partner his bike back. "Here you go! You will be tested on the power of your cells. Uh, sorry, magical girl thing, apparently I prophecize now."

Her lab partner is somewhat disconcerted by this! "What's that supposed to mean though?"

"It means I say true things out of nowhere. I think this one is about the bio exam? I'm still getting the hang of this."

The bio exam focuses heavily on mitochondria.

At magical girl club, everyone's there except Josephine, who Sumiko reports said she had a headache.

Margaret nods at the other girls as they arrive. Hattie shows up last, having had to get here from the other school.

"Hi Hattie! Looks like that's everybody who's going to be coming." Then she turns to Larissa to ask if she has the targets and instead says "Her heart burns as bright as her magic, for you."

Everyone stares at her.

She'd be staring at her too, if that was an option! "Ack! So it turns out my precognition has no sense of discretion and also no off switch? I'm so sorry." Her fidgetable sleeve is getting quite a workout, she'll pop a gem off if she's not careful.

"Maybe you should have a more civvie outfit for regular situations," growls Hattie, "so you can turn it off."

"It could be useful in any situation, though . . ." But she does take off enough of her jewelry to prevent a recurrence in the next five minutes. "Maybe if I get my main outfit better I'll get some control over it." How is Larissa reacting to this?

Larissa's not looking at Hattie or at Margaret. Turns out her elf ears are a little mobile; they're sort of drooping.

Poor both of them. "So, um, Larissa, do you have the practice targets?"

Larissa gets them out and sets them up and claims one and starts shooting at it. Everyone else awkwardly follows suit.

Target shooting! So much target shooting! And no other things!

Hattie leaves early. Sumiko jogs to catch up with her and they talk out of earshot, then Sumiko comes back and Hattie leaves.

" . . . I hope she's okay. My magic is a jerk." She has in fact fidgeted enough during target practice to tear her lacework sleeve a bit.

That's not very fabulous, Margaret.

"She'll get over it," says Sumiko. "I don't know how soon though."

"I hope so. I should go home."

"See you later," says Aaliyah, tone apologetic.

"See you!" She heads home, complains to her parents about how even magic can't make high school not be high school, and works on her outfit in the mirror for a while. Now that she has a spell that could really benefit from improvement she's going to grab every bit of beauty she can wring out of her imagination, starting with a couple of silver bangles on the arm that doesn't have a sleeve.

The bangles are good!

Ah, excellent. Bangles=good. This is much more the sort of magical information she would prefer to be receiving. How about if they're elaborate chain-link bracelets instead of single pieces?

Those are even better!

Yay! And how about a necklace that's a web of tiny sapphires and sort of extends the pattern of gems on her shirt up to her neck? It might take a few iterations to get it arranged how she wants it.

Once she has that down the magic likes it a heck of a lot.

Putting effort into things and getting results is so rewarding! She has no idea how much it will take to make her prophecies more benevolent, if that's even a direction they'll improve in, but this can't hurt. Also, jewelry with no need for clasps is the best jewelry.

She tries wrapping her opaly horns in silver wires, two loose spirals on each one with opposite handedness so they crisscross.

The wires are a little worse like that.

No, that really doesn't work with the way her horns curve, does it? Off they go. 

Speaking of "opaly", opals don't all look the same, do they? She does some online image searches and cycles all her opals in unison from "white fire opal" to "black fire opal" and then "blue opal".

Blue is best!

Then she will check a couple different shades of blue and then switch to doing her nails! Right now they're just single pieces of opal; what if the makes them longer and slightly pointer and paints the tips silver?

Neutral.

Well, she likes them; she'll put then back if she can't find anything better than "plain". Tiny silver dragon silhouette on each middle finger, smaller than any but the most expert nail artists could do by hand?

Weak positive!

This suggests an experiment. If she fills in the dragons with details too small for the unaided human eye to make out, does the magic seem to notice one way or the other?

It doesn't care once they're really that small.

Well, if you could hack ultimate power with a microscope, somebody would have done it by now. Does the mild positive effect of the having the paint job at all increase if spread to the rest of her fingernails?

Yes, just a little.

How about flame designs instead of dragons? That still fits the theme in an abstract way, and she can make each one subtly different.

Almost the same, so close she can barely tell, but if she switches back and forth and pays close attention the flames are a tiny bit worse.

Back to dragon silhouettes, then. She's pretty proud of getting them to read as dragons that well at that size, even if she got to cheat on the manual-dexterity bit.

She should probably stop doing this and go to bed, she's got that photo shoot in the morning.

The photo shoot is surprisingly complicated for someone whose previous photography experience amounts to "aim a cellphone at it". They want her to try a lot of slight variations on the coconut skin idea, and then a lot of facial expressions, while they screw around with lights and suggest other additions, and they have to tell her not to eat the ice cream because it's fake ice cream that won't melt under the hot studio lights, she'll get her real ice cream after the shoot.

Margaret will coconut her skin in various ways, and learn to translate their words about expressions into subtle things to do with her face muscles, and hold the ice cream up to her mouth without actually getting any on her.

Eventually after about five thousand pictures she receives a few tubs of vegan ice cream and a check!

She will fly the vegan ice cream home to her freezer and then immediately head out again to a bike shop! The bike shop proprietor is a bit confused why someone who arrived on the wing wants a bike, but nods at "bike rides with schoolmates" and sells her a used three-speed and a can of blue spray-paint to make it match her scales. This eats a chunk of her pay, but only a chunk; she probably has enough left to afford a session with a style consultant.

Bike securely in her garage and a bowl of ice cream in hand, she checks out Elements of Style again. What does the world of magical girl style consulting look like?

There are a wide range of consultants, most of whom include photos of themselves in case you worry that an unseen style consultant might have a combover, and some of whom include pictures of girls they've styled. The price varies likewise, up to very expensive on the high end. If she'll take an amateur she can get half an hour for less than the bike.

She'd normally be wary about taking the advice of an inexperienced person on something she's not experienced with herself, but being able to perceive the magic's responses directly means they won't wander off into total wrongness together. Do any of the amateurs have reviews she can read?

Nelson really helped me patch my look!

Paula was a delight to work with and helped me get my third spell unlocked.

Now I can wear pants again! Thanks, Tori!

Margaret will look through the reviews, prioritizing reported competence over reported niceness but looking out for signs of total jerks, and end up on Nelson's booking page. Is he free at all tomorrow or Tuesday?

He has an open slot on his booking website Tuesday morning and another one from two to four!

She's not cutting class for this, but school lets out early enough that if she flies fast she can get to his studio for a 3:30.

Now she is his 3:30 appointment.

Then if nothing happens on Sunday beyond the new routine of cardio and target practice, and if nothing happens on Monday beyond the old routine of academics and robotics club, she will arrive at 3:30! With slightly tired wing muscles and wearing her backpack as a front-pack, but on time.

Nelson's there! "First thing," he says, smiling slightly, "lose the backpack if you can."

Margaret laughs and dumps it in a corner. "Oh, definitely. I just came here straight from school, I don't normally haul this much stuff."

"There's some anecdotal evidence that time spent in plainclothes can hurt you later even once you're dressed up. They only notice that in the very top tiers of professional magic, but they do claim to notice it - go to a family reunion and dress down to placate bigoted grandparents, have an off-day at work next Monday."

"Sounds like the sort of thing someone should do a study on. And I might save up for a nicer bag that works with the wings later, just in case I ever need to do lots of magic while carrying textbooks.

So, what else on my outfit needs the most work?"

"I like the sleeve, but it's the only asymmetrical element you have and it's not enough of a statement piece for that to work," he says. "Can you think of anything else you'd like to unbalance?"

"Maybe I could unbalance my horns, but that could hurt my neck . . . One leg as one arm, for harmony. Oh, it looks like my spell has opinions! How about a legging?" She extends one leg of her shorts out from under her skirt and into her boot. "Hmm, that helps, but it looks a bit plain right now. . ."

"Your spell does costume consultation?" says Nelson, bemused. "You could lace-ify the legging too."

"My spell does seemingly random true statements from nowhere, of varying levels of usefulness." She lace-ifies the legging, first in the same pattern as the sleeve and then in a slightly denser one.

Both kinds of lace are about the same. Nelson asks, "How'd it react to those versions?"

"No real difference between the lace patterns, but having it be lace at all is good."

"That might mean that this lace is better, but matching is also important so it's giving you a bonus when it's the same as your sleeve, and updating the sleeve to something more like this would be an improvement."

"Could be!" Shifting the sleeve and the legging through lace patterns in sync? 

Matching is definitely better and the magic liiiiikes - ooh, that one!

"Oh, you were totally right, matching them is better! This pattern works best of the set; think it could benefit from some gems like the sleeve has?"

"Probably, makes it matchier. I think maybe you want the gems a little smaller so they don't overwhelm the lacework."

Little tiny gems on the sleeve and the leg!

Yay!, says the magic, metaphorically.

"Excellent!" says Margaret, literally. "Say, what are your thoughts on decorative boot buckles? Yes, no, tongues shaped like tiny dragons . . .?" She inquires of Nelson and the magic at the same time.

"Have you tried metal filigree to match the lace? You could also go harder on the dragon motif, but you're not overall shaped very much like a dragon even though that's the obvious extension, so I don't think you're going to get a lot of synergy out of it unless you wear a lot of little dragon symbols. In general unless you're walking a particularly difficult razor-wire of minimalist elegance whenever you ask 'should this be less plain' the answer is yes."

"I guess what the magic reads as dragonish isn't the same as what a random human does, huh." Filigree metal buckles down the outside of each boot, in a pattern that matches her chain bracelets! And she can probably push the heels a little higher now, too; she's gotten better at using her wings as a balance aid rather than an encumberance.

The magic likes all these things, though it's less impressed by the high heels than the filigree.

What if she makes the heel itself out of metal filigree, huh, what then?

"Filigree's good, going to see if I can push that a bit . . ."

(She leaves it dense enough not to collapse under her weight, but that isn't much of a constraint if she goes for aluminum with the blue opal as a color layer.)

If she makes the high heel out of filigree that's good!

She takes a few steps back and forth to confirm that the weight is how she likes it, then adds "That helped!" to Nelson.

How about a single little sapphire in one of the holes of the filigree on the back of each heel? Or a couple? She turns around and points so Nelson can see what she's doing, and says, "Trying some gems, not sure how to arrange them."