"That's a lot weird," says Amelia, "ew, people are buying bits of you."

"I hear it's a huge ripoff," says Vera.

"They're not bits of me anymore. You lose, like, skin and hair and sweat all the time. Same thing, just bigger, in my opinion... Ripoff? Like, they don't pay you enough for it?"

"If people paid for your sweat and fingernails that would be gross too," says Amelia.

"Yeah like they mark everything up a ton," says Vera.

"I mean, I made almost two grand in like three hours... Maybe I'm just weird for not really minding, I guess."

"Maybe," says Amelia.

"Wait, that is a lot," says Clarine. "I don't wanna shrink and I'm already pushing it being this tall but that's a lot of money."

"It's not as much as they sell the stuff for, not nearly," says Vera.

"Probably. But I can just walk in and do it. Owning a warehouse, owning tools to process stuff, boxing stuff, making a website, customer dispute stuff, shipping stuff, thinking of things that sell well, are all work too."

"I bet that's what they tell you if you ask about why you don't get a better cut," snorts Amelia. "Capitalists."

"You could always start your own site for it, or like eBay, and pay yourself 100%. I'd suck at it, so I probably won't, but you could."

"I don't wanna be a capitalist."

...Shrug.

Laura heads over to one of the targets and starts practicing with her stardarter.

Eventually the club disperses.

She thinks about challenging Jodie to a race, or something, or just asking if she wants to fly together, and feels... Strange. In the end, she doesn't say anything and isn't sure why not.

Laura continues to ride along with the second day shift swarm patrol. She does homework and reads on the patrols. She does not mess with her outfit on the move again. They'll find swarms to fight sooner or later, right?

Sooner or later, yep! They get a call and show up in a park, deserted.

"This one's pretty new," says Sandra to Laura, "and it's outside, you want to try hitting it a little before we get going?"

Here we go. Here we go. She (sort of) fought a swarm last week, and this one's the next step for that. Don't mess it up.

"Okay. Yeah. Carefully. And, you'll tell me where to go and when to back off, right?"

"Yup! Don't get closer to it than about the distance it is from that tree now - go as far as the tree and if it advances, back up, and we'll be coming around it from the other sides, okay?"

"Okay. I'm ready. One more question, stardarter only, or is my lightning okay?"

"Lightning away! We're outside!"

"Okay. Here we go!" She jogs up to the specified tree and watches the swarm, not too fast, so she won't far get ahead of everyone else.

She takes a deep breath, and lances out with gold-tinted lightning, guiding it straight at the ugly roiling mass and not at the ground or foliage.

It forks usefully, getting several in one blast.

Again, then. And repeat until it starts moving.

It does approach, but if she always gets the leading bugs preferentially, she can avoid having to move back more than a few steps.

She does move back those few steps, though, maintaining the distance they told her from the bulk of the swarm. Zap, zap, zap, zap. It's almost meditative.

Juanita helps - she has one stardarter per hand and can shoot them all in parallel, dropping them to let them dangle from ribbons on her costume so she has hands free to reload as necessary - and Sandra and Pansy wait and watch until the swarm's all dead.

"Nice!" says Pansy, clapping.

"Huzzah! Wow, that's a neat trick, Juanita!"

"Thanks," says Juanita, collecting stardarts into a bag she collects from the truck.