Then she will find an empty parking lot and practice! her! magic! Back to trying to control the size and shape of her jet of flame.

She can totally do that! It works best as a medium sized stream. Very big is tiring, like trying to lift a lot of weight. Very small becomes unstable, but maybe practice will improve that. She can't seem to get the shape to do anything interesting yet.

She's a lot more interested in very small than very big, for now, though she does give the latter a try long enough to notice the tiringness. Can she change the temperature, as measured by the color? Can she change the color directly?

She can't affect the color directly. Changing the temperature is tricky, feels sort of like stretching... But doable, and it has the effect on color that a real fire would.

This is so great and she ought to take up glassworking. Also she ought to tire herself out the rest of the way and go home, she still has homework from her classes a million years ago this morning. Can she do two at once, one from each hand?

Stretch and try and- No. That's too much strain. Maybe she could start by using both hands for one stream, and work from there.

Her notes on things to do at the S.A. the next day end up looking like this:

* Flame size control

* Flame temp (do they have measuring gear?)

* Max flame size, if there's somewhere to try it safely

* Find out if the flame needs oxygen

* selectively burning only some things?

* Two-handed?

* Spear drills

* Sparring

* Mysterious third magic thing???

But first, school! She shows up in her raiment "over" her normal t-shirt and cargo shorts. It clashes kind of hard with her blue-green backpack but whatever.

She is the target of many curious students asking if that's really a magic outfit???

It's really a magic outfit! She can't show them her magic because it's fire but she can magically switch back and forth with her other clothes!

That is wicked cool. She's basically a minor celebrity, as far as the school population is concerned. They ask all sorts of questions about what it feels like and what she's going to do next.

Teddy boggles a bit when he sees her in Math. "Oh. You've finished your robot, haven't you?"

"Yes! Magic is great and my element is fire, I can shoot flames now! Well not actually now, we're indoors, but I have so many things to test!" She shows him her notes.

"Magic! You actually did it. And the genie came through!" He scans the notes. "We can estimate temperatures with pictures on a white background and color charts. Cars have oxygen sensors, the junkyard will too. Even if we don't know how to calibrate it, we can just look and see if it changes. I'm not sure I have useful input on the rest."

"Color charts is a good idea, it'll at least let us get a sense of whether we could benefit from getting a meat thermometer. We might need to buy an oxygen sensor and take it to a more enclosed space than the junkyard to get anything useful. Ooh, and I should see what happens if I try it underwater."

"Hmm, yeah. Or in some non-flammable gas. The mysterious third thing is probably your first actual spell. You get a spear, an element, and a spell to start. I think it's supposed to come in after like a week max. We can probably try selectively burning things with just a piece of notebook paper and a match or something, and an open bit of sidewalk."

"Yeah, I assume just using the flame a lot will help the spell come in. Selectively burning things should wait until I have better control over the flame size."

"Fair point. Let me know if you want help testing things? Er, I don't want to intrude, though. This is your thing."

"I definitely want help testing things! Want to come to the spirit association building with me after school? I'll have to do some paperwork probably but then we can see what kind of powers testing facilities they have."

"Alas, my lack of independent mobility strikes again. If you give me a day's warning I can probably come with - maybe tomorrow after robotics club? It'd be interesting to see the place."

"Sounds good. I'll scope it out and finish the paperwork today and have a more thorough experiment list tomorrow."

"And remember to put in a good word if you meet any spirits."

"I don't actually know if spirits hang out at the Spirit Association more than anywhere else, but definitely."

"Yeah, I don't know either."

Class starts.

In her next class (English), Mrs. White tsks at Margaret and tells her, "Miss Perry, you are out of dress code."

Margaret looks herself over. She's in a skirt and leggings and the neckline on her shirt is totally reasonable. Did leggings get banned while she wasn't paying attention? "What piece of my outfit is out of dress code?" she says in genuine confusion.

"I know you're very excited by your new abilities, but the dress code forbids distracting or attention-getting garments."