"Sounds good. After that, can I try with your flame? To see if my resistance handles other people's magic different from my own and from regular heat."

"Oh, no, that was your flame. I'm a battery."

"Ooh, that must help a lot with the rating scales. Can you combine powers you've copied?"

"Yes! It does! And nope! It's very frustrating!" She says this perfectly cheerfully. "I keep getting more capacity and efficiency and longer hold times and once in a while a wider grabbable range, but I can't mix things together or anything like that. And I've tried. Still not bad, but..." Shrug.

"Sorry to hear it. What are some of the other scales you rate stuff on?"

"Physicality - that's the cartoon logic scale - stability, aspect or element, level of effort, level of skill, cooperativeness, per aspect or element - that's how much it plays nice and synergizes with other powers to a first approximation - combat versus utility, flexibility versus stiffness. Mine's pretty stiff."

"Cool! I'd love to hear how mine stacks up once you get a better sense of it."

And here is the rec room! Time to hold her hand over a toaster. Does it feel the same as pre-activation, or cooler, or just as hot but the heat doesn't turn into pain?

It feels hot. Hotter than she could probably have felt safely, before. The difference in sensation between room temperature and above a toaster is a bit stronger than the difference between room temperature and picking up snow in her bare hands.

She can even reach her hand into the toast slot without discomfort. Actually touching the heating coils, though, that's too hot, and painful.

"Ow, okay, so I do have some non-magical heat resistance, just not as much as one might hope. Is that the sort of thing that gets stronger as I use magic more, or is it more likely to be fixed?"

"That's the sort of thing that gets stronger. Especially since it seems like it's part of your elementalism."

"Awesome! Let's go back to the gym, I want to see if I can get flames out of both hands at once."

"Try doing the same thing with both hands?"

Marxie is taking notes in her little notebook as they walk, a bit distracted.

When they get back to the gym, Margaret sticks out both hands right next to each other and makes a little flame, trying to be agnostic about which hand the heat is actually coming out of.

This is perfectly acceptable to the magic. It's mostly recovered from her overexertion a few minutes ago, though she still feels it, a sort of lingering not-quite-soreness.

Aaaaand if she angles her hands apart and wants the fire to go in a V likewise?

The end of the blowtorch can separate into two streams from the same source. It's tricky to split your attention like that, though the hand motion helps. It feels like standing on a balance beam - at any moment she'll wobble and - oop, there it goes, she loses the left side of the V in a sputtering flash.

"Did you see that, I definitely had it for a second there!"

"You totally did! I think once you get the V thing fairly steady, you can try pulling your hands apart while you do it and get two streams."

"That's the plan! Is there a way to try doing it underwater, since it's not actually combustion? I might be able to do it in a big enough metal sink if I keep the flame small."

"Bad plan. Scalding water is no joke, even if you're resistant to heat, you might not be resistant to hot water. Magic's funny like that sometimes."

"Well that'd be a nasty surprise to get. Maybe I should get a better picture of my resistance before I do anything else, go hold my hand under the hot tap or something." She pulls out her notebook and writes down:

Resistance testing:

* conduction [check]

* convection [check]

* hot substances such as water [ ] 

* body parts other than hands (foot?) [ ]

"Maybe so. Resistances aren't as fun as other aspects of powers, but they're good to know. Say, d'you want to practice spearwork a bit? Give your magic a break, then try the V thing again... You've got to be close to your first real spell now, I think."

"Sure!" Out comes the spear.

"Then again, I'm not really a spearwork kinda gal myself. I don't think I can teach you anything useful with that thing."

"Well, I could still use a break before I try the two-handed thing again; will it bore you too much if I just do drills for ten minutes?"