The scale is remarkably resistant to frying! Though it seems to be slowly... Dissolving?

Hmm. That could he an effect of the frying, or it could just be that magically created scales stop existing after being detached from her for a while. She times how long it takes to be fully dissolved while under the torch.

Eight minutes thirty seconds.

Scales pried off and not frying take... Nine minutes to dissolve.

Fascinating. If she can find a hammer or similar to bang on things with, she'll pull one more scale and try to crack it.

One of the other girls exercising is curious enough to lend her weapon against it. "Of course, even a tap from me will definitely smash it. Magic damage, you know. I could probably dig up a maintenance closet if you really want, though. Getting to know your magic, good thing to go to the effort for."

"Thanks. Maybe we bang on it with something mundane for a bit and then you smash it?"

"Sounds like a plan. I'll be here if you find a hammer."

She can get a bemused handyman to lend his hammer easily enough with a promise to be careful. Her little scale withstands a moderate tap, but not a strong one.

"Well, it didn't even stand up to a regular hammer. Not sure there's any point in you hitting one."

"Yeah, probably not. Scales like that, you'll get tougher. You're, what, one or two special features on your raiment so far? You'll get stronger."

"Yup! It's great that this place has a gym I can go all out in with the fire. Maybe we'll run into each other again in a few months and you can try stabbing my scales then."

"Smashing. I got a hammer. And I'm not particularly invested in your scales but, sure, maybe."

"A hammer's a cool weapon. Want to spar?"

She smirks. "When I land a hit, it hurts. Maybe try someone else 'till you're sure you can take it."

"Nnnot really looking for pain today. I'll see you around." Back to blasting fire.

"Yeah. I don't spar much and I don't hold back when I do, is all I'm saying. Buh bye now."

Out Hammer Lady goes.

Margaret texts Teddy the rest of the scale testing results, and eventually she wears herself out and goes home.

At school the next day, Teddy finds her in the halls before class. "I had another idea about magic. Stirling engine! They can run on any heat differential. Portable phone charger! Might be more trouble than it's worth, though."

"Oooh! That sounds awesome, if we can get it small enough to go in my backpack easily. Tell me more."

"They don't throttle well and they're lower power for how big they are than gas engines, but pretty reliable. You can buy these kits off the internet but it's probably cheaper to make something with parts from the junkyard - should probably hold off actually designing this until after school. The hard part is going to be, like, making the electricity it generates match up to what a phone expects from the grid or a battery. I'd need to do more research."

"I think phones take DC, so we should just need the right current and voltage, but I'd want to check before sticking anything in my actual phone. We should get one of those portable battery packs and use the engine to charge that; I bet they're harder to fry."

"The power of Google compels me... I'll find you after class? Unless you're going back to the SA again. I can probably follow you there this time, I'm just not sure I'd get much out of it, is the thing."

"Nah, let's meet in the library and move to the junkyard if we get that far."

"Library it is."

To the library they go, after school.

Step one is looking some stuff up. "Looks like phone chargers convert AC to DC, so if I can generate DC I don't need to convert."

"If the coil is fixed and the magnets rotate, that makes AC. If the magnets are fixed and the coil rotates, it's DC. So we can probably get that to work with a little Stirling engine."