The high school's robotics club has a supply budget, but it's not the biggest, and anyway she can't use that stuff for personal projects. Her dad is willing to donate scrapped car parts from his auto shop, but his customers have been having a run of good luck lately and he hasn't had to throw much out. All of this explains why Margaret is detouring through this junkyard on her way home from school, looking to score some free parts.
Ghost girl nods. One of the 'no comments' says, "It is! I can fly!"
"Ah, a classic! You've got a lot of green on you - is that more like aerokinesis or more like wings?"
"Aerokinesis."
"Flying with aerokinesis sounds tricky but totally worth it. I think to do anything like fly with my powers I'd have to get a hot air balloon."
"Yeah, fire's like that."
"You folk get anything interesting for your first non elemental spell? I can, like, flick switches and press buttons remotely, but specifically switches and buttons and door handles and things, not real teekay. It's a bit weird."
"I can tell what something is made of, sorta."
"Illusions," the one male 'bearer says, sounding kind of disappointed.
"Those are all cool but I really like mine. My arms transform into, like, dragon arms."
"That sounds pretty metal," the guy with illusions says.
They all want to see except one person, who rolls her eyes but doesn't walk away or anything.
People think the scales are cool!
The instructor arrives behind them. "I see six of you and my list has six names on it so I'm assuming you're all in the right place. Everyone out of raiment, please - don't worry, just a quick demo. The class is in-raiment."
Margaret de-scales and swaps into t-shirt and cargo pants, wondering what demo has that as a requirement.
Their instructor swaps out too, revealing jogging clothes.
"Now, this class is about defending yourself with magic, but it's important to remember that you won't necessarily be spending every second of every day charged up and ready to go. Constant diligence is exhausting and nobody can do it for long, but it's important to try to be aware of your surroundings. If you feel at all unsafe, consider breaking out the raiment. For example, if one of you came at me with a knife and I only notice and start to transform after you're on top of me, I'm in a much more dangerous situation than if I started it as soon as I spotted you, and can use my magic by the time you get to me. Now... Raiment on, go go go! One second, two seconds..."
"...Five, six. You all took between four and six seconds to get into raiment. That's about average. It doesn't sound like much, but four seconds is a long time when something is trying to hurt you."
The rest of the class is a bit more conventional. They don't actually use any magic for the first session. Mostly their spears. It's more like martial arts optimized against things other than random muggers.
Spears is a reasonable thing to practice with, since they're useful for combat and pretty similar for everybody. What level of lethality does the instructor seem to be expecting?
They practice to deter and disarm against human opponents, leaning on Spirit Bearer features like the regen and always being armed.
They practice to go for the kill against monsters. Or run - running is usually a good option if you even can.
Does 'If you even can' mean that monsters tend to try to corner you, or just that they're often fast?
"The more dangerous kinds of monsters can be pretty fast. I'll teach you some monster identification in weeks two and three, between other stuff."
"That sounds both interesting and useful!" She'll make sure to take notes for Teddy, in case there's something in there he doesn't know.
Self-defense class continues into 'how to watch your footing and fall properly in case you didn't learn that in phys ed's soujutsu month', and then ends.
Margaret meets up with Teddy at school as usual. "Self-defense looks like it'll be pretty useful," she says after they've exchanged greetings.
"Practical skills usually are. It's specifically magic self-defense, right?"
"Yeah. It covers both monsters and, like, muggers, but it's geared toward defending yourself with magic."
"Self defense is probably a good idea. I tried exercising. Well. I mentioned wanting to maybe exercise to my dad and found myself at the gym with him before I realized quite what was going on... Probably a good idea, even if it was. Unpleasant to begin."
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