Hmm let's go with bird girl. 

"Hi! I like your theme. Pin-tailed something, right?"

"Wydah, yes, thanks. You don't have... wings... or anything -?" she says with mounting confusion.

"--I'm not a magical girl, my sister is, but she is spectacularly bad at meeting new people so she asked me to come with her to interface."

"I'm married."

"And she has a girlfriend. But her power lets her copy other people's powers and she just got a tune-up and she wants to see what it did for her and also wants to be scrupulous about consent."

"Is it dangerous?"

"Nah."

"When you go around being really careful with things, people might think they're dangerous."

"She's concerned she might become dangerous in the future but thank you, that's good to know." 

"Anyway, my power can be dangerous. I don't really want to hang around and supervise, I came here to fly."

"Okay. Have fun." 

"Thanks. Good luck."

"Thanks!"

She goes back to Katarzyna and reports all this.

"Do you think maybe that means I don't need to ask." 

"Maybe!" 

"I'm going to run it by Isabella just in case." 

She takes out her phone and texts Isabella. 

I'm finished with my consult!

He started over from scratch and I like the result. 

I went to the air park to see if I could do synergy, had one conversation that went basically okay except for how it was an extremely horrible experience, realized I couldn't deal with a repeat of last time, and called in Jaromira to interface. She talked to someone who said if I'm scrupulous about consent I sound dangerous and every time I ask people they ask if it's going to affect them in any way and I say no *but* the scrupulousness thing and I think as long as I'm not creepy about it I can probably just mess with copies of powers but it seems important and I'm obviously biased and you're the most effectively ethical person I know so I'm running it past you.

hoo boy

so there's two things going on here, one are you wronging people if you pirate their powers, plausibly you aren't

two, is that a good idea, plausibly it isn't, a combat power could surprise you, or one with niche combat applications, and someone or something could get hurt

also it could be a context thing - if you ask in a way that's at all weird, like going up to people at the air park, then it's like 'why would you do that', but if you skip it and somebody notices they might just as easily be like 'why didn't you just ask first', you know?

Yeah. 

I thought it might be something like that, thanks. 

I think there's a case to be made that it's not pirating if literally all I do is testing but "There is a case to be made that not X" isn't the same thing as "not X"

I had a REALLY frustrating conversation that started with the other girl that started with me asking about magic and her pointedly going "My name's Dawn, what's yours?" which would have been entirely reasonable of her except that at the end she got my name wrong. 

She might have misheard, it's an unusual name.

The name she used had a different number of syllables but I suppose it's still possible. 

Maybe you should try to get in with those scientists who pay every magical girl fifty bucks to fill out a survey?

--Oh, there's an idea.

I have those sometimes

You do.

Thank you. 

You're welcome!