Even intimidating-looking cryptids are rarely dangerous, especially to magical girls, so when Dusk finds a giant snake with a mirror for a face in the park at half past midnight, she's not too worried.
She hasn't had a chance to see if her telepathy works with cryptids, yet, so she tries it, sending a friendly greeting - and she's promptly eaten. How rude.
"That's lovely! The school here puts on little plays sometimes," says Mrs. Baker.
That's cool.
How, uh - how firm are they on her going to school, rather than studying on her own or something?
"The school is there for a reason," says Mr. Baker.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he asks.
"Whoa there," he says. "What's that for?"
She takes a second to relax, very obviously.
She can't talk without her magic, and she only got her magic not even a year ago. She grew up in an institution, and it was horrible, and she doesn't do well with being trapped places, now, or with people trying to make her do things, or with people being angry. She's only sort of handling being trapped in the Avalon; if they try to stick her in a regular classroom right now she gives it maybe a week before she goes cryptid. If she even cooperates enough to let them, which she wouldn't, because she doesn't want to die.
"- go cryptid?" says Mrs. Baker.
"Monsters don't get a ton of options!" says the manticore kid, walking by. His tail is wrapped in bandages rather than the pool noodle option. "We just have to suck it up!"
Kids are like that sometimes, doesn't mean anything, she can ignore him. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
Yeah. Cryptids - her world's kind - are what happens when a magical girl changes to look too far from human. They might be people, it's hard to tell, but they definitely aren't the same people they were before. Suicide, basically, except it's easy and painless and nobody can stop you. She likes the part where nobody can stop you; she doesn't want that but there are plenty of things in the world that she wants even less.
The Bakers look at each other.
Mrs. Baker says, "I don't think we're the right place for you to find your feet here, but would you like another popover while we go tell the council?"
Dusk gets another popover. The kid is annoyed about having been encouraged to move out when they're not going to keep her after all, and there is a brief confused argument about whether he should move back in.
Didn't go well, yeah. Generally won't; she has some pretty good reasons for being picky about grownups. She was really lucky with her first set.
"Working on it. Uh, if you avoid letting any locals get real attached to you I won't feel so conflicted about disappearing you from 'em."
"I'd try to get you put with my mom, she's pretty easygoing and I can talk her into stuff decently well, but she doesn't live in the Avalon."
...that might well be better than staying here. The size of the place doesn't matter that much for how trapped she feels, what the people running it are like does, and the council just tried to assign her to some adults without even looking at her first.
"I can think of worse reasons to announce that I have a functioning invisibility spell but Ren's place is really very small and she likes having people over."
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