'Yes. Charlottesville is odd for a city - most magical girls fight each other over territory, but because Charlottesville is a college town and mostly has nomads, the culture is different.'

'Fighting each other's dumb. How many? What are they like?'

'There's four. Only one's local, Delilah Reeve. She's fifteen, and has only been a magical girl for one year. She mostly keeps to herself, and doesn't hunt often.' A picture floats across - a gangly teenager, white, with pale blond hair, a greyish green-blue raiment that swirls around her knees, edged with a soft yellow, wielding a sickle.

'The others are college students. An Hu is a fourth year undergraduate, and has been a magical girl for ten years. She is from mainland China, and has not significantly interacted with any American magical girls.' An image of an adult Chinese girl in a bright yellow and dark gold raiment wielding an odd spear. 'Mallory Delvin is a first year undergraduate. She has made several friendly overtures towards other magical girls. She has been a magical girl for six years.' An image of a white girl in her late teens, wearing unrelieved black and wielding a handgun. 'Felicity Sommer is a new magical girl, like you. She wished to be a child prodigy, and is a first year undergraduate. She's been a magical girl only four months.' An image of a latina girl in her early teens or late preteens, wearing a frilly magenta raiment decorated with black, wielding a rapier. 

'Guess I should probably try to meet them sometime...'

It doesn't sound fun, though.

'I told their Kyubey you're here, so they won't be surprised.'

'You don't have your own names?'

'Kyubey is enough. Our society's different from yours.'

'I guess.'

She rolls over.

'I'm going to sleep.'

'Good night, Sue.'

She makes an 'mhm' noise.

(She doesn't sleep well.)

The next day, she decides she hates school.

Hates hates hates hates it. So much. The kids whisper about her a lot. She's been shoved twice, and then got in trouble with the principle for punching someone who started it.

(The teachers were whispering about her being a troubled problem kid picking fights with that nice boy. She can hear them. He's not a nice boy. He's not - )

She has to clear her soul gem a few times.

When Shisui comes to pick her up: "I want to be home-schooled."

"...I'll look into it. Can I hear your side of the story? It sounds like the teachers didn't stop to listen."

"He pushed me! And then told me I don't belong here and when I got angry said I should go running home to mama except he heard I don't have a mama because I'm dirty, so I punched him. Then he started crying and went to the teacher and said I was being mean."

"...Fair. I'm going to go yell at the principle a bit, okay? And then we can talk to - I guess a social worker - about home-schooling you."

She nods.

He pats her on the shoulder and heads in to use scary big words at the principle.

Arranging to have her home-schooled fortunately isn't too hard, though she'll have to put up with a few more days of normal school, and continuing will depend on how well she does on her own.

(He has so much work, he's... Mostly just hoping she can self-teach some... Or maybe one of his friends can help; he knows some people in the school of education...)

She avoids any further fights by preemptively growling at people.

And she takes her books and her notebooks and her pencils with her and sits beside Shisui in his classes, and is polite to his professors. She ignores the people whispering about how cute she is.

She is, actually, working on school stuff.

But she's also thinking about that night. About the witch, and Cecilia, and Kyubey...

She asks Kyubey a lot of questions. He's not very good at answering her.

But maybe someone else will be...

Kyubey said Mallory Delvin was the friendly magical girl. So, Sue approaches her first.

She's not too hard to find, at least, even during the day when school's in session and it's between Shisui's classes.

"Hello!" she says, when she notices Sue, with the friendly sort of smile adults tend to direct at strange children. 'You're the new magical girl, right?' she asks then over telepathy. 

"Hi Mal," says Sue, because it's less suspicious if she pretends to know her. 'Yeah. I wanna talk.'

"You doing alright?"

And, quietly: 'We should find a time to talk later. The telepathy has a pretty wide range, though...'

"Yeah. I'm waiting for my cousin." She sits down on a ledge and starts kicking her legs.

'Shisui trusts me but getting away's sometimes hard. He's trying to find me a tutor?'

"Well, I'm waiting for a classmate. Do you mind me waiting with you?"

'Does he know you're a magical girl?'

"Don't mind."

'...No.'

She nods, leaning back. 'You might want to tell him. It isn't safe, to tell random people, because witches go after people who know more... But he's your guardian, right? So telling him might get you more freedom of movement. And... It's kinder, in a way. And if something happens to you - he'll be able to ask one of the other magical girls what happened.'