"The magical girl and witch ecology was being actively managed by some critters called incubators, if magical girls and witches had shown up at the same time I would assume that some of them had created magical girls and then immediately force-witched them. Anyway, even if dungeons aren't what happens when an esper goes critical I still wanna take a look at one, see if my Fuckery Detector detects any low-hanging fuckery fruit."

"Sounds good, I don't actually love the equilibrium where I run around genociding proto-Crickets just because they started it."

"The fact that Cricket stopped being incredibly dangerous once the dungeon died suggests that...the proto-Crickets may not be culpable for the dungeon starting it...which is not to say I'm opposing self-defense against evil pocket dimensions or anything, just, hm. Don't like this."

"He doesn't remember very much about before his dungeon died, I waffle on whether he has meaningful personal continuity with the giant venomous most-dangerous-game-ing version of him."

"There are a whole bunch of things that could imply and I am going to very deliberately not pick the worst ones and freak out about them. Anyway," she goes back to reading the book. 

"Yeah, we do codenames here because of the whole superhero comic book culture - not sure why we still wound up saying 'espers' instead of 'supers' or something though. My codename is Traceless. Some places don't do it at all but Traceless has her own passport and everything."

"Yeah that's one of the big awful dungeons that comes up during confluences - this book doesn't really explain confluences, it's like the dungeons are cicadas or something and a bunch of them regularly come due in the same general time period every few years -"

"That assertion turns out to be based on a math error, it's actually the square of the population that increases dungeon probability."

"I might do my whole magical name thing for my legal 'esper' name, or at least the English translation of it. 'Magical Girl Ascendant Lucy' sounds more like a codename than Lucy does."

"It's unfashionably long but there is nothing otherwise wrong with it."

"Well, you know. I am not in fact an esper, I'm a magical girl, and magical girl names are about that long. I don't mind being called Lucy but I feel like the whole thing should be on the paperwork."

"Valid! And I think long names might come back into fashion soon anyway because we're like racehorses and aren't supposed to have duplicates. Since we can't corroborate things with our birthdates or anything on what is supposed to function as secret identity documentation if we're doing that."

"Some kinds of magical girl are supposed to have a secret identity but I am temperamentally as well as circumstantially inclined to skip it."

"Super valid, Traceless has her own passport because it makes it much easier to go to and from the States with a truckload of ammo but not many people are leaning real hard on the secret thing. Backlashes are sometimes secret, though, because they can be embarrassing and debilitating."

"Yeah, that part makes perfect sense." 

She goes back to reading the book. 

May continues to have commentary. Cricket purrs on her. She lets herself into June's apartment and puts her feet on the presented feet.

Not doing more than putting feet on feet feels deeply sad but Lucy's pretty sure that her own touch needs are unusually high. 

Lucy finishes the book and then has non-book-related questions. Mostly about how to go about clearing red tape to go visit a hospital and try to clear someone's backlash and maybe also obliterate some cancer or whatever. 

"If you don't think there's any conflict of interest concerns - I don't think there are but I mention this for completeness and also because I cannot shut up - then I can connect you with my agent, and she could take you on or recommend somebody else in her agency. Her name's Paula Bescond. Her texting style takes some getting used to but I've found her good to work with."

Lucy takes a moment to think about this, because it's important, actually. 

"I don't think there are any conflict of interest concerns. If it's inconvenient that I took the soul-shards back I can make other magic stuff. I think probably I need my own phone before how she texts matters? But that's probably easier than anything involving an agent."

"It's inconvenient in the sense that I was going to auction them off but I don't get saleable swag out of every dungeon. I'm sure you can auction other magic stuff too. I can probably figure out how to order a phone to my house if you at least vaguely intend to pay me back someday."

"I absolutely intend to pay you back as soon as it's convenient. Which is hopefully sooner rather than later. For most of the magic substances I can make it's more efficient for me to work with them than to hand them out to other people--including via auction--but there actually is one that I can make a lot of very quickly, my wand has the property that I can sort of draw in the air--or not in the air, actually--with it, and then there's a solid chunk of stuff-my-wand-is-made-of there. The white part, not the red part."

"Does it have interesting material properties? Dungeon materials are mostly exciting when they turn out to be, like, reverse-engineerable superconductors or something like that."

"...I do not know. It has useful magical properties; I have no idea what physical properties it has. I mean, besides the ones I can directly perceive by holding it in my hand."

"Well, a sample of it'll sell, not everything pans out and R&D departments buy on speculation. What are its magical properties?"

"It's a sort of a magical...amplifier, or catalyst? It's easier to do magic with it, I get a little more oomph out of my spells when I cast them with the wand, and they cost a little less mana, and the wand can do a handful of things that I just can't without it, like the making more of itself thing. I can also use the material as a substitute in a lot of magical workings that require specific materials, as long as I, uh, shape it, correctly, except I sort of mean a magical shape thing, not the physical shape of the material."

"If the amplifier thing works for espers you will be very very rich very very fast."

"That would be deeply cool. --I can probably figure out some way to amplify esper powers, that definitely falls within my theme's remit of making things better and more themselves."