I see. 'Magical girls' is a separate category?

Magical girls, sorcerers and artifact users are the three kinds of magic users; it's possible to be more than one. My sister and I are magical girls; our erstwhile opponent is a sorcerer and an artifact user both.

Why girls in particular?

Well, it happens to boys, too, but less often.

'Happens to'?

So the way you become a sorcerer is you get a pre-existing sorcerer to cast a spell on you, and then you spend minutes to hours writhing in pain as the magic burns itself into various sensory organs. The way you become an artifact user is by finding an artifact that doesn't belong to anyone and is compatible with you. The way you become a magical girl--or boy--is by wanting to do good you don't currently consider yourself capable of strongly enough and then happening to get noticed by--well, no one knows what it is, really, but it gives you visions of the good you could do with magical girl powers and then offers you the choice to become a magical girl or not, and if you take it then you become one.

...I'm not sure I have the appropriate mental architecture to not consider myself capable of doing something, is that part strictly necessary?

I don't know. No one's been able to interrogate the thing and trying to pin down what a bunch of almost invariably adolescents were feeling exactly at a moment they nearly never know to be watching is an inexact science at best.

I'm feeling so left out. Even if my gender's not that fixed and constant.

Lots of people aren't magical girls.

Yeah, I figured. That does not make me feel any less left out.

How old are you, anyway?

Eighteen of my years, the telepathy spell should send you an equivalent -

Same year length.

Add it to the "what the fuck" coincidence pile.

...really? Three hundred sixty-five days and change? That is freaky. Er, anyway, why is my age relevant?

Magical girls generally activate as teenagers. Eighteen is--not impossible, but pushing it.

They can activate from anywhere on the planet, there is a—thing—that activates them and—is it everywhere?

He tries looking for a thing.

There's no grand sweeping ambient thing like that.

It does not seem to be everywhere.

Hm.

Yeah, he shrugs. So, I could spend a while interrogating you about magic, but, er. He looks around.

They are in a basement with possibly creepy ratios of blank grey cement to other things.

We're not in a hurry, but yeah, might make more sense to deal with this guy and continue after.

Mmhm. Want help with that?

Thanks but no thanks, at this stage dealing with him means contacting the correct authorities and waiting for them so he doesn't escape.