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owls in Heavenly Wish
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Her plan was always "cope with her family's bullshit until she could go off to college." She would need scholarships for that, but she's smart, and more importantly, determined. And that's still the plan, sort of. But it's come to her attention more and more, lately, that potential maybe scholarships in the future are unhatched eggs, and that one shouldn't count the chickens in them. 

And her parents are getting less and less bearable to deal with as she gets older. Her brother's...fine. Mostly. Except that he doesn't want to cut ties with their parents, which limits the extent to which she can keep ties with him, in the long run. She can probably hang on until she turns eighteen; even if she doesn't manage to get into college, she can still leave. 

But she doesn't want to if she doesn't have to. 

She looks into the ways to emancipate herself as a fifteen-year old. 

One way is to get married, which--ugh, her mother might actually approve of that one, but even if there's any overlap between the kind of husband Rhonda would be willing to have and the kind her mother would want for her, he hasn't presented himself to her yet. One way is with mutual consent from her parents, which, haha, no. One way is to join the armed forces, which, extra, special, no. 

One way is to become a magical girl. 

Probably her odds aren't great. But it would be a good thing for a variety of other reasons besides just getting her out of here three years early, so she might as well check out what the application looks like. 

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"...um, I have no idea, people keep offering me things for free." She looks around. "Looks like - gold and barter and American dollars and - Norwegian krone and - I don't recognize half of these."

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"Okay, neat--do you think they're trying to give you free stuff because you're Hua Cheng's friend--"

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(Lan Zhan made the mistake of attempting to examine the fossils and is now Trapped by an encouraged vendor.)

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"I guess that's probably why, now that you mention it!"

The fossil vendor has lots of stuff! Would Lan Zhan like a matched set of mammoth tusks? A narwhal horn? Perfect imprints of crinoid? A scoopful from the small ammonite bin? A nearly complete compsognathus skeleton?

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Lan Zhan turns and walks away briskly without saying anything. 

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The vendor yells at her on her way off but he's speaking Punjabi.

By the time they've gotten to the far end of the market Xie Lian has received a box of Kinder eggs, a forged license authorizing her to fly kites in India, and an ivory hair ornament.

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Wei Ying is examining the license delightedly. 

"There is so much neat stuff here!"

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"I guess if you ever want to fly kites in India you know where to go!" (Someone tries to convince Lan Zhan to buy weed.)

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ABSOLUTELY NOT NO. She pretends very hard that she doesn't see them or hear them or perceive them in any way. 

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"It's less likely than it would be if I weren't friends with Rhonda. But, like, using it isn't the point! Why does it even exist? I love it!"

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"I have no idea!"

There is a sign in thirteen languages for the casino, and the red-light district is marked with a silhouette, and the residential neighborhoods are marked by name, usually in just one language apiece.

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"Do you think she ever thinks about the fact that there are basically people banging inside her or do you think she just doesn't care."

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"- I hadn't thought of it like that so maybe she hasn't either!"

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"Well, if she's sorta witchlike, then her barrier isn't not her."

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"I don't think it's really like that!"

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She gazes contemplatively at her own arm. "Well...the human body has, like, a shitton of bacteria in it. And one of the things about bacteria is that if you put some dead bacteria in a petri dish with some alive bacteria, and the dead bacteria have some obviously beneficial trait that the alive bacteria don't, then pretty soon the alive bacteria have the trait. So there's probably sex going on inside everyone all the time. Necrophilia, even." 

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"Ew."

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"Probably Hua Cheng is smart for not thinking about it. And maybe Magical Girl bodies have less of that." 

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"Maybe!"

Xie Lian follows an unmarked passageway down into a chamber that appears to be an art museum.

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Oh. 

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"Oh wow!!!" Wei Ying darts around to look at everything. 

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Lots of stolen and fraudulent works! They're crammed together much more crowded than a typical museum.

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"This is so cool," Wei Ying enthuses. 

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"Isn't it? I'm not sure how she winds up with all this stuff, she doesn't seem to care about it at all."

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"You probably don't have to care much when you've got a whole cityful of people to care for you!"

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