"--Yes ma'am," she says, and takes a deep breath and smooths down the front of her skirt and turns to her cheerfully. 

At the office Rhonda is supposed to answer a few more questions, but they already have her application information. She is photographed and they invite her to sign up for various introductory magical girl classes (she can do this back in the States, though since she can teleport she can probably do it somewhere else too).

She grins for the photograph and answers the questions and looks over what classes are available where when. 

Introductory Monster Hunting, Magical Resource Management, Using Your Powers.

She signs up for classes. It happens to be convenient to take them all in the States. 

Then she can go! If she has brought tribute for the Empress she can leave it over there but a lot of people skip that these days.

Yeah she's gonna skip it. 

She teleports home. Well, what she actually does is teleports just outside of home, and transform back out of her magical girl dress, and stuff her soul gem in her pocket and walk inside from there. 

She can't actually move out right this second. She doesn't have a job or another residential situation lined up. She keeps all her important stuff at friends' houses, so packing isn't an issue, but everything's just changed and she's going to have to reorient herself before she starts burning bridges. 

And it turns out it's a lot easier to cope with her parents when she knows it's optional. She could just teleport the hell out. 

She shows up to the first magical girl class in her dress when it starts (her parents still haven't caught on that they no longer have legal power over her, although she has been justifying her absences less and less).

Magical Resource Management is about making sure you're charged up! Apparently using magic uses charge, and you need monster byproducts to charge back up. Spiral-y negative thoughts can also use charge, and many magical girls go on antidepressants prophylactically so they can find a side effect profile they can cope with, or a few so they can switch if the prophylactic one turns out not to work should they have a real episode. The girl teaching the class has a photometer so they can see how charged they are now (as a percentage; different girls have different ceilings, and it can even sometimes change over time). If you get all the way to zero you will probably die unless someone rescues you right away. Here is a chart of things that magical girls do (exist, boost their physical actions, use telekinesis, use their special powers, conjure their weapons) and ranges for about how much power they take. Here is how to charge off a witch seed. When you are done with a witch seed you should turn it in to a Court chapter for disposal. There is a market for unused or partially used seeds, for girls who are for whatever reason not doing all the monster hunting they need.

That seems like maybe a good way to make some extra cash. She would ask more about monster hunting but there is a whole other class for that. She checks how much charge she's already run down and asks how urgently it's important to turn in full seeds and how to tell if a seed is full. 

She's at 82%. Used seeds can turn into monsters if left alone but you have a couple days. They look different, like so, plus you can't charge off them any more.

82% isn't an emergency but she should definitely go hunting sooner rather than later. 

She's very attentive when she shows up to Introductory Monster Hunting. 

Here is how to use your bauble to dowse for monsters. Not every monster has a seed; only the bigger and more difficult ones do. Monsters hide; when you find one you will enter an extradimensional space and will have to contend with mini-monsters, like a beehive, while looking for the monster's center, like a bee queen. When you kill that part dead enough the extradimensional space will collapse and you'll find the seed, if there is one, where you began. Monsters come in many kinds, though some are common and others are one-offs; here are some common ones that can be found and behave similarly all across North America.

Rhonda wants to know if other teleporters can usually teleport out of a monster from inside it, if teleporting is common enough to have statistics.

They seem to be able to. In general you can abort and leave a monster if you want to, though getting out isn't going to be easier than going in unless you killed a large proportion of the bees on your way in.

Good to know. How much combat experience is usual for new magical girls and, if low, how do they usually start off hunting monsters?

It's low, and many partner with a more experienced magical girl for a while, though some just dive right in and not all of them die doing that.

How many is "not all" and how does one go about finding a more experienced partner?

Did she or did she not affirm that she read the FAQ including "Life Expectancy Statistics"? There are websites, this teacher found her mentor on Abracadabra, she also hears good things about Puellae. Going it alone from day one is about 80% likely to get you killed inside a year.

She read the faq! It didn't have the buddy thing on it! 

She writes down both websites and some other personal notes. 

Here are some artists' renderings of the insides of common monsters (also called witches, demons, and horrors) with the mini-monsters and center-monsters marked. Any other questions?

Does she have recommendations for good places to do independent research on survival and strategy?

There are, again, websites, and also books, some of them very old and translated from Chinese and some of them newer.

She writes down all the websites and books. 

After class she signs up for Abracadabra and Puellae and starts looking for mentors. 

This one says she's just graduated a buddy and would take a new one!

She'd be grateful! Where is she, Rhonda's a teleporter so she can go wherever.