"Good. Once Xander's squared away I can fly over as long as I can get flying directions - a map'll do."

Flying directions can be provided! Is there anything else?

"Don't think so. Thank you very much."

"Happy to help!"

Okay, after the phone call is concluded it is time to get their temporary housing, settle into it, eat something, and, in Isabella's case, keep her appointment while Xander watches local TV.

Local TV features the end of a riveting news article on, uh... them? It's mostly about how Mirror fought a new supervillain called Doctor Dimensional who escaped to fight again another day, but includes a description of how he opened a portal to another dimension and there are interdimensional travelers in Chicago now! There's speculation about the interdimensional travelers and literally zero information about them that is not speculation! Local TV is basing this ridiculously thin update mostly on "anonymous sources close to the police."

Also included: Medical dramas! Magical girls do not feature! Tinker devices almost never feature! Police dramas, with supervillains being once-a-season things! Weather reports, with nothing superpowered mentioned in the slightest!

Meanwhile, Isabella has an appointment to keep! It looks like a perfectly normal office building except that the walls feature pictures of Mirror, a probably-man with face shrouded in a kerchief and glowing goggles, and a black guy of uncertain age with an I-hate-you expression and no mask.

Also, when she shows up at the desk, they have paperwork for her! Specifically, paperwork clarifying that the IAS testing is being done voluntarily at her request, and that they promise confidentiality about the details of her appointment unless and until there's a court order requesting otherwise. They also want her ID, though either the flimsy temporary card that got printed at the station or her alternate-universe ID will do.

"What kinds of situations cause court orders like that?"

"You rob a bank."

Pause.

"Or shoot someone. Or any other violent felonies."

"Okay but if I don't commit violent felonies it won't come up? - relevantly, one of my powers is shapeshifting, so I could see somebody framing me by claiming I was framing them. I'm not calibrated on what supervillains get up to or how often, my experience of this universe is basically 'it's like my world except there are supervillians and one kidnapped me'."

"If you don't commit felonies, it won't come up. If someone claims you shapeshifted to frame them, the police might question you, but they won't get a warrant for your powers testing logs unless you're resisting arrest."

Pause.

"Supervillains mostly commit thefts. Sometimes they steal money, sometimes they steal valuable things. There are... maybe a thousand supervillains in the United States, if you count minor ones, and usually most of them are in jail? Some of them have mental problems but most of them are just short-sighted and want to be rich and famous. They might kidnap someone rich to hold for ransom or tie up a superhero they defeat until they get away but you're not likely to get elaborately framed unless you really made one hate you."

"Cool, that helps a lot to know." Signatures signatures.

Then it's time for her to go down to the basement for powers testing! The basement is very heavily armored, with concrete and metal and very thick foam padding over most of the walls. It's also equipped with a lot of weird equipment of unknown purpose, very heavy-looking weights, and what sure looks like multiple guns, only some of which are probably loaded with paintballs. The guy managing it has glasses and a curious smile. "Mike Sanchez. You're Isabella?"

"That's me. At home there are plenty of magical girls - although if people are going to make that face at me I might switch to "puella magi", which is the corrupted Latin - and all of them have most of my powers, but presumably here you will want to test more than my unique spell."

"I think you're going to get people making TV references whatever you pick, sorry," he says. "But you've got it. Anything you can do that nobody else can do is something that might save your life or make you rich. Do you mind giving me the full list of your powers, before we get started?"

"Magical girls have shapeshifting and touch-range conjuration. You won't go far wrong if you think of it as a cosmetic power with utility side effects - we're not very good at any shapeshifting or conjuration that produces an effect we can't literally see, though a supporting secondary power of that whole shebang is that we have a mentally accessible mirror at all times. So I can go around with wings, I can wear as much jewelry as I want," she cups her hands and fills them with sapphires and lets them spill to the ground, but they vanish as soon as they leave her palms, "but if I want something to persist after it leaves my person it has to be organic, and I have to grow it out of my body. People do that at home, sell pearls and coral and unicorn-horn-type things, grow weird hybrid fruits out of branches they have sprouting from their heads, but it's kind of uncomfortable and gross so I hope that's not my best option. Shapeshifting works for healing but, again, only in visible domains, so if I break a wing I can stop having it and then put it back, but if I get liver cancer I am in the same boat as anyone else."

He nods and spends a moment thinking. "I can think of a few obvious ideas," he says, pacing back and forth, "that might be worth exploring."

"First power: Shapeshifting. You've already thought of the pearl option. If you have near-human mass and your wings can bear you, that suggests you can manage low-levels of super-strength, by making the muscles in your arms as strong as those in your wings. If you can shapeshift into anything you might be able to make very strong compounds to get light natural armor, and if it's strong enough that might be worth more than pearls, or just save your life if you do decide to hero. Question - do you have fixed or variable mass while shapeshifting? If you don't follow the laws of thermodynamics you might be able to find a way to displace a power plant." 

"Second power: Conjuration. Can you conjure complicated equipment connected to your clothing by a single ultra-durable thread? If so, that's almost as good as complicated equipment that isn't. Can you lift-by-conjuring? Presumably tiny amounts are possible if you displace air, but we can test the limits of it."

"Third power. Is the mirror full 3D sight, or just a mental picture of yourself? And are there any other supporting powers we should get to before we get too far into analyzing your first two abilities?"

"My mass varies, and I can fly. I can shapeshift into anything as long as it's neither too close to nor too far from baseline human - I can't do the first one at all, the latter is very dangerous and I don't have the guidelines from my universe memorized so I'll want to be conservative. Complicatedness of equipment is the sort of thing that I am not good at because I can't see it, but if I studied transparent versions all of whose parts were necessary and sufficient as seen, I might be able to make those? I can lift things by conjuring if I am already supporting the thing, like if I'm holding my ID card -" she takes it out, "I can make a thing under it, but if it's just near my leg or something I can't get a conjuration under it. It's a mental picture of myself but I can change the angle how I like and zoom a fair bit though not microscopically, just like if I were looking very very close up with my actual eyes - at whatever their present acuity - without obscuring the lighting conditions. I have to be doing the mirror thing, which displaces normal vision, in order to do any of my shapeshifting or conjuration things, but not to use my spell, which is stopping objects from moving."

He responds to the first parts and take notes and then stares when she gets to that last part.

"Stopping? In... what frame of reference?"

"I can sort of pick, if I'm in a car or something, but usually relative to the Earth. I haven't gotten it to do anything fancier than "stopped object in car follows car, rather than breaking rear window" so far but maybe you'll think of something."

"That sounds like a very productive avenue for exploration; there's a famous supervillain who started with a not-very-useful object-creation power, then got good at controlling his power's frames of reference and fought the entire Atlantic Six by himself." (He's taking notes again.)

He pauses. "Other questions about it to ask or test - range, legible targets, reaction time? How far away can you use it? Do you need to be able to see the object you're stopping? Can you stop a car crash about to happen?" He has MORE but he can get answers to these first.

"My reaction time is that of a normal human teenager with some practice. Range is a few blocks, I'm not sure what you mean by 'legible' targets. I don't have to be able to see it but I have to know what it is, at least more or less so I could pick it out of a lineup with dissimilar objects - I won't accidentally stop a mockingbird or a for-some-reason-moving television if it sounds like a car and fools me - and the general direction. I can stop a car crash as long as stopping one of the two cars will do that and I can tell which in time, I can't stop two things at once. My range and how many things I can stop at once are both likely to have room for improvement if I get prettier."

His note taking continues, and he's opening his mouth to answer her 'legibility' question when she says "Prettier" and he gives her the Look again for half-a-second before he straightens his face.

"Prettier. By... whose... definition?"

"We don't know! There's a religion defining 'whoever that is' as God but they don't especially have better evidence than any other religion. It's not literally identical to human concepts of beauty, it has other preferences, but that's how we say 'the quality that makes magical girls better at spells' for short."

He pauses. "Wow."

"... So by 'legible' I meant what sorts of things it affects. Can you stop 'all the air a foot from that post', or fire, or a bullet in a magazine, or -" he does not say 'someone's heart,' that isn't something you learn about by testing and it isn't something he wants anyone to think about. "Or just the engine of a car." Because a car suddenly stopping isn't going to be good for whoever's inside it.