"Mmmm..." She rolls over, or rather, tries to - she seems to have gotten tangled up in Lilith while she was resting.  "I think I may well be, which is almost as surprising as everything else that's happened today.  ...Are you ready?  Are you sure?  I know I want this, but - not if you're not truly willing, okay?  I do...have options; they'll just...take longer, probably bind me to the SA more than I'd like...but I could do it."

"I don't have lot of better options to get a powerful person who's well disposed to me... And I did sort of promise. You should probably be sitting up."

Then up she'll sit, and nod.  "I suppose 'part of your harem' is pretty well-disposed," she quips, with a roguish grin on her face.  A bit of shuffling to rest herself against the headboard follows, and... "Well, I'm ready whenever you are."

Lilith takes a deep breath and, rather than indulge in a kiss or grope as she's suddenly tempted to, with great seriousness she holds her hand.

It's... Too cold and too hot and electric. It rushes up her arm and to her head and heart and she sees abstract branching potential, a rushing ignition... And then a raiment spills over her nude form, transformed. 

It's a sleek black evening dress, though the gently flaring edges of the sleeves seem to fade to a sharp emerald green; it is cut to both increase allure and range of motion, and the body inhabiting it moves in a subtly different way, even before it ripples, shifts, as - (she reaches out to claim a name; Ophelia shall do -) Ophelia works their first spell, reshaping her form using a muscle she never knew she had so dearly lacked until this very moment -

"Oh, my.  This is quite the surprise to find within yourself.

"You may have more allies than you thought, dear Lilith.  Well done, truly~"

"You may call me Ophelia.  It is a pleasure to meet you."  She rolls to a standing position, her silver snake-fang earrings swaying gently, and brings the hand that she's still holding to her lips.  "I believe this development bears further investigation, however, and I am ill-suited to pursuing that."

Then, because she's been inspired to mischief by Lilith's example, she leaves someone else in that position as she dramatically throws an arm wide as a distraction from watching the shift, not because it is necessary, but because it is good habit.

-- the girl in a sharp indigo/blue gi, that seems to show subtle signs of armor underneath, blushes furiously at the position Ophelia has left her in, and only barely doesn't jump away in her startlement.  "Um.  Hi?  I think I'm...basically, the alternate universe version of - we'll call the - most prominent state in Annabel phase-space - Diana; the inspiration she took from Wonder Woman is pretty obvious in retrospect - anyway, her, you've met her - and I'm her, but off to the left a bit?  More...analytic, than her baseline passionate.  Which explains why Ophelia tapped me for this, but hardly explains the position she left me in!  You, are a bad influence on her!  -- that was a joke, we all like you, and I certainly couldn't possibly mind an opportunity to kiss a pretty girl who's - erm.  Hopefully consenting; it was just surprising."  She pokes at her blush with gentle fingers as it starts to fade, and hums consideringly.  "I...think this was already something that was...latent?  And this just brought the process to the fore; it felt like an injection of raw possibility, in a way few other things could be, so seizing the opportunity to take more choices is just flatly optimal.  I wouldn't say we consciously thought that through in so many words, mind, but it did happen.

"Um.  Names.  ...Luna works, I suppose?  As...More of a codename than a truename; that name I haven't figured out yet.  It's a pleasure to meet you, Lilith."

"...Awesome. Hello! I thought this might happen." She breaks into a grin. "You... Y'all are gonna be many times as flexible as a normal spirit bearer, and quite possibly more powerful too. It'll be a riot to watch."

"Yessss.  I can't wait to surprise the fuck out of my enemies."

...She promptly squeaks in surprise at having said that!  "Diiiii, not everything is a fight!  I mean, yes, I thought about the combat applications of this unparalleled versatility first, too, especially considering that it might be possible to blend, but it's also really useful in disaster response contexts!"

Diana, apparently, chuckles as the gi becomes the burnt orange underlayer to matte crimson armor, similar to what she wore earlier while she was on the hunt - simple shinguards and armguards, a breastplate, a helmet; none of these are allowed to impact her range of motion or flexibility.  Her spear, the spear that is Diana's, also finally shows up - Diana reaching out to make sure she has her magical girl weapon, then turning it around and around in her hands before it vanishes wherever unworn raiment goes.  (Interestingly enough, it came with a sheath.)  "...I owe you."

(It almost sounds like a declaration of love.)

She eyes the spear a bit warily but smiles and says, "So we've got Ophelia in black, Luna in blue, Di in orange? Anyone else?"

The spear's gone now; she doesn't need it here of all places!

"I believe we have a...Clara in...white-and-green, and there is also a Sylvia; she's...metallic grey with earthtone accents.  And I'm Diana, yes."

"Quite the harem I've suddenly acquired."

And she is blush.  ing.  fiercely.

"I'm so doomed, sooo dooomed, the epitaph on my tombstone will be 'spontaneously combusted because of a pretty girl flirting with her too hard'," she does not continue the sentence, and instead watches a small flicker of fire dance between her cupped hands.  "Though I believe that Ophelia in particular would bite you if you thought yourself above her, hierarchically speaking.  That lady tops."

"No, no, if I have any aspirations to command you, I'll restrain them to brainwa- I mean, completely optional suggestions." She smirks challengingly. "I don't know if I'll get along with all of you equally, but that's life."

She must know how hot that sounds, she's being such a tease.

"I think she likes you too, just in a...'this girl is Ours now, or a valued peer, should she wish' sort of way?"

"A knight of the realm, am I? Inviting the dragon to the round table?" She laughs. "I do think that idea about saying Culpeper Cut did it is probably a good one, but it might also backfire if the truth ever comes out. Though... I admit I don't really know how magical girl society works. What with being a duplicitous menace too scared to dare talk to one before today."

"I don't think there's really anyone not in the Spirit Association who does.  But I...did note some evidence of a stigma, for others that got powers this way, rather than from genies or spirits.  Still...I think I need a decent service record, before I can start trying to defuse that stigma, and heavily implying Culpeper Cut did it will, probably last long enough that nobody will notice me updating the paperwork and coming out about that in turn."

"You're going to be better at politics than me. I'm kind of a one-on-one gal. Do let me know how I can help, er, safely, though."

"I will, darling."

This offer prompts thankful cuddling!

Cuddles!

"So, after I put my clothes back on, or not, what's next for the newest rising star of Massachusetts? You gonna go to that stuffy school in full raiment? I think they have a uniform code, right?"

And a girl dressed in an almost shiny white skirt, shirt, and boots, accented with green thigh-high socks, and a green stripe looping over one shoulder in a charmingly asymmetric way, and a white-and-green catgirl-ears headband, twirls into existence!  "I probably could!  And really tweak their noses by being entirely within the girls' dress code, so either they have to admit Spirit Bearers aren't godly, or admit we're a girl!"

"Might try to get you to lose the ears. Or 'not gratuitously transform', and not listen if you explain, ugh. Oh hey, by my count you're already growing, that outfit's a bit more than a usual totally fresh newbie already - does it feel easy to switch out?"

"Headbands are legal!  And, like, none of us actually find the outfits of the others...objectionable?  Er, well, Ophelia's is a bit much, but I think we think she might have another one tucked away somewhere, somehow?  For politeness?  She has more, moods, than we do, within her person-space, because..."  It sounds like Luna's delivering this lecture, now, "she's basically - if you imagine us as vectors branching out from a centerpoint, and then sort of ballooning out into cones of self-ness, Ophelia's pointing a lot more 'opposite' everyone else?"

"And I think transforming is easier than it started out as!"  And that was Clara again!

"You're gonna knock 'em dead." Hug! Smooch!

And then she goes for her discarded clothes, tossing aside the blanket.

"I wanna talk to my friend, uh... I've got a couple. Mostly human but a couple who are not human and who might be happy to meet you. See if they want to some time."

Hug and smooch!  Yay!  They are returned!  "Oh, thank you!  And that sounds wonderful!  I like making friends!"  Clara positively bounces with excitement, doing that not-quite-a-clap thing and clasping her hands together as she actually does bounce, seeming incredibly light-on-her-feet!  "...You should have our phone number for that!  So you can keep in touch properly!"

Now where did she...

Aha!  There's paper!  And a pencil!  And her phone number!  And she presses a kiss to the paper despite not actually having any lipstick on save anything Lilith left with her kiss just now, then presents it to Lilith with a bow and flourish!  Excitedly!

(Clara, it is rapidly becoming clear to everyone, is a golden retriever, running via emulation on human hardware, despite only having the BIOS for cat-OS.)

(Which is to say, she's a dog, in a human, that's configured like a cat.)

Lilith starts getting dressed. "I'll call you some time for sure. I'm not online a lot of the time though."

"Of course!  You lead a busy life, and it goes many places the network doesn't reach!  And regardless, you do not actually owe us an answered phone call!  Still, let us also give you our email, speaking of online things, for potential asynchronous communication!  ...We shall also take this as an excuse to learn how to encrypt emails properly, according to Luna!"

Annnnd email and, hug Lilith again, and, "Probably going to the Spirit Association now, which I imagine you definitely don't want to do, but if you're going somewhere from here, we could give you a ride closer first?"

"Nah, I need to actually sleep. Also I barely use email because uh. You know how monsters break shit just by existing?"

"Oh, damn, that must fucking suck.  Is it, like, all the - no, my phone didn't notice you...I wonder if it's possible to twist somehow, or store and unleash later - you're clearly dampening that somewhat, somehow...

"Anyway, those questions aren't particularly time-critical; in the short-term, we really must go do the Spirit Association thing, and hope you enjoy your rest!"

"I'm basically telling it to fuck off I'm being sneaky, but eventually it goes 'no fuck you', like, really hard, especially on shit I need, so I have to find, uh, acceptable outlets."

"Ooh, do medical debt records.  And student loans.  If you aren't already.  Those are heinous."

"Find me bee-and-ee instructions for the sole point of failure of a data warehouse containing those things and nothing like medical treatment records that'll kill people and I'll consider it? I mostly use junkyards now."

"Oh, yeah, the big debt collector shits aren't hospitals, or even insurance companies - they're the, like, private shits that're probably half your spam calls by volume, who take on the debt nobody else collected.  I'll see what I can do."

And, with a two-finger salute, out she goes!

The state of Maryland awaits her! She gets a couple of immediate curious glances from passers-by at the sight of visible raiment.

She's still wearing Clara's normalish-clothing raiment - though it's now accented in her blue after several tries at stretching the switch-spell - but it is indeed unusual nonetheless.  She waves politely, but perfunctorily, at those that glance at her; she has business to complete, and can't spare much time to chat right now, unfortunately, if she's asked.

Nobody actually tries to come up and chat with her as she goes to her car, though a six-ish year old girl out with her mom jumps around and cheers at being waved back at, after the sudden raiment-shift.

Luna smiles, because childish enthusiasm is infectious.

Unfortunately, despite Clara wanting really hard about it, she suspects that the end result of talking to children unprepared would probably be a child that's crying because of something she said.  Not a good look, that.  So, into her car she goes, after giving the kid a thumbs-up, and on to the Spirit Association ...lodge?, nearest her.

They have offices. And a few 'facilities' but those are even less public. There's one that looks like a one-room sort of place in Hagerstown, and two bigger ones in the middle of Washington and Baltimore, further away.

...fuckit.  She'll - take the metro to DC, get a sense of the crowd's sentiment around MGs and the local offices on the train and then perhaps Wonder At The DC-ites Why Nobody's Fucking Said Anything About A Certain Cop Yet.

Also definitely yell at someone about Culpeper Cut's misleading description.

Well, technically, Clara will be doing the train-gossipping part of this plan!  She likes talking!

People on trains mostly either talk about whatever's on their mind with their companions or sit there on their phones, not talking. Aside from some passing nods/smiles/hellos, that's probably what'll happen unless she actually invites a conversation somehow or another.

Well, she'll certainly do that if anyone seems to want to talk, but no, she's actually just here to prime these people to think about magical girls, eavesdrop until the subject comes up, and then maybe encourage the discussion!

(...Ophelia lurks behind her viridian eyes, perhaps steering Clara's actions towards emoting, though not feeling, evident distraction from the people she's not presently looking at...)

"Hey, is that Viridian?"

"No, Viridian's blonde. She must be new, look at the..." They trail off. "Is she even magic, d'you think? You know what they say about assumptions."

"Nooo I actually don't. Why did you assume I did?"

There's a quiet whap and a giggle.

Oh that decisive turnaround gets a coquettish giggle.

"I'm not Viridian, no; would you mind telling me a bit more about my future coworkers?"

"Eep!"

"Um, hi! Um." It's a pair of tween girls. Middle schoolers. "Everyone from home knows Viridian Bloom, miss spirit bearer. She, uh, does flower shows and things. And makes plants that smell awful to monsters."

"She's a showoff," the assumption-maker says. "But I mean, magic is pretty cool."

"It really is cool, isn't it?  A little bit scary 'cause we all know what I'm going to have to do with it, but you're right that magic is pretty cool," she says, quietly, but in a way that still carries, with a soft smile on her face.

(Meanwhile, Ophelia dedicates her mental resources towards parsing the things the other passengers are saying, as Clara natters on to the tweens, seemingly oblivious.)

"And, yeah, I'm pretty new; I haven't even been properly magical for a whole day yet, though I've kind of been doing the stuff I could train for a leeetle bit longer than that, so I'm heading up to the DC office to see if they've got ways to stretch my magic a bit more than I could in my backyard - I don't really figure a one-room office has much training equipment worth mentioning, y'know?  And that's the closest one!  But you can practice spears anywhere!  Mostly; a friend of mine told me that the basic katas we all learned in gym are, well they're good at what they're for, but they're kind of not built for transitioning to magical combat, where you've got environmental effects everywhere?  I wouldn't really know as well as she might; I'm a charmer, - um, not literally! - just someone who likes making friends and helping people, and not a weaponmistress!"

"Stuff you could train? Like, before you got magic? I thought nobody knows what they'll get!"

"Are you a legacy bearer? Did you meet a ghost?"

Someone mutters, "Kids these days, talking about that in public..."

Someone else is saying, "Why's a magical girl on the train, don't they all have limos or something? It doesn't look right."

"Don't be so loud, Jim, you're embarrassing us. They can take the train just like anybody else."

"She's being loud."

"Nobody knows...for sure.  But that doesn't actually mean that you can't have an idea of the kind of person you are, and the ways that that sort of personality has historically expressed when you're enkindled, plus, of course, spear drill, and - just, tactics; some videogames actually mimic real magical effects, monsters, and environments we might encounter, but, uh, trying to get out of homework that way...doesn't work... - monster-spotting, park ranger stuff...I'm actually still going to take a lot of the courses that were my second-choice career lead-ins, for firefighters, EMTs, and so-on y'know?  There's a lot of magical-girl skills that aren't about magic.

"No, I didn't meet a ghost, and if you do - be kind to her, and support her as best you can.  It might be hard, but as with someone who's mundanely depressed, sufficiently dedicated and intelligent support can bring a lost girl back to her shining self.  ...I've heard this is something you can also do with the spirit-bearers who've just kind of...stopped actually having the internal experience of being people, jar them out of the routine they're sleepwalking through, which...I'd think the claim of 'losing the ability to have internal experience' any amount absurd if someone hadn't actually seen it start to happen on their watch, but, apparently, sometimes you get magic zombies - that are entirely unlike movie zombies in any way besides not having any apparent higher thought, but I just refuse to appropriate 'golem' for this state when the Golem of Prague just wasn't like that, however it happened, and certainly most of the thusly-dissociated aren't Jewish!"

...Those background comments start a list, 'Magical Girl Problems To Watch Out For:'

• Elitism and public perception thereof.
• Relatedly, beware getting caught in an SA echo chamber; that's as bad as cops.

"...Golems are Jewish?"

"I heard park rangers have to know everything spirit bearers do but better. I used to want to be a park ranger but it's actually really hard apparently!"

"Yep.  The original story, that coined the word or at least brought it into the public consciousness, is that of the Golem of Prague, which is set in, what, the 1200s or so, but only proven to date to a few hundred years after that, if I recall correctly - which I may not!  I'm not guaranteed to be right just because I sound like I know things!

"Anyway, wanna hear the story?  It's honestly kind of dark, but it's not, like, gory, just that - well, there's a lot of bad things that happened to Jewish people, and this is a story that's got one of those times as a backdrop."

She's assuming they do, honestly.

"So, back in the 1200s or so, whoever was in charge of Prague had started harassing, expelling, and otherwise trying to attack the Jewish people in his country, because...honestly a diatribe about persecuting minorities because outgroup-hate is politically convenient is perhaps a bit much for a light train ride, but - yeah, whoever this was, he wanted the Jews gone.  So the people of Prague, the Jewish people of Prague, they go to their rabbi, a wise man indeed, and they ask him what to do about this.  And, well, there's not very many good solutions here, especially because the one thing Jewish religious law, as first laid out in the Torah - which some of you may know as the Old Testament - and expanded upon by thousands of years of rabbis debating about things in the Talmud, definitively says you shouldn't do, despite a doctrine of breaking any law to save lives otherwise - well, you can't lie about being Jewish.  You can't pretend to renounce God to save your life and still be a Jew.  But.  The rabbi is not just wise in the Law, he is wise in the mysteries of God.  And so, he gathers some clay, that which of man was made, and sculpts it in man's image - although I'm given to believe the Golem of Prague was only about as tall as you, even if his arms and legs were about as big around as my splayed-out hand.  Anyway; the wise rabbi has sculpted his golem, but it is not yet alive, and it must live, if it is to defend the Jewish citizens of Prague from their oppressors.  So he writes four characters into the clay of the golem's forehead, that I believe spelled emet.  I'm not actually sure I remember the precise meaning; I suspect it's wisdom, of a sort.

"And this simply works!  The Golem of Prague protects Prague's Jews from the attempted purge.  But...the rabbi is a wise man, and he knows the Golem cannot remain as it is, now that the threat is gone.  Why that is so, I do not know, but he is wise.

"So he takes his thumb to the forehead of the golem, where he wrote emet a long time ago, and smudges out, not the name, not the word, but one, single, character - transforming emet - wisdom - into met - ...death.

"And that, ladies, gentlemen, and other distinguished guests, is the story of the Golem of Prague."

"And, to return to your comment...yes, park rangering is really difficult, what with the way you're so often out on your own in the woods where camouflaged monsters and bears and moose - moose, which are tough enough and big enough orcas, sometimes erroneously called killer whales, will have opportunities, and try, to eat them - are, trying to rescue people who did something dunderheaded.

"If a park ranger says something, if you see a trail sign, you listen to that, because it's there for a reason, and you don't want them to get hurt rescuing you, you know?  I really admire them - they do so much unsung work cleaning up inconsiderate people's messes, while the people with magic get to be flashy about what they're doing.

"Not to dismiss the work only spirit bearers can do, mind; I wouldn't have worked as hard as I did to become one if it wasn't worth doing - but the people who just quietly do the work that keeps society moving are heroes as much as any spirit bearer.  So take a look around you, and thank the garbage truck crew, the janitorial staff, the water treatment plant people, the long-haul truckers, the farmers, the postal workers, the fast food people, the train operators, the mine workers...The people who do the things you'd only notice if they stopped."

"Wow, you sound like you had good public relations lessons," Sarcastic says. 

"No, no, like she came right out of Garden of Elements~! She reminds me of Chrysanthemum Flare!"

She blinks, surprised despite the fact that she is heavily leaning on the lessons of those of her who were born for PR work.  "I do?  Well, I suppose I've always been a bit of an idealist!  And a believer in the power of making friends," she smiles softly at her own secret in-joke.  "Though I'll admit, I'm new enough to this whole thing that," she stage-whispers, "if there are PR classes, I haven't even been enrolled yet!"

A part of her mind is still ticking away, beneath the façade of giving these two kids rapt attention - which she legitimately is, she supposes; it's just not her full attention.

The rest of it is watching the crowd, seeing how they react to what she says.

People seem to be regarding the interaction as something between an annoyance- Loudness on a train- And cute/heartwarming in a Good Public Servant kind of way. Someone's surreptitiously recording with a blocky video camera held low, and arguing gently with his friend about whether it's illegal to record kids.

"Do you watch Garden of Elements?"

"What's your magic, anyway?"

"Sometimes!  I watch a lot of science shows, martial arts competitions, those survivalist competition pieces - stuff that's a bit more work-related - but I do have a soft spot for the power of friendship; Garden of Elements was part of what inspired me to pick up the spear when I was a little kid, because I wanted to be like the magical girls and boys on the TV, you know?"

"As for my magic..."

Luna reaches out, carefully, and summons a bit of water, floating in a globe, before slooowly spinning it out into a thin disk, and then pinching it into an upside-down 'whirlpool' that becomes a (neatly-contained) 'fountain' over her outstretched palm okay she's just going to flex the disk instead of really going 3D, yikes, she almost lost control of that!  She needs better focusing mechanisms!

"It's not my only trick, but I can do stuff like this!"

The middle schoolers clap politely and start talking about Garden of Elements, mostly to each other.

One glasses-wearing man who seems to be paying close attention but hasn't said anything winces at the near-loss of control.

"Miss, am I right to assume you've only just been mantled?" He asks quietly.

She nods.

He nods back to buy himself time to think, then says, "Public displays of magic without the right context tend to make people nervous, given the..."

The fact that most magical girls hit like tanks? And are kind of known to be reckless or dramatic at times? How they're effectively always armed? How most people don't have that kind of casual power, how it so often comes to teens, not responsible adults, and can't really be taken away?

"Given."

"So noted; I do hope you're not implying that this was not one of them?  I was asked, after all."

"Just something to keep in mind."

One of the middle schoolers pouts at him.

"It's okay, he's just worried about me.

"...And speaking of worry, I would like to take a moment and reassure you that the only people in the splash zone of that trick were myself and the seat next to me, even if it had gone plooie," she says, to him, in a voice that's the direct opposite of her stage voice in how it carries.

"Start as you mean to continue, miss." He sighs slightly. "My aunt was one, and, well, long story I won't bother you with."

"...If you want to tell it, I think having a listening ear can do you good.  And part of why I'm taking the train instead of driving is to talk, and listen."

"Not for little ears."

"Uh, we're thirteen. Not little."

"Not in public. Not to strangers who have no reason to hear it."

"...someone died, in that story that I offered to listen to.  And death sucks, and...

"Nobody should have to deal with the gaping hole in their heart where a person once resided.  Cherish the moments you have where everyone and everything you love still stands.  Don't go chasing tragedies."

The two middle schoolers go quiet. 

"...Yeah. It's not all fun and games. Monsters."

Glasses man shakes his head and sighs. "Sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up. It's old news. Just move on, please."

"...Now may not be the right time or place, but it doesn't sound like you have moved on as you might have liked.  And you shouldn't be left behind just because the world has."

She makes a soft, considering noise, and, with a bit of juggling of things, manages to give the man her email, or rather, the hastily-selected email address she put up for magical-girling with the night before.  'yourfriendlyneighborhoodmagicalgirl@leemail.com' is long, and unwieldy, but it is indubitably hers, for all that she'll likely be arranging something through a better, more privacy-preserving, front in the coming days.

"Take this; you can and should use it, if you want to talk, sometime.  Do do me the favor of keeping it private, if you would?  But...You should get to tell your story, if you want to."

...That handled, she'll see if she can get the kids talking again.  Garden of Elements is a good distraction, thankfully, and if she asks them what they think will happen next episode, they might even do some literary analysis without noticing they're doing 'schoolwork', and be better off for it.

Is there anyone else who's really paying attention to her, or that looks like they want to say something?

Garden of Elements!!! Well obviously Chrysanthemum Flare's longing for Malcolm the violinist has been hinted at for a while and they're going to guard the orchestra so obviously---- Ah but they still have to figure out where Dark Girl Schawrzstahl learned about Cameron Cattail's vulnerability to being blinded, she's obviously trickier than the average arc villain and----

They will talk about this eagerly.

The train isn't too crowded at this hour, a good bit after lunch but well before evening rush. On Sunday no less. Camcorder Bros from earlier are still paying attention to her and quietly speculating about something, but no longer recording.

She gives the kids a genuine smile and wanders a bit closer to the Camcorder Bros; what're they speculating about?

"Dude shut up she's coming here."

"Nah, bro, this is a public space. There's no reasonable expectation of privacy."

"Hi! Miss spirit bearer! Who's coming closer!"

The guy who held the camcorder originally rolls his eyes. "Hello. I'm Greg Smithers, independent reporter."

Non-recording guy makes a disbelieving, frustrated noise.

"Hey, I have a website and everything! It counts!"

"Anyone can have a website, Greg. Hi, miss spirit bearer, he doesn't mean any harm."

She chuckles.  "I saw you recording earlier; I don't mind.  I am in a public place, after all, and part of why I'm here today was to see and be seen.  Might I inquire what so obviously had your attention before this?"

"Just trying to sharpen my analysis skills. Blue is usually associated with water, obviously, but that headband is interesting and I'm not sure what to make of it - as far as I can tell it usually just means you like it, and can sometimes imply a whimsical or cheerful personality. There's nothing like hard rules on raiment tendencies and implications, and I heard you mention being new which explains the relative simplicity, only very new spirit bearers have such simple raiment. If you agree, I'd like to take some photographs and videos as your magic develops so we can track the changes in your raiment!"

"That does sound like an interesting project..."

She plucks the headband from her head, and turns it around and around in her hands.

"Though there's some things happening behind the scenes, as was, that one imagines would pose a significant advantage to avoid blasting to all and sundry."  ...Wait, why is that stripe that definitely seemed blue a minute ago, now definitely a black-green gradient?

"I do not believe that I would like to submit to particular analysis of my raiment at this time, especially not by an unknown party.

"However, I appreciate the thought of so doing as a measure of progress and indicator of perhaps otherwise difficult-to-notice subtleties, and will likely implement such."

"Well," he frowns at the colored stripe. "One imagines you're going to be in public places without reasonable expectation of privacy at times, but if you don't want professional photos that's your prerogative. I don't suppose you'd be willing to answer a few questions?"

"Christ, leave it be, man. We're on the bloody train."

"It's not that I wish to specifically avoid even public photography and speculation thereby, but that I give my enemies the benefit of the doubt as regards ability to deduce things from such, and, not knowing you from Adam, I would not wish to have such information distributed in ways that would give those who would do myself and others harm, information that I could simply tell allies.

"An aura of mystery is useful to cultivate amongst one's foes, for if they see you around every corner, they will not notice you on the roof.

"But I wouldn't mind answering questions, given the proviso that of course I may demur for any or no reason."

"Have you chosen a stage name? Are you going to join the Spirit Association?"

She hmms, and swerves into a seat across from the camcorder guy with a dancer's grace, cuing him to start recording again - if he hasn't already.

"I have not yet chosen a name, no, though 'Luna' is under consideration as a particle thereof at the present time, and, for the purposes of this conversation, will serve if you need to address me.

"As for whether I shall join the Spirit Association...It depends upon the Association, and their responses to multiple issues, some of which are what originally drove me to seek the mantle in the first place.  I'm sure you've heard about the case in Oklahoma, where an alleged police officer shot a child because they, quote, 'looked like a goblin', unquote.

"I've actually slain a few myself, and I can assure you that you can be unambiguously sure of what is, and is not, a goblin.  The smell is unmistakeable.  But let us assume a completely anosmic police officer, for the purposes of argument.

"To be so 'zealous'," the word, and the elegantly-delivered finger-quote from the hand not resting against the seat in front of her for support as she leans in, "in one's duty, as to fire first and ask questions never, is a complete disgrace not only to the police officer in question, but any who trained him to do this, and any who seek to defend him from consequences now, regardless of his underlying motivations.  The badge a police officer wears is a shield; the question America now struggles with is whether that shield is meant for the officer, to protect him from the very law he is sworn to enforce, or the people around him, who he is monomythically supposed to be protecting and serving.

"Did you know that there's actually no duty to protect any given person whatsoever applied to the police, incidentally?  It's a fascinating oversight in the law.

"Regardless...If the Spirit Association is an organization that would support such behavior, of unquestioned violence at a total lack of offence...I could not join them, even should it come to be at my own detriment.  I have standards, especially for those who claim to serve the public benefit.  To unquestioningly take a life should never be a first resort, and that was so flagrantly not the case in Oklahoma as to render any claim otherwise farcical.

"But I drift off topic.

"There are actually some more spirit-related concerns I have with the Association as of yet, but those are best handled privately; if I ever bring them up in public, it would mean an irreparable breach of my confidence in the organization's advocacy for spirits had occurred.  Suffice to say that I believe they may not have put in sufficient effort to understanding certain spirits, but I shall not disclose anything further at this time, for the sake of all parties involved, and, furthermore, chances of peaceful resolutions to such disputes both now and in the future."

...She pauses, holding up a finger for a moment before letting it sink to her lap, in evident displeased contemplation.

"...Now that I have mentioned it, and despite my intent to avoid such a contentious subject on my debut, I cannot help but draw a contrast between the actions of that police officer in Oklahoma and something I faced myself - at the time a woman just as mortal as he, already worn from practice, and armed with only a spear.  I encountered an actual goblin, as well as a fangbat, and managed to defeat both, while protecting someone - despite actually trying diplomacy, as hopeless as I knew it was.  The police officer, meanwhile, had a gun, which is far more effective as a weapon, being designed for ranged combat, and requiring less effort to use.  And yet he did not speak; he simply shot.  ...Perhaps that is the problem; when it is so easy to kill and be troubled no more, you will reach for violence as a solution, even when you most certainly ought not.

"...I suppose that really, it makes sense that my thoughts might turn to the origin of the desire to take up this mantle when I'm introducing myself to the world; it had been building for a long, long while beforehand, but it was that contrast, as well as support from friends and family, that drove me to finally start seeking spirits to empower me in earnest.  I'm no detective; I wouldn't put it upon me to break up an organized crime ring except by obviating whatever reason they might have chosen or felt forced to exist, should I have command of the resources with which to obviate it, but I can protect people.  And I want to, with all my heart and soul, especially those who fear the only protection they have is that of their own arms."

He takes attentive notes with a notepad pulled out from a backpack.

"Ah, that was quite a bit more than I usually get as answers. I think a lot of people are - using that incident as a political signpost rather than actually regarding it on its merits, if you see what I mean. Obviously it's a tragedy, but some would argue that readiness for violence is an unfortunate necessity in a world so filled with monsters. I've heard the argument to hold police to the same standards as spirit bearers before, but in fact there are a number incidents where magical collateral damage is... Expected when dealing with monsters. So. Passionate support of one cause or another is a pretty common thing to see, would you say that the law and justice are interests of yours, then? I know the Spirit Association is pretty involved in politics on some levels - mostly national security advisory, as far as I'm aware. I imagine you want to do your research on that before making a public statement, hm?"

...She'll just make sure she's got her phone recording the audio, if he isn't going to record it himself.

"Oh, I don't disagree that self-defense preparations are necessary in the present day - but I do believe that many of the people advocating, under cover of that position, to increase the violence a police officer, or indeed a spirit bearer, is prepared - encouraged, to dole out on a moment's notice, forget the first lesson of martial arts classes the world over: The best fight is one that never happens.  Readiness for violence does not, and should not, be imputed to require readiness to start fights on a hair trigger.

"Collateral damage, meanwhile, is not something that human beings should be inflicting upon fellow human beings in the name of stopping a threat a human who can direct a spear can stop on their own.  Just..."  She sighs, seeming somehow tired.  "No."

"...but no, I wouldn't necessarily say the law and justice are a particular field of interest of mine, as much as...

"I want people to flourish, and I aim my efforts towards that end.

"So insofar as the law is something I have to take an interest in, it is because the law has become an instrument of coercion, oppression, and violence inflicted by the powerful upon the helpless.

"I'd love to live in a world where the most pressing problem I could put effort towards was curing cancer, or unraveling the fundamental causes of the miasma.  But I don't."

"...And I do not have any comment, or indeed any privileged information, upon matters of national security at this time.  So, yes, I would prefer to do research before fielding any questions whatsoever on that, or indeed avoid getting anywhere near that entire field entirely."  She seems faintly incredulous that that would even be brought up.  "I want to be able to treat people like people.  Not like potential threats."

"Thank you for your comments! I'd have more questions, but a train isn't the best spot for that. Our stop is next. Check out the site when you have time!" And he offers a business card mentioning 'Magic and Matter - reporting on real and unreal.'

"I will most certainly do that!"

...Let's see, her stop is a couple stops away, and then it's a walk to the SA building like so...

DC all but ignores a random girl in early raiment. There might even be cosplayers who look more convincingly magic at a first glance than her. She can ride all the way to the end, to Union Station.

The office looks out to its front and shares a park with such august organizations as NIST, the FBI, a large museum, the district courts of Columbia, plus a memorial to fallen law enforcement officers. There's several likely magical girls visible in the area, seen at a distance past crowds.

Ergh.  The feds.  And that monument.  Maybe she should have gone to Baltimore.  On the other hand, NIST!

She's not here to play tourist, though; she's here to do magical girl paperwork.

The front area of the office has a reception area just this side of lavish, with doors leading further in marked by keypads. Signs indicate the way to practice areas, meeting rooms, the library, offices, a cafeteria, and a gym. Two receptionists sit ready and one waves her over with a "How can I help you today?"

"We-ell, I'm given to understand that having become a spirit bearer tends to eventually involve paperwork."

Blink. The receptionist looks her over properly.

"Oh! Congratulations! Yes, there is some of that but we try to make it easy. We actually have people whose job it is to introduce new people to everything, orientation staff, if that sounds good? They'd know more than me."

"That does sound reasonable!  Thank you, by the way."

"No problem! Let me just... Ah, there we are."

She takes her desk phone and dials a three digit number. 

"Yes, hello, this is reception - we have a new spirit bearer who could use someone to come orient them. Mmhm, right away. Thank you so much!" She looks at Annabel again. "Would you like coffee or a snack or anything while you wait?"

"I wouldn't mind a snack, if you're offering."

"Right over there. It should be just a minute."

They have a refreshment-laden waiting area like at fancy car dealerships, comfy seats and chips and fancy cookies of all sorts laid out for the taking.

And sure enough a minute later, a woman comes out and asks her, "Hello, new spirit bearer for orientation? Sorry, I didn't hear your name - chosen or birth. I'm Riley."

"And I didn't give one, so that makes sense that you wouldn't have.  For the moment, you may use Luna."

She snags one last cookie for the road.

...Okay, another cookie too.

"So, orientation, hm?  Is that something y'all keep someone on for as its own full-time position?  Or is it some sort of magical girl - excuse me, 'spirit bearer' is such a clunky name and I never did square it with my particular aspirations per se - Is orienting new 'hires' a magical-person thing that you get discounts on the union dues for, or something I didn't immediately think of?"

"I'm non-magical. Full-time salaried, what we call 'liaison' when we're feeling fancy - basically, there's a lot more regular humans than spirit bearers in the Spirit Association just by sheer logistics, there aren't enough of you. We think it doesn't really make sense for people with magical powers and unique ability to confront monsters without the usual amount of peril to face any stupid problems. Problems like needing to get your name changed in official databases, or finding a sturdy place to practice, or affording groceries or rent or being sued by someone you bruised while getting them away from a troll. Even, to an extent, for magical girls and boys who don't actually join the association per se. We can't fix all the 'stupid problems', far far from it especially when high-level legal stuff gets started, but we can try."

"That does make sense.  It's a shame that there are so many stupid problems that there's such a small subset of humanity that you have to focus on solving them for, though."

"I guess you can think of it as a cost-benefit analysis. Would you like a quick tour first, or straight to practicalities?"

"Perhaps an overview of the services offered first, then a visit to points of interest - I imagine I will be visiting the Baltimore center more often, but I figured you keep the political analysts here and there's been some things lately that would...affect my joining, depending upon the Association's position - if you recall the fiasco in Oklahoma.

"Any sort of trade union that doesn't condemn a cop hiding behind them to get away with what I damn well believe to be at least murder 2, even if there's only definitive evidence of manslaughter...I can't join that.

"And there's some more spirit-related things that also bear mentioning in the category of 'I foresaw' - not...actual foresight, mind, just...scenario planning - 'a possible reaction that would make me immediately depart', mostly to do with the choice of language around the spirit of Culpeper Cut.  But I imagine that all that is not actually your department?"

"Well! Major SA offices have regular meetings to discuss local and less-local happenings, association business, any community events, and similar things. They serve as a social hub to keep everyone connected in a way too. Practice areas built sturdily enough for magically enhanced physiques or outright magic attacks and manipulation, plus the presence of people with experience for advice and such. We serve as a clearing house for forming teams and locating and tracking dangerous monsters before they can threaten people, though of course not every spirit bearer fights monsters. We organize classes on magic use sometimes, even if a lot of it is intuitive they're supposed to be good, and on monster identification and tactics, nature spirit relations, and so on. We do have legal teams to advise and defend spirit bearers if they get into any legal trouble, and the liaisons for 'miscellaneous' assistance - there's a lot we do, too much to quickly list. The Spirit Association avoids taking public stances on things completely unrelated to magic or monsters, but we did announce an analyst's determination that it was not reasonable for that incident to be a case of mistaken identification unless the officer was impaired in some way. Also, you're right that I don't know much about Culpeper Cut, I can't even say where I've heard the name before."

"That's good, although perhaps too dry to actually sink in to the ongoing discourse, and furthermore reading as weasely in that...if that was the exact phrasing you used, you gave him an out, of sorts.  And you can't do that if you wish to actually condemn, though I may be projecting my own desires.  Regardless, 'No officer'," she winces, "'in their right mind,' ugh, 'should make that determination; it is an obvious error', is a lot different from 'If the officer in question believed such a thing was true, his faculties were impaired'."

"Culpeper Cut: A prairie spirit that's migrated over thisaways into some local ex-woods.  What information I gathered from both Spirit Association and outside sources described it as 'erratic'.  It's really not, it just has different priorities, and a mischievous streak strong enough to enkindle someone just to see y'all running around like headless chickens about it, as far as I'm given to understand.  It likes botany."

"Of course I personally didn't say that. These decisions are far above either of our heads - though I could certainly get you a meeting with someone up the chain. As for Culpeper Cut - oh, now I remember, he kept chasing off the girls we sent to talk to him so official classification is neutral, preferred non-contact. -Most spirits are indifferent about what gender to assign to them, if any, for what it's worth. If you've managed to open relationships with Culpeper Cut that's definitely something we should tell the librarians about."

"I hesitate to believe they'd listen to little ol' newly-fledged me up in the heights of the executive suite, or wherever national-scale PR releases are ultimately approved, but if you believe it would be worth their time to hear my thoughts, then I will at least write them a letter.

"Yes, let's talk to the librarians.  ...Why are they librarians and not psychologists, anyway, especially xenopsychologists, if their 'job' is managing spirit-whistling?"

"The Association hails from 1692, there are a lot of old traditions that a lot of our senior spirit bearers are very reluctant to let go of. The librarians are the informal name for the entire research and information branch. I can certainly get you a meeting, but maybe not right now. Aaand here's my office," she gestures at one of the doors they've been passing, "In which I can check and arrange that."

"A-ha.  That makes more sense."

"...So, would you like to do that, since we're here?  And I did mean what I said about doing a letter, if that'd work."

The office is a fairly spacious place. There are two chairs and a little couch opposite the desk. There are many pamphlets with titles like 'What Do The Elements Mean?' or 'The Sacred Spear'.

"A letter would definitely work, and work better if you're in our records! I'll just get started on seeing who's available, then."

And she pages through a rolodex, then places a call with her desk phone. There's a CRT monitor on her desk, but she's not using the computer for this apparently.

She'll page through the pamphlets; especially the spear one, as it relates to a few ideas she's had percolating recently, but she wants an overview of the elements as well.

Spears are, to steal a video game term, super effective against monsters! By all mundane reasoning, this should not be the case. It extends to polearms too. Is it a psychic gestalt effect, humanity's defenses raised against the dark? Is it an innate property of long pointy things and monsters? Nobody can tell for sure, but the fact remains that humans wielding spears against monsters, even completely untrained humans, have statistically much better chances than if they used any other kind of weapon - even guns don't help as much as you'd expect, compared to spears. This is why spear drill is mandatory in high school gym class, and why every household should have a spear for use in emergencies.

The basic elements are: Shadow, light, earth, water, fire, air, metal, and lightning. They're called basic because a great many - most, in fact - spirit bearers' magic tends to thematically center around one or more of these elements. They have typical associated colors and magic types and personality types, like healing for light or mobility for air or crafters and tinkerers for metal.

Does the Spear Effect extend to smaller, yet still proportionally long pointy things like crossbow bolts?

Arrows and crossbow bolts also exhibit spearlike properties, such as seeming to impair and damage monsters more than the actual wound itself should! If less strongly than actual full-size spears wielded with human hands.

Eventually her orienteer says, "Does 5 o'clock work to talk to a spirit relations person? That's an hour and a bit. I know it's a bit late, but I imagine you have school to go to tomorrow so it might be best to get it done now."

"I'm sure I can find plenty of things with which to occupy the intervening time, spell testing and personal development among them."

...The stripe on her outfit has, incidentally, switched colors again.

"Great! We do have some good practice areas I can show you. Uh, what name do you want to go by here? For the appointment and maybe some paperwork."

A long, slow, blink passes.

"I find myself wondering why you chose this particular moment to ask.  Realistically, it is because of the paperwork, and furthermore because there are indubitably several Lunaë wandering about these illustrious halls already.  Still, one must wonder at coincidence.  It is often not coincidental.

"Regardless, if it is the name most likely to be associated with a legal identity - in the longer term - rather than a persona, that you are now seeking...

"We shall need to file name-change paperwork about it, eventually, but.

"Annabel, spelled Annab-e-l, Asterisk, spelled as you would the punctuation-mark, Lee, L-e-e."

"I, um. Because I need to tell them who to expect for the appointment? Or - oh, you said, I think 'Luna' before. My apologies, I'm a bit scatterbrained today. I see you've got basic raiment manipulation down though, congratulations, by the way."

"Or something of the like, yes.  I am unsure if this is being accomplished by the normal method, as it was in fact done by application of a spell."

Hm.  That reaction is...a pity.  She was hoping that she had been recognized - and implicitly accepted.  But now, the others' woes and worries still yet lurk.  (Ophelia, herself, simply has no fucks to give about what others think.)

At least she was not met by transphobia.  That would have ended...poorly.

She nods and uses the computer to send a quick email. "There. Appointment all set. Want to talk about next steps paperwork wise, or see the facilities, or talk about your concerns with joining, or...? Oh by the way, at any time you can ask to talk to someone else - personality conflicts are a stupid problem." She gives a small smile at the in-joke.

She nods, and smiles slightly, before her face returns to serious-business mode.

"Paperwork; getting that out of the way seems important.

"As far as my concerns regarding joining, I have articulated the two that yet hold sway already, and you have done as best you can to resolve them.  I'm interested in the organizational structure of the Spirit Association out of academic curiosity, though."

"There's three big pieces of paperwork you'll probably want to get done regardless- Basic registration, which doesn't mean membership, just helps with recognition if you have to talk to po- emergency services or anything- Monster hunting license, so you can officially claim bounties for keeping the world clean, and payment information so we can actually pay out said bounties, or draw dues if you end up deciding to join officially."

"I am quite aware that I am going to have to interact with the police, and generally believe that someone needs to be trained to stop, pardon my language, assholes with guns; you needn't walk on tenterhooks around the subject.  I merely dislike their ubiquity in situations that merit no violent response, and the shoot-first mentality as observed so vividly in recent events - when it is not instead not being deployed when it ought to be, in defense of lives that some write off.  ...To borrow an analogy, they are at best an untrained man flailing about with a naked blade; it is their discipline that is most thoroughly lacking, and their fealty.  I actively appreciate the investigative function some serve, though admittedly a lot of that is on the federal level or, once again, applied in a prejudiced manner - if not both at once.  ...If the Senator from California's bill goes through, perhaps, the police might actually have a roughly accurate mandate compared to their...charitably, poorly honed skillset - especially if someone imposes upon them a duty to protect as they well should.

"That said, are there particular certifications I can or should pursue for fire and rescue?  I believe I could help with that, and furthermore that I should help with that.  And I will be pursuing enough medical education to be able to perform proper triage and first-line care as regards injuries I am likely to encounter in the field, I hope, but if there are specific courses for...

"Well, I have yet to find an occasion to test it, but I believe I am capable of healing, given appropriate targets.  ...The amount of 'elements' within my reach, with a bit of effort, is honestly rather impressive, given that I am given to understand most have one."

"...Excuse me, I have gotten quite sidetracked.  Basic registration, monster hunting license? - well, I suppose it must be registered somehow, but I'm quite surprised it's a license - though the model it's approached through is clear.  ...And payment information, for bounties and dues.  Well, shall we?"

"Alright." A talkative one, she is. "Spirit bearers can file for limited peacekeeping authority, by the way. Not to file charges but to detain temporarily, evacuate people, that sort of thing. I understand there are issues interacting with cops sometimes that helps with... Anyway, we also have fire and rescue classes we can arrange, yes. And I doubt you'd actually get in trouble without one, with magic, but yes, it's a monster hunting license that anyone can get if they really want but just difficult enough so untrained people don't risk themselves too badly or make things worse. There's a test."

She has assembled a few paper forms and pushes them across the desk.

"I didn't get in trouble without magic, either, as it happens, though there are many parts of me that would not want to boast about just stabbing a couple monsters with a spear."

She lets her pride in 'her' skills show, just a bit, with a subtle, friendly, smirk, then sets to filling out the paperwork.

"Nice! Yes, I imagine it's one of those laws that, ahem, isn't universally applied."

Paperwork wants to know all the usual stuff like gender, name, address, birth date, is she under 18 and if so parent or guardian information...

"It was in self-defense and defense of others, anyway.  And the other time, well.  Spirits.

"...I did mention needing to also do name-change paperwork?"

Annnd the stripe is blue again.

"If you're transgender, we see that a lot and we can definitely help with whatever you need on that front. Though your raiment changes are starting to make me curious if there's something else going on."

"That is definitely a thing, though not necessarily the only thing.

"As for if something else is going on..."  She grins... "I'm sure I'd have said by now if there wasn't - though right now, it shall remain A Mystery that I'm not getting into unless you figure it out yourself; I haven't the time for yet more advocacy on my plate starting out, with how I'm already planning on a rather visibly queer image and committed to being aggressive about it."

"...annnd we are going to need the emancipation forms too, aren't we.  Fuck's sake, I'll still be this old when I hit college and yet these people don't trust me to sign paperwork without my mother, as good as she is at it, looking over my shoulder?  I don't have that kind of time and I don't have that kind of personality, to want that for the next - one point five years."

"Okay, my first guess is something to do with your magic, maybe you can switch elements or passive abilities? Though you're still new new, less than a day, by my guess. Hmm! I'll think about it. Emancipation is relatively uncommon, usually we can take care of things without having to take that step and a lot of people's parents tend to take it as, er, not a great sign, but it's certainly something I can look into for you as well. We won't be able to manage it here and now. Out of curiosity, what college were you planning on?"

"I wouldn't know how much of this would be accomplishable under my own recognizance otherwise, is why I mentioned that.

"But I don't think my mother would be particularly put out if I had to pursue that for reasons, if I framed it right.

"It's just...I'm going to be fighting for my life and the lives of others, I'm damn well competent enough to sign a mortal contract if the spirits think I'll hold up bargains with them.  They don't trust us much.

"Also I'm kind of...I trust my mother to not try and fuck with me about things on account of being a spirit guardian - incidentally, motion to just start using that instead of spirit bearer, we don't carry around actual spirits, we just kind of also are spirit-y in some ways, from what I've gathered - but, that she has the option to fuck with me like that, itself fucks with me.  I'm tired of being sheltered and protected - even from my own fuckups, really, I just...ugh, I'm going to need to see a therapist about this, probably, let's add that to the list -" She actually has a pad of paper with 'SPIRIT-BEARER GUARDIAN IMMEDIATE CONCERNS' on it, with items like 'local commitments vs. prior college plans', 'SA: IFF, network', 'establish patrol route?', 'befriend local spirits', 'Magic: explore, develop', and, now, 'Find a therapist', scrawled in a hand that prioritizes speed over neatness as she barely pauses her rant - "and, of having to perform normalcy for a bunch of close-minded nitwits while somewhere in the world people are dying and I have the power to help.  I'm going to have to deal with that at least long enough to get out of high school, though.  The benefits of my diploma coming through on college applications are too high, unfortunately.

"But yes, this is something that would need review.

"I'm waiting to hear back from my applications, but I'm quite sure I've got the state colleges of Maryland on lock, and I've been looking around in the northerly states on this coast, especially, due to weather preferences.  Didn't stop me from applying all over the map, and having decent confidence that most of them that aren't Ivies, or, like, MIT, would take me, but, y'know.  Having weather you like is a plus.  ...I suppose I have to consider re-evaluating...hm, no, still like winter more.  Fuck the heat and fuck the humidity, even if I'm now comfortable enough in my own skin that I don't have to wear jeans in hundred-degree weather I still mostly prefer coverage."

"I think I get it. If I'm going to fight monsters, why am I being hassled about being in class and opening bank accounts and why can't I vote. I don't think you'll have much luck changing the terminology," she chuckles. "...We can lean on your high school for a graduation now, almost certainly. Or absence exemptions until the end of the year or something. Just flagging something I'm noticing, I think you mention lots of things at once and I might be dropping some. What's your concern about identification-friend-or-foe? A patrol route isn't mandatory, it depends on what you want to accomplish with it I'd think. And most spirit bearers are not necessarily in contact with most spirits. I think, speaking purely as a person who helps magical girls with their problems a lot of the time, that... Thinking you're not doing enough leads to guilt. Guilt is the path to the dark side. Guilt leads to anxiety. Anxiety leads to stress. Stress leads to burnout. And a burnt-out spirit guardian, magical girl, whatever, is of no use to anyone."

The Star Wars reference draws a chuckle out of her.  "Ah, that item was 'whether I needed to make plans for somehow overthrowing a massive corrupt bureaucracy or some weird conspiracy shit', in the finest tradition of YA novels, or if you were just more mundanely kind of bad; at this point I doubt it.  And, yes, obviously, burnout bad.  Burnout double extra bad on account of ghosting, and I like living, thank you very much.  But there are still people dying.

"It's...something I can't not know, you know?  Even if I'm still...Working within my limits.  And I don't intend to push them to the breaking point, you know?  Unfortunately, the problem's kept this long, it'll have to keep longer unless I pull a miracle out of my ass.  Which...who knows what I'll be capable of six months from now, but I can't imagine no-one's tried to make solutions for aging yet?

"And, yeah, my, well, very rambly train of thought is why I prefer written or typed communication that can be referred back to, especially when it comes to planning.  Actually, here, let me..."

Pageflip.

SA CONCERNS:

• Paperwork: Signing my life away (instead of having my mother do it.)
• Income: Banking, merchandising, monster bounties, charitable distribution of above-cost-of-living royalties on use of my image, etc. etc.
• Spirits vs. Other Plans: WTF do I do about college going psbly. cross-country if I need to be here, or should I be thinking about what colleges are close to trouble spots? Key considerations: Rapport w/ CPC, driving distance, hometown responsibility.
• Immediate Fallout of Gender: Possibility that school will be asshat about a girl showing up where they thought a boy was. Religions are sometimes asshats; I am not an optimist.
• On-Call Status: Determining tasks I am competently equipped to handle (on my own and/or w/ prof. oversight) on ongoing basis, esp. as magic improves; making available for tasks I am competent in, and fallout in thusly being called out on short notice.
• Not Getting Isolated: Absolutely cannot let the fame get to my head.  Platforming disenfranchised-oppressed viewpoints: queer, non-Caucasian, impoverished.  Cut down hate - monster-spawning?  pretty decent angle - at the roots.
• Has Anybody Had These Ideas: Sensors that watch sensors, to maximize effort necessary to subvert or break - e.g. fire alarm detects webcam spewing 'magic smoke', overlapping cameras in ring w/ LoS on others.
• Magical Girl Spirit Guard Networking: Will want contact w/ wide variety of specialties, most likely.  Not sure there's a basic that doesn't lurk somewhere.  Can confirm fire, water (not only water), shadow (w/ healing???), metal-earth, air(?) (analyze raiment).
• Rights and Responsibilities; Expectations: Develop proper professional understanding of my chosen profession.  Rather than my spirited amateur.

She proceeds to - take a picture with her shitty phone camera because it's better than nothing - and tear the page out for Riley.

"Here, you keep this; I'd like a copy back for my records, especially the parts where I'm still having to make judgement calls, but if you're going to be acting on these things, you need to know them.  The only thing that could immediately blow up in our faces, of these, is the 'what happens if my school is transphobic to my face' one, but, yeah, these are the sorts of things I hope y'all'll help me with.  And given that one of those items is 'meet a diverse variety of magic-- ahem. spirit guardians, they aren't all girls, brain - anyway, given that I want to get tips and tricks from as many specialties as I can...

"I think, in the interests of making best use of my time in the city, we should leave any of the non-critical paperwork, and go to the library and the training grounds.  Do you agree?"

"Sounds like a plan. I'll make a copy while you practice, probably. And they aren't all girls, no. Just most for some reason."

Riley inspects the completed paperwork. "Okay, so that'll be enough to get you a spirit association ID as long as we stop for a photo at some point! And I'll kick start the license too. I do want to mention, though... I'd like to encourage you to take things slow if you can possibly tolerate it. There are statistics if you want them, but - rule of thumb is that if you make it a year of fighting monsters regularly, you'll probably make it long term. Depending on the terms of your agreement with Culpeper Cut - unless I'm misunderstanding there? - Not to be too depressing, but, I don't want to underplay the danger. It can be... Sickening, to see young, brilliant people take on burdens like that. We'll do our best to equip you with allies, tools, and training, of course."

"Oh, yes, I have not suddenly become astronomically more capable, of that I am aware.  That said, I expect to be more capable in that way rather soon, modulo training speed.  And, no, I did not make an agreement with Culpeper Cut in that sense; it thought that seeing the Spirit Association be incredibly bemused at why it empowered me would be funny."

And isn't that a masterclass in lying by telling the truth.

"I just...prepared to commit to helping, and regardless of whether it was necessary to actually make that commitment, in the interest of being the sort of person who can continue to make commitments like that, I want to follow through on going 'round the area and kicking monster ass."  ...Well, for the definitely nonsapient ones.

"I see. Okay. Arranging some sort of active patrol is definitely something we can do, though because you're relatively rare and we have spirits, animal control, police and emergency services, and everyone else to report sightings more often you're called to a place monsters are found than stumbling across them 'in the wild'. Let's head towards the practice areas now? I'm not actually contractually obliged to show them off, but I like to."

"Yes, I was imagining arranging something with the local spirits to clear out local monsters on a regular basis, somewhat, rather than necessarily just wandering around and hoping.

"And I would indeed like to see the training facilities you have."

...She is now in armor.

And it's not green-and-white, it's red-and-orange, freshly-accented with gold edging.  (Though, interestingly enough, there's still that stripe in evidence.)

They head down the hallway again, to a main corridor lined with a few glass windows. A large gymnasium and workout area is visible through there, with a few people using it - though nobody in obvious raiment. Faint booming music filters out.

"So, there's the mundane gym, it's an employee perk as well as a member one. Hmm, I'm starting to suspect some sort of shapeshifting is in fact your starter spell! Still no good guesses on the color, I don't think it's tracking your mood. The magical section is... Really heavy duty, everything's very durable in there. Just up ahead."

"I will do you the courtesy of confirming that yes, there is something like a shapeshifting spell in my repertoire, and it is perhaps worth considering it to be the 'first' spell I had, as well.  But you're missing the question you should ask to figure out the real trick, and I feel like hinting at it for you - so consider the question, 'how does she have multiple distinct raiments?'"

...Huh, the stripe's split, in a sort of red-blue 'sine wave' effect that's really just the result of projecting a diagonal line across her breastplate.

"As much as I am legitimately tempted to just dive right in to the gym, since I'm here, I believe you mentioned the librarians, earlier?  Or - excuse me, sometimes I worry I'd lose my own head if it wasn't screwed on.  That's the meeting.  But if the librarians have a library...  Scientam est potestas, as they say, and I intend to become very powerful."  She laughs, quietly, at the joke.

"There is a library, a pretty narrowly focused one. Your appointment with Spiritwatcher Maeve - not her real name, she's, uh, a tad dramatic and spiritwatcher is just a fancy word for analyst - isn't for an hour but you can talk to an actual librarian about training, or read or whatever you want."

"If it's the name she's chosen, it's her real name," she gently rebukes.  "Though I imagine you meant to say that about the job title she's filed under in your taxes.  Regardless, I suspect that an hour's head start on reading everything I can get my hands on is probably not worth the marginal losses of maximizing magic exercise during the critical period, so..."

The stripe settles back to red, and in to the gym she goes, spear in hand.

There are several basic spells they haven't so much as cast, yet, after all, and that must immediately be rectified.

The magic section is that way, please do not do magic here, Riley slightly frantically herds her over. There's a sign - no raiment in this area.

The magic section is just as big and much less populated and does, indeed, look much, much sturdier. Concrete walls and hardwood floors. Lots of open space in the main area, with several closed off areas with signs like 'bullet room' or 'sand pit' or 'fire practice room' or 'pool' or 'sparring rooms' or 'heavy duty sparring rooms - reservation required'

There's someone with a moderately fancy raiment including a stereotypical Pointy Witch Hat and a carnival mask, split between blues and light purples, doing something with three kickballs and - strings and panels of purple light? in a corner. Juggling, or something in that area.

Hmm.  Interesting.

There are several things that immediately come to mind, as far as practice goes.

Ophelia and Luna wish to focus on amplifying their control and precision.

Sylvia is, as is her wont, advocating defense practice.

Clara, Diana, and Ophelia all think that speed is a very useful thing to have.

Diana and Ophelia are heavily invested in power.

Luna wants to push the 'limits' of their magic, to see if Diana's pyrokinesis can be inverted to cryokinesis, to see if Ophelia can absorb darkness to make light, to see if Clara can create a vacuum.

Diana and Sylvia both are also advocating for adjusting all their raiments to have some sort of armor, and Luna, given a challenge, starts ticking away at solving it as best she can.

In the end, it is Ophelia who starts casting shadows on the wall, a sinuous grace - and a change in color scheme - belying the billowing darkness that emanates from her hands in bursts, her motions alternating between the quick, the accurate, and the forceful.  Luna also gets her chance to see if Ophelia can pull natural shadows away...and while Ophelia can't make darkness arbitrarily bright, she most certainly can shift, compact, and yeet shadows that already exist, with an effort that leaves her mental muscles twanging.

Hmm.

Sylvia next, then; they haven't even tried on her raiment yet.  What's this about a bullet room?

Riley leaves her shortly into her practice, to go process the paperwork. She'll be back soon!

The darkness billows somewhat, yes, clouding the air like squid ink. It sticks closely to surfaces, seeming to wither away like condensation in a bare moment if unsupported in the air. It crawls along the walls and floors, pooling there and responding sluggishly to her intent. Her conjured shadows can shift 'natural' shadows somewhat, bending and twisting them in defiance of light's gaze... At least a little bit, making her shadow on the floor dance while her body is holding still with enough focused willpower.

The bullet room looks like a series of batting cages, enclosed rooms with thick wire screens, a painted circle on the ground and small tubes arranged all around. There's a sign - "Select difficulty level and walk to circle. Each session lasts 3 minutes." The available difficulties are numbered one through eight.

A girl with a wide, poofy pink skirt, twintails, arm-guards, and a few other embellishments, and some sort of wand instead of a spear is twirling and spinning as she dodges small red projectiles in one of the cages. They're... Pretty fast, about like a baseball pitch, though the balls themselves are smaller. They come every couple of seconds, and she winces as one hits her in the stomach, but continues dodging.

...Hmm.  It is Sylvia and Luna who take the lead, just observing a level-one session from outside the circle, before pulling on Sylvia's metallic, armored raiment, accented with Luna's contemplative blue.

It is Ophelia, however, who has the instincts, and the sensory capabilities, to dance between the metaphorical raindrops, her hands guiding the-body-Annabel through dodging and deflecting the oncoming storm with grace - or, at least, trying to do so.

At level one, the balls only come from a relatively narrow section in 'front', once every three to five seconds. It's still a challenge to dodge them all when you're actually in the circle. Seeing the ball, predicting its path, and moving out of the way as three different steps is simply too slow, and it'll take practice to smooth it out. The impacts that do hit unarmored or bare skin sting for a bare moment before regenerating away, and adding to a very slight, almost unnoticeable strain in the back of her head.

...She does not like that sense of strain.

But it is not Ophelia, but Sylvia, who pushes back at whatever the mechanism is -

- and Luna who swears vehemently as she realizes that her own analysis is what's getting in the way, and steps back to simply watch, instead -

- letting Diana's past practice lobbing beanbags in the air and hitting them with a stick (and her recent experience with the fangbat) come to the fore, as they go back in for another round of it.

This time it goes much better! She can dodge or deflect all the shots, save one which bounces weirdly and whacks her in the leg anyway.

Pink Girl is drinking from a water bottle and watching her now.

That's better.

Now, to add magic to the equation.

It is Luna who takes point on this - for all that Diana is the undisputed mistress of combat, she is the equally undisputed mistress of dirty tricks.

And she has one in mind, if she can freeze water by holding it in place hard enough.

Well, no, she has that idea regardless.  But she wants to make ice, because it's pushing her limits, just as conjuring a forceful stream of water would.

...Actually, she'll conjure that stream of water, and spend a little bit of time seeing just how fast she can get it to go, before stepping back in to the center of the circle, flicking the start button, and seeing how well she can deflect with a ribbon of flowing water, or spot-conjured bursts thereof.  She wants to make up for her earlier embarrassing showing.

Then it's Sylvia's turn.

...except that the spirit is willing, but the magic is weak - slow to respond, and with the approximate control of a becalmed sailboat in ways that have her cursing with about the frequency of a sailor thereupon, and eventually making a frustrated noise as yet another miss occurs and she switches tactics entirely, drawing a thin film of water in a rough oval, then compacting it where the hit will be, sending ripples through the shield, before it returns to standby.

Pink Girl shouts, "Good luck, newbie! Watch the mouth in public!" and gets back to her level 5 practice.

Controlling the water by enforcing pressure on it works... Moderately well! It takes some rather intense strain and focus to maintain it in that shape, it wants to drift and turn into a soft blob. Her film of water may have to be thicker than she likes. But 'hardened' water that experiences a surge of pressure at exactly the time of impact stops the balls cold, sending them bouncing away instead of punching through with a splash.

Thank goodness she's not almost useless in combat, even if she'll likely never be a front-liner.

...It's well-meant advice she receives, but she really doesn't like it.  She doesn't want to censor herself for the sake of others' clutched pearls.

At least she's not likely to be doing much of anything public-facing anytime soon, and thus needn't confront that issue.

Anyway - it's Sylvia's turn.

And as the water melts away, replaced by a rounded metal shield, Sylvia gives the veteran a nod and a "Thank you for the advice."

Sylvia's defense is inherently a lot more solid than Luna's, or Diana's.  This poses something of a problem, actually, given that she would need to risk either actual injury, or training bad habits, were she to practice her defenses only against this form of attack.

On the other hand, she could practice snap-casting defensive barriers, and mark success in size, thickness, and reaction speed.

She could, of course, also turn up the difficulty a notch.

And she does, because her goal is to endure where the others cannot.

At level two the balls fly faster, more often, and from a nearly 180 degree field.

That said, Sylvia is very good at blocking.

Pink Girl is in the middle of a session but still looking curiously over to her.

Perhaps she might notice that the stripe of blue across bare-metal armor (with a gambeson beneath, in earth tones) has instead become half-blue, half-silver.

Perhaps she might not.

Sylvia has no particular stake in this matter; Luna is arguing that it is a matter of correctness to keep the stripe up to date, supported by Ophelia, and so much weight is behind the concept of 'being correct' that even were the others dead-set against it, which they certainly are not, the motion would nonetheless carry.

Her only business, given that, is to prepare to endure the backlash, should it become somehow contentious.

She truly hopes it doesn't.  It would hurt the others.  She doesn't want to see them be hurt by bigots or narrow-minded fools.

Pink Girl waits for both their sessions to end before waving and shouting, "Oiiii, you're multi-element! And changing your color scheme! And armored! That's really cool and weird! Hi, I'm Rose Weed! 'Cause I'm annoying according to some people, who are idiots actually! What's it feel like what's your name?"

Rose Weed grins and bounces on her feet in the air, poofy skirt and all.

"You are very excitable.  Hello, Rose.  I have many names, and none have yet felt entirely correct in truth, not for the totality of my soul."

Her voice is surprisingly soft, all things considered.

"As for what it feels like...Each element, each way of looking at an element, has its own associated mindset, has its own associated form and space, and we simply sum the vectors in our soul to point the way, in a sense.

"The shapeshifting spell helps, in that it grounds us in an appropriate form for the motions we undertake, but it is not...necessary."

And hey here's Clara with a burst of wind, and a momentary shift to green, right on cue!  She's helping!

"Exhibit A, as they say."

"Nerd. Sappy nerd. That's fucking awesome- Ga, gosh, sorry, no swearing, no swearing." She slaps herself lightly, back and forth. "Is that, like, the multi-Tanyas from that one show? Where they sit around in a conference room in her head arguing?"

"No self-harm, Rose.  I do not mind if you swear, either.

"To answer your question, it is not entirely inaccurate to model our situation that way, especially given its...magicalness.  It is inaccurate, however, to say that there is much back-and-forth argument; there is simply...gravity, in half-a-dozen different directions.  Some of those directions have names; some branch from a name like a leaf from a tree.  This direction, the endurance, the calm, the resilience, the silver metal and solid earth, is named Sylvia; the analyst who helped me make this speech has only chosen a codename as of yet, but that codename is Luna, and she is...the moon's pull on the distant tides, the deep thoughts 'neath the ocean that surface to do strange things, the crystal clarity of ice - and, sometimes, the sharp cracks of it breaking under strain, as you may have noticed from the swearing."

"Oh come on, I barely even felt that. I'll self discipline how I like, thanks. I dunno what's going on in your head...s... But I don't have to, that's like, Plato's cave or whatever it was. I know what it's like to be me, not you. Also, you sound like the more mystic sorts of girls. Gotta have a good cadence in your voice and a deep well of metaphors to pull that off. Me, I know who I am. Aside from being Samantha in the strictest sense of the label, I am hyper and explosive and annoying! Nice to meetcha, Sylvia et al." Rose Weed holds out a white-gloved hand for the shaking.

There's a soft little laugh that sneaks out around the edges of her voice.  "You will get along with Clara just fine.  Out of costume - or.  Well.  In costume, but in Clara's frilly skirt costume instead of exempli gratia Sylvia or Diana's armor, we go by Annabel."  And she handshakes!  "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Handshake! "Rose Weed, like I said! Dunno how much we'll end up seeing each other, there's a lot like a lot of new stuff that gets thrown at the wall when you're just starting out."

"Hmm?  How do you mean?"

"Now your whole life is topsy-turvy! New friends! Goodbye old ones! New places! Monster slaying! I'm not one of those old clan heirs or whatever who trained their whole lives to partner with a spirit, just a girl who impressed a genie. That's, like, the cheater's empowerment."

Stripe's blue again.

"I think this is more the culmination of my flipping a table that I had long since been hoping for an excuse to flip, really.  Also, impressing a genie is actually quite a feat, in my opinion?  Impressing any force of nature, really.  It shows a level of dedication to your chosen path.  Meanwhile, I basically got my mantle dumped on me because a spirit thought it would be funny to see the Spirit Association wondering why it empowered me, of all people.  You seized a chance to change the world and made the most of it."

Rose Weed crosses her arms behind her head, stretching. "Eh. I seized the chance to be pretty in pink and never get old. And apparently do lots of stuff involving floaty exploding flowers. Genies are ffffflipping weird, man. So is magic really. What spirit is that? They kind of take all kinds."

"Culpeper Cut thought it would be funny.  I actually did do some more traditional spirit-impressing with one of the ones you show up to a path in the middle of nowhere and yell to contact, though.  ...Floaty exploding flowers, huh?"

"And...just because you're also benefiting from what you're doing, doesn't mean it's not worth doing."

She grins. Waves her arms and holds out a small sphere that wasn't there a moment ago, curtseying and presenting it like a romantic gift.

"Can I offer you a lovely rose-grenade, miss Sylvia?"

The 'rose' is pink and white, and the 'stem' is a cartoon-style sparking rope fuse.

She snrks, and does actually take the rose grenade, though she cushions it in water so the 'explosion' won't blow through and hit her.  "Luna, at present.  What's it do?"

"That one's a distraction. Wouldn't want to get the suits mad by damaging the concrete, there's fields to practice big stuff in."

Pamf! Goes the rose-grenade from inside the water globule, spreading jets of intensely sparkly matter in all directions, some of it escaping the blob as glittersmoke but most swirling intensely inside the water.

"Pretty!"

"Very.  Is that...how this goes, I suppose?"

"Uhh, this? I'm not big on subtext. Make the text super."

She huffs a laugh out, and follows that up with an "I'll see what I can do."

"Okay, so - you've been doing this a lot longer than I have, judging by the shiny gubbins on your outfit and also that I literally became a magical girl today.  And I guess what I'm wondering is, did you start off with the flower power stuff?  Or was that something you grew into?"

"I started out with it and I guess I was more interested in playing on the same thing than beating my head against my theme. Most of us don't have much success on that front, miss rainbow." Playful glare. "Daisies, dandelions, roses, tulips, petunias, oh my. I can do all sorts of interesting area denial effects by now."

"Isn't miss rainbow - ugh, names - Chromadyne?  We don't have a purple!  Or a yellow, yet - Diana's definitely going to try and pick up some lightning to go with her fire, though."  She grins back.  "That's really neat, though!  Can you do trees?  Or parasitic plants?  Or mushrooms, which wouldn't fit the plants thing but do fit a things-that-grow sort of look...Is it more a chlorokinesis element, or a bomb power that happens to be plant-themed?  Why is your weapon a wand?

"...Whoops!  Let my questions get ahead of me."

"Well, Chromadyne's not here, is she? I hear she hangs around in upstate New York, blowing things up for fun. I can understand that second bit, but not the first. As for me, it's flowers. All flowers, all the way down. And bombs, but only if they're actually flowers. I can do cutting steel rose petals and sleeping pollen and giant sunflower barriers. I don't even garden! I just think flowers are pretty! But vines do flower, so I can make them tangle monsters, yeah, and....."

She hums in focus, a wash of rose-scented air seeming to make her glow and push back the slight stink and mundanity of the exercise equipment.

A flower blooms, grows, folds and disintegrates in her hand. And then she presents a small pink fruit. Which she then munches on. "Theshe are delichious. And my weapon's a wand 'caushe it looks cuter!" She pulls a pose with her arm outstretched, wand in hand, mouth still full.

"What sort of fruit is that...?  And trees do flower, surely you've seen the cherry blossoms!"

"I call it ambrosia! Trees are hard." She shrugs. "Hey, wanna fight?"

"...You know, we could probably stand to benefit from a spar.  After we've sorted out our limits, at least.  Which means a brief stint in the fire training facility, but after that?"

Red, and a green-black gradient, strike the indicator stripe.  "You're on."

"Geh, that throws me off, transforming again! Okay, sure, get on with it. I'll come heckle you, even."

Well, there's just a few tests she actually needs to do; she needs to test how sharp Ophelia's shadows are, how hot her fire is, and what sort of moves Clara - and Clara-and-Ophelia - can pull.

Ophelia's shadows are a formless fog that twists and pools, but with focus it can form up into edges and points to strike for a bare moment before dissipating once again. The fire is... Fire? It's hard to tell just how hot it is, exactly, the fire practice room is just a large bare concrete space with reinforced sprinkler systems and drains. It certainly feels warm. Meanwhile, Clara's wind magic naively applied seems to support all her movements, whipping in different directions at a moment's notice when she wants to accelerate, stop, turn, or do acrobatics. It's very hard to focus on two elements at once, though perhaps getting slightly easier? As if two of her aspects can be more 'awake' at once if she really focuses? The near-instinctual nature of Clara's wind, though, makes trying to use it in combination tricky, since it follows the physical motions more than conscious intent.

Rose Weed watches her practice with a critical eye. "Hey, just thinking aloud... You're going to need to practice a lot if you want to get all those options honed to a razor's edge. The versatility's great and all, but like. I know aaaaall the nuances of all my flower types out of sheer lived experience. If I had to do the same with water and shadow and stuff it'd be harder to get it down to the muscle memory level, you know?"

"Indeed.  Thankfully, we will have the time to do so.  After all, we have forever.  In the meantime, we expect to cultivate specific combinations of magics, depending upon what we will face."

She makes a face at 'forever'. "Mmh. I guess so."

"...Immortality not appealing to you?"

"Immortality has a failure rate."

"I suppose it does, yeah.  I'm not going to slack just because I can do something tomorrow.  But I have tomorrow, if I can seize it.  And when I'm motivated...I can seize quite a lot."

"Big words from a teenager. Hey, guess how old I am?"

"Cursory guess of thirty or three-hundred, more detailed analysis occurring forthwith."

Time to count the frills!  (And blue the stripe.)

Well, her wand is very fancy, her skirt has five overlapping layers with lots of embroidery, her gloves and thighhigh socks-

She detransforms and stands there in T-shirt and jeans, whistling faux-innocently.

"Definitely still leaning towards the three hundred estimate, or perhaps, because you're expecting to surprise me, a thousand.  Not many make it that long.  ...then again, you have something you call ambrosia.  You could date back to mythological times, if I'm willing to long-jump to conclusions based on that evidence."

"Well, I'm glad I'm so impressive! The real answer's a lot lower. I won't give you an exact number but 20th century. I'm not an old soul who it all blurs together for, and a percent of a percent adds up to a hundred eventually, you see what I'm saying?"

"I think so, I suppose.  I just think that you can get rerolls worth having.  That you can...mm.  That there's more than inevitable death.  That we can stop rolling those dice."

"A good hope, I suppose."

Sigh.

"Come on, let's have a nice lighthearted spar, end on a high note."

"Sure.  Under what rules?"

"I'll only use smoke grenades and my rosethorn gauntlet spell, you can use whatever. To first unwinding. First blood, that is."

"Then so be it."

Rose Weed re-transforms, indulging in a brief series of poses as the raiment washes over her dayclothes, then starts prancing off towards the sparring rooms!

Said sparring rooms have a lot in common with the fire practice room, but a lot more... Damage, that seems to have been mostly not cleaned up yet. Missing chips of concrete, scorch marks...

That makes sense, she thinks.

Luna has a very simple plan.  It starts with a water globe, and ends with Sylvia as the best defense.

"Ready? Fight!"

And then she stands there. Grinning.

....And in a twist of thought, the plan changes; Ophelia causes Rose's shadow to spear up towards her, even as Sylvia summons a defense!

Controlling the shadow at a distance like that is clumsier and slower, and might feel like something to the target, because Rose Weed twirls to the side to avoid the mass of animate shadow and starts tossing out smoke tulips, still moving and dodging. Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen... The arena is quickly full of hissing, floral-scented, multicolor smoke. No strike comes at her.

Then Sylvia shall take advantage of their mutual obscurement to practice turtling, summoning a steel mesh -

- as Luna exfiltrates water to the ceiling, ready to drop like a hammer on her enemies!

She doesn't really expect Rose to not look up, but she does expect that Rose wouldn't expect her to look up; it's a common failing, tactically-speaking.

-There's a flash of movement to the side, a swirl in the smoke, footsteps echoing.

She'll wait...

...but if Sylvia's iron dome can be held without her direct attention...

...then Clara gently lifts from the ground, ready to fucking dodge when the strike comes!

The dome will hold, once manifested like this... So long as it's not disrupted.

The strike comes two seconds after that feint. Rose runs in along the dome, lashing out to leave a long gash shredding through the dome sending winding lines of thorned stems along it, making it hurt to maintain what's left of the structure. Rose's slight smug fades back into the riot of smoke as she backsteps back into her smoke field.

Well that doesn't matter -

- because with a rush, the water hammer falls!

There's a slight yelp.

And then, all at once, the riot of color starts to clear. 

"Ugh! Fair cop. But for the record, you got lucky with the trajectory there, guessing which direction I'd retreat."

Clara does a little twirl, and settles down -

- for Luna to explain her thought process.  "I'm not actually sure how much of it to attribute to chance, versus poor tactical decisions on your part and educated guessing on mine and Clara's - were I you, I'd have actually opted to stay in close, and deny me a mobility advantage as well as my ability to fire - actually, hmm, considering fire, and the way it isn't good for plants, yeah, staying out of close range makes sense - hey, did you know I had any sort of 'artillery' prepared, coming in?  Anyway.  Hmm...I think that what really got you was pausing to be smug.  That gave us a better read on what you'd do - you thought momentum was on your side, but I got inside your OODA loop; I knew you'd be coming after me - so I took advantage of that to make a trap for you to spring, and refined it when you struck, drawing the water hammer in along your line of attack, and relying on the momentum of the spray, and the fact that you'd have to come back around, to handle the uncertainty in targeting.  Or maybe I'm just post-hoccing, but it sounds legit, doesn't it?"

"......Nerd. In a good way, probably. I think you're saying that I wasn't taking this seriously? That's true, at least. I fight on wordless instinct more than planning most of the time, these days. I thought you had something other than that dome, but," shrug.

"Hmm.  Combat has to be run on instinct more often than not, and you discarded most of yours, for fairness' sake.  I won't say it wasn't reasonable, for teaching purposes especially, but I will say that the goal of winning became exponentially harder," Diana expounds.  "I can think of a few ways we could have prepared other reasonably undodgeable counter-strikes, as well, given that we knew roughly the direction you were coming from, and have a Clara, who, combined with fire..."

"Well, we haven't tried it yet, but let's see if this works like we expect it to..."

...Clara and Diana will, if the impromptu demonstration of wind-boosted fire means anything, make one hell of a scorched-earth murderblender some day.

The fire spreads rapidly forward, scattering as the wind hits it, but not as a solid mass - more of a rush of embers in a wide cone. That is still plenty distracting and painful, of course.

Also. Also this: There's a half-second blur of movement and then very slight stinging pain along her throat, where one of Rose Weed's gauntlet thorns is suddenly pressed up against it.

"Just remember how high the ladder goes. Don't get cocky. Okay?"

She doesn't even flinch.  "I am but a speck of dust in the eyes of monsters.  I just hope I'll make them blink."

Rose sighs and stands back. "Do. Not. Approach. The Evertree or the Monster King. Don't even think about it. They will kill you and it will be pointless." Her eyes are distant. "It's- Time for me to go."

"...hey.  I know what stupid tactical and strategic decisions look like.  I'm not going near those fuckers, not unless they're already chasing me and I have nowhere I can run.  ...And frankly, my solution to the Evertree is a fucking laser beam, from as far away as I can manage.  Not hand-to-hand combat.

"...Also.  Would you like a hug?  Or would that...be unpleasant?"

"I don't really know you, you know? So no hug. This is just me feeling nostalgic for being a bright-eyed newbie. Good luck, Luna. Look me up some time when you think you've made it."

And then Rose Weed walks out of the sparring room, heading for the exit.

"Well, I'll see you in a hundred years, then.  Be safe yourself, okay?"

Alright, she's going to visit the library now.

Her orientation person is waiting just outside the gym! With paperwork that has been through more stages of the gears of bureaucracy!

"Do you mind a brief detour for an ID photo, or straight to the library?"

"I don't mind doing the bureaucratic stuff first; it means less interruptions of my reading time."  She winks.  "But also I do mean that."

Well, the ID photo will take all of two minutes, conveniently! They want it in raiment, though. She can get it updated whenever she wants.

She'll...do that up in Diana's raiment, probably; it's the best balance for daily use magical-girling.

Now she has an ID! It says she is Luna, a Spirit Bearer, nonmember.

"I may as well be a member of the Association, I think."

"Parent or guardian signature, or enough time and other paperwork to get around needing that, I'm afraid."

"See what I mean about signing my own life away?"

"I don't think so? But I don't make the rules. I think this is due to finance laws."

"I am somehow perfectly competent to risk my life fighting monsters but not competent enough to sign up for my trade union on my own recognizance, is what I mean.  What's this about finance laws?"

"Oh, the monster-hunting license requires that too. It's because we charge dues, and technically waive them for the first two years unless you end up with some sort of strike, but- We're not allowed to make minors pay dues without the consent of their guardians. This is just official recognition that you have magic. We can add 'speaker for Culpeper Cut' later on depending on how things turn out, too."

"...Well, that certainly is a thing, I suppose.  Not sure I think it's a smart thing, especially given that there really isn't any reason I know of that I couldn't pay dues at a regular shop, but I guess it's probably tied up in the Association's particular flavor of weirdness, given the vast varieties of shit you get up to.

"Anyway...speaker for Culpeper Cut?"

"There's a lot of particular weirdness. We do get up to a lot of stuff. If it's chosen you as a representative, yes, a lot of spirit bearers are specifically tasked with representing their spirit's interests to human society, so we have a mechanism to recognize that officially. It's not... Power of attorney or anything, it's mostly a label."

She nods.  "I don't think Culpeper Cut would care about who you pinned that title on per se unless it actually managed to build a working model of human cognition sometime this century, so, I wouldn't.  But that's good to know about."

"Mhm. To the library at last then?"

"Yes please."

The whole building, architecturally, seems sort of torn between modernity and a very Old Money feel- Portions are smooth, white, and chrome, while others have landscape paintings with artful filigree and oak inlay.

The library leans fairly hard into the 'old money' side of things. The floor is patterned wood, the chairs are plush, there are chandeliers and latin mottos. It's not a vast museum-like library, much closer to a small local one, but definitely fancy.

"Welcome to my domain," says a woman in obvious raiment, positively nailing the 'librarian' look, with a pretty Asian face, blue hair in a neat bun, a purple/white vest sort of garment with shining buttons and stripes, elaborately patterned silk cape glittering with silver, shaded glasses, black gloves that flare into a star pattern at the wrist, and probably more behind the desk. "Miss Riley, is this Luna, Maeve's five o'clock?"

"Indeed. She wants to browse while she waits. Luna, this is Madam Pen, who prefers to be called that or 'the librarian'. Madam, Luna, a newly mantled spirit bearer - or perhaps spirit guardian?"

"Very good. You won't be able to check anything out today, and please don't try to re-shelve things yourself. We only keep books relevant to the life of a spirit bearer here, though that is a bit broader in some ways than some imagine when they hear it. May I help you find anything?"

"Yes, please; where's the index?  I know I don't know enough to know what I can know I don't know, just yet, madam librarian; given that knowledge is power, I'd like to rectify that glaring discrepancy with all due haste!"

...She somehow manages to put a Clara-tonne of energy in to her library voice, which, she thinks, is a feat actually worthy of an outfit upgrade, unlike simply winning a fight like a blunt instrument.

"Physical and digital," Madam Pen indicates a desk off to the side. "We use an adapted version of the Dewey system. The broad categories would be history, monsters, spirits, human magic, and other. I can offer recommendations if you tell me what you wish to learn."

"...What I'm immediately interested in is the stuff that's known to bite newbies in the ass, pardon my language; let me write down some of the farther-future topics."

In short order, Madam Pen has a Post-It with "not-becoming single point of failure/replicability of unique magics, force projection (Can't be everywhere at once; want to), what's with outfits/weapons anyway + I have too many spears, learning/developing new elements?, evidence of monster sapience/lack-thereof"...

She considered more, but she's done for her first research-binge.

"There's a wonderful book titled 'The Unfathomable Power of Common Sense, Applied to Magic' by Christine Cooper, who published it under her original name rather than a magical one. I recommend it to anyone who asks for anything like your first question. Can you elaborate on replicability of magics? Do you not want to end up the only source of some spell? In terms of force projection, 'Anti-Monster Tactics and Risk versus Reward' by Steel Helm. The nature of outfits and weapons is a deep topic but 'What's in a Raiment' by Blood Ribbon will get you started. For the last, 'The Thinking Foe' by Fleur D'or takes it fairly comprehensively despite the martially minded title. I think she wanted to get 'stab first' type girls to think about it."

"I don't want to end up the only source of a spell, no.  I also want to avoid letting others' useful spells 'die out'.  But right now...that first book sounds like the thing I should focus on, then 'What's in a Raiment'."

She'll write down all these books for later, though!

"Thank you, Madam Pen!"

"Of course. Just treat the books well, alright? As for spell specialization, good for you to think of that early on, but it's not easy. Exact duplicates are rare to nonexistent."

She rattles off Common Sense's location.

"To wilfully treat a book poorly is the sort of thing I'd call a sin, ma'am."

Alright!  To the books!

The Unfathomable Power of Common Sense, Applied to Magic has the following to say, in fairly more elaborate and detailed prose, with examples: 

• Don't fight monsters without backup
• Don't try overly flashy moves when sensible ones will work
• You're not immune to car crashes or other forms of accident
• You're still squishy when not raimented
• Don't fight monsters without backup
• Remember that environmental damage, like say, forest fires, exists
• Don't piss off spirits, most won't bite your head off but be respectful
• Being famous can be a curse, consider how public you want to be
• Fire magic ignites things. Water magic can erode foundations. Wind magic can send debris flying. Etc.
• Don't fight monsters without backup
• You should get a feel for various levels of unwinding to know when you're at your limit
• Control first and then power, always
• Ordinary humans are still squishy, and so are most buildings
• Learn about the common kinds of monsters and slang - goblins, beasts, slimes, swarms, ambushers, infiltrators
• If you don't recognize a monster, back away slowly and call for help
• Don't fight monsters without backup
• Keep in mind that most of your magic will not be permanent, water vanishes, heat dissipates, bindings dissolve. The major exception is healing, usually. But observe your own powers to find out.
• If you have the itch to make something, be careful, enchanting can be very draining
• Also be careful with whatever you end up making, who knows what it can do
• Try out new spells, new combos, new items, etc, in a safe place/on consenting subjects/with healing or whatever available, if possible
• Genies are really stupid, they mostly won't monkey paw you but you can monkey paw yourself, so be careful
• Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer, think about the risks you take, always
• If you think you can use magic to fly, if it's not a native spell it's harder than you think
• Remember when doing parkour or flight or anything that hitting the ground will hurt, a lot
• Let cops handle mundie criminals for the most part they have de-escalation training and nonlethal takedown training
• Oh, also, don't fight monsters without backup

Yep.  Don't fight monsters without backup, and mind the collateral damage.  ...Sylvia's conjuration not working for repairs properly is something she might not have otherwise caught, though; good book.  And yeah of course flight is hard, she doesn't have arbitrary vectored thrust!  ...That said, now that she's thinking about it, she could probably use water 'balloons'...

Also - enchanting?

...Oh, the cops have de-escalation training, yes, that totally explains FUCKING KANSAS -- 

'Breathe.  Tipping over into unrestrained anger kills you.  You need to be alive to fix things.  Therefore you must breathe.'

Okay, she's done with that and looking into getting herself a ranged weapon now; What's in a Raiment, please, library?

The book is easily enough found. Raiment is a magical construct! It sort of acts like it has mass, threads, particles, but it doesn't. Raiment under a microscope, like monster parts under one, look like dozens of different things - mostly what you expect them to. It pretends to have properties like mass, heat capacity, shear strength... But just doesn't, not consistently, raiment experiments don't add up. Raiment does a pretty good job of pretending to be clothes, albeit ones that always fit perfectly and never get too warm or stained. Something deep in the nature of human magic just seems intrinsically linked to clothes, maybe because they're what separated agricultural humans from the early dark and terror?

Your raiment tends to be things that both you and people around you would find pretty and cool, and most people can't edit it freely, only with focus and effort and only to an extent. It can change dramatically after important life events. The very earliest magical girl there is archaeological evidence of (an extremely rare and lucky find, found protected by ancient ward stones in a tomb!!!) is from approximately 600 BCE. There's paintings and Egyptian writings of a spirit bearer, commonly called White Tigress, who "was chosen for the house of light" and fought "the rotting crocodile of the south"; Her outfit included tons and tons of white flowy cloth and egyptian-style ornaments that line up closely with what the people of the time depicted the gods wearing, and it looks like they actually considered her basically a god, much like actual spirits.

Here's some cross-cultural raiment comparisons!!! Lots of yukata and hanfu and qipao in Asia, basically things that are culturally high class everywhere throughout history though getting more uniform after cultural crossover in the last few centuries, with the commonality of getting continually fancier and more elaborate with increasing magic power. Is raiment a side-effect of magic? A requirement? You can't do magic without manifesting it, but restoring one's raiment is an automatic, reflexive action, even more than the regeneration. Magical Girl Sapphire Eye attempted to focus on not restoring her raiment, and also using her more powerful clarivoyant spells at the same time, and couldn't do it. Raiment expressions have tendencies in terms of what they mean for powers or personalities, but this is usually vague and metaphorical at best; Here's some of the trends and some case studies.

And...this doesn't tell her how to change it.  Dammit.  Fine, she'll try deriving it from first principles.  Step one -

-- Acquire a spotter, first.

"Madam librarian, I don't suppose you'd know if there's anyone who'd be better placed to help me make better use of having half-a-dozen spears tucked away in 'raiment I'm presently not wearing' than just asking someone I met - oh, about an hour, hour and a half, maybe two by now - anyway.  I have too many mostly-identical spears cluttering my metaphorical inventory, and I would like to fix that.  However, one oughtn't experiment unsupervised, and I certainly haven't the faintest clue what one is supposed to do to shift a raiment other than 'believe very hard that it shall be so'."

Still.  First step, imagine, expect, reify.

The librarian gives a very Librarianly eyebrow-raise. "You're going to have to clarify what your plan is. Are you speaking of changing your weapon, or changing your clothes? One's weapon is, technically, not raiment."

"One's weapon.  Though possibly also my raiment.  ...Ah.  I'm going to need another book, aren't I?"

"Thankfully there are plenty. Yes, weaponness is different from raimentness, though I personally think we ought to have better jargon. Weapons tend to be easier, they respond to use of potential well enough, unlike raiment."

"Honestly, just make a supercategory of regalia, and then you're golden.  Or maybe genericize raiment, and put 'regalia' where raiment used to be?  It depends, I suppose. Anyway.  Yeah, there's like...I have way too many spears."  One spear, two spear, red spear, blue spear...Just to show what she means to the librarian, of course.

"...That is unusual. Do it again? Oh, nevermind, I see, interesting. Common Sense wouldn't have gotten into potential and expending potential, do you know that concept yet?"

"I have any idea what it might be, but hearing it from someone who definitely knows is a better idea."

"The common understanding is that spirit bearers grow in the direction they dream, strive, and practice for. This is not, strictly speaking, inaccurate, but recently another understanding has been put forward thanks to one of our researchers. The evidence is suggestive rather than conclusive, but under the," (a near imperceptible twitch of a frown) "Experience points theory of potential, a bearer can accumulate the capacity to develop new aspects of their magic to an extent. By not pushing for new capacities for some time, they can then grow a great deal at once. Have you experienced a sensation of pushing, as if your magic doesn't quite seem capable of something, but you try very hard and manage it?"

Luna does not restrain her own corresponding splutter.  "I can't believe that's a serious term of art...  Ah, maybe?  I've been a spirit bearer for all of a day or so, yet."

"It's new and controversial. You'll feel it for certain in time. Sometimes pushing will give you a new ability, sometimes no amount of effort will do anything. The key point is, changes to your weapon require potential, so it's not something to do on a whim. If you change a weapon you can then easily change it back- Assume I'm saying 'usually' three times a sentence- Changed weapons are better in every way in terms of handling, power, sharpness, so on, and you can also invest power into your weapon without actually changing it."

"I see.  Hmm.  That's...hm.  Hm.  ...I can just tell that this is going to involve either calculus or spreadsheets.  Dammit.  Alright, are there any studies on where the tradeoffs are, where the...what the relative growth curves are like, spells known versus weaponry investment...If anyone's figured out the XP rate..."

"There are wide, wide error bars. But yes."

Madam Pen will help her look up data. People have indeed made spreadsheets and speculative price lists, but they're guessing on the costs and totals and can't confirm any of it since it varies per person and have a few thousand sample sizes of one.

"Right.  Okay, then.  ...How hard can you actively cheat physics with weaponstuff and raimentstuff?  I have some ideas.  And even if guns are apparently right out, I want to get something ranged."

"Oh, that's certainly doable! If you don't want a crossbow or slingshot - both benefit greatly from actual skill, but that can be developed - wands and staves tend to come with ranged attacks. There are other options, I'm not an expert. I just use my pen." Smile. "Raiment will help you more if it looks good. Weapons can become very cheaty, with enough potential invested into them. A gun may well be the best choice despite the cost if the alternate ranged weapons are hard to use. Guns may be expensive but they're not impossible. Look here- Gloriana Whiterock's weapon, the Steinburger."

"Oh, I'm sure I can find something that doesn't look like a gun to the point that magic objects.  Probably something arm-mounted...maybe go full space future and do a powered-exoskeleton rig.  What's this about raiment helping more if it looks good?"

"The effect is limited. For example, if you fall a dress or cape can stylishly catch the air."

"Ah."

Yeah, no.  Capes are a hazard.

But.  Luna and Ophelia are finally remotely aligned about being stylish, with this new information, and Ophelia is quite happy to assist in the design of a new weapon system, to go with a slight update to the other's raiment.

It helps that she wasn't very keen on the original.

"So, how do you actually go about shifting a weapon or raiment?"

"Mostly? Simply will it. There are meditation exercises and instructional books to achieve specific effects, if you're nervous, I'm not an expert in that."

"Ahh.  I think I see.  Is it the sort of thing that might blow up in one's face, if you do it wrong, or...?"

"With weapons the worst that will happen is a disappointing result. Make sure you have a clear understanding of what you want to use it for and how. Perhaps practice with props. With raiment you can get a sort of backlash that makes further changes harder if what you try to do doesn't fit at all. Some people say it gets annoyed with you but I don't trust the anthropomorphization in that conclusion."

"I see.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure where to get a functioning arm-mounted spear-throwing coilgun with hydraulic shock absorbers on today's market, so I'll have to make do."

She can, at least, get herself a labcoat and some safety goggles!  (As her raiment; the ID stripe, being interrupted by an edge where she'd try to draw most circles, is incorporated on the rubber-ish fittings and elastic of the safety goggles, as well as on the labcoat's breast pocket.)

"Right.  Now for the hard bit, which I should probably avoid doing in here."

Her raiment can form the safety goggles, she was about due for a boost in fanciness level. The lab coat is a bit of a stretch. Her main garment shifts slowly, even sulkily, slowly finding a cut that looks stylish while still being plain and recognizable as a vivid blue lab coat. It takes a good couple of minutes of clear focus and nudging it along. There's a sense that much further change would be pushing it.

She mutters some...encouragement, as she focuses: "C'mon, c'mon, we can both have what we want here; isn't the space future a really cool aesthetic?  Yeah, like that, see?  If you want the fancy classical vibes, you know you have two whole outfits to mostly-unrestrictedly play with; now's the time for experimenting!  You could do tron-lines!"

Neither Clara nor Ophelia, who are both better placed to actually notice these things, are certain how much Luna's attempt to sate a hypothetical magical girl art director's thirst for the traditional aesthetic with them impacted this outcome, but it did make Luna feel better, so they'll allow it.

"...I'd probably better go back to the gym for this next bit, but part of me is loath to give up the advice of someone who knows how this works."

"It's almost 5 o'clock in any case. You have an appointment. And with you seeming to be multiple spirit bearers in one body it might... Complicate things. I cannot recall hearing of such a thing before."

"Huh!  You would've thought - actually, I wonder if some of the historic accounts of 'demonic possession' were something like that?  Anyway, yes, the appointment.  Ah...where should I be heading for that?"

"Perhaps I will look into it. As for Maeve, miss Riley knows the way to her office."

Miss Riley, who has recently returned after ducking out to do some paperwork, gives her a thumbs-up.

"Well, then.  Better early than late; if you would be so kind?"

It's a strange and tenuous balance to have Ophelia and Luna operating simultaneously, but they appear to be managing, judging by the color of Luna's pocket-stripe and goggles.

"Right this way, just down the hall really. At some point I should get a clear explanation of what the colors indicate for you, I can guess and tailor my attitude based on that, but why guess when I can just ask, hm?"

"Perhaps it is intended to remain a mystery, for now."

"More realistically, you in particular should know, for Spirit Association liaison reasons, but, the entity hopefully soon to be legally recognized as Annabel Asterisk Lee already has enough interest groups that will pick a fight with her for healthily and happily existing, and has no desire to add a third such burden to her plate when she's just starting out.  So it's not something to just wander the halls discussing."

Luna follows up, and murmurs "We'll talk about all that later, okay?  Just...not now.  Opsec."

"I take your meaning even if we are in the middle of the DC office. Just because we didn't have to walk through a checkpoint doesn't mean there's no security. There's... The Association is not above the law, and free speech is a thing." Sigh. "Here, Spiritwatcher Maeve's office."

They've gone into a back hallway with a fancy break room, built like academic offices. Maeve's, apparently, is an oak door that sticks out somewhat.

Riley reaches for the intercom button, but it buzzes on before she manages to touch it.

"Yes, yes, Luna may enter to come speak of Culpeper Cut. Thank you, miss Riley."

"You're welcome. Luna, I need to head out but I'll have someone to show you to the exit when you're done here. Here's my contact info, and that of the department." She proffers a business card.

"The more people who know a secret, the greater the chance it could reach unfriendly ears, even if all who you have told would never dare hurt you," is her response to the comment about DC's security.

"You have been very helpful, Riley; thank you very much."  Once that's said, she pockets the card.

(And, of course, enters the office.)

Spiritwatcher Maeve's office is cool and dim, heavy drapes all around the walls providing hints of light filtering down. Glowy runes are placed along the base of the wall, and crossing the threshold feels like - becoming a guest, for lack of a better word. Her desk looks like rough, old, scarred dark wood, and has a giant crystal ball resting on it, white mist swirling within. There's a nice chair sitting in front of it, right in front of where Maeve rests her chin on intertwined hands.

Maeve herself has braided red hair, bright green eyes that don't quite seem to be glowing outright but are definitely far more shiny than they should be, a tiara and complicated necklace and multi-layered shawl sort of raiment, dominated by the colors of green and white. She has a blue patterned tattoo around her neck.

"Be welcome, fellow speaker to spirits. The wilds of nature do not bow nor conquer, and our efforts to make accord ever have limits. The attention and will of the blessed is not without limit, and the insight of ordinary man has at times proven blinkered and self-serving, and so treating with them remains a challenge and a peril. You say you were given the spark by one who vexes and frustrates us, in jest?"

"Ma'am, to be pointlessly cryptic and arcane is to confound your own attempts to understand.  And it is your calling to understand, is it not?

"So.  On that note.  Culpeper Cut, the spirit, gives most of its fucks about the ways plants are cool, which, frankly, should have been deduced the moment someone talked to it for more than five seconds.  But I'm given to understand that no-one has, and certainly not in any way it understood.

"That 'seeking an accord' was your undoing.  You must first seek to understand values, before you can commission trade.  And here, that failed, and may well have never happened, despite even a clear human analogue to draw from in attempts at understanding!"

She hisses out a breath, taking action to calm burning indignancy, lest it overflow before it's due.

"I don't know how, and do pardon my language, the absolute blithering fuck y'all missed that Culpeper Cut is effectively an autistic prankster with a special interest in plants, but you need to do better.  You have most certainly spoken to the spirits, but how often have you listened?

"And I'm not blessed with jack and shit; I just have power, perhaps asked-for - but fundamentally unearned.  You just have power.  And with that power comes a responsibility to those that granted it, whether they care or not.  With that power we place ourselves above the common man, and the lofty heights of power do so make one lose track of the little things, do they not?  Why, I may never want for money again," she lilts, and then growls "- and isn't that something most would kill for."  Her expression, sickeningly syrupy-sweet and just as insincere, smiles for but a moment - or perhaps it shows her teeth.

Her hands thump down upon Maeve's desk, arms spread, leaning in, framing the crystal ball, practically looming.

(Her raiment has shifted to Diana's, as well, her spear upon her back, vibrant red-orange clashing with Maeve's blue-green-white.)

"I had worried, coming in; I'd thought some of the girls would be vastly out of touch with the world around them.  I'm not happy to be proven right, and by a person in such a critical position!

"If this is what the Spirit Association considers meet to the duty it carries in its very name, this cryptic self-blinding and overblown gravitas interfering with the very diplomacy that is core to our kind and our work, I must challenge you to reflect upon this pointless pomp and circumlocuitous crap, and find something better to do."

Her voice softens.

"Because you can, if you dare but try."

"I didn't even have powers until after I fixed most of the problems I resolved today.  You don't need to be blessed to do this work - you just need to be canny, and kind.  Certainly, the magic helps, and I'd no more risk a mortal life upon an unknown spirit than I'd charge the Evertree, untransformed, without a single spear in my possession or a plan - but.  But.  I did this still.  Now it's your turn.  Prove that all that spirit-watching's taught you something worth knowing, because when I came here today, I had a diplomatic purpose - and this conversation is the first thing that has truly made me doubt whether it's to the Association that I should pledge my banner."

"And regardless of anything else that may happen, I would advise taking more inspiration from how ambassadors style their offices, because you are one."

Maeve takes this all in perfectly coolly, never seeming startled or upset at all.

"How passionate of you to appear and conclude, immediately, that we have not thought of these things before, that we stand in ivory towers or palaces of indolence, that you have seen past the mistakes of tens of thousands who came before you if only we would listen. Perhaps you are correct. That does happen occasionally. However, I believe you are missing several key pieces of context, most centrally being that my role is an archival and informational one rather than a direct negotiator, followed shortly thereafter in that we bear the weight of three centuries of bureaucracy and precedent. There are things that it is acceptable for us to do. And things that it is not."

She sighs slightly and sits up.

"You want me to cut the crap? Okay, Culpeper Cut did not used to be that way. Culpeper Cut has killed nine people that we know of, including one novice Spirit Bearer. We didn't kill it because the threshold for when it's a good idea to do that is very high. We had barriers put up and patrols around it decades ago; We don't any more since it calmed the fuck down and money and bearer-power spent elsewhere can literally save lives. The directors, the old hats, think in a calculus of death. There are reasons. Sometimes it's corruption. Sometimes it's experience. Sometimes it's a stupid mistake. Sometimes it's wanting to cooperate with federal, state, and local law instead of becoming magical tyrants. Sometimes it's the best we can do. We don't trust that Culpeper Cut won't start sending mutant hyenas after people again if we poke it, so we leave it alone. You went and poked it so now we have to figure it out again. You're correct that spirit bearers have great power for better or worse. At the association we try not to become Magic Napoleon. We, that is spirit bearers, have developed parallel social and cultural systems to the majority of humanity's, we have reasons for things, and you don't know these because you are a child."

"Thank you.  Sincerely."

She sighs, her raiment shifting back, and collapses into the chair.  "Having heard that, I do retract most of my concerns about Culpeper Cut's handling, and generally believe you did reasonably well with the information you had."

A moment passes, Annabel holding up a finger, pinching the bridge of her nose, and taking deep breaths.  Clearly, delivering that monologue took effort.

"I think that if that's all the information you had available to you, you handled Culpeper Cut as well as I expect anyone could have.  This doesn't preclude the...bemusement I experience at this information, however, because while I agree that Culpeper Cut doesn't hold human life in especial regard at present - and separately has been having many problems even predicting them, as it was attempting to do so on a cell-by-cell basis - I don't particularly see why it would just up and take life without need or provocation - because it was quite forthright in communicating its desires, with me."

"I should have...somewhere in here..."

She does have a copy of her notes of her conversation with Culpeper Cut!  They're somewhat intermingled with PLANT FACTS.

"This is what I wrote down both during the talk I had with Culpeper Cut, and what I summated in the car, after; it's as close as I can get to just shoving my memories of it at you, and probably slightly more reliable regardless.  I will ask you to keep certain things that you might infer from what's in these notes private, however; there are some things that oughtn't be shared, for everyone involved's well-being."  Because the fact that Culpeper Cut didn't actually empower her isn't left out, in this copy.

She's extending some trust, to see what Maeve will do with it.

(She's not handing them over without that agreement first, though.)

"I don't disagree, I think, that Culpeper Cut is mercurial.  Its moods can change as fast as the prairie breeze.  But its desires are straightforward, and so, I think, is the spirit in general.  It likes plants, would probably prefer to understand why all these humans rattle on about boring things that aren't plants, and does enjoy pranking us to see what happens.  It's dangerous, sure.  I felt that danger.  But so's a farmer with a gun, and they get the benefit of anti-trespassing laws."

"I'm sure we at the Association are pleased to have your approval," Maeve says with her eyes closed and a hint of something that could be sarcasm or just tiredness.

She shakes her head slightly and looks at Annabel again. "If you would like to see the old case notes that can surely be arranged. It would be a good idea for you to be familiar with them. Notice also that, having not joined the Association, we will not particularly order or forbid an action with regard to the Cut. There are of course still consequences but we have no orders. It is in fact illegal to trespass on Culpeper Cut. I also appreciate the offer of your notes. Would an Oath of the first level, that being one of my own abilities to create binding promises that the parties become aware instantly if broken, hypothetically be satisfactory for your security concerns? The first level if broken simply lets the other party know and gives the breaking party a momentary spike of pain and horror."

"My approval hardly ought to matter, I should think.

"I believe the oath would suffice.  I would have that oath that you shall not reveal, by deed or implication, who did or did not empower me, unless it is first disclosed to the public by myself or another.  Or...no.  I would have that oath that you will not reveal that the conditions of the oath I wish to ask of you involve that subject.  ...blast and botheration; this is a complex web I intend to weave.  Alright.  Your level-one oath that you will not reveal, by act or omission, that the subject of who or what empowered me is not as I make it seem, unless someone else has first disclosed the truth.  ...no, that's just the same bloody oath, worded differently...  Do...give me a moment."

"Really, the primary concern I have is that in discussing the conditions of the oath, you already know of the secret.  Which was entirely my unforced error, but still.

"The secondary concern I have is that the way your oath works does not seem to include any warning component on the subject's behalf; that is, that you could break it without knowing that you were going to break it by doing what you would do.

"That just wouldn't do, because the oath would still thusly be broken.  And that's not worth bothering to extract; I don't wish to be punitive, I wish primarily to protect the secret, unless or until such time as I choose to disclose it.

"Is there something you can do to resolve that, or something I am missing that would assuage my concerns?"

"Oaths are not toys and they are not so simple as to be gotten around with cute technicalities. Intent matters also. The primary purpose of this one would be to make you know if it is broken, not to serve as a true deterrent for myself. While I believe that your concerns on this front are perhaps overstated, that is not my decision to make. What of: I will not, in writing or speech, in implication or statement, deliberately or negligently disclose any information given by one Annabel regarding Culpeper Cut today in this office excepting specific permissions granted, expiring upon Annabel's release of the oath, her death, or ten years. While I may make recommendations informed by said information, they will be bald of context or implication. With a very general prohibition there are multiple reasons you might have asked for such a thing, ranging from trauma to embarrassment to protectionism to how you were in fact trespassing on private land. I am known to make similar oaths in order to learn secrets."

"...And what did I do to give you the impression that I thought oaths such as these were -

"No, that can wait.  Business first, interpersonal concerns later.

"There's a problem with this oath; it doesn't actually protect the secret.

"Because the secret isn't really about Culpeper Cut except as that it is my 'cover', as was.

"And I'm curious why you believe my concern to be overblown, if you would."

"Then I shall append specifically not discussing your enkindling. Magic is magic, whatever its origins, and I find a great many young bearers are overly concerned with small things at first. I am, of course, not you."

"That would be acceptable.  And, indeed, you are not me - but it is not necessarily you that I am concerned about.  There are quite certainly some who treat bearers of power from different sources...differently.  And that's not something I have enough energy to face, right now.  Not with everything else I'm going to deal with."

Maeve's expression softens a bit. "We don't expect the deliverance of the world of our newest. Even if they so often expect it of themselves. To us, your job is simply to learn, now."

"I don't really imagine that I'll be saving the world.  Just having to defend myself from it, when it decides it doesn't like the cut of my jib."

She sighs.  "But that's not really what we're here to talk about.  ...If you'd be willing to swear that oath?"

"Mm." She writes out a short contract on yellowed paper fetched from a drawer, with an old-fashioned quill scratching and echoing in the odd office.

Maeve shall not, in writing or speech, in implication or statement, deliberately or negligently disclose any information given by one Annabel regarding Culpeper Cut today in Maeve's office, nor the knowledge or suspicion of Annabel's method of enkindling, excepting specific permissions granted from Annabel, expiring upon Annabel's release of the oath, Annabel's death, or ten years.

Annabel shall have no obligations.

She turns the paper around. "Read carefully, then we both touch it and I intone the promise."

She does so read, and does so touch --

-- and they say "Whenever you're ready, then."

"Oathmaking." The word carries a hint of the otherworldly. "I, Maeve, have considered and do understand the terms written here. On my solemn honor I agree to them." A spark passes from her to the 'contract'. "Have you, Annabel, considered and understood the terms written here? Do you agree to them, on your solemn honor?"

"I have considered and understood the terms, and I do so agree."

A spark passes from her to the contract, then there's a twining of golden light between them.

"Well, that's that. I won't be insulted if you seek some verification that I am actually capable of this and it's not just a light show."

"No, I definitely - felt it, I'm pretty sure.  Though I will certainly be confirming that."

"Anyway.  I give you permission to discuss and disclose anything that is to do with Culpeper Cut, except that it did not empower me.  I do not give you permission to disclose any details of theoretical trespass I may or may not have committed by obtaining such information."

She then hands over her notes.

Maeve scans them quickly.

"...Yes, hmm. I was involved with the whole affair and pulled the reports when you made your appointment, and this is not what we experienced at all. Clearly Culpeper Cut has changed. You have a rapport?"

"I would say I might.  It's...hmm, tenuous, is how I might describe it, but it's - it doesn't want me gone.  What were previous interactions like, then?"

"Constant creepy laughter, and hyenas harassing and attacking visitors, and ranging out into the lumber town nearby harassing them as well, attacking without regard for their own safety and behaving in unnerving ways. When actual communication was attempted, images of churning acid, giant claws, bursting walls. Creeping thirst that consumed all. Spears of frost shredding strange structures. Insidious parasites that multiplied out of control. We didn't understand these at all, it was 1923 and the world was different then - education was much different. They made no sense. We did not make the connection to cellular biology - it was just... Eldritch. Strange, chaotic, horrible things happening. It struck young miss Hammer Hand with lightning once. That's the novice who died. She likely inadvertently angered it somehow, but we had no idea how at the time."

"Well, it hasn't stopped doing the laughter.  ...Harassing?  Like how?"

Digging through papers... "Digging through trash, destroying fences, chewing through tires, being spotted near schools and playgrounds, following people, breaking windows..."

"...Seems like curiosity, to me.  And the attacks, what were they like?"

"February 3, 1923, its hyenas fought a tar spitter - rare slime or amorph type monster - and a group of Goblins and after killing them all, they attacked first responders. A national guard unit. Two deaths. March 14, a hiker in the area was reported missing and search-and-rescue found his body in Culpeper Cut, having been mostly eaten. April 6, a group of boars left Culpeper Cut's area and rammed a work truck off a road, killing one - the driver. April 7, a swarm of crows pecked at electrical infrastructure and caused a short-circuit and fire which killed a housewife. April 8, novice Hammer Hand and an older bearer, Naiad Nayla, tried to come to a rapport after the fire incident. That's when Hammer Hand was killed. We started a kill-on-sight policy for its hyenas outside of the closed-off area after that. April 10, a bear attacked one of the patrolling bearers but was slain safely. The remaining three deaths all occurred on October 31, 1923. Halloween. It sent a huge collection of... Strange creatures, in all directions, there was panic and confusion and five deaths resulting from it, three from actual attacks and two accidents. Plus over a dozen injured. We widened the exclusion area and there were only minor incidents for a decade, and things have been quiet since."

"Huh.  All and only in 1923?  That's strange.  And then the absolute wave of 'strange creatures' on Halloween that correlated directly with a decrease of incidents in the aftermath...

"I wonder how related these things are, because I didn't observe hyenas at all.  This is...Something about it makes me think something funny might have been happening.  And not in a pranky way.  Does Halloween have any particular, mystical significance or what-have-you?"

"Mm, difficult. I'm still in 'cut the crap' mode so, I think so, and so do others, but not everyone agrees. The most popular counter-argument is that human belief or spirit-bearer belief makes things real, and we expect Halloween to be weird. In which case we're still right, really."

"I see!  Interesting.  ...Oh, I don't like this idea I'm having.  Well, it's competing with the 'the weird mutated creatures were some sort of Miasma infection or otherwise in the vein of the Mt. St. Marcy Killer', but, ugh, I so do not want to be responsible for 'okay if belief makes things real then how much of that aggression was caused by you expecting Culpeper Cut to be aggressive?'.  ...Also, what was the National Guard even doing there to begin with?  Seems kind of...pointless to deploy when the enemy's already taken care of."

Maeve searches reports for a bit.

"...Doing a navigation exercise in the area, and responded to radio calls about the monsters, apparently. If belief makes things real, all the attempts thus far to believe in better things have more or less failed. It's not supposed to be an all-powerful effect. If anything a gestalt of all the cumulative belief of thousands and thousands of years - not something easily shifted by a viral video. More has changed in the last century than the previous three, and more then than the ten before that."

"Huh.  Well, that'd do it."

"...Also, aren't there a lot more people than there have ever been, these days?  Unless it's a function of time..."

"Yes, but there isn't math for this. I think we're getting off-topic. Culpeper Cut is no longer violent - though we had minor incidents for several years before the major ones, and for up to a decade after, they weren't deadly. I'm going to recommend to Relations that we hire you to discuss things with it and possibly introduce some other girls. The logistics of that is not my department, though. I'm an advisor."

"I see.

"...An advisor on anything in particular?"

"How spirits usually act. What they tend to be capable of. And I do wards, and oaths." She rolls her eyes. "Not that I'm just an oath-machine, like some people seem to think. Ahem. Was there anything else?"

"I can't think of anything, which means that with my luck I will immediately think of something right now or so because that's just how my brain works.  Annnnnd there it is:

"What advice do you think I'd most need to know, that you think nobody else would tell me?  Given how long you say you've been around, I figure you have some ideas.

"...And I do think we should probably talk about how this conversation went so readily to shit."

Maeve shakes her head and starts putting away the various documents in a manila folder.

"Not everyone is going to like you. Not everyone is going to think they ought to listen to you, especially if your first impression is an insulting disrespectful rant. If they're at all professional, they'll be willing to work with you to achieve good things anyway. Oh, you can keep all these copies of the archival reports on Culpeper Cut. If you like." She slides the folder forward.

She will in fact take those copies.

"Well.  That is certainly advice.  Probably useful advice.

"It is advice I would encourage you to reflect upon in turn, because what you did when I walked into this office was immensely disrespectful of the gravity I have been treating this situation with; I shall now give you the space with which to do so.  Fare thee well, Spiritwatcher Maeve."

And she exits.

It's 5:20 and an intern is there ready to show her out! Does she need a snack? Train tickets? Anything?

She wouldn't mind either of those but does not need those; is the building closing?  She was thinking she might do a bit more reading or practice.

Only the officey portions are closing. She can get back into the gym or library today, sure, closing at ten and seven respectively.

She'll go back to...hm, actually, probably ought to go to the gym, but she will go to the library and look up some common monster-fighting tactics, first; she wants to start developing something useful.

Oh, and when do the facilities open in the morning?

Gym at six, library at nine. She'll need to sign in at the front desk with her new ID.

Intern is going to leave after escorting her to the library, then! The librarian's desk is empty, now.