"Weird. Hope they figure that out. How long will you be in Seattle?"

"It's quick through the Overworld so I can come check in in just a couple of days!"

"Okay, I guess I'll see you then... are there books or websites or anything in the meantime?"

"I'll see what I can do!"

Puchuu walks in a circle on the couch, then shakes itself out.

"If there's a monster-related emergency your best option is to call Miss Tanya! Bye for now!"

"...bye."

Puchuu manages to open window latches, open it, and close it behind itself. And then drops down and vanishes.

Why didn't it vanish inside the house... whatever. She'll notebook till her dad comes home.

Nothing particularly interrupts this.

She mostly goes about her life as normal, though she does keep adjusting the outfit design. When she gets out of her truck at the end of the day she collects the FedEx package on the doorstep and notices with mild surprise that it's for her; she opens it.

It's a book. Paperback, dog-eared and a bit worn. Slightly singed, even. Titled, Species and Specialties! A fantasy setting/worldbuilding guide.

There's a note that just says 'Puchuu approved!'

Who's it from?

Some sort of holding company whose name only has one result on Google. The return address is a PO box in Seattle.

Fair enough. She will settle in to read it.

It purports fairly thinly to be a worldbuilding guide for a tabletop RPG setting. There's lots of pictures. Specialties apparently include fire, water, earth, metal, ice, air, light, shadow, spirit, reinforcement, psychic, time, lightning, sound, beast, illusion, wood, empathic, gravity, space, transform, and 'other'.

Cool! What does the psychic entry say?

Psychic users can read and influence minds, and induce feelings of terror, anger, or sympathy in their target. With practice they can harm their opponents with a mental blast. While they are adept at disrupting or destroying their enemy's minds, the greatest psychic girls can make subtle changes without damaging the target mind, allowing them to edit short term memories and even temporarily turn people into their slaves. Sadly their powers do not work on entities with no minds, meaning that long range or remote attacks and drones or mindless summons are their greatest vulnerability. Additionally, permanent mental changes are the domain of the very mightiest psychic girls. Strong willed opponents or specifically designed defenses can resist psychic manipulation. These girls become highly resistant to effects that meddle with their minds. Of course, while psychic girls have little magic to turn to if their mental attacks can be resisted, this does not mean they're harmless! A magical girl's weapon and body remain effective even without any actual offensive spells.

Out of costume, psychic girls are resistant to mind effects and can sense the presence of other minds, though they can't read them.

...sketch. Sketch as fuck, actually. The puchuu made it sound more appealing.

What can magical girls in general do regardless of specialty?

Transform and untransform, be stronger/faster/tougher/luckier than baseline human, heal better than humans, be ageless, use magic artifacts, have a weapon and costume, have their array of miscellaneous powers, and reincarnate.

Coins can change your specialty, though it's apparently a tricky process.

Magic artifacts, what's the deal there?

Magic artifacts are trinkets that usually do one very specific thing, though weirder and more powerful ones have multiple uses. They have to be charged with coins or juice from a magical being. You can wish up weak ones with silver coins, and stronger ones with gold. They can be lost or destroyed- Not easily, but it happens with the amount of energy magical girls and monsters throw around sometimes. Gods, oni, gremlins, brownies, greater spirits, dwarves, werewolves, monsters, harpies, dragons, miscellaneous, and magical girls or human magi with appropriate talents can make them in an incredibly eclectic collection of methods, too. Some example artifacts: Heal Orb, alarm ward, teleport beacon (one-way), weapons of killing-this-specific-sort-of-thing, semi-infinite water jug, invisibility cloak, various trinkets to blast things with fire or ice or lightning, defensive talismans, magic phones with interdimensional internet, a piece of paper that shows whatever the viewer expects it to, artifacts that shift the local area halfway into the Overworld so all the collateral damage of a big magic fight doesn't kill people or leave odd craters in office buildings and municipal water pipes.

Ooh, interdimensional internet. What are the appropriate talents?

It references the 'sorcery' minor power, there's quite a few schools of non-Girl magic; Either that, or learning the same thing the hard way with 6-10 years of full time study. Added to the difficulty of finding a teacher.

Oh she wants to know all about the non-Girl magic and about sorcery. Seems like an important way to add flexibility.

The book has exactly 3 pages on that and devotes one and a half of them to the difference between dark magic (lengthy rituals, sacrifices, spooky aesthetics) and evil magic (inherently corruptive or distorting, powered by malice and hatred and fear). This tentacley symbol and that tilted-swastika and this weird pyramid are all Bad Fucking News, by the way.

Runes involve carving things really carefully. Ofuda involves calligraphy. Tarot actually works if you do it right. Carving wooden protective charms is an old standby (fun fact, holy symbols work on some bad things!) Alchemy is a thing, as is magic infusion and dollmaking and druidism and Wiccan and shaolin meditation and geomancy and crystal healing. If you actually know what you're doing, of course. 

And the book certainly has not chosen to devote the space to telling her.

She will call her mom and drop a hint about her old Tarot deck with all the pretty cards, though, and her mom says she'll drop it in the next care package.