Forks does not really seem like the place for... An escaped exotic pet of some kind? Whatever it is, it's fluffy and cute seems remarkably clean, with long purple (dyed?) tail and ears. Looks sort of rabbity. It's been hanging out around town for a couple of days, near the school for the most part. It never seems to get wet, either.
It's very cute, with energetic, puppy-like movements and big round eyes. It's watching everyone at the school most afternoons, almost as if looking for someone.
The book also has a lot of stuff on different kinds of monsters. With a focus on what their scary powers are and how to kill them.
Zombies and skeletons are not people but liches can be, vampires are people, oozes and slimes aren't, trickster spirits are, werewolves are people who only sometimes can control themselves transformed, shades are ghost-things that like to make people pissed off and impulsive and are sorta debatably people, poltergeists are people but not former living people they're just blobs of mischief, there's a few different kinds of tentacle-blob monster and some of them are people. Abyssal Demons are a big category with the following tells (not perfectly reliable): Black, purple, and red, leave things rotten or rusty after they pass, slimy and 'feels unwholesome', distorted-sounding voices like a chorus of off tune singers, often weak to silver (but not always). There's a pretty staggering variety of Abyssals. Spitters, pit traps, spike boars, one-eyed crows, phase wolves, spikewheels, brutes, exploders, headcrabs, giant mosquitos, fire beetles, screamers, hellephants, Death Machines (possessed animate scrap metal), and more.
Depends on the monster; In run-down parts of town for some, hiding in dense city areas for others, wandering around rural areas or wilderness for some. Abyssals, however, just appear all of a sudden, usually in places where they can cause a lot of trouble and death. Luckily their materialization is obvious to magical senses! Magical girls always have to be ready to respond, even in the dead of night!
Most get hunted down smart quick, by Girls or other magic beings. And due to the veil they get attributed to gas explosions, house fires, psycho killers, wild animals, car accidents, etc, etc.
Are gas explosions et al simply not a thing actually or are they just sometimes monsters?
This book does not have enough detail to make a firm conclusion.
She puts it on a list of questions to ask Tanya and/or Puchuu.
She has reached the end of substantial information here unless she wants to read up on other specialties or random monsters.
Sure, what are the other specialties, let's start with Tanya's time thing.
Time mages are a strange specialty. Novice users are quite weak, but aware and practiced users are deadly. They can slow their opponent's time stream to give themselves or allies more time to think and act, or speed their own time to have more time to move and strategize. An adept time user can freeze time for periods of several seconds, and a master can suspend time for as long as they have the mana to spend, though full time-stops are very taxing. The truly gifted are rumored to even be able to selectively alter the time of different processes and laws of physics- For example, rapidly cooling burning debris by speeding up temperature exchange but leaving combustion unaffected. There are few counters to a prepared time mage other than overwhelming power.
Out of costume, time girls always know what time it is and can near-perfectly predict deterministic events (like falling objects or cooking). They are also aware of gravity effects, as they distort time.
Time travel is believed to be fundamentally impossible.
Girls with beast powers focus on summoning and enhancing animals and themselves. Though similar to the rarer transform specialty, the focus is on cooperation. They find it easy to understand the body language of animals and will likely have a number of pets that make good targets for enhancements including speed, strength, size, and healing. They can also use wild or untrained animals, but results tend to be mixed. The utility of granting themselves animalistic features such as superior senses, flight, or natural armor cannot be overlooked. Very skilled users can apply these enhancements to other magical girls, making beast users a potent supporting and crowd-control asset in a fight. True masters are said to be able to create and alter magical animals, or summon spectral forms of their pets so they they are unharmed even after intense battles.
Out of costume, they have enhanced senses and a fast metabolism and high level of athleticism (maintaining potent strength and agility boosts even out of costume).
Huh, neat. She does hope she winds up falling in with a team sooner or later, it seems like a lot of the abilities work much better synergistically. Next.
Fire is a very straightforward and direct offensive power. Lacking some utility, but probably the single most potent specialty in direct offensive power, fire is a force to be reckoned with. From projecting a stream of fire, throwing explosive balls of heat, breathing fire from your mouth or wreathing a weapon in flames, destruction and power is the calling of fire girls. But more metaphorical uses of flame are not impossible. With skill and control, fire can be expressed solely as heat, or solely as light, though never as potent as a light mage. Blasts of flame from their feet can propel them into the air, and masters can use the metaphorical cleansing property of flame to 'purify' things- Foul magic, infections, or even toxic waste. High-level fire girls can almost be compared to walking artillery batteries, but still lack a strong defense.
Fire users become more inspiring and courageous, able to act decisively even when confused or afraid. Out of costume, they retain high resistance to heat and to many air contaminants.
She doesn't love the sound of them "becoming" "more inspiring and courageous" but at least it's not her...
The next three are:
Water (hydrokinesis of various forms, masters can do weird stuff that's metaphorically appropriate like teleport between bodies of water, stealth magic, or cleanse things, fast swimmers and vague watersense out of costume)
Air (speed and aerokinesis, flight and deflecting projectiles, masters can dispel almost any magic and gain minor far-seeing and combat precognition for a few seconds, are extra-aware and alert out of costume)
Stone (terrakinesis, earthquakes, fast construction and metaphysical "reinforcing" magic for masters, good at defense and standing ground, and are extremely durable and have an intuition for civil engineering out of costume)
What a curious assortment. Why does Air dispel magic and do precognition??
The answer seems to be 'metaphor'. The weirder specialties like psychic and time don't have to reach very far for their branch into advanced tricks, but the "four elements" have a lot of history and weight behind them. Air 'scatters and disrupts' and 'reaches far and wide'.
Ice mages are fundamentally different from water mages; The focus is on the cold and inevitability. Lashing blasts of frigid air, materializing ice as shields or obstacles, slowing and stopping enemies and projectiles. Impressively versatile. Experts can slow, preserve, seal away, and stop things and true masters can get weird and metaphorical with it, like freezing 'tiredness'. Out of costume they have extreme resistance to cold and can emit a passive cold aura. They tend to become calmer and more deliberate.
Man, most of these specialties have more flexibility than an (ethical) psychic. Oh well.
Spirit mages bargain and cooperate with the ethereal spirits that are all around us. (Spirits are mostly immortal and don't tend to think about things in human terms.) Their bread and butter is giving incorporeal and otherworldly beings enough realness to exist and help out and enjoy being corporeal for a while. The big limiting factor is meeting and getting to know enough spirits to have a wide repertoire, but there are a lot of different spirits out there. Experts can wind up with whole platoons of animated sculptures and poltergeists and elemental dervishes to fight with. They are really benefitted from having perspective-taking as a skill, and can communicate with incorporeal beings even out of costume.
She can't decide whether that sounds fun or irritatingly extroverty. Doesn't really matter though.
Reinforcement mages are 100% focused on defense. Wards and shields, trivially against blasts of energy and physical projectiles, but pretty easily against all other sorts of magic as well, from psychic to Abyssal to anything in between. Reinforcement mages also have natural healing and restoration spells, able to clear off damage and lingering effects. They are dependent upon allies to actually damage foes in most cases; Reinforcement girls are all defense and support. Master reinforcement mages can place long term defenses on places or objects that last years, even decades, though only the very most gifted can make true magic artifacts. Out of costume, they remain surprisingly durable and tend to become more altruistic and extroverted.
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