Junkyards don't do 'free', but they will do 'dirt cheap' if she goes and gets the parts herself.

Regardless, there's an unusually large and active miniature dust devil in one of the far corners of the place today, rattling loose metal and occasionally even picking something up and putting it down somewhere else.

That's kind of odd. She'll go check out that corner, it's as likely to have good stuff as any other corner and has the advantage of being more interesting.

Something's definitely strange in this corner. The wind is warm, dust is everywhere. The little pieces getting moved around aren't going in the same direction as the swirling dust sometimes. And the patterns and eddies change frequently, almost with intentionality.

"What?" 

This bears investigation. Maybe a genie? She picks up one of the little pieces that just got moved.

"Hello there?" she says to the area in general.

The dust - stops, for an instant, then reverses direction and tugs at the bolt. "Put that down, I'm using it."

"Okay, all yours." She puts it down. "What are you using it for?"

More of the parts fly this way or that. Sometimes two of them combine, seemingly at random - tubes fitting into bolt-holes, bolts attaching to electrical wires.

"That is not yet clear."

Well, she knew genies were weird. This is either an engineering project more sophisticated than she can understand, or the genie is in a position to benefit from some advice. Either way holds the potential for the weirdest shop talk ever.

"Do you know what you're trying to make?"

"No. That is what I'm trying to learn."

More parts-swirling, more random connections and just as quick disconnections.

Margaret is heavily reminded of her tiny child self with a box of Legos.

"Deciding what to build can be lots of fun! I'm building a robot that can play soccer against other robots."

"I don't know what those things are."

"Oh, a robot is a machine that either moves on its own to do some task or can be controlled by a human for some task. Mine is going to be controlled by a human.  Soccer is a game where two groups of people try to get a ball to the other group's end of a field by kicking it."

The genie thinks for a good twenty seconds, then crumples some of the more uninteresting parts into a rough sphere and rolls it along the ground some. Then the ball collapses back into scrap.

"...I am not interested in soccer."

The not-quite-non sequitur makes her choke down a giggle. "Neither am I! I just like building the robots, the actual soccer-playing is just to test it."

Wind continues to waffle indecisively.

"I want to see the design of a robot."

"I can show you the one I'm making, when it's finished."

 . . . she's heard stories about genies and their sometimes willingness to return favors. She takes a deep breath. 

"If you like it, will you make me magic?"

...

"It is not certain that your robot is what I want to learn about."

She wasn't expecting a promise.

"But if it is, though?"

"Making a human magic is a great and mighty wish."

"Tell me more about the robot."

Oh good back to familiar conversational ground. Sort of. Well, not really.

"So the one I'm making on my own is going to be a sort of spider robot that can go up a climbing wall. It's going to have eight legs that extend and retract, with hooks on the ends, and a camera I can see through to pilot it, and the motors will all be . . . "

She will infodump about this robot for quite a while if permitted, pausing occasionally in case the genie has questions or wants more or less detail.

The genie doesn't ask questions. It just drinks it all in. (Well, once it asks what a 'volt' is.)

Eventually, it declares, "If you allow me to watch you design and build and test this robot, I will grant you a wish. If it is impressive enough, the wish can be a granting of magic."

She is gonna build the best darn spider-bot that ever spider-botted.

"Deal. How do you want to do this? I can come back here tomorrow and bring what I have so far?"

"I want to observe all the work. I can be small and quiet if I must."

Is she really going to invite a genie to come hang out in her basement?

magic

With her parents in the house?

spirit-bearers don't age

Really?

magic magic magic

"You can come back to my house, then, if you stay hidden. I'm making it in my basement."

The genie sort of - sighs, the wind surging for a moment, but it feels like a cheery agreement, not a resentful or reluctant thing.

"I will stay hidden. I will follow you."

"Great. So I'm actually here today looking for parts, . . ." she describes what she's looking for and the intended uses, hunting around as she does so.

The genie asks lots of questions about what and why, and rustles through the insides of cars and piles of rusting metal, arraying potential things out for her.

Not having to climb into things to see if there's anything useful in there is pretty useful! She will keep up a running commentary until she's collected everything she came here for.

The genie seems confused by the darnedest things. Like gear teeth count mattering. Or the difference between plastic and metal. It becomes much less obvious when she's done making her selections, but can be presumed to be shadowing her as she goes out the gate (and pays a relatively small amount, by the pound), probably.

"The number of teeth on a gear affects how many times it will turn around when another gear turns it." "Plastic is lighter and easier to make things out of, but it will break under strain that metal can handle easily." "Here's $15, then, and you have a nice day too."

And home and straight to her basement. She'll work a bit with her new parts before doing her homework, narrating quietly. It's a good thing her parents can't hear her down here or they'd think she'd started talking to herself.

There's a persistent draft in a corner now, listening quietly. It doesn't ask questions very often, and it whispers them when it does.

That's very considerate. Eventually, "I need to go do other things, but I'll be back tomorrow to work on the robot some more."

And upstairs for dinner and actually assigned work and bed. It is a school night, after all.

This genie is familiar with school schedules, which someone who really understands genies would find odd.

It hangs out in the junkyard overnight, and lurks near that house in the morning again, in case some robot work is going to happen.

No robot work in the morning, sadly, only classes. There will be robot work that afternoon, but the first chunk of it will be at the school robotics club.

(Class is pretty uneventful. The genie is unaware of the robotics club and goes to play with its toys instead.)

Teddy is poking an open circuit board with an oscilloscope and making thinking noises in the corner of the robotics club room.

"Hi Terry! Working on those calibrations?" Margaret starts pulling out tools.

"Hey. No, that's done, but I'm getting weird input. Maybe some incidental induction from the wires? Not sure. Analog signal is kind of wacky."

"Huh." She goes to look over his shoulder at it.

Is anyone else here yet?

The club's official adult is doing paperwork in the corner, but no other students are present yet.

"We're getting messy data when the signal chip turns this into digital. The sine wave isn't clean. So I'm trying to figure out where the interference is coming from." He goes over what he's found so far.

Yeah no she's not saying anything right now, she doesn't know the adult and anyway someone else could walk in at any moment.

"Have you tried a source you know is clean? It could be the oscilloscope is wonky."

"I doubt it, they're pretty reliable, but it's worth checking."

They check with a signal generator. The oscilloscope is good. Another student who does a lot of the metalwork wanders in and says hi.

Margaret waves at the metalwork student. "Not that then, hmm. What else have you tried so far?"

Robotics club continues. Eventually the teacher comes over to help with the signal problem and they trace it to an oversight in the circuit design. Teddy keeps testing the newly revised board, in case something else crops up.

Margaret will stick around until either Teddy leaves, or everyone except her and Teddy leaves.

Teddy is one of the last students out! They put his board into the 'bot when his tests didn't come up with any other obvious issues. But he does eventually pack his backpack and leave, not really paying attention to Margaret yet.

She'll follow him out and try to catch up.

"Hey, Terry, can I talk to you for a minute?"

"-Huh? Oh! Sure, sorry, I'm just thinking about something. An idea I had. But, what's up?"

"First what's your idea, I bet it's cool."

"So, I've heard of this thing called solar hot water heating. Black panels with water pipes in them that get really hot. It's cheaper than solar panels, but saves about the same amount of energy, especially if you have an electric water heater and use it a lot. And they're cheaper. I'm wondering if you can make a solar panel that's transparent except in the colors that it absorbs, and put them over water heater sections. I'll need to do some research. I don't know if solar panels can do that."

"Oooh, that could be good! You'd run the risk that making it transparent in some frequencies would make it less absorbent in other frequencies, and you'd need a backup system or really good insulation to make sure you still had hot water when it wasn't sunny."

"Well, the insulation is a separate engineering issue to the layering. That's probably already solved by someone."

"Yup, no need to reinvent the wheel there. Just something that could affect the cost."

"Cost is a such big deal, though. An amazingly efficient piece of tech that costs twice as much is only good for, like, remote arctic stations, or space, where just getting it there is expensive and reliability is critical."

"Definitely. So if the panels are going to be wrapped around water pipes, at least one panel is going to be on the far side at any given time, having its sun blocked by another one. I think you might actually want something like half black panels, half solar."

"Er, actually, you get black-painted metal or plastic, which gets really hot, and run thin pipes up and down a couple dozen times through that instead of trying to curve everything around it. Better not to make yourself any extra engineering challenges, yeah?"

"Oh, and then stick the transparent solar panels over top of the rest of it? That could work."

"Yeah. But solar panels are - kind of really complicated physics, actually, so I'm gonna need to research them and see if the whole transparent thing is even slightly a thing."

"Yeah, materials science is tricky. Stuff that naively sounds like it should be trivial can turn out to be next to impossible, or occasionally vice versa."

"Renewables are very cool, though, aren't they? My family had a road trip to see some relatives last summer, and during part of it there was just this - massive field of wind turbines, must have been thousands of them, stretching out over the corn fields in Illinois. Each one with a little red light on and off in perfect sync. After sunset it looked like some kind of alien landing, almost."

"Oh, I love seeing wind farms. They're beautiful to look at but also beautiful, like, conceptually----the reminder that clean energy is a thing, that our civilization built this stuff."

"Sure helps motivate everyone that the nature spirits blow up coal plants and hydro dams sometimes though."

Margaret sighs and shakes her head. "Yeah. I get why they do it, sort of--imagine if you lived in a river and someone was dumping poison in it--but if everybody blew up the things they hated, there'd be nothing left that wasn't blown up."

"Yeah. To be fair, I am pretty sure that was a glib oversimplification on the part of the website I read it on."

"Yeah. If I ever meet a nature spirit maybe they'll decide to give me their side of the story."

"Mm. Magic is annoying. Scientifically, I mean. I'm sure there's some underlying rule to it all... The Greeks thought the sun was pulled by a god... But really, themed outfits? Monsters attacking writing? I have no idea."

"The monsters attacking writing needs to stop. Everything else is an exciting if frustrating scientific puzzle. Especially the themed outfits."

Speaking of magic, have they gotten to somewhere nobody is likely to overhear them?

They're in an empty hallway, heading towards the parking lot. "There's fairly good statistics on some things, but I don't know if any scientists are close to figuring out the, like, deeper level of it all."

"Yeah. All this data, and no theories to explain it."

"You can keep a secret, can't you, Teddy?"

"Well, that depends on the secret, doesn't it? But according to the usually accepted colloquial value of that question - yes."

"I promise it's a secret I would keep for someone else and that I expect you won't be any worse off for knowing."

"Well, this sounds important. Yes, I'll keep quiet."

"I met a genie that likes robots and I think I can get them to make me a spirit-bearer!" she says, hushed but excitedly.

"-A genie? Really? Aren't they dangerous?"

"This one hasn't done anything except ask me adorable newbie engineering questions and offer me magic in exchange for getting to watch me making my spider-bot. And, uh, hang out in my basement watching me do it."

"...Well. If it's not acting hostile..."

"No more hostile than you or me. Bit ill-mannered, maybe, but loads of ill-mannered people never hurt anybody. I really think I can pull this off if I build an impressive enough robot."

"And if you think you can get magic out of it, and you think you can handle it... Whoo. Good luck?"

"I can definitely handle magic. And thanks. When I've got it, if I get it, we can do experiments on my powers together."

"Well, I'm certainly not saying no to that opportunity. It'd be really interesting. But I do wonder if there's someone more qualified to do science to magic. I sort of want magic myself, you know, but... So few people actually get it, you know? The opportunity is super rare."

"Yeah, no promises of exclusive rights, I'll definitely sign up for studies and stuff if any labs around here are looking for spirit-bearer test subjects."

Why does he have mixed feelings about that, what a horrible thing to have mixed feelings about, it'd be her magic if this thing goes through. 

"...Well, anyway, so you have to build a robot for the genie?"

She cannot answer his question, not least because he didn't ask it.

"Yeah. Specifically, I have to do all the work while the genie is watching and explain stuff. Hence the hanging out in my basement."

"I kind of want to talk to a genie... But I also really don't. Horror stories might not be statistically likely, but... Do your parents know?"

"Nnnnope. Hence the secrecy. I could probably talk them around to letting me do a thing with a genie but they do not know about the basement-hiding and are better off not knowing."

"I think you should tell them. But a promise is a promise, so I will not."

"Believe me, I want to. If I thought it was a good idea I absolutely would. But I'm worried they'd do something reckless if they knew. They'll be fine with me being a spirit-bearer, I'll tell them everything after the fact when it's clear I didn't mess it up."

"...Hm. I guess I could see that. My parents would freak out too, but... Well. Good luck with your robotics project. I think... I am going to trawl the internet for all the research I can find on genies, spirit bearers, nature spirits, monsters. It could become very relevant."

"Good plan! I'll be doing research too, but both of us are less likely to miss something than either one of us."

"We should collaborate once we're both started, stay on the same page of things?"

"Yeah. We can email if it works for you, my parents don't come in the basement. Speaking of which I should get home soon, I have robot work and homework and research and mom's making pasta."

"Sure, see you. I'll just read until my brother finally shows up, I guess."

"Sounds good."

When she gets home she gets her homework out of the way, then takes her laptop to her bedroom to read about spirit-bearers until dinner. She makes a point of looking for things that new spirit-bearers need to watch out for, and for information on genies in particular.

The genie whips past her - almost playfully? - and ruffles her clothes a bit when she passes the junkyard.

The government does not confirm or deny genie sightings, but she can find a genie-tracking hobbyist forum! The hobbyists don't think there are any in her area right now.

Spirit Bearers must take care to be level-headed and emotionally balanced, so as not to spiral into depression or anger. Having a struct and rigid routine might be bad too, but that's less clear. They start off very weak, but get a fair bit stronger pretty quick. Magic acts sort of like a muscle - exercising and stretching it feels healthy and good on a basic level. Spirit bearers regenerate rapidly from injuries.

The genie breezing past her is startling, then kind of endearing. 

The hobbyists can be informed once she has magic that there is a genie in the area, assuming that remains the case. In the meantime that isn't super useful.

Margaret has never been particularly prone to strong or long-lasting emotions, especially negative ones; she has every reason to expect she'll be fine on that front. The routine thing is a bit more worrying; is robotics club Monday-Wednesday and chess club Tuesday-Thursday enough variety? But magic will probably disrupt her routine anyway, and if it seems like it's causing problems she can start some new hobbies.

Magic being something you can get better at is a lot more appealing than it being something you just get some amount of and that's it, and the fact that the thing that makes you better at magic is doing lots of magic is even better.

This being the internet, it would be prudent to be at least a little doubtful about some of what she's reading. Some Spirit Bearers can turn into "Golems", emotionless magic robots. They still walk and talk and do things, but they never seem to do anything new, and react in pretty limited ways, and might get stuck entirely if their usual hangout spot is demolished or something. It seems to be caused by being excessively reliant on routine.

The genie asks her, "Why are you not working on the robot?"

Margaret jumps. "I didn't realize you were there! Now that you're here I can work on the robot." She makes her way to the basement and gets to work. Once she's over her initial surprise she's kind of relieved by the genies stealth capabilities as they make their way down the stairs.

Good, because this genie is very interested in robotics. It particularly likes hearing her thought process on it.

Margaret enjoys narrating her thought process! The genie actually makes a pretty good rubber duck, even if the occasional tangential question derails her a bit.

The genie is even occasionally actually insightful, in an almost childish off-the-wall way. It suggests using rubber bands instead of springs for returning the leg prototype to resting position.

"That's a really clever idea! Ordinary rubber bands would wear out too fast, but I can go to a store and get the heavy-duty kind and they'll still be cheaper than springs. Faster, too."

"All things without magic decay. Decay is a concern when designing a robot?"

"Well, when something in a robot decays, it doesn't work as well, and eventually you need to replace it. And letting one part get too worn out can cause damage to other parts."

Fascinating.

The genie is very single-minded and will discuss this stuff as long as she'll tolerate it.

Margaret is not quite genie levels of single-minded but she will still discuss this stuff until she absolutely has to sleep.

The genie thinks this is going well so far, not that it thinks to say this out loud.

In class the next day, Teddy passes her a note.

They did a big study on genies in the 70s and one on Spirit Bearers in the 50s. I have a bunch of PDFs and stuff to share later.

She passes back: 

Excellent. I will probably nitpick the life out of their methodology but that sounds super informative.

Yeah the spirit bearers one was kind of obviously super sexist but might be useful anyway.

At least they made their biases obvious. Meet in the library after school?

Sure.

And she will be in the library after school.

This is one of those school libraries with a slightly separate studying area that's not as strict on quiet.

"Hi Margaret, come and get the data!"

"Hi Teddy! Give me that tasty, tasty data." She sits down next to him and pulls out her laptop.

He hands over a thumb drive. "The thing that stuck out to me the most is that most Spirit Bearers who last five years, last at least sixty more after that. After the first five years is when 'unstable prospects' tend to have all, uh, fallen out, is what the paper concluded."

She puts it in her laptop and starts transferring files. "Good to know. What does the right tail of the distribution look like?"

"A lot of deaths in accidents and fights, fewer from what passes for 'natural causes' among Spirit Bearers. It's hard to be sure of the far right tail because early records are mostly gone and people lie sometimes, but there are a bunch of 'bearers who claim to have met Napoleon or George Washington and such."

"That's pretty amazing even if only some of them are for real. I take it the fight deaths are mostly against monsters? Or do spirit-bearers sometimes kill each other?"

"Uh, let me look... According to this, which again is kind of old data, first the Named Beasts, second other monsters, distant third nature spirits and genies, close fourth other humans - doesn't specify spirit bearers or just regular humans."

"I expect a non-spirit-bearer would have a way harder time killing a spirit-bearer than another spirit-bearer would, but there's a lot more of the former. You mentioned the data was sexist, though, what was sexist about it?"

"They exclude tons of women spirit bearers, or maybe those declined to participate a lot, it's not clear. Also non-white ones might be under-represented here, or might have been statistically less common at the time, I'm not sure yet I have to find census data and other sources to look at."

"Women spirit-bearers are like significantly more than half of them, right, what a stupid thing to exclude. Or, yeah, maybe they didn't show up. I wonder if non-white people just have fewer opportunities to do things in general and thus fewer opportunities to meet spirits."

"It's about fifty fifty in this study which means a lot of excluded women, and of course they refused to acknowledge trans people at all - hopefully I'll be able to figure out that other part."

"What would the alternative even be, "spirits are all racist"? Okay, that's not true, I can think of a couple alternatives, but still."

Her computer dings. "Ooh, copy's done. Is there a taxonomy of monsters in here?" She starts rifling through the PDFs.

"Well, there's this tactical overview thing I found, some PSAs, and a lot of more detailed studies. I'm not sure about a taxonomy per se."

The tactical overview divides monsters into four classes: Named Beasts, Unusuals, Major, and Minor - in decreasing order of threat.

The Named Beasts are the truly terrifying, giant monsters that little can truly hurt. The Monster King and its mind-controlled army of monsters, genies, and a few Spirit Bearers. The Evertree, which suppresses the magical abilities of everything else near it. The Kraken, which is simply insanely strong and tough and fast and toothy.

Unusuals are monsters which have unique characteristics. They're never quite the same and while some conclusions can be drawn from observation and common sense, extreme caution is advised when dealing with them. Some examples are a large burrowing worm that ate dozens of cows and destroyed a couple of farmhouses before being hunted down, a walking boulder that smashed up some highway and derailed a train, a mass of sentient seaweed that savaged a fish market, some kind of mega-troll that just wouldn't die for a long long while. They're large and dangerous, but nowhere near as dangerous as a Named Beast. Monsters that are unique and not large and unusually dangerous don't seem to happen.

Major monsters pose a significant threat and probably can't be safely dealt with by normal humans unless they've got serious military hardware. It's advised to have a team of Spirit Bearers to fight major monsters, though the exact level of threat varies. Trolls, Ogres, Night Stalkers, and Stranglers are included in this category, among others.

Minor monsters can sometimes be dealt with by an ordinary human with a gun or just a spear, but can still be very dangerous if you are ambushed by one, or if there's a lot of them. Even minor monsters cause significant corruption over a day or two. Lurkers, Goblins, Biters, and Jellies are examples of minor monsters. Goblins especially are the stereotypical minor and almost harmless monster.

"These one-offs are so confusing, biologically. Not that that I want there to more of the Monster King, but where do they come from? I hope there's not some parallel dimension full of monsters leaking into our dimension, or something."

"All the ideas about that bouncing around right now are pretty much un-testable. For that matter, where do genies, or nature spirits come from?"

"Exactly. None of monsters, genies, and nature spirits are the same kind of thing as regular organisms, but are they the same kind of thing as each other? There are so many things to find out!"

"There are some monster autopsies in there if you're not particularly squeamish. There's also some speculating that genies and spirits are kind of similar in some ways, but I'm not sure I believe all of it."

"Eh, it's just a PDF, it's not like doing the autopsy. I'll read those with the rest of it. Anything else I should know going in?"

"Maybe stuff about 'bearer costumes. Nothing else springs to mind."

"Bearer costumes are so cool."

"They thought it was subconscious for a while, but there's a strong argument that raiment is somehow innate too! Cultural comparisons. Everyone starts with a similar sort of thing."

"Nifty! Are there are properties of the bearer it does reliably track, if it's similar across cultures?"

"More elaborate costumes mean more power everywhere. None of them ever get - like - elegant simplicity as they grow stronger. Color schemes usually track primary element, especially at first. The distribution of dresses versus skirts versus pants versus tunics, et cetera, is about the same worldwide."

"Are female-identified bearers more likely to get dresses or skirts?"

"Yes, much."

"I wonder if, if I get magic, I'd get a dress because I'm a girl or pants because I'm a total pants person." She pats her cargo pants affectionately.

"Perhaps the data will allow you to make a prediction. From the testimonials, being a pants person doesn't seem to consistently help, at minimum. Raiment is supposed to be really convenient, though. Never tearing or getting dirty or tangled. Possibly worth it to cose some pockets."

"I definitely want to do an analysis and see what it predicts, later. I suppose I can always get a purse for when I don't just want to have everything in my backpack."

"Yeah, I'm not sure how new 'Bearers deal with that. It said somewhere that you can adjust it a little bit once you're powerful, change the length of things, add a particular accessory, with sustained wanting as far as I can tell. I'd bet most people who want them get pockets of some kind or another through force of will."

"Honestly I would give up pockets forever just for the agelessness."

"Yeah that's... Very much a thing. I - I'm jealous of you right now. I wonder if I should try and prove myself to a spirit when I graduate. Fifteen to twenty five is when spirits recruit the most, but... They're big contributors to the gender imbalance."

"Yeah. Better to try than not, I think. If I get it, and there's some way having another spirit-bearer around will help you get it, I will."

"Better to try, right. If you meet any spirits, put in a good word, yeah?"

"Of course."

"I guess I should go home and work on that robot some more. Thanks so much for the literature search."

"Glad to help. I'm gonna read the genie stuff next. I have some ideas about wish analysis."

"Awesome." And she'll head home. Does the genie join her on the way again?

Yes. At exactly the same sidewalk panel, too.

The same sidewalk panel, awww. She heads to the basement and starts testing the leg assembly she finished yesterday.

Robotics is very interesting.

It sure is!

The rest of the night, and the rest of the week, proceed as they have been going. School, engineering, spirit-bearer data analysis. Margaret's predictive model says she's more likely to get a dress than anything else.

Meanwhile, the Robotics Club's soccer robot continues to take shape. One day they order pizza and set up a projector to watch Big Hero Six after the regular club meeting.

"Disney's great. About everything they make is great for kids, and also fun for us teens and adults."

"Yeah, they really know what they're about. I've heard this one's awesome." Margaret grabs a slice loaded with veggies.

Pepperoni, for Teddy. "And about robots no less. We'll have to resist the temptation to nitpick constantly."

"Just chant 'different universe, different laws of physics' to yourself in your head, that's what I do. Of course, it doesn't help with internal inconsistencies."

"Or something that's rightly a year of work getting compressed into like a minute of montage."

(Someone else rebukes, "Shh, it's starting!")

Margaret will refrain from talking during the movie, but she will cry over Tadashi and smile at Fred's costume and gasp when the villain's true identity is revealed.

It's a good movie. Teddy laughs at Baymax's antics and is - uncomfortable about Tadashi, even though he doesn't cry (he's nothing like his brother) - and resists the urge to ask why Hiro didn't build another mini-bot controller.

Margaret almost cheers when she sees that Hiro still has Baymax's healthcare chip and can rebuild him. "I hate when robots die in movies in cases where they should have had backups," she says to Teddy afterward, "so it gets major points from me just for that."

"Yeah. Really, Baymax ought to be constantly backing up to two separate remote locations, or the cloud, but a saved chip works too."

"And he was in that portal-space thing, a remote backup would've been cut off. So having a chip saved him some pretty important memories."

"I guess so. In the end, it's a movie."

Teddy's friend Bugsy shows up, holding a plate full of pizza crusts.

"I liked how Fred's dad really was a superhero!"

"Hey Bugsy. Yeah, that was pretty neat. Those after-credits bits always have such fun stuff." She is reminded of the existence of pizza and grabs another slice.

The pizzas are mostly gone by now. Bugsy asks, "Can I have the crusts?"

(Teddy shakes his head slightly at Bugsy's antics.)

Margaret is not super attached to her pizza crust; she'll rip it off and hand it to Bugsy before starting in on the pizza proper.

"Thanks." He adds them to his pile.

"...Dare I ask, Bugsy?"

"My dog likes them."

"Awww."

"Yeah, like I would turn down free dog treats? Ha."

"I'll admit it's better than just tossing them in the trash. Hey Bugsy, who was your favorite character?"

"Fred!"

"Of course. I liked the - uh - roller skates girl. Fast and action-y, and a cool choice of tools."

"That was awesome, though I liked Honey Lemon a lot too. Very silly power, but in a fun way. Of course, my favorite character for the first big chunk of the movie was Callaghan . . . "

"Yeah, he seemed like a really great guy, at first."

"Eh. You could totally smell 'secret villain' on him a mile away."

"Eh, what can I say, sometimes I have a soft spot for mad scientists that completely ignores their level of good vs. evil."

"Most mad scientists are more like mad inventors anyway."

"Fools! You shall be but another data point in my large-scale controlled trial of EVIL!"

"Mu-hahahahaha! At least he had a sensible motivation; so many villain motives are just silly."

"Yeah, as villain reasons go, that's an awfully good one. I'm not sure I buy that the guy running the portal was that reckless? One technician reported one nominal error, probably after dozens of pre-checks. But the movie wanted us to see 'reckless, focused on proving the tech', so..."

"Empirically, he was wrong to go ahead. But on the other hand you can't blame him for the intervention of movie logic."

"Yeah... I wonder if there's anything applicable from the tech ideas in that movie. 'Laser swords' probably not. Magnetic bearings... Also probably not, there'd be so many issues. Maybe the purse-chemlab, a portable way of mixing useful things from feedstock, but it'd probably have to be a few specific things to be practical. The minibots are a control nightmare. Baymax himself, automated health advice, is the best idea of the lot I think."

"Definitely, though I think even he'd work better as a box full of scanning gear and an app than a balloon with a face, adorable though that face was."

"Robot and app. Being able to come to you and being friendly helps with, like, kids and old people."

"Yeah. And the design is great for that. Very reassuring-looking, at least if what you want out of your medic at the time is 'friendly and caring' rather than 'formidably competent'."

"Surgeon Baxter will wear a suit."

...Teddy laughs out loud at that. "A suit? Why not scrubs?" Bugsy just shrugs.

"Come on, everyone knows the maximally reassuring medical outfit is a lab coat, regardless of whether you have any good reason to be wearing one."

The robotics club's official adult calls out, "Alright, everyone, we're done for today. Last call for claiming the leftovers, and then everyone out."

"I'll see you guys tomorrow?"

"Yeah, bye," Bugsy says.

"Bye guys!"

And she heads home for more engineering. The movie was a nice break, especially since she apparently doesn't want to get in the habit of things being too routine. She wonders if that has anything to do with how much the genie seems to love routine.

The genie is sulking today. It doesn't have body language, but it's even gruffer than usual, and it blows trash around the basement and slams a door.

Margaret's mom calls down, "Are you making a robot down there, or a ruckus?"

"Sorry mom, just shut the closet a bit too fast!" She turns to the genie and keeps talking, much more quietly.

"Don't slam the door please, it's loud and startling and could make someone else come down and disturb us. . . . is everything okay?"

"Fine. I won't do that again."

"Thank you. And if there's something you want or need, you can tell me and there's at least some chance I'll do it, though I may not be able to. It's more likely to help than not, anyway."

"I don't need anything. I had to use some of my power today."

"Oh. Anyway, this assembly attaches to the casing like so, which is why I had to put the motor all the way over here, it wouldn't fit in the casing otherwise . . ."

After a few more minutes of exposition: 

"Why did you have to use some of your power? . . . I won't pry if you don't want to tell me." 

"Look at the bottom of the case for the third leg. Corrosion. I noticed that. I looked around. Then I killed three lurkers, a biter, and a goblin. They were going to delay the robot."

"Wow. Thank you." She cleans the corrosion off the robot leg. (Why are monsters spawning in her basement, are they more likely to spawn near genies, she should check the research notes later and see if this is likely to be a one-off.)

"The robot will be done soon. A couple more weeks, probably."

"I will kill any additional monsters as soon as they appear now that I know to look for them."

"I appreciate it. This new ratchet is a lot stronger than the one it's replacing, it'll let the robot get between more distant footholds, watch." The robot ratchets its way across her test chunk of climbing wall.

"But it is heavier?"

Normal robot-construction comes back after that. The genie never bothers to clarify that all the monsters it found were at least two blocks away.

When Margaret eventually checks the data-dump, she finds that results are inconclusive on whether areas frequented by genies and nature spirits tend to also get more monsters; apparently controlling for the human population is complicated. She concludes this genie at least is probably providing more protection than danger and carries on building and testing and refining and explaining without bringing it up again.

The genie doesn't bother to report any further on its daily sweep of the local area.

One day, some Spirit Bearers are flying over a neighborhood between the junkyard and her house, looking around.

Could be related, could be unrelated. She looks up at the spirit-bearers and appreciates the coolness of their raiment.

One has a ridiculously long flowy cape thing, like two long tails of cloth behind her, in pale white and green. It doesn't seem to be slowing her down. She's surrounded by a bubble of faint green light, which is carrying along a man in lots of brown and yellow, whose raiment is more like something out of an RPG - open coat, tons of bracelets and zippers and really elaborate boots.

The man is pointing where to go next. They pause and talk on headsets in midair, then head off to somewhere else.

That flowy cape thing is really cool, if hugely impractical. She watches them go, then sets off for home again.

The genie seems to be learning a lot. It rarely asks basic questions like 'what is a volt' anymore, though they still tend to be pretty off-the-wall and unintuitive.

School proceeds. Teddy is trying to develop a wish size scoring system.

Eeee learning! Teaching is fun. Margaret wants to hear all about Teddy's wish size scoring system. Is he scoping it to size of favors done for the spirit in question, or by frequency, or what? 

"Size of favors, but how the genie judges it, not how hard it is for someone to fulfill. It also seems like any particular genie has a limit to how much magic they're willing to do in a given time period, and a bunch of small wishes seem to match up to one large one in that regard."

"Makes sense. Spirit-bearers get worn out from doing a lot at once, maybe genies are the same."

"If it works like that, genie exhaustion works on a scale of months. I'm going to work out a table of wish efficiencies next. You can get four dementia cures for one limb replacement... Something like that."

"Sounds good to have. Are you planning to publish this stuff?"

"Probably. There's people who've worked out common favors and common wishes approximately but I'm trying to put numbers to everything and I don't think anyone else has done something like that yet. Or if they did I couldn't find it."

"Good. Even if someone else has done it, yours could be more useful or differently specialized or more findable or all three."

"Here's hoping. I think it varies by genie a lot, too - I've been separating my data per genie with a separate bucket for unknown ones or those who have only granted a few wishes, and the fit lines are different."

"Hmm! Is it just that some genies uniformly want more for a given wish, or do different ones seem to have different orderings? Either way it could be either a matter of preferences or a matter of capabilities."

"That's what I want to figure out. It's all just theorizing for now. Maybe when I think I know what I'm doing, I'll try to find a genie and ask it some questions."

"Maybe if the one in my basement sticks around after the robot's done you can ask them. Speaking of which, I could use some robotics advice."

"Oh, sure. Have to get this robot right. What do you need?"

She pulls her blueprints out of her bag and spreads them out in their library carrel. "So, if I put these motors in parallel, they'll each get more voltage, but I'm worried it'll drain the battery too fast."

"Hmm... I think that's a bad idea. More importantly, they'd all control in parallel. Really, you ought to have a dedicated controller for each motor - are these stepper motors or straight voltage motors? Steppers are real easy to control, but..."

They can nerd out in the library for a while, but eventually Teddy has to leave.

And Margaret has to go home and repeat the entire conversation to Basement Genie as close to verbatim as possible and then act on Teddy's suggestions.

"You got help from someone else? Who is it? Where are they?"

"His name is Teddy, and I don't know his address, but if you want to meet him maybe I could get him to come to the junkyard with me?"

"I want to understand how collaboration when building a robot works."

"It's a lot like what we've been doing! Talking about what we're thinking, asking questions, coming up with ideas based on things the other said. But if you want to watch me work on it with Teddy instead of just hearing about it I can ask him for help again."

"Yes. Where and when will you do this?"

"It will depend on when he's available, but I'll ask him to come to the junkyard with me after school tomorrow, and if he says yes we can do it then."

There's a little gust that she'll recognize by now as pleased-agreement-rustle.

Awww. Well then!

The next day she passes Teddy a note in class again.

Don't freak out, but my friend wants to watch us work on spider-bot together. Can you come to the junkyard with me after school?

Uh... Why do they want that? I guess you might not know. You're pretty sure it's safe right? The junkyard i mean.

He clearly doesn't mean the junkyard.

They want to see us collaborate, since they've never done a robotics project with anybody but me before.

I've been going to the junkyard all the time for ages and never gotten hurt, I see no reason for anything bad to happen if you're reasonably careful.

...Alright then. I'll have to arrange a ride home after we're done in the junkyard unless you can find one for me, but I can do this. I'll probably ask your friend some stuff about their work.

Questions should be fine. I don't have a car but I can maaaybe get my dad to drive you home if we're there past when he gets off work. Probably best if you can find one yourself though, he works pretty late.

Okay sure. I'll figure out how to get my folks to pick me up. Worst case I'll call an Uber, this sounds interesting enough it'd be worth it.

Great, thank you!

And after school she will lead him toward the junkyard.

"I'm nervous. This is big stuff."

"It's okay to be nervous. I was nervous at first too. But you'll be fine."

"And I'll get to ask my list of questions. Hopefully."

"I bet you'll have a chance, we've got plenty of time."

The genie is in his favorite spot in the corner of the junkyard. The proprietor sees Margaret, doesn't seem to care that she's bringing a friend, and goes back to his reading.

"Hello! This is Teddy, he said it's okay if you watch us collaborate."

"Yes," the genie intones, "I will watch."

"Okay. So... What are you having trouble with? The motors?"

"Yeah, I'm doing what I thought you suggested but I might have misunderstood you, because I'm getting weird feedback . . . "

"Well, steppers can do that. Let's take a look-"

He keeps nervously glancing at the little cloud of dust that is the genie, who is being quieter than usual today.

Margaret mostly interacts directly with Teddy, but makes her thought process more explicit and narrates what she's doing a lot more than she would if he was the only other person there.

They figure out what's wrong with the motors eventually - cheap controller chips skipping around a lot and not playing well with fast changes to the input and instructions. "So you could either work around it, make the input switching slower - these are already working and it'd take a while to tear them out, find better ones, put them in. Or if it's absolutely essential for the legs to respond that quickly, maybe go with an Ebbor T300 series controller and see how that works?"

"I'm not sure I want to buy a set of T300s for this, they only need to be that fast for jumps I can't reliably pull off the joystick moves for. And I've seen a couple nightmare reviews of Ebbor taking months to ship things. I'll rewire it to handle the chips it's got."

"You'll have to build the delay into the controls for best results. It's really the going back-and-forth that's hurting you. I think these will respond to changes alright, just not more than two or three a second..."

They keep talking about that for a while.

Eventually, Teddy tells the genie, "I want to ask you some questions."

The genie doesn't answer.

"...Is that okay?"

"Yes. I understand that the cost for observing you here is answering some questions."

"...Alright then."

He has a notebook of questions about wishes. The ones about how a genie does this or that magic thing are invariably answered by some variation of 'I just do it'. The ones about whether a given wish could be fulfilled in multiple ways go a little better - some ways of fulfilling some wishes are 'easier' and the genie will always go for the laziest option unless told not to. It'll quite happily compare what wishes are harder or easier than others, though, and how much of a favor it would be willing to do various wishes for, and Teddy gets a new set of data out of it.

Margaret is glad her friends are getting along and not causing chaos, and also glad that science is happening! She helps Teddy take notes.

Eventually, after much science and robotics, "So... I think that's everything?"

"Well, I don't have any more questions for you, so if you don't have any more questions for each other, then yeah that's everything. Teddy, did you end up finding a ride home?"

A sleek little car is waiting at the entrance to the junkyard for Teddy. Not a sports car, but fancier than your average Sedan. 

"Hey, bro! Done playing in the junkyard, I see. And hey, bro's friend. Margaret, right?"

"Yup, that's me. Playing in the junkyard is the best." She's holding the almost-complete spider-bot in her arms rather than risk it getting damaged in her school bag. Sorry, what's your name again?"

"I'm Ben. Benjamin. I'd stay and chat, but I've really got to get home and study. Good luck with whatever you're making, there. Come on, Teds."

Teddy gets into the back seat of the car with a little sigh. "See you tomorrow, Margaret."

"Oh, Margaret, do you want a lift back to your house, as long as I'm here?"

He seems to be in kind of a hurry; on the other hand it looks like it might rain and it could be really bad if the bot got rained on. "Yes please, if you wouldn't mind." She moves to get in the back seat.

Teddy makes room.

Once she has her seatbelt on, he's off. "So, let me know which way to go - and what brings you two out here instead of hanging out at the robotics club like usual? Time alone?"

"Personal robotics project instead of the club one, so I don't want to take up the club workspace. Also the junkyard'll sell stuff for cheap and sometimes they have something I can use." This is all true.

"Those darned budget cuts." He chuckles, apparently this is funny, at least to him. "Well, it's probably good that you're exploring your passion in your free time, huh? Teds gets a corner of the garage and a computer he does lots of code stuff I don't understand on, so there's that."

"Code stuff is fun, I'm sure Teddy or I could teach you sometime!"

"Probably not. I've got my own hobby projects. The best kind of hobby is the kind that you can turn into a job later, though - I might get to meet a state senator about the gasoline tax early this summer, for example!"

"I'd probably do robotics even if there weren't jobs in it, but it's nice that there are, yeah. I haven't taken econ yet but I've heard good things about gasoline taxes."

"Well, it's all interconnected, and I could probably use a little more econ, myself - I've been doing a lot of law - but I don't think you want me to recite my amateur policy paper right here."

He turns onto Margaret's street. "Which house?"

"The one with the big maple--yeah, here."

"Have a nice day!"

(Teddy has been silent the whole way here, and just waves goodbye.)

And Benjamin's car zooms off, presumably towards his home.

And only a few days later, Margaret screws the casing shut, and sets up the climbing wall vertically, and her spider-bot hooks its way from the bottom to the top and then waves its forelegs triumphantly as she wiggles the joysticks.

The genie gives the pleased-gust thing. "Is it done? I read that robots require testing before being done."

"I've been doing lots of little tests up until now, that was sort of the final one. It could always be tested more, and in different ways, but that was what I was building it to do, so yes, it's done."

"This has been interesting."

This is it, this is crunch time, when she was focused on the robot she could ignore it but now the moment of truth is Right Here and her heart is rattling around like an unbalanced washing machine. "Did you find it interesting enough to give me magic, in accordance with our agreement?" She's turning the controller over and over in her hands.

"Yes. I have learned much."

"I'm glad. Please pay me for it by making me a spirit-bearer."

With surprising foresight and situational awareness, for a genie, it says, "It may be unwise to do that right here and now."

Margaret is suitably embarrassed by being out-situational-awarenessed by a genie, but in her defense, magic. "Yes, perhaps we should do it in the junkyard or somewhere."

"The backyard would suffer no damage. It will attract attention anywhere."

Only walking as far as the backyard sounds better than walking all the way to the junkyard and she's going to be presenting the whole fait accompli to her parents anyway. "Backyard sounds good!" She moves toward the stairs.

The genie follows her upstairs and out the back door, growing bigger and louder the whole time.

And then it's a towering, thirty-foot mini-cyclone with vague arms and a head, and glowing white eyes.

It reaches one arm towards her and in a much deeper voice than usual says, "There is no going back. This is the last time to remain as you are."

"I want to be a spirit-bearer!" She affirms over the sound of the cyclone.

The genie touches her forehead.

It's like a sunburn. Or maybe like being too cold. It's - a new qualia, an intense one, too intense, spreading along her head and down her neck and through the rest of her, power, power, and change, and pain, and the world blurs like she walked outside from the darkness-

The genie declares, "Fire."

-And now she's wearing a plain skirt and leggings and short boots and a high V-cut shirt with a pattern of triangles on the hem, all themed in red and orange - and she can feel it, just under the surface, the new qualia is there. It's magic. She just has to push-

(The genie is gone, now. And the whole process was certainly a lot of wind and noise.)

It's too much, it hurts, it's awful, it's absolutely worth it, it's amazing. She looks at her new clothes and can barely see them past the feeling of power and definitely can't delay doing the thing her magic is telling her to do. She turns away from the house towards an empty piece of yard and pushes.

It's as intuitive as picking up a screwdriver. She gets a flickering bar of red fire flaring out from her palm, about two feet long, curving upward where it fades out at the end, like the world's largest lighter.

Her hand is warm - very warm, clearly much warmer than would have been comfortable a minute ago.

She could do another thing (probably the spear) and she could almost but not quite do a third thing-

First she'll try to get a better understanding of this first thing. Can she make the flame smaller?

It gets smaller and then suddenly breaks up and stops being a steady stream, spurting around everywhere.

(Someone's car alarm has been going off - it stops.)

"Ack!" She says when it spurts around everywhere, trying to turn it off altogether.

Her parents have rushed out of the house by now and seen her. "Margaret, what's happening?" "How are you magic?" "What's going on?"

"Okay, Mom, Dad, first of all everything is fine, relax. I'm a spirit-bearer now because I met a friendly genie and gave them robotics lessons in exchange for magic." They're a bit brought up short by the matter-of-fact explanation and stop asking questions mostly because they can't come up with an order to ask them in.

Some of the neighbors are looking out the windows at her. The next-door neighbors shout over, "Is everything all right?"

"We're alright! Sorry about the noise." She turns back to her parents. "Questions you probably have: I've been meeting with the genie for a while, mostly here and in the junkyard on Washington Street, they never did anything dangerous-seeming or acted like they wanted to hurt anyone, they've probably left town now because they wanted to watch my robotics project and now they've done that, no I won't let this interfere with school any more than I let spending all that time on the spider-bot interfere with school."

"Well," says her father weakly, "we always knew you were going to accomplish a lot."

"Yes," says her mother, "but no more inviting genies or anybody else over to the house without telling us! We live here too, you know."

"Yes Mom, I promise, sorry." 

Hug? Hug. "Best parents." "And don't you forget it." "Har har, Dad."

The neighbors shout back, "Well, if you're sure... Congratulations, I think?"

It hasn't been quite long enough for the emergency response 'bearers to get to them. And they're more worried about tracking the genie, in fact. Nothing else happens right away.

(Her magic is there, right there, she's barely used it at all, it'd be just as easy as moving a finger...)

To the neighbors: "Thanks!" To her parents: "So do you want to see my spear? Let me show you my spear!"

They stand back, she stands back. Spear?

Spear! It's short (for a spear), maybe three and a half feet long. The shaft is a dull orange, and feels cold like metal. It has a simple narrow tip, and feels much lighter than it should.

She spins and thrusts it in the spear drills they learned in phys ed (hey, no more hoping nobody notices she's suddenly started trying harder in phys ed, she can just straightforwardly try hard now!).

Two spirit bearers fly over the neighborhood, and past it, at high speed.

This time she considers waving, but doesn't because they're going too fast to notice. They're probably chasing the genie; she's glad she legitimately can't tell them anything about where they went.

"I'm glad to see you've been paying attention in gym class", says her mother. "Yes," says her father, "just goes to show that even non-academic subjects are important." 

"Yeah, I knew what I wanted from the genie going in. I've been trying to be prepared, reading up on spirit-bearers and stuff."

"Oh, what did you find out?"

"It's important that I regulate my emotions sensibly, and not have too strict of a routine, and that I exercise my magic," spear-twirling, "and a bunch of stuff about all the kinds of monsters."

They keep on questioning her in this vein for a bit while she gets a feel for her spear. It's a lot like the way they question her about precalculus and US history.

After a couple of minutes, a spirit bearer who looks to be in the middling-low tiers of power comes to a halt above her backyard. White-themed outfit.

"Hello! I'm with the state emergency response service! Is anybody hurt? May I land and talk to you?"

Margaret and her parents all answer at once with variations on "Hello, nobody's hurt, come on down."

She lands and gives Margaret a once over. "So, what we're figuring happened is - that genie just empowered you and alarmed a lot of people, too. We make a point to come visit when this sort of thing happens, in case there's something else going on, and because there's a couple things about magic that can get you into trouble."

"I'm sorry about the alarmed people. I don't know of anything else going on here and now, the genie went off somewhere."

"No need to be sorry. Genies are kind of alarming, is all. We escort genies and supervise them from time to time, making sure everything's safe and in good order. The ones that don't - declare themselves - can make trouble sometimes, so they make us a lot more nervous. Congratulations, by the way! What did you do for it? What's it going to do next, you think? Just a guess is fine."

"Thanks! And I gave a lot of robotics lessons, they wanted to learn how robots were made so I made a little climbing bot in my basement and explained what I was doing as I did it. I don't have a clue what they'll do next, though--maybe more engineering, maybe something completely different."

"Robotics? Cool. Genies want to learn pretty often. Lucky you. And what it's gonna do next isn't exactly my problem but it could have saved someone else some work. Oh well. But as long as I'm here, I'll tell you - you'll want to use your magic, but be careful with it. Property damage is still property damage even if you're magic."

"Yes, of course . . . given that my first spell is a difficult-to-control blowtorch, do you know a good place to practice that's more fireproof than my yard? Or should I just run the hose over the lawn and have a parent with a fire extinguisher nearby?"

"No, no. You should find an empty parking lot at minimum. The SA, Spirit Association, has practice facilities, if you want to go to one of their offices - it's sort of like a spirit bearers' union. I'm not sure if mentoring is still a thing, but the practice facilities definitely are."

"I'm definitely going to check out the S.A. regardless, and their practice facilities sound better than potentially scaring people out of parking somewhere. What else is important for me to know?"

"We don't automatically sense monsters, that's cartoon stuff. Don't fight a monster unless you have to or you have someone with you, even little ones can still be dangerous to new 'bearers. There's some legal changes I'm not totally sure on - you'll need a new driver's license if you have one, and I think you'll need to visit the social security office at some point? I can find someone who knows more to talk to about that. If your school or a job gives you trouble for activating, that's not allowed. Insurance companies have to be told about it. Uh, let me think... Oh, you'll regenerate if you get hurt, but don't rely on that. It gives you nightmares and 'bearers can die."

"I want to fight monsters, but only after I'm, like, trained and stronger and part of a team that knows what they're doing. What's this about healing causing nightmares?"

"When you regenerate or get hurt by magic, you'll feel this sort of - strain in the back of your head. We call it 'unwinding'. Sleep re-winds you, but you have bad dreams during that. Also, being badly unwound can trigger ghosting, wraiths, or golem-ing. Er, d'you know those terms?"

"Yeah, those are what happens if you get too angry or sad or stuck in a routine for too long, right?"

"Yes. It's - it can be hard to tell what the thresholds are, but one bad day is no risk."

"I should be fine on that front. Good to know getting unwound can interact with it. Hmm, anything else before I go do ID things?"

"Not that I can think of. Unless you have more questions..."

She looks at her parents for confirmation. "Nope, I think we're good."

"Okay. Well, congrats again! And here, take this card, the number on it answers questions for new 'bearers."

And she's off.

Margaret waves goodbye as she takes off. Next item, are any of the government offices she's supposed to visit open right now?

The DMV closes at 7. The other ones are already closed.

Then she can go to the DMV today and the rest tomorrow. She brings her current driver's license, her birth certificate, and anything else it looks like she might need. Does her lovely new skirt have pockets for such things, or will she have to start carrying a purse?

Pockets are not a thing for her raiment yet. She could take it off, the internet describes that as sort of like taking off a pair of glasses, or just letting go - or she could do more magic, instead - but a purse might be a good idea.

Right this moment she will go with purse. If she has a path to getting pockets eventually she can just borrow an old one from her mom.

Well, some of the Spirit Bearers she can look up on the internet have pockets. No telling how long it'll take to get to that point.

Her magic is patiently waiting inside her, ready to act. She's aware the whole time that it would be just a moment's effort to use this powerful new limb-of-sorts.

She is not going to pull out her spear at the DMV, she is *not*. If the urge gets overwhelming she'll switch back to her previous clothes. After this she is definitely going to either the spirit association or an empty parking lot.

It's not an overpowering urge or anything, but the feeling that she could is there, it hasn't settled to the back of her head like the fact that she could move her arms has. Maybe it's just the excitement of having MAGIC! That she hasn't done much with yet.

Well, sooner or later she'll get to talk to a clerk.

The clerk routes her to another clerk who has to look up what to do in this particular case. They make her demonstrate the spear-summoning. There's a $25 processing fee.

Eventually she can acquire a new ID.

Well that's pretty typical. Is the S.A. building still open, or is it time to find the biggest asphalt wasteland in this suburb?

The nearest S.A. building is about thirty minutes drive away. Also, the regular office hours are over.

Empty parking lots are plentiful enough, though.

Then she will find an empty parking lot and practice! her! magic! Back to trying to control the size and shape of her jet of flame.

She can totally do that! It works best as a medium sized stream. Very big is tiring, like trying to lift a lot of weight. Very small becomes unstable, but maybe practice will improve that. She can't seem to get the shape to do anything interesting yet.

She's a lot more interested in very small than very big, for now, though she does give the latter a try long enough to notice the tiringness. Can she change the temperature, as measured by the color? Can she change the color directly?

She can't affect the color directly. Changing the temperature is tricky, feels sort of like stretching... But doable, and it has the effect on color that a real fire would.

This is so great and she ought to take up glassworking. Also she ought to tire herself out the rest of the way and go home, she still has homework from her classes a million years ago this morning. Can she do two at once, one from each hand?

Stretch and try and- No. That's too much strain. Maybe she could start by using both hands for one stream, and work from there.

Her notes on things to do at the S.A. the next day end up looking like this:

* Flame size control

* Flame temp (do they have measuring gear?)

* Max flame size, if there's somewhere to try it safely

* Find out if the flame needs oxygen

* selectively burning only some things?

* Two-handed?

* Spear drills

* Sparring

* Mysterious third magic thing???

But first, school! She shows up in her raiment "over" her normal t-shirt and cargo shorts. It clashes kind of hard with her blue-green backpack but whatever.

She is the target of many curious students asking if that's really a magic outfit???

It's really a magic outfit! She can't show them her magic because it's fire but she can magically switch back and forth with her other clothes!

That is wicked cool. She's basically a minor celebrity, as far as the school population is concerned. They ask all sorts of questions about what it feels like and what she's going to do next.

Teddy boggles a bit when he sees her in Math. "Oh. You've finished your robot, haven't you?"

"Yes! Magic is great and my element is fire, I can shoot flames now! Well not actually now, we're indoors, but I have so many things to test!" She shows him her notes.

"Magic! You actually did it. And the genie came through!" He scans the notes. "We can estimate temperatures with pictures on a white background and color charts. Cars have oxygen sensors, the junkyard will too. Even if we don't know how to calibrate it, we can just look and see if it changes. I'm not sure I have useful input on the rest."

"Color charts is a good idea, it'll at least let us get a sense of whether we could benefit from getting a meat thermometer. We might need to buy an oxygen sensor and take it to a more enclosed space than the junkyard to get anything useful. Ooh, and I should see what happens if I try it underwater."

"Hmm, yeah. Or in some non-flammable gas. The mysterious third thing is probably your first actual spell. You get a spear, an element, and a spell to start. I think it's supposed to come in after like a week max. We can probably try selectively burning things with just a piece of notebook paper and a match or something, and an open bit of sidewalk."

"Yeah, I assume just using the flame a lot will help the spell come in. Selectively burning things should wait until I have better control over the flame size."

"Fair point. Let me know if you want help testing things? Er, I don't want to intrude, though. This is your thing."

"I definitely want help testing things! Want to come to the spirit association building with me after school? I'll have to do some paperwork probably but then we can see what kind of powers testing facilities they have."

"Alas, my lack of independent mobility strikes again. If you give me a day's warning I can probably come with - maybe tomorrow after robotics club? It'd be interesting to see the place."

"Sounds good. I'll scope it out and finish the paperwork today and have a more thorough experiment list tomorrow."

"And remember to put in a good word if you meet any spirits."

"I don't actually know if spirits hang out at the Spirit Association more than anywhere else, but definitely."

"Yeah, I don't know either."

Class starts.

In her next class (English), Mrs. White tsks at Margaret and tells her, "Miss Perry, you are out of dress code."

Margaret looks herself over. She's in a skirt and leggings and the neckline on her shirt is totally reasonable. Did leggings get banned while she wasn't paying attention? "What piece of my outfit is out of dress code?" she says in genuine confusion.

"I know you're very excited by your new abilities, but the dress code forbids distracting or attention-getting garments."

"My outfit isn't inherently more distracting than any other skirt. I'll definitely not talk about my personal life in class, but people I've told will still know regardless of what I'm wearing." She doesn't add that the rule against "distracting garments" is a euphemism for "you can't wear anything anybody else finds sexually attractive", or that determining the acceptability of an outfit based on other people's reactions is itself ridiculous.

"Given the unit we covered last in this class, you should realize that context matters, Miss Perry. Even though it is not particularly extraordinary at the moment, in this context your current outfit carries a strong meaning and is a symbol of a very exciting and distracting topic. My classroom is for English, not magic. I'm afraid I will have to insist."

"Since context matters, would you mind telling me if you would similarly require a student to change If they wore, for instance, a t-shirt with the American flag on it? The American flag carries a strong symbolic meaning and represents a distractingly controversial topic as well. Is this about a general ban on symbolism in English classes, or is it about magic in particular?"

She doesn't even care that much about the outfit in itself, but if this teacher is going to give her a hard time for being a magical girl it's going to be out in the open.

"My job isn't to debate the dress code with students. You may change or you may go to the front office."

She'll change. But after class she'll go talk to the principal.

The principal can meet her after a few minutes. He's a middle aged guy who looks a bit frazzled.

"What seems to be the problem miss, ah... Perry?"

She changed back in the hallway; now she gestures at her skirt. "First, can you confirm that this outfit is within the dress code?"

"Well, I don't see any obvious dress code violations. There's some issue you're having with the dress code?"

"Ms. White asserts that my clothes are inherently distracting because they're my spirit-bearer outfit. I can't stop people from thinking about me whether I'm wearing it or not."

"-Ah. Spirit bearer outfit." He clears his throat. "I'd heard something about that. We do usually give the faculty some flexibility in interpreting the rules. Have any other teachers said something similar?"

"No, nobody else has said anything. I'm fine with wearing different clothes in her class, but I'm worried she's planning to continue holding me responsible for other people's perceptions in ways I can't control."

"Well, I don't know if it's other people's perceptions, exactly. Mrs. White cares very much about - mm - order. I think taking off the magic outfit for her class is a good compromise, and in return she can treat you the same as any other student. I'll have a talk with her. If she keeps fussing over you, or complains, say, about people gossiping about you or about magic, I'll back you up and we'll figure something out. If you need me to do something about students bothering you about magic please let me know too."

"Thank you. None of the students have been a problem." Well, that seems to have been resolved with enough time left over for her to eat lunch.

She's the center of attention at lunch once she's been noticed! They want to know all sorts of intrusive things, like whether she's fought a monster yet or what her codename might be.

She will do her best to answer all the questions! She hasn't fought a monster yet, but she probably will eventually. She hasn't picked a codename because she doesn't know what her first spell is yet and doesn't want to just pick something fire-based without finding that out first. Doing magic feels like thus and so except for how words are totally inadequate for this purpose. She doesn't know if she can stick her hand in not-her-own fire and not get burned, but it's worth finding out, no not right now, what if the answer is no, she doesn't care if you do have a lighter. Her raiment does not have pockets but she hopes it will eventually. She taught a genie robotics. Et cetera et cetera. She does manage to get some food down during all this.