Mad swings by her best friends place on the way home, to explain what the fuck. (Importantly, this step is happening before Mad is subject to the Veil and even before she asks too many questions about what exactly constitutes breaching the Veil. Asking permission when you're going to do the thing anyway just makes it harder to ask for forgiveness afterwards.)

Vane doesn't really think the magic powers are for real, but xe's glad she came and promises not to hold it against her if she moves to the moon tomorrow. "As long as I can visit, of course!"

The next day, Mad stuffs her backpack with her important documents and a couple changes of clothes, locks the door, shuts off her cellphone, and meanders towards the witch storefront.

"Okay! Let's do this."

In the end, Mad's build isn't too hard from there.

She takes thirty points of complications towards her power cap: No Privacy, as previously discussed, a dulled sense of taste, and progressing twice as slowly. And, for whatever reason, a buff to her Charisma gets counted as a complication too.

She's going to be an Academic, partly because it fits the best with everything else she's picking, and partly because yeah duh she wants to earn magic by learning things.

For race, she sits silently and thinks for a while before settling on Sylph - very good affinities, very aesthetic, even though the charge rate isn't great and neither is the immortality. Then she hears about Hybridization, goes "yes please", and her other half is a literal phoenix.

"Also, one rank in everything that gives me points back for it, I want Lunabella as my faction, and ... I think that's everything?"

"It can be if you want! But there's also wild magic, unranked, that you can buy if you want to."

"Is any of it free or better? If not, I'll buy it later, same as the ranked magic."

"Prestidigitation is free for Academics, yes. Also you can buy most wild magic later, but if you want any other fate twists, I can only set them up for you now."

"Oh, hmm, all right, what sort of fate twists do you have?"

Mostly Mad's goal here is to learn as much Rank 5 magic as possible, but there's no harm in listening.

Indeed, most of the fate twists on offer are pricy and don't synergize well with Mad's goals, not that Penelope knows what those goals are.

However, there's one that will let her have a minor discount on up to five rank 3 magics, going up to a substantial discount if she's separately interested in the Firebird racial bonus.

Ooh dang, that is a substantial discount.

She is interested in taking the Firebird bonus, yeah: it lets her turn into a bird and apparently also makes other magic cheaper (!) Just turning into a bird wouldn't have been urgent all on its own, though.

Out loud, Mad, she tells herself.

"Yeah! I'll take the Firebird bonus, and also all five subjects - Curses, Hexes, Necromancy, uh, Psychotics and Windcalling," Mad rattles off as a list of non-Academic subjects she's at least vaguely interested in.

"You got it," Penelope says cheerfully. "You have 18 points left, want anything else today?"

"Yeah, actually," Mad says. "How much is three ranks of Divination?"

"Just four points!" Penelope replies. "Want it? If there's nothing else, I'll finalize you when you say 'ready', okay?"

"I'll take it for four points," Mad confirms.

"And: Ready!"

The power-choosing void around her melts back into Penelope's shop, and Mad takes a deep breath. Then, she says goodbye and walks straight out Penelope's door and back onto the Muggle street.