Well, some of the modeling agency offers were pretty glitzy. But yeah, this is nice.

"Tell them I want a job if you don't."

"I thought you wanted to work for Paladins."

"They funnel people to the Paladins!"

"They funnel girls." Anyway, thus reminded of the options, she checks out the website.

The website design has the simple understated elegance of an organization that knows it's cool. It contains much more detailed information about the internship program and the various activities of the Pax Corps, as well as a list of partner groups.

Apparently, if someone doesn't seem a good fit for the Pax Corps but is interested in one or more partner groups, they also offer a variety of appropriate basic training and a recommendation, in exchange for a negotiable medium-term income sharing agreement if this process results in employment with a partner group. (The Paladins are one of the groups who routinely cover the income sharing costs for someone they hire this way.) 

(It also turns out that they do have a similar funnel process for mundane professionals, but the corresponding programs have steeper requirements and lower acceptance rates. The Pax Corps has invested a great deal of effort into finding promising applications for magical talent and is somewhat specialized therein.) 

Is there anything already on there about getting underage girls opportunities to use their powers in a medical setting or will she have to send a freeform letter?

The Pax Corps does not discriminate based on age. There are a couple of entries on the application form that concern U.S. standards for parent or guardian consent and how it is confirmed. (No particular answer is required for the application to be submitted, but a lack of consent would be flagged for review by a certain subdivision.)

Medicine is indeed one of the default interest options. 

Then she will get pro forma agreement from Renée and send in her application. She has the power to stop things and is interested in tests to discover if "things" include, like, blood clots.

A few days later, she receives an email inviting her to schedule two days of preliminary testing within the next few weeks, potentially but not necessarily consecutive. The first day of tests begins with plants (e.g. "can you stop this cutting from leaking sap?") and a handful of increasingly complex animals. For the second day, they propose to bring in a magical girl with biology powers for tests that are hard to perform or validate with medical equipment alone. (In the U.S., a typical test subject for this second day is a mouse in a temporary magically-induced coma, restored to full health before reawakening.) 

There's also a generic packet of information on the family of "slow/stop/stasis" powers, including statistics on where and how they've been employed in the Pax Corps (which has excellent record-keeping) and partner groups (which vary) over the decades. It's fairly sparse, as such packets go; this is not a common power. 

Sounds good. Is it time-consuming enough that she needs to take time off school?

The tests each take most of a day, but can be scheduled for a weekend. If necessary, they can provide a note for her school.

She'll take weekend scheduling.

The testing is conducted at a medical research facility in downtown Phoenix. A local staff member walks her through the process while others busy themselves with preparations and notetaking. As in the description, it's mostly plants and invertebrates at first. They test whether she can safely staunch bleeding, put a whole creature in stasis, affect specific organs she can or can't see, steady a broken limb, affect specific groups or types of organism (one species of ant in this group? One species of bacteria on this plate?) and various other permutations. They also test whether or to what extent things she stops are affected by outside forces, and whether she can alter this with concentration. 

She seems to only work on things that are at least one of "solid objects" or "complete and contiguous", so she cannot stop bleeding - blood's a liquid and you don't want all of it to stop. She can hold a limb still, that's solid enough. She can hold a creature in midair if she wants but it'll still be, like, experiencing the passage of time. She can only affect one target at a time, not multiple ants or bacteria. She can hold things against a lot of outside force though. She doesn't need to be concentrating except insofar as she needs to stay in range and not switch targets; she can stop a pillow in midair and sit on it and get lost in a book.

Can she hold a limb still relative to the body it's attached to, thereby letting them move both without worsening an injury? 

Yes but it has absolutely no give so it's not actually going to be that comfortable for them to move much.

Noted. They run some size and precision tests. Does she need to be able to see her target? Does a video camera suffice? The pillow trick implies she doesn't need to be looking directly at it to maintain the effect? Can she get something microscopic?

She does not need to be looking at it but she needs to know where it is. A camera will do if she's familiar with the place it's pointed at and its location relative to where she is. She does not need to look at it to maintain the effect. She can get something microscopic if she has a microscope.

There's a break for lunch during which the flurry of activity dies down a bit. "Thanks for your patience!" remarks Clara, the tech who's been walking her through the process. "We have some more tests scheduled, but there's also room to get creative in the afternoon as long as it's not dangerous. Anything you're particularly excited to try?" 

"I'd been thinking of, like I said on my form, blood clots - strokes and stuff - but it could be completely contraindicated. I am curious how big a thing I can stop, I've been reluctant to try it on moving cars."

"I'm not sure we can test bigness here. I guess we could do, like, a quick check in the parking lot before you leave, going slowly. Strokes are in tomorrow's list, but that one seemed a bit odd to me. What would you be stopping, exactly?"

"The blood clot? I may be operating on an incorrect model of how strokes work."

"I would naively expect that just freezes the clot in place, which is more likely to harm than help. If you can somehow stop the process of clotting itself, that's another story. Have you done anything that abstract before?"

"No, I haven't. I think I was imagining that the clot proceeds through the blood vessel and gets to more troublesome places in so doing and I'd be buying time for it to get removed or broken down with blood thinners or something but now that I'm saying this I'm realizing that I may have based my information on The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar."

"Oh yes, that does sometimes happen. Usually, though, by the time anyone notices, the clot has been in a problematic place for a while already. Might have some niche applications, though we'll have to wait for Aloise to test it tomorrow." She does add some more abstract tests to the agenda, though.

Can she stop a sugar cube from dissolving?

Looks like yes!

That has potential! Clara adds an impromptu battery of chemical reactions and biological functions for testing! Oxidation? Osmosis? Necrosis? 

Osmosis yes, the other two no.

Huh. Can she stop a small fire? 

Not exactly but she can keep the smoke and ash in place and that smothers it eventually.

It looks like the dividing line is physical processes (dissolving, osmosis) rather than chemical ones (oxidation, more complicated cellular mechanisms). They test several more of both to see if this holds.

Yeah, that's it.

That and the planned tests wraps things up for the day. Clara's verdict is that it's a niche ability, but with the right medical training, it could be a big help in enough cases to keep Isabella busy if she so chooses. She'll probably also get offers for dealing with patients who may need restraining, if she's up for that. 

Tomorrow will be mouse work with Alouise! 

Isabella shows up to experiment on mice!

And there's a new face when she does! "Hello Isabella!" says a petite woman wearing what looks like a phoenix motif, with crimson-feathered wings and a dress that looks like fire and seems to flicker when she moves in the right light. Her hair has similar flamelike highlights, and crimson feathers surround her head like a small crown. "I am Alouise Moreau. I will help you test your powers today." She has a fairly strong French accent, but enunciates clearly.

Prettyyyyy. She's too old for Isabella probably but she's still getting used to thaumosexuality. "Great, where do we start?"

"Clara has the plan, I believe —"

Clara does! It's been modified a bit after yesterday's results. They may as well try blood clots first, since Isabella wanted to give it a shot. 

Alouise touches a mouse and concentrates; soon the mouse is flopped. They have a tiny tiny insertable camera so Isabella can see what she's doing, and Science proceeds. Aloise, it turns out, can in fact cause a clot to occur, and various other problems for Isabella to attempt to stop in various ways. 

She can - with the camera helping - stop the clot in its tracks. She cannot really stop a process unless the process relies on atoms departing their home object; if they're merely jittering around while they remain part of the object she can't affect that.

The majority of the tests they run today come up "nope", and it proves predictably dangerous to the mouse to be freezing various bits of its innards in place. But there are still a few medical problems that can be stalled this way, and a few treatments it facilitates.

The two general categories that Aloise and Clara suggest are in disaster response, where there are likely many injured people who may need to be moved without worsening severely broken bones; and large-hospital emergency care, where one is more likely to run into situations that would be drastically improved by stopping something for a while, or in extremis by having the ability to restrain a thrashing patient who'd normally require the attention of half a dozen busy nurses. Both require substantial training, but that's true of most medical applications. (They recommend strongly against experimenting with magical medicine at home, of course.) 

Is there anything else Isabella herself thinks they ought to test? 

If they have nonmedical ideas for her she'll consider those too.

Well, the combat and law enforcement applications are obvious, though Aloise in particular completely understands a desire to steer clear of violence. Clara can think of a few ways it'd make research easier, holding a sample still for analysis or even freezing it in "snapshots" to allow close study of a fast-moving process, and she suspects this may generalize to some engineering as well.

Another tech observes that the ability to hold something steady or render it inert could work well in other areas of disaster response besides medicine. It wouldn't be as useful for construction and industrial work as general telekinesis, but it nevertheless has safety applications, especially for people working at heights. 

They mostly agree the research applications seem the most exciting, as "absolutely no give" opens up opportunities for study that would be impossible or prohibitively expensive otherwise. Even if she can't stop thermal motion, things like vibration and air currents constrain precise measurements quite a lot, and some expensive setups with the sole purpose "hold this thing still against outside forces" don't fully succeed at the job. 

They're just spitballing at the moment, though. Isabella should get a proper rundown of options from the Pax Corps once the results of the tests are in. (Though if she wants to go down an engineering route, there might be a separate battery of tests for that.)

"I don't inherently object to fighting monsters, but I have dyspraxia, I'd be tough to field. Can you sign me up for the engineering tests from here or do I need to do that separately through the website again?"

"You can mention it in your followup call," offers Aloise. "And I could try to look at your dyspraxia, though I cannot guarantee anything."

"Sure, give it a whirl. I can fly all right, I just suck at balancing on my feet, I can't run. Or ride a bike. Flying is fine."

"I will have some questions for you, then. It is fine if you do not know or answer, but I work best with as much information as possible." Aloise secures them some privacy just out of earshot of the other technicians, then asks some technical questions about Isabella's medical history regarding the dyspraxia.

She falls down a lot. She has to be really careful on the stairs. Her dad stopped trying to teach her to ride a bike when her twin brother had had it down for a week and she was beating her elbow pads all to hell falling off still. The wings help her balance a bit. She trips on things, but also on nothing, especially if her pace rises above a sedate walk.

Has she had any tests or scans performed? Ever been prescribed anything for it? 

She saw an occupational therapist for a while but the occupational therapist seemed to believe that she had a deep underlying desire to play sports for some reason and also had toxic levels of buzzword poisoning so they were not really on the same page.

This gets a sympathetic wince.

After a few more queries of this sort, Aloise says,"I now ask your permission to use my power on you. It requires a few minutes of physical contact; just the back of a hand suffices."

"...well, now you've explained about ten percent of what I want to know about the process."

"Broadly, I will observe your endocrine and nervous systems for abnormalities. It's not comprehensive, I have to check specific traits one at a time, but each is quick. If I discover anything of note, I will share my findings and explain what changes I might make and what I expect their effects to be, but this first step is diagnostic only." 

"Okay." She holds out her hand.

Aloise lightly touches the back of Isabella's hand and closes her eyes. A few minutes pass.

She withdraws her hand, frowning. "Your neurology is slightly unusual, but not in a way that matches the profile of any disease or disorder with which I am familiar. I cannot rule out that it is treatable, but I would not attempt any changes without extensive study. You seem otherwise healthy, at least in the areas I checked."

"Matches my understanding."

"I am sorry I could not be of more help to you," Aloise adds as they return to the others. "That is all we had scheduled for today, I believe?"

"I think so...Oh, we should check whether Isabella can stop cars!" Clara remarks. "...You don't need to be here for that. The lab should have your prioritized request list ready now, if you want to help while you wait for pickup."

"Thank you, I shall." 

"Where's a car for me?"

"Oh, we can use mine." True to her word, after everyone's said their goodbyes, Clara leads Isabella to a green SUV in the parking lot, starts it, and proceeds to back out veeeeery slowly.

"That might be too big for me, I haven't been to a pro stylist or anything, my brother does my consulting..." Sure enough she cannot halt an SUV. "I might be able to do a smaller car. Or that one if I were a bit upgraded."

"Oh, well. At any rate, thank you for your visit and your interest in research! You're very easy to work with."

"Thanks!"

When she next checks her email, there's an invitation to schedule a follow-up call with a Pax Corps recruiter. 

Sure thing. Weekend again?

Yep, that works. And on the scheduled day, she'll get a call from Roshaun to discuss internship options!

"Are these compatible with a normal high school schedule?"

"They can be! Summer programs are popular with students your age. We can also help with homeschooling arrangements for those who prefer a different schedule."

"I've considered bidding for a switch to homeschooling before but have generally come down against. Summer's good."

"First, some background. Our primary goal with this program is to find out where magical girls can do the most good and then help them get there. We want to set you up to do valuable, fulfilling work at a pace that's sustainable for you. The first step is one of discovery, of trying things to see what fits, in some ways like finding the right outfit for your magic. So don't be afraid to ask questions or speak up if something doesn't seem right to you — the odds are good that the first thing we try out won't be the best thing.

"On that note, there are a few different knobs we can tweak to tailor this program to your abilities and interests. The first relates to how much travel you want to sign up for. On the low end of this scale, you could go for a stint at a dedicated research lab like the one you visited for testing. Or you could opt for a rotation among two or more labs, working for a few weeks at a time on one-off projects that take advantage of specific magic, facilities, and combinations thereof. On the extreme end of this spectrum is the option to leave most of the planning and logistics to Pax Corps and just go wherever your talents are in highest demand a particular day or week, with us working around any preferences or constraints you may have, within reason.

"The lower-travel options tend to be more chill, with more opportunities to make friends and pick up relevant skills, but also pay less and usually involve work with a partner group, with Pax Corps itself as an intermediary. We don't tend to recommend the 'go wherever' schedule to interns unless they're very travel-happy, but it's a common arrangement with our senior staff like Aloise and the pay's fantastic. Most folks opt for something in the middle.

"Also relevant is whether you want to stick with medicine, explore engineering or disaster response, or find some other mix of breadth and depth. I have more details, but I'll first pause in case you have any questions so far?"

"I don't mind some traveling around but I might change my mind if I were on a plane twice a week for a month. ...my twin brother is gesturing at me to make sure I mention that he wants to be a stylist and thinks I should ask if that's something you guys can help him out with."

"I can't promise anything much that front, I'm afraid, not knowing him well. He's welcome to submit an application for our style track, but as you've probably noticed from our website, the odds of getting in aren't high. I can send you both some recommendations for good schools and programs to get things started. We try to keep an eye on which programs can prepare someone to be a great stylist with the right mix of talent and dedication — or make a decent stylist with a substantially more forgiving mix, an underrated public service in my opinion."

"He's my twin, so he's my age and has to finish high school before he can enroll in FIT, alas."

"There are summer programs and such, they're just mostly not ours. It comes up often enough that I think we have a shortlist somewhere with price-quality-accessibility tradeoffs." 

"Sure, send me that and I'll bounce it to him?"

"Of course. Any other questions so far?"

"How much money are we talking about for a summer?"

Mid five figures, it turns out, assuming a modest willingness to travel. 

Nice. "Are all the local swarm patrol squads mad that you outcompete them?"

"Oh, we don't take that many interns, and most of the research positions are sourced from outside the lab's hometown. It'd be hard to find them the right combinations of magic otherwise. So it doesn't end up having much impact on patrol recruiting outside the largest cities, and for those we often have an arrangement with the local squads, training and such." 

"I'll take that as a compliment, then. I am most probably interested in joining you this coming summer."

Excellent! There are still some details to hash out, which Roshaun will cheerfully walk through. The main thing they need to know to set up the program is what fields she wants to explore. "There's some overlap," Roshaun adds. "For instance, we've already gotten some excited memos from biology and engineering labs doing laser interferometry."

"What exactly is that?"

"Well, the short version is that waves, including light waves, interfere with each other — ever wobble a rope in just the right way to make several smaller rotations instead of one big one? — and scientists can use this interference to measure things. As I understand it, first you make a bunch of light with the same wavelength, that's the 'laser' part, then you split it and bounce it off an object you want to test, then you look at the pattern of bright and dark spots made by the reflected light. This can tell you things about the surface of the reflective object to a very fine detail, and let you precisely measure things like vibration and refractive index or produce high-resolution images of cells and tissues. 

"It's an exciting application for your power, because one of the harder parts of interferometry is that even a tiny amount of external vibration can ruin your data. Lots of effort goes into holding an apparatus or part of an apparatus steady. If you decided to do this at one or more labs as part of your internship, you'd get to learn more about the math and science behind laser interferometry if that interested you, you'd participate in tests to see how much of a cost reduction or precision gain could be managed with your power, and depending on the results you might get offers to do more such work long-term."

"Physics is not already my passion but it's certainly worth a try!"

"Glad to hear it!" Roshaun has a shortlist of similar opportunities, including more research and some precision manufacturing applications, and he recommends trying out three to six of them during the internship. "Fewer than that and it's hard to explore many promising fields, more than that and it's hard to get a proper feel for any one of them, especially with travel."

"I assume the flights are comped? I'm not a sky marathoner."

"Yes, they are."

"Great. I'll look forward to it."

By the end of the call, they'll have a tentative list of opportunities to be firmed up in the coming week.

Five days later, Isabella is sent a tentative schedule. There are four proposed stints, each about two weeks long, with the first being at a precision manufacturing lab in Boulder, Colorado.

A generously compensated summer with plenty of space for trips to the zoo and whatnot. When the date rolls around, she flies to the place nearest the airport where that's allowed and takes a shuttle the rest of the way to go to Boulder.

Her internship officially starts at 8am on Monday at the lab! The information packet says she'll be working with Adrian Pelino's team and a magical girl named Nora Malden. 

She shows up from hotel dressed exactly as fancily as she usually is, with her pattern of circles and rings of various sizes on her red-and-blue color scheme. Wow, flying at this altitude is a little different. Swoop flap flap land.

It's a three-story building with a double-door entrance; there's no one outside at this exact moment.

Presumably the door's unlocked? She pushes in.

There's a small, well-kept lobby with a few chairs and a reception desk. Seated in the waiting area are a young Hispanic woman in a lab coat and a magical girl; the latter has sky-blue skin, shoulder-length black hair, and white wings, and she's wearing a gold-trimmed green robe with a gold sash and matching bangles. Her features and garb appear vaguely Indian. 

Both look up as Isabella enters. "Hello! Would you be Isabella Swan?" asks the woman in the lab coat. 

"That's me!"

"Good to meet you! I'm Monica Vidal, this is Nora Malden." The other magical girl waves and smiles. "I'll be the main point of contact with Adrian and the rest of the team while you're here." 

"Cool, should I have your email or number or anything?"

"Yes, it's in the info packet, along with some lab safety material, a map of the facility, and such." She picks up a pair of manila folders from a small table, offering one each to Isabella and Nora. "Some of this you'll have seen in the email and online forms already, but there are some things we really want to go over in person before you get started. If you'll follow me?" she adds, standing.

Hopefully she doesn't walk too briskly. Isabella trails after her.

Maybe a bit brisk, but it's a short trip and she'll slow down without needing prompting if she gets too far ahead. Just a couple of turns and a hallway to room 112, where she sits down to review the paperwork and lab procedures with Isabella and Nora. As promised, it's a mix of mundane paperwork that needs a physical signature, basic orientation material, and Very Important Safety Stuff.

Stay behind the yellow line when machinery is running! No entering labs with this sign on the door without protective eyewear! (The info packet includes some standard magical-girl-friendly protective gear that can, with minimal adjustment, avoid clashing horribly with most outfits. There are pictures and descriptions in sufficient detail for conjuration.) 

Gloves may be required in certain procedures. They won't be working with dangerous chemicals, so the dresses should be fine in lieu of power-wrecking lab coats, but Absolutely No loose sleeves or large wings near the lathe, no matter how pretty they are. (Monica emphasizes this one rather strongly.)

And just in case, here's how to use an emergency eyewash station...

It takes about an hour to go over everything. 

Isabella tries on various eyewear options and gloves till she has kinds she likes.

So does Nora! She's been quietly attentive throughout the orientation, but she absently hums a simple tune to herself while testing apparel.

"All set to go meet the team?" asks Monica once they look done. 

"Sure. How big a team is this?"

"Half a dozen regulars, not counting the part-timers, and you won't meet them all at once. Kendall's on vacation and Max is visiting another lab. Adrian and a couple of the others will be in the lab today, I think."

"Okay then." She can probably remember that many people. If she takes notes inside her sleeve.

Nora nods as well, and Monica leads the way to the lab proper. 

It's a much larger room, occupying most of the first floor of this wing. Heavy machinery stands in loose rows, encircled on the floor by yellow tape. Plates of steel and other materials are stacked against the walls, some intact and others in neatly-sliced fragments. There's a somewhat more open area to one side of the room, in which several engoggled and lab-coated individuals are gathered, excitedly fiddling with more portable tools, including what appears to be a modular device attached to a ceiling-mounted rail. 

"Hi everyone! Team, this is Nora Malden and Isabella Swan with the Pax Corps enrichment program. Isabella, Nora, these are my colleagues Krom Luang and Ramone, and our lab lead Adrian." She points to a middle-aged East Asian man and a tan-skinned fellow who looks in his early twenties, then to a wiry older man with short greying hair and a matching moustache. 

"Pleased to meet you both," nods Adrian, smiling. "We've all been looking forward to working with you." 

Nora pauses in the entrance looking utterly entranced, but starts and smiles when Monica says her name.

"Hi!" She closes her eyes for a moment to put notes in her sleeve.

"I filled them in on the basics, including safety protocol," Monica tells the team. "I didn't cover the testing plan yet, I figured you'd want do to that in person, Adrian?"

"Also it keeps changing as he gets more ideas," jokes Ramone. 

Adrian chuckles. "Yes, we're very excited about the opportunities for your respective powers."

"Oh! Isabella, what can you do? I was going to look you up in the In Skirts list but I got distracted by, um..." Nora gestures helplessly at the lab equipment. "...everything." 

"I stop things." She appears a pillow, maintains contact with it as she places it in the air and stops it, and sits on it, picking up her feet off the floor to cross her legs.

Nora's eyes widen and she grins. "That's so cool, I've never heard of that power before! I bet it's super useful, I was just reading the other day about how physical support is a major limiting factor in design for manufacturability —"

Ramone lets out a snort of laughter and Nora eeps into embarrassed silence. 

"Yes, that is one reason for our excitement," observes Adrian, a smile quirking the corner of his lips.

"It's one thing at a time, so you shouldn't do architecture with me as the keystone."

"It's more that holding a part steady takes a lot of clamps and such that get in the way of other work," Adrian offers. "But that won't be our first focus this week — we'll start with examining stress and deformation." 

"That's where you come in, Nora," adds Monica. "Sorry, I should have gone over your respective contributions in orientation, there was just a lot to cover. Microscopic vision, right?"

"Hmm? Oh, not quite — I see things. They can be far away, really small, or even in the past, though distance and time trade off pretty sharply and I need to be close to something to do microscopic or pastwatching."

Krom Luang lets out a low whistle. "Versatile." 

Nora nods emphatically. "I love it so much." 

"Oooooh that's a good one. Does it get you finer detail on your outfit or are you starscaping like the rest of us for that?"

"It helps a little, but I can't show what I see to a stylist, so it takes a while to get the patterns right. Later this summer I'm doing a stint with a professional designer who wants to do rapid prototyping, so maybe I'll get better at it!"

"Neat. My twin brother wants to be a stylist."

"Maybe we should chat!" 

"What are you doing in manufacturing," quips Ramone, "You should be a spy or something." 

"Who says I'm not?" counters Nora, then spoils the effect by putting a hand to her mouth and looking mortified. 

"Forensics for cops," she suggests.

"Long-term, yeah, probably something like that," Nora admits. "But I don't want to be stuck doing just that! There's too much else to try out first!"

"Speaking of, are you ready to hear the overall plan?" asks Adrian. 

"Hit me."

Adrian obliges. "As I mentioned, we'll start with some testing and measurements to see how you work in an industrial setting. Isabella, we'd like to see how your power affects material stress and deformation first, and maybe see how far we can get with stopping an object mid-fracture to enable closer study. We'll run these tests and a few others this week.

"Then it's on to more speculative applications. Your ability is a rare one, so we're going to need a fair bit of testing. But if the preliminary results we saw from your medical testing hold, then one of our long-term goals in the coming two weeks will be to see how your power can speed up manufacturing for parts that require high precision, or for low-quantity custom jobs like rocket fuel injectors and satellite parts. The idea being, if something fairly heavy can be stuck in place for a lengthy work period, we could skip hours of tedious adjustments of clamps and harnesses and even make some otherwise impossible cuts.

"We'll use much simpler components at first, of course. The largest and most complex ones require a bigger facility than we have here, but it should generalize, and may even have applications in medical manufacturing.

"Nora, you'll be observing throughout, and your main role will be to give us more rapid feedback on our tests. First, though, you'll practice identifying some standard deformation structures with Krom Luang and Monica, so you have an idea of what you're looking for. 

"Any questions?"

"Can I have a chair? I have bad balance, and often catch myself with my power if I fall."

"I got you." Ramone departs, and returns shortly after with a scuffed but clean-looking plastic chair with metal legs.

She plops into it sideways.

The rest of the morning proceeds more or less as described, with the interns offered a chance to look at various deformed, sheared, and otherwise damaged parts (under a microscope, in Isabella's case) and then tasked with running a series of tests on reference blocks. They check how much fine control Isabella has over the properties of stopped objects, what kinds of damage an object can undergo or resist while stopped, and how the results of destructive tests differ at the microscopic level. The team members operate the machinery involved, but they're generally good about explaining each step, and they let the interns do some less critical steps themselves as long as they respect the safety rules.

This is... not actually all that interesting, though she keeps herself occupied by asking why they want to do all these things to these objects and also brought a book.

Well, if stopped objects can be cut then that has implications for the week 2 machining plan! And fine control over surface resistance could have interesting implications for etching, stamping, polishing, and a number of other techniques, on top of the "no clamps needed" benefit. They'll run into problems trying to screw a part into a frame if the frame has zero give, but if the surface resistance can be adjusted even a little bit...

Ramone wants to try out the hydraulic press vs a stopped object, but Adrian firmly vetoes that on the grounds that hydraulic presses are expensive. 

There will not be a lot of reading time, as there won't be many long intervals between stopping objects for a test and reviewing and discussing the results. Monica does her best to keep Isabella engaged, even when the discussion otherwise gets too technical to follow; she fields most questions and and explains the function of various machines and tools being used. 

(Nora seems enthralled, and alternates between focused silence and rapid-fire questions for most of the morning.) 

"You could put two things under the hydraulic press and stop it once the one I'm not stopping gives."

"That could work," muses Adrian. "A sacrificial sample might be crushed before we find out how much force you can stop, but it shouldn't damage the press. Sure, let's try it." They stack a couple of steel cubes, each about four inches on a side, and invite Isabella to fix the bottom one in place a little bit above a steel pedestal while a press bears down on them both from above. They also put a steel sheet between the pedestal and the stopped object, just to make sure the pedestal won't be damaged if the bottom cube suddenly un-stops. 

And now it's not going anywhere.

One somewhat squished cube later: "Well, that puts a lower bound on the forces you can hold against," Adrian dryly observes. The others are staring wide-eyed and Ramone is just a bit shy of laughing maniacally.

"What's the number, in case I meet anyone who'll be impressed?"

"About four hundred tons," estimates Krom Luang. 

"Niiiice."

Adrian thinks this is a good time to break for lunch!

According to Monica, there's a small lunchroom in the building, a shared cafeteria in walking distance, and a fair number of eateries within five or ten minutes' drive. "Or you and Nora can feel free to explore by air," she adds. 

"I flew here but I think I want a little more altitude acclimation before I try to do a lot more of it." She'll try the caf.

"Yeah, it takes some getting used to. I'll show you the cafeteria," Monica says. Nora elects to go as well.

The cafeteria, shared with several other labs and light industrial buildings, is a fairly average instance of its kind, with a buffet selection and a couple shelves of fruit, snacks, and packaged meals. 

Bella has unrefined food tastes. She will take the chicken pot pie from the buffet and a banana and a cookie.

Monica and Nora plop down their respective trays shortly thereafter.

"So your twin brother wants to be a stylist? What's his name? Did he help with your outfit?" asks Nora once they're settled. 

"His name is Xander and yeah, this is all him! He went through a book on putting together a magical outfit with me and all I did was report on whether things were better or worse, I have no sense of style."

"What a good brother! Maybe he'd enjoy hearing he's indirectly responsible for four hundred tons plus of stopping power."

"I will definitely tell him when I call him - he's doing art camp, so we have to schedule it."

"Perils of differing interests, I suppose. At least you get to talk now and then. Where's art camp?" 

"Back home in Arizona. It's sleepaway but nobody was comping him an airplane."

"Maybe they should, he did a good job with your outfit." 

"I'll tell him you said so!"

"What part of Arizona? What do you get up to there when not interning?"

"We live in Phoenix. We're in high school. I'm bookish, mostly, I don't go out and do a lot."

"Are you planning to stay through to graduation?"

"In... school? Yes. In the internship, probably."

"Oh, sorry, I wasn't clear. Some of the magical girls I've run into opted to test out or homeschool or do some other thing. I did, but I was interested in the Pax Corps even before I got magic, so it was an easy call for me." 

(Monica seems content to just listen in, for now; she's mostly here to make sure the girls don't get lost on their first day.) 

"I have considered homeschool but decided against and expect to continue to do so. My mom's a teacher."

"Neat! What does she teach?" 

"Kindergarten, but she's pretty bought in on the whole system."

"That makes sense. I thought about starting a school one day, before I starscaped and changed my plans. I want to share things, not just see them." 

"Even if you don't draw, you could conjure pictures of what you look at and get them scanned or photographed. Fill out a load of textbooks."

"Oooh, I like that, that's a really good idea! I had been thinking, maybe one day when I'm fabulously wealthy and retired, I'd still open a school, but this is a...concrete thing, a now thing, and that's much better." She closes her eyes for half a minute, concentrating, and then suddenly she's holding a gilded scroll on which is painted a zoomed-in picture of a stainless steel grain structure, in full color. "It works!!! This is my spoon, by the way." 

"Nifty! It looks like a mosaic!"

"So many things are like this if you look closely enough! That's exactly what I want to show people. Grayscale microscopes and colorized images just aren't the same." 

Monica looks impressed as well. "The team's gonna love this...why the scroll?" 

"You know, I'm not really sure," admits Nora. "I wasn't particularly focused on the medium, but I do like the aesthetic of old scrolls and such. Maybe this is just what my brain associates with 'show off this beautiful thing I'm looking at'. I wasn't thinking of not scrolls. I can do paper instead for scanning, though." 

"I think scanners like it when things are flat," Isabella agrees.

Nora giggles, still staring at the scroll.

"At some point I want to know if I'm limited by mass or volume. I haven't had the opportunity to check yet. Though I assume whichever it is the exact threshold will go up when I'm prettier."

Monica nods. "We can check this afternoon if you like. It's relatively less scheduled than the morning, because we knew we'd have a bunch of results to process and new ideas to try after the morning."

"What other experiments are you guys excited about?"

"How much faster can we assemble, say, a small custom engine, if we don't have to worry about holding the framework in place? How much more precision can we get out of our instruments when they won't suffer vibration noise or bend out of alignment? Also, I bet there's a bunch we can learn from scanning Nora's pictures, that opens up a lot of options and probably bumps some other tests off the priority list, we'll see. The tentative plan for this afternoon was to time ourselves cutting and drilling custom parts from stopped raw material. We probably still have time for that, but some tests might get pushed to tomorrow."

"Are there a lot of custom engines in the world, I'd expect most things to run on some mass-produced sort."

"By sheer number, yes, most are off-the-shelf models. But you'd be surprised how many projects and prototypes require a handful of specially-tooled components. Enough to keep labs like ours in business, at least."

"What kind of thing needs a special custom engine?"

"Space probe thrusters, high-performance racing vehicles, marine vessels with nonstandard hull designs and highly specific noise or efficiency needs...also hobbyists and history buffs doing restoration projects where the originals aren't manufactured anymore. Every now and then we get a request involving an aerobatic propeller plane engine, that's always a treat." 

"Nifty. I wouldn't expect hobbyists to have that kind of cash to throw around but perhaps I unfairly malign them."

"It's probably something of a prerequisite for acquiring expensive hobbies in the first place? But some small aircraft aren't much more expensive than a decent car."

"Neat, good for people who can't grow their own."

"I suppose it is!" 

In the afternoon, the team opts to test mass vs volume while they finish working out the next steps. They produce a bundle of medium-density material that's about as large as she can manage. Then, using different materials, they make a bundle that is smaller but heavier and one that is larger but lighter. 

If they tie it up snugly enough that it all counts as one thing she can stop 1500 kilos. It turns out to be a mass (or weight, they can't tell the difference here) limit at least within the volume range they try.

They're guessing that it's mass, mostly because it'd seem weird even by magic standards for a thing that can ignore a hydraulic press to care about much weaker forces imposed by gravity. It's only a guess, though, magic is weird sometimes.

After some consultation, the team decides the next batch of experiments should involve assembly rather than machining. They're working on a couple of go-kart-sized engines, heavy enough to be difficult to move by hand but simple enough to be cheaply repaired or replaced. The idea is for Isabella to hold the frame in place while they attach various parts to it. If all goes well, they'd only need to pause the assembly a few times to put supports beneath it and let Isabella release and re-stop the whole thing. For the interns' benefit, Monica keeps up a running commentary on which parts are being installed, where they came from, and what they do.

Aside from a few checks at otherwise difficult angles and magnifications, Nora doesn't have as much to do in this phase. She contents herself with imaging and scanning a bunch of different materials and surface features when there's a lull in the action. 

Isabella does not technically have a lot to "do" either, since the power is quite passive once engaged.

They knock out the first one in record time, resulting in a round of high-fives. While they're readying the next frame, Monica asks, "Want to get a bit more hands-on?" She hefts the handheld power drill, which they've been using with bolt attachments to fasten parts to the frame.

(Isabella will have seen team members kneeling or putting one hand on the assembly to steady themselves while using the drill; it's an option.) 

"Uh, at all worried the dyspraxia will kick in inconveniently, it mostly just does my balance but I don't normally try to handle power tools just in case."

"I want to, but my outfit doesn't really play well with fast spinny things and it'd take a while to get it right again if I changed. Maybe after I've worked out the right alterations." 

"Fair enough!" 

A bit later, Nora pulls over a stool and sits down next to Isabella with a sheaf of pages. "The scans are working out great, want to see a few favorites?"

"Sure!"

Nora hands over a dozen printouts, a mix of mosaic-like metals and fabrics and a few other materials. 

"Do you use this to get microstructures that look nice on your outfit?"

"Only a little bit so far. There's not much prior work on micro-aesthetics, and it takes a long time to get something the magic likes by trial and error. I did it for the hem of my sash, though." 

"What's that look like?"

Nora produces another scroll. On it is a complex pattern of something like layers of tessellated golden spiderwebs. 

"Whoaaaa."

"Mind you, this took me weeks to get right, and I had some help with the math and patterning. I'm excited to work with an expert about it, I bet they have way more ideas." 

"It'd probably also be really hard to put back if you spill something or rip it."

"Yep. I have sketches of the pattern, but it's not easy. Oooh, I should scan some pictures of these, too." 

"Yeah! You can publish your own Visual Dictionary of Microscopic Fashion."

"Oooh, I am so going to do that once I've done more designs, and I plan to do a lot of outfit-optimizing. Even if it weren't fascinating in its own right, I want as much range as I can get."

"It'll make a good coffee table book."

"Maybe I'll do a whole series of them! An Atlas of Underappreciated Wonders, Microbes In Their Native Environments, Scenes Rescued from History..."

"Ooooh! Do you have any regulatory problems with like - do you have to not go into offices where people might have had confidential paperwork or anything -"

"It's hard for countries to regulate individual powers that precisely, I think? But when I signed on with Pax Corps, one of the conditions was that I have to be able to say under truth-magic that I haven't to the best of my knowledge used magic to spy on people outside of a few specific cases — consenting subjects, official investigations, intelligence gathering against a wartime foe..."

Inventing spells is even more of a pain than reinventing them, but the symbol of truthtelling was totally worth the months of effort it took to develop in a way that made it work with permanency. Zones of truth just don't scale as well when there's only one caster on the planet. 

It is an official Pax Corps philosophy that societies should have ways to legibly verify that the people and groups with the most power are not abusing it. 

"Hoo boy, is that one likely to come up?"

"The wartime one? Not likely. There's a hard line between staff that are signed on for peacetime and wartime activities, and I'm in the first group for now. I'm not even allowed to talk to the branch that handles active conflicts unless I mark myself open to wartime assignments, and even then there's a mandatory delay. 

"...I probably will, though, in a couple years. People should be able to learn and grow in a place that's not actively on fire."

"Wow, you can't talk to them like on the clock or like if you meet them at the grocery store they have to confirm that you aren't a peacetime gal before they can warn you about the spill on aisle eleven?"

"I'm allowed to talk to their employees off-duty, we just can't talk about war-related things, and if I need to communicate something to the military branch I need to go through an intermediary that documents everything. It's not enforced by truth-magic the way the no-abuse policies are, but a lot of Pax Corps members really don't want to do war stuff or even be associated with the war stuff, and having the option to say 'sorry the official policy is that I can't talk to you' is important to them."

"Huh. I'm having a hard time imagining someone who feels that strongly about it and can't just enforce their own boundaries."

"So, I could have said, 'I don't want the strict civilian designation, but also I don't want to do any explicit work for the military branch right now,' and they'd handle assignments accordingly. I think most of the non-magical professionals take that route. But I'm a magical girl with spying powers and that would make me an obvious target even if all I did was send emails. I don't think I'm ready for that yet." 

"I guess if all the would-be targeters are really convinced about this policy being strictly held and also don't have, you know, unrelated reasons to want to target useful magical girls."

"Yeah, it's not a guarantee. I think there are any groups out there who buy the distinction, including many of the larger states with the scary spy networks. But I think it's mostly for the peace of mind of those who want to draw a bright line for themselves. Honestly, I get it. War is scary and feeling pressured to do something about it can be scary, too."

"I can see that."

"Anyway, yeah, I need consent to casually snapshot people. But I think it'd be cool to ask people for permission to snapshot their past selves doing something they hadn't managed to capture on film, like making a scientific discovery or founding a company." 

"It'll still come out a little 'artist's rendering of', right - or can you use your power and look at your starscape simultaneously -"

"I can use my power on myself and stuff I'm wearing or holding in starscape, which can go a surprisingly long way. For everything else, yeah, but with a few minutes I can sort of — flick between starscape and viewing and adjust an image until it looks right."

"Yeah, you could get really close if not exactly photographic, I'd expect."

"Mhm. Speaking of starscapes, your circle pattern is interesting, how'd you and Xander settle on it?" 

"He did my colors first, had me go through a bunch of different ones in a plain dress, and narrowed it down to the red and blue, and then he wanted a motif and I'm not actually sure how he settled on this one, he didn't have me try very many - did briefly attempt four pointed stars but I kept getting their geometry a little wonky."

"Huh, makes sense. I wonder if you could do patterns with tiny circles, like those paintings that are all made of little dots."

"Pointilism! I'm sure someone's doing it but I don't think it'd actually be part of the same motif I've got?"

"Yeah. I suppose you could do the same pattern in tiny dots."

"I think I'm benefiting from the smoothness of the edges matching in the fabric print and also in the jewelry."

"Oh well. No tiny dots for you."

"Not in this theme, no."

Shortly thereafter, the team finishes the next assembly and Nora is pulled away to do quality control on a different set of parts.

The team speeds through a few more small assemblies, making excellent time, before wrapping up for the day. 

Does she get to make any progress in her book?

Some of the smaller assemblies require a new stopping every few minutes, but there's time to get through a few chapters.

Then it is an acceptable way to pass the time.