"Curing cancer does kind of sound... big," she muses. "Like, all cancer everywhere for everyone. The power to make these wishes comes from somewhere, right? So you're not a big enough power generator to get all the cancer, but maybe you can get something just as good if you figure out the right angle. Here's your lever, now find a place to stand, sort of thing."

"Yeah. Which means that I have to think about it good and hard. I guess I'll telepathically chat with the fuzzball during boring classes figuring out what the magic does and doesn't consider 'big'."

"I'm going to be talking to Solvei about it a lot."

"You might have a more compelling reason than I do to be in a hurry."

"Yeah. What's the best we can get and still come out alive, is pretty much the question."

"I suppose 'evil guardians in general' might be as big as 'cancer patients in general'. But you have more oomph than me."

"And the question of whether somebody's an evil guardian is a little harder to answer than the question of whether something is cancer. How do I know the wish'll get it right?"

"Yeah. I wonder if you can make it pass the buck. If there is a consensus among the guardianed-by of person X that something incapacitating should befall X, then..."

"Might be too complicated. But it's worth asking the genie."

"Yeah." Bella starts writing down the questions on wish parameters thus far considered.

And not-Solvei sits and thinks about angles from which to approach the Ghyslaine Problem.

"I guess a lot of what I wind up wishing for depends on what the subsequent magical powers are like. Apparently they include miraculous healings... but probably not in a usefully mass-producible way even if I went and did it in front of the entire staff of the NIH..."

"I'm wondering if I can wish for extra magic powers on top of the magic powers everybody gets. Because that's probably more useful than just wishing for one single thing to happen, if the single thing has to be substantially smaller than eradicating cancer. But I don't know exactly what magic powers everybody gets and I don't know how much it costs to add more, and I can't think of anything obvious that I could kill Ghyslaine with and put to good use afterward for things other than murder."

"Well, a generic killing things with your mind power could at least work locally against infectious diseases and maybe cancer cells?"

"Maybe. We can ask Fluffykins."

Bella writes this idea down. "Maybe we'll think of some things that will complement each other."

"That'd be nice. And if we find something with a big payoff that I have the power for and you don't, maybe I can wish for that and you can wish Ghys dead. But giving you more time to think is probably a better bet than that unless it's something really really good."

"Yeah. I mean, maybe I'll slow way down on the ideas and questions in a few days but right now I'm going okay so which laws of physics exactly are optional here."

"Yeah."

(Bella writes.) "And if there are a ton of puella magi out there and they don't like competition do we need to worry about defense? Especially if telepathy is a thing - a cheap thing that it can do anytime as long as it thinks we might take its contract - that indicates that scarier things might also, uh, be things."

"Scarier things like...?"

"Like mind control? Memory alteration? I mean, the fact that Ghys hasn't done any of that to you - if you can in fact be positive that she hasn't, your brain does seem to work in mysterious ways - is suggestive but not a guarantee."

"If Ghys had mind control - well, if Ghys had mind control that was any good at all - I wouldn't be here. Nor plotting to kill her. She does have this trick where she kind of... draws people's attention, but it doesn't - I spend enough time messing with my own head, I'd know if somebody else was doing it too. The fascinator trick doesn't have lasting effects."

"Okay. So there's some but not a lot, or some but it's not applicable to you for some reason, or some but Ghys doesn't have much, or - lots of possibilities."

"I feel like, if serious mind control was available, she'd probably have it. But that doesn't mean it's impossible for her not to have thought of it, or decided she wanted what she's got more than she wanted it, or whatever. As for whether I'm mysteriously immune to mind control because of one of the many ways my brain is screwed up - who knows. It's not like there's a good way to test it. I guess the fact that I haven't noticed Ghys mind-controlling anyone else is a little suggestive. Like, Stasya Koskin broke up with her and stayed that way."