I'll tell you if I stop feeling so happy.

Okay.

And here in this alley -

- aha.

Follow me if you can -

Bella steps right through a wall.

She attempts to step through the wall too, though she puts her hands first so she won't smash her face.

The wall admits her.

And here is the maze of the witch, just like Bella remembered at her. Spooky murk. The air is humid and salt-smelling.

She's nervous, but happy about it.

Bella pulls a pistol out and shoots a few familiars on their way in, but it's a pretty uneventful maze navigation - the maze is always the same.

When they approach the center she pulls out the heavy-duty recording and queues it up and places it on the floor and then stops time and scoops Lúthien up and leaves. When she lets time go again they're on a roof of a building across the street.

And she watches anxiously and-

And a magical girl staggers out of the alley, uninjured but looking like she's been led back out of Hell by Orpheus, a weeping wreck barely keeping her feet -

- and that's when four more magical girls including Raine appear on adjacent rooftops each with her own slightly-smiling fluffy alien on her shoulder, weapons drawn, one leaping down at the aquarium-witch girl and three launching themselves at Bella and Lúthien -

- and Bella slams her hand onto her shield and they're back in her hospital room and she almost doesn't think fast enough to zap the medical monitors.

What happened?

Fluffs must've noticed the de-witching and really wanted to know what was going on, although that kind of fast response suggests they already had enough from Raine or spying on us directly to be on alert.

Why did anyone attack us?

Hard to say what they had in mind exactly. More likely they wanted to capture than kill, figure out what was going on in a situation they controlled.

And how did they convince other magical girls to do it? Aren't they supposed to be on our side?

Most magical girls don't know nearly enough to hate the fluffs. And they're so fluffy, you see.

How'd they convince Raine to attack us?

Not sure. Possible one of the other girls got mind control powers. Or she didn't listen when I told her how to turn pain off and a fluff tortured her into it.

So every single witch is saveable but we can't do it, the stupid fluffs will notice...

Looks like.

Do we try bribery, then?

I want to see first if it works on the world-eater. Which means lying low for a loop.

Okay. I can practice English.

Yeah. We should go someplace, if we stay around here we have to deal with me being supposedly grievously injured and my father and so on, but it doesn't have to be Seattle, we could go to Vancouver, or we could go literally anywhere as long as we're back near this general part of the planet by loop's end.

Anywhere with forests. Parks could do, I suppose.

If you want to camp out in the wilderness for a month this is in fact a pretty foresty place.

I might do that.