I'll find you again later! Kyubey promises, and it traipses away.

They pretend there's only one of them as long as they can, Gem remarks.

Okay. It seems like it might be hard to try bargaining with them.

Whyso?

What if they just panic and attack us? Faster than you can reset?

I am now pretty sure they can't be selectively invisible to me. If I'm somewhere I'd see them coming - they've got decent telepathic range -

And I should be able to hear them. Once I know them better I should actually be able to find them at significant range. Okay. That's something.

How well do you have to know them?

Uh, it's about a sort of familiarity? If someone thinks a lot like me we might know each other well enough fast. I bet I could talk to you anywhere in the city. But they're deeply unfamiliar. They don't think like people. It might take longer.

Well, you can spend this loop chatting them up, and we can look for magical girls the long way.

Sorry about that, should have pretended to be more skeptical.

You can try again next time.

Yeah. What's the long way of finding magical girls?

Following witches around, evening's best, and catching somebody else at the hunt.

Okay. Why evening?

Lot of girls are in school, and we do sleep, and it's easier not to attract attention in the dark.

Okay. How does school work?

Kids starting around age five and continuing to eighteen all spend their mornings and early afternoons gathered together to learn stuff like how to read and do math and stuff about geography and whatnot. It's age-segregated and there's schools that specialize in this or that, like Raine goes to a Catholic school which is for people who buy into that specific religious sect.

Huh. So magical girls hunt witches at night, mostly?

In theory they could do it in the afternoon but they usually wait until sunset. And some of them drop out of school and hunt in daylight, or they just wake up early instead, or go nocturnal, but my bet is evening if I don't have any other information.

We can wait until evening. We can find a park or something.

Yeah.

They go looking for a park. This one has an ice skating rink set up!

What's that? It looks amazing, can we do it?

Ice skating! Sure, why not.

They rent skates. It is slippery, but Bella can now go on the ice without dying!

This is amazing! It's like dancing with more momentum! She can jump and twirl, and try doing both at once...