"Running around, anyway."

"They're very quick when they want to be."

"Well, we can be very patient."

And they wait.

Eventually the fluffs write back. They want to know her requirements.

She's got these already written up in a separate document. Paste. Send.

Are you nervous?

Yeah, 'course.

You just seem really calm.

I think I mostly don't emote very much?

It's probably a good thing, better than visibly seeming panicked around fluffs.

Yeah, that'd be a problem.

And now more waiting.

Negotiations go on for several days - I'm going to reset again just to be able to present a complete proposal with everything they ask already answered first thing, Bella remarks a ways in - and finally they provide enough evidence of good faith that she's willing to meet in person.

Ready to go up to a spaceship and read some minds? she asks.

Yeah.

Bella gets a new letter from her dad.

The girls meet a fluff at a designated location. The fluff expects, innocently enough, to assume them up into a spaceship which is normally over Japan but has been moved for pickup. This transpires in a shower of light and a peculiar sensation.

The ship is... not designed for aesthetics. The fluff accompanying them is the only thing that looks like anybody cared what it looked like at all. Things are all the natural colors of materials chosen entirely for structural reasons; everything is blocky, practical, dim.

She looks at Bella, Bella's pretty.

Bella's less affected. She follows the fluff, which (innocently enough) intends to lead them to one of the non-fluff-chassis-based intelligences commanding the energy harvesting project.

It's not pretty either; it's tentacled and damp and smells weird. But it doesn't have the simple directed mind of a networked fluff. It's thinking about Bella's claims and estimating that the chance of a positive sum trade is higher than the chance of obviating the need for trade by attacking.

The fluff relays this sentiment in condensed form through its own telepathy protocol and with reference to its handling-teenage-girls social skills: We would be very glad to trade you the magic we use to grant wishes for a way not to need them any longer, and then our business on Earth will be finished!

It means it. It considered attacking us but thinks this is smarter.

Thanks - I feel so much better with you along, it's a load off my mind -

And to the fluff: Will I be able to use the wish-granting mechanism effectively?

Yes, the fluff translates for the tentacle alien, we can give you the control mechanism and tell you everything we know about how it works. Since you said your infinite power generation is copiable, it will not be difficult for you to use it to great effect within its natural limits, of which there are some.

(The limits: emotion of the wisher about their wish is still relevant for wish "bandwidth", although potentiation per se will be less relevant with infinite generation capacity. One wish to a customer. Wish does do-what-I-mean but accepts only somewhat limited advance interrogation about how it will implement that; the result will given sufficient bandwidth be a fulfillment of the wish of a sort the wisher finds fair as an interpretation of their words but not necessarily ideal, without side effect, fully thought through in its implications, etcetera.)

One per person. I'm not clear if it still only works on adolescent girls, you'll have to ask. Powerful wishes you'd still have to feel really strongly about. It'll do what you wished for but maybe not in the perfect way, and you might not be able to perfectly tell in advance.

Bella quizzes the fluff about the limits, gets true answers, and receives the elaboration that the teenage girls thing is a power generation, not emotional bandwidth, issue; in theory grandmas and boys and all kinds of people can care about a thing enough to make a good wish but they don't care about everything enough to match the top fractional percentile of teenage girls in total power output. (Occasionally teenage boys manage the threshold they set, but the fluffs have been excluding them because it appeals more to some on-the-fence girls for it to be a girls' thing and it's easier to make it look like that if it actually is.)

Bella's got lots of questions. The control mechanism interfaces on the same underlying principle as fluff telepathy. Most fluff stuff works on sufficiently advanced technology, not magic, except for a handful of things they got early wishers thousands of years ago to help them out with (selective visibility's the major one). Energy conversion from harvested emotion into useful forms is handled with these thingies; sure, she can have one right now, they've got lots.

They start negotiating the exact means by which they will use the infinite power hack, since it will still require human minds experiencing the emotion. The fluffs are optimistic that they can get plenty while abiding by all of Bella's ethical standards.

She listens, and confirms things are true as needed, and watches Bella negotiate and smiles.

Bella's taking notes the whole time. While they explain more about how to handle the wish granting, while they explain how the magical girl stuff relates to all the rest of it (apparently it's separable from both wish-granting and the possibility of turning into a witch both), while they explain what sort of tests they'd like to perform on the power generation hack. Apparently they already routinely frequent several psychiatric hospitals to recruit highly emotional teenage girls (they particularly like bipolar ones) and expect to be able to find consenting-by-Bella's-standards subjects for the happiness thing.

Details are hammered out. Bella takes more notes.

And eventually she knows everything she needs to know - gonna reset so I can save those few days' worth of witches and girls -

- and they're back.

This one's for real?

Showtime, Bella confirms. I'm gonna leave Charlie a note rather than wait for him to get home and then we're going to nab the fluff who comes through with the girl who healed me first time around.