"...It actually wouldn't surprise me if I could leverage one or both of the mind spells into functionally bringing my sister with me, but if I couldn't do that I can't promise I wouldn't get depressed about a time loop. I can think of plenty of things to do with a town and a day, though, at least depending on the size of the town."

"I might get depressed about my time loop eventually, but I'm conservatively estimating that it'll take thousands of years. My ability to interact with my parents has... already taken a pretty serious hit... but I explained the whole thing to each of them a while back and they were understanding about the whole thing. I actually got their express permission to do all kinds of stuff I would have hesitated to do. My dad told me how to steal his gun, if I wind up in a position where I'm so low on magic I can't grab weapons out of my shield and I have to kill a monster by shooting at it in real time without transforming. It's sad that they're stuck with everyone else, but I'm an introverted only child without any really close friends so that's the biggest interpersonal problem I'm suffering. There's some other puella magi it would be great to bring with me, and I'm considering in the long term the option of cozying up to some prospectives and seeing if they can wish into my loop, but if something went wrong with that it'd be a disaster so I don't want to do it just for the in-the-know company."

"Heh. You know, I bet my parents would react similarly? I wouldn't describe myself as introverted, exactly, but I don't have a lot of close friends besides my sister. If I could bring her along it kinda sounds like we'd end up being a lot like you."

"And you'd have a reasonable shot at it if you had the mind magic in addition to whatever was looping you, sounds like."

"If it weren't for the risk of being erased at the end of the month, I'd be tempted to offer to follow you home and see if I could do anything about your apocalypse."

"...but you might be erased at the end of the month, and I didn't set this up to be a perfect run even if you could guarantee that it'd work," Bella says. "This is a fact-finding loop. I was in Buffalo on my way to Toronto, to see if I can find where the big witch is at this time. I'm pretty sure she has to already be a witch by the time I wake up in the hospital, I probably can't save her, but if I can nip her in the bud..."

"Alas. I wonder if you can find out who she was, even if you can't save her..."

"I guess an evil alien might know. You mean to notify her family or something? It's pretty likely she ate them early in the process."

"Or something. I've always...I told you sometimes we have to kill people, right? I promised myself a long time ago that I was never going to get to the point where I couldn't remember every single person I had killed, by real name if possible, not if there was anything I could do to help it. But your situation's different, it's just sort of my first instinct to try to find out as much about someone like that is possible."

"If I find out a way to un-witch a witch, that will become a huge priority instantly. Until then, I have to riddle them with bullets to recharge, protect bystanders from being driven to commit assorted lethal felonies, and demonstrate to other puella magi who might wind up being my only way out of my predicament and don't know the whole story yet that I am a badass they should not challenge to a fight to the death. I feel like knowing that Topiary Theme Witch used to be named Clarissa Pendleton or whatever might interfere with that."

"Yeah. Different situations. ...I feel vaguely insensitive for acting jealous of your costuming situation, earlier, your magic sounds less pleasant on more levels than it doesn't."

"It's really cool magic. I resent the fuck out of the evil aliens, because they are manipulative little shits, but they put together a keen benefits package. I can transmute stuff and telekinesis stuff and turn pain off or down and jump around like a video game character and shoot energy beams. The magical ecosystem in which I am now participating is fucked, but all I have to do to fix that is defeat or possibly compromise in some way with an evil alien civilization."

"I really wish I didn't have to worry about getting deleted. I bet using the mind magic on one of the aliens would be massively useful."

"If it worked. Like I said, hive mind, might mess up your spell."

"Or it might give us access to everything their civilization knows. Either way we'll never know, I guess, because deletion risk is indeed a thing."

"Yeah."

"I don't suppose there's any chance you could call one from the door...?"

"...You know I might be able to? Heck, evil-alien-relayed-telepathy doesn't even cost charge. And I could fill up a grief seed and throw it at the furball - they serve as a magic waste disposal system, part of how they collect their energy gains, if we don't give them the grief seeds when they're full they hatch into witches - and then I wouldn't have to spend my time in here carefully distributing my offload between the two of them so as to avoid hatching a witch in Milliways. ...I have considered hatching a witch in Milliways on purpose because supposedly Security here can handle anything, but I am not resolved that this is a good idea and anyway if I give up one seed I can still hatch the other. ...that's beside the point. You want a fluffy alien to interrogate?"

"It sounds like the most helpful thing I could do at this point."

"No. They hang around existing magical girls like me too, on request or just to be annoying, and you might not even have the potential for it, I don't know. Besides, they're physically harmless as long as you know their tricks, I'll pick it up and close the door and then I can put it wherever you need it to be. ...I should clarify that they are absolutely physically harmless to you two and the issue is that if I let it touch my soul gem it can hurt me that way unless I have pain off."

"Aha. Okay, good to know."

"Oh, also you might not be able to see it."

"...Oh?"