"Aww."

"So we wanted to meet you now, since we can't rely on being able to do so in the future."

"Well, hi."

"Hello. My name is Charlotte, and this is my husband Erik. Edie tells us you're a completely different kind of magical girl with a rather unfortunate home situation. What did you do before saving the world from deceptively fuzzy aliens and the results of their evil emotion-vampire system?"

"It actually took me a few loops to figure out the evil emotion-vampire part. Before I was a magical girl I think I was fairly ordinary to the outside observer? I attended high school. Woo."

"Ah, high school. I have such fond memories of weaseling my way out of Phys Ed. And not much else. You're well rid of that, anyway."

"Well, I didn't have to do gym class, before I was magical I was so clumsy I didn't even have a very good track record at walking on level surfaces, I brought in my medical records and did yoga in the corner."

"Lucky you. Unfortunately, 'several years younger than everyone else there' wasn't considered such a valid excuse."

"Pity."

"Now that you're also our kind of magical girl and your primary hazard has become significantly less so, what are the major dangers your loops contain?"

"Uh, I just got a mind defense spell, so I guess the things that could most easily take me out at this point would be prolonged separation from my body, excessively informed fluff shenanigans with unfamiliar magic to counter or alter mine, and non-magical methods of mind-warping which don't admit suicide as an escape hatch for some reason."

"I don't know if it's come up, but our world has more kinds of magic than just magical girls. I'm a sorcerer. I can't say I know enough about fluff magic to usefully counter it, but I do know of spells to keep one from being separated from individual belongings and as a sort of magical poison tooth."

Charlotte...doesn't look entirely happy, but doesn't comment.

"Those would be very useful."

"I don't have either of them memorized at the moment. I'll be right back with my old notes." And he goes out the door.

Charlotte sighs and rubs her face.

"Is something wrong?"

"Sometimes it bothers me how cavalier he is about the part of his life that taught him that spell."

"Edie hadn't mentioned sorcery at all that I remember, what is it?"

"Sorcery is magic that...can do anything, essentially. It's limited sharply by the skill of the sorcerer in question, but it doesn't have hard limits to what you're capable of doing at any given time like magical girls or artifact users have."

"...I want it."

"...Becoming a sorcerer is difficult and often very unpleasant. There's a reason neither of our children are. But then you're in a much more difficult situation," she acknowledges.

"I am so, so sorry for not thinking of it," Edie winces. "What else is my brain trying to overlook...it's possible, if you're willing to spend some time in our world, that we could get you an artifact. The process is bureaucratically painful and you have to consent to having a powerful lie-detecting artifact used on you but there is the possibility."

"It might not be worth the risk for me to leave Milliways, I don't know what it will do to, you know, time," says Bella. "Is 'time' so much time that it would be unrealistic to have people from your world holding the door constantly? And what's unpleasant about becoming a sorcerer?"

"It...might be. I'd say definitely not, considering the state of your world, if you were guaranteed to be approved and get something actually useful, but you're not. Becoming a sorcerer basically involves having your sensory organs burned out and simultaneously replaced with versions capable of perceiving magic."