"You are welcome," Kaff says. "Humans are very creative. I am safer than I ever have been like this. But more limited in other ways. I am grateful."

"Very good. How grateful, exactly?"

"I will waive the work you owe me and consider myself significantly indebted beyond that."

"How much is significantly?"

"You seem to want debts of favor quantified every time. Very well. I owe Tara fifteen grief seeds for her insightful idea. I am willing to provide thirty grief seeds worth of magic to Bella in exchange for as much gold as I can carry. If Tara waives her right to have me return her home I will grant three grief seeds equivalent. I will listen to further proposals but offer less for them. Excessive magic usage in a short period of time will cause long-term damage to me."

"I have no domain experience and am compensating with quantities."

Kaff has no response to this. "Operating in quantities is probably a good idea even for me, for something this delicate and urgent. Kaff, what other things would you want from us for additional favor?"

"Promises of favors in the case that you save the world and I successfully return to collect them."

"Favors which would generally be in the form of getting information?"

"Gathering information or mundane resources or magical assistance. I expect you to have great power if you succeed. I would expect a correspondingly large amount of mundane resources or magical assistance if I wished to recall favors in this way."

"I don't think that's unreasonable, but if we save the world and meet again and we do not have large amounts of mundane resources or magical power you are not allowed to be upset when we cannot provide them."

"Very well."

"Does 'not being upset' cover here the same range of technically-non-emotional side effects that would be implied with a human?"

"Genies get something like angry if you're a particularly inconsistent sort sometimes, but they generally don't do jealousy, revenge solely for revenge's sake, that sort of thing. If they try to hurt you it's because you're in the way or might decide to hurt them or maybe they're curious about pain. I meant it as - accept that there is a possibility of this happening and adjust your expectations of the favors we will be able to provide in that case. Does all that sound accurate?"

"Yes," Kaff answers.

"Okay cool."

"And now we can start to think about things we want from our grateful genie. Would you be able to bring me into Bella's time loop?"

"No. I have not observed it happening. There is no example to draw upon."

"In the vanishingly unlikely event that I was able to warn you but not her about an imminent reset would you be able to do it?"

"Extremely unlikely. Not impossible."

"Okay."

"Genies are okay at stealthing things. They can do measures against direct detection like invisibility, but they can also do a sort of 'don't notice me' aura. How sure are you that the aliens only have relatively mundane ways of finding people?"

"They have magical ways but they're geared towards magical girls and witches. I don't think they have the imagination to have anything looking for you."

"Good. But what about you, do you think Kaff might be able to totally hide you if that seems useful?"

"Depends a lot on details of how the magic works. The aliens are a hive mind, for one thing."

"I do not expect magics intended to distract humans to work," opines Kaff. "Preventing detection entirely may be possible but I think it is unlikely."

"Ah well. You have less need of it anyway."

"Shouldn't be a problem if we play it conservatively."

"Perhaps not. I'm not used to stealth being a requirement, anyway, I think I would be likely to screw up somehow."

"Stealth isn't precisely complicated but it does require an unusual amount of attention."

"And, I would imagine, practice."

"Doesn't hurt."

"Mm. At any rate, we want things that we can keep between loops - information, which cannot be directly wished for but could possibly be found with magic item assistance. New abilities for me the same way Kaff gave me truth-detecting..."