He grows increasingly grim.

"Do you know if Kyubey has ever lied?"

She shakes her head. "Mallory said he doesn't, but that he's bad at humans so he doesn't always give enough information."

"Well, assuming he doesn't... I'm going to make you a list of questions to ask him, okay? Even if he lies, or tries to weasel out... His answers should be informative."

'Attempt to interrogate a letter of the law potential asshole alien via a seven year old' had not been what he thought the first major use of his ongoing law degree would be.

"How long's it gonna take?"

"I'll try to have the first questions by tomorrow morning, okay?"

"Okay." She goes to hug him. "Be careful, okay? I dunno if he's a good alien."

Hug.

"I'll be extra super careful. Cross my heart."

"You better."

And then it's time to finish dinner, and turn to her homework for the night.

And he spends the evening and night with pen and paper, his head in his hands, wracking his brain for every little implication of every tiny detail Sue revealed - 

And in the morning he has a list for Sue.

She takes the list. Reads it over.

Those aren't very happy questions.

She clears her grief seed, tells herself 'I'm strong enough to change the universe' and - 

"Kyubey?" she calls out, softly, sitting on her bed, wrapped in her favorite blanket.

He hops onto her windowsill.

'Yes, Sue?'

Sue turns and slides the window open. "I've got some questions," she says, voice soft. It's still the morning, and they do have neighbors.

'I might not know everything, but I'll try my best,' he says, hopping in.

She nods as she slides the window back shut and pulls the curtain.

A deep breath, and:

"My first question is: Why is a soul gem called a soul gem?"

'When magical girls were naming things, the ones who spoke English thought that the gems house their souls.'

It's off script, but... "Were they right?"

'It's hard to define what is and isn't a soul.'

She nods, thinks, looks at her list, and: "What happens if I get too far away from my soul gem?"

'You'll pass out.'

"Why?"

'Your magic is in your soul gem. Being away from it means it needs to go farther. You get tired when you use more magic.'

She furrows her brow. She's not - super sure those statements are as connected as Kyubey's pretending.

"Am I my magic?" she blurts out. "My mind, the - thing that's thinking 'me' - is my mind in the soul gem?"

Kyubey is silent for a beat. However, while some magicals react sub-optimally, calculations of this one's personality reveal a statistical tendency towards emotional resiliency, and a tendency to form the irrational opposition humans name 'grudges' if given incomplete data.

'You could say that, yes. Some magical girls learn how to run new bodies.'

She's thrown off by the unexpected information, like if she was playing tug of war with someone and her opponent suddenly let the rope go slack - 

Usually if you're in tug of war and they do that that means they're about to yank it though.

"What happens to the soul gem when a magical girl runs out of magic?" She hadn't found Cecilia's, after all. (Something's wrong with that thought.)