Lan Zhan tamps down on the jealousy HARD. Shi Qingxuan thinks they are all little babies and is not even slightly interested in Wei Ying. 

"Awesomesauce."

After sushi - she gives the chef her phone number on the receipt - they can go to the nearest open park and take turns zooming on her fan.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lan Zhan very much wishes that it was her putting that smile on Wei Ying's face, but it is good to see it there regardless. 

Zoom zoom zoom! Till she needs to beg off because her gem's looking a little dark. She charges it back up with a spare seed.

"Thanks. You're really great at distractions."

"The very best, don't you forget it."

She salutes. "I'd have a hard time doing so!"

Despite starting later, Lan Zhan graduates before Wei Ying does. She has more of an innate self-preservation instinct (at least when her safety doesn't trade off against her loved ones') and her mentor, while entirely adequate, has less to teach in general than Shi Qingxuan. 

Once Wei Ying also graduates, the two of them make a habit of hunting together. It's...nice. Spending time with Wei Ying is always nice. Hunting is more nerve-wracking than many ways of spending time with Wei Ying, but between Wei Ying's power and Lan Zhan watching her back it's not so hazardous that Lan Zhan would try to talk Wei Ying into staying at home and mooching grief seeds off of other people. 

Hunting with Lan Zhan is the BEST. 

Wei Ying tries more experiments. Some of them succeed, strictly speaking, but none of the ones that succeed are ones that show particular promise in solving the problem. But none of the failures have the gem-draining effect of the first one; Wei Ying does not have a hard time limit on her researches. If she isn't stupid, she'll live for a very, very long time. If the problem is conceivably solvable, she'll be able to solve it eventually. 

...

She doesn't make a lot of progress on the question of where witches and 孵化器 come from. It occurs to her at one point that witches have grief seeds and magical girls have soul gems and to wonder if 孵化器 have anything similar. She asks around about that a bit, but if they do, nobody knows anything about it. Well, if nobody killed witches then nobody would know about grief seeds, and people don't go around killing 孵化器...

She can't shake the niggling feeling that magical girls and witches are similar to each other in a way that 孵化器 aren't similar to either. Which is silly, on the face of it. Magical girls and 孵化器 are people and witches aren't. But still...

Lan Zhan supports Wei Ying's research unconditionally, unless you count "as long as it's relatively safe" as a condition. She still doesn't know what the limits of the effect of her wish are, and has NO DESIRE to find out experimentally. That is one area of research Lan Zhan would firmly veto if Wei Ying ever brought it up. 

Wei Ying may be reckless, but she's not THAT reckless. 

They hunt. Wei Ying uses up grief seeds faster than most magical girls, between her experiments and just holding witches still to be killed, but they still manage something of a surplus. Rhonda is notified that if someone needs emergency grief seeds they're able to contribute. They don't bother selling them; Lan Zhan's family isn't Shi Qingxuan living-on-several-lifetimes-of-investment levels of wealthy, but they're not that far off, either, and Lan Zhan is generous with what she has and Wei Ying is shameless about taking advantage at need. Besides, they might need emergency extra grief seeds at some point (where they probably means Wei Ying). 

They hunt. 

They step into a witch barrier that looks like some kind of old wooden shop, the shelves lined with dolls and dolls and dolls, all in some kind of disrepair. As soon as they enter the barrier, the dolls perk up and jump off the shelves to scuttle towards them. 

"Be careful," Lan Zhan says, bisecting one of the familiars. "I think this is a Dolls of Bedlam witch. They're supposed to be very strong." 

"Got it," Wei Ying says, and raises the flute to her lips and orders stop. 

The familiars judder to a halt, but there is a surprising amount of resistance to her command. Wei Ying's eyes widen fractionally. This witch may be stronger, in terms of brute power, than any she's tried to command before. 

She switches her command to the less power-intensive ignore us, which does not strictly prevent a witch from eating people but they found this one by dowsing, not by reports of deaths, so that probably won't get anyone killed in the time it takes them to find the witch's main body and kill it. 

The closer they get to the center of the witch, the more it fights her command. She grimaces slightly and switches to fumble all your attacks, which lets the familiars charge at the two of them but not do any serious damage, especially with Lan Zhan guarding her back. 

She has to stop, briefly, and recharge off a seed they brought with them; she wasn't getting down to dangerous levels, but she likes to avoid getting down that low. Just in case. 

The witch keeps fighting her. 

Magical girls and 孵化器 are people and witches aren't. But still...

hm. 

Time to do something stupid and reckless. 

She changes her command again, as they approach what she can only assume is the witch itself; another doll, with some ugly cracks running down the size of its face, the size of a human being. 

Think. Feel. Be. If you are a you, then be you.

Chaos and pain and grief and death and--

Think. Feel. Be. If you are a you, then be you.

Wen Ning opens her eyes. 

Behind the endless ocean of witchly madness, her memories are clear. Everyone dying--she hadn't even been looking at her gem to see the charge, but she wouldn't have thought her death would mean much anyway, among so many--

"Who are you?"

"--Holyshit it worked. Uh. Hi! My name is Wei Ying. Do you have a name?"

"Wen Ning. What...happened?"

"I wished for the power to control witches! I told you to wake up, if there was a you to wake up. Where did you get that name? It's a pretty human name, did you used to be human?" 

"...I used to be a magical girl." 

Freeze. Pause. 

"How did you become a witch?"

"My gem ran out of charge." She would REALLY REALLY like to not talk about how.

Wei Ying collapses to her knees. "Oh shit." 

This is EXTREMELY ALARMING. 

No kidding. 

"I figured witches had to be connected to magical girls somehow...grief seeds and soul gems. I noticed there was something similar and the 孵化器 didn't have them...um. Hm. Oh man I have to rethink SO MANY assumptions. Okay okay okay." She puts her head in her hands. 

The witch's barrier...vanishes, and they are standing in a dark alley with a human-sized doll in a slightly preposterous outfit with a crack down her face.