Is that guy high? He looks sort of unfocused and he's walking funny.

"Are you okay?" she calls out to him, when she sees him.

"I just, I just," he mutters.

...He has a knife. Looks like the kind they use for sashimi.

Oookay, she's just going to. Stay away from the knife hand. "You just what?"

"Just one more that's all -"

He throws the knife at her, overhand, and it spins in the air -

- shunk.

Gurgle.

That's definitely blood on her lips--did it pierce a lung--what does she do--can't take it out, just bleed more--he's right there--what, why--

she fumbles for her phone and manages to dial 911. She does not manage to bring the phone to her head or say anything.

It's possible he thinks he's being helpful when he pulls the knife out for her and stumbles off muttering "Just one more, just one -"

She's not going to bet on that. She's going to lie there and try not to die and pray that someone traces her call and an ambulance shows up. Oh, and fall unconscious. That too.

Ambulances must be having an off day.

Well, she's not awake enough to comment on it.

It's about fifteen minutes later that Emily, leaving the house to see why her sister was late, finds out.

The scream can probably be heard for miles.

She certainly manages to talk, once she's called 911.

The dispatcher seems distracted but manages to send an ambulance eventually.

She does not fucking have time for your distractions. Her sister is dying.

Is the ambulance going to be difficult about her riding with Edie.

Nah, she can come.

Good.

Please be okay, she begs silently. Please, please...

At the hospital Edie is pronounced DOA.

While this is sinking in a creature turns the corner and hops up onto the table where Edie lies and sits on her chest.

Emily is not paying attention. It doesn't matter. Nothing can ever matter ever again, no Edie, Edie, no, this can't be happening, no no no no NO. NO. NO. Not Edie, no, anything, let the world fucking burn but not my sister, not my sister, no please...

It isn't too late, the creature says silently.

"...What?" Now she notices the...creature...thing...whatever. "What do you mean?"

You can bring her back, if you wish.

"TELL ME HOW"

The creature trots forward and extends its earthings till they just touch her. You only need to wish it, and your wish will be the magic that returns her to life.

"I am wishing it, I want it more than I've ever wanted anything in my life!"

Wish in words. Tell me.

"I--I wish that my sister were alive--forever, and nothing could ever erase her mind from the world ever again!"

And there is a brilliant light, and Emily may miss the other results in the course of noticing that Edie is healing.

"Edie? Edie?"

"Nn--wha?"

Emily cannot answer that question because she is too busy clinging and sobbing.

"Are you okay--what are you wearing?"

"What'm I--what?"

You can return to your ordinary clothes at any time, says the creature.

???

She looks down at her clothes.

She is wearing a dress. A pink dress that laces down the front of the bodice in gold ribbon and has short wide ruffly golden sleeves and gold lace trimming the skirt.

"What." It's very pretty but seriously, what.

Your wish was magical, and now so are you.

"Could you maybe expand on that."

You are a magical girl! You can transform at any time and do magic. You will need to fight witches to recharge if you do a lot, though.

"And what is a witch?"

Magical girls are made with hope and happiness; witches are creatures of despair.

"Do you have any information with something that resembles utility value."

They are hidden monsters that affect people around them and cause suicides and murders and accidents. Magical girls hunt them.

"...Murders."

She looks at her sister, who is still confused.

Different witches cause different emotions and effects.

"How likely is it that a witch is responsible for what happened to my sister and if one is how do I end it."

It is very probable. You can dowse for witches with your soul gem and might be able to tell which witch it was by watching their effects.

"How do I dowse for witches?"

You turn your gem from its ring or adornment form into its bauble form, hold it up, and watch it brighten as you move away from witches and dim as you approach them.

"What gem?"

It is a ring right now. The creature traipses over to put a paw on her hand.

She looks at the ring. "And how do I...do things with it?"

It should be straightforward but I am not a magical girl myself.

And then it...is a bauble. "Huh."

The creature's tail swishes.

"Can one of you please explain what's happening."

"You--you died."

"What?"

"You died and it was--the worst thing, ever--and that thing showed up and said I could bring you back--so I did--oh, Edie--" and then there is more crying.

"You, explain," she instructs the fluff, hugging her crying sister.

You died, but your sister was a potential magical girl and used her wish to restore you. You may make a wish too and be a magical girl like her if you like.

"How do magical girls work? How does wishing work?"

The happiness of a wish granted creates a soul gem full of magical charge, which can be used for many things and recharged with the seeds of defeated witches. I grant wishes that are offered to me and those who wish them become magical girls! The wishes can be anything.

"How do the seeds of defeated witches recharge magical girls? How does wishing create magical girls?"

If a witch's grief seed is touched to a magical girl's soul gem, the seed absorbs the tainted dimness of the gem and the gem brightens again. When the seed is full, I can take it away; otherwise it might hatch into a new witch. Wishes I grant transform human happiness into magical energy and that forms the soul gem, which is what makes a magical girl what she is.

"Where do witches come from?"

Witches hatch out of grief seeds if they are filled and left around, or witches that are still alive can bud if they grow large enough.

"So they just--reproduce like sponges or amoeba or whatever? When did they start?"

It was before recorded history!

"Why is magical girl magic compatible with witches? Is there anything else like witches that magical girls can use?"

All magic runs on emotion, and in that sense it's all the same. Girls can donate magic to each other, or a wish could refill a gem that already existed if the wisher chose.

"Huh. What happens if your gem goes empty?"

Charge is necessary to use any magic.

"But it's not, like, critical, if Emily's emptied she could call me and I could spend my wish refilling it for her?"

Your wish could restore her if she ran out of charge, yes.

"Okay, I'm holding onto that for safekeeping. What are common usages of magic?"

Conjuring weapons to fight witches, healing, moving and resisting damage better than normal humans, transmuting things, most things people think of are possible with more or less magic!

"Ooh. If Emily had been a magical girl already, could she have brought me back without making a wish?"

No, her soul gem does not have that much capacity.

"Huh. Okay, could she have healed me when she first found me?"

Yes.

"Okay so that's something...why isn't magic common knowledge?"

Most people don't have the potential to make wishes. Those people can't see me, or witches.

"But magical girls could tell them, right? ...How long have there been magical girls?"

Longer than recorded history!

"But the closest thing to legends we have about magical girls are anime...or, no, there's lots of legends that could be attributed to magical girls...if the phenomena of 'witches' has be been going on longer than recorded history, who decided that the English word 'witch' should be attached to it?"

Its etymological predecessors have been used for the species since Latin was spoken.

"Huh. Okay, who decided that the relevant Latin word should be attached to it?"

A Roman magical girl!

"Huh. What're they called in German?"

Hexen.

"That is way cooler than 'witch'. What does it mean to germanophones who aren't magical girls?"

"Witch".

"Where did that come from, originally?"

Where did what come from?

"Using the word 'hexen' for the magical phenomenon."

A magical girl in Germany began using it in 1398.

"Hm. Are there any words for the phenomenon that don't mean 'witch'?"

Some words more closely translate as 'demon'.

"Okay this is probably all linguistically plausible. It still doesn't explain why this isn't common knowledge by now but what can you do. Um...I got sidetracked. Are there any facts about magical girls, witches, or magic in general that you can think I would plausibly want to know and haven't asked about yet?"

Magical girls can do magic relating to their wish more efficiently than girls with different wishes. I don't think your sister has enough to bring more people back from the dead but she might be good at healing.

"That is good to know."

"Definitely." Hugs hugs hugs.

...Eventually, though, Emily will dowse with her embaubled soul gem to find the nearest witch.

There is one in this parking garage.

Well she will just go there then.

Actually no, that's dumb. She's going to ask the Kyubey how to successfully hunt witches and not die, first.

In the middle of each witch's barrier is its main body. This is more dangerous to confront than the familiars growing in the labyrinth but if you damage it enough the witch will die. You are faster and stronger than a normal human now and most magical girls can summon magical signature weapons and shoot energy bolts.

"How do I summon my magical signature weapon?"

I've never done it myself but it should be pretty easy if you try!

"Huh. Okay." She tries it. "Whoa!"

Her magical signature weapon is, apparently, a two-handed sword slightly longer than she is tall.

It will be easier than it looks to use.

"I sure hope so!"

You can also reconjure it if you lose it or want to wield one in each hand.

"And wielding one of these in each hand is going to be feasible? That seems...this is a two-handed weapon."

Yes, but you could hold it in one hand. Or use it telekinetically.

"Ooh, tell me more about telekinesis."

You might have difficulty picking up anything larger than an eighteen wheeler. It costs more magic to move things with more force, or bigger things.

"But I could summon like eighteen greatswords and become a whirling dervish of death."

Yes.

"Okay, that's really cool."

Tailswish!

"Is there anything else I ought to know before hunting witches?"

The door opens and somebody wheels in a gurney with a body bag on it.

You could bring potential magical girls who have not made wishes yet into the labyrinths with you, and sometimes human weapons can help a little with the familiars and even the main witch bodies.

The somebody with the gurney doesn't notice the creature. "I'm real sorry for your lo-" Blink. "Wrong room, sorry." Out he goes.

"--Oh. Um," she says when he's left. "Yeah. Edie was pronounced DOA, do you...have any experience with magical girls handling resurrected people?"

You could edit some memories with magic, but even without that many people will assume there was some mistake.

"Yeah, I'm going to not use mind-control as a first resort," she says, and then goes to find a nurse to explain that there must have been some kind of mix-up, her sister was apparently pronounced DOA but she's not only alive but conscious.

"Sorry about that," says the nurse, "must have been an awful fright, we've been so busy today -" And she takes Edie's vitals and notifies official persons.

...Emily has healing powers now. She discreetly finds a few rooms to duck into that have people who seem to recently need them to test what she can do.

It's the ER. Several stabbings of various amounts of fatal. Old lady with a broken hip. Diabetic in crisis. Baby with fever. Guy who prrrrobably has something stuck up his butt. Car accident.

Is there anyone who is not dead but looks to be heading in that direction.

...She's going to just. Completely ignore butt guy. He can deal with that on his own and that's probably not a "healing powers" issue anyway.

Nope, that'd fall under teekay.

Some stabbed people may be mid-dying.

Can she cause not that.

Yes! An ER nurse notices the pink glow, blinks groggily at it, and does not attribute it to Emily.

Meh, even if she did get caught, it wouldn't be worth someone's life not to. She heals everyone she can find who looks like they might otherwise die.

That's a lot of people, in a hospital on a busy day. Her gem dims noticeably.

Yeah she's gonna go find and kill that witch now.

Dowsing works as described.

Okay. So finding the witch shouldn't be hard. And getting inside isn't that difficult either.

Now she is in a sort of... evil kitchen. There's cookware and garlic and curing meat hanging down from a vaguely-defined ceiling, heaps of ice cubes in which boxes of popsicles and bags of blueberries nestle, a spice cupboard twice her height over there full of broken jars and too many mingled smells. The door ahead might lead to a giant oven; the circle under her feet might be an induction burner; there are wheels of cheese and loaves of bread she'd need her greatsword to slice. Knee-high saltshakers with stick limbs march to and fro carrying cleavers and carving knives.

She summons her greatsword.

A saltshaker takes a swipe at her ankle.

Dodge. Stab.

It shatters. The other shakers don't react.

That's nice. She'll ignore them as long as they ignore her.

They mostly do. Now and then one takes a stab.

The stab-happy ones get stabbed right back.

She gets closer to the center.

She crosses gas-flame-lined oven racks and goes through a walk-in freezer and finally winds up in a food processor with enough room to puree a house. The blade spins slowly.

The witch is a sort of warped gingerbread person frosted bloodred, with a blowtorch in one hand and a steak knife in the other. She moves fast, leaping from the blade of the food processor and going for Emily.

Emily gets her greatsword between them and summons another behind the witch to backstab it with.

The witch cartwheels out of the way and aims her torch. It's deafening.

Well fortunately she isn't navigating by sound. She drops to the floor beneath the flame and tries to summon enough greatswords to telekinetically cage the thing.

Crumbs scrape off its limbs. The torch can aim through the gaps between swords.

Well so can more swords.

Gingerbread fragments rain to the floor.

The labyrinth shimmers out of existence. There's a seed.

She picks it up. Is clearing the dinge from her gem as intuitive as everything else she's tried?

Yup!

Oh, good. Can she tell if it's full?

It is not.

She'll just hold onto that then.

She tries calling her sister but realizes that she doesn't have the pocket the phone was in any more. Is getting back into normal clothes intuitive?

Yup.

Great. She phones her sister, updates her, transforms back and starts dowsing again. This witch isn't necessarily the one that killed Edie.

The next closest one is considerably farther away.

Okay it is farther from the hospital but is it farther from where Edie was murdered.

A little bit.

If she follows it all the way to where it's hiding, it's under the slide in a playground.

Yeah, why not.

She steps inside.

This witch is in fact an evil playground inside. No part of it stays still and if Emily isn't careful she'll be motion sick from the carousel that's revolving under her feet. Spring-bottomed plastic animals bounce around. They bite if she gets close but don't attack her if she leaves them alone. She will have to traverse wobbly monkey bars and go down an unreasonably long tube slide of inconsistent width and unpleasantly staticky plastic to get much of anywhere.

Okay. This is not the pleasantest thing ever.

Emily summons several swords behind and in front of her when going down tubes.

That will spear an unsuspecting spring-bottomed donkey at the bottom of the slide.

The witch is on the swings. She looks like a girl, but made of wood and plastic, cracked across the face and colored orange and green and brown. Swing, swing, swing.

Sword, sword, sword.

She stops peacefully swinging as soon as a sword points at her.

She's unarmed, but she's faster than the gingerbread witch. She gets a fistful of hair, yanks Emily off-balance, kicks her in the knees, and springs away behind a shadowy jungle gym.

Okay it was careless to let that happen. Emily is now surrounded by a telekinetic cage of death composed of greatswords orbiting her fast enough that at least one of them ought to hit anything that tries to hit her. Now where did the witch go.

There's a manic giggling sound echoing through the maze. It's not very helpful at tracking.

A tetherball thwacks into the swords and knocks half of them aside and the witch strafes Emily again, kicking up mulch into her face as she approaches and socking her hard in the stomach and running away again.

Okay what if she starts destroying the landscape.

She can hack away as much as she likes at rickety climbing structures and hot metal slides. The girl appears, whooping, from behind a water fountain and tries to strangle Emily with a jump rope.

Then her swords will switch from "defense" to "containment" and the girl can finally die.

She does. With a horrible childlike scream and the crack of warping plastic, but she dies.

Well that was several different varieties of unpleasant.

She pockets the grief seed and heads back to the hospital.

The creature has been sitting with Edie, who no one has been unbusy enough to discharge yet. No one has noticed it. It's very soft.

Edie has mostly been largely-futilely interrogating it about wishes. Also petting it. It is very soft.

So soft. It answers all her questions! But sometimes the answer is that it does not disclose other girls' wishes, or that she doesn't have enough capacity to teleport all Neonazis to a prison island in the Pacific.

That one was hypothetical anyway so that's fine.

"Mom and Dad called while you were out," Edie says. "I explained everything. I'm not sure if they fully believed me but they're glad I'm okay."

"Yeah, me too," she says, hugging her sister again. To the fluff: "I killed two witches."

Congratulations!

"Are there any other magical girls in this city?"

Sometimes. Magical girls often move around a lot, chasing witches.

"But right now I'm the only one in residence?"

They don't all tell me where they live when they're at home.

"Okay, but am I the only one who regularly hunts witches here?"

No.

"Okay, see, that is the information I wanted to have. Are you bad at guessing what people actually want to know, or does it just amuse you to make getting answers akin to pulling teeth?"

There are a lot of things I don't understand about humans.

"Okay. Fluffy xenosapient. Not the worst thing ever."

So fluffy.

Pet pet. "I guess there's not much to do until they get around to discharging you."

"Pretty much. Hopefully killing those witches should help a little."

Eventually Edie is checked and shooed.

And then they go home and prove magic is real to their parents and Edie continues quizzing the fluff on mostly wish-related topics for a few days and Emily doesn't run out of room on the grief seeds she has and doesn't go out to kill another witch and then--

between one moment and the next, everything changes.

"What the fuck."

"Hm?"

It is January 25, in the early afternoon.

"We were just at school!"

"Uh, no we weren't."

"Am I losing time? What time is it?" She gets out her phone and checks the time.

She sees the date.

"What the actual fuck."

"Edie you're starting to worry me."

"My phone says it's January 25!"

"Because it...is?"

"Five minutes ago it was February 17!"

"Um, no, no it wasn't. What's going on?"

"If I say the word 'Kyubey' are you going to have any idea what I mean by it?"

"Not the foggiest."

"Magic exists. On February 13, you made a wish using a magical wish-granting creature called 'Kyubey,' which resulted in your becoming a magical girl. And now it's February 25--there must be some kind of time-affecting magic, I guess--I'm going to try something stupid." And she puts on a coat and goes outside, cups her hands and yells, at the top of her lungs, "KYUBEY!"

There is a delay.

A creature trots around the corner.

Emily stares.

"Do you remember it being January 25 or February 17 ten minutes ago?" Edie asks the fluff.

It's January 25 and has been since midnight.

"I remember it being February 17. Can witches and/or magical girls do time stuff?"

That could be possible!

"Because I didn't know you existed on January 25, last time, I only found out after my sister became a magical girl, which it doesn't look like she is anymore."

You both have the potential to become magical girls! What else do you remember happening?

"Well, I remember the thing she wished to fix, I remember her being a magical girl for a few days and killing two witches and asking you a lot of questions."

"What did I wish to fix?"

"I, um, got slightly murdered."

Hugs.

The wording might be important!

"Of her wish?"

Yes.

"For the time travel or for how it is that I remember and she doesn't and you don't?"

Both.

"Uh, she actually mentioned the wording and I don't think it could plausibly have caused time travel, but--" and she relates the wording, "I sort of wondered if it made me immortal, and if so what kind--but I wasn't going to test it."

I'm not sure what happened! I'll try to figure it out.

"And tell us if you do? Or will it be back to teeth-pulling."

Teeth-pulling?

"Oh yeah you don't remember that. You're really hard to get useful information out of! It's like pulling teeth!"

I don't have teeth.

Facepalm. "Not the point."

It cocks its head quizzically.

"'Like pulling teeth' is an idiom. It has nothing to do with your teeth or lack thereof."

Okay.

"So will you tell us if you figure it out?"

That depends on what I figure out!

"Under what circumstances would you tell us."

If it seemed like it would be useful for you to know.

"Why would you not conclude it was useful for us to know."

If it didn't have much to do with you or was never going to happen again or something like that.

"Do you understand the concept of curiosity."

Not very well.

And then it's earlier again.

"What the fuck!"

"What? What happened?"

"Time travel! Twice!"

"Time travel?"

"Magic exists, when I woke up this morning it was the seventeenth of February, then suddenly it was today, right now, then some other stuff happened and it was now again."

"--Huh. Do you know what's causing--"

"Not the first time, but the second time...I had just told the fluff about it, it said it would try to figure it out."

"The fluff?"

Edie summarizes the magical situation.

"Okay this is all very weird."

"Yeah.

I'm going to test the 'telling fluff causes reset' hypothesis by waiting a week and doing it."

And she does that.

It proceeds to February 2 over the course of a week.

And she solicits the fluff and explains time travel.

It goes much the same as last time. The reset takes a few hours to happen though.

Edie is not shocked this time and does not go "what the fuck" at her sister.

She does explain the situation, and her ideas.

And Emily agrees that the ideas are good ones, and calls for a fluff.

Fluff!

"Can I use a wish to send a message, if I don't know who to? Like, I want to send a message to the person who did a thing, but I don't know who did the thing."

Yes, if you desire it very much.

"Okay, great. Then I want to make a wish."

The fluff trots forward.

Emily holds a folded-up letter that Edie had written before Emily summoned the fluff, and says, "I wish that the person this letter is for would receive it."

(The letter, unbeknownst to the Kyubey, reads:

Hello. I apologize for accidentally siccing the fluff-thing on you; assuming this is the case, or whatever it was that caused the last two time-resets. My name is Edie Lehnsherr. On February 13, I was attacked by the victim of a witch, and died. My twin sister wished to bring me back to life, with a wording that I believe has caused me to retain my memories when time resets. I asked Kyubey about it, the first time it happened (to me), and then time reset again. I tested the guess that telling it was what had caused that to happen by waiting a week and doing it again. This time I convinced my sister to use her wish to send you this letter (since it seems that no changes to her are preserved through the reset). My phone number is [x]. Please contact me and explain what's going on, it's very distressing to be unable to have any lasting perceptible effect on anything other than my own mind.)

And she is a magical girl! Again for the first time!

Based on her sister's description she's sort of curious what kind of powers she'd get from sending a letter but it probably doesn't matter anyway.

Do you want to make a wish too? the fluff asks Edie.

"Not right now."

So the fluff informs Emily that she will need to hunt witches.

There's a reset mid-explanation and Edie gets a text.

Edie takes out her phone and reads the text.

You're lucky I can read English

New text:

please stop interacting with the evil aliens till you know more, they get in the way

I would have tried something else if you hadn't. They're evil and not just frustrating?

yup

surprisingly good at obfuscation considering they won't outright lie

how are they evil?

they're managing the whole magical girl + witch ecology to harvest human emotions and they started it

witches are decharged magical girls

She stares at her phone for a minute.

Then she types:

the first time we thought it wasn't a big deal if she decharged because the fluff said I could wish her more charge

can you wish a witch back to a magical girl or would she have been stuck

I think you can if you have enough oomph.

okay

we're twins

I think I would have had enough

doesn't matter she isn't a magical girl anymore.

why is everything resetting?

World ends in a month and I don't know how to fix it yet

Edie stares at her phone for a moment.

how does the world end?

Huge, huge witch

Already tried getting somebody to wish her unwitched, they didn't have the oomph, you could ask your sister to try

have you tried getting multiple people to wish it at once?

wishes don't stack like that, I asked

okay

I don't want to do this but if my sister tries and it doesn't work we could try letting it kill me and then having her try

I can extend the loop if I go to Australia or you could come where it is

let's not use it as a first resort but it's a good thing to have it as an option

yeah. where are you? somewhere in NY ish?

syracuse ny

I'm trying to backtrace the witch to see if I can catch her smaller and I think she comes east but I start in WA

where's the farthest you've tracked her

i can get my sister to make a speed wish or something and go there

I'm not really confident of anything earlier than Vancouver.

Any puella magi can stow away on a plane, no need to tailor the wish

she stops being a magical girl when the loop resets, it's not like her wish is a limited resource. I bet she can get faster than a plane.

you're not going to want to get her wished into the loop? that's useful but surprising

I will but she'll wish whatever I ask with no questions, we trust each other unconditionally. that's a useful resource and she agrees that using it before wishing her in is a good idea.

good. I think I could get a custom wish out of this one girl but I'd rather not try the thing I think would convince her

and if we have to do something that'll get me killed it might be better if she doesn't remember, she was really fucked up the first time

Lots of other possibilities to exhaust

yeah

dunno if I even can. I should probably send you the full text of the wish, gimme a sec

And then, a few minute later--

"I wish that my sister were alive forever, and nothing could ever erase her mind from the world ever again"

the fluff had at that point explained literally zero except "you can make your sister not dead anymore by wishing out loud"

they suck. sometimes I shoot them for stress relief they don't care they're a hivemind

I think she would've phrased it more carefully if she knew how it worked, I have no idea what it did to me.

the wishes are legit do-what-I-mean and the fluffs don't finetune it for whatever that's worth so probably nothing bad unless you object to being immortal

ever seen the movie "death becomes her"? I don't object to immortality but I'm nervous about what happens if I test it

haven't seen it. If you're a magical girl you can heal literally anything that doesn't destroy your gem - the body's just remote puppeted

but you have to worry about becoming a witch

yeah i dunno

it seems obviously not worth it yet but when the big witch is killed and looping is less necessary I'll think about it, I might if I think of a really really good wish

I'd like to short circuit the whole ecology somehow

girls wind up farming them so they'll be able to keep charged, letting familiars bud off and grow

I think the fluff said something about grief seeds sprouting, would it be possible to fill it up, let it sprout and kill it for a fresh seed before it killed anyone?

No, only witches that have grown a bit even leave seeds, familiars and new hatchlings don't.

I think you can get a seed off a fresh witch but even that means a girl witched

What makes witches grow?

killing people!

I was hoping there was something else, too. Damn.

If a witch kills someone and they come back doe the witch still get the benefit?

I think so but it's one resurrection to a wish

at least with the fluffs siphoning off half the energy to power their civilization

The fluff said Emily didn't have the capacity to resurrect people, what kinds of standard deviations are there on capacity and do you know any factors that influence it?

They only take the high end at all.

And only teenagers ish, like 12-17

Maybe if we could find an extreme outlier...probably not a productive line of investigation, one girl with resurrection powers couldn't fuel the whole economy anyway.

yeah I don't think she could net positive

probably not

I really really hate to bring this up as an option but without magic everyone dies eventually, if we could save half the people on the planet by feeding the other half to witches at age ninety that would be horrific but in pure numbers it would be better than no magic at all

the fluffs did not optimize the magical girl system to be positive sum trade we can do better than that

they didn't even make it, they found it

stealing their thing sounds like a great idea

I wasn't suggesting that as the best we could do but it helps to tell myself that even if we somehow manage to fuck up it's still better than doing nothing

the PR problems would make the system insanely hard to maintain

also like 90% sure that being a witch is intensely unpleasant all the time

yeah like you said we can do better

should we be compiling a list of experiment wishes that would be a terrible idea to keep but I can have my sister do while looping

way ahead of you

though we might be able to keep eidetic memory wishes if we're lucky

nice how do you do that

my "weapon" (shield) opens up and stores things outside of time. so I can also dupe stuff

that is really cool

first time Emily's (my sister's) was a greatsword, we should test if that changes

and costume! and slight differences in wording results wrt efficiency power.

the last seems slightly harder to test

can you keep a list of the loops where things happen to her that she wouldn't want to remember later, if we can get the rest of her memories wished back on?

Yeah. Which of the latest few?

just the first one where I died so far. that was my first loop as far as I can remember and this is the fifth.

okay, noted. by my counting we're on #58.

I think that implies that something you did resulted in my death

not holding it against you or anything, just noting that I shouldn't worry about murderers on that day in other loops where it's relevant

Yeah. I didn't do anything that would have spawned a new witch but I might have redirected one, or interfered with a girl who usually would kill it or something

we should probably keep an eye out for anyone else who accidentally gets butterfly-effected into the loop

Yeah, this was a surprise, I could not for the life of me figure out why the fluffs were coming after me when you'd tipped them off, I wasn't doing anything weird.

sorry 'bout that, I'd have tried something else if I'd realized they were evil

np I saw them coming

and they're designed to appeal to teenage girls

you'd think they'd be better at their evasions, then, even back when I figured they were cooperative xenosapients I was frustrated by how hard it was to get useful information out of them more than I was charmed by their cuteness

I think most highly emotional teenage girls are probably pretty dumb.

they try to calibrate their statements per person but take a while to figure out what you're like

they had more leeway with emily because they let her bring me back, she wouldn't have hesitated any longer to make the wish that resurrected me if she'd known about the witching thing

I'm sure it would have kept the lights on in a few extra alien houses if she'd witched and eaten you

if she'd known about the witching thing she'd have a policy of never being within a kilometer of me while her gem was above a certain threshold of dingy

doesn't really matter anyway, she didn't know and anyway that loop got discarded. what are the experimental wishes you've thought of?

the fluffs try to know what your wish is before they grant it, I want to know how much that matters

(had not occurred to me that time travel was even on the menu)

do you think she should frontload things with plausible longterm effects like improving our memory and other cognitive faculties

probably!

But I spontaneously heal from the car accident I had this morning

I'm guessing based on the wording of her wish that I can carry arbitrary mental features but not the state of being a magical girl. not planning to test that, though

Being a magical girl has some mental effects

Gem brightness is a ratchet on mood

definitely not going to become a magical girl unless I'm willing to risk staying one, then. also, ugh

I can cope unusually well dim, some people go into horrible despair spirals and full -> witch in seconds flat if they're set off wrong though

witching can be caused by despair and not just using charge?

yup.

also you can't not use charge. you use charge to operate your body.

fantastic.

if you're low enough on charge that it's critical and there's no feasible witches around you can reset and tell me to tell emily to wish to recharge your gem, the fluffs said that's a viable wish

not very efficient but yeah. I have some ways to get ahold of seeds on low charge from start but this might be less terrifying

there's a difference between what's efficient in a wish that's for keeps and a renewable one so yeah

how does your sister feel about this?

she's not really happy about the part where she keeps losing her memories but she's way less happy about the evil aliens and apocalypse. she's less unhappy with the memory loss with the prospect of being able to wish her memories back on after. she prefers that if we go into a loop with the intention of doing something that will/could make her not want that loop's memories back that we keep it short if we can so there's less collateral damage. she's worried about me.

She sounds very sensible.

I think I forgot to tell you my name, I'm Bella

oh, good, I'm no longer in danger of accidentally naming you your phone number in my head.

oh, and she prefers that if we're going to keep a loop longer than a day or two she be brought up to speed as much as possible; she expects operating on more complete information to make reintegrating the memories less confusing later on.

she's very sensible, at least in situations where she isn't under a lot of emotional and time pressure

She can write herself a letter and I can scan it to my laptop and email it to her? Easier than having the same conversation over and over

I usually don't tell my parents anything but I have letters from them for when it seems prudent

I'm less worried about my parents, and frankly I'd be less worried about my sister if we weren't twins.

The letter thing sounds like it would work although she'd probably want to update it periodically.

Yeah, of course.

she's writing the letter; what's your email?

1bell@yahoo

k she'll send it when it's done

besides wish experiments what do you have planned

tracking the witch, figuring out how to take the wish thing, that's the big stuff

makes sense

probably best to coordinate so other longer-term stuff is happening while Emily's doing efficiency experiments

vacation probably counts as longer-term although idk how you vacation so

I load up on easy-to-get seeds and go somewhere and make shameless use of counterfeit

nice

I could probably recommend a lot of museums if you were into that

do you have any plans for this loop in particular?

this one is just to get a clean loop in which to talk to you without the risk the fluffs were reading your mail, I did the standard steal a car get out of town thing but just by default

okay

I'm trying to come up with a sensible order of operations for experiments but mostly what I've got is just more reasons to frontload the mental enhancements thing

yeah I want those worded REALLY carefully though if they might be hard to change