"Yeah, a couple minutes, not hours."

"These people have it much worse than you, don't whine." 

"I'm not whining!!! I'm gloating!!!"

"I did not know about the headpat option! It's just sleep is something one has to do anyway, so it would be convenient if it also recharged mana."

Bella pats Caio on the head.

"There are witches who don't need to sleep, actually." She hands Lisao Caio's mana storage and starts patting her head. 

Lisao sporfles slightly and starts filling it up. 

"Is it specifically headpats in particular? That's so specific."

"No, not just headpats specifically, but like, belly rubs or whatever would be much weirder to do in public. Ear scritches are also fine. Headpats are just sort of metonymous." 

"Weird."

"That's amazing," Caio says, watching his crystal get glowier and glowier. "- you'll want to stop when it starts turning pink."

"Like how you don't want to overfill a water balloon?" 

It starts turning pink; she stops. 

"Yeah, like that." He takes it back and puts it on his leg. "But we can make more like it if you have materials."

"If we don't have materials on hand we will get materials."

"Awesome. This one is beryl, but a lot of kinds of crystals work."

"I went to school with lab created rubies because my enclave didn't have an in-school power sink yet at the time, though I sold them when we got it."

"Are some kinds of crystals better than others?"

"Yes, though it depends what spells you're using. I in particular will do best with something that's already been enchanted - I helped Caio with that beryl. In general larger less flawed crystals work better. And some people use ivory or wood or weirder stuff, I knew a guy who used his own teeth, I knew a girl who swore by storing mana in a vial of potion... Power sinks attached to sharers are likely to be many crystals, and I heard once that Kyoto enclave uses a bonsai, and there's just a lot of variety, but if you just buy a bunch of lab grown moissanite or something that'll do us."

"Big lab grown moissanite. Got it." She pulls out her phone and starts researching distributors. 

Witch Sending Chat: 

Lisao: so the wizards' mana storage works REALLY WELL. 

Lisao: we need to buy a bunch of crystal for them to make more with

Lisao: "big lab-grown moissanite" is what we settled on 

Lisao: I've been shopping around a bit on the witchy dark web and I've found some promising leads

Lisao: we can probably get a better deal with some barter than I'm immediately finding but we'll probably need, like. more kisses than I have on hand

Eliza: do you have an estimate? 

Lisao: well you know haggling can be hard to predict in advance

Johann: absent haggling what kind of price are we looking at 

Lisao: uhhh well that sort of depends? on exactly how much crystal we're buying. we didn't settle on THAT besides, like, "more is better"

Johann: what amount gives us the best deal 

Lisao: well the BEST deal I can find on short notice gives us...about twenty kilos of assorted loose stones for 100kK

Lisao: but we're obviously not doing that one

Johann: ask them if they can use 20 kilos

Lisao: ? 

"Weird question, but how much can you usefully use in a reasonable timeframe?"

"...depends on the quality you want? Caio's is pretty good or he wouldn't have been wearing it for graduation but we could do a preliminary enchantment on a decent rock in like, a couple hours per, in parallel since there are three of us. If supplied with mana for the enchantments we don't have to build ourselves we might be able to go faster than that. And a basic enchantment like that will leak, but I can go back and fix them up afterwards, and if you mostly mean to use them to transfer from headpatted Mimis to lamias or whoever, it won't have time to leak much."

Lisao: Probably???

Johann: Give me a sec

Johann: Ok I have the money

Lisao: What the fuck

Melody: seconding what the fuck

Johann: I did not do anything illegal or unethical to get the money

Lisao: that's good but does not answer what the fuck???

Johann: I'm aware

Lisao: are you going to answer what the fuck

Johann: no

Lisao: this isn't going to bite us in the ass later is it

Johann: the only person at risk is me and I'm not less at risk if I don't spend the money

Melody: I mean that is objectively better than all of us being at risk but you can see how that's not super reassuring right

Melody: you got awakened by your grandfather, right, is he into some really sketchy shit

Johann: my grandfather is not as far as I'm aware into any really sketchy shit

Johann: also he's not really connected to how I got this money

Johann: can we talk about this later?

Melody: by later do you mean never

Johann: not necessarily

Melody: you didn't borrow it from Hespatians or anything did you

Johann: NO

"We can get up to twenty kilos, apparently, because Johann apparently has more money than any of us guessed and is not being maximally reassuring about where it comes from."

"...wow. Uh, okay. Money is mana, right, you can probably - assume you'll have lots more of it to go around once you don't have to mint it every time?"

"Presumably, yeah! Also I can probably get a better deal than what I found as the list price on the internet by talking to the distributor, a lot of commerce in Arcadia is done by barter and favors. But a hundred thousand kisses is still, uh, a lot, to be willing to drop on a moment's notice if necessary."