"- hey, do you have an angle on this thing already?" says a voice at her elbow.

It's another magical girl, like her, though she's purple where Tara's blue.

She does not squeak. She's too busy to squeak. She spins and -- oh it's good to see someone else who can help.

And she was asked a question. "No! I can stop some of the damage but that's it. Do you? Have an angle?"

"No. I'm trying to figure something out. What've you observed so far?"

That's an entire car flying through the air, it's going to crash into that house there -- shield -- now it's not. "Um. Storm? Rain? Wind, it's the wind that's really a problem. I should have wished to stop it but I didn't, and it's too late now -- uh, you also got magic from the, the fuzzy little genie, right?"

"Yes - you wished that recently?"

"Just a few minutes ago, yes." There's probably a whole community of magical people, isn't there, and she's a newbie. She would have so many questions about that if the timing was better, but it's still very neat, even if this particular magical girl isn't treating the situation as the emergency it is.

"- what's your name? I'm Bella."

"I'm Tara." Shield. The genie had said something about specialties, right... "Can your magic not do anything about all this?"

"I am not a weather specialist. I’m trying to figure out how it got this bad."

"That sounds really important and I genuinely want to help with that, please do ask me about it, just, after the storm is over!"

Headshake. "I am in a time loop. It doesn't end."

She continues watching the storm, scanning for collisions that she could prevent, even though it feels pointless now. It was already starting to feel remarkably pointless, even before what the other girl - Bella - said. That's no reason to stop.

She's only just learned that magic exists at all. She might as well suppose it can do time travel, too. "Why? Or, you said you were trying to figure it out, sorry, what do you know?"

"It just keeps going west and getting bigger. - your gem is going dark, what are you doing -"

"-It wouldn't end, even without the loop?" She looks down at herself. Yes, her outfit has a gem positioned as a cloak clasp, mingled blue and black. "This? I'm not doing anything to it. What do you mean."

"Did it not tell - you have finite magic, represented by gem brightness, you're running out."

"No, he did mention running out, I just. Was in a hurry, and didn't ask a lot of questions. I don't – I don't know anything."

She hasn't been properly treating her magic as a scarce resource, has she. She wasn’t being wasteful with it, but now that she has even a sloppy way to see how much she’s used… she drops the shield on herself and flinches as she’s pelted with freezing rain. She can make her forcefields more precise if she tries for that, and leave them up as briefly as possible.

"If the cold hurts you turning down how much pain your body can send you is cheap. - you're technically your gem not your body now.

"Where would I find you, if I got here last week?"

She's... technically her gem, what... later. She can focus on the time loop, if it's real it's obviously the most important thing here. "My name is Tara Sanders, my address is –" she gives it – "I go to the high school a few blocks from here. When does the time loop end, how long do we have?"

Bella jots the address down, a purple bubble shielding it from the rain till it's stashed in her shield. "It ends when I go back. When it hits the Pacific, usually."

Okay, so. Not about to interrupt this conversation. She has time to ask questions.

She doesn't want to ask questions. She doesn't want to be out here in this storm trying to help people who are maybe just going to be rewound out of existence anyway. She doesn't want to do anything, right now, except curl up in a little ball and sob about all the horrible things she's learned today.

She casts another shield, redirecting a cascade of rubble. "You're doing the time loop on purpose, because of the storm? It's that bad?"

"I made my wish in a panic the middle of February after spending a month failing to think of one that was good enough. It was - it's not a storm, that's just the outwardly visible consequence. It's worse than the storm and it's the worst storm in history."

"We can be panic-wish buddies, yay," she mutters. "If it's not just a storm, if it's magic... did someone wish for this. Is that what this is."

"No, but I think I should tell you what it is a week ago and not right now."

"...That's fair, I guess. I mean. I don't know enough to know... whether it is or not.... Um. You are going to talk to me a week ago, though, right? Whatever this really is, I can help. I'll really definitely want to help."

"Yeah. I'm following its trail, it's hard to tell from news reports alone where it is itself versus weather that's caused by the other weather because normal people can't see the actual witch. - it's called a witch, that's not the thing I didn't want to say."