"I think there are ways to use magic to make sure the parents don't mess things up..."

"No!"

Nod.  "Wouldn't know how, anyway.  Not yet."

"We are not mindwiping anyone unless it is - somehow a primary objective of whatever is happening.

"I could get behind magic body doubles though."

"Body doubles sounds expensive, especially if we're going to be a couple hundred miles away.  I've seen girls do them for half a minute or so in the middle of a fight, but nothing more."

A thought suddenly strikes her, and she pauses a moment.  "That reminds me...  I think Lynn - one of the girls who did that - might've known something about witches?  Least, she made some bad jokes about it, like saying some missing girl was probably a witch now.  But Lynn's dead; died fighting a witch last year."

"...Hm.  Yeah bilocation would be pretty expensive, probably...Still, like.  ...Do enchanted items that aren't soul gems, like, exist whatsoever?"

Jenny rumples up her skirt a bit.  "These clothes, I guess?  And our weapons?  One girl said she had a magic flute, but I didn't actually see any magic from it, just good music."

Lila is now totally enraptured by the idea of having a real magic flute.

"Can we talk to her?  Or maybe that's something the Kyuubeys will answer next time we can talk to them?"

Jenny shrugs.  "We can try if you want.  Patricia, over on the other side of town, sort of stuck-up."

"Probably worth trying.  ...And, I mean, outside of our - symbols of office?  Paraphernalia?  The raiment?

"Is there anyone who - makes stuff that is not intrinsically tied to the magical-girl nature, that you know of.

"..If not, we may well have to ask the Incubators.  Which I am not happy about.  They're - hiding far too much."

"Symbols of office.  I like that."  Jenny lifts her sword at salute, grinning.

"Stuff not that - like I said, Patricia, maybe.  And someone else was joking about enchanting her car, but I'm pretty sure that was a joke...  Kiri mentioned the Kyuubeys' ship once, just before she moved?  Not sure what she meant, but if they've got one, I'm sure it's magic."

"...Well, they must've gotten here somehow.  They're not a kind of thing that evolution normally produces, I shouldn't think, or - well, there'd be more human magic than this.  ...What did she say?"

"We were talking about... our bodies, sort of?  How they're full of magic and we don't need to eat and we don't have to feel pain when we fight the witches and stuff like that.  And Kiri said 'we've got more magic packed in here than anything 'cept the gems and the Kyuubeys' ship.'"

(She shifts her voice a little to imitate Kiri's.)

"Didn't ask her about that; just kept talking about our bodies and how we really could live off magic without parents.  It'd run down the gem faster, of course.  But."

But it would've meant she wouldn't have maybe-died.  Maybe.

"...How did she even come to find out that they had one..."

"...There was some really weird astronomical stuff, recently, oddly enough.  I wonder if it's related."

"Yeah!  I should ask my dad if there've been more weird astronomical things recently... but then, how long have the Kyuubeys been here... and if they've been here too long, we'll start getting into how there've been more and better telescopes recently; Dad was complaining about that..."

She wrinkles her nose and slings her crossbow over her shoulder.  "Anyway.  Maybe let's talk somewhere that isn't right next to a dumpster?  Unless there's a cheap way to turn off smell?"

Jenny laughs.  "Probably is, but I don't know it.  Where to?  Try to find Patricia, or dig in records, or see if there's another witch in town?"

She heads off, if Diana's going to follow?

"...I'll defer to your judgement on whether contacting Patricia is a good idea right now; otherwise we should go to the library, I think."

Jenny makes a face.  She doesn't really like the notion of buttering up Patricia again, but she likes libraries even less.  "How about I look her up while you go to the library?"

"And ask her if she can play her flute for us!"

The one from the opera could cast a spell on the listeners, but Jenny isn't talking about Patricia like an enemy.  Besides, those spells were obvious, and Jenny hadn't mentioned anything like that.

"If you think that's a good idea.  ...Be safe, okay?"

And presumably off they go.

Lila doesn't stop to change out of her magical girl dress.

She's in a better mood by the time they get to the library, skipping down the sidewalk and twirling her skirts.  She's going to the library in a magical dress!  To study magic!  Really!

(Inside, she reflexively turns toward the fiction section before remembering to go the other way to the computers, newspaper racks, and the old microfilm machine.)

Diana's taken a firm pace as they walk, and while she, too, feels the allure of fiction and escapism, she's here on a mission.

The mission takes her directly to the information desk.  "Excuse me.  I've a few interrelated things I'm looking into for a journalism project - Strange disappearances in the local area, especially when tied to any nonfiction accounts of magic that may or may not exist.  Where would you recommend I start?"

(She is not in her full regalia, merely the partial form from earlier, her cloak of stars wrapped close.)

The librarian looks at this weird teen... cosplayer?... budding conspiracy theorist?... and says, "If you want local, you'll want the newspaper archives and maybe the police's list of unsolved cases.  You can look at the latest newspapers out there" (she gestures) "or if you're asking for an older specific date, I can get it for you."

"Starting within the last year."