"Slo-mo is cool even if you're just watching a leaf fall? Up to you~"

"Sure, I'll try it."

She grabs a stem of wildflowers and tosses them up just before she gently taps Bella on the hand.

Pollen swirls in the air like the best hi-def slow motion videos, lush petals twisting slightly in the wind as they spin.

"I seriously love being magic. The only thing better is a quiet day with tea and a good book and absolutely no responsibilities."

"Oooh - yeah, it looks so fun -"

"And I get to messily kill uncomplicatedly evil things, too! It's great!"

"They're definitely uncomplicated?"

"The less humanoid Abyssals, at least, definitely are."

"And the more humanoid ones?"

"Complicated. Scary, dangerous. Also rare."

"Well, rare is good. Maybe I can do like - D&D style Hold Person, so I can talk to them or something..."

Things speed up again and Tanya hums.

"Probably should just need practice, not Gifted, to get to that. Puchuu absolutely, categorically, hate Abyssals though, for what it's worth."

"Stands to reason what with why they'd invest in magicking folks up."

"Yeah. Okay, that's all my cheap tricks shown off. Time to go? Want to drop back out?"

"Yeah, let me see if it's as intuitive as you say." Bella ducks behind a bush and - returns to normality?

There's a thing? It's like a stubborn condiment packet? Or the end of a tape roll, stuck to the layer underneath it? Obviously grabbable, but slick and hard to get a grip on and not quite going.

"I'm pretty sure you should be able to even just as a potential, but I meant at the time 'once you're a magical girl'..."

YANK?

Dizziness! Everything twists and spins and the ground moves under her feet-

And then Tanya is there on the perfectly ordinary park grass, back in her IT'S ABOUT TIME shirt, holding out a hand to help her up.

"Bit of a rough landing but you got it!"

"Eh, falling over is fairly normal for me, presumably I'll get over it." Up!

"So, that's the Overworld. Parts of it are much more interesting - Lived in, I suppose. I'll mention you to Titanium Steel... Anything else?"

"I don't suppose there's an online forum or anything fun like that."

"Not really. My phone's pretty expensive, ya know?"

"I was sort of imagining that it would not be that hard to turn magic into conventional money."

"It's tricky without a niche the veil doesn't object to much."

"I guess I was imagining doing stuff without anyone looking and getting paid for the end product. Maybe that is impractical in today's world."

"I know there's a market for 'medical miracles'. I don't know much more about it than it exists. And precious metal, and time-stopped urgent deliveries occasionally. Most girls care a lot more about magic currency than mundane stuff, there's even a power to tap directly into a god of wealth's domain for chrissake..."