"Which is totally legit, just, like, you still need to pay the phone bill."

"Puchuu will pay your phone bill. Not entirely sure where they get the money. They won't buy you a penthouse."

"Huh. Will they buy me a studio for off-campus student housing in Seattle?"

"You'll have to ask them yourself I think."

"Is there a spending money stipend or do they just directly pay your phone bill?"

"Second thing. They just- You ask for something and they're either 'I can do that!' Or 'I'll see what I can do!'. Books, phone, hobby stuff, nice frozen meals or those pre measured kits, weird tchotchkies you can pawn, sometimes magical trinkets to borrow if they're in a good mood with you."

"Huh! And they won't explain that at all? I hope they're not like, looting the corpses of the fallen. Or doing weird brain magic to the phone company."

"Think their minds work really differently. And favor networks are more intuitive to them than money. That is just a guess though."

"Gosh. Well, hopefully I can figure something out but I guess it might be a part time job at the bookstore or something."

"Mhm. Let me know if you want that loan of bronze for your character- Three now, paid back ten later. I should get going soon, though. 

"I think I do, yeah."

"I'll fetch them from my stash and give them to your puchuu later, then. Ta! Should do this again some time!" She smirks, salutes, and starts wandering off.

"See you around!"

And Bella drives home.

Her Puchuu shows up again on Tuesday, hanging out in a tree near her house. It waves a paw at her.

"Hi there. C'mon in." She holds the door for it.

Puchuu strolls in!

"Hello again! Did you have fun with Miss Tanya?"

"Very much so, thanks for introducing her. She's going to lend me some coins."

It hops up onto the couch. 

"I'm glad you get along! I thought it would be a good fit but I wasn't sure. Miss Tanya can be headstrong. And I heard about the coins too, I actually have them with me. I don't want to activate you right away even if you're ready for that though, I want to explain why we can use your help first."

"Please do."

"Lots of things you have legends about are real in some fashion or another. One of the things that is real is vampires! They're not quite like abyssal creatures, but still really dangerous! One of their powers is enthralling people whose blood they drink. We think there's a vampire living on the military base near Tacoma, because there's been more and more dark magic there lately and some strange police reports too. We're pretty sure a vampire is around but we don't know what it's up to, and approaching a vampire without psychic defenses is a really bad idea. We were waiting on miss Third Eye who lives on the east coast to make some defensive talismans, but if a vampire is infiltrating the military, that's really bad news, and it might not be great to keep waiting."

"Am I going to be able to be helpful with that, like, right away...?"

"The thing you'll be able to do right away is protect your own mind and the minds of other magical girls from the vampire's gaze! It's not as strong as blood thralldom but it's still bad, it'd confuse people long enough for the vampire to hurt them a lot. I think you'll be able to mentally shield your teammates right away, so if you're around just in case it makes investigating at all so much safer, because we're not in as much danger of that. You might not be able to shake people loose of thralldom right away, but that mostly goes away if the vampire is destroyed."

"Who else is on this?"

"We have eight different Puchuu who can help spy and figure out where the vampire is, and Titanium Steel and Gravity Maven are willing to help. I'll probably also get Tanya and maybe even make sure Sparkling Idol and Rocky Road aren't busy in case we need more backup, if it's as dangerous as we expect. Vampires are a big deal! But we're going to investigate first and not go into this before we're ready unless we really have to."

"What makes them a big deal apart from the enthrallment thing?"