" - if they were checking whether it worked the obvious way to check would be to give people one of those radioactive tracer dyes and then if it got rid of that then it'd changed enough they were probably clean. But they might think of other tests along those lines - physically dipping people in dye would check the skin -"

"...Hm."

"I'm trying to think how else you might do it - I don't know much about the area..."

"If it's enough to physically replace all of the tissue...there's a lot we don't understand about magical girl transformations, but that might do it."

"But then don't you switch back?"

"Yes, that would be the kicker."

"- can your magic do anything like - getting us to other planets or terraforming them when we have them."

"Terraforming, definitely. Getting there--probably."

" - okay. Then we terraform the poles, right now, to have seasons. You can just buy the poles if you're rich enough, I'll get Makel to do it. We steal the reds from Biyan, make them magical girls, aggressively insist that the transformation process makes people clean, and maybe they go along with it because they don't want to offend the terraforming aliens."

"We might need to make them magical girls first, and warn them to want terraforming powers really, really hard--neither of us can do it, we just know people with relevant powers back home."

"Ah. Okay. Well, there are sixty-five million of them, one'll probably get it."

"Yeah. Maybe arrange a ship-island thing first, evacuate everyone there, get them all magicked up and then head for the poles."

"People'll try and grab the ship if only to figure out what's going on."

"Operative word being try."

"If having more firepower helps us and you're damn sure you can protect them afterwards we can magical-girl Anitami reds first, try to get some helpful powers."

"...I'd love to say I'm sure enough but in the absence of, uh, any information whatsoever about what I'm up against I don't think I can."

...nod. "Okay. ...we could see if any of Orvara's are still alive and magical-girl them before we go after Biyan."

"Good plan. Got a good idea for where to start looking for them?"

"I think there might've been a mention somewhere in some of the coverage  -" sigh. He starts looking. "I need a babysitter."

Edie looks down at the child in her own arms.

"You need me to come with you," Ruby points out helpfully. "I can magic people at a distance but it's harder to know who to magic and when. So I need to come."

"Yeah," Edie sighs, hugging her a little tighter. "I figured that one out."

"I'm not really gonna be in danger or anything," Ruby says, wiggling a little.

"Still. Call it maternal instincts."

"'Kay."

"Ladah would be in danger and should stay home. But if I call my parents they'll be curious about, uh, everything else, and if this goes badly I get killed."

"Yeah, I completely agree." Sigh. "What about the guy who you're asking to buy the poles?"

"Makel will ask questions but he won't try to get involved."

"Is he someone you could leave your kid with?"

" - yeah, I guess that'd work."