"Yeah. That's something I might work on changing, after we get our wish."

"If we're going to start a superteam I'd rather do it with dyed-in-the-wool girls we advise on their wishes than by approaching people with more experience than us who are doing fine on the old system."

"I mean, yeah, that's a solid approach. We'll see how it goes."

"I do want to be immortal, which is very different from 'killed in magic gang war at nineteen'. But I like your idea."

My predictions won't be perfect, but I could guess better than chance.

That's less helpful than I might have liked... also, what is in fact the range for how far a girl can get from her body and still control it? And does it matter which one of me wishes for something, when we do?

One hundred meters. Unless something about her magic affects it, but one hundred meters is usual. It might matter if it changes how you mean the wish, or how you feel about it.

Seems reasonable. Well, I guess I get to think about superpowers now. And see if we can come up with any more clever ideas.

...My emergency wish, if I make one. Does it need to include healing myself or can I just wait for Solvei to do that? asks Bella. Since you'll be taking my soul out and putting it in a gem anyway. I mean, is there irrecoverable damage that could happen to my body?

With enough magic another puella magi will be able to restore you from even no body at all, but it would take a lot of the non-wishing kind.

I'd definitely do it, but I have no idea how long it would take or how hard it would be.

And I don't know how uncomfortable it is to be stuck as a gem if my body dies. If it can die normally. She puts the flanksteak in the oven.

The bodies are just as biological as ever.

You know, muses Solvei, if we're really going to be properly immortal, and really intend to stay that way, we're going to have what I might call an... incentives problem. Since magical girls run on witch byproducts, and witches are 'born of the despair in people's hearts'. What happens thousands of years from now when we've engineered a despair-free future? Do we then run out of power and die? Are we going to need some kind of, of consensually operated despair farm? I mean, not that I'm going to let these concerns dissuade me from solving the immediate problem, but it's something to think about.

You know what, if I spend thousands of years engineering a despair-free future and then something I need to live is obsolete and for whatever reason I can't be a computer upload or something instead to address that problem, this is still really competitive with all other options on the table.

Yeah, of course, but then you end up in a position where you require the side effects of despair in order to live, and that's not the best position from which to engineer a despair-free future, I don't think. Like I said, I'm not about to let that stop me. But I'd rather notice it and point it out than let it pass me by and end up surprised by the conflict later. Pause. Also, Sis volunteers for the consensually operated despair farm.

...What a weird thing to volunteer for.

I mean, when you think about it, her life already pretty much consists of volunteering for the very non-consensually-operated despair farm so we don't die...

I would think it was a line of work she would want to get out of. Let's try and engineer a despair-free future where we can run on alternative fuel sources.

Won't catch me arguing.

...Intrigued glance from Solvei.

Yes, that could be done, although it would take a lot of magic to make it to begin with and more magic from moment to moment than most girls use to operate two bodies.