"I shouldn't even be here," Yuuno murmured to Arf, who'd invited him. "Yes, I know I have an animal form and no Device and lots of barrier spells, but I am still a human."

"Never stopped Saito. And you're much more of a gentleman."

"Thank you. I'm just worried that the rather large fellow made of rock is going to punch me in the face for being an interloper. I've gotten somewhat rusty."

Arf glanced at the familiar currently swapping "My partner is an utter lunatic" stories with Noi Crezant. "Mana of Gold? Nah, he's cool. Anyway, we need to get you out of that dusty library, and it's become pretty clear you only make friends with familiars."

"What? But what about Nanoha and Fate and Chrono and the rest?"

"And you haven't seen any of them in how long?"

"...You said there was a bar?"

There was, although the pair didn't get quite that far before Yuuno got sucked into an absolutely fascinating conversation with one Albert Chamomile and a rather unenthused Chachazero about various kinds of magical contracts (and how an ermine might use them to make bank, hypothetically). They were shortly joined by a smiling, catlike thing that introduced itself as Kyubey, the agent of a group working to postpone the heat death of the universe by similar contracts.

"We came to the conclusion that renewed investigation into alternative methods when one of my contractees mentioned one to me. It is similar to the method we currently use, except instead of the girls we contract disappearing when brought to despair, they turn into 'Witches' which require other magical girls to destroy. That method would provide considerably higher energy gains, but there are certain engineering problems that cannot be surmounted with our current knowledge."

There was a pause as the others digested this. Yuuno spoke first. "These Witches...monstrous and destructive?"

"So it seems."

"Mindless or cunningly evil?"

"Any thoughts they have are alien to both us and humanity."

"And you want to turn innocent children into them in order to save the universe?"

"If possible."

The librarian nodded, completely expressionless. "This sounds exactly like the arguments I agreed to stop having with the Lieze twins. I'm getting the hell out of this conversation. You have fun." And so he left.

Chachazero was glancing thoughtfully from Chamo to Kyubey and back, somehow breathing heavily despite her lack of actual lungs. The ermine noticed, and murmured to her, "No threesome. I am not risking catching some bizarre alien STD."