Sophia took the day off from exploring to start working on her cherry blossom biome inside the domain. Instead of doing it herself, though, she decided to play together with the sentient part of magic because she wanted to do it together with them. The pink and purple particles seemed really happy that the tiger actively involved them in her plan, but once they made her understand that she needed a lot more authority to bring her plans to life.

“Well, this sure was unexpected.” The blonde was right in front of the patch of cherry blossom forest she rescued and put in her domain. The ambient magic particles were also still dancing around her while seemingly having a lot of fun.

“You lot said that I can pay in installments, right?” She scratched her cheek. “As in, offer all of my authority by releasing raw magic, leaving my domain, having it reset, and repeating those things, right?" The tiger waited for a moment and then watched the particles moving up and down. “That’s going to be a lot of trips!”

“Alright, let’s get started!” While saying so, countless pink and purple particles rose from all over her body as she was releasing her internal magic to the environment. The particles immediately joined the others, and the density in the area noticeably increased. “This was about 95% of my authority, and I really need to do this like 15 times more?!" Unsurprisingly, the ambient magic just moved up and down, the newly joined one included.

“Fine.” Giving up while shrugging, Sophia then opened a portal and disappeared through it.

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“Woah!” The tiger returned to the original cherry blossom forest in the mountain range and got a brief surprise there. Before, when she borrowed the patch of the forest to put in her domain, she left some of her raw magic behind in the hope of fixing the hole she made. It worked. It had already completely regrown, and it was denser than ever. On top of that, in the very middle, a huge weeping cherry that was around 100 meters wide had grown.

“It looks great!” She liked it a lot. “I should give that one to Fennyfenny and Ari for their project! It would fit so well in the middle of a lake. Once it grows with magic, it should become even wider, too.” Saying so, she opened a portal around the big tree and let it disappear. Then, the tiger waited around twenty minutes for her authority to fully reset before returning to the domain herself.

“I’m back~.” Sophia returned to the area with the patch of cherry forest inside her domain and cheerfully greeted the magic particles there, who happily swirled around her in return. “Someone’s looking forward to it even more than I do, huh?” She smiled over how energetic they looked. Not wasting any time, she then quickly released all of her internal magic before returning to the mountain range once more.

“Urgh, I can’t wait for the finished product, but it’s sooo boring!” The tiger was on her fifth trip to the mountain range when she let out a sigh. “It’s taking forever, too! There has to be a way to cheese this, right?” She tilted her head while looking at the portal right in front of her. “Wait a moment, do I even have to go back and forth?” She then moved just her hand and arm into the portal while the rest of her body stayed behind in the original cherry forest. “Raw magic doesn’t seem to cross the portal on its own, but if I release it through my hand on the other side, my authority should still recover while doing it, right?”

“Okay, let’s go and have a look!” After having released her magic through the portal while simultaneously regenerating it for around half an hour, Sophia wanted to find out if it was working and decided to check. “Wow, so sparkly!” Arriving in her domain, the blonde was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of pink and purple particles around her. “Yes!” She raised her fist high in the air. “It’s working! There’s definitely more of you now! I’m not sure if it’s as effective as going back and forth, but that’s not important! Let’s go and catch Maya!” Sounding highly motivated, she then left through yet another portal.

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“Why are we here…?” Sounding rather confused, Maya looked around in the living room of their mansion in the capital while tilting her head before facing Sophia next to her.

"I need to kill a few hours, and so I wanted to spend time with my favorite girl while doing so!" The blonde smiled at her.

“Aww!” She still looked confused, but she liked what she was hearing.

“Unfortunately, you were the only one available, though~.” Her mood was so good that she got the overwhelming urge to tease her cat.

“Oi!” Maya really didn’t like that.

“I’m just joking!” She was still smiling. “Come on, you have to admit that it was a good one.”

“Mrng!” While looking ever so slightly proud, she refused to admit it. “Again, why are we here? I thought you were working on your cherry blossom forest?”

“I am!” The blond just nodded. “I just don’t have enough magic authority to finish it. That's why I need to take some breaks."

“Ah, I see.” The cat-girl nodded. “Wait! You?” She paused for a moment. “You don’t have enough magic? You?!” She had to say it a couple of times. “WHAT ARE YOU UP TO?!”

“You should’ve seen how surprised I was when I found out!” She continued to have trouble believing how insignificant her powers really were. "Anyway, don't worry, it's nothing dangerous. It's just that I'm totally overdoing it with the scale of things.”

“Ah, the usual, I see.” Maya just nodded along. “So, for the third time or so, why are we here?” She still had no idea why the two were back in the capital and the mansion’s living room.

“I need to pump some more raw magic or authority into my planned cherry blossom area inside the domain.” While saying so, the tiger opened a portal and put her arm into it. “I need to stay like that for a couple of hours to transport my authority into there while also recovering it at the same time on this side. If I recover and reset my authority in the domain, there wouldn’t be any extra magic, after all.”

“Is it okay if I just pretend to have understood what you just told me?” The cat-girl looked more confused again.

“Of course!” Sophia nodded. “Long story short, I take magic from here and put it into the domain, using my body as the transport.”

“Sure.” She also nodded. “I STILL don’t get why we’re here!”

“We need to have fun together for a couple of hours, but we can’t do the usual because I can’t use my body much, so I was thinking of doing a TV marathon.” Sophia pointed at the big TV they had in the living room they had gotten the first time they visited Earth last year. “Do you remember? Before we left the capital, we started a series we both liked, but we couldn’t finish it, as Steph and Chloe were physically unable to stay in the capital because they were going insane from us near-hibernating?”

“Yeah!”

"How about we get comfy on the sofa and cuddle a little? I can easily do that much with only one arm available, and we watch a whole season or two in one go?”

"I'll go make popcorn!" Once she understood the plan, the cat-girl was on board really quickly.

“Exactly what I wanted to hear!”

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Once they were ready, and had fresh popcorn, the duo got comfortable on a sofa in the living room. It took a little moment to find a good spot because Sophia had a portal attached to herself that ate half her arm, but as Maya simply cuddled to her other side, it hadn’t been much of an issue.

The only downside was that both arms of the tiger were preoccupied, one being in the portal and the other used as a pillow, so she needed the cat-girl's help with the popcorn and had her feed her whenever she wanted some. For some reason, she didn't seem bothered about it, though. Maya just could’ve shifted her body a little to free the blonde’s other arm, but she simply didn't want to at that time.

The couple enjoyed each other’s company and the TV show for many hours over the rest of the day and had a great time together. However, the two had some slight trouble concentrating on the season finale as the longer they were watching, the more busy they had gotten with each other instead.

Once it had gotten dark in the capital and the TV series, among other things, finished, the couple returned to the domain, and Sophia headed back to the spot where she was preparing her cherry blossom forest.

“Well, good thing you only need one hand for very many things~.” Smiling broadly, the tiger happily exited the portal. “And none at all for-, W-WOAH!” She immediately froze once she noticed what was going on. Stepping out of the portal, her entire vision was instantly and completely covered in pink and purple magic particles. They were so dense that she could neither see the forest nor even the slightest bit of her all-white default domain. “W-Wow, it definitely worked!” She needed a moment to let it sink in. “How do you even deal with this?”

Afterward, Sophia took another small break to think of a way to continue from here on.