Who Da Boss Lady? 21 (Patreon)

Commissioned by InfiniteChaosRai

Who Da Boss Lady?

Chapter 21

-VB-

Venalita’s sudden and abrupt appearance and disappearance put a stop to everything, and the Devils - and whoever those two giant beacons of power were - asked her to go back home and that there won’t be class tomorrow.

On one hand, yay, no class. 

On the other hand, she was genuinely worried about Venalita. 

First off, what the hell did that stupid bundle of rags do this time?!

Second, Vena was … kind of strong? She was also mysterious and weird. It was a really bad combo for Mari’s heart because she knew before and now that Venalita was eventually going to do something to cause her stress. And it was causing her stress right now. 

Goddamnit, Vena! 

And last but not the least, third, she was actually worried. 

It was like …

Ever since Venalita turned (read: forced) her to become a magical girl, she’s been at the back of her head like an unwanted fungus. It was an unwanted parasitic mushroom she’d grown accustomed to, and now that it was wholly missing, she found herself … exposed. 

It didn’t make her weak.

It didn’t make her free. 

It didn’t change anything because, despite her disappearance, Mari had some sort of an … instinctual acknowledgement that it was temporary and Vena would be back.

But it made her feel lonely.

‘Stupid mascot,’ she mentally grumbled to herself as she flew around in the night. 

Now that she’s been acknowledged as a “friendly” of the local Devils, she didn’t choose to hide herself. Her dad was … less than encouraging of her behavior but he let her go and do it when he heard that Venalita disappeared. 

‘Stupid dad.’

He always tried to keep holding her back. He knew that she was strong. Sure, she wasn’t strong enough to be able to bulldoze over everything; dad could still beat the shit out of her if he fully committed himself to it. But he was always so cautious. Letting him tell her what to do with her own power felt stifling. 

‘I know he has good reasons,’ she thought petulantly. ‘Doesn’t mean I have to like it.’

It wasn’t like she was going out to declare on the Angels and Devils! 

… Kind of. 

She was going out to take out the Hollows, Stray Devils, and whatever else weren’t acceptable to be left alone. 

… She also realized that both Venalita and dad were bad influences. The former talked about “being evil” while the latter kept telling her to “put a bullet in the target’s head.”

Mari brought herself to a stop far above downtown and sighed. 

“Mom really is the only good adult in my life,” she mumbled as she pinched the bridge of her nose. Then she looked around. She couldn’t find anything odd with just her eyes, so she did what Venalita showed her how to do. She let her mana explode outward and pass through the entire city. 

Of course, this would also alert anyone to her position. 

It was a mana radar, essentially. Venalita had done what dad called “esoteric magic sensing,” which apparently wasn’t really mana so didn’t alert people who didn’t whatever it was that Venalita used. Mari didn’t know how to do the same thing, so she was stuck using mana. 

And … oh?

She whirled around and looked up.

There was something high up in the sky. 

“... What is that?” she mumbled to herself. 

All she could see was a large cloud among many other clouds. 

She gulped. 

She felt a tingle. 

“... I’ll be back in time for bed time,” she told herself and then boosted high into the sky, barely a trickle of sparkling mana illuminating the sky behind her. 

As she soared higher and higher, she began to feel colder. But that thing in the sky… she wanted to know! 

She punched into the clouds. On the surface, the clouds looked fluffy and comfortable, but it was wet, cold, and miserable in reality. 

Rain. Thunder. Lightning. All of them assaulted her senses even as she homed in on the giant mana signature.

She flew for what had to be at least ten minutes and came out on the other side of the cloud. 

Mari spun in the air as she yelped and righted herself. 

And when she laid her eyes on her target, her jaws dropped. 

It was a castle in the sky! A half sphere on the bottom, two rings of castle walls, white buildings with round, red rooftops, and then a giant tree that dominated the top. The entire scene dominated her view and she gawked at it. 

And then she felt giddy. 

Adventure! 

She was going to have her own adventu -.

---

“This is depressing as heck,” she mumbled to herself as she stared at the many skeletons and stone tablets in this giant stone building. She had explored the surface of this gigantic city in the sky. There were gardens, homes, buildings, and everything a medieval city needs. 

Except people. There were no people… but that’s where she had help.

Venalita’s bullshit magical girl power allowed her to read all of the weird blocky scripts these people used. 

And she wished she couldn’t. 

“It’s been decades since we last saw the earth and seas below. We are always surrounded by the Sky Trench, and the only source of the light is directly above us. The magi are unable to turn off the Sky Trench, but no one wants them to turn it off. We don’t know if the Enemy is still out there. But the Sky Trench also prevents us from looking for the Enemy to see if they are gone. Perhaps we will wait a few more decades. We must. The survival of our people comes first before our curiosity.”

She set that tablet down and picked up another one. 

“We can’t turn it off. The Sky Trench requires a royal bloodline but none of the people currently on Laputa are royals. The same is true for the automated defenses. The golems are all on standard defensive mode, but we can’t do more than that, which means not only can we not get off of Laputa, we can’t send the golems out to look for our royals.”

“When did all of this happen?” she mumbled to herself.

Then she picked up a tablet that chilled her bones. 

“We’re running out of food. The soil has long run out of nutrition. The last harvest was pitiful. Leafy vegetables are the best we can grow with the depleted soil, but they can’t feed the hundreds of thousands on our Laputa.”

“... This is becoming even more fucked up.”

She lifted another tablet, took one look, and set it down.

She didn’t want to read about cannibalism.

Instead, she stood up and -.

---

“Uso!” she laughed out loud when she saw when she walked into one of the rooms. 

It was filled with gold, silver, and all sorts of jewelry! 

“I’m going to be rich!”

… But she didn’t know if she had enough of a pocket for everything here. It wasn’t like Venalita taught her how to make “bigger on the inside” bags. 

She’ll come back.

---

Her jaws dropped. 

She must be somewhere in the heart of it all, and she finally found out why she was able to detect this giant castle in the sky.

It was because of the thing in front of her. 

It was a giant crystal surrounded on all sides by giant tree roots that were thicker than her body at the minimum while one particular root wrapped around the giant crystal itself. 

The crystal pulsed with such a heady pulse of mana that she nearly jerked forward. 

It was like her own body was reaching out to the mana. To devour it. To make it hers. 

But she stopped and looked around. 

This entire … castle in the sky. 

This Laputa.

It was a graveyard. 

And if she took the mana out of the crystal, then all of this floating city would fall. Never mind the damage that would do to the ground below her, it felt wrong to destroy it just so she could feel powerful.

Even though she told herself that it felt wrong, she still felt that temptation.

She gulped. 

And deliberately took a step back.

No… She wasn’t going to.

It was wrong to desecrate an entire people’s graveyard. 

Mari took a deep breath in and let it out. 

“I’ll just be happy with the tons of gold jewelry,” she chuckled to herself and deliberately turned herself around.

It felt almost painful to walk away from that dense mana crystal. Like how badly it would’ve felt if she ran for a full day and chose to walk away from a full water bottle. 

But she did. 

Because this was what she wanted.

And an evil magical girl like her did what she wanted.

So she walked out of the root-covered chamber.

---

“Okaa-san! Otou-san!” 

Sato opened his eyes. 

Mari sounded very excited. 

He got up from the couch where he’d fallen asleep and found Mari standing just inside the doorway. 

He froze. 

Mari walked to the middle of the living room with a grin on her face… and covered from head to toe in an absurd amount of shining gold jewelry as well as carrying a whole bag of the stuff. 

“... Did you rob a jewelry store?”

That’s when his wife came down the stairs and found their daughter with what could be stolen jewelry. 

“I didn’t!” she pouted. “I found a castle in the sky!” she giggled. “Lots of dead people. Lots of jewelry, too.”

‘A castle in the sky…?’

He wrecked his memories for what she might be referring to. 

Then his eyes widened. “You found Laputa?”

“Ah? You know about Laputa, otou-san?” she looked at him in surprise. 

“Where -?”

“It’s gone,” she waved her hand. “As soon as I left the city, that Sky Trench thing obscured it.”

He met her stare.

…

He decided not to pursue it. 

He snorted. “Well, show us your loot, daughter.”

Her grin came back in full force. “I like this one the most!” 

And pulled out a massive crown of gold, rubies, diamond, and a very intense runic network.

He stared at the crown in surprise.

‘At least I’m not raising an idiot,’ he thought to herself as he stood up to help his daughter sort through her gains. He was going to have to contact someone to sell any of this, though. The magical side would definitely recognize the Laputan royal seals.