Who Da Boss Lady? 13 (Patreon)

Commissioned by InfiniteChaosRai

Who Da Boss Lady?

Chapter 13

-VB-

I ignored the fact that I was not actually wholly myself. 

Thinking about it was a straight path to madness. I couldn’t do anything about it, constantly worrying about it would only stress me out, and there were better things to focus on. 

So I ignored it.

But it didn’t mean that the urge didn’t disappear, especially since Mari’s dad took over Mari’s training. 

Because, of course, the badass DILF did. In fact, the said badass Transporter-like DILF straight up told me to “stay away for a while” until Mari’s training under him wrapped up.

Which left me adrift without anything to do.

And what was I going to do? 

I flew around town. 

It wasn’t like I was going to make another magical girl when Mari was not ready to fly from the nest! No no no, I had so much more to help her with! I wasn’t leaving her side until I knew for certain she could headbutt a god and win.

But boredom was boredom and simply flying around gave me enough … things to see. 

See nothing, that was. 

“Ugh…!” I moaned pitifully as I lazily floated around Kuoh Town. 

Honestly, Mari had a long way to go before I would ever consider her to be “good enough” for me to not need to pay attention to her. For one, her power level was nowhere close to acceptable. She was a fledgling duckling. I was serious when I just told myself that she needed to be able to win against a god, but the god in question needed to be any of the big ones. 

Conceptual? 

Authority? 

Dominion?

None of those mattered. 

My magical girls will be so powerful that such concepts and ideas will be nothing before their raw might and friendship. 

But to reach that level, Mari needed to go out and fight more monsters. 

So that she could be strong enough to do whatever she wanted. 

I let out a sigh. 

I had an inkling that Sato wasn’t going to let Mari run wild any time soon, however. The man came from … too structured of an environment. Way too stiff. Way too … normal. Oh, he was a magician, knew his way around the Underworld, and definitely had blood on his hands, but all of those had come from things he understood. He followed a path, however not traveled by normal humans, but it was still a path he knew of. 

I was worried right now that he would push Mari down the same path. 

But magical girls didn’t do that, especially evil magical girls. 

They needed to struggle! 

They needed to -!

I paused.

Something was here. 

Frowning, I flipped around and swerved my head around. 

Then I spotted it. 

There. 

In the distance, there was something. It was constantly pinging me like some sort of a radar. 

I giggled. 

Oh? 

Did they want to find me? 

Well, then, let’s give them a game, hmm?

-VB-

“It disappeared,” Kisuke hummed. 

Yoruichi, who had been about to dash out of their rented warehouse, stopped. “What do you mean ‘it disappeared’?”

“It’s gone. I can’t even find a speck of the energy that was just there.”

Yoruichi didn’t waste a second and bolted out of the warehouse with shunpo, leaving him to analyze what he did know.

In the few seconds that he was able to record the energy reading, he got half a gigabyte’s worth of data. Most of it was junk data from the surrounding areas that he would need to filter out, but among those readings, he knew that he caught at least three seconds of the odd energy that his computer set up had already flagged as oddities. 

How odd was it? 

For one, the energy in question was dense. It was similar to energy density of a captain-level shinigami hiding their signature in the material world. At the same time, there seemed to be layers to the energy as well. The essence radar, as others liked to shorten the name of his awesome device, easily penetrated through most. Yokai, Holy, Devil, and whatever else anyone might bring up, it would just penetrate through. 

But this reading? 

It was so dense and layered that everything behind it was blank.

This gave even more credence to the idea that there might be a Puppet Scenario at hand, because not even gods had such layered presence in the world. 

But Outsiders, in general, possessed those exact energy signatures: dense, layered, and wholly unnatural. 

---

Yoruichi arrived at the exact spot that Kisuke’s radar-thingy had shown her to be the position of the Puppet but found nothing.

With no choice left, she closed her eyes and immediately used reiaku. The visualization of energy signatures around her changed them from pressures and tickles into ribbons. 

There were plenty of devil ribbons, most of which came from the Kuoh Academy some distance away. They were so weak that they were more like strings from where she stood. She saw a few narrow ribbons of magicians. Inconsequential. 

Then she spotted something.

A thin black string. 

So thin that she would have missed it. 

No, it was black so much as it was … anti-black? It wasn’t the absence of light nor the combination of all colors. It was … -.

It was in front of her. 

Her eyes snapped open, the ritual of reiaku unraveling quickly.

And she found herself staring at a hovering black doll.

“... Hello~,” the doll grinned. “Who are you?” 

This was it.

This was the puppet. 

It was sickly and unnatural in ways that left her instincts hackling to rid of it. At the same time, those same instincts felt it. 

How vast this thing in front of her was. 

It looked small. It exuded no power. It was “weak” on the surface. 

But even a little bit deeper inside that it was allowing her to sense? 

It was like one of those ponds that stupid humans liked to dive into. On the surface, it was a small pond, but when one dove into it, there was a whole cave system inside of it. 

Instead of narrow caves, this one opened to a giant underground reservoir filled to the brim with power… and something huge and watchful looked up at her in those inky darkness. 

A shiver ran up her spine. 

“... Who are you?” she demanded. 

“Me?” 

Then it struck a pose. 

“I am the most beautiful evil magical girl mascot… Venalita!” 

What was its goal? It couldn’t just be being a mascot. Was that its cover? 

“Why are you here?”

“Mah mah, I answered your question. Why don’t you introduce yourself?” ‘Venalita’ chided. 

And Yoruichi's first instinct to that demand? 

Fuck.

No.

Outsiders held power over ideas even more than deities did on Earth. The more they knew about something, the more an Outsider was able to gain control of it. 

And letting them know her name was like opening the door to their influence. 

She’d seen what happened to the shinigamis who told Outsiders their names. 

Of the whispers in the dark. 

Of the soothing horrors. 

Of the inevitable changes. 

By the time of their termination, those shinigamis were no longer shinigamis but corrupted mirror copies of souls. Things that served something in the shadows. 

“You can call me … Raineko for now.”

“Eh?” the doll swerved in the air gently. Confused for a second before it frowned. “But that’s not your name, silly.”

“It’s what you’re getting. Now, why are you here?”

It tittered. 

The more she interacted with it, the more she would open herself up to its influence. 

“Well, I’m here to make evil magical girls~!” it fawned. “Say, would you like to become an evil magical girl?”

Her stomach dropped.

Instead of responding to its new question, she pulled out her phone and called Kisuke with an emergency number. 

[Outsider. Possible reproduction incursion].

“Hey.”

Yoruichi froze. The doll that had been floating a good ten meters from her was now up in her face. 

And its beady eyes. 

Things, unmentionable things, swam inside of them. 

Powerful. 

Numerous.

Hungry.

“Are you calling your friends?” 

She didn’t even call out her attack’s name. 

She immediately attacked. 

Something nullified her attack and struck her at the same time. When it happened, her reiryoku came under attack. 

A malevolent pressure froze all that she was in place. 

It didn’t feel like she was being attacked by something bigger than her like when she had a bout against Captain-Commander Yamamoto.

It felt more like she was a butterfly getting her entire body pinned by a needle inside a hot chamber. Unable to breathe. Unable to fight back. Unable to even muster up the power to do … anything.

Despite centuries of experience and possessing enough power to unmake mountains and flinch the Captain-Commander of Gotei 13, Shihoin Yoruichi collapsed like a stringless puppet. 

As her consciousness faded, she heard something bone-chilling. 

“I can have a nibble, right?”

-VB-

Something inside of me wanted a bite. 

The woman in front of me was just … too juicy. So much energy. So much essence flowing placidly inside of her like the most delicious dish at a high end buffet. 

It would be … criminal to let this go…! 

But I stopped. 

And I let out a sigh. As much as I wanted to have a nibble, I knew that if I had a nibble right now, then I might take another nibble. Then another bite. 

I might end up killing the woman before I stopped. 

But that would put more scrutiny on Mari-chan! 

“You’re so lucky I’m looking out for Mari-chan,” I huffed as I pulled away from her.

… Oh, my mouth was big. When did it get that big? When I pulled back, the abnormally large mouth with more teeth and tongues than I’d care to count even when I was the one feeling the tongue all sucked into my doll mouth like they were never there. 

… Eh, whatever. 

I looked down at the “Raineko” woman. 

Another sigh.

“I really wanted a nibble.”

After that, I flew away.

“Mari-chan better be happy I’m not eating everything. She needs them all to grow stronger!” 

-VB-

A/N: it’s leaking through.