Commissioned by InfiniteChaosRai
Who Da Boss Lady?
Chapter 38
-VB-
“... Can you let us go?” Rias asked for the fourth time.
“No, Rias-senpai,” Mari - sorry, Clarinette - responded from where she stood off to the side from the two groups. The smaller group, Rias and her peerage, was in a small circle and the larger group, the Fallen and their still living exorcists, were in a different circle.
Despite the fact that neither group were bound or otherwise restrained, no one dared to leave the circle or draw up weapons.
Because that “gravity” effect was still in play and the no weapon worked.
Somehow.
Shirone pouted. “Since when did you get this strong?” she grumbled from the edge of her circle closest to “Clarinette.”
Despite the fact that Clarinette had interrupted the fight, Shirone didn’t feel … too bad about it? Like she already knew that Clarinette was supposed to act like an “evil” magical girl. Whatever that was. She also knew that Clarinette was a newcomer, and newcomers tended to have preconceptions about how things were supposed to go.
Apparently, her friend had decided that there would be no fighting in her backyard, and if she knew anything about Mari-chan, then it was the fact that once an idea got into her head, she was gonna do it, even if it meant she might be wrong or get points deducted. That was why Mari-chan, despite being a smart student, didn’t have the best grade; she would “debate” with the teachers about a topic once she got hooked on it.
Like literature. Mari-chan raved about Kirino Natsuo and placed her above Ogawa Yoko, which earned her a black mark with their Japanese literature teacher, who turned out to be an Ogawa fan.
And considering what Mari could do against Satan Leviathan, Shirone knew that she and Rias’s peerage were, as the Americans put it, “up the shit creek.”
I still don’t understand how that’s an idiom. She learned it last week during English class as part of a series of idioms where they compared idioms used colloquially and how fast they were changing just like here in Japan like how “up the shit creek” was in a decline as an idiom just like “to wear a cat” (Neko wo kaburu) that most Japanese, especially people her age, don’t use anymore.
“Mari-chan, will you let me go if I say I promise not to do anything?” she asked.
Mari-chan looked at her with narrowed eyes and a low hum.
“Are you going to try to get Rias and Akeno-senpai out? I don’t know them.”
“What if I vouch for them?”
“Vouch for them how?”
“... Cookies?”
Mari-chan snorted. “Sure, why not. In fact, if they break your trust and try shit with me, then I’m taking you as collateral. A live-in best friend. That would be very nice.”
“... Sure?”
Mari-chan didn’t do anything but the grass around them started rising back up instead of being flat to the ground.
Shirone took a tentative step outside. No heavy gravity pushed her back down.
“... When did you get this strong?” she asked as she deliberately sat outside the previous circle of imprisonment.
Mari-chan shrugged. “I guess I always have been? I just didn’t … go to the extreme.”
“This isn’t extreme?”
“I could’ve Final Sparked everyone to death in one go,” Mari-chan deadpanned.
“... That’s what you’re calling that light? Final Spark?” one of the Fallen asked with a snarl. It was the black haired woman in a skimpy outfit.
Mari-chan didn’t even look at her. “I call it whatever I want. And you should be thankful that I took my magical girl senpai’s advice and not used The Black Sun.”
Shirone and the rest of Rias’s peerage froze.
She could tell that the “the” was capitalized in The Black Sun.
“Ah… Clarinette-chan? When did you talk to Magical Girl Levi-tan about that?” Shirone asked while sounding out names that made her feel childish and icky for having said it.
Mari-chan finally smiled. It was more carefree than before.
“Oh! She just called here and there, and I told her that I devised a technique based on my Final Spark. See, Final Spark is just a whoosh! of light with magic. Not light magic but light with magic. It’s closer to a magical laser than a light-based magic. But then you know how I used the weird fire thing with Levi-tan when I sparred with her?”
At the last question she uttered, the faces on the Fallen changed.
Because they realized just now - just now! - that they “fought” someone who sparred with Satan Leviathan. Even if they took the most generous interpretation of the term, they should now realize that the reason why Rias and her peerage were doing nothing should be made clear.
And when Shirone glanced and looked at their faces… yeah, they were getting it.
“Yeah…?”
“It ended up coming out like this.”
She raised her wand up and cast a spell without any circle, chanting, or other preparation.
Where there was once nothing, now a - {( }) - floated above the tip of the wand.
And Shirone felt it.
The [ ].
“... What is that, Clarinette-chan?” Akeno asked.
Shirone looked and saw the Queen looking very pale. She looked and saw the Fallen looked horrified as well.
Mari-chan cut the spell off, returning [ ] to normalcy. The presence, or lack of it, disappeared, and the world hurriedly filled in the place where [ ] used to be.
“That’s what happens if I use it like the Final Spark instead of a grenade. If I use it like a grenade, then it becomes The Black Sun because everything around it kind of … fades away? Yeah, that’s a good word. Everything temporarily ‘fades away’ around it while the Black Sun destroys anything that got caught up in it-.”
“What’s going on here?!”
Everyone looked up and saw Sona running up to them with her peerage and someone unfamiliar to her.
“... Is that you, Behemoth-sama?” Akeno asked, but it sounded like she was trying to talk to calm herself down.
The burly man was the epitome of power. Even if he wasn’t trying to exude it, power just oozed out of him in subtle undulating waves that washed over everyone. Physically, he looked like one of those big WWE wrestlers dressed up in a biker outfit.
“It is,” “Behemoth” replied as he looked around. He sounded soft and deep, totally unlike what he looked like. “So those are the brats my lady asked me to pick up,” he grunted as he looked at the Fallen and the exorcists. He stepped up and then stopped. He noticed something before turning to Mari-chan. “Would you kindly stop the magic?”
“... Okay.”
And then the grass around the Fallen and the exorcists returned to normal.
Behemoth-san nodded gratefully and walked over to the Fallen. “Get your … rear up. You lot are all wasting everyone’s time as it is.”
And to Shirone’s surprise, they did. They nearly shot up to their feet in a hurry.
“... You are Clarinette, yes?” Behemoth asked her friend, and her friend nodded as she stood up. “I am Behemoth, the Queen of Satan Leviathan. It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, too,” Mari-chan replied slightly nervously. No, not nervously, just a little put off by the seemingly gentlemanly demeanor of the giant. “I’m … Clarinette the Envious while in my magical girl outfit. Outside of it, I’m Mari.”
Ah. A gentle giant. That’s what he was.
He hummed. “How long will these ‘light’ restraints last?” he asked her.
“Until the end of the day. I made them to draw their power from the people that have them on.”
Shirone blinked.
That sounded … ridiculous? But also smart.
See? Mari-chan was smart!
Behemoth-san nodded again. “Thank you. I will take them off your hands now, if that is alright?”
“Sure.”
Behemoth-san then formed a portal and ushered the Fallen and the exorcists through.
Which left Mari-chan with the rest of them.
“... So what happened this time?” Sona-kaichou growled.
Rias-buchou looked a little guilty.
Mari-chan huffed. “I stopped everyone who was fighting because I didn’t want it happening in my backyard.”
Sona turned to look at Mari-chan and then at Rias-buchou.
“Start from the top,” the student president and the other Second Owner of Kuoh Town demanded imperiously.