Commissioned by InfiniteChaosRai
Who Da Boss Lady?
Chapter 40
-VB-
“So am I strong enough yet?” Aika asked.
Venalita, who came back with a suspicious white and sticky fluid at the edge of her doll lips (before she wiped it away), looked at her for a second before laughing out loud.
Aika remained seated on the couch inside her empty home, glaring as the doll’s laughter bounced off the walls.
When she finally stopped, Venalita looked at her.
“Oh, wait. You were serious.”
Then she started laughing again. This time, she began to literally roll on the floor.
“What’s wrong with what I asked?” she asked angrily.
Venalita chuckled as she finally stopped and flew up to her eye level. “Girl, that girl ate something that makes those werewolves and weird gorillas look like pests.” Then there was a pause. “And because she was my attempt at converting a person into an evil magical girl, I … used a lot more power than necessary. Once her transformation was done, the rest overlapped into her soul.”
“And I am…?”
“More refined and efficient. Better at learning spells, better at absorbing, better at everything,” Venalita crooned. “But, ultimately, not made to be as strong as your senior. And she hunted for weeks - months - before we were met. You’ve only been hunting for, what, two weeks? You are nowhere near her capacity. But you are much better with your emotions and determination, right now, which gives you a bit of an edge over Mari-chan.”
“... But I am better?”
“In many ways, yeah. But, because I made you efficient, you’re also … kind of capped?”
Aika stared at the doll with narrowed eyes. She didn’t like how that sounded. “... You’re saying I have a limit.”
“Limit? No, no, no! That’s an insult!” Venalita gawked. Aika wasn’t sure if that was genuine or sarcastic. “No evil magical girl will be limited by something like a ceiling! That is a travesty! No, you are just limited in your output. Let’s say that… you have a ratio of one to one hundred, maximum output to maximum reserve. That and your emotions. If you’re depressed, you won’t be shooting lasers.”
“... I don’t get it,” Aika frowned. “Is that, like, the maximum output per second, per spell, per moon cycle…?”
“Per spell, I guess,” the doll shrugged.
Aika stared at her.
“And what about her?”
Venalita grinned. “Hmm?”
“I’m asking how much she can use per spell. And how well she converts, you know, what she consumes.”
“Well~,” Venalita dragged out the answer but another indignant glare from Aika got her to respond. “No limits.”
She stared at the doll for a moment, confused. The confusion slowly seeped away into a cold knot in her stomach.
“... What?”
“No limits~,” Venalita grinned. It wasn’t a nice grin. “But it can kill her, too, you know? That’s why I put limits on yours. If I hadn’t been there right next to her, then Mari-chan would have died.” Then she paused with a thoughtful look. “But then again, it was my first time making a magical girl. I didn’t know what I was doing. Now I do, though!”
“That’s not reassuring at all,” Aika replied in a deadpan.
“Eh? It wasn’t meant to be.”
“Then -.”
“Ai-nee?”
Aika stopped and immediately turned to look at the speaker.
Inside the house with her (other than Venalita) was a new member of the house. The pink haired girl gripped the front of her new blue sundress. And her light brown fox ears flickered.
For a second, Aika forgot all about her one-sided competition with her senior evil magical girl rival and squeed at the cuteness of the … manufactured child in front of her.
Was this cuteness part of her design? Why did this baby girl have to look so cute?!
“What is it, Tama-chan?” she asked.
“Uhm. Are… Are you okay?”
Aika couldn’t help the sigh that came out of her. “I’m alright.”
She first ran into a youkai laboratory thinking that it had been some kind of a cursed beast she could put down to get more power. And inside of that laboratory was Tamamo-chan, sitting by herself in a secure playroom while every staff member had been killed by the werewolves she ended up dispatching. It left her tired and injured, and that was the image of her that Tamamo seemed to have stuck inside her head. Tama-chan constantly asked that question. Of course, her first instinct had been to return the girl to the youkais who made her (because she thought, maybe, she was a normal youkai girl), but after going through the lab’s papers on exactly who Tamamo was… She didn’t go back.
No, she might have kidnapped the poor girl.
Aika sighed again.
How could people do this? Like… apparently, there were two youkai factions in Japan? And the Eastern Faction wasn’t doing so hot so they thought - or rather, a subfaction thought - that it was a good idea to … clone the kitsune that once killed ten thousand people? To give themselves an elite combatant?
‘Or “failing that, turn her into a template for a potential breeder for her large youki reserve”,’ she mentally quoted one of the research papers. The idea was, to any woman, so infuriating that the phrase stuck with her out of the sheer outrage she felt when she first read that.
Tamamo fidgeted.
“... Would you like some cookies?”
And her pink head started nodding like a blur.
Aika snorted as she stood up and walked over to the kitchen.
“By the way, Aika,” Venalita grinned. “You’re going to need to start planning things like adoption and stuff like that. Like paperworks of all kinds. I’m sure you don’t want our dear Tama-chan to not go to kindergarten and school?”
Aika froze mid-way to the kitchen and turned around stiffly.
She forgot about that.
She completely forgot about that.
And then she had an idea. “Didn’t you say that you could mind control people? Like spells?”
“I mean, yes,” the doll replied.
“Great! We’ll mind control the bureaucrats to do our paperwork for us! Easy solution!”
Venalita stared at her … before tears spilled out.
“What the f-?!” Aika sputtered out before cutting herself off. Tama-chan was still there!
“I-I’m so happy!” Venalita suddenly sobbed. “My Aika-chan is already starting her criminal career!”
And whatever worry Aika had for Venalita’s sudden tears withered away to dust.
“... Maybe I should start my criminal activities by strangling you first.”
“Ooh, kinky, are we? Is that what you want for your reward, too?”
“There is a child in the room, Venalita.”