Who Da Boss Lady? 7

I apparently forgot to make this available XD

Commissioned by InfiniteChaosRai

Who Da Boss Lady?

Chapter 7

-VB-

“AAAHHH!!!”

Sato never drove faster in his life. 

Sara sat in the back with Mari’s head in her laps. Their daughter’s entire skin was flushed with spider web-like veins pulsating ominously. 

He told his wife that they were driving to a hospital.

They were. 

Just not the one she was thinking about. 

He knew (roughly) what he was looking at when he saw Mari after barging into her room. 

Mana Poisoning. 

It happened when an individual took in too much mana than their body, artifacts, and soul could handle. 

The light ahead was yellow, but he could still make it! 

He punched down on the accelerator and crossed his arms over the wheel. 

And just as he crossed the line, he twisted. 

His small 2018 Toyota Siena screeched as he made a tight turn with a drift and blasted forward it was nobody’s business.

At low toxicity, it was just nausea, vertigo, a feeling of fullness, and a feeling of pressure exerting outward. 

If someone decided to ignore that and absorbed even more mana, then they would start to feel the symptoms of the “middle” stage of toxicity: flushed skin, distended veins, and extreme full body pain. This was the highest Mana Poisoning that anyone had a chance of surviving. 

And there was a documented case of someone going even further. It was just a single file tucked away for reference purposes among every other reference materials for those in the Tokyo Onmyouji Corps to research with. 

And it was because of this he knew that he had a limited timeframe. 

Because severe mana poisoning, or the point of no return, began with a single sign: blackening nails and fingertips. It blackened because necrosis was setting in. 

He looked up at the road name as he zoomed past it, making cars squeal to a stop as they tried to avoid him. 

Sato didn’t care if they hit him. His car was enchanted just enough for him to not need to worry about collision damage. 

Once necrosis appears, the subject has less than fifteen minutes before they cross over the point of no return.

-VB-

Holy shit. 

Mari’s dad was a chad! 

I mean I kind of already had an idea? It’s hard to not guess someone was a chad when their biceps were so rock hard that rocks would be jealous of the hardness. 

And the way he drove! 

I kept my mouth shut as my body flung around, and I only managed to stay in one general area because I was clinging onto Mari’s fingers while invisible. 

Ah, well, mostly invisible. Touching made the invisibility a little wonky. 

Anyway, back to Mari’s dad. 

He’s a chad! 

Like what the fuck?! Built like a brick, dressed to impress like the fucking Transporter, and drove with more skill and swank than Tokyo Drift! 

“Sara, hold on!” he yelled as we all began to hear sirens. “My boss is not gonna be happy about this!” 

Then he did something. 

My eyes widened as I saw colorless mana flooding through his hand holding the stick shift (which shouldn’t be on a car so new) and into the family van. The once silent engine rumbled to life.

Magic?! 

“We just passed Eba Street!” Mari’s mom shouted. 

“I know! That’s not regular poisoning!” 

Holy shit, buildings outside were zooming by. How fast was he pushing -? 120 kph on an urban street?! He was going to get Mari killed -! 

Then we nearly did as the car tilted to its left, its right wheels taking off the ground from how quickly he made the turn and then came slamming back down. 

My nonexistent heart thudded like a goddamn machinegun staccato in my chest. 

Holy shit! 

Sirens weren’t getting any closer…

“Not regular poi-? IS IT MAGIC?!” 

“MANA POISONING!” 

Huh? What mana poisoning? Mari was doing her best and integrating the mana! I could literally feel her chunking away at the mana! 

… Um, it’s a little inefficient, though. She was absorbing barely a tenth of what she was processing. Horrible conversion. Mari, what the fuck? Why you a failure and a disappointment while bitching about the pain? 

“You said there wouldn’t be magic in the house!” 

“There isn’t! Doesn’t stop her from touching something outside of the house!” 

-VB-

And that’s what worried Sato the most. There wasn’t anything that he could see that Mari was taking the mana from like a cursed jewelry or clothes. 

Which meant that she took in such a large dose of mana that she was burning through it internally. 

Which was very bad. 

VERY bad. 

Mari wasn’t supposed to have any talent for magic, which was why he quit his job at the corps to live a regular life, but she got involved anyway! 

FUCK! 

He made one final turn and brought the car to a skidding stop. He jumped out of the driver’s seat and tore the rear door open almost cleanly off its hinges. “Follow me!” he hissed out as he pulled Mari up and rushed into the house of his old friend. 

The barrier around the house should keep the cops from finding them.

Then he slammed a fist on the door. 

“Shoko! Shoko! I need your help, please! My girl’s got mana poisoning! Shoko!” 

There was a thump somewhere inside the house. 

He pounded again. “Shoko! Mari’s got mana poisoning somehow! I need your help, please! I’m begging you!” 

There was a pause and then rapid thumps that came from inside the house. 

The door flung outward and Sato barely kept himself from getting hit. 

“Inside, now!” his old classmate, whose dark circles had only gotten worse over the years, ordered him. He rushed in and he heard Sara squealing when Shoko did what she usually did and dragged whoever was outside into the house with a yank. “On the couch!” 

He put Mari down and quickly backed away. 

Seconds later, there were nine different tags on his girl, and every single one of those were blacking over quickly from how much mana they were absorbing. 

“What the hell happened, Sato?” Shoko grunted as she ripped the nearly inked over tags and placed new ones. 

“I don’t know. We were all prepared to leave home for the day when she just started screaming from her room,” he gritted out as he watched Shoko go for drastic measures. 

“Grab her arms and hold her down, this is going to -.”

Then …

Then it stopped. 

The necrotic fingertips reversed. 

The flushed skin began to calm down and return to normal pallor. 

Shoko froze before stopping, whatever she’d been prepared to do was right at her fingertips, and she quickly drew the mana back.

Sweaty from just five minutes of intense care, she fell back on her ass while wearing only a pair of bras and short pants and glared at him.

“Sato,” she hissed. “You better explain thoroughly everything that’s been going on in your city,” she growled out before shoving a bunch of the contaminated tags into his face. “Those are demonic energies!” 

He looked down at the tags … and started seeing red. 

He knew where he lived. Kuoh was … it was the territory of the devils. The Devils of the Bible. One of the three Abrahamic Factions. 

And …

And they were responsible for this? 

They did this to Mari? 

He took a shuddering breath in.

“I’ll tell you what I know.”

But after this… after Mari got better … he was going to go hunt some devils. 

-VB-

I … I think… I think that did it. 

I panicked. They were about to do something drastic so I just … gobbled up some of the mana Mari had and … and there’s too much…!

Urk!

URK!

Ugh… Oh God please no, I’m gonna hurl -!

-VB-

A/N: say hi to the family. They’re not normal either. 

Oh, and Venalita’s invisibility is def a plot hole, right? It’s not like she’s some kind of an eldritch being, right? She’s not literally erasing her existence out of reality for her convenience, right?!