Don't Call Me Auntie
"Tch. Musclebound gorilla bitch...!!"
The witch, who until moments ago had been flaunting her arrogance and looking perfectly at ease, now spat curses with a distinctly impatient edge.
"Yep, auntie♪"
Topaz kept answering every last one of the witch's insults with that same sunny smile and the word auntie, which only made the witch more furious.
"I'm still in my thirties, you know?!"
"That's just sad★"
Mana projectiles of such overwhelming mass that the tentacle lounging at home would have felt his legs go numb just from watching them came crashing down on Topaz. And yet she, without any particular technique, simply threw a cheerful punch and wiped the witch's mana cannons out of the air as if they were nothing.
"Tsk. Brainless bitch."
"Ahaha. If you're weak, your brain has to pick up the slack, right? Auntie."
"You keep calling me...!!"
Whether it was because her barrage refused to land or because her patience had finally snapped, the witch who had been trying to keep her distance suddenly closed the gap at high speed.
Whoosh—!
"Uh?!"
A mechanical wing swept toward her like a blade. Topaz moved on reflex to bat it down — then, sensing something ominous, twisted aside at the last instant.
"Tsk. You're not even a beast, but those instincts of yours are sharp."
As Topaz dodged, the witch stroked her mechanical wing with a look of genuine disappointment. Then, as if something that had been locked away in a cramped hiding place had finally been allowed out, Black Mana rippled forth with an almost refreshing ease.
"Black Mana...?"
Magical girls who took in Black Mana were said to become fallen beings — witches. But Black Mana only shattered the mind; the fallen couldn't actually wield Black Mana itself. That was why there was no separate method for identifying a witch even after they had fallen. The real headache was that you had no way of knowing someone had been corrupted until they suddenly started committing terrorist attacks downtown, their mind already destroyed. If the corruption came from a parasitizing monster, there was no way to detect it except when the monster itself was discovered.
"Ahaha! These days, witches and villains alike can be reborn as something new if they're chosen by That Person! You don't know, do you? How sweet this Black Mana is?"
She stroked her wings in ecstasy, her body shuddering as if she had just climaxed.
"You can feel it too, right? What happens if you take even the tiniest scratch from my wings?"
A chilling smile spread across her face. She flung her wings wide as if to announce that the real fight started now, and charged.
"Consider it an honor. Now that I've shown you this, I could just kill you... or should I bring you over to our side♥ Aah, that sounds better! A magical girl of your caliber — That Person would surely praise me for it, don't you think?"
Topaz desperately evaded the attacks coming from every direction.
Under ordinary circumstances, taking a wound from mana laced with Black Mana wouldn't cause erosion — but that was only true of monsters with barely any intelligence. The main reason certain parasitizing monsters induced corruption was by injecting Black Mana directly, so it was obvious what would happen if you allowed a hit from a witch: a being who possessed intelligence, had once been a magical girl, and was skilled at mana manipulation.
Fortunately, the witch wasn't used to close combat, so dodging the wildly swung mechanical wings wasn't difficult. And while the mana projectiles carried Black Mana, they didn't have enough firepower to punch through Topaz's own mana, so she could bat them aside. That was how the exchange could even hold. If it had been Cherry and Aqua, even the shots the witch tossed out for fun might have been enough to erode them — so sending those two away had been the right call.
"Fufu. You think just holding out is enough? Even if reinforcements come, most of them will be nobodies~ If I just scatter mana projectiles around, things should get pretty interesting, don't you think?"
An attack on that scale would leave an opening, but whether Topaz could finish things for certain in that opening was still an unknown. Originally, just buying time until reinforcements arrived would have been enough... no. If there hadn't been any Black Mana, she could have closed the distance like this, taken a few scrapes, and beaten the witch into the pavement. It was maddening.
"Aaagh! This is so annoying, Auntieee!!"
The moment she pulled back to catch her breath, the witch mixed the occasional densely condensed projectile — the kind that was genuinely hard to bat aside — into the insane barrage, which was infuriating. Topaz tried moving at extreme speed to throw off the witch's aim, but a screen of fire so thick that evasion was meaningless came crashing down on her. Still, she somehow blocked the barrage and kept dodging the ones that actually mattered.
"Hmm~ You sure it's okay to stall for time~? I'm starting to get bored~"
The sight of her folding her arms smugly and muttering while spraying shots made Topaz's blood boil, but she stayed calm and steadily forced a tedious fight. She even widened the distance further, inducing the witch to thoughtlessly, impulsively spam her specialty — the mana-projectile barrage — so the opponent could play right into her own strengths.
That was the hallmark of those who had fallen to Black Mana erosion. Anger issues, schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder — as if they had contracted every mental illness in the book, people broke down, and the biggest feature of all was that they became impulsive. Whether it was lust or anything else, they became terrible at holding back. Force a boring enough fight, and a gap would surely appear.
"Yaaawn~"
Seeing her even yawn from boredom, Topaz immediately charged at full power and threw a full-force punch.
"Kh...!"
"Too bad. I'm pretty confident in my barriers, too."
She could tell immediately that she had walked into a trap. Those skilled in offensive magic were usually unskilled in defensive magic. But this witch's magic was like switching between sadist and masochist depending on the occasion — equally polished on both attack and defense.
Her fist stopped dead against an extremely sturdy barrier, and in that opening a mechanical wing packed with Black Mana drove into her shoulder. Blood dripped freely. The unpleasant sensation of Black Mana being injected into her body in real time washed through her, like her brain being raped. The sexual desire that had been building up, the irritation of having to restrain that desire because of this sudden callout, the anger at how drawn-out this had become, and even the destructive urge to tear apart the witch in front of her — who she figured was the culprit who had made everything this bad — all mixed together until it felt like her brain was going to cook.
"Kh— nngh...!!!"
"Fufu. Don't hold back. It hurts at first, but once you accept it, it'll feel wonderfully refreshing♥"
First time...?
Come to think of it, she still hadn't lost her virginity. Because of this damn bitch in front of her, she had had to scramble out on a sortie...
The moment she realized that, her chaotic brain sorted itself out and unified into a single desire: she wanted to tear this bitch apart.
"Right... once I get rid of you..."
"Huh...?"
The most basic reason Black Mana shattered the mind was to destroy rational thought so that a monster's instinctive hostility toward humans could be planted more easily. That was why even if the mind broke, hostility toward humans should have been the default. But because the object of Topaz's desire happened to be a tentacle, the logic completed itself: to meet the tentacle — a monster — as soon as possible, she had to tear the witch apart and kill her.
"Hehe..."
Crrrk, screeeeeech!!
Wearing the sunny smile that could have been called her trademark, Topaz grabbed the wing that had pierced her shoulder and crumpled it. Even though Black Mana continued to erode her through contact with the wing, it had no effect whatsoever on a Topaz who had already lost it.
"W-why...? You're clearly being eroded by Black Mana! Against me — who isn't even human?!"
BANG! BANG! BANG!
She gripped the mechanical wing so it couldn't escape, crushing it in her fist, and kept hammering the barrier.
Crack.
"Y-you crazy bitch!! You're being eroded and you're barely any different?! Were you already insane to begin with, or what?!"
As cracks began to spider across the barrier, the witch hastily gathered mana and, the instant the shield came down, fired a projectile so powerful that everything she had launched so far looked like a joke.
"Kh!!"
Firing a high-density mana projectile at close range meant she took damage from the explosion herself and was blown backward, but she had raised her barrier again the moment she fired, so the damage wasn't that bad. She was about to put on a victorious smile when—
THWACK!!!
Her jaw wrenched around.
"Urgh... ghk..."
Looking up through a swimming vision caused by her dislocated jaw, she saw Topaz approaching — burned badly enough in places that her skin was peeling, yet wearing that same sunny smile. Then Topaz grabbed the fallen witch by the collar, hoisted her up, and mercilessly beat her abdomen.
"Ghk!! Urgh!! Bleurh!!!"
"Ahahaha!!"
The witch, taking the beating while vomiting blood, eventually stopped making any sound at all. And yet Topaz, as if simply enjoying pounding the witch who was the source of all her irritation, kept smiling sunnily and persistently pummeled her for the better part of half an hour.
Since the goal was to inflict pain, she had held back her strength, so the witch's body only bruised and managed to keep its shape. If Topaz had been even a little more ill-tempered, the witch might well have been reduced to a lump of meat.
"S-sis...!"
"Ero...sion...?"
"Heroes A-Rank and above, magical girls Crystal-rank and above only — everyone else evacuate immediately!!!"
Cherry and Aqua, who had returned with the reinforcements, stared in stunned horror at the sight of Topaz cheerfully beating the witch, then grimaced at a man's shout and backed away from the battlefield again. When the man in red armor at the head of the reinforcements shouted urgently, only a handful of people remained on the field, and in the silence only the sound of Topaz beating the witch rang out.
"Hey, Miss Topaz..."
The man in red armor carefully approached and spoke. Even he, an S-Rank Hero, couldn't guarantee victory if he took a single hit from a Jewel-rank — and Topaz, who was rated as having the highest physical ability among them — so he approached with maximum caution. Topaz turned to look at him with her usual sunny smile.
"Oh? Uncle Red!"
Her completely normal reaction only made the people around them more tense.
"Right. Do you properly understand the current situation?"
"Hmm~?"
Fortunately her aggression seemed directed only at the witch, so he decided to continue the conversation. When he asked, she tilted her head in puzzlement.
"Ah! Hehe, I'm being eroded right now!!"
The way she burst out laughing as if she had just watched a hilarious comedy made people reach for their weapons in fear, but Red, while continuing to talk with Topaz, kept signaling them to stand by.
"Good. It seems you understand the situation. Tell me honestly what you think when you look at us right now."
"Hmm~ Nothing much... Ah! That's right. I need to get home fast."
"I'd like to let you, but... that's going to be difficult right now."
"That's kinda annoying..."
At the sight of Topaz playfully puffing out her cheeks, Red signaled for them to raise their alert status.
"Why do you want to go home?"
"I'm going home to tentacle—"
"Tentacle...?"
Why a monster, all of a sudden? In the instant Red was puzzled, the last scrap of reason remaining in Topaz slammed the brakes — the tentacle's identity must not be discovered.
"I'm gonna get myself off with a tentacle-shaped dildo until I'm satisfied!!!"
"What."
The filter in her brain was already gone thanks to the Black Mana erosion, so the cover was pretty much worthless — but either way, she hadn't directly stated the tentacle's identity. Praising herself for that, Topaz declared it proudly, and the surroundings that had been filled with nothing but tension began to murmur.
"...You mean masturbation, correct?"
"Yep! I was originally gonna get one off, but I couldn't because of the sortie and it's so annoying!"
"...Sorry. You don't need to be that detailed."
"Okay!"
Facing a group that had fallen silent for a completely different reason than before, she asked again with that same sunny smile, as if she had no idea what was wrong.
"Can I go home?"
"...Haa."
Red let out a weary sigh, dragged a hand down his face, and ordered the surrounding personnel to stand down, which set off another round of murmuring.
"I'll take responsibility. My squad and I will monitor the situation around Miss Topaz's house. It seems her impulses are all concentrated on... sexual desire rather than aggression, so she should be able to receive treatment from Doctor as well."
"Yay~!"
No one opposed Red's declaration, and the decision to stand down was made. On the way back, after a tearful reunion with Cherry and Aqua, who had evacuated first, Topaz set off for home again with an excessively cheerful air.