A couple days earlier…

 

When Merumeru arrived back at Bob and Martha’s farm, she was excited to go explore the island in the sky again. Ducks awaited her, assuming they didn’t fly away.  After getting breakfast she explained her plan.

 

“I’m going to go explore the floating island. I'll be back in a few days hopefully in time to meet Alex when they get back to Mignoneville,” the slime girl said.

 

“Won’t that be nice.” Martha patted Merumeru on the head and smiled.  However, there was no understanding in her eyes.

Having gotten adult permission, Merumeru donned her plumber outfit and dove into the big pipe.  Having a proper plumber outfit was necessary to activate the magic in the paired pipes after all.

 

Clambering out of the pipe, the red-hatted, blue-overalled slime girl looked around carefully.  The stream still flowed.  The small pond still had water in it.  The ducks however were absent.  Fir trees grew all around.  Some sparse grasses grew along the banks.  The ground was very rocky.  There were rocky outcroppings that dwarfed their really big carriage in size.

 

She inspected the ground to see if there were any other things living there besides ducks and plants.  Several bugs darted around on top of the water like they couldn’t sink.  A few frogs and lizards were hiding around.  She even saw some butterflies flitting about.  Wanting to get a better view, she used her jumping powers to hop from branch to branch on the tallest tree around and survey the area from an elevated position.

 

After she stood perched atop a large tree she placed a slimy blue hand over her brow and looked around, spinning her head in a circle.  She saw trees, trees and more trees.  The view above was filled with clouds.  However, not far away she noticed a small stream of smoke coming out from the ground above the treetops.  Maybe someone was camping up here?

 

Merumeru hopped her way along the trees playing ‘the ground is lava.’ Making her way towards the smoke, she passed what looked like a gravel road that led directly towards the smoke and directly away from it.  It was a lot nicer than anything she’s seen in town or at the farm. On one side of the road poles stood up almost as high as the trees.  The poles had three thick black rope-like things on top of them.  They had a wooden plank on the top of them and some gizmo connecting the lines to the top of the weird wooden structure. Two carriages could pass by each other easily on the road.  Following the roadline, she approached the source of the smoke.  She saw a log cabin.  It had several pipes sticking out of a shingled roof.  Fancy transparent glass windows lined each wall.  It was not as big as the adventurer’s guild but bigger than the typical house that they inspected looking for salvage in the ruins.  The long houses they made for the tribespeople were bigger but not nearly as elaborate. 

 

Next to the cabin stood a big metal building.  It looked like a barn but made out of metal sheets.  A big metal barn door took up most of one side of the building.  It didn’t have any windows.  A strange lantern-looking thing pointed down from above.  There was a strange rectangle-thingy that was white on the bottom but had strange patterns on the top of some blue-gray substance that had a slight rainbow reflection.  Merumeru wasn’t sure what that was either.  It looked like some kind of glass but really intricate. 

 

Sensing that someone was home, the slime girl walked up to the front door and knocked a white-gloved hand on the knocker.  Being a proper young lady, she waited for someone to answer the door.

 

After a short wait, a small girl wearing baggy clothing answered the door.  She wore some ill-fitting cargo shorts, a way-too-big flannel shirt.  She wore a billed hat that had an ax and a tree patch on the front.  “Hello?”

 

“Hello!” Merumeru smiled at the cross-dressing lady.

 

“Oh, a visitor, I can’t understand you but come on in.” The girl waved her in.  She looked a bit nervous.

 

“I’m Merumeru, why are you living up here on this floating rock?” Merumeru asked.

 

“Hmm, I still can’t understand you but would you like some tea?”  The girl headed into the house, motioning for the slime girl to follow.

 

The house was quite messy.  There were dirty plates all over the kitchen counter.  Clothing lay on the floor.  There were some burn marks on the tiles of the kitchen.

 

“I’m not sure how all of this stuff works.  I’ve been figuring it out as I go.  My name’s Cosmos.  What’s yours?” The girl took out a metal pot and set it on the counter.  She waved a hand and a small portal opened beside it that showed some liquid hot magma.  Heat radiated into the room and the side of the pot got red hot quickly.  The water started boiling in less than a minute.  She tore open a bag that had a bag inside of it with a string attached to it.  She tore open the second bag and poured it into a teapot, then added the hot water on top of it.

 

Merumeru paused, watching, she didn’t think that tea was supposed to be made that way.  

 

Noticing that the girl was awaiting her answer she stated her name. “Merumeru.”

 

“Your name is Merumeru?  That’s nice.  You are not from the moon are you?” The lady poured two cups of tea for them.  The cups were really nice.  They were perfectly round with a nice consistent glaze all around them.

 

Merumeru shook her head to answer the question.

 

“Oh that’s good Merumeru.  I can talk to you then.  You see, I’m a magical girl.  But I’m kinda retired.” She paused, considering her words.

 

“Go on.” Merumeru encouraged her to continue.

 

“I work in the escalation department.  Luna said that I was the most successful magical girl ever.  Too successful apparently.  If I took an oath to never step foot on Terre again she’d be able to extract some good concessions out of her rivals.” Cosmos said.

 

Merumeru’s eyes widened.  This girl and Alex had a lot in common. 

 

“But, let me tell you, working a desk job really sucks.  Most of the time I don’t have anything to do but when anyone calls me it is always a pain in the butt.  A couple months ago, I had this whole thing shoved in my lap.  Luna’s relationship department takes care of obligations that magical girls have while they are on an active quest.  They make sure that their farms don’t get ruined while they are away or some greedy moneylender decides to collect a debt by confiscating all their stuff like bandits.” Cosmos waved her hand around as she ranted.  Surprisingly, she didn’t spill any of the tea she was holding.

 

“Um, that’s nice.  But that doesn’t explain what you are doing here and what this place is.” Merumeru felt like she wasn’t getting through to Cosmos.  The only one that really understood her was the nereid. 

 

“Hmmm, not sure what language you are speaking.  It sounds like you are just saying your name over and over again.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, so I tried to talk to this magical girl whose creditors were having golems call saying the same message over and over again but nothing anyone did seemed to get through to them.  They even said that they were going to take her house.  So they came to me for help. My powers are space related you see.  So I figured, a good way to get them to stop calling would be to fake Alex’s death.  It would also be two birds with one stone.” She gave Merumeru a big grin.

 

Merumeru raised a slimy eyebrow.

 

“Traveling to other worlds can be somewhat time consuming.  Well getting there is not super hard for me but trying to navigate a completely different world can be time consuming.  Tracking down all the right parties, figuring out all the facts and handling all the paperwork to set things right.  Bleh, I say that stuff is boring.  I solved it in a day and no one will know the better.  So I get a free month's vacation. I took care of everything in a couple days.  I made a big portal and scooped up this place, setting it in geosynchronous orbit and then mucking with gravity to send a big mostly gold asteroid crashing into the crater I created, hiding any evidence that something weird happened.”  Cosmos cackled at her genius plan.

“Um, I didn’t understand most of that but are you saying that you know Alex?” Merumeru asked.

 

“You are such a good listener.  Has anyone ever told you that?” Cosmos sipped her tea.

 

Merumeru figured she’d just listen.  This girl liked to talk.

 

“Anyway, this place has some cool stuff.  I’m even borrowing some of Alex’s clothes.  I like to dress up to be less cute because it dampens my powers.  When you’ve been a magical girl for as long as I have, sometimes it is nice to turn down the ability to notice what is going on in space.   Let me tell you, one time Terre was being invaded by these space creatures.  They kept bombarding cities from orbit.  So I used my magical powers to reverse gravity and we flung rocks right back up at them.  However, shooting rocks that wanted to accelerate away from things made them a bit predictable.  So I had to find a way to use magic to muck up gravity to make some floating fortresses to go up and battle the invaders from a higher position.  That’s what I did with this place.  People started calling the rocks I altered float stones.  When we defeated the aliens and sent them packing it caused everyone to go crazy for the rocks that were just floating around.  I took off to another world to help with another catastrophe there and came back a decade later and the world had torn itself apart going to war over these float stones.”

 

Merumeru nodded.  She didn’t understand but she could pretend.  The slime girl sipped the tea with a knowing look on her face.

 

“It was vexing. Everyone cheered for me and our team of magical girls when the aliens decided to leave and when I came back something I made turned into the biggest war this world had seen up until then.”  Cosmos puffed out her cheeks in frustration. 

 

Merumeru kept listening while Cosmos ranted about her past exploits for hours.  Apparently Cosmos was over two centuries old and had fought off several demon lords.  However, she retired several years before the demon queen came into power.  She was a little bit frustrated that she couldn’t participate in this round of the fight against good versus evil but she trusted Luna.  Luna was worried having someone as powerful as Cosmos on Terre would cause the evil deities to escalate the firepower they were bringing to the fight.  If enough of that happened there wouldn’t be a planet left.  While some parties would be okay with that, Luna certainly wasn’t.  And being the deity that got Cosmos started with her magical girl class she didn’t want to question her prediction on how things were going.  Plus one of the concessions that she got was that unbonded familiars can’t be hurt.  Cosmos thought that would make finding a partner much easier for the flamingos on the moon but the sneaky demons found a way to ruin the culture of humans so that there wasn’t much of a chance to find a person fitting to be a magical girl.

 

Also, the fiasco that happened with Alex started rumors that really made the unbonded Flamingos not want to go to earth.  Many of the familiars that haven’t finished their training work at the call center and the sheer volume of contact they got from the automated spam from missing bills terrified the flamingos.  Earth now had a reputation for being a terrifying place.