Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers! #01 (Pilot) (Patreon)

Day Of The Plague Dog, Part 1

If the world had a sense of drama, they would be doing this in the dead of night, maybe in the rain, in the seedy underbelly of the city.

But no, it was the middle of the day, the skies were clear and they were in a heavily trafficked public area. The buildings of Eastwood City– not actually a city, but rather a combination shopping area, IT park and residential complex– towered above them, shielding them from the sun.

"Is it nearby?" Tammy asked her cousin as they walked through the crowds of people thronging the sidewalks. A part of her wondered why there were so many people of all ages there, since it was just past lunch on a weekday. Didn't these people have work? School? Granted, she and Willy were there because every bathroom in their school had flooded, forcing the school to close for the day to find out what the heck had happened and wait for the water to drain, but what was everyone else's excuse?

Willy shook her head. "Too many people," she said, in a tone most people would have called brusque, annoyed and vaguely offensive. Tammy could tell that while Willy might be annoyed, it wasn't at her. She knew her cousin. "It's annoying. The thing is hiding in the back. It can't take it."

"Is it hurting you?" Tammy asked, concerned.

The much taller girl shook her head again like she was trying to shoo away a fly. "Doesn’t hurt. Just annoying. I'm fine."

Tammy nodded, trying to smother her concern. If her cousin found it annoying, she'd do her part to try and lighten her load. "But it should be around here?"

Willy nodded. "I felt it coming out of the water near here," she said, her head scanning back and forth as she used her greater height to see over people. "Couldn't catch it before it did."

"It was my fault," Tammy said. "I should have been paying attention."

"You were busy killing the others," Willy said simply. "It's fine"

They didn't even have to keep their voices down. Talking about killing in public? Nothing to do with anyone, they were probably talking about videogames anyway. Tammy resisted the sudden urge to wipe her arms. She knew they were clean now, but…

She shook her head, getting back on task. Despite the tall buildings all around them, a mixture of condos and office buildings full of banks, BPOs and call centers, at ground level the place had a lot of plants in its décor. The islands in the middle of the main roads of the complex were full of plants, there were plant boxes everywhere, and trees grew in large, cultivated patches fronting restaurants and fast food joints. She didn't have to close her eyes or try very hard to feel them. She was just… aware, like she was aware of her fingers or her toes. She could feel the light on their leaves, the slow growth as they broke down carbon dioxide into carbon to build themselves, feel the slow osmotic action of water entering their bodies…

Tammy shuddered, willing herself to keep moving, to not give into as she felt the urge to stand still and root and just grow. She reminded herself she wasn't a plant, no matter if she often felt like someone who was a thousand plants stuck inside a too-meaty human body…

She forced through the lethargy, even as she took control of all the plants in her vicinity. She felt the parts of the plants that reacted and sensed light, the phytochromes and the cryptochromes and other photoreceptors.

Tammy turned them into eyes.

She walked but the plants nearest her shuddered, their leaves gaining thickness. The plants around her, once limited to seeing red and blue and ultraviolet, found the entire spectrum forced on them. She saw people moving and building's rising above her/below her/past her/over her/on her (they were stepping on her, her stems were breaking, her leaves smearing on the ground, but she wasn't dying, she couldn’t die, and even as they passed stems knit and new leaves grew, seeing all around her again…), felt her multitude of leaves spreading wide to see as many angles as possible, felt the chemicals in the water, the tars in the smoke, the pollution in the river even as her roots drew them in–

She felt Willy's hand on hers, a cold, reassuring wetness and she struggled to keep herself separate, to not start thinking she was a plant/all plants!!!! She held on to her cousin's hand even as they kept on walking, not letting herself go over the brink. The plants were her eyes, and that was all! She was a person, a human, not a plant, and the plants were just her eyes!

She held her cousin's hand tighter as their pace slowed, trying to match the people walking on the sidewalk. It let Tammy focus on seeing…

People… so many people around her. She could see herself, though her plant eyes. An average-looking girl with her shoulder-length hair hidden under the hoodie she was wearing, just standing there holding Willy's hand, water dripping from where they touched. She blinked, and suddenly she was looking in front of her through eyes made of meat, in a body of muscle and bone and roots growing from her palms into her cousin…

Hastily, she pulled back, the roots withdrawing under her skin, becoming one with her flesh. "Sorry," she muttered. Her cousin's hand stopped being cool and wet, growing firmer and warmer until they were touching flesh to flesh.

"You needed water," her cousin said simply. "Can you see it?"

"Got distracted," Tammy said, resuming walking as the space in front of them cleared, leaving the small puddle of the water that had dripped from their hands behind. "Hang on…"

Her vision fuzzed and split, and she was seeing through the plants again, through photoreceptors that were not as nature had original intended. She ignored the people, walking in their shirts and jeans and jackets, being all tall and bilaterally symmetrical. She looked for things closer to the ground. She looked for dogs.

There weren't many stray dogs here, and what dogs there were belonged to those who lived in the surrounding condos. Willy had said it had come out of the water so…

She concentrated on the senses of the plants near the river. Many were stunted and unhealthy because the water was polluted, but they were growing. Tammy forced them to live, forced them to see. She saw the dog. It was dripping wet

It was the size of a car and dripping, covered in raw lesions and pus-spewing skin, with its hair falling out in patches. Bloody gouges surrounded by blisters leaked pus on its flanks as it stumbled over the cement walk fronting the river, out of sight of the road. The giant mutt was scrapping itself along the walls, leaving blood, scaled skin, torn hair and other fluids as it tried to relieve itself of the pain it felt from its sores and injuries. Blood and other fluids were bleeding from every orifice. Its stomach was making it look like it was on the verge of giving birth.

"Found you," she muttered, recognizing some of those wounds, surrounded by blisters and white sap. She'd managed to put them on the thing before it had run away.

As it passed them, the nearby plants began to die, and Tammy felt their leaves, their stems, their organs shutting down as shear disease filled them, bacteria and viruses drifting from the plague dog from every sore, every drop it left behind, every breath of air it panted out, infesting every plant. Tammy felt their pain. Tammy felt them die. Tammy felt herself die.

She tried to strengthen the plants, to fill them with life and growth and fight the infections that were killing the, but the plants were too close to the river, too tainted, too weak. She felt stems burst, felt bark split, spots and discolorations spreading on leaves as that plants that were her became factories for–

Tammy's eyes snapped open. The plants weren't her anymore. They were hosts of taint, vessels of unwellness, fonts of impurity. They belonged to the disease.

That was fine. She had more.

"It's that way," she said pointing in the direction of the dying plants. "Come on, we have to hurry."

They wove through the crowd, keeping each other in sight as they made their way across the complex. Their hoodies didn't stand out in the crowd of twenty- and thirty-somethings all wearing call center casual. Tammy doubted they even wondered why two girls would have their hoods up in the middle of a bright sunny day. She had to hold in her thorns in case she brushed up against anyone, but let her skin turn into smooth bark. Her sense of touch degraded as her sensitivity to airflow, temperature, and minor pressures disappeared to nothing, and her body seemed to become stiff even as she kept on moving, even as her joints stopped wrinkling properly when she moved. Her vision jarred, taking on a shaky-cam-like aspect as her neck stiffened, and she had to concentrate to make the small micro adjustments that kept her from feeling nauseas, even as her throat constricted and she was suddenly breathing through her skin.

Her feet and waist weren't contributing much, too smothered to breathe properly. But at least breathing was no longer mixed with smell, so she couldn't smell her own socks. She was aware of the white, blistering sap that now ran through her xylem and phloem in place of blood and veins, of the photosynthesis going on in her face…

They crossed the street, moving past tall trees through which Tammy saw herself. Covered as she was by clothes and wearing a long-sleeved hoodie, she still looked normal, if you didn’t notice that her eyes no longer blinked and were starting to dry. She was also walking a little funny, as if her limbs were stiff, which they sort of were.

Willy, at least, still looked like herself as she kept pace with Tammy, who was following the eyes of the trees. The plague dog had gotten onto one of the main thoroughfares of the complex, the one that circled around and led to the pricey hotel-slash-condo-slash mall complex from the back, and was causing a stir as people, and then cars, avoided the monstrously huge, obviously diseased animal as it stumbled onto the middle of the road while security guards reported on their walky-talkies and otherwise stayed where they were in front of doors.

Tammy sped up as soon as the way in front of her cleared enough, jogging stiffly, her feet pounding heavily on the sidewalk, Willy smoothly keeping up with her.

"Don't wait for me!" Tammy said. "You're faster! Get to it, get it away from people."

WIlly nodded once to show she understood, and then broke out into a dead sprint, her longer legs and lighter body letting her eat up ground as, in the eyes of the plants, her face blurred in the shadow of her hood, hair and skin melding together, becoming a transparent, featureless blob that rippled with her every footfall and movement. Her hood started darkening as it got wet, the dark stain and wetness spreading down her body to her blouse, her jeans, her socks, her shoes.

Tammy would have sighed. Sometimes she wished she could be as blasé about her clothes. As it was, she was pretty sure she'd have to buy a new set of everything, including shoes, even if this turned out well. Unfortunately, she couldn’t make cotton thread bind together again.

Her physical body soon lost sight of her cousin as Willy made like an internet parkour video, jumping over and narrowly avoiding every obstacle in her path, disappearing as she went past an overpriced foreign-brand restaurant with barbershop-themed signage. The eyes on the trees kept track of her cousin's blue hoody as she ran on the street, ignoring the cries of the security guard playing crossing guard as she wove past and between cars, only some of which slowed or stopped when she crossed their view. The trees and potted plants and bushes saw the plague dog's head perk up, and it let out a wet, coughing bark that left a large smear of blood, pus and phlegm on the road as Willy leapt onto a car stopped in front of the plague dog, her shoes leaving footprints on its trunk, roof and hood as she barreled into the plague dog in front of it, her arm drawn back, and punched it in the face.

There was an explosion of water that rose high enough to be seen over the line of restaurants in Tammy's way as Willy hit the plague dog with a punch literally like a firehose, her fist becoming a raging torrent that slammed into the plague dog with deceptive force, the water flowing with unnatural cohesion and surface tension to bring the full force of its mass to bear, sending it flying across the asphalt in an expanding pool of water, tainted blood and diseased bodily fluids.

That's when the screaming finally started.

Which meant people started going towards the screaming with their phones out.

Ugh, people! She was trying to save them, why were they making it more difficult for her?

The plague dog's claws tore at the asphalt, and its bloated belly bursting in bloody bits of unalliterateable fluid and viscera everywhere. From the way people were flinching back and gagging, the smell must have been horrible. Tammy didn't have much of a sense of smell now, and either did Willy.

Tammy finally reached the road, still at a run, her face shifting as her features smoothed out, leaving only a blank surface the green of young new bark. Her body was too heavy for her to do the weaving and dodging her cousin had, but thankfully she didn't need to. Traffic had been stalled and blocked, so she didn't have to pay extra attention to cars. And she wasn't the only one walking into the road for a better view. She just managed to avoid hitting anyone, otherwise it would have been with the impact of a swinging log.

Willy was grappling with the plague dog, which was still full of life despite literally being torn open and dripping filth onto the now-wet asphalt of the road. Her hands wafted cold vapor, and there was blood and more disgusting stuff on her hands, shaped like fists and made of ice. The twisted, bloody bits of flesh that had erupted from the plague dog's stomach were moving, resolving into immature, canid fetuses, their bodies twisted, flesh red and inflamed.

They were already starting to grow, inflating like one of her seeds bursting into a sapling. There were more than a dozen of the plagues puppies, skittering over the wet road so fast that it was hard to count even with her eyes in the trees. Even fresh from the womb, their skin was flaking and already starting to bleed and drip with their own pus. They grew from the size of mice to the size of cats, and then to the size of grown dogs in the time it took them to scramble the distance to Willy, swarming Tammy's cousin even as their stomachs went from cadaverously fleshy to bloating, foaming rabid mouths snapping at her, tearing at her clothes and trying to reach flesh.

Tammy groaned. They'd just gotten done doing this! She rushed into the scene, letting out a yell that sounded like a wooden flute being blown into with absolutely no musical talent as she leapt up and chopped down her hand, her fingers bursting into dozens and dozens of thorny bougainvillea-like vines, green and supple and full of needle thorns. The improvised lash slammed down on the plague pups, tearing at their too-soft, diseased flesh. The stomach that she currently didn't have roiled at the cruelty, even as she felt her vines getting infected where the tips of thorns had snapped and had touched pus.

Her body fought the infection as she ignored it and pressed on. She wasn't some potted plant: her thorns and vine grew rampantly, fighting disease with unbound growth as she let her vines wrap around their bodies, their struggles driving her thorns into their too warm, too stiff muscles as she tried to keep them contained. They contorted as their bloated bellies began to bulge, trying to gnaw at her vines, but she only grew more thorns, tearing and blistering their mouths with her sap, staining the foam they dribbled bright pink. Struggle as they might, with her vines wrapped around them the plague pups didn't have the leverage to tear their way out of her hold.

Her cousin had her own tactics: water couldn't get sick. Her now completely soaked clothes were the only things still giving most of her body humanoid form as fists of solid ice struck at the plague pups blocking her way and hanging on by their teeth onto her wet clothes. Still, she deliberately strode to get to the one that had spawned them. The plague dog stumbled away on its raw, jerky limbs, its gutted belly already knitting shut perversely, the edges bulging, flaking and scaling grossly as it grew like a cancer to seal back its innards.

The plague pups in Tammy's grip burst. The pups hanging from Willy's wet clothes by their teeth burst. The ones knocked to the ground burst.

She didn't feel the blood and other viscera flowing down her vines and staining her as the pups, now the size of full grown dogs, all burst at their bellies, each releasing at least a dozen small, writhing, mouse-sized premature pups, skins all red raw and scaling, even as they moved and grew and bloated…

She shouldn't have gotten squeamish.

Literally dozens of dozens of newly birthed plague pups began to swarm them in earnest, skittering on the ground with bloated, inflamed limbs and squamous hides, trying to entangle them with sheer numbers. The degenerate canines bit at her shoes, her jeans, climbed up on each other to jerkily throw themselves at her and covered her with worse than piss.

Her skin was bark and felt none of it when it was penetrated and white sap flowed, even as those that bit her yipped in pain as their mouths broke out into blisters and swelled even more than before. She wasn't breathing through a nose, and smelled none of it. Only the sight of what was happening brought her disgust, and she'd seen worst on TV and games. The vines growing from her hand fell off, freeing her limb even as they continued constricting and growing around the pups they captured, growing through flesh, roots burrowing inwards for something to latch onto and feed on, even as the pups filled them with sickness. Fingers grew back, fresh green and tipped with thorns as she grabbed the pups latching on to her and began rip them off, kicking them aside with her dense, wooden legs, trying to clear the path towards the plague dog. It had already gotten away once, it wasn't getting away again!

Then she heard the new screams.

Tammy realized she'd become distracted, even as she looked through the eyes of the plants around her again. From the vantage points of the grass, the trees, the decorative greenery and the potted plants on condo balconies, she saw the situation. People had been crowding, their phones out, some still trying to get closer even as something clearly unnatural was occurring. They had gotten too close, and not all the plague pups had focused on Tammy and Willy.

Twelve dozen rapidly growing, monstrous, plague-ridden puppies were more than enough to be some obstacle her and Willy, even as they both tried to power though them to get at the plague dog. They had pushed and thrown and beat the plague pups aside, little things that were swelling like balloons. The pups had kept on growing even when cast out of the pair's way, stumbling on uneven limbs that either refused to function or where twisted or undersized. But they had teeth. And as they grew, they had been pushed outward, towards the edges of the road, towards the watching people who were backing away, but not far enough, not fast enough…

And then the pups were too close, and they were going after people, biting at ankles and knees, and these people didn't have legs made of wood.

Even after all the pictures they'd shown on the news, of twisted creatures grown beyond sane size, of a swarm of bird-sized insects devouring everyone in a slum to the bone, of the giant forest of unearthly mushrooms that had overtaken Baseco out in Manila Bay, people had not yet learned to fear monsters enough. They still hadn't learned to run.

People fell, the plague pups drawing blood, biting deeply through flimsy business casual clothes and into flesh. People tried to kick, to crawl away, even as they found to their horror that they couldn't move their legs…

A heartsick cold gripped Tammy's chest, and despite not having a heart she felt like something was physically squeezing it. She stared after the plague dog, already hobbling away. Willy had abandoned her shoes and socks, vaguely foot-shaped blobs of water sprouting from the ends of her soaked jeans somehow supporting her weight and getting traction on the asphalt road despite seeming to blend with the water mingling into expelled mess on the ground as she made to run after it.

It was going to get away again. But they had to let it, otherwise these people…

"Blue!" she cried, an inhuman voice that sounded like wind roaring through the knots of a hollow tree. "Let it go! We need to kill the others!"

Willy heard her, coming to a stop and turning to look back at her. Even with a face that was just a blob of clear water, Tammy knew her cousin was confused at the sudden change of priorities, of killing the little ones instead of the big one. The big one was the important one, the carrier that made all the little ones, roaming along the border of Marikina and Quezon City and spreading infection and sickness.

But Willy didn't ponder it long. She trusted Tammy. Turning away from the escaping plague dog, she switched targets. The spreading water, still thick on the road and pooling at the gutters to flow on towards the drains, abruptly froze, the water turning into ice with no warning. Plague pups that had been hobbling on the water began to skid and slip, and a few that had been partially submerged found their feet trapped.

Tammy had the feeling they'd need to have another 'why didn't you do that sooner' talk.

The plague dog was still getting away. It was limping, but it did so with speed, ignoring the people in its path that, not surprisingly, were getting out of its way with alacrity. Tammy wanted to just go after it. To ignore the pups around her and the people they were attacking and bring the plague dog to the ground, making it one with the earth and filling it with her roots as she devoured every part of it with her roots…

She wasn't a plant. And she was doing this for a reason.

She turned away, knowing the plague dog would get away again, knowing they'd have to hunt it down once more. But they'd been hunting it to keep people safe.

Something yellow leapt over her, landing lightly behind her on the edge of Willy's ice and kept on running.

Still connected to the plants, still seeing through their eyes, Tammy didn't need to turn to see it.

At first, she thought it was some kind of exhibitionist wearing full body spandex. Then she realized their body was all wrong. It was too tall and slim to be healthy, with a waist so narrow it seemed spindly, or the result of too much photo-manipulation. Their limbs moved strangely in a way she couldn't quite put her finger on, reminding her of a doll. The long limbs quickly ate up the ground between the newcomer and the plague dog, which still struggled to run. The newcomer leapt over the plague dog to land in its path, blocking its way.

Just like the dog it used to be, the darted to the side to evade the newcomer, but a limping dog the size of a vehicle isn't as nimble as a regular dog. Its shoulder slammed into the yellow figure, tackling it aside. Instead of being thrown back, however, the unnatural limbs moved as if independent of the torso, the yellow one regaining their balance as one hand slammed fingers-first into the plague dog's side in a knife-hand strike.

Blood and pus erupted from the wound as the plague dog let out a surprisingly high-pitched yup of pain, even as the newcomer was yanked off their feet, pulled along by the plague dog. The newcomer was pulled along for a step or two before it leapt up onto the plague dog's back, landing amidst the raw, crimson skin and thrust its other hand, fingers rigid and aiming for the head. They missed, clipping off a leprous ear and tearing a bloody gash down one side of the plague dog's face. Not letting that deter them, they struck again and again, squeezing at the plague dog's side with their long legs. The plague dog frantically shook its head as they stumbled from side to side, trying to buck off its yellow rider.

Tammy kept several dozen plant eyes on them even as she fought to keep the plague pups away from the crowd. She tore open the front of her shirt with only a mild twinge of regret– she'd really liked that shirt– letting her front erupt into branches. Her back bowed as her feet burst her shoes open, roots growing across the asphalt she stood on, fine, fine filaments finding the minute cracks on the road and flowing inside, then growing and tearing the surface only to continue growing downward. The branches erupting from her chest grew with unnatural speed, bright green buds becoming silvery branches becoming brown, scaly bark as the branches grew and grew, leaves sprout all along their length, opening to catch the sliver of sun that came between the skyscrapers, taking in the carbon dioxide and breaking it down to so her body could grow, spreading in all directions, thorny vines bursting from their ends to dart down and tangle around the growing plague pups. They were the size of dogs again, their stomachs bloating and writhing as things moved under their flesh…

As her head touched the ground, her body now bent over completely backwards, she felt what would be her scalp writhe, felt the filaments of roots extend and begin to burrow and tear inexorably downwards into the ground as the tree that now stood shivered unnaturally, thorny vines growing like growing faster than kudzu and striking like snakes to encompass the road and the sidewalks and the living. They ignored people, wrapping around plague pups, pulling them away from people, keeping them from escaping. More branches grew outwards, pressing against the fronts of buildings, smothering windows as they followed where plague pups had stumbled, vines drooping down and wriggling to seek them out. They were tained by disease on contact, their wood beginning to rot, but she grew and grew, her growth outpacing the disease, smothering the plague pups. She felt peoples' screams on her leaves, felt them bat aside her vines, but she didn't relent. She grew and grew and grew, her canopy rising higher, seeking more sun.

Sudden water washed over her, and her roots fed hungrily as Willy flooded the road again, water gushing from her feet and hands and face, or at least the parts of her still intact and soaked clothes that corresponded to those parts. Her vines pulled at the plague pups, wrapping around them as she pulled them under the shadow of her leaves, their wriggling bodies like putrid fruit. The water rushed over the diseased mongrels still on the road and water immediately became ice, freezing the plague pups in place, even as the vines wrapped around them, thorny seeds growing from the bark with the relentlessness of bamboo shoots, piercing their body. Their stomachs burst, trying to release more plague pups, but her vines wrapped and wrapped and wrapped, more thorny seeds growing from her vines, burrowing into the plague pups. Her vines strained, the plague pups trying to grow, to break free from her hold, but she continued to wrap over them, her vines reinforcing their confinement…

And then her thorn-shaped seeds, their hard outer shells protecting them from infection until they were rooted deeply in their hosts, burst into saplings.

Her massive, spreading body swayed as her hanging clusters of vines suddenly erupted, malformed and vaguely degenerate, stunted sapling growing from them, covered in gore, roots feeding on blood and flesh and bone marrow.

She sighed with satisfaction as the saplings fell from her grasp, all dropping to the ground as she severed her vines, cutting off the sickness. She breathed, filling herself with air, and she could feel her body breaking it down and growing from it even as they released waste oxygen into the atmosphere. Her body swayed in the wind, her leaves shivering as the canyon of tall buildings on either side channeled the air into a rush…

She jolted to attention as her roots froze, the veins in her stem filled with water and sap bursting as their contents expanded. Frantically, she tried to grow more roots, to mend and repair herself, but the cold was pervasive, chilling the ground, and there was a dark maw, and endless depth that she couldn't fill, a frightful and devouring–

Hey, a voice that spoke with the ice in her roots and sap and stems said, slapping her mind. Snap out of it. You're turning into a tree again.

The entire tree shuddered and suddenly Tammy opened her eyes inside her own mind and realized she was trapped, trapped inside a tree, unable to move, unable to feel…

With a scream of terror only her cousin would hear, a vaguely humanoid-shape ripped itself out from the side of the enormous tree that now blocked the road. Tammy stumbled, back in one body once more, even as she could still feel the ancient-seeming chimeric monster of a tree, even as she frantically tried to change back to have lungs and bones and muscles and skin–

Before that could happen, she felt a hand grab her wooden arm. Instinctively, filaments of roots began to grow at the point of contact, trying to suck in the water that suddenly touched it, even as she recognized her cousin's watery touch. Her cousin stood there in her sodden clothes, a vaguely humanoid figure of transparent water defiantly standing against gravity. "We need to get the dog," Willy said in the voice of the water that resonated through the puddle under Tammy's feet, in the fluid she'd managed to suck up, through the darkness in the back of her mind that sank into endless depths…

Tammy shook her head, bark falling off as she forced herself to define a division between head and shoulder and neck, forced herself to stop taking in the water that was Willy. More bark fell as she cast off excess wood, carving for herself an approximation of her body in vibrant, fresh green bark. Fine wooden fingers tipped with thorn claws flexed, and her thumb, peak of human evolution, pressed against them. Do good now, freak out about nearly becoming stuck as a tree twice in one day later. Again.

Sound came rushing back as she made organs to hear, sight returned as she lined the front of her head with photoreceptors. She could have seen from any point on her body, but she put them on her head. People saw from their heads, through their eyes, and although her eyes were wide, dark blotches on the front of a knob of wood as green as a new leaf, they were eyes and they were on her head. She was a person, not a plant, no matter how much she felt like one. No matter how much!

Legs that bent like new stalks but were heavy as hardwood stepped forward, away from the shadow of the tree she had… grown, towards the plague dog that now stood alone as it fought the yellow newcomer. Arms swung out of habit to keep her balance, and she breathed in air through her skin, let it out through her entire body. She was a person, not a plant.

Her cousin followed beside her, looking vaguely comical as she did, like something out of a laundry commercial. Ready and waiting to follow Tammy's lead, as she always did.

The yellow newcomer was… bigger now. Previously slim limbs had bulked with lean muscle, and what had seemed like tights now seemed like armor plates, and were covered in blood and pus. Curving claws protruded from the end of the newcomers hands, grappling with the plague dog and tearing bleeding furrows on their raw hide. Despite the plague dog greatly outmassing it, the two seemed evenly matched as the smaller newcomer danced nimbly around the plague dog's jaws and bulk, trying to tear at the beast's limbs.

Tammy stared at the newcomer, and in the back of her mind, she felt hunger, felt the urge to bury meat and bone into the earth and then devour it all with her roots, fill her veins with blood–

She smothered it just as she did every time she looked at her cousin.

Her name was Tammy Olivarez, and she wasn't a plant, no matter how much she'd felt like it since that day.

"Come on," she said, "let's go help them."

They ran.

Behind them, the tree stood, looking ancient as it rooted in the middle of the street, its leaves and branches pushing against the buildings on either side as the fallen sacks of vines that littered the ground around it bled blood and pus and gore.