Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers! #09 (Patreon)

The House With Pink In Its Walls, Part 6

Of the 'deaths' he'd experienced so far, getting his head stepped on while exsanguinated was definitely the most undignified to date.

Having the rest of his body squashed like a bug under one of those hydraulic compressors was definitely overkill. Reasonable overkill, since he was pretty sure the drone was still salvageable, but definitely overkill.

Tammy, you have incoming. Pink rock thing, he typed into the app.

He waited, but there was no reply for some time. Either Tammy was too distracted by what was going on, or her what was happening around her and her urges were too much to handle for her to multitask. Given how much vulnerable he'd been to them while mostly in a drone, it was a very real possibility.

He sat there, staring a the screen impatiently, before remembering her still had a few drones on overwatch.

Thankfully, once he became aware of them again and picked one to 'inhabit'. None of the birds had been too altered. No blatant tentacles or anything like that.

Still, he wasn't going down there. Tammy was right. Of the three of them, he was the only ones whose bodies had blood in them, and that thing was clearly able to rip it out of him from a distance. So, first rule of hostile ranged attacks: don't be seen, and stay out of range. It worked for the military, it worked for gamers, it should work for him…. Hopefully.

He spread his wings, extending his feathers, optimizing for flight and catching the wind as he made eyes on the stomach, looking down, like some sort of biological military surveillance drone.

Having eyes on multiple lines of axis to each other had been hard to coordinate at first, which was why he'd gone for compound eyes. But he'd gotten used to it over time, and eyeballs still had an advantage over compound eyes: they could see clearly, farther. It's why birds of prey had them. The tree cover was thick in Quezon Circle, but fortunately he had multiple drones, and sent them off to get better angles while he remained directly above, trying to see through the obscuring leaves.

Thankfully, everyone was brightly colored and contrasted sharply with the colors of the trees, leaves and grass around them, so even obscured, what few glimpses he got let him keep track. Tammy's bright, celery greens stood out against the darker shades around her, and the hemophage's now dark-red coloring, not darkening to brown the way normal blood would, stood out even more.

He didn't see Willy, but he did see a big pink thing. Had she been neutralized somehow? How? What could you do to stop someone made of water? From his angle high above, he really couldn't tell its proportions very well, any more than he'd been able to get a good sense of it from below before it stepped on him. All he could get through the trees was pinkness and a feeling of angles.

His drones were still trying to find a good angle to see the action from when the pinkness got close to the greenness that was Tammy and… Well, he didn't see clearly, but when the pink moved on, there was no more celery green.

Tammy? he typed into the app.

I'm here, she replied. Just saw your other message. What was that?

Your guess is as good as mine, Sanny typed. What did it look like? Beyond being pink.

It looked like some kind of rock monster, she typed back. Big heavy arms, huge chest, little cube for a head.

Sanny sat back to consider that. It wasn't hard to come to a solution.

It's a person, he said. A human. Like us.

I think so too, but how do you know?

Only a human would want to have two legs, two arms and walk upright. No monsters have been human shaped. They've all been animal shaped.

That sucker bug looked pretty human-shaped to me. Though it had tentacles too.

Probably from drinking my blood, or the blood of all those people it attacked. It changed right after it exsanguinated me, after all.

But why did they attack me? I was just a cute plant girl.

Why wouldn't they attack you? You were a monster plant girl.

I was NOT a monster plant! I looked cute, darn it! I looked like a cute little girl!

You had a coconut helmet head.

That was part of an ensemble, which was very cute!

They must not have realized and thought we were monsters too, Sanny wrote. Or they were overwhelmed by their urges. Is Willy ok? I didn't see what happened to them.

Hang on, I'll ask her.

Sanny waited, watching down below. From what he could see, the pink thing– person, whatever– seemed to be trying to engage the hemophage, but without Tammy trying to hem it in, the thing was free to run, it's now glistening red wings buzzing furiously and somehow giving it speed. Again, why could everyone violate the square cube law but him? It was so unfair. He saw pink things seemingly being thrown at that hemophage, moving at speed. Was the pink thing shooting at it, somehow? Or at least throwing bits of their body as projectiles?

Willy says she suddenly found herself in a maze and couldn't get out, Tammy eventually said. She could hear us, but couldn't tell where we were. She flooded the place, but still couldn't find a way out, and the air holes were strange, so she just abandoned that body.

Sanny sighed. I still have some drones in the area. I'll try to follow them, see if they go to ground.

Can we meet tomorrow? I feel like we need to talk about this, face to face.

Sanny hesitated. Sure, he eventually said. Where do you want to meet?

Let's decide tomorrow, Tammy said. Hopefully, near wherever the mosquito thing goes.

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Sanny stood in his room after a restless night following the hemophage, starring at the back of his hand. It was covered with a thick protective exoskeleton, and on the very back, like some bizarre jewel, was a large compound eye. He stared at it and stared at himself through it in turn, confirming it was functioning, and nodded in satisfaction.

Then he disconnected every nerve not needed to operated voluntary muscles, dissolved his tactile sensory organs on the arm– especially the ones that perceived and relayed pain– lay his hand on the wall, hefted the hammer in his other hand, and started pounding on his now-numb hand, making sure to completely turn the compound eye to mush

He felt absolutely nothing, only a vague vibrating from his shoulder and a sort of awareness that something was physically shifting his hand, but there was no pain as the eyes were crushed messily, as vision in those eyes went dark, as blood went everywhere before he remembered to cut off the veins from his circulatory system. He didn't manage to crush the bones to shards, but only because he wasn't really trying to. That wasn’t the point.

Finally, when his hand was a big, bloody, gory mess, he set down the hammer and briefly wondered if this counted as self-harm. Then he shrugged, tapped the screen of his phone and started regrowing his hand, including the eye.

The individual lenses of the compound eyes started to grow, spreading out and reconstituting the eye like bubbles in a soft drink. Flesh sealed, and the blood that had drained out of the veins was replaced. As soon as his hand and everything was fully functional again, he stopped the stopwatch on his phone and checked the time.

There was no denying it. His drones, unless they were fresh from his main body, regenerated and altered their forms at a significantly slower pace than his man body did, which explained the strange disconnect he'd felt while fighting. It had never really been relevant before. He'd used swarms and attrition to make his first kill, and he'd taken on the plague dog personally. Really, until he'd started interacting with Tammy and Willy, he'd mostly used his drones for surveillance, not actually having to go to the office, and buying groceries.

He supposed there had to be more limits to this thing than needing to breathe, blood, and the never-to-be-sufficiently-cursed square-cube law. Sure, it starts with you feeling invincible but then you find out you're vulnerable to space rocks, magic, tasers, sufficient prep time, character assassination, angst and retcons.

He willed the shell and eye away, and watched as they quickly–very quickly– seemed to blend in with his skin like aging scar tissue, until there was nothing left but seemingly perfectly normal human flesh over human muscle and bone.

Sanny sighed and gave the blood splatters around him an annoyed look. Then he went to fetch a wet rag before it started to stain.

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Sanny had asked them to meet him in one of the coffee shops outside of the mall at North Edsa, which was significantly out of his usual way. He'd come in his own body again, suitably altered of course, and it was only when he stepped inside and saw Tammy waving at him enthusiastically, Willy at her side, did he realized he was wearing the same yellow shirt and pants. The clothes had been the only thing that fit his disguise right, but he hadn't considered what it would look like if he was dressed the same as the last time they'd seem him. Well, seen him in human form, anyway.

He was carrying a backpack with him this time, however, and the oversized backpack was big enough to fit all his clothes and his shoes. After all, when all was said and done, he'd need clothes to change back into. He waved back to Tammy and made a quick detour to buy three cookies.

"Thanks Ate Sanny!" Tammy said, helping herself to one and ignoring the fork like a sane person.

"I thought we agreed you weren't going to be calling me that?" Sanny said, waiting for Willy to take a cookie.

"Oh, right," Tammy said. "Still feels weird." She noticed her cousin not getting one and nudged her gently, the gestured towards the plate.

Willy reached over and took a cookie and, at another prompt from Tammy, said, "Thank you," in a tone that was only mildly awkwardly insincere.

"You're welcome, Willy," Sanny said, taking the last one for himself and biting into it.

There was a moment of respectful silence as they gave the chocolatey bliss its due.

"So, before we start, I'm sorry for hitting you yesterday," Sanny said.

"And I'm sorry for sticking roots in you," Tammy said. "Really sorry. I swear, I'm usually better than this…"

"I think that might be my fault," Sanny said. He took a deep breath. "I've… been doing more testing with drones. I think… I think we lose a degree of self-control when we're operating through a drone than if we're in our actual bodies… so to speak."

"What do you mean?" Tammy asked, frowning.

Sanny pointed to the back of his head. "I think our urges gain more control of the body if it’s a drone. At least, that seems to have been what was happening to me recently. I've had more instances of subtle loSses of control in my drones when you were around, compared to when it was really me."

Tammy frowned, looking down at her hands thoughtfully.

"Also," Sanny said. "I think there are other limitations. Have your powers been slower to act through your offshoots?"

Tammy looked up sharply. "You too? I thought it was just me being stressed, but…"

"No, my powers definitely work slower through a drone," Sanny said. "If I'd been there in the flesh yesterday…" He shuddered, imagining the pain. "I might have been able to recover faster. Fast enough to have made a difference."

"Given how your blood exploded everywhere and the rest of you was squashed like a bug, I'm glad you weren't," Tammy said. "That pink one… I didn't even scratch them. It was literally like hitting rock. What can we do against someone like that?"

"Off the top of my head? Pickaxes," Sanny said. "But hopefully we won't have to. I think… I think whoever that was a college student. Someone like us, who just woke up weird one morning. Maybe they thought we were monsters like that mosquito too, and was just making sure. I mean, it's not like we talked much. They may have thought we were all monsters getting into a fight over food or territory or something. But regardless, there's still the other one. The one that drank my blood. It seemed to get stronger when it did."

"It certainly changed, that's for sure," Tammy nodded.

"I didn't get a good look after… well, after my eyes exploded," Sanny said. "You said it grew tentacles? Did they have eyes?"

Tammy thought, getting a disgusted look on her face. "Ugh, was that what those things on it were? Like little bulbs?"

"Eyes," Sanny said, nodding. "Probably compound eyes, since it was an insect. At least, used to be an insect. I think drinking my blood allowed it to alter its body to be like what I'd been like at the time which…" he frowned. "To be honest, doesn't make sense."

"Makes sense to me," Tammy said, shrugging. "It vampired you."

"Yeah, but I was making those changes on the spot," Tammy said. "Those changes shouldn’t have shown up in my blood, which wouldn't have a lot of DNA in the first place."

"I don't see what the problem is," Tammy said. "Our powers are bullshit. It shouldn't surprise us that the powers monsters have are bullshit too."

Sanny winced. It had been something he had been tentatively thinking about, but to hear Tammy say it… "Does that make us monsters?"

"If TV and downloaded anime have taught me anything, it's that people don't need bullshit powers to be monsters," Tammy said with all the sagely authority of someone who's read and watched too much mass media. "All they need is bad parenting and an election. And the election is optional. "

Sanny tilted his head, nodded. "I suppose that's true."

"Yup," Tammy said, nodding fiercely. "We could be monsters, but we don't choose to be and try not to be. So we're not. We're people."

"And people are friends, not food," Sanny said, nodding.

"And if something doesn't get that… well, that's a monster," Tammy said confidently.

Sanny thought about the place in the back of his head, and tried not to shudder. Instead, he said, "I had my drones follow the hemophage–"

"The what?" Tammy asked.

"The giant mosquito," Sanny said.

"Kinda long," Tammy said. "I just called it the blood bug."

Sanny tilted his head, then blew the lock of hair that flopped down across his face as a result. "Huh. That's shorter, at least. Tell you what, how about you name them from now on? It's certainly less pretentious than what I come up with."

"I shall wield this great power with great responsibility," Tammy said solemnly, which was sort of undermined by the dorky smile she had on.

Sanny nodded. "So, the Blood Bug," he said. "I had my drones follow it but we lost it after nightfall. I've been following social media, but so far the posts have been mainly about the people who died in UP. If anyone's posting about the Blood Bug, I haven't seen it yet."

"Where did you lose it?" Tammy asked.

"East Triangle," At Tammy's blank look, he shrugged. "It's that block directly south of Quezon Circle, with all the hospitals? It managed to lose me by going down into a covered creek, and by the time I found the other end, it was gone. I don't think it knew I was there, but to be honest I don't know how smart it is or how good its eyes are."

Tammy sighed and pulled out her phone. "Can you show me?"

Sanny obliged her, finding the right map. Tammy regarded it, angling it so that her cousin could see as well. Willy looked, but seemed uninterested.

Eventually, she sighed. "What about the pink one? Did you see where they went?"

Sanny shook his head. "They went underground. Literally underground, as in they sank into the ground. Though it supports the theory they're human. They must not want to be identified too."

Tammy sighed. "So, we don't have any more leads," she sighed. "Now what do we do?"

"We do what any hunter does," Sanny said. "We make the prey come to us. We set up a trap, put down some bait, and wait."

"Why does that sound like the last seven minutes of a Scooby Doo episode?" Tammy said. "What sort of bait would we even use?"

"Blood," Sanny said simply. "Lots and lots of blood."

Tammy stared at him, looking vaguely nauseous and horrified. "That's sick."

"It'll work," he said. "I can make a drone that does nothing but make blood and we can set it as bait for the Blood Bug. Throw in some sensory cues of the kind mosquitoes use for finding prey, and it'll come to us."

"I'm vividly remembering the last time it drank your blood," Tammy said. "It got armor."

"If it changes when it drinks my blood," Sanny said, "then we use that to our advantage. Here's what I'm thinking… "