Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers! #18 (Patreon)

On the Madness Of Mountains, Part 5

They found Sanny hiding in an overgrown vacant lot. The lot had been fenced off with barbed wire, but this was the Philippines. Very people took that as an actual deterrent. Most barbed wire fences had a hole politely left open with wire pulling the barbed wire back as a courtesy to other trespassers.

Kim wondered what the people sitting in their cars who saw them go in thought about it as he, an obviously high-school or even elementary school-aged girl, and a tall person of almost indeterminate sex went through the hole in the barbed wire and the foliage convenient closed up behind them to block them from view. Probably nothing good, but this was the Philippines. No one was likely to call the police until actual screaming, running, or a rock being thrown and just barely scratching their car happened.

Kim was surprised to find Sanny had already… changed, in every sense of the word. Gone was the dark-skinned dyed blonde. Instead, a tall humanoid insect stood there, calmly folding a pair of jeans in its chitin-covered hands. Hard-looking plates that reminded him vividly of seafood, if they'd been orange instead of yellow, shifted, slid and overlapped each other at the strangely mundane action as she finished folding and stuffed the pants into the backpack at her feet.

"Hey guys," she said, the barest little slit where her mouth should have been flapping as she spoke. "Get dressed and shrink down. I think I can fly us faster than the traffic. At worst, I might have to turn into something with legs and just run us there." Her voice still sounded the same. For some reason, Kim had expected some kind of buzz to her words, of some kind of weird modulation, but no. It was a perfectly ordinary-sounding, feminine voice.

Tammy titled her head, even as her visible extremities began to change, taking a dark, bamboo-green hue. "Are you sure you can fly like that?" she asked.

Sanny looked down at herself and sighed. "Yeah, I can, but I suppose I'll go faster if I shrink down," she said, sounding regretful. Her compound eyes glittered as she turned to face Kim. "Get changed, Kim," she said a little more brusquely. "And by that I mean turn to rock, then take off your clothes. We're all going naked here."

Kim wasn't sure he flushed in embarrassment—he'd never actually seen that happen—but he did start to turn pink. Bright pink. His hair turned pineral-like, getting absorbed into his suddenly-reflective skin, a few places stained with sweat and skin oils that had been left behind when his body had changed. He felt himself growing heavier as his inside became homogeneous, his breathing, blood flow, and all other bodily functions just… ceasing to be as he changed into mineral. His brother had once asked him what he did his thinking with when his head was solid rock and he didn't have a brain. He'd stayed up all night staring at the ceiling that night.

Tammy had started stripping with an ease that had made him self-conscious, even though he'd consciously pulled back any, ah, outgrowths into his body before he started undressing too.

It was so strange when his body was completely rock. He could see from every square inch of himself, giving him literally omnidirectional vision. He could even see through the soles of his feet, and he was glad he didn't have a stomach anymore because the little moving things in the soil were he was standing were vaguely distressing. He heard with his skin, picking up subtle vibrations in the air, felt wind direction from subtle pressure.

It should have been all too much. The sensory overload alone from having every square inch of his surface being something he saw with should have left him disoriented and stumbling. After all, he could barely floss his teeth in the mirror without getting confused, this should have been utterly paralyzing.

It wasn't. It wasn't, and he couldn't understand why.

He gathered up his clothes, rolling them up together as small as he could, only to realize that was far too thin. There'd been no feeling of resistance, only seemingly miniscule pressure. Pressure that had compressed his clothes so firmly they look like they'd been lain flat and ironed.

"You might want to let up," Sanny said dryly. "You have to wear those pants again later."

"I guess you haven't been able to get used to your strength yet," Tammy said, patting in on the shoulder. That felt strangely solid as her voice reverberated across the surfaces of his body closest to her. "Um, don't touch anything except the monster then, okay? If you're anything like me and your sense of touch isn't as sensitive as it normally is, you'll need practice to recalibrate yourself so you don't start crushing things."

"How long did it take you to learn?" Sanny asked.

"Um, a few days? Willy let me practice with her, and… well, it's a good thing we heal."

Sanny's face was completely smooth. There were no cheekbones to tighten, no eyebrows to draw together. Just a mostly blank shell-like surface and a pair of wide, building compound eyes. Her tone, however, told Kim she'd be frowning if she had the capacity to do it. "Is this safe? I know we're all stupidly hard to hurt to kill normally when we're like this, since we can just bullshit injuries, but if he's so inexperienced he's not even used to his other body, it might be too dangerous to bring him along."

"I'm fine," Kim said. "I might not be used to being like this, but I'm tough. I mean, my body's tough."

"It's not you I'm worried about, it's the soft, squishy meat people like me being around you," Sanny said blandly.

Kim didn't wince. Unless he intended to move, his body didn't. It was rock after all, and rock didn't move. His face was featurelessly smooth, almost but not quite like Willy's completely transparent face, and so betrayed nothing.

Actually, of the four of them, only Tammy had any sort of facial expression at all. Her bright green face with dark spots for eyes contorted into an almost pouty form that she leveled at Sanny. "I'm sure Kuya Kim won't hurt anybody," she said.

Sanny gave a sigh. "Fine, fine. The three of you get shrunk down so I can carry you and we can be off before people start getting down from their cars to peep at what we might be doing."

Tammy nodded, eventually followed by Willy.

Kim stared at her blankly. "Um, shrink?"

That blank stare bored into him again.

"I'll teach him!" Tammy said hastily. "Okay, Kuya Kim, it's simple…"

––––––––––––––––––

It was simple, and obvious, in hindsight. After all, he can absorb the bits of him that fall off in his sleep without getting bigger or heavier. That meant he could make his absorbed mass go away, at least when it came to his pink rock form. And if his entire body was pink rock…

He learned it quickly, despite Sanny pointedly tapping her foot in impatience, and soon… well, he'd reduced his body to an octahedron about the size of a small paperweight, Tammy had become a very undersized coconut, and Willy was a lopsided, oblong ball of ice. All of them were being held in a firm but gentle grip as Sanny flew through the air, her four dragonfly-like wings sounding like a particularly powerful two-stroke motor.

Kim could see dark, seemingly discolored spots moving around the hard green shell that was Tammy right then, like little worms burrowing under something's skin. He was getting the feeling those were her eyes, or at least how she saw when she was… planty? How did that work, exactly? Plants didn’t have eyes, right?

The view, for his own part, was… well, not exactly breathtaking, but certainly not something he'd ever seen before. Even when he'd ridden on planes, he could never really look straight down. Here he could see in all directions, despite the serration-edged tentacle… claw… thing… Sanny was carrying them with—he could sort of understand not wanting to touch Willy with flesh, since he could tell she was very cold—and the low altitude let him see a lot of detail down below.

The road they'd been on and still roughly following—they were going straight towards the rising volcanic plume, not following the road, but the road more or less continued to stay under them—was filled with vehicles trying to escape the area around Taal Volcano. Already a thin layer of grey volcanic ash was falling from the sky like rain, covering everything with a light layer than had cars occasionally turning on their windshield wipers.

Off to the sides, at the roadside amenities and restaurants and the store-filled stopping area, he saw people pointing up at them—well, probably pointing up to Sanny, since the three of them were barely visible—as they flew by. It was hard to judge how fast they were flying, since they didn't really have any markers to compare to up in the sky, but given how quickly they were approaching the tops of the massive volcanic caldera of tall—far faster than Kim ever remembered them approaching by car, even with no traffic to slow them down—Sanny had to be flying at least 60kph.

They'd traveled about half the distance to the volcano from their take-off point when Kim noticed something in the distance. "Hey!" he called, vibrating his whole body.

In response, Sanny's raised her hand, with the three of them held in it, up to the side of her head like a phone. "What?" she called, her voice faint and weak over the sound of her wings and the wind.

Kim didn't have fingers, and he didn't dare risk growing anything, since it might accidentally make Sanny let go, but he tried as best he could. "Back the way we came and to your right," he called, his body vibrating. "Back towards Manila! There's something glowing in the air."

Sanny turned her head slightly, and Kim was suddenly getting a direct look at one of her compound eyes. "I see it," he heard her say faintly.

Behind them, flashing and arcing streaks of light were visible in the sky over the city. Though, from the angle, it was just as possible it was happening over Manila Bay. Between the clouds and the volcanic ash, visibility was a bit shot, but the lights had burned, radiant and bright, seeming to pierce through clouds in the way.

Next to him, barely audible even though they were right next to each other and touching, he heard Tammy say, "What is it?"

"Probably nothing good," Sanny said, somehow managing to hear her. "Likely something we'll have to deal with. I hope it's not another thing that can fuck the square-cube law. I'm getting really tired of those."

"Kuya Kim, can you ask your brother Ryan if there's anything about it on the internet?" Tammy said.

Kim was confused for a moment, then remembered he'd left a bit of himself with his brother. "I'll ask."

Now, how to do this again…?

It was like holding two thing in his hands and shifting his gaze from one to the other while still seeing the first in his peripheral view. One moment, he was high in the air, behind held like a cheap brick cellphone, the next he was lying next to the handbrake of his family's van, in the little cup holder too small to fit more anything more than one of his corners. He heard the sound of the air-conditioning, felt his molecules getting ever so slightly closer together as cold air blew over one of his surfaces without really feeling the air rushing over him.

The radio was on, and his dad and brother were listening to a report on the progress—or lack thereof—the local governments surrounding Tall volcano were having in evacuating people. There was mention of 'lava bombs' falling from the sky and either demolishing buildings or splattering into still-molten lava when they hit the ground, which was apparently very unusual. Many of the latter were reported to have started taking horse-like shapes, only to suddenly collapse…

Was the Lava Horse making drones? That… was bad, right?

Kim made his cube vibrate, rattling it against the plastic of the cut holder. "Dad? Ryan?"

There was a moment of confusion, and both of them checked if their phones had accidentally been put on speaker mode before remembering the cube.

"Kuya? What is it?" Ryan asked, picking him up and holding the cube to his mouth. Kim was glad his senses were radically reduced when in this form. He didn't need to smell his brother's breath.

"Ryan, you don't need to hold me that close, I'm not a phone. If you can hear me, I can hear you," Kim said. "I need you to check the internet. Anything about bright lights or streaks of light over Manila or Manila Bay in the last… ten, maybe twenty minutes?"

"Sure, I can check," Ryan said, putting him down on top of the dashboard.  "Why?"

"We saw something from the air," Kim said. "Something glowing bright enough to be seen through clouds."

"Wait, you're flying? That's so cool! Are you using a warp space bubble?" Ryan said excitedly, even as he started tapping on his phone.

"Ryan, I'm an electrical engineering student, I have no idea what you're talking about,” Kim said patiently. "Sanny is flying us."

"She is? How?" Ryan asked.

"Flapping her wings really hard," Kim said. "People should have taken pictures of us flying by now. You can look for it later, find me the lights first."

"Found it!" Ryan said. "There's… some kind of bright lights flying over the city… planes being diverted to stay clear… oh, it says the lights are something REALLY hot, people on the ground say they can feel the heat even from a distance! A few people got blinded looking directly at it. People are comparing it to the sun…"

The sun?

"According to this, it's moving away from the city," Ryan said. "Heading towards Cavite."

"Wait, it's heading here?" Kim said.

That couldn't be a coincidence, could it?

He focused towards the body Sanny was still carrying, looking around.

In the distance, a bright, burning speck of light seemed to be just hanging in the air, moving ever so slightly sideways…

Or heading in their general direction at an angle.

Just as he was about to vibrate and warn the others, however, it vanished.

No bright afterglow was burned into his eyes. He didn't have eyes that worked like that. Instead, one moment there was a bright, burning speck of light in the sky, the next it was just… gone.

"It's gone…" he heard Sanny say. "Was that it?"

"I don't know," Tammy said. "But whatever that was, I could feel it. My chlorophyll was photosynthesizing from that…"

"Guys," Kim said, "we might have something coming towards us." He told them what his brother had found on his phone.

"Huh…" Sanny said, sounding thoughtful. "That's… huh."

"It's heading here?" Tammy said, sounding alarmed.

"No reason to think that," Sanny said thoughtfully. "All we know is that it's bright, hot, and flying. It could be a literal firebird or something. Which would still suck, since it's going to be hard to catch if it's hot enough to be felt from the ground."

"What do we do?" Kim asked.

"Focus on the problem in front of us," Sanny said. "Deal with the bees and Lava Horse, make sure people evacuate from here safely, hope whatever it is hadn't melted the highway or something on our way back. I think this is where we need to split up."

Kim looked down below. In the brief time he'd talked to his brother, they'd moved a long way. The road was narrower now, and both lanes ahd been clogged by vehicles moving away from Taal Volcano, because of course it had. Others had tried to drive on what little shoulder there was, and had only made things worse. "Why here?"

"There are bees harassing people below us," Sanny said. "Most of the bees are following the road, but enough are diverting to try and swarm people. And not everyone is in an enclosed car."

Kim could see what she meant. There were a lot of jeepneys below, their roofs loaded and overloaded with luggage and furniture of all sorts. Thy had no windows, only sheets of plastic to roll down when it rained, and even as he watched, he saw one jeepney disgorge its passengers, who started running around, flailing at something too small for him to see or trying to bunch together to hide small children with their bodies. Other people were hammering on the windows of nearby cars, likely demanding to be allowed in…

Kim saw people fall to the ground, one arm flailing at the air as they tried to pull their shirt over their face, only for someone else to trip on them, and a third to step on their head…

"This would be a really good time for that bug control," Tammy said. Kim saw shoots start to sprout from her surface

"Been trying. It's not working. Something else got there first," Sanny said.

"So… we have to manually deal with a fuckton of bees," Kim said.

"We have to manually deal with a fuckton of bees," Tammy said. "You and Willy need to get to the volcano. Even if it's not going to stop the eruption much, you need to put down that Lava Horse before it gets past the lake and starts setting everything on fire."

"About that," Kim said, recalling, "I heard from the radio, it might be learning to make drones."

Sanny groaned. "Of course it is… we'll keep an eye out. But you and Willy need to go! I'll have a drone get you to the volcano while we take care of this."

Kim saw Sanny's other hand reach up and delicately plucked Tammy from the tentacle… graspy… things… holding them. The… appendage… began to shift, wrapping around them differently, compacting…

"Wait!" Kim cried. He extruded some rock from himself. "Take these! We don't have phones, so we need a way to stay in touch!"

"Oh, right! Good thinking, Kuya Kim!" Tammy said.

Kim didn't react when two pincers on the end of tentacles seemed to extrude out from Sanny's other arm, taking hold of the two protrusions of rock. The pincers tugged slightly, and Kim let the protrusions break away from his body.

"Remember to keep these things from trying to eat us," Sanny said.

Kim was confused for a moment before he realize what she mean. "I'll… try?" he said.

With a wet squelch, the hand holding him and Willy suddenly separated from Sanny, and Kim was disoriented as the world around him began to spin, only to level off as, with a sound somewhere between a snap and a wet squelch, the shape of dark wingspread out to either side, watching the wind, turning their drop into forward momentum, and beginning to flap towards the volcano ahead.

From the point of view of the two pieces of himself he'd given to Tammy and Sanny, he saw Sanny offer a piece to Tammy, who reached towards it with a small… root? Branch? A growth?… and pulled it towards her, pulling it to her side as wood grew over the edged to clamp in in place.

Almost immediately, he felt the piece of stone try to grow, fine crystalline structures starting to press into the wood around it—

Kim stifled that urge, finally recognizing it for what it was ahead of time, and the growth subsided as the stone kept its shape. When Sanny warily mounted the one she was holding on what he identified as her wrist, he managed to keep it from reacting at all.

The placement didn't give him a very good view, but it was enough to tell him they were diving towards the ground. the view from Tammy's side tumbled away, and they was a sharp vibration as she hit the ground and bounced, rolling to a stop, even as the view kept shifting, getting higher…

He pulled back from those pieces of himself, concentrating on what lay ahead of them. The drone carrying him and Willy rose, seeming to go faster than they had before, and suddenly the volcano was in sight.

It rose from the lake surrounded by glood, shadowed by the still-rising cloud of ash coming from its crater. Kim had been to Tagaytay before, seen Tall Volcano many times. He's always assumed the little, pointy peak off to the side of the island was the volcano in question.

He was wrong.

While a small plume was rising from the little peak, the majority of volcanic ejecta was coming from the large, wide caldera mouth nearer the center of the island in the middle of Taal Lake. Bright against the massive plume of ash were geysers of lava that would explode high into the air. Kim tracked little glowing globs as they flew up high in arcs, only to curve down again, some still trailing ash behind them. To either side, there were bright orange fires that stood out against the increasingly gray-coated landscape.

Kim had to look to remind himself Willy was still with him. The young woman in the shape of a ball of ice had remained quiet all this time, not speaking at all. it made her easy to forget. "Willy?" he vibrated hesitantly.

For a moment, there was nothing but the rushing of wind. Then a spot on the ice became… not truly liquid, for it didn't flow away. Fluid. It vibrated in a way not that different from him. "Yes?" The word was flat, monotone, and implied boredom.

Kim didn't swallow. He had no throat, no saliva, no muscles. What had he been expecting from her? Moral support? Saying she could handle this? wasn't he supposed to be older? "Are you ready? To fight, I mean."

"Yes," Willy said, in the same tone. "Calm down."

That caught him off guard. "Calm down?"

"Calm down," she repeated. This time there seemed like a tinge of annoyance. "You're being very distracting. If you're not going to calm down, then don't talk to me so I have one less thing bothering me."

The little spot froze back into ice, effectively ending the conversation.

It was at that moment Kim realized that he had absolutely no idea of Willy's personality at all. All he knew that she seemed very attached, almost seemingly dependent, on her cousin… who wasn't there.

Well, shit.