Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers! #19 (Patreon)

On the Madness Of Mountains, Part 6

Kim could vaguely see what the other two were doing through the pieces of himself he'd given them.

They were being terrifying.

He was pretty sure it wasn't intentional on Tammy's part, but he wasn't too certain when it came to Sanny.

It was hard to see, given they'd both decided to mount him on their wrists like some sort of smartwatch, but Sanny had apparently decided to fight a biblical plage of deadly insects with… another biblical plague of deadly insects. Just on the arm he was one, Kim could see orifices had opened all along the length of the limb at seemingly random, disturbingly yonic and toothy at the same time. From these orifices, wasps were crawling out and launcing themselves a the nearest bee. There wasn't far to go, since Sanny had somehow drawn the bees' attention and was being swarmed. Tongues—tentacles?—lashed out from other orifices, whipping through the air and catching bees on their stick surface before pulling them in back into the orifice, presumably to be eaten.

Tammy was growing... things. They vaguely resembled pitcher plants and venus flytraps, but smaller and faster, the pitchers surrounded with dozens of long, stick vines that trapped bees and pulled them to itself. He saw giant flowers that were drawing bees in, only for them to snap closed with disturbing chewing sounds…

In the cars, people were screaming. Cars tried to force their way forwards, tried to push the car in front of them, crushing those made of more delicate material or had their brakes on.

Kim really couldn't blame them. Even if he knew those two were trying to help, they looked really scary…

With a metaphorical shake of his head, he concentrated on what was going on around him. How did Sanny make it look so easy, just breaking herself into hundreds of parts like that, all moving and acting at the same time? They were flying over the lake, the water below stained with ash to a dark hue. All around the island, he could see the water was boiling, and in spots he could just make out a dim, orange glow deep within the water. Given how cloudy the water was, it must have been very bright.

He could feel heat coming from below them, notable even to his crystalline body. The drone carrying them was clearly sweating, and feathers on its wings were ruffling a lot, as if facing intense winds. A layer of fresh was forming on Tammy, and Kim's vision was starting to develop spots of water, as well as occasional veils of moisture that were quickly evaporated by the hot air.

Abruptly the drone banked sharply, turning to put the island at their left and began circling around. What…?

"Uh, Sanny?" he said, speaking though the piece of himself he'd given the woman. "Why are we turning?"

No response.

He was just about to start asking again when a mouth opened directly above him. "Avoiding the island until we find the Lava Horse. The heat is causing updrafts and is pretty intense. I want an eye on the target before moving in, and the area above the water is marginally cooler."

"Oh," he said, and for a weird moment wondered how many military movies Sanny watched. "Okay. Is it really that hot? I… can't really tell when I'm like this."

"You can't?" For a moment, Sanny sounded thoughtful. "Well, hopefully you'll be able to tell when it's getting hot enough to melt what you're made of. I'll have to ask you to keep an eye out for the target, eyes aren't make aren't' doing so well in this heat… okay, have to stop talking now, I have to eject me lungs and grow a new pair, I'm too filled with ash and smoke…" The mouth sealed shut.

She was kidding, right?

The drone carrying them convulsed, and behind them, Kim saw a dark, glistening pair of organs getting ejected out from a thankfully-concealed orifice. It quickly vanished into the gloom as it dropped to the waters below.

"Did you actually just eject out your lungs?" Kim vibrated.

For a moment, there was silence. Then spots of pigment appeared directly over Kim, their colors standing out against the still predominantly-yellow body.

Duh,they spelled out. Keep Watch.

Kim decided to do just that, to maintain his sanity. He couldn't imagine just… just throwing out his lungs because they got… well, filled with ash, but it really wasn't an option for him. Apparently, it was for Sanny…

The island was dark and overcast, making seeing difficult. The video had shown the Lava Horse to be huge and glowing, so it should have stood out even in the gloom. After all, the rivulets of lava flowing down the slopes in places and the jets of it erupting from the crater certainly stood out brightly.

They had to go around the island before Kim saw it.

It was certainly huge, all right. As long as one of the buses he saw around the city and twice as tall, it was a mix of stone and lava. Solid in the parts of its body that didn't see much movement, molten in places like the joints, flanks and head, the monster was moved with the heavy grace of a living being, moving just like a living horse of a smaller size. Each stepped caused lava to splatter as if it had steped into a puddle of the stuff, and lava constantly dripped down from its tail, which flicked back and forth constantly, sending out sprays in all directions as a dense liquid kept trying to copy the physics of thread of hair. Its mane was similar, a line along the spine of its neck from which a sheet of glowing lava flowed down and dripped onto the ground, dancing flames erupting along its length.

It was walking along the slope of the island's caldera, its relaxed pace incongruously casual compared to the erupting forces around it. In fact, it reminded Kim a lot of the horses he'd ridden before when going to touristy places with his family, which always seemed to be one step away from coming to a dead stop and always seemed to do so when he was holding the reins. Kim was too far to see if the dark blobs around it were greenery or something else, but given how excitable it had seemed on the video on the video they'd shown on TV.

There was a tap, and Kim was confused for a second before he realized what was being tapped wasn't this body. A second tap bought his attention to the piece of him Sanny was carrying. From the angle of his view, looking straight at her insect-like, compound-eyed face, she was holding her arm up like she was reading the time on a watch.

"I'm here," Kim said.

"How do you want to do this?" Sanny said, and he could feel the subtle vibration of shell-like plate around him as it also conducted the sound of the words from her throat. "Drop in from straight up and hit it like a falling boulder or do you want to try and dig a hole under it again?"

The edge was there again in her voice, but Kim stifled his instinctive defensiveness. "I'm sorry," he said.

That seemed to take her by surprise. "Huh?"

Kim didn't need to take a deep breath. He wished he did. It would have made him feel better. "I'm sorry for just attacking you when you were helpless and… eating you. I swear I didn't know what I was doing, but that's no excuse. And I'm sorry for attacking you all and eating your body the second time. it was stupid, and if I'd stopped to watch and think, I would have realized what you were all trying to do. I didn't and I did something stupid because of it that could have hurt you guys and might have put people at risk if the Blood Bug had gotten away again."

"Oh." He was going to have to get used to reading blank faces. Those compound eyes and smooth face gave nothing away. "Well… apology accepted. Try not to do it again." There was an awkward beat. "Though I did mean what I said about the hole. It's ground bound, huge, and its limbs end in hooves. Perfect for keeping stuck in a hole. I wouldn't recommend being in the hole with it though. Given how all our powers work, there's a good chance it will be able to start spewing lava all over the place."

"Can you get us in behind it?" Kim said. "After just apologizing for going in and hitting people, I better not go in by starting a fight."

"I can do that, though I'm not sure how well my drone will stand it. It's really hot down there. It's really hot up in the sky, for that matter."

There was a crack of thunder that he heard with three of his bodies.

"And it seems like it's about to rain. Typical." For once, the bitchy tone wasn't direct at him. "Stupid ash seeding the clouds. This should keep the bees down though. I'll bring you in and try to keep my drone in the sky to give you an eye up there, if you leave it another rock."

"Good idea." Kim said.

"Good luck," Sanny said. She sounded like she meant it now.

Sanny switch to his main body in time to see that they were diving towards the ground a ways behind the Lava Horse. He didn't feel this either. Terminal velocity didn't make his stomach heave, because he didn't have one, only undifferentiated pink rock insides. He began to extrude a piece of himself, and a pincer-tipped appendage reached down to take hold of it. Kim tried not to be concerned how quickly the ground was getting closer, trusting that Sanny knew how to fly properly. He released the extrusion, and Sanny pulled it away and mounted it on a suddenly shell-like part of the drone's body as the ground got closer and closer.

Kim didn't feel the momentum as Sanny suddenly opened her wings, only felt the things gripping shift and adjust their hold as the drone seemed to move away. The ground was a blur all around Kim range of vision, flickering past for even him to make out details, lit only by his own dim pink glow…

The things holding him let go.

He didn't feel it as he flew through the air. He didfeel it as he hit the growl, his molecules registering the force of impact the first time he hit. He bounced one more time before he started rolling, hitting small rocks and charred undergrowth and gravity started to take hold as—

He changed his body into a cube, but it still took a while for momentum to stop making him flip end over end. It was only when he finally stopped rolling and saw that Willy, who had probably also been released when he had been, had turned herself into a pile of snow did he think to himself that maybe he should have turned into a pile of sand.

He vibrated slightly and then…

His points of view changed, expanded, pushed inward so some parts of him were looking at other parts of him as extrusions became limbs and extremities, and he was glad that this time he didn't have to pull anything back in. Kim scrambled to his feet, his feet sinking into ash, mud and dirt as his body lit the area around him with a pink glow. He could feel vibrations going up through his legs, some of which were tracking with vibrations in the air he was interpreting as sound.

He could see the smear of slush on the muddy, ashy ground that was Willy going from semi-solid to liquid like it was some kind of CGI special effect, flowing and merging together before taking on a recognizably human shape. Willy was keeping her height, and Kim wondered if she played any basketball. For all that they were made of different materials—heck, they were made of different states of matter—Kim realized they actually looked someone alike in their near androgyny and lack of notable secondary sexual characteristics.

They became the same state of matter as Willy somehowexpelled the ash and dust swirling inside her, and her body hardened from clear water to mostly clear ice, save for the ash now covering her and the layer of white frost starting to form. Her face was smooth a clear, a blank bust waiting for lips and eyes and really every feature that would have given it humanity. Only the curving, smooth line of her jaw would have hinted at femininity, and Kim thought that could only because of he already knew she was a girl.

He raised a forearm and looked out through it towards his own profile. Just as blank, if opaque. Just as she had the smooth blank curves of a wooden figure like the one his brother kept in his room for posing and sketching, so did Kim. There were no bumps of curves indicating breasts or pectorals. At best, he was a bit wider along the shoulders, she just a bit narrower at the hips.

They probably looked like really boring mannequins.

"Well?" she said, a spot where her mouth should be becoming water that didn't flow. "Are we going?" The words were flat, the tone bland.

He shook his head, even though that didn't provide the same sort of physical stimulus it should have. Just his head going back and forth, not even really affecting his range of vision. "Yeah, let's go. Quietly. We might be able to sneak up on it." A thought occurred to him. "Will you be all right, getting close to it? It won't be too hot for you?" He could tell the ground was hot though his feet, felt the heat in the air, more intense than it was up high.

"I'm fine," she said, still bland.

Well, she'd know, right? "Let's not attack it just yet," Kim said, vibrating it with his head. "I want to see what it's doing first."

The featureless, transparent head dipped down ever so slightly. "Tammy said to douse it in water and attack it," she said, as if correcting him.

"And we will," he said, recognizing that mulish phrasing. Those where the unimaginative words of someone planning to do exactlywhat they were told. "Just… wait a moment so I can figure out the best time for both of us, not just you."

He didn't have breath to hold, but he would have.

"Fine," Willy said. He didn't breathe a sigh of relief. "And relax. It's annoying. I'm not stupid. I'm special. Tammy said so."

Oh. Right. She could read his mind. Well, feel his mind. "I'll try. This… isn't a very relaxing place."

"Trying is better than nothing. People who try aren't as annoying," Willy said with a sharp nod. She turned and began to walk towards the bright orange glow that indicated the Lava Horse.

She was made of ice, right? How was she not slipping? Ice was slippery, wasn't it?

It seemed incredibly unfair, because Kim wasslipping as he followed after her. His feet would sink into the hot ground, slide on loose ash, and he kept forgetting he was heavier than he usually was, like this. However, the one time he tried to make himself flesh again to lighten his weight, the burning heat, like he'd stuck his hand inside among glowing barbeque coals, had quickly disabused him from trying it.

Someone tapped him.

Kim looked around in confusion and it happened again before he realized it was Sanny, tapping the part of him on her wrist.

"Yes?" he asked, confused. It was raining where she was, thought he couldn't see more than that.

"Make yourself hollow," she said. "I'm watching you with my drone, and… well, make yourself hollow. It's not like you have internal organs or anything, right? So just hollow yourself out."

Oh. OH! Now that it had been said out loud, Kim groaned at how it should have been obvious. Sanny was right, he didn't have internal organs, or internal anything. He could get rid of some of the weight on him without it hurting him!

"Thanks for the advice," he said, hoping his voice sounded sincere and afraid it just sounded awkward as he did just that, opening a hole in his chest to let air in as he started hollowing out his torso. "I should have thought of that."

"No problem," Sanny said. For some reason, she sounded equally awkward. "You're probably still not used to your body yet. Plenty of time to learn when we get back."

Kim nodded, then realized he was in the wrong body for her to see that. "Yeah. Thanks. That's really helped." And it had. Hollowing out his torso, head arms and legs was letting him move lightly, more lightly than if he'd been human. "Is the Lava Horse doing anything?"

"No problem. You're coming up on the Lavahorse now. Be careful. it might hear you."

A few steps, and there it was. Molten footprints splatters railed behind it, darkening further back to what were probably burning hot rocks. It was huge, and so bright in the blood. Human eyes would have needed to quickly avert their gaze, lest they burn the afterimage into eyes. Kim had no such problem.

Even as he watched, one of its front legs clipped a large rock in its path, causing it to stumble, a vibration that Kim felt run up his legs.

"It tripped?" Sanny said, sounding confused and… focused? "It wasn't that small, it should have seen it…"

"Maybe it can't see?" Kim said, even as he focused back on his body, still trying to catch up to Willy ahead of him. "It isdark, after all."

"It's made of glowing lava, it should have enough light," Sanny said. "I can see it and I'm all the way up here." Her tone wasn't belligerent or bitchy, just someone objecting.

Kim would have frowned, if he could, as a sudden thought came to him. "Wait. Why would it be able to see?"

"What do you mean?" Sanny asked.

"You can see because you have eyes," Kim said. "From what I can tell, those dark blotches on Tammy are her equivalent of eyes. Okay. But that thing is made of lava. Molten rock. Rocks can't see."

"You can," Sanny pointed out.

"I know," Kim admitted. "I don't know how I do it, but I can."

"Something to do with absorption of radiation?" Sanny mused. "Your material reacting to light, and you somehow process that into sight? That's how all sight starts, with specialized cells that can react to the presence or absence of light… "

"That's what Ryan thinks," Kim admitted. "I wouldn't know, I'm an electrical engineering student. But I'm made of some kind of weird bullshit superpower material. This thing is made of lava. How can it see?" In fact… 'I hollowed myself out like you suggested, and I can't see anything in there, even though I should be glowing—" and just like that, he literally saw inside himself. It was all just a mass of glowing pink. "—until just now when I thought of it. I didn't even do anything!" Certainly nothing conscious or deliberate.

"They do that," Sanny said absently. "Can you see through this piece you gave me?" She was holding it very close to her eye. Eyes? They were compound eyes, after all. He could even see reflection of her arm and the little bit of pink stone embedded in it.

"They? Uh, yeah. Why?"

"I need you to shut off the light coming from it and let me crack it to see the cross-section. Can you control it enough to do that?"

"I'm… not sure. About letting you crack it, I mean. It's pretty tough." Kim did dim the glow though, though he wasn't sure how he did that either.

"Okay then, plan B… Sorry about this. I swear I'm not pissed at you, this is for science!"

At which point, Sanny knelt down and started to bang the piece of Kim on her arm onto the pavement.

"Uh…" he managed to vibrate through the abuse, "what are you doing?"

"I think you have a transparent outer layer," Sanny's voice said, Kim's perception of it interspersed with the sharp shocks of being struck on the ground. "I'm trying to chip a piece off to confirm. If you have a transparent outer layer, that means light passes through you, interacting with your molecular structure, and possibly that's why you can see. Willy should be the same, since she's always transparent. The light needs to be absorbed by the body somehow. Wow, you're really tough. There's a good chance I crack my shell before I chip you."

Kim looked down at himself. Raising on hand up to his face out of habit, he grew a very narrow needle of pink on the end of his finger, looking at it through the light of the Lava Horse beyond.

The tip was just the slightest bit transparent. Pinkish, but transparent. "I think you're right," he told Sanny. "I see transparency."

There was a heavy vibration and crack though the piece he had with her. "And I just managed to crack my arm," she said, voice bland. "You are officially one hard mofo."

"Sorry," he said.

"Don't worry about it, easy fix. So, you think the Lava Horse is blind?"

"Well, it doesn't seem to have eyes, I don't thinkit has those black spots Tammy has, and unlike Willy and me, lava can't really have transparent bits that can let light pass through, right?"

"I… feel like I'm forgetting something, but the logic seems sound," Sanny agreed. "So, it's blind, it's glowing and you both can see. If nothing else, you've got some advantage. Digging a hole under it is starting to sound better and better."

It did, actually. "I'll try to get ahead of it. It should be simple since it's walking so—"

He saw Willy raise her hand. Saw water gathering on the ends of the limb of ice. Saw a blast of smooth, contiguous water slam into Lava Horse's side, causing the lava to darken as they cooled to rock, saw Willy slide back slightly at the forst of her own blast, saw piece of the Lava Horse's hindquarters actually go flying off as water pressure blasted at the rock…

The ground beneath them rumbled violently as the Lava Horse screamed a high, bubbling cry. Lava erupted from its side like blood and flames burst from the still-glowing parts of its body as it stumbled about on the uneven slope, its legs striking the ground if forceful impacts in its confusion.

"Willy!" Kim cried as he struggled to stay on his feet, falling to all fours to keep from falling over and skidding downslope. "What did you do?"

That blank bobble of ice turned to face him. "You told me to wait," she said, her voice distant, dismissive. "I waited. I'm done waiting. So now I'll drown it, and you throw rocks at it. Pull your weight. I'm not going to do all your work for you. Tammy said everyone should contribute to group work."

So saying, that featureless face turned back to the Lava Horse, more water gather—no, appearing— around her hands, and sending it towards the monster in a too-cohesive stream. The water that had sprayed all around seemed to gather itself out of the ground, clumping at the Lava Horse's feet, globs that grew bigger and bigger as they wrapped around tree-thick limbs that made them boil on contact, even as they turned to ice. From the caldera, there were sounds of explosions as streams of lava suddenly erupted high into the air, lighting the sky orange yet not really doing much for the gathering gloom

Kim watched, aghast and panicked, not sure what to do. He scrambled to his feet, fell, and then just tried to move on all fours to get to Willy, not sure what he'd do after that, but determined to get there…

He saw movement, struggled to place what he was seeing, and realized he was seeing above him just as the dark blob with faintly glowing patches of lava slammed into him and seemed to explode.

He felt his body shatter, felt the thin layer of pink stone he had left after he'd hollowed himself out breaking as it was struck by a torso-sized lava bomb at terminal velocity. His vision shattered for a moment, becoming hundreds of different, confusing points of view as his body broke, panic filling him again as he tried to make sense of what he saw…

Kim's entire body collapsed into sand, rolling and flowing across the ground, mixing with the dirt and ash, his vision shattering into thousands, millions instead of hundreds, but as the same time a… familiarity arose. Broken, shattered, hollowed, that was confusing… but sand?

He'd been sand before.

He literally pulled himself together, reforming and fusing his body, adding mass to fill his insides. Around them, other lava bombs fell. Willy had abandoned a human shape and form, becoming a large, rolling blob of water, like a swimming pool that had decided to crawl up on land. Lava bombs struck her, exploding inside her at the sudden temperature change, bubbles of steam fizzing from the shards, but she just rolled on, leaving the steaming pieces of igneous rock behind as they fell through her.

Through his skin, Kim saw another bomb coming from above. Her jerked to the side, turning back to sand, letting the sand stream and flow and bond to imitate Willy's unnatural viscosity, trying to avoid the bombs, to get to Willy.

Willy didn't seem to have any intention of getting to him, herself. Her focus was on the Lava Horse as she kept blasting it with progressively thicker streams of water that didn't break apart in the air, but kept lashing at as a solid stream. Each stream made glowing patches of lava go dark or chipped away fragments of the monster's outline. Kim was reminded of a video his brother had shown him of industrial water cutters tearing through metal…

Vibrating in frustration—and suddenly feeling much more apologetic of interfering with Sanny's plan to catch the Blood Bug all those days ago—Kim charged in to try to help, and deciding then and there to NEVER work alone with Willy again.