Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers! #22 (Patreon)

On the Madness Of Mountains, Part 9

No matter how intense the light, Kim wasn't blinded. Neither were the Lava Horses. Or rather, the Lava Horse and what were likely drones. Being blinded need eyeballs, needed cells that reacted to light chemically, and thus could become overexposed. Kim didn't have those. Neither did they.

Thus, he didn't need to avert his eyes to keep from going blind as the bright, glowing person shot burning light at the Lava Horses, literally boiling them on the spot and making them vaporize explosively from the raw heat. Heat poured off the light in waves more intense than the lava, and Kim had to bend the air around him to divert the waves of heat straight up. The heat was already causing the dark clouds above to roil as a new, intense updraft formed as he bent space all around the island, everywhere he could. The heat that shone out all bent upwards, slamming into the clouds above. Water vapor and ash roiled away even as the clouds reflected the heat back down, only to be sent back up again, and again, and again. The clouds started to roil, taken higher and higher on currents of increasingly superheated air.

He ran, using the bends all around him to shrink distances. It reminded him of that story about magic boots. It wasn't consistent, since he couldn't both bend the distance between himself and his destination and send the heat upwards, not right now. He wasn't sure what he could do that he wasn't already doing, since the glowy person and their 'burn in hell' beams of glowy doom seemed to be doing all right. They were human shaped, and right now he was thinking of learning from the last time he'd encountered people-shaped beings wielding terrifying eldritch powers. He rushes to their side, to help, to perhaps not get shot at.

The ground beneath them erupts like Kim had been half-expecting. Their light continues to burn even as they flail at being unexpectedly launched into the sky. They slammed back into the ground almost lightly, leaving a red-hot imprint on stone and ash. Where they'd been standing was a rift in the ground, lava spurting like a fountain as the Lava Horse begins to flow, reforming into a smaller size with hindquarters, obsidian eyes stark on its molten head as its hooves touched the lava gushing that had launched the glowing person into the air.

Lava flowed around their fallen form and starts boiling on contact, growing brighter and brighter from heat even as it started to wrap around them. The glowing person snapped up a hand, and—

The ground shook as something exploded, and the glowing form was tossed into the air again, her resting place a blazing hot crater as lava was thrown aside. Kim rushed forward to catch them, each step bent, before remembering that they were hot enough to melt stone, and snapped up his arm, throwing a piece of himself. It grew in midair, before shattering to sand. Each grain bent, reflecting away heat so they wouldn't melt, turning the pull of gravity and the movement of inertia into forward progress as it moved to intercept the incandescent, glowing form. Space bent, and suddenly they were landing in front of Kim. The stones under them immediately started to smoke, to glow with heat, to soften…

"Hey!" Kim called out, the voice made by his vibrations sounding strange even to him. "Are you okay?"

Something that was probably their head moved, and Kim could almost assume they were looking at him. It was hard to tell with all the glowing. He shuffled his feet, shedding layers that had gotten hot from contact with the ground before they could transfer the heat to the rest of him, leaving pink sand around him. Abruptly the glow dimmed, and suddenly there wasn't much heat coming from the glowing form. It was enough for Kim to make out a vaguely feminine outline. There was a sound in the air, almost just a faint vibration.

The Lava Horse's feet rose and it began to canter, picking up speed.

"Didn't catch that, but we need to move!" Kim said. The sand around them—her?—bent even as he bent the space around himself as well and—

There was a phantom feeling of like something falling into place, like feet going into new shoes that fit perfectly, of a falling fruit landing perfectly into a cupped hand as the bent space of the sand melded with the space he'd bent around him. The glowing girl didn't move but the spaceshe was in did as Kim turned and ran, dragging the space she was in behind him so that they stayed the same relative distance apart despite the fact he was running as fast as his pink feet could carry him.

Behind him, he could feel the Lava Horse picking up speed, feel the vibrations through his legs, feel a sudden rumble—

Kim threw himself to the side, bending space to get distance as the ground in front of where he'd been erupted, dirt, ash and lava getting thrown into the air as another fissure tore open. That couldn't possibly have been any sort of coincidence or accident. Somehow, the Lava Horse was causing them!

…

Well, shit.

All right, it clearly wasn't just a dumb animal… made of lava… that was apparently just as intent on killing them as he was in killing it. More intent, really, since Kim wasn't doing very well. He scrambled to his feet, space still bent since he wasn't sure he could safely touch the glowing girl, only for a sudden flare of heat and light at his back to cause him to collapse the space she was in as he bent the heat away from himself.

The Lava Horse screamed as its head fell to the ground, a large part of its neck just gone in the sudden burst of heat that Kim had just barely managed to send upward when it had kept traveling after decapitating the Lava Horse, whose body was collapsing into a rushing, flowing, melting wave of lava that was suddenly acting like a running fluid and not, say, a giant horse monster.

Kim threw rocks that exploded into glittering sand, bending the lava to either side of them in a wide circle. The glowing girl, once more blazing bright and hot, suddenly seemed to cool, and another blast of infernal heat lanced at the lava. His sand was instantly vaporized in an instant as the beam of heat passed through it on its way to the lava. The lava exploded as well, and Kim had to bend the superheated hot gas and plasma away from him, even as the force of the explosion pushed the lava way to either side—

The ground exploded under him.

As he tumbled through the air, his body in pieces from force, sudden heat, and the ground eruption that had sent rocks and more lava up into his crotch at high velocity, all Kim could think was a tired 'Not this again' before he hit the ground. And hit the ground. And hit the ground. And hit the ground. And hit the ground some more.

On the upside, he had very quickly become acclimated to both being dismembered, and operating dismembered and separate parts of his body. He wondered if this was how Sanny felt?

He was hurriedly putting himself together before the inevitable lava came, bending space to physically connect parts that were close enough and just turning the bits too far away into sand while he grew replacement mass, when there was another vibration in the air. It was a high, warbling ululation, that sounded almost intelligible, as if someone had turned something's volume far too low and set the speaker just a little too far away.

The glowing girl was screaming, sending searing blasts of heat and light at the Lava Horse, gouging out glowing, molten scars into the landscape even as she hit. Kim quickly forgot about pulling himself together as he focused on bending space to keep the blazing deathrays from going beyond the islands boundaries. The towns and farms around Taal Volcano were having a bad enough day as it was. They didn't need to be disintegrated with random fire too.

The scream continued, not limited by petty things like lung capacity or strain on vocal chords. The sounds just seemed to come out of the air as the glowing girl struck again and again. The flares of light and heat didn't have the beam-like coherence they had before, occasionally becoming sprays and flame-like gouts, though they were no less hot and damaging. Lava body mass was explosively blasted away or vaporized, even as the Lava Horse started pulling on the lava it was standing on and trying to grow, seemingly trying to follow Sanny's advice about growing too big to be threatened.

Unfortunately for it, all it managed to do was become a bigger target. The Lava Horse kept getting reduced as it was struck by burning beams of heat to its body, blasting it apart into a twisted filigree of barely-connected, unnatural strands and globs of lava. The low, warbling scream was rising, sounding more human.

Predictably, the ground under her exploded into yet another mini-volcano, and Kim was in enough places to see every other previous rent in the ground explode seriously as the main caldera let out another explosive eruption of rising ash, smoke, and lava. The lake around the island was literally boiling with heat, the steaming geysers of water exploding from the surface, and even through the dark water filled with ash, there was an ominous molten glow. more lava bombs began to fall past the borders of the island, flying too high to be diverted by Kim's warping of space. This time, however, the glowing girl seemed to recover in midair as she blazed with heat and light and began darting around like a little fairy from hell, darting in aggressively.

The Lava Horse flailed wildly, a misshapen horse head with glittering eyes the only recognizably equine thing left as it tried to stumble away, tried to draw on more lava to reform itself, tried to grow, tried to attack—

Kim reached out and bent.

—but it couldn't move. It was stuck stumbling around in circles, circles that made it a good target. The glowing girl came at it, moving so fast she was like a cloud of light, even as more burning blasts whittled the Lava Horse down and Kim struggled to direct the blasts skywards, to deflect the heat so that the pieces of him wouldn't start cracking and breaking and melting…

Water suddenly slammed into the island, pure and clear as it went up the slopes against the flow of gravity, gather volcanic ash in its wake. It washed over the field of lava, flowed down the still glowing channels carved out by heat, over the craters. It fell into the open fissures that had erupted, immediately bursting into steam and geysers. Still the water continued to flow, an unnatural wave that continued to grow. They passed over bits of Kim, and some of his sand was dragged along with the ash, larger pieces sent tumbling by the current, buried in ash.

The water rushed straight for the Lava Horse, a huge mass at the head, and slammed into it, knocking it down. The bright lava darkened as it was cooled by the water, steam exploding outward, then exploding again as another beam lanced down, missing the Lava Horse but hitting the water. Most of the water kept moving, meeting flowing lava and cooling it, hardening the outer layers. The shells of stone broke, revealing more lava beneath, nly to be cooled again and again.

In the middle of a steaming field, twisted stone moved, cracked, melted. Lava seemed to come from nowhere, growing on the rocks like flesh on a misshapen skeleton. The stone tried to move, only to crack, the lava covered stone collapsing to the ground. It was still large enough to cause a vibration though the ground, but it wasn't all that gigantic. A slightly large house, at best. A horse's head, with glittering black eyes, seemed to rise out of the lava. It was about the size of an office water cooler. It let out a wailing cry, of confusion, of anger, of distress.

Like the star call Wormwood, the glowing girl came down on it from above, and there was light. It blazed and there was a final scream that made the volcano rumble—and then silence. The slowly, the light faded, taking the heat with it.

For a moment, Kim just lay there, waiting. No more glowing death beams shot out. The ground continued to steam, and so did the fissures, but no more lava flowed up from the depths of the earth. Tentatively, he grew, gaining mass until he had enough to form a usable body. Gingerly, carefully, he got to his feet, which immediately sank deep into the ashy mud.

After ten steps, he had to admit this was a stupid way to walk and hollowed himself out again, reducing his weight, then gave himself wide snowshoe feet. Why did he feel like a duck? Still, it helped distribute his weight enough that he didn't sink—well, he didn't sink very deep—even if the awkward gait her had to adapt was a bit slow. Fortunately, there wasn't another wave, and even though he could see Willy, at least he knew she was out there… somewhere…

He made the pieces of himself scattered about glow slightly to light the way as he made himself flow bright. With the light faded, darkness had returned, and while the ground still glowed hot, it was a weak glow that was completely unhelpful. Kim made what pieces of him were nearby bend, shortening the distance he had to walk. He'd had a good view for most everything until the water had come and briefly blocked his view with ash, but she should be…

Ah. No wonder he couldn't see anything. There was a crater. Anothercrater, he should say, where the glowing girl had let out one last blast before seeming to fade.

She hadn't faded. Not completely, anyway. She'd simply sank down out of sight.

At least, he assumed it was her. After all, they were glowing.

It wasn't the bright, sun-like glow of before. And while there was some heat, it was… weak, compared to the burning radiance from before.

That was because it was being emitted by lava.

At the bottom of the crater, a feminine figure knelt, head down, slamming their fists down on the glowing, semi-fluid stone. Their skin was slowly-cooling lava, dulled to a weak orange-red. Their hammering fists kept breaking the layer of cooling rock, revealing fresh lava that splattered with every impact. A strange sound was coming from them, as if someone was screaming while gargling.

He took a step back involuntarily, having had enough of lava for the day… but no. People-shaped. People made themselves more or less people-shaped. And…

—a snake, made of dirt and rock—

…maybe they were just confused.

"Miss?" he called, making sure to vibrate strongly. "Are you all right?"

There was a comical, almost cartoonish stretching moment as the one he really hoped was the glowing girl suddenly jerked up at the sound of his voice, their torso visibly narrowing as their head and most everything beneath it was pulled up about a foot higher with though their legs moving. She turned her head to look at him directly, dark black eyes glittering on a humanlike, glowing red face.

Which was a feat, since he was directly behind her.

A hole opened in her face, glowing of fresh lava as she turned, each movement punctuated by popping sounds as she struggled to her feet, which seemed to fuse to the ground when she set them down. She made a gurgling sound, and her face contorted into confusion.

"Uh, it takes a while to figure out how to talk," Kim said. "Because right now, you don't have lungs or vocal chords. Are you the glowing girl?"

She mouthed something, then nodded. Lines along her neck and jack cracked, exposing the molten rock beneath the stone.

"Then… thanks for showing up. We were sort of running out of things to do to that thing," Kim said. Growing a rock in his hand, he tossed it down into the crater. It shattered into sand in midair, spreading in all directions. He used those, bending space as he stepped forward and suddenly her was two steps in front of her.

Slowly, hesitantly, he held out a hand. "I'm…" he paused, remembering a conversation just that morning. "I'm Pinky," he said lamely. "I'm a superhero trainee. Just started today."

Hesitantly, she raised stony hand, glowing red hot. It excited his molecules, but not enough to start cracking and melting. At least, not in the very brief handshake they shared.

She opened her mouth again, but all that came out was a weird gurgling. Her brow crack as they came down in a frown, and when she opened her mouth again, there was a blazing, brilliant radiance like a spotlight, and a brief warbling in the air.

"I'm Jas…" a distorted whisper said, creating an inhuman voice. "I thought… I thought I was the only one…"

And suddenly her felt much closer to this girl.

"So did I," he said. "But it turns out we're both wrong. Isn’t that great?"

And that's when the second wave flooded over the island and drowned them both.

It was a very good thing neither of them needed to breath.

––––––––––––––––––

It was late afternoon when Kim heard something land near them through the fog. The rain had been coming down for at least an hour by then, and if it wasn't for Jas lighting so brightly, it would probably have been as dark as night. Between the rain, the fog and the thick ash clouds above all of Taal Lake was obscured.

He wondered what people thought of the sudden light in the middle of the lake.

Kim sat on the still cooling ground, the rain washing over him and washing away ash as he saw the two outlines in the fog. He reached out, feeling the pieces of himself on them, and made them start to glow pink even as he called out, "Over here!"

One turned towards his voice at the sound, then had to pause and pull the other with them. There was a flowing, runny sound as Willy suddenly ran past him, heading towards one of the two figures.

Jas stepped closer nervously, steam rising from her as rain fell on her hot stone skin. She was a lot like him in that respect, except for how she tended to crack her out layer to show the lava beneath. Her head, however, was a brilliant white flame, the details literally impossible to see, and only the fact that she said she was constantly pulling back in the heat she was generating kept her from being more than just really bright.

The leading figure resolved itself into Sanny, standing tall and wet and raising a hand to block her compound eyes. "Wow, that's bright," she said.

Oh, right.

Jas seemed to take the hint, because the light suddenly cut off, and her head was brightly glowing lava in the shape of a human face, with flows that implied hair. As he watched, the lava cooled, the 'hair' turning dark, while her face took one a red glow. Her eyes, however, was dark, glittering obsidian.

Kim made introductions. "Jas, this is Yellow, and over there in the fog is Green."

There were cracking sounds as Jas raised a hand and waved hesitantly. "Hi," she said as bright light glowed from her mouth, voice still distorted and strange, but better modulated.

"Hi," Sanny said with a nod, waving back. "Nice to meet you. I'd shake your hand, but third degree burns are a bitch."

"Yeah, I understand," she said, looking down at the bright yellow cracks on the hand she'd just used to wave, and the stem rising from her stone skin. "I… still need to work on it."

"She needs a ride back to the city," Kim said. "She flew here, but… well, she didn't look like that when she got hear. I think she might need more practice."

Sanny made a show of looking her. It had to be a show, she had compound eyes. "She ate it, then?" she said, a statement more than a question. "The Lava Horse?"

Kim nodded. "Yeah." He hadn't seen it, but…

—a snake, made of dirt and rock—

…he'd been in her position before.

Sanny nodded. "Sure, I can give her a ride. Though we might need to work out how to do that without her burning me."

"I taught her how to shrink," Kim said. "Will that help?"

"It's practically a requirement," Sanny said as Tammy and Willy emerged from the fog, the latter following behind the former as if it was the most natural thing in the work. For some reason, Tammy had more blooming flowers on her than before. There was one at her temple like a hair ornament, and lace-like petal cuffs at her wrists and around the base of her neck. Her head was blank, with only a visor-like line of black at about eye level. "Can you find out where your dad is? It might be a little hard to meet up with them in this rain. "

"Already did," he said. "They're parked somewhere along the road we were on. I can point them out, I think. But…"

Tammy made a happy sound, doing that happy-girl-clap that only girls seemed to do as her eyes—the black things she had for eyes—fell on Jas. "Ooh, someone new! That's five! We've got a full team! We're definitely rangers!"

"Sentai," Sanny… corrected?

"Same difference!"

"One is a shoddy knockoff of the other."

Aaaaand already he was lost.