Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers #26 (Patreon)

The Statement Of Jaselle Alhambra, Part 3

Jas stared at the little circle lying on the cement of the building's roof. A little pink cube, a small squat plant, what looked like a bag of clear jelly, and a little furball that seemed all mouth and nothing else.

"It's not like we can carry our phones," Ate Sanny said. "If nothing else, none of us have pockets. So we use the drones to talk to each other. We leave them here and pay attention to them, and we can talk that way. Simple, no fuss, no muss, and no one can listen in on us because there's nothing to intercept."

Jas nodded thoughtfully. No wonder she'd been advised to practice how to control parts of herself that had been separated from her main body. That had been harder that had been implied. Or perhaps she was just uniquely suited for it to be difficult, because the default state of her power was 'set things on fire'. Still, she had persevered, and she had managed to work on controlling a detached part of herself, while remembering to pull in heat from her main body and the detached part.

The part of her she left was a cube of obsidian, with a hole on the face the pointed away from the other drones, most especially Ate Sanny's. Inside her black cube, plasma glowed. It was a small flicker for better hearing, since she felt she heard better with plasma than with anything solid.

"All right everyone, can you hear? Can you talk?" Ate Sanny asked… from her furball little mouth drone.

What looked like a weird bladder inflated on the squat plant. "Mine is working," Tammy said.

"Same," Kuya Kim's pink cube said.

There was a beat.

"Willy, can you make your drone talk so we know if it's working right?" Tammy said.

Willy glanced at her, and then the little ball of water on the roof vibrated. "I can talk," Willy said monotonously.

"She can talk," Tammy announced.

"Well, that's good to know," Ate Sanny said flatly. "Shall we get started then?"

Her skin began to writhe, the hard shell seeming to soften. Jas actually felt her stomach roil at the sight, even though it was filled with plasma and lava. Parts of her shell began to pop off, revealing themselves to be small insects. They were in shades of light and dark gray, with glistening, mirror-like wings. Through the holes in the shell where the strange insects crawled from, Jas could just make out things writhing. She'd seen carabao's, cows, and pigs give birth and watched as old animals were slaughtered for meat. She'd snapped the heads off and gutted her share of chicken heads, so she was not stranger to fleshy insides, but that was just wrong—were those teeth?!

"Oh, that's gross," Kuya Kim said succinctly.

"The miracle of life," Ate Sanny shrugged.

"Does this make you a single mother?" Kuya Kim asked.

Ate Sanny raised a warning hand "Let's not go there again, things will get weird."

"That's where things get weird?" Kuya Kim said disbelievingly.

"Just give me the sand, Pinky."

Kuya Kim shook his head, a deliberate movement on his part, but pink sand began to spill from his hands onto the roof. It sprayed in the wind, but some managed to make it to the ground…

The insects that were crawling from Ate Sanny all flew through the spilling sand, coming out the other side glittering slightly pink. Their wings buzzed strangely loud as they flew into the city beneath, quickly becoming lost to sight.

"Bringing the sand to the nest and the street under it," Ate Sanny reported. "You might all want to get going. Or are you all going to wait for Pinky to do his thing so you can cut down on the commute?"

"I have a name, you know," Kuya Kim said.

"Unless you want me to get into the bad habit of saying your real name around people you don't want to know, like the military, reporters, police, and whoever, you might consider either responding to Pinky or decide on what you want to be called."

"There's none of those people up here," Kuya Kim said.

"Hence why it’s a bad habit to get into," Ate Sanny said. "It's like gun safety. Just because there's no bullets and all the necessary parts were taken off doesn't mean you should stop treating it like a live gun."

"I don't know anything about gun safety besides 'don't mess with them'. I'm not going to be Pinky. I refuse to be Pinky. I know I'm kinda pinkish but that doesn't make I like it. It's something I'm resigned to, like my parent's deciding to name me 'Kim'."

"Okay, okay, you don't have to be Pinky, or Pink or whatever," Tammy said soothingly. "How about Magenta? You can be Magenta. You can't be red because Ate Jas is already Red, she's clearly red."

Kuya Kim tilted his head. "What's magenta?"

"It's a kind of purplish red that you kind of look like if you squint," Ate Sanny said. "I have no problem calling you Magenta. Anything to stop calling you your real name so we don't compromise identity security and get arrested for vigilantism or being communists or whatever we'll be charged with."

Kuya Kim clearly thought about it. "Okay, I have no problems answering to Magenta…"

"Great! Nightmæranger Magenta it is!"

There was a brief moment.

"Wait, what?" Kuya Kim said, confused.

"I'll explain later," Ate Sanny said.

"I actually get an explanation this time?"

––––––––––––––––––

The air above the streets of the Makati business district filled with insects. They alighted on the wall of buildings, on the islands full of planters, they dove down into the sewers through openings along gutters and into ramps to underground parking areas. Jas saw none of this herself, but she heard Ate Sanny—Yellow, she asked to be called—give a running commentary at their little communication circle, While the street directly under the spider's nest was clear of people and vehicles, about two streets away the roads were full of pedestrians, who walked around to the various businesses, offices and residences hurriedly, being watched over by annoyed-looking military. Even with giant spiders nearby, life went on, because there was money to be made, and who cared about giant spiders?

"That's a very cynical way of looking at things," Kuya Kim—newly dubbed Nightmæranger Magenta—said.

"Well, can you explain why all these people are here?"

"I didn't say it was wrong, just cynical."

Jas heard them talking to each other in the little circle they'd made as she hovered in the air, a vaguely human-shaped cloud of plasma. She glowed, there was no helping it, but as long as she was fairly high and small and kept her heat reined in, she was fairly unobtrusive, especially since it was a sunny day with few clouds. The fire in her wanted to burn hot as a well as bright, but she repressed that. It was a constant distraction, like a child who wanted something and kept nagging to have it. Wind flew against her, and she had to thrust herself back into place so she didn't drift off too far, trying to keep the gigantic nest below her.

She was too high up to see most of what the others were doing. Some spots of green growing on roofs were probably Tammy—Green or Nightmæranger Green, if the naming scheme held—and some glistening spots around them that might have been water was probably Willy. Their role was to contain the giant spider. She knew it had a longer name, but honestly, it twisted her tongue just to think about it. All she had to do was set it on fire when they gave the signal, and try not to let out all of her heat.

"Magenta, stop eating me from the inside!"

"Sorry, sorry! Thought I have to ask, why did youeat me?"

"I put you in my stomach, that's a completely different thing!"

"No, that's pretty much eating!"

"It was the most efficient way to carry around your sand, all right? I'm not devouringyou eating you."

"Doesn't seem like it. How are you going to get the sand out?"

"How do things get out of stomachs?"

"… oh, shit."

"Exactly."

"Ew, that's gross!" Tammy interjected.

"Can't I go out some other way?"

"What, like puke?"

"They're insects! Can't I come out as honey?"

"I'd need to consume nectar for that, and it's not flowering season."

"Can't T—er, Green grow some?"

"Dude, don't be gross. We're friends, but I don't want to do lesbian stuff with her, and she probably doesn’t want to either. That's not even getting into age think. You remember what part of the body for plants flowers are, right?"

"Ew, I hate myself. Okay, okay, forget I said anything!"

"Look, if you feel strongly about it, I'll have the stomach tear open and just drop you out straight. Then you're neither poop or puke."

"Won't that hurt?"

"Only if I forget to remove the nerves."

"Then that would be nice, thanks. It's still disgusting, but not being pooped or puked makes it the more preferable option."

"Won't the opening count as a mouth or—"

"It's not being pooped or puked, we don't need to overthink it!"

A girlish laugh, one deliberately made by the little plant. "Okay, okay, no asking insightful questions. We're in position to contain. I'm on the ground, the roofs, and some of the office buildings with trashed windows. The computers were gutted."

"Makes sense, it had to make those robots somehow."

Jas didn't blink because she had no eyelids, but she wanted to. "What?"

"What?" Nightmæranger Magenta repeated with her, and she realized she hadn't said it with her drone.

"Yeah, the third time it attacked us with weird robot spiders."

"… robot spiders." Nightmæranger Magenta's tone was very flat, like a parent disbelieving the story their child was telling about why there was one less hotdog on the table before the meal had started. "It had robot spiders?"

"Yes, we thought it was bullshit too. Thankfully it became the military's problem, since they attacked the next day."

"I had robot spiders?"

"Dude, you're made of rock, Blue is made of water, Green is made of wood, and Red is either plasma or lava. Out of everyone here, I'mthe only one who actually had to worry about getting torn limb from limb, do you see me worrying?"

"I'm worrying about the fact we're up against a giant spider that made robot spiders. That means it's intelligent, doesn't it? Maybe we can communicate with it."

"I don't speak fluent spider. Do you?"

"So we're just going to kill it?"

"You were okay with it before."

"Before I didn’t know it could make robots!"

"Why does that change anything?"

"It made robots! Dumb animals don't make robots!"

"No, other dumb robots do. Why should that change anything about why it should die? Even if it's smart, it hasn't tried to communicate, so it's clearly not interested in doing so. It's just another monster."

"Kuya," Green's voice said quietly. "It killed us. Three times. Even if it IS intelligent, it's a killer. The first time, we didn't even attack it. It came after us. We were just going to observe it."

"So it's either a violent wild animal or a serial killer," Yellow said bluntly. "Will that assuage your conscience?"

Magenta made a frustrated sound that started like a growl and progressed to sound like rocks grinding together. "It doesn't feel right," he said.

"By what metric?"

The pink—sorry, magenta—cube stayed silent.

"We're in position," Green said quietly. "Kuya, if you're backing out, say so now, and we'll find another way to continue without you."

The cube sat there, silent. Finally, it vibrated. "Drop my out of your stomachs." His voice sounded frustrated, resign, tired and determined all at once. "Let's get started."

"Bombs away."

From above, nothing seemed to happen, though she might have just been too high to see anything. She focused on the nest. It almost seemed like a cocoon hanging caught on a web, a spider's food more than its refuge…

"I'm done. Your turn J—Red."

It took Jaselle a moment to realize they meant her. She wanted to take a deep breath, wanted to close her eyes…

Terror ran through her as she felt the sensation of gravity pulling her down, of her body solidifying, getting denser, becoming flesh…

She pulled at the fire, let herself burn, and heat and light burst from her. She distantly heard cries and realized she'd stopped pulling in her heat, that she burned and was getting hotter and hotter…

Desperately, Jas pulled the heat back, the air around her becoming turbulent as heat enough to melt steel was pulled from the sky around her, her plasma flickering oddly around her…

And then her plasma was lava, and she was falling, falling towards the ground, towards the nest beneath, and the fire inside her burned with eagerness and hunger…

She wasn't going to make it, she realized. She was too far to the side, she'd miss and hit the sidewalk below, possibly even graze the windows—the broken windows—of the one of the buildings next to the nest…

Even as plasma erupted from her side, causing force to suddenly push at her, in her eyes the world seemed to warp and bend, and suddenly the nest was directly behind her. On the edge of her vision, she saw little flickering insects with glittering pink covering their legs…

She slammed onto to the top of the nest, and felt her body splatter, the parts of her that had solidified exploding violently even as the parts that w still lava spread, her heat igniting the nest beneath her. Flames engulfed her as she literally pulled herself together, making her lava flow and her cooled rock back into lava as she tried to reform—

Oh, right.

Lava and stone flared into plasma, her body seeming to join the flames, was the flames.

And then Jas let herself burn, and the nest was engulfed, the silk burning almost eagerly.

Almost silently, the cable-thick threads holding the nest burned away, sending the nest plummeting to the ground below, and Jas fell with it, and around her the sight of the building seemed to twist and bed and recede…

It hit the ground with a crash that actually sent dust into the air, the nest seeming to collapse under its own weight. Jas continued to burn.

There was no cry, no scream, no roar. But beneath her, the layers of burning silk tore and the giant spider tore itself from its nest.