Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers #33 (Patreon)

The Statement Of Jaselle Alhambra, Part 10

The rest of the day was strangely nostalgic. It reminded Jas of helping clear the fields before planting, setting fire to the dead stalks before they would inundate the ground again and plant rice. Which was basically was she were doing. Jas cleared the roads with her fire, severing parts of the Thorn Thicket from the main plant. With the physical connection severed, Green was finally able to take control of the still-living vines and somehow reverse their growth. The thorny vines had writhed and grafted into the nearest plant and were... sucked in, receding into the normal plants in the way the plants Green had grown for cover when they needed to get dressed had, save for the tips that had been charred and died from Jas's heat and plasma. This had opened the way for emergency services to get at some of the people who had been trapped in their houses, carrying them out and giving them medical attention. Yellow and Magenta had continued to enter the areas Jas hadn't severed yet, getting to people still trapped and more sorely in need of attention, while Blue used her ice to contain the parts of the Thorn Thicket that were still growing and followed behind Jas to keep the fire from spreading.

It had been too late for some people. Jas hadn't seen it herself, but Yellow had reported they'd found bodies, people who'd bled to death or had been impaled by thorns once they'd been too trapped to move. She hadn't given any specifics, leaving Jas to conceive of her own horrifying possibilities. There had heard a cry of anguish at one point, one she had heard even from a distance and through the buildings and plants in the way. It had sounded like a something dying, and the realization that it was coming from a human throat…

Jas had shuddered and focused on burning what was in front of her. She burned through the roads on either side of the block where in the center the root of the Thorn Thicket grew. To one side, bougainvillea vines continued to grow, or tried to, but Blue's wall of ice kept them back. The ice filled half the road, wrapped around light posts and some trees to anchor itself, lest it start slipping as the vines continued to grow and push it back. The ice itself was flowing, trapping vines in itself, the cold seeming to inhibit the vines from growing, even as the vines beyond the wall slowly grew thicker and thicker. Having nowhere else to grow, the Thorn Thicket grew upward. Containing the plant wasn't without consequence. Jas saw a house with the roof half-torn off, the vines grown so thick they had pushed it out of position. There were broken windows and torn mesh screens as vines had grown through them.

Inside, the fire burned. It was warm and satisfied, and with every burst of heat and plasma Jas unleashed, it only seemed to grow more so. Jas felt… vaguely cheated, somehow.

"All right," Yellow said suddenly. Even with the reduced size of the drone she was talking to talk, her voice was subdued. "That's the last of them. The only ones left… are ones I can't help."

"Good," Magenta said. "Let's get out of here. They're starting to fill in my spaces. I don't want to risk making any more. If I collapse the spaces, all that wood is going to explode."

"I don't think the houses in the middle can be saved," Green said. Her voice was also quiet. "The vines keep growing, so part just keep getting thicker and thicker. Parts have already fused into solid clumps of wood, and even if I can get control of them, the damage has already been done."

"It's also getting late," Yellow said. "I can stay longer, and Mags might be able to, but three of you have school tomorrow."

It was? It was only then that Jas realized how dark it was beyond her immediate vicinity. The thick plant growth had been blocking out most of the sky since she'd started burning, but now that she looked beyond the light of the orange flames, she saw the sky was darkening,

Green groaned. "We still have homework to do!"

"So either we take care of this thing now or put it off until tomorrow," Yellow said. "And if we leave it, it'll probably keep growing, so we'll have to start all over again. So, who's devouring this thing? Not it."

That… was a surprise. "Why not?" Jas asked, and found herself speaking in unintentional chorus with Green.

The little speaking drone was basically just a ball of meat and fur with a mouth and lungs to power it, so it wasn't very expressive. Still, from the tone, if it had the muscles to squirm, it probably would have. "My urges don't want me to."

"Your urges… don't want to devour this one," Green said, sounding surprised.

"I think it's because it's a plant," Yellow said, sounding almost embarrassed.

"Are you telling us you're skipping on this thing because you don't want to eat vegetables?"

"In hindsight, I never seemed to get hungry when you were full plant," Yellow mused. "I might be able to force myself if I tried, but honestly… I don't want to? I think my urges and I agree that unless we don't have any other choice, we're staying carnivores."

"Huh. Well… all right, we won't force you," Green said, sounding as bemused as Jas was. A picky eater… didn't she know there were people out there who were starving and had to eat rotten food they dug up in trashcans? Granted, those people probably couldn't eat this, but it was the principle of the thing!

"I'll eat the next monster," Yellow assured them. "Just… not this one."

"Then… I'm out too," Green said. "I'm not sure I'd even be able to eat this one. Speaking as a part-time plant myself, plants are hard to eat for other plants."

"I can try to reach the plant," Magenta said. "I can still get through. Even without messing with space, I can get in as sand."

"Let's call that plan B," Yellow said. "You ate the last one. Share. We all have urges we need to sate."

"You don't," Magenta pointed out.

"It doesn't want to sate itself on this one. I'd have been fine with the Gagambuhala."

"All right, that's… fair…" Green said slowly. "Blue? You want this one?"

"No," Blue said flatly.

There was a pause.

"Any particular reason why?" Yellow asked.

Silence.

The little yellow speaking drone grew a tail—or possibly a tentacle—that reached over and poked Green's drone.

"Huh? Oh! Uh, can you tell us why not, Blue?" Green said.

"I don't want to."

More silence.

"I'll admit, I thought we'd be more likely to argue about who gets to devour if we ever found prey," Yellow said in a thoughtful voice. "Boy, was I wrong. This team arrangement might actually be sustainable."

"So… Red?" Green said warily. "Do you feel like taking this one? Otherwise we'll let Magenta do it."

For a moment, Red hesitated. But hadn't she been thinking that Yellow was a picky eater?

"If Magenta has no objections, I'm willing to devour this plant and end it," Jas said. Then she add conscientiously, "Perhaps we can share? Have two people ever tried to eat the same thing at the same time?"

"Yes," Green and Yellow said at the same time, and the two drones shifted slightly as if to look at each other, then shifted the opposite way.

"It… doesn't work," Yellow sighed. "We almost ate each other."

"Stupid bees," Green muttered.

"So no, having more of us trying to eat the same thing is… inadvisable," Yellow said.

"I… see," Jas said. That just seemed wrong. To not be able to share, to take it all for yourself, unable to give to someone else? "I can't just chew on half and then leave the rest…?"

"I… don't think it works that way," Yellow said.

Jas shook her head in her body outside, just to make herself feel better. She didn't sigh, but only because she had not lungs or breath. "All right, I'll go and devour it," she said.

Yellow's speaking drone managed a movement like a nod. "I'll guide you to the address of the main plant. I have another body in front of a computer with a map and a picture of what the house looked like. You're looking for house number 339."

Jas nodded again, even if Yellow couldn't see it. "That would help, thank you."

She started looking at house numbers.

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The way was barred by thorny vines, grown so thick they were, as Green said, fusing into solid chunks.

Jas walked through them as plasma, leaving fire and char in her wake before she was far enough away that her own body didn't ignite the wood again after pulling the heat back in. It was hard to see, since plasma wasn't very good at absorbing light, but beneath her feet, a carpet of black obsidian sand glittered, each one acting as her eyes. The perspective was… strange, as she felt like she was walking on her own face, but between it and the light from her plasma it was enough to see by.

She almost mistook the bougainvillea for a tree. It had a trunk thicker than a steel drum, and had crushed aside the other plants all around it. The cement wall it had been planted against that separated the back yard of this property with the one it abutted had been pushed back so far it had crumbled, and the rest of the fence was leaning drunkenly in that direction. The plant itself was… still. Almost tranquil. Up close, save for its girth, there was no sign was anything unusual about it,

No one would be able to see it up close, since where Jas was standing was a tangle of vines and thorns. While there were some leaves, they'd been turning brown and dying even before her presence set them on fire, the growth too thick for sunlight to nourish them. Even as they wilted, withered and burned, the leaves all turned to face her, as if soaking in her light.

Hesitantly, Jas raised her hand. It was a hand of plasma, its edges fuzzing with the currents of hot air from the burning wood, held together by her will. She touched the bark of the plant and felt nothing. On the wood, a handprint burned for a moment, the wood darkening before flame began to spread from around it. Plasma began to leak from her, melding the flame from the burning wood, and the heat flared, burning hot and bright, and Jas pushedinto the wood, enveloped the tree, enveloped everything that grew from it with spreading flame. The fire inside her swirled, roared in time with the plasma, and rushed forward to consume and devour.

The bougainvillea was wreathed in flame, popping and sizzling as new green growth tried to erupt from its bark, only to burn as soon as it emerged. That was the extent of its struggles. It didn't scream as she came at it, it didn't cast lava at her again and again in a desperate fight for its life. It just stood there and burned under her hand. Her plasma wrapped around it, her dark sand fusing and multiplying, wrapping trunk and roots and low branches, enfolding them in hot rock as the fire burned and encapsulated. The flame spread and she was one with it, surrounding the tree…

For the second time, she felt it. The shift within her, the change in the fire. It was different from last time, like there was a pressure building inside, pressure and heat, growing stranger and stronger—

—Dim. Almost nonexistent. Bloated and distended, alive but not aware. All it knew was to grow and grow and grow, an elegant arrangement of chemical reactions with responses. It drew in water and sought the light, spreading higher and wider—

—Vibration. Emotion. Tone. Intensity. Ratios. Feeling. Interval. Words. Sounds. Meaning. In the air. Across the water. Through the bone, within the flesh. Stirring. Tugging. Haunting. Listen. Listen. Please, listen. Listen. Hear. Be heard. Listen… listen and remember me… devourer. Hear my last song… —

A moment like a flame's flicker that seemed fill all the world, the between of bubble bursting and a bubble collapsing. Jaselle Alhambra felt her whole body vibrate, filled with an unearthly…

The flame flickered. The bubble collapsed. The moment ended. And the seed she had found, the seed that was buried but could not grow, could not live, could not die, a life unlived now to die…

The fire burned. The fire consumed. The fire devoured, filled with contentment and hunger and glee and casual apathy and disregard…

And Jaselle was plasma, was obsidian wrapped around dead, burning wood, rivulets of lava streaming like tears as she heard the fading echoes of a last, silent song.

It would never go away, etched forever into her soul.

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Jaselle didn't think she lost control.

The fire had spread, burning the tree and the two houses nearest it, but that was the extent of the damage. She had been pulling her heat back in, and it had returned to her once there was nothing more to devour. Her friends had found her in the empty heart of the dead wood, kneeling there, body heavy and unmoving, its inner fires for once still and cold, held deep within.

She looked up, faceless and expressionless, as they entered the charred space through the hole she had burned when she had walked towards the heart of the Thorn Thicket. Magenta glowed with undeniably pink light, though in the charred gloom it didn't seem to do much. Yellow was also glowing a more muted glow that occasionally twinkled on and off, the light seeming to flow in fluttering lines.

"Jas?" Green said hesitantly. "Are you all right? You weren't responding through your drone."

Her… oh. She'd stopped paying attention to her drone.

She looked around, then up. There was no light, no sun… "How long have I been here?"

"An hour," Yellow said. "Or close enough. We'd have come in here sooner, but the military showed up—finally—and we sort of had to… aggressively avoid them."

Jas nodded slowly. "I… need to go home. It's so late…"

"I left a trail of sand, so we should be able to get you close to where you can get a ride to your house quickly," Magenta said. "You might want to call your uncle and tell him you'll be late getting home though."

Jas nodded as she pushed herself up to her feet, and nearly fell over again as she forgot to balance herself. The plasma she used to keep herself balanced had gone out, she realized. She ignited them again.

Instead of an indistinct buzz, a haunting, unearthly song filled her ears.

Jas stood very, very still. Inside her, the fire burned, low, lethargic and glutted, as it had been only once before.

She didn't blink as Yellow suddenly moved to stand behind Blue, but only because she had no eyelids to blink with.

"Jas? Are you all right?" Green said. "You… have lava dripping down your face."

Jas held up her hands, with their black-tipped glass fingers. She looked at her own face, and found bright, glowing lines of molten stone oozing down from cracks in the dark visor of uneven obsidian she used as eyes. She shuddered slightly and fused the rents shuts, pulling the eat from the lava until they blended with the rest of her red-glowing stone shell. "I'm… I'm fine. Let's just… go. Please?"

Thankfully, they didn't press.

Magenta made a warp in the air and they stepped through, crossing a great distance in a single step, and emerging somewhere with a view of the night sky, tinted orang by the glow of streetlights .

Behind them, they left nothing but blackened wood char, two burned houses, and a carpet of fused black glass, vibrating with unearthly song that no one could hear…

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Her uncle was very concerned when Jas came back, though fortunately he had accepted that she had been delayed by traffic after going off to meet with her friends. It was even true. Magenta had offered to drive her to somewhere close to where she lived, and they had gotten stuck in traffic. Supposedly, the cause was the Thorn Thicket, which had clogged one of the roads heading out of the city, which had caused traffic to build up all the way to Metro Manila, and from there all traffic had been slowed down.

She expected to eat dinner alone, since everyone had eaten already, but to her surprise her uncle and the others joined her, or at least sat with her as she ate. They opened a bottle of soft drink—she got a glass too—and talked as she ate, and it was almost like they were having dinner together like they usually did. Lila talked about her day's classes, 'Auntie' Ronda spoke at Jas with concern about the dangers of commuting after dark, her uncle said that Jas should have called him if she needed to be picked up, and Judy began telling a story about how a friend of hers who had her phone stolen while commuting.

It was all strangely comforting. Jaselle kept her silence, mostly eating, but when she finished with her food—Daphne grabbed her plates and took them to the kitchen, as if to keep Jas from washing them herself—instead of heading upstairs to start studying, she sat and listened. Everyone continued on, and while she didn't understand what they were talking about sometimes, it all felt familiar.

If she closed her eyes, it would almost have been like being back home, listening to her brother and sisters and mother and father and aunt and uncles… her uncle even sounded like father…

"Jas? What's that you're singing?"

Jas opened her eyes, blinking in surprise. "W-what?" she said, a bit embarrassed at not paying attention.

"You were singing something," Lila, seated next to her, said. "Well, more like humming, really. What was it? It was really nice."

Jas knew what it was. It wouldn't leave her, seeming to vibrate through her bones, to be a ringing in her ears in silence. "Just something I heard," she said quietly. "I don't know what it's called."

"Aww… that's too bad," Lila said. "If you find out, tell me, all right? It sounds like something I'd like to listen to."

Jas nodded. "If I find out," she said politely.

When she eventually went upstairs to study, some candies in her pocket in case she needed it, the song followed her. She sat at her desk, staring at her notebooks, her pads of paper, her textbooks and her computer as the song continued in the silence of her soul.

Eventually, she opened her books and began to work, putting the day behind her as best as she could.

Jaselle began to hum.

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She saw herself on the news the next day. It was in shaky, ill-defined cellphone footage taken from a distance, but it was her. Dull red glowing stone that faded to black, surrounded by a wavering haze of heat and occasional plasma, she was burning through vines as Blue followed behind her, spraying water at the smoking remains in her wake.

"—on the scene were unable to approach, owing to the extreme heat, no one was able to speak to the strange beings," the newscaster was saying. "However, through footage, it has been positively identified that the Yellow Creature and the Green Creature who were at the scene in Tagaytay was also present at Admiral Hills. Responders claim that the Yellow Creature entered the overgrowth in the company of a Pink Creature, and came out with several persons who had been trapped inside the overgrowth, bringing them to medical responders—"

Jas could only imagine how annoyed Kuya Kim would be at being referred to as a Pink Creature.

She'd found a message for her in her computer, asking her if she was all right, and warning her that if she didn't respond within 24 hours, they were coming to her house in case she was going through something 'weird'. She responded promptly, assuring them that she had not entered any sort of strange fugue the way Kuya Kim had. They accepted that, asking her to keep them informed as to any changes she experienced. Tammy told her to relax, and just go back to her routine until the weekend. Kuya Kim had invited them to come to his house, on the grounds it was cheaper than constantly going to coffee shops.

Jaselle did as she was advised, losing herself in the mundanity of her education. She attended classes, took notes, recited when called upon, and raised her hand as often as possible to show her diligence. Her hands ached, her throat ran dry, and every so often she got a headache, but those were minor pains that faded away whenever she was able to find an empty stall in the restrooms and changed her body from muscle and bone to lava and back again. It allowed her to stay refreshed all day, even with the minor distractions that plagued her now.

In silence, she heard that unearthly, inhuman, eldritch song. She had heard of tinnitus, where damage to ones ears resulted in a phantom ringing. She had never heard of phantom singing, of strange vibrations in a language of urges and feeling. It did not drive her mad, but sometimes she found herself staring off into nothing, just… listening. Only in focus and concentration did she find reprieve, and so she worked, if only so she wouldn't be distracted. Once or twice, one of her classmates would hiss at her to stop humming, and she would hurriedly comply, embarrassed at not noticing.

At night, she dreamed of darkness and emptiness and heat and light, and the song sung on waves of magnetism…

Day by day, class by class, the weekend came.

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It was overcast as she set off for Kuya Kim's house, and rain threatened. Lila had offered to drive her, and Jas had accepted as Uncle Carlos was going golfing with some friends of his later and couldn't bring her himself.

"Thank you," Jas said as they arrived.

"Don't worry about it," Lila said. "We're practically family, after all. Call me when you want me to pick me, up, okay?"

Jas nodded, not sure what to say to that. "All right…" she said hesitantly.

"I mean it," Lila said. "Call me, and I'll pick you up."

Jas nodded at her insistence. "All right. Thank you, Lila."

"Is your friend Sanny going to be here?" Lila asked abruptly.

"Uh, yes?" Jas said, confused.

Lila smiled. "Ah… later, when I come to pick you up… do you think you can introduce me?"

"I can try…? She might leave before me…"

"Then call me before then so I can get here before she leaves," Lila said.

"Sure…?"

"Awesome! See you later, then!"

Jas nodded, still confused as she opened the door of the car and stepped out. The overcast had gotten thicker, and there was a smell in the air that warned her it would rain soon. She knocked on the small gate of Kuya Kim's house, glancing back towards Lila's car. It hadn't left yet. Jas supposed Lila was waiting for her to go inside, to make sure she made it all the way safely.

There was a metallic grind and the gate opened. Kuya Kim smiled at her in greeting. "Hey. You're early. The others haven't gotten here yet. Come on in."

"Good morning, kuya," Jas greeted politely. He stepped back, making room for her to step inside. Jas glanced back and waved at Lila's car. Inside, she vaguely saw Lila wave back, and the car started up, moving away from the curb. Jas stepped inside.

"Come on, let's get inside," Kuya Kim said. "It looks like rain."

As if for emphasis, Jas felt something land on her hair.

"Too late," Kuya Kim muttered. "Come on, let's go in, they can let us know when they get here."

Jas nodded, and the two of them hurried down the walkway to the front door as more rain began to fall down. Jas felt the droplets land on her hair, on her shoulders, on her face, getting thicker and thicker…

She blinked blearily, suppressing a yawn, and when she finished, her eyes didn't want to open. She felt herself sway, one hand reaching up to rub at her eyes, and she was falling, her knees collapsing beneath her…

Jaselle Alhambra fell into darkness, a song ringing in her ears.