Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers #40 (Patreon)

Waterborne, Part 7

Willy slammed into the back wall of the house, and she felt parts of her ice crack from the impact with the old, rough cement. The ice immediately fused together again as she tried to get some sort of leverage, but the water was still moving, and she couldn't get any traction with any part of her body. Water exploded from her, slamming into the floodwater and pushing it back a moment. Surrounded by her own water, she dissolved her ice into liquid, its incompressibility preventing her from being pummeled as the walls and floor around her groaned from the transfer of force. Controlling water and exuding the same viscous slimy sensation as the rain, this was definitely the rainmaker, the one putting Tammy to sleep. Willy tried claiming the floodwater, and what had once been mild, weak resistance was now like trying to pull the water that had been absorbed by Tammy roots into her system. The conclusion was undeniable.

The rainmaker was staring down at the water around her, mouth open and eyes wide. Then her eyes narrowed, and she gave the mass Willy had become a look she had seen before, usually on people Tammy said she'd somehow offended. "Get away from me, monster! Get away from us! Don't interfere!" the rainmaker cried shrilly as boiling waves of turbulence battered over Willy's waters. "I finally have what I want!" She thrust her arms dramatically at Willy, a pointless gesture, but the rainmaker probably didn't know that. Certainly she would think it helped though, since the floodwater that had risen up the house rushed towards Willy in a wave. "He's mine now! I've made him mine!"

Willy made water explode from her mass, boiling hot jets accompanied by steam, the ability she had so recently devoured from the rat. The rainmaker's turbulence changed, filling with exploding geysers of steam as Willy met the surging water with her own, spewing out under greater pressure to resist the larger mass that the rainmaker had managed to call. Incompressible fluid met incompressible fluid, both surges displacing sideways, striking the walls of the quickly filling room. The house shuddered, a vibration Tammy felt in her mass, and part of the cement wall with the window exploded outward, forming a ragged hole. Far below came the sound of large chunks of cement falling onto corrugated metal roofs as all the water suddenly rush out of the hole to release their pressure. The bed began to slide towards the opening, pushed by all that water—

"NO!" the rainmaker cried, pushing one hand towards Willy—again, a pointless gesture—as she reached down with the other and grabbed the sleeper. More water surged at Willy as, still one-handed, the rainmaker tumbled off the bed as it continued to slide, she and the sleeper managing to splash and tumble off as the bed slid to the hole. First one then an other of the bed's legs went over the edge, causing the bed to partially fall out before it's metal headboard lodged it in place, water streaming out all around it, small clutter like discarded clothes and footwear being carried out with the current as Willy reshaped the water she was creating around her, forming a whirling maelstrom that created a current to divert the water from her and out the hole.

"Stop the rain," Willy said again, reforming her body of ice so she could vibrate properly to be heard. Her waters were turbulent with her own boiling hot bubbles as she struggled to keep her impatience and rising anger in check. Good girls didn't throw tantrums, good girls used words to communicate and reason with people… "Stop the rain and stop the sleep!"

"No!" the rainmaker cried, even as she used one hand to flip her long hair out of her face. She made a face at Willy, an angry face with narrowed eyes and gritted teeth and long dripping hair as she got to her feet, standing over the sleeper. "No, he's mine now! I won't let you take him!"

Willy felt more steaming hot bubbles filling her at the nonsensical reply. Was this person not listening.? "I don't care about him!" she said, taking a step forward. Whoever 'he' was. The rainmaker moved her hand like she was grabbing something from the side and throwing it at Tammy, and after a moment more floodwater came rushing up the stairs, only to be diverted by the maelstrom Willy had made around her. "Make the sleep stop already! Let me wake her up!"

"Why aren't you asleep?-! You should be asleep! Everyone should be asleep!" the rainmaker screamed. "There shouldn't be anyone to stop me! Go to sleep and stop interfering!" She thrust both hands towards Willy again, the sleeper falling to the wet floor beside her, his shirt soaked completely.

Willy felt the vibration that signaled another surge of water, as well as other vibrations, of breaking masonry and snapping wood. The floor under Willy's feet exploded upward as floodwater surged, but she was already throwing herself at the rainmaker in a full-body tackle. Her much harder body slammed into the rainmaker as water continued to gush up from where she had previously standing, and the rainmaker let out a cry of pain as her bare back struck the rough, unfinished walls. Willy shoved her clear, icy face as close to the rainmaker as she could, to make sure she could be heard, to make sure there was no misunderstanding. After all, with the rain and waves, it was possible the rainmaker just wasn't hearing her properly. "Stop the rain," she said. "Stop the sleep. Now. Please. I am asking you nicely."

The rainmaker tried to push her back, and Willy's feet slid back on the floorboards, frictionless. In the rain, with every surface wet, her being made of ice meant she had no almost traction on anything, and she nearly fell over before she made her body flow and restructure to a more upright, stable position. The rainmaker drew back her hand and punched Willy in the face, then let out a cry pain at the feeling of punching solid ice as the force made Willy slide again almost to the hole behind her. Willy let unnaturally viscous water flow from her, displacing the water under her that she couldn't claim and dripping between the floorboards before turning the water into ice, wrapping around the wooden boards beneath her as she used that to anchored her body to the floor.

Ah. They were fighting now. Tammy had told her the good girls shouldn't start fights… but there was nothing against good girls ending fights, and Tammy sometimes praised her for it. Willy had been told she wasn't supposed to let herself be bullied, and when people started hitting her, that was when she was being bullied.

She'd been hit. That was bullying. And the rainmaker wasn't her classmate, nor were they in school, so there were no unfair school administrators who even Tammy got angry at for simply levying punishments with no consideration for circumstances and self-defense.

All the boiling turbulence, all the frustrations, the cold and slush that Willy had been ignoring as she feared that Tammy would never wake up and she'd be all alone again, that she'd have to go back to Cebu and live with people who said they loved her but didn't try to understand her, who looked at her like a problem to solve instead of the way Tammy looked at her, full of warmth that washed over her like a bath after a long day… Willy clenched the fingers of one fist, stepping forward on the ice now coating the floorboards and anchoring to the crevices and textures of the house to hold it in place as she drew her hand back for a retaliatory strike at the rainmaker's own head. Her fingers creaked as she clenched it tighter and tighter, the fingers fusing into the palm, becoming a single cold mass that she filled with her anger, her frustration, her—

Good girls didn't throw tantrums. They didn't break things or hurt people just to make themselves feel better or to make people do something.

…

Being a good girl was so hard. There were so many rules, so many conditions and situations and things she had to remember to do and not do, things to do in the same situation that could be mutually exclusive and she didn't know how to tell when it was time to do what in those instances, not without Tammy telling her. Other people never needed to be told. Other people had a Tammy they carried with them all the time, in their heads. They knew what to do, how to do things right. All she had was a squatter who didn't do anything and made her head hurt by letting in other people's turbulence. She needed to Tammy to tell her what to do, needed Tammy to tell her how to act 'normal' so that people would leave her alone. She needed Tammy and the rainmaker was keeping them apart, because if Tammy was asleep she wasn't with Willy…

The rainmaker was cradling her hand, screaming and saying words that Tammy had said good girls shouldn't use casually, even if Tammy herself used them sometimes when talking about school administrators. Willy wanted so, so much to hit her…

"I'll ask you again," Willy said, her ice vibrating with the words as the rain fell around them, lowering her bludgeoning fist. Outside, through the hole in the wall, Willy could see the floodwaters rising, saw pedicabs and jeepneys and cars submerged up to their roofs. "Stop the rain. Stop the sleep. Please. Your rain is keeping someone asleep. I need her to wake up." There, she'd said please and explained herself more thoroughly. Maybe now the rainmaker would be willing to be reasonable and do as Willy asked, or at least perhaps explain why she wouldn't—

"No!" the rainmaker cried. "No one wakes up! No one will ever wake up!" She bared her teeth, her face twisted into a 'scary' expression like she was taking a group picture with classmates. "No one will get in my way again! He's mine now! No one will be able to keep kuya and me apart!"

Still not listening! "I don't care about any of that," Willy said. She'd been listening, at least. "Please stop the rain and stop the sleep! Now!" Maybe she should have said please first of all? It wasn't very clear if you were supposed to say 'please' at the beginning, middle or end of a request. Tammy used it everywhere, and the all that was really said about it is that good girls said 'please' when they were asking something of someone.

In response, the rainmaker pushed her other hand toward Willy, fingers clawed as she let out a scream that echoed the turbulence of her waters, filled with steam bubbles and boiling water, all as thick and viscous as slime. "Go away and stop bothering us! This was our day! Our day together! I made sure no one would interfere, and YOU RUINED IT, MONSTER!"

Willy felt an urge to bite the rainmaker's fingers, but good girls didn't bite people like dogs. Good girls only bit food, and they took small bites, and chewed completely before swallowing…

Water shot out from the hole in the floor behind her like a fountain, slamming into her from behind and pushing the sleeper across the floor as Willy felt the vibrations of more and more water rushing up the stairwell as the rainmaker bared her teeth. Willy just felt irritated. The rainmaker was not a good girl. This was clearly some kind of tantrum, and a petty, unreasonable one. This time however, when the waters suddenly surged up from the stairway again, called up from the floodwaters at street level, Willy remained imperiously unmoved, her feet anchored to the layers of ice she had made and grown. Stresses and forces cracked the ice as she was pushed, but it fused again even quicker, and Willy made it grow thicker and thicker as the water continued to rush futilely, pushing all the remaining furniture in the room out the hole in a flood and a waterfall—

The rainmaker's eyes suddenly went wide, and Willy felt the turbulent waters from her suddenly fill with ice. "NO!" the rainmaker cried, suddenly throwing herself towards the hole, where the sleeper had been sent sliding by her sudden surging flood. "Kuya! Kuya!" She grabbed at the sleeper, getting hold of his bare leg as he continued to slide toward the hole. "Kuya, wake up! Wake up! Kuya!" She seemed to have forgotten all about her control over the floodwaters as she struggled to get footing on the wet wooden floor, managing to arrest the sleeper's movement with his part of his upper body and one arm jutting out from the hole. "KUYA!"

The rainmaker's feet slipped, and she fell down, her legs splaying as she instinctively spread her arms for balance. Willy felt all the rainmaker's turbulence still as all of her water turned into a single mass of ice.

The sleeper slipped out the hole with the last of the water.

The rainmaker screamed, a high, keening cry as cracks burst out all over the calm, cold stillness, the ice cracking and exploding like firecrackers, the turbulence pushing hard against Willy as she kept it out of her water with annoyance. There was a dull, metallic sound as of something hitting a corrugated metal roof, its echoes quickly dying to the relentless rain.

"Kuya!" the rainmaker screamed, almost slipping and falling through the hole herself before she managed to catch the edges of the much-abused wall. "Kuya! Kuya!"

"If he's asleep, he probably can't hear you," Willy pointed out helpfully. "Please, stop the rain. Stop the sleep."

The shattered fragments of ice exploded, everything exploding into steam. What?

"YOU!" the rainmaker screamed as she turned towards Willy, nearly slipping again. The rainmaker looked down and seemed to see the ice of the wooden floor for the first time. "This is your fault! You just barged in here, and—ARGH!" One more she brandished her hand, pointing it towards Willy. "WHY CAN'T PEOPLE JUST LEAVE OUR LOVE ALONE AND LET ME BE WITH KUYA!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Willy said, quite reasonably. "I just want you to stop using the rain to keep people asleep. Please." Tammy would be proud of her, she was sure. She'd said please, even when the rainmaker had started bullying. She'd tell Tammy all about it later when Tammy woke up.

This time the house didn't vibrate. Floodwater didn't surge up from the street from up the stairwell, defying gravity by flowing upwards.

Instead, the ceiling collapsed, slamming into Willy and shattering her body to pieces and through the floor as a thick, viscous column of water fell from the sky like a tsunami from the heavens. Her perspective shattered as her body broke into pieces from the force of the sudden impact. Willy could feel the house collapsing around her as the impossible column of water from the sky struck down, floors breaking like popsicle sticks snapped in half, walls bursting outward and slamming into the houses on either side, the water spreading in all directions in a violent wave, and it was all Willy could do to keep from being swept away. Her waters were engulfed, full of nothing but turbulence, a boiling, burning, violent incandescence as all of the rainmaker's waters vaporized violently into burning steam.

Directly under the column, Willy was slammed straight into the ground, the different chunks of her body pushed to the floor from sheer pressure. Touching the cement floor that had been scoured smooth by years of feet, she tried to grow her ice outwards, tried to get a grip on something, anything to anchor herself. If the currents carried her away, there was no telling how far she'd go, how long it would take to get back here and find the rainmaker again, no telling if she even could. There was no purchase to be found, so Willy let out jets of burning hot water from her surface, the force of the geyser-like stream pushing her further into the ground, keeping her in position as she waited for the rainwater to recede. Despite her best efforts, the piece of ice her consciousness was residing in slid, and in the hazy, dark, confusing floodwaters, she couldn't see. She felt for the water she was releasing from her geysers, trying to find patterns, currents, tried to get a sense of her surroundings even as the floodwaters continued to rage…

There! An eddy where part of her water was managing to swirl within itself! She diverted her geysers, using them as jets again, sending herself rushing and tumbling towards the eddy. Her ice tumbled violently, barely kept on course until she reached the spot. It was a corner, where the floor and two walls met, and the currents of the flood was angled just enough that water and silt and now her piece of ice was managing to gather there, relatively undisturbed. Willy nestled there, using jets of her geysers to push herself in and stay in place, now more effective since she could keep herself from siding, most of her attention on trying to push back the burning turbulence from her mind. Her struggle was made easier as the sources of other turbulence became fewer and fewer.

Eventually, the only turbulence left was the rainmaker's. Most others had stilled completely and disappeared, thought Willy could feel the distant ripples of more far away from her.

The floodwaters began to slow down, the pressure abating. Though it still flowed, it was soon no longer doing so with the relentless force of a large mass.

Willy cut off her jets and began reforming her body from a chip of ice once more. She rose back to her full height, body tall and clear, and paused, staring.

The tall, narrow, three story cement tower of a house she had been standing in was gone. So were the houses to its sides, and many of the other houses around it. Wooden houses were just gone, only patches of flowing floodwater left in their place. Other houses whose walls were made of cement blocks had their roofs ripped off, their windows shattered, weaker walls pushed down, a few barely hanging off by their internal rebar. Cars and other vehicles had been overturned, and anything that had been standing loose, like outdoor furniture, chicken coops, piles of garbage or canvas signs were just… gone.

Within some of the walls and houses that remained, bodies floated, absolutely still.

Willy took a moment to note the changes in her surroundings, then carefully walked in a wide circle, her legs bumping into unseen underwater obstructions and hidden street gutters as she tried to get a sense of the intensity of the rainmaker's turbulence, which was alternating between burning steam and sharp-edged chips of ice that ground and churned together. Then she turned, faced the direction where it was the strongest, and began heading in that direction. Around her, rain continued to fall, though a patch of clouds directly overhead was noticeably thinner and lighter than the rest before it slowly grew thick and dark again.

She found the rainmaker standing in hip-deep water next to a large square of corrugated roofing that had been ripped off some house and had settled on top of something underneath it, struggling to lift up a floating body that Willy recognized as the sleeper, making loud wailing sounds as she did so. The rainmaker stumbled, clearly tripping on something unseen under the water as she tried to lift up the sleeper onto the roof, which wobbled slightly. A small body bumped into the rainmaker, and there was a brief burst of cold bubbles in the rainmaker's waters as she roughly pushed the floating body away, one of many floating around her.

Willy walked around the bodies more carefully as she drew closer to the rainmaker so they couldn't accidentally nudge her and affect her balance. Once she was close enough that she figured the rainmaker would be able to hear her even over the pounding rain, Willy said, "When you're done with that, could you please stop the rain and the sleep? I could help you if it would get it done faster." Tammy had said that if you were asking a favor of someone who was doing something thing, a good girl should offer to help so they got done faster and so that they would be more inclined to agree to your request.

The rainmaker stilled, and her turbulence erupted into burning steam again… yet somehow far, far beneath the steam, remaining completely, utterly cold and still. Slowly, the rainmaker turned, staring at Willy.

"You…" the rainmaker said, quietly at first, before her voice suddenly rose explosively. "YOU AGAIN! WHY WON'T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE!-?"

The rainmaker thrust her hand at Willy, and this time there was no pause, no delay as the floodwaters immediately surged towards her in a wave once more.