Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers #41 (Patreon)

Waterborne, Part 8

Willy met the wave of water head on, blasting out water from her front that reshaped into a vertical wedge that parted the waters, forcing it to go around her as geysers of water shot out from the back of her wedge, giving her thrust to compensate for her lack of mass. For a moment, her wedge held against the onslaught of floodwater, fighting the current to stay in place.

"This is your fault!" the rainmaker was screaming, her steaming water sending turbulence over Willy. "This is your fault, this is your fault, THIS IS YOUR FAULT! You interfered! Everything was going so well, AND THEN YOU INTERFERED! YOU—!"

Willy raised a hand that exploded into steam.

The sudden wave of superheated gas slammed into the rainmaker, who let out a cry that was seemed surprise rather than more incoherent ranting. The rainmaker stumbled back, turning her face away from the steam as she bent down and splashed her face with floodwater, trying to cool herself after the burst of scalding heat.

Willy changed her feet back to flesh and blood.

The cold slammed into her extremities from the water running over her, and she could feel the texture of the cement under her, the grit of things floating in the water. But she had purchase and friction, and she used it as she had more water burst from her body, its sudden appearance and incompressibility blunting the force of the flood and thrust her forward towards the rainmaker. An icy hand snapped around a wet wrist.

"Please stop doing that," Willy said tersely with barely restrained anger. Why was this person being so unreasonable?!

"Leave me ALONE, monster!" the rainmaker cried again showing her open palm towards Willy's face. The floodwater surged again, pushing against the area of water around Willy that she controlled, going over it and washing over Willy's face.

She let it as she maintained her grip on the rainmaker, keeping them from being separated. Her feet were freezing, but she stood firm as the rainmaker kept blasting at her futilely, the water flung at her heavy but slow and still fluid. The little that washed over her controlled water to stream over her face did nothing. "No. I need you to end the sleep. It's your doing, so you need to undo it." The explanation was childishly simple and self-evident, but the rainmaker seemed to be having trouble comprehending, so perhaps she needed things stated simply.

"We were together!" No, still ranting about unrelated things. "God answered my prayers and gave me the power to let us be together! AND YOU KILLED HIM! YOU KILLED KUYA!" The rainmaker started pulling against Willy's grip, her other, once-open hand clenching into a fist to try hammering at Willy's forearm. The ice didn't break, yet the rainmaker kept beating at it, seemingly heedless of the pain, her waters completely filled with burning steam.

"I didn't kill anyone," Willy corrected irritably. Rats didn't count. It had been a monster, after all, and they'd killed plenty of those, though only as a group. Good girls didn't kill people. That wasn't just something that would make her a bad girl, it was evil and wrong. Tammy would still help her and love her if she were a bad girl.

Willy didn't know if Tammy still would if she did something evil.

"You killed him! You killed him! Kuya is dead because of you!" the rainmaker cried, voice rising to be shrill. On TV, this was usually when Tammy would change the channel with added haste, as if wanting to be away from bad less-than-English-class-play acting as quickly as possible. Willy usually didn't have an opinion on things one way or another—Tammy's opinion was always the right opinion—but in those instances, her opinion was that Tammy was right, and such terrible acting was painful to listen to, and was undeserving of any amount of money being paid for the performance. "Die! Die! Just DIE, monster!"

"No," Willy said succinctly. "Don't blame other people for things they didn't do." Willy hadn't killed anyone. She hadn't hurt anyone. She had been restrained, still, enduring. She'd simply found the rainmaker and asked her to stop making it rain and let Tammy wake up. Everything else had been the rainmaker's own actions.

Willy received a kick in one icy shin for her helpful advice. The kick was deflected off to the side by her leg's lack of friction, but enough force transferred through to make her foot skid back a little on the rough unseen pavement below, which did hurt. The woman's steam was spinning and whirling, no longer hot and formless, but gaining currents and streams. "NO! No, I'd never hurt him! He was the only one who loved me! He was the only one who cared! I'd never hurt him! You did it! You pushed him off! THIS IS YOUR FAULT!"

"No, it isn't." The words vibrated through her ice, but they probably went unheard as another massive surge of floodwater slammed into her. she hadn't been idle. The area of water around her that she controlled had grown, and she absently diverted most of the floodwater aside, save for what rose high enough to go over her diversion and wash over her. Even then, it could be resisted, with purchase on her feet and her own water bracing her, even as her feet grew so, so cold. The floodwater flowed around the rainmaker, keeping her head in air as she continued to struggle against Willy's grip on her arm.

"This is your fault! This is your fault!" the rainmaker's voice was growing more and more shrill despite how distorted Willy's hearing was by the floodwater, the steam inside them a whirling maelstrom that wasn't so much chaotic as random, streams breaking apart to make more and more streams of burning steam as more and more of that water evaporated. The rainmaker's foot kicked again, missed. She jerked her captured arm about violently, as if trying to pull it out of Willy's grasp, but Willy moved with her, flowing with the movements so that she wouldn't be unbalanced by the wild flailing. "WHY?-! What did I do to you that you did this to me? This is your fault! Die! Die! I hope you die, monster!"

"I've never done anything to you," Willy said, and the only reason the words weren't a snarl was because she had no teeth to grit. The frustration inside Willy boiled into anger again, and the waters within her burst into her own steam, but she forced herself to calm again, for her waters to cool. No, no, good girls didn’t allow themselves to be provoked with words like that… but the rainmaker wasn't listening! Why wouldn't the rainmaker listen?-! She wanted to smack them, to hit their head so they'd start using it properly—

Good girls don't throw tantrums…

ARGH! Why did people have to be so stupid and hard to deal with?-!

"Liar! You came into our house, into our room, just to ruin our special day!" the rainmaker screamed like a child crying for attention. She actually started stomping her feet, making the water around her churn. "I was making him mine, so that no one would ever be able to keep us apart again!"

"I wasn't stopping you," Willy snapped. "I just wanted the rain to stop and for everyone to wake up."

"NO! No one wakes up! No one wakes up! No one will stop us from being together!" the rainmaker screamed. She clutched at her stomach with her free hand. "God blessed me with the rain so that no one could keep us apart anymore, so that we could be together! This is a blessed rain, a holy rain, a sign from God! With this rain, we could be together! I'd become his wife!"

Her words were a scream that shattered into a sob. The sob became a broken heaving. Her waters grew cold, the steam become chill and still as ice, even as they burned…

"Well, if you're done with it, can you stop it now?" Willy said.

And then they only burned, the steam a whirling, violent maelstrom as the rainmaker glared at her. Willy pressed on before she started screaming again. "Whatever you were doing you needed the rain for, it's done now, so can you please stop making it rain and putting people to sleep? There's someone I need to wake up. We were going to meet with our friends, and because she won't wake up we're late." There, she had said 'please', explained herself properly, and reasoned out why the rainmaker should do as she asked. Those were more things Tammy had said she should do if she was asking something of someone who was being uncooperative for some reason. Willy would have also gone to the bakeshop and gotten them a tray of brownies as a bribe and more explicit but implied payment for the favor, but she didn't have her money with her.

At her conclusion of her words, the steam began to burn, hotter and hotter and hotter as what had been a maelstrom suddenly twisted, becoming a burning stream, and current that the narrower and narrower, flowing faster and faster. "No," the rainmaker said, her shoulders starting to shake. Had the cold finally gotten to her? She'd been naked all this time, after all. "You ruin our special day, the day I gave myself to him and showed him my love, you kill my kuya and you think you have the right to ask for anything from me? NO! NEVER! This rain was given to me by God so that my kuya and I could be together! With this rain, I will punish you, monster! I will KILL YOU! I will make it rain forever! I will never let anyone wake up!" Up above, the sky directly above the two of them darkened.

Never wake up…

"NO!" Willy exclaimed. She'd said 'please'! She'd explained herself! She'd waited her turn to talk while the rainmaker had said nonsense! Why wasn't the rainmaker doing what Willy had asked? Tammy needed to wake up! Willy needed Tammy to wake up!

"YES!" the rainmaker screamed triumphantly. "Yes! Yes!" She laughed, almost a scream, Willy suddenly found herself tackled and pushed down beneath the water, the attack too quick for her to will her body to move until she was already unbalanced and tipping over. A clenched fist slammed down ineffectually at her, splashing into the water again and again. The rainmaker was probably screaming again, judging from the faint vibrations through where she was holding the rainmaker's arm.

Willy rolled over, pulling the rainmaker under the water with her. Unlike her, the rainmaker still seemed to need to breathe. She counted to ten, then pulled the rainmaker out of the water to see if they were ready to be reasonable after their outrageous words. The rainmaker immediately started screaming like a child crying for attention and pointlessly thrust her free had at Willy's face, almost touching it. Floodwater surged, but Willy was surrounded by water she controlled now, and her control was far, far better than the rainmaker's. Thick, viscous water rose to meet the surge, creating a bulwark that pushed the onrushing water to either side, held in place by thrusting geysers under the surface to counter the force.

And then the sky slammed down onto her again.

For the second time that day, Willy was slammed hard into the ground, as a massive almost literal column of water descended from the clouds, as if rain had fallen so thick it had become a solid stream. And then the water was moving outward like a massive wave, a land-borne tsunami, and this time it was too big for her water to fight, and there was no convenient corner to lodge herself into. She went tumbling, the rainmaker in her grip until there was an impact that broke that arm at the elbow, and she was in two parts, tumbling and spinning and carried along by the current—

Willy exploded into steam, the bubbles of how rising out of the water and into the air as she created her own expanding outward ripple, even if it was just a bare fraction of the size of the one the rainmaker had just caused. Willy tumbled through the air, floating blind…

Her arm was still attached to the rainmaker, who was screaming and clutching at her arm. The floodwater had wrapped around her, cradled her, slowed her down and set her on her feet after they had been separated, and now the rainmaker was slamming the ice arm shackled on her into the water, as if trying to break and beat it off, screaming incoherently. The arm broke off again, leaving only the stump of a hand and wrist that the rainmaker immediately started slapping into the water as if that would work again.

Willy pulled her steam together, temporarily forming her own rain that fell to earth, growing more mass. She slammed down onto the dark flood water as a clear sheet. All across her transparent mass, boiling hot geysers sent streams high into the air, and looking through the glistening droplets they spread, she found her arm and the rainmaker again. The whole mass of water froze into ice, sinking and scraping down to touch the hidden road, ruined walls, sunken cars and other debris under the water. The ice grew, reached out and enfolded anything it could wrap around that was stationary, and soon the mass of ice was anchored in place, a glassy island that rose and grew out of the flood.

From the mass of ice, a new body arose, clear and slightly tinged blue as Willy used the ice shackled to the rainmaker's wrist to orient herself and let her know which way to look. The rainmaker spotted her at the same time and let out another wrathful scream, her waters now nothing but random turbulence and burning steam. Even the thick, viscous slime was gone. The rainmaker thrust her arm towards Willy again, and once more the sky above her darkened as floodwater surged to sweep her away.

The ice grew, and a solid mass met the surging water head on, displacing the floodwater as it spread and wrapped around more and more structures under the water to anchor itself. It became an inexorable icy flood of its own, creeping outward as fast as Willy could grow her mass, pushing the water back as the ice grew towards the rainmaker.

For a third time, the column of water slammed down from the sky, but this time Willy was ready. She melted into her creeping glacier as the sky tsunami struck, heaven and earth touching as the descending tower of water impotently expended its force, blasting outward in an expanding ring of water that battered what standing structures were left. When the wave receded, her ice remained, clear and still growing, wrapping around every anchored structure to connect it to the ground., spreading out under the surface of the water, creeping over dirt and cement and wood and bodies…

It flowed over bare, cold feet that jerked away in surprise, but the ice flowed relentlessly, and there was only so fast someone could move through flood water. It wrapped around a foot and bound it in place, creping and flowing up the leg. The other foot was caught, and with both trapped, the rainmaker could no longer move beyond splashing futilely. Stream of floodwater flowed at the ice, but it was too slow, too fluid, forced to flow around the ice that was held firmly in Willy's control.

When Willy rose again, it was right in front of the rainmaker, her feet firmly anchored to her encroaching ice beneath the surface. The rainmaker had been caught with her upper body tilted forward, and was still flailing her arms about energetically as if they would be strong enough to free her when her legs were completely encased.

"Stop the rain," Willy demanded.

"NEVER!" the rainmaker screamed. "Never ever, ever!  This rain is our love! This—"

Willy's fist slammed into the rainmaker's face, knocking her head back and shutting her up.

"Stop the rain!" Willy screamed back.

The rainmaker's face was bleeding, the pouring rain spreading the blood, but her twisted smile showed teeth at Willy. "Never!" she said tauntingly, and Willy remembered the girls who had bullied her in school before she'd gotten tall. "Never! NEVER! You can't stop my rain! No one can stop it! I will make it fall forever! This is my rain and you can't take it from me!"

Willy stared at the rainmaker as the sky above her darkened again.

"My rain! Mine!"

She'd asked. Again and again, she'd asked. She'd tried to be a good girl. She'd tried to do things that Tammy would praise her for. She'd tried to do it right.

And it hadn't mattered, because the rainmaker wouldn't listen. The rainmaker wouldn't listen, no matter how polite and patient and reasonable Willy was. Being a good girl hadn't mattered.

There are people like that. People who won't listen. Just walk away and do something else. They're not worth the headache.

She should walk away. A good girl would walk away and do something else to fix this. But there was no other way to fix this…

Tammy had never told her what to do if there was no other way.

Willy stared at the rainmaker. Her twisted features, her snarling face…

"Please," she found herself saying one last time. "Just stop it. Stop the rain, and stop the sleep. Let her wake up…"

For a moment, Willy thought the rainmaker hadn't heard, so weak were the vibrations of her ice. Perhaps the thundering downpour had swallowed her words.

"Weren't you listening?" the rainmaker roared. "Never! Never! Never ever! Never ever ever ever—"

Willy didn't close her eyes. She had no eyes to close.

Instead, one arm lengthened, narrowing to a point, transparent as glass, fine as an ice pick.

The rainmaker was still ranting incoherently as Willy stabbed her through the stomach and upwards into her heart, filling the rainmaker's chest cavity with ice.

As the rainmaker's face twisted with surprise, as their blood joined the flood, as Willy's ice rose from beneath, growing up the rainmaker's legs to envelope them completely, as the ice grew from within, engulfing the rainmaker completely to cut off their scream, Willy reached deep within herself, into the lightless depths of her soul, where the squatter whimpered and thrashed as if in the grip of nightmares—

She felt it once more, forced and painful and coming from no part of herself as the depths with her changed into an endless dark abyss…

—Burning steam burning steam burning steam burning steam hate burning steam burning steam hate burning steam burning steam hate burning steam hate burning steam hate hate burning steam hate hate hate hate hate HATE HATE HATE HATE—!-!-!-!-!

—gently whirling water, bubbles caught in the tepid flow, tranquil stillness nearly smooth, gentle warmth, gentle whirling—

The sky tsunami struck. It hit the water already flooding the ground below and spread outward. Tons and tons and tons of water with the kinetic force of something that had been accelerated to terminal velocity spread out once more, tearing through buildings too weakened to survive, spreading out to batter against even farther structures, tearing apart flimsy homes. Young and old, strong or weak, people were washed away.

And in the aftermath, people screamed and flailed in the water, fighting for their lives as high, high above, the downpour finally ceased.