Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers #45 (Patreon)

The Nightmares That Came To Manila, Part 3

Sanny woke up suddenly as pain lanced through him, coming from what felt like several gaping wounds all over his body, and from the back of his head there was an immediate explosive tangle of urges and emotions.

—determination consume devour surprise confusion rage frustration exasperation resignation—

That was a bit more than what he usually got from herwhen he woke up. Some of her confusion bled into his own as he tried to figure where he was, and…

Why wasn't he on anything solid?

His eyes had been open all this time, their sensory input a confused blur, and they all blinked—those that had eyelids, anyway—as he looked around, habit and instinct as a vision-reliant animal making him utilize the most familiar sense first as more frustration exasperation resignationcame from the back of his head. The urges all bled together to give him an impression of strained patience as he tried to orient himself and make sense of what he was seeing. Tentacles, those were his… grayness... the ground…

Wait, why was the ground so far away?

Other senses finally became immediate. Cold and wet and more pain coming from holes and cuts and what felt like burns all over his body. The fact his body's configuration wasn't 'bilaterally symmetrical upright biped' wasn't a concern. He was used to not waking up like that nowadays. The taste of water and blood and ozone on his… skin? And antennae? He heard the sound of wind blowing around him though little hole-like ears and antenna vibrations, felt it pushing against the skin on his tentacles and… large flesh membranes? Wait, were those wings? Did he have wings?

Still disoriented from having woken so abruptly and painfully, Sanny hurriedly tried to identify the muscles that moved what on his current body configuration as the back of his head kept throbbing frustration exasperation resignation at him. Right, tentacle muscle groups were familiar, but he didn't need to move those, he needed the ones that moved the wings… The ground got closer and closer as those muscles helpfully twitched to more frustration exasperation resignation. He took hold of those muscles and spread his wings wide, catching the wind. The flesh stretched, and he felt pain as a wound on the wing membrane was pulled open.

He kept on falling towards the ground.

Frustration and panic screamed though Sanny as the frustrationwas momentarily replaced by amusementand just a little spite. He wasn't flying, why wasn't he flying? He'd been flying before, the fact he only started to fall once he woke up proved that, what was he missing? As if to answer him, more muscles convulsed in his body. Wait, where those… gas bladders? Why was his body full of gas bladders? What had shebeen doing while he'd been asleep?

There was a violent shift in the wind on his antennae, and shewent from frustration exasperation resignation to rage prey consume devour. That was all the warning Sanny had before he saw a dark shape outlined in the clouds, wide wings and oh come on, how was that thing flying? That was so unfair! Stupid square-cube law!

Sanny tried to flap his wings in a panic, but they were utterly ineffectual, and then like a bad dream the huge bird was on him and—wait, was that thing an oversized sparrow? Despite the wings being far too small to reasonably support something of that size and weight, no matter how fast they seemed to be flapping, the disproportionately intense downdraft from its wingbeats robbed Sanny of what little illusion of control he had, sending him tumbling as he lashed out in a panic with tentacles and leathery wings. The tentacles met talons, and there was more pain and blood as the talons stabbed and tore at his flesh and ah, that'swhere the injuries all over him had come from. What had she been doing fighting a giant bird? While he'd been asleep, at that.

He tried to move himself away, flapping frantically even if the only way was down, but the sparrow's head darted forward, and there was another explosion of pain as the sparrow's beak clamped down on one of his wings. Pain stretched at across the whole wing as Sanny finally found himself dangling, all his weight concentrated on the flesh in the giant bird's mouth and the joint where the wing connected to the rest of his body. Flesh, muscle and bone strained, and Sanny couldn't help but scream, giving voice to a strange high-pitched roar as one of the bones popped out of its joint from having to support his entire body's weight, the sudden shock finally knocking the lingering haze of sleep from his mind.

And then flesh in the grip of the giant bird's beak tore, and Sanny found himself in freefall once more. In freefall, and finally properly awake as he hastily looked at his body again. It was the sort of bizarre mix of parts that she favored, though a bit more symmetrical than usual. The only bones were hollow ones in the wings and a lightweight, air-filled bone plate where the wing joint connected to the body. The rest of the body's rigidity was provided by gas bladders, like some kind of inflatable suit. There was a thick cluster of multiple tentacles at one end of the body covered in gash-like mouths and eyes. The head was one huge bladder covered in tentacle stalks tipped with more eyes. The mouth was a teeth-lined sphincter that led down an esophagus with sphincters all the way down that acted more as a means to fill all of the body's gas bladders with air. Most of the weight was in the tentacles, which had naturally been pulled down as they dangled.

Except for all the gas bladders and muscles, the insides were surprisingly sparse when it came to organs. There wasn't even a stomach or rudimentary digestive track, simply an extensive nervous system hooked up to several very sensitive sensory organs. The skin was performing triple duty as tactile, taste and olfactory sensor, and hearing duty was being shared by little hole-like ears studded all over the body, and the bristle-like antennae covering the skin and backs of the tentacles. It was all linked to a small, almost rudimentary brain shielded under the bone plate next to—

Ah, that's where his man-bits were. He made a point of letting her feel his relief and thankfulness as he twitched familiar muscles to check that the bits were still healthy. More frustration exasperationresignation came from the back of his head in seeming reply, transitioning to rage prey consume devour as several eyestalks drifted to point towards the giant sparrow,

Sanny tried to say something, but none of the mouths were configured with vocal chords, only teeth. So instead, he relaxed slightly, pulling back from the instinctive absolute control he'd grabbed when he'd woken up abruptly. It was like riding a bike but only touching the handlebars with your thumb and forefinger, a too-light, half-hearted touch that was just waiting for disaster.

There was a final burst of frustration exasperation before he felt it, the sensation of nerves and muscles moving just a little bit out of his control, of someone else adding their own soft grip to the metaphorical handlebars. It was like trying not to think about breathing, letting his body seemingly do it by itself instead of being so conscious of his lungs they stopped moving entirely. The gas bladders filled, shaping the body, making it rigid in some places, curved in others, pliant in still more. The wings moved, catching the air in just the same way he could have sworn he'd shaped them to, but this time causing them to stabilize and start gliding as the tentacles flattened, going from being fat, grasping limbs to thin and wide stabilizers that all shaped themselves individually to catch the air and add lift and direction to their flight. The hair-like strands of antennae on the tentacles lay flat, curving to add their own lift and aerodynamics.

He fought to stay relaxed, to let her handle the esoteric body's flight while he divided his attention between using the eyes to watch the sparrow and seeing where they were going. The giant bird had flown off in a blast of air that felt greatly disproportional to its size, its wings flapping so fast they seemed to disappear as it turned around to fly towards them again.

Rage consume devour!

Sanny felt his body begin to turn to meet the bird head-on, and he arrested the impulse, trying to keep them flying straight. Frustrationcame from the back of his head, but he was in no mood to get in a fight in the air like this. Even if he could fly, the bird had too many advantages, like having talons made for poking into flesh! He altered a bunch of eyes on the front, optimizing them for low-light vision, and the dark and indistinct landscape below him brightened into a more recognizable cityscape, what few lights shining illuminating the area around them to his eyes.

It allowed him to get a vague idea of where he was, somewhere in the skies above San Juan. At least, he thought so. There was a large plot of clear space of there with too-straight rows of tree around long stretches of clear grass, so it was probably a golf course, meaning that was Wack-Wack, and over there was a river that wasn't the Marikina or Pasig with an overpass over it, and he was between the two…

He wished he'd left a drone at home that he could have check on his laptop, but since today was supposed to have been a casual, social, team-building thing, he hadn't thought to. Now he was regretting it, since somethinghad obviously happened while he'd been asleep. A giant sparrow hadn't been on his list of monsters this morning!

But that was a problem for later. He steered them into a vertical dive, and she responded, even as she made more of her frustration known. He tried to reassure her, but that was a bit too complex a concept to be conveyed between them. Tentacles spread out, still flattened, acting to steer them as the sparrow pursued. She seemed to realize his plan as the sparrow kept overshooting them and circling back, only to be evaded at the last second, even as its disproportionally intense wake tried to knock them aside as the ground grew closer and closer, as Sanny saw the water flowing through the streets, with what looked like bodies—

He was saved from having to consider it too long as he pulled up and simultaneously surrendered a little more control to her. Thin, skin membrane wings opened wide, catching the air as tentacles spreading like the tail of some kind of hellish peacock. Wounds tore open wider, but aside from the pain that wasn't an issue as they slowed down, casting a shadow on the houses and trees below. The area was densely packed with houses and trees, though some of the former were showing signs of age and his eyes glimpsed indications some had been converted into small business. He could feel the people in those houses, many of them tired, stressed, or asleep…

Over a clear stretch of road, he dove lower, letting their wings catch on the trees before folding them. They slammed into the water, then slammed again into the road underneath, their skin ripping open even as the impact caused many of their gas bladders and eyes to burst as they tumbled and rolled. Antennae bent and snapped, and a few tentacles were sheared off before he skidded to a stop. Blood began to spread through the flowing rain water.

Sanny, for his part, was in agony only long enough for him to deactivate every single pain receptor and nerve connected to them, at which point blessed numbness filled him. In the back of his head, annoyance resignation exasperation oozed.

Then began to cannibalize the body's organ and tissues for parts he could use…

When the bird circled around again, landing on the street despite the trees, he was already gone, a small eel-like thing swimming through the water as the bird splashed down in a massive explosion of wind. The sudden surge actually let him swim further as he rode the displaced water, and from under some sunken bushes he was able to watch as the bird began to peck at his discarded body, ripping out chunks of flesh that he belated wished he'd filled with some sort of deadly neurotoxin.

…

Well, it wasn't too late. He filled the flesh and blood of the body, its cells still alive enough for him to control, with deadly flesh-eating bacteria of all sorts. Probably wouldn't do much good, but fuck that bird. From the annoyance rage frustration consume devour coming from the back, she was probably feeling similarly annoyed.

They lay there, watching as the bird pecked at the body they had so recently been occupying, Sanny altering any bacteria that fell off the body into the water into something harmless. He didn’t want the things to spread, after all.

When the bird started screaming and thrashing about as his bacteria began to consume the cells in its mouth, he felt spitecome the back of his head. The urges and feelings coming from her were growing increasingly more complex… relatively, anyway. Even children understood spite. Some children were practically made of the stuff, from what he remembered of his childhood, which wasn't much since he was pretty sure he'd actively tried to forget most of it.

The bird took to the air, each wingbeat sending out a prolonged, too-strong blast of wind that made trees shake, windows rattle, and the floodwaters surge in all directions as the bird rose into the sky, the clouds above it actually roiling in its wake. Only when it was gone did Sanny let himself start growing a new body. Bilateral, symmetrical, upright, bipedal, hands, opposable thumbs, endoskeleton, exoskeleton, all that good stuff.

He left the tentacles growing in out of the way, weird places here they were, especially since she was stuffing them with sensory organs beyond just sight. He was willing to admit that the only senses he really thought to build were sight and hearing, with touch being taken for granted. Taste and smell? Not important. Shehowever, thought otherwise, which was why he had random tentacles with highly sensitive olfactory senses and barometric senses, and vibrational senses, and thermal senses, and electrical senses…

And they both agreed that having shark teeth grow in a line on the outside of his forearm was cool, though probably for different reasons.

Growing also allowed him time to think. Now that he was no longer plummeting to his death or about to be eaten by a giant bird… why was he here? The last thing he remembered was walking down the sidewalk, trying to decide whether he should buy snacks from the supermarket or the bakery when it had started to rain and he'd started feeling sleepy…

He looked up at the dark clouds above, but while they threatened rain, they weren't actually raining anymore—

Wait, did that mean he'd left his clothes behind somewhere? Ugh, damn it, he'd had five hundred pesos in those pants! Maybe he could still trace his steps back to where he'd been and get his money back…?

No, no, focus!

But… the money…! That was, like, a month's worth of drinks…!

No, focus!

He had to find out what was going on. That meant either getting some internet access—tricky, since he didn't have any gadgets on him, and nowadays people didn't just leave their computers on and unattended—finding someone conveniently watching the news, or finding a way to contact the others.

Given the options, he opted for the second one as 'Plan A'. After all, he was in a residential neighborhood, and even though a lot of the houses were of the 'empty mansion because the owners were living somewhere else' variety, he could feel that there were some places around him were occupied. He just had to find someone watching the news, the probability of which was actually pretty high.

It probably wouldn’t be all that useful, since it was Filipino news, and the networks all were pathologically obsessed with plugging their own shows and calling it 'entertainment new', but maybe he'd get lucky and there'd actually be something relevant to him. Still, given how he was essentially naked in the middle of a neighborhood that wasn't his, bereft of his usual resources and pretty far away from everyone he knew, he supposed it was the best plan he had short of heading home to find out there.

Settling in, Sanny began the painstaking process of sifting through the visual sensory inputs of all the people he could feel around him, hoping he found someone watching the news he needed before he found someone looking at porn or worse…