Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers #46 (Patreon)

The Nightmares That Came To Manila, Part 4

It was really tempting to go rifling through these rich people's semi-abandoned houses for spare change, but Sanny grudgingly reminded himself that even though it was more accurate to call him a violent vigilante, he should probably at least be trying to act like a superhero in the Sentaiger vein. Even the actual pirates didn't just loot people's spare change left lying around. Don't be the guy who stole the thing that was going to be auctioned off to charity!

…on the other hand, it wasn't like he was on TV and kids were watching…

No, no! Bad Sanny! God is watching!

It didn't take long to find someone watching TV. He could hear a generator running, so there were probably power problems somewhere, but the house had electricity, and an old man was sitting in the living room, watching a big screen TV. It was one of the older kinds, a huge enough to be its own cabinet that looked like it had been built in the early 90s. The colors were slightly off, either from the settings being messed with or something being broken on the tube, but the images were clear enough. He thought at first there was something wrong with the audio, until he realized the man he was listening through was simply hard of hearing and going deaf.

The man was almost dozing, barely mindful of the TV in front of him, and Sanny was able to subtly take control of the man's muscles to fix his posture and focus on the TV more clearly. Really, the man would have gotten an aching neck sleeping like that. Then again, maybe it was simply the lack of muscle mass to keep his head upright.

Carefully not to jar the man fully awake and terrify him from the fact an outside force had taken control of his body and he was temporarily trapped in his own flesh with no control, Sanny tried to watch the news. When it became clear the man's hearing was just really bad, he fixed that.

Once he could hear the TV, the news wasn't good, although there really wasn't much actual information, since the news was simply repeating what was happening. That implied either things weren't as bad as they said, and the news was merely sensationalizing… or communications were down and they were cut off from developments, meaning things were probably far worse than they said. The news they were repeating was already bad enough. There was terrible flooding everywhere, far worse than the usual terrible flooding everywhere that Manila usually got including places that didn’t usually get flooded, monsters had suddenly appeared with the rain that hadn't been active before, Pasig had been devastated by violent water… somehow… and apparently in addition to the over-sized bird, there was a giant shark shooting lightning flying around. Well, that explained the burns all over him, at least. They also kept talking about people finally waking up, for some reason.

In between each repetition of the same details 'for those just tuning in', which Sanny was grudgingly thankful for, they were also listing an increasing death toll, which was already in the hundreds of thousands. Because it wouldn't be Filipino 'human suffering for the ratings' journalism otherwise.

Once he was sure there was nothing more to be garnered from the news, Sanny turned off the TV and let the man sleep. He… might have gone a bit overboard when he'd been fixing up the man as he'd watched the news, but he couldn't just leave him with that prostate cancer. And really, what was the harm in getting rid of his partial cataract and fixing his vision? And his hearing? And restoring his sense of taste, that was just mercy, why live on bland food? And giving him a little bit more muscle mass? And fixing up his digestive system? And getting rid of some festering bacteria that his old immune system couldn't sufficiently deal with? And beefing up that immune system slightly back to spec? And doing something about the thinning hair? And tightening and thickening the skin a little…

…

Uh, it was probably fine.

So, priorities! He needed to get into contact with the others, find out if they knew anything that the news didn't, then see how many he could talk into helping him hunt down that stupid bird. Hopefully Jas would be amenable. A super-hot plasma beam was pretty much an 'I win' button for most things. He also needed to get a part of himself home and hope he still had power and internet so he could do his own research on what had been happening. He needed maps, he needed monster locations, he needed… well, whatever he needed, it would be easier to find if he was at home.

If he didn't have internet at home, then he needed a different way of getting information. That meant scouting drones. Lots and lots of scouting drones. There was a very good chance they'd been eaten by monsters or attacked by scared people, but that just meant he had to make a lot of them. The quality of quantity and all that.

Sanny started to make drones as he jogged in the general direction of the golf course he had seen, splashing through the rain water in a rather undignified fashion before giving up and falling on all fours. His arms lengthened into forelegs, feet extending and narrowing to be in line with his limbs, and he started leaping the way he'd seen deer do on videos on the internet, his now narrow, pointed limbs slipping into the flowing water at every leap and kicking him out and forward. It was an energy intensive form of locomotion, used for relatively short sprints by relatively successful prey animals but not intended for long marathons. The limbs and joints could only absorb so much shock, and the fast-twitch muscles would soon grow painful with lactic acid and need to stop. His eldritch biology laughed in the face of such limitations as he leapt over the water recklessly, not caring about what obstructions might be hidden in the dark-shrouded, murky flood waters.

There was a particular way he had to not do this if he didn't want to end up feeling like a single mother giving virgin birth to monstrous, inhuman abominations not of this world. He was fairly certain the way he avoided doing it exasperated her, but there was some things his self-image wasn't willing to compromise on for the sake of the heady rush of physical and eldritch power, and one of the lines he drew was on anything that vaguely implied mpreg. No. Just… no. Even if it probably was simpler and more efficient to just generate a lot of eggs and have them quickly grow into the drones he needed... no.

It wasn't pregnancy if none of the things were ever eggs to begin with!

The flesh on his back and shoulders began to roil, bulging cancerously as he altered the tissue there, forming small bodies as his intentions somehow filtered through her, and from her affecting his body, because damn if he knew how it actually happened. It was one thing to know his cells needed to change from this to that, but it was another to actually do it. Brains, wings, muscles, feathers… he knew what he wanted, a small, fast animal with no reproductive parts, no digestive parts, only enough respiration and circulatory systems to keep the muscles functioning, an incomplete creature that wouldn't survive in nature, optimized for sight, flight and speed.

Shewas the one who added the ears and organs for balance, the little electromagnetic field-sensing so it would know which way was north, the different kinds of feathers needed, the exact positioning and field of view of the eyes, pointed the feathers in the right direction, shaped it all to become a functioning animal that than just a tumorous mass of flesh. It was disturbingly obvious how little actual fine control he actually exercised most of the time, when he considered it. While changes happened only under his explicit direction when he was awake and he could control anything down to the cellular level, he seldom actually thought to unless he was consciously experimenting with some new aspect of biology he'd read about. His body moved and changed as he imagined it, but the actual mechanisms that caused those changes were done by her.

If he didn't have clear proof that his decisions and notions about how the body was supposed to go overrode hers, he'd be terrified. As it was, he'd been creeped out, scared, nervous, and then finally began to take her existence for granted, just another thing he had to get used to about his new life, like knowing every detail of the bodies of the people around him, or the fact she liked to add tentacles to everything, despite the clear superiority of the 'fingers and thumb' arrangement.

His drones ripped themselves out of his back, slightly moist from minute amounts of plasma, cellular fluid, and water getting splashed as they opened their wings. He could feel each one, control each one, as easily as he moved his fingers. Their sensory input was added to his own, widening his field of view as if he'd just grown more eyes… which technically he had.

Also, these were not virgin births and he was not a single mother, and neither was this mpreg! He'd just cut off parts of himself and those parts had spontaneou-magically become not-independent, sorta-living mobile beings! He hadn't given birth, he was just in more than one place at once!

His drones rose into the darkened skies, and he used them to confirm where he was going, which was a few blocks too far to the left to be pointed towards the golf course. A few drones stayed with him to give him an aerial view of his surroundings and to keep a look out for that stupid bird—and he should probably keep an eye out for the flying shark too—while he sent the rest across the city and outside it to look for other monsters and make contact with the others. One went to fly straight towards where he lived, while another headed for Kim's house, in case they were still there. Kim would have probably left a means for his family to contact him if he was out in this, though there was an equally good chance he was just at home. The guy was a normie after all.

His drones also saw a giant house-sized snail on the golf course green that definitely hadn't been there when he'd been panic diving for the ground. What?

There was a burst of attentiveness from the back of his head, and he felt her interest and an urge to consume. He wanted roll his eyes, but manfully resisted the urge and instead turned to intercept. "Fine, we'll try to eat it," he said in a low voice like he was just muttering to himself. The volume wasn't important, but the thoughts, concepts and feelings he put into what he was saying was. "But if it's too much for us, we're backing off and coming back with the others all right?"

There was muted frustration, punctuated by consume devour.

"Yes, I know you're hungry. You're always hungry. I'm still not seeing any sign you actually do need to eat, though."

Focus consume devour.

"I already said yes, stop nagging."

Trying to ask what she'd been doing while he'd been asleep been as frustrating as could be expected when the responses came in the form of someone else's feelings bleeding into his brain. He was also starting to suspect that what he was getting were simply the strongest feelings she was having, meaning subtlety was probably lost. Heck, he wasn't actually sure how much of what he sent got received. Things were a little clearer between them in dreams but also more intense, and somehow more confusing. The subtleties all bled together, and it was hard to sort through which was his and which was hers. How that squared with how shecould understand any bodily changes he wanted and why, he had no idea.

Despite all that, they'd slowly learned to stop trying to fight each other and start working together. They made allowances for each other's obvious design preferences, and things became… not exactly smoother, but less contentious. Where she'd once given the impression of being a resentful assistant trying to take his job—and why wouldn't she, when he'd in hindsight foisting a lot of work on her without really listening to her opinions—now they felt like actual coworkers. Opinionated coworkers who thought their way was the best way, but who could talk it out now… even if only he was the only one who could actually talk.

It wasn't long before he could see a dark, curving shape rising up above the trees and houses. It was barely outlined against the sky by very, very distant light reflecting off the clouds, giving him something to contrast it against. Even with the light-gathering eyeballs he'd reluctantly switched his compound eyes for—one had to be practical, after all—he couldn't see much in the way of any details. Out of habit, he tried to get an idea of its physiology, but it was as if there was nothing there. The only things he could feel were surface bacteria and small parasites living on the shell and skin of the thing. Just like the Plague Dog, the Blood Bug, the Bounty Bee and the Gagambuhala had been. Well, he already knew it was a monster…

Even with the thing in sight, he was still a fair distance away. The thing was as tall as a decent-sized building, the large shell moving with slow, ponderous weigh. What he could see of the skin seemed to be rippling as it breathed, and he couldn't see its head or any of its eyes. Was it eating? Snails were voracious omnivores and at that size… well, the golf course would probably need to replace trees. And grass. And probably dirt too.

There were houses between him and the golf course, no doubt expensive ones, and he could see townhouse buildings off to either side, but the rain and the presence of the huge monster seemed to be keeping people indoors. He found a house that was empty—no cellular life inside but the bugs, rats and bacteria—and cut through its lot, a leap and some scrambling at the back wall—curving, hook-like claws erupted from his limbs to give him purchase, and he sent a burst of thankfulness to the back of his head—let him go over it to splash lightly onto the flooded dirt and undergrowth beyond, his limbs sinking slightly into the mud.

Beyond some trees in front of him was a dark field of inundated grass—one of the golf course's fairways, he presumed—and then a line of trees separating one hole from another, the tops of the trees looking distinctly nibbled on. The old phrases flitted though his mind, as always bringing with it memories of familiar childhood resentment. Honestly, why golf lessons?Golf was one of the stupidest sports on the planet, and all sports were stupid! It had been another wasted summer where he'd been rigorously scheduled and made to learn a sport to 'get into shape' before being thrown back into the torturous drudgery of school. 'Learn', not 'have fun'.

Sanny felt the claws on his limbs grow and thicken, and he wanted to lash out, to strike something… and with long practice bottled it all in. That kind of lack of self-control was childish and stupid. He was finally living his own life. Save the anger for something he could take it out on.

Like the giant monster in front of him.

Still on all fours, he crept through the marshy ground, staying low and moving cautiously. The joints on his limbs shifted and reversed, letting get even lower as his locomotion became crab-like. The water lapped at his legs as Sanny headed towards the end his drones could see was the tail. or at least, the end opposite the head. The head was down and seemed to be eating something on the ground, and with the bulk of the body between the head and himself, it wouldn't be able to see him. Given how big the thing was, as long as he stayed this size he'd be ignored as a minor itch.

He was almost to the opposite tree line when the world suddenly lit up, bright light casting sharp, stark shadows. He didn't freeze where he was, instead running like hell towards the trees as one eye turned around to look at the source of light. After that eye was blinded, its cones and rods oversaturated, Sanny grew more, this time not having them look directly. In the sky, a small pinpoint of light was growing obscenely bright. It hung under the clouds, illuminating their contours.

Hopefully that was Jaselle and not some new monster or something.

The sudden light caused movement in his prey though. Sanny felt a rumble through the water as the snail's head rose up, the rippling across its skin increasing in frequency. It—

The world broke.

That was the best Sanny could describe it. The world broke like glass shot by a bullet. Lines rippled outward in all directions, parting and folding and he got a sense of down and vastness and emptiness and creatures, enormous creatures too big to exist, feeding on anything they could get, stalking across an endless vo—

And the snail was just gone, water rushing in to fill the long oval scar on the ground where it looked like grass and dirt had just been ripped off. The water quickly settled, leaving only a shallow and muddy pond. Sanny stared at the empty space. "Huh," he said as disappointment came from the back of his head. "That will be a bitch to hunt down."

Shaking his head, he turned towards where he knew Ortigas Avenue ran past the golf course, limbs shifting again as he changed back to the faster configuration, running parallel to the scar on the ground that the snail had left behind. He slowed for a moment, his eyes changing to give him a better look at the spot where the snail's head had been.

Was he a terrible person for only being able to nod and say, "Yup, that looks about right" as he saw the golf cart with its roof and seats ripped out, the bottom half of an old fashioned, heavy golf bag, and the bits of dead people? After all, he didn't know who they were. Why should he care and pretend it was somehow tragic, just because some strangers with the bad taste to play golf were dead?

It was part of why he'd always correct Tammy, the other being it was a joke he liked to keep running. He wasn't a hero or superhero, simply just a violent vigilante. He didn't actually care about whether people he didn't know lived or died. He'd try to save them of course, try to help those he could because it wouldn't cost him anything but time and concentration, because his parents had gotten that part of his upbringing right, but…

Well, ultimately it was about power. He finally had the power to do what he wanted, and the freedom to choose what he wanted to do. There was just enough decency in a heart full of petty childish grudges and railing against the unfairness of life that his choice was to try and do what, at a casual glance, might have been the 'right' thing.

But he'd know, deep down, that it didn't make him a better person.

Shrugging, Sanny continued running for the road. Already the drone he'd sent there was close to home, and the other one was getting close to Kim's house. They'd land soon, he'd make contact, and then he'd know where he needed to go.

Hopefully there'd be somewhere that he'd actually be relevant. Otherwise… well, that stupid bird was still out there. And the shark. He wasn't sure how he could take down a flying shark made of lightning, but… well, he'll think of something. And if he didn't, maybe she would.

Through the flickering shadows, Sanny ran.