Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers #47 (Patreon)

The Nightmares That Came To Manila, Part 5

"Hey, Tammy!"

Tammy managed not to start as she realized that someone was talking to her, nudging her little drone. "Huh?" she said eruditely, trying to juggle controlling her main body, which was in the middle of building a pair of massive, solid wood floodwalls that were rooted into the banks of the river, and listening to the input of the drone. She stopped growing the walls on opposite banks of the river for a moment, focusing on the drone's pseudo-eyes, and concentrated so she could see. Vision didn't come normally to plants, so she needed to…

Her eyes focused on a smear of paleness that slowly gained color from black and white as her eye splotches moved past detecting presence and absence of light to the different frequencies of it… "Ate Sanny!" she said, just barely managing to remember to keep her voice to her drone. There were people watching her, many with their phones out—how had those things not gotten wet from the superfloods that had happened?—who were already nervous of the presence of her and Tammy, she didn't need to disturb them more by starting to talk to herself.

"Yup, I'm here," the older woman said through her own drone. It looked like it used to be some kind of weird insect-bird hybrid, but was in the middle of turning into a round flesh blob being covered in fur. It was mostly mouth and a pair of eyes, and looked like some kind of low-level trash mob monster from a particularly cutesy Japanese RPG. "I managed to watch a news report, so I've got some idea of how the city is, but I don't know any more than that. What happened?"

"Sleep-causing no-save one-hit-debuff monster," Tammy said succinctly as she fused with the wall she was building and flipped over to the river side of the wall. Here, the only people who'd see here were on the opposite bank just past the wall she was building there, and they didn't have a very good view. "It was spread by the rain, and seemed to affect people who were already asleep normally, because Kim grandmother wouldn't wake up while it was raining."

"…shit. That's OP, please nerf in the next patch," Sanny said and ah, it was nice to talk to someone who got her! Willy could listen, bless her, but she didn't really like to talk much, and Tammy didn't want to force her.

"Willy took care of it," Tammy said as she began directing the walls to continue growing. Roots firsts, buried deep in the mud well below the water line, the walls on either side each forming a single massive plant structure. She wasn't sure how long they would manage to live on their own after she stopped growing them. The water being drawn from the river was polluted, but there were minerals, and she was letting them grow branches, leaves and even fruit, though the latter was mostly to give people something to eat to keep them from descending to violence and looting the stores. The fruits were hard to see, since they were literally in the shadow of the wall, but she could feel them being plucked off as soon as they stopped growing…

Sanny's drone, which was emotive, puckered its lips and it took Tammy a moment to realize she was trying to whistle… and failing badly. Finally she just rolled her eyes and said, "Good for her. What was it? None of what I was tracking seemed to be a rain monster or a sleep monster."

"Maybe it just wasn't obvious?" Tammy said, trying to sound casual. "In any case, we need you. Except for Red, we're all in Pasig clearing roads because it was the hardest hit. Oh, and yeah, we're going by hero names now, so you should start calling me Green and I'll call you Yellow. Same for the others on the team."

"Yes, boss," Yellow said. "What do you need me to do?"

"Talk to Loretta, compile all the information you can about the situation, and prioritize identifying situations we're best suited for dealing with quickly," Tammy said. "Not just monsters. Anything. You're creative, if you find a situation where any of our powers would help specifically, get word to us."

"Already found some and acting on it," Yellow said. "I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Where are you?"

"Along the Marikina River, almost where it joins the Pasig River, and probably halfway to Laguna Lake. I'm building a floodwall to prevent more flooding while Willy deals with the flooding that's already there." Which basically involved making the water shoot over the side of her wall and into the River.

"Got it. I'll talk to you once I either have more info or get there."

Tammy had no eyes that could blink. "Get here?" she said.

"I'm sending drones to all heavily flooded areas," Yellow said. "I should be able to stop any waterborne diseases. Any diseases, really. Things are bad enough as they are, if we can prevent people from getting sick on top of it…"

"You can do that?" Tammy blurted out.

"Cells," Yellow said smugly. "I can affect bacterial life. With all the flooding, the sewers must be overloaded, and all that literal shit is now in the flood water. That's not counting all the stuff that's in the water normally. If I can spread out enough drones, I can do something about it."

"Do it," Tammy said in what she felt was a properly decisive, leaderly voice. "Uh, can you still do that and what I asked you?"

"Oh, sure," Yellow said as if it was the easiest thing in the world. "I might be the literally squishiest person in the team, but my multitasking skill is maxed out! By the way, with the floods, the pumping stations for the water mains are likely down, so as soon as you can, see if Blue can provide clean drinking water. Hers is essentially chemically pure and distilled, right? People are going to need water soon, for drinking and eating, and eventually for washing. There's a limit to what stopping bacteria from working can do. "

Ah! Finally! Concrete plans! Big plans! Superhero-tier plans! "As soon as we deal with the flooding here," Tammy said, carefully watching her wall grow slowly. "I'm already handing out food as I can."

"Fruits and veggies?" Yellow's drone made a cutely disgusted face. If it wasn't a dangerous security risk, the woman would have made a wonderful social media influencer.

"They're good for you, and as superheroes we should encourage people to eat healthy," she said in her best post-cartoon PSA voice. "Gotta hang up, I have a wall to build."

"Yellow over and out," Yellow said, turning and growing legs to waddle towards Loretta. "Loretta, what do you—?"

Tammy let her awareness of the drone fade slightly, bringing her back into the moment. She glanced at both walls and made her way back to the top of the wall she was on, her feet fusing with the bare branches sprouting out from the top as she resumed building the wall. Branches exploded from the incomplete edges of the walls arcing down to make new roots to hold it in place, weaving together and growing thicker, fusing together to create a seamless wall to keep the water in the river contained

She was, uh, already kinda regretting doing this. This was going to be a mess to do something about when this emergency was over. If the walls were still alive then she might be able to suck it up later, unless they did die like she thought they would, in which case… uh, maybe she can get Yellow to throw termites at them or something. Right now though, they needed the walls to control the flooding where Pasig had been hardest hit.

Tammy glanced towards where Wi—Blue was, making sure she was nearby. She was, throwing the floodwater over the wall as Tammy had directed her.

She should probably check on Magenta. He'd said he was widening roads so that the dead cars wouldn't be in the way, and he'd directed people towards the fruits she'd been growing on her wall, but it had been a while, so she should probably call him like a responsible leader should…

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They needed more space.

"Is there something you can do?" the awkward-looking barangay officialwho'd come up to him said. Everyone was still wary of him, which was probably perfectly understandable when you had a slightly glowing, stone man walking around making the roads wider so that stalled cars could be moved out of the way.

Kim nodded. "Sure, I'll take care of it," he vibrated from his head. It wasn't until he'd started talking to other people that he'd realize how unnerving they found it that his voice wasn't coming from where his mouth would be. The fact that he didn't seem to have a mouth didn't matter. "Just let me finish moving these last two cars out of the way."

The man nodded, still looking awkward but also relieved. "Thank you," he said, before hurriedly turning away and speaking into a black radio. Kim hadn't been able to get his name yet, what with everything that needed to be done and almost getting shot at and calming people down when Green had started building her wall to divert the flooding and assuring everyone that the fruit growing from it was safe to eat and that they could all get as much as they liked… Well, he'd been a bit too busy for names.

That had been typical of their exchanges. Short, stilted, and with an undercurrent of uncertainty, though once he had demonstrated the ability to expand space by widening the roads so emergency vehicles could pass through the narrow streets, there had been a sort of cautious welcome. Suspicious and monstrous-seeming he might seem to them, but he'd saved them hours of trying to move and navigate around cars, trucks, tricycle pedicabs and jeepneys stalled on the road because of flooded engines, and that had earned him some goodwill.

People had managed to get moving then. Local associations, neighborhood groups, and local government units mobilized now that they could actually move faster than a constricted shuffle between cars. Kim and others had helped push the stalled vehicles into the middle of the expanded roads, ironically the best place to put them since he'd made the once narrow roads the equivalent of six-lane highways. He'd even done what he could to try and reinforce the road bed so that they would crack from having things putting pressure on it while having a sixth of the overall weight distribution.

Emergency generators and lights had been delivered by trucks, and a central command tent had been set up. Once the barangay official in charge of the local area had been able to wrap his mind around what Kim could do, the requests had started coming. The local basketball court was expanded so that it could house far more people, letting it act as an emergency evacuation center once it had been drained of water by Blue and kept from further flooding by Green's floodwall. Rosario Church had also opened its doors to people for the night, and Kim had been hesitantly asked to expand the space of their parking lot, where an outdoor kitchen had been set up to start providing people with hot food.

He'd been mildly amused at how the parish priest—dressed not in the ecclesiastical robes Kim was used to for Mass but some cut off denim shorts, flip-flops and a white undershirt—had gently but firmly insisted on blessing him with Holy Water when he'd entered the church's grounds to start laying out the shards of himself he'd be using to anchor the volume effect. When he hadn't burst into flames or started screaming in agony, the priest had nodded in a matter-of-fact way and offered him some coffee to warm up. He'd politely declined to get to work

Now he was once more expanding the bare stretch of parking lot in front of one of the nearby banks.

It was what they were using as a morgue.

The soaked, cold and stiff bodies of those who had fallen unconscious and either drowned or died of exposure were laid out in not all that neat and not all that orderly rows to get them out of the way. The little stretch of slightly cracked concrete was now about the size of a soccer field, filled with the bodies of the dead that were being recovered and removed just from the immediate area, given what dignity could be given, set aside to be identified, if they could be. Groups of people were scouring the tight, wet confines between the houses and alleys, using flashlights to see in the dark where Red's light didn't reach. They were trying to gather as many as soon as possible, before the light of day and the heat started causing them to decay…

All through this Kim worked tirelessly. Literally tirelessly. A body of stone didn't get muscle aches, didn't need to breathe, didn't need to drink, didn't need to rest. He just willed his body to keep moving and it did. He picked up debris too heavy for any one man to lift and moved them off the road to where they were being gathered. Roofs that had been ripped from houses, couches and beds and wardrobes, unclaimed furniture carried on the floodwaters, picking them up and dumping them into the slowly growing pile being gathered. Pieces of homes rendered into detritus by uncaring forces.

He moved concrete barriers to make traffic lanes, because despite all this cars and trucks still needed to move along Ortigas Avenue Extension, bringing supplies or just letting people get home after being trapped by cursed rains all day. Working vehicles cast the glow of their headlights on the roads, illuminating the people crowding the streets because they survived but had nowhere else to go. Kim ignored the cars that slowed down to stare as they passed him carrying a round wooden table over his shoulder by its central leg like it was a golf umbrella, ignored the phones raised up to take pictures.

The only other option was to stop moving and just break inside.

There were children on that parking lot. The elderly. People dressed for a casual day at home. People dressed for a day's work. People dressed in old, worn clothes that weren't quite rags. They all looked like they were asleep, save for the staring eyes and still, unmoving chests.

So many… there were so many…

He remembered the people who'd died at his University. People, fellow students with holes stabbed though their chests to get at their hearts blood, sucked up. But it had only been a handful there. Here…

So many… so many…

Could… could they have done something? Could they have done more? A monster had done this, a monster they hadn't found, or worse, a monster they had left alone until it was too late. Could they have found it sooner? Dealt with it before it could do… this?

All around him, he could hear them as vibrations on his surface. The tense, tired voices. The crying, the wailing for dead loved ones, for neighbors and lost friends. For homes and cherished possessions, irreplaceable and ruined. Small businesses damaged, the hard-earned work and investment in them gone.

Kim couldn't help but feel… helpless. Pointless. That nothing he did could bring back what they had lost…

For the first time, standing there in his body made of pink rock, he felt silly and inappropriate. A clown thoughtlessly playing the fool in a place of pain and tragedy. Turn to sand? Warp space? Super toughness and strength? It all felt like silly parlor tricks, worthless toys in the face of this grief and loss…

Someone nudged him. "Mags? Hey Mags, you awake?"

It took Kim a while to realize he was hearing through his drone. Yellow's plushdoll-like drone was poking with a tentacle. The tentacle was soft and furry and actually pretty cute, even with all the little eyes and mouths on it. "I'm here," he finally managed to say.

Yellow peered at him, but seemed to quickly realized she wasn’t going to really discern anything from a cube of rock. Yellow slithered back—Yup, those were furry tentacles pushing her around—then turned to the others. "All right, everyone here?"

"Listening," Green confirmed. "Blue, are you there?"

"Yes, Green."

"I'm here," Red said, her own black cube vibrating and flashing with plasma.

"All right," Yellow said. "In case you're not watching the clock, it's past midnight." It was? "Loretta's gone to sleep, so Ryan's taking her place right now."

Off to the side, Kim saw his brother sitting there with his laptop and tablet. "Hey!" Ryan said. "My turn to help. I'm been asleep all day, so I'm pretty well-rested."

"Are you sure? You don't have a cold or anything, do you?" Kim asked, concerned.

"He did," Yellow said, "but I fixed that."

"Healer is OP, please do not nerf," Ryan said, which probably meant something. The only bit Kim understood was 'healer' and 'please'.

"All right, let's not get sidetracked," Green said. "Yellow, what do you have?"

"There's still flooding in Marikina, but they're a bit better prepared for that than other places," she said. "Though I don't think your solution will work there, since it's loamy floodplain. However, of specific interest to us, Laking Kamay reportedly climbed out of Manila Bay this morning after the rains began and has been rampaging through the barangays in the area. People have mostly been safe, since the rain forced them to stay indoors, but it's reportedly been eating the corpses on the streets. At last report, the military have engaged and opened fire with rifles, but it's had predictable effect. No reports on casualties, and the streets are too congested for them to get in anything bigger than man-portable weaponry."

Kim's heart clenched, even though he didn't have one at the moment. More dead, fallen on distant streets… being eaten by this monster that… that…

"I'm heading there myself to finally deal with it," Yellow continued, "though I'd like some backup just in case."

"I'll meet you there," Green said. "I'm done with the wall all the way down to Laguna Lake, and Blue managed to at least get the water level down to something reasonable."

"I'll send drones to pick you up."

"Why did we wait until now to deal with Laking Kamay?" Kim said, and if his voice was accusing… well, it was.

"Because despite the fact that its preferred ambush territory is known, it wasn't so stupid as to conveniently stay there," Yellow said calmly. "It swims into the deep water of the bay after each ambush, and Manila Bay is deep and polluted enough that playing sub hunt with an aquatic monster is a risky prospect, even for me. Add to that, the military started heavily occupying the area, which was a complication I wanted us to avoid. That's not taking into account the fact the American Embassy is literally close enough to see from most of the length of the Baywalk that Laking Kamay liked to grab people and cars from. They've used those tanks they have stationed in front to shoot at it at least twice, and I don't know about you, but I still don't want to find out what a tank shell feels like. "

"We weren't ready," Green said quietly. "I didn't think we were ready yet for something so dangerous. Not yet."

"But we are now?" Kim said, just barely managing not to snap.

"Laking Kamay's on land now," Yellow said, and there was something in her tone… "On land and confined by the roads and buildings. It can't just run into the water now. And while I'm not sure about my chances fighting it in the water, I know I can kill and eat it on land." Furry yellow lips peeled back, revealing sharp, triangular teeth.

Narrow streets. Confining buildings…

"You can't just fight it were there are people!" Kim said. "If something the size of a monsters hits a building, people inside might get hurt!"

"Yes," Yellow said bluntly. "Which is why we need you there. You can use your powers to keep it from ever touching the buildings. The roads are probably a goner, but who cares about the roads?"

"What about me?" Red asked quietly. "What can I do?"

"You're our emergency button," Yellow said. "If you can leave a light on, that would be great, but we need you over the fight. We'll need light and if things start going poorly, someone to start bombing Laking Kamay with lava. And if your urges are acting up, you'll have a target you can shoot at. Just remember I'm not fireproof, please?"

"And me," Green said. "You're not fighting it, Yellow. I am."

Despite still looking like a bright yellow fuzzball, the way Yellow's drone snapped around to face Green was distinctly snakelike. "Excuse me?" she said in pointed tones.

"I need you to evacuate people from the area. And by evacuate, I mean hijack their bodies and make them run like hell. I don't want any people rubbernecking. You'll get them all out, and then we'll take that thing down together."

That seemed to mollify Yellow. At least, she stopped giving off the impression of a spherical snake and was back to being a plushy ball. "I… suppose you're right," she said reluctantly. "Then Blue, Mags, back her up. Green is tough and hits hard but she's slow and kinda sucks at serious fighting."

"Hey…!" Green whined. "All true, but you didn't have to say it out loud!"

"We'll see about giving you a training arc. Maybe you can learn archery. Traditionally most of the relevant parts are sourced from trees," Yellow said.

"Ooh, let's! I've always wanted to learn archery!"

"You can shoot arrows that grow into poisonous yew trees inside people," Ryan suggested, and if Kim had a face he'd have given his little brother an aghast look.

"It's a reference," Yellow said, looking at Kim as she said it. "There's a Robin Hood story with poisonous yew trees."

"Oh," Kim said. "That's… almost understandable."

"All right everyone, I have drones headed for your locations, so wrap up whatever you're doing. I've been tracking you on social media. Red, I'll try to get a drone up to your altitude so you can follow it, but for now, try heading in the direction of Manila Bay but don't go over the water."

"Understood," Red said.

"Blue and I are ready to go," Green said.

"I… better tell the barangay officials I'm leaving," Kim said hesitantly.

Yellow's very expressive drone gave him a strange look. "You know they can't actually stop you, right?"

"It'll be rude to just disappear, and I don't them to waste their time trying to look for me if they realize they need more space," Kim said.

"Okay… well, you do you. I'll be there soon."

Yellow turned away, bouncing up to Ryan, who picked up the drone and put it in front of the laptop as Ryan pulled out his tablet, and the two began talking about more monster sightings, government response in what areas…

Back in his body, Kim shook his head, letting his awareness of his drone fade back a little, the conversation it heard becoming a distant murmur. In front of him, the bodies of the dead lay still. Saying a small prayer for their peaceful repose, he turned and went to look for the barangay official.