Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers #48 (Patreon)

The Nightmares That Came To Manila, Part 6

Controlling multiple drones at once, and through the drones doing several things at once, came easily to Sanny. It was one of the few distinct advantages he had over the others even if, as with many things about what he did, he wasn't quite sure how exactly it really worked. The short answer was that having multiple bodies gave him multiple brains and let him pursue multiple distinct trains of thought at the same time. That was the answer the others knew and accepted.

He knew it couldn't be as easy as that. When he was using his power, when he wasn't strictly base human, he didn't actually need his brain to think and plan and perceive. Having a brain let him interpret sensory input better, assembling them into something he could understand, but he didn't actually needit to perceive the input. It helped with keeping his body's functions… well, functioning, but it was a convenience, not a necessity. Like a functioning digestive system, it was niceto have, but for him it wasn't strictly necessary.

Sometimes, he wondered darkly what would happen if his head was pulped like a tomato when he was normal and his powers were ostensibly 'off'. Would he die? Would he find that he was still alive, but could only feel from the neck down and everything above his shoulders was in familiar searing agony? For obvious reasons, it wasn't exactly the sort of experiment who'd care to run, even if he did already know what having his head suffer massive trauma felt like.

Stupid bees.

It was one of several questions he'd long since learned not to ponder when he was trying to sleep, lest he stay up all night staring at the ceiling, suffering from existential dread and the Lovecraftian horror of realizing how utterly insignificant he was in the face of a truly infinite universe. She seemed to share his opinion on such thoughts, because whenever he slipped into it, distress discomfort would start coming from the back of his head, and that would be his cue to knock himself out by doing questionable things to his body chemistry.

He'd usually wake up in the morning with a lot body mass, covered in fur and curled up on himself and a lot of tentacles.

When he didn't let himself dwell on why he was so good at controlling multiple drones at once, it was awesome.

He moved through the city faster than a car—although if you picked the right time of day in Manila, that wasn't exactly hard—as he alternately ran and flew, following the roads he knew so he wouldn't get lost. Sadly for the aesthetic, Manila wasn't a city of soaring skyscrapers and glass towers. Most of the city was composed of building between four and ten stories, with the buildings beyond that either being stupidly expensive condos—something of an oxymoron—soul-crushing corporate offices, or calls centers that were somehow even moresoul crushing. Four limbs, properly configured, ate up the distance when there was clear straight ground in front of him to build up speed, and where there wasn't, wings took over. And as he traveled, his drones did as well.

Some of them were perched and still, disguised as birds or rats or, for the ones she was idly messing around with, at least reasonably hidden from sight so that no one would see and become alarmed at the writhing unnatural mass of… well, whatever it was. Most, however, were still traveling, flying through the darkened skies to reach further parts of Metro Manila. There were more than a hundred of them under his control, his connection to them not diminished by range. Just as he watched his surroundings and the city below him so he knew where he was, so did his drones, each one looking around and noting their surroundings, each one him, if distantly.

It was like trying to look at two computer screens at once and controlling what happened in each with different controls. But instead of only being able to properly focus on one screen and one set of controls at a time, he could do both. And if he had a third screen and a third set of control, they would be just as easy. And it would be just as easy with a fourth screen.

Or hundreds.

All he had to do, he'd learned, was simply to pay attention to each screen and each set of controls.

And he could. It was just that easy.

But sitting behind him the whole time as he watched all his metaphorical screens was her. And even if he could pay attention to all those metaphorical screens and operate all those metaphorical controls at once, some of them he paid attention to a bit more than others. After all, nothing was happening there, but he was busy here, and while he was watching that thing he didn't really need to touch the control, and this onewas so routine he could do it with his eyes closed…

And that was when the light touch she usually had becomes much more forceful.

It wasn't like he completely lost control, or that she pushed him away and did her own thing. He could take control back instantly. All he had to do was pay attention to what she was doing. But that meant looking away from something else…

Nowadays, it wasn't a problem. Instead of looking at all the separate screens and operating all the separate controls alone, it was like shewas standing behind him and looking over his shoulder. Sometimes the controls were nudged just a little bit as a small adjustment was made, or some setting was changed, or one screen was boring so the controls were all mashed in boredom to see what happened. Little things that made a living body run which he'd overlooked were fixed, adjusted, optimized, and there were a lot of such little things.

Or maybe it was just as simple as having multiple brains to think with simultaneously. No need to get too complicated about it.

Sanny controlled dozens and dozens of drones at once, and trusted.

Through the drones and their myriad eyes—and other senses that she had put on that he'd just shrugged and not bothered to argue with—he perceived the city below him. One of him waited, perched near Mags, skin rippling impatiently as the younger man talked to some rando like he was asking permission from a teacher to leave a school event. One of him was picking up Green and Blue, looking at the wall made from trees fused together, holding back the waters of a raging river as the two cousins collapsed their bodies  down to something he could carry. One of him used Ryan's laptop, tapping on the touchpad with an overly long and prehensile tail with a bald tip as he switched between looking at the online map to orient himself and talking to Kim's younger brother.

Through his drones, he felt every animal in the city.

Bacteria, on every surface, in the air, in the water, in pipes underground and in foods, inside other organisms. Insects and other invertebrate life, hidden everywhere just out of sigh. Rats. Frogs. Worms. Birds. Dogs. Cats. Lizards. Snakes.

And of course, people.

He could feel them around and across the city through his drones. Men, women, children, young, old, sick, injured, ill, unwell, afflicted with everything from arthritis, drug withdrawal, alcohol inebriation, psoriasis, diarrhea, diabetes, and cancer. He could feel them all, every individual cell, every biological process, every reaction of internal chemistry, the spark from every nerve. They all almost, almost blended together, almost too much to take in at once.

Almost.

Just like the drones, it was a matter of directing his attention and trusting her with the details.

It was one of the things he'd noticed that was different between him and the others. Jas, Willy and Kim all needed to make contact with their… well, 'element', for lack of a better word… to be able to affect it with their power if it didn't come from their body. Willy could stare at a glass of water for hours and nothing would happen to it until she or a little water she produced actually came into contact with the water in the glass to claim it before she could violate thermodynamics and conservation of mass with it. Kim needed to touch the ground to be able to manipulate it. Jas had no effect on flames and plasma she didn't make herself. He and Tammy though… if it was the right kind of cellular life, they could be aware of it, control it, manipulate it, change it, grow it. Did that mean anything? Probably, but damn if he knew what.

What he did know was that he could kill every animal in the city by making their heart stop beating.

Or turn them all into piles of undifferentiated stems cells.

Or… anything, really.

It was just that simple. So, so simple…

…

But that would be wrong. Though he made a point of staying away from people who might piss him off so he wouldn't be tempted to do something… unnatural to them.

Even if he hadn't been talking to his parents before, he definitely wasn't now.

Through his drones, he was doing as he had told Tammy he would. Every bacterial cell living in the waters of the city turned on each other, as did all of their like that had latched on and were reproducing in warm, nutrient-rich bodies. Bodies already being ravaged by illness as bacteria altered the delicate balance of the body's bio-chemical processes and settings were gently reset as damage was repaired, blood chemistry was reset to normal, and energy was added to cells.

In the water, he felt people being swept away. Their bodies were growing cold, and he could feel water in lungs, felt limbs heavy with tiredness despite the adrenaline in their system. Many were too weak, too young or too old to resist. He felt could feel the mix of neurotransmitters and impulses sparking in their brains, and though his awareness of a body has limits, he could guess at their fear, and in some cases their resignation. Bodies moved, becoming drones under his command. Lungs heaved, pushing air out of lungs as new strength pulled them above the water, their limbs swimming them to shore…

He could do it, so he did. It cost him nothing.

Sanny couldn't do anything about those lying cold and still, cells metabolizing their last, choking on a lack of oxygen. Well, he probably could. But the brains had been damaged long ago, and while he might not need his brain to remember and think (don't think about it, don't think about it, don't think about it…) other people did. There was no saving them. Keeping them hooked up to machines in a hospital would just be a pointless waste of money for some family.

Ahead of him, the drones that had already been in the area scouted for his prey. He heard cries screaming from a throat that had no right to be something walking on land, heard gunfire in a wide array of eardrum-blasting rhythms that forced his drones to listen through vibrating antennae, felt the way the earth shook as heavy footfalls slammed down on roads. Though his drones, he felt all the people around, soldiers with hearts beating furiously, arms shaking from recoil, feet splashing on the wet ground as they somehow felt hot, wet and cold all at the same time…

The blocks and neighborhoods fronting the Manila Baywalk area where Laking Kamay had made his haunt were some of the oldest in Manila. Not that many of the buildings were old, since the area had been bombed flat during World War II, but the locations had been in use for a long, long time. In the way of old cities, the place was a clashing mess of residences and business that didn't seemed to follow any sort of zoning laws. Most buildings only went up to two or three stories on average, five at the most if they were multi-level shop arcades or cheap, cramped hotels, with the towering condos, more expensive hotels and glittering skyscrapers being the glaring exceptions. Small restaurants, shops, banks, convenience stores, massage parlors, and more old professions that catered to tourists were mixed in among old and big residences as well as small, shabby and poor residences. Powerlines were strung up on poles, and most of the roads were only two lanes going in opposite directions at best. The streets were flooded with the drains overflowing, and even though the rain had stopped, the water remained. As was the case everywhere else, the roadways had been clogged with stalled vehicles, toppled bikes and motorcycles, and the bodies of those who'd fallen to the sleep and would no longer get up.

At night, in the wet, during a crisis, it was a nightmare even without the giant monster.

Unlike other places though, the area still had electricity and with it, streetlights. Despite this, nearly every building and storefront and home Sanny could see was dark, curtains closed. Scattered seemingly at random were places that looked like they'd been hit by a speeding truck, walls and windows, cement and glass all crushed inward, the interiors seemingly ransacked. The damage wasn't limited to the ground floor, with whole upper floors crumbled in as if something had punched through them from above.

"I see Laking Kamay," he had the drones carrying the others say to them directly. They were all together now, Magenta using warping to compress the space ahead of the drones carrying them, letting them cover more distance. "It's about six blocks away from the Baywalk, in the neighborhoods on the other side of the highway, and it looks like he's been here all day. It's too dark to make out any more details on the ground, and the water is covering them up, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ate people." He wouldn't have been the only one that not. Just one of the biggest ones.

"Don't engage until you clear out the people around it! " Tammy—Green—ordered. "We're doing this right! Minimize casualties, and no throwing monsters through occupied buildings!"

"I suppose we don't want to take the title of being the leading cause of death in an office environment away from Space Moses," Sanny agreed, making Green giggle. It was an affected sound the drone deliberately made, but he was glad she found it funny.

Laking Kamay was practically crawling through the streets, just barely able to fit between the buildings on either side. Its limbs were long and thin, making it seem emaciated, with too-big hands and feet, topped with an oversized head. Its appendages were tipped short, slightly curved claws that seemed better suited for puncturing than ripping and tearing. Its body seemed covered by a patchwork mix of dark fur, scales and smooth, rubbery skin. Its eyes were wide, dark and unblinking, and its nose was more of a suggestion of a curving line. In the middle of its smoothly rubber face was a hole that expanded and contracted shut, seemingly sealed from the inside by a fleshly flap, like a dolphin's blowhole. Even with its body crouched down low, back hunched over and head down, it was as huge as the snail earlier. If it weren’t for the fact it was moving slowly and heavily, Sanny would have been bitching about the square-cube law all over again.

No one had ever gotten a decent good look at the monster before now. It was so named because all that anyone had ever seen clearly were its big hands and the arms they'd been attached to as they had darted out of the water, grabbed some unsuspecting pedestrian walking past on the Manila Baywalk, and pulled them into the water. After people had finally learned to stop walking there, it had progressed to grabbing whole cars and occasionally jeepneys and pulling them down into the deep. The cars were eventually found washed ashore. The people, not so much.

Even Sanny had never really gotten a good view of the thing. All his flying drones had seen was a dark shape in the water, its coloration letting it blend in with the water, waves and sunlight when seen from above. Drones actually in the water with the biggest and best eyes he could grow almost never survived, snagged by a giant, scaly hand and torn apart by sharp, needle-like teeth before more it could see past the elbow.

He'd even actually sent drones to walk back and forth along the Baywalk, trying to get caught so he could get some sort of look at it, but some official busybodies in uniform 'politely' talked to him over a megaphone and told him to leave the area. He'd gotten the impression they thought he'd been trying to commit some elaborate suicide… which, to be fair…

Now, on relatively dry land, Laking Kamay had none of the blurring, fast movements that had made it such a deadly and successful ambush predator. Instead, like a landed alligator, it was heavy and clumsy, a wallowing brute as opposed to the monstrous terror of the bay as it casually crushed in the front of the buildings on either side of it while it tried to get away from the gunfire soldiers directed at it from one end of the street. It scrambled over a two-story row of commercial spaces, the weight of its limbs easily crying the roofs in, and Sanny barely managed to get control of the people cowering on the second floor of those buildings and have them throw themselves under tables and other sold pieces of furniture as the ceiling came down, followed by the mass of the roof. One of the people he'd controlled was impaled in the calf by the shattered tip of an old half-rotted wooden beam. Bacteria died as Sanny had them rip the metal from her leg, keeping her eyes averted from the gushing wound as the gash rippled like lips before sealing shut and fusing whole as immune cells devours fungal cells he couldn't directly affect.

"I'm starting the evacuation!" Sanny told the others. "Have to focus so, uh, if your drone starts growing mouths, just remember, it’s a drone and can't actually devour you, okay?"

The next building in Laking Kamay's path of escape wasn't so lucky. It scrambled over a five-story cheap overnight hotel like it was a pile of sand, and it started to come apart like it to as Sanny reached over and took control of those in the building, used their senses to try and predict how the building might crumble as he had them all head for the emergency exits, getting them out of the building and into the cold and wet of the dark. It wasn't enough. Some people were crushed by debris, too pinned down to keep moving. Others were trapped with nowhere to go as hallways were destroyed, and he made them settle down as best as he could, finding them a secure place to stand. A few he was able to get down, using other people he had under his control to catch and support them, not waiting on the supposed existence of altruism for people to do so themselves.

Even as he tried to save the people in the aftermath of Laking Kamay's path, it kept on moving, putting more people in danger. He wasn't there yet, but he had drones, and he used those to spread his influence and control. He took over more and more people's bodies, trapping them behind their own eyes, unable to move their own fingers as he stimulated that nerves in their ears, sending phantom signals to hear imaginary sounds.

Everyone he'd taken over heard the same words: "It's not safe here. Run."

Then he made them run, getting them out of the area while he still could, not giving them the choice of trying to hunker down in their darkened homes and hope Laking Kamay didn't see them. People splashed though the wet streets, and he could feel the neurotransmitters in their brains as fear and panic slowly mounted, as they realized they had no control. Children and the elderly too slow to move were picked up by other people in his control, carried over the water as everyone moved perpendicularly away from Laking Kamay and its path of destruction, the people in areas ahead of it streaming out of their homes.

Cold didn't matter. Tiredness didn’t matter. His power filled them with the warmth and energy they needed as he made them run. Soon the streets were crowded by more than just cars and corpses, and he did his best to run through it as he tried to get the ever-increasing number of people under his control to safety. Sanny gently loosed his hold on those far enough away, trusting the situation and the crowd would keep them running. To his relief, they did. To his further relief, they didn't start screaming or, as he almost expected, whip out their phones to do something even more stupid…

Thankfully, she didn't start slapping tentacles, mouths, extra eyes or triangular, shark-like teeth on people as Sanny had to divide his attention between evacuating people out of the area, controlling bacteria and disease in other parts of the city, and getting himself and the others to the site. Instead, she was changing his main body, making faster and faster, trying to get the part of them that could actually consume this prey there as fast as possible. He was almost there, just blocks away. Already he was running into the leading elements of his evacuees, and they arted before him as he ran flat out, he and she eager for the fight.

The soldiers were still out there, moving to new firing positions, and Sanny let them even as he saw through their eyes and other felt through their other senses to get more eyes on his prey. He didn't have the faintest idea how to actually use theirs guns beyond 'pull the trigger', but they did. He doubted if the bullets actually did meaningful harm, but they hurt and they were loud and if you could see the muzzle flash, bright. All you needed to scare most predators away, by making it clear you were unpleasant to deal with—

Laking Kamay let out a deep, warbling cry as its feet trampled over the wall around a big property with an old house, pushing part of the wall down pulling the rest of the wall down with it. It looked like someone had stomped down on a cardboard box as Laking Kamay picked up a nearby car and threw it clumsily in the direction of the soldiers still shooting. The car felt short, smashing into the ground and rolling once as Sanny took control of the people in the house, giving them the strength to climb and vault over the walls on either side of the property, making the run the shortest path away from Laking Kamay.

Still on the way to the fighting, already distracted by taking control of the hundreds of people close enough to be in danger and possibility in the path of that danger, Sanny frowned internally as the drones he had over the scene saw Laking Kamay trying to get around the group of soldiers as more and more groups peppered it with gunfire from the upper floors of office buildings, hotels and condos. Despite having a clear path behind it, Laking seemed to be trying to move deeper inland as it tried to circle around the solders blocking its way.

Why? Was there another monster there or something that it was trying to reach so it could devour them, driven by the same predation impulses as her? But if that was the case, why hadn't it moved towards Baseco, with the giant mushroom forest full of zombies barely quarantined by military patrols with flamethrowers—

Oh no.

"Green, I just realized," he screamed out as he sent the drone nearest to that location into the air, while at the same time diverting away the people he'd been evacuating as best he could. Baseco. He hadn't thought to check Baseco! Why would he, when it was a charnel ground for the dead and dying? "Baseco, Green! All the measures to contain it need to be actively manned, or else the zombies in there could just climb over the walls!"

"Sh—" Green began, only to very obviously strangle what she'd been about to say into senseless growling sounds, which was pretty impressive for the limitations of her drone. Really, Green? Who are you censoring for? Oh, right, probably Blue. "Can you deal with it?"

"I'm not sure I could," Sanny said grimly. "There's a reason I've avoided it. The monster there seems fungus-based, and while I can get my immune system to aggressively consume spores and mycelial cells, my drones are vulnerable to being zombified by the mushrooms. Assuming the mushroom growths are a type of drone, if the main monsters can get the rest of me is as well…"

"I'll go!" Magenta said. "I'm made of rock. Let's see mushrooms make a dent in that."

"They probably can, but I agree, you're probably less vulnerable," Green said. "Yellow, take Magenta to Baseco. Do what you can to contain the situation if they've gotten out."

"There's been nothing about it on the news so far, no even talking heads, but that could just be because people have forgotten about it," Sanny said as he diverted the path of Magenta's drone. Including him. After all, it was a known, relatively contained factor that stayed in one place.

For a moment, Green was silent. Then her drone in Kim's house said, "Red? Are you moving?"

It took a moment for Red to reply. "I'm here!" her black cube vibrated and flashed. "Heading towards Manila Bay! Sorry, but it's hard to see, and I've been trying to leave drones to leave light."

Ah. That was why it had been getting incremental bright for some of his drones. He hadn't checked, too focused on what he'd been doing through them.

"We might need you to burn something," Green said.

Sanny's drone finally reached the little artificial slip of land that jutted out slightly into the bay that was Baseco. The semi-permanent military encampment that guarded the destroyed bridge and waterways around the former slum area was utterly wet and dark. However, Sanny's drone had good eyes, and there was light from the streetlights next to the highway that had been closed off to keep people from being infected with fungal spores. From above, he watched as emaciated, partially desiccated corpses covered in mushrooms, some still barely alive and in immense pain, climbed out of the water, using each other as stepping stones as they clumsily climbed over the barriers the military had set.

On the other side, soldiers who had no doubt fallen asleep from the rain were covered in mushrooms growing on their skin and through their clothes. Even though they were still alive, their bodies still functioning, they had no control as unnatural, eldritch mycelia burrowed into their nerves, clumsily controlling them. All they could do was feel the agony of the unnatural infection as they screamed for help, screamed for others to stay away, screamed and begged for the sweet release of death as they climbed over each other, over the barbed wired-topped walls of the encampment and out into the city beyond.

"I think it might be a little too late for that," Sanny said. "We have a zombie outbreak on our hands, and there are plenty of dead bodies for it to spread."

"Red, forget the drones, get to Manila bay now!" Green cried. "Yellow, can you evacuate people and fight Laking Kamay at the same time?"

"I can try," Sanny said grimly. He supposed now was as a good time as any to push the limits of his multitasking.

"Magenta, I need you to build a wall. Not a physical wall, a freaky looping space wall! It's not just the zombies that are a danger, if I remember right the mushrooms on them carry infectious spores for making new zombies! I need you to warp space to keep all those zombies and their spores contained in one place, and trap them all so Red can burn them!"

"Got it! I think we're almost there!"

"Blue," Green said, then hesitated. "I need you to pinpoint who among the zombified are still alive and get them into the bay, away from Red's line of fire! The salt water should affect the growths on them, and with Laking Kamay on land, there's nothing to worry about eating them. Maybe Yellow can boost their immune systems to fight off the fungus or something. We're saving everyone we can!"

"Yes, Blue."

Sanny broke through the running crowds, onto streets empty of life. The gunfire was growing louder and louder, the water was vibrating with monstrous footsteps as he changed form. Mass. Height. Weight muscle. Claws. He needed to match Laking Kamay in size. Unless God was literally on your side, literal David and Goliath fights were not going to go well for David.

There was a moment of reluctance, a twinge of suspicion. Then he forcibly buried it and relaxed. Not let go, never let go, but relaxed as he formed the image of what he wanted his body to be, and let her do the rest. Trust.

From the back of his head he felt it come back. Trust.

Bone, muscle, skin, exoskeleton and all the rest swelled.

Fuck the square-cube law.