Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers #51 (Patreon)

The Nightmares That Came To Manila, Part 9

When the sky above them had lit up, Tammy had been relieved. Red had finally arrived!

But no, it turned out it was a giant flying shark made of lightning.

Silly her. Of course the other monsters around the city wouldn't just conveniently make themselves scarce while they were having a crisis.

With their arrival, the weather changed for the worse, the cool, constant breeze growing stronger, more violent.

The Lightning Shark was, of course, huge, and much sleeker and longer than she thought it would be. It was hard to judge how high up it was, much less how long it was. It was blazingly bright as constant streams of lightning defined its shape, moving in sinuous motions through the air as if swimming, little streamers of lightning darting ahead of it as it moved through the air.

It was extremely distracting, especially since Tammy wasn't sure what it was going to do. Was it simply just swimming and found itself here? Was it looking for food? Had it simply been drawn to the water? She didn't know, and neither did anyone else she asked, though Yellow had become terse, apparently too busy concentrating on the fight she was in. That was fair, she was fighting alone and probably didn't appreciate being bothered about animal trivia.

"It's circling back around," Magenta said, the voice coming from his cube sounding wary but no longer panicky.

Willy turned her head until some of the black spots dotting it saw the Lightning Shark. "I see it," she said, her feet fused to the branches of a tree so that she wouldn't fall of. She needed height. She needed to see. "Keep at it."

So far, it had been almost beneficial. The light it was giving out from the constant lighting outlining its shape was even useful, since it was so bright it was like having a spotlight in the sky. It also hadn't attacked them yet. It hadn't even attack the Marines down the road in from of the American Embassy when they'd fired at it with their tank, which had scared the sap out of Tammy when it had gone off, ha ha. The Lightning Shark had reacted, but it seemed to have been more from the sudden sound than from actually being hurt as it had suddenly flickered of in a crack of thunder like… well, like a nervous fish that had just had something drop into the water next to it.

Still, it had moved lower as a result, buzzing the trees and the metal poles holding the safety netting for the nearby golf course. Tammy could have sworn she saw lighting flick from the lightning Shark to the poles, and she'd ever felt the tips of the branches of trees suddenly being charred. So close, it was like being near a blazing bright neon whale as it 'swam' circles in the air, like a cat trying to find a place to settle down to sleep. She hoped it stayed that way. Even if they could afford to divide their forces to deal with this, who among them could meaningfully deal with a flying shark made of lightning?

It was a terrifying distraction from the death and misery in front of her.

The situation had already reached the point where she'd had to get aggressive, impaling the ones in the horde that were definitely dead. The ones with no more eyes, their skin desiccated, withered and pulled tight like overcooked fried chicken… her branches stabbed through those, then lifting them up and throwing them towards a previously mostly-empty parking lot that had been surrounded by a wall and closed gate. It made for a convenient pen to throw zombies into, though it had quickly begun to fill, and the zombies started trying to climb up until she began raising the walls with growth.

So far, she managed to keep ahead of the horde, pulling out those still alive. The people were clearly in pain, screaming and crying and thrashing with what limited independent mobility they had as the rest of their limbs moved without their control. Tammy tried to be gentle and have Blue be the same, but she didn't know how successful she was. Those who were still alive—when she noticed them and when Blue could point them out, presumably from the pain and utter terror they felt— were gently extricated from the horde, wrapped up in a pitcher plant-like pod that she grew around them to both protect them and keep their still-possessed limbs from taking them anywhere, before hanging them up from the trees like Christmas lights.

Tammy had no illusions that she'd been able to pull them out completely unharmed. Her sense of touch was fertilizer when she was like this, and the trees she used for extracting and isolating them were even worse. It was probably utterly terrifying for the people involved, but it was the best they could do. The horde being blocked off by her containment barrier looked like the sort of solid mass of humanity she'd only seen in pictures of the EDSA revolution or meme images about overpopulation in India, the kind of density you needed CGI to make nowadays because extras cost too much money. She was literally needing to physically push them back to keep them too packed for anyone to climb over the ones in front, probably terribly crushing people she hadn't manage to extract yet.

Time was ticking on, and with every passing moment the horde in front of her grew and grew, the Lightning Shark hovering over them ominously. They all kept an eye out for it, lest it suddenly dive down for an unexpected attack. Also because it was a flying shark, and therefore utterly terrifying. The waves of shuffling, moving corpses and not-quite-corpses-yet seemed never ending, and Tammy could only wonder how Magenta was doing at his end of the highway, protecting the bridge and the smaller branching roads that led around the Spanish-era relic that was Intramuros.

She didn't dare try to move to join him, however. It was all she could do to keep her end of the road contained. Time. they just had to buy time for Yellow to finish her fight so she could once more multitask enough to work her magic, even if it was just helping Blue identify the ones still alive so they could get them all out before they could finally have Red literally go scorched earth on all the giant mushrooms and the corpses being controlled by them.

Tammy peered down from the drone that was still being carried by Yellow's drone, looking for more places that the horde might break out through. Ith the view from above, she'd been able to stay ahead of them, taking control of plants in their path and growing them from weed and grass to thick, solid trees that could obstruct them. As long as she kept the branches of her trees heaving and pushing so that the horde couldn't simply climb over each other. Despite what she saw in front of her, the rest of the area was free of the afflicted and moving corpses.

That didn't mean it was completely empty. On the ground, growing where there was soil or wood or anything but bare metal and concrete, more and more mushrooms were growing. The previously car-sized ones were rising upward, looking like fairy houses, their stems and undersides filled with a soft glow-in-the-dark plastic toy green illumination. The biggest were close to Baseco and along the road from there, but more and more were sprouting, ready to fill the air with spores.

"Red, where are you?" she called.

"I'm almost there! I can see the shark, I'm heading towards you." Her black cube glowed with either plasma or lava inside it, and her words came out slightly distorted. The cube had been vibrating the whole time, as if Red had some sort of elevator music playing through it.

"Be careful. We don't want to fight it, we have enough to deal with right now," Tammy cautioned.

"I understand. I'll circle around to avoid it…"

"Can you see Yellow?"

There was a pause, the obsidian cube only vibrating to a barely discernable tune. "I… think I see her? At least, there are two giant monsters fighting, though I can't say for sure which one she is."

"The one with the horn," Yellow said tersely. "Don't mind me, I'm fine."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure. Go, gotta kill this thing."

In the sky, she saw the glowing, burning bright ball of light that was Red. She was far, far brighter than the Lightning Shark, literally leaving a glowing trail behind her, and Tammy could feel the plants her rousing slightly as it at the sunrise, felt their metabolism start to wake up as their branches swayed in the wind. She could feel the chlorophyll that made up her bright green coloring doing the same, and had to stop leaves from budding randomly all over her. If she allowed that sort of behavior to go unchecked, she'd find that her feet had dug roots into the ground and she was starting to be top-heavy from spreading branches.

Just a little longer. They only had to hold out a little—

Wait.

Why was it getting so windy?

The tree she was fused to was swaying, moving almost back and forth as leaves and smaller branches whipped about almost violent. The people she'd rescued began to swing back and forth from where they hung in their fibrous cocoons, eliciting a new note to their screams as they were tossed about in the rising wind. And the wind continued to rise, and suddenly her barriers were swaying as they caught the wind like sails, waving back and forth as they were pushed, only to recoil and repeat the movement over and over again.

What was this? What was causing—? Her braid, wooden as it was, popped out a recollection and a name.

"Guys, keep an eye out, I think this is the Gale Bird!" Tammy said.

Above them, the Lightning Shark suddenly flickered with a brief burst of thunder, moving like a frightened fish even as its mouth opened and shut. Tammy found herself feeling slightly faint as she saw that it did, indeed, have huge, triangular teeth, except they also seemed to be made of lightning, and lighting was coming from them and arcing to other teeth made of lightning, and suddenly her mind was filled with childish terrors of sharks, like that time she hadn't taken a bath for two weeks after watching Jaws when she was seven, and then suddenly it was gone, thunder echoing in its wake.

From the darkness over the bay, the roar of the wind suddenly increased, and the tree Tammy was fused to suddenly started to bow, and she could feel her legs bending where they connected with the branch beneath her as her body found itself bending in the same direction, caught by the sudden gale that carried with it sprays of seawater. She saw Blue loose her footing, flling and being carried along by the wind, her frictionless body sliding on the ground beneath her until she hit a wall, where she was finally able to anchor herself.

The roof of one of the two-story buildings built along the side of the road, a generic looking building with the kind of blocky architecture and rough pebble wash facade that seemed prevalent with all buildings built before the nineties, suddenly crumbled, and Tammy heard concrete crushing as it became a perch. The monster on it was a dark outline in the night, but the wind coming from it was a good hint. With a hop, the Gale Bird jumped down and landed on the road. Then its head darted down, its beak opening wide and pecking down to grab one of the horde, swallowing it whole.

…

Tammy wanted to sigh, but she had no lungs. This thing was going to get around to trying to snack on the people she'd been rescuing, wasn't it?

"Blue, Magenta, change of plans!" she called, resisting the urge to add 'again'. "Get all those we've rescued and get them secured." She considered the people she'd extracted, who were handing from her various trees like berried to be plucked. "More secured! Don't attack, just discourage it from coming closer!" They couldn't afford to get into a kaiju fight here! Not with people so close to it!

She took control of the trees again, bending the lowermost branches, pushing them to the ground to make roots to support the rest of the tree even as she tried to pulled the people she'd rescued as deep among the trees of the trees as possible, the branches growing and weaving together to try and make a protective cage to keep the Gale Bird away. For the moment, the Gale Bird continued to keep pecking at the moving corpses of the horde like a chicken pecking at fallen grain. The wind continued to roar around it, making Tammy's job more difficult as she had to bend the branches in her control against the wind, even as they flexed and bent and seemed to go everywhere.

All right, they could do this. Just keep the Gale Bird away from the people who were still alive. Tammy had already gotten all the still-living around here, so they could probably safely let the Gale Bird eat the ones left, right? It's a shame for their families—if they still had any left alive—but the priority was saving the living, not the dead.

Light flashed, and suddenly the Gale Bird was gone, only for thunder to crack in the air as a blast of air so harsh it had Tammy whipping back and forth on her branch and she head crashes as more than a few more precariously rooted trees didn't make it, falling to the ground as they were uprooted—

UPROOTED!

Tammy ignored her body as she frantically tried to recover, but it was too late. From where trees had fallen, leaving gaps in her containment wall, the afflicted corpses of the horde broke through into the road beyond.

"Blue!" she cried. "Containment! Containment! Stop them!"

"Yes, Green."

For a moment, she was tempted to turn, to join her cousin and help her stop the afflicted, and Tammy had to physically stop herself. No, no, Willy could do this without her. Tammy had to concentrate on closing the breach! She took control of the fallen trees, fattening the roots, using them to seal the break, even as more and more of the horde pushed and stiffly stumbled through the opening, the still-fine roots unable to stop them. "Magenta, are there any breaks at your end?"

"Rounding them up! That explosions managed to push a few against each other so hard they went over my barrier. Not gonna happen twice, but I have to get them all back before the cross the bridge!"

"Got it, good luck!" she said as thunder cracked and wind roared again and again. The trees around her continued to whip back and forth in the typhoon-like gales, and even as she finally managed to patch up the holes, she felt another tree shudder and start to tip over, the wind too much for its roots to anchor against. Above, in the sky, the Lightning Shark and the Gale Bird fought, wind and lightning lashing out yet both just going through the other. Still the two monsters continued attacking each other futilely, either from urges or animal instincts and hunger, throwing themselves against the other again and again as Tammy finished sealing the breaks in her containment wall.

Tammy didn't scream in shock as lightning stabbed down from the sky, slamming into a streetlight and killing it in a shower of sparks, but only because she didn't have a mouth or lungs. Another bolt slamming into the branches of a tree and causing the point of impact to explode as the heat made water molecules turn into steam instantly, even as the rising gale whipped branches so hard leaves were stripping off. A third bolt hit slammed into the midst of the horde, and suddenly the sky was filled with bolts of lightning flickering out from the Lightning Shark above like it was the center of a plasma ball exhibit as it spun and tried to bit the Gale Bird even as the latter tried to claw and peck it right back, both of their immaterial forms just passing through each other.

There was a ripping sound as the corrugated metal roof of a nearby building was ripped off by the wind, deceptively waving like paper before the finaly rivers holding it in place tore, and it went flying in to the night. Nearby, there was an explosive snap as a branch suddenly ripped off and tumbled to the ground, clipping some of the bundles with people on its way.

No, no, no, no, no! Tammy tried to protect them, weaving branches into a more solid protection even as she tried to keep trees from falling in the impromptu thunder storm the two monsters were creating, bending the trunks so that branches could rest their weight on the ground, trying to minimize the possibility of wind causing branches to snap. She spared a look toward willy, and saw she was containing the afflicted corpses in her own way, blasting them with water that would freeze and engulf them to keep them from moving. Good girl!

So occupied was she, Tammy didn't notice how the ground started to shake.