Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers #54 (Patreon)

The Baseco Horror, Part 2

As burning agony began to spread over his body like his nerves being set on fire, Sanny reflected that he should have realized sooner. When people talk about fungus, mushrooms are what come to mind. Those tall, usually phallic-shaped growths that weren't trees or plants, as everyone who's had to endured elementary school sciences classes knows… except that was horribly, horribly wrong. Mushroom's weren't really the fungus at all. There were just fruits, growths that acted as reproductive organs—yes, the irony inherent in that was obvious—of the real fungus.

The real body of a fungal growth wasn't immediately obvious. It tended to be hidden, buried under the surface of what it was feeding on. It was in the network of strands of the mycelia, grown from the spores released, growing under the surface of the ground, inside living trees, inside rotting wood… and inside animal flesh.

Sanny's flesh.

He cut off the pain receptors but that only dimmed the pain for a moment as the mycelia, growing and boring into his flesh far too fast to be natural, reached the underlying nerves themselves, which was when the 'being set on fire' feeling started. He thrashed, even as it made him slam on ground riddled with mycelia, that immediately anchored themselves to his flesh and were ripped out of the ground, only to start growing on him immediately.

He fought back, of course. Bodies are not without immune responses, even to fungi. His flesh writhed as he tried to manually eject the growths out from under his skin, but it was a losing battle. They grew fast, digging into his flesh, injecting themselves into more and more nerves. Only his bulk and the design of his current body slowed it down, as the mycelia had precious feet of flesh to dig through to reach the nerves—

And then it tried to eat him.

He also died then and there. The burning agony of his nerves served as almost enough distraction that he almost didn't notice the burning net wrapping around them, ready to break them down, if it hadn't tried to eat herfirst.

It was like being bitten in the back of the neck when you weren't expecting it, or stabbed between the shoulder blades. A sudden attack where you were vulnerable and weak, a place that should have been fatal. All the warning Sanny was a sudden burst of surprise pain and eventually THREAT before he could feel her being pulled back, and he was being dragged along, and his awareness of what was all around him began to fade, replaced with the sensation of being in the grip of something—

…move…

The urge was his own as he threw himself forward, towardsthe force devouring them even as shewas unable to respond, still taken by surprise. There were no images of teeth biting down, no imaginary claws or visions of tentacles or roots holding them in place, but Sanny knew that they were in the mouth of the beast, being sucked in and all it had to do was chew and swallow….

He pushed back desperately, trying to raise resistance, trying to at least deadlock it, to buy time for her to start pushing back. For a moment, he thought he'd failed, thought he'd only managed to succeed in killing them both faster—

Sanny nearly sighed with relief as he felt his little spark press against something, something much, much bigger than he was, but it pressed back instead of swallowing him. He wasn't sure how this worked, but he remembered all their prey before them being devoured when they didn't, couldn't push back against her, had been swallowed by her without resistance. If he could resist…

…resist…

And then he felt it. He felt her, and suddenly he wasn't alone in pushing. She was there too, the familiar urges at the back of his head filling him with not prey not consume not devour prey consume devour, and for the second time that night, he found himself almost a spectator as two forces greater than himself fought.

Almost.

The two clashed, and Sanny helped as he could, pushing forward even though he felt like an ant helping a tractor. But even as he did, be suddenly became aware of the burning, fiery agony, of the bastardized, brute0force signals being inflicted through his nerves, felt the mycelia continuing to grow and grow through his body, digging deeper and deeper his flesh. He could feel the mycelia digging, following the paths of the nerves. It was only a matter of time before it reached the brain…

And next to his brain…

Panic filled Sanny, panic and desperation. No, no, no, they could not allow the infection to get this deep!

He could feel her still fighting to not be devoured, and could also feel the effort slowly flagging. The pain of the nerves, the damage the mycelia was were slowly causing their main body was accumulating, becoming a dangerous distraction. So far, they'd deactivated nerves when pain had become too great to ignore, but that didn't seem to be an option in this instance. There were too many nerves, and cutting the brain off from all of them was…

…

Sanny cut off their brain from all of the body's nerves desperately to buy time, to cut off distraction. He willed the prain to physically disconnect from the spinal cord, to isolate it from all sensory input and nerve transmissions. For a brief moment, nothing seemed to happen, and with a sinking feeling, he feared that she might be too distracted to understand what he—

He felt the spinal cord disconnect from the brain, and he was trapped in the dark of his own thought, without sound or sight or smell or physical sensation. He couldn't feel himself breathing, couldn't feel the distant vibrations of their heart pumping…

…and she felt no pain anymore.

He felt her effort redouble, felt the clash against the one trying to devour them press with greater fervor. But he could also feel the strain, the way her efforts still seemed held back, not as energetic of fervent as it had been so recently when they'd been trying to devour Laking Kamay and its unfortunate host. Was she… tired? Sanny realized that they'd never actually devoured in such quick succession before…

Were they… full?

To his horror, the more he watched, the more that actually seemed to be the case.

Well, shit.

If they couldn't win the fight… then they had to do the other thing.

Sanny didn't have to close his eyes, since he was already seeing the darkness inside his own mind, but he wanted to anyway as he began willing a new body around the most important bit of his anatomy. He felt the cells around the brain, as well as the brain itself, start to divide, changing functions into muscle and bone and skin. He could feel how slow the process was moving and tried to will it faster. Maybe it helped, maybe it didn't as he felt her slowly losing ground against what was devouring them, as he felt the threads of mycelia, the actual body of the monster they faced, digging deeper and deeper into their body.

Bones… muscles… heart… blood vessels… their blood was still clear, since the mycelia didn't seem to be releasing spores internally, but Sanny cut off blood vessels to the internal cavity anyway as he filled the body he was growing… lungs, esophagus, windpipe… ditch the digestive system, too much weight…sensory organs: eyes, ears, olfactory receptors, touch, no digestion so no need for a mouth or taste… brain…

It would have to be enough.

The most important part of him ensconced in the torso, Sanny moved into the body. He felt surprise from the back of his head as he ripped her away from the force trying to devourthem. He hoped it was equally unexpected for the other guy as he detached the remaining tissues connecting the new body to the kaiju body that was being infected, isolating them from contiguous contact with the mycelia, and hopefully from being devoured.

Inside a brain once more, he felt warmth, pressure…lungs full of blood extracted air as he stretched limbs and felt confusion at the back of his head.

Even infected, the body they were in was still alive and made of animal cells, still technically under their control. Sanny willed the chest cavity to open, the flesh to split down the middle, the bones to part…

The kaiju body responded with the alacrity he was used to, the bones flexing open as flesh parted, a vertical, lengthwise tear opening. Blood rushed out and Sanny scrambled to move, even as his body was changing, muscles and bones optimizing, nerves coming together properly, senses becoming sharper as she fixed his probably amateurish construction. Clawed fingers and toes found purchase in warm flesh as he dug his way out of the infected body, even as he felt it moving, nerves firing to move limbs inexpertly, muscles flexing in response. The outermost meter of flesh wasn't parting properly, held together by mycelia. Sanny swung his arm, a triangular, tooth-like blade extending from his forearm and tearing through the fibers baring his way as tentacles with sharp, claw-like tips writhed from what had once been ther flesh, tearing at the mycelia from the outside to meet them.

The flesh parted and he felt the night air, smelled salt and blood and ozone as he scrambled out of the hole like a perverse birth and threw himself into the air.

Gossamer wings unfurled from his back as blood filled their veins, and they caught the air as all four wings began to beat with an audible buzz. It wasn't enough to give them true flight—the wings were still too wet—but it was just enough lift to give them the range to dive into the water at their recently abandoned body's knees. They slammed into the bay, utterly ruining their wings, the sea water wrapping around them in cold relief.

In the water, two of the shark-like, bright yellow and exoskeleton-covered drones swam toward them, and Sanny grabbed onto here he could before the flesh and exoskeleton of his fingers fused into their. Conjoined, the three bodies began to haul ass from the still-rising kaiju as he felt the fungal infection spread into the body through the hole he'd come out off, attaching to the detached end of the spinal cord…

"Green, I'm out!" he said through his drone as he realized she'd been trying to talk to him all this time.

"Sanny? What happened? You stopped talking!"

"The monster is the mycelia!" he said, then realized she might not know what that was. "It's the white stuff that's spreading all over the ground that the mushrooms are growing from! That's the real monster that's causing all this!"

––––––––––––––––––

Though her drone, Tammy stared at Yellow's drone.

Then she stared down, down at the white fibrous stuff covering the ground, her trees, the infected whether living or dead, even herself as it tried to boar into her and she didn't let it…

"Blue!" she cried. "The ground! Devour it, now!"

"No, don't—" Yellow's drone cried.

Tammy threw her will at the ground, imagining roots that dug into the white filaments, digging into it and trying to spread, as if trying to pull in nutrients, even as she kept actual roots from growing…

It was there. She felt it, even as she felt the still but powerful weight of the power she held, its roots sunk deep into her such that she didn't know where she started and the power began, didn't know if it was growing from her or she was just a fruit hanging from it…

She felt her roots boring into something, trying to pull it in even as it tried to bore roots into her in turn, the roots twinning together, consuming and being consumed…

Tammy felt it when her cousin tried to devour the monster, as somethingendless and dark and deep and lightless washed over her and her nutrients both. However, the moment it touched her, the bottomless sea seemed to recoil, before turning its attention on the nutrients she was trying to draw in, almost not seeming to care as Tammy began to grow roots towards it as well…

She wanted to say it was a force of will, but Tammy didn't really know what she did as she tried to pull back from infinite depths that she knew was her cousin and focus only on the prey between the two of them. Already she could feel it weakening as it tried to defend against both of them at once and was utterly inadequate to the task. Tammy braced herself to pull back at the last minute so she didn't deadlock the way she had with Yellow the last—

And suddenly there was nothing to eat.

Da fuq?

"The heck?" Tammy said, self-censoring from long habit as she snapped back into her own body, her metaphorical roots no longer finding anything to dig into in the mycelia around her. "Blue, was that you? Did you devour it?"

"No, Green," Blue said, her ice cube and the ice on the ground both vibrating in answer. "I did what you said, but I didn't devour it. I'm still full from the Rainmaker."

"Where is it then?" Green wondered.

The ground began to shake.

"Oh, come on!" Tammy cried. "Not again!"

"It's all right," Magenta said. "It's just Yellow getting back up."

"That's not me! It's infected!"

Tammy took a moment to understand that and wanted to sigh. "Of course it is," she said. "Can you stop it?"

"I've been trying! I've killed the cells, opened the arteries to drain blood, hell I've even tried fusing the joints together! The mycelia are eating the connections I grew in the bones in the joints to give them mobility— aaand the bones are dead, so I can't even do that anymore."

"Can you fight it?"

"Not without risking infection again! I can chance it if it comes into the water, but…"

Tammy looked at the kaiju that had been Yellow. Already, mushrooms were growing in lines over its skin where the Lightning Shark's bolts had struck, and it moved with the rough, jerky movements of the infected as it began to walk among the stacked rows of cargo containers, towards… Baseco?

"Red, burn it!" she said.

There was a pause.

Then a beam of light slammed into and punched through the infected kaiju before hitting the waters of the bay behind it. Steam exploded from the flesh as the water promptly exploded, steam spreading out as the water of the bay was violently launched upwards. Tammy could see the hole through the kaiju's torso, the edges of the surprisingly small, car-sized hole actually glowing all the way through. There was no roar of pain, no reaction at all as it continued to walk, its feet slamming through the branches that formed the upper parts of the barrier in its way.

"Red, again!" Tammy said.

"I don't think it can, Tam—Green," Red said. "The angle's changing. If I shoot it again, the beam won't hit the bay anymore once it goes through it. I'd need to get lower and closer to be sure I don't damage anything."

"Just shoot it now while it's still in the port," Yellow said dismissively. "All you'll hit is cement and cargo containers."

"But there'll be damage!" Red cried.

"So?"

"That's vandalism!"

"So?"

"Yellow, please stop talking," Tammy said as she stared at the looming figure that dwarfed all the buildings around her, a shape out of a monster movie walking away. "Red, find a better position to shoot from. Magenta, it's heading towards you, do you think you can contain it? Do your space warping thing?

"Not unless it stops moving long enough for me to warp the air over its head," Magenta said. "I need to get all of it, or else it won't work. I can still try, though?"

Damn it! Yellow was, apparently, completely useless for it, Red didn't have a shot, Magenta didn't have the range… "Blue, any suggestions for stopping this thing? Can you cover it in ice and trap it?"

It took a while before the ice cube vibrated. "I'll need to completely submerge it in enough water to cover it instantly," Blue said. "Otherwise it has enough mass to break ice. I could make it go to sleep?"

"Can you make it go to sleep without putting all of us to sleep too?" Yellow said.

Another pause.

"Answer her, Blue," Tammy said with familiar rote weariness.

"I don't know. I've never tried it before."

"Don't, then," Yellow said. "Red, get to the ground so you can shoot up at it. You shouldn't hit anything but sky— are those mushrooms on it?"

"Uh, yeah? You said mushrooms grow because of lightning, and—"

"STOP IT NOW! Those mushrooms are high enough off the ground that any spores they release will be able to go over the river, especially in this wind, and there are still people over there!"