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Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers! #21
🕑 Added 2021-09-05 00:00:02 +0000 UTCOn the Madness Of Mountains, Part 8
Kim was not a violent man, but he knew how to throw a punch. His dad had made sure he knew that much. Make a fist, tuck your thumb on the side, not inside, and aim to punch somewhere a little behind where you would hit. That said, he'd never actually ever thrown a punch intending to hurt someone. Even when he'd been learning arnis, it had all been in a controlled environment, a matter of movements and muscle memory. It had been exercise, not aggression.
This was not a controlled environment.
He had forgone things like thumbs and fingers, opting for large, uneven, solid lumps of glowing pink rock on the end of his thick arms. It was simple, it was structurally sound, it had a lot of mass, and when he smacked it into the side of the Lava Horse's head, the head smeared all over it like a piece of modeling clay being stepped on.
Kim bent the air around him, changing the alignment of space to keep himself upright even as he felt gravity trying to pull him down, trying to overcome his lack of a sense of balance with brute force. Spikes on his feet kept digging into the dirt beneath him as he struggled for traction and footing. Legs and hooves of lava and red-hot stone slammed into his front, cracking and chipping rock, but he had mass on his side. He swung one mace-like arm sideways into the his enemy's forelegs, splattering them both, making its head topple down straight into the rising punch of his other arm.
Molten hot lava splashed all over him, but he ignored it. He was still growing, even as that growth was optimized into repairing the damage he was doing to himself from making contact with the lava's heat. He punched the Lava Horse again, sending it tumbling, falling onto its side—
The long, tube-like body of lava burst like a water balloon, the shape losing cohesion, the lava starting to run in all directions. For a moment, Kim flailed in confusion, only to be caught completely by surprise as two stone-tipped glowing columns suddenly burst from the mass of lava, slamming into him with the force of an entire mountain behind it. The fiery impact broke huge chunks from his chest, but he didn't fall even as the top of his body was pushed as he bentspace—
The columns of lava curled, and Kim realized that they weren't columns. They were hindquarters.
And he still hadn't moved.
The two lava hind legs slammed into him again, the force greater than before as the lava began to come together again, congealing back into a fiery equine, head now on the end away from him. The impact sent more cracks through him, and he finally stopped bending space to let the force send him falling back. He twisted, managing to get one arm down to steady himself, leaving him in a tripod-like pose, his other arm raised high.
The Lava Horse's hind legs divided, a second pair of legs rising up and curling for a kick as the first pair stayed solidly anchored on the ground.
Kim turned himself into sand and collapsed. The kick legs slammed though a suddenly insubstantial clod of pink dust. Kim could feel grains snap and crack on contact with the burning lava, while a cloud in the legs' path were kicked outwards toward the lake. The rest merely glowed weakly, caught in the crosswinds and updrafts caused by the heat of the volcano and lava, spreading out across the island.
Kim, inside every grain, was every grain, bent space.
Space across the island collapsed, warped, tilted and generally decided that linear progression could go to hell.
Without moving, the Lava Horse suddenly found itself in the bottom of a canyon. On either side rose canyon walls covered in ash, pink sand and loose lava, while in front of it, the landscape that had formerly sloped gently downward towards the dark, ashy waters of the lake suddenly sloped up. Pink sand was fusing into pink crystal, studding the walls and ground.
The Lava Horse looked around with glittering obsidian eyes, its body language confused…
And that was when dark lake water came rushing down the slope of ash and pink, washing over the Lava Horse's legs. The sizzle and bubbled and turned to steam, and the Lava Horses danced in surprise and seeming panic as more and more water rushed down the slope, the world warping as they pushed the pink sand and rocks out of place. More steam rose, molten lava abruptly cooled to dark stone that slowly began to burn with a sullen, stubborn red glow. the Lava Horse began to grow again, the lava within it increasing, trying to get above the water, but no matter how much it grew, the canyon didn't seem to get any smaller. They reared up, trying to climb, but the very walls of the canyon stayed out of reach, even as they tried to walk, and then run, burning hooves splashing and sizzling on the rising water, its rushing currents illuminated by the Lava Horse's molten glow…
Then the water was coming in a rush, clean and pure and carrying large chunks of ice as it slammed into the Lava Horse like an onrushing wave. It filled the canyon from wall to wall, and the water grew turbulent as it boiledinto steam, only for that very steam to stubbornly congeal into hail, raining down on the Lava Horse and fighting their heat with cold as more and more of the water began to turn into ice.
In the water, on the walls, as sand, as rocks, Kim vibrated. "We've done this already! It got out!"
"Throw rocks at it like Tammy said you're supposed to!" the dark waters echoed back like the voice of some terrible god of the depths.
"That does absolutely nothing!"
"Tammy said to do it, so do it!"
Yes, he was never working alone with Willy again. At least not until he'd gotten a better understanding of how she thought, because she was clearly… special.
A moment later, he remembered she could perceive other people's emotions.
Well, fine! Let her know how frustrated he was!
The water and sand rumbled as the volcano erupted again, spewing more ash and lava bombs into the air, and more lava flowed down its peak. They were all averted away from the Lava Horse, the landscape too twisted and rising for the lava to reach, the falling lava bombs dropping to either side. The Lava Horse could add to itself from the volcano, and though it could grow, so could they.
Stalemate.
Wait, no. Not stalemate. What had Sanny said?
Throw everything you've got at it and eat.
Kim had no back of his head. He wasn't quite sure where he was at the moment, only that he was every grain of pink sand and piece of growing pink rock that was reaching out to bendspace over a part of the island. But if he did have a back of his a back of the head, he imagined a slow, rumbling, but unstoppable show of hunger coming from it…
He barely stopped himself from trying to start… doing something to the water all round him. Something that reminded Kim of growing crystal trapping molecules all around them, and trace minerals soaking into things, leaving only itself as all other substance is worn away…
Wait… had he just tried to fossilize water? Why would he—
—a snake, made of dirt and rock—
—a yellow insect, covered in blood, eyes gouged out, empty—
—a tree, too big, too fast, monstrous—
—water in a pit—
—an empty corpse, falling from above onto sand—
Kim couldn't gag. He had no throat, no stomach, no muscles. There was nothing to throw up as he recalled every time he'd devoured—tried to devour—a living thing because he had been filled by an almost solid, slow, rumbling urge.
From the back of his head that he didn't have, it came again, like a mountain raising out of the sea, and slow, but inexorable, the urgeran through him.
He barely stopped himself from turning human and boiling alive as he tried to get the feeling out of his head, tried to stop, tried to keep the parts of himself from reaching out, from digging in, from making things part of himself as he devoured…
He felt himself in a cup holder, with nothing to eat…
Felt himself mounted on wood, spikes starting to growing, impregnating cells and cellulose…
Felt himself in—
Something smacked into him, hard, and he felt an answering void, felt sharp points of prickling teeth and the sizzle of strange acids on his surface, etching him.
"Stop that," Sanny's voice said, sounding mildly annoyed.
The world snapped back into focus for Kim, and with grunt of effort across all his selves he pulled himself back.
"Thank you," he said instinctively.
"Any time," Sanny said, seeming to put him out of her mind as she went back to… wait, was that a giant bee? "Bit busy right now, I'll talk to you later…!"
Kim reminded himself he had his own problems and that Sanny was good at doing horrible things to giant insects as he ignored the scenes of carnage around Sanny in what looked like a pineapple field, and stopped looking through that piece of himself.
For a moment, Kim hesitated, his grains mixing with the ash, tugged to and fro by the water. He wanted to this to be a big decision for him. A burden he decided to bear with dignity and resignation. The choice to end a life, human or not, because if needed to be done. But…
—a snake, made of dirt and rock—
—a yellow insect, covered in blood, eyes gouged out, empty—
—an empty corpse, falling from above onto sand—
He knew that to be self-serving, sanctimonious hypocrisy at this point. He'd done it already, with little thought or consideration for the act or consequences until today.
He could keep being uncaring a little while longer.
In the water, Kim's sand heaved, moving together as one, growing and dividing to maintain the bentspace even as they began to gather around the Lava Horse's legs. They were stalemated, but Kim could only keep growing the bend so much… so he had to act.
In the water, the monster's legs were burning crimson stone covered with a layer of steam bubbles as lava and water met, the stone occasionally cracking open with growth, lava leaking out only to be cooled solid again.
Solid.
It was hot, sure… but Kim could take heat.
He pounced.
Pink rock, glowing bright, gathered around each other Lava Horse's legs. It was trapped so it could never move, never reach any of the walls around it. It didn’t matter how long its step if the distance kept getting longer and longer. Kim gathered around those legs of red-hot rocks, grains of sand fusing together, growing, trapping the stone in rising, coral-like growths. Kim's body grew hot, his molecules vibrating as they took in heat, so much heat, but in the water, the heat could be transferred, vented, and soon the water around him began to boil as well as he kept growing, spreading like the trails of termites. Small cracks broke across him, but they weren't the massive heat fractures of before, fusing easily as Kim bound himself around the stony leg and drove spikes of crystal into the burning rock. From the spikes deep in the stone, tendrils seemingly one or two molecules thick suddenly shot out in all directions, heat transferring along minute strands, the threads beginning to vibrate and shiver as space bent, widening like an endless number of gaping maws to consume, to devouras Kim/something inside him screamed/sang…
Molecules of stone were torn apart and replaced with pink/himself/stone/voids of space, adding to him, becoming him. He kept growing, and suddenly heat didn't seem to matter so much as his self took on a new configuration—
He felt the shift in perspective, the feeling of seeing with more than light, feeling vibrations not through molecules, like his soul was a pit of sand that sucked in all that fell into it and made it part of itself—
…hot. hot. hot. burning. flowing…
—and got the very strange feeling he was eating someone's hair, was chewing a piece of candy through its plastic packaging…
The water boiled.
Kim found himself wrapped around hot, solid (empty/powerless/toenails) rock as the Lava Horse ripped its legs out of his grip, rearing up and balancing on its hindquarters. The water exploded into motion as a whirlpool formed, making the Lava Horse fall on its side, trying to bring it down like a wrestler taking the fight to the mat. The legs left behind became a part of Kim, turning pink and bright, their molecular structure clearly different yet a part of himself, not new so much as a reminder he didn't know he'd needed…
Water vaporized instantly as Kim found himself hurtling into the air in a violent clod of ash, burning lava, cooling lava bombs and a violent updraft of steam as the ground they had been fighting exploded into a new volcanic peak, a rent in the ground that was growing and rising as more and more burning lava erupted from it like a fountain. He felt parts of him burning in lava, encased in ash-mud, spinning uncontrollably in the air, and in a few instances actually launched so hard they burst through the cloud cover into the cold, peaceful blue sky of noon above, only to fall back into darkness.
From the ground that he'd been unable to claim, through the rupture, a giant horse rose, body made of pure, burning, fiery lava save for its glittering obsidian eyes as it reared into the air, its voice a screaming eruption as it protruded from the ground like a genie from a lamp. All around it, what water hadn't evaporated was flowing in all directions as his bendingof space collapsed, the part of him that had warped reality around itself removed with the eruption. Kim fell like glittering rain and falling rock through the brightening darkness as he searched for a piece of himself still on the island, as he tried to bend space to pull as many of the pieces of himself together as he could…
Willy! Was Willy all right? Was this something she could survive?
Bits of him fell into the lake. Into farmland with strangely oversized pineapples. Others, grains of sand, were caught by the winds and spread. Caught in cooling lava bombs as they arced to the ground, hitting roads, trees, houses, fields, cars and people. He heard screams of pain as they burned, but there were so many things he could see and hear, so much.
Kim closed his eyes, cut himself off.
The one bit of him left, the one he was seeing through, feeling through, hearing through, sank into the dark, boiling hot waters of the lake. The bit that was him, a small, perfect cube the size of a paperweight, seemed to hover for a moment in the dark void before landing on… hot, glowing red stone that was making the water around it bubble into steam.
For a moment, Kim just lay there, absently reconfiguring his molecules, letting the heat seep into him slowly and seep out very quickly, the little bubbles of steam making him dance on his corners as he tried to work out what had happened.
The ground, he realized. The ground under them had exploded. His bending of space had trapped the Lava Horse from the sides and above, but the ground…
Kim wanted to close his eyes. Wanted to lie down and give up. He felt like he should be tired, broken.
Where was Willy? Had she survived like he had? Had she been evaporated, and now needed to condense like rain? Had she been splashed out of the way and was even now mingling with the waters of the lake?
Should he get up? That… sounded insane. They'd already gotten their asses kicked twice. At least! Why put himself through this?
…
Right, that was enough self-pity.
Kim didn't take a deep breath, because he didn't need it. and it probably wasn't a good idea to do over steaming water and volcanic gases. So he just started growing, stone starting to protrude from his corners. Think tables. Four things that stuck out, two legs, two hands, head optional…
He felt heat on his feet as he walked out of the water like some kind of deep sea monster rising from the depths, ashy water dripping off him, leaving dark stains on his weakly glowing pink body. The entire island was bare as the sudden deluge of water released when space had collapsed had washed everywhere before returning back to the lake, followed by lava that now gushed out from two volcanic peaks. Overhead, the bright golden glow of the Lava Horse's massive form seemed to make the massive cloud of ash that covered the sky glow dully with reflected light. It's forelegs were set on the ground as it seemed in the middles of trying to 'pull' the back half of itself out of the ground, leading to lava surging and flowing in all directions.
For a moment, Kim just stood there, staring up at the glowing shape almost as tall as a mountain. A pretty huge hill, at least.
He didn't have eyes to close, but he'd grown fingers, so he clenched them. It didn't feel right, but it helped.
Stoically, he began to walk forward for round three, hoping that Willy was all right, hoping she'd come back and help him again. He thought they'd nearly had it between the two of them when Willy had managed to force it to solidify. Pink rocks protruded from his back and shoulders, shooting out around him, leaving a faintly glowing trail as he got ready to bend space again. Sometimes the ground under him would break, the stone still weak, revealing flows of molten lava that his foot sank into. His stone no longer cracked and melted, and it was like wading through hot mud, pulling his feet out.
Had the island gotten bigger? No, the lake had gotten smaller, the waterline receding back, exposing previously submerged rents in the ground from which lava was spewing, and lots and lots of garbage. The water had been evaporated, no doubt, joining the cloud above. He heard thunder in the distance, and could just faintly make out a haze of rain, somewhere up past the mountain-high rim of the caldera around them. All around him was darkness from the cloud above, and in front of him a beast seemingly from hell itself, on an island just as damned and burning, lit by the glow of lava now flowing freely down the sides of the island's slope. He didn't stop walking as the Lava Horse turned its head and seemed to stare right at him. A hundred feet tall, maybe? And that was just the head and forelegs. Probably bigger. Kim had nothing to judge the scale by anymore.
Briefly, rhetorically, Kim wondered if it would have been a good idea to stop glowing, just for a bit, until he'd had some kind of inkling of a plan.
Flame seemed to flare around its body as it let out another roar that literally shook the island and probably showed up on a seismograph somewhere. There was a titanic crack as another massive fissure tore itself open, and out of the earth, anotherhorse made of lava emerged. It was small, only coming to the the first one's knees… which probably still put it in the range of 25 feet or so high.
From the ground, more lava flowed and became another.
And another.
A fifth was just pulling itself out of the ground, stumbling in uncoordinated confusion when the dark clouds to Kim's left suddenly stared to glow. No, not the clouds themselves. Something behind them, something so bright it shone through the kilometers-thick volcanic haze.
And then that glow was a burning light arching through the air overhead, a heat so intense he could feel it over the heat of the island around him, a light so bright it chased away the gloom and cast stark shadows across the land…
One of the Lava Horses exploded as the glowing point of heat and light slammed into it, through it and into the ground behind it, skidding a newly molten trail across the cooling layer of stone. The glow started to dim, and with it the new source of heat.
Kim was somehow not surprised to see a vaguely-human shaped… burning… glowy… person… standing in the middle of the Lava Horses.
It had become that sort of day.
He should probably do something and help.
Kim sighed and opened himself up again, connecting to the pieces of his body still on the island…
