SCM2814
patreon
Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers! #14
🕑 Added 2021-07-18 00:01:01 +0000 UTCOn the Madness Of Mountains, Part 1
The first thing Kim Bunhong did when he woke up was make sure his room was the right dimensions.
The pink sand, tetrahedrons, cubes, octahedrons, heptahedrons, nonahedrons, Klein bottles, rings, and more common shapeless rocks on the floor and his bedspread weren't really that important. Those were easy to clean up after he'd reverted his body to being meaty instead of rocky. But if he left his room the wrong dimensions, it tended to leak out into the rest of the house, and his mother had told him to only do that if they needed the space. It was starting to be his first chore in the mornings, but there was no other way. His grandparents had trouble navigating the house because of its size as it was. No need to make it even bigger.
So he got out of bed, grabbed the tape measure on his night stand, and started collapsing the expansions. The walls of his room warped, their dimensions pulling tighter, going back to its normally length, width and height. He double-checked with the tape measure just to be sure, and had to fix the window because it somehow managed to be five feet wide while taking up four feet of length. His family claimed they got headaches when they looked at things like that for too long, but he never did… which was concerning. All he ever saw was a mild shimmer, which was strangely more visible the farther he was from it.
It was only when his room and the things in it were the size they were supposed to be that he finally gathered up the bits of himself that had fallen off when he'd been asleep. The sand and all the weird geometric shapes came next. He had to shake them out of his mattress, gather them up with a broom, and then will them to fuse together so he could just bond with them and add them back to his body. Not his mass, but his body, because apparently the excess just disappeared when he was all fleshy.
Once that was done, he grabbed his towel, slipped on his slippers, and headed for the bathroom. People were still asleep, and he bemoaned having to get up this early on a weekend, but he was expecting company today, so he wanted to look his best.
By the time he finished his bath, he could hear the house waking up. Manang Beth was cooking in the kitchen, manang Belle was outside sweeping, and he could hear his little sister Loretta downstairs, probably getting water. She always walked more softly than her twin. He passed Ryan's room, where he could hear his brother sleep-kicking his bed. He knocked on the door. "Ryan, time to get up!"
There was unintelligible guttural moaning from inside, and the sound of a body turning over. Shrugging, he headed for his room to drop off his towel before going downstairs for breakfast. Grandpa Ben was already there eating. He was very straightforward that way. The food was there, he was there, he was going to eat, no matter if no one else was around. Grandma Nene was puttering, trying to help with the food preparation and being fended off by manang Beth. Grandma still thought she had to help around the house, doing the cooking and cleaning, not seeming to realize they had three katulong so she wouldn't have to. Kim gently coaxed her to the table so she'd sit down and eat, giving his grandpa an annoyed look that was completely ignored.
His parents and sister came down next, his father sitting at the table while his mother went to talk to the katulong and went over what they were supposed to do for the day, which they already knew, and Kim stifled his urge to make a comment about micromanaging. They were all already eating when his mother finally sat down. "Have we prayed already?" she asked, leading to various indistinct murmurs before everyone stopped eating to pray along with mother.
It was another typical morning.
Ryan was the last one down, and only when he'd sat down and started to eat—after mother reminded him to pray first—did Kim's father speak.
"Kim, what time did you say they'd be here?" he said.
Kim nodded, swallowing his corned beef and rice. "They'll be here at nine, and Yellow told me that if I felt up to it we might go to Makati."
His mother frowned. "Are you sure they said Makati? Maybe they mean Marikina. Nothing's open in Makati, it's a warzone."
"I think they want to kill the giant spider," Kim said.
"That sounds dangerous," his father said with a concerned frown. "Are you sure you're up to it?"
"Nothing's been decided yet," Kim said. "We might not even go. I mean, it's only the second time I'm meeting the other two, and if they're as bad as Yellow, then I won't join."
"Yellow sounds like a bitch," his sister said.
"Lori!" their mother exclaimed. "Language!"
"Yes, mom," his sister muttered with sullen contriteness, before flaring up again. "But she is. What if she's still spying on us?"
Kim winced. He had needed to tell his family someone might have spied on them for several days, leading to their dad calling a meeting for them to talk about information safety and not letting things been seen from their windows and how they should all think of ways to mitigate this so it doesn't happen again and he knew his dad was trying to help, but how exactly was one supposed to keep a woman with monster insect powers from spying on you? He hadn't been able to and he was supposed to be the one with weird, reality-violating super powers!
"If she is, then we will kindly ask her to stop," their father said calmly. "I'm sure she'll be reasonable. She was only trying to protect her friends, after all. Now that she knows you're not a danger to them, she has no reason to do it anymore."
The words sounded like wide-eyed optimism and naiveté, a man talking about a reasonable, civilized outcome. This was the same man who'd once seen grab a snatcher who'd tried to take mom's purse, slam him to the ground, and knock the man out with one punch that resulted in a broken nose, then both call the police and make sure the guy didn't drown in his own blood. Kim wondered if his dad could break Yellow's nose. Maybe if she wasn't being all buggy…
After breakfast, his mother fussed over the living room, where they were to hang out, putting down throw pillows worrying about the dust behind the TV and on the high shelves, and telling the twins to wear more presentable something presentable than the old, wrinkled shirt Ryan had slept in or the long jersey Loretta had on. The two had sighed, and gone back to their rooms. Ryan had come down in khaki shorts and a more presentable shirt. Loretta hadn't come back down at all, choosing to stay in her room and read.
His grandparents had also dressed up. While his grandfather had only put on a button-down shirt, his grandmother looked like she was going to church, and the only thing missing were her jewelry and makeup. Ryan had to sigh. Everyone was always so… dressy when someone came over. He'd long since stopped feeling embarrassed and overdressed and was not just resigned and prayed he wouldn't act like that when he got old. Really, the only one they managed to dress casually for when they arrived were his aunts and uncles, and Katherine. And he'd had to firmly sit them down and tell his mother to not start doing it when the two of them had started dating, because it was weird. It was one of the few times his dad had backed him up to overrule his mom.
Mother was just pulling out three different bottles of soda and a bowl of ice next to the glasses when the doorbell rang.
"I'll go and get it," Kim said, leaving his mother to her fussing as he headed to the front door. He opened that and stepped out into the sun, walking down the path to the little gate next to the main gate. The walls around gate were high enough to block off all view from the outside and stopped to keep people from climbing over it. Decorative growth climbed up the walls, already beginning to grow over the pink stones he'd fastened strategically along the top of the wall. They served as his eyes and could notify him if someone tried to climb over the wall. Most of the time, all he saw/felt were birds, and the occasional cat skinny enough to fit, but better safe than sorry, especially when it came to his family.
He reached the people gate, looking at it nervously. On the other were—
Someone banged on the gate in a familiar rhythm. "Hurry up and let me in, it's hot out here!"
Kim perked up, quickly sliding the bar and opening the sheet metal gate. Katherine stood on the other side, waving at him casually and letting herself in. "Hey. They here yet?"
"No… What are you doing here?" he asked as he closed the gate.
She gave him a quick peck on the cheek, the way she'd used to back when they had been little kids and decided she didn't care if they got teased for holding hands. "What, you don't think I'm just going to let my boyfriend join a gang without me, do you?" she said. "Have to make sure they're not as bad as that bitch who calls herself Yellow. What kind of a name is Yellow, anyway? Does she have a little sister named Red? A girlfriend named Black?"
"Her friends are Green and Blue," Kim said helpfully. "And she called me Pinky."
"Very colorful," Katherin said. "Well, I'll go inside and say hi to everyone." Another peck, and she was walking casually towards his house like it was her own. Well, she had been coming most days they'd known each other, which had started when he was five.
He was staring after her, appreciating the view, when the doorbell rang again. He instinctively reached for the handle on the bar ofthe gate, then paused. "Who is it?" he called.
"Gang recruitment," an impish, young-sounding voice replied.
For a moment, Sanny seriously considered saying no one was home, or telling them he'd changed his mind, or even just saying they had the wrong address. Two of those things were really stupid to say, but the urge was there. He shook of his nervousness, reminding himself he'd chosen this. For all her attitude, invasion of privacy and brusqueness, Yellow had been straightforward, and she'd even given him the option to back out even after he'd thought he'd committed himself when he'd sent her that email.
Besides, he could always back out later.
Taking a breath, he drew back the bar and swung open the gate. "Hi," he said, trying to put on a welcoming smile.
Then he blinked.
He'd been expecting three people. And there were in fact three people there. That was where his expectations ended.
Yellow was recognizable, though was taller than he'd thought she'd been when they met. She was easily over six feet tall, maybe even seven feet, and her once black hair had been dyed blonde. She was also wearing a bright yellow men's collared shirt—he had an unfeminine little sister and a girlfriend, he knew what a woman wearing a man's shirt looked like—and loose jeans. There was a backpack over her shoulders, and she held several square, bright yellow boxes bearing the logo of a local bake shop chain. He was surprised to see she looked… nervous? He hadn't expected nervousness from the woman whose first words to him had been to call him an asshole… but maybe the fact her first words to him was to call him an asshole was biasing his opinion. She'd had a point, in hindsight, but…
The two other people with her, however…
One was also tall, about his height, maybe a bit more, and was wearing a blue hoodie that had been amateurishly patched with squares of denim, which the rest of the hoodie wasn't. In their hands was a block of ice with four large soda bottles stuck into it. The ice wasn't dripping. And while their hands looked normal—how was their grip not slipping on the ice?—their face was a completely transparent, featureless blob that let him see the inside of the hood they had raised.
The third was significantly shorter than the other two, wearing a cream T-shirt, capri pants, and a green hoody. A strange, green, fairy-like face looked at him out of the raised hood, with bright green skin, dark unblinking eyes, and a little flower growing at her temple. From her—very human-looking—hands hung plastic grocery bags full of snacks.
"Hi!" Green said cheerfully. "Kim, right? It's nice to finally meet you face to face!" She smiled brightly at him.
"For the record, they didn't look like that until we were right in front of your gate," Yellow said blandly.
Kim blinked and shook his head to clear it. "Uh, come on in?" he said.
"Thanks!" Green said cheerfully, coming inside as he moved out of the way, her grocery bags making rattling sounds at her perky step. The faceless one who was presumably Blue followed after Green, with Yellow following in the rear, her high-heeled boots clicking on the paving. "Whoa, your house is huge!" Kim waited, but she did not continue with the usual rider of 'are you rich' and similar. "And you have mangos! Willy, they have mangos!"
Kim blinked. "Who's Willy?"
Green looked at him. "Oh right, we didn't introduce ourselves to you properly, did we?" she said. She raised a hand towards him saw that it was full of grocery bags and frowned. Suddenly something shot out of her elbow, and in the time it took Kim to blink, a long, slim, hand-shaped branch with young, silvery bark had grown from the joint as an extra appendage. Green giggled as the new wooden hand extended towards him to shake. "Hi, I'm Tammy. I'm in Grade 9." Her face was also changing, becoming more human and flesh, whites growing around her eyes, until it had become a perfectly normal human face. " Nice to meet you!"
Hesitantly, Kim shook the proffered… hand?
To his surprise, his hand started to harden, turning pink and stony. Crystalline growths started to erupt from his hand and began to surround hers. He could feel tendrils in his palm start pressing against hers, forcing—
Kim drew back, the still-delicate crystal breaking as he pulled his hand away. "S-sorry!" he cried. "I wasn't trying to—"
"It's fine, it's fine," Tammy said. "That was perfectly normal for your first time."
Kim frowned. "First time what?"
"First time meeting someone like us," Tammy said, gesturing at herself. "The urge to try and eat us is instinctive. Just be aware of it, stop eating us when we ask you to stop, and learn to hold it back, and you'll be fine."
"Wait, eat you?" Kim said, horrified. "I wouldn't—"
The realization came to him at the same time as Yellow's significant cough.
"It's fine. You learn to deal with it, provided you know you need to deal with it," Yellow said. "Can we save the exposition until we get inside, Tammy? The brownies are going to get sticky."
"Oh right," Green—Tammy—said. The third hand was pulled back into her elbow, the wood getting pulled back before becoming just a green, wooden bump on her skin before that went back to normal too. "Sorry. Lead on, Kuya Kim."
A bit shaken, Kim fell back on manners to steady himself, leading them towards the house. "So, I guess… you're Willy?" he asked Blue.
Blue nodded, making a vaguely affirmative sound.
"Now Willy, say it properly," Tammy said. "And show him your face, he knows who we are now."
The faceless face glanced at the smaller girl, then looker towards Kim. "Yes, I'm Willy," she said, the voice sounding strange and fluttery. Her face was also changing, gaining color and opacity, until a normal-looking human face was there under the hoodie, just as expressionless as the water had been.
Kim glanced at Yellow. "And… you are?"
"I'm fine with being called Yellow," the tall woman said. Her eyes were flicking around everywhere in a way that Kim did recognize, clearly comparing her life to what she saw.
"Ate," Tammy said reproachfully.
Yellow sighed. "What's the point of being secret vigilantes if we tell everyone we meet who we are? Don't you know you're not supposed to just give people your private information, Green?"
"But Kim's one of us now," Tammy said. "Team work makes the dream work and all that."
Yellow frowned, clearly disagreeing, and Kim found himself irritated. Did the woman not want him here? Is that why he'd tried to talk him out of joining after he'd replied. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," he said, hiding his annoyance.
Yellow pursed her lips, then shook her head. "Ugh, might as well," she said. "Tammy won't be able to keep the names straight otherwise. My name's Sanny. Just Sanny."
"There! Was that so hard?" Tammy said, nodding in satisfaction. "Now we've all properly introduced ourselves! Our bond levels have gone up! New lines in my room! Now let's go inside, I'm feeling the urge to photosynthesize and people don't do that."
Kim looked at her, confused. "Um, I don't know what that means," he said as he reached to open the door.
"Ah, it's nothing important," Tammy said. "Just good civilization, is all. Um, by the way, where did your parents go? Kind of early for them to be gone on a Saturday. The malls aren't even open yet."
Now that the moment was here, Kim… hesitated. "Um, well… ah…"
Ah. Now he remembered. In between planning to meet this people and talking to his parents about meeting these people he'd… never really gotten around to telling them his parents would be here, had he.
"Psst," a voice hissed. Kim looked up, realizing Yellow—Sanny—had hissed to him. "This is the part where you explain about all the people inside the house and how your family knows about your powers."
"Wait, what?" Tammy said, looking at Kim in surprise.
Kim felt a moment of relief followed by sudden guilt as Tammy looked at him for an explanation. "My family's inside," he explained. "They wanted to meet you."
"You asked us to come here when your family was here?" Tammy said incredulously.
"My dad insisted," Kim said. "He wanted to know what sort of people were in the gang I was joining."
"You told your parents about us?" Tammy said incredulously.
"Of course I did," he said. "Why wouldn't I? They're my parents."
"Oh, God…" Tammy suddenly said. "Your parents know. They know about your powers. Your parents know about your powers…" She sounded horrified.
"If was kind of hard for them not to notice, yeah," Kim said. He'd woken up as a pile of rocks and sand and the inside of the house had been bigger than a mall, of course they'd noticed!
Tammy rounded on Sanny. "Did you know about this?" she asked.
"I guessed," Sanny said. "My surveillance revealed his parents, family and girlfriend knew about his powers. I was waiting for him to do the right thing and tell us. I didn't realize he'd have us come over while they were in the house."
"Wait, they're in the house?!" Tammy said, wide-eyed.
"There are ten people in that house," Sanny said. "Two are too young to be soldiers, two are too old, and the rest have the wrong physique and physical conditioning. So I guessed it was probably not a trap. Just thoughtlessness."
"A little warning would have been nice," Tammy said.
Sanny actually looked apologetic. "I… yeah. I'm sorry."
"Apology accepted," Tammy said. She gave Kim a look that was both offended and disappointed. "So, do we go in?" She was clearly not talking to him.
"I've been carrying this food all morning, I want to eat it," Sanny said. "Yeah, let's go in. Might as well right? I mean, it's not like they know our names or anything and can come after us, right Green?"
Tammy winced. "Sorry," she muttered.
"Apology accepted. Willy? What do you want to do?" Sanny asked.
Kim realized he'd been ignoring the third person there completely, and focused on the person wearing the blue hoodie. "Whatever Tammy wants to do," Willy said.
"And that is?" Sanny said, looking down at Tammy.
Tammy glanced at him, then at the still closed door, then back at the gate. She took a deep breath. "Fine. Let's meet them, I guess. Maybe we can bypass all the drama about them wanting you to stop being a superhero, only for you to decide it's something you need to do, etc, etc." She frowned at Kim, though it looked more like a pout. "But you should have asked us first, kuya! Next time, ask! All right?"
Kim squirmed. "Sorry," he said. "You're right. I should have asked first." Despite the fact she was both shorter and clearly younger than him, Kim felt like he was being scolded by his mother. It must have been the clear moral high ground.
Tammy nodded. "Good. As long as you've learned your lesson and never do it again."
The relief at being let off the hook was brief as he realized that Sanny was glaring at him. It wasn't a full-on bitch-face glare. It was just the eyes: intent, piercing, and… loaded, somehow. Clearly she didn't think he should have gotten off with an apology, for all she'd been agreeable to this. And, wait, if she'd known, why hadn't she told Tammy? Oh God, was this the power plays and internal politics his dad had warned him about?
His train of thought was derailed as Tammy said, "Okay, let's go in and say hi to everyone, and then we can talk hero stuff."
"Vigilante stuff," Sanny said as Kim finally opened the door and gestured for them to come in.
"We'll be acting heroically, it's hero stuff!"
Did he even fit in here?
