Chapter Text
If the world had a sense of drama, they would be doing this in the dead of night, maybe in the rain, in the seedy underbelly of the city.
But no, it was the middle of the day, the skies were clear and they were in a heavily trafficked public area. The buildings of Eastwood City– not actually a city, but rather a combination shopping area, IT park and residential complex– towered above them, shielding them from the sun.
"Is it nearby?" Tammy asked her cousin as they walked through the crowds of people thronging the sidewalks. A part of her wondered why there were so many people of all ages there, since it was just past lunch on a weekday. Didn't these people have work? School? Granted, she and Willy were there because every bathroom in their school had flooded, forcing the school to close for the day to find out what the heck had happened and wait for the water to drain, but what was everyone else's excuse?
Willy shook her head. "Too many people," she said, in a tone most people would have called brusque, annoyed and vaguely offensive. Tammy could tell that while Willy might be annoyed, it wasn't at her. She knew her cousin. "It's annoying. The thing is hiding in the back. It can't take it."
"Is it hurting you?" Tammy asked, concerned.
The much taller girl shook her head again like she was trying to shoo away a fly. "Doesn’t hurt. Just annoying. I'm fine."
Tammy nodded, trying to smother her concern. If her cousin found it annoying, she'd do her part to try and lighten her load. "But it should be around here?"
Willy nodded. "I felt it coming out of the water near here," she said, her head scanning back and forth as she used her greater height to see over people. "Couldn't catch it before it did."
"It was my fault," Tammy said. "I should have been paying attention."
"You were busy killing the others," Willy said simply. "It's fine"
They didn't even have to keep their voices down. Talking about killing in public? Nothing to do with anyone, they were probably talking about videogames anyway. Tammy resisted the sudden urge to wipe her arms. She knew they were clean now, but…
She shook her head, getting back on task. Despite the tall buildings all around them, a mixture of condos and office buildings full of banks, BPOs and call centers, at ground level the place had a lot of plants in its décor. The islands in the middle of the main roads of the complex were full of plants, there were plant boxes everywhere, and trees grew in large, cultivated patches fronting restaurants and fast food joints. She didn't have to close her eyes or try very hard to feel them. She was just… aware, like she was aware of her fingers or her toes. She could feel the light on their leaves, the slow growth as they broke down carbon dioxide into carbon to build themselves, feel the slow osmotic action of water entering their bodies…
Tammy shuddered, willing herself to keep moving, to not give into as she felt the urge to stand still and root and just grow. She reminded herself she wasn't a plant, no matter if she often felt like someone who was a thousand plants stuck inside a too-meaty human body…
She forced through the lethargy, even as she took control of all the plants in her vicinity. She felt the parts of the plants that reacted and sensed light, the phytochromes and the cryptochromes and other photoreceptors.
Tammy turned them into eyes.
She walked but the plants nearest her shuddered, their leaves gaining thickness. The plants around her, once limited to seeing red and blue and ultraviolet, found the entire spectrum forced on them. She saw people moving and building's rising above her/below her/past her/over her/on her (they were stepping on her, her stems were breaking, her leaves smearing on the ground, but she wasn't dying, she couldn’t die, and even as they passed stems knit and new leaves grew, seeing all around her again…), felt her multitude of leaves spreading wide to see as many angles as possible, felt the chemicals in the water, the tars in the smoke, the pollution in the river even as her roots drew them in–
She felt Willy's hand on hers, a cold, reassuring wetness and she struggled to keep herself separate, to not start thinking she was a plant/all plants!!!! She held on to her cousin's hand even as they kept on walking, not letting herself go over the brink. The plants were her eyes, and that was all! She was a person, a human, not a plant, and the plants were just her eyes!
She held her cousin's hand tighter as their pace slowed, trying to match the people walking on the sidewalk. It let Tammy focus on seeing…
People… so many people around her. She could see herself, though her plant eyes. An average-looking girl with her shoulder-length hair hidden under the hoodie she was wearing, just standing there holding Willy's hand, water dripping from where they touched. She blinked, and suddenly she was looking in front of her through eyes made of meat, in a body of muscle and bone and roots growing from her palms into her cousin…
Hastily, she pulled back, the roots withdrawing under her skin, becoming one with her flesh. "Sorry," she muttered. Her cousin's hand stopped being cool and wet, growing firmer and warmer until they were touching flesh to flesh.
"You needed water," her cousin said simply. "Can you see it?"
"Got distracted," Tammy said, resuming walking as the space in front of them cleared, leaving the small puddle of the water that had dripped from their hands behind. "Hang on…"
Her vision fuzzed and split, and she was seeing through the plants again, through photoreceptors that were not as nature had original intended. She ignored the people, walking in their shirts and jeans and jackets, being all tall and bilaterally symmetrical. She looked for things closer to the ground. She looked for dogs.
There weren't many stray dogs here, and what dogs there were belonged to those who lived in the surrounding condos. Willy had said it had come out of the water so…
She concentrated on the senses of the plants near the river. Many were stunted and unhealthy because the water was polluted, but they were growing. Tammy forced them to live, forced them to see. She saw the dog. It was dripping wet
It was the size of a car and dripping, covered in raw lesions and pus-spewing skin, with its hair falling out in patches. Bloody gouges surrounded by blisters leaked pus on its flanks as it stumbled over the cement walk fronting the river, out of sight of the road. The giant mutt was scrapping itself along the walls, leaving blood, scaled skin, torn hair and other fluids as it tried to relieve itself of the pain it felt from its sores and injuries. Blood and other fluids were bleeding from every orifice. Its stomach was making it look like it was on the verge of giving birth.
"Found you," she muttered, recognizing some of those wounds, surrounded by blisters and white sap. She'd managed to put them on the thing before it had run away.
As it passed them, the nearby plants began to die, and Tammy felt their leaves, their stems, their organs shutting down as shear disease filled them, bacteria and viruses drifting from the plague dog from every sore, every drop it left behind, every breath of air it panted out, infesting every plant. Tammy felt their pain. Tammy felt them die. Tammy felt herself die.
She tried to strengthen the plants, to fill them with life and growth and fight the infections that were killing the, but the plants were too close to the river, too tainted, too weak. She felt stems burst, felt bark split, spots and discolorations spreading on leaves as that plants that were her became factories for–
Tammy's eyes snapped open. The plants weren't her anymore. They were hosts of taint, vessels of unwellness, fonts of impurity. They belonged to the disease.
That was fine. She had more.
"It's that way," she said pointing in the direction of the dying plants. "Come on, we have to hurry."
They wove through the crowd, keeping each other in sight as they made their way across the complex. Their hoodies didn't stand out in the crowd of twenty- and thirty-somethings all wearing call center casual. Tammy doubted they even wondered why two girls would have their hoods up in the middle of a bright sunny day. She had to hold in her thorns in case she brushed up against anyone, but let her skin turn into smooth bark. Her sense of touch degraded as her sensitivity to airflow, temperature, and minor pressures disappeared to nothing, and her body seemed to become stiff even as she kept on moving, even as her joints stopped wrinkling properly when she moved. Her vision jarred, taking on a shaky-cam-like aspect as her neck stiffened, and she had to concentrate to make the small micro adjustments that kept her from feeling nauseous, even as her throat constricted and she was suddenly breathing through her skin.
Her feet and waist weren't contributing much, too smothered to breathe properly. But at least breathing was no longer mixed with smell, so she couldn't smell her own socks. She was aware of the white, blistering sap that now ran through her xylem and phloem in place of blood and veins, of the photosynthesis going on in her face…
They crossed the street, moving past tall trees through which Tammy saw herself. Covered as she was by clothes and wearing a long-sleeved hoodie, she still looked normal, if you didn’t notice that her eyes no longer blinked and were starting to dry. She was also walking a little funny, as if her limbs were stiff, which they sort of were.
Willy, at least, still looked like herself as she kept pace with Tammy, who was following the eyes of the trees. The plague dog had gotten onto one of the main thoroughfares of the complex, the one that circled around and led to the pricey hotel-slash-condo-slash mall complex from the back, and was causing a stir as people, and then cars, avoided the monstrously huge, obviously diseased animal as it stumbled onto the middle of the road while security guards reported on their radios and otherwise stayed where they were in front of doors.
Tammy sped up as soon as the way in front of her cleared enough, jogging stiffly, her feet pounding heavily on the sidewalk, Willy smoothly keeping up with her.
"Don't wait for me!" Tammy said. "You're faster! Get to it, get it away from people."
WIlly nodded once to show she understood, and then broke out into a dead sprint, her longer legs and lighter body letting her eat up ground as, in the eyes of the plants, her face blurred in the shadow of her hood, hair and skin melding together, becoming a transparent, featureless blob that rippled with her every footfall and movement. Her hood started darkening as it got wet, the dark stain and wetness spreading down her body to her blouse, her jeans, her socks, her shoes.
Tammy would have sighed. Sometimes she wished she could be as blasé about her clothes. As it was, she was pretty sure she'd have to buy a new set of everything, including shoes, even if this turned out well. Unfortunately, she couldn’t make cotton thread bind together again.
Her physical body soon lost sight of her cousin as Willy made like an internet parkour video, jumping over and narrowly avoiding every obstacle in her path, disappearing as she went past an overpriced foreign-brand restaurant with barbershop-themed signage. The eyes on the trees kept track of her cousin's blue hoody as she ran on the street, ignoring the cries of the security guard playing crossing guard as she wove past and between cars, only some of which slowed or stopped when she crossed their view. The trees and potted plants and bushes saw the plague dog's head perk up, and it let out a wet, coughing bark that left a large smear of blood, pus and phlegm on the road as Willy leapt onto a car stopped in front of the plague dog, her shoes leaving footprints on its trunk, roof and hood as she barreled into the plague dog in front of it, her arm drawn back, and punched it in the face.
There was an explosion of water that rose high enough to be seen over the line of restaurants in Tammy's way as Willy hit the plague dog with a punch literally like a firehose, her fist becoming a raging torrent that slammed into the plague dog with deceptive force, the water flowing with unnatural cohesion and surface tension to bring the full force of its mass to bear, sending it flying across the asphalt in an expanding pool of water, tainted blood and diseased bodily fluids.
That's when the screaming finally started.
Which meant people started going towards the screaming with their phones out.
Ugh, people! She was trying to save them, why were they making it more difficult for her?
The plague dog's claws tore at the asphalt, and its bloated belly bursting in bloody bits of unalliterateable fluid and viscera everywhere. From the way people were flinching back and gagging, the smell must have been horrible. Tammy didn't have much of a sense of smell now, and either did Willy.
Tammy finally reached the road, still at a run, her face shifting as her features smoothed out, leaving only a blank surface the green of young new bark. Her body was too heavy for her to do the weaving and dodging her cousin had, but thankfully she didn't need to. Traffic had been stalled and blocked, so she didn't have to pay extra attention to cars. And she wasn't the only one walking into the road for a better view. She just managed to avoid hitting anyone, otherwise it would have been with the impact of a swinging log.
Willy was grappling with the plague dog, which was still full of life despite literally being torn open and dripping filth onto the now-wet asphalt of the road. Her hands wafted cold vapor, and there was blood and more disgusting stuff on her hands, shaped like fists and made of ice. The twisted, bloody bits of flesh that had erupted from the plague dog's stomach were moving, resolving into immature, canid fetuses, their bodies twisted, flesh red and inflamed.
They were already starting to grow, inflating like one of her seeds bursting into a sapling. There were more than a dozen of the plagues puppies, skittering over the wet road so fast that it was hard to count even with her eyes in the trees. Even fresh from the womb, their skin was flaking and already starting to bleed and drip with their own pus. They grew from the size of mice to the size of cats, and then to the size of grown dogs in the time it took them to scramble the distance to Willy, swarming Tammy's cousin even as their stomachs went from cadaverously fleshy to bloating, foaming rabid mouths snapping at her, tearing at her clothes and trying to reach flesh.
Tammy groaned. They'd just gotten done doing this! She rushed into the scene, letting out a yell that sounded like a wooden flute being blown into with absolutely no musical talent as she leapt up and chopped down her hand, her fingers bursting into dozens and dozens of thorny bougainvillea-like vines, green and supple and full of needle thorns. The improvised lash slammed down on the plague pups, tearing at their too-soft, diseased flesh. The stomach that she currently didn't have roiled at the cruelty, even as she felt her vines getting infected where the tips of thorns had snapped and had touched pus.
Her body fought the infection as she ignored it and pressed on. She wasn't some potted plant: her thorns and vine grew rampantly, fighting disease with unbound growth as she let her vines wrap around their bodies, their struggles driving her thorns into their too warm, too stiff muscles as she tried to keep them contained. They contorted as their bloated bellies began to bulge, trying to gnaw at her vines, but she only grew more thorns, tearing and blistering their mouths with her sap, staining the foam they dribbled bright pink. Struggle as they might, with her vines wrapped around them the plague pups didn't have the leverage to tear their way out of her hold.
Her cousin had her own tactics: water couldn't get sick. Her now completely soaked clothes were the only things still giving most of her body humanoid form as fists of solid ice struck at the plague pups blocking her way and hanging on by their teeth onto her wet clothes. Still, she deliberately strode to get to the one that had spawned them. The plague dog stumbled away on its raw, jerky limbs, its gutted belly already knitting shut perversely, the edges bulging, flaking and scaling grossly as it grew like a cancer to seal back its innards.
The plague pups in Tammy's grip burst. The pups hanging from Willy's wet clothes by their teeth burst. The ones knocked to the ground burst.
She didn't feel the blood and other viscera flowing down her vines and staining her as the pups, now the size of full grown dogs, all burst at their bellies, each releasing at least a dozen small, writhing, mouse-sized premature pups, skins all red raw and scaling, even as they moved and grew and bloated…
She shouldn't have gotten squeamish.
Literally dozens of dozens of newly birthed plague pups began to swarm them in earnest, skittering on the ground with bloated, inflamed limbs and squamous hides, trying to entangle them with sheer numbers. The degenerate canines bit at her shoes, her jeans, climbed up on each other to jerkily throw themselves at her and covered her with worse than piss.
Her skin was bark and felt none of it when it was penetrated and white sap flowed, even as those that bit her yipped in pain as their mouths broke out into blisters and swelled even more than before. She wasn't breathing through a nose, and smelled none of it. Only the sight of what was happening brought her disgust, but she'd seen worse on TV and games. The vines growing from her hand fell off, freeing her limb even as they continued constricting and growing around the pups they captured, growing through flesh, roots burrowing inwards for something to latch onto and feed on, even as the pups filled them with sickness. Fingers grew back, fresh green and tipped with thorns as she grabbed the pups latching on to her and began rip them off, kicking them aside with her dense, wooden legs, trying to clear the path towards the plague dog. It had already gotten away once, it wasn't getting away again!
Then she heard the new screams.
Tammy realized she'd become distracted, even as she looked through the eyes of the plants around her again. From the vantage points of the grass, the trees, the decorative greenery and the potted plants on condo balconies, she saw the situation. People had been crowding, their phones out, some still trying to get closer even as something clearly unnatural was occurring. They had gotten too close, and not all the plague pups had focused on Tammy and Willy.
Twelve dozen rapidly growing, monstrous, plague-ridden puppies were more than enough to be some obstacle her and Willy, even as they both tried to power though them to get at the plague dog. They had pushed and thrown and beat the plague pups aside, little things that were swelling like balloons. The pups had kept on growing even when cast out of the pair's way, stumbling on uneven limbs that either refused to function or where twisted or undersized. But they had teeth. And as they grew, they had been pushed outward, towards the edges of the road, towards the watching people who were backing away, but not far enough, not fast enough…
And then the pups were too close, and they were going after people, biting at ankles and knees, and these people didn't have legs made of wood.
Even after all the pictures they'd shown on the news, of twisted creatures grown beyond sane size, of a swarm of bird-sized insects devouring everyone in a slum to the bone, of the giant forest of unearthly mushrooms that had overtaken Baseco out in Manila Bay, people had not yet learned to fear monsters enough. They still hadn't learned to run.
People fell, the plague pups drawing blood, biting deeply through flimsy business casual clothes and into flesh. People tried to kick, to crawl away, even as they found to their horror that they couldn't move their legs…
A heartsick cold gripped Tammy's chest, and despite not having a heart she felt like something was physically squeezing it. She stared after the plague dog, already hobbling away. Willy had abandoned her shoes and socks, vaguely foot-shaped blobs of water sprouting from the ends of her soaked jeans somehow supporting her weight and getting traction on the asphalt road despite seeming to blend with the water mingling into expelled mess on the ground as she made to run after it.
It was going to get away again. But they had to let it, otherwise these people…
"Blue!" she cried, an inhuman voice that sounded like wind roaring through the knots of a hollow tree. "Let it go! We need to kill the others!"
Willy heard her, coming to a stop and turning to look back at her. Even with a face that was just a blob of clear water, Tammy knew her cousin was confused at the sudden change of priorities, of killing the little ones instead of the big one. The big one was the important one, the carrier that made all the little ones, roaming along the border of Marikina and Quezon City and spreading infection and sickness.
But Willy didn't ponder it long. She trusted Tammy. Turning away from the escaping plague dog, she switched targets. The spreading water, still thick on the road and pooling at the gutters to flow on towards the drains, abruptly froze, the water turning into ice with no warning. Plague pups that had been hobbling on the water began to skid and slip, and a few that had been partially submerged found their feet trapped.
Tammy had the feeling they'd need to have another 'why didn't you do that sooner' talk.
The plague dog was still getting away. It was limping, but it did so with speed, ignoring the people in its path that, not surprisingly, were getting out of its way with alacrity. Tammy wanted to just go after it. To ignore the pups around her and the people they were attacking and bring the plague dog to the ground, making it one with the earth and filling it with her roots as she devoured every part of it with her roots…
She wasn't a plant. And she was doing this for a reason.
She turned away, knowing the plague dog would get away again, knowing they'd have to hunt it down once more. But they'd been hunting it to keep people safe.
Something yellow leapt over her, landing lightly behind her on the edge of Willy's ice and kept on running.
Still connected to the plants, still seeing through their eyes, Tammy didn't need to turn to see it.
At first, she thought it was some kind of exhibitionist wearing full body spandex. Then she realized their body was all wrong. It was too tall and slim to be healthy, with a waist so narrow it seemed spindly, or the result of too much photo-manipulation. Their limbs moved strangely in a way she couldn't quite put her finger on, reminding her of a doll. The long limbs quickly ate up the ground between the newcomer and the plague dog, which still struggled to run. The newcomer leapt over the plague dog to land in its path, blocking its way.
Just like the dog it used to be, the monster darted to the side to evade the newcomer, but a limping dog the size of a vehicle isn't as nimble as a regular dog. Its shoulder slammed into the yellow figure, tackling it aside. Instead of being thrown back, however, the unnatural limbs moved as if independent of the torso, the yellow one regaining their balance as one hand slammed fingers-first into the plague dog's side in a knife-hand strike.
Blood and pus erupted from the wound as the plague dog let out a surprisingly high-pitched yip of pain, even as the newcomer was yanked off their feet, pulled along by the plague dog. The newcomer was pulled along for a step or two before it leapt up onto the plague dog's back, landing amidst the raw, crimson skin and thrust its other hand, fingers rigid and aiming for the head. They missed, clipping off a leprous ear and tearing a bloody gash down one side of the plague dog's face. Not letting that deter them, they struck again and again, squeezing at the plague dog's side with their long legs. The plague dog frantically shook its head as they stumbled from side to side, trying to buck off its yellow rider.
Tammy kept several dozen plant eyes on them even as she fought to keep the plague pups away from the crowd. She tore open the front of her shirt with only a mild twinge of regret– she'd really liked that shirt– letting her front erupt into branches. Her back bowed as her feet burst her shoes open, roots growing across the asphalt she stood on, fine, fine filaments finding the minute cracks on the road and flowing inside, then growing and tearing the surface only to continue growing downward. The branches erupting from her chest grew with unnatural speed, bright green buds becoming silvery branches becoming brown, scaly bark as the branches grew and grew, leaves sprout all along their length, opening to catch the sliver of sun that came between the skyscrapers, taking in the carbon dioxide and breaking it down to so her body could grow, spreading in all directions, thorny vines bursting from their ends to dart down and tangle around the growing plague pups. They were the size of dogs again, their stomachs bloating and writhing as things moved under their flesh…
As her head touched the ground, her body now bent over completely backwards, she felt what would be her scalp writhe, felt the filaments of roots extend and begin to burrow and tear inexorably downwards into the ground as the tree that now stood shivered unnaturally, thorny vines growing faster than kudzu and striking like snakes to encompass the road and the sidewalks and the living. They ignored people, wrapping around plague pups, pulling them away from people, keeping them from escaping. More branches grew outwards, pressing against the fronts of buildings, smothering windows as they followed where plague pups had stumbled, vines drooping down and wriggling to seek them out. They were tainted by disease on contact, their wood beginning to rot, but she grew and grew, her growth outpacing the disease, smothering the plague pups. She felt peoples' screams on her leaves, felt them bat aside her vines, but she didn't relent. She grew and grew and grew, her canopy rising higher, seeking more sun.
Sudden water washed over her, and her roots fed hungrily as Willy flooded the road again, water gushing from her feet and hands and face, or at least the parts of her still intact and soaked clothes that corresponded to those parts. Her vines pulled at the plague pups, wrapping around them as she pulled them under the shadow of her leaves, their wriggling bodies like putrid fruit. The water rushed over the diseased mongrels still on the road and water immediately became ice, freezing the plague pups in place, even as the vines wrapped around them, thorny seeds growing from the bark with the relentlessness of bamboo shoots, piercing their body. Their stomachs burst, trying to release more plague pups, but her vines wrapped and wrapped and wrapped, more thorny seeds growing from her vines, burrowing into the plague pups. Her vines strained, the plague pups trying to grow, to break free from her hold, but she continued to wrap over them, her vines reinforcing their confinement…
And then her thorn-shaped seeds, their hard outer shells protecting them from infection until they were rooted deeply in their hosts, burst into saplings.
Her massive, spreading body swayed as her hanging clusters of vines suddenly erupted, malformed and vaguely degenerate, stunted sapling growing from them, covered in gore, roots feeding on blood and flesh and bone marrow.
She sighed with satisfaction as the saplings fell from her grasp, all dropping to the ground as she severed her vines, cutting off the sickness. She breathed, filling herself with air, and she could feel her body breaking it down and growing from it even as they released waste oxygen into the atmosphere. Her body swayed in the wind, her leaves shivering as the canyon of tall buildings on either side channeled the air into a rush…
She jolted to attention as her roots froze, the veins in her stem filled with water and sap bursting as their contents expanded. Frantically, she tried to grow more roots, to mend and repair herself, but the cold was pervasive, chilling the ground, and there was a dark maw, and endless depth that she couldn't fill, a frightful and devouring–
Hey, a voice that spoke with the ice in her roots and sap and stems said, slapping her mind. Snap out of it. You're turning into a tree again.
The entire tree shuddered and suddenly Tammy opened her eyes inside her own mind and realized she was trapped, trapped inside a tree, unable to move, unable to feel…
With a scream of terror only her cousin would hear, a vaguely humanoid-shape ripped itself out from the side of the enormous tree that now blocked the road. Tammy stumbled, back in one body once more, even as she could still feel the ancient-seeming chimeric monster of a tree, even as she frantically tried to change back to have lungs and bones and muscles and skin–
Before that could happen, she felt a hand grab her wooden arm. Instinctively, filaments of roots began to grow at the point of contact, trying to suck in the water that suddenly touched it, even as she recognized her cousin's watery touch. Her cousin stood there in her sodden clothes, a vaguely humanoid figure of transparent water defiantly standing against gravity. "We need to get the dog," Willy said in the voice of the water that resonated through the puddle under Tammy's feet, in the fluid she'd managed to suck up, through the darkness in the back of her mind that sank into endless depths…
Tammy shook her head, bark falling off as she forced herself to define a division between head and shoulder and neck, forced herself to stop taking in the water that was Willy. More bark fell as she cast off excess wood, carving for herself an approximation of her body in vibrant, fresh green bark. Fine wooden fingers tipped with thorn claws flexed, and her thumb, peak of human evolution, pressed against them. Do good now, freak out about nearly becoming stuck as a tree twice in one day later. Again.
Sound came rushing back as she made organs to hear, sight returned as she lined the front of her head with photoreceptors. She could have seen from any point on her body, but she put them on her head. People saw from their heads, through their eyes, and although her eyes were wide, dark blotches on the front of a knob of wood as green as a new leaf, they were eyes and they were on her head. She was a person, not a plant, no matter how much she felt like one. No matter how much!
Legs that bent like new stalks but were heavy as hardwood stepped forward, away from the shadow of the tree she had… grown, towards the plague dog that now stood alone as it fought the yellow newcomer. Arms swung out of habit to keep her balance, and she breathed in air through her skin, let it out through her entire body. She was a person, not a plant.
Her cousin followed beside her, looking vaguely comical as she did, like something out of a laundry commercial. Ready and waiting to follow Tammy's lead, as she always did.
The yellow newcomer was… bigger now. Previously slim limbs had bulked with lean muscle, and what had seemed like tights now seemed like armor plates, and were covered in blood and pus. Curving claws protruded from the end of the newcomers hands, grappling with the plague dog and tearing bleeding furrows on their raw hide. Despite the plague dog greatly outmassing it, the two seemed evenly matched as the smaller newcomer danced nimbly around the plague dog's jaws and bulk, trying to tear at the beast's limbs.
Tammy stared at the newcomer, and in the back of her mind, she felt hunger, felt the urge to bury meat and bone into the earth and then devour it all with her roots, fill her veins with blood–
She smothered it just as she did every time she looked at her cousin.
Her name was Tammy Olivarez, and she wasn't a plant, no matter how much she'd felt like it since that day.
"Come on," she said, "let's go help them."
They ran.
Behind them, the tree stood, looking ancient as it rooted in the middle of the street, its leaves and branches pushing against the buildings on either side as the fallen sacks of vines that littered the ground around it bled blood and pus and gore.
The area of the street where the yellow newcomer and the plague dog were fighting was clear of people, who'd all drawn back to take out their phones. The plague dog grappled with the newcomer, trying to get them in its jaws. It fought like… well, a dog, leading with its fangs, batting with its front paws. Its limbs were jerky though, its inflammations working against it and hampering its movements. But it was huge, it treated the fact it was bleeding like a minor inconvenience– and if it was anything like Tammy, it was– and it had a single-minded fixation on surviving.
The newcomer seemed to possess an equal determination to kill it. The back of their left arm was thickening, becoming thick and shell-like as they used it to ward off the plague dog's jaws, even as the nails– the claws– on their other hand tried to tear at the monster's– the other monster's– sides, attempted to stab in between ribs, and generally make their body unsuitable to the business of being alive and functional. Their abnormally long and thin, almost insect-like limbs danced as they tried to avoid the paws that kept batting and swinging at them, trying to get them to stumble and fall to the ground. Their reflexes seemed to be keeping them ahead of the plague dog though, and Tammy had no idea how they were moving so fast. But the yellow one was keeping the monster in place, and its stomach was still cancerously sealing shut, so it couldn't release any more pups. This was their best chance to take it down!
"Keep it from running away this time!" Tammy cried.
Willy was running ahead of her, longer limbs– Tammy had unconsciously defaulted to her natural height and proportions, something that happened when she forgot to deliberately sculpt her form– letting her cousin take the lead. Water surged as one hand erupted in a fire hose-like stream, slamming into the side of the plague dog. The water immediately started washing off the layer of blood and puss and other unmentionable, unknowable fluids on its skin as it pushed the plague dog back. Willy directed the stream lower, refining her aim, and the dog let out a high-pitched yelp of surprise as its hind legs were knocked out from under it by the relentless flow of water.
The newcomer was on it in an instant, using its bulk to protect themselves from Willy's stream while getting on top of the dog to gain leverage. It tried to keep batting its paws at them as the newcomer shoved their left forearm between its jaws, forcing its head back and disorienting it about where to attack. Their other arm drew back, and in the split second when it stopped, Tammy saw it wasn't tipped with claws anymore.
A single, blade-like spike of bone now jutted from the newcomer's forearm, and it stabbed deep into the plague dog's flesh. It howled around the thick, hard mass of bone and shell and spines between its jaws as the newcomer bore down on it, seeming trying to keep it down despite their smaller, lighter body.
Now that they were no longer dancing around, Tammy finally got a good look at the newcomer. What had seemed like tights in the distance– even though she'd known in her heart they weren't, couldn't be– from much closer looked like the shell of a crab, segments locking together and over each other like the limbs of a high-quality articulated figure, covered in fine hairs– barbs? Spines?– and minute bumps . What had seemed an even yellow turned out to be subtle gradations of yellow and white. Their head was human-sized, too small and smooth to be a helmet, so all those glistening, slightly iridescent plates had to be its actual head, which was smooth and lacking any features beyond two large, black eyes wider than tennis balls. Their eyes were slightly bulbous and dark, with a vague textured sheen that made Tammy realize it had compound eyes like an insect…
And suddenly it fell into place. The seeming shell, the slimness… it was like someone had taken an insect and shaped it roughly like a human. Or a human had made themselves look like an insect…
She felt the hunger again, the wish to open herself up and devour them and thus make them part of herself over time…
Tammy ignored it like she'd ignore grass underfoot as Willy kept up her spray, keeping the plague dog unbalanced as she kept pushing its legs out from under it, keeping it in one place. They didn't want to have to chase and find this thing a third time today. The water around it started turning into ice, making the plague dogs attempts to stand even harder. It had only known tropical weather all its life, and it didn't know how to stand or balance on ice, particularly wet ice. The newcomer's head was jerking, as they kept glancing at her and Willy, but they didn't make any gestures to try and intimidate them to keep back.
Beneath the newcomer, the plague dog heaved, changing tactics as it rolled over on the slick, slippery surface, the spike in its side and the arm in its mouth letting it drag the newcomer with it. The surprised newcomer was pulled over the plague dog and hit the ground on its other side, smothering them beneath its bulk. There was a snap at the newcomer's spiked arm snapped under the plague dog's bulk, and it let out a cry as the spike was seemingly driven deeper into its flesh.
Yet it persisted, hind legs flailing to try and regain control of its body's position as it kept pressing down on the newcomer and rapidly shaking its head from side to side, as if intent on ripping off their other arm. The newcomer's long legs kicked and scrambled, as if trying to get purchase, but their feet– covered in shell as if to mimic slim armored boots– couldn't get enough traction or leverage on the wet, icy ground.
Tammy wasn't any good at jumping. Plants weren't jumpers, either. But her light, springy wooden body managed to compress and let her kick off with enough force to get decent air as she grew an enormous, meter-long, fine-tipped thorn on one arm and rammed it with all the force of her body behind it into the plague dog's now-exposed side.
The impact rammed the thorn all the way up to her fist, at which point it snapped as she misjudged her leap and mass and kept on moving to tumble over the monster. Fortunately, after skidding on ice for a few feet there was a parked car to catch her. The impact left a huge dent on the metal of the trunk and half-ripped off the bumper, but she was fine. Just a little scrapped off back and crushed trunk. Didn't even lose all that much sap. She glanced at what was left of her giant thorn, a ragged, moist stump that dripped white sap, and a new one grew from it, the point erupting through the middle and leaving only a ragged ring of interrupted growth that quickly smoothed to a rough ridge as the wood aged and firmed to be tougher. People always underestimated how sharp wood can get unless they regularly had to deal with thorns. Tammy knew why they were still a common design feature of a lot of plants: they were sharp enough to go through most flesh. And isn't that what she was facing?
The plague dog was writhing on the ground now, pierced through other side as she got to her feet, the ice under her suddenly turning to water, letting her step on wet asphalt. Her attack had gotten it to roll off the newcomer, who'd scrambled back out of the way, managing to skid along to the edge of the ice. Tammy was mildly horrified to see both of their arms had been sheared off at the elbow, leaving writhing stumps of dripping fluids and exposed bone. The armored forearm was still in the plague dog's mouth, long strands of meaty muscle flopping from the stump, writhing and wiggling and… wrapping themselves around the plague dog's jaws?
What Tammy had mistaken for muscle that had been ripped out somehow resolved themselves into thin tentacles that wrapped themselves around the plague dog's head, keeping its jaws trapped around the armored forearm part as the fingers on the other end wiggled and grew like forms extruding from the ground, each claw-tipped finger becoming a head that wrapped around the plague dog from the other side before jamming their points into its flesh and hanging on like hooks. The tentacles writhed where they contacted its skin, their surface becoming red and raw, scaly and flaking, dry and cracked, gushing pus and blood by turns, and growing thick, dark lumps of cancerous growths, but they held on, keeping its mouth shut.
The spike of bone in its side was writhing too. The break there was more ragged and bloody, as if it had actually been torn off, but even as she watched the stump was growing flesh in a cleaner, faster way than the plague dog's cancerous flesh sealing, closing over the ragged stump to form even, smooth flesh. It trembled for a moment, as if shaking from the plague dog's movements… before segments of shell separated as if they'd always been there, and a lamprey-like mouth suddenly opened, revealing rows upon rows of small, curving teeth surrounding a deep, pulsating throat where Tammy could have sworn there had been bone a moment ago. The mouth bent its armored, flexible body down and bit into the plague dog's diseased flesh for leverage as it tried to push the bone spike that was now its tail even deeper in
Tammy looked over the bulk of the fallen plague dog, meeting the black gaze of the newcomer, compound eyes to mutated photoreceptors. For a brief moment, she felt the hunger in the literally inhuman gaze, a hunger she reciprocated despite herself before pushing it down hard, back into the dark rich earth of her mind, filled with the silent whispers of plants.
Then they both lunged for the plague dog.
Tammy got there first as Willy, despite her preoccupation with keeping the plague dog knocked down so it wouldn't run away, turned the ice in her path back into water so she wouldn't slip. She dove at the plague dog, fingers thorn-sharp, thorn-tipped branches erupting from her torso as she slammed into the plague dog fingers-first burying them to the knuckle. The plague dog immediately tried to buck her of, but her other branches grasped at it like hands to lock her in place, even as thorns grew, digging down, fattening into rhizomes that dug in deeper with feeder roots. The meat and blood and fluids were diseased, but she pressed on. She'd been sick as a kid, and she'd lived through it. She knew how to deal with sickness: power on through and keep on growing, keep on living. Her cells tried to change, to become deadly and cancerous and turn against her, but her body was a plant, and plant tumors didn't metastasize or become a threat to the main plant. Blood gushed and the plague dog howled as she dug deeper into it, roots growing towards its lungs, its heart, its brain, seeking its power…
There was the snap of cracking bone and wood, and Tammy jerked as she realized a part of her growing root system had just been ripped off, as well as the meaty flesh around it. She felt them, still growing, at least until it as crushed repeatedly and–
Tammy jerked again as her roots were ripped out again. And again. And again.
She didn't have eyes to close, but she'd stopped paying attention to her photoreceptors again. And whatever she'd been using for ears too. The plague dog was howling in agony, and as Tammy finally started seeing again, she found herself face to face with a monster from deepest nightmare that would have made her heart clench and start screaming at her brain to start running away from imminent death.
Plants didn't have hearts, and if she froze, well, plants generally didn't move under normal circumstances anyway.
The yellow one had pounced on the plague dog just like her, and it wasn't eating it from the inside. It was doing it the other way. Hook-like claws had grown back on the ends of its arms to replace the forearms it had lost, and were now digging into the body of the plague dog, visibly caught on ribs. Also, Tammy had been wrong. It had a mouth after all,
It had several.
At first, Tammy had thought the newcomer had grown new arms. The long extremities erupted randomly from their shoulders, and were lodged into the plague dog's body, including several areas where Tammy knew she'd grown roots. Then one ripped out a large, circular chunk of meat and roots and Tammy realized those weren't arms but mouths with powerful jaws and triangular, recognizably shark-like teeth devouring the plague dog one piece at a time.
The plague dog… and her. Because with every bite, more roots were torn out, and she could feel them slipping out of her control as they were crushed and digested.
It wasn't without cost. She could see the mouths starting to blister from her poisonous sap, but that only slowed it down as it continued to devour.
She felt instincts inside her, instincts she recognized as that of the plant, telling her to burrow in deep, to keep feeding, to feed and plant seeds intside the dark, fleshy places so they would grow and continue on, a part of her…
Tammy was not a plant and didn't consider continuation of the species at the price of her to be survival.
Still, a stubborn part of her pressed on, trying to outgrow, outfeed, and outlast… until a bite ripped a substantial amount of her rhizomes and roots out from under the flesh of the plague dog. Blood and puss was everywhere, and by the reactions of bystanders– Tammy still had no sense of smell– it must have been foul. Some of the insides of the plague dog was actively rotting, as if it was desperately trying to make itself as inedible as possible in an attempt to dissuade them…
Plants had no problem with rotten meat, and apparently neither did whatever the yellow one was. A carrion feeder, a scavenger? The shark mouths tore at the limbs to keep the plague dog from moving, shaking from side to side and even twisting around in circles to saw through root and bone and rip out huge chucks of unspeakable meat which they swallowed with disgusting gusto. Others, smaller and leaner, burrowed inside the plague dog's, feeding and feeding and feeding…
Her roots couldn't compete.
It was like ripping chocolate out of her mouth as Tammy let her fingers and branches tear away, throwing herself back, knowing she was in the presence of a faster, more voracious omnivore than she.
The yellow one seemed to have been waiting for just this opportunity. As Tammy stumbled back on shaky trun– legs, an uneven, slight askew line carved itself across the yellow one's chest like some kind of autopsy incision. She saw the interlocking teeth a split second before their entire chest simply… opens up, ribs like fangs swinging their torso wide to either side as if they hinged at the spine.
Despite not really being a vegetable, Tammy felt like she was going to be eaten.
It was a feeling that spiked and made her jump back, slamming once more into the car she'd previously abused, as tentacles emerged from the torso like a disgusting plurality of tongues, red muscles that looked like sandpaper and drew blood– well, drew more blood– from the plague dog's skin. They wrapped around the beast, too flexible for mere tongues, even as more cancerous grows and bleeding sores and–
The plague dog was pulled, whole, into the torso cavity, its cries reaching a panicked crescendo as the hook-like arms started pulling it into the open, predatory maw of the creature devouring it, as the tongues wrapped around it to prevent it from escaping, as flesh crept forward envelope it completely, as tears opened all over the tongues, revealing toothy maws of their own that bit and bit and bit…
The flesh closed in a mouth-like seem of interlocking teeth, leaving a comically, cartoonishly bloated figure with a stomach bulge literally the size of a car. The shark-toothed extremities shuddered and began to fall off, as easily as a lizard losing its tail. The now worm-like appendages began to thrash, gaping painfully, and Tammy felt slightly gratified as she recognized the symptoms of her sap's manchineel poisoning.
The bloated stomach was convulsing, and with each heave it got smaller and smaller as if its contents were being digested, even as the yellow one fell to their knees. Their face was still blank, but they were giving off the body language of someone having indigestion from eating way too much. Their fingers curled as they pressed on their engorge stomach, as if trying to physically assist it with getting smaller.
Willy's hand snapped up as if to shoot another stream of water, but Tammy gestured for her to stop. She watched in horrified fascination as the stomach got smaller and smaller, as if all reason and sense and little things like the conservation of mass didn't matter.
Tammy knew it didn't. She'd just turned into a giant tree on nothing but air and water. She hadn't even properly photosynthesized.
The bulge got smaller and smaller. Faintly, she could still hear the plague dog's cries, carrying stories of pain and agony as it was consumed. Then there was silence as the bulge finally approached a humanly-possible size, until finally it was gone, leaving a deceptively smooth and flat yellowish stomach that hardened back into shell. They stayed on their knees, arms trembling slightly, as if needing to mentally recover from what they've just done.
Despite the murmuring, pointing, watching crowds, it felt like it was just the three of them on the road as Tammy watched the yellow one shake.
Hesitantly, she took a step forward, causing the most minute splash on the still-inundated road.
The yellow head snapped up like a dog's, staring right at Tammy.
Then they leapt up, and Tammy had a moment to feel a distinct pang of envy as they managed to leaped over thirty feet straight up from a dead start and start scaling the sides of one of the buildings, claws gouging handholds on the façade. Then she was running towards her cousin, pointing after the fleeing… person. "Get me up there!" she cried, hoping her cousin would actually be able to think of a way. They hadn't exactly practiced this.
The hoodie moved as the transparent ball of water that was currently Willy's head turned to look at the scaling figure. Then her cousin grabbed Tammy by her armpits with both hands, and lifted her up, pointing her towards the yellow figure. Tammy turned her head around 180 degrees so she was facing front as her cousin angled her up slightly higher, and then she was flying through the air on twin jets of water.
She didn’t scream– mostly because she didn't have the right organs for a good scream– as her limbs flailed frantically, and she slammed into the yellow figure just as they reached the edge of the roof and were in the middle of pulling themselves up. The two tumbled, falling onto the plain, gray roofing material and into a bank of vents.
Tammy recovered first. She was a plant right now, she didn't have things like an inner ear to get dizzy from, or a brain to get sloshed around and concussed from impacts. Judging from how their unfortunate victim was cradling their head, they did.
Still, even concussed, their body language was quickly becoming belligerent as they got on all fours, a knob near what seemed like their but growing and extending, clearly becoming a tail with some kind of spiked tip as their head writhed, changing shape subtly as the pair of black, soulless compound eyes locked onto Tammy…
Praying she was right, Tammy raised both hands as a lipless slit tore itself open in the front of her face. "Wait!" she cried, bell-like sacks growing in her chest to pump air as she tried to make vocal cords without making her throat all the way human. "I surrender! I just want to talk!" Her voice came out like a loud, windy whisper, but at least they were recognizably words.
They froze, compound eyes staring at Tammy expressionlessly. Then slowly, warily, they stood, the tail they'd grown touching the ground as they stopped crouching like an animal and started standing like a human.
They were taller than her, Tammy realized, their elongated limbs giving them a fey-like, alien aesthetic, their smooth yellow head expressionless and faceless save for those eyes, and for a moment she remembered that internet horror story…
Then a slit seemed to crack open along the front of that head, right were a mouth would be. Tammy saw triangular, shark-like teeth and a bizarrely normal-looking tongue.
That yellow chest heaved, the plates of the shell visibly shifting as if they were taking a breath for the first time.
"So talk," an incongruously normal, feminine voice said.
End Of Episode Narrator: They're not actively fighting each other! Is this really how a meeting like this should go?
Green: "I used the magic word that immediately stops all hostilities: Martha."
End Of Episode Narrator: Next time, on Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers! The mysterious yellow being! Are they friend or foe? Are we finally getting it? An actual team?
Green: "Hey! Two people count as a team, if they work together!"
Blue: "..."
Greeen: "And she's totally an ally, what do you think this is, Kamen Rider?"
Yellow: "I am just... a passing through Apex Carnivore..."
"So talk," an incongruously normal, feminine voice said.
To be perfectly honest, Tammy hadn't really thought past this part. She'd sort of assumed that she wouldn't get this far. But she only had to talk. That wasn't hard.
"So, first off, sorry for crashing into you, but it was the fastest way up here. And thanks for not eating me," Tammy said brightly. She tried to smile, then realized without lips that didn't really work. Her mouth sort of just got wider, without the masses of muscle that gave it the implied upward curve at the ends. She closed her mouth again, hoping they didn't thing she was being sarcastic or threatening. "I mean, you ate a little bit of me, but nothing important. Nothing I couldn't grow back."
"Is that what that was?" the yellow one said, tilting their head in a surprisingly normal gesture. "I was wondering what tasted like toothpicks."
Tammy didn't think she tasted like toothpicks– she was a young green sapling! She probably tasted like celery at best– but didn’t argue the point. "So… are you human?"
"Are you?"
"I'm human!" Tammy said hastily. She held out her hand. "Plants don't have thumbs! Or talk! Or argue whether they're a member of the human race."
"Or need to justify they're human."
"You just ate a dog, that's not exactly something humans do."
"Maybe I like asocena."
"Off the street?"
"Asocena and street food." Teeth showed in a wide line.
Well, at least they sounded amused. And bantering! Tammy was actually bantering!
"Anyway, thanks for your help back there," Tammy said, relaxing. She didn't have muscles that could relax, but if she did, her shoulders would be loosening. "We were afraid it was going to get away again. It's learned to go after people to distract us."
"I was just passing through and saw it," Yellow said. "It looked like something I could beat, so I did."
"We're still thankful," Tammy said. She hesitated. "Are you… like us?"
"You'll have to be more specific," Yellow said.
"Did you just… wake up and…" Tammy trailed off.
"Found myself like this?" Yellow said easily. "Yeah. I'm glad I live alone, or that would have been awkward." She looked at her hand, and Tammy saw the intricate, interlocking shells that made them bend like human fingers. "It took some adjusting."
"When?" Tammy asked. "When did it happen for you?"
Shell-covered fingers tapped on mouth plate. "Um… during the night after the first reports of people in Baseco getting weird fungal infections showed up on TV? Before it turned into a mushroom zombie forest? And no, before you ask, I never went there. I didn't used to go farther than Makati."
"Used to?" Tammy asked.
The mouth opened again, showing teeth. "I've got new ways to get around now," Yellow said, looking very smug for some reason. "But no, whatever caused it, it wasn't because I got close to Baseco. I didn't go anywhere but home, work and groceries." Head tilt. "Was that what you wanted to know?"
"Not even close," Tammy said. "Can… do you have a phone? An email? A social media I can contact you on?"
"I don't just randomly give out my information, you know," Yellow said. "Especially when I'm not wearing my face specifically so people can't work out who I am. Besides, no offense, but we just met."
"Then I'll give you mine!" Tammy said. She held up her left arms and started scratching contact data on her inner forearm with one finger, the thorn on the tip hardened and the bark softened to help with the writing. She put in her cell number, her casual email, and one of her social media accounts, the ones she used for logging in to games that demanded it for bonuses. Carefully, she peeled off the bark so she wouldn't have to write it again, trying to suppress the shiver at the absence of pain as she essentially flayed herself, revealing the pale wood underneath.
"Seriously? You're giving your contact data to a bug person you just met?" Yellow said.
Tammy held it out. "Look, you're the only other person we've met who's like us. Most of the rest that's out there seem to be monsters. The mushrooms, the dog, those insects that ate all those people–!"
"Don't worry, I got those," Yellow said. Their tongue briefly licked out, before they winced. "Ach! Bleeding tongue, bleeding tongue! Teeth too sharp!"
"That!" Tammy exclaimed. "Look, you clearly know what you're doing! I don't even know how I'd handle bugs that can do that. The two of us couldn't even take down a dog. Sure, it was a huge dog, but it was still one dog. And you beat it!"
"Aw, crap, I think I bit the tip of my tongue off," Yellow said. "Ugh, I hate it when I accidentally eat pieces of myself, it always feels like cannibalism. This is probably why sharks don't have tongues."
"Can we, like… learn from you? On the job training? Some pointers? Please, anything! We're really bad at this!"
"This what?" Yellow said, voice sounding a little off, it's flapping mouth letting Tammy see that their tongue was indeed noticeably shorter.
"This! Heroing!"
Yellow paused and stared. At least, Tammy assumed so, since she was getting both compound eyes straight on again. "Come again?"
"Heroing!" Tammy said. "Great power, great responsibility, using our power to protect the weak and helpless, be protectors of the right, save people from these evil forces… you know, the whole comic book gig. I mean, pretty much all you need is a magic barbell."
"Okay, first off, heroism is not just something you can be, it is a pursuit with uncertain ends," Yellow said, one hand up with finger upraised in a lecturing pose, the other at her waist. "It is an accolade awarded by others in reaction and recognition to one's deeds, and as a result means one is admired for those deeds or qualities presented. One cannot just 'become' a hero, or claim to be a hero. To be a hero is to be recognized by others, and such recognition is purely arbitrary and semi-political. The same act that gets one person called a hero can result in another becoming forgotten in the annals of history. While one can act in a way that corresponds to the present heroic ideal of a culture, this does not make one a hero, merely someone seeking to be like a hero, which is not the same thing."
"…" Tammy said. "What?"
"Sorry," Yellow said. "It's a peeve of mine. You were saying?"
"You're… not doing this to be a hero?" Tammy said. "But then… why…?"
"Why go after these things?" Yellow finished. Tammy nodded a bit numbly. "Why do you?"
"Because… it's the right thing to do…" Tammy said lamely. She gestured at herself, at her body of bark and wood and thorns. "I mean, I can… this. What else would I do with it?"
"Hide it? Live a normal life, not putting yourself in danger?" Yellow said bluntly. "Do whatever you want, because you can? Do plant-related things for money? Something other than fighting dogs in the street and… did I see that right? You grew a tree in the middle of the road?"
"They were going after people," Tammy said, shuffling nervously. "I think they had rabies."
Yellow turned, looking towards where the top of the tree that Tammy had been was just barely visible. "Yeah… I think so. I'm not sure what I can do for them. Hopefully they can get shots before it really sets in, but…" Yellow shook her head, then shrugged.
"Why did you do it, then?" Tammy said. "Why go after the plague dog?"
"Plague dog?" Yellows mused. "Well, it fits." She looked at Tammy. "Do you ever get an urge, in the back of your head?"
Tammy went still like only a plant could. Eventually, she said, "What urge?"
"An urge. It comes from the back of your head, makes you want," Yellow said. Her compound eyes glittered. "Want things. Do things…"
Tammy realized her bark was getting very, very dense. Denser than oak, than mahogany, than palo santo. She felt the thorns on her fingers lengthening, hardening, felt more thorns growing along her arms…
"Urges," Tammy said, talking as much to herself as much as Yellow. Were her claws… yes, they were getting longer, sharper. "Yeah, I know about urges. Get them all the time. Getting some now, in fact. But you know the thing about urges?"
"What?" Yellow said, and her voice was no longer normal and feminine. It buzzed like a cheap audio effect, holding hints of growls and vibrations. Her tail was over her head, Tammy noticed, the point curved and sharp and pointing at her.
"Urges are stupid!" Tammy said. "Plants have urges! Dogs have urges! Animals have urges. But people… people tell their urges what's going to happen. Not the other way around. And I'm not a plant. My urges don't get a say in what I'm going to do. They can offer suggestions, but generally I don't listen, because they're stupid suggestions. That's what people… what humans do with their urges."
She met those compound eyes. "So, I'm going to ask you again… are you human?"
Very deliberately, she held up her arm still holding the sheet of bark, studded with thorns, glistening with agonizing white sap… and pulled the thorns back in.
Yellow shuddered… and then the claws seemed to fall off her fingertips, replaced by rapidly grown and very pinkish and human fingertips and nails, incongruously melded to hard yellow shell. The tail fell to the ground behind her, severed at the base like a lizard's. Teeth, triangular and shark-like teeth, fell from her mouth, revealing bleeding gums that were quickly growing more squared, human teeth. "I'm human," she said, her voicing sounding deep and raw.
"Say it with me," Tammy said. "I'm a human, not a plant."
A wide line, showing bleeding, but human teeth. "I'm a human… not an animal."
"People are friends, not food," Tammy said.
"Isn't that fish?"
"We're not fish, we're people. Don't argue."
A chuckle. "People are friends, not food."
Carefully, Tammy walked forward, covering half the distance to Yellow. Despite everything, Yellow tensed, crouching slightly. The tail behind her twitched, and the ragged flesh at the base of the tail started growing teeth before stopping and the teeth were pulled back in.
Tammy stood there, exactly half of the distance from Yellow and held out the bark again. Her fingers were soft, pinkish, with dull, useless nails.
Cautiously, Yellow stepped forward, her armored, boot-like legs clicking strangely on the gray cement of the roof they were on. The foot wasn't a single piece, Tammy saw. Instead it was segmented, adjusting like a human foot but covered in yellow shell. She tried not to look nervous and draw back as Yellow kept coming closer, seeming to loom until they stopped just outside of Tammy's reach. Tammy held out the bark. One elongated arm reached for it, then paused.
Abruptly that hand writhed, and Tammy watched in morbid fascination as the yellow shell seemed to fall off like scab, revealing a plain, human hand. Carefully, gingerly, they took the bark.
"So… call me?" Tammy said.
Yellow nodded, turning the slightly bark over in her hand. "Yeah, I will. I… yeah. I think I've been alone with my thoughts about this too long. Need to get some perspective." She held out her human hand. "I'm Sanny. Nice to meet you."
Tammy beamed, even if it was just the slit on her face opening wide. "Tammy," she said, taking the hand. "Nice to meet you too."
They shook hands. The lipless slits on their faces opened wide, showing teeth.
"Why is my hand blistering?" Sanny asked.
Tammy gasped. "Ah! The sap! Sorry, sorry, sorry!"
––––––––––––––––––
Yellow– Sanny– flew off from there. It was fascinating to watch, seeing her body break apart into a flock of yellow birds that slowly turned brown to blend in with the local mayas, taking to the air and pretty much vanishing. Two of them were carrying the piece of bark with the contact information, holding on to a bit of vine Tammy had grown on either end. She really wished she could do that. Fly, not break apart into bits. Though she was pretty sure she could do that too, as soon as she figured out what those bits were…
Getting home was… problematic. While Tammy and Yellow– Sanny– were talking, apparently police from the nearby police station outside of Eastwood had arrived. And then soldiers from the engineering brigade at nearby Camp Atienza had arrived. And the soldiers stationed at Camp Aguinaldo had arrived. Only the ridiculous amount of traffic involved kept the police in Camp Crame on the other side of EDSA from joining in on time too.
Fortunately, water laughs in the face of threats of bullets, and Willy was never all that communicative anyway. Apparently she'd just stood there in the middle of the road, looking up towards where she'd thrown Tammy and ignored all the guns pointed at her, ignored all the demands that she lie down on the ground and surrender, ignored the policemen who'd charged her with batons, ignored the ones who tried to tackle her to the ground. She hadn't been able to ignore the ones who'd desperately grabbed at her sodden clothes in the vain hope they could pull her around with them because, as she'd explained to Tammy afterwards when they'd made their getaway, Tammy had once taught her that was a 'BAD TOUCH' and she was not supposed to let strange people just take off her clothes.
That meant that Willy had still had clothes on– if with some random bullet damage– when Tammy had leapt down from the roof and onto the sidewalk. Actually, she missed the sidewalk and landed in the dirt of the plant bed beside it, but that was fine, since she was pretty sure she'd have cracked the cement falling from that height, even with a body made of light, springy wood meant to absorb the impact that had bent and vibrated like a cartoon character smacked by cymbals. She'd been shot at but even fresh, wet sapling wood takes bullets better than meat does.
She'd stumbled shakily, still vibrating, Sanny's contact info etched into the bark of her forearm– one she'd made sure didn't have any sap in it, just in case, even when she'd changed out all her sap for some that wasn't a manchineel-derivative– before Willy had grabbed her and launched them both into the Marikina river.
It was disgusting. It was after the rainy season, so the river wasn't running low and stinking from all the years of garbage and factory pollutants staining the river bed, but the root fibers Tammy had instinctively– unconsciously?– grown when she'd hit water had the plant equivalent of spiting and throwing up when they'd tasted it, before they'd been enveloped by Willy pure, clean, clear water and been trust along the river at high velocity. They'd gotten out as soon as they were out of direct sight, just in time to avoid the helicopters in the air.
After that, it had been a matter of Tammy, to her consternation, hiding as an actual tree along the river bank while Willy had gone to where they'd stashed their wallets and phones– inside another tree, of course– and bought a shirt, pants and slippers for Tammy to go around in so they could commute home.
Three hours later, wearing cheap second hand clothes, Tammy and Willy, mostly human and tired, finally managed to get back home. The house was in one of the many subdivisions that had been put up near the end of Ortigas Avenue Extension during the 80's and 90's, a nice quiet place that was still a fairly safe and secure community.
"Manang Zeny, we're home!" she called. She could hear their katulong cooking the in the kitchen, the little radio there playing a local FM station.
"We're home," Willy mimicked her, since that was what Tammy had long ago told her she should do when she came back home.
"Welcome back," was the absent reply. Manang Zeny was either focusing on the food– it smelled like chicken adobo– or the music.
The two went upstairs to their room. Technically it was Tammy's room, and Willy's room was what had once been the guest room, but that was just were she kept her clothes so it wouldn't crowd Tammy's closet. As Willy closed the door, finally making them private again, Tammy sighed in relief, turning around and falling back to sit down on her bed with a practiced bounce that let her rebound so she was leaning on the wall her bed was shoved against.
"Haaaaaay," she sighed. "What a day." But they'd finally done it! They'd stopped a monster! Now, people were safer, without having to worry about mangy, epidemic-spreading dogs! She looked at her cousin, who was peeling off the hoodie. There were at least three bullet holes in the hood itself, with more spread around the back and front. It looked vaguely like some kind of cosplay. "Put it next on my desk Willy, I'll fix it later."
Willy nodded dutifully, neatly folding it and setting it on Tammy's desk, then opened the drawer containing the sewing stuff and took out a blue thread that matched the hoodie. Tammy nodded in approval at her cousin's initiative. She'd get to it with her sewing machine later. Right now she just lay back and enjoyed the feeling of having blood and bones and muscles and taking in oxygen instead of carbon dioxide.
She felt Willy sit down next to her, felt her taller cousin's weight shift the mattress. Pushing herself up, Tammy let her cousin lay her head down on her lap. "You did good today, Willy," Tammy said, stroking her cousin's hair. It was time for a haircut, she noted. Any longer and it would start looking untidy, since after all these years Tammy still couldn't get her cousin to take care of her hair properly. Oh well. "Do you want to watch something? Do you want to watch a movie before we do our homework?"
"News," Willy said. "I want to find out what happened today."
Tammy had to sigh, but it was a fond sigh. Sometimes she regretted explaining what the news was to her cousin. "Okay," Tammy said, reaching for the remote and turning on the TV in her room, switching it to a local channel, where the news was just coming on. Willy didn't move from Tammy's lap, but the taller girl was no doubt watching the show intently.
Tammy, for her part, couldn't stand the news. Sure, it was probably full of important current events, but the way it was presented, full of what she called Human Misery Stories (not Human Interest Stories), presenting the day's human suffering in an almost pornographic way, full of crying people futilely calling out the people who'd hurt them on the air…
It was probably hypocritical of her, wanting to use her powers to stop monsters so they wouldn't hurt people, while being utterly disdainful of news footage of people who've been hurt. She told herself it was the portrayal, how the news seemed to take a nearly voyeuristic approach to interviewing people to get them to cry, but…
Sometimes Tammy wondered if she was a terrible human being even before she could stop being one. Was she really the best person to be teaching her cousin how to be a functional, responsible adult? Yes, she knew about imposter syndrome– she'd done a lot of reading on the internet once her cousin started living with them, trying to figure out what she was beyond 'special', before she realized she was trying to put her cousin in a box and stopped– but she felt justified in this instance, since she was trying to be an impostor. She was trying to be a good, responsible person so her cousin would have an example of what sort of person she should act like, and every time she was reminded she was doing this for that purpose, she felt like a sham.
She blinked as she felt a hand patting her awkwardly on the head, and looked down to find the side of Willy's head had turned to clear water in lieu of turning to look up at Tammy. "You're… sad?" Willy said tentatively.
Tammy had to remind herself she could no longer lie to Willy about her feeling, that she should set a good example to her cousin by being honest, and that it was a good thing her cousin was showing social and emotional sensitivity by identifying other's emotions– even if she was cheating now– and reacting to them in an empathetic manner. "A little," Tammy said. "I was just thinking I might not be a very good person."
"Tammy is the best person," Willy said instantly, as emphatic now as she'd been when they'd been little kids and she'd started following Tammy around. "So you don't need to be sad."
Tammy stroked her cousin's head and leaned down to kiss her forehead. "You're sweet to say so Willy. Thank you." Across from them, the news droned on. People who died in freak motorcycle accidents. People dead from 'fighting back against the police'. People dead because they were drug users or drug dealers or involved in drugs in general. News about a woman raped and found dead, because the news cycle was incomplete without one of those. Monsters being driven back by heroic members of the Philippine National Police and Philippine Army, who were 'killed while fleeing'…
"Wait, what did they say?" Tammy said.
"They say the police killed two monsters and drove away a third who'd caused a disturbance in Quezeon City," Willy repeated dutifully. "But that's a lie. It's very shoddy reporting." On-screen, the chief of police was praising the police officers on their quick response and saying that the police were fearless even in the face of monsters. Because this was Philippine TV, the next story immediately after was an update on the situation in Baseco– still barricaded, locked down, and full of fungus-infected zombie people– followed by reports of more 'alleged' monsters sighted. For alleged, there sure were a lot of cellphone videos and casualty counts.
Tammy listened as emotional witnesses frantically described a large dog everyone kept approaching and petting and cuddling, even as it started biting and eating them. People who'd rushed in to help had found themselves approaching like slavish zombies, even as they were covered in blood by the people being devoured. It had gotten away because no one had been able to stop it, and it had left the area, carrying a bleeding person in its mouth that still kept petting and cooing at it…
Currently it was somewhere in Pasay, although they wouldn't be more specific than that.
There was a giant spider climbing the buildings of Makati, leaving trails of webs everywhere. So far it didn't seem to have any intention of breaking into the buildings and eating the people inside, or descending down to ground level to eat the people down there. It was just… climbing and building, weaving an elaborate web between the buildings, slowly blocking off the sun…
Along Katipunan Avenue, something was apparently roaming the sewers and causing great geysers of superheated water to explode from manholes and drainage holes, which had already led to severe burns and injures from the various sewer covers being sent flying through the air. The exclusion zone in Tagaytay was growing as more and more bees were being born from the giant queen, with estimates of literally millions of bees in the air, attacking animals and people like some kind of cheap horror movie. Also, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology was warning of seismic activity in Taal Volcano, and people were talking about how such an eruption might potentially kill the bees…
More people had been killed along Manila Baywalk from something that had reached out from the water, plucked them from the sidewalk and quickly dragged them down. Since people had finally gotten the message and not walking on the sidewalk near the water anymore, it was now pulling in cars as they idled in traffic, and distant cellphone videos showed that the disturbingly human-like hand doing the grabbing was getting bigger, moving from the water in bursts of speed that raised up obstructing waves of water before turning back with the cars plucked from the road. Also, the Galleria was once more insisting that they did not have a giant snake in the basement that they fed people to via the changing rooms, as the sudden rash of monsters had brought those old stories surging back, now more plausible than ever…
Every day, Tammy feared she'd hear about a monster close to her house. So far, none seemed to have been reported closer than the Marikina River…
But there was so much…
She reached for her cellphone, where she'd already put in Sanny's contact information.
Hey. Watching the news. Wanna meet up Saturday? Can't just do nothing.
A few minutes later, as government officials spoke of how they needed to maintain the state of emergency to maintain order, and others accused them of using the emergency as an excuse to conduct political killings, the response came.
Why Saturday? Was about to go hunting now. Going to Makati.
Live in Rizal, too far away. Also, have school tomorrow.
Cant you just send a part of you?
Tammy stared at that message as the program switched to mindless celebrity news and Willy took the remote to switch to another news channel.
What? You can do that? Can we do that?
Maybe? I can control parts of myself I remove. Turn the part into a full body, operate it remotely. Or… be in it the same time im in other body. You cant do it?
Tammy stared at her hand. Concentrating, she made a little leafy stalk bud from her finger. Gently, she pinched off the stalk, which grew roots. She stared at it, and it began to shudder…