“Kaiju incoming,” Quark said, putting an arrow in Mark’s vision.
“Fucking! Shit?” Mark exclaimed, suddenly hyperaware of everything all over again, looking left and behind himself— “Ah, fuck.”
Mark took to the air, focusing on the new problem that was absolutely going to be a problem. Sneaky Snake was on the other side of the tunnel, currently out of view from the new threat, which was surely on purpose. Sneaky was highly visible. Sally’s cocoon was visible. This new thing came in with the white fire between him and Sneaky, aiming right for the black cocoon and moving fast.
It was vaguely a black lava strider, but it was half-organic on the top half and it towered on 8 white-crystal legs, so maybe it was a spider lava-strider. Kaiju too, of course. Quark calculated it at 300 meters tall but 750 meters wide. It was moving fast and skating on the lava like its smaller cousins, which were absolutely everywhere underneath the thing, following in the wake of 8 lava-ripping feet. The big crystal kaiju and its horde had gotten a lot of speed far out of sight, and now it was headed this way with an army—
Big Red was in the back of the army.
Cold hate spread fast through Mark’s body. He hadn’t seen the Big Red crystal strider since Sneaky Snake had batted it away, and now it was here, bringing in the big guns.
Mark eyed Sneaky Snake—
The snake was gone from his perch; not even visible in the lava.
“OKAY THEN?!” Mark yelled at the world, disgruntled and angry and worried as he prepared for the fight of his life, and probably for some sudden betrayal from Sneaky Snake.
What was better than a gift of adamantium, than a whole hundred-kaiju’s worth of adamantium? Of course Sneaky Snake was going to betray their fragile ‘familiar-to-familiar’ alliance.
Mark rapidly decided he could not fight near Sally, so he moved forward with Alacrity and Slowness, pushing through the air, forming cannonballs of adamantium as he went. Aiming would be an issue at long range, but as soon as Mark got into some sort of range at all the monsters would die fast. Mark could just shoot a hundred cannonballs, if he needed.
Shockwaves crashed away from Mark as he burned the air, pulling himself through the hot soup that was the atmosphere. In a minute, to his perception, he was finally close enough to the strider-spider crystal kaiju to link with its astral body. Mark did so. He instantly felt stronger. More alive than he had in weeks. Gods, he had missed this. First Andria’s kaiju was just a talker, and then Eliot’s kaiju was impossible for Mark to even get near. But this thing?
This thing was a target.
Everything here was a target.
Mark turned some adamantium into a baseball bat, for these things were crystal and blunt force trauma worked on them a lot better than slashing blades. He was within a hundred meters of the first of the Spider Kaiju’s forelegs, which looked like a pointed white skyscraper pushing into a divot in the lava. It wasn’t actually touching the lava at all; it was hovering above it. Every single strider was like that, with tiny divots in the lava at the end of every pointed limb. This giant thing made a giant divot. 8 giant divots, actually.
Mark swung for the fences, spinning his bat around himself a few times at a small radius, and then he widened rapidly, spinning even faster, moving with Alacrity and Slowness, striking the kaiju’s skyscraper-thick glowing white leg—
The leg suddenly jumped position, like Mark had missed, or some shit like that. But Mark did not miss. The leg had moved into a new orientation. Mark’s strike swung wide, missing completely.
The fuck?
… In fact, the entire kaiju began moving faster, slipping across the lava even in Alacrity-time, the entire world shimmering with some sort of heat and shockwave that blasted outward from the lava strider spider kaiju and struck every crystalline normal-strider on the lava, all around it. Mark repositioned, fast, flying away and thinking about what he was seeing, even as he latched into the kaiju’s astral body and sucked away all the Alacrity he could.
Mark got a kilometer in front of the kaiju by the time it slowed down enough that it was stuck in stillness. The smaller, building-sized crystal defenders were still moving fast, though. Mark flew further forward, worrying a great deal about what he was seeing.
Quark was right there with him, opting now to speak in speed-time, saying, “It appears that your strike against the spider kaiju imparted some sort of resonance of speed with the creature, which it then shared with all of its smaller counterparts. Possibly a power distribution Power.”
Mark glanced back at Sally’s container. This thing would be on her cocoon in 5 minutes, in normal time. If Mark attacked it with speed then it would be even faster… But it hadn’t sped up until Mark had actually struck it hard and fast. It wasn’t reacting to Mark’s Union of Alacrity/Slowness by going faster, or whatever...
So… so physical actions were its strength? It countered physical actions only? Or was something weirder going on.
Probably both; something weird and physical-only countering.
Mark looked down at the lava, upon which all the striders were gliding. If he disturbed the environment, then they couldn’t move fast, right? So Mark switched his Union over to Homeostasis and Agitation, targeting the lava underneath all of the lava slimes. Great swaths of slimes and lava solidified as great gouts of heat blasted upward like a sudden off-gassing.
The most-forward lava striders hit the solidifying rock and the great gusts of wind and they stumbled and fell forward, or they stopped and spiked into the solid ground trying to keep themselves from falling over. Some went tumbling over and over themselves, unable to stop in time.
The striding spider kaiju didn’t slow at all.
Great holes opened up in the black organic parts overhead. Maws. The kaiju screamed like a thousand loudspeakers, roaring at the patch of ground ahead of itself, suddenly stopping, all of its power solidifying into a great Call that vibrated the world. The patch of cooled lava suddenly turned liquid again, and Mark—
For one deep moment everything went wonky.
Mark stared up from a head and eyes that spread out into the air, stretching like putty, at the giant black organic structures of the kaiju striding on spires of white crystal. The open maws of the kaiju were tunnels of sound, vibrating hard. The Spider Kaiju passed overhead. And then the sound cut, and Mark came back together.
Lava striders came at him from the sides long before Mark could get it together for a counter. Big Red was there, striking with a giant red crystal pillar for an arm, shoving one lancing crystal into Mark’s chest and through the other side. Another two striders pushed through Mark’s thigh, and another went through his neck, flinging his head off from his body and into the air.
Mark came back to himself in three different pieces, Unioning with Fear and Glory, shining bright and snapping around Big Red’s big arm like an expanding bear trap, reaching up and around Big Red’s chest and head. Mark crunched himself together—
Big Red displaced to the left, though he had crunch marks all across his torso. He did not speed up this time, either. He swung at Mark, instead, all 20 meters of him becoming a weapon aimed at Mark, point forward.
The Spider Kaiju didn’t care about this small battle. It moved fast overhead, right toward Sally.
Mark Unioned with Homeostasis/Agitation again, right with the kaiju overhead, turning the land around Mark into a scattering of solid space and gusts of superheated air.
Lava striders scattered up and outward on the blast of heat escaping the lava underneath. Big Red cartwheeled in the air, limbs spreading wide, trying to right himself—
The air went tink-tink-tink-tink, and then crackled a whole lot more rapidly than that. Four lava striders exploded from rapid heat loss, as they went from 1500 degrees to 20. The kaiju overhead screamed violently as black parts of its organic matter flaked away from dimming white crystal legs, shattering the air with painful sounds, discombobulating Mark and the freshly-made stone back into scattered, floating metal and broken, melting lava.
Mark lost track of himself in the violence of the scream, but he realized what he had done. What he should have done earlier to these things. Forget hitting them with bats of adamantium! Just drain their heat unevenly and let their crystalline bodies self-destruct!
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When he came back the spider was a kilometer closer to Sally’s cocoon.
Mark raced forward and Unioned with Homeostasis/Agitation again, the lava turning into a fountain of heat and air and then stone, displacing the depressions in the lava that the big strider was doing, making two of its back legs crash into the ground and then into the lava below what Mark had cooled down. It suddenly flailed, crunching into the ground behind it, though seven of its eight legs were too far away for Mark to affect. Several smaller striders simply burst into scattered crystal, and Mark focused the cooling effect of his Union onto the main body of the kaiju—
The world vibrated weirdly.
Mark found himself falling down to discombobulated knees onto solid ground, his arms floating like scattered globes in the air, his head twisting back down onto his body. He was broken. Mark Unioned with Glory and Fear, healing fast, looking around with one eye that worked and one eye that was pointing at the side of the tunnel, stuttering out, “Where… Where?”
Sally’s cocoon was okay, maybe. Too far away from the battle right now. It was fine. Sally was fine. Mark could only look at it with one eye right now.
Quark flickered in his vision, pointing an arrow up and an arrow to the right.
Mark got both of his eyes back into his head and his legs under him, the arrows coming together in his vision to point upward, and so he looked up.
The strider spider kaiju was all the way on the other side of the tunnel, screeching at itself, at its broken limbs. That’s when Mark noticed two giant white crystal pillars lodged in the ground about 150 meters away from him, and also 500 meters away. They had been broken off at the elbows far overhead, leaving behind some of the black organic body on those broken sections. The Spider Kaiju far overhead, about 60 kilometers away right now, raced at one of the crystal cities and attacked it with its broken limbs.
It was as though the kaiju was pulling swords from sheaths.
The kaiju stabbed broken limbs into the crystal towers and then he pulled fresh new limbs from those crystal towers, the dark purple and dark orange crystal slowly igniting to brilliant white as the kaiju pattered around with its new limbs, those new limbs loosening up and gaining a whole lot more elbows to them. It was busy healing itself. It would remain busy for a while longer.
Mark turned down toward the lava striders stuck in the hot dirt all around him. Big Red was limping away fast, moving to get as far from Mark as possible. It was already out of range, already 3 kilometers distant and not headed toward Sally at all. Mark ignored it for now.
The others were fresh pickings, stuck in the dirt and stone and cracked lava field. They were aiming for Sally’s cocoon. They were too close.
Mark didn’t bother trying to kill them with blunt force trauma this time. He went for a direct Union of Agitation and Homeostasis, dropping their temps down to Earth-environmental-normal. They had survived the first Union, but they did not survive this one.
Crystal lava striders exploded, one after the other, shattering the air with violent off-gassing and twisting heat. Fragments of crystal landed all over the place, some burying into the cooled stone.
Some of those broken crystals began to soak in the heat of the lava and half-cooled rock, turning into crystal towers, growing straight up and spreading outward.
“… Shit.”
Mark hit the growing crystals with more Homeostasis/Agitation, and the world cooled more. The crystals stopped trying to grow in the cool dirt—
The kaiju screamed at the world, at Mark, but it was too far away to do much to Mark at all. Then, with freshly-made white crystal legs, the lava strider kaiju slipped away from the remains of the crystal city, flowing across the lava, down the side of the tunnel, sliding fast and angling toward Sally.
“Fuck fuck fuck,” Mark muttered, rushing that way. “That fucking Sneaky Snake better not be angling for Sally while I take care of this shit.”
“I have eyes out, sir!” Quark responded. “Sneaky Snake is somewhere! But the spider kaiju is flaking off smaller lava striders! It grows a new horde, sir.”
Mark looked up the white/black spider kaiju. It was scattering flakes of white dust in the air and those flakes became full-sized striders of softer, quieter colors. Not violently white like the main kaiju, but more blue and orange. Mark glanced backward to where Big Red was about 4 kilometers away now, angling to come around in a big loop to hit Sally’s cocoon while Mark was far away, trying to intercept the Spider Kaiju, which was a much, much bigger threat.
… Mark put on the Alacrity/Slowness and spun through the air, toward Big Red, hating that damned fucking thing with every shockwave that crashed away from his body and every moment that passed. He rushed over Sally’s cocoon and slammed right into Big Red, grabbing him like a bear trap again, digging into the house-sized monster with bear-trap teeth meters long. Crunching. Unioning with Homeostasis and Agitation—
Big Red displaced, vanishing from sight, and Mark crashed into himself, becoming a full person again, just in time to see Quark pick out Big Red blipping into existence in front of the Spider Kaiju, about 35 kilometers away now.
Mark soared into the sky, shockwaves spilling again, as he rushed toward the Spider Kaiju, wondering where Sneaky Snake was—
And then Mark saw the snake as it launched out of the lava right below the Spider Kaiju like a river of white scales and strong arms. Mark had never, ever been so happy to see a kaiju as he was in that singular, amazing moment. Sneaky Snake latched on to the black part of the Spider Kaiju with fangs the size of houses, all of its body suddenly coiling around the Spider Kaiju’s black organic parts—
The world flexed.
Sneaky Snake was coiled onto nothing, the world dissolving in flaming green and blue acid.
The Spider Kaiju was somewhere else. Where was—
“There,” Quark said, putting arrows in Mark’s vision.
Mark turned around.
The Spider Kaiju stood over Sally’s cocoon, back legs spread, front legs encircling, the white crystal growing whiter as it punched into the adamantium shell.
Alacrity/Slowness.
Mark moved with purpose. Nothing else mattered than saving Sally right now. He flew fast, shocking the world with black veins that cracked forward against the body of the Crystal Spider, into its organic flesh overhead. Mark was a dot of pulsing demand right below a hundred gaping maws, frozen in time, and a thousand falling fragments of lava striders. Big Red gripped onto the side of the Crystal Spider’s main maw, right where its eyes might have been if it had any.
Mark latched on to the Crystal Spider, becoming a nexus of exchange between the spider and the entire rest of the world all around.
Homeostasis/Agitation.
Stillness became an explosion of organic black body and bright, shining white crystal. Everything detonated in every direction, and the Crystal Spider didn’t even have time to scream. It blipped, leaving behind a mess of lava striders.
Some of them had even blipped into the cocoon with Sally.
Quark caught sight of the Crystal Spider 15 kilometers away, inside the middle of a crystal city. It was a broken thing, oozing blackness and with four broken legs. But it was digging into the city and getting better.
Mark killed lava striders and rapidly healed Sally’s cocoon and then Sally herself, fixing the air and the pressure again. 10 minutes later he was back on top of Sally’s cocoon and staring at the lava tunnel and watching the Spider Kaiju dart back and forth on the lava’s surface, angling toward a new crystal city in the distance. It had completely consumed the crystal city that Mark had seen it at not 10 minutes before. It was headed toward a new one, now. It was only half-healed, so yeah, it needed to eat a second city.
Sneaky Snake was gone; back under the lava no doubt.
Then Mark saw another problem. It was the same problem he had noticed before.
Crystal spikes grew in the cooled lava fields all around Sally’s container, sucking up the heat and getting bigger and bigger with every passing moment, providing cover, obstructing sight lines. They grew right onto Sally’s cocoon, too, inching up the sides and then pointing upward.
“Visual range is decreasing due to obstructions,” Quark said.
Mark softly replied, “I know.” And then he went out and lined up a cut on the largest crystal tower growing on Sally’s cocoon, taking a 10 meter rod and slamming into one surface of the structure. The rod struck true. The crystal merely chipped, and then cracked, and then the crack healed up fast. “… Fuck.”
And then Mark looked up, where all of the nearby crystal towers were growing toward the coil of bright white lightning in the center of the space. Mark felt his heart beat for a single moment, but only because his heart seemed to stop then and there, as Mark realized what he was looking at. It wasn’t a problem right now. The Spider Kaiju was a bigger problem. But these crystal cities grew fast when they could, and this one was growing fast, which meant…
Which meant white fire from above.
Quark rapidly saw what Mark saw, and then he calculated growth rates and time frames.
“4.5 to 5 hours until the crystal reaches high enough to be struck by the fire, and this whole section turns into a conflagration.”
“… Fuck.”
Mark got to pushing crystals off of the cocoon, at least. He could do that much. He couldn’t move Sally, though, and he couldn’t stop the crystals from growing. Sally’s cocoon was 850 meters wide, and even if he slowed down the crystal growth near Sally, the crystals further afield, at mere kilometers away, would grow tall enough to attract the lightning and burn down tens of kilometers of crystals.
Fuck.
