The land was a low mushroom-infested forest of twisted trees of many colors, with white, gently curving spires jutting up here and there from greenery. Those spires were the bones of a giant kaiju. The bigger mushrooms among the normal-ish green trees were easy enough to see, for they looked like beach umbrellas poking up here and there. But there were smaller spots of color among the greenery, that were the proliferation of small, normal-sized mushrooms of all kinds.
This was a land of fungal resources and defenders.
“This whole place is a goldleaf mine,” Eliot said, solidly emplaced in his seat in the middle of the vehicle, his voice strong on the team radio. “Soon as we kill Shroomer the whole forest will open for harvesting.”
Mark and Sally were in an airlock in the vehicle, holding onto a railing, both of them wearing their best armor and a few additions thanks to Eliot. Breathing masks, visual overlays, and sound devices for communication. Eliot, in his captain’s chair, and Isoko, sitting in her pilot’s chair, had their visuals and radios inside the cockpit.
They were in a spider-like vehicle of Eliot’s own making. It was sleek silver, with an abdomen that held everything Eliot would need to use for the fight, and it was based around a hovervan; not whatever trash Eliot could pick up off the streets like he had done in Rome. This one was not like that janky piece of shit.
This one could walk without jumbling the occupants, fly and do aerial maneuvers, and most of all, burrow and slam the land and anything else that got in its way. In a pinch, it could be a fighting spider, but mostly it was a construction spider. Its pedipalps were big slammers that Isoko would use to break the ground or anything else, to make it ‘man-made’ for Eliot to use with his Power. That meant that Eliot could use Isoko’s destruction to create automated turrets, but it also meant he could make ditches and tripping hazards and places for people to retreat to, or fight from. Mark was pretty sure Eliot had some Techies help him make certain parts of the vehicle, but, on the whole, the silver spider was Eliot’s private castle.
Isoko sat at the helm, saying, “Shroomer ahead. Can you see it in the airlock?”
The airlock’s window was small, so a screen showed the monster up ahead. It was big. Bigger than anything Mark had ever fought before. It would move faster than any other monster he had ever battled, just because of its size.
Mark’s heart pounded hard, black lines extending into the air around him while his adamantium twitched on his forearms and legs. He could tell Sally felt the same way, both of them looking at the big red monster on the screen. It was like a bulbous humanoid, sitting down in a fetal position on the ground. Shaped kind of like an egg, too, with its mushy arms wrapped around its bulging legs, which it held against its malformed chest. All the upper half of the thing was covered in bright white and red mushrooms of all sorts of sizes.
The colony was doing a lot of work here to make this thing sprout.
All of the mushroom forest around the creature was gone, exposing the white layers of mycelium that dominated this land. There were also a few rocks and dirt.
“So we’re sure that the colony below ground won’t wake up?” Sally asked, as she glanced at Mark. “Because I’m worried about how much plants like Mark.”
Eliot’s voice came over their radios, and also from beyond the solid plastic wall separating them from the cockpit, “The colony hasn’t reacted to any of the other Union-users, except to grow toward them like any other plant-ish monster would.” He added, “Though it’s not a plant. It’s more like a collection of slime monsters.”
Isoko said, “Oversight is above us in case we can’t hack it, or in case we need a rescue. So do what you want, Mark!”
Far overhead, Mark sensed more than saw the hovervan that held Sam Ranger and a few tech guys that Mark had only met once and kinda forgotten their names. One of the guys up there could shoot out grappling magitech like big hands that grabbed people and reeled them in, and he was on rescue duty the most. Mark tried to remember his name… But it escaped him.
“Shit,” Mark said, “I forgot the grapple guy’s name.”
“Rick,” Eliot and Isoko said at the same time. And then Eliot continued, “But we’re not going to need that! We’re gonna cripple Shroomer and then kill him, and we’re 50 seconds from contact! Everyone sound off! Final check!”
Sally had one giant sword today and her normal leathers, all of which she would be TT’ing so that she remained strong in the face of whatever Shroomer threw at them. Skin was exposed here and there, because she needed to be exposed in order for Retribution to return that damage several times over. Shroomer’s constant caustic damage should be really good for her effectiveness.
Mark would be working a breath of purity on both of them so that any possible hallucinogenic contamination wouldn’t happen, or at least it wouldn’t last long when it did happen, so Sally was good to go.
Mark was fully covered with black biohazard-type webweave, and with 5,200 grams of adamantium acting as bracers and greaves. He’d turn his adamantium into caltrops and weapons and go for slices of the big guy when he could.
Isoko and Eliot both wore full bio-hazard white webweave, though they were safely ensconced inside the spiderflier’s cockpit. Their webweave was to follow proper protocol; they didn’t expect to use it.
Worst case scenario, with everyone injured and out in the open, was that Mark grabbed Sally and ran for it, since he could do that, and Isoko would grab Eliot and try to keep him safe as she ran, too. They’d have to escape through the mushroom forest, which was filled with mushroom-shaped monsters that were small versions of Shroomer, but that was fine.
They could do that.
They wouldn’t need to do that.
They were taking down Shroomer and getting those points.
Sally called out, “Sally Wuthers, check!”
Mark roared, “Mark Careed, check!”
“Isoko Kanno, check!” Isoko said, though she chuckled a little bit as she spoke.
“And Eliot Cybersong, check!”
The screen in front of Mark transformed from an image of Shroomer to a bunch of flowing lines and words, and then it resolved into a typical Weekly Showdown infographic, with the four of them as pixel-sized humans against the much larger red Shroomer. Eliot’s face came on the image next, smiling for the camera, as he sent drones everywhere, throwing ten different angles of the arena, and then a bunch of angles on the silver spider and its occupants.
Mark noticed a camera by the door, angled up at him. He waved a little.
Eliot gave a rapid rundown of the expected capabilities of Shroomer, while a countdown flickered in the corner of the screen.
Mark focused on the countdown, breathing, relaxing, and then he strengthened his Union with his team and the world.
Sally’s skin flickered gold with Retribution tingles as she shook out her shoulders, limbering up.
Isoko flickered platinum, and then her white webweave went back to white.
Eliot’s voice strengthened, and Mark listened again, as Eliot said, “—10,000 points! Which is the base return for this monster raid. If we can take it down without much damage we might get as much as 55k a piece! But that’s a crazy thing to do, to focus on. Killing the monster comes first! So come on and say it with me! You know the words! Shout ‘em loud and strong!”
They shouted together, “Death to all monsters!”
And then the airlock slammed open.
Mark launched himself out of the vehicle, unaware of the height. Sally was right behind him.
They were 300 meters above the battlezone and Mark’s stomach whirled but then he transformed some of his adamantium into a hand, and took Sally’s hand in his own metal one. She gripped tight and Mark held loosely as he threw a ribbon of black into the air above them.
The world whistled by as Shroomer sat far below; a 25 meter tall monster in the middle of a hundred-ish meter radius of cleared land. It was seated, so it wasn’t that big right now. It was still a massive red pustule among the white mycelium. It was further dotted with white and red mushroom caps all across where its head should have been, and its shoulders.
Mark guided their fall, just barely, just a little, to the side, and then he threw open the ribbon overhead, catching the air on a flash-made parachute. He grunted as the weight of it all yanked at him in two directions at once, his astral arms pulled hard.
Sally landed first on the mycelium mat a good 30 meters from Shroomer. Mark landed a few meters away.
The land was incredibly soft. Mark had thought it was just a few inches of white, but the mat was deceptively thick. All of the boulders and dirt here were little more than leftovers from a massive upheaval of the underlying colony.
Sally stuck her landing, but she sank into the monster anyway. Instantly, her skin began to glow gold and the mycelium mat began to splatter all around, its attempts to harm her ending in harm done to itself.
Mark slammed into the colony with a Union of adamant and weakness—
“Holy FUCK.”
It was like a coffee high and an adrenaline rush at the same time. Connecting to the mycelium mat, to the colony, was like connecting to a whole other world, on top of the world all around them. The colony was strong, and it was already fully connected to itself, and Mark felt way too much, all too fast.
Sally jerked as she shared in Mark’s strength—
There had been no vector to the colony. There had been no vector to Shroomer. And then, the seated mound of red flesh ahead, suddenly knew Mark was there. The very land underneath Mark and Sally knew he was there. It was like standing on top of a kaiju, which is exactly what it was.
A billion eyes focused as one, onto Mark.
Mark instantly cut his Union to the colony and it was like severing a billion threads all at once. The vector of the colony slammed outward in every direction and the mycelium mat began to flex and heave, trying to figure out whatever had touched it. The colony burbled, and white bubbles popped here and there, sending plumes of red spores and gasses into the air. Miasma spread, and Sally’s golden glow intensified.
Mark widened his footprint with his adamantium, holding himself above the mass of flexing white threads, and he slammed his Union into Shroomer, instead. He hit the red mini-kaiju with weakness while he took adamant in turn. That felt okay.
Not like connecting to another whole spectrum of reality; just connecting to a big monster. That action resulted in a much more normal reaction from just the mini-kaiju. Shroomer simply sensed Mark’s general direction, and it began to unfold its arms from its legs.
As far as Mark could tell, the mini-kaiju had a circulatory system and respiration, and some sort of electrical brain signaling, too, but the particulars of it were all different from normal. It had no real lungs; it respired anyway, like a plant. It had no real veins; it moved fluids and chemicals around its body anyway. It had no brain; but it did have a stimulus response thing going on, and currently it was responding to Mark’s stimulus.
Connecting to the mini-kaiju did not seem to connect Mark and Sally to the real monster underground, because that’s what the vectors were telling Mark, and the mycelium mat underfoot was already calming back down. Its first big release of toxins and spores was already over, and the colony’s billion-eye vector was already closing over again, the vectors of the colony quieting, returning inward.
All of that only took seconds to understand.
Mark tried to be succinct as he said, “Connection to Shroomer established. Connecting to the big kaiju seems ill advised at this time, but it’s calming down already. There’s a link between Shroomer and the colony, but it’s not one I’m touching upon much at all. The colony knows Shroomer is active, and that’s it.”
“Fucking hell,” Sally said, after listening to Mark and making her own judgments, and now she was attempting to pull herself up and out of the mycelium mat. She wasn’t able to get very far. She was stuck up to her waist. “There’s ground under here, but the colony won’t let me stand on it like I should. It’s alive, and its astral body interferes with my own.” She tried to pull out of it, but she kept sinking down to her waist, so she stopped struggling and just stood there. “Within expectations.”
Mark asked her, “You good?”
Sally nodded.
Mark trusted her.
Eliot spoke, “The main colony hasn’t reacted like that to other Union-users.”
“Don’t connect to it again, Mark,” Isoko said.
“Not planning on it,” Mark said, as he floated forward, churning up the mat with his adamantium caltrops that were more like blenders right now. It worked well enough. Mark was pretty sure there were some deep holes in the ground here and there. Sally shouldn’t be sinking that far. Mark should be hitting ground under there, but he wasn’t. “Eliot. Update scanners for big holes in the ground.”
“Already on it!” Eliot said. “One moment!”
“Don’t want to fall in,” Sally agreed, staring up at the monster ahead.
Shroomer was slow.
It was reaching for them, too, but it wasn’t crossing the distance.
Its arms were only 15 meters long, so standing 30 meters away was enough to keep Mark and Sally out of Shroomer’s range. Still, though, when the monster reached for them with room-sized hands, covered with pulsing red veins, Mark and Sally both tensed, both of them ready to split and race in opposite directi—
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“Penetrating scanners online. Updating overlay.”
Mark’s visor updated and now he could see the faint outline of land beneath the mycelium mat. This area had been a rolling set of hills and one small lake before the colony overtook the land. The lake was beyond Shroomer, right now, so unless they circled around completely they’d always have a layer of ground close enough to the surface to reach.
… Mostly close enough.
“Ground over there,” Mark said, looking left.
Sally looked left and started headed that way, saying, “I see it now.”
She plowed forward, breaking the mat wherever she walked, and the colony didn’t seem to care. The colony didn’t seem to care that Mark was breaking it up with his adamantium blender/caltrops, either.
And, Shroomer couldn’t reach them here. Its knobbly big red hands swiped the air like giant, knobbly paddles. It didn’t care to stand, and it didn’t care to stretch. If Mark and Sally weren’t close enough then it wouldn’t reach any further than it already could… Mark did notice one thing, though. One thing among many.
“It’s reaching for me,” Mark said. “I have its attention.” Sally was headed left, to the part of the land that was close to the surface of the mycelium mat, so Mark said, “I’ll go right and keep it occupied. I’m gonna cut off some fingers.”
The giant hand moved in front of Mark, several meters away, as Mark moved to the right and Sally went left. The only sound was the sound of air moving and Mark’s blenders holding him above the deeper parts of the colony. Shroomer didn’t speak, and the land around them was dead from poison and the all-consuming white mat. No bird or bug sounds. No monster sounds at all.
Sally pulled out of the mat, stepping onto a higher stretch of land, and soon she was only ankle deep and moving a lot better.
Silent Shroomer was still waving at Mark, trying to touch him with its bulbous red hand.
“It’s too fucking silent,” Sally said, and then she added, “Can I get a range estimate on its attacks, Eliot? Like a red line on the viso— yup! Thanks!”
Red areas appeared on Mark’s screen, too.
“Don’t trust it,” Eliot said, “Shroomer could grow fast, and it’s still sitting down. It could hit far outside of the red zone.”
It probably wouldn’t, though, according to what Mark was seeing.
While Sally tore across the mycelium covered ground like a woman running in frothing surf, Mark stood his ground about 5 meters in front of Shroomer’s grabbing hand. It wasn’t even a coordinated grab. One hand wooshed this way and that, while Shroomer’s other, further hand wasn’t even reaching this way at all; he was holding onto the mycelium mat, as though it was supporting its own weight.
The monster swished its massive hand in front of Mark, missing him by multiple meters. It sounded like death passing by, or like the breeze from a train. Mark had seen and felt a lot worse, but the sound and air pressure still got to him, his heart beating hard, his mind racing. Focusing.
The fight probably wouldn’t start until Mark and Sally started it. Oh, sure, the air was full of caustic poison and Sally was fully golden with Retribution and the mycelium mat flexed and pulsed under Mark, as he held himself up with his cutting adamantium, but the monster remained seated. It wasn’t going anywhere, and the colony didn’t care.
According to the previous teams attempting this fight, they hadn’t even managed to make Shroomer move from his spot.
So Mark asked, “Sally! You need snowshoes?”
“It’s trying to grab my legs,” Sally said, almost calmly. “Shoes would just give it more to grab onto.”
“Okay,” Mark simply said. They had spoken about snowshoes of some kind for both of them before they dropped, but Mark didn’t need them and Sally apparently didn’t either. But that was Sally’s burden to think about. As Shroomer’s hand passed in front of him again, the mycelium mat rippled in its passing, and Mark said, “I’m gonna start cutting.”
The hand was the size of a room. Each finger was big enough to kill all on its own, if Mark wasn’t fast enough, if he wasn’t strong enough, solid enough.
Mark’s heart beat hard with Union as he shaped nearly half of his adamantium into a long razor. Two meters long and less than a finger’s width, the weapon was more of a curved line of black hovering in the air than it was a sword, or any other sort of real weapon. It was better than any singular weapon.
It was all of them.
Mark breathed out, connecting in a dance with Shroomer, and then he slipped forward, black lines beating in the air, into Shroomer’s astral body, taking everything from him and making it Mark’s own. Shroomer noticed the drain, but it could not stop Mark’s Union. It could only wave at him. Like a summer gust, hot air waved at Mark, along with that bright red hand.
Mark did not need to actively cut Shroomer. He just needed to hold still and let the monster cut itself.
He lifted his weapon forward and held—
Thock!
The sound of two solid things colliding vibrated the air.
Mark pulled back instantly, because he saw many things happen at once.
For starters, his blade was too thick; it had cut, but not deep, and the density of the monster’s surrounding flesh had deflected the majority of his blade. Also, the vector of the monster focused on Mark, and Shroomer lifted its other hand off of the mycelium mat, so the threat was doubling now, because Shroomer did not like the damage Mark had done. Instantly after the cut a keening filled the air, low and slow, but rapidly filling the world with a deep, rumbling vibration, as Shroomer reached out with both hands, red splatters slapping onto the white ground everywhere it moved its wounded hand.
Where the splatters touched the mycelium mat focused, rapidly gaining a vector on those drops of Shroomer’s blood. The red flowed down into the mat, and then the white ribbons and mucus began to boil, ballooning here and there. Not a second later the white bubbles popped with red spores.
Mark dashed away, heart pumping hard as he reshaped his weapon, making it thinner and longer.
Sally watched from 40 meters away, her voice coming through the mic, “Tough skin, huh?”
“There’s fucking bone or some shit all throughout the whole thing!” Mark said, slowing down as he got far, far out of reach of Shroomer. The monster slapped the mycelium mat well outside of its previous red-zone that Eliot had marked on the visor. The red-zone updated. “My blade was too thick so the density of flesh caught the blade. Some monsters do that; they flex their skin and catch swords in their flesh.”
“Fuck… That doesn’t give me much hope,” Sally said, holding up her thick sword. “Dammit.”
Eliot’s voice came through, “The extremities are reinforced to allow Shroomer to stand and walk. It’s not a real kaiju with the magic of fuck-you-physics. It’s supporting its own weight. Most of the interior is hollow with the spore payload. But the extremities are extra tough. I think Mark got unlucky with a knuckle crushing down on his sword, too, but that is unclear on the footage.”
Mark glanced to the side and saw the silver spider slamming into the ground in the distance. Isoko was at the controls, pounding the land with fire and metal, and then she planted a spike of sensors into the hole. A few other sensor systems were already up and active elsewhere, in other burned-yet-regrowing sections of the mycelium mat.
Mark and Sally had gotten into position, but Eliot and Isoko had been working, too—
Mark’s visor updated. Now Mark was seeing exactly what Eliot had seen. The red humanoid monster had bones and solid things stretched throughout its arms and legs, and something in its chest and body that was similar in nature to bones, but not quite. The belly was a weak point, but only because it bulged out a whole lot, because Shroomer’s insides were filled with big mycelial sacs.
Isoko spoke up, “Looks like Shroomer has bones but also an internal exoskeleton.”
“Lots of weak spots, but none on the arms or legs,” Sally said. “Mark, you got the legs and arms?”
Mark felt good about this, about what he was about to do.
“I got it.”
Mark flew across the mycelium mat, twisting his adamantium caltrops and dancing into the monster’s swipe of its hand. Right underneath!
It was the most dangerous thing Mark had ever done.
And then he was inside Shroomer’s reach, and then he was a blade, carving upward at the swiping hand, at the forearm. He kept his cut shallow, trying to go for security of the cut more than uncertain depth. It wasn’t cutting deep.
Mark danced away, outside of Shroomer’s reach.
It was not a fast monster; not yet.
Dribbles of red slime slapped into the white colony underneath and the colony boiled with red plumes as Mark ducked away from the grasping hands of Shroomer, and then he was on the other side of the hand. The thing didn’t have jointed bones like a person, though, so it did not move like a person. Its hand bent backward, the fingers curling in the other direction as it rapidly shifted course, as quick as it could.
Mark flashed his blade into four claws and raked it across the closing hands, the blades carving deep into the flesh, and then catching. Not stuck, but held tight by tensing flesh. Mark was held, even though the hand was still meters away and closing fast.
For a moment, time seemed to pause.
And then Mark fell into the flow, in a way he hadn’t experienced in a while.
He thinned his blades, like he was squeezing through a gap, for the metal was a part of his body, and always had been. The monster’s aura pressed at Mark, but that was fine. He pulled his metal away and he was free.
Mark was still going to get grabbed.
Instead, he grabbed first, throwing his caltrops into the monster’s forearm. With a sudden change in trajectory, Mark slipped his caltrops from the mycelium mat and grabbed onto Shroomer’s wrist, yanking himself up and around, and away from the hand.
Mark held onto the forearm of Shroomer with half of his metal while he sliced backward with the other half, ripping up the red arm.
Riding monsters usually gave a thrill, but Mark was in the flow and focused.
Shroomer rumbled, pulling his forearm back, with Mark still on top of it. His other hand appeared above Mark and Mark was about to meet the fate of many mosquitoes, but Mark twisted adamantium into a line of buzzsaw teeth and he wrapped around the arm underneath. He threw his body off the side of the forearm and held on, Shroomer’s second hand slapping himself like two whales crashing into each other, as Mark carved deep with his line of wire, while he also pulled himself forward with his caltrops, embedded into the flesh of the beast.
Mark was hooked on and he wasn’t letting go.
Shroomer rumbled, discontent, in pain, as it shook its hand wildly, trying to dislodge Mark, to slam him to the ground. Up, down, up, the arm went around. Shroomer slapped itself again but Mark was on the other side of the arm, sliding away as he wrapped his bladed string around the forearm like a garrote. Not-blood spurted everywhere and Mark turned his string into something thinner still, connected to his body by a thread of Adamantiumkinesis.
He had never managed to make monowire, and that fact still held true now, but Mark got damned close.
Shroomer’s head and shoulders of mushrooms all flared open, filling the world with a sound of pain, and brilliant red spores.
Mark pulled his thread behind him as he raced away from the oncoming rush of red. Pulling on that black thread was like unzipping a bag of gore. Red spilled everywhere and Shroomer screamed and threw its arm up and Mark raced up and away, whipping his metal away from the monster and forming some glider wings.
Mark was free from Shroomer before he realized he was free.
For the briefest of moments Mark was airborne and floating away from Shroomer, 50 meters up from the ground. And then he caught the wind as the wind burned red and billowing, drops of Shroomer’s not-blood scattering everywhere. Mark hadn’t cut off any fingers or its arm at all, but he had done a lot of damage.
Bulgy red flesh sloughed off of Shroomer’s arms, revealing carved white bone underneath—
Broken flesh fell to the ground and the ground exploded in red spores—
The colony flickered to full life again, its vector slamming into the seated Shroomer, and Shroomer expanded. Its chest doubled in size. Its head and shoulders of shrooms multiplied, the white and red caps widening like a forest of umbrellas, and then they desiccated and a single cap rose from the center, like a protruding growth that did not expand at all. It just bulged in the center, white, and then weeping red goo.
The thing was 25 meters tall when standing, and it suddenly gained all of that height and more as it stood, shooting up out of its own cloud and dragging the cloud behind, its two legs thickening with strength, veined with the white mycelium mat. The legs distended with rigidity, and then Shroomer’s head turned toward Mark, angling just slightly, red ooze clearing from the holes in its white head, revealing eyes beneath the red.
Ah.
Eyes, staring.
Death desired.
Mark glided away, and he felt weird. Where were his people?
Sally was running away down below.
Eliot was coordinating with ten different pillars he and Isoko had planted in the surrounding land, and most of those pillars were shooting water or some substance into the air, killing Shroomer’s miasma and creating clear spaces. Some of those sprayers were not working.
Isoko piloted the silver spider in the sky, at the far edge of the mycelium mat, where Sally was running.
They were safe.
Time to reevaluate the fight.