So… apparently, his new gang had forgotten to give themselves a name.

They were now trying to rectify that.

"The Othersiders?"

"No references to that series, it'll probably jinx us with grimderp."

"I have to ask," Kim said. "What series are you talking about?"

"It's this story on the internet about the cycle of bullying," Sanny said. "It's strangely popular."

"Is that what it's about?" Tammy said.

"Yeah. See, she got bullied, then she started bullying everybody else, who bullied other people, and so on."

"Doesn't sound like something I'd like," Kim said.

"It's an acquired taste," Sanny agreed. "So, names?"

"How about 'The United Magical Girl Association'?"

"We're not all girls," Sanny said before Kim could. "What if we turn off people because they think the group is girls-only?"

"The Metro Manila Brigade?"

"That's a ref to that series and you know it. Besides, we don't even do anything in Metro Manila proper. We're more along the outskirts."

"The Monster Hunters?" Kim proposed.

"We'd get sued," Tammy said.

"Why?" Kim asked.

"That's the name of a series of videogames. Companies can get really violent about branding."

It was early enough on a Saturday that traffic was still actually moving, though it was tricky navigating the military roadblocks and diversions that kept people out of Makati to get to one of the ramps that led into the Skyway, the long, elevated road that in theory was meant to lighten the load of the South Luzon Expressway and in practice… didn’t.

Kim's dad was driving them, with his brother Ryan to keep him company on the drive back. Kim, Tamy, Sanny and Willy sat at the back, with Kim and Sanny sitting in the middle row of seats and the two cousins in the rear. They'd been talking about what name to call themselves since they'd left the house. Kim hadn't understood most of the proposed names, which had apparently been references to some show or other Tammy and Sanny had both seen. The only reference he'd understood had been 'The Prevengers', and Sanny had shot that down for being inaccurate. Kim couldn't tell if she was just being a killjoy or just had a thing about accuracy.

"Not that this discussion isn't fun," Kim said, "But do we have a plan for what we're going to do when we get there?" They probably wouldn't get there until after noon, but Kim saw no reason to wait until then to think up a plan.

"We usually make it up as we go along," Tammy said cheerful.

"The last time we had a plan, someone decided to dig a hole and drop all of us into it," Sanny said blandly.

Kim winced. "Uh, I'm not going to do that this time?"

"Ah. Well, that's nice," Sanny said. "Still, I suppose we need to have some goals laid out."

"Kill the Lava Horse," Tammy said.

"Get Kim to the volcano," Sanny said. "See if he can do something."

Tammy blinked. "Huh?"

"There's no guarantee that killing the Lava Horse will stop the volcano," Sanny said. "We're assuming, and there's probably a correlation, but volcanoes are complicated things. Pressure has probably built up down there, meaning that pressure needs to be vented somehow or we'd have a bigger explosion."

"And you think I can do something about it?" Kim said.

"You can expand space," Sanny said. "All pressure really needs is somewhere to expand into safely."

Oh. Well, when she put it like that…

"But yes, I suppose you and Willy need some sort of plan of dealing with it by yourselves," Sanny continued. "Though really, I can't think of any other plan but the one we suggested already, which is Willy trying to drown it in water to induce shock from a sudden temperature shift, you throwing big rocks at it to try to get it to splatter all over the landscape, and maybe drowning it in the lake. Speaking of which," she turned to Tammy, "will Willy be all right by herself?"

"She's right here," Tammy said irritably. "Ask her yourself."

For the first time since Kim had met her, Sanny seemed discomfited. "You're right. Sorry. Willy, do you think you can handle fighting the Lava Horse without Tammy?"

Silence.

After long enough with nothing but the sound of the engine, the air conditioning, and the wheels on the ground rolling away, Sanny glanced at Tammy—who had one of those looks—sighed, and reached over to nudge Willy to get her attention. "Willy, do you thing you can handle fighting the Lava Horse without Tammy?"

Willy stared blankly at the tanned blonde, then glanced at her cousin. Tammy made an encouraging gesture.

"Yes," Willy said. "I can fight. I can beat it."

Sanny nodded. She jabbed a thumb towards Kim. "He'd be going with you. Do you think the two of you can work together?"

Willy glanced at Kim. It was the first time she'd actually seemed to pay attention to him. "I can."

Sanny paused. "Will you please work together with him?"

Behind Sanny, Kim saw Tammy smile and nod her head. Not as a signal to her cousin, but seemingly in self-satisfaction.

Willy glanced at him. "All right. As long as he doesn't make things harder for me."

"I'll try not to," Kim said. "But what will the two of you be doing?"

"Hopefully, we can do something about the bee infestation," Sanny said. "If we can get rid of the bees, then people will be able to evacuate faster and get rid of the danger of the bees moving to another area."

"So… you're going to kill bees?" Kim said.

"We're going to kill a Biblical plague of bees," Sanny said. "They've driven people out of their farms, and I suspect their queen is huge, probably bigger than the Blood Bug, going by relative sizes between mosquitos and bees."

"Wait, bees are animals," Kim said. "Couldn't you just… control them, like you said you could?"

Sanny shook her head. "Animals already affected by a monster's powers can't be controlled," she said. "It seems like it's first-come, first-served. And I'm fairly sure these bees are being affected. I think their hive's queen might have been monsterized, and that's why they're acting the way they'd been, attacking people and taking over farms."

"Wait, what do you mean, taking over farms?" Ryan said from the front seat.

"Ryan, don't interrupt them," Kim's dad chided.

"I want to know too," Tammy said. "They've been taking over farms?"

Sanny nodded. "According to my research, they first appeared in one of the pineapple farms around Tagaytay. They seemed initially benign—not actually attacking people—until the farmers deployed insecticide. Then they killed the people who'd been spraying, and started attacking everyone. Since then they've spread to all the other farms in the area, and there are a lot. Lots of fruit farms, lots of coconuts… and lots of houses near fields where things were being grown. Those were the people that initially had to be evacuated, and then they sent people in with insecticide again, so the bees swarmed them with their death throes… " She shrugged. "After people learned to stop doing that and keep away from the areas they’ve taken over, they've been mostly keeping to themselves, but now with the eruption, people are getting bottlenecked keeping away from them, and this might cause them to migrate to another area. So they need to be dealt with before they move down to the growing areas in Cavite and really interfere with the food supply."

Huh. That actually did sound serious.

For a while, they continued to drive on in silence.

"So, names," Tammy said brightly. "Monster Busters?"

"I think that's a game?" Sanny mused.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"Hunter Squad?" Kim suggested. "Like, we hunt monsters?"

Tammy and Sanny both tilted their heads. "We are Hunter Squad…" Tammy said, as if trying it out. "How proud would you be of being part of Hunter Squad?"

"Not very?" Sanny said.

"Now that I think about it, it doesn't really grab me," Kim admitted.

"Maybe our initials?" Sanny said. "That's… 'S', 'T', 'W', 'K'…"

"Stuck? Cuts? Twix?" Tammy said.

"How are you getting that from 'S', 'T', 'W' and 'K'?" Kim asked.

"Used the 'W' as a 'U' sound."

"We're all shapeshifters, in a way," Sanny mused. "Maybe something from that?"

"We all have a preferred color," Tammy mused. She frowned. "Actually, why is that? Sanny, why are you yellow most of the time?"

"My combat form is partially inspired by bees and wasps," Sanny said, looking at her arm. "It's a nice 'danger' color found in nature. Though I don't have to be yellow. I can be any color. It's just… kind of my default because of my combat form?"

"I'm just… naturally pinkish?" Kim said.

"We should really see if you can become specific minerals," Sanny mused. "Or at least figure out what mineral you're made of."

"Why does it matter?" Kim asked.

"Carbon, Sulphur, Potassium Nitrate," Sanny said. "All naturally occur as minerals."

Oh. Kim knew enough chemistry to know what those three added up to. He looked at his hand speculatively, the not-pink-at-all-but-a-mishmash-of-reds-and-vaguely-yellow-vaguely-brown flesh with vaguely green, vaguely blue veins turning a hard pink, the feeling of touch changing on his fingers. Even then it wasn't a uniform pink. He could vaguely make out subtle transitions to white…

Kim made a fist. It felt completely natural, even though he knew that there were no longer skin and muscles and bones and tendons in his hand, only pinkish rock all the way through. No skin to break. Not muscles to tear. No blood to lose…

This morning, all he'd wanted to do was get to know these people, not… go and fight a Lava Horse monster. And the weird thing was that he was going off to try to fight it, not the fact that it existed at all. Lately it seemed like the world had become this weird nightmare where more and more dangerous things started appearing but people just kept on going with their lives, convincing themselves that it wouldn't have anything to do with them…

But he'd chosen to do something about it.

Hadn't he?

He stared at his hands, lost in his thoughts as Tammy and Sanny's discussion of possible names for their group—Tammy seemed to have latched on to the word 'ranger'—continued on, and his father kept driving them down the expressway.

––––––––––––––––––

Eventually they got off the Sound Luzon Expressway, exiting to head west towards Tagaytay and Taal Volcano along the Santa Rosa-Tagaytay road. It wasn't long before they stopped moving, however. The road was full of vehicles moving away from Tagaytay, and they'd taken over three lanes of a four lane road to do it. In the distance, seemingly just to the left of where the road was heading, they could see a tall, dark plume of ash rising from Taal Volcano. Fine gray ash fell like rain, and the windshield wipers had been left to sweep back and forth so his dad could see.

"Are all these people from Tagaytay?" Ryan said, leaning forward so he could crane his neck and try to get a better view of the people on the other lanes.

"No," Sanny said, frowning. "A lot of them have been stung by bees. I think these are people from nearby areas who just got kicked out of their homes. "

"I have to ask, how exactly do you know that?" Kim said.

"I can feel their injuries," Sanny said, frowning. She glanced out the window. "I think we need to get off here and walk. No one in cars moving for as far as I can feel. Kim, leave your phone."

Kim looked at her in confusion. "Why?"

"Because if the worst happens, I don't think you want your phone lying around to incriminate your family, do you?" Sanny said. "Also, take off your shoes and leave them in the car. Socks too, if you want to wear them again later."

"Wait, my shoes?"

"They won't fit in my backpack," Sanny said. "All our clothes will have to go in here, and the shoes would be too much."

Kim's complete lack of understanding must have finally shone through, because Sanny sighed. "Look, when we fought last time, do you remember us wearing any clothes?"

Oh.

"Wait, you fight naked?" Ryan said from the front seat.

"It's sort of necessary," Sanny said coolly. "We're shapeshifters, but only our bodies change, not our clothes. And clothes aren't cheap. So yeah, going commando it is."

"But that was when it was just you three girls, wasn't it?" Kim said.

Sanny sighed. Then she reached down and pulled up her shirt.

Kim didn't even have time to try looking away. By the time he did, it was too late, and he aborted the motion partway through as he realized what he was seeing.

Sanny's chest wasn’t dark tanned flesh or light untanned flesh. She hadn't even been wearing a bra. Instead, what looked like interlocking plates of shell covered her torso, shifting and sliding over each other so seamlessly that her movements seemed completely natural. It went all the way up, plates of shell mimicking the contours of breasts and stopping just under her neck.

"I don't think this is the sort of under-shirt anatomy you'd be interested in," Sanny said dryly, letting her shirt fall. "Tammy's will be similarly made of wood, and so will Willy's. And you've shown you can make yourself anatomically incomplete when you're full rock. So it's not like we need the clothes for our modesty. I'd have all of us strip down now if it didn't mean having four obviously monstrous people stepping out of your dad's car in dead stopped traffic, so people would start asking him questions."

"Wait, has your chest been like that the whole time?" Tammy said. She'd been staring at Sanny's chest too.

Sanny shrugged. "This way I didn't have to wear a bra."

"We're going in naked, no shoes, no pants, no phones," Kim said, suddenly feeling more helpless than he'd ever been.

Sanny made an impatient sound, and her voice started taking on the bitchy notes from when she'd first spoken to him. "Phones are delicate, breakable, don't survive well under high temperature, and honestly aren't going to be of any use where we're going. Clothes have no armor value and will just restrict our range movement. Not to mention every bit of weight lost makes it easier for me to fly everyone to where we're headed. And if you're about to say you want to be able to contact your family, leave one of your rocks with them. You can talk through those, remember? Cheaper than phones, and it can't be wiretapped, so it's secure. "

"Give me a break," Kim snapped at her, matching her tone. "It's not like I've ever done this before."

"We know. We have, and we're telling you how we do it," Sanny said. "Come on, we don't have all day."

She moved to open the door

"Aren't you going to take off your shoes?" Tammy asked.

"I'm not wearing shoes," Sanny said, and for the first time Kim looked at her feet. Really looked at her feet.

They were covered in the same overlapping shell plates her chest had been, and the heels and toes looked like hooves. How had he not noticed?

"I'll look for a spot where we can change and take to the air," Sanny said as she opened the door and stepped out. "Join me when you can."

She closed the door behind her.

For a moment, there was only silence, filled with the sound of the engine and the air conditioning.

"You don't need to come, Kuya Kim," Tammy said gently as she started taking off her shoes. "If you're not ready, you shouldn't force yourself."

"I'm coming," Kim said determinedly. "I'm just… it's a lot to take in. Is she always like that?"

"Ate Sanny?" Tammy said glancing out the window to where the woman had reached the sidewalk and was looking around. "I think she's just pissed you ate her twice and haven't apologized for being so willing to murder her."

A pressure wrapped around Kim's heart.

He remembered what he'd thought was a helpless yellow monster, covered in blood, eyes ruined, lying on the ground. His anger at what a monster had done to people while he'd just stood by, helpless, not acting, even though he could have, should have, he'd had the power to. He remembered…

"What was the second time?" he found himself asking.

"In the hole," Tammy said as she pulled off her socks and stuffed them into her shoes, followed by what looked like her wallet and phone. "After she jumped in after us, she… well, she sort of had to eject most of her body so she could fly, and you ate the rest when it hit your sand."

The pressure increased.

He thought he could remember that second one. He'd been sand and rocks and distributed all over the hole to expand the space well beyond what simply moving around earth could achieve. Kim had seen the monster that had killed so many people, that had gotten away when he'd been distracted by what he'd thought were lesser monsters, and he'd been overwhelmed. The tree monsters wouldn't stop growing, the water monsters seemed impossible to subdue, and he'd been following strange instincts that had let him control the rock as if he'd been born to it…

He remembered something falling from the sky, something soft and other and his sand had moved to engulf it, to… to…

To consume it.

To devour it.

He remembered being unsatisfied, like he'd been expecting to bite into a rich chocolate and instead gotten a mouthful of bubblegum, and moving on because there were other things to eat…

His stomach clenched and he would have thrown up if there'd been anything left in his stomach as realization crashed down on him like a collapsing building of rationalizations.

"Hey! Kuya Kim, are you all right?"

Kim realized he was bent over. His hands were hard and pink and covered with sharp little tetrahedral studs, little spikes fit for a villainous monster…

With an effort, he drew them back, making them sink into the surface of his skin, leaving him smooth once more. Kim winced as he realized the dimension of the cab had warped. The ceiling had rose high enough that Tammy could stand and still need to reach up to touch the felt lining, and while his side of the car seemed not to have grown much, maybe only an inch or two, the side which Sanny had left through was now the size of a garage door.

"Did you mean to do that?" Tammy asked, standing up and looking around. Kim wondered what that would look like to people watching from outside fortunately, the windows were tinted. His father and brother were looking over their seats back at him, concerned.

"I'll… I'll fix it," Kim said, reaching over, feeling the warps in the air, feeling where things had been pulled…

It took no time at all for the interior to be the right size again.

Tammy finished tucking away her shoes under the seat. Her feet, he noticed, had turned dark brown, with a striated, barky texture up to her ankles. From a distance, it probably looked like she was wearing shoes of some sort. Willy's feet had turned to clear ice and he had no idea how she planned to walk like that. Wasn't ice completely frictionless? Or was that just wet ice?

They were waiting for him, he realized. He found himself taking off his shoes and socks, emptying his pockets. His feet turned to pink rock, and he hoped no one looked at them too closely. He was about to open the door to step out when he remembered at the last moment, and held up his hand.

A pink cube started to rise from his suddenly solid palm, about the size of some kind of marble paperweight glowing with a strange, inner light.

"Here," he said, handing it to his brother in front. "I'll call you with this, all right? If you need to tell me anything, just tap it and I'll notice."

His brother took the cube excitedly. "How does it work?" he asked excitedly.

Kim shrugged. "It just does," he said.

"Maybe you should test it to be sure?" his brother said.

Kim concentrated.

In his brother's hands, the cube shook slightly. "Testing, testing," the cube spoke in his voice, its sides acting as a vibrational speaker.

His brother grinned. "That's so cool!" he said, and Kim heard through both his ears and the cube. "Can you use it to make soundwave attacks?"

"Er, no?" Kim said. "It's just the rock vibrating."

"Yeah, but if you—"

"Ryan," Kim's dad interrupted. "Your brother needs to go." He looked at Kim questioningly. "Right?"

Kim pursed his lips and nodded. He opened the door, then flipped the seat next to it forward so Tammy and Willy could get out. As he closed the door, Tammy got a distant look in her eyes, before she began to walk purposefully in the direction Sanny had gone.

"Good luck," his dad said as he got ready to close the door. "Stay safe. Watch each other's backs."

"I'll do my best," he said.

"That's all anyone can do," his dad said, looking a little sad.

Kim slid the door shut and hurried to catch up after the girls, the feeling of the grass and dirt and sidewalk strange on his bare, rock feet.

Through the cube he'd left behind, still in his brother's hands, he heard his dad start to pray. "O God, Our loving Father, we pray before your Holy Presence, to ask for Your blessing and guidance, for my son…"