Chapter 54

“Only another god may slay me! Only a god!” “If that is true,” said Amli, landing neatly beside Bisco and yelling in Kelshinha’s direction, “then Mr. Bisco…no, both Mr. Bisco and Mr. Milo, are gods beyond anything you could hope to achieve! Now vanish, demon! Become reduced to dust! To faith without conviction! To belief without a cause!” What Kelshinha saw in his final moments were two stars, azure and crimson, each giving strength to the other. Those two lives shone opposite each other, illuminating Kelshinha’s path to darkness. They represented something the old man never wanted to admit existed: a level of divinity even higher than his own. “I…was wrong… The divinity was not within Akaboshi at all… It was in the bond they shared…!” Thuddd! Gaboom! Gaboom! “Akaboshiii!!” Then Bisco’s arrow impaled Kelshinha at last with one final scream. The endless Rust-Eaters, born of the spores falling from Bisco and Milo, ravaged and gorged themselves on Kelshinha’s nigh-inexhaustible supply of rust, tearing apart his flesh as they burst forth from his muscular body. However. “I will never lose…” Gaboom! “Never…” Gaboom! Gaboom! “Akaboshi…I will never lose to you…” Kelshinha was possessed. This was no mere stubbornness, but a grudge born of hate. When he thought of a mantra, a mushroom burst from his brain. When he opened his mouth to speak, one burst from his tongue. Still, Kelshinha ripped each of them out with his bare hands, slowly advancing, step by terrifying step, toward Bisco. Amli closed her eyes in fright, but Bisco stepped forward to meet him and stared the human time bomb of Rust-Eaters directly in the eye. Bisco was golden, shining like the sun, a paragon of the divinity that Kelshinha had devoted his entire life to attaining. “…Kaaahhh!” Suddenly, all the rust spurted out of Kelshinha’s body, an incredible volume that disintegrated upon exposure to the air. Then, at last, all that remained was the dying old man, nothing but skin and bones, looking exactly as he did when Bisco first rescued him from the bandits’ lair. “…Rgh…rgh…” “…” “…You were the true god…this entire time. I await your divine punishment for the hubris of this foolish old man.” “I’m not a god, and I’m not a demon, either. I’m a Mushroom Keeper.” “…” “I ain’t tryin’ to punish you. I’m just followin’ my own beliefs. I still think you’re a massive asshole, but I don’t think you were wrong. You had strength, old man. I ain’t arguin’ with that.” “…” “But ideals like that are like magnets. They pull each other in, clash together again and again, throwin’ off sparks, and in the end…” “One of them must fall by the wayside. I see… And now, Akaboshi, only you remain.” “Well,” said Bisco, and with the face of a young boy who had completely forgotten what this whole intense, life-or-death struggle had just been for, he smiled. “I guess that’s more or less it. Tough luck, Gramps!” Gaboom! As Kelshinha stared in awe at the young man’s face, he felt the final Rust-Eater mushroom expanding inside him. With all his strength, he held it back and spoke. “…Hear me, Akaboshi. My mantras are techniques to command the Rust as one wishes. They are limited in power by the words one uses to control them, but they stem from a greater power. Perhaps that power is enough to command the Rust to remake the entire world as one sees fit.” “Remake…the world?” “There is already something in this world with that power. I called it god. Our world is, and always has been, in the hands of this god.” “…?! Dude, what’re you talking about…?!” “Listen to me. That god did not predict your existence in this world. You are a pair of gods it did not foresee. Rust-Eaters. The Rust is your prey. And so that god will no doubt turn its boundless power upon you… A power from long ago…before the Tokyo Crater was… Gblh…!” “Hey, old man! Don’t die on me now! Tell all this complicated stuff to someone who gets it!” Kelshinha expelled a cloud of rust, and a cluster of Rust-Eater mushrooms burst through the walls of the tower. The walls came tumbling down, and the worshipers, now returned to their senses, fled in mad panic as Actagawa scooped up as many as he could and hid them beneath his safe, sturdy shell. “Hurry! Four to an iguana! Anyone strong enough, carry someone with you!” yelled Pawoo, standing at the head of the crowd, commanding the Vigilante Corps. Raskeni stood with her, shouting out over the sea of believers. “Worshipers! All the gods in this place are dead! But you may still live! There is a god within each of you! So do not pray, but stand, and flee this place at once!” At their orders, the iguana cavalry and Kandori together carried scores of people out of the collapsing tower. “Bisco! There’s no more time. We have to get out of here!” cried Milo, coming back after helping Tirol and Amli escape. Bisco glanced at him, then took out a syringe of mushroom vaccine from his pocket and stabbed it into Kelshinha’s neck. “Aaaagh?! Wh-what are you doing, Bisco?!” “Thou shalt not kill the elderly,” he answered, looking back at his partner over his shoulder. “It’s one of the Mushroom Keeper’s rules. I can’t just leave him to die. All his rust power has been sucked out. He’s just a shriveled-up old man now, same as when we first found him. He’ll die soon enough. I just want to let him choose how he goes.” Milo found it hard to say anything in response to the determination in Bisco’s voice. He just stared, as though he were gazing upon something very beautiful, and then nodded. He took his partner’s hand and leaped off the idol’s hands, out of the tower. And there, watching in amazement as the mushrooms tearing his body apart withered and died, kneeled Kelshinha. As the color returned to his features, he slowly held his hands up before his face. “I lost it all… “A hundred years… “A hundred years I toiled…in search of power over the Rust…power over death. “And he took it all away…with a single arrow… “Akaboshi. “If only I had that power. “If only I had his power… “If only I had the power of Akaboshi’s organs…!!” Kelshinha yelled out from the bottom of his lungs and stood, tore Bisco’s arrow out of his own chest, and turned, hurtling like a rocket toward the two boys. “Give me your stomach again, Akaboshiii!!” “Not sure what I was expecting…” The split second before Kelshinha’s strike connected, the two Mushroom Keepers whirled round, completely in sync, and with a pair of roundhouse kicks, sent Kelshinha flying into the idol far behind. “But you know, that kind of attitude ain’t bad!” Then the two released their arrows, a pair of comets that flew after Kelshinha and impaled him, Milo’s in the head and Bisco’s in the heart, pinning him with a Crash! into the statue. Gaboom! Gaboom! Gaboom! As if the arrow wasn’t strong enough before, the Rust-Eater, activated by the pair’s bows, spread out its mycelium not just over the statue, but all over the walls of the tower, spreading its spores throughout the temple. “You idiot! That’s way too strong!” yelled Bisco! “Oh no! I’m sorry! It’s going to explode!” The two leaped into the air, where Actagawa caught them and extricated them from the tower in the blink of an eye. Gaboom! Gaboom! Gaboom! BA-GOOM! One last explosion heralded the arrival of a supremely tall Rust-Eater mushroom that blew the tower to bits. “L-look, Bisco! It’s a mushroom tower!” “Quit your gawping, idiot!” Actagawa sprang high into the air with the Mushroom Keepers upon his back and landed on the single bridge connecting the towers to the outside world, where he stuffed his masters inside his belly and rolled along the ground. The bridge was collapsing steadily behind him, faster than he could escape, and with just thirty meters to go, it seemed he was destined to fall into the unfathomable abyss below. “Hold on to this, Akaboshi!” From just ahead, Nuts disembarked from his iguana with a harpoon in his hands. To the end was tied a rope, and Nuts hurled the harpoon toward Bisco. Just as Actagawa was about to lose his footing, he wrapped his smaller claw around it and just barely hung from the outer cliff. “Y-you did it! Well done, Nuts!” “He’s too heavyyy! Plum! Call the others!!” Actagawa was a particularly heavy steelcrab, and already the other end of the rope, attached to an anchoring point stabbed into the ground, was beginning to loosen and pull up dirt. Nuts’s face went red as he heaved on the rope with all his might, when he suddenly felt a soft touch at his back, and around his body closed the arms of the beautiful governor lady. With her fearsome strength, Pawoo pulled on the rope with both hands. “Excellent work, Nuts! I knew you were the right man to take over as captain!” “G-Governor! Stay away from me, I can’t concentrate!” “Hmm? Why not? Keep your head together, or Actagawa will fall!” “Your boobs are touching my back!!” Pawoo gave a blank look before exploding into laughter. As she did, the other Vigilante Corps members, as well as several onlookers, all crowded around and pulled on the rope in unison. There were easily thirty people there, but with the strength of a hundred, they hauled Actagawa up and over the ledge, where he collapsed, exhausted, and tossed his two masters to the ground. “…Ugh…I’m tired… How am I not dead yet? I’ve certainly been unlucky enough.” “Ah-ha-ha! That’s true! …Hey, Bisco! Look at that!” Milo propped Bisco up and pointed. Standing tall and proud where the Six Towers had once stood was an enormous Rust-Eater, tall enough to be considered a tower itself. It scattered its shimmering spores onto the gentle breeze, and upon its cap was a nebulous pattern of red and green. Bisco’s and Milo’s Rust-Eaters fused together, the two colors interweaved in a beautiful contrast. “We just turned their temple into a massive mushroom… Why can’t we ever leave a place the way we found it? These religious types are gonna be pissed.” “I’m not so sure. Look…” Milo pointed to the crowd, where one by one, people started walking toward the giant mushroom. When they reached the cliff edge, they got down on their knees. There were easily over a thousand of them now. The entire Vigilante Corps looked on in confusion as they prayed. At no one’s orders. Asking for nothing. They simply kneeled before the divine radiance of the Rust-Eater, with no creed or doctrine in their hearts and no words on their lips. “…” “…” Milo simply took in what he saw and awaited Bisco’s cynical remark…but none came. Even he was stunned into silence by the sincerity of the scene before him. Milo smiled as he looked at his partner’s face, and he decided not to poke fun for the time being. “Shall we pray, too, Bisco?” “Nah. I think we’ve done enough damage for one day. It’s our prayers that gave birth to that thing in the first place!” Bisco turned away from the mushroom tower and waved to Actagawa, who was scuttling stealthily away, apparently fed up with the people around him treating him like a divine beast. The two boys laughed and ran over to meet him.