As the mushroom-adorned wisteria diadem fell upon his sky-blue crown, Milo wondered at its curious heft. All eyes were on him, illuminated only by the wicker torches dotting the village in the miraculous silence of the night. He sat before a row of aged Mushroom Keepers, in front of whom kneeled the younger members of the tribe. From time to time, a child would call out and point at Milo with a smile, only to be admonished by their guardian. “Iv iv your rive vuh Rust—” “It is your life the Rust fears.” “…Ret rat right g—” “Let that light guide your way.” Each time the toothless elder tried to speak, the priestess standing next to him cut him off and interpreted for Milo’s sake. While the constant interruptions clearly garnered some irritation, the elder nonetheless smiled at the beautiful young Mushroom Keeper kneeling at his feet and nodded in satisfaction before turning and yelling off to the side: “Octoruff!” O-octopus? Milo looked up in confusion. Bisco and Jabi hadn’t briefed him on this part of the ceremony. Soon, a troop of younger Mushroom Keepers carried over a large mannequin, woven from leather and grass, in the rough shape of an octopus. “Octopuses have long been the crab’s natural enemy,” explained the priestess, “and so it is a rite of passage for all new Mushroom Keepers to slay one with their mushroom arrows…or at least, that’s the new trial the elder came up with the other day.” “You want me to…use my bow?” asked Milo, uncertain. “Yeah,” said the priestess, a tanned woman with an attractive face, before sidling over and whispering into Milo’s ear, “but don’t worry too much about it. It’s more of a spectacle than a trial. If you fail, that’ll just make for a funny story.” Milo looked once more at the dummy octopus before him, frozen in an aggressive pose, its eight limbs raised in the light of the braziers as if to swallow Milo whole. Wow. The workmanship is beautiful. The Mushroom Keepers were always an artistic people, and this mannequin was no exception. Milo gazed in wonder at its well-sculpted form, while the priestess handed him a sheaf of arrows and his emerald shortbow. Milo looked around to see all eyes focused on him. Every Mushroom Keeper, young and old, watched his movements with bated breath and twinkling eyes. Milo gulped, the atmosphere tense, and glanced back over his shoulder. On a constructed platform behind him sat two familiar faces: a girl with pink braids waving excitedly back at him, and beside her, Milo’s trusted red-haired companion, a volume of manga in his hands, paying no attention to the ceremony whatsoever. When he felt Milo’s prickly gaze on him, he looked up, appraised the situation, and motioned with his chin toward the octopus dummy. …What a jerk! Letting the anger toward his partner guide his hand, Milo nocked an arrow and pulled the string tight. The bow creaked under the surprising strength of his slender physique, and a murmur of suspense passed through the crowd. …Fshew! After taking a single breath, Milo opened his eyes and leaped into the air in a frightening display of agility, loosing three arrows, which stuck, all in a row, into the top of the octopus’s head before Milo landed. “Ohhhh!” “Wooow!” “Amazing!” The Mushroom Keepers cried out in awe, but their voices were drowned out as the clamshell mushrooms exploded into being, one after the other, with a Gaboom-boom-boom! The force of the blast knocked the poor elder off his feet, but as the younger members of the tribe helped him back up, he laughed and clapped. “Milo!” he shouted, and the rest of the village joined in. “Milo! Milo!” they cried, hailing the name of their newest Mushroom Keeper. Then they all swarmed around him, lifting him up and tossing him triumphantly into the air, Milo too light to offer any serious resistance. “Ah, here comes the new Mushroom Keeper… Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Milo, your hair!” By the time the jubilant tribespeople finally released Milo from their celebration, his hair had been so tousled that it stood on end, causing no end of mirth for Bisco. “Just stay Super Saiyan,” he joked as Milo tried to comb it down. “Don’t those guys turn into pandas, too?” “They turn into apes, you dummy!” “Hey, why are you angry? I thought you looked cool out there! And the elder seemed to like it, too.” “I only came here because you said it was an important ceremony, and you weren’t paying any attention at all!” “I didn’t really need to watch, though. I get to see you all the time,” said Bisco, and as the smell of fried fish came wafting over, he stood up from his seat. “And I already know you can beat a real octopus, anyway; I saw you do it myself.” “But…” As Milo wordlessly watched him go, Tirol grabbed Milo’s hand and slapped him hard across the cheek. “What he said. Come on, Milo, let’s get some grub!” “Owww! What did you do that for?” “’Cause I can’t stand watchin’ ya swoon over every word Akaboshi says! Ya gotta learn to fight back some more!” The two of them raced over to Bisco, who had already ordered a roasted Fanged Bonito, dripping with grease, and moved to a quieter location, where they sat and watched the celebrations unfold, eating their food as the meat juices dribbled down their fingers. After slaying the Immortal Monk Kelshinha at the Six Towers of Izumo in Shimane, the group had headed to Shikoku in search of Bisco’s hometown, a small village on the slopes of Mount Ishizuchi in Ehime Prefecture. Along the way, they bumped into Tirol, who had sold off the golden statue of Lord Gananja and earned enough cash to give her business a much-needed boost. Claiming that she wanted to trade with the Mushroom Keepers, she had hitched a ride on Actagawa, and today was the day they finally arrived. They had been anticipating a warm welcome, seeing as how Bisco was returning to his ancestral home, but the treatment they received defied expectation. Bisco was treated less like a hero and more like a god, and people flocked to worship and revere him, as well as have him stroke the hands of babies (and the claws of crabs), in the hopes that it would cause them to grow up big and strong like him. (This was at Milo and Tirol’s suggestion. If Bisco rubbed their heads as per tradition, they said, the babies might turn out as dumb as him instead.) Of course, for Bisco, there could be nothing more discomfiting than being treated with reverence, and so Milo helped him out by disseminating some of Kurokawa’s anime/manga/movie collection among the village. The new amusements completely distracted the Mushroom Keepers, who famously only paid attention to what was right under their noses, allowing Bisco some peace and quiet at last. While Bisco and Milo were scheduled to leave the next day, this did not seem to bother the children of the tribe, who sat in the village square, their eyes glued to a TV set that had been placed there. “Ah… No…!” “How come?! The Spirit Bomb hit him head-on…!” “Ha! Kids are so innocent. Imagine getting so absorbed in some dumb cartoon.” “I seem to recall your reaction to that scene was not so different, Bisco,” Milo replied. “…” “Must be nice being as innocent as a kid, huh?” “C’mere, you damn panda!” The two boys brawled like alley cats while the kids remained absorbed in their cartoon. Soon, however, one of the children began fidgeting, and eventually he pressed the pause button on the TV remote and stood up. “S-sorry, guys! I have to go pee!” he said. “Yutta!” said another, annoyed. “How many times are you going to do that?! It was just getting to the good part!” “I’ll be right back! Just give me a minute!” he pleaded before scooping up a young steelcrab under one arm and running off into the darkness on the outskirts of the village. When he arrived at a bunch of statues commemorating honorable crabs that had fallen in battle, he unzipped and, displaying the trademark irreverence of little boys, relieved himself against one of them. “Phew… I shouldn’t have had so much soda…” The boy sighed. Then to the crab in his arm, he asked, “How about you, Natsume? Do you need to go, too?” The crab, however, suddenly leaped out of Yutta’s grip and struck the statue with its claw. “Wh-what are you doing, Natsume?! We’ll be in big trouble if you break that! Dad’s gonna kill us… H-huh?!” At last, Yutta noticed it, too. The statue he was relieving himself against was not of a crab at all. In the dim light of the faraway village, he could see it was possessed of straight lines and right angles, and an overall more angular structure. “W-whoa!” Unlike the lively crab statues around it, this one lacked any sort of expression or shape at all. Timidly, he extended one hand out toward its flat, stony surface, but just before he reached it, there was a Bang! Bang! Bang, bang, bang! One by one, enormous right-angled columns rose up from the ground all over the field of statues. Even the one before Yutta shot up into the sky, expelling a gust of wind that fluttered the boy’s jet-black hair. “What…? What’s going ooon?!” The poor boy shrieked in fear, and a strong white light burst through the windows that were neatly and evenly spaced along the object’s surface, spreading from one window to the next with an electrical Crack! and banishing the darkness from the field. Eventually, the whole area was lit up like midday, and the rising columns had shattered the statues previously there into unidentifiable rubble. They came up from the ground, stretching out like the branches of some cursed tree, their windows flickering randomly with bright white light. “Oh…! W-waaah!” Even now, they continued to grow in all directions, a forest of uncaring concrete that tore through the life of the land. “I…I have to go tell the grown-ups!” Tucking his best friend under his arm, Yutta collected himself and began running, but a line of columns burst from the ground one after the other—Bang! Bang! Bang!—as if following him. “Waaaah!” The columns chased down the terrified Yutta before at last a pointed steel girder snagged the hem of his shirt and lifted him off the ground. “Dad, help meee!” As Yutta squeezed his eyes shut, gripped by terror, an arrow flew past his cheek and embedded itself in the white concrete wall with incredible force. “W-whoaaa!” The arrow opened a crack in the solid material of the column, and as the wire that was attached to the arrow rewound, a red figure burst into view, his cloak fluttering in the wind. “Bisco!” “Hang on tight, Yutta!” Bisco swung his bow, bringing it down hard on the girder before carrying the young boy on his back and leaping once more into the night, away from the still-growing concrete. “Get…the hell…off…my…turf!!” Bisco growled, drawing his bow tight in midair. His emerald eyes glimmered, and golden spores flowed gently from his lips like wisps of flame. The newly crafted bow in his hands creaked under the strain of his draw, and in a rush of color that spread outward from the grip, the bow’s indigo form was replaced with shimmering gold. It’s…Rust-Eater Bisco! The crack of the bowstring was like a gunshot in Yutta’s ear, and Bisco’s arrow streaked red in the sky before piercing the cuboid object. Then it was only a matter of moments before Yutta heard the Gaboom! Gaboom! and radiant Rust-Eaters burst from the thick concrete walls and started blooming all across its surface. In the blink of an eye, the mushrooms completely consumed the building, which strained for a moment before yielding to the crushing force of the fungi and falling to earth in a cloud of dust and rubble. “What the hell?” muttered Bisco, setting Yutta down. Then he turned and fired one last shot, engulfing the entire swarm of cuboids in Rust-Eaters. Even as he watched the mushrooms consume them, Bisco’s countenance was grim. This was an enemy beyond anything he had ever seen. “White…boxes? This gives me the creeps. What the hell’s goin’ on?” “Bisco, below you!” came his partner’s voice. At his warning, Bisco picked up Yutta once more and leaped back, just as Milo’s arrow struck the point where he had stood. Then a cluster of hen-of-the-woods sprang into being, devouring the cuboid object that had just started to sprout at Bisco’s feet. Even after Milo’s attack, the building continued to grow before it snapped in two under the strain, collapsing in a cloud of dust. As Bisco watched the mysterious life-form’s death, Milo landed beside him. “Is that boy okay? Thank goodness!” he said. “Milo, what are those white towery things? Some new kind of mushroom?” “I don’t know…! But they look just like office blocks.” “Office blocks? You mean, like, those old buildings they have in spy movies? Why would they be growing in a Mushroom Keeper village?” “I don’t know, Bisco. But we have to hurry! They’re fighting them on the south side of town as well! We’re under attack by something!” “All right! Actagawaaa!” After a few seconds, the shadow of the enormous steelcrab swept over the ruined building before landing with a Crash! beside the three boys. Without a moment’s hesitation, Bisco and Milo climbed up into their saddles and rode off, with Yutta shouting after them: “Go get ’em, Bisco! Kill ’em with your Rust-Eaters!” “Yutta, grab the other kids and get ’em to the elder’s house! You understand?!” Bisco called back. “Got it!” The small boy gave a salute alongside his dear friend, the juvenile crab Natsume, as Bisco, Milo, and Actagawa raced off to join the battle. Atop a small hill, Bisco stopped Actagawa and surveyed the devastating scene below. “Dammit… My village…!” he cursed, grinding his teeth. What had only a few short minutes ago been immersed in celebration was now overrun with more of the same office blocks he had just encountered, the harsh white light that spilled from their windows erasing the orange glow of the fires. The forest of buildings burst up through each and every hut in the settlement and continued to spread even now, transforming the village into lifeless concrete. “Who did this…? And why?” he asked. “Why would anyone do such a thing…?” Bisco… Milo looked up at the shivering jade eyes of his partner, who was trembling with rage. Forcing his pity aside, he clapped his friend on the shoulder and smiled. “It doesn’t matter who it is… We’ll send them packing, right, Bisco? Let’s go!” “…Yeah!” The flames of anger still roiled within him, but at Milo’s words, Bisco felt resolute once more, and he took Actagawa’s reins and steered him toward the new and mysterious foe that sought to ruin this night of celebration.
Chapter 58
13 min read