Chapter 62

3 Once upon a time, when the Mushroom Keepers were fleeing persecution at the hands of the government, they had destroyed all the bridges that connected Shikoku to the mainland. If one tried to reach the island by boat, they wouldn’t last five minutes before the redfins lurking in the waves used their sharp fangs to tear the ship apart. The only way to make the crossing, then, was to ride on steelcrabs, whose tough hides the redfins failed to pierce, and so the channel formed a natural line of defense for the Mushroom Keepers who lived on the island. “I gotta swim again?! When do I get to sleep? This is bullshit!” “It’s not bullshit, Bisco. We’ve been playing rock-paper-scissors. It’s totally fair.” “If it’s totally fair, then how come you keep winning?!” “Because you’re not very good at it, Bisco.” As the two boys bickered, Tirol, whom Milo was carrying on his back, spoke up. “Now, hold on a moment, boys,” she said, smiling and pointing over in the distance. “I believe we may be able to give poor Bisco a rest. And Actagawa, too, for that matter.” The boys had found it difficult to continue referring to the red-eyed Tirol as Tirol, given her condition, so after no lengthy deliberation, they had agreed on simply calling her “Red Tirol.” What Red Tirol was pointing at was an enormous bridge, painted and pristine, that definitely hadn’t been there three days ago when the group first arrived. While the far end of the bridge was shrouded in mist, it seemed clear from its direction that it must lead to the mainland. “Wh-what the hell is that?!” “It is a bridge, my dear Bisco,” replied Red Tirol. “People use them to cross bodies of water.” “You wanna lose some teeth?” “But why?!” asked Milo in disbelief. “There wasn’t a bridge when we came here before! There wasn’t anything at all!” “I would presume that Apollo constructed it in order to carry out his assault,” Red Tirol replied. Then she chuckled. “…However, this is the Gojo Bridge. I suppose recreating the Great Seto Bridge was beyond him. It seems Apollo is still far from being able to command the Rust as he pleases.” Bisco and Milo hadn’t the slightest idea what Red Tirol was talking about, but they were used to this by now, and so let her do her thing. “I don’t care what bridge it is; it’s good news for us,” said Bisco, steering Actagawa toward it. “We’ll reach the mainland in no time if we ain’t gotta swim all the way.” “It’s a shame we won’t get to play rock-paper-scissors anymore,” said Milo. “Shaddup!” Still arguing, Bisco spurred Actagawa out of the water and onto the bridge, where he set off toward the mainland. The giant crab found he could run much faster on the well-maintained asphalt road. “But Apollo didn’t bring that many robots, so why’s the bridge so massive?” asked Bisco. “Pretty inefficient, if you ask me.” “Back in our day, we needed bridges this size to deal with the large amounts of traffic,” Red Tirol answered. “‘Back in our day?’” repeated Milo. “But, Tirol, you’re not that much older than us.” “I see. In that case, please ignore what I just said… Hold on a second. Do you boys feel something shaking…?” “An earthquake?” Bisco suggested. “A big one, too.” “It’s not an earthquake,” said Milo. “Something’s coming from down below!” The shaking intensified until eventually, the bridge itself began cracking apart as if something were pushing against it from beneath. The bumping shook Actagawa up and down. “What’s goin’ on?” asked Bisco. “Hold on, Tirol!” cried Milo. “Actagawa, get us out of here!” Snatching the reins from Bisco, Milo gave them a shake, and the giant crab rolled up and allowed himself to be launched upward like a football. Seconds later, something terrifyingly huge burst through the surface of the bridge, with a splash of sea spray and a bellow that shook the air. “What the hell is that?!” asked Bisco. At first glance, it looked somewhat like a hammerhead shark, only far larger. Besides its freakish size, however, the other thing unusual about its appearance was the row of office buildings that lined its back. It opened its terrifying jaws wide, lined with rows of ferocious teeth, and there in its throat was a pair of grinders shaped like rolling pins, ready to smash up any steel beams that entered the beast’s mouth. Across the wide protrusion on its head was an electronic billboard that flashed a message saying HIGH ACCIDENT ZONE AHEAD. PLEASE DRIVE SAFELY. “It’s an animal!” Milo cried. “Is it one of Apollo’s lackeys?!” “No,” replied Red Tirol. “It is a municipal life-form created by rampant urbanization. It doesn’t even have a name. Let’s see… It appears to eat bridges, so how about ‘Bridge-Eater’?” “We ain’t got time to chat!” yelled Bisco. “It’s comin’ this way!” Just as Bisco said, the “Bridge-Eater” was racing toward Actagawa with incredible speed, its jaws open wide. As it went, the bridge disappeared into its gullet with a horrible metallic creaking sound as the grinders pulverized it to dust. “Bisco! That thing’s made to eat. It’ll swallow us in one bite if we’re not careful!” “Then I’ll just have to bite back!” Golden sparks danced on Bisco’s breath as he pulled the string of his bow. Looking back at the Bridge-Eater, he fired, and a crimson streak disappeared down the creature’s throat and right out the other side. Boom! Boom! Gaboom! The explosive force of the Rust-Eater mushrooms beat the Bridge-Eater back. Letting out a wail, it slowed in speed. “Wow, amazing!” said Red Tirol in admiration. “So this is the power of the Rust-Eater arrows!” “It’s still going, Bisco! It’s not dead!” “Tsk.” Bisco frowned. While he had scored a hit, the rolling grinders in the shark’s throat quickly made short work of the Rust-Eaters before they could grow. It seemed the mycelium was slow to take root in the creature’s urbanized body. “Doesn’t matter! I’ll fire as many shots as it takes!” “Not so fast, my fearsome friend! It appears we have company!” Bisco looked out toward where Red Tirol was pointing, at the miniature city on the shark’s back. There he could see several small vehicles driving along the creature’s spine toward him. “What the hell?! Cars? …And…they’ve got fins!” Along with one on each side, the cars sported a dorsal fin on their roofs, and their hoods opened and closed like mouths, revealing rows and rows of sharp teeth underneath. “Fascinating!” said Red Tirol. “These are municipal life-forms as well! Perhaps we should call them ‘carfish’? But are they even living creatures at all?” “Tirol, watch out!” Milo’s arrow shot one of the carfish out of the sky as it leaped off the highway toward her, its hood-mouth open wide. A second and third followed, but Actagawa swung his greatclaw, dashing them to the rapidly receding floor, where they fell into the Bridge-Eater’s open mouth and were crunched up by its grinders. Meanwhile, Bisco had been keeping the enormous hammerhead at bay with his arrows, but the thing just wouldn’t die. Having never fought against a municipal life-form before, he hadn’t the slightest idea how such a creature might be finished off for good. As he cowed under the pressure, the beast slowly gained on Actagawa. As for Milo, he was focused on fending off the carfish and couldn’t spare the time to sit at the reins. PLEASE OBSERVE THE SPEED LIMIT flashed the electronic sign on the shark’s head as it smashed through the bridge, sending a large chunk of debris raining down on the fleeing group. Milo rushed to the reins just in time to steer Actagawa away, but the giant crab stumbled and nearly fell while doing so. “We ain’t gonna be able to ride our way outta this one!” said Bisco. “Milo! Anything we can do?” “Hmm… Bridge-Eater…” Milo stared at the shark behind Bisco and at the bridge parts crushed in between the grinders in its jaw, and suddenly an idea flashed through his mind like a bolt of lightning. “Bisco! Fire your sand velvet arrow with me!” “Gotcha… Wait—sand velvet?” “At the bridge! Let’s go!” Before Milo even finished speaking, the two of them had drawn their bows and loosed several arrows behind Actagawa, into the road of the bridge. Bisco’s sand velvet blossomed with a Boom! Boom! Boom! kicking up yellow clouds of dust, while Milo’s arrows turned into something black and sticky. Meanwhile, the Bridge-Eater, now freed from Bisco’s barrage, slowly picked up the pace, closing in on Actagawa until it was even swallowing up the very carfish it had fired at them in the first place. Actagawa, deprived of his riders when they started firing arrows, was unable by himself to avoid the debris thrown into the road by the Bridge-Eater, and so crashed into a pile of rubble head-on, casting the three standing atop him to the ground. Milo just barely managed to break Red Tirol’s fall as she looked up at the humongous jaws of the Bridge-Eater, ready to close around them. “Oh dear, it’s all over!” she cried, squeezing her eyes shut in terror. Then, when she failed to die at the appointed time, she became puzzled. “…? Hmm? Huh?” Then she heard Bisco’s calm voice. “Nice one. Good thinking. It can’t eat us if its mouth don’t work.” “I’m just glad my idea worked,” said Milo. “I just figured because it’s a machine, we might be able to throw a wrench into the works, so to speak. A mixture of sand velvet and tarmush should clog up any mechanism.” Red Tirol slowly opened her eyes and looked up at the Bridge-Eater. The large rolling pin grinders at the back of its throat were coated in a thick, black substance and emitted a screaming metallic Creak! as they struggled to move. “Wow! You used a sticky mushroom to stop it!” “It’s still tryin’ to hit us with its fins! Come on, Actagawa!” With its greatest weapon out of action, the Bridge-Eater raised its enormous lateral fins in defiance and swung them down on the three people and one crab. Everyone narrowly managed to leap atop Actagawa and dodge the blow before the surface of the bridge was smashed into rubble. Pchew! Bisco’s and Milo’s flameshroom arrows were perfectly in sync with each other. They sank into the Bridge-Eater’s flesh before blossoming into flame-wreathed mushrooms, which then ignited the tarmush, setting off a fiery explosion that engulfed the Bridge-Eater whole. “Gruuuuh!” The Bridge-Eater thrashed in the throes of death, the billboard on its head flashing ROAD AHEAD CLOSED. The carfish, also scorched by the flames, wriggled about and leaped off the bridge, one after the other. “Bisco! Milo! The fire was too strong! This bridge is going to collapse!” “Whoops.” “It’s a little late for that, Bisco!” Milo retorted. “You really don’t know how to hold back, do you?” As Actagawa made a hasty escape, the bridge behind them fell away, dropping the Bridge-Eater’s carcass into the sea with a mighty splash. “My, my, Bisco. That was magnificent! With your quick thinking, you brought down that terrifying beast like it was nothing! You really are humanity’s most powerful warrior… No, humanity’s very future!” “…You know, Tirol, you ain’t quite been the same since you were possessed… But keep talking.” “What are you grinning for, Bisco? You know it was me who came up with that plan!” Milo protested, while Actagawa swished his hefty claws in the air. “Whoa! S-sorry, Actagawa, it was you who did all the running, wasn’t it?” Already the boisterous group had put their unprecedented encounter behind them and set their sights on the city of Imihama.