Chapter 81

20 The girl felt something warm wrapped around her, shaking her awake. As she slowly came to, she gazed up at the face above her with murky eyes. “Amli! Amli! Please wake up, Amli!” “…Mo…ther…?” “…Amli!” It was Raskeni’s face, tears streaming from her eyes. Amli gave her a reassuring smile and gently stroked her cheek. “…! Wait! I must take command! Mother, where is High Priest Ochagama?!” “It’s okay, Amli. You don’t need to do any more. It’s over.” “Over…?” Amli followed her mother’s gaze and looked out of the tent. The pale light of the moon illuminated the desert outside, where all the monks stood facing Tokyo, praying. “…What is that…?” She looked over at the Tokyo Crater, which until just recently had been home to a towering metropolis, to see that now its menacing buildings were coated in rainbow mushrooms that cast a shifting aurora across the desert sands. The monks, weary from their long battle, stood in the fluctuating, seven-colored light, and were healed. “High Priestess Amli is awake! She’s awaaaake!” Kandori’s booming voice rang out, and the priests of all denominations crowded around her. “She lives! Priestess Amli lives!” They lifted the tiny girl up and tossed her into the air in celebration. Amli was still trying to take it all in, blinking repeatedly with her one good eye. “We’ve won, Amli. You can relax now.” Amli turned to her side to see the cotton ball priest lying on his back as a similar crowd threw him, too. “We’ve…won?” she repeated. “B-but the enemy troops, wherever did they disappear to? A-and my wounds… Yes, I remember, I was wounded!” As Amli’s mind returned, she recalled throwing herself in front of the enemy’s urbanization ray to protect her followers. The pain she felt at that moment came flooding back to her, clear as day. “There was no saving me. I was sure of it. How…?” “Just look up.” Curious, Amli raised her head to where the cotton wool ball pointed. Down from the sky came countless glowing motes, falling and melting like multicolored snow on the desert sand. “Are these…spores?” “A new kind of spore, as yet unnamed,” replied Ochagama. “A form of the Rust, transformed into the power of life itself.” He spoke a mantra, and some of the spores rearranged themselves into the outline of a mushroom, causing the monks below to let out a cheer. “These spores made those robots disappear in a flash…and they got rid of all the urbanization infecting everyone as well.” “Rainbow…spores…” With the monks distracted by Ochagama’s magic trick, Amli landed with a Thump! on the ground and gazed up at the forest of rainbow mushrooms, clad in an aurora. “We won…didn’t we? My brother beat that man…,” she said, trembling with emotion. A long slender arm landed on Amli’s shoulder, and she looked up to see the smiling face of her mother. Amli embraced that arm and continued staring at the wondrous spectacle on the horizon. Just then, they saw something streak across the night sky—a small sphere that shone ever brighter as it crossed the moon. It was hard to tell at this distance, but it must have been moving very fast indeed. “Hey, what’s that?!” “How magnificent!” The monks cried out in awe at the sight. It was only Amli who knew what it was. Mr. Bisco… Mr. Milo… She looked down at her feet for a moment before kneeling on the rainbow-colored sand and praying with all her heart. Then Raskeni kneeled down beside her and prayed as well. Then Ochagama, too. Then Kandori. All the monks stopped their cheers and turned their thoughts to prayer. One by one, they kneeled down upon the sand. No words, not even a thought to what that prayer might be. All of them simply wished with all their hearts that happiness could be found at that rainbow’s end. The rainbow sphere crossed Mach 1 and blasted upward through the stratosphere, shedding the yoke of Earth’s gravity and floating free amid the stars. “So where the hell is this satellite anyway?” Bisco looked left and right, his rainbow hair glimmering in the blackness of space, and turned to his partner, who was flapping his arms and holding his mouth shut. “Hey, stop messin’ around! All of Japan’s countin’ on us!” “I! Can’t! Breathe!” “You can’t breathe? Oh, right. I guess it’s ’cause we’re in space, huh…?” Bisco nodded and blew into his hand. A bunch of multicolored mushrooms grew out of his palm, which Bisco plucked and stuffed into the mouths of Milo and Tirol. Upon doing so, they both began breathing normally again. “…Hahh! Hahh! That was close! I thought I was about to die!” Milo checked for Tirol’s heartbeat and began giving her CPR, but it seemed he didn’t need to, for the mushroom she swallowed was generating enough oxygen to keep her alive. “We might have missed it! Do you see anything that looks like a huge machine anywhere?” “You mean that?” “…Yes, that! Oh no, it’s already reached the atmosphere! This is bad!” “Well, we just gotta blow it up, then, right?” Bisco tore out several of his glorious hairs and fired them behind him, propelling him toward the satellite and leaving a trail of prismatic mushrooms in his wake. At last, he reached the giant falling object and latched on to the outside. “Eeeeuuuuuuhhhhh!” The satellite let out a groan as it was wreathed in flames. The vengeful spirits had bonded with it, becoming a single synthetic life-form, and at the rainbow intruder they clamored in fear and anger and crowded toward Bisco. They piled on top of his barrier of spores, leaving not a single gap, and applied pressure as if to crush the whole thing in one go. “It’s a good thing Tirol’s already passed out,” said Milo. “Because if she wasn’t, she would, after seeing these gross things!” “Milo, I can’t attack them and keep the barrier up at the same time. Can you take over?” “Sure thing, Bisco! Launch:Life:Maker!” With Milo relieving him of defense, Bisco took up several of his hairs and formed them into a great spear-like arrow, loosing it at point-blank range into the armored plating of the satellite. It pierced the machine’s outer layer and stuck there, whereupon Bisco held on to it with both hands, gritted his teeth, and focused all his energy into it. The rainbow spores sensed their master’s will and flowed into the arrow, emitting sparks of light in every hue. “Rrrrrrrggggghhhh!” Bisco yelled, and all of a sudden, rainbow mushrooms burst to life all across the satellite’s surface. “Stop. Stop. Stop.” “Oh, sure thing. What, you think I’m crazy? Who’d listen to you?!” “Do you know what you are doing? We are innocent lives, snuffed out before our time! We should be the ones populating the planet, not you! Do you know what it means to wipe us out?” “Milo, what happens if we kill them?” Bisco asked. “I guess nobody’ll be able to watch satellite TV anymore,” Milo replied. “Which one’s that?” “Channel 6. The one that keeps rerunning the same cartoon over and over.” “That one with the cat and mouse? Hmm… You’re right, I do feel a bit guilty about that.” “EEUEUUGHH!” Gaboom! Gaboom! Gaboom! The mushrooms grew faster and faster, but those of the year 2028 still swarmed Milo’s shield in a mad frenzy until cracks appeared in its surface. Milo did his best to endure both their assault and the intense heat he felt as he descended through the atmosphere at terminal velocity. “Bisco! I can’t hold on much longer!” “…All right!” Bisco grinned as he felt the fungal network complete its spread. He held up his right arm and plunged his fist deep into the satellite’s metal plating. Crash! With his other hand, Bisco tore off his right arm and kicked off the satellite with his partner in tow, leaving his limb embedded in the falling hunk of machinery. “I’ll leave your lot to cool off in the afterlife!” he yelled, extending his remaining arm toward the satellite. In his hand appeared a gleaming multicolored bow, and Milo reached out in place of Bisco’s missing arm to grasp the bowstring.” “Bisco! Don’t you really like Channel 6?!” “Don’t remind me! It’s too late now!” “Okay, ready? Three…two…” ““One!”” For a second, a perfectly straight rainbow flashed in the sky and punched right through the core of the satellite. The arrow struck Bisco’s severed arm, which triggered the fungi’s explosive growth. Gaboom! As the multicolored mushrooms infested their vessel, the ghosts of 2028 let out a scream and scattered to the sky. There, they broke apart and burned up in the atmosphere, until nothing, not even ash, remained, and the mad dream of the past died with them. “Hey, Milo!” “What?!” “You can let down your barrier now! It ain’t gonna save us anyway!” “I know, but still!” “Still what?” “I wanna keep it up a bit longer!” Like a pair of falling stars crashing through the atmosphere, Bisco and Milo shouted to each other over the rush of the wind. Bisco’s luxurious rainbow hair had already reverted to its former crimson hue, and the rest of his godly power had disappeared along with it, leaving him too exhausted to move a single muscle. They fell headfirst to Earth within the mantra shield Milo was straining so hard to preserve, and Bisco knew at that moment he was facing his own death. “That world tore the shit outta me this whole time,” he muttered grimly as his red hair flapped in the wind. “Why do I hafta sacrifice myself to save it? Don’t seem fair to me.” “That’s just the way things worked out!” Milo shouted back. “Besides, it wasn’t all bad! We got to meet all sorts of interesting people, didn’t we? And, Bisco, you found yourself a treasure more precious than anything!” “And what’s that?” “Me!” Bisco turned to his partner. His sky-blue hair was blown up out of his eyes, which twinkled like stars behind his broad and cheerful smile. “For most people, death is the one thing they can’t share. But not us! That’s what we found together on this long, long journey!” “…” “Bisco!” Milo, already holding Tirol in his arms, moved to embrace Bisco as well. He frowned at the cat-eye goggles obstructing his partner’s brow and tore them off. Ignoring Bisco’s protest of “Hey, give ’em back!” he pulled Bisco close and bumped their foreheads together. “…” “…” “Bisco.” “…Hmm?” “You’re really sweaty.” “…” “…” “…Kheh!” “Hee-hee!” “Heh-heh-heh!” “Ah-ha-ha-ha!” Strands of their crimson and sky-blue hair fluttered among each other, blending the colors. The pair of them laughed as they fell, brow-to-brow. They were as one in the stillness and tranquility of the scorching heat, feeling only each other’s warmth. “Milo.” “Yes, what is it?”