Youko and Dyaus were the advance scouts, and Ganapati and Vayu were the main offensive unit. The destructive force of the strategy was tremendous. Girls thought they’d finally escaped from the flamethrowers only to have a pair of mandibles shoot down out of the sky and bite their heads off. Even if their necks were too thick to bite off, she’d just inject poison and finish them off. There was no escape. Imagine how terrifying their assault must have been to Girls living peacefully in the forest. It left lasting trauma. No, it didn’t even do that — a moment after the fear hit them, they were torn to pieces and digested. In a sense, this was the fastest, most efficient means of divesting them of trauma. They left no mess behind.
The four of them headed inland. At last the trees began to thin, and the air grew dry. They’d reached a savanna. There was less water available here, and the chloroplast Girls found it difficult to maintain larger sizes, growing steadily smaller. To minimize evaporation, they made their surfaces hard and their bodies round. They looked like rocks — rocks with roots running deep into the ground, searching for water. These roots also served as traps, stabbing smaller passing Girls and draining their bodily fluids. There was a war going on underground far more frantic than you’d ever imagine from their lethargic surface appearance.
Their roots also served to mark their territory. If you could sever an opponent’s roots from the base, you could claim their territory for your own. But such attacks carried a hefty risk. Attacking meant sending your own roots deep into enemy territory, and this could expose you to retaliation. It was quite common for an overly aggressive attack to be met with a devastating counter. As a result, a variety of strategies were developed. There were schemes to bait an opponent into an attack and turn the tables on them, schemes to stake out a domain on poor land where few rivals were found, schemes for slipping in on the edges of a territory disputed by two equal powers, and schemes for deliberately allowing poison to affect your own soil. But all of them survived through blood, sweat, and tears.
Splat! A Girl was crushed underfoot. Splat! And another. Ganapati killed them both. Feelers pulled their bodies to her mouth, crunching between her teeth. Dyaus and Youko arrived back from a scouting run, came in for a landing, and gathered around the bodies.
“Weird stuff over that way,” Dyaus said, her mouth full. “Lots of white lines.”
“Can you be a little more specific, Dyaus?”
“There were white lines on the ground in a lattice-pattern. It was clearly unnatural,” Youko explained.
“That’s definitely a Girl,” Vayu said. She was inside the shell, making electricity in total darkness. “We should go eat her. You get lots of points from strong Girls.”
Vayu ate a lot of other Girls, saving up to pull from the Girls gacha. Youko was helping her, but occasionally she grew anxious, wondering what would happen to her once they found Sensei again. Would Vayu no longer need her? Would she and Sensei go off on their own? That would be very sad. But she told herself that Vayu’s happiness was her happiness. Their time together was a real source of joy. So much better than before; back then she might as well have been dead.
Splat! Spltt! Splsh! The march of death echoed across the savanna. Girls who’d survived for many years found their lives abruptly ending. Ganapati killed about thirty of them on the way to the place Dyaus had found.
Youko thought of train tracks when she saw them up close — tracks running as far as the eye could see. Two white lines stretched aimlessly across the ground. Looking closely, there was a clear pattern. The land was divided into districts, and the rock Girls were assembled in an orderly fashion. What could that mean?
“Oops!”
Youko stubbed a toe on something. She looked down, and saw a round, translucent mineral. A crystal? It seemed to be fastened to the white lines.
What was this? Before she had time to think, she heard a sound.
“Something’s coming! Look out!” Ganapati yelled.
She was right. Youko could see something coming their way. This Girl was big. The overall shape was fish-like, but with pancake-shaped segments assembled to look like one. It was like someone had taken apart a centipede and forced it into the shape of a fish. The head was a half-sphere, like the old-type Shinkansen, with two eyes on the sides and giant lensed eyes. The segments got steadily smaller from the head but widened out again towards the tail. At the rear was a set of nozzles, like an airplane engine.
Below the head was a skirt of boards attached to her, and below the skirt were a number of additional limbs. Two of these gripped the rails, allowing her to rocket towards them.
She had divided her body segments up like the cars in a train. Behind the massive head was a long row of cars. They seemed to be on stilts — two long, thin legs stood on the rails, with rods running between them. From the center of the rod was a bundle of veins wrapped in membrane, connecting it to the segments before and after. There were no wheels; instead, it seemed to be squeezing out a fluid that pulsed through the rails. A number of attachment organs were resting on the shoulders of the stilts. One car had a red accordion-like tube moving up and down. Another had a sponge-like thing swelling and shrinking. There was a car with countless trumpet-shaped organs. And another one with mouths. Lots of different kinds of mouths. Proboscises for sucking blood. Mortars to grind things. Sacs to digest them. Knives to slice and dice...
As she got closer, a wave of unease washed over Youko. When Girls got close, she could usually hear the voices of their souls, whether faint or clear. But this Girl’s voice was bizarre. It didn’t seem like a person’s voice at all. More like it was coming from a thing. It was a noise like a train. “Ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk toot toot!” Like a noise someone convinced they were a train would make.
Ganapati seemed equally spooked, and quickly launched an attack, using the hydrogen Vayu generated to roast the train’s engine with fire.