Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.
…
Seated sidesaddle on her Sky Hokie, Ariel took out her phone, tapped it with her wand – which now resembled a beautiful ivory rod with a rainbow-hued butterfly-shaped jewel at the top and a Hive microprocessor set into the handle – which caused it to freeze in place in midair, then smiled, remembered nobody could see her smile beneath her helmet, then shrugged and kept smiling anyway.
"Hey, Stargazers!" She chirped as she started streaming, addressing her millions of fans around the world. "It's your favorite foxy witch here to tell you that – despite Earth being in the middle of yet ANOTHER alien invasion – seriously, what's up with that? Is there a giant neon sign on the other side of the moon saying "Vacancies" or something like that? – Everything is a-okay, because yours truly is here to help!"
She gestured up and down her body, making sure to pose in such a way as to emphasize her curves and other assets. "As you can see, I've finally taken the next step in becoming a world-class mage by becoming a Sentai like my parents! And yes, I'm sure most of you are wondering, "But Ariel, why aren't you a Magiranger, like the rest of your family?" Well, the simple answer to that is that you don't always get a say in where life takes you, and if a benevolent alien God-Queen sends an emissary to you and asks if you want to be part of a team of amazing insect-themed superheroes to save the world, you don't complain that it's off-brand, you seize the opportunity and make it your own!"
"Ariel, should you really be doing this right now?" Lepidoptera asked from the kitsune's wrist.
"Absolutely," Ariel replied. "People around the world are confused and scared about what's happening right now. The governments, as usual, will be next to useless in comforting them, but as an entertainer and hero it's my duty to assuage everyone's fears and reassure them that the planet is in good hands.
"Additionally, since I'm a performer and entertainer, my magic tends to work better when I've got an audience, and the more people watching, the stronger I'll be."
"Oh," Lepidoptera replied, fluttering her wings briefly, impressed. "That makes quite a lot of sense."
"Also, it's been several weeks since I've updated my social media, and if I don't stay on top of things and provide fresh content, I run the risk of losing my spot as "World's most popular superstar sorceress" to someone else, like that hack Bellatrix Luluna," Ariel snarled venomously, hackles rising at the thought of her archnemesis.
Lepidoptera sighed. "Of course."
Ariel raised her left wrist to display Lepidoptera to her stream. "Also, I'd like you all to meet my new familiar, Lepidoptera! She's a mechanical God that's watched over the citizens of the Hive and served the line of Queens for longer than our planet has existed! Say hi to our fans, Lepidoptera!"
"Greetings," Lepidoptera said, fluttering her wings. "Though I'm not sure 'familiar' is the correct term-"
"Anyway," Ariel interrupted. "We're reporting to you live from Munich, where the first wave of the invaders – a really nasty group called the Infestation Empire Swarm, for those who haven't been paying attention to the news – have touched down and attempted to establish a beachhead so they can bypass the honeycomb barrier protecting the planet and begin infesting the Earth. Thankfully, my friends and I managed to get here in time, and thanks to timely support from the Hive, we've been able to seal the infected area of the city off from the rest of Munich until we've got things under control," she said, tilting her phone upwards, and revealing that a golden honeycomb barrier had formed a dome cutting Englischer Garten and the surrounding blocks off from the rest of the city.
Tilting the screen back to her, Ariel continued. "Now, I'm sure many of you are also wondering, "Ariel, that's well and good, but why are you talking to us instead of fighting with your friends?" Well, who says I can't do both?"
She suddenly thrust her wand to the side, jabbing it into the eye of a flying Funghoul that had been lunging towards her, and chanted, "Magi Magika!", causing its head to explode in a fiery conflagration.
"You see," Ariel explained in between more casts of her fire spell, idly taking out Funghouls swarming around her without even looking. "Aside from getting this awesome new outfit, I've also been linked up to the Buzzing, the Hive version of the Internet, which is actually infinitely better than the Internet in every way. Not only have I been significantly boosted in power – and sexiness," she added, blowing a kiss at her phone. "My situational awareness, reaction time, and all my other attributes have also been boosted," she continued, meaningfully squeezing her bosom. "That, and my ability to see through the eyes of my teammates and any Hive drones or members around me, means I basically have eyes in the back of my head and can multitask like nobody's business!"
"Stop showboating and take this seriously!" The Funghouls all screamed, spitting fungal projectiles at her all at once.
"Jinga Majuna!" Ariel cast, summoning a defensive barrier which the projectiles splattered harmlessly against. "Jii Magiine!"
Her barrier shattered as ice arrows shot out in every direction, piercing the Funghouls in the chest. Most of them were frozen instantly and fell from the sky, where they would shatter against the ground, but Ariel swooped down and grabbed one of them before it could break. "Whoops! Almost forgot Nushi wants one of these intact! Hey, everyone, I'd like to introduce you to this year's Big Bad, Queen Parasitica II! Well, she's not actually here right now because she's a massive coward, but she's able to control all of these Funghouls at once remotely. Trust me, she's much uglier in person."
"Ugly?! You're one to talk, you disgusting mammal!" Parasitica shrieked.
"That's rich coming from someone with a freaking centipede for an eye," Ariel shot back. "And for your information, I am taking this seriously. But by making light of the situation, joking and laughing and acting like I'm having fun, rather than letting on how deeply disgusted I am by you and your army, how deep down I'm afraid that if I don't do everything just right you'll kill me and everyone I love, the viewers will continue thinking of me as the confident and fearless sorceress I've always portrayed myself as and won't be as scared of the very real threat you pose to the planet."
There was a pause. Parasitica blinked. "Did… Did you mean to say all that just now, or…?"
Ariel facepalmed. "Shit. I'm not allowed to lie anymore, am I?"
"No, you aren't," Lepidoptera agreed.
"Exactly how am I supposed to be an entertainer if I can't lie?" Ariel asked.
"Well, it's actually a bit more complex than you'd think at first. While our society prides itself on never lying or keeping secrets, there's actually a bit more subtlety and nuance to it than most outsiders understand, which is why we can still have plays and shows and novels that are all works of fiction without-" Lepidoptera started to explain.
"Hold that thought. Luuma Gonga!" Ariel cast on the frozen Funghoul, which had been shaking so hard in an attempt to break free from the ice it had been starting to tear itself apart, paralyzing it. "Now who's the one doing something they shouldn't in the middle of the battle?" She asked the butterfly in amusement.
Lepidoptera radiated embarrassment.
"So," Ariel said, gently putting the frozen Funghoul on the ground before rising back in the air. "Let's see about helping the rest of our friends, shall we?"
Repositioning her phone, she flew back over to where the rest of the team was engaging the main force of the Funghouls. Several of them tried to break away and rush towards the city streets, but Ariel put a stop to that by swooping overhead, lobbing a number of elemental spells which tore up the ground in explosions that sent the undead beasts flying. "This may come as a surprise to you, but this gorgeous and charismatic vixen is not the leader of our fine team! Rather, it's our even more gorgeous, charismatic, and brilliant genius, Nushi Cheng, who is so smart she figured out how to integrate a Hive microprocessor into human technology all by herself even before being connected to the Buzzing!"
"I don't really think they need to know all that!" Nushi, who was lopping off limbs and heads of the Funghouls attacking her with her sword, a long, thin rapier whose blade rose from a crossguard resembling a ladybug wing shell with a Hive microprocessor sent to the hilt. Some of the Funghouls took to the air and tried bombarding her with projectile attacks from behind, but without even looking she twisted and twirled about, calling upon all of her gymnastics training to curve her body around the fungal spit, allowing them to splatter against the ground or strike the bugs around her.
Unleashing a slash which bisected some of the nearest insects, she pressed a thumb hard into the microprocessor on her blade.
"Buzz! BUZZ! BUZZING CHARGE!"
Her sword started glowing crimson, and with a fierce cry she leapt into the air and swiped her blade through the air, releasing an energy blade which disintegrated the airborne monsters.
"The public deserves to know about the drop-dead beautiful and brainy woman who will lead us to glory and victory, especially the one I'm planning to ask out on a date after this is over!" Ariel replied. "Wait, did I mean to say that?"
"I'd be happy to go out with you!" Nushi cried as she charged up her sword again and thrust it into the ground, releasing an explosion which tore up the ground and flung more Funghouls away. "But right now, I need your magic for a science experiment!"
"Oh, I'm always up for some experimentation," Ariel crooned, raising her wand. "Majuna Majuna!"
And suddenly Nushi disappeared.
Ariel glanced at her phone while casually firing more spells to blast away Funghouls that tried to attack her. "Now, as I'm sure my long-time fans know, that was an invisibility spell. Ariel wanted me to cast that to see whether or not the Funghouls – which is what these monsters are called, incidentally – can see on a different wavelength then most of us mammals do. As to how I know that?"
She tapped her head. "The magic of the Buzzing! Not to be confused with actual magic, of course, the Hive doesn't really have that, though I'm hoping to change it."
The Funghouls tilted their heads, looking somewhat perplexed… Then immediately snarled and continued attacking what appeared to be thin air, parts of their bodies getting sliced through or chopped up by an unseen blade.
"And it looks like we have an answer to that question. I guess invisibility spells won't work on the Funghouls," Ariel remarked in disappointment.
"It was still an important thing to test!" Nushi yelled as Ariel dispelled her invisibility, hooking the leg of a Funghoul to knock it down, driving her sword into its chest hard enough to pierce the ground beneath it, then twirling around the hilt with enough force to knock away the surrounding bugs with her feet. "Imagine if we tried to go on some sort of stealth mission to infiltrate the Swarm flagship and didn't know ahead of time invisibility didn't work! We would be caught instantly and the mission would be a failure!"
"It's always important to field-test new tech before using it against the enemy," Goro agreed, piledriving a Funghoul into the ground hard enough to crack it and splatter its skull open, raising a large blue handgun with mandibles like an ant on the sides of the muzzle and firing several shots wildly around him without even aiming, every energy bullet striking a Funghoul in the head and dropping them. The microprocessor in his helmet allowed him to precisely calculate the trajectory of every bullet he fired to guarantee it struck every target without fail, making him even more deadly a marksman than he already was.
A Funghoul swooped down towards him, shrieking, but he rolled out of the way, aimed his gun, and fired. This time, instead of a bullet, the entire muzzle assemblage launched away from the rest of the weapon, a cable unreeling behind it. The mandibles struck the leg of the Funghoul and dug in, causing it to shriek in pain and surprise. Goro released the trigger, causing the cable to start to retract, lifting him in the air. As he did so, he used the momentum to swing about, clotheslining several Funghouls both on the ground and in the air before finally reaching his grappled monster. It tried to shake him off, but he flipped upwards, wrapped his body around its carapace, and used his body weight to crush its wings.
As they started falling, Goro twisted them about so that the Funghoul was facing the ground and kicked off and back into the air just before it could hit the ground, its fellows immediately scattering out of the way before they can get crushed.
"Buzz! BUZZ! BUZZING CHARGE!"
This did not, however, save them from Goro bombarding them with a rapid-fire rain shower of overcharged energy bullets from his Ariel vantage, killing them all.
"And that blue hunk," Ariel narrated to the phone, shifting her head to the side to dodge an energy bullet which shot past her and blew out the brains of a Funghoul behind her. "Is First Lieutenant Goro Aori of the JSDF. You can look all you want, folks, but you can't touch! Sorry, everybody, but he's taken!"
"Happily married, with children," Goro quipped as he landed and started running and gunning, exchanging fire with the Funghouls. While every shot of theirs missed, every bullet that flew from his gun hit its target precisely, and the one time a Funghoul seemed to dodge him, Nushi suddenly slid by and swung her sword, deflecting the bullet into the back of its skull.
Nushi frowned as the comment section of her stream blew up. "Unfortunately, that makes you even more appealing to some people out there. Doubt your wife is happy about that." She narrowed her eyes. "Oh, wait, she's joined the chat. I was right, she isn't."
Another Funghoul lunged at the seemingly oblivious Ariel, only for a serrated scythe blade to tear out of its chest. "You need to be more careful," Mibojin chided, tearing out the blade and disemboweling the beast. "That one almost got you."
"No, I knew you were there," Ariel said, pointing her wand at the ninja's head and firing. Mibojin immediately ducked, and the spell knocked the head off the Funghoul behind her. "Being able to see through each other's eyes is something I could really get used to."
"You realize that means we're going to be seeing each other in the bathroom, right?" Shin asked, grabbing two Funghouls by the neck and slamming their heads into the ground hard enough to splatter them. "Or doing all sorts of other things?"
"Shin, considering how many things we've seen in each other's minds by now, I'm not sure whether or not I'd even care anymore," Goro commented, taking out two more Funghouls behind the Rider.
"I think your wife would," Ariel commented, eyes still focused on the chat. "I don't think she's too keen about the fact that when you're having sex with her, it'll be shared with us and several million other people."
Goro grimaced. "Yeah, I'm going to need to have a long talk with her about that…"
"Are you seriously talking about this sort of thing right now?!" Parasitica shrieked in indignation as she directed more and more of her minions at the heroes. "Take this seriously, dammit! Your predecessors would never-"
"You don't get to talk about them!" All the Divine Insects shrieked in unison, as did Apista, even though she knew her sister couldn't hear her.
"Also, you're wrong, they did it all the time," Caelifer spoke up.
"It was part of their charm," Lepidoptera agreed, emanating fondness and more than a little sadness.
"Except for the mantises before you, of course," Manti informed Mibojin as the ninja expertly dodged and weaved around every projectile or claw swipe from the Funghouls, allowing her to dart in and tear them open from crotch to sternum with her blades. "They were a bit more reticent."
"As befits a true ninja," Mibojin agreed, just as a claw ripped out of her chest…
Only for her to vanish in a puff of smoke, leaving a straw dummy behind.
"What?!" Parasitica shrieked as the Funghoul looked at the doll its arm was embedded through in confusion. "Where-"
Mibojin reappeared in another puff of smoke in the air above the Funghouls. She removed the blades from her arms and stuck them together, causing them to unfold into a large serrated Shuriken, tapping the microprocessor in the center.
"Buzz! BUZZ! BUZZING CHARGE!"
Her shuriken started crackling with energy, and she flung it downwards, the massive throwing star spinning around in a circle and eviscerating over a dozen Funghouls before returning to her.
"Now that is a trick you will need to be teaching the rest of my clan," Manti told Mibojin in approval.
"And that's Mibojin Kamakiri, the team ninja, because everything is better with ninjas!" Ariel exclaimed. "She's really good at killing things. Like, scary good. She kind of terrifies me, but also turns me on. Is that weird? That's not weird, right?"
"My skills in the deadly arts are something I take great pride in," Mibojin admitted, flinging her Shuriken towards Ariel, who bent over backwards to dodge the weapon, which sliced through a Funghoul behind her and kept going, tearing many more monsters in half. Unarmed, but not even remotely helpless, Mibojin proceeded to lay into the Funghouls closest to her with a series of powerful blows and kicks evocative of mantis-style martial arts, crippling appendages, cracking shells, tearing wings, and when her Shuriken made a full circle and swept back towards her, it easily shredded through the weakened Funghouls and returned to her hand.
"And don't forget about me!" Shin called as he grabbed a Funghoul by the head and ripped it out of its body single-handed, trailing viscera, before hurling it at a flying Funghoul hard enough to knock it out of the air. At least half a dozen Funghouls leapt onto him from behind, clawing and biting, but he didn't even seem to notice, dragging them along behind him as if they were no lighter than silk.
"And how could anyone forget about Shin, our resident Kamen Rider?" Ariel cooed, sending a wave of affection towards the Rider. "And yes, I know it's strange for a Kamen Rider to be a Super Sentai, but like I said before, you can't always tell where life will take you."
"And right now, it's taken me back to the field of battle!" Shin roared as he fell over backwards with enough force to smash the Funghouls on his back against the ground. Roaring, eyes glowing, his claws and spines extended and rubbed against each other with a noise akin to a discordant grasshopper's song before rushing towards the nearest group of enemies, frenziedly swinging his limbs about in chaotic, brutal chops and kicks, gruesomely disfiguring and decapitating his adversaries.
Four Funghouls leapt towards Shin from the sides, grabbing him by the wrists and ankles. He snarled and hurled them off, but in the interim, four more monsters dashed past, lashing out with their claws and cutting off his spines. He looked at the ground as the dismembered natural weapons clattered to the ground, Parasitica's laugh echoing from many mouths…
And Shin flexed, his spines regenerating instantly and shutting up the startled despot. Laughing madly, he grabbed the broken spines on the ground, clutching a dozen or so in each hand, and charged back into the fray, stabbing the repurposed weapons into the bodies of the Funghouls with enough force to tear right through them and stake them into the ground. Several of the Funghouls took to the air in a desperate attempt to escape, but Shin casually flung his spines at the fleeing insects, each one burying themselves in the square of their backs and causing them to drop from the skies.
Only one Funghoul remained, and Ariel prepared to fly after it…
Only for Shin to crouch low to the ground, the coils on the backs of his legs compressing. With an animalistic shout, he sprang into the air with enough force to crater the ground beneath him, rapidly rising towards the fleeing Funghoul. The creature managed to dodge before Shin could crash into it, but the Rider used his momentum to come about in a roundhouse kick strong enough to tear its head from its shoulders as he passed. "Nobody can out-jump a Kamen Rider!" He bragged.
"Ariel, I have another test subject!" Nushi called, nimbly bobbing and weaving around the attacks of a single Funghoul, who seemed to be getting increasingly frustrated that she wouldn't stand still and let it hit her already.
Ariel pouted. "What's wrong with the other one? I practically giftwrapped it for you!"
"… Where did these ribbons come from?" Parasitica pondered through the mouth of the Funghoul Ariel had frozen in a block of ice, which was covered in ribbons and had a nice bow on top.
"An intact, living – in a manner of speaking – test subject is ideal, true," Nushi agreed, ducking to avoid a claw swipe which would have ripped off the face of a lesser being. "But it's always important to gather multiple samples for the sake of comparison. A paralysis spell, please?"
"On it!" Ariel chirped, rising back into the air. "Luuma Gonga!"
And suddenly, the Funghoul Nushi was battling stiffened, frozen in place. (Not literally frozen, as in encased in a block of ice, but you know what I mean.) "Thanks!" Nushi called, producing a plastic bag. Using the edge of her sword, she carefully scraped off some of the fungus growing on one of the Funghoul's arms and dropped it into the bag. She watched with interest as the fungus wriggled and tried crawling up the sides of the bag to escape, but to no avail. "Intriguing," she murmured as she labeled the bag with a marker. "Let's see if fungus from a different part of the body differs…"
"Stop that!" Parasitica shrieked through another Funghoul, lunging at Nushi from behind, only for it to get shoulder-checked by Goro, who slammed to the ground, drove his gun into its mouth, and blew its brains out.
"Thanks," Nushi called absentmindedly without looking back, finishing putting fungus samples in another bag. "Ooh, this looks interesting," she remarked, plucking a centipede from one of the holes in the Funghoul's body. "Now, why weren't you affected by the paralysis spell?" She wondered as the arthropod angrily wriggled in her grasp and tried to bite her. She narrowed her eyes, her microprocessor combined with her connection to the Buzzing and her enhanced senses allowing her to see the tiniest details of its body as clearly as if she were looking at them under a microscope, multiple scans of the creature's various properties running in the background. "Did the spell consider the Funghoul a single organism, and you something else? Just what is the relationship between you things, the fungus, and the host body? Symbiotic? Parasitic? Something else altogether? I look forward to finding out."
"Are you seriously conducting a scientific experiment in the middle of battle?!" Parasitica screamed incredulously as another half dozen Funghouls divebombed Nushi from the air.
In puffs of smoke, Mibojin and five identical clones appeared between them and Nushi. Much to the ninja's surprise, the Funghouls completely ignored her doubles and went right for her. "Nushi, they weren't fooled by my doppelgänger trick!" She shouted to her leader as she tore into the monsters with her blades.
"And yet your substitution trick did fool them…" Nushi murmured, stroking her chin in thought. "I wonder why… We know they aren't fooled by invisibility. Maybe they were deceived by your doll, because there was actually a solid object under the illusion, while your clones lacked true substance? This requires more testing. I'd better take an eye."
She raised her sword, and very, very carefully moved it towards her captive Funghoul's eye.
"You're insane!" A shocked Parasitica cried in disbelief as Nushi did something which Ariel quickly covered her camera to avoid inflicting her followers with.
"Says the lady who tried to murder her sister, created a daughter for herself out of the stitched up parts of her unborn nieces, and shoved a centipedein her eye socket!" Shin bellowed, grabbing another Funghoul that had been about to attack a seemingly oblivious Nushi and ripping it in half with his bare claws.
"Why did you do that, anyway?" Nushi wondered, using a Q-tip to swab the inside of the Funghoul's mouth. "It's certainly an incredibly unsettling effect, but does it have any practical purpose? Does it allow your brain to more easily connect to the rest of the Swarm through your own version of the Buzzing? Do you have a name for that, by the way?" She gasped, struck by a sudden idea. "Ooh! Or maybe the centipede is the true mastermind, and you're just another puppet-"
"That is none of your business!" A flying Funghoul shrieked, spitting a projectile at the back of Nushi's head.
"Jinga Majuna!"
A shimmering barrier materialized behind Nushi, blocking the projectile. Parasitica shrieked in frustration as Ariel incinerated the Funghoul.
"I think you might be onto something there, lovebug," Ariel remarked, swooping by and lobbing magical bombs at the Funghouls. "She got a bit defensive there, didn't she?"
"I doubt it's really the case," Ariel admitted, sealing up the last of her plastic bags. "But I need to actually check the centipedes to know for sure… Wait, lovebug?"
"Trying out pet names," Ariel explained, taking another Funghoul. "Is that all right? Are we moving too fast?"
"I'm honestly not sure," Nushi admitted. "We don't exactly have an Earth-conventional relationship, but we're sort of working on Hive mores now. Let's just take it as it goes. Oh, also, I think I got all the samples I need, so let's finish up here."
"You're just as crazy as your predecessors!" Parasitica howled, infuriated.
"We'll take that as a compliment!" Shin replied, ripping off the arm of a Funghoul and beating it to death with it.
"And you will all die, just as they did!" Parasitica roared, as all the Funghouls stopped attacking, froze in place, and started twitching wildly.
Mibojin, who had been about to decapitate another Funghoul, hesitated. "What are they doing?"
"Their body temperature is rising fast," Nushi remarked in concern, reading the data being fed directly into his brain by the microprocessor in his helmet.
Goro's eyes widened in alarm, his realization immediately flying to everyone else's minds. "Ariel-"
Ariel swooped down, wand sparkling. "Goolu Lujuna!"
All of the Funghouls exploded simultaneously, obliterating a significant chunk of the park in a tremendous conflagration which shook the city.
Smoke rose from a smoldering, glassy crater dozens of meters wide. The Bugrangers, standing just at the edge of the crater, shaken but completely unharmed, stared at the destruction wordlessly.
"That," Mibojin said after a moment. "Was altogether too close."
"Good job with that teleportation spell," Nushi thanked the sorceress.
Ariel nodded grimly. "I almost went with a barrier spell, but decided that the safest place for us to be might not be in the middle of a huge explosion."
"A wise decision," Lepidoptera agreed. "Your suits would have protected you from most of the damage, but… You would have been severely injured, which is not something we can afford right now."
"Suicide bombers," Shin said slowly, shaking his head in disbelief. "She can turn her minions into suicide bombers."
Goro trembled with rage, memories of far too many people willing to blow themselves up for a "glorious cause" flashing through his mind, and everyone else's. "Parasitica has to die. We cannot allow someone like her to continue breathing."
Apista sighed. I dearly wish you weren't correct.
"At least they were just mindless drones, not people," Ariel reassured the soldier.
"Are we certain of that?" Mibojin wondered. "Are we certain that they were not being mind controlled by her into doing her bidding?"
They all considered that for a moment. Some of the Funghouls they'd killed were humans, or had once been. "I… Really hope not," Shin said hesitantly. "I've killed people before, loads of them, but… They've never been mind controlled." He frowned. "At least… I hope they weren't…"
"Your Majesty? Is that possible?" Nushi asked Apista anxiously.
I do not believe so, Apista replied. When the previous Parasitica was killed during the last war with the Swarm, all of the infected immediately degenerated into mindless beasts. While she seems to be using a new strain of the fungus, the behavior of the Funghouls you just defeated seems similar to the rank-and-file used before.
"That doesn't mean it's completely out of the realm of possibility, though," Nushi pointed out. "We need further data to be certain-"
Ariel gasped. "Wait! The Funghoul I froze!"
Everyone whirled around…
And sighed in relief when they saw the frozen Funghoul was still intact. "Thank goodness," Nushi said in relief. "The paralysis spell combined with the ice must have inhibited whatever biological trigger she used to blow up the others. You should probably recast the spells just to be safe, though."
"If she can remote-detonate any soldier she wants, what's to stop her from blowing this one up while you're examining it?" Goro questioned as Ariel recast her spells.
"We'll figure that out when we come to it," Nushi replied as she checked the samples she'd taken, and was relieved to see that they hadn't self-destructed as well. "Right now, we need to figure out what to do with the rest of the fungus."
"I recommend fire, and lots of it," Shin suggested. "Alternatively, a tremendous amount of athlete's foot powder."
"I can actually get us a good deal on some powder in bulk," Ariel remarked, satisfied that the Funghoul was still in stasis and wasn't going to explode anytime soon. "Part of an advertising deal from a while back. Long story… Which I guess all of you know since you've been in my mind."
Fire should work, Apista offered. There's also certain chemical solutions that have proven effective in the past. Granted, we don't know if they'll work against this strain, but…
"Now that we've contained the initial outbreak, we should have some time to figure out a permanent solution," Nushi resolved. She tapped the microprocessor on her forehead. "I've already started processing the data I've collected. While it won't yield as much information as in-depth analysis in a laboratory setting, my preliminary findings indicate that what we need to do is-"
Alarm blared throughout the Buzzing. Immediately, all of them found themselves seeing through the eyes of the drones forming the barrier around the park. The meteorite that had started all this was rocking about in the center of the corruption it had generated, pulsating and cracking ominously.
"What the hell?" Shin murmured.
"Is it about to explode?" Mibojin wondered in concern.
Goro shook his head as he reviewed the data streaming through his mind from the drone's sensors. "No, its temperature isn't spiking… It's almost like… There's something moving inside!"
Mibojin shot a look at Ariel. "I thought you said your spell should prevent the Swarm from sending any more troops through the fungus!"
"It should!" Ariel insisted, going pale beneath her helmet. "But… It wouldn't stop something that's already here!"
With a tremendous crash, the meteor shattered as a monstrous figure erupted from within, arcing through the air before crashing down before the team hard enough to crater the ground, slime splattering everywhere from the point of impact. This new creature was no Funghoul, but something far more dangerous; it resembled a humanoid snail, its limbs and body stretchy, flexible, and with no visible joints, its hands and feet swollen protrusions with spikes jutting from the sides. A pair of cannons resembling necrotic insects were clamped around its wrists – or were they necrotic insects resembling cannons? – With centipede-like cables – or centipedes that were cables? – Growing from their rears and vanishing into the large snail shell mounted on the creature's back, which was covered in fungus and spikes. More centipedes wrapped around its limbs and chest. It had a pair of long stalks growing from where its head would've been ending in black, beady eyes, and a circular mouth filled with gnashing fangs, scheming saliva dripping down his chest. Its whole body was covered in a slick, foul-smelling coat of slime.
Parasitica laughed through the snail creature's mouth. "So you survived my Funghouls… Good. I never really thought they had a chance of stopping you, anyway. They merely served as a distraction to allow my dear Fungal Beast to finish gestating! Allow me to introduce you to Shellslimer, the instrument of your demise!"
The creature bellowed and fired its cannons into the air, launching globules of slime which splattered down all over the place, coating the ground in ooze.
Ariel glanced at her phone. "Looks like we're up against our first monster of the week, Stargazers! This should be interesting."
"Are you STILL doing that?!" An incredulous Parasitica shrieked.
"Yes."
"Okay, I'm killing you first."