Megatruck Drift

  Tires screeching like a banshee, Truck-kun touched down on the stone pathway with formidable force. The arrival shook the earth restless, sending multitudes of rock shatters raining in every direction with a loud pulse. Then, skidding forward with ruthless abandon, the vehicle sped toward the group. In one united jump, they leaped, gliding through the brisk night air double-quick, scattering to every wind before the ice cream truck could scythe them as it crashed into the shrine deck.

  From afar, they observed as he slowly backed away from the gutted building with great fracas, his red taillights casting a ghastly shadow on the looming trees. The whole time, he stayed silent—unnervingly so—undoing the stillness only with his distorted music and mechanical grunts. Then, u-turning to face the torii gate, Truck-kun shined his headlights toward the majestic structure. With an other-worldly sound, the white glare brutally shifted to a bright blue, silhouetting it in Argento colors. Smoke arose from the gate, a little at first, then curtains of it; billowing dark and thick. The smell was that of burned plastic. Something was wrong, but something soon went wronger: bit by bit, it began to disappear; the world. Pixelating in a storm of shattering reality, glitches overtook it, primary red, green, and blue colors stuttered, breaking into jagged fragments; the gate and the smoke dissolving into one unfathomable eldritch horror.

  Standing near the edge of the woods with Debuu-san, Inês watched as the snow globe world broke apart. Cubes of data, some detached, some clustered, protruded from the ether. On the other side of the pathway, next to the shattered shrine deck, Jin and the Yuki-onna remained on guard. Alarmed, the girl scanned all around, looking for Lu. In the end, she found her; she was in a precarious position: having jumped inside the shrine to avoid the collision, her exit was now blocked by Truck-kun.

  “We have to get Lu out of there!” Inês exclaimed in a panic.

  “We will,” Debuu-san assured her.

  As the bug said that, an abyssal, rumbling tremor overtook the ground. It felt like a freight train was rapidly approaching them from deep within the forestland. They averted their gaze, looking back at the maple trees for an instant: the skeletal figures shuddered like running spiders. Before long, some of them began to shift, jumping into the night sky as if pushed away like dirt by a dog burying a bone; and for the first time that night, Truck-kun vocalized, crying out a primal and mechanical roar. From far inside the forest, he received a chorus of responses, ruffled and rapidly approaching, like a pack of wolves answering the call of a wounded member. As they neared, small blue orbs sparked up, travelling two by two. Quickly, the pairs grew exponentially bigger, morphing trees into severed vapors of pixels whenever they passed them. Humming rowdily, they revealed bulky, menacing silhouettes as they neared. And then, rolling in one by one with a deafening tumult, they revealed themselves at last: they were other Truck-kun, a whole swarm of them.

  “Caralho!” exclaimed Inês.

  She leaped away, Debuu-san soaring by her side. From high above, the spectacle was possibly more frightening: headlights glaring streams of glacial blue, the new arrivals gathered around Truck-kun like a royal court. And, in a concerted movement, they lined up, their chrome accents gleaming and their wheels rippling outward with glitches. Then, in a scorned, metallic lament, the trucks began to fold and switch, interlocking and clicking, growing toward the lone, silver moon. It was awe-inspiring and terrorizing. It was brilliant and repulsive.

  At the same time, a gargantuan inferno of red-orange flames suddenly blazed through the shrine. Indeed, Lu had chosen this moment to make her escape, incinerating the place to create an opening through the back. Inês watched her disappear through the roaring fire. The moments of tension that followed seemed unending as Inês couldn't tell where the girl had gone to. That was until she saw Lu jumping out around the corner of the shrine and joining Jin and the Yuki-onna in a flash of colors. The two groups met halfway.

  “What is going on?” asked Jin.

  “I think Truck-kun has decided to put an end to us,” said Debuu-san. “At any cost.”

  With a series of industrial breaths and bright, blue glows, the white megatruck stood vertical for the first time. Frosted wires slithered between its members, connecting the auto parts like an exoskeleton. The glitch swarm stormed inward around its chrome-accented frame, flowing in synchronicity like worker bees to their queen. Parts of the world started to disappear; the torii gate and its billows of smoke, the shrine Truck-kun had eviscerated, and the many trees its clones had cut down en route. Their bulging cubes of information began being sucked into a tempest.

  Having gathered himself, Jin rose his komabue; his face signaling resolve, he blew into it with intent. However, instead of the beautiful, melancholic melody they had come to know, only a buzzing, static noise escaped the instrument. Bewildered, he exchanged a look with the group.

  “I think you're gonna need a bigger flute,” said Lu.

  Unamused, the boy shot her a glower.

  “I don't understand what's happening,” he said, lost.

  “Truck-kun is corrupting the world,” said Debuu-san. “Essentially, he's hacking it to interfere with your powers.”

  "Powers? Plural?" asked Lu. "Does that mean none of us are any good against him now that he's… assembled?

  The bug didn't offer a response. Its expression was hard to read; it seemed to be standing somewhere halfway between frustration and manfulness.

  "He won't be going down without a fight," it continued, its emerald eyes focused on the Goliath. "Of course not."

  Complete and combat ready, the megatruck lowered its head, seemingly scanning the group with its glaring windshield eyes. Then, slowly raising a foot that was the size of a city bus, he made the ground tremble under his shifting weight. Multi-tonal, his thunderous voice resonated forcefully: “Terminating protocol initiated.”