21. korova of snow and ash

The prion was, as Aoko had described, a floating black ball that had no mouth to scream with. Whenever somebody moved, it glanced at them with a disturbingly human-looking eye, but did not respond otherwise.

Hisui said, “It’s kind of cute.”

“It must be killed,” was Yukimura’s response.

“But why? What if it wants to be our friend?”

“You fool! Within that creature dwells naught but darkness, which, uh… what I mean is that it’s literally not even alive. You study a lot, Sakura. Surely you know what prions are.”

Aoko stared at the prion. I expected her to plead for the creature’s life, but instead, she stayed quiet.

“They’re misfolded proteins, so no DNA, no RNA, none of that. And before any of you say ‘that’s what they are in the real world, but not this one’, prions cause mad cow disease. And what’s the Russian word for cow again? Yeah, that’s right! Korova.” He adjusted his scarf, eyes closed, as Usami69 took over. “Oh, how the truth hurts; our quest is naught but a ruse. We reside not in a land of wonder, but the encephalon of a soon-to-be burger.”

Would anyone be angry if I tossed Yukimura at the prion to see what happened? No, right?

“I accept fate not with resignation, but dignity, for it is ultimately my choice; if protecting a bovine’s last thoughts is what has become of Usami the Great, then Usami the Great shall honor destiny… for now. Comrades, let us—gyah!”

The prion’s pupil turned orange a second before it shot a laser beam at Yukimura. Sadly, he didn’t die, because Aoko summoned a shield in time. Yukimura Isami Usami69 the Great had done the impossible: piss off something that wasn’t even alive.

The prion’s eye widened as spikes burst out of its gelatinous, black body, tearing through trees as though they were paper. However, as they hit Aoko’s blue shields, they bounced. “Idiot idiot idiot!” Aoko snapped. “You made it angry!”

We huddled behind her. Looking at the shield from within, it almost looked like a bubble. Aoko flinched as the prion shot another laser, which made the water shield wobble. Vapor hissed around us. “I-I didn’t know it could get angry,” was Yukimura’s response. “Now what?”

“I don’t—” She grimaced as spike after spike rammed against the shield-bubble. “This one is a lot smaller, but a lot more aggressive… Sakura, can you, I don’t know, shroombeam it?”

“Tama is scared,” was Hisui’s response.

“Who?”

“Tama.”

“Sakura’s mushroom,” Yukimura clarified.

“W-what?”

“Not that type of mushroom.”

“Isami, not now!”

“I’m just clarifying!”

“I can try asking Pochi,” Hisui said, “but he’s a lot more bloodthirsty.”

Before anyone asked the obvious question (Who?) a familiar, blue mushroom burst from the ground, exploding on contact as it hit the prion. As it wobbled, several spikes shattered, then fell. They didn’t dissolve as the branch had yesterday.

The prion glanced at Pochi’s remnants as they, too, fell, but it didn’t react otherwise. It watched Pochi’s remains glow as it reassembled itself.

Part of Aoko’s shield froze. She scowled at Yukimura, who mumbled, “Let me see something,” before he tore the ice chunk off our one and only layer of protection, only to hurl it a good five meters away from the prion. Very nice, amazing.

The prion’s gaze now followed the ice spike. As it landed with a thud, the prion stared, and stared, and stared. “Now you embarrassed it,” Aoko said.

“No, you—nincompoop. I wasn’t trying to hit it. One of the last things to stop responding when a patient has Creutzfeld-Jakob… uh, mad cow disease are the eyes. The lights are on, but nobody’s there, if you get it.”

“Oh,” Hisui mumbled.

Unlike Hisui or Aoko, who nodded, I did not, in fact, get it. So this thing was a prion causing croissant Jacob disease, which…? Something about Russian burgers…

“Hey, Ishida,” Yukimura said. “Hisui’s gonna distract it by thrusting her mushroom—”

“Isami.”

“—around its field of vision. You attack. Go. I give treat after.”

I asked Aoko, “Can you make a smaller shield?”

To which she replied, “You don’t have to listen to Isami’s…” but then she seemed to think it through. If Hisui’s explosive mushrooms weren’t strong enough to damage it and Yukimura was essentially dead weight, then I was the only option left, however flimsy. “...I can try, but… are you sure? Those spikes shredded the foliage. If one of them hits you…”

I shrugged.

“See, he doesn’t care,” Yukimura said. “Lights are on but nobody’s there.”

Little did he know that his jabs served a purpose beyond self-gratification, for I thought that if I was strong enough, I’d be able to throw him as bait, and since I thought that, I was strong enough to grab and hurl him like a javelin.

As Yukimura flew across the clearing, screaming, the prion’s eerie eye focused on him. A spike burst towards him, then two, but a second bubble formed around him before he could die. By the time Aoko could say, “Ishida, what is wrong with—!?” I was off.

Yukimura’s insult getting to me was arguably worse than the comment itself. I was very, VERY well-aware of how I came across to everyone else…

…anyway.

There was someone inside that thing. Lest I commit PK again, I’d have to be careful. Moments before Yukimura hit the ground, a mushroom burst from the white grass to cushion the fall. However, since the shield was essentially a bubble with exceedingly strong surface tension, he just bounced off it, holding onto his scarf for dear life and screaming things that would get censored anywhere on the surface web.

As the prion shot a laser at him, I ran out of Aoko’s main shield, took a fallen spike, then aimed it at the monster’s eye; I did not expect a spike to burst from its body without it even looking at me. Granted, it missed, but I barely dodged the second one. By the third, a bubble-shield appeared, but the spike sliced through it anyway. The more shields Aoko created at once, the less effective they became, apparently.

“Maybe we have to distract it more,” Hisui said, in her usual brand of sensible nonsense. “Pochi!”

An explosive blue mushroom burst from the ground just millimeters away from me.

“W-wait, not him! What are you doing!?”

But Pochi was out for blood—anyone’s.

Strangely, I wasn’t afraid. No one and nothing mattered at the moment. If I could be just a little faster and just a little stronger, then maybe…

…no.

The last thing I wanted was another Tissu incident. If there was someone inside that monster—if what I saw with my monster eyes was a silhouette and not a hallucination—then I couldn’t seriously harm it, or I’d hurt the person as well. Easier said than done, though: while figuring out how to beat this thing, I had to dodge flying needles from one monster, and bombs from a mushroom gone rogue.

Aoko’s shields helped, but with every laser beam vaporizing their surface, they seemed to grow thinner. Yukimura, still trapped in a bubble, kept bouncing all over the field while needle projectiles failed to hit him.

…what a disaster…

And as if on cue, Hisui ran out of the shield, to Aoko’s chagrin; now she had to create and maintain four bubbles at once. “Pochi, no!” Hisui scolded. “Bad! St—AHH!”

Pochi rebelliously tried to explode her. Good to know that mushrooms had personalities and could understand Japanese.

…whatever.

I’d already killed someone anyway—two people, according to rumors. A third one didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Besides, they’d respawn.

And so would I.

In an act of valiant selflessness, Tama the mushroom overcame its fear, bursting from the ground to slam into the prion, which jiggled, then vaporized Tama.

“NO!” That was Hisui.

Its sacrifice would not be forgotten. If a sentient mushroom could achieve self-actualization mid-battle, so could I.

This was it.

New world new Ishida.

Finally, I reached ground zero and jabbed a needle into the prion’s eye… only for it to catch it by closing its eyelids.

“Ah,” was my response.

It vaporized me.

Well, almost: Tama burst from the ground to intercept the laser beam, dying again. Tama was the angel, Pochi the devil. Aoko’s bubble-shield became the second line of defense, though now that the prion shot lasers and needles at it, it whittled away through vapor and droplets.

So… if neither exploding mushrooms nor makeshift weapons affected a prion, then what could? Magic? Only magic?

Hisui was the closest thing we had to an offensive mage, while Aoko was a tank and Yukimura and I useless pieces of shit. Therefore…

Therefore… was it impossible to win?

If we couldn’t even beat this thing, then how would we be able to handle anything else?

Was it my fault?

It was a stupid thought, but I couldn’t get rid of it.

Had I chosen ‘’god’ or ‘beetle’ instead of ‘neither’, would I have been able to use magic?

Would I have a better class?

Would I finally belong?

An ice spear split the prion in half.

Just like that, an instant later, the monster turned into ash; a girl our age lay on its remains, unconscious. The spear hadn’t even grazed her.

Yukimura landed next to me. The bubble-shield popped, so he got hurt, which gave me immense happiness amidst despair. Upon spitting out white grass, he sat up, then smirked at me. “See what? Usami the—”

“Are you guys okay!?”

“—the… ugh.”

Neither Aoko nor Hisui ran over to us, but some girl I quickly recognized as the No.1 Snow Fairy from yesterday. In other words: the one that’d actually saved us. I felt like slamming Yukimura’s face into the ground again. While she approached us, the No.1 Flame Fairy and the rest of their squad went to check on Aoko and Hisui. “Oh, good,” said the snow fairy. “I was so worried…”

And I was so disappointed…

:—<> —:

While the all-star squad gloated, us failures were silent, and by that I meant Hisui, Yukimura and I. Aoko was surrounded by fellow elite.

With that said, she didn’t look particularly comfortable.

We sat around a purple campfire for lunch. Hisui stared at her skewer, idly waving it around. Yukimura’s eyes were fixed on the elite. “They’re convincing her to join them,” he said.

I didn’t reply. He wasn’t talking to me, anyway.

“I’ll just tell her to say yes.”

I nibbled on a piece of mystery pastry.

“I’ll try living a slow life. You two should join me. Ishida can be the dog and Sakura can be the illegal substance farmer.”

“Woof,” I mumbled.

“...yeah. See? See?”

Tissu was nowhere to be seen. Understandable.

“Kidding. This world is dead. I’d propose becoming bandits, but we’re too useless for that. I’ll try selling my body and marrying a rich pervert. Then I’ll suffocate her in her sleep. I’ll invent Feudalism and slavery.”

How aspirational.

“That’s not nice,” Hisui mumbled.

“You know what else isn’t nice? Going to another world, only to have the same issues.”

“Sorry…”

“You should be. I’m missing Tabletop Thursday for this shit.”

“I-I just thought… I don’t know… I didn’t think it’d be like this.” Hisui sniffled.

Yukimura, ever the gentleman, said, “Cry if you must.”

“I will.”

“Don’t,” I said, because I was also a dipshit. Nothing unnerved me more than people crying next to me. Someone else might’ve comforted her, seen the positive side, given an inspirational speech, but alas: I was stuck being myself, and so were these two.

Yukimura leered at me. “Ishida. Follow me. I need to speak to you, man to man.”

“No. Fuck you.”

“I mean, if you insist… hey, Sakura, do you like BL?”

While she nodded, sniveling, I scrambled up. Yukimura pointed at the other side of the clearing, and I obliged, ready to choke him with his scarf if he tried anything funny. Other parties continued to celebrate their success. Aoko waved at us, but Yukimura turned his head away from her. Petty.

Once we’d reached the BL spot, he asked, “Ishida, are you stupid? Do you ever have any thoughts? Ever?”

I shook my head.

“I’m serious.”

“Dogs don’t think.”

Yukimura sucked his teeth. “Sakura’s right there, crying, alone. Surely, even someone like you can see that flag.”

I shrugged.

“What does that even mean?”

It meant what it meant. As I turned to leave, Yukimura gripped my shoulder. Whichever look I gave him caused him to flinch, then retreat. By this point, it was obvious that he’d tried to set up some sort of romantic scenario because he still believed that this world was a game.

“Fine,” he mumbled. Just when I thought that he’d finally drop the act, Yukimura dramatically adjusted his scarf. “Then I guess I’ll ask her out.”

“Do whatever you want.”

“...dude.”

For better or worse, Aoko approached us with an uneasy smile and a wave. “There, there, you two. Isami, stop bullying him.”

“I’m not,” Yukimura replied. “I was trying to set up a flag for him and he ruined it. See? Sakura’s alone and crying.”

“Isami…” Aoko trailed off. “People aren’t…”

“Spare me the lecture. I give up. You’re all stupid. From now on, Usami the Great shall…” Yukimura sighed. “I’ll find something to read at the Igasu village.”

He talked to one of the supervisors there, some Igasu with a mohawk, who nodded before hopping off into the distance.

[YUKIMURA ISAMI] left the party.

Aoko fidgeted. “I won’t leave you guys,” she told his ghost. “I know what I said earlier, but I don’t think we’re… weak. Disorganized, maybe.” When I didn’t reply, she added, “Let’s go comfort Hisui, unless you want to—”