They were standing before the town hall.
Upon closer inspection, the place looked completely abandoned.
The windows and doors were boarded up, and there was dust on the stairs leading up to it.
Nobody had been in there for quite some time.
“So we just need to grab the mushroom from in there, and then we’re done?
Sounds easy, why’d you say you needed me for this?” Thalia questions, giving Astra a suspicious glare.
“Oh, it’s because when they did a study on the reproduction of Cordyceps Agape with Beings as the main focus, something unique happened-!” Rubio is cut off when Thalia heaves a deep sigh.
“Please, can you get to the point faster?
I highly doubt we have all day.” She quips.
Rubio glares, but opens his mouth to continue, but before he can, Astra places a hand on his shoulder and shakes his head lightly.
“Let her figure it out on her own.” He grins.
“What?
No!
C’mon, tell me!” She demands.
Rubio’s eyes shift between the two.
“Fine, let’s go in.” He sighs.
Astra flashes a smirk at Thalia, taking great pleasure in her outraged expression.
“You’re such a prick.” She grumbles, but she still walks up to the door, bracing her shoulder against it and throwing it open.
“No, but seriously, what exactly are we going to find in here?” She asks, turning around to face them.
Behind her, something reaches out from within the darkness.
Astra’s eyes widen, but before either of them can warn her, it wraps around her middle, pulling her into the darkness with a cut-off scream.
“…”
“Okay, maybe we should’ve told her,” Astra admits sheepishly.
“You think!?
I can’t believe I agreed to this.” Rubio facepalms.
“Just think of it as revenge for every time she cut off one of your rants.” Astra shrugs.
“You don’t listen to them either!” He points out.
Their argument is interrupted by another scream.
“Oh crap, we need to get in there!” Rubio frets and dashes into the building.
Astra is quick to follow behind.
For a split second, he can’t see anything.
The difference between the afternoon sunshine and the darkness of a boarded-up building shocks his eyes.
But once that clears, he’s met with quite the sight.
It was a giant mushroom with dozens of tentacle-like things flying about the room.
The town hall itself was a huge building.
It was rectangular with two stories, though the second story was more of a viewing platform: a narrow walkway with a railing and a gap in the middle so the first floor could see the roof.
The mushroom was sitting right in the middle.
The floor below it was torn up from where its tentacles were coming out of the ground.
The mushroom body was a pale fleshy color, and its cap was a bright pink with glowing green spots, the only bit of light in the room outside of whatever was coming in from the door.
Thalia was hanging upside down, beating at the tentacle with her free hand.
Rubio was on the floor, a sword in his hand as he hacked at the tentacle that had wrapped around his ankle.
Astra felt it a second before he saw it.
The wind whipped around him as a tentacle flew toward his middle, attempting to fling him back outside the town hall.
He lifted one leg, catching it in his talons.
He grunted as, despite digging his other leg into the ground, it still pushed him back a bit, leaving deep scratches in the wooden floor.
Instead of letting the tentacle go, however, he pulled on it, ripping it straight out of the mushroom with a heaving gasp.
The mushroom didn’t scream or anything; how could it?
It’s a mushroom.
But the rest of its tentacles did flail around a bit, destroying parts of the room.
“Agggh!
Why did you have to anger it!?” Thalia’s voice was choppy as she was swung this way and that.
“What even is this thing!?” She screamed out.
“Well, what I was trying to explain outside.
Was that something unique happened when they used two Beings for the study.
With other small animals or even bugs, the mushroom usually came out the same size, around the size of other mushrooms you’d see.
Sometimes, though rarely, they would grow to the size of the animal it fused from.
But in the case of Beings, the mushroom grew to be quite large.
And with its built-in defense mechanism, it could become quite the foe.” Rubio explains, finally cutting the mushroom away from his leg.
“Wait, these tentacles are normal?!
I thought it was some mutated mushroom monster!” She manages to punch through the tentacle at last, flipping in the air to land squarely on her feet.
“It uses them to strangle approaching animals that might want to eat it.
It then feeds off their corpses as a decomposer.” Rubio states gleefully.
“You sound way too happy; you’ve been waiting to rant like that for a while, huh?” Thalia says, giving him a lopsided grin.
“Ahem…I have been alone for quite a while.” He admits, ears reddening.
“Look, I’m sorry for cutting you off so much; I’ll try not to do that.” She apologizes sheepishly.
“Thank you.
I should try and make my explanations simpler as well; sometimes I forget not everyone knows the same things.” Rubio replies.
“Is this really the time?!” Astra screeches, dodging another hit from a tentacle by flying into the air.
While those two were chattering, he’d been fighting off the damn mushroom all on his own.
That second of distraction, though, proves to be his doom, as a tentacle whacks him out of the air and into the ground.
“Ugh.” He groans, coughing a bit as he inhales dust stirred up from his fall.
He chokes on his next cough, though, when a tentacle wraps around his throat, pulling him all the way around and dragging him backward, all while it tightens around his neck.
“Urk…kh!
Help!” He manages to rasp out.
That finally snaps the two out of whatever conversation they were having, and they rush over.
Thalia grabs the tentacle, stopping it in place as Rubio begins cutting into it with his sword.
He’s going too slow though, and Astra can see spots in his vision as his air supply dwindles.
“Faster.” He gasps out, using the last of his oxygen.
Right at that moment, Thalia’s grip slips and the tentacle pulls hard and fast; it slides right over Rubio’s sword, cutting it cleanly in two and freeing Astra from its grasp.
“Huff…hufff…thanks…for…nothing.” He heaves out.
“You’re welcome.” They shoot back sarcastically.
“How do we defeat something like that anyway?” Astra questions once he’s recovered enough.
“You need to get rid of all the tentacles; then it’ll be defenseless, and we can rip it out of the ground,” Rubio answers.
Astra frowns in distaste; there are still five tentacles left.
The three damaged ones and two full ones.
“Right then, Thalia and I will take one damaged one and one healthy one.
Rubio, you deal with the last one.” They both nod and take their positions.
Astra decides to go for the healthy one first; it’s better to deal with the harder one when he isn’t as exhausted.
He dodges past the damaged one, whipping straight for his head, and approaches the healthy one at the base.
He digs his talons into it, ripping it from the base with a heave.
The damaged one goes in for another attack, but he lets it slide past him, then uses its own momentum to rip it out as well.
There, that wasn’t too bad.
It was just a mushroom, after all.
However, when he turns around, he finds Rubio dangling upside down by the leg, and Thalia wrestling with a tentacle, glass embedded in her skin.
“What happened?!” He questions, absolutely flabbergasted.
“I uhm, tripped,” Rubio admits embarrassedly.
“I managed to rip one off, but the other tentacle smacked into the damn thing, and it flew into a window, smashing glass all over me.” Thalia grits out.
“Can you help me?
I think the blood is rushing to my head.” Rubio pleads weakly.
“…Yeah, I got you.” Astra sighs.
He forgoes flying up to Rubio and instead rips the tentacle out by the base; since all the other tentacles are gone or occupied, it’s easy enough.
He catches Rubio as he falls.
“Thanks.” The man says earnestly.
Right at that moment, Thalia rips her own tentacle out with a shout.
“Victory!” She cries out, holding it above her head like a trophy.
“Now, for the main event.” Her eyes travel to the mushroom, and Astra can only gape as she encircles her arms around the massive thing.
His eyes only widen further when it actually begins to move.
It’s slow, but she’s ripping it out of the ground.
“Can I…urgh…have a little…help here!?” She pants out, her face turning green from the effort.
“Oh, yeah,” Astra responds, running over.
He can’t actually help much; his arms are weak compared to his legs, so he tries digging a talon in and lifting that way.
Personally, he doesn’t think it helps much, but they do manage to get the mushroom out of the ground, Thalia tossing it aside a second later.
“Ugh, thank Seas that’s over.” She says, dusting off her hands.
Blood is dripping down her body from where the glass shards rest.
“Now all we have to do is wait for the town to get cured.
Maybe they’ll even give us money or something?” Rubio suggests hopefully.
“Maybe…” Astra responds absentmindedly.
He’s looking into the hole the mushroom left behind; on the floor are some ratty, torn clothes and a book.
What looks to be a diary of some sort.
He jumps down to grab it, and then flies out.
‘The Journal of Anne Rickey’
Is what the title reads.
Hmm…maybe this will come in handy?