2

“There it is,” said Bisco. “What a crazy-looking place.”

“…Urgh. I don’t like it,” said Milo. “Look, once we get the old man home, we’re leaving, okay?”

Atop an empty hill, the two looked out across the settlement. In its center, they saw six towers stretching up into the night, as if to pierce the clouds. At the base, a high pentagonal wall surrounded the towers, each of which was visually distinct from the others, such as the dazzling beauty of the gold tower, or the flickering flames of the red tower.

These were the Six Towers of Izumo. Shimane’s Mecca.

The wall that surrounded the towers was itself surrounded by another defense: a steep pit, long and deep, that circled all the way around the inner city. The only way across was a single thin bridge, which also appeared to be in use as a guardhouse.

“That checkpoint only opens in the morning,” said Milo. “We’ve got a bit of space around here, so let’s set up camp and get some rest. We’ll have to find somewhere to hide Actagawa, too. We won’t be able to smuggle him inside.”

“Gotcha,” replied Bisco, dropping down from the crab and helping to set up camp. “Hey, old dude! Tomorrow we’re gonna let ya die with yer fam, so just keep on kickin’ till then, okay?”

The old man gave a feeble groan that was either a reply or a cry of pain. It was hard to tell.

“Hey, Milo. Even if we have that guy with us, the guards at the checkpoint aren’t just gonna wave us through. Don’t you think we should disguise ourselves or something?”

“Yes, we should. We’ll dress as women.”

“What?! Again?! You really like that idea!”

“Look, I don’t want to, either, but if anyone catches sight of your scars, our cover’s blown. If we say we want to become nuns, though, they won’t give us a full search, because it’s a holy place and there are harsh punishments for touching women.”

“I know… I just don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.”

“Ah-ha-ha! Besides, who would expect the fearsome Man-Eating Redcap to be dressed in women’s clothing? Hey, maybe you should wear earrings this time. Oh, and eyeshadow, too! Want to try?”

“Why you gotta switch it up every time? Let’s just get it over with!”

After making the beds, Bisco headed over to Actagawa to help the old man down. He went to lift the man’s fragile, rusted body, when…

Ba-dum!

A chill ran down Bisco’s spine and stole his breath. The old man’s eyes were wide open like an owl’s, staring back at him in the darkness.

“Akaboshi,” he said with a crescent-shaped smile across his wrinkled face.

Bisco clicked his tongue. The old man must have heard part of their conversation and learned their true identities. He wasn’t as senile as he appeared. His unending gaze was starting to weird Bisco out, so he picked him up to carry him to bed as quickly as possible.

“Akaboshi. Want. Akaboshi.”

“Yeah, that’s me, Bisco Akaboshi. Don’t say anything at the checkpoint, you hear? There ain’t no point turning me in for the bounty if you’re just gonna die in two days anyway.”

“I want it…”

Bisco laid the old man down in bed. Noticing the lantern by the pillow was out, he called to his partner.

“Milo! The light’s gone dead! Go fetch more firebeetles!”

“How many?”

“Two! …Just wait a bit, Gramps, we’ll get that light back…”

Fwoosh! As he turned back, the old man lunged at him like a coiled-up viper. Bisco instantly sharpened his senses, dodging the attack and retaliating with a roundhouse kick as deadly as a knife blade. The kick snapped off the man’s arm, but he was undeterred and twisted around, slipping through the gap in Bisco’s kick and plunging his other arm into Bisco’s abdomen.

“Graaargh?!”

“Won-sharmd-uleshingha-knew!”

The snake’s eyes gleamed like lightbulbs, and his mouth hung wide open. As he slowly pulled back his arm, he drew out Bisco’s innards, still pulsing and gleaming brilliant and orange like the sun.

“It’S rEaL…!”

“What the hell are you?!”

Quick as a flash, Bisco drew his bow and fired off a glimmer of light that sliced through the night. The old man twisted like a snake once more and dodged it, the shining viscera leaving a neon trail.

Gaboom!

“Ngh…?!”

But Bisco had predicted the old man’s movements. The oystershroom arrow he fired exploded beneath him and launched the old man up into the air. Bisco took aim once more as he fell helplessly.

“You’re the one who struck first!” cried Bisco. His victory assured, he pulled back the bowstring.

…What? It… it’s so heavy…!!

He felt weak. As soon as Bisco noticed something was wrong, “Gblh!” Blood erupted from his mouth like a waterfall, dripping down his chest and forming a puddle at his feet. His arrow fell short, hitting only the old man’s flank and failing to bloom.

“Kha! Kha! Khah-ha-ha-ha-haaaaa!”

The old man laughed even as he fell with a splat to the ground. Bisco dropped to his knees and glared back, but the blood kept coming, now gushing from his mouth.

“I took it! Akaboshi’s stomach! I took it!” jeered the old man, tenderly rubbing Bisco’s glowing organ against his cheek.

At that moment, Bisco finally understood why his body was racked with pain and just what grisly fate had befallen the bandits in their hideout.

“You bastard…! That’s mine, give it back!”

The old man only grinned eerily, raised Bisco’s stomach high above his head, and opened his mouth wide as if to devour it.

Just then, an arrow flew in like a gale and pierced the man’s throat.

“…?! Gblh!”

Once again, the man twisted like a snake and avoided the successive arrows, yanking out the arrow from his neck without a second thought. In his eyes was reflected the blue-haired Mushroom Keeper.

“What have you done to Bisco?!” Milo cried.

As the numbing poison seeped into his throat, the old man decided to retreat and leaped off across the plains like a lightning bolt.

“Watch out, Milo!” yelled Bisco. “He’s not just some old dude!”

“I can see that!” Milo replied. His blue hair rippled like fire as he sprang into the air in pursuit of the old man and leveled his bow for the finishing blow. The arrow punctured the old man’s thigh just as he landed, and with a Gaboom! a blue mushroom burst out of the flesh.

“Nneeeeee!!”

“Next, it’ll be your head! Now, tell me! What did you do to Bisco!”

Clutching his leg in pain, the old man wailed and cried as Milo pulled his bow tighter. Eventually, in a husky voice, he began to laugh.

“Heh. Hee-hee. Hee-hee-hee-hee! Akaboshi… It’s real…”

He took something from Bisco’s body! Is he even human?!

As Milo held his bow tight, beads of sweat danced on his forehead. The old man’s arm had been torn off at the shoulder, his neck pierced, and his body was riddled with rust. Yet he kept moving. Milo wanted to finish him off, but he still held the glowing sphere in his hands. Milo couldn’t fire for fear of damaging it.

“The Man-Eater… Akaboshi… The Rust-Eater… The Rust-Eater’s…stomach…”

“What…?!”

At the word Rust-Eater, Milo faltered. The old man seized that opportunity. He raised the arrow he had pulled from his throat and hurled it toward Bisco.

“No!!” cried Milo, and he darted back and threw himself in the arrow’s path, taking it in the shoulder. The surprising force behind the projectile was enough to knock him off his feet and send him skimming across the ground like a stone on a lake. Even as he slid, he drew his bow and loosed an arrow back toward the old man’s head.

Swsh!

The old man swung his hand like a knife, slicing off his mushroom-riddled leg and springing into the air with the other, dodging Milo’s arrow by a hair’s breadth. Then he let out ringing laughter before dropping off the hill to the rooftops of the town below, leaping across them toward the towers.

“W-what’s up with him…?”

“Milo, hurry! Use the mushroom vaccine!”

Milo swiftly produced a syringe from the pouch at his waist and stabbed it into his own shoulder where the arrow had struck. After a few ragged breaths, he suddenly remembered Bisco’s state and ran over to his partner, who was clutching his gut and staring out into the night.

“Bisco! What happened to you?! T-there’s so much blood!” Milo’s voice trembled as he injected the Rust-Eater cure into Bisco’s neck.

“Ghh… Ghah… I feel a lot better after coughin’ up all that blood. That old guy…he made off with my stomach.”

“Your stomach…? Bisco, what are you talking about?!”

“See for yourself. You’re the doctor,” said Bisco, rolling up his clothes to show Milo his wound. His rippling abdominal muscles had been torn open, creating a fist-sized hole in his stomach. By now the bleeding had stopped, caking the rim in a solid clot of blood and rust, but the organ that should have been inside was completely gone.

“Th-that’s… That’s impossible!” Milo cried. It was exactly the same as with the bandits he’d discovered at the base.

“How does it look?” asked Bisco. “Though I guess I know the answer to that.”

“Your stomach’s gone! How… How did it happen so quickly?”

“Oh, what a shame. I’d finally got some solid grub in there, too.”

“This isn’t the time for jokes, Bisco! How are you still okay?!”

“It’s the Rust-Eater. That’s what’s keepin’ me alive. That injection just now awakened it.”

Bisco was right. After Milo’s injection, golden sparks flew from his body, bathing the surroundings in a luminous glow. His hair shone and flickered as the color gradually returned to his face. Inside his stomach cavity, the spores latched on to the pipes and veins, seemingly attempting to re-create the missing organ, but the swirling rust particles prevented them from doing so. Instead, the Rust-Eater spores clumped together and began breaking down the rust a little at a time.

“It’s tryin’ to regenerate my stomach,” Bisco said. “I’ll see if I can help it along.”

“Wh-what?! Bisco, what are you doing?”

“Grrrrh…!”

Bisco strained and strained, focusing on his stomach. Just then, the golden spores inside his belly surged and began tearing the rust apart.

“Wh-whaaat?! Bisco, you can birth new spores?!”

“Don’t make it sound like I’m some kinda weird mushroom man. Just watch.”

As the glittering spores engulfed him, Bisco relaxed. Just then…

Crack!

“Gwah! Wh-what?!”

There was a violent ripping sound as the magnificent stem of a Rust-Eater burst through Bisco’s back. It was followed by a second and a third. From his arms, his sides, all across his body, the Rust-Eaters blossomed, tearing holes in his flesh.

“Bisco! Stop them! Stop the spores!”

“Rrrgh! I’m tryin’! Shut up!”

Milo swiftly retrieved the mushroom vaccine from his pouch and thrust it into Bisco’s neck. As the liquid flowed into Bisco’s veins, the Rust-Eater spores slowed down and gradually settled.

“Whoa… That was crazy. I mean, some tiny mushrooms have been poppin’ up here and there, but that’s never happened before.”

“…Maybe it ate so much rust, it went amok…!” Milo racked his brains trying to think of how to help Bisco as he pruned off the mushrooms with his knife. Sweat dripped from his brow. “I never expected your regeneration to backfire like that. If we don’t do something about it…” Milo’s pale face grew even whiter as he muttered to himself.

“Hey, quit your mumblin’ and explain it so I can understand,” said Bisco. “It ain’t gonna reflect well on the world-renowned Dr. Panda if he’s more panicked than his patient!”

Bisco seemed unflappable while Milo drew closer and, in a shaky voice, tried to put his thoughts together.

“Bisco,” he began. “Right now, you have no stomach. Instead, there’s just a concentrated lump of rust, which the Rust-Eater spores are feeding on.”

“Then what’s the problem?” asked Bisco. “Just leave it. The Rust-Eater’ll take care of it all, won’t it?”

“That’s exactly the problem!” Milo cried as he shook Bisco by the shoulders. “You can’t withstand that! The mushrooms will destroy you from the inside out! …I’ve never seen a case like this. What’ll I do…? I know! I’ll give you my stomach!”

“Where’d that come from?! We just have to get mine back off the guy who stole it, right?”

Bisco motioned with his chin to the distant lights of the Six Towers. Milo looked out to see a single dark shadow engaging with several Izumo warrior monks and advancing in the direction of the gate.

“He’s still going…!”

“You don’t suppose he’s the Immortal Monk we’re after, do you? After all, he didn’t seem to care much that we chopped his arm and leg off. Also, look what he did to me…” Bisco patted the spores that formed a thin film over the hole in his abdomen. “It ain’t just any rust that can withstand the Rust-Eater like this. Must be some crazy monk magic. Maybe if we put the screws to him, he’ll be able to tell us how to fix my immortality, too.”

“Maybe so, Bisco, but…how can you stay so calm?! The Rust and the Rust-Eater are still fighting inside you! Another mushroom could come bursting out of you at any moment! Don’t you have any sense of danger?”

“Of course I do. You’re just way too panicky. The enemy wants us to panic. That way, it’s obvious what we’ll do. If we get too worked up about it, we’ll be walkin’ right into their trap.”

The logic was sound. Still, Milo couldn’t help but be struck with wonder at Bisco’s steely determination. He never cried, never lamented his fate, never accepted death as the only option. His concentration was unbreakable, like a tightly pulled bowstring, and his aim absolute, like an arrow in flight. It was that willpower, more than anything else, that was his greatest weapon. More than his muscles. More than even his bow.

“If you’ve calmed down now, then let’s hear it. You’re the one who comes up with the plans,” he said.

“…Right. Okay, we’ll go after him! The checkpoint looks to be in chaos right now, so we should be able to slip in undetected!”

“Great. So we goin’ right through the front door?”

“No way! We still have to avoid standing out; that’s the most important thing! Come here, Actagawa!”

At his master’s voice, Actagawa scuttled over, and Milo whispered something in his ear. The giant crab bubbled in response before striking his huge claws against the ground as if in preparation for something.

“Milo…don’t tell me…”

“Yeah. He’s going to throw us. It’ll be obvious there are Mushroom Keepers around if we use the King Trumpet.”

“…Don’t be stupid! The Tornado Throw is Jabi’s thing! Without him here to guide Actagawa, who knows where we’ll end up!”

“If you keep thinking like that, you’ll never get anywhere with Actagawa.”

Bisco was stunned. Milo had shut him up. Just then, Actagawa grabbed the two of them in his enormous pincers and lifted them high overhead.

“All right, Actagawa! Aim for that bridge over there!” Milo said.

“Come on! This is way crazier than anythin’ I said! Let’s come up with something else! This is gonna make my stomach turn!”

“What stomach?”

“Listen, you—”

Bisco was unable to complete his comeback before Actagawa launched himself up into the sky with incredible force. Then, like a typhoon, he spun around wildly, and with all his might, he released his masters, flinging them far out over the rooftops. Through the night sky of Izumo flew a twin pair of streaks, red and blue, heading directly for the center of the pentagonal region containing the Six Towers.