Mycophobia

[Aromancer]

Damn. Lee couldn't follow them; already, he felt his strength leaving his body to feed the mushrooms growing on him. He ripped a few away from his mouth, but already they were growing back. Through the spores, he managed to sputter out: "how do ah ge' ri' o' these thins?"

He held his blade up to Black Trumpet's neck, but it was no use. The woman was already too far gone to speak, and it seemed she was in no hurry to confess their methods to him. He needed something else, some way to save himself.

His gaze turned to the pot, as though searching desperately for some solution within its murky depths. Then, he looked beneath it. Of course! Fire! He dashed towards the fireplace, grabbing a burning stick from within!

Viper Lee hadn't received much former schooling, so his thought process was based on a faulty premise: namely, that mushrooms were plants. They had to be, didn't they? There were only two types of life, plants and animals, and mushrooms definitely aren't animals!

So, if mushrooms were plants, then logic dictated that they would burn, right? Because plants burn! He held the stick right up to the stem of one of these mushrooms, flinching at the heat but refusing to give up just because of that. The mushroom refused to burn, but he noticed it coming detatched from his skin.

Through faulty reasoning, Lee had somehow arrived at the solution to his predicament: pull the mushrooms off his body, and burn the base they had grown on! He quickly got to work, ripping off shroom after shroom and burning the bases. Before long he was no longer covered in mushrooms; just burn marks, but those would heal with time.

Jondee was no doubt long gone by now. Lee had been fast, but it had still been several minutes, and the boy had no idea where the Destroying Angel could have gone. But luckily, it seemed Black Trumpet was still alive, and that meant all hope was not yet lost.

Lee got to work burning her flesh as he had his own, getting rid of the body mushrooms he'd inflicted upon her. This done, he grabbed her collar and forced her against the wall. "Alright, bitch!" He said to her, his face twisted into a scowl. "You got two options: you tell me where your boss is, or I turn you in to the marines! I could use the bounty after all the crap that guy put me through! Fair warning though: he won't be as nice as I am!"

[viruswithshoes]

Black Trumpet's non-fungus name had been Alice a lifetime ago. Her earliest memory was receiving the brand of the Celestial Dragons marking her as a slave and life had not treated her much better since that first painful experience.

Once puberty hit she had been deemed pretty enough to earn the title of thirteenth mistress, due to her silky black hair and fair skin. The rigors of life took enough toll on her looks to be deemed no longer mistress material.
With equal amounts of shame, relief and survival instincts she learned to cook in order to remain useful.

The still teen aged cook with the fading looks came across a boy selling mushrooms whose smile as well as the poisonous mushrooms he sold were infectious. One deadly appetizer of stuffed, skull-marked mushrooms later, Alice was free.

The young boy she came to know as Destroying Angel and the others of The Enokian Angels cult of mushroom worshipers who helped poison her way to freedom became the only family she ever cared for.

The Enokian cult's customs declared that marriage was between all in the cult but Black Trumpet, formerly Alice, only considered Destroying Angel, formerly Jondee, as husband.

The years spent with her husband growing the sacred body mushroom were her the happiest in her life.
A life full of misery only to be saved gave the woman a will to persevere stronger than most.
Her chuckles directed at Viper Lee contained more than a few coughs as the spores in the mushrooms invaded her lungs.

"The catacombs in the cellar...beneath the rug. Left. Right. Left. Right. Go. We don't like corpses in the house. I'll meet you in the mycellium network after he kills you."

Darkness filled her vision and she imagined meeting all of the people she had fed the dangerous mushrooms waiting to greet her, thankful for their new and eternal lives.

[Aromancer]

Lee hadn't known about the spores in her lungs; how could he? But even if he had, there would've been nothing he could do about them. He dropped the girl to the floor, knowing Destroying Angel to be the more important target, and rushed into the cellar.

He had no way of knowing whether or not Black Trumpet was even telling the truth, but honestly the boy didn't have much choice in the matter, so he just went the way she'd instructed. Left, right, left, right, go. Past a frankly alarmingly huge mushroom farm, full of fungi of all shapes and sizes.

Finally, he found Jondee and Chaga, escaping through the garden. He pulled out his blade once more and pointed it at the two of them. "Alright, "Destroying Angel," he said, growling viciously, "I'm taking you in! I'm sure once the marines find out about your illegal mushroom growing operation, they'll give me a killing for your head!"

Sure, maybe some of these shrooms were fun. The laughter mushroom was a joy, and the anger one had given him the will to persist even as he was dying. But there was no way Lee would allow this mushroom farm to continue; not so long as it threatened innocent lives! It went against everything he stood for as a bounty hunter!

Lee thought back to his childhood, where he'd been bullied by larger, stronger men and forced to to their bidding. "I won't let you take advantage of any more innocents!" He cried, dashing forward, sword point first.

Viper Lee was fast and precise, and he was able to use those skills to get in close to the maniacal mushroom farmer before either could stop him. A single, well-placed strike would be all it took... Just so long as he didn't have any tricks up his sleeve.

[viruswithshoes]

The dark and damp atmosphere, while unpleasant to most, was comforting to those in the mushroom cult The Enokian Angels. Various mushrooms sprouted from the ground, walls, and especially from the corpses of The Destroying Angel's previous victims littered the area.

Light was sparse, but the two fleeing cultists knew their way around so as to not disturb any of their sacred fungi. After their series of left and right turns Chaga and Destroying Angel entered another cavern. This one, well lit and carved from white stone which resulted from the stone's exposure to air. The fruit of generations of the Enokian Angels' labor.

The white sepulcher containing colonies of body mushrooms was where the two men either took the bodies of their victims or lured on the days they didn't wish to carry a body.

Viper's thrust once more struck Chaga, Destroying Angel's chosen shield brother. After decades of protecting his younger brother the large, bald man finally took a mortal wound.
Destroying Angel sighed in annoyance.

"You still don't understand," He said, rubbing his temple in frustration.
"Innocent people do not exist. We're doomed to our separate existences and constantly hurting each other."
Destroying Angel's wavy blonde hair swayed as he shook his head and let out an extended sigh of dismay.
"You're on the wrong side of history on his one, friend. The holy Body Mushroom will be humanity's redemption."

Destroying Angel dashed to his left side and plucked several of the variety of mushrooms growing nearby in a white stone planter.

The anger mushrooms he consumed focused him, the laughing mushrooms made him laugh through his gritted teeth. Lit by the eerie blue luminescence of other mushrooms Destroying Angel let out something like a frustrated giggle and charged at the man who killed his wife and brother.

[Aromancer]

Lee watched as the man walked away, his brother Chaga keeping Lee from giving pursuit to his dying breath. With a few massive yanks, he finally managed to extract the blade, staring up at Jondee in silent rage. "There are always innocents," he told the man. "Maybe they've done bad things to others, but there's plenty of people out there who did nothing to deserve... this."

He looked down sadly at Chaga, then thought to the woman upstairs. They were criminals, serial murderers, he knew this... but ultimately, they were still human, weren't they? Lee didn't like to kill others; in his rage, he'd gone for a killing blow, but he did want Jondee brought to justice. Who knows, maybe he was part of a larger organization, and Lee would need the information gained from this man to take down the brains behind the operation?

"Jondee," he said, looking up at the man, "I tried to help you. Maybe I took it too far, but I was doing my job; protecting you, protecting everyone in that bar from a dangerous man. Did I really deserve to die? Aren't I an innocent?"

But before he could answer, Destroying Angel had consumed a group of mushrooms. The man was overcome by rage and laughter now, and now Viper Lee could truly see just how dangerous these fungi were. He would not be reasoned with, could not be spoken to. The mushrooms had stolen away his humanity, his empathy, leaving nothing but a raging beast.

Lee readied his blade sadly, knowing he would never receive an answer, and prepared himself to block the man's attack. "Alright then... come at me."

[viruswithshoes]

Jondee, The Destroying Angel, High Missionary of The Enokian Angels no longer possessed his usual sense of calm. The man that could fight and incapacitate most men he met was too consumed by anger, laughter and deadly sprouting fungus to think effectively.

The din of emotion clouding his mind caused him to charge at Lee without thought or mercy. In the back of his thoughts there was some part of him that thought about his wife and brother and that he'd never see them again until he died.

His anger let him bypass the part of his mind that held back his strength as he threw a hook punch around Viper Lee's sword even though it meant a large gash opening up on his chest.
Though the punch missed a small crack appeared on the support column he had struck, breaking two of the fingers on his right hand.

[Aromancer]

Lee ducked out of the way of the punch with surprising ease, even to himself. Jondee's enraged state meant he sacrificed technique for strength, and Lee's superior training and sobor head kept him out of trouble for the most part.

It was ironic, he reflected, as he dueled the man. Destroying Angel's main desire seemed to be peace, open communication, forging connections with others. Yet here he was sacrificing his mind to the mushrooms he so loved for violent ends. How hypocritical. Lee would've commented on this fact if he a) thought Jondee would care enough to listen and b) was not currently concentrating on not getting his head taken off.

He should probably counterattack; that punch had thrown the bigger man off-balance. Lee didn't want to kill him, so he ducked behind the man and slashed at the back of his knee, hoping to cause him to lose his balance.

[viruswithshoes]

Jondee couldn't think about how much pain he was in...he was too angry and sad. The same thing that distracted him from his usual tactical fighting style also kept his physical pain in check.

He pulled himself up by one of the stone planters littering the cavern and snatched at the first spouting fungus that could give him any sort of edge. More anger or sadness to forget the pain in his wounded leg or better yet another Body mushroom to infect the unbeliever.
Dying a martyr like Chaga didn't seem so bad.
He put the mushroom in his mouth and chewed, looking to gain some sort of advantage.
When he did, Destroying Angel lapsed into another fit of laughter.
It wasn't a laughing mushroom. It was a shiitake. Tasty, but hardly practical.

Once he could pull himself up, the cultist with the one functioning leg wobbly stood up while snickering.
A lifetime of imbibing mushrooms though eating and smoking them led to the effects being short-lived.
The laughter stayed, but not due to any chemical processes brought upon by something he grew.

"Let's see how this one-legged man does in the ass kicking contest, Lee."
Madly, hopping in an erratic fashion Destroying Angel, the cackling cultist rushed towards Viper Lee and gripped the man's sword at the blade near the guard where it was the least sharp to prevent any movement.
Then using his one good leg sprung upward in an attempt to slam his knee into his enemy's temple.

[Aromancer]

Lee stared as the man pulled down a mushroom and ate it, his thoughts tinged with a modicum of sadness. "Come on, Jondee," he said, as the man hobbled towards him. Outpacing him now was easy, and the Destroying Angel had to sort of "climb" along the blade to get to the point where he could kick him in the temple. "You know you're beat."

Likewise, ducking out of the way of the attack was child's play for one such as him. Lee let it connect, rolling with the blow so he could get that satisfying impact without doing any real damage. Then he puled his blade away and kicked the man to the ground.

"This isn't you," he said. "You're not a fighter. I can tell that much about you, at least. You want to make the world a better place." He coughed slightly. "Got kind of a fucked-up way of going about it, but still."

He pointed the blade at the man's neck. "Give up; let me turn you in. You've still got some life left in you, so does your wife upstairs. Maybe they'll let you out eventually, if you behave yourself in prison." The man had betrayed Lee's trust, but truth be told? Lee pitied him.

[viruswithshoes]

Jondee's initiation into The Enokian Angels involved a cup of various mushrooms, some hallucinogenic, some delicious, some poisonous.
Even as a child he knew that death would be one of the consequences and was not afraid. He didn't let the cup pass him by.

As a grown man who had seen, and caused, more than a few deaths, he could no longer look into the black abyss he sent many others. The effects of the mushrooms he took were losing their potency. Mushrooms still sprouted from him and he was still angry and sad. His anger was self-directed and his sadness was self pity.
"Should I have let the cup pass me by?" Jondee asked himself out loud.

For the first time in his life the cultist's faith had truly been tested. He was too exhausted, both physically and emotionally, to fight on. He'd never had to dwell that much on whether his human sacrifices deserved their fate.
A few minutes ago he was ready to die and join the mycelial network.
Now he just wanted to stop hurting.

He stared up at the ceiling of his cavern strewn with mushrooms and corpses and decided to buy into Lee's words about being let out eventually. There was a chance that his stack of corpses could be pardoned for something he could provide. After all, how many people had the Daibukai killed. Surely, a dozen murders wasn't an unforgivable sin.

Jondee reached his hand up towards the ceiling while lying upon his back in hope that Lee would reach down, pull him up and lead him somewhere better.

His faith had been shaken. If his destiny to turn humans into an interconnected colony of mushrooms could be defeated by one man his whole religion needed an examination. He'd been told by several philosophers, some of whom he had killed, that untested faith wasn't worth having.

"Take me to prison, save my wife if you can and I'll see what my destiny is."

As nature-based murder cults went, Jondee knew that The Enokian Angels were not the most bloodthirsty. The Sea Devil worshipers and Cannibalistic Human Underground Murder Society sprang to mind. Snitching on those maniacs seemed almost like an act of piety.

Jondee, The Destroying Angel, felt likely to be either executed or imprisoned for the rest of his life, but there was a small glimmer of hope that he could start his life again as a successful, or at least living, snitch.
Hope and faith were all the had.
"Let's go, Lee."