Battle Vixens! - 15

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Episode 15: The Price

After the...most likely attempted/partially successful assassinations, things were quiet for the rest of the day as far as mist monster attacks went. The five in the science building spent some time going over each one's known powers, for coordination purposes:

Light was only slightly stronger than normal, but by far the swiftest with the best reflexes. Her power over light was primarily useful for illusions, but lasers were pretty good at doing damage, too. Her weapon was a single katana with no sheath. She seemed to need light to recover more quickly and easily use her powers, making the day easier for her to fight in than the night.

Ning was a little slower than Light, but super strong. Her power over electricity could amplify power from the nerves, from clouds, from power lines..but it seemed difficult to control the more lightning there was, making it dangerous to use near allies, and she actually tired quickly from using it. Her weapons were a katana and a smaller blade, dual-wielded. She was extremely hesitant to test whether she could actually "regenerate" from electricity the way Light could from light, although it seemed plausible.

Rory was ridiculously strong (much stronger than Ning) and tough, except for the recently-discovered weakness to "magic". She was relatively slow and unarmed, with no apparent "magic" abilities; however, she was able to concentrate in order to make herself stronger or tougher in specific spots, or faster, apparently.

Clark was able to make the "spirit string" stuff, apparently from her wrists in a spiderman-string kind of way, and pull it along behind the needle, and move the string/needle around even in midair at will. On top of that, pointing the back end of the needle at people allowed her to instantly scan for injuries or other problems and heal injuries through some kind of "spirit vision". She could only heal injuries in particular, and couldn't do anything about cancer or disease or anything else like that besides see that it was there. It seemed like her physical abilities were well behind everyone else's—no stronger or tougher and only a little faster—but the healing powers were ridiculous enough, and on top of that the evidence so far suggested her string was more effective against the mist monsters than the average weapon or light/electric attack.

Beyond figuring that out and discussing some creative uses and combinations, they just talked normally for a while—about as normally as possible under the circumstances, anyway. As professors of the university, the Quinns seemed to feel obliged to ask how the students' classes were going. Rory particularly wanted to remind them to keep up studies, even with everything that was happening. Stopping everyone's education during a long-term disaster was a good way to drive civilization backwards, after all.

Blake returned to normal once they got back home, and Ning headed off to change back and get in a car to pick up her granddaughter—the main reason they needed to leave, though the discussion was more or less finished by then anyway. Amory was finally hungry, so they ate and agreed to forget about the present insanity of the world for the afternoon, just hanging out and playing some games. Watching the news was useful, but for now at least the Internet was still around, and a good way to catch up on anything major happening.

That night, he woke up in the strange bedroom again, lying in bed under the covers this time. As before, he quickly felt compelled to speak his phrase and quickly change back into Light. She sat up, looking around and down, and finding the t-shirt from the day and another pair of panties on her body; apparently this was just what she wore to bed somehow. Nobody was here yet, so she took a moment to crawl out from the center of the bed and hop off, onto her feet.

"How's it going, Hero?" Light jumped at the voice coming from behind her, where she hadn't seen anyone and her ears had not heard until just then. She turned around; obviously the voice was from the same woman as before.

"Um...fine, I guess?" She wasn't sure what to make of this meeting, or the question. The most that could be gleaned was that 'Hero' was now her nickname according to this woman.

"What, you don't like it?"

...Right, mind-reading. "No, it's, um, fine. I just, it sounds kinda sarcastic is all.."
"Well, it's what you want to be, isn't it?" A hand gently patted Light's head; she started to jump but was stopped by some kind of calming feeling. The woman had disappeared from the other side of the bed and appeared just behind and to one side of her to do that. "I think it's cute."

"Uh-huh.." She wasn't sure whether it was wise to attempt to step out from under the woman, but did make an awkward effort to turn around and look up at her face. "I, assume there's a specific reason for visiting me...?"

"Aww, you're no fun," she mock-frowned. "I could just be visiting to feel your lovely fur again." Her hand hovered over Light's head for a moment, and then drew back again. "But, of course you're right. You are one of the more interesting to watch, Hero, so I want to trade questions."

"You ask me something, and I ask you something?"

"Sharp. I do really like that about you," she smiled. "How about it? But if you aren't completely truthful, then I don't have to be."

Light's ears folded down. "That leaves open the option for you to lie even if I don't."
She laughed, "Hmhmhm, you're so supicious!" She booped Light's nose, drawing a wince and a brave couple of steps back. "Alright, alright. I will absolutely tell the truth if you do. But I ask first."

Light crossed her arms—not forgetting how powerful of a person she was dealing with, but this was getting ridiculous. "..Fine. Go ahead."

"I've seen your willingness to protect and help even people who try to kill you. It's fascinating. You want to save everyone; that's why I call you Hero. But what will you do with a real monster, when the option is to kill or allow many to be killed?"

"If that really is the case, then I'll kill the monster." Light frowned. "I'm not Batman. I'm not gonna let a mad dog run around hurting people just to preserve some idealistic code of honor. Someone who's misunderstood, or desperate, or acting out in anger is one thing, and if someone can be captured that's great, but there's a clear line between trying to do the right thing and letting innocent people die from your own stubbornness."

The woman looked briefly...surprised? And then delighted. "You've actually thought about this already! Here I was thinking I'd make you say something rash. I'm impressed!"

"I guess that makes it my turn, then."
"Of course," she smirked. "Take your time to think up a good one, since I did spring this on you as a surprise."

Light tried to think of a good question; it seemed like there would be only one round this dream. Why was Amory attacked? Well, she gave off an impression of knowing everything, but maybe she didn't really know every bit of their opponent's plan. "I don't know" would be a perfectly truthful answer and that would completely waste the question. But asking whether she knew why was equally useless; there was no guarantee a second question would ever be offered, and even if it was the opportunity might come too late for that answer to be useful.

What do you really want from all this? The answer was clearly "entertainment," based on what she said the very first night. But at the same time, some of her comments and behavior seemed to suggest she wanted her ready-made soldiers to succeed at defending Earth from this attack, at least to some extent. This would be good information to confirm for certain, but it didn't seem like something that would be urgent to learn. Surely there was a better one...

How do we win? No, no...she could just say "keep fighting" or something dumb like that and be completely truthful without giving out any actually useful information.

She was reminded of a story about a super-intelligent being or something like that being asked for the pair consisting of the best possible question to ask it and the answer, which turned out to be exactly that question and the answer a completely useless "this answer". It was obviously a bad idea to make the question "too perfect" like that, even if the problems with asking that particular question could be fixed. After all, this woman was no emotionless supercomputer; she'd get annoyed at a question that was asking for too much at once and find some way to dodge around it while still technically being truthful. On top of that it would make her less willing to play this game again. So—just think of something that will be useful to know, now—or at least as close to now as possible.

"...How do we help the people in comas?"

"I appreciate your consideration of my feelings too, Hero," she said with a toothy smile; seeing it up close, her teeth were all rather sharp, predatory. "You almost asked what happened to them, but that wouldn't be very helpful to know, would it? I'll tell you anyway: Those disgusting creatures took their power and turned it inside-out for their own use. Your powers are closely tied to your you," she said, pointing vaguely at Light's chest, "and your you doesn't handle being inside out so well. It takes them out of the game, and makes them mere targets for the opportunistic. There will be someone who can turn them rightside-in again, but they haven't arrived yet. Perhaps I am wrong, but I believe you will know that person when you see them."

Light didn't say anything, processing the information.
"You want to know what the part about being tied means, but you don't want to push your luck on violating the rules of the game, hmm? Just think carefully about how you think. I believe that should be enough to occupy your mind for a while."

She moved a little closer, but...normally. Walking, instead of suddenly appearing. "Maybe you'd allow me just one little touch? You were happy to have your friend pet you," she said.
Light blushed; of course she was even watching them in what should be private. "Fine.."

"Heheh. You're thinking I'd do it anyway, but I wouldn't have~," she said teasingly. Appearing behind Light, she gently picked up the tail and hugged it for a second, running her hands across it. Just as with brushing her ears before, the smaller fox-girl found this a much more enjoyable feeling than seemed right, and shivered slightly in spite of herself, even having to willfully hold back an urge to make some kind of sound in her throat. It ended after a few seconds. "Now, you really should be going. We'll meet again, Hero—if you survive. But I predict you will, and that you'll have one, maybe two more pets by then."

With that, Light abruptly woke up to the feeling of morning sunlight coming in through the blinds. She sat up, felt the hair play across her shoulders. Apparently she'd managed to become one of that woman's "favorites", at least enough for her to plan regular visits of some kind. It was hard to decide whether that was a good thing or not, but doing what she could to keep the visits going and reap some sort of benefit from them (information, like from the questions the night before) seemed wise.

This form felt good; it was powerful, and so it was necessary with what was happening. But as of now there was something..uncomfortable about that. About the way it reacted to touch and closeness, especially those ears and that tail. For the moment she changed back into Blake to start the morning.

Think about how you think...how were his powers tied to him personally? The way she'd said it suggested that the specific powers he'd received had something to do with his personality, or psychology, or...something like that. He couldn't quite wrap his head around it, even thinking about it all the way through breakfast.

Amory slept in for a while; understandable with the day he'd had, even with being insta-healed afterward. A close watch over the news didn't show any of the monsters appearing, so Blake tried to take his mind off of things by doing some of the schoolwork he should've done last weekend, but was too busy rescuing a little girl. He knew the whole time that he was going to ask Amory what he thought of the woman's words. It was something like...he was hoping that someone who hadn't gotten any of these powers, an outside perspective, would see something he couldn't see himself. It was just a matter of waiting until he woke.

---

Emma did not know where Amory lived. Before he was attacked, that would have definitely been a step too far. But with her decision to protect him, it seemed like something necessary to know. She needed to know if his home was attacked; she needed to know if he went out and needed to be protected. It was...just sensible. Right? Sure, Light might already be protecting him at this point, but Light wasn't the one who'd saved him the first time he was attacked. The only problem was, she had no idea how to get that information. Sure, as a student he was probably staying in one of the dorms...or maybe the apartments tied to the school, like her. That didn't exactly narrow it down.

But then—there he was, on the news. He was...she knew that hospital! And he must've parked in town, so he would come back to his car at some point. She just needed to wait there. Or in front of the hospital. Or...both? Obviously. It was high time she tested just how far apart her bodies could actually be.

For now, Minus hid in the shadows of the parking garage, looking for any sign of him coming in, while Plus, concentrating on using the light-bending to look as normal as possible, headed off to the hospital in case she could catch him coming out. She wasn't really sure how or if she would follow him when he got in the car, since she didn't quite feel fast enough to outrun one of those, but knowing his car would be a good start. There didn't seem to be any problem with one body being way over at the hospital while the other was in the garage; that was good, at least.

Plus somehow missed him—possibly she was too preoccupied with not letting her fox-parts be seen—because Minus saw him slowly making his way inside the garage. After following him a bit, she saw him get in his car. She did what she could to memorize the plate, make and model, and then began to chase after it. Maybe she couldn't follow the car the whole way, but at least she could figure out..which direction, or something like that? Plus found a corner to hide herself in and sat down, putting all of her focus on the other body.

In town, the car actually moved fairly slowly, enough for her to run after it. Of course, the speed limit where traffic was usually high was pretty low; that hadn't really occurred to her. Minus stuck to shadows; the streets were actually pretty empty, so she didn't actually have to hide from that many people.

Her luck continued out on roads with higher speed limits. Amory was driving slowly; he wasn't feeling well and wanted to be careful. She felt simultaneously pleased and upset by this information, and hoped he would get better soon. And, before she knew it, Minus was standing there, panting heavily, and seeing him take a spot in the apartment garage. It was the same complex she was staying at! But a different building, apparently. Now she just needed to see exactly which room...

Going through the halls as Minus was a little bit more tense. She kept thinking someone would pop out of a room at any time and see her, and then she'd have to run away before finding out...! But her luck held. Finally he finally stopped, and knocked on the door. There were footsteps from inside, and someone else opened the door. "Heyy. Back to normal, I see?" His roommate, no doubt.

He smiled. Emma's hearts both fluttered, but of course he wasn't smiling at her. "You feelin' any better?"
"Um, yeah, a lot, thanks. What about you?" He started to walk inside, which meant this was definitely where he lived. That was quite enough privacy invasion for her, thanks!

Plus spoke the phrase, and Minus disappeared, thankfully not needing to be nearby to change back. Emma stood up, brushed herself off, and realized her glasses were still in her apartment. Also her car. She had already been in two bodies and her first thought had been to run into town instead of do the obviously sensible thing. With a sigh, she changed herself back into two people. All the shadow and light moving around, all that running after the car as Minus—probably also the fight earlier too—had both of her feeling tired and a little sore; clearly she'd pushed it a little bit. But she was able to take a slower walk back, and eventually made it to her apartment. It was well after lunchtime by now, and she was doubly starving; the smart thing was to change back, so she did. It was only a couple of hours later that she lay down for a nap and wound up asleep for much longer than just an hour or two.

---

Amory listened to Blake's description of the dream. He gave a long pause, chewing his breakfast/lunch. Eventually he said, "Look, when you're...her. What do you feel?"

"Um...feel? I guess, a little weird...girly. Fast, confident. Powerful, sorta. It's hard to explain."

"Yeah, but. Let me see...you jumped in front of that cop girl, between her and the monster the other day. Why did you do that?"
"What do you mean? I couldn't just let her die."

Amory shook his head. "Uhh..let me put it to you this way. If I told you last week that you were going to jump in front of an attacker to keep someone else from getting hurt, what would you think about it?"
"I..." He squinted slightly, trying to put himself into last week—before the superpowers, before all of this insanity. "I guess I wouldn't believe you. Why would even be in that situation, and anyway—I'm not really that brave. I just..." He scratched his head.

"You'd say, what, 'I'm just a normal person, I'm no superhero,' right?"

"Maybe?"
"But I'm sure you've thought about what it'd be like before. I'm not really the expert on it here, but there are at least some nice things about being the hero, right?"

"Well, yeah. It's—it means I'm really doing something. I'm actively saving lives, not just...studying to go into some job. I'm protecting people and saving them."

"You're using your powers to do all that," said Amory. "You're fast, with good reflexes, so you can put yourself up as the target and block or dodge attacks so nobody else has to. Your powers are mostly good for illusions—drawing enemy fire elsewhere, protecting people. Right?"

"I guess so..? But the same powers would be useful for like, stealing from people and avoiding the police. It's kinda too ambiguous to say."
"Okay, let me try this with someone else. What do you think our friend Mr. Nelson was thinking last Friday night?"

"Um...well, his granddaughter had just been kidnapped. I guess he was thinking about how to get the money, or how to save her some other way, or something like that."

"Yeah, and electric powers plus super strength are a pretty good combination for stealing from a bank. But that's not all. Imagine you're an old man and the only family you have left has been taken. If someone offers you power, what are you thinking of using it for?"

"Saving her? How's that any different?"
"No, no. You don't just want to save her. Maybe you're too nice of a guy, Blake, but I think Mr. Nelson was thinking of making sure the guys who took her suffered for it—especially if they actually hurt her. If you were younger, maybe, you'd consider doing something reckless, and taking them out yourself. Maybe if they got arrested they'd get the electric chair?"

"That last part's...a stretch. But..."

Ning liked how she looked. She liked being the size of her granddaughter, to be able to be a playmate sometimes. She didn't want that about her to change, even if it meant a greater risk of being caught by the police. "I wonder if it's just the powers, or the body too somehow...if he was thinking about Nadia..."

"Yeah? You think you look like a hero when you're Light?"

"I don't know, maybe? But I guess I...feel heroic. I feel like I can do almost anything, like I should do anything I can to save people. Especially from.."

"The mist things, right? I think there's something to that, too," said Amory. "Doesn't it seem weird that everyone, everywhere, that gets those powers wants to fight them? Does fight them?"
"But they're..." Blake attempted to express what he felt in words; he moved his hands expressively for a second or two.

Disgusting creatures. His eyes widened a bit. "That woman...she said...so, she hates them for some reason. So she makes us feel that way about them, through the powers somehow..."
"But it's more than just a feeling, right? You want to fight them."
"I want to fight them because I think they'll hurt people, and I want to protect people."
"And you want to protect people because you feel like a superhero. Just like you wanted to before you got your powers. Right?"
"I...yeah." Blake looked down, trying in vain to understand what to feel about this.

"That's..horrible. Isn't it? It's..."

"It's a gift that exacts a price just by being given. It's really clever, and maybe awful for a lot of people," said Amory. "But in your case, I don't really know if there's that much to worry about? I mean, those things were going to appear anyway, and they've at least shown a willingness to kill some normal people by now, so that means they're probably aiming to hurt people in general. I mean—if I told you last week that you were gonna get superpowers and that monsters were gonna show up too and start hurting people, what would you think about doing?"
"I'd think about fighting the monsters," he said without hesitation. "I guess, but...what does it mean for someone like Ni—like Gerald? Who just wanted to live in peace with his granddaughter? Or..or, the Quinns are just college professors! They're...they didn't volunteer to be part of some war!"

"Well, I'm not coming to that woman's defense, you know. I'm just trying to make you feel a little better," said Amory. "I do wonder what those two 'wanted', though, to wind up with their powers."

"Should we ask them? Who should know about this, this side of it?"

"I think so. They're looking at all of this like scientists. They want to know everything they can. So if it hasn't already occurred to them, then I'm sure they would ask us to tell them no matter how...unpleasant it is to know."

"I just, don't know how it didn't already occur to me," said Blake, leaning back. "It's like some kind of mental blind spot and even after I got a hint, you had to figure it out from there."
"To be fair, it was a really vague hint."
"Yeah, but...I mean, if our heads are being messed with then it makes sense to make it hard for us to convince that's happening, much less realize it ourselves. Why would she tell me if she doesn't want us to know?"

"I really get the impression that she just likes playing games with information. Just like telling only you how beating someone in a fight and learning their powers works. Like playing a question game with you. She knows we're not, and we can't, just tell everyone everything, and probably finds it entertaining to see who we decide to tell and why. There's probably a bunch of other stuff we don't know that she's told someone else."

"Well...most of the attacks have been in the afternoon anyway." Blake stood up. "I guess we should call them for a visit, maybe look around town and leave someone to guard you. Oh, wait, are you done?"

Amory looked down at his mostly-full plate. "...No." His mouth had been too busy with talking to keep chewing.
"Um, I'll get my phone anyway," he said, heading to his bedroom.