Battle Vixens! - 17

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Episode 17: Duets

Clark had the Look on his face when they got back home after the meeting and a quick dinner out. Rory knew this Look; it was part of what she loved about him, but at the same time it almost always meant trouble. The most common occurrence of this Look was when she had chewed out a research assistant for doing something stupid and he thought it'd been a little too harsh, or when he'd just heard (not directly himself, but through a few people) the sob story of one of her regular students and wanted her to go a little easier on them.

She just stopped in the hallway and turned to face him. "What is it? What's on your mind?"
"You know...I, started thinking after healing Amory. I sorta forget too, it seems like. I can heal people now, probably really well. Maybe even from injuries that doctors can't get to fast enough," he said.

"What, you want to go healing terminally injured people now? Be a miracle worker?" She half-yelled; he just nodded quietly.

"..You know that's not what the powers are supposed to be for. We have evidence that using them too much tends to tire a person out, and we're two of a very small number of people in this town that can fight those things effectively, based on what we learned tonight." The Look didn't subside. "We can't do it! People would find out, it would put you in danger." She crossed her arms. "You have any idea how many psychos with superpowers out there are gonna zero in on you if they find out you can basically bring people back from near death? Kill, or capture, or do the thing with beating you to take control over your powers? It's dangerous. I don't like it."

"You were the one who wasn't worried about saying our real names before," he said. "Anyway, I can trust you to protect me. Right?" He smiled charmingly, and she just felt a little helpless, dropping her arms to the sides.

"I mean...I'll do my best, but...I-I'm still just one person."
"Rory, people are dying. If other people who got powers can go around robbing and looting and killing with them, and then turn around and start defending everyone from the monsters, then—then I don't see what's so wrong with me being a tiny bit selfish and doing what I want to do, and saving a few more lives!"

She sighed. This hadn't been an argument she was going to win from the beginning, and she knew that was how it was going to go whenever he got the Look, but she was stubborn and always had to hear the whole argument before making the inevitable decision. "Okay, look. I, know a guy at the hospital. He owes me some favors. We can get you, holed up in a room, they'll bring you people who are going to die without immediate care. You don't, you can't fix them all the way or the whole world will figure out what's going on in a matter of minutes. You just wave your magic wand or whatever and make them stable, to where the doctors can do their job, right? Anyway, you'll be able to save more lives before getting exhausted if you only do enough to save lives. And I won't be able to set this up until tomorrow morning, so we don't go dashing off that way tonight, got it?"

"..Thank you, dear," he said after a second or two, smiling brightly again.
Rory put up an index finger for a moment. "Oh no, don't think I'm doing this for free." She spoke her phrase, growing up to her fox form, and gave him a slightly predatory grin. Her clothes had reshaped into just a half-unbuttoned nightshirt and panties, as if in response to what she was thinking about. "I wanna try something new, dear~. You say my phrase to take away my strength and then we'll have some fun tonight before we go to sleep."
"Err, okay," he said, blushing brightly. Well, he wasn't the only one.

---

The following morning, Rory was sitting in human form in an otherwise empty waiting room inconspicuously, keeping an eye on anything or anyone that went through a particular door. Her phone buzzed with some texts, and she agreed to meet with the two students she'd seen the day before, noting that Clark was busy but she'd pass anything on to him later. On the balance, it seemed best to meet here at the hospital; she wanted to keep guard and those two seemed trustworthy enough not to worry too much about. Actually, wait, they already knew what Clark was capable of and hadn't made any worrying moves, so this was completely fine.

Eventually they came in, and were escorted to the same waiting room. "Hey you two. Long time no see," she said cheerfully. "You done any homework since yesterday?"
"Um, yes actually," Blake said.
"Gimme a break, I'm still recovering from the last time I was here.."
"That's no excuse. I've seen some really good work from someone with the flu, you know," said Rory. "Anyway, take a seat? I know they're awful, but it's the best this place has." They shuffled over and took the offered chairs.

"So you figured something out...when? Last night? This morning?"
"Um..she visited me again," said Blake. "Said something I found kinda worrying, so I talked about it with Amory and.."
"There's something we think we've figured out about the powers," he nodded. "You...might not like it."

"I work for a college like a cog in a machine. I deal with a lot of things I don't like on a daily basis, and I'm just fine," said Rory.

"Okay. Let me ask you something. Uum, what did you want last Friday night?"
"What did I want? What kind of question is that?" That night, she had looked at herself disapprovingly in the mirror for a moment before being reminded by her husband that she was beautiful, and then what she wanted was rather similar to, well, last night. But it wasn't like he knew how inappropriate the question was since that required knowing the answer...she might be blushing just a little bit, though, which would suggest it.

"Er—I'll put it another way," said Amory, shaking his head in an almost I don't want to know way. "Is there something you were wishing you could do that you couldn't that day? Or last week?"

"Yeah, plenty. To be honest there were a few times I thought I'd punch someone through a wall if I could. But, you know, I didn't really want to do that past a brief urge, knowing the consequences if it was even physically possible." She thought about how that might reflect on her for a second or two. "I mean, I guess I wasn't really mad at them anyway, not specifically. I was angry about a whole broken system they were getting to represent. We're supposed to be teaching the next generation of scientists and authors and leaders and whatever else, but there's a lot we don't do that we should and we do that we shouldn't, and people like me who can see that are way too low on the food chain to fix any of it."
They looked at each other. "So..." Amory tried to sum up, "You want the power to change things, but the first thing you thought about was literal, physical power to punch someone through a wall. I mean—like, instinctively, before getting rational about it."

"I guess so. So what?"

"We think the powers have something to do with what the person getting them wants," said Blake, sounding tired of beating around the bush. "Like, they pick up on what you want, and make it where you can do that, but also tie up what you want with wanting to fight the black mist things."

"Hmm..." The first response to come to mind was to dismiss the theory, but Rory forced herself to think rationally about it. The secondary instinct of pushing away primary ones was something hard-won from many years and she wasn't about to ignore it. "Yeah...so...I got super strength because I want to punch people through walls. I got invulnerability because I want to be able to change what I want without consequences. It kinda makes sense, in a twisted sort of way." Also she got a taller, and—let's say—fuller-figured body because a part of her wanted to at least know what it felt like to look that way, but she couldn't see any reason to mention that part to a couple of students. "I can sort of see it...but it's not completely convincing."

Blake started to open his mouth to say something else. "Hold on, I'm not done. You know what, I feel different when I'm in that other form. I mean—believe it or not I do have a sense of restraint and control. You can't do a single experiment successfully, much less have a career in practical science, if you just go charging into things. But when I'm like that, I don't just feel invulnerable in the sense of not taking any physical harm, I feel invincible, like absolutely nothing can touch me, so I can do whatever I want. I jumped out of a third-story window without thinking about it and started yelling at students—well, to be fair I would've done that part anyway, they were putting themselves in serious danger just for the sake of being total idiots—and then I guess I shot my mouth off a little more than I would've on the news about not closing the campus down for a few days..."

"You think it's affecting our minds that much?" said Blake, looking extremely worried.

"I dunno. Honestly, it's more like...I want the same things I wanted before, but I want them worse and I feel like I can just take them now. Is that what it's like for you?"

"It's...I wouldn't put it in terms of taking, but yeah," he nodded, visibly thinking.

"We thought about Ning, too, trying to test the idea out," said Amory. "It seemed to match."

"Yeah, I'll get another point of data from Clark when he's done playing doctor for the day, maybe. It's a pretty interesting theory."

"It doesn't...bother you?" said Blake. "We're kinda being used, even what we want is being used against us."
"I wouldn't say 'against' exactly. I love having a way to defend myself and others from those things, you know, and taking them out's even better. Anyway, it's the price of admission, isn't it?"

As if on cue, someone burst open the door to the waiting room: A stranger, a dark-haired fox-girl just slightly taller than Rory was just now with red eyes and a panicked expression. Rory caught a brief flash of recognition from Amory and only from him. "There's two of those gryphon things outside!" she said, "They almost dove into the hospital!"

Everyone sitting down in the room stood up. "Where's your other body?" Amory asked.

"Distracting them! Come on, you need to get away!"

Rory had already changed form by this point. "I have a better idea," she said, coming up to the girl who was apparently one of two bodies. "How about I help you take 'em out?"

She stared at Rory for a second, kind of wide-eyed, apparently surprised at seeing her change. "Um—okay! We need to hurry then. Follow me!"

She whirled around, though she heard the newcomer already starting down the hall. "You two keep an eye on Clark. In there." She pointed.
Blake said, "Are you sure you can—"

"Yes! You just better keep my husband safe and secret. Bring him some coffee or something soon." And then she ran after the small stranger, catching up almost instantly.

"This exit?"

"Yhh-yes!" Poor girl was running out of breath already? Rory swept her up in her arms and then continued her own faster, effort-boosted pace, disregarding the small "Eep" of surprise at the gesture. In a matter of seconds they were outside.

---

Gerald saw more black mist forming on the street outside his store. He sighed; well, at least they'd waited until after lunch this time. Then he stood up and quickly got to work: Speak the phrase, switch the sign around to closed and lock the door, run around to the back exit as quickly as possible. In a moment Ning was running out from an alley and saw someone being knocked away by a dark blur, past someone they'd stood in front of to protect. If only she'd been a little faster...!

Before she even processed what she was seeing, Ning struck it with a bolt of lightning from her hands. The feeling of being overcharged, out of control, always came with doing this; it had been a perpetual feeling at first, and it was always a terrifying one. She couldn't fight with people around, even allies. But it looked like she was alone for this one anyway, at least to begin with.

It was something like a gigantic octopus, a towering bulb in the middle from which flowed an endless writing mass of tentacles. One of those had just knocked a person aside, but now Ning stood in the way of any more of that, her swords appearing in her hands. While the thing turned itself toward her, one giant green-glowing eye facing her, her ears picked up the protected person running back, the one who'd been knocked out insisting they were okay and behing helped up...she allowed herself a small sigh of relief. Of course, this one had a huge mouth with razor-teeth too, mostly obscured by the tentacles but forming the bottom of its main bulb-like body.

Then it was time to move. It lashed out with its tentacles, one after another, and she met it with her blades, punishing each strike with a sharp slash, beginning a dance that started slow and steadily picked up tempo. Before long all of its attention was on her, its limbs striking one after another, two at a time, three—jump over the third—four. Only a little mist bled out with each strike, and she had the distinct impression that she was slashing at something unusually tough. She might be hurting it some, but at this rate it was going to outlast her awful stamina before taking any significant injuries.

Ning decided to try something new, pumping electricity through her hands into the blades. It conducted right into the thing's tentacle on the next strike, sending it convulsing back for a second. That was good—another few counters like that, and its assault began to slow slightly. But almost as soon as she started to try and think of how to take advantage of this, it abruptly changed its tactic, drawing the tentacles back, flopping over so its bulb-head was on the side, and making a sudden motion with all of its limbs on the ground at once, propelling itself sideways at her mouth-first. She got a really good look at its circle of teeth from a couple of inches away, an image that stayed with her even as she landed safely just past its head, shaking slightly from the near-miss.

Deep breath. Turn around, get ready for more. Ning held up the longer sword, straight into the air, and by instinct did something she hadn't even thought of: Called lightning down from the sky, right at the tip of the blade. The details of the science had long since fled her head, but she knew there was supposed to be static in the clouds, lots of static, which ultimately became the bolts of electricity and plasma that came down from above in a storm. What she had just done was call some of that into her own body. And partially to her surprise, it didn't kill her. It didn't even hurt or make her convulse or go numb. It felt great. Like she'd just had a long nap after eating a gigantic meal. Her energy was all back, and the excess electricity sparked around the blade, ready to be used.

With her free hand (the short blade gone for a second), she waved forward, directing a bolt almost as strong as the one that had struck her at the giant tentacled beast, right at its head. It made a deep rumbling roar in pain, its entire body-bulb hissing with mist bleeding off of it. Then it countered with another series of tentacle strikes, and Ning began the dance from before anew. This time started as fast as the previous one had ended, and pumping electricity through each of her counters and blocks didn't even seem to slow it down. It was like it had been playing around before, but now it was serious. Just as well; she felt a little like she'd just gotten serious herself.

When it started to slow down the attack, she paid close attention, saw it sticking about half of its tentacles on the ground and beginning to lean its body back for another attempt at swallowing her whole. So she leapt into the air just when it was starting to move, and threw the shortsword straight down at the peak of the jump, piercing it right in the middle of its big ugly green eye. It made another roar, this one even louder than the first, and quickly stood up again, lashing out at her with another series of attacks.

Another dance, this one manic and out of control. The jolt of energy from the lightning strike was wearing off quickly, much more quickly than she'd had any idea it would. In a way, it started to make sense: She'd been hemorrhaging energy between all of the dodging around and pushing it through her blades into the beast, and now trying to shock its tentacles again felt like too great of a risk for simply running out. But it was starting to get faster than it had been before, stretching the limits of her reflexes; it was only a matter of time before it got lucky and/or she made a mistake. Well, surely Light or somone she'd met in the last couple of days would be here soon, and it wouldn't have to be entirely up to her to take this monstrosity down. She just needed to hold out a few more seconds, dance another measure or three...

---

Gemma wasn't sure how to feel about being picked up by the other woman. On one hand, it was sort of embarrassing and the fact that she'd decided it was necessary suggested that she thought Minus specifically must be pretty weak to not be able to run all the way out of the hospital quickly. On the other, it let her save her focus and energy for Plus, where it was really needed. After all, she was trying desperately to keep the attention of the two impossible flying lion-clawed eagle-beaked-with-somehow-giant-teeth-inside, scale-tailed monstrosities enough for them to not go crashing straight into the hospital and hurting who knew how many people on the way to probably attacking Amory too.

One of them dove at her, and the other prepared to jump toward the hospital. She had to jump and roll out of the way of the dive and then throw an ice spike at the other one's eye before it got too ready for lunging forward. Her other body's ears and eyes were picking up people running and yelling and getting away from the entrance, that was...probably good, right? They were getting close to the exit, just a little longer now.

The big woman said, "Hey, so, you got any weapons? It'd help if I can borrow one. I'm invincible and super-strong but that doesn't hurt those things much without some help."

"Uh—here," Minus produced a dagger made from their own shadows, offering it. "I have four, so you can take two in a minute if you want."

"Once we get outside," she said.

Outside, the ice-spiked one was angry now and charged at her. She jumped, flipped over on top of it and landed an electric-dagger in its back, leapt off again before it could shake her off. The other one leapt at that one, swiping where she'd just been and clumsily hitting its twin in the side. By the time she turned around the one her dagger was in was rolling right at the hospital entrance, and crashed right through in a shower of glass. Definitely a good thing that part was evacuated.

"So, my name's Rory. You call yourself anything?"
"Uh—Gemma. I'm, there's two of me," she attempted to explain. "This is Minus, the one outside is Plus."
"Mhm, got it. Whoa!" They were close enough for the gryphon-thing getting rolled inside to be quite loud. Rory turned just one more corner and there they were, with the thing screeching and spreading its wings while it stood up.

The tall woman took a second to set Minus down, pat her gently just once on the head, and then ran right at the beast, punching it right in the side. "Sorry, but the doctor is out!" she yelled, the punch punctuating the the last word; it rocketed straight back out the way it came. Gemma was starting to feel like she understood why Rory was so strong..well, sort of. There was a trick, just like bending the light or moving electricity around, that was making her stronger for the moment of that punch. A little longer and she would understand it well enough to apply it.

Plus was busy jumping back and back again from a long series of impossibly fast swipes from the one still outside. Minus took a second to make a thin, narrow bridge of shadow over all of the broken glass before starting to run outside over it after Rory. Since the one that had been inside was a little stunned, busy getting itself up, the tall woman took a moment to come drop-kick the one attacking Plus right in the tooth-filled beak, making a loud crack as its head partially detached from its body from the blow.

That body of Gemma's took advantage of the reprieve to stop and pant for a second. She quietly created and held up a light-dagger, hilt first. "Scalpel," Rory said on cue with it appearing, and gently took it. "Thanks."

By now, Minus was outside and the one that had been punched out of the hospital was back up, flapping its wings in preparation to take to the air. If it got up there, it would be pretty difficult to even reach, much less stop...she made the slightly insane decision to make both of Minus's weapons and jump on its back, stabbing both in there to use as handholds, just as it took off. It wasn't happy about that, making another ear-splitting screech from less than a foot away from her as it started a wild twirling, corkscrewing path through the air in an effort to get her off.

Minus's mouth was closed, but Plus was quietly muttering "No no no no no no" the entire time, having to experience this at the same time as staring up in shock to see it. Rory was using the borrowed dagger to repeatedly stab and slice at the one still on the ground, based on what she was hearing. Eventually the thing made a mistake and lost control, spiraling right at the ground. It looked like it was still trying to put Minus below it so she'd get either hurt by the momentum of the fall or crushed under it, neither of which was a good option.

Plus tried Rory's trick to make herself a little stronger. Minus dropped as she was seen by herself from the ground to be pretty close to the other body, and Plus jumped, making to catch her in midair. This was successful, and they landed on the concrete below, tumbling around each other in a long roll that hurt, but was vastly superior to landing with all of that momentum at once and/or getting crushed by a gryphon.

She untangled herself quickly and stood back up to find that the one she'd been riding had somehow crashed right into the other one..well, maybe Rory had just arranged it that way. That one's wings looked torn to shreds, and the tall woman leapt at the new one while it was still trying to recover from the fall to probably do the same thing to it.

Both of Gemma's bodies made a run for the wing-torn one, seeing it getting ready to strike Rory while her back was turned. Did she think that wouldn't happen? Was she just that reckless, or too caught up in the moment to think about it? Well, it didn't matter; Gemma got there first. Applying Rory's trick to Minus didn't make her feel any stronger at all, but when she tried making a shadow wall to repel the strike it came out much more easily and a bit sturdier than usual, repelling the blow without quite shattering. By then she'd reached the thing, and Plus began throwing more icicles at it while Minus went around to the other side, picking up stray pieces of broken concrete from the road and throwing those at it too.

There was another loud screeching, and Rory went flying clear over the gryphon Gemma was attacking. "Ack!" Plus went to try and catch her, but was clearly too far back already. Rory spun around in the air and stuck the landing, not even pausing before charging right at the nearest mist-monster and shoving it forward, crashing it into the other one. So there was more to her trick than just being stronger, she was sort of...making her body feel less of the impact, too. Gemma really just hoped she wouldn't need to imitate that, but at least she understood how now.

Seeing Plus nearby, she said, "Hey, can I borrow another of those? I lost the old one in that thing's eye."
"Um—" "—here," Gemma said, each of her bodies approaching to offer a weapon.

"That's a cool twin speech thing, did you practice to do it?" She took them, one to each hand.
"No, it just sort of—" "—happens."

"Like everything else, huh."

"Aah!" The two bodies yelled at the same time and scattered, each one jumping out of the way of another sudden swipe from one of the beasts. They chased both of her down, and Plus didn't find much room to counterattack. Minus managed to block a strike with another strengthened shadow-wall, and then quickly followed it up by throwing her remaining dagger at it. This one had a big hole where its right eye should be, so it was the one Rory had been hitting most recently. The other one seemed less injured, faster, which was bad news since Plus had been fighting from the start and felt much more exhausted as a result. The good news was that Rory apparently picked up on that, and chased it down before grabbing it by the tail and slamming it all the way over her head into the concrete on the other side.

She was doubled over, hands on knees, before she knew what was happening. "Hhh..hh, thanks,"
"Dropped the light one," Rory reported, brandishing the dagger still in her hand and jumping at the thing's body while it was still stunned to start stabbing and slashing it again, drawing a near-continuous stream of black mist.

Minus was busy during this, making walls of concrete and shadow alternately to keep her opponent from attacking and occasionally throwing more shadow-made daggers at it, some of which got deflected but a few hit. Eventually she settled on making the thing's own shadow into a spike straight through its body, and with a particularly hard push at it and an emphatic "Mnghf!" from Minus's mouth she managed it, pinning the thing briefly in place. It skittered around, writhing and screeching and spewing mist from the hole through it, while she took several steps backward, still holding up both of her hands to maintain the shadow impalement for as long as she could.

Plus stood fully up again, to see that Rory was now slashing at a headless monster. She'd lost track; was this the one whose head had come partially off before? Well, it didn't really matter; to her eyes this one looked to be on the ropes, ready to die out. She took a couple of steps forward, throwing a series of ice spikes through its neck-hole, and then hoped she remembered correctly that frozen water still conducted electricity, pumping as much as she could through her hands at it. Whether she was right about the physics or not, the electricity arced through the inside of the beast, making it hiss as it dissolved and dissipated into haze.

A light-dagger was carefully tossed Rory's way; Plus was not feeling up to running the relatively short distance to where Minus was about to cease having her opponent pinned. She caught it, briefly nodded, started running toward it. Minus took several steps away as the shadow-spike shattered, and quickly raised a small wall of concrete which the enraged gryphon simply charged right through. Its body slammed straight into her before she could get entirely out of the way.

"AAAAAAAGH!" There was no separating out the pain of that impact, nor the subsequent one from hitting the ground rolling. One of Gemma's bodies knelt over, holding her sides, which was where the other one was hurting the most. There might have been some cracking or crunching sounds, she wasn't sure. The pain was overloading her ability to make sense of anything. There were some sounds of ripping and crashing which were probably Rory quickly taking apart the remaining Gryphon. Then it gave out a weak cry, likely finally getting destroyed.

"Hey, are you conscious there?"

Minus managed some choking gasps. Plus's voice still seemed to work, so she yelled over, "Yes!"

Rory looked back at the source of the voice, and forward agian. She was kneeling over Minus, still lying on the ground where the rolling had stopped. "Can you move? What hurts?"

"Everything! I-I don't know!" That was out of order, a certain part of Gemma's mind felt the need to inform her. Well, it was better than only Minus continuing to yell in pain—which, in fact, she was attempting to shout over.

"You can do better than that. Your arms and head look okay to me. Is it the side? Your torso?"
"Yes! I think it broke something! I-I-I heard something crack!" She also appeared to be crying, twice. Plus sniffed and attempted to wipe her face off.

"Not great, but you're breathing. Look—do you know what happens if you merge back into one? Which of you's the original?"

"I don't know! I'm scared!" It didn't feel like she had enough breath to articulate; Minus was in enough pain to maybe get knocked out, but Plus being relatively uninjured was somehow keeping her "whole" self conscious. If those injuries jumped into just one body, exhausted as well, then she might entirely faint and that might be it. Wasn't shock from pain capable of killing people? She wasn't really answering the one question she did know the answer to, was she?

"O-kay. You try and hold it together, I'm gonna pick you up and we're gonna have to see if coffee is good enough, or we need some caffeine overdose."
"Wh—" Plus gasped and winced; even as gently as Rory was picking up her other body it hurt. "What?" she said weakly, not enough to easily be heard that far away.
She answered anyway, while starting to run back into the building as quickly as she could. "My husband's a miracle worker. We'll have you good as new, or pretty close at least, in just a couple minutes. Hopefully."

The uninjured body slowly, shakily, stood up and began to walk toward the hospital entrance. She had on some boots, so it was just a matter of going around the bigger pieces of glass. She tried to focus on that and block out all of the constant pain signals from the other body, tried not to think about what, if anything, it would mean for that body to die and this one to stay alive. Gemma really wasn't the kind of person to believe in miracles, but it looked like she would need to hope for one just now...