Battle Vixens! - 8

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Episode 8: Fading Light

Their town hadn't been singled out. A quick look at his phone told Blake that Amory had very briefly tried to contact him about supper, and, much more importantly, that monsters like the one he'd just fought had appeared all over the world, at roughly the same time. They weren't all big flat-faced superbears; in fact they seemed to come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. But all of them had that kind of black misty effect to them, clearly resisted bullets much better than should have been physically possible, and every report involving one also included one or more of the fox-girls who had appeared confronting it. He remembered the sudden, reflexive, instinctual reaction he'd had the instant that thing had appeared...was this part of the 'gift'? It made a certain kind of sense.

Things hadn't gone as well as they had in his case everywhere. In Japan, one had actually succeeded at what his opponent had tried: Eating one of the girls fighting it, swallowing her whole in fact. It instantly grew five or six times its original size and started using the same kind of shadow magic she'd had. Reinforcements had shown up and eventually taken the thing down, revealing that she had been alive inside of it the whole time. The victim was still comatose, and still a fox-girl; apparently there was no such thing as de-powering due to injuries.

Blake was exhausted by the time he walked into the apartment building. He felt like he'd been running nonstop for hours..which, technically, some nonstop running had been involved, but it had been nowhere near this bad the first time around. Gerald had insisted on feeding Light before she left, which was absolutely the right decision; at least he wasn't starving now. It had meant enduring Nadia's questions about her powers and what the big scary monster had been like up close and a bunch of other things like that, but that wasn't too big of a deal. She was a nice kid.

He walked into the apartment; Amory was on the couch with the news on, as usual for this time of night. He waved. "Hi, Blake. Um.."

"What?" He wanted to say something. Blake honestly just wanted to ignore him, trudge into his room and drop the backpack and collapse on his bed, but couldn't bring himself to be that rude to someone without a good reason.
He stood up and turned to face Blake, clearly indicating the importance of whatever it was. "Look—I don't, really know how to ask this, 'cause..well..." They were showing some footage of the fight, taken from a helicopter. It was the part where Light stabbed the monster in the arm, and then through the head. Amory turned his head half-backwards, then to Blake again, pointing back at the TV with his thumb. "..Is that you?"

He dropped his backpack, immediately knowing this was going to take long enough to make not having that weight on him worth it. His roommate continued: "This isn't just, outta nowhere. I mean, you've been actin' a little weird since a few days ago, and I thought you might be—but I wasn't really sure. Since it seemed like that, I thought it'd be better if I knew for sure. 'Cause if I don't know and you don't know that I think it might be, then maybe someone finds out what I think is true and they figure out it is true and you don't have any warning."

Blake attempted to process that and come up with a response simultaneously, resulting in him partially opening his mouth but nothing coming out. Amory wasn't done.

"...I, found a pink backpack with your phone in it. In the school. After you were, near the room I found it in. And now you've got it again, so..." He pointed vaguely; the phone was in Blake's hand down at his side, so it was perfectly obvious that he did have it again. "I'm, not gonna tell anyone." He waved back at the news again. "Look, the world's—crazy, everything's getting wrecked and turned upside down. I don't want to make things worse. I wanna help, if I can. So, I want you to know I know. I mean, if I do know."

Of course Blake hadn't done a very good job of covering things up here. And apparently he'd seriously underestimated his roommate's ability to pick up on things, and his willingness to investigate something strange. A combination of mistakes, ignorance, and just the amount of information that living with a person makes available to that other person. He couldn't deny it, and Amory was trying to say that he wanted to help, not make things worse. Blake sighed; he didn't have much of a choice but to trust him at this point. "Yeah. Let me sit down, I'm wiped out," he said, starting toward the couch. "Then, I'll tell you."

---

The doctors came to the same conclusion Rowan herself had: Just some bruising. It was good to have a second opinion to let her know her power wasn't lying to her about her heatlh. That woman from her dream had intentionally granted people powers in a way that promoted chaos, destruction, and death; even if it saved them from whatever those mist monsters were, she could be regarded with nothing but suspicion, and the powers were just as capable of being untrustworthy as she was. She had spent a personal conversation with Rowan mostly tempting her to kill someone, which she'd proceeded to try and do.

The fox-girl took a deep breath, and spoke her phrase to finally change back. Officer Rowan Shepherd was still visibly covered in bruises, just as bad as they had been in the other form. But at least he was himself now. Since he was well enough, his partner drove him back home so he could try and sleep off the injuries. It was going to be another couple of days, unless he changed back into the other form and figured out its supposed healing powers. He hadn't managed anything like that yet, but then, he'd only heard of the possibility the night before and then had been too lost in thought about something else to consider trying while the doctors were checking him out.

On the way, Rowan heard the news: The mist beast had been one of possibly hundreds popping up all over the world. With this many showing up, even if the people with strange powers had taken them all down, there were sure to be more, and soon. Two wrongs didn't make a right, but he hadn't let that girl get away; she'd gotten away with the help of an unknown accomplice. Now that it had happened, it wasn't his jurisdiction, and it wasn't his problem. The world needed people like her right now, alive and not in jail cells. Barring the possibility of a genuine, direct assault on his life, Rowan needed to find the other way, the one that supposedly "wasn't worth it."

Maybe it needed him, too. When he got home, after sleeping off the exhaustion that nearly had him doze off in the squad car, he would change back and try to figure out how to do more than just see those injuries. It wouldn't be easy; none of using those water-based powers was easy, it all took a great deal of effort and concentration, or the hard shove of adrenaline, doubtless because of it being a "weaker" version of what these powers were supposed to be. But if it worked, it might be worth it.

---

Amory shielded his eyes with an arm and Blake said something incomprehensible. After a second or two, a girl's voice said, "Okay, you can look again."
The white-haired fox-girl seemed to still be wearing Blake's shirt, tented out over her smaller form. It was a cute, tomboyish look, along with her messy long hair and posture, leaning forward with her hands on her bare knees. Amory's second or third thought was that their fur didn't look nearly as soft and fluffy on TV, and the one after that to wonder if she'd let him touch it just a little bit, before he forced his mind back on track: She's talking, listen to her.

"I came up with 'Light' for the 'hero name'. I guess it makes it kinda obvious what my powers are, but they're not that hard to figure out anyway." She breathed in and slowly exhaled, leaning back on the couch. "I actually feel a little better. I tired myself out fighting that thing, but I can kinda get energy from light like this."

"Like, you can eat light? Err, is it photosynthesis, like a plant?" She didn't look green..or really seem to be the right skin tone or hair color for absorbing a lot of light in general.

"I guess? I don't really know how it works. It feels more like I am light, including the light around me, so when there's more of it there's more for me to pull from for energy. I know that doesn't really make any sense, but..it's the first explanation that comes to my mind, so there must be some way it's true."

"At least now that you know, I won't have to go looking for places to change back and forth. I can just do it here, as long as we keep the curtains closed."
"Y-yeah.." Amory realized that was probably a good policy to have while his roommate looked like a girl, too. He was trying not to think of being alone with a cute girl in his apartment with the curtains closed. "S-so, um, you can just control light? Like, make it do whatever you want?"
"Seems like it..." She raised a hand and twirled it around slightly, and the room dimmed suddenly as a ball of light appeared hovering above it. Then the ball broke up and scattered away, bringing the room back to its original brightness. "I figured out a bunch of different stuff to do with it...illusions, lasers, flashing people's eyes to blind them. Also I have the sword, but um, don't wanna cut the furniture." She paused, blinking a couple of times, and then yawned. "I guess I'm still pretty tired..."

"Well, you answered my questions, pretty much. And you know I know. And uh, last time I heard they're still having classes tomorrow."

Her yellow eyes widened. "Seriously? How is it not a state of emergency or something yet?"

"Well, all the monster things that showed up got killed, and then the President gave a speech about not letting fear overtake us and the greatest victory being continuing our lives or...something like that, and I guess our dean took it seriously," he shrugged. "But, I guess you could take a sick day if you wanted."

"Mngh. I can't act suspiciously or more people will figure me out," she said, standing up and stretching. "So I guess I'll see you in the morning. Hope none of those things attack tonight..."

"Y-yeah, me too." She walked behind and around the couch to her room, not at all noticing Amory's blush from seeing the shirt outline the front of her body briefly during the stretch, which was definitely a good thing. He was going to have to get used to living with someone who could at any time turn into a cute girl...without acting like a total pervert around her. This...might be difficult.

---

Blake thought he was okay. He was slightly surprised to wake up still a girl, until remembering what had happened at the end of the night before. At first, he felt awake enough—well, at least as awake as he could be with a morning class anyway. But after lunch, in the early afternoon, a wall of pure exhaustion hit him again. He was dangerously close to just dozing off with his head on top of the notes he was supposed to be taking, and had to resort to poking and pinching at himself occasionally to stay awake. He was so out of it that he didn't even notice an increasing number of other students' heads turning toward the window to the courtyard outside.

Eventually the professor noticed before Blake did. "What are you all—" he paused as soon as he looked, the next word caught in his throat. That finally cut through Blake's shot attention span and had him turn to look outside, too. There was black mist out there, already in the process of forming another creature of some kind. The professor quietly said, "Everyone, out in the hallway." They were too busy watching what was going outside with a mixture of fascination and shock to really hear him. He raised his voice: "Get out of here! NOW!" That got everyone's attention, and there was immediately a rush for the door.

This time, the mist was forming not one giant body, but two small ones. Well—not small exactly, but person-sized, so small by comparison to the giant Light and the officer had fought the day before. From this distance it was hard to make much else out, especially with the crowd of people running away from that forming mist in a panic. Blake slowly stood up while everyone flowed out of the room around him, the same fight-or-flight adrenaline as before bolting him awake and forcing his stalling mind back into action. Apparently being in fox-girl form was not a requirement for that reaction.

He couldn't change here and now; it would be too obvious. So he followed the class out into the hallway. It was chaos here; everyone on the same side of the building as his class was coming out at the same time, and the noise was drawing people from all the other rooms to come out and try to figure out what was going on. This much chaos was perfect for getting out of the building, and into another crowd full of people rushing away. There was limited time before those things started hurting people. Nobody was looking at him; all eyes were either turning back toward the courtyard they were running away from or forward in the direction they were running to.

In a flash of light, a fox-girl appeared, a sword in her hand. That got people's attention, of course, but as far as they were concerned she might as well have teleported onto that spot. "Clear a path!" She started running, dodging around one or two people before the rest started following instructions at least enough to leave a little gap to easily dash through. And then it was out to the empty courtyard to confront the Trouble again.

Anyone halfway intelligent would realize this was someone at the college. But there was no correlation between apparent age and real age—Ning showed that—so Light could just as easily be one of the thousands of students as one of the faculty members or a janitor or some random other person on campus for some other reason. The risk of revealing who she really was from this was very small, greatly outweighed by the value of catching those things before they started attacking people.

...Why did she assume they were going to start attacking people? It was something about their nature, or their apparent nature to her at least, and apparently to all the others given power like hers. But even if that instinctive belief was false, it wasn't worth the risk of testing it out. Even one person getting hurt just to find out that those things really did want to hurt regular people would be too many.

Light finally found the two of them. They were identical, humanoid things, both a head or so taller than her current form. They had the same kind of freakish giant-teeth-mouth thing going on as the one from the day before, but no eyes. That was going to complicate things. Their feet looked at first glance like they'd been put on backwards and were constantly on their tiptoes, and instead of hands, their arms ended in blade-like appendages. As soon as she came near both of them turned toward her, clearly able to sense her somehow, and rushed right at her.

Four blades on one was not a fun prospect. Illusions and flashes would be a waste of time and effort, so Light went straight for a laser to the side of one of them. If she was lucky, she thought, it would think somebody was actually hitting it with something hot from that direction and turn away. Apparently she was not very lucky today. The blades came whirling at her, and she had to start a complicated dance of ducking, moving aside, jumping back, and blocking to not get sliced apart by the black blades. They clashed with her sword just as hard as real metal, with plenty of strength behind every swing. The two of them coordinated, one of them always to one side or behind her, and she had to thank her accelerated reflexes for saving her life innumerable times in the span of probably thirty seconds.

She did come up with a new trick partway through: Blocking so the momentum of the blade against hers stopped, unsummoning her sword that very instant and then resummoning it into the hand again in a different position to block another attack. The ability to teleport one's own sword around at will like that opened up a whole new category of techniques and styles, but it was looking increasingly like she wouldn't be living to develop them. Eventually, maybe after a minute of being constantly just-missed, the cape her current outfit torn to shreds and some fur gone from her ears and tail from some particularly close calls, it was absolutely clear that this safe, defensive strategy was just not going to work.

More lasers, as big and as hot as she could still make them. Making them drop their weapons was not an option, but making at least one arm hurt too much to move right now seemed like a good idea. Light saw an opening and went for it, slashing right at the chest of one of them; the other one blocked, and pushed her back. She stumbled a couple of steps, panting with exhaustion. She wasn't even fully recovered from the running and fighting last night, and even with the sun above them in the sky there wasn't enough energy left in her to keep up. The two of them stood side by side, readying their weapons again, and she, panting heavily, raised her sword. Her hands were shaking; this fight wasn't going to last much longer at this rate.

Her tired mind raced as fast as it could for some kind of solution, a strategy that would work or a way to defend herself. If she could survive long enough then Gerald might see the news and Ning might come to the rescue. Some lightning bolts sounded like a really good idea right now. But she'd barely lasted a minute or two so far and felt totally spent. She could try to run away, but those things were fast, almost as fast as she was, and they could always find ways to flank her, and it would put whoever she ran toward in danger if the running went anywhere near long enough to buy any meaningful time. No, the most likely outcome at this point was them killing her and/or finding some way to eat her. That wasn't a pleasant thought. They were already starting to move toward her again; it felt like it was going in slow motion. Was this what it was like to see your death coming toward you? To see a man with a gun popping up in front of you and know it's too late to react; to realize that you've stepped on a mine and within a few seconds you're going to be in a world of pain—and shortly after that, gone?

Something...a small, thin blur darted through the space between Light and the two sword-hand-things. It left behind a bright blue glowing trail, like some kind of thread, and it swung around like a boomerang, going behind them and back toward the side it had come from. The glowing thread was pulled taut from that direction, suddenly catching one in the side and pulling it into the other one, knocking them both over like a couple of bowling pins. The light-thread-stuff scattered, fading out of existence as it broke apart.