Battle Vixens! - 9

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Episode 9: Dr. Quinn

Rory Quinn was grading lab reports in her office. These undergrads never had any idea how to write these things, not after dozens of lectures and explanations and emails, and it was deeply frustrating on top of being dull, grinding work to grade and correct these things. It was a necessary pain for the sake of those kids and all the science that maybe one or two of them would someday do, but one she was wishing for relief from at the moment.

That relief came in the form of her husband bursting her office door open. "Rory! There's one of those..things showing up out on the quad!"

She stood up right away, dropping her red pen in the middle of a stroke. "I guess that makes it our turn, right? Let's go." She moved past him on the way out of the door to the little hallway the biology professors shared, and then on down some stairs to the science building's main thoroughfare with Clark right behind her. "Ready...!" was immediately followed by her speaking her phrase to change form, and he responded by nodding and saying his as well.

Everyone else seemed to get some kind of flashy effect while changing: Water flowing, light flashes, Clark's blue glowy thing. Rory's change, however, didn't come with any particular fanfare; her body simply changed shape, growing and changing in a single physical motion. While Clark shrank down, she grew upward several inches, her muscles tensing themselves slightly as strength filled her. Her usually modest bust generously filled itself out, gaining a couple of cup sizes but thankfully not growing any faster than the clothes around them.

The bright red of her short hair dulled to a bluish gray while it flowed out into a long cape across her back; her casual clothes morphed into some gartered stockings and a dark blue, vaguely military-esque dress with a short pleated skirt and something like an actual red cape hanging from the left shoulder. Her ears pushed themselves upward, growing as tall and fluffy as the small girl in front of her but with pitch-black tips, and an even longer and bushier tail than Clark's burst out from her back, mostly the same color as her hair now was but with a brigher shade on the tip, as seemed to be usual for fox-girls.

One of her eyes turned red like her husband's did, but the other one retained its usual gray color, in defiance of all understanding of normal genetics and eye color formation. Finally, a pair of little horns grew from her forehead, straight through the long gray locks, and the two of them were finished changing.

Rory felt an immense strength and physical confidence welling up within her. She felt invincible, and had the strange feeling she could make herself even tougher or faster or stronger if she wanted to. She turned to the nearest window, shoved it up and open against the objections of the locks that were still engaged on it, and gauged the size of the opening. "Let's jump out here."
"Wh-what?!" The smaller girl next to her looked wide-eyed at the window. "We're on the third floor, Rory. That fall is not survivable without some really debilitating injuries."

"We'll see about that." She jumped without a second thought, and landed with a little rolling tumble on the ground totally unharmed.

Still astonished her wife had done that, Clark stuck her head out the window. "Are you okay? Anything broken?"
"I'm fine! Join me! Time's of the essence and all that."
"You might be invincible, honey, but I'm not!"

"Come on, you chicken," she waved. "Students in danger, right? I'll catch you!"

"I'm gonna regret this." Her head went back into the building, and Rory's ears flicked upward, hearing Clark take a running start before diving out the window herself.

Rory jumped, making a height that would have been appropriate for a cat long-evolved to jump, but certainly impossible for anything humanoid, and caught her husband in her arms midair. She landed hard enough for her shoes to make imprints in the dirt, but painlessly, and gently set the smaller girl down. "See? You're fine."
"Thanks, dear." She brushed herself off slightly, and then started running toward the quad, Rory on her tail (well, not literally, but pretty close to it).

"What are you all doing? Get out of here! Your lives are in danger!" she yelled angrily. There were a lot of students with more curiosity than brains standing around staring from a distance, but the angry woman who looked ready to physically throw them out of there persuaded them to start running off. That white-haired girl from the news of the afternoon before was standing there in front of the pair of monsters all that mist had made, looking in bad shape. When the two of them got closer, in a single motion Clark took the needle from her left ear and tossed it forward, a thread of spirit-magic or whatever coming out of her wrist along with it, attached to the bulb. When it cleared the two monsters she made a pulling motion with the other hand and the needle turned to follow, rushing back to be caught by it.

She had to ask. "Why was your first thought to throw that?"

"I dunno," Clark shrugged. "Worked, didn't it?"

"Whatever." They were already starting to get back to their feet again, so Rory followed up, running up and placing herself between them and the exhausted fox-girl, turning her head back over her shoulder to look. "Hiya kid, need some help?"
The girl's eyes widened. She was well and truly out of breath but forced out a half-whisper: "Look out!"

Rory turned forward again, putting her hand in front of an attack reflexively, and at the same time concentrating on increasing her toughness. That attack was a bladed appendage with the solidity and sharpness of a real shortsword, swung at what seemed to be close to full strength, and it didn't even pierce the skin of her palm. Another sword-thing from the other monster followed and landed in her other hand just as harmlessly, so she closed them and pulled, making the creatures stumble forward awkwardly. "Hahah! It'll take more than that!" She let go of the swords, pumped what had been boosting her hands' toughness into strength, and decked the nearest one in its stupid freakish face, sending it flying through the air. The other one swung at her with its other arm; she ducked underneath and grabbed it by the wrist, judo-throwing it onto its front side.

Clark followed up the air-tossing punch with another straight throw of her needle and the thread behind it. It went below the monster in midair, and with a rapid, complicated motion of her hands she would have struggled to describe or believe physically possible, the thread trailing behind it wrapped around it five or six times and squeezed tight, binding its weapon-arms and cutting into its body as it landed, making it bleed some of its black mist out. After catching the needle again and severing the thread from it, but concentrating on keeping it active this time rather than dispelling it, she ran up to the girl who'd gotten here first. The sword was gone from her hands and she was doubled over, gasping for air.

"Hey, are you hurt?" In front of them, the unbound monster was standing up, but Rory was on it, giving a hard kick to the stomach and then dodging around a couple of attempted strikes.

Between huffs of air she managed, "I uh..I don't..think so..?"

"Lemme take a look. Just hold still." She turned the needle around and tried scanning for trouble. A few minor scrapes and scratches maybe, but more than anything else this was the body of someone who'd been running nonstop and just needed to rest. Her powers didn't really offer a quick fix for that. "You need to take it easy for a bit, you know? My wife and I will handle these guys." She looked up again briefly to see Rory's fist going through her opponent's chest, and then another kick shoving it away followed by some disgusted waving about of that hand. "Well..mostly her. What's your name?"
"Light."

That didn't sound like anyone's real name, but given how much she'd been on the news lately Clark couldn't blame her for coming up with a psuedonym. She closed her eyes for a second, and opened them. "Hahh..you have no idea how nice it is to meet some other fox girls who aren't just trying to kill me first thing."

"Why would we do that?" she headtilted slightly.

Instead of answering, Light's eyes turned to one side, toward something Clark couldn't see. "The other one's cutting its way out."

"It—" the smaller girl looked up again, and saw her thread from earlier bursting apart as the thing stood up. "Oh, you're right! Okay then, back to work. You hang back, Light, try to catch your breath." She went running toward the other one, tossing her needle up and forward on another new impulse of how to use it. The glowing thread behind it knotted and wound around itself until it was the shape and size of a baseball bat, and she caught the needle in such a way that that end of the thread was where the bat's handle would be.

Clark ducked under a sword-swipe and swung the glowy spirit bat at the thing's side, just below the arm that had swiped at her. The bat scattered and dissipated as it connected. The creature made a loud hissing sound from its mouth as a massive gout of mist exploded from the whole region of injury, and it chopped down at her with the other arm in rage. She jumped back and to one side, bouncing on her feet briefly after the landing; that had been a little closer than expected. Suddenly it went slightly dark and a ball of light appeared behind the monster, firing a beam right at its back; the laser seared it and sent more dark mist leaking out. It took her longer than it really should have to realize that this was probably something someone named Light might be capable of doing, for as much as it all defied the nature of light itself.

That blast distracted the monster long enough for Clark to make another ranged shot, making just one loop around the thing's forearm but keeping the end from inside her wrist attached and pulling hard at the needle after catching it in the opposite hand, concentrating on keeping the string as sharp, solid, and tight as possible. It visibly pulled in through the arm before suddenly going slack, the knot coming back toward her while the creature's arm fell, cut clean off of its body by the spirit string. The arm-stump became a spout of black mist and the creature made a loud, screeching noise like a chalkboard scratch amplified severalfold, making Clark wince and fold her ears to the sides of her head.

Rory continued to stomp her opponent, delivering blow after blow, but it just didn't want to go down. She saw her husband run over to confront the other monster, apparently done talking to their rescuee for the moment, and after picking up this one in an over-the-shoulders wrestling hold and trying to crack its spine with still no apparent meaningful effect she threw it to one side like a ragdoll and ran up to the one-armed monster preparing to slash a stunned Clark, grabbing its arm from the side and throwing it over onto its back. "How are you injuring these things? I keep beating the snot out of them but they won't stay down!"

"I dunno, this string stuff just seems really effective."
A couple of clanging metal-on-metal sounds rang from where she'd thrown the other one. Despite all suggestions of rest, Light was back in the fight proper. Well, Rory thought, might as well get help from an expert. "Hey kid, how do you kill these things?"
"I don't know!" clang, clang, clang. Man she moved fast, even for as tired as she apparently was. "Make them bleed the mist stuff until they run out of HP?"

Rory stuck out a hand and caught a wrist, stopping the sword-arm attached to it from coming any closer to her, and twisted until the body it was attached to dropped to the ground again. At the same time she felt one of her ears drop to the side, reflecting her confusion. "...Horsepower?"

"Health points. Video game words," said Clark. "Critical existence failure? Well, if I can deal damage then I will." She tossed her needle up and formed another bat the same way as before, swinging it at the chest of the one-armed one as it tried to stand itself back up. It bled more mist out, and started to look..fuzzy, indistinct somehow. But then some mist flowed over to it from the direction of the other one, and it suddenly reformed, standing and regrowing its arm all at once.

It swung at Clark, who hadn't been prepared at all for that to happen, but Rory jumped in the way, blocking it a little awkwardly with her arm. The result was a cut sleeve and a scratch that looked like an exceptionally long papercut, and hurt like one too. "Ow. Jerk!" The blade-armed thing quickly received an uppercut to the jaw hard enough to send it flying again for that.

"I thought they couldn't even scratch you," said Clark, giving the arm a concerned look.

"Only when I'm concentrating on not getting scratched. I don't really know how to explain it."

Light ran back over to them, the one she'd been fighting against right behind her, and stumbled over onto her front. Rory was paying enough attention to get between the monster and the exhausted fox-girl before it could do anything to her and use its sword swings to get a handhold to throw it to the ground again. The white-haired girl rolled over onto her back, heaving. "It's..paired, twins, I think," she breathed.

"What're you saying there?" The one she'd uppercut a moment ago was running back up again; Clark tripped it with a little spirit-wire around its backwards ankle and then spun more thread to tie it up for a moment.
"Revive each other, so...need to die at the same time." Light held her hand up, and her katana appeared in her hand in a shimmer of light, the blade held carefully with its dull side against her palm and the hilt pointed up toward Rory. "Take this...got a hunch it'll hurt them more than your fists."

"Guess it's worth a try." She picked up the offered sword and turned toward the monster busy trying to get itself up again. Not that she had any idea how to use a sword, but well, how hard could turning the sharp and pointy bits at the bad guys really be, anyway?

These things were stupid, but persistent. Now that it was up, it tried to stab her. She sidestepped, grabbing its blade in her free hand, and stuck the sword through its stomach area when she pulled it closer to her before kicking it off the sword again. The wound shot a gout of black mist out, an effect that had definitely been missing when she punched it through the same spot earlier (or was that the other one she'd done that to?) Well, now it was prone. She picked it up over her shoulder and carried it over to Clark. "Hey honey, can you tie these things up together?"

"Probably, why?"
"Our friend there has the idea they have to die at the same time. So..." She waved vaguely with the sword, and dropped her load on top of the other one. "Let's test that hypothesis."

More thread went to tying the pair of them to the ground, attaching itself to some of the nearby grass. Clark hadn't really known she could secure it that way, and was already trying to figure out why...but she carefully stepped back while her wife lifted the sword up in both hands, and then made a hard chop right down the middle. The threads dissipated from the force of the blow, and the swing was hard enough to cleave right through both creatures' torsos and bury the blade halfway into the ground. More black mist was emitted, and this time the twin monsters faded and broke apart, the mist forming them diffusing out into the air before being carried away by an invisible wind.

Rory put a hand on her hip. "I guess she was right." She turned to where Light was. "Hey kid, they died for real this time!"

"Gh..good..great..." Light weakly gave a thumbs-up. Her sword disappeared into some sparkles of light. "I think I'll just stay here for a while if you don't mind."

Clark ran over to the prone fox-girl, kneeling next to her; Rory followed. Her husband held the bulb-end of the needle over Light, and it glowed slightly. "Is she gonna be okay?" It looked like she was breathing, but her eyes were closed now.
"Yeah...just, fainted from exhaustion. I guess the adrenaline finally wore off."

She crossed her arms. "Well...what do we do with her now?"

"Well, at least find her somewhere more comfortable to rest..."

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Bit of behind-the-scenes: I started writing part 8, and got most of the way through writing what became this part before realizing I had basically written two entire parts. There was even that perfect spot where the perspective switched to place the split. So, double Battle Vixens this week!

When I first started looking for images to use for this story, an awful lot of them had katanas or other kinds of swords. But I'm not happy with the idea that that's the only weapon type available, so I looked for ways to use images that didn't necessarily obviously have weapons in them for some characters with less conventional fighting styles, like these two.