Battle Vixens! - 25

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Episode 25: To Protect

Gerald had put a call through to Dr. Clark Quinn not long after Light left. The store was empty then, anyway. Clark had a lot of ideas for how to use control over electricity, but for the purposes of getting something practical to work quickly Gerald focused him as much as possible on how exactly an electromagnet worked, what he needed to do with the electric flow to quickly get a temporary, powerful one pointed whatever way he wanted. He felt sure that he had enough control now to do what the physicist described, but when he went home and began to try it proved far more difficult to coil the electricity in the needed way than first anticipated. And then there was Nadia to take care of.

Today being a day off from school, the little girl was home all day. After feeding her and playing for a while, Ning let her lie down on the couch and catch her favorite cartoon. She sat in a chair nearby, giving the electric coil another try. She felt certain somehow that if she could get a small, weak one to work then bigger ones that would actually be useful in a fight would be a simple matter of 'scaling it up' and pumping more energy into it, so there was an iron washer on the floor in front of her that she held her hands over in a vaguely circular gesture to try and make it happen. Occasionally, especially during commercials, her granddaughter's attention was drawn to her efforts, a bit of fascination showing at the little coil of sparks forming in the air between the hands and the floor.

It was getting close to lunchtime when Ning finally folded the little coil of sparks in just the right way, and by patiently keeping it working for several seconds the washer slowly levitated off the ground toward it, eventually touching the electricity itself and discharging into the floor with an abrupt little shower of sparks, flying off to one side and rolling away.

"Yaay, you did it!" Nadia cheered, hopping up and standing on the couch to applaud.
"Heheh, I guess I did," Ning said, standing up herself. "Feet off the couch, please."
"Oh—whoops!" She hopped off over the armrest and gave the fox-girl a brief hug.

When they released, Nadia's ever-curious attention was drawn to something behind Ning, making her look back to see what it was. Black mist—just outside the driveway. She felt a jolt of fear and genuine rage at whatever person, being, or group was responsible for those things appearing, an irrational thought of how dare you toward something humans might never understand which had already demonstrated a willingness to kill just anyone it came into contact with. Then her rational thought took back over, she looked to her granddaughter, putting hands on her shoulders. "Nadia, something big and dangerous is appearing out front. I need you to hide in the other side of the house and don't come out until I tell you it's safe, okay?"
"Okay," she nodded with a serious expression, and then started off. Then it was time to take care of business. Ning bolted through the house to the front door and shoved it open just a little too hard, tearing it partway loose of the hinges, making it outside just as the mist began to solidify in the street. It didn't matter that someone might have seen her coming outside; it didn't matter that she had to pay to get the doorframe fixed; what mattered right now was tearing whatever was about to appear into little tiny pieces and making it clear that invading her house and coming this close to her grandchild was not acceptable.

It formed a giant cloud, almost a dome shape, taller than any of the nearby buildings. Six streaks of black mist shot out from the dome, four evenly spaced toward the ground and two longer streams opposite each other turning into a tail with an end spiked like a mace, and what seemed like a taller version of an alligator's head, complete with a giant, powerful jaw, the usual humongous teeth, and glowing, bright-green eyes. It was something like a giant turtle, but far more agressive-looking, and the first thing it did on appearing was snap its head in Ning's direction, closing its jaws on the air as she jumped back, leaving behind a small shower of sparks for it to eat instead. Being turtle-like evidently did not mean it was slow.

She responded by calling a bolt of lightning down, which hit the shell; the electricity spread down across it harmlessly into the ground, not making it leak any mist at all. Evidently that shell genuinely worked as armor; the head at least had seemed slightly hurt by those first few sparks. Then Ning was forced to run as it charged, snapping its head in several more attempted bites; she aimed herself down the road rather than letting the thing get closer to anyone's house.

Ning felt the air pressure from a jaw closing just behind her, and immediately jumped up and around, drawing her sword in a quick slash to its neck just behind the head. Her muscle memory was tuned to resheath the sword after the strike, landing her next to it. Then it turned its head and tried to snap at her again; she ducked aside, striking the side of its head and jamming the sheath vertically between its teeth all in the same motion. The sheath was sturdy enough to keep it from closing its mouth for a couple of seconds, during which she ran around to one side of the thing's massive body; then it broke, bursting back into the electricity it was made out of and briefly shocking the inside of the thing's head again. Ning reformed the sheath around her sword right away.

It turned quickly, but not as quickly as its head had been snapping at her. Ning was able to get the rest of the way around it and deliver a flurry of slashes to its back leg, before instinct told her to jump away and that tail smashed through the road she'd just been standing on. She landed, panting slightly, and then saw something bright out of the corner of her eye and turned toward it. It was...

"Light?"
"Yep." She nodded, but her voice sounded too deep to be Light's. And she appeared to register the confusion, saying, "Not much time to explain, let's just get to work on that thing. What do you know so far?"

"The shell's invincible. Head's really fast," she said. Some undefinable part of her mind insisted that this was Light, different voice or not. But even if it really wasn't, this was someone interested in killing the giant turtle, which was more than good enough. "Seems tough."
"Alright. I'll get to distracting it, just keep hitting." Light appeared to..glow and disappear, and then there were about ten of her all around the thing. Ning ran forward, jumped up onto the shell near the back, slashing the base of the tail twice before making a more deliberate motion to stab the blade directly into the short-lived gash from those, converting and amplifying the sheath into some lightning to attract a genuine strike of it down from the sky through the hilt and into the beast. Its mace-like end whipped around to swat her off, and she had to dive away, rolling on the ground briefly, lying there a second before a little slowly standing back up again.

The turtle-thing was snapping at image after image of Light, never actually finding purchase; the real one was probably off to one side somewhere. She was also calling a laser down on each of its four legs, constantly burning them, but it all seemed fairly ineffectual based on how much mist it was bleeding. This might eventually whittle the thing down, but they were both burning through their energy quick doing all this.

"Any bright ideas?" Ning jumped slightly, not having expected Light to appear right next to her again.

"Um..."

She crossed her arms. "I think we need some way to get past that shell. If it's weak anywhere, it's inside there."

After a moment's thought she did, in fact, have an idea. "Well, I did just figure out how to make a magnet."

Ning drew her sword, turning it forward and putting the hilt inside of the sheath so the rest of the blade was facing out, aimed at the thing's shell. Then she made a spiral of electricity just like before, but bigger and much stronger, around the sheath, using the sheath itself as a ferromagnetic core. Giving the sword the same polarity as the end of the sheath it was sticking out of immediately fired it straight forward with far more force than she could've ever thrown it with, and when it impacted the shell it pierced a small hole through it, burying itself to the hilt before exploding into a shower of sparks from the impact. A geyser of black mist fired from the spot and the creature made a deep, rumbling roar of pain for the first time since it had appeared.

Light followed up, disappearing and reappearing on top of the shell with her own sword drawn, plunging it into the fresh hole and jumping away. Ning struck that with lightning, jumped away as the monster snapped at her, starting another run away from it. This one didn't last long, Light making her invisible and putting an illusory Ning going in another direction to let her catch her breath before slashing its neck another several times. The hole in the shell seemed to have sealed itself up by now, so Ning ran around to one side while the thing snapped at an image of her standing still after the attack. She caught sight of Light slicing into the base of its tail with...two..? of her own sword, seemingly disappearing every time the tail tried to swat her off and reappearing the instant the tail was gone.

The giant turtle was fooled into turning around, away from Ning, on the way to a full 180, which gave her time to line up another shot. The blade pierced another small hole into the beast's shell, and Light followed up immediately, giving Ning time to strike the weapon twice. Then it was time to run as the thing started snapping wildly in the general direction the blade-shot had come from, and Ning wound up on one side of it with Light again appearing next to her. "How're you holding up?"

"Okay..I think."

"Take a minute to recharge when you need to, I'm really good right now. Whoop!" Light picked Ning up in the same motion as jumping away from a tail-swipe, placing her on the ground again a few paces away. She could've sworn Light wasn't strong enough to make lifting the weight of a person quite so effortless, but was grateful for the save all the same; she simply hadn't been paying enough attention and apparently the turtle-thing could hear their voices.

The tail-swipe had been a component of the thing turning around to face them again, and Ning hopped just out of the way of the next snap, slotting her sheath into the thing's mouth again. Seeing this, Light tried adding her own sword in just before it crushed the sheath back into sparks, giving it a nasty surprise sticking up through its jaw and causing it to flail its head around wildly in pain for a few seconds afterward. Another lightning strike hit the blade, traveling through it to the inside of the thing's mouth before it dissipated back into light.

Ning ran around to one side, and Light made an image of her run the other way so the thing would chase it. Then she made a little bit of distance and set up the magnetic shot again, firing into the shell. It was pierce, stab, lightning, run away, and then Ning felt one of the thing's bites coming just in time to dive to the ground underneath it. Thanks to an illusion, the monster bit the air a little farther along the path she'd just been running rather than following through and taking a chunk of the ground along with her, and continued to rotate itself along after that false image.

She rolled over onto her back, panting heavily from a combination of physical exhaustion and fear of just how close that had been to her being eaten. Maybe there would've been a chance to escape from its jaws, but what happened to people who got caught inside of those things was...if not for herself, the horror for the little girl back in her house wasn't imaginable. Perhaps this was a good time to 'recharge', as Light put it. Ning stood up using her sheathed sword as a prop and then brought her hand skyward, drawing two or three bolts of lightning in a row down through it and into herself. Then, with the thing fully distracted by Light, it was time to fire her weapon through its shell yet again. Surely it had to be running out of black mist or whatever it was that made it go by now, right?

Stab, lightning, lightning. Jump over the tail, dodge the next bite from its head and here, have a sheath to eat. Ning passed Light her sword to add under its jaw, and both stabbed it up through the mouth because for as capable as it was at locating them through all of Light's illusions it apparently wasn't very bright, or at least didn't appear to respond very quickly to basic Pavlovian conditioning. It was easier to call lightning down on her own sword somehow—it was made of electricity or whatever—so the inside of the thing's head got even more electrified this time, convulsing wildly from the strike.

Both of them took the opportunity to silently run a a small distance away, letting the thing chase illusions of them going the other direction when it did recover. Light made some letters in the air between them rather than risking speaking aloud: "How's your aim with the magnet thing? Think you could use my sword too?"

Ning considered it, and nodded. It was a good idea—punch a hole through the armor and then a much deeper hole through the inside. She placed her own weapon into the sheath, holding it in place by giving it the opposite polarity to that end of the magnet, and then took Light's in her other hand, taking a deep breath to steady herself.

It was one swift, single motion: Make the electromagnet fire her own blade, give Light's weapon the opposite charge so it stuck into the sheath when she put it there, then reverse it immediately to strike again just when the first blade exploded into sparks. It looked like a thin streak of pure, white light traveling from the sheath into the tiny hole, and then a sword spat out the opposite side of the thing's shell before finally running out of momentum and falling, clattering on the ground. The creature roared its loudest as two geysers of black mist shot out from the holes, but they weren't done yet. Light appeared, struck her sword into the first hole, then appeared and struck her sword into the second hole; there seemed to be a thin string of white traveling up over the shell between the hilts of the two copies. Ning unsummoned her weapon, spreading her arms and concentrating on calling down the thunder, alternating one side and another and directing the electricity to spread all throughout whatever kind of flesh there was beneath the black shell on its way between the tips of the two copies of Light's blade. This concentrated assault was finally bringing the fight to a close, it seemed, making the giant turtle-thing start to blur and dissipate. When the swords disappeared again, Light took advantage of the still-present holes, everywhere in sight growing dark as its light was pulled inside to form lasers piercing all through the inner body of the monster.

It roared again and flailed its head and tail as it finally fell apart for real, bursting into black mist and blowing away on the wind. The sunlight resumed its natural place, brightening the surroundings back to normal. Ning was bent over panting for a moment, and Light appeared next to her again, gently placing a hand on her back.

"I..guess you were at home when all that started?"
"Yh..yeah."

"Then we should probably—..we should..." She seemed distracted; Ning stood herself up to try and see what the problem was.

The person standing there looked like...if Light had grown up quite a bit, maybe. Taller, bigger in a lot of ways, skimpier clothes, abs even. Ning couldn't help but think she looked rather beautiful. But she also had a slightly distressed look on her face, and there was a faint hissing sound starting to come from her direction. "Light? What..?"
"It's—don't worry, we're inviI—" Her voice cracked strangely. "Uh, invisible to everyone else, right now." It was changing, growing higher. And she was starting to shrink down, her clothes reshaping slowly. Light's body was pouring out a white steam that disappeared into the air only a few inches from where it began, almost an opposite of the effect from one of the mist monsters dying.

"Ough, this—doesn't feel great," she said, her voice quickly approaching its usual range and her ears drooping slightly. Before long she had shrunk down to her usual appearance, her shirt covering her whole torso and the shorts grown out into a pair of jeans. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, almost a sigh. "Hhh-okay." Reopening her eyes, Light looked slightly tired. "Now like I was saying, we should probably circle around and come in the back way. Nadia's, at home, right?"
"Right...but, what—"
"I'll—I'll explain," said Light. There were some sirens audibly on the way. "Let's, just get back to your house for now."

"Okay," Ning nodded.

---

Well, suddenly being partially in someone else's apartment—Amory's apartment, even—and not in control at all of the body that was there was not Emma's ideal way of waking up, but she discovered that once again she'd slept much later than she'd intended to, and as soon as Light dismissed the extra body she jumped out of bed and raced through the morning routine as quickly as she could without guaranteeing a disaster like slipping in the shower or falling over while attempting to put on pants (though she still came close to that one).

There was some food and, surprisingly, no mess in the kitchen. It looked freshly cooked, smelled good as usual. Beryl was nowhere to be seen, but had left a note: "Don't be late! -B" Late for...how did she know about the date? Emma was certain she hadn't seen her the night before, but...looking around it seemed she'd managed to leave her phone in the living room before going to bed. Realistically, her password wasn't that hard to guess. Emma had never been particularly good at remembering passwords or anything else like that, and anyone who knew anything about computers would probably spend the rest of their life scolding her if they found out how insecure she let things get as a result. Still, this was a new one; was her roommate really so curious about Emma's love life that she had to break into her phone? This was something to confront her about, if possible...but for now, at least there was breakfast.

Her head went spinning off in another direction, partially due to wanting to be distracted from the idea of confronting someone like Beryl about anything and partially from how she'd been woken up. If Light was supposed to have total control over her powers, could he just summon her 'extra' body into place, give her control and then have her summon the rest of herself along? The idea didn't seem to have crossed his mind, even for use in emergencies, but if they ever needed to meet in private or something it would be a pretty reliable way to at least keep Emma from being tracked. Another step toward "just teleporting wherever", it seemed like. It was also interesting, at least a little, to notice that Emma's powers worked for Light while he was in normal form—and that her 'extra' body could appear even while she was, although something had seemingly been wrong with its usual powers. Maybe there was some kind of balancing thing where having Minus without Plus dragged the body that was there down, too...which didn't really bode well for what might happen if just one of her bodies got seriously hurt.

Getting ready to go and passing the rest of the time went in a bit of a blur, and before she knew it she was standing outside of the restaurant feeling really very..uncertain about all this. She'd been so obsessed and stressed over even getting this far that she really hadn't had any time to worry about what came next. Unlike their brief conversation the day before, or some embarrassingly confused texts, this was sitting down with him for at least half an hour trying to have an actual conversaion and get to know each other. It was enough to make a significant part of her want to bolt, but the rest of her remembered well enough that she'd wanted this all along and it was going to start metaphorically knocking some heads if she went anywhere at this point.

...Was he already inside? That would be a more logical place to wait for the other person, right? Emma poked her head toward the window and looked around, trying to see whether or not Amory was present. She didn't see him, but that didn't necessarily mean anything especially if he'd already gotten a table..was she that late?! She was pretty sure she'd gotten here about right on time...

"Hey."
Emma gasped loudly and jumped, turning around to see Amory with a slightly concerned look. "Er, uh."
After a second or two he carried on as if she hadn't done that: "Sorry, I, ran a little late. You didn't have to wait too long, did you?"
"Um, n-no, j-just a minute or two." Breathe, dummy.

"Okay. Then, let's, go on in." He opened the door for her and gestured to go first, which she leveraged into breaking herself out of total mental lockup so he wouldn't have to hold it forever.

Amory took care of getting them a table while Emma continued nervously bouncing around, trying not to freak out too much. Eventually they were sitting down.

"So..how are you feeling?" he asked after waiting what seemed like a polite amount of time for her to start the conversation. "Rested well enough?"

"Um, y-yeah."
"Sorry about that thing this morning. I though it'd be a good idea, and uh, neither of us knew it would work like that."

"Th-that's okay. I was gonna get up a lot earlier, but, I've had so much trouble waking up lately. I, usually don't even need an alarm clock for school."

Amory nodded. "Doing that stuff wears people out, I've noticed. My roommate, he was asleep almost ten hours one time."

Emma looked down at the table, feeling a little awful. More reminders of how hard Light had been working toward the specific, heroic goal of helping and saving people while she'd been obsessing exclusively over what she wanted.

"Heyy. Eyes up here, huh?" She looked up slowly and Amory gave a small wave once she was looking his direction.
"Um, s-sorry. I just..." Whatever she was trying to say caught in her throat, and anyway the waiter arrived to take their drink orders at this point.

"So, I guess you know my major," he said.
"Um, s-sort of? I just know that it's, uh, sciency." Emma tapped her index fingers together. "I don't really, um..I'm studying English lit. L-literature. Never really been very good with, numbers or, formulas or st-stuff like that."
He nodded. "It's chemistry. I'm looking into biochem maybe, not sure yet." He paused while their drinks were set down. "I guess you've heard, they're opening back up this Monday. I've got most of my homework done, at least."

"Mmh. M-me too. When I um, before I went outside I found out just how good I was at doing two things at once," Emma said.

"Really good, I guess?"

"Yeah. I can uuhm, read and write different things at the same time. Play a game as good as two people. Better, really."

"Pretty amazing," Amory nodded with a smile.

They ordered their food. Emma couldn't help but feel she was talking about something that wasn't exactly her—not her efforts, just a gift given by somebody else—but somehow those stupid powers were the only thing she could talk about without stuttering so far. She'd even implied she was good with words by saying she wasn't good with numbers—and, usually she was! At least, on paper, but she was capable of verbal wit too, sometimes.

"What's um, what's he doing right now?" she said, grasping for something—anything else to talk about.

"He went out looking for something to fight this morning," said Amory.

"...Oh." Well of course Light was doing that.

"Come to think of it, I should probably remind him homework exists..hey."

"Mm?"
"What are you beating yourself up over?"

"I..." It wasn't like she'd been subtle. It didn't seem like a good idea to lie, either. "I just feel like I've been...useless. And awful. All I've done, all week, is think about myself..and now I sound like a broken record all over again, a different way."

"Emma...you shouldn't feel bad about not risking your life," said Amory with a serious tone. "Or not wanting to. You never signed up to be a soldier, right?"

"No..." She knew she didn't sound convinced. "Light said the same kind of thing," she added quietly.
"When was that?"

"Almost as soon as we met. After the hospital. She saw how I was...feeling, and, said something about deciding whether the risk was worth it. I wasn't really in any shape to think about anything at the time..."

"Well, did you think about it since then?" he said.
"I don't know. If you a-asked me whether there was anything I'd risk my life for before, this, I don't think..I wouldn't really have an answer," she said. "But now I'm in it and people are dying and almost-dying, and if there's something I can do about it but I don't...I feel like, I don't have any choice." She looked at the window for a second or five; briefly it occurred to her that she was making a concerted effort to not start crying. "It's, fight and be terrified for a few minutes, or run away and feel guilty forever. So I pick the one that makes me feel horrible for less time. I guess I'm still only thinking about myself, right?"

"That's just twisting the logic around," said Amory. "If you feel guilty at all then it's because you care about the people who might die." He paused, noticing the waiter coming up to put down their food. Once he was back out of earshot he added, "Anyway, you could always help in a way that doesn't involve fightning, or put you personally in harm's way. Yeah?"

Emma sighed. "There are some ways...I can think of, but..." She paused, taking a few bites; Amory waited for her to finish. "Sometimes I wish I'd never learned to summon weapons. If I'd just stayed inside my apartment all week this week, I wouldn't even know I could fight. Maybe I could've avoided ever finding out. And I wouldn't have been..terrified, and angry, and tired, or gotten hurt that one time. But then...you would've died." Amory nodded, acknowledging this. "I think about that...I think about how, there might be someone else out there with someone they care about. Maybe I can—maybe I'm the only one there to protect them. Even if I have to..to risk my life to do it, I don't want anyone else to have to feel the way I did when I wasn't sure yet whether I was gonna be too late, if you were alive or dead."

"Hmm." Amory was still eating, but his eyes showed rapt attention to what she was saying.

"And I know, it's, unrealistic. No matter how hard I fight or how many of me there are, there will always be people I can't even get to, can't even try to save. But, the only way I can imagine not having nightmares about it is if I know, or at least I've fooled myself into thinking that I did everything I could."

They were both quiet for maybe a full minute. Emma took the opportunity to eat some of her food. Eventually Amory said, "You know Emma, you're really a good person."
"Mgh!" She almost-choked on her food in surprise at that declaration. Seeing that, Amory moved to do something about it if he needed to, but after swallowing and some coughing she was breathing normally again. She didn't feel like a particularly good person, not after this past week!

"Uh, sorry."
"I-it's okay. What do you, mean though?"
"I mean what I said. So stop telling yourself how terrible you are, it isn't good for you. And...if you really can't be convinced not to fight, then at least don't try to do it alone. There are people who'll fight with you. I mean—on your side," he corrected, realizing only after saying it the other meaning of that phrasing.

"...I know." Emma's mind was drawn to a cold chill she'd felt from Rory the day before, and Ning threatening one of her bodies on thinking she'd done something to Light. But at least Light seemed to believe in her so far, and apparently—Amory too.

"Well, this is all a little heavy," he said after another pause. "Maybe we should lighten the mood a little?" Emma nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly. "What were you playing with yourself on the other controller?" he asked.

"Oh, um.."