Battle Vixens! - 38

 First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

Episode 38: Adjust Tracking

It was later, through the news, that Gerald Nelson found out that Light had been attacked. Not just one or two, but four puppets all committed to the effort; he was glad she didn't hesitate to use his power in dealing with the situation, but still couldn't help but feel some annoyance at not being there himself. He had to mind the shop, though; there was just nobody else to do it at the moment. He couldn't afford to close up; there was social security and some retirement money, but it just wouldn't be enough for both of them.

Although this was the reality of the situation, a part of him was starting to feel that maintaining the facade of this version of himself was more of a burden than anything else. Nadia was already used to Ning, understood she was the same person as always and seemed perfectly happy around her. Ning was stronger and quicker and had so much more energy...and above anything else, Ning was the one capable of protecting people. But if he dared to break the mask and go public with that persona...there were just too many people that would put in danger. It felt impossible.

He drove to the school to pick his granddaughter up, and then home, changing forms once inside and starting to get supper ready. It was somewhere in the middle of making the meal that Ning stopped in her tracks, a nagging thought hitting her from nowhere. She ran to her phone and rattled off a text, and then two or three more, with one hand while continuing to work with the other.

"You were able to trakc me and the peopel who took nadia"
"with like a light thing right"
"Could you do that on the puppets?"

---

Clark called "Light" through the VI app, and Blake picked up the phone. "Hey, wow, perfect timing," he said.

"What?"
"Uh, I was just about to—I'll explain in a minute. What were you calling about?"
"Oh. I uh...I had kind of a horrifying thought, and I thought I should share it right away."
"Well...what is it?"
"Okay, uh...Stay with me on this one. Rory thinks this is farfetched, but...Well, you have..a way of turning yourself into light to move at light speed."
"Right..."
"Your sword is also 'made of light' but it turns into solid matter, mostly resembling metal, and back into light again, whenever you want."
"Yeah."
"So: What if you, made your sword appear, turned it into light while turning into light yourself, and started moving in a certain direction, towing along the light that 'is your sword'. And then, turned that light back into a sword while you and it were still in motion?"

"Uh...I guess..the sword would, still be moving?" he said, unsure of the meaning.
"Correct, it would still be moving. At light speed. Or—well, physical, not-light things can't move at light speed, but, I suspect it would at least start pretty close to that speed."
"Soo, what makes this thought horrifying?"

"Aaah, let me, put it this way: I would avoid doing that, at least here on Earth, innn, any situation where you wouldn't willingly set off a nuclear bomb."

"..Oh. Okay, yeah."

"I mean, we're not really sure it'll work that way 'because magic', and Rory isn't sure you even can do it for the same reason, but, I thought it would be a really good idea to ask you politely not to try?"

Blake was silent for a moment, mostly unsure of how to react to the vague possibility of having a personal, probably self-destructive nuclear option available. Eventually Clark prompted, "So, what was your thing?"
"Oh! Uh. I was just reminded of something I figured out how to do way back, uh, literally the first day I had powers. And Amory told me that you can fly and bring along a passenger?"
"Well, with—you know, with some help."
"Right. Anyway, um, there's a possibility that I might be able to track where any given puppet came from, and if I can, then in turn I may be able to get all the way back to the one making them. But like, probably they've got a car and one of the puppets can teleport and it'd just be easier overall to avoid detection by doing it up in the air instead of at ground level, even with a car of our own."

"That's...pretty good news overall. So you want my help with this 'scouting mission', then?"

"If you're not too busy, at least."

"I'm pretty well caught up. Anyway, I think this takes priority if it works."
"That's great, because we're in the car and most of the way to your house by now," said Blake.
"...Ah. I'll make sure the blinds are shut, then."

Before long, all three of them were in the Quinns' living room, all changed into foxgirls; Rory stood off to one side with her arms crossed. Light and Clark both had a slight blush on, visibly nervous about this part even though everyone knew it was necessary. After a short pause, Clark said, "So uh, who're you gonna do first..?"
"Hmn. It'll be faster if I just go for both at once," said Amory cheerfully, putting her hands together with a peaceful smile. Then she took a step closer to them and reached her hands out to the tops of their heads, using one hand to rub each one's ears. They leaned in and moved closer, and then followed her over onto the couch and let themselves fall onto it, both pulling instinctively into a little group hug once they got there. Soon their tails were pratically knotted together, each of them had one hand on each of the others' ears, and there was a small chorus of churring. Amp reached in and got both of them glowing in their own particular ways, quickly growing them up to their fully-powered forms, and then gently untangled herself from them, hopping off and taking a couple of steps back to admire her work.

After a brief moment of petting each other, the two boosted girls jerked back and quickly stood well apart just in front of the couch. With a little bit of concentration, she'd figured out how to make Light's clothes a bit less revealing: A full-size tank top and very slightly longer shorts than before. She still tugged at them a little uncomfortably (well, the top was kinda low cut still), and eyed Clark's relatively conservative "shrine maiden" outfit with what looked like jealousy for a second or two.

"I don't think I'll get used to what that feels like," said Clark. "It was a little weird though...for a second there I felt like there was something I should..say?"
Light looked back up at her and blinked a couple of times in surprise. "Yeah...me too."

"Oh woow, your voice is so deep now!" Rory interjected, moving in behind Clark and pulling her arms around her waist. "Anyway, we'll think about what amazing new thing that could mean later."

"R-right.." Clark put her hands on her wife's arms for a moment before both of them let go. "Anyway...we should get on with this."

"You two be careful flying around, yeah? If you feel like it's gonna wear off soon, touch down right away."

"I know that."

"It prolly won't wear off for several hours unless they actually get in a fight," said Amp. "Which would be a really bad idea right now."

---

Rowan asked to be informed whenever Dawn finally got up from the "nap" she'd started immediately upon walking into the building. The report he got was that she charged straight from her bedroom to the exercise area, and when he caught up he found her hitting one of the punching bags repeatedly with her bare fists.

He came up next to her, listening to her grunt from the effort and waiting patiently for the inevitable pause to catch her breath. "You'll break your hands doing that without some protection," he said finally.

"I just...need...ta hit somethin'." She turned half toward him. "We're all outta puppets, right?"

"For today...at least, as far as we know." Rowan moved a hand forward tentatively; she didn't back away or brush him off, so he placed it on her shoulder. It was a little cold still, but not enough to keep him from doing it. "Petra told me what she said..at least, enough to get the gist of it."

Dawn nodded slowly, then gently pulled away, before giving the bag a solid kick. "She's right, ain't she? That's what makes me so mad." Two more punches, and another kick. "I'm so stupid."

"Do you think what she wants to do is right?"
"No." She paused, rolling her shoulders back and panting slightly. "So what I did, what Cynth told me ta do..musta been wrong. But if I didn't do it, then..." Turning back toward him, with a pained expression: "I made a promise. It was stupid, to agree ta somethin' like that, but I did. An' as far as I could tell she was dyin', with no hope. I couldn't..."

Her head turned down, and she made the noise of a poorly-suppressed sob. The air around her went ice cold for a second or two, and then back to normal again. After a moment of indecision, Rowan stepped forward and put his arms around her, placing her head in his shoulder to let her cry there for a moment. She returned the gesture, and he kept her there even though her body was so cold it hurt. "Dawn...you've never really had time to sort all this out. Whether it was right or not, it hurt you, and beating yourself up over it won't help it heal."

She let go after a moment, and took a small step back, her ears drooping as she saw his body give a small involuntary shiver. "Sorry."
"It's alright, it was my idea," he said with a slight, wry smile.

"I can't just...quit, or take a break, or nothin'. Not now."

Rowan nodded, agreeing. "You're needed now more than ever. But you'll do more harm than help if you let our enemy use your emotions to control you."

"Whaddayou think I should do, then? I can't help how I feel. Just seein' one a those...and thinkin' that's someone's family, or friend, or...an' she jus', killed 'em and took over..." Her eyes went sharp, cold, and angry. "I want to tear her heart out through her throat."

"I know that feeling, too," said Rowan. "Nobody ever has to ask why the police get so worked up when you kill one of our own. My advice is to keep talking about it—to me, to anyone else you trust. And remember that you're not the only one who wants to take her out, so working with the rest of us has a better chance of success than doing it on your own."
"Yeah..." Dawn nodded.

---

Rory watched her husband and Light fly out the backdoor and up into the sky, and then closed the door behind them and turned around, heading back to the living room. "Well, I guess we just wait for the results," she said, taking a seat on one of the chairs. Amory was still in fox-form, lying across the couch.

"Clark probably could've taken you along if you wanted..."
"Nah. If they managed to get detected and roped into a fight with Light's powers plus flight, I kinda think they deserve to take some hits," she said. "Anyway, even without you being targeted by monsters I don't think it's a bad idea to have someone guarding you most of the time."

"Hmm." Her ears drooped a little bit; something about saying that had made her remember something concerning, apparently.

After waiting what felt like an appropriate amount of time for her to mull that over, Rory said, "Listen...can I ask you something?"

"Yeah?"
"How do you...do it? Like, is it all magic power, or is there some kind of technique?"

"Uhh.." Amory was smart enough to know what she was talking about, but was put off by the blunt approach to the question.

"I just thought I might ask you for some tips, if you've got 'em. I mean...Clark does have a reaction to my petting, but it's not the instant switch-flip you can accomplish." She gave a brazen grin. "I admit, I do have plenty of ways to get him to look at me 'that way', but one more wouldn't hurt."

"Um.." The blonde fox-girl blushed, but her expression indicated she was forming an actual response in her head, so Rory tried to be patient. "It's..this is gonna sound really stupid, but I don't just pet the person's body. Whenever I, do that, I can feel their emotions, especially toward me. I think my power wouldn't work on someone who hated me—like, I wouldn't even be able to touch them. Clark was...hesitant that first time, but trusted me enough to keep still until it started."

"I see. It occurs to me now that you mention it..the fox parts 'feel' pretty intimate, somehow," Rory said. "Not the sort of thing I'd want just anyone to touch. Which is weird, they're biologically pretty close to normal animal parts aside from being stapled to an otherwise human body, and real foxes don't exactly have a special reaction relating to either of those places."

"It's all magic nonsense. The powers are tied to the fox parts, and the powers are also tied to the person's...self, or whatever. So I guess my power uses them as some kind of conduit," she said. "Physically I don't think I'm doing anything different from the obvious...move the same direction as the fur, go for the tail with my tail at the same time—okay, I feel weird saying that's obvious, but.."
"No no, it is," said Rory. "One more appendage to touch with works great when there's one more place to touch. Anyway, I wonder whether Clark could leverage that 'spirit power' to some effect like yours...maybe not the powering up part, since that's literally what your power is, but the other part..."

Amory closed her eyes, reopened them to a kind of confused squint with her ears lowered slightly. After a pause she said, "My first instinct is to say 'yeah, that should work', but I have no logical reasoning behind it."

"Well, you shouldn't be suspicious of your first instinct, right? 'Least until someone proves it wrong."

"It's just...I think my powers mess with my mind more than I'd like," she said. "I imagine everyone I know with powers in their fox form first, like that's how I've always known them. And I keep having these leaps of logic when it comes to understanding other people's powers, and a lot of them seem to be right."

"That sounds awkward and useful respectively," said Rory. "So what's the big deal?"

Amory sighed. "I like to think I'm in control of my own mind. I need to have a clear head and give what I think are sane observations and advice. But when she gave me these powers, it's like she opened it up and put a bunch of new information in. How do I know it's all true? What if it's mostly true, with some convenient thing that's false that'll cause a disaster when I decide to just trust it? Or—if not false, since she 'never lies'—true but misleading?"

"Hmn. Well, the stuff in your head is only one source of information, after all. Why don't you treat it as hypotheses to be tested, in that case, and only go out of your way to test them when it's safe to do so? And, if you really don't want to trust something your head just popped out then you can just, refuse to act on it. Right?"

"Maybe that would work...although I don't know how to act like I don't have information that I have," said Amory. "If I just act like the opposite is true then it's simple reverse psychology and she doesn't even have to 'lie' at all to make me make mistakes."

"Well in that case, just let other people act on their own without telling them what you think is true," said Rory. "I mean, the context where this is gonna matter will probably be some high-stakes battles anyway, so if you don't trust your instincts on something, why not rely on those of others?"

"Mmnh. I'll have to be careful either way...but I feel a little better having some kind of plan," Amory said. Smiling back up toward Rory's face, she added, "Thank you." Her tail was kind of swishing back and forth like a dog's tail wagging, too...it was just irresistibly adorable.

"Heh, and Clark thinks I'm impulsive," she said. After looking around the room briefly, Rory spoke the phrase to change forms and stood up, moving toward Amory a bit. "Maybe a quick demonstration would help me see if there's any more subtle techiniques you've got that I'm missing," she said.

"Heheh..." Amory sat up, blushing slightly but seeming open to the idea. "It'll be easier for you to pay attention to that if you're not busy jumping on top of me again."

"Maybe so." She sat on the now-open cushion, close to the small fox-girl. If nothing else, this would make tonight fun once the two kids left the house.

---

Clark's ability to pick people up was easy enough to extend to giving them control over their flight, as long as they stayed close enough to her. Once they were above the house, Light twirled and orbited around in the air some, laughing a little bit. "It's really something, right?" said Clark, smiling back.

"Yeah..." She brought herself back to an upright position, facing Clark. "I've always wondered what it's like to just float around through the air like Superman. There was a time I thought I wanted to be an astronaut, just to get to float around in zero gravity."

"Something change your mind?"

"Well...I went to one of those camps, you know? They put me on the G-force thing—the one that spins you around like crazy? I...didn't like that so much. Especially my stomach. I was really young then, but pretty soon I decided I wanted a job with a lower risk of physical injury."
"I made a similar decision pretty early in life, myself...and yet now we're doing this," said Clark, gesturing vaguely at Light's current appearance.

"Heheh, yeah. Best-laid plans and all that.

"Anyway..we've got work to do." Light turned her body around in what she was pretty sure was the direction of campus. "We should try the quad first. There were two there, so if one trail goes cold I'll try the other. If that's still no good, we could try the one that came after you."

"Right." Clark started off, the taller girl following. "..We're already invisible, right?"
"Psh, yeah. Before you even opened the back door."

"Just checking before I go over the road. I've never really navigated as the bird flies before, but I know exactly how to drive there."

When they got there, Light lowered herself to the ground, and began filtering her vision, pulling things back to that afternoon and then looking for light absorbed by the crossbow-wiedling wind puppet. The shadow one, she reasoned, might have been hiding in the shadows, which would be more difficult to track. "Hey...uh, your eyes are kinda glowing," said Clark.

"They do that, yeah. I guess some kind of power decoration. It'd broadcast what I was doing if I wasn't also making it all invisible."

"Is it harder to make dynamic lighting like that invisible?" she wondered.
"Not really? I can't really feel any difference even when I'm not boosted. And right now, I feel like I could hide a whole skyscraper without breaking a sweat." She started down the trail of the wind puppet. She had run straight toward the monster as soon as it appeared, but hadn't been standing around waiting on it; that was good news, at least, since if she had been it would suggest the puppeteer had some way of knowing where the mist monsters would be. During the time slightly before that, she had been hiding in a certain alleyway, pacing around behind a dumpster to stay out of sight of anyone who happened to pass by.

Rolling things back a couple of hours, to just the start of lunchtime, Light finally saw her arrive, and followed a jump down from the roof of a building, then some running/walking/jumping across rooftops—all sensible things to do if one didn't want to be spotted too quickly. Unfortunately for the puppeteer, this made it far easier to track the puppet than it had been to track Ning or the kidnappers; there was only the one humanoid shape clearly outlined going all across the rooftops.

Then the trail led off of campus and along the road out to the highway, a patch with forest to the side of it, which the puppet had made her way through up until finding buildings tall enough to hide on top of. Eventually the puppet's trail led up close to the side of the road, and then abruptly disappeared, indicating that this her point of origin.

Light blinked a couple of times, switching the filter around to try and see everything that was there at the moment she disappeared. There were the others—shadow-girl, plant-girl, the one Rory had stolen the spear from. And there was a car, pulled over by the side of the road, that they appeared next to, one by one. The car had tinted windows, which failed to reflect enough light out to make out anything clear of what was inside. There was a vague shadow of someone with tall, triangular ears from the driver's seat, however, which was enough to suggest that the puppteer herself was there.

She touched down, walking around where the car had been to its back. And...there was a liscense plate, of course—a number. "What do your special eyes see?" Clark quipped after watching Light stare around for a minute or two.

"She summoned them all right here, from a car," said Light. "Uh, did you bring your phone? We should get this to Rowan as soon as possible."

"Yep!" Clark pulled it out, and carefully typed the number in, then preceded it with a brief explanation of where it came from. "So now what?"

"We should try and follow the car back to wherever it came from," said Light, turning her eyes toward the road. "Or at least, I'd like to, but..." Her ears drooped slightly.

"Hmn?"

"...There's just too many cars on the road. This one's pretty generic, I couldn't track this particular car just from knowing what the model looks like, or what color it is." She floated up slightly, turning her head back and forth. "I'm losing track of it just looking around here. Wish this part of my power was just a little better..."

"Well, it's already pretty amazing," said Clark. "Along with everything else you can do, I'm honestly impressed you get to do still one more thing with so much utility. Anyway, I'm sure that plate number will come in handy the next time she tries to drive out and summon more puppets."

Light nodded ."There's no way she'll expect us to know it. We might be able to catch her by surprise this way..."

"I sure hope so." Clark's phone made the tune of a reply text, and opened it right away. "Stolen, some time late last week, from a gas station. The security camera went black just before...I guess now we know why. And he says thanks, but be very cautious if you get an opportunity to track her any farther."

"Yeah...I know better than to take that monster on alone, even if she's tired out," said Light. "Anyway...I guess we can fly back home for now." She was clearly still a little disappointed that they hadn't wrapped up the whole thing right then and there, but Clark was honestly relieved. There was a level of tension involved in hoping to stumble upon a supervillain's lair that she wasn't actually prepared for that particular night.

The "Best" RPG Ever-53

 First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

The room to the right of the one with the door glyphs seemed to have shelves built into its walls. There were some bits of mostly-rotted wood around that could have been more shelves, but if anything had ever actually been on those shelves then it must have rotted away a long time ago.
Mira walked along the wall the door was on, and found just two glyphs there. "Hey, you see any connections from these?" she said quietly. Nora came closer and looked.

"Th-they're the two doors in the room. Um...the one we came from, a-and that one," the elf said, indicating an open door on the wall to the left of the direction they had come in from. "Th-the armor must've gone through there."

"Yep," said Rayna. "Maybe we should try the left branch before going any farther in."

It didn't take long to identify which glyph opened the door on the left. Mira activated it, and then they waited back in the entry chamber for the armor to pass through and go back inside again. Shortly after it left, a distant roar of thunder echoed from upstairs. Curious, Rayna walked back over to the stairs. "Say...how's this place not flooded, with that open door straight in here?" she said, looking up the stairwell. "More importantly, do we need to worry about getting flooded out right now?"
Nora followed, and went about halfway up the stairs, watching carefully. "I-it isn't even coming down this far," she reported. "It l-looks like the water j-just goes right through this 'concentrated earth' i-into the ground beneath it..."

"Well if it does that, shouldn't the roof be leaking?" said Rayna.

"Um..."

"Some kinda 'channels' built into the walls and ceilings, maybe?" Mira suggested. "I guess you wouldn't be able to see that if it was there."
"R-right..." She came back down.

"Well, the point is we probably don't need to worry about drowning from the rain," said the fox-girl. "We were planning to be here a little longer anyway, so maybe the storm'll be over by the time we finish up here. Let's go see what we opened."

The room on the left was about the same size as the one on the right. It had no shelves, but instead there were blocks of the building's material raised up similarly to the one in the glyph room. These were fairly short, narrow, long, and placed at regular intervals around the middle of the room, nine of them total.

"What do you think...beds?" Mira suggested.
Rayna put a hand on one of them. "Pretty uncomfortable ones. I guess if you stuck a mattress on top, it might work..."

Nora noticed something not made of the walls' material in the corner, and made a beeline for it, gently picking it up. "H-hey! I found a book," she said.

Rayna came to look at it. It was thick but just barely small enough to fit in one hand. "That looks...really intact, considering the state of the library we were in earlier. What's written in it?"
The elf tried opening the book to see. It was full of scribbles in symbols she didn't recognize. "Uh...I-I think it's in another language," she said, offering the book to the fox-girl.

"Hmn..yeah. My hud identifies this lettering as 'ancient elvish'. I wonder..." The illusionist closed her eyes for a moment. "..Yes! I have a 'translate for me' skill! Let's see how much I need to invest for this language."

She took a moment opening and closing her eyes, buying one point at a time until she was able to "see" the translation to one side of the book's actual writing. "There! Not too expensive, I'd say. A little bit off-build, but I think it'll be worth the ability to just read anything. Heheh, I could even get a job as a book translator if the adventurer thing doesn't work out."

"Enough about you. What's it say?" said Mira, coming up to look over her shoulder. Of course, the witch couldn't read the ancient writing either.

"Hmn...here's one of the first entries." She read aloud, still softly enough to avoid detection by the place's patrolling guardian:

"Although my colleagues are doubtful, I am still well convinced that this place was constructed by the gods themselves. The material of which it is built is incomprehensible to our best mages on how to replicate. A shame, as our generous patrons would be more than happy to have such sturdy walls in their abode's construction. I cannot say for what purpose the gods would need such a place, nor why they would have left it so intact and empty for us to find. I almost suspect it a gift from them to us, considering how well its facilities suit the needs of our research. We have already activated an Iron Guard to keep us safe, but I am doubtful whether that will be sufficient on its own. The monsters are many in this land, and there are reports they are often larger and more dangerous as well. But that is why we are here, after all."

"Iron Guard, eh?" said Mira. "I guess that's our armor friend. Some kind of powerful magic must animate those things for them to be working after however long..."

"I wonder if their 'patrons' lived in that castle Lynn and I started in," Rayna suggested.

She looked over the next few pages. "Uhh..hmn. There are personal entries like that here and there, but this is mostly a lot of technical jargon I don't understand even after translating. Something about correlating energy flux...some notes on the behavior of dire bears, a rough sketch of one..." She flipped ahead a little. "Oh, here's something:

"The extraction process was a success, yet a failure.

After all of the trouble to capture that wretched beast alive, we mostly succeeded just in killing it anyway. The magic that inhabited it could be torn out and channeled briefly, but it refused to be contained by any of the usual methods; it is like a well-oiled snake in our hands. Where it went our best sensitives could not say; it was as if it immediately scattered to the four winds. Well is it called Chaotic Magic. But head mage is still convinced we can find some new method that will tame this untapped source of power. I think her dreams a bit grandiose, personally."

"'Chaotic magic', huh?" said Mira. "This sounds like the setup for a horror movie. 'Those scientists are meddling in forces they don't understand and cannot possibly hope to control'," she intoned ominously, drawing a half-stifled giggle from the fox-girl.

"Based on the context, i-it sounds as if this chaos magic is r-responsible for, or inherent to, m-monsters somehow," said Nora. She closed her eyes. "I-I don't remember feeling...anything specific or d-different from normal animals in any of the monsters we encountered, however. S-so it must be different from the natural elements in s-some fundamental way..."

"Well, let's skip ahead a little more," said Rayna. She turned to a bit past the middle, and paused, showing the others some complicated diagrams. "My Sophol, it's covered in technical jargon," she said, flipping through the next several pages and finding much the same thing. "It's like the magic-science equivalent of Galois' final letter...I think I even see 'not enough time' scribbled in the margins right there," she said, pointing. "Where does all this start?" She flipped back a few pages at a time until eventually coming to the last pair of pages devoid of diagrams, a likely candidate for a 'personal' entry. "Aha...now let's see......mm-hm, this looks like our smoking gun. Listen:
"My strident objections, and those of others in our group, have been silenced.

Chaos Magic refuses to inhabit anything other than a living body. Putting it into animals, even a well-trained tame one, just creates wild, uncontrollable monsters. Logically, that leaves only the option of using a sapient being for storage. It would be unethical to take a volunteer who did not understand the risks as well as we now do, an objection to which the head mage responded with an offer to be the test subject herself. This kind of thing never goes well, and I don't think it shall here, either. The magic of people, the gift of Sophol, seems to naturally repel Chaos Magic, so her aim is to deliberately burn herself out first and then we use some carefully-tuned nullification charms..."

"Well, that sounds bad," said Mira. "At least we've got a half-genre-savvy person here. Wonder whether he got away."

"Well, uh..." Rayna continued:

"I'll be clear: It is not that I think this won't work. It's that none of us know what the result will be if it does—funneling chaotic magic into a person this way. She is certain she can control it, but if our studies here so far has taught us anything, it is that control is the very thing which Chaos Magic abhors the most."

"And the other page says..."

"I have been using this book as a research journal, and in the capacity of reminding myself of things I should already know, nobody has ever objected to its use. But I will spend tonight filling the remaining pages with as many of the details of our work as I know. After that, I will use the best preservation charms I know to attempt to ensure this journal survives the ravages of time—"

"—which explains how this survived and none of the other stuff or furniture that should probably be in this room," Rayna interjected. "Anyway...

"Our patrons would not approve; my colleagues would also be aghast at their life's work being recorded in this way, with such great risk of a leak. If things go well tomorrow, I swear I will burn this book. But I don't think they will, and in that case I will leave this behind so that something of what we have done remains, even if I myself die.

If this book still exists, then it exists as a warning not to follow in our footsteps. There are some things more dangerous than even courting the power of demons. Monsters should be killed, and if studied, only to the end of killing them more efficiently. The magic that makes them monsters is inherently dangerous in a way that nothing else in this world is. I tremble to say this, but from what I have seen here, and what I understand of their nature, I do not think this magic is the work of the gods at all. I don't know what that means, nor do I have the courage to pursue that inquiry further. Anyway, I have only a few hours left to write down the details of our research.

"...And then the technical jargon starts," said Rayna. She put the book into the party's inventory. "Well, I'm sure this will mean something to someone, at least. We'll bring it back with us for safekeeping."

"Uh, y-you're absolutely sure th-there's nothing else here but the armor, r-right?" said Nora.
"Well...I haven't heard anything else. And I'm pretty sure the armor would attack anything else here if it knew that it existed," she said.

"What's wrong?" said Mira, noting that the elf had a more genuinely nervous expression than usual.

"I...I'm not sure. J-just, something about what the journal said they were trying to do fills me with d-dread. Or, horror..." she shook her head. "I-it's been such a long time since this place was occupied. Rationally..th-there's no way, even if that experiment was a disaster and c-created some kind of super-monster, it sh-should be dead by now, right?"

"We can only hope," said Rayna, nodding. "But hey, like you said, it's been a long time. Why would a super-monster hang around a place like this with that armor trying to attack it all the time? If it were here then it would've destroyed the guard already. So chances are that if it's even alive, it's on the other side of the world right now and completely and totally not our problem. Though of course..."
"Yeah, our own sense of genre-savvy suspects otherwise," said the witch. "Still, I don't think we need to worry about it right now. Let's get back to looking through the rest of this place, and figuring out how to dispose of an 'Iron Guard'."

---

A loud clap of thunder startled Clera from an unintentional nap. She jerked into an upright position in the easy chair, looking around briefly in confusion before remembering where she was. After that, the next thing to occupy her mind was the location of a certain shapeshifter. "Aria!" She had been laying across the nearby couch before.

"Ye~es?" her voice came from the library, and she walked back into the living room.

The winged girl glared, pushing herself up onto her feet. "You should not be wandering around unattended until the vertigo clears up completely," she said.

"Sorry..you just looked too cu—uh, comfortable there after you dozed off," she said. "I didn't wanna wake you. But I get super restless sitting around not doing anything. And I can't even take a nap—without Kath around, sleep is even more dull and annoying than being awake. So I went looking for a book I could read or something." There was clearly not a book in her hands; she hadn't found anything worthwhile yet, apparently.

Clera was reminded: She had been reading a book before. After looking around briefly she located it on the floor nearby, and picked it up, dusting it off a bit. "Just wake me next time—if there is one," she said sternly.

"Yes'm," Aria nodded, and collapsed back onto the couch for the moment. The winged girl followed suit, taking a much gentler approach in returning to her prior perch on the chair.

"...Clera—the one from here—brought up something in my dream we had not yet considered," she said.

"Yeah?"
"Your 'final skill', to merge entirely with the demon...does its description say anything about what happens to the demon's mind, relative to yours?"
"Uh.." Aria took a moment, closing her eyes to review the description in the menu. "Lessee here..no, no, it just describes what happens to my stats and how the other skills're affected."

"Is not the demon in your sword asleep right now, its consciousness and full power locked away?"
"I guess? That is the impression I get from the way things look in my dreams," she said, opening her eyes again.

"But if you were to merge with it, and your minds become one, then its mind may hold as much sway as your own. Possibly more—the demon has lived far longer, and so has more memory of being itself."

"Huh. I hadn't thought of that. I mean, I'm already worried a little about not being me with this Ares stuff going on..."

"If we do not know how it works, then it is too great a risk, is it not?"
"You're right. We just need to..ask an expert on demon swords or something. Hey, maybe the Captain would have some idea! Or Mira can explain how she eats demons without, like..." She made a vague expression with her hands.
"The demons a witch or warlock eat are already dead," said Clera, pulling from the native personality's knowledge. "Their souls are consumed for power, so expecting anything of their former memories or behavior to persist is like expecting the smoke from burning a log of wood to reveal how old the tree was." She paused for a second. "...Granted, there may be some way for science to determine that, but..."
"I get your point, yeah. But hey, it's a long way off before we're even to that point in the first place. I'll start asking around with people who might know, and maybe we'll stumble on the facts of the matter before we even need to worry about it. And...if we still aren't sure when the time comes, then I just won't take the skill until we are totally sure. Or we...find some way to 'kill' the demon's mind before I merge with it, or something."

"That seems best," Clera agreed, nodding.

Aria flipped around on the couch until she was halfway across the armrest, leaning Clera's way. "So hey, what were you reading?"
The winged girl showed her the cover of a basic primer on magic, something like a textbook for first-year students at a school of magic. She then halfway offered it over.

"Uh, no thanks...I don't think I'd understand much of it," Aria waved it off, and it was set down on an end table. "The 'other you' drew you to that, you think?"
"More the opposite...I was curious to read the sort of book she would have been highly familiar with. However, she memorized this one a long time ago and gave me that knowledge as soon as I fell asleep."

"Oh yeah! So, having your magic burned out doesn't mess with your link to the other you, even though she's supposed to be the source of your power or whatever?"

"Uh..the link is directly between our souls, which runs deeper than our magic," she said, her tone of voice and cadence slightly different from usual. "She has to use her power to channel mine, and that's where the link is broken." The winged girl paused, blinking a couple of times. "I mean...wait, how did I..."

"That's new...I think the 'other you' came out and answered," Aria said. "She's not starting to take over or anything, is she?"
"No...she explained to me in our first dream that the 'extra soul' of an Empath takes on a purely submissive, supportive role, usually not even affecting the person as much as she had been then. We are...entertaining the possibility that things are different due to the nature of what happened, since I took on much of her appearance." She frowned slightly. "While awake, I usually cannot tell the difference between her actions and my own unless I really think about it."

"Is it..scary, being two people at once?" said Aria, with a serious expression.

"I...a little, I'll admit. We...have not really disagreed yet, at any fundamental level. While awake, the cooperation and communication occurs without either of us consciously aware of it. It's all very convenient, and yet..it doesn't really feel, 'normal'," she said. "I doubt I'll ever get used to it."

The shifter nodded, pulling herself back to sitting on the couch. "Honestly, I'm asking because it seems like I'll have to deal with something like it soon. I guess Ares is something different, though—not another soul, just a collection of memories I have but can't remember. I want to say 'false' memories, but..."

"You don't feel as if they are," Clera said quietly. "Is that it?"
"Yeah...that's what bugs me. I mean, I know what life I lived, and who I really am, and with the gods possibly involved any amount of evidence can be planted to make it 'real', up to and including someone remembering 'me'. But I can't shake how it feels..how it felt when I almost remembered that night..."

After staring into space for a moment, Aria jumped onto her feet. And instantly regretted it, falling back onto the couch again and holding her head. She took a moment to recover, then looked at Clera, nodded, and got up again—slowly this time. "I can't keep spinning this around in my head. I want to go write those notes for Loren, so that I'm doing something, and then maybe I'll actually find a book."
The winged girl nodded, and stood up also. "I think a distraction would be best for me as well, at this point..."

---

Rose was glad she hadn't missed a storm back in her forest. The rain always made the plants so happy, and she didn't particularly mind it herself. A small fragment of her mind wondered if it was going to hurt the new dress she had on, but..well-made clothes usually weren't particularly damaged by just getting wet. She could take it off after the storm ran its course, change into something dry from her inventory, maybe hang it out to dry and it'd be good as new by sometime the next day. A vague memory insisted that it was mostly snagging on thorns or getting too excited with her claws that had destroyed previous outfits, and likely represented the greatest risk to the new ones as well.

Once she had tended to the plants, the dragon-girl took a few more experimental flights. Her old self had never dreamed of being able to do this, and the new self felt a deep sense of nostalgia that made it all the more satisfying. It would be so easy to get to and from town this way, and see all the nice girls she'd met there...! Besides, if any flying monsters got too close to her forest then she could actually chase them down this way. Her human memories said something vague about going high up in the air during a thunderstorm being a bad idea, risking a lightning strike; her dragon memories insisted that it wasn't that big of a deal; the rain and air turbulence was more trouble for sustained flight than the lightning was a risk. Maybe she'd been struck by lightning before and been basically okay afterward? With how sturdy she felt, that almost sounded reasonable.

..She had forgotten all about dropping hints to each quartet of girls that the other was from Earth. But there was probably plenty of time to figure that out, the next time they met. Rose went to work gathering some more of the herbs and flowers that the people in town had liked the best, in preparation for her next trip. Maybe she'd stay here through nightfall and come back the following morning. Being with people was wonderful, but it could be overwhelming after long enough...and she had to keep her 'hoard instinct' in check, anyway.

After a while, she landed, perching herself on a treetop to watch the storm: The distant lightning and thunder, the rain, the wind blowing through the trees. She knew that many people, her old self included, might have found these conditions miserable to be out in, but somehow it now just seemed...relaxing. Like watching waves on the shore, maybe. But she couldn't go to sleep, either—there was a small risk, after all, of a fire sparked by a lightning strike. It rarely ever happened, especially to her trees, and yet...

That was why watching storms always seemed to put her in this attentive yet relaxed state, a kind of quiet meditation very different from her usual excited self. There had been thousands of storms like this, and the smell and sound of it carried more meanings than she could ever coherently express. Some emotions without consciously available sources rolled through her; she could feel forgotten memories from ages past while she was like this...but not quite reach them.

Maybe that was for the best...the person she had really been didn't want to be buried completely beneath eons of memory, and she was happy with the way things were now, ever since Nora had come to her forest. She was out of the confused, animal haze she had lived life in for a very long time, had made friends—again..? For the first time..? It was hard to say. Things just seemed livelier and more fun now; even fighting monsters was more exciting with friends around to help out. There was a whole town of people nearby who at least regarded her as an ally, and not as a freak or horror. That was enough—all of that together was more than enough. Besides, not all of the emotions echoing from those buried, distant memories were pleasant ones.

---

Katherine watched the wolfgirl pet the wolf for a moment. You know, Zack...it doesn't really seem like you need a translator.

What do you mean? Lynn asked.

Whenever the wolf makes a noise, he just seems to intuit exactly what it means right away. Or at least, the emotion behind it, which is usually plenty to understand.

I don't really know when or how I learned it, he said. I guess it's just because I'm 'part wolf'?

The wolf could be like turning into some kind of familiar for you, thought Lynn. Hey, maybe we're a few days off from you being able to see through his eyes and stuff! Zack paused just long enough to give her a brief half-lidded look.

Well, if we really wanted to test your theory we'd need to find a 'normal' wolf, or maybe a dog in town, and see how quickly you pick up what it's thinking, Katherine said. Might be a fun afternoon. I'm sure I saw at least one pet shop in town...

Well, do you understand cats? Lynn wondered. Psychic abilities notwithstanding, did you know what the cats we were just fighting were thinking from their mouth noises?

I think it's pretty obvious they were in pain, for equally obvious reasons, said the catgirl. That isn't really useful evidence one way or another. Maybe we could see whether Nora's read anything about beastfolk being able to understand the related animal species...

The wolf uncurled slightly, enough to raise his head in the air and sniff. "What?" said Zack. "Storm's over soon?" The wolf gave a brief, affirmative bark before laying his head down again. "Well, that's good news at least. This rock floor's not a very comfortable seat..."

The "Best" RPG Ever-52

 First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

"Aha...here we are," said Rayna. They went around another couple of trees to stand before a very artificial-looking building. It was one story tall, made of shiny, sheer black material of some kind, in the precise shape of a rectangular prism jutting up out of the ground. It only went a short ways out to the left and right, but the dense foliage nearby made it hard to tell how far back it extended.

"This is 'ruins'?" said Mira, walking a little closer. There was a doorway—open, no door—right in the middle. "It looks like a modern art sculpture."

"It's certainly distinct from the castle Lynn and I woke up in." The fox-girl came closer too, and carefully put a hand on the wall. "...Or anything else we've seen in this world so far." There were vines running up and down much of the building, but the wall itself felt smooth and cool, like polished stone. "Any ideas there?" she asked Nora.

The elf walked up to the building, staring intently at it. "Th-the walls look like..heavily concentrated earth. I-it isn't naturally occuring the way materials used for the b-buildings in town are. More like somebody 'purified' st-stone...if that m-makes any sense."

"So...some kinda super-magic-based construction. I guess it would have to be something special to be so intact after...however long."

"Assuming it really is old," said Mira. "Anyway, standing around out here won't get us anywhere." She pointed upward, and a ball of light appeared from her index finger; then she started into the doorway, the light swirling and bouncing around in front of her. "Hey, stairs."

The others followed her; indeed, the doorway led to a small landing followed immediately by wide stairs going down. The walls inside were the same as those outside, but with considerably less plant life on them. There were some bugs buzzing or skittering around here and there, which only Rayna seemed bothered by. Finally, the stairs ended and the walls opened out to a tall, mostly-underground chamber, empty apart from the bugs.

Rayna put her hands on her hips, looking up and around. "Hmn. If the whole place is like this, my map's gonna be pret-ty boring."

"Actually, it looks kinda like this is the whole place," said Mira, swinging her light around. "No more doors or anything. But..."
"Yeah, it should be way bigger, based on what we saw outside."
"Um.." Nora walked up to the spot opposite the stairs. "T-there's cracks here," she said. "I-in the wall. Like, uh.." She pushed at it, and with a small grunt from her that part of the wall moved in slightly.

"Lemme help ya there..." The witch came closer and gave the wall a harder shove, making a door swing out into another room beyond. The hinge clicked repeatedly as the door moved, but it stayed open. "Phew. We totally shoulda had Zack along for this one."

"Aww, you're plenty strong," said Rayna. "Anyway.." She waved past the doorway.

"Right." Mira moved the light into the next room. This one was just as tall, but smaller otherwise. Come to think of it, the door was rather huge itself, maybe eight or nine feet up with enough width to still have the proportions of a normal door. There was a table on the wall opposite their entry, seemingly carved out of whatever material the wall was, and the wall past the table had some symbols engraved in it.

"Hmmn..." Mira walked up and climbed onto the table, running a finger across the symbols. "These seem kinda familiar, but I can't exactly place them. Some kind of magic runes, I'm sure..."

"Hey, shh!" Rayna whispered suddenly. The others turned to face her; her eyes were closed and her ears turning this way and that. After a moment, she opened her eyes again. "I heard metal clanking...like I did back at the castle. Maybe the same kind of 'security guard' armor thing as you met there?"

"I really hope not. Zack couldn't even touch that thing," Mira said quietly.

"I'll keep us invisible, just in case," the fox-girl nodded. "Perhaps it has weak points you just couldn't see while running away from it in a panic."
"Yeah, maybe...anyway..." The witch turned her attention back to the runes.

Nora was looking around at the rest of the room. Just like the previous one, it appeared to be a dead end, but it also had cracks indicating the same kind of closed doors, one to the left and one to the right.

"Oh! Yeah...I'm not sure where I remember this from, but..I should be able to activate these," said the witch.

Rayna asked, "Are they..safe? Or some kind of trap?"
"Not sure. Well—the first one just makes light. Maybe all over the building. But the others turn things on or off and I dunno exactly what."
"Let's, try the light at least then?"
"'Kay.."

Mira chanted something quietly, and the rune she'd indicated as the 'first' one glowed faintly with a purplish color, and then the ceilings of both rooms they'd come to so far began to glow. The light was a pale blue, dim but enough to see the way around. "Hmn...it feels like it's lost most of its power," she commented. "...How do I know that?"

"Well, at least we can see without your light-orb thing," said Rayna.

The witch looked around the room again, and finally noticed that Nora was closely examining the hinge of the door they'd opened into this room. "What've you got there?" she said.

"Um..i-it almost looks..mechanical? B-but not exactly. Th-there's something, like a channel through the wall going from it." She turned around slowly, her eyes following something neither of the others could see, and eventually settling on one of the runes next to Mira. "I...th-think the doors have some sort of magic to open them automatically," she said.

"..Which would explain what these runes are supposed to turn on and off!" she said excitedly, turning back toward them.
"Uh, we're not totally sure any of those isn't a trap, though," Rayna pointed out.

"We'll be careful, then. Go one at a time. You listen for any extra gears turning or whatever."

"Oookay..." She tried to make it clear this still seemed like a bad idea by the tone of her voice.

---

Zack found himself standing before a cave with Katherine once again. Well, there were a couple of other people involved this time. Lynn started to say something, and he quickly waved to cut her off. Quiet. They're right inside.

Oh, yeah...I keep forgetting we can talk this way. I was gonna whisper, though.

...Anyway, how many do you think we're dealing with? When we ran into Rast there were just two, and that was enough to be trouble.

We'll be fine..the four of us must've taken down like a dozen dire wolves in that guy's pack, Katherine responded, indicating the white-furred beast. Zack took a second to look at him, thinking back to that time, and it occurred to him that he'd sported a lot of visible scars back then...which were seemingly mostly gone now. Maybe they'd just been shallow wounds from previous fights with the pack or its opponents, or fur had grown over them...but even thinking that, surely some of it should still be visible?

He kept it mostly to himself for the moment. Nora and Mika were doing a lot of crowd control..and he cut off the fight early to 'challenge' me. But I think we'll be fine if we use this entrance as a choke point. Glancing at the wolf: Two of us can hold it, Kath get anything that dodges us to come after her instead of you...as long as you can shoot around us.

I can handle that. But still—any clue how many?

I can feel at least ten just in there, the catgirl thought back after a moment's reading. There are probably more deeper in that'll get alerted once we start.

Zack gave a vague signal to the wolf and stepped up to the mouth of the cave; he seemed to understand, taking up a position next to the alpha. So, what's our opening move? Lynn thought, moving uphill a bit to where she had a clear shot. You want fire? Lightning? Ice fragments?

We want to push them out here. so get some fire in as deep as possible, Katherine suggested. I can give it an extra push and maybe direct it to land in one of them. She also sent over a spatial sensation of about where the closest few of the wildcats were, while the archer drew her bow back and carefully aimed.

A streak of fire flew by next to Zack, lighting up the cave on its way in; in a moment, there was a roar of pain from one of the cats inside. It didn't take long for them to start running out to the mouth of the cave after that. The knight swung his sword right through the throat of the first one to come to him; the second dodged, jumped at him, and got bashed by the flat of the blade, thrown to the cave wall, in response. The wolf pounced on the first cat to arrive, tearing its throat out with terrifying precision and tossing it aside like an unwanted doll before going to do the same to the next.

A fifth cat arrived, yowling in rage; an arrow went into its throat and electricity sparked through its body, stunning it long enough for Zack to quickly stab it with his short sword. Then the one he'd thrown a moment ago came back; he kicked it in the side, flipping it partway onto its back, and followed up with a slash to its exposed underside, finishing it off. The wolf's second victim fared no better than the first, but the third cat to come to it was more ready, stopping a small distance away and poising itself to pounce at him. The wolf growled, but sat and waited patiently, and when it did attack he moved just aside of its claws gracefully, responding with his own claws straight to its stomach, knocking it to one side. Katherine drove a knife into its skull before it could stand back up.

Another one came for Zack, taking a running jump and forcing him to sidestep. It caught a rock attached to one of Lynn's arrows square in the face, knocking it back into his range to quickly stab the short blade through where he was pretty sure the heart was—anyway, it quit moving once he did that. The next cat pounced at him while he was trying to pull the weapon out again, but the wolf intercepted it, tackling it to one side into a brief roll before landing on top and tearing that one's throat out, too. This left the wolf's side open long enough for one cat to run out; Katherine pulled it in her direction and started chopping it up with her knives, easily dancing around its attempts to strike or pounce at her.

The wolf stood back up, and Zack crossed to the side it had been covering until now. Then the tenth cat arrived, moved in and tried its claws on the knight but only hit armor. He grabbed one of its paws and threw it over on its back before stabbing it in the same way as before. An eleventh one tried to run around the wolf; he stuck out a paw and tripped it, and it skidded clumsily across the ground briefly before having the giant white wolf land on top of it, crushing it briefly before digging his claws into its head and pulling its head back until it snapped. Katherine finished off her opponent, getting a knife into its mouth and jabbing it up at the brain, and then the last of them arrived; an arrow coated in ice landed just in front of it, the ice shattered into pointed shards that hit its muzzle and throat. It yowled, pawing at its face in pain until Zack stabbed it through the back with his main sword, putting it out of its misery.

Lynn nocked another arrow, and everyone remained tense for a moment, Zack and the wolf resuming their post at the cave mouth. Everyone except the human could hear distant cries of the surviving cats echoing faintly in the cave as they fled out some other exit, and after a moment Katherine moved to a more relaxed stance. I think that's it, she thought to the others.

Lynn nodded, putting away her bow and returning the arrow to the quiver before walking up a little closer, looking around. Looks like we got twelve of them.Probably enough to count as 'thinning them out', right?

Yeah. Zack moved closer to the wolf, and said aloud: "Good work." In response to the praise, it gave a small 'hmph' kind of growl, sat on its haunches and looked up at him, wagging its tail slightly.

No kidding. He does as much work as any of us, though Lynn. Once the others are well, we oughta split into three parties for small jobs, with that guy as one of our DPS or tanks.

Sooo, should we do something with all the bodies? she thought, looking around at them. Somehow I feel like it'd be a waste to just leave them here...

We could sell them to a tanner or something, I guess...I know I don't want any cat corpses anywhere near our house, said Zack. He knelt over one of the bodies and tried picking it up in his hands. "Hmn. Never mind, I don't think this counts as an 'item'," he reported.

"Wait, didn't we find gold on that wolf we killed, way earlier?" said Katherine. "Or rather.."

"It disappeared, and a bag of gold appeared in its place," said Zack, nodding.

"Really? We never had anything like that happen," said Lynn.
"Neither did we, since then. The goblins stayed corpses, and just about everything else..."

"I think we should consult an expert," Katherine suggested. "If we report that as something strange we encountered on our way into town, say..."

"Yeah, we didn't think it was weird at the time because 'this was a game', but it does seem weird now," said Zack. "...Hmn?" Looking around, he noticed that the wolf was standing at attention again, sniffing the air and clearly agitated about something.

---

Mira tried activating the rune that Nora said was connected to the door on the right. It glowed faintly, and then the door swung itself open. "See? No problem," she said, hopping down off of the table. "I guess we should start checking out what's that way, and then come back and open the other door?"

"Hey!" Rayna whispered suddenly, grabbing the witch's wrist for a second. Then she breathed, "Quiet..."

Nora took a step away from the newly-opened door; they both gave Rayna a questioning look for a second or two. Then they could hear it: Clank-clank-clank-clank...metal boots running toward them. The fox-girl finally released Mira's hand, and she made a gesture suggesting a return to the larger chamber, which they did, watching the smaller room with the glyphs from there.

Before long, Rayna's suspicions were confirmed. Something resembling a suit of armor with glowing red eyes ran into the glyph room, its helmet-head gazing around. The armor itself was cracked and dented, completely gone in places; it looked through some gaps in the torso and legs to be completely hollow. After a long, tense moment, it seemed satisfied that there was nothing there, and turned around, walking back out the door it came from.

They waited until it was out of earshot—well, for the two of them without fox ears at least—and then breathed a small, collective sigh of relief. "Seems like it's fooled easy enough by my illusions," said Rayna. "I dunno what I'd do if those eyes had truesight or something."

"Well, the bad news is that we probably do need to eventually destroy it," said Mira. "It definitely won't be safe for researches to come in here with that thing patrolling around."

"Hmn. You think the three of us can do that, or do we need backup?" said the illusionist.
"Well, honestly all we tried last time was Zack briefly duelling it and Kath mostly drawing its attention to run away. It was a really good sword-fighter, fast and stupid strong. But I think we might stand a chance with some explosions, maybe my scythe can do some damage if your illusions help me get strikes past its defenses. And—could you move that 'concentrated earth' around to hit it with?" she asked Nora.

"Um...maybe?" She tried pulling on some of the wall nearby. "Rrgh..no good. I-it's all tied together, like the whole building is one big strand of stone," she reported. "I-if we could find something made the same way and smaller, I-I think I could move it, and it p-p-probably would be solid enough to hurt the armor, though."

"Alright. Let's go looking for something like that, then," said Mira, starting back into the glyph room. "After all, there's no hurry to fight that guy. We should find any weapons this place provides, and the battleground that gives us the most advantage. Hey, if we do find any traps we could even use those to our advantage, right?"
"Good thinking," said Rayna, following. "We just need to avoid being in the same room as it. Don't want it bumping into something 'invisible' and deciding to slice it in half rather than figure out what's going on."

---

"Hey, what's wrong?" Zack came a little closer to the wolf.

Katherine patched the wolf through so the others could understand him. Skywater is near, he said. Big, with loud falling-fire. His head turned to face the knight. Alpha, we should take shelter here until it passes.

"A rainstorm, huh?" said Lynn. "Well, I'm not afraid of a little water."

"I'd say thunderstorm, more like," the catgirl responded. "And considering one of us is wearing probably really conductive plate mail..."

Zack was still watching the wolf looking up at him, having noticed something in its eyes he had never seen there before. It finally occurred to him what it was: Fear. He understood after watching for a moment what was going on: The wolf was terrified of...probably not rain, but particularly lightning, and the accompanying thunder. "Any idea how long it will last?" he asked, although he wasn't really sure an animal could predict the weather that accurately.

Not long. Passing quickly; coming quickly, the wolf reported, a slight pleading tone bleeding into its mental voice. Zack looked at the others, having a short wordless conference and quickly coming to an agreement with them, and then said, "Alright. We can probably just wait it out then. Safer for me, at least." He started inside, and they followed.

A little deeper in, Katherine took out her fire-enchanted knife and activated it, making a small glowing light for them to see by. The cave had a good several yards where the three of them could all stand upright, and they got far enough in to stay dry before turning around to look out. Things were growing dark outside rather quickly, and the animal-girls could hear thunder in the distance now. They carefully took a seat; the wolf curled up nearly into a ball next to Zack. Then there was a deafening, tearing peal of thunder from just outside the cave, making all of them jump slightly from the nearness and suddenness of it.

The wolf had his eyes closed, and was visibly shivering even though it wasn't cold at all. It gave a barely-suppressed whimper at the next peal of thunder from a bit farther off. Zack cautiously put a hand on its back, and the animal visibly calmed a bit. Well, our team pet just keeps getting more interesting, Katherine thought between the humanoids. I admit I wouldn't have liked to be caught in that either, but I could've have managed...

How was he ever an alpha of a huge pack with such a crippling fear of storms? Lynn wondered.

All he had to do was order the pack into shelter when he smelled, and then put on a brave face for a while, Zack suggested, slowly moving his hand along the wolf's fur. It seemed to him to be softer than it should for a wild animal, and he couldn't feel any trace of those scars; something odd was definitely going on with this wolf. He barked softly in response, which Zack felt certain was a pleased or relieved sound, so he continued to gently stroke the wolf's fur for as long as the storm persisted.

Mutual Mentor

Sequel to Shifting Ambitions!

I didn't really expect there to be a sequel when I wrote that one, but the more I thought on what to do with this image the more it felt like something I wanted to do.

Also, I would like to note that I made an account on DA, mostly for the purpose of confirming that that really is me. I intend on probably echoing my new captions and some old ones over there, but this is still going to be my primary hub for a number of reasons; particularly I hate what migrating over there would do to the formatting of my long-running stories. Anyway it'd be a lot of trouble to move 200+ posts even if I wanted to!

Battle Vixens! - 37

 First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

Episode 37: Shut Up

"I suspect she's right. She usually is..."
"Mmn." Simon had invited Dawn to lunch as extra thanks for taking a few photos. She really had no idea what the big deal was, and wasn't exactly eating normally yet, but it wasn't like there was anything else to be doing at the time. His wife was there too, and had...a lot of ideas.

"Then again, I suppose I am biased. It's not something anyone would want to you to feel pushed into, but.."

"I get it. It'd be good, maybe. I just...don't think I'm the right one ta talk about anything serious like that," said Dawn. "Not in front a' so many people, anyway. I'd end up sayin' somethin' stupid."

"That's just it, though. Even the stupidest things you might say could get through to people in situations like the one you were in where nothing else would. You're not the only person to ever go through all that, and finding that out could give someone else a better chance to live a bit longer, you know, without weird fox magic help."

She just gave a noncommittal "Hrmn" and mentally begged his car to get back to the base already. He seemed nice and polite at first, but had kind of an overbearing personality. Even his attempts to be polite or grateful or kind just felt like too much after a while, like some big elaborate mask he was putting on over who-knew-what underneath instead of any kind of genuine expression.

Karis wasn't the same way, and part of her wondered what she saw in him. Not that it was really any of Dawn's business, and not that she had any room to talk—but, there it was in her head anyway.

She braced herself, knowing that there had now been silence in the car just long enough for him to decide the old subject was over and change it, which meant more talking. Even though he was apparently a very good artist, from her experience it seemed like all he really knew how to do (pre-gaining superpowers) was talk. That bracing came in useful when his phone started making a familiar beeping noise instead.

"Oh! Well...can you look?" said Simon, starting to pull the car over. Dawn picked up the phone and read off the address—only a couple of blocks away from them. He immediately drove back out onto the street and started that way. "On to the fight, then! You're up for it?"

"Always." It did feel a little much to put it that way, but she meant it.

The car turned a corner and the monster came into view, towering in the middle of the street; it was just like the one she'd fought in that other town with the...lightning girl, whatever her name was. Simon was starting to slow down; she removed the seatbelt, opened the door, and jumped out with the remaining momentum, hearing a startled "Hey!" from the inside of the car. It wasn't going to be far enough to make it to the huge tentacled thing, but she did get about three-fourths of the way before hitting the concrete with a rough roll and getting back to her feet with some scratches in her clothes and grit stuck to her skin and fur in places.

Its eyes turned her way and it gave the same kind of low roar as the last one; at least she had its attention already. Once stable, Dawn took off at a run, making a couple of short blades with the ice to block and punish the first few swipes of its tentacles, and then jumped backwards out of its range again when she picked up the sound of Simon—Petra—whoever, running up.

"You coulda waited another second or to for me to stop."
"Whatever. I fought one a' these before. The head's the weak spot, it's fast, the mouth is at the bottom of the head an' it likes charging, so if it turns over onto its side get ready to move outta the way."

"'Kay." Petra raised her hands and picked up large chunks of concrete, starting to surround Dawn on either side and the back with them. "Cover ya?"

Seeing what she meant after a second or two, Dawn nodded. "Jus' keep an eye out for puppets." Then she ran at the thing again, listening to its limbs whipping against the concrete repeatedly and getting ready when the makeshift shield began to crack. She was already close enough to leap past the next several strikes, form a giant blade and stab straight into the middle of the thing with it, and then carry the momentum a little farther, running around its body to kick off of the back, make a couple more bounces and rolls off of the ground before standing up with another pair of small daggers to block its strikes with while moving back out of range. It was looking her way now (at least it had only one eye, she thought) which meant Petra should be coming up behind it one way or another.

It skittered forward and Dawn backed up a few steps, tossing some small fireballs its way to keep it doing that. This continued, the giant tentacled beast steadily gaining, until a massive spike made of compacted concrete pierced it straight through from back to front and it gave a deafening roar of pain in response, falling straight toward Dawn as if to crush her. She moved aside and slashed at it before it charged in the opposite direction (toward Petra, of course). No sooner did it start that charge than the ground shot up under it, flipping it into the air and into a wild spin that ended with it landing sideways, the mouth on Dawn's right. It turned itself around on the ground and charged at her next, so she dove out of its way and let it go until it realized it hadn't caught her and picked itself back upright again.

Her ears picked up someone coming up nearby—too nearby to be Petra. She turned that way, making a short sword out of ice and readying it just in case. And that turned out to be the right move; something blurred into view just in time for her to knock it aside with the sword and then rushed back to the hand that tossed it. It was a metal rod with a handle on it, which Dawn would later be told was called a tonfa. There were two of them, one for each hand of the gray-haired puppet in martial arts gear standaing there.

Her lips twisted into a forced-looking smile. "If it isn't, Dawn. I missed you, yesterday."

"Shut up." Dawn threw the sword at her and then ran just out of range of another flurry of hits from the monster's arms. The puppet dodged the sword easily, but then several of those blows hit her, knocking her away. Then Petra caught up.

"I see we have a special surprise guest." The puppet's weapons moved from the pavement back into her hands and then seemed to pull her back up to her feet themselves. "Any good ideas?"
"I'll take care a' her." Dawn took a step forward, making a new pair of swords. "Don't get eaten or killed."
"Sure, sure!" Petra interrupted the monster's approach, tentacles still flailing at them, with another tilt of the ground under it, toppling it over onto its side again before running up to attack.

This left her with the puppet. Dawn ran to her aggressively, slashing at her a few times, forcing her back with each move. "What's got you, so upset?"

"Don't talk ta me!" she stabbed (missed), knocked aside a strike, stuck a sword in the ground and pivoted on it to give a cold kick to the puppet's stomach, making her stumble back. Dawn landed on her feet and readied another slash with the remaining sword. "Murderer."
She ducked under it, and tossed one of the metal rods into the air. "Ha ha. What does, that, make you?" Then she struck forward with the other one, and Dawn moved aside, quickly making a shield above her head to block the first weapon coming back down at her head from an angle. The shield barely held, cracking and falling apart just after the impact, and the move left her in an awkward stance, forcing her to take several steps around to regain her balance.

"Incomiiiing!" Dawn picked up Petra's warning just in time to react, jumping as high into the air as she could and landing on top of the charging monster. The puppet followed suit and started swinging at her, so she backflipped off again, the momentum tumbling her across the ground for a few feet before she could get her footing back. A wall raised between them and the tentacled thing just before it started swinging its arms around again.
"You don't know nothin' 'bout me." Dawn threw a flurry of ice spikes at her, and she let go of one of the rods, making it spin around in front of her and knock them aside.

"Oh?" Another forced, twisted grin. "I know, what you did. Who, you killed."

"She was already dyin', stupid!" This wasn't working; she went for a longsword, charging forward and trying to hit the spinning tonfa away. It flew aside and then swung back, the puppet striking out at her at the same time.
"How does, that differ, from the other, fallen, ones?" She blocked the puppet's attack, ducked under the flying weapon.

There was a roar coming from the direction of that wall. "I think ya missed the part when I told you ta shut up!" Dawn swept at her opponent's legs, tripping her onto her back again.

The monster charged through the hastily-raised wall, aimed right at Dawn. She dove aside, which put the monster between her and the puppet. It put on the brakes and started whipping its limbs around again, and this time she charged into it, blocking and slashing until she reached the middle and threw a few spikes into its eye. Petra followed this up with a much larger spike of concrete and stone, which hit it hard enough to knock it over onto its back again. It roared in pain again while the puppet's weapons came at Dawn through the air to her left and right; she leapt forward and they followed, she ducked and they went past her head. "Mngh!" Then a kick hit her square in the back, knocking her into another forward roll.

Dawn stuck her hands on the ground and sprang into a forward flip, twisting in midair to turn around and face the puppet by the time she landed. "Ha ha. You can't, even defend, your actions. But I, can." The puppet held her hands out; they were still empty. Dawn's ears picked up the sound of the tonfas coming and she ducked again, striking a hand up to grab one and hit the other away with it. It felt like it was trying to pull itself out, like a struggling animal in her hand, but her grip was firm.

She growled, advancing on the puppet again. Her free hand formed another shield, blocking another strike from the weapon still in the air.

"You took, her power, so it wouldn't, be, wasted." The other tonfa finally returned to her hand. "Isn't that, why?"

"I made a promise." Dawn drew on Cynthia's power, making a fire from her right hand hot enough to make the metal in it faintly glow. She turned what was left of the shield into a club, swung it at the puppet to force a block, and then slammed her in the face with the burning rod. Its hair caught fire while it stumbled back, and the clothes followed.
"Ha ha. I meant, isn't that, why, she wanted that, promise?" The tonfa rattled, and finally pulled out of Dawn's hand and back into hers. "You're, worse, than you think, I am, if you've, never, even, thought, about it."

The puppet laughed as it started to fall apart into ash. "Shut up! SHUT UP!" Dawn tried to yell over it. The fire grew larger and hotter even as its fuel dissappeared. "RrrrrRRRAAAAAAAAAHH!" She pulled the fire off of the pile of dust and toward herself; it swirled around her as if in response to her frustration and rage. The mist monster returned its attention to her, striking with its tentacles, but the fire burned them away before they could reach her. She turned, feeling steam coming off of her eyes, and pointed the fire at its body, sending a spiraling stream of heat and combustion right at it. The creature roared one more time as it was destroyed, and then the fire finally dissipated.

Dawn knelt over, gasping for air. She felt sore, exhausted, and badly overheated. Petra approached her cautiously. "Hey...are you..?"
"J..just go away." There were more small crystals of ice falling from her eyes and breaking on the ground.
"Well I don't think that's a good idea." Petra crossed her arms. "I should at least get you somewhere safe to rest first, eh?"

Dawn didn't say anything; she was too out of breath and too angry to form words.
"Okaay..." Petra moved a little closer and sat down next to her. "I'll stay with you until you can move, then."

The silence lasted a minute or so, maybe. Long enough for Dawn to mostly catch her breath, but the idea of moving from this spot was still an unpleasant one.

"So, she's really trying the whole 'not so different' speech on you?"

She turned her head up to glare. "Whadda you know?"
"I know that talk is cheap." That was not something Dawn ever expected to hear out of Simon's mouth. Or...Petra's, same difference.

"...Even when it's right?"

"I dunno about that. I mean, however horrible the stuff you did before turns out to be, it's what you're doing now that matters most—after all, it's the only thing anyone ever has some control over. So think about it: You're running around trying to fight off the monsters and protect people, and what's she doing? Still trying to kill people, or at least get them killed."

Dawn didn't answer; she still didn't really feel any better about it. "Look, emergency responders are coming up already. If you don't wanna have a whole lot more people wanting to talk to you we've got to get out of here now. I'll carry you if you need me to."
She sighed, and pushed herself up to her feet. "...Naw." Looking around, the car was in...that direction. Dawn started going that way, taking a slow, listless walk like dragging her own self along the entire way.

Petra hopped up and put an arm around her, a gently supportive motion. "Look. So far you had a part in saving my life, and Karis's, and a lot of other people's too. By my estimation, you coulda killed one of the best human beings on the planet and you'd still be in the black on karmic balance by now."
That was obviously supposed to be encouraging, but it just stung worse. Dawn couldn't care much less about karmic whatever, and her mind just fixated on "killed the best human", which...certainly felt closer to the truth. "Just...stop talkin', please."

"Okay, okay."

To her surprise, Petra did turn out to be capable of shutting up for a while when asked. The entire drive back to base was in silence, except for the radio Simon turned on to keep it from being too awkward. The puppet's words were still echoing in her head, even with the arguments against them Petra had given, but it was easier to bear without the extra noise.

---

Rowan closed her eyes, listening carefully and "feeling" the water around her. She was staking out Nico's house, where her husband currently was, on a small hunch. In fact she was hunched over on the roof, hoping to take advantage of the natural tendency humans had to look down and forward and never up. It was practically a gamble, with the number of available targets, but it didn't take all that long for it to pay off. There was something with no water in it pushing its way through the vapor in the air over the back fence.

Remembering Light's words about announcing one's advantage, Rowan silently drew her sword and leapt down, slashing at the puppet. She would've just shot it, but felt certain she couldn't aim that well with a handgun from the rooftop at a moving target, besides the fact that that would take time and this she could do confidently and quickly. The slash connected, but only briefly before the target was gone from her range and a few steps to the side. The puppet hadn't moved, she had simply been in one place one moment, and the next right afterward. Not unlike an ability Light had recently displayed, but this seemed to be a much more immediate part of this one's powerset.

"Heh." The puppet held out its hands, and a pair of butterfly knives appeared in them. The right arm had a deep gash in it from Rowan's attack. She began to strike, but Rowan sensed a feint and moved diagonally forward-left toward the puppet; when she disappeared and reappeared behind Rowan, she hit only air. A thick arm of water shot up from the grass and around the puppet while Rowan whirled around, sword ready.

The puppet struggled (her arms were bound against her body, of course) but gave a forced grin. "I've been, looking, all over, for you, and here you are." Rowan remained tense, aware she could probably just disappear out of the grasp. Even before gaining power over shadows in Japan, the puppeteer had to have some way of quickly escaping after a kill. Some power capable of moving quickly, or flying, and preferably of bringing a passenger along; this seemed to fit the bill after making an extra assumption or two. Something like that would also be convenient for kidnapping; that was more or less the extent of the hunch.

"We have nothing to discuss." Rowan readied her blade for a stab dead to the puppet's chest. "Unless you wish to hear the Initiative's ultimatum again. I assume you get television or at least radio wherever you are hiding."

Predictably, the stab went through air, meaning it was wise to not commit too much energy to it; the puppet appeared on the ground to her right, and Rowan turned the move into one designed to block any slashes from that direction. None came just yet, and they ended up facing each other again. "You, know, where it is, don't you?"
"I do not."
"I would, leave everyone alone, if you told me." Not bothering with a feint this time, she just moved to a few inches behind Rowan—and was immediately struck by a thick tendril of water, knocking her over onto her side. The water broke apart from the impact and formed into a collection of sharp blades, spinning briefly in the air as they formed before half struck out toward the prone body. She reappeared on her feet to one side of the attack, and then parried the other half of the blades with her own weapons.

"And then what?" Rowan made a show of readying her sword again. "Find more people to murder? Wait around for a new 'crop'?"

"Come, now. I'm not, so,—" WHUMP. The puppet caught another arm of water square in the side and went spinning through the air briefly before catching herself on the ground and flipping back onto her feet. "..greedy. What you, have now, would be enough. I'd go, away, find, somewhere, in the middle, east, maybe. Make things, stable there." Her head tilted ever so slightly. "We, could be, allies. You're, pragmatic, aren't you?"

Rowan relaxed her stance slightly, creating a false opening, and continued to watch her opponent carefully. "You speak to me as if I have some say in the matter. I do not have the information you seek, and I do not have the authority to forge alliances."

"Do you, really expect, me, to believe that?" She pointed with one of her weapons. "Who is, in charge, if not, you?"

Rowan's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "That information is confidential."

Finally, the move was made. Rowan ducked under a slash from just behind her, turned ninety degrees, struck the other blade with her own and knocked it out of the puppet's hand. Turning the rest of the way came with a hard kick to the puppet's side, knocking her over again. "No one is impossible to find with our resources," she echoed, starting in the middle of the statement that had been made on the radio and for the news. It reappeared next to her and was grabbed, lifted slightly into the air by another tentacle of water. She turned calmly to face the puppet, and continued: "If you do not give yourself up soon, you will be located and destroyed. Either way, you will be made to answer for your crimes."

Her grip on her sword was loose, and there were three or four more sentences to the ultimatum. So the puppet didn't anticipate the sudden motion of her hand to the gun, back up again, three shots, back into the holster. The damage done to her by three bullets to the chest was too much for the puppeteer to hold the body together for another laugh or more talk; it just collapsed into dust immediately. Nothing about this situation was good, but Rowan couldn't help feeling a small sense of satisfaction from shutting her up.

---

Light and Plus showed up back where Emma had left Amory, at one of the benches along the sidewalk between a couple of buildings. It was close enough to the quad that everyone evacuating the area for a monster attack to still be gone, and there weren't any cameras around, at least that they could tell. He waved as they came up. "Hey. Everyone okay?"
"Yeah. Seems like the big plan today was to talk to and/or attack me," said Light. "She sent puppets to stall Rory and Clark, probably would've sent another after her if she knew where to send it," she said, indicating Gemma. "Would you mind calling Rowan for me? And don't let me leave without getting the 'secret' version of that app on my phone."
"Alright."

Amory got to the communication part of the phone and tapped Rowan's name, then the "call" button. After ringing for what seemed like a little longer than a normal phone call would, there was an answer. "..Rowan speaking. Is everyone alright over there?"

"Yeah. We had.." he gave a questioning look, and Light made the number 4 appear in the air. "..four puppets over here. Uh, Light's here, I think she has more details."
"There are six accounted for here. As far as we know, that's all of them for today," he said. "It's probably not a good idea to assume that's really it, though. We're keeping our guard up here."
"Right." He tried to offer Light the phone; she took it but kept her hand out, pushing the speakerphone button. Amory waved incoherently and she pointed at Plus with her other hand. Emma just looked confused for a second until Light tapped one of her own ears with the palm of her hand.

"...Oh! Okay," she whispered, nodding. She held up her hands in a sort of shielding gesture, presumably keeping the sound of the phone from going too far.
"Hey, this is Light. One of Gemma's here with us. Sooo...she tried to 'negotiate' with me today, though the puppet."

"We had the same kind of thing around here. I guess yesterday was intimidation to try and make it more convincing."

"If anything, it just made everyone mad."

"Right."

Light went over a brief summary of the fight, with Plus filling in a few details on the puppet that had attacked Clark.

"...I can't say no harm was done today, but everyone came back alive and conscious, and still determined to keep fighting our puppeteer. I think it was more of a waste than she expected," said Rowan. "The Initiative is making fast progress on identifying her."
"Really? I thought that'd be pretty difficult," said Light.
"The knowledge that she has to personally be there to kill her targets helps narrow things down quite a bit. Think about it: The victims are from all over the world. Someone has to have the means to travel, and for the most part they have to get through customs over and over again. So it's just a matter of seeing who was in all of the right places at all of the right times. Even if she eventually gives up and gets away from us, I can just about guarantee she won't find passage at any airport in America by then."

"Yeah, that makes sense," said Amory. "I mean, assuming that theory is right. But, yeah, I still can't think of any other reason she'd go for feeding people to monsters instead of killing them directly with the puppets."

"...Light, she spoke to me again last night."

It took Amory a moment to work out who Rowan was talking about, but Light seemed to understand immediately. "What did she have to say about all this?"

"She told me about the person who I got my powers from. And then said something about wanting to make sure I wouldn't hesitate to kill the puppeteer if I needed to. Because it 'wouldn't be fair' otherwise. She also implied that these powers are 'mine' now, not because I have the full use of them but because of some kind of mental compatibility with how being in that form makes me talk and act."

"She told me that...what was it...'your powers are closely tied to your you'. I guess this is the same idea. Either she feels like that's how it should be, or having that 'compatibility' is really necessary to use our powers effectively," Light guessed.

"You think she's playing both sides against the middle?" said Emma.

"I'm more inclined to believe she's just playing around," said Amory. "Mixing things up to make them more 'interesting'...which is always more trouble for us."

"Still, you're right. We can't discount the possibility she's helping the puppeteer one way or another," said Rowan.

"Hey, did she uh..try to pet you?" said Amory.

"...Yes. With minor success. Why?"
"Um," he wasn't sure how to explain this with Emma right there.
"She did the same thing with me, too," said Light. "We haven't noticed any ill effects, so it's probably best to just accept it'll happen. Our benefactor is just..weird like that." And possibly rubbing off on Light a little bit, Amory thought. Implying it was harmless was as close as she could get to telling him it was probably helpful without either lying or letting his secret out, and he couldn't help but feel a small satisfaction at the cleverness of it.

"Alright. Well, I think that's everything," said Rowan. "I need to..get back to someone soon."
"Sure. I'll call you back if there's anything else."
"Just make sure to get enough rest. I suspect the puppeteer will be a lot more violent and less talkative tomorrow."

---

While I was silent for quite a while, I wasn't entirely inactive. I've been chipping slowly away at parts for multiple stories, including this one; I just keep getting stuck at a certain part and needing to pull myself along through to the next one. In this case, I was having some real difficulty figuring out what power the puppet Rowan was about to fight should have exactly. Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to push past the block on the other stories as well, soon.