Battle Vixens! - 77

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Episode 77: How You Remind Me / Photograph

Click. Click.

The main source of noise in the room was a knife being tossed up in the air and caught. That fairly tall girl with dark-gray hair, bright red eyes and teleportation powers, who'd eventually asked to be called "Warp", was just standing there, back partially leaned against the wall, watching it go up and back down into her hand. There were plenty of empty seats, but she wasn't even the only person standing up.

Click. Click. Click.

It was some kind of deep-seated nervous tic from before she died, and it was difficult to say whether she'd even had time to develop it between getting powers and then—so, probably from whoever she'd been before.

Click. Click. Click. Click.

Serra broke down first. "Will you cut that out?"
"Hmn?" Warp looked at her like she didn't even know what she was talking about for a second, and then: "Oh." She closed the knife. "Sorry. I just can't stand dead silence like this. Too boring. Sucks we missed out on the action today, too...most of us, I mean," she added, looking at Cynthia and Dawn.

Kagee-Shibai spoke softly, relaying through her interpreter: "I'm sorry I didn't hear what was happening in time to help."
"Hmph, not your fault," the redhead replied. "They went out of their way to not tell us. You too, right?" she accused the interpreter herself, who shrugged in reply.

"I didn't know about it either," she professed.

"You know, the guy who killed us all—I was his friend," Warp said. "He killed me first." She was tossing the knife up and down again, glaring at it. "What kinda friendship is that? How'd I ever get mixed up with such a wacko? Much less think we were friends? Trust him enough to get strangled by him? I must've been stupid."

Kagee said, "Aahm.." and continued with more Japanese (as the language was apparently called).
"You need not be stupid to be deceived," her interpreter translated.

"Yeah, yeah. I just feel a bit trash, is all. You guys're pretty cool—mostly. Sucks I got you all killed, or at least made it way easier for her.

Up. Down. Click. Click.

"..Worked for his dad, too, I guess. No family or nothing to speak of for me. The VI's not sure what to do with me. I'm not going back that way, I know that. Maybe I'll stay here. Or, maybe I'll just..."

The knife clattered loudly to the floor, Warp leaving it behind when she instantly moved to the other end of the room. "...Disappear. Go on a trip someplace. Yeah, that sounds nice. Think I got money put away somewhere. Sure hope I can get to it, like this."

All of them went completely silent then, because they could hear footsteps nearby: Two sets. "..Here we are." Rowan's voice. All eyes were on the door. He opened it like a polite gentleman, letting an about average-height girl with two tails and a weird sort of split-down-the-middle aesthetic to her come inside. She froze in place, halfway through the door, when she realized they were all looking at her, and still seemed terribly nervous after recovering enough to take the last few steps.

"Um, h-hi..?"

"Yo," Serra walked up, taking the initiative to try and make her feel welcome—extending a hand to shake. "You're the one Rowan told us about?"
"Uhh..I guess so." She was a little slow to the cue, but took the hand anyway after a minute. "My name's Gemma. I, uh...m-my power lets me learn other people's, if I see them use them." Rowan managed to slip inside just next to/behind her and shut the door without even making enough noise to disturb any vixen's ears. "I also, um.."

In a motion as difficult to follow as Warp's disappearing acts, she stepped "apart", two different, smaller bodies that seemed to each match one of her previous form's two sides appearing: Short white hair and blue eyes, long black hair and red eyes. "Whoa," Serra took a small step back, looking back and forth between them. "Which one's real?"
"Um—" "—both? I-I mean, it's that—" "—I'm still one person, but I have two bodies. A-actually I—" "—didn't even know I could combine into 'one' at first." Looking around, Cynthia caught uncertain expressions from Warp, Kagee-Shibai..and Dawn. Like they saw something they recognized but weren't sure why.

"You look..familiar?" Dawn said quietly.

"Well, duh, she's one of the ones who were there when we first 'woke up'," Cynthia said.
"Yeah, but..more than that."
"We, met before," the black-haired body said. "Just a couple of times."
"What about me, huh?" Warp asked, stepping closer. "Why do I recognize you?"

"...I, don't know?—" "—Wait, maybe..." the white-haired one mumbled, then looked at Rowan, whose expression Cynthia found unreadable. "Um, I'm not sure how much you know about—" "—what happened, but, the person who um.."
"Who killed us, yeah, get on with it," Warp waved, annoyed.
"Y-yes. She—" "—her power let her summon 'you'. That is, a fake body with your, personality and memories—" "—and control it. Puppets. I, was involved in fights with some of the, those, of you. But—" "—we were also told you wouldn't be able to remember things from the time you were...in that state, so..."

"The Giver's threshold for 'remembering' something is probably above a vague sense of familiarity," Rowan pitched in. "Not to defend her, but it's a plausible explanation."

"So, wait..we did fight together," Cynthia realized aloud.

"Against our will, I imagine," Warp said.

Serra muttered, "That's why.." Everyone else more or less murmured the same realization at once. The day before, it had felt familiar because it was familiar—if not necessarily for the best of reasons.

---

"Just turn your head a bit, like thiiis...ears straight up, if you can. Perfect, hold it!"

Click. The shutter went off, and Simon took a moment to double-check that he had the angle and details that he wanted. Getting all of a vixen's features had the extra complication of needing the ears from the front and back, including the fluff of the inner ear, and possibly multiple angles of the tail if it had some pattern to it—like the black tip of Light's. Ning's relatively flat colors were easier, but he still wanted to get the shapes just right.

"We're good," he gave her a thumbs-up to relax. "I was wondering, by the way: Do you have a plan for when someone asks about that whole 'bank robbery' situation?" That inadvertently made her sit up straight again to look at him. Light, who'd been staring into a distant corner of the room probably still contemplating whatever frustrations he'd accidentally dug up before, also snapped her head up and around to look at him.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised you know about that, but I am anyway."
"Well, it's a matter of public record; it was on the news at the time. And at this point it seems pretty obvious, even with only some relatively blurry features on-camera. Your powers go a long way to identifying you, even if you'd looked as different as you do now immediately afterward."

"I don't know that I can do much more than explain and apologize. My reasons..aren't exactly complex. My granddaughter was kidnapped; I was desperate. I didn't tell the truth about it all the first time around 'cause I was worried identifying myself like that might put her in danger again. My understanding is that it's been decided not to...enforce anything regarding that."

"Sure, but I suspect some kind of statement from the VI or someone indicating you're 'officially pardoned in light of the circumstances' would go a good deal toward smoothing things over," he said, shrugging. "Not like they haven't done something similar in a few other places—treating 'saving the world' as sufficient 'community service' for..frankly a lot worse done in those first couple days.

"...Ahh, it's prolly not even worth worrying about." Simon waved his hand dismissively. "Knowing Rowan, he's already got a plan for it, I'm sure."

"Hmmh. Welp, I'm already sitting here. Any objection to doing my original self next?"
"None whatsoever. Let's hear what sort of picture you want: Full body, headshot, bust..."

---

"Anyway, not all of us here know our real names, but: I'm calling myself Serra. That's Warp, Kagee-Shibai..?" Serra paused to look the dark-haired vixen's way, who nodded to confirm she'd pronounced it more or less correctly. "I guess you know Dawn, and Cynthia kinda?"

"Um..—" "—Indirectly, I guess. She talked about you..some," Emma replied carefully.
"Hmph, did she now?" The redhead got up and approached Plus; she seemed to have an inherently confrontational bearing to her, and sounded slightly skeptical of the claim.

"L-like I said, we only met like twice," she replied, taking care to just use Plus for it. "But..she made you sound like a really good person."

"I dunno about that." Even though her verbal response was negative, she at least seemed less ready to bite Emma's head (heads?) off. "Soo, you can 'copy' our powers just by seeing them?"

"Sorta. It's never as strong as the 'real thing'."

"Oh, well, me first then," Warp said. "Check this out." She vanished from near Minus and reappeared behind and a bit to the right of Plus. "..Boo!" Both of Emma's bodies had already turned most of the way toward her at this point, and she didn't react. "Hrmh." She moved to behind Minus this time, and made a kind of hissing sound—without much of a reaction from Emma, yet again. "Hey, what gives? How do you keep guessing where I'm going?"

"Well, um..—" "—I'm not guessing. I can see..—" "—well, see isn't right exactly but..—" "—There's a 'trail' between where you start and where you're going," Emma tried to explain. "It looks to me like you're..connecting them,—" "—and exchanging whatever's on one side with what's on the other. You..only use this to move yourself?"
"Well...yeah?" Warp gave her a slightly confused look.

"I mean—" "—I just can't see any reason you couldn't use it to exchange other things around the same size or smaller.—" "—Maybe not people, without their cooperation, but..." Looking around quickly, Plus spotted a pen on an end table next to the couch Dawn was sitting on, and 'reached' for it, bridging the pen with some air the same size above her right hand. It teleported over her open palm, dropping into it.

"Ooh, that is handy. Poof!" Putting a hand out toward the same end table, Warp succeeded in teleporting the whole thing next to herself. "I gotta say, that's impressive. Five seconds and you knew more about my power than I ever did."

"Hoboy, I think we made a monster," Serra commented—joking, hopefully.

"Um, h-heh.." Both of Emma just nervously fidgeted, thinking she wouldn't have caught on to it anywhere near that fast if she didn't already have some understanding of 'space'-type powers from Shuriken and the opposite of Tenpo's ability. Rowan interrupted this by gently putting a hand on Minus's shoulder for a second, getting her attention.
"Excuse me, something just occurred to me. Back soon," he said quietly, and turned and left her with them to learn the rest.

---

It was hard to argue with Gerald Nelson's decision. In the first place, of course, it was his decision to make, but it was hard to even say that it could be anything other than right when Simon had finished taking every picture he wanted, shown them so he could decide he was satisfied with them, and he immediately turned back into a fox-girl and breathed a full, deep sigh of relief. There was a sense of clear finality to that sigh; she had just finished saying goodbye to her old self for good, and now she was smiling warmly as she eagerly went over the sorts of prints she wanted, and which one should be framed.

"Guess it's my turn now, huh?" Light seemed to be in a marginally better mood now, too. It seemed like she'd just decided not to think about her problems for a bit, which was likely for the best. Sometimes the conscious mind needed to be off of something for a while before it could be processed in a healthy way.
"Indeed," Simon replied. "How do you think this should work, exactly?"
She shrugged. "Just turn off the flash. I can replicate the lighting conditions it would give you on Ning's old appearance."
"Neat!"

The real Ning got up and sat off to the side, and an image of her previous, younger-looking appearance popped into place right away. "You just want all the same poses as before?" Light asked, putting her in the first one.
"Probably. I can let you know if I think anything's missing."

---

Minus gently moved some water around in the air, demonstrating the opposite of Cynthia's power. "Hmn. Wonder if it means anything if two people have 'opposite' powers?" the redhead said, watching.
"Maybe?—" "—But um, I think what are actually opposites is partially my 'interpretation' somehow. Like,—" "—if someone else has a power that could imitate the 'opposite' of someone's power, it could be something different.—" "—'Cold' or 'ice' maybe, for example..."

"What's my opposite, then?" Serra said. "Or Warp's?"
"W-well, um..." She started fidgeting skittishly again. Watching her from a bit behind Cynthia, Dawn had a vague sense that this perpetually nervous girl was somehow very much like her. Sure, Cynth had a clear habit lately of getting in people's face and fighting hard for what she thought was right, but it was something of a front to hide how terrified and uncertain she was with this whole situation. Maybe Gemma was the opposite way: Only getting really angry and bold when it seriously mattered or...something. There had to be a buried memory, she thought, asserting that—because there could be no other reason for her to feel so certain of something there was no evidence for right in front of her.

"Isn't that the same as the 'original'?" Serra said. "It feels similar to me."

"Yes, but..—" "—Your power pushes air around. This only pulls it toward that point. Like, um—" "—like a miniature vacuum." The pen she'd teleported into Plus's hand a moment ago reappeared in the spot Minus had made it vanish from with Warp's opposite, falling to the floor. "Oops! Um..l-lost my focus on that..." She went to pick it up manually, but Warp herself just teleported it back onto the end table—which was still sitting in the middle of the room.

The door opened again, and Rowan returned with the gray-haired vixen in tow—the one whose power let her throw metal thorns around. Sam...something?

"Pardon me," she said politely, as if to get their attention—as though every head hadn't turned toward the door already. "Miss Gemma. We more'r'less passed by each other the other day, but didn't properly meet. Name's Samuel Langdon." She offered Plus (the nearer body) a hand, who gently took it and was in turn taken for a brief ride of a firm, assertive kind of handshake. "Rowan said you might be able to learn somethin' like my power by watchin' it?"

"Oh, um. Y-yeah," she said.

"Well, here y'are then." She held up her hand, making some metallic thorns twist upward from her palm and form into a knife after a moment. Both of Gemma's bodies watched intently.

"I...—" "—I saw you do this, for Ning.—" "—But I wasn't really 'paying attention' at the time."

"Well, 'sthat good enough?" Samuel asked, dismissing the knife again. Gemma both quickly nodded.
"Y-yeah, thank you."

"Mmh. Got some target practice to get to. 'Scuse me." Miss Langdon briefly nodded to everyone, and quietly went back out the door. Funny, Dawn thought..she seemed mildly uncomfortable with being the center of everyone's attention too, to the point of putting a bit of visible effort into hiding it. It wasn't hard to imagine anyone feeling that way around a bunch of near-total strangers, though.

Someone else leaned partway into the door at this point—an unfamiliar man wearing glasses and a lab coat. Rowan turned to intercept that person, practically pushing him outside with him and shutting the door. Of course, that didn't prevent literally everyone inside from hearing their conversation. "What do you want, Dr. Bridges?"
"Oh, excuse me. I'd heard Gemma was around—"
"From who?"
"Er.."
"Never mind; just answer my first question."
"Ah, well. I didn't mean to interrupt, but..." His voice trailed off as the two of them walked farther away—which they had been doing during the entire conversation.

"Sounds like you're popular," Serra commented. "I think that's one of the guys they have 'studying magic' or whatever?"
"Yeah, he's always with that old guy," Warp said, tossing her knife up and down in the air again. "I tried following them around once, for fun. They were talking about masks and used a bunch of words I didn't recognize."

Click. Click. Click. The entire room was silent aside from the knife-catching; whatever Gemma thought of the latest visitor, the attention clearly made her nervous.

"...Hey, so what's the 'opposite' of metal thorns?" Serra asked, ending the awkward silence in one fell swoop.

---

Click.

The shoot went exceptionally fast, because he didn't have to tell her to adjust a single pose—and, indeed, what he'd had Ning do a moment ago was more than sufficient for capturing the features of the 'less mature' form. It was hard not to be a bit jealous at how her powers seemed to also gift her with some kind of immaculate photographic memory—probably for the purpose of illusions being convincing in a fight. But if he could do that, he wouldn't have even needed any photos in the first place.

"Thank you so much," Simon said after the last picture took. While the illusion vanished, he added: "You could make images like that of anyone you've seen, couldn't you?"

"...In theory. I'm not really comfortable with helping you photograph people without their permission, though."
"Oh, of course I wouldn't ask that of you. Really, even though I'm the only one who may ever know the difference, there's some importance to me of capturing the 'real thing'. However, I bet there's one person whose privacy you don't care so much about." She gave him a questioning look. "The Giver, or Diamond youtube channel, or Pandora or..whatever other dozens of names she's collected! Right? You've seen her several times in dreams. I'm not under the impression she'd ever sit down for a shoot, but she certainly doesn't respect the privacy of others at all, soo.."

"Ah. Hm." Light got the smallest hint of a smile, and waved her hand, making an image of the tall, many-tailed woman appear in front of him—complete with a derpface expression.
"Pffhaahahah!" Simon doubled over in laughter briefly; it was hard not to appreciate the contrast between her no doubt carefully tailored appearance—that tall, gorgeous body, her consistently imposing and powerful bearing, those regal clothes—and that goofy face. He wasn't alone in this either, Ning failing to suppress some giggling at the image too. "That's perfect! I should immortalize that expression in a painting. Maybe make a serious one afterward, heheh."

"We found out yesterday that you can't even attack an illusion of her," Light added.

"Really? I wonder whether a sculpture would be similarly invulnerable. Or would I be unable to finish chiseling it once it was sufficiently close?"

---

"Wait wait wait pause it pause it!" Rory raised her voice excitedly, pointing at the screen, causing her husband to pick up the remote clumsily, fumbling it in his hands briefly before recovering enough to press the pause button.

"What?!"
"I remember this part! I know what I said—our uh, our vows," she said, her volume decreasing rapidly with each word. Then, almost a whisper: "I wanna show you."

"Okay. Go ahead?"

She seemed to think about for a second, and then stood up, taking one of his hands in both of hers to gently pull him up onto his feet too, so they were facing each other. After that, Rory started where the recording of her past self had left off, reciting her part of the vows perfectly. At first, Clark wasn't even sure he remembered them that well, but he took up where she left off and found that they rolled off of his tongue easily.

There were some tears coming down his wife's face, and before long Clark had to sniff and wipe his own eyes off to see them. Both of them were on the verge of sobbing by the time they finished, but it was a happy sort of crying that he felt he hadn't experienced in very a long time. After a pause long enough to partially regain their composure, Rory quietly, nervously intoned: "'You may now kiss the bride?'" Obviously that wasn't her line, but...

He let her take a small step closer and pick herself up onto the balls of her feet, returning her embrace. He let her place her lips on his, and even participated in the gentle, polite and somewhat hesitant kiss. He let her...ha. As if he ever really had much of a choice! Clark ran a hand down through her hair, remembering that day along with her, finding the experience as crystal-clear now as if it had happened yesterday—or today, even. Maybe there was some kind of magic at work, or maybe the memory had been there all along, ready to be reawakened in him as much as in her.

Gentle as it was, the kiss lasted a little while. Around halfway through, there was a sort of motion from Rory that didn't seem intentional: Her weight coming entirely into his arms even as it became lighter, her curves softening just a bit...the foxlike ears vanishing from the top of her head when he ran his hand through her hair again.

When they pulled apart again, and he gently set his wife down, it was Rory standing there again: The short, fiery redhead he'd married, looking the same as she had in the video, or any other day before the world got turned upside down. Well—her expression was one of genuine surprise as she looked around and then down at herself, realizing what had happened.

"I-it's, I'm...me again!" Rory laughed and cried at the same time, both of which proved terribly infectious. "It really is me!" Mrs. Quinn leapt back into her husband's arms, and he gently span her around in the air briefly before stumbling back onto the couch because he wasn't especially good at carrying another person. When their laughter finally died down, she gently lifted herself off, letting him adjust his position to a more comfortable one, and sat as close as she could next to him on the couch.

"It's, um...I-I still don't remember everything," she said, seeming slightly nervous to be giving him this news. "But this..feels right. I-I guess I remembered 'enough'."

"Must be," he said, nodding. "Perhaps it doesn't make much sense to feel this way, but...I'm proud of you."
"H-heheh..thanks." She put her arm over his shoulder in a somewhat more distant hug. "Just watch me. I'll keep getting better!"

The waterworks in Clark's eyes just wouldn't quit. The woman who'd confronted him today, challenging his attempt to shelter her and demanding to help anyway—that was her. And..this was her, too, nervous or not. If he hadn't believed it was the same person before, something about seeing her change back clinched it.

Maybe...there really was such a thing as a soul. Or maybe he just really hoped there was, at the moment.

---

I'll take this opportunity to mention that my use of a song title doesn't necessarily mean I like the song or the band it's from. I can just about guarantee this won't be the last time I use a Nickelback song title.

If this were in an auditory medium, I imagine most of the scene transitions would go from the clicking of the knife to the clicking of the shutter, and possibly back again.