Battle Vixens! - 89

First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

Episode 89: My Best Friend's Girl

still in apt?

Yes.

ok to bring emma in?
Fine with me.

The apartment had been silent for an hour or so, just Blake sitting in a living room chair reading. There wasn't really enough room for a collection of physical books, so he'd adapted to reading comics on a tablet a while ago. It wasn't quite the same as flipping the pages between his fingers, but it had its perks. There were a couple of weeks' worth of backlog on his favorites by now, but since finishing his "personal project", he'd already torn through that and moved on to some of the classics.

It was a little surreal reading other people's imaginary versions of something like his own experience. This had to be a taste of what it was like for cops to watch police procedurals or...something. Although, of course, the fantastical situations the fictional characters were in were quite distinct from the ones he was stuck with. One book was trying to be especially up-to-date by introducing a bunch of fictional vixens whose powers operated on a similar ruleset to the real ones on top of the "standard" superheroes already present in its universe, which was something of a glorious mess to behold. The writers didn't exactly have all of the more confidential information, so their idea of how things worked was mildly inaccurate and very inconsistent with itself in places where, perhaps, they had just now learned something they were wrong about before.

It didn't take very long after the texts for the key to turn in the door and open, Amory coming in followed by a slight shimmering in the air which took a moment to shut and lock the door behind it before dropping the invisibility. "Uhh, hi." It was, of course, Gemma in her combined form.
"Hey." Blake set down his tablet, standing up and turning to face them. "Date went okay?"
"Yeah! Very um. Very okay." The two-tailed vixen blushed and looked away. Amory just nodded his agreement, his face also slightly red.

"I uh, thought we might go ahead and test the theory that fusion doesn't strictly require my help," Amory said. "And, also see, you know, what happens in general?"
"Mmh." Blake nodded. "You want to try it?" he said, specifically to Emma.
"Um—yes!" She seemed pleased at the swift change of subject, coming closer. "I'm uh, is it weird to say I'm a little excited even? I mean, how often do people get a chance to find out what it's like to be each other, even a little bit?"

"I hadn't thought of that way," he said. "Okay.." Blake gestured for Amory to cover his eyes before speaking the phrase to generate a bright flash—and turn into a fox-girl yet again.

Light exhaled softly. "How...close exactly do we have to get, I wonder?"

"I'd guess 'physical contact' is required, at least," Amory said. Then, as both of them looked at him: "Would this be uh, easier if I was Amp?"

"Uh, m-maybe."
"Yeah," Light said at the same time.

"Okay then." He changed to the short, cute form, although this didn't actually seem to make Gemma's heart race any less from looking at her.

Light just tried putting a hand on her head and speaking her phrase, and 'felt' some sort of vague feedback that she was doing this incorrectly. "Nope. Not close enough, I guess. Prolly should've known..."

"Uh, it's okay, you um, totally have my permission to go for a hug," Emma said, but didn't actually sound that certain about it. Light just stepped close enough for a very loose sort of hug, turning her head off to one side and letting Emma return it about as loosely. Then she tried saying Emma's phrase again, and—this time, it worked.

Light's body glowed, turning into something like physical light the way it always did when she transformed or was boosted; Gemma gained a grayish glow about her. Both of them were semi-involuntarily drawn much closer together by the effect, until the light that was Light enveloped the other girl's body, becoming a halo all around it briefly before combining with the grayish glow and, together, absorbing back into her. A third tail burst from her back as she swiftly grew a half-foot or so taller, moderately curvier and more muscular.

The resulting person blinked a couple of times, looking around the room and particularly at Amp. Other than the growth spurt, she strongly resembled Gemma's combined form with an extra tail identical to Light's, except that her "plus" eye was green rather than blue and her "minus" eye was orange rather than red. Her outfit had shifted somewhat, clinging a bit tighter to her enhanced figure and leaning slightly more toward Light's usually tomboyish style. She opened her mouth in slow motion, preparing to say something and seemingly needing longer than expected to formulate it.

Finally: "Is it really like this all the time?!" Her voice bore similarity to Gemma's and Light's, its register landing at at higher alto. Now that she'd started, she continued with little pause: "I mean—wait, is this not normal? No, it's—I can't hear myself think over hearing myself think! Aagh!"

"Um—"

She put up a hand. "No no wait, sorry, hang on. I should—" Then she popped apart into two bodies—not Light and Gemma, but whoever-she-was's "Plus" and "Minus". Plus seemed to keep Light's tail, while Minus got an inverted-color version of the same; similar to the combined form, they both seemed to be more "mature" and muscular versions of the Gemma's usual appearances for the most part. They both looked at each other, then at Amp for a second, before saying simultaneously: "Why did I think this would help!?"

Amp gave them both a slightly worried look. "Um, are you okay?"

"Uhh, sorry—" "—Yes, I'm fine, it's just—" "—my head started spinning nonstop as soon as I fused or whatever—" "—like a processor thrashing between way too many threads and I—" "—can't seem to focus on anything for more than two—" "—nanoseconds without getting distracted by something else I wanna think about—" "—and like forty to sixty percent of it isn't even slightly important but my brain—" "—brains won't let it go anyway. And I'm used to this and I think it's normal—" "—and I know it's not normal because it doesn't usually do this—" "—so now I feel like I'm arguing with myself, which is super weird and total nonsense—" "—especially since I'm actually just explaining one thing but—"

"Hold it!" Amp put out an arm toward each of them. "Let me see if I can get this straight. 'One of you' is used to your mind working like that, and the 'other' isn't, right?"

"Uh..—" "—yes."
"Aand, I'm guessing Emma's the one who's used to it?"
"I...—" "—I think so.—" "—This is way more confusing than I think it should be." 'Combined Minus' poked at the tip of one of her ears.
"Look, if I understand how this works correctly, you probably have the processing power of three brains at this point, so maybe that's actually making it worse once you start panicking. Just..take a deep breath for a second and try to calm down?"

"Okay—" "—yeah.." They took deep breaths in kind of back-and-forth chorus for a second, one body inhaling whenver the other was exhaling. "Yeah. Okay, that—" "—that is better. I think 'Light' just isn't used to managing this. But um—" "—Once I made an effort to remember how 'Emma' handles it, it was almost trivial.—" "—Sorry about that."

"It's perfectly fine," she said. "I'm surprised Quinn wasn't way more confused about suddenly being 'one person', too. But..maybe my 'help' actually smooths that over somewhat?"
"Possibly...—" "—it could also just be that they've lived together long enough to know what the other is thinking to some extent, and like,—" "—they have so many experiences more or less 'in common' that it's easier to get used to it quickly." Both of them were pacing around in a wide circle that periodically exchanged their positions; the panic was gone, but it seemed the abundance of excess energy wasn't.

"It didn't help my confusion to look at you, and feel—" "—uh, how do I put this—" "—simultaneously um, 'attracted' and also—" "—not, exactly, repulsed or anything, but super weird about the idea of ever being attracted to you—" "—on Light's end, of course. But now that I think of it that's actually kinda reassuring, like—" "—makes my jealous fit before seem even dumber now that I get how I feel.—" "—Err, how 'Light' does, I mean."

Hearing this, Amp realized something, and said: "Wait..so, you have um, 'both' sets of memories, right?"

"Mm-hm. But uh—" "—I'm not exactly sure how to explain it—" "—there's a difference between what I remember and what I will remember,—" "—or what I'll..remember, remembering. There's kind of a—" "—mental 'box' that I can choose to put things I want both of me to remember into—" "—and keep things I don't wanna remember out of, or things I don't want me to remember, if uh, that makes sense.—" "—But I think whatever I experience directly like this automatically goes into said 'box',—" "—including anything I say aloud or hear from you, ssssooo." Both bodies gestured vaguely, their faces very slightly red.

There was a clear implication here: Emma didn't want the memory of what they'd been doing just slightly earlier that afternoon to get into Light's head, and Light probably also didn't want to permanently remember that. "I get it," Amp said, nodding. "Um, so what about your powers? Anything, special come to mind with that?"

"Ohh, yes!—" "—Totally!" both of them said at once eagerly. She seemed immediately excited to share her ideas, so Amp cheerfully braced herself for the inevitable torrent of words. "I uh, kinda already started some. That is—" "—almost as soon as I 'combined' and realized I was gonna have a freak out and maybe raise my voice, I thought to mute sound going out of this apartment.—" "—It feels like there is way more power for imitating Hugo to do that than I'm used to, so it's like nearly effortless and I hardly even need to think about it.—" "—So, thankfully, even our next door neighbors can't have heard a thing."

"Well, that's...good news. I guess," Amp said; she hadn't even thought of that issue, but of course Light would have. "Obviously you can do everything Light could, but do you also get stronger shadow powers for Minus?"

"Ooh, let's see!"

The white-haired vixen raised a hand, gathering the majority of the light in the room into a small sphere hovering over the palm; the other body then spread her hands out and succeeded in making the shadows this resulted in dance around a bit, raise from the ground as solid objects briefly, then go back to their usual locations. "..Yep. That didn't feel or uh, 'look' like an imitation power at all."

Meanwhile, the 'Plus' body was still looking into the sphere of white above her hand with a thoughtful expression. "Hmn. You know something?" Her other hand's index finger pointed at the sphere, and it turned instantly into a ball of electricity, chaotically arcing around and occasionally sending smaller sparks out from it. "It's just energy. Just..—" "—magic. So.." Spreading her fingers out, she succeeded in turning it into a fireball; then another couple of motions formed it into a distortion in the air (gravity or time magic, Amory wasn't sure; this one didn't stay long and seemed to lose size very quickly). Finally it cycled back to light and she released it, making a small flash as it dispersed. "Converting between one form and another should be easy, and it is. At least—" "—for 'me' it is, anyway. And I should be able to do the same thing with..." the dark-haired body trailed off, forming a small globe of water from vapor above her hand and shifting it to rock, solid shadow, wood, a bunch of spores, and then back to water again. "Yes! Okay."

"So, you can basically 'make' whatever element you want out of any other element?" Amp said.
"Sort of—" "—it's not a hundred percent efficient, and I feel like it's easier to switch between different kinds of 'energy' or different kinds of 'matter' than to go between energy and matter.—" "—It's just that, Light's powers have always involved being able to 'absorb' and 'reinterpret' light energy, in a way,—" "—so even Gemma's fairly limited control of a bunch of different kinds of magic benefits from that. Oh, and—!" 'Plus' raised her hand and formed Light's sword, then immediately it turned into a line of light and reshaped into a flail, a mace, nunchucks, a hammer, back to a sword again before dismissing it. "I usually—I mean, Light can't do this for some reason, but it's pretty easy like this."

"Cool."

"So..do you want a name for...'you', other than Light or Gemma?" Amp said. "Quinn claimed that any good fusion deserves its own name, but.."
"Um yeah—" "—it's actually one of the dozens of things I've been involuntarily thinking about in the background,—" "—and I think I have a good idea, too! A 'gem'...or uh, at least um, a kinda crystal-type thing that has to do with light, and with uh,—" "—converting or splitting things.."
"Prism?" Amp guessed.
"Prism!" both of her bodies excitedly yelled back at once. "Yeah, I knew you'd get it pretty quick," 'Plus' said. "I'm not as certain about what to call these uh, two separate bodies if it's relevant though.—" "—Plus and Minus still works, but I don't entirely feel like the me that's usually called those things, so it is a little odd."

"What about, 'Pitch' and 'Bright'? As in—pitch black, and bright uh..white?" Amp suggested.
Both bodies displayed her thinking about it briefly, and then the light-haired one said, "I think I like it, yeah.—" "—Especially since I'd probably wind up using a lot of shadow with this one and light with that one," 'Pitch' continued. "Helps they're not any longer to say, or..even a bit shorter, I guess.—" "—But if anyone forgets or just, hasn't been told, it should still be easy enough to remember which of me is 'Plus' or 'Minus' anyway." They stepped steadily closer to each other as they spoke, then recombined into the single, three-tailed body.

"You know, I wonder if fusions can fuse. Or just—stack as far as there are people available to combine with in general," Prism said. "Quinn got...two tails, right?"
"Yeah, both Clark and Rory's," Amp nodded.
"Yyyeah, so a lot of people combined would have an increased risk of those things getting really badly tangled. And there's a question of at what point the power gain is less useful than having more than one target for the monsters to take down..."

"Mmhm," the blond vixen nodded.

Thinking of something else, she looked up at Prism. "Hey, you uh..wanna see what you're like 'fully boosted'?"
She blushed, but said, "Uhhmmm, sure!"

"I also wanna check if this works without you needing to 'break apart' and 'recombine' for some reason," Amp said, stepping hesitantly closer and having some difficulty suppressing some heat in her own cheeks. She went for a conservative touch, just reaching her hands up to gently rub the tall girl's ears a bit and push her power upward. On reaching in, she could feel some confusion and internal conflict still there, but it also had a kind of overall stability to it built out of what the two people making her up had in common. At any rate, neither "side" of her had any problem with Amp's touch as such, and she quickly picked up the smaller girl in a light hug as her height and proportions swiftly grew, setting her down once it was done and taking a couple of steps back.

'Enhanced Prism' was, again, something like Gemma's combined and boosted form, with several inches more height, a slightly larger bust and a bit more muscle. She was smiling (with a slight blush still) and seemed immediately much more calm than before. "That's actually...much better," she said slowly, her voice mostly like Light's boosted form. "I dunno how to describe it exactly, but it feels way easier to focus now."
"Does this still enhance the 'price' too?" Amp said.
Prism put a finger up to the bottom of her chin, thinking. "Hmmn, I suppose. I could totally see myself running off right now if there was a monster attacking. Power-wise, everything just seems even easier than it was before. Uhh," Her left ear lowered a bit as she thought of something. "Wait actually, there's this thing I did when I got—uh, I mean Light did when Gemma got eaten once...you remember how I could make a sort of hologram of the outside of the hospital?"

"Sure," she nodded.

"Well, this is sorta similar..." The entire surface of Prism's eyes seem to glow a bright white. "Yeah, it's super easy like this." She was facing Amp and away from the chairs and couch in the room, and she raised a hand to make a small wisp of light go around behind her and weave around nimbly between all of the furniture. "It's..a little hard to describe, but I've got a sort of 'display' in front of my eyes now that shows everything in..well, everything in our apartment right now but I could probably push its range out pretty far if I wanted. I don't need to focus on any one thing like the way, y'know, eyes usually work, I'm just aware of all of it at once. The way it has to look to fit all of that 3D information at once would be totally incomprehensible if I couldn't um..'process' it fast enough, which I'm sure my—uh, Gemma's power specifically is helping out with a lot."

She stepped apart into two bodies once again, Bright maintaining the glowing eyes while Pitch's were normal. "I could probably just use this body's eyes for something else if I wanted," the latter said, "since I can already 'see' everything I need with that one."

"Maybe infrared?" Amp suggested.

"Hmmn." Bright made a gesture toward the other body's eyes, and they seemed to be covered over in black in a similar manner. "Yeah, it's just a simple shift of the spectrum after blocking out the normal visible light...I could also do a radar pulse or check for X-rays or whatever pretty easily."

Both bodies' eyes turned back to normal, and Bright seemed to sort of nod toward Pitch for some reason. "I think that's about all the playing around I need for the moment,—" she said, "—I mean no offense to myself with this, but my mind working like this nonstop just seems exhausting. I don't really wanna stay like this for a long period of time without a reason,—" "—like, y'know, something 'Prism' is needed to help take down. But there is one other thing to test..."

Both bodies closed their eyes, and the bright-gray combined glow that had appeared when Prism was fusing appeared around both of them; then the white and gray separated, the white from Bright exchanging with the gray from Pitch. Both bodies then quickly shifted, the former's white tail changing to Minus's usual dark one and the latter's tails combining into Light's. Bright's body changed back into a combined Gemma, and Pitch into Light, both still boosted. The latter breathed a short sigh of relief now that they were separate.

"Looks like it worked!" Gemma said happily.
"Yeah," Light nodded, her expression not unhappy, but much more neutral. "We can basically decide where to put each of us when splitting back up," she explained to Amp.

"We were um, a little worried that Light might only be able to 'come from' Bright, or that this would somehow invert her powers to be permanently shadow-based until we recombined and split again."

"..Or that it might just fail to work in some other way," Light added.

"But nope, all good!" Then they exchanged a glance for a moment.

"...This is weird, right?" Light said, folding her ears down a bit. "I still feel a little like I'm in two bodies continuing each other's sentences."
"Heheh, yep, that takes some getting used to," Emma said. "But—it's just 'cause we both remember what Prism was thinking."

"..Right."

"I had no idea other people's brains didn't work like mine!" she said.
Light said, "So, no one's ever—"
"No," Emma shook her head. "Um, I guess I do a pretty good job of faking it if what you're used to is the real normal."

"Well, we can't know that with only two data points," Light pointed out.

Emma paused awkwardly for a moment, looking like she wanted to deliberately change the subject away from that, and finally settled on: "Well uhm..It was kinda fun! Even if it is kinda exhausting."
"Yeah...and 'Prism' could be very useful in a fight," Light said. "I guess between that and 'Quinn', we're gonna make the VI come up with even more excuses for us, huh?"

"Probably!"