Battle Vixens! - 97

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Episode 97: Monday Comes Around

Light breathed a sigh of relief, leaning back into the couch and massaging her forehead. As it turned out, a majority of the people who'd wanted to talk with her had had their fill in the main room already, and asked to be woken up before too long. After a while, the "lounge" was only occupied by Amp (or "the Dreamer"), Light, and a few left of that group, along with some other groups scattered about more distant parts of the room with other things they wanted to talk about amongst themselves. This left the enormous room full of comfy chairs, couches, and end and coffee tables, with a few grand, unlit fireplaces lining the walls, feeling comfortably uncrowded.

"You doing okay there?" Amp came to a nearby chair, hopping up into it.
"Yeah. Just...no offense, but people are exhausting," she said.

"I think you did great. I could get you up now, if you want?"
Light opened her eyes to regard the blond-haired vixen. "And leave you alone with everyone?"

She shrugged. "I'm doing just fine. Maybe I'm just more of an extrovert."

"Hmmh. Okay, you've convinced me. Anyone have any last minute comments or questions?"
"Nah," one of the others sitting with them said. "Go get 'em, girl! We're all rooting for you!"
"Yeah!" The rest of them echoed this sentiment.

"Uh..thanks. I'm, rooting for all of you, too. We're in this fight together, after all."

---

Cynthia shivered and grasped at the covers, folding some of them over herself, mumuring an inarticulate complaint and trying to go back to sleep. But it didn't do any good; the cold was seemingly latched on to her, and getting worse instead of better.

It took a moment to gain enough of a conscious mind to make sense of this, during which her hearing registered a wavering, whimpering sound and a high gasp. Then she wrested herself free of Dawn's grasp, pulling the covers with her and twisting around to sit on her knees facing her. Whether or not this caused it was hard to say, but at this point the noise rose into a hoarse, desperate scream, and the temperature of the whole room dropped below freezing.

Still half-asleep, very annoyed at the cold, and irritated at being awoken so early (it felt like; she hadn't looked at a clock or anything), the redhead growled. "Dawn! DAAAWN!" she yelled over the scream, feeling a slight temptation to set the covers around her on fire to keep warm. Fortunately, the tall vixen thrashed around at this point and fell over onto the floor, waking up and instantly ceasing to be a human refrigeration unit.

After briefly grunting less from the mild pain of falling to the floor than the shock of suddenly being jolted awake by it, Dawn whimpered and slowly sat up, some tears still going down her face while she sniffled for air.

Cynthia was fully conscious by now and still fairly irritated. "What was that!?"

"Ah, mmh..." After sniffing again, she tried to answer. "Nightmare..sorry..."
"You froze the room over, dummy! Almost froze me to death!" She grabbed a pillow and threw it at her—not with enough force to hurt anyone, but still enough to regret doing so when Dawn didn't even try to dodge and it hit her flat in the face before slowly sliding down to her lap.

The look she got back was one of extreme worry. "Are you okay?!"

"I'm fine, I was exaggerating. Yeesh!"

"...Sorry I hit you with a pillow."
"I don't hurt or nothin'." Dawn sniffed again, and then giggled uncontrollably for a second, which made Cynthia glare at her again.
"What?"
"S-sorry, I just...I dunno if I got words for it. Just...

"I...couldn't be happier you threw somethin' at me. Proves you're really there."

The redheaded vixen gave her a very annoyed/confused look. "Where else am I gonna be, huh?"
"I j-just...it was, when you.." Dawn's voice went very high, and then she trailed off, the tears coming back.
Cynthia exhaled slowly through her nose, forcing herself to calm down and think for a second. "You had a nightmare about..when I died, huh?"
"Y-yeah..it felt, real, like it was happenin' all over again."

Cynthia's arm felt weird. She rotated the shoulder a bit, but quickly concluded the feeling wasn't real, just in her mind. "Guess I should feel lucky I won't remember that."
"Hmmh..sorry."
She just shrugged. "You can't help what your brain does when you're sleepin'. Well, whatever, I ain't getting back to sleep now!"

"Nah, me either."
"You wanna get breakfast, then?"

Dawn nodded.

---

First Clark got out of bed—which was a slight disturbance, but nothing too bad. There was a little bit of noise, maybe, but nothing impossible to sleep through. Then, however, he came back to the bedroom and prodded her side with a finger. "Rory. Time to get up, dear."
"Mrrngh..what time is it?"

"Around seven."

"That's too eearrrlyyy."
"You want to go to the college, don't you? Meet with some students?" He turned on the light, and Rory shielded her eyes from the blazing gleam with an arm. "Well, I'm your ride, and I've had my turn in the shower, so this is when you get up."
"I can't get up this early, I got amnesia."

"If you wanted to use that excuse, you shouldn't have told your grad students you'd be there to meet with them." Clark came and gently took the hand attached to the arm covering her eyes, lifting it up. "Come on. I'll make us something good for breakfast, brew you some coffee."

"Fiiiine. Curse you, past me..."

---

It strikes twice today. At least three hours apart.

The Giver's twitter account posted one message publicly, as soon as the sun began to rise on the west side of the international date line. After that, it artificially remained where everyone could see it for more than long enough to gain the attention that would keep it visible naturally from then on. It had millions of replies, including a number of questions, but the account saw no further public activity.

Rowan soon received, from New Zealand, reports of private messages going out to the public faces of local organizations of empowered and/or vixens with publicly known identities receiving DM's—private messages—from the account, at a volume the platform would ordinarily identify and block as spam before long.

Each message consisted only of a set of coordinates—longitude and latitude—and one or more links to the most popular wiki that had popped up to keep track of the vixens and monsters, specifically articles identifying and describing certain varieties of mist monsters. When someone replied to the message, asking "how do i know i can trust you?", a response came back linking them to wikipedia's article on Bayesian statistics. And, in every instance so far, an attack had appeared fairly close to the given coordinates, consisting of the type or types of monsters linked to. The timing of the attacks relative to when the messages were received varied, with anywhere between half a minute and slightly over an hour between.

Now, he was sitting in an emergency early-morning meeting with anyone who could get onsite at the VI's main headquarters who was involved with the development of the VI app, and a few more of them by teleconference. "So she's essentially acting as an early warning system," he concluded. "You should have already received some samples of the format she's been using from me. How soon can we incorporate a form to input this into the app's alert system?"
"Well, uh...it shouldn't be too hard. We'll need to ensure that only certain people can submit information, to prevent false alarms, of course..."
"Uh, you knoow, the Giver might screw with her formatting just to troll us, though."
"It goes through a human before it's submitted," Rowan said. "Who should spare the mental space to double-check that everything's in order. I know that I will."
"Fair enough, we'll get to work on it."
"Thank you," he nodded, pushing back his chair as he stood up. "Sorry for calling you in so early, but the sooner this can be used to keep people safe, the better. Now, please excuse me—I have to report 'upstairs', too." Technically that meeting was to focus the events of the meeting the night before rather than this, but not everyone present had clearance to know about that.

---

Marcus was up to something, and he definitely didn't think Thad knew it.

It was one thing when he started going off on random trips, including the day the puppeteer turned their town and the city nearby into a warzone. Thaddeus had no idea where his roommate was that entire time, only that he was safe and fine apparently, and came back fully intact. Since that trip, he'd changed his habits fairly blatantly: Waking up early only to nap later, going out of the apartment several times when he'd usually be lazing around all weekend.

It wasn't like Thad was suspicious or upset. Guys had their secrets, after all, and they weren't the closest of friends or anything, with totally different interests. Thad was sports and excercise, cute girls and cars; Marcus was songs and instruments, video games and anime. He was fine as long as his roommate wasn't putting himself in danger or something. And if anything, he actually saw Marcus coming up with as legit of excuses as he could for each thing as a sign of respect. So, even though the whole charade quite naturally piqued his curiosity, he did his best not to show any signs of being anything but totally fooled in a show of mutual respect—in this case, for his privacy. If he ever came back totally exhausted or seriously hurt, or looked like he was panicked and in some kind of real trouble, though—the masks would have to come off then. So to speak.

Until then, things were just as fine as ever. So he got up early in the morning, got ready for his wake-up workout, knocked on Marcus's door to wake him up for classes like usual on the way to leave the apartment, and went on with his day. They both had stuff to do, after all.

---

Emma played around with her powers for a little while in the dreamspace, and then lay back in the bed, closing her eyes as if to go back to sleep. This had the intended effect of waking her up the following morning, and she found herself in two bodies, lying on their sides and holding on to each other in bed. "Mhh." She pulled the hug slightly closer, combining 'into' Plus before turning over and sitting up, rubbing her eyes. As she hopped out of bed and went out into the living room, some confused thoughts floated around: First that she was staying in vixen form so she wouldn't need glasses—when it was no longer necessary for that—then worry about being seen this way—but there was nobody to see—and finally a fleeting thought of the scent of food, the sight and sound of Beryl cheerfully wishing her a good morning. But none of that was going to happen, either.

She shook her head slightly to clear it, heading for the kitchen. The Watcher had been a frequent enough absentee roommate to begin with for her to be used to waking up alone here. It was just...despite everything, there was still something profoundly lonely and sad about knowing she would never be there again. Maybe Emma had just gotten so used to the old routine that her dumb brain needed some time to adjust to something else. So: Even if things were better now, that didn't mean she was used to it yet.

There was some time yet before her classes. She pulled apart into two bodies again, picking up a recipe book and selecting something that looked reasonably easy. She wasn't nearly as clumsy like this, and four hands were better than one—and both bodies had ways of preventing or healing accidental burns besides. Since nobody else was here to do it, she'd just have to treat herself to something nice this morning!

Right...today was also the first time for the world (or rather, people at the university) to see her 'new' (human) self. She was still pretty sure nobody in her classes had paid enough attention to her before to be suspicious of the sudden change, but there were guaranteed to be some looks regardless. The way her body looked now was decidedly eye-catching, which was to some extent on purpose. And the looks would be mostly compliments, people being impressed by her newfound beauty brought on by a supposedly natural growth spurt. It was just...they were still going to be staring—or at least noticing her—and that was something else she'd need to get used to.

---

After dropping Nadia off at school, it was time for more work.

It hadn't taken Gerald very long after announcing herself as Ning to find a new home for her store. With everything packed up the day before, it was on its way over to the new place and what she wasn't taking herself was due to arrive that afternoon. Overall, things looked optimistic to get it up and running within the next couple of days, which was so fast that she couldn't help suspecting some sort of annonymous help was responsible for making things go so smoothly. That's not to say that many of her long-time friends, neighbors, and/or regular customers weren't playing a part in it all, a fact which she was quick to show gratitude for.

She'd done her best to prepare Nadia for some questions, but the impression walking her in was only one of brief interest from the other kids. At that age, they were a lot more accepting of magic in general, so a little of that being real and right in front of them, while briefly fascinating, was still not difficult to be distracted from by other concerns. And she did her best not to worry for the girl's safety, having been assured of some 'invisible help' with keeping her family secure the day before. They were doing a pretty good job of being invisible, at least.

If being super strong wasn't enough, Ning found that her stamina for ordinary, "mundane" work in this body far surpassed anything she could remember achieving as a younger man. And she had Light to thank for ensuring that this body wouldn't emit dangerous (to everyone else) showers of sparks periodically, or if she got slightly upset or frustrated or worried—not that any of that was happening right now anyway. She did make sure to try and save some fight for the promised attacks today, keeping a phone close and an ear on the news as she got to work setting everything up.

---

Dr. Quinn (the male one) sent out some messages to the other vixens in his town's group, first checking whether Ning had a twitter account (she didn't; he hadn't thought so but didn't want to assume). Then, since he did have one, he promised to keep an eye out for messages indicating the location and type of monsters that would soon appear.

Then, to Ning: It's just you in the city center rn, with everyone else near campus. If something shows up out that way, Rory and I will hurry over to you. Otherwise, take a break in case that second attack is a big one.

Since lugging armor around would probably be a pain for the students among their group, he offered to keep it in his office along with his own and handed Amory a spare key—although it probably wouldn't be locked anyway. Given the 'trick' they'd worked out the day before, it probably wouldn't even matter if they were in a hurry and just grabbed the first set of armor they saw. For that matter, Rory could just grab everyone's at once and take it to wherever the fight was going to be once that was known.

He hadn't anticipated being the coordinator for everyone like this, but it wasn't really a problem. Years of being a grad student and then a professor had given him plenty of opportunity to get experience herding people around and making schedules fit each other. This just had the added flavor of possibly risking people's lives if he did it wrong—no big deal. If the VI could find someone 'unpowered' who they could all trust, though, he wouldn't complain about that person taking over the job.

He really wanted to get back to the hospital again soon and heal some more people, if he could. Maybe after work and all the fights today, if he wasn't too tired. Maybe with Amp's help to make it easier, or to get over the exhaustion if it came to that. Perhaps a few more lives saved was only a drop in the bucket overall, but it made him feel like he was doing something with those powers besides just killing things nonstop. And it was something he'd always be able to do, even if they drove the monsters away forever.

---

Simon caught Cynthia leading Dawn through the hallways, walking briskly with purpose. "Aha, there you two are! Had breakfast yet?"
"Uh-huh," Dawn said. "We uh, got up early today."
"Her fault," the redheaded vixen said with a tone of playful annoyance. "Rowan asked us to meet in one of the courtyards to work on my...technique or something?"
"Sounds about right to me. Well, I won't be long," he said, continuing beside them. "I've got a gift for you," he said to Cynthia in particular, and theatrically presented a large spiral sketchbook along with a small case. "Tadah!"

She regarded it with a head-tilted expression, taking enough interest to slow her walk for a moment. "What..is it?"
"Sketchbook," he said, insistently pushing it into her hands, "aaand some decent pencils and erasers to use with it. I think, you, are an artist, and perhaps reigniting a bit of that spark will help you recall some happy memories for a change!"

Cynthia looked between the items now in her possession for a moment; her expression really did appear to be one of confusion at the fact that something she didn't actually remember seeing before felt so immediately familiar anyway. So his hunch was maybe right! "Well...thanks, I guess?"
"Please," he said, "if you don't mind, you can express gratitude by showing me some of your work later! I'll even be happy to critique it if you ask too, but be warned I can be positively savage. It's all honesty, and honesty is kindness in the art world, so I'm not in the habit of holding back! Anyway, got work to do myself, so I'll catch you two later!" With that, he gave a quick wave and power-walked off in another direction, swiftly making a turn at the next intersection in order to disappear dramatically from their line of sight. He'd never manage Warp's level of such trolling, but it was good enough if he could keep someone from getting a word in edgewise.