Battle Vixens! - 119

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Episode 119: Scattered Showers

"Drat! I was just getting to the details."

Simon set down his brush with visible frustration, then picked up his phone, flipping quickly through the information related to the alert.

Karis hopped to her feet. "Oh, relax...you can continue after, if everyone does their jobs right. So what's the news?" Remedy was already moving out of her pose to go behind him and see.

"Hmmnh..lots of individual weaklings. I mean—compared to me, at least."
"'Class 1', huh?"
"But predicted to be...everywhere. All over town. Dozens of them."

"Sounds like the swarm all over again."
He nodded. "Only more dangerous, less numerous. And she added that 'they won't all show up simultaneously,' so that's good at least.

He headed for the stairs. "Well, I'll bet I already know Rowan's plan for trying to deal with this."
Karis unsummoned Remedy and followed. "What, split into small teams and respond to them as they show up?" He turned his head back to give her a look that said she'd stolen his thunder. "I mean, it's the only logical thing to do."

About halfway down the steps, Simon sighed. "Are you, planning on fighting?"
"I appreciate that not coming out as a demand that I don't," she said. "Anyway—I'm definitely not a fan of sitting around doing nothing. Hey, I've got good defense apparently, and I can just send Remedy out to do stuff anyway, right?"
"Sure, but you shouldn't keep working without pay. And...stick with me, please."
"I can do that," she said, her last half-word or so cut off by Simon's phone ringing.

"Listen up, everyone..." Rowan, already in fox form, had most of the city's vixens on the line. "While our targets should be manageable individually, we'll be in trouble if too many are around at once. We will need to be quick and efficient; go for fast takedowns whenever it's safe to do so. If you have difficulty, do not hesitate to ask for help. I have someone marking locations for each team to gather on your maps. I'm with Dawn and Cynthia; Zeno, you've got Warp and Hugo headed your way; Sam, Tora, and Fay are together; Nico, Petra, you'll need to meet in the middle."

"I'm with Petra!" Karis chimed in. "Lemme know if anyone gets hurt."

"Please do. Maintain awareness of who's nearest to you, keep your comms open, check your map whenever you have a free moment. Let's keep our city safe."

Rowan stood a short walk out from the VI's front entrance, Cynthia and Dawn on either side of her. There were some stray droplets of water coming down from the overcast sky—not enough to be called actual rain, but it could easily grow into the role at any point. This was where some of the first of today's monsters were predicted to appear, so all they needed to do was wait.

As they waited, Dawn occasionally turned her head Cynthia's way, wearing a slightly worried look. Rowan could sense slightly more tension from the redhead with each glance, and it boiled over by about the sixth time. "Will you quit looking at me like that?!"

"Like what?"
"Like I'm about to collapse or somethin'?"
The droplets grew slightly thicker. "It's..rainin'," Dawn commented, holding out hand to catch a few.

"What, you don't think I can handle a little water? Just do your job, and trust me to do mine!"

Warp had been right about these two. "Please," Rowan said quietly but firmly. "Calm down, and focus. Both of you."
Dawn looked contrite. "O-okay."
"I am focused!" Cynthia said, half talking over her, taking out her sword.
"Them calm down," Rowan repeated.

"I am calm!" she snapped, not sounding like it.

Rowan was about to tell Cynthia to put her weapon away, but she spotted the formation of black mist in front of them, gathering into a tiger scorpion and a gryphon. So she drew her own weapon insead. "They're here."

As if on cue, the dripping from the sky picked up into a light rain. Rowan took advantage of it, quickly gathering droplets from above and around into a limb of water held out slightly in front of her left hand and having it wrap around the flying monster, forming blades and spikes into its body to cut into it as it struggled to move and running in to swiftly stab and slash it with her sword for good measure. The other monster she chose to trust to her allies—but not so much that she wasn't ready to move if anything went wrong.

Dawn also found a use for the rain, easily freezing some of it into a number of small blades and throwing them at the tiger scorpion. Cynthia went around this barrage, which the beast was starting to move into in an effort to sting its source, and exploded her weapon into a stream of near-point-blank fire in the monster's side. Its stinger came down at her and she leapt away, having anticipated this attack; now that its attention wasn't on her, Dawn ran in with a large sword of ice in both hands and slashed through it. She reformed the ice that didn't break off in the slash into a shield, blocking its claw and its muzzle when it tried to retaliate that way. Cynthia closed in again, leaping to stab her sword into the top of its hind leg before exploding it this time, ensuring that most of the resulting fire was inside its body.

Rowan continued working on the gryphon, taking more of the rain to keep it bound up. Combat-wise, the two of them were doing just fine, at least for now.

Zeno put up a shield, blocking the giant bear-monster's claw, backflipped and fired three arrows in the general vicinity of its eyes. It roared, charging forward, and she moved aside, firing more arrows into it. Wash, rinse, repeat. A single class-1 monster alone, especially one whose patterns she'd studied, didn't stand a chance of hurting her—at least, not until she wore herself out. But it wasn't long before a wave of noise came crashing through it from behind, making it stagger forward, and Warp appeared a couple of yards above its head, falling down onto it knife-first and burying the blade to the hilt before vanishing away again.

"Sorry we're late," the shield maiden said as the monster tried to roar, swiping the empty air above it futilely. She muted its voice, and sent another wave of sound at it.
"I'd say you're just in time!" Zeno said, giving it a full volley of arrows in the side. Warp reclaimed her weapon to throw into its other side. "Stay aggressive, you two—we've got bashers scheduled to show up in a minute."

"Which one's that again?" Hugo said, holding up her weapon to block a frenzied swipe from the monster's claws.

"Spindly-legged deer things," Warp answered.

"Oh, right. Always get 'em confused with the boars. Hey, 'port me out in a sec." She leapt forward, slamming her shield into the monster's center mass hard enough to bowl it over, erupting it into sound waves and sending them echoing through the center of its body. It tried to grab for her as a stream of mist poured out of it from this assault, but she was already gone.

Tora and Fay were fighting a pair of twins when Sam arrived. "Yeah, c'mon!" Tora leapt back, tilted her personal gravity mid-flip, and landed feet-first into her opponent's chest, the force knocking it to the ground. Fay blocked a blade with her staff, turned it to point its tip in the other twin's center mass, and set off an explosion there before moving aside of it to plant the staff into the one that had just been knocked over, giving it the same treatment.

"Well, you two seem to have them two handled," Sam commented.
"Set your traps," Fay said, blocking some retaliatory strikes from both twins. "We've got this."
"Sure do!" Tora took advantage of their attention being elsewhere to slash both of them in the back, diving away when they whirled to try to counter.

"Will do, then." Sam got to work forming metal thorns, weaving them into a network of surprises for their upcoming visitors. Meanwhile, the other two vixens continued blocking, dodging, and countering, seeming more in-sync than the pair of monsters were. In short order, the two linked monsters' forms had grown blurry and indistinct. Fay levered her opponent over on its back, Tora kicked the other one on top of it, and then a staff stabbed down into them, placing an explosion large enough to finish both off.

"Bleh, rain." Petra slammed a pile of rock down into a charging snakewolf, pinning it to the ground.

"Oh, c'mon—it's like sprinkling at worst," Karis said, having Remedy go up and slash the trapped beast in in the side several times.
"Just wait 'till you experience the wonder of wet fur." She turned to the side, raising up a fist of stone and punching away a second one as it arrived, sending it tumbling along the ground. Where it skidded to a halt, she picked up more concrete into a spiked arch around it, holding it in place too. Then she moved in to stab her own sword through the monster's neck.

"Hey, at least it's good for the trees!" The first monster shook itself free of the rocks, biting for Remedy and catching only air as Karis un-summoned her. It took an uncannily short amount of time for it to give up on the missing target and run after the next-nearest one: Karis herself.

If she'd thought about what she was doing, Karis would've brought Remedy up to either hit it, distract it, or at least block it to slow it down, but—with a giant qudripedal beast rushing up at her—a near-instinctive reflex is what she acted on instead, before any thinking could even take place. She leapt aside when it was too close and moving too fast to turn and follow her, landed gracefully on her feet, and then punched it square in the side of its muzzle. In the middle of that punch's momentum—happening so fast that her perception shouldn't logically have been able to pick it up—a flash of red light appeared around her arm, and by the time her fist connected with its target, that light had formed into a familiar red-and-black gauntlet. Furthermore, the strike conveyed more force than it logically should have, sending the snakewolf rolling sideways-forward away from her with a distinct stream of mist pouring up off the point of impact.

"Whoa! Uh—I can do that apparently!?" Further reflection found that, in the same way she could 'feel' Remedy lending her power someone else, Karis could sense her Stand inside herself at this moment. Visually, this state manifested as a slight reddish glow flickering like a fire around her body.

The snakewolf recovered its feet, and again with an uncomfortable alacrity, turned to charge at her again. "Well you should probably do it again! Or send Remedy out!" Petra lifted a bit of the ground in front of it just as it started moving, tripping it into an awkward stumble.

"Oh, right." It seemed like a poor strategy to go for the very dangerous mouth again, so instead Karis jumped for the thing's back, grabbing it with her bare hand and punching down into it with the gauntlet, landing three or four good punches in a row before it could recover from the fall. "Ora ora ora!!!" Then it stood up abruptly and shook violently to try to shake her off, so she took the momentum into a backflip, 'throwing' Remedy back out in front of her. The Stand went up in a flying leap, drawing her sword as she fell and stabbing it into the beast's back.

Six chargers should've been at least a somewhat tough fight, but with the right preparation, it was almost trivial. Tora played the bait, running right in front of each one as it appeared, taking whatever opportunity there was to slash her claws through their sides to really get their attention, and running away. She was faster and more agile than Ning had been, which allowed her to go around Sam's traps and leave relatively large windows to spring them around the monsters. No sooner was a monster or two caught in a net of metallic wire than Fay would sweep in, repeatedly tap them with her staff, and set off one explosion after another until the beasts struggled free.

The main advantage chargers had was speed and—frequently—numbers. They were not especially resilient on an individual basis. Not a single one of this group ever got up to full running speed before being caught in a trap, and Tora's claws, Sam's stabbing wires, and especially Fay's explosions made short work of them. Few of them survived their third time being caught in a trap, and none of them the fourth.

After placing her last explosion, Fay staggered back, catching herself from falling backwards by using her weapon as a crutch. If there was one disadvantage to their party composition, it was her being the main source of damage. Tora ran up to support her, offering a shoulder. "You gonna make it?"
Fay took her up on the offer, dismissing her staff. In between huffs for air, she replied: "Need..a break..."

"Yeeeah, you're not built to blow things up nonstop like that. More of a 'sometimes food,' I guess."

Sam faced a different issue: She'd actually been a little too proactive in placing traps, and now still had a significant surplus of them left. It wasn't that there was a risk of them hurting civilians—she could dismiss all of the wire immediately if she wanted—but it seemed like a waste of effort. She got out her phone, pushing the button to speak to everyone on the team. "Got a lot of extra traps here. Bring 'em to me if you wind up in the area."

While she had the phone out, she checked the map. "Fay, take a seat. Tora—up that street's our next target," she said, pointing. "Lead it here—I can just keep it tied up for a bit."
"On it!"

Hugo jumped and smashed her shield against the head of the approaching basher, the impact forcing it backwards and stopping it in its tracks. "Hey—can you put me under it?"

"Can I?" Warp scoffed. So she raised the shield above her head, got teleported to directly beneath the monster's underside, and fired off a wave of sound through its body, destroying it.

"Two down!" Zeno fired more arrows into her target, keeping its attention on her. It ran, leaning its head down to try to hit her, and smashed through a pre-placed light shield. This didn't stop it, but slowed it enough for her to dive out of the way. "Keep moving toward our next target. You 'fraid of heights, Hugo?"
"Uh—usually at least a little, but—"
"Then don't let it get airborne!"

"Or I'm 'porting her to it, eh?" Warp said, busy harrassing Zeno's target with some teleport-knife-throws, confusing it into looking for a target where there was none.
"That's one idea, at least!"

Hugo yelled, crashing the noise into the basher's side to knock it over, then ran up, jumping into the air and using the assist from gravity to slam her shield into it. It thrashed around, but with a few more arrows and knife-throws, it fell apart. "You think we're maybe spread a little too thin?"

"No choice, too many enemies," Zeno said. "C'mon, keep up!"

They arrived just as a freshly-formed gryphon took off into the air. "No good," Hugo said. "Well—I'm less scared of most things like this. Just don't let me hit terminal velocity."
"I'll keep you safe, don't worry," said Warp, tossing her weapon into the air and catching it. She then threw it forward, teleporting it to just an inch or so in front of the monster's left eye. "Ready?"

Hugo nodded, raising her weapon again.

Petra struck her sword into the side of their second snakewolf, finishing it off. That was her only direct hit on this one; Karis had really done a number on it. "Okay, now where..?" As she got out her phone to check their next target, she felt a familiar, relieving feeling, some of the tiredness from the fight easing off. Looking up, there was Nico already at work growing another tree. "Aah, there you are!"

"Yeah, sorry, lots of blocked streets to get around. Plus I stopped back there since I figured you'd already be done with these two," she said, pointing a thumb behind her. "Put down some fruit-throwers and stuff."
"Great! Let's go." Petra started running that way, and Karis followed, stopping briefly to shrug Nico's way. The green-haired vixen followed.

Rowan hadn't seen one of this type of monster in person before, but had read the wiki's basic description: "A rat the height of a human, with tentacles coming out of its back." That was about right, aside from the omitted-as-obvious fact that it sported giant, razor-sharp teeth rather than the kind one would expect on a rodent. They were up against three of them, and she had two tied down; the number of tentacles the monsters had varied from one to another, but regardless, all those extra limbs meant it took most of her focus just to do that much.

The rain was steadily getting heavier. It wasn't a downpour yet, but there was a lot flowing along the sides of the street for her to work with.

Cynthia and Dawn were working on the other one, the former keeping her distance to blast it perioidically with fire while the other one used dual-ice-swords to harass it. Whenever its tentacle or mouth closed around one of the swords, she just let it go and got out another one. And whenever it moved in the redhead's direction to try to retaliate, Dawn got in the way, gathering the rain into a rough club and smashing it across the head.

The big rat-monster was getting indistinct, but this was too slow a pace. Even with the help of Rowan's sword, the other two were going to take too long. Just then, Sam announced that she had traps ready. If her group was still near to their starting point, then...

"Finish that one, then we switch to bait-and-run," Rowan said. "We'll rendezvous with Sam."

"Got it!" Cynthia said, moving forward to stab their target in the side and send a stream of fire into it. It only took a couple more strikes from Dawn to end it, and then Rowan led the way to the street they needed to go down, loosening her grip on the other two monsters slightly. They struggled free just as the three vixens met up, and Rowan started running, the other two following.

After ten seconds or so of running, Cynthia called from behind: "Holy—fast!" Rowan wouldn't know until later—by way of some research—that these things liked to use their tentacles kind of pole-vault up then down-forward sometimes. They typically used it as an especially dangerous pouncing maneuver, coming down onto a target giant-muzzle-first, but evidently they were also happy to use it to speed up pursuit.

"Dawn—delay tactics!"

Dawn tossed back rough, half-made bits of spiky ice for the monsters to trip over. Rowan did her part too, assembling the water on the street into some thrashing, grasping tentacles. She didn't bother to aim, knowing that looking back would only slow her down, so they tended to swipe the ice-spikes into the air and land the occasional hit on a monster with them. Between their efforts, the rats were slowed just enough for a breakneck dash to keep the vixens ahead of them.

It was a good thing that Hugo's powers made sound useful, because she was making a lot of it right now.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"

Being suddenly very high up in the air was disorienting, and she'd probably overestimated how much "being a vixen" enhanced her courage. But she wasn't going to waste the opportunity either. Warp had placed her a short distance above the spot that the gryphon was about to be, so she thrust her shield out below/in front of her and focused her screaming into a downward torent of pressure. Both slammed into the gryphon at the same time, the latter making black mist erupt off of it while the former threw off its flight trajectory into a decidedly downward direction. It screeched and raised its claws to try to swipe at her, but then, maybe only two or three seconds after the impact—she was suddenly standing on solid ground once again.

This "landing" was also fairly disorienting, having her stumble around briefly before her body seemed to comprehend the direction of gravity. By now, the gryphon was spiraling downward, its best efforts at remaining airborne after that impact failing. Zeno was already on her way to where it was about to land to intercept it, raising her bow and nocking a light-arrow in the string.

"Have fun?" Warp asked from a couple of feet to her left, then teleported over next to Zeno.

"Hffh...I'd say 'never again', but..." Hugo realized Warp was gone at this point and terminated her sentence with a sigh, then got her weapon out again, taking two slow steps forward to make sure her legs were working properly before continuing the momentum into a run.

"Incoming!!!"

Rowan's voice in the distance was the first sign Sam had of someone taking her up on her offer, followed quickly by some rapid footsteps. One of the rats behind the three vixens did something her mind said made no physical sense and then it was in the air and coming down practically on top of them. Thankfully, all three seemed to sense this, and scattered, diving away to both sides—and the monster's momentum carried it straight forward into range of one of the traps. The metal closed up around its main body, and Sam took care to twist more wire up around its..back-tentacles to try and tie them into place somewhere about halfway up from their base.

Another one was right behind that one, and this one wasn't so committed to its prior movements that it couldn't turn and follow Cynthia—who'd dove to the right while the other two went left. "Tora!" Sam yelled.

"On it!" And, thankfully, she was. By now she was halfway into a leap, which she turned into a sideways dive, and wound up kicking the thing in the side just as it was getting close enough to grab the redheaded vixen with one of its extra limbs. It swiped out at her after that, but she dodged around and aside of the assault, slashing into it a few times for good measure.

"RrrraaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" Cynthia was not happy about almost being grabbed. No sooner did she recover her feet than she thrust out both her hands in front of her and screamed angrily, sending a stream of fire hot and thick enough to erupt the raindrops it went through into a burst of steam. Tora barely got out of the way, while the rat took the full brunt of it. A torrent of black mist streamed up off of its body, but it advanced toward her anyway. Some water twisted up around its feet.

Just now on her way from kneeling to standing, Rowan yelled: "Cynthia, stop!"

She dropped her hands, stopping the stream of fire—which allowed Rowan to twist water up around more of the beast's body and restrain it. Then she staggered a couple of steps backwards, looking winded.

"Give me a split second to get away, would ya!?" Tora said as she stood up again and dusted herself off.

The redhead folded her ears down. "Ugh..sorry, wasn't thinkin' again."

"Just sayin'—even I've got my limits on near-death experiences."

"Lead it to another trap," Sam advised Tora—or whoever. She had their bear-monster pinned, and Fay had been periodically poking it, but there was room for one more.

Now also back on her feet, Dawn formed an unreasoanbly large blade out of frozen rain. After taking a couple of steps in the monster's direction, she jumped, striking the weapon deep into its back as she landed, then whirled and ran in the direction of one of Sam's traps. Rowan partially released her grip, watching for it to actually chase Dawn rather than someone else before fully letting it go. In short order, Sam had it caught too.

Tora had gone over to start slashing the first rat, mostly keeping her distance in case it broke free. "Boss, we haven't quite got the DPS we need here. Dunno how many Sam can hold at once, and Fay got close to her limit with those chargers. Maybe a little firepower would help?"

"If you want my help, you could just ask," Cynthia said, having her breath back by now.

"Cynthia..." Rowan drew out her weapon and gestured at their most-recently-caught target with it, starting toward the bear herself.

"I'm on it," she sighed.

"Dawn, help Tora with that one. Take these down so we can go get more."

Being the slowest of the three (or four) of them at a full run, Petra caught up with Karis just as three humanoid figures formed out of the mist, each one sporting arms ending in weaponry rather than hands. Nico hung back, growing some of her plants, while Karis sent her Stand ahead to start attacking them right away. "So—three on three, huh?"
"Triplets," Petra said, moving ahead of her. "Like the twins, you have to kill all three at once. I'll keep 'em grouped up, you hurt them." One of the monsters blocked Remedy's sword, trying to counter; she blocked it with her metallic arm and landed a solid stab through its body with her sword. Seeing the other two trying to spread out—one of them moving Nico's way—Petra tilted the ground under both of them, pulling up a quick wall in the way of the far one while forming her own weapons and gauntlet-punching the near one back toward Remedy's position.

By now, Nico had plenty of trees lobbing fruits in at the three mist monsters. Not every shot hit, but those that did consistently sent brief jets of black mist up off of their bodies. Nonetheless, the one Petra had walled off from reaching her changed its mind and went Remedy's way instead, working together with the one already fighting her to put her on the defensive. The one Petra had punched began to recover its feet too, so she moved in, raising her weapon and making a couple of feinting slices to get their attention.

Seeing Remedy in an awkward position with no room to dodge the next strike, Karis dismissed her and ran up, briefly "possessing" herself with the Stand to uppercut the monster that had nearly landed a hit in the side, sending it careening away in an upward arc. The other one came swinging a flail-like appendage at her, and she instinctively pulled Remedy's sword out of seemingly nowhere with her un-gauntleted hand to block it. Then she stepped backwards, Remedy appearing in the exact position she'd just been in as she did so and then yanking the end of the flail with her sword to make her opponent stumble, dismissing and re-summoning the sword to stab it through the torso again.

The one Karis had punched away came flying through the air in roughly Petra's direction, so—not one to waste an opportunity—she grabbed her sword in both hands and hopped sideways, planting her feet just in time to swing it like a bat and slice it clean through the triplet's torso on its way across. Then she threw the sword at the one she'd been fighting, the heavy blade hitting it with enough momentum to bowl it over onto the ground.

Hugo did what she could to keep the gryphon from taking flight again, sending waves of sound in an upward arc to slam down on it from above again and again. Warp and Zeno kept wailing on it from the sidelines, and every time it tried to run after one of them along the ground she intercepted it and blocked it with her shield. It didn't take very long for it to start looking indistinct.

She was taking a deep breath to yell another sound-blast at it when Zeno said, "Hugo, ge'back!" As rushed and malformed as the words were, the tone of urgency was enough for her to drop her shield and immediately jump backwards as far as she could, landing awkwardly enough that she stumbled back a couple o steps before recovering her balance.

There was no need to ask the reason for that warning, as no sooner was she out of the way than a blur of solid-black-mist rushed in front of her: Four legs, big snake-like tail complete with the mouth, gigantic canine muzzle gaping open more than wide enough to have swallowed her whole. Its momentum kept it going straight into the side of the gryphon, and it had gone halfway through the other monster's body before it stopped. They briefly looked like they were stuck like that, but then the mist forming them became slightly less distinct, beginning to pulsate and reshape into a new, larger form.

Hugo re-formed her shield in her hands. "Aww, sshhoot."

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Whew, this has been a tough one to write. Lots of action, and still more to come. I had some difficulty figuring out where to put the cut between this episode and the next one. But I guess in a visual medium all this fighting would've taken even longer to put together!