Battle Vixens! - 138

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Episode 138: The Name of the Game

Simon and Rowan were occupying seats facing each other in one of the VI's lounges. The former gestured emphatically: "No no—that part is supposed to be more of a 'swoop' sound."

Rowan sighed. "I don't know what a 'swoop' sound is. Just repeat the second half again, slowly."

Overall, this was going better than Rowan's attempt to teach Light his phrase. He understood from some communication with the Quinns that the process could be quite slow, but had perhaps underestimated how frustrating it would be. Simon wasn't the most patient of people, and would probably be fed up with this already if he weren't so eager for the end result.

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There was a gentle, polite knock on the front door of Amory and Blake's apartment. Amory stood up. "I'll get it—pretty sure I know who it is anyway." Blake vaguely grunted in acknowledgement, remaining seated on the couch with his computer in his lap, continuing to work on some kind of programming project or homework.

When he opened the door, he found Emma standing a bit behind the person who'd knocked—who was almost undoubtedly her sister. She was tall, dark-haired, with a fit but quite filled-out figure, and stylishly dressed—managing to even make a cat-ear band look good. While Emma's new look made it easier to see the family resemblance between the two of them, Amory felt sure he could've discerned it with her original form, too. Either way...

"Hey! You must be April, right? I'm Amory," he said, offering her a hand, which she gently took and gingerly shook.

"Indeed. Pleased to meet you~," she said. "Emma's told me so much about you!"
"Oh? Nothing bad, I hope?"

Emma stammered, "Um—"

"Actually, precious little so far," she said, leaning forward slightly with a teasing sort of grin. "But that she's fond of you tells me quite a bit!"

"Ah, okay. Well—that's my roommate back there, Blake." He sat up a bit and turned half-around to wave.

"Hi."
"Hello there~. Well, shall the three of us get going, then?" It was previously agreed that they'd go somewhere of April's choosing to actually sit down and talk—a restaurant of some sort, Amory assumed.

"Yeah, sure. Right?" he directed this question at Emma, making her jump slightly.

"Uh, right."

"Heheh~," April lightly giggled, seeming to find this exchange entertaining.

Once they were out the door, she said, "So—why don't you tell me about yourself?"

"Alright. I'm a chem student, thinking about going into biochem. So—huge nerd, I guess. I'm an only child, my dad's a surgeon, and my mom...passed away when I was little."
"And how did you and Emma come to meet?"

"I do some tutoring, we first met during that sometime uh, last year?" he asked Emma to confirm.

"R-right..."

"And she asked me out a little while after getting powers."

"She asked you out?" April repeated, halfway directing the question Emma's way.
"Uh-huh," she answered ahead of him. "I-I was super nervous, and it took me forever to work up the courage to try. I-I had some help, too..."

Amory said, "'Gemma' actually saved my life a couple of times before that, you know."
"Ooh. So you were aware of her identity?"
"At some point, yeah. Because of all that, I'm sorta involved with the vixens around here—you know, mostly giving moral support."
"A-and thinking up plans, and stuff," Emma added.

They came to the doors leading out of the apartment building at this point, and Amory hurried ahead to open the door for both of them. "My, what a gentleman~," April commented a bit teasingly, brushing past.
"Uh—thanks," Emma added rather shyly.

"So—where are we headed anyway?" he asked while catching up to them.

"I spotted a wonderful little casual cafe in easy walking distance. They won't mind people sitting around to chat for a while. And if we get hungry after some conversation, we can do lunch there as well."
"Sounds good."

"So—what has Emma told you about us so far? That is, her family?"

"Let's see..that it's pretty big—six older siblings, and all your names. I don't think she said what order, although I have a guess."
"Oh?"
"Well, it seems like your parents went for an alphabetical sort of theme? And I know you're the oldest. I don't know exactly where Atlas fits, but since Ben and Carrie are twins, he must be second or third, and Beverly the other one. And then Doris, and finally Emma. Right?"
She nodded, "You've got it—and Beverly is the second oldest. But names and ages are far from everything. Let's see, ah..."

Their conversation was interrupted by someone running up with his phone in one hand..Amory was pretty sure he was in their school news club or something. "Emma, hey! Can I—"

"Ahem," April interrupted, subtly placing herself between him and Emma with her fists on her hips. For as friendly and cheerful as she'd been up to this point, she had a surprisingly imposing presence when she wanted it. "Buzz off, Gemma's enjoying some personal time with her family. You can quote that—right, m'dear?" she asked Emma.
"Um—I-I can do an interview later," she said nervously.
"Oh, cool. Sorry about that," he said, waving once with his free hand and heading off.

"Hmph. At least that was a polite one," she said. "I deal with the media occasionally in my profession—if you need any tips."
"Uh, th-that's okay...people have usually been pretty respectful so far," Emma said. "And uh—I can kinda, just disappear if I wanna?"
"True—oh, that the rest of us had such powers," she said.

"Anyway—where was I..." Shaking her head slightly, April started leading the way toward the cafe again. "Right. So: Beverly is an actress—stage, not screen. Not on Broadway, mind you, but the troupe she works with does quite good work. Atlas works at a high-end gym, even training some sports players you may have heard of. He's always been into bodybuilding, and he has a fondness for superhero comics and the like as well, so recent events have had him pretty excited."
"Oh, yeah? My roommate's pretty into comics too," Amory said.
April nodded. "Perhaps we could arrange a meeting sometime. Anyway—Benjamin works at a university, teaching philosophy—or, more likely, arguing with his students day in and day out. He's our sweet oddball, constantly asking questions ever since he was young. Carrie's an artist, does graphic design work at an ad firm, and Doris is still working her way through grad school. Ah, she'd hate being mentioned last, though—always been out to prove she's the most talented and important of all of us."

"And, what about you?" he asked.
"Me? Ah, yes. I work in fashion. Largely in coming up with new designs," she said. "Sometimes costume design for shows, as well. But I'm not really cut out for the runway myself."
"Really? You look like you could be a model."
"Eheh, you charmer," she said. "But really, I enjoy wearing whatever's in, but I could hardly walk the walk. I think it's a much harder life than my own. And, since you're both 'in on things', perhaps I should mention...I'm actually doing some consulting work for the Vixen Initiative lately."

"For the—wait," Emma said. "You mean—are you involved in designing the uh.." After this stream of words came out all at once, and a bit loud, she quickly lowered her voice to a near-whisper despite the lack of anyone near enough to overhear them, "the masks and stuff?"
"That's right," she nodded. "They had a rather bizarre series of requests for me, but I rather enjoyed the challenge. It was really something to see my haute couture on the news last Friday—you know, Magus's debut? It seems like she's customized it a little to her own tastes since then, and especially for practicality, which is just fine by me. I mean, it was only as ostentatious as it was in the first place because apparently nothing subtler was working.

"Ah—here we are," she said, gesturing toward the front door of their destination. She hurried to the door to open it ahead of Amory, saying "Allow me this time," and gesturing for them both to head inside.

"Alright—thanks," Amory said. After that, they wandered around briefly before finding a table in a more distant, deserted corner of the cafe to sit around. A waiter immediately showed up, and April ordered herself some coffee, offering to take care of whatever the two of them wanted as well. So Amory asked for a hot chocolate, and (after some fidgeting) Emma just got a soda.

After a brief period of more casual conversation, their drinks arrived. April took a sip of hers, then put her elbows on the table and made a little bridge above her cup with her fingers, leaning her chin gently onto it. "So, tell me Amory..." she started during this maneuver. "Does does the prospect of a ménage à trois excite you?"

"Uh.." He briefly had difficulty believing that he had the meaning of that phrase quite right, because it didn't seem possible for her to have suddenly asked that out of the blue.

Emma had been in the middle of taking a sip of her drink, and nearly choked on it, barely managing to swallow before saying, "A what!?" in a mortified sort of half-whisper, her face instantly going quite red. So she'd understood her question the same way he had.

"Oh, don't get me wrong," April said calmly. "My meaning is—since Emma can be in two places at once...this is the first time in human history when just two consenting adults could enjoy such a thing~."

Still blushing furiously, Emma quietly sputtered out some incomprehensible, high-pitched stammering. Amory decided to try and help her out. "We...really haven't even thought about anything that, uh, intense."

"Oh?" April said. "How far have you gone, then?"

"Just, you know—hugs, some kissing, and um.." he felt a little heat on his cheeks from this, but it was best to be honest: "...petting."
"Petting?!" April sat up a bit, seeming surprised by this word—but maintaining quite a wide grin for that.

"That is, uh—literally," Amory corrected quickly. "Like, since she's capable of having, fur? I-I can't say I ever thought about that kind of thing before but..we, enjoy that."

"Ah, I see," she said, lowering her chin onto her fingers again. "But you do realize that word has some more intimate meanings, hmn?"

Emma finally found her voice in time to loudly, squeakily whisper, "Apriiiiilll!"

Her elder sister, who'd been looking Amory's direction this entire time to the point of seemingly ignoring her, lifted her chin to free up a hand to sort of dismissively wave it downward just once. "Oh, please. I've teased the potential lovers of all my other little siblings before, and roughly half have sworn to have their vengeance whenever I find the right man. It's only fair~."

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"That's it—that's it. You only stumbled on that very last part."
Rowan nodded, and tried that part again slowly.

"Aaah—no, it's—" Simon repeated it for him yet again.

After exhaling briefly he said, "So, then..." and tried the entire second half again.

"Yes! Yesyesyes!" He stood up excitedly. "Now do the whole thing!"

"Okay..."

The effect of finally getting it right was not too different from when he'd accidentally 'won the right to command' Cynthia. Simon's power manifested as a fuzzy, dark-brown, quickly-moving haze that rushed on him very suddenly and quickly. He paused for just a moment in the wake of the strange rush of feeling from gaining that, and then said the phrase a second time to pass his power back to him.

"Odd—Cynth made that look a lot more unpleasant. It just felt sort of weird," he said.
"She was using her powers at the time."
"True, yes," he nodded, and then quickly moved on: "So we should be able to do the thing now, right?!"

"Yes?"
"What, you don't want to try it out at least once? You know, find out how it works so we won't be surprised if at some point we really need it?"

Rowan shrugged, standing up himself. He wasn't convinced it was necessary—'Wave' had had no difficulty exercising her powers with no prior practice, after all—but he'd suspected from the start that he wasn't getting out of this encounter without them trying it at least once.

"A test shouldn't hurt, at least," he said, and then his own phrase to shift into blue-haired, fox-girl form.

"Ah, right...!" Seeming to just now realize he needed to be in vixen form himself, Simon quickly blurted the phrase Rowan had just learned to become Petra, maintaining a giant, excited grin the entire time. "So, so—we need to hug or something, right?"
"..A handshake was sufficient for Light and myself," Rowan said. "I suspect it just needs to be a show of mutual trust—" She was cut off by the two-tailed vixen excitedly glomping her.
"Let's gooo!"

Rowan sighed, patting her head gently a couple of times and speaking the newly-learned phrase.

She shifted into water and flowed 'into' the other vixen's more solid form, merging them together. The resulting body grew slightly taller and curvier, Rowan's tail appearing alongside Petra's two along the way. She had one ear in Petra's color and the other in Rowan's, and mostly the former's hair color with the light blue appearing at the tips of her locks.

The fused vixen spread her arms out, looking down briefly at herself and around. "Whoa—okay okay, pretty dissimilar from last night." She felt immeasurably strong, solid, and agile, with command of both vixens' swords and a myriad of ways to use them in a fight popping into her mind unbidden. The excited energy Simon nearly always had was tempered by Rowan's calmer nature, making her feel sort of..balanced.

Still, she couldn't help chattering to herself a little bit. "Anything peculiar to this combination I can't do on my own? Well, an earth dragon's a given, but I've got no desire to demolish this building doing that now. Fancy swordplay feels like second nature, sure sure, and maybe a modicum more precision for sculpting rocks. Additional power behind the water too, as though I don't have enough already!"

"...Shouldn't waste too much more time or energy staying together, really...but I at least need a name!" She tapped a finger on her chin a couple of times, trying to think of something good—and halfway wishing Karis was around to help out. "Water plus dirt makes..mud? Gross, no good," she said, shaking her head. "Hang on—" an image of the grand canyon popped into her head, and she brought the hand away from her chin into an 'I have an idea' kind of upward-pointing gesture. "Water cutting through the earth, carrying pieces with it everywhere...Erosion. That's a little more evocative!" Between Petra's steadiness and stamina, and Rowan's agility and strategy—well, up against an opponent she couldn't shred right away, there was a good chance she could still outlast it, and eventually wear it down to nothing. "Eh—sufficient for now, at least? No need to announce it unless I—we—whatever—do this in public, huh? Hup—"

Splitting apart was reasonably effortless. Rowan didn't feel nearly as winded afterward as from being Wave, but then 'Erosion' hadn't really done much more than stand around and talk. Still, compared to the constant, noticeable effort needed to maintain Wave's fused state, being in the merged form with Petra had come with only the sense of a slight, perhaps even negligible drain. It probably came down to the other vixen's absurdly high stamina, plus the fact that simply standing on solid ground 'recharged' her. Definitely an advantage to keep in mind.

"Aww, we didn't even test anything out," Petra complained..although Rowan had the distinct feeling it was insincere. The split had been as 'mutual' of a decision as anything conceivably could be.

"I'm certain we'll have plenty of time to 'play' tomorrow, if it really is worse than yesterday," she remarked.
"Yeah, yeah—you're right. Gotta be responsible and all. I do have work of my own to get to!"

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I know, it's been a while. This isn't all I've been working on; I have a couple of other things hopefully near completion. When it comes to this story in particular, though, I've been having a little trouble just because, after "Rainbow in the Dark" and the fallout from that, we're kind of back in a part of the story where I don't already have a good outline for exactly what should happen. There is another known "landmark destination" things are headed toward, but it's on the next in-story day because back when I had ideas for that, this "break day" in between hadn't even been planned to happen at all.