Battle Vixens! - 143

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Episode 143: She Hates Me

Emma sat up in the large bed abruptly at the sound of knocking. It wasn't the same sound as the last couple of nights: A different amount of force, a different rhythm. The person at the door of the room she occupied in her dreams was not Amory.

She hopped down, stretched very briefly, and hurried to answer the door. The person on the other end..looked a little bit like Amp after all. She was taller and more mature-looking overall for sure, but the blue eyes and blond hair, and the fur of her ears and singular fluffy tail taking on the latter color as well, besides a great many details about her face and build overall, made her almost look...kind of like the cute girl's "mother". Despite the drastic difference from any previously-known appearance, however, Emma also recognized exactly who she was looking at, and not just from context; the sense of familiarity was just as if this was how she had always looked.

She smiled slightly, but her expression overall seemed almost...a little bit nervous. "Hello there~." Well, the voice was the same, at any rate. "Could I..come in?"

"Yeah, sure!" Emma hurried to take a few steps back. "You look uh—really different!"
"Well...I don't know whether I have a 'true form', but this appearance most closely matches how I looked during my earliest memories," she said with a slight shrug, walking inside. "I tend to use it when I'm not trying to intimidate or impress my audience. You must not be happy to see me, either way."

"Hey, don't be like that! I've wanted to see you again for days! C'mon, let's—sit down somewhere."

Emma gestured emphatically toward a part of the room that had been empty a moment ago. She and Amory had figured out a lot about how this place worked: Expecting a comfy couch and chair to be there more or less caused them to be, so she just hurried over and hopped onto one side of the former.

"Hmmph—how could I say no that?" Her guest went to sink into the chair, slumping back a bit in the process. "I really am surprised, though. You wanted to see me?"
"Yeah, of course! We've been friends for like two years!"
"That wasn't really—"

"I know, I know—Beryl never was real or whatever. But that doesn't mean you didn't enjoy being her, does it? I just can't believe you'd spend so much time and effort being that nice, actually helping people who can't do anything back—if there wasn't something you were getting out of it, yourself. Maybe you are a huge jerk, and hurt a lot of people, but I think...that's not really all you are."

She sat up slightly. "Hah...you might be the only person of your entire world who thinks even that highly of me."

She leaned her head on a hand, with that elbow on the chair's armrest. "..Don't get me wrong. It's not like that was ever by accident. If I wanted to be adored by all the inhabitants of a planet, it'd be all too easy for me. Only ever telling the truth is hardly even a handicap."

"So, what, you made everyone on Earth hate you, on purpose?"
"Of course," she sat up again to nod slightly, folding her hands across her lap. "If I came off as some sort of benevolent goddess, then most of those wielding my power would never stop 'praying' to me. It'd be cute at first, but I could never afford to protect you that way forever. I just..didn't think success at this task would bother me as much as it does. I've been hated by entire universes' worth of people before and hardly felt a thing."

"How many of them did you really meet? Spend a week or two with, let alone over a year?"

She shrugged, "Not too many, I suppose. Hardly ever in a context that wasn't just them demanding things from me."

Emma said, "Well, there's gotta be something in between 'everyone worshiping you' and 'everyone hating you', if like you just—wanted us to grow power of our own instead of using yours."

"But that was the most efficient way. It doesn't really matter how anyone feels, including me, if it gets the right results."

Emma leaned up and forward a little bit. "You've got such an awful way of thinking about things, you know? All 'efficiency' this and 'results' that. There's way more to being around other people than just getting what you want out of it."

"I don't know of any other reason," she said, tilting her head slightly. "If I want to make someone else happy, that's still something I want. And if I must choose between making someone happy or helping them to survive, then surely it's only a matter of whether I like them or not."

"Does that really have to be a choice?"

The Watcher was quiet for a moment, then just shrugged. "Hard to say. Really, I haven't cared at all about whether I make anyone but myself happy until very recently. Even then, I don't fully comprehend why I do...

"I apologized to you for doing to you and your friends what I still feel was right. But not even my closest acquaintance at the moment—you've never met her—would agree that it was. Light certainly doesn't."

"Do you...care a lot about Blake's opinion of you?"
She nodded slowly.
"You said you like her before. But...why?"

"I don't know whether I can really explain it. I've just been fascinated, watching the 'Hero' do her thing, since the very beginning. Such a talent for creative, flexible uses of her power, but such a strange, hard-headed way of looking at things. So willing to forgive even those who would take her life, but holding such a deep hatred under the right circumstances. Besides, she's just so cute when she glares..."

Emma thought about it for a moment. It was easy for her to think of reasons why she liked Amory, although..the point where respect, gratitude, interest and then friendship, turned into attraction, affection, or infatuation...it was hard for her to really draw the line. Maybe her question had been unfair. So, instead of pressing...

"You know...one of Blake's strongest beliefs is that anyone can change. Being a bad person isn't something that you're just, stuck with forever, after it happens. No matter how much bad."

"I know that..." Her expression shifted to a kind of crooked, sad smile. "But even if I somehow became the ideal person, I don't think I'd be able to show her. She told me she never wanted to see me again, last night, and most definitely meant it. And I will not visit someone who won't let me in. Hmmh..." She closed her eyes slightly, still smiling.

"You don't look that upset about it, though. Are you thinking of some way to trick her into talking to you again anyway?"
She opened her eyes again. "No, no—nothing like that, I promise you. It's just..

"Hahah...heheh...For once, I don't have the words—or better, I don't think they exist in your langauge. Pain just...isn't something that comes naturally to me. I don't really comprehend it. Even emotional pain, is brand new to me as an experience. Light hating me and wishing I were dead hurts, it hurts so much—but I'm also fascinated by that feeling itself." She sniffed once, and Emma realized there were about two or three tears coming down her cheeks.

"You haven't heard of 'masochism' before?"
"Pffhahah!" She chuckled. "No, no—it's not that, I swear! I do...I do want it stop, but I also don't want it to end. It's so much easier to just stay the same, and savor it, but a part of me wants to change anyway, and see what happens then."

"Okay...so what makes changing so hard anyway, if you want to?"

She wiped her face on a sleeve, the tears gone as soon as they had appeared. "I have made a great many decisions. Commitments. Promises. I must be fair to everyone, as much as I can. Being 'good', according to Light, means acting immediately just because one person is in trouble, but I have to think about the price of every action in terms of what it will cost billions of others. Worse, I don't have the excuse of not having time to think things through. In under a second, I can compute the consequences of my next action out to at least several decades in most situations. So...even if I truly wish to do something kind for someone, I'm trapped within the many constraints that my own actions have created. In short, being an adult is hard," she said, shrugging.

"Do you regret starting to help people fight those monsters?"
"Never," she answered instantly. "Not one bit." She sighed. "Now and then, I do miss the days when I was only an audience member, sitting back and watching events play out...but I've had my focus drawn to plenty of exciting things I would never have noticed otherwise. And, my time with the people of your world has been another unique experience all its own."

"You know, it doesn't sound like it'd cost you that much to just...get to know the people of some other world. Like, one that's not in danger? You could show up and just talk honestly with people—like, actually honest, not that 'tell only the truth' thing, but not going out of your way to make them hate or love you, either."

"Emma, I legitimately don't know whether I'm capable of that kind of honesty."
"Well—then—you definitely can't figure that out unless you try!"
"Hmm, perhaps not..."

She paused for a moment, looking over at the door, then back Emma's way. "Time here doesn't work exactly the same as in your waking world, but.."
"Are you wondering about Amp? Rowan wanted her help to hold a last-minute meeting thing with a bunch of the other leaders," Emma said.
"That's good..but I did already know that. I was going to say, I've been here for a while as it is. It's...good you're all taking tomorrow seriously. And it's nice to have the opportunity to talk to you again..."

Emma gave her a long look. "There's something you're not saying, isn't there?"
"Well," she shrugged, "I..don't know whether this will be the last time. Obviously I never do, but especially..."

"Tomorrow will be, difficult. Exceedingly so. More than you might expect. For your world, the enemy's usual pattern of behavior was thrown off a little by my interference; its first few strikes were the sort that would have wiped your world out if you had no help. But after that, it began its usual...'strategy', to use the word lightly. A number of probing attacks, with a certain pattern of intensity to them. That's what it does with worlds full of magic, which at least appear to be well-prepared for its assault. After that, a brief pause, and then..."
"And then?"
"It makes its true strike. An all-out assault, you could say. The earlier attacks tend to expose the weaknesses of a world's defenses, widen the cracks that were narrowly present before—often in ways the world's own protectors barely notice or can do little about in so short a time. And then, at this point, those cracks are hit hard enough to shatter everything, if it's possible. The good news is that if this fails, it tends to give up for a while...but if it perceives a serious weakness this time, it will continue to strike at it again and again until the world falls."

"Do we...have a huge weakness like that?"
"I don't believe so. And at least you don't have...

"Well, a world having powerful magic from the start, especially if it's closely concentrated, can be a double-edged sword, is all. We lost such a world recently; its gods made powerful protectors so that their people could live in peace and harmony, but all it took was the enemy swallowing just one of those for the rest to fall like so many dominos. If only more of them had swallowed their pride and accepted my help...

"Your world doesn't have that problem, but as a result, you aren't terribly secure either. Your collective power is just about enough to resist its strike. So I'm su...sssuuu....mmh." She appeared to be unable to finish her sentence. "I mean, I hope you'll make it through this. I, believe you are capable."

"But—you can't actually say you're 'sure' we will."
She nodded slightly. "Sorry. I've...given you all I can afford to. It is your fight now."
"It kinda always was, though, wasn't it?"
She grinned a little wryly. "...Yes. You're right."