Battle Vixens! - 58

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Episode 58: Out of a Hat

Marcus arrived at the VI's office space to find them in the process of hastily leaving. When someone walking out asked him who he was and he barely even started to explain, they urged him to follow a small convoy of "essential" workers headed for their headquarters—so he did. The place was being guarded like a fortress, and there were definitely more people around than it seemed normally outfitted for; in addition to staff that would normally have remained off-site, the families of those vixens in the city whose identities were known were around. There was an obvious tension in the air, but Marcus followed a worker to an unoccupied office to wait for someone else to interview him anyway. Then that person arrived, and she just asked him a few questions he thought they should already know the answer to—about his occupation (student) and interests (video games), and how he felt about the VI overall—before they were interrupted by a PA announcement that the facility was going on lockdown.

"Well, I think this is enough, anyway," she said, picking up her notes and shuffling them together. "Please, go back out to the waiting room and sit tight. I'm sure..." Her confident, businesslike manner faltered for a just fraction of a second. "Well—I hope this will be over soon enough."

"Uh..yeah," he agreed, getting up.

There wasn't much to do in the little waiting room, but there were chairs and there was a TV mounted to the wall, which Marcus was able to stand on the seat of a chair to turn on and tune to the news. Plus, there was an open outlet, and the VI headquarters had an open wi-fi network for guests—making him glad he'd had the foresight to bring his phone and a charger inside with him.

They covered the battle going on outside, cutting together professional news footage with shots people were taking out the windows of homes and offices with their phones. Not wanting to make too much noise with people still running around the halls and sometimes through the waiting room, Marcus settled for rooting for them quietly. The way Petra was fighting that fire-puppet was like a cage match or something, at least until the latter disappeared on her. Naturally, he was also able to catch the moment live when the puppets all turned to dust, and allowed himself a quiet "Yess" and fistpump to celebrate the victory.

The news continued playing various clips of footage from the fight, interspersed with interviews and going through the fairly small list of casualties, for at least half an hour. Maybe it would've bored someone else, and Marcus hadn't historically been one to watch much news at all, but this certainly held his attention for a long while. That's why he was still watching when they broke in with something else—something especially strange. Someone, somehow, had hacked youtube.

To be more specific: There was a video showing up on the homepage and at the top of every list of recommendations, and its title was visibly glowing. Checking it for himself, Marcus could see as well as anyone that it wasn't a hoax. The title was "A Brief Message", it was the only video from a nearly brand-new account named "Diamond", and the description read "To my blessed ones." Then, on a second line: "PS: Oh, stop freaking out; it'll quit doing that once enough have seen it."

Meanwhile, the news were flipping through the footage. It was shot in a forest, some kind of weird light show; a vixen who Marcus thought looked sort of like Dr. Clark Quinn, only more...mature?...was floating in the air and glowing, and then there were lines of string coming out of her and bodies coming into existence out of light coming from the opposite end of each. The newscasters remarked that from the camera angles and backgrounds of the shots, there definitely weren't any cameras present which could have taken the footage.

Since the news was talking over it, Marcus had to play the video for himself, on his phone, to hear the audio. It was silent apart from narration by a mature female voice he didn't recognize, but the sound of which made him feel—something difficult to describe. Terror? Respect? As if it were possible to feel a person's strength through the sound of their voice alone, and this particular voice conveyed an unimaginable amount of it. She said: "Do you see the reward this one was given? You should be grateful that she was so kind, that her desires were to heal and not to rule. Listen: No game's set of rules is without loopholes, and while some would be content to roughly graft in a new one at this stage, I have nothing so crass in mind.

"When I gave you your gifts, I told you what I wanted, and that remains very much the same. But if I may add just one little thing to that: The threat to your world is very real." (The video very briefly jump-cut through a flash of several different shadow monsters at this point, before switching back). "Fight them, good. Run from them, I don't care. Do nothing, fine. Fight or kill each other, I'll enjoy it. But help your enemy, like this one did..." (The video cut to a shot from a few feet above a blond-haired vixen Marcus didn't recognize, whose position lying on the ground looked disturbingly unnatural) "..and I will be sure to reward anyone who kills you very well."

Once he'd watched it, Marcus noticed that the video's title quit glowing, and going back to the previous pages it was no longer being pushed to the top of any list. Feeling unnerved, he closed out of everything involved in viewing the video. He found himself asking the same question the news was: Was that the "Giver"? And—if so—what was she doing on youtube?

A door leading out into an adjacent hallway opened up, and the woman who'd interviewed Marcus came in. "Excuse me, Mr. Rowe."
"Uh..hey."

"You've been approved to help us test things out. If you're up to it, they said they're ready for you in the lab now."
"Really? I mean—yeah, definitely," he said, quickly pulling his phone charger out of the wall and standing up.
"All right." She gave him directions, and he tried to memorize them and repeat them back. When she nodded that he had it right, he headed out into the hallway to start.

The route he'd been given required several turns through the headquarter's labyrinthine hallways, making him start to wonder how anyone found their way around in here. But—some of it did seem to be detours around "restricted" areas with even the hallways blocked off with their own locked doors and occasionally a person guarding them. Either way, he was pretty sure he was still headed the right way, and most of the way there, when he came to a particlar intersection. He was supposed to be going straight here, but noticed something over to the right while just glancing both ways to ensure he wasn't going to run into anyone.

It was difficult for him not to audibly gasp. It was Light, just sitting in a folding chair next to a door off that way. Maybe he did make some sound, since her ears twitched slightly and she went from folded entirely forward to stare down at the floor to just slightly more upright and then turned her head his way. Part of him wanted desperately to run over to her and try to introduce himself, but it helped his restraint win out when he saw her face. She had an exhausted, maybe depressed expression that would be easy to mistake for an outright glare. It was immediately clear that, however victorious the news had presented things...something bad must have happened, too.

Unfortunately, now she was looking at him, and he couldn't just run off without at least acknowledging it...right? So Marcus wound up giving an awkward half-wave, like a silent 'excuse me', before he turned and continued on his previous route at a quicker pace than before. Some other time, he told himself, when they hadn't all just been through a rough fight...or even if not, it was better that the only impression he left on her wasn't of an annoying idiot fan gushing at her when she wasn't feeling particularly great.

"Hey! Wait up." A moment later he heard someone saying this while running to catch up to him, and almost immediately she showed up next to him, so he slowed to a stop. She still looked as tired as before, but wasn't the least bit out of breath from what seemed to him like a record-winning sprint to have caught up so fast. "...Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you off."

"Oh. Um. Y-you didn't, I just, uh..it looked like you weren't really in the mood to talk to anyone right now," Marcus said, instantly nervous. If it wasn't enough that he'd gotten to see and talk to her, now she'd also run after him specifically to let him—which made him feel especially bad that he didn't have anything really important to say.

"I guess I'm not. But it's better than sitting around moping. What did you want?"

"Um. Just, you know, I wanted to say hi. I'm a huge fan of yours, and the others, and uh. The way you guys fight off those monsters, and bad guys, it's awesome. Like, uh..." Marcus was starting to feel increasingly like a doofus now, and restrained himself from going into all the minute details running through his head. "A-and I didn't think I'd get a chance to meet you at all. I mean like—you're my hero," he said, waving his arms toward her. Light seemed to fold her ears back and wince for just a second at this before returning to a more neutral expression. Marcus had no idea what he could've said to offend her, but wanted to apologize immediately anyway. "Uh—sorry. I guess you must, get that a lot."

"...Not really. I usually hide from fans and news crews. I don't really...know how to deal with that stuff yet.

"..So, what are you doing here, anyway?"
"Um.." Marcus took a long moment to understand the meaning of the word 'here', after which he was brought out of starstruck confusion just enough to remember that he was in the VI headquarters right now. "Oh, yeah. I uh—they're, I mean I volunteered to help test some stuff. It's something to do with giving 'normal' people magic, or something?" The descriptions of exactly what he was testing had been (probably deliberately) very vague, but he knew how to read between the lines.

"Hm." She nodded, as if she understood this explanation better than he did. Well—surely Light was in on the VI's secrets a lot more than some random student, Marcus thought. "Look. If you...do end up getting some kind of powers, don't let anyone tell you that you have to use them a certain way. Especially not fighting those things..."

"R-really? But uh, I kinda..I'd definitely want to help you guys, if I can," he said. She got a conflicted, mildly pained look in response to this.

"I don't..want to discourage you, if you wanna help. We need all the help we can get. But—you should know what you're getting into first. It's your life you'd be risking out there," she said after a pause. "And even...even if you don't end up getting hurt or killed, I guarantee there'll be days you feel how I look right now."

"Yeah...are you...are you okay?" Marcus asked, starting to feel like he should have led with something like this instead.
"Well, you know. I have this problem where I'm not happy unless I can save everyone," Light said. "So, I'm never happy, lately." Despite her words, this came with a wry sort of half-smile.

"Oh. Well, uh..I really, hope things get better soon," he said. "F-for whatever it's worth, there's a lot of people like me, pulling for you guys. We—at least, I don't think you've done anything less than your best." It was one thing to see one of his heroes in a moment like this, another to talk to her—and a third still to be attempting to encourage her when he had absolutely no idea what was really going through her head. Still...

"I mean—this is why, I volunteered. And went through a lot of interviews and stuff. So I could try to help, even if it's...just a little bit."

"I guess so," Light nodded. Whether she was convinced or not was unclear, but she looked...slightly better, he thought? "Well, I guess you were headed for an appointment, right? I won't hold you here any longer."

"No, i-it's fine," he said. "I'm—seriously stoked I even got to talk to you."

She nodded again. "Just...keep what I said in mind. Please."
"Yeah. I promise." Seemingly satisfied with this, the white-haired, fox-eared girl turned to head back the way she came—walking slowly again, like the exhaustion evident on her face had reasserted itself on the rest of her body in the wake of that sprint earlier.

Marcus continued on his way, feeling a bit grateful that there wasn't too much of the route left. If this encounter had come near the start of his trip, he probably wouldn't remember the whole sequence of directions, but with only two or three turns left even he could manage it.

When he came to the place, he opened the door to find himself in another waiting room, sort of like the front area of a dentist's office with a counter-window on one side of the opposite wall and a much more secure-looking door on the other. Entering, he overheard a conversation between two men somewhere past the counter.

"...demanding his son's body."
"Well, I don't see any reason they wouldn't give it to him. Next of kin, and all that."

"Our medical staff could learn a thing or two from it, though. Oh, don't give me that look."
"I very much doubt that he would give us permission to dissect her body before burial. And it would go against basic human decency to use anything other than a volunteer, anyway."

"Pah, 'human decency'. See how well that line holds up if one of the vixens gets an ear infection or a broken tail and we don't know how to fix it."
"Couldn't they just ask a vet, in that case?"

"Uh, excuse me?" Since there was no receptionist or anything behind the counter, Marcus had slowly walked up to it during this bit of conversation and now leaned over it and called at a moderate volume in hopes of getting their attention. This at least ended whatever conversation was going on back there, and after a moment a man with a lab coat and glasses on ran past the counter to open the door next to it, leaning out of it.
"Hello there! Marcus Rowe, right?" By the voice, he was the one who'd spoken last before Marcus interrupted them.

"Yeah...I uh, someone told me to come here for some kind of tests?"

"That's right. Pardon the confusing welcome, but...most of our staff fled home in the wake of the, recent crisis," he said. "And our recruitment office wanted an interview with you beforehand, further complicating matters," he added, shaking his head slightly. "Anyway, I'm Dr. Bridges." He offered Marcus a hand.
"Uh, yeah. Marcus." He came close enough to shake. "Guess you knew that already."
"Right. I'm sure you've been...held up here longer than expected already, so let's get started. It shouldn't take very long." Dr. Bridges pushed the door open farther to gesture him to follow, then darted back inside. For having a doctorate, he looked pretty young, Marcus thought; maybe he was around the age of the Dr.'s Quinn.

Past the counter and around a corner, they ran upon the other member of the conversation—the one who seemed to be in favor of dissecting a body or whatever. He was older, with no glasses and graying hair. "This is Dr. Brand—" the younger researcher started, and was interrupted.

"Pity's sake, you just got through telling him this wouldn't take long," Dr. Brand said, annoyed. "Which it will if we give our lives' stories. Let's just get on with it. Right?"

Since this last question appeared directed to him, Marcus half-nodded. "Uh—sure?"
"You see that hat on the table there?" The sitting doctor pointed to a folding table set up on next to the wall on the opposite end of the room, and almost immediately Marcus wondered how anyone (who wasn't blind) could not have seen that hat. It was a sort of conical witch-ish hat made of dark blue cloth, ornately decorated, with a brim maybe a third to half as wide as he was tall, and so tall itself that its tip hung down far enough to almost touch the brim.
"Ye—"
"Obviously, you aren't blind. That's the result of our prototype process. We need you to put it on so we can record the results."

Dr. Bridges cleared his throat. "To clarify, our experiment will be a success if that hat is able to act as a 'key' of sorts to amplify your inherent 'power'. Not dissimilar to the key-phrases vixens use, but the end result will be much weaker and less extreme. Still, there should be some obvious effects, and we need to gauge them to determine which parts of our process worked and which ones didn't."

"Oh. Uh.." Marcus was a little gobsmacked by how quickly this had gone from a vague promise of 'tests' to possibly getting power just like one of the vixens. His expectations were tempered somewhat by the description of the effect as 'much weaker', but still—magic! Maybe even the ability to fight the monsters, if—well, depending on how things worked, if he was allowed to keep them. "...Cool." He hadn't meant to sound so utterly stupid, especially in front of the older, severe researcher, but it was hard to get any deeper thoughts out right now. Instead he just walked over to the hat and carefully picked it up in his arms, turning to face the two of them.

"So I just...like, put it on, now? Or..?"
Dr. Brand looked ready to bite his face off, but the younger researcher nodded encouragingly and cut him off by speaking first. "Right. There isn't exactly specialized equipment for what we're trying to study yet, so what we can see with our eyes will have to do for studying the 'bonding' process. Afterward, there will be plenty of time to assess the end result—so to speak."

"Okay then..." Marcus took a deep breath, and lifted the hat up over his head before pulling it down onto it.

The effect was immediate, and rapid. Marcus could feel a rush of something pouring down from the hat onto his head, and at first it seemed to take the form of his hair spilling out over his forehead, cheeks and back and then on down his shoulders. His body seemed to grow lighter as the room rose slightly upward around him, and his clothes shuffled around on his body below while a faint, light-blue glow appeared around him. He gasped slightly at a feeling between his legs, and then a quick "Aa~ah—!" came from Marcus's mouth in a voice that suddenly jumped an octave or two up into a mid-high alto as her chest puffed forward ever so slightly into a small pair of breasts. Then she felt her ears stretching themselves out into long, fuzzy spikes and a tail seemingly unrolling itself from her lower back, splitting in two about midway down. Her body and clothes finished changing at about the same time, followed by a group of light-blue sparks appearing in a curved line just in front of her, which her hands instinctively reached out to take. The sparks then seemed to burst off of an object which they had initially obscured, a katana complete with its sheath, and she lowered it in her hands until her arms were mostly down to her sides again. Some of the sparks stuck around, turning into blue petals that fluttered around near her as her lips curved slightly upward into a smile. The rush of energy that had started from the hat seemed to be coming from her core now, and it felt good in an indescribable, not-quite-physical sort of way.

 

The change had been fairly quick from Marcus's perspective, but from the way the two researchers' expressions seemed to change just after it was over she felt as if had been completely instantaneous, like time had slowed significantly for her while it was going on and they had just now had enough time for the light showing the change to reach their eyes. And those expressions were—well, Dr. Brand looked about the same as before, severe yet mildly interested; Dr. Bridges, however, appeared slightly surprised.

"...Interesting. How are you feeling, Marcus?" The younger researcher said, coming slightly closer to look her over.

"Uh..pretty good," she said, looking down at her new appearance and letting go of the sword with one hand to let it slide down to a vertical position with the tip of the sheath leaned on the ground. "Little—weird, I guess," she added. Being suddenly female was odd to say the least; she'd shrunk maybe a foot or so in height and lost all of that excess weight she was used to carrying; and the unusual sensation of having the fox-ears and tail (tails?) was not to be understated. "Is this uh, what was supposed to happen?"

"Well—our prototype process was modeled after the manner in which vixens' magic appears to work," Dr. Bridges said, "so we expected the end result to possibly carry some of the same traits."
"However, we expected slight physical changes—the addition of the ears and tail at most," Dr. Brand continued. "Not a complete transformation comparable to one of theirs. Are you able to 'dismiss' that sword?"

"Um..?" Marcus looked down at it, tapping the hilt with a finger, and then tried just letting go of it with the other hand. It turned into some blue petals once she let go, then they fluttered and faded from view as though they had been holograms all along. "Yes?"

"Bring it back?"
Holding her left arm up, Marcus tried to close her hand around an imaginary hilt, and with a similar effect to the first time it had appeared, the sword came back. "Yes!" She let go to dismiss it again, feeling slightly uncomfortable with waving around even a sheathed deadly weapon in this environment.

"Hmm. Would you please hold still for a moment?" Dr. Bridges said, walking up to her. Marcus nodded, and he pulled at her still very oversized hat. It didn't seem to want to come off for him, and even though it seemed like he was pulling as hard as he could, Marcus didn't feel like it was being tugged on very hard at all. "Hmm." He let go and stepped away again. "Are you able to take it off?"
"Um..I hope so.." Reaching her hands up, Marcus pulled the hat up off her head as easily as it seemed like the big, loose thing should go, and immediately the transformation reversed itself. "..Oh. So, it's just like the phrases, huh?" Looking at the hat for a second, Marcus noticed just one decoration that hadn't been there before: three pieces of perhaps artificial feathers or fur affixed to the brim which had a color scheme resembling Light's ears and tail, pure white up to a black tip. Then he dropped it on his head again and instantly changed back to the fox-eared form (but didn't re-summon the sword in the process—because she didn't want to).

"So it would appear. That looks..inconvenient to wear, however," Bridges said, frowning.

"Hmm." Feeling a sort of instinct cued from agreeing with that, Marcus put her hands on either side of the overwide brim and...pushed. The hat shrank on her head, seeming to shuffle around until it was much tighter and shorter, plus her ears poked through newly-made holes designed for them in the fabric. "..There? I don't really, know how I did that." She tried taking the hat off again, and it returned to its original, gigantic size at the same time as Marcus turned back into an overweight male human. Putting it on again, it shrank back to the 'new' look. The researchers looked on with obvious interest, but had no particular comment on this newfound, very hat-specific power of hers.

"Well, are you able to do anything else?" Dr. Brand said. "I assume you have the 'power' to wield the sword half-competently, if your abilities behave comparably to the empowered."
"I think so? It felt pretty...normal in my hands," she said. "And..hm." Trying to answer his question for herself, Marcus found herself thinking about magic in general—some of the ways she'd always thought magic might work, in particular. She had what might have been called an inspiration, except that once she realized it, it felt like the knowledge had been there all along. "Yes, there's other stuff I can do. It's not...uh, I don't think it'd be safe to do it in here, though."

The researchers exchanged a brief look, before Dr. Bridges said: "There's an enclosed courtyard not far from here. It would be at least somewhat safer to test things out there, perhaps." Dr. Brand sighed and stood up, having evidently hoped to conduct all of the testing from his chair.
"Okay."

As the younger researcher led the way, he said, "By the way—I might as well mention this now. The way that 'key' works, it won't function for anyone else now that you've used it. To..put it as simply as I can, it 'bonded' to you and became 'yours' on first use. So, you can keep it."
"Uh..is that really okay? I mean, if it gives me superpowers and all..?"

"There are thousands of people running around with stronger powers already, so what difference does it make?" Dr. Brand said. "At least the VI knows who you are. The same rules apply to you as any of them, so don't go around breaking laws and killing people, and they likely won't particularly care."

"This is why the recruitment office wanted an interview," Dr. Bridges added. "You can bet when we're through here they'll send someone to try and convince you to work with the...more 'active' branch of our organization. Just be aware you're not obligated to any of them, since the forms you've signed up till now were just for this test and any subsequent interviews."

"Uh..right." Marcus mostly managed to contain her excitement at the prospect of helping them, but her tail still seemed to do something resembling wagging. Looking behind herself briefly, she could see that it came out of her back as a single tail and split in two about halfway down, with each separate end-piece only about half as thick as the tail was before the split-point.

Dr. Bridges opened a door and they came outside. The building formed a large square of solid wall around this courtyard, which seemed to include a small obstacle course of sorts over to one side and some targets cast in various materials closer to their exit. "So, here we are. Hopefully this will be safe enough."
"Uh, yeah, I think so."

The fox-eared girl stepped up in front of the two of them, looking over the targets briefly before picking out one that looked to be made of metal. She mentally reached again for what she had felt in the lab, and her hands instinctively went to retrieve the sword, the left taking the hilt while the right slid the sheath carefully off and dropped it, disappearing it again. Then she sort of swung the sword around in a slight flourish that ended with its tip pointed toward the target. "Fire!" A small ball of what indeed appeared to be red fire seemed to shoot itself out of the tip of the blade, flying through the air and hitting the target with a small explosion.

Marcus lowered the sword slightly, noticing that the target had melted slightly from the heat before it disappeared. "Uh..whoops."
"Don't worry about any damage. Those things are replaced at least daily," Dr. Bridges said.
"Is that it?" said the older researcher, a bit less encouragingly.

"Uh, no, I can...I think if.." Marcus pulled the sword up to vertical, so its blade was just in front of her head, and concentrated for a second. Then she said "Flame!" and with the same kind of flourish sent a ball of fire about twice as big as the first one, with a comparably expanded explosion.

"Yeah.." she nodded, "And—I don't think it's just fire..." With a different motion of the sword, she said "Spark!" and sent a jolt of electricity arcing visibly through the air into the target; then she took a step forward, continuing the motion smoothly into a third variety of flourish—"Ice!"—which made a small chunk of solid ice appear and fire itself at the target similar to the fireball before, shattering into frozen shrapnel when it hit. After this she dismissed the sword, her stance relaxing again.
"Hmm. Is it necessary to say 'fire' or 'spark' to do that?" Dr. Bridges asked; she hadn't even fully realized she was doing that until he did.

"Um.." Marcus turned back to the researchers, letting her weapon disappear again. "I don't think so, but it feels like it makes it a lot easier? It's—not just those three, either, I feel like there's a lot of other stuff I could throw out the same way."

"Does it only operate as 'throwing things' that way?" said Dr. Brand.

"I'm..not sure, but it..mostly?" Marcus said. "This is just, the first idea I had, but it came right away when I started thinking about it. If I can do something else then I guess I don't know it, and thinking about it doesn't give me any other ideas."

The two of them exchanged a glance which almost appeared to somehow transmit thoughts between them. Then Dr. Bridges said, "How would you have imagined that magic would work, were it real? I mean before the events of the past two weeks."

"Well, uh, I play a lot of video games. And watch shows, and stuff," Marcus said—fairly certain that they might know this from her answers to the various questionnaires she'd answered before today. "So I guess, I'd expect it to work kinda like in a lot of RPGs. You know, you learn a spell and then you can cast it, and it usually does one thing—which is often throwing the 'element' of the spell at the bad guys, or...uh..." Her ears folded down slightly as this began to seem awfully familiar. "A-and you have to concentrate more to get a stronger spell."

The younger researcher nodded. "It appears to have already occurred to you as well, but I suspect looking to that model for more 'inspiration' would be effective in your case. Perhaps you are more limited than 'normal' empowered in how flexibly you can apply magic, but it's possible you also have versatility in ways that most of them don't. Either way, understanding how your magic came to work the way it does will be extremely important to our project. If you continue using it, and 'learn' or otherwise discover something new about it, we'd appreciate you keeping in touch."

"...Whether or not that continued use is with the VI," Dr. Brand added in agreement.

"Well..yeah, sure," she nodded. "I mean—this is awesome. I'd be glad to help you guys any way I can. Do, would I just call the VI or..?"
"My card," Dr. Bridges said, producing and offering the same. "Has our office's number on it. Even if neither of us is around, we have people who can take notes for us most days."

"Days when there's not a terrorist laying siege to the city," Dr. Brand further clarified.

"Okay, got it," she said, nodding.

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I find it personally gratifying to imagine a cosmic-level entity screwing with Google, but ultimately that alone isn't why she chose to put that video on youtube in particular, instead of say, interrupting the news broadcast or sending them a glowing video tape. It's more just because it's the easiest way to make sure just about everyone who she wants to see it or hear its message, will. I admit I feel a mild discomfort alluding to something as real-world and specific as that, but hopefully it doesn't make anyone cringe too much. I guess it'd be on tiktok or something instead if that had been the intended effect.

 

Anyway, we've met all three "major" characters of this episode before. The doctors weren't named then, but they were in the meeting back in Episode 50.

Battle Vixens! - 57

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Episode 57: Pyrrhicism

There were suddenly a lot of very confused people around. Rowan looked, and listened; there were a few different languages being spoken here and there, but mostly the newly-revived vixens just stared blankly around, as if uncertain of where they were or what to do about it. Two in particular, however, had landed near her, facing each other: Dawn and Cynthia. They noticed each other right away, staring at each other in a mixture of uncertainty and disbelief.

"It's...you."
"It's me," the red-haired one nodded slowly. "I'm..alive."
"Ya are. I can't..." Dawn began crying, which seemed to cause the one across from her to do the same. "I-I, wanna say how sorry I am, but I don't remember why."

"Me either," Cynth shook her head slightly. "I..I think it's okay. You..I...we're here now." They moved closer, pulling into a gentle hug; the redhead was short enough to lean her head on the taller girl's shoulder while both of them began really sobbing.

Listening to this, Rowan walked. She felt...exhausted, angry, overwhelmed. Relief was present, but faint, and tainted with doubt and rage as some of the pieces fell into place. There was only one thing the Giver could've promised Dawn, and it meant she'd planned this all along—every single step of it. Even the people who thought they were making plans of their own were just pawns in her game, all for...this. Or whatever it was she was really after, anyway; maybe it was just for a laugh. White mist poured off of her body as she relaxed a grip on the enhanced power that she hadn't been aware she was holding. It was a little like feeling briefly ill, but without the physical sensation of a stomachache; at any rate, that sensation was the least of her worries just now.

"You." She stopped a few feet away from Gemma, whose two bodies were also in the process of turning back to normal. It seemed like everyone was, really. She pointed at one of them. "You didn't help."

"I—" "—what?"

"You have power over time and space, however limited it is. She moved too quickly, and you did not slow her down. She disappeared and you helped no one follow her. She fell into the shadows and you didn't pull them out from under her." Rowan took a small but aggressive step forward, the monotone of her voice tempered with just enough rage to render it terrifying. "You. Didn't. Help. And because of that, someone died who did not need to."

"Hey, back off!" Amp caught up to them, putting herself between the twins and Rowan and glaring at her with her ears folded back. "She fought as hard as anyone else did! And if we're assigning blame for tactical errors, then what about you? Why didn't we bring the person with two automatic rifles strapped to her back along? Or the one who could literally strike her with lightning, huh?!"

"...Sorry." Her ears folded down slightly and she took a small step back again, but the monotone of her voice made it difficult to really believe the apology. Then a couple of small beeps came from a pocket in her clothes, and she pulled out her phone to answer it, turning away from them to walk back the way she had come.

"What was that about? ...Are you okay?" she said, turning back around toward Gemma, both of whose bodies looked ready go jump in a ditch somewhere.
"Uh—" "I, I'm fine I guess..—" "—she's right, though," Minus mumbled much more quietly.

Feeling altogether done with the fox-tailed look for the moment, Clark let go of Rory and spoke her phrase to resume human form. The tall vixen stared at this with an air of curiosity. "That's a neat trick; how'd you do that?"
"Wha—I just turned back to normal," he said. "You can do that too."
Her head tilted slightly. "..How?"
"You just—look." As he still knew her phrase, he spoke it, trying to order her to return to normal. The usual sort of 'tug' that signalled he could order her power around was there, but this order seemed to have no effect; it wasn't something the power itself could do right now.

"Isn't that..just my name?"
"What?! No...listen. Your name is Rory Quinn," he said, gesturing toward her with a hand. "Doctor. Rory. Quinn. Not that—nonsense collection of syllables you were given less than two weeks ago."

"Oh..okay. It does have a nice ring to it," she said.

"She's not. You did the best you could, didn't you?" Amp said, stepping closer. The question was obviously meant to be rhetorical, but Minus shook her head slightly in response.
"I-I tried, but—" "—I couldn't...I didn't wanna k-kill someone, or—" "—help kill..." "—Nnnngh, I'm so stupid," she said, pulling at her ears.

"It's no use thinking that way," Light said as she came toward them slowly. She looked exhausted, like walking any faster might cause her to collapse. "Sometimes there's no such thing as doing 'enough'." She turned partway toward Rowan, now standing in an empty part of the clearing, away from them. Everyone's ears could easily hear her explaining the situation to whoever was on the other end of the line, calling for transport and several translators to handle those among the amnesiactic vixens who didn't seem to know English. "I think...she's not nearly as stoic as she usually seems, and just started yelling at the first person she saw."

"That doesn't make what she said wrong," said Minus, shaking her head again. Both bodies had some tears coming from their eyes at this point.

"Yeah, well. I was too focused on using my own power to even think of using Ning's, now that you mention it," Light said, and shrugged. "Borrowing it for one lightning bolt probably wouldn't have killed her, especially if it...worked."

"Gaah, I could've done that, too,—" she said, the note of frustration seeming to snap her out of crying for a moment. "—but I didn't wanna be the one to kill her..." the other body argued back.

"You know, that's okay. I told myself I'd do it a lot of times, and really felt like I could once or twice, but...I don't know how I'd feel right now if I had managed to get a sword through her throat." Light shook her head. Amp watched this conversation quietly, wanting to think of something else comforting to say but struggling with a new source of frustration herself now that she was really thinking about the way everything had gone.

Casualties were remarkably low. Of course, it helped that aside from the vixen-puppets the enemy hadn't really had access to any ranged weapons, and the vixens defending each city had done their job exceptionally well. All of them were alive, too, with varying levels of injury but nothing life-threatening. Overall, Rowan could objectively agree with the assessment that this victory had been hard-won but decisive.

Yet she couldn't shake the feeling that the overall price, across the entire conflict with Tobias Mond, had been far too much. Too many people had suffered and died and were still suffering, or about to do more of it; too much time and energy had been sucked into dealing with her that should've gone elsewhere. Even the undeniable miracle of her victims coming back to life was soured by the state they were left in—not to mention that it was only those whose powers she'd managed to take, a relatively small collection out of everyone she'd hurt or killed.

Rowan was shaken out of this train of thought by an unexpected finger tapping on her shoulder. She turned quickly toward the source to find Dawn standing there, looking hesitant and keeping about as far away as was still within reach. Cynthia was slightly to the side of and behind her. "Uh..sorry if.." she said slowly, drawing back a bit. "It's just, uh..I feel like there's a lot of people I gotta apologize to, an' maybe you most of all. If it's okay...I'm real sorry. Even more that I don't really know why..."

The blue-haired vixen fixed her with a look for a moment, breathing slowly in and out. There was a mixture of despair and relief at being recognized and apologized to this way. But also, her mind caught on the fact that Dawn wasn't wearing any gloves, but her hand hadn't felt cold at all. Were their powers not working, or...?

"It's...all right," she said slowly. "We'll work on it."

"Yeah? Uh, okay..that's good, I think," she nodded.

"Rowan Shepherd." The contact with the finger had been brief and through her clothes. She put out a hand for Dawn to shake, partially curious if this gesture would even be understood, and at first it wasn't, with the tall girl staring down at the hand with her head tilted slightly to the side. "My name," she added after a second.
"Uhh...oh! I get it," she said, taking the hand and shaking it. It felt like a normal human hand, no ice to it at all. "I'd uh..like to say my name, but I don't think I know it..."

"It's Donald Keller," Rowan said. "And you're Cynthia Hargrove," she added after letting go, gesturing toward the redheaded vixen. "We haven't met before, but I've heard a lot about you."
"Oh? Well, if you say so," she shrugged. "For now, anyway. I'll have to ask someone else if they agree."

It didn't take long for a small convoy of vans to arrive, taking the same road the puppeteer's car had used to reach the cabins. At the same time, all of the revived vixens were showing clear signs of exhaustion, and allowed themselves to be ushered into the vehicles before almost simultaneously falling asleep. The seats in the back of the vans were parallel to the road, one row on each side, and there was more than enough room for everyone—plus a few extras sent along to be empty decoys, just in case.

Clark and Light were in the same van, sitting across from each other. Rory was asleep with her head on his shoulder, and he didn't move or say anything for a long time, just occasionally picking up his hands to stare down at the palms before dropping them again. They were the only ones awake in the back of this particular van, and for a while she didn't feel much like talking either. Eventually, about the sixth time she counted him looking down at his hands, she did ask: "Are you...okay?"
"Hmmh." He looked up slowly. "I think I'm just...in shock, still. You play many games?"

"Some, yeah."
"You ever notice, you kill a lot of people in video games. Really, a lot of fiction is...violent. Violence centered. Movies, books.."
"Comics too...yeah."

"There's people around who worry that that dulls people's reactions to real violence. I guess if you asked me yesterday, I'd say was pretty well desensitized."

He looked down at his hands with no further comment for a very long moment. "So, now..?" she prompted, starting to become uncomfortable with this gesture.
Clark took a long breath in and out. "I..can say I never really thought I was capable of killing someone else. I mean—physically, yes, even before superpowers. Accidentally, sure; I drive a car. But...really. Wanting. To kill someone. And then. Doing it...? No. No way. Not me.

"I...could've stopped. I had her restrained to where she couldn't really use any of her power anymore." He was shaking slightly in place, and seemingly putting a lot of effort into not shaking more, not wanting to wake the woman still leaning on his shoulder. "She was struggling, but couldn't get out. I was too strong, and I'd stay that way, and she wasn't getting any stronger. A minute or so of that and I'm sure I would've been declared 'winner' and...gotten 'ownership' of her. Or I could just...wait for Rowan to shoot her, or something. No matter whether she had to die or not, I didn't need to be the one to do it. I'd already, done, enough."

He took another deep breath, steadied himself slightly as he dropped his hands back to his lap, and looked partway up again. "But I was...angry. I wanted to tear her into tiny little pieces with my own two hands, and since I could, I started to do just that. And you know what's really terrifying? I feel like, if I could go back to that moment right now, I would do it again. That...hatred, is still there. I feel...sick...just thinking about it."

"..She killed a lot of people," Light said. "Good people. Innocent ones. She put everyone in even more danger than we were already in."
He nodded. "Maybe, if anyone ever does...she deserved to die. Sure. But that wasn't punishment, or prevention, it was just...revenge. She killed someone...the one person I care the most about, and because of that I wanted her to suffer and die. In that instant, nothing else mattered to me."

Gemma recombined to take up less space, even though it wasn't strictly necessary, and took a seat Amp had already reserved next to her. The blond-haired vixen folded her ears back and glared at Rowan when he (now in human form) entered the same van, but that didn't deter him from sitting across from them. Emma just stared at the floor, feeling equal parts still terrible about the mistakes he'd pointed out and newly terrible about being the center of a conflict between the two of them.

After the vans began moving and they couldn't change seats, he finally said something. "I need to really apologize for what I said."
"Yes, you do," Amp agreed.

"I'm not always as...in control as I seem to be, in that form. I was...in the process of realizing some ugly facts about the overall situation, and I let it get the best of me and lashed out at you for no good reason. You didn't deserve that."
"You were right, though," Gemma squeaked through some new tears. "I didn't do nearly enough, and Dr. Quinn..."

"I think everyone made mistakes here. And you're not a soldier, or a member of law enforcement. You didn't volunteer to be in this kind of situation. You weren't trained for it, either. I..get the sense you weren't really ready to take someone's life in the first place."

Gemma sniffed, raised her head, and nodded slowly. She made a small, choked, sobbing noise in a failed effort to explain herself on this point.
"You shouldn't be. You shouldn't have to be. The only people who should be on the front lines of a war are the ones who knew what they were getting into before it started. The Giver is cruel and heartless, and doesn't care who gets hurt. She used everyone for her own goals, which—who knows what those are in this—and we all came out the worse for wear because of it."

Gemma swallowed, took in a deep breath, and sat up, nodding again. "Mmhm." He was trying to comfort her, and obviously didn't mean it that way, but a small part of her felt hurt at the thought that she was actually too broken to be as helpful as possible. Someone like her was no good in a stressful, important situation like the one they'd been in—or at least not as good as someone who could be a proper soldier. But she was getting used to having these kinds of thoughts lately, and pushed them back to deal with later, or better yet, never.

Sensing that she didn't really want to continue this conversation, Rowan turned to Amp. "...To answer some of your questions, I was trying to 'outplay' her. I thought that she would expect me to show up and bring my gun, and think she'd accounted for it only to get shot anyway. But someone with an automatic rifle might have spooked her, or even Ning may have made her too cautious to catch. The only problem is, it's really hard to hit someone with a pistol from that distance while also falling." He shook his head. "It would've been much easier to hit her with lightning before she knew we were on top of her. But I think everyone's frame of mind was wrong when we thought how to approach this battle. Besides, Ning didn't want to come; she has someone to protect. And, maybe wasn't ready to kill someone either."

Amp nodded. "I'm feeling pretty manipulated myself, at this point. If I take a step back and reexamine the way I've been thinking lately, it's clear this 'connection' to her has been really screwing with my head. I'd have been way better off landing with everyone else so I could slap her right in the face, or at least take out a lot more than just one puppet when it really mattered."

Rowan sighed. "I think we've all gotten reasonably good at fighting monsters. But when it comes to fighting people, that's a different kind of problem. I just wonder what she gets out of all of this, if it's not just 'more entertainment'..."

"Well, she was obviously involved in whatever Dr. Quinn did," Amp said. "You should probably ask him about that at some point, right?"
He nodded his agreement, but said, "It looked like...he needed some time."

"I guess...I'm glad it wasn't you. Or, anyone else but Rowan, I guess," Clark said. "You're still pretty young. After everything we've already been through, piling on the knowledge that you took someone's life might be too much. Especially for Gemma."

"She's...having a hard time as it is," Light nodded. "I thought I was ready to kill her just like another monster, but I dunno how I'd feel now if I'd really done it."

"Yeah...I guess we did have your help, though, with Rory's plan. Keeping me invisible and all. It was a smart gamble that she wouldn't be 'sensing' for me when you hadn't been doing illusions the whole fight before then."

"Um...she," Light pointed to the sleeping Dr. Quinn, "asked me to do that. Just before we left on the chopper. I'm not sure I would've known what you were doing soon enough to really help otherwise."

"Hmm." Clark turned his head for the first time since getting in the van to his sleeping, amnesiac wife, just slightly. "...Our plan was just for her to distract the puppeteer while I got ready. Did she plan on getting killed? Or was that just..?" He shook his head gently. "I can't even ask her, now."

---

"Pyrrhicism" isn't a real word, but hopefully its "meaning" is clear enough anyway. I pronounce the last 2 syllables the same as in "cynicism".

Battle Vixens! - 56

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Episode 56: Bring Her Back

Clark felt a white-hot, blinding, unfathomable and incomprehensible rage. She restrained the puppeteer first, retaining just enough rational thought to know that this was necessary, and then pulled and pulled until she heard the body snap—and then pulled some more, just in case. Not until a great, multicolored cloud began to rise up from the limp, lifeless body caught in her wires to signal the woman who had killed her wife was well and truly dead did she let go, allowing them to dissipate and drop her unceremoniously to the ground, lying on her back in an unnaturally twisted position.

Almost at once that cloud of power rushed toward the surviving Dr. Quinn, overwhelming her senses. At the same time, something difficult to describe in words occurred, where the world appeared to slow down around her. She could simultaneously feel the continued rush of the powers of thirteen different vixens, an unimaginable torrent rushing into her that felt equal parts sickening and good, even as she was brought out of the rush enough to move around and consciously perceive the rest of the world again.

"Well, well...this is a surprise." Clark had only heard this voice once before, but something about it was instantly recognizable. Like the Cheshire cat reappearing from its smiling teeth, the one responsible for everyone's powers appeared a few steps in front of her, just between Rory's body and the puppeteer's, wearing an unbelievably punchable grin—if only she were capable of being punched. "I thought for certain that Light would do it. Or, at least the policeman—who's always been ready to take a life. Going down the list, out of everyone here who could have killed her, I must say I am almost astonished that it was you."

The pain of seeing Rory stabbed was still raw, and Clark's rage automatically directed itself at this new target. "Why are you here? What do you want?!" She stepped aggressively forward, and—at the same time—didn't, really. This was some sort of partially out-of-body experience, with her "real" self still stuck in place mid-power-absorption.

"What do I want...?" She gave an infuriatingly smug chuckle. "I already have it. You see, this here," she said, leaning down slightly to lift the lifeless puppeteer's head slightly, "is it. My enemy's head on a platter. The friend of my enemy, perhaps you might say," she said, rising again to give a brief circular gesture with her hand. "As for why I'm here.." In that uncomfortable, threatening manner that Clark knew her to be capable of from Light's recounting of previous visits, she was suddenly inches away from the smaller girl, bent down toward her face with that disgusting grin. "Why, to reward you of course! And I have a couple of very nice options lined up for you."

She moved back slightly again, standing next to the stream of power still flowing into Clark's actual body. "This one's power is great, and now it's going to be yours. But, perhaps, instead of simply taking it on as weakened, 'stolen' power, I can make it all yours." She traced a hand along the line of energy as though it were solid threads that she could pick up and weave at will. "Just think of it: With power like that, the enemy wouldn't even be able to touch you. Any other vixens feeling particularly murderous would quickly fall in line or easily be crushed by your righteous wrath. Or..."

The Giver moved again, this time kneeling next to Rory's body. Clark felt a spike of rage again that was fit to boil over if she touched her, but thankfully she didn't, just leaving the smaller vixen still angry enough to remain speechless. "The way that one wielded stolen powers was quite unique, you know. Quite a bit of the people she took them from is still there, even now. Death is an awfully tricky thing, as I'm sure you can imagine, and there's no bringing back someone who's really dead, even for me. But—being the one who gave everyone their powers, I have a bit of a backdoor. Cheating death, sometimes, is possible."

She slowly stood up while Clark struggled mentally with the obvious implications of her words. "If you're willing to give up your claim to everyone's power but hers," she said, pointing to the dead puppeteer, "I can help you put them back together again. More or less, you make bodies for them, I reshape them into real bodies, then we channel their powers in and use those to pull them back from 'mostly dead' to 'fully alive' again. You should know, however, that death really doesn't like being cheated. This will be somewhat painful, and even I can only bring so much back this way. You'll have to figure out how to get the rest back yourselves."

The tall, many-tailed woman took a couple of slow, normal steps toward Clark, gently kicking the puppeteer's lifeless body out of her way as she did so. "I'll give you as much time as I can to consider your answer if you like, but we must do one or the other of them now. These roads are mutually exclusive and rather difficult, if not impossible, to track back on."

Tears (real or not) streaming down from her eyes by now, Clark glared for what felt like a long moment up at the Giver's face, trying to make sense of the bizarre woman. "...I can't understand why you would bother giving someone a choice, when you already know what they're gonna pick. Or are you so detached from every human emotion there is that you can't comprehend how I feel right now?"

She shrugged. "I've lived more than long enough to thoroughly consider perspectives that aren't my own, but I don't see how the choice is obvious from your point of view. You're a scientist; think about it logically: Their lives were already lost, and it's not all that many people in the end. Think how many other lives you could save if you took the first option. I guarantee that the people you bring back won't be nearly as cooperative as they would be as your puppets, and you and your allies may never have another chance like this again."

"You really...you really don't understand," Clark said through an almost-sob, with a tone of something like wonder. She shook her head, swallowing and taking a careful breath. "I hope that someday you get to find out what it's like to actually care about another person. Rory is my wife. I love her, and you took her away. Bring her back. And everyone else you let her murder, too. I don't care what it costs me."

"Very well then," she said with a nod, rubbing her hands together. "Perhaps I ought to hope for that too, someday; it sounds positively exciting. But, for the moment—let's make a miracle happen, shall we?"

There wasn't time to do much more than look on in abject shock. One minute the puppeteer fell and all her puppets were dust, and then everyone could see the multitude of her powers rushing into Clark Quinn's body. And then, at about the same time as the last of it converged into her, she rose, floating slightly off of the ground with her clothes and hair whipping around in otherwise nonexistent wind, a brilliant blue light glowing from the outline of her body and especially shining out from her eyes.

Blue strings struck out from that light toward various unoccupied positions nearby, one of them seeming to go into Rory's back and cause her body to turn into a blue light before dissipating. Then, from the end of each string came a ball of light which grew and reformed steadily into a body, bearing the distinctive traits of long hair, fox ears, a tail—all of them floating just slightly off of the ground. The light burst off of each one, leaving not a puppet but a fully-fleshed, humanlike vixen's body behind, eyes closed, floating in midair. More light, this time in various colors and patterns, flowed in spirals along the string, seeming to dim the light around Clark by leaving herand cause each newly-formed body to suddenly gasp and start breathing when it entered her through the back.

Finally, the strings collapsed away starting from the point of contact with each reformed vixen and traveling back toward their origin, letting each one down onto her feet in turn. When it was done, Clark's body appeared to have gained a bit of height beyond its usual "amplified" size, and her eyes closed as she fell down onto her hands and knees, panting as if from an extreme physical exertion. White mist poured out of her as she shrank back most of the way to her usual size, but retained the type of outfit Amp's power usual gave her and a bit of the extra height and physical maturity usually present in that form.

When she opened her eyes, Clark found Rory standing there facing her from a few of feet away—the other side of Tobias Mond's lifeless body, which was still conspicuously present—with a slightly concerned but otherwise strangely blank expression. Still only halfway through catching her breath, she leapt up at her revived wife, throwing her arms around her in a hug and equal parts sobbing and laughing with relief. Rory had no trouble catching her and staying upright, of course, but seemed to only return the hug very gently and hesitantly, as if uncertain what the appropriate response to this was.

"Uh..hey, there."
Dr. Quinn pulled out of the hug enough to look up at her wife, still crying and smiling.
"What's..this about?"
"You..you're alive!" she said.
"I..guess I am." Rory shrugged. "Um..who are you?" This question stopped Clark in her tracks, and it probably showed. The taller vixen attempted to save face somewhat, regaining a slightly blank look of concern, her ears folding down a bit. "I mean..I think..you look familiar somehow, but.."
Clark let go, and stepped back slightly, looking up into her wife's face and really taking in the blank, confused expression in her eyes for the first time. "I..what do you mean? It's me." No obvious response. "Clark? Clark Quinn? Your husband?"
"My what?" The way she asked this question suggested not shock at the claim, but more that she didn't know the word 'husband'.

"You—I took your last name!" Clark said, waving her hands forward at her. "How can you—?!" She stopped, sensing some fear in response to her shouting, and said more quietly: "You really, don't remember, do you?"
"I'm..very sorry, but I, suppose I don't." In response to Clark's continued stunned silence, she looked even more worried, her ears still folded down. "I mean—like I said, you do look really familiar. When I..first saw you, I felt..really happy, and..I'm really sorry if I'm, making you feel bad now, but.."

Clark drew in a long breath that suppressed the beginnings of another sob, then exhaled slowly and sniffed, wiping her eyes on a sleeve. "No, nono I'm sorry." This was what she'd meant about bringing the rest back on their own, wasn't it? "It's...you're. I'm happy you're alive. I can hardly even believe it. That should be enough for right now. We'll...we'll work on the rest later, I guess." Her hands went up onto Rory's shoulders in an attempt at a comforting gesture, which the taller vixen appeared to accept much more readily than she had the sudden tackle-hug earlier. Clark made a desperate effort to smile comfortingly up at her, and was rewarded with a small, yet present smile back, and Rory's tail slowly wagging behind her in a further expression of friendliness toward the nice person she couldn't quite seem to remember at all.

---

This is a shorter episode; it's essentially the "end" of the last one, but it needed to be separated out as its own episode as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, back when I posted "Knight Sacrifice", I said the following: "I certainly don't take major character death lightly...Just wait and see". This is what I had in mind. I essentially had planned this out before "The Missing Morning", and hopefully it now starts to be clear why that series of events even happened in the first place. 

 

As far as bringing people back from the dead, I feel personally (and hope at least some of you will agree) that this doesn't do what happens in a lot of mediums where it makes death feel cheap and risks less meaningful. The conditions for this "revival" are too specific to be easily replicated pretty much ever, and it has an obvious, very high cost whose full ramifications will be explored more in future episodes. 

 

 Hopefully, now that this difficult-to-write part is more or less through, I can get parts of this story written more often than, like, two within a six-month period. I guess we'll see, anyway.

Battle Vixens! - 55

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Episode 55: Checkmate

They were going to kill her.

 

It was the only way this could end. One of them was going to kill her. Some portion of Gemma's expanded mental capacity in that grown-up, "enhanced" form, alongside the concentration necessary to keep the helicopter silent, was involuntarily dedicated to thinking about this ugly fact. And while Light seemed absolutely enraged when she talked of killing her, and (Emma imagined) Rowan probably viewed it with solemnity, as an unpleasant but necessary reality, she herself couldn't help but think of this fact with a mixture of disgust and terror.

She resolved the issue somewhat before they even let Amory off by deciding that she would help not by getting up close and personal with the puppeteer, but instead providing support from as far away from her as possible. Even then, she had to work to keep herself from thinking too much about the fact that this still constituted helping the others to kill her. Logically speaking, she couldn't deny that it was a complete necessity. This person had to be stopped, and there probably wasn't a better way to do it. Yet the idea of her, or most any of the others present, taking another person's life was almost inconceivable.

Two weeks ago, the idea of death had been too distant even to really think about. Sure, there were a few tragedies at her high school, but none she'd had more than a very distant supporting role in. Her parents, and the family she knew in general, were all healthy and relatively young; the grandparents had died before she was old enough to really know them, much less understand the concept of their dying. Now it seemed to be staring her dead in the face all the time. If it wasn't her dying, it was someone else—Amory or Light, Dawn and his girlfriend she'd never even met—and now it was not just in the past and present, but the future as well. It was terrifying, but there was nothing she could do about it but—figuratively—grit her teeth and do her part to try to keep as many of these people alive as possible.

The chopper came up above the cabin. A number of bodies were visible below—a real vixen, tall, blond and regal-looking, four puppets with eyes, clothes, fox ears and tails, and a several of the same faceless puppets that were assaulting their hometowns. At some silent direction from Rowan, the pilot put them close to just above the puppeteer herself, and then everyone dove out—Clark using her power to slow their fall as their trajectories spread out to surround her. They were most of the way down when the tall, blue-haired vixen, currently behind their quarry, drew her gun, quickly aimed, and fired.

The noise of the shot rang out. Emma honestly hadn't expected it, and it came too fast to account for ahead of time, and even with Amp's help her weak imitation power would've had difficulty damping such a loud noise to the point where fox ears so close by wouldn't hear it alongside the complicated task of continuing to quiet the helicopter. Rowan's calculation was that if her shot hit it wouldn't matter whether it was heard or not, and if it didn't then they were close enough to the ground that they were about to be detected anyway. Unfortunately, the bullet was a few inches off its mark, passing harmlessly by the puppeteer's head and landing in the skull of the puppet standing in front of her—the one that could teleport—turning her to dust.

Then, everyone landed.

The faceless puppets closest to their master clustered together close to her, one of them seeming to "grow" the features of the teleporting puppet as it did so, and she disappeared with it out of the crowd as Light charged into them sword-first, tearing through most of the group in a series of swipes quicker than the eye could follow. More of them went to surround Rowan, but water drawn up out of the soil and grass formed thick, thrashing limbs that bashed them away from her as she formed her blade and moved toward the puppeteer's new position outside of the group's initial circle.

Rory took herself out of Clark's "flight" just as the gun went off, using the momentum from falling the rest of the way to kick down into the head of one of the fox-eared puppets, knocking it to the ground. This was the mage-looking one with the staff and it didn't survive the blow, but almost as soon as it disappeared another one nearby took on its appearance and swung its staff, firing a ball of light at her. She buffed her speed to dodge it and charge, punching right through a shield the puppet conjured into its midsection to send it bowling through some new faceless ones that were in the process of pulling themselves up out of the ground.

Gemma landed between two of the other vixen-puppets, one of which looked like Dawn and the other gray-haired with a pair of tonfas in its hands. She split herself, Plus coming out with two short swords swinging at the latter while Minus sent a sustained blast of fire toward Dawn—wincing somewhat inwardly at attacking her in particular, but tyring not to let it slow her down.

Clark landed in a cluster of the faceless puppets, between Rory and Gemma's positions, and began tossing her needle around, knocking them down, flying up into the air when they tried to tackle her and keeping herself out of reach in this way as she worked her way through them.

Light zipped herself next to the teleporting puppet and swung at it; it teleported an inch out of the sword's range and stabbed at her while the puppeteer gingerly stepped away; she ducked out of the stab and swung with a second superpositioned copy of the sword with her left hand, stopping short in a feint and successfully guessing with a right-handed stab that caught the teleporter square in the chest, turning her to dust yet again.

Rowan tossed her gun in a forward arc through the air and raised a tentacle from the ground behind the puppeteer to catch it, wrapping its end around the trigger to fire it while her actual body was busy tearing through more of the faceless puppets; the teleporting puppet reappeared (another faceless one elsewhere "promoted") next to the puppeteer and disappeared her away just in time for the shot to miss, and the limb turned into a wave to crash back in Rowan's direction so she could grab the gun and stow it away again while running toward her target's new position.

"AaaaAAAaaAAH!" Dawn's voice came out, a hoarse, strained yell, as she caught and clearly felt some of the fire before raising a thick shield of ice in its way and then lobbing a chunk of ice over the shield at Minus. Plus's opponent proved able to block and counter her strikes at first, despite some enhanced speed and strength, until she began flashing a strobe light in its face to temporarily blind it and was able to knock one of its weapons away. Minus dodged the chunk and some debris it exploded into when it landed, moving around Dawn while raising her shadow up into a spike and forcing her to dive away from it.

"Heads up, Plus!" Clark's needle flew in a blur around the lost tonfa as it tried to fly toward the side of her head, yanking it back long enough for Plus to maneuver to the opposite side of her opponent before it snapped the line and made it the rest of the way to her. When she threw the weapons, Plus made some light-shields to block them and sent electricity arcing through their metal into the puppet, shocking her into uncontrolled convulsions long enough to step forward and stab her. Minus threw shadow-bullets at Dawn, which met a smaller shield held in one hand while the other made a big sword, and then she charged forward while swinging it around.

Light split herself, superpositioning into several copies that spread out in all directions, jumping, light-speeding or using Clark's help to fly (for those which were close enough to her to do so) to cover as much ground as possible. Seeing this, Rowan drew up the water from her wave into a multitude of blades surrounding herself and charged toward the puppeteer's new position, either swinging her sword or throwing a few of the blades into any of the faceless puppets that got in her way.

Rory leapt at the nearest faceless puppet and grabbed its wrist, swinging it around at the nearest group of enemies as a big blunt weapon until another projectile came her way from the staff-puppet. She jumped over it, landing her fist in the puppet's face and turning it to dust once again before throwing another two puppets out to either side to clear out more of the faceless ones as they appeared. One of Light's copies ran next to her, tossing her a sword which turned out to be "real enough", at least, for her to catch it and swing it wildly into another group of puppets—one of which was the staff one reformed yet again, and another was the one with the tonfas that Gemma had just taken out.

Minus made her swords of fire and shadow, channeling heat and fire through each one to try and melt through Dawn's sword and shield. Now that Plus was freed up, she lifted a chunk of dirt and threw it at the puppet, making her jerk to one side as it hit her, but as she dropped her mostly-melted weapons she lurched forward unexpectedly and grabbed one of Minus's shoulders. "AAH!" It burned; the ungloved, plastic hand felt the way being splashed with dry ice probably did. She channeled heat toward that part of her body and kicked the puppet away, Plus running up to slash away at her and force her back again and reaching her left hand out toward the shoulder to partially heal the injury.

"You—tell Light.." Dawn spoke, staggering back before standing up straight again and forming a pair of short daggers in her hands. "You gotta tell her—!" Minus threw more fire at the puppet while Plus stepped into her, remerging into a single body. Then she fired a bullet of shadow, with the highest mass and speed she could manage, into the puppet's chest, interrupting whatever she was saying with a direct hit that made her stagger back again with a deeply pained look before disappearing into dust.

Rowan reached the Puppeteer and drew her gun in her right hand, using the left to swing her sword. When she teleported away again, the nearest "copy" of Light zipped next to her, feinting a swing to goad her into disappearing, and then she was near a different copy which did the same thing with a differently-placed swing. When the puppeteer moved to a position surrounded by more of her own, Rowan sent a flurry of her blades at the group to knock some of them down and either make her leave again or produce an opening for one of the Lights to come in. Her gun was tossed into the air and caught by several of the blades merging into a midair limb attached to a long, thin stalk with its opposite end in Rowan's left hand, aimed down at a gap deliberately left between the copies of Light.

"Hey, don't ignore the mooks!" Rory charged by next to Gemma, plowing through several of a group of faceless puppets which had steadily been encroaching on her position while she was busy with the stronger ones. Clark floated over near where Rory had just left, throwing some rope around the arm of a newly-formed staff puppet and using some briefly-borrowed strength to yank it over her head and slam it down into a group of faceless puppets climbing themselves up out of the ground.

"The wha—oh!" Panicking a bit, she threw some fire, icicles, arrows and shadow at the rest of them, taking most down—but one refused to fall, instead "growing" Dawn's traits again, pained look and all, before throwing a big icy spear right at her and making her dive out of the way, splitting herself back into Plus and Minus each taking a side to dodge away toward.

The puppeteer and her teleporting puppet appeared almost right next to Plus, the latter moving in to stab at her. "Yeek!" She ducked awkwardly back out of the way, forming a big shield of light and making it strobe-flash back at her assailant almost by instinct. Minus, meanwhile, moved in on Dawn again with fire and earth blades to clash with two mid-length icy blades in the puppet's hands.

Another gunshot rang through the air, hitting the teleporting puppet and turning her to dust, and the remaining "extra" Lights disappeared as a single one collapsed into place right next to the puppeteer, swinging at her. The blond-haired vixen moved with sudden, surprising alacrity, stepping backwards and dodging between the strikes while keeping one or the other of her hands raised, fingers twitching constantly to control all of the puppets around them, the entire time. Her face was still fixed in a confident smirk as several of the faceless puppets nearby converged on the location she was backing away toward. Plus got behind Light, facing the opposite direction to block a staff-thrown orb and tonfas with more light shields before returning fire with a couple of thrown blades and arrows. She dashed forward to place some point-explosions right next to one of the fox-eared puppets before leaping back to resume blocking the other one's attacks.

Minus blocked a blow from an awkward angle with a black orb, then picked up and threw her shadow as blades from either side of the Dawn puppet, forcing her to dodge awkardly around and back instead of maintaining an offensive. At the same time, she yelled, "She's a liar! She lied to me!" continuing the thought cut off by her previous "death". At first it wasn't clear to Gemma which 'she' this meant, but the rage and pain in her voice when she said it made it clear that whatever was left of the person in that puppet felt betrayed. "Tell her!!!" It clicked after a moment that there was just one person who Dawn probably had contact with shortly before dying that morning, and would've definitely expected to be telling the truth.

"Wh—what did she say?" At about this point Minus felt something else pulling at the shadows around everyone, preventing her from easily using them, and she switched to picking up nearby dirt and packing it into rocks to throw at Dawn.

Plus gave the warning: "Light! Shadow's here!"

"Indeed," the puppeteer said with a grin—the first thing any of them ever heard her say in her own voice. At once the shadows under all of the puppets and vixens and trees rose up, blades and thorns rising out of the ground to fly and swing at everyone. Light hopped back as her target disappeared into her own shadow, the dark-haired puppet responsible for this appearing in her place with scythes drawn, and her body blazed with light that spread out like a fire, burning all of the sharp shadows back out of existence. The puppet swung forward at her and she caught the scythes with the copies of her own sword and threw them out to either side before swinging one, then the other, through the shadow-puppet and making her disappear again.

Rowan blocked the brief assault of shadows with a dome of water around herself, using the rest of her concentration to grab or block some of the thorns with limbs of water to keep them away from Rory and Clark; Minus retained enough control over the shadows near herself to suppress them from actually attacking. Then the blue-haired vixen raised her gun again and fired it at the Puppeteer's latest position, where three different faceless puppets dove in to take it instead, one of them catching it and turning to dust. The teleporter reappeared next to the puppeteer while the shadow-puppet rose up next to Rory and came after her with its scythes.

Plus ran at the remaining powerful puppet near her, the one with the staff, and after blocking one of her shots with a light-shield and slicing through a shield with one of her swords she easily cut it down with the blade in her other hand. Then she ran to help Minus, coming in from Dawn's right while Minus moved to her left and, between the two of them, she forced the freezing puppet into an awkward position and used the advantage to drive a shadow-bullet through her head, destroying her again.

Still using her power to suppress the shadows, Light sped herself over next to their opponent and initiated a dance of disappearing, swinging, slashing back and forth with the teleporter, who seemed much more adept at this fighting than she had been earlier. Rowan came close as two of the nearby faceless puppets became the tonfa- and staff-wielders and took on both of them, using her water to pick up and throw the latter while her blade deflected the former's thrown weapons and forced her back. The puppeteer fell back into her shadow and fled their position again.

Rory dodged aside of a couple of slashes from the scythes, threw Light's sword at the puppet's throat, and when it dodged that she borrowed her husband's power to throw string from each of her wrists around the scythes' blades, using her vastly superior strength to yank them out of her hands and away to either side before stepping in to uppercut the puppet's chin with enough force to send it in a hard backwards spin through the air that ended in a rough landing and turning again to dust. Then Dawn reappeared nearly right next to her and moved in to grab her arm, but was stopped by some wire from Clark herself which was then yanked to knock her over onto her back, Rory following up with stomping through her stomach with enough force to crumble the puppet to dust.

At this point Amory arrived, emerging from the forest into the clearing to find a huge crowd of faceless puppets surrounding its perimeter. Some were looking out, but most were looking in, and when they noticed her a few moved toward her, not very aggressively but almost as though they were curious what she was doing there. She slapped each one that came too close, well aware they would likely be able to grab and restrain her without that counting as "violent", moving to get into the circle herself while removing as few of them from the equation as possible.

A puppet near Rory grew taller, gaining a blindfold and drawing a greataxe into its hands; the puppeteer's power to 'make' this one was finally coming back. It swung at her, but she ducked, caught the weapon and yanked it out of the puppet's hand before swinging the handle back at its side to send it flying away. Clark floated above her, catching and throwing or knocking away any that came too close behind while she threw, shoved, or grabbed and swung any who came at her from the front.

Gemma recombined and went toward the Quinns, having almost-unconsciously noticed a larger than usual number of them converging on Rory's position. She tilted the ground under some of them to knock them over, stabbed one in the process of turning into the shadow puppet, and got rid of several more with bullets, arrows, ice spikes and sound blasts and anything else she could think of to throw around.

Light and Rowan took out their opponents, then the former lightsped into the air briefly to get eyes on the puppeteer before zipping over to her, leaving behind a trail through the air for Rowan to follow. The blue-haired vixen ran that way, maintaining a shield of water with limbs extending out from it to knock down or away any puppets that got in her way, until one of them became Dawn and grabbed the tentacles that came at her, freezing them and throwing them away before leaping at the shield to do the same to it. Thinking quickly, Rowan parted the water away from her and swung her sword at the puppet, slicing through her stomach and knocking her away in the same motion. There was no time to consider the look of absolute despair on her face at how close she came to hurting or killing Rowan; she just had to keep going. But then another puppet jumped into her path, this one with blazing red hair and palpable heat coming off of her that turned all nearby water to steam. She looked about as ready to cry as Dawn had.

Gemma split again to more effectively take on the number of puppets around, especially since two of them became the shadow and tonfa ones again. "The fire one's here too!—" "—We're getting outnumbered here."

"Yeah, I hadn't noticed," Rory said, yanking the staff out of another puppet's hand when it appeared and jabbing it into her stomach to knock her away. "This is taking way too long, right dear?"

"I—maybe?" Clark replied. "Please be careful if you're gonna."

"I'm always careful!"

"What?" Plus said, feeling like she was missing some of this conversation's content.

Light fought the teleporting puppet again, this time "splitting" into superpositions just to gain something resembling a numerical advantage. This proved enough to take her down, but once again the puppeteer dissappeared into shadow after dodging another few of her strikes, not even looking particularly winded. Another shot of Rowan's gun rang through the air, as this proved the most efficient method she had to take down the blazing Cynthia puppet and get some relief from the intense heat coming off of her.

The puppeteer rose out of the shadows near the middle of the clearing, next to the cabin; this was about as far away from Rowan and Light as she could be without leaving the area. It was also fairly close to Rory, Clark, and Gemma, and the opposite side of the circle of faceless puppets from the one Amory now emerged from, just now having an opportunity to see the situation inside. Rory threw the puppet in her hand away, raised a hand and yelled "Okay, THAT IS IT!" before charging straight toward the tall, blond-haired vixen, mowing down, tossing aside, or outright ignoring all of the puppets in her way. A couple of powerful ones hit her with projectiles or weapons, but she was maxing out her defense and only took minor scratches from any of them. Light zipped next to the teleporting puppet during the charge, engaging it again just to pull it away to one side. Rory moved her buff into speed once the rest of the way to the puppeteer was clear, and jumped a couple of feet up into the air to lead with her fist pointed down toward her.

Tobias grinned.

In flash of heat and light, one of the puppeteer's hands had Cynthia's sword in it, blazing with fire, and it struck out diagonally up, catching Rory square in the chest. Her momentum helped rather than hurt it, letting it stab her far enough to come out the other end, and she was stopped on the long sword just short of the prepared punch's range. The puppeteer lowered the blade just enough for Dr. Quinn's feet to touch the ground. "Finally. You're mine."
At the last possible second, when the blade appeared, Rory had pumped her defense again. She was still conscious, and raised her head slightly before making a noise halfway between a choking cough and a laugh, and then spitting out some blood onto the puppeteer's face. "Sorry kid," she croaked. "I'm spoken for."

None of Tobias's puppets were looking behind her just now; there was a cabin in the way and nobody was there—well, nobody was supposed to be there, anyway. Someone's voice said what she recognized as a vixen's phrase—not one she knew, of course—and then what must have been Dr. Quinn's power emerged from her still-conscious body, going around the puppeteer to that person who was behind her.

Then she noticed the strings.

It was impossible to believe that she hadn't noticed them before: Bright, thick, glowing blue wires arranged in a network right there, inches in front of her, with the sword of fire stuck through one of the holes. They were pulled in at the same time as they apparently become visible, wrapping around her arms, hands, feet—and her neck. Her fingers were pulled back, forced straight up and still, and without her control every one of her puppets went limp, standing slumped over like so many robots that had suddenly run out of batteries.

Tobias tried to say something, but a thick, braided rope of blue wire was around her neck, and it was difficult if not impossible to get air. The sword was gone from her hand too, and Rory collapsed forward onto the ground without it holding her up. Her head was slowly pulled back more and more as she choked, an excruciatingly painful sensation of cutting and pulling from every part of her body the wire was wrapped around. Just when it seemed like her head couldn't move any more, for Tobias alone, time slowed to a crawl.

The world around her was strangely blurry, taking on a certain unreality. And, suddenly, standing over her with feet almost certainly on top of or on either side of Dr. Rory Quinn's head, there was the many-tailed charitable one, wearing a smile that was equal parts victorious and cruel. Tobias glared up at her, still feeling the pain from the ropes and unable to breathe, much less speak.

"What's the matter, little one? Things not turning out how you hoped?" She leaned slightly forward, placing a hand very gently on Tobias's chin for a second. "You really should've expected an outcome like this. After all, if you didn't want to lose, then..." She stood upright once more. "You shouldn't have challenged a grandmaster. Ta-ta." With a small, dismissive wave of her hand, she disappeared again and time seemed to rush to resume, an audible, sickening snap joining the litany of pain the former puppeteer was feeling and seeming to cause an instantaneous effect, an outward wave of puppets from those nearest her to those farthest away turning instantly to dust as their master died.

---

"Hey, Light."
"Hmm?" As the last two to head outside toward the quad, where everyone was going to meet up and get on the helicopter, Rory Quinn and Light were briefly alone.

"Clark and I have a little plan pre-arranged. It's risky, so we're hoping it isn't necessary at all, but I'm pretty sure it'll work if we can pull it off. So: To help us out, if I give the signal I want you to keep it looking like my husband's still in the same place, and hide all of her strings. But don't hide me; in fact, make me super visible if you can manage it. You got that?"
"Uh...sure. What's 'the signal'?"

"Oh, I dunno," Dr. Quinn shrugged. "Prolly something super obvious. I think I'll...yell at the top of my lungs and wave my arms or something like that. You know."

"Okay then," Light nodded, and they made the rest of the walk in silence.

---

The title is kind of a spoiler, I guess, but come on. There's no way I could have an entire arc with chess titles and not end with "checkmate". Anyway, it's not like there aren't surprises here even if you know the broad stroke of how it ends already. I have a fair bit to say about this one, overall, but first I'll say that I couldn't publish this without also finishing writing the next episode too. I don't want to accidentally spoil this one by publishing that one too soon, so it's queued up for tomorrow, but they're definitely intended to be read very soon one after the other to make the most sense.

 

Anyway. I imagine how a lot of my stories would operate in a visual medium such as a comic or an anime or whatever, most especially this one. It helps me think out the "choreography" of fights to describe the action in what I hope is a reasonably coherent manner. But also, I imagine things like title cards and such. So, for the entire "puppeteer" arc, I imagine that there would periodically be title cards featuring different characters in specific particular, very uncomfortable pose with red strings tying them upright in the air. "Episode 31: Marionette" would show the shadow puppet in that pose for the first one, and "Episode 51: Knight Sacrifice" would show Dawn in it. Then, as the final payoff to that, that pose would be exactly the one that Tobias Mond winds up in, but with blue strings instead, just before her neck gets snapped.

I suppose also that the title card to this episode would include a section of chessboard that showed the black king with a white rook in an adjacent tile protected by a white bishop, with two white queens a bit more distantly placed so that the overall positioning formed a clear checkmate for white. It would hint at the way things go without, maybe, spoiling the details of the ending outright.

 

If this episode makes you upset, or tense, or whatever...just wait and read the next one. This particular hump of story is one I was eager to get over not just for its own sake, but also so that I could finally get to what follows it.