Battle Vixens! - 1

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Episode 1: The Gift

A vast, lavish, royal audience chamber with an empty stage at the front. It was full to the brim with people: Young, old, all races and nationalities. It should, perhaps, have been loud with the voices of every modern language, speaking in confusion to people who didn't understand each other. But it was eerily silent. Everyone, it seemed, could feel the same kind of pressure...a distinct impression that whatever was waiting behind the stage had power, real power, and demanded respect.

Soon, a tall, gorgeous woman, the source of that pressure, wearing a sprawling, royal kimono that only accentuated her curves, stepped out from behind the curtain. Two tall spikes of fur rose from the sides of her head, and an interminable carpet of fur spread out behind her lower back, all slowly flowing around like so many elegant streams. From her poured forth a deep sense of elegance, intelligence, strength, and, more than anything else...power.

Although many in the crowd should have been unable to see or hear her very well from where they were, or who they were standing behind, later every one of them would remember it as clearly as if she had stood right there, right in front of them. She smiled—well, it was more of a smirk, a condescending grin perhaps. "Your world is about to be in a little spot of trouble soon," she explained gently, her voice as beautiful and elegant as her appearance and bearing. "Lucky for you I noticed~. I'm giving you an opportunity to do something about all that...a little taste of power to hold on to in these trying times. Just say these words..."

And, a sound from her mouth, but not in her voice. In a multitude of voices, one voice for every person there, every one saying something not quite comprehensible to any of their minds. But to each one, a single phrase none of the others heard stood out clearly from the multitude, a phrase in a voice strangely familiar, yet not their own. Each one found themselves repeating what they had heard, echoing it in their own voices, and felt a small rush, as if just a small piece of that incredible power the woman on stage had been granted to them by speaking this phrase. From this memory the knowledge of how to speak the words stuck deeply into their minds, becoming something unforgettable yet not intrusive, a thought like a well-trained soldier standing at attention off to the side, awaiting its call to come forth.

After this one thing they all spoke, the chamber echoed briefly with their voices. Then there was silence, several seconds of it; it felt respectful, perhaps even grateful in nature. And after seeming to enjoy this for a moment, she spoke again: "No need to thank me, really. But I will be watching, and if you want to please me..." She held up a finger, wagging it slightly like a mother admonishing her children. "...Don't. Be. Boring."

And then, all at once, everyone woke up.

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"...fifth incident of its kind throughout the country this morning, and the tenth one worldwide. Security cameras were unable to get a clear image in this case as the suspect was moving too quickly the entire time, but based on the footage it seems likely the person was between four and five feet in height, and wearing roughly the same kind of costume as the others. The police are recommending that anyone who sees the suspect call crime stoppers immediately and do not approach her, just as in every other case; she is believed to be armed and extremely dangerous..."

Amory had the TV on, the news, and Blake could hear it through the wall. It seemed his roommate was always up this early to watch the morning news, even on a Saturday. He got up out of bed and went to the door, opening it to the little living room of their college-furnished apartment.

From the couch, Amory waved. "Hey, I wake you up again, man? Sorry...I tried to turn it down this time."

"I'm just too light a sleeper, I guess." Blake couldn't make himself ask him outright to just mute it and read captions, or get the news from the Internet in his room, but he could hint that this arrangement of being woken up by the news instead of his alarm clock wasn't going to work for long. He took enough steps out to turn toward the TV and see it. "What're they talking about?"

"There's like some kinda international crime spree or somethin' going on," said Amory, waving at a world map with some points on it representing locations. "Buncha weirdos in like, anime fox costumes."

Blake scratched his head, thinking about his dream last night. At the same time, he realized all the dots seemed to be west of the college town he lived in, except for the one being placed on said town. "So...one of them here, too?"
"Yeah! They like, short-circuited the security and tore the lock off the vault and took some bills." The screen returned to some black-and-white, frame-by-frame footage of the street just outside the bank, showing a short blur of a person coming out the front door and running out of range, followed first by what looked like a large mass of light-colored hair and second by some wildly scattering arcs of electricity. "Weirdest thing is they didn't even take all that much. Don't even look like they brought bags or nothin'."

The newscaster cut in again: "We're just receiving reports from eastern Canada of another incident, continuing the pattern of moving from west to east from the international date line. Authorities across the EU and Asia have already been alerted in case this pattern continues, but it's unclear what the police of any nation are even able to do about these individuals..."

A little taste of power. That was what the woman in the dream had said. Superpowers? Blake thought. Moving faster than a camera, trailing electricity, and 'police can't do anything about it' screamed to him of a superhero's origin story—or a villain's, maybe. He could remember the words from the dream clearly, even though the figures of everyone around him were too vague to recall anything about besides that they were human.
"Uh, I can turn it down some more if you wanna go back to bed."

"No.." Blake shook his head. "I'm just gonna take a shower. Got some stuff to do today anyway."

All he could think about in the bathroom was the words, the dream, what was happening on the news right now, all over the world. Some people, probably not everyone, had been picked and handed power. They weren't all good people, if it lead immediately to a crime spree. Don't be boring. Maybe that talk about a threat coming was a lie, and she just wanted to see what kind of chaos would come from giving a random grab bag of people superpowers. Well...if that was it, then he had some too. He just had to say the words, and maybe he'd be able to do what the police couldn't—just like the heroes he'd been reading comics about all his life. It was...an exciting idea, if any of it turned out to be true.

But not here, of course. It might be some kind of flashy power-up sequence and Amory would notice. No offense to his new roommate, but he'd only known the guy for a couple of weeks, since starting freshman year and moving in with him. He might not even understand the importance of a secret identity, and Blake really had no idea how good he was at keeping a secret anyway. So, he'd need to go find some modern equivalent to a phone booth. Not anywhere there were cameras around, obviously, and not somewhere with witnesses either.

Putting on his clothes, Blake had an idea. The apartment had "public" bathrooms visitors and employees could use. This early in the morning, probably nobody would be in there; it would be easy to tell if there was someone, too. The door swung inward, so he could block it first and then see if the words did anything. It wasn't the most...dignified place to discover one's superpowers for the first time, but it was the closest place with the right kind of privacy, and he wouldn't be somewhere weird with no explanation for why he was there if nothing happened.

Back in the living room, he glanced briefly as the news showed the map again. There were more dots scattered around Europe now. "I'm going out," he said, waving to Amory.
"See ya. Hey, look out for cosplayers."
"I always do," Blake answered sarcastically, and headed out.

The biggest, heaviest thing available to block the door with were the big trash cans they used in hopes of only needing to take out the trash every other week or so. It wasn't ideal, as the cans were designed to roll, but he figured out with a little work how to make the wheels lock, only allowing the door to crack open a bit before more force would be needed, and then there would be a scraping noise from the wheels refusing to turn. A warning system more than anything, but it would have to do.

He went around a corner to the stalls, having already found the bathroom empty, and used the big handicapped one with a good amount of extra space next to the toilet. Hopefully—if this wasn't all crazy, if he wasn't just trusting some strange dream too much—he wouldn't accidentally break anything in here. But there were lots of male residents in the complex, and this bathroom was accessible from outside, so it still wasn't likely anyone would figure out it was him.

The excitement from before, the nervousness that it was all nonsense, had mounted together during his preparations, and now Blake's heart was pounding. He took a deep breath, reminded himself it wasn't a big deal if he didn't get superpowers—he'd lived without them his whole life, after all—and not to go off the rails if he did. Then he opened his mouth again to speak the words.

They were incomprehensible as before; the syllables themselves feeling like something he wouldn't physically know how to say if he hadn't been taught specifically how. And yet, at the same time, it felt familiar to him, like the words were somehow his. Speaking them brought an indescribable rush just like the one he'd felt in the dream, but that wasn't all it brought.

Blake's body and clothes both began to glow, a pure white light emitting from him. He held up a hand, trying to make sense of what he was seeing as the light grew brighter, far outshining the bathroom lights before long, but somehow not blinding his own eyes. He felt the glow now, too, as if his mind too pulsed with light, and then with an understanding of that light.

He felt like a hologram, like his whole being was light now, a bright glow producing only itself, like the sun. And to his surprise, he began then to change shape, like the light being refracted as it continued to shine. He grew shorter and smaller, his frame slimming down and the room rising up around him slowly. His hair streamed out, pure-white bangs appearing before his eyes, more streaks of white falling across the sides of his face and down along his back. His ears stretched up and out, and another ray emitted from his back, a long tail of thick white fur appearing all at once. The light forming the leggings of his jeans from the thighs down burst out away from him and then back around his torso, becoming a jacket; his shirt split down the middle, sealing itself back together with a row of buttons. His socks stretched their way up legs that were quickly becoming much slimmer than before, stopping just above the knees.

Blake felt a shift in the nature of the light that was himself—and all at once a girl stood there instead. She felt her chest gently spreading forward into a waiting bra, becoming a small but present pair of breasts; she felt her underwear beneath the shorts she had on now turning into a soft pair of panties. The shifting of her body stopped, leaving her at least a foot shorter than before, with narrow shoulders, slender arms and delicate fingers, a flat stomach with an inward curve to the sides contrasted by the gentle outward slope to her hips. Her long hair seemed right now, framing a small, round face.

The light that was now a girl solidified, its glow fading back to a mere reflection of the light provided around her. A silvery shimmer arranged into a vertical line appeared before her, and she reflexively reached out toward the bottom, both hands taking it by the hilt as it solidified into a katana. She stood, panting slightly from her earlier excitement and from the rush of what had just happened, feeling a brief spark of a fight-or-flight response on top of that and responding by readying the sword as if it were a practiced motion.

All of this, she realized as she remembered there was nobody here and slowly lowered the sword, letting her right hand catch it, had transpired in barely an instant to anyone else, a flash of brilliant light between the man named Blake and what she was now. And what..?
"Wh—wha..?!" Her eyes popped wide open, her hands letting go of the sword; it obediently shimmered back into light and disappeaered. "I.." She looked down at her body and then bent around to see a white mass of fur swishing behind her back, finding herself much more flexible and far better at physically balancing than usual as she did so. But none of that was the main concern at the moment.

"I'm a girl!?" her voice, rather high-pitched for every utterance since the words that had changed her, sounded even girlier in this expression of surprise. She patted her chest a couple of times, rediscovering the bra, and wiggled her legs enough to feel what was there instead of what wasn't there, and every indication showed she really had become the opposite sex.

Her face burned slightly; was she blushing? It probably looked...cute, too. "W-well..this is, at least a pretty good disguise I guess." Anything was better than continuing to think about suddenly being a girl, and more than that, really feeling like one somehow. What were her powers, anyway?

Another deep breath, and Blake looked around, her tall fuzzy ears twitching automatically. She could hear people in the halls, and in the floor above her, and water moving through pipes in the ground below, depending on which way they pointed. On deeper thought, her sense of smell seemed sharper than before, too, though thankfully the unpleasantness of the bathroom's bouquet didn't seem enhanced by this effect. Her new tail seemed eager to help her keep balance, and felt somehow effective at doing so. But that was all..icing, it seemed, something like a side effect of how she looked now, which was in turn a result of the actual power the woman in the dream had granted her.

The thing that stood out to her most was the light. She could feel every ray of light in this room, trace it back to where it came from, bend it and move it and alter it as she wished. With a wave of her hand and a small exertion of will she bent the light near her until the stall door displayed a reflection of her body, as if it were a perfectly clear mirror. After examining it for a moment with another blush (this one she could see and feel, and yes it did look cute), she closed her fists and made a pulling motion; the reflection disappeared and light throughout the bathroom dimmed as it was all absorbed into a small white orb held just in front of her. That was enough concentration of light to shape into a burning, cutting laser if she wanted, it felt like. She dispersed the light back to its normal place, causing the room to seem brighter for a few seconds before returning to normal.

And the sword...with a thought, it returned to her right hand in the same manner as before. It was light just as her powers were; she could disperse it into light at will no matter where it was and retrieve it from nearby light, but only into her own hands. She took a small step back to make space and then made a few short swings in the air with it; it felt lightweight (ha), balanced exactly to whatever her body's current build was. Blake had never touched a sword before in his life but she found herself moving with the precision and ease of an expert. The blade was razor-thin, deadly sharp with a point at the end made for stabbing, but its material was sturdy and durable.

Releasing the sword again, she paused to listen for anyone in the hall outside the bathroom and didn't find anyone. A smile slowly crept its way into her lips and then..."Heheh...hahaha!" she laughed, not loudly but not quietly. Girl or not, this was amazing! She really had superpowers! And they weren't some terrible uncontrollable awkward powers to need to get used to; they were as natural to use as breathing. She was sure speaking the words again should turn her back, but...she didn't feel ready to turn back just yet. A superhero's first discovery of powers isn't supposed to just be like "hey, that's cool" and then they go back to their normal life right away; they're supposed to run around, try them out, find somebody to help or something! She wasn't going to make the mistake of trying to make money off of a wrestling match or something, she was going to do some good before turning back.

Flinging open the stall door, Blake went to where the trash cans were, covering the distance effortlessly in about a second. She paused there, looking back and forward again as she realized what she'd just done—apparently the whole 'light' theme extended to super-speed too, not exactly light speed but certainly enough to do some very easy sprinting. Shaking her head and smiling again at how amazing that was, she started moving the cans out of the way.

The problem with the next step occurred to her at this point. Blake was on camera going into this bathroom, and someone paying attention would know he was the only one inside; if a girl with a fox tail came out it would give her away right away. Frowning and looking at herself in the mirror for a second, she realized the solution was simple. With an outward pulling motion of her hands, like pulling a pair of sliding doors apart, the image reflected from the new girl's body changed to become that of Blake. She looked at it in the mirror for a moment, thinking was I really that tall? but feeling somehow confident that her own powers knew what she'd looked like. She moved the cans the rest of the way to where they'd been before and stepped outside.

Next, Blake walked out of the building. She just had to be careful not to bump into anyone or say anything, both of which were pretty easy this early in the morning, and soon she was out on the street. She looked around, trying to discern whether any cameras were still watching, or witnesses for that matter; to her surprise a new aspect of her power surfaced to tell her the light she emitted wasn't being seen or recorded. So it was safe to drop the illusory boy...but then, it would look weird for a girl with fox ears and a tail to go running around town, wouldn't it? People like that were all over the news committing crimes; it was definitely a bad idea.

With a closing-doors motion, the fox-girl changed her appearance into one very close to the real one, but with no parts borrowed from an animal and...brown hair, she decided. Her clothes were normal-looking enough once all that other stuff was taken care of. After taking a second to give her eyes only a brief look at her own reflection she smiled slightly and nodded.

"Hmn hm hmm~," she bounced a bit on her feet, humming a few notes to herself in satisfaction with the illusion. And then..ears drooping slightly, she thought, why did I do that? It was kind of a silly, maybe even...girly thing to do. She really felt very much like a girl, it seemed, as if it were part of the package of new knowledge along with what her powers were and how to use them. Frowning and crossing her arms, she reminded herself that acting differently only helped people not know who she really was, and shook her head a bit, deciding not to worry about it.

Well, there were no criminals around to chase after. After all, why would someone commit a crime on a street next to a well-traveled college-owned apartment, shortly into the morning, with not just regular police around but campus police even closer? Duh. And Blake hadn't thought ahead to what she would do to find a crime to stop. But the idea occurred to her, and it was an obvious one of course but still..what if she could chase down the person who robbed the bank? There was a crime she knew had happened and hadn't and wouldn't be solved by the police, after all, and on top of that the person who did it had power just like she did, so maybe she was the only one who could stop them anyway! It was perfect.

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And, a new episodic story begins! I feel like some kind of reference to Kampfer with regard to this story is inevitable, so I may as well bring it up myself. I have never actually watched Kampfer aside from a few small bits and basically the only thing I know about it is that some people in modern day become super-powered girls for some reason, and the main character is a guy who's one of those and also turns into a blue-haired girl. Suffice to say that wasn't really a major inspiration for this story, and any similarities between the two storylines aside from the really obvious (superpowered girls are involved and one of them is a guy when depowered) are likely to just be coincidental.

The idea for this story sprang up as I was looking for images to use in captions and stories and noticed a fair number of them that fell under the rough category of "fox girl with a weapon". I thought maybe I could stitch together a story using some of those images for the characters, and that's pretty much where it is now. Not a lot of plans have been made but I know what'll probably happen within the next 2-3 parts or so, so hopefully you like it enough to look forward to more.