Battle Vixens! - 18

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Episode 18: Poor First Impressions

Don understood, she really did: This was a test. It was known that she wasn't violent toward people, wasn't inclined to really do anything particularly bad, so letting her wander around on her own wasn't considered a risk as far as that went. The test was whether she'd run off and then probably that waterbending cop would show up and knock her out or shoot her or something, or if she'd just be lazy and do nothing, or if she'd actually do what she was supposed to do and somehow or other get a phone number into that Light chick's hands before meeting back up at the spot she'd been dropped off.

It just didn't matter that this was a test. It was stupid. She walked around, seething, thinking of what might be happening back in the city. They were already getting short of people who could fight those things, so why ship someone perfectly capable out to a place which clearly had an abundance of them instead of finding some pretext to lock one of them up and take them there? Surely at least one of them had done something criminal by now, right?

The internal rant was interrupted by the noise of thunder. Her giant fuzzy ears twitched. Thunder? Looking up in the sky, it was clear as could be. Well, it was coming from..that way. She wasn't all that familiar with these streets, but it shouldn't be too hard to get over there. She started running, shoving aside a couple of people in the way (but not so hard as to actually hurt them...probably), thinking this looked like one of them. A moment later, there was a flash of lightning from the sky, straight down at a particular spot, and another roll of thunder. Okay—white clouds generally don't do that, especially not on a sunny, slightly cloudy day. This was definitely one of the people she was supposed to "ingratiate" with or whatever. It seemed likely to be a fight, so just join on in that person's side and everything would be great.

Don turned a corner and finally saw what all that lightning was about: A giant bulb thing, a purplish blur caught in a larger dark blur of its several tentacles. Gross. She took a deep breath, starting to amplify the cold in the air around her. A faint blue glow swirled around her as the temprature dropped. She jumped back at the wall of a building just behind her and kicked off, going up and forward. "RRRRRAAAAAAH!" The energy coalesced into a big, sharp spike of ice all around around the leg she was leading with.

The ice shattered on impact, jagged pieces raining down on the thing's body and limbs while her actual foot impacted it in the middle of its body-bulb-thing, taking it down with her. She knelt on top of it, more cold swirling into thin blades of ice in her hands to stab into it. It made a low, rumbling noise in rage and started swatting at her with its tentacles. Don turned over onto her back and held her hands up, making a shield of ice to block each blow and shatter in the process while continuing to pump the heat out of the black body behind her. This wasn't a good place to be for very long, but if whoever she'd just rescued was in a good enough mood maybe they'd take advantage of this little distraction.

There was the noise of another peal of thunder, and Don sort of saw the flash from it; it didn't seem like it had done much of anything to the monster, though, which was concerning. Only then she heard footsteps running up to one side and some chopping noises of sword through tentacle, near where they were attached to the body. Okay, that was slightly better; that attack was slowing down the tentacles coming at Don.

It was about time to get off of this ride. She rolled over toward the opposite side of the body from the one the sword-person was on, leaving behind a block of ice and briefly turning off her power to fool the thing into thinking she was still there for a precious few seconds. Before long Don was able to stand up, hearing that ice shatter on impact, and followed it up by grabbing the nearby bases of two tentacles, one to each hand, sucking heat out as quickly as possible. Those two went limp, but of course there were always more. She was forced to jump back, back, aside, back, as it tried to counter, making another roar like an earthquake in the process.

It skittered, turning around so the base of its body faced her. Oh, that's where the mouth was. Why did these things have to have mouths? Well, Don had something to feed it, a special gift straight from Cynth. She sidestepped another tentacle and made a fastball-pitch motion with her right hand, sending a blue fireball straight inside of that ugly gaping mouth. Then it was clearly time to jump as the thing somehow ran forward on its tentacles right at her; the leap came with a somersault and a brief roll on the ground before standing up and turning to face the thing again.

"Um—thanks." The person she'd seen fighting it and making lightning before was next to her now; a brief look registered purple hair, very short, a kid or something? Looked scared—not that Don blamed her for that.
"Talk after it's dead," Don said tersely, holding up her hands to allow a giant sword of solid ice to appear in them. The monster was standing back up again, so she started running toward it.

The next tentacle to come toward her was dodged, and the huge weapon, with all of Don's ability to suck heat out of things channeled concentrated onto its blade, sliced right through, chopping it off and leaving it to briefly writhe before exploding into black mist. Another one came after her and met the same fate. Then there were two, but she didn't need to worry about one of them because the tiny girl chose this moment to jump in and block with an electrified sword; so those two became about one and half, with the whole one convulsing uselessly. The charge continued, the smaller girl flitting around and blocking two or three of them at a time while Don methodically dodged and cut them off.

It really seemed like this thing's supply of limbs was endless, but the distance to its body wasn't. Before long they were close enough for Don to slash at the roots, cutting every tentacle based on the front side of its body free. This she followed up with the highest jump she could manage and a chop right through its body. finally shattering the ice-blade midway through. The small girl ran up its body and stuck the longer of her blades into the partial cut, electricity starting to arc and jump all around her body as she pumped it through the weapon.

Don landed in a kneeling position, panting heavily and hoping the wild whipping around she was hearing was just involuntary convulsions because she wasn't in a good shape to move right now. The feeling of everything starting to get too hot was the indication that she was running up toward her limit. The giant beast began to collapse to one side, looking blurry and indistinct but still solid; the smaller girl finally fell off of it, awkwardly landing on one foot, losing her balance from that and falling onto her back. Don finally stood up, harnessing the heat she felt into another fireball just over one of her hands and lobbing it at the thing's side. That was the final blow needed, and another earthquake-roar just as obnoxious as the first one came with some weak wriggling around just before it fell completely apart and blew away.

The purple-hair girl was still lying on her back, panting up at the sky. Don took a few steps to stand over her, getting the first good, actual look at her appearance. ...Yo. You need any help gettin' up? Goin' someplace to rest?"

"No, I...just here...for a second," she replied breathlessly between gasps for air.

Don knelt down, grabbing a hand. "Come on—no naps in the road here, right?" She pulled the girl up to a sitting position while she was busy taking another gasp at how cold Don's hands were. Then she waited for the girl to catch her breath.

"Um.." She looked up at Don, blinking a couple of times. "So, you saved me. Thank you."
"Ain't really a big deal. More like I attacked something you were already fightin'," said Don.

"Not to be rude, but who are you? I seem to keep being the one to meet people..."
"Ahh, Don. You?"

"Err—Ning." Fake name; she wasn't so sure about it at first. Well, people could play around with that all they wanted, it wasn't against the law or anything—yet. Just, what kind of name was that anyway? Couldn't pick anything cool, or at least halfway meaningful?

"Well, Ning," Don tried to keep the sarcasm out of her voice when saying the name, "you ah, ain't a friend of Light's, are you?"

"What if I am?" she said, immediately suspicious. With the reaction that other girl had before—did everyone actually hate this person?
"Look, I got a message from Officer Shepherd—that's the one who shot at her a couple a' days ago."

"Go on." Okay, no; this person was a friend of Light because the anger was now directed at the person the message was coming from, straight through the messenger of course.

"He's sorry about that and wants to talk about some stuff. So I got a personal phone number if Light feels like callin'. There's a big effort to coordinate things in the US, y'know, and maybe Rowan—ah, Officer Shepherd—ain't got accurate information, but Light looks to know most of the—y'know, like us—around here. So, the right person ta start askin' about coordinatin'."

"I see..I can give her the number," said Ning. Looked like she was still deeply suspicious, not directly admitting to being a friend. That was fine as long as what she did say was the truth.

"You need it written down? I forgot to bring any paper or pens or nothin'.."
"I should be able to remember a number for ten minutes," Ning said, clearly annoyed. To Don, being annoyed at the suggestion of a short memory seemed like an older-person trait. So what, this tiny girl who didn't even look past puberty was secretly a geezer? More strangeness in all this.
"A'right, a'right. Listen:" She said the number. "Ya got it?"
"Yes," the small girl nodded, and repeated the number. "Anything else?"

"Well, can ya stand up now? I won't feel great leavin' ya in the street there."

Ning sighed, and pushed herself up to a standing position. She looked tired, but uninjured; perfectly capable of walking away. "Satisfied?"

"Yeah. Just make sure Light gets that number, tell 'er she can use a burner phone, hide somewhere weird, hang up if anythin' makes her mad, whatever. It's just, I'm in even more trouble if it don't look like I delivered it."
"I'll do what I can," she brushed herself off. That seemed like the best Don was going to get.

"Okay then. I gotta go, make sure my town's still standin'. You keep yourself alive, hear?" Ning seemed a little surprised at that last expression, but nodded. Then Don turned around and headed off, not running but taking a brisk pace of a walk.

---

Blake (or rather Light after a brief stop by a restroom on the way) was not content to just sit around doing nothing. Once they went into the camera-free surgery room Clark had taken up as a temporary place of magic-based healing, she wove and bent the light around until they could see a clear image of what was happening outside. While she was figuring that out, Amory actually talked to Clark.

"How are you feeling?" She was sitting in a chair, looked a little tired maybe.

"Pretty good. A lot better than I thought, physically. About as good as I expected otherwise."

"So...you've been using your power to heal people, huh?"
"Yeah. I think I lost count after fifty." She gave a big, genuine grin.

"..Got it!" Light moved the 3-d model of the fight going on outside to the middle of the room where everyone could see it, resizing it to be a little larger. Rory was being thrown by one of the mist-things, but landed just fine.

"I guess I don't have to worry about her."
"She was worried about you," said Light. "Did you say fifty, how are you not uncsoncious by now?"

"I..don't know, really. I was limiting how much healing I was doing, enough to bring them back from the brink, you know." She took a long sip of the coffee Amory had made while Blake was in the bathroom. A deliberately unguarded break room near the waiting room they'd started out in had just finished making a pot; to a cup of that add generous sugar, creamer, and get something that at least didn't cause her to make a face. "Even then, it took a lot out of me every time. But whenever it was done, I felt better again. Like they were saying thanks and giving something back. It wasn't ever quite as much as I spent, but it was enough to keep going, every time."
"Hmm." Amory had a thinking expression. Outside, the two bodies of the strange girl who'd been following him yesterday split up, each one chased by one of the monsters. "It sounds the same as how Light recharges from being in a well-lit place. Maybe each power comes with some way of replenishing when you get tired."

"So mine's from healing people? But it isn't even enough to break even. Not much use, huh?"
"Maybe it depends...there's some kind of balance you could strike in some cases. I agree though, it wouldn't be much use if you ran out of string or whatever in the middle of a fight."

Light, who was watching more intently than the other two, gasped. "What? What happened?" Clark looked over.

"Look," she pointed with the hand that wasn't being held up to 'maintain' the image. "The body that ran in to warn us just got slammed into by one of those things..." She started to stand up.

"How bad is it?" Clark immediately hopped up and walked closer to try and get a better look, but it wasn't a very high resolution image.

"I don't know, but she's not getting up."

"The other body just knelt over," Amory said. Rory was busy tearing apart the gryphon that had done it, and went to the prone body as soon as it started to fade away.

"I should go out there," said Clark. "There's no danger, they're both dead now anyway, right?"
"We should all go," Light agreed, dismissing the image. "I'll make us look 'normal'. You came in in human form, right?"
"Yes. You remember what it looks like?"
She thought for a second. "...Yeah. I guess I do."

They started running through the halls on the way out, not nearly as fast as Light could run but more Amory-speed, which was also slow enough for Clark to handle, even while tired. They wound up in a hallway adjoining the badly-shattered entrance and nearly ran into Rory carrying the hurt body and going the other way. Light carefully rearranged things so the illusion wasn't on for Rory but still worked for the cameras.

"What are you doing out of your room?"
"We saw most of the fight, with Light's help," said Clark, starting toward the hurt girl.

"No, no—not here! Somewhere.." Rory saw an empty room nearby. "In there. Quick." She pushed past them inside, and Clark was the first one in behind her. There wasn't a camera inside, thankfully, and there was somewhere to put the girl down.

"Now?" said Clark, with some impatience.

"Yes, go. Fix." She waved. Clark put the bulb-end up of her needle to the groaning girl.

"Not great...some broken bones in really awful places. But no internal organs damaged, that's good. I'll take care of the bones, make it where you can walk again, I think that's the best I can do right now. Hold still, understand?"
She made a hoarse groaning noise in what seemed to be reponse. Clark touched her side gently with the bulb and a soft blue glow spread out from it over her before fading. The effect wasn't visibly obvious, but her breathing went from gasping staggers to steady, normal breaths and her eyes sort of fluttered open for a second, looking around the room before shutting again.

There was a knock on the door. The girl lying down croaked, "Other me...has a voice still, kinda." Rory nodded, and opened the door; a silver-haired girl came in, looking unhurt but like she'd spent the last few minutes sobbing. Looking around the room, and then particularly at Clark she said, "Thanks. It still hurts, but, not nearly as bad."

"Glad to hear it. I'm sorry you got hurt in the first place."

"No, it..it's fine." The dark-haired body slowly swung around to a sitting position, groaning slightly in the process. "I guess that's bruises..."

"Right. You should probably take a day or two off for that to heal."

"May I introduce you?" said Rory.

"Mhm."

"This is Gemma. Two bodies, Plus and Minus," she indicated each in turn—the injured one being Minus. "Gemma, my husband Clark healed you. Amory, but I guess you know him somehow? Light." Her reactions to each were very clear: She nodded gratefully toward Clark, blushed feverishly and refused to even look at Amory, and then fixed Light with a glare, her ears folded well behind her head.

"..What?"

"So you're Light, then."

"What...about it?" She made a valiant but unsuccessful effort to think of some way she could possibly have offended this girl without even meeting her.
"It's, nothing," she looked away, trying to make a more neutral expression but failing (especially the ears). "I-I guess, thanks for staying in here with him..."

"Are you okay?" said Amory. "You're acting kind of weird.."

"Er, I-I'm fine," she said, instantly nervous. The dark-haired body hopped down onto her feet, taking a second to apparently get bearings. "Um, I-I need to get out of here before the newspeople come. I don't really, want to be on camera answering a bunch of questions..."
"It's a little hard to get out without attracting attention," said Rory. "I mean, they're probably surrounding the building at this point and trying to figure out where the side entrances are 'till all that glass gets cleared out."
"I can help with that," said Light, "just make us invisible on our way out, and and let you off wherever you want."
Minus shook her head emphatically no, but after a second Plus said, "I—sure, thank you." To a brief questioning look, she said, "Um—I'm just, getting m-my responses mixed up, p-probably that body's head took a hit or s-something." Well, it probably would be confusing to be in two bodies at once—but Clark hadn't said anything about a head injury.

"Okay then. If you're ready, then let's go." Rory gave directions to a side exit, and they headed out. There was silence while they were in the building, with one or the other body occasionally giving Light a look that was hard to make sense of. Then they carefully snuck past the news crews and got to quieter streets. From there, Plus led the way to wherever it was they—er, she—wanted to 'appear'.

"I don't really know why you're mad at me," Light said quietly.

"It's, I'm not. I'm not mad at you. I just." Minus made a hoarse growl of frustration; it seemed like she was having trouble putting the feeling into words.

"Well, I hope you can get over it eventually, whatever it is. I mean, I like you just fine."

That seemed to genuinely confuse her. "...Why?"

"Well, you've saved or helped save a friend of mine's life twice now. Besides saving a ton of other people by getting the message to Rory about some of those things attacking the hospital. I'm, really sorry I wasn't out there to help, but she wanted to make sure her husband was safe. It looked like you were doing fine right up until.." She trailed off, finally looking at one of Gemma's faces and realizing that this seemed to be doing the polar opposite of reassuring her.
"Mrrrgh, just stop, please."

"Stop what?"

"You, you're making it...J-just, listen. I'm no hero," she said. "I, I just...—" "—I don't understand what I'm doing," Minus half-whispered, sounding terrified. It took her a second to realize she'd said that part aloud at all, and she violently shook both of her heads, eyes closed, for a second before looking around. They'd come to a pretty quiet street, well away from the hospital. "Here, here is fine!" she said.
"Okay."

"Look, you...you don't have to fight those things," said Light. "I know what it feels like, when one of them shows up, but...think about, whether the risk is worth it. I decided for myself that I wanted to fight them, and I'll do my best not to die or get put into a coma in the process, but I've accepted that it could happen. It's a decision worth actually thinking about instead of letting it get made for you—right?"

Plus shook her head, some tears starting to stream from her eyes. "Just...just go away, please. I...—" "—It won't end well if we meet again." She looked at the other body, confused for a second at it seemingly continuing to speak out of turn. The tone had been mostly cold, but with a touch of the fear from before still present.

Light looked back and forth between them for a second, still profoundly confused as to what was going on with her. Concerned too, of course, but her continued presence was obviously not going to improve things. "Um, sure...I, hope you can figure things out," she said, and ran off, turning invisible again.

---

Almost as soon as the other three bodies left the room, Rory said, "She likes you."
"...What?"
"You heard me. Whoever Gemma really is, she likes you. Not just a little, too—I'd rate that crush maybe a six or seven out of ten just based on her reactions in the last two minutes."

"That would explain why she was close enough to protect you so fast yesterday," said Clark. "Probably planning to talk to you, or just stalking maybe..."

"Seriously!?" He wasn't sure what to think of the idea of having a superpowered stalker.

"I bet she also thinks you're dating Light," Rory added. "Hence all that hostility on display toward her."
"Dating—!?" he started to react with incredulity before jumping forward a few words. "Wait, hostility?"

"How did you not notice it?" said Clark. "Oh, and weeee, just let them run off alone with each other. Whoops."

Amory looked at the door, back at the Quinns, repeated a few times. Part of him wanted to chase after them, but he knew there was no way he'd catch up; he wouldn't even know where to look for them once outside. "Well, at least one of that girl's bodies isn't really in any condition to fight right now, and Light's at a hundred percent, so odds are pretty good they don't kill each other," said Clark. "On the optimistic side of things, you know."
Something occurred to him. "Wait, wait...she's...so..."

Rory asked, "What?"
"The price. What we talked about earlier," he said. "If she was already...before last Friday, then..."

"Price?" said Clark.
"Fill you in in a minute, dear. So what, you think she's fighting monsters because of you?"
"That's, pretty literally it, yeah. There's compelling evidence for it, too. I think I need to sit down." He quickly found a place to do so.

"Ummh..." Clark's attention had been drawn to a TV left on in one upper corner of the room, tuned to the news. There was a monster other than the gryphon there, and a bolt of lightning striking it.

"Holy—! Is that live?!" said Rory, already getting ready to probably punch her way out of the building if necessary.
"Mmmno. Looks like...yeah, they're cutting to an interview." Rory calmed down again, looking at the TV too.

"She made sure I could get up and then ran away," said Ning on the camera. "Said her name was, Dawn I think? Whoever she is, she saved my life. Hey, do you have any folding ch—?" the editor cut her off, going back to an anchor.

"Well, at least she's alive too," said Rory, sighing. "That makes another one, right?" Cue the anchor mentioning that 'Dawn' was a known fox-girl from the next city over, and a brief blip of footage of her standing alongside another, much shorter girl—brilliant red hair, wreathed in flame.

Their TV-watching was then interrupted by Light's voice from just inside of the door suddenly saying, "Hey, what'd I miss?"

Battle Vixens! - 17

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Episode 17: Duets

Clark had the Look on his face when they got back home after the meeting and a quick dinner out. Rory knew this Look; it was part of what she loved about him, but at the same time it almost always meant trouble. The most common occurrence of this Look was when she had chewed out a research assistant for doing something stupid and he thought it'd been a little too harsh, or when he'd just heard (not directly himself, but through a few people) the sob story of one of her regular students and wanted her to go a little easier on them.

She just stopped in the hallway and turned to face him. "What is it? What's on your mind?"
"You know...I, started thinking after healing Amory. I sorta forget too, it seems like. I can heal people now, probably really well. Maybe even from injuries that doctors can't get to fast enough," he said.

"What, you want to go healing terminally injured people now? Be a miracle worker?" She half-yelled; he just nodded quietly.

"..You know that's not what the powers are supposed to be for. We have evidence that using them too much tends to tire a person out, and we're two of a very small number of people in this town that can fight those things effectively, based on what we learned tonight." The Look didn't subside. "We can't do it! People would find out, it would put you in danger." She crossed her arms. "You have any idea how many psychos with superpowers out there are gonna zero in on you if they find out you can basically bring people back from near death? Kill, or capture, or do the thing with beating you to take control over your powers? It's dangerous. I don't like it."

"You were the one who wasn't worried about saying our real names before," he said. "Anyway, I can trust you to protect me. Right?" He smiled charmingly, and she just felt a little helpless, dropping her arms to the sides.

"I mean...I'll do my best, but...I-I'm still just one person."
"Rory, people are dying. If other people who got powers can go around robbing and looting and killing with them, and then turn around and start defending everyone from the monsters, then—then I don't see what's so wrong with me being a tiny bit selfish and doing what I want to do, and saving a few more lives!"

She sighed. This hadn't been an argument she was going to win from the beginning, and she knew that was how it was going to go whenever he got the Look, but she was stubborn and always had to hear the whole argument before making the inevitable decision. "Okay, look. I, know a guy at the hospital. He owes me some favors. We can get you, holed up in a room, they'll bring you people who are going to die without immediate care. You don't, you can't fix them all the way or the whole world will figure out what's going on in a matter of minutes. You just wave your magic wand or whatever and make them stable, to where the doctors can do their job, right? Anyway, you'll be able to save more lives before getting exhausted if you only do enough to save lives. And I won't be able to set this up until tomorrow morning, so we don't go dashing off that way tonight, got it?"

"..Thank you, dear," he said after a second or two, smiling brightly again.
Rory put up an index finger for a moment. "Oh no, don't think I'm doing this for free." She spoke her phrase, growing up to her fox form, and gave him a slightly predatory grin. Her clothes had reshaped into just a half-unbuttoned nightshirt and panties, as if in response to what she was thinking about. "I wanna try something new, dear~. You say my phrase to take away my strength and then we'll have some fun tonight before we go to sleep."
"Err, okay," he said, blushing brightly. Well, he wasn't the only one.

---

The following morning, Rory was sitting in human form in an otherwise empty waiting room inconspicuously, keeping an eye on anything or anyone that went through a particular door. Her phone buzzed with some texts, and she agreed to meet with the two students she'd seen the day before, noting that Clark was busy but she'd pass anything on to him later. On the balance, it seemed best to meet here at the hospital; she wanted to keep guard and those two seemed trustworthy enough not to worry too much about. Actually, wait, they already knew what Clark was capable of and hadn't made any worrying moves, so this was completely fine.

Eventually they came in, and were escorted to the same waiting room. "Hey you two. Long time no see," she said cheerfully. "You done any homework since yesterday?"
"Um, yes actually," Blake said.
"Gimme a break, I'm still recovering from the last time I was here.."
"That's no excuse. I've seen some really good work from someone with the flu, you know," said Rory. "Anyway, take a seat? I know they're awful, but it's the best this place has." They shuffled over and took the offered chairs.

"So you figured something out...when? Last night? This morning?"
"Um..she visited me again," said Blake. "Said something I found kinda worrying, so I talked about it with Amory and.."
"There's something we think we've figured out about the powers," he nodded. "You...might not like it."

"I work for a college like a cog in a machine. I deal with a lot of things I don't like on a daily basis, and I'm just fine," said Rory.

"Okay. Let me ask you something. Uum, what did you want last Friday night?"
"What did I want? What kind of question is that?" That night, she had looked at herself disapprovingly in the mirror for a moment before being reminded by her husband that she was beautiful, and then what she wanted was rather similar to, well, last night. But it wasn't like he knew how inappropriate the question was since that required knowing the answer...she might be blushing just a little bit, though, which would suggest it.

"Er—I'll put it another way," said Amory, shaking his head in an almost I don't want to know way. "Is there something you were wishing you could do that you couldn't that day? Or last week?"

"Yeah, plenty. To be honest there were a few times I thought I'd punch someone through a wall if I could. But, you know, I didn't really want to do that past a brief urge, knowing the consequences if it was even physically possible." She thought about how that might reflect on her for a second or two. "I mean, I guess I wasn't really mad at them anyway, not specifically. I was angry about a whole broken system they were getting to represent. We're supposed to be teaching the next generation of scientists and authors and leaders and whatever else, but there's a lot we don't do that we should and we do that we shouldn't, and people like me who can see that are way too low on the food chain to fix any of it."
They looked at each other. "So..." Amory tried to sum up, "You want the power to change things, but the first thing you thought about was literal, physical power to punch someone through a wall. I mean—like, instinctively, before getting rational about it."

"I guess so. So what?"

"We think the powers have something to do with what the person getting them wants," said Blake, sounding tired of beating around the bush. "Like, they pick up on what you want, and make it where you can do that, but also tie up what you want with wanting to fight the black mist things."

"Hmm..." The first response to come to mind was to dismiss the theory, but Rory forced herself to think rationally about it. The secondary instinct of pushing away primary ones was something hard-won from many years and she wasn't about to ignore it. "Yeah...so...I got super strength because I want to punch people through walls. I got invulnerability because I want to be able to change what I want without consequences. It kinda makes sense, in a twisted sort of way." Also she got a taller, and—let's say—fuller-figured body because a part of her wanted to at least know what it felt like to look that way, but she couldn't see any reason to mention that part to a couple of students. "I can sort of see it...but it's not completely convincing."

Blake started to open his mouth to say something else. "Hold on, I'm not done. You know what, I feel different when I'm in that other form. I mean—believe it or not I do have a sense of restraint and control. You can't do a single experiment successfully, much less have a career in practical science, if you just go charging into things. But when I'm like that, I don't just feel invulnerable in the sense of not taking any physical harm, I feel invincible, like absolutely nothing can touch me, so I can do whatever I want. I jumped out of a third-story window without thinking about it and started yelling at students—well, to be fair I would've done that part anyway, they were putting themselves in serious danger just for the sake of being total idiots—and then I guess I shot my mouth off a little more than I would've on the news about not closing the campus down for a few days..."

"You think it's affecting our minds that much?" said Blake, looking extremely worried.

"I dunno. Honestly, it's more like...I want the same things I wanted before, but I want them worse and I feel like I can just take them now. Is that what it's like for you?"

"It's...I wouldn't put it in terms of taking, but yeah," he nodded, visibly thinking.

"We thought about Ning, too, trying to test the idea out," said Amory. "It seemed to match."

"Yeah, I'll get another point of data from Clark when he's done playing doctor for the day, maybe. It's a pretty interesting theory."

"It doesn't...bother you?" said Blake. "We're kinda being used, even what we want is being used against us."
"I wouldn't say 'against' exactly. I love having a way to defend myself and others from those things, you know, and taking them out's even better. Anyway, it's the price of admission, isn't it?"

As if on cue, someone burst open the door to the waiting room: A stranger, a dark-haired fox-girl just slightly taller than Rory was just now with red eyes and a panicked expression. Rory caught a brief flash of recognition from Amory and only from him. "There's two of those gryphon things outside!" she said, "They almost dove into the hospital!"

Everyone sitting down in the room stood up. "Where's your other body?" Amory asked.

"Distracting them! Come on, you need to get away!"

Rory had already changed form by this point. "I have a better idea," she said, coming up to the girl who was apparently one of two bodies. "How about I help you take 'em out?"

She stared at Rory for a second, kind of wide-eyed, apparently surprised at seeing her change. "Um—okay! We need to hurry then. Follow me!"

She whirled around, though she heard the newcomer already starting down the hall. "You two keep an eye on Clark. In there." She pointed.
Blake said, "Are you sure you can—"

"Yes! You just better keep my husband safe and secret. Bring him some coffee or something soon." And then she ran after the small stranger, catching up almost instantly.

"This exit?"

"Yhh-yes!" Poor girl was running out of breath already? Rory swept her up in her arms and then continued her own faster, effort-boosted pace, disregarding the small "Eep" of surprise at the gesture. In a matter of seconds they were outside.

---

Gerald saw more black mist forming on the street outside his store. He sighed; well, at least they'd waited until after lunch this time. Then he stood up and quickly got to work: Speak the phrase, switch the sign around to closed and lock the door, run around to the back exit as quickly as possible. In a moment Ning was running out from an alley and saw someone being knocked away by a dark blur, past someone they'd stood in front of to protect. If only she'd been a little faster...!

Before she even processed what she was seeing, Ning struck it with a bolt of lightning from her hands. The feeling of being overcharged, out of control, always came with doing this; it had been a perpetual feeling at first, and it was always a terrifying one. She couldn't fight with people around, even allies. But it looked like she was alone for this one anyway, at least to begin with.

It was something like a gigantic octopus, a towering bulb in the middle from which flowed an endless writing mass of tentacles. One of those had just knocked a person aside, but now Ning stood in the way of any more of that, her swords appearing in her hands. While the thing turned itself toward her, one giant green-glowing eye facing her, her ears picked up the protected person running back, the one who'd been knocked out insisting they were okay and behing helped up...she allowed herself a small sigh of relief. Of course, this one had a huge mouth with razor-teeth too, mostly obscured by the tentacles but forming the bottom of its main bulb-like body.

Then it was time to move. It lashed out with its tentacles, one after another, and she met it with her blades, punishing each strike with a sharp slash, beginning a dance that started slow and steadily picked up tempo. Before long all of its attention was on her, its limbs striking one after another, two at a time, three—jump over the third—four. Only a little mist bled out with each strike, and she had the distinct impression that she was slashing at something unusually tough. She might be hurting it some, but at this rate it was going to outlast her awful stamina before taking any significant injuries.

Ning decided to try something new, pumping electricity through her hands into the blades. It conducted right into the thing's tentacle on the next strike, sending it convulsing back for a second. That was good—another few counters like that, and its assault began to slow slightly. But almost as soon as she started to try and think of how to take advantage of this, it abruptly changed its tactic, drawing the tentacles back, flopping over so its bulb-head was on the side, and making a sudden motion with all of its limbs on the ground at once, propelling itself sideways at her mouth-first. She got a really good look at its circle of teeth from a couple of inches away, an image that stayed with her even as she landed safely just past its head, shaking slightly from the near-miss.

Deep breath. Turn around, get ready for more. Ning held up the longer sword, straight into the air, and by instinct did something she hadn't even thought of: Called lightning down from the sky, right at the tip of the blade. The details of the science had long since fled her head, but she knew there was supposed to be static in the clouds, lots of static, which ultimately became the bolts of electricity and plasma that came down from above in a storm. What she had just done was call some of that into her own body. And partially to her surprise, it didn't kill her. It didn't even hurt or make her convulse or go numb. It felt great. Like she'd just had a long nap after eating a gigantic meal. Her energy was all back, and the excess electricity sparked around the blade, ready to be used.

With her free hand (the short blade gone for a second), she waved forward, directing a bolt almost as strong as the one that had struck her at the giant tentacled beast, right at its head. It made a deep rumbling roar in pain, its entire body-bulb hissing with mist bleeding off of it. Then it countered with another series of tentacle strikes, and Ning began the dance from before anew. This time started as fast as the previous one had ended, and pumping electricity through each of her counters and blocks didn't even seem to slow it down. It was like it had been playing around before, but now it was serious. Just as well; she felt a little like she'd just gotten serious herself.

When it started to slow down the attack, she paid close attention, saw it sticking about half of its tentacles on the ground and beginning to lean its body back for another attempt at swallowing her whole. So she leapt into the air just when it was starting to move, and threw the shortsword straight down at the peak of the jump, piercing it right in the middle of its big ugly green eye. It made another roar, this one even louder than the first, and quickly stood up again, lashing out at her with another series of attacks.

Another dance, this one manic and out of control. The jolt of energy from the lightning strike was wearing off quickly, much more quickly than she'd had any idea it would. In a way, it started to make sense: She'd been hemorrhaging energy between all of the dodging around and pushing it through her blades into the beast, and now trying to shock its tentacles again felt like too great of a risk for simply running out. But it was starting to get faster than it had been before, stretching the limits of her reflexes; it was only a matter of time before it got lucky and/or she made a mistake. Well, surely Light or somone she'd met in the last couple of days would be here soon, and it wouldn't have to be entirely up to her to take this monstrosity down. She just needed to hold out a few more seconds, dance another measure or three...

---

Gemma wasn't sure how to feel about being picked up by the other woman. On one hand, it was sort of embarrassing and the fact that she'd decided it was necessary suggested that she thought Minus specifically must be pretty weak to not be able to run all the way out of the hospital quickly. On the other, it let her save her focus and energy for Plus, where it was really needed. After all, she was trying desperately to keep the attention of the two impossible flying lion-clawed eagle-beaked-with-somehow-giant-teeth-inside, scale-tailed monstrosities enough for them to not go crashing straight into the hospital and hurting who knew how many people on the way to probably attacking Amory too.

One of them dove at her, and the other prepared to jump toward the hospital. She had to jump and roll out of the way of the dive and then throw an ice spike at the other one's eye before it got too ready for lunging forward. Her other body's ears and eyes were picking up people running and yelling and getting away from the entrance, that was...probably good, right? They were getting close to the exit, just a little longer now.

The big woman said, "Hey, so, you got any weapons? It'd help if I can borrow one. I'm invincible and super-strong but that doesn't hurt those things much without some help."

"Uh—here," Minus produced a dagger made from their own shadows, offering it. "I have four, so you can take two in a minute if you want."

"Once we get outside," she said.

Outside, the ice-spiked one was angry now and charged at her. She jumped, flipped over on top of it and landed an electric-dagger in its back, leapt off again before it could shake her off. The other one leapt at that one, swiping where she'd just been and clumsily hitting its twin in the side. By the time she turned around the one her dagger was in was rolling right at the hospital entrance, and crashed right through in a shower of glass. Definitely a good thing that part was evacuated.

"So, my name's Rory. You call yourself anything?"
"Uh—Gemma. I'm, there's two of me," she attempted to explain. "This is Minus, the one outside is Plus."
"Mhm, got it. Whoa!" They were close enough for the gryphon-thing getting rolled inside to be quite loud. Rory turned just one more corner and there they were, with the thing screeching and spreading its wings while it stood up.

The tall woman took a second to set Minus down, pat her gently just once on the head, and then ran right at the beast, punching it right in the side. "Sorry, but the doctor is out!" she yelled, the punch punctuating the the last word; it rocketed straight back out the way it came. Gemma was starting to feel like she understood why Rory was so strong..well, sort of. There was a trick, just like bending the light or moving electricity around, that was making her stronger for the moment of that punch. A little longer and she would understand it well enough to apply it.

Plus was busy jumping back and back again from a long series of impossibly fast swipes from the one still outside. Minus took a second to make a thin, narrow bridge of shadow over all of the broken glass before starting to run outside over it after Rory. Since the one that had been inside was a little stunned, busy getting itself up, the tall woman took a moment to come drop-kick the one attacking Plus right in the tooth-filled beak, making a loud crack as its head partially detached from its body from the blow.

That body of Gemma's took advantage of the reprieve to stop and pant for a second. She quietly created and held up a light-dagger, hilt first. "Scalpel," Rory said on cue with it appearing, and gently took it. "Thanks."

By now, Minus was outside and the one that had been punched out of the hospital was back up, flapping its wings in preparation to take to the air. If it got up there, it would be pretty difficult to even reach, much less stop...she made the slightly insane decision to make both of Minus's weapons and jump on its back, stabbing both in there to use as handholds, just as it took off. It wasn't happy about that, making another ear-splitting screech from less than a foot away from her as it started a wild twirling, corkscrewing path through the air in an effort to get her off.

Minus's mouth was closed, but Plus was quietly muttering "No no no no no no" the entire time, having to experience this at the same time as staring up in shock to see it. Rory was using the borrowed dagger to repeatedly stab and slice at the one still on the ground, based on what she was hearing. Eventually the thing made a mistake and lost control, spiraling right at the ground. It looked like it was still trying to put Minus below it so she'd get either hurt by the momentum of the fall or crushed under it, neither of which was a good option.

Plus tried Rory's trick to make herself a little stronger. Minus dropped as she was seen by herself from the ground to be pretty close to the other body, and Plus jumped, making to catch her in midair. This was successful, and they landed on the concrete below, tumbling around each other in a long roll that hurt, but was vastly superior to landing with all of that momentum at once and/or getting crushed by a gryphon.

She untangled herself quickly and stood back up to find that the one she'd been riding had somehow crashed right into the other one..well, maybe Rory had just arranged it that way. That one's wings looked torn to shreds, and the tall woman leapt at the new one while it was still trying to recover from the fall to probably do the same thing to it.

Both of Gemma's bodies made a run for the wing-torn one, seeing it getting ready to strike Rory while her back was turned. Did she think that wouldn't happen? Was she just that reckless, or too caught up in the moment to think about it? Well, it didn't matter; Gemma got there first. Applying Rory's trick to Minus didn't make her feel any stronger at all, but when she tried making a shadow wall to repel the strike it came out much more easily and a bit sturdier than usual, repelling the blow without quite shattering. By then she'd reached the thing, and Plus began throwing more icicles at it while Minus went around to the other side, picking up stray pieces of broken concrete from the road and throwing those at it too.

There was another loud screeching, and Rory went flying clear over the gryphon Gemma was attacking. "Ack!" Plus went to try and catch her, but was clearly too far back already. Rory spun around in the air and stuck the landing, not even pausing before charging right at the nearest mist-monster and shoving it forward, crashing it into the other one. So there was more to her trick than just being stronger, she was sort of...making her body feel less of the impact, too. Gemma really just hoped she wouldn't need to imitate that, but at least she understood how now.

Seeing Plus nearby, she said, "Hey, can I borrow another of those? I lost the old one in that thing's eye."
"Um—" "—here," Gemma said, each of her bodies approaching to offer a weapon.

"That's a cool twin speech thing, did you practice to do it?" She took them, one to each hand.
"No, it just sort of—" "—happens."

"Like everything else, huh."

"Aah!" The two bodies yelled at the same time and scattered, each one jumping out of the way of another sudden swipe from one of the beasts. They chased both of her down, and Plus didn't find much room to counterattack. Minus managed to block a strike with another strengthened shadow-wall, and then quickly followed it up by throwing her remaining dagger at it. This one had a big hole where its right eye should be, so it was the one Rory had been hitting most recently. The other one seemed less injured, faster, which was bad news since Plus had been fighting from the start and felt much more exhausted as a result. The good news was that Rory apparently picked up on that, and chased it down before grabbing it by the tail and slamming it all the way over her head into the concrete on the other side.

She was doubled over, hands on knees, before she knew what was happening. "Hhh..hh, thanks,"
"Dropped the light one," Rory reported, brandishing the dagger still in her hand and jumping at the thing's body while it was still stunned to start stabbing and slashing it again, drawing a near-continuous stream of black mist.

Minus was busy during this, making walls of concrete and shadow alternately to keep her opponent from attacking and occasionally throwing more shadow-made daggers at it, some of which got deflected but a few hit. Eventually she settled on making the thing's own shadow into a spike straight through its body, and with a particularly hard push at it and an emphatic "Mnghf!" from Minus's mouth she managed it, pinning the thing briefly in place. It skittered around, writhing and screeching and spewing mist from the hole through it, while she took several steps backward, still holding up both of her hands to maintain the shadow impalement for as long as she could.

Plus stood fully up again, to see that Rory was now slashing at a headless monster. She'd lost track; was this the one whose head had come partially off before? Well, it didn't really matter; to her eyes this one looked to be on the ropes, ready to die out. She took a couple of steps forward, throwing a series of ice spikes through its neck-hole, and then hoped she remembered correctly that frozen water still conducted electricity, pumping as much as she could through her hands at it. Whether she was right about the physics or not, the electricity arced through the inside of the beast, making it hiss as it dissolved and dissipated into haze.

A light-dagger was carefully tossed Rory's way; Plus was not feeling up to running the relatively short distance to where Minus was about to cease having her opponent pinned. She caught it, briefly nodded, started running toward it. Minus took several steps away as the shadow-spike shattered, and quickly raised a small wall of concrete which the enraged gryphon simply charged right through. Its body slammed straight into her before she could get entirely out of the way.

"AAAAAAAGH!" There was no separating out the pain of that impact, nor the subsequent one from hitting the ground rolling. One of Gemma's bodies knelt over, holding her sides, which was where the other one was hurting the most. There might have been some cracking or crunching sounds, she wasn't sure. The pain was overloading her ability to make sense of anything. There were some sounds of ripping and crashing which were probably Rory quickly taking apart the remaining Gryphon. Then it gave out a weak cry, likely finally getting destroyed.

"Hey, are you conscious there?"

Minus managed some choking gasps. Plus's voice still seemed to work, so she yelled over, "Yes!"

Rory looked back at the source of the voice, and forward agian. She was kneeling over Minus, still lying on the ground where the rolling had stopped. "Can you move? What hurts?"

"Everything! I-I don't know!" That was out of order, a certain part of Gemma's mind felt the need to inform her. Well, it was better than only Minus continuing to yell in pain—which, in fact, she was attempting to shout over.

"You can do better than that. Your arms and head look okay to me. Is it the side? Your torso?"
"Yes! I think it broke something! I-I-I heard something crack!" She also appeared to be crying, twice. Plus sniffed and attempted to wipe her face off.

"Not great, but you're breathing. Look—do you know what happens if you merge back into one? Which of you's the original?"

"I don't know! I'm scared!" It didn't feel like she had enough breath to articulate; Minus was in enough pain to maybe get knocked out, but Plus being relatively uninjured was somehow keeping her "whole" self conscious. If those injuries jumped into just one body, exhausted as well, then she might entirely faint and that might be it. Wasn't shock from pain capable of killing people? She wasn't really answering the one question she did know the answer to, was she?

"O-kay. You try and hold it together, I'm gonna pick you up and we're gonna have to see if coffee is good enough, or we need some caffeine overdose."
"Wh—" Plus gasped and winced; even as gently as Rory was picking up her other body it hurt. "What?" she said weakly, not enough to easily be heard that far away.
She answered anyway, while starting to run back into the building as quickly as she could. "My husband's a miracle worker. We'll have you good as new, or pretty close at least, in just a couple minutes. Hopefully."

The uninjured body slowly, shakily, stood up and began to walk toward the hospital entrance. She had on some boots, so it was just a matter of going around the bigger pieces of glass. She tried to focus on that and block out all of the constant pain signals from the other body, tried not to think about what, if anything, it would mean for that body to die and this one to stay alive. Gemma really wasn't the kind of person to believe in miracles, but it looked like she would need to hope for one just now...

Battle Vixens! - 16

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Episode 16: The Dawn

"Yo, Emma! You alive in there?"

She sat upright, confused. It should probably be past sunset now, so...why was there light coming in the window. "Um, y-yeah I'm okay!" she called half-automatically, realizing her roommate must have showed up while she was asleep. Clock clock clock...oh, it was..HOW late in the morning?! She'd been asleep for—for no less than ten hours, at least, not that she could remember what time it was she'd lain down exactly but it had to be at least that long ago.

Her roommate was peeking her head in through the cracked-open door. "Great. Sorry if I woke you up or whatever." And then the head was gone.

"Um, I just, had a late night last night." She winced a little at the lie, but tried to remember she needed to be able to do that now. Preferably without giving it away to anyone who was looking.
"Yeah? You have a nice, long date with that guy you like, uhhh....wha's his name again?"

"No!" She blushed furiously enough to hear at the suggestion. "I..I-I still haven't talked to him." Sleeping so long without having supper first, Emma was now starving. She fumbled for her glasses.

"Gurrrl. You gotta get your act together! No's a pretty funny name, but if I wanted him we'd-a been in his backseat by now!"

"No's..what?" She had to mentally stumble her way all the way through the pun before toppling over on what she'd followed it up with. "Beryl!!!"
"I'm just lookin' out for ya! If you don't act fast someone else's gonna get to him first!" Okay, that one stung. She winced in real pain from it. "You hungry, or just ate?"
"Um, I'm p-pretty hungry, yeah."

"I'll make somethin' for ya then. I picked up a new book, you know.

Beryl was a senior in culinary arts. She was already lined up to be a chef at some world-class restaurant as soon as graduation. And she was tall, gorgeous, blond-haired, loud, confident—how Emma had wound up paired with someone like that, and a nice one to boot, she would never understand. She had family nearby and stayed with them about as often as she did at the apartment. She seemed really busy in general anyway, so frequently she was out for days at a time and just came in to crash for the night, cook some food for the day, and head off yet again. And she really liked trying new recipes out on Emma, which was...admittedly nice, they were usually good and she didn't have to pay for the ingredients as long as she cleaned up the kitchen and avoided breaking too many plates along the way.

She stepped out of the shower to the smell of food almost done. "Yo! There's six donuts missing from five days. What, you eatin' for two now?"

"Um..I just, since school was cancelled, and, a midnight snack," she waffled ineffectually, walking into the kitchen.

"HAhahah! I'm just messin' with you again! But you should find some better variety than donuts every day, breaks the heart of a foodie like me to see that. Seriously, you try talking to the mirror like I said?"

"Yes..." And then some. "I, um..it sorta worked. But then the whole, and, I was gonna Tuesday but there was that attack..."

"Well, keep it up! And really, what was his name?"

In between bites: "A-amory."

Her roommate had a confused look for a moment, looking around the room as if whatever she was trying to remember would pop out of the walls or something. "Ooh yeeaah! He was on the news! One of those, uh, weird things attacked him right?"
"Y-yeah."
"Well, I bet you feel even worse not talking to him yet, right? I mean, that mighta been your last chance! You never know."
"I-I know. I already yelled at myself about it." Literally.
"Really?" Beryl grinned. "Wish I coulda been there to hear that. Your volume don't go over one and a half, maybe two whenever I'm around. How is it?"

How is what? Oh, right. Food. "Um, it's good...a little spicy..."

"Yeah, I know. It's a Cajun book, all like that. I made some substitutions to not burn your poor li'l tongue off. You need that for other things, hmm?"

Emma choked, coughed for a moment or so—not helped by the spicy food—and eventually forced some orange juice down before her roommate could get up and attempt a Heimlich maneuver. It took her a second to get to where she could speak again, and she immediately tried for a ten: "BERYYYYYYYL!" This had the effect of the named person laughing so hard she nearly collapsed onto the table, pounding it with a fist a couple of times.

"Sorry, sorry. You should really be worried, though, right? I mean, Amory got his life saved by some cute girls, hmm? Maybe one of them gave him a number?"
Part of her said, I wish. Aloud, it was more like, "Th-they didn't talk to him all that long. Um, and..some of them are boys anyway. Like, half."
"Yeeeah...it's kinda easy to forget that, though, isn't it? I bet, even for them." She was quiet for a second, and then hit the table again, making all the dishes and silverware rattle. "Man, it's too bad they closed everything down for the week. You can't even chase him if you wanted to, right? I mean, it's not like you know where he lives or anything, eh?"
"Uhhhhmm..." Well, some things were going to slip past, it was just inevitable.

"Oooh my goooooooosh, stalker alert~! How'd you find out?"
"He uh, well, the um. It's, I saw his car coming into the garage, when I went out yesterday." Technically true, avoiding awkward facts. "S-so, I just, looked. I thought about, talking to him but he was, he didn't look so good after the attack..."

"Well, you could totally make a move now, right? Just knock on his door and offer to come right in?"
"He has a roommate...so, what if he answers instead?"
"Tell him you're looking for the other guy! That's not complicated!" True, maybe, but her real situation was very complicated.

Beryl changed subjects abruptly, deciding to ask Emma how her classes were going and everything else like that. She made several more inquiries about the meal, nodding earnestly at all the feedback while eating her own portion of it. Eventually, breakfast was over and Emma was full again.

Her roommate stood up, pushing herself off the table hard enough to nearly tip it over. "Okay, I'm glad you liked it. I gotta jet, y'know, there's hungry people to feed with all a' this that's goin' on." She never seemed to go into detail about it, maybe some form of modesty or something, but Emma got the impression her roommate worked at soup kitchens or other places similar to that. It was always like that—Emma had to guess based on context and vague hints thrown into the conversation what her roommate was doing, planning, or thinking, but she always asked direct questions of Emma which she found nearly impossible to avoid answering. In some ways it bothered her, but in others it was...kind of nice.
"Oh, okay. Um, see you later," said Emma.
"Yeah. And you—" She stopped to put her hand on Emma's chin and turn her face upward, giving her an uncharacteristically intense look. "You go after him, girl. Take what you want. Don't let anything or anyone stop ya." The look was gone as soon as it had appeared, flashing instantly to a bright, toothy smile. "Bye~!"

The door slammed loudly a second or two later, and then a key turned in the lock. Emma finally noticed that the kitchen looked like a hurricane had been through it. The food was delicious, but it was always her job to clean up—a fair enough trade. It was just too bad Beryl apparently needed nearly ever cooking utensil in the apartment to make whatever it was, every single time. She stood up, sighing to herself, and started toward the sink. Then she stopped, looked around, walked out of the kitchen and up to the apartment door, putting an ear to it. Nobody out there; Beryl was already gone. She nodded to herself, resolving to listen carefully just in case, and spoke her phrase, splitting into two. This, too, would be easier with a teammate. Being generally coordinated was a solid idea, too.

After that, Gemma decided to go check on things. Plus went over to the hallway Amory lived on, and listened carefully to what was going on inside—not to eavesdrop, just to be sure he was safe! Minus started another trip out to the town, just in case someone new showed up. After waiting a little while, she heard footsteps in one place and someone getting out of bed in another. Two people, two roommates, so...he was inside, and he was fine! Good. That was enough for her to give up and head back to her apartment, sitting down to concentrate on the other body for now.

She wasn't really sure what she was looking for, or why she had chosen to take the body that couldn't look normal on its own to go around town. There was almost nobody there. No monsters, no fox-girls. Except...she eventually saw someone. A big, kinda gaunt looking guy sitting on a bench. She wasn't sure what, but...something seemed suspicious about him. Or, interesting, maybe? It was hard to say what instinct exactly drove her to hide in the bushes nearby, but she acted that instinct out anyway.

After a while, he sighed, sounding annoyed. He said something she didn't exactly understand...but realized after a second or two must be one of those phrases, just like hers. And in fact, he started to change, a faint, pale blue glow surrounding him.

He shrank down just slightly, the hoodie pulling down off of his head to show his hair growing a little bit longer and wilder. It pulled closer against his body around the waist, gaining a small belt there. His dark pants split at the thighs, the lower parts turning to cloth and crawling down a bit, showing off soft, smooth skin and tightening against slender legs. His body actually filled outward a bit, his hips pushing out andbutt growing bigger quite visibly through the short jean-shorts. Also, he clearly changed sex as those shorts pulled tighter.

Her ears spiked up, gaining soft black fur with tufts of white on the inside. The glow on her eyes brightened to a continual fire while it faded from the rest of her, her face becoming small and pretty. The hood converted into a blue scarf wrapped around her neck while her chest pushed forward, rapidly growing into a rather generous bust. Her shoes grew upward, turning into boots reaching nearly to the knees, with a white fur trim. Finally, a long dark tail spilled out from her back, the tip turning white as it reached its full length and thickness.

All that Emma could think for a moment was, why do even the boys get to have better bodies than me? The big fox-girl put her hand up, some fire swirling around her sleeve and gathering into a flame floating just above her gloved hand, the same pale blue as her glowing eyes. She stared into it almost pensively for a long moment.

Minus stared at the fire too, trying to understand how she was doing it—the same way she had learned the light, and the electric stuff before. But it wasn't working; there was something just not quite as truth-revealing about the way this fire was being made. She couldn't exactly make sense of it, but knew, felt sure, it wasn't just because only one of her bodies was seeing it, or anything like that. No, it was something about how this boy-turned-girl was doing it that was preventing her from making sense of it.

"Y'know..." Minus's ears perked up; the strange girl was talking. Her voice was deep, mature, a little...sad. "I can feel th' heat in the air. I can tell you're over there. Ya want me to just throw this at that bush," she pointed at the fire with the hand that it wasn't floating over, "or ya gonna come out?"

"Um—!" Gemma was immediately terrified. But she remembered that her 'real' body was safe at home, so if this turned into an attack then Minus could always just vanish. So she stood up, and came around into view. "...Hi?"

"Thanks." She closed her hand and the fire went out. "Ain't nice to stalk people, y'know."

"I wasn't—! I-I mean, I just saw you, sitting on the bench, a-and I wasn't really sure what you were doing..." she said nervously.

"Yeah. You ain't one a' Light's friends, are ya?"

"...No." Minus wore a sour expression, her ears folded back. Already getting tired of this Light business. What was so special about her, anyway?
"Pshh, too bad. A' course my first job ain't easy." She shook her head. "Ah well, I'm s'posed ta meet and greet whoever I see anyway. C'mon, you wanna talk?" She made a beckoning motion.

"Err.." Remember, real body elsewhere. This is safe, it's easy to disappear. Minus walked up and sat on the bench, as far away from the bigger girl as physically possible.

"Name's Dawn." She reached over, and Minus took the hand.

"Mm—uh—Gemma." Even through the glove, it felt like she was shaking a hand made of ice; she involuntarily pulled her hand back as soon as Dawn let go. "Yeah, I know, sorry. I pull the heat outta whatever I touch like this; I can do more if I want but it don't go below a three or four, y'know."

Minus nodded; this she felt she understood. Gemma was already beginning to understand the 'trick' behind this power, and was sure she'd be able to figure it out with a little practice, later. "Um, how did you, do the..fire earlier?"

"You wanna know how I can do that? It's my girlfriend's power. I killed her."

She gasped, and drew back, nearly squeezing herself into her corner of the bench.

"What, I ain't gonna attack you. I'm just sayin', you better not to me either. It's all I got left." She panicked slightly less, but remained tense. "One a' those things ate her. Y'know they can do that, right? Nobody they've eaten ever woke up. She was dyin' anyway, that thing tore her arm off. She wouldn't a' made it to the hospital, never mind wakin' up."

Both of Gemma's bodies were shaking. Not from cold. "Sorry. I guess, you ain't done much fighting yet," said Dawn quietly. "Trust me, don't. It ain't worth it if you got a life ahead of ya. Anyway, I had to do it. She made me promise. Didn't want the gift ta go to waste, was sure it would if she died without someone killin' her. She trusted me, I dunno why."

"But, I think I have to," Minus said quietly. "There's someone...I have to protect."
"Yeah?" Dawn looked her in the face, fixing a stare for a long moment. "Be careful with that. Don't take anyone's life, just 'cause you can. Just 'cause it's even easier now than it was before. You kill someone, you can't ever take it back." And she looked away.

"Um..."

"I dunno why I'm sayin' all this. You just got that look about you, like you're gonna do somethin' you regret. It doesn't matter if I say—I'm workin' with the cops, I confessed already.

"My girl, her dad was a real bad guy. He was hurting her, you understand? Not just her, lots a' people. Everyone he touched. When I woke up and I could do this..." She held her hand up, and a small pile of ice appeared in it from the air. "The first thing I thought about was him. I went to his place, put my hands on him..." She looked away again, staring straight forward at something Gemma couldn't see or even begin to understand. Her hands made fists, the one with the ice in it crushing it to powder effortlessly. "It was just like fallin' asleep, an' not ever wakin' up. Too good for a scumbag like him. I'll regret it as long as I live, so I'm glad that prolly won't be too long. My girl, she...helped me hide it. Burned the place down." Her other hand was held up, with a small fire over it. "Made me promise lots a' things after that. Then.." Closing that hand, the fire went out again.

"Anyway, you got someone you need to hurt, go hurt them. This is your best chance, with the world upside down nobody's gonna care that much even if they do notice."

"Um.." Was Dawn seriously advising her to go attack someone? "Didn't you just say..?"
"Yeah. Don't kill them. I ain't sayin' you should attack people on the street for whatever reason. But if you're gonna be stupid, limit how stupid you're gonna be."

"Okay." Gemma felt like she was supposed to say something more dramatic than that at a time like this. "...I promise."
"Oh yeah, be careful with promises too. Be real careful if you mean 'em. Anyway." Dawn pushed herself up off of the bench, standing up. "I gotta go run around, look for some people. Got nothin' but luck to go on, an' this body holds up better'n the real one, y'know."

"Alright. Um, I'll, see you later I guess?" Minus also stood up, a little less violently.

"Yeah, I guess we should hope so." And then started running off.

Gemma recalled her other body, speaking the phrase twice. It was time to see if she could figure out this new trick. Plus was able to make her hands cold enough to slowly freeze water around it by submerging a hand, and Minus could do the opposite, as expected, getting it to boil pretty fast. It didn't seem all that useful, except that when she was doing it her hands didn't seem to be hurt by the cold or heat respectively. As a test, she tried picking up some ice from the freezer with Plus, concentrating just a little on the power, and indeed the cold against her hand didn't bother her at all. Feeling a little braver, she tried turning on the stove briefly and putting Minus's hand there while making it 'warm'. This was fine, too. Slowly turning up the temperature, it took quite a while for it to feel unusually warm, much less painful as it obviously should be. One more brief test had her feel the ice with Minus's hand pretty acutely (as the ice rapidly melted), and likewise a barely-warm eye with the cold hand. So it only went one way with each.

So, this was a little hard to use as an attack, but if something tried to use fire or..like a cold, anti-fire attack thing, she could defend herself or somebody else like this. Did it come with a new pair of knives? Not exactly. Plus was, with some concentration, able to make a spike of ice appear in her hand. It felt far more natural to throw this than anything else, though obviously she wasn't going to do that in the apartment. Minus didn't seem to be able to do much of anything, but at least her 'defensive' ability seemed much more likely to be useful, with fireballs feeling like a far more natural threat to encounter than the opposite.

Emma changed back to one person to have lunch. Sleeping so long last night suggested that being two people was really taking more out of her than it felt like it was, so skipping meals was an especially bad idea now. After that, she figured she'd had enough "fun" for a while, and now was probably a good time to check on Amory again. Sure enough, when Plus quietly crept up to the corner by the hallway, she heard the door opening from the inside and quickly ducked out of sight, hearing both occupants leave.

"Back to the same hospital, huh?" Amory said.

The other guy: "Yeah, that's just where she said they were. Sooo, that's where we're going. Your car, my car?"

"You drive, I'm still sleepy. Anyway, don't want you to get out of practice."

Well...she knew where they were going, which was good, but she didn't know what his roommate's car looked like. That might be important to know later. And she was not going running into town again. So Plus followed just long enough to get a look at it before making a run for her own car and changing back to Emma just in case someone saw her driving around. This was all kind of insane, but...well, he needed to be protected. He might be attacked at any time! Just keep telling herself that...