Battle Vixens! - 10

 First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

Episode 10: Brief Respite

The whole campus had been evacuated, of course. Rory carried the white-haired girl in both her arms, a little more carefully than swinging a monster over her shoulder, and made her way back toward the science building. The graduate lounge had some cushy couches that would probably be nice to lie down on. Clark was already at work on the shallow cut on her arm, even though it already didn't hurt and it wasn't even deep enough to draw any blood. Her ears twitched around, picking up distant car noises.

"News crew, I think," said her husband. "Probably had another helicopter pointed at us."
"Ffffyeah. I didn't really think about the whole city-wide attention thing. Wha'dyou think we should do?"

"We might as well tell them the truth, right? We're professors here, we acted out of concern for our students. We haven't been outside in these forms at all until now."

"I guess so. And we have no idea who this person is," she nodded to the girl in her arms. "Just that she introduced herself as Light."

"Do we really have no idea who she is?" said Clark. "To be at the quad before us, she had to be on campus, walking around or maybe in one of the closer classrooms. To show up around town a couple of times before that, she's probably someone living in this town. So, either another member of the faculty or a student, probably..."
"Look, this crazy girl's risked her life to keep people safe at least twice now. So I say, if she wants to remain anonymous let's not go out of our way to mess that up."

"I guess you're right." Clark turned to one side. "...Company."

Another fox-girl, even shorter than Clark, was running up toward them. She had purple hair and was carrying a blade in each of her hands. They stopped politely to let her come closer. "Hi," said Clark with a friendly wave.

"Are they still here?" she said, looking around. "The...black things?"
"I'd pick different words, maybe," Rory said. "Anyway, we got them."

She looked pretty frustrated with this news. "Grrrrrh."

"Sorry?" Clark: Ever the diplomatic one. "I mean, they were endangering our students, so.."
"Wait!" She noticed Light for apparently the first time. "Where are you taking her?" she demanded, pointing with the shorter weapon.

"Oh, she fainted after helping us fight those things. So, somewhere to rest," said Rory. "You a friend?"
"Um..yes." The girl let go of her swords and they each disappeared in a small shower of electric sparks; she seemed to have expected a fight for a minute there.

"I'm..Ning." Another fake name, which seemed to fit with being Light's friend.

"Rory Quinn here. That's my husband, Clark."

She nodded, and then looked around nervously. "Look, it'd be...really bad if the police showed up with her here," she said. "They, think she did something or had something to do with something but she didn't, and it's my fault they think that. And I can't really..."

"Well, can you carry her fast enough to get away from all the news crews?" said Rory. The small girl seemed uncertain. "We'll be outside the door, and whenever she wakes up, you can tell her what happened and then you two can just leave. She's pretty good at disappearing, right?" Ning nodded.
"We weren't planning on saying a lot about her anyway," her husband added. "Just that she was a huge help, and she introduced herself as Light. That doesn't reveal too much, does it?"
"I...I guess not."

---

As much as he had wanted to help, to do something, Amory knew full well that he couldn't. Not only would he be virtually no use against the monsters that showed up on campus, but all the other students were evacuating. It would be suspicious if he hung around, and even more suspicious if he did something to help Light fight or get away. He was Blake's roommate; there would be an obvious connection there. He just had to hope she survived the fight and that he'd be able to do something to help her afterward.

It was tense for a minute there—he really thought she was going to get killed. But some others he hadn't seen or heard of before saved her. And then they went on to introduce themselves on the news, standing around in the science building. Dr. Quinn herself, huh? Why her, he thought; wasn't she terrifying enough when mad without the ability to turn into someone two feet taller who could punch through concrete better than a wrecking ball?

Even though there was clearly footage of Light being unconscious and Dr. Quinn carrying her into the building, and someone else with purple hair (Ning, he guessed) running up to them in the middle of that, they claimed the two had disappeared shortly after they got inside. Obviously the first guess was that they were hiding in one of the science building rooms, but a full search by some particularly zealous newsfolk of at least the places that weren't locked and/or clearly marked as hazardous turned up nothing. Amory felt certain that those two had decided to help out that little disappearing act, but gave themselves plausible deniability.

But now Light hadn't shown up back at the apartment, which meant the two of them were someplace else. Maybe Ning's place, whoever she was and wherever that was. Not even seeing her at this point made him feel even a bit more useless than he already had been for this entire ordeal. But what was just some college student supposed to do anyway, without superpowers like Light? It didn't seem like he could do much of anything at all, without some kind of powers of his own...

It brought his mind to the woman Light had said seemed to give everyone their powers. How had she decided who got powers and who didn't? Given what happened the day after the powers first appeared, it was definitely not based on who would be the most responsible or upstanding users of them. Was it some kind of compatibility thing? Was it random? It did seem to be arranged so that at least a few of them were near just about anywhere there were people, which if she really meant to help humanity defend themselves against the mist monsters seemed to be an intentional strategy.

But then, why were they killing each other? That was also something that happened worldwide, not just for a few particular crazy people getting powers; it was almost like something drove them to attack each other, at least at first. He knew for a fact that Ning's first reaction to meeting Light had been an attack, although she hadn't exactly divulged any details such as why. On top of that, the killing hadn't stopped, even after the mist monsters started showing up. Someone had snuck into a very well-guarded hospital in Japan and murdered the poor girl in a coma from being eaten by a giant monster; nobody was ever going to find out who she'd really been now. And why?

Officer Rowan Shepherd had shot down a girl with water powers, and gained the ability to turn into someone with water powers. It clicked for him: There was an inherit-by-killing aspect to these powers, which almost certainly was mainly intended to work for fox-girls killing other fox-girls. If that woman could make them work any old way she wanted, and if the one thing she said she wanted was for the people with those powers to not be boring, then apparently she considered all this death and murder to be entertaining. Not at all the kind of person you'd want to be in charge of your planet's only defense against extradimensional invaders—or whatever those things were. But for whatever reason, she was all they had.

Amory sighed to himself. What he wouldn't give to be a little more help in this situation. But there was only one person who could, in theory, make him more helpful, and ignoring the fact that there was no known way to get in touch with her, she didn't really seem like a particularly nice person. Oh, sure, he could go out and try to kill someone with superpowers, because that was totally a smart idea. No, he'd just have to accept the facts and support his roommate any way he could. On that note, he took out his phone and sent a text that anyone listening in on would see as perfectly normal in this situation: "are you OK?"

---

Light had tried hiding in the bathroom and turning back for a moment, and had just felt more sore, more exhausted, more awful in general as Blake. He'd really messed himself up with all the running and jumping around and sword-swinging the last few days, and wasn't sure he could even walk through his building to his apartment without needing to take a break or collapsing at some point. So it was back to fox-girl mode, where at least the sunlight through the window and the light in the room could make her feel a little better.

"I'm sorry I was no help all over again," said Gerald.

"It's not your fault. If something showed up in the middle of town and you went after it first, it'd take me forever to get there. Anyway, you did help a bit. Aannd, I guess you ran out on work to do this, huh?"

He nodded. "I close the shop early a lot. I'm an old man, nobody will really find that suspicious."
"Ahh..I just meant, I'm sorry you had to do that."

"You shouldn't apologize for inconveniencing someone else when you were the one risking your life," he said.

"Hmmn." She leaned back, turning her head up toward the ceiling with her eyes closed.

"There's another good reason for us to try and stay anonymous," she said. "Dr. Quinn...her husband, they've put themselves in more danger than they know. Wish I could've warned them."
"What do you mean? They haven't even been outside in those forms before now, so the police have no reason to suspect them..."

"Yeah, the police aren't the real problem though." She sighed. "It's pretty clear we can gain new powers by killing each other. Or, like what happened with you and me, there's some way to steal someone's power even without killing. Telling everyone who you really are, where you live..it puts a target on your back. Just based on the little bit of news I've seen, there's gotta be loads of those girls around who're more than willing to kill for more power. Now if any of them live close by...Well, I guess we can be glad Dr. Quinn's basically invincible. But her husband's in trouble."

Gerald nodded with a slightly somber expression.

Light opened her eyes again, bringing her head forward again and looking directly at him. "They saved my life. Protected both of us, talking to the news. So..we owe them. Besides, they're decent people and it looks like they plan on protecting our town and campus from those monsters. I'd say we have no choice but to protect them. Or, well, I do at least."

"...I agree. I'll help them if they're in trouble," Gerald said. He crossed his arms. "You can't keep taking everything onto yourself. It's obviously no good for you."
"Yeah..."

There was a long moment of silence, and then suddenly the loud noise of a ringtone. Light jumped in her seat, and startled Gerald, both of them looking around in a slight panic for a second before realizing. "Oh..heheh...phone." Light's clothes had had proper pockets in them this time, and the phone was just there. It was a text from Amory. Right, she'd totally forgotten about him!

While responding with a "yeah, back at the apartment in a bit", she said, "Look, um...my roommate knows. About me. I didn't tell him anything about you, but he's figured some of it out on his own. He's...a lot smarter than I thought he was, I guess. Or I'm nowhere near as good at hiding what I'm doing as I thought I was."

"Should I be worried?" said Gerald.

"I really don't think so. He said he really wanted to help if he could, and I believe him. Anyway, if he wanted to announce who I was to the world he would've done it already. So, this is him asking if I'm okay." She waved the phone vaguely. "I guess it'd be nice to rest back in my own bed for a while, and it'd get me out of your hair."

"Alright," Gerald stood up. "If you're feeling up to it." Light took considerably longer but did make it to her feet. "Listen. If you hear of another of those things showing up, let me take care of it." He put a hand on her shoulder. "You need to rest. Once you're back at a hundred percent you can do what you want, but...I don't want to see you getting yourself killed."

Light sighed, and smiled, putting a hand on his briefly. "Thanks. I'll do my best to relax for a while."

"Now, where can I drive you that'll be close to where you live?"

---

An attack had hit Rowan's town at the same time he was busy elsewhere. Thankfully, there were more at least someone decent people with those powers, enough to come out and take the things down. The first thing the next morning was to call in and let the sargeant know he was still too injured to be much use, and then to change form and try to fix those injuries.

It was deeply frustrating. Rowan felt sure she knew what she needed to do somehow, just move the water that made up her body around in a very careful, specific way to make the bruises heal faster. But her power over that water just seemed to squirm aside of her control every time. She wasted an hour of effort with only a slight decrease in soreness to show for it, and eventually had to give up. There wasn't enough power, or enough control, or...something. Maybe healing like this was somehow an advanced form of her abilities, like someone who'd never held a gun before trying to snipe something a hundred feet away with a handgun. Her power was an inferior version of what it "could be", but if the problem was one of control, then...surely that could be corrected with enough practice.

After taking a deep breath and then a break for a while, Rowan returned with a glass of water, placing it in front of her before sitting back down. This much wasn't too hard to do: She felt the water in the glass and gently waved it up out, flowing it around in the air. Then it split in two, and she tried controlling each chunk separately. Her hands instinctively came up and motioned the way she wanted the water to go, and that seemed to make it easier to do. It was tiring, and she had to let the water fall back into the glass at this point. Pacing herself was important; it was a good idea to just relax for a while, have lunch, and then come back to it.

The next thing was to try and solidify the water the way she had the day before, while angry. It was difficult, and required intense, constant concentration to not let it slip out of control, but in a moment she managed to have a single water-knife floating in front of her, pointed straight up at the ceiling. Holding it in place once it was formed seemed far easier somehow, and gently spinning it around in midair worked alright as well. If one had formed already, it felt natural enough to control.

The sudden noise of the phone ringing jerked her out of the concentration and made her drop the water entirely, splashing the coffee table the glass was on. Rowan sighed, and spoke the phrase to change back before answering.

They wanted him to come back to work. Yes, he was still injured, but for as long as that was the case there was another important capacity he could serve in. The black mist things that attacked the day before had shown up again. He was the most reliable, trustworthy person they had with experience in fighting those mist monsters, and it didn't seem like they were going to let up. Also, the problem of the fox women was still there, and there were a lot of reasons he could help with that. Interviewing or negotiating with one of them might be easier for someone who knew what it was like, they thought, or having a perspective that knew what it was like would be helpful to understanding how to deal with the criminal ones.

Obviously it was just luck that had gotten him into this position, but if he was willing to work as a consultant in this matters, they were willing to pay extra. How much extra, he said, just out of curiosity. The amount per day was more than he usually made in a month. Obviously someone with direct control over the funding considered this a priority. Rowan would've done it without that part, but it certainly made things more palatable.

More practice would have to wait. After hanging up, Officer Shepherd went to change and drive out to the precinct. There were already a lot of questions to answer about the first two waves of attacks, and the people asking those questions were eager to have an eyewitness account like his. There was some good news, a lot of bad news, but overall things were about to get much busier for him.