Battle Vixens! - 21

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Episode 21: Sheathing the Sword

They slowly walked their way off campus. "How's your head? I hit it what I thought was pretty hard, but I guess I didn't hear the skull break or anything..."

Gemma said, "I, um, it's a little sore but...—" "—I think I'm okay. I was using Rory's trick to be tougher."

"Her 'trick', huh? Is it something you could explain to someone in words, out of curiosity?
"I don't...think so.—" "—And, I can't remember it right now, at all. Umm..—" "—what, happened, exactly? I don't...—" "—I can't remember the, thing to merge back or anything! But it was—" "—it felt so obvious before..."
"Hidden rule of our powers. I beat you in honorable combat or whatever, which gives me 'command' of your powers. Once we're sure you're stable and not going to fly off the handle again, I'll give everything back and it should work just like it did before," said Light. "It's.." she seemed briefly conflicted. "It's only fair I warn you that the 'owner' is supposed to have an increasing amount of control over people the more there are, possibly including mind control. I hate the whole idea of that, but I don't know how much control I really have over it."
"Well, um—" "—it was my fault anyway. I don't, even now,—" "—fully understand what I was thinking..."

"Maybe there's some kind of subconscious knowledge of the rules put in us and you wanted this to happen. It's hard to tell once the door's open for our powers to alter our minds."

"Here we are." Light pointed to a house they were approaching. "This house belongs to Dr. Quinn. And her husband, Dr. Quinn. Rory and Clark, for short."
"O-oh! Er.." She hadn't known they were doctors, but they had been at the hospital. And one had literal healing powers.

"They're professors at the college we were just at. I was under the impression you went there too?"

"Yes, but—" "—I don't know everyone. I'm, mostly only familiar with people from the—" "—English department."

"That'll explain it. Yeah, they're scientists. But, you didn't already see them on the news?"

"I haven't watched much TV at all lately," she admitted. "Or really paid much attention to the rest of the world." Another thing to feel slightly terrible about. But it could only be good for her to know her mistakes.

They were in front of the door; Light pressed the doorbell. "Also, Amory's here."

That got her attention, both of her bodies immediately jolting upright in surprise.

"Well, I didn't fully trust that woman's announcement of no attacks, and I was gonna be busy with you, so we decided it'd be best to make sure he was with someone who could protect him if another of those things showed up."

Emma thought about that that. She hadn't even considered the possibility that there would be an attack today, even before the announcement! The first one, the one that almost got Amory, was in the morning like now, too! She'd been so focused on her own stupid problems, even the one good thing she'd been consistently doing until now had broken down...

Rory, in human form, answered the door. "Hi there! You're done having a tantrum, right? I got breakables in here."

Plus looked down in shame, running one of her feet across the ground. "Um, yes...—" "—Sorry," Minus whispered.

"I'm holding onto most of her powers right now," Light clarified.

"Okay, come on in! We've got a lot of room in here anyway." Rory turned around and went back inside without further comment, leaving the door open.

"Um—" "—Light." She stopped on her way into the door.
"Yeah?"
"Could you—" "—turn me, back to normal? I, I don't really want to do this—" "—like this."

"Are you sure? It'd tell everyone here what you really look like," she said, appearing concerned.
"Yes," she nodded. It didn't seem like it would make any difference with this group, and Amory was who mattered to her right now...
"Okay." Light said something incomprehensible yet deeply familiar, and Minus flickered out of existence, Plus's clothes ruffling slightly, reshaping themselves while her ears and tail retracted. Eventually a pair of glasses found normal ears to hang themselves on.

"Um, m-my real name's Emma," she said, carefully following inside.

"Nice to meet you."

Once they were inside, Light came back to shut the door, and they went into a short hallway; she stopped at a doorway and pointed inside to a kitchen/dining room area, where Amory was sitting at the table with a bunch of papers spread out in front of him. "Go on," she waved, "I've got someone else to talk to, if he's awake." Seeing Emma standing paralyzed in place, she gently put her hands on her shoulders and directed her into the doorway. "Go."

Emma awkwardly shuffled inside, Amory of course already looking at her. "Um, h-hi. I'm, Emma," she said quietly.
"Hey." He stood up and came over to her, offering a hand. "Amory. I think we've met before, right?"
"Y-yes, I'm..um," she fumbled her hand into a weak shake, getting even worse butterflies from even this much physical contact. "I was, I-I mean..yesterday at the hospital, and the day before that," her voice faded out of audible range.

"I mean I recognize you from sometime before that," he said, tilting his head slightly like he was trying to recall. "But thanks again, though. I dunno how to feel about those things wanting my head but at least someone was around to protect me, huh?"
"Y-yeah! You um, you helped me with my c-chemistry homework a few times, um, last s-s-semester," she said.

An awkward silence. Emma took a small step back, looked at the floor. "Um..I, I haven't been..I've been s-sort of terrible lately. I, uh, I, tried to kill your f-friend. Seriously tried. A few minutes ago even."

"Well, we can both be thankful you failed, right? Or do you still wanna do that?"

"No. I-I, don't think I ever did." As bizarre as the conversation was, it seemed to be going okay. It was time to put all of that practice to some kind of use! Emma was determined; she forced herself to look up at his face for this part. "I..I um, I was following you before, because, I wanted to a-ask you on a, date," she squeaked. "It's, I know I wasn't acting normal, but...I'm sorry. J-just, I was too nervous for a while, and then.."

"Then the whole world went crazy, right?" He gave a sardonic grin. "I know, somehow I wound up staying over at this house of all places for safety. If anything I'd expect to need to hide from Dr. Quinn."

"I heard that!" Rory said from a room or two over. "Why don't you two just kiss already?"

"Umh—!" Emma looked down again, her face burning at the very thought of it.
"Did you give yourself fox ears just to eavesdrop?" Amory yelled. "We're trying to have a serious talk here! ...Sorry about that."
"I-it's okay."

"So, I dunno if the world's gonna be any less crazy any time soon. I'm not sure we really even know that much about each other," said Amory. "Well—depending on how long you've been following me around, I guess."
"N-not that long! Just the...past week or two.." she said, her voice fading off again. "I know some stuff about your, uh, schedule and major, but n-not really about you, no.."

"A date's just fine then," he said. "You're cute enough. We could have dinner somewhere and talk for a while, if you want. At least I won't have to worry even if there was another attack then, yeah?"
"Y-yeah!" She just barely choked the answer out past an actual swarm of butterflies from him calling her cute.

The conversation had reached a logical conclusion, but they stayed standing there for what felt like another half an hour (probably a minute or so of awkward silence). Then Rory Quinn barged into the room and grabbed Emma by the shoulders, easily picking her up and turning her around to face the doorway before setting her down again. "You, go get your powers back from Light. Chop chop, you're distracting him from his homework and there's a lot of it!"

"Um—!"

"We'll talk about where and when later I guess," he said. "I'll get your number in a bit."

"O-okay!"

---

After some very unsubtle directional waving from Rory, Light found Clark in fox-form in the bedroom, sitting on top of the bed in a slightly childish-looking pink nightgown with a pattern of clouds on it, eating a bacon-egg-cheese biscuit from a plate in her lap. "Hey, sorry I didn't get up to welcome you," she said.
"Um, that's fine. I guess you just woke up?"
"Mm-hm." She swallowed the bite. "These powers are amazing, but they really wipe you out when you push them to the limit. I'm wondering if its some kind of intended 'rule' with them, or just something about using the powers naturally causing physical strain...I guess that's more my wife's territory." She waved at a computer chair, inviting Light to take a seat, which she did.

"Breakfast in bed. I had to move it off of me to get up anyway, though. Waking up in a female form is just weird; I dunno if you've noticed certain disadvantages yet..."

"Yeah, I have." It was a terse response to the obvious meaning; after all, Light was the one who'd woken up in this form three times now, not even counting the one where she went to sleep in it.

After another bite, Clark said: "So, as far as I've heard you went to fight our mystery friend from yesterday?"
"Not—specifically. It was more like she attacked me and I had to defend myself. But it was also helping her, in some kind of weird way."

"I can't believe how cavalier everyone's being about this. Life-or-death fights," she said. "Or—pretty close anyway. Risk of serious harm that would compound even if you survive because a weakened person is easy for people who want to collect more powers to prey on. If I was up I'd have insisted Rory go with you to just knock her out—both of her—if things get too dicey."

"In this case, I think that might've made things worse. She wanted me to come alone and she could sort of see through invisibility—shadow powers I think. Anyway, we're okay now. She must be talking to Amory by now."

"You let her in to see him?" Clark took a sip of orange juice. "Talk about rewarding bad behavior..."

"I'm not—it's not about rewarding anything! It's just, she was going crazy from thinking about him, and wanting to talk to him was one of the things behind her power, I think. I'm looking for, you know, psychological stability—not, treating people like a dog where you only give them what they want if they do the right trick for you," said Light. Her tone was more upset—angrier—than expected in some places, though she made an effort to keep it under control when she noticed.

"Easy there, I was trying to make a joke," said Clark. "I'm no psychologist but I don't think telling her she can't see him would've ended well, either." Why so mad at the idea? Right...she was worried about the thought of "pets"—on that topic,"one, maybe two" was just a hilarious way to refer to one person in two bodies, or an annoyingly, intentionally ambiguous reference to the nebulously-scheduled second meeting with Rowan Shepherd.

During the silence for Clark to take another bite of food, both of their ears could pick up what Amory was saying a few rooms over. "Sounds like their conversation's going well enough. I was starting to wonder, though, when you're gonna look in the mirror and notice your life has turned into the incarnation of 'defeat means friendship'. You know, first Ning, then that cop—I mean, you didn't technically defeat her but there was a possibly-lethal fight, now...this one."

"I've realized it all right. I can't say I love it exactly, but it's, you know, it's better than defeat meaning death as far as I'm concerned." She leaned back and looked at the ceiling for a moment. "Or me losing and getting killed. Look, are you awake enough to talk about science?"

Clark grinned. "There is no such limitation. I'm guessing you're looking for new ideas on how to use your arbitrary control over photons, and let me tell you, I've got some. Lemme finish eating to free my hands up and we'll get us a whiteboard out. My wife's ordering Emma around out there, so you should probably deal with that first."

"Yeah, I'll go see what that's about," Light stood up and headed to meet her rather than crowding the bedroom.

They stopped in front of each other in a hall. "Um.."

"So, how'd it go?"
"G-good. He said yes," she half-whispered, looking genuinely happy for the first time Light had seen.

"Okay. Now: Do you solemnly swear not to attack me or anyone else in this house. Or my friend Ning for that matter. And..actually, to do your best to not attack anyone without a good reason."
"..Yes," she said, making an expression that appeared intended to be a serious one.
"Good." Light spoke her phrase, and a gray cloud (combining the white and black, maybe) travelled from her head back into Emma's, returning her powers to full function. At this point it finally occurred to her that she had casually used someone else's power's in the middle of their fight.
"What?" Emma saw Light's expression at that realization and thought it was directed at her.

"Oh—sorry, not you, I just, need to call someone real quick. You be good," she pointed authoritatively. "Also ask Clark to please have a look at your head? Concussions are supposed to be able to sneak up on you and I don't want you to collapse on the way home or something." Light rushed off to see about borrowing Rory's or Amory's phone, hers still back in his car.

"Hello. Gerald Nelson speaking."
"Hi, this is—you know. I um, did you notice anything happening in the last hour or so?"
"Anything...like what? Another attack?" His tone of voice indicated he was looking out the window, probably.

"No no no. Like with your powers? Any feeling of something happening?"
"...No. I've just been taking care of the shop."

"Okay, I might have—called on them a little bit ago, because I needed a second sword and to deal with someone else using lightning powers. Don't worry—I'm fine, they're fine, the whole thing's basically taken care of. But I wanted to find out if it was something you noticed happening, or if there was any after-effects or something."

"Give me a minute, I'll try changing back and forth..."

A little later: "...Everything seemed normal enough. The sword was still there."
"Okay. Good, I think. Hang on—you've been talking about how your power feels totally out of your control, right?"
"Yes..."
"Well I was able to call lightning and make it do basically exactly what I wanted every time: Go where I want with exactly as much power as I want. It makes sense, I'm supposed to have 'full control' over it. But maybe...if there's some time you could meet later this afternoon, I could just order your powers to be more controllable so we wouldn't have to worry about that."
"It's, worth a shot I guess," he said. "Needs to be pretty early, so I can pick up Nadia still."
"Okay. Um—about one? I have a lot more talking to do here first probably."
"...That's fine. Come in the back."

---

When Gerald returned from lunch he came in the back, letting any would-be customers believe he was just taking a longer lunch break. With everything that was happening lately, it seemed like it would be good to try and hire someone to man the store when he was away...but it'd have to be someone extremely trustworthy, all things considered. Well, if business picked up enough to make it feasible he'd think about it more seriously, he thought.

A little after one o' clock, Light put a message on the wall in front of him: "I'm here." He got up and opened the door, letting it close itself after she came in.

"What exactly were you talking about?" he said. "Who's fine?"
"Uh, you remember the girl—or, girls, who saved Amory the other day just before you showed up? They're one person in two bodies, and she was having some...problems." Light fidgeted with her hands. "We had an encounter kinda like you and I did on Saturday, except it was entirely her idea."

"So...you 'control' her powers too?" he said, curious.

"Yeee-eah."

"Well, I'm sure you'll be perfectly responsible with handling that," He smiled, trying to reassure her.

"I sure hope so." She looked away, less certain. Then back at him, eager to change the subject: "So, um, you're ready to give this a try?"

"Yes," he nodded.

"Okay..." Light spoke Gerald's phrase; there was something in the way she said it that seemed louder almost, with a slight echo to it, and he wasn't sure whether that difference was something physically audible or his mental perception of it. Either way, the effect was the same.

A little bit of electricity arced from Light's hands to Gerald's body, which seemed to react to its touch by amplifying it and turning into more. Gerald had the familiar feeling of his body starting to change into lightning itself, electricity sparking around and through him before he began to reshape. He shrank upward rather than downward, his arms spreading themselves out as he floated in the air. The electricity form his hair gently tugged out a little longer than before as his body softened and thinned; his clothes reshaped into leggings, a skirt, belt, top, and cape, just as usual, and before long he felt the change to a youthful female finishing up.

Her tail sparked outward, a jolt of lightning spreading it out longer and thicker than before, and her ears stretched out into place. In her hands appeared two bolts of lightning: A long one in the right, a short in the left—normally her two weapons. But on some unfamiliar instinct she pulled her hands together, her body still glowing and sparking, and held the two together, placing the shorter one against the tip of the longer and pressing, molding it around the blade as it began to form.

The random, dangerous sparks that had surrounded Ning from when she first transformed until Light removed them were back, but as the lightning in her hands reshaped into a single sword and a black sheath around it, the sparks drew themselves inward, joining her body as if they had always been meant to be a part of it. She felt a kind of confident calm settle over her as she floated down to the ground, pulling the sword partway out of the sheath to examine it, and couldn't help but smile at the feeling.

She re-sheathed the blade and let go of it, allowing the electricity to fade away harmlessly. "So, um, did it work?" said Light, seeming uncertain about what all of the excess special effects had meant.

"Yes! It totally—" Ning paused, mildly confused at her choice of words "—uh, worked, yeah! I mean as far as I can tell, hang on, step back a little." She held up her hands and tired to get just a tiny bit of lightning to dance between her fingertips in a very specific pattern; the test succeeded. "Yes! Is this how easy it's been for you all along?"
"I, uh, guess so." Light headtilted slightly. "It's hard to tell, but you look slightly taller I think. And your tail looks...bushier. I didn't tell it to make any physical changes—wait, your hair color's back to gray, too!"

"It is?" She tried to pull some hair in front of her face, failed, and instead turned herself around to look at her tail, which in addition to being thicker did seem to have turned back to its original color. She gave a small gasp. "It is! So maybe this is like some alternate version of my powers that naturally comes with a different look or something?" She looked back up at light, smiling. "Either way, who cares? It worked!" Ning obeyed an impulse to tackle-hug Light before her brain could catch up enough to question it, and both of them were just as surprised at the gesture, though Light did gently return it before carefully setting her back down.

Ning rocked back and forth on her feet a bit. "I actually think it feels a little less..like not having it in control gave me more, like bigger lightning I could use? But this is way better even if it isn't quite as powerful. I actually feel like I can use it without risking hurting someone!" She pointed at a nearby electric socket and drew a tiny stream of electricity out into her finger for a second. "And I can use those, too, without burning anything down!"

"Are you...sure you're okay? You seem, uh, kinda hyper," said Light.
"Oh, I.." She paused, thinking about her actions over the last minute or so. "I..yeah. I am kinda. I dunno, I just feel so excited all of a sudden. I'm happy I can control it I guess, but...more than that, yep. I feel like I've just had six cups of coffee or something. It's hard to even stand still."

"..I can tell." Ning realized she had been gesturing rather wildly that entire time.

Light had a concerned look. "I'm a little worried 'power control' costs 'self control' for you or something like that..."

"Well, I—I can control myself fine," Ning said. "I just, feel different is all. The best way I think I can put it is that I actually feel young and it's amazing after being as old as I am for as long as I've been."

"You didn't feel young like that before?"

"Hmm..no, I did, but like, not as much? Or...I felt like, I don't know, I couldn't act out that part of how I felt as much or I'd hurt someone. Or something like that?"

"I see." Light seemed to have an idea about it, but if she did, it wasn't one she wanted to share. "So uh, your weapons changed?"

"Ohh, yes! They did!" Ning resummoned the sheathed sword, and moved into a stance that felt familiar, holding it as if the sheath were attached to her left hip with the right hand on the hilt and the left holding the sheath. "Feels like I know how to use these, too," she said, making a slow-motion version of attacking, pulling the katana out of the sheath in a slice and then dancing around the target and hitting it with the sheath in the other hand too, then re-sheathing it to the same position at the end of the motion. "That kind of thing, but fast. Like—I could use the sheath to block a lot more effectively than I could when it was a knife."

"Well, as long as we're here I want to try and test something about what happened this morning," said Light. "Do you mind?"
"No..probably good to know about," said Ning.

"Okay..."

Light tried saying her phrase, and immediately the katana seemed to slip out of Ning's hand, turning into electricity and bolting over to Light's hand. While she was holding it, Ning couldn't get the blade to appear; it just felt like it wasn't "there", wherever "there" usually was. Then she let go of the weapon and, holding out her hand, Ning was able to immediately take it again. The same could be done with the sheath, or with both of them at the same time, and with the same kind of effects. When Ning let her weapons dissipate, Light was able to simply make them appear in her hands right away.

"So I can borrow your weapon, I guess. But if you're not using it then you don't really notice that I'm doing so. What about.." Light said Ning's phrase again, and made a small burst of electricity jump out of her hand. "Did you...feel anything when I did that?"
"Kinda? I mean I think I felt a tiny bit of my power being used, like if I go zzzt!" she said, making a quick jolt of electricity jump up from her index finger, pointed upward. "...Yeah, about that much. It feels a little weird to feel it being used and know I'm not using it myself, I guess."

"It's just weird, this isn't how it looks like it should work," said Light. "I mean—when I order your power out of you it visibly moves from you to me. Or your weapon. But if I order it to just work then apparently it just works—even if you're nowhere near me and still in human form."
"Well, at least it's more convenient that way," said Ning. "I guess just make sure I'm not in the middle of some really important fighting when you wanna borrow my weapons and stuff."
"I'm...a little hesitant about using your power at all. I mean, it could wear you out all of a sudden or something like that—even if you're not fighting something just then, that's sorta dangerous."

"Liiiight.." Ning put her hands on her hips. "If you need my power for something, and you know it won't immediately put me in danger to do so, then you use it. You have my permission and I'm ordering you to do it as your elder. For your own good."

She blink-blinked. "Um, okay, I guess."

"No 'I guess!' You need to keep yourself and whoever you're protecting safe. If it helped you today it'll be helpful in the future, and there's nothing I want more than for you to use it if I'm not around to help you out myself."

"Okay, okay! I get it."

"Heehee," Ning giggled. Then she realized she'd just done that, and blushed slightly. "Errm."

"That form is definitely messing with your head..."

"Okay, change me back and—oh, I'll change me back, whatever—and I'll tell you the same thing again. Completely serious here."