Battle Vixens! - 24

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Episode 24: Trust

Blake woke up; it was finally Saturday again. It felt like it had been a year or at least several months since that night he and some probably thousands of other people were given superpowers to play around with...only to need them to defend themselves and others, possibly even the world itself somehow. Everything was totally upside-down, and yet...some parts of it had been nice.

Reading comics and watching movies, Blake had always thought he had an idea of how to be a good hero. The right kind of hero, he thought, was someone who thinks strategically and makes the best use of their powers they can, thinking through not just their obvious uses but any logical extensions. Someone who doesn't just fight their enemies, especially the super-powered ones, but tries to understand them whenever possible, hopefully enough to make friends of them instead. A hero aims for redemption not just because it's right thing to do, but because gaining more allies is strategically sound. And here...he'd lived that. It wasn't easy, it wasn't always fun, but there was something satisfying in it. Obviously he would rather it not happen: The powers not be necessary; people not need to be talked down from trying to kill each other—but if it was going to happen anyway, he was almost..grateful for the opportunity to do something about it so actively.

It was midmorning, and after getting up and moving a little closer to the door he heard the news on, the volume down low. Amory was responding to his complaint yesterday, the one he hadn't made seriously; if anything this proved the point he'd been trying to make. He went straight to taking a quick shower; most likely there would be another attack today. Then he was walking out to the living room.

Amory heard the door open and turned his head. He had his laptop open. "Morning. Someone put together a wiki," he said.
"..I guess I shouldn't be surprised." Blake came a little closer to look. "What's it say about me? Anything we don't want known?"
He tabbed over to a page with a slightly blurry image cropped from news footage of that first fight on Monday—well, it was probably an image of one of Light's illusions, but it was an accurate likness regardless. "They know a lot about your powers, but I guess it's a little hard to keep that a secret. They know you're 'allies' with the Quinns, Ning—seems like they don't know who she is either, thankfully—Dawn, 'the twins' but with a question mark."

"Emma, huh?"

"Yeah. They've got an entry for me, too, 'cause I was on the news once, but they made the pages for all the 'targets' admin-only so there's not a lot of personal stuff there."

"That's good." Blake moved on toward the kitchen to make breakfast.

"Hey, what do you think happens if you use Emma's power? You get the ability to learn stuff too? Orrr, wield her knives?" Amory called.
"No idea. It was pretty obvious with Ning, but..."
"Maybe you should test it? You know, in case you need it for something?"

"I don't really think it's a good idea to throw other people's powers around for no good reason."

"What happened when you suddenly used Ning's power in that fight? You just had a sudden instinct to, right? Say that happens with Emma's and you have no way to plan around it because you don't know what'll actually happen."

The logic was difficult to deny. "..Fine, fine." Maybe he could just...ask her power to tell him what he wanted to know? "Let's see..." He tried saying her phrase with the order 'just tell me what her power does when I do this'.

Minus popped into place in front of him, right in the kitchen. She was in a neutral stance, arms at the side, eyes closed. Then they slowly opened, blinked rapidly a couple of times and darted around, taking in the location. "Uuuuuuh...hiii..?"

Blake could feel something like invisible strings from his head (or, his mind maybe) to the body; it felt like he could move it. That movement was not quite as natural as that of his own body, but it seemed easy enough to do, even multitasking both at once. He tried raising an arm while the mouth and eyes, which didn't have any "strings" going to them, continued on their own.

"Wh-what's going on? Am I dreaming or something? W-why can't I move my—aah!" Her left hand raised itself, apparently a surprise but not painful or anything.

"Er..sorry," Blake dropped the arm again, putting one of his own behind his head. "I was, trying to check what happens if I call on your power. Apparently this."

"Th, this feels soo weird..."

"To me it feels a little like borrowing Ning's sword. So I guess somehow your extra body counts as your 'weapon'?"

"Th-that doesn't make any sense, though. I have no 'favored' body, there are just two of me. I can..w-well, usually I can switch back and forth, whatever body says the thing turns back into normal me."
"And you turned back with Plus most recently?"
"Mmhm. Oh! Y-you think maybe if I turned back with this one then the other one would show up?"
"Yeah. So you pick which one's 'extra', but the 'extra' one is your 'weapon'. Let me check one other thing and I'll fix this?"
"O-okay." Blake could feel a deliberate effort to nod coming back through the strings, though it was unsuccessful; her head was as still as ever. He tried pulling at her body to make it move the shadows in the room around. They waved around slightly, but he didn't seem to be able to make anything solidify or gather the way she had the day before..

Minus's eyes closed in a wince, her ears folding themselves down. "Nnngh, this is r-really uncomfortable..."

"Oh! Sorry." He quit.

Apparently borrowing her body like this did not grant it shadow powers as an equal "opposite" of his own usual abilities the way it worked for her "learned" powers. Even using those this way seemed to be too much to handle. "For the record this whole thing was Amory's idea."

"A-Amory..?" Her eyes looked around the kitchen again, and her face reddened slightly. "Wait, is this..is this your apartment?!"
"Yeeah. You want to say hi to him?"
"N-no!" she squeaked, blushing much brighter. "Please send me back now, I just woke up and this feels really weird..."
"Okay, I'm sorry again." He spoke her phrase, telling it to make her power go back to working the way it usually did for her and return the body. Minus disappeared as abruptly as she'd shown up. "You get to apologize for this at lunch!" he called to the living room, continuing on to getting breakfast.

"Lunch..?" Amory muttered. "Oh, right!"

"Did you forget? You just made the plan yesterday."

"Uh...no, I just..wasn't thinking about it. A lot on my mind."

"Like what?" Food in hand, he came back to the couch to sit and eat it.
"There was a..second round. Sa—uh, the Giver or whatever visited a bunch of new people and gave them powers last night."

"Hmm. So, she visited you?"

"Yee-es." He seemed unusually nervous about divulging this. "I um, you were totally right about that."

"Well, what kind of power did she offer you? I guess you took it?"

"Apparently everyone those things targeted specifically, like me, was a candidate for something 'special'. And she gave everyone else the power of someone who died to one of those mist monsters or natural causes as a 'consolation prize'. And mine's supposed to be the special one."
"I'm not sure whether I should congratulate you or express sympathy."

"Well, it's um, it's, certainly different. It's not a fighting power, like everyone else's. It's supposed to be like a weak version of her power, that temporarily makes other people's powers stronger. But she also said I'm immune to attacks by the monsters while I'm in that form, which sounds nice at least."

"Hmn." He took a moment to finish the bite in his mouth. "No immunity to being kidnapped and forced to use it on whoever, though, right?" Amory nodded. "There's always something. So we have to keep it a secret."

"You should probably call Rowan or—or get someone to do that and tell her that this second round is all people who were targets like me. The Initiative could use that info," he said.
"They could. But why don't you call? You got the number too."
"I'm not sure I trust them to know about, y'know, this power." Amory looked a bit fearful. "I'm not really sure who I would trust, like, besides you."

"...You do realize that even if I claim to have found out some other way, you're on the news as someone who was targeted. Soo, telling them that's who got new powers is basically admitting that you got one too."

"...Oh." Amory hadn't thought of that already? He really was distracted. And it seemed to be something about his new power...

"Well now I don't know what to do or who to tell."

"You're right that it would be good information for them to know," said Blake. "But we only know about it from you, and it's you who's at a slightly greater risk from it getting out. They'll probably figure out eventually anyway, just based on the obvious cross-referencing. So maybe all that not telling them does is buy us a little time."

"On the other hand, it buys anyone they could prevent from doing something horrible that same time..."

"The point is, I won't put you at risk by telling them or anyone else unless you're okay with it."

Amory paused a moment, and sighed. "I think we should tell them. If they don't already know."

He got out his phone, apparently texting Rowan. While he did that, Blake carried on with his eating, trying to figure out what was making Amory so nervous. It felt a little like there was something still to be revealed, but he was worried how Blake would react to the news...

"I guess they do know already. That's, kind of a relief, means I don't even have to make a decision."
"How do you know?"

"Well, her first answer to 'this is Amory' was 'did you get powers too?'. I, said I don't want to talk about it even though I know that's basically saying yes. She said 'I understand' which means she's respecting my privacy, which is good."

"Why do you keep saying 'she'?"

"Um..you know how your power makes you think a little differently? Like just slightly, even in human form."

"Yeah, the price and whatever..."

"Well she went and changed my first instinct thinking about anyone with powers to imagining them in their, you know, that form. I have to put delibrate thought in to not—" his phone buzzed again. "..Uh, sh—he wants me to ask you if today is okay. Late afternoon, after the attacks are over. Assuming you're both physically able. And says there's someone else he wants you to meet."

"If I'm not konked out, I guess that's fine," Blake shrugged. "Right now just say you'll talk to me and then respond like an hour or two from now, we don't really want them to know I'm sitting next to you."

"Right."

Well, the food and texting was done. "Okay. Seriously, what's wrong?"
"Wrong?" Blake gave him a look. "Uh—it's not something wrong exactly—well I mean it might be, buut..look, I told you what my power does but I haven't told you how I do it. It's..it's kinda weird, is all."

"You're just making me curious now. What if you just show me?"

"Y-,yeah. I was thinking it'd be better to do that, and maybe you'd understand then..." Amory said his own words for the first time in Blake's hearing, and his body visibly shrank down, his clothes ruffling and tightening into a pink blouse, short skirt, black tights. His blond hair cascaded out, pooling on the couch, some locks on either side braiding themselves. A pair of fox ears and a long, bushy tail popped out, a huge blue ribbon sparkling visibly into place near its tip; smaller ones did the same at the end of the thin braids and at the end of a couple of other locks of her hair. And yes, by now there was unmistakeably a girl sitting next to Blake, and a very pretty one at that.

"Oh wow, you're cute." Blake sat up slightly after a second, only now realizing what he'd just said. "Uhh, I-I mean," well he'd meant exactly that; it was literally the first thought he'd had on looking at her fully transformed. "I—I don't know why I blurted that out, sorry."

"Heehee, it's fine," she giggled, blushing slightly (which only made her seem more cute, unfortunately). "Like you said, I can only take it as a compliment~." Amory's nervousness from before was simply gone, replaced by what seemed to be a calm, cheerful self-confidence. While slightly tempted to compare it to that woman's demeanor, he couldn't help but feel this was less that smug, all-knowing attitude, and more just Amory's usual confidence restored back into visibility.

"Soo, to demonstrate, you have to change too," she said.

"Okay." He spoke his phrase, and in a bright flash of light shrank down to the shape of a fox-girl, his shirt and jeans simply shrinking to fit Light's proportions. Instead of covefing her eyes, Amory watched, clearly seeing the transformation itself this time rather than just a blindingly bright flash. "Nnnow what?"

"Just, uhhmm..hold still!" she said, a tiny bit of apprehension leaking through that calm smile. "You..trust me, right?"

"..Yeees?" Light was unsure how to interpret that question.

It became more clear when she leaned forward, reaching her arms out to touch her roommate's ears. Amory's small hands against them drew a familiar shiver across Light's body, her fur suddenly far more sensitive than usual, if only to touch from this one person. It was just like...! But instead of tensing or drawing away, Light found herself relaxing, leaning forward into it, and making a small, surprised-yet-pleased "Mrrh~".

The other girl had been a little slow, hesitant with it at first, but took this response as an indication to proceed. Light felt slim, delicate fingers tickling up and down her tall, fuzzy ears, and found herself falling partway across the couch to get her arms around Amory, pulling herself up and forward using the other girl as an anchor with the ultimate goal of holding their bodies close together. This goal was soon achieved; she could feel her small chest pressed against Amory's own generous new breasts, and with the body entirely in her arms she had a distinct sense of how..fragile and soft it really was. She held on tight, but was instinctively gentle with the blond girl, like she was handling a priceless work of art.

Amory would not have asked her for trust and then done...this just for fun. The only logical conclusion to draw was that this was how boosting someone's power worked. It figured that woman would insist on making it work like this, Light thought...seemed just like her. But at least it felt good, another part of her mind offered. She was starting to press her face against Amory's, nuzzling the other girl's cheek. Her tail was reaching forward and beginning to curl around that big, fluffy golden one. Amory returned the gesture by gently moving her own tail across Light's, drawing a slightly louder "MrrRRrrh~!" from her throat.

Past the deep sensitivity and excitement that mirrored the Giver's effect on her, she could feel in Amory's touch the very same thing she'd felt a few nights ago, and in that moment of tired weakness had found completely irresistible: A calming, pleasant feeling that reached an instinct she had never even been aware existed before then. The part of Light that thought—knew how strange this was, felt increasingly embarrassed and practically yelled at her to stop this and pull away was muted by that part of what she was feeling, by what felt like a physical manifestation of the trust they had built over the last few days. So she stayed in place, enjoying and even growing comfortable with these bizarre feelings.

Even with her eyes closed and the near sensory overload she was feeling, Light became aware of Amory's power actually taking effect now. She could feel her body...glowing, like it was turning partway into the light that it felt made it up and energized it. Unlike the sudden, harsh flash of change back and forth to human form, this was a calm, soft white glow, and it somehow kept her body's phyiscal form completely present to continue feeling Amory's body against hers, her cheek and hands and tail all quite palpable.

This conversion to light was enough for her to be...amplified, brightened meaningfully. And along with that, her body was refracted—slowly changed in shape as if this was needed to fit the increasing brilliance she was feeling inside of it. She grew slowly taller, her body stretching upward and outward; her hips and butt grew more pronounced, and her chest noticeably puffed out. Her voice, still pleasantly churring in her throat, matured and deepened down to match her increasingly womanly figure.

Light's pants faded, the leggings disappearing farther and farther up until they were just a tight pair of very short shorts hugging her wider hips tightly. Her shirt refused to grow with her height and bust gains, causing it to pull steadily up off of her stomach; as if that weren't enough, its sleeves too disappeared and its collar dipped down to show off that increasingly generous cleavage. Her body felt not merely taller and..well, bigger in other ways, but a little bit stronger and more muscular, and even faster and more agile than before. Her control over light had felt pretty strong before, but now it was even more than that; the sense that she was light from that first time changing came back with a vengeance, and some really interesting ideas for how to use that popped into her head along with it.

It couldn't have been more than a minute or two from the start of all that to when the glow faded back to reveal the new shape of Light's body, and Amory slowly let go of her ears to run a hand through her hair and gently return the hug with the other one. Freed from that feeling, even with their tails still tightly wound together, Light's mind returned enough to normal function to realize that her own hands had found a place on Amory's ears and the other girl had been nuzzling her back just as affectionately for nearly the whole time. She pulled herself back an inch or two, panting slightly from the...excitement and feeling the heat in her cheeks only get worse as Amory's cute, blushing face smiled back.

"Uh..um, so this is..?" she tried, discovering just how her voice sounded now: A soft, deep alto which was, if possible, even more feminine than its usual pitch as a girl.

"Y-yeah. That's why, uh, I d-didn't think you'd get it unless I actually..."

"Mmh, I understand," Light said. She looked pointedly down at what had happened to her physically, and her clothes. "Do you know if it..?"
"I don't know but I really get the impression changes like that are part of the deal. Do you feel, uh, more powerful or anything?"

"Ohh yes, absolutely!" Light hopped to her feet excitedly, found her tail still partway around Amory's. She took a moment to slowly untangle it, enjoying the last bit of tickling of fur against fur. Then: "Check this out." She moved herself to the other side of the room, near the front door. To someone else it would look like her body glowing out of existence in one place and into existence in another about simultaneously. Amory took a second to peek her head over the back of the couch and find her.
"You can teleport now?!"

"No no, I'm just—moving." She went in the same way to standing just behind the couch. "I feel like I get it now, more than I did before: I'm light," she said, putting a hand on her chest to point.
"Well, yeah."

"Not my name, silly! Like I'm literally a big ball of light. One big, specially-shaped photon or something. So I can move myself around the same way I can move light around, at the speed of light too, because I am light."
"You realize moving at C looks identical to instantly teleporting tooo, basically anyone, right?"

"Yes, but it's different! And there's this, too." Two more of her appeared to either side. All three waved, saying, "Look, no illusions here!"

"You're—" Amory started, getting up onto her knees to get a better look. "No wait, lemme try and figure this out. Your voice came from all three of you. Can you move them individually?"
"Yep." Left Light gave a little wave. "But I'm not stealing Emma's thunder, there's just one of me still."

"You split your waveform!" Amory pointed. "Quantum stuff. Schrödinger's fox, right?"

"Yeah!" The one in the middle put a finger on the tip of one of Amory's ears and both she and the left one instantly vanished, leaving only the one on the right behind. "If one of me touches an observer I collapse. I don't have control over which one I turn out to be, but if I was fighting someone who could see through illusions I could still confuse them, and at best they get a one-in-three shot of hitting me. This also works for..." Reaching out her hands, her sword appeared in both of them. "And I could throw them. But if I need to actually dual-wield I can actually just sort of juggle it instead." She dismissed it and reappeared it in non-quantum-split state, then made the light forming it jump between her hands as frequently as it could. The effect was a small stream of light, like a glowing string, joining the hilts of apparently two identical swords. "Since it's really all the same single sword it can't clash against itself," she demonstrated by making one go through the other.

The blades shimmered out of existence again. "This is so cool. And I feel just physically stronger and faster on top of everything else. How long does it last?"

"Uhm.." Amory got a 'thinking' look on her face for a second. "Feels like..it's not a specific amount of time, but more like 'usage'. If you change back to human then it goes away immediately. Otherwise if you didn't use your powers at all it could last all day, but if you used them as much as possible nonstop maybe only ten minutes."

"Well, at least refueling feels good," Light grinned.
One of Amory's ears tilted down. "You're..a lot more comfortable with this than I thought. With your tone of voice back when you were talking about the woman doing, uh, that, I thought..."

"Amory." Light put her hands on the sides of the other girl's face. "I don't like her. She's responsible for convincing a lot of people to hurt each other. I don't trust her because she's this smirking, scheming chessmaster who probably doesn't have anyone's interests at heart but her own. I trust you, and I like you, so—you can pet me anytime you want!"

She let go of Amory's face, dropping her hands as she realized how extreme of a statement that really was. Blushing she said, "I-I mean. You know, not just randomly like outta nowhere. Ask permission first. But especially for this. I can fight so much better like this, you have no idea. I want to run off and search for monsters to kill, I really wish I had a tracker or something to know where they'll show up."

"Uh, it'll be kind of obvious you got buffed, you know," Amory pointed out. "Or..that something happened anyway."

"Oh..right." Light looked at her altered body again, the blush brightening as a result of just how..skimpy the clothes were now. She waved a hand and made an illusion of her normal appearance. "I can't fix my voice, but that shouldn't be a huge problem."
"Now look," Amory leaned over the couch and briefly poked Light's nose (apparently still knowing where it was through the illusion), "If you go out there and you don't find anything to kill before lunchtime then you'd better get food from someone—like Ning or the Quinns or whatever. Or grab your wallet and buy it as an anonymous human girl if you must.. Your normal powers wear out faster if you aren't getting energy back from actually eating, and that leads to that 'sleep five extra hours' state. Not just absorbing sunlight—you're not a plant!"

"When did you...figure all that out?"
"Oh, um. I didn't?" Amory looked briefly confused. "It seems like I just 'know' some things about how the powers in general work. And that's one of them: You get this like 'worn out' state from using your powers a lot. Lemme think, what else do I 'know'.." She closed her eyes. "Different people have different stamina levels and each power comes with its own way of temporarily replenishing that stamina. Elements like light and electricity, it's usually just 'absorb the element' somehow or other. I guess Clark's is 'healing people' and if I had to guess it looks like Rory gains from 'violence', like beating something or someone up. She's never shown any signs of wearing out anyway, though; her base stamina is probably through the roof to begin with."

"You should take notes of all this stuff," Light crossed her arms, briefly uncrossed on discovering her resized breasts in the way, recrossed below there. "We'll figure out some way to tell our allies, even the ones we really don't want to know about you."
"You're right..." she nodded. "I think the knowledge is part of my 'powers' specifically so I'll have to do it like this, too."

"Okay. I'm gonna go hunting." Light dropped her arms again, started to turn, unturned. "Don't forget you have a date! Or to text Rowan my response later."
"I won't forget," she said. "You're not worried I'll get attacked?"

"Are you? I can stay here if..."
"No. For one thing, the 'competition' is over so there's no more reason to target me than any other fox girl. And even then, I'm absolutely confident that even if I am, this form will protect me." Absolute confidence; that was something that came from the powers. Maybe they didn't trust the one who had given them, but so far that 'confidence' only came right along with demonstrable powers that worked exactly the way the confidence said they should. On the balance...the risk wasn't too high, at least.

"Okay. Now I'm going." Light whirled around, placing a 'Blake' illusion over herself for the purposes of getting outside the apartment complex, and headed out, really hoping she'd catch a black mist thing and kill it before this wore off. It just felt like it would be such a waste to be like this and not do something with it.

---

Clark got out of the shower to hear Rory howling in laughter. It was the "sincerely losing hope in humanity" kind, which bore investigation. He came to the kitchen to find she was laughing at her computer. "What?"
"Clark." She turned the screen to face him. "They are writing slash fiction of us. Like, in general but also the bunch in this town specifically."
"Is it any good?" He leaned forward and squinted enough to see just the title, and then drew back like a snake had bit his nose.

"It's horrible! Can we sue them? PLEASE tell me we can sue people over this! You can't write that kind of junk about real people!"

"I did not get my doctorate in law, honey." He decided it would be a better use of time to get some cereal going. "I don't think whoever wrote that makes enough money to be worth the trouble anyway."

"Uugh, I hate when you're right."
"You didn't say that—"
"I hate when you're right and it's not fun!" she corrected. "So now that the Vee Aye has issued best practices for what to do if a giant monster attacks, they're reopening next Monday."

"Are you happy or upset?" He placed her bowl and poured some milk, then sat down to do the same for his own.

"At least they waited to get word from someone about what to do. There are a few details about these instructions that I find kind of, interesting though."

"Mm? Like what?" He hadn't actually read over them yet, although of course they had both received the big all-caps-title "READ THIS NOW" email from the dean.

"'Stay inside as much as possible until the day's attack in your area has occurred'. What's with that? It assumes just one attack when there could be more than one."

"Maybe, but we know that throwing too much at us 'overextends' the enemy and they really like to send everything that's targeting the same major area—like the same city—all at the same time. It makes sense to form a habit around what's most likely to happen and then improvise of you have to, right?"

"Yes, but why stay inside?"
"They've never appeared inside of a building. Not once."
"Never?" She said in disbelief. "Really?"
"It doesn't seem like they can. Maybe that 'blowing in on the wind' thing requires outdoor wind, and I guess windows aren't enough. I don't think they've even appeared under an outdoor roof."
"So we could stop them by building a big sunshield that 'roofs' the whole world, right?"
"We could..kill ourselves that way. And where would the materials for that even come from?"

"I'm just saying, you know, eventually! If someone got a magic power that created high-tech stuff they could probably manage it over a few years and just make it a thing that produces its own light using solar power. Heck, we'd solve the greenhouse problem too that way, right?"

"I'm so glad you are not a meteorologist. Any other suspicious orders?"

"'If the mist is seen in motion in the air, move toward the direction it came from.' What if it circles around? Is the mist even there except for the one spot the things actually appear in?"

"Hmm. I'd say either yes, and they've noticed that it's always going toward its target, so the opposite is away, or that they're making a pretty natural guess of what seeing that stuff going in a single direction might mean."

"'Flee all monsters at once'; duh. 'Keep your distance from empowered, flee as if a monster is present when two or more are fighting. Approach and speak with them only in their human state.' Well that's just rude, isn't it? Anyway, the newspeople keep totally ignoring that one."

"I think the idea is to keep people from getting in the way of someone on their way to fight a monster. And to protect normal people from crazy fox-girls who'll just sadistically kill for no good reason."

"'When an attack begins nearby, scatter as much as possible while moving away from it.' That just seems weird. Running away makes sense, but..scatter? That's not what you do for any other emergency..."

"If people are all leaving in an organized, regimented manner then it's easy to spot someone going missing. They want to encourage private-minded people like our friend Light to break out of the crowd and fight without needing to worry about being identified. It also does sort of make sense from the perspective of someone running away; if everyone goes the same way and there's not someone fighting it then the monster will just follow the big crowd and start tearing through it. If everyone scatters then it has to chase down one at a time and may completely miss some people. A different policy makes sense because these things are highly localized, unlike 'normal' disasters like fires, storms, and earthquakes that are a danger to a sort of blanket area and you either get out of or take shelter from it inside somewhere. Usually driving away is a bad idea, but in this case it'd be a good one." Rory nodded, and was quiet for a little bit longer.

"I guess this makes us 'unusual emergency' responders. Not sure if that's good or bad."

"I like being able to do something about it," said Clark. "It's bad that there's something to be done, though. Wish we could spy on the enemy or something to find out what would beat them for good, or at least make them stop attacking."

"Hmmph. Let's tell Light to ask that woman next time there's a chance, I'm sure she already knows and just wants to 'surprise' us later."

---

I feel a certain responsibility at this point to emphasize that Light's new "tricks" are not necessarily applying more of the preexisting powers to real physics, like obviously a photon's probability isn't spread across precisely 3 discrete places. It'd be more accurate to describe them as new powers loosely based on some concepts from the known physics of light.