Battle Vixens! - 31

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Episode 31: Marionette

"Hey, how are you with children?"

"Hmn? Uh, not bad," said Amory. "I did some babysitting back in high school. Why?"

"Well, Nadia will be up pretty soon, and I wouldn't want to leave her alone if there's an attack. I mean, I don't wanna burden you, but.."
"I'm not doing anything else important today," she shrugged. "I'd be happy to help." Since changing into this form, Amory had been hearing a radio tuned to the news from one of the rooms—just barely loud enough for the fox-ears to pick up. It seemed Ning was keeping an ear out for an attack.

As if on cue, the kid came out of a bedroom door yawning and holding her arms up in an exaggerated stretch. Ning rushed over to her, leaning over onto her knees to bring their heads to about the same height. "Morning, sleepyhead."
"Hi, Ning!" She rubbed the fox-girl's ears briefly before noticing Amory was there, giving a wide-eyed look.

"Nadia, this is, uh—"
"Amp," she supplied.

"Amp, right. A friend of Light's."

"Ooh." The little girl rushed around Ning to offer a hand up at 'Amp'. "Hi! Light helped save me from bad guys, did you know?"

"Yeah, I know." She shook the girl's hand gently, making a mental note that she hadn't said anything about her being cute. "She does a lot of that lately." Obviously not conclusive evidence, especially since it was a child and for all they knew it could work differently depending on one's age, but at least evidence of some kind.

Almost as soon as they released hands, Nadia leaned to one side with a sparkly-eyed expression. The source of her fascination was also very quickly revealed: "Can I touch your tail?"

"Eheh, we'll see."

"Nadia, that's a super personal thing to ask right after meeting someone!" said Ning.
"Sorry..."

Turning toward her grandparent to give the apology, Nadia finally seemed to actually look at her a little more closely. "Hey, you look diff'rent."
"Um, I know." Ning seemed ready to come up with some kind of explanation or excuse, but she tensed slightly, her ears turning toward the direction Amory knew the radio was in. "Dear, there's another mean monster attacking some people, and I want to stop it. Could you be a good girl and stay here with Amp while I do that?" she asked.

"Mm-hm!" her granddaughter nodded eagerly.
"Now you listen to her, and do what she says, alright?" Ning rubbed the girl's head a bit.

"Yes!"

"Okay. I'll be right back." With a short nod in Amory's direction, she ran off toward the back door.

---

"So—" "—what was that on your phone earlier?" Gemma was next to herself in the backseat.

"I'm testing an app for the Initiative; they're hoping to get it out by tomorrow," said Petra. "The UI and graphics need some work, but the functionality's already there. It beep beeps when the authorities report a monster attack nearby; anyone can download it free, so normal people can run away and we can run toward, all while keeping anonymity if it's wanted."

"Half a minute, we'll be there," Karis announced. She had driven quite sanely and carefully earlier this morning, but was presently displaying an equal ability to drive like a maniac.

"Dearest, I can trust you with my greatest treasure, right?"
"I thought I was your greatest treasure."
"My second greatest, then." Petra offered over her phone.

"Yeah, yeah."

"..We're here, bail out!"

Gemma opened the doors and jumped out, looking around quickly. They were at the entrance to a city park, which a stream of people were running out of. A police car whose sirens she only just now remembered hearing pulled up behind Karis, stopped, and then slowly backed away and left again—apparently noticing the fox-girls coming out and starting to run into the park.

Petra ran between Gemma's two bodies, until they found the source of the panic. There was a man sitting up against a tree, cornered, with a humanoid mist-monster over him; another was chasing a woman running away in panic. Both were eyeless monstrosities with huge lipless mouths, one arm ending in a long, sharp spike and the other in what seemed to be a hatchet-hand. The arms were mirror images of each other—the spike was left for one, right for the other.

Petra raised her hands and jerked a column of dirt up from under the one chasing the woman, knocking it backwards; it rolled into the fall and quickly recovered its feet. Gemma had Minus throw some shadow blades at the other one while Plus ran up, knives forming in her hands. It danced away from the blades (but also away from the man it had been about to kill) and then charged, chopping and striking at her with its arm weapons. Plus was forced to just back away given the huge range advantage over her knives, but threw some electricity at it anyway, drawing a bit of black mist out.

Petra's opponent ran at her and found its hatchet-hand caught on a sword. She knocked its other hand aside with her sheath and then bashed it a couple of times in the head with that before kicking it away. Minus ran closer to her while Plus continued keeping the other one busy. "These are twins! Light fought something like this before; they had to both be killed at the same time or one would keep reviving the other."
"Yep yep, I'm on it." Petra's opponent stumbled back a couple of steps before taking a running stab at her, which she backstepped and then countered with a slash to its back. Minus imitated Rowan's trick, throwing a fireball after it as well, and then ran back to help her other body.

Plus was caught in a loop of backing away and ducking and sidestepping, slowly going around in a circle with the thing as it just kept going. She had to push Rory's trick out of physical defense and into stamina to keep up with it long enough for Minus to deliver the message. Finally, her other body returned to stab the monster in the back; it responded with a whirling chop she had to duck under and began attacking that body instead, allowing Plus to take a short breather before returning to work.

The other monster tried to strike Petra again, and this time she slammed it in the side with a big rock that just happened to be a part of the park's decoration, throwing it over onto its side. She stabbed it in the chest, kicked the rock off of it, picked it up by the neck and punched it several times in the face with the gauntlet before throwing it aside just as it was trying to get a chop in with the hatchet. This time it rolled, recovered, and started to run the other way.

Once both bodies were fighting one twin, things went a little more smoothly. It could only hold the range advantage over one of them at a time, allowing the other to get a jab or electric shock in (Minus already getting the hang of imitating Petra's earth control). She had four eyes and enough spare concentration to notice the other twin running into help, and had both of her own bodies scatter as it charged with a spike-hand forward and the other one chopped, ending in both of her surrounding the two of them, which stood back to back.

They both went after Minus, who was almost completely out of breath at this point. Plus had to start throwing ice spikes to force their attention elsewhere, and then they started after her. Fortunately, Petra charged in at this point and made them focus on her, meeting their whirl of attacks with her sword and sheath. Plus threw some more knives at them, which one body tended to knock aside just as it was about to hit the other. Minus recovered and threw more fire and lightning their way, which they could not block.

Then Minus tried pulling at the shadow of a nearby tree to make more blades to throw, but found it difficult. It was...it felt like playing tug of war with someone decidedly stronger; that tree's shadow and a number of shadows all around spun and twisted together under someone else's control. She tried to follow the motion and realized where it was going just in time to deliver a warning. "Petra!—" "—Jump left!"

She did just that, diving to her left side and rolling, just as the collection of shadows suddenly formed a massive spike straight up from the ground to try to impale her. As she got up, the spike reformed into several blades aimed her way, forcing her to block or dodge them while still more converged to form another spike under her. The mist monsters seemed reluctant to chase her with all of that happening and turned back toward Gemma's bodies, tensing to charge again.

---

"That kind of stuff just isn't good for a kid to see at that age. At least not until they're mature enough to come to grips with the idea of death in the first place, on their own."

"Oh come on, I saw all kinds of violent movies when I was young and I turned out fine."

Clark gave his wife a knowing look. This was their last day off and she'd insisted they wouldn't spend the part of it that wasn't already going to be spent outside fighting monsters inside. So they were just taking a walk, and now this conversation was happening.

"Well, I'm not a fair representative then. But what, you think we should ban those games?"

"No, no—you don't get it. Parental controls exist, but they don't see nearly as much use as they should. The ratings are there to tell parents who should and shouldn't be allowed to play. The problem is that the parents buying them don't pay attention to the ratings, like they don't even care, and then act like they care later, when they're talking to the lawmakers and the news. I want to be on their side because I agree with them in principle—I don't want our eventual kid playing something like that until they're old enough to understand—but their behavior just doesn't make any sense to me."

"I think you're conflating people."
"I'm what?"
"You're lumping in all the people who act in ways you don't like as if they were all one person. It makes it look like that person is acting in contradictory ways precisely because you're including people from two totally different categories. It's really convenient if you want the other side to look bad, but it isn't actually a helpful habit."

"No, no—I've actually seen this. I saw it when I was young. It was the same parents, Rory!"

"Maybe so, but you can't possibly say it's always so just because you've got some anecdotal evidence."

"Oh look, a monster." Clark pointed to some black mist starting to form a block or so ahead of them. If not for the great many reasons not to allow himself to feel grateful toward those things or whatever leader they obeyed, he might have felt very much so for getting out from under this discussion. They both changed and Rory far outpaced her husband on the way over as the thing formed and the normal people around began running away.

In addition to the fox-girls themselves, that wiki was steadily trying to keep track of all the species of black mist monsters that there were. This one seemed to be a new variant, something like a gigantic black tiger, except instead of a cat's tail it had one more closely resembling that of a scorpion. This one looked ready to chase them around, which was going to be a real pain for Clark's emerging strategy of being a mostly-ranged attacker, but she trusted Rory to keep it from doing any real harm.

They came close enough for it to notice, and then it charged Rory, mouth agape; she jumped clear over its head and landed on its back. Its stinger struck at her and she rolled off, letting it jab itself. As usual, what would've probably been a good strategy for any organic creature fell fairly flat as its stinger pulled back out of its back effortlessly and it changed direction to immediately try and bite at her again. Its back was to Clark at this point, so she tossed the needle at it, winding it around the tail a few times before pulling the string back to herself and pulling tight.

The beast screeched out a noise that seemed impossibly high and loud and made Clark wince briefly from the sheer auditory pain. It occurred to her that it was really, genuinely too high to normally hear and that this was perhaps a situation where fox-like ears proved to be a disadvantage. Rory yelled angrily in response, coming around and grabbing it by one of its legs, throwing the entire creature over onto its back; the impact shattering the concrete under it and seemed to shake the very ground.

After recovering, Clark wasn't idle, weaving about a soccer-ball-size bundle of string above the monster and moving it down with one hand while recalling the needle with the other. With a little help from gravity, it slammed into the exposed underside, spilling apart into a sprawl of glowing string and drawing jets of black mist out before dissipating. After another painful screech, the creature flipped forward in an instant and charged at Clark; she tensed to evade it until Rory ran up and tackled it in the side, slamming it over into a roll across the ground that lasted several yards and repeatedly punching at its side the whole way.

She started weaving something else and was interrupted by another sudden loud noise, the sound of thunder from just a couple of feet away startling her badly enough to jump away and drop everything, needle and all. "Yikes!" Looking that way, it was Ning, looking...more developed than usual. Probably Amory's doing.

"Sorry! What's going on?" She ran up.

"Big tiger scorpion thing, its yells hurt." Clark pointed, and then continued the movement into one that would remotely pull her needle up off the ground and back into her hand. "Think you—"

"DUCK!"

A stranger's voice interrupted the conversation, and when Ning instinctively did as it said something audibly whiffed through the air just where her head had been a second ago. "What th—!?" Ning half-looked that way before having to arrange the narrow miss of another several shots; Clark turned toward the assailant in those two or three seconds.

---

Petra became frustrated with running away from shadows very quickly, and in a single sweeping motion she pulled a chunk of ground big enough to support her up off of it into the air, where she could get a better look around. "What's the big idea, huh?!" Keeping one hand up seemed to help her maintain this brief floating fortress, and before long she spotted someone stepping out from behind a nearby bush. Also those twins were going after Gemma hard; she was going to need to do something about that soon.

It looked like another fox-girl, but... "Moh..moushiwake arimasen..." Her movements were slightly jerky, and she seemed to be having difficulty speaking. With what Petra was pretty sure was an apology, she pulled the shadows back toward herself and they formed into a pair of short scythes, one in each hand. Then she leapt into the air, aiming to slice Petra with them, so she kicked the bunch of dirt at the attacker and herself in the opposite direction, taking her brief flight over onto the top of one of the twins. She let her momentum carry her blade straight down on its shoulder, slicing a hatchet-arm off, and then a gauntleted hand punched it away in the same direction, giving some relief to—which one was that—Plus, right.

The dirt knocked the new girl back to the ground, but she got up quickly, running toward Petra with the weapons still firmly in her grip. She waved one of them upward and forced her to jump back out of the way of another ground-based spike, which made it only fair to respond by tilting the ground under her and knocking her over onto her side. Plus took this opportunity to very briefly catch her breath and then run to help Minus, throwing some daggers at the monster's back and then striking it with lightning until it shifted its attention her way.

Petra ran up to the stranger. "Why are you attacking me!?" Pushing herself up, the girl responded with more stuttering Japanese which she didn't have the time or spare concentration to fully translate, and struck with the scythes again, this time meeting a sword and a sheath, each of which had enough force behind it to throw the weapons out of her hands. Her eyes looked strangely glassy, and face—her chin, and her elbows and shoulders and knees—all had a strange cut-up and segmented look to them. Almost like she was some kind of...doll? Petra kicked her in the stomach and she staggered back a couple of steps before throwing a shadow-blade, which Petra flicked aside with the gauntlet. Her brain churned out some bits and pieces of what the girl was saying: There was something about not wanting to...about control...?

Plus and Minus were trading off on the twin they'd converged on, and it this point the one Petra had just maimed ran up to her spike-arm first, aiming for impalement. She noticed that just in time to duck aside, grab its remaining arm, and thrust it toward the shadow-wielding girl, who jumped away gracefully and threw more shadow-blades at Petra while the monster stumbled the rest of the way onto the ground. For these she just raised a temporary wall from the earth, and then turned that into several rocks thrown the girl's way. She didn't seem to have the fine motor skills necessary to dodge every one, and flinched uncomfortably with each hit. Petra ran up right at the end of that and tried slashing at the girl's shoulder, which was met by both scythes. Then she punched the girl in the cheek with her free hand, sending her flying off. It even felt like cold plastic to the skin of her knuckles.

The fallen twin ran up behind her and she caught its arm with her gauntleted hand again, decided she was tired of playing around and stabbed it through the middle a couple of times before throwing it in the shadow-girl's general direction while she was busy trying to pick herself up off of the ground. The monster started to look indistinct for a second or two, until some mist began pouring out from the other one toward it. That one was restrained at the moment, each of Gemma's bodies holding onto an arm, and was trying to bite at them. Petra decided to take a cue from shadow-girl's book (or however it was supposed to go) and raised and compacted some nearby dirt into a spike before stabbing it into the held one's back. Then, seeing that her original quarry was starting to regenerate even its lost arm, she ran up and stabbed it, too. The shadow-girl had evaded the monster throw, and tossed a blade at her which she knocked away, and then responded with a sheath toss. This one hit her square in the forehead, which visibly caved in, as if hollow.

Now that it was stuck on a spike, Gemma's twin was easy enough for her to start slashing at with some of her own weapons, and then the monsters had had enough, and began to fade together. The doll-girl, head still caved in, stood up. Her mouth seemed to force itself by series of twitches into an uncomfortably wide grin, and in a monotone voice very unlike the one she'd been using until now said, "Ha ha ha." Then her body, clothes and all, seemed to fall apart into dust on the ground.

Gemma had probably been too busy to see much of what was going on, but this she saw, and was as confused as Simon about it. "Uh..—" "—What just..?"

---

Ning was having none of being shot at repeatedly, and responded with a shower of electric sparks in the general direction of the attacker. She let go of the green, wooden crossbow in her hand (which the shots had been coming from) and it seemed to break apart into the air. Then she waved her hands to either side, forming a visible, green gust of wind in front of her that contacted the electricity and dissipated it before it could reach her. "What's your problem!?" A more focused lightning strike was met with another dissipating gust. "Huh?!" Ning was also aggressively moving toward her, seeing how her weapon was ranged and probably harder to use point-blank.

"Forget about me!" The strange girl had a pained expression. "Just—lookout!" As soon as she interrupted herself, she made a diagonal chop with her arm, and the green wind-energy she'd been using to block appeared as a cutting blade running through the air. On a probably-stupid hunch, Ning made a similarly-shaped scattering of electricity which met it in midair and actually did manage to dissipate it. "Just help your—gaaAAaah!" She charged at this point, reforming the crossbow and trying to bash Ning over the head with it. Ning drew her own weapon and sliced the crossbow in half before scattering some lightning at the girl with her free hand. Her attacker didn't react to this one quickly enough and convulsed briefly from the shock.

"Incomiiiing!" Rory's voice yelled from behind. Ning became electricity and zapped up several yards into the air before turning back, and then saw the giant tiger-thing charging through, Rory holding the end of its tail down with one hand and keeping herself on its back with the other. The crossbow-girl dove aside of its gaping jaw, and Ning struck herself back down through its tail onto its back with Rory.

"Hiya, need a sword?" She offered hers.
"It'd help, yeah." Rory grabbed it and stuck it into the monster's back, and then it bucked violently and rather than dealing with being thrown into the air and tumbling around Ning just struck back to the ground again.

She looked around quickly, having lost sight of the wind-wiedling intruder. Fortunately her instincts were better than her eyes, and she leaned back an instant before seeing a bolt go right past her nose. "Rrrrgh!" She called down lightning from the sky to scatter on the ground in the general direction that had come from, and then struck that way herself while the girl was busy rolling on the ground from dodging that. Rory had her sword, but she still had a sheath to summon and start swiping at the girl from a foot or so away, forcing her into a series of awkward dodges. "Stop! Shooting! At! Me!" she yelled, punctuating each with a swing.

"I—can't! I'm not even—alive!"
"What is that supposed to mean?!"

Ning was confused enough to stop swinging for a second, which proved to be a mistake. The girl stood herself up and instead of making the full crossbow she made a bunch of bolts in each of her hands, throwing several Ning's way. She zapped herself out of the barrage and to one side of the girl, and threw a shower of sparks that way. Then the monster screeched, an unimaginably loud and painful noise the likes of which she felt sure she'd never heard before. It stunned her for a second and in that second, her opponent redrew the crossbow and was just about to fire it right at Ning's chest.

A blur of neon blue lassoed around in between them and then she was pulled over onto her back by Clark's string just as she pulled the trigger, making the shot go just barely over Ning's head. Deciding this was enough, Ning fired a slightly strong taser-blast at the girl's center, and picked her up by the collar while she was stunned, then grabbed each arm by the wrist. Her skin felt cold and hard...not like skin at all. On closer inspection, she really didn't look human—or, even as human as fox-girls usually did.

"That won't work, just stab me or something," she said in an annoyed tone of voice. In her peripheral vision, Clark was running back around to join the fight with the monster. It had a big gaping mouth just like they all did, and seemed to have a habit of charging mouth-forward, which was a real risk of someone getting eaten.

"Fine!" Ning went with 'or something', and channeled the equivalent of a lightning bolt and a half through her hands. The girl's unnatural, doll-like body jerked and convulsed, gaining some visible burns, as the electricity ran over her. She stopped moving for a second, her eyes closed, and Ning dropped her. Then her eyes opened up again, and Ning tensed, ready to strike again if needed. But her body didn't move, just her face.

Her mouth twisted up unnaturally into a smile. "Ha ha ha." And she fell apart into dust.

Ning wasn't sure what to make of it. Had she just...killed someone? But she'd said that she was already dead! And seemed unusually happy for someone about to fall apart. Or...well, there was really something about the way it happened that seemed completely forced, like someone else's hands were there forcing her lips up and her mouth to move and somehow even her voice to make sounds. It was unsettling, but—she had been in the way of saving lives, and seemed to want to die (die again?). There was no time to think about it right now, the others needed her help.

She turned and struck herself up and down in an arc toward the monster. Rory was still on its back, dodging wild strikes from its tail while slashing its back repeatedly with the sword, and it was running all over like a wild horse. Clark was a short distance away looking unsure how to help just now. Ning came up next to her. "I can stop it if your string'll hold," she declared.

"It wouldn't even be a problem if my wife would just get off and turn it over again," said Clark, sounding annoyed. She took a moment to weave her thread into a rope of three or four strands all bound together and then offered Ning one end of the rope, the one the needle wasn't attached to. Once she took it, Clark threw the needle end and it wrapped around the base of the monster's tail.

Ning held on with both hands, pulling hard. A rut tore in the ground under her, but the monster was slowed to a near-halt before the string dissipated. Rory hopped off, grabbing one of the thing's hind legs and throwing the entire beast upside-down. Ning struck it with lightning from the sky a few times, making its body pour out mist, and Rory gave it a few more stabs for good measure before stepping away. It screeched again, but all three of them were covering their ears this time and didn't get stunned by it. Then it flipped on its front again and charged at Ning.

She took her sword back for a moment, slotting it into the sheath and using the magnet trick to fire it right into the thing's mouth. Then she struck in an arc around to one side, through that side to the other, and back onto her feet to see the black mist flow out from it. Rory was already chasing it, and Ning tossed her the sword again, which she caught and made a quick horizontal slash with.

The thing was finally starting to look indistinct; there wasn't much left of it now. It turned itself rapidly and charged after Ning again, and Clark threw her needle at Rory, who caught it and pulled it taut enough to be a tripwire for the four-legged beast, making it fall forward and over onto its back again. Ning struck it a couple of times with lightning from the sky above and was raising her hand to go for a third when she suddenly felt very tired. She lowered it to her side, huffing slowly and seeing that it was thankfully unnecessary anyway, the monster was already falling apart.

It felt like her whole body was tired, and wanted badly to relax, and was getting ready to relax whether she wanted it to or not. Ning gasped slightly, realizing what was happening, and also that she couldn't let it happen with possibly a camera watching. She drew herself up, forcing her body to tense briefly, and zapped up into the power line, taking a trip through it to a less-traveled road before allowing herself to fall back into humanoid form and land a little roughly with a couple of bounces, ending up lying on her back in some grass that probably should've been mowed a couple of weeks ago.

This place...would do. She sighed slightly, feeling her body relax, but at the same time feeling a lot of the energy she'd had since Amory had powered her up tearing itself away from her, seeping out from every crack it could find. It seemed to come out as a visible white mist from her body, and she could see her chest falling back down to its usual size, her body shrinking down to regular Ning. Light was correct—this didn't feel very good. But the sense of sudden exhaustion left her once it was over, and even regular Ning was still pretty okay.

She sat up and looked around, feeling thankful she knew her way around this town. Like this, she would have to walk or run all the way home, but that was fine. She knew where she was, and it really didn't feel all that far away, with as quickly as she could move even when unable to turn into lightning. She just hoped the Quinns wouldn't worry about her too much until the call came in to let them know she was okay.