Battle Vixens! - 32

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Episode 32: Castle

"Soo, I think we got attacked by a doll or something like that. She was speaking Japanese and it's been too too many years since I took my classes, so I couldn't catch a lot, but it didn't sound like she was fighting of her own will," said Petra. "Uh, hey, you okay there?" Both of Gemma were visibly tired from the effort of that last fight, panting heavily at first and continuing to need some gasps of air afterward.
"I think—" "—I will be. But..." Her mind was drawn briefly, almost instinctively, to the morning when Light had 'summoned' one of her bodies and she couldn't move anything but her mouth and sort-of part of the face.

"By the way, why left? Outta curiosity."
"Left? Um—" She had to think back through a long blur of mostly-instinctive movements. "—Oh, right. I could see it was gonna come up from under you, and I thought it might be really tall or—" "—or if I just told you to jump you could fall down onto it, so I needed to tell you 'away' but you might take too long to process that, so—" "—I just picked left arbitrarily as a definite direction to go in.—" "—Actually it's really good the direction wasn't important because I was thinking about my left which was your right but I actually have two different lefts right now, so—"

"Okay okay!" Petra giggled. "You could do the world's very first single-person 'Who's on First' sketch, you know. Or...a lot of single-person usually two-or-more person things, now that I think about it." She started to head toward the park entrance they'd come in through, so Gemma followed.

"...Have you noticed—" "—you say a word twice, sometimes."
"I do?" Petra seemed to think about it for a second. "Oh, yeah. I guess so. It's not a verbal tic I ever cultivated on purpose. I wouldn't be surprised if the superpower forms change speech habits, though. At least it's kind of a cute one, right? It pairs well—ha, pairs—with having two tails, yeah?"
"You...—" "—don't mind being cute?"
"Mind? It's perfect!" She made a brief sweeping motion at herself. "This body was not made to be anything else, so talking and walking in a way that matches is good for image."
"But you're, uh...—" "—a guy?" Speaking of gained mannerisms, it seemed like whenever Plus was hesitant to say something directly but Gemma thought it needed to be said, it would spill out of Minus's mouth anyway.
"Pfft, not right now. Petra's obviously a girl, so I got no problem rolling with it."

---

Rory walked up toward Clark, looking around. "Well, that was wild...uh, where'd Ning disappear to?"

She didn't look as happy as Rory felt; in fact her arms were crossed and her ears folded down a bit. "You and I need to have a serious talk about strategy and paying attention to things." She waved at a nearby power line. "She just zapped off up there and kept going, I guess to get away from the media. Could've at least said bye."

"Aww come on. I have a plan: Attack."

"That didn't even work in the movie you're referencing." She shook her head. "You made this whole fight way harder than it had to be, especially with that extra person shooting at Ning the entire time."

"It..seemed pretty easy to me." Rory's ears lowered slightly, realizing her husband was serious. "Soo, the extra person..?"
"Poofed after Ning shocked her a bunch. Said something about already being dead before that? We'll have to talk about it after cameras." She waved toward some news crews driving as close as there was intact concrete, and put on a friendly face for them.

---

"...really am sorry to hear about that. I'll pass it on, 'course." Karis was standing next to the car, talking on her husband's phone. "Looks like..they made it out okay." She waved at the three fox-girls coming out of the park. "I'd guess it wasn't a cakewalk for them, either. ...Yeah, I'll leave you to it."

Petra was finally in normal-conversation distance just as she hung up. "What's the news, dearest?"

"We lost one. These..doll people showed up all over, one for every monster in the city. I guess you saw one too?"
"Mm-hm. Shadow and scythes, spoke Japanese."
"Well, Rowan said she recognized the one that attacked her group as resembling someone who'd been killed in a hospital after a monster ate her and put her in a coma. And...she managed to get one of the ones in Rowan's group caught in the monster's jaws."

"Oh." Petra was feeling a lot less chipper all of a sudden. "...Which one?" She'd only properly introduced herself to the majority of them this morning.

"Nico. She's alive—Rowan was able to get her out and heal some of the worse tooth marks—but..."
"Won't be fighting anymore, I assume."

Karis nodded. "As soon as the monster ate her, the doll person laughed and disappeared into dust. She's on the way to tell her family."

Glancing over at Gemma, she saw a different expression on each face. Plus seemed sad, and Minus had a slightly terrified look. "Hey, don't let it dampen the victory we got," said Petra, putting a hand up on the nearer body's shoulder. "Nobody could've predicted mystery undead dolls showing up and attacking—"

"—puppets," the same body interrupted, suddenly standing more upright and staring attentively straight ahead.

"Eh?"
"They're not dolls, they're puppets.—" "—Someone is controlling them, pulling the strings. I think it's someone's power.—" "—And the puppets are, taking the look and power of people she's killed."

Karis raised an eyebrow. "How do you..know that?"

"It's..—" "—I don't know how to explain it, but—" "—I can see other people's powers, how they work. When I looked at the girl attacking you with shadows,—" "—I saw an imitated power, like you get from killing someone. And—" "—I also saw some of a real power, in the body itself. Like...like strings, going away to somewhere else."

"Did you see where? Could you trace it back to whoever was doing the controlling?" Karis pressed.

"No," Plus shook her head a little sadly. "I...There wasn't a direction to it, there were just, strings.—" "—It's just so hard to put into words at all.."
"Ahh, sorry. Just an idea."

"We should tell the Initiative," Petra suggested. "This insight may be useful, or at least there's prolly a way to check the theory against what they already know."

"Yeah. We have an appointment there post-monsters anyway," Karis nodded. "Alright, back in the car then." She waved vaguely toward it and went around to return to the driver's seat.

---

Ning passed by a few people on the way home. Some of them waved or smiled, a few actually looked frightened or stared. It seemed like she was walking fast enough to convey she was in a hurry, at least to the extent that nobody really tried to stop her to talk. She just made sure that no one was still watching when she got close to the house, and then went around the back way, knowing the door should still be unlocked. And if it wasn't then she could knock, or...well, the lock was made of metal so in theory she could maybe mess around with magnetism enough to unlock it? In case of emergency, she had already demonstrated that the doors of her own house were really not a match for her present strength anyway, so what was she even thinking about? Anyway, the door was unlocked so she quietly let herself inside, hearing Nadia giggling from the living room right away.

Amp was sitting on the couch with her tail out to the side, and Nadia was clinging onto it with her head poking just above to watch the TV. The fox-girl had a phone in one hand and waved with the other on seeing Ning come in. "Hey. I guess it went alright?"
"Yeah. There was..something weird that happened, but everyone survived. I, had to leave in a hurry before your, um.." she waved vaguely to herself, "..wore off. Uh, where'd the phone come from?"

"What do you mean? It was in my pocket when I came in."

"But you.." It certainly didn't seem like her present outfit had pockets, but maybe they were just hidden? For that matter, what happened to things in Gerald's pockets when he went back and forth? Ning had never really noticed that stuff anywhere, but it always seemed to show back up where it originally had been on turning back. "..Uhm, nevermind."

"By the way, do you really let her do this all the time?" Amp pointed to the girl on her tail with a thumb.

"..Nooo. I let her touch it a little if she's good, but not use it as a pillow. Nadia, did you lie to her?"
She looked at Ning wide-eyed for a few seconds. Then she insisted: "I said you let me pet your tail all the time."

"Uh-uh, you used the words 'do this' when I asked you and you were doing exactly that. Eh, it doesn't bother me, anyway. You must've taught her pretty well, she didn't yank my fur or anything."

"Uh-huh!" the small girl agreed eagerly.

"Still." Ning put her hands on her hips. "Nadia, that kinda thing is dishonest too."

"...Sorry."

She sighed, and moved a little closer to the couch. "So, have you been keeping up with things on that?" she said, pointing to the phone.

"Yep." She held the screen toward Ning, with an article open. "It looks like as many as ten weird doll-people showed up, most of them in the city just down the road. We got one, and a couple of other towns nearby got one."

"Oh. So...?"
"They all turned to dust like yours did. And..I have a pretty good idea what's going on."

"You do."

"Yeah, well, one of the ones in the city matches with someone I know got, uh," Amp briefly looked in Nadia's direction but her attention was mostly on the TV. She continued in a much quieter voice: "Well, a monster took her powers and then she was—you know—in the hospital after, in Japan. With a little more digging, it seems like that kind of thing happened to all the ones I could identify. Someone has the power to make dolls they control—more like puppets, I guess—and they've been taking advantage of the whole coma thing. And they can just make a puppet with a person's power after taking it, it seems like."

This possibly explained claiming to be 'already dead'. "But, she didn't just use her powers to attack," said Ning, her ears folding down slightly. "She warned me before shooting, and then tried to tell me to focus on helping the others instead of fighting her, like she knew she was a distraction and didn't want to be."
"Hmn. I guess manifesting someone's powers in a puppet gives it just enough of them to speak from what would be their mind? Or it could just be the puppetmaster messing with you by having them act like that's the case."

She closed her eyes and seemed to think carefully for a few more seconds, and then reopened them. "Either way, I think I get why there were those warnings. At some point she must have had a puppet—you know—someone, and it didn't count. She has to do it herself. So the strategy is to try and distract people fighting monsters so the monsters will take their powers for her. In other words, it's bad for her if one of her puppets actually succeeds in, uh—really hurting someone. But they still have to put up an actual fight or it won't be an effective distraction."

"So..should we just not fight them? Ignore them?"
"I don't think that's a good idea. They still have le—uh, dangerous powers and they're still attacking you with them. You'll be forced to dodge even if you don't fight back. From now on, the best strategy is probably to take out the puppet as quickly as you can, and don't hold back at all.

"But this also means...whatever facility the Initiative has for those people, she's gonna be looking for it. It would also explain targeting this area specifically all of a sudden." Amp jumped slightly, and pulled the phone back to herself. "I really doubt this hasn't occurred to Rowan, but she needs to know right away, just in case."
"In...case?"
Amp concentrated exclusively on sending a text (which Ning, leaning over slightly, noticed was in all caps) before responding. "That plan of distraction actually worked in one case, in the city, today. So there's someone going to that facility right now. They can't let a puppet track her—or their master. I dunno how they'll be totally sure about it, but...they just, can't."

"..Oh." Ning felt a combination of sadness at the news and dread at the possibility of this puppetmaster murdering all of those people and becoming that much more powerful.

A moment later, a response came and Amp read it aloud. "'I recognized that possibility immediately. Rest assured we are being extremely careful, so much so that I cannot explain any more than that over phone.' That's...probably for the best, yeah."

"If we could just figure out how to wake all those people up before it's too late..."
Amp nodded. "Yeah. I'm sure they're trying everything they can think of."

---

The Quinns returned to human form and began to walk back home after excusing themselves to the newspeople. Once they were away from the cameras, Clark's expression darkened again. "Rory, listen, when we try something and it works you can't just suddenly decide to do something else."

"I mean, evidently I can, or we..." She allowed his glare to cease the nitpicking of his choice of words. "Anyway, it might've figured out a counter to just flipping it over and then we'd be screwed. I had to mix in other things to be sure that didn't happen."

"One: What exactly was this monster going to do in response to being turned over onto its back with its big tail under it and us both too far away to get caught by its claws or fangs? Two: Everything we know of these monsters so far suggests they do not learn, at least not on an individual basis. Three: Riding on its back was obviously not working!" Clark had been making an obvious, conscious effort to keep his voice down until now, but allowed himself to briefly yell at this point. He was angry, and Rory's husband was almost never angry. "You seem to frequently and conveniently forget, dear, that your powers don't actually allow you to hurt them directly. Until Ning showed up with a sword for you to stab it with, all that riding on its back did was wasting time."

"Well, what's wrong with wasting time? I just figured someone would show up with a weapon sooner or later, and we could stall until then."
"We had a way to hurt it already! Every second that thing was around was another second it could've hurt someone, especially one of us. It might have charged me at any time—it did charge me once or twice."

"It wasn't gonna hurt me," Rory protested.
"It was trying to eat you the whole time!" He was 'waving hands in the air' mad at this point. That tended to be funny in hindsight, but genuinely worrying in the moment. "And I don't know how much research you've been doing on how it works, but I have seen footage: No matter how tough one of us is, if a monster gets them in their mouth it is over. You'd be in a coma and I'd be fighting an invincible monster with all your powers. How's that for screwed?!"

Rory gave him an expression that indicated she was thinking about it, and he caught his breath after all of that shouting, resulting in an awkward gap of silence.

"..Uh, is this a bad time?" Light's voice came from next to them, and they both looked over to see her shimmer into view. "I guess, you guys are okay, right?"

"Yeah, we're fine," said Rory. "Just having an argument at the moment—I think he's winning this one. I was under the impression you were fighting homework today."

"Well, I was just about to take a break to clear my head and go get lunch when I heard the report on a monster showing up. I came as fast as I could, but it was already dying by the time I arrived."
"Soo, you've been following us since then?" said Rory.

She nodded. "You seem really chipper about 'having an argument'..."

"Well, arguments are good!" Since she looked confused, Rory continued: "Conflict is important! Ideas can't grow unless they get a chance to clash against each other. An unchallenged belief is useless. You can't possibly hope to understand someone else's position if you never even hear it defended, right? I married a man I knew would disagree with me often, and that's the best decision I ever made. Anyway, can I ask your opinion?"

"My opinion," she repeated with a tone of mild confusion.
"Do you think he's right?"

"I really dislike being sidelined from my own conversation," Clark announced, crossing his arms. Light looked at him inquisitively, and he gave an exasperated wave to respond after a couple of seconds.

"Well—Yeah, obviously," said Light. "I mean, I didn't actually see you fight the monster, but if you actually found out that flipping it over on its back was relatively easy and worked and safer than letting it chase you around, then you probably should've kept doing that until and unless it stopped working. And—he's definitely right about you being edible even while invincible, and the horrible result that would have."

"That's not really even the point," said Clark. "The point is, she's putting herself in danger by always acting on impulse and not paying attention to what's going on!"

Light probably would have visibly sweatdropped if it were possible. "Please don't start telling me to tell each other things, I really don't want to be in the middle of this."
"No worries," Rory shook her head. "This is just revenge for me using the third person a minute ago. Right dear?"
"Right.."

"Anyway, it's not like I don't try to be careful and think things out, but somehow my impulses just get the better of me and I don't feel like I can help it. Later on I try and rationalize my actions like I just did, you know?"
He sighed. "It's not so bad to act quickly in a dire situation. We wouldn't have made it to Light in time without your crazy 'let's jump out the window' idea. Just...keep in mind that you're weak to magic and to being eaten and at least I won't have to worry as much," said Clark. "And try to listen to other people in the moment, too, if you won't think about what you're doing yourself."

"Agreed," Rory nodded, and then grinned slightly trollishly at Light. "See, and then we get to kiss!"

Light seemed as nonplussed as expected after said kiss. "I'm..gonna make sure Ning is okay and then go eat lunch. You...keep being you."

"I'm literally incapable of anything else!" Rory said, watching the fox-girl disappear again.

---

"Right. Sorry to saddle them with extra work like this, but...right. Thank you again." There were three unmarked vans, and three ambulances, all in an enclosed garage. Rowan watched crash test dummies being loaded into all but one vehicle, with Nico—now quite stable in the same way they usually were not long after going into a coma—being placed in one of the vans. had just gotten off the phone with his former boss, explaining the situation and requesting some police presence to watch over her family. They would be allowed to visit her, as usual, which meant they would find out where the facility was. But now, if a puppet showed up near their house to try and kidnap one of them, it would be shot. Rowan had good, personally-gathered evidence that the puppets were not particularly well defended against being shot.

Four of the vehicles would go roving around town. Rowan didn't know which four. The other two would go out of town, one to the actual facility (which he knew full well was out of town), and one on a long loopback around into town. They were doing this as soon after those fights as possible because the puppetmaster was surely exhausted from fighting with about ten puppets all at once; chances were she had no ability to follow at all in that condition except for possibly doing it herself in human form, but the extra precautions were considered more than necessary to ensure that the obvious disaster was prevented.

Unfortunately, he was pretty sure he knew where that van was going. Not precisely—he had gone out of his way to not look it up on a map. But he knew more about the facility's security than most: That it was behind a very emphatic 'no-trespassing' fence, and that aside from one particular, anonymous person, the guards were to shoot anyone with a fox tail who attempted to cross that fence. "Shoot on sight" was the kind of thing that only military bases could really get away with, and there was one not exactly next door, but at least reasonably close to the city. It was probably a side building to that, not a part of the base proper but close enough to pretend to be a part of it to allay suspicion. And that one person would probably be someone from the base who had received powers. Rowan didn't know of such a person, but if the military wanted them to be a secret and the Initiative was in on said secret then it would explain the roundabout way they had described this exception to the "shoot on sight" rule. So far—at least as far as he knew—the base hadn't been attacked by a mist monster, but obviously they had no desire to be unprepared if that ever did happen.

This was the best they could do. There were efforts underway to find the identity of the one responsible for these hostile puppets and probably at least ten cold-blooded murders around the world, but there was nothing vaguely resembling a lead so far. Rowan had proposed that if the puppets' speech was genuine, they might have some idea of who or where to look, which meant the next time he was fighting them was going to also be an attempted interrogation. Any information gained even then would need to be taken with a grain of salt—since she might just be "faking" all those personalities.

Now it was a waiting game. The puppetmaster had shown her hand, and they had done everything they could to prepare for the strategies Rowan guessed to be possible with said hand. It was now her move to make.

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This episode's title might seem weird right now, but should make more sense in hindsight. Unless of course you already know in what sense I'm using the word.