Battle Vixens! - 33

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Episode 33: Bag of Tricks

After meeting everyone (and learning a few new tricks from them), Gemma was pulled into a small, empty conference room by Rowan for a private conversation. Actually, only Plus went with him while Minus stayed behind and made a little more small talk, but it was essentially the same thing. Her first impression of him—the day before—had been of someone stern, serious, maybe always calculating. He seemed a little down for obvious reasons ever since meeting him again here at the Initiative headquarters, but once they were there he went against whatever expectations she had and faced her with a friendly smile. "I'm glad you're all right," he said. "Too bad this had to be your first impression of our town. It's really a nice place when it's not actively under attack." His smile went slightly wry at this point.
"Oh, um, I've been here before with my family," she said. "We were on the way to visit the college, I wound up studying at." Rowan nodded.

"We met yesterday, but it was more of a brisk introduction. I had a lot of other things on my mind. Not that I don't now, but...well, I'm making more of an effort. It seems like you had some kind of talk with Don?"
"Uh, yeah..." She realized she hadn't actually seen her..him around anywhere today. "I hope I didn't go too far or anything."
Rowan shook his head. "I'll be honest, I brought him along half-hoping Light would notice something was wrong and push him to get help. Instead she was focused on me the whole time, but whatever you said did the trick anyway. He went to get some tests run early this morning. So, thank you."

"Oh. Um..." She wasn't exactly sure what to say to that. It had mostly just felt like a bunch of reaction to what she saw and heard from her, and then 'sensed' using Clark's trick.

He sighed. "Another of those puppets showed up in your town, too. Nobody was seriously hurt, but it means that whoever the enemy is, they have an interest there as well—if only in keeping you all too tied down to help here. It's obvious enough what her real target is..." Plus nodded agreement. "If you can get the message across, tell everyone there to be careful. If...if there's some way to get information across privately then I'm willing to share anything new we learn about this enemy with Light and the rest of you."

"Oh! Uh, Light can actually..summon one of me," she said. "Since both of my bodies are the same person I can talk across long distances. And I can actually 'merge back' into whichever body I want and then split back up to put both bodies where that one was. I was thinking of using that to save a car trip back if I could get a hold of her..."

"Hmn." Rowan seemed to think for a moment. "It would be a good way to talk about setting up another way to communicate that doesn't need one of you to stay here for any length of time. I'll try and make contact with her through what channels I have, if that's alright."
"Okay," she nodded.

It seemed like that was as much as he wanted to say—at least at first. There was a long pause during which she was increasingly uncertain whether the conversation was over, leading to the eventual realization that he wanted to say something more but wasn't sure whether he should—or possibly wasn't sure how to say it. He finally did say it all the same: "Look, I'm not asking you to tell me, but..does someone know?" Plus's expression must've made it obvious she didn't know what he meant, so he clarified: "Does someone know who you really are, and that you can change to...being that?"
"Oh. Um.."
"Just, think about it. Someone should know, so your family can at least find out after the fact if something happens. Even if you didn't die, if you just fell into a coma and eventually woke up....so far, I hear the most effective way of getting any response at all from them is for someone who was close to talk to them. Besides, can you imagine if someone you cared about just suddenly disappeared, and you had to guess why?"
Emma's mind was drawn immediately to think of Amory, although of course there was her own family back home to worry about in the same way. But of course, he did know, and so did Light and the Quinns. "Uh, there are some people who know," she said.
"That's good," he said with what seemed to be a relieved tone. "I would say the same thing to Light or anyone else back in your town. These secrets might keep you safe—I'm sure you noticed even some of those working with me here are going by assumed names and not giving out their real ones—but if something ever did happen then you deserve to have people know who you really were."

---

Not five minutes after Ning went to the kitchen to start getting lunch ready for the three of them, there was another knock on the back door. "I'll get it," she said. Amp leaned forward and turned her head to look, and saw some glowing letters (probably 'It's me, Light' or something like that) on the inside of the door; then it was opened just long enough for an invisible person to come in, and finally closed again. Light appeared after that.

"Hiya," said Ning.
"Hey. Just making sure you're okay after disappearing like that." She finally saw some motion out of the corner of an eye and turned toward the living room. "Oh! Hi, uh—" (Ning whispered 'Amp')
"—..Amp. I guess, you're still here?"

"My tail's being held hostage," she joked, pointing at Nadia. "So how far are you on—"
"Really far! Far enough to take a break and make sure everyone's okay after creepy dolls start showing up and attacking my friends and allies out of nowhere! Rory already asked about this."

"Okay, okay. Just making sure."

"..I guess you know about her power by now, then," she said, turning back toward Ning.

"Mhm. I can zap through power lines."
"So I saw. Seems like an even quicker way around town than mine. Or at least equally as fast, as long as you know where you're going."

Amory's phone buzzed again. "Uh..hmm."

"Who is it?" Ning called, starting back toward the kitchen and probably getting ready to expand the guest list for today's lunch.

"Rowan again. Wants me to pass on a request that Light summon one of Gemma's bodies—Plus, if possible—for some private communication."

"I was wondering if that'd occur to her as a shortcut back here." Light came into the living room. "So, should I?"
Amp shook her head, "Not right now. I still don't want her to know about this just yet...I'll say we're eating in public, and we'll do it as soon as we can with a warning text first?"
"That's fine."

Ning's head poked out from the kitchen door for a second. "Wait, you can summon her? Can you summon me?"

"Uhh, no. It's—well, our best guess is that the extra body counts as her 'weapon' and I can summon other people's weapons. And we already pretty much agreed to be really careful with it."

"Awh, too bad." She went back, and Light went to follow.

"Really? I'd be terrified to find out someone could just suddenly teleport me next to them whenever they wanted."
"Maybe if it was just 'someone', but you're nice. It'd be a convenient way to get from one place to another sometimes."

"You realize I'd still have to go to places, right?"

"Yeah, but if it was close to where I was goin' anyway, it'd be like..carpooling without the car. Or with a car even, but not having to pick anyone up."

They talked in there for a little longer, and just when the smell of food was starting to come from the kitchen, Ning called, "Nadia, come get some lunch, dear!"
"..'Kay." The small girl finally let go of Amp's tail and hopped off the couch, starting off in that direction. So the fox-girl got up and followed.

During lunch, Light said, "You brought your car, right?"

"Mm-hm. Want a ride back?"
"Yeah."

---

Back in the apartment (and both back in original human form ever since going out to Amory's car), Blake stood up next to the couch and spoke Gemma's phrase, asking her power to bring Plus into the room. She appeared, blinked a couple of times and looked around. "It's kinda disorienting to suddenly go from one place to another..."

"Well, welcome back anyway," said Blake. "What's Rowan have to say?"

"Uhm, well I'm sure you already know about the new puppets showing up everywhere...they got one of the vixens here—um, there I mean, at the city—caught by a monster, and she's been moved to a secure place. As far as Rowan can tell, their goal is to distract people fighting monsters so they get knocked out, which means the person controlling them wants to find that place and, uh.."

"Take all of their powers for herself," Amory finished. "I more or less guessed as much myself."

"Oh!" She jumped finally, seeming to notice him for the first time. "Um, hi again. Sorry. Did you—do you want..I mean, um."
"Sure, but we'll talk about it after this," he said, apparently understanding whatever question she'd half-asked.
"O-okay.

"So! Um, the next thing...there's an app for your phone Rowan wants you to download for secure communication, like encryption and stuff. It's disguised to look like a general 'monster alert' app the Initiative is going public with this afternoon. He says if Light has a phone she should at least get the regular version of that, and the Quinns should too. Or the secure communication one if you're okay with the Initiative knowing about your phones."

The more secure version was difficult and time-consuming to download, with Emma needing to recite several passwords character-by-character to get Amory through to it. Eventually, it was set up, and he opened to the main screen of the 'shell' which just showed a map of the nearby area and a notification indicating there were no monster attacks in the nearby area at the moment. "This is a truly surreal thing to say there's an app for," he said, staring at it.

"It's an ingenious idea, though," said Blake.

Plus nodded agreement. "So um, to get to the phone part you just press the logo a few times with a certain timing like, uh." She pressed a finger to the opposite palm a few times to indicate the timing. Amory tried that, and something resembling a cross between a phone address book and a chatroom user-list showed up, indicating choice for who to call as well as who was online.

"..You can text or call anyone listed on this screen, and you can see who's got their phone on right now and a recently-used list and...um.." Plus's expression suggested that whoever was talking to her other body was going a little too fast to keep up, or possibly using terms she didn't entirely understand. "..Theeee, uhh, if you—if someone calls someone else then it just makes it look and sound like the phone is ringing normally, and the same for texts. The main difference is that all the actual voice and text gets encrypted so nobody can just listen in on it. Unless they're in the same room. Also the alert for monsters is really loud so, um, be ready for that. Rowan says you're showing up fine, is Amory okay as the, name to display on there?"

"Sure," he nodded.
"Okay." She sighed, closing her eyes. "Now he's gonna call you and I can take a break. Wait don't repeat that part. Or this one. Uhhmm—right." She shook her head clear, finally realizing what she was doing there. Opening her eyes again she added, "It's been a tiring day, okay?"
"Hahah, it's fine." Amory's phone started ringing, and he paused before answering, nodding to Blake. After taking a second to process the gesture's meaning, he changed back into Light.

Her ears were able to pick up the other end of the line easily enough. "Hello again. There isn't really much more to say at the moment, but I wanted to make sure everything was working before calling it a day. We haven't actually tested this beyond the city before now."

Plus frowned slightly, her ears twitching a bit.

"Well, I can hear you just fine," said Amory. "You, uh, you okay there?"
"As good as I can be, at least. I don't know how I would've survived today if I'd waited any longer to get the full use of my powers. Tell Light thank you for that." He looked, and she nodded in response.

"It's like there's an echo.." Plus whispered seemingly to herself.

"Oh—right. Now that your phone's got that on it, you can actually use it to help Dr. Quinn install the same thing with nowhere near as much work. Please do that whenever you can, if they're willing."

"Sure."

"Thanks." The other end hung up, so Amory dropped the phone back to his lap.

"I'm not surprised there's some noticeable latency from the encryption," said Light. "More importantly, I wonder if you're actually able to break physics by providing FTL communication between your bodies..."
"Wouldn't be surprised at this point," said Amory; Plus just looked confused. "So..you met some new people over there? Learned some new powers?"
"Uh—yeah. A lot."
"Hey, take a seat. You're tired, right?" He waved to a comfy looking chair, and after a moment's hesitation she nodded and went and collapsed into it.

"You can change back if you want, I could help you get back to your room without showing anything suspicious to the cameras," Light offered.
"Um—not just yet, I'm saying bye to everyone over there still," she said. "Th-thank you though."

"Can you tell us anything about the puppets? Since you fought one?" said Amory, with a gentle tone of voice.
"Not..not much. I mean, I didn't fight it much. Sim—uh, Petr—another of the girls from the other town actually fought her directly. I was really busy with the monsters at the time, but I was able to see that it was someone using a real power to control the puppet and a stolen power through it, but not much else. I...know she had shadow powers and spoke Japanese, and Rowan said something about someone with those powers getting killed in a hospital bed in Japan..."

Amory nodded. "We're dealing with a genuinely garbage person here."

Light thought of something. "Actually...if you're not too tired for it..could you tell us about who all you met? The powers you learned from them? It'd be good to know what you're now capable of for future reference, and also who exactly our allies are if we go to the city or they come here."

"Mm," she nodded in agreement.

"Okay..um, so, first I met Simon, but Simon's Petra when he's..you know, like the way you're Light when you're not..."
"Yeah," she said, giving a 'go on' gesture.
"Petra has earth powers. Like, picking up concrete and dirt and throwing it around. So I can do the same lightning and earth attacks as before, but with both Plus and Minus now. But I can only make one earth-knife and one lightning-knife at a time, no matter which body makes it."

"Uh, then there was, Fay. She has a big, like a quarterstaff thing? And her power makes..these kind of bomb things."

"Bombs," Amory repeated.

"Er—they, she can make a point of light appear in front of her fingertips or anywhere the staff goes, and then make it explode into a bigger ball of light herself, or something touches it."
"How...big of an explosion?" said Light. "Could you show us here without destroying anything?"
"I think so. Hers can be huge but mine are all the same pretty small size." She made a dagger appear out of the room's light and held it forward, producing a small point of light. Then the weapon was unsummoned, and then the point suddenly, violently expanded out to the size of a baseball before disappearing. There was an audible blast of air out from the point as it exploded, and some heat off of it.

"We..probably should've considered the noise that would make," said Light.

"It wasn't too loud," said Amory, getting up and going to the front door to peek outside through the peephole. "Hopefully they'll just think it was a game or movie or something."

Plus looked around nervously, but after a minute or two neither of them heard anyone nearby calling the police. "S-so, um. Minus's version of that makes dark balls about the same size as that exploded to. They absorb energy instead, and shrink to a point before dissapearing."

"What kind of energy?" Amory finally returned to the couch.
"Um—any kind, I think. They're obviously absorbing light; someone tried putting a fire under one and it kinda sucked it in. If you hit one it feels like hitting something really solid, but it usually disappears right away if you do that. I tried putting it right on top of one of the explosion point things and they both disappeared."

"After that, was Hugo. She's...you know, another guy. Her powers were all sound-based, like, yelling and making this force wave thing out of the yell that hits like a truck. And she has this huuge shield," she said, attempting to convey the hugeness by bringing her arms as far up/down as they would go. "I couldn't make sound actually hit things like she can, but I figured out how to move it around a little bit, especially make it a little quieter or louder. And Minus can sort of dampen impacts with it. Like, make a hard hit not as hard, especially if it's directly to her. I mean, me."

"Really wish you'd mentioned that one before we tried the explosion," said Amory

"Oh—right. S-sorry."
"It's fine, I'm pretty sure our neighbors are out enjoying their last day off anyway," said Light, and gave Amory a small mock-glare. He shrugged comically and Plus finally noticed the exchange just in time to be visibly confused by it. "I'm catching up on homework," she explained.

"Is yours mostly done?" said Amory, now that the subject had come up.

"Oh, I actually got way ahead the first couple of days after I got these powers. Um...being able to do two things at once really helps."

"Anyone else?" Light was eager to shift the subject back to the important one.
"Yes. Um, she said her name was Zeno, but I think it's probably another fake name...She had a bow and made arrows out of light, like this.." Emma demonstrated, raising her hand and forming an arrow in her hand from the light in the room. "She can make these, light shield things. Like, um..you know hard light from that one game, where it's light but you could actually walk on or bump into it?"

"Yeah. That's just scifi nonsense, though," said Amory. "Light shouldn't actually be able to do that, or I guess it's more like there's no way someone should be able to do that with light..."
Light cleared her throat, and pulled about half of the light currently in the room into a ball floating an inch or so over a raised hand.

"..Point taken." She dropped her hand, returning the room's light to normal.
"So, um, once she summons one it just stays in one place, but it'll take some hits before it breaks. Or she said she could 'concentrate' on an existing shield to make it last longer or through a harder hit, but it's draining. Mine...are really small and fragile." Plus waved her hand in front of herself and a small rectangular glow appeared in the air.

"Hmm..." Light looked at the 'shield'. It 'felt' like light to her, but strange, unnatural light. Out of curiosity, she waved a hand to try and move it and was able to get it to go up, down, and spin around briefly. It refused to break apart or reshape itself, only move around and rotate.

"I can actually feel you pulling on it..I could sorta pull back but you're a lot 'stronger' than I am, if that makes any sense. Um..I felt something like that when Minus was using shadow powers and then that puppet showed up and started pulling on the same shadows herself."

"I think there's some kind of 'same-element' thing going on," said Amory. "Like, different expressions of the same idea. At any rate, if you ever met up I'm sure you'd find some cool ways to synergize your powers, huh?"
"Yeah." After she let go of it, the light shield dissipated. "So, what's Minus do with this one?"
"Uh..shadow bullets. But, I can't just make them, I have to shoot them to get them to appear at all, and then they disappear on impact or after falling to the ground. They looked like just tiny dark spheres on camera. I can't actually make them go all that fast, either—usually somewhere close to what a BB gun can do. Or—well, I feel like I could get them close to 'real bullet' speed if I put a lot of effort into it, but it doesn't seem like a good idea to spend that much for just one shot."

"So when you shoot them, do you do, like..a finger gun?" said Amory. "Or just..?"
"I can make them appear in the air in front of my hand, no matter how I hold it," she said, holding a hand out palm-forward. "I could make a finger-gun shoot them if I wanted to though, heehee."

"Um, anyway..the last person I met was Tora. She has these, uh, claw things that appear on her hands."
"Wait, like, extending out of her hands?" Light leaned forward excitedly for a second.

"Uh—noo..?" Seeing Gemma lean back slightly in surprise, she drew herself back. "Like, a glove with claws on it. Here," she pointed to the three spaces between the non-thumb knuckles. "Everyone thought she had some kind of physical powers, like Rory does? But I figured out what she's really doing is altering her own body's response to gravity. Like, um, making herself physically heavier or lighter or even bending the direction of the effect to get more speed."
"I think we're beyond the realm where physics can explain anything," Amory commented.

"Yeah..so I can do some of that with this body. Minus can...sorta, very slightly do it to things other than herself—myself, except it can include me, Plus, just not—um." She trailed off nervously.
"For the sake of clarity, just refer to your other body in the third person," Amory suggested. "It's fine, we get it."

"Okay. The smaller the thing is, the easier to do something noticeable. I was barely able to make this body a pound heavier or lighter on the scale using Minus's version, but Plus's version was much easier to get a meaningful effect from."

"...And then, I'd already met Rowan and Dawn. Err, I didn't actually see Dawn today though..she, went to get some help. The..person who got eaten was Nico. I didn't really want to ask about her powers...i-it just seemed a little insensitive."
Amory nodded. "If we ever need to know, there's probably news footage or a wiki entry I could look up instead of pestering them."

Plus took a deep breath. "..Okay. I'm, through over there." She spoke her phrase and changed back to Emma's form, glasses appearing over her eyes. About two seconds later, she jumped slightly in her seat. "I left my car at the school!"

"Uh, you want me to drive you there?" Light offered.

"Nooo...to be honest the only thing I really want to do right now is lie down in my bed and die for like twelve hours. Um..it should be fine, it's not somewhere I'll get a fine for parking in. I-I just did it so the person picking me up to go to the city wouldn't be, wouldn't know exactly where I live. O-or, what complex I mean. I'll, just have to walk to campus tomorrow, I guess."
"I can drive you," said Amory. "I have a pretty early class anyway."

"O-oh! Okay.." She nodded, visibly blushing again. After a pause just long enough to be awkward, she pushed herself up off of the chair by the armrests. "I should get to bed before I fall asleep here...that'd really r-raise some questions, haha."

"Alright." Light stood up too, nodded to Amory, and they headed for the door.

"We need to go a little closer to the side entrance," she said in a very quiet voice once they were outside. "We're invisible right now. I'll make it look like you came in that way, and then we'll get to your door at the same time as the illusion."

"Okay," Emma said in an exaggerated whisper, and nodded. A moment later, the same way: "..Heehee. Feels like I'm some kinda spy or something."

"Yeah, a little bit. Okay, the illusion's sorta 'merged' into where you actually are now." After that, Emma led the rest of the way to her apartment. Light made a mental note of where it was, just in case.

Her ears twitched slightly, hearing noise from inside. Very loud cooking: Clanging pots and pans; utensils wielded with far more enthusiasm than could ever possibly be necessary. "..I think your roommate might be home," she said in an actual whisper.
"Oh. Th-thanks for the heads up. Beryl's really nice, but she can be a little...much."
"You want to sneak in?"
Emma shook her head. "No, she'll notice me anyway...best to just get it over with." She got her keys out and opened the door.
"Aah, hey there Emma~!" A tall woman appeared from the kitchen into the apartment living room, and ran from there into the entry hallway, a few steps away from the door. "Where've you been all day?"

"U-um. I-I, went to see my family for a while." Emma walked inside. Light stayed in place, keeping herself quiet. "I j-just got back." She was sure she'd never met this person, and yet her voice sounded very...familiar.

"Oh, really?" Beryl said in a skeptical tone. She had been focused on Emma this whole time, but when her roommate came close and she took a second to ruffle to the top of her hair, her head turned upward, away from Emma, and her eyes seemed to wander strangely. "Well, at least you're still safe, right? I heard those awful creatures tore up a few roads recently."

Light's heart raced uncontrollably and time seemed to freeze at a realization...Beryl was staring straight at her. It wasn't a random look, it was a direct, meaningful, I know you are there expression. A smugness as annoying as it was terrifying, and also equally familiar. But it lasted barely a second or two before she reached over to close the door behind Emma. "Sooo, how'd your date go, hmm? Spill, girl!"

Whatever the rest of the conversation was, Light didn't hear it. She left for her own room, trying very hard to deny the evidence. It was always possible that some other explanation existed. Like..someone with non-fox powers which allowed them to sense invisible people. Or, someone somehow wise to everything despite not having any powers, and able to see a predator-type shimmer where Light was, but perfectly happy to not point her out to her own roommate. But her voice, and that expression, and even more than that the kind of teasing way she talked circles around her audience and always hinted, but never quite directly admitted, to knowing basically everything there was to know. Emma had just described her as being 'a little much', which was likely an understatement of the century. And—her mind popped out one more piece of evidence: Beryl was a kind of gemstone, including emeralds and aquamarine. Amory had mentioned her desire to be named after a precious gem in his dream; in particular, she had listed "Ruby, Sapphire, Diamond", all not kinds of Beryl, which would line up with already having a presence on their world as someone who was named after that kind of precious gem...

By the time she came back to the apartment and quietly entered, Light was certain enough to share her suspicion with Amory. She sat down on the couch in what must have been a slightly overdramatic fashion, which made him give her an inquisitive look.
"I think Emma's roommate is the Giver, taking on human form," she said bluntly.

"..........What!?"

---

I think it's probably pretty obvious that most of the time and effort for this one went into coming up with a whopping four more powers for people to have. There's only more to come up with as more puppets attack, but I'll manage. I do wonder if anyone guessed at the information revealed toward the end, though.