Battle Vixens! - 42

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Episode 42: Deflection

"Oh, hello dear!" Karis found her husband in the upstairs studio at 5 AM. He waved to her only briefly before continuing his work.

"What're you doing up so early? I thought you were supposed to rest after the whole hydra thing."

"I did rest! I went to bed early," he nodded, "remember? Besides, this is how I relax."

She moved closer; he seemed to be maybe two-thirds of the way through a painting of a sunrise over a field of grass with some trees and bushes scattered around. "Where's that?"
"Oh, it's—well, not anywhere actually." He pointed to a tablet resting precariously on an easel behind and slightly to one side of what he was working on. "Someone's got an AI that generates landscapes. I played with the sliders until I found something I liked."
"I assume you mean a neural network.." Karis took a closer look at the screen. "I don't see the green tree trunks or weird sky color in your painting."
"Well—after all, it is a mere approximation," he said. "This is why I know those things will never put me out of work. It takes a real human's eye—an artist's eye—to make something like that truly look real."

"You need not fear the machines, you know. Even this sort of thing only knows what a human tells it," she said, waving at the tablet. "So, why this when you've got all those monsters and fox-girls sitting around half done?"
"Ahh, this is the one for Dawn. It's a good change of pace for me so I don't get bored doing the same things nonstop, and since it's a gift I want it done quickly anyhow.

"I offered to let her pick out where I should paint, but she didn't show much an interest," Simon continued. "So I thought I would go for something she couldn't have seen before. I began searching for 'false landscapes' and other terms like that, wound up on this site with the sliders, played with them...there you go."

"Did you start this today? How long have you been up?" she said, putting her hands on her hips and moving next to his painting to face him directly.

"Just an hour or so, and no...not in that order," he said. "I started this yesterday. And I wanted to get some painting in before I head off to our friendly neighbors. Their dragon tore up some important streets—I understand, it wasn't nearly as amenable to staying in one place as our hydra was—so I offered to help put some of it back together, or, at least clear some of the debris, a bit quicker than mundane methods can manage." Simon gave a slightly more serious expression. "On the D-L, Rowan approved out of wanting some extra backup for Light's crew. The lack of a puppet attack yesterday when it would've been perfect left him a bit paranoid. Well—a bit more paranoid than usual."

Karis crossed her arms. "Which is all the more reason you should've slept in, or at least taken a nap. You know you faint if you overexert yourselves, and you'll do more harm than good if you decide to collapse in the middle of moving giant chunks of concrete around."

"I won't collapse," he said, waving a hand dismissively, "I was only a little tired after yesterday's exertion, and like I said, I went to bed early last night. I think I have better stamina than most of them, is the thing. Plus, well, there's a theory that each of us 'recharges' from something related to our own power, and for me it could be as simple as being firmly planted on the ground—which I often am. Look, I'll get two cups of my usual on the way out of town and be wide awake for the next ten hours, trust me."

"Planning to test whether vixens can have heart attacks, eh?" Karis shook her head. "Just try not to give me one, alright dear?"
"Certainly."

---

She woke up as Light again, having half-dragged herself into the bedroom after eating a small dinner Amory insisted on fixing for her. A few quick messages through the VI app confirmed: No visit from Her, not for Light nor anyone else in contact. It was a little before 9 AM, and Amory had already gone to class. Some further communication established that Emma didn't have classes that morning either, so the two of them could keep an eye on things near the apartment complex. Mr. Nelson was going to work as usual, so he was on that end of town, and evidently Petra had been sent in to help repair the roadways, which meant Ning would have backup if something happened there. The Quinns were on campus for obvious reasons. That meant everyone was reasonably well-positioned to keep an eye on things throughout the entire town that morning.

After some breakfast, Light took a seat on the couch and concentrated, putting together an image of the outside, set to an overhead view for the moment. There was no need to personally go out there and risk being 'spotted' by a puppet who could sense past her illusions when she could just 'see' things from right here, after all. So far, nothing appeared alarming or out of the ordinary.

By this point Rowan seemed dead certain that something would happen today—either monsters or puppets or both. It wasn't hard to follow his logic: If—and a big if, sure but—if their capricious benefactor always warned everyone when there was a 'day off' from attacks then the fact that she hadn't meant there would be one. If the puppeteer had inside information from her, or from some other source such as 'eating' so many powers having given her a sense of when and where the monsters would strike, then taking a day off when everyone else was busy and then swooping in fully rested to wreck everyone alongside today's monsters was a viable strategy. Or, say—if she had taken advantage of the tough monsters keeping everyone busy to look for that facility then the search had been in vain, and she may well decide to return to the usual strategy today. Apart from the extremely unrealistic hope that she had given up on her obvious and clearly stated goals, every explanation Light could think of for her abscense the day before suggested that an attack of some kind was coming today.

In her mind, the only real questions were where and when.

---

Zeno wandered into Rowan's office—the door was open, after all. As always at the base, she was in fox-form, a tall, wiry appearance with blazing red hair and fur; she came up next to his chair, looking at all the screens in front of him. "You know, I thought this twenty-something-monitors kinda setup was like a fake movie thing? It makes whoever uses it look like the villain too," she said. "I mean—among other things I'm getting an uncomfortable view of just how much surveillance we're under out in the streets, yeah?"

Even the seemingly-absurd number of screens wasn't nearly enough to cover every camera in the city; someone had rigged up something to periodically change the oldest screen to a new one that hadn't been seen in a while in semi-random rotation. "I wish we didn't need this," he replied. "But now more than ever..."
"Sooo...You ever think the enemy's strategy is just to freak us out so much we tear ourselves apart, then come after the scraps?" she said, leaning on an unoccupied armrest with one hand. "You're doing a great job of that for her, I'd say."
"It's only for today," he tried to assure her. "We can't..not be alert right now." Zeno followed Rowan's gaze to a police officer visible in one of the camera's shots, standing guard at a certain street corner.

"I've been in those shoes. I don't want to do this to them, but I don't feel like I have a choice right now. It's a state of emergency."
"The whole world is in a state of emergency," she said with a sweeping wave. "No end in sight, either. You think this maniac will be the last one?"
"..No, but I hope we can at least get a few days off before the next one shows up," he sighed. "At least police don't have to be out in full force to deal with monsters alone."

"Mmm-hm," Zeno nodded. "We get a happy little ending where the music plays if we catch this bad guy, and then get to move on to the next episode's cold open after a week or two, yep. As long as they don't hit us with the mid-season cliffhanger stinger." She twirled around into another chair off to one side of Rowan's, leaning half-forward with her legs crossed. "Now, I'm sure this isn't fair to you at all, but...as our officially unofficial 'leader' through all this, and the one the higher ups actually talk to..." She stared into his eyes. "Is there an end to this? We got...any endgame plans?"

"We don't know," he said slowly, shaking his head. "Nobody does. Or—if anyone does, it's—"

"Yeah, and that'd be major spoilers," Zeno said, "well out of character for her. It doesn't seem like a great strategy to hope this takes care of itself, though.

"Right now I just feel like we're on our way to the worst ending. Seems like I hear of people dying—or going into comas after getting eaten by those things—every day. Maybe there's a lot of soldiers, but after that 'second round' thing I got the impression she doesn't mean to keep refreshing our ranks. An' even if she does, there's only so many humans...it turns into an awful math problem of whether we repopulate fast enough to keep throwin' people into the meat grinder..."

Rowan closed his eyes for a second or two, shook his head, reopened them. "That much has occurred to the leadership. There is...research being done."

"Hmm. Do tell? Or—don't if, y'know, it'll get you in trouble."

"It's still in its earliest stages. Brainstorming theories and ideas, searching for people who can be trusted," he said. "I can tell you this much: The ultimate goal they've stated is to give us real support. Relief that doesn't come at the whim of the Giver."

"Hmm. We want to make our own fox-girls, huh?"
"Not..necessarily. The greatest ideal would be a weapon anyone can use that hurts those things," Rowan said. "Mass production for the remaining militaries of the world. This would no longer have to be a job for civilians unfortunate enough to be given the necessary powers."

"And, say, what do you think our military would do with such weapons, y'know, after?" Zeno said. "If there even is an after, I mean."

"We already made something that can destroy an entire city in one shot," Rowan said. "The United States...and humanity as a whole, really, has been surprisingly responsible with that power for well over half a century. Maybe it's a little idealistic, but...I would like to imagine things at least won't be worse than they already were.

"There's no guarantee a weapon like that can exist in the first place, anyway," Rowan pointed out. "Maybe our powers were given to relatively few because only some of us can have power like this."

"Naah. I guarantee you she picked a number that would create maximum drama and tension," Zeno said. "Enough to feel like we're numerous and can get away with killin' a few of each other, but not so many that we get to be a real, solid army against the enemy."

"You think she cares how close it is?" Rowan said.

"I'm sure you've noticed how often the victories come down to a razor's edge." Zeno put up her hands. "The Giver's smart, clever, strategic. She knows just how much power she's giving people and probably knew pretty close to exactly how much we'd be up against long before this all began. She likes blood sport—we know that much for sure—and what fight's better to watch than a close one?"

Rowan slowly nodded. "We had a similar line of reasoning for why she may be helping our opponent right now." He crossed his arms. "For as much as she calls them our 'enemy', and expresses personal disgust for them...I'm still not so sure she didn't call those things to our world herself. Or at least, lure them here somehow."

---

Beryl was gone again today, but left breakfast and a relatively small mess behind; maybe that was for the best. Emma finished eating and then nearly choked on the last of the orange juice when her phone buzzed, vibrating against the table.

mist sighted @ lot north of apt

I'll help!

She stood up and spoke the phrase to split into two bodies; Minus wound up holding the phone. There was a brief pause: Hesitation?

wait@ your door, will come make invisible. safest option ICO puppets

Ok

Maybe just thinking. Both of Gemma hurried to the door, setting the phone face-down, locked, on the nearest surface. She jumped (both at once) again as the alert went off, and heard a soft knock as she was recovering, the word "Me" appearing in glowing lettering on the inside of the door. Plus took a deep breath; Minus nodded. They went outside, locking the door and stuffing the key in a pocket while following Light the rest of the way out of the complex, all three of them invisible for the moment.

---

For once, Gerald had customers when the alert went out. On closer inspection, the attack was actually nowhere near him, and they all just looked at their phones long enough to confirm it wasn't nearby before resuming their shopping. Perhaps by the time he could reasonably get out there to help, it would already be over. There wasn't an easy way to get out of this situation and still keep his secret...but it wasn't like he couldn't help at all.

He sent a quick message through the VI app: Use my power as needed. The response was a single-letter "K" which presumably indicated Light had received the message, and he allowed himself a quiet, brief sigh of relief before switching the phone over to displaying the news. He could reasonably 'take a break' as soon as the customers in his store right now finished up, and it was important to know whether he would be needed then.

---

Rory didn't even need to have her phone on, or the app on it, to know there was an attack. Her lecture was interrupted by the familiar beeping from no less than half her class's phones, prompting a stray thought about how several of the same sound was the same thing as making that sound very loud, and maybe the alert's volume should be turned down a bit more...

"Where is it?" she said, turning away from the board toward the class. It was at the apartment complex, which was also where Light was. Well—it wouldn't hurt to at least try to get there in time, she thought. She looked to the assistant in the room and waved to her notes; if anything the potential need for someone to take over had forced her to actually type some of them out and make them a bit more clear to the eyes of someone else than usual. She shrugged to the class: "Duty calls—"

Rory was interrupted by the noise of glass shattering, the nearest window broken by something flashy coming in from oustide. Everyone, herself included, had time to reflexively duck and avoid the projectile, and it hit the opposite wall with a noise like a bottle rocket taking off, leaving a scorch mark. She spoke her phrase before quickly picking herself up. "Stay down, and keep away from the broken glass!" Rory ordered loudly, doing just the opposite herself—running to the broken window and diving out the convenient new hole, tumbling onto the ground below before getting back to her feet.

A puppet, of course, was waiting for her; this one held a long staff with a red orb-crystal-thing at the end of it, and wore long, flowy fantasy-mage-type robes that didn't look particularly easy to move around in. "What, you get impatient or something?! That's state property you broke up there," she said, pointing back and up at the window. Before answering, the puppet just swung the staff, making another thing just like the window breaker—a spiky ball of pulsating light that zoomed through the air at Rory, making her step to one side so it could land in some bushes.

"Parli troppo," the puppet said—the words flowing naturally, not something the puppeteer was making her say. She swung the staff again and this time Rory jumped over the attack and forward, aiming a kick at the attacker's head on the way down. It spun the staff in a circle, like twirling a baton, forward and above itself, making a thin circular reddish glow appear that Rory felt her foot hit like a wall, shattering the shield but stopping her forward momentum enough for the puppet to duck back and avoid her, taking several more steps back while she was busy regaining her footing.

---

"Doctor, Quinn."

"Are we really doing this again?" Clark, already in fox-form, was accosted by more vines; the plant puppet had been waiting for her—different day, different building, same puppet. But this time they had a plan, made precisely in case of this sort of thing.

She spoke her wife's phrase immediately, followed by: "I'll answer that for you: No." She borrowed just enough strength, and for exactly long enough, to rip the vines out with her legs and leap into the air; with enough effort pushed through her own powers, she was able to 'float' (more like weaken the effects of gravity on herself) just enough to coast there for a second or two, while a needle she'd just thrown coiled itself around the puppet's neck two or three times before returning to the hand opposite the one the string was attached to at the moment her feet hit the ground.

She concentrated on keeping the wire totally solid and intact, and pulled hard; the puppet dropped her sword and thrashed back and forth, trying to get a hold of the thin wires with her hands and making a very organic-sounding choking noise for being seemingly made of porcelain and/or plastic. So the puppets' consciousnesses still felt pain from the injuries, did they? Well, it was important to cut that suffering as short as possible. Clark spoke Rory's phrase once again, and pulled with enough might to tear through a person's neck, down to the bone. This produced some loud cracking and squeaking noises while the puppet struggled briefly, followed by her head popping clean off and falling to the ground next to her while her body went instantly limp, falling to the ground before both separated portions exploded into dust as usual.

Once more, Clark spoke Rory's phrase, ordering a carefully chosen, tiny pulse of her power to go in and out within the span of an instant: Confirmation that she was done using it for the moment, and her power was at Rory's disposal now.

---

Reconstructing a street was somewhat boring, but at least the work seemed to be going quickly. Three or four times, Petra had to remind the crew of people directing her that she couldn't do anything about the debris which wasn't specifically made of rock, concrete or dirt, such a bunch of broken glass and piping strewn around. It seemed as if the work was almost done when the alert went off on the phone strapped to her belt, as well as a few of the road workers' phones. She looked to one and nodded when he said it wasn't nearby. Well, they were almost done here, she thought, continuing the motion of the chunk of concrete she already had a hold of toward its directed target hole. The bunch here, especially Light, seemed pretty powerful; they'd probably have a monster attack wrapped up before she could even get there...right?

Her thoughts were interrupted by her peripheral vision picking up a motion she didn't immediately register on a conscious level. It was—something had moved above the concrete chunk she was moving? That wasn't really it, of course; rather her brain thought this was so because of the motion in its shadow. In turn, that was because a body had suddenly appeared in her load's shadow, and now she had to drop it, letting it shatter on the ground while turning some of its fragments into her sword right away to avoid getting a pair of scythes buried in her chest. The shadow-puppet's stance was all wrong from striking this way, and she was able to lever the weapons out of her hands into the air with a quick push, then kick her away by the stomach, taking a couple of hops back herself and readying the sheath in the other hand for the fight.

She got up onto her knees, holding both hands out palm-up. Every nearby shadow drew itself up and rushed at Petra, turning sharp and jagged as they approached; she made an upward sweeping motion with the sheath, tossing the ground under her (herself with it) a few yards up in the air, out of range of the shadows. Then her ears picked up something rushing through the air toward her and she dove from the platform, letting it drop on the remaining shadows while she whirled toward the direction the attack had come from. It was another puppet, the one with the tonfas that Dawn had taken down. Too bad she'd been busy with the monster during that fight; what was this one's powers again? Well, the thing she'd just dodged was one of those weapons, the other still in her hand.

No time to sort it out with shadows probably at her back. Petra charged the puppet, slashing at it with her sword and letting it jump away. Then she tossed the ground under her up into the air again, forming a wall of concrete behind herself at the same time in case of shadow-spears or those scythes being thrown. The tonfa that she had dodged before hit that wall with a solid thunk. Riight, she could force-pull those things. Well, weapon toss was in Petra's reportoire too! She raised the sword and made a quick, solid swing, throwing it blade-first at the puppet; she deflected it with the remaining tonfa while the other one pulled itself out of the wall and went over it, forcing Petra to knock it away with her sheath. She turned the lost sword back to dirt, making a new one out of her platform while launching off of it to one side, away from the tonfa which was still stubbornly pursuing her.

The scythes were back, along with a far more careful approach that wasn't going to be so easily knocked off balance. If it wasn't bad enough that shadow-girl was coming at her herself, her shadow exploded into a bunch of thorny vines rising out of the ground to try and grab her. Petra ducked away, slashing and bashing at the shadows to get rid of them...this sort of thing really wasn't her forte.

Her ears picked up shouting during the whirling fight: Angry, loud. "Get away from her" was a phrase she caught, along with a number of colorful epithets. When the vines were gone she locked each of the shadow puppet's weapons with one of her own, turning around in the process. Then Petra could see the source of the noise: The people she'd been working with a moment earlier had piled on top of the other puppet, grabbed her arms and legs and the weapon she was holding, and another group all had a hold of the one in the air.

Being seen as a hero was a power in and of itself. Maybe these people couldn't fight the monsters, but the puppets were a different matter. It was exactly what she'd been counting on all along.

Petra's eyes flicked from the downed puppet back to her opponent, and she grinned. A stomp to the ground tilted her opponent's foothold, destroying her balance; a hard shove upward knocked the scythes out of her opponent's hands—and this time rather than backing away Petra pushed the advantage, closing the already-short distance to plant her blade firmly in the puppet's torso. When it didn't turn to dust right away she bashed its head with the sheath, and that did the trick. She darted over to the restrained one, and when her allies made room to do so she stuck this one through about where the heart would be if it were organic. That worked—even though there probably wasn't really a heart there, the puppets took very similar damage to what human bodies would to similar trauma. And so, both the puppets were dust.

---

Rory felt a draw on her power; no doubt her husband was also confronting someone. As much of it as she had she dumped into agility to dodge with; the armor was nice and all but these sparkle-bomb attacks looked a little bit stronger than Light's lasers. This proved an especially wise decision as her ears picked up the noise of something coming at her from the side, and she dove out of the way of a flurry of crossbow bolts just in time to not get any buried in her stomach. Standing up, her new position and facing had the staff girl forward and slightly to her right, the windy one with the crossbow straight ahead.

Clark's voice was practically in her head: Remember, stall.

"Two against one, huh?" she said, making a 'ready' stance. "I think you've underestimated me a bit."

The first response was another of the wand's shots, this one snaking back and forth in the air as it approached, and another few bolts that seemed intended to keep her from charging. Rory went from one side to another, listening to the puppeteer talk through the one with the crossbow: "Your, power is, a true, crown jewel."
Rolling to one side of the sparkly ball's path she heard the other one continue: "It would be, such a shame, to waste."

"I think I'm using it a little better than you could," Rory replied. There was a particularly hard pull on her power while she spoke, soon followed by a short pulse. A gust of bladed wind came at her, and she pumped power into her legs to vault straight over it, speaking her husband's phrase to throw a balled-up mass of string at the other puppet, which collided with another ball of energy, going straight through to smack her in the face while Rory landed right next to her, and kicked her in the side, knocking her over.

The other puppet leveled her crossbow in Rory's direction again while the staff-wielder stumbled back; obviously the plan was to keep their distance from her and take advantage of her significant range disadvantage. But at this point they all heard a certain clicking sound that the college professor knew meant this fight was basically over.

Campus police had arrived. It wasn't a particularly dangerous campus overall, but in light of some shootings in recent years the board had deemed it appropriate for such personel, as well as certain designated teachers, to carry. Rory had never taken the time out to get a license; otherwise she would've gladly been one of the latter. At any rate, there were now three or four handguns pointed at each of the puppets, and they were fired without any hesitation. The wind girl ducked out of one shot but caught the next two; for the one with the staff, already off-balance and not particularly agile to begin with, there was basically no hope at all.

Rory stood up straight, breathing a sigh of relief. "Thanks."

---

The mist appeared near Hugo and Dawn's position, and they were swiftly directed toward the forming monster. At the same time, three puppets appeared: One came out of an alley swinging at Dawn, one near the doorstep of the VI base, and a third near where Fay and Tora were stationed. All three were shot on sight by nearby police officers, never even given a chance to interfere beyond very briefly distracting Dawn. Since the monster was just another bear-thing like the one Rowan had fought during the very first wave, and headquarters were almost as far away from it as they could be, Rowan and Zeno remained at the cameras while the other two were directed toward the fight. The thing was gone before they even got there.

Rowan stood up and nodded slowly, watching the thing dissipate on a central screen currently locked to viewing the relevant area. "..Only three here. They must have focused their strength on Light's group," he said.
"Uh.." Zeno pointed to one of the screens he hadn't been looking at, a camera near the edge of town which had a partial view of the sky beyond. Rowan took only a brief look at it before standing up with enough force to knock over his chair and making for the exit. Zeno, not nearly as certain of the meaning of what they had seen, hesitated briefly before following.

---

This is it. Finally. I've had the absolute worst writer's block with this part of the story, and now I'm past it. For about half a year now I've repeatedly written bits and pieces of these next several episodes in my head, but been totally unable to type them up before actually getting there. As expected, once I got through the part that was giving me the most trouble everything else just spilled out all at once, and I couldn't be too much happier with the results.

Expect five episodes over these five days, starting with today. Tomorrow's is a bit short, but it was necessary (as far as I'm concerned) to split things up exactly the way they are. Hopefully, you'll find the coming events interesting.