Battle Vixens! - 46

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Episode 46: The Explanation

Usually, Blake was the sort of person who could only sleep in certain beds. It had to have the right firmness to the mattress, the right consistency to the pillows; the temperature had to be just so, and, of course, as little noise as possible. Lately he found himself considerably less picky—or, to be more accurate—Light seemed far less picky, especially when she was exhausted. After a while pacing the unfamiliar halls of the Vixen Initiative's headquarters, someone she'd never met before—one of the fox-girls from the city—gently guided her into a guest room and shut the door behind her. She stood there for a long moment, staring at the bed, and finally forced herself to sit on the side of it, and then to lie down, and then—with more effort than should ever be necessary for the task—to close her eyes. After that, she was out—like a light.

She woke up under much thicker covers, in a much larger, softer bed than the small cot she'd fallen asleep in. Her body felt light again—the weight, the anxiety and exhaustion she'd been feeling, all cleared away. She slowly sat up and looked around, recognizing the room right away. Of course: She felt so much better because she wasn't awake, because things worked differently here in these dreams.

The room was empty aside from her, but she crossed her arms and glared straight forward, knowing by now she was already being watched. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised," she said. When that didn't draw a response, she took the time to pull herself over to one side of the bed, swing her legs over, and fall down onto her feet, turning toward the open space opposite the head of the bed and placing her back to the wall. She wouldn't have the satisfaction of surprising her from behind this time, she'd decided. After she waited a moment, the front door creaked open, and the person responsible for everyone's powers strode in, smiling with every bit as much satisfaction and self-assurance as usual. "Hello there, Hero. Won't you take a seat?" She waved to a mid-size, comfy-looking chair opposite her position; another one was next to her. Neither had been there a second ago, until the instant Light had focused her attention entirely on the tall, many-tailed vixen entering the room.

Reasoning that she could be kept here indefinitely if she didn't participate in the conversation, Light sighed and stepped closer. "I'd rather stand, if it's all the same to you."
"As you wish," she said with a small shrug. The chairs stayed right where they were, her leaning a hand against the one beside her while Light moved to a few steps in front of the opposite one and waited for the other shoe to drop. "I merely thought you'd enjoy some rest after the stresses of the day. having one of your minions sacrifice herself for you and all~," she teased.

"They're not—" Light took a small step forward, then pulled herself back, knowing full well she was being baited.

"You can't possibly be that surprised. After all, isn't this how it should be? The main hero certainly can't fall to some lesser threat; that's up to one of the supporting cast to lose their life to for pathos. No, your life shouldn't really be in danger until the big climax."

Light could only growl in response; despite being aware this was intentional goading, she just wasn't in the right headspace to successfully ignore it.

"Heheh. You're so very angry," she said, in the same tone of voice one might call a dog cute. "There's no need to be so disappointed in yourself; you did everything right on cue as far as I'm concerned."

"I guess it goes without saying that you did that on purpose," Light said, folding her ears back against her head. "And then you wait until I know what you mean because the answer gave itself away so you can gloat."

"That's putting it rather harshly, but I certainly couldn't risk giving it away early. Really though, I think it's time I cleared a few things up that have been bothering you for a long time, Hero."

She grinned, baring her sharp teeth—it was a cruel smirk if there ever was one. "You're still angry, aren't you? I'd say you're mostly mad at yourself, but at least a little bit at me now, hmn? Enough to lash out a bit?" Light recognized the provocation, but didn't answer. "Come on," she made a 'come-here' gesture with one hand, then moved it up to her chest, near where the heart might be on a human. "I solemnly swear that if you hit me, I won't retaliate in any way. Plus, I have no tricks up my sleeve which will harm you, or anyone you could possibly care about, as a result of doing so. Sooo...won't you feel much better if you sock me a good one? Riiight here." She pointed to her cheek.

Light stood there for a long moment. Her right hand closed into a fist, and opened again. This repeated a few times. Then she drew her hand up to follow through...and the fist collapsed back into an open palm. Glaring at her traitor hand, she tried to make a fist of it again, but it dropped back to her side as a result. Raising her hand destroyed the fist; making a fist lowered her arm. The problem was impossible to identify—at every step her body seemed to be obeying her, but the end result was always failure. Her target chuckled.
"Trouble with your hand? Maybe you should just go for a good kick to the shins," she said. Even knowing it was bait, Light took it, raising her foot, drawing it back...and placing it down on the floor again. She tried the other foot, and the same thing happened. Once again, it proved impossible to even seriously try.

"Give up? Everyone does, eventually," she said, the smirk fully intact.

Light growled, frustrated and confused, and glared. "Why are you doing this?" she demanded.
"I'm not really doing anything to you, you know. I'm just letting you in on a big secret," her host said.

"You see, this place..." she waved to the room around them—with the sense that she more generally meant the entire 'dream space' that all the vixens could be called to at her whim, and had been at least a few times by now, "...is an extension of me. It's a part of me, and I am a part of it. It inherits my nature, and anyone who can exist here can only do so within that nature. Do you understand?"
"So you can make yourself invincible here," Light said. That wasn't a surprise.
"No no, you're missing the point, little Hero," she shook her head. "Tell me: Can you hit yourself?"

Light raised an eyebrow (and the neighboring ear). Not seriously wanting to, she made to punch herself in the face...and in the same way as before, couldn't.

"Of course not. You see, I'm not invincible—as such," she explained patiently. "Rather, violence abhors me, because my very nature is one of perfect peace."

"...What."

"Nothing can hurt me," she continued, "because, in a sense, nothing wants to. From the forces of nature to every creature or being, great or small, the very idea of causing me injury is simply impossible to bring to fruition. Only beings at an intelligence level similar to or greater than yours are even capable of imagining it. Neither intention nor accident, no matter how distant, is able to move in a way that would injure me."

"Won't you please take a seat?" she offered again, waving to the chair behind Light. This time she perceived that this was going to be a particularly long talk, and sighed with annoyance but acquiesced. Her host followed suit, sitting down and leaning slightly forward, as if to tell someone secrets in confidence.

"Surely you've wondered, little Hero, why it is that I will not take up arms myself against the enemy. And sure, there are a number of good reasons why I may not want to—but I want you to understand that, even if I did, I can't," she said. "Just as you are unable to make your body fight here, I cannot fight. The power of violence escapes me, just as it does anyone or anything which might otherwise attempt to harm me.

"For a world without magic, this can be terribly difficult to explain. For every thing I might compare my situation to, your world's science has doubtless found some workaround or theoretical situation in which it could perhaps happen. For instance, I could tell you that it's like trying to set water on fire, but you've managed something like that, as I understand. But surely you grasp what I mean, to some extent. You are a bright one, after all," she said with another smirk. Light crossed her arms again, unamused.

"If you're so..peaceful, then why do all this?" Light said, the antecedent obvious. "Or—how even? How can you give people weapons, or the power to kill each other, if violence is so against your nature?"

"It is precisely because I cannot fight that, if I want fighting done, someone else must do it. I have much power at my command, naturally, but to be martially useful it has to be combined with another ingredient. I need people with violent desires, or at least desires that involve or require violence to fulfill. You humans fit that need perfectly.

"My consciousness is distinct from my nature, you understand. After all, over half of your body is water, but you don't obsess about flowing downhill all the time. Contemplating violence, conceptualizing it, is completely within my grasp," she said. "As something out of reach for me personally, it holds a special fascination. Everyone wants just what they can't have, after all."
"But you—your teeth," Light protested, pointing. "And the way you..."
"Intimidation is diplomacy. Perfectly peaceful," she said with a smirk. "Just as well, the only way one could successfully hit me is a light, open-handed slap—communication of disgust rather than an attempt to injure—and it would still have no chance of harming my by accident, no matter the strength behind it. And while I don't need to eat, of course I can eat meat, so long as I don't have to kill the animal myself. In fact I quite enjoy the taste. Do you begin to understand?"

Light thought about it for a long moment. Amory's power was supposed to be a weaker version of hers. Amory was weak—seemingly physically powerless. She was (supposedly) immune to the monsters' attempts to attack her, and had reported a general magic immunity discovered with Ning's help. Furthermore, to Light the very idea of attacking her at all felt—impossible. It was the same thing.

She glared again. "So—if you're so invincible, then why do you care about our world, or go to such lengths to help us protect it? Besides getting a blood sport to watch, what do you care if those things kill us all?"
"And how do you really know I didn't send them myself? Right?"

"You talk about them like you hate them, like they're your personal enemy. But what can they even do to you?" she continued, unabated.
"I will tell you, little Hero, as best I can."

"You wonder what my motivation is, what drives me at the deepest level. But the answer is simple, the same as it is for anyone—anyone who's really honest about themselves, at least." She grinned, pointing to herself. "In your language's terms, the closest word I know is 'Hedonist'. I believe that everyone—especially myself—seeks to gain pleasure and avoid pain. I want for entertainment, gratification, new experiences—and as a true immortal, completely immune to harm, I am especially free to find sources of such enjoyment."

"You really think that's true?" Light said.
"I think anyone who believes otherwise is lying to themselves on some level. The complexities come in when differing desires clash, and one person's pleasure becomes another's pain," she said. "You I call Hero, because your emotions are so intensely focused on the people around you. You feel great pleasure when you think you've helped someone else out, or especially 'saved' or 'rescued' them, be it from external danger or from themselves. And you experience the utmost pain when you think you've 'failed' at your duty, neglected to rescue someone you could have. Can you truly say I'm wrong about that?"

"I think I can say you don't have a shred of empathy in you," Light replied.

"It's absolutely true that I don't care at all about the lives of others. My age measures more than that of your planet multiplied many times by itself; to care about beings which, to me, appear one moment and are gone the next, would only bring me endless pain. It simply isn't worth it." She shrugged. "But of all the things I'm here for now, it's not to argue philosophy with you, so let us move on."

"When I was young—I know not how long ago, nor in what manner, I was born, but I do recall the point at which I became fully aware of myself—those with scrying power sufficient to perceive me called me the Watcher," she said, gesturing to herself again. "For I was content to watch the worlds, never interfering. I would simply enjoy the show. Before I learned to block myself from such view, a few who were aware of my existence nature even implored me to help them in one way or the other, and I only did so out of curiosity and interest of my own. Once, I was begged to stand on a certain planet, at the predicted impact site of an oncoming meteor. When I did, it changed course just enough to miss me, but hit the planet anyway, ushering in a disastrous ice age just as predicted." She recounted this story with a nostalgic grin and not a hint of remorse at the fate of said planet's people as a result. "But in general, I have found it best not to insert myself into the stories I watch, and I was perfectly content with my role as a simple audience member. That was, until I encountered the enemy.

"Make no mistake, Hero: What you are dealing with is world eater. It always works the same way: It begins by devouring or destroying anyone or anything with magic, because it knows that is its weakness. After that it turns its gaze to anything that could use magic—all life, beginning at the most complex and intelligent and moving down to the least. When it's done, all that's left is a barren world, a desolate waste that despairs for the life that once inhabited it. That despair and loss, the enemy uses as fuel to jump to another world and start all over again. This it has done for longer than I am able to know, and countless worlds have fallen to become mere food for its advance. It will never be satisfied; it has no mercy, no empathy, no consciousness whatsoever to speak of. It is little more than an animal intelligence, looking for its next meal. Those 'monsters' you fight are like its little fingers or the ends of the suction cups of its tentacles—what intellect there is, exists only on the larger scale—which is why you may have noticed, they're awfully stupid all on their own."

"You still haven't answered my question," Light pointed out.
"Heheh," she chuckled, leaning back in the chair. "Patience, little Hero~. It's not as if any of your actual time is being spent up here anyway. Now, indeed, when I first noticed the enemy I paid it little mind. It was another big, scary antagonist to watch people fend off and send packing, or fail to do so and display a glorious tragedy of the loss of their world. But over time, I began to notice that worlds which had once been able to repel its advance would suddenly be attacked again, and this time would not survive. I realized that it was eating worlds at an exponential rate: As its power grew, so too did its reach, and it had learned how to pick out worlds weak enough for it to take, and when its power had grown enough to take a world it had failed at previously. The number of worlds out there is unimaginable indeed, Hero, but make no mistake—it is finite. And while a great many are separated from the rest by an unusual, highly magical protection the enemy currently can do nothing to pierce, if it eats enough worlds not even that will be enough to halt its advance. When I saw the level of the enemy's success, that was when I was moved to action. Perhaps you can hazard a guess why?"

Light didn't know the answer at first. She mulled it over for a moment, and then understood. "You don't want all your favorite shows cancelled," she said. "You couldn't care less about one person, or one world, or twenty or a hundred. But if it's all of them..."
"Exactly! While it has no power to touch me—indeed, I've checked; it hates me and is able to try to attack me, unlike every other entity throughout every universe I have seen, but its bodies pass right through mine with no effect—it does have the power to do the one thing I would despise the most: Make the multiverse boring. I would have an eternity of watching barren worlds which no life can be seeded upon ever again. You see, even a world destroyed by, say, your nuclear explosives or something even greater, can eventually have life again given enough time or the right kind of nudges from outside. But one that's been eaten by the enemy can't; its tendrils choke out not only any life there is but the very power of that world to contain life; that very essence is the enemy's favorite food. And that is why I decided to help fight back against it. In most remaining worlds, there is sufficient magic to begin to fight it when it comes, and I need only push or enhance things a little bit to help mount a successful defense from a world which otherwise would be doomed to destruction by the enemy.

"I despise being cast in the role of hero and savior, personally," she said, "and in this case it almost seems too cliché to bear. Here I am, with great beauty, intellect and power, a passively watchful being of peace and pleasure—and circumstances force me to oppose this ugly, ravenous beast of violence and pain. But I do what I must to keep my 'entertainment' alive.

"So then I see your world—a rare, precious gem, a world totally unprotected by Breach, which had successfully snuffed out its own magic potential a long time ago; one which nonetheless had escaped both my enemy's and my own notice until now—until I saw it aiming its crosshairs at you."
"'Breach'?"
She shook her head. "A technical term, irrelevant here; never mind. But just think what would happen if I had left things alone. Mundane weaponry such as yours, effective as it can otherwise be, would achieve little in fighting those things. Eventually your people would, in desperation, turn to the strongest weapon you have—and it would be effective. Their natural resistance can only do so much, after all. But you would be doing the enemy's work for it—killing millions and turning the land uninhabitable in the process. And then, the very next day, there would be more of them.

"Therefore, I saw an opportunity to have a little fun with you. It would be more costly to me to do things this way, of course, but aside from pumping in another world's magic or persuading some otherwordly invaders to come 'protect' you, there was little else to be done in the time I had left before the attacks began. For now, you use your desires to feed off of my power, and in turn use the results to defend yourselves. But it can't always be that way, of course. I've many other worlds to help defend, and enjoy and meddle with."
"So...how do we stop them?" Light said.

"Indeed, that's one of your biggest questions, isn't it? How ever can you win this war?" She smiled, a distinctly cruel grin that was bound to come with bad news. "The short and disappointing answer is that you can't. There is no way I'm aware of to free a world from the enemy's influence once it has fully taken over. You must repel the beast again, and again, for all of eternity, or else lose your world for good. Nonetheless, there is a way to stop the present wave; many of them, in fact. You must simply do something that convinces the beast your world is too powerful, on its own, for it to take at this time. And I don't mean you personally, of course, although you do have the option of taming the entire population of those I have blessed, ruling over your world as their queen and using the resulting, enormous power to squash every attack before it begins. The same could happen if someone, say, killed every other blessed one to inherit all of their powers, at which point I would happily unlock the full potential of every single one for her. But neither of those is realistic to expect of a Hero such as you, I know."

Light shook her head, not wanting even to imagine a future like that.

"It's a fragile solution anyway," her host admitted. "Despots always fall in the end. One false move, or even just a series of small mistakes, and the queen dies, her power dispersed, and the land under her rule descends into chaos. The world is ripe for the beast to attack all over again, and this time there's not an army of cute vixens to stop it. No, what your world really needs is magic of its own. To that end, my blessing for you operates differently from simply borrowing my power every time you speak the name I gave you. Instead it is designed to help you find magic of your own—both personally and as a society.

"You see, my blessing does not merely give you power, but empowers you. Over time it turns your strong, intense desires and emotions into the raw potential to use magic on your very own, and helps to shape that magic into something useful as a weapon. The more you identify with your powers, the less you are borrowing mine and the more you are simply using your own. Eventually the training wheels come off, and it's all you." She pointed at Light. "You are the closest person on Earth to achieving that end, little Hero—which is yet another reason for my intense interest in you. It's why I want to tell you the truth of things first, to disseminate at your pleasure.

"I was impressed with you from the very first time you used your power. It was just supposed to be for illusions, to help you succeed at avoiding or redirecting attacks, and hitting things with that sword—and maybe some flashing to blind people. But you didn't submit yourself to what your power said it could do, you told it what you thought it should do. And you convinced it, you made it agree with you. From that very first time, you've been inventing new things you could do, and you haven't stopped. By this point your magic is coming up with new powers for you as you need them, and enhancing the old ones—and as if that isn't not enough everyone around you is coming up with new powers for themselves, too."
Light stared ahead—not really at her host, but more into space, in a mild sort of shock. After a long pause, and some extra hesitation, she started, "...So you're telling me that I could just—"
She held up a finger to cut the suggestion short. "Don't get me wrong, Hero. It's always a negotiation, a careful balancing act. If you try to tell your light-based power that it can control shadows, it will tell you no, end of story. Your magic has to agree with you about what it can do. In a sense it amounts to agreeing with yourself, but in another sense there are still hard, solid rules to reality that cannot be broken. I cannot do anything opposite my own nature, and your magic cannot oppose its nature, either. People from worlds with magic understand this sort of thing right away, but then again, perhaps because of that none of them would be so creative as you have been. But beyond that, as I'm certain you are well aware, every use of magic comes with a price, and the more difficult something is to do, the more costly it becomes."

"And that is the second benefit to my blessing. A person like you is a big hint to anyone from your world who wishes to make a more general magic that doesn't have me as its origin. Perhaps you'd do best to tell somebody at that place you're sleeping in something along those lines, if you do want your world to be safe sooner rather than later without wearing a crown. Because if ordinary humans of your world gain the ability to defend themselves against the enemy, alongside the impressive power of yourself and the others I have blessed, then the beast will have no choice but to turn back for now. Even if that should happen, however, your world must be aware that it can always come back, and eventually will—perhaps even stronger than before. It's unerringly stubborn; now that you're in its sights it will never give up on eating your world. But every victory you win against it is more of its time and resources wasted on a world that refused to yield."

"...I see."
"I sincerely hope you do. Now, is there anything else you wanted to ask me?" she said, knowing perfectly well that there was.

Well, since she seemed to be so forthcoming and knowledgable about everyone's powers...there was something Light remembered, kept in the back of her mind. "Do you know whether I would be able to 'throw' my sword at near the speed of light?"
"Hmmn, probably." She shrugged. "You believe that it's something 'light' can do, and your logic is sound enough to convince your magic to do it, too."

"So then, if I did, would it..?"
"Ah, I have the most exciting answer to that question, little Hero." Her host gave another sharp-toothed grin, and held up an index finger. "I. Don't. Know. As I'm sure you've noticed, how much magic decides to conform to the laws of physics varies quite a bit. What I do know is that that extreme of an effect will come at a great cost regardless. So, in your position I would keep a trick like that well up my sleeve until I was truly desperate."

"...You are Beryl," Light stated—not a question; not even really an accusation so much as a statement of a basic fact.

"Mm-hm," she said with a swift nod. "I really thought you'd figure that out a little sooner, but I couldn't resist giving you one last little hint. I'm also twenty or so other people on your world, fulfilling various other roles. When I first began making plans to help your world out, I decided that a physical presence, some personalities to push people in certain directions, would be useful. But when it comes to little Emma, well...I just thought she was too cute to ignore. Besides, I'm always happy to have a test subject for my culinary spells, and she seemed to like having something to eat for free. 'Beryl' has always been very sweet and nice, unlike a few of my other personas, you know. I think with her enhanced learning Emma will work it out eventually herself, so I would appreciate it if you'd let me have my fun with her until then. I guarantee it'll be to her advantage, and so to yours as well."

"...Fine. I don't really know how I would tell her anyway," she admitted. "..Culinary spells?"
"It's a bit like alchemy. You take some ingredients and some clean dishes as components, you mix it all together, carefully following an arbitrary set of steps, and in the end a meal comes out—along with the same dishes dirtied. Not always what you expect from the ingredients, either, which is why it can be so much fun to see the reactions to the results," she said with a straight, if smiling, face. It was hard to tell whether she was seriously talking about a form of magic or just obliquely describing mundane cooking, but Light decided that splitting hairs on the point was not important right now.

"Okay then. So..wait, if your power is like Amory's, then.."

She nodded in reply to the implied question. "Just like her, I empower those I have blessed by petting their fluffy little ears and tails—only mine is permanent. Your fuzzy parts represent your connection to me through your innermost desires; it's simply how the magic I used works. And I made it work that way because I wanted it to." She leaned forward, reaching a hand over toward Light's ears, and she recoiled back away from the hand reflexively, after which the hand was dropped. "But you see? Even knowing that, you can't bring yourself to let me do it. I have to sneak in little bits of petting here and there to empower people I like because they don't desire me to pet them. Now that you understand what kind of person I am, you can no more consent to my touch than you can attack me.

"Oh, but speaking of my power being like hers. I wonder whether you could persuade your little friend to sleep in the pretty new form I gave her, even just once? I've been saving a delightful surprise for my little 'princess', and had hoped to show it off to her well before now. Clearly it won't hurt her any to try, hmn?"

"I'll suggest it," Light said.

"..Since you know exactly how our powers work, you know what happened to me today," she said.

She nodded. "As I said, your powers stem from desire and emotion, and—again—everything has a cost. You felt something 'break', did you not?" Light nodded slowly. "When one of my blessed ones becomes enraged or desperate enough, that emotion pushes past your natural limits. It's dangerous to your health, so it only happens if you're so mad you no longer care what happens to you. It's another intentional part of my design, precisely to help with the kind of situation you found yourself in.

"The enemy gains a significant advantage when it consumes magic, because it can squeeze that magic out for its own use—so I knew that it would try to eat you. Naturally, when someone's friend is eaten they become rather upset, and in this way their odds of winning are made far better than they otherwise would be. That said, because you've grown so powerful and so much of what you wield is already your own, not to mention those powers you have command over—your 'broken' state proved more powerful, and more costly, than usual."

She held out a hand, forestalling a further question, and continued: "Don't get me wrong, you're in no danger now and have done no permanent harm today. But if you should find yourself doing that again, you should know that that blazing aura represents you burning yourself up from the inside out. You might feel invincible, but if you push things too far in that state, little Hero, you will self-immolate, and then there won't be anything left. The closer you get to that point, the worse you'll feel afterward, and the longer you will take to recover. "

"But there's no danger from gaining a similar level of power from you. Or from Amory," Light said.

"Of course not. The difference is the kind of desire that sparks the power boost. Destructive desires destroy; peaceful desires lend stability instead. A desire that tends to violence is necessary for my blessing to work as intended in the first place, but you know what they say about too much of a good thing."

"I don't really consider people wanting to hurt each other a 'good thing'," Light said.

"Heheh, of course not. That's what makes you a Hero," she said, leaning slightly forward again. This time, the motion of her hands was untraceably swift, and Light felt them on her ears before she could see them to react to. She leaned into it just briefly and let out a short, animal churr before her brain caught up with what she was doing and she pulled back out of it, her feet shoving hard against the floor to push the chair back with her, audibly scraping it across the floor.

Her host giggled at this reaction. "I have to sneak it in when I can, you understand," she said, completely ignoring the annoyed look on Light's face—or perhaps enjoying it just as much. "You know how these stories go, after all. Things have to get worse before they can get better. But there won't be any monsters tomorrow, so you should enjoy the reprieve while you can. Best of luck, Hero." She gave a small wink, and in that instant Light awoke, her eyes still shut and her back still against the cot in the VI headquarters.

She slowly sat up, rubbing her head and wondering just how long she'd been asleep for. A clock on a nearby wall let her know it was only an hour and a half or so, but even that seemed to have been enough to feel much better. Or, possibly, the events of the dream had allowed the rest to be more effective than usual for her; that seemed well within the realm of possibility.

Light stood and slowly went into the adjoining bathroom to splash herself awake, maybe rinse off the faint traces of tears from the fight; once there she frowned briefly at a small mirror fixed to the top of the sink. She reached her hands up and patted her chest a couple of times; maybe it was her imagination, but...no, it probably wasn't: Her bust had grown slightly as a result of the latest dream-world ear-touching. "Great," she muttered under her breath. In summary, Earth's greatest—possibly only—hope had come from an invincible, sociopathic pervert. If that wasn't enough to give her a negative outlook on the near future, then that parting line about things getting worse certainly was.

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Well, here we are at the end of the ride. Hopefully the next episode won't take me half a year to get started.