Episode 54: The Trenches
Guns were loud.
Of course they were—controlled explosions that propelled pieces of
metal to speeds over twice that of sound were going to be pretty
ear-splitting, especially so many in one place all at the same time.
But, all the same, when the whole army of puppets simultaneously took
a step forward and the shooting began, Petra flinched and folded her
ears down at all the noise, thoroughly unprepared for the excessive
volume even before it was amplified by the traitorous fuzzy spikes'
unusually sensitive hearing.
The delay was tactically dangerous, but nothing bad came of it; she
was prepared by the time a massive fireball came sailing over the
enemy troops to stomp a vacant patch of concrete up into the air to
intercept it, and ran through the quickly parting crowd of soldiers
between her and its origin during the resulting explosion. Burning
pieces of rock threatened to rain down after it, and she threw a hand
forward in a motion similar to a punch but with an open palm to
direct them roughly forward, into more faceless marionettes and away
from the crowd of humans firing on them.
A fairly wide column of ground was hers to try and hold, which she
did by slamming more ground back and forth, throwing puppets along
with the land they stood on to either side on top of the ones getting
shot, and followed through by firing another big chunk of concrete
forward. This didn't get far before it was visibly cut in half, the
line through it glowing white-hot as the two resulting pieces fell
off to either side to reveal the one responsible: A fox-eared puppet
with brilliant raid hair and fur, carrying a fairly wide katana whose
blade was wreathed in a bright blue flame. Her face appeared pained,
like it would be crying if it were capable of that, and—from what
few images Simon had had the opporunity to see of her—it bore a
strong resemblance to Cynthia. Even though everyone had been advised
not to think of any of the puppets as people, Simon found it
difficult to believe it wasn't, in some way, really her.
Wisdom dictated that Ning should conserve her energy, but this proved
difficult to actually achieve. The lines were a bit thin—not
everyone assembled yet—when the puppets advanced, and even though
the first few rows of them fell limp, they didn't turn to dust, and
instead were used as humanoid shields for those who followed. When
they began to encroach on the line of soldiers in this way, the vixen
couldn't bear to just stand by and let them get hurt, and so began
throwing lightning around.
One bolt after another traveled through the puppets, dropping them
until the ones still active were well behind their original line.
Even with Amp's help, this sustained, widespread volley left her
briefly winded, panting softly until she felt a hand on her shoulder.
Looking over briefly, Corporal Langdon was next to her, her other
hand taken up by one of the massive guns she'd brought with
her—readied but not yet firing. "Two of 'em comin' up here,"
she yelled over the din, to which Ning nodded, making an effort to
stand up straight again.
The grass came alive. All at once, from under, barely in front of,
and behind the feet of the soldiers around them, blades shot up into
long, twisting, thorny vines, gripping at legs and arms like so many
thin tentacles and trying to pull them to the ground. Ning could feel
it, and jumped—lightning arcing behind her and burning the plants
touching her to a crisp—swiping her sword, electrified, to chop
away the vines in the way of her landing. The Corporal's response was
immediate too, sweeping her free hand to one side and throwing a long
line of steel wire out, twisting around the base of the vines to
choke and cut them, freeing many of the briefly bound soldiers. The
army had come prepared for this sort of attack, and flamethrowers
came out while those who could backed away from the active vines.
More instinctive dodging followed for Ning, as she wove through a
volley of several crossbow bolts, alternating between making them
just miss her and knocking them aside with her blade. A line of wire
whipped by in her peripheral vision to the right and she turned to
lightning, diving through it and riding it to the end before swiping
her blade right at the puppet responsible. A gust of sharp wind
scarcely missed her when she left, and her weapon cut through the
crossbow before forcing its wielder to take several steps back away
from her swipes.
Cynthia charged, slashing hard at Petra; she was able to block with
her sheath and counter with her sword to force the red-haired puppet
back, but the heat coming off of the weapon was too much to safely
stay close to for long. Rowan had advised everyone that the puppeteer
would be stronger with two more stolen powers, but clearly she had
also been pulling her punches before now. Never mind the
thousands of 'normal' puppets around; this felt like the level of
power that the red-haired vixen might have had in life. Well,
thankfully she didn't need to strictly win this fight—just
keep the puppet busy for a while, and if things looked especially
dicy there would be a sniper trained to her head, sure to bring her
down for good before Petra took a mortal blow.
To that end, she solidified her sheath as far as it would go and
threw it underhand at the fire-wielding puppet, letting her knock it
away with her sword while Petra raised the ground to either side to
throw in at her, forcing her to jump back out of the way. She replied
to a fireball with a wall of dirt that barely took it as it
collapsed, then stomped to make the ground under Cynth tilt way back
and give her a choice between jumping back or falling—and she chose
the former. As Petra was now deep enough behind the overall enemy
line to have puppets on either side of her, she threw big waves of
rock and dirt out to either side of her to crush and/or block them,
then backed away, throwing another hardened sheath the fire-puppet's
way to keep her more or less on the defensive during the position
change. This time, however, she caught it in one hand and threw the
blazing sword right at Petra with the other.
Ning's sheath came up to catch another sword—the plant puppet
herself interrupting the advance on the wind one. She turned her
attention that way, swiping sideways while turning toward her to
counter and also letting a wave of electricity fire off at the wind
puppet to keep her back. She more felt than heard or saw the
motion of her fellow live vixen jumping in behind her, swinging her
bayonetted weapon at the green-haired puppet and twisting a fence of
wire up into place behind her to keep her from retreating that way.
The electrified blade was caught by her opponent's longsword while a
bunch of vines grabbed at Ning's sheath; she abandoned the latter and
punched at the puppet with the freed hand, taking advantage of her
awkward positioning to uppercut her square in the gut and send her
flying backwards. Then Ning swung her blade in the direction of the
other one as a gust of sharp wind went the Corporal's way, the
lighning from it expertly arcing around her ally to intercept the
wave of air. They exchanged a very brief glance as they swapped
positions and opponents, Samuel throwing twisting wire out to grapple
with a bunch of new vines from the plant puppet while Ning sent
another wave of electricity out to force the green-haired puppet to
concentrate on blocking it with more wind.
Caught between the possibilities of that blazing weapon going
straight into someone behind her or maybe the fire exploding at a
group of soldiers, an earth-wall failing to block it effectively with
all that heat and momentum, or—of course—getting hit herself,
Petra elected to reshape her current sword into a sheath (the old one
already turned back to dirt) and swipe at the blade just as it
arrived to send it off to one side, into some puppets, instead. The
heat gave her—especially her right arm—what felt like sunburns
from the brief but very close proximity, and then the Cynthia
puppet was back on the offensive, throwing a sustained volley of fire
her way. Petra did make a wall for this, then another, thicker
one as the first proved insufficient, and finally tossed another big
chunk of earth up at a higher, larger ball of fire to intercept it
the same way as the very first.
The puppet followed up with a charge, swinging a brand new blazing
blade Petra's way in a series of rapid swipes that she was only
barely able to keep up with between the sheath, the sword, and
occasionally stomping to tilt, shift, and throw the ground out from
under the puppet and repeatedly challenge her impressive reflexes and
sense of balance. All the while, the boiling heat emanating from not
only the sword but its wielder had Petra sweating; it was unlikely
that a normal human could manage being this close to her for terribly
long without some severe burns to show for it.
Samuel and Ning were well behind the enemy's lines now—which was
exactly where she wanted to be. While the short girl threw lightning
out in waves that frequently caught the surrounding puppets in their
wake, Samuel used one or the other of her guns to pepper the nearest
ones with short bursts of cover fire while her other hand kept the
puppet with the green thumb busy. Steel wire choked her weeds, dug
into the ground and tore out their roots, twisted around her sword
when it formed to yank it right back out of her hands and throw it
off into the distance, and just generally made a nuisance of
themselves in blocking every direction she tried to go.
The Corporal was glad to have a body for which the recoil on these
relatively high-caliber guns was next to nothing, but was equally as
well mindful of the limited ammo there was to work with before a
reload would be necessary. Hopefully she wouldn't have to shoot these
puppets too soon, so the fighters on the real front lines
would have as long as possible to do their jobs; Ning, at least,
seemed to be pulling her own for the moment.
Not long after the chopper reached the edge of town, Emma began to
test the real extent of her boosted power over sound. The loud noise
of the engine and blades slowly but surely died off, until they
seemingly fell completely, eerily silent, leaving only the occasional
radio chatter and noises from the instrument panel in the front
behind. These, too, couldn't be heard outside the confines of the
helicopter. Her eyes were closed and her ears folded partway down
from the effort of concentration required to maintain this effect,
and everyone else remained quiet in an effort to make the job as easy
as possible to manage.
A few tense moments later, the forest came into view, and they
touched down on a clear-looking patch of land; the chopper hit the
uneven ground a little roughly, but stayed upright and able to fly
and didn't lose anyone in the process, which was as much as anyone
needed just now.
"Well...I guess this is my stop." Amp reached over, putting
a hand briefly on the two-tailed girl's shoulder—you can do
this. She opened her eyes briefly to nod back, and then the
small, harmless-looking vixen climbed out of the chopper. As it took
off, she turned and began to walk—not too quickly at first, until
the helicopter was back in the sky and gone from sight as well as
sound thanks to Light's illusions.
The meeting place wasn't far into the forest, and it had been quite
easy to see from the air, even at a distance. Amory could still smell
the ash from the explosions, and—it was hard to say for sure—but
maybe the scent of blood, too. It was a little disgusting, a little
nauseating to think about someone—a good person, sure, but
anyone really—dying on the very spot she was heading toward,
but she didn't feel anything other than that. No fear, no nerves; the
tension felt inside the copter seemed to have been largely
empathetic, leeched off of those who were about to go and actually
fight. Alone now, the Giver's "princess" felt as calm and
in control as ever. There was a vague sense that everything was going
to turn out better than alright—perfectly, even—which her
logical self needed to expend effort to push down and focus on the
work at hand.
The faceless puppets' strategy of picking up the fallen ones to use
as shields proved effective even against armor-piercing bullets and
lightning, and they slowly began to close on the pair of vixens,
giving them an ever-decreasing amount of room to maneuver in while
fighting the strong ones. The Corporal switched to using the
bayonetted gun to take the plant puppet in a close-range fight; it
was poorly balanced compared to the longsword, but her strength was
superior and the puppet wasn't particularly agile compared to her,
either. Ning began having to dodge bolts shot from behind a wall of
live and dead weak puppets, slicing or electrocuting her way through
several of them but unwilling to advance far enough to put any of
them between herself and Samuel.
Eventually the two of them were backed up close enough for the tips
of their tails to touch, and—after a brief glance back at each
other—they switched places, Ning arcing through some provided wire
to land right in front of the plant puppet and follow through with a
series of hard, advancing strikes—alterning swift swings of her
blade with sweeping, hammering shots with her sheath. Samuel emptied
a clip into the crowd of weak puppets, twisting wire up from her hand
to catch or deflect bolts shot back at her, until the one with the
crossbow was once again exposed. In a swift, singular motion she
threw the empty gun to one side, bowling over a line of puppets, and
drew the one with the bayonet back out again, chopping through the
crossbow with it before flipping it around and bashing the puppet's
chest with the butt of the gun, knocking her over onto her back.
Petra's ears picked up an especially deafening boom through the din
of gunshots and yelling, followed by a distinct pting! as the
puppet's blazing weapon jerked, tilting away to one side in a way
that didn't look intentional. Her body acted before her mind
registered what had happened, swinging at the blade with her sheath
to knock it the rest of the way out of the puppet's hand and then
swiping into her stomach with the flat of the sword to knock her back
into the faceless puppets, her body burning through several of them
on the way down.
In fact, that had been it—the sniper trained on their
location deciding that she needed help and giving it; it would not be
until after the battle that she was entirely certain that it hadn't
been a miss at the puppet's head with especially lucky results but—in
fact—an incredibly good shot intended to knock the blade out
of her hand and give the vixen some much-needed breathing room. And
whoever was responsible for that shot was still ready and waiting to
help Petra again, which gave her the confidence to press this
advantage. When the puppet landed roughly on its back, Petra stomped
to push the ground down underneath her into a shallow pit and raise
the extra mass up into a dome around her, then pressed her blade
against her sheath, concentrating on hardening the sphere of earth
into the hardest rock she could manage to keep the puppet trapped for
as long as possible and force her to spend some effort breaking her
way back out again.
"...Cute."
A few steps into the burned-out clearing, Amp heard a voice and
turned toward a nearby tree; a tall, blindfolded puppet with a
battle-axe over its shoulder stepped out from behind it to greet her.
"Yeah? I get that a lot," she said.
"Heh." The puppet got a twisted, forced-looking smirk for a
second. "This one, can't even, see it. It is, you then,
isn't it?"
"I think so. I guess it really depends on who you're expecting
me to be." Amory took a couple of steps closer, not merely
knowing but feeling that this puppet, weapon or not,was
utterly incapable of hurting her.
"The one, who makes, others stronger. Draws out, our true,
potential."
"That sounds like me," she said, nodding.
A gust of bladed wind came the Corporal's way; she ducked aside but
still caught it in the arm. Despite the strength of the gust, the
resulting cut was fairly shallow, a source of pain but insufficient
to even limit the use of that arm. She responded by throwing some
wire directly around the wind puppet's waist, lifting it into the air
and yanking it down toward herself. It drew its crossbow in response
and fired down at her, giving her a harsh lesson in not giving her
opponent the high ground and forcing her to jump aside in the
direction she'd tossed the spent gun in before, picking it up in the
middle of the dive and swinging it around as a blunt weapon to throw
some faceless puppets out of her way. The thrown puppet at least
landed roughly afterward, skidding and rolling across the ground
toward Ning.
The girl with the lightning powers, on the other hand, was doing
quite well, chopping through plants with the blade in one hand and
repeatedly knocking their creator's sword away with the sheath in the
other. Eventually she grabbed the puppet by the wrist and threw it
back behind herself, turning in the same motion to face the
wind-puppet as it landed. Ning sent a taser-like shot of lightning
into that puppet to stun it before sweeping her blade in an arc
behind her back, sending another wave of lightning at the approaching
puppets in that direction. Seeing opportunity, Samuel caught the
flying plant-puppet in more wire about her left ankle, attached to a
piece held in her left hand, and slammed her down into the middle of
the ordinary marionettes, trying to tune the impact to stun a
superpowered puppet like her without quite taking her all the way
down. The empty gun she'd been using for blunt-force impact was
dented beyond usefulness now—not possessing the supernatural
sturdiness of a vixen's weapon—so she tossed it away into the
nearest group of enemy soldiers, letting it knock through them one
last time before firing the remaining weapon through a group
threatening to encroach on the space between herself and Ning.
As she shored up damage from the heat, sword-slashes and point
explosions of fire inside the rocky sphere, Petra felt a wave of
relief running through her. The slight burns from close contact with
the fire puppet and her sword stopped hurting and even seemed to heal
somewhat, and the strain of keeping her imprisoned eased up a bit. It
was a sensation only slightly familiar to her—from the time she had
first met Nico and gotten a demonstration of her power. Risking a
brief look backwards, she saw the neon-green-haired vixen hard at
work tossing seeds around, a few mid-size trees already present amid
the crowd of soldiers still engaged in battle with the multitude of
powerless puppets.
She was meant to be running support for all three of the other vixens
in the city, and the army in general, and it seemed she had just now
gotten around to this side of town. Well—it was pretty good timing,
with the puppet that could turn those trees to cinder presently
occupied trying to break out of an uncomfortably small space.
However, it wasn't long after this that she did manage to burst
through, leaping up into the air and throwing a volley of fireballs
down and forward at Petra, the soldiers, and all, and the two-tailed
vixen had to throw quite a lot of dirt up into the air from in front
of her to try and block it all. What fire got past her, however,
seemed to fizzle out before it could hit anyone, Nico having clearly
thought to put a reasonably high concentration of her power here
into, more or less, 'fire resistance'. Petra grinned as she saw the
puppet land, knowing that this would make her job of stalling it much
easier for the next few minutes or so at the very least.
The puppet circled around Amp, who stood still, feeling mlidly
uncomfortable at being examined this way but not showing it. "As
usual, the charitable one, doesn't lie," it said. "You
would, give yourself up?"
"Mm-hm; I hate to see people get hurt. So how's this work,
exactly? You call the attack off now that I'm here, or we have to
walk all the way to where you really are first?"
"You do appear, to be alone. But Light has, many tricks.
They will, stop, when we leave," she stated. "This way."
The puppet pointed with her free hand, and began to walk, so Amp
followed.
"Alright then.
"So, as long as we're walking, you don't mind a little
conversation, do you?" she said, her voice as innocent-sounding
as ever.
"Not, at all."
"I don't think I've ever met anyone quite like you before. I'm curious about your mindset. What do you want?"
"Not, at all."
"I don't think I've ever met anyone quite like you before. I'm curious about your mindset. What do you want?"
"Simple. I, will save, the world. And everyone, will be
grateful."
"Everyone who isn't dead, you mean."
"Heh. Some sacrifices, are necessary. Are they not?"
"Heh. Some sacrifices, are necessary. Are they not?"
Ning was using some of her breathing room to strike herself with
lightning out of the sky a few times. The Corporal was aware from
some briefings that this was a way of temporarily recharging, and
equally aware that needing that was a sure sign of her energy
getting a bit low. Samuel herself was busy at the same time loading
another clip into her remaining gun, well aware that if the army of
puppets came too much closer there wouldn't even be time to do
that—not to mention that her supply of extra ammo was rather
limited to begin with.
More plants rose up, and Samuel twisted some wire around them to
choke them, spreading it far enough to whip at some of the other
puppets around her too. She fired left and right, swung her blade
through some more approaching enemy troops, and backed up toward
Ning. The lightning-girl was busy discharging herself all around to
both block some wind-blasts from the green-haired puppet, now
recovered to its feet, and drive back the encroaching horde. She used
some sheath-feints and slashes through the crossbow to force the wind
puppet back until she was stuck between Ning and Samuel, still facing
the former, and once she was close enough the Corporal grabbed her
hair and swung her forward with it, bowling her through some more
puppets.
"Time we exit!" she yelled over the gunfire.
"Which way is out even?!" Ning said, having completely lost all sense of direction in the chaos of the fight. Samuel pointed to her right, sending a line of wire arcing up over the enemies with the hand at the same time.
"Which way is out even?!" Ning said, having completely lost all sense of direction in the chaos of the fight. Samuel pointed to her right, sending a line of wire arcing up over the enemies with the hand at the same time.
"Go. Make it rain, I'll follow!"
Ning nodded, and dove into the wire metal, dropping lightning down
from it every couple of feet or so to clear the way beneath her.
Samuel threw up a wire fence between herself and the two empowered
puppets—catching some incoming crossbow bolts in the process—and
swept gunfire in a fanning motion in every other direction before
turning into a breakneck run toward where she'd sent the other vixen,
leaping and running over the mountain of charred puppet bodies and
occasionally sweeping her bayonet left and right to keep the others
away.
Before long they landed back at the front lines—which were quite
far back from where they had left them. Ning arrived first, followed
by Samuel, and a hail of high-caliber gunshots and lightning joined
the wave of fire and bullets coming from either side of them. This
part of the battlefield was a scorched mess with no plants left for
that puppet to manipulate, the fallen marionettes forming a
wall that ever more of them seemed to be climbing over to advance.
Now that the vixens were back with the human army, some grenades and
rockets went flying into that wall to blow through it and hinder the
enemy's attempts to gain any more ground.
Cynthia charged once more. She was still fast, but Petra could take
near-misses of her sword now, and even kick at her without fear of
burning her shoes off from the heat emanating off the puppet's body.
She took care to make her steps pick up smaller chunks of concrete,
rock, and bullet shells and casings from the nearby ground and pelt
them in at the puppet, giving her considerably more to dodge or block
than before; this proved far more effective than tilting the ground
had been, presumably because of the unbelievably good balance vixens
(and vixen-puppets) tended to have. On top of that, Nico had one of
her trees flinging fruit their way, which the fire-puppet further had
to spend concentration swiping out of the air, dodging, or throwing
little bursts of fire at to explode before they could reach her.
Petra steadily pressed her advantage, pushing the puppet back and
stomping the ground under the lesser dolls into uneven pits. The
piles of bodies they'd been using as cover fell, allowing bullets
from the army through to make further piles for her to also
bury. Cynth looked almost relieved to be losing as they stopped just
between the soldiers and puppets, Petra content to keep her pinned
there while slowly raising the ground beneath them and deepening the
trenches in front. The puppet's very body blazed with fire, but Petra
held the center of the platform they were on and kept her at a
distance, near the cliff-like edges, where she could barely maneuver
around the sheath and sword swings, much less the rocks and fruit
still occasionally being thrown her way. The red-haired puppet seemed
almost winded, if such a thing were possible for it, but Petra still
felt able to keep this up for a while longer—another several
minutes at least, which would hopefully be the kind of delay they
needed.
"I just wonder: Will you ever really be satisfied? I
mean—how much is enough?"
"Not, many more," the puppet said. "With your help,
fewer still."
"Is it really, though? If you could have all the power you
wanted now, would it really change anything?" Amory slowly moved
closer behind the puppet, eventually coming up next to her. "Is
too much ever enough, when there's still more you can have?"
"I would, be justified, in stopping anyone who impeded me,"
she stated. "It would be, unhappy, but necessary. Once I, am the
one, defending this world, no one else, will be able to do it better.
But many, will be sure, they can, anyway."
"I suppose that includes normal humans. Even people with
no power aren't safe if they try to take you down, huh? You think you
can even deal if someone just...disagrees with you?" Amory
maintained a tone that suggested nothing more than curious, almost
friendly, interest. She was right next to the blindfolded
puppet now, and the weapon was gone from its hands.
"I don't see, why I should have to."
"Hmm. Maybe whoever you made that puppet out of, isn't the only
one who's blind, then."
The puppeteer was about to retort in some way, but the puppet she was
speaking through hesitated briefly—a short jerk of motion that
halted its walk as the concentration required to control it was
needed elsewhere for just a second. At about the same time—maybe
milliseconds later—Amp's ears picked up the sound of a gunshot from
a moderate distance up ahead of them. It was close enough that human
ears could've picked it up, and her fox-ears were able to pinpoint
the exact direction well enough to follow the noise the rest of the
way.
Not one to waste an opportunity, Amp drew her hand back and slapped
the puppet's cheek before the puppeteer's focus could return to it
sufficiently to start it running in the direction of that gunshot—of
its master. This act expressed the intensity and depth of her disgust
for the person at the other end: Someone like her deserved no
power, and she would demand as much of it as possible from even this
mere puppet's hands. There was an almost physical yank through the
invisible strings controlling the blindfolded puppet to their origin,
drawing out all of the power responsible for making and controlling
it and dispersing it into the air around Amory where it couldn't be
used—not until it had been gradually gathered back to its owner,
which would take a good several minutes at best. The puppet itself
collapsed into dust from the exchange, with no power left to keep it
held together.
That was it; that was what she was capable of when she really meant
it. The power-pull from Light had been relatively weak and
short-lived, but if Amory could do this to the real thing, she could
end the entire battle right then and there. With this in mind, she
began running in the direction of the fight—more of the sound of
which reached her ears as she drew closer, now that it was properly
underway.
We're almost there. I really, really want to be happy about finally getting through writing this and posting it. But, of course, google is a piece of absolute garbage company and has now forced the new interface on everyone. It makes the work of posting things here significantly more difficult, enough to make me wonder whether there's any alternative that would be better.
