Battle Vixens! - 55

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Episode 55: Checkmate

They were going to kill her.

 

It was the only way this could end. One of them was going to kill her. Some portion of Gemma's expanded mental capacity in that grown-up, "enhanced" form, alongside the concentration necessary to keep the helicopter silent, was involuntarily dedicated to thinking about this ugly fact. And while Light seemed absolutely enraged when she talked of killing her, and (Emma imagined) Rowan probably viewed it with solemnity, as an unpleasant but necessary reality, she herself couldn't help but think of this fact with a mixture of disgust and terror.

She resolved the issue somewhat before they even let Amory off by deciding that she would help not by getting up close and personal with the puppeteer, but instead providing support from as far away from her as possible. Even then, she had to work to keep herself from thinking too much about the fact that this still constituted helping the others to kill her. Logically speaking, she couldn't deny that it was a complete necessity. This person had to be stopped, and there probably wasn't a better way to do it. Yet the idea of her, or most any of the others present, taking another person's life was almost inconceivable.

Two weeks ago, the idea of death had been too distant even to really think about. Sure, there were a few tragedies at her high school, but none she'd had more than a very distant supporting role in. Her parents, and the family she knew in general, were all healthy and relatively young; the grandparents had died before she was old enough to really know them, much less understand the concept of their dying. Now it seemed to be staring her dead in the face all the time. If it wasn't her dying, it was someone else—Amory or Light, Dawn and his girlfriend she'd never even met—and now it was not just in the past and present, but the future as well. It was terrifying, but there was nothing she could do about it but—figuratively—grit her teeth and do her part to try to keep as many of these people alive as possible.

The chopper came up above the cabin. A number of bodies were visible below—a real vixen, tall, blond and regal-looking, four puppets with eyes, clothes, fox ears and tails, and a several of the same faceless puppets that were assaulting their hometowns. At some silent direction from Rowan, the pilot put them close to just above the puppeteer herself, and then everyone dove out—Clark using her power to slow their fall as their trajectories spread out to surround her. They were most of the way down when the tall, blue-haired vixen, currently behind their quarry, drew her gun, quickly aimed, and fired.

The noise of the shot rang out. Emma honestly hadn't expected it, and it came too fast to account for ahead of time, and even with Amp's help her weak imitation power would've had difficulty damping such a loud noise to the point where fox ears so close by wouldn't hear it alongside the complicated task of continuing to quiet the helicopter. Rowan's calculation was that if her shot hit it wouldn't matter whether it was heard or not, and if it didn't then they were close enough to the ground that they were about to be detected anyway. Unfortunately, the bullet was a few inches off its mark, passing harmlessly by the puppeteer's head and landing in the skull of the puppet standing in front of her—the one that could teleport—turning her to dust.

Then, everyone landed.

The faceless puppets closest to their master clustered together close to her, one of them seeming to "grow" the features of the teleporting puppet as it did so, and she disappeared with it out of the crowd as Light charged into them sword-first, tearing through most of the group in a series of swipes quicker than the eye could follow. More of them went to surround Rowan, but water drawn up out of the soil and grass formed thick, thrashing limbs that bashed them away from her as she formed her blade and moved toward the puppeteer's new position outside of the group's initial circle.

Rory took herself out of Clark's "flight" just as the gun went off, using the momentum from falling the rest of the way to kick down into the head of one of the fox-eared puppets, knocking it to the ground. This was the mage-looking one with the staff and it didn't survive the blow, but almost as soon as it disappeared another one nearby took on its appearance and swung its staff, firing a ball of light at her. She buffed her speed to dodge it and charge, punching right through a shield the puppet conjured into its midsection to send it bowling through some new faceless ones that were in the process of pulling themselves up out of the ground.

Gemma landed between two of the other vixen-puppets, one of which looked like Dawn and the other gray-haired with a pair of tonfas in its hands. She split herself, Plus coming out with two short swords swinging at the latter while Minus sent a sustained blast of fire toward Dawn—wincing somewhat inwardly at attacking her in particular, but tyring not to let it slow her down.

Clark landed in a cluster of the faceless puppets, between Rory and Gemma's positions, and began tossing her needle around, knocking them down, flying up into the air when they tried to tackle her and keeping herself out of reach in this way as she worked her way through them.

Light zipped herself next to the teleporting puppet and swung at it; it teleported an inch out of the sword's range and stabbed at her while the puppeteer gingerly stepped away; she ducked out of the stab and swung with a second superpositioned copy of the sword with her left hand, stopping short in a feint and successfully guessing with a right-handed stab that caught the teleporter square in the chest, turning her to dust yet again.

Rowan tossed her gun in a forward arc through the air and raised a tentacle from the ground behind the puppeteer to catch it, wrapping its end around the trigger to fire it while her actual body was busy tearing through more of the faceless puppets; the teleporting puppet reappeared (another faceless one elsewhere "promoted") next to the puppeteer and disappeared her away just in time for the shot to miss, and the limb turned into a wave to crash back in Rowan's direction so she could grab the gun and stow it away again while running toward her target's new position.

"AaaaAAAaaAAH!" Dawn's voice came out, a hoarse, strained yell, as she caught and clearly felt some of the fire before raising a thick shield of ice in its way and then lobbing a chunk of ice over the shield at Minus. Plus's opponent proved able to block and counter her strikes at first, despite some enhanced speed and strength, until she began flashing a strobe light in its face to temporarily blind it and was able to knock one of its weapons away. Minus dodged the chunk and some debris it exploded into when it landed, moving around Dawn while raising her shadow up into a spike and forcing her to dive away from it.

"Heads up, Plus!" Clark's needle flew in a blur around the lost tonfa as it tried to fly toward the side of her head, yanking it back long enough for Plus to maneuver to the opposite side of her opponent before it snapped the line and made it the rest of the way to her. When she threw the weapons, Plus made some light-shields to block them and sent electricity arcing through their metal into the puppet, shocking her into uncontrolled convulsions long enough to step forward and stab her. Minus threw shadow-bullets at Dawn, which met a smaller shield held in one hand while the other made a big sword, and then she charged forward while swinging it around.

Light split herself, superpositioning into several copies that spread out in all directions, jumping, light-speeding or using Clark's help to fly (for those which were close enough to her to do so) to cover as much ground as possible. Seeing this, Rowan drew up the water from her wave into a multitude of blades surrounding herself and charged toward the puppeteer's new position, either swinging her sword or throwing a few of the blades into any of the faceless puppets that got in her way.

Rory leapt at the nearest faceless puppet and grabbed its wrist, swinging it around at the nearest group of enemies as a big blunt weapon until another projectile came her way from the staff-puppet. She jumped over it, landing her fist in the puppet's face and turning it to dust once again before throwing another two puppets out to either side to clear out more of the faceless ones as they appeared. One of Light's copies ran next to her, tossing her a sword which turned out to be "real enough", at least, for her to catch it and swing it wildly into another group of puppets—one of which was the staff one reformed yet again, and another was the one with the tonfas that Gemma had just taken out.

Minus made her swords of fire and shadow, channeling heat and fire through each one to try and melt through Dawn's sword and shield. Now that Plus was freed up, she lifted a chunk of dirt and threw it at the puppet, making her jerk to one side as it hit her, but as she dropped her mostly-melted weapons she lurched forward unexpectedly and grabbed one of Minus's shoulders. "AAH!" It burned; the ungloved, plastic hand felt the way being splashed with dry ice probably did. She channeled heat toward that part of her body and kicked the puppet away, Plus running up to slash away at her and force her back again and reaching her left hand out toward the shoulder to partially heal the injury.

"You—tell Light.." Dawn spoke, staggering back before standing up straight again and forming a pair of short daggers in her hands. "You gotta tell her—!" Minus threw more fire at the puppet while Plus stepped into her, remerging into a single body. Then she fired a bullet of shadow, with the highest mass and speed she could manage, into the puppet's chest, interrupting whatever she was saying with a direct hit that made her stagger back again with a deeply pained look before disappearing into dust.

Rowan reached the Puppeteer and drew her gun in her right hand, using the left to swing her sword. When she teleported away again, the nearest "copy" of Light zipped next to her, feinting a swing to goad her into disappearing, and then she was near a different copy which did the same thing with a differently-placed swing. When the puppeteer moved to a position surrounded by more of her own, Rowan sent a flurry of her blades at the group to knock some of them down and either make her leave again or produce an opening for one of the Lights to come in. Her gun was tossed into the air and caught by several of the blades merging into a midair limb attached to a long, thin stalk with its opposite end in Rowan's left hand, aimed down at a gap deliberately left between the copies of Light.

"Hey, don't ignore the mooks!" Rory charged by next to Gemma, plowing through several of a group of faceless puppets which had steadily been encroaching on her position while she was busy with the stronger ones. Clark floated over near where Rory had just left, throwing some rope around the arm of a newly-formed staff puppet and using some briefly-borrowed strength to yank it over her head and slam it down into a group of faceless puppets climbing themselves up out of the ground.

"The wha—oh!" Panicking a bit, she threw some fire, icicles, arrows and shadow at the rest of them, taking most down—but one refused to fall, instead "growing" Dawn's traits again, pained look and all, before throwing a big icy spear right at her and making her dive out of the way, splitting herself back into Plus and Minus each taking a side to dodge away toward.

The puppeteer and her teleporting puppet appeared almost right next to Plus, the latter moving in to stab at her. "Yeek!" She ducked awkwardly back out of the way, forming a big shield of light and making it strobe-flash back at her assailant almost by instinct. Minus, meanwhile, moved in on Dawn again with fire and earth blades to clash with two mid-length icy blades in the puppet's hands.

Another gunshot rang through the air, hitting the teleporting puppet and turning her to dust, and the remaining "extra" Lights disappeared as a single one collapsed into place right next to the puppeteer, swinging at her. The blond-haired vixen moved with sudden, surprising alacrity, stepping backwards and dodging between the strikes while keeping one or the other of her hands raised, fingers twitching constantly to control all of the puppets around them, the entire time. Her face was still fixed in a confident smirk as several of the faceless puppets nearby converged on the location she was backing away toward. Plus got behind Light, facing the opposite direction to block a staff-thrown orb and tonfas with more light shields before returning fire with a couple of thrown blades and arrows. She dashed forward to place some point-explosions right next to one of the fox-eared puppets before leaping back to resume blocking the other one's attacks.

Minus blocked a blow from an awkward angle with a black orb, then picked up and threw her shadow as blades from either side of the Dawn puppet, forcing her to dodge awkardly around and back instead of maintaining an offensive. At the same time, she yelled, "She's a liar! She lied to me!" continuing the thought cut off by her previous "death". At first it wasn't clear to Gemma which 'she' this meant, but the rage and pain in her voice when she said it made it clear that whatever was left of the person in that puppet felt betrayed. "Tell her!!!" It clicked after a moment that there was just one person who Dawn probably had contact with shortly before dying that morning, and would've definitely expected to be telling the truth.

"Wh—what did she say?" At about this point Minus felt something else pulling at the shadows around everyone, preventing her from easily using them, and she switched to picking up nearby dirt and packing it into rocks to throw at Dawn.

Plus gave the warning: "Light! Shadow's here!"

"Indeed," the puppeteer said with a grin—the first thing any of them ever heard her say in her own voice. At once the shadows under all of the puppets and vixens and trees rose up, blades and thorns rising out of the ground to fly and swing at everyone. Light hopped back as her target disappeared into her own shadow, the dark-haired puppet responsible for this appearing in her place with scythes drawn, and her body blazed with light that spread out like a fire, burning all of the sharp shadows back out of existence. The puppet swung forward at her and she caught the scythes with the copies of her own sword and threw them out to either side before swinging one, then the other, through the shadow-puppet and making her disappear again.

Rowan blocked the brief assault of shadows with a dome of water around herself, using the rest of her concentration to grab or block some of the thorns with limbs of water to keep them away from Rory and Clark; Minus retained enough control over the shadows near herself to suppress them from actually attacking. Then the blue-haired vixen raised her gun again and fired it at the Puppeteer's latest position, where three different faceless puppets dove in to take it instead, one of them catching it and turning to dust. The teleporter reappeared next to the puppeteer while the shadow-puppet rose up next to Rory and came after her with its scythes.

Plus ran at the remaining powerful puppet near her, the one with the staff, and after blocking one of her shots with a light-shield and slicing through a shield with one of her swords she easily cut it down with the blade in her other hand. Then she ran to help Minus, coming in from Dawn's right while Minus moved to her left and, between the two of them, she forced the freezing puppet into an awkward position and used the advantage to drive a shadow-bullet through her head, destroying her again.

Still using her power to suppress the shadows, Light sped herself over next to their opponent and initiated a dance of disappearing, swinging, slashing back and forth with the teleporter, who seemed much more adept at this fighting than she had been earlier. Rowan came close as two of the nearby faceless puppets became the tonfa- and staff-wielders and took on both of them, using her water to pick up and throw the latter while her blade deflected the former's thrown weapons and forced her back. The puppeteer fell back into her shadow and fled their position again.

Rory dodged aside of a couple of slashes from the scythes, threw Light's sword at the puppet's throat, and when it dodged that she borrowed her husband's power to throw string from each of her wrists around the scythes' blades, using her vastly superior strength to yank them out of her hands and away to either side before stepping in to uppercut the puppet's chin with enough force to send it in a hard backwards spin through the air that ended in a rough landing and turning again to dust. Then Dawn reappeared nearly right next to her and moved in to grab her arm, but was stopped by some wire from Clark herself which was then yanked to knock her over onto her back, Rory following up with stomping through her stomach with enough force to crumble the puppet to dust.

At this point Amory arrived, emerging from the forest into the clearing to find a huge crowd of faceless puppets surrounding its perimeter. Some were looking out, but most were looking in, and when they noticed her a few moved toward her, not very aggressively but almost as though they were curious what she was doing there. She slapped each one that came too close, well aware they would likely be able to grab and restrain her without that counting as "violent", moving to get into the circle herself while removing as few of them from the equation as possible.

A puppet near Rory grew taller, gaining a blindfold and drawing a greataxe into its hands; the puppeteer's power to 'make' this one was finally coming back. It swung at her, but she ducked, caught the weapon and yanked it out of the puppet's hand before swinging the handle back at its side to send it flying away. Clark floated above her, catching and throwing or knocking away any that came too close behind while she threw, shoved, or grabbed and swung any who came at her from the front.

Gemma recombined and went toward the Quinns, having almost-unconsciously noticed a larger than usual number of them converging on Rory's position. She tilted the ground under some of them to knock them over, stabbed one in the process of turning into the shadow puppet, and got rid of several more with bullets, arrows, ice spikes and sound blasts and anything else she could think of to throw around.

Light and Rowan took out their opponents, then the former lightsped into the air briefly to get eyes on the puppeteer before zipping over to her, leaving behind a trail through the air for Rowan to follow. The blue-haired vixen ran that way, maintaining a shield of water with limbs extending out from it to knock down or away any puppets that got in her way, until one of them became Dawn and grabbed the tentacles that came at her, freezing them and throwing them away before leaping at the shield to do the same to it. Thinking quickly, Rowan parted the water away from her and swung her sword at the puppet, slicing through her stomach and knocking her away in the same motion. There was no time to consider the look of absolute despair on her face at how close she came to hurting or killing Rowan; she just had to keep going. But then another puppet jumped into her path, this one with blazing red hair and palpable heat coming off of her that turned all nearby water to steam. She looked about as ready to cry as Dawn had.

Gemma split again to more effectively take on the number of puppets around, especially since two of them became the shadow and tonfa ones again. "The fire one's here too!—" "—We're getting outnumbered here."

"Yeah, I hadn't noticed," Rory said, yanking the staff out of another puppet's hand when it appeared and jabbing it into her stomach to knock her away. "This is taking way too long, right dear?"

"I—maybe?" Clark replied. "Please be careful if you're gonna."

"I'm always careful!"

"What?" Plus said, feeling like she was missing some of this conversation's content.

Light fought the teleporting puppet again, this time "splitting" into superpositions just to gain something resembling a numerical advantage. This proved enough to take her down, but once again the puppeteer dissappeared into shadow after dodging another few of her strikes, not even looking particularly winded. Another shot of Rowan's gun rang through the air, as this proved the most efficient method she had to take down the blazing Cynthia puppet and get some relief from the intense heat coming off of her.

The puppeteer rose out of the shadows near the middle of the clearing, next to the cabin; this was about as far away from Rowan and Light as she could be without leaving the area. It was also fairly close to Rory, Clark, and Gemma, and the opposite side of the circle of faceless puppets from the one Amory now emerged from, just now having an opportunity to see the situation inside. Rory threw the puppet in her hand away, raised a hand and yelled "Okay, THAT IS IT!" before charging straight toward the tall, blond-haired vixen, mowing down, tossing aside, or outright ignoring all of the puppets in her way. A couple of powerful ones hit her with projectiles or weapons, but she was maxing out her defense and only took minor scratches from any of them. Light zipped next to the teleporting puppet during the charge, engaging it again just to pull it away to one side. Rory moved her buff into speed once the rest of the way to the puppeteer was clear, and jumped a couple of feet up into the air to lead with her fist pointed down toward her.

Tobias grinned.

In flash of heat and light, one of the puppeteer's hands had Cynthia's sword in it, blazing with fire, and it struck out diagonally up, catching Rory square in the chest. Her momentum helped rather than hurt it, letting it stab her far enough to come out the other end, and she was stopped on the long sword just short of the prepared punch's range. The puppeteer lowered the blade just enough for Dr. Quinn's feet to touch the ground. "Finally. You're mine."
At the last possible second, when the blade appeared, Rory had pumped her defense again. She was still conscious, and raised her head slightly before making a noise halfway between a choking cough and a laugh, and then spitting out some blood onto the puppeteer's face. "Sorry kid," she croaked. "I'm spoken for."

None of Tobias's puppets were looking behind her just now; there was a cabin in the way and nobody was there—well, nobody was supposed to be there, anyway. Someone's voice said what she recognized as a vixen's phrase—not one she knew, of course—and then what must have been Dr. Quinn's power emerged from her still-conscious body, going around the puppeteer to that person who was behind her.

Then she noticed the strings.

It was impossible to believe that she hadn't noticed them before: Bright, thick, glowing blue wires arranged in a network right there, inches in front of her, with the sword of fire stuck through one of the holes. They were pulled in at the same time as they apparently become visible, wrapping around her arms, hands, feet—and her neck. Her fingers were pulled back, forced straight up and still, and without her control every one of her puppets went limp, standing slumped over like so many robots that had suddenly run out of batteries.

Tobias tried to say something, but a thick, braided rope of blue wire was around her neck, and it was difficult if not impossible to get air. The sword was gone from her hand too, and Rory collapsed forward onto the ground without it holding her up. Her head was slowly pulled back more and more as she choked, an excruciatingly painful sensation of cutting and pulling from every part of her body the wire was wrapped around. Just when it seemed like her head couldn't move any more, for Tobias alone, time slowed to a crawl.

The world around her was strangely blurry, taking on a certain unreality. And, suddenly, standing over her with feet almost certainly on top of or on either side of Dr. Rory Quinn's head, there was the many-tailed charitable one, wearing a smile that was equal parts victorious and cruel. Tobias glared up at her, still feeling the pain from the ropes and unable to breathe, much less speak.

"What's the matter, little one? Things not turning out how you hoped?" She leaned slightly forward, placing a hand very gently on Tobias's chin for a second. "You really should've expected an outcome like this. After all, if you didn't want to lose, then..." She stood upright once more. "You shouldn't have challenged a grandmaster. Ta-ta." With a small, dismissive wave of her hand, she disappeared again and time seemed to rush to resume, an audible, sickening snap joining the litany of pain the former puppeteer was feeling and seeming to cause an instantaneous effect, an outward wave of puppets from those nearest her to those farthest away turning instantly to dust as their master died.

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"Hey, Light."
"Hmm?" As the last two to head outside toward the quad, where everyone was going to meet up and get on the helicopter, Rory Quinn and Light were briefly alone.

"Clark and I have a little plan pre-arranged. It's risky, so we're hoping it isn't necessary at all, but I'm pretty sure it'll work if we can pull it off. So: To help us out, if I give the signal I want you to keep it looking like my husband's still in the same place, and hide all of her strings. But don't hide me; in fact, make me super visible if you can manage it. You got that?"
"Uh...sure. What's 'the signal'?"

"Oh, I dunno," Dr. Quinn shrugged. "Prolly something super obvious. I think I'll...yell at the top of my lungs and wave my arms or something like that. You know."

"Okay then," Light nodded, and they made the rest of the walk in silence.

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The title is kind of a spoiler, I guess, but come on. There's no way I could have an entire arc with chess titles and not end with "checkmate". Anyway, it's not like there aren't surprises here even if you know the broad stroke of how it ends already. I have a fair bit to say about this one, overall, but first I'll say that I couldn't publish this without also finishing writing the next episode too. I don't want to accidentally spoil this one by publishing that one too soon, so it's queued up for tomorrow, but they're definitely intended to be read very soon one after the other to make the most sense.

 

Anyway. I imagine how a lot of my stories would operate in a visual medium such as a comic or an anime or whatever, most especially this one. It helps me think out the "choreography" of fights to describe the action in what I hope is a reasonably coherent manner. But also, I imagine things like title cards and such. So, for the entire "puppeteer" arc, I imagine that there would periodically be title cards featuring different characters in specific particular, very uncomfortable pose with red strings tying them upright in the air. "Episode 31: Marionette" would show the shadow puppet in that pose for the first one, and "Episode 51: Knight Sacrifice" would show Dawn in it. Then, as the final payoff to that, that pose would be exactly the one that Tobias Mond winds up in, but with blue strings instead, just before her neck gets snapped.

I suppose also that the title card to this episode would include a section of chessboard that showed the black king with a white rook in an adjacent tile protected by a white bishop, with two white queens a bit more distantly placed so that the overall positioning formed a clear checkmate for white. It would hint at the way things go without, maybe, spoiling the details of the ending outright.

 

If this episode makes you upset, or tense, or whatever...just wait and read the next one. This particular hump of story is one I was eager to get over not just for its own sake, but also so that I could finally get to what follows it.