Episode 56: Bring Her Back
Clark felt a white-hot, blinding, unfathomable and incomprehensible
rage. She restrained the puppeteer first, retaining just enough
rational thought to know that this was necessary, and then pulled and
pulled until she heard the body snap—and then pulled some more,
just in case. Not until a great, multicolored cloud began to rise up
from the limp, lifeless body caught in her wires to signal the woman
who had killed her wife was well and truly dead did she let go,
allowing them to dissipate and drop her unceremoniously to the
ground, lying on her back in an unnaturally twisted position.
Almost at once that cloud of power rushed toward the surviving Dr.
Quinn, overwhelming her senses. At the same time, something difficult
to describe in words occurred, where the world appeared to slow down
around her. She could simultaneously feel the continued rush of the
powers of thirteen different vixens, an unimaginable torrent rushing
into her that felt equal parts sickening and good, even as she was
brought out of the rush enough to move around and consciously
perceive the rest of the world again.
"Well,
well...this is a surprise." Clark had only heard this voice once
before, but something about it was instantly recognizable. Like the
Cheshire cat reappearing from its smiling teeth, the one responsible
for everyone's powers appeared a few steps in front of her, just
between Rory's body and the puppeteer's, wearing an unbelievably
punchable grin—if only she were capable of being punched. "I
thought for certain that Light would do it. Or, at least the
policeman—who's always been ready to take a life. Going down the
list, out of everyone here who could have killed her, I must say I am
almost astonished that it was you."
The pain of seeing
Rory stabbed was still raw, and Clark's rage automatically directed
itself at this new target. "Why are you here? What do you
want?!" She stepped aggressively forward, and—at the same
time—didn't, really. This was some sort of partially out-of-body
experience, with her "real" self still stuck in place
mid-power-absorption.
"What do I
want...?" She gave an infuriatingly smug chuckle. "I
already have it. You see, this here," she said, leaning down
slightly to lift the lifeless puppeteer's head slightly, "is it.
My enemy's head on a platter. The friend of my enemy, perhaps you
might say," she said, rising again to give a brief circular
gesture with her hand. "As for why I'm here.." In that
uncomfortable, threatening manner that Clark knew her to be capable
of from Light's recounting of previous visits, she was suddenly
inches away from the smaller girl, bent down toward her face with
that disgusting grin. "Why, to reward you of course! And
I have a couple of very nice options lined up for you."
She moved back
slightly again, standing next to the stream of power still flowing
into Clark's actual body. "This one's power is great, and now
it's going to be yours. But, perhaps, instead of simply taking it on
as weakened, 'stolen' power, I can make it all yours."
She traced a hand along the line of energy as though it were solid
threads that she could pick up and weave at will. "Just think
of it: With power like that, the enemy wouldn't even be able to touch
you. Any other vixens feeling particularly murderous would quickly
fall in line or easily be crushed by your righteous wrath. Or..."
The Giver moved
again, this time kneeling next to Rory's body. Clark felt a spike of
rage again that was fit to boil over if she touched her, but
thankfully she didn't, just leaving the smaller vixen still angry
enough to remain speechless. "The way that one wielded stolen
powers was quite unique, you know. Quite a bit of the people she took
them from is still there, even now. Death is an awfully tricky thing,
as I'm sure you can imagine, and there's no bringing back someone
who's really dead, even for me. But—being the one who gave
everyone their powers, I have a bit of a backdoor. Cheating
death, sometimes, is possible."
She slowly stood up
while Clark struggled mentally with the obvious implications of her
words. "If you're willing to give up your claim to everyone's
power but hers," she said, pointing to the dead
puppeteer, "I can help you put them back together again. More or
less, you make bodies for them, I reshape them into real
bodies, then we channel their powers in and use those to pull them
back from 'mostly dead' to 'fully alive' again. You should know,
however, that death really doesn't like being cheated. This
will be somewhat painful, and even I can only bring so much back this
way. You'll have to figure out how to get the rest back yourselves."
The tall,
many-tailed woman took a couple of slow, normal steps toward Clark,
gently kicking the puppeteer's lifeless body out of her way as she
did so. "I'll give you as much time as I can to consider your
answer if you like, but we must do one or the other of them now.
These roads are mutually exclusive and rather difficult, if not
impossible, to track back on."
Tears (real or not)
streaming down from her eyes by now, Clark glared for what felt like
a long moment up at the Giver's face, trying to make sense of the
bizarre woman. "...I can't understand why you would bother
giving someone a choice, when you already know what they're gonna
pick. Or are you so detached from every human emotion there is that
you can't comprehend how I feel right now?"
She shrugged. "I've
lived more than long enough to thoroughly consider perspectives that
aren't my own, but I don't see how the choice is obvious from your
point of view. You're a scientist; think about it logically: Their
lives were already lost, and it's not all that many
people in the end. Think how many other lives you could save
if you took the first option. I guarantee that the people you bring
back won't be nearly as cooperative as they would be as your puppets,
and you and your allies may never have another chance like this
again."
"You really...you really don't understand," Clark
said through an almost-sob, with a tone of something like wonder. She
shook her head, swallowing and taking a careful breath. "I hope
that someday you get to find out what it's like to actually care
about another person. Rory is my wife. I love her, and
you took her away. Bring her back. And everyone else you
let her murder, too. I don't care what it costs me."
"Very well then," she said with a nod, rubbing her hands
together. "Perhaps I ought to hope for that too, someday; it
sounds positively exciting. But, for the moment—let's make a
miracle happen, shall we?"
There wasn't time to do much more than look on in abject shock. One
minute the puppeteer fell and all her puppets were dust, and then
everyone could see the multitude of her powers rushing into Clark
Quinn's body. And then, at about the same time as the last of it
converged into her, she rose, floating slightly off of the ground
with her clothes and hair whipping around in otherwise nonexistent
wind, a brilliant blue light glowing from the outline of her body and
especially shining out from her eyes.
Blue strings struck out from that light toward various unoccupied
positions nearby, one of them seeming to go into Rory's back and
cause her body to turn into a blue light before dissipating. Then,
from the end of each string came a ball of light which grew and
reformed steadily into a body, bearing the distinctive traits of long
hair, fox ears, a tail—all of them floating just slightly off of
the ground. The light burst off of each one, leaving not a puppet but
a fully-fleshed, humanlike vixen's body behind, eyes closed, floating
in midair. More light, this time in various colors and patterns,
flowed in spirals along the string, seeming to dim the light around
Clark by leaving herand cause each newly-formed body to suddenly gasp
and start breathing when it entered her through the back.
Finally, the strings collapsed away starting from the point of
contact with each reformed vixen and traveling back toward their
origin, letting each one down onto her feet in turn. When it was
done, Clark's body appeared to have gained a bit of height beyond its
usual "amplified" size, and her eyes closed as she fell
down onto her hands and knees, panting as if from an extreme physical
exertion. White mist poured out of her as she shrank back most of the
way to her usual size, but retained the type of outfit Amp's power
usual gave her and a bit of the extra height and physical maturity
usually present in that form.
When she opened her eyes, Clark found Rory standing there facing her
from a few of feet away—the other side of Tobias Mond's lifeless
body, which was still conspicuously present—with a slightly
concerned but otherwise strangely blank expression. Still only
halfway through catching her breath, she leapt up at her revived
wife, throwing her arms around her in a hug and equal parts sobbing
and laughing with relief. Rory had no trouble catching her and
staying upright, of course, but seemed to only return the hug very
gently and hesitantly, as if uncertain what the appropriate response
to this was.
"Uh..hey, there."
Dr. Quinn pulled out of the hug enough to look up at her wife, still crying and smiling.
"What's..this about?"
"You..you're alive!" she said.
"I..guess I am." Rory shrugged. "Um..who are you?" This question stopped Clark in her tracks, and it probably showed. The taller vixen attempted to save face somewhat, regaining a slightly blank look of concern, her ears folding down a bit. "I mean..I think..you look familiar somehow, but.."
Clark let go, and stepped back slightly, looking up into her wife's face and really taking in the blank, confused expression in her eyes for the first time. "I..what do you mean? It's me." No obvious response. "Clark? Clark Quinn? Your husband?"
"My what?" The way she asked this question suggested not shock at the claim, but more that she didn't know the word 'husband'.
Dr. Quinn pulled out of the hug enough to look up at her wife, still crying and smiling.
"What's..this about?"
"You..you're alive!" she said.
"I..guess I am." Rory shrugged. "Um..who are you?" This question stopped Clark in her tracks, and it probably showed. The taller vixen attempted to save face somewhat, regaining a slightly blank look of concern, her ears folding down a bit. "I mean..I think..you look familiar somehow, but.."
Clark let go, and stepped back slightly, looking up into her wife's face and really taking in the blank, confused expression in her eyes for the first time. "I..what do you mean? It's me." No obvious response. "Clark? Clark Quinn? Your husband?"
"My what?" The way she asked this question suggested not shock at the claim, but more that she didn't know the word 'husband'.
"You—I took your last name!" Clark said, waving
her hands forward at her. "How can you—?!" She stopped,
sensing some fear in response to her shouting, and said more quietly:
"You really, don't remember, do you?"
"I'm..very sorry, but I, suppose I don't." In response to Clark's continued stunned silence, she looked even more worried, her ears still folded down. "I mean—like I said, you do look really familiar. When I..first saw you, I felt..really happy, and..I'm really sorry if I'm, making you feel bad now, but.."
"I'm..very sorry, but I, suppose I don't." In response to Clark's continued stunned silence, she looked even more worried, her ears still folded down. "I mean—like I said, you do look really familiar. When I..first saw you, I felt..really happy, and..I'm really sorry if I'm, making you feel bad now, but.."
Clark drew in a long breath that suppressed the beginnings of another
sob, then exhaled slowly and sniffed, wiping her eyes on a sleeve.
"No, nono I'm sorry." This was what she'd
meant about bringing the rest back on their own, wasn't it?
"It's...you're. I'm happy you're alive. I can hardly even
believe it. That should be enough for right now. We'll...we'll work
on the rest later, I guess." Her hands went up onto Rory's
shoulders in an attempt at a comforting gesture, which the taller
vixen appeared to accept much more readily than she had the sudden
tackle-hug earlier. Clark made a desperate effort to smile
comfortingly up at her, and was rewarded with a small, yet present
smile back, and Rory's tail slowly wagging behind her in a further
expression of friendliness toward the nice person she couldn't quite
seem to remember at all.
This is a shorter episode; it's essentially the "end" of the last one, but it needed to be separated out as its own episode as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, back when I posted "Knight Sacrifice", I said the following: "I certainly don't take major character death lightly...Just wait and see". This is what I had in mind. I essentially had planned this out before "The Missing Morning", and hopefully it now starts to be clear why that series of events even happened in the first place.
As far as bringing people back from the dead, I feel personally (and hope at least some of you will agree) that this doesn't do what happens in a lot of mediums where it makes death feel cheap and risks less meaningful. The conditions for this "revival" are too specific to be easily replicated pretty much ever, and it has an obvious, very high cost whose full ramifications will be explored more in future episodes.
Hopefully, now that this difficult-to-write part is more or less through, I can get parts of this story written more often than, like, two within a six-month period. I guess we'll see, anyway.
I don't think that Light will take this new development too well. Rory is now another person that she wasn't able to save, and she may even feel like she played a part in her death, and even if it was temporary, I know she won't be happy about the consequences.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you can't convince me that the Giver wasn't taking inspiration from Miracle Max. Bringing people back from "only mostly dead"? Making miracles happen? Can't do anything when somebody is all dead (besides going through their clothes looking for loose change but I don't see her needing to do that)?
On a totally unrelated note, does it mean anything when the Giver actually refers to somebody by their name? It feels like it does; I was actually surprised when she talked about Emma by name instead of just giving a description or nickname, and this was the first time she referred to Light by name, at least that we know of.
Loving this story, keep up the amazing work!
The Giver obviously likes playing around with words and especially names, but I'd say that often which name she uses for someone depends on who she's addressing and why. I didn't really think about a specific reason she uses "Light" over "Hero" or something else here, so it's probably not a big deal. I mean, not unless I retroactively think of something that'd be cool, but I don't know of anything like that at the moment.
DeleteWow. A lot of info in a few short chapters. There were a few things that I had expected, and a few things that I never saw coming.
ReplyDeleteWhat I got partially right:
-After Dawn's death I got thinking, "maybe if Amp's powers were to bless
a puppet, or maybe Clark's powers after Amp boosted him?" I was
actually closer to the truth than I thought.
-I did think that Beryl had something personal against Tobias, but
I didn't realize that it was because Tobias was indirectly helping the
World Eater by attacking Light.
What I got wrong:
-I was with Beryl in thinking that Rowan was going to kill Tobias in
revenge for Dawn.
-I thought that either Clark or Petra would sacrifice themselves, not
Rory.
-Lastly, I thought that Amp would be able to slap Tobias. Just once. All
that anticipation on what was gonna happen if Tobias got slapped just
so Clark could strangle him. Really.
Anyway, eagerly waiting the next chapter! I already see that "Battle Vixens! 57 is mostly done" so I'll definitely read that one when it comes out!
To be clear on one thing, Clark didn't just strangle her, she actually pulled so hard it broke her neck. I tried to research whether or not you could really break a person's neck by pulling it back hard enough, but didn't feel like pursuing that line of inquiry too far, so I just shrugged my shoulders and said "super strength, right?"
DeleteAnd, Rowan certainly did try.
I did a little bit of research, and I found a discussion here: https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/41790/theoretically-would-it-be-possible-for-a-human-to-break-another-humans-neck
DeleteWhat they came out with is that it is much more likely to break someone's neck if they are immobilized. As Tobias could not move, it is very possible that Clark could break his neck.