Battle Vixens! - 57

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Episode 57: Pyrrhicism

There were suddenly a lot of very confused people around. Rowan looked, and listened; there were a few different languages being spoken here and there, but mostly the newly-revived vixens just stared blankly around, as if uncertain of where they were or what to do about it. Two in particular, however, had landed near her, facing each other: Dawn and Cynthia. They noticed each other right away, staring at each other in a mixture of uncertainty and disbelief.

"It's...you."
"It's me," the red-haired one nodded slowly. "I'm..alive."
"Ya are. I can't..." Dawn began crying, which seemed to cause the one across from her to do the same. "I-I, wanna say how sorry I am, but I don't remember why."

"Me either," Cynth shook her head slightly. "I..I think it's okay. You..I...we're here now." They moved closer, pulling into a gentle hug; the redhead was short enough to lean her head on the taller girl's shoulder while both of them began really sobbing.

Listening to this, Rowan walked. She felt...exhausted, angry, overwhelmed. Relief was present, but faint, and tainted with doubt and rage as some of the pieces fell into place. There was only one thing the Giver could've promised Dawn, and it meant she'd planned this all along—every single step of it. Even the people who thought they were making plans of their own were just pawns in her game, all for...this. Or whatever it was she was really after, anyway; maybe it was just for a laugh. White mist poured off of her body as she relaxed a grip on the enhanced power that she hadn't been aware she was holding. It was a little like feeling briefly ill, but without the physical sensation of a stomachache; at any rate, that sensation was the least of her worries just now.

"You." She stopped a few feet away from Gemma, whose two bodies were also in the process of turning back to normal. It seemed like everyone was, really. She pointed at one of them. "You didn't help."

"I—" "—what?"

"You have power over time and space, however limited it is. She moved too quickly, and you did not slow her down. She disappeared and you helped no one follow her. She fell into the shadows and you didn't pull them out from under her." Rowan took a small but aggressive step forward, the monotone of her voice tempered with just enough rage to render it terrifying. "You. Didn't. Help. And because of that, someone died who did not need to."

"Hey, back off!" Amp caught up to them, putting herself between the twins and Rowan and glaring at her with her ears folded back. "She fought as hard as anyone else did! And if we're assigning blame for tactical errors, then what about you? Why didn't we bring the person with two automatic rifles strapped to her back along? Or the one who could literally strike her with lightning, huh?!"

"...Sorry." Her ears folded down slightly and she took a small step back again, but the monotone of her voice made it difficult to really believe the apology. Then a couple of small beeps came from a pocket in her clothes, and she pulled out her phone to answer it, turning away from them to walk back the way she had come.

"What was that about? ...Are you okay?" she said, turning back around toward Gemma, both of whose bodies looked ready go jump in a ditch somewhere.
"Uh—" "I, I'm fine I guess..—" "—she's right, though," Minus mumbled much more quietly.

Feeling altogether done with the fox-tailed look for the moment, Clark let go of Rory and spoke her phrase to resume human form. The tall vixen stared at this with an air of curiosity. "That's a neat trick; how'd you do that?"
"Wha—I just turned back to normal," he said. "You can do that too."
Her head tilted slightly. "..How?"
"You just—look." As he still knew her phrase, he spoke it, trying to order her to return to normal. The usual sort of 'tug' that signalled he could order her power around was there, but this order seemed to have no effect; it wasn't something the power itself could do right now.

"Isn't that..just my name?"
"What?! No...listen. Your name is Rory Quinn," he said, gesturing toward her with a hand. "Doctor. Rory. Quinn. Not that—nonsense collection of syllables you were given less than two weeks ago."

"Oh..okay. It does have a nice ring to it," she said.

"She's not. You did the best you could, didn't you?" Amp said, stepping closer. The question was obviously meant to be rhetorical, but Minus shook her head slightly in response.
"I-I tried, but—" "—I couldn't...I didn't wanna k-kill someone, or—" "—help kill..." "—Nnnngh, I'm so stupid," she said, pulling at her ears.

"It's no use thinking that way," Light said as she came toward them slowly. She looked exhausted, like walking any faster might cause her to collapse. "Sometimes there's no such thing as doing 'enough'." She turned partway toward Rowan, now standing in an empty part of the clearing, away from them. Everyone's ears could easily hear her explaining the situation to whoever was on the other end of the line, calling for transport and several translators to handle those among the amnesiactic vixens who didn't seem to know English. "I think...she's not nearly as stoic as she usually seems, and just started yelling at the first person she saw."

"That doesn't make what she said wrong," said Minus, shaking her head again. Both bodies had some tears coming from their eyes at this point.

"Yeah, well. I was too focused on using my own power to even think of using Ning's, now that you mention it," Light said, and shrugged. "Borrowing it for one lightning bolt probably wouldn't have killed her, especially if it...worked."

"Gaah, I could've done that, too,—" she said, the note of frustration seeming to snap her out of crying for a moment. "—but I didn't wanna be the one to kill her..." the other body argued back.

"You know, that's okay. I told myself I'd do it a lot of times, and really felt like I could once or twice, but...I don't know how I'd feel right now if I had managed to get a sword through her throat." Light shook her head. Amp watched this conversation quietly, wanting to think of something else comforting to say but struggling with a new source of frustration herself now that she was really thinking about the way everything had gone.

Casualties were remarkably low. Of course, it helped that aside from the vixen-puppets the enemy hadn't really had access to any ranged weapons, and the vixens defending each city had done their job exceptionally well. All of them were alive, too, with varying levels of injury but nothing life-threatening. Overall, Rowan could objectively agree with the assessment that this victory had been hard-won but decisive.

Yet she couldn't shake the feeling that the overall price, across the entire conflict with Tobias Mond, had been far too much. Too many people had suffered and died and were still suffering, or about to do more of it; too much time and energy had been sucked into dealing with her that should've gone elsewhere. Even the undeniable miracle of her victims coming back to life was soured by the state they were left in—not to mention that it was only those whose powers she'd managed to take, a relatively small collection out of everyone she'd hurt or killed.

Rowan was shaken out of this train of thought by an unexpected finger tapping on her shoulder. She turned quickly toward the source to find Dawn standing there, looking hesitant and keeping about as far away as was still within reach. Cynthia was slightly to the side of and behind her. "Uh..sorry if.." she said slowly, drawing back a bit. "It's just, uh..I feel like there's a lot of people I gotta apologize to, an' maybe you most of all. If it's okay...I'm real sorry. Even more that I don't really know why..."

The blue-haired vixen fixed her with a look for a moment, breathing slowly in and out. There was a mixture of despair and relief at being recognized and apologized to this way. But also, her mind caught on the fact that Dawn wasn't wearing any gloves, but her hand hadn't felt cold at all. Were their powers not working, or...?

"It's...all right," she said slowly. "We'll work on it."

"Yeah? Uh, okay..that's good, I think," she nodded.

"Rowan Shepherd." The contact with the finger had been brief and through her clothes. She put out a hand for Dawn to shake, partially curious if this gesture would even be understood, and at first it wasn't, with the tall girl staring down at the hand with her head tilted slightly to the side. "My name," she added after a second.
"Uhh...oh! I get it," she said, taking the hand and shaking it. It felt like a normal human hand, no ice to it at all. "I'd uh..like to say my name, but I don't think I know it..."

"It's Donald Keller," Rowan said. "And you're Cynthia Hargrove," she added after letting go, gesturing toward the redheaded vixen. "We haven't met before, but I've heard a lot about you."
"Oh? Well, if you say so," she shrugged. "For now, anyway. I'll have to ask someone else if they agree."

It didn't take long for a small convoy of vans to arrive, taking the same road the puppeteer's car had used to reach the cabins. At the same time, all of the revived vixens were showing clear signs of exhaustion, and allowed themselves to be ushered into the vehicles before almost simultaneously falling asleep. The seats in the back of the vans were parallel to the road, one row on each side, and there was more than enough room for everyone—plus a few extras sent along to be empty decoys, just in case.

Clark and Light were in the same van, sitting across from each other. Rory was asleep with her head on his shoulder, and he didn't move or say anything for a long time, just occasionally picking up his hands to stare down at the palms before dropping them again. They were the only ones awake in the back of this particular van, and for a while she didn't feel much like talking either. Eventually, about the sixth time she counted him looking down at his hands, she did ask: "Are you...okay?"
"Hmmh." He looked up slowly. "I think I'm just...in shock, still. You play many games?"

"Some, yeah."
"You ever notice, you kill a lot of people in video games. Really, a lot of fiction is...violent. Violence centered. Movies, books.."
"Comics too...yeah."

"There's people around who worry that that dulls people's reactions to real violence. I guess if you asked me yesterday, I'd say was pretty well desensitized."

He looked down at his hands with no further comment for a very long moment. "So, now..?" she prompted, starting to become uncomfortable with this gesture.
Clark took a long breath in and out. "I..can say I never really thought I was capable of killing someone else. I mean—physically, yes, even before superpowers. Accidentally, sure; I drive a car. But...really. Wanting. To kill someone. And then. Doing it...? No. No way. Not me.

"I...could've stopped. I had her restrained to where she couldn't really use any of her power anymore." He was shaking slightly in place, and seemingly putting a lot of effort into not shaking more, not wanting to wake the woman still leaning on his shoulder. "She was struggling, but couldn't get out. I was too strong, and I'd stay that way, and she wasn't getting any stronger. A minute or so of that and I'm sure I would've been declared 'winner' and...gotten 'ownership' of her. Or I could just...wait for Rowan to shoot her, or something. No matter whether she had to die or not, I didn't need to be the one to do it. I'd already, done, enough."

He took another deep breath, steadied himself slightly as he dropped his hands back to his lap, and looked partway up again. "But I was...angry. I wanted to tear her into tiny little pieces with my own two hands, and since I could, I started to do just that. And you know what's really terrifying? I feel like, if I could go back to that moment right now, I would do it again. That...hatred, is still there. I feel...sick...just thinking about it."

"..She killed a lot of people," Light said. "Good people. Innocent ones. She put everyone in even more danger than we were already in."
He nodded. "Maybe, if anyone ever does...she deserved to die. Sure. But that wasn't punishment, or prevention, it was just...revenge. She killed someone...the one person I care the most about, and because of that I wanted her to suffer and die. In that instant, nothing else mattered to me."

Gemma recombined to take up less space, even though it wasn't strictly necessary, and took a seat Amp had already reserved next to her. The blond-haired vixen folded her ears back and glared at Rowan when he (now in human form) entered the same van, but that didn't deter him from sitting across from them. Emma just stared at the floor, feeling equal parts still terrible about the mistakes he'd pointed out and newly terrible about being the center of a conflict between the two of them.

After the vans began moving and they couldn't change seats, he finally said something. "I need to really apologize for what I said."
"Yes, you do," Amp agreed.

"I'm not always as...in control as I seem to be, in that form. I was...in the process of realizing some ugly facts about the overall situation, and I let it get the best of me and lashed out at you for no good reason. You didn't deserve that."
"You were right, though," Gemma squeaked through some new tears. "I didn't do nearly enough, and Dr. Quinn..."

"I think everyone made mistakes here. And you're not a soldier, or a member of law enforcement. You didn't volunteer to be in this kind of situation. You weren't trained for it, either. I..get the sense you weren't really ready to take someone's life in the first place."

Gemma sniffed, raised her head, and nodded slowly. She made a small, choked, sobbing noise in a failed effort to explain herself on this point.
"You shouldn't be. You shouldn't have to be. The only people who should be on the front lines of a war are the ones who knew what they were getting into before it started. The Giver is cruel and heartless, and doesn't care who gets hurt. She used everyone for her own goals, which—who knows what those are in this—and we all came out the worse for wear because of it."

Gemma swallowed, took in a deep breath, and sat up, nodding again. "Mmhm." He was trying to comfort her, and obviously didn't mean it that way, but a small part of her felt hurt at the thought that she was actually too broken to be as helpful as possible. Someone like her was no good in a stressful, important situation like the one they'd been in—or at least not as good as someone who could be a proper soldier. But she was getting used to having these kinds of thoughts lately, and pushed them back to deal with later, or better yet, never.

Sensing that she didn't really want to continue this conversation, Rowan turned to Amp. "...To answer some of your questions, I was trying to 'outplay' her. I thought that she would expect me to show up and bring my gun, and think she'd accounted for it only to get shot anyway. But someone with an automatic rifle might have spooked her, or even Ning may have made her too cautious to catch. The only problem is, it's really hard to hit someone with a pistol from that distance while also falling." He shook his head. "It would've been much easier to hit her with lightning before she knew we were on top of her. But I think everyone's frame of mind was wrong when we thought how to approach this battle. Besides, Ning didn't want to come; she has someone to protect. And, maybe wasn't ready to kill someone either."

Amp nodded. "I'm feeling pretty manipulated myself, at this point. If I take a step back and reexamine the way I've been thinking lately, it's clear this 'connection' to her has been really screwing with my head. I'd have been way better off landing with everyone else so I could slap her right in the face, or at least take out a lot more than just one puppet when it really mattered."

Rowan sighed. "I think we've all gotten reasonably good at fighting monsters. But when it comes to fighting people, that's a different kind of problem. I just wonder what she gets out of all of this, if it's not just 'more entertainment'..."

"Well, she was obviously involved in whatever Dr. Quinn did," Amp said. "You should probably ask him about that at some point, right?"
He nodded his agreement, but said, "It looked like...he needed some time."

"I guess...I'm glad it wasn't you. Or, anyone else but Rowan, I guess," Clark said. "You're still pretty young. After everything we've already been through, piling on the knowledge that you took someone's life might be too much. Especially for Gemma."

"She's...having a hard time as it is," Light nodded. "I thought I was ready to kill her just like another monster, but I dunno how I'd feel now if I'd really done it."

"Yeah...I guess we did have your help, though, with Rory's plan. Keeping me invisible and all. It was a smart gamble that she wouldn't be 'sensing' for me when you hadn't been doing illusions the whole fight before then."

"Um...she," Light pointed to the sleeping Dr. Quinn, "asked me to do that. Just before we left on the chopper. I'm not sure I would've known what you were doing soon enough to really help otherwise."

"Hmm." Clark turned his head for the first time since getting in the van to his sleeping, amnesiac wife, just slightly. "...Our plan was just for her to distract the puppeteer while I got ready. Did she plan on getting killed? Or was that just..?" He shook his head gently. "I can't even ask her, now."

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"Pyrrhicism" isn't a real word, but hopefully its "meaning" is clear enough anyway. I pronounce the last 2 syllables the same as in "cynicism".