Battle Vixens! - 58

First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

Episode 58: Out of a Hat

Marcus arrived at the VI's office space to find them in the process of hastily leaving. When someone walking out asked him who he was and he barely even started to explain, they urged him to follow a small convoy of "essential" workers headed for their headquarters—so he did. The place was being guarded like a fortress, and there were definitely more people around than it seemed normally outfitted for; in addition to staff that would normally have remained off-site, the families of those vixens in the city whose identities were known were around. There was an obvious tension in the air, but Marcus followed a worker to an unoccupied office to wait for someone else to interview him anyway. Then that person arrived, and she just asked him a few questions he thought they should already know the answer to—about his occupation (student) and interests (video games), and how he felt about the VI overall—before they were interrupted by a PA announcement that the facility was going on lockdown.

"Well, I think this is enough, anyway," she said, picking up her notes and shuffling them together. "Please, go back out to the waiting room and sit tight. I'm sure..." Her confident, businesslike manner faltered for a just fraction of a second. "Well—I hope this will be over soon enough."

"Uh..yeah," he agreed, getting up.

There wasn't much to do in the little waiting room, but there were chairs and there was a TV mounted to the wall, which Marcus was able to stand on the seat of a chair to turn on and tune to the news. Plus, there was an open outlet, and the VI headquarters had an open wi-fi network for guests—making him glad he'd had the foresight to bring his phone and a charger inside with him.

They covered the battle going on outside, cutting together professional news footage with shots people were taking out the windows of homes and offices with their phones. Not wanting to make too much noise with people still running around the halls and sometimes through the waiting room, Marcus settled for rooting for them quietly. The way Petra was fighting that fire-puppet was like a cage match or something, at least until the latter disappeared on her. Naturally, he was also able to catch the moment live when the puppets all turned to dust, and allowed himself a quiet "Yess" and fistpump to celebrate the victory.

The news continued playing various clips of footage from the fight, interspersed with interviews and going through the fairly small list of casualties, for at least half an hour. Maybe it would've bored someone else, and Marcus hadn't historically been one to watch much news at all, but this certainly held his attention for a long while. That's why he was still watching when they broke in with something else—something especially strange. Someone, somehow, had hacked youtube.

To be more specific: There was a video showing up on the homepage and at the top of every list of recommendations, and its title was visibly glowing. Checking it for himself, Marcus could see as well as anyone that it wasn't a hoax. The title was "A Brief Message", it was the only video from a nearly brand-new account named "Diamond", and the description read "To my blessed ones." Then, on a second line: "PS: Oh, stop freaking out; it'll quit doing that once enough have seen it."

Meanwhile, the news were flipping through the footage. It was shot in a forest, some kind of weird light show; a vixen who Marcus thought looked sort of like Dr. Clark Quinn, only more...mature?...was floating in the air and glowing, and then there were lines of string coming out of her and bodies coming into existence out of light coming from the opposite end of each. The newscasters remarked that from the camera angles and backgrounds of the shots, there definitely weren't any cameras present which could have taken the footage.

Since the news was talking over it, Marcus had to play the video for himself, on his phone, to hear the audio. It was silent apart from narration by a mature female voice he didn't recognize, but the sound of which made him feel—something difficult to describe. Terror? Respect? As if it were possible to feel a person's strength through the sound of their voice alone, and this particular voice conveyed an unimaginable amount of it. She said: "Do you see the reward this one was given? You should be grateful that she was so kind, that her desires were to heal and not to rule. Listen: No game's set of rules is without loopholes, and while some would be content to roughly graft in a new one at this stage, I have nothing so crass in mind.

"When I gave you your gifts, I told you what I wanted, and that remains very much the same. But if I may add just one little thing to that: The threat to your world is very real." (The video very briefly jump-cut through a flash of several different shadow monsters at this point, before switching back). "Fight them, good. Run from them, I don't care. Do nothing, fine. Fight or kill each other, I'll enjoy it. But help your enemy, like this one did..." (The video cut to a shot from a few feet above a blond-haired vixen Marcus didn't recognize, whose position lying on the ground looked disturbingly unnatural) "..and I will be sure to reward anyone who kills you very well."

Once he'd watched it, Marcus noticed that the video's title quit glowing, and going back to the previous pages it was no longer being pushed to the top of any list. Feeling unnerved, he closed out of everything involved in viewing the video. He found himself asking the same question the news was: Was that the "Giver"? And—if so—what was she doing on youtube?

A door leading out into an adjacent hallway opened up, and the woman who'd interviewed Marcus came in. "Excuse me, Mr. Rowe."
"Uh..hey."

"You've been approved to help us test things out. If you're up to it, they said they're ready for you in the lab now."
"Really? I mean—yeah, definitely," he said, quickly pulling his phone charger out of the wall and standing up.
"All right." She gave him directions, and he tried to memorize them and repeat them back. When she nodded that he had it right, he headed out into the hallway to start.

The route he'd been given required several turns through the headquarter's labyrinthine hallways, making him start to wonder how anyone found their way around in here. But—some of it did seem to be detours around "restricted" areas with even the hallways blocked off with their own locked doors and occasionally a person guarding them. Either way, he was pretty sure he was still headed the right way, and most of the way there, when he came to a particlar intersection. He was supposed to be going straight here, but noticed something over to the right while just glancing both ways to ensure he wasn't going to run into anyone.

It was difficult for him not to audibly gasp. It was Light, just sitting in a folding chair next to a door off that way. Maybe he did make some sound, since her ears twitched slightly and she went from folded entirely forward to stare down at the floor to just slightly more upright and then turned her head his way. Part of him wanted desperately to run over to her and try to introduce himself, but it helped his restraint win out when he saw her face. She had an exhausted, maybe depressed expression that would be easy to mistake for an outright glare. It was immediately clear that, however victorious the news had presented things...something bad must have happened, too.

Unfortunately, now she was looking at him, and he couldn't just run off without at least acknowledging it...right? So Marcus wound up giving an awkward half-wave, like a silent 'excuse me', before he turned and continued on his previous route at a quicker pace than before. Some other time, he told himself, when they hadn't all just been through a rough fight...or even if not, it was better that the only impression he left on her wasn't of an annoying idiot fan gushing at her when she wasn't feeling particularly great.

"Hey! Wait up." A moment later he heard someone saying this while running to catch up to him, and almost immediately she showed up next to him, so he slowed to a stop. She still looked as tired as before, but wasn't the least bit out of breath from what seemed to him like a record-winning sprint to have caught up so fast. "...Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you off."

"Oh. Um. Y-you didn't, I just, uh..it looked like you weren't really in the mood to talk to anyone right now," Marcus said, instantly nervous. If it wasn't enough that he'd gotten to see and talk to her, now she'd also run after him specifically to let him—which made him feel especially bad that he didn't have anything really important to say.

"I guess I'm not. But it's better than sitting around moping. What did you want?"

"Um. Just, you know, I wanted to say hi. I'm a huge fan of yours, and the others, and uh. The way you guys fight off those monsters, and bad guys, it's awesome. Like, uh..." Marcus was starting to feel increasingly like a doofus now, and restrained himself from going into all the minute details running through his head. "A-and I didn't think I'd get a chance to meet you at all. I mean like—you're my hero," he said, waving his arms toward her. Light seemed to fold her ears back and wince for just a second at this before returning to a more neutral expression. Marcus had no idea what he could've said to offend her, but wanted to apologize immediately anyway. "Uh—sorry. I guess you must, get that a lot."

"...Not really. I usually hide from fans and news crews. I don't really...know how to deal with that stuff yet.

"..So, what are you doing here, anyway?"
"Um.." Marcus took a long moment to understand the meaning of the word 'here', after which he was brought out of starstruck confusion just enough to remember that he was in the VI headquarters right now. "Oh, yeah. I uh—they're, I mean I volunteered to help test some stuff. It's something to do with giving 'normal' people magic, or something?" The descriptions of exactly what he was testing had been (probably deliberately) very vague, but he knew how to read between the lines.

"Hm." She nodded, as if she understood this explanation better than he did. Well—surely Light was in on the VI's secrets a lot more than some random student, Marcus thought. "Look. If you...do end up getting some kind of powers, don't let anyone tell you that you have to use them a certain way. Especially not fighting those things..."

"R-really? But uh, I kinda..I'd definitely want to help you guys, if I can," he said. She got a conflicted, mildly pained look in response to this.

"I don't..want to discourage you, if you wanna help. We need all the help we can get. But—you should know what you're getting into first. It's your life you'd be risking out there," she said after a pause. "And even...even if you don't end up getting hurt or killed, I guarantee there'll be days you feel how I look right now."

"Yeah...are you...are you okay?" Marcus asked, starting to feel like he should have led with something like this instead.
"Well, you know. I have this problem where I'm not happy unless I can save everyone," Light said. "So, I'm never happy, lately." Despite her words, this came with a wry sort of half-smile.

"Oh. Well, uh..I really, hope things get better soon," he said. "F-for whatever it's worth, there's a lot of people like me, pulling for you guys. We—at least, I don't think you've done anything less than your best." It was one thing to see one of his heroes in a moment like this, another to talk to her—and a third still to be attempting to encourage her when he had absolutely no idea what was really going through her head. Still...

"I mean—this is why, I volunteered. And went through a lot of interviews and stuff. So I could try to help, even if it's...just a little bit."

"I guess so," Light nodded. Whether she was convinced or not was unclear, but she looked...slightly better, he thought? "Well, I guess you were headed for an appointment, right? I won't hold you here any longer."

"No, i-it's fine," he said. "I'm—seriously stoked I even got to talk to you."

She nodded again. "Just...keep what I said in mind. Please."
"Yeah. I promise." Seemingly satisfied with this, the white-haired, fox-eared girl turned to head back the way she came—walking slowly again, like the exhaustion evident on her face had reasserted itself on the rest of her body in the wake of that sprint earlier.

Marcus continued on his way, feeling a bit grateful that there wasn't too much of the route left. If this encounter had come near the start of his trip, he probably wouldn't remember the whole sequence of directions, but with only two or three turns left even he could manage it.

When he came to the place, he opened the door to find himself in another waiting room, sort of like the front area of a dentist's office with a counter-window on one side of the opposite wall and a much more secure-looking door on the other. Entering, he overheard a conversation between two men somewhere past the counter.

"...demanding his son's body."
"Well, I don't see any reason they wouldn't give it to him. Next of kin, and all that."

"Our medical staff could learn a thing or two from it, though. Oh, don't give me that look."
"I very much doubt that he would give us permission to dissect her body before burial. And it would go against basic human decency to use anything other than a volunteer, anyway."

"Pah, 'human decency'. See how well that line holds up if one of the vixens gets an ear infection or a broken tail and we don't know how to fix it."
"Couldn't they just ask a vet, in that case?"

"Uh, excuse me?" Since there was no receptionist or anything behind the counter, Marcus had slowly walked up to it during this bit of conversation and now leaned over it and called at a moderate volume in hopes of getting their attention. This at least ended whatever conversation was going on back there, and after a moment a man with a lab coat and glasses on ran past the counter to open the door next to it, leaning out of it.
"Hello there! Marcus Rowe, right?" By the voice, he was the one who'd spoken last before Marcus interrupted them.

"Yeah...I uh, someone told me to come here for some kind of tests?"

"That's right. Pardon the confusing welcome, but...most of our staff fled home in the wake of the, recent crisis," he said. "And our recruitment office wanted an interview with you beforehand, further complicating matters," he added, shaking his head slightly. "Anyway, I'm Dr. Bridges." He offered Marcus a hand.
"Uh, yeah. Marcus." He came close enough to shake. "Guess you knew that already."
"Right. I'm sure you've been...held up here longer than expected already, so let's get started. It shouldn't take very long." Dr. Bridges pushed the door open farther to gesture him to follow, then darted back inside. For having a doctorate, he looked pretty young, Marcus thought; maybe he was around the age of the Dr.'s Quinn.

Past the counter and around a corner, they ran upon the other member of the conversation—the one who seemed to be in favor of dissecting a body or whatever. He was older, with no glasses and graying hair. "This is Dr. Brand—" the younger researcher started, and was interrupted.

"Pity's sake, you just got through telling him this wouldn't take long," Dr. Brand said, annoyed. "Which it will if we give our lives' stories. Let's just get on with it. Right?"

Since this last question appeared directed to him, Marcus half-nodded. "Uh—sure?"
"You see that hat on the table there?" The sitting doctor pointed to a folding table set up on next to the wall on the opposite end of the room, and almost immediately Marcus wondered how anyone (who wasn't blind) could not have seen that hat. It was a sort of conical witch-ish hat made of dark blue cloth, ornately decorated, with a brim maybe a third to half as wide as he was tall, and so tall itself that its tip hung down far enough to almost touch the brim.
"Ye—"
"Obviously, you aren't blind. That's the result of our prototype process. We need you to put it on so we can record the results."

Dr. Bridges cleared his throat. "To clarify, our experiment will be a success if that hat is able to act as a 'key' of sorts to amplify your inherent 'power'. Not dissimilar to the key-phrases vixens use, but the end result will be much weaker and less extreme. Still, there should be some obvious effects, and we need to gauge them to determine which parts of our process worked and which ones didn't."

"Oh. Uh.." Marcus was a little gobsmacked by how quickly this had gone from a vague promise of 'tests' to possibly getting power just like one of the vixens. His expectations were tempered somewhat by the description of the effect as 'much weaker', but still—magic! Maybe even the ability to fight the monsters, if—well, depending on how things worked, if he was allowed to keep them. "...Cool." He hadn't meant to sound so utterly stupid, especially in front of the older, severe researcher, but it was hard to get any deeper thoughts out right now. Instead he just walked over to the hat and carefully picked it up in his arms, turning to face the two of them.

"So I just...like, put it on, now? Or..?"
Dr. Brand looked ready to bite his face off, but the younger researcher nodded encouragingly and cut him off by speaking first. "Right. There isn't exactly specialized equipment for what we're trying to study yet, so what we can see with our eyes will have to do for studying the 'bonding' process. Afterward, there will be plenty of time to assess the end result—so to speak."

"Okay then..." Marcus took a deep breath, and lifted the hat up over his head before pulling it down onto it.

The effect was immediate, and rapid. Marcus could feel a rush of something pouring down from the hat onto his head, and at first it seemed to take the form of his hair spilling out over his forehead, cheeks and back and then on down his shoulders. His body seemed to grow lighter as the room rose slightly upward around him, and his clothes shuffled around on his body below while a faint, light-blue glow appeared around him. He gasped slightly at a feeling between his legs, and then a quick "Aa~ah—!" came from Marcus's mouth in a voice that suddenly jumped an octave or two up into a mid-high alto as her chest puffed forward ever so slightly into a small pair of breasts. Then she felt her ears stretching themselves out into long, fuzzy spikes and a tail seemingly unrolling itself from her lower back, splitting in two about midway down. Her body and clothes finished changing at about the same time, followed by a group of light-blue sparks appearing in a curved line just in front of her, which her hands instinctively reached out to take. The sparks then seemed to burst off of an object which they had initially obscured, a katana complete with its sheath, and she lowered it in her hands until her arms were mostly down to her sides again. Some of the sparks stuck around, turning into blue petals that fluttered around near her as her lips curved slightly upward into a smile. The rush of energy that had started from the hat seemed to be coming from her core now, and it felt good in an indescribable, not-quite-physical sort of way.

 

The change had been fairly quick from Marcus's perspective, but from the way the two researchers' expressions seemed to change just after it was over she felt as if had been completely instantaneous, like time had slowed significantly for her while it was going on and they had just now had enough time for the light showing the change to reach their eyes. And those expressions were—well, Dr. Brand looked about the same as before, severe yet mildly interested; Dr. Bridges, however, appeared slightly surprised.

"...Interesting. How are you feeling, Marcus?" The younger researcher said, coming slightly closer to look her over.

"Uh..pretty good," she said, looking down at her new appearance and letting go of the sword with one hand to let it slide down to a vertical position with the tip of the sheath leaned on the ground. "Little—weird, I guess," she added. Being suddenly female was odd to say the least; she'd shrunk maybe a foot or so in height and lost all of that excess weight she was used to carrying; and the unusual sensation of having the fox-ears and tail (tails?) was not to be understated. "Is this uh, what was supposed to happen?"

"Well—our prototype process was modeled after the manner in which vixens' magic appears to work," Dr. Bridges said, "so we expected the end result to possibly carry some of the same traits."
"However, we expected slight physical changes—the addition of the ears and tail at most," Dr. Brand continued. "Not a complete transformation comparable to one of theirs. Are you able to 'dismiss' that sword?"

"Um..?" Marcus looked down at it, tapping the hilt with a finger, and then tried just letting go of it with the other hand. It turned into some blue petals once she let go, then they fluttered and faded from view as though they had been holograms all along. "Yes?"

"Bring it back?"
Holding her left arm up, Marcus tried to close her hand around an imaginary hilt, and with a similar effect to the first time it had appeared, the sword came back. "Yes!" She let go to dismiss it again, feeling slightly uncomfortable with waving around even a sheathed deadly weapon in this environment.

"Hmm. Would you please hold still for a moment?" Dr. Bridges said, walking up to her. Marcus nodded, and he pulled at her still very oversized hat. It didn't seem to want to come off for him, and even though it seemed like he was pulling as hard as he could, Marcus didn't feel like it was being tugged on very hard at all. "Hmm." He let go and stepped away again. "Are you able to take it off?"
"Um..I hope so.." Reaching her hands up, Marcus pulled the hat up off her head as easily as it seemed like the big, loose thing should go, and immediately the transformation reversed itself. "..Oh. So, it's just like the phrases, huh?" Looking at the hat for a second, Marcus noticed just one decoration that hadn't been there before: three pieces of perhaps artificial feathers or fur affixed to the brim which had a color scheme resembling Light's ears and tail, pure white up to a black tip. Then he dropped it on his head again and instantly changed back to the fox-eared form (but didn't re-summon the sword in the process—because she didn't want to).

"So it would appear. That looks..inconvenient to wear, however," Bridges said, frowning.

"Hmm." Feeling a sort of instinct cued from agreeing with that, Marcus put her hands on either side of the overwide brim and...pushed. The hat shrank on her head, seeming to shuffle around until it was much tighter and shorter, plus her ears poked through newly-made holes designed for them in the fabric. "..There? I don't really, know how I did that." She tried taking the hat off again, and it returned to its original, gigantic size at the same time as Marcus turned back into an overweight male human. Putting it on again, it shrank back to the 'new' look. The researchers looked on with obvious interest, but had no particular comment on this newfound, very hat-specific power of hers.

"Well, are you able to do anything else?" Dr. Brand said. "I assume you have the 'power' to wield the sword half-competently, if your abilities behave comparably to the empowered."
"I think so? It felt pretty...normal in my hands," she said. "And..hm." Trying to answer his question for herself, Marcus found herself thinking about magic in general—some of the ways she'd always thought magic might work, in particular. She had what might have been called an inspiration, except that once she realized it, it felt like the knowledge had been there all along. "Yes, there's other stuff I can do. It's not...uh, I don't think it'd be safe to do it in here, though."

The researchers exchanged a brief look, before Dr. Bridges said: "There's an enclosed courtyard not far from here. It would be at least somewhat safer to test things out there, perhaps." Dr. Brand sighed and stood up, having evidently hoped to conduct all of the testing from his chair.
"Okay."

As the younger researcher led the way, he said, "By the way—I might as well mention this now. The way that 'key' works, it won't function for anyone else now that you've used it. To..put it as simply as I can, it 'bonded' to you and became 'yours' on first use. So, you can keep it."
"Uh..is that really okay? I mean, if it gives me superpowers and all..?"

"There are thousands of people running around with stronger powers already, so what difference does it make?" Dr. Brand said. "At least the VI knows who you are. The same rules apply to you as any of them, so don't go around breaking laws and killing people, and they likely won't particularly care."

"This is why the recruitment office wanted an interview," Dr. Bridges added. "You can bet when we're through here they'll send someone to try and convince you to work with the...more 'active' branch of our organization. Just be aware you're not obligated to any of them, since the forms you've signed up till now were just for this test and any subsequent interviews."

"Uh..right." Marcus mostly managed to contain her excitement at the prospect of helping them, but her tail still seemed to do something resembling wagging. Looking behind herself briefly, she could see that it came out of her back as a single tail and split in two about halfway down, with each separate end-piece only about half as thick as the tail was before the split-point.

Dr. Bridges opened a door and they came outside. The building formed a large square of solid wall around this courtyard, which seemed to include a small obstacle course of sorts over to one side and some targets cast in various materials closer to their exit. "So, here we are. Hopefully this will be safe enough."
"Uh, yeah, I think so."

The fox-eared girl stepped up in front of the two of them, looking over the targets briefly before picking out one that looked to be made of metal. She mentally reached again for what she had felt in the lab, and her hands instinctively went to retrieve the sword, the left taking the hilt while the right slid the sheath carefully off and dropped it, disappearing it again. Then she sort of swung the sword around in a slight flourish that ended with its tip pointed toward the target. "Fire!" A small ball of what indeed appeared to be red fire seemed to shoot itself out of the tip of the blade, flying through the air and hitting the target with a small explosion.

Marcus lowered the sword slightly, noticing that the target had melted slightly from the heat before it disappeared. "Uh..whoops."
"Don't worry about any damage. Those things are replaced at least daily," Dr. Bridges said.
"Is that it?" said the older researcher, a bit less encouragingly.

"Uh, no, I can...I think if.." Marcus pulled the sword up to vertical, so its blade was just in front of her head, and concentrated for a second. Then she said "Flame!" and with the same kind of flourish sent a ball of fire about twice as big as the first one, with a comparably expanded explosion.

"Yeah.." she nodded, "And—I don't think it's just fire..." With a different motion of the sword, she said "Spark!" and sent a jolt of electricity arcing visibly through the air into the target; then she took a step forward, continuing the motion smoothly into a third variety of flourish—"Ice!"—which made a small chunk of solid ice appear and fire itself at the target similar to the fireball before, shattering into frozen shrapnel when it hit. After this she dismissed the sword, her stance relaxing again.
"Hmm. Is it necessary to say 'fire' or 'spark' to do that?" Dr. Bridges asked; she hadn't even fully realized she was doing that until he did.

"Um.." Marcus turned back to the researchers, letting her weapon disappear again. "I don't think so, but it feels like it makes it a lot easier? It's—not just those three, either, I feel like there's a lot of other stuff I could throw out the same way."

"Does it only operate as 'throwing things' that way?" said Dr. Brand.

"I'm..not sure, but it..mostly?" Marcus said. "This is just, the first idea I had, but it came right away when I started thinking about it. If I can do something else then I guess I don't know it, and thinking about it doesn't give me any other ideas."

The two of them exchanged a glance which almost appeared to somehow transmit thoughts between them. Then Dr. Bridges said, "How would you have imagined that magic would work, were it real? I mean before the events of the past two weeks."

"Well, uh, I play a lot of video games. And watch shows, and stuff," Marcus said—fairly certain that they might know this from her answers to the various questionnaires she'd answered before today. "So I guess, I'd expect it to work kinda like in a lot of RPGs. You know, you learn a spell and then you can cast it, and it usually does one thing—which is often throwing the 'element' of the spell at the bad guys, or...uh..." Her ears folded down slightly as this began to seem awfully familiar. "A-and you have to concentrate more to get a stronger spell."

The younger researcher nodded. "It appears to have already occurred to you as well, but I suspect looking to that model for more 'inspiration' would be effective in your case. Perhaps you are more limited than 'normal' empowered in how flexibly you can apply magic, but it's possible you also have versatility in ways that most of them don't. Either way, understanding how your magic came to work the way it does will be extremely important to our project. If you continue using it, and 'learn' or otherwise discover something new about it, we'd appreciate you keeping in touch."

"...Whether or not that continued use is with the VI," Dr. Brand added in agreement.

"Well..yeah, sure," she nodded. "I mean—this is awesome. I'd be glad to help you guys any way I can. Do, would I just call the VI or..?"
"My card," Dr. Bridges said, producing and offering the same. "Has our office's number on it. Even if neither of us is around, we have people who can take notes for us most days."

"Days when there's not a terrorist laying siege to the city," Dr. Brand further clarified.

"Okay, got it," she said, nodding.

---

I find it personally gratifying to imagine a cosmic-level entity screwing with Google, but ultimately that alone isn't why she chose to put that video on youtube in particular, instead of say, interrupting the news broadcast or sending them a glowing video tape. It's more just because it's the easiest way to make sure just about everyone who she wants to see it or hear its message, will. I admit I feel a mild discomfort alluding to something as real-world and specific as that, but hopefully it doesn't make anyone cringe too much. I guess it'd be on tiktok or something instead if that had been the intended effect.

 

Anyway, we've met all three "major" characters of this episode before. The doctors weren't named then, but they were in the meeting back in Episode 50.