Battle Vixens! - 63

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Episode 63: Trouble (Reprise)

 

Was it wrong to be excited about an impending disaster?

Marcus woke up in the morning thinking about it, and it occupied a decent portion of his thoughts as he got ready to go to class. Well—a small part of an ongoing disaster. And not so much the calamity itself, but the opportunity to do something about it. Light had suggested that, since he had control over the hat's size and shape while in vixen form, the same should always be true; indeed, some experimentation proved that he could manipulate its shape quite a bit so long as it remained a conical "witch hat" and kept its decorations, especially the miniature tail. So now he had it around the size of his hand, small enough to collapse and fold and stuff into a pocket.

He picked it up off of his nightstand after his shower and momentarily felt a kind of mad doubt that the entirety of yesterday had even happened. But he tried it on, and sure enough it grew, he shrank, and then "Magus" was standing there in a mirror—the red-eyed, blue-haired girl from yesterday, pulsing with mystical power, and..wearing only an open blouse and a pair of panties. "Uh.." She blushed briefly at herself, one arm going up to cover her nearly-flat chest, before slowly dropping again.

"H-heheh." This whole...being a girl thing hadn't exactly clicked the day before. Sure, she knew it had happened—that the vixens were all girls, and she was one too. But her own being, well, actually female, hadn't fully processed before now. Seeing herself barely dressed in her own bedroom really forced her to realize that this cute, feminine, and actually fit body really belonged to her. But of course...Marcus took a deep breath and let it out in a quick puff...it had a purpose. She took the hat off again and went to get properly dressed.

Some texts came along asking "Magus" about her schedule. Nothing specific, just if she had classes this morning so she could watch the campus with Light. Of course, he did have class, and couldn't suppress a whispered "Yesss" at the prospect of working with his hero this morning. And..therein came the dilemma. He wanted to fight alongside his hero, but that meant the shadow-monster things had to come to the campus this morning. Or, at least it was most likely to happen if that happened. So he was hoping for a disaster—or, more accurately, that it would time itself conveniently for him.

Maybe that was a little bad? Except that he wanted it to happen that way so he could help protect people, which was...good, right? This kind of unhelpful, excited back-and-forth ran through Marcus's mind as he got in the car to drive to campus. He patted his pocket with the hat in it a couple of times, just to make sure it was still there. It'd be really embarrassing to need superpowers and find he left them at home. Maybe there was some way he could turn it into a necklace or bracelet or something...

Naturally, this had him a little distracted during class. He was impatiently anticipating something that he was also terribly nervous about. There was something like stage fright coming on as he felt like the time was getting closer—even though that "feeling" was nothing more than his own imagination. It was always getting closer, sure, but just because he sort of, conflictedly, hoped that it would happen this morning didn't mean it would. He might spend all morning hyped up and anticipating a fight with some monsters only to tire himself out and choke that afternoon. But he remembered how it felt when Rowan had come at him with a sword, and some new instincts sort of kicked in. That body didn't seem capable of choking, even if it wasn't so good with a sword. At least, he had to hope so.

---

The bell attached to the front door rang, and Emma came into Mr. Nelson's store no less hesitantly than her first visit. There were no customers at the moment, and the owner was sitting behind the counter with a pencil in his hand and some papers spread out in front of him. He looked up briefly in response to the sound and nodded to her. "Morning."

"Uh, good morning. I, didn't really have anything else to do, so I thought I could maybe just wait in here?"

"That's fine with me." He waved vaguely at a door in the back of the store. "A few folding chairs in the back if you wanta take a load off."

"Thanks."

After pulling one out and sitting down over to one side of the counter, facing the window, she sat patiently for a few minutes...but just couldn't help it. "So uh..what're you looking at there?"
"Budget. Tryin' to figure out how to afford a new hire, if I can find someone we can trust. Or if there's some clever way to sell the shop and retire."

"Oh. Do you...wanna retire?"
"No. I like it here. But.." He sighed. "I'm gettin' tired of this, I guess."

She looked at him for a moment, trying to discern his meaning. "'This'..?"

"This ah..body, I guess you could say," he clarified, gesturing at himself. "I've..already made the decision to just stay 'Ning' forever at some point, and these days I only look like this, well..here. Or on the rare occasion I need to be out in public for something else. You know, I've never felt so old as I do now that I get to be young most of the time. I just feel, heavy and sore all the time, and get impatient for when I'm done with this and I can just turn back."

Stay a fox-girl forever...? Emma hadn't even considered something like that before, but it made some sense that he'd want to be young again. What if she could just keep two bodies forever? She'd probably be able to get a lot more done that way. But..."Um, you..don't mind that you'd be stuck as a girl, then?"
Gerald shrugged. "Don't make a difference to me. I get to see my girl grow up, and I get to..feel young. You just don't know how good you have it there until you age out of it, trust me. Anyway, I think I'm a fair sight more attractive as Ning, too."

"So...you're just using your original self as a 'disguise', I guess?"
"Right," he nodded. "To keep Nadia safe. Hey, I still don't think you've met her yet, have you?"
"Uh, no. I guess we've both been pretty busy lately."

"Yeah. Maybe you could visit tomorrow sometime."

It was a terrible paradox, she thought: He wanted to be 'Ning' for his granddaughter, but he also needed to be 'Gerald' to keep them both safe. Or..did he, really? There were plenty of vixens with publicly-known identities, and the people close to them who had thus far gone very much unkidnapped. And with the puppeteer...gone...there were no immediate nearby threats, were there?

"Um..you think, you could ask the VI to help protect her? I mean, if you..'unmasked', I guess, and just stayed 'Ning'?"

"I'm sure I could. They've had a lot on their plate lately, though."

"Well..how many people know you have a granddaughter?"
"Just about anyone who comes to my store regularly, or lives near me," he said. "I guess that ain't too many, though."
"So..could you do that and just..not tell people you have relatives? Or, what if you 'sold the store to Ning' and retired quietly or something?"
"Come on, folks ain't stupid," he said. "A scam like that'd come apart pretty quick."
"Oh, uh, I guess so..sorry."

"Hey, it's all right. I know you're just tryin' to think of ways to help," he said. "And, really, thank you. But, I think..I just want to give it another couple of days. If things stay calm—well, as calm as they can be at the moment—then I can see about the VI or whoever finding some sorta discreet protection for my girl, and if they do, then...Maybe it'll all work out." He shrugged. "Guess I'd get a lot of visitors to the shop after that, eh?"
"Yeah, but..not all to buy groceries," Emma said.

"Some would. I guess then I'd be able to look for someone to hire without needing to worry about them keepin' my secrets, and maybe I'd even be able to afford it, then."

There was a sizable break in conversation. The girl sitting in the folding chair didn't pull her phone out or appear to find anything interesting to stare at during that time, but instead just...stared straight forward. Once he finally realized this, Gerald said: "You, thinkin' about something?"
"Yeah. Uh. You know the um, person who gave everyone their powers, how..she's supposedly made some kind of rule for herself to not lie to anyone?"
"Sure," he nodded, thinking he'd heard something like that at some point but not precisely sure from who.

"When we were..fighting yesterday, Dawn tried to tell me something. Which—she wanted Light to know. I, I didn't even remember it until just now, because I was...well, there was a lot of other stuff on my mind right after that. She was yelling at me to tell Light that 'she lied', and..I couldn't get her to say what that lie actually was."

"And now you can't ask her," he said, "'cause she won't remember."
"Mmh," Emma nodded. "I wonder, if I should even say anything? To Light, about it? Maybe it's important, but maybe it was.." She shook her head, having difficulty fabricating a plausible alternative. "Could she have just been...wrong?"

"I'd say tell her," he suggested. "Even if she was wrong, there's surely some reason she came to think she was right, to think it was important enough to tell you then."
"Mhm," Emma nodded, seeming to agree.

---

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Finally! Marcus stood up, hurrying toward the bathroom in the shuffle of students heading for shelter away from where the monster was appearing. I mean, uh..oh no. I need to do something about that.

Once the hat was on, Magus waited just a moment for the sound of people going past the door to stop, then tossed it open and hurried for the front door of the building. It occurred to her about five steps outside that she didn't actually know exactly where the attack was, but there were still people running past, so she just went with the direction they were coming from. Then her ears heard some gunshots, and she bolted toward the source to find a few campus police backing away from a pair of humanoid black, misty things in the quad—evidently having elected to stay there as a distraction so the students could get away easier. She knew these two as the "twin" monster type, the unusually small ones who always seemed to appear in pairs and had weapons for arms. And Light wasn't here yet.

The most important thing—to Marcus's later memory of the event—was that she didn't choke. Instead her sword came out just as easily as the first time, and she had a perfect opportunity to test out one of a number of suggestions on the use of her spells from the night before. A mist monster was advancing hard toward one of the police, raising an unnaturally long arm that terminated in a spike like some kind of giant praying mantis, and..

Block! Magus made a motion like the one that had summoned the shield before, followed quickly by pointing to her target—and a dome-shaped translucent shield appeared in front of him, the spike-arm glancing off its curved surface awkwardly, making the attacker pause and buying its target plenty of time to turn and run.

"Yesss—ack!" Her celebration was cut somewhat short when the other monster came at her with unanticipated speed, swiping some shorter blade-arms at her and making her duck and hop out of the way awkwardly. It was much clearer now that it was close just how freaky-looking these things were, with their eyeless heads and huge gaping mouths full of giant spikes of teeth. Eventually Magus—less noticed and more felt an opening, and used it to throw a quick fireball into the thing's chest, making it back off for just a second. Unfortunately, the spiky-armed guy was nearly on her by then.

---

Emma got up right away, ripping her phone out to get a quick look. Two signals in the city, one not far from Mr. Nelson's shop and the other on campus. It was like they knew where the vixens were and were targeting them, except that, fortunately, there was nothing near the Quinns' house. She looked up. "Uh—"
"The back," Gerald said, getting up himself and hurrying toward the front door as much as he could to close the shop for 'lunch'. "I'll follow right after."
"Okay!" She nodded and ran for the opposite door, dropping off her purse and phone inside once she was satisfied she had the location of the monster appearing near them memorized. There was another door beyond, an emergency exit that led out the back of the building but either didn't have an alarm attached or had had its alarm disabled at some point since everyone got powers, so Emma changed, splitting into two before pulling Minus back into herself so she wouldn't have to slow down to get through the single-person-width door.

She ran a short way through the alley so it would hopefully be not so obvious which building she came from the back of, then around the next wall and toward the black beast just in time to hear it start roaring. There were still some people running away when Gemma got there, but it hadn't grabbed any of them just yet. And—it was the big, bearlike thing that Light and Rowan had fought right when they all first appeared. Gemma quickly thought through what she knew of this sort—it was very strong and somewhat fast; its hooklike claws were very good at stealing weapons; it loved to grab and eat people when it could. She tossed a couple of ice spikes at its side to get its attention, then began working on some of the ideas from the night before.

Gemma took fire from her left hand and lightning from her right, then pulled them together, melding their 'weapon material' into a single, long-bladed sword whose hilt both her hands now held. Somehow it felt much more natural to hold something like this in both hands, even though it was no heavier than the blades she could make with Amp's help. When the beast ran close she moved aside and slashed hard through its side, pouring heat and fire into the blade to give it a burning sheath that did far more damage than the sharp metal alone could. It rattle-screamed, swiping down at her, and she let it take the sword, jumping and front-flipping off her hands before making a gesture toward the weapon to make it explode back into the flames and electricity that had made it, like a bomb in the monster's hand.

She used Plus's power to slow time just in front of her left hand, which shot out a number of shadow-bullets. The rate of time snapped back like a rubber band, briefly going faster catch up, which sent them all rocketing out at her target at the same time with greater speed than usual. This..probably didn't make any sense physics-wise, but Emma wasn't a physicist anyway. She used wind magic to spread spores into the air behind her while she moved aside of the thing's wild, quadrupedal charge, and then pushed both her hands toward them, focusing hard on using each one as the center of one of Fay's point-explosions as the mist-beast ran through it—which worked because the spores were among her many "weapons".

Gemma stopped for a moment after this, panting. This was exciting, but a little exhausting; she was repeatedly forcing more power into her attacks than they naturally had, and that seemed to take a bit of a toll. Many-small was better than few-big in her case, she thought—at least, again, without Amp's help. It turned toward her during this, roared and raised a foreleg to swipe down at her—and then a bolt of lightning from the sky hit the the top of its head.

---

A kind of gleam came into Magus's peripheral vision, and then a tall, white-haired vixen was just suddenly there in between her and the monster, swinging a sword into its arm with enough force to throw it away. Actually, she had—two identical-looking swords, and when the other guy came at her she clashed using both of them, pushing his arms apart before kicking his midsection to put him on his back.

"Rrrgh, these guys," she growled. Well...the voice was deeper, she seemed visibly stronger and—let's say—much more mature, but with the white hair, that sword (swords?), and..the rest of the context clues..this had to be Light.

"Uh, what?"

"Bad memories," she said, shaking her head (and misinterpreting the question). "Anyway, they revive each other if you don't take 'em out at the same time."
"Really!? That's, uh, not in the wiki." Both of them were starting to get up. Magus backed away some.

"Well, it probably should be. I can keep them busy easy, just hang back and throw some magic for now."

"Uh, sure!" Already on that.

Light danced around their efforts at attacks easily, knocking away their weapon-arms and throwing them off balance with ease. Magus focused for a high-power lightning spell, and tried making it jump through one of them into the other—with great success. They both screeched, steaming out black mist from the blow. Unfortunately, this also got their attention on her, and the sword-handed one came toward her while the other stabbed at Light, trying to pin her down. This proved ineffective when Light just disappeared into a trail of light which landed in front of the one advancing on Magus, then reappeared from the trail to stab it in the stomach and kick it away, leaving the sword in. She just made a third sword appear in her hand when the stabby guy ran up after her..or, no, the sword in the other one's chest vanished right after that.

So that was what the gleam earlier was. She was doing some kind of..teleport thing? Magus wondered if she could come up with a similar spell. Or—what about...?

In a swift motion, Magus pointed her blade up toward the sky, turned it to right side of her facing forward then swept it over to the left. "Shuriken!" A few spinning blades made of water formed, arcing around to catch the standing monster in the side of the head. "Oh wow, that worked? Uh—fire!" she shot a small fireball at the sword-handed one as it got up again, then backed away, giving Light plenty of space to come in under his swords, grab him by the ankle and toss him at the other twin.

"Hey—I'm a blue mage!" she said excitedly.

"I'd really hope you can learn things without getting hit by them," Light said, raising a hand and pushing it downward. The light around them dimmed as a laser appeared from just over the two monsters, searing into their bodies. "What about this?" They stood up and charged at her, and she went back to knocking away their arms/weapons and easily dodging their assault.

"Uhh.." Magus would've found it difficult to put the thoughts running through her head into words. She was trying to come up with a 'laser spell', especially the correct motions and 'word' for it, but exactly how those things related to the desired end result was ineffable. Nonetheless, she came up with something after a moment, sweeping her blade so the tip drew a small circle in front of her then stabbing at its 'center'. "Beam!" The resulting laser was dimmer and smaller than Light's, but it still burned the monster it hit, and she was able to sustain it for a few seconds before it faded out.

Her target's attention was drawn by this attack, but when it started to turn her direction and even think of retaliating, Light took advantage of this distraction to grab it by the upper leg and pull it to the ground, then caught the other one's swings with her blades, kicking it to the ground too. "Pretty good, but—think you should do the chain lightning again next. They're getting close to going down."
"Uh—okay!" Magus focused again, taking a few steps away while the monsters both stood up. Now that she thought of it, they did both look sort of indistinct compared to how they'd started out. That was probably how Light knew...

"Booolt—Chain!" Even though she knew she didn't have to, sometimes saying the 'spell' aloud just seemed to give it more oomph. In this case a particularly big bolt came from Magus's blade, arcing through the near one, around Light (thankfully) and right into the other. Both of them screeched unpleasantly at this—making Magus start to wonder why someone interested in protecting this world would ever give its 'protectors' such sensitive ears—but Light cut them off by driving one of the 'copies' of her sword straight through the chest of each, finishing them and making the dark clouds forming them dissipate harmlessly into the air.

---

"Heya!" Ning ran up next to Gemma while the monster swiped its forelegs blindly at the sky in rage. "Didn't take too long, did I?"
"No, uh, you're good. Just taking a, small break," she said between breaths.
"No problem," she said, already in the process of placing the hilt of her sword into the open end of the sheath and pointing its blade up at the monster's mouth as it finally looked down, opening its mouth wide to roar again. "Oh, you hungry?" she yelled back while Gemma began stepping around to one side. "Here's somethin' to chew on!" Electricity arced around the blade and sheath, repelling the former violently out to go straight through the mouth and out the back of the mist monster's head, drawing a plume of dark mist and another loud scream.

Feeling rested enough for now, Gemma drew together cold and water into a long ice-spear and chucked it at the creature, landing a hit square in its side. This she followed up with a few weaker bolts of lightning which Ning caught and amplified into massive bolts along the way, each one traveling right through the frozen water into the beast, making it erupt with more black mist.

It charged down at her, swinging both forelegs wildly, and Gemma split to run away to either side, each body tossing whatever came to her hands first to throw at it in parting shots. Ning hopped in just in front of it, catching her sword and sheath each on its hooklike claws and sending more electricity out through them both into its arms. Gemma quit running, turning to throw some fire, arrows and shadow-bullets the monster's way, and it started to fall forward, sinking onto its "knees" as it struggled to stay solid.

As it fell forward, Emma perceived a certain intent, a hint of strategy in the motion: Its mouth was still widely, unnaturally open. "Ning!—" "—Leggo! Jump away!" She both waved in the direction behind the other vixen to try to emphasize the urgency of this advice.

"Hup!" Doing just that—a long backwards jump complete with a somersault—the bright-haired girl somewhat narrowly avoided the oncoming maw, and she reformed her blade to slash at the top of its head for good measure as the mist monster finally dissipated, its last-ditch effort having failed.

"..Sorry about that," Ning said as the two of Gemma walked closer. "I wasn't paying enough attention there."
"It's fine—" "—I'm just glad you're okay," she replied, coming close. "Uh, you are okay, right?—" "—Nothing hurt?"
"Yep! I feel fine," Ning said, grinning and giving a quick thumbs-up. Emma stared at this for a second, feeling like she understood even better than before why Mr. Nelson would rather be Ning all the time if he could. She just looked so happy like this—at least until she noticed the staring and tilted her head slightly. "Um..what?"
She realized that she (at least one of her) had been staring. "Oh, uh, nothing.—" "—We should, get going, unless you wanna give an interview or something," Plus suggested.
"Ri-ight. Yeah, let's go," Ning nodded.

---

Light turned toward Magus. "Hey, you did pretty good for a first fight with those things."
"Uhh, thanks." The blue-haired girl blushed, her ears lowering a bit as she seemed to take the praise particularly to heart. "Um, so not to change the subject too quick, but.." she waved her arms emphatically at Light's present appearance. "What's with the two swords and the teleporting and your voice and..?"
"..Oh. Yeah," she nodded. "This is, kind of a long story; promise I'll explain it later. For now, though..you should decide if you wanna introduce yourself to the press. They're probably on their way."

"Uhhhh." Magus looked more terrified by this prospect than she had of the monsters.

"That's fine. I can hide your 'escape' if you want," Light said, gesturing toward a nearby building.

"Thanks. What about you?" she said after starting to take her first step that way and hesitating.
"..I think it's time I at least try to talk to them. Can't just, have stage fright forever, right?" It was hard to keep the ambivalence she still felt out of her own voice.

"Yeah," the other vixen nodded, getting a brief thoughtful look. "Um, good luck, I'll be watching!" she said, giving a short wave before starting to run off.

Once Magus was through the door and out of sight, Light took a deep breath and let it out slowly. There were plenty of questions they could ask that she wouldn't be able to answer without an extra one about her voice sounding deeper than usual, and by now she'd been 'boosted' and had it wear off more than enough times to know what it felt like. While the extra power could be released by deliberately spending it all up or going to human form and back, neither of those was really ideal right now. Instead Light simply replicated the feeling of 'letting go', no longer keeping a tight grip on the enhanced powers—even though it didn't feel like she was holding on at all just now. This worked as well as she had hoped, her body shrinking down again as some white steam leaked out of it. It actually felt better than the boost wearing off "naturally", more like relaxing a tensed muscle than having something unwillingly squeezed out of her.

When it was over, she took another deep breath and let it out again, for good measure. People were starting to notice that she hadn't disappeared, and..someone was going to come ask why pretty soon.