Battle Vixens! - 64

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Episode 64: Building Bridges

Zeno wove through the cafeteria, listening in on all the conversation: The amnesiacs and translators, the late-rising staff and others going for a snack. Breakfast was a while ago for her, but they still had decent coffee here. She went and made two cups, each one a different way, and sipped from just one as she made her way through the VI facility and eventually arrived at a certain half-ajar door. After carefully taking both cups in one hand to knock, she nudged the door open with a foot and walked in.

Rowan hung up the phone and picked up a pen, scribbling something down on a piece of paper. "Morning, boss. Still burning the candle at both ends?" The vixen came around to set the full cup on a small empty space on the desk in front of him.
"I get more sleep here than I did in my old job, thanks. Still no good with politics. Still trying to find who most of the puppeteer's victims were."
She went around to lean against a wall, raising one leg to place the sole of that foot on it, and sipped her coffee while he did the same. "Ah, well, I can tell ya that Italian one remembers her diet well enough. Lucky our staff was already making vegan stuff."

He looked up from the paper for a moment. "Not that I don't appreciate your visits, but don't you have a real job somewhere?"

She shrugged. "Flexible hours, especially with the present crisis and all. I usually show up in the afternoon and work late into the night."

"Hmmh." He wasn't really that interested in her answer, just happy to hear that this 'hobby' wasn't going to get her fired. Nice guy that way.

After staying quiet long enough to nearly finish her cup, the vixen pushed herself back to her feet. "Well, good chat."
"Oh," Rowan raised a hand. "Corporal Langdon might still be using your yard. Tell her to take a break if she is, please."
"Will do," she nodded, and continued out to the hall, approaching the first intersection of her route before her ears picked up footsteps from the left and she backed up enough to be out of the way. Simon nearly rounded the corner quickly enough to run into her, but managed to stop himself short.

"Sorry," he said. "Good morning."
"Hey, no harm no foul. But you're sure up early."

"I'm up on time, thanks. Some of just can't afford to hang around the VI all day and night."

"I'm not sure Karis would agree," she teased. "So what's valuable enough to bring you in today, hmmn?"
"A vital opportunity I intend to argue vehemently for!" he said. "Or at least until it's clear I won't get anywhere with it. As long as we have so many visitors about, there's no good reason I shouldn't take a few shots of each, for posterity's sake if nothing else. I'm sure I can get at least a few of them to grant me permission."
"I mean..not to steal boss-man's lines, but this is one situation where consent's a bit fuzzy, innit?" she said. "What if you forgot who you were for a couple of days and then found out someone took your pics because you 'said it was okay'?"
"I'm not publishing them anywhere," he protested. "You make some simple pictures sound like such a big deal."
"And you don't?" she countered instantly.

Simon shrugged helplessly to this. "I can't help what I'm passionate about. Oh, but—speaking of whiiich.." He got out his phone, slid through some menus quickly, and turned the screen where she could see the photo on it. "I've about finished yours, aside from a few minor touches. What do you think?"

In the painting pictured, a dark-haired, fairly petite girl stood confidently holding a bow and arrow, wearing a short purple kimono. A thick, fluffy tail came from her back, and a pair of spiky fox ears with white fluff on their inside rose past the hair to well above her head.

"Hmm.." She leaned in a bit to get a closer look. "It's a pretty good likeness. I don't like how short that robe is, though I guess it's harmless enough in still-frame form."
"It's the outfit you started out in," he defended, "aside from the quiver you don't actually need. I have news footage to prove it."
"Mm-hm. Why d'you think I started buying my own clothes for this form?" She waved to her present outfit of just a T-shirt, some shorts, and a small, lightweight purse slung over her shoulder. "Anyway, I can't exactly hang that up in my home just yet. Keep it on layaway for me?"

"Sure," he said, "I've got the storage space for now. It might get a bit buried after a couple of months, so you'd better find a place for it sometime soon."
"Hmm. On second thought," she said, standing up straight again, "just bring it to HQ when it's done. I'm sure there's somewhere I can hang it here for now, without giving away too much."
"Very well, then. Now excuse me, I've got a rock to convince to move," he said, moving to go around her.

Zeno let him by. "You mean a pond? You're the rocky one, remember?"

"Good one," Simon said, continuing on toward Rowan's office.

After some walking, she came out to a courtyard, where indeed their latest, military-type recruit was still at it. She pushed the button to fire a clay pigeon out and tried throwing her knife up at it—missing the mark by an inch or five. "...Darn."
"Hey, didn't you used to shoot guns for a living?" Zeno interjected, walking out to her. "You're s'posed to lead your shots on a moving target."

"I know that, but the timing for throwin' something like this ain't the same at all," she said, reforming the knife in her hands. "Maybe I'm better off flailin' it at the end of a string."

"It never hurts to practice something new. Also, morning. I'm Zeno; don't know if we've been formally introduced before," she said, offering a hand.

"Samuel Langdon." The gray-haired girl's handshake was firm; the hand itself seemed soft and warm, yet had a curious sort of firm, metallic quality to it. "Be workin' with ya'll for the time being."

"Mm-hm. Now, Rowan advised me to tell you to take a break, besides which it's time for my morning warm-up," she said. "I'm guessing 'cause we don't know yet how much 'energy' you have to spend, nor what 'recharges' it. It helps everyone to at least eat something, so if you've been up as early as the boss I'd say it's time for a lunch or coffee break, whatever takes your fancy."
"Hm. Think I could watch you for a bit, first? Might pick up some tricks."
"Sure, I guess," she shrugged. "Though I wasn't any kind of marksman before all this, so you should know any talent you see is just the powers talking."

Samuel went over to a wall, leaning against it to watch. "If you don't get better with practice, why warm up?" she countered.

"Why indeed. It's actually kinda fun, for one thing."

Zeno pulled out her phone and a USB cord, kneeling down to plug it into the control device for the clay pigeon thrower. "Check this out. I managed to convince the techs to rig this thing up for me in their spare time for a little wager." She pressed play and stood up, retrieving her bow and the first few arrows. After a brief pause, the phone started blasting "Ana Ng" and the shooter fired pigeons more or less to the beat of the song—slightly behind, actually, so the vixen could time her shots with the music instead. On some parts she instead danced around or placed light-shields up to block the debris raining from pigeons that were hit nearly directly above her head.

When the last note played, she lowered the bow and let go of it, making it disappear back into light. "..Phew. The bet was, I couldn't hit them all," she explained further, kneeling to unplug the phone and put it away again. "..And I did. Actually, they picked a pretty slow song to start out. You have to program each one in manually, but hey—it's like my own personal Beat Saber."

"I won't insult ya by pretendin' to know what that is," Samuel said, standing up. "Still, that was a pretty impressive performance. Ya can't convince me that much precision is purely from your powers, though."
"Maybe not?" she shrugged. "I have always had a good sense of rhythm, at least."

After an early lunch (both because she was hungry and to beat the likely crowd of amnesiacs and employees that would come soon), Zeno's foxy ears picked up Simon still at it with Rowan. Well—maybe he'd blown him off for an hour or so to take some calls.
"I really don't think I'm asking for much here—just, permission to ask permission. Technically I don't think there's any reason I need to ask, but I respect you and the VI as a whole, so—"
"So you should respect my judgement in this," Rowan interrupted, fed up. After a brief pause, however, he gave in the slightest bit: "Look. If you can manage to talk to their next of kin before they leave with them, then you can ask them."

"Hmm—okay. Challenge—" He was interrupted by a ping on his phone, as she turned a corner to find them both standing in the hallway, and pulled it out. "Oh! Hey hey! Light'sgivinganinterview!" he spat out excitedly all at once, and ran for the nearest place with a TV.

"Who told you that?" Rowan said, following anyway. Zeno decided that this was interesting enough to join in on, and did the same.

"My wife, of course. Need I remind you she teaches high school?"

It looked like they had her sitting in one of the school's buildings with an anchor. She looked like she was trying very hard to relax—nervous, but also very determined not to be. "..It's just that I've never thought of myself as someone special. Or, especially not someone who'd ever be famous in any way. I'm, uh..here because I got the impression that rumors about me are getting out of hand."

"...I just want to help. I want to, protect whoever's in front of me, I guess," she shrugged. "And, these powers gave me an opportunity to do more good than I could without them."

"...Well, she said her name was Magus. I don't really know much about her, but she wanted to help out. So, we worked together today..."

"...Our..relationship? Well, again, I don't speak for everyone, but I consider the VI our allies. As far as I know, they want the same things I do: To keep those things from hurting people, and hopefully find a way to stop them for good so things can go back to normal. Or, as much normal as they can, anyway."

"Look at her!" Simon said. "She's perfect! I have never been more proud of anyone, much less someone I hardly even know!"

"I'd like to know what you mean by that," Rowan said dryly, with a light seasoning of suspicion.

"She's what our PR needs, is what I'm saying. All just—totally without even trying!"
"I don't think that comforts him much," Zeno said.

"Well—look, you're the professional," he explained (to Rowan). "When you talk to the press, you think carefully about every word, because you're as conscious as everyone else is that you're acting as a mouthpiece for the VI as a whole. She comes across as an individual. An inspiring volunteer. In short, she reads one hundred percent, pure-blooded hero, and as far as our public relations go I don't think we could do much better than having her clear approval. On top of that, she's also pretty sly at keeping people's secrets, too."

Light was saying: "..don't really know what is or isn't harmful to say about it, and the VI knows more than I do anyway. So, you're better off asking them, or going off of whatever they've already said..."

"Look at it this way: You're Batman. That's our Superman right there," he said, waving at the screen.

"So what's that make you?" Zeno said. "Booster Gold, minus the time travel?" Simon laughed, but the reference more or less went over Rowan's head.

Whenever a small amount of sensitive material needed to be carried to or from the VI's office space, Zeno volunteered to play messenger. She took a company car out to the lot, got out with the folder in her hand, and headed into the door; nobody batted an eye as she shuffled on through several security layers into the deep offices and labs, and finally to one office in particular. Dr. Brand was sitting in front of a desk covered in papers full of complicated equations, ansat up from a terribly hunched-over position when she arrived to deliver the folder.
"I suppose you aren't free yet," he remarked in a characteristic annoyed tone as he took it, opened it and shuffled through some printouts.
"Sorry," she shrugged. "The college had their attack less than an hour ago, so Rowan wants us on high alert. You looked outside lately?"

"Hmm." He glanced briefly toward a window; the answer was probably no.

"Sky doesn't look quite right to me," Zeno said. "Storm clouds don't form like that."

"That really doesn't concern us," he said, lifting a USB drive from between some pages and sticking it into a computer to his right. Zeno leaned halfway over his shoulder to watch with him.

The old theoretical physicist gave a voiced sigh that bordered on a growl. "This shaky mess is really their best footage?"
"Just some unwitting volunteers out the classroom windows, I'd guess," the vixen replied. "Hey, that looks kinda like Rowan's attack she saw yesterday."
"Hm." A little later: "I think Light tried 'teaching' her that one. Any new theories on the feathers?"

"Nothing new. I don't think it's super complicated," Zeno said, straightening up. "If you like, I can ask him to report if he notices a change in the hat's decorations. That oughta seem innocent enough."

"I wish you could maintain a more professional tone," Dr. Brand said once the video was over, leaning and turning his chair back toward her while she stood up and stepped away.

"Yeah, well, that's method acting for ya," Zeno shrugged. "Anyway, it's getting kinda dark out there," she said, pointing to the office window. "Think I better go get prepped to leap into action at a word."

"Try to remain intact," the old professor said—about his closest approximate to expressing concern.

"Yep! Still need my noggin, after all."

She took the rest of the folder with her out into the hall, moving to the next door on the right, which had a very temporary-looking placard on it reading "Dr. Ezekiel Delano Bridges". The vixen pulled a key out of her purse, unlocking the door and sweeping inside briefly—not even bothering to turn on the light—to deposit the folder on a desk. Then she shut and locked the door again, hurrying back out toward the front door.

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In any story as big (in terms of scope and number of characters) as this one, there are going to be major characters, and minor characters. Zeno is pretty squarely in the latter category, but I'm happy that the narration style of this story still allows me to shine a spotlight on someone like that briefly and reveal a few things about them while still advancing the plot. I also like my title puns.
 

Anyway, this one wound up a little shorter than average, but it still feels complete to me.