Battle Vixens! - 68

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Episode 68: All Apologies

Not long after the discovery about the Giver's appearance, Magus happened to glance at a clock and exclaimed that she had to go now or else be late to a class. If there had been any doubt she was a student at the college before, all those present knew now—which also lent some credence to her worries about keeping secrets. Light helped her back out to her car, then came back to get everyone else. Everyone thanked the Quinns (mostly Clark) for their time, then they went out to Amory's car and got in, all but Light shifting back to human form.

"Hey, can you explain exactly how the channeling thing works?" Light said, leaning forward slightly in the backseat.
"Um, it's not very complicated," Emma said. "You just..think about the thing you wanna do, but don't actually do it. And..keep thinking about doing it until you do it?"

"Hmm. Guess I'll try it later..."

"I wonder if I can still pull her into the dreamscape thing," Amory said. "I mean, she doesn't 'count' as a vixen for the 'you're cute' thing, but...oh, shoot." He snapped his fingers once.
"What?" both of them said almost at the same time.
"Ahh, I meant to tell Rowan about that yesterday. Or at least, way earlier today. Slipped my mind. When we get back, remind me."
"Sure."

"Um." Emma half-turned back toward Light. Speaking of meaning to remember to tell someone something: "Yesterday...Dawn was trying to tell me, to tell you that 'she' had lied to her. But..I couldn't get her to say, about what?"
"Hmph." Light crossed her arms. "Well, it's not like I trust her word anyway..even though nothing she's said so far has been false."
"And a lot proven true," Amory added. "But her stated goal is to still manipulate people, even while telling the truth all the time. That doesn't mean she couldn't have made Dawn believe she said something that wasn't true with language games."

"Yeah," Light nodded. "Like, 'What if I told you the moon is made of cheese?' That isn't technically a lie, because it's a hypothetical question, but it implies the speaker believes the statement contained in the 'what if' and means to relay it."
"That's kinda cheating, in a way," Amory said, "but it still fulfills the letter of the law, so to speak. And there's lots of other, more subtle ways she could say something that makes someone believe she's telling them something she isn't. Like: Getting someone to ask her a certain question, and then just staying silent and letting them assume she agrees with whatever they already believe."

"I think it probably had something to do with getting her to go fight the puppeteer alone," Light said. "Since...as far as we know the only visit she had was just before that happened."

"That makes sense," Emma said. "Still, I...she wanted me to tell you specifically for some reason, so.."
"Yeah," the white-haired vixen nodded. "Thanks. Maybe she told Dawn she'd talked to me a lot, or she was just aware of that for some other reason."

---

Dawn left, starting out into the hall, but she wasn't immediately certain which direction Cynthia had gone. She started toward their rooms—about the closest thing to "somewhere to hide" that they had at the moment—but stopped briefly into a bathroom to actually rinse off her face. Looking at herself in the mirror for just a moment, she felt she knew—Cynthia wasn't ready to know yet.

For one reason or another, Dawn was remembering things so much faster than her—not that she remembered all that much, but somehow..she felt much more stable and secure here than Cynthia did. Rowan was right—it would be wrong to burden her with that knowledge when she didn't even know enough of what it meant. Or...a guilty part of her argued back, maybe she was just rationalizing. Maybe this wasn't really something she wanted her to know, for much more selfish reasons.

Dawn shook her head at herself. Not now. Not this conversation, she thought, turning to leave. Either way, I ain't ready to tell her.

Her guess was more or less right. Cynthia was lying on her back on their—on Dawn's bed, rather—staring at the ceiling. Her fox-like ears had heard someone coming, and her head quickly turned toward the door when it was carefully pushed the rest of the way open. "Hey...sorry." She sat up while Dawn came inside. "I, made a mess with your friend, huh?"

"I think he understands...kinda. He seemed more, uh, relieved than mad," she said.

"Yeah, but I bet he still thinks I'm..." Cynthia struggled for a moment as though some more words were caught in her throat, but she didn't know what they were. "...I guess I must do this, a lot? It started feeling familiar after a sec."

"To, me too, actually. But I don't think..."

Dawn paused, going to a chair to sit down—finding she didn't like talking down toward Cynthia like that. "You're...you just, don't take no one's lies," she said. "Or, nothin'. You want to keep both of us safe, right? And...maybe others?"

"I guess." Cynthia looked away slightly.

"We...I bet we're used to bein' in situations where we gotta stand up for ourselves or get eaten alive. And you always do," Dawn said, holding back a part of her that wanted to add except with—. She didn't know except with who, and contradicting herself on something half-remembered didn't make much sense right now. "That's gotta be why, you weren't scared to go out and fight those things...right?"

"You don't think I'm scared!?" she snapped, looking back up. "I'm terrified! I woke up with no idea who I am, and—and I still don't know, even though I feel like I should. I don't know this place, I don't know these people, and there are monsters outside trying to kill all of us!" She waved emphatically in no particular direction, meaning 'outside'. "A-and, now they're all looking at me like I know what I'm doing, and I don't! I just ran out there 'cause, 'cause I-I have to do something, to feel like I'm in control, and—and I'd rather die fighting than just sit around waiting to get killed!"

Cynthia leaned forward, sobbing into her hands. Dawn rushed over to try to hug her from one side—which was easy enough to do. "Cynth..I'm sorry."

She sniffed loud and long in response, pulling her hands off her face and half-composing herself. "I...I don't know how to talk to people. When I'm mad at myself I take it out on everyone around me."

"Ain't I the same way? Just..haven't been mad here yet," Dawn said. "Someone..anyone say somethin' bad about you, you'll see it then."
"Hhh-heheh.." What started as another sob terminated in an uncomfortable sort of half-giggle. "That sounds..like you all right." She sat up just enough to look the taller girl in the eye for a second or two. "Thanks for following me. I dunno if anyone else would've, if not for you. And then I'da been fighting those things alone."

---

Relieved to be done putting on a brave face for the moment, Clark took one last cookie and went straight to the living room couch, sinking into it, leaning his head far enough back on the cushion to be tilted upward, and closing his eyes. Rory took a moment to realize he'd left the kitchen, then came to the doorway between the two rooms. "Are you—did I make you tired?"

"Yes. Good tired, don't apologize," he amended quickly, leaning up slightly and making his eyes open enough to look at her. "You can keep eating cookies if you want."

"Oh, uh, I'm quite full actually. Maybe...I can just look some more stuff up with the computer?" she suggested.

"Go ahead." He didn't exactly fall asleep, just went into a half-meditative, blank mental state for a while.

It didn't last as long as he really wanted it to—the sound of bones cracking and the sight of a body lying on the ground, twisted around like a broken ragdoll, floating to the surface. A sharp intake of breath came in response; he sat up and forced open his eyes open to look around the room—at anything else. It took him a moment to realize the cracking sound was actually the clicking of keyboard keys, and even after that realization he still felt slightly sick. Eventually his gaze settled down toward his hands, turned upward and spread where he could look at the palms.

There was nothing on them.

How could he feel guilty about doing the right thing? Someone had to do it, right? Rory—if her memories were back—would tell him he was being foolish, wouldn't she? If Tobias hadn't cut her off, she'd been just abount to punch that fox-girl's relatively fragile body with enough force to...

to break her...

Clark's teeth gritted in a wince; imagining something even that close to the reality was sickening and almost physically painful. Anyway, that wasn't the point. Everyone was there specifically to kill her. Rowan shot at her. Light was ready to stab her or something. Emma...wasn't prepared to kill someone, but had clearly accepted the necessity of the act enough to help the others try. Rory would...would willingly have taken her out, and then cracked her knuckles as if to say, "another monster down." Was that a good thing? Was he even right about it?

Rory would say this was all stupid. He shouldn't feel bad at all about killing a megolamaniacal murderer. He should, instead, feel great about saving who-knew-how-many lives and bringing back the dead, however "incomplete" of a resurrection it was. She would...

"Um...what're you..doing?" His head snapped up and over to find Rory looking at him through the doorway again. "Are you okay?"
"It's...nothing. I'm..." fine. The word wouldn't come out. She was giving him a concerned look, but at the same time acheiving the familiar expression of her old self which informed him that she knew he was trying to lie and wasn't about to tolerate it. He exhaled, not really wanting to have this conversation—ever, if possible. "You know that...the person who killed you. I killed them."
"Yes?" Plus an implied 'how is that relevant?'

"Her death was...logically speaking, necessary. And good. Without even counting the.." He half-waved toward her. "What happened afterward, to bring some people back to life, taking her down saved many lives."

She came around toward him. "You don't seem very happy about that."
"I'm...not. Because I can't convince myself to be. I just feel...wrong. Sick. I feel guilty, because I killed someone who had to die."

At this point, Clark was looking down again; he'd dropped his hands away and was just staring at the floor instead. For this reason, he was much more surprised than he otherwise would've been when his wife bent over and easily lifted him up into a hug. "Aack!" He struggled briefly in surprise before making sense of what was going on, and of course that wasn't enough to combat her present super-strength.

"Uh..sorry. I surprised you," she said.
"Yes..." Clark returned the embrace before she could think about putting him down.
"It's just..maybe it's a good thing to feel bad about killing someone," she said. "Anyone. They still have..lives, and families, and someone who cares about them. Maybe not guilty, but..you can feel bad about it, for sure. You even...just found out what it's like to lose someone, too, didn't you?"

"I did." Clark sniffed, and realized that both of them had tears coming out, even though Rory was sort of half-smiling. He leaned over onto her shoulder for a moment. What use was it trying to figure out what the 'old her' would say? Rory was right here, and memories or not, she understood him perfectly and knew what to say.

"Oh, Rory, I'm sorry.."

"Well, don't be! You, you don't have to apologize to anyone for how you feel," she continued. "Trying to hold it back just makes it worse. Let it out, and then you can move on with your life." At the same time...that's right. That's the kind of thing she would say. "Um.." Minus the slight hesitation afterward, at least.

Clark pulled back enough to look her in the eyes again. "See? That's you," he said, running a hand over one of her ears and through some of her hair. "You can drop any doubts you have left now."

"H-heheh..if you say so."

---

"..for an experiment."

The interpreter on the phone relayed Rowan's message in Japanese, then paused to hear the reply. "We are likely willing to help, but need more information about this 'experiement'," he said.

"Well, I think you're aware of how the Giver is able to draw us into a 'dream space' to talk. We may have a way to use that space to speak with each other. All you would need to do is go to sleep tonight in empowered form."

"...That sounds easy enough. Count us in."

Rowan nodded. "Thank you. Your help is most appreciated."

Once both sides hung up, the interpreter set Rowan's office phone back on its base, nodded to him and left. Now that the room was empty, Rowan noticed the faint buzzing of his personal phone informing him of a call he'd just missed. It was Dr. Quinn—the male one—through the VI app, so he tapped to call back.

Rowan spoke first: "Hello?"
"Ah—yes, sorry. I was just..well, I thought better of it and hung up almost right away," he waffled nervously. "Didn't want to bother you with.."
"Please, go ahead. I'm not busy right now, and we've both been through a lot," he said.
Clark exhaled into the phone. "Okay. Well—you know that I, after yesterday's events I have...the same powers Tobias did, in addition to my original ones."
"Right." This seemed like more of a lead-in than the actual content of his question.

"I just...how do you..

"How do you use a power you saw kill people you care about? How does it not..?"
"I see. Well—it wasn't easy, at first," Rowan said. "I had some doubt. Plus it's...possible to, take on some of the emotions that characterized the original owner's expression of the power when you wouldn't otherwise. I made some...mistakes that way. But...Mmm, this may sound pretty corny to you. Once I had...the full extent of my power unlocked, I swore to myself aloud: 'I will save more than she killed'.

"That may be a tall order for you. Tobias...had much more time and power to do harm," Rowan continued. "But I think the general idea works. It doesn't matter where it came from or how it was used before. Our powers are a tool to be used how we wish. For what it's worth, I think we can trust you to use yours right."

"...Thank you," Clark said.

"By the way...I have what you could call a theory," Rowan said. "About..their memories."
"Yes?" He seemed particularly eager to hear this.

"Well..Dawn has been very quickly remembering some things that I know were...extremely emotional for her. I'm not sure in how much detail yet, but...I think the more 'emotional' a memory is, the easier it is to bring it back. It's probably something to do with how the Giver says our powers are temporarily strengthened by emotions."

"That...tracks.

"Look, I'm..sorry I haven't contacted you before now, but..she visited me last night," Clark said. "Wanted to make sure my 'prize' was satisfactory. She wanted to assure me that the people we brought back are really the same people, the same 'souls' pulled back among the living using their powers as 'rope'. I can..type you out a more detailed summary. Maybe it'll help."
"I'd appreciate it, but don't feel obligated to share anything you feel is too private."

"Got it."

Battle Vixens! - 67

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Episode 67: Show Me the Way

If Marcus had been excited that morning, then he was positively ecstatic now. There wasn't much room for conflicted feelings when it came to this, either—the opportunity to really, formally meet and talk to not just Light, but all of the vixens in his town! Well..except for Ning, apparently, but that didn't lessen his enthusiasm a bit. The instructions she'd given were for him to park at a certain place a short ways away from the Quinns' house—where they were all slated to meet—and wait. He didn't actually need to wait very long, as a message soon came through the VI app from Light.

I'm here. Then: Go ahead and change forms, I'll hide the special effects.

He couldn't help but tilt his head slightly at that, even as he got the tiny hat out of his pocket. Special effects? he wondered, but just shrugged and put it on. After that, Magus stepped out of the car and looked around only briefly before spotting Light a short ways off on the sidewalk. She motioned to follow, so the red-eyed vixen did just that.

Light was a rather fast walker, and it was hard not to appreciate this body's level of physical fitness allowing her to keep up without losing her breath at all. Granted, maybe that said more about Marcus's real form than it did this one, but...still.

Marcus only really knew the Quinns' house from news footage, and didn't actually know its location until they came within sight of it. After that, Light went up to the door, knocked lightly on it while the other vixen caught the rest of the way up, and after the male Dr. Quinn came to open the door, they both slipped inside.

"Welcome back," he shrugged, "everyone's in the living room. I'll be in the kitchen."

"Sure," Light nodded.

He'd glanced her way for a second, but hadn't specifically addressed the other vixen. "Hey, uh." She succeeded in getting his attention and immediately regretted it. He just looked..tired, and sad. A little like Light had the day before, but less of the former and more of the latter. "I-I'm a huge fan," she said nervously.
"..Thanks, I guess?" After that, Dr. Quinn went off his own way. His mood seemed slightly improved, but maybe he was just putting up a brave face or something...

"Ning couldn't make it this time," Light said. "Busy with work and stuff."

"Cool, cool," Magus half-mumbled, still a little worried about the Quinns. It had to be hard to see someone you loved die, come back to life but then not remember you. She probably should've come up with something better to say, or else just kept her dumb mouth shut. She managed to get herself over it by the time they got to the living room—the excitement about meeting Gemma returning. And, indeed, she was sitting on the couch in that 'combined' form she'd gained after being eaten by a monster and the VI woke her back up—but there was also someone else there, too.

A curvy, peculiarly harmless-looking vixen looked up at them as they came in. She wasn't exactly on the opposite side of the couch from Gemma; it looked more like they'd been sitting fairly close and she'd made a half-effort to scoot away and vacate the middle, except that the three tails they had between them were still occupying that space. "Okay. Magus, this is Gemma."
"Hi," she waved, seeming mildly nervous. Why was she nervous?
"And this is Amp."
"Hey." Magus put up a hand to wave back. She briefly had the sense of some kind of anticipation from everyone present, like they were all expecting her to do or say something specific. "Um, nice to meet you."

Amp appeared to exchange a meaningful glance with Light before looking back Magus's way. "Likewise," she said. "I guess you're wondering why you haven't seen me before, huh?"

"Well, uh...hm." Magus put a hand up to her chin, thinking. "Actually, I..think I have. You're in the Giver's video, right? There's like, two or three frames of someone who looks like you, and the talk page on the wiki was flooded with an argument about whether or not she's even real or if it's just the Giver messing with everyone like she always does until the mods put a lid on it."

"Oh. Well. I'm real, but, it's kinda a secret," Amp said. "One which..the more people know it, the more danger I'm probably in."

During this exchange, Light had gone over to take a seat, and she was gesturing gently for Magus to do the same—so she did. "Um..how come? I mean, you're a vixen, right?"
"Yes, but my power's...different from most. For one thing, I literally can't fight," Amp said.

"I said I'd explain why I was different earlier today," Light interjected. "Stronger powers, different appearance..she's why."

Magus looked at the strangely harmless-looking vixen for a moment with her head tilted, thinking. Then: "..Ohh! Meta-magic! You're a buffer," she said, pointing. "I mean—not like a website buffer, but like a.." she waved her hands incoherently.
Amp nodded. "I think you've got the idea, yep. So, there are definitely people who'd be willing to kidnap me if they knew I could make them stronger. But it's more..complicated than just waving my hands and making your powers better. It doesn't seem to work unless the target actually knows and trusts me to some extent, for one thing."

"Oh. Um." Magus felt her ears fold down slightly. "Is this a bad time to mention I'm not like, super great at keeping secrets? I-I mean, not like I'll tell anyone anything on purpose, but if someone puts me on the spot.."
"I'm sure you'll at least try," Light said. "Anyway, we're far from the only people who know about her. The VI know, for one thing."
"I guess that makes sense...oh, wait. Waaiit. The mist monsters steal people's powers and that puts them in a coma. Something like—screws up their power to do that. So you're the VI's secret for waking them up!" she waved. "Right?"
Amp and Light exchanged a brief glance, then the former said: "Right again."
"Awwh, this is even worse. I probably shouldn't know any of that stuff!"

"Look," Light said, putting out a hand. Somehow this seemed to cause Marcus's hands to let go of her ears—and allowed her to realize she'd started pulling on them at some point. "I made the decision a while ago that I don't want to keep too many secrets from my allies. Anyway, I already have you at a disadvantage since I've seen your 'human form'."
"Yeeah..I guess so," she said. "But, um. It's prolly best you guys don't tell me your secret identities or anything, just in case. F-for now at least. I mean, I don't wanna run into you in the hall and, freak out or something and give it away. If, any of you go to the college," she added after a second. That the non-Quinn vixens were all students was something the wiki considered definite canon, but that wasn't a great reason to treat it like an actual fact.

"That's fine," Light said.

"Oh, but uh. I-in the interest of not keeping too many secrets, and since you already know this," she said, waving toward Light. "I'm uh..not technically...I guess you could say I'm an 'artificial' vixen? So like, the VI is trying to come up with some way to give people magic without the Giver's help, and they gave me this hat to put on—" she said, pointing an index finger on it "—so it could act as a 'key' kinda like the power words you guys have, and it uh, turned me into, looking like this. And gave me powers."

"..Aah." Magus turned toward Gemma, who had the look of someone who'd just figured out a difficult math problem after staring at it for a long moment. Actually, now that she thought of it, Gemma had been pretty quiet this whole time, and maybe even halfway staring at her? "I thought something looked weird," she said.

"Um, that is—I-I dunno exactly how to explain it," she said, backpedaling fast. "It's just, you don't 'look' the same way as other vixens do?"
"I guess that makes sense. You think you could still learn my powers, though?"

"I really don't know unless I try," Gemma shrugged. "But I have to actually see someone doing something to figure out their trick."

"Oh, let's do it then!" Magus said excitedly, hopping to her feet. "Um, I think there's some spells I could do in here without breaking anything."

"Spells?"

"Yeah, uh—so, like the way it works is that I come up with a motion of my sword and a word and it, does a thing. Just like casting a spell in a game! The, research guys think it's 'cause that's how I kinda thought magic would work before I had it...if that makes any sense. Oh, I think I can do flash if everyone just looks away."

"Or, I can block the light," Light suggested.

"Yeah, perfect!"

Gemma was leaning forward with an expression of interested study; Light was sitting up; Amp was leaning back in a very relaxed pose. Magus did the motion and went for a silent casting this time, producing a small flash of light which it seemed like only she saw; it didn't reflect off of the walls of the room or anything. "Or, uh..." She tried again, this time taking a bit to charge the spell, and couldn't help doing it aloud this time. "Flash!" The light was brighter as expected, and this time she actually saw it being funneled straight toward Light's body, and seemingly right into it. "How's that, huh?" she said, looking at Gemma.

"Um..I, don't think there's anything I can imitate there. It's like..sorta like what I see when someone's using a 'stolen' power, but even more of an imitation than that? Uh, n-not that you're weak exactly." She stood up. "Um, if anything—I think you can learn 'spells' way easier than me. You don't need to watch someone do something and then figure out a spell based on what they do, you just..think of something plausible for a 'spell' and it works, right?"
"Y-yeah..I guess? Pretty much," Magus said. "I mean, I got ideas from watching some of you guys, but..like, the chain lightning thing I did today was original, I think. Kinda."

Gemma nodded. "But...there is one thing you do that's different. How do I.." She came up next to Magus, facing the same direction.

"So, when one of us wants to do magic, um..bigger." She drew her right hand back. "What we do is just, push, really hard," she said, moving her hand forward palm-first as if against some resistance. "Like, if you wanna move a big piece of furniture, um, say a couch, across the room faster, you put more of your weight into it? But, when you want a stronger spell, you just focus on it for a few seconds, and then you spend the same effort to get the stronger spell as you do for the weaker one. Like you're, um...satisfied as long as the couch gets there?"
"Well..yeah. I'm just channeling a spell, I guess," Magus shrugged. She hadn't really thought about it as anything special—just a part of how magic would work, or how her magic worked, at least. But...nobody else did it that way?

"I don't think there's any reason we couldn't do the same thing," Gemma said, putting her left hand out palm-up. "'Channel' an effect to make it stronger, but still just as cheap. It's just that pushing is so much more obvious that no one's ever thought to do it your way before." A big black sphere, about the size of her head, appeared floating over the hand. After a moment, Magus realized this was probably the 'opposite' power to Fay, and definitely bigger than usual. The two-tailed vixen nodded, seemingly to herself at the successful experiment.

"Well..awesome. I guess I taught you something after all, huh?" she felt a goofy grin coming to her face, but couldn't really help it.
"Heheh, yeah," she nodded, turning to face Magus while taking a small step away. She looked particularly happy and satisfied to have figured it out. "Not just me, either. Any of us could benefit from knowing how to do that." Despite her nervous disposition, Magus got the impression that this had to be another professor at the school or something. She seemed to be some kind of genius, after all—someone who thrived on learning and especially figuring out new things. That made perfect sense with the powerset she got. But—maybe this discovery about Gemma was one best kept to herself.

"There must be some tricks I can do that'd make good spells for you," Gemma said after a moment, more or less cementing Magus's impression. "The back yard should be safe enough for that, if we can stay hidden?" she half-asked, looking Light's way.

The white-haired vixen stood up, nodding. "Great idea."

---

Simon sat down on his comfy living-room chair for a moment, pulled out his phone and scrolled down the list of contacts in the VI app for a moment, considering how best to fulfull Rowan's request.

It was true, really: He was pretty good at getting people to do things. That was because his years of experience had taught him many lessons on just exactly how. First of all: When you want someone you don't know all that well to do something they probably don't want to do, you don't ask them.

Hey Light! excellent job with the news today

You ask someone you know slightly better who knows them better. Sometimes a little bit of patience is in order.

And sometimes, the answer comes back right away.

Thanks. It really wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be.

isn't that just how it always is?

Positive, somewhat casual but personalized opener done; now he was in. Look. boss asked me to see if I can get G to come learn some powers from the forgetful bunch we got hanging around here Light was the kind of person who valued honesty. Plus, it's hard to call someone out on an ulterior motive when they announce it to you straight away.

"G"?

Then, a couple of seconds later: Oh. I don't know if she'll be willing.

She was at least considering relaying the request now, but Simon wasn't quite done being honest yet. between you and me, that isn't really why he wants her to come

Her reply was just a question mark by itself.

when he asked me, he wasn't thinking about their powers or G

he was thinkin about dawn and her friend cynthia

my guess is he thinks talking to her would be good for them or sth?

She was taking a bit to respond, which meant she was thinking. This reeked of a shared secret (although it being a secret might be unintentional) between them regarding Dawn, connected to whatever Rowan was thinking about. Perfect!

so if you can come up with some other excuse to get her over here after the baddies are gone tomorrow, that's gonna be good enough, k?

I'll see what I can do. Nail. On. Head. Simon allowed himself a small fist-pump after quickly double-checking that he was alone in the room. Light would figure something out, even if it was just relaying what he just told her to Gemma. Either way, this had the best possible shot of getting her to come.

---

"You have time magic?!"

"Um..sort of. I-I mean, it takes a ton of effort to distort time just a little bit in a very small area for a brief..."

"You. Have. Time. Magic."

Amp watched from a lawn chair as Emma went through several of the things she'd learned to do with her powers, "teaching" them to the new vixen. Light was leaning back against the wall of the Quinns' house, one of her legs raised so its foot was on the wall, and for the moment she was just occasionally looking up at them from her phone—playing on it or texting someone or something.

Among the first things Emma had said to Amory involved how amazing he was—how she just wanted to help him. In a way, those roles were reversed now, at least when it came to the interaction between their powers. But Amp didn't feel upset or jealous; instead she felt a curious kind of pride to see the two-tailed vixen helping someone else, fighting as effectively as she had today, and just being reasonably confident in general.

"I'm-onna try it. ...Haste!" Magus's sword-waving for this 'spell' was noticeably longer and more involved than most.

Gemma looked down at herself, and around for a moment. "The effect is..pretty small, but I do feel it," she said.

Deep down, Amory had never really been comfortable with the idea of someone who defined themselves entirely around him. It was a huge relief to see that she was so much more than that.

"So, what's the opposite? Slowing things down?"
"Um, no..that's still 'manipulating time'. The opposite is..I guess you could say 'space'? Even though that's supposed to also be, kinda the same thing I think."

"..Oh, hey. Did you feel that?"
"Hmn? Oh..it stopped," she nodded.
"Yeah. As soon as I quit thinking about it. So, there's some kinda upkeep. Still, I bet I can—no, I know I can do 'slow' too."

"It might be hard to make that work on something as big as one of those monsters...but, maybe not? If it works so your 'target' is always one 'thing', instead of a certain volume of space..."

Light lowered the phone and glanced around for a second—at Emma, then Amp's way. It didn't seem to be purposeful, like she was trying to get anyone's attention. Rather, she was just thinking about something that involved them. Well, Amp could always ask about it later.

"Hey, how'd you do that thing where you made a bunch of explosions right in the monster's face today?"
"Oh, uh, well—Nico's trick involves planting seeds, so..the opposite is 'spores' that make mushrooms." Gemma took a moment to demonstrate, before dismissing them again. "The spores are kinda like weapons, so...Fay's trick is focused on the 'tip of a weapon'..."

"Hey! I bet I could make a spell like that, too. Something like...Boom." A golfball-sized white explosion appeared from the tip of Magus's sword. "Uh..that's pretty small, huh."
"The 'motion' goes really fast, though? If you 'channel' it while running up toward one of them, you might be able to get something closer to what she can do."

"Oh, yeah! Great idea."

A few minutes later the back door opened, and Rory took a couple of steps outside. "Crmkns dmn," she said, waving with her left hand. She had a cookie in her right, and by the sound of it another one in her mouth.

"Oh, sweet!" Magus instantly dropped her sword (which, thankfully, unsummoned it) and started back toward the door. "Thanks, uh—Dr. Quinn."
She swallowed just enough to be intelligible. "Welcome. Just Rory's fine, though. I think." Emma looked at Light during this exchange, who just shrugged. Everyone went inside after that.

The blue-haired vixen sat in one of the kitchen chairs; Clark was occupying the opposite one while his wife hovered near the cooling cookies, seeming intent on making it easy to gradually steal more of them. The rest were standing around the kitchen, with Light in the doorway to the living room. "So, uh, do you guys meet here often?"

"Not..that much. Last time was...day before yesterday," Light said, briefly glancing Gemma's way for some reason. "The other place we met once or twice..didn't seem like a great idea today."

"So, 's there more room to do stuff there? Or..not that the back yard isn't pretty big, but.."
"'Do stuff'," Light repeated flatly as a question.
"Yeah! Like, play around with your powers, or train or something?"

Since nobody seemed especially familiar with the concept, Magus went on: "Like, the main VI, over in the city, do stuff like that all the time. There's videos of Zeno, like, shooting some clay pigeons in time to music. Or, Hugo lifting these huge weights," she said, spreading her hands to illustrate the size. "And like, Rowan doesn't 'play' exactly, but spars with everyone else to keep 'em sharp, and does this exercise thing to try to improve precision with her water control...do you guys not, uh, do anything like that?" She looked around at the group, feeling slightly perturbed by how blank-faced they all seemed at the very idea.

"We tend to be a bit busy," Clark said first; Amp seemed to be deliberately looking away from everyone else.
"Um, I do some stuff if I'm on my own in my apartment sometimes," Gemma said a bit nervously. "Like, when I'm 'two people' I can focus on two things at the same time, and get more stuff done. I tried eating two things at once a couple of times, but that usually just tastes weird."

"Maan. We should ask the VI if they can find us some space or somethin' to 'officially meet' and train in, then. I mean—they did that for some way more distant teams," Magus said. "Uh—not that I, you know," she backpedaled slightly, making an incoherent gesture—not wanting to presume on being an official member or anything.

"I don't know that I'd ever use it," Light said. "Mostly I only look like this when there's an emergency to deal with."
"Really?" Magus looked at her. "You've never just played with your powers? I mean, like—you can literally make any image you want, at-will, straight from your imagination. Isn't that awesome?" she demanded, waving her arms both Light's way.

"I, guess," she poked at the tip of an ear doubtfully. "It's just—I don't know. Let's say: I know better than a lot of people, just what kind of person we got our powers from. I don't really like the idea of using them more than I have to to help other people."

"Um, but.." Gemma half-mumbled, and continued only after some extra hesitation that resulted from nearly everyone turning to look her way. "Didn't she say something about them being ours, still? I-I mean, it's supposed to eventually be 'all you' or something like that?"

"More to the point," Amp said, "she gave us the powers to fight monsters with. If we use them for something else, that's kinda rebelling against that purpose, isn't it?"

"I can almost guarantee she'd be happy seeing us enjoy using them," Light said, crossing her arms.

"Yeah, but like..so what?" Magus said. "I mean, like, why keep yourself from havin' fun just to spite someone else?"

"She probably enjoys watching people do that just as much anyway," Amp pointed out.

Light exhaled a half-sigh. "You're right, that is pretty dumb." She waved a hand forward, conjuring an image of a person Magus didn't recognize—a very tall, curvy woman with fox ears and a lot of tails—with her eyes crossed in an intentionally altered, derpy expression. "Durr, lookit me, I watch people suffer for fun."

Amp started, "That's not much of an.."
"Who is that?" Magus accidentally interrupted. "The Giver?"
"Yeah.." Light seemed to answer and agree with whatever Amp was saying at the same time, dismissing the image.

"Whoa—hang on. There was something.." Magus tilted her head slightly, trying to think of the right words. "I dunno, I just felt weird looking at her. Like, 'I should try to protect that person'. Your illusions of other people don't, usually do that, right?"
"Nnooo..." Light tried putting up the image again, without the derpface, and glared at her for a moment. "Hm. Feels like I couldn't punch it. I think I could, but there's...the same kind of mental wall. I guess her 'violence immunity' extends to just her looks, too?"

"Yeah," Amp said, "because why wouldn't it?"

"At least you're still able to dismiss the image," Clark observed, looking almost as displeased with her as Light did.

Really, aside from Rory—who seemed too busy enjoying cookies to care—there was a general air of hostility and/or distrust toward the Giver's image that Magus could just feel. Well, the sort of person Light was didn't seem likely to get along with that voice from the video the day before, but..it seemed almost like she and Clark had actually met her and held some conversations. Not that you have to know someone personally to hate them, but..judging her only on the actions Magus knew about, she had given everyone world-saving powers for possibly capricious reasons, then told them not to sabotage each others' efforts to use them toward said saving of the world "Or Else". Not a great reason to like someone, but far from sufficient to generate this level of overall hostility. Well, Light did just say she knew her better somehow...

"Yeah, sorry," Light said, waving the illusory Giver out of existence again.

"Anyway, that could be useful to put up in front of you in some situations," Amp said. "Make someone hesitate who was gonna attack you for just a second or two."

"Hope I won't have to," Light said, but nodded agreement.

"So, uh, see?" Magus said. "Sometimes you figure new stuff out just from playing around, too. It's totally worth it."

"Maybe you're right," she shrugged. "I guess I got caught up in thinking of them as a weapon and crime-fighting tool so fast, I never really thought about everything else they'd be good for."

Ko-fi

If the below looks irrelevant to you, feel free to ignore it. There is a new Battle Vixens to read which posted an hour ago, so you can scroll right past this to read that if you want.

 

I'm "reposting" this post to announce that I'm now using ko-fi for essentially the same purpose that I briefly used "digital tip jar" for before that website closed down. The reason for me to do anything like this at all is basically expressed in the original post below, from a couple of years back. I still feel pretty much the same way as then, although the specifics of how this platform works are different from that one.

Ko-fi works a little strangely, where I have to set a "unit price" and people donate a discrete amount of units instead of just deciding on an amount of money. I set the unit to $1, which will hopefully work okay. Also, there are the usual paypal fees, I think 2.9% + 30 cents, so keep that in mind if you decide to send anything.

---

Original post (titled "Digital Tip Jar" at the time) below:

This is the kind of post I don't really like to do; I prefer every post here to be either a caption, a story, or something like that. But there is something I think I should specifically address.

At this point, at least two people have said something about wanting to send me monetary support (well, specifically asking whether I have a patreon), and I wanted to have some kind of response to it (since, as a proportion of the amount of comments I get on a regular basis, two is actually a large number). I think it's perfectly natural when people are offering one money for one to want to have a way to accept it, after all. So I started exploring options.

The issue for me with patreon is kind of twofold. First, patreon is modeled as a kind of continual kickstarter, with stretch goals and rewards and stuff. This makes me kind of uncomfortable because I abhor the idea of putting any of my work behind any kind of paywall, and I don't want people to feel like I "need" money sent to me in order to keep doing this. Second, I feel like getting a patreon sends a message like "I'm making this thing my job now, so become my patron and send me money please", which couldn't be much farther from the truth. I have a day job, it pays my bills, and I like it just fine. I write what I write here as a way to relax, and only when I have both the time and inspiration to do so. I don't want to feel like other people are paying a subscription for content that may or may not arrive, and I don't want to create a situation where people feel I "owe" them more writing because they sent me money.

So I went looking for other options. One option was to get a paypal "donate" button, and I'm still considering doing that. The issue is that I'm not really entirely sure how anonymous I can be behind one of those, like if it would show whoever donated my real name or the email address associated with the account or something. Also, I'm not sure it's legal? My research online suggests that the donate button is supposed to be for charitable organizations, and while people can still use it for supporting their website, blog, etc., paypal will start asking questions if more than a certain amount is "donated" in a single year. While I seriously doubt I would ever raise that much, it would be yet another thing I needed to watch out for (close the donation link if it gets too close to that amount!), and the track record of the adventure site is a good indicator of how I am at remembering to do things on a regular basis.

For those reasons, what I'm trying for now is a "Digital Tip Jar", the button for which can be found over on the right side. I want to emphasize that this is specifically for people who already wanted to send me money. I am not asking anyone for money, and I don't want anyone to send money under the misapprehension that I would owe them anything for it, either. I like the message that "this is a tip jar", i.e., putting money through it just signifies appreciation for things already done, and not the purchase of any future stuff. Again, I do this for my own enjoyment, and I don't want it to turn into any kind of obligation. The disadvantage of this option is that it goes through stripe, so it only accepts credit/debit cards and has fees associated with that (which the "donation" page itself will also warn you about). If that's an issue for someone who wanted to send money, let me know and I'll look into maybe adding a paypal button as an alternative--if I can make it anonymous enough. (Speaking of anonymity, the digital tip jar appears to allow one to remain anonymous on the "sending" side as well as the "receiving" one, which is another reason I favored it)

Anyway, sorry about this being the post that comes up after a bit of a drought. Hopefully I'll be able to push this down with some more actual writing soon.

Battle Vixens! - 66

First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

Episode 66: Watching Through the Window

"Um, Clark..?" Rory stood just a bit behind him as he got to work rinsing off the dishes and dropping them into some kind of machine built into the kitchen counter.

"Yeah?"
"I uh, I don't really want to do, 'husband-wife' things. But..I just, want to be close. I-I really want a hug," she said.

"Oh. Well, that we can do," he said, setting down what was in his hands coming closer to put his arms around her for a moment. She returned the hug tightly—somehow, even though she felt strong enough to crush him, it was easy to keep the embrace harmless—and buried her face in his shoulder for a moment, then let go. He still had work to do, after all.

But the message was more or less received. After he finished cleaning up, and they went to the living room couch to talk some more, Clark took a seat on one side of the couch and let her—or maybe even encouraged her to—sit right up against him and slowly arch her arm up around his back to rest the hand on the opposite shoulder. It was a little embarrassing feeling/hearing her tail swish across the material on the opposite side and thump the back of the couch repeatedly, but..she was happy like this, and just couldn't help herself!

They spent a while talking about Clark—his past, his interests. Some parts of what he said were incomprehensible, some of it felt familiar, but it felt so good to hear him talk happily about his interests, his dreams..what he liked. This was eventually interrupted by some beeping from the...phone, right—on the little table next to where Clark was sitting. He reached over, picking it up to look for a second, then reached for another thing on the same table, pointing it at the big rectangular thing (sort of like her laptop's screen) that took up a prominent position across the room in front of them. It seemed that it was another kind of screen, as this act turned it "on" and it began to show images and play sounds.

It was a lot like the videos she'd seen on the laptop, and seemed to involve people talking and shaky footage of some people Rory had seen the day before—and one she hadn't, with a hat—fighting against some sort of shadowy beasts. Seeing those monsters themselves made the fox-girl's fur stand on end, and Clark felt very tense watching it, too.

"Um.." she started—it hadn't felt right to interrupt at first, but it was getting to be an uncomfortable silence, the noise from the screen notwithstanding.

"I'm..watching to see if they need my help," he said, anticipating her question. "It seems like they're doing all right, but...just in case."
"Oh. Should I help too—"
"No," he very nearly cut her off.

Rory looked over at him. He'd tensed up again, more than before, and his face was in the middle of a transition from a deep frown to a performative calm, neutral expression. "But..I can, fight them, right? I mean—I feel like I can," she said, feeling uncertain.

"It's just.." He made a clear effort to calm and physically relax some. "You, you only just..came back to life. You don't remember anything. That's...you could get hurt fighting those, and—I think it would be best if you wait until you remember more, to know for sure that it's still worth the risk. Knowing..that you really did get killed once before."

"Oh..okay," Rory said. It was a good explanation, seemingly well-thought-out, but something about it still felt disingenuous and evasive to her. But, because something about this subject clearly pained him, she didn't want to press the issue. Anyway, it seemed like the people on the screen were indeed doing a great job on their own.

Once the big bear-thing went down, and the lightning girl jumped back away from its falling body, Clark breathed out a sigh of relief, and raised the device to turn the screen off again. "Hey, are you..getting hungry for lunch?" he asked. "It's a bit early, but maybe I could get something started."
"Uh, certainly," Rory said. "Is uh, do you think I could help any?"
Clark stood up slowly and turned to look at her; there was a tiny bit of surprise evident on his face. "Well—sure, if you want."

While she followed him into the kitchen, Clark seemed to sense her confusion about this. "Sorry, it's just that—you'd never offer to help before. I've asked for it when I just needed an extra pair of hands now and then."

"Really? I, I made you do all the work?"

"No, just most of the cooking," he said. "I don't mind—we both pull our own weight, and the overall distribution is totally fair."

A bit later, after he gave her instructions on how to cut something and she got to work, he was looking at her. "You still seem a little worried," he said. "Look: I like the way our relationship worked—works. We both have things we like to do for each other, and things we don't like doing."
"Then why'd you say yes when I offered to help?"
"Because you offered—which meant you wanted to, right? It'd be ridiculous of me to turn you down when you want to do something that helps us both."

"Well then, isn't it wrong of me to expect you to not need any help?"

"Not when I have an established pattern of generally not needing help, and asking for it when I do," Clark replied.

"So, does this mess something up? I-I mean, are we not a 'fair distribution' if I'm doing this?"

He turned to face her for a moment. "Rory. Dear. Just because I'm happy with things one way doesn't mean I can't be equally happy if they change up a little. You want to help, and I appreciate the help, and that you want to help. Petty little details aren't what matter for our relationship, and if we're both satisfied then it's working out fine. If one of us decides she's not satisfied and wants to change things, there's a bit of push and pull until we're both happy again. In this case I'm already happy you want to help, so we're fine."
"H-heheh. Okay."

---

They were probably in trouble.

Not long after the amnesiacs came back into the VI building, they were more or less gently herded back into a room similar to the one where they'd had their situation explained to them the day before; maybe it was even the same room. The podium was empty, though, so everyone just sat or stood talking or staring around the room wondering what was going on.

"Heyy," Cynthia said. "You got real mad when that bird-lion thing tried to snap me up."
Dawn shook her head. "No, I, I was—terrified. Real scared. I-I felt, I felt like it was gonna happen again," she said slowly.
The redhead tilted her head a bit, folding an ear down. "Like what was gonna happen again?"

"I..I-I don't, know," she said, the words sounding pained. "Cynth, it's just..when I look at you sometimes, or, or I'm not thinkin' of anything...or, last night, in my dream...I feel like..."

She paused for just a moment, trying to take hold of a slippery thought, and seized on a more recent memory instead. "..Rowan said you died before I did, right? I-I think, I must've seen it. A-and I'm rememberin' that, or..some part of me is tryin' to."
"Well, I'm glad you don't want to see me hurt," Cynthia said.

"N-no, but..!" Dawn shook her head emphatically. "I-I don't just feel, sad or...angry, when I think of that. It's, I feel, guilty more than anything else. L-like I did somethin' horrible." She shuddered, and the temperature dropped in the air around her. Some tears came halfway down her face, freezing into little icicles and dropping onto the floor.

"Hey. Heeyy.." The shorter girl climbed herself up into a hug, so their faces were right in front of each other. "Dawn. Look at me! It's okay. I'm okay now, and you're okay too! Whatever happened...I'm here now." She ran a hand through Dawn's hair, across her ears, and the air slowly warmed again.

The taller girl slowly, hesitantly returned the hug with one arm, and sniffed. "Y-yeah. Sorry, Cynth..." She ran her free hand through Cynthia's hair, and then gently set her down again, feeling better..at least for now. But some uncertainty lingered. She thought that maybe she was closer to remembering than before. It felt almost like...

Rowan Shepherd came into the room from a door near the podium. He wasn't loud or even particularly physically imposing, but something about his entry and presence in the room caused the chatter to die down quickly, people mostly sitting down and turning to look. He didn't actually walk up to the podium, instead coming up in front of the platform it was on. His expression was unreadable—serious, certainly, but not angry, Dawn thought somehow. "Sorry you all got chased in here," he said. "I only wanted to speak with you for a moment.

"First of all, thank you. You may have saved this building, and the people within it, by your actions. Secondly, though, you really shouldn't have needed to do that. It was a..tactical error on my part that left this place undefended to begin with, and for that I am sorry. Most of you aren't even from here, and none of you really have the full picture of what's going on..so it wouldn't be right to ask you to fight again. I'll try to be more careful in keeping those of you who are still here tomorrow safe."

He paused while the interpreters in the room finished echoing his words. "That's about it," he said then. "I understand your lunch was interrupted; the kitchen staff is making something fresh for you if you're still hungry."

The other vixens began filtering out of the room at this point—many of them attracted by the offer of food. Dawn was interested in that too, but Cynthia was headed Rowan's way, so she followed. "Hey, the two of us are from here," she said. "So we can fight those things tomorrow, right?"

"...I can't ask you to," he said after a moment. "You already risked, and gave, your lives in this fight once. Kids like you don't deserve this kind of burden, and, as I said, you don't understand enough now to really make an informed decision."
"Excuse me?!" Cynthia leaned up confrontationally; Rowan stayed upright and stone-faced. "I know those things tried to kill us today!" she said, pointing vaguely off to one side like the monsters were in that particular direction. "A-and lots of other people too! And they'll come back tomorrow, and the next day, and—am I wrong about that?"
"No."

"And I know we're supposed to have these, weird powers to fight them with. Right?"

"That is supposedly the reason we were given them," he said neutrally.

"Then how is that not enough context?!"

"Uh, Cynth—" Dawn half-muttered, getting the sense that making a scene like this wasn't exactly out of the ordinary for her.

"You don't know who you are," Rowan said; he didn't seem to be intentionally cutting her off, and probably hadn't even heard her. "You can die, or worse, fighting them, and right now you have no idea whose life you would even be risking."

"Wh—I know who I am!" she said, incredulous. "I'm—me, I-I-I'm—"
"Cynthia," Dawn said, managing a volume that both of them could hear this time. She turned back toward the taller vixen, still looking angry, and Dawn folded her ears down. "It's—he's just worried about you. About us. And, don't wanna see us, get hurt," she said.

The redhead looked between the two of them, growled incoherently, and stormed out of the room, leaving Dawn behind with Rowan. There were some tears in her eyes in the flash of her face that Dawn could see during this, but...again, she had a vague sense that had to be coming from her lost memories. It said: Leave her alone for a few minutes to cool down, then go to her. Meanwhile...

She looked back at Rowan. It was strange: His expression didn't seem all that different, but Dawn had the sense that he was more relaxed now. "You want to ask me something," he said—not a question.
"Uh, yeah. I..it's just, lately I feel like.." Dawn shook her head uncertainly. "Rowan, did I—" She looked down at the floor, and shook; she wasn't even sure she wanted to know, but she needed to know. The temperature in the room dropped palpably as she turned her head back up to face him again. "D-did I kill her..?" she squeaked softly.
"...Listen. You know now what those monsters are like," he said slowly and patiently—she nodded. "They will try to eat us, to take our powers and use them against the rest of us. You and Cynthia were fighting one of them, and it tore off one of her arms and ate her," he bore down, keeping his tone even and serious—like an imitation of how he talked as a vixen, if with slightly more emotion. "You took it down, but she was left unconscious, and with trauma which she would not have survived."

The room had gotten even colder, and Dawn shivered, some frozen tears falling off her face. "A-and so I..I did it then, huh?" she said in a choked voice—half concluding, half remembering. Rowan just nodded.

"I didn't want to tell you before you had enough context—nor her, but I'll leave that up to you to decide," he said. "I can't tell you whether you did the right thing, but—for complicated reasons, she's alive now because you did that. Make of that what you will."

Dawn took a deep breath, then continued breathing slowly, calming herself down; the temperature around her went back to normal as she did. Then she said: "Rowan. I...I did somethin' else horrible too, right? B-before that..."
He nodded. "I really...don't want to burden you with that knowledge before you actually remember it. But...you should know that you didn't do it for selfish reasons. You were never a bad person, Dawn, but from what I can tell, you've always valued her far above yourself. And the two of you were...backed into a corner."

Dawn nodded and sniffed, wiping her face quickly on a sleeve. "T-thanks. I gotta..she'll wanna talk to someone soon," she said, turning to leave.

---

The lunch came out very good. Since she wasn't starving or sleepy from just waking up, Rory tried to imitate the more polite way Clark was eating instead of just stuffing herself carelessly. It turned out that she seemed to already know how to eat like that, but just..had some sort of habit of eating more rudely here, or possibly when just with him.

After they ate, he didn't seem to do as much of the work with the dishes as he had after breakfast, instead heading back into the living room and grabbing for the device that turned on the screen again. "The city might be under attack by now," he explained when she followed him. "It's..less likely that they need my help, or that I can get to them in time to do much, but...I'd like to know things are okay there, just in case." The screen was re-showing video from before instead, so he shrugged and pushed a different button that made it quit making sound before going to sit down again. Then they talked some more, Clark mostly focusing in her direction with the occasional glance toward the screen.

It seemed like Clark had a much better relationship with his family than she did with hers. He said they liked her too, as though this was unusual..so maybe it was. He had several siblings, while she was an only child. It seemed to her like he was a consistently nice person, maybe to a fault of giving in to what others around him wanted. How did two people so different end up together in the first place? Or..maybe being different this way was somehow beneficial, she thought.

The screen finally did show whatever he was waiting to see—more of people she half-recognized, from the 'city' she guessed, fighting more of those monsters. What was more, a bunch of the other people they'd said had been brought back to life along with her were fighting them, too. Rory felt sure now that she could be fighting too—the earlier doubt brought on almost entirely by Clark's sudden, sharp negative answer. Not only was she keenly aware of being very strong and sturdy, but she could tell that as a second or perhaps even first nature, she had the ability to pump 'something' into her own body to make it even stronger or tougher, or change other physical properties it had. All of this made her feel a twinge of guilt that she hadn't helped—that she seemed to have also kept him from helping, too—when they both had the chance. Clark almost certainly sensed this, but he didn't say anything in response to it. He wanted to talk to her about a lot of things, but this just wasn't one of them, it seemed.

The phone rang an hour or two later, and Clark picked it up after finishing the sentence he'd been in the middle of. "Hello?"
"Hey, uh.." A male voice which Rory thought she recognized came out of the phone—but it wasn't anyone she'd seen yesterday, she thought. "So Magus wants to talk to Light, and Gemma wants to talk to Magus, and...Light wants to tell her about me. It'd be, probably good for us to all meet up somewhere relatively 'neutral', but we don't have the keys to the lounge, and campus is busy today anyway so it wouldn't be all that private..."
Clark exhaled something like the tail end of a sigh. "You can all come here, it's fine," he said. "Our backyard fences are high, and I think the reporters still won't get too close. Probably better if whoever's driving parks a bit away and Light hides you all walking here, just to be safe."

"Sure. Uh, thanks. Thank you. Really."
"It's no problem," he said before hanging up.

"Well, we're going to have some guests," he said. "Mostly people we fought with yesterday, and one..new vixen, I suppose. You..don't mind, do you?"
"No?" She tilted her head slightly; the question had seemed slightly apologetic, but it wasn't like she knew enough to tell who should visit or when anyway.

"H-heh, okay. I'll answer the door when they show up."

---

"..Sorry for the wait." The door shut behind Rowan as he came in. Tora and Zeno were crowded around Petra, all of them watching or reading something on her phone; Fay and Hugo were standing off to one side; and Corporal Langdon was more or less standing at attention over by herself. "I suppose you've heard by now, but the puppeteer's victims helped defend this place."
"Yeah, they're all over the news," Zeno said—in the process of stepping away from Petra's phone, a motion which Tora more or less mirrored.
"They've dubbed them all 'the reborn'," Petra added. "And that Cynthia is 'The Phoenix'," she recited dramatically. "'Cause: Fire, back from the dead...no flight, but hey, two outta three! Actually, I bet she could do some kinda fireball double-jump thing which is a bit like flying, yeah?"
Rowan cleared his throat. "I wanted to thank them, but also ask them not to put themselves in danger like that again," he said.

"What, even Dawn and his girlfriend?" Zeno said. "They're both from here, and—she was more or less leading the charge today."

"She's emotionally unstable," Rowan snapped. "Not that I blame her, but—she needs help. Therapy of, some sort." He regretted not knowing enough to use the right words. "Not to be..drafted into a war all over again, with even less of an idea why than before!"

"Well..you've got me there," Zeno shrugged. "I'd say they all probably need that, but it'd be a little hard to get them to talk to someone when they don't even have an idea of what a psychiatrist is. Or the laws involved with confidentiality and such."

"..Anyway, you all did well today," Rowan said. "Despite how many of them showed up, nobody was hurt, and there wasn't even much property damage—aside from this building. And..that comes down to my mistake. It really should've been obvious by now that those things target the empowered specifically, and I suppose they have some way of 'knowing' when one of us is nearby. For as long as we have those guests, we'll need to guard this place carefully.

"Now..I don't know whose idea it was, but you need to stop calling me 'boss'," he said, crossing his arms and glaring toward Petra and Zeno. "I'm not anyone's boss here."

"All due respect, you sure seem to call the shots," the Corporal spoke up. "Ain't hard to see we're more effective with your direction."

"It's one less syllable than 'Rowan'," Petra helpfully added.

"Still. I don't like it," he said. "So stop."

"Ohh, alright. Maybe I can get Karis to come up with a good hero name for you instead," she said.

Rowan just shook his head. "Anyway, that's all for today. Stay sharp."

However, as they began to filter out, he had one thought—and moved toward Petra. "Simon."
"Yeah?"
"I know she's reluctant, but..you think you could convince Gemma to visit tomorrow, after the attacks are over? Maybe learn some of our guests' powers before they leave?"
"Sure, but—why me? You've got her in the app too."
"You're better at convincing people to do things," he said.

"True, true." She nodded—then paused, folding her ears back to glare up at him. "Heeyy, so I can't take a picture but she can come grab everyone's powers?"

"She'll be asking permission," he countered.
"...Fair enough. I'll see what I can do!"

---

Clark stood up slowly and stretched at about the time he expected everyone to arrive. It was nice to have a break from standing and lecturing, running and fighting. Despite sleeping reasonably well the night before and taking a nap before that, he now felt uncharacteristically tired. Maybe the Giver's spell had taken even more out of him than either of them thought. It was...also tiring to keep up a conversation with his wife for hours, but it was worth it. No sooner was he through stretching than the doorbell rang, making Rory jump slightly at the unexpected (possibly unfamiliar) sound. "They're here," Clark said as he started toward the front door—supposing, correctly, that she'd understand the meaning of the noise from this context clue. She stood and followed a bit behind him, staying a few steps back as he opened the door.

"Welcome," Dr. Quinn said. "Good job out there today." Amp and Emma were in the front, the latter in her "combined", two-tailed form, with Light behind them. He moved out of the way and they came in, Light stopping about at the threshold.
"Magus is coming pretty soon," she said. "I'm gonna go 'ferry' her over."
"Got it," Clark nodded, letting the door shut after she turned and started off the other way.

"How are you feeling?" Amp asked as they all started toward the living room.

Who she was asking wasn't entirely clear, but Rory answered. "Um, I'm well," she said. "I think. I seem to be alright. But not much has really come back yet."

"Well, just give it time. Rome wasn't built in a day." Rory just seemed confused by the statement; then she turned to look at Emma for a moment.

"Aren't you, um..two?" she said. "Sometimes?"
"Uh—yeah. It's really useful when I wanna do more than one thing at the same time," Emma said, "but I um..talk kinda weird, then."
"Oh."

They stopped in the living room, with Rory still looking at Emma like she was trying to remember something. When the two-tailed vixen tilted her head slightly, she finally said: "I'm...sorry. You're really a good kid."
"Huh?"
"Um.." Rory folded her ears down a bit, looking deeply uncertain. "I..felt like I needed to say that to you, but I have no idea why."
"Well, um..thank you. I think?"

"Hey," Clark interrupted, "you two go on and take a seat." He waved to the couch. "You want some cookies? I'm in a mood to bake something."
"Well..sure, if you're offering," Amp said, Emma nodding quietly toward him to echo the sentiment.

"You, um, want me to help?" Rory offered—as he'd more or less hoped she would. There were a lot of recent memories of these people, and trying with little success to put them together seemed to be making her very uncomfortable. Pulling her into a situation where she could still see and hear them, but didn't feel obliged to participate in their conversation, seemed best.
"Yes, please. It should be fun," Clark said, gently guiding her toward the kitchen. "The end result is tasty, too." Also, he really did want her to taste his cookies for the "first time" again, while the opportunity existed.