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."