Battle Vixens! - 71

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Episode 71: Trios

Rowan changed form in the same motion as getting up from the desk chair, sweeping her phone into a small bag that served as a replacement for having pockets. Halfway to the exit, she pulled it out again, switching the VI app she already had open to the comms feature for the city's vixens. "Locations, please." Fay, Nico and Petra were at home; Zeno was near the VI's research office space; Corporal Langdon was just inside the edge of town after some sort of covert event, possibly special training, at the base; Hugo and Tora were near each other over toward that side of town. In short, Rowan was the only one of them at headquarters.

Eyes reported in, too: Two of those giant turtle-beasts had just landed: one very close to Petra, one about halfway between the Corporal and Hugo's positions. Finally, a mass of black mist was swirling together just above the VI's front entrance; it was going to be something big once it finally finished appearing. Rowan didn't need anyone to tell her that last one; she walked out the doors into the shadow of it herself. She did some quick, rough distance calculations on the map, comparing everyone's positions to the monsters.

"Hugo, Tora, join with Corporal Langdon to the east. Zeno, Petra, Nico, Fay: West side. Take out those turtles as quickly as possible, then reconvene with me in front of headquarters."

Tora said, "You banking on the big one not coming down before then, or what?"

"Unlikely. I will hold it here until you arrive."
"Uh—seriously?" Zeno cut in. "That description sounded like how our hydra problem the other day started. Look, boss, I'm closer to you than I am to that turtle. I can—"
"No. If you are going to insist on calling me that, then listen. They require your assistance to take it down swiftly. Then all three of you can come to my aid instead of just one."

"O...okay. I'll do what you want. Just promise me you've got a good plan?"
"I do."

Rowan swept her weapon into existence, looking up at the darkened sky. Partially on her own suggestion, the VI had a reservoir of water running around its perimeter, fed by a combination of storm drains and an intake from the city's water supply that could be turned on or off, with pipes sticking up and out periodically and some internal controls to pump it out manually. Once the city's vixens were off the comms, she switched to giving strict instructions to keep all of the puppeteer's victims inside this time, and to get that water pumping out her way. Streams began to pour out from behind her, and she collected it all into a sort of lake surrounding her—putting away the phone at this point so she could focus.

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When the alert went out, Blake and Amory both ran into the living room, shared a brief, silent glance, and then spoke their phrases to change simultaneously. The blonde fox-girl drew Light into a close hug, running a hand down from the snowy white base of her tail to its black tip, making her grow back into the bigger, stronger form; at the same time a hand ran through her own hair. They took a small step back, the much taller Light nodded, still blushing and smiling slightly, and then went for the nearest window, opening the blinds just enough to see through—and then jumping through the glass in the form of literal light.

The monsters seemed to have a favorite haunt near the apartment complex. Two of the quadrupedal things with scales and feathers, red eyes and wolfish teeth, like the one that Emma had just barely prevented from killing Amory before, had shown up on the same still-shattered ground as that fight with the thing that ate Emma. Light was here first this time, and quickly tossed a copy of her sword at each of them to get their attention and make them stop chasing the people unfortunate enough to have been present when they appeared. She also made those people invisible, and gave the two beasts some illusions of herself to charge toward, pounce at, and launch themselves muzzle-first into some already-broken concrete.

Light stepped close enough to one of them to hit it with a combo of slashes; when it turned to bite in retaliation she jumped forward over it, leaving behind an illusion of herself dodging impossibly between the two of them as they continued to claw and bite. Once they both had their eyes on it, that illusion erupted into a bright flash, some of the sunlight from above splitting into a laser hitting each one from above. Then she moved in to stab the near one in the side, lightspeeding aside when it jumped at her.

Her ears picked up someone running closer, and she gave the monsters something to chase while she looked briefly that way; it was Magus. She put up a hand briefly in that direction, projecting some midair letters for the vixen in the hat to read: Keep your distance, I can't just throw these things around. Also their hearing is pretty good, maybe don't say spells aloud at them. Magus skidded her run to a halt, surprised by the sudden manifestation of reading material, and looked at it blinking for a moment before nodding.

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"Alright alright! Heeeere's the big guy now!" Petra's yelling got the giant turtle-monster's attention, so it whirled around to face her instead of stepping on someone's car. That would've been a heck of an insurance claim...although, come to think of it, likely not uncommon these days. Its head snapped at her, and she drew a spiky wall of concrete in its path for it to ram into instead; the wall collapsed from the impact, but Newton's wonderful equal and opposite force made the head recoil back too.

"Hh—hey! Petra!" Nico called from a fair distance behind her, sounding a bit out of breath. "Just made it."
"Good, good," the two-tailed girl said, back-stepping in time with the turtle's aggressive approach. It was probably too big to be easily knocked off-balance, even though tipping it over would be helpful here. For now she just picked up some more rocks to form into spikes and throw down at its head. "Let's play tower defense, eh? Magic and strength buffs, and a line of fruit throwers back where I'm headed."

"Mm-kay."

Petra kept luring it backwards, feeling some added strength and energy for rock-throwing coming her way, and soon came to a wider road with little grass dividers between it and its sidewalks. Those dividers now had several person-height saplings rising from their soil, each one carrying some greenish, slightly growing fruit and poised like a catapult to toss it. As the monster came in range, they began throwing volleys of that fruit at it, only hitting its shell apart from a few lucky shots on the legs or side of the head. At this point, Petra made a somewhat lazy, but tall, wall in front of herself and ran over to one side, letting the turtle ram its face through that wall while she came up to its side.

"Umm, I don't think they're doing much to the shell," Nico reported from somewhere on the opposite side.

"Yeah, we gotta pierce it first." Petra had seen footage of Ning turning her sword and sheath into a railgun to get through the armor of one of these things. Well, she didn't quite have that capacity, but she was—physically speaking—much stronger than the lightning-throwing vixen. She leapt up toward the shell, bringing her sword up in the process, and landed blade first, slamming its tip with all her might into the shell so it buried its first few inches in. Then her feet bounced off of the shell and she landed next to it, bringing the sword's sheath out with both hands around the open end, then began banging it into the hilt of the sword, hammering it like a giant nail. A few swings into this the turtle turned hard, roaring in pain and rage and going to snap at her, and she knew she'd hit paydirt.

More spiky wall raised in the way of that head, and she ran over toward that same side again, turning the earth composing the sword into a sort of stone spear before using her dirt-control to yank it out, letting a geyser of black mist spray out of the thing's side. "There we go! Aim for the hole."

"Got it!"

"I'monna make some more, too!"

---

"So how, exactly, are we s'posed to fight off a turtle?" Hugo met with Tora before they came to the monster.

"Dunno. Maybe army man's got an idea," she said. "I'll tank the front for now, you jump on top and cut whatever's exposed?"
"Ehh, good enough for me."

A sonic blast was enough to get the attention of the giant reptile made of indistinct black fog, and it was charging at her in no time. Hugo backed up slowly, staying just barely out of range of its snapping head, and when it did try to close the distance and stretch out at her she stuck her shield in its mouth and let go, jumping back away from it and exploding the shield into a sharp, focused screech that reverbated down through its neck into the rest of its body.

By now Tora already was running down the thing's back to start slashing at its tail. It roared low in response to the pain, and Hugo made its own noise echo back into its face at a deafening volume while reforming her shield. The tail whipped up to try and slam into Tora, but she easily jump-roped it, matching the timing perfectly and continuing to make the big beast hurt while it began to thrash around, back and forth, to try and throw her off.

Since it was the center of her power, Hugo was particularly sensitive to unexpected sounds. In this case, her comms were going off, and she quickly pulled up her phone to try and hear it over the din. "Repeat that?"
Corporal Langdon named a nearby intersection of city streets. "I'm settin' up a trap. Lead it to me!"
"Got it. Toraa!"
"What?! Kinda busy here!"

"Hop off and lead it east."

She jumped over another tail swipe, this time vaulting over to the turtle's left side—Hugo's right, now. "Which way's east?" The tall vixen pointed, and Tora nodded, running off in that direction with the turtle hot on her trail.
Hugo wasn't the fastest runner, but she tried her best to follow, grabbing some more angry roars from the thing's mouth to hit its own neck with along the way.

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Magus seemed to take the warning to heart, even backing up a couple of extra steps as she readied her first spell. This appeared to be a new one, consisting of a volley of about ten small fireballs arced up through the air at the two beasts. Not every one hit its mark, but they certainly didn't like the ones which did. Since of course this gave away her position, Light placed an illusion of her there for them to turn toward and chase, sending it running off in the opposite of the direction Magus did. Then she ran up next to the one she'd been hitting up until now, easily matching its top running speed.

Perhaps channeling Rory a bit—but with a solid plan to escape, at least—Light leapt into the air and landed on top of the mist monster, stabbing one copy of her sword into its back to hold onto with her left hand and using the right to slash wildly into its upper neck. It howled, turning sharply and bucking to try and get her off, and its partner quickly took notice, turning to turn and pounce at her. Light pointed the free sword up and ducked just under the leaping beast, letting it slash itself through the blade for a moment before letting go and lightspeeding herself to behind her mount as both of them landed hard, one on top of the other. All throughout this, a number of water-shurikens were arcing through random angles from Magus's position into the two beasts, their less straightforward path clearly intended to make it more difficult to locate their origin.

The water spells stopped not long after the two wolf-things collapsed, and—looking for a second—Light could see that Magus was focusing pretty hard on something big. Guessing it would be AOE, she kept her distance and lasered the two of them while they recovered their footing, the top one climbing off of the other and both turning toward her—and while the other vixen went through an unusually involved motion that ended with her sword pointed skyward instead of at the monsters. A thin line of electricity went up into the sky from that sword, and seemingly picked up power from the clouds before coming down on the two monsters as a proper lightning bolt, comparable to any of Ning's.

Both of the creatures howled and charged, Light's more frequent target beginning to look very indistinct by now. She threw a sword at each one's muzzle, gave them several options of illusory Lights to chase, and lightsped herself up, over and behind them, looking over Magus's way to see that she was panting hard, needing a brief break after the exertion of casting that lightning bolt. Waving to her to get her attention, Light pointed out the weakened beast, highlighting it with a faint white glow for good measure. Magus took a second to look back and forth between the monster and her before nodding, understanding, and used another (possibly new) spell that threw a big spike of ice into its side as it ran past her, bringing it down for good. Its partner howled in rage, running straight in Magus's direction, but again Light gave it a false target to chase so the vixen in the big wizard hat could safely run away.

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"For the record—I am not your chauffeur." Dr. Brand's car pulled up near the reported location of one of the turtles, brakes screeching from a fairly unreasonable speed down to a halt. Zeno tossed the passenger door open and hopped out.
"Yeah, but—can't blow my cover by driving, right? And, still, thank you." She shut the passenger door and ran toward the fight, her fox-ears picking up the low, rumbling roar of the beast to direct her the rest of the way more accurately. As she came closer, she also made out the sound of metal on metal, a rhythmic wham wham wham, with the last one punctuated by a particularly loud, pained roar. It seemed like Petra was doing some good work here, which made it seem all the more like she should've gone to help Rowan anyway—but she was right, too; you can't insist on calling someone boss and then fail to act like it.

Turning the corner, she found Petra running full-tilt away from the turtle's uncannily toothy beak snapping angrily at her. "Hey hey! Glad you could make it!" She half-turned, raising a wall in the thing's way which it tore through almost right away. Still, this bought her time to turn the rest of the way and start backing up instead, building a stronger wall. "I made some holes for ya. Arrows go in, mist comes out."
"..Got it," Zeno said, running around to one side. There were some of Nico's trees here hurling fruits concentrated on some specific points along the turtle's side—suggesting that was where the holes were. It wasn't exactly easy to tell by sight, otherwise.
"Oh-bytheway I finished your painting this morning! You should drop by and see it once this is all over!"

Drawing her weapon, Zeno couldn't help but laugh. Would that everyone had Petra's casual optimism in the face of fighting beasts that were reportedly the extremities of an eldritch abomination. She drew the string back and sent a spread of arrows at one of the target spaces, watching for one to land deeper than the others so she'd know where the real bull's-eye was. The rest of the arrows disappeared, but she kept that one to mark her place while the mist monster roared and half-turned toward her, swiping its big clawed foot her way; she raised a light-shield for it to scratch and ran around, readying another shot.

The old arrow disappeared just in time for the next to strike. One after another, Zeno's dead aim stuck arrows into that hole, a couple of Nico's fruits hitting the back end of them sometimes to drive them farther in. Petra took advantage of the turtle's attention being off her to run up to the opposite side and drive her sword in again, slamming her gauntletted fist into the hilt for the first hit and then draing her sheath to get some longer-range bashes. Zeno could see the geyser of mist from all the way on the opposite end of the turtle, and of course it wasn't happy, twisting back around to try and bite the earthbending vixen once again. She had to think fast and place some light barriers in the way of its swiping tail, buying herself enough time to dive and roll waay back out of its range. Well, at least Nico was far enough away to not get caught in this thing's wild thrashing—hopefully.

---

The wires were obvious enough to Tora: Big, braided lines of silver tied to the base of some lampposts, going from high enough for an easy session of limbo to over her head. Any normal athelete just might be able to polevault over this, but it was no problem at all for her to leap into the air, rocket herself well clear of them, and land on the other side with a tuck and roll, popping back up to her feet facing the opposite direction with little to no recovery time at all. That said, all this excitement left her the slightest bit out of breath as that turtle bore down toward her, drawing its head back ready for another sharp snap.

"Get to one side!" army man's voice came, and Tora nodded, jumping up and away to land over next to the Corporal. She was actually holding onto both ends of the line of wire herself, one in each hand, and as the turtle began to trip over the lines Tora had seen, some more wire struck out from either side of the beast to grab its back legs too. Samuel Langdon pulled hard, helping the turtle's forward momentum and directing it in a way that had it tilting more and more precariously forward.

Hugo caught up at this point, and saw what was going on easily enough. "Want me to push?"
"If you—nngh..please!"

The shield maiden yelled at the top of her lungs, sending the impact force forward and up at the base of the turtle's tail. Then she ran up and bashed that same spot with her shield in a forward leap, giving it that final bit of kinetic energy needed to completely destroy its balance and send it tumbling forward onto its back.

"RrrRRAAAH!" Tora screamed over the Corporal's suggestion to go take advantage of this compromising position, already doing it. She jumped up onto the center of the thing's underside, slashing hard repeatedly into it. The line of spiky wire around the thing's limbs was directed to two more lampposts, keeping each of its legs pointed upward against its attempts to flail itself back to an upright position. Hugo jumped and slammed her shield down hard on the base of the thing's tail, keeping it from levering itself upright with that method too.

With army man's power and strength all occupied with keeping the turtle from flipping itself upright, and Hugo busy restraining the tail, the only real damage sources were Tora's continued slashing and some sound-blasts from the shield maiden. Nonetheless, this proved more than sufficient, each hit erupting in jets of black mist from the thing, as seemingly its solid shell was "balanced for" by a particularly weak and soft underbelly. By the time the enormous reptile's immense strength began to strain the lampposts holding it, breaking three of them in half and uprooting the last one from the concrete, it was already beginning to look very indistinct, the sure sign that a mist monster was almost dead.

---

That's it, I am never insulting support classes again. Magus stopped, huffing in air to recover from a relatively brief run, and picked herself back to an upright posture again. Light was super-strong, super-fast, and could make lasers, but it was hard to overstate just how great it was that she could make those Wolf Chimeras see enemies everywhere, or in whatever particular direction she wanted, and also not see their real opponents for extended periods of time.

It was surprisingly difficult to hold her tongue when casting, and the strong spells she was testing out here seemed even more draining than they otherwise would be without it. But her awareness of just how fast these things could run and how easy it would be for one to snap her up in its jaws mid-spell helped her self-control quite a bit in the battle with her natural inclination to take the path of least resistance. While Light went to work running up next to the beast in a blur of hyperspeed motion, Magus settled on another hard-hitting spell to hopefully finish this one off with, too.

She'd thought up a way to make more powerful spells this morning, like that lightning bolt. It required her to think if not say much more than just a word or two describing its name. It was more like a proper incantation, a request she made of her magic, or the elements it manipulated themselves—a carefully composed letter or poem or something, which somehow persuaded them to have the spell's results occur. This time, she finished channeling just as Light leapt off of the big beast's back, leaving two of her own sword behind somehow, and made it pounce up and land face-first in the concrete again.

Blazes of the rising sun, burn my foes to ash and cinder. Fission Bomb! A point of light like the beginning of one of Fay's explosions shot out from the tip of her blade, continuing in a straight line until it hit the mist monster in the side. Then it expanded out into a sphere of white energy, its diameter pushing out to a person's full height; the sphere persisted for a couple of seconds before vanishing all at once, leaving behind the trail of mist that every one of these monsters seemed to dissipate into when it died.

Magus bent halfway forward, leaning her hands on her knees and gasping for breath in the wake of casting that spell. Okay, that one had to have cost a pretty penny in MP and stamina, she thought; a fine finisher but not a great choice for a mid-battle spell. Overall, it was probably a good thing that she tested out these 'high-level' spells in a relatively safe environment like this, where even if they weren't the last blow, Light could distract the chimeras before they came to claw her face off, or at worst make them chase something else instead of her.

Before she caught her breath enough to stand up, a hand was gently placed on her shoulder. "You, okay there?"
"Yhhess, fffhh...just uh, you know. Lots." Magus pulled herself mostly upright to turn toward Light, who was now standing at her left side facing her. "Guess I am a kinda squishy mage, by comparison."

"Still, that was pretty..." Light's ears turned in the direction of the apartment complex first, followed by her face and then full body. Looking that way herself, Magus saw some guy running toward them. His appearance shimmered for a second—Light making some kind of illusion, presumably, and he—between pants—whispered a phrase and turned immediately into the gorgeous, blond-haired vixen from the day before. This seemed to instantly give her the stamina to run the rest of the way to them, not even out of breath anymore, but she didn't seem to take much comfort in this fact.

"What's wrong?" Light said, echoing back the same kind of worried expression.

---

Gemma (in her combined form) came around to the front of the building just in time to see the monster finish forming, a fair distance up in the air. It was a long, thick thing, like some gigantic snake or worm—and the huge, circular mouth it presented as it fell down toward the street reinforced the latter impression. It also had no eyes, and didn't even seem to notice her as it struck the earth, its downward momentum sending it straight down through the street and whatever utilities were beneath it. Its long body undulated in uncomfortably swift, jerking movements to push it even farther into the ground, until its entire body was gone from sight, leaving behind a huge hole where part of the street had been.

"Uh.." Folding her ears down uncertainly, she ran up and around to the other side of the hole, looking down into it. She could hear rumbling down there, but it was hard to pinpoint a singular location; the ground under her feet shifted slightly as the monster no doubt continued tunneling its way through what should've been solid bedrock below.

Her attention was drawn back to the surface by the sound of the front door to Mr. Nelson's shop opening, the familiar, friendly chime of a bell attached to it to let the employees (or owner) inside know that someone had entered. In this case, it was instead the lightning-wielding vixen herself coming out. She noticed the hole right away and ran up to the opposite side of it. "Hey, what made this?"
"Um, some kinda giant worm thing," Emma said, vaguely tracing out a tube shape with her hands. "It just kinda dove underground when it landed, and uh..it's, still down there."

Ning looked up at her. "Well then, where d'ya think—"