Episode 72: The Twin Dragons
It was not another hydra that descended from the air to assault the
VI's base. It was dragon, much like the one that Light's group had
taken down earlier that week...with Amp's help.
The giant, flying beast landed hard enough to collapse concrete and
shake the ground Rowan stood on, and it roared a challenge that
seemed directed right at her. She stood firm, drawing some of
the water around her up into a solid dome of a shield with several
long, thin tentacles writhing out from its surface. When the dragon
drew its head back and snapped forward, breathing out mist that
formed smaller monsters and threatened to disorient any who breathed
it in, Rowan sent out a crashing wave in reply, normal water vapor
pushing the mist away while the rest of the water reached out as
short-lived tentacles to pick up the dragons' spawn and slam each one
into the ground, dissipating it.
Seeing that it wasn't going to be as easy as that, the dragon took
one step forward, then another. Rowan raised her sword, pointing the
tip at it with her eyes narrowed; the limbs on her shield combined
into a single long, thick one that reached forward to whip against
the monster's muzzle and try to drive it back. It didn't so much as
flinch from the impact, instead beginning to pick up speed toward
her. When it threatened to get too close for comfort, Rowan leapt
into the air, pushing water up into a column below her, gaining
enough height to clear the top of the dragon and land behind its back
in a hard forward roll along the uneven, broken ground.
She recovered her feet as the dragon turned around to face
her—thankfully its target prioity was her first, and
whatever was behind the VI's front doors after. But as she stood
there, panting, it was terribly clear that throwing around so much
water so often was overextending the usual scope of her powers. She
wouldn't be holding off the giant beast for very long doing things
like this.
But this was where her real plan came in. It was something
that she'd thought of after hearing what Tenpo said the night before.
I just need more time was a thought of desperation, but not
revenge, anger or hatred, and yet it had been sufficient to
grant her a power boost for a limited period. The Giver had explained
to Light that emotions granted power, and that destructive emotions
destroyed...but that didn't mean that there weren't other
emotions to latch onto, other simple statements one could so keenly
feel that it would empower her in sufficiently desperate situation.
That was why she didn't want any help at first. No distractions, no
allies to make it seem like she stood a good chance of success. Rowan
had now successfully manipulated herself into a desperate position.
Now it was time to see if that risk was going to pay off. But first,
in the last few seconds of the unnatural sense of emotional calm that
her vixen form usually seemed to provide, she reminded herself of one
thing...
The timing was almost comical.
Ning was in the middle of asking where the giant worm made of black
mist was going to come back up from underground when it loudly burst
out from under her, throwing concrete and rock out on all sides. One
three-thousandth of a second she was there, and the next she was just
gone, the black, indistinct mass in her place swiftly towering
beyond the upper range of Emma's vision.
A kind of helpless squeak came from her throat as she stared up at it
all, wide-eyed, but then she split, diving away to both sides at
once, before she really even knew why. The front end of the giant
worm slammed down straight into the ground she'd just been standing
on, and then it ran along the ground, twisting its gaping maw toward
Plus, who landed in a run and just kept running—the other body
keeping her distance as well. In the middle of its pursuit, the thing
began to pulse with electricity, sparks arcing in a spiral around its
body, but after a moment it jerked abrutply off to one side for no
apparent reason, the current flickering around randomly and even
seeming to hurt it briefly as some of the mist composing it steamed
off, before returning to the spiral shape as the worm's trajectory
turned back down into the earth.
Plus turned to face it as it sank back into the ground, panting
heavily. She felt sick. Angry, panicked. More than a few of
her thoughts were in the tenor of How could I let this happen?!
The rest of her mind had a feeling of raw, painful rage threatening
to swallow it all up. But that wasn't...
Minus swallowed hard, and Plus gasped, forcibly catching her breath.
There was a faint aura, flickering like fire, just beginning to be
visible around each body: A lighter gray around Plus and a darker one
for Minus. Emma knew what this was; she'd seen it happen to Light in
news footage of when that six-armed thing ate her. It was what
had happened to Tenpo to very nearly stop time on one of Japan's
islands for an entire day. It was "snapping", a temporary,
self-destructive power boost that was supposed to help vixens fight
things that ate their friends. But it came with a price—that whole
'self-destructive' part; plus it made the empowered feel invincible,
reckless with the single-minded goal of revenge.
That's
not what I need!
Emma pushed back against it all: The panic, the rage, and especially
the guilt trip. She needed more power and especially stamina right
now, yes, but she really needed to focus. This monster
was eerily silent compared to the others: No victory screech when it
ate Ning, no aggressive roaring. For being a gigantic worm, it was
impossibly stealthy. But—with two vantage points—she could hear
where its movements were loudest and quietest underground and use
that to sort of calculate where it was as it now began to rise back
up out of the ground.
She held on to the panic and rage tightly, reining it in, keeping it
under control—but not releasing it entirely. She needed that
power, but not the recklessness, so she took hold of her own mind,
her very own emotions, the same way she controlled every other
thing her powers let her do, and kept them just on the edge—like
some kind of zen meta-thinking trick. Minus backflipped away a few
seconds before the worm was going to burst out of the ground under
her, and threw a volley of every dagger she had access to, plus some
kunai and bullets, all at it, vanishing all of them into light with
the opposite of Shuriken's power until it appeared and then releasing
them all at once to strike the side of its head as it rose up out of
the ground.
Minus kept backing away as it rose up, some of the electricity which
twisted around it gathering into a bolt and firing down at her. That
worm had Ning's power, and along with it total control over
the electricity around it, but nevertheless she was able to catch the
lightning when it came within a couple of inches of her, practically
holding it between her hands and fighting its natural inclination to
go through her just successfully enough to instead thrust it down
into the ground. She was slightly burned but not electrocuted as a
result, so she turned and ran, letting Plus's eyes guide her into the
right timing to dive away and not get swallowed when that gargantuan
circle of teeth making up its maw came slamming back down into the
ground.
Who had her—? Minus did! She got up, yanked the phone out, and sent
a series of hastily-written, poorly autocorrected, possibly
incomprehensible texts to Amp—to Amory. Hoping he got the message
anyway, she stuffed it back in the bag, still huffing air in to catch
her breath from all the running.
Both bodies circled slowly, listening carefully for the worm's next
attack. She could still feel the sick panic and rage, a rapid-fire of
thoughts that her power's expanded mental capacity let her think all
at once, and still she kept a tight grip on them all. Be patient,
be patient, she told herself, almost mentally yelling over the
torrent of thoughts. You don't need to kill it, not now.
You just need to survive!
I
just need to hold it here...
...until
help arrives.
Rowan nodded to herself, taking a small step back as the dragon
approached again and letting some of the panic and desperation flood
in. But instead of feeling worried about herself, she focused on the
reason why she was doing this. The faces of everyone she knew
in the VI, all of the puppeteer's victims. Cynthia. Dawn.
Everyone else beyond that who her failure today could harm.
Thinking of all of that, it was easy to find an emotion, a simple
statement to latch on to.
"You will not...hurt them." It came in an almost-whisper at
first, interrupted mid-statement to gasp for air as she was still
somewhat out of breath. The dragon snapped its head back and breathed
at her again, and this time she rode a wave backwards while sending a
separate one forward to crash into its spawn and dilute the hazardous
mist into harmlessness.
Taking a deep breath, and letting it out, Rowan repeated herself, a little louder. "You will not hurt them." Her body felt strangely light, even more than usual, and the feeling of having exerted herself eased off—not gone, but muted somehow. It seemed to be working.
Taking a deep breath, and letting it out, Rowan repeated herself, a little louder. "You will not hurt them." Her body felt strangely light, even more than usual, and the feeling of having exerted herself eased off—not gone, but muted somehow. It seemed to be working.
The dragon came close enough to swipe at her with its giant limbs,
and she dismissed the dome around herself, instead focusing all
available water into two giant tentacles, one catching each swipe and
wrapping around the foreleg to pin it in place. Staring up at the
giant, flying lizard's short, porcine muzzle, its rows of spearlike
teeth, Rowan glared, deliberately feeding the rage she felt toward
this monster, and every other monster, and everything they
represented to her: All of the pain and hardship and death
that their very existence had brought to Earth. "You.
Will. Not. Hurt them."
The monster roared back as if it could understand her—yes I
will—and then struck forward to bite her; she let
the limbs binding its forelegs collapse and pushed a pillar of water
up from under her feet to get out of the way, turning the water the
dragon's mouth closed around into long, sharp spikes which that
closing motion speared into its head from the inside outward, the
tips visibly sticking out in a few places as black mist streamed out
of it.
It roared in pain and rage, raising itself up onto its hind legs to
chase her. Rowan screamed right back: "YOU! WILL NOT! HURT
THEM!" As she did, her need to protect everyone
manifested itself in her powers to its greatest extent: The water all
around gathered into the pillar she was standing on as it rose up to
surround her body completely. She released her sword from her hands,
reforming it almost unconsciously as the water around her formed into
the head of another kind of dragon—a long, thin snakelike one made
entirely of water—with her head behind its eyes. It would look to
an observer like she was practically piloting it, but Rowan could
feel every drop of water composing it as though it was her own
body—it was her—her weapon becoming a row of wide, sharp
teeth running the full length of the mouth.
She darted forward, wrapping around the gargantuan black dragon and
pulling it back down onto all fours, ending with her head just in
front of its neck and striking forward to sink her teeth—her
weapon—into its neck. It thrashed and roared, trying to breathe out
more mist, but a torrent of water choked its throat and some
tentacles thrashed out from the sides of her midsection to wrap
around the monster's wings, turning briefly to blades and spikes
before falling apart into water again.
This time the worm came up next to Plus, taking its momentum from
underground in a forward direction instead of erupting into the sky.
She was running before it surfaced, but couldn't outpace it even with
all the extra speed that Rory's and Tenpo's tricks could provide.
Thinking fast, she pulled up a few shards of concrete and merged them
with some light, forming a long wooden pole like Fay's weapon, but
ending in a spike—a spear—and backflipped just as its gaping maw
came inches from the tip of her tail. This leap just barely cleared
its diameter, and she stuck the sharp end into the worm's body,
pushing hard against the lightning which still tried to race
up the relatively non-conductive wood.
From there, she managed a kind of upside-down sideways flip using the
palm of her hand on the flat end of the spear as a springboard, and
with a bit of help from manipulating her own gravity the way Tora did
landed just a few feet to the worm's side. Bending her hand that way
with her full body's weight on it made her wrist sore, but she had to
keep running to keep its electrified body from ramming into her from
behind as it twisted sideways to continue the pursuit. Miraculously,
the worm once again seemed to lose control of Ning's power and jerked
in the opposite direction for a moment as more mist rose off of its
body.
Minus was busy too: Keeping a healthy distance from the worm's giant
body, pushing at the ground just in front of Plus to keep it as flat
and stable as possible, throwing some bursts of fire at the monster.
As it slid back into the ground she risked converging her bodies
toward a spot its back end had just vacated, quickly refreshing
Plus's magic some from the heavy exertion required to make herself
just perceptibly faster with time magic.
Her four ears picked up someting unusual, a steadily-building hum,
from within the big hole the worm had entered when it appeared, and
she quickly ran her bodies apart again, trying to be ready for
anything—Plus forming as solid a light-shield as possible between
herself and the hole, and each body raising a barrier of shattered
concrete and rock in a circle around her. This proved wise as a
series of lightning bolts struck upward from the hole, each one
splitting into several fingers of electricity pointed at one of the
two bodies. The light-shield broke quickly, the barriers of rock
caught most shots, and she was able to catch the several small sparks
that got over the circle and just redirect them sideways. Make it
a dome next time...
After that the worm was under Minus again, so she threw the wall
apart to start running right away, getting a few yards off before the
worm struck upward in a short arc that landed behind her and began
its pursuit.
Rowan released the mist dragon's neck and darted diagonally up into
the sky, letting go of most of her mass so the retaliatory swipes and
bites only hit falling water. She landed in a large, shallow pool of
water now sitting between the monster and the VI's headquarters,
pulling it up into her body as a very long back end now coiled into a
tall conical shape. Then she thrust skyward, forming any leftover
water below into spinning blades thrown up and around to bury
themselves in the beast's center mass.
The black dragon replied with a roar, launching itself into the sky too, flying to bite into a section of Rowan's body. She broke off that part into more spikes through its head, coiling around it again—making two long arms ended in long hands appear near her head and reforming part of her teeth into claws for them, raking across the beast's back and wings. Her back end split into innumerable long, thin tentacle-like limbs, each grabbing the dragon's body and yanking it down with her as her head struck back toward the earth. Together they crashed hard into the crater the dragon had made when it first landed, deepening it and flooding it with water as all of the extra limbs fell apart.
The black dragon replied with a roar, launching itself into the sky too, flying to bite into a section of Rowan's body. She broke off that part into more spikes through its head, coiling around it again—making two long arms ended in long hands appear near her head and reforming part of her teeth into claws for them, raking across the beast's back and wings. Her back end split into innumerable long, thin tentacle-like limbs, each grabbing the dragon's body and yanking it down with her as her head struck back toward the earth. Together they crashed hard into the crater the dragon had made when it first landed, deepening it and flooding it with water as all of the extra limbs fell apart.
Rowan darted away before the dragon could bite at her "head"
(and her actual body), leaving behind most of the water and
landing in a vastly shortened form between the monster and the VI's
headquarters again. She pulled together the pool her opponent was now
standing in, twisting thorned tentacles of water up around each of
its legs and its tail. It retaliated by drawing its head back and
snapping forward, firing a sharp, narrow jet of black mist straight
toward her head. She pushed herself up and around in the air, and the
dragon's shot followed her, some small flying mist-monsters similar
to the ones that had swarmed around the day before appearing in its
wake.
Eventually she managed to get around to one side of the beast,
pulling some of the water under it over into her "body" to
make it longer again. The dragon quit breathing mist, instead taking
advantage of a looser grip on its legs to leap, propelling itself up
into a low flight. Its wings, though partially torn, were still
enough for it to turn around toward her in pursuit. Rowan threw
herself up over the monster, trying to twist around it again to force
it to land, but it took advantage of a moment during this when her
head was in range to raise a huge, clawed forepaw and hit it hard.
She saw this coming with not enough time or maneuverability to dodge,
but just enough to pull the water-dragon-head's mass together,
teeth and all, in front of her to block the impact. The claw didn't
make it through the block to hit her directly, but enough of the
strike's momentum still transferred to knock her back out of the
water and into a hard fall down toward the ground.
Emma had another idea. Shuriken's trick didn't actually have her
going into one shadow and out of another—well, it did, but
not as if they were two ends of the same portal. Rather, it was like
she temporarily made a "location" that was "inside"
of the shadows, using the shadows themselves as a portal into it, and
so could then wait as long as she wanted and then exit any shadow
close enough to also be attached to that location. Emma's imitation
couldn't make that "location" very big, just barely enough
for a person to fit inside, so she couldn't really travel
through shadows this way...but she could hide in them.
Minus wasn't going to outrun the worm with the kind of speed it had,
so instead she booked it to the shadow of a nearby building, pulling
it together slightly to make a small patch "dark enough",
and Plus quickly placed a portal for her to drop into and hide while
the monster went "over" it. It twisted itself back around,
just barely not bowling into the building, seeming confused as to why
it hadn't just swallowed a vixen—and fired another bolt at Plus.
She saw it coming soon enough to place a light-shield in the way and
back off a few steps, letting the lightning shatter it and scatter
apart, falling into the ground instead of continuing on to her body.
After that the worm slid back down underground, and Minus jumped back
up out of the shadow, letting it disperse to its natural state again.
Its behavior was strangely predictable: Alternating from one target
to the other every time. This made some sense as a strategy,
since if this was any other two people they wouldn't be able to
consistently tell where the worm was coming from and eventually one
of them would probably fail the lucky timing to dodge away or start
running. For Gemma, though, this was incredibly useful: Minus could
catch her breath and briskly walk away while Plus ran toward those
buildings to prepare to dive into another shadow to escape it.
The worm came up vertically again, and Plus jumped away a moment
before it emerged; she dove down into a shadow as a shower of sparks
came off of its body toward her to evade them, and stayed there until
it arced its fall over toward Minus. Then she popped back out,
throwing a couple of knives with point-explosions centered on their
tips, timed to start as they hit its body, and backed quickly away,
placing several quick light shields as she went to block some smaller
retaliatory shocks. Minus simply waited until the beast was committed
to landing in a particular area and then ran clear of that space,
drawing up a dome of rock around herself to absorb a lightning bolt
the very back of the worm shot down at her just before following the
front and middle into the ground.
The landing was rough and painful. Rowan's first instinct was to try
to gather water from the ground toward her to cushion the fall, but
she couldn't get it there in time and just hit the dry concrete hard
with her left shoulder, going into a long sideways roll that ended
with her face-up. She was left feeling physically stunned, the
exhaustion that had been pushed back before asserting itself in
full—but, knowing she couldn't stay here, she forced herself
to stand up, reforming her weapon in its usual sword shape as a
crutch in her right hand in the process.
Now the water Rowan had been trying to gather came to her,
sweeping into an unnatural pool up to her knees. Her legs, side, and
left arm all worked; miraculously, nothing had been broken by that
botched landing. But she was badly scraped and bruised in some
places, and terribly spent despite the power boost. Her body shaking,
she stood up, drawing some water to come up and heal the worst of
it—a technique she had relatively little practice with that
required some degree of concentration. Looking up at the dragon now
in front of/above her as it roared, readying to dive, Rowan forced
some air into her lungs in a half-gasp to let out in a low, defiant
growl back.
I don't know which two things in this episode are the "twin dragons" themselves. In my mind there are several possible valid options.
The "cover art" I imagine for this episode has a vertical split right down the center. On the left you can see Minus from behind looking on as the worm (with electricity visibly spiraling around it) chases Plus, and is very close to catching up. On the right is the mist dragon's head from behind, looking up at Rowan's "water dragon" which is looking back down at it. And this part is kind of hard to describe, but where the worm's body meets the vertical split it seems to "change into" the back end of the Rowan-water-dragon's body, maybe swapping back and forth a couple of times, so that the overall picture looks like a single long snake with the worm's head on one end and Rowan on the other. There's probably also some perspective meddling so that the left side is kind of looking down with a flatter view of the ground, and the right side is looking up mostly at the sky.
P.S. I had to doctor Episode 71 slightly to include a mention of Fay at the beginning because, of course, right after needing a slight retcon to explain Nico's absence during the swarm I forgot someone else. I think it makes sense this way, still, because that episode left off on the relevant turtle fight pretty much right after Zeno arrived, so I'm gonna say Fay just needed longer to get ready and/or reach the location.
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