Battle Vixens! - 73

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Episode 73: Rebel Rebel

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GIANT WORM

ATE NINE

Ring

help

tell everyone keep distance

"I already sent something to Dr. Quinn," Amp said at the same time as they were both reading the series of texts, "I..think he's on his way already."
Light nodded. "Okay. Who's driving? You wanna come?" she added toward the vixen in the hat.

"Uh..y-yeah." Marcus nodded. The wiki had taken to calling the result of a monster eating a vixen and using her powers "nightmares", and not without reason. But...she wasn't going to run away and hide now, when they definitely needed all the help they could get.

"I'll drive," Amp said, "c'mon." She turned and started off toward, presumably, the parking garage.

Magus started running that way at first, but got winded pretty quick—the exhaustion from all that exertion during the fight with the chimeras still fresh. If she'd known there would be another fight right away, she probably would've been more frugal...but then it wouldn't have been over so soon, maybe, and that was at least equally bad...?

"Hey, uh.." Light was practically just walking to keep up with her. "Okay if I carry you instead? Prolly faster."
"Uh...s-sure." She couldn't quite suppress a mild blush at the idea of the tall, gorgeous vixen picking her up, but tried not to think too hard about that, just stopping to let her do it and holding on as Light took off in an unbelievably swift sprint, especially given she was carrying a whole extra person. On the other hand, Magus was certainly lighter right now than usual.

---

Cynthia was with Dawn in their—in her room, rather, picking the tall, dark-haired vixen's brain for what all she remembered about them so far. There wasn't much, but the few details she shared sounded very familiar. At the same time, she seemed slightly tense about the questioning, like there was something she didn't want to be asked..but, try as she might, Cynthia hadn't managed to come up with a question close enough to that sensitive topic to confront her about it.

Both of them could hear the echo out in the halls and other rooms of a peculiar sort of beeping, a sound which had also gone throughout the cafeteria the day before during breakfast. Cynthia had had enough foresight yesterday to ask someone what it meant and confirm her suspicion that it was basically a "monster alarm" to let everyone know another of those attacks was going on. She exchanged a look with Dawn, whose expression was worried but deferential, and got up to go out the door and start down the hall.

There were some of those armed guys at the first intersection they came to. "Please go back to your rooms," one of them said, "for your own safety. One of those things showed up outside the front door."
"Well, screw my own safety, I wanna help!" These guys had a lot more backbone than the ones they had bypassed the day before; he didn't so much as flinch when she got in his face.

"Our people have it well in hand, Miss Hargrove," he said flatly. "We are grateful for your help yesterday, but the mistakes which made it necessary won't be repeated."

"Oh, yeah? Who's fightin' that thing out there?" She backed off a bit, but crossed her arms and fixed him with a glare.

"Mr. Shepherd for sure; I don't know who else."
Another one nodded. "Saw him running out just a couple of minutes ago."

Cynthia felt a bit of a growl in her throat, thinking about that guy, acting like he knew what was best for everyone. Keeping them stuck inside was probably his idea, too. There was the faintest temptation to threaten these guys with her powers, bring her sword or something...but she felt a slightly cold hand on her shoulder, and looked back.

"Cynth..." Dawn gave her a worried look, with her ears down. She'd been about to go off the rails again. But...! She couldn't just go sit around, knowing they were under attack and that people were risking their lives for them. She looked forward again at the guards.

"..I wanna watch," she said. "Show me whoever's out there knows what they're doing. And if they're not, I'm going out there if I have to burn a hole through the wall."

The guy who'd spoken first exchanged glances with a few of the other guards, before looking back at the two vixens. "..Alright. Come with me."

---

Clark's phone buzzed at almost the same time as the news did a smash cut from one of the fights in the city to a shot of a gigantic worm towering its way up into the sky. He read it as it crashed back down, tensing more than he had at any point the day before, and Rory knew none of this was good news. Then he exhaled and pushed off the armrest. "I..I have to go. And, help," he said, pointing vaguely toward the TV. They had someone on the phone yelling that it had eaten 'the lightning girl' and almost done the same thing to 'the twins'.

"Then I should come too—" she said, starting to stand up, but was cut off so hard she fell back into the couch.
"NO!" It was more panic than anger that made him yell at her, but it really stung all the same. "I.." He paused for a second, looking very sorry about it, and continued: "You should stay safe, here. Please. I can..we'll have enough to manage this, without.." He shook his head, leaned down toward her to take a hand, looking and sounding on the verge of tears. "I'm sorry, I just...I can't lose you again."

In the face of all of this, Rory couldn't move. He seemed to take her stunned silence as an affirmative and nodded back, letting go and turning to run oustide, starting the car out there and clearing the driveway before she had processed anything enough to even mentally respond. That response was a surprise, something she hadn't felt since, apparently, coming back to life.

Rory felt angry. A deep growl came from her throat and a only few tears leaked out of her eyes. The main thing she thought for a moment was, How dare you?! He was going to go and risk his life fighting, and not let her help? Put himself in danger and not give her an opportunity to defend him from it? Even without specific memories to point to, Rory knew that she would never, ever stand for that. Doctor Rory Quinn would not sit idly by and be protected, not when she could fight—not by him, or anyone else!

There was something soft in her left hand, and when she looked, she found she had just torn some of the upholstry out of the couch armrest. Letting go of that, she quickly stood and went to the house-phone, dialing the only number she actually knew: 9-1-1. She calmed herself down enough to speak respectfully to the person on the other line, who she didn't know and wasn't presently angry with, sniffing slightly from the tears just before they picked up.

"Hello, yes. I am Rory, um..Dr. Rory Quinn. I, uh, I'm at my house. And I need a ride to the big, the worm thing in town.

...Yes, that one. You don't have to get too close, it's just..much faster than walking, I think? And would save my energy for fighting it.

...Thank you very much!" she ended the call cheerfully before hanging up and slamming the phone back into the receiver (but restrained herself from using enough force to break it).

Rory stood up and went to the front door, still tearing up a bit while she screamed at him in her head: You reckless idiot! I'll show you. I'll help you whether you want it or not!

---

Rowan was probably aware she had an audience, more or less. All of the vixens generally did, between news cameras and people with phones all over. However, she probably wasn't aware of the particular trio of audience members in one of the VI's security rooms, and Alan sincerely hoped that the VI's figurehead superhero never did find out. The exterior of the VI had plenty of security cameras, especially near the entrances, and it was pretty simple to angle one of them up to get a good view of the fight.

Ms. Hargrove was kind of like a steamroller towing a tank—the tank being Dawn, who had always been relatively cooperative in the past, from what he'd heard. She did seem to reel her in to some extent, but it wasn't much of a substitute for actual self-control. It didn't help that he kind of agreed with the opinion written all over her face: Why keep these valuable fighters locked inside? But...at least when it came to something like this, Rowan got what he wanted.

Things were going pretty well at the time he first got the feed set up. Rowan seemed to have invented on the spot a brand new power power to make her own Zord entirely out of water, complete with ridiculous shapeshifting capabilities and everything. Dawn even seemed to be looking at her like, 'see, she's doing fine out there', but Cynthia clearly wasn't happy to see it was just one person fighting, no matter how effectively.

Surely Rowan had backup on the way. It was just that she'd been the only one here exactly when the monsters showed up, right? Alan took a moment to sneak out of the room, shut the door, and pick up some of the radio chatter, hoping they wouldn't be paying enough attention to make out the words with those vulpine ears of theirs. That was when he found out that no one was coming, at least not right away. That Mr. Shepherd's explicit orders had been to go fight everything else and then assist her in fighting a literal dragon. This sat...not so well with him. He went back inside, hoping to find that everything was still fine. That was about the time Rowan's Zord got socked in the face by said dragon.

---

"Here I am." Nico looked over from the fight with the giant turtle to find Fay standing there, staff in hand, panting slightly from a recent sprint.
"Oh, hiya. Nearly missed the 'party'," she said, giving the last word some air-quotes. "Um, Petra kinda poked some holes in the big guy's shell. Y'see where Zeno's got arrows sticking out?" Fay nodded. "If you can get your staff in one of those spots, the explosion'll hit it where it hurts."
"...I'm on it." She ran off into the fight.

The monster was already fairly close to death now, despite its relatively high endurance. Nico went and focused on growing the magic-booster a bit more, finding that her fruit-throwers weren't doing all that much anyway. Fay stood to one side of the giant turtle for a moment, concentrating, before running up and jumping, running a short way up the shell, yanking out one of Zeno's arrows (which made a small jet of mist come out all by itself) and jabbing her staff straight in.

The explosion not only hurt the big guy pretty bad—given how loud a cry and violent of a turn he made right after—but seemed to widen the hole a decent bit too. The next time one of Nico's fruits hit him in that area, nearly the whole thing hit paydirt. For the first time, the turtle seemed to notice that those plants existed, and snapped one apart with its claws. It was a kind of uncomfortable senstaion to 'feel' one of her 'creations' being destroyed like this, but this was something Nico was already pretty used to. Anyway, the distraction helped everyone else capitalize on the holes yet again, and the cycle continued. Before long he was going down, turning to a cloud of black mist which disappeared into the midmorning sky.

Petra waved everyone toward her, and they quickly converged. "Alright, who wants to carpool? My wife's got a car revving and a blatant disrespect for speed limits."
"All the time?" Fay said—a rare joke.
"No, just right now. And certain mornings."
"Yeah yeah, let's go," Zeno said. "I'm worried about the boss."
"Alright, follow me!" She took off in a full-tilt run. Nico was always surprised by her ridiculous stamina; even though she'd just been standing around keeping plants alive, she didn't feel up to running at quite that speed. Thankfully she didn't have to, as Karis drove right up to the edge of the still-usable portion of the road.

---

Her body barely wanted to stand and seemed prepared to refuse to walk or run, but Rowan could still feel the water around her. She used it to lift herself up, riding a wave to one side as the black dragon dove, turning herself around and landing sitting up on the ground a few feet away from a swipe from its right forearm. While the giant beast was busy slowly turning its flight around to ready another dive, however, Rowan found several of the small monsters it had spawned a moment ago converging toward her.

She picked herself up onto her feet using the water, lifting her sword to a ready position. It felt impossibly heavy, but when the first of them swooped, teeth bared, she managed to swipe up through it and destroy it. After that, though, there were three coming at once from different angles. Her mind could think of a dozen different ways to dance through their strikes and destroy them, but her body was too spent to carry out any of them. However...all of them were aimed at her upper body. She just let herself collapse down and backwards, cushioning the fall with more water, so they all went just above her. This wasn't sustainable at all; her body desperately wanted to just stay here or on the ground for a long while, and the next two were certainly going to aim lower.

A jet of fire passed by above her, wiping all of them out. Rowan felt immense relief for only the fraction of a second that it took her to register the logical origin of that fire, and then immediately found herself strong enough to stand, look, and yell. Cynthia and Dawn were running out from the VI's front doors. "Ghh..get back inside!" she waved. The newfound strength came from the same place, the same emotion as before, but it felt less right than before, distinctly painful now. Much of the water near the entrance raised into a semicircle of wall before them.

"Are you stupid or something?!" Cynthia threw forward a jet of fire, turning the wall in front of her into steam long enough to jump through it.

You'll get hurt. "You'll die out here!"

"Me? I just saved your life! Who died and made you king anyway?"

Rowan felt a stream of water from her eyes, and took unreasonably long to realize that it was tears. The more rational part of her mind knew that Cynthia was right, that without their help she would've died—maybe not from the smaller monsters, but from the dragon itself—but it felt wrong. She couldn't let anyone get hurt because of her, even if it meant...

"Hey, HEY—heads up, MOVE!" Neither Dawn's nor Cynthia's voice, but Petra's—from one side. The yelling just now had not drowned out the noise of tires squealing, but had helped her fail to mentally register it for a moment. Feeling instantly exhausted again, Rowan barely managed to turn around and see the dragon diving from what had just been behind her, and too close to get away. "Augh, too late!" All of the ground left between her and the monster raised into a wall, which it crashed straight into. It wasn't enough to stop the dragon, but its forward momentum was slowed enough for Rowan to fall back into the water surrounding her and ride it away to safety before it could crash right into her. She landed on her back, panting heavily and still crying, starting to feel kind of sick; the desperation power seemed to have actually worn off for good this time.

Zeno ran up and knelt next to her. "Hey, you still with us?" Rowan's eyes turned to look at her. "Good." She looked forward, drawing and firing several arrows, then placing two or three light shields in a row to block some incoming jet-spray from the dragon. "Not that I know a whole lot, but, you know—refusing people's help all the time can't be great for you, mentally speaking."

Rowan sniffed and let out a slower, more stable breath. "Thanks for the tip."

She could hear one of Fay's explosions from the dragon's direction, which seemed to cut off the mist spray. Zeno was looking up and firing, probably taking down the things it had spawned. "Sure. Hey, this isn't the best place for a nap, either," she said, looking back down and offering her a hand. Rowan took it, managing with some effort and help to sit up. At this point Cynthia and Dawn arrived, the former running past the last of the light-shields to go take on the dragon while the latter stopped next to the two of them, looking down at Rowan with a very concerned expression.

"...Right. Think you can carry me to the building?" she said, looking at Dawn.
"Uh. Sure," she nodded, kneeling down to pick her up and do that, taking off at a moderate run toward the VI's headquarters.

On the way, Rowan said, "Dawn. I'm sorry."
"It's..Cynth's just overreacting," she waffled.
"Maybe. But that doesn't make her wrong. Here is fine, put me against the wall."

"A'right."

Sitting up like this, she could see the fight. By now Fay and Cynthia were running away from the dragon as it chased them, swiping its forelegs to try and catch each in turn; Nico was keeping her distance, planting mostly buff trees a good distance off; Zeno had retreated closer to the wall along with Dawn. The ground titled up in front of the dragon, tipping it back, but it took this as a cue to jump and start flying after them instead. Dawn was already running in that direction, and now stopped to raise a bunch of the water pooled around into a number of spears, chucking one after another at the thing.

"We gotta clip that thing's wings!" Petra called, tossing some of her own concrete-made spears up at its back. "Any ideas?"

"Metal wire would," Fay called back.

"I'm not happy just stalling, though. Hey, split up already! Fay left, fire-girl right." When they did, the dragon breathed more of its black haze down at them. Rowan could already feel some relief from Nico's trees. She felt well enough to control some surrounding water, although her body demanded she stay immobile, so she lifted up a spray to dilute the mist while Zeno shot down the few smaller monsters it spawned. After that the dragon turned to chase Cynthia, and Dawn immediately bolted to intercept, freezing more water around her into a pair of big, spiked shields held in her hands.
Petra raised a small platform beneath her feet and rode a wave of concrete toward them with it. "On your tail, fire-girl, comin' in for a dive. Dawn, make a big sword instead, I'll do the blocking here!" After a moment's hesitation, she did reform the shields into a long, thick, two-handed sword. Meanwhile, Fay skidded to a halt and turned around to face the dragon, pausing to catch her breath before running after it.

As the dragon came close to the ground (and distressingly close to the wall several yards to Rowan's left), Petra stopped a short ways to its left, letting go of her surfboard and pushing both hands up hard to raise a gigantic spike of earth, impaling the dragon straight through its center. Its own momentum tore through its body for a few feet before it stopped at ground level, thrashing to get itself off. The two-tailed vixen split the upper part of the spike, now above the dragon, into four big arches that latched around its body, pinning it even more in place. "Dawn, help me pin it. Rrrrgh...go for the wings!" she yelled over the creature's ear-splitting roar.

Cynthia whirled and leapt onto the dragon's back with zero hesitation, wreathing her weapon in flame and slashing into the intact portion of its left wing. Fay caught up, jumping up and running along its back to deliver a series of explosions to the right one. Dawn did as she was asked too, jumping and stabbing the blade diagonally forward-down into the dragon's neck and holding on tight, pumping cold into the icy sword to keep it intact against more thrashing. While it was down, Nico risked coming closer to place and grow a mid-sized fruit thrower, then ran back out to go back to maintaining the other trees.

Two of the arches collapsed as the dragon continued fighting, and the central pillar through its body began to crumble. Petra grunted and growled, seeming to physically fight against this without much success. "Okay everybody, ride's over! Off off off OFF!" Dawn let go of her weapon as it shattered, running backwards as fast as she could; Fay leapt off as soon as the dragon started to free itself and Cynthia did likewise near the end of Petra's prompting. It whirled on the ice-wielding vixen and Petra, jerking its head back to breathe out more mist—and Rowan choked it with a torrent of water, buying Dawn time to turn and get some distance. It spat out the water and shot a jet of mist at them anyway, but by now Zeno had made her way in front of them and set up some light shields.

"We know it's using up itself to breathe that stuff," she said, backing up slowly and placing a new shield each time an old one shattered. "How can it still have so much left?"
"What can I say, it's a damage sponge," Petra said, finally catching her breath from holding it in place for so long. "At least it maybe can't fly so high now." She raised a semicircle of rock to catch the rest of the mist-stream, letting Zeno take a break from shield-raising.

Another car pulled up next to Simon's, slowing to a halt like a sane person was driving it. The passenger doors came open and Tora leapt from behind a back one, landing next to the three of them. "Yo, cavalry's here."
"More cavalry," Hugo added, running toward them from the other backseat. Corporal Langdon stepped out of the front passenger's side and began briskly marching toward the group also.
"Great, 'cause Rowan's pooped and it's charging at us like a bull now," Petra said.

The dragon tore through the shield that had blocked its breath, effortlessly shattering the remaining light shields—but by now the group of vixens had scattered off to either side, apart from Hugo and Corporal Langdon, who were still a fair distance off. The former tossed her shield up into the air, and the latter threw a group of metal thorns up to catch it, sending it forward while Hugo rolled out from under the weapon. It went into the dragon's mouth, the wires breaking off from it to swing forward and wrap around its head, digging deep and sending an eruption of mist from it. She stood up from the roll and clapped her hands, making the shield explode into a sharp noise aimed inward from the mouth to the body. Then Petra raised the ground under the dragon's right side, tilting it hard to the left and knocking it over into a long forward skid through the ground.

"Careful, this thing breathes nasty stuff," Petra advised the newcomers. Samuel went around to one side of the dragon as it came to a stop and began trying to recover its footing. By now, Rowan had recovered enough to try something slightly stronger, and slowly raised her right hand, pulling up much of the nearby water into a long, thick tentacle to grab the monster and pin it in place again. "Eh? Oh, boss is still kickin'. Beat it while it's down! Sammy, you hold it there too"

"'Sammy'?" She threw out several lines of metal thorns anyway, pulling the dragon's limbs toward its body with them to restrain its thrashing and let everyone get their free hits in. Tora slashed into its upper back and wings, Dawn and Cynthia took opposite sides of her to cut into it with their weapons, and Fay danced around between them, periodically hitting it with the staff and an accompanying explosion. The tree Nico had placed earlier tossed a few fruits whenever there was an opening between the three of them; Zeno turned around to take out all of the smaller monsters the dragon's most recent breath had spawned before they could blindside anyone; and Petra lent her own efforts to keeping the beast down, making the rut it was already lying in deeper and pushing several smaller spikes of rock into it from every side to keep it pinned.

Rowan lowered her hand, letting the limb of water collapse as she felt the exhaustion again. "Sorry, sir," a man's voice come from her left; she turned to find one of the VI's guards there. "She threatened to burn a hole in the wall." He kneeled down to offer her a bottle of water.

"She would," Rowan remarked dryly, taking the offering and making herself utter "Thank you" before chugging it.

Corporal Langdon grunted with exertion. The metal thorns tore and broke as the dragon fought harder against them, even though it hurt itself even more in the process. "He still fightin'! Everybody back off!" Petra yelled, and they did—Cynthia last, again, and then only because Dawn grabbed her forearm to get her attention before leading her off. The dragon burst out of the last of its bonds then, leaping into the air and trying to fly, but its badly tattered wings couldn't manage whatever manner of physically impossible flight they had before and it just landed roughly back onto the ground a few feet in front of the pit it came out of. It roared, turning around and charging the group as they fled—but didn't breathe any more black mist out. It was weakening.

Seeing an opportunity—as the dragon chose Dawn and Cynthia to keep chasing when its targets split up—Rowan brought up some of the water just in front of it into some relatively weak limbs, grabbing its forelegs with just enough force to make it trip and fall, rolling forward onto its back and skidding a rut into the concrete yet again. She picked herself up onto her feet, still tired but no longer incapable of moving. "Any more?"
"Uh," he took a second to understand what she wanted more of, and then: "Yeah, sure." She drank another two full bottles of water at a speed that would be unhealthy for most humans. This recovered her much more, much faster than Nico's trees. It was only temporary, of course, but it seemed likely to be enough to get by if she didn't push herself too hard.

Everyone took advantage of the monster's prone state again, in much the same way as before: Grab, spike, pile on, tear into, flee when it started to get its footing. This was no turtle, after all, and could get itself face-up very easily once it was free. It ran and swiped at Petra just as energetically as before, but as an outside observer Rowan could tell it was faltering, its body starting to look less distinct. Summoning forth her will to protect them again—not as a desperate, emotion-based power-up, but in the sane, natural way she usually felt it—Rowan raised a new water-dragon from the pool in the crater where the beast had first landed, giving it her weapon as teeth. It came to coil itself around the dragon's body and legs, biting into its neck again.

Petra looked between the dragon and Rowan for a second. "When'd you learn to do that? It looks awesome!" With both of her hands occupied controlling all that water, Rowan just gave her a pointed look. "Oh, yeah, right—let's take it down, everyone!" She waved forward, not just to gesture them to do that, but to raise, form, and throw a bunch of small spikes of concrete at the dragon before running up to slash into it herself.

This time, the dragon didn't break free. Instead, despite roaring defiantly, it fell apart, dissipating into black mist and blowing away in the wind. Rowan released her own "dragon" from existing afterward, in the process accidentally drenching some of the vixens still standing there panting from the exertion of two long, hard fights in a row.