Battle Vixens! - 78

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Episode 78: The VI Carousel

"Ah, well. I didn't mean to interrupt, but—"

"Hold it," Rowan interrupted, stopping abruptly to turn aside and open a nearby door. "Here." After quickly glancing inside, he practically pulled Dr. Bridges in with him, insistently if politely, and shut the door again, taking a moment to stand across from the researcher with his arms crossed.

"Is something wrong? I wasn't intent on saying anything particularly sensitive—"

"Look, can we drop this already?"

"Er..?"

"It's fine to keep up appearances for everyone else, but I was told three days ago," Rowan said. He put out a hand. "Someone was worried I'd be suspicious about your movements or something."

"...Ah. Well, that's a shame." Ezekiel adjusted his glasses, smiling slightly nonetheless. "It was a secret from you only very briefly, then. I was actually part of the second round, but we weren't aware I was being targeted because I happened to be in well-protected VI facilities every time the monsters came to attack. And, I was going to try and have a 'Tom Marvelo Riddle' moment for you at some point."

"..A what?"

"Ah, you know. The thing from Harry Potter?" Rowan was no less confused. "With the—look." He pointed at the nametag on his laniard, highlighting each word with a finger. "'E-ZE-kiel Dela-NO. I thought it was a little clever, anyway."

He replied to this with the disappointed sigh of someone who understood a joke, but still didn't think it was funny. "Regardless. You already met Gemma once or twice before; why do you want to do it again?"
"Ah, well, it's not me," he said, briefly putting a hand to his chest, "but the research department as a whole which is interested. And..Dr. Brand suggested I would be the better representative."
"Does he know?"
"Yes, of course," Ezekiel nodded. "He'd never put up with me slacking off so much on our work if I weren't risking my life while doing so."

Dead silence from the room; that one didn't really land either. "...Anyway, Gemma's power clearly gives her a unique insight into how magic works that would prove exceedingly useful to our efforts. Or, if it doesn't, she has some kind of intuition for it all on her own, which is at least equally valuable in a field that's so poorly understood. Really, if she weren't 'anonymous' it would be well within our interests to reach out with a job offer."

"You think she'd accept it?"
"Hard to say. From what I know of her personality, she might not even believe an offer like that if presented too bluntly. To clarify, I don't mean that we would make such an offer so suddenly—the right kind of approach would be needed, which wouldn't be too dissimilar from what I actually came here to do."

"Which is..?" Rowan crossed his arms again, looking like he was losing his patience. Of course, he had a lot more patience than he pretended to; this was an affectation he'd developed, maybe only very recently, to cut down on wasted time.

"Well, only introduce myself and my department's goals, inform her of how to contact us through the VI app and ask whether she'd be willing to add us as a contact. Let us know if she notices anything unusual, ask permission to ask her questions with the understanding that she might not be willing or able to answer...that sort of thing. Start a dialogue, you know."

"So, in short, you want to hire her, but you'll settle for asking her to help you without pay."
"Well...it sounds bad when you put it like that," Ezekiel said, adjusting his glasses again. "This is supposed to be an honest conversation, wherein the research department lets her know that we're interested and why, and asks if she'd be willing to talk. Further conversation will also be completely candid, and if it seems reasonable to offer to pay her for her help, we will. We just don't want to scare her off with too bold of an offer right away."

"Hmmh.

"...Out of curiosity, what is your assessment of her personality? Since you're supposed to be some kind of expert in that area."
"Well...I'd say she's overall very intelligent and eager to help others, but likely introverted. Dislikes being the center of attention and is especially nervous around new people or unfamiliar situations. Maybe a bit easily distracted at times? She doesn't have much of an ego, but on the other hand her self-esteem is low to what might be an unhealthy degree. And: Our powers inherently make us 'braver' in combat situations—that much is clear from my own personal experience—but even factoring that in, she still seems very courageous to me.

"...That's no professional opinion, mind you, just based on some simple observation. I'd have no idea what's really in her head unless I asked and she was willing to answer."

"Maybe you should let me do the talking, then," Rowan said. "After she's finished talking with Dawn and the others."
"Might be a good idea. There is less attention to fear in a smaller group."

"Okay. Now, we need to take a detour before we go back. Simon's probably finished with his pictures by now."

---

"I'll keep a few prints on reserve if you ever want them. I can understand how possessing a photo of someone nobody's had a camera around would be difficult to explain, after all."
"...Thanks," Light said.

"Now then, uh...wonder if Gemma's all done?" Simon went over to the nearest door, unlocking it and poking his head out. "I'm not actually sure what we're supposed to.." he mumbled, before suddenly pulling the rest of his body outside. "'Ey, Rowan!" Coming around behind him, Light could see he was waving. She exchanged a glance with Ning, and the three of them came out into the hallway.

By then, Rowan had come within conversational distance, with a man in a lab coat wearing glasses in tow. "What do you want?"
"Weelll, I'm all done taking pics. You won't believe the fourth set. And, I suppose it's time to get Ning's business settled?"

Rowan took two or three slow steps up to Simon and deliberately lifted a hand to place it on his shoulder. "That's your job."
"Mine?"
"You work with our PR department. Why do you think I left her with you?"

"So I could take pictures..?"

He dropped the hand back to his side and sighed. "The VI has helped introduce 'new' vixens to the public plenty of times by now. It's not exactly hard. We've never done a 'public unmasking' before. I hope you'll agree I can't be trusted to come up with the best plan for that."
"Ah, well. When you put it that way, it sounds terribly obvious."
"So maybe you, or someone you know, will have some ideas on how to make it go smoothly. Especially considering the details of Ning's situation. Please take care of it? I have a lot of other things to do today that I actually know how to do."

"Well, since you're asking so nicely," Simon said, putting his hands up—but grinning in a way that suggested he actually looked forward to the challenge. "Rright this way, miss Ning," he said, making an overdramatic sweeping gesture to follow him as he headed off in another direction.

Light wasn't exactly sure whether she should follow or not; her body started to lean in that direction automatically at first, but she paused, looking at Rowan. "You're with me," he nodded, seeming to confirm that suspicion. "At least, if you agree that it'd be a good idea to properly meet Cynthia."
"Oh...right," she nodded, feeling her ears lower a bit. Then, with a bit more effort: "Yeah, I should."

"She's with the group Gemma's learning powers from. Actually, I have someone here who wants to talk to her," he said, indicating the...probably scientist with him, who nodded quietly.

While following them back toward the direction they'd come from, Light said, "So, who're you?"
"I am Dr. Bridges. One of the research heads trying to figure out magic here, you could say. It wouldn't be inaccurate to call Magus's hat some of 'my handiwork'," he said, sounding slightly proud of that. "If only partially."

"...You wanna pick her brain, I guess?"
"Well, I've been asked to open a line of communication, if nothing else. Now that I think of it, though, it wouldn't hurt to give you our contact info on the VI app too, just in case the Giver decides to give you any more hints for us."

"I wouldn't mind that, but...she hasn't 'visited' me since when I was here Wednesday. Maybe she lost interest in me."

"I wouldn't bet on that," Dr. Bridges said with a tone that suggested he knew something—prompting her to give him a questioning look. "Oh, I'm sorry. It's just that—her reported behavior so far doesn't strike me as likely to lose interest in someone she's been watching carefully for this long. Anyway, I doubt she'd leave you alone if she thought it'd please you to do so."
"Hmph. That's true enough."

At this point, her ears picked up someone from a nearby room saying, "What good's a block of wood supposed to be?"
"Well, um—" Minus's voice. "—It doesn't have to be a block, exactly..." And Plus.

Another voice chimed in in what sounded like Japanese. "It would make good fuel for your fire," someone else said over it, like an echo.

"Who-hoa, not indoors, shadow girl!" Someone else again. At this point they reached the door, Rowan turned to subtly indicate the two following him should hang back for a moment, and he cracked it open, coming partway inside.

"Gemma. There's someone from our research department who'd like to speak with you for a moment, if you don't mind."
"Oh, uhh—" "—I'll go," Plus's voice said. "And leave Minus behind? If that's okay?"
"...Should be fine." Then he pulled the door back the rest of the way, letting her come out (and look around, glancing briefly at Light and Dr. Bridges) before waving for Light to head inside.

She hadn't seen these people since they were brought back to life. Dawn, of course, Light recognized, and Cynthia had to be the red-haired vixen standing close by her. For the rest of them, there was a strange sort of resemblance to certain puppets—the one who'd shot a crossbow at Ning; the one with shadow powers, sitting next to a human woman; and the one who could teleport, who Tobias had kept next to her at all times. It was a little disappointing to see such a low turnout for Emma to learn powers from, but this would still represent many more possibilities for her to defend herself with regardless. Anyway, maybe some of them had already been shipped out by now.

"This is Light, everyone," Rowan said, and then went through introducing the amnesiac vixens: "Light, meet Warp, Serra, Kagee-Shibai, Cynthia, Dawn."
"Hi." From the moment they heard her name, they were all looking at her; Light didn't generally get stage fright, and didn't let this show either, but something about their expressions was unnerving. Like they had expected her to look different, or to be someone different. Minus looked back and forth throughout the introduction, seeming just as confused by their stares as Light was.
"Cynthia: As I said before, Light inherited 'access' to your power through me after the incident earlier," Rowan continued unabated; if he noticed that look, he didn't give any indication. "I thought it best you meet each other, since she was already here."
She did turn toward him in response to that. "...'Kay."

He nodded, "Excuse me," and then went back out the door to lead Plus and the researcher somewhere else—leaving them alone.

An awkward moment of silence followed. Light just crossed her arms, looking around and waiting for one of them to say something and give her a clue what the problem was.
"..So you're Light, huh?" Cynthia said, taking a step and a half closer and looking her up and down. She leaned in, making Light lean back reflexively. "TV made you look taller."
"..Oh...really?" So they'd all seen her interview. Okay.

"Some people around here won't quit talkin' about you," Warp added after teleporting from Light's left to her right. "Hey, you can teleport too, right?"

"Uh..not really. I can..turn into physical light and move at light speed, which looks very similar, but it's costly and exhausting to do that, and I just got through fighting a giant worm that was on lightning."

She seemed to buy this excuse, thankfully. "Aw, too bad." She had her weapon out, and started throwing it in the air and catching it like some kind of nervous habit—except that she didn't seem particularly nervous.

"Lie-toh." The dark-haired girl with shadow powers spoke softly, and pushed herself up onto her feet, getting everyone's attention. "..Arigatou."

"Thank you," the woman next to her, an interpreter apparently, translated. "Gemma also," she continued half-over some more words in Japanese. "I understand you both had a big part in saving all of us. Thank you both." Kagee took a moment to give a sort of half-bow to both of them, before withdrawing back onto the couch.

"...Yeah. It's nice living, and not being someone's puppet," Serra agreed. "Thanks." The others expressed something similar, except for Cynthia, who still seemed to be busy appraising her.

Light took a small step backwards, away from the redhead. "Uh..you're all, welcome...if that's even the right way to put it. I'm, not really used to the idea that I'm actually saving lives, I guess. But I'm glad I could help, anyway."

"So you can control my powers, the same as Rowan," Cynthia said finally, drawing the subject of conversation back that way.

"Yeah. Look, I'm sorry that happened. I didn't really.."

"What are you sorry for, huh?! It's my own fault for bein' an idiot. Anyway, it happened, it's in the past, so screw it. What're you so worried about?"

"..Nothing. I just, don't like the idea of having 'control' over other people," Light said.

"Well that's a good attitude! But—"

At some point, the redhead had backed her nearly against a wall, and at this point she poked a finger straight into the center of Light's chest. "If you see one of those black monsters, you burn it until it dies. Throw my sword at it! It's my power and that's how I want you to use it now that you can, unless I'm tryin'-a use it. You got that?"

"...Sure." People telling Light it was okay to use their power if she needed it was par for the course; this was a birdie, or maybe a hole-in-one by comparison. But it was difficult to come up with an argument against it with Cynthia still right in her face.

"...Good." She took a few steps back.

Minus's head was slightly titled. "Can you tell if one of us is using our power or not?"
"Not usually," Light said, shaking her head slightly. "But..today...when we were on the way to you, I realized I could feel a kind of 'pressure' from your power and Rowan's, like it was being pulled on really hard, and it would be dangerous to you for me to pull in the other direction. I guess that means I can tell if you're in that desperate kind of state..."
"Did you feel anything from Ning?"
"...No," she said after thinking about it for a second.

"Hey, how many people's powers do you have control over anyway?" Serra asked, correctly interpreting the context of this brief conversation.
Light exhaled a half-sigh. "...Four. For the record, I didn't want any, and I don't want any more."

"Hey, that's cool," Warp said. "After what went down with Cynth today, it's easy to see how it might happen by accident. You must get a lotta people challenging you to fights, though. Punchable face, maybe?"
"I dunno. Just seems to be my luck," Light said—deciding that the details of each of those first three incidents were better left unsaid.

---

After Rowan introduced him, Gemma watched Dr. Bridges with an uncertain look. Perhaps Rowan doing all the talking had backfired a little bit; sometimes being silent was significantly more intimidating than speaking. The researcher adjusted his glass, deciding to take the reins. "Right. We're interested in you since your powers seem to give you a kind of insight into magic in general."

"Um..I dunno how much help that is, though. What I do to imitate people's powers, I have no idea how to put into words," Plus said.

"Of course," Dr. Bridges nodded, "but because you can 'see' what part of a person's actions is their own power, you were, for example, recently able to pick out something which anyone can apply. There may be things you understand about magic right now, which you don't even realize most people are unaware of."

"Erm..I-I guess that's possible."

"We just want to open a line of communication," he continued. "Through the VI's app, so it'd still be anonymous. If you think of something that may be useful, you could send it along—and if we think of a question you might be able to help answer, we could ask it. You wouldn't be obligated to answer anything, but if you do have some idea, we'd like to hear it. This is a completely novel field, and operates on a different logic from most sciences, so even thoughts that seem nonsensical or unhelpful at first glance can be unexpectedly useful."

"Soo.." Her head got a slight tilt. "You just wanna talk sometimes? I don't mind talking. Um, I was afraid you wanted me to try to do something specific."

"Not right now, at least," Ezekiel said. "I know you've had an exhausting day already. It's possible we could come up with some sort of experiment for you to conduct later, but even that would just come as a suggestion. We don't have any intentions of trying to make you do anything you don't want to."

"I mean..if I can help, I at least wanna try..." Plus trailed off, possibly distracted by something her other body experienced.

Her ears popped upright after a second. "Uh, Simon just came in. T-to the other room, I mean, with, Light and everyone..."

Rowan exhaled a slight sigh. "I'd better handle this." His annoyance was mostly performative; by now he was pretty used to the eccentric, fame-chasing artist's antics. Ezekiel certainly agreed that Simon's good outweighed whatever bad there was. Plus looked at Dr. Bridges like she wanted to follow him out.
He nodded. "Rowan or Simon can set up our contact properly. I'm just glad we got to meet."
"Um, s-sure!"

---

After everyone's ears picked up some fast-paced walking up to the door, Simon burst in through it. "Yo! Are you girls hungry?"

Minus sort of stammered, "U-um..."

Once she was finished turning to face him, Light replied, "Yes, actually."

"Great, well, I was just—Rowan! There you are." He leaned back out of the doorway, waving excitedly. "We're ordering Mexican in for lunch! You want some?" There were more footsteps from the direction he'd come from, matching Ning's walking gait.

"How, exactly, did this come about?" Rowan's voice asked just before he came into view.

"We-ell, we were starting to talk about how to help Ning here," he said, waving behind him as she caught up, "when I realized: I, am, starving. Everyone else has gotta be hungry too; we fought some pretty big monsters today!"

"We have a cafeteria, you know."
"Pff," he waved dismissively. "And have these poor people—" (he was waving excitedly through the doorway, but probably meant everyone but Light and Gemma) "—had anything else since coming back to life? I say to you no, and they surely deserve better! Besides, the PR department's comping the bill."

"...Why?"

"It's a working lunch! Once I realized I was hungry, I thought about taking Ning out to eat somewhere myself, but realized that might draw some unwanted attention."
"I'll say," Ning interjected. "Aren't you married?"
He whirled around (Ning being behind him). "Happily so!"

"You better offer to buy somethin' for your wife too, then."

"She's at home, recovering from a week of teenagers, and probably doesn't even want to move right now."
"Still. Take my advice, it's important to let her know you're thinking about her even when you've got no good reason to be. That's how I lasted forty-seven years."
His face briefly betrayed the mental dissonance between Ning's present appearance and the age necessary for that achievement. "...Right. Sure, I will."

"Anyway!" He quickly turned back to Rowan. "We're treating our three guests, and I insist that we're treating our longer-term guests too. I'm in on it because it's my scheme, and you can have something too if you want it because you're the boss."

Rowan just shook his head slightly. "All right then..."

---

After they watched the rest of their wedding tape, it finally occured to Clark that he should report what had happened to Rowan. He nodded to his wife, got out his phone, and dialed. It took more rings than usual for him to answer, but he did. "Rowan!—"

"Hold on, moving to a soundproof room.

"..Okay. What is it?"

"Rory changed back!" He paused just barely long enough for Rowan to verbally respond in some way, and when he didn't, elaborated some: "We were watching a video of our wedding. I, suppose enough came back for her to identify with her human form or something. And..she just, changed back."
"That's good," Rowan replied this time. "Happy for you. Also good to confirm that it can happen."

"Yeah, definitely. She doesn't, exactly remember everything yet, but I suppose we crossed some sort of threshold.

"..Er, I'm sorry, did I interrupt anything important?"
"Just lunch. It'll wait for me," Rowan said. The Quinns had eaten as soon as they got back to the house. "Listen, I just remembered something I should've told you the last time you called. I don't know exactly how much attention you've been paying to the news..?"
"Not...much. Just when there were fights going on, to see if I..if we were needed."
"Mmh. Well, Jeremiah Mond has been making some noise lately. Chances are that's all it is, just noise, but just in case, I want to make sure you understand: The VI holds all legal responsibility for Tobias Mond's death.

"Officially speaking, the VI and its allies went on a joint mission to confront the puppeteer and halt her attack, with the express understanding that, if it was necessary in order to achieve that goal, any one of us had the prerogative to kill her. If anyone approaches you for anything related to that, direct them to us. I know...there is some temptation to explain yourself, or even try to apologize for what had to be done. But it almost never ends well."
"..I, could guess that much," Clark said after a brief pause. The sudden, jarring shift in focus and tone had still rattled him a bit.

"Sorry to bring it up at all. But I thought you should know. As for any...less legal actions, which are even less likely, we have a few people covertly watching to ensure you don't come to harm. This isn't actually anything special; every one of the puppeteer's victims, and their families where that applies, is being offered similar protection."

"That's...also good." Even though Clark wasn't really sure how to feel about having invisible government bodyguards, it was still the lesser evil right now.

"Anyway, that's it," Rowan said.

"Okay. Thank you."
"Mmh. And, if it's the right thing to say—congratulations." He hung up.

Clark looked over at his wife to find she had changed back to vixen form sometime during the conversation. "Um, I wanted to know what he was saying," she admitted, and quietly spoke her phrase to change back to human again.
"Fair enough. I'd have just relayed it to you after anyway," he nodded, and then took a deep breath and let it out. Now that the adrenaline of the recent fight, and the excitement of seeing his wife recover so much of herself so quickly, had worn off...he just felt tired. Rory fixed him with a concerned look, easily sensing this, too.

"I..don't know why I'm so exhausted lately."
"You've been working really hard," she replied, "nonstop. Cooking every meal, trying to do everything you can to help me. And then today's fight—I'm really not surprised. You should take a break from it all!"
"Hmmn." He nodded, but it was something of a doubtful groan.
"Come on, I'm well enough for now. What do you usually do to unwind?"
"Video games," he replied instantly.
"Well, play a game then!" she waved emphatically toward him. "I'll watch."

"You..never seemed too interested before," he said. "Typically you'll go off and work on your research, or grade papers, or read something..."

"I'll go away if I do get bored. But right now I'm curious! Seize the opportunity." She made a grasping motion with her right hand.
"Heheh, all right." He got up and went to turn things on and get a controller.

---

Another weird sort of transitional episode, largely to wrap things up at the VI. Had some difficulty thinking up a title for this one; there's not a good consistent theme to it aside from people going back and forth and talking a bunch. If I come up with a better one than this, I might even replace it.