Battle Vixens! - 79

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Episode 79: I'm So Tired

Lunch was in a mid-sized conference room that had a table just barely big enough to fit everyone. On one side, the conversation was dominated by Simon and a few of the people from the VI's PR department working out a plan for Ning's "unmasking" the next day, including how to deal with her actions on the very first day everyone had their powers. A pretty solid plan, which she actively agreed with, fit itself together over the course of the meal.

On the other side were the majority of the vixens—Light, Gemma (back in combined form), the five who had decided to show the latter their powers, and a couple of the other amnesiacs. It seemed a few of the puppeteer's former victims had indeed already left, one way or another. They had what appeared to be casual conversation, asking the two visitors about their powers, their interests (but not in much detail), and a few questions about what they knew of their personality from the few times they'd met them in puppet form. Rowan sat near the middle, mostly quiet, stepping out once to answer a phone call.

Before they knew it, it was over, and everyone said their farewells; the three visitors headed out to get a ride back to their town. Around the halfway point of the drive, Emma's phone buzzed and she pulled it out, giving it a mildly confused look once she'd had just enough time to read the notification...and then muttered, "Oh."
"What is it?" Ning asked.
"Um, a certain someone's on twitter now. Didn't think I was following anyone called 'Sapphire', but um...yeah. I guess everyone is, now."

Light said, "So, what'd she say?"
Emma took a moment to bring up the full text. "Hmmnnh..

"No attack tomorrow. Try to enjoy the break.

"...Thought you might appreciate the use of a medium everyone can see."

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The small group of "reborn" vixens stayed behind in the conference room when everyone else left. "Soo, that was Light, huh?" Serra said, introducing the topic on nearly everyone's mind. "She seemed pretty nice overall."
"Yeah...nice," Cynthia said, with a tone that made the word sound slightly like an insult. "...Weird."
"Hey, it's better than I expected," Warp said. "I thought for sure she was just reading cue cards in the interview. People who're all cool and perfect in public are usually total jerks in private. Com-plete-ly fulla themselves, think they're the most important part of the world..."
"You'd think she was," Cynthia said, "the way some people around here talk. Make her sound superhuman, like..she can do anything."

"...Not to interrupt, but aren't we all 'superhuman'?" Kagee's interpreter translated.
"Aghh, no, I mean like..." Cynthia waved her hands incoherently.
"We can each do junk like teleport, or throw fire around," Dawn expressed for her—having felt the same way about Light herself. "But we're just, like, normal people inside. We get tired, or angry, or do stupid stuff nonstop."
"Yeah!" Cynth nodded. "Light sounded like someone immune to all of that. But she's not. Like, somethin' was really..ticking her off today. It wasn't us exactly, but...

"...Heh. I dunno, I guess I was sorta hoping she could wave her hand and help me remember everything. Or, say just the right thing to help me feel like...I'm not totally lost anymore." Dawn gave her a worried look, but she waved it off.

"Well, what can I say?" Serra said, putting a hand out over the table. "I guess everyone's just been normal people, ever since the beginning."

The Japanese vixen spoke up again. "I don't want to live in a world of superhumans like that. It's better to know that even a 'hero' struggles."

"Maybe for most of 'em," Warp said, drumming her fingers on the table. "I'm with Cynth and Dawn, though. I'd like to have just one fix-all-er around who doesn't."

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They arrived at Ning's house first, and she went inside to tell Amp to come out. "Whoa, hey.."
"Yeah, I know, I look different. Did you remember Light can change how people look using our keyphrase?"

She tilted one ear sideways, thinking. "...Now that you've mentioned it, I do. Uh, we had lunch like you suggested."

"Great; I ate, too. Were you good, Nadia?" Her granddaughter was just barely peeking her head up from behind Amp's enormous tail.
"Mm-hm. Ning, you grew up!"
The white-haired vixen chuckled. "I suppose I did. Well, I won't keep you any longer," she said to Amp. "Got some things to get put together, myself."
"Okay. See you."

They drove to the garage Amory's car was in after that, and once everyone got out, Light hid the other two vixen's transformations back to normal so they could drive to the apartment complex with minimal trouble. Emma had a short walk to get to her own car, and drove very carefully until she got back, finally really feeling the exhaustion from the fight. Not only that, but dealing with so many people for so long! They were all generally kind people, and she'd mostly enjoyed it—especially learning some new powers, she had to admit—but it got exhausting for her after a while.

When she came to her apartment, she opened the door hesitantly, listening, and was relieved to find that her roommate wasn't there. As much as she liked Beryl, her overwhelming presence would just..make Emma want to hide in her room and take a nap. Instead she sat back on the couch and took a nap. The difference was subtle, but very, very important.

Only once they reached their apartment did Light turn back to normal, and Blake went and collapsed into the living room chair, staring up at the ceiling. "Long day, huh?" Amory said quietly.
"Long day."
"You had something to eat?"
"Yeah. VI fed us lunch."
"Are you..okay? Wanna talk about anything?"
"Not really. I mean..."

He took a second to drop his view forward again and turn toward Amory, who was standing near the door to his own room. "I need to process. Before I talk. And, very tired. Maybe sleep."

"That's cool, man. I'll be here," Amory said, nodding, and heading into his room to get some neglected homework done. Maybe a day off would do them all some good. A week off would've been better, though—not that the Giver had control over it in the first place.

---

Marcus had no idea how tired he really was until he took the hat off and turned back to normal. At that point his body screamed at him for sleep and food so hard that he couldn't decide at first which one to satisfy first. Well, hunger like this was bound to upset his stomach and interrupt sleep, so he scrounged up some leftovers and scarfed down an entire plate. He had to admit portions like this weren't too abnormal for him, but he usually at least ate slower to try and feel full sooner.

His roommate finally woke up about halfway through the meal, giving him a look as he went over to the fridge. "Big breakfast, bro?" Thaddeus...or, Thad as he preferred, was a straight-up jock. Not stupid, not a jerk, but one-hundred-percent jock, including having a metabolism and body type that Marcus sometimes had to fight hard to not be too jealous of.
"Dude, don't even start. I've been awake, all morning."
"Yee-eah. You run a marathon during that time? Pffsh." He retrieved his breakfast of two cold slices of pizza and plopped them on a plate, having no idea how close to reality that description felt. "Hey, how's the battles today? Anything happen yet?"

'The battles' was such a weird way to put it, but it was Thad's preferred term. "Yeah, everyone around here fought somethin' this morning," he said, trying to think how to talk about it like he hadn't been there. "Light and Magus fought those chimera things right outside here, and a huge worm ate Ning."
"She okay?"
"Yeah. Gemma survived that..lightning long enough for everyone else to show up. Dr. Quinn even came to help."
"Which one?"
"Uh..both, actually. Anyway, they all took it down together."

"Well, good. Ning's cute," Thad said. "Gemma, too." He wasn't as avid a fan of all the vixens as Marcus was. He understood the importance of them literally saving the world daily, sure, but his...personal interest in them was of a different sort. "Heyy, did the new girl give an interview yet?"

Marcus managed to avoid choking on his food mostly by virtue of expecting this question. "Nah." He was also able to brace himself sufficiently for what followed.

"Pff, too bad. She looks super cute even in the blurry action shots we got so far. Love to get somethin' a little closer up." Thad had a type, after all.

"So, what about Rowan and them, huh?"
"I got hungry before I could catch up on it much," Marcus said—technically true. "I know they had to split into three teams to fight one of those turtle things, and the big dragon. I also heard Rowan did this crazy thing that made like, a huge snake out of water with teeth and like, piloted it from inside its head to bite the big dragon's neck? Dude, it's crazy."
"Mm-mh! Have to look up any images they got of that," Thad said. "Bet she looks awesome." He liked 'cute' girls, but fiesty ones—fighters, he might say—especially. An independent girl with some real fire to her was what appealed personality-wise. Having an expression of that "fire" in terms of action shots of the vixens all being superheroines probably delighted him the most.

It had been a little surprising to learn, but he also didn't care a bit if they were "really" male like Rowan. But, at least, he considered married people off-limits, and didn't seem to comment that way about Petra even though she was otherwise completely his type. Marcus generally found this all harmless enough; a guy had a right to fantasize sometimes, and it wasn't like Thad expected to ever meet one of them in person in any meaningful capacity...but it was really surreal now, thinking how he might react to learning the truth. He was kind of glad Thad didn't know about the whole 'testing something for the VI' business, actually.

Finished eating, Marcus yawned as his body's need for sleep reasserted itself. "Ah, 'scuze me. I'monna take a nap."
"You do you, bro. Got up waay early for the weekend," Thad said, giving him a thumbs-up. "See-yuh."
"Mm-hm."

---

"..went very well, and we now have contact with both Gemma and Light."
"Good, good." Dr. Brand nodded distractedly, shuffling through a pile of fox masks built out of a few different materials that populated one side of his desk. He picked one up, looked it square in the face as he quietly growled for a second, and then chucked it at the corner of the room. It didn't shatter—which was probably what he wanted—but clattered satisfyingly loudly on the floor as it landed.

Ezekiel gave his partner a long, searching look. "..Care to explain?" he said calmly afterward.
He picked up another one. "Every single one—" he threw it, and it broke in two. "—of these should work—" (he threw another one, which landed with a singular clack) "—by all the principles we've put together, but that tests we developed say they won't," he punctuated with a third one, which managed to stick itself directly on top of his first toss. "I have personally, wasted, the resources and time that went into making these...abominable masks."

"You remember how many hats, bracelets, rings and necklaces we went through before finding one that worked," Dr. Bridges said. "It's inexact. We don't know enough to get consistent results out yet; that's rather the point."

"This isn't progress," he replied, his frustration remaining peaked. "It's trial and error. Stumbling around in the dark! We should know more by now."

"Look..you've clearly hit something of a wall," Ezekiel said gently. "I know, I've been at my 'other job' quite a bit lately. Perhaps you could take the rest of today off, and come at it with a fresh head tomorrow? I can look through everything and see whether I have any ideas."

"Hrmmmhh." If there was one thing Dr. Brand hated, more than anything else, it was being inactive. It was why, shortly after becoming 'professor emeritus', he went looking for another job. That was when he'd realized just how much he hated it. But sometimes, a little rest was what the brain needed to come up with something new. This, too, the old theoretical physicist knew; it was surely advice he'd told his own doctoral students from time to time.

He sighed reluctantly. "All right. It beats staring at these masks."
"I hope you can find something more relaxing to do than throwing them at a wall," Ezekiel replied. "Maybe a nice cup of tea."

"..Right." Dr. Brand stood up. "I'll see you tomorrow." Nodding to his partner, he stalked out of the office and on his way to some much-needed rest. Only once he was completely gone did Dr. Bridges get up and start cleaning up the thrown mask pieces, neatly stacking them along with the intact masks from the desk over in one corner of the room, where they'd take up as little real estate as possible.

Maybe these would work as keys, and their tests just had some unexpected false positives. Ezekiel picked them up, one by one, and ran through the tests himself, just to confirm his colleague's findings. He left the broken ones alone—of which there were more than just those most recently thrown.

Being fox masks, Dr. Brand didn't just see his own failure and frustration when he looked at them. He saw the Giver. He saw a complete expert in the field who outright refused to share her knowledge openly. Someone who treated understanding like a tool to gain leverage over others, teasing them with little hints and less expecting them to understand than enjoying the show their struggles resulted in. He expressed open disgust whenever she came into conversation; that was one thing he had in common with Light.

Ezekiel Delano Bridges—Zeno—didn't quite share that hatred. It probably helped that he had no firsthand experience with her, but...maybe it was just professional curiosity. It was hard for him to conceive of a psychologically stable immortal, and he wondered how someone managed to be as ancient as she claimed to be—and probably had no reason to lie in said claim—without going entirely mad. If anything, he found it surprising that she was helping anyone to any degree, that she seemed to make carefully-concocted plans and then go through them. How had she not bored of seeing the same scenarios over and over again to the point where she just decided by now to act randomly, or at least arbitrarily, in hopes of someone reacting unexpectedly?

Maybe she was truly alien, in a way that neither he, nor any other human, could conceive of or relate to. Humans were finite down to their physical makeup; there was an astronomical, but still finite, number of configurations of brain cells and neurons and synapses. If you randomly generated brains for long enough, you could get two identical ones. Humans could only remember so much, because the physical storage space for that memory was only so big. Since she had never bodily appeared—to his knowledge, at least—perhaps the Giver didn't have that kind of physical brain. Maybe she had a magic brain, or a magic mind, or something.

If he weren't trying desperately to help magic available for the world at large, he might be studying the puppeteer's victims like mad. Amnesia like that was unheard of in his field; the idea that something heretofore undiscovered, a "soul", could carry information from one body to another, was insane. How did it function? Did a soul have its own collection of "neurons" and "synapses" made of some kind of magic "stuff"? Was it more like a hard drive somehow, with ones and zeros? Or did it operate on some architecture no one had even thought of before? Well, maybe they appreciated not being "studied". But what he wouldn't give to trade the power he got for something that could deeply probe the minds of others—with their willing participation, of course. No one reportedly had received that kind of power, despite the fact that the Giver herself was pretty forthright about having the ability to read minds. But then, mind-reading didn't sound very useful against the enemy she purportedly wanted everyone to fight.

All of the masks were in the 'done' stacks by now, and Dr. Brand's findings were confirmed. Of course; he hadn't expected his colleague's precision to wane no matter how tired and frustrated he was. But Dr. Brand himself would've insisted he double-check everything first anyway. So, either they had misunderstood something about the successful creation process for Magus's hat, or something in their testing method was producing consistent false negatives in this case. The only way to really know for sure was...probably to find a willing test participant and have them try on the masks one by one to see if any one bonded successfully.

If he could accuse his partner of anything, Ezekiel thought, it was destroying a few masks out of their sample which could, theoretically, have been the only ones that worked. But these had all been produced on such similar principles that, if only one or two worked and no others, then what they were working with was sensitive enough to tiny changes to effectively be luck. Luck wouldn't do, so in that case they needed a different method anyway.

Ezekiel got up and stretched before moving to his own office. It was time to crunch his way through the data—something Dr. Brand was usually better at. But maybe, just maybe, he'd spot something his colleague hadn't.

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Just to be absolutely clear, the title is only in the first person because that's how the Beatles wrote it.