Battle Vixens! - 80

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Episode 80: Figured You Out

By the time she woke up, it was late afternoon. Emma's glasses had slid partway down her nose; she was collapsed into the couch in a manner which probably wasn't very good for her back. "Mnngh..." She sort of fidgeted in place for a second or two and let out a soft groan, part of her still not wanting to wake up, before jerking upright. She almost immediately stretched, quietly yawning. She took her glasses off to rub her eyes, then put them back on, looking around. The only light coming into the room was sunlight through a window, and it had dimmed considerably, turning the golden shade of the mid-to-late sunset. There was a sense of something being different.

After a moment's half-awake thinking, she put together that her roommate's bedroom door was slightly ajar; it had definitely been shut before. But there wasn't any light coming from inside, as far as Emma could tell. She took a moment to quietly take a deep breath and brace herself for more human contact, resolving that she had definitely rested enough by now, and called: "Beryl?"

A computer chair rolled back a little and then creaked, the sound of its occupant standing up, and the door opened the rest of the way, the tall blond woman shuffling outside with a kind smile on her face.
"Oh, hey there sleepyhead!" she said, coming over in front of the couch. "You were fast asleep when I came in, so I tried to be as quiet as a mouse and didn't turn any lights on. Hope I didn't spook ya."

"No, um..thanks," Emma said, scooting herself back on the couch to sit in a somewhat better posture.

"Seems like you're always tired lately. Are you alright?" Beryl leaned down a little toward her.
"I'm okay," she said. "Just...very busy, lately. Lots of...stuff to deal with."

"Hey, maybe I can make something special for you tonight. And surely you can rest tomorrow, right?"

"Mmhm.." Something in her mind twitched, like a car sputtering and failing to start. She still wasn't entirely awake yet, mentally speaking, but tried her best to grab hold of the thought.
"Hey, have you been on a second date with No yet?"
"With..um...?" Oh. "...Not, just yet. We've hung out a little, but nothing official."
"Well, then call him!" She straightened up, putting her hands out. "Make 'official' plans for tomorrow. No school, so nothing to stop ya, rii~ight?" Beryl gave the slightest bit of teasing tone to the question, suggesting a level of..naughtiness that Emma didn't really have plans for. A usual sort of joke, for her.

The engine spun up properly this time, and started consuming gasoline. No school tomorrow. No attack tomorrow.

...Try to enjoy the break.

It was nothing more than a coincidence, at least at first glance. Beryl had no way of knowing what was really occupying her time, and even if she thought for some reason that the attacks were inconveniencing Emma in more...normal ways, that message from the Giver had been totally public. It was probably on the news, even! But there was just something...

About it...

No, it wasn't really about what she'd just said at all; it was a pile of other things on top of it. Disconnected information all stowed away in Emma's head, from the past few weeks and beyond, all clicked itself together rapidly like one of those puzzle boxes where nothing fits unless you have everything already in the right position, and then suddenly it becomes whole.

Beryl said: "If you weren't taking those steps forward, then instead of staying where you are you would've gone backward. Sometimes, right where you are is simply the best you can do."

Light said: "She told me that the best we—the best anyone can do is stall them."

Beryl said: "You go after him, girl. Take what you want. Don't let anything or anyone stop ya."

Light said: "Our powers are fueled by—she used the word 'desire'. Whatever it is the person wants, basically. And she said she needed people with 'violent desires', or at least desires that basically make a person need to be violent to fulfill them."

Beryl never gave a straight answer to almost any question. She instead prompted Emma to play a weird kind of guessing game of sorts with her, giving negative answers to wrong guesses and saying nothing to indicate when she was right. Sometimes she said things in the form of a question, or implied something, but not once had Beryl ever directly stated any one thing that Emma thought she knew about her background, family, education, or present or future employment.

Amory said: "She claimed that she never lies, about anything. Some kind of rule to this whole 'game', to make it more challenging to manipulate people, I guess."

Contradiction: The Giver was mean-spirited, cruel, and downright hateful. She openly admitted to intending her actions to result in people being hurt or killed, to not caring about anyone's life, to "enjoying" other people's violence and pain. When Emma herself had been put through the excruciating pain of being eaten by one of those monsters, she had practically dangled that in Light's face to make her feel horrible. Beryl was nice! She was kind, and caring, and always trying to look out for Emma and make her feel better. Beryl was...Wait, Beryl..?

A Beryl was a type of gemstone. Diamond, Sapphire: Gemstones. The Giver was undoubtedly, undeniably full of herself in a way that made it totally plausible she'd name herself exclusively after valuable things like that. She had a weird sort of playfulness about her that made such "theme naming" totally believable even though it could backfire very easily on any secret identity she really wanted to keep.

It was the span of a second or two, and her roommate had turned around to start heading toward the kitchen. If there had been any discernible look on Emma's face, she probably hadn't seen it at all. There was an easy test; the Giver had one clearly-defined trait that was so powerful, immutable and intrinsic that her "princess" Amory had a weaker form of it, that even illusions which resembled her kept some degree of it. Beryl had just said something teasing again, and Emma was going to pick up a pillow and throw it harmlessly at her back in retaliation.

Her hand went onto the pillow, but wouldn't close to grip it. Beryl took a step away. She tried again, getting the pillow in her hand and raised, and then just put it down again. It was a surreal feeling for Emma's body to simply disobey her intentions, a little like how it had felt when Light briefly, accidentally assumed control of Minus, but not quite as uncomfortable. No, this didn't feel wrong like that, which granted it an even deeper sense of mental dissonance. Nothing was actually controlling her body, it just didn't want to do this.

Light said: "It was so weird. I tried to punch her, and I just..couldn't. I could take some of the steps on the way, but one of them always just, failed somehow. The same thing with kicking. She wanted me to try just so she could show it to me, and then gloat about it."

"...It's you." Emma felt sick. There was only one person like this, who could have this effect, in all of the world—in all of the universe, or multiverse, or in whatever other, larger views there were of "everything that exists".

"Hmn?" Even though it had been almost a whisper, Beryl heard it and stopped in her tracks, halfway turning her head around. She at least knew that Emma had spoken, if not exactly what. No, who was she kidding—the Giver could read minds. Every thought in Emma's head over the past several seconds was like an open book to her. This was a show, for her own personal amusement and no one else's. Just like every-STUPID-thing else.

"IT'S YOU!!!" Emma threw the pillow which was still in her hand forward—not at Beryl, but in her general direction, where it sailed past her without making contact—and shoved herself up onto her feet. "The Giver, or Watcher, or whatever other DUMB, PRETENTIOUS NAME you came up with for yourself today!"

She had turned entirely around by now, and just paused for a second before saying, "..Oh. Yep. You got me." The quiet, casual response took long enough for Emma's eyes to catch up to her emotions and start pouring tears of rage out. She picked up the nearest thing on the coffee table in front of her, a book, and threw it—well aware that she couldn't see where she was throwing through the mess the tears were making of her glasses. It hit the wall.
When she got emotional, Emma was usually an incoherent, babbling mess. When she was angry with herself, she usually withdrew and tried to find somewhere to hide. She'd never really, actually been angry at another person before. Her most immediate thoughts manifested in a one-word scream. "WHY!?"

"..I thought it'd be fun." There was something in Beryl's tone that Emma did not pick up on right away, not until later: A hesitance, an uncertainty that was completely uncharacteristic of both who she really was, and who she'd pretended to be for so long. In the moment, her mind was too much of a wreck to handle subtlety and only picked up on the words instead.

"FUN!?" Emma took a small step forward, but was arrested by the coffee table. "YOU THOUGHT IT'D BE FUN?!" A part of her demanded that she not just awkwardly shuffle around it, and another part argued that she couldn't very well vault it. But, of course, she really could. Her phrase came out in the same kind of angry shout as the rest of what she was saying, and she split into two, both easily clearing the table with a short jump and then advancing on her target steadily as she continued to yell at the top of all four of her lungs.

"What part of any of this—" "—is fun to anyone but you!?—" "—You made me come up with a whole history for your—" "—completely fake identity, pretended to be nice all while—" "—planning the whole time to hurt everyone!"

"There are plenty of people I never planned on hurting, and indeed haven't," she replied calmly.
Plus produced an indistinct chunk of solid metal and threw it forward."You've personally caused millions of people to hurt and kill each other!—" Minus did the same with a fist-sized block of wood. "—You went out of your way to set things up so we'd all be motivated toward murder!"

She took a couple of steps back, toward the wall. "I can't help that violent powers were necessary to defend yourselves, nor that they led to some harm." Her expression wasn't one Emma had ever seen Beryl make, emotionally blank and infuriatingly calm.

"You goaded people into killing each other deliberately!—" "—You helped turn Tobias Mond into a murderer and then personally arranged her execution!" She was throwing more things, just whatever her powers gave her, one after another in tandem. Maybe some of them were actual weapons, but most were just malformed chunks of "weapon-stuff". Every single one conveniently missed Beryl, sometimes by less than inch, and loudly hit the wall Emma was technically aiming at.

"Tobias had already—"

"YOU INTENTIONALLY—" "—LED ME—" "—INTO TRYING TO KILL LIGHT!"

She was looking down at the floor, and slowly tilted her head up just enough to point her eyes at Plus's face. "...But you didn't succeed, did you?"

"SHUT UP!!! JUST—SHUT UP!!!!!" both of her screamed in the Giver's face. Plus strengthened herself, putting her hands under Beryl's arms and gently lifting her forward so that her back was pressed against the wall. Her voices continued in unison: "YOU KEEP ACTING LIKE THIS IS ANOTHER ONE OF YOUR STUPID GAMES, AND YOU CAN WIN JUST BY SAYING THE RIGHT THING!" Minus drew a dagger made of shadow and placed it just barely far enough away from her neck for the blade to not make contact, well aware that her hand was shaking and could easily slit the tall woman's throat by accident—not that it ever would. "YOU WON'T EVEN TAKE A SECOND TO THINK ABOUT WHAT I'M FEELING, OR ABOUT WHAT ANYONE ELSE IS FEELING BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU DID! YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT ANY OF THE PAIN YOU'VE CAUSED EVERYONE! AND YOU WON'T EVEN TRY TO UNDERSTAND WHY I'M ANGRY!"

Still holding the lie of a person she'd thought was nice five minutes ago, and the knife not quite against her throat, Emma panted, gasping for air in the wake of achieving a level of volume she would never have thought herself capable of for an instant, much less sustaining it for so long. The Giver's expression was unreadable for a long moment until her head tilted ever so slightly to the side.
"You know, you'd make perfect casting for a remake of The Shining."
"Wh—" "—What?"

She shrugged. "Well, would it help if I said I was sorry?"

Minus leaned slightly forward. "...It would help if you meant it," she said, her rage focused into a quiet, hoarse, shaky near-whisper. She took a small step away, dropping the dagger out of existence, and Plus slowly set Beryl down as her expression changed to one of curiosity.

"I wonder..." She looked between Emma's two bodies with a slight smile, but it wasn't any of the smiles Beryl had ever had before. It wasn't happy, or kind, or teasing. It wasn't a cruel, predatory grin or some kind of complete troll-face like she imagined being used against Light. It was sad. "You should know by now, I don't lie—not to the people of your world. It's a rule I set myself, as an added challenge, to see if I could make things go the way I want without ever saying something that isn't true. And—just to ensure I didn't lie by accident, I put a little geas on myself to enforce the rule."

Her voice was quiet and calm, but warm somehow—like Beryl was supposed to be. The sadness from the smile carried into it, just a little bit. "Geases are stronger than curses, you know, since, they require a willing agreement to activate—they can simply prevent a person from doing a thing, not just punish them afterward. So I literally can't say something to you, or anyone else from your world, that I don't mean—or at least believe to be the truth. So, I can't just...say I'm sorry. Not unless I mean it. I wonder...if I can mean it. Let's find out."

Emma had no idea how to react to any of this. She just stared quietly as the transdimensional alien super meta-god looked down at her for a moment with a serious expression like she was gathering her thoughts to say something important. Finally, she said: "Emma, for the pain I've put you through..I'm sorry."

So, she was really sorry? Since when? Emma's expressions were identical ones of total confusion. "..H-heheh.." Beryl grinned just slightly, and giggled; for a second Emma's anger from before flashed in as she thought her confused look was being made fun of—but then she realized there were also tears coming from the tall woman's eyes, even as it progressed into full-volume laughter. "HaaA~Hahahaa!!" She was bent forward slightly from the intensity of it.

"What—" "—what's, so—" "—funny?"

"Heheheh..oh, no no," she turned her head upward enough to face Emma and shook it, "not you, dear. It's just that—I can't be sorry. I shouldn't be. I have no logical reason, to be sorry!"

Drawing herself up, the Giver continued: "With every decision that involved or directly affected you, I have always chosen to act in a way which would result in the greatest possible net benefit to you. Not that that was the highest priority most of the time, but it was always easy to arrange within the rest of my plans. I know that I have never personally done a single thing wrong to you. Every bit of pain you have experienced as a result of my actions has led to far greater joy, or else helped to strengthen you beyond what you thought possible before. I have even, if half-accidentally, surrounded you with some of the most powerful protection and aid that I could have hoped to provide. But—"
Beryl sniffed, loud. Her voice wavered unsteadily as she continued: "But seeing you like that, your poor little heart in turmoil because of things I've done, or said, I hurt. Me. And so I'm sorry anyway!" She spread her arms out theatrically for a moment, before abruptly dropping them back to her sides.

Emma was utterly speechless—not only did she have no idea what to say, but saying anything felt horribly wrong. So Beryl just stood there quietly crying for over a minute, before slowly gathering herself again. "You tell...Clark Quinn sometime...he should be mindful of what he wishes for other people. He might have a gift for prophetic curses."

"Um..?" This seemed to be in reference to something Emma hadn't heard about at all.

"I must be sorry because, even though I knew exactly how this was going to turn out in the end, I really started to think of you as an actual friend of mine. H-heheheh..." Her soft chuckle was desperately, painfully bitter. "I don't have any of those. How absolutely, utterly foolish of me. I'm sorry."

The Giver was an ancient, immortal, perfect trickster. She could behave any way she wanted to, no matter how insincerely, and still not be "lying". She'd never acted sad or uncertain around anyone before, not that Emma had ever heard of, but if baring her predatory fangs, magically evoking an aura of power to cause fear, and threatening violence she could never personally enact were on the table, then so was this—fishing for sympathy, or something, and once she had it she could make her victim do whatever she wanted. But...

She'd said she was sorry. She'd then proceeded to practically spill her guts aloud, expressing utter confusion at what she was feeling. It was difficult to imagine the purpose of a performance like this, if it was somehow a ploy—there were so many, much easier ways to make Emma do pretty much anything. She didn't have to be this vulnerable to convince anyone of anything, and she—she loved looking untouchable and eminently powerful, unattached to everyone and everything, with the only stakes she cared about at all being her personal entertainment.

Putting all of that aside, it was impossible for Emma to see someone this upset and not want to do something to help them. She'd been there, so many times, and almost felt that pain right along with them. So she pulled herself together into a single body (since it made her a bit taller) and stood on her tiptoes, leaning forward to put her arms around the strange being who had occupied her apartment for over a year. Beryl didn't ask for anything else, just returning the hug and gently picking her up the rest of the way before weeping quietly into her shoulder for an indeterminate length of time. For all of her reported behavior around Light and Amory and everyone else, her hands didn't even move toward Emma's ears or tails once.

---

Frank glanced out the window as he came out of his office. Sunset. "Hm...a bit late," he remarked, looking to his secretary. "Sorry to keep you so long, Opal."

"It's no trouble, sir." He heard her sniff, and turned to see a few tears coming down her cheeks.
"Is something wrong?"
She paused, wiping her face on her sleeve—appearing surprised by the tears. "No, nothing. I just..remembered something sad, is all. Please, don't worry about it." She grinned, and appeared to have stopped crying.

"Well, all right." Frank nodded, and continued his routine to leave the office for home. "You let me know if I'm working you too hard, hm?"
"Believe me, sir, I would."

---

"...Watcher?"
"Hmn?"

"Are you...crying?"
"Well. This body has tear ducts, unlike yours."

"Indeed. But. I've never seen you use them before."

"Is that so?" She smiled. "Well then, have your fill. You may never see it again."
"Aannd it's, too much to hope that I'd ever learn their origin, I suppose."

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This is one of those episodes that I've been looking forward to and writing in my head for quite a while now. Actually, this is technically "half" of the episode I was writing in my head because it came out very, very long and had what seemed to be a natural split point which was also an opportunity to slot in the two little extra scenes at the end. Plus, I had a good idea for the title of the remaining "half". Said "second half" will post tomorrow.