Sunday, May 30, 2021

Aetuornos Beta 2-7



2-7: Triple Trial Threat

The pair of magicless adventurers heard a high-pitched 'ding' sound from seemingly the center of the ceiling of their room, and then Noire's ears picked up something spinning up inside the slots in front of them. Then a ticking sound began to play from the same general direction, and a small piece of blue, glasslike crystal shot out from the farthest right of those slots. The rogue instinctively tossed her dagger at it and scored a hit, which caused it to shatter, the pieces seeming to vanish inches away from the point of impact. Then one of the left slots fired a larger chunk that moved at a smaller speed, and—deciding that she had the right idea—Jack moved his axe so its blade was in the crystal's way, breaking it, too. Another 'ding' sound played.


"Hrrrnnngh...woof, there. Hey, did you hear that?" Grigori said.
"Hear what?" While she was nowhere near as physically strong, the monk had been pushing with her back to help him position the largest of the metal boxes. The druid was in part-bear form for the strength bonus.
"There was a 'ding' sound, from somewhere..above the ceiling. And then something shattering..there's another 'ding!"
"Perhaps our comrades' trials are directly above us," Zef suggested. "At any rate, this should be sufficient to reach—"


This time, Noire got a rapid series of three small crystals, right-center-right. In between, at a somewhat slower tempo, came two larger ones from the left slot. The rogue had little difficulty hitting each one in turn, while Jack almost missed his second one. Still, they managed to do it. "This is less 'puzzle' and more 'skill check," she commented.


After Grigori picked up another, slightly longer series of shattering noises from above, a point on the magic circle on the ceiling began to glow, and a yellow flame rushed down from it toward the suit of armor on the right side of the room. The fire spread across its body and it seemed to come to life as a result, taking an aggressive step toward the two of them. "I bet you should touch where it's glowing," he said. "Can you reach?"
"It's a leap, but—yes," she said, nodding, as the armor began moving faster, brandishing its halberd to swing at them.
"Go, I got this."

Zef ran for the shortest metal box, running up it, across it, along the wall it was up against to the next highest one, then jumped to the rough 'staircase with gaps' they had managed to make so far, picking up momentum as she went. Meanwhile, the armor made a hard sideways chop at Grigori, who ducked back away from it.


"Next?"
"X! Three, two, one—goo-ooww!"
"Yeowch!" Both of the demon-girls' attempts to push the third button-pair were unsuccessful. Fiori found that there was much more resistance from the square button than the triangle and circle, so that slapping it like she had the first two just hurt her hand and didn't budge it, and—turning around to look—she found that the buttons on Thora's side were now covered in a bright yellow flame. Something in her mage-class intuition told her that she could counteract it with her own necrotic fire magic.

"What th—"
"Switch sides, hurry!" Fiori started running across the room. "Square is next, hit it as hard as you can."
"Oh-okay!" Thora ran across on the opposite side of the metal slab, drawing her fist back. Fiori sent Roth ahead of her to spew some flame on the right-side buttons, and she punched in the X button at the same time as the berserker literally punched the square one, resulting in another satisfying 'ding'.


The third 'ding' from above came with a substantial delay compared to the period between the first two, and Noire could hear machinery spinning up in a different location from before. "Watch the left wall," she advised quickly, turning toward the right herself. This time, five crystals shot out in rapid succession from Jack's side, with three larger ones interleaved from Noire's. She hit all three of her targets easily enough, and just barely managed to play catch-up on the three her partner missed.
"I literally can't move that fast!" he complained.
"I guess we're meant to swap sides," Noire said.
"How were we supposed to know that?"
"We'd best jump to ensure the plates stay down," she said quickly, half-over his complaint. Time was surely ticking before the next set of things-to-hit came out, after all.
"Okay," he turned around to face her. "Count three for me."
The catgirl nodded. "Three, two, one—"


"—Circle!" A fourth 'ding' sound.
"More fire, switch!"
"On it."

As the demon-girls turned around toward the center of the room to swap sides, both of them had the opportunity to see a flash of bright yellow fire in the indentation opposite the door they had come from. A humanoid creature which seemed to be made of golden light, with pieces of flat, metallic material in a winglike shape floating out from behind its back, had appeared. Its hands each held a short sword, and it seemed to hover slightly off of the ground, gliding forward almost as soon as it came into existence.

"Uhh—" Thora started toward the back side of the slab, watching the thing as it came toward her.
"Keep running!" Fiori had already cleared the front of the slab; she sent Roth over to toss a fireball at the creature, which it caught with a sword swipe and seemed to instantly dispel. Then it was between Thora and her destination, brandishing its weapons. She made to go left, then right, and it simply swept itself directly in her way each time.

"Grrr.." Gaining a bit of her usual berserk aura from sheer annoyance, Thora raised her own weapon and swung, trying to hit the thing in the side. It blocked with both swords, but her strength proved more than sufficient to overpower it and send it flying toward the wall it had started out up against, crashing hard into it.


At the peak of her leap from the tallest metal box, Zef brushed her hand against the glowing part of the magic circle with her fingers, resulting in the glow fading out and the armor it had animated halting its motion, becoming seemingly frozen in place. Her momentum carried her on to the wall, and she landed neatly against it, gently sliding down to floor level. Then there was a fourth 'ding' and a new spot on the magic circle glowed, a yellow flame traveling down from there to the armor on the wall opposite the door, animating it.

"Second verse, same as the first," Grigori said, shrugging and approaching the armor so it would target him. "Can you reach that one?"
"Uncertain. I will attempt," Zef said, landing and immediately running to start her chain of jumps and wall-running all over again. However, no sooner had she reached the top of the first box in that chain than a loud buzzer-like sound echoed all across the room, and the armor that had been advancing on the druid went still, the glow on the circle above them fading out.

He lowered his clawed arm from its defensive position. "Uhh..okaaay?"


Six targets came out this time—four on the left, two larger ones on the right. Noire thought she heard two hits from behind her, and knew she hit all four of hers: Three with thrown daggers, one by chopping it with her hand while still waiting for her weapon to finish returning. Nonetheless, their success was followed by a loud buzzer, like someone had gotten a wrong answer on a quiz show.

"Ow, what?" Jack turned around, still covering his ears. "Did you miss one?"
"No. Hold on—" The rogue held up a hand for a second of quiet. "..No ticking. That timer ran out."
"How could we go faster?" he said, exasperated. "We had to wait for the, uh, things to come out."
"Not sure...but I think we should swap back," Noire suggested.
"Why?"
"Hm~mn, call it a 'treasure hunter's instinct'?" she said, giving him a winning smile.
"Uh..'kay." Knowing she was 'really' male didn't do much to help him resist her charisma, it seemed.


While the golden light-thing was busy picking itself up off of the floor, Thora ran for the buttons. But, just as she arrived, the ticking resolved to a loud buzzer—they had run out of time. "Gaah. Sorry," the berserker said, turning around.
"It's okay, that thingy showing up was totally unexpected!" Fiori leaned over to get a look at the symbols on the slab. "Mmh, looks like it's reset, first symbol's yellow and everything. Soo, we can try again for free! No pressure."
"Yeah. Okay..." Thora nodded, punching into a hand with a fist. "This time, I'll knock that thing away way faster."
"You remember your first two buttons, right?"
"Dot, cross."
"Yep~! Let's do them like, bam-bam," she said, cutely punching the air with her fists to demonstrate, "then switch right away!"
"Uhh..yeah, got it." Thora turned back to her buttons to hide a slight blush.

"Okay, I count up three and we press on four and five," she said. "One, two, three—"


Two chimes came from above: Ding, ding. Noire readied her weapons, and found herself bombarded with four small crystals, the third almost instantly after the second. She barely managed to catch the fourth with her hand, but Jack got three targets—one instantly after the first—which he was ill-equipped to handle. The one he missed crashed against the back wall, and another loud buzzer sounded.

Jack growled in frustration. "What the heck?! I couldn't react to that!"
"Easy there," Noire said, tossing one of her daggers up in the air and catching it back in her hand a couple of times. "I have a feeling we'll get another, more reasonable try in a moment."
"Huh? You figure something out?"
"I have..a suspicion," she replied.


"Buzzer?!" The two demon-girls stopped halfway through swapping sides. "What'd we do wrong this time?" Thora complained.
"Umm, I guess that was too fast?" Fiori suggested, equally confused herself. "Let's just walk back and give it another shot?"
The berserker sighed. "Alright. So maybe a timing somewhere between the first time and this time will be the Goldilocks speed."

"'Kay. One, two, three—"


"We appear to have bought a moment of time somehow," Zef stated. "Push that box against the wall," she snapped, pointing to one that wasn't part of their path, followed by the wall.
"Uh, sure." Grigori walked around the unmoving suit of hostile armor to go shove the box into place. As he pushed it, he heard two dings in quick succession, some shattering sounds from above...but the circle above them didn't glow. It was as if some convoluted set of conditions needed to be fulfilled for it to activate, none of which were in their hands. Well—at least the cute monk girl seemed to have had some idea of how to hit the second glowy spot more reliably, he thought.

Around the time he got it against the wall, the bell above chimed in somewhat slower succession, followed by a series of shattering sounds. Turning toward the halberd-wielding armor, he found exactly what he expected to see: A yellow flame coming down to activate it. It seemed to 'look around' with its helmet briefly before spotting him. "Uh, Zef?"
"On it!" She made the same leap-run combo as before, brushing her hand against the glowing point on her way to the wall and then sliding down it. As soon as she was close enough to safely do so, she pushed off the wall to start running around the boxes and back to the first one of that same pattern of movement.

Above, there were more chimes and shattering sounds. The druid turned toward the second armor, which held a sword and a shield. This one seemed to know where he was instantly, running straight for him and swinging right away. He backed off, sidestepping a couple of swipes and trying to navigate himself in a circle so he didn't get his back against a wall or box. Meanwhile, Zef used her momentum to leap from the highest box over to the one he'd just pushed, along it and up the wall next to it to wall-jump-backflip just barely high enough into the air for her foot to kick the glowing spot on the ceiling and deactivate this suit of hostile armor, too.


"—jump!" Noire swapped to the left, and caught the series of five smaller crystals. They always came in the same pattern, so she was able to anticipate them and throw her daggers ahead of time at the first two and one in the middle of the sequence.
"Hey, I'm getting a little better at this," Jack said after the fourth 'ding' and the following four targets.
"Good—it's likely to grow more difficult still," she said, turning around toward him. "Swap again. Three, two, one—"


Thora turned after the fourth button-press, readying her giant club as she ran to swap the second time. She again ran to her left of the metal slab in the center of the room—behind it—and gave a hard, two-handed swing into the glowy monster that had appeared without really even looking at it, achieving a similar result to before in far less time. As she ran the rest of the way to the buttons, Fiori called, "Cross, dot!"
"Got it!" Thora punched the button with the cross on it as she arrived, and waited for the countdown to hit the other one.

Fiori had Roth's eyes available to watch the light-thing get up and start floating toward her, and she had her familiar hit it with a jet of flame to annoy it, which seemed to have the effect of making it target him with its swords. The necromancer had the distinct sense that this thing was magical in a way that meant it could harm her physically-intangible familiar, and made him fly back away from the swipes, thankfully clearing them. At the same time, she counted: "One, two, three—"


The fifth set of crystals alternated between slots on the right and back wall for Noire, while Jack's came only from the left. "Keep an eye on the back wall," she said, correctly anticipating that the sixth set would include one that way for him, too. The rogue was starting to get a hang of how the targets tended to alternate, but her compainion barely kept up with this last one.

"That's two more, so we swap," she said, mentally preparing to pick up some slack for him if needed.
"Yup." Jack elected to count this time: "Three, two, one—"


The third armor held a warhammer in its hands, and predictably activated next—after the six faint ringing sound from above. Grigori took a step toward the armor as it awoke. "Hold it," Zef said, running up to him. "I cannot reach that target as things are now." She pointed at the ceiling.
Risking a brief glance skyward, the druid saw what she meant. "Oof, yeah."
"I will keep it busy," she stated, placing herself between the armor and him. "Push them, quickly."
"Sure!"

Grigori tried to imagine the kind of trajectories she would be able to manage, with the wall-running, wall-jumping, and so on, and find the least movement of boxes needed to give her a route. In a moment, he settled on moving a mid-size box that had been unused before to where she could chain a jump down to it from the biggest one to get across to the latest target spot on the ceiling, and got to work moving it.

While he did this, Zef effortlessly danced around the armor's attempts to smash her face (or any other bones) in with that hammer. She even found time to talk while doing so. "I would inform you, that in contrast to the false image you perceive, my actual body is male."
"Oh? Funny world," Grigori said between breaths as he pushed. "Hnngh! My actual body's, ffh, female."


The sixth button press summoned another floating light-guy, and it approached Thora while the one that was already present gave up its pursuit of Fiori's familiar to go for the necromancer herself. "Two of them now! Go away!" The berserker batted her pursuer away as easily as she had the other one, and ran to knock away Fiori's problems too, sending him flying in the direction of the door they had come from.
"Thanks!" The short demon-girl hurried to the buttons, having Roth harass the guy who'd just hit the back wall with some fireballs to keep him busy as he recovered. "X then dot; you count!"
"'Kay! "One, two, three—"


"There! You're set," Grigori called, hurrying to intercept the hostile suit of armor. "Guess you mean to discourage any future advances, but trust me—you're not interested, I won't bug ya. I've had a taste myself, and no intentions of inflicting it on anyone else." As he moved forward, the monk faded back, examining the configuration for herself and discerning his plan almost immediately, running to get back onto the highest box.
"Very well."

As she made her way up, the druid realized that her position—consequently his, now—had been pushed back by this third suit of armor into a place about equally close to the two inactive ones. "Ooh boy," he mumbled to himself, making an effort to get himself away to one side, so he could at least face toward all three at once. His opponent predictably didn't like this much, and tried to deny him with a hammer swing or two—but he took advantage of his bear-strength, grabbing the hammer just below its head after a downward slam missed and yanking it out of the armor's hands to throw it into the inactive armor with the halberd.
It clanged off the metal of the breastplate—disappointingly not knocking the armor pieces all apart onto the floor—and clattered onto the ground, and its owner ran to retrieve it, giving him time to maneuver into a much less surrounded position. Just then, Zef hit her target—grazing the ceiling with a light-blade from her arm—and hit the wall past it, sliding down gracefully once again.

"Get ready to hit all three again," the druid said.
"'Gamer intuition'?" she asked, doing so anyway.
"Nah, just normal intuition this time, I think."


The seventh barrage of targets proved especially difficult, and Jack missed half of his—but Noire picked up that slack. "I can't even—how!?"
"They're all at the same elevation on that side," Noire said as quickly as her mouth could go. "Just swing wildly in a circle, I'll catch the rest!"
"Okay!"

This strategy was more successful than his attempts to target them carefully had been, which was good since the eighth target set left Noire very little room to play catch-up. She wound up kicking her foot out to one side to get the last one.

"Swapagain! Three, two, one—"


The light-things were almost on them by the time the eighth pair of buttons had been pressed. Fiori whirled and drew her scythe quickly to block the two swords of the one after her with its shaft, while Thora botched an effort to dodge and got a cut across her stomach before roaring and swinging her club into the culprit, sending it back to crash into the side of the metal slab. Roth came up behind his master's attacker, spewing flame and forcing it to turn and deal with him instead of continuing to push on her weapon. She took the opportunity to drop her scythe and run around him, and he replied by ignoring Roth's assault and chasing right on her heels.

Thora swept her recent victim off to her right as she passed him, then did the same to Fiori's pursuer as she passed, making it to the buttons a bit ahead of the necromancer. "S-square!" Fiori breathed as she came to the other side, just behind a fireball from Roth, and pounded the cross button, the other half of the final symbol in the sequence. Behind her, she heard the click of Thora hitting her assigned button, and then the usual 'ding' sound repeated itself thrice, followed by an audible whooshing noise as their two pursuers vanished back into yellow flames.

The first six symbols on the slab now glowed white, the next two green, and the last one bright yellow.


"Keep spinning!" Noire advised, listening to every single slot wind up at the same time after three chimes in a row above them. Then, somewhat predictably, they all shot out at the same time. Jack got lucky and hit all but one of his targets, plus one Noire missed; she threw her daggers in anticipation, then twice more, and then had to improvise a roundhouse kick to catch the rest, but nonetheless—they did it. "...Phew."


When all three of the armors animated again, their strategy was recognizably different. The one Grigori had just finished disarming, instead of resuming the pursuit of its big hammer, ran toward the nearest box, making to push it; the other two advanced on the druid, weapons readied, to try to prevent him from interfering. "Hey hey, none of that!" he growled, calling on his ingame deity to throw some vines out from his left arm, whipping them around the disarmed suit's torso and pulling to reel it back toward him. He had to let go before long, thanks to another armor's sword-swipe, but he managed to turn the force into a jerk strong enough to topple it over onto its back. All of this left him awkwardly positioned for the downward chop of the third armor's halberd, and he just had to duck aside and take it square in the shoulder. Almost immediately after this, that armor went still.

"Ouch." The sword-and-shield armor pressed the assault, while the unarmed one got up and started toward the box again, pushing it a foot or so before he came around to kick it in the side and send it stumbling over—which, unfortunately, also hurt his foot about as much as one would expect from kicking solid metal. He mentally observed that the Monk wasn't asking after his condition; it didn't seem to him that it was necessarily unimportant to her, but rather that focusing on turning off the second suit of armor was more important than inquiring after obvious information. Anyway, he had a plant-god to call on, and the shoulder cut was already in the process of regenerating.

The attempt to sabotage her path didn't even slow Zef down, and by the time the armor he'd kicked had recovered itself, its second companion had been stopped. So it went and grabbed the halberd from its closest unmoving ally, stabbing hard at him a few times before backing up and pushing its back against the box to move it some more, watching him with its weapon ready to swing if he approached. The joke was on their saboteur, however, as Zef had already figured out a somewhat more complicated path which let her build up the needed momentum and make it to the tallest of the boxes without involving that one at all. Seeing this, Grigori just backed off and let the armor waste its time until she touched the last glowy spot above, deactivating it again.

Zef slid down the wall one last time and strode over toward him, her stance still tensed and ready for some last-second ambush. "Were we successful?"
"I think so. I heard three chimes in a row up above a minute ago, and no more buzzers. You have fun running and flipping around all over?"
"This has been...fruitful," she said after a second or two's thought. "Removing my wings has forced me to consider terrain differently. It is nothing I have not experienced before, but it has been a while since I practiced 'grounded' maneuvering."
"'Your wings'?" Grigori asked, curious.
"I am a servant of Sol," she stated; her tone was almost as flat as ever, but with the faintest hint of...maybe pride, he thought?
"Ah. Neat."

<hr />

Jack dropped his weapon somewhat ingratiously and clutched his head. "Ough...didn't know virtual bodies could feel this dizzy."
"I believe it should fade quicker than it would in reality," Noire said. "It certainly helps with immersion, at any rate."
"Yeah, sure..

"..Soo, we won, right? How do we get outta here, and on to the top floor?" Still holding his head with one hand, Jack squatted to recover his axe and put it away again.
"An excellent query. My first guess is that there is a slight delay before we are all abruptly teleported up there. My second is that 'obviously' we should go back through the door we used to get here, and its destination has changed via magic," the rogue said. "Either way, I suspect waiting a moment will elucidate that bit."
"..You sure use a lot of big words," he observed. "And fancy phrasing."

"Ah, well, that is my character, after all. Just a noble-kid runaway," she said wisfully, "who received just enough education to be dangerous before feeling choked and smothered by a loveless household and deciding to strike out on her own, to prove that a fortune could be rightfully earned rather than squeezed unjustly out of peasants."
"Huh. You thought up a backstory and everything already? Dude, I am way behind on that stuff..."
"Well, half or more of roleplaying is improvisation. Say, if someone acts like they know you, just go with it," Noire suggested. "Could be fun."


Both demon-girls moved toward the center of the room, watching as the symbols changed color from left to right until all nine were glowing white. "I guess, uh, we did it?" Fiori said. "Wonder what's with the weird extra timer, though."
"No idea. But, I'm glad those light-things are gone," Thora said. "It had what felt..very realistically like an aura of celestial magic."
"Mmh. I'm a bit lucky it never managed to slice Roth with those blades. There are huuuuge penalties if your familiar gets deaded, and uh..it's slightly complicated to revive a wisp." Roth took on a fearful expression and rotated back and forth in a manner resembling someone shaking their head—except that his entire body was the head. "Aawh, there there. You're just fine," Fiori said, putting her hand palm-up just underneath him. Roth floated back into her again.

"Is that uh...does Roth have an AI or something? I thought there were no AI's technically."
"Well, like, enemy AI exists—but i know what you mean," Fiori said. "Nope, I'm just acting, to be honest. I get physical control over my familiar and some kinda 'extra processing power' so it's not disorienting to experience things from two perspectives at once. It'd be kinda neat if people could 'split in two' with magic in the real world too, I think."
"Some people can do something similar with..really high-level astral projections," Thora said. "I've..never been too good with meditation magic, though. I just tend to get distracted way too easily."

A familiar voice cleared his throat, echoing throughout the room. "If you are hearing this message, it's because you were insufficiently curious to check the doors you entered through," Mondelain's disembodied voice continued dryly. "Please do that now, and cease wasting your time and mine."

"Huh?" Fiori looked (as did Thora), and found the door shut again—though she couldn't remember if either of them had done so.
"I guess that's how we get to the top floor...somehow," the berserker said, walking up to it. She hesitated in front of the door for a second, her hand extended partway toward it. "I hope this isn't another instant-teleportation thing..."
"Heehee!" the necromancer giggled. "Hey, we survived the last one, didn't we?"
Thora looked to her, then back at the door. "...Guess so." She reached her hand the rest of the way to the knob to pull it open.


I hope it makes enough sense what's going on with the trials here. But, I'm sure some DM, somewhere, has made a more complicated puzzle/encounter than this.

A majority of this chapter was actually written as part of 2-6, before I realized that it was getting way too long and looked around for a good place to cut it and add that scene with Ronin in instead.
Posted by at 2 comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Friday, May 28, 2021

Battle Vixens! - 87



Episode 87: Mutually Unfamiliar Territory

Emma's choice of restaurant was a casual place within easy walking distance of their apartment complex, where the clientele ordered at the counter and then sat themselves. It also wasn't very crowded, and once Amory got inside it was easy to spot a few corner booths far enough from all the other tables to speak without worry of being accidentally overheard. It was difficult for him to guess at this point whether she had thought about that or merely chosen this place some other way and been lucky. Either way, it seemed like they could talk in relative private here.

He turned back toward the front door, hearing its bell ring, and so came his first sight of her freshly-altered appearance. Even though she had changed a fair bit, what impeded his immediate recognition the most was the lack of glasses. However, it only took him half a second or so—since she had basically the same face as Plus that way—and it was after that that she stammered, "U-um, hi." That, and her slightly nervous expression, were even more recognizable.

Emma had added on to the changes she'd told them about last night. She was now maybe a full foot taller—enough for her eye level to be around his chin instead of his chest—and quite a bit curvier, maybe a C cup with hips to match. Her build overall seemed trim and athletic, like a long-distance runner or something. Her choice of clothes seemed basically the same, some knee-length jean-shorts and a t-shirt, although only the former seemed to be new; as a result the latter now was tight enough to show off the new curves and short enoguh to expose a few inches of midriff.

She was also blushing some. "Soo, whatdoyou, um..thiiink?" Even this much extra skin seemed to embarrass her a bit, and on top of that she obviously felt the immense strangeness of asking his opinion about drastic changes to her body.
Amory just smiled. "You look good. Especially if you like it better."
"Heheh," Emma giggled. "Somehow I knew you'd say something like that. Um..." She waved vaguely toward the front counter, and he nodded, leading the way over.

Once their orders were in, Amory went to the booth in the most deserted corner, and she followed, sitting across from him. From the time she came in to when they sat down, Emma was constantly looking around the room—or ocassionally at him—evidently trying to get used to being so tall. Of course both of them had experienced shifts in perspective before, between Amory's fox-form and her "boosted" or "combined" ones, but it had to be something else entirely for the body she thought of as the normal one to be so different.

"I uh, might still wanna make a few tweaks," she said softly. "But it's soo liberating just to not need glasses anymore!"
"I can't imagine," Amory said. "From out here, though, it does give a clearer view of your pretty face."
"Heheh.." Emma giggled nervously, flushing a bright red. "Th-thanks. I guess you know I haven't changed that."
"I don't think you need to, if you want my opinion. But, you're the boss."
"Mmnh, I dunno how I'd feel about looking in the mirror and not even recognizing myself," she said, shaking her head.

They paused for a moment, long enough to signal a change of subject, and then both attempted to say something at the same time. "So this morning—"
"I thought of—" she said.
Amory put a hand up toward her: You first.
"Um, okay. I kinda, realized while I was doing stuff this morning that I...have to tell some people about, what happened last night. Like, anyone who knows..'cause, like, Ning or the Quinns would find it kinda weird for me to suddenly look like this with no explanation."
"Yeah.." he nodded. "I was gonna bring that up at some point. It..might be a good idea to tell Rowan about that thing, too. I mean—at least give him a heads up that the Giver has, like, human bodies all over the place doing..things."
"Hmmh. I guess I should," she said. "It'd be good practice for telling, everyone else I guess."
"Light suggested you could also tell him how we knew before you did..just that uh, he prefers as much honesty as possible with our allies."
Emma nodded. "Maybe..he'll understand."

At this point their food came, and they thanked the server, watching her go well out of earshot before continuing.

"Soo uh, what was your thing?"
"This morning, uh, Clark called me. There's some good news, Rory remembered enough that she's able to change back to human form again like before."
"Oh? That's great," she said, smiling.
"Yeah. She's acting a little more like her old self, too," he nodded. "Um, which I know because—the reason he called me was he had this idea..."

Emma headtilted hard once he was finished explaining, visibly attempting to imagine what it was like to simultaneously be herself and another person. "That's...um..I guess it's good? I mean, like, 'Quinn' is way stronger than the sum of her parts?"
"Yeah. It's like..from what I can tell, it's like their powers 'resonate' and amplify each other. She could also do things neither one could do individually."
"Hmmnh. It's really weird to think about, buut..I kinda wonder what it's like to have Light's confidence, now that I think of it," she said. "What does uh..she think of it?"
"Her opinion seems to be that it's better than 'commanding' everyone else's powers arbitrarily, since both minds seem to get 'equal say' at least."
"We..don't really know how long it'll be, after today, before we get a chance to 'try things out' risk-free, huh," Emma said slowly. "You think, she'd be willing to try, um, later today or something?"
"Probably, under the same logic. We can ask."

They talked about some more normal things for a few minutes, until Emma abruptly interrupted herself. "I'm gonna call Rowan," she said, quietly but emphatically. "After—right after this. Before we go, uh, wherever else. Maybeee, I should probably stop by my apartment to do it."
"Alright." Amory didn't ask, but he was curious what brought this on.
"I just uh, don't wanna procrastinate about it, or especially forget about it...every time I think about it I feel a little worse about how long I haven't already said something."
"I don't think half a day is too bad," Amory said. "It took me, what, five days for me to tell you about the uh, 'Amp' thing..and that took you getting put into a coma."
"That whole thing was uh...complicated," Emma said. "You know I've never been mad about it."
"You are way too nice," he said, but smiled and nodded.
"But um..thanks."

When they were finished, Emma fidgeted uncertainly. "Um..so, we haven't said anything specific about what to do after this? Orr, after I go call.."
"I could walk back to the apartment with you," Amory suggested, pulling her garbage over onto his tray to dispose of. "Then anyone who sees us can wonder why I'm with such a gorgeous girl."
She turned her head toward a wall, blushing deeply, and softly giggled again. "H-heheh.."
"Uh..too much? Sorry." He got up, heading for the trash cans; Emma followed after a couple of seconds.
"N-no no, I'm just, not used to it at all, I guess?"
"Me either, really..."

Once they were outside and on the way back, Amory continued: "I haven't really...I mean, I've always thought of myself as kinda terrible with romance. I don't know how to flirt really, besides sounding like a total doofus. Before you, the only dates I've been on were a couple of times in high school when a friend set me up on a double-date with them, and..mostly I just had no idea what to say. The girls they picked out for me because we'd be a 'cute couple' or something..I didn't feel like I had much in common with. Or, maybe I just didn't know what to say to find out."
"Oh, um..I-I wouldn't know 'the right way', either," Emma said. "I've always been kind of a huge shut-in nerd type...which I guess is pretty obvious. A guy asked me out just once, sophomore year, and I pretended I was sick and ran into the bathroom. Uh..actually, I think I did feel sick 'cause I was that nervous. And, I never found out for sure, but I suspect it was a dare or something. Even though I thought that, I still, beat myself up over it for the rest of the day..heheh..."

Amory gave her what was hopefully a sympathetic look, but she just shrugged it off—this was far enough in the past that she didn't seem to feel any real pain from it anymore. "I guess I probably would've gotten over my crush without ever talking to you once, if not for..everything. So Beryl, kiiinda helped push me into it, in her own convoluted, psychopathic way..."
"I guess, but there had to be other ways she could've introduced us. Like: Literally coming up to me and saying 'hey, my friend over there wants to go out with you but she's too shy to say it herself'."
"Maybe...I might've just run away again, though. Not that I think her way was best, or the only way either. But, I imagine it's another thing where she saw results as guaranteed with this method, and that mattered more to her than what I had to go through to um, get to this point."

"I admit finding someone to..be with, wasn't really a priority for me, either," Amory said. "I've just always been focused on other goals. I thought it'd maybe fit into place once I had all the more 'important' things done."
"I um..I've fantasized sometimes, before, but never about anyone both specific and real," Emma replied. "I always thought meeting someone I really liked, who was also interested in me, was totally out of reach. So like, I didn't have many thoughts of being romantic with anyone in particular, even if I thought they were attractive, 'cause I'd already pretty much given up on the idea." She sighed. "I dunno if..I mean, I-I'm definitely infatuated with you, I admit, but the whole obsessive stalking thing was, maybe really about me? Like, I just wanted there to be one thing that I'd already given up on, that I could prove to myself I actually could do. I was..I mean I am definitely tired of telling myself 'I'll never ever'."
"Well, that's good, then. I'm happy for you," Amory said, cautiously putting a hand on her shoulder for a second. "In my opinion, you deserve to be happy."

Emma stopped in her tracks, turning to stare from his hand on her shoulder up to his face with an increasingly bright blush. "H-heh..thanks," she said, pulling up into a brief hug before abruptly jerking herself back out of it again. "Um." She looked around them quickly, seeming uncertain whether that had been appropriate.
"Hey..It's okay." Amory moved closer and pulled her back into the hug himself, letting her lean her head on his shoulder for a moment before disengaging a bit more naturally. They had been..equally close and then some before, but only when he was 'Amp'. This was a completely different experience, which he honestly really enjoyed. Going by her smling, giggling blush, Emma seemed to like it, too. But—she quickly turned to keep walking, about equally as embarrassed by it as she was happy.

A long pause later, as they came into the apartment building proper, she said, "Beryl um...seemed to think so too. To uh, want me to be happy. Or something like that. Isn't that kinda...weird?"
Amory shrugged. "From the reference point of what we knew about her before last night, yeah. She's always seemed to go out of her way to give the impression that it's only her own happiness she really cares about. But, if she wanted you to be her friend..or thought of you as one, then that just seems like a natural result."
"I guess that's right."

Emma stopped again in front of her apartment's door, looking between it and him nervously a few times, fidgeting her hands together. "Um...I guess, you wanna come in? It'd be kinda super awkward to have you just wait out here the whole time..."
"Sure," he nodded, and then followed her inside.
"Maybe you can um, help me remember what I need to say. I feel like I'm gonna drop the phone or something."
"I guarantee you, Rowan won't be angry, or even upset," Amory said, but nodded his assent anyway.

She changed to her fox-tailed form, the combined Gemma, to actually make the call. He stood over next to the couch, and she paced randomly around the room the entire time, occasionally looking at him. He didn't really need to signal any specific cues for her; she just seemed to intuit something he wasn't even thinking from briefly looking into his face, and that was enough to help her come up with the right way to say something, or remember whatever she thought should come next.

Gemma breathed a sigh of relief after hanging up. "Um, thanks, you were right," she said. "I mean—I think I knew it too, but it's so hard for me to really believe a situation's gonna go okay sometimes. I'll play the worst version of it in my head and get worked up about it, and just build up this pressure that starts to make it feel like I just shouldn't do it at all in the first place. That's kinda, what I meant about procrastinating too much, honestly."
"And, I guess that's what made it so hard for you to actually talk to me for a while," Amory said, putting a hand out toward her.
She nodded, "Y-yeah. Uhhm.." Her phrase came out, and she changed back to the, now taller, human form.

"M-maybe we could just..watch something here?" she suggested, gesturing toward the TV on a little rolling cart which was presently in viewing range of the living room couch. "Instead of going somewhere else..I mean, I've got some stuff we could watch, or play, I think.."
"Sure, if you want," Amory nodded. It was increasingly clear that she was a lot more comfortable in private than in public, like she felt dozens of eyes on her every move out there despite nobody really watching. This was particularly true for displays of affection, maybe, like that hug earlier.
"Um, okay. T-take a seat?" she suggested, going over to a shelf to pick something out. He nodded (to her back) and sat down on one side.

"Is, uh, would this be okay?" Emma said, holding out a DVD case for an old Disney animated movie.
"Sure." There were several other things on her shelf that Amory liked, but it wasn't like she knew that, and he could respect going for a relatively 'safe' option. Once it was in, she sat on the opposite side of the couch for a moment before nervously looking between him and the screen a couple of times and then sloooowly scooting closer. Amory just put an arm over her shoulder once in range to reassure her this was okay, and she giggled nervously again, pulling the last few inches to be up against him, leaning over onto his shoulder, and returning the gesture with an arm around his waist.

They stayed more or less like this for the rest of the movie's runtime, apart from some occasional fidgeting or their hands moving around some. Emma's focus clearly wasn't entirely on the movie, with the way she occasionally looked over at him for a second or two; Amory couldn't blame her, and he wasn't much better, either.
At the end credits she sort of mumbled, "Um..good..right?"
"Yeah. It's uh, been a while since I've seen it," he said, turning his head toward her. This gave him a view of her looking up at him with a terribly nervous expression, coupled with a bright blush.

"D'you uh..wanna...?" She trailed off, clearly afraid to actually ask, but it was kind of obvious—to him, at least—what she wanted. Amory responded by gently leaning down and pressing his lips onto hers."Mmnh!" Emma flinched violently, surprised at first by the gesture, but stopped short of actually pulling away. After a second or two, she even sort of leaned into it, putting her other arm around his front to pull closer. "Mm...mm~mh..." That sounded pleased, and soon after they carefully pulled apart again—but she still had both of her arms around him.

"How was uh..was that any good?" Amory said. Even though he thought he knew the answer, there was some doubt he couldn't quite dispel without actually hearing it from her. "I mean, I've never really.."
"M-me either!" she squeaked. "B-but uh, it was pretty great as far as I'm concerned." And, she had on the cutest, blushing smile he thought he'd ever seen. "Did I uh..y-you think I could use more um..p-practice?"
"Well, I don't think you need it, but I know I'd appreciate it," he replied, running his hand through her hair, which made her shiver slightly and giggle again.

This time, Emma seemed to physically push through her nerves to get her head up to his and go in for a second kiss. This one was decidedly more intense; breaking through her nervousness seemed to leave her with a lot of suddenly free energy, and she spent it pushing herself into him while steadily climbing around to his front side, one of her knees between his legs and her upper body pressed much closer against his than it had been in their previous couple of hugs that day—which gave him some firsthand, tactile experience with her new and improved figure. To be fair, he was holding on to her pretty tight now too, and putting about as much into the kiss as he was getting.

They basically stopped just to come up for air, and their faces didn't really pull very far apart while they both softly panted. Neither of them really seemed to mind the minor discomfort of all that hot air on their faces. Emma giggled giddily between breaths. "Uh, s-sorry, did I um..heheh..g-get a little carried away?" Despite the apology, she was grinning from ear to ear—expressing an emotion Amory felt he had very much in common.
"Well—if you did then so did I," he said after a couple of deep breaths, and brushed through her hair again. "If we are doing this wrong, then I don't want to do it right." Emma just laughed to show her agreement with this. But she did get a somewhat more serious, doubtful expression as she caught her breath.

"So um..a-are we..I mean, what are..?"
"Well, we're dating, yeah? There's no need to put another label on it for now. I mean, we can talk 'seriously' if you want, later maybe, but.." He leaned forward pointedly, drawing another giddy giggle from her.
"You want more?" He made the slightest motion of his head he could for a nod. "O-okay, yeah, me too actually." Emma pushed herself onto him again, and they shared an experience not unlike the previous one, again stopping only because of the mutual need to actually breathe. However, she did pull her head over his shoulder again afterward, giving them both slightly more space to get air from.

"Uh..heheheh...that, it uh..it feels, way way better than anything I was able to imagine," she said quietly, and then pulled her head back enough to be back in front of him.
"It's pretty great over here, too," he said, brushing through her hair again.
"Mmnh..still, I kinda almost wish I could—wait!" Her eyes widened slightly; she'd suddenly had an idea.
"What?"
"Can you uh—and maybe. Uhmm." She took a second to try to get un-tongue-tied, and still only succeeded at being partially coherent: "Fox. Amp. Uuuh, boost. Me."
"Sure..?"

Emma nodded and spoke her own phrase, shrinking back to the two-tailed form. Amory did similarly, and had the curious experience of the..excitement from the kissing and their continued embrace suddenly transfer over to a completely different, yet no less pleasant, sensation. Emma wasted no time in pulling herself as close against the small, blond vixen's body as she had been before, and Amp felt almost compelled to curl her one tail across both of the other girl's, continuing to brush one hand through her lengthened hair while rubbing all across her ears with the other.

She churred and nuzzled Amp, petting her back for a moment, as she grew into her enhanced form: Even taller, curvier and more muscular than her human form had become. After a moment of this she seemed to forcibly pry herself back against the instinct to keep nuzzling so she could talk. "I uh. Quinn has 'hair control', 'cause Rory's power includes 'complete' control over her body. R-right?"
"Um..yeah?"
"Can she like, shapeshift some too?"
"Mmhm..we found that out the first time I used my power on her. She was able to make some...pretty drastic changes actually."
Gemma grinned, seeming to find some satisfaction in her idea actually going somewhere. "Like, turning into a boy maybe?"
"Yeah..that exactly."
The two-tailed vixen just smiled down at her for a moment of silence, until Amp actually caught on to what her idea was. "W-wait, are you..?"
"I wanna at least try," she said. "Um, l-let's see.."

"Mmnnnngh.." She squinted, humming and visibly concentrating, tensing her entire body. It took a second or two, but Amp began to feel results before seeing them. Gemma's body actually shrank in height slightly—she had the sense that some size and strength was being 'sacrificed' to make this work—but, at the same time, her curves began to diminish. She steadily pulled herself closer against Amp as her breasts shrank to make room; her shoulders broadened slightly, and her voice didn't so much deepen as change in timbre to a more masculine-sounding one. Finally, at the end of it, Emma gasped sharply alongside a slight forward motion of her hips—his hips, as Amp became immediately aware of the person on top of her being actually male.

"Hhhh.." he breathed out slowly, and then, "Heheheh.." He didn't quite compare to the ultra-masculine form Rory had once achieved, instead retaining a very slim, effeminate build—though not without some solidness to the muscles—Gemma's usual, very long hair, and a not-much-changed face that was androgynous at best. "It worked!" He grinned, then frowned. "Aah, this sounds weeeird." His voice was a high tenor, just scraping the ceiling of adult male range. Despite all of that, Amp's body responded to the change with a sudden resurgence and intensifying of what she'd felt just after changing a moment ago—a fuzzy, deeply pleasant sensation down between her legs that was making her blush and causing her to desperately want to kiss him..again.

"Um, so uh.." The fox-boy leaned down toward her, going in for that kiss, but hesitating again; he wasn't sure if she would be weirded out by the idea or something. Amp just took over and pushed her face up onto his, reveling in the strange new sensations it provided her. There had been..hints of a feeling like this before sometimes, while petting Emma at night, but nothing that stayed long, nor that came anywhere near this level of intensity.

He let go after a long moment, heaving in air. Amp realized that her back was now against the armrest of the couch, her legs across the rest of the seating, with Gemma entirely on top of her. And—he was burning her granted energy very fast maintaining that form, so she gently rubbed his ears and teased his tails with hers some to pump him with more, drawing a high yip from him. "H-heheh," he giggled again in response to that. "I uh..m-maybe this sounds dumb, but I really wanted you t-to know um..h-how it felt for, for me. A-and, since you could, I wondered if maybe there was a way for me to—a-and so uh.."
Amp gently put a finger up to his lips, and he quit rambling, just blushing even brightre instead. "It does feel pretty good on this side of the fence," she said softly. "What do you think of that side, hmn?"
He smiled, but looked very flustered. "Uh, it's um. Wow. T-that, howdoyoueven control this thing?"
"It's not always possible, at least in the teenage years. Here.." She pulled his head down to kiss him again, knowing that even constant boosting wouldn't prevent him from burning through a lot of energy to stay male—and wanting to feel that at least one more time before he risked tiring himself out for real.

Indeed, about two-thirds of the way through this kiss, Emma made a slightly distressed "Mmh!" sound in his throat, and started shifting back toward a more feminine figure, regaining the lost height at the same time. Still, he managed to stay male just long enough for Amp to be satisfied, and she let him out of the kiss with a loud smack just before a high "Aa~aah!" came out and Gemma changed back to her natural sex. Both of them were left panting afterward, Amp from the excitement and the other girl from that and all of the exertion she'd just suddenly put herself through.

"Uuhhmm..this is pretty weird, right?" she said. "I-I mean, exchanging, like, going back and forth on. A-and, that we kinda really started after the second date with mostly both being girls and.."
"Well, it's not like most people get an opportunity to do any of that in the first place," Amp said, running a hand down through the taller girl's hair again. "Anyway, who cares if it's weird? It's, we're both doing what both of us want and enjoying it. And nob—aah, almost nobody is watching, anyway."
"H-heheh..y-yeah.." Emma paled slightly at thinking about who their audience might be—but then deliberately pushed it back out of her mind again. Amp didn't even feel concerned in the first place; this had to be positively passé to an ancient immortal being who'd watched the people of millions of worlds before.

"I guess um..the thing you said before about the whole wrong, and..right.." Despite having double the brainpower of an average person, Emma was clearly struggling with an overload of recent and still-persisting sensations to the point where she couldn't quite remember something said less than five minutes ago.
"If it's wrong, I don't wanna be right?" Amp helped her.
"Y-yeah! I uh..I guess I feel the same way about, this." She leaned down, nuzzling the smaller girl's cheek. "Mnnh. Oof, turning into a boy for even like thirty seconds was exhausting."
"Well, it's only like..two o'clock," Amp said, gently petting her ears. "We could take a short nap if you want. Or just..lie here and rest, even if it's not sleep."
"Tha'd be nice...mrr~rhh." Gemma returned the favor, her tails also twisting and running themselves across Amp's.

The intensity of feeling from all of the kissing faded off over the next few minutes or so, but Amp still felt a steady, calm afterglow of girlish pleasure now, as she continued to pet and nuzzle the tall vixen in her arms. With the way her power 'reached in' and touched the emotions of other vixens while petting them, it was easy to tell that how Emma felt about her had changed in some deep and profound way over the past few minutes or hours...and it seemed that shift was mutual, too.

She had hesitated to put a label on it before, and still wasn't so sure it was wise to try to just yet...but, maybe, this was what love felt like? Or something like it, anyway...
Posted by at 2 comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, May 23, 2021

Battle Vixens! - 86



Episode 86: Ain't No Rest for the Wicked

When Rowan woke up in the morning, it was typical for only the night-shift guards to be awake with him. He had been afforded a larger living space deep within VI headquarters, complete with a small kitchen/living room area of its own, and everything had been moved from his apartment to there. As far as he was aware, very few knew the exact location of this space, which was probably for the best. Anyone who wanted to see him usually found him at his office, or doing some work if away from there, and he was always there long before most of them were awake.

Today's business began especially early, with seeing a few more of the amnesiacs off. He didn't do more than down half a cup of old coffee and an energy bar before leaving to help hand them over at the airport. Despite some of their first impressions, they all seemed to feel positively about the VI, or at least about him—which was more or less the same thing—with several expressing gratitude along with their farewells. A few more flights would go out later today, but for now he could head back to headquarters to get started on some of the more usual work.

A day off from fighting really just meant he could focus on negotiations, clerical work, overseeing training, helping with research if needed...and whatever else inevitably came up today. There was always something, it seemed, but at least he couldn't complain of this job becoming overly boring or predictable.
Across the world, things were stabilizing and fitting together somewhat better overall; some places had been hit extremely hard, but nowhere was completely destroyed, and the worst-hit countries across the world were actually in the process of clawing their way back up. The VI was having to make alliances with some groups of vixens in other regions who had grown especially powerful through murder, which was a bit personally discomforting, but it at least meant they would be far less likely to show up on the VI's doorstep, or that any of their partner organizations in Japan or Europe. In fact, a few of the most individually powerful made the threat that they would work together to obliterate whoever tried to break the peace.

Ning sent him a few messages around eight, which thankfully did not involve any complications to the plan for her reveal later that day. Rather, the Giver had taken enough of an interest in her to visit, and had particularly mentioned a way in which vixens could make any clothing fit themselves. Having tested it with some ordinary clothing, her suggestion was that any armor developed for them could just be mass-produced in a single size and everyone could simply adjust it themselves—provided that this effect maintained the function of whatever it altered enough. Rowan passed this along immediately, before he even continued reading.
Then he found out that she had also provided Ning with a method of making specific people (her direct descendants) immortal, along with a way to 'give' that method to other vixens (and have it apply to their descendants). This he disseminated far less widely; Ning was willing to give the spell to whoever wanted it, but didn't really want to be the source for large numbers of vixens. Perhaps he could take on that role; it was plausible that it could be passed to more distant people through the "dream space" with Amp's help, as well.

To see whether Ning's idea held water, Rowan made a quick trip to the group working on armor and tried changing the appearance of one of their prototypes. All indications were that both the material and the functionality were maintained by the shift, if not improved by it properly fitting her. This pulled development ahead by quite a bit, enough that they might be able to start shipping the equipment out before the end of the day.

Around nine, a few messages came from Light. It hadn't directly occurred to Rowan that owning the powers of others might grow one's own in a manner similar to stealing them by killing, but it made a kind of logical sense as soon as he heard it. Since there was nobody in his office at the time, he took a moment to shift forms and try to 'release' any gain of power that may have resulted from the events of the day before. She simply relaxed and meditated on the fact that she wanted to be more powerful in order to protect everyone, and it came to her before long. Her body seemed to flow outward slightly as water, in a manner similar to its usual transformation, growing marginally taller. Afterward she felt slightly..sharper, perhaps, in a way which would be difficult to articulate; the real benefits might show themselves better later, in actual combat. Nonetheless, it seemed to have worked, so Rowan returned to human form to continue his work.

He had to admit that he missed Zeno's usual mid-morning visit with coffee. But, the research division was surely at least as busy as he was, and Dr. Bridges was needed there much worse than he could ever be as a coffee...girl. Rowan just got up and went to the cafeteria to make it himself. By then, headquarters was buzzing with activity, the other vixens on-site (including the remainder of the Puppeteer's victims) eating breakfast, and so on. He made a detour to the PR offices on the way back to listen in on the progress for Ning's reveal. It was just about time for it to start, but it sounded like they had it well in hand, and there wasn't much need for him to interfere. Nodding to Simon through the doorway, he continued back toward his office. The man had convinced the governor to sign what was essentially a blank official pardon ahead of time, "in view of Ning's heroism in the face of this crisis". Well, it would probably be good for her reelection, so maybe the convincing hadn't been all that hard.

When he was about halfway there, Warp's voice came from a few inches behind him. "Oy." Rowan managed to clamp down and avoid an instinctive reaction to her suddenly being so close, instead slowly and calmly turning around to face her.
"Yes?"
"Aah, you're no fun. Well, I've got something I need to talk about, if you have a minute."

He took a sip of his coffee before replying, "Okay. Go ahead."
"Well, I'd like to stick around and work with the VI, at least for a while, but. Got some, misgivings you could say. Which probably ought to be voiced in private."
Rowan nodded, and waved to a nearby soundproof room. Thinking on the past few turns of his route, this was the first one he'd been near in a while, which made Warp's timing seem very intentional—and implied that she already knew the function and location of these rooms quite well.

As he led her inside, she said, "You know, any o' us with fox ears can still hear conversations in these rooms if we stand close enough to the door."
"I'll keep that in mind," he replied. "So, what's this about?"

"Well. Like I told you yesterday, I used to be a hired killer," she said. "I don't remember much detail now, but there's enough to be dead certain of it. I've got no intentions of going back to that life, but to begin with, it's sure to come out sooner or later. What do you think that'll do to the VI's rep?"
"A number of vixens currently allied or even employed by the VI committed serious crimes in the few days before the monsters began appearing," he said. "Our reputation is largely built on the fact that nobody has done such things since joining us, or for the most part since becoming our allies. This situation isn't exactly the same, but our PR department is already working on it, and didn't seem very worried when I laid it in their lap."
"Hmmh.

"Wha' about you, then?" she said. "Former cop. How do you feel about working with a known assassin?"
Rowan shrugged. "You've told me that you wanted to leave that life, even well before this crisis began. It's not my job to uphold the law anymore, and anyway it's..malleable right now, when it comes to 'us'. You wouldn't be the first person offered this form of 'extreme community service', and I'd rather see you helping us than executed anyway."
"Heh. You're not like most police," she said.
"Have you met most police?" Rowan replied, neutrally.
"No' that I can remember. But..." She shook her head, seeming to decide that getting sidetracked this way was useful for neither of them.

"Well, here's my real worry. There's sure to be people still around who..employed my services at some point in time. Far as those people are concerned, I might know—might remember—that they were the ones who hired me. If I want a way to be on the good side of the law, it's hard to think of something better than turning on the lot of them, and they'll know that. Maybe I even will, once I get to remembering a little better."
"Up to you," Rowan said—although of course he would be very encouraging if she decided to do it.
"Sure, sure. But the trouble is, them knowing that means they might come after me. Even while all this is going on," she said, waving her hand in a circle in the air. "If I'm staying here, they might attack the VI itself. Is my help worth that risk to you?"
"To me? Yes," he said with no hesitation. "I'd like to think that even the people who want you dead the worst would rather wait until you aren't actively defending their lives from monsters before making their move. Maybe it'll be too late by the time you're not."
"Suppose they know that," Warp replied.
"Well then, they should consider what they're up against.

"It has been well-known from the beginning that killing one of us, while in empowered form, gives the killer the power of the killed. Because of that, the VI started out employing some of the tightest security available. But on top of that, anyone who succeeded in that murder anyway would be hated by the public, and among those looking to capture and kill them would be:" (he counted on his fingers) "every police force in America, the military of the U.S. and its allies, every one of us still alive with powers who is allied with the VI, not to mention the intelligence network that was responsible for learning the identities of you and Tobias Mond within a few days of her first attack. I think someone smart enough to want to silence you would also be smart enough to recognize how much worse it would make their life, and then decide they were better off hoping that you either never remember them specifically, or decide not to testify about them.

"But, this isn't entirely my decision to make. I'll pass the concern upstairs, in case they haven't thought of it, and at the same time express my own willingness to keep you around."
She tilted her head slightly. "Why're you so willing, knowing the risks? I don't think my power's really qui'e as good as fire or rock-throwing at killing those things."
"They're not the only enemy we may face; after all, despite what I just said, Tobias attacked us anyway. With what you learned to do thanks to Gemma, your power is even more useful than it already was for dealing with...human opponents, even non-lethally. And, since you can teleport willing allies, it's extremely good defensively in all situations too. But, most importantly: I don't just want your power. I want you."

She gave him a very confused look on this point. Want me how exactly!? it more or less said.
"..Excuse the dramatic phrasing," he said, seeing her reaction. "What I mean is: You're someone who wants to turn away from a life of crime, more or less, and become an honest citizen. Whatever your motivations, you want to employ what skills and powers you have to save lives. I have an opportunity to help you do that, so I'll do whatever I can to seize it."
"Ah. Well. Hope you can see where I might'ave misunderstood the way you put it the first time," she said.

Rowan took another brief sip of his coffee. "Well, thank you for bringing this up. I look forward to working with you."
"Heh..I suppose the feeling's mutual," she said, giving a somewhat unsettling grin; it was unclear whether that was intentional or not. Once the door was open, Warp teleported rather than walked out, and then off to a corner of the hallway, and then out of sight. If she ever expressed willingness, her real talent might be in intelligence gathering itself, he thought. But that didn't seem to be what she wanted to do now, unless it was—apparently—entertaining herself with knowing more about the VI than she was technically supposed to. It was a good thing their most confidential conversations didn't take place in this building at all.

An hour after he returned to his office, Rowan got a call from Clark Quinn. Before he could even say anything, the physicist said, "Rowan! I figured out what our fusion dance is. And we've already confirmed that it works."
"...Our what now?"

The idea of being mentally and physically combined with another person, in a single body with a single mind and intent, was not something Rowan had had any concept of before, and required some patient explanation from the physicist. It would have been difficult to believe if not for literally everything else they'd been through so far, but Clark's description of his experience being 'Quinn' (or possibly part of 'Quinn', it wasn't entirely clear), along with her powers, sold it fairly convincingly.

While this potentially opened up some tactical possibility, it required one party to "own" the other, which didn't seem wise to make common. Anyway, Dr. Quinn hypothesized that it was 'costly', and required the combined power of the would-be fusing parties to exceed a certain threshold. Amp was able to help the Quinns cross this threshold, but they couldn't on their own—which suggested that, even if he wanted to, Rowan would not be capable of using this technique with Cynthia at the moment. But, possibly, Light would be powerful enough to edge herself and another over that threshold. She might test that theory today, in which case he was fairly likely to hear about it. For the moment, Rowan thanked Dr. Quinn for this information, hung up, and began considering who to pass it along to, aside from the obvious.

Another call came through the VI app a while after lunch, just after Rowan returned from the airport for the last time of the day. He answered up the phone as he came to his office door. "Hello?"
"U-uh, hi um. This is uh, Gemma."
"I know that already," Rowan said patiently. "We have caller ID."
"Um—right, yeah. So uh. I, have something maybe important and definitely very weird to uh, tell you about."
"Okay. Hold on a moment."

Rowan turned and entered the soundproofed room across the hall from his office, which was specifically reserved for his use, waving over a guard at the same time and indicating he should keep anyone from coming too close to the door. Once he was inside and sitting, he said. "All right, we're clear to talk in private."
"Okay. Um.." She whispered, seemingly to herself, "so how do I..?" before continuing. "There's uhh. You know how my power includes being able to split into two bodies, that are still both me."
"Yes."
"So obviously, the uh, person I got this power from, would logically be able tooo, do the same thiiing..?"
"That would make sense."

"Well, I, found out last night that she is. I mean, she does. In fact she has sssseveral apparently human bodies running around, doing...things. I found this out because one of them, was my roommate, until I figured out that she was who she was."
Gemma seemed to hesitate for a long moment after this, possibly expecting some reaction from him. "...Go on." She obviously had more to say, which meant it was too early to react.
"She told me—I mean like, I believe it's true, that there's a 'geas' that keeps her from lying to us. To uh, 'people of this world'. And after that, she told me that she had um, lots of bodies playing the part of like, support people for organizations or people who she thought might be important, tooo, surviving all of the monster attacks. To help them. So that's why, I'm not exactly sure this is important? I'm not sure what happens if someone acts on this information in the sense of saying 'hey, you're her aren't you', 'cause like, she might just disappear and stop helping then. But I also know, a really easy way to identify people who might be her, and an even easier way to test that out.

"She likes...'jewel' names. Like, 'Diamond', 'Sapphire'? My roommate was 'Beryl'."
"...She visited me once, and hinted at that during our conversation," Rowan realized aloud.
"Yeah. And—for the other—you know the whole, 'nonviolence' thing..? If you just try to throw something harmless at someone and you can't, like literally your body won't let you, then it's her. That's how I..confirmed it, when I suspected Beryl was, her."
"That also makes sense."

While he waited to see if she had anything more to say, Rowan tried to think of the best way to act on this information—or to not act. Gemma seemed not to take this pause especially well. "U-um, I'm really sorry I didn't call or anything sooner, to tell you. The thing is I was kinda really overwhelmed, right after it happened, a-and.."
"Anyone would be," Rowan said, trying his best at a reassuring tone.
"I also got, distracted too. I don't know if you know this but I'm, very very easily distracted, a lot of the time."
"Truthfully, I'm not sure what advantage it would be to know this sooner," Rowan said. "I don't really know what's best to do with it now. I can't sit on any information that may be useful or important, but I may know someone who fits your profile, who would almost certainly hear about it if I passed it upstairs." On the other hand, a secretary doesn't exactly have top-level clearance...

"I uh. So that thing, where you know something and you wanna tell someone, but it might wreck things if you do, or if you're not...careful enough how. That's—you get that, right?"
"Sure." More than she knew, maybe.
"On um...on Wednesday. When she explained a bunch of things to Light, she also a-admitted to being Beryl and..put her in that position, with needing to not tell me."
"Or, by extension, anyone else," Rowan inferred.
"Yeah. Um."
"Do you fault her for it?"
"No," she answered right away. "Not at all. She's still kinda..sorry about it though, from what I can tell."
"It's not healthy to be sorry about getting pinned to a wall," Rowan commented. "Either way, thank you for sharing this with me. I'll be as careful with it as I know how."
"Okay.

"Uhhmm..oh, r-right! She also said—no. She implied that she'd be sending more information maybe, about which kinds of monsters are gonna show up, and where. But, didn't tell me how, or who'd get it. And, it wasn't..a direct statement, soo...? But if you or, someone else starts getting some kind of unexpected messages from like..a glowing twitter account or something..?"
"I'm sure we'd notice that either way," Rowan said. "But thanks for the heads up."

Once he was off the phone with Gemma, Rowan's next order of business was to contact Frank. While the man had the utmost trust in his staff, there was a general awareness that one could never be too careful. There was a direct line, text only, intended mostly for extreme emergencies, and Rowan was one of few people with access to that line. This was largely a matter of composing his message carefully.

Was informed reliably that Giver employs multiple bodies of ordinary human appearance in support roles at various organizations. Goal appears to be helping world survive monster attacks, therefore likely unwise to confront any potential suspects.

In a game of telephone, information is lost because each person along the line only passes along what he feels is most important. There was no telling what else the Giver had told Gemma that she didn't think should be passed along, but Rowan trusted that she had given him what mattered. In turn, he decided that the clue and the test from Gemma were unimportant unless someone asked him for more details. Rather than doing that, Frank just responded: Understood.


Whether he liked it or not, Rowan's new job had him playing games with information.

The public on the whole didn't know any of Warp's history, and it would be a long while before they did, if the VI's PR department had its way. The other amnesiacs' true identities, if known, were not revealed to the press, so this looked to be just more of the same from the outside. Clark's idea of fusion would likely only be passed to a few relevant people from above, and otherwise would amount to yet another inexplicable thing that Light's group could do and seemingly nobody else could—the press were getting used to being stonewalled about such things, and seemed to accept it for now. The research department's findings were still highly classified, and Magus was thought by the public to simply be another "ordinary" vixen.

Ultimately, Rowan had kept the fact that he knew who Zeno was from her almost out of habit until it was relevant—although he could very well convince himself it was because they hadn't had much opportunity to speak privately after he found out. Cynthia didn't know about her father, and whatever he had done to her to make her distrust and suspect any figure of authority. She didn't know that Dawn had killed her—had promised to do so, and followed through, possibly driven by the guilt of murdering that man. Neither of them knew that she had burned down the one place she might have ever called home herself. Dawn didn't know that she had been dying of cancer; she likely didn't have any memory of the concept of cancer, still. Until they remembered it for themselves..it was wrong to burden them with that knowledge.

Perhaps there would be a day when everyone could know every truth, but for now...their survival would have to be enough.

Posted by at 2 comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)