Battle Vixens! - 90

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Episode 90: Following Through

Light glanced at Emma's 'new and improved' appearance on their way back to her apartment—now that she had gone back to human form. It was strange to see some of the exact same traits she despised in her present form and know that Emma loved them, had wanted something like it for much of her life, and saw it as an outward expression of, and/or reason for, some newfound confidence.

She hadn't really cared so much about her 'superhero identity' being female at first. There was immediate shock and incredulity, but it felt as natural as being male—being Blake—after the first few minutes or so, and fell away from importance entirely before long. If anything, it seemed to have some prospect of making her secret identity even more difficult to guess. But getting to know the person responsible for making that decision, coming to understand that it had been a deliberate choice as well, not some consequence of her way of giving power, and especially seeing her attitude and wants as expressed by this body's 'development'...it made Light now feel a profound annoyance that bordered on disgust if she didn't push it out of her mind.

"You said goodbye in a hurry," she said quietly.

"Yeah, but um, I-I got to be with him long enough, heheh!" Emma giggled softly, clearly still a bit giddy. Being Prism had felt nice, honestly, once she was over the shock of how her brain worked. All of that worry had been Light's in the first place, it seemed, amplified into the brief panic by Emma's general nature. She was also still, understandably, happy from..however the date had gone. "A-anyway, I've got a journal to start."
Light nodded. Prism had resolved it for her, but it was up to Emma to do it. Actually, it seemed like she'd been trying to use Light's confidence to help her make that resolution, but it was all something that Emma wanted to do.

They came to her door. "Uh, hey, if you're.." Emma rapidly tapped her index fingers together a couple of times. "—With Ning later today and wanna test whether fusions can fuse, lemme know."
"...Sure." Light nodded after a second.

She took a deep breath. "Okay, I'm gonna do it," she said, turning and fumbling her keys out to unlock the door.
"You'll be fine."
"Thanks," Emma whispered, heading inside.

---

"Well, here we go." Hugo waved the two girls into the VI's public computer room. "Didn't see Warp on the way, maybe I'll track 'er down in a bit. Anywho.." She followed them inside, pointing to the nearest unoccupied desk.

"These aren't exactly the latest model...well, they're about at the level of the public library." She went and grabbed a second chair, offering them to Dawn and Cynth. "I think they got 'em surplus from some school or something. Anyway, they got internet and speakers, at least...maybe I can ask if somebody can get you three some notebooks at least. Dunno how Rowan didn't think-a this." They just exchanged a brief, mutually confused glance once seated, and let her keep talking.

Hugo went through some of the basics, demonstrating how to get the web browser open and use the search engine, leaning in between them to use the mouse and keyboard the whole time. "Now, let's see...Dawn, Ning, fight...mm-hmm, pretty much the first result. There you go." She opened the link. "Nothin' but a bunch of shaky long-distance phone footage, but..prob'ly for the best no one got too close, I guess.." She stood upright again, crossing her arms as she watched it with them.

"That's me an' her, alright," Dawn mumbled.
"When was this, anyway?" Cynthia said.

"Oh, date's down there, in the description," Hugo pointed. "..Thursday 'fore last."

"...Fire," Cynthia leaned in slightly. "Did I see that right? You, throwin' fire?"

Dawn's ears folded back, but she didn't answer. Hugo tried to help out: "Far as I know, she had fire powers from the day she first joined up with the VI."

"How...why did you...?" She turned toward Dawn, trying to understand. It wasn't like she knew of any other answer to the question, but she didn't want to believe that answer.

Her answer was barely audible. "I had to." Cynthia shivered; finding the room suddenly fairly cold. "Y-you were already.."

"What?!" Cynthia stood up hard enough to knock over her chair, advancing on Dawn about a half-step despite the air that way feeling like the inside of a freezer. "You killed me?! For real!?" She was looking down at the floor, dripping icicles from her eyes.

Hugo had taken a step or so back from the sudden, violent movement. "Uh, hey you two—"

"LOOK AT ME! I was already WHAT!?"

"Dying!" Dawn snapped, turning her head up to face her. "You were—th-that thing tore off your arm, and it—y-you weren't moving! Everyone who—a-and you made me promise! I—" she buried her head in her hands, sobbing loudly. "I'm sorry," she choked out after a moment.

Cynthia put a hand on her opposite arm, just below the shoulder; the idea of her arm coming off seemed to make her imagine an excruciating pain there, and the bizarre experience of being simply unable to move or feel anything past that point. The idea of the physical sensations was extremely faint, with the more prominent memory—if that was what it was—being the combination of shock and confusion resulting from them. Maybe she really was just imagining this, but...

A promise? That she remembered. If I die...take my power, and use it to keep fighting. Maybe those weren't the exact words she'd used, but...Cynthia knew it was true as soon as she heard it. There was a vague sense that she had already been angry with Dawn when they'd had that conversation, a mood of intense loss and despair, of having nothing else left. Whatever had happened to them just before must have been horrible, and not just for her.

"Dawn...I'm so sorry. I..dunno exactly how it happened, but, I never shoulda made you swear to somethin' like that..." She knelt, reaching her hands out through the frigid air to put them on her shoulders and try to make the taller vixen look up.

"I-it's.." Dawn sniffed, barely turning her eyes up enough to look into her face. "It's not just that. I-I knew, before this...d-didn't know how to tell you.."
"What, that you're the one who'd killed me? Yeah, I think I can see why that'd be tough for ya," she said.

"That a-ain't even the worst. I-I did somethin' else awful before that, an' I can't even remember..." It had to be whatever Cynthia was angry about when she forced Dawn to make that terrible promise. But, even though she could grasp the memory of that rage, she still felt far from placing its origin..

"Uh, hey, you two." They both looked up, being reminded that Hugo was still there. "Sorry, I didn't mean to dredge up somethin' awful like that." She squatted partway down toward them. "I, uh, forgot how bad you had it before this whole disaster started. Like—I think I heard Dawn had cancer or something, too?"

"You—" Cynthia looked at her for a fraction of a second. "That's right...you were real sick, before.."

"Anyway, do you need me to get someone? I'm not—grreat at handling this kinda thing."

"Um..I think we might be okay." She pulled forward, hugging Dawn, who was already starting to feel a lot less like a human air conditioner as she slowly returned it.

"Y-yeah..."

"Uh, still. I think you two might want some professional help or something, if you start getting a lot more awful memories back. It's, nothing to be ashamed of, just like..how you gotta take care of your body, you know?"

They both gave her a confused look; Dawn didn't seem to know any more about whatever Hugo was referring to than Cynthia did.

"Well, I knew I was pretty bad at this. Maybe ask Rowan or someone? Iii should-oughta leave before I make any more messes, I think."

---

Once he was back to himself again, Blake sighed and took a seat, feeling mildly tired once more.

"You alright?" Amory was also back to human and male, and came to sit across from him on the couch.
"Yeah," he nodded. "Being Prism was..weird. It's like I—or I guess, Emma—thinks about things so fast. I'm used to chewing on my thoughts for days when I'm trying to make sense of things. She either comes up with a solution right away or throws it off in seconds so she can worry about something else. It felt so normal to do it that way once I started."

"You're not gonna tell me you can't think fast," his roommate said, leaning forward slightly and looking at him.
"No, but it's—" Blake gestured vaguely. "I only think fast when I need to. If I think something's important and I have time to think about it, I take time. It didn't feel like I...could then. I'm still not completely sure if that was a relief or it just worried me more. Anyway..."

He picked up his tablet and put it where they could both see it. "I spent some time setting something up. It's uh..a dead-man switch message, in case...anything happens. Just, an email to my parents, basically." He typed in the address to open it, showing Amory the login screen, which just asked for a password. "I'm gonna give you the password, in case I'm alive but can't log in for some reason or whatever." Typing it in quickly, he brought up a simple display.

"Here's the timer, and you push this button to refresh it," he said, pressing the button in question and resetting it to 24 hours. "It can also be turned up in 24-hour increments, or back down to 24; past a full week it switches to saying 'infinity' which basically turns the whole thing off." Then, pointing to more of the interface: "That's for editing the message and who gets it; I already finished doing that part. There's no button to send it right away because it'd be really stupid if that got pressed by accident."

"You think you might die?" Amory said, looking up toward his face.
Blake shrugged. "I dunno. I just thought—just in case. I mean, I..we saw what happened to everyone Tobias killed. Even back to life, nobody knows who some of them are. If something else happened that wiped my memory and kept me as 'Light', maybe something big enough that nobody else who knows could say either..I want a backup. And..if I did die, they at least deserve to know." He sighed. "I feel...really guilty keeping it from them this long, when I really think about it. But I don't know how I'd tell them right now if I had to."
Amory nodded. "Same with my dad, I guess."

---

"Hmmmnn...." While Clark went around taking care of some household chores, Rory was at the kitchen table with the computer to try to re-learn or remind herself of a few more things. At this point he caught her leaning in toward the computer screen, staring deeply into it.

"You really might hurt your eyes doing that," he said.
She jumped a bit at his voice, not expecting it to suddenly come from so close, and leaned back again, looking at him. "Oh, sorry! It's just uh. I feel like I mostly remember something that should be super important. Up here..." she pointed to the URL bar. "I think it's like.." After hovering her fingers over the keyboard for a second, she typed out the address to log into the school email server. "Aaand then, this box gets...RQuinn5, and uh...that one?" she pointed.

"That's your username and password for emails from work," he said. "You don't really need to see that since you're not working right now."
"Well—yeah, I guess, but..I just—feel like I almost remember what the password's supposed to be too. And anyway, it still feels important to check it!"

"Hmnh. You never told me what any of your passwords are, so I can't be much help here."

Rory stared at the screen for another several seconds, before typing a series of letters and numbers without looking at the keyboard. "That uh—feels right, except I have no idea what I just typed."

Her husband shrugged. "Try it out, then?" He pointed to the 'login' button.

"Uuuum, right!" After clicking that, she said, "..Wow, that's a lot of new messages. Uh, looks like a lot of people are hoping I'm okay! That's good, right?"

Clark sighed. "Since our emails are publicly displayed on the school website, all our 'fans' know them." He leaned over and clicked through a few options to filter out anything not internal to the school. "These'll be the actually important ones..mostly. Those are just outdated announcements..."

"Oh, hey, I know this name!" she pointed. "Aaand, that one too."
"Your grad students." Rory clicked to open one of them. "They'll have been working with you on their research."

"Hmm. She wants to meet with me tomorrow, in my office."
Clark leaned in to try and read it himself. "..Even though you don't remember anything about that research yet?"
"No, it looks like she gets that." The gist of the message was that regularly going over her progress with Rory helped this student stay motivated and organized, even if Rory wouldn't be able to give much meaningful feedback. "Hey, maybe it'd help me remember that sutff I'm supposed to be an expert in?"
"At the very least, it might be a learning experience for her to have to 'teach' it to you. Well, you can certainly come to campus to meet students if you want to," he said, shrugging. "Just be prepared for a lot of people asking how you are and especially how soon you can get back to regular work."

---

It had to be counted as a victory when Emma only stared at a blank document for five minutes or so before writing her first word.

Everyone who got a power wanted something. Lots of people wanted things anyone can relate to, or really good things that nobody could fault them for. What I wanted was very selfish, and a little stupid and silly.

She also made it two whole sentences before getting into self-deprecation. This sort of thing was why she didn't usually like to write about herself. But—she took a deep breath and reminded herself of everything she'd ever learned about writing in general. Keep it going, and make edits later. The timeline of events ever since the day everyone got their powers was essentially her outline, particularly her own experiences during that time.

After a few minutes, she felt the simultaneous need to pace and to keep going. She used her key phrase to split into two bodies and accomplish both needs at once. This was about at the same time that she was gushing about her first realization of how her power worked—how it let her do two things at once, just like this.

Several pages later (and after swapping out which body was pacing around), her phone buzzed, and Minus grabbed it to look. It was through the VI app, from the male Dr. Quinn: We just got armor for everyone delivered from the VI. Let me know when you can pick it up today.

Armor? Right...hadn't Rowan said something about that? The events at the VI felt terrifically distant, with that confrontation with Beryl, talking about it that night, and all of today in between, but it really had been just yesterday. And..it certainly made sense for the publicly-known vixens to be the ones who it got delivered to.

Emma made a quick estimation, based on prior experience, of how long her momentum with the writing would last, and settled on a time slightly after that—long enough to drive over, plus half an hour's worth of padding. Only...

She sent back first that she would be there around that time. Then, immediately after:

but uh

theres a Thing

I need to explain about

A 'Thing'?

yes

better in person, btu like

I will look

different

so be ready for that i guess

Different?

Emma didn't reply to elaborate, and after another several seconds Dr. Quinn seemed to shrug to himself and finally sent: Okay, see you then.

---

I haven't had much time to do anything resembling writing for the past month or so, sorry about that. I also had a massive writer's block on this story before that which resulted partly from some difficulty organizing things. This was mostly written for a long while, but I needed to move some things into the next episode to make things line up the way I wanted them to and actually finish this.