Battle Vixens! - 91

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Episode 91: Suiting Up

"Hey, where ya headed, brah?"
Marcus had almost made it out the door of their apartment before being caught. He turned around to face Thad leaning halfway out of his bedroom door; it wasn't necessarily his roommate's business where he was going, but of course it was against his prior habits to leave the apartment at all over the weekend, and this was the second time. Fortunately, he had an excuse prepared. "Study group. A test got shoved around to tomorrow after all the closures last week."
"Aah, that's harsh, man. Well, see ya," he waved.
"Yep. I don't think it'll take too long, anyway."

With that done, he drove out to near the Quinns' house again, taking a path Clark had routed out for him across some sidewalk behind their neighbors' buildings to reach the gate in their backyard's fence. He glanced around once or twice on the way, but it really didn't seem like anyone was watching or following him. Really, he couldn't recall a single time that footage of their house had even been on the internet, much less the news, so maybe all of this caution wasn't necessary. But—he couldn't see any reason not to do it. It maybe made him feel a little more like a superhero or something, which was nice.

Clark opened the fence, looking at him for a moment. "..Magus?"
"Y-yeah, that's me." It occurred to him only at this point that the Quinns hadn't seen his 'human' form before. Well—just more evidence that he wasn't so great with secrets.

He nodded and led the way to their backdoor. "You have your key?"

"My uh—"
"The hat."
"Oh. Yeah, in my pocket," Marcus nodded.

"Good. Hopefully you can 'adjust' clothing with it in a similar manner to our method."

They came to the kitchen, where a large box was open on the table, several clear-plastic-bagged piles of clothing littered around it. Rory was sitting in fox-form wearing one of them, a sort of lightweight version of modern combat armor—except the one she was wearing seemed more colorful than the others littered around, and appeared to fit her perfectly. Another outfit out of its plastic was hanging across a chair, this one not only more brightly colored but reshaped noticeably. The result was reminiscent of the shrine-madenish style of clothes that Clark's fox form often had; it even had sort of a skirt part to the pants.

"Hi!" Rory waved cheerfully, seeming to be in a very good mood. Marcus waved back as he came in.
"So uh, just pick one of these?"
"One was labeled 'Magus', actually—hang on.." Clark went around the table, briefly picking up and examining a few of the bags before finding the one he was looking for and offering it over. It was surprisingly heavy, enough for Marcus to nearly drop it at first.

"Thanks. I guess uh, could I use your bathroom to change?"
"Certainly."

It was hard not to feel a bit embarrassed that the armored outfit's weight was noticeably easier to manage after putting on the hat to turn into a slim girl. She pulled the plastic open and got out several pieces: A bulletproof vest, pants, a sort of coat, and a..helmet. It hadn't looked like the Quinns' armor had helmets, but maybe they'd just set them aside? This was particularly silly for her, though, with the whole hat thing...but then, maybe it could be small enough to fit a helmet over?

She took off the outergarments her t-shirt and pants had turned into and kept her eyes off of the mirror as best she could while she pulled the armor on; it was, unsurprisingly, slightly loose, not having been particularly tailored to this slim form. The helmet she just held in her hand, looking at herself in the mirror and feeling kind of ridiculous. So—'normal' vixens, it seemed, just had to say part of their phrase to adjust their clothes. But Magus had already found it necessary to pull her hat around in her hands to make it change shape. Yet...her clothes did change with her, after all, so whatever her magic 'was' still had that component in in somewhere. Reaching a hand up, she tapped the hat a couple of times in hopes that it might somehow jostle that component to activate, to no avail. Tugging at the armor and stretching herself around didn't work either.

"Rrgh." Her face in the mirror looked frustrated. Was Magus going to be the only person on their team without armor tomorrow? It'd look weird for sure, maybe a little suspicious, to say nothing of the fact that she'd be in more danger and maybe waste the others' time protecting her. No, she couldn't accept that. Shifting around their clothes was just a thing their magic did for free, apparently, but since she didn't know it could do that at the time, her own 'imitation' of other vixens' powers hadn't been 'set up' to do more than change what she was already wearing. So...

This armor was...defintely too small for 'Marcus' to successfully wear. If she took off the hat, there was no telling if she'd find herself squeezed into it mid-transformation, or if the change would exert a force that would burst the armor apart or something...it wasn't worth the risk. Taking the armor off to change back and then squeezing it on himself before putting on the hat was...possible, but having to do that every time he was going to go out and fight monsters just seemed like a huge waste of some extremely limited time. There had to be something else she could do...

At this point, Magus finally had an idea. Shifting the clothes around was a magic effect, and 'natural' vixens basically said 'magic words' to do it. Well—she had her own kind of magic words. She drew her sword, carefully turning herself around so there was nothing in its path to get whacked, and invoked a simple spell: "Tailor." The gesture ended with the blade held right in front of her, pointed up toward the ceiling. Immediately some blue sparks similar to the ones that her sword usually appeared from rushed out from the blade across the armor, pushing and reshaping it. Before long, it properly fit her—having changed its color scheme to a lot of white and dark blue, similar to the outfit she'd just taken off.

At the same time, some of the sparks rushed over to the helmet she'd set on the sink counter to cast the spell, seeming to burst it apart into more sparks which rushed up onto her hat, not reshaping it but seeming to add a layer of...something. It was difficult to tell visually, but once the spell had done its work she had the distinct sense that the hat was sturdier now—more able to protect her head—despite looking pretty much the same. She tapped it a couple of times with an index finger and found it decidedly more solid than the soft-looking cloth had any right to be, from how it felt to the noise the tapping made. "Well uh..that works, I guess."

She picked up the clothes she'd taken off, hanging them over an arm, and opened the bathroom door to go out and report her success. Her vulpine ears picked up a light knock on the house's front door, and she continued out to the living room to see who it was. She arrived just in time to see Clark opening the door to Gemma, in her combined form, looking..moderately nervous, which Magus figured was about the baseline mood for her.

"Uhhh, hi."
Clark tilted his head slightly. "You look about the same to me."
"Well um, I wasn't talking about this form," she said, wringing her hands. "A-and then I thought, if I was just gonna walk up and knock, it would probably be better to either look like this or be invisible, so—"
"I think I get it. Come on in," he waved her through and shut the door behind her, and she finally noticed the vixen in the hat.

"Oh, uh, hi Magus!" she waved, seeming slightly more cheerful. It was difficult to tell if Magus's presence actually made her feel better somehow, or just distracted her from whatever she was worried about.
She put up her free hand in reply. "Yo. You here to pick up armor too?"

"Yep! But uh..also for other reasons." Back to the hand-wringing with her ears down. Okay, it probably had just been a brief distraction.

"Rory's in the kitchen with the rest of the armor," Clark reported. "So, you found a way to make it work?" he added, to Magus.

"Oh, yeah. Turns out I had to use a spell instead. It did something sorta weird though," she said, tapping her hat. "The helmet kinda..'combined' with my hat?"

This distracted Gemma again, making her pause halfway to the kitchen to stare at the hat and, after a second or two, squint her eyes. "Huh." She resumed her walk at a faster pace afterward, and Clark shrugged at Magus before following. It felt like a cue to join them and see whatever the two-tailed vixen had in mind.

"This one's yours," Rory said cheerfully, offering her one of the bags. Gemma nodded, carefully pulling it out of the plastic. "Actually, it's one of the two they sent in case you needed one for each body..." She trailed off. Then: "You look like someone who just had an idea. Care to share?"
"Well uh—it'll be pretty silly if it doesn't work, I think," she said, holding the full set of armor in her arms. After this she said a few syllables Magus couldn't understand—part of her phrase, no doubt—and the armor in her hands glowed gray before flowing up across her body and settling onto what she was presently wearing: A short-sleeved blouse, skirt and stockings. The result seemed to be a slightly thicker version of the same outfit which showed a bit less skin and had a white-and-black beret added on top of her head, between the ears. Once this was done, Gemma took a moment to pat a few parts of the outfit, and it certainly sounded more solid than it looked, especially the hat.

"So...what exactly was that?" Clark said.
"Well uh—it looked like Magus 'layered' the properties of armor on top of her hat's usual properties somehow...I'm not sure it can stay like that forever, like there's a tiny bit of uh..'something' going from her into her hat to maintain it. I thought maybe we could do that too?" she said, shrugging.
"Looks like you were right!" Rory said. "This'll make armoring up way quicker."

"What's the 'cost' of keeping your whole outfit enchanted?" Magus said.
"..Barely even noticeable. Like, I can't feel it and can just barely see it if I'm looking for it."
"Awesome!" Rory said, "So, what was that thing about you looking 'different'?"

"Uhhm. I guess I can show you first."

Rory waved Magus toward one of the chairs, so she went and took the offered seat. Gemma, meanwhile, said the same piece of her phrase again to evidently 'unstick' the armor from her regular clothes, and they came off looking quite different: Obviously sized to fit her, and complete with a split-down-the-middle color scheme like all of her combined form's outfits seemed to have. The helmet remained a beret. After setting the armor down, she went through her entire phrase to change back.

Magus hadn't actually seen Gemma's human form before, but if anyone had asked her what the chronically anxious vixen probably looked like as a human, it certainly wasn't this. She was a tall (for a girl at least), athletic bombshell that any guy (other than maybe Thad) would ask out on a date in an instant. At the same time, she seemed slightly nervous and uncomfortable, fidgeting while the Quinns looked on in evident surprise for a moment.
"Wow, you grew up!" Rory said first, grinning and putting out a hand toward her. "Have you been working out or something?"

"It..doesn't take a biologist to know that shouldn't be possible in such a short span of time," Clark said. "I can see why this requires an explanation, at least."

"Well uh. I mean, I kinda have to start a little back to explain this," Gemma said, still blushing profusely from some combination of the attention she was getting and how she (now?) looked. "It's...maybe a little long?"
"Hey, take a seat then!" Rory invited her. "You too, quit hovering over everyone," she added to her husband.
"I'm not 'hovering'." He went and sat at the available chair next to her anyway, and after a brief hesitation Gemma sat down too, across from them.

---

Out of all of the departments of the VI to call an 'emergency meeting', the research department was certainly an unexpected one. Rowan made his way out to Frank's office, and found that the only others invited were Dr.'s Bridges and Brand themselves, and Chandra—who arrived last.

"We'll keep this brief," Dr. Brand said, standing. "My office had an intruder sometime prior to our arrival this morning. Said intruder entered without unlocking the door or disturbing anything inside, with the exception of taking four of the masks stored inside. The office was left in a sufficiently neat state that the three missing masks were not immediately noticed, in fact not until we took inventory about half an hour ago."
Dr. Bridges cleared his throat. "The fourth mask was not, in fact, missing, but had been wedged into the doorframe in a deliberate effort to have it fall on whoever opened the door first." His partner nodded, holding up a white fox mask he had been keeping by his side and putting it on. The effect was fairly similar to Magus's hat, transforming the old theoretical physicist into a petite fox-girl with white hair and fur aside from a few black accents—the inner ears, the tips of her tail and locks.

"Our first and only realistic suspect for this action is the Giver," she continued without missing a beat. "She also left a note on my office's door which appeared to be intended as a hint to further our work's progress." Without changing back, Dr. Brand sat down again.

"It was a very effective hint," Ezekiel said. "We had intended to report on these events before the end of the day, until we noticed the three missing keys."

"Well," Frank spoke up for the first time. "What do you think she'll do with them?"
"And are you absolutely sure she is the only possible culprit?" Chandra added. "We know of vixens with the power to bypass locks and walls of all kinds."

"None local to us but Warp," Rowan chimed in. "Her capability is line-of-sight, so she would be seen by our headquarter's cameras if she went anywhere last night. Most likely, someone on duty would have seen her—besides which, she has no motivation to steal from us at present. Much less do that," he waved toward the fox-girl.

Dr. Bridges nodded, adding: "She also would not have the information needed to give us that 'hint', even if she knew what the masks were for—which I also consider unlikely. As for what the Giver will do—I suspect she intends to offer them to people, of course, possibly targeting persons in need of an immediate way to defend themselves."

"Does that form have any particular powers?" Rowan asked the fox-girl.
Dr. Brand nodded. "I believe this form has limited combat usefulness, and my time and energy will still be best served with the research department. Its primary capability appears to be a kind of instantaneous scanning of anything I perceive with my eyes."
"Specifically for magical properties," Ezekiel clarified. "Thus far, we have been able to confirm that she can instantly identify valid keys, as well as discern various details about the powers of a 'natural' vixen that are not usually visually obvious. While the weapons vixens produce can look identical to ordinary weapons, she can not only tell the difference, but precisely the 'elemental makeup' of any that came from a vixen."

"Well, that at least sounds useful for us," Frank said. "As with any other empowered, you of course don't have to fight if you don't wish to," he added to Dr. Brand.

She nodded. "...I am willing to fight in the event that a confrontation is inevitable—either an extreme emergency or a threat to my own life. Should that happen, I would still prefer to keep my actual identity confidential if possible. In that case, this appearance should be identified only by the codename 'Hephaestus'."

"Loud and clear," Frank replied, nodding. "Well, as you're both already here, what did the Giver's 'hint' help you learn?"

---

"Um, so then she was like, 'I know what's a good prize, what if I just make it so you can customize your body?' I-I mean, not like exactly in those words, but.." Emma gestured excitedly throughout her story, unsure whether to take her audience's rapt silence as a good or bad sign. She just pushed through, going over all of the relevant information she could think of but leaving out the part about Beryl 'liking' Light since that didn't seem particularly relevant.

"...Soo, that's why I look...like this," she said. "I thought—besdies people um, 'in the know', most people who aren't my family don't really pay much attention to me. A-and they haven't seen me in months, and a growth spurt like this isn't totally unheard of, like, as far as naturally occuring..?"
"And you like the results?" Rory said.
"Well—yeah! I mean, I've always wished I could um..'grow up' a little more, physically speaking, like this kinda," she said.
"Then go for it, girl! Right?" she looked back and forth between the other two.
"Nobody knows of a way to change how anyone's human forms look, so they'll see something grounded in 'mundane' science as obviously correct," Clark agreed. "It's not as if anyone will guess a reason as implasuable as the real one."

Magus gave a small nod, sort of staring off into space—thinking about something, maybe?

"So uh, I told Light and Amp about this last night," Emma said, "and Rowan. I still need to tell Ning some time. But—besides that I think this should really stay a secret."
"Oh. Uh." Magus mumbled, seeming nervous. "I-I'll try, at least?" Oh...whoops. She'd said before she wasn't so good with secrets, right?

"Really, how likely do think it is that someone will ask something specific enough for you to spill these particular beans?" Rory asked her.
"Uh—that's a good point, actually. I guess I just need to not like, tweet about it outta nowhere, huh?" She cheered up a bit, but this didn't seem to relate to whatever she was thinking about before the word 'secret' came up.

"There's an entire chain of other knowledge someone would have to have to think you were writing anything besides a sudden burst of bizarre fanfiction," Clark pointed out. "Still—please don't."

"Hey, speaking of things you should know about!" Rory interjected (toward Magus). "Since you're gonna see it tomorrow anyway, it's not really something we can keep from telling you."
"Uh—yeah?"
"We found out we can fuse," Clark said, "under certain conditions. You know how Light has 'access' to certain other vixens' powers?"
"Uh-huh..?"

He went through a brief explanation of how fusion seemed to work, its cost and results, in terms of 'Quinn'. Magus seemed stunned a little excited by the news.

"Duuude," she said, leaning in a bit with her tail twitching around behind her. "What's it even like to like, be another person? I mean—while also being you?"
"It's uh, pretty weird," Emma said. "I tried it with Light—um, only one person needs to know the other's phrase. We freaked out a little bit at first."
"So—wai-wai-wait. Light could fuse with Ning, or Rowan, or uh—" Magus visibly grasped for a name she didn't know. "Phoenix, too?"

"Uh, in theory, yeah. She'd planned to try it with Ning sometime today."
"Rowan knows about it, but he's a bit busy," Clark said. "And Cynthia..."
"Might not really understand the whole concept," Rory said. "Still being at least as much an amnesiac as I am at the moment."

"Still, that's awesome!" she said, spreading out her hands. "The whole fandom is gonna go nuts when they find out!"
"I fully expect pornographic renderings of every conceivable pairing by the end of the week," Rory said, nodding.

Clark cleared his throat. "That said, you also shouldn't mention that to anyone until it's already public knowledge."
"Well, uh—yeah. Obviously," Magus nodded. "I don't think I'll run into anyone I'd blurt that out to before tomorrow."

"So now we just need to get the news out to everyone that you can just paste armor on top of whatever you're already wearing," Clark said, abruptly rolling the subject back to before Emma's story. "Courtesy of Gemma, again."

"Well—um. I-I mean I wouldn't have thought of it if Magus hadn't.."
"This was pretty much an accident," the wizard vixen said. "But, hey, glad I could help anyway!"
"H-heheh..uhmm, same.

"...Oh!" Emma suddenly remembered. "Uh, there was one other thing, she said. Like, right after the whole...apologizing part. It was like, 'tell Clark Quinn he should be careful what he says, he might have a gift for prophetic curses'. I dunno, what she meant by that?"

Clark's expression turned serious and thoughtful, and he stared into space for a moment. "...When, she was offering me a choice of whether I wanted everyone's powers, or to bring them back to life. I told her that I hoped she would find out what it's like to care about someone else," he said finally. "...I wonder if she really did."