Battle Vixens! - 93

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Episode 93: Somebody's Popular

"Uhh—" "—heey." Gemma's voices called softly from the other side of the backdoor. Amp went and opened it. "Hi!—" "—Uh, thanks. I wanted to knock but, my hands are full—" "—all...four of them." Plus was carrying two plastic-wrapped sets of armor, and Minus had the third hung over her arms.
"Just—set 'em on the shelf there," Lightning said, pointing. "Actually, I can take one or two off your hands if you want," she added, hurrying toward the more encumbered body.

"Thanks.."

Once everything was set down, Lightning said, "Okay! We've already established that staying this way burns energy, so we oughta take care of things as quick as we can. Now, I'm 'boosted' right now, but not too sure if the 'imabalance' matters.."

During this, Gemma recombined to a single body again. "Another thing to test?" she said.

"Makes sense to me. Let's go." The taller two-tailed vixen put out her arms to invite the shorter one. It was a little goofy-looking, and Gemma couldn't suppress a slight giggle at it before stepping in and letting herself be lifted into a hug. Presumably it was Ning who wasn't shy at all about doing this part, given Light's reactions and emotions before. Either way, Lightning spoke the appropriate phrase, and shifted back into a bunch of light and electricity, seemingly 'pulling' Gemma into her before reforming just slightly taller.

The resulting woman had (of course) four tails, her outfit gaining slight light-and-dark patterned flair to it, and a slightly darker shade of hair. She stood there for a few seconds, crossing her arms with all four tails weaving around randomly behind her (but apparently managing to not tangle at all). Then: "Yeah, no, this is completely unsustainable."
"What do you mean by that?" Amp said.
"I don't feel, stable at all," she said, tugging at her right ear gently with a hand. "The 'cost' for staying fused goes up exponentially or something, I guess. I don't feel like I could stay this way very long unless I felt like I needed to, even if 'all of me' was boosted repeatedly."

"I guess a five-way fusion is out of the question, then?" Amp said.
Three-people-in-one shrugged. "Maybe it tips back the other way; we can't say without actually testing it. I do know four tails is already too many to coordinate; no idea how she does it with..however many."
"Yeah, it's kinda hard to count somehow," Amp agreed.

"Anyway~, yeah, let's just..." With a slight twitch of will, the combined person's body gained a brief aura of swirling gray, white, and sparks of electricity before expelling just the white part—bright, visible light streaming out to one side and re-forming into Light's body alone. The remaining person shrank a half-foot or so, her hair darkening its shade and her ears shifting from having dark tips to being a darker gray overall.

Both resulting bodies breathed a clear sigh of relief as soon as they were apart. "Way better," the still-combined one said, then stepped apart into two separate bodies, her own 'Plus' and 'Minus'. Light moved out of the way of this, seeming to anticipate it.

The 'Plus' one started: "Naturally, this body gets electricity—" "—and this one, 'earth' I guess? Soo, there's that.—" "—I'm thinking 'Quartz'."
"Quartz," Light repeated.
"For the 'fusion name?" Amp clarified.
"Yep!—" "—'Cause it's like, a gemstone..earthy, and..—" "—there's a thing, where like if you hit it right it sparks or something?"
"Piezoelectricity," Amp said.
"Yeah, that."

"Makes enough sense to me," Light said.

"Any special 'combined' powers?" Amp asked Quartz.

"Hmmn.—" "—Maybe more to the 'opposites' thing, now that I think of it. This body feels super strong, like Ning is,—" the 'Light' one said, flexing an arm, "—but not this one," the other continued. "I think instead I get a big 'magic' boost? Besides that..."

Both reached out at the same time, one forming a sword like Ning's from a spark of electricity out of her wrist while the other drew up a piece of the concrete making the floor up, forming it into a pair of shorter blades, similar to the one which had turned into Ning's sheath when her powers were 'tuned'. They both paused to examine the damage to the floor. "...Whoops.—" "—Well, my lease here's already pretty much void, so it's fine. Anyway!—" "—While I can make 'any' weapon, there's something about the 'natural' ones that feel..'special'. Like: Stronger, or like I know how to use them much better?—" "—And in this case I get tw..uhh, technically three times the weapon. The sheath's still around too.—" "—It's maybe a bit silly, but if we're doing different names for every Plus and Minus, then I'm thinking 'Current' and 'Ground?" she added, some part of her mind having apparently been working on this.

"Works for me," Amp said.

She let go of the weapons ('Ground' moving the concrete back to roughly where it had come from, but not succeeding in rejoining it with the floor it had been yanked out of). "Okay, phew. One more thing to check," 'Current' said, looking to Light, who nodded. A brief exchange of sparks and gray-colored glow separated her into Ning (from Current) and a combined Gemma (from Ground).

"Uhm.." Gemma looked around at everyone briefly, looking a bit dazed.
"Focus, dear," Ning said. "Come gimme a hug to test this last thingy out, and then we can all take naps," she said, raising her arms. After a second she lowered them slightly, adding: "...'Cept me, I've got more packing to do."

"Uh, heh..m-maybe I could help with some of that?" the two-tailed vixen offered, stepping in to let herself be picked up again.

"Now, first thing: We're not tryin' to combine, just sharing a friendly hug. Soo, try it," Ning said. Light spoke her phrase first, then Gemma's, to no apparent effect. "Nothin'. Good, good."
"No 'forcing people to fuse'," Light said, nodding.
"That'd be so weird," Gemma agreed.
"Okay, we're actually tryin' this time? Right?" Ning turned her head back down to Gemma.
"Um, y-yeah." Light spoke Ning's phrase again, and this time succeeded in a brief shower of sparks and the two of them recombining into Quartz. She turned and looked to Light, nodding, then breathed out a sigh, splitting back up once again.

"Done and dusted!" Ning proclaimed, clapping her hands together. "Now, are you sure you wanna volunteer yourself for manual labor?" she asked Gemma. "I can be pretty demanding of my workers, y'know."
"W-well, I'm not really doing anything else right now," she said, "and anyway, I'm pretty coordinated like this. You'd have two bodies to help carry stuff around."

"I don't mind helping either," Light added. "Since I'm already here."
Amp shrugged. "Uh, I don't have super strength myself; if anything I'm pretty weak like this. Guess I could change back and help?"
"If you wanna, but don't feel obligated. We already got three or four super-powered bodies about," Ning said. "Between us, I bet we'd be able to get the rest done before Nadia wakes up!"

---

Once the decision was made, it was necessary to find as clandestine as possible a method to disseminate the information to the VI's allies—and make arrangements for delivery. To that end, Rowan had a suggestion.

He walked out of the meeting room not long afterward and straight into a nearby private, fully soundproofed room in the same building to make a call—possibly several. He sat at the desk with his phone, and two or three rings later, Amp's voice came on the line. "Hello?"
"Good afternoon. I hope everyone's doing well on your end," he said first.

"Uh, yeah. We've been—well, Light's been testing out 'fusions' with everyone possible around here. We found out three or more-way fusions are possible but super costly, maybe not worth it, and that two 'subordinates' can combine with the 'owner's' help, too. Oh, and we got the armor in. Gemma said she figured out a way to like, 'enchant' normal clothes with..."

"Clark already told me," Rowan half-interrupted her. "Excuse me. Is where you are relatively private?"
"Sure—we're in Ning's store, actually, the backrooms. It's closed and we're..well, everyone else is helping her pack stock up to move." She didn't sound happy about this last part—maybe even eager to find some way to be actually useful at the moment. "So uh, what's going on with you?" Rowan didn't want her to make a decision based entirely on that emotion, but...well, he'd just have to be careful to point out the risks himself.

"You remember the events of the night before last," Rowan began. "Specifically, what we found out about your capabilities in the 'dream space'."
"Yeah...?"
"To put it bluntly, we—that is, the VI—have found ourselves in a situation where those abilities would be extremely useful. There is some highly sensitive information which would be best shared at once with the heads, or appropriately-chosen representatives of, our ally organizations. We basically need to arrange something with each of them in a fairly short timespan; normal high-security channels would require a lot of back and forth, and it would be much easier to simply meet all of them...'in person'."
"Oh!" she said. "So you wanna meet with them all in dreamspace. I can help with that."
"..You can," Rowan said, his tone only taking the words as far as acknowledging that she had the ability to do so. "However, it poses a secrecy risk as far as your existence and abilities. That is: Every one of them will need to be told about you, and as I understand it they'll also have to meet with you in the process of being gathered."

"Well, yeah..but I mean, hasn't that ship kinda sailed a little bit? Shuriken knows about me, plus everyyone I woke from a coma, which is more than enough people for one or two to have told someone else all about it," Amp said. "As it stands right now, those people know that my powers include being able to wake them up and being 'gentle' and 'cute'. Nobody actually knows about the boosting thing for the most part, right?"

"Yes, but...the presence of a previously-unknown vixen, plus the fact that everyone who has displayed the ability to be temporarily more powerful is near your known location—known because of your appearance in the Giver's video on Thursday.."

"Hmmn, yeah, I guess there's that. But, again, several of them know or will know about me either way. Maybe the VI just being honest—I mean as far as my existence, not the full scope of my power—and asking the bosses to not tell everyone about me, is actually better for secrecy?"

"Maybe it is..." Rowan shook his head. Well, he probably should've guessed that she would have decent logic behind the decision, too. "In that case, you are willing to help with this?"

"Yep!" she said cheerfully—and very cutely, but maybe that part wasn't on purpose. "But—you should remember that one pesky limitation: Only people who those present have met in person, including in dreams, at least once, can be 'invited in'."

"I am aware of that," Rowan said. "Leave those logistics to me. For the most part, however, we'll only need to go one or two people away from one of those you met by waking them. Las Espadas may be one of the few who are actually difficult to reach, since..most vixens who've met her in person died shortly afterward."

"Didn't she go kill that big monster in Cuba the other day?" Amp said.

"Right..."

"If catching someone's unconscious body falling through the air counts as 'meeting them', at least, then...that could work. But, a more reliable 'plan B' would be needed too, I agree."
"Anyway," Rowan said, "I'll see how many of them are willing to attend this 'meeting' and get back to you. Thank you."

"Sure, no problem!"

Seven calls in, a pattern was beginning to emerge. It was at this point that Rowan made the call to Mexico, a direct line very few had the privelege of using. Las Espadas made the same request:

"...In this way, we can meet with any of the Zorra you know, can we not?"
"We could, but our goal is just to make a few announcements to all of our allies at once, along with some important arrangements related to.."

"I want to meet with Light." He could hear her smile when she said it.

"...You should already know, she is not even officially a member of the Initiative. She is only an individual volunteer allied with us under common goals."

"In that case, there is no problem, yes? Light can represent herself—or her group, in this meeting."

"That isn't.." Rowan sighed; he was going to have to give some possibly revealing context. "Individuals or groups living near the VI's headquarters, or under our 'jurisdiction'—so to speak—aren't relevant to this announcement."

"Then she can step out afterward. I only want to talk for a moment," Las Espadas said half-playfully, half-plaintively.
"It isn't within my power to make her come," Rowan said finally, after a pause long enough to let her know his reluctance. "I can ask if she is willing."

"Good enough for me. But I know a lie when I hear it," she said—with the clear implication that if he didn't sincerely try to secure Light's attendance, she would know.

"...Well then, I look forward to finally meeting you 'in person', along with our other mutual allies. If you are wrong about the 'safety' of this 'place', you should warn the others that I am more than capable to defend myself."

"Of course. But I assure you that won't be a problem," Rowan said. It was a relief when she finally hung up the phone.

For most of those who expressed the same interest, it wasn't quite a demand—usually just a casual request thrown out after hearing how the dreamspace 'worked'. A few did, however, make the opposite request that Gemma not attend, being well aware of how she might 'steal' their powers and become more 'dangerous'. That was the main request Rowan had actually anticipated; he was about as surprised by this turn of events as Light was going to be when he made his final call from this room.

The casual requests could be thrown off easily enough. Most of the VI's allies understood the importance of cooperation between their organizations, and wouldn't base their continued membership in the loose coalition on something as trivial as not meeting this request. But Las Espadas was the kind of person who wanted things exactly her way. She was exceedingly powerful all by herself, possibly capricious, and the world could not afford her going on another killing spree—much less getting killed in the process and granting her catalogue of taken powers to someone possibly even less stable. On top of that, the price of just meeting someone would appear relatively low, and Rowan's failure to meet it might be played up as the VI not even being reliable for such a simple, low-key request—with implications that they would be unreliable for more important needs, too.

He called Amp back. "Hey!"
"Are you still with Light?"
"Yeah, still hard at work. I mean—they're mostly done, actually, but.."
"The..nature of the meeting has changed somewhat over my proposals to the other organizations," Rowan said. "First of all, many of them want to use the opportunity to meet with everyone else and have a proper 'summit'. Discuss various issues of interest in addition to the VI's announcement and the logistics related to that."
"Okay..that doesn't sound so bad," Amp said.
"It would expose you to some sensitive information, but I'll trust you with it," Rowan said—knowing full well that it would, in fact, be far worse than she was probably imagining. He exhaled softly, then: "Secondly, a number of our allies made a particular request to..briefly interview Light. It seems her actions in particular have...piqued the interest of more people across the world than I imagined."

"Okaay. Well—we can, probably do that, right? You wanna talk?" Amp was speaking to someone other than the phone with this last part—a faint voice on the other side said 'yes, give me the phone'. "She wants to talk."

"Put her on."

Before Rowan could say anything: "What do they want me for?!"
"Curiosity, mostly," he said. "I expect some of them want to know how you did some of what you've shown yourself able to do."

"I can't answer that, right? I mean—"
"I have, and will, make it clear that some secrets of yours or ours are off-limits," Rowan said. Against his own wants, the VI needed him to try and make Light comfortable with this idea. "Some of their questions, though, you may be able to answer no problem, and the answers might even help them in their fights against the mist monsters. You don't need to stay for the entire summit, just long enough at the beginning to exchange a few words with whoever's interested."

"Well, that's good. I-I mean, I haven't even been paying attention to what's going on in most of America, much less the whole world. I probably won't even know who most of them are..." One could practically hear her crushing social anxiety through the speaker.

"I think that will be understandable," Rowan said. "I can make that clear enough, and introduce people to you as they come. For you, this doesn't have to be anything more than casually meeting some..'fans'."

"...You...don't sound any happier about this than I am," Light said after a moment.
"I'm not."

"Then why do you..?"
"Our 'coalition' is very loose, and fairly fragile," Rowan said. Maybe honesty could actually help him out here. "Giving some of them what they want in this—having you there—might help ease relations between the VI and some of the...touchier members of that coalition, somewhat. And there will be a lot of friction between some of the others, especially meeting in person for the first time. I think the majority of them see you in a positive light, so your...tacit approval of the meeting's happening in the first place might even encourage them to stick around."

".......I'll be there, then," Light said finally.
"Thank you. And, I'm sorry."

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I think I've found and fixed the issue that was causing the right sidebar to appear at the bottom of some pages. It seems like I somehow had an unclosed "div" tag somewhere, and just adding an extra "/div" at the end of the post fixes it. Weird, since I haven't changed the way I write posts at all, so I don't know where the extra "div" even is.