Battle Vixens! - 96

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Episode 96: The Midnight Summit

"Another world lost?"
"Indeed," the Watcher nodded. "Their most powerful would not accept my help, and now it is devouring them, one by one. While the world has not yet been entirely consumed, the dominoes are falling quickly. As per the terms of our agreement, I have offered the survivors a way out and am temporarily housing those who take it."

Her host groaned. "I'll find somewhere to put them—but, you should know that I'm really disappointed. It's been forever since you visited me without bringing horrible news!"
The Watcher smiled. "Your reaction to bad news is always much more entertaining."

Her host did something of a double take. "...Watcher?"
"Hmn?"

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

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

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

She paused, sniffed gracefully, wiped her face on a sleeve, and the tears stopped. Then she seemed to change the subject instead of answering: "The people of that world gave me a name with the meaning 'Peaceful'.

"...Do you ever hate what you are now?"
"Hmmn." Her host thought about it for a moment. "Fairly often, yeah, early on. It was more that I hated what I couldn't yet do, that was always so easy back when I was human."

"I despise peace, you know. Tranquility is so very tedious and dull, compared to conflict."

"Huh. In some respects, I agree I guess—to be alive is to struggle and fight to stay that way. If the day comes when there's nowhere left to run, when the Beast devours the last universe, and there is nothing left but you and it—that's when there will be eternal 'peace'."

"And it will be very, very boring. That thing has no imagination, so even its best efforts at torment will turn repetitive swiftly.

"I'd like to commission something from you—a device with a particular purpose. You're far better with technology than I, after all."
"That's only 'cause you always brute force everything with magic! You've had several times my expected lifespan to learn already."
The Watcher shrugged. "It's one of the few things I can do resembling force, and so I savor it. All the same..."
"Well, okay—I like to tinker anyway, so if it'll help a world survive, I'll give it a shot. What do you need?"

---

When they were both through eating, Amory and Blake changed to their vixen forms, and she helped Light relax some more with the less logical means of some petting. This resulted in the white-haired fox-girl taking on her softer, curvier appearance, which obviously had to be undone before they went to bed, but there was still some time until then. She stood up, stretched, and thanked the small, cute vixen before heading back to her room to "play a game, or read, or..something," to take her mind off of things for a while. Amory herself didn't change back at any point between then and going to bed.

She awoke in the dream-space, and once she had hopped down out of bed she found her clothes rather unlike usual. Instead of something fit for sleep, it was a somewhat flashy, kimono-inspired dress in a bright color scheme. After briefly picking at it and wondering just how this place 'decided' what anyone was wearing in the first place, she went to the door and knocked on it gently, deciding to get Rowan 'up' first. After a moment it opened; the blue-haired vixen was also not in bedclothes, instead appearing in a dark blue evening dress. She was barefoot, but Amp could spot some very high heels in the bedroom behind her that looked like they'd just been kicked away.

"Well, uh, hey."
"Evening." Her expression was largely neutral with a hint of serious. "I spent the past two hours or so memorizing a number of things, including the list of everyone 'invited'. Hopefully I don't forget anyone important."

Amp nodded. "I guess I'll get Light now?" Rowan nodded back, and they went to a newly-appeared door to do that. Light answered the door in black dress slacks with a slightly loose, sleeveless white shirt tucked into them.

"Hi again," Amp said slightly cheerfully. "You ready?"
"As much as I can be." She tugged at the shirt, looking between the two of them. "You know what's going on with our clothes?"
Amp shrugged. "I guess this is better than everyone meeting you in just a t-shirt, though."

"Maybe."

Rowan cut in to this conversation: "Before we start bringing everyone in, we need to discuss venue. It would be ideal for everyone to fit in a single room, but this one is the largest available, and it is unlikely to fit the full population. At the bare minimum, everyone should be capable of hearing a single person speak."
"Hmmn, yeah. There's not exactly much seating here either, is there?" Amp put a finger to her chin and tilted her head, thinking. "Well—we haven't had anything but bedrooms before 'cause it's just been one to, like, five people meeting at a time. And, we've all been in super informal clothes 'cause we were just meeting people we already sorta knew, again in small groups. So maybeeee..." She went over to a third door out of her bedroom, trying the knob. It turned and opened into something that was not a bedroom.

The three of them walked into a giant conference room of sorts. It was decorated about as garishly as the bedrooms usually were, and it had a towering ceiling lined with massive chandeliers. The majority of its floor space was taken up by an impossibly long, unbroken rectangular wooden table lined with ornate chairs, including four along each short end. There were also numerous doors along the walls of the room, ready and waiting to be 'linked' to the invitees' own rooms.

After they glanced around the room briefly, Amp put her hands together, grinning: "There we go!" This'll work great, right?"

"It should," Rowan said. "It also appears to possess favorable acoustics for being heard across the room without the aid of microphones and speakers."
Light crossed her arms. "This is unnaturally convenient. Did this place always 'exist', waiting for us, or did you 'make it' because we 'needed' it?"

Amp shrugged. "I dunno if there's a difference here. I mean—don't forget we're literally in a dream. Either way, it does what we need it to do."

Rowan nodded her agreement to this, then said: "We have a large number of 'guests' to bring here. Amp's presence is necessary, as is my knowledge of who the delegates are, but there is no reason for you to walk around endlessly along with us. You could take up a chair and wait here, if you like."
"Yeah...I'm not opposed to hiding in a corner for a while," Light admitted.
"I will be certain to introduce any interested parties to you directly," Rowan said, then proceeded to the nearest door not already in use. Light went to get one of the chairs next to the table and bring it to the corner opposite the door they'd come from.

"We'll begin with Tenpo and Shuriken, since they are already familiar with you and this place. It is a shame that it's too late to introduce you by another name that doesn't suggest the true nature of your powers," she commented.
"It technically isn't, but I don't really mind," Amp. "I don't think I'd come up with anything good on the spot, just 'the Dreamer' or something."

Rowan looked over at her for a moment. "...That would work. You didn't actually give your name to anyone you woke the other day, did you?"
"Err, I don't think so? But we told Tenpo and Shuriken I was 'Amp'."
"They can be sufficiently discreet."

After a bit, the two of them came back with the Japanese vixens in tow. Rowan followed them as they came Light's way, while Amp went back to another door to get someone else. Light stood up. "Miss Light," Tenpo grinned eerily wide as she put out a hand to shake. "We haven't actually met before. Shadow-play seems to think much of you."

"Sha..oh. Is she, doing okay?" Light took the offered hand, shaking it gently, and then gave the other vixen the same.
"Some small pieces of her memory are returning," Shuriken replied. "It is slow, but recovery seems to be in reach."

Amp had been sent to get one of the vixens she'd woken up—who in turn knew the actual delegate from the UK. She opened the door before too long. "Aah, it really is you!"
"Eheh, yeah." 'Phase' had a powerset that let her freely move through solid (nonliving) matter, which had been enough of a problem when a monster ate her—much less the risk of the Puppeteer or someone equally murder-prone getting access to something like that.

"Oh, ooh! Is Light here too?" She leaned sideways to try and see through the doorway, being one of relatively few vixens shorter than Amp was.

"Yeah, but, we need to get Lumberjack first. If you don't mind?"
"Oh, no, not at all. What do I need to do?"

Rowan would, obviously, profess to anyone who asked that she selected the order to bring people in more or less as she remembered them—more or less randomly, in other words. In actuality she took some consideration to begin with the ones whose ties to the VI were essentially rock-solid, in hopes of them helping to project an image to the more tenuously committed members of the coalition that everyone else was unified. This had the side effect that the first delegates brought in included a number of generally friendly people who fell into the two camps of "not at all to only slightly interested in meeting Light" or "huge fans of hers". As it turned out, Light didn't have much difficulty dealing with members of either group, and slowly one small crowd gathered around her while all the others split off into smaller groups around the room.

"How'd you track down Ning with only light powers? Are you an expert tracker in real life or something?"

"I think I can sorta show you. Close your eyes for a sec..."

"...Well, it's not really teleportation. I'm just, turning into light briefly and moving around as light."
"Hm. I suppose I can see why that'd be taxing. I can, like, turn my skin into steel briefly to block attacks, but it's..."

"Can you teach me to go Super Saiyan like you did on that big Shiva thing?"
"Uh, trust me, you don't wanna have that happen..."

"Hey, how come Gemma's not here too? Can I meet her some time?"
"She's—nervous around crowds. Me too, honestly, but uh...a-anyway, probably. We'll have to ask, uh, Dreamer to help arrange it some other night..."

"Can you sign my scarf?!"
"Uh, I don't have a pen and, I don't think stuff here 'carries over' into the real world..."
"Awwh, too bad. It'd sell for hundreds online."

"There are thousands of fakes out already. How would you even prove it's authentic?"

"Uh, wait, people are faking my signature? I've never even signed anything—I mean, not as 'Light', anyway."

"I know, right?!"

Amp stopped near the next door, turning to watch the flow of conversation around Light. She seemed a little overwhelmed by all of the attention, of course, but still relieved—maybe even happy. For the most part, people were staying away from questions she couldn't answer, and a surprising number of them apparently just wanted tactical advice for fighting mist monsters, or her suggestions on creative ways to use their own powers. A lot of the crowd around Light weren't actual delegates, come to think of it, but instead some of their 'go-betweens' who were supposed to be ushered out of the room when it came time for the 'actual' meeting. Amp thought, maybe she could find them all a side room to continue the conversation in, and hang out with all of them there herself.

Rowan came out of the door next to her, bringing with her a couple of vixens from Italy. They left after a brief conversation, and she turned to Amp.

"So, how many do we have left?"
"We're over halfway through the list." The blue-haired vixen sighed. "At this point, we must invite Espadas."

"'Kay," she nodded, not particularly questioning this.

"We arranged a reliable sequence of go-betweens after my last call to you today." Rowan went off to one side of the room, waving to one of the other South American vixens who'd apparently been standing by, and now walked up to knock on the door. They went through a chain of five or six others, the last of which knocked on what would become their target's door before stepping cautiously back.

The person who Amory had shown Blake a picture of that afternoon opened the door not long afterward, wearing something fairly resembling a formal military dress uniform, complete with a hat, but with the contradictory inclusion of a short skirt and stockings. She was around Amp's height, and looked around briefly after opening the door, nodding briefly toward Rowan before addressing the blond-haired vixen. "So it seems that you are real," she said; there was enough of a Spanish accent to her voice to make it clear she was actually speaking English, and was apparently pretty fluent with it. "You're cuter than on television."
"Eh, thanks? I'm 'the Dreamer'," she said. "My power mostly consists of doing, uh, this."
"And you are not the Giver herself?"
"No."
"Las Espadas," she said, offering her a handshake, but giving it perfunctorily when it was accepted. Then she briskly swept by Amp to get to Rowan.

"Not many in here, but I hear quite a few voices around. We won't have to hold the meeting in a maze of rooms, will we?"

"Something more convenient showed up," Rowan said. "I'll take you there."
As they left, Amp decided to follow a short ways behind them. "I trust you were able to persuade Light to attend?" Espadas said.

"I was. I'll introduce you," Rowan replied.

After a few twists and turns, they came out to the conference room and began moving through it. At first things seemed normal enough, but Amp noticed some heads turning Espadas' way a few times. Around half of the way to Light, one of the Italian vixens angrily stepped directly in front of them.

"And who invited this butcher here!?" she gesticulated angrily. "Is all of Mexico not enough for you to terrorize?"

Espadas stopped, appearing completely calm. "If you want to make me leave, you are free to try," she said, a number of her 'light-swords' appearing in the air around the one who'd challenged her, all with their tips pointed down at her. "I would be happy to test whether this place truly prevents violence, if you provoke me to self-defense."
The Italian vixen growled and didn't respond otherwise, but stood her ground.
"..Too bad." She waved her hand, dismissing the swords. "But if you must know, I was invited by the VI personally. Is that not right?" she turned her head Rowan's way.

The blue-haired vixen took a small step forward. "Las Espadas is officially recognized as the representative of Mexico's empowered population, by the Mexican government," she stated. "Even if she were not, she has not killed anyone since the attacks began. And the VI's goal is to keep our world from being destroyed, not punish murders over which the US would have no jurisdiction in the first place."

"..None that you know of," she retorted, but moved aside.

After they had moved away from the site of the confrontation, Rowan glanced the dark-haired vixen's way. "I am not disappointed, nor even surprised," she said in response to this glance. "You don't need to worry—I have no unrealistic expectations of a warm welcome here."

The crowd around Light parted as they came to it, all of them having gone silent after hearing the yelling and seeing what it was about. Several of them were giving Espadas mostly fearful looks, obviously not keen to test her earlier threat. Eventually she stopped in front of Light, who..was trying her best at a neutral expression, but going by her ears and tail, she was more nervous than anything else.

"Light." The short vixen offered her a hand, and she took it, shaking.
"Las Espadas..."

She gave what appeared to be a very warm, genuine smile. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Uh, likewise, I guess."

"...Heheh," she chuckled. "There is no need to be so tense! I only want to talk for a moment."
"O-kay..." Light crossed her arms, apparently unconsciously. "Thenn, let's talk. What about?"

"Some congratulations are in order, to begin with. You and your friends did good work, killing that insect Tobias. It is a shame her moment of death was not recorded for all to see."
"You think so?" Light's ears folded back slightly. "The one who actually killed her wouldn't agree."

Espadas didn't seem particularly bothered by the increasingly hostile body language. "Do you think he was wrong to slay her? After she had murdered so many in cold blood, and his wife last of all?"

"No. We didn't have a choice. But that didn't make him feel any better about it."

"...I admire you, you know—as do many others, no doubt," she said, gesturing vaguely to the surrounding crowd. "But I knew you wouldn't approve of what I have done."
Light made a visible effort to pull herself back to a more netural expression. "No, I..can't see how I ever could."

Las Espadas nodded. "The world needs heroes like you to look up to: Idealists and 'dreamers' with unbreakable moral principles."
The attempt became unsustainable at this point. "And, what, you think it needs people like you, too?" she all but snapped.
"Maybe not forever. But someone must be willing to hunt down those monsters wearing human skin before they do so much harm that someone like has 'no choice' but to slay them. I am willing to bear the world's hatred if I can still make it a better place."
Light's fists were clenched at this point. "You've killed innocent people."
The short vixen put out her arms. "I can't deny that without arguing over who really is 'innocent'—and I know we won't agree on this. But then, I have only done so to survive."
"...You can stop someone from killing you without killing them, you know."
She tilted her head slightly. "Maybe so. I imagine that you have some experience with this."

Instead of responding to this verbally, Light took some deep breaths through her nose, managing to calm down again. Espadas seemed to take this silence as a sign that she didn't want to say anything more on this particular topic, and seemingly changed the subject instead: "Do you know what I wanted, when all of this began? I wanted revenge. To drive a sword through the heart of the man who killed my family, years ago. To watch the light go out of his eyes, just as I had seen in my mother and father after he shot them down in cold blood. But when I had received this power, and went looking—" She chuckled again; it sounded the same as before, but there was still something distinctly bitter about it this time. "He was already dead.

"I should have felt happy, or angry, or at least disappointed, perhaps—but instead I felt only empty. For a moment, I thought that everything was pointless. But then I realized that I was far from alone. What I did after that, was avenge other families lost and lives ruined by their kind. My goal is to stop such atrocities from being committed, ever again—ah, but now who's talking like an idealist?"

They were both quiet again for a moment, and Light's expression slowly changed again. By the end of it, she didn't look angry exactly, but Amory thought she'd only seen this expression once or twice before—and always when she was obviously thinking about the Watcher. It was a cold, distant stare, communicating something beyond hatred and closer to disgust. If Espadas could feel the chill from that, she kept herself standing firm and confident anyway.

"...Did you count them?" she asked (way too) calmly.
"Hmn?" The short vixen tilted her head slightly, the antecedent of 'them' not being immediately obvious to her.

Light took a small step forward. "How many people you killed? How many families you might've torn apart, or lives you ruined?" Her voice grew steadily louder and less calm as she continued, and at this point she took a slightly larger step toward Espadas. "Did you even care what you were doing enough to keep track of how many people you stabbed, or cut down, or tore apart!?" The shorter vixen flinched slightly, but didn't summon her swords or move to a tenser posture. Light seemed to respond to seeing her flinch by drawing herself back to her original position and taking another deep breath to calm down. Then, at a more conversational volume, she said: "Anyone can change, while they're still alive—but if you kill someone, then that's it—they don't get a second chance."

The pause before Espadas' reply suggested to Amp that she hadn't expected the conversation to go exactly this way—but it still didn't look like it had particularly bothered her. "...I suppose you are right; I admit I don't know that number at all. Perhaps you, or someone like you, will see that I pay for them with my own life someday," she said with a hint of solemnity. "But for now, if nothing else, at least we can agree to work together against those monsters which do nothing to hide their nature?"
"..The black mist things? That's..a given, really. But—" Light exhaled slowly. "It's more likely to be someone like you."

The short vixen was briefly confused before she understood what this was in reference to, then chuckled in a warm, friendly sort of way again. "I suppose so. It has been a pleasure, Light." She smiled, then turned and left, striding away just as confidently as she had walked up.

Once she was gone off toward the other side of the room, Light sighed. "You know, I..wasn't really sure how I felt about antiheroes. Guess everyone knows, now," she half-mumbled, seemingly mostly to herself. Then she looked at Rowan. "Sorry for, kinda blowing up at her," she said.
"She did not appear offended by it at all," Rowan said. "If anything, I would guess you lived up to, or else surpassed, whatever her original expectations were. And, you said nothing I disagree with." Then she turned to leave, gesturing for Amp to do the same—they had more people to bring into the meeting, after all. As they headed out, the crowd around Light erupted into various exclamations of how cool she'd been, and/or how terrifying Espadas was, before settling back into a similar flow of conversation to before.

After they had brought out another several delegates into the main room, Amp paused in front of a door leading to a now-empty bedroom. "Hey, you mind if I check something real quick?"
Rowan shrugged. "Go ahead." So she went in and shut the door, then opened it again and waved for the blue-haired vixen to come in with her and did so again. The noise of the crowd from the meeting room immediately vanished, as if it wasn't on the other side of the door at all.
"You're gonna need somewhere to put everyone who's not actually a representative, right?" she said. "I bet I could summon a 'lounge' or something to stick us all in, and we won't even hear any secret stuff this way."
"That seems..sensible," Rowan nodded. "Worst case, one of the larger chains of bedrooms like this would suffice."
"Mm-hm!" the blonde vixen nodded cutely, then opened the door again.

No sooner had the last of the delegates arrived to the main room than everyone heard a familiar voice from above them: "Good evening, my blessed ones." It didn't sound like it was particularly loud, but it somehow carried a presence of overwhelming power which almost immediately silenced the room and turned all eyes to the source: A semicircular balcony in the upper part of the center of one of the long walls of the room, with a tall, throne-like chair on it and no apparent means to get on to or off of it (if one couldn't fly or climb walls, at least). Obviously, the person sitting on that throne was the same many tailed-woman responsible for giving everyone present their powers in the first place. None of this had been there before, of course.

"Do pardon the interruption," she said, "But I just couldn't resist, with so many of you here at once, and finally beginning to take advantage of the potential of this place. Someday, it will no longer be mine at all, and belong the Dreamer instead—but even before then, you may consider it an extra gift of mine, to all of you." She grinned widely. "After all you've certainly been far from boring thus far.

"Now, make the best of the night, for the enemy awaits you tomorrow," she continued. "Like many intelligent species, you bear the contradictory natures of cooperation and competition. The conflict between the two in a crisis is always something to behold, and it matters not to me which one allows you to survive. Just remember: I will be watching you." She smiled wide, showing off her razor-sharp teeth, and then vanished in an imitation of the Cheshire cat, leaving only her teeth behind—then having those disappear last of all. The balcony and the throne set upon it remained, apparently as a reminder of her invisible presence in the room.

"...Since the Giver was kind enough to quiet the room," Rowan said, speaking with enough volume that all could hear her, and without a hint of audible sarcasm, "this is a good time to ask that we convene the meeting which we were all brought here for in the first place. Would those of you who are not designated representatives of the VI's allies please follow the Dreamer into an adjacent room? If you wish to leave, she should also be able to wake you on an individual basis upon request." Amp nodded, confirming this, and waved people to come to where she was standing, next to one of the room's many doors.

---

"Here we are." The Watcher's host presented her with a device resembling a big cylindrical shell of metal with an antenna rising out of the top and large openings on the sides. Inside was a somewhat cushy, immobile chair—like a resaonably nice computer chair with the legs cut off—and a sort of domed, metallic hat attached to a hinged metal arm hanging above it; other than that it was mostly full of electronics and wires all just barely tucked out of the chair's legroom. "Fun to pull this old thing out to work on again. I hardly touched it since I first prototyped the psionic interface system."

"Back when you were human?"
"Mm-hm. Anyway," her host walked closer and patted the side of the strange machine a couple of times with a hand. "It's self-powered like I said, and should now have no problem hooking up with their internet wirelessly and acting as a secondary server if needed. You got somewhere you can hide it picked out already, I assume?"
The Watcher nodded.

"Heheh. It's a little funny to imagine how you'll use this. I can't say I ever thought of spamming DM's back on my homeworld.

"...I admit, I was surprised to see you actually take those masks."
"Well—" The Watcher produced the items in question from one of her sleeves, fanning them out like a hand of cards and pointing to each in turn with the other hand: "These two were terribly broken—so I save them the trouble of repairs—and I simply couldn't resist this other one when I saw it..."

"Hm." Her host leaned in to examine them closer. "That...really looks a lot more like a cat than a fox to me."
"Exactly! I don't imagine they'd want such an inferior product anyway."

"Guess you already know who's gonna get them, too?"
"Likely. I've left some room for improvisation, as always." She folded the masks back into a single stack and tucked them into a flowing sleeve, where they seemed to disappear again.

"So..." The Watcher's host crossed her arms. "You think they're gonna make it?"

"I hope so."
"Really?" She tilted her head. "Someone once told me, 'the only thing the Watcher hopes for, is a good show.'"
"Perhaps that person was right. But it would be unsatisfyingly pathetic for them to fall now."

"Maybe I don't need to tell you this, but—they have quite the audience now. At first it was just a few concerned parties—and those who thought the whole 'game' would result in a disaster and wanted something to laugh at. But since the attack began in earnest, word's been spreading. If you wanted to appeal for more help from our stingier acquaintances, they might be more receptive than usual—at least, so long as it went to that particular Earth."

The Watcher shook her head gently. "That wouldn't be fair, would it? Besides, deus ex machina is even less enjoyable than tragedy."

"I'm just reminding you, the option's on the table if things get desperate."

"Desperation is where they shine their brightest. It would truly be a shame to hinder that."

---

Phew, this one was tough to write. The first issue is, obviously, that this episode very much breaks my rule of keeping a tight focus and not going out into the larger world too much, which means inventing a lot of people very fast and dealing with all of the logistics for this whole meeting thing. The second was getting Espadas' personality/behavior just right, as well as Light's reaction to her. Overall I had kind of a basic plan for this, but needed to work a bit to fit all the ideas together just right. And now, with this part done, I should be able to get back to a relatively tight focus for a bit, so hopefully the next few episodes won't be so difficult for me (nor, consequently, take so long to finish!).

Also, in case it isn't clear, the first part of this is an expanded version of the scene at the very end of Episode 80.