Battle Vixens! - 99

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Episode 99: Anticipation

With her hat and armor finally both on, Magus ran, panting, out to the quad. Light and Gemma were already there, the latter split into two bodies evidently with the intent that the three of them could then stand in a triangular formation and watch out in all directions. "Hahh, ffh, ffphew..uh, hi, sorry I'm late."
Light shrugged. "You know how you're not really late for class as long as you get there before the professor?" She and Gemma were both in their 'Amp-lified' forms; it was too bad something like that didn't exist for Magus. "Same thing here. You didn't tire yourself out running, did you?"
"Uh, no no. I mean..ffh...not in any like, long-term way. Just need to catch my breath, is all."

Plus produced a couple of Nico-esque seeds in her hand, tossing them and making a small sapling grow from the ground nearby. It gave out a refreshing sensation, helping her catch her breath a bit quicker than she would otherwise. "Heey, thanks!"

"Uh, n-no problem.—" "—...Something just occurred to me," her other body said. "Whenever uh, one of us gets eaten—" "—Amp can wake us up, because our powers are kinda linked to Ber—" "—uh, to the Giver, and she has like a...power like hers?"
"Suure..?"
"But then—" "—your power's um, not. So what if—" "—I mean, if you get eaten then, then how do we..?"
"Let's try not to need to know," Light said.

"Oof. Yeah." Thinking back to how Ning had seemed to be suffering while asleep a couple of days ago, Magus nodded. "I'll stick to the back row, totally." She went over to between Light and Minus, taking out her weapon and looking around for a moment.

"Sooo, I guess the Doctors Quinn...?"

"Went to help Ning," Light nodded.

"Are you two gonna uh..?"
"What?"
"You know, the—'fusion'" (she whispered this word well under her breath) "—thing?"
"Oh, that. No. It's way too exhausting to use unless we absolutely need to."

"And we have to fight those things twice today as it is," one of Gemma added.

"Oh, yeah, that's fair. It's kinda a shame you can't just pull out your strongest stuff whenever you wanna, though."

"What do you know about what we're up against?" Light prompted her after a moment. "I, only glanced at the pictures for a second and then ran out here in case they were showing up right then."

"Um—" "—wait, pictures?—" "Oh, right!—" "—Uh, I-I didn't even look," Gemma admitted.

"Well, the uh, scorpion tiger is kinda what it says on the tin. Like, a giant wildcat with a big scorpion tail it likes to try to stab people with. I think the Quinns fought one before? And the other one's a mouthtopus...uh, the giant squid orrr, octopus thing Ning and Dawn fought on Thursday before last. Its tentacles are super tough—and it has lots of them and they move fast—but the main body is pretty vulnerable, got a big glowing eye as a weak spot too. The name's because it likes to uh, lean down and charge mouth-first to try to eat people, and it's kinda fast when it does that."

"Mmh. If uh, you start to fall into a shadow—" "—that's me getting you out of the way of something," Gemma said. "Try to just, um, land gracefully and duck until it passes?"

"Will do!"

---

"Hey! Get back here!"

Ning had seen on the app that a "charger" was coming to the area just outside the hospital—something like a bull or boar the height of a person with feathery "skin" and an especially spiky front end, a wide mouth full of sharp teeth (naturally), and its namesake—a penchant for ramming headfirst into its targets. What she hadn't been told was that there would be five of them, but even that would've been fine. No, the real problem was that instead of charging her, they were intent on charging at anything and everything else—crashing into the sides of cars, knocking over lightposts, aiming for power lines, and bowling into windows and walls with an impact force neither was built to withstand.

She chased the nearest three, striking her sword into one and tossing lightning at the other two. But one person could only really chase one of them at a time. It was a good thing the front end of the hospital was still under repair from when those gryphons shattered the windows, so nobody was in that area to be struck, but she couldn't allow them to get in to all the doctors and injured people. The area was thankfully mostly evacuated, including the interior of a lot of these buildings, but there was no way to just move the occupants of an entire hospital on such short notice.

With her sword still pinning one of the three, the other two turned toward her, scuffing their hooved feet against the ground. "Yeah, that's it. Come at me!"

"Hey ugly!" another voice called. It was in the direction one of the other two had gone, and followed by a couple of gunshots. A quick glance found a police officer with a riot shield held up and one of the monsters turning toward him. That shield...probably wasn't going to be enough when that thing charged him. Thinking fast, Ning took off at a run in that direction, taking out her sheath (the sword still in use pinning her earlier target). She had two of them running behind her, and managed to catch up as the one after the officer started its run, slamming the sheath into its side hard enough to bowl it over sideways and allowing the force to break her weapon back apart into a shower of sparks. Then she made a high backflip over the other two, throwing more lightning into their backs as they made to circle back at her.

The fifth one she couldn't see, but her ears could pick up the sound of a lot of things breaking in a nearby shop. She'd be pitying the owner quite a bit right now if her mind wasn't occupied with the other four chargers all converging toward her at once—the one previously pinned by her sword having freed itself by now. She was panting from exertion already, so she took a moment to regain her breath rather than moving or countering, waiting until one of them was getting dangerously close before leaping into the air, letting sparks fly down out of her in the process and spread out across the four of them, summoning her sword in midair and stabbing it down through the head of the one just in front of her.

There were more gunshots—just one or two, with the aim of getting attention more than the expectation of doing any real harm. That policeman was also loudly cussing out the monster; all of this was to try and bait it back out into the open. Ning wasn't sure if he was brave or stupid at this point, but at least it was working. She heard it crash through another window and him tumbling in a rough roll just barely out of its way.

The fox-girl had her own concerns, vaulting off of the hilt of her blade to land behind the monster she'd just stabbed it into, then turning and firing off more lightning through the whole group. She could spare a glance at the fifth one from this vantage point, and saw the officer getting up and booking it more or less her direction as the beast turned and resumed its charge, quickly gaining on him. Calling lightning down on it didn't slow it down or even get its attention, and as they came closer two of the others that had been after her turned to converge on him, with the remaining one not impaled by a sword turning and getting ready to charge her again. She growled in frustration, trying to think of what to do to keep this guy from getting killed. The help corralling these things was definitely appreciated, but if he got himself killed, it'd be better if they'd just let them wreck the whole area instead!

---

Rowan got everyone in a conference room or on speakerphone not long after the Giver's warnings went out. "Listen up, everyone. We've got four attacks marked. On the east side of town—"

"I got it," Simon interrupted, waving. "I'm taking that one."
"What's got you so riled up?" Warp asked.

"That high school, literally two feet from the spot she marked? Wife works there."
Rowan nodded. "I'm with you, then. There's another, higher threat level near there too—anyone close enough to get there quickly?"
"Pretty close," a man's voice came through—Hugo in human form.

"I'm in the neighborhood too," Tora added.

"Got it. I'll send Fay with you two to handle it. Closer to town center—Nico, you're around there, right?"
"Preeetty close. That's guy's deffo too much for just me, though!"

"Sam, head out to assist. Zeno, you join them when you can. Your job is to stall it until one of the other teams can assist, got that?"
"Sir," Sam saluted. Zeno didn't respond verbally, but this was fairly normal when she was away from the headquarters; he knew Ezekiel was listening.

"That leaves the west end. Mixture of low-level threats. Warp, Cynth, Dawn—I'll get a ride for you three there; mop them up quick, then go help Sam and Nico."

"Sure," Cynthia said; Dawn nodded.

"You should have info on what to expect in the app. Try to do your reading before you arrive, if you can, but if it isn't there when you do, you can do it then. Let's go, people."

"Don't get eaten!" Simon helpfully advised, following Rowan out.

---

The two monsters appeared side by side, proving the Giver's predictions accurate once again. The tentacled beast on the left raised its limbs to strike, and the other one raised its muzzle skyward, letting out an unholy screech, paralyzingly loud and shrill.

Light had made their four bodies invisible, but the mouthopus seemed to know where they were anyway—despite its big eye suggesting it relied at least somewhat on sight. She and Gemma scattered, while Magus managed to react just in time to raise her sword and place a half-dome of magic in front of it to block the blows. "Gyeaah! I thought those things were silent!" she said. Thinking about it, the sound did seem to be just above the range of human hearing—not that that made it any less loud.

"Sorry, uh—" "—I'll block it next time!" Gemma said, Minus raising a thick, moderately solid wall of earth to block some more tentacle strikes as that monster advanced. Its companion, however, did not charge any of the vixens at all—nor Light's illusions of them elsewhere—instead opting to turn and dart off to one side, toward the nearest building.

"What th—what is it—I'm on it!" Light interrupted her own confusion at this behavior, and then lightsped over in front of it, throwing her sword into its shoulder. It made another screech—this time muted about a quarter of a second in by Emma's efforts—and whipped its stinger down at where it probably thought she was; she'd already moved to one side and above it, keeping herself in the air to slash into its side, by then.

Magus continued rapidly backing up while she silently channeled a spell, eventually casting it to send a bolt of lightning down from the sky to the big tentacled beast's main body. Gemma pulled a bunch of the light away from the area between the two (or three) of them with Plus, sending it Light's way, and used Minus to weave the resulting shadows up into a bunch of spiky limbs that grasped the monster's own tentacles, binding them so they couldn't keep whipping dangerously around at them.

While it swiped at her position again with its stinger (easily dodged by just bringing herself back to ground level), the tiger-scorpion didn't turn to face Light, instead continuing in its earlier direction now that she wasn't directly in its way. She growled, pulling the light Emma 'donated' her into a blinding semicircular wall of light around its head to try to disorient it. She then struck two of her sword into its right hind leg, trying to use them as hooks to hold it back and throw it over onto its side, and eventually succeeded after being dragged along a few yards herself. Its tail swung around, stinging everywhere it could, but she'd already moved to its front-underside by then, slashing repeatedly into it.

Magus moved to one side while she gathered her breath, then threw some fireballs in an arc toward the big tentacled beast's main body. She was a decent distance off with both of Gemma between her and that thing, but it just never seemed to run out of tentacles, and even the ones bound up in shadow were starting to break loose. Gemma now abandoned those shadows entirely, Plus instead producing a bunch of steel wire from her hand and throwing it, forming it into a big net with electricity pumping through it that the limbs' whipping around tangled themselves into. Then she used both of her bodies to throw numerous weapons at a single point between/in front of them, time-delaying the whole lot so they'd all reappear at the same time, followed by teleporting them directly in front of the thing's eye when they did. It screamed, tearing the net apart as it drew its limbs back to itself, leaning its body back to charge.

It wasn't as cheap to maintain the blinder around the tiger-scorpion's head once Emma stopped sending her light, but Light no longer needed to maintain it like that anyway. Once the monster got up, twisting to swipe its forelimb claws at where she'd just been, she made it look like the blinding light faded off, but actually changed it to an illusion in the same place of their surroundings—turned so that a spot a little bit ahead of of the mouthtopus's position looked like the way it had been trying to go before. It took the bait, turning in a brief circle before charging that way.

Magus and the twins spread out, all three preparing to dodge the charge as best they could, but when the many-tentacled beast just began darting toward Minus's direction, its companion slammed into it from the side, knocking both of them over and well off-course. The big mass of black mist tumbled along the ground for several yards before slowly coming to a halt, but when it did, it was hard to tell what part of it was the tiger-scorpion and what part was the mouthtopus. It was like the impact had put one of them halfway into the other, and its limbs—tentacles, scorpion tail and legs alike—all writhed around confusedly for a moment before suddenly stopping, as if it had realized something.

The black mist surged together into a single form, raising itself up. It was the same shape the mouthtopus had had before, except that as its tentacles extended out again, their ends had visibly changed into sharp, scorpion-like stingers. Its eye, badly injured from Emma's earlier attack, seemed to tear itself the rest of the way open, becoming a brand new circular mouth lined with razor sharp teeth, and while it did, it emitted a loud, high screech—which would have been even worse than any before if Plus hadn't almost immediately muted it again.

"I guess you guys aren't the only ones who can fuse, huh?" Magus muttered, continually backing away from this sight; Light placed herself next to Minus, the part of Gemma now farther away from the combined beast. "That uh, that's—not good, right?"

<hr/>

The three amnesiacs sat in the back of one of the VI's unmarked vans, Warp handling a tablet and showing the other two some pictures of what they'd be up against. "Buncha cannon fodder," she remarked. "Gryphons and..'snakewolves'? Guess it shouldn't be too hard for you to burn 'em up, at least."

Cynthia nodded. "Quicker we get rid of 'em, the quicker we can go deal with the 'big threat' or whatever."
Dawn put a hand on her wrist, gently. "Just, please be careful..."
"Hey, I ain't stupid." She placed the opposite hand on top of Dawn's. "I won't forget what I was taught literally this morning."

"Oy, right. If either of ya feel a weird tug from my direction," Warp said, "That's me trying to pull your tail outta danger. So just let me."

"Sure."
"Thanks," Dawn added.

---

Ning clinched her fists, clamping down on the electricity running through her as best she could. This might hurt you, but it won't kill you, she thought. Then, with everything gathered, she made a high leap to a spot just ahead of the policeman, electricity falling out behind her and spreading out across the monsters that had been charging her. She caught him mid-run, picking him up, and leapt again, spreading electricity behind her and a little bit (about as much as a few static shocks) into him before landing a good distance off. He jerked slightly from the resulting pain but gritted his teeth and didn't cry out.

Setting him down, Ning turned to see all five of the chargers making to turn her way. "Thanks," he said. "Those things were after some civilians, and I couldn't let them get impaled. Guess I got in over my head, huh?"
"Can't blame ya for helping," she said. "Borrow your shield?"
"Huh? Uh, sure," he handed it over. "Think I can write it off if you break it, so don't worry about that."

"Good. Now get outta here while I've still got their attention."

Ning turned the shield horizontal and ran toward the monsters; it was mostly plastic, but the handle was metal, so she ran some electricity across that. She clashed against the first of them, knocking it aside with the shield while current arced across its body, then slammed straight into the second one with the shield, stabbing the thing's horns into it and using that to throw shield and monster alike to one side. She formed her sword in its sheath and used that to knock the next beast aside with as much blunt force as she could manage—maybe too much; it slammed into a wall hard enough to knock some bricks out. A swing back the other way and a little bit of circling electricity to make repelling magnets threw the sheath out at the fourth one, the impact staggering it, and she had it explode into sparks again on landing. The last charger bore down on her from an angle, but she turned to it with her weapon raised in both hands, stabbing it straight down between the thing's eyes, tightly gripping the hilt to push back against its momentum, her feet sliding across the ground several feet in the process until they came to a stop, and then using the hilt to lift its entire body up over her head and slam it into the ground to one side of her.

A thin line of blue flew past her vision, turning to arc around one of the downed chargers and wrap around into a thick rope binding its legs and keeping it from righting itself back to a standing position. After this, the familiar sensation of Clark's ability to let people fly came to her not a moment too soon, as two more of the things had just recovered enough to start coming after her once again. Ning gathered herself and leapt straight up into the air, leaving behind a shower of sparks to spread across her assailants as they bashed their faces into each other, and then used that flight to stay up in the air, surveying the nearby area to find the Quinns quickly floating in from one side.

"Hhh—" She was a little out of breath from all of that, but couldn't stop grinning anyway. "Hey! Took you two long enough!"

"Sorry. Traffic was murder," Rory said, diving at the nearest charger to lift it into the air and punt it back down into the concrete.

---

"I was wondering...does Dawn seem different to you?"
Rowan was driving. "How do you mean?" Not that she didn't, but he still wanted a clarification before answering.

"I don't know. She seems weirdly, ehh, quiet. And calm," Simon said, gesturing vaguely. "And she's always following Cynthia around like a lost puppy. Or a duckling or something? She was much angrier, more aggressive—assertive, certainly—before, well..."

"Before she died," he put it out bluntly.

"Yes, that."

"You're not wrong. But we didn't really know Donald before all this started. Maybe she is normally calm and collected, and losing Cynthia changed that. It's really not hard to imagine she'd be afriad of losing her again."

"Hmmh, I guess not. But you can't spend your whole life being someone else's bodyguard, especially if they don't want it. Isn't very healthy."
"I've made arrangements for them to talk to someone. Someone professional," Rowan said. "Hopefully it'll help both of them."
"Ah, well, that's good." Simon nodded. He seemed as chipper as ever, but changing the subject away from what was obviously the most on his mind was telling. This was, evidently, Simon's way of worrying.