Battle Vixens! - 100

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Episode 100: Affliction

The van pulled to a halt, and the three vixens got out, spreading out and looking around. It was an off-street between some buildings, not especially narrow but not particularly spacious either. The driver let them know she'd be back to pick them up, but wanted to put some distance between the van and the fight for now. Their prey hadn't arrived yet, but people had already more or less evacuated the area, leaving it eerily empty and quiet for somewhere in the middle of a city.

However, they didn't have to wait very long. With a lot of their memories still missing, the three of them were less immediately familiar with the way the monsters tended to appear—the black mist swirling in the air and congealing into solid form—than most, but it was fairly unmistakeable. Warp backed away, taking out her weapon and getting ready to play support, while Dawn and Cynthia seemed to have a brief, silent disagreement over which of them should be in front of the other that ended up with them standing side by side a few feet apart. She had their comms—a hastily-lent flip phone—in the other hand, so she carefully put it away before the monsters finished forming.

The gryphons appeared in the air well above them, while the land-dwelling beasts descended onto the street from a yard or two up, standing up and making hissing/growling noises at the two nearest vixens. Cynthia took a small step forward, loosing a stream of fire from her hands in response which expanded into a wall across the entire span of the street. They ran right through it, converging on her, despite the jets of black mist it sent erupting from their bodies.

One of the flying monsters was circling the pair from above; the other one was flying away like it just wasn't interested in the three of them. Warp wasn't sure if this was normal behavior or not, but letting one of their targets get away was against her sense of ethics. She tossed her weapon forward, teleporting it just in front of the thing's eye, then retrieved it to make an overhand throw, moving it from midair in front of her to over one of the thing's wings to slash across it. Neither strike was especially strong, but it struggled to fly right with its wing torn and spun around awkwardly in the air instead.

Dawn, predictably, stepped in front of the charging snakewolves, raising a wall of ice featuring large spikes in the front to absorb their charge and impale them. Then she stepped back, releasing her grip on the ice just in time for Cynthia to throw her sword into it and explode it into a point-blank fireball.

"Oy! Above you!" Warp warned them, before making the more reckless decision to bring herself to the still-fleeing gryphon. The other one was diving at them by now, targeting Dawn, who took the opportunity to throw a spear of ice up into its shoulder before diving away and letting it roll across the concrete toward its landbound companions. They had recovered from landing in the shield by now, and easily skirted around the fallen gryphon to try and encircle Cynthia. She took several quick steps back to keep them from getting more than 45 degrees or so to either side of her, 'channeling' briefly to unleash streams of fire from the palms of her hands, one for each of them. This time they did try to get out of the way, jumping off to one side, but still were briefly caught in the heat anyway.

Warp landed on top of the gryphon, drew her knife and swiftly slashed several times through the more intact wing. Predictably it didn't like this very much, screeching and twisting around in an effort to throw her off; when she couldn't hold on any longer, she teleported off of it to a couple of feet away in the air, throwing her knife into its good eye before placing herself over the ground again, tumbling briefly from the momentum she'd gained in midair before recovering and bouncing back onto her feet. It was now blinded, struggling to stay in the air, and the wild twisting it had done to try and shake her off had it oriented back the three vixens' way. Good.

One of the snakewolves hit a wall from its dive, but seemed ready for this, running across it and leaping off toward Cynthia's side. Dawn got in front of her, slashing a big, two-handed sword into and through the beast hard enough to throw off to one side. The other one darted toward the redheaded vixen, mouth open and ready to bite, but she waited with her sword in her right hand, pumping fire across it to heat it up, then ducked aside of the bite and stuck the searing sword through its muzzle from one side, far enough for the tip to stick out the opposite end, before letting go of the hilt and moving quickly away from both. The gryphon that had dove at them was taking off back into the air by now, readying for another dive.

---

"Hey, this guy didn't gore a policeman, did he?" Rory struck Ning's blade straight down into the back of another charger—the one with a riot shield stuck on it—while the weapon's owner took a much-needed break a fair distance up into the air.

"Nah, just his shield," she said. "These guys like to run off and wreck things."

"Better not give them the chance, then." Clark had two of them tied up, Rory had the attention of another two, and the fifth was busy ramming itself into a puppet. Once there was nobody too close to it, Ning exploded her weapon into a burst of electricity, frying the two monsters close to it and dissipating the one it had been inhabiting, then re-formed the weapon and offered it Rory's way again. She smacked the survivor of the lightning strike with the sheath first, bowling it over onto its side, then came to accept the gift.

"Really wish everyone could just fly," Clark said, "without my help, I mean." The first charger she'd bound up got itself loose while she wove some string up into a spiderweb-like trap; then she used her puppets to lead the two free monsters sraight into it, coiling it around both of their bodies and adding some more afterward to pull them into a big coccoon.

"It'd be nice, yeah," Ning agreed. "But y'know these things would just 'adapt' to all be flying too, or somethin'." Rory bashed her most recent target with the sheath a couple more times, then slashed through it with the sword, finishing it off. Then she threw both of them at the coccoon, and Ning erupted both into more lightning, arcing it across all three remaining chargers. Then she gave Rory the sword and sheath again to keep it going.

---

"I don't see how it could be," Light answered.

"Only one target?" Minus suggested.

"Don't jinx it."

The fused creature leaned itself forward, extending several of its tentacles out in front of it while using five or six of them to start marching forward, stabbing its stingers into the ground and skittering forward like a gigantic spider. The limbs in front of it whipped around wildly as it approached, bearing down on a point about midway between the three vixens in front. Light moved herself behind it, throwing her sword at the side of its main body, but it seemed to detect this, raising one of the limbs it was using as a foot to swipe the weapon away and then try to sting her. She moved to another point, closer and behind it, slashing into it a couple of times from melee range before disappearing again just ahead of another attempt at stinging her.

Plus wove together some multicolored string and metal thorns, drawing all of it together into another net, and tried throwing it as the thing came closer to her; she succeeded in tangling some of its limbs up, and electrocuted those through the metal, but the ones in charge of locomotion were unaffected, and even the ones she caught didn't stay caught long, nimbly untangling themselves instead. Minus tilted the ground around under it a few different ways to try and throw it off balance to no particular effect, then gave up and just twisted some shadow up around its 'walking' tentacles to try and stop it. This did halt its progress briefly, until it overpowered the shadows and pulled its limbs right through them, the sharp black thorns cutting them so they erupted in small bursts of black mist along the way.

Magus was busy this whole time channeling a spell, which at this point she finally cast. "Fruit of the earth, arrest and tear. Binding Thorns!" A multitude of thick vines rose up from the ground around the monster then, two or three winding halfway up each of its tentacles already on the ground and several more reaching up to loop around the ends of the ones up in the air and pull them down. It made its best effort to avoid them but failed, and wound up struggling to move, its main body waving back and forth while a faint stream of mist came out of its limbs from the thorns holding on to it. The mage bent forward, momentarily exhausted to the point of gasping in each breath of air from the effort of casting the spell—but it was obviously worth it.

Light landed on top of one of the more bound-up tentacles on one side of the thing's main body, raising her weapons and slashing into it repeatedly. Gemma recombined into one body and went with some lightning, fire, and Fay-type explosions spread through thrown spores. It was only a few seconds before the monster began to free itself, but this was more than enough for the two of them to do some real damage. However, once it was free it was absolutely enraged, whipping its tentacles everywhere around it briefly while crying out in anger from both mouths (largely muted by Gemma, thankfully). It leaned back and charged faster, running straight toward Magus—who was recovered just enough to stand up straight and see this, her eyes widening as she backed up several steps.

Light moved next to the vixen in the hat, picking her up and taking off at a run to one side. Rather than changing course to intercept her, the combined monster just changed targets to Gemma, who split apart and took off at a run herself, each body moving away in a different direction. It chose to follow Minus until she dove into a shadow—turned into a portal by Plus—and then abruptly, changed course—making what seemed to be an impossibly fast, sharp-angled turn, and caught up to her other body enough to swing its frontmost limbs her way.

Magus was put down a bit roughly at this point, and pushed herself up onto her knees, watching Light lightspeed to behind the monster's main body, trying to distract it by stabbing it repeatedly in the back and sides. It threw some of its limbs up to try and sting or grab her—all of which were dodged—but the 'running' and 'swiping for Plus' limbs continued doing their jobs anyway. Minus popped back out of the shadow and tilted earth, pulled some shadow and water limbs up to try and slow the thing down. This was about enough to let Plus keep ahead another several steps; then she had to play jump-rope with the next several swings; then finally a side-swipe hit her on the ankle, taking her enough off-balance for her own rapid forward momentum to knock her off.

"AaaAAgh!" She didn't hit the ground, two of the beast's tentacles grabbing her around the waist and pulling her legs together as it lifted her toward its smaller mouth. Light landed next to Minus at this point, and that body immediately turned to her saying, "Make it dark make it dark makeitdark makeitdarkmakeitdark!" Catching on by about the second one, she drew all of the light around Plus and the monster to herself, forming a small orb about the brightness of the sun held above her right hand. The result was the area suddenly turning pitch-black in the middle of the day, and Gemma succeeded in pulling Plus into this mass of shadow, slipping out of the thing's tentacles just barely in time. Not one to waste so much gathered energy, Light tossed forward it into a brief but massive laser that peirced all the way through the thing's body and left it spewing mist from both ends and screaming again from both mouths. Gemma was a little too busy right now with both of her bodies slightly hyperventilating to mute it, but the beast wasn't close enough to anyone (not counting Plus since she was still hidden inside its shadow) to capitalize on everyone recoiling from the sound.

---

Warp decided that grounding the other gryphon was probably the best use of her abilities for the moment, and went for several teleport-throws to methodically shred its wings, keeping an eye on the situation otherwise while she did so. Despite the strong possibility for their powers to unintentionally cancel each other out, Cynthia and Dawn seemed pretty good at working together and keeping out of each others' way. The moment Cynthia backed away, the other girl had run in with two long swords made of ice, slashing them through the more mobile of the two snakewolves until they broke, then throwing them so the sharp edges buried themselves into the bodies of both. After that she pulled back just about in time for another swath of flame to engulf the two badly-injured monsters, dissipating them for good.

Now it was just the gryphons, and both were on their way down. "Dawn, throw something," Warp suggested. "Hard, at a wall maybe?" After taking a second to get her meaning, she nodded, forming a large spear of ice and throwing it. Warp teleported it right next to the side of the blinded gryphon, impaling it on the spear, and did the same for another few spears Dawn threw. Cynthia turned toward the other one and waited patiently for it to get close to the ground and try to turn its inevitable downward momentum into a dive for her, then moved aside, leaving behind a brief inferno for it to dive through instead, melting most of it into black mist and leaving behind only an indistinct, nearly-dead body. She pulled in close and slashed her sword, wrapped in flames, through its throat, neatly finishing it off.

The other gryphon didn't fare much better, Dawn switching to making a big sword as it came close to the ground and chopping down through its body, pinning it so she could make some smaller swords and cut it up. With the damage Warp had already done, and assistance of a few more teleported knife throws from her, this monster too went down before long.

Cynthia exhaled audibly. "Not bad, huh?"
"It'll do," Warp said. "We're far from done, though." She waved the two of them to follow back to where the van had dropped them off before.

"You, uh, did good.." Dawn mumbled to Cynthia.

"Not bad yourself! Yoo, not a scratch on us, either!"

"Y-yeah..."

Warp got the comms back out. "Warp reporting in, we got our targets."
There was a brief spike of noise. "Sorry!" Hugo's voice came through. "Having a hard time over here. On your way yet, Rowan?"

While Rowan didn't respond, Nico did: "Things are uh, stable on our end for now, but—" She was briefly cut off by a loud, high, screeching noise. "Gah! Yeah, it's, not liking being tied up, of course."
"We're on our way now," Warp assured her.

---

There were tears streaming down both of Gemma's faces, and Minus squeaked, "Th-that was way too close!"
"It was," Light agreed. "We better move." She gestured forward, to the giant two-mouthed squid with stingers for suction cups leaning down to charge at them.
"Y-yeah!" She turned and ran, while Light just lightsped over to one side, throwing her sword at the thing's tentacles a few times to try and make sure she had its attention. Without the use of illusions, she'd have to make do with this.

"Holding up, Magus?"
"Uh—mmh—I'm good!" The mage pushed herself up to her feet, still shaking a little from how close they'd come to having to fight that thing as a two-bodied nightmare with all of Gemma's tricks at its disposal. She raised her sword, prepping another spell to hurt it or something. It started after Light, and she turned around, running on foot so it would actually chase her. Plus finally had room to get out of the shadows, and took advantage of her position to throw and teleport some things into the monster's back and sides, Minus doing the same (minus the teleportation) as she pulled off to one side of the chase.

At this point, Magus finished channeling another lightning bolt down on the thing's head, and staggered back slightly from the effort. Maybe that 'binding thorns' spell was a little spendy on MP, if not also stamina. Thankfully Gemma noticed her struggling at this point and laid down some more aura-plants to help her recover some. She took a deep breath, standing up straight and trying to get herself back together for a moment.

Light was getting dangerously close to being cornered against a building, so she lightsped over to one side of the monster and continued her run from there, trusting rightly that it would make an impossible sharp-angled turn to keep up the pursuit. It was starting to look a bit indistinct now; two monsters fused or not, this was no dragon or hydra, and only had so much "mass" to spare.

"..Oh, shoot!" When its trajectory chasing Light came to a certain point, the monster abruptly changed course to come toward Magus instead, as if it had suddenly noticed that she was relatively close and wasn't running—and maybe that she couldn't run very fast without help. The mage quickly raised her sword. It wasn't like she'd neglected coming up with an escape plan for situations just like this one, being well aware of how relatively slow and useless she was physically. Well, Warp could teleport, so magic let people teleport, right? The only problem was that it still felt too costly for her to just pop off at a second's notice. That thing was closing in way too fast...! But she had the spell ready!

"Transpositio—AAAAAGH!" Magus succeeded in teleporting herself all the way over to next to the wall of a far-off building, but not before one of the thing's stingers briefly struck her in the shoulder. It seemed to pierce right through her armored clothing like it was tissue paper, endowing the spot it hit with blinding pain, and she knelt forward, dropping her sword to the ground to grab the shoulder with the opposite hand. It was bleeding and she seemed to be crying all of a sudden, besides a weird feeling of her entire body tensing up and seizing like there was something else wrong with it beyond a relatively light puncture through the skin.

---

Rowan's car turned to one side and skidded to a rough halt a short way into the high school's parking lot, Petra jumping out of the passenger side while it was still moving. Rowan changed to vixen form on the way out, hurrying around to that side to follow after her.

It was already there.

The monster they were after had a body shape similar to a deer, with long, skinny legs ending in hard hooves; it was more than twice as tall as a human, and its head seemed to be from a different species entirely from the rest of it. It had a short snout with an unnaturally wide mouth, and above that was a large, dome-shaped part of its head that it liked to ram into things. It could get up to speed fast and tended to do a lot more damage than its slender-looking frame suggested.

One of the school's walls had collapsed from the impact (maybe more than one) of that head, the second story of that part of the building falling down on top of whatever rooms were below. Rowan came up to the beast, finding it open-mouthed and skidding its foot across the ground in front of this broken part of the building like it was getting ready to dig around for something under the rubble. She drew out some blades of water, throwing them into its side to get its attention.

"I'll keep it busy; you dig."
"On it." Petra started lifting and tossing aside all the pieces of rubble that qualified as 'earth' with her power, quickly but carefully enough not to miss anyone caught between some of it above and some below. What she couldn't lift with her power she picked up and threw backwards with the gauntlet on her right hand.

This one's vocalization was a low, rumbling sort of roar. It skidded its foot along the ground a couple of times, then charged Rowan's way, whipping its head back as it approached and then down at her with the apparent goal of biting her in half or trampling her if that missed. Rowan jumped aside just far enough to be missed and too late for it to turn, slashing into its legs and leaving behind a limb of water just big enough to grab one of its rear legs and make it trip and stumble awkwardly along the ground for a long moment. She capitalized on this by jumping and stabbing her blade directly into the side of its body, then backflipping away again as it recovered its feet and whirled, readying to charge again.

They couldn't have gotten here any faster. Rowan had taken the shortest route possible, at the fastest speed he could. There was no telling whether or not Simon would agree with that assessment. She wasn't finding anyone in the rubble yet, but then why had that thing looked like it was getting ready to dig instead of charging into the school? For that matter, why would it do that even if there were one or two people lying injuried under the rubble, when there were so many more unhurt people inside for it to chase?

Rowan moved to the opposite side of the monster's charge from before, otherwise taking the same tactic again. This time she slashed across its side instead of stabbing, sending out a stream of black mist from the cut. It skidded to halt, stood straight and charged her again, from a bit too close to prepare anything, so she dove aside, rolled, threw some blades back at it while it made a wide-angle turn to come back to her.

She was getting ready to do the same thing again when the ground suddenly erupted from underneath the beast, concrete from below and around and much of the discarded rubble flowing together. It stumbled and fell, but recovered quickly to its feet—but by then the collection of earth around it had begun to take the shape of a massive hand, which now wrapped its fingers around the beast's body, lifting its struggling form up into the air and closing into an increasingly tight fist.

"Simon?" Rowan turned toward the school, making out a faint groan from that direction in a somewhat familiar voice.

---

"Got no more good anchor points 'round here." Sam wove together a net anyway, watching their target take off into the air again, and wincing when it screeched. "Oh hush, you overgrown bat!" She threw her weapon at it more out of annoyance than any expected effect; it landed in the creature's belly, but it hardly reacted, continuing its upward trajectory uninterrupted.

"I'll try and get these as strong as I can," Nico said, raising two of her trees as tall and wide as she could make them. There were light posts, normal trees and a couple of telephone poles strewn around, fallen, splintered or broken into pieces by the monster's talons; Sam wasn't willing to tie that thing to a building and risk the resulting destruction if it tore that in half.

'Overgrown bat' was more or less accurate, but such phrasing failed to capture the thing's scale. The width of its mouth was more than a man's height—and of course it was full of razor-teeth and it could apparently unhinge its jaw like a snake when it wanted to. Its legs were very long, proportionally similar to a stork or something, yet freakishly flexible, with hooklike talons at the ends that it liked to swipe at people with, and its wings ended in claws too.

"Joining in!" Zeno's voice came, and a few arrows up at the thing's head. "Sorry I'm late. Need someone to guide it into place?"

"Like you wouldn't believe," Sam grunted. "New legs're good and all, but I still ain't much for acrobatics."
Some more arrows succeeded in drawing the giant flying beast's attention, and soon it dove down at her. Zeno ran up to the net and leaned back, skidding along the ground underneath Sam's trap before rolling, popping upright and running off to one side to get out of reach of its talons. The thorns wound up around it, grabbing its whole body, legs, wings and all, and tying themselves around Nico's trees. The monster screeched, struggling against its bonds, and after a brief pause to dust herself off, Zeno took some free shots at it while it struggled.

Sam backed away quickly. "Ain't gonna hold long, get clear!"
"Sorry, my plants are uh, not really built for long-term stability," Nico apologized.

The three of them could pick up the sound of brakes squealing, a fast-moving vehicle coming to a stop around a nearby corner. "More party members!" Zeno announced cheerfully, making her way around to one side of the creature and channeling to set up a big light-shield in case it dove at her from where it was instead of going back into the air first.

Warp teleported into view first, pausing to assess the situation. After this, Cynthia and Dawn ran in, both turning the corner at about the same time and both pausing. In Cynthia's case, this was just her slightly started reaction to a first sight of the giant bat, and the general destruction that it appeared to have caused. Dawn, however, stopped completely in her tracks when she saw, freezing completely and staring up at it.

Cynthia tensed to move after a second or so, but sensed the air getting cold, and noticed that Dawn wasn't moving, either. She turned toward the taller vixen. "Hey, what's wrong?"

She didn't respond. The air around her was already below freezing, and the cold was spreading outward.

"Dawn? Hellooo?"

She couldn't hear her.

Dawn could see that thing, clear as day, diving toward her—shrouded in Cynthia's flames. She could feel herself tumbling through midair with it, tearing into it in rage, in hope that—despite what had happened just before it threw the red-haired vixen into its mouth—that she could still do something to save her. It fell apart and she caught Cynthia in her arms.

Cynthia was screaming. She was unconscious, but still crying out in pain. There was a hole and blood gushing out of where her arm was supposed to be. In the few seconds of staring at the girl in her arms, trying to think of what she could do, the cries grew quieter and weaker.

Thinking about it was meaningless. Dawn knew what she had to do. What she had promised to do. She remembered the promise; she remembered why she had made it. Why she would have done anything Cynthia asked, from that moment on. But this...?

The girl in her arms was quiet now, barely moving. Dawn placed one hand on her forehead, keeping the other behind her back. It was only a soft but unpleasant cracking sound, and then Cynthia was silent, unmoving—gone. A bright blue fire blazed around them both for an eternity.

Dawn was screaming.

---

Petra was dead silent.

She was slowly walking in the monster's direction, her right hand held up in the same pose as the gargantuan hand made out of rock, dirt, bricks and concrete. Rowan ran that way, finding the owner of the voice to be Karis, lying down on her back on the floor of a hallway near the inner edge of the rubble—just outside of what would have been safe from the collapse. She knelt over Simon's wife, checking her vitals and feeling the flow of water through her to get a feel for her overall status.

The ground started trembling slightly, the monster roaring in a somewhat defiant but very pained way. Rowan listened through that to hear Karis talk. "H-hey..ow. Thought I'd, go back and make sure everyone was out. S-stupid, huh?"
"Don't try to talk." Rowan placed a hand on her chest, and she winced. Water—blood, rather—was flowing in several locations and directions it shouldn't be in there. There was something hard and sharp in her lung. It was even more worrying when she tried to take a breath and it came in shallow, exiting as a rough cough that had some blood in it. Rowan hadn't had much actual experience healing injuries with her power over water—mostly her own—and it couldn't do anything about broken or misplaced bones regardless.

She could do shallow cuts on the surface easy, deep ones at best; her knowledge of anatomy just wasn't strong enough to be confident about repairing internal bleeding correctly. Overall, these injuries were completely beyond her ability to fix, and to her untrained eye seemed like the kind that might not allow one to survive the ambulance ride to the hospital—and definitely not the wait for Dr. Quinn to come all the way to the city after things were temporarily safe in that town. She tried anyway, for a moment, to at least seal up some of the worst of it.

The shaking was getting worse, approaching the scale of a local earthquake, which made her continued efforts even more difficult, therefore less effective. Rowan could no longer hear the monster's voice, and glancing in that direction, saw that Petra was holding the fist of stone tightly around..nothing, at this point. "Simon! It's already dead!" She didn't seem to be able to hear Rowan.

"Hey, stupid! Cut it out!" Karis punctuated this with another very uncomfortable-sounding blood-laced cough. This she could apparently hear, immediately dropping everything (the fist collapsing into a rough pile of dirt and rock) and turning to run back in their direction.

"Hh, how's it looking up there, doc?" Karis was obviously biting back a lot of pain; there were a lot of tears coming down her cheeks. Rowan wasn't certain exactly how long she would remain conscious in this state. Back in her right mind, Petra leaned half-over them with a pained, worried look that did not seem to fit her face.

"...This is beyond my powers to heal," Rowan said bluntly. "There is still something we can try, but if it works...I will require both of you to play along, possibly for a long time."