Battle Vixens! - 101

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Episode 101: 「Remedy」

On the way out of the meeting, with the decision made about the masks, Rowan indicated that he had something to speak to the two researchers about—possibly in private. They turned a corner in the hallway. "There's something I was wondering about," he said, particularly to Dr. Brand—or maybe more accurately Hephaestus, as she hadn't changed back yet. "For us, injuries and other problems don't seem carry between our forms, just exhaustion. Petra's burns from fighting those puppets disappeared when she changed back to Simon, and were able to heal even while he wasn't in that form. In Dawn's case, even cancer didn't carry over to her empowered form."
She said, "You want to know if the same is true in my case." He nodded. "It must be. I feel none of the usual ravages of age like this. And I had a papercut on my hand before, but—" she held out her left hand, palm-up, showing no cut.

"Uh-huh..." Ezekiel nodded. "So, just—hypothetically, I suppose—if someone was mortally wounded but still only mostly dead as of yet, you might be able to save their life by slapping a mask on them. Poof, fresh new body with powers, and most importantly, no injuries."
"That strikes me as an uncharacteristically irresponsible suggestion," Brand said to Rowan, "assuming that was your reason for asking."

"I'm not suggesting that it should become any kind of standard practice," he assured her. "But if someone has reason to be aligned with the VI—or one of its allies—and our overall goals, strongly enough that giving them powers poses no real risk? If their survival could be deemed important enough to warrant spending the resources?"
"I think I could agree with that," Dr. Bridges said. "Heph?"
"That's Dr. Brand, please. As long as we are already sending those things out, I suppose you could be afforded the discretion to determine when the use of one is necessary. We will discuss it further, and you will find out our decision later," she said.

Rowan kept a bag by her side; it included some medical and other basic supplies, a couple of water bottles. She got one of the latter out first, popping it open and pushing the water out into a dome around the three of them that obscured them from view. Then she got one other thing out while Petra was busy being confused as to how that first thing was supposed to help: A white half-face fox mask with some yellow and red paint across it, which had appeared in her office's mailbox that morning.

Emergency situations that required extreme, one-time solutions really weren't supposed to pop up this soon after they were imagined and prepared for. It could be manipulation by a certain powerful entity, or plain bad luck, or maybe things were just getting worse almost too fast for everyone to keep up. This was not her usual flavor of information management; it was a lie that someone else—maybe several people—would have to participate in along with her. But...it would save a life, and hopefully more than just the one. Or, at least that was the idea anyway.

Fixing the mask onto Karis's face resulted in a bright, reddish glow spreading from there across her body briefly. She gasped sharply, but then exhaled much more normally, and Rowan's water-oriented senses could immediately pick up the fact that all of the internal injuries were very abruptly gone. She didn't change in appearance very much, seemingly only gaining fox ears and a tail in the same deep brown color as her hair. A less-expected occurence was the sudden appearance of another person standing over the two of them, opposite Petra's position: A short, white-haired fox-girl with one red and one yellow eye, wearing a red-and-black metal gauntlet with two large red gems fixed in it over most of her right arm, bandages halfway up her left leg, a red skirt, a collar and a long black coat—and holding a sheathed sword in her left hand.

She seemed to just blur into view in that position, and Rowan's first reaction to this was to stand up and point her sword at the stranger, immediately on guard. Her voice came out in a soft, high, incoherent "aah" sound and she backed up, raising her hands over her head in a clear 'please-don't-attack-me' signal, dropping the sword which apparently resulted in it turning into a brief shimmer of red light and disappearing rather than just hitting the floor.

"Whoa, hey, hold up! That's just me," Karis said, sitting up quickly (now that Rowan wasn't on top of her), inadvertently letting the half-mask fall off of her face and land on her lap in the process. "Uh—sort of, anyway. So, what was...I mean, how am I..?"

---

Magus felt some hands on both sides of the injured shoulder, and heard Plus's voice from that direction. "I got it Igotit, sorry!" At about the same time, her ears picked up Minus mumbling from farther away: "I was supposed to keep you from getting hurt..." The pain eased off, and she took a few sharp breaths in and out, slowly managing to regain control over the strange muscle contractions. There had been the sound of Light saying something incomprehensible and a brief roar of thunder just before that, and now there was no noise of that fused monster running around or screeching beyond the range of human hearing—so that was good.

"GaaAAgh," she coughed a couple of times, feeling like some kind of thick phlegm was coming out, and then her breathing went back to normal. "What was that!?"

"Uh, your body was acting kinda like it had some sort of venom in it?—" "—but there wasn't anything there, I mean, at least not that I could—" "—wait wait, some black mist came out just now, so it must've been—" "—like the dragon, except...?"
"That's going a little too fast for the rest of us," Light said, coming up toward them. "Are you okay?" she gave the mage vixen a concerned look, offering a hand to help her up.

"Y-yeah, I guess.." After a brief hesitation she took it, her legs shaking a bit not from anything physically wrong, but just from the thought of how close she'd come to getting possibly actually killed by her own dumb plan.

"It's—" "—poisonous. Or, it acts like poison sometimes?" Gemma tried to explain. "If any of the, stuff those things are made of gets inside a person. Like when the dragon breathes a bunch of it, that time I got some of it in me?—" "—So, the stinger also injects it like poison. But, even though it went into the blood—" "—it still just came out of her mouth. But it was acting like, like a neurotoxin I guess—" "—she didn't have control over her muscles for a second or two. If there'd been more, if it had gotten a solid hit on any of us..!" Both of her were crying again, obviously feeling a bit panicky at the thought of all of this.
"Have you, heard of anything like this?" Light asked Magus, looking a little embarrassed that she hadn't made an effort to even know what randos writing a wiki knew about her own enemy.
"Uhh, s-sort of? It's actually pretty rare for the, tiger scorpion to land a hit with its tail at all, and um..when it has, the victim didn't really...s-s-stick around long enough to..." Magus took a shaky breath in and out. "S-sorry, I can't st-stop shaking for some reason..."

"You had a really close call."
"Y-you've had plenty of those! Right?"
"Yes, but.." Light exhaled a sort of half-sigh, like something unpleasant was just now occurring to her. "Those of us who she gave powers to, it isn't just physical superpowers and magic. It's like..we're psychologically hardened or something, so being nearly killed over and over again doesn't affect us anywhere near as much as it should."
"Y-yeah," Plus nodded. "I think I'd be crumpled up in a little ball in a corner somewhere by now otherwise...."

"Point being, we have an unfair advantage when it comes to this." She shook her head, looking disappointed in herself. "I didn't even think about that, sorry."
"That's okay..." Magus took a slow, deep breath, willing herself calmer. Advantage or not, she couldn't just stand here being useless all day. "I, I chose to do this anyway. 'Cause it's important. I mean, way more important than anything else I was gonna do with my life, as long as I don't do something stupid like that again and get myself killed for real."

"Teleporting away was pretty smart, though..?"
"I-I mean, maybe, but like, putting up a shield would've been better. Or just turning and running, or yelling for one of you to help? I probably wouldn't have gotten hit at all."

She winced after a moment, suddenly feeling sore and heavy. "..Aaugh, adrenaline's wearing off now. I think I blew through my whole stamina bar twice or something."

Light nodded. "Okay, come on, let's get you inside to rest." She put a hand on Magus's shoulder, starting to lead her toward the entrance to the nearest building. "No good having you collapse on the sidewalk out here. Are you gonna be okay, Gemma?"
She seemed surprised to have been addressed suddenly, both bodies snapping to attention. "Huh—?" "—Oh, uh—y-yeah, I guess, eventually.—" "—Heh heh," she semi-laughed nervously. "I've been in way worse; at least my idea for getting away worked."

"Good. There's, one other thing I just remembered I wanted to ask you about," Light said. "Nothing bad. If you don't mind coming in too?"
"Oh, uuh—" "—sure! No problem." She combined back into one body, following the two of them.

---

Dawn just stood there staring at the gargantuan bat-like monster for a long several seconds, ignoring Cynthia's increasingly worried questions and steadily freezing the air around her. Then she suddenly gasped for air, like she hadn't been breathing that entire time, and screamed like something was stabbing her straight through the eyes. This made everyone jump, and also got the beast's attention, as it seemed to suddenly find her an especially attractive target, leaning down toward her against its bindings.

While Sam quickly went to pull the steel wire taut to hold it in place for as long as possible, the scream terminated into Dawn gasping and exhaling, faster and faster, like she no longer understood how to get the air all the way to her lungs to breathe it—still staring wide-eyed up at the thing.

Cynthia tried to get closer, shivering in the cold. "Hey, c'mon, t-talk to me! What's wrong with you!?"

Warp glanced swiftly around at everyone, and then teleported directly in front of Dawn, hand raised, and slapped it across her face—lightly enough not to injure, but hard enough for her to feel it, her head turning a couple of inches to one side from the momentum and her eyes half-closing in a wince. Then, hands gripping Dawn's shoulders hard: "Breathe!" She gasped much longer then, maybe not because she comprehended the word, but because the brief pain had forced her back into reality enough to obey her own body's basic survival instincts. "That's it." Warp loosened her grip, but stayed close, making sure her head took up most of Dawn's view instead of the giant bat-stork thing. "In, out. Slow." Dawn obeyed this command, letting out an incoherent sobbing noise each time. She wasn't exactly calm, but she stopped making the air near her feel like the arctic. "Now I'll ask: What is wrong?"

"This is the same variant that killed Cynthia before!" Zeno said, watching it snap several of its bonds, including breaking one of the trees supporting them in half at this point. "Hey, eyes on me, buddy!" She sent several arrows particularly toward the thing's eyes, making it screech and tumble in her direction as planned while it freed itself the rest of the way, and finally she focused her earlier channeling into creating the biggest, widest shield she could for it to rake its claws against on its way into the air. "Did nobody warn anyone about the possibility of severe PTSD!?"

Warp guided Dawn several steps backwards, and down to a sitting position, all while she continued to sob and mutter something incoherent about protecting someone. "Either way, she's outta the fight for now. I'll keep her steady, you go break that thing, fire girl." She pointed back at the now-airborne monster.
"Uh—okay." Cynthia showed a rare moment of uncertainty at finding out that something just like this had killed her before—even though she didn't remember any of that—but turned around to face it, determined to fight all the same. "I'm on it!"

---

Rowan dismissed her weapon, whispering; "Long story short: That mask acted as a 'key' the same way our phrases do, and the fact we have something like that is an extremely high-security secret. As far as anyone else is concerned, you are a 'normal' vixen and simply hid it from the VI and everyone else until now. Whether you told your husband I'll leave you two to decide. Understood?"

"Uh, sure I guess? H-hey!" Karis was interrupted by Simon immediately picking her up into a hug, hopping and spinning her around in the air briefly before setting her down again.
"You're okay, you're okay!"
"Heheh, yes, I'm okay now, apparently." Rowan quickly retrieved the mask from under them before it could be stepped on, temporarily stowing it back in the bag. It also wouldn't be good if she accidentally put it on and changed back while not in the presence of someone who could then prevent her human body from dying. Then she let go of the dome of water at this point, carefully pushing it out and down onto the ground so it wouldn't soak the three (or four?) of them. "Bleah, your face is wet—put me down, you goof!"

Petra hadn't cried before, but now the tears were flowing pretty freely down. "I really, really thought I was going to lose you this time. Of all the beautiful things I've ever created, possessed, or seen, the only one that's truly priceless."
"I'm glad to hear you feel that way, dear." She ruffled Petra's hair gently.

Rowan cleared her throat, interrupting their moment somewhat. "Could you explain what you mean about this body being 'just you'?" she said, gesturing. Since she'd let go of her sword, the fox-girl had dropped her arms to the sides and sort of stood passively watching them, not doing anything.
"Oh, uh—sorta? I can see through her eyes, and like feel all the rest of her body's senses too. And I think maybe I can.." At some invisible prompting, the fox-girl vanished in a blur-like motion and reappeared next to Karis. "Yeah. And I can 'command' her to do things, but it's not like I have direct control—so, not exactly the way Gemma works, I guess? Hmn." The girl put out her right hand, placing the gauntlet on Karis's shoulder for a moment; a red gem set into the forearm glowed faintly for a second. "I'm..uninjured? Good to know, but wh..wait. Wait wait, you can heal, can't you?" she said to the other body, which dropped her arm back to the side but didn't otherwise respond. "With that mecha-arm thing, yeeaah. People usually get powers based on what they 'want the most', right? So that would make sense, given my condition half a minute ago."

"I suppose so," Rowan said. "So you can teleport her and 'command' her?"
"Uh, no, it's not really teleportation. More like I can dismiss her or call her out at will," Karis said, demonstrating this by having the body disappear, then appear again after a second or so. "Neat!"

She crossed her arms, looking at the 'extra body' for a second or two as if trying to understand everything she was experiencing through it. "...Wait, no, I think I get it. You're a Stand, aren't you!?"

"A what." Rowan had no idea what she meant by that.
"You know, a Stand! It's a—oh wow, I don't actually know how to explain this one concisely.."
"It may have to wait, then; we still have an active attack to handle elsewhere," Rowan said, taking out her phone. "Speaking of which."

"Sitrep, everyone?"

A loud spike of noise cut her last syllable or so off. "Boss, glad to hear from you! Tora got hit," Hugo said. "Nothing life-threatening, um, I think, but—a-anyway we're down one fighter." Another crash of noise came through. "Please tell me you and the brick are on your way!"
"'The brick'!?" Petra repeated, exaggerating her irritation at this nickname.
"We are now," Rowan said, muting the call and gesturing for the two-tailed vixen to follow. "You should probably come with us for the moment—so you'll have time to get your story straight," she added to Karis under her breath.
"'Kay."

---

The giant bat swooped down at Zeno, who ran to one side, forcing it to veer away from a building to chase her. Sam threw her knife in front of it, wire wrapped around the hilt, and pulled it back to herself to loop it around one of the thing's legs, catching the weapon in her left hand while holding the other end of the wire in her right, pulling back hard enough to bend the limb backward in a way that would've broken it on any normal creature.

Cynthia focused this entire time, 'channeling', and with a relatively stationary target she now used the stored energy to throw out a sphere of fire about half her height in diameter that erupted into a blinding explosion as soon as it made contact. The monster screeched, flapping and twisting itself around in her direction, scraping itself free of the wire and and diving hard enough to skid across the ground toward her. She felt a sort of 'pull' from behind and allowed it to take effect, Warp teleporting her to behind the thing and a fair distance off, to where Nico was.

Zeno stopped, catching her breath during the explosion, then turned and rapid-fired arrows at the monster while it stood up, Warp moving the few missed shots to hit it almost square in the eyes. It turned, standing on one leg and raking the other one down at her, which she backflipped away from, leaving behind a light-shield for good measure. Sam twisted wire up around the standing leg and yanked hard, pulling along with its momentum from the other leg's swing to tip it over onto its side, flailing its wings wildly the whole way down.

"Keep breathing." Warp knelt next to Dawn, keeping a hand gripped gently on her shoulder—even though it felt like holding onto an ice sculpture. "Slow, deep. It's not just you and her this time, and I'll make sure that thing won't get us." She whimpered something half-incoherent that sounded sort of like an apology. "Not your fault. Seeing it again must've brought back some awful memories, eh? You're crying icicles over there." Dawn sort of half-gasped and let out a nervous, confused giggle, then sniffed somewhat normally. "That's it. You're going to get better, just be patient with yourself."

Sam tried braiding some wire together for strength and throwing it up over the big bird, twisting it around the still-standing base of a lamppost on the other end before pulling it taut. Several more braided strands like this went up in succession, with her own hands holding on to the other side and pulling down to keep the flailing beast from getting free. Cynthia sent more fire from her hands, tossing it up so it fell down across the thing's body, burning it into an eruption of more mist. Nico's trees tossed fruits from either side, while she took the opporutnity to plant some new, sturdier ones spaced out to help trap the monster again. Zeno kept her distance, waiting for it to free itself so she could get its attention again.

When it burst free, taking off into the air, they were ready. Light-arrows landed across its body, and when it twisted and dove at Zeno she ran, leaned back and skidded along the ground under Sam's trap, and the big bat netted itself between the trees once again. Cynthia wove fire out from her hands onto one end of the net, running it across the length of it to heat it up. The fire damaged the trees, but didn't quite destroy them, and the heat along with the wires cutting into the big bat's body had it spewing black mist and screeching in agony and rage. It tried to land on Sam when it broke free this time, and Warp moved her out of the way and out of the thing's view.

---

"Let's see—the most logical way to explain what everyone else has saw is this: The Giver offered you power, maybe the same time as me, but you chose not to ever actually take it," Petra said. "Perhaps you told Rowan about it in private at some point, but you weren't sure how to tell me, so you didn't."
"Mmh, wouldn't wanna steal your thunder," Karis nodded, agreeing. "I can easily say I'd have some qualms with taking power from a being with her personality, even for as little as we knew of it at that time. So what just happened was Rowan convincing me to say the thing and take it anyway, just to keep myself alive, I guess?"
"That's what I was thinking."

"What're we up against here?" Rowan interjected; he was back in human form to drive more comfortably.
"Ah, yes, right," Petra nodded. "It's shaped a bit like a giant crocodile, with a very long mouth, huge tail with actual blades at the end, but six legs instead of four, all ending in these clawed-hand-things. Not quite as tall as your average car, but more resilient than most of 'em that size, and fast. Very, very fast." She glanced at Karis. "Now, I know what you're thinking."
"Well, I've got ears. Much bigger than usual, in fact," she said, pointing at one of them. "And I can at least do something about Tora's injury."
Petra sighed. "I know better than to try to stop you, but—please, at least be careful. We don't have another spare body to give you if you get hurt. Just, try not to ruin everything at this point."

"Oh, please, I'm nowhere near that efficient. It'd take me at least a week to ruin even half of everything," she said. "Anyway, you don't need to worry. I'll keep my distance and have my Stand do all the hard work."

"Have I mentioned the thing we're up against is fast?"

"Almost there, about to hit the brakes," Rowan said. "Hold on." There was about enough time for the two of them to lean back and grab onto their seats before the inertia of the sudden braking hit, making their seatbelts pull taut against the relative forward motion. Once they were around fifteen miles per hour, Petra gave Karis a brief glance and nod, undid her seatbelt, and dove out the door. Karis just shook her head, waiting for the car to come to a complete stop before getting out herself, at about the same time as Rowan.

Hugo threw a wave of noise, driving the beast back, ran in and grabbed Tora, all but tossing her over her back. "Grab on!"
"Gnngh, got it." Tora held on awkwardly with both arms, leaving Hugo's left arm mostly free to raise her shield against the thing's sudden charge, which made her stumble back a couple of steps. Fay ran in then, placing an explosion between the monster and the other two vixens and successfully grabbing its attention. It skittered close, raising itself up on its hindmost two legs and using the other two to swipe and grab at her. She parried with her staff, letting the claws knock it aside or grab it away occasionally only to re-form it, placing explosions strategically to briefly secure certain angles of attack and give herself room to back away and breathe.

Its tail had caught Tora's left leg on her way to leap out of its range, cutting a deep gash right along it. So much for their armor; she wasn't going to do much walking, much less running and jumping, in that state. "Hey, get the phone outta my pocket, open the comms, will ya?" Hugo could feel some blood wetting her right shoulder, but wasn't one to complain about that sort of thing.

"Hrnngh." Tora grunted, pushing through the pain to comply with the request. They picked up Rowan's voice asking after the situation just before Hugo threw a wave of noise at the beast to knock it aside before it could corner Fay.

"Boss, glad to hear from you! Tora got hit," Hugo said. "Nothing life-threatening, um, I think, but—a-anyway we're down one fighter." The thing turned on her, skittering up almost too fast for her to form her shield, and she amplified the noise of its claws raking across it into a high screech of feedback, twisting that into a pressure wave to push it back again. "Please tell me you and the brick are on your way!"

Tora sniggered at Petra's reaction to the nickname. She wasn't kidding about being an adrenaline junkie, apparently. She pushed the phone back into Hugo's pocket and then used the same hand to throw one of her claws at their opponent. By now Fay had caught her breath just enough to move back in and start her dance of death with the thing again.

This time, it used its hind and middle legs to walk, snapping at her with its big, wide mouth and advancing faster with more calculated-seeming swipes. She still managed to keep up, partially thanks to Hugo still throwing noise at it periodically, but she was obviously tiring out, and that thing seemed to know, refusing to be distracted into coming after Hugo again.

"..Gonna haveta let you down," Hugo said quickly, kneeling. Tora let go and slid off onto the ground, wincing and flinching from the slightest bit of weight hitting the injured leg for a second along the way. Then she raised her shield and charged, bashing the big six-legged gator across the side to knock it over and force it to change its target of attention. Fay knelt forward, panting heavily down at the ground and supporting herself with both hands on her staff.

It practically cartwheeled with the momentum from the shield hitting it, twisting near-instantly back at Hugo and clawing around the outer edges of her shield. She backed up quickly, not really able to adjust her position fast enough to keep up with its movements, and threw more noise back at it to try and push it away. She wasn't particularly feeling exhausted yet, but didn't like her chances if that thing decided to stop trying to push through and go around instead.

The sense of relief was immediate and immense when the noise of a car braking came in from one side, signalling the arrival of reinforcements. Within a second or two, a wall of concrete suddenly encircled the beast, Petra running into view while Hugo gracefully staggered backward several steps, realizing the arm she'd been holding her shield with was awfully sore all of a sudden. An unfamiliar vixen ran up from behind, toward Tora.

The monster skittered over the wall, starting off going in Hugo's direction but quickly interrupted by Petra tossing the sheath off of her sword to smack it across the muzzle. It twisted, closing the distance to her in an instant on four legs with the other two rasied to attack. She caught both on her sword, brought a spike of earth up through its body to pin it, and backed off while it struggled free of that.

Rowan also arrived. "She's friendly," she informed Tora bluntly, pulling into the space to one side of Petra and stabbing her blade into the beast's side, getting its attention and then dodging/blocking its four arms and one mouth's worth of retaliatory strikes with what looked to be an effortless grace, holding so much of its attention that Petra was able to slash right across its side unimpeded.

"You bet she is!" another voice said, someone standing next to the car nearby. Hugo sort of squinted her eyes after turning to look that direction, unsure if she was seeing what was there quite right. Was that...Simon's wife, with fox ears? Meanwhile, the stranger placed a metallic hand against Tora's wound, making the cut glow bright red and begin to seal itself up. "Say hello to Remedy!"

---

There are multiple songs titled "Remedy", but I have in mind the one by The Black Crowes. Also, full disclosure: I have only incidental and brief wiki glancing knowledge of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, but Karis is supposed to be a huge fan and therefore an expert on it. Sorry if I commit any critical research failures with this, it's just the kind of risk an author takes in writing a character who knows something he or she doesn't.