"..Hi Remedy, I'm dad."
The silent white-haired girl gave Tora a mildly confused look as she continued to mend her leg wound. "Well, uh," Karis said from still next to the car, "It's good you've got a sense of humor about this, at least. Anyway, it looks like you lost a, noticable amount of blood from that, and might feel kinda dizzy, so—don't stand up too fast. Sorry, I don't think I know how to regrow blood, soo, gonna have to sit the rest of this fight out at least."
The silent white-haired girl gave Tora a mildly confused look as she continued to mend her leg wound. "Well, uh," Karis said from still next to the car, "It's good you've got a sense of humor about this, at least. Anyway, it looks like you lost a, noticable amount of blood from that, and might feel kinda dizzy, so—don't stand up too fast. Sorry, I don't think I know how to regrow blood, soo, gonna have to sit the rest of this fight out at least."
"Ahh, that's okay with me. Looks like the boss and the brick
have it in hand." She gestured their way.
As soon as Petra cut it, the six-legged beast went to tackle her,
only to slam itself into a wall of concrete; the impact collapsed the
wall, but left it staggering back briefly. Rowan took the opportunity
to get out a bottle of water and open it, bringing its contents out
as a long tentacle grasping two or three of the thing's limbs so she
could move in and stab it through the torso.
It broke free and slashed wildly with four of its limbs at the
blue-haired vixen, but she backed slowly away, keeping just enough
distance for most of its strikes to miss and parrying the few that
came close with her blade. Petra raised some broken concrete and
loose dirt, forming big spikes of rock with the material and throwing
them sharp-end-first into the monster's back; what it twisted back to
deflect she caught in midair and redirected back into it again. Once
there was a good collection of broken pieces from that, she gathered
them together, raising the mass up over and around the monster into a
dome to briefly imprison it.
"You still good, boss?"
"Somewhat winded," Rowan reported between some heavy breaths.
"Somewhat winded," Rowan reported between some heavy breaths.
"Then take a drink!" she yelled over the thing's roar as it
burst through its prison. Petra moved in to intercept it, holding her
sword in one hand and her sheath in the other—using both to catch
its strikes. She tilted the ground underneath it wildly, forcing it
to use four of its limbs as feet to keep its balance, and used her
superior strength to push back against it whenever it grabbed one of
her weapons to try and yank it away.
Dawn didn't feel like she was getting better. The noise of the
battle, that thing screeching in her ears, just seemed to
bring back flashes of the day Cynthia died back, over and over again.
If she could have never remembered that, it would have been
better. If she'd died instead, it would have been better. If she
could just move, do something to keep it from happening
again...but like this, she was useless and worse, putting
everyone in even more danger.
It wasn't that she was afraid, or angry, or in despair. What she was
feeling was indescribable in terms of emotion. It was more like a
confused, uncontrollable flood of memories and thoughts pressing
across her body and threatening to crush her and drown her all at
once. It came out in tears and a loud sob, and it made it difficult
to breathe all over again.
The hand on her shoulder squeezed. "Hey, that's too fast. Slow down and just breathe."
Warp made it sound so easy. Dawn put all of her effort into pulling air in, a slow, ragged gasp, and then letting out, fighting with all she had the urge to let air in before it was all out—or out before it was all in. Things got a little better after that, at least temporarily.
The hand on her shoulder squeezed. "Hey, that's too fast. Slow down and just breathe."
Warp made it sound so easy. Dawn put all of her effort into pulling air in, a slow, ragged gasp, and then letting out, fighting with all she had the urge to let air in before it was all out—or out before it was all in. Things got a little better after that, at least temporarily.
The big bat twisted itself upright, standing on one leg and reaching
the other one out at Zeno. She ran, placing shields behind her to
slow it down, and Cynthia took the opportunity to throw another big
explosion into its back. It lurched forward, swapping to standing on
the leg it had been using to attack and trying to use the other one
to reach for Cynthia, but Warp had already moved her somewhere else
before it could see her. After a brief pause of possibly confusion as
to the source of its most recently-felt pain, the monster took off
into the air once again.
"How is it still alive!?" Cynthia yelled over its
screeching.
"We're doing good work," Zeno replied. "Look, it's not
as together as it was before." Her breath caught up from the
recent running, she got her bow out and fired up at it some more;
Nico and Sam were busy putting together another trap for it.
"HRRAH!" Since Rowan was taking a brief break to chug
water, Hugo shouted, throwing it at the monster as a pressure wave to
help delay it and knock it a little more off balance. It tipped and
caught itself on one of the legs it had been assaulting Petra with,
giving her an opportunity to lean in and sock it square in the side
of the muzzle with her gauntlet. The impact sent it flying, twisting
through the air briefly before it caught itself and skittered back at
her, four arms raised to attack. Fay pulled in from behind, tapping
its back with the tip of her staff and placing an explosion directly
inside it, then quickly darted back before it could retaliate.
It twisted around to run after her—and she was still too exhausted
to get away from it very fast—but Petra raised a half-cylinder of
concrete around it with the open side toward herself. "Hey hey,
eyes on me!" She punctuated the last word with a slash
through its back, and it twisted, swiping and snapping its mouth at
her wildly. She wasn't fast enough to keep up with this, and had to
back quickly away, raising some shoddy walls of rock for it to break
instead of her face.
With Tora's injury fixed, Karis decided that her Stand could do more
than just..stand there, and had her run up next to Petra instead,
grabbing one of the monster's limbs with the mechanical hand and
forming the sword she'd come with in the other, putting it in the way
of the thing's mouth. It bit down on the sheath and she let it keep
that, drawing the sword out and slashing into its torso in a quick
motion. Then another of its legs sliced straight through Remedy's
torso, much too quickly for her to properly react.
Petra's ears folded back; she let go of her sword, drawing that hand
back as a fist fist and straight-punching the air in front of her
with it. This wouldn't have been very effective, except that the
material forming the sword and most of the loose dirt nearby
near-instantly gathered together into a fist about the size of a
person which imitated this motion, punching the monster's entire body
and sending it rolling back along the ground several yards.
"Hey, relax, I'm still fine!" Karis yelled, unsummoning the
Stand and then re-summoning it again next to her. She'd been aware
of Remedy being in brief but immense pain, with a potentially deadly
injury—but hadn't felt the injury like it was her own at
all. And the summoned body was uninjured now, but it felt like
it had taken a lot more effort than usual to bring her back.
Petra unclenched her fist—which seemed to cause the big earthen one
to fall apart right away—and quickly turned her head her wife's way
to confirm this. "Oh, good. Don't scare me like that!"
Rowan moved in, gathering all of the water she'd dropped—and any
other she could find—along the way, then used it to form a number
of thin tentacles that tangled themselves around the beast's limbs
and neck, keeping it prone on the ground so she could stab and slash
into its body repeatedly while it struggled to get free. As soon as
the strength of her water-limbs gave out she darted away, well out of
range of its series of wild, rapid retaliatory strikes. Its body
looked somewhat indstinct now, but it was in a frenzy, slashing the
air around it and practically daring anyone to get too close.
The big bat flew up and away and swung back again, twisting around
through the air in an attempt to dodge Zeno's shots. She led her
shots and mostly caught it anyway—and Warp made sure the missed
arrows weren't wasted, making them pepper the thing square in the
face. But it still didn't seem interested in diving at her;
its focus as it came in for another descent was elsewhere. "Hey!
I'm right here!" Zeno threw a couple more arrows at it,
waved, and yelled—but it just paid no attention to her.
Thinking—or attempting to think, anyway—from the beast's
perspective, it made sense: All of its targets kept running around
and disappearing on it, but there was one—two—which it had
noticed earlier and seen several times to be still quite immobile.
"Warp, move!"
"Trying here!" Warp could easily teleport herself
out of the way of the dive, but to move someone else, it evidently
took their 'permission'. There was something special about trying to
use magic on another living creature's body; it had been among the
research department's earlier discoveries when they'd suggested Rowan
try to do some basic 'bloodbending'. She could heal another
person, sure, but—despite the human body being a big bag of
water—couldn't throw them around or explode their blood out or
anything. Or, if she could, its 'MP cost' was too high for her
to normally afford, and her 'instincts' directed her to do much
cheaper things of equal or better effect. It was like people—maybe
animals, too—had a 'magic immune system' or something.
It started to approach the ground, picking up speed. Its wings were
spread wide and its long legs trailing out behind it.
"Rrngh...sorry!" Sam grabbed the net she'd been making
between Nico's trees, grunting with the effort required to yank it
off and break the fragile magic-flora herself, and threw it, quickly
rearranging it into a kind of complicated lasso that whipped around
the big bat's legs. Seeing what she was doing, Nico tossed seeds
nearby, weaving them up into some roots twisted around Sam's legs to
help her not just get picked up by the thing's momentum and dragged
with it. She got pulled partway up anyway, and Cynthia ran up to grab
her around the waist. She didn't have much in the way of
'super-strength' either, but the extra support helped things hold a
little bit longer—enough to kill most of its momentum. Zeno ran up
alongside it as it slowed, the front of its body scraping along the
ground. What she was going to do exactly she wasn't sure,
but—something, right?
Warp growled. "Come on! Just—let me—!" She grabbed both of Dawn's shoulders and shook her. The big bat came to a stop with its head just in front of them. It thrashed and snapped at them, dragging itself forward with the claws at the ends of its wings against—and through—the wires binding its legs. Looking quickly between the thing and the dark-haired vixen, Warp made a decision—shoving Dawn away from it as hard as she could and then teleporting away herself, before it could get any closer.
Picking up another person—that Zeno could maybe do. She
caught up to the side of the thing's head, getting ready to sweep
herself right in front of it and pick Dawn up to move her out of its
range.
What she noticed as she came closer was: The air here was freezing.
That was when she heard a loud gasp, Dawn inhaling like it was the
last air she'd ever get, and another scream, just as loud as
the first. But this one was different from before: It wasn't sad,
anguished, or afraid—it was angry.
A rage roared out of her, freezing the air between her and the
monster, driving massive spikes of icicles up through its body and
wings, piercing through it like so many teeth. It shredded itself on
the first several as it thrashed and clawed with its wings, stabbed
itself on the next set as they grew bigger, and struggled, only
cutting itself deeper, as the ice envloped it.
This wasn't even the one that had hurt Cynthia. And that wasn't
the monster she was screaming at anyway.
The flood of memories hadn't stopped at her death. Dawn had already
remembered the promise she had made; she now remembered why
she had made it. What had happened before—and why. It was like
spears stabbing into her brain, one after another. Every horrible
thing that man had done to Cynthia—to both of them, to
everyone else around him—rushed through too quickly to
mentally put into place. Each one hurt more, and made her angrier.
She couldn't hurt him back—not anymore—but there was
something right in front of her that she could
keep on hurting.
She directed all of this straight ahead, drawing the ice up through
the thing while it struggled, refreezing twice as many every time it
broke a few of the spikes. It closed it in like a beartrap—like a
mouth, clamping down around it. The beast was screeching back, but
she couldn't even hear it—to her, her own voice was much
louder.
Zeno had to skid to a halt and quickly flip away to one side to avoid
getting caught on the sudden crowd of spikes herself. When the scream
was over, Dawn collapsed forward, one of her hands stretched out in
the monster's direction—unmoving but probably just unconscious.
Hopefully, anyway.
The giant bat screeched again, a noise made all the more unpleasant
by the noise of the ice spikes closed around it shattering as it
struggled. "Still ain't gone yet!" Sam yelled, throwing
some braided ropes of metal across it to try and hold it down.
"Burn it to a bloody crisp!" Warp yelled. Zeno wasn't exactly sure where she'd gone, but she was obviously not happy about being that close to getting eaten. She did her part once she was clear of the ice and wires, drawing her bow to shoot it a few more times through the side. Fire wove across the metal, scorching through the beast's body and melting if not instantly sublimating most of the ice into steam. But by the time it was no longer bound by the ice, it had lost too much of its own characteristic black mist to hold itself together, and finally dissipated.
"Burn it to a bloody crisp!" Warp yelled. Zeno wasn't exactly sure where she'd gone, but she was obviously not happy about being that close to getting eaten. She did her part once she was clear of the ice and wires, drawing her bow to shoot it a few more times through the side. Fire wove across the metal, scorching through the beast's body and melting if not instantly sublimating most of the ice into steam. But by the time it was no longer bound by the ice, it had lost too much of its own characteristic black mist to hold itself together, and finally dissipated.
Petra raised all of the rubble she could find, gathering it into
solid, spiky chunks of earth to toss at the monster. It swatted most
of them aside, but staggered back from one particularly solid hit.
Remedy moved in carefully to one side of the rain of rock, forming
her sword, unsheathing it and taking the opportunity to run in and
stab it into the beast before backing quickly away while it roared
and slashed wildly again.
Rowan caught her breath again and drew up as much water as she could
find during this, then wound it around the beast's limbs, binding it.
She drew her own sword in her right hand and came in close, drawing
Karis's blade out of its body with her left hand and dual-wielding it
with her own weapon to deliver a rapid series of strikes before it
could get itself free. When it did burst free and strike at
her in particular, she backed away, deftly parrying it with one sword
or the other. Petra slowly approached the two, tilting the ground
under their opponent to push it off-balance and force it to slow down
its attacks.
Since all of its attention was on Rowan now, Remedy pulled in from
behind and punched it in the back with her mechanical hand. Combined
with its unstable foothold, this sufficed to make it stumble forward,
and Rowan struck both blades back inside its body before darting
backwards out of its range. Then Petra arrived, slashing through its
body with her own weapon as it tried to stand up again, finally
finishing it off.
She stood there holding the sword out at the end of its arc for a
second or two, then dropped it away, relaxing her stance.
"...Finally! That thing was so stubborn!"
"We'd have taken care of it if it wasn't," Tora said,
slowly getting up. She wobbled slightly, but didn't go back down
again. She looked at Karis, who was finally coming closer now that it
was safe. "Hey, having a meat shield you can just summon back if
it dies is stupid handy! You been hiding that the whole
time?"
She shrugged, unsummoning the Stand and her own weapon for now. "I'd
hate to steal my husband's thunder. And—I didn't know that's what I
could do. This is my first time using this...stuff, and then only
because I would've died otherwise."
"One of the monsters collapsed part of the school onto her,"
Rowan explained, moving toward Tora.
"Oh, yeeaah—and injuries don't carry between forms, right?
Huh, you think it knew she had powers and wanted to take her out of
the game?"
"...Hard to say.
"How are you feeling?"
"Little dizzy, but okay. Hope two hours in human form is long
enough to be fighting fit again, I'd hate to miss out on the
excitement."
She placed a hand on Tora's shoulder, giving her a faint but visible
stern expression. "If you are unwell, do not push
yourself."
"Heeyy, don't worry, boss! I know my own body pretty well, okay?"
"Good. Hugo, Fay?" She turned their way.
"Heeyy, don't worry, boss! I know my own body pretty well, okay?"
"Good. Hugo, Fay?" She turned their way.
"I will recover," Fay said, nodding.
"Yeah, I'm mostly fine. Arm's a li'l sore from all the blocking,
though," Hugo said, shaking the offending limb around a little
to try and loosen it.
"Hey, I can take a look at that," Karis said, bringing
Remedy out and sending her over that way.
"Can't resist a chance to show off, can you?" Petra said
with a huge grin on. "Well—not that I can blame you."
"At any rate, you three can consider yourselves on break for the moment," Rowan said. "Get some food and rest before the next one comes. I need to debrief the other team, and we need to determine how soon Dr. Quinn can come make her human form's wounds less fatal," she said, gesturing Karis's way.
"At any rate, you three can consider yourselves on break for the moment," Rowan said. "Get some food and rest before the next one comes. I need to debrief the other team, and we need to determine how soon Dr. Quinn can come make her human form's wounds less fatal," she said, gesturing Karis's way.
Amp watched the fight from the window of a third-floor lounge, the
door locked and Light doing a little trickery to make sure she was
hidden from outside view. She got out her phone after it was over,
calling Dr. Quinn.
"...All went pretty smoothly on our end. Well, those things did
some property damage before we got here, but nobody got seriously
hurt," Clark was saying. "Ning's a little winded from
keeping them all occupied, but some food and rest should be enough
for her to help with the second attack."
"That's good. Everyone, uh..survived..on our end. Gemma had a rrreally close call, and I think Magus overextended herself pretty badly. And she took a hit, but Gemma healed it."
"That's good. Everyone, uh..survived..on our end. Gemma had a rrreally close call, and I think Magus overextended herself pretty badly. And she took a hit, but Gemma healed it."
"Well, if she needs to sit the second one out, that's fine. We
may need to allocate ourselves a little differently, or see if the
city can spare anyone. We're heading back now."
"'Kay, see you."
"'Kay, see you."
Not long after he hung up, Light knocked softly and put the words
It's us on the side of the door facing Amp, so she went and
opened the door for them. "Good job out there. Pretty rough
though, huh?"
They filtered in, and Light quietly closed it behind them. "Yeah,
I wouldn't have run them into each other if I knew they could do
that," she said, going over to a couch. She'd already
released Amp's 'boost' and returned to her usual appearance on the
way up. She hadn't seemed at all tired out in the courtyard, but the
way she collapsed into a seat told a different story.
Emma had stopped in front of Amp, so she wordlessly hugged the
two-tailed girl for a moment. She then went to take a seat too,
changing back to human form in the process.
Magus was still standing awkwardly next to the door; she looked
exhausted and distressed, with the mark of recent tears on her cheeks
and her clothes torn at the shoulder, where the monster's stinger had
pierced through. "You wanna hug too?" Amp offered.
She sort of snapped to attention—out of a tired sort of zoned-out state—and tilted her head. "Um..aren't we both, you know...guys?"
She sort of snapped to attention—out of a tired sort of zoned-out state—and tilted her head. "Um..aren't we both, you know...guys?"
"Not at the moment," Amp shrugged. "And I don't care
anyway, I'm always up for hugs." She gently put out her arms to
emphasize this point.
"..Yeah, I, totally need a hug."
"..Yeah, I, totally need a hug."
Not that she expected anything different, but the most Amp could
really do for her was a normal, mundane hug—no 'relaxation magic'
involved. After release, she gently pushed the girl in the hat toward
the nearest seat, which she semi-stumbled over to before sitting
down. "..Thanks, heheh." Well, it seemed like it helped
anyway.
In case you don't recognize what the title is supposed to be, it's something Simon said right after getting powers, way back in Episode 27. Not that it doesn't also apply as just plain what this episode's title is.
