Thursday, April 14, 2022

Battle Vixens! - 102




Episode 102: Revenge! Catharsis!

"..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."
"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.
"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 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.



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.

"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.



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."
"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."

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?"
"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."

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.