Battle Vixens! - 103

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So, I realize at this point that it's been almost half a year since I posted anything other than intermittent parts of this particular story...with approximately one exception back in February. And I know, at this point, if I were someone in the habit of reading things at this site, I'd be wondering if this was all the author wanted to do at this point. The short answer is that it's not.

I've just had a rough half-year or so with not a lot of time in which to write; when I do find time to squeeze writing in I'll chip away at this or that thing, but this particular story has just wound up being the one that I can actually finish pieces of lately. There's a big pile of unfinished captions and story parts and individual stories all in various states of completion that I'm hoping I can find the time and energy to focus in on soon, but I know better than to make any promises about anything. I just want to apologize to anyone who doesn't like this story, or just prefers something else I'm writing, and/or is getting tired of it. Sometimes I just have to take what my own inspiration gives me: I have to write what I can, or not write at all, and I very much prefer the former to the latter.

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Episode 103: That Makes No Sense

The first thing Rowan did after getting into the car was call Sam to check in on the other team. She indicated they had taken down their target, then she and Nico gave a rundown of just how that had happened.

"Thanks. Nico; you can consider yourself debriefed and go on back to your day job if you want. It's on the way, isn't it?"
"Sure is."
"I'll drop her off, then," Sam said.

After he hung up, Karis leaned up toward the front seat, where Simon was. "So, hey, what's with that stone fist attack?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well—you usually don't have fine enough control to sculpt something as detailed as that. But when that thing cut up my Stand you just pulled one up from nowhere to punch it in the everything."
"Oh, yeah...I'm not sure I understand that myself." He shrugged. "Just felt like I got angry and wanted to punch it, so I did."

"You formed a gigantic hand to crush the one that hit the school," Rowan pointed out. "I think it's something similar to my 'water dragon'."
"Oh?" He turned toward their driver, interested.

"Tenpo told me, when she was nearly consumed by one of those things and stopped time—that was driven by a specific, desperate thought. She could put it into words: 'I just need more time'. And Saturday, when I was facing down that dragon, I told it—'you will not hurt them'. That thought is what 'became' that dragon. I wonder, if you could put it into words—what you were feeling when you saw what that thing had done to your wife."

"Ah, well—you know." He put out his hands. "I'm pretty good at acting like a hero and hiding it from the public, but I'm sure you're well aware: I'm quite a selfish person at heart. Nearly every thought I have in my head is all about me, and the same goes for how I see those things. Ever since I gained the power to fight back, the sort of thoughts I motivate myself with to fight them are just like everything else: totally and completely self-centered. How dare those things upset my life—disrupt my livelihood, close my favorite restaurants, hurt my friends and wreck my town?"

"You have a funny way of being selfish," Rowan commented.

"If you say so. Anyway, this was more of the same, only much more extreme for a moment."

"Sooo," Karis said, "'How dare you mortally wound my wife', then?"
He nodded. "Mmh, with the spirit of that, but I suppose I wasn't thinking anything even that complex. If I must put it into words, there's just the three of them: 'How dare you'."

"Keep that in mind, then," Rowan said. "With some practice, you should be able to use that thought to form stone hands like that without having to work yourself up too much. At least, if my own experience is anything to go by."

"Oooh..sweet! I'd love to straight up punch those things in the snout without—you know—worrying about them biting my hand off."

They met the others on the way into the VI headquaraters, Sam helping Cynthia carry an unconscious Dawn. He gestured for Simon and Karis to go ahead, stopping to talk. "Good work out there. Seems like it was more..difficult than expected."
"Pffsh, that's an understatement," Cynthia said. "Dawn freaked out."
Rowan nodded. "That's..understandable. I'm sorry I put you both through this. Please, get some rest."

They headed onward—the two of them carrying Dawn to a bed, hopefully, and Warp vanishing her way down the hall.

Zeno stayed behind. "Hey, boss, can we talk? In private?"
"Sure," he nodded. "I had something to discuss with you anyway." They went to the nearest soundproofed room.

She'd made the request in a casual tone of voice, but walked briskly with her ears folded partway down, betraying a less-than-pleasant mood. This came to a head almost as soon as Rowan had the door closed. "What were you THINKING?!" she yelled angrily.
Rowan paused, taken somewhat aback. Anger like this was uncharacteristic of Ezekiel, a very laid back person in general. "I..may need you to be more specific."

"That giant bat we just fought was the same kind of monster that basically killed Cynthia right in front of Dawn before, and nobody so much as furnished the two of them with a warning before springing it on them!" She put her arms out, gesticulating, during this rant. "It—hold on, I can't, like this—"

Zeno took a moment to speak her phrse, turning back into a taller, human male. "..There. It was hard enough fighting that thing without having to watch Dawn have a full-on panic attack about it the entire time! We're all lucky Warp knew what to do to help her through it, because I was too busy keeping that thing away from her! And it still nearly ate both of them, if she hadn't ascended to the next level of trauma and then proceeded to throw it at that thing in the form of a bunch of icicles. And I'm no doctor, but there is no way she'll be fighting fit for the rest of the day because of this. We'll be fortunate if she is conscious before tomorrow morning."

"...This is my fault," Rowan nodded slowly. "I would never have sent them to fight that variant—at all, if I could help it, but definitely not without warning. If I'd known.."

"How did you not know?!" Ezekiel cut him off.

"I asked Simon to give me a quick run-down of their threat levels before the meeting, so I'd know how many people we needed to assign where. He's been keeping up with that wiki since it started, so I trusted he'd have some idea of how difficult each opponent would be from the names, without having to spend time reading all of the individual articles. Of course I would've recognized the one that killed Cynthia before, but...if Simon even knew in the first place, it probably didn't register. He would've been too concerned about the one that was practically targeting his wife.

"..I am sorry about this. I should have double-checked things myself, even if I was in a hurry."
"I'm not the one you should be apologizing to," Ezekiel said, quietly but with an intensity even stronger than his angry yelling had. "But," he sighed, "it was an honest mistake. I can't be nearly as angry as if you'd done that on purpose for some reason. And I'd say 'just don't do it again', but this seems far too specific a set of circumstances to even have an opportunity to.

"...But speaking of Simon's wife, was that her I saw a moment ago? Sporting fox ears?"
"Right. That's the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. Or more specifically, to thank you."
"To thank me?"
"Well—not you specifically, maybe the research department as a whole."

Ezekiel seemed even more confused by this clarification. "..What for?"

"Well, by the time we arrived, that monster had collapsed part of the school...right on top of her," Rowan said. "I was able to keep her alive because of this." He produced the half-face fox mask he'd used earlier. "It was in my office mailbox this morning. I was under the impression it came from you?"

He stared at the mask for a long moment. "...Yes, technically, but—not in the sense you're thinking. We didn't send along a mask to you yet; we've been far too busy packing up masks, arranging shipping all across the world and making a few extras to cover the demand. That, if I'm not mistaken, is one of our castoffs from our early research into making keys, before we'd even made a successful hat. I was under the impression it was either in storage or had been destroyed. But it worked anyway?"
"It did," Rowan said. "So you don't know how it got to my mailbox?"
"That's not exactly true. I mean—there's only one person I can think of who's likely to have done that, and who'd be able to modify a non-working key into a perfectly functional one. Which means..." He put out a hand, and Rowan let him take the mask for a moment to examine more closely. "We may be able to learn something from this! There are a number of failed keys lying around the research department and it'd be very convenient if we could work out how to fix them by studying this model. Maybe Heph's power could give us a good sense of what she did to make it functional." He turned it back and forth in his hand. "I don't suppose we could borrow this for an hour or so?"

"That should be fine," Rowan said. "I'm hoping we can get Dr. Quinn to come and heal her human form back to at least a survivable state, but until then it's best if we minimize the chances she turns back, even accidentally. Just, please don't break it."

"Oh, not to worry about that," Ezekiel nodded. "My partner just needs to look at it for a moment with her 'special eyes'."

Karis didn't actually know where Rowan was telling them to go when he waved them off, but Simon apparently did, so she followed him. "Hey, I don't think I said thanks to you yet."
"To me?"
"You know, for saving my life and all?"
"I'm not really the one who did that."
"Modesty really doesn't sound very 'you'," she said. "You came along specifically to see if I was okay, you pulled the rubble off—without which I would've been dead, fox form or not—and you crushed the jerk who did that to me into a..I dunno, misty pulp? Vapor? What actually happens to the matter making up those things when they die?"

He shrugged. "I'm under the impression that it blows away in the wind."

"Either way, you saved me too. So—thanks." She took a moment to hop up at him and plant a kiss on his lips before they continued.

Evidently their destination was Rowan's office, and they didn't have to wait long after arrival for him to follow them and unlock the door. "Please, take a seat if you want," he offered, heading to behind his desk and the computer there. "I'd better check how things went over there before I call..."

---

Dr. Brand donned his own mask, then took the half-mask from Ezekiel, examining it closely. Her eyes narrowed, glowing fairly brightly, as she stared it down with an increasingly frustrated expression. Finally, she lowered it to address him. "This is the mask that was able to function as a key for her?"
"Yes? I saw her fox form for myself, on the way in."
"He didn't give you some other mask by mistake. You didn't mix it up with another one."
Ezekiel crossed his arms. "I think he would've mentioned if he'd mysteriously received two masks this morning, and he doesn't seem the type to just keep a bunch of normal masks around, much less carry them in a bag. And I haven't had the opportunity; I just got here. What are you getting at?"
"This mask," she waved it, then somewhat forcefully handed it back to him, "is completely inert. It has no trace of what I can see in any of our keys, functional or not."

"That...doesn't make any sense." Ezekiel shook his head, staring the half-mask down for himself. "Unless she just used her own power to awaken someone in a way that made it look like the mask was responsible?"

"Even then, there should at least still be some trace of our previous work still on it," Dr. Brand pointed out, "unless it's only a replica of the one we made...wait.

"I have never checked my own mask." She paused, taking it off the side of her head and staring into it with glowing eyes for just a couple of seconds. "...Nothing."

"Nothing?"
"Just as inert as that one."
"But that one—we know is effective. It's—you're literally using it right now. Or, at least the form it grants you.."
"It is possible, though I think unlikely, that they become powerful enough to 'mask' their nature from my view as well—after being fully initialized as keys," she suggested.

"Maybe? But even the ones we thought were failures before didn't look to have no magic whatsoever."

Dr. Brand stared into her mask for another long moment. At the same time, Dr. Bridges paced wildly around the office. He stopped abruptly, turning toward her. "We have to check the hat. You never had an opportunity to look at it that way."
"We never so much as scanned it after he put it on," she agreed. "This could be meaningful for every key we make, including the ones we're preparing to ship off all across the world."
"We've got to get Magus back here right away." Dr. Bridges hurriedly got out his phone. "Hold on—I have an idea how to arrange it, if it isn't too late."

---

Everyone was quiet for a minute or two. "Sooo. We gonna wait for the Doctors Quinn to get back, I guess?" Magus said, sitting up slightly from her slump. "I mean, I'm just sitting here 'cause my legs feel so sore they might not let me get very far."
"You could leave if you needed to," Amp shrugged.

"Hey, how'd things go over in the city? You see the news or anything? I uhh, left my phone...sssomewhere..."

"I had a quick look at things, yeah," Amp said. "They..made it through, but not without some problems. Dawn and Cynthia wound up fighting the same kind of monster that ate her before, and Dawn just completely broke down. She...did a big ice attack I think was probably like a concentrated burst of you guys' rage state, and then collapsed, and was still unconscious when they left. And—Petra's wife got buried under part of a wall one of those things knocked down, but I guess it turns out she had a fox form all along? And, she was able to use that to survive."

Both of the others turned their heads at this last part. Emma went first: "Wait, you mean Karis had a fox form all along?"
"I guess?"
"That..that doesn't make any sense. I mean—uh, m-maybe I'm wrong but, when I met her the other day, she didn't seem like someone who'd sit on the sidelines if she was able to fight."
"That's, the same impression I got," Light said, "from what Simon told me once. What are her powers like?"
"Apparently she can summon a second body—but not like yours," she added quickly to Emma. "More like, 'actually summon', where she doesn't get hurt if it does, and it gets unsummoned if it takes too much damage, then resummoned at full health again."

"Dude, that's sweet. I oughta see if I can summon a familiar or something sometime," Magus said. "I mean like, when I don't feel like hot garbage."

Light's mind was still on a different track. "If she was in danger from that monster, why wouldn't she change and send out her summon to distract it before it brought a building down?"

"Uh, not the whole building, just like—one wall," Amp said. "Two-story wall and the roof over that part."
"My point is the same. Especially if it was probably putting her students in danger too..."

"Well, m-maybe she didn't have a power?" Emma suggested. "What if she's like Magus instead?"
"...Yeah. It didn't happen until Rowan and Petra had already shown up. That could be it," Amp concluded. "The VI officially announced that she had been offered powers and just never said the phrase to accept them before that point, but—the public isn't supposed to know about the alternative method yet, maybe."

All of them paused as footsteps approached in the hallway outside—two pairs coming closer to the door. One of them got out some keys, and Light made everyone briefly invisible until the door opened and the Quinns stepped inside. "Who's not supposed to know what now?" Rory asked, following her husband in.

"Uh, this thing," Magus pointed to her hat. "And Petra's wife maybe having something like it now too."
"I see," said Clark. "About her. Rowan called me on our way over, and I agreed to head over this afternoon to stabilize her human form, with Sam coming our way to cover for my absence."

He turned Light's way. "Sorry about agreeing to this without consulting you, but..we don't actually know a lot about how the health of one form affects the other—some things, like fatigue, definitely do carry between forms. So, I couldn't very well say no to possibly saving someone's life. And it seemed like a good idea to have Sam go where Ning is so she won't be a lone, stranded fighter waiting around for the rest of us again."

"Uh, you don't need to apologize to me," Light said. "I mean, it's your decision where you go, and..I'm not really cut out for organizing stuff like this anyway."

"Hey, I mean, everyone says you're the leader around here," Magus pointed out.

She sighed. "And somehow, telling them I'm not just made it worse."

Clark continued: "Anyway—Rory can borrow my power if there's an urgent need for someone to be healed on this end and Gemma can't do it."

"Seems like a solid enough trade to me," Amp said. "And they'll be okay without her?"
He shrugged. "Rowan said they've had plenty of tough fights with just as many, before she showed up. Anyway, my puppets can serve the role of tank pretty well, too—and if it's strength we need, I can borrow..." He trailed off, interrupted by his phone ringing, and held it up to glance at it. "..Rowan again. Hold on."

"Sorry to bother you again. Have you left yet?"
"No, I just got back to the college. Still need to arrange for someone to handle my classes."
"Good. The research department's asking whether you can bring Magus with you. They also tried contacting her, but haven't had any replies yet." The girl in the hat made an apologetic expression, hearing this, and tried to deliberately mouth something, but Clark only caught the word 'backpack'.

"She's here, and fine. Well—uninjured, anyway. So physically speaking, I can, although she may have other plans this afternoon?" She shook her head and gesticulated excitedly. Clark gave her a look and brought the phone away from his head a bit. "You can just talk, you know—the phone can't hear you at this distance."
"Oh, uh. Heheh, right. Yeah, I can totally come with," she said. "I mean, I won't be missing anything super important, if this is important..."
He sighed, giving her a somewhat disapproving look at the cavalier attitude toward skipping classes. "Is this important?"

"As far as I know, it is. Something about a snag with keys like her hat that they're hoping they can solve by taking a close look at it."

"Then I suppose I can bring her. We'll head your way soon."
"Thank you." Rowan hung up.