Battle Vixens! - 104

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Episode 104: Doubt/Trauma

Marcus sat in the passenger seat, staring down at his key—his hat, which sat atop his lap. Clark glanced over at him a few times, and each time found him in this same posture. "I really don't think you need to worry," Dr. Quinn said after about the fifth such glance.

"Huh?" His passenger snapped upright in his seat. "Oh uh..nah. I'm just, trying not to fall asleep, heheh. I guess I'm, curious what it is they wanna check out about the hat, but like..this whole thing was supposed to be so they could figure out how this stuff works in the first place, so I'm stoked to help."
"You certainly haven't noticed anything unusual or 'wrong' with it yourself, have you?"
"Yeah, nah."
"Well—if you're exhausted, maybe you should just nod off," Clark suggested. "You mind if I put on some music? Any particular distastes?"

"Oh, not at all, man. You do you." Marcus leaned back in his seat, shutting his eyes.
"I'd expect a music student to be pickier," Dr. Quinn remarked, but turned on the radio anyway.

"Guess I used to be, but..." he paused, interrupting himself with a yawn. "I've been learning to appreciate all kinds of stuff."

---

After calling Dr. Quinn, Rowan headed straight for the cafeteria. Sam always had lunch at the same time, unless something urgent interrupted her—and then it was as immediately after the interruption as possible. He found her and sat down across from her.

"Corporal Langdon."
She looked up from her plate for a second. "Just 'Sam' is fine."
"...Have you...turned human, since coming here?"
The metallic fox-girl shrugged. "Few times, sure. Not too often. Pretty big place here, so havin' both my legs back is real helpful to gettin' 'round. You got orders for me?"

"Orders...I suppose so." He hadn't said anything to indicate his visit was more than casual yet, but maybe sitting down to talk implied as much. "Simon's wife was mortally wounded by our target before we could stop it. She was able to use a previously undisclosed empowered form to put that body in 'stasis'. I asked Dr. Quinn if he could come our way to get her human form out of danger, but that would leave them short-handed. So I offered to send you over."

Sam tilted her head slightly from about halfway through this explanation until the end. "You do realize, all you have to say is 'go there, do that'. Nothin' more. I respect the chain of command 'round here."

Rowan shrugged. "I know that, but I'm used to treating people more like equals. So it still feels awkward to me to promise you'll do something without talking to you about it first. You don't..have any objections you'd voice in absence of a 'chain of command'?"

"None whatsoever. I trust you'll put me where I'm needed most. Anyhow, as an aside, I look forward to working with Miss Nelson again. We made a fine team last time."

Rowan started to get up, then paused. "You trust me particularly?"
She nodded.
"Just out of curiosity, any specific reasons?"

"I'm a military man. The military works for the government, the government trusts the VI with our present crisis, and the VI trusts you. That's all I need."
"..Excuse me if I'm being vain, but is that all there is?"
She looked up from her food to give another slight head-tilt. "'Course not. I've seen your work since before my existence was declassified. You took a buncha desperate survivors fightin' those things in little groups throughout the city and made 'em a unit. They call you 'boss' 'cause you're the one who made 'em a team. And you motivate folks to not just fight, but train and be ready. And I ain't privy to a whole lot of it, but if I understand correctly you've been integral to doin' the same for the rest of the world: Convincin' 'sister organizations' to work together with the VI rather than ignoring each other or worse."

"I've made a number of extremely consequential mistakes," Rowan said.
"No plan survives contact with the enemy," Sam retorted. "I'll be ready to move out soon." She turned back to her food, apparently feeling the conversation had reached its conclusion. So he got up and headed for his next destination.

---

Marcus was, fortunately, not much of a snorer. The car was quiet apart from the music, leaving Clark to his thoughts. About halfway to the city, he woke with a start, looking around in a brief fit of confusion before remembering where he was and why.

"Morning," Dr. Quinn said mildly.

"Oh, uh..is it still morning? I just realized how hungry I am, dude..."
"As far as I understand, eating something after a fight is always helpful to our recovery. I think the VI has a cafeteria, if you can wait that long."
"Uh—yeah, sure. I don't wanna slow us down or anything. You know, in case uh—Petra's wife needs help sooner, or like, the monsters show up right when we get there..." He shook his head, then rubbed his eyes for a moment.

"Maan, this is still pretty surreal to me."

"I'm much more used to this new situation the world's in than I think I should be," Clark said, nodding.

"Uh, sure, but I mean like—even after that. Getting to fight alongside you guys. I mean—pretty much since this whole mess started, you've been my heroes. Light and Ning, and Gemma, and you and uh, Rory," (he said this a little hesitantly, unused to using her first name), "and Rowan and their whole team. I'd say everyone, but you know, not jerks like the Puppeteer or that crazy chick in Mexico."

"I would say I'm not used to being thought of as a hero," Clark admitted, shaking his head. "I suppose I can't disagree that, on an objective level, I'm doing things people call 'heroic'...but I don't know. I'm really only doing what I can."

"Hahah...yeah, man. It's—I guess it's kinda weird, in a way, realizing you guys are all just normal people too, with your own problems and stuff. I mean—in hindsight it's like 'duh', but..."

"Hey," he looked over, "who were your heroes?"
Dr. Quinn thought about this question for a moment before answering. "Oh, you know, the usual—at least for a physicist anyway. Feynman, Newton, Einstein...once I'd decided on this career path, there were plenty of, more or less canonical examples to look up to and try to imitate the successes of."
"Huh. No offense, but like—all science guys? Nobody who took out a bad guy or saved millions of lives? Or not even, like, Loius Pasteur or somethin'?"

"Well—I wouldn't disagree about someone like that being heroic. It's just, when you say 'my hero,' that isn't the sort of thing that first springs to mind. I take it more to mean 'someone I could realistically dream of emulating', and for me—at least until very recently—that pretty well cuts out anyone in the medical field..or combat or other forms of life-saving, for that matter. As much as I'd like to be saving lives, it didn't really seem plausible for me to go into medicine."

"Dude, really? You got a P-H-D anyway, though. You've gotta be way smart enough."

"...Maybe, but that isn't the problem. Truth is, I'm squeamish about blood and...other bodily internals. My wife says you get over that sort of thing after just a little exposure, but...well, let's just say her efforts at providing me said exposure didn't go over very well."

"But...you heal people all the time, now."
"Yes, but—magically repairing someone's injuries is vastly different from putting someone under the knife. And anyway, my powers come packaged with a sense of calm that completely overcomes the issue."

"...Yeah," Marcus nodded. "Light and Gemma said something about that too—like, how you guys are more resistant to psycholaugical trauma or whatever?"
"I suppose that's true, but..." He shook his head. "There is an upper limit to that 'resistance'."
"Hahah...I'd still take it over nothing at all, though, if you gimme a choice. I mean if, uh..." Marcus glanced over at his shoulder. "If I don't distract myself enough, I can still kinda see that thing charging at me, and I gotta look at my shoulder just to make sure it's not about to get stung again..."

Clark nodded. "Give it time. Maybe it'll never go fully away, but...let yourself process it, and it should at least fade."

"Cool, cool...but uh, can we talk about literally anything else right now?"
"Certainly. Let's see, ah...do you play any video games?"
Marcus grinned wide, leaning foward a bit. "Duude, do I?"

---

Dawn groaned, squirmed in place for a moment, and then opened her eyes, moving her head just enough to look around. She was lying in bed in her room, and Cynthia was sitting next to the bed. "Dawn!" the redhead leaned in.
"Nngh...hey." Her voice was a little hoarse from all the screaming, but still serviceable.
"Are you okay? I mean uh..how, how are you feeling?"
"...Like total garbage." She exhaled a sigh. "Tired. Sore. Still...angry."
"Y-yeah, you, messed that thing up pretty bad. I guess it must've really...I mean, I can't even imagine. If I had to see one of those things...do something like that to you.."
"Nn...not at them, really."
"Huh?"

Dawn stared at the ceiling for a long moment, then turned her head to face her again. "...I remembered somethin'. Somethin' we agreed not to tell each other about."
Cynthia folded her ears down. "..Oh."

"I know what I done. I know how bad it was. But right now...I don't feel. I can't feel like it was wrong. I'd wanna do it all over again, if I could."

"Dawn..." It didn't sound like she was sure what to say. But she certainly didn't seem like she wanted to know the truth just yet.

Both of them paused after this, right in the middle of the silence, hearing footsteps approaching, and then a quick knock on the door. "Uh, you can come in," Cynthia said, sitting up and facing the door. "It's unlocked."
"..Thank you." Rowan opened the door.

"What do you want?" The redhead demanded, her outrage sounding not entirely sincere.
"While I had a moment, I was hoping to check on Dawn. You're awake?"
"Yep."
He nodded. "I'm glad.

"...I said this before, but..you weren't exactly conscious at the time. I'm sorry. It was my mistake that led to you fighting that particular enemy. A stupid oversight that could've been avoided if I'd paid only a little more attention. It...must have been traumatic."
Dawn exhaled through her nose, and pushed herself up onto an elbow to face him, ignoring the objection of every sore muscle involved. "Nah, it's good. Maybe I needed that kick in the teeth. 'S like I been numb for days, and now I feel pain, but it's better than the nothin' I was feelin'. Helped me remember some things. Like how I got here in the first place. What I did before."

Rowan nodded slowly—knowingly. But said, "There were better ways for you to remember that than being put into mortal danger."

"Aah, maybe. Hey, you still think it was wrong?"

"That...depends what you're asking about," he said carefully. "Having seen the relevant footage for myself, calling Miss Hargrove's death a murder on your part feels extreme. She was practically already dead, like you said before."

"Yeah, I mean the other thing."
He looked between them. "Do you want me to talk about that?"

Dawn paused, looking at Cynthia. She still didn't look ready. "..Nah. Never mind, I'll ask ya later."
"If you want," he said, nodding again. "You should get some rest. Food, if you can take it."

"Yeah..sure." Dawn leaned back onto the pillow.
"Hey, I can still fight," Cynthia said. "This afternoon, or whatever." Dawn looked over at her. "Hey, I'll be careful! You ain't gotta guard me all the time."
"...Yeah. Keep her safe for me?" she said to Rowan.

"We'll all do our best to protect each other," he said.

"Mmh. Good enough." Dawn was too tired to raise any real objection.

"I'd better go. Hey, getting some food and rest goes for both of you."
"Uh, sure," the redhead nodded.

---

After a fairly disjointed, excited discussion on the mechanics of certain action RPGs, the conversation in the car died down a bit. Marcus did what a lot of young people do in lulls of conversation and got out his phone.

"Oh, hey—you know the Giver's got a twitter?"
"I am acquainted with that fact," Clark said.
"Yeah, but like—not just the early-warning DM's. She's actually answering people's questions! Uh, sometimes. She pretty much either answers so instantly there's no way she had time to type everything, or not at all. Like..."

He thumbed through some replies. "Oh, yeah, someone asked her, 'if I—hypothetically of course—nuked the VI base, would I get everyone's powers'? And she's like 'No, too indirect'. So some other people jumped on with a bunch of other stuff like, 'what about a mine? Poison? Sniper rifle?' Uh..eventually she just said," (he cleared his throat and put on a faux-austere accent) 'It must be possible for her to look you in the eye and fight back, or at least have a reasonable probability that she survives and can avenge herself upon you.' So uh, I guess guns are okay but missiles aren't, basically."

Clark shook his head. "All purely hypothetical, of course."

"Well uh—I mean I hope so? Guess I don't gotta worry about someone taking my powers and using them for evil or whatever, at least."

"Anyone who thinks you're a 'normal' vixen could still try," he pointed out.
"Oof, yeah. I guess I hadn't thought'a that."

"Anything else besides rule clarifications?"

"Uhh, let's see..hey, yeah! 'How are you replying to everyone so fast?' And she said, 'Magic'. Hahah...I guess, that's, fair?"
"Is she still bound to tell us the truth through twitter, or is that only with verbal communication?"
"Awh, yeah, someone must've asked her that, right?" Marcus scrolled around for a moment, and didn't find any such question. "Uh..right?"
"Perhaps it isn't that common of knowledge that she 'always tells the truth'," Clark realized. "She let Light know as much, but at no point have we or the VI actually dissemenated that information..."

"Hmm. Is it uh—bad if everyone knew that?"
"I don't know how it would be, but it's hard to know what exactly she's told every single person she's spoken to."
"Huh, yeah. I was thinking I could ask something that'd give her a chance to like, say she has a rule where she won't lie to anyone, buuut..."
"Someone is bound to give her that opportunity anyway, even if by accident."

"True, but..yeah, I don't wanna be the one to spill those beans either way."

---

Dr. Bridges knocked on the door of Rowan's office. After a moment, not the office's owner but Simon opened up. "Ah, hello there. Rowan's out at the moment, doing the rounds no doubt."
"That's fine. I'm only here to deliver this," he said, producing Karis's half-mask.
"You guys already out of experiments to run on it?" Karis said, coming up behind her husband.
"Not...necessarily, but it is yours, and will be needed soon, as I understand it," he said, offering it to Simon. "If you're willing, there are a few questions I'd like to ask you, for the purposes of our research."

They looked between each other, and Karis shrugged. "Uh, sure I guess? What about?" She stepped back, and Simon opened the door more fully, letting the researcher in.
"We want as good a grasp as possible of how an individual's knowledge, beliefs, expectations and desires affect the resulting powerset. So—primarily your state of mind at the time the mask was initially used as a key, and your own explanation of how your powers work."
"I guess that makes sense..."

The three of them were inside now, so Ezekiel quietly shut the door behind him. "Well, obviously, I was kinda mortally wounded at the time, and technically still am," she said, crossing her arms. "So I was thinking it'd be really nice if I could, y'know, not get hurt? Or at least heal myself up if I needed to. Be nice if I was invincible like mister rock here," she said, gently punching Simon's arm.
"Hey, you're thinking of Sam with that," he said.
"And, is your present body more resilient to damage than your human one?"
"Uh, y'know, I haven't really checked. I went out of my way to stay far from danger in that recent fight, seeing how I already used up an extra life."

He nodded. "Understandable. There are some relatively safe tests for that you could conduct for us later, if willing. Have you noticed any other extraordinary attributes to your present form—enhanced strength, agility, anything like that?"
"You know, not particularly, but again I haven't tested it out..."

Karis went over to one of the chairs, and carefully lifted it into the air with one hand. "Okay, definitely stronger," she said, setting it down again. "Not that I couldn't do that before, but it doesn't feel as heavy as it looks, if that makes any sense."
Dr. Bridges nodded. "Now, how would you describe what you know of your powers, as of yet?"
"Well—" Remedy appeared next to her in a brief blur. "—I got a Stand. She can move around and fight independently of me, I give her like 'mental orders' and she tries her best to follow them. And she has a sweet robot arm and can heal people with it, and if she gets hurt I can just put her away and get her back out." Remedy 'flexed' the robot arm in question, then disappeared and reappeared at the last part of this explanation.

"Wait, is that a robot arm?" Simon grabbed the summoned girl's wrist to feel of it. "I thought it was a gauntlet of some sort. How does it attach?"
"Time and a place, dear," Karis said; Remedy gently but firmly pulled herself out of his grasp.

"You said a 'Stand'," Ezekiel said.
"Yeess. Man, does nobody watch good anime but me?"

"I thought that was what you were referring to, actually, but—just for the sake of clarity, what exactly do you consder the word to mean?"

"Uh, you know, she's like a—manifestation of my spiritual energy and will to fight and stuff. Like, an extension of my will and personality that I can use to fight. And, I guess, heal people."

He nodded. "More to the point, is this how you would've pictured magic, or supernatural powers in general, working—before we had superpowered vixens in the world?"
"Well, I guess it's one of the ways," she shrugged. "I'm familiar with a lot of different magic systems."

"Was this particular one on your mind recently, then?"
"Yeah, I mean, I was binge-watching Jojo just yesterday—waaiit.

"Are you saying, that just because I've been thinking about this kind of 'magic' or whatever recently, I wound up with it?"
"It's..a possibility," he said. "We only have three data points so far—and before you ask, the other two are classified."
"Sure, sure. But like, does that mean you could convince someone that magic should work a certain way, then stick a mask on 'em and their magic will work that way?"

"We believe it's much more complicated than that," Ezekiel said. "Each person has a particular level of 'potential' in the first place. If we attempted to 'prime' someone to have the power to summon miniature suns, but they lacked the power to magically produce fusion reactions on demand—which is probably an extremely large amount of power—they may be unable to do more than summon small points of light. Besides, what a person wants plays a factor as well, and there are likely many other limitations. For instance, aren't Stands supposed to be intangible and invisible?"
"..Huh, yeah!" She turned to Remedy. "Hey, why aren't you a ghost?" The white-haired girl shrugged and made a soft "Aah" sound from her mouth.

"Did you 'tell' her to do that?"
"Oh, uh, yeah—as far as I can tell, she doesn't have a will of her own or anything, which is pretty Stand-like. It felt natural to have her do that, though, in a way," Karis shrugged.

"Now that I think of it, though...when I was lying there covered in rubble, I definitely regretted putting myself at risk just to check if there was anyone who hadn't evacuated yet. But—not to the point that I wish it'd been someone else. Just, I was thinking how nice it would be if I could've checked without putting anyone in danger—send someone invincible, maybe. I guess my power level isn't high enough to support 'total invulnerability' though, so being able to re-summon Remedy if she gets hurt is the next best thing."

Ezekiel nodded, thinking. "That may be exactly what it is, then. My impression is that—no matter whether one's powers are 'natural' or 'artificial'—no one understands them better than the owner herself. This is why a personal interview is the best for making sense of these things."

"Cool. So, any other questions come to mind for now?"
"..Not for the moment. If you don't mind keeping up communication, we could send you any follow-up questions we come up with later."
"Don't mind at all," Karis nodded.

Dr. Bridges said, "Thank you. I should be going now, but please give Rowan my regards."

After the researcher left, Simon turned toward Remedy again. "So is that a robotic arm or not? Where's it start? What does it look like under the sleeve there?"
"Pfft. You could at least take a girl out to eat before asking her to strip!"
"What, so you want me to date your Stand instead of you now?"
"No, get your own Stand and we can double date."

"Do the stone fists count?"

The white-haired girl crossed her arms and shook her head. "Remedy does not want to date a pair of giant fists!"