Battle Vixens! - 105

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Episode 105: Discovery

After their arrival at the VI headquarters, Marcus and Dr. Quinn quickly went their separate ways. Of course, he was Marcus's ride back, but there was at least lunch plus one monster attack and maybe some other stuff between then and now.

By now, Marcus's stomach was screaming for food, but fortunately he'd already texted back and forth with Dr. Bridges and found out they wanted to meet him in the main headquarters anyway, and so they got him a pass for some food at the cafeteria. Apparently there was someone they wanted to introduce him to who was 'affiliated with' but not officially a member of the research department, or..something like that.

So he made a beeline for the cafeteria and piled his food up high. While it wasn't the best food he'd ever seen, it was free food! And it was better than what most of the college's cafeterias served (which generally wasn't free), too. Security was noticeably less tight than the day of the puppeteer's attack, hardly anyone even sparing the overweight dude wandering around the hallways and sitting in the cafeteria a second look. He spotted some vixens eating way off in the distance, but thought it better for keeping his own secret to not go off and approach them.

After that, he made his way to the lab where he'd first received his hat, pausing periodically to double-check the directions he'd noted down in his phone. The front office here was different too, having an actual receptionist behind the counter and no sound of people arguing in the back. "Mister Rowe," she said, apparently recognizing him despite him being pretty sure they'd never met before. "Dr. Bridges is waiting for you in the back."

"Oh, uh, thanks," he nodded, following her directing wave toward the very same room he'd received his hat in.

---

Karis sat on one side of an infirmary bed, kicking her feet rhythmically. "So what's Dr. Quinn like, up close and personal?"
"I..don't know that I can really say," Simon answered. "We sort of brushed past each other and hardly exchanged a word, the one or two times we even met at all. I think I might've said more to his wife, or her to me..."
"The wife does seem like the louder personality of the two, going by the interviews...at least pre-amnesia, anyway.

"...They're supposed to arrive when again?"
"Five or ten minutes away at the time we left for this very room, m'dear," Simon said after a brief glance at a wall clock. "So—zero to five minutes now, if I do my math right."

"You'd better. Hey—I wonder if Remedy has limited range?" She called her Stand into place next to her and quit kicking her feet.
"She does only have a sword to fight with, doesn't she?"
"No, silly—I mean is there some limit to how far away from me she can be? Or does she get weaker if she's farther away? This calls for an experiment!" She sent Remedy out into the hallway with orders to walk briskly away from their position.

"Just—don't send her into anywhere marked 'secure' or 'restricted', and don't freak out the security guards by goading them into shooting her."
"Hey, that's something you'd do, if anything. She's just going for a little stroll..."

After waiting a moment, he asked: "Well, is she still there?"
"Mm-hm...must've gone a hundred yards by now, at least. But...it's a little hard to describe, but she does feel a bit weaker. Maybe...you guys have a training courtyard, right? I wonder if I can properly test her abilities, if she really is weaker or if I'm just fooling myself."

"We have several. Describe which way she went, and I can guide you to the nearest one," Simon said.

---

With Dr. Bridges was a short fox-girl Marcus didn't recognize: White hair and fur with black tips, yellow eyes that he could swear were faintly glowing and a sort of blank expression to her face, with a white fox-mask attached to the side of her head by a strap. She was already looking his way when he came in.
She turned toward the researcher. "This is your subject?"
"Yes, although I wouldn't—" he cleared his throat. "Marcus. Good to see you again."

"Uh, yeah, same."
"This is Hephaestus," he explained, gesturing to her. "Her main power involves analyzing magic rather than combat, so we brought her on with the research department—on a 'volunteer' basis, for the moment. There's something we're hoping she and you can help us clear up."

"..And you are 'Magus'," she said, sort of as a half-question.
"Uh, y-yeah." He was thinking about whether he might be able to cast some kind of scanning spell—although of course it wouldn't be as good as someone whose whole powerset was scanning stuff.

"Allow me to look at your key."

"My..?"
"Your hat," Dr. Bridges clarified.
"Oh. Uh, here," he got it out of his pocket and offered it toward her. However, it seemed like she meant 'look' in the most literal of senses, as she proceeded to simply stare at it for a moment rather than taking it. Now Marcus was sure her eyes were glowing, brighter than before.

"This is the same hat they gave you before? It does not match the description I was given," she said.
"Uh, yeah, I can—" He pulled it around in his hands. "—kinda, shift it around."
"In human form, too?"
"Uh-huh," he nodded.
"Well, Heph, what do you see?" Dr. Bridges asked.

"...Nothing. It looks entirely inert."
"Inert. That doesn't make any..it does work, right? Try it on, please," he said. So Marcus put the hat on, changing forms.

"..See? It can't possibly be inert, it's functional!" he said, gesturing emphatically forward at her.
"Well, I don't see anything, even now. She has magic at this moment, but not the hat," Hephaestus said curtly. "So either my power cannot detect it, or some other explanation is necessary."

"Well, what other explanation is there?" Dr. Bridges crossed his arms and shook his head, visibly racking his brain.

---

Karis crossed her arms, thinking carefully. "Hmmn..yeah, I feel like she just can't swing as hard or move as fast. So, there's definitely some weakening going on with distance beyond a certain threshold..."

Simon was about to give some response to this when a soft, polite knock came to the door. "I'll get it," he said, and opened to find Clark, already in fox form, standing there.
"Simon," she nodded.

"Yello Dr. Quinn, great to see you! The patient's right here," he gestured happily.

"Ah, hello."
"Hiya," his wife waved, and the fox-girl approached her; something about her walk gave the impression she was floating. "'The patient' has got a name: Karis," she said, offering the physicist a hand to shake.

"Right. Clark Quinn."
"I read your thesis on gravitational wells back when you first started getting famous. I understood the maths, but not the science—but even that much was an ego boost for someone rotting in high school all these years."
"Heheh..you must be one of the good ones, I hope."

Simon cleared his throat softly. "Maybe, you should lie down first? Her wounds were...are...rather severe, after all," he said to Dr. Quinn.

"Hmmh." Clark removed the needle from her ear, getting it into a position to scan Karis's vitals in her present form while she did that. "Well—one bit of good news is that you appear to be perfectly healthy as you are now. It seems to be true that only things like exhaustion and hunger 'carry over' for 'normal' vixens like myself, and the evidence suggests, at least, that it's the same way for you."
"Nonetheless, I'd miss having a form that can sit in a car comfortably," Karis said.

"Right. That's the key?" she asked, tilting her head toward Simon, who was standing on the opposite side of his wife with the mask. He nodded.

"Well, put it on, and let's see what I can do."

---

"..An experiment—if I may," the fox-girl said. "You can make your hat look whatever way you like?"
"Well uh..more or less, I guess?" Marcus said.

"Take it off for me, and—" She looked around the room quickly, spotting a stray baseball cap left on a nearby table and swiftly heading over to pick it up and present it to him. "Make it look exactly like this."

"Uh..sure." After removing the hat, he molded it to look just like the hat in her hand.
"Allow me to borrow that," she said, "I'll give it back when we're done."

"Okay?" She took the cap and hid both behind her back, then presented them both to him again.

"Can you tell which one is 'yours'?"
"Uh..no? I mean, they look totally the same, right?"
"It's this one," she handed over the one in her left hand. "Try it on." He put on the hat and changed forms like usual.

The fox-girl and Dr. Bridges shared a brief glance—he'd been able to see behind her back. "..That wasn't your hat," she said.
"Uh—it wasn't? But it worked, right? I mean, I can.." Marcus pushed at the hat, changing its appearance, took it off and put it on again—it still seemed to be her hat.

"This is the one you gave me," Hephaestus said, waving the one in her right hand. "They're both completely inert hats, to my eyes."

Dr. Bridges crossed his arms again. "So, you think...? Of course!" He had the look of someone experiencing satisfaction at figuring out a difficult puzzle.

Marcus took the hat off again. "What?"

"'Your guitar is in your mind!" he said excitedly.
"Uh..?" Hephaestus looked as confused as he felt by this declaration.

"Ah, excuse me—that's probably too obscure. What I mean to say is: After initialization, the 'key' isn't a physical object. It's—the concept of a hat. Or, 'your hat'. 'Putting on your hat'? Something like that. As long as you believe that it's 'your hat' and therefore it should work, then it does. The power is entirely in the person after it's activated. Right?" he said to Hephaestus, who nodded.
"That was my hypothesis also, more or less." She offered Marcus his original hat. "You should keep that other one as a spare—evidently, if it works once, being told it 'isn't yours' won't stop it from working again."

"Well..sweet." With some brief experimentation of his own, Marcus confirmed that he could 'mold' both of the hats. So now they were both his hat—or maybe it was better to think that both of them were 'his hats', and to be Magus he just needed to put on 'one of his hats'. "Thanks."
"It would be helpful if you make an attempt to get other hats to work for you also—either fooling yourself, employing someone else to fool you, or convincing yourself that they should work—and report any results you find," Hephaestus said.
"Does this uh, solve the issue you guys were having?" he asked, shrinking and pocketing both of them for now.
"It is an important breakthrough," Dr. Bridges said, nodding. "I believe we have no cause for worry, at least, and this insight could prove very useful if we can find an effective way to harness it."

---

"Ah..aaaAAAAGGHH!" Karis had almost managed to forget how much pain she was in after what felt like half of the school collapsed onto her. It was somehow worse having all of that pain instantly return instead of the relatively slow feeling of coming up out of a brief concussion-driven daze into it. She gasped softly, feeling the pain ease off almost immediately, and was able to see Clark's face wearing a particularly serious expression, cast in the blue light of her 'wand', which seemed to be glowing unusually bright.

The excruciating pain ebbed off into just intolerable pain, and after that to 'oh, I should see a doctor sometime' pain, and finally to just a severe soreness. At this point, Dr. Quinn lowered her instrument of healing and took in and let out a small huff of air, sound and looking very much more tired than she had a moment ago. "That..got you past the worst of it. I really...I'm not sure you could've survived even if you'd been in an ICU from the instant those injuries developed onward."

"G-good of you to toot your own horn...heheh...oww."
Clark shook her head. "I mean to say that: I am grateful for whatever circumstances led to you having an alternate form to 'escape' to, rather than perish."
"Oh, you and me both. But, there's no reason I can't be a vixen while the natural healing does the rest, right? I mean I—"

---

Her job apparently done, Hephaestus headed off while Dr. Bridges stayed behind. "Now, I also wanted to conduct a brief interview...ooh, just—have a brief conversation regarding your power specifically. It shouldn't be too much of a surprise that we've been paying attention to any news footage we can see of your participation in combat."

"Yeah? You see any major problems?" Marcus said.
"To the contrary, I think. It seems as if you've become steadily more innovative with your spells, using 'standard' concepts to do a variety of damage, but particularly coming up with some impressive tailor-made spells for certain situations. Such as the one you used today, to bind an exceptionally fast opponent. Or the teleportation one for escaping something that moved that fast."
"Oh, uh, yeah—I'm not actually totally sure that was a good idea, though. I mean, I still took a pretty bad hit," Marcus said, wincing as he remembered it again.

"That's only a tactical problem, and occasional mistakes in that are extremely understandable, under the circumstancs," Ezekiel said, going over to a chair to sit and gesturing to indicate his guest could do the same. "Or really—under any circumstances. Even trained officers can misjudge things and make mistakes, never mind in the middle of a fast-paced, heated battle. But the idea was solid, and the fact that you were able to actually teleport is also of interest. You would be able to replicate that spell any time you liked, now?"

"Sure." He took the seat, feeling grateful as his body seemed to take this moment to remember how tired it was. "I mean, it's kinda...'costly', I guess? The vine thing was super tiring to use, too."

The researcher nodded. "I would expect effects like that to be more expensive. Nonetheless, I have certain hypothesis of my own that you may have more stamina, or use it more efficiently, now than you did when you first began using your power.

"Perhaps it's too soon to tell for sure, but if the monster attacks let up tomorrow, or later this week, it may be a good idea to do some benchmark stress-testing. Nothing enough to harm you, but to get a sense for yourself of how much a few particular spells cost in a controlled manner. Then, you could do the same thing again later and see if anything is 'cheaper'."

"Hey, yeah...it'd be great if I am getting a little stronger," Marcus said. "What gave you the idea, though? I mean, I'm not sure I feel all that different."

"Well, two things: First, using magic seems to be something our bodies are physically involved in—after all, something exhausts us from using too much of it. It probably means there's something like a 'muscle' for magic, and it's logical that exercising that 'muscle' might make it stronger, or that overworking it might cause strain and injury, as with what appears to happen when a vixen goes into a 'rage state'. And second: Your own understanding of your powers. After all, what kind of wizard doesn't level up now and then from fighting back monsters?"
"Oh...heheh, yeah! Sweet." Marcus knew he had the biggest, goofiest grin on, and he didn't care one bit.

---

Karis paused abruptly in her speech as she realized something. That was: She was going to say something about how convenient Remedy could be as an extra pair of hands still belonging to her even in a domestic setting. But that was the thing—she'd forgotten Remedy in the training yard, and she was still standing next to a wall there staring into space. That is: She was still there, even though Karis was now in human form and had been for a couple of minutes.

"What? A bug get in your throat?" Simon said.
"Something wrong?" Clark followed up, with a tone of actual concern.
"Uh, no, it's just—ha, hang on. Here." She pointed at an empty spot near the foot of the infirmary bed. "There." On her command, Remedy was unsummoned and resummoned into that spot, just as easily as ever.

"Wah!" The short vixen, who'd seemed quite composed until now, jumped back a step or three at the sight of the white-haired, fox-eared Stand suddenly blurring into place right where she was looking. "What—"
"That's my Stand...or, uh, summon? Remedy. Except, I thought being able to summon her was part of my 'fox powers', though?"

"I, also had that impression," Simon said. "Are you..still in control of her?"
"Oh, yeah, sure." She had Remedy wave apologetically to Clark. "Just the same as before. Why can I do this when I'm human?!"
"Isn't a Stand supposed to be an expression of one's soul? One's will to fight?" Clark asked. "I don't see any reason why that would be lessened just because you're in a different form, even if it is a physically weaker one."
"Noo...I suppose not." Her point made, Karis unsummoned Remedy again. "But like—you can't magically heal people in human form, right?"
"I rather wish I could," Clark said. "But—perhaps this is a meaningful difference between 'normal' vixens and...those not borrowing the Giver's power. That said..." She shook her head, appearing to stop short of saying something out of concern that her audience wasn't meant to know it. "We certainly don't have enough points of data yet to make any sweeping conclusions, at any rate."

"We definitely need to tell the research department about this, at least," Simon said.

"Dear. Mask?" Karis reminded him, reaching out a hand to take it. He'd been keeping it idly in his hand and gesticulating with it.
"Oh, sorry." She took it, put it on, and became—for the moment—a healthy vixen again, breathing a quick sigh of relief immediately after.

"Thank you." With that, she hopped up off of the bed and lightly brushed herself off. "I suppose it'd help if I'm around to provide 'proof' to them too, eh?"

"Have you had something for lunch yet?" Simon asked Dr. Quinn, and then continued over the beginning of her attempt to answer him: "Because we certainly haven't, and I'm not really into the cafeteria around food here. We've still got some time on the clock before the next round of monsters show up, after all..."

"Well, I wouldn't object to eating something, after using my powers like that," she said.

"Excellent! Come with us!"

"Heyy..you knew what I meant by 'Stand'!" Karis realized.

"Well—of course. I take it you've encountered people who didn't lately?"

"Only everyone!"

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Well, it's an album title rather than a song title, but it works as a one-word title I haven't used yet either way.