Battle Vixens! - 122

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Episode 122: Doing Better

Hugo turned Zeno's way. "So...who was that? Heph, you said?" No sooner had the monsters been destroyed than the girl with two blades used them to open a portal, jumped through it and out of sight, and it closed itself again.

"Codename 'Hephaestus'," Rowan answered for her. "She's with the research department. Her primary ability is useful to them, and isn't suited for combat. She also abhors fighting."
"Fame too, I guess," Zeno said. "I got her number during a visit a couple days back, thought this was enough of an emergency to use it."

"Well, she answered, so looks like she agreed," Warp said.

Rowan got out her phone. "Situation, everyone?"

"All good here," Petra answered first. "Nothing left on the to-do list."

"We're doin' a little post-battle cleanup," Sam reported next. "Report back to base soon for debrief."

"Good. We're through here, too. Don't worry about coming back to base if you don't live there—rest up instead. There are still two more battles today."

"That I can do!" Petra said.

After hanging up, she looked around. "...Did any of you happen to leave a car parked nearby?"

---

Rory offered Ning a shoulder once she was up, and started leading the way across the street. "Hey, Light—can you check how the other fight's going for me?"
"Uh..?" She was briefly unsure how she was supposed to do that.
"Like on your phone."
"Oh! Right..." It didn't take much effort to find the local news. "Looks like they're done. Emma took a hit, but it got healed, so no major, lasting injuries...that's a relief."

"In that case—Clark won't mind if I borrow his power for a minute." She gently propped Ning against herself, placing a hand on top of her head. "Hold still a sec. Can't risk those cuts getting infected."

"'Kay."

Rory spoke her husband's phrase and a blue glow spread down from her hand, healing Ning. Then she put her arm back around her shoulder to keep leading her along, up to the front door of a building across the road from the school. She seemed to still be keeping her "lightning resistance" active, as she didn't so much as flinch from the occasional small arcs jumping out of Ning and running down the side of her body into the ground.

Light wasn't sure why they were going into a random shop, but figured Dr. Quinn knew what she was doing and opened the door to let the two of them shuffle inside. It turned out to be a coffee shop, minus any customers or workers. Evidently it had been abandoned in enough of a hurry that nobody bothered to lock the door. And, clearly, Rory was after the seating; she led Ning to the nearest booth, pulled in next to her, then waved Light over to sit across from them.

"Sooo, how're you two holding up after that? Thought you could at least use a couple minutes off your feet."
"I'm winded," Light said. "but I can keep going if I need to. I'll be ready by the next fight."

"Not...too good myself," Ning admitted, leaning forward with her right arm splayed across the counter and landing her head cheek-first on that hand. "I just ain't too bright sometimes, am I? I mean, I panicked and super overdid it. I dunno...if I can do any more today." A few sparks flew off of her, one of them running across the top of the counter and down one of its legs to the floor. She sighed. "Feels like...I'm not even safe to be around right now. I'd be afraid to hug my girl like this..."

Light said, "I had the same thought as you—I don't know why, but it really looks like they were targetting the school. I'm not sure we can conclude they were after your granddaughter specifically, but even if it wasn't...your reaction's completely understandable."
"Thanks..."

After a long pause, Ning picked herself up just to lean against the back of the seat. "I don't like being useless, and dangerous is even worse. If you...if you could just, 'borrow' my power for the rest of the day...at least it wouldn't go to waste like this. At least take enough so I'm not.." She lifted a hand in front of her and some arcs jumped off of it in nearly every direction. "...doing that?"

"...I guess I can do that," Light said after a moment. "If you need it back...if you want it back for a second, tell me. And it goes back after the third fight today, either way."

"Fair enough," she nodded. "Maybe with some rest, once I've calmed down, my control will at least be back to normal."

"...So, how are you doing?" Light asked Rory, since she'd started this conversation.
She grinned. "You need to ask? I'm great. Didn't even break a sweat."

---

Aside from Zeno (who said her job was close enough to just walk back to), everyone wound up piled into Hugo's pickup truck. Rowan insisted on not taking the front seat, but Tora wasn't shy about calling shotgun—so Fay was with Rowan in the back, and Warp sat in the bed. The former police officer wasn't happy about this last decision, but eventually gave in after Hugo promised to drive very carefully and Warp reminded her that she could just teleport out of danger if the truck did somehow get into a collision.

Fay leaned back quietly for a few minutes, until she noticed a slightly unhappy expression on Rowan's face. In fox-form, her expressions were always quite subtle and muted, so something that registered as 'slight' to Fay was probably serious. "Is something wrong?"
"Some of the monsters near the college appear to have targetted an elementary school," she said.

"That is bad. Did they survive?"
"Yes..." Rowan nodded slowly. "They didn't make it to the school itself, thankfully."

Some vixens, including Rowan herself, reported that being in fox-form caused them to speak a bit differently. It was something that could be 'turned off' with a bit of effort or practice. The same was true for Fay, but she felt like the urge to speak in groups of three words at a time was stronger for her than such things were for anyone else. "Then, what is," she started, hesitated slightly, and then forced the rest out: "bothering you?"

"It is...possible that they were targetting someone specific at that school. Ning's granddaughter. As a result, Ning panicked and overextended herself."
"That bothers you?"
Rowan sighed. "I'll need to call her later. There is...information I could have shared yesterday. Should have, maybe. About the monsters' behavior. You remember how Simon's wife was injured yesterday?"
Fay nodded. "Of course..." The tone of her voice lifted as if there was going to be a third word, but she closed her mouth instead.

"I arrived at the suspicion that she was targetted. Some research revealed evidence that other civilians had similarly been targetted recently, almost always people who were close to someone with powers. I could have at least warned her. Warned everyone..."

"Hey, no use beating yourself up over it," Hugo said from the driver's seat. "You just didn't want to worry anyone, right?"

Rowan didn't respond—not that she hadn't heard, but she didn't seem to know what else to say. Fay decided it was probably best to drop the conversation at this point.

---

Magus followed the others into the graduate lounge, taking a couple of steps inside with the idea of finding a couch to sit or lie down on before stopping short. Amory was here, standing in front of one of the chairs. She let Emma (now in her 'combined' form) go to him first, watched them share a brief hug before she jumped over onto a couch, and then went up in front of him herself. It was better to get this out of the way immediately, she figured.

Amory seemed uncertain what she was doing in front of him, even tilting his head slightly after a second or two. "What's with that face you're making?"

She only realized at this point that she was making a face, kind of an anticipatory wince. "Uh—aren't you gonna punch me or something? I mean..I did hit your girlfriend, right? Kinda...hurt her. Like.....a lot?"

"Eheh.." Amory seemed briefly embarrassed by the use of the word 'girlfriend', but didn't seem to object. Once he was over that, he crossed his arms. "Well. Emma doesn't seem too mad. Are you?" he glanced her way, and she sort of half-shook her head. "Anyway, I'm not really the 'punching' type, you know?"

"Dude, you don't even seem angry," Magus pressed. "How am I supposed to learn not to screw up again if there's no consequences!?"

"I mean.." Amory shrugged. "If you know you did something wrong, then isn't that enough to learn from?"

"Apparently not. I mean—this isn't even the first time! I almost dropped hot lava on someone yesterday!"

"True," Clark pitched in, having already taken a seat himself. "At least Karis was justifiably mad about that."

He sighed. "I'm not happy to see her get hurt, no. Taking it out on you as anger, though, isn't helpful to anyone. Look..." Amory lifted one of his arms, and Magus flinched, still expecting some kind of physical hit, before realizing that he was just placing that hand gently on her shoulder.

"You know what makes your power so amazing?"
"Uh..no, what?"

"It's sort of exactly what the problem is, I think." Amory let go of her shoulder, backing up to take a seat. "When you get an idea for a new spell that might be useful, you don't hesitate. You don't, think about whether the spell makes sense, or might be too hard to cast, or really even whether it's the best choice for the situation. You just think—'that's a cool idea, let's try it!' And then you go for it. Am I wrong?"

"No, that's..pretty much what happens," Magus admitted, collapsing backwards onto a couch. "How does that make my power amazing, though?"

"Because the way magic works depends partially on our minds. If you don't doubt for a second that you can make a spell that does a thing, it's way more likely you can! So, starting to second-guess yourself and worry about friendly fire would be bad, and probably not actually help prevent it.

"Instead—why don't you just focus on communicating a little more? Like, 'hey, I'm gonna try something, don't be standing in front of me'?"

"Oh." As it always was with Amory's advice, this seemed terribly obvious to Magus once he'd said it. "Yeah, that'd help..."

"And you should think about some support spells you can use too, instead of it always being attack, attack, attack all the time."

"I guess, yeah..."

"I wonder if you're at some kinda disadvantage," Emma said.
"Uh—like what?"
"I mean...those of us who got power directly from, uh, her...maybe our 'fighting instincts' include making it easier to coordinate with each other in fights? It does seem like people hit each other on accident a lot less often than I'd expect, with all the dangerous stuff everyone can do. Um, besides, you already have trouble physically fighting with your sword, up close and personal, right?"
Magus nodded. "Yeah...I've always thought of that as kinda my main weakness."
"So, that could be part of it too."

"By the way," Clark said. "That spell was aimed upward, wasn't it?"
"Well—yeah," Magus noddied. "Like, to hit the giant bird?"
"I would think someone standing on the ground would've been grazed across the top of their head, at worst. But you," he said toward Emma, "caught the full brunt of it since you were jumping into the air at the time. Why were you doing that?"

"Oh, uh.." Emma spent an awkward pause twiddling her fingers nervously. "I, thought I could try to throw something at one of its wings, like, right when it flew by? Maybe, use some of Lift's power to knock it off balance. I just..thought I should try something, since otherwise it'd just keep diving."
Dr. Quinn sighed. "In that case, I suppose all three of us had plans in the works we weren't telling the others. Only mine wasn't very different from what I'd been doing before."

---

Rory had sent Light to watch Ning's store and insisted on escorting Ning back to her house, and then going and closing up the store herself. That probably was for the best; once she hit the couch, Ning really felt just how exhausted she was, and went into a kind of half-asleep daze.

She'd been lying there for at least fifteen minutes, relieved she wasn't risking setting anything on fire, when her phone buzzed. It took her a moment to reach up and feel around on the end table before she could pull it up to her face and see who was calling.

"Hey, Rowan. What's up?"

"Ning. Are you okay?"

"Mmh. Yeah, I'm not hurt—just, super tired. Guess you heard what happened?"
"Yes. It's...what I wanted to call about," he said. "One of those monsters was trying to get past the fence, even with you and everyone else there. You must have felt like..they were targetting your granddaughter."
"Yeah?"
"I...believe that they were."

A tiny flutter of the panic she'd felt right when the attack began flew through Ning's mind. She had to carefully remind herself that it was over before she could answer at a normal tone of voice. "Well...why do you think that?"

"Yesterday, Simon's wife appeared to have been targetted too. She was..barely rescued. I did some research, and this seems to be a pattern lately—people close to those of us with powers, with no powers themselves, seemingly being attacked specifically. And, on Zeno's advice, I went to ask the expert."
"Uh—who's an expert on this stuff?"
"...The Giver herself."
"Oh. Yeah, that tracks. So what'd she say?"

He sighed. "Essentially...one of us, with power, being near someone else...you can think of it like the 'scent' of our power lingers on them. And the monsters follow that 'scent', think it's someone who isn't powerful yet, but could become a threat to them later. Similar to how they attacked everyone who got powers in the second wave."
"I see.."
"The fact is that I knew that yesterday. But, I chose not to share it with anyone, including you. For that, I'm sorry."
"How come? It wouldn't have reassured me too much to know for sure Nadia was in danger," Ning said.
"You could have been mentally prepared, or had someone stationed closer to the school. At the very least, you deserved to know. I've just..gotten a little too used to keeping secrets from people, 'for their own good'."

"Well, there's still no use beatin' yourself up over it," she said. "You're telling everyone now, ain't ya?"
"Yes...there's a press release going out from the VI. It's...more vague on the details of how we got the information, but has the same overall message."

"Then there you go. Everyone makes mistakes, and you're still young anyhow. So—I forgive you. Problem solved, right?"

"I guess so...thank you."

"Listen...you shouldn't feel like you owe me anything, but I can't fight any more today. I'm just..too exhausted. I mean, I think I'll be able to move around after an hour or two, but panic and exhaustion makes my power hard to control, and then it's as dangerous to my friends as my enemies. And you know—Light fused with me for a couple of minutes there. When we're fused with someone, we share energy, aannd, Light's tired too. Not nearly as bad as I feel right now, but she's definitely more beat than she wants to admit. I think the last few days have been rough on her. But knowing her, that poor girl won't stop fighting 'till she collapses."
"That's worryingly common among empowered," Rowan agreed.

"Yeah. Sooo, if you find the time, and Light's in a pinch...maybe you can come around and give her a hand."
"I'll certainly try."

---

"...Phew, okay." Magus stood up, reaching a hand up and doffing her hat to turn back into Marcus. "I'm gonna try to be a good student and get back to class now. Skipping a lecture is one thing, but I can't miss too much practice. I'll get rusty and sound awful!"

"Good on you," Clark said, waving as he left.

Amory glanced Emma's way, and she returned a questioning look. "Sooo...you're not mad I didn't punch Magus or anything, right?"

"What? No!" She grinned slightly. "Heheh..if anyone was gonna punch her for hitting me, it'd be me!"

"Okay, just checking."
"You think he'll take your advice to heart?" Clark asked.
"Definitely. When I was helping him through his math classes, I always told him he was smarter than he thought he was. He pretty much never made the same mistake twice. He just, uh..kept inventing new ones to make, is all."

"That we could all be so lucky," Dr. Quinn remarked.

---

Rory walked into the back of Ning's store, clapping her hands against each other. "There we go, all locked up. Hey, take a seat already!" She pointed at a chair, and Light shrugged before going to sit in it. "It's a shame she wouldn't let us just run the store. No good reason for her to lose sales today!"
"I've...never worked retail," Light admitted. "You?"
"Nnnnot that I can remember! Okay, yeah, I guess it wouldn't be that great an idea."

Rory got out her phone, checking the time. "Looks like we've got at least another hour 'till. You hungry yet?"
Light hadn't been thinking about food, but she knew the answer as soon as she was asked. "...Yeah."
"Hey, maybe we can get something delivered here. I brought a card. And some cash for a tip!"
"You thought ahead. Not me," Light admitted. "Just brought my phone."

"At least you don't have to be bored, then."

They settled on a sandwich shop just a couple of blocks away from Ning's store, which delivered themselves. Light's fox-ears picked up the person on the other end trying a couple of times to refuse payment until Rory's insistence won him over, and then she hung up after making the order.

After a couple of minutes of waiting in silence, Light thought to try and start a conversation. "It's still impressive, you know, seeing you just...pick up one of those things and throw it around. And you still walk into every fight like you're invincible. I mean—I knew you weren't gonna be hurt by all that electricity, but even if I was immune...I think I'd still hesitate a little bit to walk into that."

"Hah, well, you know me," she said, pointing a thumb at herself. "I'm the tank. That's the word for it, right?"

"Yeah."

"Clark taught me."

She paced around for a moment, then grabbed another chair and sat across from Light, leaning forward against what was supposed to be its back.

"You know something? I've gotten to where I remember a lot, but I still don't remember anything from..the day I died. When I found out exactly how it happened—how I apparently planned out my own death, to make sure my husband could take her down—I didn't understand. How could I do something like that?

"I mean, it's true..my powers do make me feel invincible sometimes. But I'm smart enough now—and I'm sure I was then, too—to know that I'm not invincible. I even know what I'm weak to, what'll kill me the easiest. But, at some point, I realized: Getting in the way of danger so it doesn't hurt other people is simply, what my powers make me the best at. And, even if I'm not invincible...I don't mind."

"Do you...think you were expecting to die, back then?"
"I dunno. Maybe I thought Clark could heal near-fatal wounds, and hoped I'd luck out and only get one of those. I'm sure...I must have accepted the possibility that I'd die. But I knew, even if I did, I could rely on everyone else to finish the job. Especially him."

"You were asleep at the time, but...he didn't take having to...wanting to kill someone...very well," Light said. "I don't think I would've taken it much better."

"I do get that impression," she said. "But the human mind is an impressive thing. It endures all kinds of awful stuff, stuff that leaves deep scars you think won't ever heal. But with the right support, with a lot of effort..you can get better. Maybe never, over it completely, but...better."

Light wasn't sure Rory was just talking about her husband. She nodded. "...Better."

Their conversation was interrupted by the noise of a knock on the front door to the store. "Delivery!" someone called.

"Sit tight, I'll get it," Rory said, hopping up onto her feet.

Battle Vixens! - 121

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Episode 121: Live Wire

Ning stepped out of her store as soon as the alert began, retrieving her phone to see where she needed to go. She'd already taken several steps of increasing speed along the sidewalk, starting to reckon the quickest way to get to where the monsters were going to be, when her mind did a sudden double-take of the location and her feet came to an abrupt halt. That spot was one she knew extremely well. She'd been there earlier this morning. She was supposed to be there again this afternoon, and tomorrow morning and afternoon, and so on.

Just outside the front gates.

Heart starting to race, she looked up at the overcast sky. There were a lot of clouds, and she could feel the electric potential running through them. When she'd been in a "boosted" form thanks to Amp, she could go through power lines, riding along with the electricity they carried. She'd noticed Light doing things that used to be only available to her with a boost lately, so probably—those were things her power could have always done, they just took a lot of energy and effort. So being "boosted" wasn't what made those things possible; it just made them easier.

There was no telling when those things were going to show up. Running might not be fast enough, and going to her car to drive there wasn't much quicker. The school was just too far from here by land, with too many buildings in the way. But the sky was another matter.

Ning took a deep breath. Some thin, static-like arcs had started falling out of her into the ground from the rising panic; she made an effort to pull all that in, gather herself together...and then, finally, she jumped. The first two or three feet upward were as a woman, but after that she was able to shift into being a bunch of electricity, firing upward into the sky like a backwards lightning strike.

The clouds were a lot less straightforward to navigate than power lines. With wires, of course, there were only two directions: "forward" and "backwards". And everything felt so perfectly even and balanced, being carefully tuned to just the right voltage and amplitude and so on. The clouds were a choatic mess of electric potential, with every imaginable direction available. But Ning knew which way she wanted to go, and was very, very determined to get there quickly. The disorientation of being in the clouds only really registered to her after a bolt of lightning hit the ground in front of the school gates, erupting a shower of sparks out from the point of impact while forming itself back into her body, kneeling unsteadily and panting heavily.

She picked herself up onto her feet slowly, trying to get a grasp on her breath. There were sparks coming out of her again, some arcs into the ground and others jumping as far as the metal of the gates. The confusing, chaotic feeling from being in the clouds hadn't entirely left her, and neither had the sense of panic that had pushed her to do that, really. Her mind fixated on just one kind of thought: Not this time. Not again.

If there was any hope in her mind that she'd overreacted, that perhaps the monsters wouldn't even show up until she, Light, and Dr. Rory Quinn had all had plenty of time to arrive and mentally prepare themselves to fight—it didn't last very long. The clouds in the sky weren't nearly as dark as the ones gathering a few yards ahead of her on the ground. People were already starting to run and hide. Taking another long breath in and out and trying without much success to steady herself and get a grip on all of the sparks falling out of her, Ning drew her sword and yanked off its sheath, tossing that away to one side to hold the weapon in both hands in a ready stance.

Her opponents fully coalesced not a moment later: Those six-limbed, razor-clawed things with bladed tails. They had a reputation for moving much faster than something that big was supposed to. Ning was fast too—not nearly as quick as Light, but she could probably keep up with one of these things.

There were two of them.

Both of them rushed forward silently, using all six of their limbs to run. At first Ning thought they were both coming for her, which would be bad enough, but only one of them actually raised itself up and started slashing its foreleg-claws at her, making her block with her weapon and back up, while the other one continued forward, starting to climb up the fence.

Ning threw her weapon forward with both hands, the force knocking the beast in front of her backwards. She reached her right hand back, electricity arcing out of it and across the half-foot or so gap into the fence, electrifying it. Normal animals trying to climb the fence would've been knocked off immediately; the black monster, however, continued anyway, even as dark mist streamed off of it. "NNNNGH!" She angrily jumped over to it (leaving a shower of sparks behind), grabbing one of its upper limbs near where a person's wrist would be and physically throwing it away from the fence. Not again. Not EVER.

The one she'd thrown her sword into took advantage of its extra feet to pick itself up quickly, and no sooner had she thrown the other one than it was back in her face, forcing her to reform her weapon to block some of its slashes—and then pull out the sheath in her other hand to catch some more. She dodged sideways to keep herself from being pinned against the gates, then tried to counter one of its strikes only for it to catch her blade in one of its 'hands'. Holding onto her weapon like that wasn't terribly smart, as electricity pumped through it into the beast and sent an eruption of black mist off of its body—but it had an opening with the rest of its limbs to try to slash at her, making her awkwardly block and shove it back with her sheath. She followed this up with a kick, knocking it very temporarily onto its back—because the other one was already most of the way to the fence.

"NO!" As loud as it was, her voice could barely be heard under the noise of a bolt of lightning coming from the clouds above straight down into the offending beast, and—already knowing that that wouldn't stop it—she jumped between it and the fence, reclaiming her weapon in its sheath and swinging it like a baseball bat at the monster just as it stood itself up to attack her, sending it flying backwards, with the sheath flying out away from her to one side afterward. She then made a sudden half-turn, pulling the sword up horizontally in front of her on pure instinct just in time for it to catch a strike from the other monster. She grabbed for something else in her other hand and got the sheath back, shoving it forward into the creature's torso to make it stagger back a couple of steps.

There was electricity arcing out of her in every available direction by now—some hitting the concrete around her and bouncing along it, some humming through her sword and sheath, some of it still arcing back into the fence, keeping it sporadically electrified. She was going to exhaust herself much too fast between running around fighting those things and constantly bleeding energy like that, but she just couldn't get control over it to make it stop. She brought down another bolt of lightning into herself to try to recover somewhat, but felt half of it arc right back out, scattering itself through the drops of rainfall aruond her in a deadly lightshow.

Ning didn't have time to think. The other monster had its hands on the fence again, the black mist steaming off of it into the rain. She leapt at it sword-first, stabbing her weapon into its body and continuing her momentum forward until the blade could be struck down through the beast into the concrete to pin it in place. A noise somewhere between a growl and a scream came from her throat as she shoved the weapon down through it to the hilt, and then she whirled, pulling out her sheath to block some strikes from the other one before kicking it away from her again.

Her left arm hurt. There were a few scratches on her forearm, barely deep enough to bleed. The beast that wasn't pinned down barely stumbled for the instant it took her to register this before recovering to rush at her again. "RrrrrrRRRRRRAAAAAAHHH!!!" She growl-screamed louder than the last time, moving aside of its slashing claws to raise the sheath in both hands and swing it down at the monster, bashing it in the shoulder and then the head before it caught the third wild strike in its claws, yanking the weapon out of her grip.

Never mind the fact that the one in front of her was advancing again; all of that sideways movement had put it between her and the fence, and the other one was picking itself up through her sword, about to start climbing the fence.

Not! Again!

Both pieces of Ning's weapon erupted into showers of sparks, and then another bolt of lightning struck down at her, splitting into five arcs as it came close to the ground: One for each monster, one for her head, and the other two landing into her waiting hands as a pair of swords. They were both of equal size, not as large as the one she'd started with, nor as small as the one she'd lost to gain a sheath for that one. She immediately struck one into the center mass of the monster in front of her, using it as a handle to swing the entire monster aside and let go, turning the swing into a sideways throw. The other she jumped and stabbed down into the other monster, then grabbed its lowermost right leg in both of her hands to throw it up, over, and behind her, feeling a sharp pain along her cheek as its bladed tail grazed her skin.

She whirled around, reforming both weapons and slashing them wildly at the beast trying to recover to its feet, forcing it to use its tail and hind legs to block. When the other one approached her again, she threw one of the blades at it, then the other one, which it knocked that one away with its claws—then she reformed both swords and stabbed them into its head and neck, shoving it away with her hands on the hilts and then kicking it over onto its back.

The entire area in front of the school gates was electrified, sparks erupting out of her body and weapons and spreading out along the raindrops and the water pooled on the concrete. The clouds contributed too—not targeted, controlled strikes, but far more than the fair share of stray bolts for such a small patch of land.

Ning gasped for air and let it out in another desperate scream. She couldn't keep this up; it was a miracle she hadn't already collapsed. But she couldn't stop, either.

---

Fox ears, of course, could pick up sounds at a greater distance than human ones. They could also hear things close enough to be in normal earshot in far greater detail, making it possible to hear a sound coming from several feet away as if you had your ear pressed right up against its source. The sound of a human body hitting pavement and rolling wasn't something Magus had ever wanted to hear in such detail.

She recoiled and winced first, hard enough to drop her sword to the ground with a noisy clattering. Then she just couldn't help looking in the direction of the sound. Gemma's white-haired body, Plus, was hugging itself tightly with the tail curled tightly around a leg and already groaning in pain. "Gemma!? Shoot, sorry!" She'd been in the air, mid-jump for some reason; Magus's timing couldn't have been worse.

"I-it's okay!" Minus, not Plus, said—over the other one's groan ascending into a yell of pain. "I've been hit harder—I had defenses up—I can heal myself!" Her tone of voice was strained and distressed, making these assurances harder to buy. But the dark-haired vixen was briskly walking up to the downed monstrous bird, grabbing a dagger out of the air and raising it for a throw. "J-just get it while it's still down!" she said, throwing the weapon forward with some electricity dancing around it.

Dr. Quinn had a puppet running toward the downed body while she herself advanced on the big bird. The hand she wasn't busy controlling puppets with was holding her needle, using it as a handle for something like a big club made out of glowing blue string. "Harder? You mean when a gryphon broke half your bones?"

Trying not to think about exactly how many bones she'd heard breaking just a moment ago, Magus scrambled to pick her sword back up and do as quick a spell as possible to damage the monster down. All of a sudden she wasn't feeling very confident about aiming a projectile to come from her to the bird without hitting someone else in between, so she tried for a lightning bolt from above instead. Rushing the spell like that resulted in a weaker strike than usual and tired her out more, making her drop to leaning on her weapon's hilt with its tip buried partly into the ground, panting heavily for a moment.

"Y-yes?" Minus answered uncertainly, throwing a small fireball into the beast.
"That is not a good standard by which to measure new injuries!" Clark raised her hand and smashed the bat into the monster's left wing. Rather than remaining solid, it fell apart into the strings it was made of, all of which wrapped themselves down around the wing and held on tightly as the thing twisted itself around to try to stand up. By now, her puppet had reached Plus's body and was kneeling, holding a hand down toward her which gave off a faint blue glow.

---

"Ning!"

Light's voice didn't seem to carry far enough. The noise of thunder and the humming of electricity were one thing (or two, perhaps), but the main thing keeping the tall vixen from hearing anyone else's voice was her own, screaming angrily, desperately, and painfully, even as hoarse as it was. She was bleeding electricity all over the place, making a radius of some ten or twenty yards around her completely uninhabitable for people not made out of lightning themselves. That meant that Light couldn't get any closer than this—much too far away to physically help.

She made Ning invisible, and placed illusions for the monsters to chase after. One of them ignored the illusory vixen entirely, instead making a beeline for the fence until Ning stuck a blade into its side, picking it up by the hilt and slamming it into the ground. This theatric, largely ineffectual move only didn't get her killed because the other one was chasing Light's fake copy of her by now. Light tried blacking its eyes out briefly, then giving it a rotated view of its surroundings when it stood up again; it went toward where it thought the fence was, moving in the opposite direction from Ning. That was good, as she was now busy recklessly slashing at the other one. After the unexpected first couple of strikes, it caught on to the fact that it couldn't see its attacker and turned around, catching and taking one of her swords only for her to let go of it, let it explode into a shower of sparks, then resummon it and keep going.

"NING!" In addition to bleeding electricity, she was also just plain bleeding. Light couldn't easily tell how bad or deep the wounds were, but their presence was obvoius enough from the bits of red mixed with the water on the concrete around her. There was at least a cut on her face. Giving away her position like that had seemed uncharacteristically stupid—at least, if she realized that she'd been hidden in the first place. Light couldn't risk blocking her vision to ger her attention, either—not when those things were so quick to realize they were being fooled.

The one that wanted to climb the fence rapped its foreleg against a wall, then dropped to all six limbs skittered around in a wide circle, seeming to have immediately realized that what it wanted to climb felt like metal, not brick. Light drew her own weapon and threw it at the monster's side; even though she kept herself and the sword invisible, its tail swept across and swatted the blade out of the air.

---

Magus stood up carefully, determined to give it another shot. The big bird couldn't fly with its wing wrapped up like that, so there wasn't as much of a rush to kill it as she'd thought a moment ago. So she channeled her second bolt of lightning properly, and got a solid strike straight down through its head, making a jet of black mist erupt out of it as it screeched and swept its limbs around, trying to grab someone. Clark stepped rapidly backwards away from it, raising up a puppet for it to take. Minus dove into a nearby building's shadow.

The strings binding the monster's wing were starting to give way. It was looking very indistinct now, a blurry, translucent mess. But it was raising its wings, getting ready to try to take off once again. Magus was still far enough away to be out of reach of its swiping limbs, and now she had an impeccably clear shot. She took a deep breath and let it out. I won't hit her again. Or anyone else! This is a single-target spell, no AOE!

At the end of the spell's motion, she swung her sword from one side to another. Then she swung it back the other way, and back again. Each swing sent a small fireball arcing forward and landing squarely into the beast's body, making a little more of its mass bleed off. Finally, instead of taking off, the giant bird collapsed to the ground, losing its form entirely and dissipating away as a big, faint cloud of black.

---

"Sooo—what's the deal here?"

Light jumped, not expecting someone's voice that close behind her. Thankfully, on turning to face them—it was just Rory. The rain must have made it harder to hear someone walking up, she thought while trying not to have a heart attack. But there were more pressing worries.

"Ning's gone completely berserk," she said, gesturing backwards. "She can't hear me yelling, I can't risk messing up her vision mid-fight to get her attention, and we can't get close enough to actually help without getting electrocuted!"

"Uh, you mean you can't?"

"What?"
"I can insulate myself, remember?" Dr. Quinn said with an emphatic gesture at herself. "Lend me a sword."
"Oh...right," Light said, reforming her weapon to hand it over.

"You might have to keep those things off us for a minute," she added as she started toward the electrified patch of concrete.

The monster that was trying to reach the gates had gone in increasingly wide, rapid circles until its forelegs felt the metal of the fencing; now it was starting to climb up it. The one Ning had been attacking had gone on the offensive, forcing her to stagger backwards as its four upper legs and tail all swiped at her one after another. She'd probably been able to keep up with an assault like this before, but was clearly exhausted and losing focus.

Rory leapt across some two or three yards, grabbing the monster climbing the fence by the neck with her free hand and slamming it into the ground before stabbing Light's sword through its center mass, the blade burying deep enough for half of it to be in the concrete. "Stay," she said, pointing at that monster like it was a disobeident dog. Then she then ran up to the other one, drawing back a fist and punching it in the snout, sending it flying away through the air. She then turned Ning's way and grabbed her in a sudden, tight hug. The tall vixen convulsed once, confused.

"Sssshhh..." Rory patted her back a couple of times, and Ning's hands shook briefly before she let go of her swords to return the hug, dropping her head onto Rory's shoulder and letting out a muffled scream into it. "I know, I know—it sucks." The flood of electricity coming out of Ning diminished to a trickle, just some stray sparks going out of her and a few traveling down Rory's body into the ground.

The monster that had been punched away recovered to its feet and looked ready to interrupt the two of them. Light ran to intercept, picking up one of Ning's dropped swords along the way—it wouldn't be good to free the other one right now. She displaced her apparent position for it about a body-length to one side, and stabbed her sword forward at it in an obvious way with the illusion's sword in the same position, letting it block that so it would believe that the body it was seeing was real. It started slashing at the illusion right away, so she had the false vixen dodge off to one side of her, leading it away.

"My girl—Nadia—an' all those other kids...they..I can't let..." Ning sniffed loudly, and then in a high voice said, "N-not again.."

"Not again. You're right about that." Rory loosened her grip on the hug and ran a hand through Ning's soaking-wet hair, noticing the fence-bound monster picking itself up through Light's sword. "'Cause this time, you're not alone." Then she let go and picked up the remaining sword on the ground, heading that monster's way.

At this point, Light turned around to face them. "Oh, h-hey Light.."
"Are you okay now?"
"Heheh..n-not really." Ning lifted one of her hands with the palm up, displaying some sparks jumping up off of it. "Guess I panicked and lost control again. I suppose I oughta step back and let you two handle it from here, but I—can't right now. I could use some, help?"

This request sounded very vague, but for some reason Light felt like she knew exactly what Ning was asking for. So she stepped closer. "You want to 'borrow' some self-control?"
"That'd be nice. J-just long enough to destroy those things."
"...Okay."

Light put both of her hands firmly around the one Ning was holding up, and pronounced the appropriate phrase. A brilliant glow and a shower of electricity converged around where their hands had been together, reforming into a single, two-tailed vixen.

Lightning looked around, taking a deep breath, and then re-summoned the two swords Rory wasn't borrowing at the moment. It felt trivial to send electricity up out of her hands into the blades and back again. Unlike what would happen if Ning tried to do this, with arcs and sparks leaking out everywhere, this was clean and efficient, barely costing her anything unless the weapons were actually in contact with an enemy. She had the illusory Light lead the monster still chasing it to face away from her while she strode up to it, then slashed into its side, catching a retaliatory strike from its tail with the other sword. The rest of the beast whirled and started slashing, but by then she'd already turned briefly into light to move herself to its opposite side, leaving behind another illusion for it to chase.

The clouds were blocking some of the sunlight, but above them the light was still there. She pulled some of it down through the clouds, converting it to electricity as it went and joining it with what was already there. The results were enough to strike the monster with massive bolts of lightning some five or six times while she walked up next to it, then slashed through it again, disappeared, let it chase an illusion.

It was no trouble to keep Rory hidden from sight too. When the monster trying to reach the fence stood up, Dr. Quinn was already waiting to grab it by one of its forelimbs and slam it into the ground again, stabbing her borrowed weapon down into it to the ground. Then she backed away to keep out of reach of its limbs and tails while it writhed and thrashed, and when it stood up and started toward the gates, she grabbed it by the base of its tail—the one part of that appendage that wasn't covered in sharp blades—and pitched the entire beast in the opposite direction hard enough that it skidded and bounced along the concrete of the road a few times. Finally, it landed on two of its feet and whirled, starting to run toward the gates again.

Lightning clapped her two weapons together, joining them into one gigantic sword. When she came up to the monster attacking her illusion again, she lifted this weapon and slashed it diagonally down-left, letting gravity help it tear into the monster's body and knock its tail aside when it tried to block the strike midway through. She abandoned the weapon to hop back out of the monster's retaliatory strikes, erupting it into an explosion of electricity mostly through the thing's body into the ground. With this, her opponent was finally starting to look indistinct.

Rory ran to intercept the running monster, kicking it in the side and knocking it into a diagonal roll. It recovered fast, but still had to quit running long enough for her to get in front of it and stab it down through the neck, using the sword's hilt to throw it over her onto the ground. Then she stomped on the hilt, again pinning it down.

The two-tailed vixen lifted a hand as she walked away from the monster still chasing an illusion, gathering light down through the clouds once again. It was struck with lightning again and again until it fell apart completely, and by then she'd made her way to Rory. She brought both her hands in front of her, taking the last bolt of lightning from above down into them to form the gigantic sword again, then carefully offered it to Rory. "Wanna trade?"
Dr. Quinn grinned. "You know it." That weapon felt fairly heavy even to Lightning's combined level of super-strength, but Rory held it casually and one-handed, like it was made of paper.

Lightning freed the pinned monster prematurely by summoning the sword in it to her own hands. When it stood up, it started moving away from the fence—its eyes seeing a 180-degree rotation of its actual surroundings. Rory came up behind it and effortlessly slashed through it again and again with the gigantic weapon; when it started to turn around to try to retaliate, Lightning appeared behind it and stabbed it through the throat hard enough to knock it stumbling forward. Rory backed away while Lightning raised both her hands and struck the sword stuck into the monster with several rapid-fire bolts from above, until it recovered its footing enough to turn around again and try to slash at her. While it only hit an illusion—Lightning having already jumped back out of the way—this opened the door for Rory to start in on it again. Two or three rounds of this was all it took for the beast to fall apart into a cloud of the same black mist that had formed it.

Light and Ning stepped apart from the combined body right away, both of them panting heavily. Some stray sparks of electricity jumped out of Ning as she stumbled forward slightly and knelt on the ground to steady herself. Rory walked up and offered her a hand to help her up.

---

Magus ran up to the collapsed body and puppet still standing over it. "Is she—are you—gonna be okay?!"

"Thankfully, yes," Clark answered first. "She wasn't extraordinarily hurt by your spell, or the landing. Mostly bruised and shocked."

"Uh, y-yeah," Minus said, walking up to them. "Good job finishing it off before it could fly away again."
Not wanting to crowd Gemma's injured body, Magus rushed at the one still standing up. "Seriously—I am so sorry. I didn't even look to check if someone was there before I cast that!"

"I-it's okay, really. You didn't mean to."
"What, you're not even angry? I'd be super mad!"
"It was just an accident. I've made...worse mistakes, recently," she said, looking slightly away. "And..a lot more on purpose."

"Still!" Magus said, spreading her hands out in front of her. For someone to not be angry at her for that felt wrong, like she was getting away with a serious crime.

"If you don't mind—we should probably leave now," Clark said. "Unless you'd like to be swarmed by students and reporters." By now, her puppet was helping Plus stand up again—and the latter looked perfectly fine again, as if she'd never been injured.

"Uhh nope—" "—no thanks," Gemma said (back to using both bodies to talk again).

"Y-yeah, I'm not feeling very up to that right now, myself," Magus said, quickly following the two/three of them toward a nearby door to go inside.

---

I sort of guessed this episode would be easier for me to write. Parts of it, at least, are another thing that I've had half-written in my head long before I started the previous pair of episodes; I certainly knew the title some time ago. Speaking of which, I realized that I'd left a slight plot hole in episode 120, and went and made a little edit to fix it.

Battle Vixens! - 120

First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

Episode 120: Gust Front

"I don't like this."

Magus jumped slightly—her focus having been a little too much on the center of the campus courtyard, where their first monster of the day had been forecasted to show up. She turned her head partway around; Dr. Clark Quinn—just arriving outside after getting a boost from Amp—was the one talking. "Uh, don't like what exactly?"
"The mist monsters showing up here," she said, gesturing where Magus had just been looking as she came up next to her.
"How come? I mean, it's pretty convenient that they're not wrecking the buildings and stuff, right?"
"Students pass through here, if not congregate here, all the time. We've been lucky so far, but just imagine...one attack with the wrong timing, and only a few seconds' warning."

"Well, it's not like we can ask them to relocate."

"I suppose not."

Gemma was standing quietly on either side of them. She'd been the first to arrive; Magus figured she'd been with Amory when the alert when out. "Sooo, uh, giant bird thing. Any pro tips?" Magus asked the closer one (Plus).

"The one we fought yesterday had Void's powers—" "—so hopefully this one will be easier. But—" "—we still need some way to ground it..."
"You can't like, use aerial denial stuff like yesterday?"
Plus shook her head. "That was taking advantage of how it was flying so fast—" "—and Prism is way more powerful than I am alone."

"Well, can you like, imitate Sam's wire thing?" she said, making a vague gesture with her hands. "Or I guess I could—"

Clark quietly cleared her throat to get their attention. She had her hands raised, and her needle was rushing around through the air in front of her, weaving a big net of glowing blue thread.

"Oh...yeah, that should work."

"We could also fly with me around, but..."

"Fighting in the air's a bad idea," Gemma said. "We wouldn't be able to move fast enough to keep it from grabbing us—" "—or just swallowing someone whole."

"My thoughts exactly," Clark nodded.

"It has a certain, um, pattern—" Minus said. "—I'll let you know when it's coming in for a dive," Plus finished.

---

A volley of five or six light-arrows cut through the mildly disturbing sight of two monsters becoming one. "Hey, no cutscenes in real life!" Zeno said. "Keep hitting it!"
"Uh—right." Hugo broke her weapon back into sound waves, amplifying them and sending them forward to crash into the fusing monster.

It continued forming all the same, spreading two wings even larger than those of the gryphon out and sprouting two heads...make that three, with the snakewolf's usual tail-head appearing at the end of a tail two to three times as long as either of its 'parts' had had. It was also noticeably taller and larger than either monster had been on its own.

Naturally, the beast screeched/roared/howled when it finished forming. Hugo was ready for this, turning the noise back on its body to send an eruption of black mist off of its center mass. She was a little less ready for it to immediately and rapidly charge straight at her, its running speed apparently improved rather than being hindered by its larger size. Her reflex of raising a shield in the face of danger saved her; the lion-head bit down on the shield instead of her body, and she had time to let go of it and scramble backwards before the wolf-head could come in for a second try. Feeling the familiar pull from Warp, she let herself be teleported a fair distance away before finally losing her balance from that awkward back-run and falling on the ground for a moment.

"Hey, get its attention so I can call this in!" Zeno said, currently busy backing up and placing light-shields while the snake-headed tail, apparently misunderstanding how a snake was supposed to work, kept whipping its snout straight into them.

"No worries." Warp threw her knife at it from a little to one side—enough that the wolf head could see her doing it. Finally on her feet again, Hugo blew up the shield still in the lion head's mouth, sending the noise straight into its body, and yelled to quickly form a new shield in her hands, letting the sound carry to where the beast could hear her. It charged after Warp first, its snake-head behind it turning its attention on the shield maiden.

It bashed against her shield a few times, then unhinged its jaw and tried to bite it, scraping its teeth down along the front. If vixen weapons hadn't proven to be generally indestructible, she'd be quite worried about this.

...No, actually, she was worried about it anyway, and backed away as it kept beating itself against the shield.

"This is Zeno! Two of our targets fused, looks like it's gonna delay our next appointment. Any assistance would be appreciated."
After a moment, a response came: "Petra here—same problem. Think we got it under control here, but can't come help. Sorry!"
Then, finally: "I'm on my way." This was unmistakeably Rowan's voice.

Surprisingly, Zeno didn't put the phone down just yet. Instead, while Warp got Hugo and herself out of danger and then taunted the monster with another knife—she quickly dialed someone else. "Listen—I know you don't like to fight, but there's a few showing up right next to your office and now we can't get there in time. Can you just—lure them away from your collagues, to us?" She named the corner they were on, then hung up, not waiting for the other side's reply. And then she raised her bow, firing it on the chimera from behind until it whirled to charge at her instead.

---

"Wh—come on—that just isn't fair!" Karis complained, gesturing at the triplet she'd just punched into the air as it sank into the torso of one of those bear-monsters. The other two "parts" of their three-for-one opponent pulsated and grew as the original bear became slightly smaller, its claws reshaping into giant weapon-like appendages. "It wasn't there two seconds ago!"

"It's not like these things ever played fair in the first place," Petra said, taking a few steps back from the pair she'd just been fighting. "Just get ready to punch out the three bears, Goldilocks." As they came close to being fully formed, she raised up a fist of stone from the concrete, pulling it back to prepare a punch.
"Which one's papa bear, then?" Karis summoned Remedy behind the fusing monster, ordering an all-out attack on its back.

"Aren't they all kinda the same?" Nico remarked from the sidelines—her fruits still pelting the three of them as they finally 'came to' and moved to attack.

Petra's fist slammed into the two in front of her, sending them staggering backwards but not landing quite enough force to knock them over. So she drew her other hand back, making the stone-fist reshape into a right hand to match it before punching forward again, managing to knock one of them over. The one Remedy was assaulting turned around to try to grab her, and she disappeared, Karis running up behind it, leaping with her arm raised and then slamming a gauntleted fist down into its side before kicking herself off of it and backflipping away.

---

"I'm on my way." Rowan looked around briefly. "Tora, Fay—with me. You two keep working with Sam here."

"Sure," Cynthia said; Dawn nodded. The other two vixens silently came up next to Rowan before the three of them took off at a run, matching pace with each other as they headed off in the direction of Zeno's team.

They just had the last of those tentacle-rat things left, and Cynthia was taking her latest turn trying to incinerate it before stepping back to catch her breath, Dawn moving in to take her turn stabbing and slashing at it. It broke free of its trap and both vixens ran, luring it to another one for Sam to snap shut around it.

"Dawn, head that-a-way," Sam said, pointing with one hand while holding onto the traps with the other. "Got two bashers showing up; lead 'em here. Keep 'em distant from the overgrown mouse too—don't want no fusions to deal with on our end."

"Got it!"

---

"It's diving—" "—Now!"

Clark had summoned four puppets to help hold the net. Now they tossed it up and forward into the approaching bird-monster, and she pulled it tight around its body and wings as it tumbled screeching to the ground. The puppets kept a hold of the thread to keep the thrashing monster tied down while Gemma threw several dozen projectile attacks at it in a row. Magus could hardly keep track of all of the different powersets she was imitating just now. The mage vixen focused on some long-chant, high-damage spells, making sure to channel each one to make it less tiring to cast. There were two more fights to get through today, after all!

Eventually, it thrashed enough to tear apart most of the netting and broke free, immediately hopping forward and pecking down at the vixens to try to catch whoever it could. Clark had given everyone plenty of warning, so it only managed to destroy a couple of puppets. Then it screeched, lifting its wings and flapping them to send a gale of wind forward.

"Eeyaah!" Magus was knocked off her feet, the wind lifting her several feet up into the air. Gemma thought quickly enough to have Minus run up and grab her, diving both of them down into a shadow-hole in the ground before the big bird could swipe one of its excess limbs forward, trying to grab her in its talons. Then it took off into the air again.

After they came up out of the magic-based hole in reality, Minus set Magus back on her feet. "Uh, thanks."
"No problem.—" "—The wing flap was uh, super deadly with Void's power,—" "—so I didn't know what it usually does with it."

"But I guess 'hit the deck' would be a pretty good idea, huh?"

Clark was busy using her surviving two puppets to make another net, braiding together rope to make this one sturdier than the last. Magus spread out with Gemma's two bodies, sending a couple of lightning bolts down from the dark clouds above onto its head while waiting for it to dive down at them again.

---

Hephaestus sighed.

She stood watching out one of the tinted windows toward the street. Despite the evidence on hand, a small part of her hoped that she would see someone else with a fox tail show up out there before any black mist did. She already had a plan for when that didn't happen, a way to try and minimize how many people saw her—the first part being to wait here and not show up outside until the danger actually appeared.

Luck was an illusion, and if the Giver was to be believed, their enemy lacked the capacity for emotions like empathy or mercy, let alone the intellect required to intentionally irritate one person in particular. She still cursed her bad luck when the black mist appeared outside, then quickly turned around to the open space behind her, confirming that no one had idiotically stepped into said space before raising her blades and slashing open a portal to outside.

It didn't help that there was a sheet of rain coming down just now; she dove through the portal and closed it immediately to minimize the wet floor left behind, but there was nothing to be done about the water immediately soaking her excess of hair and fur as she raised her black-hilted blade and threw it at one of the three chargers which had just now begun to look for something to destroy. On the one hand, these things were very good at vandalism, but—to her advantage—they were also very easy to lead on a chase.

It squealed, moving to charge at her, and the other two followed alongside it. Re-summoning the thrown weapon was trivial, so she did that and cut a portal in front of herself, standing her ground. While she usually used this part of her power to make portals she could jump through—that is, openings that faced her—there was no reason she couldn't instead use it to open a portal facing away from herself instead, as a defensive maneuver. This one in particular dumped the stupid beasts out as far in the direction behind her as she could make it reach.

The dumb beasts were already at a full-tilt charge before she made the portal, and they weren't nearly smart enough to be disoriented by the abrupt shift in surroundings. They kept going for several more yards before screeching to a halt, looking around for a new target since the one they'd been after had disappeared. By that point, the monochrome-maned vixen had used two judiciously-placed portals to put herself a good distance past them—but still close enough to be seen, and to raise and throw her white-handled blade at one of them to get its attention.

These monsters' collective idiocy was as well-documented as the immense danger they posed to civilians despite it. When they made mistakes, and even when they suffered for those mistakes, they didn't learn from them. So even the flat of the blade awkwardly bouncing off of one's face was more than enough to draw its attention her way, and when the three of them went into a full-tilt run at her again, she cut open another portal.

This was going to take a few minutes, but it was relatively safe, got them away from her research and her colleagues, and it didn't leave her in one place for very long. No one would get more than a couple of seconds' glimpse at her. At least—that was her hope anyway.

---

Remedy leapt and stabbed her sword partway into the back of a bear-triplet, using her weight to drag the sword down through its body while it tried to swat back at her with the two giant blades it had for hands—neither of which could actually get to the middle of its back. The Stand left the sword behind while merging with Karis again to let her punch another one in the side, knocking it over. Petra was busy slamming the third one with her stone fist, knocking it in the general direction of the other two. All three were starting to look indistinct.

"What, are they dying already? I thought fusing made them last way longer!"
"You and I both hit pretty hard, dear," Petra pointed out. "And the barrage of fruit is not to be underestimated. By the way—you holding up, Nico?"
"Yep!" The green-haired vixen was sitting on an upper branch of one of her trees a decent distance away, giving a thumbs-up.

"Good. Let's finish this." Petra gathered the material for her weapon and the stone fist, along with a decent amount of concrete and dirt, formed it into three large stone spikes, then drove them down through the bodies of the three monsters, merging their ends into the ground at the bottom to keep them pinned in place. Just keeping them pinned like this seemed to take most of her effort and concentration, so Karis went and punched/slashed them each in turn, one after the other, ducking around the continued fruit-volleys from Nico's trees, until all three of them finally dissipated at once.

---

"Guess it can still fly," Hugo commented, watching the fused monster climb higher into the sky, only a couple of arrows from Zeno going high enough to hit it.
"That's to be expected."
"Ready to go up after it again?" Warp asked.

"Bad idea—that tail'd bite her," Zeno said before Hugo could answer.

"So we just wait for it to feel like landing?"
"Not necessarily...we could try focusing fire on one of its wings. If you don't mind helping?" She readied another arrow, getting ready to fire forward-up. Warp nodded, sending several arrows and her own weapon along to hit the beast in its left wing. It twisted around in its flight, trying to bite at what the projectiles would've been coming from if they were following normal physics—and it did more roaring and screeching, which Hugo was able to turn back against it with some concentration.

This process was interrupted by the noise of something running closer to them. Turning that way, Hugo found what looked like a hole in the air, out of which three chargers seemed to have just emerged. She moved to intercept, raising her shield and yelling a wave of noise over at them to get their attention. Their manner of arrival raised some questions, but she had a guess those would be answered pretty soon without her needing to ask.

Indeed, the hole the monsters had come from disappeared, and a new one opened itself next to Zeno, an unfamiliar mostly-white-haired vixen with a pair of katanas in her hands stepping out of it. "Heph! Welcome to the party," she said, seeming to recognize the stranger.

"This is not a party," Heph said flatly.
"Think you can get that thing back to the ground?" she asked, ignoring the objection, and pointed up at the gryphon-snake-wolf.

Heph glanced upward. "It may be too big to fit."

"Well, it's a great opportunity to test what happens when you slam a portal shut on something then, isn't it?"

Meanwhile, Hugo waited for the first charger to come ram itself into her shield, then used the momentum to toss it over herself and slam it into the ground judo-style. Warp teleported her out of the way of the other two, and she sent another, stronger wave of noise through them, enough to topple them and send them briefly rolling along the ground. Zeno turned away from the conversation to pepper them with a few arrows while they were stunned, then ran over away from Heph, placing a light-shield for them to ram into and then diving away to the side.

Warp appeared next to Hephaestus. "Looks like it's 'bout to dive."
"I can see that." She jumped into the air and slashed her swords in an X shape diagonally forward-above herself, making the widest portal she could and pairing it to one in the apparent trajectory of the monster. Then she dove down past the lower edge of the portal, rolling along the ground and bouncing back to her feet again, turning to face where she'd just been standing.

The monster was, indeed, too wide for the portal, especially with its wings spread out. Part of its body went in, while the rest crashed against the outer edge of the portal as though it were a physical object. When Hephaestus tried to close the portal, it visibly squeezed in on the monster's body, but the monster violently jerked around and pushed back, black mist erupting off of it, and seemed to force the opening wider for just long enough for its body to squeeze through and fall awkwardly onto the ground; then the portal slammed shut.

Hugo's voice was starting to get a little hoarse, so she clapped her hands together to make a wave of noise instead, sending it over at the three chargers to get their attention before they hit a building. They turned and ran her way once again, and she again raised her shield. Before they could reach her, however, a bunch of the water pooled onto the sides of the street gathered into some thin tentacle-like limbs, grabbing for their front legs with just enough force to trip them and send them toppling along the ground.

"Boss! Glad you're here," Zeno said, shooting some more arrows at the grounded gryphon-wolf-thing while it worked to regain its footing.
"What about us?" Fay asked while running up to start placing some explosions into the downed chargers.

"That was a plural you!" she insisted. Rowan strode toward the large target, using both of her hands to gather some more water up into spiked tentacles and wrapping them up around its body and tail to keep it from moving. Hephaestus came close enough to start slashing into its already-injured wing, stopping only once it looked too damaged to fly with, and then slowly stepped back away, panting heavily.

Tora ran up and started slashing the chargers until they got up, then led one of them on a chase straight up to Hugo's shield; Fay ran the others around until Zeno could get their attention with some arrows. The three of them had this more or less in hand, so Rowan ignored the chargers and focused on keeping the fused monster pinned down. Warp alternated throwing her weapon at the several available targets, watching for anyone who needed bailing out.

The fused beast was starting to look indistinct, and the chargers never lasted very long anyway. It wasn't going to take them much longer to finish them all off.

---

"It's gonna dive again!—" "—Is the net—?"
"Close enough!" Clark interrupted, bringing up two new puppets and having them and the two old oens grab what she'd made.

Magus tried to follow the motion of the giant bird through the sky, and soon realized that she was between it and the net. Taking a deep breath, she channeled a transposition spell, and when it did dive down at her, she teleported over past the net to get away. Then it was caught again, and they had a repeat of their first set of attacks. Only this time, Magus dove to the ground and grabbed some of the grass in her hands (like that would help) when it broke free and started flapping its wings at everyone. It turned out to not even be aiming the wind her way, so she stood back up again and brushed herself off when it took to the sky again, feeling slightly silly.

The bird in the sky looked somewhat indistinct; it didn't have much life left in it. It also looked to Magus like it was just circling around once in prepation to swoop down at them again.

"Um—" "—It's already diving!" Gemma said, confirming this suspicion. There hadn't been any time for Clark to weave another net, so they'd just have to dodge this one. Magus ran for the nearest wall, and Dr. Quinn raised up several puppets and had them run around the middle of the courtyard, seemingly to keep the monster's attention. This seemed to work well enough, the giant bird grabbing a few of the puppets and continuing up into the air to circle itself around yet again.

Clark seemed a little out of breath from bringing up so many puppets in a row. She wasn't about to have time to make more net this dive either, and it seemed likely the monster was going to just keep doing this. Maybe this was just what this kind did when they got damaged, and they'd all been lucky the day before to take that one out before it could fly again? Clearly something needed to be done to knock the thing out of the sky again, or damage its wings.

It was going to come for the center of the courtyard again, after some more of the puppets. Gemma was probably using light-and/or-shadow magic to hide the three of them and make the puppets seem like the only targets. Magus was pretty sure of the timing, and got started on a new spell. It would be moving fast, and her aim wasn't amazing, so it'd need to hit a wide area. A bolt of lightning really should be enough to knock a bird out of the sky, but that just wasn't how these monsters worked. However, they did need to follow the laws of physics to some extent. She just needed a physical hit, to give it enough momentum in the wrong direction.

With the idea for the spell solidly in her mind, she began making some of the first motions of it, channeling to make it as cheap to cast as possible. She needed to be ready to capitalize on the downed bird, after all, and there was no better use of the time spent waiting for it to actually dive. From there, it was just a matter of waiting for the timing to be right...

"Impact Wave!" Magus swung her sword in a sideways slice, left-to-right, sending out a wide wave of kinetic force—like what Lift's power could do sometimes. The monster dove right into the wave, catching it full in the side of its body; the momentum imparted to it sent it twisting sideways/forward through the air, losing control of its flight and crashing to the ground. All of this should have been great news, except that this sight came along with the sound of someone yelping in pain and then hitting the ground.

---

People-watching had never been a habit of Blake's before. But, sitting on a bench in the park, waiting around while invisible, there wasn't much else Light felt like doing. She needed as much of her attention as possible to notice the alert when the monsters showed up and respond to it immediately. And she needed to conserve all the energy she could for when that time came—and when it came again, and then a third time today.

It felt a little strange...maybe even wrong, to do this while invisible. But, at least, it was a relief to see normal people mostly just living their lives still. This...this was what everyone was fighting for. Someday, somehow, they would drive those things away for good and everything would...

Well, it probably wasn't exactly right to think that everything would go back to normal. But at least there would be a chance for everyone to live peacefully again.

At this point in her thoughts, the familiar noise came out of her phone, and she pulled it out immediately to look, hopping down onto her feet at the same time. There was an attack at the school—good, they had people there to take care of that. And there was one in the city, closer to her. It wasn't somewhere that monsters had shown up before, as far as she was aware, but with the map on her phone she was pretty sure she understood how to get there, and started quickly walking in the right direction while double-checking the surrounding area on her phone.

It was near a few businesses...and an elementary school. Well, that wasn't good, she thought, putting away her phone and picking up the pace into a proper run. Maybe they weren't going to go that way, and would focus on the people immediately around them—but it'd be best if a vixen was already there to greet them and hold their attention instead.

But...an elementary school...?

A terrible thought occured to Light. No, it wouldn't make any sense—these monsters didn't work like that, right? It had to be a coincidence. But still, that thought drove her to run a little bit faster.

---

So, hi, happy 2024 and all that. I've been doing a lot of "writing, but not publishing" lately, in some cases not releasing things because they just aren't finished, but sometimes (as in the case of this entry) because I kind of want to finish the next one after it so there won't be such a wait in between. But I got over it and decided to publish this anyway. I do hope to finish the next part soon, but no telling whether I actually will.

EDIT 1/21: Don't mind me, just plugging a minor plot hole with some extra sentences in the third paragraph...