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.

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.