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.