Battle Vixens! - 124

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Episode 124: Low Visibility

Light took off at a slower run so Rory could keep up with her. The rain had picked up enough to be unpleasant, the drops condensing into a moderate fog at ground level. Nobody else seemed to be outside now, apart from a few cars passing in the opposite direction.

Rory said, "Hey, hold up." They were nearly to where their target was supposed to be, so Light felt slightly impatient—but heeded her anyway, sensing a warning in her tone.
"What is it?"
"Is it just me or...that fog looks darker, right?" she pointed, and Light looked. "As in..more black?"
"..No, you're right." Light went a little farther, turning a corner. The fog on the part of the street they were now facing was thicker and heavier, making it even more difficult to see very far—and, as Rory thought, its color was an unnatural, deep black that was all too familiar to both of them. She thought she could hear a faint hissing sound from ahead of them, too, just barely audible against the backdrop of constant rain.

"Soo...that's the stuff they're made out of, right?" Rory said. "Like how the dragon could breathe out 'itself'?"

"Looks like it..."
"And, Gemma didn't react too well to breathing that in."
"Not to mention when Magus got stung by similar 'poison'..."
"So, what do we do?"

Light looked around. "We're already breathing some of it in here. You feeling unwell?"
"Not yet. You?"
"...No."

"Maybe just one of us should head into that? Me?"

"If whatever's in there eats you, we're both screwed."

"It's no better if it gets you—just sayin'."

Light sighed. "I can at least move and react a little faster. I'll make some light above this stuff so you can see where I am. And—not likely, but if it relies on sight at all..."

"Okay okay, I'll stake out here for now. Let you know if I see anything you don't."
"..Okay." Light drew out one of Ning's swords and handed it to Rory. Then she lifted a hand, amplifying some of the light above her position—high enough to be past the dark fog—and making her own body invisible.

Taking some careful steps forward, she tried to listen through the rain. The hissing she'd thought she could hear before seemed to have stopped. She didn't feel any worse physically from breathing in the increasingly black mist, but it blocked out even more of the sunlight than the rain already did—besides, of course, making it difficult to see more than a couple of feet ahead. Maybe there was a way she could filter her vision to see through all of this.

"Light! Dodge left!"

A lot of things went through her mind at once, and were only fully put into words afterward. First, that voice was unfamiliar. Second, whoever owned the voice, her tone was extremely urgent. Third, it wasn't clear whose left she meant, and it wasn't clear whether or not actually following a stranger's advice was a good idea (at least, in terms of going that specific direction) because it could be a trap. But—finally—that didn't mean she couldn't react.

Light turned into light and shot herself upward, above the black haze she'd been standing in to roughly where her 'beacon' had been set. She turned her head downward and caught sight of something made of black mist and much more solid than that fog moving aggressively fast, from what would have been in front of her to behind her.

"Uh, up works too! Didn't know that was an option," the stranger's voice commented. Light allowed herself to land, turning around to face the monster she'd seen. It wasn't easy to see very much of it as it continued on, but its shape sort of resembled a large, bipedal lizard, and—most strikingly—the majority of its "skin" was covered in a bunch of irregularly-placed small mouths, every one of them gaping open with some small, sharp teeth visible inside them. Despite listening very intently, she could only barely hear the beast moving away from her as it slowed down but continued forward, disappearing from sight. Much more audible footsteps came from next to her, and their owner came close enough to see through the mist just about as she turned their way.

It was another vixen, with short, dark hair and similarly-colored fur, her build on the rather tall and muscular side. She was wearing jeans, a t-shirt with a stylized logo of an eye with a red "no" stamp over it, and perhaps most strikingly, a bunch of dark cloth tied around her head at eye-level as a blindfold. "Hiya. Glad you moved in time."

"..Me too." This was another member of No Evil...Light was pretty sure someone had said the blind one was called Braille? "Thanks." But what was she doing here?

"Heey, newbie!" Rory called. "You can see in that stuff?"

"Well, it's not exactly seeing," Braille started explaining.

"Just tell me where to swing this sword." Light could hear position of Rory's voice getting closer—she was walking into the fog.

Even though—again—she definitely couldn't see, the tall vixen turned her head Light's way as if to ask for confirmation. Light made a vague 'go-ahead' kind of gesture. "Where is it now?"

"Ahead of us...circling thatta way," she said, pointing. "I bet it's gonna charge this way again, especially with the two of us in one spot."

A brief glance upward confirmed that her beacon from before would be visible from ground level. "Rory—look up. Go where the...red light is, wait for Braille to say to move, then come get it," she said, placing that red light as she spoke.

"On it!" The blindfolded vixen also nodded her assent to this plan.

There was no obvious signal that the monster was in motion. Light could neither see nor hear anything, even as Braille visibly tensed up and then yelled "Go!" before diving away to the right. Light moved herself away in the opposite direction by about five times her best guess at the monster's size, turning around in the process to face it, and then threw her sword at it as it passed, landing a solid hit in its body. Rory appeared just on the other side of the moving shadow, slashing her sword two-handed straight through its body. With an unnatural suddenness, it twisted itself around and swiped at her with a clawed forefoot, which she backed away from; then Braille appeared behind it, raising a big axe with both her hands and giving it a hard chop down into the monster's back. Now it fled again, disappearing into the fog. "Hey! Coward!" Rory called after it, but of course it wasn't interested in her insults.

This encounter had given Light a slightly better look at the monster. Its entire body was covered in the strange miniature mouths, and she'd caught sight of the black mist they were standing in coming out of some of them—a process which also seemed to be the source of that faint hissing sound. Its actual mouth was fairly long and wide, like a shorter version of a crocodile's—big enough to bite someone in half. It walked with a severe hunch, mostly standing on hind legs whose feet looked sort of like they were webbed but sometimes bounding forward onto its forelegs, which ended with bigger, wider 'hands' which also sported webbing between their giant 'fingers', each of which ended in a deadly-looking spike of a claw.

"Let's stay apart this time," Light said. "Braille, let us know who it comes after." She closed her eyes and started working on a 'visual filter' for herself.
"Hey, uh, did I even introduce myself?"
"I've heard of you before. No Evil, right?"
"Yep! Lucy said you guys were in a bind, asked for a volunteer to come over. I figured since you all saved my life, maybe it'd be nice to meet up! Lucky thing too, I guess."

Ignore all of the light reflected by Rory, Braille, and that, she thought, picturing the monster.

Braille said: "Looks like it's after me this time. Doc Quinn, I'm on your, uh, left. Look that way...no, a little more—there. You hear a 'now', come running straight. 'Bout..ten or eleven steps for you."

"Yep!"

When Light opened her eyes, facing the direction Braille's voice had been coming from, she was able to see two deeper, humanoid shadows in the fog. They were blurry and the exact distance to them was difficult to gauge, but it definitely let her see them from much farther away than before. She worked on rearranging her vision slightly to make a brighter 'highlight' around each shadow so they'd stand out a little more. Braille said "Now!" and dove away, and Light was equally able to see a large, blurry shape moving quickly through the space she'd just occupied, along with Rory running up to slash through it again.

"Yeah, sure, run away again!" Dr. Quinn taunted. "It did you a lot of good last time."

Light moved herself next to the loud biologist. "Rory."
"Whoa, your eyes are glowing?"
"I'm filtering my vision. I'm gonna do the same for you, so we can see where it is."
"Wha—you can just do that?!"
"Yeah. It's..literally one of the first things I did when I first got these powers," she said, reaching a hand up to lightly touch a spot on one side of Rory's face, next to her left eye. "I just needed to figure out the right 'formula' first." Applying the same 'filter' for Rory resulted in a similar glow appearing around her eyes, too.
"Still, you could've mentioned this was an option before!"
"Sorry. Didn't really think about it at first."

Rory looked around, quickly identifying where their opponent was lurking. "Aha!" She grinned wide enough to show her fangs. "Now we can really go on the offensive."

"Yes, but be careful. There isn't a lot of light to work with in the first place, so this isn't perfect."

"Yeah, yeah." Rory hefted her blade, walking in the monster's direction. "You'll watch our backs, right Braille?"
"Of course!"

The hazer tried to circle as Rory approached, seemingly not 'noticing' that she could now see it. Of course—like always, the monster's behavior didn't really change. They never really 'learned' anything on an individual level, even if something like becoming an ambush predator seemed decidedly more intelligent than usual. Rory just turned with it, taking off into a bit brisker of a run, and then leapt and stabbed her weapon down into its body before yanking it out again, twisting to dodge.

Light moved herself to one side of the two of them, making sure she was in the right place before moving again to behind it. She threw her sword into the beast, making it turn around, and then teleported herself around to another side of it. Then she 'felt' for the electricity arcing through the clouds above and drew some of it down into a bolt of lightning into her sword and through the thing's body.

"Yeah! That's the stuff," Rory said, coming in from behind it again with a follow-up swing. She blocked the monster's retaliatory swipe with her weapon, then let go of it to jump away from another swipe from its other limb. Braille didn't miss out on the action either, finding a third angle to come in from with her axe and swinging it into the beast. While the hazer focused on turning around to strike back at Braille, Light moved herself next to Rory, resummoning the lost sword to hand it to her again. "Thanks!"

The three of them continued chipping away at it. Light picked a new direction to hit it from each time, always keeping her own distance and relying on sword-throwing and the occasional lightning strike from above. However, she noticed something slightly odd while the other two were fighting. It seemed like, sometimes, Rory or Braille would leap back away from an attack and wind up a little farther away than expected. Or the monster would run up and swing its arm, but come up just short on a strike that seemed to be coming from close enough to land a hit—or at least require its target to block. She even noticed her movement while 'being light' winding up slightly off-target a couple of times, and had to pause for a second to reorient herself when it happened. Most of this was beneficial, but it was still decidedly odd.

The hazer wasn't built for a fight like this, where its opponents always knew where it was. It had a lot of "mass" but seemingly spent up a lot of it making its characteristic fog. It kept trying to stalk off into the shadows, only to get a sword in its back or a slash in the side from one of the other two. It was only took a couple of minutes of this onslaught before its form started to look indistinct, and then it was one of Rory's sword swings that brought it down for good.

When the monster dissipated into some mist and blew away, the black fog that it had made seemed to go with it, all whirling together upward into the sky. Light took a deep breath, releasing the visual filter from herself and Rory, and then exhaled, letting go of the buff from Amp while she was at it. The others came to her.

"Whoo! Being in that junk makes me appreciate how nice normal fog is," Rory said. "But that was pretty fun once we could see the stupid thing!"
"It could've gone very badly, though—especially without your help," Light said to Braille. "Thank you."
The blind vixen grinned. "Hah, no problem! Glad I was as useful as I was. I don't have big flashy magic like most people, you know—my axe is all there is for attack."

"So—what's with the blindfold anyway?" Rory asked. "How do you 'see', exactly?"
"Um..to be honest, I don't know exactly how it works. I gotta admit I wasn't coming over just out of appreciation. We were hoping Gemma might be able to shine some light—so to speak—on what my power even is.

"All we know for now is that I have super...uh, wha'd Lucy call it...'proprioception'? Like, I'm just kinda aware of where stuff is around me, the same way most people are aware of where their limbs are without looking. The problem is it's so strong that I get overwhelmed and can't even walk straight if I combine it with normal vision. It's got this, like...wobbliness to it, that's easy to adjust to when it's by itself, but doesn't match quite right with where I see things being. Oh, and it seems like I give out some kind of minor..dodge buff aura? Like, everyone says it's easier to dodge attacks and stuff when I'm around."

"I noticed that too," Light said, nodding slightly. "Well, she probably wouldn't mind..." She trailed off, interrupted by her phone ringing, and got it out to answer. It was Magus.

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"We've got a high-threat group all in one place—one of those turtles with support—and a few class 1's spread out around the rest of town. Petra, Karis—you're with us. Sam, bring Warp and Tora, meet up with Zeno; Nico, Hugo and Fay are on the other side of town. Clean them up as quick as you can, then group up with us. We're on our way over now."

Rowan drove out to near where their opponents would be, occasionally glancing over at Cynthia, or at Dawn through the rear-view mirror. The redhead had her arms crossed and was staring straight out the front windshield into the rain, while the vixen in the backseat was pointedly looking away from her, out of the side window. Both of them were silent, and the mood between them was tense. Warp had perhaps exaggerated the intensity, but something was definitely wrong with both of them.

Was bringing them out to fight really the best choice right now? Rowan didn't think leaving them at headquarters to stew would be any better for them, and with what everyone was up against, they couldn't really afford to be down two fighters. Anyway, Cynthia would just turn her anger on him if he decided to exclude them from helping, and if she went, then Dawn was going, too.

He was hedging his bets on who to bring besides the two of them. Petra and Karis were very tough; Remedy could heal anyone who got hurt; and Rowan himself had good defenses against both fire and ice, especially with all this rain around to help. He'd have brought Warp along too, to teleport people out of danger, if not for her express request to be kept away.

Would this turn out to be yet another mistake of his? It was hard to completely shake off his doubts. Even with how careful he was being, there was always the possibility. But it was always true: No amount of planning could fully account for everything that might go wrong. He would just have to fight as hard as he could, in the moment, to protect them. From the monsters, and from each other or themselves if necessary.

The car stopped and everyone got out, Rowan speaking his phrase along the way to shift forms. Then she led the way to where the monsters were going to be. Through the noise of the rain, they could hear another car pulling up, the doors opening and shutting.

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Taking guesses now as to exactly what Braille's powerset really is/how it works.