Battle Vixens! - 132

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(Recommended listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G0u13COALA )

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Episode 132: Rainbow in the Dark

By now, the many bodies of the "army" had fully surrounded the two vixens. They stepped closer, readying the weapons that were their arms and hands. But Magus looked Light's way, and as she held her sword in one hand and reached out the other to the sky, she was grinning. That could mean only one thing: She was about to do something awesome.

When there's lightning...

A bolt of lightning struck the palm of her hand, scattering itself out from there across the entire mass of the monsters surrounding them. A little bit of it was left behind, in the form of Ning's sword. No sooner had it formed than she went out into the crowd, dancing in a circle with both weapons around and between, under and above the beasts' attempts to strike or block, slashing through every one of them as she went. The weapons seemed weightless in her hands, and the monsters' bodies offered no resistance to their motion, as if they were back to being the wispy clouds they had first formed from.

Magus's orb followed along behind her like it was supposed to, but she noticed something else—something unusual. A blue glow seemed to surround the edge of each sword's blade, and it was that glow which seemed to cut through their bodies before the physical blades even had a chance to make contact. The wounds it made sent out enormous eruptions of black mist; this loss of mass was enough for some of them to instantly dissipate, and some of those that didn't still fell physically apart, as if the cut had actually severed their bodies into two pieces. That wouldn't be so weird if not for the knowledge that vixens' weapons usually couldn't do that to those monsters—aside from a few specific exceptions like hydras and mouthtopi.

Seeing that everything was working as intended, Magus let go of her sword and slumped carefully onto the ground, turning over to lie on her side instead of eating dirt. Every bit of her energy and concentration needed to be directed toward keeping that big, bright orb alive as long as possible. She'd said they were going to make it before, but there had definitely been a tinge of false bravado to it; she hadn't really wanted to confront the possibility of failure, or what it would mean for her personally. But now...it felt like she'd been right all along.

...I cry out for magic...

Light came back next to Magus, and then a quick recital of Rowan's phrase, and a swipe with Ning's blade, brought rainwater down from the sky, up from the ground, and in from the air around them together into a collection of waves, which pushed out into the crowd of monsters, knocking them over and forcibly carrying them away, sweeping them around to the direction they'd all came from. A couple of natural bolts of lightning from the clouds above were siezed and thrown into the water and through the monsters' bodies, before she finally let go of the waves again, stopping to gasp for air and take in some more of the summon's light.

She glanced down at Magus's prone form. "Still..with us?"
"Y-yeah.."

She smiled. "Thank you."

"Hahah..n-no problem...any...anytime."

---

...There's no sign of the morning coming...

It was time.

Quinn sent the last few super-strong puppets forward, clashing them against the tank's latest attempt to charge. They kept on shoving it back as the monster's limbs whipped and stabbed into them, until they finally fell apart. She lifted her weapon one more time and threw it off of the needle again into the thing's face, the impact knocking it a little farther back and the eruption of thread producing another satisfying explosion of black mist.

Then she stepped apart. Clark gasped heavily, stumbling around and nearly toppling over before Rory caught her and propped her upright so she could regain her footing. The white mist of Amory's power leaving her came up off of Clark, but Rory held onto her own boost tightly, quickly whispering her husband's phrase to borrow her power.

Clark pulled herself upright, taking the needle out of her ear and handing it to Rory. "S...hhfh.."
"Hmm? You got something to say, dear?"
"Survff...hff.." She reached a hand all the way up to Rory's shoulder, gripping it hard, and looked her in the eyes with a severe, serious look. "Survive." If the Giver thought she was some kind of curse-maker, then—just this once—she wanted to be able to grant a blessing instead.

Rory nodded, giving back a reassuring smile. "Will do. Now shoo! Get yourself outta the firing line. I can't go all out with you in my space."

"Hffh...alright." Clark started off with a slight stumble, but soon managed to get going in a run, off in the opposite direction from the tank.

...You've been left on your own...

Rory turned toward her opponent. "Alright, ugly. Just you and me now."

However, it hadn't been idle while they were having their moment. Five other monsters stood between her and the tank. "..And your friends," she amended. "Okay then!"

Dr. Quinn ran forward, grabbing the first monster by the leg and tossing it into the next. They clumped together, starting to fuse, and she picked up the mid-fusion monster in both hands, swung it around, and threw it into the tank's mouth. The next two she threw higher, making one crash into its teeth and the other stick itself uncomfortably into the part of the beast's face that was missing a lot of eyes thanks to Quinn's hammer. The last one she leapt and punched, making it roll back toward the tank and slam into its chin.

The tank rumble-roared again, its spawn sinking into its skin as it began to charge. Rory landed from that punch into a continued run, intercepting the monster before it had gathered the momentum to go faster than a human's walk and punching it three times: "No—you—don't!" She was pumping everything she had into speed for the run, then snapping it all into strength for each hit. Now she could hear the monster's limbs coming down at her, so she put it into speed/defense, dodging the first two before catching an upward swing to the chest that sent her flying back and landing hard on the ground several yards back.

"Hh..hahah!" She sat up, and stood up, waving a hand over her slightly bruised front torso. Clark's power made the hand glow, healing the injury. "That actually kinda hurt!" she said, smiling defiantly. "Now we're serious!"

Her husband's voice echoed in her mind: Survive. Right—survive, and live to enjoy what would come after. Tonight, and tomorrow, and the rest of her life that she wanted to live. It felt like she was a little tougher, a little faster, just from thinking about it.

The monster drew its limbs back and tossed out some more cannon fodder for her. So she steadied herself, then took off at a sprint. Time to do it again.

---

...Do your demons, do they ever let you go?...

Thad's driving was terrifying. Emma squeaked slightly when he rammed right past a red light, then went halfway across the intersection before jerking the wheel in his hands to make the car swing around to the left, stomping on the accelerator the instant it was facing the right way to start off down the road. It was true that she wanted to get there as fast as possible, but it especially bothered her that he seemed to be enjoying this!

She tried to reassure herself that, even if he wound up crashing the car into a building or something, she could toughen herself, heal any critical wounds he got, and hopefully walk away with both of them alive. Then she got out her phone, just to try to focus on something else right now, and turned it on. There was relief, then a slight shock of panic: It was undamaged—probably since she'd restrained her throw to avoid making a hole in the wall of Amory's apartment—but she also had...ten missed calls, and five messages in voicemail. She shuddered slightly, looking at those notifications, but then gritted her teeth and went to listen to some of them anyway. She really needed to not be thinking about how fast the vehicle she was in was moving through the very-not-highway streets. So, from least to most recent...

"Emma, darling!" Her eldest sister April had left the first message. "I saw the video—is that really you? I mean, I know I said you might be a late bloomer, but I didn't expect this late, or that much blooming."

"What, you jelly?" Beverly's voice said afterward, sounding a little more filtered, like through two layers of phone instead of one. "I mean, she could just about model your designs, riiight?" So this was...some kind of conference-call setup involving more than one of her siblings.

"Are we seriously not gonna talk about her punching a demon in the faaaace!?" Atlas cut in, loudly and quickly. "Like, wham!" One could easily imagine his fist slamming into an open palm. "I didn't think super strength was in your powerset, but that big wolf-thing went flying!" If he was in on the call too, it was probably all six of them.

"What's it feel like to touch one, anyway?" Ben asked. "Is it solid like a rock, or—spongy? Like does your hand sink into it? Do they have fur?"
"Let's try to focus here, huh?" And now it was Carrie. "Now listen up, Emma—some of us tried calling you to see if you were all right, but clearly everyone doing that at once was just gonna overwhelm you..."

"Oh, yeah, like you weren't the first one!"
"Shush, Bev. So—when you didn't answer, we had the bright idea—"
"My idea!" Doris said insistently.
"—the idea to just do it all at once!"
April said: "...And let you know we're proud of you. You're so much more amazing than any of us could've imagined, staring down those unsightly things—"
"And punching them in the face!" Atlas interrupted.

This was followed by a bunch of disorganized chattering. Emma could make out a little more than half of what everyone was saying, and she could manage as much as that only because she had a decent amount of experience with her siblings doing this exact thing, quite often, every time the family was all together.

April cleared her throat emphatically to quiet everyone down. "Please, do call any of us back whenever you feel ready. We'd love to chat!"

...

Her parents had made their own call, with much the same sentiment. "Really, it's fine you kept it a secret. It's a pretty hard thing to admit to, right?"
"You're so brave, dear..."

...Is it someone that you know?...

One message had been left through the VI app: "Gemma, this is Simon! My compliments on your reveal! —Ow, Karis!" (She seemed to have hit him.) "I'm well aware it was unintentional, but you couldn't have announced yourself in a better light if I'd planned it! I mean, jumping in front of a crowd to save someone, that's downright genius! Anyhow, I just wanted to let you know that I'm available, if you'd like some sage advice on dealing with newfound fame. In fact, the entire VI's PR department is at your disposal—or at least, as much of them as I can muster—which is quite a lot! Just gimme a ring!"

...

A second one had, too: "Emma, this is Ezekiel...Dr. Bridges. We, only met briefly the other day, but—in light of recent events, I wanted to make certain you were aware. If, you need someone to talk to—confidentially, I mean, about anything at all, the VI has resources available. There's no need to call me, I know you don't know me, but you could get in contact with Rowan, or perhaps Simon, to arrange something. Just—be aware that you don't have to deal with these things all on your own. There's no shame in asking for help."

...

Finally, a number she didn't recognize. "Emma." But she knew the voice immediately. "Be careful out there. I don't want to see you in surgery. And, don't break my son's heart, alright?"

Thad's voice cut in just as she was finishing the last one: "Hey, we're almost—you okay?" he interrupted himself.

Emma realized she had a few tears coming down her cheeks again—surprising; she really thought she'd run dry by now. "Uh—I'm fine. Just, I realized I'm kinda stupid—like always," she said.

"Can't say I agree with that. But—we're almost there, so I thought you might wanna get ready to jump out?"
"Um...r-right." She put away the phone, wiped her face on a sleeve and took in a sharp sniff to try and make her nose quit running. "I'm ready."

She'd spent all afternoon refusing to look—refusing to listen. She'd been so terrified of what everyone was going to say. But the only thing they really wanted to do was tell her the obvious, something she should've realized—should've known—to begin with. She'd purposely isolated herself, thinking she just needed...or really, just wanted to be alone, but the truth was just the opposite. It was really that she'd felt alone. Like nobody else could ever understand.

And all any of them wanted to do was help her, support her, encourage her! Let her know that she wasn't alone!

The whole time Amory had been there, it was only kindness in his eyes and his voice. He'd probably wanted to give her that hug from the start, and he'd finally taken his chances at the last moment, just as she was leaving—and all she'd been able to think about was how much she didn't deserve it. Amory was always like that—she'd practically expected him to put up with her at her worst, and felt even guiltier when he did. But Blake...

The idea of a "hero" was a complicated thing for him. But all the same, him calling someone else a hero was the highest compliment he could give. He hadn't said that right away, but at the end—after she'd blown up at him. The terrible thought had overtaken her mind that he only cared about her as long as she was useful, so she'd tried to use that to push him away...and he'd practically ignored that, just to tell her that he was still on her side—even if she wasn't.

Maybe, in the end, all of her worst thoughts were true. Maybe she was a pathetic, awful, selfish, useless waste of a person. But as long as so many people thought she was worth something, as long as they just wanted to help her—as long as she wasn't alone, she could at least try to do the same for someone else. If nothing else, Beryl—the Watcher—had known this about her all along: If Rory was going to be alone without her, and might not survive because of that—then she couldn't just sit around and do nothing anymore!

---

"Whoa..do you...feel that?!" Magus wasn't sure what it was—except for a strong pull, a sharp tug.

Light nodded. "Emma...needs her power back."
"Th-then, hey, let's give it! I mean, dude—I'm not usin' it anymore."
"Yeah..." With the same words that had granted Magus temporary use of Gemma's powers, Light revoked that and sent them back to their owner.

Magus could feel her body shrinking slightly and weakening significantly; it was an unpleasant and kind of sick feeling. But at the same time, it was a massive relief—she felt like a swarm of bees had finally left her brain!

The monsters had recovered their feet after the wave by now, many of them helping the others to get up faster, and they were moving toward the two vixens again, a steady march now developing into a headlong rush. Light took up her swords again, taking a few slow steps forward before beginning to build momentum, and soon her speed matched that of the approaching army. She crashed into them with the same dance of blades as before, and they chose to surround her rather than continuing toward Magus—clearly intent on removing the 'real threat' first. Good thing they weren't smart enough to know the source of her present burst of power.

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...You're just a picture...

A hard, running-jumping kick landed where the monster's nose should be (but it was just more eyes), and then Rory's leg was grabbed by one of the thing's tentacles. Another one struck its spike out at her while she was hanging upside-down, and she couldn't do better than boost her defense and take it. It tore through her armor but bounced off her stomach, and she grabbed that limb in her arms, using it to yank herself out of the other one in a way that badly sprained her ankle. Then she let go as it whipped violently to try and throw her off—letting herself be thrown, healing herself in midair, and landing in a brief roll before standing up again.

"Come on!" Somehow she'd managed to really get its attention on her by now, enough for it to no longer keep aiming for the city, but instead actually spend time awkwardly turning before trying to charge right at her. And Rory was mentally perpared to do it all again, even if her muscles were getting sore and her body was begging her to relinquish Amp's boost. They were just fighting another stupid hydra back in the city, right? How long could that possibly take?

As it took its first steps forward, Rory getting ready to charge herself, something different happened. A bunch of spindly, thin shapes rushed up from the ground on either side of the tank, winding themselves around its many spiky legs. Some were made of shadow, some of stone, some of metal, some of the rainwater soaking the ground and the air around them. A series of bolts of lightning struck down from the sky into its body one after another, sending an eruption of black mist steaming off of it as it leaned its enormous weight back and forth and whipped its limbs around wildly, trying to break free of the bonds.

Looking to one side, Rory found a certain pair of vixens, one holding up her left arm while the other held up her right. "Emma?!" There was a distinct glow coming out of both bodies—one a darker gray and the other much brighter—vaguely similar to the blazing aura Light had had around her while in "rage mode".

...We're a lie, you and I...

To be perfectly honest, Rory had not expected Emma's help tonight—not at all. But it felt wrong to admit to that, especially in the face of some serious relief she was feeling about not having to charge at that thing and risk getting eaten or stabbed or crushed yet again. So she quickly followed up the surprised exclamation of her name with: "What took you so long?" pretending to have the confidence in that girl that...maybe she should've had all along.

"Oh, you know—" "—panic, stress—" "—anxiety, self-loathing—" "—literally arguing and fighting with myself—" "—so...um, j-just the usual stuff." The water-limbs made some loud cracking sounds as they steadily froze into solid chunks of ice, and as soon as they were frozen, Emma brought up some more, making it even harder for the monster to free itself.

Rory took the opportunity to get out her husband's weapon and start quickly weaving a rope with it. "Heheh...i-is that all?"

"Well um...—" "—I, also left my car on campus—" "—and had to get a ride."

"Oh, yeah—that'll do it."

---

Light allowed herself to be surrounded. Better than those things getting to Magus, to kill or eat her. The crush of their bodies came steadily closer and closer, more of them encroaching no matter how many she knocked away or cut down. She tried to get herself together to change into light and move away again, but she was getting increasingly exhausted; it was going to require channeling, and concentration. There were too many weapons coming at her, too fast, from too many angles...

...You've been left on your own...

Then, suddenly, there weren't. The water all around her had raised itself up, forming a multitude of thorned limbs, grabbing and binding the monsters where they stood. In the direction she'd come from—beyond which was where Magus was still lying down—they went as far as to pick up the monsters and throw them aside, clearing out an aisle wide enough for a person to comfortably walk through. Rowan was on the other side of that crowd in her tall, commanding Amp-lified form, her left hand raised to maintain and control all of those limbs. She calmly-yet-briskly walked through the parting of the army that she'd made. "I should have departed sooner," she said, her ears folded back slightly and her usual near-monotone voice conveying a certain level of doubt, of uncertainty, of regret.

"Nah—you're just in time," Light said, taking a small step in Rowan's direction. Smiling again, she let go of her swords and held out her right hand palm-up, like she was asking for a dance. As it had been with Ning earlier that day, both of them understood what she was asking for without words—and Rowan accepted immediately, placing her free hand on Light's. When Light spoke the other vixen's phrase once again, this handshake brought them together—light shining and water flowing into a spot in between them to reform into single, two-tailed form. Her clothes were a mixture of Rowan's elegant dress and Light's more tomboyish outfit, her form tall, strong, beautiful and imposing. Her hair and ears were a bright, pale blue, her eyes glowing a brilliant, emerald green. Her expression was a somewhat muted version of Light's confident grin from before.

You. Will not...

With a wave of her right hand, the limbs of water gathered together, forming the shape of a gargantuan water-dragon, its teeth made of Rowan's sword. It swallowed up over half of the monsters inside its body, keeping its mouth partially closed to tear through them as they passed into its mouth.

...Stop us.

A motion of her left hand gathered a majority of the light coming out of Magus's orb into a much thinner, longer dragon made of pure white light, eight short legs appearing at even intervals down the length of its body. Like Zeno's walls, this was "hard light"—more than solid enough for it to rush through the air and curl itself around the rest of the army, squeezing them together like a gigantic constrictor. Its claws—made from Light's blade—tore into their trapped bodies, immediately destroying a number of them.

...Like a rainbow in the dark...

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...Just a rainbow in the dark!

Rory threw her rope, weaving it around one of the monster's legs around the middle of one side, near the leg's joint. "Help me pull!" she called, yanking it down. When Plus started toward her, she clarified: "Not the rope, the legs!"
"Huh?—" "—Oh!" Minus seemed to realize first, with Plus an instant behind, and both of them released most of the bindings around the monster's other side to instead send a bunch of new ones up around its legs. Both bodies used both hands to gesture back, making the various elementally-formed limbs pull against the monster's attempt to rock itself in the opposite direction, push back with its "arms", and do just about anything else to keep from toppling. She even managed to make the ground under it tilt just a little bit...

And then, abruptly, the entirety of the land under the monster, to a depth of several feet, flipped sideways, all at once. "Whoa!" Rory hadn't expected Emma to be capable of that, even in her present state, and dropped her rope, stumbling back slightly, as the monster rolled over onto its side. But then, it turned out that this hadn't been Emma's doing at all.
"That was what you were after, right?" Simon—Petra—called from nearby. "Hah, look at it skitter around! Just like an upside-down turtle if not for those tentacle-things."

"Less gloating, more killing!" Karis said, coming up next to her and pointing emphatically at their biggest problem.

"Right right!"

Plus and Minus managed to simultaneously exchange a glance with Rory, and then both of them released everything else to instead focus a bunch of limbs on grabbing and binding the beast's "arms". A couple of them managed to evade these restraints at first, reaching into the thing's back and yanking out some of its mass to toss out as a couple of low-grade monsters.

"Aha, targets for me!" Tora ran up immediately, slashing her claws into a snakewolf. It started chasing her, and she disappeared, reappearing above it to land claws-down into its body. Karis went after the other one, Remedy's gauntlet appearing on her arm as she leapt into the air and punched down into the gryphon's body, destroying it immediately.

A net of metal wire teleported into place above the tank's forelimbs as they broke free of Emma's efforts and threw out another couple of smaller monsters, falling onto them and tangling them together in its grip. Rory ran up and grabbed one end of that net, pulling back; Sam appeared on the opposite side and grabbed the other.

Now that other people were doing the hard work of keeping the monster sideways and bound, Emma turned her attention to actually hurting it. She flung one weapon after another at the beast as it thrashed around and roared, trying anything and everything to get itself free. Petra was pelting it with spikes of rock; Dawn and Cynthia had appeared at some point too—the former throwing roughly-made chunks of sharp ice while maintaining a rough two walls and "ceiling" of ice around the former, so she could gather and throw out one fireball after another. As Hugo walked into view behind Petra, the tank's next roar seemed to mute itself midway through, the sound crashing back into and through its body to send out another stream of black mist off of it. Opposite Emma and Rory's position, Zeno was shooting a volley of light-arrows into its underside. And a sense of energizing relief washed over everyone as some of Nico's trees sprouted up from the ground closer to the city freshly plowed by the monster's feet.

---

When a number of the army managed to swim and struggle themselves free of the water-dragon, and the light-dragon's victims squeezed and pushed into each other to allow some of them to jump free, the fused vixen simply dismissed both of them, returning her weapons to her hands, and strode forward. The water the dragon had been made of gathered around her into a multitude of limbs, each one holding a "copy" of Light's sword and using it to slash into the approaching monsters; the light-dragon's components turned into a ring-shaped halo floating several feet above her head, the concentrated light erupting out of it into lasers that each pierced through several of the army's bodies at a time.

...When I see lightning...

A bolt of lightning struck down toward her from above, splitting as it hit the halo and forking out, amplifying along the way into so many bolts each the same size as the original one; each one found its mark, the majority of the struck monsters falling apart instantly. Only—the two-tailed vixen hadn't done that. Looking around, she spotted the person responsible quickly enough—her body lit up in the night by stray sparks running all across it and out through some of the rain falling around her. "Ning?! I was under the impression you felt too out-of-control to fight."

"Yeah, well—I thought maybe it'd be good for me to let loose a li'l bit—under the circumstances?" she said, amplifying the stray sparks around her into some more bolts, having them strike into a bunch of the monsters nearest her. "What d'you say, partner?"

She nodded. "Let's finish them." And punctuated this by shouting Ning's phrase, granting her the rest of her power back.

...Feel the magic, I feel it floating in the air...

The fused vixen spred her arms wide, re-forming the two dragons and using them to pull the army together just as before. Then she became light/water and moved/flowed herself over to one side of Ning and a yard or two away—just outside of accidental-shock range. She turned her head the other vixen's way and nodded to her.
While she raised her hand and drew together the electricity in the clouds above, beginning to send one bolt down after another into the dragons and their captives, Ning yelled over the noise of all the resulting thunder: "So, what do you call yourself?"
"What do you mean?"
"Y'know, your cool fusion name?!"

"Oh, that." What did light and water had in common? Her thoughts went back to when Braille was talking about how her powers seemed to work—about seeing the ocean. That was enough to come up with a reasonable title: "Wave."
"Sweet!"

...There's no sight of the morning coming...

The dragon made of light, and the flashes from Ning's bolts, were the only bright things around now—Magus's summon either spent up or dismissed. She had passed out not long after losing the powers borrowed from Emma, but she was still alive and breathing—just exhausted. A fraction of Wave's concentration was devoted to keeping the heavy rain off of and away from her so she wouldn't drown or get too cold.

---

...There's no sight of the day...

As with Quinn's net before, the tank showed itself capable of untangling its front limbs from the metal net annoyingly quickly, and then it managed to title itself back to being upright. Sam was already hard at work making another net; Rory staggered off to one side, panting heavily, as her body finally insisted on relinquishing Amp's boost despite all protests from her mind. Turning to look, she saw it finish throwing out some more minions, which meant...

"It's gonna charge again!" she called out.

"Oh really?" Petra stomped, raising a wall in front of the monster as it started trying to pick up speed. "We'll see about that!" She lifted her arms into an MMA sort of readt stance, and a pair of stone fists rose up just behind the wall to match her own. When the tank crashed through the wall, it met a one-two punch from those fists, sending it sliding backwards. It dug its feet into the ground to stop once again, so Petra dropped the fists and tilted its footing back and forth to ruin its balance.

Karis and Tora took down the beasts it had thrown off of itself, so everyone else continued focusing fire on the tank as the ground under it kept tilting it this way and that. Sam reappeared in front of it to toss another net out and tangle up its limbs, and Emma took the opportunity to stike some lightning down through the steel wires and hit all across the front of its body.

This was the first time Rory's vixen form had ever felt truly tired. It registered as "I've had a great workout, and now I need to stop or else I'll pull or sprain something." She decided that she probably wasn't strictly needed right now, and put some distance between herself and the fight before taking a seat on the ground to rest. Some brief poking with Clark's needle found no particular injury—just the physical exhaustion she was already well aware of.

...You've been left on your own...

Emma had bought her a couple of minutes of not having to fight at a hundred percent. There had been just five or so minutes of the two of them working together against the tank until more help arrived, instead of Rory alone. She would've exhausted herself sooner without that help—by her own estimation, she'd probably have felt this spent a minute or two before the city's vixens had arrived. Which meant they likely would've arrived to one of a few tragic and unpleasant sights. Best-case, she'd be badly injured and collapse at the last moment; worst-case, they'd be up against her "nightmare", and/or a very enraged Clark.

She...had come to not really like that girl much, at some point. Sure, their first meeting was fighting a couple of gryphons together to protect a hospital, but the second one was when she'd been so selfish and insecure, so completely unable to just get over herself, that she'd threatened and then attacked Light for no actual good reason. Even as recently as this afternoon, she'd thought of Emma as mentally weak for not just gritting her teeth and returning to the fight, no matter what she was dealing with in her personal life. But obviously, that was wrong. Maybe she hadn't actually said anything too unpleasant to her, but at the same time...perhaps an apology was in order. Or at the very least, a proper thank-you.

The attack on the tank continued. Between Petra, Sam, and Gemma's efforts, it had very little opportunity to do anything but roar and thrash around—and its own roars were turned against it anyway. Everyone else took down its minions when they came, or kept tearing into it. It took some time to damage it down until it was indistinct, but with everyone working together it felt like something of a foregone conclusion.

...Like a rainbow...

By coincidence, the last blow went to Emma—one last lightning strike dissipating it into black mist and finally ending the excessively prolonged fight.

---

Wave exhaled, dropping her arms and dismissing the two dragons. She took up her swords in those hands and lifted them again, taking a small step forward. Of the entire army—a single monster made of so many bodies they had once been too numerous to properly count—there were only six left. She could take these down with some simple melee.

Ning drew the twin swords she'd formed that morning, glanced between the two of them, and then tossed one of them forward, breaking it apart into a forward strike of lightning as it came close to the lot of them; it arced through half of them, immediately destroying them. So—make that just three. She then called down a bit of lightning again into that hand, reforming it into her old sheath before dropping it to the ground and taking the remaining sword in both hands, striding forward next to Wave.

The last three fell in one strike each—one from a single swing of each of Wave's weapons, and then Ning stabbing her blade into the last one, kicking the hilt to drive it in farther before exploding it into a shower of sparks to dissipate the very last of the army.

...You're a rainbow in the dark!

Now that the job was done, Wave immediately stepped apart. Light had worn out her boost from Amp at some point before Rowan's arrival, and she stood still for about half a second after coming out of the fusion before suddenly passing out and collapsing backwards, Ning hurrying to catch her before the back of her head could strike the ground. Rowan took in and out a deep breath, releasing her own boost—knowing how to do so 'safely' from Wave having thought about it at some point—and then turned to face them. "...I knew we were overdoing it."

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This is it! This is the episode that I've been planning for quite a long time. We're stretching the gimmick of episode titles also being song titles as far as I'm willing to go with it here; in every other case, you aren't meant to think of the actual song, but in this case I'm invoking the lyrics deliberately.
It does occur to me that the actual message of the song is more fitting for the events that precede this episode, but I think it's no less fitting to use the song as a theme of coming out of that desperate situation. Listening to this song, and imagining the events of this episode, has been one of my ways of motivating myself to keep going, just so I could reach this moment in the story. Don't worry, I still have plans for what comes after, but I'm still really happy to finally write this particular part.

There are lots of ideas and back-references in play here, not all of which completely came from me. Like: Someone commented that Light hasn't been smiling very much lately, and I thought "yeah, I can use that." So that became properly canon in Episode 123, so I could bring things back around here. Someone guessed at some point that Magus would be a hopeful, optimistic foil to Light being the more experienced but also worn-out and stressed hero, and at the time I thought "probably not", but that idea is also very much on display in these last few episodes. I had to restrain my fingers (the typing equivalent of "biting one's tongue") when someone guessed about when Thad would get a mask, because I knew this event was when that was going to happen.

Anyway, this is the last of the run of episodes I have prepared at this time. I do want to get to the denouement of this whole thing (and the lead-in to what's coming after), but maybe so many updates of only this story will annoy or at least concern people interested in other things that I write here. So I may take a break and work on some of those instead; we'll see.