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I know, it's been a while since the last caption, but let this at least be proof that I at least haven't stopped writing them. This one's ending took me a few rewrites to be semi-happy with.

Battle Vixens! - 72

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Episode 72: The Twin Dragons

It was not another hydra that descended from the air to assault the VI's base. It was dragon, much like the one that Light's group had taken down earlier that week...with Amp's help.

The giant, flying beast landed hard enough to collapse concrete and shake the ground Rowan stood on, and it roared a challenge that seemed directed right at her. She stood firm, drawing some of the water around her up into a solid dome of a shield with several long, thin tentacles writhing out from its surface. When the dragon drew its head back and snapped forward, breathing out mist that formed smaller monsters and threatened to disorient any who breathed it in, Rowan sent out a crashing wave in reply, normal water vapor pushing the mist away while the rest of the water reached out as short-lived tentacles to pick up the dragons' spawn and slam each one into the ground, dissipating it.

Seeing that it wasn't going to be as easy as that, the dragon took one step forward, then another. Rowan raised her sword, pointing the tip at it with her eyes narrowed; the limbs on her shield combined into a single long, thick one that reached forward to whip against the monster's muzzle and try to drive it back. It didn't so much as flinch from the impact, instead beginning to pick up speed toward her. When it threatened to get too close for comfort, Rowan leapt into the air, pushing water up into a column below her, gaining enough height to clear the top of the dragon and land behind its back in a hard forward roll along the uneven, broken ground.

She recovered her feet as the dragon turned around to face her—thankfully its target prioity was her first, and whatever was behind the VI's front doors after. But as she stood there, panting, it was terribly clear that throwing around so much water so often was overextending the usual scope of her powers. She wouldn't be holding off the giant beast for very long doing things like this.

But this was where her real plan came in. It was something that she'd thought of after hearing what Tenpo said the night before. I just need more time was a thought of desperation, but not revenge, anger or hatred, and yet it had been sufficient to grant her a power boost for a limited period. The Giver had explained to Light that emotions granted power, and that destructive emotions destroyed...but that didn't mean that there weren't other emotions to latch onto, other simple statements one could so keenly feel that it would empower her in sufficiently desperate situation.

That was why she didn't want any help at first. No distractions, no allies to make it seem like she stood a good chance of success. Rowan had now successfully manipulated herself into a desperate position. Now it was time to see if that risk was going to pay off. But first, in the last few seconds of the unnatural sense of emotional calm that her vixen form usually seemed to provide, she reminded herself of one thing...

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The timing was almost comical.

Ning was in the middle of asking where the giant worm made of black mist was going to come back up from underground when it loudly burst out from under her, throwing concrete and rock out on all sides. One three-thousandth of a second she was there, and the next she was just gone, the black, indistinct mass in her place swiftly towering beyond the upper range of Emma's vision.

A kind of helpless squeak came from her throat as she stared up at it all, wide-eyed, but then she split, diving away to both sides at once, before she really even knew why. The front end of the giant worm slammed down straight into the ground she'd just been standing on, and then it ran along the ground, twisting its gaping maw toward Plus, who landed in a run and just kept running—the other body keeping her distance as well. In the middle of its pursuit, the thing began to pulse with electricity, sparks arcing in a spiral around its body, but after a moment it jerked abrutply off to one side for no apparent reason, the current flickering around randomly and even seeming to hurt it briefly as some of the mist composing it steamed off, before returning to the spiral shape as the worm's trajectory turned back down into the earth.

Plus turned to face it as it sank back into the ground, panting heavily. She felt sick. Angry, panicked. More than a few of her thoughts were in the tenor of How could I let this happen?! The rest of her mind had a feeling of raw, painful rage threatening to swallow it all up. But that wasn't...

Minus swallowed hard, and Plus gasped, forcibly catching her breath. There was a faint aura, flickering like fire, just beginning to be visible around each body: A lighter gray around Plus and a darker one for Minus. Emma knew what this was; she'd seen it happen to Light in news footage of when that six-armed thing ate her. It was what had happened to Tenpo to very nearly stop time on one of Japan's islands for an entire day. It was "snapping", a temporary, self-destructive power boost that was supposed to help vixens fight things that ate their friends. But it came with a price—that whole 'self-destructive' part; plus it made the empowered feel invincible, reckless with the single-minded goal of revenge.

That's not what I need!

Emma pushed back against it all: The panic, the rage, and especially the guilt trip. She needed more power and especially stamina right now, yes, but she really needed to focus. This monster was eerily silent compared to the others: No victory screech when it ate Ning, no aggressive roaring. For being a gigantic worm, it was impossibly stealthy. But—with two vantage points—she could hear where its movements were loudest and quietest underground and use that to sort of calculate where it was as it now began to rise back up out of the ground.

She held on to the panic and rage tightly, reining it in, keeping it under control—but not releasing it entirely. She needed that power, but not the recklessness, so she took hold of her own mind, her very own emotions, the same way she controlled every other thing her powers let her do, and kept them just on the edge—like some kind of zen meta-thinking trick. Minus backflipped away a few seconds before the worm was going to burst out of the ground under her, and threw a volley of every dagger she had access to, plus some kunai and bullets, all at it, vanishing all of them into light with the opposite of Shuriken's power until it appeared and then releasing them all at once to strike the side of its head as it rose up out of the ground.

Minus kept backing away as it rose up, some of the electricity which twisted around it gathering into a bolt and firing down at her. That worm had Ning's power, and along with it total control over the electricity around it, but nevertheless she was able to catch the lightning when it came within a couple of inches of her, practically holding it between her hands and fighting its natural inclination to go through her just successfully enough to instead thrust it down into the ground. She was slightly burned but not electrocuted as a result, so she turned and ran, letting Plus's eyes guide her into the right timing to dive away and not get swallowed when that gargantuan circle of teeth making up its maw came slamming back down into the ground.

Who had her—? Minus did! She got up, yanked the phone out, and sent a series of hastily-written, poorly autocorrected, possibly incomprehensible texts to Amp—to Amory. Hoping he got the message anyway, she stuffed it back in the bag, still huffing air in to catch her breath from all the running.

Both bodies circled slowly, listening carefully for the worm's next attack. She could still feel the sick panic and rage, a rapid-fire of thoughts that her power's expanded mental capacity let her think all at once, and still she kept a tight grip on them all. Be patient, be patient, she told herself, almost mentally yelling over the torrent of thoughts. You don't need to kill it, not now. You just need to survive!

I just need to hold it here...

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...until help arrives.

Rowan nodded to herself, taking a small step back as the dragon approached again and letting some of the panic and desperation flood in. But instead of feeling worried about herself, she focused on the reason why she was doing this. The faces of everyone she knew in the VI, all of the puppeteer's victims. Cynthia. Dawn. Everyone else beyond that who her failure today could harm. Thinking of all of that, it was easy to find an emotion, a simple statement to latch on to.

"You will not...hurt them." It came in an almost-whisper at first, interrupted mid-statement to gasp for air as she was still somewhat out of breath. The dragon snapped its head back and breathed at her again, and this time she rode a wave backwards while sending a separate one forward to crash into its spawn and dilute the hazardous mist into harmlessness.
Taking a deep breath, and letting it out, Rowan repeated herself, a little louder. "You will not hurt them." Her body felt strangely light, even more than usual, and the feeling of having exerted herself eased off—not gone, but muted somehow. It seemed to be working.

The dragon came close enough to swipe at her with its giant limbs, and she dismissed the dome around herself, instead focusing all available water into two giant tentacles, one catching each swipe and wrapping around the foreleg to pin it in place. Staring up at the giant, flying lizard's short, porcine muzzle, its rows of spearlike teeth, Rowan glared, deliberately feeding the rage she felt toward this monster, and every other monster, and everything they represented to her: All of the pain and hardship and death that their very existence had brought to Earth. "You. Will. Not. Hurt them."

The monster roared back as if it could understand her—yes I will—and then struck forward to bite her; she let the limbs binding its forelegs collapse and pushed a pillar of water up from under her feet to get out of the way, turning the water the dragon's mouth closed around into long, sharp spikes which that closing motion speared into its head from the inside outward, the tips visibly sticking out in a few places as black mist streamed out of it.

It roared in pain and rage, raising itself up onto its hind legs to chase her. Rowan screamed right back: "YOU! WILL NOT! HURT THEM!" As she did, her need to protect everyone manifested itself in her powers to its greatest extent: The water all around gathered into the pillar she was standing on as it rose up to surround her body completely. She released her sword from her hands, reforming it almost unconsciously as the water around her formed into the head of another kind of dragon—a long, thin snakelike one made entirely of water—with her head behind its eyes. It would look to an observer like she was practically piloting it, but Rowan could feel every drop of water composing it as though it was her own body—it was her—her weapon becoming a row of wide, sharp teeth running the full length of the mouth.

She darted forward, wrapping around the gargantuan black dragon and pulling it back down onto all fours, ending with her head just in front of its neck and striking forward to sink her teeth—her weapon—into its neck. It thrashed and roared, trying to breathe out more mist, but a torrent of water choked its throat and some tentacles thrashed out from the sides of her midsection to wrap around the monster's wings, turning briefly to blades and spikes before falling apart into water again.

---

This time the worm came up next to Plus, taking its momentum from underground in a forward direction instead of erupting into the sky. She was running before it surfaced, but couldn't outpace it even with all the extra speed that Rory's and Tenpo's tricks could provide. Thinking fast, she pulled up a few shards of concrete and merged them with some light, forming a long wooden pole like Fay's weapon, but ending in a spike—a spear—and backflipped just as its gaping maw came inches from the tip of her tail. This leap just barely cleared its diameter, and she stuck the sharp end into the worm's body, pushing hard against the lightning which still tried to race up the relatively non-conductive wood.

From there, she managed a kind of upside-down sideways flip using the palm of her hand on the flat end of the spear as a springboard, and with a bit of help from manipulating her own gravity the way Tora did landed just a few feet to the worm's side. Bending her hand that way with her full body's weight on it made her wrist sore, but she had to keep running to keep its electrified body from ramming into her from behind as it twisted sideways to continue the pursuit. Miraculously, the worm once again seemed to lose control of Ning's power and jerked in the opposite direction for a moment as more mist rose off of its body.

Minus was busy too: Keeping a healthy distance from the worm's giant body, pushing at the ground just in front of Plus to keep it as flat and stable as possible, throwing some bursts of fire at the monster. As it slid back into the ground she risked converging her bodies toward a spot its back end had just vacated, quickly refreshing Plus's magic some from the heavy exertion required to make herself just perceptibly faster with time magic.

Her four ears picked up someting unusual, a steadily-building hum, from within the big hole the worm had entered when it appeared, and she quickly ran her bodies apart again, trying to be ready for anything—Plus forming as solid a light-shield as possible between herself and the hole, and each body raising a barrier of shattered concrete and rock in a circle around her. This proved wise as a series of lightning bolts struck upward from the hole, each one splitting into several fingers of electricity pointed at one of the two bodies. The light-shield broke quickly, the barriers of rock caught most shots, and she was able to catch the several small sparks that got over the circle and just redirect them sideways. Make it a dome next time...

After that the worm was under Minus again, so she threw the wall apart to start running right away, getting a few yards off before the worm struck upward in a short arc that landed behind her and began its pursuit.

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Rowan released the mist dragon's neck and darted diagonally up into the sky, letting go of most of her mass so the retaliatory swipes and bites only hit falling water. She landed in a large, shallow pool of water now sitting between the monster and the VI's headquarters, pulling it up into her body as a very long back end now coiled into a tall conical shape. Then she thrust skyward, forming any leftover water below into spinning blades thrown up and around to bury themselves in the beast's center mass.

The black dragon replied with a roar, launching itself into the sky too, flying to bite into a section of Rowan's body. She broke off that part into more spikes through its head, coiling around it again—making two long arms ended in long hands appear near her head and reforming part of her teeth into claws for them, raking across the beast's back and wings. Her back end split into innumerable long, thin tentacle-like limbs, each grabbing the dragon's body and yanking it down with her as her head struck back toward the earth. Together they crashed hard into the crater the dragon had made when it first landed, deepening it and flooding it with water as all of the extra limbs fell apart.

Rowan darted away before the dragon could bite at her "head" (and her actual body), leaving behind most of the water and landing in a vastly shortened form between the monster and the VI's headquarters again. She pulled together the pool her opponent was now standing in, twisting thorned tentacles of water up around each of its legs and its tail. It retaliated by drawing its head back and snapping forward, firing a sharp, narrow jet of black mist straight toward her head. She pushed herself up and around in the air, and the dragon's shot followed her, some small flying mist-monsters similar to the ones that had swarmed around the day before appearing in its wake.

Eventually she managed to get around to one side of the beast, pulling some of the water under it over into her "body" to make it longer again. The dragon quit breathing mist, instead taking advantage of a looser grip on its legs to leap, propelling itself up into a low flight. Its wings, though partially torn, were still enough for it to turn around toward her in pursuit. Rowan threw herself up over the monster, trying to twist around it again to force it to land, but it took advantage of a moment during this when her head was in range to raise a huge, clawed forepaw and hit it hard. She saw this coming with not enough time or maneuverability to dodge, but just enough to pull the water-dragon-head's mass together, teeth and all, in front of her to block the impact. The claw didn't make it through the block to hit her directly, but enough of the strike's momentum still transferred to knock her back out of the water and into a hard fall down toward the ground.

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Emma had another idea. Shuriken's trick didn't actually have her going into one shadow and out of another—well, it did, but not as if they were two ends of the same portal. Rather, it was like she temporarily made a "location" that was "inside" of the shadows, using the shadows themselves as a portal into it, and so could then wait as long as she wanted and then exit any shadow close enough to also be attached to that location. Emma's imitation couldn't make that "location" very big, just barely enough for a person to fit inside, so she couldn't really travel through shadows this way...but she could hide in them.

Minus wasn't going to outrun the worm with the kind of speed it had, so instead she booked it to the shadow of a nearby building, pulling it together slightly to make a small patch "dark enough", and Plus quickly placed a portal for her to drop into and hide while the monster went "over" it. It twisted itself back around, just barely not bowling into the building, seeming confused as to why it hadn't just swallowed a vixen—and fired another bolt at Plus. She saw it coming soon enough to place a light-shield in the way and back off a few steps, letting the lightning shatter it and scatter apart, falling into the ground instead of continuing on to her body. After that the worm slid back down underground, and Minus jumped back up out of the shadow, letting it disperse to its natural state again.

Its behavior was strangely predictable: Alternating from one target to the other every time. This made some sense as a strategy, since if this was any other two people they wouldn't be able to consistently tell where the worm was coming from and eventually one of them would probably fail the lucky timing to dodge away or start running. For Gemma, though, this was incredibly useful: Minus could catch her breath and briskly walk away while Plus ran toward those buildings to prepare to dive into another shadow to escape it.

The worm came up vertically again, and Plus jumped away a moment before it emerged; she dove down into a shadow as a shower of sparks came off of its body toward her to evade them, and stayed there until it arced its fall over toward Minus. Then she popped back out, throwing a couple of knives with point-explosions centered on their tips, timed to start as they hit its body, and backed quickly away, placing several quick light shields as she went to block some smaller retaliatory shocks. Minus simply waited until the beast was committed to landing in a particular area and then ran clear of that space, drawing up a dome of rock around herself to absorb a lightning bolt the very back of the worm shot down at her just before following the front and middle into the ground.

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The landing was rough and painful. Rowan's first instinct was to try to gather water from the ground toward her to cushion the fall, but she couldn't get it there in time and just hit the dry concrete hard with her left shoulder, going into a long sideways roll that ended with her face-up. She was left feeling physically stunned, the exhaustion that had been pushed back before asserting itself in full—but, knowing she couldn't stay here, she forced herself to stand up, reforming her weapon in its usual sword shape as a crutch in her right hand in the process.

Now the water Rowan had been trying to gather came to her, sweeping into an unnatural pool up to her knees. Her legs, side, and left arm all worked; miraculously, nothing had been broken by that botched landing. But she was badly scraped and bruised in some places, and terribly spent despite the power boost. Her body shaking, she stood up, drawing some water to come up and heal the worst of it—a technique she had relatively little practice with that required some degree of concentration. Looking up at the dragon now in front of/above her as it roared, readying to dive, Rowan forced some air into her lungs in a half-gasp to let out in a low, defiant growl back.

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I don't know which two things in this episode are the "twin dragons" themselves. In my mind there are several possible valid options.

The "cover art" I imagine for this episode has a vertical split right down the center. On the left you can see Minus from behind looking on as the worm (with electricity visibly spiraling around it) chases Plus, and is very close to catching up. On the right is the mist dragon's head from behind, looking up at Rowan's "water dragon" which is looking back down at it. And this part is kind of hard to describe, but where the worm's body meets the vertical split it seems to "change into" the back end of the Rowan-water-dragon's body, maybe swapping back and forth a couple of times, so that the overall picture looks like a single long snake with the worm's head on one end and Rowan on the other. There's probably also some perspective meddling so that the left side is kind of looking down with a flatter view of the ground, and the right side is looking up mostly at the sky.

P.S. I had to doctor Episode 71 slightly to include a mention of Fay at the beginning because, of course, right after needing a slight retcon to explain Nico's absence during the swarm I forgot someone else. I think it makes sense this way, still, because that episode left off on the relevant turtle fight pretty much right after Zeno arrived, so I'm gonna say Fay just needed longer to get ready and/or reach the location.

Battle Vixens! - 71

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Episode 71: Trios

Rowan changed form in the same motion as getting up from the desk chair, sweeping her phone into a small bag that served as a replacement for having pockets. Halfway to the exit, she pulled it out again, switching the VI app she already had open to the comms feature for the city's vixens. "Locations, please." Fay, Nico and Petra were at home; Zeno was near the VI's research office space; Corporal Langdon was just inside the edge of town after some sort of covert event, possibly special training, at the base; Hugo and Tora were near each other over toward that side of town. In short, Rowan was the only one of them at headquarters.

Eyes reported in, too: Two of those giant turtle-beasts had just landed: one very close to Petra, one about halfway between the Corporal and Hugo's positions. Finally, a mass of black mist was swirling together just above the VI's front entrance; it was going to be something big once it finally finished appearing. Rowan didn't need anyone to tell her that last one; she walked out the doors into the shadow of it herself. She did some quick, rough distance calculations on the map, comparing everyone's positions to the monsters.

"Hugo, Tora, join with Corporal Langdon to the east. Zeno, Petra, Nico, Fay: West side. Take out those turtles as quickly as possible, then reconvene with me in front of headquarters."

Tora said, "You banking on the big one not coming down before then, or what?"

"Unlikely. I will hold it here until you arrive."
"Uh—seriously?" Zeno cut in. "That description sounded like how our hydra problem the other day started. Look, boss, I'm closer to you than I am to that turtle. I can—"
"No. If you are going to insist on calling me that, then listen. They require your assistance to take it down swiftly. Then all three of you can come to my aid instead of just one."

"O...okay. I'll do what you want. Just promise me you've got a good plan?"
"I do."

Rowan swept her weapon into existence, looking up at the darkened sky. Partially on her own suggestion, the VI had a reservoir of water running around its perimeter, fed by a combination of storm drains and an intake from the city's water supply that could be turned on or off, with pipes sticking up and out periodically and some internal controls to pump it out manually. Once the city's vixens were off the comms, she switched to giving strict instructions to keep all of the puppeteer's victims inside this time, and to get that water pumping out her way. Streams began to pour out from behind her, and she collected it all into a sort of lake surrounding her—putting away the phone at this point so she could focus.

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When the alert went out, Blake and Amory both ran into the living room, shared a brief, silent glance, and then spoke their phrases to change simultaneously. The blonde fox-girl drew Light into a close hug, running a hand down from the snowy white base of her tail to its black tip, making her grow back into the bigger, stronger form; at the same time a hand ran through her own hair. They took a small step back, the much taller Light nodded, still blushing and smiling slightly, and then went for the nearest window, opening the blinds just enough to see through—and then jumping through the glass in the form of literal light.

The monsters seemed to have a favorite haunt near the apartment complex. Two of the quadrupedal things with scales and feathers, red eyes and wolfish teeth, like the one that Emma had just barely prevented from killing Amory before, had shown up on the same still-shattered ground as that fight with the thing that ate Emma. Light was here first this time, and quickly tossed a copy of her sword at each of them to get their attention and make them stop chasing the people unfortunate enough to have been present when they appeared. She also made those people invisible, and gave the two beasts some illusions of herself to charge toward, pounce at, and launch themselves muzzle-first into some already-broken concrete.

Light stepped close enough to one of them to hit it with a combo of slashes; when it turned to bite in retaliation she jumped forward over it, leaving behind an illusion of herself dodging impossibly between the two of them as they continued to claw and bite. Once they both had their eyes on it, that illusion erupted into a bright flash, some of the sunlight from above splitting into a laser hitting each one from above. Then she moved in to stab the near one in the side, lightspeeding aside when it jumped at her.

Her ears picked up someone running closer, and she gave the monsters something to chase while she looked briefly that way; it was Magus. She put up a hand briefly in that direction, projecting some midair letters for the vixen in the hat to read: Keep your distance, I can't just throw these things around. Also their hearing is pretty good, maybe don't say spells aloud at them. Magus skidded her run to a halt, surprised by the sudden manifestation of reading material, and looked at it blinking for a moment before nodding.

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"Alright alright! Heeeere's the big guy now!" Petra's yelling got the giant turtle-monster's attention, so it whirled around to face her instead of stepping on someone's car. That would've been a heck of an insurance claim...although, come to think of it, likely not uncommon these days. Its head snapped at her, and she drew a spiky wall of concrete in its path for it to ram into instead; the wall collapsed from the impact, but Newton's wonderful equal and opposite force made the head recoil back too.

"Hh—hey! Petra!" Nico called from a fair distance behind her, sounding a bit out of breath. "Just made it."
"Good, good," the two-tailed girl said, back-stepping in time with the turtle's aggressive approach. It was probably too big to be easily knocked off-balance, even though tipping it over would be helpful here. For now she just picked up some more rocks to form into spikes and throw down at its head. "Let's play tower defense, eh? Magic and strength buffs, and a line of fruit throwers back where I'm headed."

"Mm-kay."

Petra kept luring it backwards, feeling some added strength and energy for rock-throwing coming her way, and soon came to a wider road with little grass dividers between it and its sidewalks. Those dividers now had several person-height saplings rising from their soil, each one carrying some greenish, slightly growing fruit and poised like a catapult to toss it. As the monster came in range, they began throwing volleys of that fruit at it, only hitting its shell apart from a few lucky shots on the legs or side of the head. At this point, Petra made a somewhat lazy, but tall, wall in front of herself and ran over to one side, letting the turtle ram its face through that wall while she came up to its side.

"Umm, I don't think they're doing much to the shell," Nico reported from somewhere on the opposite side.

"Yeah, we gotta pierce it first." Petra had seen footage of Ning turning her sword and sheath into a railgun to get through the armor of one of these things. Well, she didn't quite have that capacity, but she was—physically speaking—much stronger than the lightning-throwing vixen. She leapt up toward the shell, bringing her sword up in the process, and landed blade first, slamming its tip with all her might into the shell so it buried its first few inches in. Then her feet bounced off of the shell and she landed next to it, bringing the sword's sheath out with both hands around the open end, then began banging it into the hilt of the sword, hammering it like a giant nail. A few swings into this the turtle turned hard, roaring in pain and rage and going to snap at her, and she knew she'd hit paydirt.

More spiky wall raised in the way of that head, and she ran over toward that same side again, turning the earth composing the sword into a sort of stone spear before using her dirt-control to yank it out, letting a geyser of black mist spray out of the thing's side. "There we go! Aim for the hole."

"Got it!"

"I'monna make some more, too!"

---

"So how, exactly, are we s'posed to fight off a turtle?" Hugo met with Tora before they came to the monster.

"Dunno. Maybe army man's got an idea," she said. "I'll tank the front for now, you jump on top and cut whatever's exposed?"
"Ehh, good enough for me."

A sonic blast was enough to get the attention of the giant reptile made of indistinct black fog, and it was charging at her in no time. Hugo backed up slowly, staying just barely out of range of its snapping head, and when it did try to close the distance and stretch out at her she stuck her shield in its mouth and let go, jumping back away from it and exploding the shield into a sharp, focused screech that reverbated down through its neck into the rest of its body.

By now Tora already was running down the thing's back to start slashing at its tail. It roared low in response to the pain, and Hugo made its own noise echo back into its face at a deafening volume while reforming her shield. The tail whipped up to try and slam into Tora, but she easily jump-roped it, matching the timing perfectly and continuing to make the big beast hurt while it began to thrash around, back and forth, to try and throw her off.

Since it was the center of her power, Hugo was particularly sensitive to unexpected sounds. In this case, her comms were going off, and she quickly pulled up her phone to try and hear it over the din. "Repeat that?"
Corporal Langdon named a nearby intersection of city streets. "I'm settin' up a trap. Lead it to me!"
"Got it. Toraa!"
"What?! Kinda busy here!"

"Hop off and lead it east."

She jumped over another tail swipe, this time vaulting over to the turtle's left side—Hugo's right, now. "Which way's east?" The tall vixen pointed, and Tora nodded, running off in that direction with the turtle hot on her trail.
Hugo wasn't the fastest runner, but she tried her best to follow, grabbing some more angry roars from the thing's mouth to hit its own neck with along the way.

---

Magus seemed to take the warning to heart, even backing up a couple of extra steps as she readied her first spell. This appeared to be a new one, consisting of a volley of about ten small fireballs arced up through the air at the two beasts. Not every one hit its mark, but they certainly didn't like the ones which did. Since of course this gave away her position, Light placed an illusion of her there for them to turn toward and chase, sending it running off in the opposite of the direction Magus did. Then she ran up next to the one she'd been hitting up until now, easily matching its top running speed.

Perhaps channeling Rory a bit—but with a solid plan to escape, at least—Light leapt into the air and landed on top of the mist monster, stabbing one copy of her sword into its back to hold onto with her left hand and using the right to slash wildly into its upper neck. It howled, turning sharply and bucking to try and get her off, and its partner quickly took notice, turning to turn and pounce at her. Light pointed the free sword up and ducked just under the leaping beast, letting it slash itself through the blade for a moment before letting go and lightspeeding herself to behind her mount as both of them landed hard, one on top of the other. All throughout this, a number of water-shurikens were arcing through random angles from Magus's position into the two beasts, their less straightforward path clearly intended to make it more difficult to locate their origin.

The water spells stopped not long after the two wolf-things collapsed, and—looking for a second—Light could see that Magus was focusing pretty hard on something big. Guessing it would be AOE, she kept her distance and lasered the two of them while they recovered their footing, the top one climbing off of the other and both turning toward her—and while the other vixen went through an unusually involved motion that ended with her sword pointed skyward instead of at the monsters. A thin line of electricity went up into the sky from that sword, and seemingly picked up power from the clouds before coming down on the two monsters as a proper lightning bolt, comparable to any of Ning's.

Both of the creatures howled and charged, Light's more frequent target beginning to look very indistinct by now. She threw a sword at each one's muzzle, gave them several options of illusory Lights to chase, and lightsped herself up, over and behind them, looking over Magus's way to see that she was panting hard, needing a brief break after the exertion of casting that lightning bolt. Waving to her to get her attention, Light pointed out the weakened beast, highlighting it with a faint white glow for good measure. Magus took a second to look back and forth between the monster and her before nodding, understanding, and used another (possibly new) spell that threw a big spike of ice into its side as it ran past her, bringing it down for good. Its partner howled in rage, running straight in Magus's direction, but again Light gave it a false target to chase so the vixen in the big wizard hat could safely run away.

---

"For the record—I am not your chauffeur." Dr. Brand's car pulled up near the reported location of one of the turtles, brakes screeching from a fairly unreasonable speed down to a halt. Zeno tossed the passenger door open and hopped out.
"Yeah, but—can't blow my cover by driving, right? And, still, thank you." She shut the passenger door and ran toward the fight, her fox-ears picking up the low, rumbling roar of the beast to direct her the rest of the way more accurately. As she came closer, she also made out the sound of metal on metal, a rhythmic wham wham wham, with the last one punctuated by a particularly loud, pained roar. It seemed like Petra was doing some good work here, which made it seem all the more like she should've gone to help Rowan anyway—but she was right, too; you can't insist on calling someone boss and then fail to act like it.

Turning the corner, she found Petra running full-tilt away from the turtle's uncannily toothy beak snapping angrily at her. "Hey hey! Glad you could make it!" She half-turned, raising a wall in the thing's way which it tore through almost right away. Still, this bought her time to turn the rest of the way and start backing up instead, building a stronger wall. "I made some holes for ya. Arrows go in, mist comes out."
"..Got it," Zeno said, running around to one side. There were some of Nico's trees here hurling fruits concentrated on some specific points along the turtle's side—suggesting that was where the holes were. It wasn't exactly easy to tell by sight, otherwise.
"Oh-bytheway I finished your painting this morning! You should drop by and see it once this is all over!"

Drawing her weapon, Zeno couldn't help but laugh. Would that everyone had Petra's casual optimism in the face of fighting beasts that were reportedly the extremities of an eldritch abomination. She drew the string back and sent a spread of arrows at one of the target spaces, watching for one to land deeper than the others so she'd know where the real bull's-eye was. The rest of the arrows disappeared, but she kept that one to mark her place while the mist monster roared and half-turned toward her, swiping its big clawed foot her way; she raised a light-shield for it to scratch and ran around, readying another shot.

The old arrow disappeared just in time for the next to strike. One after another, Zeno's dead aim stuck arrows into that hole, a couple of Nico's fruits hitting the back end of them sometimes to drive them farther in. Petra took advantage of the turtle's attention being off her to run up to the opposite side and drive her sword in again, slamming her gauntletted fist into the hilt for the first hit and then draing her sheath to get some longer-range bashes. Zeno could see the geyser of mist from all the way on the opposite end of the turtle, and of course it wasn't happy, twisting back around to try and bite the earthbending vixen once again. She had to think fast and place some light barriers in the way of its swiping tail, buying herself enough time to dive and roll waay back out of its range. Well, at least Nico was far enough away to not get caught in this thing's wild thrashing—hopefully.

---

The wires were obvious enough to Tora: Big, braided lines of silver tied to the base of some lampposts, going from high enough for an easy session of limbo to over her head. Any normal athelete just might be able to polevault over this, but it was no problem at all for her to leap into the air, rocket herself well clear of them, and land on the other side with a tuck and roll, popping back up to her feet facing the opposite direction with little to no recovery time at all. That said, all this excitement left her the slightest bit out of breath as that turtle bore down toward her, drawing its head back ready for another sharp snap.

"Get to one side!" army man's voice came, and Tora nodded, jumping up and away to land over next to the Corporal. She was actually holding onto both ends of the line of wire herself, one in each hand, and as the turtle began to trip over the lines Tora had seen, some more wire struck out from either side of the beast to grab its back legs too. Samuel Langdon pulled hard, helping the turtle's forward momentum and directing it in a way that had it tilting more and more precariously forward.

Hugo caught up at this point, and saw what was going on easily enough. "Want me to push?"
"If you—nngh..please!"

The shield maiden yelled at the top of her lungs, sending the impact force forward and up at the base of the turtle's tail. Then she ran up and bashed that same spot with her shield in a forward leap, giving it that final bit of kinetic energy needed to completely destroy its balance and send it tumbling forward onto its back.

"RrrRRAAAH!" Tora screamed over the Corporal's suggestion to go take advantage of this compromising position, already doing it. She jumped up onto the center of the thing's underside, slashing hard repeatedly into it. The line of spiky wire around the thing's limbs was directed to two more lampposts, keeping each of its legs pointed upward against its attempts to flail itself back to an upright position. Hugo jumped and slammed her shield down hard on the base of the thing's tail, keeping it from levering itself upright with that method too.

With army man's power and strength all occupied with keeping the turtle from flipping itself upright, and Hugo busy restraining the tail, the only real damage sources were Tora's continued slashing and some sound-blasts from the shield maiden. Nonetheless, this proved more than sufficient, each hit erupting in jets of black mist from the thing, as seemingly its solid shell was "balanced for" by a particularly weak and soft underbelly. By the time the enormous reptile's immense strength began to strain the lampposts holding it, breaking three of them in half and uprooting the last one from the concrete, it was already beginning to look very indistinct, the sure sign that a mist monster was almost dead.

---

That's it, I am never insulting support classes again. Magus stopped, huffing in air to recover from a relatively brief run, and picked herself back to an upright posture again. Light was super-strong, super-fast, and could make lasers, but it was hard to overstate just how great it was that she could make those Wolf Chimeras see enemies everywhere, or in whatever particular direction she wanted, and also not see their real opponents for extended periods of time.

It was surprisingly difficult to hold her tongue when casting, and the strong spells she was testing out here seemed even more draining than they otherwise would be without it. But her awareness of just how fast these things could run and how easy it would be for one to snap her up in its jaws mid-spell helped her self-control quite a bit in the battle with her natural inclination to take the path of least resistance. While Light went to work running up next to the beast in a blur of hyperspeed motion, Magus settled on another hard-hitting spell to hopefully finish this one off with, too.

She'd thought up a way to make more powerful spells this morning, like that lightning bolt. It required her to think if not say much more than just a word or two describing its name. It was more like a proper incantation, a request she made of her magic, or the elements it manipulated themselves—a carefully composed letter or poem or something, which somehow persuaded them to have the spell's results occur. This time, she finished channeling just as Light leapt off of the big beast's back, leaving two of her own sword behind somehow, and made it pounce up and land face-first in the concrete again.

Blazes of the rising sun, burn my foes to ash and cinder. Fission Bomb! A point of light like the beginning of one of Fay's explosions shot out from the tip of her blade, continuing in a straight line until it hit the mist monster in the side. Then it expanded out into a sphere of white energy, its diameter pushing out to a person's full height; the sphere persisted for a couple of seconds before vanishing all at once, leaving behind the trail of mist that every one of these monsters seemed to dissipate into when it died.

Magus bent halfway forward, leaning her hands on her knees and gasping for breath in the wake of casting that spell. Okay, that one had to have cost a pretty penny in MP and stamina, she thought; a fine finisher but not a great choice for a mid-battle spell. Overall, it was probably a good thing that she tested out these 'high-level' spells in a relatively safe environment like this, where even if they weren't the last blow, Light could distract the chimeras before they came to claw her face off, or at worst make them chase something else instead of her.

Before she caught her breath enough to stand up, a hand was gently placed on her shoulder. "You, okay there?"
"Yhhess, fffhh...just uh, you know. Lots." Magus pulled herself mostly upright to turn toward Light, who was now standing at her left side facing her. "Guess I am a kinda squishy mage, by comparison."

"Still, that was pretty..." Light's ears turned in the direction of the apartment complex first, followed by her face and then full body. Looking that way herself, Magus saw some guy running toward them. His appearance shimmered for a second—Light making some kind of illusion, presumably, and he—between pants—whispered a phrase and turned immediately into the gorgeous, blond-haired vixen from the day before. This seemed to instantly give her the stamina to run the rest of the way to them, not even out of breath anymore, but she didn't seem to take much comfort in this fact.

"What's wrong?" Light said, echoing back the same kind of worried expression.

---

Gemma (in her combined form) came around to the front of the building just in time to see the monster finish forming, a fair distance up in the air. It was a long, thick thing, like some gigantic snake or worm—and the huge, circular mouth it presented as it fell down toward the street reinforced the latter impression. It also had no eyes, and didn't even seem to notice her as it struck the earth, its downward momentum sending it straight down through the street and whatever utilities were beneath it. Its long body undulated in uncomfortably swift, jerking movements to push it even farther into the ground, until its entire body was gone from sight, leaving behind a huge hole where part of the street had been.

"Uh.." Folding her ears down uncertainly, she ran up and around to the other side of the hole, looking down into it. She could hear rumbling down there, but it was hard to pinpoint a singular location; the ground under her feet shifted slightly as the monster no doubt continued tunneling its way through what should've been solid bedrock below.

Her attention was drawn back to the surface by the sound of the front door to Mr. Nelson's shop opening, the familiar, friendly chime of a bell attached to it to let the employees (or owner) inside know that someone had entered. In this case, it was instead the lightning-wielding vixen herself coming out. She noticed the hole right away and ran up to the opposite side of it. "Hey, what made this?"
"Um, some kinda giant worm thing," Emma said, vaguely tracing out a tube shape with her hands. "It just kinda dove underground when it landed, and uh..it's, still down there."

Ning looked up at her. "Well then, where d'ya think—"

Battle Vixens! - 70

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---

Episode 70: A Sparkling Gem

It was unbelievable. Impossible. Unthinkable.

Emma was ahead on her homework. For a while now, she'd been splitting into two bodies to get things done quicker whenever Beryl wasn't around, and that had been exactly what happened the night before. So now everything was done! She then spent a little time experimenting with her powers, just playing and relaxing, went to bed and did even more of the former until Amory showed up. Now it felt like she was out of things she needed to do, tired of everything in her apartment that she wanted to do, and...ready to go out and get some new things to do.

The only problem with that was that today was a Saturday, so there were no classes, no scheduling obligations to force her outside. Neither she nor Amory had said anything about a second date lately, and...she was feeling too nervous right now to make the first move on that. Besides, in its own weird sort of way...what they'd done together the past couple of nights was a better form of being together than just going to a restaurant and talking for a while or something. It didn't mean she didn't want to go somewhere with him in the waking world, soon, but...it also didn't really remedy her present problem.

She'd already slept as much as she was going to sleep, and she didn't want to pace around her apartment any more this morning. Only after Emma was halfway out to her car did she really begin to think of where she was going to go in it. That was: There was no telling when today's monsters were going to show up. That new vixen was definitely a student, so maybe lived in the apartment complex or on campus or something; that meant that between Light and her, this area was probably protected enough. But Mr. Nelson...Ning was almost certainly in his shop with his granddaughter, alone (as far as people with superpowers went). He'd offered the day before to have them meet, too. So she stopped awkwardly in the middle of the hallway to fire off some texts to check whether that was okay. He took a long moment to answer, which could be for any number of reasons, but seemed to generally agree with the plan. Good! Especially since...she was already most of way to the car, and it'd be kind of awkward to go right back to her apartment from there.

---

As soon as he was finished eating breakfast, Clark got up and went back to the living room. Not done herself, but curious, Rory leaned over to get a view of him through the doorway—digging through the contents of a bookshelf. Said contents didn't exactly look like books; more like some kind of thin boxes for holding something? She felt an unaccountable association between them and the big screen in the living room that was...probably relevant.

After a little while, her curiosity got the better of her. "Um, what're you looking for in there?"
"Well." He turned half-around toward her. "I thought it might be time to get out the big guns." When this obviously confused her, he continued: "Rowan thinks that, ah, very emotional memories are the easiest to get back. Maybe, the key to getting everything back. And I know, in here somewhere, is a DVD of our wedding ceremony. The whole thing, from start to finish. It's just, ah, we've never actually pulled it out since we moved in, so..."

One of Rory's ears folded down. "...Isn't it in the bottom left?" Why did she know that?
"Hmm." He knelt over to try that area. "Oh! So it is," he said, pulling out a particular not-book (DVD, she guessed) with a triumphant expression. "You must've remembered!"
"Yes, but. I don't actually know what that thing is?" she said.

"Ah, er. I'll explain it first. And go on and finish eating before that!" he said, waving to her while going over toward the screen—reinforcing her impression that they were related.

---

"Lessee here. Hmm..." Zeno hummed softly, thinking about making a wall of light without actually making one. "..Yah!" Finally, it went up: A thicker, stronger wall than her usual sort, vertically placed straight in front of her. "Hit it."

"Sure." Hugo came up and punched hard into the wall, making a spiderweb of cracks form centered on her fist—but the wall held. "Hm, lookit that," she said, rubbing her knuckles with the other hand. "Don't look like it could take two, but.."
"Yeah, you'd go straight through a normal one." It was almost unbelievable that such a simple trick had been missed, by everyone, until their 'test subject' stumbled face-first into it just by virtue of how he thought magic would work in the first place. She dismissed the shield then, clapping her hands. "Well, I've gotta go. My other job's got something urgent coming up today." Rowan had asked everyone to try it out at least once, and most had some measure of success. Tora could 'jump' farther and faster, Fay could make a bigger, longer-lasting explosion...Hugo here, of course, had always been able to make sound-blasts in varying intensity, but reported making a stronger one to be much less effort this way. Too bad they didn't realize how generally applicable the concept was the day before.

"Sure. I got somethin' to do, too," she said.

The one to realize it was Gemma, reportedly. Not everyone knew that, but of course Zeno was privy to things Rowan sent upstairs that were then deeemed to be pertinent to the research department. Maybe it was time to reach out to the person whose power let her literally examine magic with a job offer or something. Plus (oops, a pun, ha ha), she was supposed to be visiting later today. The research heads needed to request a brief audience, if nothing else.

Dr. Brand had been hard at work on their second prototype. He wanted to isolate the traits in a "key" and/or its user that would result in a fox-girl form (or even fox-man, for that matter), in hopes of developing something else and finding a third test subject which, together, would produce powers devoid of that particular trait. That meant they were eventually going to try and make a second "artificial" vixen, this time on purpose. He was also, possibly, overworking himself a bit, which was part of why his partner-in-crime wanted to get back to their office so soon. Maybe Ezekiel could do the heavy lifting for a while. And maybe—hopefully—today's attack wouldn't be so exhausting that he collapsed into a coma in his chair for half of the afternoon.

---

Amory got up around the same time as his roommate, and even though each of them was making his own breakfast this morning, they still just sort of wound up sitting at the tiny little kitchen table across from each other. "So, uh, how'd last night go?" Blake said.

"Just fine. Turns out the dream-space translates for us, at least between English and Japanese. No reason I think it would fail for any other language pairing." He paused to take a sip of juice. "Plus, Emma learned Shuriken's power."
"Sure-ickenz power," Blake repeated blindly. "...Oh, the, Tenpo's partner," he said after a second, waving vaguely, to which Amory nodded. He'd been trying to pay a little more attention to the news himself lately, but was still only vaugely aware of the vixen-related goings-on in other countries. "...Wait, I thought our powers didn't work in the dreams."

Amory squinted for a second, thinking that couldn't be right. His power certainly worked; Emma's did last night and the night before and...wait. She'd specifically said it didn't work the night before that. "Night before last, Emma was using her powers just fine," he said. "But..not the night before that? So the rules must've changed for some reason."

"I'm guessing nobody can attack anyone else, still."

"Rrright. She could throw a thing at a wall though...hm. The other thing about night before last that was different from before was, she was able to go there on purpose, without my help. But she didn't even seem to notice that her powers suddenly working was a new thing."
"Let's be fair," Blake said, "missing a detail like that really isn't out of character."

"..Eeh, yeah, I guess it isn't. Well, if she made up the rules for that place then I guess she can change those rules when she wants, huh."

After a moment of silent agreement, he continued: "So what I was gonna say, though, is that apparently she isn't the only person who can adapt her weapon to look other ways. And Rowan said sh...he'd spread the whole 'channeling' idea around to the rest of the VI."

"Hmmn. Guess I should try it, huh?"
"Yeah, but. Rowan couldn't do it. Said something about how everyone's powers have different degrees of 'flexibility', and maybe the same thing is true for the weapons?"

"Let's check." Without so much as a second thought, Blake spoke the phrase to turn into Light—giving Amory just enough time to recognize what was being said and shield his eyes from the resulting blinding flash—and formed her sword, holding it out to one side where the tip nearly touched the wall. She spun it around slowly until it was upright in her hand, then squinted at it. It faded in and out of visible existence for a moment before stabilizing back to the same form it always had. "...No good. Maybe I spend all my 'flexibility' using the 'magic' creatively," she suggested—and then immediately turned back.

"To be fair, you can do some crazy stuff with it already, like make a bunch of copies...at least while 'powered up'," Amory said. "And I know I've seen you taking advantage of the ability to make it vanish and reappear to pull off some moves nobody could do with a normal sword."
"Yeah." Blake went back to eating.

"Magus wanted to know what we're all doing today," he said after a while.
"Yeah? Wha'd you tell her?"

"The truth, more or less. I'm staying at home to catch up on work. Just wait for the alarm and go to the closest reported mist-thing." He shrugged. "She said she'd try calling the VI later today asking about finding us a 'home base'. Or, more like asked whether that was okay. I said that's fine, maybe ask Dr. Quinn to do it if she's not sure she's the right person to make that kinda request."

"Dude, you think he'd want to do that? Prolly still busy trying to help his wife remember who she is," Amory said—keenly feeling the surreality of seeing the confident, overbearing professor he knew acting so hesitant and uncertain for the past two days.

Blake just shrugged again. "I was half-awake and didn't really think about it before I sent it. To..be honest, I was thinking about her like she was still..." He shook his head.

"But you just said 'Dr. Quinn' in the text?"
"Yeah. So, not a complete disaster at least. He's still 'more of an adult' than any of us, right?"
"Guess so."

---

"Look, I solemnly swear that I will test it out in my backyard. Pick up a large pile of dirt or something," Simon said into the phone. "Pleeease. This is one of only two days a week that I promised I would spend doing my original job instead of hanging around the VI all day. Fine, fine. Yes, okay. I'll be ready, don't worry at all about that." The conversation over, he placed the phone on a tiny table next to him with somewhat more force than was strictly necessary.

"Now dear...I just overheard you making a promise," Karis said, walking into the upstairs studio with two cups of coffee in hand. "Might I ask what it's about?"
"Caffeine!" He rushed to take the one that wasn't hers off her hands. "Oh, just some new technique they've worked out." He took a long, loud sip while waving his free hand dismissively. "Charge up your magic attack by thinking about it longer. Bigger effects cheaper. Pfft, like I ever get tired in the first place."

"You might, if you ever stopped drowning yourself in espresso. Which you still haven't said 'thank you' for, by-the-way," she said cheerfully.

"Thank you," he said, not insincerely but certainly perfunctorily. "Anyway, what does 'stronger' even mean for my powers? I pick up big rocks and concrete effortlessly all the time, it's my thing. I mean, did you see me two days ago?"

"Nevertheless, you do have a job to do," she pointed out.

"I have lots of jobs to do right here!" he said, waving around his studio in a sweeping motion, at twelve paintings all in varying stages of completion, plus a stack of photos piled on top of one of the little end tables in the room. "About half of the reborn let me take photos, I'm still not done with everyone from our own home base, and I've started getting commissions from the out-of-town teams. Besides some obligations I took on before becoming PR consultant for the world's first organization of actual superheroes." Halfway into this rant he began pacing, coffee in hand, over to one of them, lifting a brush with his free hand and dipping it in the paint at the same time as taking another big sip of the coffee.

"Pffheheh," Karis half-chuckled; this manic sort of energy he had was part of what attracted her to him in the first place. "Careful dear, you're gonna choke doing that. Or spill your drink on a painting."

"I'd be tempted to make an experimental technique of it, if I didn't need the caffeine in my body," he replied, setting the drink down anyway. "Don't you have some papers to grade or something?"

"Astoundingly, I still do not take my work home over the weekend," she said. "But you're right, I do have some binge-watching to catch up on."

Karis headed back to the doorway, stopping to turn and wave goodbye. "You go on painting, then, dear—just don't get so caught up in it you miss the auditory bat-signal."
"I would never!" he said, turning dramatically toward her with the brush raised high in the air like a hero's sword.
"And test the charge-up thing! You promised!" she said as a parting shot, ducking out to the stairwell before he could retaliate.

---

Nico knocked on the door to Rowan's office—though it was already open—and he waved her in. "Uh, hey boss."
"I told everyone not to call me that yesterday."
"Oh, sorry. Anyway, just ah, wanted to let you know I got back safely. Reporting in, and all that."
"Thank you. You probably could've just sent some messages once you got home."
"Yes, but, I like the personal touch of conversation. Anyway, I'm sorry I wasn't here for what went down yesterday."

He waved it off. "If anyone has a right to the occasional vacation day, it's us. You only had one father."
"Y-yeah," she nodded, getting briefly misty-eyed and sniffing. Something about the way he said it brought some of the emotion from the funeral rushing back for a second or two.

After waiting long enough for her to compose herself, he said, "Have you seen the messages I sent out this morning?"
"Mm-hm," she nodded. "That's, kinda another thing I wanted to talk about real quick. See, uh, concentrating for a longer period is already what my power does. Like that's how I make bigger trees and stuff. I guess I just thought that made sense, 'cause..plants, like normal ones, need lots of time and patience and care to grow. I've never tried 'forcing' a tree to grow faster, it'd just feel wrong."

He nodded. "That's good to know. You might still try it, if you get into another desperate situation."

"Heh, yeah. Anyway—this was my first stop back in town. Hubby's waiting at home and all, sooo."

"Go on ahead. I think it'll be obvious when you're needed today," he said.

"Yyyep, always is. See ya!"

---

It was hard to decide what to watch.

Clark hadn't watched the video of their ceremony himself in years, and there were a lot of little details and things that he'd more or less completely forgotten about. On the other hand, there was Rory's face, shifting between complex and hard-to-read expressions that had to each be somewhere between recognizing things she didn't expect to and trying very hard to actually remember them, with a hint of emotions brought on by the half-memory and the sight of the event.

It hadn't been a terribly elaborate ceremony; Rory obviously wasn't the "spend a fortune on the perfect wedding" sort of bride. She was more the "long, semi-expensive honeymoon" sort, actually. But Clark's family insisted on some bells and whistles, and her mother had been willing to 'give the bride away', so to speak. After only a little while, they were almost to the wedding vows—something the two of them had composed for themselves instead of repeating the same things everyone else did. But this was when the shows—both of them—were interrupted by a loud alarm from Clark's phone.

He instinctively went for the remote to pause it, if only because they were missing the audio from the bit the alarm blared over. But he looked at Rory once the video was paused, and she returned a look that echoed some of the worry he was feeling. "It can wait," she assured him, "just a little bit? I wanna know if everyone's okay, too."
"...All right," he said after a moment, switching everything back over to where they could see the news.

---

Mr. Nelson's store was busy for the first time Emma had seen. Maybe a lot of his customers were the kinds of people who had day jobs, so their shopping time was when they were off work—generally later in the afternoon than she usually came, or the weekend, as it was now. Aside from that, the main thing she noticed in the store's window was a prominent sign that hadn't been there the day before: "Help Wanted". What that meant was...either he'd figured out a way to afford someone, or...

Well, there was no point standing around outside speculating. She came in and looked around absently on the way to the front counter, watching people carefully picking out fruits and vegetables, examining some of the more exotic groceries...normal stuff, mostly. His granddaughter wasn't in sight though; she'd thought the little girl might be sitting next to him at the counter or something.

"Oh, you're finally here," he said once she came close. "Here, lemme show you the stock room." He made kind of a sweeping wave after carefully standing up, indicating she should follow him toward the back. He opened the door to let her through and paused to half-jokingly tell everyone, "Camera's watching, so don't steal nothin' while I'm in the back!" This got a couple of chuckles from people who Emma suspected to be his regular; he seemed to trust those onece to seriously prevent theft for that brief moment he couldn't watch things.

After the door was shut, he said, "She's back here watchin' TV. Anyone asks, though, you came lookin' for a job but the scheduling didn't work out."
"Um..oh! Okay," she nodded, realizing that he'd needed to come up with some kind of plausible explanation for why he was showing a random college student the back of the store. While she was busy figuring that out, Gerald strode ahead of her and turned a corner into a small side room which the noise of some cartoon playing was coming from.

"Nadia dear, I'd like you to meet someone." She followed him in to find a small girl sitting cross-legged on top of a folding chair. In response, Nadia turned/climbed around so her arms were wrapped halfway around the back of the chair to face both of them. "This is Emma," he continued, waving her way.

"Hi Emma!" she said brightly, putting up a hand at her. Emma smiled back, coming up to gently take it in the palm of her own somewhat larger hand.

"Hey there. I really like your hair," she said cheerfully. If there was one kind of person she actually knew how to talk to, it was little kids.

"Yeah, it's pretty, right? Ning did it for me," she said, half-looking toward her grandfather. "Oh, are you like Amp?"

"Uh..like who now?" She wasn't sure exactly how many secrets this...what, ten or eleven year old?...could be permanently trusted with.

"Amp! One of Ning's friends. She's gotta big floofy tail," she said, spreading her hands apart wide to indicate the size.
"Well, d'you see a tail on me?" Emma said, putting a hand on her hip.

"Noo, but you must be another of grampa's new friends, right? I can keep a secret," she said.

"Well, uh." She looked toward Mr. Nelson uncertainly; he didn't seem to be bothered by any of this. "I dunno about 'friend', we've only met a few times. Buuut, 'friendly acquaintance', maybe?"

"What's 'ack wait ence'?" she said, pronouncing each syllable in turn like it really was a made-up word.

"Oh, that's someone you've only met once or twice, I guess? Like, a possible future friend," she said.

"Oh."
After visibly thinking about it for a long moment, Nadia said, "Emma, you wanna be my ack-waitence?"
"Heheh, sure! You seem nice enough to me."
"You seem nice enough to me, too! Ack-waitences!" she said excitedly, putting a fist up toward Emma. She returned the little girl's fist-bump, still giggling at the whole thing for the moment.

After this, they started back toward the front. "See what I mean?" Mr. Nelson said. "Veerry smart for her age."
"Super sweet, too. Most of the kids I've dealt with have way more of an attitude," Emma said.
"You gotta watch her sometimes, though. Can get pretty rambunctious at times." Despite this warning, he was positively glowing at the secondhand praise.

This moment was interrupted by Emma's phone playing, at a relatively low volume, the VI's alarm for a monster attack—echoed by some louder alarms from customer phones just outside. Seeing that Mr. Nelson had an expectant look on his face, she got her phone out quickly to look. "There's one—uh. Right outside?" she said, turning the screen toward him to show.

He nodded, and spoke quickly: "Tell Nadia to shut and lock the door 'till I come, and run out the back to the alley to change, there's no cameras there. I'll tell everyone to evacuate that way too, so be quick." The front of the store had big display windows, making it not a very safe place to wait around during the fight. "Got it!" she nodded, turning to go and do that.

---

In which I try to patch up a couple of continuity errors I noticed while going back through things. Namely: (1) Where the heck was Nico during "The Swarm", and (2) As mentioned here, nobody could use their powers in the dream-space originally, but then suddenly they could. If I wanted to go back and make major changes to previous episodes, I would probably just add Nico to Zeno and Hugo's team (which would of course require rewriting the parts showing their fight some), and maybe remove the "no using your power in dream" rule. Arguably, though, one reason it was originally in effect was to obfuscate the fact that nobody can hit anyone else in the dream-space, especially not the Giver.

Anyway, the title is a callback of sorts to Episode 20. Nice to get one more light-hearted episode out while we set things up for some action sequences coming up next.