“Child.” Kuroneko turned her head to him. “Go and rescue your mate and her sister. The time for games have come to an end.”
Kevin didn’t know what was going on. How could he? One moment they had been having fun. The next he was being knocked off his feet and protected by a woman who, until this moment, seemed more like a super wise but lackadaisical individual. However, he didn’t need to understand what was happening to know where his priorities lie.
He stood up and rushed over to Lilian and Iris, who coughed as they sat there in the water, having obviously been knocked down by the previous explosion of power.
“Are you two all right?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Lilian coughed up water. “I’m fine. Thanks.”
Kevin helped the two vixens stand up, then tried to find the source of the shock wave. Something had to have caused it, something unnatural.
“You guys?” Iris said.
“What?” asked Kevin.
Iris pointed up. “Above us.”
Kevin looked up, and a small part of him wished he hadn’t. Falling from the sky like descending angels, parachutes slowing their descent, were dozens—no, hundreds of soldiers. They were everywhere, dotting the sky like a swarm of locusts. Above even them, several planes continued to disgorge troops. He couldn’t even begin to guess how many people there were.
“This is so not good,” Kevin muttered.
“Kevin!” Lilian’s shout grabbed his attention. The redhead pointed out toward the sea. “Look!”
Ships. That’s what she was pointing at. Dozens of ships, all of them war vessels. Gleaming of steel. Glistening in the sun. Even at this distance Kevin could see the massive guns situated on their streamlined forms, giant turrets that held enough firepower to tear through metal like it was paper. Cruisers. Battleships. They created a line that covered the entire beach, and several of those ships were drawing closer. Troopships.
“Way to jinx us, Stud,” Iris said with a sigh. Kevin wanted to dispute her, but he couldn’t even think of something witty to say in the face of this overwhelming military force.
And I didn’t even think to bring my guns, either. Kevin silently lamented his bad case of misfortune. This is just not my day.
CHAPTER 9
BATTLE AT MANHATTAN BEACH
The combined forces stationed at the Marine Corps Air Grounds Combat Center and Naval Base San Diego attacked Manhattan Beach in masse. Dropships rained troops from the sky, naval warships blocked off the sea line, and vehicles of war cordoned off the roads, keeping people from entering or exiting. Nowhere was safe. The US Marines and Navy had locked downed the entire area around Manhattan Beach within a five-mile radius.
All of the troops had been debriefed on the situation. Their job was to exterminate Kuroneko, her companions, and any other yōkai in the area. While human casualties were expected, they were to be kept down to a minimum. Despite how many humans were present at the beach, they still expected this to be an easy assignment. What could one woman and three kids do?
Thus, the army was surprised when, instead of crushing their enemy with the might of overwhelming numbers, they found themselves being smashed against a steel wall of resistance.
***
“Iris!”
“Void Art: Nightmare!”
Nightmare. It was a technique created by Iris after her failed attempt at subduing the Void. It was an illusory technique in which the user’s youki seeped into the minds of those around them, presenting nightmarish images into their heads, which would slowly erode their sanity. Kevin had been subjected to this technique several times, both during training and when Iris was first coming up with it, so he knew of its effectiveness. It was especially effective against humans who had not been trained to resist or break illusions.
Iris’s targets were the many soldiers dropping down from the sky. She couldn’t catch all of them in her illusion, of course. She lacked the power for that, but what soldiers she did catch all screamed and thrashed as they were subjected to horrors the likes of which mortal minds were not meant to comprehend.
Several of those soldiers dropped their weapons. Kevin grabbed two handguns that had clattered to the ground, which he didn’t hesitate to use. The sound of his guns firing round after round added to the chaotic music, the sounds of battle and blood being spilled. Each attack was aimed with unerring accuracy.
Kevin did not shoot to kill this time like he had others. Instead, he shot to disarm and disable. A man was struck in the leg. Another lost his guns. Kevin swiveled around, took aim, and fired, punching a hole through the hand of a man who’d been about to shoot him in the back.
Then Kevin looked up and pointed his weapons into the air. Guns exploded as they were struck. Shoulders were disabled as Kevin aimed at them with pinpoint precision. Blood spurted from thighs as they were punctured. Over and over Kevin shot those descending toward them, disabling them before they could reach the ground.
The enemy returned fire.
“Shield!”
“Celestial Art: Barrier that Protects the Princess!”
A glowing golden shield shimmered in the air around them, and not a moment too soon. Bullets pinged off its surface. Sparks flew as the numerous fire from automatic rifles sought to break through. However, while Lilian’s barrier might not have been on the same level as an aegis, it was still strong enough to defend against gunfire.
“You’re up again, Iris!”
“Void Art: Rain of Oblivion!”
They appeared within the mass of troops. Thousands of tiny black flames flickered in an unseen breeze. Several soldiers within range stared at the fires as if unsure what to make of them. Curiosity soon turned into shock, and shock turned into pain, as the flames, moving with a mind of their own, attacked them.
A threnody of terrified screams echoed across the beach. Troops still in the air thrashed as the fires spread across their bodies. First, their hair caught fire. Then their eyebrows and eyelashes cracked and fizzled as they were burned off. Soon, their eyelids melted and their eyes were consumed. The black fire didn’t stop there. It invaded their esophagus, burning down their throat and into their stomach. Fat ignited as every soldier was consumed from the inside out—
—or so they thought.
Kevin watched impassively as nearly two hundred soldiers fell to the ground, drool leaking from their mouths, sightless eyes staring at nothing. If it wasn’t for the rise and fall of their chests, he would have assumed they were dead.
Rain of Oblivion was another illusory technique. It was an area-wide illusion that affected everyone within a certain radius. Unfortunately, this illusion was indiscriminate. It didn’t matter if you were an enemy or an ally. If you were within the affected area, you would become trapped in the illusion.
Lilian had protected Kevin from the illusion, circulating her own youki through his body to disrupt the flow of Iris’s youki. Some others weren’t so lucky, and a few beach goers lay on the beach, their bodies twitching as they suffered from the nightmarish illusion. Kevin grimaced. When he’d asked Iris to launch an attack, he hadn’t considered the civilians who would also be trapped within her illusion.
I really hope Kuroneko knows how to cure mental trauma.
“Iris, how do you feel?” he asked.
Iris sucked in a deep breath. “Fine…” she rasped. “Just don’t expect me to pull anything that big out for awhile. I’m not a power generator, you know.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t think we’ll need you for a while yet.”
“I’d better get some love after all this is over,” she warned.
Kevin nodded. “After all this is over, I promise that Lilian and I will give you all the love you can stand.”
“A threesome?”
Kevin shrugged. “If you want. Lilian? How are you doing?”
“I’m good,” Lilian said. “While Barrier that Protects the Princess takes a lot out of me, I think I’ve still got a good amount of fight left in me. Although I hop
e you won’t mind when I say that I really don’t want to fight—not like this at least.”
Kevin understood. Lilian liked shonen battles. One on one fights between two opponents who traded witty banter and showed off cool techniques. She wasn’t a fan of realistic warfare like this unless it was in a video game like Call of Duty.
The area around them was mostly clear of enemies. Several soldiers had made landfall in other places, and the troopships had finally reached the beach and were disgorging soldiers by the bucket loads. They rushed out of the exit hatches, guns blazing from the moment they touched sand.
This really is horrible.
Humans clashed with yōkai. Both sides took a beating, though the soldiers seemed to have taken heavier losses than their enemies. Several troopships had been sunk long before reaching the beachhead. Their remains floated in the water, wreckage and bodies that had drowned when the ningyo and kappa destroyed them. Oddly enough, there were not that many deaths. Kevin could see several yōkai swimming through the water as they rescued the still surviving US soldiers.
It looks like they have the same idea as Monstrang.
There were a surprisingly large number of yōkai fighting. While many had run to escape the violence, just as many had stayed. Even now, several yōkai could be seen leaving the area. To many, it would have looked like they were fleeing, but Kevin could see more clearly. They were protecting the humans who’d gotten caught up in this, calmly directing the humans away from the beach. That calmness in the face of danger was shocking. It was almost like they’d been expecting this.
Did Kuroneko know this would happen?
“Come on,” Kevin said to his two companions. “We need to find Kuroneko.”
“Roger!”
“Right, right.”
Kevin took point as they rushed across the beach, with Lilian and Iris running beside and slightly behind him, forming a triangle. With his sharp eyes, he picked out several battles taking place, and Kevin didn’t hesitate to take opportunistic shots at soldiers whose backs were turned. Several went down when he destroyed their weapons, shot them in the leg, or took out their shoulders.
Daven Monstrang had a policy to always show mercy when possible. A lot of people knew the US soldiers were not fighting out of hatred but because of orders, and this policy was put in place partly because of that. Another reason was that fighting without killing would cause confusion and uncertainty among the rank and file, making the soldiers who did kill yōkai because of fear wonder if they maybe they were wrong. His boss hoped this would bring humans and yōkai closer when the war was over.
“Celestial Art: Orbs of an Evanescent Realm!”
Spheres of light emerged from Lilian’s tail like tiny golden globes. They spread out, shooting off in all directions. Each one struck an enemy, exploding with enough force to knock them unconscious, then splitting into smaller spheres that attacked more people.
“Celestial Art: Combination Technique: Many Droplets of the Sun!”
The small spheres that appeared scattered, zipping along their chosen linear path. Each tiny sphere hit another soldier, each shot aimed at something vital but not life-threatening: a leg, a knee, an elbow. One man even got hit in the balls. Kevin winced, feeling a moment of sympathy, as the man in question grabbed his baby maker and sank to the sand.
“We’ve got incoming!” Iris shouted over the sounds of battle.
Kevin saw them. A dozen troops were gunning for them. Three on the left. Three on the right. Six in front.
“Lilian!”
“Got it! Gomu Gomu no Extension!”
Kevin would have facepalmed at Lilian’s blatant use of an anime attack, but he would save that for later.
Lilian’s tails extended to incredible lengths, easily growing until they were six yards long. She then used those tails to slap aside the soldiers on their right and left at the same time, sending them flying.
Because she was taking care of their flanks, Kevin could focus on the enemy in front. He aimed both guns and fired. The first six bullets struck the semi-automatic rifles in their enemies’ hands. Each shot penetrated the barrel, destroying the mechanisms inside of the guns and rendering them useless. The next two struck the kneecaps of two soldiers, sending them into the sand. Four more bullets were dodged when the soldiers cottoned onto his technique and moved accordingly.
Kevin pulled the triggers again, but they clicked empty, so he instead threw them at two of the soldiers, the guns bouncing off their helmets. That was okay. They’d served as a good distraction, and Kevin, Lilian, and Iris quickly closed the distance.
There was no chance for retaliation as Kevin slammed into the enemy forces. He caught one soldier in a clinch and leapt into the air, slamming a knee into their nose, breaking it. Pain lanced up his kneecap, but he ignored it as he landed on the ground, rolling across the sand and taking out his next opponent with a leg sweep. While the soldier managed to catch themselves before they fell, Kevin pushed himself into a semi-handstand and slammed his foot into the underside of their chin. The soldier, a young woman, fell backwards with a dull thud and didn’t get back up.
Celestial Art: Light Inversion!”
The two remaining soldiers stumbled as they were caught within Lilian’s illusion. Kevin capitalized on their sudden inability to correctly perceive light. His first attack, an elbow to the neck, caused one soldier to fall limp. His second, a flying roundhouse kick, caught his opponent in the face, which was unfortunate for him because his enemy was wearing a helmet. So, while they stumbled back, Kevin howled in pain, holding his foot as it throbbed.
Before the soldier could recover, Iris leapt forward. Several front handsprings took her past the soldier’s guard. Doing a handstand, she wrapped her legs around the soldier’s throat, then used a minor application of reinforcement to lift them up and toss them into the ground. The middle-aged man gasped as the wind was knocked out of him. He never got a chance to recover either, as Lilian slammed her tail into his gut hard enough to cause the sand around him to dent. The soldier twitched once, twice, and then went limp, clearly unconscious.
“Are either of you hurt?” Kevin asked.
“I’m good, Beloved.” Lilian patted herself down as though assuring him that she was fine.
Iris placed her hands on her knees. “Same here. I’m just tired. Damn it. I wanna go to bed.”
“There you three are,” a voice said. Kevin looked over to see Kuroneko walking toward them, her elegant sashay still in place, as if she was just taking a stroll through the park. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Where have you been?” Lilian demanded before Kevin could do the same. “You just went off and left us to fend for ourselves.”
Kuroneko smiled. “My apologies, child, but there was something that I needed to do.”
“Like what?” asked Kevin.
“Like retrieve your weapons,” Kuroneko replied, handing Kevin his silver and black handguns. She then pulled out his holsters, bandolier, and ammo clips from her cleavage and handed them to Kevin as well. “Here you go.”
“Thanks,” Kevin muttered as he hurried to put them on. As he slung the bandolier across his shoulder, he made a solemn vow to bring his weapons no matter where he went, even if he was going to the beach.
I should have known something like this would happen.
As he finished clipping his ammunition to his ammo holder, Kuroneko walked past him and the two kitsune. Her eyes held an indistinguishable look as she gazed out at the fleet blocking her view of the ocean.
“Hm, it seems like the entire Naval base from San Diego is here. I guess that means they took the bait.”
“Bait?” Lilian said, furrowing her eyebrows.
Kuroneko’s lips twisted into a smile that appeared both beautiful and deadly. “Why yes. You don’t think I just let myself walk out in broad daylight whenever it suits my fancy, do you?”
Kuroneko said no more, but she didn’t really need to. They understood. She had used he
rself, and them, as bait. All that posturing, walking around town in broad daylight, shopping for bathing suits, even traveling to the beach, had been designed to entice the US Army into attacking them.
It also explained why none of the yōkai were panicking. Even the humans, frightened as they seemed, appeared calmer than they should have been. Did that mean they all knew what was going to happen? Had Kuroneko planned all this from the start? The answer was obvious. Yes. Yes, she had. Everything, from the moment they had arrived to now, had all been a part of Kuroneko’s plan to draw out the Navy. A trap for her foes.
This woman… she truly is a terrifying creature.
“Now, then, I believe it is time I did something about these troopships, wouldn’t you say?” asked Kuroneko, though she didn’t give them a chance to respond.
Kuroneko raised a single hand in the air. Energy swirled around her. Strands of blue light like streamers gathered, coalescing above her palm, forming a tiny orb of blue energy. The orb grew, increasing in size, going from the size of her palm to the size of a basketball and then a beach ball.
“I think this is enough energy.”
Kuroneko smiled—
“Aether Blast.”
—and several hundred beams of light erupted from the orb, lancing out to strike the troopships, blowing through them like they were made of paper. Explosions rocked the ships as their engines were destroyed. Metal debris flew through the air, launched across the beach as plumes of fire rose into the sky.
“Now for the planes.”
The orb, decreased in size but still quite large, shot several more beams from within, this time into the sky. Each one was fired with incredible precision, slamming into plane engines and blowing them to kingdom come. The planes remained intact, however, and they fell to the sea, crashing into the water with a large splash.
That was when the ningyo swarmed in. The kappa hung back, blasting holes into the metal hull with water attacks. The ningyo, however, got in close. They swam inside of the holes and came back out, dragging humans with them. Some were conscious, and those ones kicked and struggled until they were knocked out. The ones that weren’t awake were lucky, as they were merely dragged to shore.
A Fox's Alliance (American Kitsune Book 10) Page 23