A Fox's Alliance (American Kitsune Book 10)

by Brandon Varnell

  One sphere broke apart under the intense gunfire. Rather than simply burst into particles, it split into two, both of which attacked Jill again, adding one more to the number of spheres trying to hurt her.

  This seemed to anger Jill who, releasing a furious snarl, didn’t even bother avoiding the next attack and punched one of the spheres. Lilian gawked at the display. Yet even though she somehow disrupted the attack, all that happened was the sphere splitting in two. It also meant Jill wasn’t paying attention to the other nine spheres.

  Five of the now eleven spheres struck Jill like miniature sun bombs. The smaller two struck first, detonating against her back and making the woman stumble. A second one slammed into her chest and sent her reeling. The third and fourth attacked from the sides, slamming into her at the same time and bursting like stars undergoing combustion. Then came the fifth, which struck her across her helmeted face, sending her to the ground.

  “Ha… ha…”

  Lilian panted. Her chest felt tight and oxygen seemed hard to come by. Controlling so many spheres like that, and expending that much youki, really took a lot out of her.

  Did that finish her off? Please tell me she’s unconscious.

  “That hurt…”

  Glaring at the woman as she slowly climbed to her feet, Lilian felt nothing but disbelief. A jolt like an electric current traveled through her. Jill didn’t even seem that injured. Her bodysuit had a few scratches on it—its gleam had dulled somewhat, but aside from a little cosmetic damage to her clothing, her enemy looked righter than rain.

  “I can see why Lieutenant Justin claimed that you were the most dangerous person to face,” Jill continued.

  Despite being in the middle of combat, Lilian felt her chest swell with pride. “I’m glad somebody recognizes how awesome I am. Of course, I am one of the main characters, so it’s only natural.”

  … A moment of silence.

  “I have no clue what you mean by that,” Jill declared, her feet sliding across the ground. “What I do know is that I can’t let you live.”

  Lilian was about ready to respond with a snappy comeback suitable for a heroine. Unfortunately, she’d never get the chance.

  Because at that moment, Jill rocketed toward her, bodily ramming into her, and sending them both flying straight through the brick wall of a building.

  ***

  Iris was running.

  Her clothing was torn. Cuts littered her body, and tiny trails of blood leaked from the uncountable number of tiny nicks. They weren’t deep wounds, but even a thousand small injuries could take a person down. The accumulation of so many cuts caused her body to burn as if it had been dunked in acid.

  Her breathing was ragged as she turned down an alleyway. She could hear nothing but the harsh pants of her own breath and the throbbing beat of her heart, which had leapt into her throat and felt like it might be regurgitated at any second. Behind her, Jack followed with a dogged tenacity.

  “Why are you running away?” Jack crowed at her back. “Come on! Come back and play with me.”

  Iris gritted her teeth. She would’ve loved to retort, but she couldn’t intake the necessary amount of breath to speak.

  I… if this keeps up, I really might die…

  It was a stark realization, the knowledge that this battle could kill her if she made any more slip ups. She’d been trying not to kill her opponent, but that was clearly no longer an option.

  I’ll have to use the Void.

  She’d avoided using it so far because she was trying not to kill him and didn’t want to accidentally kill anyone who might be living in the buildings around her. The matter was no longer in her hands. If she didn’t fight to kill, then he would kill her—and she’d rather he die. There was far too much that she had to live for.

  I need to lure him to an open space.

  A parking lot would do. If she could just find an abandoned parking lot, then she could take care of him. A road was too small, too narrow. There were also too many people within a certain radius of it. She’d seen them staring at their battle through windows all over the road. Walls were not an obstacle for the Void, so if she unleashed it there, it would seek those people out.

  The stud would never forgive me if I killed innocent people.

  Neither would Lilian, and if she was being honest, Iris didn’t think she’d be able to forgive herself either.

  A gunshot went off.

  “N-ngg!”

  Iris stumbled as she zipped around a corner, pain flaring up like acid-laced needles punching through her flesh. Blood splattered to the ground, and she pressed a hand to her side wincing as she felt the bullet wound. It had only grazed her side, but it still hurt.

  Grimacing, Iris ignored the pain and pushed on. She only needed to run a little further. There was a parking lot up ahead.

  Another gunshot went off just as she reached the parking lot.

  “A-ah!” Iris gasped, her left leg giving out as splitting pain shot through her calf. She stumbled to the ground, in the middle of the empty parking lot, and clutched her leg, from which blood spurted like a leaky faucet.

  “It looks like I finally got you.”

  Stepping into the parking lot, Jack strode toward her with a calm, steady gait, the kind a predator gave when it knew it had won.

  “You’ve given me a good deal of trouble, more than I expected from such a pretty face, but it’s all over now, Sweaty.”

  Iris scowled at his condescending attitude. She’d grown to respect humans thanks to Kevin’s unwavering dedication to her sister and his strength in battle, but for some random peon to mock her—it was far too much.

  Youki circulated through her tails, directed and shaped by Iris’s will.

  “Tell me,” she rasped, her tongue dry. “Do you… agree with this war?”

  The man paused. “You mean do I agree that you yōkai are a menace to the human race?” he asked rhetorically, then shrugged. “Not really. If you were, then I’m sure we would have been dead or enslaved a long time ago, and I doubt you would have integrated yourself so fully into human society.”

  “Then why are you doing this?”

  Jack put his hand on the trigger. Iris reached into the Void.

  “Because it’s my job. I don’t like it. I don’t agree with it. But when you’re in the military, you’re sometimes given orders that you don’t agree with. That’s a part of life.”

  “And what about the yōkai who were part of your military? What happened to them?”

  “Most were found out and honorably discharged, so if you’re trying to make me feel guilty, then it’s not going to work.”

  Iris smirked. “I guess not, but at least it got you talking.”

  “What?”

  “Void Art: Consuming Flames.”

  Quicker than Jack could blink, a black ball of void fire struck him in the chest. It quickly moved to consume him, spreading over his armor and eating away at it. Yet Jack proved that he was a veteran soldier and not easily surprised, when he unlatched his chestplate and leapt away. The armor, plus the strange backpack, clattered to the ground as it was consumed. The Void then spread along the ground in search of more sustenance.

  Jack lifted his pistol to shoot Iris, but she knocked it out of his hand with a tail. The gun fell into the black flames and was consumed. He looked at where his gun had been, then at Iris’s glowing red eyes.

  I’ve got you now.

  Iris narrowed her eyes. A tail lashed out at Jack, but he avoided it and ran backward, causing her to click her tongue. As Jack beat a hasty retreat, Iris used one of her tails as a crutch and limped away. She traveled a relatively safe distance, stumbling into an alley, where she leaned against the wall.

  I really hate this, she thought, wondering what kind of ill-fate she must have been given to be forced into these battles. She was a kitsune, not some stupid mutt who took pleasure in fighting.

  Iris took a deep breath and prepared to move—

  —then cried out when
a knife flew out of the darkness and impaled her left shoulder.

  ***

  Lilian couldn’t breathe. The hands around her throat ensured that.

  She was lying on her back, amist piles of rubble and broken items. Jill straddled her waist, strangling her.

  Not one to quietly give up, Lilian wrapped a tail around Jill’s neck and, reinforcing the tail, squeezed. Jill must not have expected this. Her eyes suddenly bulged and a wet rasp escaped her parted mouth. She let go of Lilian’s neck and grabbed onto the tail, which she tried to pull off.

  It didn’t budge.

  A kitsune’s tail was their strongest appendage. It was the place where all their youki was stored, the source of their power. Because of that, reinforcing the tails was easy for a kitsune. The power was already there.

  As the woman struggled against her tail, Lilian used her other tail to grab the tank on Jill’s back. The tail coiled around the tank and ripped it off, the veins tearing and spilling strange green liquid on the ground. Grinning fiercely, Lilian tossed the tank away and brought her tail toward Jill’s temple.

  “Kitsune Art: Illusory Sleep.”

  The woman stopped struggling. Her body slumped in Lilian’s grip. Seeing her foe slip into unconsciousness, Lilian released her tail from around Jill’s throat. Without something to support her, Jill fell forward.

  Directly on top of Lilian.

  “U-ugh.”

  Lilian groaned under the woman’s dead weight. She’d spent so much youki during this battle that she no longer had enough to use reinforcement, and she was way too tired to lift this woman under her own prowess.

  “This sucks,” an exhausted Lilian said to no one in particular.

  At least the battle is over, she thought with a sigh, closing her eyes. I hope Kevin and Iris are okay.

  ***

  Leaning against the wall, as her legs no longer supported her, Iris held a hand to her new wound. Crimson ichor poured from the shoulder, gushing like juice from a freshly squeezed grapefruit. Her teeth clenched tightly, Iris’s face was the utter definition of agony.

  A figure appeared around the corner. Iris tried to attack, but she was obviously distracted by the pain, and Jack reacted more quickly than her. His hand wrapped around her throat, gripping it in a fierce, ironlike clamp.

  “That was pretty dangerous,” Jack said, his voice no longer joking. “I knew you were a Void Kitsune, but I didn’t know how deadly the Void could be. That would have really killed me if I hadn’t been so quick.”

  “It still could,” Iris said from behind him. Jack’s eyes widened as the person before him faded into nonexistence. Before he could do anything, two tails clamped onto his head and slammed him into the wall. The first strike shattered his helmet. The second one knocked him unconscious.

  As the man crumpled to the ground, Iris eyed him with cold satisfaction.

  “After all, without that strange backpack of yours, you can’t tell the difference between illusion and reality.”

  Iris eyed the man with a huff, wondering if she should just kill him. He was dangerous. However…

  “Not really. If you were, then I’m sure we would have been dead or enslaved a long time ago, and I doubt you would have integrated yourself so fully into human society.”

  “I feel like the stud is rubbing off on me,” Iris muttered as she looked at the man. The longer she stared, however, the more she felt like he at least deserved to be punished.

  A smile spread across her face as she grabbed his arm and began dragging the man off.

  ***

  Kevin could feel the sweat running down his back as he dodged Justin’s attacks.

  His former friend hovered over him, firing lighting from one weapon and fire from another. They weren’t guns in the most normal sense, but rather, they were a part of his suit that had shifted into guns. Large barrels like metal tubes glistened with moonlight in place of his hands. They were long, easily a foot in length, starting from his wrists and traveling past his hands. Kevin didn’t understand the mechanics behind such a contraption, but when being fired at, such thoughts hardly mattered.

  Fire spat from the left gun at a rapid pace, like a tommy gun from the Godfather. Justin used this to track Kevin, who dodged and wove through the hail of bullets in random, zigzagging patterns. Bullets combusted against the black road, tiny sparks of incandescence that released incredible heat.

  However, that was nothing compared to the lightning.

  They shot from the right barrel like javelins thrown by an Olympian. They weren’t bullets. They were lances, and those lances struck the ground with a brilliant crackle, shattering blacktop and scorching the earth. Lightning skittered across the ground in a massive wave when this happened. Kevin was lucky that his bodysuit was insulated with rubber.

  “Come on, Kevin!” Justin crowed. “Make this fun for me!”

  “Tch!”

  Kevin’s breathing was even as he ducked into a narrow alley. Trash cans littered the area, but they weren’t hurdles to be overcome. Wall leaping onto the first one, Kevin used them to help him ascend. He stretched out his hand after taking a final leap, latched onto a pole jutting from the building to his right, and then swung himself onto the fire safety ladder.

  The high ground. I need to reach the high ground.

  In most cases, a battle between two individuals was decided by several factors: skill, strength, speed, endurance, intelligence, and battle awareness. In a straight fight between two people who were more or less equal, it became a matter of who tripped up first. However, in a battle where one of them was flying and had a suit that made them more maneuverable, the high ground suddenly became paramount for the one who couldn’t fly.

  Of course, as Justin could fly, Kevin would never be able to retain the high ground for very long. That was okay, though. He only needed it for a second.

  Without a second thought, Kevin leapt from the second-floor fire escape seconds before Justin flew into alley. The young man paused when he didn’t see anyone.

  His former friend never saw him coming.

  Not until Kevin had landed on top of him.

  “What the—?!”

  Kevin gritted his teeth as Justin suddenly took evasive action. He clung onto the other teen’s back, his fingers digging into the suit, as the erratic aerial maneuvers threatened to throw him off. The wind blew in his face as Justin barrel rolled. Sensing the wall coming closer, Kevin used the rotational forces to spin around Justin like he was a pole. Now face to face, he and his foe stared at each other as Justin’s back broke through the concrete wall.

  Objects scattered as they crashed into them. Kevin yelped as something smacked him in the face, and he was flung off Justin, who continued flying. Asphyxiated agony caused him to become breathless when he crashed into the ground and rolled across the floor. He stopped only after slamming into something made of metal, which fell on top of him soon after. Whatever it was, it was covered in some kind of fabric as Kevin found himself buried under a pile of cloth.

  “What’s this?”

  Blinking several times, Kevin grabbed the offending piece of cloth sitting on his head. Then he looked at it.

  He blinked some more.

  “Panties?”

  They were, indeed, panties. Black with lace. In other words, lingerie.

  “Huh…”

  Looking around, Kevin realized that he was actually lying in a pile of women’s lingerie. All sorts of sexy undergarments surrounded him.

  Kevin breathed in through his nose, then out his mouth.

  “I am never telling Lilian and Iris about this,” he decided. “They’d never let me live it down.”

  Pulling himself from underneath what he now recognized as a clothing rack, Kevin stood up, plucking g-strings and thongs off his body and tossing them away.

  The place he found himself in was a clothing store. Extending as far as his eyes could see were numerous aisles lined with racks. Multiple large posters hung from the walls. Judg
ing from the amount of female undergarments in the area, he was definitely in the women’s section.

  Where’d Justin go, I wonder.

  Lightning struck a spot close to his head, blowing a chunk out of the wall. Kevin winced as he received a slight jolt. He shook it off quickly, and ducked behind a large shelf, which was reduced to fragments and twisted metal when more lightning struck it.

  “That was pretty clever, Kevin. Forcing me into a building where I couldn’t use the high ground to my complete advantage. Bravo!” Justin complimented as he fired more shots from his gun arms.

  Fire bullets struck the floor, walls, racks, and clothing, which burst into brief flares and created countless fires. Kevin darted away from the growing conflagrations. At the same time, he unholstered his silver gun and fired off several rounds. Each bullet from his gun splashed against the growing flames, putting them out with a hiss of steam.

  “I see you’ve already changed your ammo to water,” Justin said, shooting a massive lance of lightning at Kevin, who met the attack by charging his black gun and firing a large ball of wind. The two attacks collided, creating a minor shockwave before harmlessly dissipating. “And you’ve also learned about the elemental weaknesses, I see.”

  It was a very fundamental concept. All elements had a weakness and a strength to an opposing element. Fire was weak against water but strong against wind. Wind was weak against fire but strong against lightning. Lightning was strong against earth, and earth was strong against water. The five main elements created a pentagram of strengths and weaknesses.

  “It comes from living with yōkai for so long,” Kevin shot back, firing off several wind bullets, which harmlessly bounced off Justin’s armor. He narrowed his eyes when he saw how the bullets bounced away. “Tch. You should try it sometime. Maybe then you’d stop trying to exterminate yōkai out of some misguided sense of duty.”

  Justin laughed, even as he shot more fire bullets at Kevin.

  “I thought I already told you, Kevin. I—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I remember,” Kevin cut him off as he rolled across the ground, came back onto his feet, and raced through an aisle full of bikinis. He came back out on the other side, his guns already blazing. “You don’t hate yōkai. You’re just following orders because you’ve got a purpose and blah, blah, blah, blah. Maybe it’s time you get a new purpose!”