A Fox's Family (American Kitsune Book 4)

by Brandon Varnell

  “Like, can you believe the nerve of that new assistant coach? She, like, totally made me run, even though I told her I didn’t want to,” one of them complained. Eric couldn’t figure out which one had spoken, and he honestly didn’t care. The girl on the far left had just slid her shorts off, revealing cute white panties. Her butt had nothing on Lilian or Christine, but still, a butt was a butt was a butt, and if there was one thing Eric liked with the same zeal as boobs, it was butts.

  “Like, I know. I tried to tell her that I just got my nails done, and like, she was all ‘I don’t care’ and I was like, you’re a total bitch.”

  The girls all laughed as one.

  “I know, right? And then she forced us all to, like, play that game of dodgeball. My hair is now totally ruined, and I’m all sweaty.”

  “Eeww!”

  Eric squinted as he recognized the voice, or at least the type of person the voice belonged to. These girls sounded like the stereotypical valley girl cliche. How surprising. He didn’t think girls like that existed anymore. They weren’t living in the 90s. People should’ve learned how to speak proper English and not act so air-headed!

  Weird thoughts coming from a boy who spent most of his life trying to peep on women.

  He continued listening to the girls complain, or rather, he completely ignored the complaining in favor of watching them strip. He was a bit disappointed that none of these girls had much to flaunt. They didn’t have the astoundingly large and unusually perky boobs of Lilian, nor did they have the marvelously flat chest of Christine. They were all in between, never going for one extreme over the other, thereby making them normal.

  For some reason, normal had become awfully boring these days.

  He blamed Lilian and Christine.

  “Come on, girls!” a familiar voice shouted out. Eric also heard clapping coming from somewhere out of his field of vision. “Hurry up! Another class is coming in soon, so you girls need to clean up, get dressed and get out in five minutes!”

  “Tch! Can you believe that woman? She doesn’t honestly think we can do all that in five minutes, does she? Like, it takes me at least thirty just to do my makeup!”

  “Totally, and it takes me fifteen to get my hair just right. That bitch totally doesn’t know how easy she has it with her short hair.”

  “I don’t think she even takes care of her hair. I mean, just look at it. It’s all stiff and greasy, like she washes her hair in a tub of oil or something.”

  “Like, totally.”

  “Hey! Move your butts, girls! I don’t pay you to sit around talking!”

  “Like, you don’t pay us at all!”

  “Totally!”

  “Ugh, I’ve got to take a shower. My skin is, like, absolutely sweaty and gross. I can’t wear my clothes like this!”

  “Me neither.”

  “Good thing I, like, brought a towel.”

  Eric’s grin widened as he realized what was going to happen. These girls were going to strip naked! What a treat!

  Contrary to the popular beliefs most men had of what transpired in a female locker room, girls didn’t just randomly strip naked for no apparent reason. Eric had been most depressed when he had first learned this fact. All women should get naked in a locker room just like they did in anime! Why didn’t these girls know that? Still, he’d grown used to seeing, at most, a pair of well-filled panties, and learned to make up for this deficiency in his Perv-O-Meter with hentai and H-games.

  But now, none of that mattered! Because he was going to finally see a pair of real-live breasts!

  “Hell, yeah! Bring on the boobies!” he shouted.

  “Did you hear that?!”

  Eric clamped a hand over his mouth.

  “Like, it sounded like a shout!”

  “You don’t think…?”

  “I do.”

  Eric “eeped!” when the door to his locker was suddenly and violently wrenched open. A hand grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked him out. The young pervert went tumbling to the ground, where he soon found himself surrounded by a bunch of angry females in various states of undress.

  “Any last words?” one of the girls asked, cracking her knuckles.

  “I regret nothing!”

  “Wrong. Answer.”

  Five minutes later a bruised, battered and thoroughly beaten Eric lay on the ground, twitching and groaning in pain. He looked like, well, like a bunch of women had unleashed their Righteous Female Fury upon him. His cheeks were swollen like a chipmunk whose mouth was full of acorns, and both of his eyes were black. His left eye looked worse, as it was swollen completely shut and beginning to turn purple. He was also missing several teeth and had a split lip that bled profusely.

  Standing above him, hands on her hips and the most amused smirk quirking her lips, was none other than Heather Grant.

  “So… was it worth it?”

  Eric groaned in pain, but was still able to slowly raise his shaky left hand into the air, where he gave a thumbs up… and then let it drop back to the floor with a dull thud.

  Heather nodded approvingly. “Good man.”

  ***

  From the moment the plane took off, Iris had decided that she absolutely hated flying. There was just something unsettling about the whole thing. Maybe it was the knowledge that she was hundreds if not thousands feet above ground, or maybe it had something to do with how the plane would jostle and shake whenever they hit turbulence. Either way, she decided right then and there that flying sucked.

  Iris sat in the seat closest to the aisle. No way in hell was she getting anywhere near the window. Kirihime sat beside her, humming a gentle tune to herself as she flipped through the pages of a magazine, which, judging from the front cover, was about knives. After reading over Kirihime’s shoulder in an effort to distract herself, Iris shuddered and looked away, disturbed by the maid’s fascination with pointy objects. Over by the window, Camellia had her face pressed against the glass, gazing at the vast sea of clouds with a child’s curiosity.

  Trying to ignore the way her stomach flip-flopped the longer she stayed in this death machine, Iris swallowed the bile attempting to rise in her throat and closed her eyes.

  Within the darkness of her mind, an image appeared, of a beautiful girl with hair the color of crimson flames and eyes that sparkled brighter than a pair of emeralds.

  Wait for me, Lilian. We’ll be reunited again soon.

  Chapter 2

  Not All Surprises Are Good

  “So, how is it?”

  Kevin looked at Alex, blinking several times as he processed his friend’s words. “How is what?”

  Alex rolled his eyes, as if amazed by Kevin’s ignorance. “Don’t give me that ‘how is what?’ crap. How is dating Lilian, like, really dating Lilian and not that weird runaround thing you two were doing before?”

  Kevin’s cheeks flushed a dark shade of crimson as he opened his locker. “W-why do you want to know about something like that?”

  Alex gave his friend a flat stare. “Are you seriously asking that? After over two months of listening to you claim that you didn’t like her, you’re finally dating Lilian. You can’t expect me to not be curious.”

  As his other friends nodded, Kevin conceded that Alex had a point. If their positions were reversed, he’d probably be curious, too.

  He paused halfway through getting changed. His track pants were on, but his shirt remained in his hands.

  “It’s… pretty amazing, actually.” His blush didn’t recede, but a soft smile did appear on his face as he thought about Lilian. “She’s a really amazing girl, you know? She’s vibrant, fun, cheerful, and is always optimistic about everything. She’s like… like a bright ray of sunshine. Everything just seems so much more vibrant whenever she’s around.”

  “Don’t forget she’s also hot,” Andrew added.

  “There’s that, too,” Kevin conceded. While more interested in Lilian as a person, he would be stupid to deny her general…well…hotness. The two-tails
was, quite frankly, one of the hottest examples of the female species he’d ever seen. Oh sure, Kotohime was really attractive--gorgeous even--and she had a mature air about her that Lilian lacked, but she also carried a katana and wore a kimono everywhere she went. Plus, she scared the crap out of him.

  Kevin put his shirt on and began lacing up his shoes. “Sometimes, I feel almost like I’m living in a dream, you know? I’m always expecting to wake up one day and discover that none of this ever happened.”

  It wouldn’t have been a hard thing to do, considering all the crazy stuff that had happened to him in the past two and a half months. His life had been one zany disaster after another ever since Lilian’s arrival. He felt almost like one of those harem protagonists in a shōnen romantic comedy.

  Which was, of course, patently ridiculous. He wasn’t some kind of shōnen manga protagonist, no matter what crazy things Lilian or Kotohime said to the contrary…

  … Right?

  “Listen to you, bragging about your love life,” Chase scoffed. “From the way you keep talking about Lilian these days, you’d think she was the greatest chick in the entire universe.”

  Kevin’s blush receded as he finished tying his shoes. “Well, if there was a contest for greatest woman in the universe, she’d definitely have my vote.”

  “Whatever,” Chase grumbled. “For someone who used to be so hung up on Lindsay, you’ve become awfully lovey-dovey with a girl you claimed to not like two weeks ago. What changed your mind?”

  Kevin shrugged as he, Alex, Andrew and Chase made their way out of the locker room with the other track members. “I couldn’t say. I guess it’s just, well, maybe I just realized that Lindsay wasn’t the only amazing girl out there. Like, there are more fish in the sea, or something, you know?”

  “Expanding your horizons.”

  “Studying abroad.”

  “Searching the market.”

  “… Women….”

  Everyone stopped talking and stared at Justin very oddly for a second…

  … And then went back to their conversation.

  “You know, I just realized something.” Kevin turned his head left and right, searching for something that wasn’t there. Or rather, someone who wasn’t there. “Eric still hasn’t joined us.”

  Alex, along with his fraternal twin brother and Chase, also scanned the area. “Huh? You’re right. That’s really weird. I mean, Eric is a pretty unreliable guy at times, especially if he’s given the choice between perving on women or hanging out with friends, but he’d never miss a track meet, and he definitely wouldn’t miss out on the last one of the season. Where do you think he is?”

  As if summoned by their words, a loud, familiar voice shouted from behind them.

  “LOOK OUT, EVERYONE!!! COMING THROUGH!!”

  And then another voice shouted, this one female.

  “IF YOU PEOPLE DON’T WANNA GET FLATTENED, YOU’D BETTER MOVE OUT OF THE WAY!”

  The entire male track team looked behind them to see Eric and…was that Heather Grant? Yes, it was. Their new PE assistant coach was also running down the hallway, and there was a large cloud of what looked like dust chasing after them.

  Everyone present jumped away, their backs pressing against the wall, just as the two ran past them.

  “There they are!”

  “Get them!”

  “Hurry up! Don’t let them get away!”

  “Come back here, you stupid perverts!”

  “I can’t believe we trusted you!”

  “KILL THEM!!!”

  Before anyone could even think about relaxing, the track team was forced back against the wall as a horde of outraged teenage girls rushed by. Several drops of sweat rolled down Kevin’s face as he noticed that every girl was carrying some kind of household appliance: a broom, a mop, a rake, a strange pole thing, and…

  “Holy shit! Is that chick carrying a claymore?!”

  Kevin nearly did a double take when he saw that one of the girls rushing past them was, indeed, carrying a claymore: a two-handed longsword with a cross hilt of forward-sloping quillons with quatrefoil terminations. The weapon was gigantic, literally a foot or so longer than the girl was tall. That she carried it so easily spoke much of her strength, or her anger, or both.

  Angry women tended to gain a substantial increase in strength proportionate to how upset they were. It was one of the basic laws of shōnen manga.

  “Is that a prop? Please tell me that’s a prop!”

  “I don’t know… it looks pretty real to me.”

  “B-but just look that that thing! It’s huge! And look at the way she’s carrying it! There’s no way a waif of a girl like that could possibly carry a real sword that large!”

  Kevin had to agree. Claymores were heavy. While he didn’t know exactly how much they weighed, he knew that a full-tang steel claymore was, at the very least, somewhere around 60 to 80 pounds, if not heavier. It was probably a prop of some kind—although he couldn’t recall ever seeing a prop like that being used in any of their school’s plays.

  Maybe that girl’s a fan of Claire and that’s just her cosplay sword… yeah, that’s gotta be it. No way someone would be carrying around a real claymore like that.

  The horde of murderous teenage girls dwindled down to a trickle before ceasing altogether. Alex, Andrew, Chase and Kevin all looked at each other with matching “WTF?” expressions.

  “So, what do you think that was about?” Alex asked.

  “No idea,” Chase muttered, staring at the last place they’d seen the girl wielding the giant claymore.

  Kevin shook his head. “I don’t think I want to know.”

  “… Peeping…”

  Once again, Justin received nothing but odd looks, even though, for once, the group completely agreed with him.

  ***

  “Ha… ha…. I think… we lost them…”

  Eric was hunched over on his hands and knees, breathing heavily as if he’d just run a marathon—or been chased by a horde of angry teenage girls. Sweat dripped down his brow and his shoulders heaved as he tried to regulate his breathing.

  He looked at his partner in crime, the gorgeous blond teacher whose lecherous streak was even wider than his own, and he couldn’t help but wonder: where had this woman been all his life? Why had she just revealed herself to him now? If only they had met sooner!

  Unlike Eric, who looked ready to keel over, Heather hadn’t broken a sweat. She appeared right as rain and ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. “Hmm… I don’t know. We women are a tenacious bunch, especially when angered. Trust me. I’ve been doing this for years.”

  “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!” Catching his second wind, Eric stared at the woman in shock. “You mean to tell me that you’ve been peeping on girls in the locker room for years? Seriously?!”

  Heather’s chest swelled with pride. “Of course! I’ve been peeping for years for my research and inspiration!”

  “Research? Inspiration?”

  “That’s right. You see, I am not just a pervert who enjoys peeping on women in the locker rooms. Everything I do is for the sake of my art.” Heather held a clenched fist up to her face. “I am the trailblazer, paving the way for men and women everywhere who enjoy reading about sexy shenanigans and bouncing boobies! I am an author! A writer of erotica! Peeping is my passion and writing is my craft, and I will hone both until I become a master!”

  By the end of her speech, Heather had raised her clenched right fist into the air. The fire in her eyes, the physical manifestation of her determination and lustful desires, had turned into a raging inferno. Bright orange flames surrounded her body, a conflagration wreathing her in a strange, Saiyan-esque blaze of energy derived from her own perverse intentions.

  Eric was in awe. This woman was truly a pervert among perverts. And she was a woman to boot! A hot woman! That alone caused her Pervy Power Levels to rise past 9,000!

  Eric bowed before this messiah, getting down on his hands and knees, bowing so lo
w that his nose scraped the tiled floor. “Oh, great and powerful one, please take me under your wing! I wish to learn your ways! Please share your knowledge with me!”

  Heather smiled benevolently. “Very well. Rise, my young apprentice. Rise and follow me into the world of perversity and peeping! It is only through me that you shall become a master!”

  “Yes!”

  The newly appointed master and apprentice smiled at each other, glad to have finally found someone they could share their salacious antics with.

  This moment of bonding, which would have been touching had the pair’s antics not been borderline criminal, was interrupted when a horde of furious females turned a corner.

  “There they are! Get ‘em, girls!”

  “Oh, god! They found us! Run for it!”

  As Eric and Heather began to run, the blond-haired assistant PE coach turned to her apprentice.

  “Now then, apprentice, I believe it is time for me to teach you my first lesson.”

  Eric somehow managed to look incredulous. “What? Now?”

  “No time like the present.”

  Eric looked behind him at the horde of outraged high school girls, and then back at his new master.

  “Um, okay. So, uh, what’s this lesson you want to teach me?”

  Heather nodded, pleased to see someone so receptive to her teachings. “Whenever you are being hunted by a mob of angry women, you never have to outrun the mob. You just have to outrun the person next to you.”

  “Huh?”

  Before he could decipher that statement, Heather stuck her foot out and Eric suddenly found himself eating pavement. Ignoring the pain, he looked up at the blonde woman, who grinned and winked at him, before hauling butt out of there.

  And then the horde was upon him.

  “Now we’ve got you!”

  “Don’t think we’re going to let you get away with this!”

  “You damn pervert! DIE!”

  Eric’s shrill screams echoed across the campus.

  ***

  Lilian sat on the bleachers, waiting for her mate’s track meet to begin.