After the initial hostilities between Kevin and Iris had ceased, the succubus of a kitsune had finally accepted Kevin as Lilian’s mate. Of course, she still acted like a creepy siscon, but that was just a part of her character. Even though her personality caused a lot of trouble, Lilian didn’t want Iris to change anything about herself.
“It does feel weird,” Lilian agreed. “I’ve become so used to having Kevin always with me that not having him by my side makes me feel edgy.”
“In that case, I suppose it’ll be up to me to take the edge off.” A grinning Iris threw an arm over Lilian’s shoulder and drew her close. “I’m not the stud, but I’m sure I can make a pretty damn good replacement. Anything for my adorable Lily-pad.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” Lilian deadpanned, though she didn’t deny her sister closeness either. She did, however, smack Iris when the girl got a little too frisky.
The bus soon came to halt at their stop. Lilian and Iris stepped off and began the walk home.
The bus had stopped on the crossroads of 17th Street and McDonald Road. The Le Monte apartment complex was about a 15-minute walk at a sedate pace. While this area of Phoenix was mostly a residential district filled with apartment complexes, there were several office buildings, which Lilian and Iris cut through.
As they were walking, a strange prickling sensation crawled down Lilian’s spine. She didn’t know what it meant—not until a shimmering blue barrier appeared around them. It took the shape of a large dome, which encompassed the entire parking lot and all of the buildings.
T-this is a barrier technique!
Barrier techniques were unique specialized skills that created barriers around objects. They were often used to protect people, but they could also be used to trap them too. Such was the case now. She and Iris were trapped, and the only way to escape from this barrier would be to defeat whoever had raised it.
Overpowering it was also an option, but neither she nor Iris possessed the necessary amount of youki to break a barrier that was powerful enough to cover an entire complex.
“Now what do we have here?” a voice spoke up. “A couple of little foxes all lost and alone, with nowhere to go, so far away from home.”
Turning, the two girls found a group of people shimmering into existence like light particles coalescing into solid form. There were four of them, a weedy kid with beady eyes and large buck teeth, two hulking brutes that must have been part gorilla or something, and a man with spiky hair and dark eyes.
It was the man in the middle they paid attention to. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the first thing they noticed was how large he was. He wasn’t just tall, but he was also big and bulky. He looked like one of those pro wrestlers in the WWF. He even dressed like one with his ripped black jeans, white muscle shirt, leather jacket, and combat boots. Lilian was reminded of those stereotypical bully characters that she always read about in shōnen manga with a high school setting.
He walked up to them, and Lilian and Iris both tensed when his hulking form blocked out the light.
“What do you want?” Lilian asked with a confidence she wasn’t quite feeling.
The four were obviously yōkai, though what race they were remained unknown. She was confident in her illusions, but having started training with Kotohime, Lilian knew that she lacked the battle instincts necessary to fight on par with yōkai who actually enjoyed combat—and these guys looked like they reveled in battle.
“I thought that would be obvious,” the man said, his grinning face boring its way into her soul. “We’ve been asked by a certain individual to teach you a lesson, and while I’m loath to mar such pretty faces, money is money and so, we’re gonna be teaching you what happens when you cross the wrong people.”
***
Kevin Swift wondered what he should do for the next half hour. The late bus wouldn’t be leaving until four, and it was currently three-thirty, which meant he had a bit of time to kill. Maybe he should go to the library and grab something to read? They had a small section dedicated to manga because of how popular it was becoming in North America. Maybe they would have something he hadn’t read yet.
Before he could think about turning thoughts into action, a figure stood in his path. Kevin almost scowled when he saw who it was.
“Chris…”
“Swift.”
Chris Fleischer had not been on Kevin’s mind very much these days. While at one point, the boy in question had been the most frightening person in school, something akin to the high school boogeyman, these days he was a joke. Ever since Lilian destroyed his ability to use youki with her divine powers, he’d become the laughingstock of the school.
“What do you want?” Kevin asked.
Chris smirked. “I just wanted to see your face before it gets messed up.”
That didn’t sound ominous at all.
“What? What is that supposed to mean?”
Apparently all too happy to gloat, Chris said, “It means just what I said. I’ve got some people who are going to be taking care of you and that damn fox-whore of yours. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve already ripped your precious little kitsune bitch limb from limb.”
Something within Kevin’s stomach tightened. An unpleasant ball had settled in his gut.
Chris was a fool and a gloater, as evidenced by what he was telling Kevin. It probably didn’t even occur to the inu that Kevin might use this knowledge against him. As far as Chris was concerned, he had already won. Kevin could see it in the victorious glimmer contained within the other teen’s eyes.
“Someone’s attacking Lilian?”
“That’s right!” Chris crowed. “You’re both going to get it now! You thought I was strong? These guys are the fucking real deal! Each one of them is a powerful yōkai capable of tearing through steel and concrete like it’s fucking paper! They’re gonna murder your little cum bucket, and then they’re going to—”
Chris did not get the chance to say anymore.
Because at that exact moment, the sole of Kevin’s shoe slammed against his face.
As the former-bully fell to the ground—the back of his head meeting concrete with a loud crack!—Kevin took off toward the parking lot. Lilian and Iris should have arrived home by now, but if they were being attacked, then they’d likely been ambushed after getting off the bus.
That meant it would take him 30 minutes of solid running to reach them.
Kevin pushed his body as hard as he could and sped out of the school gates. He would make it in 20.
***
Christine was just leaving the library when she saw Kevin peel out of the school gate like a man possessed. She paused.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking, nya?
Yes.
She nodded, for once in agreement with her nekomata half.
Let’s follow him! they thought at the same time.
***
From the moment the group of yōkai changed forms, the battle had begun. The group of four split up. Two of them went after Lilian while one went after Iris. The leader hung back, his arms crossed, and a fanged smirk adorning his now red-skinned face.
When Lilian initially thought that the two who were now trying to kill her looked like gorillas, she hadn’t meant that in a literal sense. Of course, seeing them standing before her now, with fur sprouting from their bodies, crouched down on all fours and walking on their knuckles, Lilian knew these two were, indeed, gorilla yōkai.
Their bodies had easily grown to twice their original size. They loomed over her like Cthulhu over a city. Thick brow ridges protected their eyes and made their ugly, inhuman mugs look even more hideous.
One of them slammed their knuckles onto the ground. Concrete broke underneath the blow. That seemed to be the signal, as the two charged at Lilian faster than she would have believed possible, bounding toward her on all fours.
The one on the left reached her first. It roared while bringing down a massive fist to crush her like a human crushin
g an ant. The attack missed, or rather, Lilian simply wasn’t there when it hit. The ground cracked underneath the powerful strike, but it went straight through Lilian as if she were a ghost…
… Or an illusion.
The world around the gorilla became distorted. Colors inverted. The world flipped upside down and reversed. White turned to black and shades became mute.
Kitsune Art: Inversion was a powerful illusory technique that screwed with a person’s mind and messed up their brain’s ability to render visual data properly. This resulted in a skewed sense of balance, damaged retina, and could even lead to insanity if the one who was trapped wasn’t mentally strong enough to withstand having their perceptions twisted.
It would have worked. It should have worked. Unfortunately, Lilian hadn’t realized something: Gorillas may look stupid, but they weren’t. They were surprisingly intelligent and more than capable of thinking through a situation like this logically.
The gorilla yōkai that she’d trapped in her illusion closed his eyes. If his vision was impaired, then he just wouldn’t use it. Instead, he sniffed Lilian out. His roar filled the air when he caught her scent. Cement was pulverized underneath his feet as he charged straight for Lilian, who, upon realizing that her illusion had failed, appeared within a shimmer of light.
“Do not think something like a simple illusion will work on me?!” The gorilla yōkai roared. “I’m not some simple-minded creature that will allow himself to be fooled by cheap parlor tricks!”
Lilian tensed and prepared to dodge her opponent’s next move. However, with her attention turned toward the giant mass of muscle and fur charging at her, she’d completely forgotten about the other gorilla yōkai that had been there—not until a shadow suddenly loomed over her from behind.
“GYA!”
Lilian was sent flying when a large, hairy hand slammed into her with the force of a freight train.
***
“Lilian!” Iris shouted as her sister was smacked by a large hand.
Like a ragdoll that had been tossed by an angry child, Lilian slammed into the ground and rolled across the parking lot. Iris felt fear wash over her, overpowering her common sense. She’d never been so afraid in her life.
She turned around and tried to rush toward her sister, but the world around her suddenly changed. Lilian disappeared. The other yōkai vanished. Even the buildings, cars, and pavilions were gone, as if they’d never existed in the first place.
What had once been a parking space between buildings had been replaced with sand. Everywhere she looked, there was nothing but sand. Large dunes that stretched out for miles, far beyond the event horizon, glowing dully in the light of the sunset.
Iris looked down to see that her feet were also covered in sand—no, not covered. She was getting pulled into the sand. Inch by inch, her body descended into the depths of countless shifting granules. Her calves soon disappeared, followed by her knees, then her thighs.
It took until her navel had nearly disappeared for Iris to get it together and flare her youki. The illusion shattered, and she was suddenly standing back in the parking lot, the sand gone, and her opponent standing several feet away. Over to her left, Lilian climbed shakily to her feet, blood dribbling down her mouth and her left hand holding her right shoulder.
Iris wanted to rush over to Lilian, but she couldn’t do anything for her sister. Not right now. Not when she had her own opponent to deal with. All she could do was pray that Lilian would be able to hold on until she dealt with her own foe.
“Did you really think an illusion would work on me?” Iris asked, scoffing at her opponent. “I’m a kitsune. Illusions are in my blood. A yōkai like yourself would never be able to trap me within one for very long.”
Her opponent was a rotund, bear-like animal, wearing a straw hat and carrying a bottle of sake in his left hand. Tan fur covered his body from head to toe. A large tail stuck out from behind his back, thick and flat, and his two squat legs kept him standing upright. Iris vaguely recognized this yōkai. He was a tanuki, a yōkai who was said to be the brother of kitsune.
She couldn’t see the resemblance.
“That may be the case, but who said that my illusion was meant to trap you for long? I only needed you distracted and unable to act long enough to enact my plan.”
“What?!”
That was when Iris noticed that her legs still felt like they were stuck in quicksand. A glance down revealed several thick strands of sand wrapped around her legs like rope. They constricted around her tightly, the many grains rubbing her skin raw.
“Oh, shit!”
Iris was jerked off her feet and into the air. Gritting her teeth as wind sailed all around her, whistling loudly in her ear, she concentrated on producing a tiny black flame from the tip of her tails, which she slammed into the sand at least a meter from her own body so as not to be caught by her own attack.
The sand was erased from existence, consumed by the black fires of the Void. Unable to retain its cohesiveness due to the disruption, the rest of the sand broke apart, scattering and blowing away with the wind.
Glaring daggers at her enemy, Iris angled her descent so that she was going to land directly on top of the tanuki. Her tan-furred foe looked up and prepared to launch more sand her way, but Iris wasn’t about to let this fat-ass of a yōkai pull it off.
“Kitsune Art: Rain of Oblivion.”
From the tips of her tails, two black spheres burst into existence. The flames branched off, splitting and separating into more flames before moving off in different directions in a strange form of osmosis. By the time two seconds had passed, there were over one hundred tiny black flames hovering in the air.
“Now…”
Iris pointed a single finger at her opponent, her body still falling toward the earth as gravity pulled her down.
“You die…”
Like the furious rainstorms of the South American rain forests, the black flames descended upon the hapless tanuki with relentless tenacity.
***
There were very few times that Lilian cursed being born a kitsune. Back when she’d reached the age of 130 and the matriarch decided to try marrying her off, she had cursed her fate. That had lasted for exactly 23 years until she met a young Kevin. She hadn’t regretted being born kitsune after that… until now.
It was well-known among the yōkai world that kitsune, until they gained their fourth tail, were some of the weakest yōkai alive. A kitsune’s body was just as weak as a human’s, and because of their deficient youki capacity, no kitsune under a four tails could use reinforcement to its fullest. That was why kitsune with three or two tails had to rely on illusions to get out of tricky situations.
It was also why most kitsune ran from a fight if the chance presented itself. They just weren’t able to fight on par with other yōkai until they gained more tails and experience.
The number of tails a kitsune possessed equaled the amount of power they had, with each tail gained multiplying their power by the number of tails itself. A three-tails would have the strength of two two-tails, a four-tails would have the strength of nine three-tails, a five-tails would have the strength of sixteen four-tails, and so on.
Lilian, with only two tails worth of power, lacked the youki necessary for anything more than illusions, the less youki intensive celestial attacks, and short, precisely timed bursts of reinforcement.
It wasn’t enough.
The two gorilla yōkai came at her from either side, trapping her in a pincer maneuver. One came in to swat her like a fly. The other tried to crush her beneath his fist.
The first attack went right through her, revealing that Lilian had used a very well-timed illusion to displace her own body and make it look like she’d been standing there. The real Lilian rolled across the ground, avoiding the crushing hammer blow and kipping back to her feet. She spun around, two spheres of light igniting on her tails, burning with the divine powers of a Celestial Kitsune.
“Celestial Art: Sph
eres of Light.”
Her tails acted as a trebuchet. She slung them forward at maximum velocity and launched the spheres into the back of the nearest gorilla yōkai. The attacks struck the large mass of muscle right between the shoulder blades, causing him to stumble forward. His fur was singed, black and creating a distinct scent that wafted through the air.
Unfortunately, the attack didn’t seem to have harmed him so much as angered him. The gorilla yōkai let loose with a roar and beat on his chest like Tarzan.
“Damn fox!”
Lilian reinforced her legs with youki, as much as she dared, and used her enhanced muscles to take several large leaps backward. She avoided one of the bull-rushing gorillas, allowing him to smash right into a car, crushing it like a tin can. The other also charged toward her, but she leapt into the air, clear over his head. Her intention was to land on his other side and attack from behind.
A large hand grabbed her shapely calf, showing that she’d misjudged the creature’s reach.
“Take this!”
Screaming her head off, Lilian was sent hurtling toward the ground.
“AGH—GUH!”
Lilian nearly swallowed her tongue as her back slammed into the blacktop with enough force to form a crater. Pain the likes of which she hadn’t felt since her fight with Kiara flooded her body. Her vision blurred. Darkness crowded around the edges. She wanted to curl up into a ball and weep until her body healed.
But she couldn’t.
Because looming above her like a gigantic colossi was one of the gorilla yōkai, and his fist was descending toward her face at an incredible rate.
Lilian gritted her teeth as she launched two spheres of light at the furry supernatural being. The twin spheres of Celestial energy struck the yōkai right in the eyes, burning straight through his corneas.
“GRAAA!”
The fist continued to descend as the creature roared, but the pain knocked it off course. Lilian rolled along the ground, avoiding the blow and using her reinforced tails to leap out of the crater.
“IT BURNS! IT BURNS!”
The gorilla yōkai who’d had his eyes seared by divine powers stumbled around in a drunken manner, his hands covering his devastated corneas. Lilian hoped she’d blinded him for good. The amount of power that she had pumped into that attack should have been enough to destroy his eyeballs.
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