A Fox's Mate

by Brandon Varnell

  Silence descended upon them. Lilian didn’t know what to say. She knew that Kotohime was right, but she didn’t want to admit it. She wanted to have faith in Kevin, but she was worried for him. She didn’t want him fighting alone. At the same time…

  Kotohime is expressing her faith in Kevin.

  She hadn’t said it outright, but Kotohime’s words had made it more than clear: She trusted Kevin. She had faith in him.

  If she can show this much faith in Kevin, then I should be able to do the same.

  Before now, Lilian had only placed her faith in Kevin when she felt it was a sure bet. She only believed in him when she truly thought he could win.

  However, that kind of faith was half-assed. True faith wasn’t about believing in someone only when it was convenient. It was knowing that the odds were stacked against you and believing in that ideal, that person, that something precious, regardless.

  Lilian decided, right then, that she would place her faith in her mate, truly, and not the half-assed kind of faith that she’d shown up until now.

  “That was a really deep speech,” Iris said. “Did you practice that in front of a mirror—guag!”

  Lilian and Christine became rooted to the spot when a long, black tail shot out from behind Kotohime and struck Iris across the face. The young vixen landed on her back, in a dazed heap. Kotohime, ever the elegant beauty, hid her mouth behind the sleeve of her kimono.

  “Ufufufu, I have no idea what you mean by that, Iris-sama. I hope you were not implying that I practice shōnen manga speeches in from of the mirror like Lilian-sama does.”

  “Geh!” Lilian doubled over as if she’d been sucker-punched in the gut.

  Why did everything always come back to her?

  ***

  Kevin was beginning to wonder about his own sanity. Here he was, a human fighting against a creature of supernatural origins, in the middle of an office building not a mile from his house. There must have been something wrong with him.

  The roar of his opponent caught his attention. His body moved without his brain telling it to, throwing him backwards into a roll just in time to avoid getting crushed by a fist four times the size of his head. He skipped back to his feet as the gorilla yōkai charged at him again.

  By this point in time, Kevin had already realized that he would never win this fight through conventional means. This wasn’t an enemy that he could pummel into submission. This was a creature whose strength was on par with an inu, a creature of large, tightly packed muscles covered with an added layer of fat for protection. No amount of force that he could generate would damage something like that.

  So he needed to improvise.

  The office building was pretty much in shambles by this point. More than half of the cubicles had been destroyed, reduced to splinters and twisted steel frames. Much of the ground was covered in craters, from which a wide array of spider web cracks created fissures within the floor. The gorilla yōkai must have also hit a gas line or something, because an odd smell, something sulfuric and acetic, hung in the air.

  Diving to the ground, Kevin avoided the swipe of the gorilla’s large hand. This didn’t stop the primate, though, and Kevin was forced to roll along the ground like a man on fire, lest he wish to be squashed by a palm that slammed into the concrete floor with the force of a pantheon of angry gods.

  As he continued rolling, Kevin grabbed a handful of dust, leftover remnants of a destroyed table and pulverized concrete. He scrambled to his feet as the gorilla came at him with the intent to kill.

  At the very last second, Kevin threw himself out of the way while also tossing the dust into the gorilla’s face. The yōkai roared furiously as the dust irritated his eyes. The creature stumbled about, his enraged roar shaking the building to its foundations.

  “Do you think this will be enough to stop me, human?! I don’t need my eyes to kill you!”

  “Tch!”

  Kevin was aware of that, but he hoped that the creature’s irritated eyes would distract it long enough for him to think up a plan. A glance around the room revealed… not much, honestly. There was a lot of debris, and he could probably use it as a means of distraction, but nothing that would provide a decisive victory.

  Come on. Come on. There has to be something that I can—

  Out of his peripheral vision, Kevin caught sight of a small wire that was hanging from the ceiling. It sparked and crackled with remnants of electricity.

  It hit him like a Pikachu’s thunderbolt.

  Maybe the solution wasn’t inside of the office, but behind the walls. All office buildings had a built-in sprinkler system along with electric cables running throughout its infrastructure. If he could set off the sprinkler system and find an active electrical cable, he could fry the gorilla before his foe smashed him like a bug getting hit by a flyswatter.

  Another roar alerted him to his opponent’s intent. The gorilla tried to body-slam Kevin, but he dove to the side and ran in the opposite direction. His large, furry foe crashed through another cubicle.

  “Damn human!” The gorilla shouted, sounding quite angry. “Stop running around! Nothing you do will amount to anything! You can’t win this, so why even bother trying?”

  What kind of stupid question was that? His reason for fighting should have been obvious. Still, he deigned his opponent with an answer, if only because he felt like he needed to hear his own answer himself.

  “Because I have something worth fighting for, a person who I want to stand beside. I don’t care that she’s a yōkai. I wouldn’t care if she was an alien who randomly appeared in my bathtub. She and I might not be the same species, but I’m not willing to let her go just because I lack the supernatural abilities that you yōkai pride yourselves on.”

  It didn’t matter if he was human and Lilian wasn’t. It didn’t matter if the world that she came from was filled with violence and death. She was important to him, the person who was closest to his heart. For her, he would become strong. For her, he would fight.

  For her, I would kill.

  Kevin glanced around. There was a fire alarm on the wall several feet away, and next to the alarm, a fire extinguisher.

  He could use that.

  The gorilla yōkai snorted. “Then you are a fool. Our world is not meant for humans to tread upon. You humans might be an arrogant and violent species, but you’re also weak. You can’t stand up to a threat like us unless it’s with overwhelming numbers and superior technology, of which you possess neither. The only reason your species is even at the top of the food chain is because we yōkai lack the numbers and cohesiveness of a single nation. If all of the yōkai races combined, we would have crushed your kind long ago.”

  “Maybe so, but I don’t really care about any of that. You can keep spouting crap about how humans are weak and pathetic. I’ll take those words and shove them down your throat. I’ll prove to you that it doesn’t matter how weak a human is, because even someone who is weak like I am can still beat you into the ground!”

  During his rant, Kevin had been inching closer to the fire alarm. The gorilla hadn’t stopped him, likely because it was busy listening. That was another weak trait of gorillas. They would always let a person finish their sentences.

  Without warning, he pulled on the alarm, causing sirens to begin blaring obnoxiously inside of the building. The gorilla covered his ears with his hands and roared. Kevin quickly smashed the glass panel protecting the fire hydrant with his elbow and pulled the device out.

  He ran up to the gorilla, who hadn’t noticed him yet due to the sudden noise blowing out his eardrums that the yōkai was so proud of, and, pointing the extinguisher at his foe, Kevin pressed the button that caused it to release the chemical compound stored inside.

  The fire extinguisher was a halon extinguisher, the type that used compounds to break the chain of chemicals involved in a fire to stop combustion. Kevin didn’t know this, of course. He’d never studied what went into fire extinguishers. All he knew was that most extingui
shers, when shot in a person’s face, tended to have adverse physical effects on said person.

  While a gorilla yōkai was stronger than a human, and their hide was thick enough to withstand serious blunt force trauma, that didn’t mean they didn’t have a weakness.

  Kevin sprayed the gorilla right in the face. The yōkai roared in pain. He reared back as the halon compounds blasted him. Not only did the compound get in his eyes, but it traveled down his throat when he accidentally inhaled it.

  The creature began to cough and sputter. He flopped around onto his back, convulsing as he choked on the chemicals. Kevin expended the entire contents of the extinguisher before tossing it at the yōkai’s head with as much force as he could muster. The extinguisher released a loud kong! as it bounced off of his foe’s cranium.

  Then he bolted, leaving the creature to suffer in agony. What he’d just done wasn’t enough to defeat the yōkai. If he wanted a surefire win, then he needed to do something creative.

  Like making this entire building go up in a blaze of glory.

  Or something like that.

  ***

  Alvis Anzo was a gorilla yōkai. His intelligence was beyond that of other primitive races, and his body had enough strength to halt speeding trains with his bare hands. Among the many yōkai races, gorilla yōkai were some of the strongest, most intelligent, and most able yōkai in the world.

  Alvis Anzo was a gorilla yōkai, and he was not amused.

  This entire fight had not gone the way he’d anticipated at all. Despite being stronger, more intelligent, and more powerful, that human child was giving him fits. From the very onset of their battle, the boy had fought using trickery and deception; he used the environment to keep Alvis from getting a clean hit, he tried enraging him and clouding his mind with insults, he threw fine granules into his eyes to blind and irritate him, and he caused the fire alarm to go off and damage his eardrums. That human brat had even blasted him in the face with the chemical compounds from a fire extinguisher, and now…

  … the boy had set off the sprinkler system. Alvis glared up as his body became soaking wet, his thick fur matting to his skin. He could now add one more item to the list of things that had not gone right.

  Observing his surroundings, and trying to ignore the way his fur clung to his body like it had been covered in gallons of oil, Alvis tried to find his annoying opponent. His foe wasn’t in this area of the building anymore, that much he could already tell. He couldn’t hear the boy’s breathing.

  This building was shaped like an L. It consisted of several large sections filled with cubicles, and a long hallway that ran through other sections. Within that hallway were numerous offices, which the boy could’ve used to hide.

  Alvis would need to be careful.

  Walking on feet and knuckles, he proceeded forward, glancing around carefully. His feet made squelching noises as he walked. The carpet was already soaked all the way through.

  The hallway that he entered was long and straight, a narrow passage that he could barely squeeze through. He peered into the window of each office that he passed. No one was in them—at least he didn’t think so. The boy could have hidden behind a desk, but he was almost positive that wasn’t the case. He would have seen the boy’s feet.

  The hall eventually opened into another room, a reception area. A desk stood in the back of the room, containing a computer and a chair. Several seats were situated on either side of the wall near a glass door. On the opposite side was another hallway that led to the other side of the building.

  His feet splashed against the wet tiles. There seemed to be more water in here, which, upon closer observation, he realized was because one of the water lines was broken. It looked like something had cracked the pipes located in the wall, from which large quantities of water spurted out.

  A strange bbzztt! noise alerted him to movement. He panned over to where the sound originated from, thinking it might have been his enemy. It wasn’t.

  It was a cable.

  A sparking cable that appeared to have been cut and was falling into the water.

  Alvis’s eyes widened.

  The cable touched the wet tiled floor…

  … and Alvis lit up like a new year’s fireworks display.

  ***

  Kevin walked out through the large hole that he had entered from. His hair was sopping wet, and his clothes were plastered to his skin. He was tired, sore, and could really use a nap. Actually, that sounded like a really good idea. When he got home, he was taking Lilian to bed…

  … That sounded so wrong. No, actually, it sounded kind of right.

  “Nggg…” Kevin pressed a hand to his face and groaned. “My mind is going down the gutter.” He paused. “I blame Iris.”

  Kevin began walking across the small back parking lot that led to the grassy slope. Lilian, Iris, Christine, and Kotohime were all standing there. His heart felt light. They were waiting for him. His eyes locked onto Lilian, whose face lit up in a dazzling smile when she saw him. Unbidden, he began to smile as well. He took a single step forward—

  —Right before a loud, ground-quaking roar nearly blew out his eardrums. That came from behind him!

  Kevin barely had time to turn around before a large hand nearly four times the size of his head slammed into him with bone-breaking force. He experienced an odd moment of weightlessness. A scream sounded out from somewhere—at least, he thought it was a scream. His hearing was muffled, as if someone had taken wax and shoved it into his ears.

  The moment of weightlessness soon ended, and Kevin hit the pavement of the parking lot hard. His back exploded with agony. He would have screamed, but his breath had been stolen from him. His vision went black for a moment as something lodged itself in his back. Something wet trickled down from the impact point. Warm and sticky. Blood. His blood.

  Gasping, Kevin reached underneath himself and pulled out a rock that had become embedded in his muscles. It was covered in red fluid, glinting like a Philosopher's Stone in the light.

  A shadow blotted out the sun. Black skin stretched across an inhuman mug. Dark eyes glared down at him like he was the scum of the world. Thick brow ridges. A face surrounded in dark fur. It was the gorilla yōkai.

  He looked like he had seen better days. His face was covered in scorch marks, and his hair was singed. Blood dribbled down his mouth, black and viscous, like coagulated human blood. The bloodshot eyes of someone who’d done way too many drugs—or been electrocuted by Inari-only-knew how many volts of electricity—glowered down at him in vengeful rage.

  “Did you really think something like that would be enough to do me in?!” The gorilla bellowed. Kevin screamed as something smashed his torso. It felt like an anvil had been dropped on him! “Your plan was a good one. It might have even worked on a lesser yōkai, but I am a gorilla, a yōkai of the primate race! A little bit of electricity is not going to be enough to stop me!”

  Whatever had stomped on him left, but it was a short reprieve. Kevin cried out as the gorilla lifted him up and squeezed. He felt something crack. Several somethings. Breathing became difficult, and Kevin realized that the cracking was actually his ribs being ground into a fine powder. He fiercely gripped the rock in his hand, still slick with his blood, as if holding it was his only tenuous grip on his sanity.

  “Beloved!” there was a scream.

  “Stay back! Anyone moves any closer and the human is dead!”

  Who was he talking to? Kevin wondered. Surely it wasn’t him—ah, his friends were here. Christine and Iris and Kotohime and… Lilian. Lilian was also here. She was seeing this. She was watching as he was crushed by this creature.

  “Let him go! Let him go, please!”

  That was Lilian’s voice. Kevin couldn’t see her, and his hearing wasn’t working quite right, but it sounded like she was crying.

  She was crying for him…

  Kevin gritted his teeth. His arms were pinned to his sides, but he wriggled his left arm out of the gorilla’s grip. It was
hard. It hurt. Everything hurt. But he didn’t dare stop. He couldn’t afford to.

  “Hahaha! I think not! Do not take me for a fool. Right now, the only thing keeping that four-tails over there from slashing me to pieces with her katana is the boy. No, I think I’ll be keeping him right here for a while yet.”

  “Then it seems we are at an impasse.” That voice, smoother than silk and cooler than a yuki-onna’s breath, it couldn’t have been anyone but Kotohime. “A hostage is only valuable so long as they remain alive. Kill him and you will have nothing to hide behind, nothing to stop me from murdering you. However, you can’t afford to let him go either, because you know that once you do, I will still murder you. This is a most vexing situation.”

  “And once again, you kitsune insult my intelligence. I am not ignorant of your kind, fox. I know that kitsune, despite using trickery and deceit to get their way, are also creatures of their word. Kitsune never break their promises, which is why you are going to promise not to harm me once I let the boy go.”

  “... Hey… aren’t you forgetting about someone? ” Kevin muttered tiredly, ignoring the way his lungs welled up with blood just by speaking.

  The gorilla looked at him. “Oh? You’re still conscious? This is a surprise. You must have an awfully high pain tolerance if you’re capable of coherent speech. I’m almost impressed.”

  Kevin coughed up blood. “A compliment from you… doesn’t really mean much to me… and I think you’re… forgetting something…”

  “Hmm?” The gorilla looked amused. It was hard to tell. His face was blurry, and Kevin was starting to see double, but he thought he saw the creature smiling. “And what have I forgotten?”

  “That I’m not a kitsune.”

  With that, Kevin used the last ounce of strength he possessed and shoved the bloody, sharp rock straight into the gorilla’s left eye.

  The yōkai’s shriek was an amalgamation of surprise, pain, and rage. He dropped Kevin to the ground, which Kevin hit with a meaty thud, and used his free hands to cover his now gouged out eye.