A Fox's Mate

by Brandon Varnell

  “Uuuuu! Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

  While Christine’s tsundere protocols activated, leading to her standing up and stomping on the ground like a child having a tantrum, Lindsay curled her knees up to her chest. There was a gloomy aura surrounding her. Like smoke, black miasma wafted off of her body.

  “She said she doesn’t love me? Am I really that unattractive?” The girl perked up a second later as a panting Christine came down from her tsundere-induced high. “Oh, yeah, I forgot to ask, how goes your attempts at seducing Lilian and Kevin?”

  While Christine gave her a look that all but asked if she was crazy, Iris’s face split into a mile-wide grin. “Huhuhu, it’s going quite well, thank you. I really have to thank myself for overusing my void powers. The whole sickness thing really helped bring Lily-pad and I closer together.”

  As Christine and Lindsay watched her zone out, Iris recalled what happened between her and Lilian.

  Just remembering the way her sister had washed her body sent chills down her spine. Lilian had been so tender at first, but once things had heated up, she had clearly lost her composure. Iris was sure that she and Lilian would have given into their passion if Kevin hadn’t interrupted them.

  “Just you wait.” Iris stood up and held a fist to her face, her eyes burning with lustful passion. “It won’t be long now. Very soon, Lilian will fall for my charms, and the stud will fall for me shortly after that. Yes, it’s only a matter of time before Lilian, the stud, and I begin our journey of debauchery! Uhuhuhuhuhu!”

  Christine and Lindsay stared at the girl, who continued laughing like a loon, heedless of the looks she was getting.

  “Christine, this girl scares me.” Lindsay hid behind her gothic friend.

  “I don’t blame you,” Christine admitted. “She freaks me out too.”

  Still unaware of how badly she was freaking out her friends, Iris continued laughing.

  “Heeheeheeeheehee!”

  It was damn creepy.

  ***

  Kevin did improve his aim as the hour wore on. By the time the hour was up, he could hit his target seven out of ten times with a reasonable degree of accuracy. It wasn’t perfect, but Jeffrey had told him that he’d improved faster than anyone he’d ever seen.

  After he practiced shooting, Kiara had bought him a gun. It wasn’t a large gun. Actually, it was pretty tiny, like, Noisy Cricket tiny.

  The Bond Arms Texas Defender Derringer Handgun was a single shot, .375 magnum. It had a single barrel and only one shot before it needed to be reloaded. That said, it was more powerful than a 9mm. Even a gorilla yōkai would die if they were shot in the face with this.

  The gun had felt abnormally heavy in his hand when Kiara handed it to him.

  They had returned to the gym after practicing at the tactical shooting range. Several hours after exercising with Kiara and getting his butt kicked by Heather, a freshly showered and dressed Kevin joined up with Lilian, Iris, Christine, and Lindsay, and then the five of them met up with their friends at the mall.

  It was crowded that day, though this didn’t surprise him with it being Sunday and everything. Despite the crowd, they were able to easily glide past everyone.

  This was probably due to who was with them. Christine, Lilian, Lindsay, and Iris were all gorgeous. Having so many pretty girls in one place must have been intimidating to many of the guys who were wandering around.

  As they walked through the mall, Kevin thought about what had happened when he and Kiara returned to Mad Dawg Fitness. Heather had been waiting for them upon their return. She had not been pleased when she discovered that Kiara had taken him to a tactical shooting range.

  “I can’t believe you took him to a shooting range without me! I can’t believe you decided to let someone else teach him how to handle a gun! I’m two thousand times better than any old coot with a funny accent could ever be. Plus, I’m cuter, too!”

  Those had been her words, complete with a childishly pouting face and her hands on her hips. He swore that lady was one of the most unusual people he’d ever met. She was a self-proclaimed pervert and writer of smut, had taken on Eric as an apprentice in the ways of perversion, and she apparently wanted to be the one who taught him, Kevin, how to shoot a gun. The fact that she’d been making dirty gun jokes had only made the whole situation more surreal.

  Kiara had been ready with her counter argument, however.

  “I decided not to have you teach Kevin because I know you, and I know that you would end up throwing him into the deep end by trying to teach him advanced techniques before he’s ready. While I’m all for teaching someone using the trial by fire method, I’m not willing to risk my disciple’s safety. Shooting a gun isn’t the same thing as learning martial arts.”

  Heather had pouted a bit, but she’d been forced to concede. Kiara had then added the ringer.

  “Besides, if you spent too much time teaching the boya how to shoot a gun, you’ll end up neglecting your apprentice, and we wouldn’t want that now, would we?”

  Yes, apparently teaching Eric the art of peeping and public groping meant more to Heather than teaching him how to shoot a gun. That woman was so weird.

  “Ah-ha! Take that zombies!”

  Kevin snorted in amusement as he and Lilian continued playing House of Haunted Horrors. It was something of a past time for them—zombie killing, that is. Whenever they came to the arcade, this was their go-to game.

  While Kevin had taken a relaxed stance and casually blasted heads off, Lilian was firing like a madwoman on crack. It always amused him to see how enthusiastic his mate was when she played video games. That part of her personality, the part that put her all into everything she did, was something that he loved about her.

  “Ne, Lilian. How’s your training with Kotohime going?”

  His question caught Lilian off guard, causing the redhead to get hit by a zombie with a chainsaw, dropping the number of hearts that she had to two. His mate got back in the game quickly, though, and she fired off several rounds at its head. Blood splattered against the screen as the zombie’s head exploded.

  “It’s going fine, I guess.” Her left cheek swelled as if she was on the verge of pouting. “I still can’t beat her—not that I actually think I’ll be able to. She’s got way more experience than I do at fighting. I don’t really like fighting.” The last zombie died from their combined gunfire, making way for a cutscene, which allowed Lilian a moment to cast him a smile. “I’d rather live in peace with you.”

  Kevin returned her smile. “Yeah, me too.”

  They continued playing, but while Kevin used his skills as an ace arcade shooter, his mind was a million miles away.

  Neither he nor Lilian wanted to have anything to do with the yōkai world. All they wanted was to live in peace. Unfortunate circumstances and the origins of Lilian’s birth forced them to remain forever with one foot in that world, however, and there wasn’t much that they could do about it. Being a yōkai herself, Lilian would always be a part of that world, never mind the fact that she came from one of the three strongest kitsune clans in existence—and she was a heiress of that clan to boot.

  Kevin sometimes wondered about what his life would have been like if he’d never met Lilian. Would he still be that boy whose shyness around girls kept him from speaking to Lindsay, forcing him to pine after her from a distance? Would he have ever worked up the courage to ask her out on a date? He knew now that she had actually liked him, so he imagined that, if he had ever plucked his courage from whatever hole it had been hiding under, they would have started dating. But that left him with another question.

  Would I have been happy?

  It was always on his mind. Would he have been happy dating Lindsay? Thinking on it now, he wasn’t so sure. While he and Lindsay were both athletic and had been friends long before he’d ever been stricken with that horrendous case of Cannot Talk to Girls, they were also very different. Lindsay enjoyed doing, well, girly things. Outside of soccer, she e
njoyed gossiping with friends and talking about the latest celebrity scandal.

  On the other hand, Kevin enjoyed watching anime, reading manga, and playing video games. These days, he could also add intense physical training with Kiara and sparring with Heather or the three stooges—his nickname for Kiara’s underlings—to the list. He was on the fence about shooting guns. He still didn’t like them.

  Oddly enough, the one girly thing that Lindsay didn’t like—clothes shopping—was the one thing that Kevin actually did enjoy doing. With a fashionista for a mom, it was only natural that he’d know a lot about fashion. He bought and read all of the magazines that his mom was featured in. It was his way to show support for what she was doing.

  In some ways, Lilian was Lindsay’s polar opposite. Oh, Lilian was certainly girly. She was chatty, enjoyed gossiping, and loved shopping for cute clothes, but she enjoyed talking about things that most of the girls that he knew didn’t like.

  Lilian didn’t care about the latest gossip or what celebrity was involved in which scandal. None of that mattered to her. She loved anime, manga, and video games just as much, if not more, than he did. She’d even begun learning how to draw recently as he’d seen a How to Draw Manga Characters book on his shelf that he knew hadn’t been there before.

  In the end, Kevin often conceded that his reasons for liking Lindsay had been due to a number of factors. They were both athletic. They’d been friends for a long time. She was the only girl who he’d ever spoken with. She was also super cute. While none of those were bad reasons to like someone, they were kind of shallow.

  He would also admit, if only to himself, that a part of him had wanted to date Lindsay because he felt like she would have been a safe bet. They were already friends, so asking her out would have been easier. Lindsay had been his security blanket. He actually felt guilty for thinking that way. What kind of friend uses someone like that?

  He and Lilian continued clearing several more stages of the game, getting all the way to the boss, before a voice that neither of them wanted to hear sounded out through the throng of people.

  “Hola, my beautiful senorita… and Sweeft.”

  “Do you make it a point to bother us while we’re having fun?” Kevin asked while Lilian wrinkled her nose.

  “Great, it’s the pompadour boy.”

  “Ugh! My dulce la flor, such harsh words you use.” Juan grabbed at his chest, feigning someone having a heart attack. “Must you always speak to me so severamente? Why can’t you whisper to me tiernamente?”

  “How about because I don’t like you? And stop using internet translations when you speak! I can’t understand those!”

  “Such coldness from my two favorite people. And here I was, wishing to see if you were okay because I’d heard you got into a fight with a group of yōkai.”

  Lilian narrowed her eyes. “Were you responsible for sending those yōkai after me?”

  “My preciosa flor, I am wounded.” Juan held a hand to his heart. “How could you ever think that I, your valiant caballero, would send such violent and ill-bred fiends after you? No, no, I merely found out about it after the fact and wished to see if you were well.”

  “For some reason, I don’t believe you,” was Lilian’s retort.

  “What do you want, Juan?” Kevin asked, already sick of seeing this boy’s face. “If you’re simply here to bother us, then you can leave.”

  Juan chuckled in a condescending manner. “If that is your wish, though I also wanted to tell you both to be cautious. Odd things are afoot in school, so you’d best be on your guard. Farewell, hermosa flor, Kevin Sweeft.”

  “I really don’t like that guy,” Lilian said, glaring at the half-yōkai’s back.

  “I’m not much of a fan of him either,” Kevin said, though he did have to wonder about Juan’s words. Was something happening at school? He hoped not. They had dealt with enough trouble to last several lifetimes.

  ***

  After their encounter with Juan, Kevin and Lilian met up with their friends.

  When they had first arrived at the arcade, they had split off into groups and gone their separate ways. Everyone had different taste in games. Most games were also single or two-player. There wasn’t much point in sticking together. They had promised to meet up at the pizza parlor located inside of the arcade at twelve.

  Upon arriving, the pair was met with an interesting sight.

  “GOD DAMN PERVERT!”

  “GYA!!”

  “ALL OF YOU LECHS DESERVE TO DIE!”

  “MOMMY!”

  Kevin resisted the strong urge to facepalm. He turned away from the sight of the violent beatdown and looked at Alex and Andrew. “Care to explain what happened here? I think I can already guess, but I’d like to hear it from someone.”

  “OH, GOD! HAVE MERCY, PLEASE!”

  “I HAVE NO MERCY FOR PERVERTS!”

  “AAAIIIIEEEEE!!!”

  “Eric tried to grope Christine again…” Alex started, wincing as the sound of someone’s face being stomped on by a heel echoed around them.

  “... And he actually succeeded this time,” Andrew finished, right before a particularly loud and almost feminine squeal erupted from the boy on the floor. Both of the twins brought their hands to their crotches, as if they felt the phantom pain of having their balls stomped on.

  “I see…” Kevin said.

  Then it was just as he suspected and Eric had—

  “Wait.” Kevin studied the two more closely. “You say he succeeded?”

  “Yep.” Alex nodded, his own expression somewhat slack—dazed even, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d seen. “Shoved his hand right into Christine’s long frilly dress and squeezed a handful of her ass.”

  “GOD DAMN IT! WHY! WON’T! YOU! DIE!?”

  “UGYAAAA!”

  “As you can see, she isn’t too happy about that.”

  “Right…”

  Talk about understatement of the century. He’d rarely ever seen Christine look so pissed. It wasn’t even that she was losing control of her powers, evidenced by how hoarfrost was creeping along the carpet. The violence that she was displaying was much more savage than her normal tsundere violence.

  “What about Lindsay?” asked Lilian, pointing at something. “Why does she look so depressed? She looks like someone murdered her favorite pet fox.”

  Kevin looked at Lindsay, who was hiding underneath a table, her knees drawn to her chest as she rocked back and forth. An aura of gloom seemed to be emitting from her body in waves, dark black clouds of streamer-like vapor that poured off her body. The girl appeared absolutely despondent.

  “I can’t believe he managed to touch her… even I haven’t been able to touch her yet… sob…”

  She was also mumbling something really stupid under her breath.

  “And that girl says she isn’t a dyke,” Iris said with a grin. She was standing next to the table that Lindsay was curled up under. Her expression reminded Kevin of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland.

  Kevin wondered if a facepalm would have been enough to adequately express his feelings. Something incredibly stupid had happened while he and Lilian were killing zombies. He didn’t think a simple facepalm would do the trick.

  “DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE!”

  “GGGGUUUUUUOOOOOEEEEEEE!”

  Yes, he decided as Eric’s screams turned into high-pitched, pig-like squeals, a simple facepalm definitely wouldn’t be enough to express how stupid this situation was.

  ***

  It took a while, but Kevin eventually convinced Christine to stop emasculating Eric via stomping on his crotch. Once the girl had calmed down, Lindsay had crawled out from underneath the table, Iris had stopped poking fun at Lindsay and then disappeared somewhere, and the group sat down to order some food. During the time where they waited for their order to arrive, Kevin told the group that he was learning to shoot.

  “What? You’re really learning how to use a gun?” asked a befuddled Alex. His eyes were about
the size of a pizza. Kevin had never seen them so wide.

  “Yep,” Kevin replied in his best “I don’t give a damn” tone of voice.

  “So not fair. First you get a super-hot kitsune girlfriend. Then you find out that she’s got a super-hot sister. Then you start learning martial arts from Kiara F. Kuyo, and now you’re being taught how to shoot guns. Why does all the cool stuff happen to you?”

  “You forgot the fact that I’ve already had to fight against several yōkai, was nearly killed each time, was stabbed in the stomach with a water spear when we went to Comic-Con, and just recently had my entire ribcage crushed by a gorilla.”

  A waitress arrived and set their pizza onto the table. They’d bought two: Pepperoni and cheese. Everyone served themselves, grabbing a slice or two and putting it on their plate.

  “Okay, point,” Alex conceded.

  “It still doesn’t change the fact that you’ve had a lot of awesome stuff happen to you,” Andrew grumbled before taking a bite of his pizza.

  “Who cares about any of that,” Eric said, turning to Kevin. “No offense to you, My Lord. Your awesomeness knows no bounds, but learning to shoot a gun isn’t that cool.” Proudly pointing at himself with his thumb, Eric grinned a lecherous grin. “I’m learning how to grope women in public—DOOF!”

  “Can it, pervert!” Christine shouted right after smashing Eric’s face into the table—and his pizza. “No one wants to hear about the lecherous crap you’re getting up to.”

  “Oh, my Gothic Hottie.” Eric cried. “You are so cruel—Guag!”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “Hey, did you guys see where my sister went off to?” Lilian asked, ignoring the way Christine shoved Eric’s face into his pizza and tried to make him choke by inhaling cheese through his nose. “I could have sworn she was here just a second ago…”

  “Yahoo!” As if summoned by her name being called, Iris appeared behind Lilian and Kevin and draped herself across the two. “You called?”

  Being so close to Iris brought memories of their sexual encounter to Lilian’s mind, which promptly caused her face to turn red. “N-n-no, I didn’t. I just wanted to know where you were.”