His second weakness, one known only to his best friend and crush, was for animals. Kevin had loved animals ever since his mom had first taken him to the zoo when he was five. He had gone into the petting pen and played with all the animals there. They seemed to like him, unlike some of the other kids who had been bitten, and he'd a great time. Ever since then, he had a small obsession with animals.
Back when he was younger, he would occasionally bring stray animals or wild animals home with him. It had caused a lot of problems with the people in charge of their apartment complex because of their no pet policy. His mom had put her foot down and made him promise to stop bringing in every animal he found. Since then, he hadn't brought animals into the apartment.
Naturally, with the noise possibly falling into the second category of his list of weaknesses, Kevin quickly made his way towards the source of the whimper. It sounded like it was coming from around the corner of the building.
He turned the corner and stopped.
His eyes widened.
“Ohmygoshit'safox!” Kevin squee'd in a manner that was eerily reminiscent of a fangirl who had just bumped into her favorite pop idol.
You know what a fangirl is, right? They're those pre-teen and teenage girls that go “SQUEE!” when they're excited. Squeeing, by the way, is a very shrill noise that pierces the eardrums and can cause them to occasionally burst. In severe cases, it can also induce brain hemorrhaging, in which blood and liquified brain matter ooze out of the ears.
According to Mythbusters, being near someone who is “squeeing” has a ten percent fatality rating.
If you ever decide to become a pop idol be prepared to buy ear plugs.
But you are probably wondering why Kevin was 'squeeing' like one of these fangirls, yes?
Because lying near the dumpster was an honest to god fox.
Less then a second after letting loose with his “inner fangirl,” Kevin slapped a hand over his mouth. Idiot! What was wrong with him? Squeeing like some kind of prepubescent little girl?
Worse still, he had “squee'd” in front of a fox! It was a well established fact that foxes didn't like humans! They shied away from human contact and when frightened, would bite!
If he wanted to have any hope of even getting near it, much less petting it, he would need to be quiet. As in, quieter than Elmer Fudge when he was “hunting wabbits” quiet.
Luckily, the fox didn't seem to have heard him. It hadn't even moved from its spot. Now all he had to do was sneak in close.
He would become one with his surroundings. He would blend in with the shadows. He would be like a shinobi.
Nin nin.
Making a weird sign that looked like a cross with his fingers for no apparent reason, Kevin began slowly creeping towards the fox. As he did, he began to wonder how it got into the city. There were fox's in Arizona, of course, but they all lived out in the desert and were usually as far away from any human habitat as possible.
Though, with the recent expansion of city limits, the fox's natural habitat was getting smaller. Maybe it was forced to come here because it had nowhere else to go. Kevin scowled at the thought. No one seemed to care for how people were destroying the natural habitat of animals like this fox anymore.
As he neared the creature, he observed its appearance. The fox was very small, nothing more than a tiny kit that could easily fit in the crook of his arms. It had a flattened skull, upright triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and deep red, almost crimson colored fur.
He recognized the species, a red fox, the most common type of fox among its species. Strange, he didn't think red fox's lived near Phoenix. Their habitat was supposed to be the northeastern portion of the state, like up in Flagstaff.
Perhaps the most unusual thing about this fox was its tails. Yes, tails. Lying limply behind the tiny critter were two, bushy red fox tails with white tips.
How unusual. Kevin had never seen a fox with two tails before, and he was pretty sure that fox's normally didn't have more than one tail.
Maybe it was some kind of government experiment? He couldn't see why the government would experiment on a fox to give it two tails, but there was always a conspiracy theory about various world governments doing inhumane experiments on humans. Why couldn't they do one on a fox as well?
Another whimper escaped from the tiny red animal and Kevin realized that it was injured. He had not noticed it before because its fur was so red (and because he was so excited about seeing a fox), but the fox was bleeding from its torso. It was only after taking a more in depth observation of the fox and noting that there was a portion where the thick red fur was slick and shiny like someone had splashed some kind of liquid on it that he was able to notice the injury.
Of course, now that he had noticed it was injured, he also noticed the expanding pool of blood underneath it, as well as the carnelian trail that showed it had dragged itself to this spot before collapsing.
Fearing for its safety, Kevin dropped all sense of subtlety and sneakiness (and his ninja hand sign) and rushed towards the fox.
It must have really been out of it not to notice his approach. Foxes were supposed to possess very keen senses. Even injured, he would have expected it to run away as soon as he started making too much noise.
It was only after he got in close enough to kneel right next to it that Kevin realized the reason it had not noticed him; the small kit was unconscious.
Growing even more concerned, Kevin scooped the small fox into his arms as gently as he could and stood up. A small whimper managed to escape from the tiny animal as its wound was jostled.
"Sorry," Kevin whispered, even though he knew the fox couldn't hear him. He moved as quickly as he could back to his bike and, after a moments thought, decided to divest himself of his shirt and use it as a makeshift pillow for the fox. Sure, it would likely have a blood stain that was going to be impossible to get out later, but that was a small price to pay to keep the small thing from getting injured further by jostling it as he rode back home.
Placing the fox into the basket on top of the waded up shirt, Kevin took off toward his apartment. His thoughts were focused solely on helping the small creature suffering in front of him.
Chapter 2: First Aid Fox
After, and forgive The Author's French, hauling ass back to Le Monte apartment complex, Kevin quickly dashed towards his bedroom. He didn't know how much time the fox had before it bled out, but judging by the way his shirt was now soaked all the through in the carmine liquid, it wasn't long now. He didn't want to take any chances and have the fox die on him because he had been too slow to render aid.
For an animal lover such as himself, death was unacceptable!
Placing the still unconscious fox on his bed, the high school sophomore ran into his mom's bathroom where all the medical supplies were kept. If he remembered right, and he was sure he did, they were in the bottom cabinet under the sink, though they hadn't always been there. They used to be in the mirror cabinet on the left hand side above the sink, but because Kevin kept getting injured when he was younger, during his animal searching excursions or when playing sports, and because his mom hadn't always been around to help him, the supplies had been put somewhere more accessible. Since then, Kevin had just decided to keep them in the lower cabinet because it was convenient.
Crouching down, he opened the cabinet door and peered inside. There, he found the first aid kit sitting between a large bottle of Zzzquill and a box filled with various feminine products. Exactly where he recalled it being last time.
He grabbed the box and tore through the short hallway once more, heading back to his room. Sitting on his bed next to the fox, Kevin opened the first aid kit. Before doing anything else, he took inventory to make sure everything he needed was still there. It would suck to begin working only to realize he was missing an essential item and be forced to search throughout the house for it.
He found the disinfectant, cotton balls, gauze and bandages. Nothing seemed to
be out of place.
Good.
Quickly pulling out the supplies, Kevin got to work. If he wanted to help this fox before it bled out he would need to hurry. At the same time he would need to be careful. He couldn't rush through the process and do a half-hazard job of patching up the poor creature. Expedient yet careful, that was how he needed to work if he wanted to have any hope of saving the small kit on his bed.
The first thing Kevin did was grab one of the cotton balls and pour a good deal of disinfectant on it. Carefully rolling the fox over a bit so that the injury on its torso was more easily accessible to him, Kevin began to clean the wound and surrounding fur.
The fox whimpered in pain as the ethanol did its work, killing off whatever harmful bacteria were around the wound. Being an alcohol based disinfectant Kevin knew that the stuff stung something fierce and was quick to apologize once more despite the fox not being awake to hear it, much less the fact that it wouldn't be able to understand what he was saying even if it was awake.
As the blood and grime covering the fox's torso got wiped away, Kevin was finally able to see the injury more clearly.
His stomach churned.
It was a rather nasty looking gash that reminded Kevin of the time he had been bitten by a pit bull that belonged to this grumpy old man. When he tried to pet it the animal had quite literally clamped its jaws onto his hand and tore into his flesh. He had needed somewhere around half a dozen stitches on each side of his hand for the damage to heal.
That was the only time any animal had ever bitten him before. He still had a memento of the wound in the form of a white scar on both sides of his hand near his thumb, a jagged, white line that stood out starkly against his tanned skin.
The longer he continued cleaning the wound the more he realized just how horrible the injury truly was. It was more than just a ragged gash. Whatever had done this had actually torn through some of its muscles as well, or was that just fatty tissue? It was hard to tell, since Kevin didn't know much about fox anatomy. Either way, he wasn't even sure stitching the wound shut would allow it to heal properly. And even if he had the necessary supplies, he knew next to nothing about stitching wounds.
This would require professional help.
Unfortunately, the nearest veterinary office was over fifteen miles away and he didn't think he would be able to make it on his bike before the kit died of blood loss. Maybe it was just him, because really, he couldn't see the fox's skin beneath all that fur, but the creature was beginning to look kind of pale.
Not knowing what to do, Kevin just kept cleaning the wound until he felt it was good enough to begin bandaging it up. He ended up going through eight cotton balls because there was so much blood and dirt covering the injury. Truth be told, he had expected to use more.
It was right after he had grabbed the bandages, but before he began wrapping the wound, that his eyes caught sight of something startling.
"What the heck...?" The young teen looked more closely at the wound, his eyes squinting.
He blinked several times, then rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't just seeing things. When he convinced himself that, no, he was not suffering from any kind of hallucination, and that, yes, what he was looking at really was happening, his eyes widened. The wound was healing! Slowly but surely the large gash on the fox's torso was closing up fast enough that Kevin could actually see the process happening. Small lines of skin that looked more like thread slowly stitched themselves across the fox's wound. There had to be at least six or seven of these 'threads' that were slowly weaving through the other threads and leaving behind perfect, unblemished skin that began growing sparse amounts of bright red fur soon after.
"What is this?" he asked under his breath. It was a question asked in rhetoric, as there was no one near him who could answer.
It was like watching a video of how a wound might heal if someone used a Curaga spell or something else from one of his video games. It was fascinating to watch, but Kevin wasn't thinking about how amazing the sight was. He was more startled than impressed.
What was going on? Was this fox some kind of ancient and powerful creature like those half demons he read about in his manga? Or was it some kind of government experiment that had managed to escape from a top secret lab somewhere? What if it had been injected with the T-virus and granted super human... um... super fox, healing abilities?
Kevin had obviously been playing way too much Resident Evil.
As he continued watching Kevin noticed that the wound was still very large and that the fox was beginning to breath much more heavily as the constant loss of blood began taking an even harsher toll on its body. If this kept up, super healing abilities or not, the fox wouldn't last much longer.
Deciding that he could think on what he was seeing later, Kevin began dressing the wound as best he could. He pressed the gauze against the bloody gash, putting as much pressure on it as he dared without aggravating the injury further to keep it from bleeding out anymore than it already had. After that he used the bandages and wrapped them tightly around the fox's torso to keep the gauze pad in place in an effort to help stem the flow of blood.
Several times while he worked the fox whimpered or yelped as he was forced to turn it over or accidentally pressed on the gauze and bandages too hard. Each time this happened, Kevin would flinch as if he could feel the fox's pain, and he whispered apology after apology. After what felt like hours of some of the most heart stopping and stressful work of his life (but in truth was only around five minutes) the wound was dressed to the best of his abilities.
Leaning forward with a frown of concentration Kevin checked over his job of dressing the wound. It was a pretty good patch up for an amateur if he did say so himself. Several gauze pads were pressed securely against the fox's torso where the injury was, and the bandages were wound around its body tightly enough to keep the gauze in place, but not so tight that it constricted the fox's breathing. If nothing else, it didn't look like any blood was leaking out, so Kevin felt he was in the clear.
Of course, that could be just because the wound itself was healing at an astounding rate. Sure, it was still pretty slow in some ways, comparatively speaking, but it was far above and beyond anything he had ever seen in anything less than a video game or anime. In either event, the bandage job should keep the fox from dying of blood loss until its healing ability could finish the job.
He very briefly thought of calling a vet, or taking the fox to the veterinarian himself, but in the end decided against it. If that fox was some kind of government experiment, then he didn't want to let anybody know about its existence.
Especially because it was such a cute little thing. There was no way he would let something so adorable get sent off to the labs to be experimented upon. Not in this life, or the next.
Kevin could only imagine what would happen if the government found out he had one of their experiments. He could just picture them beating down his door, arresting him for harboring a government project and taking the fox back with them to continue committing their inhumane torture on it.
In case you haven't already figured it out, Kevin's got a very...vivid imagination.
Sighing, Kevin rose to his feet and left his room. There really wasn't much more he could do right now―it would be up to the fox's strange healing powers to do the rest―and this whole incident had taxed him far more than he had realized.
Kevin found himself walking into the living room. As was the case with most apartments, the living room was connected to the kitchen via an open entryway that changed from beige carpeting to white tiles to show the shift in rooms. There was not much to note about the room other than the couch sitting against the northern wall near the entrance and the large, 62 inch, flat screen TV that hung from on opposite end, complete with several gaming consoles and surround sound speakers. Between the two, but closer to the couch, was a glass coffee table and on either side of the television was a pair of tall, steel lamps.
Kevin went to the co
uch, collapsing on it with an exhausted exhalation of breath. Raising a hand to cover his face, he closed his eyes and felt himself slowly drift off. He would just get a couple minutes of shut eye before deciding what he should do next.
He didn't know how long he had been asleep, but it must have at least been a couple of hours. When he woke up and looked at the clock, he saw that it was 12:30 in the afternoon. Having been in such a panic when he arrived home, he had lost track of what time he'd gotten back and how long he'd been trying to bandage up the fox, so now he couldn't say how long he'd been sleeping.
A growl alerted him to the fact that it was well past the time he normally ate lunch. Not being one to ignore his stomach, he got up from the couch and walked into the kitchen where he made himself something to eat: a plain ham sandwich with a lot of toppings that he scarfed down like a man dying of starvation.
Once satiated, Kevin went back to his room to check up on the fox. It was exactly where he had left it, laying on his bed, seemingly still unconscious. Walking over, he noticed immediately that the bandages had bleed through and would need to be changed. Glad that his forethought kept him from putting the first aid kit away, he got to work.
As he unwrapped the bandages, Kevin saw something that made him pause.
"Oh...!" he sounded surprised, "So you're a girl." He must have really been panicking if he had missed something like that. Naturally, the fox didn't reply, and Kevin finished unwrapping the bandages. Taking out more cotton-balls and disinfectant he began the task of cleaning the fox's skin and fur of blood again. Once all the blood was cleaned away, Kevin took a glance at the wound. Like last time it was closing up. In fact, it looked like the speed at which it was healing had increased. Where before it looked like the wound was closing in slow motion, now the skin was knitting together at an astonishing pace. The wound itself was almost healed over. The once jagged gash was now just a thin, red line. At the rate it was healing, Kevin doubted the fox would even have a scar.
A Fox's Love (American Kitsune Book 1) Page 2