“Concede?”
This would have been the moment where Kotohime raised a hand, hid her smile behind the sleeve of her kimono, and then giggled demurely as she politely told him to fuck off. As both her sleeves and, in fact, most of her kimono, had been ripped to shreds, she didn’t do that.
Instead, she stabbed her katana into the ground, using it as a crutch as she stood up. Despite the battle that had been waged, her blade remained immaculate and unsullied. This sword was the kind that could not be broken, not by the likes of this man.
I wish I had my wakizashi.
Her wakizashi had been lost during the initial assault. The explosion had flung it away from her. It was probably buried somewhere in the rubble.
Her legs wobbled and shook. Her knees wanted to give out. Her body felt like it had been repeatedly bashed against an impenetrable barrier by a battering ram.
It was the consequence of her River Kitsune blood. She could heal her wounds, mend her muscles, repair her organs, but that didn’t mean she had no limit. Muscles would eventually wear down from natural causes, bones eventually ached from overuse. While the wounds inflicted upon her had healed, she could do nothing about the damage that came from straining herself.
She refused to acknowledge this weakness. She raised her head and glared at Li through the bangs falling around her eyes. Slowly, painfully, she raised her sword and slid into a basic kenjutsu stance.
“I refuse.”
“I see.” Li sighed, and for the first time since their battle began, he seemed disappointed. “I do not like violence. I fight when the tasks that I am given require fighting, but it has never been something that I enjoyed. That being said, I will not shy away from combat when left no other option.”
The atmosphere shifted, becoming tense. Kotohime felt it immediately, the killing intent. It was hard not to. Throughout their battle, Li had never once released any killing intent, almost as if he hadn’t felt any desire to kill her. Now she could feel it. He was about to get serious. This wouldn’t be her attacking and him counterattacking. She could tell. He was going to try and kill her.
“You have left me with no other recourse,” he continued. “If you will not acknowledge your defeat gracefully and back down, then it means I must put you down.”
Kotohime’s muscles tensed—
—and in between the second it took for her to tense up, Li moved. There was no warning, no hint that he had made the transition from point A to point B. One second he was standing several yards away. The next second he stood right in front of her.
Kotohime’s eyes widened. He stared down at her, and for the first time since Corban had died, she felt utterly helpless. This man was going to kill her, and she could do nothing to stop him.
“Forgive me. Know that killing you brings me no pleasure. I only do this because you have left me with no other option,” he said, raising his fist and bringing it down more swiftly than she could comprehend—
—Only for the fist to inexplicably stop not even an inch from her nose. Kotohime stared at the appendage, which trembled and shook, blinking.
“What the heck…?”
It took her several seconds to realize why Li’s fist wasn’t moving; it was because of the long black tail that had wrapped around Li’s forearm and wrist, keeping it from turning her face into mulch.
Li seemed shocked as well.
“What is this?!” he cried out. He didn’t get the chance to say anything else, as the tail coiling around his entire forearm lifted him up and tossed him away. He landed several yards from Kotohime, but he made no move to close the distance again.
“Haaaaa…”
Kotohime blinked. What was that noise? It sounded like… yelling?
“… waaaaAAAAA!”
The apartment complex to her left exploded in a shower of brick and mortar. Debris rose into the air, shooting off in every direction and pelting the ground. Kotohime did her best to protect herself, raising her arms, shielding her face from the debris. Fortunately, most of what hit her was small and didn’t hurt very much.
When she could feel nothing hitting her anymore, she lowered her arms to see what had caused the sudden explosion. She then promptly wondered if she had become unknowingly trapped in an illusion, or perhaps her lack of youki had induced delusions of some kind, for those were the only explanations she could think of to explain what she was seeing.
Camellia stood in the epicenter of the ruined apartment building, completely unharmed, minus the dirt covering her toga. Her ears twitched and her tails flexed. She seemed to be observing the area with the curious gleam of a child.
Their eyes locked.
The sunny smile on Camellia’s face was so out of place, so contrasting to the devastation surrounding her, that Kotohime almost face planted. The only reason she didn’t was because faceplanting was not something an elegant yamato nadeshiko like herself did. Ever.
“Ah, Kotohime! Morning!” Camellia greeted with her ever-childish grin, though Kotohime did notice that she hadn't been called “Koto-Koto” or something equally childish.
“It’s evening, Camellia-sama,” Kotohime muttered.
“What happened here?” Camellia either ignored or hadn’t heard the words. She surveyed the remnants of their apartment building with curious eyes. “Everything looks like it went doki-doki boom.”
Kotohime didn’t know what doki-doki boom meant, but she had neither the desire nor the inclination to figure it out. Fortunately, she didn’t have to.
“Camellia Pnév̱ma,” Li said, staring at the woman who merely blinked in return. “Once known as the Dancing Lily of the Netherworld, but has since been reduced to someone with the mentality of a child. I do not know how you survived my attack, but please do not interfere any further. If you do, then I will have no choice but to kill you as well.”
Camellia said nothing. She looked at Li for a second longer, and then went back to staring at her surroundings—until her eyes caught sight of Kirihime. She slowly walked over and knelt in front of her maid, her left hand going to the woman’s shoulder, trying to shake her awake.
“Kiri-Kiri? Kiri-Kiri, why are you lying around like that? What’s that red stuff coming out of your mouth? Why aren’t you answering me?”
The slew of childish questions that Camellia unleashed made Kotohime grimace. It was sad, Camellia’s complete lack of understanding. Due to her degraded mental disposition, she couldn’t understand concepts like internal bleeding and damage induced by blunt force trauma. She didn’t know why Kirihime wasn’t responding to her. Had she not already understood and accepted that this was how Camellia was, Kotohime would have wept.
Kotohime was given no more time to ponder Camellia’s sad fate as Li suddenly appeared before her within a split second, the five-tailed kitsune’s hand already coming in to impale her through the chest. He was too fast. Kotohime had no time to dodge.
The hand was stopped.
Once again, the culprit was one of Camellia’s tails. Li tried to get out of their hold, but for some reason, he couldn’t phase through Camellia’s tails like he had Kotohime’s attacks. This strange turn of events seemed to baffle him as much as it did Kotohime.
“W-what the… why isn’t my ability working?”
“Are you the one who hurt Kiri-Kiri?” Camellia asked, and Kotohime sensed, more than saw, the intense shifting in Camellia’s demeanor. “Did you do this to her?”
Camellia stood up and turned around. Her face still looked childish, cheeks puffed up almost humorously, and yet…
… There was something about Camellia that put Kotohime on guard. Some indefinable change had taken place within the woman. She didn’t know what it was, but Kotohime could sense that something about her charge’s mother was different.
Li also seemed to sense this difference, for he took a halting step back. “I only did what my lord bade me to do. We cannot have you interfering with our—guah!”
Kotohime felt a ripple of shock tear through he
r when another of Camellia’s tails slammed into Li with force. A ferocious shockwave erupted from where the tail smacked against his stomach. A mere split second later, Li plowed straight into an apartment building several dozen yards away. Like a house of cards, the building collapsed, burying Li under several tons of rubble. Dust billowed out from the wreckage, and when it cleared, it revealed Li, lying beneath several massive chunks of concrete, his body reminiscent to a broken doll.
“Ug… uu…”
Embedded into the apartment ruins, Li struggled to push the debris off him and stand up. Blood leaked from his mouth. His monk robes were torn, revealing the ugly black bruise on his stomach that he had received from Camellia’s tail. He placed his hands against the broken wall, as though to push himself up, but another tail slammed into him, and instead of getting up, he released a cry of pain and collapsed back into the building. The tail retracted.
Kotohime tore her eyes away from the sight of Li and looked over at Camellia, who was… powering up?
“HAWAAAAAA!!!!!!!”
Yes, Kotohime idly noted. Camellia was, indeed, powering up. She was crouched down in a stance that Kotohime had seen on the television on many occasions since arriving at the Swift residence. Her knees were bent at 45-degree angles, hands clenched into fists and tucked into her side. A strange, silvery aura engulfed her body, howling in torment like a thousand damned souls. Kotohime could almost see them within that aura, the faces of people whose lives had been lost, the wandering spirits damned to spend an eternity on earth. They surrounded Camellia, creating an aura almost similar to the one Kiara created from her youki.
The aura vanished, or rather, the ectoplasm that had formed the aura gathered to a single location: Camellia’s hands, which her five tails were entwined around like furry gloves. The coalescence of spirit matter compressed into a tiny sphere, which grew to the size of a baseball. It then began howling with the horrid ring of a thousand voices all crying out at once.
“Hawaaaaa…”
Kotohime blinked when Camellia began to speak. Of course, she wasn’t speaking actual words but her catchphrase.
“Hawaaaaa…”
Over by the building, Li had finally managed to stand up. He held his left arm to his stomach. A lot of blood spilled from his mouth, denoting to severe internal injuries, perhaps even a ruptured lung. Still, Li moved, stumbling out of the collapsed building like a drunken sailor.
“HAAAAAA!”
It was at that exact moment, just as Li emerged from the building, that Camellia unveiled her attack. She thrust her hands and tails toward Li like she had no doubt seen Son Goku do at least a thousand times already. A giant beam of energy blasted out, a cone of pure destruction that slammed into Li, whose entire body disappeared as the chaotic energy engulfed it.
The beam didn’t stop with Li. After consuming his body, it plowed through the wall behind him, and then continued to strike an apartment several dozen yards away, which promptly exploded in a torrent of spiritual energy.
Kotohime covered her eyes with an arm as the winds howled and screamed. Dust flew in her face, making her cough before she covered her mouth with her other hand. She could feel her body sliding back as it was struck by the relentless forces battering her. Blood leaked from the bottom of her feet as the black top rubbed her skin raw.
Then it was over. The winds stopped. The howling stopped. Everything stopped. All that remained was a heavy stillness.
Kotohime uncovered her face. The world around her looked like something from an apocalyptic manga series. The buildings of their complex were all ruined. Even the ones further out had been destroyed by the backlash of Camellia’s attack. A large trench at least eight feet across and four feet deep started where Camellia stood and disappeared beyond several decimated buildings.
After gazing at this new world in shock, Kotohime turned her head to Camellia. The five-tailed, toga-wearing kitsune had not moved from her place next to Kirihime. The aura had died down, and she looked a little tired. However…
She also looked excited.
“Begone evil of the Megaverse,” Camellia intoned, striking a pose and pointing at the spot where Li—and an apartment—had once stood. “In the name of the moon, I will punish you! Tee-hee!”
Silence. Several crickets began chirping. A tumbleweed rolled across the battlefield, and then several snakes hissed as they slithered by. It looked like they were chasing after the tumbleweed, though it was anyone's guess as to why.
Kotohime stared at Camellia for a few seconds longer, slowly raised her right hand…
… And promptly palmed her face.
“I knew it was a bad idea to let Camellia-sama watch anime with Kevin-sama, Lilian-sama, and Iris-sama.”
***
Fan glowered as she limped her way into the school building. This was the place where she had pinpointed that blasted Lilian’s location. Grimacing as she made her way down a bland hall, Fan pressed a hand to her leg to keep it from wobbling.
While the wound on her hand had healed, the one on her leg was being stubborn. The bullet had hit her knee cap. She had managed to heal the wound itself, but the bullet was still inside; it kept grazing against her joints, sending jolts of agony straight to her brain and making her knee threaten to buckle.
She couldn’t believe that she had been injured by a human! Twice! She’d not been injured at all during her entire battle with Lilian and the other two yōkai, yet some measly human had managed to injure her two times! It was absolutely absurd!
“Damn that human,” she growled, the grating noise bubbling from her throat. “When I get my hands on that pathetic ape, I will make him rue the day he was born!”
She looked down the hall. White tiles covered the floor. Plain white walls surrounded her on two sides, along with a checkered ceiling above her. Several windows on one side allowed sparse amounts of moonlight to filter inside, illuminating the interior. A row of doors were on the other side, with a numbered plaque hanging from each one.
Frowning, Fan began wandering the halls, searching the rooms. Each room was empty. They contained no signs of life, just the desks and tables that she had come to expect from a human educational institution. While Fan had been able to pinpoint Lilian and the others’ location to this building, she didn’t know where they were hiding. That meant she had to search the entire building from top to bottom.
“I can’t believe Father gave me such a demeaning task,” she muttered to herself as she checked a classroom. It was empty. She moved on. “This is absolutely humiliating. I shouldn’t be here. I should be spending time with my beloved little brother, trying to help him recover.”
She scowled some more after checking another empty classroom. Where were her targets?! As she turned around, about to continue traveling down the hall, she caught sight of something red out of the corner of her left eye. She swiveled her head just in time to see red hair fluttering around a corner.
“There you are,” she growled. “Lilian Pnév̱ma, your time is up!”
Fan limped after the fluttering red hair. Because of the wound on her leg, which aggravated her even now, her target always managed to stay ahead of her. The few times she caught sight of the blasted girl, it was to see her hair fluttering as she disappeared around a corner. For a moment, she thought that she might be chasing after an illusion, but she could sense no foreign youki inside of her.
She continued tailing after the girl, who would be suffering a most brutal death when she caught up, and eventually came to a flight of stairs. She peered down the stairs. The door at the end was partially open. Scowling to herself, she limped down the stairs and flung the door wide before walking through.
The room was strange. Pipes hung along the ceiling and traversed the walls, a network of steel grids running in a variety of directions, crisscrossing and intersecting to conceive an unnaturally symmetrical web. Large machines thrummed and vibrated with life. There were all kinds of contraptions, strange metal boxes, small fans, rumbli
ng cylinders. An annoying hiss filled with air.
There was very little light to see with. What light there was only served to cast shadows around the room, which moved and twisted, creating macabre images that parodied life.
She ignored the unsettling pit that swelled within her chest. Her target was somewhere in here, and she would find that little wretch and kill her—no, she would beat her to within an inch of her life, find that blasted human, and kill him in front of her. Only then, after that damn scarlet woman watched the life drain from her mate’s eyes, would Fan kill her.
Fan walked past a metal fence, the lights shining through the chain links playing off her face. She turned her head left and right, eyes constantly sweeping the perimeter. A noise caught her attention. She looked to her left—
—and froze.
She met a pair of blue eyes.
He stood in front of a metal door that was partially open. In one hand, he held one of those human weapons: a gun. In the other were several locks of long red hair, which fell from his fingers and fluttered to the ground.
It was as she watched the silken strands of crimson fall to the floor that she realized something.
She’d been tricked.
“You!” Fan shouted in rage. “I’m going to murder you!”
The boy just looked at her, his blue eyes resigned. “Not today, you’re not.”
The calm response Fan received pissed her off so much. She saw red. She started channeling youki through her tails. She was going to erase this ape from the face of the earth!
Said ape raised his gun and fired. Out of instinct, Fan switched from attack to defense. Tsun Su’s Shield appeared before her, a brilliant barrier shaped like a yin-yang symbol, a powerful shield which no mere human weapon could hope to penetrate.
Unfortunately, she didn’t realize until too late that she wasn’t the target.
Ping!
Fan turned around just in time to see a spark ignite as the bullet struck one of the pipes. Not even a second later, the pipe exploded, igniting a chain reaction that caused more pipes to detonate, gouts of flame shooting out in thick plumes. She didn’t even have time to yell before her world was consumed by hellish fire.
A Fox's Revenge (American Kitsune Book 7) Page 13