A Fox's Revenge

by Brandon Varnell

  “DOOOOOGGGG!”

  The kitsune charged at her again. Time seemed to slow as Kiara centered herself. She studied her opponent. His dark hair flew back, his square jaw quivered in inexplicable rage, and his eyes bulged from his sockets. His eyes had become bloodshot, a dark and angry crimson filled with a hatred that could not be contained.

  She didn’t know if this rage was directed at her or if it was at all inu in general, though she did wonder why he had decided to attack her. Well, it didn’t matter right now. All that mattered was putting this rabid yōkai down. She could worry about the how’s and whys later.

  “HYA!”

  With a war cry of her own, Kiara unleashed a swift punch. The fist hyperextended. Red youki exploded from it, a cataract of overpowering energy that surged forth like a massive tidal wave. The mass of energy slammed into the four-tails and detonated with the violence of a maelstrom.

  Kiara’s world was engulfed in red light.

  ***

  When Kotohime returned to consciousness, it was to see the apartment where she and her family lived in ruins. The entire building had been reduced to rubble. It looked like several giant hands had smashed into it from all sides. Now it was nothing more than a mountain of debris. Smoke rose from this mountain in plumes. Nothing was left.

  “W-what…?”

  Kotohime grunted as she pushed herself up. Her body was sore from where she had been smashed against the ground. If she hadn’t enhanced herself with reinforcement at the last moment, she may have very well died.

  She stood up, her body swaying back and forth precariously. Liquid stung her left eye, and it took her a second to realize that she was bleeding. It ran freely down the left side of her face, matting her hair to her forehead and forcing the eye closed.

  A sound alerted her to something happening. A pained grunt caused her to turn her head. Her remaining good eye widened when she saw her sister being held in the grip of a giant kitsune with five tails. He had a hand around Kirihime’s throat, clenching her esophagus hard enough to make her veins bulge. Kirihime struggled within his grip, kicking him with all her might and trying to slap him with her tails, but she clearly wasn’t at one hundred percent. The tails were weakening. Kirihime’s hands were slowing down. Her legs were starting to twitch and spasm. If this kept up, she would die.

  Kotohime picked up her katana, which lay on the ground beside her feet. There was no time to think. All she could do was act.

  “Water Art: Blade of the Water Lily.”

  Water coalesced around Kotohime’s katana, hardening and increasing her blade’s sharpness, as she shot forward.

  “Ikken Hisatsu. Anawoakeru no Sen.”

  It didn’t take her long to reach the man holding her sister. Before he could so much as think about using Kirihime as a shield, she thrust her blade forward hundreds of times within a single second. The kitsune dropped her sister and leapt back to avoid being impaled. Even so, blood flew from several shallow cuts that appeared on his skin.

  With her wary eyes stuck on the man before her, who seemed in no rush to initiate more violence, Kotohime asked her sister: “Are you all right?”

  “Y-yes…” Kirihime coughed, holding a hand to her throat. “I’m fine. I coated my throat with water and hardened it with my youki. Most of the damage is cosmetic.” She indicated the bruises on her skin as though to emphasize her words.

  Kotohime wasn’t sure if she entirely believed her sister, but she also knew they didn’t have the luxury of arguing.

  “Sister… that man… he… My Lady… she… she was in the apartment…”

  A sharp pain struck her heart. Like an icy fist, it gripped her and refused to let go. Yet even with the heartache filling her chest, she did not remove her eyes from the man, who continued staring at them with a silent gaze.

  “I know… there isn’t anything we can do for Camellia-sama right now.” It hurt to say, but she had no choice. They needed to focus, or both of them would be killed. “All we can do is avenge her, and avenge her we will.”

  The sound of feet shuffling against the ground echoed all around her as Kirihime, stumbling like she had a concussion, stood back up. Kotohime didn’t pay much attention to her sister. She couldn’t afford to. To look away from an enemy was to present them with an invitation to attack.

  She studied the man before her in more detail. He was quite tall, standing at least several heads above her. His body was composed entirely of muscle, the kind that she expected to see on an inu or an oni, not a kitsune. His hair was dark enough to be considered black, as were his eyes, yet the trace amounts of yōkai coming from him were celestial in nature. He had five tails.

  She frowned as something clicked within her mind. “Are you a member of the Shénshèng Clan?”

  The man’s nod confirmed it. “I am indeed. My name is Li, and you are Kotohime, formerly known as Tsukihime, the Blood Moon Princess of the now destroyed Ślina Clan, and that is your younger sister.”

  “So you know who we are, which means you are deliberately targeting us.”

  “Not exactly. To be perfectly honest, I would rather not battle you at all, if I can help it,” Li admitted easily, which put her on guard. The fact that he was so willing to let her know something like this made her wary. Why tell her anything? Why not just attack her? Unless she wasn’t the target, which would mean…

  “You’re after Lilian-sama.”

  “Indeed we are,” Li said. Kotohime’s body tensed, but Lee moved faster than she could react and was suddenly standing just a few feet in front of her, his monstrous form staring her down with the kind of expression one might use when peering at an insect. “I would like to ask that you not interfere with my charge’s mission. You can either remain where you are and wait, in which case, I shall not attack, or you can try to get past me, in which case, I shall put you and your sister down.”

  Kotohime glared at the one known as Li. “I choose neither of those options. As you are also a bodyguard, you should know that the duty of a bodyguard is to always protect their charge and ensure that person’s continued safety. If the person you are supposed to protect is threatening the safety of the person I am protecting, then it means I have no choice but to go through you.”

  Li’s silent stare would have unnerved most, but Kotohime was not most people. She met his stare evenly, her rage at the danger that Lilian and her mate were facing even now allowing her to meet the more powerful kitsune’s look head on.

  “I see. Very well, then…”

  Releasing a deep breath as though expelling his emotions along with it, Li shifted his stance, widening it and adopting a strong combat stance used by Daoist monks. She recognized it as one of the more advanced forms of Wushu.

  “… Get past me, if you can,” he said, gesturing for her to bring it on.

  ***

  It was unbearable. Every muscle in her body felt like it was being ripped apart at the molecular level. Her eyes had long since stopped being able to see. Her ears could no longer hear. Her brain was on the verge of shutting down. Everything hurt. Pain was all she knew. She just wanted the pain to stop. For everything to stop. Why wouldn’t it stop? Why wasn’t it stopping?!

  “Lily-pad!”

  Lilian gasped and, as suddenly as the pain had come, it disappeared.

  “Lilian?! Lily-pad? Can you hear me? Are you all right?!”

  “What… what…?”

  Lilian blinked several times, eyelids rapidly fluttering as she looked around, her mind feeling sluggish as she tried to comprehend what she was seeing. She no longer stood in that barren wasteland. She was back on the soccer field, and her sister was standing in front of her. So was Christine. Both of them looked concerned. When did they… how did they… what was…

  “A-an illusion,” she rasped, her throat sore as though she’d screamed herself hoarse. “It was all an illusion.”

  “Tch!” Several yards away, Fan stood on the grassy field with her arms crossed in annoyance. “A few more
seconds under that illusion and you would have been brain dead, just like my dear little brother.”

  Lilian grimaced as she realized how much trouble she was in. She had known there were some powerful illusions out there. Even so, she hadn’t expected something like that. What made it worse was that the illusion she had been placed under wasn’t even that strong, comparatively speaking. Fan only had three tails, after all.

  That still left her with a problem. Her opponent had three tails, which meant she was not only far stronger than Lilian, but she also had more techniques up her sleeve. It was definitely a good thing that Christine and Iris were here. Then again, if they were here, then that meant…

  “Where’s Kevin and Lindsay?” she asked. Her ears were ringing and she had a terrible headache, the consequences of being trapped inside of that illusion for so long.

  She couldn’t remember what happened to Kevin. During the start of the battle, she had cast an illusion over herself and Kevin, set Kevin by the bleachers, and then—nothing. She’d been hit by Fan’s illusion and everything after that was blank.

  “Don’t worry about the stud.” Iris didn’t take her eyes off Fan. “He and the dyke are safe.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call my friend a dyke, you stupid whore,” Christine bit out harshly.

  “That’s not really an insult to me, you know,” Iris shot back. “And such words mean very little when coming from a prudish loli like you.”

  “At least I’m not willing to jump everything with two legs and a dick!”

  “Now, now, we both know that isn’t true. The only dick I’ll be jumping any time soon is the stud’s, and that’ll only happen if my Lily-pad joins in.”

  “Gods, you’re so disgusting!”

  Lilian almost sighed as the two began arguing back and forth. Didn’t they realize that they were in the middle of a battle? They probably did, but they just didn’t care. She really wished they would stop, though, as their bickering was giving her a headache.

  That illusion messed me up more than I thought.

  “ENOUGH!” Fan’s enraged shout echoed across the field. “If you two are going to stand in my way, then I’ll just have to kill you along with that damn bitch who refused my beloved brother!”

  “I noticed you talk about your beloved brother a lot,” Iris pointed out. “Are you some kind of brocon? Got a bit of a brother complex? I’m not judging, but I have to admit it’s kind of weird to have a thing for your little brother.”

  “This coming from the skank who wants to get into her sister’s pants,” Christine pointed out.

  “Ooh, you’re getting wittier by the second.”

  “RAGH!” Fan screamed before her tails curled around her front, their tips converging into a single point. “Celestial Art: Ch’ang-o’s Celestial Canon!”

  Light gathered near the tips of her tails, forming into the shape of a sphere, which grew larger and larger until it completely blocked their view of Fan. Then, suddenly and without warning, it shrank, seconds before becoming a large beam of pure light that shot toward them with the speed of a Gundam undergoing atmospheric reentry.

  Lilian reinforced her body and leapt away at the same time as Iris grabbed Christine and jumped high into the air. While they were in midair, Christine conjured half a dozen shards of ice, which she launched at Fan. The three-tailed kitsune was impaled by three of the six shards—or so Lilian thought.

  When their foe vanished, Lilian’s head swiveled in search of Fan. She couldn’t find the woman, however, as it seemed her foe had completely disappeared. It was only when a bright white light appeared behind her sister and her friend that she realized where her adversary was.

  “Iris! Christine! She’s behind you!”

  “Celestial Art: Laozi’s Chains!”

  Lilian’s warning came too late, or rather, Christine and Iris couldn’t do anything because they were still in midair. A dozen chains shot from the ground, their ethereal bodies composed entirely of golden youki. They soared high into the air, over the heads of Christine and Iris, before falling back to spear the ground. The one dozen chains crisscrossed over each other, forming a net, which then retracted, taking the pair with them. Christine and Iris were slammed into the ground.

  Their screams pierced the air as they were smashed against the ground. The earth around them dented. Cracks spread from the point of impact. Lilian gritted her teeth and angry tears sprang to her eyes as she listened to their agonized cries. She didn’t have a chance to do anything for them, though, as Fan used her distracted state to attack her next.

  “Celestial Art: Yin-Yang Entrapment!”

  A circle appeared underneath Lilian, white on one side and black on the other, with a black and white dot inside of each opposite half. A yin-yang circle. She had absolutely no idea what it did, but she also had no intention of finding out. Reinforcing her legs, she launched herself out of the circle just in time to avoid a giant golden cage that appeared around it.

  “Celestial Art: Taoist’s Point!”

  Lilian did not have enough time to fully evade the qiāng that Fan created and threw at her. It grazed the left side of her torso. She hissed in pain as foreign youki invaded the wound, burning her. It hurt a lot, more than she thought it would, considering she was also a Celestial Kitsune. She did her best to counteract the damage by sending her own youki to the damaged flesh, but even though her wound began healing, it still felt like something was burning her from the inside out.

  “Celestial Art: Laozi’s Chains!”

  Before she had a chance to recover, two chains burst from the ground on either side of her. They wrapped around her arms, tightening until it felt like her arms were being squeezed into a thick paste, and then they retracted back into the ground, forcing her arms wide and pulling her down. Lilian struggled to escape from their indomitable grasp. She did everything she could, but no matter how much she fought against the chains, nothing happened. She was trapped.

  Fan walked up to her. “You’ve given me quite a bit of trouble, girl. Far more trouble than a two-tailed brat like you should. However, it doesn’t matter now. You should have known that a kitsune with two tails is no match for a three-tails like myself. That’s how the world works.”

  Lilian glared at Fan as light coalesced around one of her opponent’s tails, once again taking the shape of a qiāng, which her tail curled around.

  “And now, Lilian Pnév̱ma, you will die.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so,” Lilian said.

  Fan hesitated at the confidence in Lilian’s voice. That hesitation was all Lilian needed to launch her own attack.

  “Celestial Art: Orbs of an Evanescent Realm.”

  Nine orbs of light appeared around Fan, surrounding her. Mere seconds after they were formed, the orbs shot toward the woman, converging on her. Fan leapt into the air just before they struck the area where she had been standing. This didn’t stop Lilian’s attacks.

  Lilian hadn’t been resting on her laurels these past few months, unlike a certain Void Kitsune. She had been following Kevin’s example. Every day after school she’d trained with Kotohime for at least an hour, sparring against the much stronger and talented kitsune. Months of fighting. Hours of sweating and bleeding. Lilian had improved, bit by bit.

  One of the areas where she had improved on was this technique: Orbs of an Evanescent Realm. When she had first created this technique, she could only control two orbs at any given time.

  Now she could control all nine at the same time.

  The orbs didn’t collide. They curved, a full 90-degree tilt, and shot upwards, toward Fan. Lilian didn’t know if her opponent was surprised, but regardless, Fan reacted with incredible speed, creating a pair of daggers from her youki. She used the golden daggers to try and cut through Lilian’s spheres. In return, Lilian made her orbs dart all around the woman, making them flit in and out of Fan’s vision, frustrating the woman as she slashed and hacked at them to no avail.

  Of course, Lilian’s technique
was just a distraction.

  “Void Art: Rain of Oblivion,” another voice called out.

  Fan looked up as nearly one hundred black flames appeared above her, their forms flickering with a strange sort of sentience and radiating an insatiable hunger that made her shiver. Even Lilian, who knew the creator of those flames, felt fear pierce her soul. For Celestial Kitsune like them, the sight of the Void, a power that negated the very concepts that created their world, was enough to make them tremble.

  From where she and Christine were bound to the ground, Iris grinned. “It’s time for you to burn.”

  The flames descended in mass, converging on Fan’s location. Lilian was positive that this attack would do the woman in. She was floating in midair, with no way to dodge. She couldn’t avoid this attack. The flames struck her without mercy, over and over, lighting her body on fire like a dark beacon. Fan screamed and screamed as the void fire ate her body.

  Lilian looked down as Fan was eaten, feeling sick to her stomach, yet relieved that they had won. The chains around her body disappeared, and so, too, did the chains pinning Christine and Iris to the ground. She stood up, gingerly making sure that her arms hadn’t been dislocated. She had reinforced them with youki to keep them from being pulled from their sockets, but that didn’t mean having those chains yanking on her arms hadn’t hurt.

  Upon confirming that her arms were fine, Lilian looked up to ask Christine and Iris if they were okay.

  “Are you two all right—gya!”

  She didn’t even get to finish her sentence when Iris pounced on her, sending them both to the ground. Lilian landed on the cold, wet grass, her back becoming slick with due. Iris, lying on top of her, began nuzzling Lilian’s chest, liberally shoving her face into Lilian’s superlative bosoms.

  “Oh, Lily-pad, I’m so glad you’re all right!”