A Fox's War

by Brandon Varnell

  A cone of fire burst from her wand and struck the creature of darkness, but it didn’t disappear like she expected it to. The malicious entity didn’t even appear injured as it turned to her. This thing didn’t have any eyes, just a gaping mouth, which opened up to release a condensed beam that shot at her.

  “Whoa!”

  Lindsay jumped out of the way and quickly imagined herself flying.

  “Magical Actualization. Wings.”

  Wings flared from her back, letting her ascend into the air. This also let her avoid the beam attack. Her wings flapped, taking her higher into the air and letting her perform several intense aerial maneuvers, which helped her avoid more of those beam attacks.

  “If inferno didn’t work, then…”

  Lindsay pointed her magical wand at the thought entity.

  “Magical Actualization. Blessed Shooter.”

  A number of spheres appeared around Lindsay. They were small and looked like glowing orbs of pure white. These spheres hovered only for a moment before shooting at the malicious thought entity, slamming into the creature and blasting several holes through its body.

  “Ah, yeah!” Lindsay cheered. However, her cry of victory soon turned into one of shock when the thought holes closed up in the thought entity like nothing happened. “What?! That’s no fair!”

  The malicious thought entity opened its mouth once more, but this time, instead of firing off a single beam, it fired a scatter shot of many beams. Lindsay squealed as she flew through the air, trying to avoid the numerous beam attacks.

  “This isn’t good!”

  Lindsay gritted her teeth as she tried to think of what she could do to beat this thing. Her only attack spells were Blessed Shot and Inferno, but neither of them seemed to work on this thing. That meant she literally had nothing she could attack with.

  As these thoughts flashed through her head, a streak of light flashed past her, causing Lindsay to scream again. The streak flew straight down like an arrow toward the thought entity. Then—

  “Divine Slice!”

  A line appeared on the thought entity. The creature stopped firing off beam attacks and grew silent. The line grew larger, and Lindsay realized that it was actually an incision line. It wasn’t long before the thought entity split apart along the incision line, falling into two halves, which soon burst into dark particles.

  Lindsay stared at where the thought entity had been, and then she looked at the person standing on the ground in front of it. She couldn’t tell who they were. There wasn’t enough light. However, this person was wearing a skintight bodysuit with a short skirt. In this person’s hand was a stick that looked more like a magical girl wand than what she had.

  “Um…” Lindsay landed on the ground and approached the figure. “Excuse me, but who are you?”

  Not “thank you for saving me,” which was what Lindsay probably should have said, but a question and demand for an introduction. Lindsay felt she was understandably wary. She’d been fighting a thought entity, losing, and someone she didn’t know suddenly showed up in magical girl garb.

  The person before her didn’t answer. They didn’t even turn around. Grabbing the Jewel Seed, the other magical girl(?) took to the skies and quickly flew off.

  “H-hey, wait!”

  Lindsay stuck out her hand as if to stop that person, but they disappeared before she could actually do anything.

  Silence descended on the clearing. Lindsay stared at where that person had disappeared, her eyes wide as she tried and failed to comprehend what had just happened.

  “Just who was that?” she wondered out loud.

  Kevin was naked when he woke up. The first thing that he saw, aside from the red hair of his mate, was a pair of panties hanging from a tree branch.

  Since when was there a tree in my ap.. art… ment… oh, yeah.

  He and Lilian weren’t in their apartment, were they? That’s right. After talking about what happened between him and Christine, he and Lilian had made love underneath this tree. Now they were wrapped up in a blanket, snuggled together, and naked. Completely naked.

  I really hope no one saw what Lilian and I were getting up to…

  It didn’t take a genius to realize that he and Lilian should probably leave this place. They’d been lucky to not get arrested for public indecency, and he didn’t want to push his luck. Never mind getting arrested, he just didn’t want to suffer the embarrassment of someone discovering him and Lilian lying naked under a tree.

  “Lilian. Hey, Lilian. We need to get up.”

  “Ngg… five more minutes, Beloved.”

  “I wish I could give you five more minutes, but we really do need to get up.”

  Groaning, Lilian rubbed herself against him, then lifted her head and slowly blinked several times. She offered him a sleepy smile. “Morning, Beloved.”

  “I actually think it’s night,” Kevin murmured as he kissed her. Despite wanting to get dressed and leave this place quickly, he still allowed himself this moment, relishing in the feel of her tongue languidly rubbing against his, and of her bare body pressing against him.

  “Is it really night?” Lilian sat up, resting her hands on his chest, and looked around. The frown on her face told him that she’d finally realized something. “Beloved?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why are we outside?”

  “Because this is where we were talking before we fell asleep. Remember?”

  “Oh… right. I remember.” She paused. Her head turned this way and that, reminding him of an owl. Then she looked back down. “Beloved?”

  “Yes?”

  “I think we should head back home before someone sees us.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  It took several minutes to find their clothes. They must have been rowdier than he’d realized because several articles of clothing were found a couple yards away—and that didn’t include the stuff that somehow ended up hanging from the tree. Once dressed, he and Lilian walked hand in hand back to their apartment. On their way home, extremely familiar sounds reached their ears. They paused and cocked their heads to the side, listening.

  “That’s gunfire,” Lilian announced.

  “It is,” Kevin agreed.

  He and Lilian looked at each other. Within her eyes, he saw the same curiosity that he felt being reflected back at him. Nodding to each other, he and Lilian took off into the night, following the sounds of gunfire.

  Athena winced as a bullet grazed her shoulder. While she was built to withstand attacks from even yokai, that did not mean that she didn’t incur injuries, or that being injured didn’t hurt.

  She was being chased through the streets, running from a horde of pursuers, a combination of humans and yokai. Her breathing had grown heavy from doing so much running. Even she, born and bred to kill yokai, didn’t have the endurance needed to keep up this hellish pace. She’d need to do something soon if she didn’t want these people to catch her.

  Turning a corner—

  “Celestial Art: Light Sphere!”

  —Athena was forced to duck when a golden ball of light nearly slammed into her.

  This attack…

  She could feel the intense energy ball buzzing over her head, whizzing by her like a sphere of condensed lightning. Athena recognized the attack. It was the same attack that had nearly hit her when she’d tried to kill Justin.

  Skipping back to her feet, Athena was about ready to bolt in another direction—

  Whoosh!

  —when a fist sailed past her head. The fist was attached to a blond teen with blue eyes. Seeing that he’d missed, the boy retracted his fist and tried to slam a knee into her stomach. Athena raised her left leg. She felt his knee strike hers but pillowed the blow, then tried to hook her hand around the boy’s and strike at the opening in his left flank.

  Her attack missed. Athena blinked.

  What?

  “Kitsune Art: Inversion.”

  The world around Athena suddenly flippe
d upside down. Objects that should have been further away appeared closer, while objects that were close looked far away. Colors switched places. Red became blue. Green turned into orange. Black was now white. An illusion. Athena bit one of her teeth, cracking it. The pain caused the illusion to shatter.

  The boy’s fist filled her vision. On instinct, Athena moved her head. She felt a moment of confusion when she couldn’t feel his attack ruffle her hair. A punch like that should have displaced the air at least a little bit. Ignoring that, she attacked him with a high kick, aiming at his neck.

  Her foot went straight through him.

  Another illusion—ugh!

  “Celestial Art: Heaven’s Prison.”

  Celestial bodies appeared around her, swirling like ethereal eddies of energy. Chains shot out from within the spirals of youki. Athena leapt backwards to avoid them, but there were too many to completely dodge. She felt several—that must have appeared behind her—wrap around her arms and waist. Struggling against them didn’t work. They tightened when she tried to break free.

  “I wouldn’t bother, if I was you,” the boy said. “Those chains are strong. Only a yokai of greater strength can break them.”

  Athena had already deduced that his words were true. She would not be able to break these chains, which left her with one option. What’s more, she could hear the shouts coming from behind her as the people she’d been running from caught up. Even if she could break these chains, escape was impossible now.

  Protocol dictated that she could not allow herself to fall into enemy hands, no matter the cost. Having already come to the conclusion that there was no escape, she bit down on the capsule sealed behind her gums.

  She felt the poison travel down her throat.

  She felt her heart stop.

  She felt nothing after that.

  Kevin stood outside of a hospital room with a group of people. There was Lilian, of course, but Justin and Mack were also there. There was also a distraught Thoe, along with Euryale and Menippe, who stood by their crying friend, a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  The hospital room they were in was not a waiting room, or even a hallway. Small and somewhat narrow, the only thing it offered aside from several chairs set against the wall was a large window, through which they could see another room.

  Within that other room, a large cylindrical bed sat in the center of the room. It was covered in a glass case. There was someone inside. It was a young girl with long blond hair, pale skin, and elfish features. She couldn’t have been older than ten.

  “I can’t believe this happened,” Thoe mumbled.

  “It’ll be okay, Thoe.” Euryale rubbed the woman’s back. “The doctors said they’re going to do everything possible to save her.”

  “They shouldn’t have needed to save her in the first place.”

  Thoe tossed Kevin a vicious glare, as if blaming him for what happened. He flinched. Lilian didn’t.

  “Don’t glare at my mate like that,” she said. “It’s not his fault things turned out like this. That girl was clearly trained in combat.”

  “She’s a ten-year-old little girl,” Thoe shot back. “There’s no way she could know how to fight. Not even we yama uba were placed in positions that required us to fight in life and death battles until we were much older!”

  “I’m afraid that Lilian is correct,” a voice said before Lilian could retort.

  Everyone turned around to see Mack walking into the room with Justin trailing behind him. From the grim look on his face, Kevin deduced that nothing good was going to come from his words.

  “What do you mean by that?” Thoe asked.

  “I mean that girl is an assassin who was created and genetically modified to kill yokai,” Mack answered. “Her name Athena is actually the name of the project that created her. She was born inside of a test tube, and her genetic makeup was spliced with several different yokai to give her more strength, agility, and intelligence than a normal human being.”

  Thoe shook her head back and forth, as if trying to deny his words. “That… that can’t be true.”

  Mack said nothing, and his very silence seemed indicative of the truth that he’d unveiled to Thoe, who broke down in tears.

  Kevin looked away from the scene. He suddenly felt like an intruder. Walking up to the window, he peered into the room, where Athena lay resting on a table. She was hooked up to electrodes, had IVs inserted into her arms, and there was an oxygen mask placed over her face.

  After he and Lilian had successfully captured her, Athena had bitten down on something and started convulsing. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that she’d poisoned herself. Kevin had seen enough anime to know that she probably had a capsule filled with poison in one of her teeth. Lilian had used her powers as a Celestial Kitsune to try and heal her, but he didn’t know how much good it had done.

  Dr. Henry Von Stein walked out of the hospital room. Ignoring the way Lilian hissed at him like a cat spitting fire, he walked up to Mack.

  “How is she?” asked Thoe, her imploring expression enough to make any man become putty.

  “I believe that she’ll survive,” he said to the relief of several people present. “However, the poison has already affected her brain, impairing most of its functions. She’ll live, but she’ll never be the same again.”

  “I… I see…” Thoe looked away from the oni doctor with a bitter expression.

  As Kevin tried not to feel guilty for being the one who put that expression on her face, Justin walked up to him. “I know it’s probably not much consolation, but if you hadn’t been the ones to capture her, then Athena would have been killed.”

  “You’re right. It’s not much consolation,” Kevin admitted.

  “My celestial powers might be able to heal her mind,” Lilian suggested.

  “Don’t even try it, girly,” Dr. Henry Von Stein warned. “A prepubescent fox like you would only do more damage. I bet your idea of healing is saturating her body with youki and hoping it fixes whatever damage has been done to her. However, all that’s going to do is poison her.”

  “I know how to heal people,” Lilian spat.

  “Wrong. You know how to heal Kevin. However, Kevin’s body composition is completely different from that girl’s. What’s more, Kevin is used to your youki because of how intimate you two are, thus he responds to it more easily. If you healed anyone else the same way you heal Kevin, I guarantee they could die from youki poisoning.”

  As much as he didn’t want to admit it, the oni doctor’s words made sense. While he didn’t know much about healing, he did know that humans could be poisoned from what was known as youki saturation, which was when the body became oversaturated with youki.

  “Lilian…” Kevin slid his hand into hers. She looked at him, studying his face, then sighed.

  “Let’s go, Beloved. I don’t want to be in the presence of an oni any longer than I have to.”

  “Che.” Dr. Henry Von Stein clicked his tongue. “That’s fine. I don’t want to be in the presence of a brat any longer than I have to.”

  Lilian sent the doctor a vicious look before squeezing Kevin’s hand and dragging him out of the hospital. He sent everyone there an apologetic look before the door slid shut behind them.

  “Can you believe the nerve of that stupid, red-skinned jerk?” Lilian ranted as they walked home. “That idiot said that I didn’t know how to heal people! Me! Heal! I know how to heal people just fine! I’m a Celestial Kitsune, for crying out loud! I might not be as good as a River Kitsune, but I know how to heal others!”

  She was in a foul mood. Kevin had been listening to her complain for the last ten minutes.

  Leaning over, he pressed his lips against her cheek, then pulled back. “Try not to let what he said bother you. That guy is an oddity even for an oni.”

  Dr. Henry Von Stein was certainly a character. Kevin had never met an oni doctor before, and aside from Hina, he’d never met an oni who acted so calmly and spoke so rationally.
However, it didn’t change that the doctor was an oni. Lilian’s irrational hatred of onis refused to change just because one or more of them showed intelligence, it seemed.

  “Whatever,” Lilian grumbled. “I still don’t like him.”

  They made it home and entered the apartment. Before they could so much as take off their shoes, someone stomped up to them.

  “Where were you two?” Christine demanded to know. The yuki-onna stood before them, her arms crossed and her expression stern. Kevin thought he detected worry in her voice, but that could have just as easily been irritation.

  “We ran into some trouble on the way home,” Kevin explained.

  “And that trouble kept you away from the apartment since the end of school?”

  “End of school?” Kevin and Lilian looked at each other. When it became clear that neither of them knew what their friend was talking about, they looked back at her.

  “Christine, what are you talking about?”

  Christine frowned. “What do you mean what am I talking about? You two disappeared during gym class.” Her eyes narrowed into tiny slits. “Did you two go off and have s-s-s-sex somewhere?”

  “Uh…” Kevin hesitated. It was certainly true that they had sex, but that hadn’t been until well after school. Still, it wasn’t like they could tell that to Christine.

  “Well…” Lilian added.

  “You two did, didn’t you?! H-how could you be s-s-so disgusting and shameless?! Perverts!”

  “Now that’s just rude,” another voice spoke up. Iris greeted the pair with a smile as she walked into the room wearing nothing but a shirt. It was long enough to hide her bottom, but Kevin could tell she wasn’t wearing panties underneath it. “You two took your time getting back home. Did something happen while you were out—aside from the sex, I mean?”

  “Let’s not talk about sex right now,” Kevin groaned. “Please?”

  “Uhuhu, I’m just screwing with you, Stud. Seriously, though. It looks like something interesting happened to you.”

  Lilian and Kevin eyed each other again. Something interesting had happened, and they both silently agreed that these two should know about it.