“I wonder why they’re picking a fight with Ocean Kitsune,” she mused.
Kevin shrugged. “Who knows?”
Kyle eventually stopped the car in a small alley, where it would hopefully go unnoticed. Kevin and Lilian exited the vehicle, grateful that they were no longer subject to Kyle’s insane driving.
“Oh, ground, how I’ve missed thee!”
Lilian watched in amusement as her mate dropped to the ground and affectionately rubbed his cheek against the asphalt. Kyle twitched.
“My driving isn’t that bad!”
“Yes, it is.” Kevin didn’t stop rubbing his face against the road. “You’re a horrible driver, and coming from me, that says a lot about how crappy your driving is. I’ve ridden in a car with Kiara.”
“You picking a fight?!”
“Now, now,” Lilian decided to play the diplomat. “Kyle may suck at driving, but at least he got us here in one piece.”
Lilian did not make a good diplomat.
Kyle growled. “Just follow me. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can be rid of you two.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say, Kyle the Kappa.”
“Seriously, stop that!”
***
Kevin and Lilian followed Kyle.
They were in a mostly abandoned part of town near the docks called Marina Del Rey. According to Kyle, this place had once been quite lively, but the kitsune who’d moved in had cast an area-wide illusion that caused humans to abandon it. The marina consisted of large buildings, parking lots, and empty docking stations.
Neither of them knew where he was leading them, but they trusted that he wasn’t leading them astray. It wasn’t like they had much of a choice anyway. They’d long since gotten lost in the maze of buildings, through the twists and turns that seemingly went on forever. It felt like they were traveling in circles.
It was an act of pure coincidence that they ran into someone else—a blond-haired kitsune with two tails. He turned a corner just as Kevin, Lilian, and Kyle were several feet from that same corner.
All four figures skidded to a halt. Three sets of eyes widened in recognition.
“You!” Kevin was the first to respond, pointing an accusing finger at the blond kitsune. “You’re the fop who kept hitting on my mate!”
“And you’re that human who thinks he’s hot shit when he’s really not!”
“Hey! That’s rude!”
The kitsune deadpanned. “So is calling me a fop.”
“Aw, whatever,” Kevin dismissed the man. “You are a fop. I mean, just look at your hair.”
A tick mark appeared on the kitsune’s forehead. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
“Nothing, nothing at all… if you’re a girl, that is.”
“Oh, that does it. I’m not usually one for fighting a human, but you’ve pissed me off, kid.” The kitsune rolled up his imaginary sleeves… and then he paused. “Wait a minute. Did you say mate?”
That’s when his eyes landed on Lilian in her hybrid form.
Kitsune are very vain creatures. They are naturally drawn to beauty. While what is and is not beautiful is subjective, there are some things that can be considered universally beautiful. Iris is a perfect example of this, and so is Lilian.
Kevin gained several throbbing veins on his forehead when he noticed the blond fox’s lecherous gaze.
“Stop-ogling-my-mate-you-damn-pervert-kick!”
“Buaf!”
Ken was thrown backwards by Kevin’s powerful double heel kick. Kevin, having used the kitsune as a springboard, flipped through the air and landed in a crouch. The two-tailed fox was not so lucky. After sailing through the air, he hit the ground. Hard.
“Urk!” Ken nearly swallowed his tongue as he slammed into the ground. He continued to tumble across the asphalt for several more feet before coming to a halt.
Kevin stood back up and clapped his hands several times, wearing an expression that epitomized satisfaction. He turned his head to look at his mate and the flabbergasted kappa.
“You just kicked a kitsune,” Kyle stated the obvious.
“That I did.” Kevin nodded, quite proud of himself. This was the first time he’d managed that kick without landing on his back. “You two should get going. I can handle things here.”
“You sure?” Kyle appeared dubious. “You may have gotten the drop on him, but that guy is still a kitsune, and, well, you’re just a human.”
Two sets of cheeks puffed up simultaneously.
“Don’t underestimate me! Who the hell do you think I am?” Kevin shouted, pointing at Kyle.
Don’t underestimate my mate! Who the hell do you think he is?” Lilian also shouted. She was also pointing at Kyle.
The kappa looked at the two of them, his face slowly deadpanning. “You two just did that in synch.”
Kevin and Lilian tilted their heads at the same time. Their expressions were almost identical. “We did?”
“Yes, you did.”
The two might have responded to Kyle’s words, but they were forced to scramble out of the way when a drill made of water crashed into the ground, which cracked underneath the intense pressure. They looked at the person who’d created it—Ken, once again on his feet, with blood trailing down his forehead, and his two tails writhing in furious agitation.
“Quit ignoring me!”
“Oh, right,” Kevin muttered. “You’re still here.”
“Are you saying you forgot about me already?!”
“I’m sorry. You’re just not that important.”
“What?!” Ken gawked.
“That’s what happens when you’re a fop,” Lilian added.
“Ugh.”
“Yeah, nobody likes a fop,” Kevin agreed.
“Gurk.”
“Especially not pretty boy fops,” even Kyle got in on the action.
“Shut up!” Ken growled, his cheeks almost neon red. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! I’ll show you! I’ll prove to all of you that I’m not a fop!”
“Only someone who’s a fop would bother trying to prove that he’s not a fop,” Kevin chided.
“That does it!”
Water gathered in the air around Ken’s left hand. Threads beaded together, congealing into a whip that extended along the ground for at least two meters.
“I’m going to kill you,” he said, cracking the whip in Kevin’s direction. Asphalt broke apart as it was struck. “And then I’m going to kill the kappa.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Kyle said, cracking his knuckles.
“Then once you're dead, I’m going to claim that girl for my own.” Ken’s eyes contained a gleam as he looked at Lilian and licked his lips. Lilian felt a sudden urge to bathe in lava. “I’ll enjoy breaking her.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Kevin declared. “I won’t let you touch Lilian.”
“What can you do?” Ken sneered. “You’re just a human.”
Kevin didn’t bother defending human ingenuity and strength. Doing something like that would have been a waste of breath, and Ken clearly wasn’t interested in listening. Instead, he set himself in his preferred fighting stance: body lose and knees slightly bent as he stood on the balls of his feet. His hands rose into a guard position that looked like a combination of boxing and karate.
Offering the kitsune a grin, Kevin goaded his soon-to-be-opponent. “Come on, then. Fight me and find out what this lowly human can do to a fop like you.”
***
The four-tailed kitsune that Kotohime had been battling appeared several feet to her left, his form distorting as the water-based illusion that kept his body hidden from sight dispersed.
He walked toward the woman, smirking as she knelt on the ground, staring at the sword sticking out of her chest. It was the same water sword that she had used to try and stab him, a sword that was currently dripping with her… water?
He didn’t have time to be shocked as Kotohime burst into a million crystalline droplets.
<
br /> “What the…? Was that an illusion?” he asked, his eyes widening. “No, this is…”
“Water Art: Great Spear Pierces the Heavens.”
Glittering like gems in the night, the ever-shifting droplets of water coalesced, merging, morphing, changing. The water became condensed, then it elongated into a spear exactly twelve feet in length. The spear, fully formed mere seconds after its creation, shot forth at supersonic speeds, impaling the four-tails in the chest—
—Only for his form to evaporate like water on a scorching summer day. The weapon continued onwards, striking the ground with a ferocious roar, tearing the pavement asunder and sending chunks of rubble into the air.
Several dozen yards away, Kotohime and the man she’d been fighting reappeared.
“That was an impressive use of illusions,” Kotohime complimented her adversary.
“How did you escape my technique?” the other four-tails demanded.
“You seem to forget that I, too, am a kitsune who wields water,” Kotohime chided her foe. “I knew before I even extended my katana that the you that I was attacking was nothing more than an illusion. I am impressed by your skill, however. It takes a great deal of concentration to place an illusion over a technique to manipulate the space-time of water techniques like Tsukuyomi.”
Tsukuyomi, a technique named after the moon god of Shinto religion. It worked by creating two vortexes of water that displaced the space-time continuum of other water techniques, essentially disrupting the concept of “continuity” and replacing it with the concept “water will pass through here and come out here.” It wasn’t a very powerful technique. It only worked against other water techniques whose youki consumption was not greater than that of the youki used to power Tsukuyomi. However, it still required a lot of concentration to use.
The other kitsune grimaced. Kotohime knew that she was wearing him down. She could see it in his heavy breathing and slouched posture.
That technique must have been his trump card, she reasoned.
“I suppose this is what I get for thinking something like that would work against the Blood Moon Princess.”
“I do not particularly care for that title,” Kotohime admitted coolly, settling herself into a basic kendo stance. “Now, since you have impressed me so much, may I know the name of the kitsune whose life I am going to take?”
The other Kitsune glared at her, but he still answered, “It’s Kaine.”
Kaine,” Kotohime tested the name, her nose scrunching cutely. “An odd name, but very well. Let us end this battle quickly, Kaine-san. I will be sure to make your death a painless one.”
***
Blood flowed through Kiara’s veins, pulsing in time to the pumping of her leg muscles. Her heart beat at an accelerated rate as adrenaline and the thrill of the hunt spurned her on.
After destroying their trap, the two kitsune had launched a simultaneous attack. She’d defeated it, of course, but that didn’t matter to her two opponents. The techniques had served their purpose: a distraction that allowed them to escape. Now she was chasing them down, tracking them by scent and her acute hearing.
“Water Art: Water Spikes.”
Several dozen spikes shot up from the ground, intent on impaling her. It was a localized attack, one that required precise timing and finely honed instincts to execute with accuracy. Impressive, but ultimately futile.
Kiara leapt into the air, avoiding the spikes. She channeled youki to her fist, encasing it in fiery red energy. When she reached the apex of her jump, she twisted around until her head was angled towards the ground, then she unleashed a barrage of punches. Massive bolts of energy were launched out of her fist, blasting the water spikes and much of the ground apart.
Landing back on the ground, knees bending to absorb the impact, Kiara slowly rose to her feet.
She was smirking.
“You’re going to have to do better than that if you want to beat me!” she called out. Her floppy ears twitched as she tilted her head, listening. Eyes scanned their surroundings, observing the buildings that loomed over her. Her opponents were somewhere around here. All she needed was for them to make a single sound and—
There!
Kiara spun around. A large red ball of explosive energy was launched from her fist and struck the wall on the opposite side of the alley, blowing it apart. She narrowed her eyes at the blur that leapt away at the last second. Her ears twitched when the sound of feet striking pavement reached her. The sound came from her left.
She fired off two more blasts of youki at her enemies. Both were dodged. She knew this because there was no cry of pain. Her attacks struck a wall several meters away, blowing two large holes through it.
“Water Art: Transient Waterfall.”
Instincts finely honed to a razor’s edge warned her of impending danger. She spun around to see the incoming attack, a geyser of water barreling towards her. Kiara thrust her youki-covered hand at the technique. Red youki blitzed from her palm, taking the shape of a clawed hand that expanded to an incredible size, threatening to engulf the much smaller waterfall attack.
The waterfall passed right through her youki.
“What?!”
“Kitsune Art: Water Wave.”
Her incredibly fast reaction time allowed Kiara to turn around, however, she had no time to do anything else as a rushing wave of turbulent water slammed into her and swept her off her feet.
***
After leaving Kevin to deal with the blond kitsune, Lilian followed Kyle as he turned corner after corner, past identical looking buildings that she could have sworn she’d seen several seconds before. She was lost and worried, and she wasn’t all that sure the turtle yōkai knew where he was going.
“Do you even know where you’re going?” she asked.
“Of course I do,” Kyle grunted, sounding insulted that she’d question his sense of direction. He turned another corner. Lilian followed. “I’ve been here hundreds of times before. This place used to belong to our family before the Ocean Kitsune stole it from us.”
“So you say, but it seems to me like we’re lost.”
“We’re not lost.”
“We’re going around in circles. How is that not lost?”
“We’re not going around in circles! We’re—”
Kyle said no more, not because he had no more to say, but because something slammed into him from above—a figure clad in a black cloak. Lilian stared in undisguised shock at the person who’d just landed on Kyle’s head.
“You!”
“Nya, I knew you were alive,” the woman’s words were a sharp purr. It was an odd noise, to be sure, but Lilian didn’t have time to dwell on it.
Lilian threw herself backwards, feet sliding along the asphalt. This allowed her to avoid having the woman’s claws carve bloody furrows in her chest. Red hair whipped about her body as she moved, the woman following close on her heels.
She continued to move backwards. At the same time, two balls of light flared to life on the tips of her tails. They were not flung forward. The tails curved around her body, the tips touching in front of her chest. The orbs combined into a single large orb, which swelled to the size of a basketball before another layer of golden light encased it.
“Celestial Art: Celestial Cannon.”
The Celestial Cannon was an attack of Lilian’s own making. First, she created a large light sphere, then she encased the sphere within a shell made from a thin layer of youki. After that, she created an opening in the shell, through which the celestial energy shot out as a beam of destructive light. She’d created this technique based on the attack that she’d used to defeat Chris over half a year ago.
A beam of light the size of her fist burst from the sphere. As it was released, the beam expanded, growing larger at an exponential rate. Before long, it had become even larger than the woman it flew toward.
“Nya.”
With feline-like grace, the cloaked woman moved, avoiding the beam, which slammed i
nto a brick wall several yards away. The wall wasn’t capable of withstanding the attack. It exploded and sent hundreds of fragments flying everywhere.
Lilian gritted her teeth. She knew that it was foolish to have expected her attack to hit. This woman was clearly a trained assassin. Avoiding an attack like Celestial Cannon, which could only move linearly, was easy for someone like that.
The cloaked woman looked at the damage that Lilian’s attack had wrought, then whistled. “Nya, that was impressive.” She turned back to Lilian. “It looks like I might have to actually take you seriously.”
As the woman shifted into an unusually animalistic fighting stance, back hunched, knees bent, and claws positioned in front of her, Lilian slid her feet shoulder-width apart and tried not to show how nervous she felt. This was her first battle since Kiara, and it was against someone who clearly knew how to fight. It was not a good combination, as far as she was concerned.
Beloved, she thought as the cloaked woman launched herself at Lilian. Please hurry up. I’m going to need your help.
Chapter 9
Of Water, Illusions, and Light
Kiara was having problems.
It had nothing to do with the strength of her opponents. Even together, they did not have the strength to match her. Four plus two did not equal six as far as kitsune power levels went. She had more youki, more strength, more power, and more experience than the both of them combined. However, Kiara had forgotten something about kitsune and how they fought, something that had slipped her mind because of Kotohime’s straightforward style of combat.
Kitsune specialized in illusions.
It was so simple, a fact of life, yet it was so easily forgettable. Kotohime never used illusions in combat. She relied mostly on her katana. When faced with something that her katana couldn’t cut through, she used the specialized techniques granted to her by her River blood, and when those failed, she brought out the big guns. Illusions were not something that her friend used, and so, Kiara had no idea how to fight against someone who did use them.
“Water Art: Misty Land of Foxes.”
Kiara glared into the thick fog that engulfed the area, billowing up from the ground, surrounding her on all sides. It was impossible to see through. She wondered if the kitsune she was fighting knew of her weakness.
A Fox's Vacation (American Kitsune Book 5) Page 22
