A Fox's Vacation

by Brandon Varnell

  The woman, who Iris recognized as Taer, walked up to the bemused Kevin and Lilian. “Um, excuse me?”

  The pair turned to her. Kevin blinked. “Aren’t you Taer?”

  “Um, yes,” Taer said. “It’s a pleasure to see you two again.”

  “Wow.” Lilian blinked. “You sound a lot more emotive than you did when we first met.”

  “W-well, I’m currently doing a job, so…” Taer trailed off, shook her head, then started again. “Anyway, could you please move off stage so we can restart the competition?”

  “Sure, we can do that,” Kevin muttered.

  Iris snickered as Kevin and Lilian left the stage. She couldn’t even be mad at Kevin for stealing her sister anymore, not after that. Those two truly were a riot.

  I’m going to have so much fun with them both.

  “Okay… well… that was a, uh, an interesting last performance,” Taer said. Iris held back a snort. “So, um, I guess… now that the contestants have all been shown, it’s time to cast the votes and pick the winners.”

  Taer tried to get everyone’s enthusiasm up again, but the sheer “WTF” that people felt from the past few seconds had caused too much existential trauma for that. The room remained quiet, still. Disturbed. No one spoke, thus, leaving it up to her to try and bring this whole event back on track.

  Iris felt sorry for the woman.

  “It looks like the votes have been cast, so now it’s time to announce the winners!” Taer exclaimed, though no one clapped or cheered, leading her to cough into her hand and continue. “In third place for the singles competition, we’ve got Helena Trace, who dressed up as Tifa Lockhart.”

  No one cheered as someone dressed in short black shorts, a white shirt that exposed plenty of midriff, and coveralls, walked onto the stage. She received a medal, then left via the backstage again. This went on two more times, with the grand prize winner also receiving an all-expense paid vacation to Japan.

  “In third place for the couple’s competition, we have Jannice and Ulric, who dressed up as Natsu and Lucy!” Taer announced as two people dressed as a certain pair of fairies walked onto the stage amidst a silent crowd.

  And that was how it went. The last two couples came up to claim their prizes, with the first place couple pairing also receiving an all-expense paid vacation to Japan. Iris just knew that Lilian was probably crying her eyes out right now. Kevin, too, for that matter.

  It happened just after the winners for the couples’ cosplay were announced. A strange shift in the atmosphere caused the hairs on the back of Iris’s neck to stand on end. Something was wrong; a heavy presence existed where before there had been nothing. She recognized it, and that recognition sent a shockwave rippling through her body.

  This is youki!

  Seconds after this realization, Iris saw snowflakes, pristine and white, falling from the sky. They drifted down, landing on the people in the room, though no one seemed to notice them, which made sense, seeing how they weren’t real snowflakes.

  Eyes grew heavy. People stumbled, slumping over as if exhausted. Consciousness was soon lost. More than half the people succumbed to slumber within seconds. Her sister’s friends had already fallen. They lay crumpled on the ground, all except for the snow maiden, who struggled to remain conscious. Yet even she was beginning to look heavy-lidded.

  “An illusion…” Iris muttered. Cursing, she expelled the foreign youki from her body, breaking the illusion and clearing the fog clouding her mind. She went over to Christine, slumped next to Lindsay, who lay sleeping on the ground.

  “What… are you—”

  Iris brought out her tails before she placed one against Christine’s head and the other against Lindsay’s. The two jerked, Lindsay more than Christine, as Iris flooded their bodies with youki, dispelling the illusion.

  “Huh? Wha-what?” Lindsay looked around, her eyes wide and startled as she tried to reorient herself. A few seconds later brought her face-to-face with Christine, who blinked and tilted her head as the tomboy stared at her.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Ah, no.” Lindsay blushed. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Really? Because you’re looking at me strangely.”

  “S-sorry. I just…”

  “Just what?”

  Lindsay’s cheeks grew redder. Christine looked even more confused. Iris sighed.

  “I’m all for a little lesbian action, but you two might want to do that some other time,” Iris interrupted them.

  Upon hearing her, Lindsay leapt to her feet while Christine glowered at Iris as she slowly stood up. “What are you talking about, fox skank?”

  “Nothing to concern yourself with,” Iris said dismissively. “We don’t have time for that anyway. We need to grab the others and get out of here.”

  “Get out of here?” Christine’s frown became ever more prominent. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know, but someone cast an illusion on us, which means trouble’s afoot. Now, come on. Help me wake up the idiots and let’s get going.”

  “Hold on! We’re not going anywhere until—”

  Christine started to say something, but Iris was not in the mood.

  “Look, you two just fell under a kitsune illusion,” Iris enunciated each word clearly, hoping that it would help them understand their situation better. “That means that there is at least one kitsune here who can cast a large-scale illusion on an entire group of people. Whoever this person is, they’re strong—too strong for us to even think of fighting. That’s why I need you two to help me get everyone out of here.” When the two still hesitated, Iris lost it. “Now!”

  “All right, all right. Geez! No need to flip.” Iris actually glared at Christine, getting the yuki-onna to hold her hands up in surrender. “We’re going. Keep your panties on, skank.”

  “Tch.”

  Iris watched the two move over to their friends and begin waking them up. Now that Christine knew about the illusion, she could dispel it. Iris frowned when she noticed that Justin was missing, but she put him out of her mind. He wasn’t important anyway. The most important thing for her was getting to Lilian and Kevin. Kotohime was with them, and she would know what to do.

  Before she or her friends could actually do anything else, however, two things happened near simultaneously. Several people stood up, showing that they hadn’t been affected by the illusion. These people soon proved themselves to be kitsune when tails sprouted from their tailbones and their human ears became long and furry as they shifted on their heads.

  At the same time, several windows and the doors suddenly exploded, and dozens of individuals dressed in black spandex stormed the room. They carried guns at their sides and had rifles slung over their shoulders, which they didn’t hesitate to bring to bear.

  The soldiers opened fire on the kitsune, who responded by launching techniques of their own. Explosions soon rocked the building, causing Christine, Lindsay, and the others who’d woken up to scream.

  In a situation such as this, Iris could only think of one thing to say.

  “Well, this escalated quickly.”

  Chapter 14

  A Convention Stained Red

  Kevin didn’t know what had happened. One minute, he and Lilian were being consoled by Kotohime, and the next, his head was resting on a familiar chest while a pair of tails caressed his temples. He also felt drowsy, as if he’d gone on a 24-hour anime binge.

  “Lilian…” he mumbled into his mate’s bosoms. In response, a pair of hands tenderly ran through his hair. He sighed and pressed his face deeper into Lilian’s chest.

  “How are you feeling, Beloved?”

  “Tired… what happened?”

  Lilian made a sound in the back of her throat. “It was an illusion. Kitsune Art: Snowflakes. It’s an Ocean Kitsune technique.”

  “Ocean Kitsune…” It took Kevin several seconds to catalogue this information and understand what it meant. “If an Ocean Kitsune is the cause of this, then…”
<
br />   “It means that we have trouble on our hands,” Kotohime interrupted. The woman seemed agitated. “I told you this would happen, Lilian-sama. Now do you see why I wanted us to leave right away?”

  “… I’m sorry,” Lilian muttered, her tone terribly contrite.

  Kotohime sighed. “Well, what’s done is done. We can’t change anything now. All we can do is try our best to escape from this situation.”

  Kevin blinked several times, trying to bring his eyes back into focus. They were still behind the stage, though they were the only ones present—or so it seemed at first. It took a moment, but he soon realized that everybody else had fallen asleep and lay sprawled out on the floor.

  “Are you sure you’re well enough to stand?” Lilian asked as Kevin moved away from her.

  “Yes, I’m fine.” Kevin pressed a hand to his face. It felt like there were cobwebs clinging to his mind. “I just need to regain my bearings is all.”

  Just then, a sound thundered around them. Kevin recognized the noise. It was the roar of gunfire.

  “What’s going on out there?” he wondered out loud.

  Before anyone could answer, Iris burst through the curtains and rushed up to them. “We’ve got problems!”

  “So we’ve noticed,” Kotohime said, her tone dryer than a desert.

  Iris ignored her. “There’s Ocean Kitsune out there, and they’re battling against these spandex-wearing freaks with guns.”

  Lilian and Kevin shared expressions of alarm. Spandex freaks with guns? That sounded terrifyingly familiar.

  “The Sons and Daughters of Humanity,” he said.

  “Well, this situation has escalated quickly,” Lilian added.

  “I already said that, Lily-pad.”

  “Shut up, Iris.”

  ***

  It was chaos everywhere.

  Christine had thought that it was just happening inside of that one room, but no, wherever they went, kitsune were fighting against humans. Oddly enough, the kitsune seemed surprised at having to fight a group of armed humans. Several had gone down in the initial assault, and the rest were struggling to fight back.

  “What the fuck is going on?! Is this some kind of dream?!” Alex shouted, his voice several octaves higher than normal.

  Andrew held his hands over his head as he screamed, “If it was, I’m pretty sure we would’ve woken up by now!”

  All of them were hiding behind an upturned booth that had been pressed against a wall. Alex and Andrew were flipping out, and she couldn’t blame them—unlike Eric and Lindsay, they had no knowledge of yōkai, but they were now caught in the middle of a battle between yōkai and humans.

  Though it’s not like I’m in a better position than them.

  The sounds of gunfire rang out. Screams resounded around the room. Several meters away, Christine saw a person clad in spandex fall like wheat before a scythe after getting impaled by several stakes made of water. Having seen the same thing, Lindsay whimpered.

  “Christine, what should we do?” Lindsay huddled next to her.

  “Why are you asking me?” Christine grimaced.

  “I-I thought you might know what to do because, well…”

  “I might be a yōkai, but that doesn’t mean I’m used to situations like this. I’ve been living like a human my whole life, in case you haven’t realized that yet.”

  “S-sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” she muttered.

  As they remained huddled behind the table, several long tendrils of water seeped out of the ground around another soldier. The uniformed man shot at the tendrils with his pistol, but they quickly reformed. Then they suddenly constricted around the soldier. The man screamed. A sickening crack! was heard, the sound of bones being crushed, before the soldier went limp. The tendrils dropped him to the ground.

  Lindsay looked away, her eyes closed and her body shaking. The others weren’t looking good either. Alex and Andrew had stopped yelling, and Eric was abnormally quiet.

  “W-what are we going to do?” Alex asked in a high-pitched voice.

  “T-this is… are we going to die here?” Andrew wondered.

  “I think you guys are forgetting something important here,” Heather said, causing everyone to look at her. There was an almost mocking smirk on her face.

  Christine raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

  “That I was once a member of the Sons and Daughters of Humanity.”

  After saying this, Heather darted out from behind the booth and launched herself across the space between her and a fallen soldier. Several bullets of water splashed around her. None of the projectiles hit, however, and Heather rolled across the ground, snatched up the gun, and took up a crouched firing position. The gun rang out five times. Christine heard a scream of pain from the other side of the booth, which was followed by silence.

  “W-what’s happening out there?” asked Lindsay.

  “I don’t know,” Christine said. “I don’t know if I want to know.”

  “Would someone please tell me what the hell is going on?!” Alex screamed.

  “Shut up, Alex. We don’t have time to explain things right now,” Eric snapped, surprising everyone. The young man then ran out from behind the booth and over to Heather. “Please let me help you out, Master!”

  Heather sighed as she gave the boy a wan smile. “You can help me by getting back behind that booth. Kitsune aren’t the only enemies that we need to worry about, you know.”

  “Eh?”

  Hidden behind the table as she was, Christine comprehended Heather’s words before Eric. The two of them were surrounded by, not only kitsune, but also the spandex-clad soldiers. They just happened to have been lucky enough to find a spot where most of the soldiers couldn’t see them. Now Eric and Heather were out in the open, and several guns had been trained on them.

  “Do you think they’ll let us go if we tell them we’re not with the kitsune?” Eric asked, his voice strangely calm in the face of danger.

  Heather eyed the soldiers surrounding them. “Somehow… I don’t think so.”

  “… Well, shit.”

  ***

  Several hours before the battle between the kitsune and the Sons and Daughters of Humanity began, Camellia had wandered off on her own. She’d been so distracted by the colorful decorations and pretty costumes that it took her almost an hour to notice that she’d been separated from the others.

  “HAWAAAAANNN!”

  Since then, she’d been wandering the halls, bawling her eyes out like a child who’d gotten lost.

  It was this very loud and obnoxious crying that eventually led to her being surrounded by several men wearing black spandex and carrying firearms. The men all looked baffled. Camellia was just as confused, and she stared at them with her large, innocent eyes.

  “Hawa…?”

  “Damn,” one of them swore. “This chick is stacked.”

  “I never thought I’d meet someone this sexy in person,” another agreed.

  “Cut the unnecessary chatter, you two!”

  “Yes, Captain!”

  “What should we do with her?” asked one soldier.

  The captain shrugged. “Why are you asking me? I don’t have a clue.”

  “She’s a civilian, right?” a soldier wearing a beret asked. “Doesn’t that mean we should, like, protect her or something?”

  Camellia, who was fortunate enough to not have her tails out—even she knew that kitsune weren’t supposed to reveal themselves to humans—realized that these people didn’t intend to harm her. She grabbed one of them by the arm and clung to him desperately, tears gathering in her eyes.

  “H-hawa… please help me. I need to find my daughters.”

  Though her mind had been reverted to that of a child, she knew that her daughters were in danger. She might not have been much of a mother, but she still cherished both Iris and Lilian. Beyond the jumbled mind that had been devastated by circumstance lay the love of a mother who wanted to protect her prog
eny.

  The soldiers melted at the sight of her gaze. There was no way they could resist those eyes, or that face, which was so beautiful and innocent that it made angels look devilish and…

  … Hold on.

  “Did she just say daughters?”

  The group of soldiers looked at each other in shock.

  “Damn.”

  “Damn is right. Who could have guessed that we’d run into a total MILF on this assignment?”

  Camellia, who had absolutely no clue what they were talking about, just did what she did best. She tilted her head and looked cute.

  “Hawa?”

  ***

  Kirihime was worried.

  Strange men in spandex were fighting against a group of kitsune. It was clear to her that both groups had been lying in wait. The kitsune, she guessed, were from the Mul Clan. They were probably here for her group. The soldiers were another matter entirely. She had no clue why they were present, but she supposed it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they represented a danger to the people that she was sworn to protect.

  That meant they had to die.

  She moved through them like a storm, slashing at her foes with the two knives that she kept hidden in her French maid outfit, slitting throats and lopping off limbs. She could not use any water techniques, but with her muscles reinforced by youki, decimating her opposition was easy.

  The soldiers panicked.

  “How can this woman move so fast?!”

  “Damn it, I thought kitsune used illusions! We haven’t been trained to fight someone like this!”

  “Fuck! We need backup!”

  One of the soldiers appeared in front of her. The pistol in his hands shook. He was afraid. That was good.

  Feeling the grin on her face widening, Kirihime blitzed him. Gunfire met her advance, but she dodged each bullet with ease by tracking the soldier’s muscle movements and predicting the pistol’s firing trajectory. Left. Right. Duck. The gun clicked empty. She was in his guard.

  A scream erupted from the man’s throat as she slashed at the tendons in his legs. Unable to hold himself up, the soldier toppled over. Kirihime let him fall past her, twirling around gracefully to the left, and then slashing out with the knife in her right hand. Steel met skin and muscle and bone. Steel won out. Kirihime didn’t bother watching the man’s head fall from his shoulders and moved on to her next target.