A Fox's Mate

by Brandon Varnell

  As they continued on their way to class, Lindsay was greeted by several people. She greeted everyone back with a smile and a wave, chatting with some and just grinning at others. Christine observed it all out of the corner of her eyes. Lindsay was well-liked by a lot of people. It was probably because she was friendly, outgoing, and sporty. It was a stark contrast to her.

  Not that Christine cared about being popular. The only people she liked were Kevin, Lindsay, Lilian… and she guessed Iris could be included in that list too, loathe though she was to admit it.

  Suddenly, without warning, Lindsay stopped walking.

  “What’s wrong?” Christine asked.

  “What do you think’s going on over there?” Lindsay pointed at something several feet away.

  Christine looked at the crowd that her friend was pointing to. There were a lot of people, and they seemed to have formed a circle around something. She couldn’t see past all those heads. Pretty much everyone present was taller than her by at least half a foot.

  I hate being so short.

  Nya-ha-ha-ha!

  Quiet you!

  “Don’t know.” Christine shrugged.

  “Wanna go see?” asked Lindsay.

  “Not really—h-hey! What the hell are you doing?!”

  “Come on. Let’s check it out.”

  “I said I don’t want to!”

  Despite Christine’s protests, she ended up getting dragged behind her friend as the tomboy waded through the crowd of people, using their smaller, more lithe bodies to slip past all of the others, until they were standing inside of the massive circle.

  And in the center of that circle was…

  “What the fuck?” Christine’s right eyebrow began twitching.

  “Huh, never thought I’d see something like this,” Lindsay muttered.

  It was like watching two children fight over who got to wear the pretty dress first… only instead of a dress being in the center of Lilian and Iris’s tug of war, it was Kevin. The poor boy looked like he was experiencing excruciating pain. His face was scrunched up as he groaned, moaned, and whimpered. He looked pitiful.

  “That looks painful,” Lindsay muttered worriedly. “Christine, do you think we should help—”

  “Hey! What the hell are you two doing?! Can’t you see you’re hurting him?!”

  “—Kevin…” Lindsay finished with a mutter, and then sighed. “Never mind.”

  Christine marched up to the pair of kitsune, stopping just a few paces away and staring them down. “Let go of him right this instant!”

  Lilian and Iris stopped trying to rip Kevin’s arms off and turned their attention to Christine.

  “Why should we?” asked Iris. “And why are you even bothering us?”

  “T-that’s—” Christine stuttered, her face freezing over like the Arctic. She recovered quickly, however, and presented a strong front once more. “As one of Kevin’s friends, it is my right to be concerned about his well-being!”

  “Che, whatever,” Iris dismissed Christine’s words. “Didn’t you confess to the stud and get turned down in book four? You don’t have any say in what we do with him.”

  “Th-that’s only because Lilian got to him first,” Christine hissed, steam now pouring from her ears and hoarfrost gathering around her as she lost control over her powers. Several people—including Lilian, Lindsay, Iris, and Kevin—started shivering. “Had I reconnected with him before Lilian, I would have been the one dating him.”

  A pause.

  “N-not that I want to still date him or anything! Hmph! I’ve been over Kevin for months now.”

  Another pause.

  “And what’s this about a book four?”

  “I have to agree with Iris on this one,” Lilian added. “This is between me and my sister. Sorry, Christy, but could you please not interfere?”

  “Like hell I will!”

  Thus the tug of war began anew, only this time, Christine was also part of the equation. There was no way she would let her friend be pulled around like this. While Lilian and Iris had ahold of his arms, she grabbed onto the front of his shirt.

  Kevin, who was pretty much insensate by this point, found himself being tugged in three directions, and, unfortunately, something had to eventually give.

  Fortunately for Kevin, the thing that gave wasn’t his arms, which would have really sucked because he needed those arms. Because Lilian and Iris were battling each other more than they were Christine, who pulled Kevin from the front as opposed to his sides, they were the ones who ended up losing the tug of war.

  Unfortunately, because Christine had been yanking on him with all her might and hadn’t been prepared for when he slipped from Lilian and Iris’s grasp, both she and he took a tumble. Christine squawked as she landed on her butt, the jolt of her tailbone hitting cement bringing tears to her eyes. Kevin, on the other hand, landed on his stomach.

  As consciousness returned to him, Kevin found himself engulfed in darkness, with his nose pressed up against something cottony soft and kind of musky. He couldn’t quite tell what it was, as his brain felt a little fuzzy, but the feel of fabric against his nose and the scent was strangely familiar. It was different from what he was used to, but still, he kind of recognized this smell. Moving his head, his nose brushed against whatever this thing was.

  That was when he heard a feminine gasp.

  Kevin froze. His eyes began to adjust, and he finally realized what his nose was brushing against. He blinked several times as he stared at the pair of white cotton panties surrounded by two milky-white thighs. He could barely make them out due to the sparse amounts of light trickling in through what he now understood was a skirt… a very long skirt that could have only been worn by their resident goth loli.

  “Oh, crap!”

  Kevin attempted to scramble out of from underneath Christine’s skirt. In hindsight, this wasn’t the best idea. Because he was so frantic and letting his fear rule him, he ended up doing more harm than good.

  He became tangled inside of Christine’s skirt.

  “W-w-w-WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!”

  “Gah! I’m sorry!”

  “DON’T APOLOGIZE, YOU DOLT! GET THE FUCK OUT FROM UNDER MY SKIRT!”

  “I’m trying, but it’s harder than it looks! I can’t seem to find the exit!”

  “Kya! What are you—WHERE ARE YOU TOUCHING ME?!”

  “HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW?! I CAN BARELY SEE UNDER HERE!”

  “AND THAT’S WHY YOU SHOULD GET OUT OF THERE!”

  “I WILL IF YOU STOP SQUEEZING ME WITH YOUR THIGHS!”

  “S-S-S-SQUEEZING YOU?! I-I-I AM NOT—SHUT UP! SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT THE FUCK UP RIGHT NOW!”

  “G-guh… can’t… breathe…”

  While Christine and Kevin struggled to escape from their embarrassing predicament, Lindsay joined Lilian and Iris as they, along with pretty much everyone else in the vicinity—which had grown to at least 100 people since Kevin fell face-first into Christine’s crotch—stared at the pair.

  “I feel like I should be bothered right now,” Lilian muttered, frowning. “Like, really, really bothered by what’s happening.”

  That you should.

  “Oh! It’s you,” Lilian greeted in surprise. “I haven’t heard from you in a while.”

  That’s because it’s hard to write blatantly obvious self-inserts when the story is flowing so smoothly.

  “Ah, yes, I can understand how that would be a problem.” Lilian nodded her head in agreement. Iris frowned.

  “So, I’m guessing you’re somehow responsible for this…” she gestured to Kevin and Christine.

  They looked like they were wrestling, with Christine’s thighs wrapped around Kevin’s head while the young teen struggled to pry himself out from underneath those thighs and the, by now, twisted lolita skirt.

  Ah. Yes, that would be my doing.

  “Fanservice much?”

  W-well, I sort of wanted to try my hand at this, you know, to see if I could do
it.

  “Uh huh…” Iris stared at the scene some more. “Well, it certainly looks like something you’d see in those ecchi fanservice anime. Still, why Christine?”

  Why not?

  “Touché,” Lilian said.

  Lindsay looked at her two friends oddly. “Who are you two talking to?”

  “No one,” Lilian and Iris said at the same time.

  Kevin finally managed to get out from underneath Christine’s skirt, a task which had been far harder than it should have been and for all of the wrong reasons. He sat on the ground, his hands pressed against the cement behind his back, gasping for air, his face fire truck red from a combination of oxygen deprivation and having his head squeezed like a lemon between a pair of surprisingly strong thighs. Christine wasn’t in much better shape.

  “I… I’m really sorry… about that…” Kevin said between pants. Who knew struggling to escape from a woman’s skirt could be so tiring?

  “It-it’s fine,” Christine mumbled, her face glowing like frozen lava.

  “W-wait.” Kevin started in surprise. “You’re not mad at me?”

  “W-well, i-it’s not like this was… was your fault or anything,” Christine stuttered a bit. “I mean, we were—that is Lilian, Iris, and I were sort of, well, you know…” As words tumbled from her mouth, the lolita-dressed girl became more and more embarrassed, until she eventually tried to sink her head into her dress. It was absolutely adorable.

  “So cute!”

  It was so adorable, in fact, that several of the teens present, who just so happened to have a loli fetish, were blasted backwards when blood burst from their noses like Blastoise using Hydro Pump. They sailed through the air and crashed into the ground, their nasal saenguination spraying carmine fluids everywhere.

  Strangely enough, Lilian, Lindsay, Iris, Christine, and Kevin, who were in the center of the massive jet streams of red fluid, did not get covered in blood. Several other people did, however, and they complained quite loudly.

  “Ugh, this is seriously disgusting!”

  “Did you people really just get a nosebleed over a little girl? Have you no shame?!”

  “I can’t believe this!”

  “It’s going to take forever to get these stains out…”

  “S-so, you’re not mad at me?” Kevin asked again, ignoring the complaints of everyone around him. Christine shook her head.

  “I can’t be mad at you.” Christine began drawing circles in the ground with her left index finger. “It wouldn’t be right if I got mad for something that wasn’t your fault.”

  “A-ah, so I see.” Kevin smiled. “Thank you.”

  Christine squeaked at the sight of his sunny grin, but she managed to also return it with a smile of her own, albeit, it wasn’t quite as bright. “Y-you’re welcome.”

  “Is it weird that I feel insanely jealous right now?” Lindsay asked in a calm voice.

  “I suppose that would depend,” Lilian said. “Who are you jealous of?”

  “Both of them.”

  Iris and Lilian stared at Lindsay very, very oddly.

  “Dyke,” Iris muttered.

  “Did you say something?”

  “Not a thing.”

  ***

  “Your love life is really screwed up, Stud,” Iris said as she, Lilian, Lindsay, and Kevin resumed their walk to class.

  A still blushing Christine had stuttered something about not wanting to be late and departed soon after the whole “face in panties” incident. The girl had been trailing frost and mist in her wake when she left.

  “Please don’t remind me,” Kevin groaned.

  “Seriously, you’d think stuff like this wouldn’t happen after hooking up with my sister, right? Like your life would be filled with rainbows and bunnies and lovey-dovey crap, right? And yet here you are, having all kinds of ecchi encounters with other women.” Iris shook her head in mock sadness. “I almost feel bad for you.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Kevin grumbled. “At least half of those encounters are your fault. And I don’t want to hear you calling them ecchi. This isn’t a harem comedy, you know.”

  “Considering the author’s thoughts on your love life, it might as well be.” Iris grinned at him. “But hey! Think of it this way. You’ve been hitting so many flags from all the girls around you recently that a harem route might open up for you!”

  “Yeah, well, the author needs to burn in hell,” Kevin snapped. Then his right eye twitched. “And don’t mention harems! Don’t mention flags either! My love life isn’t an eroge!”

  “How about a galge?”

  “It’s not one of those either!”

  “I agree with you, Beloved,” Lilian concurred, holding Kevin’s arm to her chest. She was, thankfully, the only one doing so this time. “The author should just hurry up and die. Maybe then we’ll have someone else write for us and we’ll get some halfway decent scenes.”

  O-oi! That’s not a very nice thing to say.

  “It’s your fault for writing crap.”

  Mugyu…

  “You shouldn’t use other people’s catchphrases,” Iris commented idly. “You might get sued for plagiarism or something.”

  “Are you ever going to tell me who you’re talking to?” Lindsay asked.

  “Now where would the fun in that be?” Iris sent Lindsay a sexy little smirk, which caused the tomboyish blonde to flush scarlet and turn her head.

  “Probably not,” Lilian agreed. “Humans aren’t meant to understand this stuff. It would make your brains explode… or something.”

  “Then why do you two keep doing this in front of me?” asked Kevin. “What am I? Chopped liver?”

  “You’re different.” Lilian gave her mate a fond gaze. “You’re my mate, which makes you special. Remember what Kotohime said? Long-term exposure to kitsune has granted you a limited version of The Power. That means you’re immune to the potential dangers that being around us can cause.”

  “Ugh, somehow, it feels really wrong when you say it like that.”

  Lindsay frowned. “But wait. If long-term exposure causes this… power-thingy to manifest, then how come no one but Kevin has it? I’ve been around Lilian for nearly as long as Kevin, and I haven’t gotten this strange power.”

  “What Lily-pad means to say is that long-term, intimate exposure with kitsune has granted the stud a limited ability to break the fourth wall,” Iris explained, smirking at Lindsay. “She’s not talking about standard meetings and greetings, but sexual encounters.” The smirk widened when Lindsay’s face burst into flames. “So, basically, unless you were to become intimate with one of us, or both of us, you wouldn’t be able to get the powers that the stud has.”

  Another pause ensued. Iris’s half-narrowed, succubus eyes danced with mirth as she gazed into Lindsay’s wide brown ones.

  “Maybe you’d like to join Lily-pad and I in our sexcapades?”

  “What sexcapades are you referring to?” Kevin squawked, turning to Lilian. “What sexcapades is she talking about?”

  “She’s not talking about anything,” Lilian assured Kevin. “There haven’t been any sexcapades since I fell in love with you.”

  That appeared to reassure Kevin… until he realized something. “What exactly have you and Iris done together before falling in love with me?”

  Lilian went silent, which was unfortunate, because it meant that Iris had free reign to speak. “What haven’t we done? You remember how good I was at pleasing Lily-pad during our trip to California? You didn’t think that was my first time playing with her, did you?”

  Kevin’s cheeks gained several shades of red. Lilian’s cheeks were also red, but she was defiant enough to glare at Iris. Lindsay looked like someone had shoved her face into an oven.

  “Well, if you don’t want to get into some lesbian triple play with Lily-pad and I…” Iris continued as if she’d said nothing out of the ordinary. “Maybe you’d like to join Lily-pad, the stud, and me in a four-way orgy?”

  “There w
ill be no orgies! And don’t ignore Kevin and me! It’s rude!” Lilian shouted.

  Kevin wanted to tease Lilian about the pot calling the kettle black, but his hormonal teenage mind was having trouble coping with the erotic imagery that Iris’s words had invoked—and he wasn’t the only one.

  Within the confines of her mind, in a small section that contained all of her innermost desires, Lindsay was inundated with massive amounts of erotically sexual encounters of increasingly questionable ratings.

  Less than five seconds after Iris’s spoken words, Lilian and Kevin and Iris mutely watched as Lindsay was launched into the air like a cannonball. There were copious amounts of blood spraying from her nose like the jet propulsion system of a rocket.

  “Huh…” Kevin muttered in shock. “I didn’t realize women could get nosebleeds.”

  “Of course we can, Beloved,” Lilian said as if he’d just mentioned something that was really stupid. “Women might hide it better than men, but we’re just as, if not more, perverted than even some of the most perverted males.”

  “Except for that friend of yours,” Iris added unnecessarily. “No one’s more perverted than him.”

  Then again, Eric wasn’t really a human so much as the embodiment of lust and perversion, so perhaps he wasn’t the best person to compare someone else to.

  “I guess that makes sense,” Kevin admitted. “And I do recall you having several nosebleeds before.”

  Lilian’s first nosebleed had been after one of their more stimulating encounters. He remembered Iris mentioning something, which, now that he thought about it, was quite similar to what she’d mentioned just now. Lilian had been sent crashing into the ceiling back then, such had been the power of her nosebleed.

  Lilian blushed. “I had been hoping you would forget about that.”

  “Not on your life. I’m keeping that little memory tucked away for potential blackmail material.”

  “Are you sure you’re not a kitsune?” Iris asked.

  Several feet away, Lindsay finally hit the ground. Her body twitched several times as blood continued to pool out of her nose. Kevin took note of the dopey and somewhat perverse smile on her face.

  “Well,” he started, “I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you women are a bunch of perverts. After all, you and Iris both like walking around naked.”