“You really are something else, Lilian,” Kevin complimented.
Lilian beamed at him. “Aren’t I?” she said, her expression one that could only be described as a “praise me more” look.
“Great, she’s healed, the dog’s healed. What are we supposed to now?” Iris asked, rudely interrupting the moment between mates. The void kitsune was lying on her side, languidly stretched out like a cat basking in the sun. She only wore a shirt, so her legs were bare. She also wasn’t wearing any panties.
Kevin looked away. He really didn’t want to get blue balls right now.
“Lilian and I plan on taking care of Polydora until she’s healed,” he answered. “We also need to keep an eye on the inu. When he wakes up, I plan on interrogating him about Phoebe’s possible whereabouts. She’s apparently been captured and is being held prisoner.”
Iris studied him with her keen, crimson eyes. “You’re worried.”
“Of course, I am.” Kevin frowned at her. “Phoebe is my friend. If she’s been kidnapped, then I want to help rescue her.”
“Hm, yeah, I guess that would be how it is,” Iris concurred. “You wouldn’t really be the main protagonist if you didn’t feel that way.”
“Being the main protagonist has nothing to do with it,” Kevin snapped. “Any semi-decent sentient being would feel the same way. Stop looking for an excuse to break the fourth wall!”
“You’re getting better.” Iris nodded approvingly.
“Of course, he is!” Lilian’s chest swelled with pride, which somehow made her already sizable bust seem even bigger. “Beloved is the best!”
“Can you people please be serious here?!” Christine scowled at the group. While Lilian and Kevin were sitting by Polydora’s bed and Iris lounged on the floor, she was standing by the entrance, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. “And can someone please explain what the hell is going on?!”
The words made Kevin remember something: Christine didn’t know what had happened to them after Fan Shénshèng had tried to kill them. She’d left sometime while he, Lilian, and Iris were in Greece.
She really does deserve to know what’s been going on.
“It’s a bit of a long story,” Kevin started. “There’s a lot to tell, so please bear with us, okay?”
Stomping over to them, Christine plopped down next to Kevin. She sat cross-legged, her hands resting on her knees as she leaned over and frowned at him.
“Okay, I’m listening. Start explai… ning…?” the girl trailed off as she continued staring at Kevin, who stared up at her. Her cat ears twitched. Slowly, like a bomb ticking down before it exploded, her face turned red.
“Uh…” Kevin grasped at straws. “Christine?”
“Chu!”
Steam poured from her ears like a cloud of smoke. She turned around, presenting her back to him, and started fiddling with her fingers.
“J-j-just hurry up and explain it already!”
“Right…”
Kevin, with help from Lilian and the occasional side comment from Iris, explained everything that had happened to them, from the time Fan Shénshèng tried to kill them to now. There was a lot of ground to cover, and by the time they’d finally finished, it was nearing nighttime. The sun had begun to set, the sky was growing dark, and Kevin’s stomach rumbled, reminding him that he never had lunch or dinner.
I’m so eating after this.
“This… this is a hellova lot to take in.”
Christine looked like someone had blindsided her with an electric attack. Dumbfounded really didn’t do the girl’s face much justice.
“I nyever… nyever realized nyou three had gone through so much.” She looked down at her hands, which rested in her lap. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help.”
Kevin could already see the signs of someone who was feeling guilty, the shaking shoulders, the way she bit her lip. She’d gone off to see Orin to get stronger, but during that time, disaster had struck and she hadn’t been around when it happened. That had to be eating at her. Christine was a girl who cared for her friends but didn’t know how to show it.
He placed a hand on her head and stroked her hair. The cat ears on top of her head twitched, making him want to play with them. She looked up at him.
“Don’t worry about it.” He secretly enjoyed how soft her hair was “Hindsight is twenty-twenty, right? In a situation like that, you did what you felt was best at the time. You couldn’t have known how things would turn out. Besides, everything turned out all right, and look! We’ve all been reunited. That’s a good thing, right?”
Christine looked at him, then at Lilian and Iris. While his mate beamed at the yuki-onna with her vibrant smile, his… whatever Iris was to him (Mistress? Or was she Lilian’s mistress?), simply tossed her a lazy grin.
She looked back at Kevin. “I-I guess so. Thank you, Kevin.”
“Anytime,” Kevin said with a smile, still rubbing her head.
Poof!
“K-K-Kevin?” Christine’s voice suddenly became flustered.
“Yes?”
“Yo-your, um, ah, uh, your hand. I-it’s…”
“My hand?” It took him a moment, but Kevin soon realized that he was still rubbing Christine’s head. He retracted his hand. “Whoops. My bad. Sorry about that.”
“I-it’s okay,” Christine whispered softly, looking down at her lap. “It’s nyot like I didn’t enjoy it or anything…”
“Did you say something?”
“W-w-w-wha—of course nyot!” Christine squeaked.
“Man.” Iris chuckled. “It looks like Christine’s dere side is coming out in spades today.”
Tsundere protocols: Activated.
“Y-y-y-you shut up! Pervert! Lecherous fox! I-I-I’ll kill you!”
“Aw, aren’t you just the cutest little tsundere ever!”
“T-t-that does it! Die, Boobzilla! Die!”
As Christine began chasing a maniacally cackling Iris around the room, Lilian turned to Kevin.
“Those two, don’t they seem so happy to be together again?”
Kevin watched as Christine tried to light Iris on fire.
“Um, yeah, sure, let’s go with that.” He shook his head and stood up. “Anyway, want to get something to eat? I’m starving.”
Lilian was about to answer when her stomach did it for her. She and Kevin stared at her tummy, which gurgled and growled, as if demanding to be fed. Blushing just a bit, Lilian gave him a sheepish grin.
“I think that’s a great idea. Fighting that spider must have worked up more of an appetite than I thought.”
Lacing their hands together, Kevin and Lilian exited the hut. Behind them, the sounds of chaos, tsundere-style death threats, and Iris’s mad hatter cackling could be heard.
It was just another day in their life.
Kevin and Lilian encountered a problem while they were trying to grab something to eat. No one would give them any food.
“We don’t serve his kind here!”
“Go back to where you came from, damn human!”
“You want food? Ha! I hope you die of starvation!”
Everyone in New Genbu hated humans. There didn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason for it. Most of the hatred seemed almost unnatural, or perhaps forced would have been a better way of describing it.
Fear; the most powerful motivating factor for hatred. People have always despised the things they fear. It made them look weak, made them feel helpless. When someone feared something, they would often lash out at what they feared, as if to prove they didn’t fear it, that they weren’t afraid.
Kevin had never really understood this. There were plenty of things that he was afraid of: Losing Lilian, not being able to help and protect his friends, and not being a good mate, to name a few. However, he’d never let his fear rule him. Then again, perhaps he simply hadn’t met the thing that made him so afraid that he’d grow to hate it. Although, considering what he had seen since Lilian came into his life, he couldn’t
possibly imagine what that thing might have been.
“You gods be damned human!”
Nalen, the onikuma who’d responded so violently to him before, was the best example of this.
“You think you can just barge in here, take our food, and not suffer the consequences?!”
It happened while they’d been trying to find a meal. Nalen had confronted them after they were denied by another food vendor. They had been about to go back to their hut to try and convince Christine into buying them food, but then he appeared before them—and he’d brought a crowd.
“Go back to where you came from, human!”
“Go die in a ditch!”
“All humans are scum!”
Forming a circle around him, Lilian, and Nalen were what must have been at least two dozen yōkai. All of them were jeering and shouting, braying and spewing insults. They were like a mob of angry blue-collared workers protesting in front of the White House, except there was no security to stop them here.
Lilian growled at the people around them. Whiskers were appearing on her face, showing that her transformation was slipping. If she wasn’t careful, she might actually revert to a fox.
Kevin calmly assessed the situation. There didn’t seem to be any way for them to talk their way out of this. Did that mean they would have to fight? He’d rather avoid a violent confrontation, if possible. However…
“Do you have a problem with me?” Kevin asked Nalen, who scowled as if he’d just been insulted.
“Of course, I have a problem with you!” Spittle flew from the onikuma’s mouth as he growled. “I have a problem with all of you humans! Each and every one of you deserves to die!”
It was just like how Kevin had been treated before the founding of Neo Seiryuu, only worse. At least back then, the only people who hated him were teens his age. The younger yōkai had lashed out at him, the only human they could reach, in the vain hope that doing so would grant them some form of revenge. He thought adults like this would have been above such things, but he supposed there would always be those few people who proved him wrong.
“Fine, I can see that you hate me, so why don’t we settle this man to man?” Loosening his body, Kevin relaxed into his preferred fighting stance, arms held loosely at his sides, knees only slightly bent, his posture almost lazy. “You want to take your misguided hatred out on me? Well, now’s your chance, big guy. Come on, show me what the big, bad onikuma can do.”
Lilian moved away from Kevin, having already realized what he was planning to do. Meanwhile, the onikuma all but snarled at him.
“Boy,” Nalen’s deep, grating voice was like two rocks being ground together, and it was becoming deeper by the second. “You’re going to regret those words.”
Black fur sprouted from Nalen’s body as it grew to nearly three times its previous size. Nails extended, sharpening into wicked-looking claws. Snapping could be heard as bones broke and reformed. His face elongated, becoming a large muzzle, the lips of which peeled back to reveal just as large teeth. Thick legs, stubby but powerful arms, Nalen’s bear form was, indeed, a terrifying sight to behold as it towered over Kevin.
“I’m going to make you regret coming here, human!”
As Nalen came at him, Kevin kept his cool. While Nalen’s yōkai form was frightening, he felt no fear confronting it. Nalen wasn’t a warrior. He was a yōkai who’d lived his life peacefully amongst humans, until recently at least. He didn’t have the killer instincts that yōkai of old used to possess; the desire and will to kill. Likewise, his fighting ability was nil.
All he had was strength, and against Kevin, who’d trained himself to fight against creatures far stronger than him, strength meant nothing.
Nalen attacked with a full-on frontal assault. There was no subtlety in his movements, no finesse; just straight up brute force.
Predicting Nalen’s attacks was easy, and Kevin flowed around the assault like water around a boulder. A swipe to his head was dodged by ducking. An attempt at impaling him through the chest was avoided when, with almost nonsensical gentleness, Kevin sidestepped the attack and pushed the offending arm away with his palm. Everything Nalen tried was either outright avoided or redirected.
“Hold still, you damn human!”
Kevin almost sighed, but he was in a battle, so sighing would’ve disrupted the flow.
“Do you know how many times people have said that to me? This is the standard comment two-bit villains are supposed to say, you know.”
Nalen’s response to his words was to unleash a ferocious roar and attack even more furiously. He tried to claw Kevin’s face off, but that failed when Kevin slipped between his legs. Spinning around, he swatted at Kevin with a backhand. However, Kevin had seen it coming and already moved long before the attack actually happened.
It’s just like Kiara always said. Most yōkai no longer know how to fight.
As the farce of a battle continued, Nalen eventually began to tire. His movements grew sluggish, his attacks were less precise, and even his vicious disposition had disappeared in the wake of his exhaustion.
That was when Kevin went on the attack—or rather, when Kevin finally counterattacked.
Kevin’s style was derived from a combination of fighting experience, necessity, and hours of watching anime. By presenting openings that yōkai could instinctively see, he forced them to attack exactly where he wanted them to, allowing Kevin to take control of any battle. It was a style made specifically so that a human could fight against yōkai.
It didn’t work very well on humans, though, since Kevin was, in point of fact, stronger than a good deal of regular people. That was why his battle against Justin was so much harder than this one. Justin was physically weaker than a yōkai. That self-same weakness made the effectiveness of Kevin’s fake opening style practically useless.
On Nalen’s next attack, Kevin used the onikuma’s own weight against him, grabbing him by the arm and liberally tossing the massive yōkai over his shoulder like he was a sack of feathers. Nalen slammed against the ground, hard. A pained gasp escaped his muzzle, as cracks spread out from underneath him. The world seemed to shake for a moment, and then everything became mercifully still, save for Nalen’s pained breathing.
Kevin stared down at the yōkai with an almost feral quality. Nalen’s eyes widened.
“I want you to listen to me, and listen well. You can hate me, revile me, detest me. I don’t care. I’ve put up with worse things than a petty yōkai with a grudge. However, if you’re going to hate me, then do it because of who I am, not what I am. Do it because I’m the guy who just kicked your ass, and not because I’m a human. Your misguided hatred of me right now is pathetic. It’s the very reason why humans and yōkai are at war.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Nalen growled, though it didn’t sound angry. Most of the fight appeared to have left him. “This war was started because of how much you humans fear us. We never did anything to you. All we wanted to do was live in peace, but you humans found out about us, and you attacked us without provocation. My little girl was killed by you humans and your Yōkai Killer machines.”
“While I’m sorry to hear about your daughter, I’m not the one who killed her, and I’m not the one who started this war. In fact, I was in the exact same boat as you. My mate and I were almost killed by the Sons and Daughters of Humanity, who saw us as a threat because of what we represent.”
“Your mate?” Nalen looked from Kevin to Lilian, then back to Kevin. “You don’t mean…?”
“Kevin is my mate,” Lilian declared proudly. “I claimed him!”
“I don’t think you ever did an official claiming,” Kevin pointed out, “but no one is going to contest your claim. Even if they tried, I wouldn’t let them.”
“Oh, that’s right. Tee-hee, my bad!”
As Lilian rapped her knuckles against her head and poked out her tongue, Kevin sighed.
“Right. Anyway, what you’re doing right now is the same thing that humanity
did when they first learned about yōkai. You’re discriminating against every human because a group of terrorists managed to incite humanity’s fear of the unknown against you. No matter what your reasons are, nothing makes what you’re doing right.”
Kevin and Nalen stared at each other for several long seconds. No one spoke; not the people surrounding them, not even Nalen himself. Eventually, the onikuma looked away, unable to maintain eye contact any longer.
“Come on, Lilian,” Kevin said, turning around to walk away. “Since they don’t want me here, I’ll leave.”
“But what about—”
Kevin interrupted her with a smile. “We can always find somewhere else to eat.”
Lilian stared at Kevin as he walked away, the crowd parting for him. As whispers broke out, Lilian turned around to face Nalen again, pulled her right eyelid down, and stuck her tongue out. Nalen blinked as the redhead blew him a raspberry.
“Wait up, Beloved!” Lilian called out as she ran after him.
Kevin stopped moving and waited for Lilian to catch up. When she reached him, he laced his hand with hers, and together, the pair walked off to find someplace where they could get some grub.
They were still hungry.
Standing on a tree branch far above everyone else, Orin stared down at Nalen, who remained on the ground even now, staring blankly at the canopy.
“Now I see why that boy was chosen to come here,” he mused to himself. “Kekeke, Kevin Swift, I finally understand why Kuroneko and the foolish drake are so interested in you.”
“T-that idiot did what?!”
After realizing that no one in New Genbu would serve them, Kevin and Lilian returned to the hut housing Polydora and Cien. There, they’d informed Christine and Iris about what had transpired. Needless to say, Christine had not been happy.
“T-that idiot! That stupid, good for nyothing, lazy jackass!”
Christine was in perfect form as she stood in place, fire crackling around her feet. Her cat-like ears twitched violently—they were practically shuddering, and her face made Kevin think she might go on a murderous rampage later tonight.
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