The Fox Girl
So much smoke…
Aikawa Mutsuki stared dimly at the dim lights above as he laid black and blue on the floor of the penthouse his foster father had given him.
So much blood…
And from where he laid, the half-dead man could smell smoke mingling with the sickeningly sweet stench of freshly-spilled human blood. He could feel it getting hot in there within moments, too, as the horror show to which he and his friends had been treated drew ever closer to a close.
How could this have happened…?
In those moments, all Mutsuki could think about was the blinding speed with which what had started out as a night of revelry with his friends quickly turned into a horror movie come to life. They had gone out on the town, hopping from establishment to establishment – all his treat, of course – to celebrate his imminent ascension as head of the family. His father had recently been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, and indeed had already begun settling his remaining affairs. Some of his friends had expressed misgivings about going out to have a good time given his family situation, but he waved off those concerns. In fact, the old man himself had given Mutsuki free rein to go out with his friends to live a little and take his mind off things, even if only for a little while.
Well, pops, I did get to live a little, he thought as he grimaced weakly up at the lights. Though not for much longer, it looks like.
In Mutsuki’s defense, he thought it was a good idea at the time. He and his friends started the night off by raiding their favourite all-you-can-eat yakiniku place in the heart of the commercial district so they could stuff their faces. Once each of them had had their fill and then some, they then headed to their usual KTV bar in the red light district where they had a few drinks and belted their lungs out. They got to know some of the girls, and on top of that, at least one of those girls had agreed to go with them here to the penthouse so they could get to know each other that much better.
Heh.
In Mutsuki’s defense, he truly thought it was a good idea at the time. Between her fair skin, her innocent brown eyes, her vulpine yet quintessentially feminine face, her long, silky black hair that reached all the way to her waist, and that hourglass of a figure that was only accentuated by her fitted black tank top and knee-length denim shorts, the girl they had invited to join them for the night was a classic beauty if he ever saw one. More importantly, all four of them could see that the seeming innocence and naivete with which she carried herself belied a completely different side of her that all but begged to be set free.
Funny how that turned out.
And in his defense, thought Mutsuki, he was right on at least one count. She definitely gave them more than they bargained for.
Just not exactly in the way we had in mind.
The evening at the penthouse had started off simply enough. She consented to having a few drinks with Mutsuki and friends, while responding with a knowing smile when he made an offhanded comment that they would all have fun no matter how things unfolded from there. The fact that she began acting all weird not long after finishing her first bottle of beer arguably made it better, too. If she was crazy enough to go out with a bunch of guys knowing full well what they had in mind for the evening’s activities, it stood to reason that getting some alcohol into her system would only have made things even more interesting.
It was a trap, he thought painfully. She sure got us good…
The good news was that she hadn’t turned out to be a trap in traditional sense.
The bad news, on the other hand…
“Heh,” Mutsuki managed to mumble painfully as he coughed up a trickle of blood. “She definitely got me good.”
She wasn’t a trap – at least, not in the sense that one would normally use the word given their current context. Indeed, it didn’t take long after she’d downed that beer for her to begin teasing them by pulling down her shorts just enough to not only leave them salivating, but to leave no room for doubt that she was the real deal in all the ways that mattered. And at that point, everyone agreed that Mutsuki deserved to go first. As it was his money that had made that evening possible in the first place, none of them had any objections to the idea of him being the one to do the honours. She beckoned him closer, and when he obliged, she pulled him in slowly so their lips could meet-
Really, really good.
-Only to knee him savagely in the crotch before throwing him like a ragdoll, before he landed through the coffee table in front of the couch, just a few feet away from the queen size bed she’d been about to straddle him on mere moments ago.
…Fuck does it hurt.
As Mutsuki only had a vague awareness of his friend’s screams of mingled rage and fear at the horrifying turn of events as he he pulled himself up so he was leaning against the couch and looking down at the bloody mess just below his waist. The alcohol had mercifully numbed the pain to bearable levels, but a moment’s glance was enough for him to see exactly what she’d done to him with that single knee strike. She really nailed everything down there.
Out of the corner of his eye, Mutsuki saw the girl lay the mother of all smackdowns on the rest of his little posse. He heard the sickening crunches as she landed two successive chops that crushed Junichi’s windpipe and then his spine, just as he heard Jun’s dying scream as she sidestepped his wild punch and then snapped his neck from behind. And it was all he could do to watch, too, as she parried Sakuya’s desperate downward knife strike with her left forearm. From there, she then broke his friend’s arm at the elbow joint and relieved him of his combat knife, before finally running it straight through Sakuya’s throat.
Sorry, guys, Mutsuki thought as he watched in numb horror. This is all my fault.
Before long, he was the only one left, and there was nothing he could do but watch as she slowly advanced on him. Even if Mutsuki hadn’t been all but paralyzed by fear at that point, the sheer extent of the damage she’d inflicted on him had rendered him physically incapable of movement. He choked and gasped as he felt something soft and fluffy wrap around his neck and forcibly hoist him upright so he could make eye contact with her.
“Why…!?”
As Mutsuki choked out the singular word through what may as well have been a fuzzy noose that slowly tightened around his neck, he managed to get one last, long look at his killer. She wasn’t much less attractive now than she was earlier, but she now bore sinister-looking facial markings running down her cheekbones and across her forehead. Her canines had elongated into inch-long fangs, and her innocent brown eyes had been replaced with pigeon-blood irises with narrow, bestial slits for pupils. Most of all, there was a pair of fox ears on the top of her head that weren’t there before, complemented by no less than three, long, fluffy, and golden brown fox tails right where her tailbone was-
Wait, what!?
“I am not your plaything.”
Her voice radiated all the warmth of an arctic wind as Mutsuki felt as the noose – no, her tail – drastically tightened its grip around his neck, crushing it, before finally releasing him and leaving him to crumple onto the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“I am not yours to use.”
And before his world faded to black, he heard her speak just one more time.
“Know your place, you filthy human.”
Those words were the last Aikawa Mutsuki ever heard before she stepped out onto the balcony to take a leap of faith off the edge, leaving him a lifeless corpse staring glassy-eyed out into the clear midnight sky.
She had been violated.
That much was clear, thought the fox girl as she plummeted rapidly toward the ground below, a miniature meteor with her long, silky black hair fluttering behind her. Her recollection of the night’s events was a fuzzy blur, which was hardly surprising given all the alcohol she’d been made to drink at the bar since sundown. But then, it wasn’t as though she needed perfect recall to know what that human and his friends had in store for her. Her senses were keener than those of humans, after all, and there was no way she wouldn’t have sensed their attempt to roofie her coming from a mile away.
Idiots.
It was one of the hazards she implicitly accepted when she turned her back on her kin. She’d been banished for choosing to protect the human child she’d befriended from one of her kind who wanted to have his way with that child, not that she particularly minded at the time. The very next day, she fabricated a new identity for herself, as well as for the child who had come to see him as a surrogate sister – or, perhaps, a surrogate mother.
Minoru…
Having assumed the identity of Miroku Miho, she lived happily for a time with the child she’d all but adopted – at least, until he died in the same fire that burned down their house just three years ago. From then on, the heartbroken Miho drifted across the land, never staying in any one place for too long. It was only recently, after much soul-searching, that she mustered up the courage to return to this city where her beloved Minoru was taken away from her.
I’ll live this life for the two of us.
It was with that thought that Miho finally landed on her feet on the ground below, in a much smoother manner than one would expect considering she’d just jumped out of the penthouse located on the 9th floor. The vehicles she saw all around her told her she was in the outdoor parking lot, just as the presences she felt told her she wasn’t alone.
Where’d you come from!?
Sure enough, Miho sensed something move behind her. She leapt into action in an instant, pouncing on the miscreant with a speed far exceeding that of a normal human, and pre-empting his attempt to blindside her by slashing him across the throat with her claws on her right hand. Judging from the gun the man held, he’d been about to shoot her in the back.
Were you guys here the whole time?
She barely had time to dwell on that thought when she felt a faint ripple in the air around her, giving her a window just wide enough to narrowly evade the gangster who tried to cleave her lengthwise with an overhead slash. The miss left him open to reprisal, and indeed, Miho punished him with a savage right side snap kick to the face that broke his nose and knocked him out cold. She then took up the sword her would-be attacker had dropped, before brandishing it threateningly at the rest of the foes she knew were waiting just beyond her sight.
“I already know you’re all there, so you guys may as well show yourselves,” she defiantly called to the rest of her assailants. “Seriously, why are you all getting in my way?”
Sure enough, no less than seven hoodlums in crisp business suits stepped out from the vehicles and lampposts they had hidden themselves behind. Miho saw that each of them wielded different weapons; the two in front of him wielded brass knuckles and a katana, respectively, while the one behind them had an assault rifle in his hands.
“You’ll pay for what you did to our young master,” spat the one on the left. “Monster!”
Miho recalled an old Corsican proverb she learned at some point in her centuries-long lifespan as she rolled her eyes at the accusation.
‘He who lives an immoral life dies an immoral death.’
While there was no arguing the gruesome fate that boy and his friends had met at her hand, what the depraved youths had intended to do with Miho was even more undeniable. More importantly, she sensed the malice and ill intent radiating from each of them like neon lights in the red light district where they first met her. Even more specifically, she sensed what they intended to do the very next day. And when one considered just how the so-called young master had earned his position in the first place, it was very difficult to argue that he didn’t deserve the hand she, Miho, had dealt him.
“Who do you think you are, bitch!?” demanded the one on the right as he brandished his katana at her. “That was the son of our boss!”
Yeah, that explains it.
Miho had acclimated to the human world long enough to know how things worked. No matter where she went, there were always people who laboured under the delusion that their wealth, power, or status gave them the right to do whatever they wished with whoever they wished. It was one of the commonalities between this world and the one she had been born in. No matter where she went, she ran into those sorts. And no matter where she went, there weren’t many who possessed the courage to stand up to them.
“You’re outnumbered,” warned yet another, who stood behind his two comrades as he aimed an assault rifle straight at her heart. “If you get on your knees, we’ll make it quick.”
That set her off.
Go to hell.
Time seemed to move in slow motion all around Miho at that moment. She started with the two who were nearest to her, slashing their throats open with a quick slash of her pilfered sword, before doing the same to their compatriot behind them who had fired off a quick burst from his assault rifle. Just then, the flow of time returned to normal as suddenly as it slowed down, at which point all three gangsters fell lifelessly to their knees.
From there, the rest of the miscreants didn’t fare much better. Miho rushed one of them down to plant her pilfered sword cleanly through his heart, before she rounded on another to claw at his throat. The next one after that met an equally gruesome end as she sank her teeth into his jugular and tore his neck open.
Before long, only one was left. Miho walked slowly towards the last remaining gangster as he fired panicked shot after panicked shot in her direction, only to miss his mark by a mile each time. By the time she was right in front of him, he was on his knees begging for mercy. Far from eliciting her pity, however, Miho only snarled as she wrapped one of her tails around the man’s neck to hoist him up so they were making eye contact.
“Don’t cross me again,” the fox girl hissed as her tail tightened around the man’s neck before crushing it entirely, at which point she carelessly tossed the man’s body away like a child would a discarded ragdoll.
Finally, having eliminated all hindrances before her, Miho ran off into the night.
That’ll teach them.
She ran and ran through the streets of that sleeping city.
And as she ran, bits and pieces of her past came flashing to the surface.
“We may live among humans, but we are not a part of them.”
She remembered the words her father had told her almost half a millennium ago, back when she was less than a hundred years old.
“You’d pick this human child over your own kind? Have it your way, then!”
She recalled that fateful night when she confronted one of her kin who had attempted to abduct Minoru and take him back to their world, where they doubtlessly had ill intentions for the boy.
“Miho, I’m gonna be okay… right?”
Finally, she saw herself just outside the husk that had once been their house, where she desperately assured Minoru that he wouldn’t die that night, only for her to be made a liar within the next several seconds when the child she loved breathed his last in her arms.
…!
That was more than Miho could take.
The air around her grew exceedingly hot for one moment, then exceedingly cold the next, before Miroku Miho blacked out, slumped forward, and moved no more.
