The half-kitsune brother's auras oozed from their bodies, exuding their respective malice for each other clashing like treacherous tsunamis of gold and cyan mana and spilling out into the street. The animosity-fuelled mana seeped into the air, distilling a heavy and suffocating tang of dread in anyone unlucky enough to inhale it. With a veil of purple keither stemming from his Dotoma Mark to shelter himself and the crate-cladded Faithilia from the mana's intoxicating clutches, Temperance lowered his shoulders solemnly, regretting his decision to go outside even more as Faithilia struggled to free herself, flailing her legs like a track runner.
"I'm already missing only having to deal with Nakamai...," Temperance grumbled, pulling at his face. Contemplating how to get himself out of his current predicament, Temperance took a second to notice the knee-high trail of pink dust slivering under the brothers' mana and heading directly for the unsuspecting half-kitsunes.
Almost like something clicked in the duo, the brothers snapped away from each other, cutting their aura clash to an air-slapping stop while putting on forced ear-to-ear smiles, straining every fibre of their beings like their lives depended on it. Although only slowing at first, the pink mist stopped its advance before dispersing away from the brothers, making them sigh with enough force to let their souls briefly leave their bodies.
"Honestly, can't you two go five years without squabbling over nonsense?" a feminine, elder-sounding kitsune asked, her voice airless and fuelled by mental exhaustion. The woman's tone of voice sent waves of dread through the brothers, the lack of force behind her words spelling an all too familiar fate to come for the duo if they made even a single error.
The woman lazed atop the Golden Bear Bakery sign, the pluming mass of her kitsune tails splitting off into ten large tails. The five with pink tips pointed at the brothers with sass-filled sways and the cyan ones pointed at Temperance with a reserved hover.
"If you apologise to everyone here, then I'll refrain from putting you through training your gramps would've deemed standard," the elder kitsune stated calmly. The brothers didn't utter a word, choosing to silently nod, their tails slumping to the ground in shame as they walked off to fulfil their punishment. Temperance rubbed the back of his head, confusion still clouding any form of understanding of what happened but decided to let any interest he might've had go.
"I do hope you'll do well and reframe from making my great-grandkids with disdain for each other like those two," the elder remarked half-amusedly. Temperance frowned at hearing the lax kitsune's remark, shivering instinctually in frustration before swinging his unamused gaze up to the elder kitsune, intending to give her a piece of his mind.
Temperance couldn't get out a single word as the juxtaposition of the sight before him so outside his realm of expectation it left the guy speechless, long after his initial shock had worn off. Atop the bakery's sign was not the diligent old lady Temperance expected to see, given the voice he heard, but a young-looking girl swarmed by her wafting kitsune tails. The girl's tails towered above the bakery, surprising Temperance at the absurdity of finding a kitsune with tails that could dwarf Lola's.
"I take it you must be their gr-".
Temperance was cut off by a loud crash behind him, followed by pained and angered murmurs of Faithilia as she staggered past, still stuck in the crate and dropping gelopines along the way. Temperance watched Faithilia trip over a knocked-down stand-up sign before one of the elder kitsune's tails dived for the crate girl and wrapped around her, stopping her fall before it could begin.
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"You could say I am, but familial relations between kitsunes can get rather confusing when egos and visages get involved," the elder kitsune ego remarked cheekily; her voice now more cutesy and child-sounding, matching her adolescent appearance. Temperance mentally jumped at the elder's shift in vocals and demeanour, which left him minorly unnerved.
"That's better than some people's situations," Faithilia mentioned with a muffle, huffing in exertion as she pulled her head out of the crate of gelopine, "Right, Temper?". A brief silence followed the girl's question as she and Temperance stared at each other.
"What are you implying?" Temperance asked while raising an unamused eyebrow. Not expecting such a response, Faithilia could only stammer, turning bright red and deciding to book it across the street, diving into the adventurers guild branch building to escape the situation. Temperance raised a hand to the back of his head, scratching it and saying, "Is everyone here so weird?".
"Heh... can't say you're wrong but isn't self-insults even weirder, Kiddo?" the elder kitsune ego remarked as she rolled off the sign, flipping to an upright rotation while her tails rapidly retracted into her body to a partial exstent. Landing at the foot of the bakery's entrance, the elder's appearance became more clear to Temperance, and he could easily make out the kitsune's familial resemblance to Lola and her kids.
"Oh where are my manners, my name's Zalina, but Ina will suffice my future grandson-in-law," Zalina remarked smugly, leaving Temperance to frown in annoyance.
(Zalina is a four-foot and two-inch tall humanoid female kitsune with the appearance of a fourteen-year-old; she has neck-low almost white-in-colour pink mane-worth hair with pale cyan and magenta ends, pale magenta eyes, and ten large almost white-in-colour pink kitsune tails [five foot when short/fifty-four when long] with five having pink ends and five having cyan ends)
(Zalina is wearing an oversized long white fur coat, black sports shorts, a large strip of her tail fur covering her chest, and silverwood getas)
"I already know that marriage thing was a joke," Temperance remarked bluntly. Zalina froze before her body shook like a sprite-styled platformer character after being hit, followed by her collapsing on the ground with a thud.
"It was a joke?!" Zalina asked in disbelief, her voice pitiful and small as the revelation hit her like a world-transporting truck. The woman rolled onto her back and stared up at the clouds for solace, small bursts of dust escaping from under her tails. But her sulking was brought to a halt, a sight above cleaving her mind from her prior sulking.
"Guess her check-up is done.".
"Who's?"
"Tem!" Saigo exclaimed from above, her voice kicking up a frenzy in the surrounding citizens as they booked it from the area. He could barely lift his head in time as a barrelling projectile collided with his chest, knocking the wind out of him. Before he knew what hit him, a loud impact exploded in front of the bakery, hurling a pillar of debris into the air as Zalina remained in place.
As the debris rained back to the ground, Saigo ripped her face out from the mini crater of her making, amused confusion evident on her face at the lack of Temperance in her presence. Nana-Ka descended to the ground on her hoverboard, rolling her eyes at the messy state before her.
"So, you're the guy Saigo wouldn't shut up about?" Nana-Ka remarked snarkily while carrying the winded Temperance by the back of his shirt as embers of pink keither flaked off the guy.
"And you must be the Recoil Rumble Arena maker, since you're the seventh I've met," Temperance retorted, hitting Nana-Ka with as much sass as she gave him. Nana-Ka remained stoic in her expression, but the gradual flushing of her face showed her hidden embarrassment at getting back what she gave out.
"I can see why Mother likes you," Nana-Ka grumbled with minor embarrassment before releasing her grasp on Temperance and dropping the guy on Saigo, easily flattening her like dough and into a pancake on impact.