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Chapter 13

Last thing she remembered was crashing outside SIR, but now she was...home.Or a very realistic dream of home. It even had her father sat across her, smiling to him with deep gold eyes.

“Dad…” Kiko couldn’t believe it. He was dead, what was he doing here?

“Hey Kid. You really got the shit end of the stick, huh?” He asked, smiling his coy, confident smile, before leaning forward to pour some tea.

“You’re dead…” She muttered, not able to believe her eyes.

“Yea. Kinda sucks. But no Kitsune close to your heart ever truly dies. I get to be here, with nifty golden eyes that let me Look into your mind and make a perfect helper for your problems. If you want to get technical, I am not actually Drax, but what makes a person, if it is not memory and emotion? I’m as Drax as Drax was, which is why I feel comfortable with the claim that I am him” Drax liked to talk, and Kiko liked his voice. So it was a good partnership between father and daughter. “I’m sorry I forced you to deal with all this so quickly. I thought I would be alive a lot longer than I was. We Kitsunes are born to kill the Beasts from Beyond. It is our calling and our nature. And I wanted to spare you that, I wanted you to have a normal life, not a life that would have you out there, against them.

As a five-tailed Kitsune, I thought I was going to be able to keep you out of the life for a lot longer. But it seems something big caught me by surprise. Little bitch” He finished pouring the tea, and took his own cup, pushing Kiko’s towards her.

“I…missed you. And...you...say you can, look into my mind?” She muttered. Drax stared for a second, as if looking through her mind – the way he said ‘look’ made it sound as if it was something different to using your eyes to see things – and then sighed and leaned back.

“Yea. Fuckin' Blood Moon. Where were the chances of that happening to you, of all people?” He asked rhetorically, shaking his head. "Tell Asha about it when you wake up. They probably have you locked up somewhere because you did go psycho and obliterate four guys in a parking lot. But that will at least give them a reason" he counselled, giving her a warm smile.

This was nice. It was comforting. And, with everything she had heard, Kiko knew that this was exactly what they were designed to do. Hallucinations that acted as a portable, personal therapist. What kind of situation would require this kind of modification, however, she didn’t know.

“So I heard you had a relationship with Queenie” Kiko put in, slumping back on her chair.

“Ha, ran into Queenie huh? Yea, she was a good'un back in the day. Fiery little tike. We had some good days with her" Drax would give a coy and elated smirk.

“Is she my mother?” Kiko asked. Her mother had left when Kiko was very young, and Drax was disgruntled enough to have no pictures about the place. Though, from the reaction of Drax spitting out his tea, she immediately knew she was not.

"Vanaet, No. No. We never got that far. Nor, I think, ever had any intention of that far to begin with. Your mother is a different woman entirely" Drax seemed to have quite a lot of feelings on that particular subject, so just changed to another one.

"Vanaet? Is that an old curse word or something?" Kiko asked, leaning in. If this was going to be a proper conversation with a Dad-Equivalent, might as well make the most of it.

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"No, no. She'd kick my ass for using it like that, if I wasn't already dead. Vanaet is the God of the Kitsunes, often appears as the feminine side of the Trinity. Agnaet is the God of the Lupines and the Inu, and is the male side of the Trinity. Inari sort of covers both of them but isn't really explicit to either. And appears male or female as they will" he'd explain, before glancing into his cup. "Though, theology lesson needs to go on hold, you are waking up now" Drax exclaimed, and before Kiko could argue, she was in a rather empty room.

Her body was sluggish and drowsy, her shoulder...was surprisingly good actually. Though the handcuff locking her to the bed was less good. Not an out of character reaction considering what she did. She was clearly being monitored, as a few minutes after she woke up, someone unlocked the door and came in. T'was the doctor man from before, who nodded to Kiko and wisely stayed out of reach.

"I'm not going to attack you" Kiko told him, leaning back and relaxing.

"I'd rather keep a safe distance anyway. It was quite the brutal video to watch. Though, there is nothing on the tests to imply what would cause that kind of reaction. And Asha has no records of a Kitsune's fur turning red" the man replied. That certainly cause Kiko's attention, and she sat up with a bolt.

"My fur turned red? Holy shit...it didn't happen to be a bloody red, did it?" She asked, apprehensively.

"...It did, yea. Why do you ask?" the Doctor questioned, looking up from his clip board.

"I...this whole, thing started after the first guy started bleeding. My whole body felt flushed and filled with power. And this is going to sound terribly weird, but my dead father told me it's a Blood Moon thing" she explained, being as helpful as she could. Wasn't his fault she was kind of scary.

"Blood Moon? That's...not good" the doctor muttered to himself, turning for the door and leaving Kiko, as if forgetting she was even there. She had been dealing with it before, helped by the Kitsune mentality. But now...that reaction...it made her feel like a monster. And then an invasive voice came to her ears. Different to the one before, this one was seductive, but cruel.

‘They fear you now. Nobody will trust you again. Whatever you do, however you try to redeem yourself, they will always look at you different’ it said. The words were so true. The doctor's reaction. Avoiding her like that, and then running away when he figured out what she was. No wonder Drax wanted to keep her away from this life, he wanted to keep everyone from realizing the monster he had given birth to.

‘But I can help you, my dear. I can make it so that you are never subjected to this pain again’ it promised. 'I will take your sadness, your despair, and treat you right. I will never see you as a Monster. Only as the glorious woman you can be' the voice promised. Silky smooth and irresistable, Kiko gave into the hypnotic beauty of it and let herself be taken. There was soft laughter in her head before she felt teeth sink into her neck, ripping into her. It was an agony she could not stand, but now she was paralyzed, unable to do anything about it.

For a few moments she felt her emotions being drained and replaced with something repulsive. Something she wanted to run from, to fight off. But the paralysis was total, and she could only sit here and let the creature take control of her.

Or so she thought. The voice, so haughty and proud, suddenly turned frantic and frightened as a second appeared. The creature that sunk into her neck screamed inside her head, before the shrieks became wordless and it faded away into nothing.

Freed from the paralysis, Kiko’s hand went to her neck, and felt the wound there, saw the blood from the puncture mark. Whatever had happened wasn’t in her mind, it was real....And that was very bad.

"What the fuck?" she gasped, her head swimming as her emotions snapped back and burned out the repulsive replacement.

‘You are the closest I have been in hundreds of years. People are moving away from us and towards them, and this may be my last chance. And I will not lose you to some abandoned scavenger. There is nothing wrong with asking for and receiving help, little one. Just don’t rely on it to save you from everything’ it replied, ringing in her mind. The voice was so powerful, so confident, so fearless. But then it faded away like fog in the noonday sun, and left Kiko. Exhausted from the ordeal, Kiko tried to fight off the fatigue but failed and passed out again on the bed.