Akira sighed. "So in the end, we kitsune were always destined to bend the knee to mages..." Two flames lifted off from Akira's tail and sailed off.
"There, they're no longer statues."
"STATUES?! They were fox kits!"
"Yes that was the shape of-"
The jaws closed tighter. "They were flesh and blood kitsune! We don't have time for your games!"
"What in Jigoku are you talking about?!"
Zack looked startled as well. "Mia... he's not lying, he DOESN'T know what we're talking about!"
"Wait... they became the forms the statues were of?! That's impossible! The ritual for becoming a kitsune is long and elaborate! Otherwise Yomi could have claimed her prize and be done with it!"
"THEN YOU BETTER FIX IT!"
"... There's no way my magic should have made them true kitsune without the ritual... Hopefully undoing my original spell was still the lynch pin in their transmutation. ... You have won. I have lost. And so has my family."
"OH WILL YOU GET OFF IT ALREADY!? YOU keep attacking US, you keep getting your asses kicked, and then you whine and complain that it's not fair?! That's what school yard bullies do! SO STOP PLAYING THE VICTIM CARD EVERY FIVE SECONDS! I've had NIGHTMARES about you for most of my life!!!"
"You have any idea how many of the Great Families there are? Dragons. Undead. Fae. The various Nekos. So many others... Lilith's clan itself counts as one of the Great Families. If we show weakness, we risk ourselves. Your world isn't the only place. What you call the other side of the Veil is vast with many self contained realms and layers. Much like Lilith's Hell. I wish Yomi had NEVER chosen those brats to be adopted into our family! Then we could have gone on with our lives and you could have gone with yours! Then we wouldn't have to suffer one humiliation after another! Only our two Elders' might protects us now! Why do you think the world isn't overpopulated with Celestial Foxes like them? Why do we adopt so many humans into our family? Because no one wants a kitsune to survive to their 800th year of life! I've lost count of many of my family I've had to say good-bye to the ashes of!
"I wish to the gods themselves that Yomi had never made her grab! You could have continued to play for your survival across different branches of time, and we could have to play for our survival across different veils of existence! The Great Families don't give a damn about your wizards games between lights and darkness, nor your wars across time and time's branches, nor Lilith's fixation upon you, or Circe and her devoted! Anymore than you care about the Neko's racial tension between the miminekos, bakeneko, and Nekomata!! The power struggle between the mummies and vampires within the undead alliance, whatever the Fae are up to this day of the week, the endless civil war between the western and eastern dragons. They all have their own affairs to deal with, same as YOU DO! I swear a third time, if I could, I'd ensue Yomi had never dragged us into your mess! It was a mistake upon mistakes!
Now let me go so I might prepare for seppuku and regain some shred of my shattered honor for having utterly failed my family!"