Once Fukushu and the Voids was gone, it was time to look at these two anthros more properly. They were both teenaged foxes, their fur a rich chocolate brown. Mary Elise supposed this wasn't that much out of the ordinary, though she had never seen actual brown foxes before. But it was also clear they weren't ordinary foxes. For one thing, instead of having pointed ears, their ears were round like a bear's or a lion's. She could also see that their fur had faint stripes mostly along their backs as their fronts were white. And their tails, while fluffy, were more fluffy cat tails.
They were also considerably more solidly-built and muscular than the average kitsune. It was quite obvious from the way they were dressed. The male, Aaron was wearing a leather duster with no shirt underneath. The female, Haley, wore a tube top. They were considerably more dressed from the waist down, wearing camouflage-patterned cargo pants and combat boots designed for digitigrade feet. Mary Elise personally felt it made them look like they've watched a few too many animes and action movies.
Their choice of weapons also lent weight to that. Aaron wielded a pair of handguns that he kept in hip holsters. Mary didn't know much about guns to know what model they were, but she was pretty sure the runes inscribed on them were not standard issue. Haley carried around a large hammer with a head as big as a fire hydrant and a handle that almost as tall as she was. It also seemed to carved from a single piece of bone, though Mary couldn't imagine what kind of creature other than a whale that such a bone could come from. Despite this, Haley carried her hammer very easily.
"So you said your names are Aaron and Haley, right?" asked Mary.
"Yep, and you're Mary Elise," said Aaron, "So this must be Sebastian."
"And you're Uncle Shiro," said Haley to Shiro.
"What?!" yelped Shiro in surprise.
"Well, this timeline's version of our mortal uncle Shiro," said Haley, "Guess that mean she's Aunt Jennifer."
"Haley, what did we talk about saying too much?" asked Aaron.
"Hey, it's not our timeline," said Haley.
"Hold a minute," said Mary Elise, trying to get her growing headache under control, "You're saying your the other Mika's children from the future."
Aaron sighed and said, "Yeah, that's right."
"But if you are able to travel back to now, then that means Mika-"
Shiro clapped his hands over his ears and said loudly, "La, la, la, la, la, I'm not hearing this!"
"Yeah, today's our birthday," said Haley, "Well, it ought to be. At least it enables us to come back here."
"So then who's your father?" asked Jen, having to speak a little louder than Shiro who was still trying to block this all out.
"Who else? Claudia," said Haley.
"But...Claudia's female," said Sebastian.
"Well, not all the time," said Haley, "Sometimes she and Mom-"
"Ok, that's more than enough for me," said Mary, "So you're kistune kids from the future."
"Well, not complete kitsune," said Aaron, "We're zasshu."
Shiro stopped his self-isolation and asked in an affront tone, "Excuse me?"
"What? What's that mean?" asked Jen.
"It means 'halfbreed'," said Shiro, "And it usually isn't meant in a nice way."
"Oh, that's just a blanket term for all hybrid yokai," said Haley, "More specifically, we're kitaro."
"Huh?" asked Sebastian.
"Part fox, part tiger," said Haley, "We're not just kitsune, we're honorary members of the Taro-Oni clan." Seeing their blank faces, she clarified, "Tiger demons."
"Well, the oni aren't exactly demons," said Shiro, "They're a bit closer to ogres or trolls. And I think they're supposed to wear tiger pelts, not be actual tigers."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just a particular subspecies," said Haley indifferently.
"Well, that would explain your hammer," said Mary, looking at the large bone-forged weapon.
"Yep, and that's not the coolest thing," said Haley, "You haven't seen us get big."
"Watch this," said Haley before her faded stripes started glowing red. Then her whole body started getting bigger, her muscles becoming even bigger and more defined. It was also also clear that she was getting older by the way her breasts were swelling and her hips were expanding. Curiously, her fur was becoming lighter as her brown turned to jade green. As she grew bigger, her vulpine features were overwritten with more feline features. By the time Haley's tail split into two, she had grown into a towering amazon of an anthro tigress. Her longer multicolored pigtails might look a little silly, but they went surprisingly well with her jade fur.
"Well, if we're showing off..." said Aaron before his faded stripes started glowing blue. He also grew larger and more muscular, but not nearly as much as his sister. While her fur turned jade green, his turned bright red. His vulpine features also became sharper and more distinct, though his stripes still remained. His tail also split in two as he became a fullblooded fox. Though he was more distinguished from the average kitsune by being much more muscular and having stripes in his fur. Curiously, his previously black hair had turned yellow and spiky.
"So are these your super modes?" asked Mary Elise.
"Sort of," said Haley, with a noticeably deeper voice, "This is what we'll be like when we're older, when we've chosen which side of our parentage we want to follow."
"But we can only hold them for so long before we have to revert to our true ages," said Aaron. At this, both them shrank back down, fox and tiger features blurring again as they reverted back to their teenaged hybrid forms.
"Are all kitago like you?" asked Shiro.
"Mom said that because we were the firstborn of our clan, we're more imbued with chaos than the others," said Aaron, "Not that there are any kitago besides us."
"Plenty of other kitsune though," said Haley, "Fukushu definitely didn't see that coming."
"And I'm guessing you popped up here because of him," said Mary.
"Yeah, we were going to see our moms, but we saw we needed to make a detour along the way," said Haley.
"Speaking of which, we better get going," said Aaron, "I wanna show Mom that her idea worked."
"One last thing," said Shiro, "Should we expecting more of you future kids popping up?"
Aaron smiled at his mortal uncle and said, "That's the beauty of the future: it's still mutable." With that, the two kitago twins vanished.
Sebastian looked at Mary Elise and asked, "You think our future kids will be anything like that?"
"I have no idea," said Mary Elise, "But I think we'd be more normal."
"Normal?" asked Jen dryly, "I think you need to find a new definition for that."