Jasmine's preternaturally fast angelic brain saw an opening, rejected it as a feint, saw another opening, and considered that as long as Tamthis was seriously draining off power to boost Roberta, prolonging the fight to weaken Tamthis in his confrontation with Kyriel was the way to go. She went on the defensive, knowing that even an enhanced Roberta would tire before an angel.
++++
"Kirk or Picard?" shouted Kyriel. For a second she almost saw the human buried inside Tamthis looking out through the kitsune's eyes, but the moment passed quickly. "I knew it wasn't going to be that easy" she muttered.
+++++++
*She loves Tamthis, but she was made that way. I love Karther. Why?* Alexandra felt a massive pressure in her mind, trying to drive her away from this line of thinking. *Magic made her love Tamthis. What makes me love Karther?* A force tried to drive her attention to the surrounding environoment, as the angels tried to restore Jennifer. *Tamthis is loathsome, so in order to love him, she had to be magically forced. Karther is, was, what? Why does no one else like him or respect him?*
Something exploded inside Alexandra's mind.
*Karther forced me to love him. He raped my mind the way Tamthis raped Kathy's* Alexandra looked down on the foxgirl not with loathing or contempt, but with compassion. "Oh, you poor thing."
++++
Jennifer blinked, and the angels sensed that the magical personality changes had been dispelled. "Where am I?" the Shiva vixen asked, and the angels breathed a collective sigh of relief. "I can't move my arms!" she shouted, in a panic. Lisa swallowed hard. This part was going to be difficult to explain.
+++++
Jasmine sensed Natalie, Lucy and their followers outside the door of the banquet hall. Jasmine knew she couldn't fight off an entire city, and the real hope of overcoming the kitsune lay in the fierce mental struggle between Kyriel and Tamthis. *Time to get it in gear, Nazarene.* she leaped in the air, pulled an angelic version of a pistol in her left hand, fired on Roberta aiming for the muscle clusters that controlled her arms, landed behind what she hoped was the now immobilized kitsune writhing on the floor, and moved to the entrance, hoping to hold it against the newcomers.
+++++
"You make a very reasonable argument for hauling ass away from here." Keiko thought. "However, you're forgetting one thing."
"And what would that be?" came in a mental communication from the tick gorged on her blood.
Keiko threw her head back and laughed. "The kitsune are crazy!"
The room was empty, and the cards that had been in Keiko's hands fluttered to the floor.
++++++++
Keiko observed the panicking foxfolk, the chaos of Tamthis's city under attack. *And to think I almost missed this.*