Erica did a mental double take, "Did he just say 'his city?' "
The body of Tamthis', once again Tommy's after what seemed like eternity fell to the
sandstone floor limp, severely bruising his muzzle in the process, he was going to feel
that when he got back to his body. Tommy's spirit uploaded itself into the threads of
magic that held the city and it's NPC like citizens together, becoming his own spreading
drop of ink following after Tamthis' spreading drop of ink.
Kyriel couldn't help but think it was odd looking at what was Tommy's body now... still a
tall humanoid fennec kitsune, still draped in an oversized version of Karther's cape and
still showing off it's body for all the world to see, physically, not a single thing had
changed.
Erica repeated herself as if no one had heard her, "Did he just call this 'his city?' "
"Yes, it seems he did." Jasmine responded at last in a totally calm voice, Tommy's 'residue'
as his awareness spread through the Karthis looking his Tamthis persona appeared to be
looking the throne room from imploding on them. Jasmine wanted to make a few gestures
however, "If that kitsune hadn't chosen to flee, I wish at least that he had undone this
curse upon my shell before doing so."
"Is something wrong with being in the body of a female and a fox?" Lisa asked in an even
tone.
"I gave no protest to this form purely for the sake of the performance of us being the
kitsune's women during at stealthy entry into the city. Having my shell still being in a
shape altered by a kitsune flusters me."
Erica asked the obvious question, "Why not just undo it yourself?"
Kyriel was the one to speak up, "Because... mixing magics... can always lead to
unpredictable side effects and unforeseen out comes... while Jasmine can remove the leaf
curse on her own, doing so might backfire, in particular magic based so heavily on
organized chaos like kitsune magic... Karther was engulfed in it, likely why he funneled all
of his insanity into the castle walls to keep from losing all direction and lucidity."
"Good text book answer." Jasmine said to the cherub. Truth be told, Jasmine had little faith
in the barely reconstructed Ego of Tommy being able to overwhelm, or subdue the
remains of Karther's programming, but she had told him he had twenty minutes, and that
was precisely what she intended to give him. 'Also, I never imagined that Tabris' offspring
would actually succeed in digging out the remains of the lad's Ego to begin with... let us
see if I am surprised twice in one day...'
"Do I have to keep asking this question? Did he just say 'his city?' His city? The city
magically created out of nothing but sand? The city populated with nothing but people
who were swindled into agreeing to become citizens here? And what did you mean 'shock
of the new city' er.... Jasmine." Erica realized she didn't have a clue what to properly
address Jasmine as! She had been given the fundamentals of her new race, including that
unlike Angels in Christianity, Islamic Angels couldn't disobey or deviate from order even if
they wanted to! With that in mind, Erica realized she should have been very very VERY
grateful that Jasim's orders were to unleash the Dijinn on Karther IF Tabris' group failed...
Jasmine looked at Erica like the incredibly younger Angel had asked a incredibly stupid
question, then got a look of realization, "Oh right, you and your sisters who chose to
become Messengers were sculptured to specialize as soldiers so you wouldn't have sensed
it... the illusion barriers are gone, the Veil has been removed... operation Return has
begun."
All three younger Messengers gasped at this.
"Dad/Mom, you have your wish." Kyriel whispered. "For better or worse, the kingdom of
illusions is no more."
"Wouldn't it have made sense to wait until AFTER we had Tamthis dealt with?" Erica asked
exasperated.
Jasmine shook her head, "Tis not ours to reason why, only to do as commanded. I had no
idea this would happen when it did until it had happened. Perhaps whoever has done so
wished to make sure to get humanity's attention with a large enough incident."
Lisa sighed, "I guess what's done is done and what's done can't be changed so we had
better deal with what's happening now. ... And Erica has a point though... Tommy did call
this 'his city' and he did say he would not let us dismantle it anymore than Tamthis."
"Exactly," Erica groaned, "How are we gonna keep from ending up having to fight kooky
fox king number three?"
"Tommy's not like that!" Kyriel snapped startling everyone as she stamped her foot. "He's
not evil! And he doesn't want to conquer the middle east!"
"Kyriel, Erica didn't say he did." Lisa intervened, "But what are we to do? Nearly everyone in
this city is here because they were kidnapped or lied to. The whole REASON why T' came
to help us was because Karther was filling up his castle with people he was plucking away
from their lives at random. Well, most at least." Lisa thought of Alexandra, what the
kitsune had said suggested that she just might have, just might have been given a choice,
though knowing Karther it wasn't likely an informed one.
Erica rubbed where her eyebrows would be if she still had them, "Not to mention all the
conflicting clans here are only not killing each other because Tamthis -programmed-
them to get along. Like robots."
Kryiel spoke with total confidence and faith, "After Tommy beats Tamthis, he'll let everyone
here go. There aren't many natural born fennec kitsune left, but Tommy knows he wont'
need to create slaves to find volunteers."
Erica leaned in close, "You're saying that as if you believe Tommy's gonna go back to a
nicer version of bastard Karther's plan."
"... When Tommy assimilated Tammia and some of the other subparts, he effectively
inherited Karther's position as prince of all desert foxes.. including the task of getting the
fennec kitsune back on track.. I was a part of his mind for a short bit... he's... I think
seeing this city and the fennec kitsune as his responsibility has become internalized." She
looked at them sternly. "But that DOESN'T mean he's going to turn into another Karther!"
ERica said, "So HOW is your dad's/mom's best friend kicking his worst part's butt gonna
keep Jasmine's hypothetical General Ripper from blowing up this place?"
Lisa spoke, "With all due respect elder Jasmine, I feel that you're jumping to conclusions...
you don't attack something just because it randomly appears in the middle of nowhere...
and if Return has really begun, there are now more than a few cities now that have
suddenly appeared on the maps. They'd only attack if they linked this place to the villages
that had suddenly been de-populated in the last few days.. and right now they're two
related and unknown phenomenon. -After- Tommy destroys or assimilates Tamthis," Lisa
looked kindly at Kyriel, "If he really has internalized the mantle of leader of the fennec
kitsune, he'll have enough time to peacefully contact the leaders of the lands."
Kyriel looked at Jasmine, and fought against the part of her wanting to call the older angel
'mommy.' 'My parents are gone. My mother and my father gives themselves so I could be
born. Jasmine is not my mom.' Not that there was really a set president for such things,
since Angels did not normally biologically reproduce.
Erica still had a malcontent look on her face, "But that still leaves the question, how do we
keep the locals in the city from killing each other once they're no longer fox zombies?"
"We don't." Jasmine said plainly, "If that is their choice, that is their choice. If they chose to
remain here that is there choice. If they choice to kill each other, that is their choice. If they
chose to go home and leave the fighting for another day, that'll be their choice too... we
are here but to remove the threat that the current kitsune prince represents to the
mundane and mythical worlds."
While Erica and Lisa stood shocked, Kryiel spoke up smiling, "Dad/mom would be
surprised and impressed miss Jasmine... you respecting human's ability to make their own
decisions."
"And what about you little cherub?" Jasmine asked calmly.
"I do what my dad/mom would have done... remind them they have a choice not to kill,
which many people in a blood feud forget."
Erica and Lisa looked at the cherub, with a slight look of awe on their faces. 'I knew there
was a reason I could still think of Kyriel as a leader in spite of her being so cute now.' Lisa
thought. The fact that the two of them could even for a moment defer to Kyriel's point of
view rather than that of the senior Angel, reminded that the sisters were no islamic
messengers.
"Come on," Kyriel flew past the three older angels (flying was faster than walking for her
now), let's get Tommy's body out of here in case this place starts to turn inside out before
Tommy had put Tamthis in his place!
++++++++
Alexandra entered the courtyard, the water was still flowing and the plants were still
green but that was it. All the fountains and sculptures wavered as if they were made of
jello during an earthquake. Still, they were away from any tall buildings as much as they
could be without trying to rush through the entire city which Alexandra considered a fool's
gamble.
Catching her breath Alexandra laid down poor Jennifer and Kathy... 'Why I am I helping
them at all?... I guess because we are all victims at this point of my prince's madness.'
She saw sand object split in two right down the middle then seal back up together again...
she saw faces of kitsune come out of the walls of sand just long enough to be noticed
before fading back in. She shuddered. Was this city going to die too? How many times was
her life going to be stolen from here?
When she saw the shadow fall on her, she knew Kathy had apparently woken up.
Alexandra was no warrior, never was, had no desire to be, but she was a hard worker!
Kathy had been made not to do any intense action outside of the bedroom. Kathy knew
how to comment, please, gossip, laugh, joke, and make love, Alexandra knew how to kill
live stock to prepare for dinner. In short, Alexandra was just stronger than her.
"KATHY! There is no point to this! PLEASE! I beg you! Just open your eyes!"
"I'm wide awake traitor!" She hissed.
"No you're not!... Kathy..." Alexandra realized... this woman was exactly the same as her...
both of them had their lives stolen and had been custom built to fit someone else's
fantasy. "Do you really think I'd betray our kind? Our people? Our kingdom?"
"You have! You want to see our king dead!"
".... Lisa, the Angel told me and you... our king is ill, they just want to cure him of his
sickness..." She didn't say how the sickness was Tamthis' personality, but for Alexandra, it
was close enough for the truth. She still hadn't forgiven Tamthis for erasing Karther from
existence... Alexandra had loved him, created or not, they were her emotions, and her
prince had been stolen from her, forever. Now the being who he had been used as raw
material for was trying to kill her.
"LIES!"
"LOOK AROUND YOU! This city is him and he is this city... can you say this city looks well?"
Finally, somehow, Kathy DID take in her surroundings. "This... this is nothing but a trick!"
"It's no stage performance... !! Kathy look out behind you!"
"You insult my-" Alexandra dove down and tackled Kathy just as six scimitars smacks into
the sand stone.
Like a snake in the grass the insanity had looked for a host, a medium, anything to create
another outlet from the insanity that was growing greater and greater within Tamthis as
he spread his mind over this city and suddenly found new awareness within it as well that
were not welcome breaking his center even more.
It had found Jennifer, still unconscious, still lacking arms after having lost four. The
dismembered shiva vixen had the sand plunge into her as the two vixens had fought one
another. In a matter of seconds Jennifer had become seven feet tall, had grown SIX arms,
and now had a scimitar in each, the sloppy programming not being nearly complex
enough to deal with diverse weapons. While Tamthis would never ever consciously harm
Kathy even to save his own life, Jennifer was under the control of Tamthis', formerly
Karther's insanity, the broken weapon mindlessly seeing anything alive and bled red as a
target.
'Kill.. kill...kill..." The Shiva vixen's mouth spoke.
"What?..." Kathy looked completely shattered.
"I told you! Your master is sick! It's spreading to everything!" Alexandra snarled. Alexandra
was being reminded far too much of her own state a short short while ago at the news of
her prince gone, bu Alexandra had the adrenaline rush to keep thinking straight look
along to pull Kathy away from the mad shiva vixen.
Alexandra didn't know where she could run... or where she could lead Kathy if the harem
vixen had a nervous break down.. an Alexandra didn't like the taste of just leaving the
kitsune to her fate.
The mad shiva vixen rose her six swords into a splash pattern around herself and prepared
another series of mad slashes. Five seconds and four blurs later the shiva vixen was
disarmed, on the ground, restrained, and was being unhexed for the second time that
day, this time with safety measures thrown in prevent such a thing again, it being much
simpler this time since the brainwashing was the incredibly sloppy 'zap and go' variety.
Alexandra and Kathy huddled together forgetting their previous fight and stared in awe at
what they saw.
"You... you saved me?... Natalie... Lucy? What are you doing with them?" At this point, the
minor possibility that Alexandra might have been telling the truth had finally dawned on
Kathy's made from scratch mind.
Natalie merely whimpered and rubbed against Kathy, not what she had come to expect
from the alpha female of her king's giant muscle bound killing machines. Lucy, sighed and
closed her solid black eyes. "I've... finally woken up."
"So... are you one of them now?" Kathy asked.
"No," Vicki said putting a hand on Lucy's still sandy shoulders, "She's no angel." Lucy
might have had the appearance of one, but Vicki now knew that meant the same as
wearing a police officer's uniform. Luna and Vicki in a united effort obliterated the cheap
programming inside Jennifer, snapping her back to reality... she groaned and looked at
herself... "Dangit... still not male or wrinkly... looks like I got that return with interest
though huh?"
"If you can joke then you'll be fine." Luna said.
Lucy dismissed the sand bound holding down Jennifer, Vicki this time had been careful to
leave some defenses in place to make sure Lucy didn't snap back into insanity or under
the city (meaning Tamthis' ) control.
"Lot of stuff happen to you?" Luna asked Vicki.
"Yes, you?"
"Same. Natalie okay?"
"I was able to repair her soul, but her mind is gonna take a lot longer to fix, yours?"
"'Hers' is ..." Lucy said not liking to be talked of in third person, "Is... is whatever 'me'
means anymore! Before at least I was still a living being! Now I'm just sand in the shape of
the a anthro vixen! I'm not anything!"
Luna broken into Lucy's lament, "LUCY! I love you! You're my sister! You're a part of our
family! Same as Keiko, Erica, Kyriel, Charlene and all the rest! But we really don't have time
for you to have a break down right now! Let's hurry to the throne room and just maybe we
can catch a glimpse of the finale before everything ends..."
Vicki, "Luna, you should know now, as what we are, you should know, most endings, turn
out to be just new beginning."
Luna, "Nice big sis but not that relevant! Let's move it!"
'What am I feeling?' Kathy thought, 'Within the wall of city I feel my king, who is yet not my
king, and one who is not my king, and yet is my king... am I going mad?' Kathy asked
herself becoming more sane than she had been in her entire existence.
+++++++++
To call kitsune immortal was a misnomer, they were positively hard to kill, due to their
unpredictability, and were made of magically sterner stuff than mundane foxes... But they
could still become spirits and nothing but spirits of worst came to worst. Like if the fennec
kitesune who due to the madness of the city was now running around laughing with
butcher knife much larger than he was slice random things in two. He saw the two
currently unoccupied bodies of the two japanese kitsune, laughed and charged at them
with the giant butcher knife... which was suddenly a giant daisy... the made fennec
kitsune didn't really seem to notice or care as he hit the two kitsune with it, and moves on
repeatedly hitting a wall with the giant flower laughing all the while. On the room a group
of kits sunk waste high into the stone ceiling of the roof they were on, and pulled
themselves now being foxtaurs and leaped from roof to roof singing 'Tonight, tonight.'
Two girls who were on each other's shoulders followed suit when one became the taur
body while the other become the torso. A quick soul hack kept the spirits from being
hopelessly fused by the chaos and enabling them at a later time to be separated into
independent beings again. Julio groaned, why did that power surge have to wake him up?
He was having the most wonderful dream... well, if he had to keep his camouflage from
Jasim being turned into cutlets or a two headed donkey, then that was just what he had to
do. He just hoped that whoever he was sensing inside the city's threads of magic on top of
Tamthis and the two kitsune finished things before the reserves he had gotten from the
power surge ran out... it felt like Tamthis, yet had a different configuration from
Tamthis... this was disorienting... 'Ugh! Have to stay focused! My soul is hacker proof on
top of hacker proof but ...' Julio hacked gravity to deflect a tower that had twisted and
wrapped so badly it had fallen sideways and had threatened to crush the bodies of the two
kitsune. 'I just rather not see Keiko and her brother, sister, whatever killed.'
++++++++++
The current location of Tommy and Tamthis at that very moment was very simply to
describe: Every single inch of the city.
'You made a mistake by following me. Here I am stronger than ever, I shall finally absorb
you here, the last remnant of my former self. And Karther's dream of a middle east
populated only the fennec kitsune shall be a reality and he, as Kathy, shall experience
nothing but happiness and pleasure for eternity as my queen.'
'Are you saying that because you believe that, or because you want to scare me off?'
The location of the spirits of Keiko and Akane was equally easy to describe: they were
everywhere -else!-
'Who are you-!?' Tommy asked.
'Us? We're your sisters, true you weren't part of the harem for very long before T' jumped
to ruin bastard Karther's perfect little fantasy, but you're still part of the family as far we're
concern.'
'This'll make thanks giving very interesting.'
'Akane!'
'It's true.'
'No I meant, the japanese don't have thanks giving.'
'Oh, right.'
'Are you two crazy?'
"" Yes.""
'Look,' Akane said, 'I know you two likely wanted to have a whole big one on one fight of
the souls, spirits and minds against each other decide who'll come out on top... but there's
way too much on the table for this to be considered personal!'
Akane's form became that of a japanese school girl with five fox tails and fox years and
holding a 500 Mega-watt shoulder mounted laser cannon. Rather odd since all of them
were just formless masses of will and awareness within the massive threads of magic that
ran through the city and it's people.
The mental image of the magic web first became a copy of Karther's castle, then it became
a baseball stadium from Tommy's home town... then it became a hot-springs house made
to look painted like an anime.
'AKANE! Cut it out!' Keiko shouted the place then became woods that spread out infinitely
in all directions. 'Basically, we offer our imagination at your disposal for deleting what's
left of bastard Karther's brainwashing and insanity.' The web of magic from their
perspective became shapeless again and they were all once again formless masses of will
and awareness. 'Besides, we figure you need help with the kitsune magic thing.'
'Don't worry, I can handle it, thanks for the help though, I'm sure it'll make things easier.'
'Hold on! Was that Kyriel just now?'
'Just the part of her that's now a part of me, don't worry about.'
'While you three had been blabbing... I've been absorbing more of my city's magic back to
myself...'
'What?' Akane said surprised, 'Dang! The meta-magic plane should be like in games where
speaking is a free action!'
'Don't worry... without the part of Kyriel that became a part of me he can't control or
regulate it anymore nearly as good as he wants to think... he created this web when he was
still whole... now he's just parts... Once again Tamthis.. you have nowhere to run now...
either became a part of me, or vanish into oblivion.'
'Enough... it'll be you who'll becomes a part of me.'
'Ohh! Me Akane love trash talk before final final confrontation taking place in final final
area of really really final dungeon!'
Tamthis had lost Tammy's pleasure seeking and the rage and power of the wolf beasts.
But he still had the devotion to Karther's cause and his own hubris after absorbing Queen
and Lady Tammia.
'Prepare yourself then for game over with your save data erased! I am the king of all
desert Kitsune! And two japanese kitsune and my left over raw material won't erase me...'
'Then why did you retreat?'
'Did I retreat? Or did I lure you here-?!'
'Head games.' Keiko said, 'You're FINALLY getting into the act of what it means to be
kitsune... might be hope for you yet.'
'I CARE NOTHING FOR YOUR PRAISE OR INSULTS! You are the dust on a apple that needs to
be cleaned off before it is devoured!'
'Oooh, nice insult,' Keiko said, 'But I can do better,' She then thought a combination of
twelve words at Tamthis' awareness.
'.... YOU DIE NOW!'
With two less than a week old chronologically five tailed japanese kitsune and Tommy on
one side, and the complication of Karther's brainwashing and insanity on the other... the
final battle for the fate of so many people finally began.