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Haden Draw was the most feared gang leader of his area of China. He had more than his fair share of children from far more than his fair share of women and girls. The blood of a hundred men soaked his hands, and their wealth lined his pockets. He had no moral code whatsoever. Other, more respectable leaders had spoken out against him only to have their heads blown off, their children murdered, and their women violated publicly while the police he blackmailed watched.

He was an ugly man. His nose had been broken and set poorly more than once in his boyhood, one eye was blind and milky white with a deep scar bisecting the socket around it, and the jagged holes from a poor stitching job framed it like a fleshy aura. He was tall, but stooped over from osteoperosis and was missing three teeth. The rest were a cancerous mix of black and yellow. He was gaunt, filthy, and disease-ridden like maggots on rotted meat, but he was the quickest knife-fighter and best aim for miles around. And he liked to play games.

Haden had a game he played with people that was of his own invention. It went like this: If he targeted you, you had three options: surrender, run, or roll a die. Running was futile. Surrender meant death. The die was fairly appetizing.

A one let you roll again. A six let you go free, never to be bothered again. A two lost you your testicles or your labia. A three lost you three thousand dollars. A four lost you four cups of blood. A five lost you a hand.

He played other games, too. He played boys against their mothers, fathers against their daughters, saints against sinners, and every ethnic combination conceivable. A millionaire once had to pass through his district. Haden kidnapped the man's daughter and told her every filthy secret about her father, everything he did behind her back, and showed her proof of severed fingers and pictures of the rich man holding cleavers over human beings.

After her father payed the ransom, he returned the daughter, who ran her father through with a butcher knife. As he fell, Haden grinned wickedly and brought out the imposter he had hired to take pictures with. The girl turned the knife on herself, and Haden blew a hole in the imposter's throat before ravaging the man's retainers with uzi fire and making off with all he could carry. No, it was not the most sickeningly complex prank ever played, but it got him a reputation, and that was what mattered.

One day, Haden began to notice things missing from his stores. Upon setting up video cameras, he saw what he learned was a kitsune, stealing without any care as to getting caught, as confident as a lion on his mate. Haden vowed to kill him in a method he had been waiting to try that does not warrant description anywhere.

He met Kirin the next day, or rather, Kirin met him. The kitsune chose a secluded, dark alley and approached the man before him slowly, watching him breathe. The man's eyes were slightly wider than usual and he stood in his customary hunching crouch, trying to watch Kirin's movements, knowing he had no gun if anything went wrong. Which couldn't possibly happen.

The kitsune finally stopped. "I'm going to play with you, Haden."

"What do you mean, play with me? I play! I play everyone, and they know how I play them and they love me for it! How are you going to play with me, you piece of shit?"

Kirin put one hand on one sword. "I hope you live," he whispered, and rushed the man. Four seconds later, Haden's scruffy face was lying six feet from his body and one of his arms was stuck in a tree, while the other was crumpled underneath his corpse. Kirin did not look at the scene. He only sighed, and faded from view.

Fran was twenty-three when she moved into her New York apartment. She had received a job offer from NBC to work as a sound editor and a cute husky was on her team, the kind of guy who made her smile on sight. Her parents' tears were still fresh in her memory when she unpacked the last box from the move, sighing contentedly and nostalgically at her wonderful, frighteningly new situation in life.

But she deserved it, and she needed it. Fran wanted to be a news anchor on national television. Maybe she was crazy, but she had a plan forming in her mind. If she got up high enough into the workings, even before that enviable position, she would be able to manipulate the country. People were puling, puking babes these days, sickeningly dependent on the government. Birds claiming racism and jackals claiming illegal citizenship, stealing funds and justice from hard-working citizens! She could change the world.

Who better, actually? She was beautiful and brilliant, suma cum magna out of Oxford, and was only getting this job at first to work towards a master's degree. Long, silky black hair fell down her back, she worked out regularly to maintain a pleasant physique, and her chest was a healthy B-cup. Her face was thin and sharp due to her saluki ancestry and green eyes stared out of long, lovely lashes. She also had a black belt in judo, if any of the male workforce thought they could mess with her.

A month after her job started, a new neighbor moved in beside her. He was a shy, white fox from overseas, and didn't introduce himself. He was quiet, and only ever saw her in the hallways, at which times she tried to chat with him and learn where he had come from, but he never responded, instead just looking at her nervously until she was left just saying goodbye and going on her way. Three days later, he walked into her apartment at about midnight, while she was awake readying a series of clips for the next day's news. This time, though, he was different.

He wore strange, foreign garb, and held swords at his hips. He also seemed taller and stronger than before. "I've been unfair to you," he said quietly, staring with calm intensity at her.

"Wh- who are you? How did you get in here? What do you mean, you've been unfair to me?" She spun in her chair, starting to get up. Then, she looked closer. "Are you... do you live in the apartment next door?"

He nodded solemnly. "For now, yes. And what I mean is, I have not spoken to you, and I should have. You are a beautiful human being."

"Th- thank you." She smoothed back her disheveled hair, but maintained a defensive crouch. "Can I help you with something?"

"I'm going to play with you," he murmured quietly. He shifted his feet about some, drawing circles in the carpet with a toe. "It would help you to stand up."

Fran got to her feet nervously. What was going on? Was this...? Had someone noticed what she was doing, throwing subtely negative connotation on the people in her clips who were leeches to the economy at best, dimming their voices and cutting them off? Had he been hired? What was this about? "What do you mean, 'play with me'? What is this about?"

"I... noticed what you were trying to do. I'm not with the government." His voice was no longer hesitant. It was calm, subdued, and vaguely warm. "I'm private, but I wanted to see... if you were qualified to do this. So I'm going to kill you."

She could tell he was serious by the set of his stance and the gravity in his eyes. "But... but... no! You can't kill me! I have too much to do, I have friends and family and, and, I haven't even started life, and you- you can't kill me!" She was panicking, but her judo instinct was kicking in, and she lowered into a fighting stance.

He looked down at the ground once before placing a hand on one of the swords at his side. "I hope you live." He charged her.

Their first contact ended with his being thrown hard to the ground, but then she tried to run away and was pinned to her door with a sword. This is it, she said to herself, feeling the blood leave her heart and her vision fade. This is the end. Her head fell from her body as she finished the thought. Kirin sighed and shook his head, closing a vial he had opened that was full of an ointment for the dead. Then, he vanished.

Raison d'êttre. I needed one. I mean, damn, I was a teenager. The horror of eternity was sitting in front of me, I was horny as hell and didn't know what to do about it, and I was convinced no one in the world could understand me. And now, I had all these angsty concepts of elitism and superiority suffusing my thoughts. Obviously, I was meant to do something with myself, and the rest of the world. Who else would? Who else could?

So I decided on one, on a raison d'êttre. At one time, I wrote a long, complicated series of mixed metaphors and pointless imagery to describe it, but you don't need to see that. You've seen that before. I mean, a sampling, below:

"I, Sibra, am Mephistopheles, and my pen is the staff with which I write souls into my book. I write you without your name and make you hear me like spider eggs in your ear, clicking pincers to tap, tap "clap on!" a brain lost in black waters, trying to hold you by your earlobes in Styx to immortalize you and trying not to pass on the Achilles' hands and hearing I inherited from God-knows-where, the losses of which would kill me."

Like I said, there's no need for any more of that. Let's be reasonable. So now I had a hyper-sized fox, a weird, insubstantial following of nerds and Rajah, a reputation as a frankly creepy vigilante of whatever justice I felt like meting out, and the emo guy who was dating that goth lynx chick.

So I looked back through my books of mythological lore and decided I would become a Philosopher, "one able to call Thoughts to oneself that he may invoke their terrible power over others." Todd and I practiced this reawakened form of magic in as much secret as was possible, mostly in the gym, at night, given the limits imposed upon us by his huge size in what I decided to call Conscious form.

I taught him any magic for which I knew technique, which meant very little. I could amplify my magic through him, but mine was so nebulous in form that it was often lost in translation like a bad signal through a transformer. For several nights, we worked in total failure. He had gained a strange urge to learn, now that he had this newfound strength. He retained his old personality in part, though, coming to our practice once with a throbbing erection (remember: this means twenty feet of pulsating, gleaming, golden flesh) and instead of being in the least embarassed, asked if it would make me more comfortable if he took my clothes off while he finished "rubbing this one out." Despite my warning about the problems we would probably have with the volume of semen he would produce, he just told me I could do what I did last time and kept at it. So I waited until he was on edge and broke the orgasm by jumping to his head sending him back to his original size. I expected it to infuriate him, but he just laughed and asked if I had done it so I could fit him again. My gaze could have withered evergreens.

Occasionally, I wondered exactly what I was going to do, once I had exhausted everything I could learn about the situation. Could I publish scientific papers on it? Probably not, given that I had no clue how to write one properly. Could I sell him to a research organization, or go on talk shows? No, because that's meaningless media and cash. The best thing to do would be to perfect our magical skills so that I could use him for my... ultimate purpose. Whatever the hell that was. I mean I certainly liked to fantasize that I'd one day have a legion of elite thinkers and fighters and I'd take over the world governments and make the world my own beautiful utopia, but come on. What high school introvert didn't?

Two days into it, I thought of another good reason to keep him around. A "foreign exchange student" began classes that day, but I recognized him immediately. He called himself Frotifi, but I knew that was just a pseudonym. Why, you ask? Or how? At the time, it was ostensibly for some long and overly complicated reason, but it boiled down to, "because Frotifi is a ridiculous name."

You see, having found a Thought, I was immediately on the lookout for other indications of ancient thaumaturgy, and was perhaps a little hasty in how hard I was looking. As a medium, I could sense when people were not acting on the outside how they truly were within... most of the time. It's true; I have made mistakes. However, this guy, I deciphered immediately, and it was because he wanted me to see him. By a lot.

His entrance into my life was to stride down the hall in full kitsune regalia, wearing a kosode with bright, shimmering stars on a white background over his creamy, red-marked fur and sporting a double-sheath belt with leather bound hilts on his right hip, his eyes squinted almost closed in classic kitsune fashion. Expressions are hard to read on that style of vulpine face, but his aura was one of total confidence as he paraded past, three of his bushy, red-orange tipped tails brushing me while they twisted behind him. The splendor of the spectacle would have made Parisians take notice at least long enough to choke on a cigarette.

However, I was the only one witnessing this grand entrance. The people beside me saw a shy, small, delicately-colored foreign boy with squinty eyes, glasses, and a few binders immobilizing his unnoteworthy arms, wearing blue jeans and a tee shirt. And I don't like to admit it, but my recent plethora of sexual experiences made me much more willing to admit to myself that as a withdrawn boy, he was insufferably cute and as a kitsune, he was one sexy beast. But that hadn't affected how I dealt with people who were taunting me before, and it certainly wouldn't now.

My first reaction, of course, was to stare with my jaw threatening to fall open at his magnificence, even after he sent me some sort of magical pulse to let me know only I could see him as he was. It bothered me how little I understood about even that simple communication. As soon as I snapped out of my awestruck trance, I narrowed my eyes and tried to send him a feeling of gratitude, though I imagine it never reached him.

I had no idea how to approach this person. He had entered school at sophomore level to take classes one year ahead, but I, a junior, was taking senior level classes, so we only passed one another in the hall and every time, he would turn on his elegant glory, even if just for a second, like he was mocking me, teasing me. And I wanted to follow his beckoning, will-o'-the-wisp hands into any pitfall he had, for the first two days.

But I had a project due for statistics, and didn't have time to stalk him like I wanted to. Luckily, I learned that I couldn't, because his name only appeared in our school's directory and the last name he had chosen - Kirinkami - didn't offer any responses on Google. The translation to "god of unicorns" was a little... fanciful... but there was nothing I could really get out of it, even in those few old books of lore.

At the same time, Teva and I were both awkwardly avoiding being awkward; that is, we made fervid glances at one another in the halls because we didn't have the gumption or the drive to come up with anything to do. I mean, what was there to do? With Todd eliminated as a threat and Tor cowed, there was no head at which to strike. The only changes to be made if we wanted reform would have to be propagandistic, and social reform was not easy for people our age and station to think about.

The reform was to be in favor of the industrious, yes, but more importantly, against the idle. Tor had become our greatest enemy, and he was nothing. Then again... It would be good to strike him down more decisively, but how? We needed to research his skills, see if he really was worth killing. Because that's what this came down to, in the end. The only way to really make a statement was to start lashing out at figures who represented corruption, greed, and sloth in the world, and we had to start small, and we had to know how to get away with it. Magic made it both difficult and easy. It was a simple matter to avoid leaving DNA evidence, but some people's powers were so cosmically unavoidable that we would need to significantly up our own strengths to combat their investigative skills.

This was not madness. That is the most important thing to remember. We wanted people dead, yeah, but it was not the kind of thing we chatted about to ourselves in crazed countenance and frenzied speech. It was as practical as taking a shower. The cleansing was a necessity.

Maybe what did make us mad, in the end, was the conviction we weren't. But I'm a few decades ahead of myself.

We didn't talk during this time. By the way, this is Sibra speaking; I don't know exactly how Rachel resolved her relationship with Teva, but they set up something very similar to the thing Glen and I had going. I've been referring to her as Teva simply because that is whose body she inhabits and I assume that's whose soul is in it. I hope... it's possible that I almost had sex with a total stranger, but she didn't object to my calling her Teva, but... Anyway. At the time of writing this, I don't know exactly what was happening. Except that I finally broke up with my girlfriend after the night with Teva. I had kind of forgotten about her... oops.

The Kirinkami boy approached me three days after his arrival at school, half an hour before my projected meeting time with Todd. The muscle-bound fox had given me his purloined key, so I was using the gym to practice my poor martial arts and dancing skills as long as no one was in it, while praying there were no security cameras. He made his entrance as the boy.

From one end of the dim lighting, I heard the click of the door and knew an enemy was entering. I felt it in my bones, like bleach in the blood telling me of a heart attack, like the oxygen gas flow that bursts arteries, like fluctuations in the tower letting its occupants know that not long remains and that in a moment, a fight for their lives will ensue that will never occur again as they combat gravity, praying for flight.

He stepped in, his feet making no noise in white tabi. Socks, that is. He was cold like the iceberg that sank the Titanic, warm like the sickening that alerts a mind to its body's need to vomit, smiling with an undecided malevolence and madness. I don't know why I knew he was as evil as he was at that moment, but... I drew out of my martial stance and stood tall to meet his eyes. He was shorter than I, but I felt like we were on level ground.

His voice was soft, like flour on cookie dough. "I'm here to play with you, Sibra." He pulled off his shirt sensually, revealing a chest almost less muscular than my own; smooth and creamy, thin and flat. He tossed the clothing to the side, swaying his hips and moving like a cat on leather.

I wanted him so badly.

He kept talking, so softly, still like a shy child, but he never once stuttered. "You strike me as the kind of person who won't die just because someone like me... a bicentenarian... decides to try to cut you into pieces with swords tempered by scalesmiths."

My eyes narrowed, but not for any ethnic reasons. "Scalesmiths."

"Yes," he answered. "Men whose work was to hone the hide and scales of dragons into armor and weapons. Don't misunderstand me - dragonhide is not the impenetrable stuff it's made out to be. It's more a tougher form of leather. Very light, about as effective as low-grade steel or kevlar. The scales, though, are like glass. Powdered and magnetized by some of the greater mages of the time... including scalesmiths..." He was walking this whole time, very slowly, not even approaching me. He just... walked, not looking at me, appearing to have a normal conversation with someone, his voice a poultice on a deadly wound, soaked spitefully in sea salt. It carried across the room expertly. "So all the points face the same direction. And then that can be softened by fox-fire - my very own, in my case - and hammered into a perfect weapon. Honed by its very nature to molecular sharpness, lightweight, and simple to balance. Also, dragon scales are easy to imbue with magical properties, but don't worry: I wouldn't use those on you. It would be unfair."

Somehow, he had maneuvered his way to the center of the gym and his bare, creamy chest was facing me while his head turned sideways and down as though he were trying to remember something, or... one hand was scratching his wrist. He looked nervous. But that was stupid. It was an act.

"That sounds reasonable," I said. My heart was beating hard in my chest. I had waited for a long time for an opportunity to see if, in a situation that threatened my life, I would have the ability to fend off death with the mere will to survive, because gods knew I didn't have the physical capability for it. Now was the time to test that, and I was afraid. If it didn't work, I would die, and all I wanted to be, all I wanted to prove, all the people I needed to meet and to touch and to write and to change and to teach... everything would be lost.

"Are you afraid of me?" he asked, barely whispering. Everything was silent. It was not even the silence before the storm. It was the silence by the grave; it was the silence over a lover's leap; it was the silence of Beethoven screaming at God the night he died. The silence of remembering a deaf composer.

I nodded. "For more reasons than one." My voice was a full whisper, unable to compete with his quiet question.

He nodded in answer. In the motion, the glory of his true form covered him. His garb returned, the jeans fading. The swords appeared on his hip, his face showed a flame spiral design apparently tattooed through the fur on his forehead. I had missed it before. It burned like the hearth - a soft glow. Seven more tails spread like a peacock behind him before flowing into graceful turns and swishes. Muscles appeared on the chest and arms, rippling without bulging as he grew several inches so that he was just barely taller than I. The socks faded to show feet that looked very young for the age I supposed him to be, and then he slid smoothly into a left-handed crouch. The Latin for "left" is sinister.

"I hope you live," he murmured. Then, he blasted towards me.

I didn't have time to think. I told my mind, as he put his hand on his sword, to give my soul control over my body, because my brain was useless, here. I felt a release like no other, and let out a gasp that pierced the crazed silence as I fell backwards and caught a glimpse of his black, glassy katana as it shaved my chin. I then spun in a back-bent sidestep as he drew the other weapon and stabbed backwards once before twisting and bringing the first blade down in a bisecting slash.

My blade met his. My... blade?

I looked up at the sword in my hands as I held it for dear life, its black, reflective surface showing me hardened eyes that could not possibly have been mine. Kirinkami glanced nonchalantly to his hip. Both sheathes were empty, but he only held one sword. When I spun, I had stolen the sword that had stabbed at me.

His smile was less sickening, now. "Well-played." His clawed foot swept out to trip me, so I shoved upwards and bent into a backspring. His sword played at me in a series of mind-boggling feints, but as I said, my mind had no part in this. It only observed, as my soul worked to preserve its corporeal vessel, tapping into the fabric of everything to feel his movements and escape. I wove my sword like a ribbon-dancer, presenting false blocks to his false attacks and tap-dancing as his feet sought to pull me off balance, our bodies swaying as the sound of crystal filled the air, different pitches calling out depending on where the swords struck. Squeaks perforated the symphony as my shoes left marks like black grooves in the floor.

He spun around once and presented me his elbow before jabbing it at my face, which I ducked underneath so my body could press in to strike at him, but going on the offensive meant more than preservation, so my stance lost rigidity and he tossed me to the floor like so many potatoes with just the weight of shifting his feet.

"Why did you try to attack me?" he asked, still unworried, still just having a conversation. He was serious, of course; more serious that I would have been in his position, especially if I were wearing that kind of smile. I rolled to dodge his crushing stomps and floor-shattering stabs, which came at the tempo of a gale, and eventually rolled with enough power from the rotations to flip myself into a spinning, sweeping dodge that came under a blow and body-checked his chest. This one didn't count, because I had two choices; get pinned against a wall or let him run into me as I sought a better position.

"I shouldn't have," I answered, ready to begin my defensive again. He willingly provided the assault. He initiated a series of head and neck strikes, passing his blade back and forth between hands to enable the use of knife-hand attacks, aiming for my cortices. My sword spun above my head to block them all while my head moved like an evasive machine and my elbows acted as shields for blows that I know should have pulverized my bones. I didn't realize that he was using my own tactic against me and was gaining momentum until he leapt into the air, lashing out with all four limbs in a flash of too-rapid succession while his tails trailed behind him like a comet. My sword blocked his, my hilt blocked his hand, and one elbow caught one foot, but the other took me in the opening beneath my neck and shoulder, pressing my ribcage dangerously close to my heart through my breast. I fell to the ground on my back at an odd angle and looked up in time to see him above me, driving down with his sword.

"You're right. You're doing well, though. I had hoped for this." I blocked with one hand on the flat of my blade, shoving myself backwards along the ground with his weapon as a brace, the dragonscale sending another crystalline note into the stillness. My timing was perfect, and I couldn't take time to think about how good I was; only to be relieved that I wasn't dead yet. I pulled into a reverse somersault onto my feet in time to bend backwards, dodging his decapitating slash and falling onto my hands, my back bent as though I had started a back handspring and forgotten what I was doing halfway through. I fell to the ground to dodge the return slash and blocked up again as he performed a triple-gainer and thrashed down thrice as he flipped over my head and tried to crush my skull on the landing. I barely turned my head aside in time.

"How long will this go on?" I asked him, noting that my muscles were no longer happy with me. They were threatening to go on strike if I didn't get a second wind. I tried to hamstring him as he stomped again, and my punishment for even that was that his foot cracked against my muzzle as it moved. He kept stomping, and I kept dodging, eventually sitting up through the strange caress of his many tails. I had to fall again to my side to evade a spinning blow to my head and lifted myself on a hand like a breakdancer, hopping back to my feet as he twirled around and around, backing me into a corner such that his next attack necessitated a face-to-face, sword-to-sword pause. In the pause, I noticed that my lungs were crying, my muscles were feeling the burn of their own acid and the pressure their inflamed states put on my nerves, and I was wheezing asthmatically in an effort to appease them both.

"As long as it takes me to be satisfied." He lunged forward, so I twirled away, holding my blade vertically in front of me and continuing the many pirouettes I ended up doing, my face whipping around like a ballet dancer's to watch him as he launched a hail of quick strikes, adjusting his step size immediately to my rotations, which should have put anyone of lower standing out of sorts with the awkward speed.

We kept going. My body shrieked at me to cease and desist this stupidity. My soul endured in grim determination, unable to use any more of itself than was necessary to survive. My consciousness watched with growing concern as the soul began letting through minor slits in an (impeccably efficient) attempt to concede to the body's complaints. Blood stained my tee shirt and shorts, and sweat stung my eyes. The soul gave up using sight, relying entirely on reading the threads of movement, sound, and air, which were not reliable, with this creature and his wind-shifting tails. Deeper cuts began appearing in my body, and the upper left portion of my chest was letting me know it was severely damaged from the blow earlier. My muzzle was unhappy, as well, but the soul is not distracted by skin-deep pain.

In desperation, I blasted a terrifying new resolve into my spirit and crashed into an offensive, gyrating like a top on cocaine, my arms and legs not following the customary laws of physics and thereby straining the muscles even more than before, using up what felt like a late-come second wind in the space of fifteen seconds of blood-screaming attack. I turned like a dervish, struck like a hurricane, kicked like an earthquake, and stepped like rose petals in a gale, my claws like lightning to snatch at him while the sword was for any reason not before me, my eyes fire frozen in blackness and my momentum an erupting volcano.

In those fifteen seconds, he could not attack, though he did try. I didn't score a single blow, either, rather driving him backwards, though he shifted himself to be able to turn around corners so I couldn't pin him. He was the one backflipping away now while I shifted form and style in the space of fractioned seconds, regardless of my total ignorance of any swordsmanship. He stepped off a wall and I followed him into the air so we could do battle before landing with a soft patter of pads and soles.

It left me. Without any warning, a foot was planted in my chest and I was watching him fail to shrink with distance as he kept speed with my body which turned to bounce and lift myself up into a flip...

But failed. It got me in the air, but I didn't have the strength to complete the flip. I felt him coming, and ripped my arm around to block the incoming strike, but ripping is exactly what happened. Muscles tore with the motion, and after he booted me in my fall another few feet away, my scream continued into the silence. I was beginning to sacrifice parts of me my soul deemed least important.

He ran forward with a low slash at my exposed back, so my wings popped out to shield it, but they were cut like so much ribbon by the sword, which missed only because my back arched in pain from the wounds. It had been planned. Blood was pouring from me now, rather than just seeping, like before, and I was facing a splatter from some time earlier in the fight. It smelled acrid.

"Call your Thought, Philosopher," Kirinkami said. "He is the only one who will make it to you in time."

"What does he have to do with this?" I growled between clenched teeth. "I'm not going to kill him just because I'm too weak to beat you. I live despite death."

There was a silence from behind me. "Say that again."

"I - live - despite - death. There is too much left for me here for me to miss it just because someone cut me into pieces with 'swords tempered by scalesmiths.' I - must - live." My voice trembled as I spoke, whimpers punctuating my words, my heartbeat causing my entire body to pulse. I screamed again as my wings reminded me that parts of them were no longer attached to me. At least I couldn't see them.

Again, there was a significant pause. The buzz of the lights above, my occasional throat-wrenching cries as I approached the fetal position more and more, and the air conditioning were the only noises. "You are worth it," he said, and I heard him drop to his knees. "You are worth it. Worth two hundred years of..." His voice did not change. It was eerie, but comforting, that he was so in control of himself. "Sibra, you are worth it." His sword spoke into the room as he let it fall to the ground, and I heard him fly across the floor to me.

I abruptly reinhabited myself, starting to shriek as the agony of what had been done to my body coursed through me and then, his hands were on me and he was holding my face and kissing my forehead tenderly like a mother. "I've killed so many for this, and you... You're still alive. You - live. You live despite death. Sibra..." He kissed me on the lips, then, surprising me into opening my eyes. Through the clearing haze of sweat, I saw a single tear trickling from his closed right eye. His kiss seemed to pour through my body, soothing and revitalizing dying muscles, repairing ruptured organs, reassuring my heart that it had at least enough blood left in the body to pump, and knitting fractured bones. My wings lost feeling, and then I clutched at him desperately and moaned in hellish pain as another pair tore through my back and exposed their bloody, disgusting mass to a drying wind. He held me tightly as I thrashed and quivered, and his lips on mine continued to course through me, finally hitting my back and repairing the horrific damage there. Cuts healed, bruises vanished, and despite the blood loss and residual muscle fatigue, I felt like I would remain conscious as his mouth left mine.

Hesitantly, I brushed the saltwater from my eyes with a tremoring hand that at first ignored my command to move. He was still his kitsune self, but he was no longer mad. His expression was no longer insane; rather, he had no expression, though a single other tear had left the other eye. It was so much better than some relieved, self-fulfilled thing. "Sibra," he repeated, and finally I heard his sharp, hesitant intake of breath. It felt like a scrap of true marble in fake, that betrayal of emotion. "Sibra, you're alive." Like petals in winter, that voice. It hadn't changed from the first time I heard it, and yet... it made me want him more even than before, despite this "trial" he had put me through.

"Did... *kff...*" I cleared my thoat. Twice. "Did you enjoy playing with me?"

He nodded, now on both knees and watching me as I tried to sit up, largely unsuccessfully. "I did."

I panted on my back, wincing slightly at my still-tender wings. I didn't have the strength to sit up. "Please," I asked him, "help me sit up?"

"Certainly." He landed gracefully beside me and held my abs with one cool hand and my middle back with the other as I reached to his shoulder with my hand, and he lifted me with confident strength. I felt so drained and was humiliated by my lack of power, but he made no comment, only keeping his hands on me as his tails continued to twirl hypnotically behind him.

"Thank you," I said. He nodded, but I shook my head. "No, not just for this." I took a moment to breathe. "For all of that. I needed... to know that I could do that."

"You must answer me this," he said. "Have you ever trained in that art before?"

"No. I've tried, but... nothing like that."

"Playing around," he laughed softly. "You have never performed anything like what you just did?"

"No, sen- no. Only in my dreams." I had almost said sensei, so affected was I by his aura of power. But I felt like... even given his span of years, it would be inappropriate to call him that. "Why?" I asked. I gently moved his supporting arms away, able to sit on my own. "Why did you do that? Why has it felt as though you oppose me since you showed up, until now?"

"You're a toy," he answered with a kind smile. "I saw what you wanted to do with the world and... I want to oppose you. Not out of disapproval. Many people have believed themselves fit to change the world through murderous cleansing. I myself have killed many in my search for someone who would not die in the first few seconds."

"But... to keep fighting me for so long, then... you were looking for something else. What was it?"

"I was enjoying myself." He turned away, sheepishly, his cheeks blushing. "You are one of two people who have ever even pretended to land a blow on me. The first was a girl. She actually had me on the floor, but she was too afraid and, regrettably... she tried to run. Which showed too much fear, indeed."

"But... to even hit you at all... not to raise myself up, but she must have been... at least somewhat good. At living." I was breathing more deeply now. He still knelt at my side, but it looked like a natural position, rather than something suited to the situation.

Sibra, came Todd's voice. Are we doing anything tonight?

_ No,_ I answered. Something came up. How did you figure out this telepathic thing?

_ Too lazy to call. Bye._

Kirin was nodding. "She was very good at it. But I can't run the risk of someone at all unworthy of living, someone not willing to see everything all the way through, taking control. I need someone who is able to endure in spite of everything, and you have filled at least one qualifier for that."

"I don't want to make you angry," I said pacifically, "but can't people be changed? Couldn't you help them, rather than kill them?"

He turned on me sharply, but didn't change his tone. "Are you prepared to kill, Sibra? You must be, to make change. And it will occur to you that most people have good in them, but you must realize that sometimes the wheat is swept out with the chaff and there must be a separate basin in which to catch them." The fox held up a small vial containing a grey, gelatinous substance. "I hold in here the souls of all those whose lives I have claimed. By touching their bodily fluids, this ointment absorbs a tiny piece of the dying person's spirit. I could drink it at any time to gain the knowledge and power of those souls, because when a person's bodily vessels fail, the spirit claims as much of itself as possible, in this case meaning that it returns to the ointment. To do so, though, would be less justifiable than genocide.

"All of these souls once belonged to the bodies of people who through whatever means they could find were trying to change the world." He looked me in the eyes. "Yours is the only one to not find itself trapped in here, wrapped in oblivion until the day I decide to release them. I will not try to kill you again, but I will aim the world you seek to transform against you, so that when you succeed, the weeds will have already made their way from the flowers just to try to crush you and when they are burned, only good will remain. If it kills you, I will not be troubled and I will move on. Am I understood?"

It is hard to believe that the softness and warmth of his voice did not falter through this explanation, but it did not. He had clearly had all those two hundred years he claimed to become accustomed to losing beautiful, twisted people. As I myself had not. I wondered if he mourned for their losses anymore, or if each one simply blurred together with the others into a sick parade of regret. His life and what he had chosen were complex and heart-wrenching, but he commanded all of my respect for it. It didn't occur to me that he might be manipulating me, lying to me, and just having his way with my sore and frayed mind. I don't think he was. By this point, there's no way for me to know.

I nodded, feeling a resurgence of my sense of purpose. Yes. Raison d'êttre. This was what I needed to do. I still spoke with my teenage need to be formal and fantastical. "Yes. And I will stop you. Because this world needs reform, Kirin, and I will bring it about. Your role... is more necessary than I first imagined. How did you not catch some of the bigger names, though? Hitler? Hussein? Kim Jung Il?"

He looked at me with a slight smile on his face. "As talented as I am, I cannot test everyone. In addition, there are... limits imposed upon me by the interference of others. Also, Hitler did not kill himself."

I took a moment to absorb that. "Oh."

"I am preparing to go. Are you certain you can stand and return to your home?"

"I'll ask my Thought to help me. Thank you, though."

"Todd is indecent right now," he informed me. He had no way of knowing, but I mostly trusted him. "It would not be wise of you to ask him to bring you home. Would you like my assistance?" He was getting nervous again as he stood up. What a strange person! And I still had so many questions for him.

For a while, I considered refusing. But then I nodded again. "I guess I'll accept your offer. Will I have time later to ask you more questions? And may I call you Kirin? Frotifi seems silly, now that I know who you are. It was a code name, wasn't it?"

He blinked and smiled. "No, not at all. Yes, call me Kirin; that is my true name. And we will have time to talk later, especially if... hmm..." He moved his foot back and forth across the floor with his hands behind his back, studying his toes, apparently. Why was he so nervous? "Would you... hm..." It took him a long time to look back down to where I sat, and he spat it out in a rush. "Would you be my friend?" Immediately, his cheeks flushed. In this full, beautiful form with eight tails, royal garb, ravishing fur, and ancient sigil, he was acting like a twelve-year-old boy trying to ask out a tenth-grade girl. Two hundred years of living reduced to the withdrawn state of middle school... I guess that's just how we guys are when it comes to forging relationships with either gender.

Truth be told, I had to hesitate before answering him. I felt like I could trust him, but if I let him too close, would he use it against me? He said he would try to stop me. But... he was so beautiful, and so wonderful, and so far-flung, that I could not refuse him. And also, this was as breathtaking, if not more so, than speaking to Voxis that one time. Than learning about Teva. Than... than meeting Glen...? I was so afraid and so eager that my voice wavered as I answered. "Kirin, that would be amazing." I grinned childishly. "I look for myth and fantasy everywhere. There's no way I would turn down the chance to know you better." It was weird, that each of us looked up to the other so greatly and with so little tainting the adulation. I loved it.

His blush heightened and his ears perked up. "Thank you, Sibra. Thank you so much." He knelt by my side again, but this time took me under my back and knees, cradling me warmly against his chest. My heart leapt into my throat. After a second's contemplation, I let my head fall against his breast. "We will talk longer, later. Be swift in your recovery." And he took me home in his arms, leaving the gory mess of our battle behind.