A Fox's Love (American Kitsune Book 1) (2 page)

Yeah, his mom was frugal like that. This wasn't to say she didn't spend money on other things like those new Android mobile phones that came out a while ago. Those were awesome! Or, on things that were fun, like going on vacation.

At least once a year she and Kevin would take a vacation somewhere nice, usually out of the country. He had been to France, Italy, England, Ireland, Spain, and Germany. And then last year she had blown it out and had taken him to Japan.

Now
that
had been awesome. He used to think the Comicon that he went to annually in Arizona was the height of cool, but the anime conventions in Japan were just incredible. The one he had been to when he and his mom had visited must have had at least a couple hundred thousand people on that day alone! And almost all of them had been dressed up in some kind of costume! He'd seen everything from Sozo Ku from Dragon Warriors X to Natsumo Uzukami from Shinobi Natsumo, and upwards of 100 Ichika Kurohimes from White Out.

He had also seen a good number of Satsuki's, which was not cool because Satsuki was an emo jerk who needed someone to pull her head out of her rear end.

With a shake of his head, Kevin dispelled his rather superfluous thoughts and focused on delivering newspapers. The trip through both neighborhoods took him a little over two hours. By the time he got back to the newspaper distribution building, it was about 4:30 am. He probably could have finished much sooner, but Kevin had decided to make a game of trying to smack the cars with a newspaper. More often than not, he failed. Kevin wasn't a basketball or baseball player. He had no talent in throwing anything unless it was a Frisbee, and even then, not very well.

At least he got a few good laughs when he actually did manage to toss a newspaper against the hood of all those ridiculously priced cars. Too bad it wouldn't even scratch the paint.

After he finished his newspaper route, Kevin re-parked his bike by the front door, went in and headed down the first hall on the left. He didn't have to walk far, not only was the hall short, the room he needed to get to was the first door on the right.

The room was a standard office. It had all the things that were expected of an office. You know, desk, chair, file maintenance cabinet, things like that. This particular office was very spartan, possessing only the bare necessities and nothing else, not even a single picture. There was nothing in this room to indicate it was being used other than the stack of papers that were sitting on the desk.

Well, that, and the very large man sitting behind the desk, like Sumo Wrestler were large. Kevin wouldn't be surprised to learn that this man had been a Sumo Wrestler at one point in his life, or perhaps he was the reincarnation of a Sumo Wrestler.

The man in question was his boss, Davin Monstrang. He was a big, beefy man with a head of short brown hair and small brown eyes and looked like he could eat two entire cows and still be hungry. He had no neck, somewhere around ten chins, and fat that practically rolled out of his ugly, khaki colored shirt.

"I finished my newspaper route," Kevin informed the man.

Davin grunted, still not looking up from whatever paper he was working on. "And I suppose you'll be wanting your pay?"

"Yes."

Another grunt was the answer he received. Davin wasn't one for words. The chair creaked ominously as he rolled it away from his desk and Kevin actually wondered how long the chair had before it broke under the strain of keeping that man seated.

"Here," Davin slapped Kevin's paycheck on the desk. "Try not to spend it in all one place, brat."

Kevin resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the man. Even after all this time, his boss still seemed to think the worst of him. He wasn't like those spoiled rich kids who spent their money so frivolously.

...

Okay, so maybe he was. But at least he spent it on fun activities like going to the arcade and not on drugs like a lot of kids at his school did. That had to count for something, right?

Grabbing his paycheck off the desk, Kevin thanked his boss and hurriedly left. He didn't enjoy being in his boss' presence anymore than necessary.

It was all that fat, you see. Whenever the man moved, it looked alive and made Kevin feel like he was staring at some kind of eldritch horror that might eat him if he stayed too long.

HP Lovecraft had nothing on those fat rolls.

Grabbing his bike, Kevin was just about to leave when a noise caught his attention. It was very muffled and difficult to make out, but it sounded like a whimper from some kind of animal. A cat or a dog maybe.

Kevin had two weaknesses, one well known, one not so much. The first was a weakness towards women (everybody knew about this one). He could never talk to them without feeling supremely embarrassed. All any pretty girl had to do was smile at him or bat her eyelashes, and he would turn into a stuttering mass of reddened flesh within seconds.

His second weakness, one known only to his best friend and crush, was for animals. Kevin had loved animals ever since his mom had first taken him to the zoo when he was five. He had gone into the petting pen and played with all the animals there. They seemed to like him, unlike some of the other kids who had been bitten, and he'd a great time. Ever since then, he had a small obsession with animals.

Back when he was younger, he would occasionally bring stray animals or wild animals home with him. It had caused a lot of problems with the people in charge of their apartment complex because of their no pet policy. His mom had put her foot down and made him promise to stop bringing in every animal he found. Since then, he hadn't brought animals into the apartment.

Naturally, with the noise possibly falling into the second category of his list of weaknesses, Kevin quickly made his way towards the source of the whimper. It sounded like it was coming from around the corner of the building.

He turned the corner and stopped.

His eyes widened.

“
Ohmygoshit'safox!” Kevin squee'd in a manner that was eerily reminiscent of a fangirl who had just bumped into her favorite pop idol.

You know what a fangirl is, right? They're those pre-teen and teenage girls that go “SQUEE!” when they're excited. Squeeing, by the way, is a very shrill noise that pierces the eardrums and can cause them to occasionally burst. In severe cases, it can also induce brain hemorrhaging, in which blood and liquified brain matter ooze out of the ears.

According to Mythbusters, being near someone who is “squeeing” has a ten percent fatality rating.

If you ever decide to become a pop idol be prepared to buy ear plugs.

But you are probably wondering why Kevin was 'squeeing' like one of these fangirls, yes?

Because lying near the dumpster was an honest to god fox.

Less then a second after letting loose with his “inner fangirl,” Kevin slapped a hand over his mouth. Idiot! What was wrong with him? Squeeing like some kind of prepubescent little girl?

Worse still, he had “squee'd” in front of a fox! It was a well established fact that foxes didn't like humans! They shied away from human contact and when frightened, would bite!

If he wanted to have any hope of even getting near it, much less petting it, he would need to be quiet. As in, quieter than Elmer Fudge when he was “hunting wabbits” quiet.

Luckily, the fox didn't seem to have heard him. It hadn't even moved from its spot. Now all he had to do was sneak in close.

He would become one with his surroundings. He would blend in with the shadows. He would be like a
shinobi.

Nin nin.

Making a weird sign that looked like a cross with his fingers for no apparent reason, Kevin began slowly creeping towards the fox. As he did, he began to wonder how it got into the city. There were fox's in Arizona, of course, but they all lived out in the desert and were usually as far away from any human habitat as possible.

Though, with the recent expansion of city limits, the fox's natural habitat was getting smaller. Maybe it was forced to come here because it had nowhere else to go. Kevin scowled at the thought. No one seemed to care for how people were destroying the natural habitat of animals like this fox anymore.

As he neared the creature, he observed its appearance. The fox was very small, nothing more than a tiny kit that could easily fit in the crook of his arms. It had a flattened skull, upright triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and deep red, almost crimson colored fur.

He recognized the species, a red fox, the most common type of fox among its species. Strange, he didn't think red fox's lived near Phoenix. Their habitat was supposed to be the northeastern portion of the state, like up in Flagstaff.

Perhaps the most unusual thing about this fox was its tails. Yes, tails. Lying limply behind the tiny critter were two, bushy red fox tails with white tips.

How unusual. Kevin had never seen a fox with two tails before, and he was pretty sure that fox's normally didn't have more than one tail.

Maybe it was some kind of government experiment? He couldn't see why the government would experiment on a fox to give it two tails, but there was always a conspiracy theory about various world governments doing inhumane experiments on humans. Why couldn't they do one on a fox as well?

Another whimper escaped from the tiny red animal and Kevin realized that it was injured. He had not noticed it before because its fur was so red (and because he was so excited about seeing a fox), but the fox was bleeding from its torso. It was only after taking a more in depth observation of the fox and noting that there was a portion where the thick red fur was slick and shiny like someone had splashed some kind of liquid on it that he was able to notice the injury.

Of course, now that he had noticed it was injured, he also noticed the expanding pool of blood underneath it, as well as the carnelian trail that showed it had dragged itself to this spot before collapsing.

Fearing for its safety, Kevin dropped all sense of subtlety and sneakiness (and his ninja hand sign) and rushed towards the fox.

It must have really been out of it not to notice his approach. Foxes were supposed to possess very keen senses. Even injured, he would have expected it to run away as soon as he started making too much noise.

It was only after he got in close enough to kneel right next to it that Kevin realized the reason it had not noticed him; the small kit was unconscious.

Growing even more concerned, Kevin scooped the small fox into his arms as gently as he could and stood up. A small whimper managed to escape from the tiny animal as its wound was jostled.

"Sorry," Kevin whispered, even though he knew the fox couldn't hear him. He moved as quickly as he could back to his bike and, after a moments thought, decided to divest himself of his shirt and use it as a makeshift pillow for the fox. Sure, it would likely have a blood stain that was going to be impossible to get out later, but that was a small price to pay to keep the small thing from getting injured further by jostling it as he rode back home.

Placing the fox into the basket on top of the waded up shirt, Kevin took off toward his apartment. His thoughts were focused solely on helping the small creature suffering in front of him.

Chapter 2: First Aid Fox

After, and forgive The Author's French, hauling ass back to Le Monte apartment complex, Kevin quickly dashed towards his bedroom. He didn't know how much time the fox had before it bled out, but judging by the way his shirt was now soaked all the through in the carmine liquid, it wasn't long now. He didn't want to take any chances and have the fox die on him because he had been too slow to render aid.

For an animal lover such as himself, death was unacceptable!

Placing the still unconscious fox on his bed, the high school sophomore ran into his mom's bathroom where all the medical supplies were kept. If he remembered right, and he was sure he did, they were in the bottom cabinet under the sink, though they hadn't always been there. They used to be in the mirror cabinet on the left hand side above the sink, but because Kevin kept getting injured when he was younger, during his animal searching excursions or when playing sports, and because his mom hadn't always been around to help him, the supplies had been put somewhere more accessible. Since then, Kevin had just decided to keep them in the lower cabinet because it was convenient.

Crouching down, he opened the cabinet door and peered inside. There, he found the first aid kit sitting between a large bottle of Zzzquill and a box filled with various feminine products. Exactly where he recalled it being last time.

He grabbed the box and tore through the short hallway once more, heading back to his room. Sitting on his bed next to the fox, Kevin opened the first aid kit. Before doing anything else, he took inventory to make sure everything he needed was still there. It would suck to begin working only to realize he was missing an essential item and be forced to search throughout the house for it.

He found the disinfectant, cotton balls, gauze and bandages. Nothing seemed to be out of place.

Good.

Quickly pulling out the supplies, Kevin got to work. If he wanted to help this fox before it bled out he would need to hurry. At the same time he would need to be careful. He couldn't rush through the process and do a half-hazard job of patching up the poor creature. Expedient yet careful, that was how he needed to work if he wanted to have any hope of saving the small kit on his bed.