User:Throat Wolf/Outfoxed Chapter 1

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{{#ifeq: User |User| Outfoxed (Chapter 1) | Outfoxed (Chapter 1)}}[[Title::{{#ifeq: User |User| Outfoxed (Chapter 1) | Outfoxed (Chapter 1)}}| ]]
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Author's Comments

The idea for this series came from its co-writer, KazukiFennec of Eka's Portal. Kazuki is also a great expert on all things Kitsune, and provided a lot of useful information over the course of writing it.

Though there is technically no adult content or vore contained within this opening chapter of the story, I'm keeping the markers on it anyway because it is present in most of the others.

I

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This is a vorarephilia (vore) story, in which people get eaten for erotic purposes. Unlike many vorarephila stories, my flavor of vore is entirely non-lethal; I'm not interested in snuff. However, if vore is not your thing, you probably will not enjoy this regardless.

an got off the bus, and waited for it to pull away before walking up the sidewalk toward the Japanese stroll garden adjoining Bolton Park. He came here fairly often in the spring and summer, when things were green and blooming, and again in September for the yearly tea ceremony that was open to the public. But it looked like this would be his last walk here this year.

The garden really was a marvel. Seen from the air, the walking path would look like nothing so much as a really squiggly strand of spaghetti that someone had dropped at random. But the garden was so carefully landscaped that most of the path was hidden from view to anyone walking it, giving it the illusion of being a much larger area. It was possible to walk through it for an hour without coming back to the starting point.

But Ian’s objective was much closer than an hour. There were a number of small temples and shrines and tea houses in the garden, and Ian had visited most of them at one time or another. But there was one to which he kept returning, as it had special meaning for him—the shrine to Inari.

The entrance was marked, as all shrines to Inari are, with a large crimson Torii gate, flanked by twin stylized statues of foxes. As he passed, he always felt safe, protected. With practiced ease, he stopped at the fountain, and performed the purification ritual.

Gently lifting a ladle in his left hand, he poured water over his right hand, and then switched the ladle to his now-purified right hand and poured water over his left hand, then took some water in his cupped right hand, and rinsed his mouth out with his left hand, finishing by tipping the ladle up to allow water to run over the handle, purifying it before returning it to the fountain.

That done, he proceeded to the shrine itself, withdrawing a small bundle from his backpack, unwrapping the Inarizushi (a form of sushi made from fried tofu skins stuffed with rice) he brought as an offering. He stepped up to the shrine itself, placed his offering, and then tossed a coin into the coin box. He rang the bell, bowed his head twice, clapped twice, bowed once more, and then said a prayer for the future. That done, he turned back to the torii, and started heading back.

As he neared the gate, he was startled when a young woman stepped into his path. He hadn’t seen her on the way in—had she just entered? It was actually rather strange; Ian couldn’t remember seeing another visitor to the shrine on any of his previous visits. There didn’t seem to be that many who venerated Inari in this town, or who were even interested in touring the temple.

The woman was an attractive redhead, with a very curvaceous figure. She was wearing blue jeans and a denim jacket with a thick fleece lining against the fall chill. Her long hair was gathered into several braids that were tied together at the end with a ribbon. Her skin was quite pale; Ian was almost reminded of porcelain. Her green eyes seemed to be filled with some secret laughter. She raised an eyebrow, expectantly.

“Hello,” Ian murmured softly, not really sure what to say beyond the greeting.

“I’m surprised,” the woman said. “You don’t see many Westerners at these shrines—let alone ones who bring an offering and know the proper rituals.”

“Oh, you were watching?” Ian said, blushing. “I, well, I have a bit of an interest in the culture.”

“So do I.” The woman smiled. “Might I know your name?”

“Oh, yes. It’s Ian. Ian May,” he said, fighting back a stammer.

“Pleased to meet you, Ian. You can call me…” She considered a moment, then chuckled. “Janice.” She offered him an arm. “Would you care to stroll with me, Ian? I find these gardens…soothing.”

“Pleasure to meet you Janice. I would love to.” He smiled and took her arm, a bit surprised at the fact she would be willing to risk body contact with someone she had just met.

“Good.” Janice led the way back out onto the main path, and away from the entrance. “Not many people here today. It’s coming on fall.”

“Indeed. Not many people come out when the weather starts to get cold,” the young man replied

Janice smiled enigmatically at him. “So…tell me about your…’interest in the culture?’”

“Oh, nothing particularly special, really. It just piqued my interest when I was younger, just seemed right, for lack of a better way to describe it,” he said.

“Animé, manga fan?”

He nodded. “Big fan. I like the way they have more nuanced, romantic storylines than a lot of western stuff. Not enough romance left in the world,” he sighed.

Janice chuckled. “A romantic, hmm?”

“Hopeless romantic.” He chuckled, nodding affirmation.

“Does being a romantic lead to good relationships?” Janice asked mischievously. “Or do you prefer to admire the fairer sex from afar?”

He blushed at that. “Well, I do have a girlfriend, sort of. I mean, I take her out on dates and stuff.” He shrugged. “But I suppose I have no better luck than anyone else out there. Haven’t been seeing her a lot recently, she’s been busy with her work. But then, I’m rambling, now aren’t I?”

Janice patted him on the arm. “Mmm…yes, but you’re doing it so well!”

Ian chuckled. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Janice looked around for a moment, then stopped walking. She let go of Ian’s arm and stepped back. “I think we’re far enough away now. I have a proposal for you.”

“Huh?” he murmured, his right eyebrow climbing his forehead a bit, Spocklike.

“But first, let’s just get this out of the way.” Janice closed her eyes, and her entire body shimmered and changed. Gone were the jeans and the jacket—standing before him was a still very attractive but now very furry woman. She was covered from head to digitigrade feet in red fur, shading to more of a cream color on her chest. Her face was now more fox-like, with a muzzle and fox ears, but the piercing green eyes were still the same. Her hair had come out of its braids, and she shook it down around her waist.

The one thing she did not have that would have marked her as a simple anthropomorphic fox was a fox tail. Instead, she had several of them. It was hard to count the number from in front of her, but there were at least four or five in the bundle. She stretched, then grinned, tongue lolling from her muzzle. “There, that’s better.”

“Oh—oh my,” Ian stammered, stunned. “You—you’re a...”

“Kitsune?” Janice chuckled. “Yes, I get that all the time when I go out like this. Even when I wear sunglasses. Go figure.”

“I, uh…well, wow.” He was speechless. He had been interested in kitsune for quite a long time, but he had never seen one, and he hadn’t expected that he ever would.

Janice shimmered again, changing back to her human guise. Her hair was still loose around her, but she gathered it up in her hands and pulled her hands down it, and it separated out into braids at her touch. “Now that we don’t have to play the ‘why should I believe you’re a kitsune’ game…I have a proposal for you.”

“A proposal?” he squeaked, the question clear in his voice.

“You see…I’m under a geas, or curse. I believe it was meant to teach me humility or some such rubbish.” Janice sighed, and pulled a white ball about the size of a baseball out of a pocket too small for it to have fit in. “Once per year, I have to choose someone and give this to them. It is then theirs, until they give it back to me. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what that means.”

Ian’s eyes widened. “No, no you don’t. A kitsune’s ball—there are all sorts of legends about how whoever has a kitsune’s ball has power over the kitsune.”

“That’s right.” Janice sighed. “Now, I should tell you that whatever you do to me while you hold my ball, I shall return to you at least threefold when I have it back again.” She rolled her eyes. “I got cursed by a Wiccan. Long story.”

She tossed the ball from hand to hand, and looked at it ruefully. “Anyway, I’m specifically forbidden from bribing or otherwise tricking people into ignorantly taking the ball and then giving it back again, like saying, ‘wanna play a game of catch.’ I have to explain the whole deal first, as I’m doing now. Nor can I steal the ball back from you—though I can trick you into giving it back.”

“And…if you give me the ball, you…belong to me?” Ian said. “For as long as I have the ball?”

“Well, I could give you the ball, and you could give it right back, and the condition of the geas would be satisfied and we could both go our separate ways, even-Steven. However, I can’t compel you into doing that.” She shrugged. “Anyway, once the ball is in your hands, it’s out of mine. Catch.” She tossed it underhand at him, and he caught it reflexively. “Congratulations, you are now the proud owner of one slightly-used thousand-year-old kitsune. Be careful not to void the warranty.”

Ian stared down at the ball for a moment. It seemed to be just an ordinary ball, kind of like a baseball without the stitching. Nothing about it suggested that it might be the ownership token to a powerful Japanese spirit.

“So…you wanna give it back to me and we both go on our merry way?” Janice suggested hopefully.

Ian slowly looked back up at her. “Well…thing is, I’d kinda like to get to know you better. And I’m afraid if I give this back, you wouldn’t have any reason to hang around with someone like me.”

Janice tilted her head and considered that. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” She sighed. “So I guess I should get used to calling you ‘master,’ huh?”

“Please don’t go all ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ on me, okay?” Ian said. “Look, how about we go somewhere and talk this over, okay? Do you have an apartment or something?”

Janice shook her head. “Nope. I travel light, and sleep anywhere a fox can find a nest. It’s kinda hard to hang onto material possessions when once a year you belong to someone else.”

“And my apartment is—” He shook his head, recollecting all the posters and prints of kitsunes that adorned the wall. It probably wouldn’t do to show her that first; she might get the wrong idea.

Janice misinterpreted his pause. “—a mess? I can help with that.”

“—not a good place to talk,” Ian finished lamely. “C’mon, let’s go get something to eat.”

Janice shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

Ian looked down at the ball and sighed. “Look, I’d like to be your friend, not your ‘boss’ or your ‘master.’ If I thought for one moment I could trust you to stick around, I’d gladly give this thing back.”

Janice nodded. “But you can’t, so you keep it.”

“Yeah. Look, do you know how long I’ve wanted to meet a kitsune? My whole life, pretty much. You think now that I’ve met one I’m just going to let her walk out of my life again?”

Janice rolled her eyes. “I should’ve guessed, the one person left in this town who venerates Inari would be a kitsune fanboy.”

“I’m the only one?” he asked, surprised—and glad she couldn’t see his apartment.

“Only one I’d seen, and I’d been hanging around here for a week.” She shrugged. “Oh, a few people came by to look at it, but none of them knew the ritual. I was starting to lose hope.”

“How did you choose your past, ah…” Ian groped for a politically correct word and finally gave up. “…masters, then?”

Janice shrugged, hands in the pockets of her jacket. “I was stupid. I tried to find the dumbest person I could find, because I thought they’d be easy to trick into handing the ball back. Kami-sama, what a mistake. They turned out to be just smart enough to realize what they had, and determined to hold onto it—not to mention grope it—with both hands.” Janice shuddered. “The most I can say for them is they turned out to be useful enough after I finally got the ball back.” Her glare warned him not to inquire after them further.

“So this time I thought I’d try something different,” she continued. “Look for someone who might respect me enough to—hopefully—help me out so I could be on my way. Guess the joke’s on me again.”

“Sorry about that,” Ian said, smiling slightly. “But have you ever been owned by someone who liked you before? I mean, as a person?”

“I suppose not,” Janice said.

“Then it’ll be a new experience for you.”

“I guess there is that,” Janice admitted.

They arrived at the bus stop, and a few minutes later one of the buses pulled up. Ian paid bus fare for both of them, and they took a seat together near the back. To Ian’s surprise, Janice cuddled up against him, resting her head on his shoulder.

Then his surprise vanished when she sighed. “Darn. I still can’t snag it from your pocket. I’d hoped the spell might be fading by now.” But she didn’t move away from his shoulder, either. After a moment, Ian put his arm around her. And in this way, they rode uptown together.

They got off the bus at a Panera coffeehouse. Janice raised an eyebrow. “Kohi?”

“They make good soup and bread, too,” Ian said. “It’s about lunchtime.”

Ian ordered a bowl of chicken noodle soup, a roll, and a cafe mocha. Janice chose a turkey club sandwich and a grande espresso. She held the mug in both hands, inhaled the aroma, and sighed happily. “Kohi.”

Ian chuckled. “Coffee drinker, huh?”

“The best thing you gaijin ever brought to Nippon,” Janice said, sipping it. She eyed Ian’s mug. “Mmmm. I suppose anyone who likes kohi can’t be all bad. Though I don’t think it’s necessary to put all that milk and chocolate and whipped cream in it.”

Ian grinned. “You drink it your way…”

They slurped and sipped and chewed for a while in silence, each eying the other surreptitiously over the table. Once lunch had been mostly devoured, Ian assayed a question. “You’re obviously a Japanese spirit…how come you’re over here in America?”

Janice leaned back, considerably mellowed by the food in her belly and the mug of kohi in her hand. “It’s like this. For the last few hundred years, since the magic had faded away, I hibernated in my den—holding on to what little dregs I had left. But then, a few years ago, it came back. We creatures of magic began to wake up, though most of us are still too timid to deal with humans as we did in the old days. They’ve developed this pesky ‘technology’ thing that doesn’t tend to go too well with magic, or so we thought. But some of us still had the old wanderlust—and I was curious where the magic had come from. And it seemed to me I could smell it coming from somewhere over here. Somewhere in this town, in fact. So I came, and here I am.”

“But the curse…?”

Janice scowled. “I was…hasty. I did not learn local customs until it was too late, and in my haste I…caused some problems for people. One of them was a witch, and she cursed me. And so my life has been…complicated ever since. I had hoped that coming here, to the source of the magic, I might be able to have the curse lifted. But I have not been able to find that source—and most of the people here seem unaware magic exists at all.”

Ian nodded. “I wasn’t aware of anything. I’d heard some flap a few years back about magic coming back, but thought it was just more Christian Fundamentalist stuff.”

“Yeah, well.” Janice shrugged. “I sure hope that witch is happy with herself. Someday I’m gonna find her and pay her back threefold. Anyway, where do we go from here?”

“Back to my apartment, I guess, eventually.”

Janice rolled her eyes. “Great.”

“Unless you’d rather find a hotel room…”

She stared at him. “What?!”

Ian grinned. “Just kidding. I won’t ever tell you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

Janice snorted. “Your sense of humor needs work.”

“What can I say? I’ve grown up on animé.”

“Touché.” She shook her head. “That was a crazy awakening. I never thought I’d have culture shock from my own culture. When I went to sleep, samurai were still slicing each other up over random insults to their lords. When people wanted entertainment, they’d go see some Noh or Kabuki, or read books, or listen to poetry. Now…animé. Manga. Rampant consumerism. Moé. What’s up with that?” Janice shook her head, then slurped down the last of her espresso. “Anyway…I guess I’m ready for you to take me home. Not much point in delaying the inevitable.”

“Okay, but I’m going to warn you ahead of time—when you said fanboy, you were right,” he sighed. He stood up, then headed for the door.

Janice raised an eyebrow. “Oho,” she said, following him. “This ought to be pretty good then.”

They took the bus, and before long Ian was fiddling with the door lock to his apartment. “It’s never been the same since those guys tried to jimmy the lock,” he sighed as he finally swung it open, revealing—well, not much. The apartment itself consisted of a foyer off a main living area, a kitchen, restroom, and one bedroom.

Ian waved a hand in the direction of the bedroom door. “You can take the bedroom. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“Chivalrous,” Janice observed.

“Not enough chivalry left in the world.” Ian said, closing the door.

Janice rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t give me that. I am yours, you know. Chivalry doesn’t apply here. You can take advantage of me all you want.”

“Not if I don’t want it ‘returned threefold’ when I give you the ball back,” Ian pointed out.

“Oh. Well, there is that,” Janice muttered.

“I’m a bit sharper than I look,” he pointed out with a chuckle.

Janice wandered through the apartment, looking around—and raising an eyebrow at the kitsune prints, kitsune paintings, kitsune woodcut pictures, kitsune figurines, kitsune statues, and other kitsune kitsch with which Ian decorated his apartment. “Wow, you weren’t kidding when you said you were a fanboy.”

“I tried to warn you.”

Janice picked up one of the statues and turned it over in her hands. “It is a little creepy, you know. Like coming into a stranger’s house and seeing they’ve got all your family portraits up on the wall.” She frowned, then looked a little closer at one of the antique woodblock print reproductions on the wall. “Hey, that one actually is of me. I remember posing for that.”

“Heh, what are the chances of that?” he chuckled, a bit surprised.

“Well, greater than you might think, actually. Only a few of us were quite that exhibitionistic.” Janice grinned.

“You sure you want to claim being an exhibitionist around a fanboy?”

All of Janice’s clothes suddenly vanished, and her hair fall free around her body. She leaned to the left so it all fell to her left side and in front of her, and peeked out from behind the fox-red curtain. “Why? Is there something wrong with being an exhibitionist?”

Ian blushed brightly, and suddenly felt very conflicted. He wanted to look away out of modesty, but then, he didn’t, so he just stood there frozen for a bit.

Janice sauntered over toward him, smiling wickedly. Her pert, upturned breasts peeked out through the curtain of hair, and the view below showed that the red color of her hair was definitely natural. “Well? You’re the one who wanted the exhibition.”

“I—Uh, I was kinda joking.” he stammered, finally able to avert his eyes. He wondered if he was actually going to get a nosebleed like in the animé.

She stood directly in front of him. “Well, here I am.” She pushed the curtain of hair back out of the way. “I’m willing to bet this is more than you’ve seen of your girlfriend.”

“Even so,” he squeaked, exceedingly uncomfortable and not really sure what to do or say to rectify the situation.

She leaned in close to him, and he felt her breath on his face. Her lips brushed his for the merest moment—then she leaned back, and was fully-clothed again. “Well! Not a bad place you have here.” She ran her fingers through her hair, and it was separated into seven braids again. “I think I could come to like it here after all.”

“I sure hope so,” Ian said. “Look, I’m sorry about all this—”

Janice laughed. “What do you have to be sorry about? I’m the one who gave you the ball.” She smiled. “And for what it’s worth, if you had given me the ball back, I would have been gone. Even if I’d promised I’d stay. That’s just how I am. So you made the right choice.”

“What about now?”

She considered. “Better hold onto it a while.” She winked. “Just to be safe.”

“Ooookay. But remember, you’re the one who told me so.” he said, returning the wink.

“But you’re not required to listen to me! I could be trying to trick you. I am, after all, a kitsune.” She spun on her heel, her braids flying, and wandered back to the end of the apartment to inspect another kitsune painting.

“Well, far be it from me to miss out on the whole experience.” He chuckled. “So, um…is there anything you need? Toothpaste, toothbrush, change of clothes?”

Janice tossed her head. “I’m a kitsune. Self-reliant. What could I possibly need?”

Ian considered that for a moment. “Is there anything you want?”

She practically threw herself into his arms. “Why, Ian, I thought you’d never ask! Let’s go shopping! I hope you’ve got credit cards.”

Ian rolled his eyes. “Let me get my jacket.”

Preceded by: none

Outfoxed{{#if:| (First: {{{first}}})}}

Succeeded by: Chapter 2