Poaching A Kitsune

I wasn't sure whether to put this in NonHuman or SciFi/Fantasy, but I decided this was the best spot. It's an alternate history setting. Story involves hunting, capturing, and enslaving a girl. I hope you enjoy it.

***

I was just starting a week long hiking vacation when I saw her. I was up in the mountains, near the border of the British occupied zone. In point of fact, I was probably over the border, but it wasn't like they painted a line down the mountain ridge. I'd taken my motorcycle up some old mining roads then followed a game trail for several more miles once the roads ended before it got too steep and I had to start hiking.

I always wanted to get as far away from human civilization as possible on these trips. This was my first time in this particular stretch of mountains, but I'd done similar things many times before. I grew up in Colorado, and my family always loved the mountains. They were all still back in the States, but video calls were fine for staying in touch.

Anyway, that's how I ended up cresting a ridge in the late afternoon and finding a small mountain valley with a tiny lake at the bottom. I was only about two hundred feet below the tree line, so the pine trees filling the valley were small and skinny and I had a good view of the lake a half mile below me. Good enough to see a naked girl bathing in the lake, miles away from any sort of civilization.

I moved off the ridge so my silhouette wouldn't show against the skyline and knelt down. Bracing my elbow on a convenient rock, I reached into the side pocket of my day-pack and pulled out my scope. Cameras on your phone are all well and good, but I like having something with a decent zoom to get photos of birds when I'm hiking. I put the scope to my eye and let the auto focus find the correct magnification for the lake.

The girl sprang into focus, and I realized instantly she wasn't human. I mean, it was pretty obvious, she had a tail. Two of them in fact, orange fur tipped with white. She was a Kitsune. I'd seen the one they kept in the Tokyo Zoo, but I'd never expected to see one in the wild. The fox spirit in the zoo was kept in a replica of an old Shinto temple, had black hair down to her waist, and wore an elegant kimono. This Kitsune wasn't wearing anything; she had short messy red hair that looked like she cut it herself, and the body of a teenager, all lean muscles and small curves.

She might not have been human, but she certainly had all the right parts. My dick was hard and straining at my pants as I watched her scrub herself clean with handfuls of sand. When she was done washing, she dove into the water and swam back and forth in the lake, never going too far from the shore. I snapped a few dozen photos throughout the process, getting lots of good close-ups and full body shots.

Eventually she tired of the water and climbed out onto the bank, shaking herself dry. She reached back and wrung the water of out her tails, then shifted into her fox form, her body shrinking and growing fur in seconds. It wasn't anything like the werewolves from the documentaries; no bones snapping and muscles tearing, just a shimmer of magic, and then there was a small orange fox with two tails shaking the last of the water from its fur. The little fox bent its muzzle to the grass and picked something up in its teeth, then vanished into the trees.

I sat down against the rock and unzipped my pants. It wasn't the first time I'd ever masturbated on a hike, though it was certainly the freshest material I'd ever had. I stroked myself off, reliving the sight of that tight ass with the two tails springing from the base of her spine, coming faster than I thought I would. Looking down at my sperm puddled into the dirt, I realized I'd already come to a decision. I wanted her, and I was going to have her. Screw hiking, this had just turned into a hunting vacation.

I quickly stood and fixed my pants. I didn't want to go into the valley until I was prepared; the scent of a human bumbling around would frighten her away. I turned around and retraced my steps, cutting strips of bark off the occasional tree to make sure I would be able to find my way back. I wasn't really worried about getting lost, otherwise I would have been marking my trail as I climbed, but I was going to make very sure I could find my way back to the Kitsune's little mountain valley.

I took my motorcycle back down the mining road until I hit the little two-lane highway. Once there, I got off and flipped the switch to take it out of off-road mode. The smart plastic in the tires smoothed and the frame readjusted itself, turning my mountain ride into a nice little crotch-rocket. The protectorate doesn't have helmet laws; call me an idiot, but I don't wear one, just a visor to keep the dirt and wind out of my eyes. You only live once; it's worth the risk to feel the wind on your face. If I valued a safe ride over the adrenaline rush I'd have a car instead of my little Ford-Kawasaki baby.

I pushed my baby down the roads, hugging the steep curves. Before too long I reached the tiny town I'd refueled at on my way up. It wasn't really a town so much as a charging station, a diner, and a tiny motel with only a dozen rooms. I checked into the motel after confirming that they had internet. You can't really get a signal in the mountains, so the hotel's wifi was the only real way to get the information I needed.

Once I was in the room, I pulled my tablet out of my saddlebags and got to work. After World War Two, there'd been a campaign to end the practice of capturing and enslaving Kitsune. Some people felt it was barbaric, the church thought it was heathen, and the environmental types wanted them classified as an endangered species. In the end, money won out; MacArthur himself had accepted the gift of a Kitsune as part of the surrender treaty, and the politicians and generals in charge of running the new American territory had quickly adopted the most hedonistic practices of the old ruling class.

The British ended up abolishing it in their share of what used to be Japan, but in the American portion of the protectorate Kitsune hunting not only continued but actually expanded. Good old-fashioned American materialism overturned the old Japanese tradition of limited hunting. Most of them were born in captivity these days; apparently the last time a wild Kitsune had been caught was 2009. According to my research they didn't breed well in captivity: one site informed me that if Kitsune lived a human lifespan, by now the number of captive Kitsune would have actually fallen lower than it had been in the old Japanese Empire. That seemed kind of pedantic to me; why worry about hypothetical human lifespans when the fox spirits all lived to well over two hundred?

I searched around, looking for information on actually capturing them. I found an autobiography of a Kitsune hunter from the 1930s and bought it, downloading it to my tablet and activating the translation software. I can get by in Japanese, but it's easier to read in English. Thankfully, over seventy years as an occupied territory has made English the default in most places.

While the translation program was working, I looked up regulations. I kept my hunting and fishing licenses up to date like a good Colorado kid, but there was an extra license for hunting supernatural creatures. I bought it, paying the extra $200 for speed processing.

After that I pulled up the autobiography and settled down to read. I browsed through the sections on the man's personal life quickly then settled in to read his hunting stories carefully. By the time I finished, I had a list of what I wanted for my own hunt. It was getting late in the day by that point; the trek into the mountains and out had eaten up most of the day. I crossed the street for a truly shitty meal at the tiny diner then went back to my room. I changed into some loose flannel pants and a t-shirt I used as pajamas and transferred the photos from the scope onto my tablet.

Several of them were slightly out of focus or bad angles, but there were quite a few gems. I found one I particularly liked -- it was a shot from when she'd been unknowingly facing me. She had one arm lifted over her head and was reaching across her body to scrub her armpit. Her thighs were pressed together and her arm covered one breast but not the other. The pose almost made it look like she knew she was being watched and was trying to preserve her modesty but failing.

I imagined standing on the bank, ten feet away from her. She would look up and see me, letting out a cry of shock, a blush covering her delicate features as her hands flew to cover her nudity. I grabbed one of my socks off the floor and used it catch my sperm as I masturbated to the picture.

Once I was done, I flipped through the photos until I found a close-up of her face in three-quarter profile. She had sharp, thin features with a pointed chin, reflecting the fox aspect of her nature. Looking at the photo I realized that her ears came to points at the tips; nothing exaggerated like in the fictional elves from the Lord of the Rings movie, but definitely not a human shape when you really looked at them. I set the tablet against the old analog alarm clock on the bedside table and lay down on my side, watching her face glow on the screen in the dark room as I drifted off to sleep.

I woke up early and packed up, emptying my saddlebags and leaving their contents and my pack in the room. I extended my reservation for the rest of the week; the original plan had been to work my way up and down the mountains, but now I needed a base of operations near my Kitsune's lake. After a breakfast of shitty hotel coffee and cereal, I packed up and took my bike down the highway towards a real town.

I had found a giant hunting and fishing shop online, and I programmed the destination into my visor, the turns appearing in my peripheral vision as they approached. I parked outside and grabbed a shopping cart, filling it with what I needed. It ended up being a tidy sum, and I was especially annoyed that I was re-buying some things that I had at home. I'd planned this trip as day hikes, not expecting to need a sleeping bag or some of the other things I picked up. I still picked out the absolute minimum; the steel traps I was buying would occupy most of the weight I was willing to carry on a mountain hike.

Once my shopping trip was done, I treated myself to a late lunch at a real restaurant then headed back into the mountains. By the time I got to my shitty motel it was too late to start the hike, so I settled for re-packing to make sure I was ready. I endured another meal at the crappy diner, the waitress remembering my order from the night before. Back in the motel, I went to bed early and rubbed one more out looking at the pictures, promising myself that the next time I came, it would be inside her.

The next morning I was up before the sun rose. I took a quick shower and choked down another shitty motel continental breakfast and was on the road with the dawn. I retraced my route up the highway and the old mining roads, but finally had to abandon the bike. I slung the saddlebags over my shoulders and started hiking. It wasn't the best way to do a steep hike, but I was motivated and powered through it.

According to my online research, a Kitsune in the wilds had a similar sleep cycle to a normal fox. She likely slept through the morning and the hottest part of the day in her den, then roamed out in the afternoon and evening to hunt, returning to her den before dawn. My first hike up I'd started later in the day, having driven out from Kyoto, and had been taking it easy enjoying the scenery. Now I was off my bike before 10 AM, and pushing quickly up the slopes.

I reached the ridge overlooking her valley just before noon. I settled down on the rock and swept the valley with my scope; no sign of her, as expected. I opened my saddlebags and took out a tranquilizer pistol which I belted around my waist. I didn't expect to actually stumble onto her, but I was going to be prepared if I did. After that I pulled out a can of spray that was supposed to mask my scent with the smell of rabbit and sprayed myself down. I also liberally sprayed the three steel traps I'd bought.

Ready for the hunt, I slipped down into her valley. I'd pushed hard on the way up, but now I settled into the easy stalk of hunter, not wanting to leave any signs of my presence to startle her.

I reached her lake and circled it. I found four game trails where animals came to water. Abandoning the one on the far shore, I found places to set my traps on the trails closest to where I'd seen her bathing. I set my traps on curves in the trails and covered them with pine needles, giving them another light dose of the spray once they were concealed. Traps set, I refilled my water bottle then retreated over the ridge and found a spot to make camp near a small stream a third of the way back to my bike. I set out my sleeping bag and dumped the saddle bags, much lighter now without the traps.

I ate a couple of energy bars and drank some more water, then went back to the ridge line and settled down with my scope to monitor the valley. There was no sign of her throughout the afternoon. I didn't know if she was hunting in the trees in fox form, or if my traps might have already been sprung, but I wasn't going to risk startling her with my presence in the valley if I could avoid it. After the sun set, I slipped back into my campsite and rolled up in my sleeping bag, remembering my promise to myself that I wouldn't come again until I'd caught her.

The night was damned cold in the mountains, and I shivered in my sleep and woke early. I broke my fast with an energy bar and headed out to check my traps. I hate wearing the same clothes more than one day in a row, but extra clothes would have meant more weight that I couldn't afford when carrying three solid steel traps and the collapsible shovel needed to bury their anchors in the dirt.

The first trap had been sprung, but all it had was a dead rabbit. I hung the rabbit from my belt and reset the trap, moving it further up the game trail away from the smell of blood. The second trap was empty, so I left it alone. The third trap was gone. There was blood all around the area, and a two foot deep hole in the dirt where the anchor had been dug out. I panicked for a moment then realized the trap was missing. No animal would have had the sense to dig the chain and anchor out, so it must have caught my Kitsune. If the trap was gone and she'd had to dig up the anchor, it was likely that she hadn't been able to pry the jaws loose. All I had to do was follow her trail.

The trail was easy to pick up once I settled down and looked for it; traces of blood and clear marks in the dirt from the steel trap being dragged. She hadn't made it far; I found her just a few hundred feet away, curled up against a fallen tree trunk. She was in human form; the jaws of the trap were closed around her leg just above the ankle, the sharp teeth sunk into the flesh of her calf. She'd passed out from the pain and was unconscious.

I slipped the tranq pistol out of its holster and approached carefully. Even unconscious and trapped, this was still a dangerous wild spirit. I knelt beside her and looked around for my prize. One of her hands was clenched into a tight fist. Setting the pistol down where I could reach it easily but she couldn't, I carefully pried her fingers loose to reveal a small pearl. That was the key; trapping a Kitsune was all well and good, but to truly own one, you needed to take their pearl from them. Each Kitsune had one, and without it, they couldn't use their magic without permission. I picked up the pearl and held it in my hand, studying it with fascination.

I tucked the pearl into a pocket in my pants and zipped it closed. Then I turned to examine my prize. She was filthy, covered in dirt and blood from her long crawl, but she still looked exquisite. I stood over her and drank in her naked beauty for a bit, then nudged her ribs with my boot, prodding her awake.

She let out a whimper of pain but her eyes blinked open. Her pupils were dark gold, another reminder that she wasn't human. She let out a startled gasp and tried to scramble away from me, crying with pain as her leg jostled the trap.

"Hello, fox. Missing something?"

She looked around in shock, eyes falling on her open palm. "My pearl! Where's my pearl?"

I patted my pocket. "Right here. I have it now, which means you belong to me. Do you understand?"

Tears filled the corner of her eyes. "You're not supposed to do that; humans aren't allowed to hunt us anymore."

I lied easily. "You made your nest on the wrong side of the border, little fox, you're in American territory. You were just lucky that no one found you before I did."

"No, you're wrong! You can't do this!"

"Do you really know where humans mark their borders? And even if you're right, who are you going to tell? I have your pearl, and you're going to come with me. I have all of the proper forms filled out, and I'll tell anyone who asks that I caught you in our territory. Do you think anyone will take the word of trickster spirit over a human?"

Her eyes filled with despair as she realized the truth of what I was saying. "Please, don't. I'll do anything you ask, just please let me go."

I laughed. "You'll do anything I ask anyway. Or do you want to see how long you can live if I take your pearl out and crush it with a rock?"

Tears formed in her eyes. "N-no."

"Good little fox. I'm glad we've got that settled. Now, does my new pet have a name?"

"M-my name is Chiyo."

"That's a pretty name. I think I'll let you keep it. Now, are you going to try and fight me if I let you loose from the trap? Without your magic, I don't think it will go very well for you."

She looked up at me; I guessed she was about 5'5", which gave me eight inches of height on her and an easy hundred pounds of muscle advantage, leaving aside the fact that I was fully dressed and armed while she was naked. She shook her head. "No, I won't fight. Please take it off, it hurts."

I took off my day-pack and pulled out the little socket wrench that came with the traps. I knelt to work the trap loose from her leg. She bit her lip against the pain as the teeth slowly pulled back, until I was able to carefully lift her injured foot free. "Alright, can you stand on that?"

"I don't know." She sat up and pulled herself to her feet using the fallen tree trunk. When she tried to set some weight on her injured foot she cried out in pain and collapsed, but I caught her before she could fall. I set her down on the tree trunk and picked up her foot, carefully feeling at the injury. She whimpered in pain as I did so.

"I think your leg's broken. If I give you permission to use magic, can you heal yourself?"

"No, I'm just a two-tails. All I can do is change shape and understand languages. I won't be able to heal until I grow my third tail."

I sighed in frustration. "Alright, we'll make this work. Sit there while I find something I can use as a splint."

I stayed close enough to keep an eye on her while I looked for a couple sticks that would work. She sat on the tree trunk, injured leg extended, arms wrapped around her chest, head down.

I came back with two straight sticks the length

of her calf, along with a smaller one. I took off my jacket and pulled my shirt off, cutting it into strips with my pocket knife. I wet a couple of the strips from my water bottle and washed the blood off her leg. The teeth had gone about a half-inch deep into the muscle of her calf, and she'd torn the cuts wider with her struggles. Once I washed the blood away, I could see the broken ends of her tibia through the cuts on the front of her leg.