Tchkchkchkchkchk... t-tchkchkchkchkchkchkchkchk... The sweet, oily scent of Bolivian coffee filled the Marketplace apartment which had since become split down the middle. One half consisted of vague piles of fabric, separated by color and texture in a formation that bowed to a logic that defied observation. The other half was a row of collapsible hanging racks, filled to stuffing with garment bags etched with odd glyphs written in gold marker. In the center, a tiny figure, sturdy and curvy, tilted and inched the fabric around the pedal-driven needle of a restored antique Singer sewing machine. The bright red fox-ears pinned back into the short hair of similar hue, pinned back from her eyes with a ladybug hairpin. Track pants that ran a bit too long for her bunched at the floor, worn at the hems from the getting trod underfoot, contrasting to the meticulously measured garments lined up before her, tucked in their neat little bags. A flash of red flickered and slapped around Saffron's shoulders, a scourge built of fur, tendon and bone, kicking her back to the intricate, complex stitchings. Her eyelids lowered, possessed of great, magnificent circles beneath the shudder of silver irises. The tail slapped back, hard enough to break the strap on the sturdy bra which holstered her breasts, and leave a nasty wel across her shoulder.

"GHAAFFF--GFHAAAAACK!" The chair went one way, lost in the piles upon piles of fabric. The sewing machine went the other, crashing through the slide-away door to the closet and lodging into the fancy flat-screen held behind it. She felt the familiar stiffness rise from the base of the furry whip, the instrument of pain hidden beneath the disarming puff of bright red like the kind eyes of an Inquisitor. Her heel drove into the floor with a loud crack, bursting open the bamboo panel that hid the crash-mat below. Her neck contorted from the muscles behind her ears, drawing her body into a wretched twist along her spine. Blood poured out from her shoulder, staining a long streak down the honey-tone of her skin. The tail jerked her first into a hard landing on the chair, twisting her into a rib-bruising drive against the angle of the seat. One leg swept out to stand, but the fire etched upon it flared, causing the muscles to fire and toss her back toward the wreckage of her sewing machine. The tail wound and wound, the ears twisted and warped, grinding her into the spines of needles and the fractures of wood, carving brutal calligraphic strokes into her, drawing maledictions in lost languages, rage-filled glyphs, cursing bind-runes onto the tiny scrapper until she slumped into the wreckage, limp, panting. The white brush inched up, and slipped behind the clasp of the collar, popping it open and tossing it to land, soundlessly in a pile of far more eldritch fabric than the others, a mountain of suppression and silence. "Why are... you always so..." Saffron coughed and curled in, trembling, spitting blood from a split lip, soon to swell. "... why are you so mean to me?" The grays fluttered and drooped, taking what milliseconds they had to rest before the next wave began.

Fox knew better than to keep her assault to merely physical means. Once the lids closed, sounds and visions blasted her inner senses, ripping through memories and ramming them back down her throat. The slurp of spittle and aching gums that accumulated around the pull of orthodontic headgear. The chants of "Saffy Duck! Saffy Duck!" from schoolchildren. Screams, split skin on little knuckles, clumps of hair pulled in clenched fists, the shrill-scream "THTOP MAKING FUN OF ME!!!" Venomous glares and half-spat whispers in the halls welcoming her to her Sophomore year and the new ache in her back and shoulders, which only got worse. The crash of a broken chair leg across the bridge of her nose, slick warmth of blood and aqueous humor down her palm, and four fingernails packed with dangling ribbons of skin. The accompanying shriek and toothy muzzle flashed her back to wakefulness, opening her eyes to find little more than the roiling, misty void.

The trickle of water, the rubbery texture of strange grass... her little hand splayed out, drops or red falling upon its back. The tail was now just a limp, vestigial limb, and her ears dead weight on the side of her head. Her legs folded up slowly, into a clumsy lotus position. Loud crumbling and crashing noises followed broke through. A rush of air blew up from beneath her, from around her. She did what she could to take a deep breath, albeit a raspy, gurlging one. Flit by flit, the tattoos on her flesh bubbled up, hissing and charring as she started to burn. In the distance, a hushed chittering sound, followed by a whooping howl pierced the air. "Fox..." Saffron rumbled quietly. "You... aren't separate from me... you... you can't... hwwoookoffkoffkoff!!! ...you can't hurt me... because... I'm only hurting myself for not admitting that I--" Her eyes went wide as a full blaze burst up from her back. She could smell the sweet, meaty aroma of her flesh burning. It was delicious. "--I did all of that. I killed that guy... I... I crippled his girlfriend.... I let... I hid all of my pain and used my looks to- to escape blame... I kept... flinging Mayu into bed so that we could keep from... actually showing her how messed up I am... and from... from getting to know her." Only her little patch of grass remained, all else having fallen away into the inky void. "I did all of the things I blame on you. I ignored my sewing... because I don't give a damn about everyone else's mutations. I don't care about making clothing except for what I feel like making... and I don't... I don't want to keep bothering with worrying if people approve of me... because... that's up to them, not to me..." The black-smoke scent of burning hair reached her nose while it still functioned, and the flame burnt her nerves to deadness, permitting her to cease her struggle, to drop her head, and sigh. "... You can keep this up... but this isn't real. You aren't real... You're just a face i made for all of the parts of me I don't want to deal with. Thank you, Fox, but I want all of that wildness and energy back. I want to find my own center."

A single, black egg rolled into the light that her fire cast. It was wholly unremarkable. Just a fist-sized rock, calm and unadorned. The fires settled from around her, and revealed her skin as renewed, if bloodied. Where the etchings of flames once were, a single design, a four-winged phoenix in the midst of resurrection spread from her legs, up her back and over her arms, its egg centered at the base of her spine. Her tail and ears remained vulpine in shape, black in hue, tipped in white as the shadow of her initiating spirit. The egg before her crumbled, folding out into loose black cotton to cover her bleeding form. The pants were still too big, and the top was more of a tent. A ragged red sash was folded beneath, the texture of her old skin. She tied off the top and grinned, leaping, soaring out into the abyss to the chime of her own bell, nestled in a pile of ash in her apartment.

The squat palm smacked against the roof's ledge, followed by its counterpart soon after. The black vulpine ears crested, tilting back and forth, and with a hard double-kick to the wall the diminutive figure arced through the air, far enough to send her sliding down the incline of a roof two houses down. She tucked and rolled, leaping squirrel-like over the chasm of the street below, suspended in the air for what seemed an eternity.

"No one can love you without having to suffer you." Everything that Bianca said came out practiced. Everything about the way she appeared was a lengthy, arduous, meticulously-designed construct. Dark hair tugged, singed, extended, slathered into submission into cherubic curls. Eldritch blues and purples, moonlight silvers, pixie greens to soften the hawk-like stare, to distract from the nigh-perpetual scowl that creased around the edges of unremarkable eyes. "What do you you think will happen when they get to see the real you? Do you remember how long it took to get you to stop cramming bugs into your mouth, or, hell, to stop making those insipid noises and speak clearly?" Every smile of love and affection, every stare said to convey desire, peppered with disgust after the ears and tail made themselves manifest, speaking of failures on so many levels. "What would you do without me?"

Maybe she made too ambitious a leap. She could feel her body creep toward the yank of gravity, crumbling all too soon to its insistence. All of the power in her core seemed to drift away, tangled, redirected, distracted in the miniature spots of eternity between the seconds.

"How could you do this to me!?" The burnt sandwich that sliced across her face, splattering molten hummus onto the slim cheeks made sallow, the gray eyes made puffy from lack of sleep. "You don't love me! Give me my day back!" The twinge of nausea and the crumble onto the floor. Gentle arms around slender shoulders as the little Canadian girl broke down. Choked, sobbing attempts to express feeling. Cold wind on the back, and a frantic call to her friends for a place to stay.

She stopped retreating from the leap, and yet she felt herself not quite advancing either, suspended in mid-air, between a red splatter on the ground and a feat of acrobatic wonder. The words came voicelessly, settling herself into her suspended state, in the cradling of the elements. No, I don't love you... and you don't love me... I'm afraid of you, and you just seem afraid of everything. You say you're independent, that you're strong... but then why do you have to cut me down and make me smaller than I already am? If you loved me, then you'd see how big I can get. You'd see that I can withstand anything the world throws at me, with some work and some humility. I keep myself safe, not only for me, but also for others, with a little patience. I hope that you can feel that way about yourself, some day, but as long as you're afraid, Bianca, you can't go anywhere except down... In that last sentence came clarity, marked with a giddy laugh and crossed eyes producing two landing spots ahead of her for a few seconds, both rushing toward her outsretched hands. "Durr!"

Another old layer burnt away. Another lock undone. Blood surged from her pores, vitality greater than her body could hold soaking through her clothing, and once more the four wings spread from her back, carrying her own waves of light and heat to the hatch on the far roof. Deft fingers whipped the trapdoor open, and the wings flickered away as she dropped down into the Inn, to the tension and drama of the world at large held in four walls, with a smile spread as wide as it could.

The temperature plummeted in the apartment. What light scattered in from the windows ended prematurely at the edge of the kitchen, consumed by a thousands shadowy mouths. The ache began at the base of Saffron's tail once more, climbing back up to the juncture where her ears met skull. Something new crept in from the ache, beginning at the base of her spine, creeping in through her core, settling in her womb. At first, just a tingle, flickering through muscle and threading through tendon. It spread through her organs, finally settling into its place within her vessel. Sweat pooled on her skin, pouring down the pale skin marked with the image of the Phoenix, whose egg began to emit a strange iridescent light in arcs behind her, like a peacock train. "G-gnh... N-no.. no... I don't.." The heat grew, roiling, holy fire, a righteous sphere of whirling flame, licking into her most sacred recesses. Her heels turned out, then toes, then heels, settling in shoulder-width apart, knees just a bit in. Her upper body twisted around and her hands rolled, palms out, elbows tucked. Her breath was hard, loud, like the bellows stoking a flame. Her eyes went wide, chin jutting out just a bit. The sphere in her middle spread and she started to tremble from the waist up, horrible choking sounds crawling their way up through her body from the clamp growing through the muscles at her neck. Finally, her right leg raised, coiling up, balancing with her sole pressed to the inside of her left thigh. The flames rose like wings, deeper, insinuating itself into her seat of life. Her eyes rolled back and her knee buckled, tilting her body back... back... back...

"GEDDOUT!" Her foot slammed onto the floor again and her hands pushed down in front of her, and with a shriek the resplendent flame tore out from her body and into the hole in the floor. Her left leg slid back and her hands drew upwards at the elbows once more, fingers firming into clawing hands. Her weight shifted toward the back leg as the fire grew, unfolding itself from the hole. The hole began to fizzle, then smoke, then expand, burning past the single panel to take up the others. The flames slowed their spin, winding down to reveal the shield of white-gold wings.

The Phoenix was about the size of a large horse, shining in metallic copper and pyrite, interspersed with royal purple and the quivering colors of flame, just a few puffs and spasms that twisted the bird around in painful spasms. Its eyes were set in harsh sockets, pure black balls, missing nothing. Its beak clickclicked together, a harsh, hollow noise from a menacing hook the size of a shovel. A talon rose to dig into what remained of the bamboo flooring, and the other soon followed to straddle the hole that gave rise to its abruptly interrupted manifestation. The sound of ripping crash pad prefaced its leap towards Saffron, The front, primary pair of its four wings swiping in at either side to draw her in towards the beak, flickering with a few phantom matchstrikes from within its throat.

No time for restraint. No chance to show grace. A defiant "HRRAAK!" croaked from the little shamaness' throat as she hopped onto one of the wings that snapped in toward her, just as soon skipping her way to the bird's shoulder. Her hand remained in a claw out front, keeping up defensively as her body twisted, winding up the back hand in her lunge toward the bird's neck.

The Phoenix whipped its wing across itself and reared its neck up to snatch Saffron out of the air, opening its gullet wide. She would, by hook or by crook, fuel its transformation, its senseless cycle of death and rebirth with no meaningful existence in between. She would be the nest, the incubator, the fuel for the Immortal Egg.

The launch's shove sent Saffron soaring toward the Phoenix's head, yet it also sent the short, sturdy little fingers, normally so nibble-worthy, deep under the ridge of the bird's brow. Her free hand splayed on the beak to balance, legs out to either side. Her hips tilted to wind up, and swung back around, taking her, and an eye the size of a tennis ball, down to the other side of the room to land in a crouch, with her tail swooping in to cross over her body.

The Phoenix recoiled from the pluck, diving into a far corner with a blood-curdling shriek, a squeal of sorrow that it had yet not known. It shrunk behind its wings, puffs of fire spurting randomly, most followed by horrible-looking contractions and hard cramps that demanded it call forth in the most chilling, most pathetic shrieks. Its head dropped to the side as it stared out from behind its wings, a single black orb to watch the figure crouched at the other side of the room, cradling its eye in her hands like an apple. A steady light issued behind the head from the empty socket, and from the spot at the back of the eye where the optic nerve had snapped. A single electrical arc snapped when the bird's head tilted, pulling at the eye desperately, a few fledgling caws appealing to her compassion.

Saffron looked from the bird, to the eye, then back to her tummy, where this whole scene began. She looked at the ruffled desperation, the call of the bird to return to its proper, perfect resplendence that the colors and lines across her skin depicted. For a moment, she turned the eye over in her grasp, once more glancing from it to the bird. Her heels set in, her eyes locked onto the single black sphere capable of sight. She brought the eye to the tiny, fanged mouth and bit in, pulling off a huge chunk of sclera, and drinking down the aqueous humor like wine, unflinching as, bite by bite, she consumed the sight organ of the mystic bird.

The Phoenix wailed, its first, beautiful foray into melancholy, into grief. It slumped in its spot, dejected, wings pooling on the floor before it. The light where its eye once was grew, brighter and brighter, a flash-bulb set in a bloody socket lighting the grisly scene. Its body twisted in pain, its claws scraped and clawed at the floor.

The shamaness simply watched, licking the end of the nerve clean before popping it into her mouth to chew on tenaciously. A soft sheen of gold ran down from her throat, strobing down to her stomach before spreading through her arteries in a glorious burst. A soft sheen of auric played over the black fur of her ears as the light flitted across her form.

The light... The Phoenix lifted its wing and closed its one good eye and raised its forewings, secondary wing sticking out to the side, spreading its form as it drew in essence. The fox-eared girl tucked in as she watched, focused and quiet. Small spheres of light spread from the wings, scattering around the room enough to stretch and toy with the shadows below. The Phoenix slumped down once more, less and less physical, less manifest. Wings faded into gossamer. Talons flattened against the floor and the body rolled in one final movement, one last ditch expression of energy. The avian image crumpled inward like a worm in the sun, shriveling down, folding, condensing into a single starlight egg, the size of a basketball.

The lights coagulated above and behind Saffron, stretching her shadow long before her, a forked, pitch-black bridge that stretched all the way to the hole in the floor. A paw rose. Two pitch black ears. Red fur. Too red. Wet. Bloody. The movements were too easy, too slow. The Fox's teeth bared in something of a grin, too human a gesture with eyes lacking any focus, any cleverness, just dull malice and ulceritive hate. The Fox stopped, head twisting one way...then the other... a straight line from the Egg, to Fox, to Saffron. Saffron creased her scar with a sniff. Her right leg shifted back and her center of gravity followed, left foot set out front, toes pointing toward the Bloody Fox and the Egg, left hand out in a claw. Another sniff, and a light sneer at her upper lip, the Name washing through her mind and body with a shimmer and a shudder. "Reynard."

The utterance was enough to set the Fox into action. He leaped toward the crouched shamaness. He easily swelled to the size of a wolf, barreling down and "woowoop!"-ing frantically. His breath hit Saffron's palm, and she sprung forward, rising up from the crouch. Her back hand looped beneath then swung down, aiming for the spot right between the eyes to land the blow. Her wind up provided the hair's breadth of time for the hateful beast to spin around on his front legs, setting his back paws on her hips to launch himself toward the Egg.

Saffron snorted in a punctuated inhale and drew her palms up to her shoulders once more, catching hold of the ball of light that floated behind her. She shook with energy, blazing, small flickers of dark-centered flames puffing around her shoulders and knees, running lines up and down her bare form to trace the channels and meridians of energy. With a turn of her hips, she coiled in, and the fractured balls of light dropped behind her, and the fox's leap drew him closer and closer to the Egg, mad eyes wide with hunger.... then spreading further in shock.

The lights channeled themselves through the black egg drawn at the base of her spine and traveled through her channels toward the gruesome Fox. Two circles opened in the centers of her palms, and the lights flew forth, luminal darts shredding the beast of blood and hate before returning themselves to the Egg's confines. A grid-like halo started to form around the egg, and the lights that issues through the filter of the red vapor that was once Reynard took to colors, and situated themselves along the pathways of the halo, until drawing in to rest inside the large egg.

Ribbons of fur and skin floated down across the remains of the floor, spreading out in strips as the lights and colors subsided, and the apartment returned to a... relatively normal state. Saffron shook out her hands, set her feet to shoulder width, and took a deep, grounding breath. She padded over to the circle in the floor, dragging her fingertips over the ragged edges of the broken bamboo. In spiraling wisps, white lines spread over the hole, drawing over it in arcane patterns, soon followed by the spheres of light. Her unremarkably-colored gray eyes drifted from sphere to sphere, and her little hand stretched out to the orbs, catching the resonance. One tap of her finger here, then there, then somewhere else and the sphere bloomed, sealing the ghost of the hole with a new, strange structure, a Taiji symbol of a Fox and Phoenix chasing each other in as Yin and Yang, respectively. She spread her toes on the symbol, tapping the ball of her foot twice, then leaving it to splay and catch the vibrations within. She strode over the new floor with a little extra shimmy in her hips, taking on a pleased grin as she collected the strips of skin over her forearm, with an eye drifting with a devious glint to the chimera of machinery created from the television and sewing machine...

"Almost..." Saffron arched up onto the balls of her feet, perched on the edge of the Egg-O-Matic 9000 . The multi-armed Dakini android stood on an unfolding lotus base, the center featuring Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. Her tail counterbalanced as she leaned forward, the android's head in her hands, moving it between the six open palms to figure out exactly where to set it. The broken base of the head sparked, drawn magnetically to the palm of the second Left hand. "... there." She tilted further and further, finally tipping off of he perch to land on her palms and walk on her hands before tilting up to stand.

Next to the idol were her various training weapons, ready to take their rightful place upon her chosen face of the Goddess, the grisly, mangled worker droid turned to a holy symbol in its loss of function. She pressed her palms together and raised them to her forehead, then dropped for three bows to the statue, ending with a salute of her right fist wrapped in her left hand. Her tail swished slowly behind her as she walked closer to the statue, her lower lip nibbled in giddy anticipation of the assembly. First, she fastened the sheath to her double broadswords at the statue's waist, on the right side. In the lower right hand went her longsword, her 3-section iron staff set with arcane writing set to rest in the central right, folded into its upright state, and finally the whip to be held loosely in the top hand. The lower left hand gained a single-edge dagger, the upper left a pair of kamas, and in the tangled wire that acted as a substitute for hair on the android, she slipped her beloved kerambit. Last, she took the red sash, the fierce, deep red, indestructible length of fabric, and knelt before the statue, taking to a more reverent bow.

Her palms smoothed over the sanguine-hued silk, harvested from hellish arachnids. She lifted it into her grasp to feel its weight, to allow its color, its oxygenated red, to blast her retina with its splendor, to bring that soft inhale and shyly lustful smile. She rose from her kneel slowly, in measured motions which, to her, reached through worlds. Crease by crease she unfolded the sash, the stormcloud grays set on the gynoid clavicle of the idol. each motion and each breath to an inaudible rhythm. She balled up the one end and tossed it over the left shoulder, then caught it to bring it toward the lower right, where she knotted it like a bandolier around the figure. Three steps back. Three bows. She smiled in accomplishment.

Something seemed to tug at her as she kept her idle pace of straightening up the apartment. She organized every single shelf in the bathroom, moving the items to the places dictated by hidden categories and structures... and saw all of Mayu's belongings at one, easy-to-reach shelf. She inched her way out, a slow, backwards walk, then turned to the shoe mat by the door. Each and every single shoe ever was accounted for, settled together, made nice and neat and clearly seen. She stopped for a moment, toes splayed on the firm rubber end to her Converse sandals as she counted off on each of her fingers. "One.. two... for... Nh." Her ears perked, then drooped as she sighed as she realized how irrelevant the number of times she'd organized the shoes was. The act carried hope, before, but now... she just glanced to the patch of floor taken up by Mary Janes and thought of other things.

She ambled to the other side of the room and, with a deep, heavy sigh, slid open the closet. Nice, tidy, everything in order and hung on good wooden hangers coated in felt. She fixed the deco Walken tank top's hem, closed her eyes for one last, cleansing breath, then spun around on her heel to settle herself back into the All-Star sandals, clipping herself in before slipping through the door, and toward the Inn.

Saffron's stagger from the woods was a slow, awkward thing. She winced with each step of her left leg and held her skirt at her right hip. Her tail coiled around her upper body, providing what it could to act as coverage for her breasts. All along the left side of her neck she bore a leopard-spotted constellation of bruises and burst capillaries. A painful-seeming swell took to her lips, no less enticing for the wear upon them. They held, in their throb and bruise, a smile at their corners that just would not leave.

If her gait to the Horne's apartment building could be characterized as a walk of shame, she showed absolutely none of it. Idle flaps of her left arm flew to passers by in the golden hours, and the looks of shock and concern received a musical laugh and a coy bat of the hand before well-wishings were offered. No jerks were awake at this ridiculous hour; mostly churchgoers, or ambitious sorts getting a jog in. She'd managed rather well on getting through the gate and navigating her keys from a hidden pouch in her skirt, the threat of dropping them arriving but once and offering a stumbling waltz to the creaking metal to the tune of "Ffft! Aaaow! Ow ow owowow..." The steps to the door met with a stare born of dead-eyed frustration, and a low rumble of a groan that lasted her entire zombie-shuffle gait before litling up on her hoist to the first step. "Hnk! Ugh... Hnk! ugh..." a further stumble towards the door. The sudden twinge from her various wounds, visible and otherwise, brought her to seize up, making good on the threat of dropping her key. "Fffaaaaahahahahaha-haak." The left leg flopped out with the initial articulation of a Barbie doll, and the bend at the knee set Saffron to sing out in a soft, high keen while the left folded her down to lift the key.

Finally... she opened the entry way to her relatively new home, and inched her way inside.