Ignoring their mother's protests, they drew down her arms and began petting her, rubbing her ears and tail until she melted on the spot.
"Hehehe, Haha-ue is so adorable at times like this," Green giggled, squeezing Tamayō's ears as she bent over in submission.
"This secret weapon Onee-sama taught us recently is truly powerful," Shiro observed, her tone amused. "But Haha-ue could easily escape if she wanted to."
Tamayō flinched hard when she heard that.
Shiro smiled knowingly and continued. "Could it be, Haha-ue actually just wants to be petted like this?"
"N-No! I just…" Tamayō tried to deny it, but her legs gave out completely. "Please… spare me…"
Subtle tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, and her face was flushed a deep red.
GULP.
The children swallowed, briefly stunned by her beauty, before intensifying their petting instead.
"But why?!" Tamayō cried in despair. "I even used the secret technique Levina taught me!"
***
"Have you had enough, Haha-ue?" Onee-sama asked with a wicked smile. "I need to prepare dinner, so we should end this already."
"Never!" Tamayō stubbornly declared.
"Tsk. Then we will pet you at another time. Stop this tantrum now." A vein pulsed at the edge of Onee-sama's smiling face.
Tamayō noticed her eldest daughter growing irritated, and in a fit of desperation she began rolling on the ground.
"Wahhhh!! Now the purple one is angry with me!" she wailed, throwing a full tantrum. "What? Am I not allowed to demand a little attention after being left alone in the dark, talking only to myself and the walls?!"
Onee-sama thought to herself, 'She is not going to stop, is she? She sighed.'
Walking over to the crying Tamayō, she gently rubbed her mother's head.
"Stop crying, Haha-ue. If the wolves see you like this, we will all die of embarrassment… Ah, yes, the wolves. They are the cause of this entire problem, are they not? Should Haha-ue not punish them instead?"
Tamayō's face immediately hardened. Her left eye turned a deep violet, with spiraling circles coiling endlessly inward.
"That is correct." She rose and dusted her kimono with dignity restored. "It is the wolves' fault that the Supreme Lord refuses to see me as a woman. It is their fault that I must constantly fight in these endless power struggles. And now, because of them, I have disgraced myself before my own children…"
With a single wave of her hand, the very air shattered like brittle glass. She stepped into the fragments and reappeared on the other side, standing beside Onee-sama.
The wolves were still struggling to uproot themselves from the hardened mud, while Swanir desperately tried to deactivate the spell before they sensed the dreadful bloodlust now pressing in.
"Great… now their mother waltzes in," one wolf muttered, slumping in resignation, half of his body still buried. "I do not even care anymore. Just kill us already…"
"Do not give me orders; you despair will come into view shortly... I see my children have already done a marvelous job here," Tamayō seethed, her voice sharp and cold, "Allow me to add yet another layer of ruin to complete the work."
Without wasting even a second, Tamayō began her incantation:
"幽眸者,虚潛徒,混沌客等,予汝希祷.屈服於吾意,上古冥月,俾我討敵,變之荒廃.聆令,命爾.忿視敵徒,播厄種於寂,來助予焉."
"...Shiiiiiit..." the wolves groaned in collective exasperation, all of them immediately tilting their heads upward.
Nine massive spheres of different hues were plummeting from the heavens, each one twisting and warping the very fabric of reality as they descended.
"So... When are we reporting this to the Supreme Lor—"
Before the wolf nearest to the fuming Swanir could finish his question, the moons struck the earth with an apocalyptic roar.
The shockwave alone was enough to reduce the grand ice castle and the dojo to near ruins, shattering them apart.
Then came a surge of absolute darkness, bursting outward in a flash. When it finally cleared, nothing remained of the battlefield; except for Trigger's solitary cottage, standing amidst a sea of annihilation.
The kitsunes behind Tamayō were drenched in cold sweat, their bodies trembling ever so slightly as they stared in silent dread at the carnage their mother had so casually unleashed.
'Every time I witness her true strength,' Onee-sama gazed at Tamayō's back with awe, 'I realize more and more that no amount of admiration will ever be enough.
Our mother, Tamamo-no-Mae: the Dark Fox of Lord Ravenswood.'
The Supreme Lord, sovereign ruler of the entire Shadow Realm, possessed only a scarce handful of subordinates capable of even approaching his level of power... and Tamayō ranked third among them.
Behind her tantrums, her playful dishonesty, and her constant frivolous jokes, there resided a terrifying monster: a woman with dominion over void, death, forbidden sorceries, and the dreaded Evil Eye of Chaos.
"Sigh. Now that I have managed to relieve some of my stress..." Tamayō exhaled and turned her back on the destruction, stepping once more into the fractured shards of space, "Prepare me something sublime... uh..."
"You still haven't given me a name, Haha-ue," Onee-sama gently reminded her.
"Ah, of course! I was saving the honor for the Supreme Lord himself!" Tamayō lifted her hand dramatically, "And listen here, purple one, that accursed human—Alicia—called me a seductive vixen earlier. Isn't that just obnoxious? She even asked the Supreme Lord to 'kill it.' As in 'it,' she was referring to me! Can you imagine the audacity? Wait, are you even paying attention to my rant at all?"
"Hai, hai, Haha-ue," Onee-sama replied with a knowing smile, following after her into the portal.
The other kitsunes remained behind, their eyes locked on the blackened wasteland where the battlefield once stood, until Brown broke the silence.
"What... is an Alicia?"