When we were finally getting ready to call it a night, Alice nervously glanced back and forth from me to her bedroll like she wanted to ask something. For whatever reason, all four of us seemed a little on edge; Titania urged us not to head out alone at night and offered to stay up for a while keeping watch, but she wouldn’t say what exactly she was watching for. Even Viela appeared surprisingly uneasy, pacing around the edge of our small camp while staring into the pitch-black woods around us.

The last of the setting sun had disappeared over the mountains, total darkness engulfed our camp, and that feeling of being watched grew unbearable. All at once Viela stopped, her ears twitching like crazy as she focused on some unseen entity.

“I thought so…” she muttered with a slight frown upon her face.

Right when I was about to ask the fox spirit what the hell was going on, she seemed to lose her patience and crossed her arms.

“Just come out already,” Viela called out into the darkness.

A new sound reached my ears over the crackling of our campfire, like something stepping toward us through the forest. Leaves rustled as it approached, and the sudden crack of a branch snapping in half brought another minute of breathless quiet. Then… an unfamiliar shrill, feminine voice shattered the silence.

“FOX!”

A girl leapt from the darkness into the light of our fire—a naked girl. She was slightly shorter than me, yet with the figure of a young adult my age and not a scrap of clothing covering her two supple breasts. A short mess of snowy grey hair covered most of her head—along with two round furry ears and a similar patch of hair right above her crotch. And behind her, a thick tail almost as long as she was tall protruded out over her butt, covered in white and grey fur with black spots, just like… the tail of a snow leopard…

Ah, crap.

“If you have a shred of dignity in the depths of your wretched soul, fight me one on one!” the leopard girl shouted, her bare breasts jiggling as she thrust a finger at Viela.

The fox spirit rolled her eyes. “That’s a real sassy way to say ‘thank you’ for saving your life.”

“A cruel joke, fox!” the girl growled. She flexed her fingers on both hands, and a set of sharp claws extended beyond each nail. Only then did I notice that her hands and wrists were also covered in snowy grey fur, as well as her ankles down to her toes.

“This is why I can’t deal with ferals,” Viela sighed. “At least I have a sense of humor.”

She disappeared in a puff of smoke, and a moment later I felt a fluffy tail tickling my neck with the weight of four fox paws landing on my shoulders.

“Just what kind of mess have you gotten us into now?” I turned to ask the transformed Viela. “Is she really the snow leopard we ran into earlier?”

“Yeah, that’s her,” she said. “Cover for me, will you~?”

The sly fox gave my cheek a wet kiss.

“Hold up, does that mean when you had her subdued with that spell back there… you fluffed her fluff knowing that she was a snow leopard spirit?!”

“What’s the big deal?” Viela asked coolly. “She was trying to give us the scare of our lives. I was just trying to give her some love.”

“I’ll show you some ‘love,’ fox!” the girl barked, taking another step closer. The flame of our campfire burned within her familiar silvery eyes—a flame almost as bright as her temper.

She was short and cute with a surprisingly high-pitched voice that made it hard to take her seriously. But even still, a pang of fear struck me at the sight of her approaching claws, and Viela trying to hide behind me didn’t make this any better!

Okay, deep breaths…

“We’re just passing through the area,” I said to the snow leopard spirit. “We don’t mean any harm, and we won’t be bothering you or your two… Wait, were those your cubs?!”

“That’s right!” she replied with an air of pride. “Except now Sasha and Arwen smell like humans, all because of you perverts!”

What? An animal spirit actually had kids in this world? But they just seemed like normal snow leopard cubs to me! Did that mean… this girl ‘got it on’ with a real snow leopard?!

Oh God, this is a whole new level of weird! Which form was she in when she got—actually, maybe I shouldn’t think about it too much…

Titania spared me from my mental anguish by stepping to my side with the business end of her lance pointed at the snow leopard spirit. When I glanced at her, something about her seemed off; the lancer’s posture was bent forward at an awkward angle like she was dealing with a sudden cramp.

“I-I really will spear you if you try to attack us!” Titania said, a little less confidently than usual.

Viela turned around on my shoulders to get a better view. “Which spear?” she asked coyly.

“You’re not helping!” I nearly shouted. “Titania, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she replied with a weak smile, patting the thigh of her leg armor. “It just gets a little tight sometimes…”

For Christ’s sake, did she really…? Damn it, why did our futa warrior have to be this weak against nudity?!

The naked snow leopard spirit glanced at each of us, warily eyeing Titania while trying to focus on the fox perched on my shoulders as if she were searching for an opening. I stared at her, and she paused when her eyes came to rest on mine, biting her lip.

“Don’t think I’ll go easy on you just because you… you d-didn’t…”

Suddenly, the girl looked around frantically like she just realized she had lost track of the most important thing in her life. The thought dawned on me that the three of us were also missing something.

“Where’s Alice?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a dim robed figure crouched behind the spirit and to her side. In the light of our campfire, I could just barely make out the shape of Alice kneeling down with a small hair brush in her hand, rubbing the fluffy belly of one snow leopard cub and gently brushing the other’s fur. When the spirit followed my gaze and saw the same, she just about lost it.

“What are you doing!” she shrieked.

I ran to grab her, but the leopard spirit was too quick, leaping toward Alice on all fours.

“Don’t do it!” I shouted.

When the spirit was almost within striking distance, Alice whirled around and stopped her with the head of the brush.

“Bad kitty!” Alice huffed, her expression as upset as she sounded. “Look how dirty and tangled their fur is!”

“Excuse me?” the ‘kitty’ protested. “I can take care of them!”

“And your tail is messy, too!” Alice went on. “You have to take better care of yourself!”

Before she realized what was happening, the snow leopard spirit had the end of her long, furry tail grabbed by the determined young witch who began vigorously brushing away. The spirit yelped as she tried to fend off her surprise ‘attacker,’ but collapsed trembling to her knees instead like she was helplessly overcome by the new sensation of Alice grooming her tail.

“D-Don’t think this feels good!” she gasped. “Do you know how much older I am than you, human?”

“Bad kitty, hold still!” Alice scolded.

She worked her brush with firm yet gentle strokes up the furry tail. The snow leopard spirit’s bare breasts squished flat against the ground as she dug her claws into the earth, just as if she were straining to resist an overwhelming euphoria taking over her body.

“M-My name isn’t ‘kitty!’” she whimpered. “It’s… It’s F-Fre… Freyaaahh!”

When Alice’s brush finally reached the thick tail fur right over her butt, the spirit’s back arched up like a cat in heat as she moaned with pleasure. For all her squirming and quivering, she was no match for Alice’s skill with a brush.

An all too familiar sense of déjà vu washed over me as I watched the tense situation devolve into… whatever was happening on the ground now. The other three of us finally relaxed as if taking a breath for the first time in an hour.

“So, are they going to be alright?” I asked no one in particular.

Viela wagged her soft tail against my neck with a hum of satisfaction. Titania sighed, lowering her lance and rubbing her forehead.

“At this rate, my heart is going to give out again…”

***

The snow leopard spirit Freya had transformed back into her animal form, wrapping her long tail around her body and biting down on the end of it. Alice’s impromptu grooming session had spared us the worst of the spirit’s wrath for now, but unsurprisingly had done little to quell Freya’s irritation overall. She lay on the other side of our campfire with her two cubs snuggled against her, not showing any signs of getting up but growling whenever any of us stared at her for too long.

Alice suggested we move our bedrolls together, and everyone was happy to comply. All four of us were exhausted now, but sleep appeared unlikely any time soon, given our party’s grumpy new guest…

“What are we going to do about this?” I whispered.

Viela stroked her chin. “She won’t try anything when her cubs are this close,” she said. “Right now, she’s all bark and no bite.”

“Come over here and I’ll show you some ‘bite,’ fox!” Freya barked.

Ugh. Fighting monsters would be one thing, but dealing with a pissed off snow leopard spirit like this was a whole other level of difficulty. I didn’t exactly blame her for being mad about what happened to her earlier, but still…

Just when I was about to ask Viela if she had another spell to manage the situation, Alice decided to grab some dried meat from her rucksack and walk over to the leopard trio. I started to call out to her, but if there was any of us who could parley with the spirit, it would probably be her.

The two cubs perked up at Alice’s approach—especially once they smelled what she had brought with her. The third leopard wasn’t as pleased.

“We don’t need your human food!” Freya growled.

A loud grumbling erupted from her stomach, betraying her words. She didn’t try to stop Alice from tearing off small pieces of meat and offering them to the hungry cubs. But when Alice tried to offer her a big piece, Freya growled again.

“Kitty, just take it!” Alice insisted. “Giant rat jerky is my favorite.”

Wait, that’s what kind of meat this was?! I had to admit though, it was actually pretty good…

Freya’s leopard nose twitched at the irresistible scent of seasoned meat. Temptation won out in the end, and she gobbled up the offering, tears beginning to flow from her eyes.

“D-Don’t think this tastes really good…”

The snow leopard spirit finally admitted defeat for the night, relaxing enough to lay all the way down on her side. The two cubs looked to Alice for more food, and finding none, snuggled back up against Freya’s warm fluff.

When Alice returned to our side of the camp and lay down in her bedroll next to mine, she looked surprisingly unsatisfied.

“That was pretty incredible,” I said. “Uh, do you want some of my rations?”

She shook her head. “That’s not what I’m thinking about.”

“Then… what is it?”

Her cheeks flushed red while she fidgeted under her covers like there was something she desperately wanted to say. Or do, as it turned out, because she eventually worked up the courage to answer by snuggling closer under my covers and leaning her head on my shoulder.

“Teehee~, I rolled over in my sleep!” she whispered in my ear with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

“Was this really your plan all along!” I whispered back. My first thought was what the other two would say if they ‘caught’ us, but Viela looked to be sound asleep and Titania was facing the other way. And then I thought, Why not?

I gently wrapped an arm around her and pulled her in—just a little closer.

“Good night, Alice.”