Dearest listener, wise scholar of these many words. You have learned much of how the world works. You have learned much about wisdom and inner peace. You have witnessed the joy of acceptance, of harmony, of friendship, of enlightenment. You may at this time consider yourself to have made progress upon the path towards becoming a sage.

Idiot! I made all of that up!

I've been right here all along - right where everyone could see me but where nobody thought to look. Nobody thinks to count the tails of a mountain! And [i]that[/i] is the difference between me and any of these silly little flufferhead foxes. That isn't to say that I have never been a silly little flufferhead, only to say that I have taken the flufferhead arts to heights undreamed of by gods or buddhas. You think that you can reach heaven through romantic violence? Maybe. If you're boring. But you can also reach heaven through [i]crime[/i].

Crime is different when you've been around as long as I have. A novice might still find pickpocketing and wire fraud compelling, but I have more refined tastes. My current plan is a masterpiece beyond the ken of any foxgirl below my nine-tailed rank: I have become a mountain, and every year I stand up and creep a few meters closer to the nearby town. And then one day at the height of the autumn festival I will transform back into a fox, pounce on top of the village, and steal all their fried tofu. I have been working on this plan for fifty years now. It's brilliant. I'm brilliant.

Or I was. But now this girl Yue is looking right [i]at[/i] me with her heart full of love and she is [i]waving[/i]. And I can tell that this girl is practically a buddha or a saint or an anime or something and [i]oh my god[/i] do you know how dangerous that is? She could ruin everything! She has to be stopped, probably!

And so I stand up, tails wagging ominously. Snow falls from my triangular ear-peaks and trees tumble loose from my mighty flanks. And then I [i]creep[/i]. I creep and stalk and sneak, tails wagging, rocky ears twitching, delicately stepping over houses and rivers as I sneak around the rim of the Terraced Lake. Despite being mountain size my paws are still soft and fluffy where they scamper across the ground and I move so silently and smoothly even the birds sleeping in the trees on my peaks don't wake. A couple of times my foxy senses tell me that someone in that distant cottage is looking out the window and I need to duck down and press my tummy against the earth and lie my ears flat. I wait patiently for them to go back inside, no doubt to engage in kisses or kiss related silliness. And then I am sneaking once more! 

(Naturally there are plenty of people in the immediate vicinity who are quite terrified to see a sneaking mountain. To them I say: Nyah ha ha ha ha! Run! Run little humans!)

Eventually I have snuck, crept, pranced, and sashayed my fluffy tails all the way over to loom over the cottage of Yue. My archenemy! Look at her inside, so smiley, so happy, so vaguely confused as to where the mountain on the other side of the lake has gone. Little does she know it is right behind her! This will truly be my greatest - wait, what on earth is [i]that[/i]?

I turn my head around and fix my gaze on a little foxgirl with white fur, black ear and tail tufts, and big bright teal eyes. She has a sword the size of her body and has pressed it up against the base of my ninth tail. Seeing my look she hides the blade behind her back and giggles nervously. 

"Little two tail!" say I in my most mysterious voice! "Whatsoever do you think you are doing?"
"It's not fair!" she said, immediately bursting into tears. This one has a bright future ahead of her. "I tried so hard to earn my third tail! I came so close! I bought and sold princesses, almost made away with the treasury of the Sky Castle, it's not [i]my[/i] fault that there were dragons."
"Those seem like awfully ambitious plays for a little two-tail," I say with my voice full of Judgement.
She nods tearfully. "I can't help it. All I want is to be the greatest kitsune who ever lived! I can't accept second best from myself, is that so wrong?"
"You must be if your path to your third tail goes through my ninth," I say, Disapprovingly. She hangs her head in shame.
"It was only because your tail was the fluffiest and most magnificent I'd ever seen," she said. "When you think about it, it practically hypnotized me into stealing it. How can a little two-tail resist such brilliance as yours?"
I nod at this obviously correct assessment of the situation. She is really a magnificent fox. "My name is Damn Fox," I announce grandly. It is an old name, given to me by a human who was probably a king or something. 
"I am Cyanis," said she.
"I understand that your ambitions are bigger than your lips," I say. "You are not the first foxgirl to try to swallow more than she can chew. But I recognize your potential and will offer you this: Your third tail in exchange for the most precious possession of the anime known as Yue."

It's a test just as much as it is an opportunity for me to roll around on my back and kick my pawsies in the air for a little bit. When I stand up I've carved a huge swathe of destruction into the forest behind Yue's house. Another wicked surprise for my nemesis! But sooner than I expected I smell Cyanis sneaking back and again I restore myself to my dignified mountainous poise.

"What have you bought me?" I demand eagerly. "Have you stolen her infinite wealth? Her wolfish wife? Her tricky sister? Show me!"
"Damn Fox," said Cyanis. "I have bought you a fox."

And she holds within her hands a Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits. I know her immediately. I couldn't call myself a fox if I didn't recognize a Fluffybiscuits.

"A wise choice," I said. "There is nothing in this world more precious than a fox."
"Unfair!" said little Fluffybiscuits. "I was napping! And then she got me by the back of my neck and patted me so softly that I didn't even notice when she was wrapping me up in blankets! O Kitsune of the Mountain, jail for Cyanis! Jail for One Thousand Years!"
"Is this true?" I ask. "Did you sneak up on her while she was napping?"
"She snored and rolled over because the sunbeam had moved," said Cyanis. "That's not a nap, that's a doze."
"I demand Fox Justice!" said Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits.

And then for the first time I open my eyes. Both of the smaller foxes go silent.

"Fox Justice?" said I. "Oh, little Fluffybiscuits. You are young and naive, even younger than Cyanis. To you Fox Justice is something you only ever apply to humans. You steal a sandwich from a human and you call that justice. A human wakes you from your nap and you mewl and bite and call that justice. But Fox Justice? True Fox Justice, for crimes between foxes? Let me show you what that truly means."

And then I bang my front pawsies on the ground!

There is a flash of light and the smell of fried tofu and the glittering magic of Transformation, which turns dreams into girls.

And then when it is done there are [i]two[/i] foxgirls before me. One with two tails, and one with three.

"Cyanis," I say smugly, "for the theft of the anime Yue's most precious possession on my behalf, I have awarded you with your third tail. But as punishment for sneaking up on a fox who was napping I have also gifted a tail to Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits. She is free to pursue her fox vendetta against you until the stars go out."

"I'm a girl!" squeaked Fluffybiscuits, wrapping her tails around her body for modesty. "You made me a girl!"
"I granted your secret wish, little Fluffybiscuits," I say. "It is you who will be my spy inside the house of my hated rival. It is you who will lead me to her larder and help me dig holes in her front yard! You have to do what I say, I have more tails, that's Fox Law probably," it wasn't, but one of the advantages of foxes is that they're all sillyheads who are bad at math and intimidated by large numbers. 
Katherine's eyes nervously watch my tails, contemplating their sheer fluffiness. Then she stands up bravely. "I won't betray Yue! I am a fox of honour, and she -"
"I'll let you rummage through the pantry," I say. 
Her resistance crumbles immediately. But her attempt was honestly very admirable! That put her in the top two percent of foxes! "And climb on the counter?" she adds.
"Sure!" I say, grinning and wagging my tails.
"Then what shall we do first?" she said, eagerness creeping into her voice. And that was always the thing about fox wishes, wasn't it? When you grant them they protest and blush and proclaim their innocence and purity and how terrible the foxes were for forcing this terrible fate upon them... and then five minutes later it's all swaying hips and [i]'I may as well'[/i]s.

"First?" I ask. "First, tell me the story of how this sun farmer grew strong enough to challenge me!"