Kyubi no Shojo – The Girl With Nine Tails

The Girl With Nine Tails was a daughter of one of the earliest emperors of Takani. She was caught one day in a stable with one of the palace’s cooks whom she had fallen deeply in love with. Called a harlot and branded dishonourable, her father had her taken to a haunted forest fifty miles away and cast into its depths in hopes she would perish there. His wish came true, but in a way he would not expect. For in that forest the young princess witnessed a magnificent Fox Spirit do battle with a hulking demon – seeing the Fox almost slain she ran to intervene, stabbing at the demon with a sharpened stick she had made to protect herself.

The demon reeled and turned, slaying the girl with a single blow, but giving the fox enough time to gain an upper hand, clenching its teeth down on the demon’s neck and killing it. The Fox looked over the dying body of the hapless girl, and in a selfless act, entwined itself with her, saving her from certain death. It saw the misery and pain she had endured, and the heartbreak. The two were then one, though within still very much two and often the personality of the Fox would become dominant in their outward personality, and other times the girl would be the more dominant of the two.

In her first act of vengeance, the Girl With Nine Tails smote a curse on her father and brothers so that none would ever bare children in their lives, but sparing her sisters. She then became a well renowned and worshipped spirit among many, and the ancestral guardian to the families of her sisters. She became known as a symbol of beauty and fertility, but also cunning and luck to those who needed it most. Notably she also is one of the few remaining spirits left to guide the Spirit Samurai in the physical world as the others retreat into the depths of Yomi in hopes of finding a hiding place from the Oni as they overtake the Spirit and Physical Worlds.