Rowena

She is the main protagonist in *Rivals*. She is a fox who strikes up a permanent rivalry with a donkey named Marta.

## **Physical Appearance**

Her disguised form is a large, muscular anthropomorphic fox with reddish-orange fur, long ears and black feet. Her upper body resembles a woman's, complete with curves and opposable thumbs on her clawed, black-colored hands. The top of her head is black. She has a long, bushy, swiping, black-tipped tail, yellow eyes, and a white muzzle connected to a white underbelly. There is black fur around her eyes that stretches up to her black ears; a black stripe on the bridge of her nose connects to the black fur on the top of her head. She has two black dorsal stripes: one running down her back, and one running across her shoulders; these intersect at her shoulder blades to form a cross shape on her back.

Her true form is a massive Kitsune with nine longer, bushier tails and a black outline around her mouth.

She retains her coloring when shapeshifting.

## ***Rivals***

### **Chapter 1: Escape From the Fur Farm**

Synopsis: Rowena, who is one of many foxes on a fur farm in the countryside, escapes in the hopes of starting a new life. She lets out all the other foxes in the process, resulting in the farm's owner, afraid of losing his only source of income, putting a bounty on her head. Lying that Rowena is rabid, he sends animal control authorities after her, but she quickly outruns them and escapes into a forest, where she temporarily makes her home. However, her rest period is short-lived when many hunters arrive with dogs and traps, wanting to catch her for the bounty.

### **Chapter 2: Keep Running**

Synopsis: Rowena is continually chased by the hunters and their dogs. However, she outsmarts both the humans and dogs every time by springing traps and leading the hounds on wild chases. All the hunters give up on the pursuit except for a young woman named Alice along with her pack of hunting dogs.

### **Chapter 3: The Fox and the Hound**

Synopsis: Alice and her dogs pursue Rowena in a lengthy game of cat-and-mouse. Rowena, tired of running, leads her pursuers onto a train track while a train is coming and waits to jump to safety until the last minute. Three of Alice's nine dogs are hit and killed by the train, and Alice, vowing vengeance, trains her remaining six dogs to ignore all other target animals besides Rowena. The chase continues, with Alice trying several different hunting methods to catch Rowena and the fox always escaping in the end. A few days later, Rowena leads Alice's pack into wolf-infested forests; the fox watches from a tree as five of the dogs are attacked and killed by the ravenous wolves, with Alice and her favorite dog Mia, a German Shepherd, narrowly avoid death themselves. Even more livid now that almost her entire pack is dead, Alice and Mia relentlessly hunt Rowena for a whole night into the next morning. Having had enough, Rowena leads the two to the edge of a cliff. Alice, having lost her rifle in the wolf encounter, tries to shoot Rowena with her pistol, but Rowena skillfully dodges, and the woman accidentally shoots Mia instead. Rowena then pushes the wounded Mia off the cliff, prompting Alice to run over to save her. While Alice is struggling to pull Mia back onto the cliff due to the dog's obesity, Rowena walks up behind the woman and kicks her off the edge, sending both her and Mia falling to their deaths. Wanting to get as far away from other hunters as possible, Rowena travels to a large animal farm and goes into the main barn, where she collapses from exhaustion.

### **Chapter 4: Donkey Problems**

Synopsis: Rowena manages to rest undisturbed for a few days until a large herd of donkeys enters the barn and starts causing problems for her. Marta, an immature female, antagonizes Rowena enough to start chasing her. However, a starving Rowena catches her and is about to kill her for food when the farm's owner, a man named Joshua, intervenes and decides to take Rowena in. For the next two weeks, he nurses the fox back to health, during which she strikes up a rivalry with Marta. Months later, things take a turn for the worse when Joshua starts letting Marta and some of the other donkeys into his house. One day, Rowena unwittingly causes a fight between Marta and some other members of her herd by tossing vegetables on the floor while searching for meat; she ends up being dragged into the fight herself, leading to her and her rival completely trashing the house. This results in Joshua evicting both Marta and Rowena from the farm as punishment, with the man threatening to shoot them if they ever return. To Rowena's delight, it also results in Marta being banished from her aunt's herd. Rowena and Marta blame each other for what happened and start fighting again, only to halt at the sound of Joshua firing his rifle as a warning to leave. Not wanting to die at the hands of the man who helped her months earlier, Rowena obliges. Still seeing Marta as food, Rowena chases her off the farm and into the woods, where fox and donkey find new ways to outwit each other as predator and prey.

### **Chapter 5: City Chase**

Synopsis: Rowena and Marta continue their chase out of the woods and into a large, densely populated city. There, they wreak total havoc, being oblivious to their surroundings and destroying everything in their path; as they do so, Rowena tries to catch and kill Marta several times, but fails. When animal control officers are sent after them both, they try to escape whilst still fighting and chasing each other. However, they're quickly captured and contained before being sent to an animal shelter for large fauna.

### **Chapter 6: Shelter Helter-Skelter**

Synopsis: While imprisoned in a room with other carnivores, Rowena, wanting to finish her fight with Marta, figures out how to lure in humans who feed the animals so they'll unlock the cage door. When a shelter worker arrives to feed her, she knocks him unconscious and takes the key to her cage. She frees herself and soon does the same for the other carnivores, who return the favor by attacking the other workers, who learned of her true form, when they try to recapture the fox. Rowena searches for Marta and finds her trapped in another room with other ungulates. The fox prepares to kill the donkey by readying a Power Sphere; however, a few shelter workers enter the room and tackle her, causing her to accidentally fire her attack elsewhere. The Sphere blows off the top of Marta's cage, allowing her to jump out and escape. Rowena sees her foe running, kills her assailants, and runs after her. The fox chases the donkey out of the shelter.

### **Chapter 7: Unexpected Trouble**

Synopsis: While still pursuing her prey, Rowena finds that the city's residents fear her so much they want her dead when they start shooting at her with guns. She switches to her true form and decimates her assailants before resuming her hunt. Just as she is about to catch Marta, however, Rowena meets army tanks and a massive mob of angry people armed with several kinds of weapons, distracting her. Some of the people in the mob take her distraction as a chance to rescue Marta. Realizing she could die in this situation, Rowena decides to stop the fight with Marta and retreats. The people drive her out of the city, causing her to jump into the river near the city's southern border and swim away to safety.

## **Relationships**

### **Marta**

Marta is Rowena's archenemy and therefore is always fighting with her.