Hello, I hope you enjoy! Flames will be ignored or scathingly mocked. Constructive criticism is welcome.
Chapter 1:
He watched his dear friend and love sleep. The moonlight struck her face at such an angle to make it seem other-worldly, but also accentuating the deep shadows that sorrows had left underneath her thick, resting eyelashes. Nobara was no longer the rough-around-the-edges, I'm-daddy's-little-tomboy he had wrestled with in their toddler years, though that part of her certainly still existed. But neither was she tall, elegant, with an over-whelming aura. She was so small, curled up underneath his leather jacket, big enough to be a tent for two of her. That was why Kinta protected her.
In comparison to her body size, she had long, but not overly thin, limbs, and incredibly large foxy, black-tipped ears. But they looked right on her. They matched her overwhelmingly large, upward-tilted, unseeing eyes, made so by that murderer. The spell they had never found in the countless libraries they visited, let alone any way to reverse it. More breathtaking than the whites where her pupils were supposed to be was the sheer inner strength and intelligence that emanated from them.
Nobara's cheekbones were elegantly high, yet slightly sharp, because of her hollow cheeks, created by a hard life and even harder people. Her brow was quite a noble shape, following in the vixen genes, below them her soot-black lashes fanned out and her lips were small, yet full, also following the fox bloodline. Between them rested a small, delicately straight nose, barely upturned at the tip.
Kinta would never tire of looking at her.
Turning the admiring gaze towards the moon, who had given him the light to see this beauty in the dilapidated, abandoned warehouse that they had taken over after the murders, a rough period he preferred not to think back on. The moon stuck him as it had her, lighting up his sharp cheekbones and narrow, masculine chin, and illuminating his incredibly dark eyes, and long, straight lashes. Kinta's nose was long and straight, but not too masculine. His brow was strong, but not overwhelming, and at night, his hair seemed more blue than black. Kinta was not to be called "string-bean pup" anymore. Standing at six feet eleven inches and counting, from the tips of his three-inch wolf ears, to the bottom of his bare feet, his muscled, lean, frame made quite an intimidating figure. Because of his sharp, vicious-looking, and tantalizingly, untouchably, handsome, exterior, people left him and Nobara alone, something he didn't want to change. That was why only Nobara knew that he was an overgrown puppy on the inside, and had a soft spot in his heart for little children, kittens, and cooking. But you don't know that.
No one but him knew that Nobara was blind. Thanks to her huge ears, and the subtraction of one of her senses, she could hear near-super-sonically, and could tell where walls and people were because of echoes and heartbeats. Her sense of touch had been heightened so that she could even feel where the lines were on her paper, and even the fine print in their textbooks. Not that Nobara would ever ask him not to tell anyone, she was much too proud for that. Despite her five-foot-flat frame, and seemingly frail exterior, she was fast and spirited. Faster than most regular full blooded fox demons would ever hope to dream to be. When she moved at her great speed, as she was likely to do in gym, to annoy the females who already hated her(she liked to live on the edge), her wildly curling, silky, deep, blood-drenched red with a coppery sheen hair would fly behind her, barely contained by the tight braid that stretched to nearly her knees. Nobara's braid was doubled upon itself in said long braid. Vixen hair grew long and fast, on the head at least. Kitsune did not have hair anywhere else on their bodies except their hair and eyebrows and eyelashes, according to Nobara.
During one of the few times when she moved at her top speed, Nobara would actually disappear from sight, leaving the barest after-image where she began.
Enough mooning, Kinta thought. Tomorrow would be a long day. He would need all the strength he had, as usual.
Tomorrow was school. High School to be exact. Nobara and Kinta were the only half demons in the school, and even the community. With their tenth year looming, and the warehouse on the destruction list, they had to move. All the preparations were made, and all they had to do was find a new home, new jobs, go to a new school, and dodge the gangs of demons and humans that would attack them. That was easy compared to what they had grown up with in the ten years since their parents' death.
The case of the two couples had been filed as cold almost immediately. Adoption homes squealed 'Full!', and the six and seven year old were out on the streets, separated from their only other childhood friend. Being half demons, they went into survival mode and did just that. They remained alive. Now at sixteen and seventeen, Kinta was working five different jobs, and Nobara working four, they lived still, always together. Kinta didn't want that to change, ever.
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InuYasha Takahashi was tired. Tired of fighting, tired of life, and tired. Life had become a constant battle for him. At Inspiron High School, there were too many people, two thousand two hundred to be exact, not including the staff and people suspended. Of those twenty-two hundred, about ninety-nine percent hated him, and seventy-five percent of that showed it physically. But no matter what they did, they couldn't make him leave, even for one day. He rubbed his existence in their loathing faces every single day, proving to them that he was not weak, and only making them hate him even worse. The other one percent just didn't care. Those were the teachers.
Human girls were afraid of him. He didn't know why in the hell they were. They could walk up and talk to full-blooded demon males, but they couldn't do that with a half-breed. Maybe it was because he glared at them whenever they would look at him, but that couldn't be it. Not owning a mirror, he had no idea that they were admiring him. Standing at about six foot one, he wasn't overly tall, but tall enough. The elegant shape of his brow and cheekbones, coupled with the shock of long silver hair and striking golden-amber eyes was enough to make all of the girls in the school swoon and sigh, secretly, of course. What made the girls squeal mentally were the two silver ears with pink insides, nestled comfortably in the thick moon-white locks that draped over his molten-gold peepers.
Plodding up the listless gray stone steps, he walked into his hell, made of gray and cream stone walls, and the devils in it were certainly real. He didn't hear or didn't react or both to the jeers and taunts thrown at him. InuYasha was too tired to feel or react. He could barely live. He was now a shell of a being, and he was washed up, high and dry on the beach of life. If he wanted to call it that. There was so much hate and hurt that was taking up residence in the hollow that his dead family had left, and he didn't know what to do about it. So he stopped feeling it. Stopped feeling everything actually, except for the most basic of instincts, like hunger and exhaustion. Other than those, determination, anger, and despair took up whatever holes they could find in his rather dilapidated heart.
He had lied about his age and now was working for a delivery company at night, which paid pretty well, if you didn't count going a week without sleeping(exhaustion didn't go away). He made enough to pay for an apartment about the size of a closet, but heating and laundry was included and it didn't leak.
InuYasha continued to stride to his locker, carefully putting in the combination with razor half-inch-long talons. Snatching the books and a random pencil or two, he made a beeline for his homeroom. That was the easiest class of the day to deal with, as all of the physical haters were still sleepy and those who weren't just didn't give a damn at the time.
Three people in his homeroom were confusing to him. Two girls and a boy, to be exact. The boy was a couple inches taller than InuYasha (six foot three), human, with odd eyes. A deep, deep blue that made all the girls blush and swoon idiotically. Except the two odd ones of course. His main color of choice seemed to be a dark blue or purple for a shirt, and always loose – not baggy – blue jeans. On his small, insensitive ears were golden hoops, two in the left, and one on the right. The teen's hair at first glance seemed black, but really it was an extremely dark, unruly brown that was kept in a tiny ponytail at the nape of his neck. The boy was equal to InuYasha when it came to being good looking, but his face was narrower than InuYasha, his eyes were smaller, and his brows were not as strong. His body build was less stocky than InuYasha, more lithe then brawny. Still, he looked like he'd be dangerous for any other human to take on.
The first girl was tallish. Some female demons didn't reach that height, five foot ten. She seemed to be the quiet thinker of the trio. Her hair was not as dark as the boy's, and was normally kept long and down, straight locks resting all the way down to her behind, which the boy seemed to always have a particular interest in. She was beautiful outwardly, with semi-large, medium brown eyes resting above angled cheekbones, which then slanted down into a slightly sharp chin, where a ruby mouth carved with a jeweler's precision was planted perfectly. Her bone structure was thin, but riddled with hard feminine muscle all the way down to her extremely trim, almost bony ankles. InuYasha wasn't sure if the insides were as beautiful, and he was running out of excuses to not go and talk to them to find out what they were really like. Her normal dress was light colored blue jeans and different colored shirt, though most often red.
If the first girl was the Amazon, the second girl was the Angel. InuYasha couldn't figure out another way to describe her, and that bugged him. Her hair went halfway down her back, in pure black waves, not a touch of brown or blue in any of the inky strands. Her eyes at a first glance seemed brown, but on further inspection, one found that they were more hazel than brown, with the tiny bubbles of gray and blue floating along the surface of the chocolate ocean. Her cheekbones were high enough to be aristocratic-looking, but her cheeks were round enough to give her cherubic features. She was shorter and curvier than the tall girl, but not flabby or fat in any way. At five foot six, she was petite framed and delicate-looking. Despite the ordinary clothes she wore, which varied from capris to pants to tee-shirts to button-ups, she seemed a steady sort of girl, but was prone to worry excessively, and acted as the mother figure, but without the world-wiseness. Naturally cheerful, her smile would lighten up her friends no matter how the day was going. It always cheered him up, too, and that irked him to no end.
InuYasha was catching snippets of the 'curious trio's conversation while he was sitting in the back of the room. It was about normal, innocent stuff, what homework did they have and for what classes, which band was better, normal stuff. Every once in a while during the years that they had been homeroom classmates, if one of them caught him staring off into space their way( he would never admit that he was staring at them and wondering what their wonderful lives were like ), that one of the trio would smile at him. That's what made them so curious. The smaller girl was the weirdest, as she smiled at him almost every day.
Kagome always felt so guilty when she walked into homeroom and saw him there. He was always so serious, brooding over whatever it was he constantly thought about. When Kagome smiled at him is frown sunk from mulling to confusion. He didn't understand the simple gesture, it was alien to him, and it looked like money was, too. His one pair of jeans were more than a bit too short, his shoulders a bit too broad for his two tee- shirts, their threadbare colors undistinguishable, thanks to many years of rough wear.
Now Kagome was just as susceptible to hotness as the next girl, but the other girls in school, excluding her best friend, just wanted him to be a boy-toy. None of them really seemed to care when he was beaten up and limping when he came to school some mornings, except for the fact that his face was marred. Kagome always wanted to cry when she saw him like that, or at least give him some ice. Perhaps both, she didn't know.
All of the sleepy, brooding, and annoyed hormone-infested human and demon-like creatures were snapped into full awareness when their morning-person of a homeroom teacher rapped a wooden ruler on her dilapidated desk. However, about ninety-five percent of that awareness was lost as soon as she started talking.
But all one-hundred percent of the awareness was regained when two unusual people walked in through the classroom door.
Every living being in the room stared at the two half demons. (Demon whispers carried far in homeroom.) Like InuYasha, it seemed that they were immune to new and/or clean clothes.
Kagome could practically feel the mental squeals of all the sexual-hormone-infested girls as the boy stood in front of them. He was more than tall. He was huge, looking to be about seven feet tall, and had to scrunch through the door. He looked like some Olympian God of war or night, with his shoulders practically bursting out of his rugged leather jacket, and with his legs that were so long and lean. He looked like he could take on all of the demons in the school and win, maybe not by much, but still, Kagome thought with a shudder. His face, with its large, almond-shaped, dark, dark, eyes, high, strong cheekbones, and perfectly masculine chin, InuYasha had competition in the looks department.
Perhaps the most astonishing features of this boy were his hands. They proved the fact that there was wolf demon blood in him. Like wolves had uncommonly large paws, some wolf demons had large hands and feet. He could hold the girl beside him comfortably in his large, deadly hands.
Said girl looked so tiny next to her giant companion. Large, milky-light blue, beautiful eyes stared at each and every one of the teens in the homeroom, below lashes so long and black; there was no way mascara could have been used. While both of them looked scrawny, her thin-ness was only enhanced by the baggy pair of jeans that she wore and the large shirt of no particular color that was obviously a hand-me-down from the boy next to her.
Her face was fine-boned and eerily, heart-wrenchingly, beautiful, but there were shadows beneath her eyes and cheekbones. Her skin was barely darker than moon-white, and reminded several of the boys of moonlit silk. Her hands, unlike the boy's, were small, long-fingered, with delicate white claws tipping the ends.
While her hair reminded Kagome of ringlets of ivy dipped in blood and then misted with molten copper, and reached nearly to her knees in its thick, long braid, her companion's was stick-straight and rested in blue-black strands to the nape of his neck. From her wild bangs that nearly covered her beautifully frightening eyes, her two coppery, fox-like ears rose and twitched to every little noise, while from his stick-straight bangs that were parted just slightly, his two long, slender ears rested, still.
Though their mesmerizing faces remained still, and their body positions seemed relaxed, everything swirling in their eyes was growling aggression. That was when Kagome noticed something about the girl's eyes. They held no pupil, and reflected no light.
The boy's eyes on the other hand, were so dark that no one could really tell what color they were, and a strange light gleamed from within them, but it wasn't from the cheap florescent lights of the room either. Miroku shuddered. After examining the two new-comers, the randomly assembled teens paid some attention to what their annoyingly bubbly teach was saying;
"Nobara-bibushi Takani and Kinta Yoshiro have just moved here from the other side of Tokyo, class. Say hello." Some mumbled assent from the class was given, and an awkward silence consumed the room. Then the boy, Kinta looked right at InuYasha and gaped unabashedly.
"InuYasha? Long time no see." Nobara had smelled him almost immediately, and she snickered mentally at her inward black humor. It had been a long time since she had seen anybody.
Nobara-bibushi's voice was not what Kagome or InuYasha were expecting. Instead of a high, soft, vulnerable voice, or a sultry, mysterious one, this girl had a strong, elegantly musical voice with more than a hint of stubborn mischievousness. InuYasha smiled inwardly. So his childhood partner in crime hadn't gotten bit by the girly bug. Good.
Without further ado, the teacher assigned them seats and arranged the tables so that InuYasha, the three odd ones, and the two newbies were sitting at one table. Again with the awkward silences, Nobara mused. The rustle of cloth told her that the girl beside her had turned to look at her, and the slight, almost silent 'pap, pap' of her blinking eyes told her that she was curious.
Desperate to make conversation, Kagome turned to the tiniest demon she had ever seen, she looked like she was a rose petal's width under five feet, and asked a simple question. "You have such a pretty name, Nobara. Is that a family name, or were your parents original?"
Nobara could not believe her super-sonic ears. No one… no one, excluding Kinta, had ever even spoken to her for anything except insults or commands. Getting her self back on her mental feet, she said shakily, in the direction of the girl's heart beat, "Yes, it is. Since I am part fox demon, it only fits that my name means wild-or briar-rose, fire-warrior."
For the first time in ten years, she said something with a smile to someone other than Kinta.
InuYasha turned to Kinta, with something close to friendship in his eyes, that particular emotion had vanished after their separation. "Where did you get that jacket? I didn't think they made them that big." With Kinta's answer, Kagome discovered what all those romance novels meant by a velvet thunder voice. How could someone in the tenth grade have that sort of voice? Then again, InuYasha's was rather sexily husky, too. Mentally slapping her self, she listened to Kinta's answer.
"They don't, I found it at goodwill. You can't call me 'string bean' anymore, can you?" In his awkward, shy smile, that didn't quite reach the dark, sad eyes, the tips of the largest fangs Sango had ever seen were revealed to them. The muscles of his face didn't seem to quite remember how to make the tensions necessary to create a proper smile. His hands were hidden in his lap, while Nobara rested hers on the table, openly flexing her claws luxuriously. While Kinta and InuYasha had completely pearl-colored claws, Nobara's just looked like extremely thick (and sharp) human nails.
"So, InuYasha. What has been going on with you these past ten years?" Nobara cut to the chase quickly. It seemed like their arrival had aroused some of the stronger demons, who were quickly smelling of a kind of demented sort of joy and anticipation. It didn't take half an idiot with half a brain to figure out what they were thinking. And Nobara was certainly more intelligent than that. And certainly smarter and faster than them.
Nobara wasn't scared. It was true. She never feared for her life or her safety anymore, Only for Kinta's. Everything that could have happened to her had, except for rape. And that was only thanks to Kinta. He attacked her attackers, and they pressed charges of physical assault. He missed a whole year of school even though he was proven innocent. Kinta took it all in stride, as was his way, even at fourteen years old. He didn't blame her, and refused to let her blame herself, even if she did offer to work late and then take the shortcut through the bad part of town.
Nobara had left the diner where she worked her last job at around three o' clock in the morning, a sleepy time for all thirteen-year-old girls, human, demon, or hanyou. At this point, all she wanted to do was get home, steal Kinta's huge leather jacket and curl up into dreamland, the one place where a blind thirteen-year-old girl did not have to work four different jobs, and transform into different people in between. Seriously, who would hire a scrawny half demon under sixteen? For this job, she was a cute little brunette with large brown eyes and freckles, similar to what her mother looked like, only with straight hair, and her pseudonym was 'Yuki Miko.'
Nobara was so tired. Being blind came a blessing at times like these, for she could close her burning eyes and it wouldn't make a damn difference. She walked, listening for anything that she possibly could, which wasn't a lot when her ears were human.
They came out of nowhere. They were some sort of reptile demon, she was too scared to really pay attention, and her mind was focused on other things like trying to get away and transform back that way she could beat the crap out of the creeps.
But there were too many. They held her arms and grabbed her ankles two or three of them whispered vile, repulsive things about what they were going to do to her while trying to get the waitress uniform off of her. Fear clogged through her veins, freezing any other thoughts except to scream for help. Which she did. Loudly. She felt the demons wince, but they didn't loosen their grip on her. One of them, one from school, covered her mouth with his hand, which was bitten repeatedly in an effort to protect her innocence and life.
Tears were leaking from the corners of her eyes, and her chances of getting away were slowly slipping away when she heard a blood-curdling howl that froze her attackers and sent shivers down the spines of all present.
It was Kinta. He was six-foot-seven at fourteen years old, thin and lanky, not quite filled out yet, but still dangerous. Relief flooded through all of Nobara, she was safe.
Then she felt his eyes. She could always feel them on her, but this… this was different.
If only Nobara knew what she had missed in her inescapable darkness. The once dark, kind eyes were the iciest blue imaginable, and the normally white area surrounding them was molten lava. The fangs were elongated, impairing his speech.
"Get away from her." The lethal claws were sharper than normal, and the very tone of his speech rose the fine hairs on the back of Nobara's neck. What happened next Nobara couldn't bear to think of even now. All she could remember were the horrible screams, and then she was being carried. She cried for the rest of that night, his soft crooning growl providing a backdrop for her near-hysterical sobs. Sometime before dawn she felt Kinta shudder and he looked at her with those sweet dark eyes for his, she could feel it, and she couldn't stop the fresh crop of tears from creating more tracks in the dirt smudged across her narrow cheeks. Kinta, being who he was, simply held her until she chased out all of her fears. Then he asked her what happened.
"Earth to puny carrot-top!" Inuyasha's husky voice brought Nobara out of her reverie. Plastering on an icy, sugary smile that made the hairs rise up on the back of Miroku's neck, she simply replied;
"Carrot's tops are green and my hair is red. Someone at this table needs to go back to primary school." InuYasha merely smirked back.
"I know. Kinta told me they sent you the letter yesterday, too bad. Now you have to miss out on my company for the rest of your high school career." Again that creepily sweet smile from Nobara.
"Keep on talking much longer and the paramedics will have to come to get your foot out of your mouth and your balls out of your ass." InuYasha and Nobara held their respective smiles for a moment longer, and then InuYasha spluttered out of his smirk into a crooked smile. Nobara's smile then turned into a real one, leaving the three humans at the table very confused.
"It's all right." Kinta watched the humans' brows furrow and quirk in puzzlement, so he supposed it would be a good idea to fill them in on how they knew each other. "Our mothers and fathers were best friends when they were growing up, so we were raised sort of like a litter. These two are particularly sadistic with their insult and threat contests they always used to have. It looks like they haven't changed much in the maturity department."
Sango examined the three half-demons that were seated at the table with her friends and herself. They didn't seem to be from the same sort of wolf, fox, or dog demons that went to this school. And she would know, her family was from a long line of demon exterminators, and used to be in law enforcement to help with problems concerning criminal demons. Amazingly, unlike her late family, Sango did not turn out racist against demons. She believed that there were good and bad people, just like there were good and bad demons. But what she couldn't help but wonder was whether InuYasha, Nobara, and Kinta were made from love or not. But then again, Kinta had said that their parents were friends, so she guessed they were made out of love. But what sort of species were their demon parents? They didn't look quite as animalistic as the other demons in the community. Some sort of sub-species? She had to ask, she just couldn't help it.
"Excuse me, but what… type of demon were your demon parents? I know they were fox, dog, and wolf, but…" Sango trailed off into quiet embarrassment.
"My father was a Great Fox Demon, InuYasha's was a Great Dog, and Kinta's was a Great Wolf." Nobara looked Sango defiantly dead in the eye while offering her explanation, daring Sango to call her a liar.
"Oh, I see." Sango looked at the three half-demons with new respect. They could be pitted against every full-grown demon in the school district, just the three of them, and if they released the blood rage that all great carnivore demons had, they could and would probably win without getting too much of a workout. It was said that the last three of each died… around ten years ago. Realization sucker-punched Sango in the gut. 'So, InuYasha. What's been going on with you these past ten years?' They were their children?
Again, Sango had to ask. "Would you tell me your fathers' names if I asked you?"
Nobara looked at Sango. "I will tell you my father's name, but I will leave Kinta's and InuYasha's to them." The pause was a brief one for Sango, but an eternity of gathering up her willpower for Nobara, to say the name of the person she had loved most in the world, aside from her Momma. "His name was Kitsoro Takani." The table was silent as the conversation took place, and Kagome was astounded at how Nobara was able to keep her voice idly cool while talking about the one person that stood out most in the heart of a little girl, the one now dead for Nobara.
"Touga Takahashi." InuYasha's voice was just on this side of harsh.
"Hiroshi Yoshiro." Kinta looked at Sango with kind eyes. "Now," he thrummed deeply, "Let's get the names and lives of our resident humans." His eyes twinkled, their darkness becoming less threatening, as Miroku, Sango, and Kagome first believed, and more like the sweet darkness of a soft, quiet slumber. Miroku cleared his throat.
"Well, let me see. I am in current training, due to my family's blatant disregard for my own wishes, and their obsession with tradition, to become a monk. Needless to say, I have the ability, but alas-" Sango stiffened and quickly slapped Miroku across the face.
"You lack the mind, you disgraceful pervert," Sango chose now to interrupt Miroku's annoying, though eloquent, speech at the same time he chose to get a feel on her ass. "He's currently being raised by his equally perverted grandfather, so any get-togethers are at Kagome's house." Kagome piped up.
"Which really sucks because Miroku's family is filthy rich, but I like to keep my butt as untouched as possible, so we don't go to Miroku's unless his grandfather's away on a trip." Kagome flashed a dimply grin, and continued. "My house is actually a shrine, so there's plenty of room for however many people we need to invite over. We even have five extra rooms in my house and six in the guest house, though right now it's off season."
As Kagome chattered amusingly on, about how her grandfather was not all there, and her mom was so relaxed about everything, and her little brother was constantly pestering them to come play soccer, she noticed something change in the faces, eyes, and auras of the half-demons. Nobara's face slowly evolved from polite interest, to vivid interest, and then settled on a sad, dreamy wistfulness. InuYasha was still just looking at her, smiling lightly in all the right places and times, but his eyes were somewhere else. She felt like- like he was looking through her and inside her at the same time. It was a bit alarming. Kinta was asking questions about this and that, and what exactly a shrine looked like from the inside.
"How about if you three come over on Friday?" Nobara blinked her eyes wide. Kinta looked at Nobara.
"I have to be at work at seven, and I don't think that I could even step inside a fucking shrine." Kagome crinkled the skin over her nose and in between her eyebrows.
"Well, if you don't want to come, you can just say so, you jerk. And, our shrine doesn't have ofuda everywhere, so anyone can come on the grounds!"
"Even if I could step inside, how do I know you haven't got them every where? And, why would I even want to come in there anyway?!" InuYasha rose to the challenge of a good, old-fashioned argument; it was much easier than facing five wolf demons. Physically, at least.
Said argument lasted until the end of homeroom; around ten minutes. In the end, Nobara, InuYasha, and Kinta were coming over for a couple of hours on Friday. The day of the conversation was Thursday.
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Sango and Kagome munched on potato chips while waiting for Miroku, InuYasha, Nobara, and Kinta to arrive. Sango cleared her throat,
"You do realize that the Great Fox Demons were the original canine demons, and they were the most powerful and the fastest of any carnivore demons?" Sango wanted her friend to know how dangerous their new acquaintances were.
"No, I didn't! Jeez, then that makes Nobara a literal super-girl!" Of course, Kagome was not fazed by the danger of Nobara losing her temper.
"Yes, but you see, the female Great Foxes are extremely rare." Sango paused, thinking of the best way to explain the million-year-old situation. "Let's put it this way: A male Great Fox is ten times faster and ten times more powerful than any other demon in his demonic power, while a female is equally powerful in her demonic power, she is ten times faster than a male Great Fox. To basically put it, Nobara, when she hasn't lost control of herself, could easily destroy any other demon in the world." Kagome was silent for a moment.
"She wouldn't do that, though. And her attitude about herself… it's almost like she's in a wheelchair, but not really, almost as if… she's sitting in a wheelchair insisting that she is walking." Kagome sighed. "I think she's lost something besides her family, something that she wants to hide…" Sango listened, and pondered Kagome's observation. Realization was beating Sango upside the head, but she couldn't figure out why.
"Her eyes." Sango whispered. "But it can't be that she's blind, she wrote everything down in our History class, albeit a little sloppy, and she reads with her fingers on pages, but she does read…." Kagome's head jerked up at Sango's words.
"But, don't demons have senses ten times more powerful than humans? Doesn't that include-" DING!" Kagome launched out of her room to answer the door, leaving Sango to her thoughts.
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Nobara trotted alongside Kinta's long, luxurious strides and InuYasha's strong, purposeful ones. The night before, they had agreed to move into InuYasha's apartment together, even though to say it was cramped would have been the understatement of the year; Kinta could barely turn around, and had to lean against the wall to sleep. But it was warm and dry, and now all three of them were chipping in to the cheap rent (Nobara and Kinta had found new jobs at InuYasha's work), so they all had a little money to spare for shampoo and conditioner, and Nobara and Kinta took actual showers for the first time in months, not just a rinse-off to keep from stinking.
Nobara was anxious to see the inside of the shrine, nervousness and excitement skittering along the outskirts of her brain, but curiosity reigned supreme in her mind, as it always had. She did not know what to expect when she went to Kagome's house. What would they do? InuYasha, Kinta, and Nobara hadn't played any of the games that normal teenagers giggled over, but Kagome was very kind, and certainly trustworthy. In fact, Nobara, being mischievous, conniving fox she was, had already started to devise a plan to 'push' InuYasha towards a relationship with her, once Nobara was sure that Kagome wouldn't be repulsed by it. And the other girl, Sango, while Kagome had to grow on Nobara, she liked Sango immediately. Sango had what fox demons merely called the bushindo. She had a warrior's heart. Kagome did as well, but it was not as conspicuous behind her dimples and kind eyes. She hoped said eyes and smile would be enough to peel away the defensive layers around their hearts that had been erected the night of their parents' deaths. She really needed a friend that she and Kinta could trust.
InuYasha examined the shrine grounds. It was just like he imagined; everything had a place here, the trees that surrounded the house and guest house were tall, and creaked their branches at the three exhausted souls that were headed towards the main house. The perfectly worn away dirt paths between the various buildings reminded him of his childhood home in the country, with him, Nobara, and Kinta all helping each other into and out of trouble. Although, truth be told, he and Nobara were the ones getting everyone into trouble, and Nobara was the one who talked them all out of it. Kinta was just there with them, and sometimes even took the brunt of the punishment.
They were at the door. Kinta did not seem afraid, or even nervous, so he was the one that knocked. No answer.
"Try the bell." Nobara reached over and slightly up, with some direction from Kinta, and pushed what turned out to be the loudest, most heinous, doorbell any of them had ever had the displeasure of hearing. Nobara let out a surprised "yie!!!" and nearly fell to the floor in her pain. InuYasha grimaced in his extreme discomfort, as did Kinta. They had to talk to her about that doorbell.
The door, creaking on its old hinges, flew open. Kagome stood there, panting slightly, and a confused look came to her face at the grimaces on her guests' faces. Then realization struck.
"Oh! I forgot to tell you! Don't use that one! My grandfather can barely hear, and that's the one his friends always use."
InuYasha looked livid. "Thank you for the warning." He barely managed to keep his voice level. Gods above! What was wrong with this wench! First she forces him to come to her home, a death-trap for any with demon blood in them, then she leaves the most ridiculously loud and ear-splitting excuse for a doorbell out, and then she just calmly invites them in like she's done nothing wrong! Damn! InuYasha's thoughts trailed off into quiet aggravation as he walked into the old house.
It was a nice sort of old house. Kinta thought so, anyway. The kind that creaked and moaned quietly and kindly, as if to tell its residents that they were being watched over. He thought of his old home with his mom and dad. He supposed he was just as big as his dad was, but he was still growing. He could thank his mother for the extra couple of inches. In her bare feet, his human mother was six-foot-two. He couldn't remember his father's exact height, but remembered that he looked a spitting image of him, without the ears, of course. He hoped he wasn't going to be one of those giants that had documentaries made of them on the Discovery Channel. That would certainly make talking to any normal-sized person… awkward.
Speaking of awkward, all of the teens present were assembled in the Higurashi living room.
"Do you guys want to watch a movie? We don't normally wait for Miroku, since most of the movies were stolen from him." Kagome was trying to ease the tension in the room. None of it was a bad sort of tension, but still… if she didn't do something quick, everyone would probably suffer tomato-face syndrome before you could even say 'Hunt's Ketchup.'
"That sounds fine, thank you. Just pick one, any will do." Nobara was just as eager to get rid of this silence as Kagome was. As Kagome ruffled through the movie collection, Sango couldn't help but notice Nobara didn't take her shoes off at the door. That wasn't nice of her, thought Sango, her brows drawing together in indignation.
As if on cue, Nobara took a step forward and showed delicate, pale, clawed toes. She didn't have any shoes. None at all. Not even socks. Sango felt her chest tighten, and immediately felt guilty about her previous thoughts. Obviously the three hanyou in front of them had been raised with manners, so of course they would take off their shoes if they had any. Nobara continued to walk forward, saying to Kagome,
"Do you mind if I peek around?" Nobara's face radiated curiosity, and the slight pleading note was not missed by the Matrix-hunting teenager. But what she did miss was the triumphant smirk of a sneaky vixen when she received her desired answer.
"Not at all. There may be a few sutras lying around, though, so be careful."
She was gone.
Nobara had grown up in a house like this one, and she loved the smells of well-worn wood, loved the delicate creaks and moans as her slight weight ghosted across them, reveled in discovering the secrets of times long ago and not so long ago, and wished with all her heart that she could see every last nook and cranny.
Kinta cleared his throat, as Sango and Kagome blinked in slight surprise at Nobara's quick disappearance. "She's always like that in new places, especially old places. May I go with her?"
"Of course. Sango, why don't you give them a tour while I get all the snacks and stuff, okay?" Kagome was really getting frustrated with the elusive movie.
"Okay. Kinta, do you know where Nobara went?" Sango really had no clue which way Nobara had gone.
"This way." Kinta pointed to the kitchen. And off they went.
At first the silence was awkward for Sango. She was a little bit intimidated by him, and to be quite frank, didn't know whether she like any of the hanyou that had been unceremoniously dropped on their little group yet. Of course she pitied them, but that wasn't the same thing. But that was just how she was. She was slow to decide whether she was your friend or not, but when she did, you were stuck with her forever.
"Does Nobara have any shoes?" Sango blurted out. She immediately wished that she could take back the words.
"No. But we're saving up to buy some. Her feet can't take much more." Kinta looked like this was a subject that had been bothering him for some time now.
"What do you mean?"
"Fox demons, females in particular, have very delicate feet, almost as fragile, if not more than, human feet. She also has thin 'vixen bones', and her feet are constantly giving her trouble at the end of the day." Kinta was attempting at conversation with the demon-slayer, but didn't know if he would be accepted or not. Obviously this girl didn't like him romantically, so maybe she was just a little shy, like him.
"Oh." Sango paused, seemingly thinking about something. "I think I may still have some of my little brother's shoes at home, but they might be too big. Nobara's so tiny."
Kinta crinkled up the corners of his eyes. "Yes, but she doesn't know it. She thinks that she's the biggest one out there. Thank you." He paused, wondering if he should tell a rather comical story from their childhood, and decided that there had to be some time to break the ice. "I remember one time, when InuYasha, Nobara, and I were very small; some bullies at the school were picking on her. Some of the girls that liked her came to get InuYasha and me, since our first-grade class was having lunch. We rushed out into the playground, and would you believe that Nobara had every single one of the second grade bullies sitting on the ground and crying? Now you have to remember that when she was in kindergarten, she was the size of most three- and four-year-olds. That little episode didn't really do much to deflate her ego, especially since Mr. Kitsoro told her how proud he was, and refused to let her be punished for defending herself."
Sango giggled. She could just see a whole bunch of little second-grade bullies trembling in fear of a tiny three-year-old with vivid red hair. She couldn't imagine Kinta or InuYasha being that small, though. The Guest Hall opened rather abruptly into the main lobby for guests. A grand piano rested, white against the polished hard-wood floor, in front of several traditional Japanese tables, all set with teacups, and a centerpiece on each with delicate flowers.
"That is beautiful." Kinta wasn't talking about the lobby itself, but about the piano. Without another word to Sango, he seated himself onto the piano bench and allowed memory to take hold of his mind.
He was seven years old that day. It was his birthday, and every year on his birthday, Kinta and his mother would spend from seven o' clock in the morning to one o' clock in the afternoon seated together on the bench of their baby grand. No particular song ever spilled from the ivory and ebony keys, but music would be divulged in wonderful chords as his mother's thin, long, golden hands ghosted over his own small, child-like brown ones, and then would play a matching tune to whatever it was Kinta was playing.
Dad would always sit and listen to their small duets, always with his eyes closed, and would sometimes even go to sleep. Not that that ever happened much. Being the Father and the Male of the household, Hiroshi did not like to go to sleep unless both Kinta and Yuki were safe and asleep. Kinta remembered his father confiding this in him, and had never felt so proud of himself. "Kinta," he said, "Kinta, when you have a mate and a baby of your own, they become more important than anything else in the world." At the time, Kinta didn't understand. But he nodded seriously anyway, and ran onto the stool with Momma. He thought about what that must be like, to love someone more than anything, besides Dad and Momma, of course. He supposed it was the same, only Kinta wasn't married to Momma. And Momma and Dad always kissed whenever they saw each other. Yuck.
He began to play with clumsy child's hands that were much too big, and the melody floated up and around the Piano Room, soon joined by his mother's soft counter-melody.
The melody was created at his wonder of what that feeling of love must be like, since it was different from the way he loved his parents.
On Kinta's seventh birthday was the first day Yukiko, commonly called Yuki, Yoshiro moved her hands from the piano and allowed her beloved son to take the keys by himself. He had a talent for it, and more importantly, a love for it. The extemporaneous melody drew her into memories, the melody soft and soothing, and then passionate and powerful the next. She choked back happy tears.
Kinta saw it and stopped playing. "Momma?" he asked, worried.
"Nothing, sweetheart." She smiled. "It was so beautiful."
It had been ten years since he had touched a piano, but that made no difference to his hands. They began to play out the precious music from so long ago, the acoustics in the room enhancing and pulling the various notes to their full potential.
The claws that could kill so easily, large and deadly, were poised on fingers delicately and passionately dancing along the keys. Sango watched them idly race up and down, mouth agape.
Nobara heard it first, before anyone else in the shrine did, naturally. A piano. The melody was so familiar to her, and only one person she knew of could play like that. She raced off to know what was happening, naturally.
Sango saw Nobara materialize beside her, staring as well, but with more satisfaction than surprise. Sango wondered what that meant. She watched Kinta stare blankly at the music stand while his fingers pressed and created twirling, leaping melodies. He was lost in that piano, and the treasure of the song was found in its depths.
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Kagome wondered if InuYasha was even going to do anything. He was just standing in the middle of the room, watching her. It was annoying.
"Are you just going to stand there?" Kagome didn't mean to snap. She just hated being stared at. And her knees were beginning to hurt from kneeling on the floor, and she didn't really know how to act around the boy that had been beat up and ostracized for their whole school career.
"Maybe I'll help if you actually tell me what you're looking for." Smartass, as usual.
"The Matrix." Kagome really hoped that he would help. She was getting a little miffed at her inability.
Silently InuYasha walked over to where she was and plucked The Matrix right out of the floor cabinet, his tendons standing out starkly right in front of Kagome's eyes. Damn, he was in shape, alright. Not a good idea to piss him off. Even though it was starting to be fun.
"Here. Shit, you'd think that you were bli-" InuYasha broke off, ears twitching. They were very cute and small, so different from Nobara's satellites, and Kinta's long ones.
"Do you have a piano?"
"Yes, in the lobby, so Mom can hire entertainment sometimes during tourist season."
"C'mon." Without an explanation, InuYasha roughly grabbed Kagome's upper arm and proceeded to drag her to her feet and over to the door to the kitchen
"Hey! You can't just drag me around!" He ignored her. "Hey!"
Kagome continued to protest until InuYasha clapped a rough, tanned hand over her mouth and snapped "Shut up, wouldja?!" He paused. "Kinta used to play the piano with his mother all the frickin' time. It's probably him."
InuYasha remembered that particular melody. It was the last melody that he ever heard Kinta and Ms. Yuki play together. It was the last song that was created before he was separated from Nobara, Kinta and Sesshomaru. It was the last masterpiece before the end of his small, happy world.
"Wow, Mommy! Listen to them play!" InuYasha bounced ahead of his family, forgetting that his mother could not hear as well as he did. He couldn't wait for Kinta's birthday party, he always loved to sit and listen to the piano, and once Kinta was through, they would all play chase and tag, then settle down enough for delicious cake and ice cream.
"Slow down, baka." Sesshomaru, his older half-brother, was curt and quiet, but only family and close friends knew that it was to cover his rather odd personality. InuYasha rose to the challenge. Dad wouldn't stop them unless they actually went into the realm of physically harming each other.
"Shut up, stupid! You're just jealous 'cuz I'm faster."
"Oh, really?" And then Sesshomaru would race off and beat InuYasha. It happened every year. Theirs was a hate-love relationship. When they were standing next to each other, they hated each other. But when they were separated, they missed each other and sulked.
The party went as planned. Kinta loved his gifts, as usual. InuYasha couldn't even remember what he got for Kinta, but he remembered the joyful smiles of everyone around him as they watched excitement and wonder chase themselves across Kinta's seven-year-old face.
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