Yay! My first-ever story! Alright, this one is an Inuyasha fanfic, starring Sesshomaru and this OC. Since this is kind of and intro for Hazukashi (Hazukashii- "panther" in Japanese), Sesshomaru will be in Chapter Two. Just to make it clear.
Before I bore you, onwards to chapter One!
Rated T for blood, gore, and possible swearing.
Half-Demon is what I am.
I'm Hazukashi, and I don't go out into the open much. I stay hidden to my extent in the bushes. It is quite comfy in there, if, suppose, you were a daughter of a full panther demon and a human. If not, well, you might just feel a bunch of sticks and leaves up your butt.
Anyways. Seems pretty bland, right? I stalk day and night for nothing.
Actually, no. You are wrong there.
Some say I am bad. Some say I am good. It depends on how I feel.
By 'some', I mean humans.
If I'm in a good mood, I prance out into the open air and walk into villages. The silly humans fear me; they back away with scared faces, sometimes tripping over baskets or nets or whatever provisions they leave lying on the ground.
And I just smile at them, then stop at a child to give them some fresh fruit I picked. I don't eat very much, so I just leave leftovers in a little cloth bundle and hand them out to kids in the next random village I come across.
The children are happy and eat it, not a care if it's poisonous or not. The adults take me for granted and attempt to slap the fruit out of their hands, but the children are good and they follow me when I wave them on with my arm.
Then, just outside the village, we play and sleep and talk and eat some more, and when the sun goes down, I take my leave, urging them to go home. Cute humans.
When I am in a bad mood, I take on my full neko form and bulldoze a village over, but I usually just do half of it. I want to save the other half so that the weak humans can rebuild what they lost and bury the dead. Stupid humans.
At least I don't kill all of them. I have mixed feelings for them. What can I say? A half-demon's gotta do what a half-demon's gotta do.
So today, I am in a peachy state, because one of my Shuria Karos was fixed by an elderly man. He was real difficult to deal with, since I wasn't necessarily "good" in his mind. I believe his name was Totosai. Shuria Karos is a pair of full demonized shurikens, with blades that was said to be forged out of the galaxy. It was handed down from my mother to me. I treasure them greatly.
I sprang out of a tree and onto the muddy ground. It just rained, but so what? No one cares. Rain is good.
After running for five minutes, I came across the village—yes, THE village— that I cracked my Shuria Karos in. I didn't finish my destruction, because by the looks of it, I stopped about a fourth in. Stupid man, you cannot protect your family with a blade that I saw you sharpen horribly myself. Just for a bit of entertainment, I killed him after he cracked the shuriken. That didn't quite fill me up revenge-wise, but I had to go save my sweet weapon.
Swallowing my anger, what I rarely ever did, I replaced it with a small smile as I walked into the streets. Men were busy bringing wood and rebuilding the houses, women were busy with digging graves, and the children was asked to bring flowers. Few saw me ride in and out of the faint smoke. The ones who did see me were children. They didn't reconise me as a human form, so they just stared and blinked.
An adult knew the similarities between human and demon, so he pointed it out quite loudly.
"The demon that wrecked our village!" He shouted.
"Shut up," I barked. Since I was in no place to lie such a pointless lie, I didn't do so. "I had a very good reason to destruct this civilization, so lower your fingers and keep working." Now, I drew attention to ALL of the humans. Idiot man. I'll tear you to mere shreds.
Now was my time to act peachy, as I was. I untied the multi-colored cloth from my obi and unwrapped it, revealing various foods. I took one and gave it to the closest kid near me. He took it and ate it. Once he realized the sweetness, he smiled at me and escaped from his mother's outstretched arms.
As I gave more and more kids fruit and vegetables, more and more followed. I was all gone, and almost every kid in my path was grinning happily. We all reached the edge of town, when the clouds clotted up the blue sky again. We sat down under the leaves of trees and talked until it started sprinkling.
I listened intently to everyone's little stories. I noticed a bunch of eyes watching me from the village, and found out that it was the parents of these kids. I paid no mind to them, though; it was too bad they didn't have enough food for the children. In a way, I kind of felt bad. These innocent kids starving, and in my childhood, food was just as common as the words on tongues. It started to rain harder, and most of the kids left to take full cover inside their houses—if they still had one, anyways.
One of the child's stories particularly interested me more than the others. Her stories were collections of rumors, things she'd seen, things her friends and family's seen. As she spoke, I could imagine everything she described.
The two other kids beside me stopped chatting and lent an ear. We were all lost in her storytelling. When she finished, I brushed some pale pink hair out of my face and said, "My, aren't you a good teller."
She blushed and shrugged. "My mommy said it was a gift."
I paused for a second before replying. "Tell me, girl... what is your family like?"
She no longer had her eyes locked on mine. They dropped to the damp grass and held there. Wasn't she the daughter of the guy who broke my Shuria Karos? I think she was. She resembles him in such a way.
As the rain dropped down harder, the sun was going down too. The two other kids by my side left, because the rain was missing all the leaves and hitting us instead.
The girl still didn't answer. I was beginning to get impatient, but I sucked it in.
"My daddy was killed by the scary demon just a week ago," she finally said, and it hit me. She was the man's daughter. Even though she looked 10 or 11, she still had the grammar of a 6-year old. How sad. Was she that much of a princess that no one pressed on her about the correct way to talk, ever? Must be.
"And your mother?"
She shook her head. "She's got a big sickness." I then realized that she practically has no one to take care of her, if the humans were careless enough in there.
Without saying anything else, I stood up. As I retreated into the thick treeline, I felt a little tug on my kimono sleeve. I turned back.
There the little girl was. She held onto my sleeve and looked at me as if I were her last chance at surviving. As the storm soaked us, we kept staring at each other.
"What do you want, little human?" I finally asked. Thunder broke through the skies, followed by lightning who slashed through the heavens.
"Can I come with you?"
That question struck me so suddenly that I could only blink. Her? Come with me? I do not understand humans. Is she not aware that I can just kill her, or that she could be killed herself? Is the dangers of this region not, perhaps, clear in her head? Demons can bring her to death during the night while she sleeps. I can't make her facial expression out due to the sun being down, but it was light out enough to make out her outline.
If she does know the dangers, I am sure she can protect herself for a bit. If she doesn't, let her death serve as punishment for being careless.
"Yes."
Stupid is as stupid does.