A/N: I'm just posting the first chapter for the moment, to see what you think of it. I posted a different version of this story a couple years ago, and got flamed fiercely for it, but I really like this plot, so I'm trying again.
Warning: This involves an OC. In fact, this doesn't involve Inuyasha and company in the least. However, I am not a babbling twit who puts herself into a fandom and has everyone fall in love with her. Please, read the story before you review. If you read the first chapter and still feel that I shouldn't continue, or don't like how I'm writing, or don't like the idea of inserting an OC, please say so. Don't just read the first sentence, realize that it's about an OC, and immediately flame me.
It was hot for a day in late May. The sun was shining so brightly that most people had a perpetual squint on their face. A tiny village on the southern point of Honshu was bustling with activity none the less, though. Whispers and furtive glances were exchanged; a tense nervousness hung in the air, mixed with a morbid feeling of excitement, as a crowd waiting to watch an execution. Trades between merchants were more scatterbrained than usual; woman who were supposed to be watching their children were instead talking with their neighbor.
The steady stream of whispers, however, ceased suspiciously as a young girl, no more than eight, walked by. The girl in herself was unremarkable; shoulder-length black hair that she often pulled to the side with a ribbon, dark brown eyes, and a kimono that looked like it had once been white, before it had been stained by dust, mud, and grass. But a tense silence followed her closely throughout the village, each person seemingly holding their breath as she passed, as people were opt to do when they had nearly been caught talking of something they shouldn't be. Then they would start up again, fiercely as a mountain stream that had been dammed, the moment they thought she wouldn't notice. They were right, as well- the girl was, for the most part, oblivious to the gossip. She was also oblivious to the glances being thrown her way- many laced with pity or fear, but most were simply nervous. She bought vegetables from an obviously uncomfortable vendor, and was almost out of the village when a pair of young boys broke the code of tense silence that had followed her about.
"Half-breed's sister! You're no better than her! I'm glad we'll be rid of you-" The boys cut off abruptly when their distracted mothers rushed in and pinched both the boys by the ear. The women sent the girl a forced apologetic smile and bow, along with a murmured 'sumimasen', before dragging the boys off, scolding in low voices. But the girl was not quite so oblivious now to the silence that hung heavily over the street, and she sealed her lips together, forcing a smile onto her face and continuing past the edges of the village. The rice fields were on the opposite side of the village- this was only an unfertile field, dry and stiff with tall grass. The girl treaded a well-worn path almost a mile past the last hut that was an official part of the village before a small hut, with smoke rising in a very light plume from the rooftop, came into view. She ran to it, still forcing herself to smile as a young woman, a few years older than the girl- fifteen, perhaps- stepped out of the hut. The woman hardly resembled the girl in the least- her hair was short, to her chin, and a silver-white color that reflected the sun like a mirror. Her eyes, though narrowed in the afternoon sun, were a startling shade of light green. Her hair was tucked behind two distinctly pointed ears, which were dusted with hair the same silvery shade as the rest of her head. She smiled, a genuine smile, at the young girl and accepted the basket with a word of thanks. The girl followed the woman inside the hut, grateful for the shade which allowed her to relax the squinting which was beginning to hurt her eyes.
The silver-haired woman began to work at slicing the vegetables, pushing the slices into a simmering pot of stew over the hot coals of a fire. She stayed silent, as though waiting for something. Finally, the girl, who had positioned herself on a worn-out cushion on the floor, began to speak.
"Some boys in the village were teasing me today." She began. The woman's shoulders tensed visibly, and young or not, the girl knew that her next sentence would have to be worded delicately. Still, the words tumbled out of her mouth. "They said- they called me- Sis, what is a 'half-breed?'"
The knife's handle nearly cracked from a hand suddenly gripping it and considering using it for the less conventional purpose of slicing someone apart. After a moment, she abandoned the knife and its thoughts to take a couple steps across the room and embrace her little sister, her eyes suspiciously bright, though she shed no tears.
"Don't worry about it. It's nothing, Arisa." She tried to be comforting, but the fact that her little sister had to hear their poison- which was spat constantly behind their backs, she knew- was a hard fact to take. Still, in just a few years Arisa would be growing up, and she would have to know someday. But not today, she pleaded with whatever force might control when some precious bit of innocence would disappear, never to be found again. Not today, not yet.
Arisa hesitated before wrapping an arm around her older sister, and barely resisted saying that it really wasn't her who needed to be reassured. A moment passed before the elder composed herself enough to pull away and smile in an almost genuine way. She walked back over to the vegetables and continued to cut them, still considering if she should make good on some of the fears that the villagers had on her and scare the teasing boys so well that they wouldn't come out of hiding for two weeks. It would do no good for either of them, she knew, but it help to imagine it, so that the urge to actually go out and do it- or worse, actually hurt them- wouldn't grow.
"Sister Kaynoa, may I go outside again?" Arisa asked, her voice shaky. She didn't like seeing her sister so tense- it scared her to not know what she was thinking. Still, Kaynoa nodded, and the appeal of going out and finding flowers to make a crown or a necklace with chased away any concerns that were better left to older people.
A couple hours passed, and the sun was setting when Kaynoa realized that Arisa had not returned. She stepped out of the house; first calling very briefly, then again when she wasn't answered by an immediate 'coming!' that usually greeted her summons. Nervousness stirred in her when she called a third time, very loudly, and still got no answer. She stepped out of the hut and began to walk down one of the paths- the one that headed to the river- when a girl's voice to her right shrieked. Ignoring the convenience of the path, Kaynoa ran through the tough grass, its dried limbs cutting her as she ran. When she reached the clearing that Arisa was in, however, she wasn't prepared for what she saw.
She stumbled out of the tall grass to find herself in a ring of firelight cast by about 10 torches scattered throughout a crowd big enough that it had to be the entire village and then some. A man, tall and strong-looking, was holding Arisa, one hand clamped over the girl's mouth and the other arm trapping her arms at her sides. Two others stood apart from the crowd; a young man with frightening eyes and a woman in a black robe. The woman stepped forward, smiling in a sinister way, and Kaynoa found herself frozen. With a good deal of concentration, she could suck in shallow breathes, but couldn't get any further than that. A couple of people in the crowd laughed. Kaynoa felt the urge to cut them up with something sharp come back with a passion. The man who was holding Arisa covered almost her whole face with his hand, and Kaynoa worried for a moment that she couldn't breathe before she saw the tiny gap in his fingers for her to gasp for air through her nose. How considerate, she though sarcastically. ow The more important thing was that it covered her eyes, so Kaynoa couldn't let her know that she was here, that she was safe now.
She would have bowed her head if she could. Arisa wasn't safe now. Kaynoa was no fighter, especially not against more than 50 people, some of whom looked to be bandits with sharp objects hidden all about their person.
The woman who was holding Kaynoa using some dark magic spoke. "This is the one? The hanyou that plagues your village?" General affirmative cried echoed in the night. "And this is her sister?" She asked, motioning to Arisa.
"Half-sister," A young voice cried. Kaynoa fought the spell to see who it was, and recognized one of the few girls who had actually spoken to Arisa when she went to the village. She felt a mixture of relief and irritation at the girl; relief, because whatever was going on here was probably focused around her and if they all knew that Arisa was fully human and uninvolved in whatever they had planned, she might be let go; irritated, because their status of only sharing one parent had not changed the fact that Kaynoa looked after her sister like a widow might her only child, and Arisa looked up to Kaynoa with a mixture of admiration and adoration.
"Whatever." It was the man who held Arisa who spoke. Arisa squirmed when he did, and Kaynoa was relieved to see that she was still conscious. "Is it true that she is a bastard, then?"
Again, a few people laughed at their expense. "If her father is known, it'd only be to her older sister now- mother abandoned them when the girl was barely speaking." Some man in the audience who Kaynoa only recognized in passing was speaking this time.
"Good for her," someone murmured. More than just a few people laughed at that- the laughter took longer to die out, as well, as those who had not heard her comment heard it from those standing around them and took their own turn in laughing. Kaynoa felt as though she might lose it, sitting here, frozen while she and her sister were humiliated and insulted.
"Then you'd have no want of her? A bastard is not someone any respectable man would marry, and you have her… relations to consider as well." The tall man with the evil eyes spoke, looking among the villagers.
A couple uneasy murmurs circulated around the crowd before someone finally shouted, "You may take her." Hesitant, mumbled approval came from the rest of the crowd. Kaynoa burned with rage, feeling as though some part of her were straining against a wall that would not come down.
"Well then," the woman who was holding Kaynoa spoke, "now that you have your little plaything, Onigumo, shall we get on with the show?"
"Pretty little plaything you are, too," he whispered, caressing what of her face you could see with a gentleness so fake that Kaynoa could see through it from here. She burned white hot with rage, struggling against out bonds. "A bit young for me, though. Perhaps we could give her to that temple- the one who's dedicates were so young." The innuendo in his voice made her sick. "Or perhaps we could just end her pitiful existence now," he continued, drawing out a dagger that was shining in a slightly unnatural way, as though it had a thin coat of liquid over it- poison, Kaynoa realized. He drew it along her upper cheek, cutting deep enough to draw a good deal of blood. Whatever was on the dagger was obviously designed to cause immediate pain, because Arisa's face contorted behind the hand and she screamed, the sound hurting Kaynoa's ears even though the man holding her still clasped her face harder than ever.
Onigumo drew the dagger over her other cheek as well. Arisa's face contorted further in excruciating pain, and her scream was so high-pitched that it took Kaynoa a moment to realize that there had been a word in there.
'Help.' Her sister had cried for help. Kaynoa lost it. The wall the she had been pressed against shattered, casting a blood red glow about everything. She could move again, and she sunk her claws into the closest thing to her. The flesh and bone parted before her claws, the satisfying power of ending a life giving back some tiny fraction of her sanity. She liked the feeling. She did it again, at the next shape that was running. This was a woman, she realized; the flesh was soft, more fat than muscle, and she was skinnier. She made a game of it, telling about a person as her claws dug into them, their screams an interesting melody of death.
She had missed one. Blood was everywhere, the scent empowering her, giving her strength that she had never known, but one life was still clinging. She turned. It was a girl. She was terrified, and backing away. Kaynoa advanced, smiling evilly. She girl pleaded with words that Kaynoa couldn't understand and didn't want to. She grew tired of the mortal's cowering and simply brought her claws down, cutting a couple inches into her chest with four matching claw marks.
The girl gasped. She looked up with dying eyes, and choked out a final word. "Sis…"
Sis. That word brought back memories. She knew what that word meant- knew who used it. It brought back a face- the face that was pale and dead beneath her claws.
She blinked, and the red haze cleared. Blood was everywhere. She was bathed in it. Her claws had it all on it- Arisa's blood.
Her world shattered in a completely different way. Her heart burned, constricted, writhed. Kaynoa screamed her agony to the sky until her voice gave out, then sobbed until she had no more tears to sob.
At the break of dawn, she fell forward in a faint in a puddle of her sister's blood.
No more than a few hours later, Kaynoa was woken by the scent of bodies beginning to rot in the near-summer heat. She was nauseated by it. She wanted to bury them, but there was no way she could dig a grave for them. She looked around, then regretted it as she was forced to her knees by retches. Finally, when she could bring herself to look at the bodies who's blood was on her own hands- without vomiting, anyways- she began to look for fire. She would burn them- it was as close to a burial as she could get. She saw a torch that had been pressed into the dirt at some point during the night and still radiated enough heat to burn. It would work. She took it to a dry, tall piece of grass and pressed the remaining coals to a dried branch. The branch smoldered, then smoked, then finally began to flame. She watched the flame spread to the stalk, and when it was obviously not going out, she tossed the torch into the grass and turned in the direction of the river. She wanted this blood off. She could smell their death all over her- Arisa's death.
She got to the river and collapsed in tearless sobs, the icy water running a sickly pink as it carried away the evidence of her sins.
But she could never forget her sins, never forgive herself for them. She vowed that she would find a way; she would stop at nothing to see her sister's smile again.