Disclaimer: I do not own Tactics or Inuyasha.

Inside the Stomach

The green youkai wasn't sure what this thing was. Lying there, in the soft grass, was a pink spherical ball that she had never come across before. Cautiously taking a step forward, she observed the ball lying there innocently, reflecting the sunlight, and giving off a pink glare. Another step forward, and she felt it. The immense power radiating off from what seemed to be a simple pink stone was overwhelming, which caused her to stop in place.

"Muu?"

She wondered if it was something she could eat. She had eaten many things before, spirits, demons, aradama, bugs…but this little stone here somehow seemed very delicious. A drop of clear saliva dripped down her chin and landed on the grass field with a little plop, and Muu instantly took another step forward. The hunger was becoming immense, and the craving for that tiny stone grew with each halting step.

"Muu-chan! Don't leave me! Where are you?"

From far her husband called, but she didn't, couldn't care. Her beady black eyes fixed its gaze on the stone, and with a deep breath, she sucked the stone right into her stomach.


"So she has been sick since then?"

"Yes… Muu-chan! What should I do! I can't live without you!"

Sugino the white tengu was at the verge of his tears. He knew his wife had the habit of eating anything interesting that she came across, but she hadn't become sick for a long, long time. Only if he took a good care of her and her eating habits… The tears sprung again and this time, it barely lingered at the rim of his eyes. When Muu suddenly collapsed right in front of him, the only help he could think of was the silver haired human that he hated so much. Ichinomiya Kantarou. Though the folklorist exactly wasn't the best in his mind, the logical side of him persuaded him to take his wife to the man, which the tengue did. The folklorist didn't quite welcome him when Sugino suddenly barged into the room in middle of his meeting with a rich guest, but seeing that Muu was in bad condition, he quickly dismissed the customer and tried his best to figure out the reason to her sickness.

"She ate a stone and got sick?"

"I think so…"

"Why would a stone make her sick? I mean, she eats…most uncommon things in the world, Sugino san."

"Muu is a fragile youkai! She is not like you, Kantarou!"

Took back by the enraged white tengu's comment, Ichinomiya shifted uneasily under the black haired man's accusing glare, until he heard it: the light jingle of his bells. It rang louder and louder until it started to vibrate and shake violently that the folklorist had no choice but to hold down the bells with his other hand. And despite the mad jingles of the bells, his chest was perfectly fine without any trace of pain. At that moment, Kantarou somehow felt relieved that the other tengu wasn't in the room, since he hated noise. Eventually the bells died down, and Kantarou let go of the hand that had been gripping onto the bells.

"Strange…"

"What is?"

"Oh, Haruka."

Kantarou looked up at the black haired man with quite an effort. The heavy weight clinging onto his neck made it much harder, and Kantarou was definitely irritated by the amused look twinkling in Haruka's eyes. Sugino clinging onto Kantarou's neck begging to save his wife was not an everyday occasion, nor would this happen in the future, and Haruka was simply amazed what that green demon could do to that egoistic but devoted white tengu. Haruka certainly would have observed this entertaining scene if his master didn't ask him sweetly to pull Sugino away from him. Agitated but not able to disobey, he ripped Sugino away from the young man's neck and pushed Sugino back into his seat. The black winged tengu sighed, silently hoping that the folklorist will fix Muu soon.

Soon.


Muu could hear all the fuss that had been going on in the room. She could feel, hear, and sense everything from the moment she collapsed up to now. The demon felt guilty when she felt drops of her husband's tear as he held her tightly in his embrace and flew over to Kantarou's house, and certainly still felt guilty for making the tengu worry. Despite the fact that all of her senses were intact, she could not even twitch a little nor make a small noise. It felt quite weird actually, knowing everything yet feeling as if nonexistent.

"Muu!"

She tried speaking, to assure herself that she still existed, but the echo of her own voice rang inside her mind, swallowed by the silence of her mouth. It was then she heard something shift inside her stomach. It first sounded like a mere wind until the sound got more frenzy and sounds of thunderstorm erupted within her. Muu panicked, not knowing why there was such thunderstorm inside her, and she did not remember anything related to thunderstorms. Between the rumblings of thunder and tatterings of the rain, Muu heard the frantic sounds of Kantarou's bells, and the young man's grunts to calm the bells down. Just as the bells started to calm down, Muu thought she heard a young girl's voice from far beneath of her stomach.

"Where am I?"

Muu never remembered eating a girl.