And I'm back, HA! and you all thought I died or something didn't you? Well I'm still alive! despite the best efforts of my employers and rotten customers over the nightmare that is Thanksgiving weekend in retail. That's right! you losers couldn't kill me no matter how hard you tried! Buahahahahaha!
Boy have I missed being able to rant. I friggin' live for these things. Why? Because I can put it out there with bribe of a brand new chapter and you poor suckers are forced to either read it or scroll down through it. And thus satisfy my evil whim to be as annoying as humanly possible. You got yours by being stupid customers whenever you go shopping, now I get mine for having to put up with stupid customers. It's a fair trade I think.
I kind of toyed with the idea of whether or not to post this today... I haven't quite finished up the last chapter yet, but I've typed it all the way up to where I've written and the chapter will probably be a short one. But I figured you all were tired of waiting, or I've already lost you completely. So I went ahead and posted. Hopefully I'll finish it up real fast and get started on the part after this one. The nxt part whould write relatively quick since I know pretty much exactly how I want to write it and it's a very active part of the story. Actually it's the biggest, most important part of the story. (Unless you prfer the fun parts, then that would be the last part of the story.) Any body feeling a little confused about the order of things? Let me know if you want me to post my outline on my profile page. I've offered before, but sometime i think nobody notices becuase they don't rad the authors notes at all... Shame on you, you miss so many oppurtunities that way. heehee.
On the school front, I have not yet received my scores for the Chemistry GRE that I took Nov 4th, but I have registered for the general GRE and will be taking it Dec. 13th. Despite it's being on a WEdnesday and all, it shouldn't interrupt my posting schedule so long as the plot itself doesn't decide to throw a monkey wrench into the works. (it does that every now and then. Damn tricky plot.)
Ahem, and now I would simply like to dispell any and all rumors before they start. I did not Kidnap rumiko Takahashi. I am not keeping her locked up in our unfinihed basement until she finally signs over all the more interesting inuyasha characters. And you will not be hearing about her disappearance any time in the near future. La di da di da, hum hum...
Miner's Delight
Massively bad days do not often occur in multiples. That is to say that the rule of threes does not really apply to bad days. They do not happen consecutively. The residual feelings from a bad may carry over upon occasion, but usually the day after a bad day is pretty bland all things considered.
Unless you just happen to have Aki's luck, then bad days occur in strings of time that like to clump together like used kitty litter that are just as disgusting and smelly.
She just couldn't believe her predicament, truth be told. All the seriously dangerous altercations should be out of the way already (excepting the one with Naraku.)
The shards were all collected for the most part. All the lesser youkai that had managed to find one or two had already been dealt with and now the great hunt for the evil hanyou was on.
Or at least that's what Inuyasha and company was busy with right now. Aki wasn't convinced all the shards had been found, so she chose to head to an area of Japan she had yet to search herself.
Thus she had found herself making a somewhat scenic tour of Hokkaido. She couldn't think of anywhere else they had likely avoided going. After all, who wants to search for trouble and shards in a practically frozen landscape? Sure, Hokkaido wasn't covered in snow year round, but it sure tried really hard to stay that way. Plus the island offered a greater change of scenery and she enjoyed spotting the wildlife during the breaks her constantly complaining friend insisted she take.
Fred was convinced that he was allergic to cold weather, and he insisted that death didn't really change that. He'd hated cold weather when he was alive and he apparently hated for Aki to be subjected to it while he was dead. Something about watching her shiver in the chilly breezes that went by seemed to always set him off.
Aki hadn't minded the cooler weather. It wasn't like she had wanted to play in the water, and their travels had been remarkably free of precipitation in any form. It was altogether a rather pleasant trip up until they were on their way back to the well.
Right before they would have crossed over to the big island, Aki was accosted by a mole youkai for seemingly no reason. Not only did he attack her completely out of the blue with out provocation, but he'd brought his two kids along to watch the show.
Kids, as a rule, are highly impressionable and Aki hated to think what seeing their dad beaten to a groveling mess would do to his children. And as Aki was really against violence of most any kind, especially when it would affect some small life in an adverse way, tried really hard not to hurt the shorter youkai.
She really shouldn't have. If she hadn't been trying so hard not to hurt the runty bastard he never would've gotten the drop on her. Still she was convinced she could somehow get herself out of the problem even as Fred took off to find her some help. She had managed to do so this far along, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
Her confidence quickly left her when she found out the special weapons nature had gifted her mole youkai with. It made Aki want to track the bitch down and tear her hair out by the roots.
Seriously, it was turning out that all the overtly predatory youkai were pushovers in comparison to nature's idea of prey. Case in point, Rabbit youkai have the ability effect their environment so drastically as to leave a commonly powerful predator incapable of doing anything, which was a great defense mechanism to be sure. But in the right situation it was highly unfair in the hands of someone really good at turning the most benign of things into a weapon.
So it was with the mole youkai. Only the defense was different. Mole youkai, like their animal counterparts, spent a great deal of timing digging underground. Now there is some argument on whether their digging is what lead to the discovery of the special ore they use to protect themselves or if the ore is the reason they dig so much in the first place, but there is no dispute that they have used this rare and special ore very much to their benefit. The raw ore is a special material that has a natural affinity for all types of energy that is only focused and intensified through the special methods of carving it into the useful tools moles have used since they began mining it beyond the knowledge of history.
They make it into to tools and jewelry and beads to fulfill a specific purpose. Sometimes the purpose is protection or waterproofing and upon occasion, small-refined pieces of the ore are traded away for whatever the moles cannot provide for themselves.
This particular mole had taken some of these very precious beads and chosen to use them on Aki. Each of her limbs was cuffed securely with a magical bracelet be spelled to make her nothing more than a mute doll for him and his kids to play with. A set of Shikon shards apparently 'given' to the mole were used to reinforce the magic that forced her limbs to follow every order she was given and nothing more.
For once in her life Aki was forced to do as she was told exactly how she was told. He told her to jump; she did without asking how high. The kids wanted her to dress up like a porcelain doll with a painted face, well…
And she hated it. The clothes they made her wear were too short. The make up itched constantly. Her head hurt from the little monsters pulling and playing with her hair. She was reduced to a babysitter who didn't have the privilege of the word "no".
Everyday was another lesson in torment. Her body yearned for the food she was never able to eat. Aki's brain begged for sleep she hadn't the luxury for without an order. And her hopes of someone coming to her aid were dashed when the weather took a turn for the extreme worst as snow began to fall in deadly swirls.
Not that she had really had a great deal of hope for it happening to begin with. Fred as a ghost was slower than most snails and he was limited in who he could approach by the rampant paranoia of the age.
Aki didn't have a clue where any of the few people he could implore to help her were. Inuyasha and Kagome were wandering around somewhere in Japan, hunting for Naraku. Kikyou always was a wanderer with even less predictable direction then the shard hunters and Sesshoumaru… Kaede and Hanako would be easy to find, but they were halfway across the big Island from here and that left her no chance of breaking free until sometime next month at Fred's rate of travel.
Actually, she wasn't really sure how long it would take him to get to Kaede's, which was fine since she couldn't be sure of the passage of time anyway. She lived barely aware of what happened around her so she couldn't be sure of the progress of time from day to night, only of the steady increase of her own fatigue, the growing ache of her hunger. She felt as if her head were wrapped in cotton, muting the signals to her brain. Certain sensations sliced through the fuzz with ease while others almost failed to register over the clamor of her thoughts inside her head.
And there were a lot of thoughts.
During the times when her tormentors left her alone, she assumed while they slept, and she had the relative peace of guard duty, Aki would try to organize the mess. Sometimes she would manage to quiet the din and slip into a quiet meditative state. Most of the time, however, she failed miserably and only succeeded in finding new things to annoy her. She would have been moved to violence more than once, if her stupid restraints hadn't forced her to hold it in.
And that was if she was lucky…A rather annoying song got stuck in her head for hours, the lyrics bouncing around her skull fast enough to kill any attempts to slow it down on contact. Aki would have given anything for her curse to rear its ugly head right then. On the plus side, it cleared her head of a lot of other thoughts.
Occasionally, Aki was allowed to assume a bit more connection with the outside world when the little girl mole would demand a conversation. Usually it happened in the daytime, but sometimes, after a nightmare, the child would demand Aki talk with her in the middle of the night.
Aki would learn a lot from the talkative and somewhat neglected child.
The poor child was as often as not left out of her father and brother's enthusiasm for some of the things they'd decide the family should do. She wasn't that interested in tunnel construction or trapping small animals for dinner. Actually, the little mole wasn't really interested in much of anything.
Aki learned that the mole Youkai's two children had been part of a much larger set. Originally there had been four mole children, but a mysterious evil youkai, that Aki recognized as Naraku from the description, had attacked them, killing off two of the kids and their mother very recently. Naraku had then ordered the mole to find and subdue Aki to turn over to him. He'd given the mole the five small Shikon shards that insured Aki couldn't break free on her own.
Aki was just ecstatic to find out the adult mole youkai was far too smart to carry out Naraku's commands to the letter. He was under no illusions as to what would happen to him and his family once he turned her over to the evil bastard. So, since Naraku wouldn't come after her himself, the mole had decided to keep Aki and force her to protect his family.
Aki tried hard never to bring that subject up again. She couldn't trust herself not to throw a fit and ruin her small periods of semi-freedom. It irked her that she was forced to be a puppet to people she would've helped protect anyway had they bothered to ask.
The rampant paranoia of the feudal era really didn't make sense. Yes, there were people who would take advantage of you. True, there was a lot of violence, thievery, and treachery, but none of that was going to get better until people start banding together against the chaotic element. And that can't happen if nobody is willing to take the chance to trust someone else.
Unfortunately, history proved more than once that unification can be achieved another way, a violent bloody way. Aki was pretty sure that's the way things were heading; she was a little fuzzy on her Japanese history though.
At this point she was finding herself a bit fuzzy on just about everything because of all the circular thinking she'd been doing. Without the ability to say things out loud she couldn't tell if they sounded right or not, and the moles didn't care much to allow Aki the opportunity for such semi-serious talk that had no bearing on anything the little youkai wanted to talk about.
So her poor brain felt inundated by useless information, no sleep, and bottled, pressurized emotions. She was very ready for something to happen.
And then, something did. Aki was now certain life, fate, and the universe had decided there was nothing more entertaining than screwing with her life.
Kagome had sensed a surprisingly large quantity of Shikon no Kakera and had been forced to lead the group towards them without rest. Inuyasha wanted this damn quest over already and, despite Kagome's reservations, was convinced they were headed towards Naraku's hide out.
Imagine how stunned the group was to stumble upon three mole youkai and a strangely dressed Aki instead of any of the evil hanyou's agents.
Aki let loose a long string of multilingual curses in her head when she perceived the shock on their collective faces. They obviously weren't here to help her out, which could only mean bad things in her near future.
"What are you doing here Aki?" Shippou asked curiously before the moles could get over their shock.
"Aki has the shards," Kagome told the group. "There's one on each limb and one on her neck," the human teenager blinked. Aki had never stored them that way before. What's more, she still hadn't answered Shippou's question and Aki had never before ignored the boy's questions.
"What are you just standing there for? Defend us," the mole father yelled at the stationary Aki puppet.
"Hey, don't yell at her like that!" Shippou hollered at the mole. "Aki wouldn't fight us just because you're stupid!"
The mole's son turned purple in rage. Nobody called his father names! "Shut him up!" he yelled at the top of his lungs and Aki lunged awkwardly toward the kit.
Aki strained herself pulling as much speed and strength from the move as she could. Luckily Shippou jumped out of the way at the last minute.
"Eep!" Shippou squeaked and leapt to Kagome's shoulder in Fright.
"Aki, what are you doing?" Kagome demanded.
"She does what we tell her," the adult youkai laughed, feeling superior and very sure of his awesome plan to protect himself and his family.
"Let her go!" Inuyasha growled and launched himself at the mole, sword drawn with intent to do him bodily harm.
Suddenly Aki was in the way and the hanyou was forced to pull back or do her serious harm. As it was he still drew blood.
"Stop it Inuyasha!" Sango yelled when Inuyasha made to attack again.
"What is it Sango?" Kagome inquired.
"Mole youkai are not particularly strong when it comes to fighting, but their magic is incredibly strong when used in conjunction with the ore they dig. Aki is under their spell; any move we make to harm them will wind up with Aki as the victim."
"Shouldn't she be able to break free of it on her own?" Kagome asked. "She's very powerful on her own."
"I suspect they used the jewel shards to reinforce the spell," Miroku answered.
"So what do we do?" Kagome asked.
"WE break her out of it!" Inuyasha declared like there was nothing to it.
"How?" Kagome demanded the stupid dog boy answer that one. It was just like him to ignore the important details.
"Fight them!" the mole youkai ordered Aki.
She attacked the group, forcing them to scatter before her in order to avoid injury.
"What the hell are we supposed to do?" Kagome cried desperately before Aki changed targets to strike at Miroku.
The monk blocked her repeatedly with his staff, gritting his teeth with effort. Aki shoved him back a step with every impact. "Any ideas?" he all but pleaded an answer from the rest of the group.
"Break the strings of beads," Shippou suggested, having spotted them while hiding in the branches of a tree.
"It might work," Sango said as it became her turn to suffer Aki's powerful onslaught. "But I don't think it will be that easy."
"Keh," Inuyasha scoffed and went from defending against Aki to attacking her with his bare claws. He'd have to get close enough to snag the beads, but he didn't want to risk damaging her overly much in the process, so using Tessaiga was out of the question.
The fight grew more intense as the combatants continued to exchange blows, though only Inuyasha appeared to be causing any damage.
The hanyou leapt back, studying Aki's movements. Her blank eyes bore through as she watched him. The former tutor's movements were stilted as though her body fought to move…or fought not to move. Aki was still in there and fighting against the spell for his sake and Inuyasha had a moment to feel guilty about hurting her.
"You're not fighting right," the boy youkai whined petulantly. Inuyasha was certain he hated this kid. "You're supposed to call out your moves as you do them. Don't you know anything?" The brat grumbled at Aki causing her to stop in her slow advance on her target.
"Shut up, Youta!" his sister hissed at him in annoyance. "We obviously don't have time for such stupid details!"
"Shut up yourself Yumi! It's a very important part of a fight!" Youta told his sister with a roll of his eyes.
"It's stupid!" Yumi declared.
"Is not," Youta insisted.
"Is too!" Yumi argued.
"Is not!" her brother returned. "I bet if she did it right she could fertilize the trees with those bad guys."
"Telling your enemy what you're doing won't make you fight any better stupid!" she retorted.
"Dad, she called me stupid!"
"Because you are, Moron!"
"No I'm not, and I'll prove it!" the angry little mole shouted in response, completely ignoring the combatants who had stared openly at the two children squabbling over inanities in the middle of such a serious fight. "Fight right!"
Inuyasha rolled his eyes and returned his attention to Aki just in time to see the humor faid from her eyes. He didn't imagine being locked inside your own head was healthy. At the very least it had to be very unpleasant.
After all, what was inside your head, but thoughts of all your fears and pain, memories of sadness and broken dreams. They were always so much more potent than unsustained moment of happiness when you're alone as only one trapped and conscious in one's mind could be.
Inuyasha almost shuddered at the though. Sometimes it was no picnic to be locked in your head when were unconscious, especially with Naraku about.
Aki stalked to within arms reach of Inuyasha and said, "Punch" just before her fist flew through the air and landed on the hanyou's very startled face.
The shard hunters tried to stifle their laughter by focusing on the seriousness of the situation.
Aki shouted, "Kick!" and planted her foot in Inuyasha's shocked body.
"Inuyasha wake up!" Kagome called to the dog boy. "Aki will really hate you if you let her mop the floor with your stupid body!"
The hanyou growled in anger. "Shut up!" he bellowed as he caught Aki's right fist. "If you think you can do better why don't you fight her!"
"Kagome can't sustain as much damage as you Inuyasha," Miroku pointed out. "So long as we do not move close to the moles, Aki focuses on you because you will best survive it."
"Smack!" Aki said.
Inuyasha snarled as he answered the monk, "I know that stupid."
"Why don't you pay attention to what's going on? Aki's telling you what to expect!" Kagome pointed out. "Why are you still allowing her to hit you?"
"Because Inuyasha does not have much of a defense," Miroku declared.
"Inuyasha's style has always leaned more towards aggressive attacks and lots of noise rather than developing any real defense," Sango observed.
"Yeah," Shippou joined in, "That's probably why Inuyasha gets hurt so much all the time."
Sango and Miroku nodded in agreement.
"Really?" Kagome pondered. "That would explain a lot, like the time Sesshoumaru stuck his hand through Inuyasha."
"Hey! We're still fighting here!" Inuyasha growled, annoyed that all his friends had pulled aside to discuss his so-called failings of martial skill. He was absolutely perfect. They were the ones who were all screwed up.
"Cart wheel!" Aki yelled as she went through the movement to bring her foot down on the back of the distracted hanyou's head.
"I told you it was a stupid idea!" Yumi yelled at her brother.
"It is not! She's just not doing it right!" Youta hollered. "She's supposed to have attack names for her special attacks and stuff."
"Well what kind of moron would name their special attacks and shout it at their enemy every time they use it? Calling an incantation to make it happen is one thing, yelling out the name of the weapon you're using is fine too, but continually telling people what you are doing is stupid!"
"You don't know anything!" Youta shouted back at his sister. Then he turned to Aki and yelled, "Do it right!"
"But Aki never uses special attacks," Shippou though aloud. "And when she works her magic she always mumbles things so we can't hear. Does he expect her to just name things because he wants her to?"
"You underestimate the power of the mole's spell," Sango pointed out.
"Still, what kind of names could she come up with on the spur of the moment? Especially when she's so encumbered by this spell?" Miroku wondered aloud.
In the next moment they were doomed to find out. Aki had been hungry for days and she had found her thoughts spiraling around this one bodily need, so it didn't surprise her when the first the she thought of was food. "Chef Boyardee flying ravioli kick!"
Kagome lost the battle with her laughter. She didn't have a chance. Even Sango and Miroku found it funny and they didn't' even know what ravioli was.
"S'more a la fist throw!" had Shippou cracking up in spite of himself. Inuyasha almost forgot to duck in his consternation.
Aki prayed they realized how much all this nonsense was costing her. It hurt to pull her punches. Her muscles screamed in protest when she slowed her attacks. When this was over her poor body was going to be one big ache.
"See?" Yumi grinned in triumph. "Even the bad guys realize how stupid it is."
"Stop being silly!" Youta bellowed.
Aki could have sighed, the child was so demanding. Thank goodness there were more words than 'silly' to work with. 'How about ridiculous?' she thought to herself. "Leaping Lizard pummel!" she announced with a flourish of movement.
That did it for Sango and Miroku, who had made a good show of reining in their laughter. Even Kirara appeared to laugh at that one. The words coupled with Aki leaping through the air to clobber Inuyasha to the ground just demanded it.
"Would you guys focus on the problem here?" the hanyou demanded angrily. He was getting tired of them laughing while he got his ass handed to him. "She's still under their spell thingie if you'd care to remember!"
His out burst managed to sober all of them up, at least until Aki yelled out her next attack.
"Crouching Tiger, lunging Squirrel!" She hollered and then proceeded to attack Inuyasha with old leaves and nuts from the forest floor.
"You can't tell me you didn't find that funny," Kagome gasped out between giggles. "Oh! You should see your face!" and her laughter doubled in intensity.
Inuyasha, when he's angry or frustrated has always had anger management issues. He tends to be more violent than he might otherwise prefer and the hanyou was certainly getting frustrated and a little angry with his rotten friends. He was getting beat up, Aki was under a spell and Kag-er his friends were all laughing. It was enough to piss almost anyone off, even if they weren't likely to turn all homicidal.
But Inuyasha had homicidal tendencies and he was growing very Angry and frustrated. Without thinking much about what he was doing, the hanyou attacked the nearest person to him, who just happened to be a poor ensorcelled Aki.
The unfortunate female was thrown back from his blow into a tree, which crashed to the ground on impact. Aki couldn't breath around the sudden pain that exploded through her body. The cost of being nice was starting to accumulate a little too quickly.
Inuyasha stared in horror at what he had done. How could he have hurt his sister? He was supposed to protect her. Perhaps he would never be able to have a gentle relationship with anyone that fit into the roll of sibling. The great namelessness knew he couldn't keep from trying to kill his half sibling.
Oh shit! What if Sesshoumaru found out?
"Inuyasha!" Kagome cried in horror and watched as the hanyou's ears drooped. She didn't bother to say anything else. Inuyasha was apparently beating himself up about this turn of events already. Perhaps he would finally admit he had a problem and work towards bettering himself. Kagome rolled her eyes, like that would ever happen!
Nobody else said anything. They were all waiting to see if Aki could pull herself up off the ground. Thought some already knew it was a foregone conclusion. Aki couldn't be kept down unless she was dead, and Inuyasha hadn't hit her that hard…