The wind was deafening. InuYasha had never heard wind like this. "Kagome, you okay?" he yelled.
"InuYasha? It's fine. You don't need to yell. I'm right here," Kagome complained, standing behind him and making him jump. "Calm down! Have you never seen a tornado before?" she asked, laughing as she looked outside one of the shrine's windows.
They had come back from the Feudal Era just hours ago, hearing about the oncoming tornado hitting the area and weren't allowed to leave the shrine grounds. Or the main house, for that matter.
To Kagome, it was a thrill. There weren't many tornadoes to hit Tokyo, but she loved being able to go out and drive to where the destruction hit. It was beautiful. The last time she did it was with her father when she was seven. Since then, there were never tornadoes close by.
Now, at the age of eighteen, she had her driver's license and decided she would sneak away from InuYasha to go see Akishima and the destruction that was laid upon them. It was the town right in line of the storm.
InuYasha growled. With his hearing, it was like the windows were open. It was driving him mad! "Oi, wench. When can we go? The wind isn't that strong!" He looked outside and saw a swirl of clouds off in the distance. "Hey, what's that?"
"The tornado. This wind is nothing compared to the winds in the tunnel. It' like Miroku's Wind Tunnel. The closer that tunnel gets, the stronger the winds are, sucking everything up and destroying it. Even then, to go outside would be suicide. The only safe point during a tornado, is in the eye, but the eye is so tiny according to the reports."
"Those things have eyes?" InuYasha asked, shocked.
Kagome sighed. They had just turned on the TV for some reason Kagome couldn't remember, and every channel she turned to was static. Then, on one of the news stations JMA was broadcasting a tornado warning.
Souta was over a friend's house, and had called to say he would stay there until the storm passed.
Her grandfather was out in the park with some old priest friends, or already on their way to Fukuoka to take a cruise they'd been planning for years. Was it in Fukuoka that the cruise was launching? Well, it was far from the damage, and that's all Kagome really worried about.
And Mrs. Higurashi was at work, safe with all the other workers as they waited out the tornado.
As InuYasha growled, Kagome sighed and went to make some tea. Orange Pekoe always cheered her up, after she added a pound of sugar and a pint of honey. It reminded her a lot of her friend…who was it again? Not Yuka, or Eri, or Ayumi. They drank it straight like she would normally.
One of her lesser friends. Probably Hojo.
"Why won't you let us go back to my era? There's no tornado there. Even Kagura isn't this bad," InuYasha whined, sitting in a huffy manner at the kitchen table. "Oi, what are you doing to the tea?" he shrieked, watching her add a clear gold and grainy substance, followed by a clear gold, thick liquid.
"Adding sugar and honey," Kagome replied, looking at him like he asked if she was a girl. "Would you like some? It's soothing."
"Keh. Why's the sugar gold? In my era, sugar is white. This stuff is the color of my eyes."
"Because it's pure sugar-cane. It comes from this place called Maui, and they grow whole fields of sugar canes, which you cut to make sugar. Wait, you have sugar in your era?"
"No, but Souta has white sugar. Can I try some…honey…in my tea? And some sugar?" InuYasha asked, sounding out honey. "How else can you eat that stuff?"
Kagome laughed as she poured some boiled water into a cup and dumped the sugar and honey in, stirring until it dissolved. Then she took out a stick with a ball on it and dunked it in the honey. The ball had slots, and InuYasha watched the honey pour down them.
"Stick this in your mouth. It's just honey."
It tasted good! He watched as Kagome got a second thing out and took the entire slotted ball into her mouth. The honey was sticky and thick, just like something else InuYasha knew about. He wondered how Kagome would like that. It was white, and came from InuYasha after she rode on his back and he was stuck with a boner.
Realizing the turn his thoughts took, and how tight his hakama had gotten, he stopped eating the honey and looked out the window, seeing a tree not far away be ripped from the ground. "Kikyou would love honey," he said aloud, not really thinking.
Kagome froze. Here he was in her era, witnessing her favorite event, eating her favorite food because of what it reminded her of, and all he could think about was Kikyou.
"InuYasha?" she asked softly as she stopped sucking the honey off the stick.
When he saw this, he almost jumped up and stuffed it back in her mouth to keep the erotic moment. Hell, if he didn't get his act together, he'd end up shoving a different stick up there for her to suck. "Yeah?"
"Do you even like me at all? Do I mean anything to you other than a shard-detector?" she asked, lowering her head so he wouldn't see the tears.
"No," he started, answering her first question truthfully.
He knew, he didn't like her. He loved her. This was so cool she asked this way, he say it on all kinds of movies. He would get to hug her and kiss her hard with his tongue, tell her he loved her, and not have to service himself later in the woods.
"I knew it," she whispered.
It was then that InuYasha smelt the tears, only seconds after she dropped the honey-coated stick and bolted outside, into the raging winds she herself called suicidal.
As he ran after her, he realized just what she had meant. The tunnel thing was so close by, he had to use all his strength to run straight and not get pulled up and away. With these winds, he suddenly started to panic. Where was Kagome?
Every time he turned his head to look, the winds would whip his hair into his face. Damn! Back in his era, you cut your hair when you were ready to leave memories behind. Since he met Kikyou, he had never cut his hair, even an inch.
But once he met Kagome, he felt like cutting every strand and starting new. He never did, however, out of fear what would happen if he forgot Kikyou.
Finally, he knew what would happen if he didn't forget Kikyou. He would lose Kagome.
He took Tessaiga and took his hair in a fist. Slashing right through it, he scowled when he realized he had only cut about five inches. But then he senses were all clogged-up to the point the would go mad.
The winds were howling so much, it almost sounded like Kagome screaming for him.
Wait a…it was!
"Kagome? Kagome! Kagome!" he yelled, darting around the yard.
Then he saw her. At some point, the winds had knocked her back onto the God Tree and was staked to it with a piece of fencing post in her shoulder that must have been thrown by the wind. Thank kami-sama it had missed her torso, or worse, her head.
And yet, while he came closer, he saw the winds kept pushing up her skirt, to the point that he could see the bottoms of her undergarments when his hair was held from his face.
"InuYasha?" she gasped. "What happened to your hair? Did you cut your hair?"
He held back on doing something stupid. The first thing she notices is his hair got barely shorter. Kami-sama she was an idiot. She didn't notice he had ran after her, or how suicidal she was?
Suddenly, a tree nearby, on the very edge of the shrine, was uprooted and blown away. InuYasha ran to Kagome and yanked the fence post out of her, pulling her into his arms, muttering.
The winds were intensifying, and InuYasha felt himself coming away from the ground. Shit! He ran, faster than he ever knew he could, over to the well house. Shutting the door, he was shocked to no longer hear the howling winds. Then, he turned on Kagome.
"What the hell was that? What were you thinking?" he exploded, ramming her up against a wall of the well. "You said it yourself. Going outside was suicide! Why the hell did you do that?"
"Because dying is better than loving a guy that can only think of the past!" she yelled back, tears roiling down her eyes. "Kikyou is dead. And you can't say she isn't. Even she agrees even now she's dead. She was dead before I was born, before I even met you. And I love you! Why the hell can't that be enough?"
He stood back, shocked. Kagome…loved him? "Then why the hell are you always sitting me?" he shot back. "People don't purposely hurt the people they love."
"I don't know. I only do it when I'm mad. I always feel guilty later!"
"And why didn't you ever tell me? Damn it, I'm not the only one responsible here!"
Freezing, she just looked at him, and InuYasha wished so badly he could take away his words. The look of pure hate was so deep on her face, he felt as if he went cold. Almost as if there had been a fire within him that was suddenly squelched in water.
Now Kagome understood everything. She turned him away. And he hated her for doing it. Kikyou was his vengeance. She turned him to her, and now he wasn't letting go. "Fine. Then let's get the hell back to your era now. The sooner we go, the sooner we can close up this well forever."
"Ka-Kagome…" he stuttered, trying to reach out, only to have her bat his hand away. He looked at her hurt, and saw only determination in her beautiful hazel eyes.
She almost bent when she saw the expression so close to tears. Almost. "Go ahead. You first. The faster we go, the faster we go the sooner you'll be with Kikyou."
"This…isn't right. Kagome, what's wrong? Are you possessed or something?" he asked, only to feel her embrace him. Then, he suddenly felt weightless, and realized halfway down the well that Kagome had pushed him, just as he had done to her to make her leave.
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"InuYasha?" Shippou asked, surprised to see him alone. "Where's Kagome?" Then a gust of wind blew him down into the well, InuYasha catching him. "InuYasha, Kagura's making huge winds! Naraku even opened a time-thing. Where's Kagome?"
He looked at the well's bottom. No miko was appearing next to him. He was afraid she may never appear to their era again. Then his words reached him. "Naraku did what?"
Suddenly he saw Sango and Miroku jump down the well to him. "InuYasha, where's Kagome-sama?" Miroku asked.
In a less delicate way, Sango pinned him against the side of the well. "Kagome-chan better be okay. She better be on her way back to this era as we speak."
"What the hell is Naraku doing?" InuYasha yelled.
"He used the Shikon shards and Kikyou to open a time-portal into Kagome's era and has Kagura braced between the times. She's making a wind powerful enough to destroy the forests in both eras, and they're trying to seek Kagome out. Now, where is she?" Sango explained.
InuYasha gasped. He told her those things weren't normal! But then he started to process her words. "She isn't coming back. She thought I was in love with Kikyou, and she pushed me through. She's killing herself."
"You mean, she's doing as you did? What you thought was the better for her?" Miroku asked, accusingly. "Does it hurt, to feel betrayed? Do you get what she felt like now?"
Yes, he did. Right after they had fought with Hiten and Manten, he had pushed Kagome through the well and shoved a tree in it to keep her in her era. She came back crying when Shippou helped her to get back through. InuYasha finally understood her betrayal…
"Sango, let go of me. I'm getting Kagome back," he ordered.
Kagome had left a jewel shard to him, and like hell she could put a tree in that well.
He climbed up the well, and then dived down to the bottom, face crashing into the dirt. As he stayed there, head and arms dug so far in that he was upright upside-down, Shippou sighed.
"We're doomed, aren't we?"
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As Kagome threw in a garden shovel for good measure, she sighed and dusted her hands off. After she pushed InuYasha, she filled the well with any gardening tool she could find even remotely near the well house.
She didn't dare venture far past a sturdily sustained rope that lead from the well house to the woods. Souta and her grandfather put it up back when they had a dog. He died and they got Buyo, whom Kagome loved just as much as Midori.
"That should keep him," Kagome said aloud, looking back outside. The tornado wasn't supposed to hit Tokyo City, and yet it almost seemed like it was coming straight for the shrine. Then, she saw something she thought she'd never see. "It can't be."
There, in the tunnel, was a sparkle of something, but what she didn't know. For a minute, she had thought it was a Shikon shard, but that was impossible. Her mind was playing tricks on her.
Yet, there it was again, and now the tunnel seemed to be changing direction. Oh kami-sama! It was coming towards her! It was going to hit Tokyo City, and maybe even the shrine! Kagome couldn't imagine what would happen if it took out the shrine. And so she thought of the next most reasonable thing.
Grabbing her bow and arrows from a niche Souta had found just weeks ago, and a rope to tie around her waist, she ran outside. Working her way to the forest, then to the God Tree, she focused on not dropping anything. Finally, she made it to the tree and tied the rope around her waist and the trunk of the tree.
Preparing the bow, she pulled the arrow slack and focused her miko powers. This wasn't going to purify. This was going to obliterate. As the arrow took to the sky, the winds from the tornado pushed it off course and flying into an urban neighborhood.
"Damn!" she yelled. If she tried that again, someone could get hurt. "Now what…Holy shit!" she cursed as she saw the tornado even closer than she felt comfortable. Watching the destruction was one thing, being in it was another.
But then she saw it, there was a shard! And it looked like someone was inside. Someone with a fan…
"Kagura?" she yelled over the ripping winds. Quickly as possible, she undid her tether and ran back to the well house via the rope.
From inside, she erected a barrier, focusing so intently it was a hundredfold more powerful than anything Kikyou ever put up, and so consuming she didn't hear the curses and her garden tools being cast around in the well.
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Eventually, after many several painful attempts InuYasha finally made it through, only to see how Kagome had clogged up her side of the well. "Fucking garden things? What the fuck is all this. Fucking bitch needs to fucking learn her fucking place."
Making his way up to the well house, he saw Kagome so immersed in her miko powers they went red. The color of his mate. He smiled at the memories of telling his mother he would always put his wife in red.
Then he realized something. He couldn't hear the winds anymore. Did the storm-thing pass? No, it was that eye-thing Kagome told him about. Was it? Just to make sure, he poked his head outside the well house. What he saw made him gasp.
There was Kagura, fighting with a barrier a little more than around the shrine, and expanding. He looked back to Kagome, and saw her look of fear and adoration, pulled in one. Suddenly, their eyes met, and hell broke loose.
Her focus dropped, and all her energy rushed to fight back the tornado, purifying it as well as Kagura as it dispersed far out over Tokyo. Then, drained, Kagome slumped to the ground.
"Kagome!" InuYasha yelled, concerned, as he ran over and hugged her, kissing her head. "How did you do that? What were you thinking?"
She closed her eyes and panted, resting her head on his chest. "Tokyo was going to be destroyed, and I had to save it. That I'd lose everything. Souta, Kaasan, my friends, the shrine…the well," she whispered, snuggly into him.
He held her close and stole sniffs of her hair and her person. She was stronger now, even turned-on somehow. He smiled at his discoveries, thinking of later uses for them. But for now, she was drained, she was mistaken, and she was sad.
"If that well was destroyed, I'd never see anyone again. Kaede-sama, Miroku-sama, Sango-chan, Shippou, Sesshomaru and Rin…you."
He smirked into her hair that she had left out Jaken. Ever since Rin started growing up, Sesshomaru and InuYasha had been forced to get along better so Rin could learn about being a girl by the human women he traveled with.
"Kagome, I was so worried," he whispered, tugging at her hair to get her to hug him. "Oh, that feels so good. Kagome, I couldn't get through. I thought something happened."
"You…did? But you did the same thing to me before," she told him, loving the feel of their hug as well.
"But I was protecting you. In my head you were safer here, with the other people from your era. With that boy, even if I loved you."
Kagome gasped. "Even after everything I've done?"
"Hell, Kagome. Especially after everything you've done. Let's see, collected how many shards? Purified how many demons? Loved me for what reasons? You're an amazing person. Woman. With a really nice body."
She laughed at the last part and hugged him closer, climbing into his lap. "I love you, InuYasha. And when you finally stop loving Kikyou, I'll still love you." Then she looked at his hair again. "Why did you cut this?"
His head dropped to look at his lap. A bad idea with her there--all he could see was her chest. And it turned him on in a big way. "It's only a few inches."
"But I've never seen you cut it. It's like from all those old customs. It's only cut when…you're ready to let go of your old memories or old experiences," she whispered, realization hitting her.
"Yeah. I'm ready to let go of Kikyou, Kagome. I realized that when I was scared shitless for your life," he whispered, kissing her. "How many movies have you seen?"
"Huh?" she asked, confused. It was such a random question.
"I said, how many movies have you seen?" he repeated.
"Not many. Why?"
"In the kitchen. You never let me finish. I don't like you at all. I--" he started.
Finally she got it. "Fuck," she swore, crossing her arms over chest. "InuYasha, movies aren't real. You don't say 'I love you' like that! Yuka slapped a guy across the face for trying to do that. And my friend Shinji cried all night when his girlfriend tried a line from the movies."
Eyes growing wide, he looked guilty at her words. Oops.
She sighed and leaned in, kissing his gently on the lips. "At least you said you love me."
Now he was smiling deviously. "I do more than tell you. I've always been better at showing things. Care to join me in my era for a show of how much I love you?"
She smiled and laughed. "Not yet, dog-boy. First we have to go get the jewel shards Kagura dropped, then I want to show you something. This is your first tornado, right? I want to show you the destruction it can leave. It'd beautiful."
"Beautiful? How?" he asked, getting up and offering Kagome a hand as the other slid around her to bring her up with him anyways. "How common are these things?
"Smooth. You've seen how industrial Japan gets. The destruction lets you see nature again. Then, almost days later the areas all built up again. It's not common around here. But the carnal beauty is amazing. My dad…he showed me once, and ever since I love it. I have a photo book all of destruction pictures. It's called Moving On."
"Keh," he replied, walking out with her, smiling. Who would've guessed all their bonding came from a wind-demoness bent on their destruction?
Well…not all their bonding. That moment when they went inside to get her keys was definitely not caused by Kagura. It was plain and simple. It was lust and love.