AN: Illithids are not mine. As far as I know, they belong to Wizards of the Coast for the various Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. AKA: not mine. Though I am proud to say I have a very wicked 6th level Druid... my pet is a velociraptor so large I can ride it. We've nicknamed him puppy. But Illithids? Not mine.

Chapter One: The Ring

"It's coming your way, Akane!"

Sango's voice broke out over the ear-piece in Miroku's ear. He was surprised to learn the illegal demon they were trying to catch had managed to get past Sango. She was a strong fighter, which was why they had put her in the forefront. If they could catch the demon right away it would save a lot of strife. Behind her waited Akane in ambush, in case the demon got past Sango. Behind Akane was Ranma. Miroku smiled when he thought of the partner he had known the longest. Ranma was no doubt shuffling about, trying to think of how he could apprehend the demon with the least possible amount of trouble. For being a strong, confident, and graceful fighter, Ranma had gotten sick of it in the past two years.

Last, there was Miroku. His lungs hurt as his feet pounded against the leaves and twigs on the park ground. There was a reason that Ranma, easily a better fighter than Akane, was last in their line of defense. He was there as a last-ditch effort to keep the demon from getting to Miroku. The demon they were hunting, an illithid, was known for feeding on psychic energy.

Miroku was a psychic. He was the bait.

Over the ear piece he heard grunting as Akane engaged the creature. A safe distance behind them, Miroku took the opportunity to lean against a tree, breathing heavily. His throat felt raw. Miroku began patting down his pockets, and cursed out loud when he realized he must have dropped his inhaler behind him somewhere.

Besides Akane's sounds of fighting, there was silence. Miroku was not a strong psychic—he was just an empath—but he excelled at reading people in every way possible. Rolling his eyes as he began tracing back his steps, peering down at the dark forest floor in hopes of finding his puffer, he could feel that Sango was worried about him. That was why she was being so quiet. With her astute senses she could hear his arrhythmia as he tried to breathe.

"Are you okay, Miroku?" she asked, concerned.

Her voice was sweet and honest. Miroku knew that she was honestly concerned about him, but she always was, and at times it irked him. Okay, so he wasn't a half demon like she was. Sure, he wasn't as strong or he didn't have as much stamina… but did she always have to slow herself down or not use as much muscle as she could? He knew she did it so that she wouldn't hurt his feelings, but always having to be dealt with as if he were inferior was just as bad as losing.

Worse was when she treated him like an invalid. Miroku was being unfair to her when he thought that—he knew that, but he couldn't help it. As of two years ago, he'd had to occasionally rely on a puffer to help him breathe. That was what happened when your lungs starting tearing themselves apart, when you had to have surgery, and when you inhaled a shitload of smoke, all in the same week. His lungs couldn't work as well as they could, and so sometimes he needed a boost to help them perform properly. It wasn't serious. It was just asthma. It was common. But sometimes, she looked at him when he reached into his back pocket for it, and he saw pity.

More than anything in the world he hated pity. When he had been a teenager there had been a short while when he had loved pity. Miroku had learned then that sometimes telling the truth—and being pitied because of it—was a great way to get girls into the sack. They would hold him, kiss him, and love him as if he had been emotionally neglected his whole life. That had worn off quickly.

Now he hated pity. He hated seeing it. He had hated seeing it on the faces of his teachers when he'd been eight years old and getting beaten up at school. He had hated seeing it when people found out he was an orphan, as if his foster parents were inferior because they weren't biologically related. He hated it. And he hated it on Sango the most.

On more than one occasion, back before Shabranigdo had been resurrected, back when he and Sango had been partners for a short amount of time, there had been several occasions where it looked as if one of them might die. Miroku, it seemed, especially. Now every time he coughed Sango was there, afraid she was still losing him, pitying him the weaknesses of his body, wishing to make it better…

And he felt he was taking advantage of her.

What was the difference, he sometimes wondered, between Tora Sango knowing the truth and the chicks he'd picked up at the campus bar four years ago? They had been a one night stand—maybe even sometimes a month or two at most—and Sango was going on two years. He loved her, that was part of the difference. He loved her enough that he hadn't wanted to jump in bed right away, and for a long time he had kept a safe distance from her… but did she only want him because when they had started dating she had expected it to be a short relationship? Which of them had expected it to last two whole years?

Ah, there was the puffer.

Worse, when she looked at him, he could tell she was afraid for him. She was afraid that every cough, every missed breath or heartbeat, was a sign that Miroku was about to die.

The thought washed over him, carrying away the frustration that had made his muscles tense. He sighed, dusting off the puffer. She was concerned about him, and she was so because she was his girl friend.

"It's nothing, Sango. I guess I'm just a little out of shape to be running full speed through a park at eleven at night." He took a deep puff of the inhaler.

Miroku was honestly worried that Sango was just going out with him because she pitied him. Worse, he occasionally wondered if she still loved Urahara and that she had agreed to go out with him simply because she thought he'd die soon. He was never jealous of the time she spent with Urahara. Kisuke Urahara, the head of the technological department of the IBSP, was far too formal and honest to ever get too close to Sango when they were alone together. If he did get close, it was in such an open, friendly manner that Miroku knew he had nothing to worry about.

Besides, he knew that Sango did care for him. He had been ready to die for her to save her. To save him, Sango had given up her innocence and shed human blood. But, whether or not Sango loved him was not the question. There were different kinds of love. There was the fond, devoted attachment Kisuke Urahara displayed towards Tora Sango. There was the fun, brotherly love that Miroku felt for Ranma, and for Akane. There was the respectful love he felt for his foster parents, Hououji Fuu and Ferio de Forest, senior members of the IBSP. Then there was the deep-seated love he felt for Sango, the love that refreshed itself every week so that each time he saw Sango is was like seeing her again for the first time.

How did Sango love him?

He smiled, leaning against the tree and continuing his break. He could feel his heart beginning to beat in a steadier rhythm, and his lungs didn't hurt so much anymore. Miroku put the puffer back in his pocket, and patted one of the front ones.

Miroku had a plan to find out whether or not Sango loved in a temporary matter or an eternal one. He had had the plan for a long time, but he never knew how to ask her. Part of him wanted to be traditional: fancy dinner, white wine, down on one knee… but Sango liked fun too. Maybe it would be better some other way, like at a dance hall… what about waiting for a day with fireworks?

He could never figure it out… So he carried the little blue velvet box with him everywhere…

It was missing.

Miroku looked back in the direction from whence he came. It must have fallen out of his pocket, like the puffer had… This time he managed to curse mentally. Miroku bit his lip as he contemplated going back and looking for it. The demon was back there… but so were his friends… and the engagement ring…

With a sigh, Miroku began trudging back into the forest. His eyes were locked to the ground for signs of the blue velvet box. It would be much more difficult to see than the puffer. At least that had a silver side to it that sparkled in the moonlight. The box would be probably next to invisible, but at least… Miroku groaned. At least? At least the chances were unlikely that the box would have popped open as it fell, sending the engagement ring flying? Miroku's world thrived on taking unlikely and turning it into Miroku's reality:

He was dating a half-demon. He was being used as bait for a spirit-sucking entity from another plane of existence. He belonged a secret government which 5/6 of the world knew nothing about. His boss was a full demon. There had been repeated attempts on his life because his blood had been the secret to resurrecting a demon lord.

With his luck, the ring was not only probably lost, but swallowed by a frog who would turn into a prince and demand Miroku was now his wife or something.

Akane let out a short scream. It crackled in the ear piece, and Miroku stopped when he realized he was close enough to the fight to hear her scream clearly with the other ear. How was it that he'd seem to run for ages away from the demon, but two minutes of walking led him right to it?

"Akane!"

"Saotome Ranma, you can get to your fiancée later! Hold your position!" Sango barked. She was also breathing heavily now. She had been running, obviously. There was a pause, and since Ranma didn't retaliate she figured he had obeyed. "Akane, you okay? I'm on my way!"

"Yeah," Akane answered. "I'm fine. The bastard got away, though. He headed towards the north-west, towards the end of the park where the bath houses are."

"Okay. Ranma, can you intercept?"

"I've got the outhouse in my sights. As soon as he runs by, I'll jump him." Ranma paused tentatively. "What happened, Akane?"

Akane's voice was muffled. "It threw me into a tree. Luckily, it was an evergreen, and turned out to be surprisingly comfortable, for a tree."

"Miroku, where are you?" Sango asked.

Miroku looked around him. "There's a raccoon three feet to my left." Nobody said anything. "What? Akane can make jokes and I can't? Like I bloody know where I am! I'm surrounded by trees and there seriously is a raccoon three feet to my left. Just follow the bloody demon. If it catches my scent then it will change course…oh, shit."

Miroku was staring at the raccoon. The damn thing picked up a small box from the ground and was examining it, paying no interest at all in Miroku until he swore. At this oath it looked up, almost as if it felt guilty. The beady black eyes, looking at him with a mixture of innocence and cunning that seemed disturbingly human, seemed startled. It clutched the box.

"Oh shit what?" his friends demanded.

He thought quickly. "I stepped in raccoon shit," he answered. Miroku ripped off the microphone after that. The last thing he needed was to distract his friends or have Sango questioning him.

Ducking his head, crouching to appear less threatening, Miroku slowly began edging towards the raccoon. He even held out his hand as if offering food. They were on a campsite. It was possible that the raccoon knew the gesture enough to think that Miroku was genuinely offering some rare human delicacy—corn on the cob or Cheetos, for example.

"Come here, little raccoon… come here, you little thief…"

The raccoon remained where he was and Miroku advanced a little closer. Buddha help him if he ended up having to wrestle the raccoon for Sango's engagement ring.

Much to his surprise, the raccoon dropped the ring and waddled away as fast as his short legs could carry him. Miroku let out a sign of relief before he realized that another presence was closing in on him quickly. His whole body went numb as it drew closer, as if the life were being sucked from his limbs to leave him vulnerable. He remained crouched on the ground, like a deer frozen for camouflage. There was little camouflage his blue dress shirt and his jeans could offer in the middle of a forest.

The illithid came within view. Miroku's lips pulled back, disgusted. Even though he knew what it looked like, nothing quite prepared him for seeing it again. The shape was humanoid, the fingers long and slightly webbed, the skin purple and grey-tinged and shriveled, like an amphibian's out of water. It was the head which was most disturbing. In the shape, eyes, and the fibrous projection that made up the mouth it very much resembled a squid.

Miroku, upon finding out he was going to be used as bait, had made the mistake of looking up how the creatures fed. The illithid was an illegal demon. It had been trapped in another plane of existence for the past tens of thousands of years because it was a creature which could only live on humans. It fed on them by wrapping the fibrous projections—they were technically, he supposed, like the mandibles of the creature—around the heads of the human. Buried underneath them was a sharp beak, much like a squid's. This was used to make a sharp hole in the cranium. The creature was an incredibly picky and clean eater. The tentacles covering the beak were dexterous, capable of peeling back the skin of the head, breaking off the cap of the skull in manageable fragments until the hole was adequately large enough to allow the tentacles to reach inside and remove portions of the brain in small, bite-size pieces the tentacles then passed to the beak.

He wasn't sure which was the most disturbing: the way the author of the article described it (using such phrases as "peeling the skull like an orange"), or what happened to the victim. They were held down against the body of the demon from the arms of the demon. Though slender and strange, the arms and hands of the demon were amazingly strong. The process kept them alive; it didn't kill them automatically. The illithid wasn't a humane killer, breaking the neck first the way a lion would. No, it kept them alive.

Inside the tentacles were specially designed suckers—it was a misnomer that all suckers on aquatic animals were the same. They were not the plastic-window adherents little kids imagined them to be. They were specially designed mechanisms on their own. Giant squids had ones that were more like weapons. Each sucker had a claw which held an animal in place the way a fingernail helped grip.

The illithid's were designed to absorb auras, and everything attached to them: emotions, energy… Miroku had the largest aura in their group. The aura was linked to psychic energy, though no one understood how. The most prominent theory was that psychics' auras tended to be larger because they were more attuned to what was going on in their own mind to control their powers, and because they used more mental energies. Regardless, the slow absorption of their auras meant that people felt fear and excruciating pain… and it slowly ebbed away. The pain and the fear—all emotions—left them until only a dull, void husk was left behind.

Some people had been known to be live through the attack. The only drive left was hunger, one of the most basic instincts. It was even more basic than the sexual drive. The humans had become the zombies popularized in movies. They walked the earth heedless of their energies or their dying bodies, searching for beings with large auras to refill their own. The only benefit was that their insatiable hunger never lasted very long. These failed attacks—for the brain was still intact—meant the victim continued to bleed out until it died. It usually didn't take that long to die.

Failed vampire attacks which were the most horrendous mutations, but that wasn't what Miroku was thinking about. He was thinking about the illithid, and what it would do to him if it caught him.

Miroku reached into the shoulder strap he wore. He always wore it. He held the gun ready, and the creature slowly advanced on him. Guns had always been one of mankind's greatest inventions. They had always thought that it was all-powerful. A single bullet could kill a man. Then they had needed to build Kevlar vests to protect cops from guns. Miroku wore one of those at all times too. So bad guys had built faster, stronger guns to pierce the vests. The illithid hadn't needed to evolve such protections, and Miroku knew that. At least he would let the others know where he was.

The gun went off. Miroku knew he would get in trouble for it, but he didn't care. They were supposed to deal with quietly. People were on the camp sight, and gunshots would only draw attention. The last thing they needed was to have humans find out that a war was going on under their noses.

Sango's voice over the headset was warped. She was changing. "I'm coming, Miroku."

"On our way, Miroku," Ranma verified.

The thought that they were on their way offered little comfort. Completely human, despite his psychic powers, Miroku found it alarming that a bullet, one of the strongest defenses man had created, could do nothing against the creature. Miroku knew he had struck. He was an excellent shot. In fact, he rarely missed. It was simply that bullets had been designed against animals from their plane of existence. The illithid's skin was like nothing on earth. The bullet connected with a strange kind of slurping noise, and it disappeared. The robe the illithid wore sported a bullet-sized hole in the chest, and the skin was indented where the bullet had struck, but the creature wasn't wounded. The grey, wrinkled skin was to elastic too be broken by a bullet.

His eyes glanced down. The box was laying on the ground. He snatched it up, clutching it tightly in his free hand. Miroku scrambled to his feet, heedless of the leaves clinging to his dark hair. His grey eyes were bright in the forest as he began backing up.

The only universal thing that did damage to other demons was another demon. That was why Sango was so vital in their group. She was the capable of inflicting the most damage against demons. Other than that, each group had their own weakness: shapeshifters like Sango were weak against silver, vampires against wood and flame…

Illithids were weak against flame, too! Of course!

Miroku looked around and spotted exactly what he had been looking for. He picked up a large, dry branch covered in leaves. If his plan got out of control he was going to be in a pile of shit at the Bureau, but hey! At least he wouldn't be dead!

He dropped the gun, standing over it so he wouldn't lose the weapon. He dug around in his other back pocket. That one contained a small lighter. He always had a lighter on him, ever since he'd started dating Sango. The things came in handy.

He swore that the illithid was laughing as it seemed to glide towards him. There was, much like the raccoon, a human awareness in those black eyes. Unlike the raccoon's, these eyes were cold and cruel. Miroku held the lighter under the branch and grinned at the demon. He flicked the lighter and a small spout of flame appeared. The reflection of the flame glittered in the illithid's large, watery eyes, and for a moment, it stopped. When it started moving again, it rushed at Miroku, hissing as it full-out attacked.

Shoving his hand closer to the branch, he lit it on fire. He cursed as it all but erupted into flame, singing his hand and scorching the wrist of his shirt. Gripping the make-shift hilt, he shoved the ring box away to hold his weapon like a flaming sword. The illithid stopped rushing, and Miroku went on the offensive. It was a sword, as far as he was concerned, and he attacked as such.

Sweat dripped down his nose from the branch of flame he wielded. Miroku hated fire. The dampness of skin wasn't just the result of the heat, but his fear as well. He hated the roaring and the crackling of the fire, the smell of it, and the heat. His hands shook, but he was moving too fast for the illithid to see the signs of fear.

He could hear his friends coming. Sango's arrival was predominantly silent, until a roar broke out. The illithid jumped in surprise, as did Miroku. He could feel the illithid's surprise as a tiger jumped out of the forest, but Miroku felt only relief. That was swiftly followed by an intense wave of adoration and respect. He loved Tora Sango, and even as a tiger she was still beautiful. Long, lithe, and perfectly furred from her whiskers to the tip of her tail, she was a powerfully built creature meant for both fighting and grace.

At once Sango was on the creature, biting and scratching. The illithid was an ambusher, and didn't have much in the way of defense, minus its strength and agility. They weaved and ducked around each other, a blur of shimmering stripped orange and invisible black. At one point Sango had her jaws around his neck, until she roared with pain and shook him loose.

"What happened?" Miroku asked, feeling strangely helpless as the two large creatures fought.

The bastard bit me! Miroku couldn't see any blood on Sango until he understood. He had tried absorbing Sango's aura with his tentacles.

"Be careful, Sango!" he called out. "If he manages to wrestle you down, he'll devour you. It won't matter if you're a strong psychic or not now that you've made yourself a threat!" Sango's response to indicate she understood was simply to wave her ears in his direction.

Akane showed up next. She jumped the illithid from behind. When Ranma appeared, Sango slowly began changing back into a human being. Ranma only dared approach after Sango lost her ears and her tail. Even though Ranma knew the tiger was Sango, he was still scared of the shape.

With Ranma helping, the three of them managed to wrestle down the illithid and handcuff him. Miroku felt helpless as he stood by, holding the burning branch. When the fight was over, Sango took it for him and willed the flames into nothingness. She smiled at him, but he was too tired to really care.

He'd bring out the engagement ring tomorrow.

To be continued...