S-S: My apologies for this chapter taking so long. I had a stack load of art commissions to finish.
I do not own InuYasha.
There was a flash of pain, searing, burning, horrifying, the kind that makes blood run cold as ice and thoughts scream.
Then, as soon as it had arrived, the pain left. In a flash. It didn't fade, it simply vanished, like with a snap of the fingers. Poof. Gone.
Shiko could see anything, just the darkness. But it wasn't a complete darkness, there were blobs of light that sort of moved when she tried to look at them. Blue light, white light, sort of out-doorsy light. Oh. She was looking at the back of her eyelids. That must mean that she still had eyes. That was a good sign, she supposed.
Without opening her eyes, she tried to think about where she was. Something that felt suspiciously like grass tickled the skin on her bare arms. So she had arms then. Excellent. She wiggled her toes, and upon doing so, discovered that she was still in possession of those as well. She ran her tongue over the back of her teeth quickly to make sure that her teeth hadn't been knocked out. Nope, those were all still there. Her fingers felt a bit tingly, so she had fingers as well. There was something in her hand, she realized, something smooth, wooden… her sword was still there? Strange. If she had been hit by that car, she would have expected that to go flying out of her hand…
Hold on.
If she had been hit by a car, and all she was feeling was a slight headache – as opposed to crushed bones, ruptured organs, and splattered brains – , what the hell had happened?
Oh no oh no oh no.
She was dead, wasn't she? She had died and gone to heaven- or hell, she honestly had no idea what the powers that be would think about her.
Well. Time to open her eyes.
Gingerly, and with the full expectation to see fire and brimstone or bright pearly gates, she cracked open her eyes, but just a crack.
A pale, grey-blue light steamed in, all the way to her temples. That wasn't particularly heavenly, she thought. Reaching a hand up to her head, she rubbed her eyes and sat up.
And then she opened her eyes all the way.
She was looking at a sky. A beautiful, blue sky. A slightly cloudy, chance of rain later, sky.
Well, was that heaven?
No, it couldn't be.
Those clouds looked… odd.
She held up a hand and made some noise of surprise that was almost a scream but got lost along the way. It sounded a bit like 'eep!'
Her hand was all there. No lost fingers or added fur or talons or hideously disfiguring scars. Just her hand, the way it had always been. Even the black nailpolish was there, shine and all.
But it was animated.
Her hand was animated.
So was the sky. And her legs. And what she could see of her torso. And the grass that she was sitting on. And the trees in the distance. And-
Well, she was just going to go out on a limb here, but at a guess, she would say that the whole world was animated. So either someone had slipped something in her drink, or… or what?
Where was she anyways? There wasn't any where like this near her home, animated or not. And it had been quite sunny, not cloudy at all just a moment ago.
Was she… dead?
She would say that was impossible, seeing as how she was still functioning, breathing, heart beating. But seeing as the whole world being animated had been impossible naught five minutes ago and here she was, standing in an anime world, looking animated, that whole 'impossible' train of thought simply didn't apply. So if she was dead, then was this heaven? Why would heaven be animated? Yes, she would be the first to say that anime was kinda heavenly in its own way, it just didn't make sense.
Wasn't heaven all pearly gates and singing angels and stupid fat naked babies with wings and harps? Where was the old man with a beard who would tell her that she had been a very bad girl and needed to go to hell? "Standards must have really dropped, huh?" she muttered out loud to herself, trying to relieve some of her stress.
She looked all around. As far as she could see, was grass, this open field. Beyond the green fields was a large forest of dark trees, and farther beyond that, mountains that scraped the sky, trailing clouds of snow and mist in their wake. There wasn't anything particularly biblical about this place, or indeed anything particularly particular to any religion that she had ever heard of.
So then where was she? It was like she had been sucked into a computer. Describing what it was like to be animated was pointless. Everything looked two dimensional, flat, like on a computer screen, until it moved or turned and then she realized it wasn't.
Right. So she was in an anime world.
Well, that wasn't something that happened every day. She felt woozy, like maybe she was going to faint. But she gritted her teeth, because in a world ruled by Murphy's law, feinting in the middle of nowhere with nobody around was the last possible thing anyone wanted to do. And coincidentally, it was likely to be the last thing anyone would do as well.
"Okay Shiko, pull yourself together!" she yelled at herself. She had to focus, stay strong, keep her head. Heads were hard to find again once you lost them. First thing first. She had to find out where she was, when she was, what universe she was in.
She bit her lip and looked around. There was forest in all directions, no landmarks. Taller mountains to the left. Oh, there! To the left! A small chimney of smoke curled from behind the trees. It wasn't too far off either, pretty close actually. It rolled up into the sky in the strangest way. Her mind told her that it was painted, not real, simply an animation, but it looked so real, moved like real smoke. Like it was pretending it was real smoke.
Her sword was still in her hand, and she was glad that she had it. Her gun must still be in her messenger bag, and that was a relief. She didn't want to be unarmed in this. She tucked her sword into her belt and tied it into place. That done, she squared her shoulders, clenched her fists, and shrugged her bag higher onto her shoulders before she set off at a fast pace towards the smoke.
The grass acted like real grass, crunching beneath her feet. The forest even smelled like a real forest, piney fresh. Maybe there were some people camping or something. That was the only reason that Shiko could think of that would explain people being so far out into the wilderness. She was a city girl, and there wasn't much options for camping near home, although there were the Sierra Nevada mountains that weren't all that far away, and the central valley was apparently pretty nice. She had been to Yosemite once, and that had been okay for camping. Maybe she had ended up there. The only other place that she had ever been to that looked like this was Japan, when she had visited there one summer and gone up into the mountains for a day.
Campers or just vacationers, she hoped that they had a car or something so that she could get a ride to a city
And then she stepped out from behind a tree and her jaw hung open wide. "Well… maybe not a car then," she managed to mutter.
She was standing on the very edge of what looked like a feudal village. Huts with wooden slats for wall, thatched roofs, a large stone-wringed campfire in the center of a road. She said village, that was pretty lenient. There were only a few houses, few and far between. To her right was a mountain slope, where rice paddies had been cut into the rock, leaving those steps for farming. Stables with horses, chickens, animals that her city life had never seemed to include.
And the people.
Oh the people. Dark hair, dark eyes, dressed in ragged kimono and no shoes. And they wore topknots, all the men wore topknots. The people moved about the village in that humdrum of daily life, heads down and ignoring the world, carrying large bundles and only focused on their work.
That is, until Shiko stepped onto the dirt road.
The man nearest to her dropped a bundle of kindling, the wood spilling onto the ground. He held a look of surprise, shock, and strangely enough, fear. He stepped backwards from her, like he was scared that she would turn him into a toad like in fairytales.
Shiko held up a hand, "Please!" she begged, "I'm just lost, if you could help me please , that would be great!"
He opened his mouth, staring at her… and said something in Japanese.
Well shit. If the kimono's hadn't given it away, this certainly would. Shiko's mind switched to the different dialogue, like changing channels on a remote, "I'm lost," she said in Japanese, "Please. Help me." It was rusty, she hadn't spoken it in a while, but a few more sentences and she would have the fluency back.
The man just gave her this look, like she was evil incarnate, and yelled, "DEMON!" Shiko's stomach plummeted like a brick as the man ran away faster than if the devil was on his heels. He kept screaming 'demon!' as he ran off.
Shiko's hand flew to her ponytail. The black hair. With the blue dye. The sword. The strange clothes.
"Fuck." She swore, returning to English. Of course they would think she was some sort of… well, she hadn't been thinking demon, but it made sense.
And at the end of the road, the man was coming back. With others. And with spears, pitchforks, and sharp metal things that she really didn't want to think about.
Shiko turned on her heels and ran.
The cries and yells of the villagers were still behind her, trying to catch up to her. She felt as though she couldn't run fast enough, but she just kept going. Her bag bounced and banged against her hip and she held a hand to her sword to steady it as she leapt over tree roots and ducked under large branches.
Thin branches tried to grab her arms and cut at her cheeks, but she could still hear the cries at her back. She risked a glance over her shoulder and could see them, far behind yes, but moving. Her heart pounded in her ears, blood rushing through her veins as that adrenaline really began to kick in. she doubled – no, tripled her pace through the forest.
She felt like a frightened rabbit, about to be cornered and slaughtered. How was she going to get out of this?! Stop being the frightened rabbit. Use her brains, that's what they were there for. Shiko quickly glanced around and spotted a very tall tree with particularly heavy foliage.
Tree-climbing had never been her forte, but her dad had made her do a bit of everything, so it wasn't like she couldn't. She grabbed a long hanging branch and used her momentum to carry her legs past the branch and swing herself up. Reaching up, her hand found a branch and latched on, her sweaty palms digging into the bark. She pulled herself towards the branch, stretching her leg up to push on another branch. In that way, like a spider, she scrambled up the tree.
When her head burst through a clump of waxy green leaves and the forest floor was far beneath her and the branches were thinning, she paused, drawing her legs up to her chest and leaning over a branch, peering through the leaves. And not a second too soon, it seemed. Beneath her, the villagers began to run off into the distance, to wherever it was they thought she was.
Sighing deeply, Shiko leaned back against the truck of the tree and allowed herself to relax. The adrenaline slowly faded from her system, leaving her feeling tired, more tired than she had in a while. Today was not her day, was it?
The shouts and yells and noises of the villagers faded into the background, and then they disappeared all together. Still, Shiko waited. Partly because she knew better than to come down right away, and partly because she simply needed a moment of rest.
She reached into her bag that had miraculously survived the trip up the tree and rooted around inside. There was her cell phone, wallet – no good here –, a box of pocky that she had got the other day, and an apple and a candy bar. She pulled out the apple, shined it up a bit on her shirt and bit in.
Crisp and juicy. Delicious. She polished it off quickly and tucked the core into a bend in the tree, whipping the juice off on her pants. Now what was she to do?
She would have to be careful. Of all the anime to wander into, she had to get the one in feudal Japan, didn't she? Where her hair would stand out for miles around, even if she was able to do something about her strange clothing. Gun and sword, yes, but she was not about to shot people just for a mistake. How long would she be running for? What would she, could she do?
For the first time in a very long number of years, she had the sudden urge to curl up into a ball and cry. She was stranded in the wilderness, she couldn't try and make contact with people for fear of being hunted, and she was in a world that she had never known, and things were animated. Oh, and she would soon run out of food. And there were demons. Freaking, demons. Well wasn't that… wizard.
"What am I supposed to do?" she asked out loud. The words echoed quietly off her surroundings, like the forest had better things to do than repeat her thoughts.
Feeling odd, and perhaps a bit empty, she climbed down from her perch in the tree, landing as lightly as she could on her toes. She glanced around in all directions, trying to decide where to go. Well, the direction the village was in was o-u-t out. She looked up, past the tree line. Best to head towards those tall mountains. Even if she didn't find anything, the height would let her look around and see where she was.
This time, she tried very hard to make as little noise as possible. Who knew what people were lurking here, on some mental demon hunt? Every step she took, she rolled the balls of her feet when she stepped, picking up her foot again as lightly as possible. She kept glancing at the ground, making sure to avoid twigs or dry leaves, anything that might make noise.
The forest was silent around her, her own breathing seeming louder than she could ever have possibly imagined. San Francisco, her beloved home. Who would have thought that she would miss the loud sounds and noises of the city so much. But it was true. Her home, loud, noisy, and smelly thought it may have been, at least had had the grace to be familiar and welcoming. Camping and hiking in the wildlife parks and natural reserves simply didn't compare to this. There, there were always ranger stations in case you got lost, and there were probably other hikers just a bit farther down your trail, people camping just a little ways away from your tent. This was solitude.
For the first time in a long while, she felt completely alone. Oh there had been the emotional hide in her room alone, and the parents left on business trip and empty house alone. But this was different. She had… she really had no way of getting home. No way to tell her dad, who must be panicking, that she was alright.
She didn't even know if she herself was properly alive or not.
What was she going to do?
And then, with all the creaks and booms that should have accompanied it, a giant snake crashed through the trees.
Oh yes. Today was definitely not her day.
