AN: Yay! Fanfic's e-mail is working again. I am so happy! I should write a lemon! Should, but didn't. I figure my lemon is going to take a little while to come around since my chapters are a little shorter than I planned. Right now I have planted the lemon tree. It is just waiting to be watered so the lemons can start to grow. So instead I made this chapter a little longer. Now, let's get this chapter started.
Last Chapter
"Why did you not perish?"
Takara looked up from her kimono and slipped her fingers out of the large slit Sesshoumaru had caused. She pouted and her bottom lip started to shake as her eyes swelled up with tears. "This was my favorite kimono," she muttered sadly. She looked up with her soft gray eyes barely registering Sesshoumaru. I blinked in mild surprise. 'For a second I thought Sesshoumaru looked remorseful.' But it was gone as quickly as it appeared. She blinked a few times to clear her eyes before smiling sadly. "You can't kill me Sesshoumaru."
"What does that mean?"
"You can't kill me but I can kill you."
Chapter 8
Sesshoumaru raised his eyebrows in question and then crossed his arms across his muscular, oh so muscular chest, in a huff. Takara looked at his disposition before wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "Fine, I could kill you if I could kill you."
I looked at her before scratching my head. "What?"
She sighed, "Can we go inside to talk about this?"
"No, you will explain yourself to this Sesshoumaru here and now."
Takara looked at him with empty uncaring eyes. "Or what? You'll kill me?"
I looked at Takara disapprovingly, "Takara." She sighed and looked down at her ruined kimono before looking at back me. "I am sorry about your kimono, but don't push Sesshoumaru. Even though you are fortunate that he can not kill you, it is obvious he can still inflict pain on you."
She nodded her head and sat down on the ground in front of us. "Okay, I'll answer a few questions, but not too many."
Just as I started to open my mouth, Sesshoumaru beat me to the punch. "Why can't I kill you?"
She looked up at him with distaste. "Is your other question going to be something around the lines of how I could kill you?" Sesshoumaru gave a curt nod keeping the movement of his body to a bare minimum. "I'll answer both of them at the same time then. For some strange reason the forest can't harm me. I don't know if I am protected by it or if only things in the forest can't kill me. Likewise I can kill anything in the forest be it a bird or a tree."
"But we aren't from the forest," I pointed out.
She looked up at me before continuing. "I can't explain all of the specifics because I can't understand it all myself. All I know is that nothing can kill me but I can kill other things. I guess when you two came in you fell under the jurisdiction of the forest and thus under me."
"So you think that you would be able to fight, and by some luck decapitate, or even kill Sesshoumaru?" I looked over at Sesshoumaru and I noticed he was looking up at the treetops, though I'm sure he was listening attentively.
"I am not sure. Usually when I fight someone stronger than me either the opponent is weakened or by some fluke I end up beating them."
"So if you fought Sesshoumaru he would suddenly weaken or die by some unfortunate event?"
"I don't know. I have never fought a Lord before. If Sesshoumaru holds still we can try and see, Kagome. That actually might be kaizen."
"If you come near this Sesshoumaru, this Sesshoumaru shall remove your head from your body."
Takara shook her head quickly and her hair swung up and caught leaves throughout the chestnut strands. She looked at her now messy hair and shrugged in defeat. "It wouldn't work. A guy seven lifetimes ago tried it. All it did was leave a nasty scar and a thin line of blood. His sword never got deeper than two inches in my neck."
"Someone else has tried to kill you?"
"Why is this Sesshoumaru not surprised?"
"Actually, Sesshoumaru was calmer than all the others. He resisted the urge to put me out of my misery for a long time. A few of the others 'killed' me on sight. Someone goes in a forest and finally sees someone else and what do they do? They get jumpy and start swinging pointy objects or throwing heavy things."
"Why do most of them try and kill you?"
Takara smiled joyfully as if nothing bad had happened in the last ten minutes. "Why, because I'm annoying of course."
Sesshoumaru smirked, "Of course."
I looked at her with surprise, "You said that like you're proud."
She turned to me and smiled harder showing all of her teeth. "I am. My mother used to tell me it was a gift. I know how to annoy any and everybody."
"So you try to annoy everyone?"
"Well, yes," she replied as if she was shocked I even had to ask. "Why shouldn't I? It takes less work to be annoying than to be kind and sweet. Isn't there some saying that you should do what comes naturally? Besides knowing that no matter how much I annoy someone they can't kill me gives it that extra bit of fun and the only joy I've felt since I came in this damn forest."
"How long have you been in here?"
"I don't know for sure. I'd guess about twenty-four lifetimes."
"How long is that? A hundred years?"
"I don't know. In the forest the sun and moon don't change. Depending on where you are in the forest determines how the sky looks. The deeper you are in the forest the darker the sky looks. I actually measure the time by how long the new idiot, I mean, person in the forest lasts."
"Lasts?"
"Yes, how long they live or how long it takes them to get out of here."
"People have actually gotten out of here?"
"Yes."
I smiled in relief. 'There is hope for us yet.'
"Two, I believe. Both of them were lucky bastards."
My shoulders slumped lower and I frowned. 'So much for that.'
"They figured it out fairly quickly."
"So you know how to get out of here." Sesshoumaru said making a question sound like a statement.
"To get out of here you have to do what you were meant to do."
"And how do you know that?"
"I am all knowing."
Sesshoumaru and I looked at each other before looking at her skeptically. "Hey, I'm telling the truth. My job is to help everyone get out of the forest."
"So what went wrong with the other twenty-two people?" Sesshoumaru nodded in agreement.
"Hey, I can't help it if they don't do what I tell them to do. Some of them ended up killing themselves in desperation. You are stuck in a forest. It takes patience."
"So how do we get out?"
Takara looked at both of us for a minute. I watched her with bated breath as she lit bit the inside of her left cheek and tapped her right index finger on her chin.
"Well are you going to answer – thing?"
Her face quickly contorted in anger as she turned to face Sesshoumaru. "Would you stop that!"
Sesshoumaru started to smile but he glanced at both Takara and my eager eyes and it disappeared. "This Sesshoumaru knows how to be annoying too."
Takara got of the ground and dusted herself off. When she noticed that it didn't help she shrugged and turned towards her left. She lifted up her right arm and pointed it off in the direction she was facing. "If you walk for a few hours in that the direction, the west, you should reach the edge."
"Only a few hours?" I looked the direction she was pointed in. I wasn't too sure that this was so small of a forest.
"If you two don't stop and make out or have sex along the way. Have fun!"
I would like to thank all of my reviewers:
Black Smurf
SessKagome1KaiHilary (SessKagomeKaiHilary)
Lady Vinicia
JadeStoneTheYounger
lildevil0644 (lil devil)
kzb637 (kimiko)
TheRYU
See you in the next chapter!
