AN: Sorry about the delay! (again). I can't put my hands on my computer everyday, and days like Sunday are worst, since a horde of friends (always on sundays T.T) decided to invade my home and eat my snacks... my precious junk food! ToT. Now I'll have to buy more Nuttela, strawberry jam and brigadeiro (a sweet made of milk and chocolate)... perhaps some chips too... hmmm :9
Pairing: KagomexItachi (with mentions of KagomexInuyasha) and SangoxMiroku.
Rating: T
Chapter Summary: A little down side to having half a soul that Itachi just found out.
The tales of the lost Shinobi.
9: Soul Stealer.
For the two days Kagome've been away, Itachi felt like he had nothing to do. Of course, he had numerous things to do... but the feeling of being bored escalated out of proportions.
"No, concentrate on your inner energy, on your chakra" He was now instructing Sango on how to use the limited amount of chakra she had. She'd never be able to be a true chakra-user though, because she was underdeveloped in that sense. When he told her just that, she tried to pound him with her big-bad-battle boomerang. Of course she missed - badly - but it was the thought that counted.
By the end of the day, he managed to get her to raise her chakra to the surface through the weak and narrow pathways, using his sharingan to point her through the "concentrate on that specific point" problem. She did summon a little amount of chakra, not even enough for a bunshin, but with time and the right training, Itachi could raise that small amount and sharp Sango's chakra control over it, to have her perform low class basic jutsus, like Substitution and a clone or two.
"Its hard!" Sango gasped, breathing hard. Yes, she could now summon her chakra to the surface, but it didn't mean, by all, that it was easy. She didn't have the same amount of chakra Itachi did, or the developed chakra path-ways - as Itachi "kindly" pointed out - necessary to make that task easier... so she had to struggle.
Though, it would become an useful tool if she could make a clone, intangible as it is, to fool her enemies.
"Keep on focusing it to your skin" Itachi instructed patiently. It was a way to kill his boredom.
Inuyasha was watching from a nearby three, sneering all the time... It seemed that Itachi wasn't the sole victim of Kagome's absence. Inuyasha's mood darkened gradually as the days went through.
But then something strange happened. Inuyasha's sneer transformed slowly into a blank mask. His rosy nose rose up to the air and the half-dog demon took a delicate sniff. Golden yellow eyes shifting to the stationary form of Itachi, who was still pretending to be lecturing Sango.
With a mighty leap, Inuyasha was out of his three and trekking into the forest. Itachi blinked after the red clad figure - Sango wasn't as discrete.
"He's off to see her again" The demon slayer mumbled irritated. It took milliseconds for Itachi to understand who was this "she" Sango talked about - And it took only another millisecond for the shinobi to remember his contempt to "her".
He glared at the direction Inuyasha had run to. Though, he had a glaring partner, as Sango's incensed eyes seemed to burn even more than his - non sharingan - ones.
Briefly, only as a passing though, Itachi entertained the motion of going after the half-demon, and meeting face to face with the woman who had half of Kagome's soul and Inuyasha's heart. He absolutely felt displeasure about her, mostly because of Kagome's sake - He was broken off of his semi-day dream by a snort.
"So you felt it too?" Miroku's voice came from a little ways behind them. The monk's been there sharpening his staff for some time now, and only stopped his chore to leer lecherously to Sango's rear, so intently it was like he was committing to memory her shapely curves. Itachi wondered more than one time, how Miroku would react to the Icha-Icha Paradise book series. Kisame was/is a fervent fan. Even if his blue partner had to fight Jiraiya on more than one occasion because of the Kyuubi's brat.
Kisame reluctantly did so.
And it helped that Itachi hesitated to kill Konoha shinobis... OK, he never ever thought of harming his ex-compatriots, even if they tried to kill him, maim him, arrest him, knock him down - and all sorts of bodily/mental harm - Itachi still thought of himself as a loyal Konoha shinobi in the deepest part of his being... It was drilled upon him the moment he got to ANBU. "Keep your mouth shut! don't spill secrets even under torture! Protect Konoha by all costs! Your life is nothing if the village is in the line" Stuff like that.
Idly he wondered too, if that wasn't the cause for so many ANBU's units being killed on a weekly base... ANBU were killed like peons on a gaming board... It was kind of sad, really.
"Yeah... I felt when those nasty little things begun circling around the forest" Sango replied to Miroku's half question. What are they talking about? He didn't feel anything different, aside from noticing Inuyasha's strange antics before said hanyou took off.
Almost as if reading the confusion on his carefully poker-blank expression, Miroku shook his shoulder blades to take off the stiffness from being sat down for so long, and explained.
"You heard of Kikiyou, Itachi-sama?" Miroku's purple eyes were shadowed, as if he was thinking something unpleasant.
"Yes, I may have" Itachi nodded, his voice grave and emotionless. Sango's lips curled as she sneered at a nearby, innocent three.
"She can't survive with only that fraction of Kagome-sama's soul, she's unstable, and will crumble easily... so she's made a pact with some lower spiritual demons - Ayakashi - that she can control, using a miko' skill to create shikigamis... She uses those to steal recently deceased maiden' souls, and fuse them into her own body, so that the souls' energy sustain her instead of a whole soul for herself" The monk sighed deeply. It shouldn't be humanly possible for something like that to happen... simply putting things, that woman was a soul eating zombie - kind of reminded him of Orochimaru's body switching pastime.
The shinobi shuddered… thinking about Orochimaru and comparing him to Kikiyou.
Itachi felt sickened to the pit of his stomach, and thanked whoever god was out there that he didn't have breakfast this morning, wanting to burn some energy, least he gained fat - which would make him slower and less aerodynamic - and he wouldn't admit to being a health freak, ever.
He purposely blocked some childhood memories of him pouting under his mother's stare, as he refused to eat anything but sweets...
"So what you felt..." He asked instead of pouting outwardly. Though he truly wanted to know how they detected Kikiyou. He left the sentence hanging for the sake of it.
"The souls her Shikigamis are carrying" Miroku answered haughtily Sango nodded.
"I wish to learn how to detect such things" Itachi asked/imposed with a raised eyebrow. It would be an useful skill, to be able to detect a soul... or so he thought at the time. But Sango smiled at him gracefully.
"Of course! I'm not good with it though, Houshi-sama is be a better teacher" Sango motioned to Miroku's beaming form, all dark thoughts involving innocents' souls being lost forever in the stomach of a zombie miko, seemingly forgotten.
"I'd be happy to teach you open your mind to the supernatural!" Miroku was still smiling brightly. "With those eyes of yours, it should be a fairly easy task for you to accomplish, Itachi-sama"
"Hn" And so he kept with Sango's lessons, though the three humans were still a little bit tense about the situation, seeing as once or twice, a tubular, white/light blue semi transparent, dragon-like creature would cross the sky, carrying in their tiny claws, a pulsing white globe. A soul.
Thankfully Itachi couldn't see them without his sharingan eyes... yet.
XxxxXxxxX
More of a filler-because-the-story-is-almost-done chapter than anything else~ x.x A big, fist-sized brigadeiro to everyone who leaves a review!
