So after a ridiculously long hiatus I'm actually posting a new chapter; I still have not given up on this story yet!
000
"'If we don't hurry up'?" exploded Kouga, flinging Inuyasha's words back at him, "you damned mutt – wasn't that your job? Why in the hell are you standing here talking to us instead of out there finding them!"
Inuyasha whipped back around to face the irate demon youth, his own lips curling around a snarl. However, Ginta seized the moment to swoop in between them before the situation could escalate any further.
"It's not like that, Kouga; Inuyasha wouldn't have abandoned the trail if he hadn't been unable to follow it!"
This earned the intercessor a swift clouting over the head by the same pale-haired boy. Ginta winced at the half-breed, clutching his battered cranium, "Well, it's true," he whimpered.
"Don't talk about me like I'm some sort of shit-tracker!"
"Why not," retorted Kouga, "you obviously are. And you!" he suddenly turned on his lieutenant, "Why did you just moronically follow him here instead of trying to find your own kinsman?"
"I'm trying to explain," the other wolf held his hands up toward his boss to fend off any further blows, "both of us were tracking the scent when we inhaled something awful – it burned our sinuses so badly we couldn't smell anything, and then we couldn't follow their foot trail very well either…so we thought it would be better to meet up with the rest of you before going any further."
"What was it that you inhaled," Sango wanted to know.
Inuyasha gave a sullen shrug, "Dunno, some kind of powder maybe." He sniffed loudly, dislodging the lingering irritant, and spat on the ground, "My guess is that bitch Kagura is the one responsible."
"No doubt," the demon slayer agreed, "If I wanted to shake a bunch of people with acute senses of smell I would use something like that too."
"Well, now what the hell do we do," Kouga demanded.
"I have an idea," Miroku supplied calmly without further explanation as all eyes turned expectantly to him, "and in the meantime, we can fill each other in on what we've learned so far."
Panting raggedly and covered in lacerations, Hakkaku lay in a growing pool of his own blood; Kagura loomed menacingly over him, looking somehow much larger than her diminutive size.
"Consider that your only warning; the next time you open your mouth I'll decapitate you and haul your corpse along with me." She shut her fan with a loud snap to punctuate the statement.
As far as he was concerned, since she was planning to kill him anyway, she might as well get it over with – but remembering that Rhane was hidden just inside the cave, he did not want her witnessing such a gruesome scene and merely nodded compliantly.
Satisfied, though still visibly agitated, Kagura readied her feather and gestured sharply at him, "Get on."
"Stop," piped a shrill pleading voice.
Hakkaku had halfway risen to join the demoness when he suddenly twisted round to see a fully human Rhane emerge from the cave opening.
Kagura's dark lips twisted into a wry smirk, "You were saying something about being alone?"
"R-Rhane what are you doing? Get away from here," Hakkaku entreated weakly, waving her away with a bloodied hand.
The girl gave no response. Her jade eyes never wavered from the sanguine glare of the other woman as she strode over and placed herself resolutely between the two demons. "Kagura-san, please listen tae me – what Hakkaku said is true! Tha' water showed us things from th' past and the future, an' one of those things wis a picture of you dead beside a sapling! But it hasnae happened yet – th' future c'n still change! Ye dinnae have tae go through wi' this, an' whatever ye do, please don't take it out on Hakkaku – he's innocent." She turned and cast a brief look of apology toward her feral friend who continued entreating her with his own gaze to run. "I'm the one who broke yuir vial!"
Kagura looked unimpressed. "You don't say – well, I'm glad to hear that." She lifted her fan almost offhandedly, bringing it rapidly down again, "Now die!"
Rhane collapsed to the ground beside Hakkaku, a succession of wind crescents sailed past – one of them barely missing her head and ripping through her shoulder. "Ah," she gasped, clasping her wound. She looked up just in time to see the wind mistress swing her fan above her head in preparation to cut the Scottish mortal into pieces.
Before she could be decapitated, something large and heavy was suddenly lying on top of her and the girl heard the hoarse voice of Hakkaku. "You'll have to slice through me first! The water's still inside me, Kagura, regardless of what happened – so leave her out of this!"
The incarnation sighed angrily at the heap of bodies at her feet, "I really don't have time for this. You," she pointed at the wolf demon, "get on and come with me now and I won't kill her." She shot Rhane a warning look, "Provided you don't get in my way anymore."
"She won't," assured Hakkaku, lifting his body off the human. He glared sternly down at her, "Don't try to stop me, Rhane, I'm going and there's nothing to be done about it."
Her wide green eyes regarded him in alarm, but he turned abruptly away and limped toward the giant awaiting plume without another word. She wasn't fooled by his bravado, however; she could see his trembling as he climbed onto the levitating feather with Kagura and her heart twisted with helpless anguish. She understood that he was trying to protect her and that, with his ingestion of the liquid from the cave floor, there was little else she could do apart from her desperate but futile attempt to persuade the sorceress not to sacrifice him.
Hot tears spilled down her cheeks. Rhane wanted to leap up and tackle the witch to the ground, to rake her claws across the cruel, pale face with its red eyes and lips – but that would only result in her own death and all Hakkaku's efforts being for naught. Still, she could not simply lie there and allow him to be whisked off to be slaughtered. She rose to her feet as the feather and its passengers all at once lifted dramatically into the air.
"Kagura," she shouted up to the plume, "don't kill him! Ye ken tha' ye dinnae have tae – please!" She watched the enlarged hair ornament rise higher before jetting swiftly away. Rhane took off in the same direction, shifting into a wolf even as her legs launched her forward. The second her weight came down on her injured shoulder, a starburst of pain exploded through her head, sending bright spots to her eyes. Keeping up with the feather on four good legs would have been extremely difficult, now it was next to unthinkable. Without slowing, the wolf shifted again into her hybrid form in order to take the strain from her damaged limb and sped desperately through the underbrush on threes.
With the full return of her intellectual faculties, Wolfsbane considered the almost half-hearted blow that Kagura had dealt her. Despite the seriousness of her wound, the shape-shifter knew from previous encounters with the deomoness's handiwork that she easily could have killed Rhane at such close proximity – especially Rhane in human form. For the first time she wondered if the woman was really as heartless as she'd first believed. She dared to hope that Hakkaku might yet be spared even as the wind carried them further and further from her.
Perhaps it was the cursed, stagnant water from the cave, or being sliced up by wind blades, or the fact that he was shooting through the air to his eminent death, but Hakkaku felt increasingly unwell as he crouched behind Kagura on the feather. Part of him thought he'd be better off leaping from the plume and ending things on his own terms before the wind wielder had the chance to kill him in order to accomplish her schemes. On the other hand, if the vision he'd seen was accurate, she'd be the cause of her own undoing and he had a duty to see his plight through to the end – both to Kouga and all the rest of their slaughtered kin. Either way wound up with him dead. The boy gave a miserable shudder; his stomach lurching with every swerve of the feather.
His thoughts gradually shifted to the other forecast he and Rhane had beheld in the glassy surface of the water: the two of them together in the future. How could that be true if he was going to die? Was any of it true, or was it as Rhane had said earlier – the future remained changeable. Perhaps he would die today, or perhaps he would live on together with Rhane somehow – perhaps neither of these was true. The wolf demon didn't know what to believe.
Automatically, the moon-faced girl with her shock of wildfire hair appeared in his mind's eye. She was not, he conceded, what he would have ever thought to look for in a mate: human (at least half the time) prone to emotional outbursts and altogether foreign. At the same time, she was also courageous and compassionate to a fault, not to mention biologically close to his age. His fondness for her (he realized as he considered his current circumstances) was great. If one of the watery visions had to be true, he prayed it was the one about her and him.
In front of him, Kagura remained as poised and unapproachable as a dagger, saying nothing and only looking straight ahead. Hakkaku addressed her hesitantly, unable to bear the silence any longer, "How much further are we going?"
"Why," she snapped, twisting round to face him, "are you in a hurry to die?"
"No." He risked a peek over the side of the plume, but all he could see were the tops of trees far below; he'd long since lost sight of the trailing Rhane and hoped that she'd finally given up. "I just don't know how much longer I can stand being on this thing."
Kagura gave a short laugh, "You'll be on it for as long as you need to be, wolf, or did you think this was a joyride for your amusement?"
The boy didn't answer, only hunching further into a miserable ball.
The witch observed him for a moment longer before continuing, "Don't think for a second that I'll have mercy on you either – no one toys with me and gets away with it."
Hakkaku shook his head while studying his feet, "I don't," he muttered quietly.
"…Or that I believe your pathetic story about seeing a vision of me," she spat vehemently.
"Sure; I understand."
Kagura glared ahead once again, then turned abruptly back to him, "And I suppose it was Kouga who told you about the sapling – of course."
Hakkaku slowly met her eyes with a pallid look of confusion. "What? No, he never mentioned it – why would he know anything about that?"
"Because he was there when I found it," she ferociously insisted.
"What's the deal with this scrawny tree anyway," the wolf demon suddenly shot back with unexpected vigor, he sat up, thrusting himself toward her, "I don't understand what any of this means – what am I dying for; can I at least know that?"
Taken aback by the eruption, she cautiously regarded the battered youkai for a moment, as if seeing him for the first time. "I suppose I could tell you – since you're going to die anyway – that 'scrawny tree', or rather the acorn it's attached to, is the key to my freedom. The only missing ingredient now is the water you have in your gut."
Hakkaku looked apprehensively down at himself. After a minute's deliberation he took a breath, ready with a hopeful suggestion, but all that came out was gurgling belch instead. Hastily, the boy dove for the edge of the feather and immediately vomited. He watched in disbelieving horror the contents of his stomach shower the forest while he retched repeatedly. Now completely purged, he looked at Kagura to find a pair of crimson pools forecasting his own grisly demise with as much certainty as the water in the cave had conversely revealed hers. The grim reality dawned on him: apparently the future is changeable.
"S-Sorry about that," he swiped an unsteady hand across his mouth, "I was just going to ask if there was a way you could possibly get any more of that water."
Rhane's torn shoulder roared in growing protest with each leap she took. Biting back a howl, she told herself that it was no worse than the Reverend had given her on more than one occasion, not to mention all the various injuries she'd sustained as she fought alongside her team mates since joining then New Mutants. She instead looked up through a break in the canopy for the perpetually shrinking feather in the distance. Her watering wolf eyes could barely make it out anymore; she wondered how she would ever catch them now.
The distracted werewolf lost her footing without warning and tumbled down a slippery incline, landing agonizingly on her injury. Rhane let out a shrill yelp, collapsing face first into the mire, and lay there inhaling the damp decay of the forest floor as her tears intermingled with the mud.
"Hakkaku," she whimpered forlornly. Even as the name left her lips, it shone a beacon through her despair, compelling the girl forward once again. Ignoring the waves of agony, she struggled back to her feet. As long as she had a nose and a set of working legs, she vowed she would not stop until she had tracked them down.
A vivid new idea suddenly broke forth from her mind like a frail bloom: Ah love him – God help me, but ah love a demon! Forcefully, she was reminded of another whom she'd loved all too recently – the Wolf-Prince of Asgard – though reciprocal, it had not been meant to be; the memory of him still twisted her heart with grief. She had no idea what would come of her feelings for yet another immortal. Furthermore, she knew she did not belong in ancient Japan, she had friends and loved ones she longed to be reunited with, but she could do nothing about any of it at the moment. Nothing accept finding Hakkaku mattered now.
Shifting all the way into her wolf form, Rhane Sinclair put her nose to the sky and inhaled deeply of the wind. All at once a shadow fell across the forest and she froze, watching the strangest cloud she'd ever seen sweep low over the treetops and pass directly over her head. Even as a wolf she quickly realized that whatever it was, she was not actually looking at a cloud. It was yellow and torpedo-shaped – the word 'zeppelin'came to mind – and it smelled of demonic energy. Regardless, she felt no apprehension about the outlandish apparition and without questioning her primal instincts, she let out a prompt howl for assistance.
Crouched atop the massive flying form of the Monk's raccoon servant, Ginta and Kouga perked up and exchanged looks of recognition at the sound. "Rhane," they said in unison.