Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.

Chapter 21 – KAGOME!

"Remember what I said, no killing!" she hissed in his ear.

"This Sesshoumaru does not need your constant reminders, Hando," he growled in return.

"Do you always refer to yourself in the third person when you're annoyed, Taisho?" she snapped.

"I know not what you speak of," he retorted.

"Do you always use archaic speech patterns when trying to deflect attention from your idiosyncrasies?" she smirked.

"Do you always use insight to distract others when you're in an uncomfortable situation?" he shot back. She gaped at him. "I thought so. Now, no more talking; they'll be able to hear our voices."

The two stalked silently towards their destination. It was a small, single level concrete bunker, only about eight by ten meters, and very plain looking. It had but one door, a large and foreboding steel mechanism that seemed to be operated by electronic keys. At every corner of the building there was a lamp post, and around the base there were a few ground lights as well.

This deceptively plain appearance belied the true nature of the building. Kagome knew it ran deep down into the earth, and inside she could sense the auras of her sister, Inuyasha, the dark miko, several youkai, and a few humans.

Something else began to nag at her senses when she probed for auras; there was a universal taint to everything around here. She recognized it as traces of some powerful youkai. Focusing on it so she would be sure to recognize it in the future, she was hard pressed not to vomit it again. The aura had a truly loathsome feel to it.

If Sesshoumaru was puzzled by the look on her face, one eye squinted shut with her tongue hanging out as if to say "BLEH!", he didn't let on. However, not wishing for him to think she'd suddenly lost it she briefly explained.

Composing her features, she snuck up behind the guards at the door and used the same trick she had employed to quiet Shippou down the night of her welcome home dinner, and knock out Kikyou and Inuyasha for the superglue incident.

Already she had put several of their comrades that had been patrolling the area out. Once they were down, Sesshoumaru came out from behind a tree and listened at the door, using his youkai hearing to determine if he could detect the telltale whir of a roving and focusing security camera. When he was satisfied the coast was clear on the other side of the door, he gestured for Kagome to hand him the card key from one of the guards at their feet.

Inside, they would repeat this procedure over and over; Kagome would knock anyone they came across and Sesshoumaru would use his hearing to listen for any further surveillance, whether it be mechanical or living.

At first, he had not liked this plan. He was much more in favor of swooping in and killing the lot of them for daring to interfere with his second and third in command, but Kagome had convinced him to show restraint. She pointed out that if they did things her way, no one would be able to tell who it was that had made the infiltration. After all, the sleeping spell she was using could be performed by youkai, mikos, houshis, witches, and any number of others. It wasn't a rare or traceable capability, and unlike hitting someone over the head, it would keep the victim asleep for a dependably specific amount of time. What was more, if Sesshoumaru had used tokjin, his acid, whip, or even his claws, it would have given the enemy clues as to who had been behind the attacks.

Another reason for leaving them alive was that Kagome was imprinting the memory of each aura so that in the future she could recognize and track them. This would hopefully lead to much more information on their enemy that a pile of dead corpses ever could.

Letting Kagome direct things gave Sesshoumaru some great insights into her character. True, she still acted immature and defiant on the outside, but here, in the midst of a mission, she was serious and focused. He noted that her movement still did not match Kikyou's in grace, but she was quick, silent, and efficient. Never once did she have to backtrack, and she was never startled or distracted.

It was one thing to read about her accomplishments in a dossier, and it was quite another to see her in action. Once again, he found himself forced to admit she had exceeded his expectations.

As they made their way deeper into the facility, Kagome was having an increasingly difficult time remaining silent as the pulls on Kikyou's powers became stronger and more insistent. She could have dealt with them easier if she'd been allowed to send her aura out to her sister, but they couldn't risk detection.

Finally, thirty seven guards, twenty cameras, eighteen doors, and ten flights of stairs later, they reached the doorway beyond which Kagome was sure Inuyasha and Kikyou were being held. Sesshoumaru could smell something extremely potent coming from the room as well, and it made his stomach churn. The scent was a mix of herbs, blood, ash, and very faintly, death.

"There's a barrier around the door," Sesshoumaru noted. He was tense. This 'no killing anybody' thing was really hard. He was beginning to wonder why he had agreed.

"No, really Taisho?" Kagome whispered sarcastically. "I couldn't tell."

"Can't you break it?" he growled lowly.

"Of course I can break it," she retorted. "The real question is can I not break it, but send a sleeping spell through it, knock out the miko on the other side, then break it, and then put it back up without anyone noticing."

"Well, you're supposed to be good at this, aren't you?" Sesshoumaru inquired with feigned innocence, though secretly he admired her ingenuity.

She grimaced at him, and then brought her attention back to the door. Closing her eyes, she muttered something and gathered a bit of light into her palm. Then she seemed to press the light through the door. A few seconds later she heard something large hit the floor. She looked at Sesshoumaru who nodded his head and then broke the barrier. The door was unlocked; apparently the occupant had assumed her barrier would be enough to keep anyone out.

Inside, they found an unconscious woman face-down on the floor and two large bathtub-like vats. Inuyasha was in one, and Kikyou in the other. The liquid they were immersed in was red with what Sesshoumaru recognized as their own blood.

Sesshoumaru pulled them from their baths while Kagome went to the shelves which lined all of the walls, her fingers not touching but guiding her eyes as she looked for something in particular.

"Excellent," she murmured as she plucked a jar from the shelf. "This will make reviving them much easier," she explained. Gingerly, she took a piece of cloth ripped from her shirt and used it to take a small, withered, black and red object from the jar. Tightening the lid she placed the jar back on the shelf.

Before they made their exit, she approached the dark miko. She flipped the figure over to look at the dark miko's face, which he noted was partially disfigured. Only her slight hissing tipped Sesshoumaru off that his intervention was needed.

"What do you think you are doing, Hando?" he growled lowly as the caught her mid-dive in attempt to go for the unconscious woman's throat.

"I'm going to kill her!" she murmured, thrashing quietly in his grip. Sesshoumaru had size, weight, and strength to his advantage, but she was blinded by a fury which was proving difficult to contain. Thankfully, their need to remain quiet kept her from struggling as hard as she could have.

"Let me go, Taisho! Let me go so I can rip out her intestines and strangle her with them! And then I'm going to pluck out her eyeballs and shove them down her nasty little throat!" she whispered in deadly tones.

Sesshoumaru was so shocked he very nearly let her go. 'Where in the hell is this coming from?' he wondered in amazement, and even interest.

"You have established that we are not to kill anyone," he reminded her, trying at the same time to put her in a headlock.

"That was before I knew who was behind this! Let me go, let me go, let me go!" she snarled.

"You will disembowel no one, Hando!" he growled, securing one of her arms behind her back and twisting it nearly to the point of breaking her wrist.

"Then I will decapitate her foul head from that filthy, twisted body with a dull knife! Let me go now, Taisho!"

"No!"

"Fine!" she said, just as she took her free hand to reach around and leave a substantial burn on his chest.

Luckily for Sesshoumaru, and unluckily for Kagome, her hysteria had made her just distracted enough that his reflex reaction of throwing her to the floor and sitting on her with BOTH hands pinned behind her back seemed to snap her out of it.

"I can still purify you from my current position, Taisho!" she hissed.

"Perhaps, but you would have a difficult time getting both Kikyou and Inuyasha out of here without me," he huffed, panting from the effort of restraining her. "We have both agreed, no killing on this mission!" She grunted, but nodded her head. "Now, who is she?" he asked, not daring to move off of her just yet.

"Tsubaki," Kagome practically spat the name.

"Is she the source of the taint you've been detecting?"

"No, but her aura reeks of it worse than any other here!"

"How are you familiar with her?" He remained in his position; as her muscles were still tensed, he did not trust her to not attack.

"She was once a miko for the shrine my mother was training at, but she ended up stealing the powers and youth of other mikos to stop her own aging."

"Go on," Sesshoumaru prompted when she paused, though he was thinking, 'Peters warned me about her reactions to those who threatened her family. I hadn't thought she would be this extreme. Ikeda was correct to have compared her to a youkai mother.'

"My mother discovered what was going on, and confronted her. Tsubaki tried to use some kind of strange snake demon to attack my mother, but Mama just reflected the attack back at her, scarring her face as you see it now. She was weakened, but she sent a parting curse at Mama before fleeing. Mama was tired from her previous efforts, and was burned badly from being unable to hinder the entire curse. It took months for her to heal, and she was scared until I was able to fully heal her as a teenager."

She paused, breathing deeply, or as much as she could with over two hundred pounds of inu-youkai sitting on her.

"I want to kill her Sesshoumaru," she growled again.

"Later, for now we must save our siblings. Now, if I let you up will you beha…"

He did not finish the sentence because he had to clamp his mouth shut to keep from howling. Kagome, impatient for him to get up, had sent a purifying jolt at his rear.

"Told you I didn't need my hands," she said as she stood, ignoring the murderous look he was shooting her. When he made a move which seemed to indicate he had every intention of slaughtering her for that last shot, she smirked and said, "No killing, Sesshoumaru! Now pick up Inuyasha so we can get out of here!"

The taiyoukai snarled a promise of future pain, but retrieved his brother nonetheless. He walked cautiously out the door and waited as Kagome picked up Kikyou and placed her over her shoulder. Before she left, she approached Tsubaki's still unconscious figure.

"Hando…" he warned.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to do anything…much"

Placing a hand to her temple, Kagome closed her eyes until green wisps seemed to emanate from the unconscious form and into her hand, causing the scaring on Tsubaki's face to spread somewhat in the process. Making the most disgusted expression he'd ever seen, Sesshoumaru looked on as she put up a barrier once they were outside the closed door.

"Her barrier, her energy, not mine, can't trace," she mouthed at his raised eyebrow.

'The girl is thorough. Psychotic, but thorough,' he thought, but ceased further ruminations at her angry glare. Apparently she was still tuned into his mind.

Silently, and more quickly now that they were familiar with their path, the two hauled their siblings out of the bunker and back into the surrounding forest.

"How much time do we have before the guards start waking up?" he asked. It'd been about half an hour since they began their descent into the bunker.

"We have about fifteen more minutes, which, with any amount of luck, will be just enough time for me to revive these two and we can be on our way," she replied as she took the cloth-wrapped object she'd stolen from the miko's stores. "Now, I need you to slice your palm and then crush this with a bit of your blood."

Sesshoumaru hesitated; he could sense she was nervous. Of course it could have something to do with the fact that Kikyou and Inuyasha were slowly dying right in front of her, but for a moment, he caught a look of guilt in her eyes. Was she hiding something?

"Sesshoumaru please, this is the best way to help them and we don't have time for me to sit here and explain it to you," she pleaded, holding out the little dried herb. "You asked me if I trusted you on our way out here. Well, now I'm asking you. Do you trust me?"

After what seemed like an eternity he nodded and accepted the herb from her. He did as she asked, using his claw to cut the center of his palm and then squeezing the small object enough to crush it into dust. "Good, now rub it around a bit, get it to mix really well," she instructed, her breathing short and ragged.

As Sesshoumaru did so, a funny feeling came over him. He felt weak, and weightless, almost as if his body didn't exist. Suddenly he realized he had fallen to the ground, and although he was still completely aware of his surroundings, he was unable to move an inch, or even swallow. His entire body, every single muscle save for the autonomic ones such as his heart and lungs, was paralyzed.

"I'm sorry Sesshoumaru," she said, tears in her eyes. "I didn't want to do things this way. I meant to talk to all of three of you before I acted, but now I don't have that option. That foul miko nearly ripped Inuyasha's demon half out of his body and almost succeeded in robbing Kikyou of her powers. Their bodies are broken and confused, and their souls are crying out for relief. I can feel them desperately clinging to this life, but unless their physical bodies have increased healing abilities they won't make it, not even Inuyasha."

As she talked she was working. She arranged all three of their bodies so that Sesshoumaru was lying in between the Kikyou and Inuyasha with two feet of space between them. "Don't worry, the effects of that drug aren't permanent. That thing I handed you was dried flesh from a very rare South American frog whose skin is laced with a unique compound produced by glands in its shoulders. It's called curare, and given your healing prowess you should be up in about eight minutes, which is saying something since the dose I gave you would knock a human out for about four hours."

She pulled a small knife from a leg strap that had been concealed underneath her pant leg and then removed his shirt. "Please forgive me for what I'm about to do, but it's the only way."

She made a shallow cut, about 8 centimeters in length, on the part of his chest that was just above his heart. Then she made an identical cut on Inuyasha.

"Before you three leave, please make sure there is no trace of anyone's blood left behind," she said looking at him.

'What do you mean us three?' he asked in his head, hoping she would hear and answer. She looked at him for a few seconds, but did not respond.

Sesshoumaru watched in morbid fascination as she knelt between him and his brother, placing a palm over each of their cuts. She bowed her head and began to breath deeply. In a few seconds he could smell the mint of her miko powers, and the tree-smell of earth power spike in the air as the telltale green light lifted from the ground and swirled around the three of them. After that he felt…love. Pure, intense, determined loved radiated off Kagome in such unmatched intensity he could almost see it.

He had never felt love this strongly before, and if it weren't for his relationship with Rin, he wasn't even sure he would have recognized it for what it was. In a way, it was almost frightening.

Suddenly, he felt hot, as if warm, tickling flames had just engulfed his body. Next to him, he could sense rather than see his brother's form changing. They both started to tremble, and Kagome was literally shaking with the strain she was under. Her eyes flew open and he could see that they had once again become stark white. He felt all three of their heartbeats synchronize, and then the cut on his chest healed. She collapsed down on the ground panting. He could also hear his brother's moans.

"One down, one to go," she gasped as she crawled to the space between him and Kikyou. She reopened the cut on his chest, gave one to Kikyou, and once again began to focus her powers. Again she placed a palm on his chest, once again he saw the green light surround her. This time, however, she seemed to struggle more.

In her eyes there was pain, a pain that looked so blinding he was amazed she was still conscious. Yet, even with this added challenge, the love he could feel enveloping the two sisters was still greater than before. It was such an overwhelming experience that he did not notice the tear sliding down his cheek.

This time as he felt the wonderful tickling of the flames, he noticed how her entire body seemed to be flickering with a kind of golden glow. He felt the heat of her hand almost burn his skin.

She grunted and whimpered, grinding her teeth together as she struggled to complete her task. "Please," he heard her gasp, her voice laden with suffering. "Please let me finish so they can go home!"

As if they had been listening to her, the trees surrounding them seemed to lean towards her and groan in reply. Suddenly, a shockwave burst from the ground under them and rippled outwards into the forest.

Once again their heartbeats synchronized, and in a few more seconds it was over. The cut on his chest was healed, he could hear the regular breathing of his brother and Kikyou, and the effects of the curare were lessening. Kagome had slumped forward onto the ground, her still hot hand limply resting upon his bare chest.

Then, all at once, he, Inuyasha and Kikyou groaned and sat up. They briefly stayed there on the ground, staring in complete wonderment at each other as the feeling of Kagome's love lingered. When its tangible presence finally faded, they found their voices.

"Oh Kami," whispered Kikyou.

"Holy shit!" exclaimed Inuyasha.

"How…" Sesshoumaru questioned aloud.

"KAGOME!" all three yelled as they noticed the still form of the young woman between them.

-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-

A/N: There you are my pretties! Was it worth all the hype? Now, this is being posted right on the heels of chapter 20 (hurrah for Super-Beta DarkCrystalis! – she got this back to me in less than 24 hours!), I'm hoping those of you who hadn't already read 20 (coughaddictedtoreviewscough) will review for that one too. Now no calling me a review monger because if I was really that bad I'd hold off on posting, but I can't 'cause I'm just too excited!

SO! Spoilers for Chapter 22 – Because He Loves Her

- She hunkered down closer to the bike and increased her speed, determined to outrun him. All too soon though she heard a sharp "HANDO!" and felt Sesshoumaru's clawed hand upon her shoulder, trying to pull her away from Reiner and her sense of freedom.

"GO AWAY!" she growled, momentarily letting go of the throttle in order to punch him squarely in the jaw.-

-"How can you be sure?" Sesshoumaru demanded, glaring at the blonde, blue-eyed person. Sometimes it was hard to take anything he said seriously because his lightly tanned skin, rosy complexion, and slightly goofy and pointed ears gave him the appearance of a lovable cherub. However, Sesshoumaru was fully aware that said cherub knew more ways to kill a person than there were grains of rice in a 20 kilo bag.-

-"But why'd he come all the way here?" Rin asked Shippou.

"Because he loves her," came the honest reply. Before Rin could ask anything else a loud crashing noise came from upstairs.-

Ooh ooh ooh! I just thought of another shameless way to encourage reviews. Anyone who guesses the identity of the cherub correctly will get another spoiler! Haha!

-x-

Okay, one last thing… if you read all these A/Ns then you know that last time Bruce had me in a rather precarious position. However, I had recently read an excellent Harry Potter fanfic (and I'm kicking myself for forgetting the title) where the author writes that if your in a headlock a good way to get out of it is to pinch your assailants inner thigh, hard.

Well I wasn't in a headlock, but apparently the move works for more that one situation, for which I am most grateful. And who says you never get anything useful out of fan fiction?