The wind moaned in the trees, heavy with the scent of the rain that was sure to come. Branches creaked as the forest giants slowly moved in the direction the wind pushed them. The air itself was stiff with static, crackling with the energy of the impending storm.
The small child sitting in the middle of the field looked up, her large brown eyes curious as the weather steadily worsened. She quickly got up, her checkered yukata full of flowers that she had been happily picking, and turned to the giant two-headed dragon sitting with her in the middle of the field.
"We should go back to Sesshoumaru-sama, Ah-Un," Rin told the dragon, her voice very serious. "He will not be happy if we catch a cold because we were caught in the rain."
Ah-Un nodded its assent, and Rin climbed onto its back, letting all but a small bunch of the flowers float lazily onto the ground. She clutched its reins as Ah-Un bent its scaly knees and took off into the air, soaring quickly but quietly toward the place where it had left their lord.
Sesshoumaru himself was standing, still as a statue, in the middle of the forest. His face was its usual neutral mask, but the tension in his shoulders told a different story as his cold golden eyes searched the distant south. His imp retainer Jyaken was hanging around his ankles, nervously holding his Nintojo like it was a talisman to ward off evil. When he heard the soft whoosh of Ah-Un's approach, the imp turned around, impatience clearly stamped in his bulbous yellow eyes.
"Rin! Where have you been? How dare you make our lord wait for you in this weather!" Jyaken fumed, shaking a small fist in the girl's direction. "You should kn-"
"Jyaken." Sesshoumaru had lifted his gaze from the horizon to glare at his retainer. Swallowing visibly, the imp turned to his lord. "Be silent," he commanded, his voice never rising above a calm, room-level volume. But to Jyaken it was more fearsome than the loudest roar. The imp muttered something and turned away, sweat beading his green brow. Sesshoumaru then turned his eyes to Rin.
"Rin apologizes for worrying you, Sesshoumaru-sama," Rin said humbly, bowing slightly as she apologized.
"Hn." Sesshoumaru turned back to the south, eyes narrowing slightly as he scented the wind again. There was something that shouldn't be there, a scent that was mixed into the wind...
"Is...is something bothering you, Sesshoumaru-sama?" Jyaken asked, mentally hoping he wasn't pushing his lord too hard (again).
Sesshoumaru didn't speak for a few minutes. Then, just when his imp retainer was really starting to squirm, the dai-youkai finally stated: "Take Rin and find shelter."
Before Jyaken could question his lord about the order, Sesshoumaru stepped forward, his mokomoko-sama twisting about his ankles as he took off into the air, sailing majestically into the distance.
"Oh no! Wait-please wait, Sesshoumaru-sama!" Jyaken cried, darting forward for about fifteen paces before realizing it was futile. His shoulders sagged beneath the brown haori he wore as he turned back toward the dragon and girl who were waiting patiently for him. "Ohh," he sighed, even as he scrabbled to get onto the dragon's back as Ah-Un took off into the static-filled air, the twin sets of yellow eyes searching for a safe place to wait out the oncoming storm. "Why doesn't he ever tell me anything anymore?"
The small village's one path was running red with a river of blood that had churned the dirt into a muddy, reeking mess. The huts were burning, sending black smoke up to the gray sky. What few villagers remained were fleeing to the river, if they hadn't been frozen by Kyūna-shi's powers of influence. The blade of Mujōna's wakizashi was dripping with the viscous scarlet liquid that she craved like a narcotic, driving her into fits of ecstasy with its coppery scent.
"Yes...yes!" she giggled, letting her hand run down the bloody blade, enjoying the feel of the thick liquid. "Surely, this is what Mujōna's purpose is about. Bringing hell to Earth...that is why Naraku-sama created me!"
"Stop running!" she heard Kyūna-shi bellow, followed shortly thereafter by the shocked screams of those inflicted by the power of Kyūna-shi's glowing eyes and thunderous voice. She smiled to herself. 'What a wonderful feeling...'
"Over too soon again," Kyūna-shi sighed, striking out at a nearby hut once he realized that all of the villagers had either fled or died. "Why can't we ever destroy a village full of fighters, or something?"
"Because, my dear Kyūna-shi," Mujōna sighed with the expression of a long-suffering parent, "The only village full of fighters was the village of the youkai-taijiya, and that was destroyed by Naraku-sama long before either you or I were made. Now, the best equivalent you might find is a handful of samurai per every hundred people."
"It's not fair," Kyūna-shi thundered with something of a pout in his voice. "Why can't we ever be around during the good fights?"
The youkai/miko looked at her giant ōkami cohort with an expression of interest. "How come you're never this excited when it comes time to fight InuYasha? Aren't those good fights?"
"I don't like that hanyou!" Kyūna-shi grumbled. "And I most certainly do not want to eat him! Not fun!"
Mujōna shook her head, a smirk on her face. 'Idiot,' she thought, almost fondly.
Then, she turned her gaze back to the burning village, to the bodies littering the ground and the blood staining the Earth. The smirk turned into a rictus grin that seemed to stretch from ear to ear, lighting her eyes with an insane, blood-thirsty light. 'Such a good thing to see...Hell on Earth. I do love it so.'
You're sick. Completely and totally sick.
'Quiet, little girl,' Mujōna told Kagome smugly. 'The adults are working.'
"Well, Kyūna-shi, I guess we should-" Mujōna's sentence cut short when a shiver of awful awareness ran down her back, sending a wave of cold through her body. With a sense of impending doom, Mujōna turned around. A streak of green light was moving rapidly toward them, shining brightly as it grew nearer and nearer. Mujōna didn't know what it was, but she had a hunch, and it wasn't good.
"KYŪNA-SHI!" she screamed, launching herself across the village, "GET OUT OF THE WAY!"
Kyūna-shi, confused, turned to see the light turning into a full-blown comet of youki, soaring toward them like a spear, heading directly for where they were standing. With a loud howl, the ōkami-youkai jumped to the side, scooping up the small woman with one paw and barreling through some of the huts (regardless of whether or not they were burning) in order to get to safety.
He barely managed to escape in time. The ball of light smashed into the blood-stained ground, sending out a small shock-wave that shook the huts ringing the road and nearly sending Kyūna-shi tumbling to the ground. A hissing sound started up as the being's poison dissolved some of the rocks and blood around it.
Sesshoumaru rose from the crater he had created, his figure proud and majestic as he slowly straightened to his full height, his golden eyes fixed upon the twosome standing to the side of him. His claws glowed with a poison that matched the cold, quiet fury blazing in the dai-youkai's eyes.
"Are you of Naraku's ilk?" he asked, voice emotionless.
"Who are you that you would dare to attack Kyūna-shi?" the ōkami-youkai growled in response, gritting his fangs and clenching his free paw.
Sesshoumaru ignored the question, his eyes becoming impossibly colder as his eyebrows pulled down into a slight frown. "This Sesshoumaru asked you a question, ōkami-youkai. Are you of Naraku's ilk?"
Kyūna-shi drew back slightly, shivering at the force of the inu-youkai's death-glare. Quelled and slightly fearful, he turned to Mujōna for help. Mujōna didn't seem to be affected by Sesshoumaru's gaze; she returned the glare with one of her own.
"And what if we are?" she challenged.
Sesshoumaru turned his gaze upon Mujōna as if seeing her for the first time, his brows now pulling together in slight confusion. "What is this? Are you not of my bastard brother's flock; the miko bitch upon which he most relies?"
Mujōna smirked at Sesshoumaru as she slid down Kyūna-shi's arm, her feet landing with a small splat upon the blood-soaked ground. She stood tall and proud, facing Sesshoumaru without a shred of fear upon her face, looking and feeling like one who has the upper hand. "Let's just say I've had a change of heart."
Sesshoumaru's eyes flicked from the wakizashi clasped loosely in Mujōna's fist to the blazing red eyes that seemed very much out of place in the miko's delicate porcelain face. 'She is possessed by something then,' he decided. 'As for the state of her mind...if she still resides within herself, this Sesshoumaru will be surprised.'
"You are not acting of your own volition," Sesshoumaru stated. "Running with an ōkami-youkai that stinks of Naraku and slaughtering a village of humans are not actions my brother's bitch would usually take."
"How astute of you," Mujōna sneered sarcastically. "You figured it out much faster than your idiot of a brother, Sesshoumaru-sama." The title came out as more of a disrespectful sneer.
"Sesshoumaru?" Kyūna-shi asked, his voice curious. "Not the same Sesshoumaru who Naraku exploited to his own end? Not InuYasha's older youkai brother?"
Sesshoumaru answered before Mujōna had a chance to. "You seem to know much about this Sesshoumaru," he said, his voice never rising above his usual calm, normal-level tone. "Some time spent talking with Naraku, I gather?"
"I would never waste my time talking with one such as him!" Kyūna-shi thundered, beating his chest with his fists. "Naraku might have made me, but that does not make him my master!"
"Kyūna-shi," Mujōna said softly, "you're making a scene."
Before Kyūna-shi could reply, Sesshoumaru cut him off with a glare. "Enough of this," Sesshoumaru growled softly, lifting one hand and cracking it, readying his claws for the fight to come. "If you truly are Naraku's minions, then I will kill you." With that, the dai-youkai charged, moving so impossibly fast that his body was a white streak against the dark afternoon. Mujōna, bravado temporarily forgotten in the face of death charging swiftly toward her, fell backward onto her butt, only just managing to shriek, "KYŪNA-SHI! PROTECT ME!"
Upon hearing Mujōna screaming the order, Kyūna-shi forgot whatever qualms he might've had about fighting Sesshoumaru. With a roar the ōkami-youkai charged forward, arms raised and claws outstretched, his mouth gaping wide open to expose his fangs. Sesshoumaru's stride wasn't even broken as he jumped out of the way of Kyūna-shi's blundering charge, sending the youkai charging into one of the flaming buildings framing the bloody road. It collapsed about his body, making him scream in pain as the fire seared his fur and burned his flesh.
Kyūna-shi threw the boards away from him as he rose and charged again, claws arching toward the dai-youkai's head. Sesshoumaru dodged again. "Do you think you can hurt this Sesshoumaru with such a slow and mindless attack?" he asked as his claws ripped five green trails through the night. Kyūna-shi let out a blood-curdling howl as the dai-youkai's claws severed his right arm at the shoulder, blood gushing from the wound as the lifeless furry limb fell to the ground, sitting in a pool of blood for a few seconds before vanishing in a small cloud of purple shouki. "Useless," the inu-youkai continued.
"H-How dare you attack Kyūna-shi!" Mujōna screamed, the wakizashi clutched tightly in her grasp as she charged toward Sesshoumaru in a red-eyed rage. Sesshoumaru didn't even turn around as he reached out, caught the wakizashi's blade as it whipped through the air in an attempt for a direct strike at his head and effortlessly snapped it. Then, the same hand flashed out and grasped the collar of Kagome's school uniform, pulling Mujōna forward until she was on her tiptoes. Then, slowly, inevitably, the dai-youkai turned to face her.
"As I told your youkai pet...any such attack against this Sesshoumaru is useless," Sesshoumaru informed her with the emotional detachment of a weather report. "Did you expect for this Sesshoumaru to have lowered his guard while dealing with the ōkami?"
Mujōna gave Sesshoumaru a frantic grin as she quickly tried to work something out. Behind Sesshoumaru, Kyūna-shi was slowly getting to his feet, his remaining paw covering the stump of his arm to staunch the blood flowing from his wound. The youkai/miko knew by looking that there was no way that Kyūna-shi was in any state to fight; with one arm missing and lots of blood lost, he would be at a severe disadvantage to the unharmed Sesshoumaru. She knew that the best thing for him to do at this point was run; run as far away as his wound allowed him. Which he would do-eventually. As for her...
"You can't kill me, Sesshoumaru," Mujōna told the inu-youkai, grinning madly at him. "I am possessing InuYasha's wench, after all; would you kill someone as important to him-to defeating Naraku-as me?"
"This Sesshoumaru cares not for articles that belong to that bastard hanyou," Sesshoumaru replied. Mujōna gulped and tried another tactic.
"T-Then you can't kill a helpless human! How dishonorable is that? I mean, at least let them put up a fight or something!" she cried desperately.
Sesshoumaru just stared down at her. "If you are associated with Naraku, this Sesshoumaru has no mercy to show you," he intoned. Then, he pushed Mujōna away from in a powerful shove and swung his claws at her in a vicious arc.
Whether it was luck, or divine intervention, or mercy, or one of those things humans call 'coincidence,' Sesshoumaru's blow just barely managed to graze Mujōna's arm, not even deep enough to poison her. It didn't even bleed that much; hardly fatal.
However, as far as luck went, that was where Mujōna's ran out.
'He attacked me...I can't believe he attacked me!' Mujōna thought wildly as she sailed backwards. 'Naraku-sama said that as long as I possessed this woman's body, nothing could touch me! Not youkai, not that filthy hanyou, not anyone!'
Reality sucks, doesn't it? Kagome asked quietly. I could have told you that there would always be someone who would be able to kill me. Sesshoumaru is just one of them.
'Dammit, I...I won't die here! I can't die!'
You're afraid, aren't you? Kagome realized. If she had possessed a face at the moment, her eyes would have almost been pitying. 'You're afraid of going back to the darkness from where Naraku first summoned you. You're afraid of death; afraid enough to hide in me.
'Sh-shut up! What about you?' Mujōna taunted wildly. 'ALL humans fear death! You can't be an exception!'
Kagome was silent for a fashion, making Mujōna cheer up slightly. Then, the miko 'spoke,' driving a hard shiver down her back. To add to the ominous words, a boom of thunder reverberated through the dark afternoon as the sky finally opened up and the rain began to pelt the Earth.
Death holds no fear for me, Mujōna. Not anymore. If it means you die, too, then I welcome it all the more.
Mujōna's reverse flight came to an abrupt halt when she landed with a tremendous SPLASH in the middle of the river she and Kyūna-shi had been discussing barely an hour before.
She got to discover first hand just how fast the river really was.
The boom of thunder echoed through the forest, shaking the trees to their very roots and causing birds of all shapes and sizes to soar, shrieking, from the branches.
"Sounds like it's going to rain soon," Miroku noted, unnecessarily, since as soon as the second word left his mouth the rain began to pound the Earth.
"Aww! I hate being caught in the rain!" Shippou whined, covering his tiny head with his paws and drawing close to Sango's ankle.
InuYasha, however, didn't even seem to notice the rain. He and Kikyou were both standing stock still, their faces fixed in the same direction.
"What is it?" Miroku asked, taking note of their stiff figures.
"I smelled somethin' weird before the rain started," InuYasha growled.
"Youki," Kikyou said simply.
"Where?" Sango demanded, already readying her Hiraikotsu. Kikyou raised one pale hand and pointed toward the South.
"Alright, let's go before this gets any worse!" InuYasha roared, already charging through the soggy grass. Kikyou summoned her shinidamachuu, commanding them to wrap themselves around her body so she could follow. Kirara managed to transform and take flight, though, as a fire-youkai, she was severely weakened by the rain, a fact which Sango knew well and apologized for, telling the nekomata that she would make it up to her somehow.
The group raced off for the south, hoping against hope that this time, they wouldn't be too late.