As soon as Naraku realized what had happened, his face contorted with rage, and he transformed into a huge black spider. The creature was dark and ugly, with eight long legs as thick as tree trunks, and too many glowing red eyes for Kagome to bother counting. He was only half Sesshomaru's size, but that did nothing to diminish his lethality. The great ugly creature grabbed onto Sesshomaru's paw with its mandibles and sunk in its fangs, which were dripping with poison. Sesshomaru's beast let loose a low snarl and shook him off, sending Naraku flying several yards. Kagome watched as the demons ascended into the sky, crashing into one another with the strength of hundreds of years of experience and pent up violence.

Meanwhile, a suffocating cloud of miasma had begun rising from the floor like tendrils of steam. The demonic substance was heavy and thick, and it choked Kagome, who had no chance of escaping her chains unless she could somehow harness the power she was supposed to have. The miasma was rank with a stench that stung Kagome's nostrils and throat and brought involuntary tears to her eyes, making it not only hard to breathe but almost impossible to see, as well.

Kagome fought the instinct to panic and instead closed her eyes, fighting to focus. She reached within herself, not really sure what she was searching for, but something told her that it would be similar to how she had harnessed her incomplete mating bond.

...

Sesshomaru was furious. Not only had this spider taken his mate, but he had also chained her up in his bunker out in the middle of fucking nowhere, with nothing more than her panties and bra to cover her. Nobody, NOBODY, was to see his mate in such a state of undress, aside from him. This THING which wasn't even a full demon had far overstepped his boundaries.

Sesshomaru had almost wanted to laugh when the spider bit him. Sesshomaru's talent, as a demon, was acid, a useful little gift from his mother. As a result, he was immune poisons of almost any origin, this creature's venom included. Dispatching the creature ought to be no problem. At least he thought that until he bit the head off of the arachnid, and weird slimy tentacles emerged from the point of decapitation and pulled its head back where it belonged. It was then that Sesshomaru truly realized what he was dealing with.

The creature had felt off to him from the beginning, and now he knew why. Spiders were not daiyoukai, and therefore, were not supposed to have a humanoid form. Spiders were small demons that typically stuck to just possessing humans and hiding in plain sight. This spider had taken its possession to a whole new disturbing level. Whatever it had done, was so against nature you could smell it in its miasma.

Miasma...

Shit! Kagome. She's Human, She can't breathe this stuff as I can. Savagely tearing several body parts off of the spider in a bid to buy himself some time, he turned back towards the underground bunker and made to approach when an explosion of Reiki blew the bunker and the earth around it to smithereens. Freezing in his track he watched his Mate emerge from the destruction glowing a faint purple-pink, her eyes glowing and hair flying back on the breeze that her power created.

...

Kagome found the little ball of power just as Kikyo made her way down into the basement/bunker wearing a gas mask and a look in her eyes that bespoke madness and fury. She had an insane glint in her eye, and for some reason, she was wearing the traditional Miko outfit. Holding her hands out towards Kagome she screeched "Give me back my soul!"

Kagome's eyes widened. Obviously, something had happened during her little lunch date with Inuyasha. Whatever it was, it did not bode well for Kagome. Crap.

Suddenly a pink glow emanated from Kikyo's hand, and Kagome felt something inside of her wrench, as though Kikyo were attempting to yank Kagome's entire being out of her. She could feel herself beginning to drain from her, and even though she didn't know how, she desperately tried to pull what she knew was her soul back into her. She could feel it draining away, like sand or water slipping through her fingers. In one desperate attempt to regain control, she grabbed onto that little ball of light inside of her. Hard.

The tides turned. Immediately, Kagome felt her soul pouring back into her, filling her up in a way that she hadn't felt since she was a child. Power crackled at her fingertips, melting away the chains that bound her, setting fire to her surroundings. Suddenly everything was ablaze with a pinkish-purple flame. Everything except Kagome.

Kikyo screamed as she realized that she was losing. Her body weakening with the loss of the one thing that had been holding her together. As the last drops of power and energy left her, her body began to shrivel and decay. The noxious scent of rotting flesh adding to the heavy cloud of miasma that was slowly burning away in the wildfire of purity which was now radiating from Kagome's body.

Kagome felt like a water balloon that had been filled passed its recommended capacity. Now that the power was awakened, it was like a faucet had been turned all the way up and the handle broken off. She couldn't turn it off, nor could she slow it down, and the power had nowhere to go but out. She felt the explosion before it happened, and was shocked in the aftermath to find herself still intact. Letting instinct take over, she felt her body go weightless as she floated up into the sky, taking in the fresh pure mountain air. It was freeing to let go like this. Somehow her body knew what to do, so she let it.

Zeroing in on her target, a writhing black heap of flesh behind her Mate, Kagome raised her hands towards the abomination that had dared imprison her, a bow and arrow forming in her hands. She sent a brief warning to her Mate.

'Get out of the way.'

The great white beast that was her Sesshomaru, she smiled to herself at that thought, gave an almost imperceptible nod, before gracefully moving out of her way. Kagome took aim, and despite never having shot a bow and arrow before in her life, the bolt of purification energy found its target without error.

Naraku's death was almost anticlimactic. After everything that had happened over the last couple of days, Kagome had sort of expected more fireworks. Instead, when her purification light enveloped the creature, it writhed and twitched before eventually dissolving away into dust, leaving behind the corpse of a shriveled old human man, and the rank scent of hundreds of years worth of decay.

It's over. No more being afraid of my own shadow. No more tiptoeing around volatile ex-friends. No more letting life just happen to me. No More!

AN. Well, there you go. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Obviously, Kagome's still going to have to duke it out with her inner demons, but at least that threat is taken care of. I do apologize for taking so long in getting back to this. Hopefully, I won't take quite so long to finish out this story. I see a happy ending on the horizon for these two. Tune in the next chapter to see what happens now that Kagome's power has awakened. How is she going to learn to control something that Powerfull? Good thing her mate has some experience with unruly power. ;)