CHAPTER 25 - Exposition

Whether it was the half-demon's intention or not, Hagane didn't know, but the swipe she took didn't kill him, it only ripped off his filter mask. For a second he was relieved that at least his face wasn't torn off. But then he remembered the poison dust he had thrown into the air just a few seconds ago. He cursed as he covered his face with hand, hopping backwards. Shock hit him as he was then jerked forward out of the poison cloud by none other than that same half-demon.

'Is she… rescuing me? Why?' It was too good to be true. Hagane reasoned it must all be a trap, and so he pulled out his sword and stabbed the girl in the arm.

"I-isha!" the demon's companion called out in a panic from somewhere.

The girl paid no mind, to either the stab wound or her frightened companion. "You idiot! I can't believe it, how dense can you be? Can't you figure out Naraku's just using you?!" She pulled the sword out of her arm and grabbed Hagane's arm. "And look at you! While you keep trying to kill me, you don't even notice you're bleeding to death!"

Hagane believed this statement to be just a trick to get him to let his guard down, but he checked anyway. Sure enough, he found himself kneeling in a huge puddle of blood which seemed to be his own. He stared at it in shock. 'All this blood, but I haven't felt any pain…'

The companion known as Souta ran over to check on the half-demon. "Are you okay?"

As Isha confirmed she was, Hagane collapsed in his puddle of blood.

Shippo asked, "Ooooh, is he dead?"

Souta grimaced. "No, I think he just passed out. Uhh, Isha," he turned towards the girl, "this guy has a shikon shard in his back."

"Oh, that explains it. I was wondering how he kept managing to fight so hard without even wincing from the pain."

"Yeah, I mean, you're no wimp, but even you start slowing down when you bleed this much," Souta said, half serious and half joking.

Isha glared at him, then continued speaking. "That bastard Naraku… he gave this kid the shard so he would keep fighting until he died."

Isha, Souta, and Shippo stared soberly at Hagane's unconscious body for several seconds, only for Souta to break the silence with a question he knew he had to ask but regretted asking all the same: "So… what do we do next?"

"What else? We go track down Naraku." Isha turned towards the direction Naraku had fled.

"Right… all four of us?"

"Well, yeah. Why, are you scared?" Despite the serious drama, Isha's mouth began creeping into a smirk.

"No, it's just, I mean, I barely fit on your back as it is. How are you going to carry me and another guy at the same time?"

%%

Of course, they managed to figure out a way for the surprisingly small Isha to carry two teenage boys who together were more than twice her size and weight, plus Shippo. I don't need to tell you how, because it's so obvious it would be a waste of time to explain it, and certainly an insult to your intelligence. So we'll continue.

They arrived on the scene just in time to see Kannon impaled by one of Naraku's tentacles. Isha managed to haul off the unconscious Kannon just before Naraku attacked again. 'No,' Isha thought, 'oh, don't die! If I'd only run a little faster, I…'

Isha was brought out of her sad thoughts by Kannon stirring and saying, "Phew! I thought for sure I was a goner!" She pulled the tentacle off her.

Isha stared on in shock. "There's not even a hole in your clothes!"

"Fantastic luck, eh?" Kannon patted her stomach.

"What's the idea of falling down like a dead woman if you were still alive?!"

Naraku interrupted the conversation at that point. "So, Inuyasha, you still live? How disappointing that Hagane was unable to kill you."

"Oh, shut up!" Isha clenched her fists. "This is all your fault, isn't it?! You're the one who led that demon horde to the exterminator's village and slaughtered all those people!"

Naraku chuckled in his typically evil fashion. "All I did was inform some demons that the village's most powerful exterminators were out on a mission, and so their fort was practically defenseless."

Hagane's heart skipped a beat to hear such a confession.

"And your goal was the shikon shard the village held?" Kannon asked icily. "You killed all those people for one shard?!"

"Naraku!" Hagane shouted, despite being so weak from his blood loss. "The demon at the castle… that was your doing as well, wasn't it?!"

"Oh, yes, that was me," Naraku said, without a hint of irony. "I needed a means to lure you exterminators from the village, and to get rid of you before you realized the truth."

Hagane shook all over, then gathered up all his strength and lunged for Naraku with his hiraikotsu. He didn't get far before collapsing, his shikon shard popping out of his back as he fell.

Naraku chuckled again. "You'd have been better off just killing Inuyasha and being content with it." Naraku himself would've been better off paying attention. If he had been, he probably would've noticed Inuyasha running at him, drawing her sword.

She swung quickly, and Naraku's head flew off, chuckling. Isha paid no mind, as a feeling of numb relief washed over her. 'We did it… At last, Naraku is dead.' She approached the severed head, thinking bitterly about all the pain Naraku caused, and now it was all over. It was almost disappointing it was over so easily.

Almost TOO easily, it seemed to Kannon. She was about to tell Isha to take caution, but it was too late. Isha picked up Naraku's head, to see his face, only to make a gruesome discovery.

Thankfully it was nothing dangerous, but still quite odd. His head consisted entirely of the lower half of his face. Certainly it made sense that there was nothing below his chin, but Isha hadn't made any cuts to the upper part of his head. Why would he have no eyes, no ears, no hair? Confusion and anger bubbled up in Inuyasha. "What the hell?"

Then Naraku's body sprouted tentacles and began attacking the group again, but headless this time.

"Just when I thought I'd seen everything, the Feudal Era surprises me again," Souta sighed as Isha dodged a huge tentacle.

Naraku's half-face further surprised Souta by laughing, "Did you really think I could die?"

Souta, Hagane, and Shippo looked on in confusion as Kannon and Isha attempted to attack Naraku's body.

"How is he reforming?" Souta asked no one in particular. "He doesn't have a shikon shard with him. What IS he?"

"I never… sensed any evil aura from him at all before, and I still don't. I don't sense any demonic aura from him at all!"

"Huh… Now that you mention it…" Souta was ashamed to admit he hadn't even noticed that.

"Wait…" Hagane was struck with a realization. He shouted, "Aim for his chest!"

Naraku's half-face frowned. "Oh dear, you've caught on, have you?"

Isha shrugged and gave Naraku's decapitated body a hefty slice with her sword. Instantly it disintegrated and turned to earth.

Kannon approached the rubble cautiously. She spotted a small, wooden doll, and picked it up.

"A doll?" Isha said incredulously, looking over Naraku's shoulder.

"It's not a doll, not really. It's a golem spell." Kannon frowned and clenched the doll. "All this time we've been fighting mud and magic."

%%%

Once they had double-checked that Naraku was for sure gone, the group returned to the exterminators' village. Kannon tended to a fire while Isha was cleaning up all the debris scattered around the grounds, yelling.

"I can't believe that lousy exterminator! How can he not remember where Naraku's castle is – or even what his stupid face looks like?!"

Kannon, as ever, was unrattled by Isha's agitation. "Naraku probably put him under some kind of an enchantment to make sure he wouldn't remember. And even if he did remember, he's in no state to move right now anyway."

"Pfeh," Isha spat. "It's been ten days he's been 'sleeping' and 'resting.' If it were me, I'd have healed in three days!"

"If it were me I don't think I'd have even bothered ever getting out of bed again," Kannon sighed.

Meanwhile, Souta was hunting for Hagane. It was time to change his bandages, but Hagane had disappeared from the hut he had been sleeping in. Fortunately, the village was small enough that it wasn't a long hunt. "Ah, Hagane! You shouldn't be out moving around yet, your wounds aren't healed enough."

Hagane was sitting next to some of the graves. "You… gave everyone a proper burial," was all he said.

"Um, yeah…" Souta sat silently, awkwardly next to Hagane, wondering what else to say. What can you possibly say to comfort someone who lost their entire family, all their friends, their whole village. Souta had felt bad enough when his father died, and to say Hagane must feel even worse would probably be a huge understatement.

But he did think of one thing. "Say, Hagane, when you feel better… do you want to travel with us? Ah, I mean, Kannon and Isha, they're both nice people, mostly, when it comes down to it. They both take some getting used to, of course, but… Aah I'm not making this sound great, am I?" He saw Shippo nodding in agreement.

Hagane didn't acknowledge that Souta had even said anything, but asked, "You… had a shikon shard, didn't you?"

"Oh, yeah." Souta pulled out the big shikon chunk he wore around his neck. "We managed to get it back from Naraku, I mean the golem-Naraku."

"Which means the real Naraku will come after it again, yes? If that's the case, then I will come with you." Despite his wounds, Hagane was clearing burning with determination.

"Are you planning on avenging everyone?"

"Of course. And besides, the shikon jewel was born in my village."

"Oh, that's right! That was the whole reason we came looking for this village in the first place, to learn about the origin of the jewel." In all the craziness, Souta had somehow forgotten that.

"Then, to thank you for what you've done for my people, I'll tell you how the shikon jewel came to be."

%%%

Isha carried Hagane on her back while the group headed to the cave they had discovered earlier, the cave with the strange, huge, petrified and mummified demonic mess.

"This is it," Hagane said.

"Right, this demon thing. What about it?" Isha's voice was laced with irritation, at having to wait and go through hoops to find out about the shikon shard, as well as at Hagane for being heavier and larger than Souta, and as such, much more cumbersome to carry.

"It's not just a demon. It's several demons – dozens, maybe hundreds – all come together in order to defeat single foe, a human."

"A human?" Kannon looked towards the top of the amalgam, at the decidedly more humanoid shape, the one with stringy black hair and the big hole in the chest. "Such old armor… An ancient warlord, perhaps?"

Hagane replied, "No. She was a priestess, hundreds of years ago."

"A priestess? That's a woman?"

"Yes, and a very powerful and unusual woman she was. Back then, there was so much war and death and famine, much worse than it is now. And because of all that, there were so many more demons than there are now. Of course there were many monks and priests that had the power to exterminate them, but only one person had the power to extract and cleanse the demon's souls. That person was the priestess Midoriko, who you see before you.

Souta looked at the mummified corpse with a mixture of awe and bewilderment. "She could extract their souls?"

"And not just demon's souls. Everything in the world, every rock or tree or creature, is said to be made up of four souls."

Something small clicked in the back of Souta's brain. 'Four souls… shikon?'

"It's a Shinto philosophy, not a Buddhist one, but I happen to be familiar with it," Kannon stepped forward to explain. "The 'shikon' consists of arami-tama – courage, nigimi-tama – harmony, kushimi-tama - miracles, and sakimi-tama – love. Together they form the soul, or the heart. When these elements combine to form a truly balanced soul, it is called 'naohi,' and a person with such a soul can easily remain on the true path. But if an evil deed is committed, the aspects become unbalanced, the person becomes 'magatsuhi', or a 'twisted spirit', and the person travels the wrong path."

The rest of the group stood in silence for a moment.

"That… was a lot to take in." Souta rubbed his temples.

"I didn't understand a word of it," Shippo's head was reeling.

"Yeah, what was any of that supposed to mean?!" Isha yelped in agitation.

Hagane sighed. "All it means is that a soul can be good or evil. Midoriko's soul was perfectly balanced, and this gave her the ability to nullify demons. But the demons began to fear her. They plotted her death, but realized if they outright attacked her, they would be nullified and killed before they even had a chance. So they decided to combine into one huge demon that would be too large and too powerful for Midoriko to instantly destroy."

"They… merged into one demon?" Souta thought that explained why the big mass was so lumpy and odd-looking, but he still had questions. "How exactly did they manage to do that?"

Hagane pointed a small protrusion towards the bottom of the mass. "Midoriko isn't the only human here. They say there was a man who lusted after her. The demons snuck into the man's heart, possessing him. It seems it's much easier for demons to combine their strength if they possess a single human, a single, twisted human."

Some more things clicked in the back of Souta's brain. Once again Kannon had the answer. "This story… this is just like Naraku's! How Onigumo gave up his body to a horde of demons, to become an even more powerful and terrible demon than any of the others…"

Isha's voice hardened as she asked Hagane to continue the story. "The priestess, did she win, or lose?"

"Well, they say the battle raged on for seven days until Midoriko's energy was all spent, and the great demon began to devour her. But before it could fully consume her, she used the very last of her energy to steal the demon's soul, and combine it with her own and expel it out of her body. Both Midoriko and the demon perished, and all that was remained was what we call the shikon jewel."

"And the mummified corpses," Souta pointed out.

"…Yes." Hagane sighed. "But although their bodies have perished, it's said that the two souls, the souls of Midoriko and the great demon, are still battling each other. And so the shikon jewel will become good or evil depending on who holds it. In the hands of a demon, the jewel will become corrupted. But in the hands of someone with a pure soul, the jewel will become purified." Hagane paused for breath, and Kannon and Shippo looked meaningfully at Souta. "Over hundreds of years, the jewel has passed from one demon to another, until one day my grandfather recovered it and returned it to this village. By then the jewel had become very corrupted, so the jewel was entrusted to a powerful Shinto priest."

A single name rang through both Isha's and Souta's minds: Tsuta.

OoO

A++ always awkward endings to every chapter. I just didn't feel like finishing up the rest of the exposition. Eh. Sorry this chapter took forever. I actually hadn't realized it had been so long since the last chapter, and then I didn't feel like finishing because EXPOSITION. I ended up not changing a whole lot from in-canon so I probably could've just skipped it, but I've already typed it all up so oh well.

That bit where it's like "it's obvious how Isha managed to carry two teenage boys" is code for "I don't feel like figuring out how to make this make sense." Having already established in an earlier chapter that Isha is surprisingly small-figured under her clothing, and having just mentioned in the author's note in the last chapter that Hagane is several inches taller than Isha (and Souta) and being more buff/fit than Isha (and Souta), I realized I had a bit of a problem here regarding how Isha would manage to fit both Hagane and Souta on her back. I was considering just having it be like she just carried Hagane and Souta ran after them. Or maybe Shippo gave them a ride in that little balloon form thingy Shippo has. Hey, can you believe it's chapter 25 and I still haven't said if Shippo is a boy or a girl? It helps that Shippo barely ever says anything, even in canon. Haha.

Midoriko is still a lady and not a victim of the genderbender because I like the idea of having a totally powerful, kickass priestess, especially since it's basically just her and Kaede now. I know her being a woman kind of messes up the parallel between her and that one guy, and Onigumo and Kikyo, but then again, Onigumo/Naraku still being male in this story kind of messed up that parallel already anyway.

I slipped in a Pocahontas reference. In manga Sango says "Human or animal or trees or stones", so it's pretty easy to just slip that into "every rock or tree or creature", especially since Pocahontas goes on to say they all have a life, a spirit, a name, and Sango goes on to say they all have four souls. Yep.

According to Wikipedia, kushi-mitama is the "wondrous soul" that's supposed to have mysterious powers including the ability to cure illnesses. Basically I gather it's one of those words that's difficult to translate into English, but gosh, it sounds weird to say the soul consists of miracles among other things.

I forgot Tsuta's name while writing this. I was like "Tsujin? Suka? Crap."

Re: recent review from "Guest" about tsundere - I actually like that idea! I've been trying to come up with stuff to happen during the next modern day chapter, or at least the one that happens after Kouga shows up (or maybe they're the same chapter anyway? I know Kagome goes back to modern times right after meeting Kouga…) and I could definitely try to fit that in somewhere. I'm not sure if people were saying "tsundere" back in 1997 when Inuyasha canonically takes place, but as I said elsewhere, basically, who cares? It's just a fanfiction, I don't care if it's not 100% historically accurate. I've already had Souta make a few references he shouldn't have made if it was really 1997. Am I arguing with myself?

Anyway, so what's next? I really want to just go ahead to the Koga intro arc, but that'd be skipping three volumes, and there's a lot of good stuff that happens, but some lame stuff. Hrrm. I guess you'll all just find out. I AM skipping the "false water god" storyline and I'm pretty sure I'm going to skip the "Miroku(Kannon)'s wind tunnel starts splitting open" because while I do like that chapter and it gives some good characterization to Miroku, I'm not sure if I can find the inspiration to really make it not just a word-for-word retelling of the original with different pronouns.

A+ author's notes always super long, sorry.