In all honesty, Kagome was expecting Tsukuyomaru to forfeit his next match. One of their group reached semi-finals already, and the bat youkai was nursing a broken wrist – surely he wasn't going to fight in that state? But in the end, her prediction proved to be wrong.
Tsukuyomaru's opponent in this fight was a youkai named Manten, Hiten's younger brother. While looking as different as the sky and a bald boulder, brothers shared powerful lightning powers, which both had enough matches to demonstrate in fullest. When the Tsukuyomaru was standing across Manten on the arena, with his left hand in a splint, he looked ready to surrender right there and now – that is, until Manten opened his mouth.
Kagome didn't hear what the elemental said, but Tsukuyomaru looked at first horrified, then angered, and then just very determined. He had replied something quietly, and Kagome really wished she could read lips. When the fight began, he charged into attack first, making the priestess gasp in surprise and confusion. With the corner of her eye she could see Sesshomaru frowning slightly, while Tsume raised her brows in surprise.
"What happened?" Kagome asked aloud, looking at the two youkai near her helplessly. "Why Tsukuyomaru-san is fighting in his condition? What had Manten said?"
To her ever growing confusion, Sesshomaru and Tsume exchanged meaningful glances before any of them answered.
"After bragging over his imminent victory, the elemental expressed his desire to defeat you in his next match and take your head as a trophy," Sesshomaru said in toneless voice. Kagome looked at him with wide eyes. Is that what had angered Tsukuyomaru so much? And it seemed that not just him – the priestess could literally feel waves of Sesshomaru's wrath with her skin. His aura pulsed heavily, making goosebumps rise over Kagome's body. Was he angry over her wellbeing? She shivered involuntarily, both because of the aura and the idea of someone turning her into a potion, turning away from her teacher and to the fight below. Thankfully, Tsukuyomaru held his ground even with only one hand, at least for now.
"Why would he want this?" she asked. It made no sense – Kagome never ever met this guy before!
"Oh, don't you know?" this time it was Tsume who decided to grant some explanation to what was happening. "Beat fire with fire, cure diseased with healthy. Baldy just wants to make a hair growing potion out of your mane, girl. This Tsume must admit, though, that while his gall is definitely outrageous… You have great hair for a human indeed," with these words Tsume rubbed a lock of Kagome's hair in her hand, making her turn towards her.
"Uh, thank you, Tsume-sama," Kagome said a bit awkwardly as the dog lady let go of her hair. The priestess brushed her locks with her hand. "I use a lotion made from eggs and burdock to make it healthier."
"How interesting! You will need to tell me more about this, girl," Tsume replied with new sparks in her eyes. "But later. It seems that your protector is in trouble right now, after all," she pointed at the arena, and Kagome looked there just in time to see Tsunohiyoru fly to the ground after being grazed by a strong blast of lightning from Manten's mouth.
"Tsunohiyoru-san!" Kagome gasped, watching over enrolling battle with fear and worry. 'Stupid, why didn't you surrendered? I'd be fine! I could have taken him on for myself, or just forfeited the match at any given moment. I am sure that Tsume-sama would've interfered if I did and this guy continued to fight!'
The bat prince, though, still had some tricks in his sleeves. As soon as he was standing on his two feet again, Kagome saw him sheathing his sword and reaching somewhere under his charred armor. At the next moment Tsunohiyoru threw several small projectiles – some sort of dark balls – into Manten. He easily deflected them with his bare hand, but as soon as that happened they exploded into a cloud of greenish smoke.
"Trickery," Sesshomaru commented with disdainful snort. "A maneuver of the desperate."
'Whatever lets him to win,' countered Kagome in her thoughts. 'This isn't against the rules!'
The cloud soon dispersed under gusts of wind from opponents' movements and from Manten's thunder blasts, but the damage was already done – the elemental was keeping his puffy red eyes closed shut and was attacking completely blindly. Tsunohiyoru seemed to be in similar state, if a bit better, but was acting with the same precision as always. It didn't take him much time to knock Manten out and be declared a winner, even if many people in the audience seemed to be unhappy about this. But Kagome could see Touran and her wildcats cheering wildly from their lodge.
"Thank you, you idiot! You did great, but I'd be fine without your help, do you hear me?!" the priestess loudly added her opinion to all the voices in the crowd. In response, Tsukuyomaru only smiled at her bashfully, before returning to his family.
When Kagome stood near him a bit later at the sand of the tournament arena, Tsukuyomaru's eyes were fine, and he was smiling at her again like nothing happened. Kagome, though, was filled with increased dread. She didn't want to fight with him, and what was even worse – after her battle with Touran, her reiki was so low that she barely got enough of it to keep herself in check. The match had already begun, but nobody yet did a step towards each other.
"I had never really thought that not only I will get to the semi-finals, but you too!" Tsukuyomaru said, chuckling. "Be sure to grab yourself something nice from the rewards later."
Kagome pursed her lips, unable to feel happiness about future rewards. Instead, she was filled with growing anxiety. Her youki responded to it with its pulsing against hair-thin confinements of her reiki, on which Kagome reacted with even more dread and worry. It was a cursed circle that only Sesshomaru's presence could break, and he was far above, watching at her with his impassive yellow eyes, not calming even a little bit.
"I know that Sesshomaru-san told you to not give up, but you really should, Kagome-san. You barely stand on your feet, there is no way you fighting him!" continued Tsukuyomaru, looking at her with worry. "But if you aren't going to, I will. And if he says anything about that, he might as well say it to me."
Of course the bat youkai heard her dialogue with Sesshomaru, and of course he was now trying to help her, because he was just that kind. Now Kagome felt even worse. She was almost sick, both from worry and from youki trying to emerge. She was almost at the bottom of her spiral of madness, and concentrating on anything else besides keeping the vile power inside of her contained was hard.
"I…" Kagome half-said half-gasped. She wasn't sure anymore, what exactly she wanted to say – to yield, or something else, because in the next moment youki inside her responded with vengeance at her attempts to contain it, and Kagome's words were cut out by a cry of anguish.
It was the one thing she could never truly get used to, despite everything. Oh, it got easier with time to just try and forget, ignore that part of her metamorphoses, but it was always there and always strong. When Kagome channeled her transformations it distracted her from the torture a little, but this time wasn't one of those. The priestess didn't had time to prepare herself for the onslaught, and how was barely holding out in a middle of a storm.
She could see eyes of a person in front of her widen as she jumped towards him. She could see and hear many more people all around her, but that one was the nearest, and he was doomed to suffer the consequences of her pain-induced rage. When he jumped away, she followed. When he surrounded himself with an opaque red sphere, she clawed at it with all her might, feeling angrier and angrier when it didn't broke even when she rammed it with her heavy horns.
"Kagome-san, what's going on?!" the person inside the sphere cried out. "I yield! Somebody, help her – I think she isn't well!"
She rammed at the sphere again – it didn't worked, but the action of putting her whole body weight into the singular attack felt nice – when she felt a strong presence approaching. The smell was very familiar, and she quickly turned towards the new enemy. She knew well that he was strong, and he beat her often before, but that only made her desire to destroy him burn hotter. She roared and charged.
A heavy wave of youki descended on her like a downpour on a flaming forest. For a moment she stopped, standing right before her familiar enemy. Clarity appeared where her pain retreated, but running on leftovers of it together with her previous bad feelings, Kagome threw a heavy punch towards Sesshomaru's face anyway.
It didn't land, of course. He stopped it with his palm effortlessly, and then just as easy caught Kagome by her collar and helped her to stay upright when the rests of her transformation wore off.
"Don't sleep. You still need to fight this Sesshomaru," he said, letting go of Kagome when she regained some stability.
"Kagome-san, are you alright? What had happened?" Tsukuyomaru asked with worry and almost panic as he run up to her.
"I am fine now," Kagome smiled weakly at him. "Sorry, Tsukuyomaru-san, I will explain everything later, alright? It's a bit of a long story."
Tsukuyomaru looked at her with disbelief, but in the end just sighed and wished her luck in her next fight, before leaving the arena. With Kagome and Sesshomaru already present in it, the next match could start immediately. And so it did.
"You still need to work on your stamina," Sesshomaru noted, circling Kagome slowly. "You will start now, priestess."
Kagome snarled at him in annoyance and anger. If translated from dog it was supposed to mean a rude request to go somewhere and leave the speaker in peace, but Kagome probably pronounced it wrong. Not that she cared much at this point anyway.
"The spite of you," Sesshomaru smirked, as if appeased somehow. "But is there any bite in that bark?"
'That prick!' Kagome felt like boiling. She'd probably started her metamorphose right there and now from that anger alone, if Sesshomaru's aura didn't clouded the whole arena like a thick blanket, keeping her in check. 'I will show him what happens when you underestimate the underdog! And what the hell is with all those dog puns?'
She unsheathed Tsunohiyoru, filled with determination and stubbornness to the brim, despite the fact that her limbs felt like they were made of lead, her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and her reiki was so low that the sword in her hand wasn't glowing as usual, instead just looking as if it was made from normal steel.
Sesshomaru advanced without hurry with Tenseiga as his weapon of choice. The sword that cannot cut danced in his hands, landing strike after strike on Kagome's frame despite her attempts to protect herself. And even if it actually healed her body instead of wounding it, her pride suffered none the less. It was as if Sesshomaru was going to toy with her until the priestess will just fall down from exhaustion.
'No way this is going to happen so easy for him,' Kagome thought, grinding her teeth as she and her teacher and sometimes torturer clashed again. Sesshomaru waved around her block, piercing her heart through. With that stab he left himself open for a moment, and Kagome knew that this was her chance. This would have never happened in real fight (because in real fight she'd be dead right now), but at this precise moment Sesshomaru was left open and relatively vulnerable.
Kagome stepped forward, ignoring the sword in her chest and gathered the rests of her reiki. As Tsunohiyoru stabbed, shattering Sesshomaru's pauldron and piercing his shoulder with a loud hiss of burning flesh, she felt the youki run freely inside of her body, with no force to stop it even for a moment. But this time Kagome was ready, grabbing the reins of it and putting the image in her head, the same one the example for which was now right in front of her.
His face with its features twisted in pain and anger was now so close that their breaths mingled. She could feel smell of his blood - metallic with most exquisite acidic undertones. They reminded her of something, some kind of dish or a drink, but she wasn't going to think about it when she was in such pain. She needed some relief from it, right now. Maybe a taste of that blood will help? She moved forwards, ignoring the thing that was still stuck inside of her, and tried to grab a bite, but was thrown away with a great force.
She turned around in the air, landing on all fours only to spring forwards, her paws eating distance like it was nothing. She knew that the person in front of her wasn't really her enemy, but also knew she needed to show him who was better. And grabbing a bite or two from him in the process would've been great as well.
He tore her metal stick from his shoulder and threw it to the ground just in time to meet her onslaught with his claws. She roared as they clashed again. Despite his wound, her opponent held her back, not letting her land another strike, and with each moment without any progress she felt more and more frustrated and less and less distracted from her eternal torture. It was hard to remember that she wasn't supposed to try and land lethal attacks, or how she needed to look. She could tell that her opponent wasn't trying to kill her either. Some part of her didn't even wanted to resist, hoping for a blessing of unconsciousness, but everything else drowned out its weak pleads with rush of blood in her ears.
It didn't change anything in the end – even when she forgot about everything besides continuous need to destroy things and her attacks became merciless and even wilder, her opponent didn't fell. Instead, he landed a blow on her head, finally putting everything under a blanket of calm darkness. But even in that darkness, there was pain.
Kagome's memories afterwards were even blurrier than usual. Maybe it was a defensive reaction of her brain, because what she could remember of last events was filled with lots of anguish. She still felt echoes of it even now – loud, persistent echoes. In other words, Kagome felt terrible. She also was, for some reason, lying in what looked like a prison cell.
She groaned, lifting her head up a little and was met with Sesshomaru's impassive gaze behind the metal bars. She tried to pierce events that led to her being in that prison cell together. First, she wounded Sesshomaru, using lasts of her reiki. Then, she went berserk. Then, she went even more berserk. Then Sesshomaru knocked her out. Then she woke up in a cell… still berserk. Her memory didn't gave Kagome much information on how long she spent raging in her confinements, though nicks and scratches on the walls around her were innumerous.
"You was too reckless, priestess, and now is suffering the consequences of your own actions," Sesshomaru said, unlocking the door. He might have looked calm, but his pursed lips and his next words were showing that under this cold façade a storm of emotions was hiding. "You didn't need to try so hard to prove me your tenacity."
Did that sound like worry? Kagome could swear it was worry. And he didn't use the third person when referring to himself, which he only did that one time when he was really angry at her… She'd ask, but her throat was too dry and her eyelids were too heavy. Smiling a little, she closed her eyes, feeling Sesshomaru's warm hands lift her up, and fled away from her aches into nothingness again.
When Kagome woke up next time, she was lying on a futon in what looked like a normal, if big and luxurious room. A cup and a jug were standing near her head, and under a window, Sesshomaru was writing something over a low desk. She still felt horrible, though – and not with aches of tired muscles and healing bruises. It felt like her blood was burning twice as hot now, and twice as painful, as if she was nearing her transformed state, except she wasn't. Kagome looked inside herself, only to feel her youki calm, and her reiki still not full, but replenished greatly. What happened to her?
Sesshomaru put his brush away and moved closer to Kagome. He sat near her, before pouring some water from the jug into a cup and leaving it near her. She reached for it gratefully, her hands shaking and barely able to bring the cup to its destination without spilling its contents.
"How long I was… raging?" Kagome asked when her thirst was quenched.
"A day," Sesshomaru replied. His eyebrows were lowered, like in anger, but otherwise he seemed to be calm. "You were able to regain consciousness when your reiki replenished a little."
"I feel awful," Kagome complained, not expecting to hear any condolences in response. Of course, they didn't come.
"This Sesshomaru doesn't know if the reason for this was the time you spend in your unstable state, or your lack of reiki to prevent it, but there are some changes to your body that aren't disappeared even now," Sesshomaru said instead.
His words caused Kagome open her eye wide in shock and dread. She sat up in hurry, throwing her blanket to the side and looking over her body in search of those changes. Did she have a tail now? Scales? Maybe chitin, or some additional limbs? None of this seemed to be true at the first glance.
Before Kagome could panic further, Sesshomaru grabbed her hand and rolled up a sleeve of her yukata (which was definitely not what she was wearing before). Kagome stared at him in confusion, and then at the place to where he was pointing with his eyes.
It was the hair on her hand. If she looked at it, she could see that small hairs that always were just a shade lighter than the hairs on her head, were now of the lightest silver color. A small, almost unnoticeable change in comparison to what she imagined. Kagome let out a deep breath of relief.
"This mutation might seem small, but it's a first step towards your death, priestess," Sesshomaru stated, letting go of her hand. "It's also not the only one. Your body now is a little more youkai in its nature, and the war within it storms stronger than before."
Kagome shuddered, looking herself over again. Was that why she felt so terrible? Was she going to feel like this all the time now? Was she going to die soon, not learning how to properly transform into a youkai form she was learning about for a half of a year?
"Servant will bring you some food soon. Finish your rest," Sesshomaru said, standing up. "You aren't going to get any afterwards until you finish your education."
Kagome's rest lasted two days, quarter of which she spent looking herself over in a big mirror which servants brought for her after she asked for something reflecting. Of course Tsume's palace will have an expensive thing like this. It was very helpful in noticing her other changes, though.
First was her eye color – what, as Kagome remembered, was once a common brown, now had a distinct bluish tint in it, especially noticeable under a bright light. Second were her nails that became thicker and stronger, though still far away from Sesshomaru's claws. Her canines now looked a bit longer and felt strange and unfamiliar in her mouth when she touched them with her tongue. Her tongue itself felt normal, but definitely wasn't normal – it was longer now, and as if thinner. When Kagome tried, she could reach both her nose and chin with it. Her ears changed a shape as well, not becoming pointy, but getting closer to it. And all of her senses now seemed to be a little bit better in general.
The changes, while harmless or useful, felt scary. Kagome felt like a stranger in her own body, afraid of it changing again into something completely foreign one day.
"All of those mutations belong to your future second form," Sesshomaru noted, when Kagome quietly expressed her fears to him. She wasn't sure what moved her to this – maybe it was the fact that Sesshomaru knew the most about what she had to live through with her blood curse, or maybe that little care he showed to her both recently and in the past. And she wasn't even that surprised when he answered with something like words of comfort and praise. "Even when in mindless rage, you kept it in mind. And this form is not unfamiliar to you anymore."
Kagome also had other visitors in those two days. Tsume came, of course, congratulated her over her second place in the tournament and told her that she might get her reward at any time. Kagome was also surprised to see all her new friends come over as well with well-wishes, congratulations, expressions of concern and questions. They told her that Tsume allowed them to stay for a little while after the end of the tournament to see Kagome getting better. Tsukuyomaru also got the piece of ningyo flesh he was fighting for, and Shizu already had time to eat it, though there was no way to say if it worked or not yet.
In return, the priestess told to her friends an abridged version of the story about the curse of Shikon no Tama, and how Sesshomaru helped her to deal with it in return for her servitude. Kagome was glad to see that nobody looked at her any worse after that – if anything, they were just more worried over her health. Both groups, Tsukuyomaru's and Touran's, stayed until the next day, before leaving with heartfelt farewells, promises to drop by and invitations to visit, and with that Kagome had again returned to her previous life of studying hard.