Paradigm Shift
Chapter Eighteen: Learning
… … …
The daylight that was streaming into the room was incongruous. It seemed wrong, somehow. Dark waves of hair spilled across a colorful woven rug, and that seemed wrong too. So out of place. It didn't fit with the insanity, the darkness of the man.
'It could be so easy.' Kagura thought. 'So easy to just kill him right there while he's asleep.' But she knew she was lying to herself. So she stood at the open window, longing to feel a breeze or a gust of air on her face. It seemed that she wasn't even to be granted that simple pleasure.
"How traitorous your thoughts must be, Kagura, for your emotions to wake me."
Naraku smiled and it made her skin crawl. That was wrong too.
"How could I betray you while you hold my heart in collateral for my obedience?"
Naraku pushed himself from the floor, coming to stand behind his incarnation.
"You forget that you are born of me, Kagura. I know how you think." He ran his hand over the side of her neck as he looked out the window from over her shoulder. "I know how you feel, how you long for your independence, how ruthless you can be in your pursuit of what you want. I know because you are me."
His words were a burning venom in her bloodstream, eating away at her from inside.
"Then it's fitting that I hate myself as much as I hate you." She spat from between clenched teeth, pulling roughly away from his touch. He laughed at her and it made the hair on her neck and arm stand on end.
"Go. Bring Kanna. I wish to see what Inuyasha and his little company are up to. They have been too quiet lately and I want to know what they do about this new development."
Kagura smiled, then. Facing away from him so that he didn't see. She was glad that all of his work and all of his plots and all of his manipulations were for nothing, now. How the mighty fall. Naraku was no stronger than herself without his precious Shikon. If not for his possession of her heart, literally holding her life in the palm of his hand, she could have been rid of him already. It would have been the perfect opportunity.
She did as she was told, though, crossing the room to the door to retrieve her sister. When she opened the door to see Kanna's stoic face looking past her to Naraku, she wasn't surprised. The pale girl always had an uncanny way of knowing things.
Kagura stepped aside from the frame of the door, letting Kanna pass and make her way to Naraku's side.
"Ah, Kanna." Kagura didn't understand how Kanna could stand there unaffected when Naraku's hand cupped her face and brought her eyes to his. Kanna didn't respond to much, though.
"I want you to go to Inuyasha. Do not be seen. Show me what he and his companions are up to.
Kanna turned glided out of the room in silence to attend to her task.
… … …
"NO!"
Kagome winced as Tatsuo's plain wooden staff connected with her shoulder. The inuyoukai's red hair bristled as she swung around to point the staff at Miroku.
"I blame you for this! All wrong! All wrong!" She turned back and closed the distance between herself and Kagome. "How will you ever be of use in battle if you have to sit and meditate to call up your energy!? No!"
Tatsuo's claws dug painfully into Kagome's skin as she adjusted her stance.
Kagome pressed her lips together, figuring that it wouldn't go over well if she suggested that Sesshomaru had been the one to suggest meditation in the first place.
"Like this!" Kagome's left arm was pulled straight out, her hand smacked until she had her palm facing flat out, parallel to her body. Her right arm was bent in from of her chest, palm down, facing the ground.
"Oof" Kagome grunted as the air was knocked from her when Tatsuo hit her chest roughly.
"Your reiki does not come only from here! That is just the most concentrated well of reiki in you. You must direct it. Not just let it run uselessly over your skin."
Tatsuo threw another glare back to Miroku, where he was working through a series of martial arts exercises under the watchful eye of a bulky male bear youkai. He was sweaty and red from exertion and very distracting.
"Focus!" Tatsuo yelled in her face. "Reiki and jaki are not some physical or tangible things that you need to feel to call on! That way of thinking will only hold you back!" The red-haired woman sighed and took a deep breath before continuing, standing beside Kagome in the same stance.
"Your reiki is energy. It is always within you. Within all parts of you. All you need to do is tell it to rise from where it rests where you want to use it. You do not need to drag it from your center and push it around. You waste your reserves and make it too complicated."
Kagome nodded at Tatsuo, concentrating on the words.
"Open your eyes! This is not that silly meditation."
Kagome frowned at that, she liked the meditation. It was calm and relaxing.
"How can you use your reiki to fight if you always have your eyes closed? Feel your stance. Feel your body. Feel your reiki coursing through you; like a river. It runs through all parts of your body."
Kagome tried to do as she was told, having to fight the strong urge to close her eyes again. The mention of a river helped, and she imagined the feeling of her energy in her chest spreading out through her veins.
"Once you feel it pouring through you, simply extend it. Call it out where you want it to surface. In this case, your palms. Expand the path that it travels naturally to reach beyond your skin. It is your reiki. You are not its body. It does not possess you, you possess it. It does not control you, you control it."
Red sparks of jaki crawled along Tatsuo's palms and fingers, thickening around the backs of her hands and crawling up her forearms to her elbows.
"Now you."
She watched Kagome's arms.
Nothing happened as Kagome's face scrunched up in concentration.
"No! You concentrate too much. You concentrate too little. You have to balance it if you want to learn battle reiki! And you must if Lord Sesshomaru wishes it!" Tatsuo's silvery-blue eyes landed on Miroku again and she growled. She stomped over to where the burly bear youkai was watching Miroku go through the forms.
"Heiji! I'm taking him!"
The man laughed and waved his arm as Miroku with in amusement in his brown eyes at the fiery woman's disposition.
"We are nearly finished anyway." He told her. He outright laughed when she began hitting Miroku repeatedly with her quarterstaff, growling in frustration.
"Where did you train!? Tell me so that I can make sure never to send anyone to train there!" Her staff laned with an audible thus on his thigh. "Do you even use your own reiki in battle!? This useless,-"
Miroku covered his head with his arms.
"Hey! Ow!"
"-self-expressionist,-"
"Hey! Stop it!"
"-meditative, useless channeling!"
Tatsuo grabbed Miroku's wrist and stalked with him in tow over to Kagome and shoved him to stand by Kagome's right side, taking back up her post at Kagome's left side.
"Now! You too! Stances!" She bit out at them.
They both sighed in resignation and bent their knees, moving their arms into place.
"Like a river. Tell your reiki to spill out and over the bank of its natural course. No! Stupid man."
Tatsuo reached around Kagome's front and smacked Miroku as his reiki crawled over his whole body in slow blue flames.
"Control it. Direct it. Only your hands! Stop! Eyes open. You cannot block out sounds and distractions. You cannot focus on sounds and distractions. You have to accept the world around you, be part of it, be in it, be aware and observe, allowing the unimportant things to pass through you. Aware and observant, but not filled with the need to pay attention to everything. When you face a foe you need to see your surroundings and know how to use them, but they do not need to take all of your attention."
The red sparks lit along Tatsuo's hands and forearms again.
"Eyes open, soto-zen!" She scolded. "Do not roll them at me! I'll come smack them right out of your empty head!"
Kagome and Miroku's eyes met out of the corners of their eyes, conveying their mutual exasperation.
Tatsuo dropped her hands and moved to stand in front of them both. She stomped one foot in the dirt and balled her hands into fists as their reiki moved across their whole bodies again.
"No! No no no!" She pushed beat at their arms with her staff, making them each take a step back and break their stances while she growled at them again. "Give me your hands."
They both held out their hands to her. She grasped Kagome's right wrist and Miroku's left, bringing them close together so that the sides of their hands touched. Her hand hovered over theirs and her jaki sparked in her palm in the space between.
"Now feel." She slapped her hand down onto their palms. They both jumped slightly and pulled their hands away, shaking them out. "Do you feel where my jaki touches your reiki? Where it shocks you inside your hands?"
"Yes." They chorused.
"Good. Only there where you feel it. Where my jaki sits on your skin still. Stances!" She resumed her place by Kagome and they all resumed the posture. "Tell your reiki to cleanse the jaki from your body. Only to cleanse the jaki."
Miroku got it first, the tiny blue flames licking over his hand and wrist. Kagome smiled at him and watched the reiki dance on his skin.
"Yes! Good! Now you, miko. Ah! Eyes open!"
Kagome stared at her palm intently, doing her best to allow the rest of the reiki's flow through her undisturbed, letting herself feel the tingle of Tatsuo's energy in her palm. She took a deep breath and as she exhaled, she pulled on the desire that she had to get it right, to nullify the jaki in her hand.
The recognizable wisps of pink steam rose up in the center of her palm, right in the spot that the red spark had touched her. She smiled at Tatsuo and Miroku, not realizing how her aura filled her eyes and turned them a clear, bright amethyst.
"Very good, Kagome. Very good control, too. Just in the spot where my jaki was." She made shooing noises, smacking their thighs with her staff lightly. "Go now. We are done for today. Practice that and we will continue tomorrow."
Heiji meandered over to Tatsuo's side as they watched Miroku and Kagome head towards the bath house to wash away the sweat of their exertions for the day.
"You see it too." Heiji's deep voice said.
"I do." Tatsuo agreed. "They could be powerful together."
"They are already powerful on their own."
"Yes. If they blend, though… they could make a formidable asset to the west and to Lord Sesshomaru."
"Oh, I'm sure he knows already. Lord Sesshomaru doesn't miss much. I wouldn't be surprised if he was encouraging it."
Tatsuo chuckled and glanced at Heiji before watching Kagome and Miroku as they talked, seeing their smiles for each other as they rounded the side of the haiden, moving out of their sight toward the bath house in the back.
… … …
The bath house was large, Wide and white, arguably a pool more than anything else. If someone were so inclined, they could swim along the perimeter. There was a stone wall jutting up in the middle of the bath, dividing it into two halves. It was tall enough to cover someone's body if they stood against it, but low enough that they could see over it from the neck up.
If they were as short as Kagome, at least. Sango might have to crouch down to preserve her modesty if she were there.
The wall didn't reach all the way to the edges of the pool, there were open spaces on each side that would allow someone to swim, if they didn't mind hitting their knees on the bottom- under the waist deep water, or walk to the other side.
Kagome turned her back and made Miroku get into the cool water first, waiting to hear the tell-tale splash, and making him promise that his back was to the dividing wall before she stripped to get into the other side of the water, settling her back against the stone opposite of him.
The water was relaxing, despite it being unheated, and she heard her sigh of contentment echoed from Miroku through the acoustic room.
"Tatsuo is a slave driver." Kagome groaned.
"At least you don't have to do the physical training that Heiji is putting me through. I shouldn't have mentioned my martial arts history when they asked me about my previous training."
"She has me do some physical stuff."
Kagome rolled her eyes at Miroku's snort.
"Not even close to the same thing."
"Yeah, but still. My whole body is sore." She grumbled.
"I could-
"Don't even start!" Kagome interrupted him. She could hear the mirth on his face. She giggled and sunk down to her chin in the water, remembering Tatsuo's temper and how she had attacked Miroku.
"Tatsuo really doesn't like you."
"Yes, I'm baffled by it." He ignored her giggles. "My charm has failed me. I must be losing my touch. How tragic for me."
Miroku swished the water around and splashed it up onto his chest, rinsing the sweat from his skin with a smile.
"Maybe she's just immune."
"Ah, well. I find that I don't mind so much anymore."
Kagome heard the implications in that statement and felt herself flush as she scrubbed her shampoo into her hair. She ducked under the water to rinse it and grabbed the floating plastic bottle, tossing it over the wall onto his side.
"What happened to living in the moment and enjoying what you can while you can?" She asked him as she heard him move through the water to retrieve the bottle.
"Thank you." He said, pouring some of the soap into his hand and rubbing it into his chest where he stood with his back to the wall. "What makes you think that I'm not doing those things?"
When Miroku heard the water moving, he chanced a glance behind him. He barely registered the half-a-second view of the expanse of her back, shoulder, bottom, legs, as she wrapped the white cotton yukata around her, silk clothes in her hand. Because the door was closing and she wouldn't meet his eyes. Because it was possible that he had seen tears on her face.
He turned back around slowly, frowning, his light playful mood overtaken by something painful.
He was quick and efficient as he finished washing. He gathered his own clothing as he donned the same with cotton yukata.
The door closed behind him too. He followed, knowing that she would have to go to their room for fresh clothes. He wasn't ready to just let her walk away like that. He couldn't force her to come to him so he would make sure that she knew that he was serious. Make sure that she knew she was wanted. In every way. She would learn that he really could see past the physical. He would show her, teach her, let her learn how beautiful her soul was.
He would let her learn that he wasn't someone who gave up.