He had barely worked up a sweat on his brow, and he was dominating the standings along side Inu-Yasha. The two of them were working their way from the outer edges of the arena to the middle, where they'd meet each other, and Miroku planned to use his tamaana.


The fighting continued, Miroku almost forgetting he had brought along his sword, and Inu-Yasha never even unsheathing his. The men went down easily, and it was just a matter of staying ahead of everyone else. More than once Miroku had found himself slipping to Kirara for second, and he'd have to start kicking ass twice as hard to regain the spot.


Miroku stomped his sandaled foot onto a fallen man's head, and grabbed the badge that dislodged itself. Grinning happily, he continued on his killing spree, contemplating humming a little song to scare the others away from him. He recalled a tale from his village of a man who once used song to throw his enemy off . . . how did the words go?


"Total slaughter! Total slaughter! I won't leave a single man alive! La de da de dai, Genocide! La de da de duh, an ocean of blood! Let's begin the KILLING TIME!"


Miroku had successfully weirded out those around him, and had killed about five men in his eagerness. Like a giddy schoolboy he gathered the badges up and moved onto his next victim.


With a swift kick in one direction, and slash with his katana in the other, Miroku found himself the proud owner of two more badges, and he snickered to himself. He liked this city. It was an easy way to get some quick money. It was only a shame that they only held the contest once a year, or he found that he could be a very rich man if he stayed in this city.


The men were near starved and tired, and so some of them could be defeated with a mere pat on the back. Miroku knew, despite not being from this city, that the purpose of the tourney wasn't to have worthy opponents to defeat though, but as the registrar herself told him, it was the city's 'system for disposing of excess criminals in an amusing, entertaining, and awarding way.'


He really didn't have a problem with that, he thought, as he took down another man.


Inu-Yasha, too, was holding his own, happily remaining in first place now, and content to win the tourney. With a grin, he slashed his claws through several men's heads, and practically bounced from corpse to corpse as he collected his prize: the badges. With those, he was secured the three thousand shell first prize, and the fame that came along with being a winning warrior from the tourney.


Things were going great.


Of course, in battle, things can never really be going great, and this was proved as Miroku looked up into the audience for a brief moment, and his eyes caught the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in his life. And a man of his lechery had seen many.


Taking advantage of the distraction, several of the criminals ambushed him with a fallen man's armor, and knocked him out cold.


The sight caused Inu-Yasha's attention to momentarily lapse, and his head was victimized by a fist. Now thoroughly pissed off, Inu-Yasha landed a punch against his attacker and made sure it was hard enough to kill the already weak man. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Miroku being carried to the hospice tents, and he unconsciously let out a sigh of relief. Miroku would be okay.


Now assured of his new friend's safety, Inu-Yasha devoted himself to killing as many people as he could. He found that if he extended his arms out and ran forward, several people's throats would be caught against his claws and die.


It was really quite fun.


He took pleasure in the death of a few more men, before he paused, and started working on the group of bandits to his right.


"Here kitty kitty kitty kitty!" he said, with a malicious glint in his eye as he killed them one by one.


And so it went until criminals suddenly were drawn back to the chains, and Inu-Yasha grabbed the last badge from the man he'd killed.


It was Halftime.


He made his way through the dead bodies, now being cleared by kisai and registrars, he found the hospice tent Miroku was in with little trouble.


Getting in the tent was a bit different. There was a long line of men outside, and Inu-Yasha had to scoff at the fact that not even three of them looked injured enough to want in. The whispers of a 'really hot nurse' confirmed his suspicions, and Inu-Yasha contemplated giving them a reason to be standing in that line, but he held back, his claws flexing even still, liking the idea of more killing.


"Yeah, I think I'm gonna need mouth to mouth!"


"I sure hope she can cure me, if you know what I mean!"


"I hope I won't be the only one in that hospice bed."


"You haven't seen her?"


"She's gotta be a concubine on double duty or something."


"Yeah, maybe that means she's free for the taking!"


"I call first dibs!"


"Yeah right, every man for himself!"


"Well she's got really nice legs-"


"Big blue eyes!"


"The chest on that girl!"


Inu-Yasha snorted at the lecherous remarks coming from the men, and almost thought they rivaled Miroku's own perverted thoughts, but then thought better of it. Miroku, who may or may not have been conscious now, was in there. Hearing all these men, he couldn't help but wonder what Miroku's reaction had been (or would be, if he had yet to awake).


He should have been thinking of his own.

When the line finally cleared, one of the more homely nurses shooing them away, Inu-Yasha managed to duck into the tent, and soon found himself in a familiar presence.


No . . . it couldn't be, could it?




Now now, I'm not REALLY evil...I mean, sure I gave you a really short chapter and then put a cliffhanger on it, but . . . no one is reading this anyway, except for the lovely Sprout (see below) so who cares, right?



To Sprout: You made Mimi cry! She was so upset, because she's been working hard on this story, and no one cares, and then you left that nice review. It wasn't fifty lines long or anything, but it affected me none the less, and I just want to thank you for your kindness. Your reviews motivate me to keep going (even if others don't think I should), so really, I'm writing this story for you, so I hope you like it!


So, did anyone else catch the Trigun reference? Yes, Mimi is a very big Trigun fan, but moreover, she's a very big Wolfwood fan. The fact that Jeff "Malfoy Nimrod" Nimoy is the voice actor for him does kinda screw things up a bit, but that also kinda adds to the giant Digimon cast lurking over in the Trigun area. And, as you may or may not know I started out in Digimon fandom (I went from Digi-diva to Devilish Diva to Junbug all the way to Anatra in that section) and that's like, a huge bonus for me. :D