Author's Note: Footnotes are at the end of the chapter.
****** There and Back AgainChapter Fourteen: Waiting. And Sango vs. Inuyasha, Again.
"Oi, Kagome." Kagome fluttered her eyes open to see the hanyou hovering inches from her face.
"KYAA!" The rest of the camp was up and staring at a panting Kagome and a blushing and grumbling Inuyasha.
Inuyasha stood. "We're going back to the well, so Kagome can go on this 'date' thing. You guys catch up as soon you can." He was obviously feeling better at receiving several jewel shards for free, even if their courier did stomp all over him before giving them to him, er, Kagome.
Kagome cautiously crept up onto the hanyou's back and they took off. Inuyasha's nephew watched them go, then looked down at Ruri. "You get the feeling he has no idea what a 'date' is?"
"Hai. Inuyasha-sama no baka."
"Hai." The youkai started to make another snide comment about his uncle but stopped, sensing the "lesser evil" from the night before watching them again. As Sango and Miroku started moving around packing, he carried a random object over and handed it to the houshi. "The first's back."
The monk took the object and paused, pretending to consider it. "Yes, indeed. I can barely feel it, but it's there. It's not the one that awoke me last night."
"No, I'm now sure that there were two when we spoke last night, one just joining the first which awoke you. This one's the first one. I had been planning to return with them, since they're going anyway, but this presence concerns me. There's something familiar about it that I can't place."
"Do we try to attack?"
"No, not without Inuyasha. We may need everyone's skills for the malevolence we felt last night, and if we take on the smaller it is sure to summon the larger."
"Hai."
Ruri saw darkness in Inu's face as he walked back to where she was. "Inu-kun, I thought you wanted to go back with them the next time they went."
He forced the darkness from his face, determined not to alarm his charge. "Eh, what's one more day or so? We're likely to have a fight on our hands when we get back, we might as well enjoy a brief vacation."
Ruri could tell that wasn't all of it but opted to trust him. They hadn't hidden anything from each other since they got here, and if he was choosing to not tell her something now, she knew that in time he would tell her. She also couldn't argue with sticking around a few more days. All of her life had been within either the stale, polluted Tokyo air or the brittle controlled environment of labs and starships. Even the time she remembered being in Scandinavia during her early childhood was spent in a controlled environment more than the country's natively clean air. Sengoku Jidai's weather was a welcome change of pace.
They finished packing up camp and headed back towards the well. Ruri hadn't been warned about Kirara, and was shocked to see the kitten-sized youkai flame into her full size. Of course, Sango, Miroku and Shippou had never seen the transformed version of the younger Inuyasha, nor had they seen his father transformed. Thus, they were even more shocked than Ruri had been when he chose to carry Ruri in his horse-sized dog form which stood at least half a meter taller than Kirara
******
Though they had traveled quickly back to the well, the lesser evil that they had sensed continued to follow them, always staying out of sight from the group. The trip was completely uneventful however, so Miroku and Inu saw no reason to worry their companions until Inuyasha and Kagome returned. Besides, if the two really were after the jewel shards, the watcher should know that it was Kagome who carried the shards, not any of them. Thus, the sextet spent an uneventful day lounging by the well. Miroku spent the better part of the day trying to grok space-time.
Ruri lacked Inu-kun's patience and quickly grew infuriated with the houshi's questions which she took for granted. Early on, she broke out the console, which of course attracted Shippou's and Kirara's attention. Kirara quickly gave up trying to assist Shippou and plopped down in Ruri's lap, as the ponytails were dealing Shippou a thorough clock-cleaning.
"... space and time... are like... fabric... but..." Miroku was thoroughly confused by this point. Sango had long given up on the monk as well, and had wandered off a few minutes ago. Even Inu-kun was losing patience by this point, Ruri noted.
Suddenly, a freshly-carved bokken embedded itself in the ground in front of the youkai. He looked up to see Sango holding a second one. "Oi, youkai, let's finish this."
The youngest of the clan of Inutaishou welcomed the relief from the current conversation, and rose to claim the bokken. Sango was obviously referring to their match from yesterday. He made a few sweeps with the weapon to limber up his sword arm. Damn, this thing was well made. He stopped and stared at the bokken.
"What?" Sango challenged. The rest of the party looked at the youkai with curiosity.
"You made this, in the few minutes you were apart from the rest of us?"
Sango was beginning to get pissed at the insinuation that it was crude. "What're you trying to say?"
The youkai flipped it through various strikes and katas. "It's just that this is probably one of the best-made bokken I've ever held. I've been trying to find a good bokken for half a century, and none came close to this." He stared down at the wooden blade in wonder, oblivious to the red spreading across Sango's face. "So, as thanks for this, sure, let's finish what we started." He shrugged off his haori [1], setting it on top of his nearby cloak. Ruri quickly finished off Shippou, just when he'd thought he might be winning, so they could watch the match.
Inuyasha tucked the bokken into his belt, his right hand casually on the hilt. Sango held her weapon before her and slowly circled her opponent.
"You know that I was the best swordswoman, or swordsman, in my village?"
"And have slain countless demons. Some years from now, as the Kyu and Dan system becomes established, you will rank as Eighth Dan, the second-highest rank."
Sango smiled. "Very well. And what is your rank?"
He returned the smile and leapt towards her. "Ninth."
The bokkens cracked and resounded through the clearing of the Bone-Eater's Well. Ruri was almost in shock. She knew he was formidable, but... a Ninth Dan iaido practitioner? Ruri watched the two in fascination, trying to remember all the attacks he had shown her and naming them as he pulled them off.
Miroku watched the two closely, greatly enjoying the sight of Sango fighting when she wasn't in any danger. She was definitely...
Thonk.
Thonk.
Miroku rubbed his head and looked over at the two children and Kirara.
"Baka," Ruri said flatly.
"Baka," Shippou echoed.
"Mew," Kirara sounded.
Sango didn't notice any of this, as she was rather preoccupied with trying to punch a hole in Inu's defenses. So far she hadn't had any luck. Every time she swung he seemed to have his bokken already in the path of hers.
"How do you do that?" she snapped out of frustration.
He coolly smiled at her and deflected several more blows before answering. "This particular Ryu hasn't even been invented yet. It is Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, which focuses upon reading an opponent's attacks."
He leapt over her while she swung a forehand stroke and tapped her left shoulder on the way down, almost sending her to the ground. "The difficulty with this Ryu," he continued, dodging an overhand strike so that it completely missed him, "is that it requires knowledge of several Ryu to be able to master. However, it does have one advantage." He watched as Sango inventively faked another overhand attack then spun and attacked with her off-hand. "I can learn other styles' attacks quickly." He parried the blow then performed the same move against her, which she didn't dodge as well as he did. She caught the blow on her hip and went to the ground. The youkai leaped over her head as she fell towards the ground. She landed in a crouch, her bokken still in her hand, but before she could do anything she found the younger Inuyasha's bokken laid across her throat. He was squatted down behind her, and the blade made it look as if he were giving her a rather sadistic hug.
"Concede?"
She lunged backwards, hoping to catch him off-guard. He merely rolled backwards, letting her lunge into his shins, and used her momentum to launch the taijiya into the air. It turned out that she was the one caught off-guard, as she landed on her backside and slide several feet away from him on the grass.
Miroku stood. "Sango! want me to check you for injuries?" He dodged the rock she threw at him, but didn't see the other two coming.
"Hentai!"
"Baka."
"Baka."
"Mew."
Miroku rubbed his head and sat back down, waiting for the two to finally give up. Growling stomachs could soon be heard even above the echoing bokken, and ended the match in a draw. Sango was miffed that the youkai wasn't even sweating and she was still panting as she downed some rice. She wasn't miffed that the youkai was dragging Ruri through analyzing what she had done right and wrong; her training had been that way too. No, the other thing that was annoying her was that the moisture she was emitting was attracting extra attention from the monk. Not that she didn't want to be noticed by him, but... "Grrrr."
Everyone gathered looked at Sango. Youkai Inuyasha suddenly wished he was the size of Myoga and could go hide in Kirara's fur. He then noticed Sango wasn't actually glaring at him, she was glaring at the monk. For his part, Miroku was trying to become the size of Myoga, albeit unsuccessfully.
******
Footnotes:
1. Haori – the outer "jacket" men wear. It's the part of his kimono that Inuyasha tends to throw over Kagome's head a lot early on into the series. Refer to Yura of the Hair and the Spiderheads episodes.
