Kitty sat glumly in a bar in Shinjuku. What a bummer this was! It was still early; Aaron had been called off by Tiamet, his dragon, and left her all alone. The battle had already calmed down, and now a tense silence had settled over the city. Not only that, Sesshoumaru was back in his own mansion, now with a human with him… and Kitty would be damned three times if the girl was his slave. She acted more like a mother, for crying out loud! She groaned slightly, as she finished off whatever happened to be in the bottle she held, and weakly signaled for another one.
Aaron would probably be gone for a week, at least. That always got her depressed. She was just about the only youkai serving under a dragon, and it got sort of lonely. Aaron was nice, though. He understood her. He knew how she worked, and she had a vague idea of how he worked too, albeit it was hard to understand someone as weird as him… but Kitty prided herself in being able to maintain a pretty good idea of how he was feeling.
And then there was Atma's new dragoon, Kohaku. That boy was odd. Kitty was a good judge of character, but Kohaku was almost unreadable. He was odd… and there was definitely something between him and that Sango girl… but what?
Kitty growled slightly, and took another long swig. Suddenly, there was a tug at the edge of her brain. All the alcohol drained from her blood almost instantly, and she rose. She was being called. She rolled her eyes, and muttered. How had she gotten paired with such an egotistical dragon?
She sighed, and walked out of the bar. What did the mighty Khellendros want now?
~~
Sango laughed. She laughed in the face of a beast that killed for fun. She laughed because she would die as a relief from boredom. She laughed until tears of hopelessness ran down her cheeks. She laughed until her sides her and she wanted to throw herself off a cliff.
She laughed at herself. She laughed at the perverted monk, probably already dead from the blasts of lightning. She laughed at Kagome, doomed to die. She laughed at InuYasha, who would kill himself from grief. She laughed at Shippo, who would be left alone. She laughed at Kirara, a little lost kitten. She laughed at Kohaku, forever to serve. She laughed at herself, for ever thinking she could save anyone.
But most of all, she laughed at the poor, deluded dragon who thought it stood a chance against a desperate woman. With a single, echoing, crazed cry, she hurled herself at the huge beast, grabbing her boomerang, and laughing insanely.
Shippo blinked at the crazed youkai exterminator. She had finally snapped.
Khellendros's eyes flashed open, and followed the woman wind her way up to his massive frame.
Sango was moving faster than she ever had before. The dragon's eyes flashed golden, but she was already well away from the stream of lightning bolts that struck down. Her laugh rose to a crescendo, and with a mighty swing she hurled the great boomerang at the great beast and drew her Katana. With a mighty leap she was on the great scaly haunch, and then traveling up the dragon's spine like a beast. The boomerang was knocked savagely aside by one of the dragon's enormous claws, but Sango was already making herself a much bigger threat. Already up to the beasts neck, she savagely thrust the blade in-between two scales, and thrust deep downward. The dragon hissed in pain as a tiny pinprick burned the back of its neck. IT arced its head around, and glared at the annoying speak.
Sango pulled the blade out, and was moving again, running back down between the massive wings, and lashed out at the leathery skin, slashing the wing savagely.
This got considerably more than a hiss from the dragon. This brought on a full blown roar of pain. The beast's eyes narrowed and lightning arced down its back just a Sango leapt high into the air and back flipped away from the menace.
The dragon, though, didn't stop. Its eyes now glowed a constant, bright gold, and Sango could feel her hair sticking on end, and there was some sort of immense power going though her body. The ground underneath her, she saw in horror, suddenly shifted. The sand began to grind against itself, and the earth began to tear apart. Lighting was flickering all over now, touching down, and blowing huge craters in the spotless white desert.
Sango came down lightly on the spinning whirlpool of rock and sand, and leapt just as soon as her feet grazed the churning earth.
The great dragon's tail swung down in a deadly arc, but Sango was already practically on the other side of the dragon, leaping back over the azure scales back up to the great beast's neck. The thin blade darted in between two large scales again, and then again. The dragon's eyes narrowed and he twisted his head back, and snapped at Sango savagely.
Sango bolted back out of the way, but the slim blade stayed embedded in the dragon's flesh. The dragon opened its claws, and expertly reached back and swatted Sango off its back.
The wounded youkai exterminator's eyes widened, and the breath rushed from her lungs in a great gasp. She winced as she hit the churning ground hard, and immediately began to sink.
Through the haze of pain, she looked up at the dragon, and her eyes widened in shock. There was another figure dashing up its back! She pulled herself forward out of the sands, and then leapt.
But the dragon was already there. The huge, clawed hand came crashing down on her lithe form, sending her crashing to the ground. This time, however, she bounced strait back up, and hovered in midair for the two minimum seconds before falling back down.
In those two seconds, two things happened.
First, the dragon breathed in a deep heavy breath, and set out a huge bolt of lightning, erupting from his mouth like gout of flame from hell's gates. She was on the barest, outside edge of the bolt, but even then, all the air went from her lungs.
Pain. So much pain. She had never felt anything like this before. The pure electricity pulsed through her, enveloping her in pure, white heat. Her vision started to cloud, and every muscle in her body was twitching violently.
The second, was that through the light of the pure, white bolt, was that she could clearly make out the figure on the dragon's head.
He was wearing purple and blue robes, normally those worn by a monk. His face was lean and handsome, and his face was set and determined. In his left hand, was a thin link of prayer beads. His right hand was clenched tight into a fist, and thrust directly between the dragon's eyes.
"Houshi…" Sango breathed through the pain. Miroku's right hand opened, and Sango's world went black.
