Wee! A new chapter! Even though I've been told the characters are too out
of character for this story to be worth reading, I was also told to
continue writing until its completion. So, confused though I may be, ere I
go...
Disclaimer: Inu-yasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi. End of story.
*---*
He blinked, then snorted. "What in Hell."
From behind her vantage point in the bushes, Vera watched the fair woman return the demon's rude gesture with an airy lift and falling of her shoulders. Yes, she was definitely from the Italian states, or Helvetia at the very least. Simpleton, coming from a culture that lived off the remains of a deceased empire, good for nothing and worth even less...unnoticed in the brush as she was, Vera spared herself a superior smile. Let the demon deal with the insolent halfwit as he was meant to (after all, she was hardly better than a savage).
Inu-yasha stepped forward, undaunted by the woman's indifference. After all, it was probably little more than a front, a façade meant to lower his resolve. Inu-yasha grinned and clenched his teeth, pulling his lip back just enough to show the edges of his elongated canines. "Methinks the lady doth want to fight," he mocked silently to the world in general. "Well, then. I shant keep her waiting."
She avoided his initial swing with a fluid swivel of her pelvis and flicked her fan along his exposed backside, tearing through the ravaged leather of his jerkin and halfway through the woolen undershirt with invisible blades. Blinking and with mouth parted in surprise, the demon whirled and tripped over his own feet, so aghast at this successful attack was he. She took advantage immediately, striking down with her comb and searing him along the spine with the same undetectable knives. Inu-yasha clutched his abdomen and fell to his knees, bending like a withered weed in the sun. Behind him, Vera screamed.
For the first time since their acquaintance, the villain was taken aback. She paused in her smiting, pirouetting and regarding the girl with a half- lidded expression that exuded mild curiosity and dominance. Vera, too, wilted.
"What manner of creature are you?" she mumbled, gesturing lightly with the comb until Vera was suspended in mid-air by cords weaved of wind and moisture. Limp hands held away from her body by the cords, Vera turned her malaise-stricken glower to the demon and stared with a ferocity born to only the privileged and proud to be so. The woman returned the glare exactly.
"A mortal." The inflection in her voice faded, as if Vera wasn't worth the effort of mentioning in her musical lilt. "How drear." All at once her eyes flitted back to the demon kneeling crumpled on the ground, grabbing at his lower back ineffectually as he bled profusely all over the forest undergrowth. Her smile was sinister.
"Inu-yasha..." Vera muttered, then, louder; "Inu-yasha!"
Affected by shock though he was, the demon turned at her voice. Seeing her stranded in the air, the demon woman about to drop her the five or so feet to the ground without a thought, a strange kind of emotion flickered across his face and he rose, apparently now oblivious to his injuries. The demon woman nodded approvingly.
"I was hoping you weren't so weak," she whispered, then launched herself at him.
This time, he had the wit to expect her. Inu-yasha braced his legs instinctively, but instead of taking flight to avoid her body slam, he ran headfirst into her, knocking her both windless and utterly nonplused. The gasp that somehow escaped her was quick and guttural, a sign that he had gotten her where it hurt. Inu-yasha smiled grimly, knowing his victory was a small one.
"Audacious wretch!" Her voice, ere theatrical and meant to impress, was now as frayed and vicious as a wolverine's snarl. Somehow, it suited her more. She whipped her arm about like a cobra and attempted to strike him with her comb; his arm shot out, catching the edge of it in his forearm. Vera winced, just as Inu-yasha twisted his own arm about hers and tried to wrest the comb from her grasp. She held onto it as though it were an extension of her soul.
It was then that Vera's vision began to clear, the pain still an ever- present force but becoming muted as she adjusted to its consistency. Still slightly lethargic from the shock, she peered about the entire scene, seeing things that the defending demon did not. Lines, thin and dark and with ends waving in the wind, just like...
Carefully, languorously, her eyes traced up the cables and cords to their source, passing through the demon's comb and into a satchel under her tunic. Hair. She was manipulating hair.
Well, what else would she be doing with a comb?
"Inu-yasha!" Vera exclaimed suddenly, startling him in the midst of his struggle. He blinked at her, the only sign of his acknowledgement that she had inveighed upon him. "The cords-"
"What cords?!" he shouted immediately, grunting when he noticed the trickle of blood the demon's claws has prompted through new holes in his palm. He was losing far too much of his vital fluids, even if he wasn't feeling the repercussions. Yet.
Vera muttered an exasperated curse, somewhere finding the bravery for derision even in their dire predicament. Inu-yasha had already gone back to scratching at the woman's face and arms with his own talons. "The ones coming from the comb," she muttered, doubting he even heard her.
Apparently he did, because as soon as she spoke, his eyes shot to the tool and he grabbed at it with renewed effort. However, the demon had discovered a gap in his defense, and she struck him in the area between his legs with her knee. Vera squawked appropriately.
Inu-yasha, however, only smiled. "I apologize. Where you expecting that to hurt me?" He grabbed her arm again and pulled it forward before wrenching it sideways, popping the bone neatly out of its socket. The woman, who had no such displacement of pain, screamed in such agony that Vera clutched her ears with her hands and her eyes shut, though she remained tangled in the strands.
He, however, was not finished. Lifting his left foot and placing it upon her abdomen, just below her breasts, he used his other hand to grab her shoulder. A sudden wrench, and her arm became more than disjointed. The soft 'squiking' of flesh signaled as it failed to adhere to itself. Her already ragged shriek grew breathless.
Inu-yasha stepped away, expecting his job to be finished. The arm made a reflexive grabbing motion as he released it and it hit the spongy mosses of the ground. When he turned, the woman was staring at him with eyes grown scarlet with hatred.
Inu-yasha backed away, but she was already thrashing at him, the comb somehow locked in her other hand and striking him across the face with quick, lancing cuts. The youth felt a root behind his heels and jumped automatically, but another root was right behind it and he fell nonetheless. The woman pounced atop him like something possessed by the fabled Prince Himself. Inu-yasha winced, expecting the worst.
"Let him go."
The voice, so laden with repugnance and umbrage, was foreign to him, and so at first he disregarded it. The cougar atop him, however, recognized the voice as a possible threat, and so turned towards it. Inu-yasha almost exclaimed in surprise when the demon suddenly barked out an insolent laugh.
"I've had enough of you, chit. Die!" A simple wave of her fan, and the cords that streamed forth became so thick that even Inu-yasha could detect the way they affected the surrounding air. Vera shouted, struggling in her bonds with all her power, but the cord was upon her all at once, wrapping about her torso like a living vice. Except, it did not remain so for long. Sensing the hair's location more with intuition than anything else, Inu- yasha brought his blood-stained claws down upon it, meeting only weak resistance before the preternatural material shredded, growing limp and for a second falling. Then again it was shooting forth, only this time it encased Inu-yasha with a silky translucent thread that paralyzed him and rendered him involuntarily prone. Inu-yasha's eyes, horror and anger- filled, turned to the demon.
"Since you seem so affected by this mortal, I will have you watch as I kill her," she explained as the twine roped about him like a cocoon. Working with supernatural efficiency, he was soon totally immobile, sheathed in silky tresses. A furious growl rose in his throat, but she chuckled. "Patience, puppy. I was going to make this swift, but now the thought has come to me that I should like to take my time with such things."
"No..." Vera uttered, her emotions a mess of defiance and fear. The demon shook her head, unconsciously negating her words.
"Indeed I am, raven-haired chicklet. Observe." And the threads that poured forth from her satchel and through her comb, poured like water or wind, were curled and burning with green fire. Even from where she hung, Vera could feel the heat, smoldering and uncomfortable as a day indoors in July. Unbidden, Vera felt a lump forming in her throat and her eyes had begun to water.
"Hmm. Where shall I start? The throat?" She gestured, and the smooth locks floated towards Vera's upper torso, stroking the void between her head and shoulders like lapping waves. Vera sucked in her breath and flinched as a lick of flame singed the lobe of her right ear. The demon shook her head, and the hair once more retreated. "No. Too quick. Well, then." Though she whipped her legs about frantically, the binding hairs kept Vera for the most part stationary, and susceptible to the emerald miasma. Inu-yasha watched with empty eyes, unable to help a soul.
Perhaps losing patience, the demon flexed her wrist and the flame locked about her legs, burning clear through to the muscle beneath. From inside his cell, the young demon choked, blood rushing to the areas on his limbs where his body thought he was injured. Vera, too, whimpered, more for his sake than her own.
As soon as one of the cords touched bone, though, there was a sheer light and the hair melted, dripping to the ground like chunks of spoiled cream. The demon woman stared, aghast as the rest of them, as the light condensed about the wound into the form of a tiny ball, no bigger than a pebble though perfectly round. Vera's eyes, too, were wide, but filled not entirely with something other than amazement. Suddenly free of her bounds, she reached down, closing her fingers about the object and bringing it to her chest with methodical grace. Her large brown eyes met the demon's, and the latter shown, for the first time, terror. Vera reached forward and stroked the demon on her cheek; like her hair, the pallid skin dissolved and drooped away, revealing muscle sinew and bone almost identical to a mortal's. The demon shuddered and began to dart away, before Vera's hand slid down and grasped her by the throat. That, too, disappeared.
The head thunked as it hit the ground, but Vera was surprised to see the eyes still following her every move. The lips, now missing half their tissue, twisted in a desperate sneer. "You'll never kill me," the demon's head cackled somewhat breathlessly, as the body swiped at Vera with the comb. Unprepared, Vera felt the edge sink into her shoulder with an odd sensation, just as Inu-yasha again choked on the pain.
"I don't think so." And Vera's next move, her final move, both grabbed the comb away from the woman and split it with a resounding crack. The two pieces began to drop down in time with the body, but both dissolved before hitting the ground, along with the head and discarded appendage. The demon's scream reverberated in their heads and minds, the only remnant of the demon's existence besides her clothing and satchel. The hair, too, remained, though it was now as lifeless as the corpses it came from. Vera lifted the lip of the bag, peering inside and grimacing. Instead of reaching in, she turned the sack over and let the objects within topple out onto the undergrowth. Skulls, four or five of them, all fleshless and naked except for their hair. It was that hair that still kept Inu-yasha bound, whom Vera discovered when she turned round.
"Inu-yasha!" She stepped forward quickly, touching the cocoon with her shining hands and catching Inu-yasha as he stumbled through the hole. Inu- yasha was staring at her feet and her gaze followed, growing round when she saw the bleeding and ragged wound about each shin, one deeper than the other. "Oh," she said simply, and bent down, touching one cut investigatively. Inu-yasha hissed and bit his tongue.
"No wonder." Even though his pain was hers, and hers, his, Vera carefully laid the youth upon the oak leaves and wild grasses with the gentleness of a mother, though Inu-yasha protested avidly with his tongue. "Shut up, fool. I'm not painless either, you know." At this he fell silent.
"Well," she mused, surveying the desolate scene with a disparaging eye. "What a mess." Indeed, little remained of the demon, not even her blood, but Vera's and Inu-yasha's own blood littered every rock and trunk like brackish dried rainwater. Vera pinched her face up, and lost her sagacious countenance. "What now?"
"Now," Inu-yasha grunted, forcing himself on his elbows and trying to stare at Vera commandingly (and failing, due to his lingering astonishment). "Now, we go back to Kaede."
"What?" Vera looked at him, genuinely surprised. "We do? But what about-"
"We already found it," Inu-yasha snapped. At her continued look of puzzlement, he sighed and nodded towards her. "In your hand."
Somehow managing the impossible and looking at the ball as if seeing it for the first time, Vera sucked in a breath and bit her bottom lip. "Then, that's what this...?"
"Yes." Stupid mortal. What had she been expecting, something shaped like a human heart? Or maybe a jewel as large as her head...
"Oh." Vera shrugged. "Alright."
"Alright," Inu-yasha echoed, staring at her in disbelief. What in all the Hells had come over her, and how had it left her in such unawares? His hair shuddered as he shook his head. Whatever.
"Alright," she said one final time, then flashed him a smile so bright and self-pleased that for a moment the young demon was dazzled, and he stared unconsciously, not knowing that his eyes were large or his aquiline brows raised. What a strange...
And then she was up and moving, walking away from the battlefield and back along the hacked-out path they had made, as if nothing important had occurred at all. Inu-yasha watched after her, dumbfounded, eyes flickering from wound to wound to the straight line of her back as she traipsed through the foliage like some little buccaneer on a mission. Were all humans this strange and he just never had the opportunity or desire to discern thus, or was she uniquely crazy? Whether it was his luck or bane, he was in for it now, and there was no telling what trouble the featherbrain would get into if he left her alone. Hastily, he pushed his battered body off the ground and took off in a rush after her.
*---*
Yay! A really long battle scene! I tried to make it sound linear and interesting, I really did...well? Did I succeed? Did I fail? Please tell me...I promise not to complain if you criticize, I can't say I enjoy criticism but I know I'll never improve if I don't determine what I'm doing wrong first. So feel free, go ahead and pick apart my story...just explain why, please, so I can fix it. Thanks ^-^
I know I said I was going to break the gem in this chapter, but it was getting long and it's 1:00 am right now, sleepy. -_- So I'll go upload this and then you nice people will R&R! At least, I hope you will....
Until next chapter.
Disclaimer: Inu-yasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi. End of story.
*---*
He blinked, then snorted. "What in Hell."
From behind her vantage point in the bushes, Vera watched the fair woman return the demon's rude gesture with an airy lift and falling of her shoulders. Yes, she was definitely from the Italian states, or Helvetia at the very least. Simpleton, coming from a culture that lived off the remains of a deceased empire, good for nothing and worth even less...unnoticed in the brush as she was, Vera spared herself a superior smile. Let the demon deal with the insolent halfwit as he was meant to (after all, she was hardly better than a savage).
Inu-yasha stepped forward, undaunted by the woman's indifference. After all, it was probably little more than a front, a façade meant to lower his resolve. Inu-yasha grinned and clenched his teeth, pulling his lip back just enough to show the edges of his elongated canines. "Methinks the lady doth want to fight," he mocked silently to the world in general. "Well, then. I shant keep her waiting."
She avoided his initial swing with a fluid swivel of her pelvis and flicked her fan along his exposed backside, tearing through the ravaged leather of his jerkin and halfway through the woolen undershirt with invisible blades. Blinking and with mouth parted in surprise, the demon whirled and tripped over his own feet, so aghast at this successful attack was he. She took advantage immediately, striking down with her comb and searing him along the spine with the same undetectable knives. Inu-yasha clutched his abdomen and fell to his knees, bending like a withered weed in the sun. Behind him, Vera screamed.
For the first time since their acquaintance, the villain was taken aback. She paused in her smiting, pirouetting and regarding the girl with a half- lidded expression that exuded mild curiosity and dominance. Vera, too, wilted.
"What manner of creature are you?" she mumbled, gesturing lightly with the comb until Vera was suspended in mid-air by cords weaved of wind and moisture. Limp hands held away from her body by the cords, Vera turned her malaise-stricken glower to the demon and stared with a ferocity born to only the privileged and proud to be so. The woman returned the glare exactly.
"A mortal." The inflection in her voice faded, as if Vera wasn't worth the effort of mentioning in her musical lilt. "How drear." All at once her eyes flitted back to the demon kneeling crumpled on the ground, grabbing at his lower back ineffectually as he bled profusely all over the forest undergrowth. Her smile was sinister.
"Inu-yasha..." Vera muttered, then, louder; "Inu-yasha!"
Affected by shock though he was, the demon turned at her voice. Seeing her stranded in the air, the demon woman about to drop her the five or so feet to the ground without a thought, a strange kind of emotion flickered across his face and he rose, apparently now oblivious to his injuries. The demon woman nodded approvingly.
"I was hoping you weren't so weak," she whispered, then launched herself at him.
This time, he had the wit to expect her. Inu-yasha braced his legs instinctively, but instead of taking flight to avoid her body slam, he ran headfirst into her, knocking her both windless and utterly nonplused. The gasp that somehow escaped her was quick and guttural, a sign that he had gotten her where it hurt. Inu-yasha smiled grimly, knowing his victory was a small one.
"Audacious wretch!" Her voice, ere theatrical and meant to impress, was now as frayed and vicious as a wolverine's snarl. Somehow, it suited her more. She whipped her arm about like a cobra and attempted to strike him with her comb; his arm shot out, catching the edge of it in his forearm. Vera winced, just as Inu-yasha twisted his own arm about hers and tried to wrest the comb from her grasp. She held onto it as though it were an extension of her soul.
It was then that Vera's vision began to clear, the pain still an ever- present force but becoming muted as she adjusted to its consistency. Still slightly lethargic from the shock, she peered about the entire scene, seeing things that the defending demon did not. Lines, thin and dark and with ends waving in the wind, just like...
Carefully, languorously, her eyes traced up the cables and cords to their source, passing through the demon's comb and into a satchel under her tunic. Hair. She was manipulating hair.
Well, what else would she be doing with a comb?
"Inu-yasha!" Vera exclaimed suddenly, startling him in the midst of his struggle. He blinked at her, the only sign of his acknowledgement that she had inveighed upon him. "The cords-"
"What cords?!" he shouted immediately, grunting when he noticed the trickle of blood the demon's claws has prompted through new holes in his palm. He was losing far too much of his vital fluids, even if he wasn't feeling the repercussions. Yet.
Vera muttered an exasperated curse, somewhere finding the bravery for derision even in their dire predicament. Inu-yasha had already gone back to scratching at the woman's face and arms with his own talons. "The ones coming from the comb," she muttered, doubting he even heard her.
Apparently he did, because as soon as she spoke, his eyes shot to the tool and he grabbed at it with renewed effort. However, the demon had discovered a gap in his defense, and she struck him in the area between his legs with her knee. Vera squawked appropriately.
Inu-yasha, however, only smiled. "I apologize. Where you expecting that to hurt me?" He grabbed her arm again and pulled it forward before wrenching it sideways, popping the bone neatly out of its socket. The woman, who had no such displacement of pain, screamed in such agony that Vera clutched her ears with her hands and her eyes shut, though she remained tangled in the strands.
He, however, was not finished. Lifting his left foot and placing it upon her abdomen, just below her breasts, he used his other hand to grab her shoulder. A sudden wrench, and her arm became more than disjointed. The soft 'squiking' of flesh signaled as it failed to adhere to itself. Her already ragged shriek grew breathless.
Inu-yasha stepped away, expecting his job to be finished. The arm made a reflexive grabbing motion as he released it and it hit the spongy mosses of the ground. When he turned, the woman was staring at him with eyes grown scarlet with hatred.
Inu-yasha backed away, but she was already thrashing at him, the comb somehow locked in her other hand and striking him across the face with quick, lancing cuts. The youth felt a root behind his heels and jumped automatically, but another root was right behind it and he fell nonetheless. The woman pounced atop him like something possessed by the fabled Prince Himself. Inu-yasha winced, expecting the worst.
"Let him go."
The voice, so laden with repugnance and umbrage, was foreign to him, and so at first he disregarded it. The cougar atop him, however, recognized the voice as a possible threat, and so turned towards it. Inu-yasha almost exclaimed in surprise when the demon suddenly barked out an insolent laugh.
"I've had enough of you, chit. Die!" A simple wave of her fan, and the cords that streamed forth became so thick that even Inu-yasha could detect the way they affected the surrounding air. Vera shouted, struggling in her bonds with all her power, but the cord was upon her all at once, wrapping about her torso like a living vice. Except, it did not remain so for long. Sensing the hair's location more with intuition than anything else, Inu- yasha brought his blood-stained claws down upon it, meeting only weak resistance before the preternatural material shredded, growing limp and for a second falling. Then again it was shooting forth, only this time it encased Inu-yasha with a silky translucent thread that paralyzed him and rendered him involuntarily prone. Inu-yasha's eyes, horror and anger- filled, turned to the demon.
"Since you seem so affected by this mortal, I will have you watch as I kill her," she explained as the twine roped about him like a cocoon. Working with supernatural efficiency, he was soon totally immobile, sheathed in silky tresses. A furious growl rose in his throat, but she chuckled. "Patience, puppy. I was going to make this swift, but now the thought has come to me that I should like to take my time with such things."
"No..." Vera uttered, her emotions a mess of defiance and fear. The demon shook her head, unconsciously negating her words.
"Indeed I am, raven-haired chicklet. Observe." And the threads that poured forth from her satchel and through her comb, poured like water or wind, were curled and burning with green fire. Even from where she hung, Vera could feel the heat, smoldering and uncomfortable as a day indoors in July. Unbidden, Vera felt a lump forming in her throat and her eyes had begun to water.
"Hmm. Where shall I start? The throat?" She gestured, and the smooth locks floated towards Vera's upper torso, stroking the void between her head and shoulders like lapping waves. Vera sucked in her breath and flinched as a lick of flame singed the lobe of her right ear. The demon shook her head, and the hair once more retreated. "No. Too quick. Well, then." Though she whipped her legs about frantically, the binding hairs kept Vera for the most part stationary, and susceptible to the emerald miasma. Inu-yasha watched with empty eyes, unable to help a soul.
Perhaps losing patience, the demon flexed her wrist and the flame locked about her legs, burning clear through to the muscle beneath. From inside his cell, the young demon choked, blood rushing to the areas on his limbs where his body thought he was injured. Vera, too, whimpered, more for his sake than her own.
As soon as one of the cords touched bone, though, there was a sheer light and the hair melted, dripping to the ground like chunks of spoiled cream. The demon woman stared, aghast as the rest of them, as the light condensed about the wound into the form of a tiny ball, no bigger than a pebble though perfectly round. Vera's eyes, too, were wide, but filled not entirely with something other than amazement. Suddenly free of her bounds, she reached down, closing her fingers about the object and bringing it to her chest with methodical grace. Her large brown eyes met the demon's, and the latter shown, for the first time, terror. Vera reached forward and stroked the demon on her cheek; like her hair, the pallid skin dissolved and drooped away, revealing muscle sinew and bone almost identical to a mortal's. The demon shuddered and began to dart away, before Vera's hand slid down and grasped her by the throat. That, too, disappeared.
The head thunked as it hit the ground, but Vera was surprised to see the eyes still following her every move. The lips, now missing half their tissue, twisted in a desperate sneer. "You'll never kill me," the demon's head cackled somewhat breathlessly, as the body swiped at Vera with the comb. Unprepared, Vera felt the edge sink into her shoulder with an odd sensation, just as Inu-yasha again choked on the pain.
"I don't think so." And Vera's next move, her final move, both grabbed the comb away from the woman and split it with a resounding crack. The two pieces began to drop down in time with the body, but both dissolved before hitting the ground, along with the head and discarded appendage. The demon's scream reverberated in their heads and minds, the only remnant of the demon's existence besides her clothing and satchel. The hair, too, remained, though it was now as lifeless as the corpses it came from. Vera lifted the lip of the bag, peering inside and grimacing. Instead of reaching in, she turned the sack over and let the objects within topple out onto the undergrowth. Skulls, four or five of them, all fleshless and naked except for their hair. It was that hair that still kept Inu-yasha bound, whom Vera discovered when she turned round.
"Inu-yasha!" She stepped forward quickly, touching the cocoon with her shining hands and catching Inu-yasha as he stumbled through the hole. Inu- yasha was staring at her feet and her gaze followed, growing round when she saw the bleeding and ragged wound about each shin, one deeper than the other. "Oh," she said simply, and bent down, touching one cut investigatively. Inu-yasha hissed and bit his tongue.
"No wonder." Even though his pain was hers, and hers, his, Vera carefully laid the youth upon the oak leaves and wild grasses with the gentleness of a mother, though Inu-yasha protested avidly with his tongue. "Shut up, fool. I'm not painless either, you know." At this he fell silent.
"Well," she mused, surveying the desolate scene with a disparaging eye. "What a mess." Indeed, little remained of the demon, not even her blood, but Vera's and Inu-yasha's own blood littered every rock and trunk like brackish dried rainwater. Vera pinched her face up, and lost her sagacious countenance. "What now?"
"Now," Inu-yasha grunted, forcing himself on his elbows and trying to stare at Vera commandingly (and failing, due to his lingering astonishment). "Now, we go back to Kaede."
"What?" Vera looked at him, genuinely surprised. "We do? But what about-"
"We already found it," Inu-yasha snapped. At her continued look of puzzlement, he sighed and nodded towards her. "In your hand."
Somehow managing the impossible and looking at the ball as if seeing it for the first time, Vera sucked in a breath and bit her bottom lip. "Then, that's what this...?"
"Yes." Stupid mortal. What had she been expecting, something shaped like a human heart? Or maybe a jewel as large as her head...
"Oh." Vera shrugged. "Alright."
"Alright," Inu-yasha echoed, staring at her in disbelief. What in all the Hells had come over her, and how had it left her in such unawares? His hair shuddered as he shook his head. Whatever.
"Alright," she said one final time, then flashed him a smile so bright and self-pleased that for a moment the young demon was dazzled, and he stared unconsciously, not knowing that his eyes were large or his aquiline brows raised. What a strange...
And then she was up and moving, walking away from the battlefield and back along the hacked-out path they had made, as if nothing important had occurred at all. Inu-yasha watched after her, dumbfounded, eyes flickering from wound to wound to the straight line of her back as she traipsed through the foliage like some little buccaneer on a mission. Were all humans this strange and he just never had the opportunity or desire to discern thus, or was she uniquely crazy? Whether it was his luck or bane, he was in for it now, and there was no telling what trouble the featherbrain would get into if he left her alone. Hastily, he pushed his battered body off the ground and took off in a rush after her.
*---*
Yay! A really long battle scene! I tried to make it sound linear and interesting, I really did...well? Did I succeed? Did I fail? Please tell me...I promise not to complain if you criticize, I can't say I enjoy criticism but I know I'll never improve if I don't determine what I'm doing wrong first. So feel free, go ahead and pick apart my story...just explain why, please, so I can fix it. Thanks ^-^
I know I said I was going to break the gem in this chapter, but it was getting long and it's 1:00 am right now, sleepy. -_- So I'll go upload this and then you nice people will R&R! At least, I hope you will....
Until next chapter.
