By: trekker
CHAPTER 6: REMEMBER KIDS: DON'T DO THIS AT HOME!
Inuyasha (a little while ago). . . Inuyasha and Kagome climbed out of the well. The first things Kagome saw were the hair strands that formed a dangerous web of razor-sharp hair that would slice anything that touched it. Inuyasha, on the other hand, only noticed that there was a big part of the tree in front of him that he could not see clearly. Then came Yura…
As hair attacked both of them, Inuyasha tried to dodge (with help from Kagome) but soon, a strand of the hair wrapped itself around his wrist and pulled him up, throwing Kagome to the ground. She looked up to see Inuyasha suspended in the air by the hair, a giant ball of the deadly stuff next to him – it's Yura's hideout.
Yura lands gracefully on the hair in front of Inuyasha, admiring the fine prey she's caught. She recognizes him as Inuyasha. "They said a half-monster called Inuyasha became a servant of the reincarnated priestess." A low growl escapes his throat as he glares at Yura. Kagome recognizes the thing Yura is holding in her hand – the shards of the Shikon no Tama.
Inuyasha escapes from his hairy bonds and swings towards Yura. She, however, moves gracefully out of the way and recaptures the hanyou. She appears behind him. "What beautiful silver hair. But look! It's not even cared for properly. It's all roughed up" Raged, Inuyasha slices at her but she dodges and falls backwards. Using hair as a trampoline, she propels herself upwards, draws her sword, and wounds Inuyasha. He utters another low growl.
Yura licks the blade of her sword. "I'll just slice you up right now." She lunges at Inuyasha but an arrow flies in front of her, causing her to jump backwards. Kagome commands Yura to let Inuyasha go or she'll hit her with the next arrow. When she doesn't comply, Kagome lets another arrow fly but this one nearly decapitates Inuyasha. Instead, it hits Yura's hideout. A purple glow begins to spread outwards from the arrow, engulfing the entire ball of hair in an eerie light.
The ball falls apart and hundreds of skulls fall, held together by the still-attached hair on their heads. "Don't worry," Yura assures Inuyasha. "Your head will be joining them soon along with your beautiful silver hair. I'm really looking forward to playing with it." She jumps down, landing gracefully on hair. "But first…" She aims her red comb at Kagome, shooting fire at her. "It will burn you to the bones," she says cheerfully as Kagome calls out for help. Then she turns to Inuyasha. "Soon you will be joining her in the next world!"
She draws her sword and lunges at Inuyasha who plunges his claws into his wound, covering them in blood. He slashes at Yura, cutting off her hand. As she sends skulls to attack Inuyasha, her severed hand heads stealthily towards him. It narrowly misses his neck and Inuyasha slashes at Yura again with the claws of blood. She, however, has learned and lowers a curtain of hair to protect herself from the attack. From behind, her severed hand plunges into Inuyasha's shoulder. He falls to the ground and Yura's hand is reattached by hair.
"A hanyou really can't do anything right." She lands on the ground next to Inuyasha, her sword raised and ready to cut off his head. Right before the blade hits, Inuyasha plunges his hand through Yura's chest. But, it does nothing to her – she's still alive. Suddenly, Yura feels a tug on her red comb. She turns around to see Kagome climbing up the hair. "That girl!" Angrily she jerks the hair and Kagome has to grab on so as not to fall. While she's distracted, Inuyasha grabs her sword. He slashes Yura diagonally in half, but the hair heals her. Now, Yura's pissed. She slams Inuyasha against a rock wall. "You were smiling even when we cut and slashed at you but you're not smiling now. Is there something you don't want us to find?" Inuyasha asks, a sly smile on his face.
"Inuyasha! The red skull! There's something in it!" Kagome points up, yelling to Inuyasha. Yura jumps to Kagome, her sword dragged behind her by the hair. Inuyasha breaks free of his bonds and comes after her as Yura tries to fling Kagome away from the skull, but Yura's hair blocks his path. The sword strikes Kagome, bouncing off Kagome's arm but the force of the attack causes her to fall. The hair catches her, suspending her before Yura. "What are you?" she asks as she nears Kagome. "Why aren't you cut?" Kagome remembers about the fire-rat coat and realizes that it protected her. "Your body looks like a normal human… But how about this?" Thin hair wraps itself around Kagome but nothing happens because of the coat. Then, it wraps itself around her bare neck. "You seem human enough from here."
Sark. . . After he rematerialized, Sark set his tricorder to record any recordable effects of the mysterious transporter he was about to use. Then he walked to the well and climbed down with the pattern enhancers slung over his shoulder. As he touched the bottom, he noticed that there was an unseen light source at the bottom. Then there was a breeze… and suddenly he was nowhere. He could see stars flying past him as if he were a starship traveling at warp speed. He looked around and he could not see any sign of where he came from or where he was going. There was no way he could orient himself. There was no 'up'; there was no 'down' in the conduit through which he was traveling. He could move, however. Not that there was any reason to do that, though. And suddenly there was a flash. And then he was at the bottom of the well again. It was as if nothing had happened. Except that there was blue sky above the entrance of the well.
He tapped his combadge and to requested beam out from the Columbia… except that he received no response. He tried again. Nothing happened. He climbed up the walls of the well, which he estimated were at least twenty feet high, and he looked out. The first thing he noticed was that he was somewhere else. He saw three people: One woman standing on what seemed to be nothing; one person with unusually long, silver hair being held in position by huge black cables; an one person who was wearing a red coat and had his or her (Sark can't tell from his point of view) back to him. He heard the woman saying something about "Hmm. You seem human enough from here…" but he decided it would not matter what she said as long as he could do his job. He climbed over the wall at the top of the well facing away from the other people and crept into the brush behind the well, unnoticed. Or so he thought…
In the Cortez shuttlecraft. . .
As Sloane steered the shuttle through the thermosphere, Boslin noticed something strange on his console. He saw Sark clearly, along with the pattern enhancers but there were three other humanoids within the vicinity, in addition to a complicated web of thin strands of biomatter that surrounded the entire area. Boslin could trace some of the strands all the way to a local settlement, but most of them were overlapped with a tree. It didn't make any sense. Boslin mentally compared the network of biomaterial to a gigantic spider web. Also, according to the shuttle's sensors, two of the other humanoids were overlapping the stuff in certain places! The third was level with it! It seemed impossible, unless these arachno-humans were native to the planet's ecosystem. He scanned the biomatter, and noticed that its molecular structure and density was similar to that of human hair. He only knew this because he had originally intended to become a medic, but his talents were needed more in the command department. The strange thing was that there were at least a hundred different DNA signatures among the web. And all of the hair was showing some biological decay and disrepair. The worst part, was that the vast majority of the hair was of human origin. As the shuttle cleared the stratosphere and descended into the troposphere, they received a communication from Sark. "Sark to shuttlecraft: Do not land. I need to be extracted before any attempts to break through the web can be made. I have been severely injured by the web. Do not land here."
"Too bad, Sark," Boslin muttered to himself. "Sloane, bring us around. I'm going to open fire on the web." He activated the comm. "Sark? Can you make it back to the well with the pattern enhancers? The Colombia is still orbiting the other planet. They can pick you up there."
"I am not at the liberty to move any significant distance right now. The entity that operates the web is called 'Yura'. If you open fire, she will attempt to put myself or any of the other hostages in the path of your attack. She is very adept at handling the web. I would not recommend taking an unnecessary risk. Sark out."
"He knows there's a way for him to escape. Otherwise he wouldn't have warned us away," Sloane pointed out, optimistically.
"Sonofabitch. That goddamned Vulcan got himself into trouble again and he's not gonna share the fun with us," remarked Boslin. He was referring to the many away missions gone-wrong that Sark had partaken in.
"Well, that's not going to change anytime soon," Sloane sighed. She took a moment to look out of her the window to see how low the shuttle was to ground level. Her console said their was 100 feet and dropping. Now they were at 45 feet above ground level. Boslin was obviously trying to take a shot at the Yura thing. They were now ten feet above the ground and about 500 yards from the pattern enhancer. Then the collision alarm kicked on!
"We aren't too close to the tree yet. Must be our altitude," Boslin stated as he deactivated the alarm. And then it reactivated itself. Suddenly, they saw it: Two huge, black worm-things were heading straight for them. Boslin opened fire with the shuttlecraft's phasers and destroyed the things. Then he blasted whatever was ahead of the shuttle again. Several tiny explosions were visible into the short distance. The shuttle was too close to the first one, so it rocked slightly as it passed. They were now a hundred yards away and closing at 120 kph. The phaser blasts made two clean paths of destruction to nowhere as they continued beyond the shuttle's vanishing point (beyond the view of the shuttle's crew). Boslin veered to the right of the tree and took the shuttle into a sharp, bumpy vertical climb and leveled off.
"I'm going in again," he stated calmly as he brought the shuttle around for another go.
"I'm not sure that's a good idea," replied Sloane. "That climb should not have been so turbulent. Also, look at this," she pulled up a diagram of the black things: "Those things were actually hundreds of smaller thing intertwined into a cord 1.5 feet thick! I would not put it beyond reasonable consideration to believe that they have regrouped and will be ready for us when we come back."
"We can still kill them. The phaser cells still have enough charge for us to shoot cords until next week if we had to. I'm going in."
"But, remember the turbulence?" Sloane protested, "The sensors show that the turbulence was from the shuttle impacting with even more of the cords, except that they were much smaller than the ones that attacked us. I believe that there is a web of those cords that covers the entire area. That would definitely explain Sark's predicament. And––"
"Wait a minute!" Sloane jumped; she hadn't expected that at all from Steve. Least of all at that moment. "You're suggesting that there is a huge spider web down there. Or something close to that. So whatever it is, I think we can safely assume that it intends to eat Sark within a short matter of time and that we are the only ones in a position to save his ass from some friggin' godspider thing that's gonna eat him before we can have any second chance to save him. It's like in the horror holofilms where some huge monster thing is about to clobber some world somewhere and then the military kicks its ass and then it's over!"
"Someone's been spending too much time in the holodeck," Sloane muttered just loud enough for Boslin to here her.
"Hey," Boslin countered, "It's just a theory. Besides, you don't get out often enough, anyway. So, tell me again, who's been enjoying their shore leave?"
"I know I've been," replied Sloane. She checked her instruments and saw that they were at least twenty miles off course. "We're going off course!"
"You're just saying that to change the subject," replied Steve, but he checked his instruments and they agreed with Sloane. So, he turned the shuttle around… and the collision alert came on again!
Meanwhile, at a nearby military encampment. . .
"What is that!?!" "Another demon!" "Kill it!" The soldiers were taking up arms as they saw a strange-looking creature fly across the sky. It was broad and its legs were slightly lowered but otherwise kept close to its underside. It was colored mostly off-white with pointed red [feet?] and it had a bright blue stripe running along the length of its leg. And it was flying very, very fast. "Shoot it!" A cry went up as archers shot arrows at it and in front of it. "Shoot it down!" And/but they all missed. (Hey: they're using longbows.) The creature arced gracefully and turned around, unscathed.
(In the event you did not figure this out, the creature is the shuttle, but the soldiers don't know that.)
. . .
"Okay. Back to Sark," Steve Boslin turned the shuttle around, back to where Sark was hanging out (literally). Back on course, they could see the tree with the four people hanging around… Make that three people??? Where did the one with the white fur go? (Inuyasha's hair looks like white fur when examined closely from a bird's eye view)