Okay, you know all that junk I had right before the beginning of the last chapter? Well, insert them right…
About….
Here. Yeah. Here works pretty good.
Author's responses:
PerennialOutlander—They're out there, trust me. Unfortunately, some are not that good… And you were the 1st reviewer! Tanx!
SesshoYasha—Ohhhh, believe you me, I definitely will…
Seeds of Doubt
RaptorChicky
Chapter 2
Thirty-six and a half days earlier…
"Inuyasha!!"
"Dammit, wench! Stay back!"
A red and silver blur swooped in front of Kagome and carried her away before the oni's huge mitt could slam down and turn the miko into pate. The ogre's other hand shot out, trying to swat the hanyou down, but Inuyasha dodged it—in mid-air, no less—and deposited Kagome well beyond the oni's reach.
"Now stay put!"
"I want to he—"
"No, dammit! I don't want you getting hurt! Just let me protect you, Kagome!" Inuyasha leapt back into the fight before Kagome could protest any further.
The young priestess scowled, but readied another arrow nonetheless. Just wish these things actually made a dent…
It was like they were fighting the Tsubaki-oni again: Kagome's holy arrows barely made a scratch, Sango's Hirakoutsu was consistently ducked, Miroku's ofudas and Kazaana were almost ignored, and Inuyasha's Kaza no Kisu only pushed the oni back. The situation was a clichéd one—a shard-carrying demon attacking the little group in hopes of obtaining more, but this was an oni with a shard, meaning a harder fight. And right now, Kagome thought retreat was becoming a very attractive option, though Inuyasha would never allow it. Hoping Shippo was still alright in his hiding spot, Kagome glanced down toward Miroku and Kirara protecting an unconscious Sango. Yards away from the trio, Inuyasha was letting loose with yet another Kaza no Kizu. It angered him to no ends how the Wind Scar hardly scratched the ogre and how the ogre relied on physical attacks, making it impossible for the hanyou to use his Bakaryuuha.
Asshole, snarled Inuyasha when the oni shrugged off yet another attack and lunged forward, ready to squash the smaller youkai. He darted out of the way with no trouble—the oni may have had a shard, but it was still slow in Inuyasha's eyes—and an idea started to formulate in his mind as he eyed the cliff the oni had just slammed into. Screw this. If the Kaza no Kizu doesn't hurt this fuck, I'll use it on something that it will affect… Turning, Inuyasha attacked the cliff.
The Wind Scar crashed into the granite, freeing already loose boulders and creating new ones, effectively removing part of the cliff and piling it on top of the oni. Let's see 'im survive that. Inuyasha smirked as he saw his plan work, but his smirk quickly vanished when the oni's hand shot out of the rocky chaos and wrapped around him. He struggled to free himself, but couldn't, and was pulled over the path's edge with the oni.
Kagome screamed and nearly jumped off the small ledge she was on, but self-preservation prevented her from leaping to the mountain path 30 feet below. She could only watch, totally helpless. The miko hollered for Kirara the moment the rocks ceased their rumbling descent seconds later, too many seconds later for Kagome's liking. Everything was moving too slowly for her—she wanted to be at the bottom of the cliff right now, making sure that Inuyasha was alright.
Move it…she silently urged the fire-cat and clamored on the moment Kirara got close enough. Touching solid ground on the mountain path, Kagome yelled for Shippo and Miroku—Move it, move it…—the kit dashed out of hiding and hopped on, while Miroku carefully scooped a semi-conscious Sango into his arms before joining Kagome and Shippo on Kirara. Too slow! Without any urging, Kirara took off for the bottom of the cliff.
Kagome's fingers tightened in the neko's thick fur and her stomach clenched when they went over the edge—the drop was, well, she didn't know how far it was, but, it was definitely not as high as the cliff Inuyasha pushed the Peach Man over. And Inuyasha survived that fall…only because he landed in a tree, but still! He'll survive this one, he has to!
Nearing their destination, Kagome's self-preservation lost to her impatience and she swung her leg over Kirara and dropped the last 6 feet to the ground. She landed hard, banging up her knees, but she didn't care.
"Inuyasha!"
Shouting the hanyou's name over and over, the miko approached the twitching oni, and removed the shard from its neck; the oni turned to dust and without its body for support, the rocks settled a bit more, forcing the girl back a few steps.
"Inuyasha!!"
She and Miroku scrambled over the rubble, hoping to spot a patch of familiar red and silver, but all they saw was the dull grey of the rock.
"INUYASHA!!"
Getting desperate, Kagome started to dig through the debris, trying to remember which hand grabbed Inuyasha. Miroku shook his head and started to reach for the frantic girl, but she turned on him and demanded to know why he was just standing there like an idiot. Sighing, the monk helped her shove the heavy rubble away. Twenty minutes later, Kagome's fingers were bleeding, but she continued to shout and dig, not wanting to face the conclusion Miroku had come to.
Inuyasha was gone.
His balance faltered and he stumbled forward. A clawed hand came away from his head and caught himself on a tree trunk before he could fall all the way. Balance slightly restored, he pulled away from the trunk and staggered forward, not seeing the bloody hand print he left behind. His head felt like someone had stuffed his ears with wool and then proceeded to keep on stuffing until his entire skull was filled with the scratchy substance. He could hardly see straight, the only thing he could smell was the blood flowing from his own head wound, and everything sounded completely muffled. Moments ago, he thought he'd heard a woman crying out, but he shrugged it off as his mind playing tricks. The jumbled thoughts running through his brain couldn't really be trusted: at one point, he'd thought the sky looked quite green and the grass was equally blue and thought the whole thing was rather hilarious.
And his chest… It hurt just to breathe. He wondered which list would be shorter: ribs that were whole, or ribs that were not. He wished he could remember why he was in such bad shape, but everything was fuzzy, indistinct.
The wind suddenly picked up, nearly pushing him over and he jabbed his katana—why was he dragging a beat-up looking piece of metal around, anyway?—into the ground for support.
"Inuyasha."
Looking up through shaggy silver bangs that hung over his eyes, he saw a woman dressed in the manner of somebody of high status. The fan in her hand was whisked open and the winds seemed to grow in strength. Inuyasha? Is that me…? "Who—? Who are you?" He fought to stand straight, but the wind kept pressing him back and everything was getting fuzzy, especially his vision. Too fuzzy for his liking. "Who is—" Way too fuzzy. His gold eyes rolled into his head and he collapsed, a sprawl of silver and red against a sea of green grass.
Kagura smiled. This was way too easy. Inuyasha was at her feet, unconscious, completely helpless, and his companions were nowhere in sight. Absolutely nothing there to stop her. She 'snicked' her fan shut and lifted it high, preparing to use a wind blade to decapitate the hanyou. A pity, though. I was hoping for something more interesting. In a swift move, Kagura swung her hand down…only to find her hand empty. Looking up, the demoness found her fan still in the air, firmly held by another hand.
"Let him live, Kagura."
She arched a dark brow at the cloaked figure—she had yet to find out how Naraku made his puppets appear at a moment's notice, where ever he wanted them to.
The ku-ugutsu held out the fan and Kagura snatched it from him. "Bring him to me." And he left, leaving the wind witch to handle the hanyou on her own.
"Did you bring her like I commanded?"
"The old hag is sucking in youkai as we speak."
Naraku ignored the crudeness of Kagura's statement.
"Care to explain why I had to haul him," she pointed to the motionless silver-haired figure on the floor between them, "back to you, or am I going to remain in the dark again?"
"Patience. I only need to check on something." With a feather light touch, he laid his fingertips across Inuyasha's brow and closed his eyes.
Reopening them, Naraku found himself at the intersection of a large number of hallways, each hall lined with countless doors that stretched on further than any eye could see. This was Inuyasha's mind, or rather, how Naraku perceived it to be, but unlike other minds the youkai had invaded, this one appeared to be shaken—walls not meeting the floor and ceiling at right angles, the floor and ceiling not completely parallel to each other—and it was empty, quiet, completely still. Normally, the halls of an individual's mind were straight and flush and they would be filled with some sort of activity: a few disembodied voices, a faint scent or two, even a tactile sensation or a visual image. In very rare occurrences, Naraku's mouth experienced a variety of tastes for no reason at all. But, in this mind, he found none of that, which was very odd—even when unconscious, a person's memories would still roam free.
He picked a random hall and started down it. This hall had numerous other halls branching off of it and those primary offshoots also had halls splitting off of them—an endless maze of halls and doors. Naraku tried to slide open the first shoji door he came to, but it refused to move. When he attempted to rip through the rice paper held taught in the wood frame, the paper would knit itself back together before a decent sized hole could be made. The story was the same with other doors he tried. Other doors would open only after a great deal of force was applied, but would slam shut when Naraku let go. A few doors would give way to the demon's touch and allow him access to the rooms beyond, but the rooms were dark, or filled with a thick haze, obscuring his vision and giving him only fleeting images of movement.
Naraku wandered the hallways of Inuyasha's mind for who knows how long; he found the situations with the doors and rooms repeated over again and again, but he needed to make sure of what was going on before he made his next move. Satisfied with what he did find, Naraku started to leave, but a faint sound caught his attention. Straining, he heard it again and followed it to its source—this was the only other sound he'd heard beyond his own footsteps on the wood paneled floor. He discovered the sound to be emanating from a hall that saw little for visitors, filled with cobwebs and dust. Naraku understood what it all symbolized—bad memories. Unlike the more frequented halls, this one was not a straight path, and when Naraku turned a corner, he was quite surprised to find a solid stone wall barring his path. And right in the middle of the wall was an equally solid looking iron door, which was heavily rusted and covered in locks and chains that secured the door shut. The noises Naraku was hearing were coming from right behind the locked door and now that he was closer, he could identify the noises: it sounded like the screeching of a raging beast, intermingled with the screams of a frightened child.
Interesting. What kind of memories would Inuyasha lock away from himself? But now was not the time to fiddle with the locks and satisfy his curiosity—he wanted some time to figure out what his grand scheme would be.
He left the stillness of Inuyasha's mind.
"So?" Kagura inquired the moment Naraku's eyelids slowly slid up. To him, it felt like hours had passed, but to Kagura, in the real world, it had been only a few seconds.
Naraku smiled. "It's better than I'd anticipated."
"And what did you anticipate, Naraku?"
The two youkai looked up at the new voice; Kagura scowled at the hunch-backed old woman and Naraku smiled a knowing smirk.
"Tsubaki. I hope you had your fill…"
The koromiko strode into the dimly lit room and her appearance grew younger with each step until she stood before Naraku as a beautiful young woman with elegant features, pale blue eyes, and dove grey hair. Her light grey shikigami slithered up around her and hissed at the spider demon. A pale hand came up and calmed the snake shikigami and Tsubaki sighed, "This goes against my better judgment, especially after our previous dealings…but your wind witch said it'd be worth my time. What do you need of me?" She'd spotted Inuyasha the moment she'd entered the room and a part of her hoped Naraku would allow her to take the hanyou in and add his strength to her own. Wouldn't that be something? I can almost see Kikyo's face when she finds out that her dear Inuyasha was a part of me.
"Something ridiculously simple for someone of your abilities…" His hand motioned toward the hanyou, who was still unaware of his surroundings, "Remove Inuyasha's rosary, the one that binds him to that little miko of his."
The surprise was clearly evident on Tsubaki's face, her eyebrows lifting partway to her hairline. "That's all?"
Nodding, "That is all. Unless this task is too difficult for you…"
Tsubaki scoffed. Of course this wasn't too difficult for her—whoever had cast the subduing spell on the inu hanyou was strong, but not as strong as her. It would be child's play to remove that rosary. With no preamble, the koromiko settled down by Inuyasha's head, took the beaded necklace in her hand and slipped it off; the rosary came off with no resistance.
"Here," she tossed the rosary at Naraku's head—he caught it, "I'm sure you can find a use for that." Getting back up, she brushed the wrinkles out of her dark blue robes, but Naraku pulled her back down.
"Now tend to his wounds."
Her response was to stare at him.
"I am the lord of this castle. I will not debase myself by doing such menial tasks." Standing up, Naraku motioned for a smirking Kagura to follow him as he departed the room.
Tsubaki muttered under her breath, but did as she'd been asked.
It took both Miroku and Sango to pull a frantic Kagome away from the fallen debris.
"No!" shrieked the girl, struggling to get away. "He's in there somewhere! We have to get Inuyasha out!" She suddenly slipped free and immediately started to toss rocks aside again.
Sango came from behind and hugged the miko tightly, pinning Kagome's arms to her sides. "He isn't in there, Kagome-chan. And you've got to stop—you'll just hurt yourself even more. Inuyasha wouldn't be happy if he found you like this."
"I don't care! How happy would Inuyasha be if he found out we—"
"Hey! Kirara found something!" shouted Shippo. His russet head ducked down for a second, and then popped back up. "And it smells like Inuyasha!"
The three humans scrambled over the rock pile to get to the kitsune and all breathed a sigh of relief when they found the two demons with their noses close to the ground.
Miroku frowned. "He must have wandered off."
"But why?" Kagome started to wring her hands. "Hurry and follow his trail, Shippo-chan, please."
Nodding, the kit went after Kirara and the humans followed. They were not pleased how Inuyasha's trail wove back and forth as if he were drunk. Kirara came to a halt beside a tree and chirped, peering up at the trunk.
Kagome gasped at the sight of the bloody handprint. "He's hurt! We gotta hurry!"
They took off again, this time at a much more hurried pace. The hanyou's scent trail continued on for another 100 yards or so, leading right into a spacious meadow, where it dead-ended. The fox and fire-cat wandered around the meadow, trying to relocate Inuyasha's scent, but they find nothing and returned to their friends. Scowling, the taiji-ya squatted down—she'd spotted an odd dampness in the grass and wanted to get a closer look. Her scowl grew when her fingers came away wet with a dark crimson fluid—blood.
"What is going on?" Sango wiped the blood from her fingers on the ground and stood back up. "Inuyasha's injured and his path ends in the middle of nowhere. Are you sure you can't find anything else, Kirara, Shippo-chan?"
"Well…there was something, but…" He shuddered. "I didn't like it."
Kagome knelt in front of the fox child and made him look at her. "What do you mean? Do you know what it was?"
Biting his lip, "I dunno. It just smelled…bad. I don't know what it is—my nose isn't as good as Inuyasha's. Kirara didn't like it either."
"…Then I fear that someone has taken Inuyasha."
The young miko bolted upright, staring at the hoshi. "Nani?! But by who? Sesshoumaru? Naraku?" Kikyo? Did she finally take Inuyasha to hell?
Shaking his head, Miroku shrugged helplessly. "By either one, or by both, or by somebody completely new. Right now, we can only search for Inuyasha."
The koromiko was long gone, escorted off the castle grounds by Kagura, so Naraku took the opportunity to take the next step in his plans.
Inuyasha was still asleep and he would remain that way as long as Naraku wanted him to. The red firerat robes were long gone, replaced by pale dusty blue ones that Naraku had provided; the yukata concealed the bandages wrapped around the hanyou's broken ribs, but it certainly did not hide the bandage on Inuyasha's right temple. That head wound had bled a lot and was still leaking by the time Tsubaki arrived, but after her medical attention, it was well on its way to being completely healed.
Onigumo does have his uses from time to time... Naraku smirked when he picked up the Tetsusaiga from its place on the floor by Inuyasha's side. Or I wouldn't be able to even get near this sword. Unsheathing the seemingly worthless looking katana, he draped the battered sheath across his lap and simply held the Tetsusaiga, examining it. It had been a long time since he'd last held the powerful youkai blade and he could sense a definite change in the sword's power. The destructive Kaza no Kizu, the ability to slice through any barrier, and the unstoppable Bakaryuuha were all contained within the beat-up blade—if one didn't see the sword in action, it was impossible to believe that the Tetsusaiga could do more than just hold itself together. Hard to believe, the demon thought as he continued to look the sword over, turning it this way and that. I was nearly destroyed by this katana…but now it will destroy for me.
Placing the Tetsusaiga next to its scabbard, Naraku clasped his hands together and concentrated; a pale violet light glinted through the cracks between his hands and moments later, he opened his hands, revealing a dark violet crystal that was about half the length of his first digit. Though it was similar in nature to the one the ookami prince had been tricked with—a solidification of toxins and poisons—this crystal had little something more: Naraku's essence, his 'soul,' so to speak, making it like the Shikon shard that controlled the taiji-ya boy. If everything went as planned, the crystal would act as a link between him and the hanyou and put him in control of just about anything: the Tetsusaiga, Inuyasha's body, and most importantly, Inuyasha's mind.
Taking the sword again, Naraku gripped the hilt and took the crystal and forced it against the tattered hilt, right below the handgaurd. The blade sensed the invasion and pulsed and sparked in protest, fighting Naraku's efforts. Naraku's answer to this was quite simple: he pushed harder. This was a battle of wills: Naraku's verses the Tetsusaiga's, and the sword's will was partially affected by its master. And seeing as Inuyasha was lost within the darkness of his unconscious mind, the sword's strength of will was weaker than it should have been. Naraku sensed two other presences within the blade, but they were faint, almost negligible; the youkai guessed that they belonged to the sword's forger and to Inutaisho, since it was his fang that made the sword possible. The Tetsusaiga put up a decent struggle to maintain its freedom from violation, but once Naraku put some real force behind the crystal, the katana ceased its protests and the violet crystal was shoved into the handgaurd.
Naraku smiled, rather pleased with himself—he was the Tetsusaiga's master now.
One hand delved into his robes and Naraku pulled a familiar dark pink sphere—his portion of the Shikon no Tama. And now, time to deal with the hanyou…
OMG! What's that evil jerk going to do to our precious Inu-chan?! And just how much more of this flash back s*** are you readers going endure before you snap?! maniacal laugh For those of you who don't like the flash back s***, tough, this chapter was just the beginning…and I have a lot of time to cover…and I have plans… rubs hands together in a rather evil fashion
And, now, the part you've all been waiting for….the translations.
Koromiko=black priestess
Ku-ugutsu=Naraku's clones/puppets
Shikigami=best way I can explain it is that shikigami are "helper spirits" (If you watch/read "Shaman King" you know exactly what these guys are—Yoh's grandfather uses them a bit.)
Okay, I'm going to address the whole "Naraku reading minds" thing before anybody has a fit within their review… As we all know, Goshinki's main weapon was the ability to read his opponents thoughts, without any tactile contact. And since Goshinki was a detachment of Naraku, I figure that Naraku has this ability as well, he just isn't as specialized in it as his detachment. Naraku has so many abilities, taken from the demons he's absorbed, he isn't able to hone each one to perfection; his "kids" are his abilities perfected (e.g. Kagura=wind, Kanna=nothingness; read vol 16 of the Inuyasha manga).
Now review, darn it!