Chapter 2

As morning arrived, the soft sun reached through the trees and touched Kagome on the face, through the unclosed net window. Also, at the same moment, a perverted monk was sitting at the entrance in a daze at the sight before him. Before he knew it, he was hit over the head with Sango's boomerang. He fell back in shock from the impact.

Kagome quickly got dressed (before the monk could recover) and noticed Inu-Yasha, who was laying on a rock, fast a sleep. She began to blush a little until she noticed Sango's presence behind her. Then, she quickly acted as if she was doing something else.

By this time, the Miroku was starting to regain awareness and stood to his feet.

Inu-Yasha heard a noise coming from the forest and woke up; he immediately became alert.

"What is it, Inu-Yasha?" Kagome asked.

He sniffed around in the air a little, and after a pause said, "It's nothing. Let's just go."

Kagome was alert to because she knew that Inu-Yasha sensed something, and she sensed it too.

The others, on the other hand, seemed completely oblivious to what they were sensing and were acting as if there was nothing wrong at all. Kagome cautiously packed here stuff, taking note of the disrupted panties, which she vowed to get Miroku back for later, and slid her bag on her shoulders.

"Let's go," she said.

"So soon," replied Shippo. "But we haven't even had breakfast yet."

"I have a bad feeling about this place."

'She senses it too,' Inu-Yasha thought. 'This can't be good.'

They began to walk along the enclosed pathway. Shippo and the others were a little bit more aware of the presence now.

"I don't like the looks of this at all," Miroku stated as he looked upon the long path they still had yet to travel on.

"This path just seems to get longer every minute," Inu-Yasha said as he brings his hand to his sword that he's getting ready to use if necessary.

Suddenly, they heard a cracking noise coming from in the forest, where the trees were too thick to see.

"What was that?" Kagome Shrilled.

"Stay here." Inu-Yasha unsheathed his sword and with a great leap, jumped up to a high branch. Two jumps later, and he reached the top of the trees. He looked around, but he didn't see anything. So, he jumped off of the branch and put his sword back in its resting place. "It must have been nothing. Let's just get out of here."

Although they were a little assured by Inu-Yasha's confident words, they still felt a little uneasy because they could feel the presence around them even more now.

As, they continued to walk, the path became more curved and snake-like. This made it harder to see anything at all. Not only that, but it was also becoming thinner, and their comfort of being close to each other, especially for Miroku, was no longer able to be sustained as they were, almost within feet, forced to travel in a single file line.

Kagome kept saying "I don't like this" over and over again, until Inu-Yasha said, "Everything will be just fine." Then, she settled down and became a little more secure.

However, as they traveled it seemed to get darker because the trees were getting bigger, wider, and more plentiful. Now their only hope of escape was to retreat because the tress were, at this point, touching and inner locking. They looked like they were fusing because they were so close together.

Suddenly, noise filled in around them in the up until this point quiet forest.

Kagome reached back and grabbed for Inu-Yasha's hand as she let out, "Inu-Yasha, I'm scared." He forced her to loosen her grip and let go so that he could easily grab for Tetsusaiga.

The ground in front of them began to tear up coming in their direction. Inu-Yasha managed to grab Kagome end mover her out of the way behind him. Then, he jumped up, pulled out Tetsusaiga, and plunged it into the rising ground. At the same moment, a small fox demon, a little bigger than Shippo, wearing a shinobi uniform revealed himself from beneath the dirt.

All that you could see of him was two ears, his brown eyes, tail, and paws.

Upon jumping out of the ground, he threw something into the air, which burst in a cloud of white, blinding smoke. Seconds later he appeared and began attacking Miroku from behind the group.

Taking a cheap hit from behind by the fox demons small katana, Miroku was at a disadvantage, and after he blocked a few of the fox's attacks, the demon realized that wasn't go to work and flew back into a defensive stance, where his legs were spread out one in front of another, one hand on the ground, the other with the katana ready but held back. He lunged forward, and with the katana in his hand, said a quick little chant as chi formed in his hands.

Inu-Yasha quickly jumped over everyone with Tetsusaiga held firmly over his head.

"You're not going to get away this time, you coward."

Distracted by Inu-Yasha's screaming, the fox accidentally released the chi ball off in the wrong direction and barely missed Miroku and the others.

Inu-Yasha came down and swung his sword to the ground which sent dirt flying everywhere. The fox quickly jumped out of the way and returned to his defensive position.

Drops of blood could be heard hitting the ground and smelt by both the vigorous demons. They both had small cuts that ran across their cheeks.

'How did he cut me,' he thought. 'It was so fast.' He thinks back and vaguely remembered seeing what he could dimly make out as a katana, which flew up and barely missed him, as the little fox jumped out of the way.

The fox demons attention is drawn to the cut on his cheek, indicating by shifting eyes.

Inu-Yasha quickly takes a swing at him again, but cannot swing his sword fast enough to hit the demon in such a small space.

The demon quickly reaches into his pocket again and pulls out something that causes another blinding cloud. When the smoke clears, he is gone.

BTW (Author's note): This fic is almost completely spontaneous. Every word is spur of the moment. So, if any of you want to know what is going to happen, your guess is as good as mine.