Disclaimer: If I owned InuYasha than Kikyo would be nothing but clay pot pie.
-
Thank you for your reviews! Hopefully this isn't much too late after the first posted chapter. I couldn't post it yesturday because it said something about a corrupted database... something... 503 error, er, well, I hope you enjoy the chapter anywho.
-
Disposable Soul
Chapter 2 :: Kissable Soul
.
.
.
Dinner was served. InuYasha had his Ramen, and everyone else feasted upon the guilty pleasures of fried rice, and old fashion raw fish. Though it was very comfortable to share a meal with your friends, Kagome missed going to WacDonald's for a nice, juicy Tamatori Burger.
Being shown to their rooms by a fellow monk, Miroku and Shippou shared a room, as did Kagome and Sango in another. InuYasha chose to sleep outside in the high security of a tree, most-likely trying to get in touch with his inner being, or brood about having earlier been told off by his number one love interest, Kagome.
Sure, Kagome not only looked cute when she'd crinkle her face in an innocent way as he called her the most ill-tolerated of names, or just wanted to push her buttons just to see that face and paid no mind if it did put her in a bad mood, or mar her feelings.
But nothing was cuter than seeing her victory cheer, as she would sometimes jump up and down, seemingly not knowing that her clothes rode up a full three inches as his golden gaze halted at the sight of her smooth cinnamon tanned skin he just wanted to reach out and caress…
InuYasha smirked as he cuddled deeply into the crook of the tree branch and the trunk. It was just a plain good day to be InuYasha.
.
«»
.
It was about midnight. The heat of the hours of darkness leisurely thinned into a musky breeze with the smell of on-coming drizzles and the spectacle of twinkling stars beyond the black that shown brilliantly. Ancient willows with branches like ropes swayed to the un-sung melody of the night. There was no ruckus and all together the atmosphere conspired to be the perfect night for exploration. So thought Kagome, anyways.
Seeing as Sango breathed easy as her body rose and fell with each intake of air, and her face was a tranquil front you could just tell she was asleep. Kagome crawled out of her sleeping bag with her school uniform still on yet it was very wrinkled. Kagome tiptoed to her abnormally large yellow backpack, reached her hand inside and wriggled it around for the flashlight. When found, Kagome walked over to the sliding wooden door, took one last look to make sure Sango wasn't awake, and ambled into the hall closing the door noiselessly behind her.
Kagome knew InuYasha wasn't exactly asleep, as much as he always appears to be. He'd close his eyes, take labored breaths, and stay perfectly still. She knew this because as the countless times she tried to go home in the middle of the night were foiled, InuYasha stopped her in her tracks with a bumbling fit of rage. Fool her once, shame on you. Fool her twelve times, and you can just put a 'point and laugh at me' sign on the poor girl's back.
Not this time. No siree bob, she was going to go exploring come hell or high water! As she made it outside of the shrine on the other side of the exit from where InuYasha was at, Kagome turned on her flashlight and strode on the stilted footpath over the murky lake below.
.
«»
.
A cool vapor swept through the trees, and whistles swam through the grass. Stars silently screamed caveats to their assigned individual; the brighter they were, the louder they seemed to scream. None of this, however, seemed to stop Kagome Higurashi. Well, not completely.
Kagome hugged her shirt closer to her body like a jacket, leeching its warmth to the very last second. Her eyes swiveled this way and that, as every noise she heard, every sudden movement of nature, freaked her courage a couple of negative notches down.
She was at a shrine, for cryin' out loud! A domain she was more than welcomed and accustomed to. Though she's always heard the saying "don't judge a book by its movie," she would use that advice now (in a different view point, of course) to her greatest extent as she made the best of her thoughts and shooed away her gut feelings to find out the truth behind these grounds.
"I wonder what exactly Sango, Miroku, and Shippou found today that made them so skittish…" Kagome wondered aloud. A floorboard on the footpath beneath her feet squeaked, causing her to jump back and heave a sigh in foolishness.
"I've got to stop doing that! It's crazy being scared, when there's obviously nothing around that can kill me." Kagome displayed a smirk that would make even InuYasha proud. "Besides, InuYasha will save me if I'm in danger. Though, something still makes me wonder…"
That later afternoon during supper, Miroku and Shippou were all the more jumpy than they seemed. InuYasha interrogated them about what their problems were, and what they had been doing all afternoon. And to Kagome, Miroku seemed very smooth telling InuYasha that they were just innocently exploring the grounds. It was funny that they didn't bring up the subject of having found something neat, like Sango had told her. So, playing it cagey, Kagome just dropped the subject, spite her over-whelming needs to find what exactly they were hiding.
She didn't know what she was looking for, that was true, but as of now finding shelter would be on the top of her list. As the minutes passed, fog that Kagome had not taken notice to before started to get thicker and thicker, and it was soon too hard to even see her own feet. The only thing in her line of vision was the striking beam of her flashlight hitting the creaky boardwalk as she walked onwards. And as Kagome's girlfriends would probably describe it, this was the moment in the horror movie where some gruesome, barbaric dolt would pop out of nowhere and eat the harmless victim. All she needed now was the haunting music, or the sound of unexplained—
Footsteps. They sounded uneven at first, as Kagome solidified on the spot in horror, the footsteps only got quicker and louder and… closer. Doing the only thing that came to mind first came in only one word: run.
Her fragile hand loosened around the flashlight, but dare not let it go. Kagome turned and ran. She ran as fast as she could to nowhere that looked familiar in the slightest. Her uniform skirt flailed around with her hair being wildly brushed with the fingers of the wind as her psyche flashed red in siren danger, and swearing she could hear the stars screaming for her to run faster. The footsteps only running in sync with her every step.
From what seemed like hours, Kagome took a sharp left and found a small fortress as what she could only describe as a savior. A cabin-like shed one might mistake for a house seemed to summon her inside and shy away from all danger that was out there with her.
Her hand knocked aside the bamboo shutter as she barged loudly into the silence of the dim shed. Kagome's chest heaved and dropped heavily with every intake of breath, just wheezing a little bit. Her shaking body leaned against the wall and slid downwards, her hand letting go of the flashlight making it clutter to the cold floor.
The beam of light radiating from the futuristic contraption rolled steadily across the ground until it stopped at a small crack in the floorboard, shining upon something across the room on a small table stand.
After a few minutes of mental regeneration and reassurance, Kagome picked up her flashlight, absently glancing in the direction from which the light had spotted. Crawling curiously like a Cheshire cat, Kagome elevated herself up and pointed her light to where she saw nothing stranger than a doll slouching on a table stand.
"What a strange thing to keep so uncared for…" She walked over and kneeled eye-level in front of the spook show baby, and set her straight in a poised sitting position. Her eyes lingered into the doll's beady ones.
Then fell to a heap on the hard floor without knowing what hit her.
.
«»
.
He was confused. A loud bang had emitted from the distance—not even the clearest of sounds, and here he was, worrying over it like a turning point of history had occurred no father than the shrine premises. Ha! What a likely story.
But he did live in a hysterically chaotic time epoch. Maybe an early night head count will settle his wills. Now when he means head count, he means that as long as Kagome was tucked in, lightly snoozing in dreamland with an amorous grin gracing her façade, than InuYasha was truly at peace.
Walking into Miroku's and Shippou's room he saw that they were both sprawled over their futons like languid bums. InuYasha snorted and closed their door, heading deeper down the hall. He paused in front of the girls' room. Did he really want to intrude on their privacy…?
But of course!
Without a second thought, InuYasha quietly opened the sliding door and popped his head in to see if anyone was awake. Yet something wasn't right as he headed over to Kagome's sleeping bag.
There was no Kagome.
And that's when the panic begun.
.
«»
.
"Cursed WHAT?!"
"InuYasha, please calm down!"
The whole party of four upset, worried, and cranky people gathered around in the hall. They had just told InuYasha what they had found earlier the other day, and saying the dog demon was furious is an understatement. He was beyond hell-bent, that just because they thought a senile old lady made the whole story up was a pathetic excuse to think that something dangerous couldn't actually come from a shrine. As it was, shrines always have some kind of sorted secret and this was a ripe example. If not this time, it was with the Spiderheads and the massacre stringed to them as the slivers of the Sacred Jewel were taken by none other than the head 'priest' himself.
"InuYasha," Sango said after being interrupted by a big fox-like yawn coming from Shippou. "There is no time to waste for arguing when we need to find Kagome. Who knows what's out there in this fog!"
"You're absolutely right, Lady Sango," Miroku jangled his staff and rubbed his chin in thought. "Perhaps we should split into teams. We could cover more ground that way—wait, InuYasha, where are you going?!"
"I don't need your help!" InuYasha hollered from the doorway, successfully rousing tenants and wards from their siesta. "I'm going to get Kagome back if it's that last thing I do! We don't have enough time to have even more people lost so just stay here and DON'T MOVE!" With that, the dog-eared wonder dispersed into the haze of the new morning.
"Oh damn, what have we got ourselves into now." Sango sighed. "C'mon, let's see if we can help out with breakfast. WITHOUT your helping hands monk!" A wallop echoed through the vacant halls like one big wake-up call as people in their rooms unnoticeably shook their heads sleepily.
.
«»
.
"Kagome! Kagome—where are you?!" Fret and dread seeped through the very fruit of his loins as InuYasha soared from rooftop to rooftop in search of his darling. His breath cut short and his mind not able to register anything over a three-word sentence. Something could be happening to Kagome, and he truly felt like a muzzled puppy; lost without his owner and powerless to accept the fact that Kagome just might be dead. He would never be competent enough to live with himself, how he broke his promise to not let anything come between Kagome and himself, and how he let Kagome down by not protecting her.
"InuYaaaaaashaaaa…" Said person stopped dead in his tracks like a deer caught in headlights.
"KAGOME?!" He couldn't believe it—she wasn't hurt! Or, at least she didn't sound like she was hurt.
"InuYashaaaaa…!" It was a faint call. But InuYasha picked it up like bat radar and followed the drifting echo of his name, and the strengthening pleasant aroma of the girl to the root of the source. Where he would find his sweet Kagome.
Her voice and fragrance eventually led him to a shed. She had to be in here. InuYasha didn't miss a beat as he pulled the bamboo screen aside and set a foot inside, only to have two familiar hands he knew so well clutch his over coat and pulled him inside with a surprised yelp.
The surprise wasn't entirely when he was pulled inside the shed, but when his face was suddenly rained in kisses of various attitudes. Some were soft and pleasant then some were demanding and tantalizing InuYasha to the very core. His cheeks were sketched in a deep crimson glow, getting darker by the second.
"Ka-Kag…gulp… Ka-Kagom-me?" InuYasha stuttered her name brokenly; his eyes wide and breaths short as her kisses descended down his jaw to the dip of his neck. He felt her lean back a little, and nearly felt his heart would beat out of his chest as she nibbled on the skin of his neckline and pressed her body powerfully to his against the wall.
"Oh, InuYasha…" Kagome breathed against his neck, kissing it after almost every word. "I was so scared… by myself… alone… oh, Inu, hold me…"
Using strength he didn't know he had come to deal with, InuYasha managed to barely escape her wandering hands as he flipped her around and pinned her to the wall instead, peering his excited golden eyes into Kagome's oddly crafty sapphire one's.
"Ka-Kagome?" He managed to slip on a desperately angry front, remembering how worried he was when she left without a word. She didn't seem to be injured from what he could tell, that relieved him, but what was this non-stop barrage of kisses and caresses? InuYasha was far from displeased, moments like these only happens in his dreams, and made him question if he really was still asleep in his tree.
"What is it, InuYasha?" Kagome laughed, and crushed herself fully against his chiseled chest and biceps, swathing her arms around his neck and seductively nibbling on the tip of his ear. "Don't you like me anymore…?"
"Aaah!" InuYasha couldn't contain his moans as Kagome's nimble tongue flickered on his very sensitive ear. Just that movement alone sent him over the edge, but it left him with less than an ounce of self-containment to get her to stop before he did something that he feared Kagome would regret in the right state of mind.
"W-wait, Kagom-me!" Kagome lowered her eyes to InuYasha's and cradled his face in her hands gently.
"Yes, Inu?" As Kagome started to rain more kisses on InuYasha's face, InuYasha backed up and picked the girl up in a bridal fashion causing her to squeal in delight. The dog demon smiled slightly, but his eyes didn't bother to cover up the worry in his eyes, and the mystified confusion of his love's new attitude. Perhaps she was just scared out of her wits during the night. And who knows? She'll probably change as the day goes on, and his happy-go-lucky Kagome will be back securely in his arms.
But what he didn't notice was the doll strewn on the floor, innocently looking out of the makeshift door, with black eyes made to cry.