AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!! I'M SORRY!!! I promised this to you by Wednesday, and instead, it gets out the following Monday late night! I'VE LOST MY FANBASE! WAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!
Ahem. Composure resumed. But I do profusely apologize for missing the deadline. You would not believe some of the stuff that's been cropping up around here as of late. That, coupled with Battlefield: 1942, writers' block, and just plain laziness; has caused this horrendous a delay and this short a chapter. But don't worry! If the next chapter isn't at least 8 pages long, I'll eat my computer monitor, piece by piece. And it will be here in ONE WEEK! *Shouts to self* YOU HEAR THAT, MYSTERIOUS VOICES?? ONE WEEK! NONE OF YOUR STALLING WILL HELP YOU!
Review responses:
Kai19: You know, it's one thing when I start predicting what my characters will do next based on their personality. It's quite another when A READER predicts what my characters will do next based on their personality. You're amazingly accurate with your hypotheses.
Kagome...umm...I guess she's somewhere else. Who's to say? Well, me, for one, but... And yes, Sesshomaru and Koga both appear again at least once each. I haven't discarded them like used snotrags. And...SPOILERS...we might just hear of the return of a certain undead miko...
hersheykiss1012: Yes, I'm just a twisty-turny type of writer, aren't I. I like throwing curves at you readers. It's fun to watch you squirm! Err, right.
StreetRats: You read it in one sitting, too? Geez...it isn't THAT much of a compelling read. Here's the next chapter. Usually, I don't take nearly this long to update, but I've been stupid and haven't written.
AssassinReiX: Yes, I'm just an evil, evil man.
anonymous: Love the compliments...but in the future, could you confine lemon comments to the lemon story? It's not exactly public knowledge that I've written a sex scene and I'd like to keep it that way. (I live in a conservative community.)
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Chapter 41: Humiliations Galore
"Hello there, boy," the General said quietly. He wiped some blood off his sword and slowly walked into the room. "Apparently, my blizzard did little to deter you, but you fall right into the clutches of these buffoons instead. You were correct about one thing, though." He walked right up in front of Tobias. "You are going to escape."
Tobias, though nearly dead, still managed to be shocked by this. "Escape...?" he hissed. "How? You'll kill me in a few seconds..." He looked around and felt a sharp pain from the wounds in his neck and throat.
"You would like to think so, would you not?" The General paced slowly around the room, keeping his eye on Tobias the whole time. "If I were here to kill you, I would have done it already. You know I favor efficiency above most other things. No, I have come here to have a nice chat.
"What...?" mumbled Tobias.
"To talk. We have not sat and talked for some centuries now. This is likely my last opportunity to converse with you, in a situation where you are not blindly attacking. Seeing as you are chained and bleeding to death, I theorize we have some minutes yet."
"You...I..."
"Coherency is not your strongest attribute at the moment, I see. Perhaps it is the blood loss, or the sleeping potion still coursing through your system. No matter. You can still listen. There will be no need to talk. Except..." He leaned in closer. "Where is the last jewel shard?"
Tobias was staggered. Could the General know, now, where it was? Hadn't Maurius relieved him of it? He shifted his weight a little and felt the small shard against his chest, still in his pocket. It was so close...so close and yet so far. "I dunno," he said finally.
"You expect me to believe that?" The General resumed his pacing. "I know that you and your friends know where it is. Only, now, I am in a bit of a quandary. Your companions are all unconscious, and there does not seem to be a way to extract the information from you. I could torture you, but you are already so close to death that any additional damage would propel you over the edge. Perhaps I could torture one of your friends..." Tobias stiffened. "But, as previously proved, you are not at your mental peak right now and could probably not give me the answer even if you wished." The General isn't wrong often, but he is now...he underestimates me. He always underestimated me.
"Why did you..." Tobias spat some blood to the side. "...come here?"
"Very simple. It was child's play to track you and your compatriots down, and it should be obvious to you – even now – why I came. Maurius and his 'brothers' would have cheerfully slaughtered you to become the new masters of the sword. We cannot have that, now can we?" The General stepped back a little. "Hunting you down and the anticipation of our last battle has been my driving force for all the millennia I have wandered this planet. It would be a horrible shame to arrive and find that somebody else killed you, would it not?"
"So...you wanted...to kill me yourself. Why not...now?" Tobias rasped. He was bleeding very heavily and didn't expect to survive for more than a few minutes.
"You must be in worse shape than I thought. As I said, the thought of our final battle has been a great source of inspiration for me. I do not want anyone else to kill you, nor do I want to kill you like this. There is no honor, no glory, no redemption..." He paused. "No fun." His lips curved slightly upwards.
"Fun?" Tobias couldn't believe his ears. "Fun?!"
"Very much so. It is a source of great fun to have a serious duel with you. We both know we have not actually fought in over a thousand years." He walked towards the door and paused in the doorframe, facing away. "If you have it in you, I would very much appreciate information about the last shard."
"I told you...I don't know..." groaned Tobias. The General did not turn around.
"Do not think you are saving anyone by not telling, hoping that I will give up or some such thing. It is very simple. If I do not find the shard with you, I shall be forced to assume that it is in the possession of a demon, and therefore I will begin hunting down demons. Once all of the demons have been destroyed, I will assume that one of the human villages has it; so I will destroy every village until I find it. If I still do not find it..." He turned towards Tobias. "Then I will know you have it, and will slice you all to very small pieces to find it. Whether you tell me or not is irrelevant. You are simply delaying the inevitable and causing more deaths." He walked closer to Tobias.
"Tell me," he said quietly, "where the last jewel shard is, and you have my solemn word I will not harm; directly or indirectly; any human, demon, or other creature from this era. Do you accept?" Tobias growled at him.
"You may...keep your word...but you always...find a...loophole somewhere." Tobias coughed up some more blood. He was certain the end was near. "I'm not...from this era...and neither is Kagome..." He looked away. "Besides...you'll just go to...the modern era...and kill people there."
The General sighed. "You are too clever for your own good, boy. Perhaps I was mistaken about your incoherency. There is nothing stopping me from doing that already. Do you seriously think that anyone in the so-called 'modern era' is capable of stopping me if I decided to go on a rampage?" Tobias did not respond. "I thought not. In any case, if you are left as you are now, you will die shortly, and I cannot have that." He went to pull down Tobias. Tobias recoiled.
"Don't you touch me," he hissed.
"Then we shall do it the difficult way." Tobias cringed as he felt the General's sword pressed against his throat. He offered no resistance as the General ripped the chains holding him out of the wall and carried him out of the building, never actually touching him, just gripping the chains. He dumped him unceremoniously on the ground out of sight of the building, then disappeared into the woods again. A few minutes later, he came back, carrying in turn; Inuyasha, Miroku, Sango and Shippo, and last Kagome. He piled up their unconscious forms and turned to walk away.
"General!" choked out Tobias. "What about..."
"Oh, yes...that." He went back into the woods and came back a few minutes later.
"I cannot seem to actually touch your sword, boy. If I try, it burns me terribly, so picking it up is not be an option. However, there are ways around such obstacles..." He threw Tobias's sword onto the ground. Tobias nearly lost it again when he saw Maurius's severed hand still clinging to it.
"Why...?" he said weakly. The General paused.
"To humiliate you, boy. Imagine the guilt and the pain that this will cause you...to be saved by the man you have sworn to kill. The irony is delicious. I could not have done better had I planned out the whole encounter. Besides...you know how much I enjoy causing you pain. It satisfies me to a degree the likes of which I can find nowhere else." He began to glow blue. "Your friends should wake up in a few hours. Plenty of time for you to think of a story as to how you escaped." He vanished.
Tobias pried Maurius's cold fingers from the hilt of his sword and took it into his own hand. The instant he did, a great warmth seemed to fill his whole body, and he could feel the pain soothing and the bleeding slowing. He lay on the ground, deep in thought, for a long time.
Inuyasha awoke. He was lying face-up on the grass. The sun was setting. For a moment, he didn't remember much about what had gone on. He sniffed the air, trying to get a bearing on his surroundings.
Miroku, Sango, Shippo, Kirara, Kagome...KAGOME?! He jumped up and ran to where Kagome was lying. She, along with the rest, was unconscious but breathing. Suddenly, it all hit him. Tobias lying on the tree...the darts...that bastard who threatened Kagome! Wait...where's Tobias? He looked around and spotted Tobias. He was sitting on top of a nearby hill, facing away. A stench floated around him that Inuyasha recognized as a 'cigarette'. Carrying Kagome, he walked over and sat next to Tobias.
"What the hell happened?" he demanded. Tobias was silent. He took a drag on his cigarette. "How did we get out? What happened to you? What happened to Kagome?" Tobias did not look at Inuyasha, but he responded in a monotone that eerily resembled the General's.
"I'd prefer it if we didn't talk about it." Inuyasha stared at him.
"What's with you?" he demanded. Tobias exhaled some smoke and looked into the setting sun.
"Look at it," he said quietly. "The sunset. It really is beautiful, isn't it? The lights and the colors, the way the sun seems to just explode in a radiance of light before sinking quietly into the night. Like the sun is using up everything it has to stay in the sky, but eventually fades into darkness."
"What are you talking about? Who cares about the sunset? Are the others all right? Is Kagome okay? Did they-"
"Kagome's fine. The others are fine. I managed to break free and escape." He took his cigarette from his lips. "You know something interesting...I've been captured by them before."
"What are you babbling about?" demanded Inuyasha. His patience was wearing thin; his mate could be hurt and Tobias was talking about a fucking sunset!
"I recovered my sword, that one time, and broke the chains on the wall. The guards rushed me, but I just knocked them out, I didn't kill them. I normally have no qualms about killing, but something...something just didn't feel right about it then. I tried to escape and was immediately lost in the passages."
Inuyasha snorted and looked away, but Tobias soldiered on.
"I ducked into a room and slammed the door. I thought maybe I could knock down a wall and escape that way. When I turned to the far wall, I saw a little girl." Inuyasha paused and looked back at Tobias. "She seemed terrified of me. I sheathed my sword and called out to her.
"'Hey, there,' I said softly. 'Don't be scared. I won't hurt you.' She still looked frightened, but she relaxed a little. 'The men are looking for me, so I'm gonna have to leave in just a few seconds. Don't tell anyone you saw me, all right?' She nodded, but her lip quivered.
"'Is Daddy okay?' she whimpered. This stopped me right in my tracks. I had killed a few of them before I was captured...how was I to tell if her father was one of them? 'Umm...' I stalled while I thought. 'What's your daddy's name?'
"'The other men call him Rufus,' she said. I relaxed. Rufus was one of the guards I had incapacitated. 'He's fine,' I whispered. 'But I have to go now.' I burst through the wall and ran. I never heard from her again." Tobias took one last puff on his cigarette and ground it into the earth. "The reason I tell you this is that the people I kill...they're people. They have wives and children and friends just like anyone else. They're actual people." He sat in silence for a while. "But to the General they aren't."
"What?" Inuyasha was a little surprised at this new subject.
"To the General, the people he kills are just nameless and faceless things, that have no connection to anything. He doesn't think of them as actual human beings. He kills just for the sake of killing. He's a monster!" Tobias made as to stand up, but shrank back onto the ground again. "He's a monster," he whispered.
"And you are wrong," whispered another voice, so faintly even Inuyasha could not hear it. The General stood silently in a small clump of trees far from them. "That is not why I kill. You are as misguided as ever, boy. But things will be rectified soon enough." He vanished.
"Still, even in the midst of all this...there's a sunset." Tobias lit another cigarette.
"You haven't done those things for a while. I thought you ran out," said Inuyasha.
"I was saving some for just such an emergency." He breathed deeply, then stopped. "Someone's around here," he whispered.
"Very astute of you." Tybalt leaped down and landed in front of the two warriors, swords extended.
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Dear me. He shows up at the most inopportune times, doesn't he? Oh well. Fight scene in the next chapter! REVIEW! And I won't take NEARLY as long this time around! Ja!