The Demon Bride
By Crystal Arrow
Chapter 11: Settling in.
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or the other characters from that story; they belong to someone else who actually has talent.
Michera woke early, before the sun's first rays of light began to warm the earth. She woke to find herself warm for the very firs time in years, not cold, or shivering in fear of the witch. For the first time in the longest time, since almost beyond her memory's reach, she felt warm, and safe.
She rose slowly, careful not to disturb any of the warmth around her in case she might wish to return to it. Rubbing sleep from her golden eyes with a smooth fist, she stretched, the action causing her spine to crack refreshingly all the way down to the tip of her tail. Opening her eyes, she looked around herself, and smiled. She herself had been wrapped in the warmth of her elder brother, Sesshoumaru's tail, and to her other side, cuddled within the end of the dog demon's tail was the little girl she had found to be traveling with him. Looking around more into the distance, she found the pretty girl her other brother had been traveling with snuggled in some sort of bag blanket with the kitsune cub held firmly in her arms across the smothered fire. And nearby to them lay the perverted monk, suspiciously close to the demon exterminator and her cute cat demon companion. All that was missing was her brother, Inuyasha.
Rising carefully in order to make sure that she did not disturb Sesshoumaru, she continued to study the mismatched groups camp site in search of her other brother. After several moments in search, she had still not found him. That is until she heard a soft snort from above. Glancing up, she smiled one more, for there was Inuyasha settled comfortably in the tree above where she had slept, high enough to see her and the entire camp. He looked so much younger asleep, almost like as he did as a pup, except that his clothes weren't quite so baggy. "Ka..gom..e…" she heard him mumble in his sleep. She giggled softly, it seemed as though he very much liked the human girl he had taken to traveling with. She would have to remember to tease, and maybe play a little bit of matchmaker!
After a few moments more spent in reminiscence, she took to the air and disappeared from the camp long before the suns light broke unto the clearing.
A few hours later, the camp finally came alive, and rather quickly at that. See, what happened is that the famous perverted monk Miroku woke up first. He looked over to Sango a few feet away, sleeping peacefully with her faithful Kirara by her side, and he decided, it couldn't hurt to give her a little good morning kiss, now could it? How wrong he was.
His choice to kiss Sango started an entire chain reaction of events to begin in this order:
1.) Sango woke up in a shock and upon realizing what Miroku was doing, and proceeded to pulverize him with her bone boomerang.
2.) The noise Sango made managed to wake Kagome and disturb Sesshoumaru into glaring, but then returning to sleep. The children, Shippo and Rin woke and watched as Sango beat Miroku into a bloodied pulp.
3.) Kagome looked around the camp only to find that the newest member of the inu gang, Michera, was missing, and she unwisely stated this fact out loud.
4.) Well, now Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru were wide-awake and ready to attack whatever could have possible kidnapped their newly found baby sister.
5.) They began to argue over whose fault it was that Michera was missing which in turn made Rin start to cry, since she didn't like to see her Sesshoumaru-sama angry.
6.) This in turn caused Shippo to jump into the fray as well and tell Inuyasha to shut up which in turn resulted in him turning around and chase Shippo in an attempt to silence and probably beat the kit into bloodied pulp.
So now the entire camp was awake and fighting, save for Kagome, whom was desperately trying to calm Rin down enough to be able to make sense of the entire situation. Now Kagome was usually a very kind, gentle and patient girl, however, she was pms-ing, and after a long night of talking, she wasn't ready to awake. Thus, the first day of the new and improved inu gang began.
"Gggrrrrr……SIT!!!" Kagome screamed at the top of her lungs. The campsite fell silent, as Inuyasha crashed down onto the ground none too gently. At that moment Michera calmly strolled into the clearing as though she was never gone, all the while ringing out her long midnight black hair and tail.
"Hey, you guys, what was all that noise about?" she asked innocently.
Inuyasha pounced up out of his new hole in the ground and landed before her, snarling. "You, you stupid wench, whe..."was as far as he got before Sesshoumaru knocked him upside the head rather harshly.
"Don't call her names, mutt."
"Stop fighting, you two," Kagome ordered, "You've already made Rin cry once."
"Rin," Sesshoumaru asked, "is that true?" Rin didn't need to answer, Sesshoumaru could see her tear stained cheeks as it was, but she nodded regardless.
Michera now took the time to at last survey the campsite. She found Miroku in a bloodied heap on the ground, Shippo somewhere up in a tree, Rin still crying softly along with other various damages to the camp. "Just what happened while I was gone?" she asked hesitantly.
From nowhere, Myouga appeared on the shoulder of her newly washed kimono. "Well, Lady Michera, it seems the camp came awake to find you missing along with various other things."
She remained silent for a second as she looked over the camp. There was still some battle ki left over from her two brothers' confrontation with each other upon her disappearance. The area where Sango had slept was left in ruins, and Miroku in a bloodied heap in the center of it, he seemed to have put up very little fight against Sango and her rage, or was un able to at all. Everything was out of place and strewn about after hurried awakenings all around. Overall, it seemed as though a tornado had passed through the area, or perhaps a battle, if not the entire war. She giggled, "All this for me?"
"This isn't funny, Michera!" Inuyasha growled. "We were really worried about you."
"I'd only gone to take a bath." She had started before now both Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru interrupted her.
"It took you that long to take a bath?!?!" They yelled together as one.
Michera stepped back a step. "What? I just fell asleep!"
At this Kagome started laughing. She hugged Michera tightly as she stifled her laughter unsuccessfully after receiving rather vicious glares from both dog brothers. Michera seemed to have gone slightly tense at the close encounter. "Oh, boy, we'll get along just fine, we will. Yeah we will!"
Michera looked at Kagome sideways then relaxed slightly. Shaking her head slightly, she let out an exasperated sigh. "Sheesh, all this over a bath. What will you guys do when the suitors start popping up?"
Sesshoumaru finally spoke calmly and evenly, at last back to his usual icy self. There seemed to be a rather odd gleam to his eyes though as he answered her. "Kill them."
At this, the camp spirit lifted back to normal, despite the new largeness of the group and the morning's events. The children cheered up, and Shippo at last came down from the tree in which he had taken refuge from Inuyasha to join in the laughter that now filled the air. Miroku regained a bit of consciousness and joined in the laughter, more laughing at himself than whatever anyone had said, he was still not back to any real state of sanity after all the blows to the head he got from Sango.
From here on out, the new gang got along well, Michera and Kagome sharing the roll as the binding of the group: Kagome keeping Inuyasha with the original group, and befriending Rin; Michera binding the brothers and keeping them from killing each other. A new journey would begin, one that could be called a very large side quest to the search for the Shikon no Tama and to defeat Naraku and that would play an extremely large roll in his defeat, for when there are two grand sources of power together in one place, any demon would give anything to get them both.
Author's Note: Long time since I've updated anything, this is a major wow. I never had many people reading my stories, not that reviewed anyway, but I'm pretty those that have are going to shoot me for delaying this for so long, and also for having to say, it will be a very long time before I probably will be able to update again. Sorry, and please don't hurt me!~Crystal Arrow
