Futile Attempts

She took a step forward, as if unsure of the sight before her eyes. Then in a blurry movement she was suddenly in front of Inuyasha, his neck in her hand. At the same time Inuyasha took out a small dagger and rested it against her heart without a blink.

"First an arrow, now a dagger Kagome?" he asked her icily.

"You bastard...I would have never done it, and you know that. It wasn't ME." she said desperately, a teardrop falling from her eye. He didn't move the dagger away and only pressed a little harder, his eyes getting colder.

"Do you know how many people I had to bury that day? Do you know who I had to bury? I saw you with my own eyes, Kagome, and they never lie. Now let go, or you will go to sleep for a second time." he emphasized with a sharp push of his blade. It broke through the fabric and punctured the skin, making blood stain the cloth. She slowly released her hold on his neck and took a step back.

"Do you hate me so much, Inuyasha?" she asked in a soft tone and disappeared into the forest. The villagers gave a sigh of relief but still warily looked around them. Inuyasha stood there, looking down at the dagger stained with a bit of red. His hands were trembling and amber eyes looked distant, as if he was remembering something. Sesshoumaru saw something glitter in the corner of his eye and spotted the jewel in a hunk of centipede flesh. When he picked it out with two fingers the flesh disintegrated nto dust. The jewel flared when he held it then returned to a normal purple hue.

"I suspected it, but now I know for sure who you are." Inuyasha said, wiping the dagger on the ground and slipping it back into his gi. All reminiscing vanished and was replaced by a strange mask of concentration.

"Who was she? That Kagome?" Sesshoumaru asked, ignoring Inuyasha's comment.

"Don't, don't say her name in my presence. If I ever see her again, I will have to put her to sleep again, whether it is in a spell or death." Inuyasha motioned the men to throw the bones into the well and they began to hustle about in normal routine. He hopped onto a horse and whistled another one nearby, handing it's reins to Sesshoumaru.

"You know how to ride, right? Do they have riding in that world of yours?" he asked curiously as he led the horse towards the village. Sesshoumaru easily leaped onto the horse's back and with the perfect posture of a equestrian, began to canter along Inuyasha's horse.

"She killed someone important." the sentence came out more of a statement then a question. Inuyasha's shoulders arched up and the horse shook it's head from the tense rider but trotted on as if it was use to it.

"And many others. We'll talk more tomorrow, when there is daylight. I'm sure you are tired from your...journey to here." he politely said while silently gritting his teeth.

Why now, when he had just gotten over the massacre fifty years ago? Why was she awake? She looked just as he had remembered, those ocean blue eyes with hair that reflected the colors of night. He gripped his reins and looked behind him, his brother's reincarnation. Was this how his brother would have looked like if he had lived? The eyes and hair were the only characteristics that he remembered of his brother. That....that contemptible hanyou, it was all her fault. He could never forgive her for what she did, despite what they shared back then. And now the Shikon was back again, to wreck havoc on mankind. The future did not look optimistic for him, not if the Shikon existed.

She ran through the forest, every piece of it unfamiliar because of time. Scents of age and anger now permeated the once peaceful place she had lived in. Finally, she stopped her wild running and dropped to her knees, overwhelming grief forcing her down. She squeezed her hands and slumped tired shoulders, a trembling breath that shook her chest in pain. One tear was all she allowed herself, she wasn't going to cry for him. Three months of friendship had been thrown down in one day. The worst part of it all was that he had believed his eyes over his own trust of her.

How could he think she had done it?

Her chest clenched, aching to cry, to bring the tears that would soothe away all hate. But she wouldn't let herself cry away the malice, she needed it. It was all she had right now and the only thing to remind her of Inuyasha's betrayal. She looked up, the Shikon. Gods, how did she forget about it? That strange man who looked like Inuyasha... there was only one other person she knew who had silver hair and golden eyes, and that person was dead. How did he come upon Shikon? Or more importantly, why was the Shikon inside his body?

She took one last deep breath and stood up. She'd take the Shikon and run, never coming back here again. She'd leave every memory and bury it in the village that had caused so much anguish. The girl shivered and wrapped her thin arms around her shoulders. It seemed that it had gotten colder in the past fifty years.

His body ached at the wooden floorboards but he was too proud to complain. He did however allow himself contemplate on his bed back home. Rin...Jaken would take care of her, but just enough so that she would barely live. That incompetent fool would probably just give her a bowl of rice for the day. He tried to give himself to the rhythmic breathing of the leader boy who slept just a few feet away from him. But it was a hopeless cause, sleep wouldn't come, not while he was in such an unfamiliar place.

As silent as a shadow he crept outside the doorway and stood with his hands in his pockets. Fingers wrapped around the tiny orb that gave off so much power. It's strange warmth was comforting through the biting chill of the night and through his own restless thoughts. Thoughts of how that jewel was in his body in the first place. There was a tiny crack of a leaf far off and Sesshoumaru took a step forward. Someone was near, someone small and stealthy. He moved closer to the forest that bordered the village, body tense for fight. And then she stepped out, bold and daring. There were muscles in her body that could never been seen in humans for she moved like the liquid grace of a panther.

"Good, you made my job a lot easier." she spoke, so softly that he could barely hear the
words. "The Shikon, you have it, I want it."

"I don't know if you deserve it." He answered, his body still waiting for a fight. He didn't
take over a decade of different martial arts for nothing. She gave a tired look to him.

"I don't know who you are but you probably don't know the full extent of the Shikon's powers. I do, so give it to me or I might use force." She was about to say more but the two little ears on her head swiveled towards the hut. In a lightning quick movement she grabbed him, putting a hand over his mouth, and swiftly bore him away into the forest. He didn't know how she was able to even hold him with her small arms, nor how she was able to run easily without any hindrance despite the weight she held. After ten minutes of sprinting, she finally stopped and released him. Other than slightly quicker breathing, she looked like she had only gone on a leisurely run.

"If you give me the Shikon, I'll take you back to the village." She repeated her demand again.

"It was in me for a reason and it will not leave my hands." Sesshoumaru dusted off bits of leaves and bush that had stuck to his black coat.

"Don't you understand human? You won't be able to use it at all and you don't have any need for it." She said, walking around him like a frustrated hawk.

"Why do you want it so badly?" He asked while watching her walk back and forth.

"You wouldn't understand." She muttered to him. She stopped her aimless walking and her ears swiveled back and forth. She reminded him oddly of a predator stopping and listening for intruders. She grabbed his hand and began to run quickly through the forest, pulling him at a speed that his legs couldn't give. There was a loud whistling sound in the air and little bolts of lightning were being aimed at Kagome's neck. She stopped and tried to bat the bolts away but they connected to create a glowing necklace. When the lightning stopped and the whistling died down, the necklace revealed to be a rosary. Inuyasha appeared out of nowhere as Kagome strugged to get the necklace off, but it glowed brightly and made the whistling sound from before.

"Inuyasha! What-is-this?!" Kagome growled as she stopped her futile attempts.

"Say the subduing spell." Inuyasha ordered to Sesshoumaru as he watched Kagome with careful eyes.

"Subduing spell?" Sesshoumaru looked at Kagome ears and a small idea planted in his head. "Like....sit?"

WHAM

Kagome had been smashed to the ground, creating a shallow girl sized hole in the ground. She began to cough up dirt that had gotten into her mouth. She punched the earth in anger and looked up at the two men with burning eyes that were tinged red. Her effort to appear frightening was dulled by the fact that dirt smudged her cheeks and her hair was tangled and messy.

"What the hell was that?!!!" She shouted.

"Sit." Sesshoumaru said with an invisible smile. It was an exhilarating feeling of power whenever he said that word. But he felt almost sorry for the girl as she proceeded to cough up more dust and dirt.

The water was icy cold. No, scrub that. It was the kind of cold that took your breath away and create uncomfortable shivers all across your skin. But there was absolutely no way he was going for three days without a bath or a shower. He looked dismally at the lake's unheated waters, desperate times call for desperate measures. Inuyasha was a few feet away with his back turned, stroking a blazing fire.

"Don't you have any hot springs in this time?" Sesshoumaru asked as he looked almost reluctantly at the freezing water.

"Not if you want to trek to the next village, which is a two hour walk from here." Inuyasha called out, adding more logs to the fire.

He dove into the water after hearing the word 'not' come out of Inuyasha's mouth. It took all of his years of hard training to not run back to the fire and warm up. Forcing himself to wash his hair with tough soap, Sesshoumaru gritted his teeth and tried to do it as fast as he could. He took the fastest bath in his life and was walking out of the water when he noticed a certain hanyou sitting on top of a grassy bank just above the lake's cliff walls. They stared at each other for a moment before she turned away with a blushing face. He gave a smirk at her reaction.

Inuyasha handed him a white bundle of clothes without looking at him and went back to the robot like motions of stroking the fire. The clothes he had given Sesshoumaru were made of an incredibly fine silk. It was a kimono with red borders of tiny white flowers on the collar and the sleeves. For some reason, Inuyasha had also included armor in the bundle. It was heavy, though not so much that it was difficult to walk. It was actually quite comfortable and this was all belted with a long yellow and purple sash. When he sat across Inuyasha from the fire, the boy gave him a strange look before giving a grunt of approval.

"You don't look so much of a foreigner anymore." Inuyasha admitted. "I have a request to make.

"A request?" Sesshoumaru raised an eyebrow.

"Alright, maybe it's not a request. I need you to-"

There was an explosion of trees as an immense demon crashed through them. He was a hulking thirty feet tall and was a large toad-like creature, remind him eerily of Jaken.

"Shikon!!" It gave a joyous shout and began to run to Sesshoumaru. Inuyasha picked up the bow and quiver right next to him and calmly took aim at the youkai's heart. He let it loose but it was deflected off of the demon's tough leathery skin. It didn't slow down the youkai one bit, making it run only faster towards it's goal.

"Where's the Shikon?!!!!" Inuyasha yelled at Sesshoumaru, pulling him behind.

"In my-"

CRUNCH

The toad looked down at his feet then lifted it up and a second explosion shook the land. Bright purple streaks sped off in hundreds of different directions and the toad cowered away, falling on it's rear. After a minute or so, the streaks faded away and the sky returned to it's normal blue color.

"Pants." Sesshoumaru finished weakily, looking at where the toad at stepped. His clothes were cemented in an imprint of the toad's webbed feet. The toad blankily stared at the ground for a moment then stood up and began to lumber towards Sesshoumaru again.

"Give me the Shik-whaddya want shorty?" The toad stopped to look down at Kagome who was standing before him. "Hey, ain't you the little hanyou shrimp-"

The toad didn't finish his sentence, the 'hanyou shrimp' had taken out her claws and ripped him into ribbons. She stood there with an annoyed face as hands flexed and unflexed in irritation.

"I HATE it when they underestimate me." She grumbled. "Hey, human, is the Shikon safe?"

Sesshoumaru felt something prickle his senses and his quick eyes caught sight of something glittering on the ground. He picked up a tiny glass shard that glowed the same purple as the Shikon. Kagome and Inuyasha leaned closer to see the object in his palm. They both said the same thing when they realized what it was.

"Oh crap."

Ditto.

I know that pretty much everybody is familiar with the first twenty or so episodes, which was why I changed some things around. For one thing, I find Sess a bit too manly to use a bow to hit the Shikon. Two, aw... I couldn't put the entire Shikon incident to blame on him. It was that stupid toad too. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chappie! and for those who are reading my other stories, I've updated all of them as well. unfortunately, I had to take off Trial of the Shikon Guardians because I lost my interest in that story. I thought the plot itself was unique, but I just couldn't think of anyway to get it starting again. Someone else could use the storyline if they want to, I don't mind. But I know I can't think of anything for the story.