A/N: May I remark that this chapter doesn't really tell you anything about what this story's about? Because it doesn't. It's all hints, foreshadowing, and the introduction of a very annoying new character. Seriously, the only reason Harai's not dead yet is because he's utterly adorable and completely deadly with a kunai. So please, although this first chapter seems like your typical, everyday, boring old Inu-Yasha fanfiction, don't go! In the next chapter, things start to get. . .shall we say, interesting.
Disclaimer: I own no one except Harai and Karite and Sesshoumaru's invisible castle servants, who sell me naked pictures of him. I wish. .
Chapter One: An old song, a new companion
Inu-Yasha lay on the rooftop of Kaede's hut, staring up at the stars, and wondered if this was how his life was supposed to be. The evening had started out well enough, or at least, normally enough, but through some chain of events that Inu-Yasha couldn't remember, Kagome had ended up yelling at him and he had stormed out. Not that it mattered what the chain of events was; even if he had known what had led up to the yelling, he would probably have had no idea how to fix it. Inu-Yasha sighed hugely, letting the stars pull him into black eternity, and tried to forget where he was. He could feel Kagome still seething in the hut underneath him, and he knew, no matter what it was she was so upset about, it had to be his fault. It always was. Everything had always been, from his mother's death, to his brother's hatred for him, to Kikyou, and that was definitely one guilt trip he didn't want to take tonight. He yanked himself upright, breaking the pull that the space between the stars exerted, telling him to just go, be free, and found himself facing the moon
It was big tonight, a smooth golden yellow, full or close enough to it that no one could tell the difference. Inu-Yasha, who had learned and kept track of the phases of the moon since he was a tiny cub, absently noted that it was actually the night before the true full moon. Still, he sat and drank up the soft light, letting his guilt fade for the moment and sinking back into memories.
There had been many nights like this, when he was a child. In a treetop, on a hill, perched on the roof of a building, always between his two idols, their three heads in a row shining like quicksilver in the light of a moon that was either full, or close to it. He heard his father begin, a slow, strong note that rose steadily, a declaration, a call, or a lament. He had never decided which. Then his brother joined, his voice unpredictable. Sesshoumaru was young, and his voice was on the edge of breaking, so that some nights he would weave a high descant over their father's pure melody, and on others would dive into a harmony so low that the young cub between them, ears pricked to catch every note, could feel the vibrations in every bone of his body. The small figure in between the singers looked up at their moon-drenched faces with awe, but did not join. He still had much to learn. During the day, he was taught the songs, but he was not yet confident enough to perform the true singing with his father and brother; it required both skill and a gift for improvisation. His father said that he had both, but the young half-breed was shy. He waited.
Lost in that long-ago memory, the sound that floated over the trees seemed the most natural thing in the world. Inu-Yasha didn't even note it consciously, although his ears pricked to catch the notes rising towards the golden moon. The hanyou came to himself with a start, suddenly noticing the sound of his own voice, softly testing his own notes against a melody that he hadn't heard in decades. Someone, far out across the forest, was singing the moon-songs. Inu-Yasha strained to catch every note, although he needn't have bothered; whoever was singing had a clear, carrying voice that traveled effortlessly across the quiet of the night. The song wasn't quite the same as any of the ones he had learned as a child, but he recognized the melodic base. The singer had made it wilder, more free. Inu-Yasha decided he liked it. Before the hanyou could think about what he was going to do, he took a deep breath and joined the far-off singer, jumping in at the beginning of a verse and segueing into harmony.
The moon-songs weren't songs in the sense that the humans thought of songs, although Inu-Yasha knew that the canid daemon variety had been sung for far longer that the humans could even recall. There were no words, and sometimes the singing itself was more like the howling of a wolf than anything. But no wolf had ever howled with such artistry; the moon-songs were a delicate tapestry, based off of ten basic melodies which were embellished and harmonized as the singer desired. Everything was improvisation, which made duet or group singing a slightly tricky business, usually attempted after practice and consultation.
Inu-Yasha didn't strike a single sour note. His ear for harmony, his sense of the tune and its direction, all returned in a rush, as though he'd used them just yesterday instead of eighty years ago. The other singer didn't seem surprised as he joined; he didn't drop a note, and they moved together as easily as Sesshoumaru and Inu-Yasha's long-dead father, as easily as if they'd sung together for years. The hanyou sang as he had been taught, with his whole heart, and found his guilt and annoyance and general tension flowing out, to be replaced with a strange sense of peace. He gave no thought to this as he concentrated on the song, and the moon rose higher above the dark trees.
---
"Sorry."
It was early the next morning, and at the sound of the word everyone instantly stopped in their tracks. Miroku's hand jerked to a stop en route to Kagome's thigh, Kagome's chopsticks paused halfway to her mouth and dripped unnoticed on her skirt, Sango's polishing cloth froze in mid-rub on her hiraikotsu. Inu-Yasha gave them all a vaguely puzzled, typically annoyed look.
"What? You all look like I've just risen from the grave or something."
Shippou was the first to break the frozen tableau, hopping from his perch on Kagome's shoulder to feel Inu-Yasha's forehead as the hanyou glared at him with, surprisingly, a notable lack of venom.
"Are you sick? Or. . .maybe possessed!" Shippou nodded decisively, removing his hand from Inu-Yasha's brow. The latter growled, a vein popping out on said brow, and swatted Shippou across the room.
"O. . .kay. . ." Shippou blinked dazedly, sliding head-first down the wall to end up on the floor with his fox feet in the air. "He doesn't seem sick."
"No, he doesn't," Miroku agreed, raising an eyebrow. "Besides, sickness usually makes one more bad-tempered, not less."
Inu-Yasha considered killing the houshi, but decided it was too much trouble. Besides, his good mood from last night was still with him and he didn't really feel like spoiling it by losing his temper. He finally just snorted a scornful "Feh" before getting a bowl and sitting down next to Kagome, who turned her head to look at him dubiously.
"You're sorry?"
"Feh. I said it, didn't I." The hanyou ladled out breakfast for himself and began to eat with savage concentration, plainly sending a message not to discuss whatever he had said any further. Kagome eyed him strangely for a moment, but the others shrugged and went back to what they had been doing. In Miroku's case, 'what he had been doing' meant that Kagome's look, along with whatever she had been thinking, was immediately derailed.
"MIROKU!" she screeched, slapping him reflexively. Miroku continued sipping tea as though nothing had happened.
"Oh dear." He said calmly, looking at the ceiling with utter innocence. "My hand…" Sip of tea. ". . .slipped."
Inu-Yasha growled absently at the monk, but most of his mind was somewhere else. Thing settled down, and the hanyou's good mood from the night before ebbed back in little warm spurts. He had never known that singing was so. . .good. Inu-Yasha made a private resolution to do it more often. . .so long as everyone was asleep or well away from him. It would be far too damaging to his image if one of them caught him.
". . .to the east," Kagome was finishing. Inu-Yasha, having missed most of the preceding statement, blinked himself back to the present.
"What?"
"Have you heard anything I said?" Kagome asked exasperatedly. "I've been sensing a Shikon shard to the east, off and on. I don't know why it's blinking in and out, though. . ."
Inu-Yasha grinned, a very Inu-Yasha-like, bloodthirsty grin. "Well then, let's go!"
---
The path through the forest lay in dappled shade, the air around it full of the rustle of leaves and a far-off birdsong, neither of which broke the peace of the scene. It was a peace which Inu-Yasha felt was entirely too peaceful. He sniffed the air suspiciously as the group strode down the path with the hanyou in the lead. All his instincts told him that something was there, but he couldn't get a scent or sound of anything out of the ordinary. Then, from out of absolutely nowhere and no one that he could see, a voice boomed out all around them.
"FOOLISH HUMANS!" it raged. Inu-Yasha, who already had the Tessaiga out and ready, growled at this. The voice continued, unheeding. "HOW DARE YOU ENTER THE FOREST OF. . .OF. .AH. .A-CHOooo. Damn. Stupid voice trick always makes me sneeze."
The boom went out of the voice, seemingly deflated by its sneeze, and Inu-Yasha's ears pricked forward.
"Gotcha!" he cried, leaping toward the source of the sounds with his sword upraised. As he brought Tessaiga crashing down, he saw a dim figure leap quite frantically out of the way, only to miss its hold in the next tree and fall with an ungraceful thump onto the path in front of Inu-Yasha and company.
"Itai," it- he- grumped, rubbing his butt. "Jeez, can't ya take a joke? Uptight canids…"
The owner of the 'mysterious booming voice' seemed to be a young man, about 17, not bad looking at all, and dressed in a forest-green kimono with golden dragons embroidered on the sleeves. However, certain things betrayed his seeming humanity; for one, his hair was a positively unnatural color for someone Japanese (bright, rich red, the kind that probably had gold highlights in direct sunlight), his ears were pointed, and he had a tail. A long, bushy tail with neat white and red stripes. Despite these fairly obvious indications of demonhood, however, along with the short sword at his hip and the hilts of several kunai which could be seen inside his shirt, he seemed almost. . .harmless. Which didn't deter Inu-Yasha from continuing to threaten him with the point of his sword.
"Who the hell are you?" the hanyou snarled.
"And, um, what kind of demon are you?" Kagome put in from behind him, curiously. She knew she had seen a tail like that somewhere before, but couldn't quite put a finger on what animal it belonged to.
"The name's Harai," the demon announced, bouncing cheerfully to his feet and bowing to them all just as if he wasn't in danger of being skewered by Inu-Yasha at the first hint of hostility. "I'm a red panda youkai. Who are all of you? I mean, well, it's obvious who you are, but you're kind of a strange group, aren't you? A hanyou, a demon hunter, a priest, a baby kitsune, and a miko. . .it's not exactly common to see a group like that all in one spot…unless some of them are trying to kill the others, of course, and. . ."
Harai was cut off in mid-ramble by an indignant Shippo, protesting that he was not a baby. Miroku took the opportunity, brief as it was, to leap in.
"We're merely a simple party of travelers. Tell me- Harai, was it? –you wouldn't have heard of anything a little strange going on in this area lately?"
Harai shook his head after only a second's thought. "Not that I can think of. Although, you know, it's interesting how much the definition of 'strange' can vary from person to person. Now, to me, for example, a big, slavering oni isn't that out of the ordinary. Scary as hell, but not weird. But take your normal, everyday, human peasant type. . ."
Harai rambled on without a sign of stopping. Inu-Yasha, with a growl of frustration, sheathed his sword and started down the path again. The others followed, not without a few curious glances at the garrulous red panda youkai. And Harai, apparently content to have someone to chatter at, trailed along.
---
Half an hour later, Kagome could hear Inu-Yasha's teeth grinding in lethal irritation. Harai was still following them, and he hadn't stopped talking for any noticeable amount of time. As soon as he seemed to be reaching the end of a particular topic, something he saw or remembered would start him up again. Sango looked ready to hurl her Hiraikotsu without notice, Shippo had stuffed leaves into his ears, and even Kagome was thinking wistfully of how pretty a purifying arrow would look in the dim forest light. Inu-Yasha, the least tolerant of all of them, was inches from murdering their party's newest acquisition. Only Miroku seemed unaffected, probably from years of carefully mastering how to tune people out as they screamed at him for something he'd done. However, this didn't mean that Miroku was unaware of his comrades' impending reactions to the loquacious demon's chatter, and finally, he decided to do something about it.
"Harai."
The word broke the flow of the panda's words, and he blinked at Miroku, slightly thrown off. "Um, yes?"
Miroku gave him his blandest and most appealing smile. "Why don't we drop back a little? I need to," he glanced at the others, "have a little talk with you." Firmly, he guided the unresisting, but slightly baffled, Harai to a location well out of earshot of the rest of the group, pretending not to see the intensely grateful looks everyone was shooting his way, but secretly plotting how he could use this gratitude to pull something, later. For now, however. . .
Inu-Yasha, Kagome, Sango, Shippo, and even Kirara watched curiously as Miroku and Harai muttered together. Then Harai's voice rang out, loud and startled.
"KAMI! ARE YOU. . ." Miroku shushed him hastily, glanced around as if trying to make sure no one was spying on them, and drew Harai down so that he could lower his voice even more.
"I wonder what he's saying to him," Kagome said anxiously, gazing distractedly back at the pair. Inu-Yasha was watching them suspiciously, one ear cocked. Sango shook her head and sighed.
"Personally, I don't care. If he manages to shut that youkai up, I'll be eternally grateful."
"Eternally?" Inu-Yasha muttered skeptically, most of his attention still fixed on the unintelligible hum of conversation behind them. Even he couldn't make out what Miroku was saying at this range, and it was making him a little frustrated. Sango blushed.
"Well. . .at least until the next time he tries to grope me, then."
In a few more seconds, Miroku nodded emphatically to finish off what he was saying, then straightened up and walked unhurriedly forwards to join the rest of the group, who had stopped to observe the drama.
"What did you say to him?" Kagome hissed, glancing back. "He looks like he's in shock!"
"Oh, nothing of any importance," Miroku dismissed it airily. "He should be quiet for at least a little while now. Oh, and, Inu-Yasha?"
"Yeah?" Inu-Yasha inquired warily.
"If he mentions anything to do with. . .er, magic, or curses, for example. . .look really, really furious."
"Why?" The hanyou was really suspicious now.
"Just, ah, trust me," Miroku smiled at him disarmingly. "Now, let's be on our way, shall we?"
The party started off again, a blessedly (but temporarily, alas) silent Harai in tow. It was beginning to be a perfectly normal day.