Disclaimer (overly excited): Hey guys, guess what!
Audience: What?!
Disclaimer (taunting): You'll never guess!
Audience: Tell us!
Disclaimer: I don't own InuYasha.
Audience: Oh...
Disclaimer: Hee...hee...
Now on to...
Strange Interlude
Chapter 4
A dark figure snuck around the burning building. The mob of angry villagers was still at the front, determined to see the demon girl burn. No one saw Kenji slip away from the group.
He crept in the shadow and smoke of the fire and with a strong kick opened the flaming doors.
Jennifer lay there, helpless, unconscious on the ground, a burning piece of wood on her leg. He moved the log and dragged her limp body out of the fiery hole.
Several days later.
Two villagers with hoes on their backs passed Kenji's house.
"Poor Kenji," one of them said. "He's been locked up in his house since the fire. His heart must be broken."
"Oh well, what is done is done. The foreign demon girl cannot hurt us anymore..."
They begin to walk away from the hut to the fields.
"Hey, did you see that midday meteor shower the other day?"
"Yes. It was very strange. The stars were pink, were they not?"
"Yes, I believe so..."
***
Jennifer awoke to find herself in Kenji's room lying on a mat with a bag of cool water resting on her head. Kenji was at her side. She felt an intense burning sensation on her leg. Her eyes came in and out of focus. The smell of smoke was no longer in her nose.
{How long was I out? I swear if I keep falling unconscious like that I'm going to experience brain damage or something.}
Something touched the burn on her leg and she sat up while yelping in pain.
"Shh! Be still!" Kenji cautioned, "No one knows you are here."
"What happened Kenji? I remember being tossed into that burning hut, but then-AH!" She had discovered the burns on her back and arms.
"Shh!" he said again, putting his finger to her lips. "You need to leave here. The villagers all think you perished in the fire. You cannot stay here if you wish to remain alive."
Jennifer could see the obvious pain in his eyes. She nodded.
"Not yet. I understand what'll happen, but if you would please allow me to stay just a few more days to recover and--"
"Of course," he smiled.
He couldn't stand it. It hurt him too much. She had just come into his life when she had to leave. He would allow Jennifer to stay as long as was safe and necessary. He wanted to hold on to her as long as possible.
Kenji turned his head away, as did Jennifer.
She lay back down and for some reason thought of Sesshomaru. {Where is he right now? And what am I going to do now that I have nowhere to go?}
***
In the dead of night a great carriage flew across the sky against the full moon. The carriage creaked noisily in the wind. The curtain blew aside to reveal a lady with pink eye makeup and a multi-layered gown sitting inside. The woman's hands and feet were bound and she had a sad look cast upon her face.
Far below the sky-borne carriage stood a young man in red and a girl in a green and white school uniform. They were walking along in the moonlight when they had heard the movement of the carriage overhead.
The boy panicked and watched in horror as the carriage was ripped from the sky by a giant hand. The three-fingered hand belonged to a monstrously tall demon whose head was so high up in the clouds that the only things visible were its huge red eyes.
The behemoth crushed the carriage and the woman in it as the boy called out to her, calling her 'Mother'.
The woman had lived, but barely. She lay in the demon's hand hardly conscious and called out to her son.
The giant stepped forward revealing a much smaller demon in white standing on the monster's shoulder.
The young man in red called out to this demon with anger, "Is that you, Sesshomaru?"
The demon's long silver hair blew in the wind.
"Indeed," he answered, "I've quite missed you as well, little brother."
"InuYasha," the raven-haired schoolgirl spoke tugging on his sleeve, "he called you his brother. Does that mean-?"
Sesshomaru looked at the human girl. She was of average height and had long, black hair. Strange how she seemed to look almost exactly the same as the one who had set him free from his stone prison only weeks before. But no, that girl was surely dead by now.
"A mortal? How interesting."
"Yeah?" the girl retorted. "What of it?"
Sesshomaru ignored her and spoke instead to InuYasha, "Others would be shame, but with you, little brother, the girl quite suits you. These human creatures...I should think you've had enough of them. Or is it a taste from father?"
Sesshomaru was again reminded of the human girl he could not kill. He hated all humans, revered them as the scum of the planet, yet he couldn't hate that girl. That didn't mean he had any feeling toward her, he just didn't have that strong loathing rise up in his heart when he saw her. When that girl set him free and then begged for her life, as he was about to strike, he felt...nothing. There was nothing.
Sesshomaru was deterred from his thoughts. InuYasha had started talking.
"...You couldn't have come all this way just to tell me that!"
Sesshomaru scoffed, "Be not a fool. I have no such time to waste. The tomb of our father, where must I seek it?"
InuYasha looked confused.
"I got no idea what you're talking about. Besides if I did, there's no way I'd tell you!"
"I see," spoke Sesshomaru. "Then you give me no choice but to let your mother's suffering convince you!"
A bright light emanated from Sesshomaru's right hand, and he whipped the monster whose shoulder he was standing on. The demon tightened its grip on the elaborately clad woman.
InuYasha leapt into the air and slashed at the huge demon's hand with his Iron Reaver attack. The hand and the woman both fell to the ground as the monster screamed and tried to attack them with his remaining hand.
Kagome quickly rushed to the woman whom InuYasha claimed was his mother, and just as the giant demon's hand was to strike them, InuYasha jumped into its way. The monster slammed his hand into the ground, but a white light erupted before it hit, and when the monster moved his hand away the humans and hanyou he would have crushed were gone, replaced by a few smashed lotus petals.
"What a bother." Sesshomaru said.
"Aye milord. And yet it goes so well. Please milord, leave it all to me."
"This scheme of yours is beneath me. Should it fail you will die."
He turned to leave.
"As you will milord."
Sesshomaru moved to the place the Un-Mother had transported them. It was Jaken's plan to use the Un-Mother to get close to InuYasha to extort the information of the whereabouts of heir father's tomb from him.
The Un-Mother placed a spell on the area to make it look like something from InuYasha's childhood. The hanyou and that human were under the illusion that they were in a real place: a serene meadow and pond when in reality they were in a foggy bog.
Sesshomaru watched all this as if it were a performance of some kind. He knew the script and knew what InuYasha was seeing, what imagery the Un- Mother was putting into his head, that might bring him into a false sense of trust, and force him to divulge the location of the tomb. But there was no such luck. InuYasha's mind was more shielded than expected and if the Un-Mother was to prod any farther his mind would be destroyed.
{This is becoming rather annoying.} Sesshomaru thought. {I need to know where the tomb is so I can obtain my birthright, Tetsusaiga, and make myself unopposable.}
Sesshomaru's eyes then widened when he heard InuYasha mutter.
"...Black Pearl...on the right."
"So that's where it is..." Sesshomaru whispered.
The Un-Mother's illusion then began to fade because Kagome had disturbed the pond's reflection, which had projected the spell. InuYasha was pulled from the Un-mother and tossed to the ground.
InuYasha struggled to stand and had only just now taken a breath when Sesshomaru used his demon speed and snatched InuYasha by the throat. His grasp was slack enough to allow trace amounts of oxygen to enter his lungs but still tight enough to cause great discomfort.
"Of all the places for him to hide it. All this time beneath our very own noses, or to be technical, above our very own noses-right above one might say. Father was determined to keep it a secret, which is why he chose here to hide it."
InuYasha gasped for a breath, "What? You're not making sense!"
Kagome watched in horror, as it seemed like InuYasha would die for a second time. His brother's death grip was turning InuYasha's face completely white. Kagome feared that any longer under this treatment InuYasha might faint.
"Well little brother," Sesshomaru said coolly, "since it was obviously alone without your knowledge, how would you like to come with me and find out?"
Sesshomaru raised his other hand and pointed his first two fingers as InuYasha's right eye.
A fury of yellow sparks came erupted from Sesshomaru's fingers. They bore deep into InuYasha's eye. The pupil widened and a small black orb was withdrawn.
{Finally Tetsusaiga will be mine.}
Sesshomaru closed his hand over the black pearl and dropped the breathless InuYasha.
He smiled, "No wonder looking for it beneath ground was useless. 'Seeing yet never seen. Protected yet ever known to its protector.' (He said that...) Our father's tomb hidden inside a black pearl deep within your eye."
Sesshomaru turned around and dropped the pearl on the ground. He took Jaken's Staff of Skulls from him and hit the end of the staff forcefully against the pearl.
The old man on the staff opened its eyes and laughed hysterically. Now the tomb would open.
There appeared a great rip in the air, followed by a swirling black hole. Sesshomaru and Jaken quickly jumped through. Kagome rushed to get InuYasha standing and they too followed through the portal.
In the portal it was day, though hardly. The sky was a dull gray and orange. The ground was vast and barren with no trees as far as the eye could see. There were no forms of life except for the skeleton birds that flocked and flew in the sky. They flew in tight circles and occasionally landed on the huge skeleton of a demon, which could only be Sesshomaru and InuYasha's father, the Great Dog Demon.
Sesshomaru glided through the sky, Jaken trying his hardest to keep up. He grabbed onto Sesshomaru's furry boa and held on the rest of the ride. Sesshomaru felt this and though it greatly annoyed him, he would allow it only because he would soon claim the Tetsusaiga; the sword fabled to kill 100 in a single swoop. He would soon have power over all, so it mattered not what Jaken did.
Same with that human girl he had met. He no longer cared why he couldn't dispose of her. It makes no difference what Basoni had said about the one to free him. He was dead. All that mattered now was claiming the Tetsusaiga and fulfilling his own ambitions. Let InuYasha and that human come later...
~!@#$%^&*()_+~!@#$%^&*()_+~!@#$%^&*()_+~!@#$%^&*()_+~!@#$%^&*(
As you may or may not have guessed thoughts are now denoted by {brackets!} Though this does not give the same effect as italics, I've given up on it. *sigh*
You know, I'm watching Trigun right now. It's an awesome show. I love that Wolfwood...yeah he's pretty sexy...Am I crazy?
Oh yeah! I have another disclaimer.
Disclaimer: Parts of this chapter contained word for word dialogue from the English-dubbed episode: Aristocratic Assassin Sesshomaru and of the episode following it...uh...the name escapes me at the moment...Anyway, hope you weren't too annoyed with it...And I hope I don't get in trouble for it...Hey! I mean I did mention I don't own any of it. Rumiko Takahashi does! (Or whoever owns the episodes...I'm not sure. I'm glad Funimation doesn't.they would've ruined it...)
Anyway...thanks for reading!
Audience: What?!
Disclaimer (taunting): You'll never guess!
Audience: Tell us!
Disclaimer: I don't own InuYasha.
Audience: Oh...
Disclaimer: Hee...hee...
Now on to...
Strange Interlude
Chapter 4
A dark figure snuck around the burning building. The mob of angry villagers was still at the front, determined to see the demon girl burn. No one saw Kenji slip away from the group.
He crept in the shadow and smoke of the fire and with a strong kick opened the flaming doors.
Jennifer lay there, helpless, unconscious on the ground, a burning piece of wood on her leg. He moved the log and dragged her limp body out of the fiery hole.
Several days later.
Two villagers with hoes on their backs passed Kenji's house.
"Poor Kenji," one of them said. "He's been locked up in his house since the fire. His heart must be broken."
"Oh well, what is done is done. The foreign demon girl cannot hurt us anymore..."
They begin to walk away from the hut to the fields.
"Hey, did you see that midday meteor shower the other day?"
"Yes. It was very strange. The stars were pink, were they not?"
"Yes, I believe so..."
***
Jennifer awoke to find herself in Kenji's room lying on a mat with a bag of cool water resting on her head. Kenji was at her side. She felt an intense burning sensation on her leg. Her eyes came in and out of focus. The smell of smoke was no longer in her nose.
{How long was I out? I swear if I keep falling unconscious like that I'm going to experience brain damage or something.}
Something touched the burn on her leg and she sat up while yelping in pain.
"Shh! Be still!" Kenji cautioned, "No one knows you are here."
"What happened Kenji? I remember being tossed into that burning hut, but then-AH!" She had discovered the burns on her back and arms.
"Shh!" he said again, putting his finger to her lips. "You need to leave here. The villagers all think you perished in the fire. You cannot stay here if you wish to remain alive."
Jennifer could see the obvious pain in his eyes. She nodded.
"Not yet. I understand what'll happen, but if you would please allow me to stay just a few more days to recover and--"
"Of course," he smiled.
He couldn't stand it. It hurt him too much. She had just come into his life when she had to leave. He would allow Jennifer to stay as long as was safe and necessary. He wanted to hold on to her as long as possible.
Kenji turned his head away, as did Jennifer.
She lay back down and for some reason thought of Sesshomaru. {Where is he right now? And what am I going to do now that I have nowhere to go?}
***
In the dead of night a great carriage flew across the sky against the full moon. The carriage creaked noisily in the wind. The curtain blew aside to reveal a lady with pink eye makeup and a multi-layered gown sitting inside. The woman's hands and feet were bound and she had a sad look cast upon her face.
Far below the sky-borne carriage stood a young man in red and a girl in a green and white school uniform. They were walking along in the moonlight when they had heard the movement of the carriage overhead.
The boy panicked and watched in horror as the carriage was ripped from the sky by a giant hand. The three-fingered hand belonged to a monstrously tall demon whose head was so high up in the clouds that the only things visible were its huge red eyes.
The behemoth crushed the carriage and the woman in it as the boy called out to her, calling her 'Mother'.
The woman had lived, but barely. She lay in the demon's hand hardly conscious and called out to her son.
The giant stepped forward revealing a much smaller demon in white standing on the monster's shoulder.
The young man in red called out to this demon with anger, "Is that you, Sesshomaru?"
The demon's long silver hair blew in the wind.
"Indeed," he answered, "I've quite missed you as well, little brother."
"InuYasha," the raven-haired schoolgirl spoke tugging on his sleeve, "he called you his brother. Does that mean-?"
Sesshomaru looked at the human girl. She was of average height and had long, black hair. Strange how she seemed to look almost exactly the same as the one who had set him free from his stone prison only weeks before. But no, that girl was surely dead by now.
"A mortal? How interesting."
"Yeah?" the girl retorted. "What of it?"
Sesshomaru ignored her and spoke instead to InuYasha, "Others would be shame, but with you, little brother, the girl quite suits you. These human creatures...I should think you've had enough of them. Or is it a taste from father?"
Sesshomaru was again reminded of the human girl he could not kill. He hated all humans, revered them as the scum of the planet, yet he couldn't hate that girl. That didn't mean he had any feeling toward her, he just didn't have that strong loathing rise up in his heart when he saw her. When that girl set him free and then begged for her life, as he was about to strike, he felt...nothing. There was nothing.
Sesshomaru was deterred from his thoughts. InuYasha had started talking.
"...You couldn't have come all this way just to tell me that!"
Sesshomaru scoffed, "Be not a fool. I have no such time to waste. The tomb of our father, where must I seek it?"
InuYasha looked confused.
"I got no idea what you're talking about. Besides if I did, there's no way I'd tell you!"
"I see," spoke Sesshomaru. "Then you give me no choice but to let your mother's suffering convince you!"
A bright light emanated from Sesshomaru's right hand, and he whipped the monster whose shoulder he was standing on. The demon tightened its grip on the elaborately clad woman.
InuYasha leapt into the air and slashed at the huge demon's hand with his Iron Reaver attack. The hand and the woman both fell to the ground as the monster screamed and tried to attack them with his remaining hand.
Kagome quickly rushed to the woman whom InuYasha claimed was his mother, and just as the giant demon's hand was to strike them, InuYasha jumped into its way. The monster slammed his hand into the ground, but a white light erupted before it hit, and when the monster moved his hand away the humans and hanyou he would have crushed were gone, replaced by a few smashed lotus petals.
"What a bother." Sesshomaru said.
"Aye milord. And yet it goes so well. Please milord, leave it all to me."
"This scheme of yours is beneath me. Should it fail you will die."
He turned to leave.
"As you will milord."
Sesshomaru moved to the place the Un-Mother had transported them. It was Jaken's plan to use the Un-Mother to get close to InuYasha to extort the information of the whereabouts of heir father's tomb from him.
The Un-Mother placed a spell on the area to make it look like something from InuYasha's childhood. The hanyou and that human were under the illusion that they were in a real place: a serene meadow and pond when in reality they were in a foggy bog.
Sesshomaru watched all this as if it were a performance of some kind. He knew the script and knew what InuYasha was seeing, what imagery the Un- Mother was putting into his head, that might bring him into a false sense of trust, and force him to divulge the location of the tomb. But there was no such luck. InuYasha's mind was more shielded than expected and if the Un-Mother was to prod any farther his mind would be destroyed.
{This is becoming rather annoying.} Sesshomaru thought. {I need to know where the tomb is so I can obtain my birthright, Tetsusaiga, and make myself unopposable.}
Sesshomaru's eyes then widened when he heard InuYasha mutter.
"...Black Pearl...on the right."
"So that's where it is..." Sesshomaru whispered.
The Un-Mother's illusion then began to fade because Kagome had disturbed the pond's reflection, which had projected the spell. InuYasha was pulled from the Un-mother and tossed to the ground.
InuYasha struggled to stand and had only just now taken a breath when Sesshomaru used his demon speed and snatched InuYasha by the throat. His grasp was slack enough to allow trace amounts of oxygen to enter his lungs but still tight enough to cause great discomfort.
"Of all the places for him to hide it. All this time beneath our very own noses, or to be technical, above our very own noses-right above one might say. Father was determined to keep it a secret, which is why he chose here to hide it."
InuYasha gasped for a breath, "What? You're not making sense!"
Kagome watched in horror, as it seemed like InuYasha would die for a second time. His brother's death grip was turning InuYasha's face completely white. Kagome feared that any longer under this treatment InuYasha might faint.
"Well little brother," Sesshomaru said coolly, "since it was obviously alone without your knowledge, how would you like to come with me and find out?"
Sesshomaru raised his other hand and pointed his first two fingers as InuYasha's right eye.
A fury of yellow sparks came erupted from Sesshomaru's fingers. They bore deep into InuYasha's eye. The pupil widened and a small black orb was withdrawn.
{Finally Tetsusaiga will be mine.}
Sesshomaru closed his hand over the black pearl and dropped the breathless InuYasha.
He smiled, "No wonder looking for it beneath ground was useless. 'Seeing yet never seen. Protected yet ever known to its protector.' (He said that...) Our father's tomb hidden inside a black pearl deep within your eye."
Sesshomaru turned around and dropped the pearl on the ground. He took Jaken's Staff of Skulls from him and hit the end of the staff forcefully against the pearl.
The old man on the staff opened its eyes and laughed hysterically. Now the tomb would open.
There appeared a great rip in the air, followed by a swirling black hole. Sesshomaru and Jaken quickly jumped through. Kagome rushed to get InuYasha standing and they too followed through the portal.
In the portal it was day, though hardly. The sky was a dull gray and orange. The ground was vast and barren with no trees as far as the eye could see. There were no forms of life except for the skeleton birds that flocked and flew in the sky. They flew in tight circles and occasionally landed on the huge skeleton of a demon, which could only be Sesshomaru and InuYasha's father, the Great Dog Demon.
Sesshomaru glided through the sky, Jaken trying his hardest to keep up. He grabbed onto Sesshomaru's furry boa and held on the rest of the ride. Sesshomaru felt this and though it greatly annoyed him, he would allow it only because he would soon claim the Tetsusaiga; the sword fabled to kill 100 in a single swoop. He would soon have power over all, so it mattered not what Jaken did.
Same with that human girl he had met. He no longer cared why he couldn't dispose of her. It makes no difference what Basoni had said about the one to free him. He was dead. All that mattered now was claiming the Tetsusaiga and fulfilling his own ambitions. Let InuYasha and that human come later...
~!@#$%^&*()_+~!@#$%^&*()_+~!@#$%^&*()_+~!@#$%^&*()_+~!@#$%^&*(
As you may or may not have guessed thoughts are now denoted by {brackets!} Though this does not give the same effect as italics, I've given up on it. *sigh*
You know, I'm watching Trigun right now. It's an awesome show. I love that Wolfwood...yeah he's pretty sexy...Am I crazy?
Oh yeah! I have another disclaimer.
Disclaimer: Parts of this chapter contained word for word dialogue from the English-dubbed episode: Aristocratic Assassin Sesshomaru and of the episode following it...uh...the name escapes me at the moment...Anyway, hope you weren't too annoyed with it...And I hope I don't get in trouble for it...Hey! I mean I did mention I don't own any of it. Rumiko Takahashi does! (Or whoever owns the episodes...I'm not sure. I'm glad Funimation doesn't.they would've ruined it...)
Anyway...thanks for reading!