Author's Notes: Took me long enough to get around to updating this one. God I'm a lazy bastard.

Dawn of a New Age

Chapter 7- Thunder

Kagome felt herself drifting in and out of darkness. Her head felt like it was packed with cotton until a throbbing pain raced through her temple. She felt a powerful arm holding her by the waist. "Inuyasha?" she groaned softly. There was a sensation of movement and as her vision cleared, Kagome found herself flying above the treetops. Memory hit her like a fist and she gasped as she looked up to see herself being carried by the Moreau called Hiten. "You!" she shrieked.

"Damn it, she's awake," Hiten grumbled. He roughly braced Kagome up against his hip as she began to squirm. "I wouldn't do that, bitch. We're fifty feet up."

"Inuyasha will come for me," Kagome said threateningly.

"Who?" Hiten asked with an arched brow.

"A Moreau. My friend." Kagome looked up at him defiantly, trying to stay brave.

"You mean the canine Moreau who they tossed in storage? That's convenient. We were told to be on the look-out for him." Hiten smirked cruelly and looked down at Kagome. "Did you hear that Manten? The little bitch here is going to bring us Inuyasha."

"That's great news, brother," Manten answered with the same cruel smirk. "We'll be rewarded greatly for bringing him back."

Kagome was starting to wonder if maybe she should have kept her mouth shut. This was going from bad to worse quickly. She decided to keep faith in Inuyasha, though. If he could stand up to all the torture he was put through in the Project, then he could handle whatever these oafs could dish out. Right?

Something zipped past her head and in the next instant struck Manten upside the head hard. The bulky Moreau wavered on his hoverboard for a second before losing his balance and falling off into a clearing below. The board, without anyone to steer it, flew off wildly before slamming into a tree.

"Manten!" Hiten shouted and descended. When he was a few feet above the ground, he dropped Kagome unceremoniously and rushed over to his brother. "What happened?"

"I happened," came a voice from the trees. Kagome looked with a smile as Inuyasha bounded out of the forest and landed in a crouch beside her with Shippo on his shoulder. "I'm in an extremely bad mood right now, and I'm going to take it out on you two."

"Inuyasha!" Kagome cried out involuntarily in joy. He was here! Before she could say anything else she found a startled Shippo thrust into her arms.

"Take the kid and get back," Inuyasha said in a low voice.

Kagome knew better than to question. She looked over at Hiten and Manten and started to retreat to the edge of the clearing. She would need to find cover, as this was going to get really ugly in a minute.

-x-

Inuyasha slowly rose up and cracked his neck. "Who wants to go first?"

"Does it matter?" Hiten asked with a snarl. "It's not like you've been trained in combat."

"I'm not as dumb as I look," Inuyasha said evenly as he flexed his knuckles. He was going to need every ounce of his speed here. These two definitely had him outmatched in raw power. He'd have to try and wear them down.

"Fine," Hiten spat. "Brother, do you want to go first? He struck you, after all."

"It would be my pleasure," Manten growled.

Inuyasha noted with some satisfaction that the wrong he had thrown left a very visible bruise. He widened his stance and balled his hands into fists. Just stay loose. Just what the instructors always told Koga. If you tensed up, you wouldn't be able to react as quickly.

It was a good thing Inuyasha remembered that lesson as Manten opened with mouth and fired off a blast of what looked like electricity. He was barely able to dodge the incoming attack, landing in a crouch a few feet off. Since when the hell could they do that?!

Inuyasha looked up as Manten charged at him with a roar. Inuyasha nimbly sidestepped his slower opponent and pivoted into a hard kick to the back. Manten fell face-first into the ground but rolled over as Inuyasha prepared another attack and opened his mouth for another thunderbolt that Inuyasha just barely dodged in time. A stray lock of hair got caught in the blast and the ends were singed off.

Manten used his narrow window of opportunity to kick Inuyasha hard in the knee, bringing him to the ground. The canine Moreau recovered quickly and rolled away before Manten could grapple him and followed up with a kick to the head. Just as he figured. Manten was stronger, but he was slow and clumsy. Inuyasha held the mobility card on this one. But what about Hiten?

As if on cue, Inuyasha heard the sound of the small red discs on Hiten's boots activating. He ducked under a swing of the bladed staff and reached back, grabbing Hiten by the coat lapels and flipping him over and onto the ground. Inuyasha leapt back several feet and adjusted his stance. Goddamn sons of bitches ganging up on him at once! This just got a hell of a lot harder.

Hiten jumped up and swung out his bladed staff. This time, Inuyasha wasn't fast enough, and the blade slashed across his left arm. He let out a sharp yelp of pain and felt the opposite end of the staff impact with his head, knocking him off his feet and onto the ground. He opened his eyes in time to see Hiten level the staff, which crackled with electricity. Inuyasha rolled away just as a bolt shot out of the end and scorched the earth where he just was.

Inuyasha sprang to his feet only to feel Manten's shoulder slam into his side and send him sprawling across the ground again. He sprang away again as another bolt of electricity was fire at him. Damn it! He'd have to take one of them down in a hurry. Hiten was the most dangerous. Better go for him.

Inuyasha made a lunge for Hiten, but the humanoid Moreau brother just leaped up into the air and began firing off bolts from his staff with hovering with the discs on his boots. That staff and those boots would have to go. But at the moment, Inuyasha was too concerned with staying two steps ahead of both the thunderbolts from Hiten and Manten.

Out of the corner of his eye, Inuyasha caught a gleam of light and looked over as he jumped away to see Kagome holding a stone in her hand glowing brightly. Since when the hell could she do that?! She threw the rock as hard as she could at Hiten, but it missed and instead hit Manten, upon whom it exploded on impact in a flash of light sending the ugly Moreau crashing to the ground like a bag of cement.

"What the fuck?!" Hiten shouted and looked in the direction the stone had come from. "You bitch!" With that Hiten changed course and headed for Kagome.

Oh, that fucking tore it. Inuyasha leaped up into the air after Hiten and pounced on him in mid-air, bringing them both crashing to the ground. "Manten!" Hiten shouted to his brother. "Get the girl!"

Manten nodded as he picked himself up and made a charge for Kagome who gasped and picked up Shippo to make a retreat. Her path was cut off when one of Manten's thunderbolts streaked past her, missing by only a few inches.

Inuyasha roared in rage and frustration as he grappled with Hiten. "Kagome! Get outta here!"

Too late, Manten was moving faster than Inuyasha thought was possible and he almost on top of Kagome and Shippo now. No!

"Inuyasha!" Kagome cried out as Manten grabbed hold of her. He batted Shippo away like a fly, sending the fox Moreau flying into a tree trunk.

"As soon as your heart stops," Manten snarled, "I'll feast on it." With that he wrapped a clawed hand Kagome's throat and lifted her up off the ground. He pinned her to a tree trunk and smiled darkly.

Inuyasha felt that part of his mind stronger than ever at the sight of Kagome's strangled cries and desperate squirming. He screamed in rage as he continued grappling with Hiten. There! Beside them lay Hiten bladed staff. Inuyasha flipped them around so that Hiten had his back to the ground. He nimbly snatched up the staff and drove the blade through Hiten's shoulder and into the ground, causing the reptile Moreau to howl in agony.

Inuyasha scrambled away and dove toward the edge of the clearing. He heart was pounding out of his chest with fury. How dare any one of them even touch Kagome! For an instant, flecks of red, danced before Inuyasha's vision, but they vanished as he leaped through the air. Manten looked over his shoulder just as Inuyasha descended on his, bracing himself against the bigger Moreau's back with his knees and digging his claws into the neck and shoulders.

With a roar of pain and anger, Manten dropped Kagome to the ground and began vainly struggling with his stubby arms to get Inuyasha off of him. Meaty fists impacted with Inuyasha's back and shoulders repeatedly, but he didn't let go. He had to wait for the opportunity.

At last, both of Manten's arms were down and Inuyasha released his grip on the neck and shoulders. He grabbed hold of Manten's head and twisted sharply. The distinctive cracking of bones followed the movement, and Inuyasha hopped off as Manten fell to the ground dead.

Shaking his head to clear it, Inuyasha rushed over to Kagome. Her neck was already starting to show bruises and she looked a little out of it, but other than that, she seemed okay. Now to deal with Hiten.

Before Inuyasha could turn around, pain erupted throughout his upper body. He looked down and saw the point of Hiten's weapon sticking out of his shoulder. There was a crackle and a blast of electricity ran through Inuyasha's body, eliciting a scream of agony from him before the blade was pulled out and he dropped to his knees.

Inuyasha looked over his shoulder to see a scowling Hiten nursing his mutilated shoulder. "An eye for an eye," he spat. "Now to finish you off for what you did to my brother."

So this was how it ended, huh? The electricity had left Inuyasha's reflexes dulled and the wound in his shoulder made it almost impossible to use his right arm. And Kagome... Red flecks began to dance in front of Inuyasha's vision again, and his breathing turned into ragged growls and snarls.

Hiten's brows went up and he readied his staff defensively. "What the hell?" He raised his staff, prepared to make the killing blow. Even if Inuyasha could dodge, Kagome would die. There was no way he'd let that happen. He braced himself, ready to try and fend off the attack instead.

But it never came. A small blast of blue fire came out of nowhere and hit Hiten in the face. With a cry of pain, Hiten dropped his staff and put his hands to his face. "My eyes!" he shouted. "Who did that?!"

Inuyasha seized his opportunity. With a roar, he lunged forward, a power he never knew he had filling him. He swung his arm with claws bared and a yellow light erupted from his hand. It turned into arcs of light that struck Hiten and passed through him before twisting into the sky and vanishing in a flash.

Hiten didn't make a sound when the arcs hit him. His hands had parted away from his face enough to show the expression of shock frozen onto his features. The smell of charred flesh filled the air, and in the next moment, Hiten's body collapsed to the ground in pieces.

Inuyasha stood still for a moment as his breathing returned to normal and his vision cleared. He looked down at the dismembered corpse before him and then at his own hand. He caught himself wondering for the third time today when someone had gotten the ability to do something. Then he remembered the fireball and looked in the direction it had come to see Shippo weakly staggering to his feet and still surrounded in a ghostly aura of flames. Correction: fourth time today.

Inuyasha grimaced at the pain in his shoulder and collapsed back against a tree as Kagome finally came to.

-x-

Kagome shook her head to clear it. That was twice today she had been knocked out. It wasn't an experience she had any desire to go through again. Her vision had tunneled, but was starting to clear up. The first thing she saw was Manten's body laying face down with the neck at an unnatural angle. She gasped and looked around. First she saw Shippo slowly regaining his senses as he stood up. Then came the sight of Hiten's body laying in about five or six pieces in the ground. She gasped at the sight of that, but what shocked her even more was Inuyasha propped against a tree with his face twisted in pain as he tried to stop his shoulder from bleeding. "Inuyasha!" she cried out in alarm.

"Kagome," he mumbled as if in exhaustion. "Got 'em," he said with a smirk, though it clearly took him effort to do so.

Kagome scrambled over on her hands and knees to his side and looked at his wounds. "Hold still," she said softly yet forcefully. With that she closed her eyes and laid her hands on his cheeks.

"Kagome, what...?" Inuyasha began to ask, but Kagome softly shushed him.

She concentrated her mind and reached out into him. Her hands were enveloped in a soft pink glow. She reached out to the wound in his shoulder and visualized as if it were her own. She willed it to close. For the muscles to mend, the blood to clot. There wasn't much she could do now, but she could keep him from bleeding to death, at least. After a moment, trying to repair the damage became too much of a strain, and Kagome had to let go of him.

Inuyasha looked at her in awe for a moment before pulling down on the collar of his shirt and see that the wound had closed up.

"It'll open up again if you move it too much," Kagome explained. "But that's the best I can do for now."

Inuyasha nodded slowly in understanding, his bright yellow eyes softening in a way Kagome had never seen before.

She smiled gently at him and went over to Shippo. She scooped the Moreau child up in her arms and cradled him as Inuyasha slowly stood up. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Shippo said weakly. "We got 'em right?"

"You're damn right we did," Inuyasha said in a strangely soft voice. "Now let's get the hell out of here."

Kagome nodded slowly and began to walk beside Inuyasha back to the ranch.

It was sunset by the time they reached the burnt-out ruins, but Inuyasha wordlessly began picking up where Kagome left off preparing the bodies. Kagome took Shippo back to the car where he promptly fell asleep and went to help Inuyasha. Two hours passed as Inuyasha began digging shallow graves with his bare hands and gathering up stones for markers. Both of them were covered in dirt and dried blood by the time the macabre task was over, but it made Kagome feel a little better to know that at least in death these refugees could find peace and dignity.

The two of them went back to the car in silence. The first few minutes of the drive passed quietly before Inuyasha flatly asked, "So I assume you want to keep the kid?"

Kagome glanced over at Inuyasha in surprise. Did he really just say that? The thought had crossed her mind, but... "Well, it makes sense. Where else can he go?"

Inuyasha said nothing for a moment. "I just wanted a fair warning. I'm not good with kids."

Kagome couldn't help but smile. Even in this brief period of time, she knew enough about Inuyasha to realize that was his dysfunctional way of saying he approved.

-x-

"You realize, Miss Yoshida, that this is to be kept as quiet as possible," the aging agent behind the desk said.

"I believe that goes without saying, sir."

"Good. It took a lot of effort on my part to convince our superiors that you were suited to this case. I cannot stress enough just how serious this is."

"I understand."

The man handed her a binder with several manila folders inside. "Here is all the information on Project: Moreau that we have at this time. Enclosed are also several files on individuals we want you to investigate first. Do not let us down, Miss Yoshida."

"I won't," Sango answered sincerely as she turned on her heel to leave.

-x-

Author's Notes: I don't know why, but I love doing fight scenes. Maybe it's the testosterone in me, but Ang Lee is among my pantheon of cinematic gods.

Mimiko: Inuyasha is just expecting too much of her. Look through the story and you'll see that most of the time, to sense auras Kagome has to consciously think about it as it's still a developing power. She found Inuyasha by accident.

Secret-punk-rocker16: Yeah, well... bare with me here.

Magellan-chan: Now that you've seen Hiten and Manten get ripped apart (metaphorically and literally), do you think the pay-off was up to scratch?

Zonza: I think I just have an easier time with Inuyasha simply because I'm a guy. The only character I've ever seen more hyper masculine than Inuyasha would be Michael Myers of Halloween, but now I'm getting really analytical, and I'll probably bore you to death if I go on.

Father Malvado: Like I said, parts of it will mirror the series, but for the most part, I just want the similarities to be something people can look at and smile at the comparison.

xthe stranger withinx: No I haven't seen The Grudge. I've been very cheap with my money the last couple months due to the holidays.

Decrescendo: In hindsight, the whole "composure" thing was just poor word choice on my part.

Lost-Remembrance: Convenient timing, isn't it?