Death Full Circle
Chapter 5
Arina
"He slit her throat, officer! I swear! And then the boy was covered in blood, and he was crying..."
One of the girls next to the boy telling the story whispered, "I think he loved her."
It was the next Tuesday after the strange incident at the high school, and police officers were still wandering around trying to get a straight story out of the student witnesses. Even though they all had basically the same tale, the officers just couldn't believe that the crime seen they'd come across was perpetrated by a large god-like man and his demon pets.
When they'd arrived at the scene, acting on a 911 call made by a student that said a man was attacking four other kids, it was already after the fact. And it was no longer a 'fight scene' or a 'crime scene,' but a murder scene.
One girl was lying on the ground with her throat cut open, facing a boy with a knife in his heart (forensics assumed it was the same weapon used to kill the girl) who was coated in the girl's blood, as if he'd been standing there when her throat had been cut. Behind him was another girl and boy, or what was left of them. They did look like they had been shredded by a rabid dog, torn to pieces, just as the witnesses described. In fact, the presumable circumstances for the four kids' deaths fit perfectly into the other students' stories. But no one was willing to believe that a god, a couple hordes of demons, and a demonic dog named Lycan had killed four high school students. So they set an investigation out for a man fitting the students' description (minus the godly details), and called him "Armed and Dangerous," even though the only weapon apparently used at the scene was the knife in the boy's chest.
Needless to say, they never found anyone who could have committed the crime. The investigation was sent to a special branch that dealt with such things, unsolved mysteries and so-called 'spiritual' crimes that were equally unsolvable.
Kagome blinked her eyes open. Her body felt heavy, and her head ached. There was a dim sense of fear overlaying all her other emotions and senses at the moment, and she didn't really move when someone picked her up, pulling her bodily close to themselves.
Then she realized that that someone was crying in her hair, and that it was Inuyasha, sobbing over her. She tried to lifter her head, looking up at him. His eyes were squeezed shut, and his hair, still silver, was draped around his face and over hers.
"In...u...ya...sha?" she murmured, pressing a hand to her throat. There was a burning sensation there, but as soon as she touched it, it faded away.
Inuyasha's only response to her awakening was to pull her closer to his chest, burying his face into her shoulder. "I hate this," he muttered after a moment, voice thick and dead-sounding. It took Kagome a moment to realize it, but he sounded defeated. "I hate this," he repeated. "You died...It's not right...seeing you die..." He threw his head back, and howled into the air, "WHAT THE FCK IS GOING ON!"
Kagome was suddenly bombarded with memories of what had happened. She started shaking as she felt that fear, the body-numbing, mind-stilling fear that had possessed her just before Naraku had killed her. She'd never felt that before. Was it one of those things one could only feel right before they died?
She buried her head in Inuyasha's shoulder, and started to cry. He only held her tighter, and they stayed like that for a long time. Eventually Kagome stopped crying, lifting her head to look at Inuyasha. She sniffled, pressing that all-encompassing fear down into the depths of her heart, hopefully never to be retrieved.
"Inuyasha? You're all right, too?" she asked. As he nodded, she suddenly became aware that they were in a position...And she didn't really care. She pressed her face against his chest again, fighting the tears.
A sudden cough from behind them had them turning to face a grinning Miroku and a blushing Sango. It was then that Kagome bothered to take notice of her surroundings.
They were sitting in a barn in a patch of moonlight, surrounded by hay. Up to their left was a loft with some of the bottom boards torn out, and the door to their right was hanging sideways. The light of the moon fell in through the roof, half of which was gone, and the other half looking as if it would fall soon.
Inuyasha gently set Kagome back on the ground, but didn't do anything to dispel Miroku's expression. Instead, he demanded quite bluntly of the monk, "Where are we?" in a tone that was a little closer to his usual one than any he'd used just yet.
Miroku turned serious. "How the hell should I know, idiot?" he said back, rather blandly, considering he didn't usually talk so informally. "Sango-san and I only woke up a moment ago, to the two of you...And this place looks like it'll fall down any minute." Miroku deftly cut himself off and changed the subject before either of the two teens could decide he would be better roasted.
Kagome stood shakily and wandered over to the ladder under the loft while the others kept talking.
"It was terrifying," Sango was saying. "I can still feel the fear I had when I was staring him down."
"I...I don't want to do that again." Inuyasha muttered. "It wasn't even my own death that hurt so bad, so what happens when..?" He cut off, unable to finish his thoughts.
Kagome lifted her hand from under the hay, pulling out a piece of very old, yellowed paper. "Hey, guys - " she started to call, but was cut off by the creaking sound of hinges coming from the run-down door.
Everyone turned to the entrance into the barn, and stared at a young girl standing there. She had short, ragged, red-brown hair that cupped sloppily around her face, and her eyes were a pale hazel color. She was wearing loose-fitting tan pants and a shredded-looking vest over her muddy white shirt. Her face was streaked with dirt and tear-stains, and she gulped under their scrutiny.
"Wh-what are you doing here?" she asked, her voice a high-pitched, squeaking whisper. "Why are you in this old barn? And who...who are you?"
Kagome walked over to the little girl, picking her up nimbly. She hugged the child to her chest and cooed, "What's wrong? Are you okay? Where are your parents, honey?" Sango was at her side, and Miroku and Inuyasha were watching from a distance away, but standing.
"I-I-I'm Arina...from Saft...there was a war...and my parents are dead!" She pressed her face into Kagome's shirt and cried.
Kagome realized that she was wearing scrappy brown-hued clothes that resembled the girl's, but in a little better shape. She also saw that the others were dressed so, too.
Sango reached over and patted the young girl's head. "It's all right."
"Now, child, would you tell us where we are?" Miroku said from behind them.
"sniff, sniff You're in Meci...in an old barn...outside the village. Meci was burned down a year ago...and it's not far from Saft...so Aoron sent me here...He said it was safe, since the Shift have already burned it down...they won't attack again. He's going to meet me here in two days. I...I heard you talking in here...and thought you might know where I could stay...because..." She stopped, and scrunched her eyebrows as she looked around. "But there's only four of you," she said slowly.
"Yeah?" Inuyasha asked from behind her. "So?"
"But Nemi said you travel in groups of at least six!" Arina cried.
"Wait, Arina!" Kagome said, stopping the child from possibly crying again. "Tell us, how old are you?"
"I'm nine."
"And who is...Ay-oh-rahn?"
"Aoron's my Sibling." Arina said, nodding as if that explained everything.
"Your brother?" Sango wondered.
"No, my Sibling. We're cousins, but he was told by Nemi to...to..." She broke off, saying something none of them understood.
"To what?" Kagome said, cocking her head to the side.
"To ishaptha. To be a guardian to me. He would be like a parent to me should anything happen to my own..." She looked like she was about to start crying again, but she held back her tears and continued. "Siblings keep you out of trouble. They watch out for you...and they'll lie for you if you need them to. You can always go to them if you need to talk, or be away from you home for a while...At least, I could always go to Aoron. And he lied for me to my Papa lots of times!"
"I see. I think we should talk to...Aoron..." Miroku was taking charge... "In the meantime, you should get some sleep. Lie under the hayloft and rest."
Arina nodded, and ran over to the ladder as soon as Kagome put her down. She crawled into the hay under the loft and snuggled up. Little snores were heard almost as soon as she closed her eyes.
"I think we should wait in this town until Aoron shows up. Then we should talk to him. Get a better feel of this area, and find out what this war Arina was talking about is. I have a feeling he should know more about it than Arina."
Sango nodded in agreement with Miroku. "Once we know a little more about this place, we can settle in and find out why none of us are dead."
"Or are we?" Inuyasha muttered. "Are we dead? Have we just moved on to the afterlife?"
"No." Kagome said. "I know what happens when souls are moved into the afterlife. Little demons take their souls away to be judged. No, we would know if that were what had happened."
"Kagome's right." Miroku said, nodding. "I know this is wrong, because there's no way we could all be in the same place if we were dead."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean!" Inuyasha demanded.
"Look, I'm not saying anything about you, Inuyasha. Even if you are supposed to end up in heaven, I don't care what you say, there's no way Kagome and I would end up in the same place. She's pure-hearted, and I have no illusions about my soul."
"Don't talk about me like that! I'm right here, you know!" Kagome cried.
Miroku continued as if she hadn't spoken. "Plus, that girl's alive. I know she is. Her flesh is real, and her soul is bound to it. Even if we were in limbo, or hell, her soul wouldn't be bound to her body."
"Okay, so we're still alive." Sango said. "We know this because there is substantial evidence to prove it. We'd know of we were dead, we probably wouldn't all end up in the same place, and there wouldn't be a living person where ever we did end up. Now that that's out of the way, we should probably focus on finding something for us and Arina to eat."
"We don't know where we'd be able to find food here." Inuyasha said.
"But still, I agree with Sango." Kagome said. "We should try to look for something to eat." Miroku nodded his agreement.
With a grumble, Inuyasha stood with the others and they made their way outside.
A/N: Okay, I don't usually do Author's Notes, but this is an emergency. I don't want you tracking me down to kill me when I don't update for a long time. I hope your happy, The Last, that I brought everybody back to life. Don't worry, I'll explain the confusion later.
Okay. It took me a long time to update Chapter 4 because ate up, like, three paragraphs at the end of the chapter, so I had to copy and paste that part off the floppy copy I have of Death Full Circle, because I do have it on a floppy. I only had up to Chapter 5 (this one) actually in my document manager, but I had all the way up to Chapter 9 written and a whole bunch of notes for future issues that need to be addressed (such as the still being alive part). I hadn't put them on yet because Chapter6 didn't look so hot andChapter8 I wanted to send in a different direction, which could drastically change Chapter 9.As you can imagine,this flopyis very important to me at the moment.
And now for the very bad news. I got so caught up in printing up a copy for my friend because she wanted to read it (I was at the libraray, by the way, waiting for my ride home to show up) and calling a whole bunch of different people to get a hold of my ride that I lost my disk. I don't know if it got left in the computer or if I put it in my purse, but this was a week ago. I went back to the library that weekend to ask them if they'd found it (and I figured they might have because I'd left the same disk there before. Ironic, huh?), but the lady told me to go to the information desk, and I doubt it's there anyways, but I should check soon.
Anyways, it could take me a very long time to get my disk back and redo Chapter 6, much less Chapters 8 and 9. I have three reports due in English, a project I'm working on in French, and an Algebra project I have to present some time next week. Plus, I'm having a whole bunch of people over some weekend in May for an Inuyasha Marathon with a few Fullmetal Alchemist episodes thrown in (I own a whole lot of the episodes of both series, and I'm currently arguing with a friend we're currently calling Kougara overwhich one of us gets Ed when we get to his dimension...don't ask.). Death Full Circle is a high priority...but I can't do anything until I get that disk back and have access to my notes and future chapters again. I was a big enough idiot not to save everything to my computer in the first place (that's the first thing I'm doing when I find that disk again).
Please don't kill me over this. I'm very sorry.
Plus, I think my Author's Noteis longer than the chapter itself, and I don't even like Author's Notes. Less fun to read, of course, but very long.