AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thank you, everyone, for the reviews. Especially the longer ones. Seriously, they were wonderful to read… made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. But anyway, enough fluffiness. On with the story…
ABOVE AND BEYOND
Chapter Two: Appointing a Guardian
There was someone in her room.
The stranger lifted his head, and Sango's scream died in her throat as a pair of dark blue eyes stared at her, free of fault, completely guileless. As if he wasn't standing in the bedroom of a girl he didn't know.
"Sango?" Her father's voice echoed from the living room above the distant sound of the television. "Is everything all right in there?"
Great. Her father was the one person who could make everything worse.
"No, everything's fine," she yelled, still not taking her eyes off of the intruder. "I just stubbed my toe, that's all."
He made a reply, but Sango didn't hear it, her attention instantly drawn back to the man in her room. He stared back, actually having the gall to smile widely at her and revealing a set of even white teeth. And as she watched him, it suddenly hit her that this guy was looking through her underwear drawer.
For a moment, she just gaped at him. Someone she had never once met in her life was looking through her underwear drawer!
"Pervert!" she hissed, loud enough so that he could hear her, but soft so as her father or Kohaku wouldn't hear. She yanked her sneaker from her feet and threw it as hard as she possibly could. It hit him, giving a loud thunk as it did so. He stumbled backward, clutching his head, and Sango smirked, pleased to see that the smile had dropped from his face.
"Ow…" He glanced up at her, still rubbing his head where she'd nailed him. "What was that for?"
It was time to pound this sucker. She pulled off her other shoe, and a twinge of satisfaction shot through her as he raised his hands up in surrender.
"No!" he protested, panic laced in his voice. "Don't do it!"
"Then tell me who you are and why you're here," she said, narrowing her eyes and tightening her grip on the sneaker in her best attempt to look intimidating. Apparently, it worked, because he nodded.
"Okay, I will," he gave in, his gaze on the deadly sneaker the entire time. "Just… just drop the shoe, okay?" She didn't move. "Please," he added politely.
Man, he almost looks afraid, she realized.
Well, good. More power to her.
"I won't drop it until you tell me who you are," she told him forcefully. She was surprised at how well she was handling this. The guy was completely under her control.
"Fine, fine. I'll talk." His hands lowered in resignation, as if he were a criminal caught for his evil deeds.
"And close the drawer!" she snapped, motioning toward her underwear drawer. He complied, and Sango felt a slight blush dash across her cheeks as he raised an appreciative eyebrow at the drawer's contents before closing it.
"Now talk," she ordered. The shoe was still raised. "Who are you?"
He sat down on the bed and began to pet Kirara. Sango scowled. Of all the nerve! What was with this guy?! He somehow had sneaked into her room, had looked through her underwear drawer, and was now sitting on her bed petting her cat as if he lived there! And Kirara wasn't even biting him! She was purring, for goodness sake!
Sango examined him untrustingly. He looked to be fairly tall, about eighteen or nineteen, with shoulder-length black hair that was pulled back into a short ponytail at the nape of his neck. He was dressed in odd robes, and there was an equally strange-looking staff leaning against the wall that could only belong to him.
The guy was most likely crazy, she surmised.
"Come on, talk," she growled, in her best scary voice. She ended up sounding as if she were part of the Mafia.
He glanced up from petting Kirara, and she noticed how very blue his eyes were. Very, very blue.
But he was still most likely crazy.
"My name's Miroku," he said, giving her another one of his innocent smiles. She didn't buy it. "I'm a monk. And," he paused, "your guardian angel."
Silence.
Okay, he wasn't possibly insane. He was insane.
The guy—Miroku or whatever—kept on petting Kirara and smiling at her as if he hadn't said something completely outrageous and worthy to put him locked away in a loony bin.
"So," Sango said finally, "how did you escape?"
"What?" His face scrunched up quizzically. A good actor. Or maybe just a psycho.
"Ha!" She snorted. "What do you think I'm talking about? The asylum! Don't they stuff you crazies up in straitjackets or something?"
His eyebrows furrowed. "I'm not crazy," he said. Sango was tempted to hit him again with her shoe. Maybe that would knock a little sense into this weirdo. "I was telling the truth."
"That you're 'my guardian angel'?" she said, her tone sarcastic. "I hope you realize why I find that just a little bit difficult to believe."
"Why is it so hard to believe?" he asked evenly.
"Maybe because angels don't exist," she suggested. "And if they did, I highly doubt they would be in the form of badly-dressed perverts like you."
Miroku momentarily stopped petting Kirara. "Pervert?" he echoed with a sigh. "Are you still holding this morning against me? I don't see what is such a big deal about a little touch."
For a reason she couldn't explain, Sango began to feel her stomach tighten. What did he mean, this morning? She meant tonight, just a few moments ago when she'd caught him looking through her underwear drawer…
"What do you mean?" she asked. Her hold on the sneaker wavered slightly. "I've only met you a minute ago. I didn't even know you this morning."
He frowned. "Oh. I thought you meant—" He stopped, as if he thought better about speaking. "Well, never mind then."
Never mind then? She didn't like his tone… as if he knew something that she didn't. And there was something about his words than unnerved her, too. What had he meant?
"Tell me," she said, the Mafia Growl coming back full-force. "Or you know what happens." She raised the shoe for emphasis.
"You know, you're a lot more innocent than you look," he observed. "I never pinpointed you as a slightly unstable shoe-thrower."
Ooh, he deserved a hit for that. Sango held back, though. This was her only shoe left; the only ammunition to make him speak. "You're avoiding the question," she said evenly. "And if you don't watch it, this 'slightly unstable shoe-thrower' will hit you. So quit shirking around the topic and answer my question."
"Promise you won't hit me?"
"Depends," she replied without missing a beat.
He shrugged. "Good enough for me." He stopped and looked up as if thinking. "What was the question again? Oh, yes. Well, as I said, I'm a guardian angel of sorts and I had to pick someone to look after. And I saw you at your school and thought you would be perfect, but I also… well, it was a bit important to me that the person I guard has a nice ass, you know? Maybe you don't know. But, anyway, I was just giving it a quick feel to test it. And, I have to say, you've passed with flying colors."
She chose to ignore the ridiculous babbling about the guardian angel crap, instead focusing on what he'd said about copping a feel—or, as he put it, "testing out" her butt. She thought about that morning, when she could have sworn someone had whispered in her ear and touched her…
"That can't be," she said with a shake of her head. "There was no one there."
"Of course there was," he responded cheerfully. "How else would someone touch you?"
"You're crazy," she accused. "You probably saw me before and decided to climb up the fire escape and sneak into my window to freak me out."
"Now, Sango—" he began.
"Oh my god, you're a stalker!" she cut in, her eyes wide and her hand wrapping itself more tightly against her shoe. "How do you know my name?"
He pointed at the desk. "It was on your writings over there. It's a very pretty name."
"Thank y—" She stopped abruptly as she realized what she was saying. "I don't have to thank you. You're insane."
"I'm not insane! Look, would you just let me explain?"
"Explain how you climbed through my window and then started pawing through my underwear drawer?" she put in snippily.
"I couldn't have gone through the window," Miroku said. "It's rusted shut."
He was right, it was rusted shut. She remembered trying to open it earlier that evening to let in some breeze. But how else could he have gotten in? She was sure she would have seen him had he gone in through any other windows. He had to have broken it open somehow. That was the only explanation for it.
Sango walked over to where the window was and began to yank on it desperately. She was strong; it had to give way. It should have been simple, had someone just opened it. But to her annoyance and dismay, Miroku proved to be right. It was clear that he hadn't used the window.
"Then…" She turned from the window to look back at him. "How did you get in here if you didn't climb through the window?"
"Oh, that's simple," he replied smoothly. "I just teleported."
She burst into peals of laughter, and Miroku looked a bit offended. "What?"
"So you're telling me that in addition to your occupation of a guardian angel, you're a magician? What else do you do, run a circus? Substitute for the tooth fairy on weekends? Tell me, I'm curious."
"I sense some sarcasm," he told her. He almost sounded exasperated.
"No, really?" she snorted. "For a second, I thought I believed you."
"If I teleport for you, will you let me explain?" he asked.
The poor, poor guy, actually believing he could teleport. What was next, flying? Telekinesis? "Sure," she replied, folding her arms and leaning against the window. This would be amusing, at the very least. "Go right ahead and prove me wrong."
He gave her a large smile, and then closed his eyes. Sango almost burst out laughing again as nothing happened. What a moron. "All right now," she began, uncrossing her arms and walking over to where he sat, "now that you're attempted to prove me wrong, you can leave n—" She stopped abruptly as Miroku vanished.
There was no other word for it. He just disappeared. One second he was there, the other he was gone. There no smoke, no poof, nothing.
"Oh… my… god," she breathed. She leant forward to examine the bed on which he'd just been sitting, setting her hand on the quilt. It was still warm from where he'd just been sitting. "Kirara, tell me that did not just happen."
"You talk to your cat?" a teasing voice said from behind her. "Well, that's one cute thing about you."
Something began to caress her bottom, and she quickly realized it was a hand. His hand, she was sure. She whirled around and slapped him as hard as she could. "You pervert!" she roared. "Watch where you put that thing!"
Miroku laughed sheepishly as he rubbed his swelling cheek. "I'm sorry, it was just such a perfect moment."
Sango's hand dropped as she stared at him. He had just disappeared completely from her room, and now, somehow, he was behind her again.
Could what he'd been saying been true all along? That he was some type of guardian angel…?
No way. There's just no way.
"Now will you listen to me?" he asked. "After all, you promised."
Sango admitted defeat. She'd been proven wrong, and she was ready to listen to his explanation, crazy or not. She sat down on the bed. "All right," she agreed. "Explain."
He began to sit down on the bed beside her, but at her warning glare backed off and remained standing instead. "Okay," he laughed. "Sorry about that. Now, where do I start…?"
"Maybe about this guardian angel stuff," Sango supplied. "As in where you started before."
"Right." He smiled. "I'm not really a guardian angel, I'm actually something you'd call a Beyond."
"What's a Beyond?" she asked automatically.
"A Beyond is a spiritual fighter, if you will. I died a long time ago—about five hundred years ago, according to Inuyasha—but I didn't die… well, I didn't die properly, you could say." He raised his right hand. It was clothed with a gauntlet, a rosary wrapped around it. "In my right hand is a hole. A kazaana. My grandfather was cursed with it, as well as my father, and now me. It sucks up everything in its path, and it eventually sucked up me. This is a very… unusual method of death, you could say, and so the afterlife agreed I could have a second chance. Well, sort of. You see, there are very few Beyonds in the world today. Souls will apply to the duty of fixing errors that humankind cannot, such as poltergeists, rampant demons, et cetera. Being accepted, however, takes a long time. Some souls end up waiting thousands of years. I had to wait about five hundred, although it didn't seem like that to me."
Miroku paused for a breath of air, and Sango's head swarmed as she attempted to take this all in.
"I applied to be a Beyond for one reason," he continued. "There is a problem, one that has existed for many years. A hanyou by the name of Naraku. Five hundred and fifty years ago, he was born and has only grown in power since. He is the reason for this hellhole in my hand. His power has increased so rapidly that none have ever been able to defeat him—although one Beyond, known as Kikyo, nearly stopped him. She had been another wronged by Naraku, and as she was one of the most powerful miko to have every existed, she was almost immediately accepted as a Beyond. She managed to weaken Naraku considerably—his hellish powers have decreased so that he can only now shape shift. But Kikyo died in the struggle, and as time progresses, Naraku grows stronger. As he has not made himself known, however, we don't know the extent to which his powers have grown. That's why Inuyasha—another Beyond, that is—and I have been assigned to find him and kill him."
"Wait a second," Sango cut in. "Even if this was true—and I'm still not sure I believe it—what do I have to do with this? This doesn't sound like you're my guardian angel or whatever to me."
"I'm getting to that," he said patiently. "You see, there's only one rule that goes along with a Beyond. The time that you spend as one doing your task, you must help out a human being in one form or another. Guide them, more like. So in essence I could be considered a guardian angel. When I saw you this morning, I chose you to be the person I would guard over."
Sango would have thought up a witty reply, but her brain was still struggling to process everything he'd said. "Hold on," she said uncertainly. "If I do believe you—and that's still a very small maybe—then what happens after you kill this demon? Will you leave me alone?"
"Well, this all depends on what happens. If I do find Naraku and he manages to kill me—as much as he can, anyway, seeing as I'm already dead—then I will return to the afterlife. If I manage to kill him, I am rewarded for my efforts and I will be restored of life."
Sango closed her eyes, her head swarming. Beyonds, demons, mikos… it was a grand scale above anything she'd ever heard of before. And Sango knew that it was something so above and beyond everything that she would be unable to take it. Her mother's death still haunted her. How could she manage to get through this?
"No," she murmured.
"What's that?" Miroku asked. "No what?"
"No," she said again, shaking her head. "I can't deal with this. My life's bad enough as it is. I don't want Beyonds and demons and all that. I want to be normal, okay? Just… just leave me alone. Find someone else to guard over."
He frowned. "But I've chosen you."
"Well, choose somebody else!" she shouted angrily. "You have no right to just barge into my life!"
He opened his mouth as if to reply, his smile now gone from his face, but he stopped as there was a knock on the door. "Sis?" Kohaku's muffled voice could be heard through the door, as well as the obnoxious tune of his Gameboy game.
Oh, no, not her brother. She couldn't let him see Miroku. He would freak out and tell her father that there was a boy in her room, and that could only result in trouble. Sango jumped off her bed and began to run toward the door as it started to open. "Just a minute!" she called, but it was too late. Kohaku had opened the door.
"I can explain!" she yelled hastily as Kohaku stepped into the room. "Just don't tell Dad—"
"Explain what?" he asked in confusion. "What's going on?"
Sango glanced back at were Miroku had been standing only seconds before, but he was now gone, no trace of him remaining. He must have teleported again.
"What, sis?" Kohaku prompted again.
"Nothing," she said, a bit dazedly. "Nothing at all…"
Sango set her tray down at the lunchroom and began to pick half-heartedly at her food. She was not in the best mood; her pre-calculus teacher hadn't exactly been pleased that she hadn't done her homework. She would have, if only she could have focused, but her mind had still been so troubled by what Miroku had told her that she hadn't been able to concentrate on anything, let alone math of that level.
I wonder if he's gone for good, she found herself thinking as she fiddled with her chopsticks. He'd never given her a definite answer on whether he was staying with her or not, but Sango was pretty sure it was the latter. Why else would he have left otherwise?
She could only hope that he'd gone. Her life would be way too complicated with him there.
But, still… she wondered if he would defeat that demon and live. If he did, would she see him again? Not that she wanted to… the guy was a complete pervert. Sango pitied the girl he was going to be watching over.
"Hey."
Sango glanced up from her tray of unappetizing food to see a girl standing by her table. "Mind if I sit with you?" the girl asked politely, pointing the hand that wasn't holding a tray at an open chair.
"Sure," Sango mumbled, feeling slightly embarrassed. She probably looked so pathetic, sitting all alone at a table in the corner. The girl was obviously only sitting with her out of pity.
"I'm Kagome," the girl said with a bright smile. "You're in my history class, aren't you?"
To tell the truth, Sango had no idea. "Uh, I think so," she replied stupidly, sincerely hoping that she was. "I'm Sango."
"Nice to meet you," Kagome offered. "This is your first year here, right? I don't remember seeing you last year."
Sango nodded. "I just moved here," she explained. She didn't say, We moved here because we have no money. Because my mother's dead and my father spent all of our money to save her, but in the end we couldn't.
She didn't want Kagome to pity her anymore than she already did.
"Do you have any brothers or sisters?" she asked. "Or is it just you?"
She didn't even look as if she were trying to make small talk. She actually looked interested. "I have a little brother named Kohaku," Sango answered, picking up her chopsticks and beginning to eat again. "He's eleven and a complete brat."
Kagome laughed. "I have a little brother too. He's eight, though. And he's a complete brat, too."
Strangely enough, Sango began to feel almost as if she were relaxing in Kagome's company. She even made Kagome laugh a few times. It was as if she were any other girl who had friends and a normal family. A girl that didn't have a weird monk sneaking into her room and claiming to be her guardian angel.
She could definitely get used to this.
Okay, so the day hadn't been as bad as Sango had previously thought. Sure, her language teacher had shouted at her for a completely inane reason, and her locker had gotten jammed again, and she was stuck sitting behind an extremely foul-smelling guy in physics class, but compared to yesterday, it really wasn't all that bad.
She swung her backpack over her shoulder as she exited the building. It was a lot heavier than yesterday; almost all of their teachers had assigned her homework. Her shoulders were beginning to cramp. With a sigh, Sango set her backpack down on the concrete steps just outside of the building to give her aching muscles a quick rest.
"Need me to carry that for you?"
Sango's eyes widened as she heard the voice. It was smooth and confident, so self-assured it was almost aggravating.
She knew only one person with a voice like that.
She turned and gave Miroku the fiercest glare she could muster. "You…"
He grinned.
AN: I hope that chapter cleared a few things up for those of you who were confused. There's still a bit of explaining to do for the future, but most of it was done in this chapter. Sorry about how dialogue-heavy it was, but I couldn't find much of a way around it, so I just kept in the explaining that needed to be done without trying to overdo it. And, of course, I had to add in some Miroku-esque lines.
Please review!
