Disclaimer: I do NOT own Inuyasha or any of its characters.
Whew! Sorry for the long update period folks, but my PC finally went to meet its maker. And so I purchased a nice Macintosh. :D
For the more observant readers, you will notice that the characters rarely, if at all, mutter incantations when casting spells- this is due partly to my own laziness but also because as the characters spend more time on that plane, they attune to elemental energies faster, thereby nullifying the need to channel energy through words.
To the Reviewers:
Anja-chan: Yes! More minio- err, fans!
And about Miroku's granddad- I started writing this before I got to see the second movie, so I had to make his name up. It's too late to change it now though...sorry...
K-chan9: Now now, being bitter is not healthy...
Demonslayingmonk: So are you!
Fred the Mutant Pickle: And you will know quite soon. Read on!
Wandering Namekian: Word to DBZ creators: delete Chaozu from the series. Now. Erase all traces that he even did anything. You will regret it if you don't.
As you can see, I despise that little Kangshi look alike.
Shakujou: Hey again! Thanks for that e-mail by the way: I think I can learn to be a little less tactless in front of women now. :D -Pokes back with stick-
Inucrazy: Indeed. Must I remind everyone of the killer rabbit from the Holy Grail?
YuniX-2: Word to the Wise: Forget about Emily Dickinson's poems- don't mess with death lest he forces Jaken to dance in front of you naked...except for a tutu around his head.
"": Speech
'': Thoughts
#: Asterisks
Shippo continued to wail at Inuyasha, demanding that the latter believe the former's claim that Shippo did indeed use Tessaiga.
"I'm serious! Will you just shut up and listen to me! Argh!" He gave up on diplomacy and proceeded to use brute force to persuade Inuyasha (which failed spectacularly).
Inuyasha shot Shippo an annoyed glance. "Get off, pest." -Zap- A rather large bolt of static electricity Shippo in more ways than one. The now extremely pouffy Shippo leaped off and began yelling some more about not zapping things just because Inuyasha could.
However, Miroku and Sango had no time to ponder upon the morality of static electricity, as a large Guardian preoccupied them from such thoughts.
Sango tripped over her now-weighty boomerang as a quick succession of light blasts disintegrated the ground she stood on only moments ago. She still could not remember how to use her Hiraikotsu.
'What's with me? How can I not remember how to use a weapon I'd been fighting with since the age of seven!' She desperately thought up of other methods to destroy her opponent. The fact that Kirara had previously been injured did not help matters.
Miroku was having his own problems- though Wind was swift, Light was even swifter. Every attack he made was easily countered by blasts of searing light, and the constant dodging on his part was taking a toll on his body. He would need Sango's heavier, more solid Earth powers soon.
"Sango!" he yelled. "Any luck yet?"
"Iie!"
"Keep trying then!"
"I am! Eeek!" She ducked back behind her boomerang. Onyx chunks flew by her in a hailstorm, superheated by a beam of light. An extra large piece of debris flew into her boomerang and knocked her over, leaving her helpless. The guardian loomed menacingly over her.
"Sango!"
"Get away from her! Ice Spear!" The giant momentarily paused, allowing Miroku to blur by and snatch her away. He landed a good ways away from the mayhem, both boomerang and breathless girl in tow.
"Daijoubu?"
"Hai, arigatou- Look out!" Miroku was forced to unceremoniously dump Sango in a heap onto the ground to avoid getting his head Stimulated Emission Radiationed by the guardian's Amplified Light. -1-
"Oof!"
"Eh heh, gomen..." He looked up to see Kagome being forced backwards, her bow still rhythmically spitting out arrows infused with ice. Due to her complete concentration on her enemy, she failed to notice she would back up into a corner.
"Kagome-sama! Blade Twister!" A tornado, brimming at its edges with blades, spun its way towards the guardian. The funnel almost made contact...
#Flash#- In a blast of light, the giant teleported away from its doom, leaving Kagome in the tornado's path.
"Kuso! What the HELL do you think you're doing, bouzo!" Inuyasha sped into the fray and fled with Kagome in his arms. "Quit trying to kill us and kill IT!"
"Right!" He turned his attention again towards the Light guardian...
Who was suddenly right up in his face.
"This can't be good..." -WHAP- A direct backhand to the face sent him flying into a pillar.
"Gah!"
"M-Miroku sama!"
He settled to the base of the stone pillar, his cranium leaning forward and blood beginning to drip slowly down his head and face.
"Kisama! GaaaaaAAAH! Flame Fist!" He aimed a right hook at the guardian's face, but was quite shocked when he found that his fist was grasped in the large paw of his opponent.
"Oh shi-" After a blinding flash of light, he went sailing into the ground, bounced off of it, and skidded to a halt a good twenty meters away. More shouts of concern rang out.
Finished with eradicating two of the several pests, the guardian turned towards Kagome, raised a glowing arm, then fired a beam of blinding light. It collided with Kagome's hastily summoned ice wall...
And then it refracted into several dozen, multi-colored beams that sought to skewer anything in their paths. Fortunately, Kagome managed to dodge a beam in time, whereas Miroku, Miroshin, and Inuyasha were too close to the ground to be struck (and Shippo simply too short).
But Sango...
"Sango-chan! Sango-chan!" Kagome cried to her friend who lay still on the floor. The light had gone straight through her bone barrier. Kagome dashed over to Sango's side and began shaking her. "Sango-chan! Wake up! Onegai!" She gasped as the guardian stomped towards her without its usual swift, darting movements.
"Get back!" Kagome shouted, notching an arrow to her bow. She fired several times, but arrows did little more other than waste her spiritual energy. It was not long until her exhausted arms refused to pull back another arrow. Kagome tried to gather her energy into another form of defense, but she saw the Light guardian raising its arms once more...
'I...I won't be able to make it in time...' she thought in despair. She knew her opponent would charge up energy much sooner than she ever could at her current state.
'Is this...the end?'
"So ends your pitiful existence, human," rumbled the giant. "You will be terminated."
It fired straight towards Kagome, who screeched and buried her head in her arms.
'Mama...Souta...Grandpa...everyone...'
'I-Inuyasha...'
"Stone Barrier!"
"What?"
CRASH- The superheated rock made an earsplitting noise as it blew apart.
"That should not have been possible, human. your memories were surely locked away within me."
Sango slowly stood up, staring in wonder at her hands. 'How?' she thought. 'How did I remember everything?'
'That beam of light...'
She had no more time to thing as the stone golem stomped right through the remains of her wall.
"Daijoubu, Kagome-chan?"
"Hai...what happened?"
"I don't know...get back and check on the others, I'll handle this freak." Sango held her boomerang in its proper position as Kagome scampered off towards everyone else.
"You will learn that the human heart is too impure to endure Light."
She only glared back.
For a moment, everything was stock still, the only noise being Kagome's worried tones sounding here and there. The two opponents only glared at each other, each tense as a drawn bow string.
Silence, only silence.
Th at silence was cut to pieces by a diamond-edged boomerang. "Hiraikotsu! Diamond Edge!" She hurled her weapon, which spun and flew straight towards her enemy. It darted to its left and charged, extending a five-foot beam of light from its right arm. Sango charged as well.
"You may taste your death, mortal." It made a vicious slash at Sango's head, who rolled under both the blade and between the guardian's legs. She dodged a few more slashes, then planted her foot on one of the guardian's lowered arms. She somersaulted up and above her opponent and landed perfectly behind it.
By now, Hiraikotsu was spinning back towards its original throwing point, while its owner was standing directly in the path of its return flight. Sidestepping to her right, Sango expertly grasped the spinning projectile by its straps and spun around, adding her centrifugal force into her blow. The guardian, however, clamped its hands over the boomerang and spun it, so that Sango was sent twirling into the ground. She looked up and dodged just in time to avoid being split in half by her own weapon.
"Earthshaker!" She planted her palm flat against the stone floor and began a tremor, just enough to cause minimal damage to the surrounding stone, but enough make the guardian teeter off balance. Sango sprang up and leaped forward, in which she delivered a-
"Onyx Fist!" A stone fist, roughly the shape of beach ball, burst forth from the ground and bashed into the golem's face, sending its upper torso reeling backwards. She retrieved her weapon, and jumped backwards, while the guardian sliced apart the offending rock fist.
Stalemate.
"Let us step this up a bit, shall we?" He blurred into motion and reappeared behind her.
"Predictable." She swung her boomerang sucker-punch style...
Into an enemy who was no longer there.
"Nani-" She saw the Photon blade coming at her face just in time to raise her boomerang, which had a shiny new hole right through it after the blade retracted.
'This can't be good...' she thought as she kept dodging more and more blows.
Eventually, she decided that Hiraikotsu wouldn't quite cut it, so she tossed aside and drew her own katana, coating in a thin layer super-dense granite. She got into a fighting position...
She let out a war cry and dashed towards her opponent, who simply phased into existence another Photon blade and teleported directly above her. In response, Sango drove her blade into the ground, allowing a spurt of lava to geyser forth from the ground. The guardian blurred off into another direction to avoid becoming intimate with molten, super-hot rocks.
Sango kept on the pressure with more slashes, lava spurts, and the occasional stone projectile. However, her attacks were still futile.
'This is going nowhere,' she thought. She was starting to feel the affects of fatigue on her tiring muscles. Her lack of concentration awarded her with a swift kick to her face, which sent her spinning a few feet.
"Sango!" Why is everyone shouting her name out today? she wondered.
"So...the monk joins the fray..."
Miroku, looking rather bruised and bloody, but still determined, floated towards Sango and stood in front of her protectively before her opponent could do anything else to her.
"Two birds with one stone, as they say," it rumbled. "Come, taste death."
"You first." Sango sprinted to the right, while Miroku headed towards the left.
The golem solved its pincer dilemma by creating two walls running at an angle towards each other, effectively trapping Sango and Miroku in a large funnel. The walls hummed with energy menacingly, sparking every so often.
"Look out!" cried Miroku. He grabbed hold of Sango and flew upwards, watching as the light beam bounced around the funnel like a pinball, smashing and disintegrating a stone wall soon afterwards.
'This isn't getting anywhere,' Sango worried. 'I have to finish the job quick...' "Miroku! Hold him off, I have an idea!" The monk nodded in compliance, dropped Sango off on the ground, and sped away.
'Right...let's get started.' Sango's eyes turned into a stony, gray color and she began meditating.
Meanwhile, Miroku did his part and engaged his opponent in a fierce battle. Staff and Photon blades flew at speeds that there was a maelstrom energy thrumming from their battle site. One would slash, block, and deflect at speeds that no human could ever dream of achieving in his lifetime.
'Almost there,' thought Sango.
A sudden feint and counterattack by the golem threw Miroku completely off guard and knocked him to the ground, leaving him helpless. Two blades locked into his staff prevented him from getting up.
"Good effort, human. Pity it was wasted." the guardian of Light opened its mouth to vaporize Miroku
"Nice speech," replied Miroku mischieviously. "Pity that was wasted."
Miroku quickly expelled a cloud of corrosive gas from his mouth, which forced the guardian to let go of him to get rid of the acidic poison. When the smoke cleared, the golem's head appeared to be scarred and slightly distorted.
Miroku glanced back at Sango and grinned. "And now for the grand finale."
He leapt away to safety.
"Earth Dragon's Rage!"
The earth trembled, perhaps shaking in fear at the coming destruction. The onyx floors beneath the guardian began to splinter and crack, and then began to churn like an angry ocean.
Inuyasha, Miroshin and Shippo, who were being rejuvenated by an exhausted Kagome, looked up from their reclining positions as Earth destruction began its slow, but unstoppable, roll towards its pinnacle.
They watched as spikes of black rock, harder than steel, spear their way out of the floor and catch the guardian in its legs. They watched as the spikes grew higher and higher, until they began to look like far-off mountains. They watched as the spikes suddenly became porous. They watched as lava spewed out like water out of the holes and began to form a spinning maelstrom of molten rock. spinning into a huge funnel that kept rising up. They watched as the guardian of Light slowly melted and became part of the lava flow itself. They watched as the lava seeped back into the spikes, along with the remains of the guardian. They watched as the spikes sank back into the floor and seal back up as if nothing had ever happened.
The only echoes of the chaotic destruction that had occurred was the intense heat left behind by the lava.
Only one word could describe the scene that had passed before them:
"Sugoi..."
Miroku and Sango rested their weary bodies while Kagome began her rejuvenation process, replenishing bodily fluids and easing sore muscles. When Kagome finished, the rest of the group geared up to continue through the giant doorway. The pedestals adorning the ground near the door lay silent, statues no longer decorating the great platforms.
Silence had returned to the innards of the dome.
The group came to the doorway and gazed upwards at its black, ominous frame. What lay ahead was known for sure- their hated enemy, Naraku. But what else lay beyond?
Inuyasha took the initiative by planting a hand on one of the doors. "Come on, Narku ain't gonna wait for us all day. Let's go!"
And so the group prepared to step into the unknown, their greatest enemy lying in front of them.
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
"#Strain# Uh, minna? The door's stuck."
"#Groan#"