2

Okay you waited for it (good for you, you are more patient then I shall ever be) And here it is! Chapter two, for your reading... uh... pleasure. I guess.

Chapter warning: More random character death. Yes, I do enjoy this. Deal with it.

He was halfway to the camp when he realized that he was being silly, and turned back, and he was halfway back when he realized that it couldn't possibly hurt to go check, and in the end he ended up changing mind, and direction, every few seconds. And then he realized he was being superbly stupid and set off toward the camp, determined to get there this time.

There were far too many human smells there, even without the overpowering reek of blood. Even in the tent in which he had found her, there wasn't anything strong enough to actually identify. He would have to go into the woods after her. Maybe far enough into the woods-

He stopped himself for the thousandth time. What was he doing this for? This is stupid. He was wasting time looking for the scent of a human female. And what if it was different? What would he do then?

Well... He'd think of that once he had the answer to the original question. It's not like he was mortal, with only a few dozen years. He had all the time in the world. And it's not like he was doing anything else.

He set off into the woods.

Meanwhile, about two hours journey ahead of him, the woman in question was sitting in a tree watching another band of marauders go by. Japan was lousy with them, it seemed. And why not? Between the army and the marauders themselves all the men of fighting age were gone.

Her idea had been simple, why not teach the women to fight, to defend themselves and their villages, but, not surprisingly, not many people had taken up that particular cause. Women learning to fight, preposterous.

So she had taught herself. And she was remarkably good.

However, when the band of marauders had attacked her village, she and her father's old sword were not nearly enough to keep them away. Her village had burned, like so many had before and so many would do after.

But even when they had bound her, dragged her off to whatever fate may await her, she had stared back at her village. The few remaining people were gathering, a few women, some old men, a child. And she had laughed at them, because irony, even when painful, was still funny.

Now the band had passed. The branch she was perched on extended over the road, and she flipped upside down, hanging by her knees, to see further down the road. It looked clear. She flipped over again, this time dropping the six feet to the ground. And she started to walk again.

This was a nice road, but she knew it was useless. There was nothing ahead on this road but another burned down ruin, and probably another after that and another after that.

They were like a plague, destroying everything in their path. And they needed to be destroyed, though hell if she knew how.

Idly she wondered as to the fate of the last band she had run into, and how most of them were dead now. That youkai... He had killed them all, and spared her. Why?

Perhaps he had some grudge? But there had been survivors. She had passed a few of them on the road. They had ignored her, maybe because of shock, maybe because on their own their bravery evaporated, exposing them as the plain and simple bullies that they were.

Not that it would have mattered. One on one, she was pretty sure she could take on any man on earth.

The sky was darkening as she headed on. There was the strong smell of fire. So she was right, there was a ruined village ahead. Even as she thought this the flames themselves came into view, then the buildings that were on fire. Sighing, she began walking down toward the village, or what was left of it. There was an off chance that somewhere there was some food left.

There wasn't. There was nothing left. By the looks of it, there had been about ten people left alive, and they had long past gathered everything of value and left. To go where, she didn't know but they sure were gonna try.

Sighing, she moved on. There had to be something to eat somewhere.

Sesshoumaru glanced at the sky, watching the sun get lower on the horizon. This was taking him longer than he had thought. He had run into a slight distraction when another small army of bandits tried to stop him on the road. For what reason, he neither knew nor cared. Once he had determined that the woman was not in fact, among them, he moved on.

(As a side note, this encounter was another testimony to human stupidity, for when the first man was struck down, his sword dropping from it's position only inches from Sesshoumaru's shoulder, the second man immediately assumed he would do better. As did the third, fourth, fifth, and so on for pretty much the rest of them.)

The sun set just as he was passing through the remains of a ruined village. The glowing coals of homes provided a little light, not that he needed it, the dark was no problem for his eyes. Her scent was stronger here, she had spent quite a while looking around this place. Maybe this was the village she was from.

But it moved on, as she had, and he followed after.

Not far past this, her scent left the main path, heading off into the woods. There had been no one else on the road, and no one had passed since, and so her action puzzled him. Actually, she was doing this more and more often, and he wasn't sure he liked it.

Arguing with himself for the millionth time, he left the path, following her. She hadn't gone very far, and he had been traveling quite a bit faster than her.

She couldn't be far...

She was, in fact, right in front of him. She was lying back against a tree, her sword held against her chest. Her eyes were closed, and for a second Sesshoumaru was sure she was dead, his time wasted. Then it occurred to him that she was just doing that 'sleep' thing that humans did so much. Youkai only needed to sleep when they were injured very badly, and then they only did it to pass time until they could move again.

Time to do what he came for. Approaching her silently, he knelt down and inhaled deeply.

There was something different after all. She smelled like a human, but not in that sickening, stomach turning way most humans did.

No, she was different. She actually smelled kind of... Nice.

But WHY?

He stared at her face, trying to pick out some difference, some feature which would leap out and say "I'm the reason! Now quit being stupid and go back to your life!"

No such feature appeared. Well, several of them appeared, the woman wasn't exactly homely, but nothing defining which would throw this whole muddled mass into sharp relief, like the rocket ship FINALLY appearing out of those thousand and a half dots you've been squinting at for hours.

And then he was suddenly glad he wasn't an enemy because she'd be long dead, stupid humans, sleeping through the freaking apocalypse. Maybe this was it's own defense, sleep was, nothing in it's right mind would hurt her like his, the look of peace on her face, her body relaxed, her navy eyes staring dreamily out and -WHOA!

This time, the shock was even worse than when she had kicked him, and he actually did fall backwards, backing out of the compromising position she had just awakened to find him in, namely, four inches from her face.

The little man with his switchboard hit the panic button again, this time he didn't let off the pressure. His heart, which was getting the brunt of this pressure and was not enjoying the extra work sent his voice up to give the man a good talking to, but even he got confused and ended up going out Sesshoumaru's mouth, and none too coherently.

The woman began to laugh, another in the long line of unexpected reactions.

"You're cute when you're surprised, Fluffy."

At this point everything shut down and went into automatic mode.

"Dammit, woman, stop saying that!"

"Saying what? Fluffy? I haven't got anything better to call you."

"Sesshoumaru. Anything but fluffy, but my name, if you must know, is Sesshoumaru."

"My name's Rin. Nice to meet you, again."

Sesshoumaru scrambled to his feet, trying to look as if he had just stumbled upon this spot totally at random. Why had he gotten so close? Moron, moron, moron...

"Perfect Killer, huh? Interesting name. You must have cried a lot as a baby. Or maybe your parents wanted to make sure you grew up fast. I bet you get a lot of fights out of that, don't you?"

Moron moron moron moron oh was she saying something?

"Or do you even have parents?"

"Of course I have parents, don't be stupid."

"Well you never know, with youkai, half you guys just come into being at various ages, and Perfect Killer seems like a name you would give a full grown guy like you and not to a little baby. Or maybe you were a really ugly baby, but that seems unlikely." She got bored with her own train of thought. "So what are you doing out here, anyway?"

"I followed you."

"Oh, gee, I didn't realize. Here's another stumper: Why?"

Now Sesshoumaru had three choices. Listed in order of difficulty, he could tell the truth, he could make something up and look like an idiot, or he could just kill her.

His mind was kind of leaning toward the last one, but that seemed like going just a little bit overboard, and the second was doomed to end in failure.

"You smell strange."

Smooth.

"Is that so?"

"Well, not strange but different, cuz humans smell really really bad," moron "but you don't and I wanted to find out why."

"I don't smell like human? That's really weird."

"No, you do, but you smell different, too."

"Like what?"

"It's impossible to explain to a human, like describing color to a blind man."

"Oh. So what now?"

"I... Don't know. But if I were you I'd give up that sleeping thing for a while. If I'd been a wolf you'd have been dead before you even knew you were being attacked."

"Thank you, that fills me with confidence."

"It's true."

"Well, I can't give it up. Unlike you all powerful youkai, I can't function unless I sleep. It's a reckless but necessary risk."

Sesshoumaru considered this for a minute.

"Then I'll stay here."

"Eh?"

"This is going to drive me nuts if I don't figure out why you're different. You getting killed will hinder me a good deal. So I'll stay here."

"... Thank you."

Sesshoumaru said nothing, but sat on the ground and stared into the trees. Rin waited a moment, then returned to her original position. She was asleep within a few minutes.

End chapter two! Here's the stats so far:

Time to write: three hours twenty five minutes.

Time to write: (Subtracting time spent staring idly off into space) forty-eight minutes.

Time to read: (depending on your reading speed) Twenty to forty minutes.

Shameful request for reviews, carefully disguised as time to review: (based on length) Thirty seconds to a minute, depending on how nice you are.