With nothing to fight and no real destination to head to and, for once, no bodies to bury, the group of friends was free to just… relax.
"Arrgh… I HATE THIS!"
"Quit pacing, Inuyasha, you're giving me a headache," Kagome said, looking away from her homework.
"It's way to quiet and I swear there's somebody watching us."
"You're just being paranoid." Sango told him. He sent a glance at the
falling sun, almost halfway set now. In only another few minutes it
would get dark, and then…
"I hate this," he said again.
"I don't suppose any of you guys know about binomial equations?" Kagome
said without a lot of hope. She was met with four blank stares.
"Didn't think so."
"Why do you even have to know this stuff?" Inuyasha asked, poking at a
page covered in numbers. "If it won't kill a demon and you can't eat
it, what good is it?"
"Yeah like explaining it to you would do any good."
"Keh. I don't know why I bother."
Without another word Inuyasha turned and disappeared into the
semi-darkness beyond the fire's light. Withina moment he was out of
sight.
Unnoticed by the others, Miroku went slowly after him.
Sesshoumaru was seriously starting to worry about the monk. Maybe he
wasn't as easily swayed as the youkai had thought. Anyone else, he was
sure, would have at least thought about making a move in the night,
while their prey was sleeping. But not Miroku. He hadn't even been kept
up.
Was he waiting for something?
The daiyoukai remained hidden, watching, as his brother left the ring
of light. Miroku went after him, quietly. Something wasn't right
though. Even if he only had a half-breed's senses Inuyasha should have
heard his friend coming.
He seemed totally oblivious to everything going on around him.
Was he sick or something?
Inuyasha sat by the edge of a dropoff, leaning against a tree trunk,
and watched the last sliver of sun disappear behind the horizon. A
tingling started to burn in his chest, spreading outward. It was
slightly nauseating, like having your whole body fall asleep.
Like it always happened, the colors got a bit brighter as his line of
vision shortened to only a few dozen feet. The few sounds he could
still hear sounded like they were coming to him through cotton. A lock
of his hair blew in front of his face, and he saw that it was,
once again, pitch black.
"I hate this," he muttered.
It was bad enough that the tessaiga was all but useless, but in this
state he wouldn't hear an enemy even if they came running up behind
him. They could almost be on top of him before he realized they were
even-
A hand landed on his shoulder and he jumped about a foot in the air.
"Little high-strung tonight, are we?"
"Dammit, Miroku, one of these days I'm going to-"
"One of these days, maybe, but not tonight."
Grumbling, Inuyasha sunk down among the roots of the tree, glaring at the younger man.
"So what do you want?"
Miroku didn't respond for a long time.
"Inuyasha… how badly do you want to beat Naraku?"
"That's a stupid question. More than anything."
"Anything at all?"
"What's with the questions? You got a point in there anywhere or are you just trying to piss me off?"
"Say, there was a way to beat him, almost for sure. Only problem is, you'd have to die to make it work. What about then?"
"What kind of question is that?"
"A very important one. What's the answer?"
The hanyou studied the tessaiga like the answers to the universe could be found in the scuffed surface of the blade.
"Just me? Not you or Kagome or Sango, you'd all be okay, right?"
"Yeah. Just you."
Sesshoumaru dropped what few reservations he had had and stared. His
brother was a human. Tonight of all nights. So that's what the monk had
been waiting for.
The more he thought about it, of course his brother would be human, at some point.
Why hadn't he thought of it before?
Sigh.
Okay, I close this chapter now. Please review!