Here it is, the waited for, the sought after, the slightly indecipherable, the one, the only
People: Get on with it!
Castle Anthrax: Get on with it!
French guys: Get on with it!
The slightly longer than I wanted it-
God: GET ON WITH IT!
Okay, okay, sheesh.
(Sorry for the blatant plug. I am ashamed of myself.)
In this chapter, Sesshoumaru and Naraku can fly, and I'm not sure why they can do this, but they can. I've seen it in various parts of the anime, so yeah. Also, Kohaku will not be in this, because I feel that he would be kind of a useless character.
Also, just as a note, I switch scenes from woods to neighborhood pretty fast, and I would like to explain this. In my town there's big blocks with houses around the outside and a lot of woods still left. You can get pretty much wherever you want to go without leaving the woods, not that there are a lot of places to go to.
Anyway, here's the new chapter! With the promised new character, who I had a problem getting in character, I think, (notices everyone has skipped ahead to the story.)
FINE! Be that way!
Wall of people who guessed right: On the new character, nobody. On Takemaru: Dragonfaeriex (That was a lot of info, thank you) Kagedavies. And thank you to rei, I can use that info…
"What on Earth could have done this?" the sergeant asked, trailing her fingers over the hand-shaped burn on the wall. "The fingerprints are intact, it was an actual hand that made this mark."
"The guys are starting to say it was one of those demons," her partner said, surveying the sad scene around the house. The man and woman who had lived there were upstairs, where they had apparently fled when an intruder had burst, literally through, their front door. The coroner was up there now, loading them into body bags. A trip to the hospital was not necessary. Kikyo turned to the younger man.
"You really believe in those things?"
"Yes," he said. "I really really do."
Kikyo was about to ask him if he didn't know something more than he was letting on, but another voice interrupted her.
"Yo! Koga!" a man called from the upper level. "Start checking the closets! A kid lives in this house, and she's not here!"
"Oh great," Kikyo said.
"That's exactly what we need right now, another kid on the loose. First Jaken and then Miroku and now this kid."
Koga shook his head.
"I'll check the basement."
"Yeah…" Kikyo muttered, looking one last time at the mark on the wall.
A blinking light caught her eye. The answering machine had a message on it. Curious, she pressed the playback button. She listened to the music, barely able to believe her luck.
"Koga! Get up here and listen to this!"
"She's not down there," he said, emerging from the stairwell. "But look at this thing. Any idea what it is?"
He held out a circular brown thing. There was a small hole on one side, and a faint buzzing came from inside.
"I don't know. But listen to this."
She hit the playback button again.
"Hi dad, hi mom, anybody there? It's Sango. I'm just calling you to tell you that Miroku woke up, he's going to be okay. So I'll keep calling back till you get home, okay? Bye!"
"I think we can safely assume she isn't in the house?"
"Yeah."
"Come on, let's start checking hospitals," Kikyo said, walking toward the door.
"Why hospitals?"
"Wherever she is, she's with Miroku. Wherever he is, he's hurt bad enough that she wasn't sure if he would live or not. There's a limited number of places they could be."
"Okay. Check the hospitals then."
Even a short three foot drop from a window can seem a considerable feat if your own height is slightly less than that. Jaken wasn't sure if he could perform that feat, and for this reason, he chose to go out the front door instead. Nobody noticed.
In his hat and children's clothes, he could have passed as a human. He hoped his disguise was good enough, particularly when he passed a good sized group of gun-weilding people.
But he didn't care about them, he had to find Sesshoumaru. But where could he have gone?
Knowing Sesshoumaru, chances were, he wasn't laying low anymore.
"I just have to wait for an explosion," Jaken thought.
As it happened, he didn't have to wait for any such thing, because right about then, a very familiar figure appeared over the treetops, followed by another, slightly less familiar one.
"Well that's new."
"Hey, that's Jaken!"
"Who, the kid?"
"He's not a kid, he's just really really short."
"Fine, whatever, I thought you were in a hurry."
The figure on the ground jumped up and down, waving his arms.
"Wait a minute."
Sesshoumaru dropped down to ground level, Jaken running toward him.
"Dude, when'd you learn to fly?"
"It's not flying, it's kind of a…" he trailed off. "Ten minutes ago."
"Sweet. Look, you gotta help me. I can't stay out here much longer or somebody's gonna find me. I can't go home and there's no way I'm staying at your house."
"Well we're going to Japan. You can come, I guess."
"Who's we?"
"This other youkai and I. Naraku."
"Where'd you find him?"
"I'll tell you some other time, okay? Come on."
The secretary searched through the various papers on her desk, then turned to the two officers.
"Sorry, no one here by the name of Miroku."
The two of then sighed. SO many hospitals, so little time.
"Thank you for your cooperation," Koga said, tipping his hat.
"So much for that," Kikyo said, turning to leave.
"Wait a minute. There's a boy in the third floor. He can in unconscious in critical condition, so far we haven't tracked down name or relatives. Could he be the one?"
Kikyo and Koga shared a look.
"Third floor, you said?"
"Yeah, room 348."
"346… 347…348. Here we go."
"Kikyo pushed open the door, revealing a plain white hospital room, like pretty much any other. On the bed was a boy, and by his side a girl, a little older than he. There was no one else.
"Are you guys Sango and Miroku?" Koga asked bluntly. Sango sat up, looking at the two of them.
"Why?"
"Yes or no, miss."
"Yes."
"Two down," Kikyo muttered.
"What does that mean?"
"There's been a slew of missing child reports today," Koga explained. "starting with a boy called Jaken, then after the (quite impressive) explosion at Miroku's house a neighbor reported him missing, and then when we were at your house, you obviously weren't there, so we had to look for you."
Kikyo addressed Miroku.
"DO you know what happened at your house, about the explosion?"
"Yes. I know my father's dead."
"Your mother?"
"Died a long time ago."
"Anyone else we should look for?"
"No, it's just me left now."
"Sango, do you know what happened at your house?"
"No. I called an hour ago and everything was fine."
"Thank you," Koga interrupted, writing something down. "That narrows down the time frame a lot. What time was it when you called the second time?"
"How do you know about all of this?"
Kikyo glared at Koga, the least gentle of the two.
"A neighbor noticed the door broken in and called us."
"Are my parents okay?"
"… no. They're dead. I'm sorry."
Sango's eyes filled with tears. Miroku put a hand on her shoulder. He didn't know exactly what she was going through, but he had at least an idea of the pain.
"Do you know who did it? Did anybody see their killer?"
"Nobody, which is amazing, considering the amount of damage," Koga told her. "The house was completely wrecked."
"We do have a few clues. There was a hand print burned onto a wall."
Miroku's eyes widened.
"Sesshoumaru!"
"What? What does he have to do with this?" Sango asked.
"I saw him do that at the bottom of that tree! He burned his hand print right into it!"
"So he killed my parents? But why?"
"How should I know?"
Sango turned back to the two adults, who were looking a bit confused.
"You said you have a few clues. what other than that?"
"We found this," Koga said, drawing out the round hive. It was still buzzing. "He left it in a really obvious place, too, almost like he wanted it to get found."
"Why is it buzzing?" Miroku asked.
"It's not a bomb, don't worry. We checked that possibility out."
"It's definitely not ours," Sango said. "I would remember something that weird looking."
"You still have to tell us," Koga said, "What happened to you two. Why are you here?"
"You want the long story or the short story?" Miroku asked.
"Long, we've got time."
"Fine. The long story would start back about five hundred years ago when a demon whose' name and identity have long been forgotten. He put a curse on my family so that every male child would bear the kazaana on his right hand. The kazaana is a wind tunnel, that, given the chance, will suck in pretty much everything, and it is our fate to be eventually drawn into it ourselves, and be destroyed."
"You sure can talk, for a nine year old," Koga intoned.
"I'm sorry, should I dumb it down for you?"
"That won't be necessary."
"Thank you. Anyway, the explosion you experienced was my father being drawn into this hole, thus passing it onto me. I was slightly out of my mind at watching this, and I was about to go after him, but I was stopped form doing so by a demon named Sesshoumaru."
"Wait a minute," Kikyo said, looking annoyed. "I don't want to hear a fairy tale, I want to hear about what happened today."
"That's what I'm telling you."
"Demon curses?"
"There's been weirder, Kikyo, now be quiet," Koga said.
"thank you. Anyway, I went back with him to his house, where I met his father, another demon, and his little brother, Inuyasha, a half-demon. That's where I got this."
He held up his right hand, displaying the sheath for the kazaana, complete with prayer beads. That's when Sango showed up."
"Through the window, actually."
"You never did explain that."
"See, my family, a long time ago, were demon slayers, and I was trying to uphold the family legacy by slaying the evil demons who had stolen Jaken away."
"You know where Jaken is?"
"I did. He's a demon, too, but not a humanoid one, and when he took on his demon form because of the hundredth full moon-"
"What?" Koga asked, alert.
"Every hundredth full moon all demons revert from their human bodies to their demon ones, and regain their powers."
"Oh. Well that explains a lot."
"Anyway Jaken was a demon, but a short ugly impy kind of one. He was afraid to go back home, because his mother was trying to kill him."
"She failed to mention that."
"I thought she might."
"Anyway, when I got there, I decided to go for the youngest demon first, that would be Inuyasha, so I went in through the window for surprise, but instead I got tackled by Sesshoumaru. He was scary, I tell you. I told them why I was there, Sesshoumaru got mad at me, burned my wrists, and stormed off."
She displayed her wrists as proof. the hand prints were still there.
"After that I decided to go home. I had snuck out, so I didn't want my parents worrying. But I had some stuff to think over, so I went to my thinking tree. I think I fell asleep in the branches, but the next thing I knew Sesshoumaru was climbing up the tree after me, and Miroku opened the wind tunnel to try to get him off."
"That's when these weird bugs came out of nowhere and went right into it. They poisoned me, and I ended up here."
"I carried him out of the woods and called an ambulance."
"And what happened to Sesshoumaru?"
"He got pulled off the tree, but I ducked and he went right over my head and slammed into another tree."
"That's the last place we saw him."
The officers exchanged a glance.
"Sango, can you take us back to this place?"
"Yeah. Miroku, will you be okay?"
"I'll be fine. Watch out for him. He's youkai, you know."
"I know."
With that, the three of them left.
Takemaru looked around at the gathered crowd. They had spread out, surrounding the whole house. A broken window had been discovered in the back, away from the house, raising many questions. He almost laughed at the gullibility of the men around him, but kept it to himself, for now. It could wait.
"The demons will be inside. We'll burn them out and kill any demon that tries to get past!"
The men had roared with approval, willing to follow any leader with some kind of plan.
Fools.
He waved his right arm, and the assault began. Smoke began to rise from the sides of the building. Just a matter of time, now.
Inuyasha awoke to find an acrid smell in the air and his mother shaking him.
"Mommy? What's that smell?"
"Shh, it's okay. We're going to leave not, really quietly, okay? Don't cry and don't say a word, okay?"
"Okay," he whispered back.
Inu no Taisho, meanwhile, was rummaging in the basement for something that might help. The walls were still far from burned through, he had plenty of time. Grinning, he pulled the third sword from it's place, feeling it's evil power once again. There was a reason he kept it in the basement.
The smell of burning insulation filled the house, and he felt himself wishing for the simple burn-outs of the past.
He rushed back up the stairs to find Izayoi and Inuyasha, who was making a valiant effort to be quiet.
"When you hear the crashes, take Inuyasha and run for it. You have to make it, understand?"
Izayoi nodded.
"You'll be okay?"
"I always have in the past."
"But isn't there some other way?"
"It's either kill them or distract them. I'm telling you, I'll be okay."
Izayoi nodded.
"Come on Inuyasha…"
As the two of them hurried to the back door, where the smell was even stronger, and waited.
Outside, Takemaru waited for something to happen. Youkai were not like humans. they didn't smell smoke and go blindly rushing out away from it. No, when the youkai were killed, they would take down a good many humans, as well.
He was willing to make that sacrifice.
Watching the flames on the walls reach the roof, he waited.
Not long now.
Inu no Taisho held the last sword in his hands. The sou'unga, the last fang.
Time to use it.
Pure evil radiated from the sword, and it took everything the youkai had to keep it under control. As he watched, dragon made of nothing but energy wormed it's way out of the sword. He pointed it outwards.
The dragon attacked.
Takemaru actually felt the sound waves reverberating as the front of the house was blown away.
And that's when everything fell apart.
He had overestimated the men he had, and a good number of them, realizing the peril they were in, fled. The ones that were left rushed to the front of the house, to see what had happened, leaving the back completely exposed.
The plaster dust began to clear, and the handful of men left waited for a figure to appear. Something did appear, but it wasn't the youkai they had been expecting, but a dragon. It hissed, and lunged at them, it's body taking all the bullets they could shoot. Before Takemaru could even blink three of them had fallen.
The dragon retreated. This was his chance. Pulling the old monk's spell scrolls out, he rushed into the dust. He couldn't see exactly what was happening, but he could make out, at least the figure of a tall youkai. He threw the spell scrolls at the figure and they stuck, just like they were supposed to.
Perfect.
What he hadn't been expecting was the move that followed, namely, Inu no Taisho letting the dragon out of his sword again. With the youkai temporarily weakened, there was nothing to keep the evil energy in check and it flowed outward in a small, but insanely concentrated river.
Izayoi couldn't help but look back at the second crash. She held Inuyasha close to her chest, holding back a scream. The flames around their home had turned black, and the front of it radiated an energy what made her want to shiver. As she watched a wall inside gave away, then another, and the roof came crashing down. The energy dissipated, the flames regained their natural yellow color, and Izayoi turned from the sight. Inuyasha looked back over her shoulder and closed his eyes.
He didn't want to see that.
"What do we do now, Mommy?"
"I… don't know."
Behind them, a twig snapped.
"This is the last place you saw him?"
"Yeah. I was up there, Miroku was here, and Sesshoumaru hit this tree, here."
Sango pointed to the appropriate locations as she talked.
"Look, here's the burn mark," Koga said, pointing to the black mark on the tree. Around it, the bark had withered, turning a dark gray color.
"What is that?"
"Poison."
"Amazing. You may be right about these demons after all. There's no human that could do this."
"So, more about these 'demons,'" Koga said.
That's all I know. Why?"
"No reason."
"Koga, you've never done anything for no reason. What's up."
"It's nothing."
"You are one, aren't you?" Sango asked.
Koga froze.
"What gave you that idea?"
"You can't answer a question with a question, youkai."
'Youkai?"
"The old word for demon, a bit less evil sounding."
"Is she right, Koga?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I've just been feeling really weird all day."
"Do you think you're sick?"
"Not bad weird. Good weird."
"You are sick."
"This conversation is over. Come on, we still have to find Jaken."
"He would probably still be back with Inuyasha's parents. Their house is over there, about a block."
"Come on then."
Izayoi turned slowly, to face whatever had caused the noise. She desperately hoped it was her husband, a but she had the horrible feeling it wasn't.
She was right.
Apparently not all of the men had deserted their leader. One of them still stood there. One of his shoulders was bleeding lightly from some scratch. He'd been hurt, and he hadn't even gotten to shoot anything.
"You one of those demons?"
Izayoi shook her head, trying to use her hand to cover her son's ears. Too late.
"Just him then?"
"No!"
The man raised his gun, grinning as he looked through the scope.
"Lady, that there ain't no kid. It's a monster. Said so on TV. Now just back off, I'll take care of the little guy for you."
"Don't!" Izayoi wrapped her arms around Inuyasha, shielding him with her body.
"Leave him alone, he's done nothing."
"And I'm gonna keep it that way. Don't make me shoot you too."
Inuyasha, crushed by his mother's arms, looked at his hands. His nails had lengthened into wicked points. There was something he could do here.
He knew there was something he could do, something with his claws, they were almost speaking to him. He's felt that once before, the year before. He had fallen off a diving board and his body had told him, swim, and he had. Now, his body was telling him strike, and he did.
His life depended on it.
"What… what the hell… did you do?"
The man looked down at his shirt, shredded by the yellow blades of light that had appeared from nowhere.
"What the hell did you do to me?"
"This… wasn't like this."
Sango surveyed the wreckage. The house was almost completely destroyed, flames licking at what little was left. There were corpses here, too, sliced to ribbons.
"This place… feels… really really awful," Kikyo said. She was right, the jaki was almost overpowering, but she didn't know that any more than she knew the name for the evil residue.
"What could have happened here?"
"Sesshoumaru again?" Koga asked.
"I don't think so. Why would he turn on his own family, or his friend, or his home? No, this was done by more than one person."
"How do you know?" Sango asked.
"Look at the fire. There's no place of origin. The fire was set evenly, at about the same time, all the way around the perimeter of the house. In order for one person to do that, they would have to had to use about a hundred gallons of lighter fluid, or gasoline."
'And there's no smell of it here," Koga finished.
"You can tell that? Sweet."
"Hey! That doesn't prove anything. Gasoline stinks."
"So we're out of leads. Obviously there's no one here. So what now?"
At that moment, a gunshot echoed through the air.
"Where did that come from?" Sango asked, her hands pressed to her ears.
"Somewhere close," Kikyo replied, doing the same.
"That way," Koga said, leading them into the forest.
"And we come upon another dead body," Sango said dispiritedly.
"Koga, go back to the cruiser and report this, let's get some people out here."
"Right."
"What happened to him? I mean, I've never seen anybody actually get shot, but… that doesn't look like a gunshot wound."
"It isn't," Kikyo said. "Don't touch anything, this is a crime scene."
"They look like knife marks."
"Sango!"
"What?"
Sango turned around to see Inuyasha running toward her. He saw Kikyo and stopped dead.
"I didn't mean it!"
"Mean what?"
"I didn't mean it!" Inuyasha said. He was starting to cry now. But he shouldn't cry, Mommy said not to cry, "I'm not a bad demon, don't shoot me too!"
"Wait, who got shot?"
Kikyo moved toward the boy, but he backed up, faster than she could follow.
"Don't shoot me too, I'll be good…"
"Inuyasha, it's okay. She's not going to shoot you," Sango reassured him.
"Promise?"
"I promise. Now, can you tell me what happened here?"
Inuyasha shook his head. Kikyo noticed the ears emerging from the white hair, but was no longer surprised.
"Is there anyone else, who was here? It's very important that we find out what happened to this guy."
"My daddy. He stayed in the house so Mommy and I could run."
"Run from who, Inuyasha?"
"I don't know. Lots of people."
'Those must be the people back at the house,' Kikyo thought. 'They were killed by something… the demon father?'
"What happened to your mother? Did she go back for him?"
"No."
"Inuyasha. It's important. Where's your mother?"
"I didn't mean it…"
"You didn't mean what?"
"He was gonna hurt my mommy and I just… I just…" the hanyou stared at his hands. "I hurt him and eh got mad and shot as us."
Realization dawned on Kikyo's and Sango's face.
"I made him mad and he shot my mommy! I didn't mean it, I didn't mean to, it's not my fault!" Inuyasha cried.
"It's okay. It'll be okay…"
Sango gathered the boy into her arms as Kikyo went back the direction he had come from.
So much pain… death… on one day. Because of the youkai?
Is this what her ancestors had fought?
Maybe they were right after all.
But… maybe…
Sango looked at the hanyou in her arms, sobbing into her shirt.
It wasn't their fault.
Miroku counted the dots on the ceiling, hit four thousand, skipped one, started over. The IVs had long ago been removed and he personally saw no reason for him to remain here. The nurse's excuse had been 'rest.'
Keh.
The constant buzzing from the thing Koga had left behind was starting to really annoy him.
"Shut up," he told it. The thing, sitting innocently on the table beside his bed, did not oblige.
"Shut UP!"
It might have been his imagination, but the noise actually seemed to get louder. He picked it up.
"I'm warning you, thing…"
"Bzzzzzzzzzz"
"YOU ASKED FOR IT!"
He shook it violently. It stopped buzzing.
"Well that was easy."
"Bzzzzzzzzz"
The buzzing, he found, was no longer coming from the hive, but instead from… above him. He slowly looked up.
The same bugs from the forest hovered above him, looking pissed.
"Oh… was that your home? Heh heh… go back!"
He held up the hive, and the bees obligingly flew back into it.
"Well that was easy."
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"
"Aw, man..."
He paused.
"Wait a minute…"
These things were definitely not normal. They seemed to understand what he said to them, and, moreover, the had the ability, simply by being around, to render his kazaana useless.
Somebody knew about the kazaana, and, more importantly, a way around it.
Miroku stared at the gently buzzing hive, thinking intently.
It couldn't be Sesshoumaru, he didn't even know he himself was a demon until that morning. And if Sesshoumaru had wanted him dead, he had many chances, which he passed up.
Speaking of passed chances, why had he gone after Sango? Why there? He could have killed her at any time once she left the house, but she had been up in the tree long enough to fall asleep.
And why her parents? Sure, maybe Sesshoumaru had been pissed, but not enough to kill the two innocent people. He wasn't that evil. Not to mention he didn't know where she lived.
There was someone else here, working behind the scenes, pulling some strings.
Whoever they were, they knew about the kazaana and had some kind of grudge against Sango and her family. They would have to be pretty old, because they had obviously not transformed that morning, they knew too much.
His eyes widened.
Old… five hundred years old? Old enough to be the demon who had cursed his family with the kazaana? But that didn't add up. Where had he been for five hundred years? And what did Sango have to do with it?
Too many questions, and he wasn't happy just sitting here and pondering them.
Time to go.
Okay, I really have to end the chapter here. I promised to update yesterday and I didn't (Library closed, sorry) so instead you get his monster of a chapter.
Five orphans in one day in one story, I am ashamed of myself. I really do feel bad about that, but it needed to be done.
For those of you who don't know: Without giving anything away, Takemaru appears in the third movie, and he is the villain who fights Inu no Taisho to the death, in a burning building, so a blatant rip-off there. Just like in the movie, here, Takemaru appears from nowhere, with no apparent motive, and attacks the Inu family. Don't ask me, I don't know.
About Kikyo and Koga, they're about twenty, just cuz writing so many kids was weirding me out. They're a team for no particular reason, just coincidence at the police station, and there is no romance.
Also, I don't know how well I'm writing these characters.
Inuyasha is young, but not a pushover. Sesshoumaru's developed a superioristic attitude, but he's not evil. Also, Rin was going to be in here, but she's kinda... not. Heh.
Okay, enough from me.