A/N: Bleh. Our computer got a virus. Fortunately all the files are still here, and I had written this chapter a long time ago, so...
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A secret shattered
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Inuyasha glared at the man in front of him, who smirked and pressed the cool nose of the silver revolver to the boy's forehead. The tension in the air became thicker than the aroma of saltwater and seemed to grow each passing second.
Kouga sneered at him, acting like he had already pulled the trigger and was on his way back to the base to collect his reward.
"You first. Then I'll take the woman."
However, currently in his state of superiority, he failed to bear in mind that he hadn't done anything about Miroku and Sango.
Inuyasha glanced sideways and nodded once.
Miroku immediately jumped out of the backseat, appeared behind Kouga and having the element of surprise, was able to twist him into a chokehold. The older man tried to shake him off, but before he could Inuyasha tore the gun from his grasp and pointed it at him.
Sango slid in the front seat, got behind the wheel, and stepped on the gas, navigating back to the place where they'd first lost Kagome.
Inuyasha smirked. "Never leave your victims untied, smartass. First rule."
Kouga growled, and as he did the silver-haired boy noticed something different about him.
Kouga had fangs.
Before Inuyasha could pull the trigger, the man jammed his nails – which were incredibly sharp – into Miroku's upper arm. The dark-haired boy cried out in pain, fell to the bottom of the speedboat, and rolled under the steering wheel.
Kouga jumped on Inuyasha and they started wrestling ferociously on the moving boat. Blood and sweat splattered about. Each one was without a doubt trying to kill the other.
"Miroku!" Sango cried softly to the bleeding boy over the spatter of waves, "I'll get some first aid, wait-"
"Screw that!" Miroku grunted through clenched teeth, clutching his injured limb, "Just keep steering!"
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'Damn it. It's all my fault! It's all my fault!' Inuyasha thought frantically as he tried to pin the heavy man he was struggling against.
'Is she alive? Damn it!'
The angry thoughts coursing through him, as well as the numerous cuts and gashes the wolf demon was giving him was too much for the pink crystal hanging from his neck to bear. It suddenly shot out a brilliant flash of light that erupted in the small motorboat for a millisecond. Every occupant in the vessel was bathed in the strange pink glow.
And then it was over.
Kouga's broken body was sprawled across the speedboat's deck. His arm was detached from his body, bound together by only shreds of skin and sinew, and his face was unrecognizable. Blood was everywhere, turning the white leather seats brown, and the floor was decorated with polka dots of the crimson liquid.
Yet that wasn't the most startling aspect of the scene before them. Sango gaped in shock. Even Miroku forgot about his pain for a second.
Inuyasha stood over the dead body of the brown-haired man, hands at his sides, chest heaving. He glanced up, and there was a flame in his golden eyes, making them dance and flicker about under the sunlight. The pink jewel on his neck shook madly on its slender white cord.
"Well, what the fuck are you two staring at?" he growled, "Let's go get Kagome!"
Sango clutched the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white. "Inuyasha…" She whispered. "What's on your head?"
The boy's eyes widened as understanding dawned on him.
'No…fucking…way.'
Sango's eyes were enormous.
'He's a hanyou.'
Miroku squinted at Inuyasha.
"Whoa…what kind of ears are those?"
Inuyasha snarled and grabbed the unfortunate boy's shirt, creating tears in the soft material with his newly transformed claws.
"Listen," he growled threateningly, glancing at each of them, "both of you will act like this never fucking happened, you hear? Not Kagome, not anybody hears about this, or I'll rip you two apart and eat you for dinner!" he bared his fangs for emphasis.
Sango and Miroku's heads bobbed quickly up and down. Neither of them really doubted him.
"Now," Inuyasha seemed satisfied, for he dropped poor Miroku back on the deck and lifted Kouga's body from the bloody seat, "Let's go!"
He dumped the tattered body into the ocean.
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Everything was pitch-black.
'Where…am I?'Nothing was clear. The atmosphere was hazy, like it would be in the middle of a cloud.
It felt like she was floating on something, yet it also felt like a strange, thick liquid was filling her lungs and making her believe she was going to burst any second.
'Need…breathe…but feels...nice.'
It was dark, but peaceful. Why go back?
A voice pierced through the fog.
"Kagome!"
'Wha…?'
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"Are you sure, Inuyasha? I'll just go in-"
"No fucking way," he growled, cutting off Sango, "You'll never get to her in time!"
He stripped off his bloody shirt and plunged into the cold ocean water.
Miroku chuckled, then grimaced as pain shot up through his whole upper body. Sango turned to him.
"What's so funny? You're the last person I expect to see laughing."
Miroku opened an eye and grinned.
"Think about it this way—he calls her a bitch and insults her every time he even looks at her, but look at him now. He's risking his life to save the one person he so presumably 'hates'."
Sango stared at the dark-haired boy for a while, and a small smile crept up on her worried face.
"And he barely knows her."
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Inuyasha hissed as the salt water stung his cuts and scratches, and he couldn't miss the way the clear azure water around him turned slightly pink. But he forgot all about his pain when he saw her.
'Shit.'
It seemed she had thrashed about for a while before she passed out, for she was fortunately only a foot or so beneath the surface of the ocean water. Her ebony hair billowed out behind her like a cloud. She sank slowly, but gracefully, her arms outstretched toward the surface, as if asking for a hug.
He used his demon speed to swim to her and grab her from the clutches of the ocean. She hung limply in his grip, and her weight was lessened because of the water. It was a miracle she had survived for so long.
He swam up to the lifeboat and broke the surface.
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"Goddamn it!" Inuyasha roared, gripping the unconscious girl and shaking her fiercely, "Kagome wake up!"
His hair, claws, and ears were back to normal, for he had calmed down a bit after rescuing Kagome. But that didn't mean he was in danger of losing it again. It wouldn't matter that much, since they had come to the shore of the private beach, but he didn't want to risk it again.
The girl made no move to get up and lay still on the coarse sand.
Miroku sighed. "Shaking her isn't going to help, Inuyasha. You're going to have to give her CPR." He winced when Sango gingerly wrapped a bandage around his shoulder from the speedboats first-aid kit.
The sun was setting, shining luminous orange rays on the almost-black color of the night sea. The beach had gone from a pale yellow to a musty brown.
Inuyasha just looked at him. "You mean I'm going to have to—"
Miroku rolled his eyes as he rested on the coarse sand. "Come on, Inuyasha. Be mature about it. I'll do it if you—"
"Fuck no!" Miroku raised his eyebrows at the boy's sudden possessiveness of the raven-haired girl.
Inuyasha ignored him and looked down at the almost lifeless girl with wide amber eyes. He had already violated her when drunk, it seemed doing it again without her permission would be a crime.
'It'd be better than her being dead…'Thinking wasn't helping. Her pulse seemed to be growing weaker by the second. The silver-haired boy took a deep breath…
And stepped back.
"You do it." He said to Sango.
Sango gave him an odd look, but, seeing as time was necessity, she moved forward and, being experienced in her training as a lifeguard, gave Kagome CPR.
Miroku glanced at the now-human boy.
"So…any reason why you backed out? It looked to me like a pretty good chance."
Inuyasha met his gaze with a stony glare.
The reason that maybe he was scared of what she would do crossed his mind. But there was no way in hell he was going to tell the boy next to him that. "Keh, I didn't…know how!" was his retort.
Miroku rolled his eyes. "Sure."
A coughing fit from the girl Sango was holding interrupted them. Kagome mumbled something incoherent and retched out what seemed like a bucket of seawater.
The two boys and the black-haired girl holding her sighed with relief. Sango leaned over Kagome, smoothing the poor girl's wet hair back from her face.
"It's all right, Kagome. Everything's going to be fine."
The girl she was talking to nodded weakly. Then her head slumped backwards and she passed out once more on the cool sand.
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A white-haired woman rushed into a cold metallic room titled 'Executive'. Her face was emotionless as she announced the grave news, but a hint of awareness sparkled in her vacant hoary eyes.
The man in front of her didn't even seem mildly surprised. It was as if he knew it was going to happen all along.
"So he's dead?"
"Yes sir. His body was found by one of our men patrolling in the helicopters. They had to do a DNA sample to see if it was really him. The professor said his body was mangled and his face unidentifiable."
"Mm-hmmm. So he failed. Oh well," he turned around in his swivel chair and gazed out the window, "it just saves us trouble. If he had come back without finishing the job, we would've killed him anyway." A cruel but quiet laugh escaped the pale man.
The woman nodded. "So you want me to bring up the next one on the list?"
"That would be perfect." The man leaned back on his chair, "Oh, and Kanna?"
She turned around, "…Yes, sir?"
"Write up an apology note, and add an upgrade to security. Their trust is crucial right about now."
"And after that, call Kagura. She is one of my main items for the next assignment."
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Two girls sat in a beige bedroom. Well, maybe not sat. One lay down in bed, with the covers pulled up to her chin, still tired after what had happen earlier that day. The other kept angrily pacing around the room, kicking random objects that got into her path.
"It's ridiculous!" Sango shouted, unable to keep her rage at a level, "You almost got killed, Kagome! What the hell are we doing still staying here? We should immediately get tickets to board on the next plane back to Japan! Why, if it wasn't for Inuyasha, you wouldn't have probably even been here!"
Kagome glanced at the pacing girl from her spot under the covers. "Sango…what happened?"
Sango glanced at the raven-haired girl and put her hand to her forehead. "Oh yeah, you were unconscious." She laughed halfheartedly. "Well, let me tell you all about it…"
'Except the part where Inuyasha turned Hanyou…'Inuyasha stared at the pink jewel in front of him with disgust.
"You betrayed me," he growled, "now those two know because of you!"
The crystal, being an inanimate object, did not apologize neither did it protest.
He huffed and roughly ran his fingers over the coarse part of the jewel that had been cut in half, and memories came flooding back to him.
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"The Shikon Jewel…give it to me!""Fat chance," he growled, "SANKON TETSUSOU!"
The demon screeched horribly as it burst into many gory bits of flesh, then disintegrated.
"Inuyasha!" a woman's voice called from the other end of the forest.
A smile found its way on the hanyou's face as he jumped from branch to branch to reach the owner of the voice. As he got closer, the coppery scent of blood hit his nose, and he frowned.
The hanyou quickened his leaps, and soon landed into a clearing where a raven-haired beauty sat on the lush grass.
She was stroking a lavender flower and looked up expectantly when a crimson clad form landed in front of her. It was like the fist-sized wound on her, dripping copious amounts of blood, wasn't even there.
"Kikyou…" he whispered hoarsely, bringing her up into his arms. She gave him a pained smile, and sighed his name, "Inuyasha."
His voice broke, "K-kikyou, who did this to you?" he buried his head in her hair, inhaling her scent deeply. "Tell me! I'll kill that goddamn bastard!"
She didn't answer, merely reached up and touched the half of a pink jewel hanging from his neck. His eyes widened, and he sucked in a sharp breath.
"Inu…Inuyasha. My sister was right. It wasn't meant to be."
"Ki…Kikyou," the hanyou choked, "I'm-I'm so sorry, this is all my fucking fault…" he nuzzled her cheek, "don't worry, I'll save you, c'mon, she'll have something for you-" he got up, cradling her gently. She stopped him from leaping into the air by softly laying a hand on his arm.
"It's too late now…I'll die on the way. Inuyasha, I want to spend my last moments with you…alone…please," she pleaded.
The silver-haired boy's face became void of expression, and his bangs hid his eyes as he nodded. He hung on to his love for dear life, afraid to let her go. She responded by nestling in his embrace, and clutching him as tightly as she could in her extremely weak state.
They stayed like that for a while; wishing time would stop so they could enjoy their final moments together, in each other's arms.
Unfortunately, time did not listen to even the most sincere of pleas, and it was not long before the woman suddenly gasped. Inuyasha worriedly lifted her chin until they were eye to eye, "Kikyou?" he asked anxiously.
She gave him a small smile before reaching up and softly pressing her lips to his. The hanyou shut his eyes and responded deeply to the kiss, pouring his heart out, telling her how much he loved her without saying a word.
Then it was over, and her head fell back limply as she unintentionally broke the kiss. She was gone.
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The pillow was wet with unbidden tears. Inuyasha kicked himself mentally for having gone far enough in his thoughts to remember that day.
"Shit." He muttered harshly, throwing the beige pillow across the room and burying his head in his hands.
She was dead, and it was all his fault. All his fucking fault.
'Why'd she fucking have to look so much like Kikyou?'He thought crossly before his shoulders started to shake, and the otherwise-vacant room was filled with the echoes of heartbroken sobs.
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A/N: -braces self for incoming rocks-