I do not own Inu-yasha, if you thought I did then you're a stupid konoida! Or pokepoo::pokepoo tackles her: I also don't own Full Metal Alchemist, which is only mentioned in this chapter.
Chapter Six
Other Side of the Well
Kagome watched as the landscape changed. For some odd reason, Sessho-maru had been following them. She didn't know if he'd actually try to go through or not, but he had been with them since the castle. The others had voted to stay at the castle and try to find any clues of Radaus', Lorelei's, or Naraku's location.
Sessho-maru had been silent the whole time, thinking to himself more than anything else. She's going to kill me because I left Rin... was the thought at the very back of his mind. He mentally blinked. Damn, there was that little part of him that actually had a personality. It was something buried in the back of his mind though. He really didn't care that Artemis would clobber him when she realized that tiny little fact. A mental smirk formed in his mind. What could she, a normal human, do to him, the great dog youkai lord of the west?
Be like a female and somehow kick your ass with those mysterious powers they have for getting their way, even if it includes kicking the ass of something stronger than them.
One of these days, he'd kill that little part of him.
"Sessho-maru, you know you can't go through the well, right?" the female called Kagome yelled to him.
He merely glanced at her. Humans were none of his concern if they did not include Rin or Artemis. He didn't say anything but gave her that emotionless stare that we all know and love. Well, for her, it was creepy.
The biggest problems on his mind were One: His arm was still throbbing and he could of sworn it was longer. Two: Artemis was unconscious, and he lately he hadn't heard her breathe or seen her chest rise or fall regularly. Three: Something about Artemis was making him act like what had happened with Rin all over again.
Why was he caring so much about some stupid mortal? ((I know! pokepoo: Well of course, you're the author. If you didn't know, you'd have to be way into stupid, or just pathetic. :smirks: Well, you are! candysweet::throttles him:))
A clearing came up and he saw an old well covered with vines. Was this the well that the Tomoko character and the Kagome mortal were talking about?
"We're going down!" Kagome said.
Sessho-maru looked at it. Go down a well? That seemed...odd...and stupid, something a mortal would do. Apparently a foolish hanyou as well. If it meant protecting Artemis, it was probably worth it to get wet.
Kagome got off of Inu-yasha's back and held Artemis up. "You want to take her through, Sessho-maru?" ((Ha! That rhymes! pokepoo: You dumbass. candysweet: --;;))
She rested Artemis against Sessho-maru, who held her up with his arm. "All we do is go through the well, got it? Maybe the fact that you're with Artemis will make it so you can go through," she said with a shrug.
He only stared at her with those emotionless eyes.
Kagome mentally shivered and turned back to Inu-yasha. "Ah, shall we?" she said. She got back onto Inu-yasha's back again and they disappeared down the well.
Sessho-maru looked at the girl resting against him and slung her over his back, her being too large to carry in one arm like he had Rin. He stood on the rim of the well and looked into the black emptiness beneath him. If he got wet for no reason, some foolish mortal was going to die. In he went.
---
Kagome and Inu-yasha watched as Sessho-maru came out of the well with a still sleeping Artemis on his shoulder.
"So my theory worked!" Kagome said happily. Sessho-maru looked over at her.
Shiver.
Meanwhile:
Tomoko listened to the others on his end of the earphone. So they had gotten through. He was in a large, dark room, the only thing illuminating his handsome face was the computer screen in front of him. The whole room was a bunch of computers and high-tech equipment he'd learned to use from the few years they had spent in the Earth's schools.
Those middle and high schools were a pain in the ass, but he'd became a total computer genius by taking the classes. So something came out of going to the hellholes. He especially hated one in America that was named Northridge. He wanted to burn that one. ((Yep, scorin' a few points on my school...))
"So you guys got through," he said, stating the obvious.
"Oh! You sound so much clearer!" the female voice said.
"No duh. I'm in your time."
"Oh. So...where are you?"
"Ever heard of the Spides residence on Tomi Street?"
"Well, no, but I know where that street is. It's a few minutes away from my house."
"Well get her over here and quick!"
"She's not breathing."
Inu-yasha and Kagome looked over at Sessho-maru, who had gotten Artemis down and now had a hand on the back of her head, resting her against him, looking down at her. Kagome could of swore she saw some kind of emotion in those eyes of his, but she wasn't taking any chances.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE'S NOT BREATHING?" Inu-yasha said, well, yelled.
That caught the attention of Tomoko. "Suheute! GET HER OVER HERE NOW!"
Inu-yasha tried to pick Artemis up, but Sessho-maru glared at him and gently put her on his back like he had seen Inu-yasha do to Kagome.
Inu-yasha rolled his eyes and Kagome got on, Kagome giving directions.
They arrived in no time in front of a huge mansion.
"Wow! That's Artemis' place?"
"She is a freakin' princess!" A man said, standing in the gate. "You guys took forever!"
"I'm guessing you're Tomoko?" Kagome asked.
"No. I'm the Easter Bunny."
"No need to be mean," Kagome murmured.
Tomoko went to Artemis and pulled her off of Sessho-maru, who growled at him, but Tomoko ignored it. He had been growled at by more larger and uglier ((MUCH, MUCH, MUCH uglier!)) things. Of course, Artemis had usually been there to do one of her favorite pastimes-killing evil, ugly monster things that wanted to eat him and/or her and/or innocents.
He held her in two arms and ran off toward the building. The three people left behind started after him.
They ended up in a white room with a bed and lots of dangerous looking equipment, as well as a lot of stuff that looked like it would of come from D&D.
"What are you, some kind of alchemist?" Kagome said. "Like one that heals?"
Tomoko looked back at her. "You know that alchemists were people back in the old days that tried to turn ordinary stuff into gold, right?" ((I looked it up in the dictionary! pokepoo: At least she can do something. candysweet::glares at him: Stop showing up in my pointless and pathetic authoress' notes that no one is going to read!))
Maybe I've been watching too much Full Metal Alchemist. Kagome thought. ((I know I have!))
"Maybe you've been watching too much Full Metal Alchemist," Tomoko said out loud and started working on Artemis. He pulled the top of her kimono down, revealing the wrappings that she had been using since she had gotten that arrow stuck in her. "This is it, the poison," Tomoko said.
"She sure gets poisoned a lot, doesn't she?" Kagome commented.
Tomoko glared at her. "Can you shut up? If I don't get this fixed soon, she'll die! She's probably already running out of the extra oxygen that Kundurains have inside of them!"
"What are Kundurains?" Kagome whispered to Inu-yasha.
He looked at her blankly. Who in their right minds would ask Inu-yasha a question like that? Inu-yasha, the guy who couldn't tell what an adjective was if it smacked him in the face! The guy who couldn't multiply two and two even if Kagome's life depended on it! The guy who takes getting a hand shoved through his stomach with flying colors, but whines when he eats curry! Okay, I think we've...depressed his self-esteem a bit, and proved to us all that Inu-yasha is an idiot. ((I think I went a little overboard with that. At least the OOCness is pretty much gone. :eye twitches:))
Kagome looked back at Tomoko and Artemis. "Hmm, what was I thinking?" she said to herself.
Tomoko pulled the wrappings down as well and Kagome covered Inu-yasha's eyes. She wasn't going to touch Sessho-maru, not because he was ugly or anything, but because she didn't want his fluffy thing to be some kind of monster that ate her hand or something. With Sessho-maru, she never knew. So, she wanted to keep her hand intact, so she kept it off of his eyes. He was kind of tall too...
"Fire herbs, and Fallene spice should do it, the rest is up to her," Tomoko said and grabbed something from the D&D side of the room. It looked like a normal lotion bottle to her, but its contents were a rich purple and smelled like artificial strawberries, the kind people used in lotions and things like that. ((Because I have never smelled an actual strawberry smell, so I think the lotion smells are artificial.))
He quickly spread some of it over the bruise and hooked her up to an oxygen tank. "That should work for now. She'll probably wake up in a few minutes or up to a few hours. The longest ever recorded was two days, but that was a very bad attack. This one is more light," Tomoko said.
"I don't even understand what happened," Inu-yasha said irritably. ((Aren't you used to that by now Inu-chan?))
"Aren't you used to that by now, Inu-yasha?" Kagome said, teasing him lightly.
Inu-yasha growled at her.
Tomoko rolled his eyes. "Radaus used a Kotane Curse Poison in his hand when he touched Artemis, and even though it's called Kotane, his hand would of been really cold. Anyways, he used his magical power to make this poison and to apply it to her through his hand. This poison's symptoms include dizziness, fainting, labored breathing, loss of breath, and if not treated soon enough, death."
Everyone but Sessho-maru stared at him blankly. Sessho-maru stared at him emotionlessly.
Tomoko sighed. "Okay. Follow me."
They followed him to a dark room filled with high-tech technology. ((Ha, I used tech and then technology in the same sentence! pokepoo: --;; :stamps her forehead with the word 'baka':))
"Okay," Tomoko said, sitting down in the chair and clicking a couple of keys. "Listen to this."
"Ah, if only looks could kill, those would surely kill anyone, my precious sweet. But I'm afraid that they can't. Now let's see what the princess of Kundura has for me. Like I had thought..."
"Get off of me! You weigh a ton!"
"You know that I'm stronger than you are, little princess."
"You bastard! Your hands are freezing!"
"You will regret that."
"The feedback from the earphone was a little fuzzy, but did you all hear the part about his hands being freezing?"
"Yes," Kagome said.
"Okay. There is a poison from where we are from that is called the Kotane Curse Poison. In our language, Kotane means fire. So basically, it's the Fire Curse Poison. This poison is projected through the hand or another body part and injected into the person. To make and project this poison, you must have magical ability and the want to curse someone. Radaus is one of the most powerful people from where we are from and he has a lot to curse Artemis for. He made this poison and then projected it through his hand to Artemis' skin. That's why he said she would regret whatever it was she had done."
He typed a few things and diagrams showed up on the computer, as well as what looked like a scan from a really old book depicting what Tomoko was talking about. It was in some other language though, and Kagome couldn't read it. Inu-yasha, being Inu-yasha, couldn't read it either.
"So, since he poisoned her, she fainted and stopped breathing, like I was telling you earlier. This poison's symptoms include, depending on how powerful the poison is, dizziness, fainting, labored breathing, loss of breath, and if not treated soon enough, death. Only a really powerful one, like the one Radaus used could of caused death though." ((Yay! I'm good at making up poisons! And languages! pokepoo: And that's something to be proud of? candysweet: Well...sometimes...I guess...))
"But you saved her with that lotion, right?" Kagome said.
"Yes," Tomoko answered. "That 'lotion' is made up of the cure, which is Fire herbs and Fallene spices. Fallene means air. Since she had probably about ran out of oxygen, even though Kundurain people store a lot more in their bodies, I had to hook her up to that machine, so she wouldn't die from the lack of oxygen. Even having that lotion on won't make you breath until a few minutes later."
"So she's going to be alright?" Inu-yasha asked. ((Ain't he just so cute when he asks the obvious?))
"No," Tomoko said. "She's going to die a horrible, painful death." He glared at Inu-yasha.
"That means yes," Kagome said to Inu-yasha, who probably didn't understand sarcasm, like a lot of things. But, being Inu-yasha, who is a sarcastic jerk...
"I know what sarcasm is!" he said with a light growl.
Tomoko rolled his eyes. "Hey, where's that tall guy?"
Kagome and Inu-yasha looked around the dark room. "Where did Sessho-maru go?" Kagome said.
---
Sessho-maru stared down at the girl lying on the bed. She looked too frail to be a fighter. Why was she doing this? Why was she hunting some man that obviously wanted to kill her? Or use her?
She had never really told him much about herself. He had noticed that she was very quiet about that part of her life. She almost never spoke of her past, and when she did, it was short and to the point. She dodged almost everything that would relate to her past. He reached out and touched the stone tied around her neck. About the only thing he could get out of her was that no one lived where she had come from and that the other one living inside of her was Alejandra of the Fire Stone.
Their conversation from a while ago ran through his head.
"What is your real name?"
"Artemis Srina Spides Alatontion Son of the R- Dragon Clan."
"The other you's name."
"Oh. Alejandra of the Fire Stone."
"Where are you-how old are you?"
"Seventeen. Born on April Ninth.
"Where are you from?"
"My home is a long way away, and no one lives there anymore."
"My moon, why were you so surprised?"
"An old prophecy I once heard. 'Find the one with the power of the moon, you will be caught in his web'."
She had stopped saying something about her clan, and said Dragon instead, and she had mentioned maids once. That man had called her princess, but she said nothing about it. Was she a princess somewhere? She had stopped at the R, was she going to say Royal Clan?
Another stab of pain went through his stump of an arm and he pulled up his sleeve to look at it. It looked longer than before... What was happening to him?
-------
candysweet: Yay! Another chapter! So I explained the Kotane Curse Poison to you! Poor Artemis is barely alive!
pokepoo: What I don't get is why he would kill her if he needs her.
candysweet::gets triumphant look on her face and holds her chin between her outstretched index finger and thumb: Ah! But that is something I want you to get from this story!
pokepoo: The fact that it makes no sense?
candysweet::beats him over the head with an inflatable mallet: No! The reasoning behind why he would want to kill her even though he most obviously needs her and most definitely... Oh, I can't say any more!
pokepoo::crosses his legs and arms while hovering in the air, thinking about it with a large bump on his head: Ah! I've got it!
candysweet: Yay! I have a smart fluffball to call my own::huggles pokepoo:
pokepoo::laughs at the readers: I bet none of y'alls can figure it out!
candysweet: Yay!
pokepoo: And what's with Sessho-maru's arm?
candysweet::smirks wickedly: That's another secret that will be told in time. 3