My thanks to: That Bloody Demon, Premierarchange (and yes, you're right. On reflection, Kagome does say 'sit' too many times in this story...from now on i'll give her a little more restraint...problem is she's been bitten by Myouga! evil laugh), artgalgenius (i'm very glad you think everyone's in character amused it's been very interesting seeing the different views of how people perceive Inuyasha and one day i'll read the mangas, as you imply they are very good!), and hentail8ancilla. I hope you keep enjoying this...I won't let it drag on before I get to the real fun of messing with the beads of subjugation, I promise!

Your faithful fanfiction writer,

Tessadragon

Disclaimer: Inuyasha isn't mine, except in my dreams. (Just kidding, my bf means everything to me!)
Chapter 5

"Myouga," Kagome asked pointedly, slipping into the hut, as Shippo, who'd transformed into a fly to grab the flea-demon from Inuyasha's robes, dropped Myouga on the floor."Have you been drinking from just Inuyasha? Or anyone else as well?"

Myouga went beet red. "Of c-course n-not! W-why w-would y-you think s-such a thing!"

Kagome grimaced: that was all the answer she needed. Someone's gonna be itching soon.

Now Shippo popped back into his normal fox-demon form and stretched, feeling stiff from being in the bunched-up form of a fly. "Hey Myouga! When's Inuyasha's birthday?"

"The young lord's birthday?" Myouga asked, mystified. "Why on earth should you ask, Shippo?" Making himself comfortable, the flea settled to a nip of some of the bread Kagome had taken from her backpack. It always fascinated him to see things from her era. "And as for your answer…not for a long time. Heck, the Lord Sesshomaru's birthday is nearer than Lord Inuyasha's!"

Kagome giggled at the mental image of Sesshomaru blowing a party whistle and blowing out the candles.

"I don't even know if Master Inuyasha considers his age," Myouga continued. "He was asleep for fifty years, after all. That should be pretty depressing. Even demons have a mid-life crisis."

Kagome sighed sadly, trying not to think of the more disturbing image of Inuyasha driving a red car. "I suppose so."

"So that isn't what's making him act weird?" Shippo asked, taking a gulp from a bottle of water and screwing up his face as he struggled to get over the fact that he now had a face, not a fly's proboscis.

Myouga shook his head. "I would not have an idea…but I can spy on him?" he offered. "Seeing as I'm meant to stay with him to the end of the moon's cycle before going back to Totosei."

"Yes," Kagome agreed. "Thanks, Myouga." Then she gave him a less friendly look. "And if you drink a single drop more blood from me, I'll get the bug spray out."

Myouga went beet-red again. "I-It wasn't m-me," he mumbled.

"Uh huh."

Shippo got up and went to the door, peered out at the tree in whose branches Inuyasha had curled up for the night. "It looks like he's asleep," he whispered.

"I heard that!" Inuyasha's voice, indignant, floated over the night breeze. Shippo blanched.

"I don't need to sleep, you little runt," Inuyasha continued, knowing perfectly well that Shippo was listening. "You're practically as weak as these pathetic humans, needing to sleep!"

"Inuyasha," Kagome said warningly in a low voice.

He blanched, but she didn't say the three-letter word he despised, so he tried to relax back onto his branch, but couldn't get the nervousness from his limbs.

"Now," Kagome turned back to Myouga and Shippo. "Try and find out what Inuyasha's deal is, Myouga, okay?"

The flea-demon nodded unhappily. "I'd better get back to him."

"Be careful!" Shippo called after him softly.

"He'll be fine," Kagome said confidently, and absentmindedly rubbed her arm, then discovered where Myouga had sucked her blood.

Hopping as quickly as possible, Myouga jumped onto Inuyasha's sleeve and rushed to hide himself.

Inuyasha's eyelids fluttered as though he was about to sleep, then with an effort he sat up. "Don't need to sleep," he reminded himself in a mutter, then his head jerked up as a new scent seemed to explode through the air. "What the—!" he gasped, his tawny-gold eyes widening, then he leapt from the branch to the ground, landing softly, turning his head frantically to try and catch the direction that the scent came from. Myouga could only compare the franticity of Inuyasha's reaction to when Kirara the demon cat found a heap of catnip.

The half-demonglanced once towards the hut, his dog ears twitching wildly, as he silently debated if he should leave Kagome and Shippo alone, then he started walking towards the Forest of Inuyasha.

Where's he going? Myouga thought desperately, then had the terrible feeling he was going towards danger, began fighting the urge to not run away…then...

"To hell with the bet!" he shrieked and leapt off Inuyasha, then hopped as fast as he could back to Kagome and Shippo.

"What the—!" Inuyasha stopped, baffled. Did I just hear that little pest? "Myouga!" he snapped but there was no answer. Shaking his head, the half-demon grimaced and went back to running into the forest, his red kimono stark in the darkness like blood on ice.

"He's gone towards the forest!" Myouga bolted into the hut. Shippo gave him an unequivocal look of disgust. "You coward. You said you'd spy on him."

"There's a disclaimer in every contract I sign," Myouga said delicately but breathlessly. "Whenever there's the slightest hint of danger, I'm allowed to run for it! Self-preservation, Shippo! I'm an endangered species!"

"A flea? An endangered species? I wish!" Kagome said, grabbing her quiver of arrows, and the smooth bow, and slung them over her shoulder.

"No. Me, Myouga. I'm an endangered species!" Myouga said smugly.

"Come on, Shippo!" Kagome asked, heading to the door, an arrow in her hand with the bow.

Shippo trembled. "Must I? It's dark!"

"You're a demon, a full demon," Kagome coaxed. "And you can't let me, a puny human, go out on my own, can you?" Her insides squirmed at voluntarily calling herself 'puny' but she managed it.

"I guess not," Shippo muttered, thinking of how Inuyasha would clobber him if he didn't protect Kagome while he wasn't around. "C'mon then, Kagome. Let's find Inuyasha!" He ran out ahead of Kagome.

"That's the spirit," Kagome smiled and they headed out into the darkness, towards the forest while a mile ahead of them, Inuyasha raised his head, sniffing the air. "It's close," he muttered. He could smell blood and dirt and metal. Why was he insisting on following it? Because he'd smelled it before. When he was a child:

Running…the demons were coming! A sob choking him in his chest, his red kimono fluttering around him as he pushed himself harder, his lungs hurting so much! Crashing to a standstill before the cliff…

They're coming! The sky rumbled with thunder. A split-second decision.

Watching them through an uneven crevice, as they look around in confusion. Exalted spite rising in him. They are stupid, not seeing me here!

Then hurriedly squeezing his eyes shut as one of them ventures closer to explore, to try and find where the half-demon scum hid…

I'm not scum, I can't be scum…Mother loves me! I can't be…

His fists balling up so much that it hurts, and then a trickle of blood snaking down his clenched palm.

The demons, disappointed that they can't crush the half-demon, wandered away. Struggling not to pant, so afraid, young Inuyasha waited, pressed against the underside of the cliff, holding himself there with every muscle in his body…god, his hands hurt…!

Dizziness washing over him, then a streak of pitch black across his vision as the shock overcame him, then he was falling, falling down the cliff! He struggled to hold back a shriek of terror, before plunging into the river, water-smoothed rocks and shards of the cliff exploding around him as he entered the fierce numbing cold…

He lay there in a daze, then a hand searched for his beneath the water, stroking first down his chin, his neck, his shoulder, eventually down to his fingers, grabbing them, then pulling him out in smooth strokes. Then he was lying on the pebbly shore, every inch of his skin hurting as the cold receded, chased away by the afternoon sunlight from the azure sky. He breathed, the only sound he could hear while his senses struggled against the memory of the river.

Then he became aware that someone was watching him. He tried to sit up, but failed, lay back again as the maiden shook her head, motioning him to rest.

A maiden dressed in shadows, he could only describe her as. A distant smell of forest leaves came from her ripped black kimono and metal beads stank from where they were threaded into her raven black hair. Her face was clean though, her cheeks so rosy they were dark like her aura. A silver chain, tarnished black with age, hung around her neck and on it was threaded a tarnished, battered, broken mirror.

"Who are you?" young Inuyasha whispered.

She only smiled. Never answered. Her eyes were pitch black but for a spark of blue, like staring into the night sky, searching for colour. Her nose was small and sharp like a tawny owl's beak. She knelt beside young Inuyasha, watching as colour returned to his pale face, and young Inuyasha even felt she might be admiring his silver hair. It's like starlight? He thought irrelevantly, and from that moment silently nicknamed the girl Midnight.

That's who I'm looking for, Inuyasha thought, his lips tightening. He'd not thought of her for a long time, he'd even assumed she was dead, but he couldn't forget her smell: the smell of the tarnished metal beads in her black hair and the dirt woven into her black kimono. His nostril flared as a new forest smell rose…very slightly different from the smell of the Forest of Inuyasha…it's her, he realised with a slight tremor of excitement, like he was still that little half-demon boy, searching for the rescuer who'd not seemed to notice what he was.

From out behind a tree trunk she stepped, so silently that Inuyasha stopped dead, feeling as clumsy as when he'd last seen her. And she smiled, that eerie, dark smile that, if Inuyasha had never seen her before, would have made him instinctively reach for his sword.

She parted her lips and mouthed his name, Inuyasha…

"What are you? Why do you carry that mirror?" Inuyasha asked.

A quizzical expression came over her clean face, and her slender, elfin hands reached to grip the wrought, twisted oval frame of the tarnished mirror around her neck. From the mirror, Inuyasha heard a tumble of sounds that seemed to rearrange in his head. Shadows…of all…

He took a deep breath, then showed her the rosary beads around his neck. "Can you…have you got the power to make another necklace like this?"

Midnight took a step towards him, freed one of her hands from the mirror, and used it to instead grasp the rosary beads, running her fingers along it.

From the mirror, spoke a simple word. Why?

"Retribution," he said coolly.

Again the mirror asked, Why?

He sighed, aggravated. "So she knows how it feels to be subject to her every whim."

Midnight smiled, took his rosary and showed it to her mirror, then let go of the rosary and reached into her mirror. From it, she teased out a rosary almost like Inuyasha's but that it was tarnished like Midnight's mirror.

"Does it work the same way as Kagome's?" he asked.

From the mirror, came one word. Echo.

It is an echo, Inuyasha's mind filled in for him. Then Midnight turned and walked away, with no farewell, just like when he'd last seen her, leaving him to hold the tarnished rosary. A grin came to his mouth.

Next: Inuyasha has to get the rosary around Kagome's neck. What length will he go to?