Mrryl: Sorry, this chapter took a while because I'm mainly concentrating on my RE fanfic. I'll still mainly concentrate on that because of two reasons: One, because it's my most successful fanfic out of the three. Second, because I already know EVERYTHING about it, I don't know how they get Miroku in Inu Yasha… among some other things. So if you could tell me the basic outline of that episode, I'll be able to continue this fanfic quicker. SORRY FOR THE LONG WAIT! Oh yeah, FLUFF ALERT! There's gonna be some sweet sh!t in this chapter, just to let you know. Nothing serious, but some cute stuff because my other RE fanfic is seriously lacking fluff (a basic component to my life, seeing as how I'm devoid of love from anything besides my family, myself) so it might be kinda overdone in this chapter… sorry….
Inuyasha awoke to a flushed face, Nekogome was against the wall furthest from him, her hands clasped together and in her lap. She found the ground extremely interesting as she poked at it and traced designs in the hard packed earth.
Inuyasha found this perplexing, the half cat-demon was unusually embarrassed, she wouldn't even meet his eye. The sun shone through a nearby window, the shutters weren't in place yet and the wind that was blowing through it made both of them shiver. Kaede was already up, she could be heard calling out directions to the villagers, where to build huts, etc. Inuyasha stood up, his back cracking as he stretched. Walking towards her, he noticed her eventual glance in his direction, and the smile that made it's way to her face, cutting the gloomy expression like a knife through butter.
When he sat down next to her, she looked up at him and said, "I don't know what happened last night, alright? I was asleep before I hit the ground," she laughed uneasily, seemingly awaiting a rebuke or insult. She seemed completely unnerved when Inuyasha wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close, saying, "Well, I understand. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone," she cuddled up closer, allowing herself to drop her guard, if only for a few seconds. Those few seconds turned into minutes, which in turn became a full hour. Then a thought occurred to Inuyasha, "If you're blind," he said, "Then how could you see me get up?" She blushed.
"Well," she began, "I didn't see you get up. I remember your smell." She admitted this with a slight tinge of pink covering her face. "Besides, I heard your breathing change when you awoke. Your scent grew stronger when you came closer, so I knew you were coming closer." She finished, her cheeks grower redder as she looked back at the ground, her fingers one again tracing figures in the dirt.
Inuyasha obviously found this cute, because he hugged her close, so close that she gasped and jumped up, across the room so that she landed just behind the brazier, it burned with remembered coals from last night. Inuyasha was confused, one second she was snuggling up to him, the next she wanted to be away from him.
Her eyes welled with tears. "I have to go!" she said as she ran from the hut, disappearing into the morning light. Inuyasha ran after her, stopping at the entrance to let his eyes adjust. She was gone.
"Excuse me," he said to a nearby resting villager, "have you seen Nekogome run by here?" the man's face twisted into a momentary frown, only to be replaced with an indifferent expression as he pointed, "She went that way, young sir," he said as Inuyasha sped past him into the nearby forest. Inuyasha reached a clearing, only to see Nekogome slouched against a tree, her shoulder shaking with sobs.
Inuyasha thought he should say something, but decided not to. Instead, he quietly walked away, back through the trees to the village. Or at least he presumed he was walking towards the village, but soon found himself lost. Looking around, he began to talk to himself, "I think the village is this way," he said, pointing down the trail he was walking, only to doubt himself and look at another path, this one only minutely more promising than the first.
'Oh great, I'm lost!" he swore to himself, feeling like an idiot. He kept talking to himself as he walked, completely distracting himself from his current plight quite effectively. He was therefore completely aghast when he stumbled upon a battlefield, the remains of hundreds of dead warriors strewn across the field. It was blackened in places, like fire or lightning. "What? Oh yeah, I'm in the Warring Provinces Era…. Of course there'd be battles all over the place," he felt compelled to look over the bodies, he didn't know why, but it became a fascination. The battle looked like a massacre, some bodies burned to a crisp, others almost completely obliterated.
Inuyasha was speechless, the entire area burned. The further he searched, the more the battlefield looked like something from a story. It seemed that the storms themselves worked against the armies. Both sides seemed massacred, hundreds upon hundreds of people were dead.
He was so intent on the surroundings that he didn't notice the neko-hanyou slip up beside him, her hand tapped him lightly on the shoulder, snapping him out of his revere. She sniffed, "I smell blood, where are we?" she asked, her blinded eyes shifting around the area cautiously.
"It's alright, we're in a battlefield. It's already over, both sides seem to have been destroyed," he said, slightly shocked when she grabbed him and lightly hugged him.
"Good, I thought you got hurt…" she said, then backed up obviously puzzled at her own reaction. "I mean… I couldn't care less if you got hurt! Go away," she yelled, turning her back to him.
"I'm gonna go check out the area further over there, alright? Maybe we can discover what did this?" he said, barely hearing the "Feh," uttered by the perturbed girl. He rounded a tree, stopping in mid-stride when he saw a little fox youkai huddled in the bushes, trembling. Standing over that little youkai was a big, ugly demon. It looked like a humanoid frog, standing on two legs and powerfully built. He had almost no hair, a mere four strands sticking ridiculously out of his flat, scaly head.
" I could use a fox hat to go along with this lovely belt your father made for me…" the frog-like demon uttered, laughing terribly as he raised his head and opened his mouth. Light collected from his belly. Something isn't right… what's happening? Inuyasha asked himself, running for the little fox demon as the other one began to bring his head down. Inuyasha had barely grabbed the fox when the frog roared, a large bolt of lightning ushering forth from his maw and obliterating the entire area, easily encompassing the area where the little guy had been.
He gasped, the frog had such power! The fox kit in his arms stopped shivering, looking up at Inuyasha.
"Who are you? Don't hurt me, alright?" he begged Inuyasha, obviously thinking that Inuyasha was going to kill him.
"Don't worry, kit. I'm not hurting you, but that frog-guy—" he began, cut off when the kit jumped from his arms, pulling a small spinning top from his jacket and tossing it at the bigger demon. Inuyasha stared in shock as the top grew in size, becoming a humongous thing as it landed on the frogs head and dropped him into the ground, incapacitating him. "Come on!" yelled the little fox demon as it clambered to the battlefield and attempted to pull Inuyasha with him.
When they reached a safe spot the kit looked at Inuyasha. "I didn't need your help! I could've done it on my own!" it yelled, clapping it's hands over its mouth to quiet itself.
"Yeah, I bet you could. But you looked like you needed some help," Inuyasha began, not expecting to have to explain why he saved the kit.
"Yeah, well… I'm sorry, I'm just mad at that guy and his brother! They killed my dad and—" he was cut off by Inuyasha, "So that fox pelt around his waist is your dad?" he asked, seeing tears well up in the kids eyes. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make ya cry, kit."
The kit rubbed its eyes, saying, "Oh, it's okay. I'm Shippo! Nice to meet you…" he let his sentence trail off, expecting a name.
"Oh, I'm Inuyasha!" Inuyasha supplied, holding his hand out in greeting. Shippo took it and smiled, shaking heartily. The kit was small, he only went up to Inuyasha's knee and he was dressed in a thin wool coat and baggy blue pants made of some kind of material. His red hair was tied back into a short ponytail by a black cloth.
"Hey! Inuyasha! Where are you?" Nekogome yelled, sniffing the air as she ran towards them, her cat ears perked for the slightest hint of noise. He whispered, "Hey, Nekogome, quiet! Come here!" She stopped in Mid-stride, glancing around almost frantically.
"I smell blood, are you alright?" she whispered, concern making her voice quiver slightly. He began to stand up, wincing in pain and crying out slightly when he felt a searing pain along his entire right side of his body. Looking down, he noticed that his abdomen area was black. Then he remembered the slight pain in his side when he leapt to save Shippo, he thought it was just a stitch in his side at the time. He had been hit with that blast, probably only a glancing blow but it hurt so much. He gasped as he couldn't take the pain anymore, falling forwards to land flat on his face. He was stopped from falling only moments after he fell, finding himself in the arms of a certain neko hanyou.
"Are you hurt badly? We should get you back to Kaede!" Nekogome said, beginning to pull him up into a marital-style hold, only reversed. He stopped her, "Shippo…." He began, she nodded.
"The brat? Alright, kit, come here! We've gotta get Inuyasha back to Kaede, so grab onto my back and DON'T let go!" she said, and Inuyasha could feel the wind whistle through his hair and past his ears as she ran through the field, back towards the village. But he was quietly put to sleep by the soft beating of her heart.
Mrryl: There ya go! Now Lita can quit bugging me about writing the next chapter! Umm…. I'll try to write more for this one, now I have something to do and write about it so yeah! Sorry for all of you who want Shippo to have his revenge on Manten and Hiten, that's gonna be in a bit, I still need Inuyasha and Nekogome to get the Tetsusaiga