Well, hello again to all the people who may or may not have read the last chapter. Really I'm kind of bummed I didn't get any reviews. But I'll get over it! I'm going to keep posting this story because I have a lot of friends hooked on it and I promised them I'd post it some day.
I seemed to forget to put in the last Author's note what I made sure to put in my other story. Most importantly what to do if you think I stole any ideas from other fanfic authors. Like I said in the other story, if this issue arises, contact me and we can compare notes as again I have the dates of when I wrote each chapter of this story and should we find that the ideas were used elsewhere first I'll give credit where credit is due. I won't remove it. As a fanfic author I don't think we can ask for more since by definition we are piggy back riding on someone else's idea to begin with.
Also upon occasion I may make reference to movies or songs I think a large portion of my intended audience would be familiar with. I would like to think my readers understand that I do not own any of them any more than anybody else does who mentions them in passing during everyday conversation. I'd like to think the peoples of the world can be intelligent upon occasion.
In case you hadn't figured it out yet, all the characters of Inuyasha are my play things until my lease runs out sometime in the next millenium. It's good to be delusional.
Swimming with Umbrellas
Only one description could fit how this day was turning out. " When it rains it pours." How so? Well first Aki fell through a well that sent her unexpectedly into Sengoku Jidai, a particularly nasty period in Japanese history. Then she broke her glasses with her elbow…before she'd climbed out of the well. Then said elbow had to be treated using the rudimentary medicine of the time and area.
So when Kaede, the only person with knowledge about harvesting herbs, was called away from their joint flora-gathering endeavor not five minutes after Kagome had left them, Aki simply sighed. And her day was just getting started.
Rather than waste the whole effort, the some-time English tutor persuaded the old miko to allow her to continue the mini-expedition. So Kaede gave her a five-minute verbal crash course on which herb they needed, what to look for, and how to harvest it. Then with two minutes worth of directions the healer hurried off to do what she did best… heal.
In less than seven minutes you too can be on your way to gather herbs, however that doesn't mean you'll be overly successful. But for all that, Aki wasn't as bad off as she could've been. Thank goodness for that Taxonomy lab back in college. Taxonomy is the categorization of plants by basic physical characteristics, like a spider plant has narrow fluted commonly bi-colored leaves. It was because of this and this alone that the esoteric language of plant categorization didn't leave her completely confused.
Aki quickly found the little break in the trees outside the village and set to work gathering the elusive little plant. And she was actually doing a pretty good job.
She was very careful to pick only the part of the plant required for the miko's use. The old woman had been fairly adamant about that little aspect of the herb retrieval. It made sense really, why take more of something than you need? Besides, it gave the task that little extra Challenge that kept the job from being too boring and tedious.
Had someone ventured into the little clearing, they might be inclined to feel pity for her, sitting there all by herself in a strange land, But Aki preferred solitude. She'd always been something of a loner. Now there was a reason to widen the gulf between herself and others.
After a space of time, she managed to develop a method to her chaos. That is to say she became rather efficient at plucking the correct plant from the plethora of vegetation present in her selected clearing. What's more, she managed to keep said plant in near the exact condition it was in before she harvested it. Both abilities marked her as something extraordinary.
She could very well have been done and back to the village before Kaede had time to check on her had a certain incident not occurred.
Fred made an appearance.
"The prodigal son returns" he joked mildly. Aki simply rolled her eyes without pausing in her work. "Ever notice how you manage to attack every task just as single-mindedly regardless of how boring it is?" Fred remarked.
Aki shrugged as much in answer as to loosen the muscles of her shoulders. "Well, I do put up with you, don't I?" She reached up and pulled her hair in front of her shoulder, letting the sun soak in the back of her shirt. "Every job or task has its perks, it's just how you look at it. For Instance," she leveled her gaze at him, temporarily leaving her work, "a chore as tedious as this can lose the 'boring' aspect if you think not of the task itself, but what comes after. Or if, like with me, it is a completely new activity and the novelty hasn't worn off."
"It's still boring no matter how you put it." Fred retorted. "And there is no upside to some occupations, like sewer maintenance for example," he continued somewhat smugly.
"There is too," she chuckled. Arrogant ghosts generally are pretty amusing, especially when you can prove them wrong.
"Oh, really? Like what?" he challenged, unwilling to admit loss.
"Well, there's the basic satisfaction of knowing what you do improves the lives of others whether they realize it or not," Aki began. "Also in our world, I guess it's the future, there are technical advances giving the job the luster of a high tech career. Some people thoroughly enjoy the technical aspect of it. Others enjoy the engineering demands of the job as they have to design a system sufficient for the area as it is that will also serve as the area, or city, expands. Frankly it depends on how you think of challenge." She inhaled deeply and continued, "Plus you're not even considering the chemistry involved in the treatment of sewage. After all environmental officials have to make sure that nothing hazardous leaks out into the local ecosystems. I mean just managing the pH levels alone…"
"ENOUGH with the chemistry!" He huffed exasperated and waved off any further proof of her argument. "Trust you to drag in chemistry!" He growled, partly exasperated at being so thoroughly proven wrong, and partly to see if he could goad her into further argument.
Aki, however, was not to be goaded. Having made her point, she turned back to the task she'd momentarily abandoned, causing Fred to acknowledge yet one more change in his friend.
"How come you always pull back?" he asked, somewhat sobered as a cloud passed over the area. "How come whenever you almost seem like you used to be, you throw up those walls and stop yourself?" Aki merely blinked up at him innocently. "Don't give me that! Aki, Don't do that to me!" He was suddenly angry and frustrated. "You know you're doing that! You know it!"
"What's the point?" she replied quietly. "Why do you even ask? Things will never be the same and I've got promises to keep. You should know that better than anyone else."
"What will you do then?" Fred asked her. "Cut yourself off from the world and pretend it doesn't exist? All for a promise made to people that died. You know none of us ever wanted that. That's not living, that's hardly surviving!"
"Why don't you…" she began softly when a shout rolled across the area. Aki stood up swiftly letting her harvested produce fall to the ground from her lap. "Fred, where…" another shout rang out, this time more desperate.
She took off before Fred could get a word in.
On the outskirts of the village, near the rice fields, was a little inlet in the banks of the river that watered the rice paddies. The water was shallower and calm here, and in the warmer months the village children would sneak off to play in the clean cool water. The little plot of land was acknowledged to be a safe place and it had always been clear of threatening monsters, both demon and human, as long as the oldest elder could remember.
However, this was not the warm season, the day wasn't even that unseasonably warm. So when it was discerned that the calls for help were coming from this very innocuous location, everyone was stunned. So much so, that the first to arrive from the village was just in time to watch Aki dive under the water barefoot.
"That crazy, stupid…!" could be heard from everyone's favorite dog demon.
Aki, of course, couldn't hear him or the collective dismayed gasp of the crowd as they caught sight of what was in the water. She wouldn't have cared anyway.
The water wasn't warm, not by any stretch of the imagination, but she didn't let that distract her from the small thrashing body trapped under the surface of the water. 'Thank goodness I've always been good in the water' she thought dryly as she caught a hold of the child's garment and tugged. 'What the…' she thought in confusion.
The child's struggles took on the desperate strength of panic and Aki reacted. With a burst of adrenaline she hauled the kid free and swam for the surface. She picked up so much momentum that when she broke the surface, she flew up a few feet. At the height of this semi-flight, Aki threw the poor child further up, not really clear on why, but hoping for the best.
A tentacle snaked around her ankle and yanked her under the water once again with barely enough time to take a breath. The water was murky from all the sediment the mobile beast had kicked up, so Aki couldn't see. It was like thick fog; only without the air and no amount of temperature change was likely to clear it up quickly. She closed her eyes to keep the dirt from them.
Her lungs began to burn, reminding her that she hadn't caught a full breath before being dragged under. Aki began to flail for the surface in the wrong direction. She didn't realize it until her outstretched hand grazed the spongy bottom. Unlike most normal people in such a situation, she didn't panic. She maneuvered herself upright with her legs bunched up underneath her. She took this opportunity to remove the tentacle from her ankle, consequently removing some skin.
Aki kicked off the bottom with both feet exhaling as she headed for the surface, carefully insuring that no time would be wasted once she broke the surface.
The demon, angry that its grip had been released, snaked out and caught her again, this time around the waist. It slammed her back against the river bottom. This time it exerted itself to cause its prey real pain. Her eyes flew open in response.
The girl desperately searched the area around her hoping to find a stick, branch, anything to fight with. She missed a great deal as she flailed blindly about, but finally her grasping hand encountered something that definitely shouldn't have been there. 'What's my…?' she started the question when the beast finally began contemplating the best way to ingest this particular morsel. That is, it came at her, mouth wide and full of teeth!
She shoved the metal point of her umbrella in the demon's gaping maw while her vision began to spark with from lack of air. She pressed the release button that would open the umbrella's metal arms and a burst of brilliant white light added enough force to the opening umbrella to shred the cloth of the umbrella and the flesh of the demon bearing down on her. But by then, Aki was unconscious and dismissed the light as something cooked up by her oxygen-starved brain.
The demon had released her and retreated in pain. What happened next seemed utterly godlike. A luminescent Aki burst out of the water and floated slowly to shore. It seemed godlike because the girl was upright with her eyes open and the light appeared to be coming from her. The crowd was collectively stunned as well as a bit apprehensive; they took a step back as this strange creature set foot on the bank.
Aki wasn't breathing, nor was she strictly 'conscious'. Thus it should be unsurprising that once she touched Earth, she promptly collapsed in a discomposed pile.
Kagome ran to her downed English tutor and realized there wasn't any respiration going on. Our favorite miko archer in training began to wrack her brain for the information needed to perform CPR. She was becoming increasingly frantic because she kept coming up blank.
Luckily, Aki coughed up all the water and dirt her lungs had in them on her own, making her throat rather sore and gritty in the process. She didn't awaken from her unconscious state, even while her body shook with the fatigues of her recent exertions and the chilled air.
Inuyasha, who'd managed to catch the boy Aki had thrown in midair, paced up behind Kagome a little in awe (though he'd never admit it) of the shaking unconscious human girl. In an uncommon act of gentlemanly generosity, he removed his haori and handed it to Kagome to wrap around the day's mysterious hero.
Kaede, of course, came up right on the heels of the dog demon. As impressed as she was by Inuyasha's strange gesture towards the stranger, the miko was determined not to let it distract her. The old woman efficiently began to assess the damage caused by the village's last brush with an errant demon.
She was not surprised to find the flesh around the girl's middle to be a raw angry red, nor did the missing skin on her ankle strike the old miko as odd. After all, she'd just come from treating the boy. No, what surprised and intrigued her were the burns covering one of Aki's small hands.
Well, whatever the reason, none of the wounds would be worsened if Aki was moved somewhere else, and at the moment that was all that mattered. "She'll be alright," Kaede spoke gruffly. "Let's get her back to the village."
Kagome looked at the older woman with concern in her eyes. "Are you sure it's all right to move…" she began with worry.
"She's just unconscious," Kaede reassured the teen as Inuyasha picked Aki up off the ground, "probably from everything that's just happened."
"Feh!" was all Inuyasha said.
"I can walk, you know," a tired Aki said surprising everybody within hearing range. Inuyasha almost dropped her he was so surprised. "I think I'd rather walk, actually." She wrinkled her nose. It's true that people throughout history didn't bathe much, but it also appeared that demons did so even less. Aki really didn't wish to be mean or rude, but the smell was making her nauseous.
"Inuyasha, put her down," Kagome ordered.
InuYasha had been rather willing to let the girl walk, but after Kagome said something he had to be difficult about the whole thing. "Feh!" he simply scoffed and kept walking. Aki placed the back of her wrist against her mouth. Before it was only the smell, now that Inuyasha was walking differently, in defiance of Kagome, she was getting motion sickness.
"Please, may I walk?" She gasped out somewhat desperately. Getting sick would most definitely not be fun. Especially since she hadn't eaten anything to throw up.
Inuyasha felt he was far enough ahead of Kagome that putting the girl down wouldn't look like he was following her orders. He set Aki gingerly on her feet. He was well aware that she had damaged an ankle. He expected her to make some sound of pain, but she didn't.
Aki's ankle screamed at her to rethink walking. The pain was so intense that she had to grab onto Inuyasha's arm and immediately take her weight off her foot. She refused to admit defeat though. She closed her eyes in determined concentration.
Inuyasha watched this very strange girl. She was stranger than Kagome even, and up 'til now, Kagome had been his standard of "Weirdest-creature-to-walk-the-face-of-the-Earth". This new person was hanging on to his arm the way Kagome did when she was about to fall. He almost picked her right back up again when her grip lessened and he realized she was slowly adding weight to her bad ankle. Before too long, she was standing on her own without her makeshift hanyou prop.
But Aki wasn't done yet; she still had to walk. Now everybody else in the world would've called it quits about now. We all have a healthy wish not to damage ourselves needlessly (masochists excluded of course). We also generally try to avoid pain if we can. Aki, however, decided to disregard the inherent programming given her at birth. While she doesn't exactly enjoy pain, she does have a certain disregard for her own well-being and stubbornness, it seems.
"There you go again!" a strange voice near Inuyasha's ear caused the dog type to jump and nearly knock over a precariously balanced Aki.
Besides being nearly knocked over, Aki ignored the apparition. "You know, most sane people in a strange land would run away from screaming people they don't know," the ghost informed her pointedly.
Aki shrugged in response as Inuyasha tried to clobber the spirit from behind. Inuyasha ended up flat on his face. She reached down to help the much heavier male up and instead wound up falling painfully down beside him.
Kagome caught up with them and couldn't for the life of her figure out the chain reaction that had come about to leave Inuyasha and Aki both on the ground. 'Course her logical pathways were somewhat interrupted upon unexpectedly seeing the ghost hovering above the pair. "Ahh!" Kagome jumped causing Inuyasha to jump and fall from his half raised position, this time falling on Aki's bad ankle.
Aki gritted her teeth against the sudden onset of pain and quickly got her own feet under herself to prevent anyone else from falling on the abused appendage. "Fred! You really need to learn not to sneak up on people who don't know you!" she chastised her friend before glancing over to Kagome.
"Eh? You mean all that was me?" Fred began innocently.
"You know damn well it was," she retorted without feeling.
"Well, how the hell was I supposed to know they could see me?" he defended himself. "Nobody back home could."
"Now you know, so please stop making so much noise about it," she sighed and started walking again.
"Damnit! Aki you're doing it again!" the ghost bellowed after her. "Stop pushing yourself! You're gonna end up pushing yourself into an early death!"
Aki turned and glanced sideways at him for a moment before turning to continue on her way. She never said a word as the three of them stared at her slowly disappearing back.
"Hey! The village is the other way!" Fred called, hurrying after her.
Kagome blinked at Inuyasha who blinked back at her in confusion. "What the hell was that all about!" they mumbled in unison before following after the strange girl and her semi-transparent companion.
"You're limping," the ghost nagged.
"Happens," Aki replied absently.
"The hell it does!" he challenged heatedly. Aki just shrugged. "So just where is it you think you have to go? I'll warn you that unless you're attempting to go home I think you're crazy to delay getting back to the village."
"I'm glad you think so." Actually she didn't sound as if it made a bit of a difference to her one way or the other what he thought.
"You know, you really need to lighten up on yourself. It's not your fault we all died…" Fred began and instantly knew he shouldn't have brought it up.
"It's nice of you to say that, however inaccurate the sentiment is," she replied mildly.
It was his turn to sigh, "I really do wish you'd give up this half-baked notion that you're cursed. You know curses don't exist."
"Neither do wells that send you through time, dog demons, nor sea monsters, right?" she chided him.
"Wha- Tha- That's different!" Fred tried desperately to defend his assertion. "The river monster and the dog demon are just – just flukes of nature, and the well… I'm sure the will can be explained by physics. Curses don't exist!"
"Sure they do," Inuyasha interrupted as he and Kagome caught up. He still wasn't sure what to make of being called a fluke of nature. Just what was a fluke anyway?
"Eh? They do?" Kagome burst in a little surprised. Inuyasha rolled his eyes at her obvious stupidity and an argument ensued, involving all three individuals, giving Aki time to 'get away' without harassment.
Then again, having Fred harass her was enough of a distraction that she didn't notice just how much damage had actually been inflicted on her body. She couldn't quite figure out how she could have possibly burned her hand underwater. She also couldn't remember what had actually happened to her umbrella after she'd opened it. Aki shrugged, didn't matter now.
What were the kids doing with it anyway? She distinctly remembered leaving it at that hut Kagome had first taken her to.
'Ah well, kids will be kids,' she thought to herself and dismissed all the underwater events from her thoughts.