Kirara snapped her head to the side, her nostrils flaring and eyes narrowing as she peered into the forest below. Sango leaned as far over as she dared as she followed the creature's gaze, and was surprised to actually catch a fleeting glimpse of Inuyasha's cloak between the trees. Since morning that had been following him blindly, only tracking him by scent and never actually catching sight of him. For what seemed like endless hours they had followed his meandering trail as he apparently wandered through the forest at random. At one point Kirara had picked up his scent uncomfortably close to a village, but then Inuyasha had changed direction, retreating further into the woods. Though Sango had watched for him until her vision began to blur, she could never make him out through the thick canopy of trees, and her only solace was that he had thus far kept away from the numerous small villages that dotted the area. Now, as the sky began to blaze with the first trappings of sunset, they had caught up with him at last.
Sango squeezed Kirara with her thighs, silently ordering her to descend nearer the forest. She unconsciously adjusted her grip on the hiraikotsu, her hunter instincts acting unbidden. Sango swore silently to herself as Inuyasha's darting form once again disappeared amongst the trees. Kirara chuffed, circling nearer to the trees as she tried to regain his scent. Sango squinted, her eyes darting back and forth as she searched for Inuyasha between trees that were now almost close enough to touch.
Can I really do this, she thought, remembering so long ago when it was all she could do to hold her own against Inuyasha despite having a Jewel shard lodged into her back. Can I stop him without killing him?
Then a darker thought intruded into her mind.
Can I kill him if I must?
Suddenly there was a bellow of rage from below, and Sango had barely left her thoughts when Inuyasha's filthy, twisted face suddenly loomed in her vision. Kirara reared back, trying to interject herself between Sango and Inuyasha, but the sudden movement cost Sango her balance. Inuyasha's leap, probably from an unseen tree limb, carried him easily over Kirara's head, and he was upon Sango before she could so much as raise the hiraikotsu to deflect him. Sango struggled with him briefly, feeling his claws press into her shoulders through the thin armor of her slayer's uniform, but her right arm was entangled in the hirakotsu's grip. Inuyasha growled at her, his mouth a twisted chasm of fangs, and she writhed in vain to twist away from him before she realized in stomach churning horror that they were both falling. She heard Kirara's roar of anger and surprise just before the first of many branches hit her.
Kagome was laying on the floor doing her homework when it finally happened. The disaster sirens began to blare just before the special report came on, and somewhere in between her world came to an end.
"The Self-Defense Force has confirmed a sighting at Tokyo. Repeat, a sighting has been confirmed at Tokyo by the Self-Defense Force. Stay tuned for evacuation procedures."
Kagome was on her feet before the announcer had even finished his statement, and the only thing she could think to do was run. She pushed past her mother, who had walked out of the kitchen with a wet dish still in her hand, and threw open the door. Somewhere behind her she heard the dish shatter as she stumbled into the grass. The night was cloudless and the sky seemed impossibly empty. The moon had hidden itself away, and bloated masses of smoke rose up to blot out the stars. She stumbled as she towards the shrine's ornate Shinto gate, her ankle twisting painfully as she lost her footing in the slippery grass. Although tears leapt at her eyes she sprinted as best she could until she came to the top of the shrine's ancient steps. She nearly overbalanced and tumbled down the worn stone stairs, but managed to stop herself by the barest of margins. Her breath was ragged from both exertion and the smoke stinging her lungs, and it was a long moment before she collected herself enough to look at the city below.
Tokyo was in flames. From where she stood it looked as if the power to all of downtown had been cut, but the buildings were illuminated by the sea of fire that engulfed them. Macabre shadows danced through the ruins as crumbling buildings shifted and finally gave way entirely, dying in clouds of smoke and dirt that rose like ghosts above the funeral pyre that had once been the business district. For a few seconds of forever Kagome stood transfixed on the destruction, then a sound she remembered all too well reached her ears. Thundering footsteps, punctuated by a clarion roar that began like a distant rumble before gathering into a hateful crescendo, echoed up from the ruins of the city. Her heart stopped, and she frantically scanned the scene below for the source. Cold dread filled her as she found what she had known from the start she would see.
It was him. After eleven years, it was him, the one from Okinawa. Though he was impossibly tall, at this distance his black hide concealed him against the charred backdrop of the city. His eyes, those dead eyes burning with white hot evil, shone malignantly in the darkness. At his feet there was a constantly retreating line of popgun fire from the Self-Defense Force's heavy artillery. Here and there more popguns fired from the side streets and rooftops, and flashes of the beast's body were revealed by the exploding munitions which did nothing to pierce its scaly flesh. For an instant Kagome crazily thought that the beast was encircled by disembodied souls, then she realized with a start that the lights which sporadically appeared around the monster's chest and head were muzzle flashes from the chain guns on the SDF helicopters. Blue flames leapt from the beast's mouth and one of the chain guns was forever silenced.
Kagome's legs wobbled before giving way, and she sank gracelessly to her knees. After everything she had seen in the feudal era, it all came to this, and despite the bravery she had been able to muster in battling the demons of the past, when faced her own demon she could only watch in awe and terror. Tears leapt at her eyes, she uttered a thin, choking cry. The Shikon Jewel around her neck was ablaze with unearthly light, and it tugged insistently at the chain the held it to her, reaching out to the monster below as the creature let loose another earsplitting roar. More footsteps thundered as the beast came to claim the jewel.
"So these dreams belong to you," Kikyo muttered quietly.
Kagome's snapped her head back in surprise, only to be met with the sight of Kikyo kneeling in the grass only inches away, her face awash with tears. At first she thought that Kikyo was hugging herself in an uncharacteristic display of emotion, then she saw that the priestess was cradling her left hand against her body. Kagome's eyes widened in horror as she saw that the fingers were set at odd angles, the palm misshapen from broken bones pressing angrily against the skin. Then she became aware of her own pain, and looked down to find her left hand broken and twisted, marked with a perfect heel print just as it had been when she was four years old.
"These dreams are yours," Kikyo repeated insistently, accusingly, her voice trembling with a strange mix of understanding, terror, and betrayal.
Though they had been only a few feet above the trees, it seemed to Sango as if she and Inuyasha fell forever. Even as she struggled against his inhuman strength she couldn't help but notice his dead, cloudy eyes. Though his face was twisted into a mask of hatred, his eyes, once the color of warm honey, now had no luster to them at all. Even as the demon slayer inside of her frantically worked to formulate a plan, the woman in her choked back a sob at the sight of her lover's blank, awful stare. Then his teeth snapped shut scant inches from her face and Sango's instincts returned to her. She caught hold of his once-shimmering hair with her left hand, pulling his head away from her own. Then, using the hiraikotsu for added momentum, she threw her right arm across his back and twisted into him. Bracing herself as best she could against his chest, Sango rode Inuyasha to the ground, letting his half-bred body absorb most of the impact.
Sango wasn't as prepared as she would have liked to have been when they finally hit, and she landed far more awkwardly than she had hoped. Though she had firmly planted her knees in Inuyasha's stomach in the hopes of further dampening her fall, he tried at the last moment to throw her off and she had ended up landing chest to chest with him, losing all of her wind in a painful gasp. She was dimly aware of Inuyasha's head bouncing grotesquely against the forest floor.
Her own vision dimmed from the impact and the pain, and she rolled off of Inuyasha's chest weakly, coughing and sputtering as she tried to get her breath. At some point during their fall she had let go of the hiraikotsu, but as she lay gasping for breath it seemed rather unimportant. Sango's eyelids felt heavy, and she dimly realized that she probably had a concussion. Slowly she collected herself and mustered the strength to sit up.
Inuyasha groaned beside her, and Sango watched in horror as he rolled over, shaking his head to free himself of his daze, and rose to one knee. Blood trickled from his mouth and ears, running down his bedraggled cloak. Though he had taken the brunt of the fall, his demonic constitution was even stronger than she had realized, and once again Inuyasha had the advantage. Inuyasha rose shakily to his feet, staring dumbly into space for a moment before noticing Sango again. When he saw her, Inuyasha uttered a strange, anguished cry and immediately dove for her, claws outstretched and gleaming in the fading sunlight.
Sango managed to throw herself backwards, at the same time hurling a handful of dirt at Inuyasha's face. His mad dive for her sent him reeling off balance, and Sango staggered to her feet as Inuyasha stumbled to his knees. Inuyasha composed himself far more quickly than she had expected, and this time Sango couldn't put enough distance between them when he leapt at her. They wrestled briefly on their feet before falling to the ground. Inuyasha made no noise but for loud, angry grunts, and in his mad hunger he seemed to forget his claws, striving only to bite, to taste sweet blood and flesh. Sango caught hold of his cloak, using it as a handhold to keep his snapping jaws at bay. Now that they were on solid ground she could use her leverage more effectively, but she knew well enough that even in his dazed and injured state Inuyasha was just too strong to hold off for long. Soon her arms were shaking badly, threatening to buckle at any moment. Inuyasha leaned over her, pressing forward with his mouth agape, trying to close the ever-narrowing distance between his fangs and Sango's face.
Despite his supernatural strength, Inuyasha was still a small man in stature and, more importantly, weight. As a youth, Sango had been instructed in hand-to-hand techniques as part of her exterminator trainer. While she had privately had her misgivings about the need for such things she had nonetheless trained in them diligently, and now she finally found a use for them. Sango placed her feet in Inuyasha's hips and waited patiently for him to overbalance himself. With the last of her strength, Sango pushed back on his shoulders, and Inuyasha reacted just as she hoped he would by throwing his weight forward in resistance. As she felt his weight surge forward, Sango pushed up on his hips and tugged down on his collar, neatly flipping him off of her. He made a clumsy grab for her as she stood up, and without thinking she drove a knee sharply into his face.
Expecting a renewed struggle, Sango was taken completely off guard when Inuyasha simply released her. His arms fell to his sides and he simply sat on his knees before her. A small trail of blood ran down his cheek from the cut that the point of her knee had made, but the small wound had already closed and begun to heal before the blood had even dried. Sango could have sworn that the Tetsusaiga, which almost miraculously still hung at his hip, was pulsing visibly, and for an instant Inuyasha's eyes seemed to clear. She was unable to stop herself from reaching out to him, but then his face darkened once more and she sucked in a deep breath as he shifted his weight in preparation to spring.
Sango retreated a few steps, deftly flicking a small barbed dart from its hiding place in her sleeve. Little more than a needlelike spike with a pair of sharpened barbs at one end, the dart was envenomed with the paralytic toxin of a demon centipede. It was intended to slow down or disable particularly large or powerful demons so that they might be more easily dispatched. She had retrieved it from the armory months ago upon her last return to the slayer village with Naraku in mind, never expecting to use it against one of her companions. Now, as Inuyasha charged her with another graceless lunge, she sent it streaking at his chest.
The dart hit home with the dull, queasy sound of parting flesh. A mortal man would have collapsed instantly in a heap as the poison shut down his motor functions, but Inuyasha somehow, impossibly, stayed on his feet. He looked stupidly at the dart protruding from his chest, then back up at Sango. His face was no longer twisted with hatred, but Sango found his bland, drugged look even more horrible, if only because it combined with his clouded, lightless eyes to give him a look of living death. Slowly, incredibly, he took a step towards her, limply raising his clawed hands. Sango fell back a pace, but to her amazement Inuyasha advanced yet another step.
From somewhere behind her came Kirara's low growl. Sango had somehow forgotten about Kirara in the confusion of the fight, and it must have taken her a few moments to find a landing spot amongst the dense woods. Sango dared a brief glance at her companion, who was galloping protectively towards her.
Inuyasha made a small gurgling sound, and Sango looked back to see him collapse to the ground like a discarded doll. In the soft purple light of evening that filtered through the trees, Sango could see a few streaks of black suddenly ripple through Inuyasha's dirty white hair. His claws seemed to retreat into his fingertips, and his ears folded back and suddenly seemed to vanish against his head. As the last rays of sunlight finally gave way to nightfall the transformation was complete, and Inuyasha lay before not as a half-breed, but as a man. Soon she would see if his curse was lifted. Soon, she hoped, he would be free.
Then elation turned to horror as Sango caught sight of the pool of blood spreading darkly across the soil beneath him, blood from the wound inflicted as he fell forward onto her dart, driving it deep into his now very mortal chest.