Dedicated to all my reviewers
"Let her go you bastard!" growled Inuyasha "No. She is the one thing you hold above all others. It is time for retribution." But before he could do anything, Kagome stepped on his foot and he gave just enough slack for her to run away from him. Akhei seemed to quickly get over the pain and disappeared. His foot appeared and tripped Kagome. Then he re-appeared from the foot up. He walked up to her and slammed his foot on her back. She cried out in pain and Inuyasha snarled "Don't touch her!" "Too late puppy, I already did and now it's time to end this as he brought his sword down.
Kagome rolled away the second he lifted his foot to kill her. She almost got up, but was grabbed by the scruff of her shirt and pulled up and wrapped in a pair of strong male arms. She expected to be killed, but she looked up and saw her protector, Inuyasha. He had used his demon speed as soon as he saw Kagome move. "Stay here." He said. And he added "You could use these." As he handed her bow and arrows to her. She nodded and watched as he pulled out Tetsusaiga and faced Akhei. "You're gonna pay for hurting Kagome." He snarled. "Really?" said Akhei, looking amused. "Bring it on puppy." Akhei drew his sword, which was silver with a red streak, and went into a fighting stance. "This should be easy" he said. He yelled "Poison Strike!" as a snake appeared and struck at Inuyasha and missed. "Feh! Is that all you got?" "I wasn't aiming for you half-breed." Inuyasha turned and saw the snake heading straight for Kagome. She had already notched an arrow and aimed, but she didn't fire. "Kagome! Fire your arrow!" Inuyasha yelled, but she remained frozen ad at the point when the snake came closer, Inuyasha ran forward, desperate to save his fiancée'. Then, the snake lurched forward and Kagome shot her arrow through it's mouth, killing it. Inuyasha breathed a sigh of relief. Then Akhei said, "She's not out of danger yet." And with that he vanished. Inuyasha waited for him to appear and kept Kagome close to him. Akhei re-appeared and grabbed Kagome. "I am now officially making your life a living nightmare." He said as he disappeared.
"Dammit!" yelled Inuyasha for the tenth time as he circle a tree in the pouring rain. He could find any trace of Kagome or Akhei's scent and he had been wandering around, trying to find them. He couldn't believe he had let Akhei take her so easily.
When Akhei reappeared, he was in a marble castle dragging a squirming Kagome behind him. He threw her into a room with 2 huge men and a burly looking woman. "Make her life hell." He said evilly as he closed the door. Kagome gulped as they crowded around her. They tied her to a chair and indicated all the torturing tools around the room. They took a knife and two clubs down. Then they did what Akhei had told them to do, make her life hell. Later.… Kagome was lying in a cell Akhei had given her with small piece of bread. She was bleeding so much, she couldn't even tell where the blood came from. She wished that she was far away from this horrible place. She didn't notice a shooting star from her tiny window (I know fairy tale-ish. Couldn't help it.)
The next day, Inuyasha still hadn't given up on finding Kagome. He slept under a tree during the night and amazingly, it was still pouring, like it had just started. He was never going to give up on Kagome. He was going to find her.
Kagome woke up to find the skinny toad demon poking her. "What do you want? Am I supposed to get tortured at the crack of dawn now too? There's no way those people are up now." She said. "Precisely." He said. "Huh?" "I am getting ahead of myself. I am Kerai, Akhei's servant. I'm here to get you out of here." "Oh. Why? You could get punished." "Not if I join my brother and his master, the great Lord Sesshomaru." "I knew you're related to Jaken! You look like him a lot." "You know Jaken?" "Yes" she said "Sesshomaru is my fiancée's half brother." "That's Lord Sesshomaru by the way. Well we should go know and we must hurry. I know you are weak and you will have trouble, but once we get off the castle grounds, you must run." He said as he unlocked her cell. "I'll try." They didn't talk until they had gone down three flights of stairs, out a huge marble door, and into the pouring rain.
"We must part now" said Kerai as he vanished, leaving Kagome alone. She started to run, but an aching pain in her shoulder and thigh stopped her. She looked down at her thigh and shoulder and saw two awful stab wounds bleeding freely. She ignored the pain and started to run. She ran until she thought she would die from exhaustion. She came into a clearing and saw Inuyasha.
Inuyasha heard a rustling in the bushes and drew his sword. He watched as Kagome came out. She looked like hell. She was covered in blood mixed with mud (hey, that rhymes! Oh, sry, back to story), creating a red-brown color and her shoulder and thigh had two stab wounds in them. She had a nasty cut above her left eye and had bruises everywhere. He rushed up to her and gave her a kiss that he was afraid, if he broke, she'd disappear. But when they ended it, she was still in his arms. She gave him a small smile, then fainted. He picked her up bridal style and decided pretty quickly that she needed to see Kaede.
He rushed to the village, which wasn't that far away, and burst through Kaede's hut door. "Kaede! Are you here?" "Yes child, over here." He heard her say. "Look at what he did to Kagome!" Kaede got up as Inuyasha put Kagome on the examining table. When she was done looking over her, she said, "Inuyasha, she might not live. Whoever did this to her did a very good job. She has two stabs wounds, a nasty cut above her eye, and many bruises." "I could've come up with that!" he yelled, then said quietly," It's my fault she's like this. I didn't kill him fast enough." "Child, ye need to tell me who 'him' is." And so Inuyasha told her the whole story starting at the point she knew, when Akhei attacked the village and ended when he found her. Kagome hadn't told him yet what he did to her. If he had done worse than torture. What if he had raped her? The thought of someone other than himself touching Kagome like that made his blood boil. He looked at the sleeping beauty (get it? I crack myself up. But not with that joke, it's horrible.) lyingon the table and thought, "Why did I fall in love with her? Why her!" "Because," said a little voice in his head, "she's perfect." That little voice was right. She was like an angel on earth. His guardian angel, come to protect him. He couldn't lose her now. They had come so far. He didn't think he could take one day without her. He would give up anything even Tetsusaiga and ramen for her to stay alive.
He slept beside her that night after moving her to a bed. When he opened his eyes, he saw something that made him jump back in surprise. Kagome's chocolaty brown eyes staring at him. "You're alive!" he whispered. She looked at her arms and her stomachand said, "Yeah, I am. At least I think so. Only one way to tell." "What?" "This" she said as she caught him by surprise and kissed him. Then Kaede came in during their kissing and cleared her throat. They both looked at her and blushed a deep red. "I need to re-bandage Kagome." She said. "Since she survived through the night, her wounds will need tending to." Inuyasha left, still blushing, and went to the Goshinboku. "Kagome's gonna live." He thought as he sat with his back to the trunk on the ground "We can get married now and start a family." He gazed at the ground in front of him and suddenly, it became really interesting. He heard footsteps approaching and looked up. There stood Kagome, basking in sunshine, and with bandages covering what were probably stitches above her thigh. He stood up and noticed that she was still wearing her engagement ring. "I haven't taken it off." She said as she noticed him looking at it. "We should still set a date." He said. "Yeah; Soon, I hope" he said as he kissed her. Then, they noticed that everyone in the village was running past. Kagome stopped one of them and asked what was wrong. "That demon's back, the one that set fire to the village!" she said as she tried to rock her crying child to sleep. Inuyasha picked up Kagome and raced towards Kaede's. He put her down and said, "You need to stay here. You'll get hurt again." And he started to leave, but she put a hand on his shoulder and turned him around. "I'm not letting you leave without me." "But…." He began , but Kagome cut him off. "I can take care of myself." "Oh like you did when you got kidnapped and left to die?" he shot back, but immediately regretted it when he saw her face. If Kagome was an assassin and not his soon-to-be wife, her face would mean someone was about to get iced (yes, I used that line from Princess Diaries. So sue me) or if he still had the rosary (Kagome had taken it off), her face would mean he was about to be sat. "I'm going and you can't stop me." She said as she picked up her bow and her quiver. She huffed out of Kaede's hut and Inuyasha carefully followed her to the field. They saw Akhei there and he was setting fire to every thing he could see.
Kagome was already aiming an arrow at Akhei and Inuyasha saw him looking at her from the corner of his eyes. Akhei knew Kagome was there and he was expecting her to fire an arrow at him. Akhei was going to repel it at her. "Kagome! Don't fire it!" he said, but it was too late. Kagome's arrow headed towards Akhei and to Inuyasha's surprise, when Akhei turned to throw it back, it had already hit him in the shoulder. He stumbled and looked at Kagome, who was smiling to herself. "So the girl has a trick up her sleeve? Well so do I." He lifted his hand and a purple light shot out of his palm. All of a sudden, an assortment of demons appeared and started to attack. Kagome shot a few down and Inuyasha stabbed many with Tetsusaiga, but there were too many. Kagome saw Akhei alone watching the fight. She crept through the demons (don't ask how) and made her way to Akhei. She knew that she was leaving Inuyasha to fight the demons single-handedly, but if she killed Akhei, they would disappear.
Akhei could feel the human girl coming towards him and revised his plan. Let the demons kill the hanyou and then face the girl one-on-one. "She is no match for my skills." He thought. He turned to Kagome, who was standing still with her arrow aimed at his heart. "You don't need to aim there because I don't have one." He said. "It'll kill you anyway." "Oh, so now you're an expert on demons. Well, little girl, what about this?" he said as he clapped his hands together and a barrier formed around them as quickly as Kagome could blink. Fire leaped at the edges as the heat swept through the barrier, making sweat pour down Kagome's face, but Akhei was not even sweating one drop. "You've escaped me one time to many, and now you will die." He pulled out an oak bow and yanked the arrow out of his shoulder. "There is poison running through my blood and the second this hits you, you'll be dead." "That's big talk for someone whose going to be dead soon." "We'll see." He aimed the arrow at her heart. There was no doubt that it would miss, nor for her.
Inuyasha stopped killing the many demons to see where Kagome was. In the sea of demons, he couldn't see her. The horrible notion that a demon had killed her inched its way into his head. It quickly found its way out as he saw where she was. An even bigger thought slammed into his head like an anvil in the Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons. She was going to be killed by Naraku's son. He hacked his way through the demons, yelled "Wind Scar!", saw that all the demons were destroyed and made his way up the hill. He could only watch as Kagome and Akhei let their arrows fly. As the arrows collided, a blinding light erupted and when it cleared, the winner was found. Kagome. The barrier slowly faded and Inuyasha saw Akhei fading as well. Kagome smiled at her fiancée and got up from where she was sitting, but was struck down as an arrow collided with her stomach. Inuyasha looked up at Akheias what remained of him was lowering his bowand grinned evilly, thenwas blown away by the wind. Kagome was sprawled on the ground with blood seeping through her shirt and spilling onto the ground. Inuyasha quickly picked her up and sprinted to Kaede's.
When he got there, there was no one there. "Damn!" he swore loudly as he laid Kagome on the table and then he realized that he had to take care of her himself. He rummaged through her backpack, looking for bandages. He found some and quickly yanked the arrow out of Kagome's stomach. He applied the oink-ment or whatever Kagome called it and wrapped her upper torso in the bandage. He looked at her and, for the second time in his life, he let a tear fall. He had only cried when his mother died and now, with her injuries from earlier, and this arrow wound, Kagome might die. He watched her through the night and only left when Kaede came in and told him to leave so she could take care of Kagome. He had gone to the Goshinboku and slept until Kaede came up and told him to come see something. He followed her and when she pushed him into the hut and shut the door, he saw Kagome sitting on the table eating ramen. "I saved ome fu you." She said between gulps of ramen. He was so scared that she would die and then, there she was, eating ramen like nothing had happened! He was so relieved he walked over to her and hugged her. "Um…. it's nice to see you too?" she said as he looked at her. Her rosy red lips were just calling for him to kiss her. So, he leaned in and she met him in the middle. His hands drifted, only to end up cupping her jaw. Her tongue entered his mouth and he tasted ramen, his second favorite taste other than Kagome's mouth. He retracted his tongue and broke he kiss. "Well I must admit, you are a very good kisser." Said Kagome as they broke apart. "Same to you." He said as he hugged her again. He was just happy that she was alive. Plus, her hair always smelled like wild flowers, even now. He took the chance to say, "Listen, Kagome, I'm sorry about what I said earlier." "It's alright; I should've known you would try to protect me. You just went a little overboard." He started to say," Kagome, if you died, I don't know what…." "Inuyasha," she interrupted. "What?" "Just shut up and kiss me." She said as she grabbed his head and his lips crashing down on hers.
