Chapter sixteen: Transformation.
Jinx's body shattered into shimmering, burning sparks that hung in the air. The vague Jinx-shape of the form vanished, replaced by a solid circle. Each spark glowed individually, and the space between them was inky black, even though there couldn't possibly be any black behind the stone altar the circle was positioned over.
Sesshoumaru raised Toukijin – when had he retrieved it? – but Raven stopped him with a light touch on his wrist. 'Not yet,' she said quietly. 'Trigon is intending to pass through Jinx. That circle contains his DNA.' The inuyoukai looked at her blankly. 'The information needed to remake his body. When he emerges, the first few moments before the resurrection is complete………he'll need all his magic to keep himself together for a while. That's when we strike.'
Trigon's head was tilted back as he observed the sky. The sun was almost gone now, and it was nearly time for the resurrection. He could feel the alignment of the heavens protesting. Unlike the previous time, there was no true prophecy of his revival. He had no consent from Reality to return to the living, and that weakened him.
Well, he cared not.
He was powerful enough to throw his weight against that of the universe, if only for an infinitesimal moment, and that was enough. He would rebuild his power once he was alive again.
The sun set, and his barrier broke.
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Inuyasha stopped before he reached the ruins, alerted by something she couldn't sense. 'A barrier,' he said grimly, setting her down on the ground. He unsheathed Tetsusaiga, eyeing the faint shimmer in the air between them and the altar. It glowed dark red in instant response to his need, and he screamed in fury as he brought it down with all his might, shattering the obstruction as if it were delicate glass.
Inuyasha took a second to survey the situation. Trigon (in Naraku's body) was standing in the ruins of the library, a barrier around his body. Sesshoumaru was snarling, a strange rising and falling inflection that she had never quite heard from him before. Raven was crackling with energy.
Why weren't they doing anything?
'Hey,' he said harshly. The demon turned his gaze consideringly on the hanyou. 'You this Trigon guy?'
'That is my name.'
'Keh. For someone who's got us all worried, you're kind of small, aren't you?'
Raven and Sesshoumaru, who had both seen the demon's true form, lifted an eyebrow at this statement.
Trigon laughed, obviously thinking of the same thing. 'Prepare to die, fool,' the demon rumbled.
'That's my line, ugly!' Inuyasha spat before he lunged at the demon. Tetsusaiga glowed like blood as it sliced through the barrier. Trigon stepped back, mildly surprised.
If Naraku could have seen it, he would have been darkly amused by that.
Tetsusaiga's second blow struck straight for the unprotected demon's neck. Trigon didn't even react. He simply lifted an arm in defense. An inch from the arm, the fang slammed into a barrier……..and could go no further. Inuyasha's eyes widened incredulously as he stopped in midair, unable to even cut skin. 'You're strong,' Trigon noted. 'I'm stronger.' Inuyasha gritted his teeth and attacked again. Trigon stepped sideways, barely missing the sword. Again and again, he struck to no effect. 'I'm a telepath, you fool,' the demon laughed. 'I know everything that's in your mind.'
'Obviously not, or you'd be running away right now,' Inuyasha sneered, and consequently left himself open for the next punch.
Trigon's arm came around in a thundering punch that lifted Inuyasha off his feet and slammed him clear across the ruins into another building. Tetsusaiga clattered to the ground some distance away, untransforming.
And then, while all three were still stunned by the casual way Trigon had deflected one of the most powerful weapons in the world, he struck, white beams of light stabbing out from his eyes. The first was aimed at Sesshoumaru, who dodged nimbly; the second at Raven, who put up a barrier. The barrier held, but the speed of the bolt sent her flying straight towards a pile of sharp boulders. She managed to catch herself just in time, flying free of the rubble and into the air.
The third bolt was aimed at Kagome.
The miko saw it coming, but unlike the others, she was not blessed with physical powers or superhuman reflexes, and it was too fast for her to shoot a banishing arrow at it. At the very last instant, Sesshoumaru slammed into her waist, pushing her down and out of its way. Instead of taking the beam in her chest, it hit her shoulder, an instant flare of white-hot pain spreading through her body in addition to the pain from the cut on her chest. Then it really began to hurt. Kagome screamed as she hit the ground. Sesshoumaru was suddenly gone as he attacked Trigon again, drawing him away from her.
The next moment, Inuyasha was there, golden eyes dark with fear as he saw the wound. The fire had cauterised it, burning a clean hole in her shoulder.
Not dark with fear, the miko realised foggily through the agony. Dark with something else. And he wasn't holding Tetsusaiga.
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Kagome stared at him fuzzily, but Inuyasha could see the knowledge dawn in her eyes. 'You're turning youkai,' she said faintly. If he had been human, he would never have heard her. She was the only one who could keep him sane, keep him himself, the only one…….make me stay, Kagome –
'Don't let it take you over for good, you hear me? Come back to me, or I swear I'll sit you to the middle of the earth.'
Dimly he realised that she wasn't trying to stop him as she had before. What was she thinking? But it was too late, he was lost, his last hope of sanity gone. Tetsusaiga was too far, and he could feel the change beginning already. He could feel the blood rage in him, pounding and calling. He could feel the pulse around him, that eerie extension of his inner aura into external space that blurred his vision and summoned his powerful mindless youkai self in time with the beat of his heart. It rose insistently, different from what it was before. Earlier, it was self-preservation that had prompted his youkai form's appearance. This time……..the wound wasn't fatal, but that wasn't the point. Kagome was his, she was everything, and she had been attacked. He had failed his pack, and his youkai was not going to allow him to do it again.
He has harmed Kagome. Kill.
Struggling to reach the sword, he wondered why she had not resisted the change.
The pack is in danger. Kill.
He would not lose control again.
Kill kill kill kill kill
No! Inuyasha raged futilely.
But his eyes were turning red, his claws lengthening, teeth turning into true sharp fangs, and he waited fatalistically for the red curtain to drop on his sanity as it always had. But it didn't happen. He could feel the physical change, it was complete, but the clarity of his mind was intact. He could hear a whisper in his mind, in his own voice.
This is how it was meant to be, this blood rage. You and I together.
His eyes opened wide in realisation.
A mind is like a chain, his youkai whispered. When the two of us are present simultaneously, the chain becomes too strong to be broken. Kagome knew.
He straightened, looking Trigon full in the eyes. The demon looked puzzled. Inuyasha smirked. 'Can't read my mind now, can you?'
Deliberately, he turned his back on the demon and walked to where Tetsusaiga lay, rusty as ever, in the ground.
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'I thought he was mindless when he transformed?' Raven said, watching Inuyasha stride towards his weapon. Trigon's eyes never left the hanyou.
Sesshoumaru shook his head, thinking about the words he exchanged with the tree sprit when he had sought him out to discover the secret of Inuyasha's transformation. After his brother had killed Ryukotsusei after controlling his transformation to some extent, he had gone to the tree spirit again.
'There are two kinds of transformation hanyou can have,' the tree spirit had said, its face twisting as it considered, the tree bending to accommodate the expression. 'The first is the kind you described to me, when they seek to protect themselves. That transformation has no purpose outside the hanyou's own life; no bond can reach them then. But should the hanyou transform to protect someone else, he retains his clarity of mind and purpose. The change is linked to the blood of their pack. That transformation is linked to the pack-bond as a result, and it can be controlled to some extent by the hanyou. Even then, the transformation is dangerous and should not be maintained for long.'
'And how does one tell the difference?' Sesshoumaru said, his expression blank as ever.
'Is this a hypothetical question, or is it related to your brother, my Lord?' the spirit asked slyly. Sesshoumaru's eyes narrowed.
'It is none of your business,' he said icily.
'Oh,' said the other, clearly understanding. 'Well, should there be wards cast on that hanyou, wards that control his or her youkai state, they should fail to function when the rage is directed at protection instead of self-preservation. Wards such as an ensorcelled sword.'
Should fail to function…….Sesshoumaru watched, inwardly tense, as Inuyasha approached Tetsusaiga, waiting for something, anything. If the sword rejected him, then he was lost, and he would have to be killed.
Needless to say, not something he relished. Not to mention dealing with a royally pissed Kagome afterwards, he added blackly.
'Distract Trigon, Raven,' Sesshoumaru said, not liking the way it came out as a request rather than a command. Raven nodded tightly and attacked, sending blasts of dark energy at the demon. He responded with bolts of his own, though he seemed reluctant to leave the place he was standing.
Inuyasha's hand seemed to take forever to reach out to the sword……..and then his slender clawed fingers wrapped securely around the hilt. He immediately went into a convulsion of power, his body trembling as questing tendrils of power shot from the Tetsusaiga's blade, licking over him before they subsided and disappeared. Sesshoumaru relaxed fractionally. The sword had accepted him. He was secure.
'Enough of this,' Trigon snapped, striding forward. With blasts of his own, he deflected Raven's dark energy. He vanished from view for a second, only to reappear on top of the palm-shaped altar. 'It is time. I will not allow you weaklings to interfere any longer.'
He stepped through the glowing circle, and flame enveloped him.
The transformation was quick…….almost too quick. Naraku's form seemed to shimmer, replaced briefly with Trigon's blood-red antlered silhouette, then Naraku…….Trigon…. Naraku again. Each time, Trigon's form became more and more solid and Naraku's more transparent.
Too late, Kagome thought, bitterness flooding through her as she saw Trigon on the altar. She had tried to call out to Naraku, but her fluctuating miko powers had not been able to reach him as easily as he reached her. I'm too late, too late, too………wait. Maybe there was one last chance.
She wrenched the vial at her neck open. The Shikon shards winked up at her pinkly, maliciously from her palm. The shards could amplify the powers of anyone who used them. They were the reason this entire mess had come about………and maybe its salvation as well.
Closing her eyes, she called, the Shikon no Tama amplifying her power.
Inuyasha froze for a moment as he felt a pulse of energy from her that rivaled anything he had ever felt in terms of sheer power. And then he stopped altogether as she screamed the one name he could never have expected. It was silent and wordless, a simple summons, but the amount of force she expended in making that telepathic call translated it into words, into a shriek of sound that drummed into the heads of the two youkai she shared pack-bond with – into the receptive mind of the empath – into the demon that was transforming himself within the portal above them.
'NARAKU! NOW!'
Everyone turned to look at the miko with varying degrees of shock. She kept her eyes closed. Felt for any change in the youki around her, in her mind, anything that indicated that Naraku had heard. Nothing changed.
Trigon's opaque flame eyes opened, sought her questioningly, but she evaded them. The miko had drawn her own conclusions about the source of Raven's power, and she knew better than to meet a telepath's eyes – if she had to guess, that was the trigger.
She also didn't want to see the expression on Inuyasha's face.
The body twitched within the flame, imperceptibly at first. Then shivers ran through it as Trigon and Naraku struggled in some way Kagome couldn't understand.
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The snake-youkai that was rushing towards Kagura at supersonic speeds suddenly slowed, nearly killing her as her wind blades went wild. Behind her, she could hear the humans shouting something. Her name?
'Kagura! Get down!'
That was the monk. Puzzled but not interested in taking a risk, she dismissed her feather and descended to the ground.
Miroku unwound the sacred cloth from his hand. The void in his palm flared to life, drawing in the suddenly sluggish youkai. Within a few moments, he had finished the youkai that surrounded them and bound his hand again.
'Nice!' Beast Boy said. 'Why didn't you do that before?'
Miroku shrugged. 'I didn't know how the time spell would affect the tunnel.'
Robin was peering into the darkness with his night vision goggles. 'There's more coming!'
Miroku's eyes widened as he saw the youkai approaching. There were too many for the rest to handle, and Kouga and Kagura were already tired. 'Stand back,' he said with preternatural calm. He could feel the wind tunnel ripping at his palm. Had been feeling it, in fact, for almost a month before his unexpected time travel. It was almost time.
He opened the wind tunnel and let it rip. (A/N: I know. Terrible pun.)
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'What have you done?' Trigon roared within his mind at the tiny presence that was Naraku.
'Oh, shut up,' Naraku said rudely. He could sense the miko listening to the conversation, their connection unsnapped, and the fact that Trigon couldn't only fueled his amusement at finally getting the better of the demon.
'How dare you–'
'I dare. I dare everything.' The hanyou sounded very calm, and Trigon stared at him in baffled fury. His body was changing in some way, some strange division was being ripped wider. He knew he didn't know everything about hanyou bodies, but this ability was not –
'You thought I was a youkai, didn't you? I'm not normal, Trigon. I am an exception; some would say, an abomination. I am a mixture of several youkai, and once a month, I turn human again, and my youkai parts separate.' Naraku smirked. 'And here's the sweetest thing. I get to choose when.'
Trigon struggled to maintain the body, but it was already too late. He had been so absorbed in turning time forward and keeping his barriers intact that he had not bothered to pay attention to what the prisoner was doing. A dangerous mistake, as it turned out.
'I'll KILL YOU!' he swore, summoning fire.
Dying was fine, just fine, but not by this one's hand, it wasn't. Naraku laughed in Trigon's face and let go of the precarious hold he had on life.
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Kagome was slammed out of Trigon's mind by Naraku just before he killed himself. She could feel that clearly, as clearly as she could hear his last words to her, and the brief explanation he'd shoved into her brain.
A parting gift, Kikyou.
And then he'd thrown her out and back into the real world. Kagome looked down at her hands. The jewel shards had dug into her palm, leaving angry red marks. No blood.
Trigon staggered forward, out of the circle. His body was a strange mixture of Naraku's and Trigon's, wavering between one and the other. Before she could feel hope, Trigon's body consolidated into a smaller version of his true form. Trigon roared, his body swelling as he regained his original size. They watched him, fascinated, as his head arched back to regard the inky sky, crimson eyes darkening and brightening as his inner struggle continued.
Inuyasha leapt up into the air, drawing Tetsusaiga back. He could feel the Wind Scar form around his blade. Trigon's aura was overwhelmingly strong; the sword could probably have pulled it off without him. 'Ever seen a Wind Scar, ugly?' he snarled, scenting Trigon's aura. 'It's to die for!'
The golden blast hit Trigon squarely in the chest, and the demon screamed in pain, staggering back. Inuyasha smiled ferally, displaying long gleaming fangs, and pressed the attack. Without the advantage of his telepathy, the demon was unable to fend off his blows. But he healed as quickly as Inuyasha struck at his limbs, growing new ones as quickly as Naraku had.
Below him, at Trigon's feet, Sesshoumaru prepared to use Toukijin. Then Tenseiga pulsed at his hip. Startled, he looked at the sword. It seemed to be calling him. He drew it, understanding. If Tenseiga was responding to the demon's presence, then he was not truly of the living. The underworld had not relinquished its claim on him, and resisting that pull was using up too much of his power. This was going to be too easy.
'Raven!' Kagome screamed from the ruins. She was standing, clutching her bow. She would never be able to draw with that shoulder. 'He's still struggling to stay together!'
If her guess was right, somewhere on his body was a node that served as a sort of spiritual adhesive for the body. The aura around it was unmistakable. Aiming at it would unhinge the spells that bound Trigon together. He wasn't alive at all. He was just a corpse who'd bandaged himself together with someone else's body.
'Got it!' the empath yelled back, circling Trigon, evading his white blasts of power, retaliating with her own. Looking for a weak point, Sesshoumaru realised. 'The back! Spider mark!'
'Inuyasha. Use the Wind Scar on the mark–'
'That's not good manners,' Inuyasha said, sincerely shocked for a second.
Raven gaped at him. What? 'To hell with manners!' she said and let loose a thunderous blast of her own. It hit the spider mark and……..split, tiny focused strings of power stabbing the flesh around the mark. Trigon convulsed and then split apart, all the half-transformed youkai that made up his body splitting apart as the node that connected them was destroyed. They were a strange mix of the youkai they had been when they were Naraku, and of parts of Trigon's body.
For Trigon himself, the split was painless. His alternate body was designed to split, after all. But Raven wasn't finished, not by a long shot. The black threads of power that she had used to disconnect Trigon's weakened body firmed and widened, keeping the parts away from each other. The demon struggled, trapped in midair, trying to bring his body back together. Raven made a small sound of pain in her throat as she kept the barriers up. She was dangerously close to the limit.
Sesshoumaru moved then, slicing Tenseiga across the component youkai. None of them were very strong, and they died instantly. They had already been partially integrated into Trigon's body, and organs cannot live without the head.
Which had managed to turn within its barrier to face Raven. The empath, caught in her own explosion of power, had her eyes closed, face contorted in extreme pain. The eyes powered up a blast, determined to kill her. Inuyasha noticed and darted to defend her, knocking her aside and leaping up to intercept the blast. He half-closed his blood-red eyes, feeling the power rushing from the demon…….and cut it with a circular sweeping motion at that precise point that he could never explain the location of but understood viscerally.
The Backlash Wave struck Trigon's energy and turned it against the demon, the tornadoes sweeping towards the source of the blast. Sesshoumaru swept his arm down, adding Tenseiga's force to the wave. At the same moment, Raven withdrew the internal barriers between the component youkai and Trigon's head and divided her flow into two. One band of dark energy enclosed the parts of Trigon's body inside a barrier, while the other wrapped the dark energy around the Backlash Wave instead, channeling it straight for Trigon's body. The confined space made the attack even more powerful. It struck the demon in a concentrated explosion, breaking his body apart in a few seconds.
The shriek of the wind died down with Trigon's dying scream.
Raven collapsed.
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The fifth praying mantis demon was sucked into his palm, and as it went in, it slashed at the edge of the wind tunnel. It was the worst sort of déjà vu, and Miroku took a second to appreciate the irony of it before he felt the nerves in his palm scream and then go numb. Time up, game over.
'Get away from me!' he screamed. Sango and Robin, who were closest to him, shot him puzzled looks. 'It's going to take me,' he forced out through the pain.
Robin caught on faster than Sango and grabbed her arm, forcing her away from him. 'Miroku……?' she cried as understanding struck.
He couldn't hear her. The wind tunnel was howling, and the sound blocked everything out. The others were safe, though. That was the most important thing. More youkai were being pulled into him as the wind tunnel's power increased. It had nearly absorbed his arm now. Above him, a giant horse-youkai shrieked as it was sucked up into the air and then down towards the void in his palm.
Just before he was sure he was going to die, it stopped, just like that. The awful ripping burn faded – or at least, it got no worse. Miroku tore his eyes away from the milling youkai in time to see the wind tunnel vanish from his palm yet again.
And then, before he could even take a second to understand the fact that he was free of the curse, that Trigon and Naraku were dead – the bloody horse youkai fell on him.
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Inuyasha saw the demon die, saw Raven fall and Sesshoumaru catch her and place her on the ground next to Kagome. The tension eased from him slowly, leaving him with the strange sensation of two selves in one mind, hanyou and youkai. Unlike his previous transformations, there was no resistance from the youkai – it faded easily and gently, leaving him shaking with physical and mental exhaustion, leaning heavily on Tetsusaiga, which he had jammed point-down into the ground.
Kagome watched, fascinated, as he changed back more gradually than he usually did. Turquoise pupils faded to normal black, and red to gold. His fangs and claws returned to normal, and the bold jagged stripes across his cheeks faded into his skin. The darker aura disappeared. He never let go of Tetsusaiga. The transformation complete, he sagged to his knees, utterly exhausted from keeping control.
For a long time, nobody spoke or moved. After a while, there was a great shriek of sirens as the Jump City Police came there. The Commissioner had ordered all his men to stay away from the fighting – standing orders from the Titans. An ambulance pulled up too, and Kagome was lifted onto a stretcher. Inuyasha growled tiredly, but Kagome shushed him and allowed herself to be taken into the ambulance. Inuyasha followed her; a doctor tried to stop him after seeing his dog ears, but a lift of a lip and the way the miko clutched his hand were enough to ensure him passage. A pair of paramedics headed for Raven, but Sesshoumaru waved them off. 'She is sleeping,' he said curtly before scooping her up in his arm and streaking away.
He was about halfway to the island where Titans' Tower had stood when the communicator squawked. It was Robin. Sesshoumaru set the sleeping Titan down and picked up the communicator.
'So you've dealt with Trigon?'
'He is dead.'
Robin wasn't as elated by the news as he expected. 'Miroku's dead too,' he reported.
Tenseiga pulsed at the sound of the monk's name. Sesshoumaru groaned. He was being turned into a real errand boy recently. 'I'll be there,' he reported.
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Raven sat up straight, jolted suddenly awake as her mind remembered that she had been in the middle of a battle.
'You really should stop fainting when you're fighting,' Sesshoumaru's cool voice said. She opened her eyes reluctantly. The youkai was sitting on a rock, watching her. She was lying on a bed of soft grass on the beach overlooking the island.
'I can assure you it's a recent development. Try doing everything I did today and feeling bright and perky afterwards. Besides, if you want to get technical, I didn't faint, I went into a healing trance. Where is everyone?'
'They aren't here,' the inuyoukai replied. 'The humans were injured, and they went to hospital. The wind witch and the wolf have left the planet. She said you would understand. I didn't know where else to bring you.'
'Oh,' Raven said, feeling strange and purposeless now that it was all over. 'Well, all right. They're all okay, then?'
Something flickered in Sesshoumaru's eyes. 'Yes, they are well. You need to sleep.'
'Sesshoumaru. Thank you.'
'Thank you, Raven,' he replied in a strangely formal tone before her eyes closed again.
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When she woke up again, it was morning. Beast Boy was watching her carefully, sitting on the rock Sesshoumaru had occupied.
'Rae!' he squealed happily when she opened her eyes, and promptly hugged her. Raven twitched madly. Hugs were okay, as long as there weren't too many, and it was less than twenty-four hours after the previous one. However, she decided to forgo the usual threats of disembowelment in view of the circumstances.
'Everybody's here?' she said, sitting up and pushing him away.
'Yeah,' he said. Then his ears drooped sadly. 'Robin's working on Cy. The rest of us are trying to figure out how to rebuild Titans' Tower. Kagome's pretty hurt, so she's taking care of the explanations.'
'Sesshoumaru? Rin?'
'Sesshoumaru was gone when I got here; I tracked your scent from the library to here. He took Rin from police headquarters. Say, Trigon really did a number on it, didn't he?'
'Hn.' Oh, god, she was turning into him. Next she'd be making 'foolish human' comments. He'd left? Without saying anything?
……..how……..impolite.
'I take it he's Gon now? Well, he did Tri hard,' Beast Boy said thoughtfully. 'I guess he couldn't take the strain. Just fell apart, I heard. He always was a nervous kind of demon.'
'You're still not funny,' Raven said, but after eight years she had to crack up sometime, and the laughter took her off guard. The shapechanger looked mildly alarmed as she giggled, chuckled and finally laughed, high-pitched, nearly hysterical.
'All right. Where are you and what have you done with Raven?' he said, half-serious.
She brought herself under control again. 'I'm free, Beast Boy,' she said, still smiling. 'I can feel all my emotions at the same time. The spell he laid on me, it's dissolved. I'm free. I laughed, and nothing blew up, see?'
The shapechanger examined the beach cautiously, not convinced of his teammate's sanity just yet. It was true. Nothing was in pieces, levitating, or otherwise destroyed.
Raven, free to feel whatever she wanted. Raven, smiling. It was too weird.
'If you're even thinking about hugging me again, I'll kill you,' she warned.
Then again……..he mused, some things just didn't change.
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Rebuilding Titans' Tower took a few weeks. Given the current mood in Jump City, they could probably have taken the metropolis over without much protest from the citizens. Robin firmly tamped down on that thought.
The new Tower was built along the same lines as the old, but with a few little extras added. Cyborg directed most of the building.
After struggling to repair the metalman for three days, Robin had simply given up and hunted down Gizmo instead and beat him into fixing Cyborg up. The little bald genius wisely elected to agree to the Titan's demands and made him good as new in far less time. Of course, the HIVE graduate was detained further until Cyborg could check himself for viruses, booby traps and backdoors. And then Robin threw him in jail for jaywalking just to prove that he was the baddest guy in town and they had better not forget it.
Inuyasha and the others left for Tokyo soon after, to see if the well portal was still open. After a bit of hunting, they had found the almost-complete jewel in the ruins of the library. Even after Kouga's shards were added, one tiny fragment of the jewel was missing – the fragment that had been in Kohaku's back. They still didn't know if Miroku and Sango could use the well, but there was no harm in trying.
And yes, Miroku did take a finger-sized video camera with him, although he decided on sober reflection that he would never get anywhere with Starfire. A Little Chat with Robin helped him immensely with that decision, and the Titan looked smug – well, smugger – for days after.
There was no contact from Sesshoumaru.
Raven spent days poring through old spell books, looking for any leads on what might have happened to Jinx. There were few clues, but the empath kept looking. It was Terra over again for the Titans, and she would not fail again.
And Beast Boy finally did master the inuyoukai form, though they all agreed that a furry green dog wasn't really that impressive even if it was half the size of Titans' Tower.
A/N: 'Ever seen a Wind Scar, ugly? It's to die for!' Inuyasha says this when he's fighting Kyokotsu of the Shichinin-tai. Since in this AU he'll never face them, he says it to Trigon – who's also undead. Neat, eh?
I know. Shameless gloating.
Dun-done-dun! Wow.
By the way, the last part will be extensively revised later.
Thanks, guys! Seeya soon!
