Chapter 14 – Breakdown

Okay! By a unanimous vote we are going to do….the second option! Yay! You guys picked the one that I liked! Okay! I don't own Inuyasha, and here it is -

It was almost a week later when Inuyasha and my mom deemed me well enough to walk around on my own. I thought that I should have been allowed to walk sooner, because I felt fine, but they didn't want me stressing out my shoulder. Secretly, I doubted them. I doubted everything they said.

I knew he'd accepted me as his daughter. And we both knew we loved each other. But after that, I wasn't sure how things were playing out. My mother…oh, God. My mom was acting like a teenager. She loved him, staying by his side all the time, keeping him beside her. I didn't mind until one night I woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare and found them having sex.

Have you ever walked in on your parents? It's sick. It's wrong. It's disturbing. You don't even want to think about it. When I saw them, it felt like my whole soul had just been torn apart by a swarm of demons with razor-sharp claws. I couldn't control my emotions – I wanted to run into a dark corner and scream and cry like I was two years old. What had happened to my happy ending?

That night I went to Kirara and cried to her. She'd been my support all week, carrying me, staying up with me when I got scared, always listening, even when she couldn't say a word. That night in particular I was nostalgic for – get this, my wind tunnel. My Kazaana. My curse. I realized that night that I was missing my Kazaana because it had symbolized the one thing I had in common with my father, aside from my eyes. When I had my wind tunnel, my mother loved me because I was the only living thing she had to remind her of Miroku. When I had my curse, I had a goal worth getting to. Now the goal was fulfilled. My father was back. Everything was supposed to be perfect.

Now we had the real Miroku. My real father. It was like they didn't need me to remind them of him anymore. I knew I was overreacting – my mother still kissed me every night before I went to bed, Inuyasha still teased me and Kagome still pampered me as usual, my dad gave me a soft smile and a hug every day. But why did it all seem so empty?

We were supposed to be heading back for the village where Inuyasha and Kagome had lived. I was trying to act as normal was I could. I figured if I could get back to the village, by then everything would straighten out. The group kind of gave me space, even Shippou, which was, like, a friggin' miracle. They figured I was still freaked out from the Kanna incident. Which I was. Well, I guess. I didn't even know what was going on inside me then.

I walked alongside Kirara, slowly rotating my shoulder. It felt good to get my muscles stretched out – they were healing pretty quickly, but I could see the outline of a scar where he'd stabbed me. Inuyasha and Shippou were arguing about something, Kagome and my mom were talking softly, and my dad, Kirara and I were walking in silence. I was getting pretty hungry – we were running low on supplies. Kagome's ninja food could last forever, but with all of us needing to eat at least twice a day to keep moving, we were dangerously low.

That night we came upon a village. I was really, really, REALLY happy about this, but before I could run tearing into a village for food, we had a conference. We had no money. Nada. Zip. Zilch. So we had a couple of options – Shippou or Kirara pretend to be a rogue demon and Miroku come through and pretend to get rid of them, we steal some money from the wealthiest house and split, or we hide out in the attic of one of those houses. As I listened to them conferring about this as if it was perfectly normal, I finally said,

"Why don't we just ask if there's an extra place to spend the night? I mean, God, guys, you sound like first-rate criminals deciding which house you're going to rob."

They looked at me. "Um, yeah, 'cause we are trying to decide which house we're going to rob." Inuyasha sneered at me. "So pipe down, girl, and let us figure out what to do."

"You stuck-up, dumbass hanyou…" I swore to myself, but suddenly a peasant came up to us.

"Excuse me, but would any of you know where I can hire a good Taijiya?"

Bingo.

My mom and I leapt to our feet in an instant. "Consider yourself lucky, sir." My mom said easily. "We're some of the best Taijiyas in all of Japan, and we just happen to be passing through."

So we got ourselves a job, a room for the night, and a good dinner. Across the dinner table, I smirked at Inuyasha and mouthed, 'Who got us a room, dogboy?' He snarled at me and dove into the ramen.

The job was for the next day at noon. We were all suited up and ready to go. The man had told us that the demon attacked every day around noon, and always caused at least one casualty. It had been going on for a week now, and they had finally decided to hire a Taijiya. We were all ready for battle, and I was tuning out my emotions. I didn't need to be getting all depressed about my mom and dad now. There were demons to kill.

But at first I didn't even see anything. There was a thin fog over the ground, but I didn't really think anything of it. But my mom handed me a gas mask and put one on herself, and when she caught my eye, she nodded. Okay. There was a demon. The fog thickened until even Kirara was coughing, and then slowly a young man walked forward.

I was entranced. He was sex-hay!

He had thick black hair in a long ponytail, black eyes, and very expensive clothes. While everyone else in the group was ready for battle, I was just staring at him. Wow. Demons were really hot. Why the hell hadn't anyone told me?

(I would like to point out to you all that I was still a novice Taijiya, and this was kind of my first time fighting a demon in human form. It wasn't my fault.)

He looked us over, and then said sweetly, "Would you be Inuyasha?"

"Depends on who's asking." He snapped, drawing Tetsusaiga. "Who are you and why have you been tormenting this village?"

He smiled and said, "So I can fight weakling Taijiyas and hanyous like you."

"Say WHAT!" I barked.

"DAMN YOU!" Inuyasha roared.

My mom didn't say anything – just aimed Hiraikotsu at him and threw it with every ounce of strength she had. Which was a lot.

But in one instant, the fog cleared, the demon's body crumbled to the ground, and in its place rose a terrifying bear demon, with black eyes and teeth stained red with blood. I gasped as Hiraikotsu simply brushed against his skin and then flew back to my mother. Kagome ran forward, firing her arrows, and Inuyasha screamed, "WIND SCAR!" The battle began.

By our standards, it was relatively easy. Bear demons aren't particularly hard, and there's a lot of them, so we'd had a lot of practice. I assumed we could take care of him with just a Wind Scar and one of Kagome's arrows, but we did have to work a little harder than that. My mother and Shippou kept him distracted while Miroku launched a sutra at his heart. I saw my opportunity, drew my sword and sprinted forward. I held my katana aloft, just ready to stab it into the sutra and pierce the demon's heart, and so win the battle, when I felt my katana drop to the ground and something snatch me as I was running. A paw.

The bear had grabbed me in its paw just as I was about to attack him. Oh, I thought, this is even better. I smiled at him, looking deep into the bear's black eyes, and reached over to grab the beads on my right hand, pull them off and suck this demon into the Kazaana.

But when I groped around on my hand and didn't feel any beads, my heart dropped.

I didn't have the Kazaana anymore.

Oh, shit.

I was speechless, my heart frozen, realizing I was completely defenseless. The bear smiled at me, a fearsome smile, showing all his miserable, blood-stained teeth, and growled,

"You'll do nicely, girl."

And that's when he turned tail and started to sprint out of the clearing, still holding me.

"MAMA!" I screamed desperately, tears pouring down my face. "MAAA-MAAA!"

I saw her and my dad leap up onto Kirara and start to follow me, but the bear was going too fast. She was disappearing slowly, and with it, I felt like my world was disappearing too. I was being taken hostage by a demon – what was going to happen to me now!

"MAMA!" I screamed as loud as I possibly could.

The bear looked at me and smiled. "No use yelling, girl. There's nothing they can do now."

I was crying now, really crying, my body shaking and trembling, and I'd never felt so helpless in my life. A word floated back to me –

"Kaza!"

It was my mother, but she couldn't do anything to help me now.

Well, Kaza deserved it. She's been pissing me off lately. Anyway, thank you so much all of you that reviewed and told me what you wanted, and i hope i can live up to your standards! Please review, Arigatou! And no, this is not going to be a typical capture twist - someone very important is going to enter the scene very soon...ok, i'm done being clairvoyant. REVIEW!