Disclaimer: I know now that nobody reads these but for the sake of appearances…I don't own the rights blah blah blah if you sue me you also inherit my debt—nya nya raaaaaaaaazzzzzzzzz …
A/N: In this chapter I introduce some characters that will seem familiar but have had their names changed, since there really is no equivalent in French for some of the Japanese names in the series. I thought long and hard how to do this and I realized that I'd kind of painted myself into a corner on this particular issue, so I'll stick with the locality I picked in order for the story to flow properly. Also, sorry for the delay—I needed French for this chapter and my interpreter was out of town until the 8th, so hopefully after this things will go a little more smoothly.
Kagome recovered from Inuyasha's rough shove just in time to see the tail end of the plane sail over her head. After her chute had opened she turned to look at the plane drifting further away, noting that it had straightened considerably since she had exited.
"Come on Inuyasha, what are you waiting for? Jump!"
The rumble of engines brought her attention back to her own situation and she looked around for the fighter planes that were turning to make yet another pass on the ill-fated mail plane. She quickly remembered that she presented an easy target as the rumble grew louder, so she reached up and pulled the parachute risers down as hard as she could to collapse her canopy and drop quickly. No sooner had she done so than a short burp of cannon fire erupted behind her and flew through the airspace she would have been in.
Fortunately for Kagome, the still aloft mail plane presented a much more tempting target, so the fighters flew past her without making any more attempts at shooting her down. With that danger past, Kagome turned her attention to finding a suitable spot to land. Being in northern France, however, realistically limited her options to what type of tree she preferred to land in, so instead she decided on trying to follow the plane as far as she could, and trying to find a clearing along the way.
She was still moving in the general direction the plane had been flying, scanning the ground for possible landing zones, when a muffled explosion caused her to jerk her head up in alarm. All rational thought ceased as she took in the sight of what she decided must be the burning wreckage of her plane hurtling toward the ground. The fact that she only saw one parachute dimly silhouetted against the horizon only doubled her anxiety.
"Inuyasha, that'd better be you under that canopy over there…"
It was not Inuyasha under the canopy, as Kagome hoped. Rather, a very unconscious Kouga Tanaka swung lifelessly under the great silk dome that he had strapped to his backside only a few hours previously.
He drifted in and out of consciousness, each time realizing anew that he was no longer in his plane. By the time he came around for the tenth time he realized that he was staring down into a lush and soft looking orchard. He wondered briefly if he was dead and floating up toward heaven, before his addled brain reminded him of two things: 1) if he were dead, heaven was not the place he would probably be heading to; and 2) the ground was coming up at him, not down away from him. As he started to lose consciousness again he decided he'd dwell on that little revelation more the next time he woke up, hopefully in his own soft bed…
Inuyasha barely restrained a bark of laughter as he left the plane just in time to see the German fighters come back to make their final pass. This was for several reasons that occurred to him as he thought he was staring death in the face for the last time, but when he was still alive several seconds later, he focused only on the one overwhelmingly important fact—in his haste to leave the plane, he had neglected to attach his own static line to the anchor cable in the plane.
It was just as well, really, he decided, since the plane had been falling faster than he was when he jumped. Remembering his second demotion Inuyasha did laugh at the irony in the situation as he pulled the cord on his reserve parachute.
'Wouldn't it be a suiting death for me to die by jumping without a parachute that would open.
He waited anxiously the three seconds it took for the canopy to fill up and arrest his fall watching the open farmland beneath him rush up at him a bit to quickly for his comfort. When his reserve chute finally fully deployed he let go of the breath he hadn't noticed he was holding. The jerk upwards was hard enough that it caused his pack to come loose from the clips on his harness, which in itself wasn't so much a problem because it was also attached to him by a fifteen foot static line. The problem occurred when the static line reached its limit and the shock from that spilled the entire contents of his pack onto the ground below.
Inuyasha watched his carefully gathered supplies drop the remaining two hundred feet or so to the ground, and he could only bring himself to mutter a single word.
"Perfect."
He took some comfort in the fact that a two hundred foot fall would not destroy everything that he had packed, but it was a small consolation when he next noticed that his rifle was no longer next to his side—if indeed it ever had been.
After landing roughly with the backup parachute Inuyasha spent about two minutes gathering the impact resistant contents of his pack that he could find—thankfully among them were his compass and his map case, his sidearm, and some food. After shoving these things into the remnants of his pack he quickly rolled up his parachute and ran into the nearby orchard in the opposite direction the plane had been flying in.
'I hope Kagome is faring better than I am.'
After stopping to hide his parachute and harness under some thick brush he shook his head ruefully.
'Who am I kidding? The chances that Kagome's doing better than I am are slim to none—I just hope she managed to hang on to more of her gear.'
Kagome sneezed violently as she continued her descent while an unbidden thought came to her.
'Somebody must be speaking badly about me.'
She shook off the superstitious thought as quickly as it came and concentrated on trying to make it to the clearing she had managed to find. Her feet were starting to brush the tops of the trees short of the clearing and she knew she was going to fall short. She tugged harder on her front risers but it was no use—Kagome slid into the thick canopy of the trees below her, finally coming to a stop about fifteen feet off the ground. She looked up at her parachute and saw that it was stuck without any hope of getting it loose—not that she really wanted to fall the extra fifteen feet anyway.
Looking at all the broken branches she had passed through she was glad she and Inuyasha had agreed she should wear pants under her long skirt while they were traveling. For one thing putting on a parachute harness over a skirt looked ridiculous, and for another it didn't work very well (probably the very reason the Scottish paratroopers had finally agreed not to wear their kilts into battle). Bringing her mind back to her present situation, she took stock of what she had left the plane with: her pack was still attached to her harness, her rifle case was secure at her side, and her reserve parachute was still intact.
Seeing as she was stuck in a tree, and nobody—except maybe Inuyasha—would be coming to get her, she had to get herself down. The method for this had been demonstrated to her, but she'd never actually had to do it, so she decided to proceed very carefully. First she detached her rifle in its case from her harness and tied it to the side of her pack. Then she took the slack of the static line attached to her pack and undid the clips attaching the pack her harness, lowering her equipment to the ground slowly so as not to jar anything loose. Once her pack was on the ground she very carefully undid the clips keeping her in the harness, and maneuvered herself out onto the static line, climbing down hand over hand as carefully as she could. When she finally reached the ground she looked back up at her harness hanging from the tree and decided she'd just have to leave the whole thing there, since there was no way to get back up there and down again safely.
'There—that wasn't so hard. I'm not hurt and I still have all of my equipment. If I'm doing this well Inuyasha must be several steps ahead of me already—I'll have to hurry to catch up.'
She unpacked her rifle, changed out of her dress shoes, strapped on her pack, and started off in the direction the plane had been flying to accomplish the first task in their worst case scenario—reconsolidate on high ground.
Inuyasha cursed as quietly as he could after rolling his left ankle for the fifth time in nearly as many minutes.
'Damn reserve 'chutes are way to small for someone carrying a combat load,' he reflected, trying desperately not to upset his twisted ankle any further. 'I guess there's a reason they decided not to let paratroopers wear short-topped boots—landing in these dress shoes nearly broke my ankles.'
He stopped to consider the picture he presented. 'Yeah, if anybody sees me there gonna have a real hard time figuring out where I came from…' Still dressed in his formal dress uniform for traveling purposes, he decided he stuck out like a sore thumb in the thick, bright green foliage he was surrounded with.
Getting moving again he started looking for some high ground ahead of him, trying to figure out where Kagome would make the rally point. Climbing to the top of a small hillock he looked out as best as he could over the tree tops. Seeing a large domed hill about two or three kilometers away he decided that was probably where Kagome was heading.
"That's where I would go if I were in her shoes," he said to no one—or so he thought. A rustle in the brush at the bottom of his hillock instantly put him on alert, looking for what had caused the noise. When a rabbit darted out of the brush a moment later he let his guard down slightly.
'The sooner that I get to that hill and get Kagome, the sooner we can figure out what to do next.'
Stepping lightly, he hurried as fast as he could in the direction he was sure would take him to Kagome.
A little more than an hour later, Inuyasha arrived at the base of the domed hill. He decided it was best to reconnoiter the area first, so he made a circuit around the base of the hill looking for old encampments, bunkers, and signs of enemy patrols passing through the area. He did find some signs of activity and a hastily made shelter, but decided that they were long out of use and so ignored them.
Finally, forty five minutes later, he returned to the spot he had started his recon from and started to ascend the hill before hearing the distinctive sound of a rifle's bolt being cycled.
He started to turn to face his apparent captor when he was suddenly struck hard on the back of his head with what his fading mind decided was the butt of a rifle.
'Well this day just keeps getting better and better..' he thought bleakly as he blacked out.
Kagome had seen a large domed hill in the direction of the crash site while she had still been airborne so she made for the hill, arriving there almost two hours after jumping from the plane—it turned out that it was much further away than it had looked from the air. Stopping to rest at the bottom of the hill she dropped her pack and removed a canteen from one of the outside pockets. Taking a short drink—'Who knows when I'll get more water,' she thought—she replaced the canteen and strapped her pack on once more, heading for the top of the hill.
After a long climb she reached the top of the hill and surveyed the clearing before her, perfectly formed on the exact center of the dome top. Everything seemed fine except for the lilting sound of a girl singing to herself. At first Kagome couldn't figure out where it was coming from, but as she moved around the edge of the clearing she was able to see a young girl with red hair sitting with her back against a tree, singing to herself in French. Kagome was just about to back off and look for a spot to wait for Inuyasha on his side of the hill when a mechanical 'click' sounded behind her. Kagome froze and quickly analyzed the situation.
Taking a chance, Kagome spoke without moving. "Qui est que va?"
Silence followed for several tense seconds, during which Kagome noticed that the little girl was no longer singing. Kagome worried to herself in a whirlwind of thoughts. 'Who's caught me? Are they German or French? What was the little girl doing up here by herself? Are they going to shoot me? Did they get Inuyasha too?...' Her unasked questions were interrupted suddenly when her captor spoke.
"Qui vous est?"
Kagome relaxed, but only slightly. Her guess was so far turning out to be at least slightly correct. "Je suis Américain. Je suis un civil." An indignant snort set Kagome on edge, ready to react again. She realized she may have just made a big mistake.
"You call yourself a civilian, yet you carry military equipment and a sniper rifle, from the looks of it," spoke a woman with a heavy accent. "Turn around."
Kagome turned to face a tall brunette haired woman holding a German semi-automatic rifle. Judging by the way the woman was holding it and how steady it was in her hands, Kagome would have bet that her captor was quite comfortable with weapons and marksmanship. The woman was slender because of her height (probably a good two or three inches taller than Kagome) but she had the solid build of someone who was used to manual labor and physical work. Any thoughts of trying to fight back and escape quickly left Kagome's mind, especially after noticing the Luger pistol that the red-headed girl quickly concealed when she noticed her looking.
"So I'll ask you again: who are you?"
Kagome's mind raced trying to decide how she could test this woman to find out if she was friend or foe without revealing any information. She finally settled on using one of the pass phrases. Pointing at a spot of mud on the woman's blouse, she said, "Only heavy rains will wash out that stain."
The rifle never wavered, but the woman's face lit up then and her eyes widened in recognition as she repeated the proper counter-sign: "Then we must seed the clouds and dance and sing aloud."
Kagome relaxed a little when the counter-sign was repeated, but did not fully relax until after the rifle had been lowered. Once that happened though she found herself trapped yet again, but this time in the woman's strong embrace.
"You are finally here! Oh we had grown so impatient waiting for the liberators to come. How does it go then? Are the Nazi's in retreat? Is Paris back in the hands of our rightful government? You must tell me all that has happened, but first we'll need to gather the people and share the news…"
Kagome was bewildered until she remembered what that particular pass phrase was for—it indicated the liberation of France and was a message for the French Resistance to fight openly. Oops.
"No, no. I am sorry—I have delivered the wrong message, but at least now you know I am a friend."
The woman stopped abruptly. "So France is not free yet? Our allies have not come to help us?"
"No that's not true either—we are here to help, but in a more obscure and quiet kind of way. Do you know what I mean?"
The woman considered for a moment, and then smiled. "Yes I think I know exactly what you mean, but before we say anything more we should get indoors. Because of that plane crash there will soon be German Patrols combing this area for survivors. I know a safe place you can hide. Follow me."
Feeling much better than she did at the start of the conversation Kagome tried to keep up with the quick woman as she ran south toward the open orchard land and presumably safety.