Ch: 18
Yet Another Abduction of Two
"Hey, Sesshomaru, can I leave you alone a minute? Can you stay out of trouble for that long?" Sky asked in a teasing voice. Even though Sesshomaru had not said a word since earlier this morning, and the sun had long been risen, giving him enough time to do so, she was still in a good mood. Sesshomaru, Aatu holding so tightly to his tail that he was hidden in the fluff, did not answer, still walking, but Sky saw the slight slowing in his pace and smiled. He would - at least - if not wait, not go far. "Thanks, Sesshomaru." She raced off into the bushes.
Hey, when you gotta go...
It was disturbing to Sesshomaru how much he felt the absence of her good-natured presence.
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Screeching noise
Inuyasha: Wait a second, hold up. Are you trying to tell me that the whole purpose of this entire story was to get Sesshomaru - Sesshomaru - to like the wench?
Kagome: Inuyasha, you are so completely dense. Can't you tell that the two are just meant for each other? sigh
Inuyasha stares at Kagome in a weird mix of disgust, confusion, and surprise
Inuyasha: You mean you actually knew this? You knew this and didn't even say anything? You APPROVE! I knew you were stupid, but this...
Kagome: Inuyasha! Sit! Sit! Sit!
Inuyasha crashes into the ground
W.W. - You don't know how hard I worked to keep them silent for this long...
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It was as if a big chunk of... say his sword, had just gone missing in a heated battle when the tide had been about to turn against him. Like I said, disturbing.
'I refuse,' Sesshomaru thought randomly, not really knowing what he was refusing to, but knowing that it was a stupid refusal that he would end up breaking. He pushed that thought away too, and just trudged along the path, face set.
It was several minutes before he noticed the strangeness surrounding him.
Not a single bird called, nor leaf rustled. And Aatu, normally good tempered, had begun to whimper most alarmingly in the tail.
That last fact had just begun to register in the dog demon's head when the net was cast over him, and he found that for the second time in a very short period, he couldn't move. But this... This had a different feel to it then the bandit, a feeling emphasized when multiple people came streaming out of the trees surrounding the path, shouting triumphantly.
"It worked! The crone's charms worked! Our village is saved!" Sesshomaru was forced to stand impassively inside the net, limbs and face not working, as the people ran up to him, spitting, cursing, and having an all around good time. The only movement the net allowed him was the motion of breathing.
But none of this had a feeling of spiritual power, magic, or anything. He didn't know how it was binding him. The humans wore no charms, unlike the bandit, yet stepped on the net with no ill effects, so obviously it didn't effect humans. Perhaps it was something designed to only capture demons...
So how come it didn't feel like spiritual magic? There were no traces of purifying in this thing. As he wondered, the shouting, screaming, smelly, insulting band of people snatched him up and carried him away.
'Of course,' Sesshomaru thought bitterly. 'Nothing ever goes as planned.'
His thoughts were then directed to Sky. Would they go after her next? Would they go after her, while she was alone, and he was trapped here, unable to save her?
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Kagome: Weeping Oh, that's beautiful...
Inuyasha: Gag.
Kagome: Still weeping Sit, sit, sit...
W.W. - Um... no comment.
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Sky had just finished her... urgent business... when she heard the shouting. A little curious, but with a lot of worry sprinkled in, she hurried toward where she had left Sesshomaru, following the clearly marked trail that she had left. Breaking out onto the path, the dog demon was nowhere to be seen. She looked both ways distractedly, then set out on the way that they had been headed, telling herself that she was stupid for worrying. This was Sesshomaru they were talking about, not just some little nobody. Surely nothing bad could happen to him.
But as she continued walking and found no trace of him, the worry grew, and she began to run. 'If he had continued walking quickly, of course he would have gotten farther then you when you're just walking normally. After all, you had to jog just to keep up with his pace earlier,' she rationalized, but it didn't calm her.
She knew for sure that something bad had happened when she came upon a part of the path were many feet had been... then the footsteps had sunk deeper into dirt, as if they had suddenly started carrying something rather heavy. Something the size and weight of a full grown dog demon. In a panic now, she fled down the path, running at a break neck pace. It was no surprise, really, when she ran into someone.
"You!" She gasped. The little boy she had run into smiled at her, a little confused.
"You who? I am me, but I have never met the me that you say I am supposed to be." He giggled at her, then ran off into the bushes. "Think I'm a good villain now, girl?" He called back, though his voice had changed, become female. "A day and a half is all you have now!" Sky took off after the boy, running head long through the trees. The thought was firmly implanted in her brain that the boy/woman, the one who had kidnaped Mara Rose and Rin, had also stolen Aatu... and Sesshomaru. But as she ran along, a tree limb stretched out and directly in front of her, crashing into her stomach. It was strong enough that though she dented it mightily, she did not break it.
"Whoa, there! You're chasing the wrong person! You're doing exactly what she wants you to do!" A muffled voice said from above her. The branch wrapped around the stunned girl's waist and lifted her up. "What do you think you're doing, following her?"
"She stole my friends!" Sky replied once she had enough air to do so. The tree shook.
"Well, in a way, but not the way you're thinking of. Your demon friends are in the exact opposite direction of the way you're going. She's a distraction."
"I don't mean to be rude, but I have no time to be talking to a tree. That bitch stole my friends, and I have to go after her!" The tree shook again.
"Are you listening to me? She's distracting you, while the people who did steal your demons are that way. And if you don't hurry up and go stop them, they are going to do something that I'm assuming, from the look of your soul, that they would regret very much." Sky was bewildered and now she was pissed.
"What the hell do you mean? My soul? You're speaking gibberish, and I have no time for this! And even if I did, why should I believe you?"
"Have you ever heard of a talking tree lying?"
"Actually, yes. I have." The tree, if it could have, would have blinked, taken aback.
"You have? Anyway, take a look for yourself if you don't believe me." The limb holding her was raised into the air, and she could see a small crowd moving swiftly away from her, carrying a very pale figure over their heads.
"Sesshomaru!" Sky breathed out, then started pummeling the tree branch. "Let me down! I have to go rescue him!" The tree did lower her, but not quite to the ground; not yet.
"Calm down. You'll reach them in plenty of time. And stick to the path; if there are lying talking trees about, the world is just not safe anymore." Then the tree set her down, and watched her go, shaking it's... canopy, I guess, would substitute for a head in this case. "Lying talking trees... what has this world come to..."
Sky raced off through the forest and back out onto the path, now on the right track.. It wouldn't occur to her until much later that perhaps she should have been surprised by being snatched up by a talking tree, but at the time it is quite understandable how she could have overlooked it.
Soon she reached the village where Sesshomaru had been taken. Standing on a hill before it, she could see his pale, unmoving form in the very center of the town... roped to a stone stake and surrounded by very dry wood.
'If these people were strong enough to capture Sesshomaru, how am I going to rescue him?' She wondered, now becoming calm like the tree had suggested. A plan suggested itself to her, and she smiled. It was simple, it was straightforward... and it rather suited her personality, too. In other words...
It would work.
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"Demon! You are charged with the direct intent to destroy our town! How do you plead?" Laughter rose up from the crowd as Sesshomaru, lashed to a post, stayed silent, even though he had been de-netted. Instead of being trapped by a net, now he was having issues because of the ropes. Aatu, also, had not been able to free himself of the entrapment, and was still hidden in Sesshomaru's tail. In any case, the ropes served the same purpose as the net, to keep him from speaking or moving. The humiliation was compounded by the fact that they had taken his armor and his weapons, piled them tauntingly in front of him. The 'judge' continued. "Since you say nothing in your defense, this court finds you guilty as charged, to be burned immediately!" The people gathered around him cheered enthusiastically. "Torch bearer, step forward."
As he waited to be burned to death, Sesshomaru heard a familiar voice push through the crowd of ecstatic people.
"Excuse me, pardon me, sorry, please move..." Soon he saw the black head of Sky moving toward him. She walked right up to the pole that he was tied to and lifted it free of it's moorings in the ground. The village people watched wide eyed as one woman carried away what had taken twelve men total (including those who carried Sesshomaru and Aatu) to carry there. Their courage fled in one giant scramble, thought the people remained rooted to the ground.
One finally gathered enough of the fleeing courage, though, to step in her path.
"What are you doing?" He demanded. Sky blinked at him and smiled.
"This demon belongs to me. I'm taking him back."
"How are you able to lift that?" A voice shrieked from the mass. "DEMON!" The crowd took up the cry, remembering and garnering bravery from their new weapons. The man who had spoken to her raised his hands.
"This is no demon! A demon could not lift this stone, nor come near these bonds without being frozen! You know this as well as I!"
"Then how does she do it?" The man considered the pretty, slender woman with the beautiful smile. The demon lashed to the stone over her shoulder seemed both awe-inspiring and rather out of place. The answer came to him.
"She must be a Goddess!" He cried, bowing deeply to the woman, that full prostrating bow, with his head in the dirt, hands stretched out before him. Sky winced as the rest copied him, and sent a look at the frozen Sesshomaru.
"Perhaps this will be harder then I thought..." She said to him. Then she turned back to the man, who was now looking up at her with adoration on his face. Sky was, to say the least, uncomfortable with being worshiped.
"My Lady! Won'st Thou stayst with us poor lowly souls but for an hour? It wouldst be the greatest honor, to bask in Thy holy light for even the shortest period Thy will grant us."
"Um... Sorry, I can't. I have important, uh, goddess-like business to attend to, and it's very urgent, so..." The person who had first cried her demon spoke up again.
"She does not glow! She does not speak in the proper and very boring and probably wrong manner! This woman cannot be a goddess!" They all looked at Sky for a rebuttal.
"Uh..." She shifted Sesshomaru to a different shoulder, and Aatu, no longer able to tighten or loosen his grip with every bounce, reached the end of the long hair he had been sliding down this whole time, and fell to the ground. No longer in contact with the ropes, he began to crawl toward Sky, giggling.
The townspeople were amazed.
"Look! The Goddess doth cause the male demon to give birth! Surely, if thy wretched souls had any doubts, they are gone!" The man who had started this whole goddess business shouted.
Sesshomaru was radiating hatred right about now.
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W.W. - I might have to go into hiding once his lordship is unfrozen...
Sky: Probably.
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"Look, people, could you be serious and stop talking like that for a minute? This is my demon, that's my demon baby, and I really have to go." She saw their blank faces, and sighed in frustration. "Look! Behold My glory!" She raised Sesshomaru on the stake high above her head, and tossed it a couple of times. They all 'ahhed'. "I am the goddess Sky Pyre! If ye do not want thy pathetic souls crushed and fed into the flames of My eternal funeral fires, ye shall part and let Me pass!" Scurrying, they all tried bowing and getting out of her way at the same time, then gave that up and just ran to get out of 'The Goddess Sky Pyre's' way. Tossing Sesshomaru's armor over the unoccupied shoulder and tucking the swords into separate belt loops she watched them trip over themselves. Taking measured steps, Sky realized that her mother's preaching on the correct way to walk finally came in handy, and to the people's eyes, she seemed to float out of town. (There really is a way of walking that makes it look like that too, though usually only if you're wearing very long dresses... Shh. I won't tell if you won't.)
Once out of sight, she put the stake down , anchored it to the ground, and leaned against it, wiping her forehead. She grinned at the still attached Sesshomaru.
"I thought I told you to stay out of trouble, Sesshomaru. Why didn't you listen to me?" The sense of hate became stronger, but Sky only laughed. "Now now, none of that, or I'll just leave you tied up there. Though I suppose it's a good thing that they didn't burn you, for their sakes. I don't want to think on what I would have had to have done to them. Perhaps that's what the talking tree meant by 'the look of my soul'." Aatu, who she had picked up on her way out of town, giggled. With a sigh, she started to untie the demon. "It was nice for there to be a reason for your silence, for once."
The last rope fell to the ground, and she lifted Sesshomaru away from them, so he too could move. Dusting himself off, he sent daggers at her with his eyes. Sky was stunned.
"What? I saved you."
"You could of gotten hurt," was out of his mouth before he could stop it, and his eyes grew wide as he realized that he had, as a matter of fact, said that out loud. They didn't even compare to Sky's though.
"I... um... well..." There was a storm breaking inside her head; with one motion she launched herself at him, this time not as a tackle, but as a hug. "I'm just glad you're okay." She whispered.
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Inuyasha: Whispering I want to gag, but I don't want Kagome to kill me...
W.W. - Also whispering Can't help you there, dude...
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Sesshomaru stared down at the black haired head that was pressed into his armor-less chest, amazed.
It was nothing next to Sky's amazement as the dog demon returned the hug. The new emotion was enough to tip the scales, and actually make her cry. Sesshomaru felt the wetness seeping through his shirt, and was horrified. 'Did I hurt her?' He thought irrationally. She tilted her head to look up at him, and smiled, confusing him more.
"I'm really glad you're okay, Sesshomaru. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't been." Before he could react, and before she could lose her nerve, Sky kissed him, for the second time. This wasn't no short one either.
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W.W. - Hee!
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But half the reason it wasn't a short one was that Sesshomaru wouldn't let her go when she rather feebly tried to pull away. The last time she had kissed him, he had wanted it to last longer, and by Kami, this one would.
When she finally was able pull away, Sky was thoroughly bedazzled. Her head swam somewhere up above cloud nine, and she smiled goofily at Sesshomaru. Everything had a gently gold cast to it.
"That," she said softly, "was very nice." A faint, slightly arrogant smile touched Sesshomaru's lips.
"Yes. It was." Looking over her shoulder, though, he saw something not nice at all.
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The night before
Maliha commandeered three rooms back at the Research Center, after going back on the shuttles. One for each of her boys, and another for herself and her husband. After settling in for bed, they began to talk and plan the next day.
The next day
The four of them got off to a late start, barely opening their eyes before seven, and slowly getting ready to go to the sites by eight. After two verbal fights and three all out brawls, they had gotten fed and to the shuttles, fortunately on time. The archeologists gave them all a wide berth. They had no idea who these strange people were, that got special treatment, but they weren't going to possibly jeopardize their lives by making friends. Even if the two younger males were incredibly attractive. The older one was also handsome, but he was obviously taken by the petite woman.
The brothers, however, felt no need to stay away from any and all pretty females on the bus, and soon had quite a few tripping over themselves to tell them all they knew about Sky.
"On the very first day, I thought that girl was weird," one claimed. She had no clue that she was talking to the girl's brother. More importantly, the girl's older, overprotective brother, who had personally chaperoned many of Sky's dates, and had joyfully beaten the shit out of every person who had broken her heart. No sign of this was on his face, however, as Desan continued to listen sympathetically to the human woman's story. "I had been walking down the hall to my room, and had heard a scream. I know it sounds stupid, but I went to see if the person was alright. You see," her voice lowered to a whisper. "some of the men here have been here for a while, and they can get really desperate." Her voice became normal again. "Anyway, I went to see if she was alright. She was fine! She was just sitting there, with spaghetti dangling out of her mouth." The woman shuddered. "What a savage." Desan chuckled, and moved on.
Another female was telling A'Dyn, through the many giggles she was sprouting, that Sky had just been downright stupid.
"She missed the shuttle on the first day, can you imagine that? I think there was something seriously wrong with her, you know..." She made a swirling motion by her head. "I think she was crazy. Because after the first day, she just wandered around, giving away perfectly good one-pieces. I took one, because it was my favorite color." She giggled. "Do you know what color is my favorite?" A'Dyn shook his head, though it was perfectly obvious. The girl was only wearing one color.
"No, what is it?"
"Pink!" She shrieked, and laughed at her little joke. Whatever it may have been. I don't know. I don't speak pink.
The shuttle ride ended without too many major mishaps... except the one. An older man had overheard Desan and some woman discussing Sky, and had decided to put in his own two cents.
"Damn! I know the girl you're talking about! She had a fine body, with the cutest ass I ever did see!" Here he chuckled. "I woulda had her on her back in three seconds if she hadn't a turned up missing–" And here Desan decked him, plowing across his jaw, and knocking out more then four teeth. This was after the man had moved back, so he only got grazed. If he had just stood there and taken the punch... He'd of been a dead man.
"That girl is my sister, and if I ever hear you talking about her like that again...!" Desan let his threat dangle in the air as he was pulled away by his brother and father. There was a silence for the rest of the shuttle ride, but thankfully that was only a couple of minutes long. Desan sat between his mother and his father, glaring resentfully at everyone. The man he had punched had been moved to the very front of the shuttle, where they luckily had some medics aboard.
Upon reaching the site, they ran into none other then Captain Thompson West himself. Poor man, he screamed and ran away, causing Maliha to smile in a very satisfied, evil manner. Aditya gave his wife a questioning look.
"What did you say to him? The part that the whole world couldn't hear?" She blinked innocently at him.
"I have no idea what you're talking about, dear. I was, as always, a lady, and neither did I raise my voice nor threaten the good Captain in any way. That would be bad manners." Aditya sighed. Asking was pointless. They got down to business. "Alright, Desan, A'Dyn, you two get to stay here and ask around for anything that they might know about when your sister disappeared. Meet with us at Sky's site about noon. Try not to kill anybody." They began to walk away, and Maliha shouted after them, "OR EACH OTHER!" They waved in acknowledgment. "Dear, you and I get to go to Sky's area, and see what is to be seen. Apparently the asshole in charge was making her work the whole area alone... It's about a mile radius, so we have a lot of work ahead of us. Are you ready?" He gave her a very tired smile. Damn. More walking.
"Of course, love. Let's go." Husband and wife walked the twenty minutes to Sky's site.
There was little enough there: some digging equipment, footsteps, dust, and craters. Occasionally there was a hole where it was evident Sky had started digging. But other then that, nothing but air. Still, they searched the rocky, lumpy land until noon, when their sons caught up with them.
"Mom, dad, did you find anything?" A'Dyn asked, wiping away the sweat on his forehead. Aditya shook his head.
"No. Nothing but dust." There was a moment of silence, then Maliha spoke up.
"That means nothing! She's still here, she couldn't get off the planet without them knowing. So, if we keep looking, we shall find her!" She looked at their tired faces, and smiled. "But first, let's find a place to have lunch." The three men cheered. Maliha shaded her eyes against the sun and looked around for a flat spot. Finding one, she pointed it out, and that's where they sat to have a wonderfully prepared capsuled lunch (-).
And promptly fell through... To another world.
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W.W. - I think I want to leave you there...