More Holiday wishes.
Kisses to the reviewers, follower and favorites. Thank you for staying with me!
Cheers!
~Yasha's Sis
Circumstance
Book 2: Land of Grass
Chapter 23:
Prisoner
Hotaru's chains are like water given a semisolid form, all cool blues and sea-like greens. It reminds him of crystal, the kind that used to hang in Mama Higarashi's garden.
They're hypnotizing… when they aren't darting about to impale you on their ends.
Four of the deceptively delicate looking branches pierce the limbs of the smallest member of the assassination squad. The remainder of the spiked chains wave as if in an unfelt breeze, poised in a fan behind Hotaru's back as she stands before her prisoner.
InuYasha takes a moment to admire the image as he kicks the last of their dying enemies off Kiba's blade. It'd be an intimidating image if he couldn't remember her half dead and nearly fainting the day they crossed the swamp.
"Who's this then?"
InuYasha doesn't really care. Assholes attacked them first. It'd be easier to kill them all and move on, but Miroku's incessant voice asks for answers in the back of his head. Damn monk.
Hotaru tilts her head forward and sniffles.
Alarmed, InuYasha stomps over to the older woman and glares up. "Are you crying?!"
Fucking hell, if she didn't like killing people, she could have held off a bit. InuYasha didn't even manage to kill more than four.
He could have handled the bulk of their enemy as long as she used her fancy chains to keep herself safe.
"I'm sorry, InuYasha-sama." She hiccups a bit which stabs at InuYasha like a knife to his ears before continuing. "She's just… so young."
His retort lodges in his throat and the boy's head snaps to the assassin staked to the ground. Young?
InuYasha's lips purse and the survivor in him tells him to finish this fucker off, but…
Crouching, he hooks a finger under the mask and flips it off with a jerk of his wrist.
The girl looks like Rin.
It catches him so off guard that InuYasha almost falls back because there's blood dribbling out the corner of her mouth and what little that is left of her kneecaps are splinters with Hotaru's chains nearly matching the width of the limb. Her eyes are flat and dark grey, not the soft, warm brown InuYasha's used to and it is that which finally focuses his mind and tears it away from the almost horror of a near dead Rin.
The girl stares at him with not dead eyes though what life that should be in them is dulled and she doesn't say a thing.
Hotaru lets out a muffled sob behind them.
The chains staking the little girl in place don't waver.
InuYasha doesn't know what's worse: That Hotaru was forced to do this to a child, or that she continues to do so, because she knows the kid would attack that moment she was freed.
Thoughts? Comments? Concerns?
~Yasha's Sis