Giddily, InuMaigo's yellow youki energy swirled as he changed forms from beast to boy and back again, splashing in the thick brown mud like so much chocolate frosting.
Pink tongue darting from his smiling lips, curiously, and because its smell was sweet, he lapped up the gritty muck from the side of his face and grimaced,
"Yep not frosting!" The words came out as tiny barks as he switched forms yet again. His little body became furred and in a quick, slightly painful, snap he found himself as a lolloping puppy fur matted with muck.
Bouncing in the sticky goop, he couldn't help the lonely feeling in his chest.
He missed his family, not used to playing alone. Sadness came and went in a flash as the massive puddle began to vibrate; a welcomed distraction.
Bubbles fizzed from the muddy depths, and he couldn't quell the desire to pounce on each and every one, bathing himself in fresh layers of grime with each bound.
He continued his quest to conquer while switching forms mid-pounce.
Giggling spilled from each popped glob, like a little girl being tickled. "Where are you?" InuMaigo laughed, caught up in the joys of being covered in slime and goop like a thick slick second skin, caring less that he was still indeed void of any clothes.
If only his mother could see him now, bare and covered in sludge, she'd scream and scold him with a shake of one long red polished claw.
The laughter grew louder, shaking him from his longing. "Where are you?" He asked once more with a pop of a rather large mud bubble.
The mud here smelled so much better than any mud he'd ever smelt, like fleshy ripened fruits and sweet brown sugar.
"Everywhere, Silly!" The voice cooed seeming to come from every direction, high pitched and lofty.
The pup glanced around the clearing, suddenly painfully aware his brother and the weirdo were nowhere in sight, and neither was the girl.
"Show yourself." He growled, his voice losing its innocence, a mask twisted on his face, claws erect and poised to fight.
Crying, it came like a smooth sad melody ripe with despair and followed with a whimper of desolation,
"Please don't be mad, don't leave!" It was then he realized that her words came from the mud popping with sound, and before he could find anything to say, a throaty squawk screeched. His spine went ridged and his pointed ears ached.
"Whelp!" The bulbous green creature scrambled closer, careful not to sully his bare feet in the slimy muck puddle, "Get out of that filth! Do you wish to dishonor Lord Sesshomaru like that filthy hanyou?!"
His giant juicy yellow eyes blinked wide as the mud began to recede to a small growing form way too close to the pup for his hide's safety. If something were to happen to the brat, his Lord would surely have it fresh from his bones.
Grime oozed vertically into the air, forming a giant mass of blobby mud monster, and a wide soggy mouth from which sludge seeped and oozed. "You will leave us you ugly monstrosity!"
The tiny bubbly voice of a little girl morphed into something far deeper, and resonated through the forest. Birds and squirrels chirped and chattered, scurrying away to safety high in the canopy.
A tremor of fear ran through the green youkai's form, but he held up his staff, squawking, "You are no match for the staff of two heads!" As the staff rose into the air, massive mucky spit balls crashed over him until he ran for his Lord.
He'd allow his Lord the pleasure of killing him if he so chose but not that disgraceful blob demon.
"What are you?!" InuMaigo shouted with his messed claws extended toward the mass, wishing he hadn't lost his right arm as he tried to keep the fear from his face and eyes.
White light spilled over the mass, and suddenly where the giant mucky monster had been stood a little girl.
"Woah!" InuMaigo's pupils dilated. She looked like the embodiment of hot cocoa. Skin like molten caramel, eyes the color of rich dark chocolate, and hair wild and messed like white foam atop her head. She glowed a light pink youki.
A red flush covered her face, and she quickly turned around, hiding her eyes, "I'm a deinei youkai. Can you please put on some clothes?"
Suddenly InuMaigo remembered being naked, and while he loved not having any clothes on, and he didn't care if boys saw him…His entire body turned pink…this girl, he did not want to be around a girl naked!
Turning to leave, he stopped mid stride when she screamed, crying again, "Don't leave!"
Frozen in place, the pup groaned, completely unprepared for such a situation.
"I'm lost, don't leave me alone…" Her small voice filled with sadness, it crept up on him like a shroud of misery, and his feet refused to take him away.
He knew the wrenching feeling of being lost and alone.
The beast inside him growled, "I'll protect you," the words spewing from his lips without even a thought on his part.
Never before had such a thing happened, his natural unconscious control had always been enough to keep his beast at bay, and now he found himself wishing he would have paid more attention to his training for it seemed his beast would do as it pleased.
"You grant the female your protection, pup?" Seemingly out of nowhere, his older brother's voice, just slightly lilting with amusement and annoyance, met his flushed ears.
With a huff, InuMaigo clenched and unclenched the claws at his sides. "My beast insists, the vow has been said, I am honor bound to do so."
Despite the urge to run into the flowering bushes and hide his nakedness from the deinei youkai, he instead, much to her red faced dismay, took a stance protectively in front of her.
She spun to face away once more.
"So be it. Do not leave this area."
Ten long minutes passed, silent but for the shuffling of tiny embarrassed feet from side to side. The small Inu glared straight, staring at the thick green leaves of the forest ahead trying to keep his mind from thinking about the awkward situation he now found himself in, all because his beast had a big mouth.
He now had two things to work on, control being the basis of both his problems; resisting temptation and ruling his beast.
A sharp pain throbbed in his skull, and he wondered if this was the 'migraine' his mother talked about with so much frustration marring her usually happy tone.
"What is your name?" The small mud demon asked, stealing his attention from the trees. Her eyes were glued to her toe swirling in the dirt.
"InuMaigo, son of Lady InuKimi and Lord Haiiro," Pride filled him up as he sucked in a deep breath, puffing up his pale chest, before he tilted his silver top and glanced at the back of her pink tinged head. "What is your name?"
She also seemed proud of her lineage, her back straightened, and her pointed chin became parallel with the ground, "My name is Moyashi, daughter of General Onmitsu of the Western Lord's Army."
Turning her head over her shoulder, she met his gleaming amber eyes, flushing slightly pinker as she caught his gaze, "What affiliation do you have to the West? I have heard only the Lord has a crescent above his brow."
Not sure if Sesshomaru would be angry if he told her his time travelling tale, he merely averted his gaze, muttering, "I am a relative of Sesshomaru-sama."
Smiling, she nodded before turning to watch a turquoise butterfly flutter around the clearing, "Once you clothe yourself, I'd like to play again. Not many of the children at the shiro enjoy playing with a mud demoness, but if you are staying there, perhaps we may become friends."
Sesshomaru found the pups back to back, pink cheeked, in the clearing where he'd left them, and tossed a satchel filled with clothes at the naked Inu. "Bathe and dress, I will protect the girl while you do so."
The pup narrowed his eyes, scenting mischief in the wind, but took the gift graciously, slightly bowing, "Thank you Sesshomaru-sama," and ran into the bushes he'd been eyeing longingly for almost half an hour. His nose told him there was a stream nearby.
Centuries, he'd lived for hundreds of years, his senses unparalleled to any other's, but Sesshomaru's nose could not place the flavor of his mother's second offspring.
Later, in the secrecy of his fortress's walls where no unwanted ears could hear, he would ask the whelp, but with such an opportunity to test out the strength of the child, his curiosity would not allow him to pass it up.
His golden eyes ran over the small female before him with a note of familiarity, and he lightly sniffed the air trying to place her sweet sugary scent.
It donned on him, she was the daughter of a spy in his army, their scent held much of the same aroma but they looked nothing alike.
Catching her attention with a stern muttering of, "Girl," He gave in to curiosity.
In a quick bow, she lowered her head, frothy locks sticking out like an immobile dollop of cream while fear and anxiety rippled through her aura, "Hai Milord?"
"You are indeed General Onmitsu's daughter, are you not? Why are you not accompanied by a guard?" Her father held a respectable position in his army, surely one so honorable in his duties to his Lord were also honorable in other duties as well.
Face flushed, Moyashi knew she could not lie to her Lord, there would be no honor in trying to deceive anyone really, but the Lord of the West would surely kill her for the insult. "I um…" Fingers trembling as she wrung her hands, "Well…I…I kind of ran away…or well not ran away," Desperately trying to find the right words before the Lord grew impatient and just lopped off her head.
She let her tears fall, tears she'd been trying to keep in check for a day and a half, shame licking over her aura like a thickly coiled snake.
Slightly narrowing his eyes at the tiny demoness, he pressed his lips together. She wasn't his child to prod for more answers, "You will return to the shiro."
As if his order had been a question, she mumbled, "Hai," before sitting in the dirt, with her face buried in her hands, sobbing.
"Haori and hakamas?" InuMaigo glared at the clothes he'd been given, not ever wearing such ridiculous things before.
Holding up a strange length of white silk with weird straps, he wasn't sure what to do with it. Perhaps it was a scarf of some sort.
Usually he would wear underwear with his clothes, but he couldn't figure out what in the bag was even supposed to be underwear.
There were too many sets of kimono, or maybe they were layers, and he couldn't find a use for them, so, with a frown, he slipped the blue hakamas over his thin legs and drowned his arms into the white haori's sleeves, and, after eyeing the pink length with immense disgust, tied it tight with something he vaguely recalled as an obi from the only time his mother had ever even attempted to get him into traditional garb.
God he despised pink, and kimonos, and haoris, and hakamas, he even disliked the silk fabric. It was too smooth. Too slippery.
Shoving his feet into a pair of thick socks and black boots, he groaned.
Comfort had yet to be invented. He couldn't wait for the chance to wear jeans and a t-shirt, or better yet nothing at all in the solitude of his own bedroom, with little responsibilities and no beast offering girls his protection.
His eyes widened, the girl…something felt wrong.
Despair, her despair filled with disgrace and salty tears, it perked up his beast, his natural instincts to protect her and end such suffering.
As he ran back to the clearing with a speed he'd never had much use for until now, except cat chasing, his eyes caught sight of Moyashi's crumpled form on the ground.
Her face was in her hands as she bawled her eyes out.
"What did you do to her!" Growling, he shot his alpha an angry snarl, his beast disliking the scent of pain and sadness marring the girl's rich candied fragrance.
"Hush pup, you have yet to earn the right to pledge an oath of protection, however," Sesshomaru waved a hand to his side, and InuMaigo noticed the usually screeching retainer had a gag in his mouth and a frantic look in his bulbous eyes, "I will allow you to fight Jaken to earn the right to make such vows."
Surprisingly the pup's amber eyes looked pleased, and a fearsome smile spread over his face.
The pup no longer looked innocent and reckless, but held a sense of easy violence, and began an attack on the imp youkai almost immediately with deadly silence in his movements.
Using the staff of two heads as a flame thrower, the imp youkai, filled with dread and fear, ran around the clearing in a frantic circle, his large eyes darted every which way.
Muffled screeches bled through the small area, and Sesshomaru decided to use the gag as a permanent accessory for the green youkai.
He watched the young one with interest as InuMaigo easily kept his retainer on the run. The pup was like a ghost, quick and unseeing, and he toyed with the retainer like a cat with a mouse.
His amber eyes consumed by white fire, blazed as he sped through the air. Sesshomaru eyes widened a fraction as he realized the pup's feet were no longer visible.
Perhaps he hadn't given the pup enough credit, the little one couldn't have been more than seventy-five seasons old. He was young, small enough to be a human toddler but deadly still even by youkai standards.
Sesshomaru flicked his wrist, putting an end to the fight with his yellow energy whip. He could no longer catch the pup's scent, and was beginning to have an idea as to what the little halfling could possibly be. "You've earned the right to protect the girl if you wish."
Sucking in a deep breath, InuMaigo closed his eyes and bowed to his brother before taking a protective stance in front of the girl.
Moyashi stared at him in awe, with wide chocolate eyes and slightly parted lips. His spine went ridged as she flung her arms around him and giggled a quick almost silent thank you.
Tilting his head to the side as she pulled away, he furrowed his brows, "You are very strange."
One moment the girl would cry and the next she'd laugh, the two tones of her voice so utterly different and yet the same.
His statement made her giggle more, but he decided to ignore it, she was confusing and now his beast had him stuck with her.
"Sesshomaru-sama?" The pup asked, approaching his brother with an uncomfortable gait, unsure of this new version of the brotherhe'd known all his life.
"Hn?" Now there was a familiar answer, and he found it gave him a little more courage to ask his question.
"Did I fight well?" He couldn't help but seek approval from his big brother, and his eyes gleamed with nervous anxiety as Sesshomaru stopped mid-stride to give him a lengthy gaze.
Casting his still gagged retainer a heated glare, he spoke with no emotion at all, "Jaken did not pose a threat, do not consider it a fight."
Not sure how to take the cryptic answer, the pup hung back to walk beside Moyashi. "You did very well Inu." She grinned when a small smile broke on his lips, and whispered, "I think we shall be great friends."
With a nod, InuMaigo sighed, not sure if he wanted a girl as a friend. She already proved to be very confusing, but she was kind of nice, and fun to play with in her youkai form.