SCROLL FIVE:
The Fires of Love
(Hikari: "… That's a very cheesy title Reiki…"
Reiki: "Shut up…")
(At yet another ungodly hour on the following morning…)
"Well, we're ready!" cried the two foreigners, their belongings packed into Reiki's backpack.
"For what?" Kagome asked, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. The stars were still out.
"To go hunt down Naraku, of course!" they responded.
"I'm with you!" Inu-Yasha and Miroku chimed in, ready in a heartbeat.
"But why now?" Sango asked, Kagome yawning and stretching in the background.
"Starting the day off with a demon hunt always makes us feel good!" Hikari giggled, on the rebound ever since being ripped away from her Koga… literally.
"Besides," Reiki pitched in, "aside from 'help rebuild the village' avoidance, we've already caught his scent."
"What?!" Inu-Yasha scoffed, sniffing the air himself. "I don't smell anything!"
The two shook their heads. "We sense him in a different way. No guy would understand."
"Well then where is he?" Inu-Yasha tested them in a sarcastic tone. Without looking at each other they pointed in the same direction (and if you were to triangulate and follow it you would run straight into a surprised Naraku).
"Hm," Miroku pondered, and he stuck two seals over their eyes and turned them both around and around in circles. They still pointed in the same direction, though a little dizzy. "What kind of sense do you posses? Can you feel the Shikon Jewel shards?"
At this Kagome felt threatened over losing her job, the only reason she had to still be there.
"Oh, hell no," Hikari stated with a hand over her stomach as Reiki took her time to retch in the corner. She gets sick pretty easily. "We just have a keen sense of 'hottie'."
"… You have got to be kidding…" Kagome grumbled with a bored and slightly perturbed expression.
"Ah… No, we're serious," Hikari defended. "The more evil, the more sexy, in our opinions."
"Did you know that all the reappearing bad guys have eye shadow?" Reiki asked, brushing her teeth.
The odd statement/question raised silence. Why does she randomly state things anyway?
"BUAHAHAHA!" Shippo cackled, jumping out of Kagome's backpack. He had on makeup (mainly bright green eye shadow). "I'm evil now!"
"Shippo!" Kagome yelled, grabbing and slapping the little fox until the makeup wore off. "How dare you get into my stuff!"
"HAHAHAHAHA!" Reiki and Hikari laughed.
"K-Kagome wears makeup!" Reiki giggled.
"She must be threatened by you, Reiki!" Hikari stated, still clutching her side but for a different reason now. "Or maybe she's trying to lure In-" Kagome chucked her entire backpack at Hikari, sending her into the wall.
"Lure in what?" Inu-Yasha asked, completely at sea as the rest looked at one another and began whistling, not meeting his eyes.
As they traveled, Reiki and Hikari leading the way, there was hardly any conversation save for between the two best friends. If they were to collect the final shards, that would mean that Inu-Yasha would become a risky full demon, Miroku's curse would finally be lifted (making him motive-less), and Kohaku would almost certainly die. But then again, they might just all die…
"Hey!" Hikari called back, and everyone looked up. "What's all the gloom about! This is a happy day, damn it!"
"What's so happy about it?" Sango asked, riding with Miroku on Kirara.
Before the two could reply though, there was a small buzzing sound overhead.
"It's a saimyosho!" Hikari shrieked, almost adoring Naraku's insect.
"Damn it, just call it a wasp!" Reiki griped, chasing after it with everyone else. She'd never learn that word.
"Never, bitch!" Hikari responded. Leaping with flailing limbs into the air every now and then to try and catch it like a kitten with a butterfly (except neither was as innocent… or as cute really…).
"Hey, Sango, isn't that your village?" Miroku asked. Looking, she nodded sadly, Kirara flying after the wasp as it zoomed towards the obliterated slayer's village. Miroku stared hard at a certain spot and gasped. "What is that thing!"
As they approached they could see a figure digging up the graves of the dead demon slayers and feasting on their bones.
"OMG!" Hikari yelled.
"That's disgusting!" Reiki backed up. The hulking figure heard them and turned. It breathed, sending out steam, and slowly the ground began to look different, a little hazy.
"… Actually," Reiki began, and Hikari said the second part with her. "That's beautiful!"
They stared at its breath, which surrounded it and made it shimmer. The man, in their eyes, was a gorgeous sight indeed. Too gorgeous.
"Kikyo?" Inu-Yasha muttered, staring at the same spot.
"KIKYO?!?" the two girls demanded, stunned. Then their attention was yanked back to their hot piece of man-meat.
"Father?" Sango gasped, and Miroku stared - a stupid look on his face - as though at a naked woman.
"Kagome," Shippo said, edging towards her. "What are they talking about?"
"That beast," Kagome shivered. What she saw was the truth. It was a monster, one still gnawing on the bones of the dead. It stood around eight feet high, with gray, thick skin and flexible arms that would come and go as they pleased. Its eyes were red and it had a mane of fire running down from its forehead to its ass. Its bulged stomach was glowing like a raging furnace, and it flared as the contents of its frog-like mouth entered it. It kept feeding, on bones and graveyard soil.
"Kagome!" Shippo yelled as its gut began to shape into something. He suddenly began to do a little dance. "OOWWWIE!!! HOT HOT HOT!!" and he jumped into her arms.
"Heat?" Kagome thought, and as she stared she could see heat waves waft up from the earth. But, how did that make sense? "Shippo," she began, but the fox didn't respond. "… Shippo?" He just looked ahead, overheated and lazy eyed. "Shippo, what's wrong? Snap out of it! SHIPPO!"
"Father…" he muttered, hugging Kagome. "You're alive…?"
"He must be hallucinating…" Kagome thought, looking around. Sango had fallen to her knees, whereas Miroku still struggled to stand by leaning on his staff. Inu-Yasha kept standing solidly, and Reiki and Hikari shuffled slowly towards the beast, drooling at the mouth like a couple of zombies. The more they moved though, the more red their skin got from the heat. It was like a desert, with all of the … "Wait a minute!" Kagome made the connection. "I get it now, it's a mirage! And the heat must be influencing their awareness." She looked at the little kitsune in her arms. "And Shippo hadn't been affected because of his short stature, but when he was in my arms… What am I going to do!"
"Inu-Yasha!" Kagome yelled, running up and shaking him. He was warm to the touch, like Shippo, and like she was becoming. He just stared on, as though nothing but him and what he saw existed. Kagome noticed that his breathing had slowed, like when he slept. "Inu-Yasha!" He pulled out of her grasp sluggishly and staggered forward. The fire demon slowly extended a clawed hand to greet him. "Inu-Yasha, sit!"
"AAGH!!" he exclaimed, falling to the frying pan of an earth as the demon's hand launched at where his chest use to be. "Kagome! What the hell are you-!" He looked up, his face red from the ground, and the shape that was emerging from the glowing spot turned into a flaming resemblance of Kikyo. As it walked toward a confused Inu-Yasha there came out another figure, that of a man, and it approached Hikari and Reiki, who's drool made evaporation clouds off the soil as it struck.
"RAAAGH!!" Inu-Yasha cried, slicing the transformed Tetsusaiga at 'Kikyo'. She was unharmed as it passed through her, but Tetsusaiga became coated in the fire of her being and eroded to its ancient state. "WHAT?" he yelled.
Kagome drew back an arrow, and shot Kikyo in the chest. She turned black and fragmented, pieces dissolving into the air, and from where she once stood there fell a thigh bone with an arrow through it. The demon glowered at the archer, and opening its mouth it spewed out transparent and boiling clouds of heat.
"Kagome!" Inu-Yasha yelled, leaping in front of her. Instead of repel the temperatures though, his robes actually caught fire, and through the heat the monster shot out its tongue like a spear and…
"Nng!" he gasped, eyes wide.
"Inu-Yasha!" Kagome spoke, alarmed, catching him. Something warm splashed onto her and dripped down to abdomen, and she looked with horror at the blood on her chest. His whole weight had them both cripple to their knees, and Kagome could hardly hold him for the fires on his robes, which were spreading, and the heat of the ground on her skin. "Inu-Yasha!"
"Hehehe…" the monster chortled, liking its lips with a now bloody tongue. "So, Naraku was right…"
"Naraku?" Kagome gasped, slapping the hell out of Inu-Yasha to try and put out the fire.
"Yes, the one I came from," the monster continued. "Hehehe… He said that my fires, fueled by the remains of a Phoenix, were the only flames that could burn through the cloth of the Fire-rat, the animal upon which the bird fed."
Kagome, drawing another arrow, was knelt so that Inu-Yasha was between her and the monster. She released, and as it passed over him the flames were blown out. It pierced the monster, and was absorbed.
"Hm?" Shippo blinked, the momentary lack of heat waking him up. "Inu-Yasha?" With a wince the half-demon opened his pained eyes. "Inu-Yasha! Are you okay!"
"Y-yeah," he stammered, struggling to stand. He was bleeding where patches of skin were burned off, visible through his charred and tattered clothes, and there was a hole through his chest. He coughed and more blood spewed out his mouth.
"Inu-Yasha, stay down!" Shippo practically ordered. "You're really burned! And you'll bleed to death with your heart injured!"
"I'm fine!" he growled with determination. His knees buckled and he collapsed back down for the last time. Kagome rushed over and cradled his upper body in her lap. She winced when the soles of her shoes finally melted away, leaving the bare pads of her feet on the ground.
"What a pretty sight… Hehehe…" the monster chortled again, gapping its mouth towards them. "Now, you will perish together
(End of chapter!)
Reiki: "Ha ha! Ciffy! We left you hanging, na-na na-na NA NA!