Twenty-Second Chapter: The Things I'd do for You

A/N: QT, the cookie is yours. ;) and animefanatic: I'm sorry to hear about your sister… I'll try to give out a warning next time I do something like that in a chapter. So speaking of which, this one might be a little bloody, maybe you can read it and then summarize it for her so she doesn't have to freak out. Also, to everyone: I'm sorry that I took so much longer to update than I said I would. Let's see, a few days versus over a week… heh heh… oops. But in my defense I would have updated on the 14th, but my internet connection was down again for some reason. I really have to figure out what's making my computer do this again! And the fight scene STILL sucks!

Disclaimer: See chapter 18 or something…

The Things I'd do for You

Inuyasha and Miroku were several miles away from the hot springs, on the other side of the village, both still contemplating the "Kagome Situation". Inuyasha, who was losing his patience with all this blood-boiling thinking anyway, was able to hear the ogre long before he could actually smell it. Which was a rarity. But when he did finally recognize its scent he felt an all too familiar white-hot rage come slamming down on him. He was standing in an instant, furious, his hand gripping the handle of Tetsuya so tightly that his knuckles and were colorless and his fingertips red.

"It's Naraku's scent." He spat as Miroku rose and stretched casually. "Another one of his incarnations."

"Oh joy. And his timing continues to be convenient, as usual."

"Come on."

When they reached Kaede's hut, Inuyasha threw open the curtain door and started into the house, his form jerking to a stop when he saw what lay before him. Nothing. The hut was empty. He stared for a moment, his expression blank, one foot still in the doorway while Miroku leaned forward, looking in over the hanyou's shoulder curiously. The silence was cut short when another earth-shaking footstep made the walls rock, flakes of dust and dirt fluttering down from the rafters.

"They're not here." Miroku said plainly, his voice enraging Inuyasha with its matter-of-fact tone.

"I noticed that, thanks!" Inuyasha snapped angrily, his golden eyes blazing. "Damn it! Now I have to track them down! We don't have time for this."

Sango hadn't had time to change. Instead she was running across the borders of the hot spring, throwing rocks at the ogre's eyes and making sloppy attacks with her Hiraikotsu, which Kilala had brought along, in nothing but a rather short, white towel.

'Perfect…' She thought sarcastically to herself. 'Now of all times…'

She cursed loudly as she mounted the fire-cat, wet skin sticking against the fur as she held the Hiraikotsu up with one hand, her other desperately clutching the small piece of linen around her body, the stones collected in the nook of her bent arm.

"Hiraikotsu!"

With a powerful circular movement that coursed up from her shoulder to her fingertips she set the Hiraikotsu loose, the huge boomerang spinning from her grip with an incredible, raw force that made the air hum. She didn't miss. She never did.

The Hiraikotsu tore a bloody gash across the ogre's pale green face, dark red liquid spurting out everywhere, splattering loudly on the forest floor, coating the trees… the leaves, Sango nearly choked on the smell. The ogre meanwhile was furious, its painful scream shook the ground as it staggered towards her blindly, the red gushing from the raw, torn up flesh, as it clawed at the air. "It hurts us!" He roared, his voice deep and raspy and almost incomprehensible. "Filthy humans! I'll kills it!"

Sango grinded her teeth at the insult, waiting as the Hiraikotsu spun behind the demon's head and started to loop back around, reversing directions to come back. "You wish." She muttered under her breath as Kilala dodged a claw.

"Sango!"

The sound of her name surprised her so much that she nearly missed the Hiraikotsu on its return path. A relieved feeling washed over her when she saw who had called her name. "Miroku!" At last she had some back up. Though it came in the form of a breathless monk and hanyou.

The monk, however, stopped short upon seeing that her body was only barely wrapped up in a towel above him. His murky violet eyes widened and traveled slowly downwards, the corner of his lips twitching upward in a poor attempt to keep the silly grin from taking over his face.

But Sango was following the direction of his eyes. "Not now you perv!" She screeched, grabbing a stone to chuck at his head. She only missed by inches, too flustered to be able to aim straight.

Miroku merely looked down at the discarded stone with mild interest before smiling back up at her. Her stare was icy enough to freeze over the hot spring beside him. With a casual shrug of his shoulders and a knowing smile that irked her to no end, he moved to face the ogre, whose flying hands were raking the branches from the trees, causing bark and sap to come down in little showers, along with the rain-like drops of blood.

Sango watched Miroku carefully as he reached into his robes and pulled out two rectangular slips of rice paper, praying over them diligently with a bowed head. 'Sacred Sutras.' She thought tartly to herself as blue flame began to lick at the corners of the paper and slowly spread down towards his fingers. It amazed her that the man had the power invoke anything even remotely holy anymore, considering his habits…

"Ah!" Sango was given a harsh reality check as the ogre's claws made a dangerous swipe at Kilala. Forcing the cat to veer off in the other direction. Sango clutched tightly at the sandy fur to keep herself from falling off, the gravity-defying lurch making her stomach shrink. "Kilala!"

The demon was only able to growl.

Behind the massive boulder, Kagome was as crouched low as she could be, trying hard to keep herself out of sight like Sango had instructed her to do. But she couldn't keep herself from watching. Her cocoa brown eyes watched, widened in fear as the battle unfolded before her. She felt so helpless… just watching like that.

'It's going to kill them… That thing is going to kill them…' Her mind was racing. 'I have to do something… don't I? Can't I?'

She watched as Inuyasha and the monk, or "houshi" as she referred to him, arrived on the scene together, looking breathless and worried. Inuyasha was shouting something about someone to the slayer, and in response Sango jerked her head at the boulder Kagome was hiding behind. He seemed satisfied as he immediately drew his gigantic sword at the monster and began to slice at its ankles while it, in turn, tried to stomp on him as if he were an ant.

The people, those three people, each struggling so hard against that thing in front of her: In the air the slayer was breathing raggedly through an open mouth, a bloody gash on her right cheek painfully visible from fifteen feet in the air. Below her the Monk was slicing furiously at the thick green flesh with Inuyasha now, his golden staff dripping with the redness that already coated the forest floor.

The smell was enough to make Kagome throw up. The ogre and the two men on land sloshed noisily through mini-rivers of it. In the air, the slayer's reflection sometimes was caught on the few still puddles of the blood, crimson liquid soaking slowly into the dirt, staining the milky white water of the hot springs a light color of pink. The blood was everywhere. And not just the ogre's blood now… but their blood too. They were all injured, wounded, but still fighting…and there she was hiding behind a rock.

"No." She said firmly as an unfamiliar feeling washed through her. A determined feeling. Her jaw was locked tightly as she stood up and stepped out from behind the rock, ignoring the gut-wrenching sensation of exposed vulnerability that threatened to send her back behind the boulder. 'This isn't right. I have to help them. Somehow….'

Inuyasha's arm hurt. A lot. The blood from a deep cut dripped down his skin and soaked through the sleeve of his haori, making it stick firmly to the flesh. The ogre had managed to give him a nasty tear when he hadn't been quite quick enough to dodge a falling claw. He could still feel the sharp, throb of the unprotected wound, damaged skin starting to rot a little in the filthy air. It was a searing pain, but it would be gone by tomorrow. So he ignored it.

"You wanna piece of me, you filthy demon? Come on over here and get it!" He called angrily to the ogre, taunting the it in an effort to advert its attention to him. He brandished his sword into the light, although now it was so thickly coated in dark blood that there was no reflection from the sun. The ogre heard him, however, and it turned its head slowly around to face him. Its small black eyes, foggy with redness squinted down at him before recognition dawned and he roared in fury.

"Yeah that's right!" Inuyasha goaded him on. "I'm the one that you – ugh!" The massive hand connected with his chest and sent him flying backwards, knocking his breath out of his body as it smashed with the wall of rock surrounding the hot spring. It crumbled on impact and crushed him to the ground, muffling his colorful curses as it knocked around his senses. He felt thick a dizzy for a while, a numb pain spreading across his limbs for a moment before he mentally shook it off.

"Inuyasha! Did you have to ask for it!" Demanded an angry and vaguely annoyed voice. For a moment he didn't recognize it.

"Shut up, Miroku!" Inuyasha finally snapped as he heaved the rocks off of his chest, groaning with the effort. He was still al little disoriented after he had worked himself free and pushed himself to a shaky sit, resting his head momentarily in his hand as he tried to make his vision straighten out. What a punch. And then… through the buzz of his headache there was a voice. A loud, determined, beautiful, voice that rang clear and strong, like a bell through the ogre's moaning and the sound of hard fighting.

"Hey ugly! Over here!"

Inuyasha's focus came crashing back to him, his head snapping up in a fraction of a second. It was Kagome. There she was, standing there in the open. Waving her arms frantically back and forth like she was trying to take off. Drawing attention to herself. Panic gripped at him without warning, cold fear jolting him back to life like an electric shock.

"No, you idiot!" he yelled, scrambling to his feet. "What are you doing!"

But the ogre, Naraku's incarnation, recognized Kagome. He knew what he was looking for, and despite the fact that the blood was still burning in his eyes, he could knew his target had emerged. However, he was lost in a blood rage. And that meant that the only thing he had left on his mind was killing. The only thing he was capable of was killing. And he would kill her. Inuyasha felt his blood chill when he realized.

Kagome jumped out from behind the rock, watching as the thing wrenched a tree up from the ground with a deafening rip and began using it as a bat to try and smash Sango and her cat, clods of dirt and root flying everywhere.

'What can I do?' She thought frantically to herself, standing dumbly for a moment. 'What can I do…? The only thing I can think of is…' Then it occurred to her. That was it.

"Hey!"

She started waving her arms in the air to try and get the ogre's attention. "Ugly!" If she couldn't fight it, "Over here!" She would just distract it.

There was a moment where both Sango and Miroku stopped what they were doing and turned around to look at her, the expression on their faces exactly the same: horrified shock.

And then, "No you idiot! What are you doing!" Kagome heard Inuyasha shouting from somewhere but she couldn't understand the words. Because now the ogre was turning too, looking at her, and for three terrifying, dead-time seconds, she realized the stupidity of what she had just instinctively done. She could only gasp as the thing started towards her, its large reaching hand bloody and powerful, and coming right for her, moving in a deadly swinging motion.

It was going to rip out her stomach… tear off her face… probably take off an arm or a leg or something… And she was suddenly paralyzed. All she could do was close her eyes tightly and wait, the impact sure to come.

But it didn't.

Instead, a pair of rock-hard arms constricted around her body, crushing all the breath out of her lungs, yanking her forwards as she fell tightly into a something solid. She opened her eyes and tried to gasp but the air wasn't there. A thin, yet impossibly hard material was blocking her, the same material as that night… Suddenly Kagome pushed back against the stranger's chest, and came face to face with his piercing golden eyes. He was looking right at her.

She felt her mouth open, her eyes widening in terror as the sickening rip filled her ears. She could only take one breath. One, short, hollow-sounding breath that she as she stared in shock at Inuyasha. His form lurched forward a bit, his mouth opening as the smell of new blood slapped her in the face. But she found that was just… trapped… with him looking at her… in a never-ending moment.

She stared at Inuyasha, her eyes impossibly wide, her skin paper-white pale. And as she looked at him, as he looked at her, she saw could see the agonizing pain washing over his expression. And also… in his eyes there was relief… for her.

Kagome felt slow horror start to sink in as Inuyasha's arms tightened around her body... protectively, pulling her closer, soaking her skin throughthe towelwith his hot, red blood. But she didn't feel it. She only stared in fear, her breath trapped, bottled tightly in her lungs.

"Inuyasha." She whispered finally, her voice shaky and barely above a whisper. He didn't respond.

Slowly, together, they began to fall backwards. Inuyasha's body no longer able to hold itself up straight. It all seemed to happen in slow motion, time clogged in her brain, their bodies falling simultaneously at the pace of dripping molasses. And Kagome could only stare at him, horrified, his arms still tightly crushed around her. He started to look at her… so gently. And she knew he was happy… just because she was safe.

A whisper curled across her mind as the corners of her vision began to fade into darkness... a voice inside her head.

'I was afraid…'

She inhaled sharply as they hit the ground. The back of Kagome's head slamming into something sharp and hard. She was knocked unconscious in a fraction of a second. And a memory returned.

A/N: Short I know. That's because its just another chunk. But don't worry because I'm posting everything today, all at once. So if you don't have the "next" button down there by the chapters, then just type the number into the address. Ok? Cool. See ya then.