OK, I hope you guys like this second chapter!!
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Inuyasha and all that other jazz. The only things I do own are the computer I'm typing this on and the nose tissues because of my cold and the characters I create.
We left the group as Inuyasha and Comp. were discussing their next move and a strange pair of eyes was watching them.
Inuyasha leaped through the air, Kagome on his back. Miroku, Sango, and Shippo flew besides them, riding on a transformed Kirara's back. Transformed, Kirara looked much the same except for the fact that she had two large canines like a saber-toothed tiger and her paws were covered in flames. Sango's outfit had also changed. Instead of her green skirt and two-colored shirt, she wore a pink and black outfit that covered her from shoulders to feet. It was made up of both armor and cloth. She had two shoulder plates covering the shoulders (where else would shoulder plates go?) Her feet were covered in a pink material and her knees were also protected by armor. Her hair was tied back in a large ponytail and she had a sword sitting on her hip.
"How much further, Kagome?" Inuyasha called. They had broke camp while discussing their next move when Kagome had said that she sensed a Shikon jewel fragment.
Kagome screwed up her eyes in concentration. She replied, "Not much further. It's really tainted, though."
Inuyasha muttered under his breath, "What else is new?"
"Is it over there, Kagome?" Sango asked. She pointed towards a huge cloud of fog that covered a section of the forest. The other hand held her boomerang to her back.
"Yes."
"All right!!" Inuyasha landed on the ground and veered sharply to the right. He started running in earnest. Colors flew by him and Kagome as he covered the distance with ease. Kirara had difficulties in keeping up with him.
Sharp, ragged breaths tore through her throat as she struggled to get away from the being that assaulted her. It was dark and shadowy with no clear features besides the gaping teeth that sought to devour everything in its path.
She kept moving over the white floor. Her surroundings were completely white and there seemed to be no floor or ceiling. The only figures in the world were the dark shadow and the stumbling girl.
"What is it," she gasped, "about this thing? It never was so strong!!"
She tripped over her own feet and not having the strength to get up started to scramble away as fast as she could. However, due to her sorry state, this wasn't very fast at all. The dark shadow started to loom over her and she rolled over, too tired to crawl anymore. She closed her eyes and waited for it to all be over.
"I don't like this," Inuyasha called out, running closer to the fog. "It smells foul and damp." His nose twitched. "There are things inside it. They don't smell too nice."
"Isn't fog supposed to smell like that?" Kagome said, aggravated. "It's probably in the middle of a swamp or marsh and you're smelling something that a youkai did in it."
"It doesn't smell like that," Inuyasha insisted. "I know what a youkai smells like, all right?"
Shippo shook his head and thought, 'They're at it again.' Suddenly, his nose twitched, too, and he said out loud, "Inuyasha, do you smell that?"
"Smell what?" the hanyou's nose twitched as he tried to probe further. "Ah, I smell it. Smells like…..hmm….not sure what it smells like."
"Smell what?" Miroku said.
"It smells like a human yet not a human," Inuyasha explained. "It also has a multitude of other scents."
With one more bound Inuyasha covered the remaining distance between him and the fog. He leapt into it without a second's thought, Kirara following him. All of a sudden, Inuyasha could no longer feel the grass beneath his feet. There was no sky and instead, the fog reached out endlessly. He stopped and let Kagome down. He put a hand on his sword.
"Is something wrong, Inuyasha?" Sango asked from Kirara's back.
"I can't feel the ground," Inuyasha said. He was looking at his feet as if they had lost feeling in them. "There's no grass."
"That's impossible," Miroku said confidently.
Kagome was inspecting the ground. She had her hand on it and was running it along the foggy bottom. She suddenly pushed down with her hand and found herself floating upside down.
"AAAH!!!" Kagome yelped.
"Kagome!" Inuyasha cried. He flipped her around and set her on her feet. He then looked at the ground suspiciously. "What happened?"
"It's like there's no ground," Kagome said, her voice quivering. "I just pushed down on it and completely flipped!!"
"An ominous sign," Miroku commented. He got off Kirara's back and held his staff at the ready. "We have to be ready for anything. Kagome, how much further is the jewel shard?"
Kagome looked around. She then pointed straight ahead. "It's there!!"
"With a smell," Inuyasha said with a grimace. "Ugh!! It smells like dead corpses and I don't know what else!!"
"It must be the work of the shard," Miroku said. "Let's hurry."
The friends ran off into the mist without a second's thought. Inuyasha had his sword ready to be drawn at a moment's notice and Kagome had her bow ready with an arrow begging to be shot. Sango's boomerang was in perfect throwing position and Miroku held his staff like it was a fighting stick. As for Shippo? He was just clutching Kirara's back for dear life, praying that whatever it was wouldn't get him first.
Suddenly, Inuyasha stopped and drew his sword. It was a rusty, battered old thing until it transformed in a blaze of golden light. It was then a huge fang with a hilt of white fur. It pulsated and started to form swirls of wind around the blade.
"Everybody stay back," Inuyasha warned. He lifted his sword up and brought it down in one fluid sweep shouting, "Kaze no Kizu!!" (A/N For those wondering that's the Wind Scar in Japanese)
Four bright golden lights swept across the ground ahead of the group. A loud unearthly shrieking was heard as the lights struck their target.
"There!!" Miroku shouted. "Come on, you ugly youkai!! Show your face!!"
"Don't make me throw this!!" Sango yelled. She held her boomerang in throwing mode.
"Hang on," Kagome said. She was peering through the thick mist. "What's that?"
"Eh?" Inuyasha looked, too. There was no mark where the Kaze no Kizu had swept across the ground but a dark shape was writhing in pain in midair. A second shape was lying on the "ground" right in front of it, not moving.
"Now it's my turn," Miroku said. He put his hand in his navy blue robe and drew out two papers with squiggly lines. He closed his eyes and then opened them throwing the paper. "Sacred sutras!!"
The sutras attached themselves to the youkai and a bright blue light like lightning emerged from the contact. Sizzling, the youkai turned around and attacked the group in a mad rage. Now they could fully comprehend its ugliness.
"Ewww!!" Kagome cried.
Inuyasha swore and put himself protectively in front of Kagome. He held his sword at the ready. The thing was uglier than any of them could ever imagine. Dark writhing shapes crawled over its already dark surface and two shapes that could pass as hands reached out towards them. Its fingers were sharp and deadly and its face had no visible eyes but teeth that looked like a mummy's only much sharper.
It shrieked its unearthly shriek again and hurled itself at Inuyasha and Kagome. Inuyasha's sword again started to form swirls around it and he lifted it up shouting out the battle cry as he brought it down. "Kaze no Kizu!! Take that, you ugly thing!!"
The Kaze no Kizu again struck the being and supposedly annihilated the thing.
Kagome cried out, "The jewel shard!! It disappeared!!"
Inuyasha's ears perked up as he looked at Kagome disbelievingly. "Whaddya mean?"
"I mean it disappeared, stupid!!" Kagome replied angrily. "It disappeared right after you attacked that thing with your Tessaiga!!" (A/N That really is how you spell Inuyasha's sword's name)
"So it was in that monster?" Inuyasha asked stupidly.
"Where else would it be? In the fog?!"
"No," Inuyasha said, swinging his sword and putting it on his shoulder. Kagome looked relieved. "I thought it'd be in the dark shape that youkai was attacking." Kagome looked furious again.
"Somehow," Miroku intervened, "I'm not so sure that was a youkai." Inuyasha looked at him strangely. "It gave off a demonic aura but I've never sensed one like that," he elaborated.
"Strange how one who is such a lecher can be so knowledgeable," Sango said sarcastically.
"Now, now, Sango," Miroku said. "I may be a lecher but I am a monk."
"Why don't you guys stop fighting for once and see what that shape is?" Shippo asked from his safe perch on Kirara's back. "It has to be important because that youkai was attacking it."
Inuyasha put his Tessaiga in its sheath, transforming it back to its original form as he did so. "Shippo's got a point," he admitted.
Slowly, the hanyou and Kagome approached the shape on the "ground". As they drew closer Kagome noted that it was a girl. She seemed to be in adolescence and had black hair. It had been tied back in a ponytail but most of it had escaped. She wore queer blue clothes. In a way it looked similar to what Inuyasha was wearing but less baggy. It clung more to her skin but it was ripped in several places.
"The poor girl," Kagome cried out. She rushed to her side and lifted the strange girl's head. She was unconscious but breathing. Scratches covered her face and the skin that was under the ripped parts of her clothes.
"I'd be careful, Kagome," Sango advised. She still held her boomerang at the ready. "We don't know why the youkai attacked her."
"For the last time," Miroku said, exasperated, "I don't think that was a youkai!! Its aura was too strange!!"
"Then what would you call it?" Inuyasha asked. "The-dark-shape-lurking-in-the-shadows-with-a-demonic-aura-but-it's-not-a-youkai?" He said it very quickly and all in one breath.
"No, I wouldn't call it that, Inuyasha," Miroku said. "It's way too long." Inuyasha looked astonished that Miroku had taken him for his word.
"Come on," Kagome said, "we need to get out of here."
"Yeah, but, which way is out of here?" Inuyasha asked, looking around. "Everything looks the same."
"Eh?" Kagome looked shocked. "You don't know the way out of here?"
"No, I thought you knew," Inuyasha said.
"Can't you sniff your way out?" Sango asked. Inuyasha twitched his nose and shook his head. "Why not?" she persisted.
"The only thing I can smell is us and the damp," he said.
"Same here," Shippo said.
"Go ahead," a weak voice broke in.
"Eh?" everybody said. They all looked at the girl in Kagome's arms. She was awake.
"Hurry, before it comes back," she said weakly.
"You mean it's not dead?" Inuyasha asked.
"No, it teleported," she replied.
"Which way is out?" Kagome asked the semi-conscious girl.
She attempted to get up on one elbow and partly succeeded. She closed her eyes while everybody fidgeted.
"That way," she said, pointing to the left. "I can feel the sun's warmth."
"You can feel what?" Shippo said incredulous.
There was no reply because the girl had fainted again.
"We can't just leave her here," Kagome said pleadingly, looking at Inuyasha out of big brown eyes.
"Feh," Inuyasha said, annoyed. "Fine, I'll carry both of you."
Kagome beamed. Several minutes later, the group headed to the left in the direction which the strange girl had pointed out to them.
She regained consciousness slowly. She didn't want to open her eyes. Her head throbbed and the numerous scratches she had accumulated on her body burned. She was struggling with the decision to fall asleep again or to find out if the party that had rescued her made it out alive.
'No way around it, I guess,' she thought, as she opened her eyes a crack. It was night. She opened them wider and found herself covered with a blanket. She got up slowly because it was still painful to move.
She found herself looking at a huge two-tailed feline sleeping only a few feet away. The two-tailed cat was sheltering a girl with long hair who was sleeping peacefully. On the other side of the cat was a strange looking man with a ponytail. In a strange bag by a bush was yet another girl. She wore a strange outfit and had a small boy with a tail sleeping with her.
'There's one missing,' she thought, remembering the rough voice she had heard yell before a yellow light knocked her senseless. Her thought was answered as she heard a soft thump behind her and turned around to see a white-haired young man with dog ears.
"You're awake," he said.
"Thanks for saving me," she answered.
"I was after the jewel shard," he said.
"Jewel shard?" she asked, not knowing what he was talking about. "You mean like a piece of jewelry?"
"Don't tell me you've never heard of the Shikon jewel," he said disbelievingly.
She shook her head. "What is it?" Suddenly an image popped into her head. "Is it a large pink round jewel?"
"Oh, so you do know it," the strange man said. He crossed his legs, folded his arms inside his shirt and leaned back against a nearby tree.
"No, you just gave me the image," she said.
"I gave you the image?" he asked, suspicious.
"Never mind. What's your name?" she inquired.
"Inuyasha," he answered. "How are your scratches?"
She put a hand up to her face feeling them tenderly. "I'll live. Considering how strong it was, I was lucky to not have been killed."
"We'll talk in the morning," Inuyasha said. "Get some sleep. You look like you need it."
"What are you?" she asked, ignoring his statement.
"I said get some sleep!!" Inuyasha said roughly. He got up and leapt to the first branch in the tree before settling down.
"Weird," she muttered and heard him mutter the same thing. She smiled, and lay down. As she closed her eyes she thought tiredly, 'There'll be time for answers tomorrow.'
OK!! That's it for Chapter 2: The Strange Girl. What do you think? Reviews are always welcome!!
I'll try to update soon!