"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

Aldous Huxley – Brave New World

The crashes and yells had died with the waning torch light and the servants exchanged fearful glances. Someone would have to check on the master and no one wanted to be the one to do so. Michi looked at around at the faces of the older men and knew that they were going to send him in. He bit his lip.

He was just a kitchen boy, and he knew that going into the master's chambers unannounced would get him whipped. His only hope was that perhaps Lord Toyotomi would be unconscious or sleeping.

His worst fear was confirmed when a burly guardsman grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pushed him towards the door. He yelped and stumbled.

"Oi whelp, go see to the master or I'll have you flogged."

Michi almost told the guard that if he really wanted to know so badly, he should go check on the master himself, but held his tongue. The guard must have read the insolence in his eyes because he put his sandal to the boy's backside and pushed him through the door.

Michi hit the floor in front door, biting down to keep from crying out in pain.

"Insolent whelp, now go!"

The boy wiped the blood off his chin and slowly slide the door open. What he saw there made him blink in dismay.

The room was a wreck. Linens were shredded, vases were shattered, and furniture was busted into jagged blocks of wood. He jumped when he heard his Lord's voice and promptly hid behind the only thing that remained in tact, the low nightstand next to his master's futon.

From his vantage point he could see his Lord waving his hands widely, his face apoplectic with rage. He could hear him ranting like a lunatic to no one and his fearful thought was that he'd gone mad, but then a disembodied voice answered.

"Stop this foolishness. You knew that it would happen sooner or later, it's why they are perfect for the ceremony. Just because the monk took your plaything doesn't mean you should start whining like a little child."

"She was mine!" He snarled. The voice grew cold.

"She was never yours. You and your sick, twisted, sexual lusts. If you don't find some control soon I may decide I have no further need of you. You need to remember where your gifts come from."

Toyotomi scowled but he could not stop the fear from seizing his heart. The very small part of him that was still human whimpered.

Petulantly he said. "But I was the one who should have taken her virginity. Me, not that monk."

The voice answered, disgusted. "I grow weary of this. Go and find another servant girl or better yet a villager to pound, but then come back, for we need to finish preparing the ceremony. The hunter's moon is almost upon us."

Toyotomi frowned. "Everything will be ready. I have as much at stake as you do. And after Mari there is no one amongst the staff that pleases me, and now she is useless to me."

Michi almost gasped when he heard that name and quickly clamped his hands over his mouth to stifle any sound. He couldn't believe it. His sister had vanished and now it seemed his worst suspicions were confirmed. She had become one of the Lord's women.

Oh sister, he thought in despair. Why? How?

The voice came back, sounding highly amused.

"Why do you grumble so? When you gave me your seed in the beginning you had no trouble with the bargain and now you whine? I thought you found children useless."

Toyotomi kicked a piece of broken chair. "They are, but so is having to give up my toys right when I've finally trained them to do all that I want. Once your spawn takes residence I can no longer play with them."

The voice said something else, but Michi could listen to no more. His fists clenched white and he silently made his way out the door. The guard that had sent him in tried to cuff him on the ear, but he ducked. The man's fist only caught air.

"Guttersnipe," he growled. Michi danced away from him.

"Lord Toyotomi is well," he muttered and made a break for it. Angry shouts followed him, but he paid them no attention. He had a destination in mind and he would need all his knowledge of the castle's hidden passages to get there.

His sister needed him.

InuYasha watched Kagome while she played with the village children and felt his heart clench in his chest.

Kami, she's beautiful, he thought. Feeling his eyes on her she looked over her shoulder and met his gaze. She smiled softly and he looked away, guilt suffusing him. Her smile faded and she sighed.

With a growl he stalked across the village heading for the training arena. Some of the villagers greeted him and he grunted in reply, but most of them avoided him. Some even went so far as to grab their children and hurry away. He wanted to snarl at them that he didn't hurt kids, but it would do no good. Tatsuo's poison was unfortunately worming its way into them and robbing the villagers of what little good sense they had.

He scowled. Sango and the damn houshi had better get their asses back here or Sango was going to lose her village to that idiot. His mood was rapidly turning blacker and his scowl deepened when he found Isamu standing in the middle of the practice arena swinging a katana while sweat poured off his bare torso.

Riko was standing near him glaring at him, arms akimbo. She spied InuYasha and she spat.

"InuYasha tell your friend he is a fool and that I refuse to bind his wounds if he breaks them open again."

InuYasha fought the urge to smirk. Riko looked a great deal like Kagome when she was annoyed with him.

"Isamu what the hell are you doing." The former samurai glared at the hanyou.

"Training," he hissed. InuYasha crossed his arms.

"Keh, looks more like your trying to bleed to death. I can smell the blood from here."

Riko gasped and Isamu ignored him.

"I told you, you stubborn imbecile! You are not well enough to be out here training."

He acted as if he hadn't heard her and continued going through his kendo exercises.

Huffing in frustration the healer crossed her arms and stepped in front of the samurai. Isamu cursed and pulled the sword stroke just in time to avoid stabbing her. His momentum caused him to overcorrect and he stumbled into Riko, driving them both to the ground. He looked up, his eyes caught hers, and he sucked in a ragged breath. He'd landed on top of her and his body was pressed against hers, groin to breast.

She glared at him, her green eyes shooting sparks, and he couldn't help but notice the soft give of her body underneath his or how inviting her full lips looked.

Shaking off his lustful thoughts he narrowed his gaze.

"You little fool. You never step in front of a samurai while he is training. I could have stabbed you."

Her chin lifted defiantly. "I'm the fool? I'm not the one out in the hot sun swinging a rusty piece of steel and slowly bleeding to death."

"Woman, you try my patience," he growled. Her glare sharpened.

"Then we are even, baka."

Isamu felt his ire spike, but when she started wiggling beneath him to dislodge his weight his anger gave way to a sharp stab of pure lust. When her breasts rubbed back and forth against his chest he hissed.

"Dammit Riko, keep still."

She was about to spat something scathing back until she noticed the hot look burning his eyes. She froze and swallowed. She suddenly realized that she was intimately pressed against his body and she could feel something hard throbbing against her thigh. Her eyes widened.

She looked away and blushed and he pushed his body weight off of her. She scrambled away. Riko's whole face had grown hot and she quickly stood, brushing the dirt off of her kimono.

"I have to…have patients I need…" She muttered and stumbled away. Isamu frowned and cursed while InuYasha smirked. The former samurai turned to his friend.

"Not one word."

The hanyou scoffed.

"And what's a puny human like you gonna do to me?"

Isamu's scowl deepened.

"I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, hanyou. Strength…isn't everything. Fighting takes a great deal of wit, strategy, calculation, and instinct. Do not presume you can match me skill for skill just because you are physically my superior."

InuYasha shrugged.

"Anytime you wanna go I'll be happy to wipe the ground with you."

The ronin shook his head.

"Perhaps later. Now, what did you need?"

He watched the confident smirk fade from his friend's face. He towed the dirt and mumbled.

"Kagome's mad at me."

He nodded and glanced in the direction Riko had gone. "Must be something in the air."

The half demon shrugged again and muttered.

"I don't understand women." Isamu laughed.

"You are not alone, my friend. You are not alone."

Riko retreated to the relative safety of her hut, and rested her back against the closed door while she got her breathing under control. She touched her still warm cheeks and cursed inwardly.

She was a twenty-six year old widow with a son, not some blushing virgin, but that man could still make her feel like she was in the throes of her first crush. She pressed her hand against her heart and felt its rapid beat.

Kami, she needed to stop this foolishness. Granted, Isamu was a sinfully handsome man and she considered him a good friend, but she did not want, nor need, a husband. She'd already experienced what it meant to be a man's property and she'd vowed never to allow such a thing to happen to her again.

She inadvertently rubbed her legs together and felt her arousal on her thighs. She closed her eyes.

It had been years since she'd wanted a man to touch her. So long in fact that she had long thought she'd exorcised such urges, but now her traitorous body was reminding her that she was a woman…a woman who'd not had a man between her thighs for much too long.

A vision of Isamu's bare chest flashed unbidden behind her eyes and she groaned. She wondered what would have happened if InuYasha hadn't been there. Would he have kissed her? Would he have parted her kimono and wrapped those heavy hands around her breasts?

An image of him naked, driving into her came unbidden and she bit her lip. She opened her eyes and looked around, a bit guilty.

Benji wasn't here. He was with his demon slayer class studying herbal demon deterrents in the nearby woods. She worried her lower lip between her teeth.

She closed her eyes and sunk down onto her nearby futon. Kami, this needed to stop.

Every time she got close to him anymore her body would heat and she started wanting things that she couldn't let herself want. Besides he'd made it abundantly clear to the other women in the village who had tried to catch his eye that his heart belonged to his dead wife.

She couldn't compete with a ghost and she didn't want to.

She sighed, and decided that now wasn't a good time to start lying to herself. If she had any chance of fighting these feelings she at least had to acknowledge them. She was finding more and more that she did want to compete with the lingering specter of his deceased beloved, but she was always deterred from action by her own insecurities.

She pulled her legs to her chest and rested her chin atop her knees, and let her mind drift back to less pleasant memories.

She had been sixteen when she was married to Benjiro's father, Keiichi. He'd been the son of a powerful merchant and had bought her from her dirt poor family.

She hadn't held it against papa at the time. Their family had a small farm and too many mouths to feed. Papa had been cursed with four daughters, and only one son prone to sickliness. When Keiichi had started lusting for her it seemed the perfect solution for all involved to betroth her to him.

Soon after she'd become pregnant with Benji, and had delivered him to this world two months after her seventeenth birthday.

Their first two years together Riko had been relatively happy to be her husband's wife. He had seemed attentive and affectionate to both her and his son, but then he started to lose interest in her.

He stopped coming to her bed at night and he would stay out later and later, indulging his desires in tea houses with his friends.

Then he'd started drinking, really drinking, and the man she'd known…changed.

The first time she'd complained to him about it, he'd smacked her across the face hard enough to send her into a wall. He never apologized.

The next few months after that had become a blur of beatings and cruel words. He told her that she had been bought and paid for like the chattel she was and that she'd do best to mind him.

Then on Benjiro's third birthday something happened that prompted her to action, even if it meant disgrace for her. He'd hit her son.

That night while he was gone, she'd packed up her and her son's meager belongings and fled with him to the western lands. She'd bought her small farm with the money she'd managed to steal from her husband's possessions and never looked back.

But she'd never felt safe.

It wasn't until the year Benji turned five that she was able to truly reclaim her life. By a twist of fate she'd journeyed to a nearby village, to sell some of her medicinal herbs that she grew to the healer, and she'd run into her younger sister, Arin.

She'd almost run when she saw her, but Arin had seen her before she could and had run to embraced her. She has spoken so quickly and excitedly that at first Riko had not understood what her sister was trying to tell her.

Then it had all sunk in.

The night she had fled her village had been attacked by bandits and only a few people had survived. Her family had thought her lost to them because her husband had been found among the murdered.

It was a twist of fate she had not been prepared for, and once again, in the flash of an instant her life had changed.

She'd relished her freedom after learning of her husband's death and had made a modest living on her small herb farm selling remedies, and working as a healer.

Then the ogres had come and decimated her livelihood, and they would have taken her and Benji's life had not Isamu and InuYasha come along.

She sighed. Never had a man caused her heart to pound, her palms to grow sweaty, and her body to react with something as simple as a smile, the way Isamu did. Perhaps it was because his smiles were so very, very rare.

Annoyed with herself and feeling sweaty she decided to have a quick sponge bath before returning to the convalescence hut and checking on her patients. With practiced hands she retrieved her basin, heated some water, and placed some cleansing herbs into the bowl.

She pulled her yukata along with her juban down her shoulders and starting running the cloth over her shoulders, behind her neck, and over her full, bare breasts.

She was so preoccupied with her thoughts that she didn't hear the low cry, nor did she see the shadow as it backed away from her window.

Tatsuo stroked his cock and watched Riko sensually wash her exposed cleavage. An angry scowl twisted his ferret face, and after a couple more strokes he left the evidence of his presence on the outside of her wall. She didn't hear him grunt or else she would have lifted her head and seen him lurking outside her back window.

His anger grew hotter and his faced flushed red as he tucked his now limp member back under his clothes. He stalked away towards his hut mumbling and cursing and ignoring the strange looks he was getting from the villagers he passed.

He'd followed her after he'd seen her encounter with Isamu and he'd watched the emotions play over her face like an easily read scroll. She was in love with the bastard.

Tatsuo scowled. He hated that disgraced samurai with ever fiber of his being and not simply because he knew the ronin held Riko's heart.

Isamu continually stood in his path. He could have turned the village against the taijiya long ago if that blasted man hadn't constantly defended her.

Disgusted, he threw open the door to his hut and stalked inside. His was a bit larger than most in the village due to the room he'd added on in the back. He headed there now.

The small dark room was windowless, the only light coming from a circle of candles surrounding a small shrine. Without preamble he fell to his knees and looked into the mirror that held the place of honor.

"My lord!" He cried. The surface of the mirror started to swirl and smoke, until the image of a man appeared. Tatsuo felt a growl of distaste claw at his throat, but he held it in. He was much too cowardly to risk offending his master.

His master was busy rutting some inconsequential slip of a girl, but the cold, physical act seemed to do little to his concentration. In fact if Tatsuo hadn't seen there naked bodies moving against each other he would be hard pressed to believe that his master was fucking anyone.

"Why do you disturb me, Tatsuo? Can you not see I am busy?"

Tatsuo looked away, guilty.

"M-My lord, why does the healer resist the potion! You promised…"

"You had better not have interrupted me to whine, Tatsuo. I will not thank you for it." His voice was low and dangerous and the cowardly little man swallowed convulsively.

"N-No my lord. I-I've come to report that the ronin still lives. That damable hanyou and his priestess whore saved him from the demons you sent."

Lord Totoymi's expression did not change, but Tatsuo began to sweat under his unwavering gaze.

"I am displeased, Tatsuo. Very displeased. The village should have long been under my control and the taijiyia grows ever closer. I expect that you will have accomplished the task I have set for you before she reaches my lands."

The ferret faced little man swallowed convulsively. "M-My Lord. I-It will be done."

His master said nothing as the mirror went blank. Tatsuo frowned and eyed the bag of potion he still had left. It was useless for Tatsuo's initial purpose, but perhaps he could use it another way.

He smirked as he thought of the hanyou and his whore and wondered how well his master's spell would work on a half-demon.