Chapter 12 – Costly Betrayal
Today was her last day in the Feudal Era. He watched her make her good byes, and give kisses all around. He couldn't help but feel a little jealous when she placed her lips on the monk. He knew he should be down there, saying goodbye, making the most of the time he had left with her...but for the last few days, all he seemed to be able to do was watch her from a distance. He felt so pathetic. He saw Shippou run after her as she made her way to the well, alone.
"Shippou, I love you too but you're making this harder for me. If you come with me now, I won't be able to do this, and it's very important that I do." Good, InuYasha thought.
"Good!" Shippou exclaimed, almost like he could read InuYasha's mind. "I didn't mean that."
"Yes you did."
Shippou thought a moment. "Yes I did." He agreed. "But that's not what I meant to say." InuYasha tensed. "I wanted you to promise that you'll stay strong."
"I promise." Kagome's voice was soft.
Shippou looked at the trees a moment, before spotting him and catching his glare. Shippou shifted uncomfortably. Too bad, do it! InuYasha thought, glaring.
"You have to promise to be strong."
"I did." Said Kagome, surprised and confused.
"No, you have to say it."
"Oh." Kagome fixed Shippou with a serious gaze and placed her hand over her heart. "I swear that I'll always stay strong."
Shippou looked at him again, and he nodded to the kitsune. "It'll do." Shippou conceded.
It was the closet InuYasha was going to get to a goodbye, never mind that it hadn't come from him directly -
"InuYasha!" The startled hanyou leapt to his feet, looking around him wildly. The voice giggled. "Silly, it's just me." InuYasha cursed, glaring at the pretty young hanyou for interrupting his reminiscing. Chouko grinned, "What, the great InuYasha didn't notice a simple butterfly like me?"
"Not with these damned flowers everywhere," he muttered, ruthlessly kicking a patch of the small, heavily scented white flowers that the forest was rife with.
"You are in a bad mood. Are you thinking of that old lover of yours again?"
InuYasha growled and took to the trees.
#
Kagome sat on one of the rocks surrounding the pond, watching a little bug skim along the surface. "So what have you been up to? Haven't seen you in a while."
Ryouga, who was sitting next to her, sighed. "I was training. And I tried visiting Akari, but that got messy for for a while – you know how bad my sense of direction is."
Kagome 'hmmed' her agreement. It was terrible. "Hang on," she almost yelled, startling herself as well as the boy next to her. "Who is this Akari?"
"Oh...well, she's kinda in love with me. She thinks we should get married or something."
Kagome silently cheered. This saved her finding a girl for Ryouga herself.
"Kagome! Where are you?!" Akane yelled.
"Here comes the nanny," Kagome muttered.
"Kagome!"
"Right here!" she answered, getting up from her seat and turning to wave at Akane, who stood on the porch with a horrified look on her face.
"Kagome!"
"What?" Kagome asked irritably. The over-protective thing was getting really old.
Akane raised a shaking finger. Behind her Ryouga gasped, and before she even had the chance to see what was wrong, she felt him slam into her, taking them both flying across the garden.
She scrambled away from Ryouga, finally getting a look at situation. Standing in the pile of rubble that had previously been the rock she'd just been sitting on, was...well, the only name she could put to the creature was 'demon'.
It was humanly shaped, but it stood hunched over, its elongated arms brushing against the ground. It's skin was a rotten black, and glistened with the copious amounts of saliva that was sliding from its mouth. Huge fangs protruded from behind its upper lip, so large that the rest of its face looked like they had been compressed to fit them in, and his beady red eyes were almost hidden behind the many folds of flesh.
"Girl, you have it, don't you?"
Kagome paled...the demon couldn't be talking about...the jewel...could he?
"Thought it was lost, thought it was lost," it rasped out.
It was talking about the jewel. There was no other possibility, the situation was just the same, to similar...Kagome felt sick. But there was no time for that – she had to protect the jewel.
"Kagome? What is it talking about?" Akane shrieked, panicking.
"Never mind, Ryouga, hold it off! Akane, wheres Ranma? I'll be back in a second!" Kagome pushed her way past Akane, into the dojo, searching for weapons.
She waded through the piles that fell out of the weapons cupboard, and after a minute of desperate searching found a spare bow and a few arrows. She raced back outside, to see both Ryouga and Ranma had thrown themselves into battle. Ranma kicked the demon, snapping its head back, and Ryouga followed him, with a punch to the stomach.
It stumbled backwards, fell into the pond and sent water flying in all directions – including Ryouga's. Ranma seeing what was about to happen, threw Ryouga out of the way, getting drenched in his place. Snarling as best he could with his girlish voice, Ranma threw himself at the beast again. His weaker self's arms were shaking with exertion as she hoisted the demon over her head and threw it back on the grass.
Akane ran into the house for some hot water.
Kagome took a deep breath, summoning the power she used to vanquish the demons she'd hunted down – but was distracted when Ranma punched it in the gut and screeched in pain.
"It's like hitting rock!"
Ryouga smirked, glad to get one up on Ranma – even if he'd just saved him from humiliation. "Weakling!" He taunted, getting back into it.
Kagome sighed, and began summoning her power again. She fitted the arrow against the bow, drew it back and – snap. She groaned. The string was broken. What timing. Weaponless, she turned her attention back to the boys. The boy, and the boy/girl thing, anyway.
"Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken!" Ranma yelled, throwing hundreds of lightning fast punches within the blink of an eye. She stood back panting. "Not even a scratch! And I hit all the vulnerable points too!"
The demon snickered. "Fool, you can't hurt me, my body is strong!"
Ryouga froze where he stood, a thoughtful look on his face. "Strong...like rock, eh?"
Akane raced onto the grass and poured steaming hot water over Ranma. "Akane!" Kagome screamed, as the demon lifted clawed hand to bring down on her cousin. Ranma had already seen it though, and within seconds had scooped Akane up in his arms and leapt backwards, safely out of reach.
"Stay here!" Ranma growled.
Behind him, Ryouga was speeding towards the demon. "Bakusai Tenketsu!"
Ranma made a sound of sheer frustration. "Idiot! That doesn't work on anything living!"
Ryouga ignored Ranma, and attacked the demon, using the same incredible speed that Ranma had used – shattering the demon into a million tiny pieces. As the dust settled, Ryouga looked up at the astounded group and grinned.
#
The entire family (including Happosai and Ryouga), sat around the dining table, all eyes on Kagome.
"So, the demon came after something you had?"
Kagome nodded to her uncle, rolling the Jewel around her palm. "Yes. This."
Akane frowned. "I thought it was just a fake Shikon Jewel?"
Nabiki snorted. "Hardly. Look at that flawless quality...and compare it to this," she said, holding up the Shikon Key-chain.
Ranma's eyes widened.
"You better find her before she gets hurt; She gets drawn to the strangest people...and vice versa..."
"You knew!" Ranma accused.
"Uh, duh," Nabiki rolled her eyes. "I said as much in front of your entire class."
Happosai cleared his throat loudly. "But what I want to know, is how you managed to procure the jewel, which was supposedly destroyed 500 years ago?"
Kagome sighed. "Well, my shrine, is the exact place the half-demon, InuYasha -"
"Dogs! Inu, is dog!" Ranma gave Akane his best 'you are a freak' look. She blushed.
"Well...yes, Akane." Kagome shook her head, and carried on with her story. "It's the exact place InuYasha, and his lover the Priestess Kikyo, who looked after the jewel, were tricked by the evil bandit - Onigumo - into hating each other. Disguised as InuYasha, he mortally wounded Kikyo, and then disguised as Kikyo, he shot InuYasha.
InuYasha thought Kikyo had betrayed him, so he stole the jewel and ran. But Kikyo, using the last bit of her strength came after him and – Akane, do you remember the sacred tree? The patch of bark that's been rubbed away?"
Akane nodded.
"Well, Kikyo sealed InuYasha to the tree before she died and had the jewel burnt with her body – the missing bark shows where he lay asleep for fifty years."
"But the Jewel can't have been burned, you have it right there!" Mr. Saotome protested.
"I haven't got to that part yet," Kagome said quietly, the shaking in her voice betraying how she felt about revealing her secret at last. Nervous as hell.
"Five hundred years later, Kikyo was reincarnated," Kagome made a face here, "With the Jewel lying dormant inside the baby. On the girl's fifteenth birthday, she fell into a dry well on the shrine where she lived – and found that she'd traveled five hundred years into the past."
She could feel the stunned looks on her, as she stood and began pacing before her audience.
"And you got the jewel off this girl?"
"Ryouga, she is the girl."
"Oh."
Kagome smiled. "Yeah. That's right. I broke the seal on InuYasha, when the Jewel was ripped out of my side during a battle with a centipede demon – he promised he would save me, and I didn't want to die like that.
But after he'd defeated the centipede demon, he turned on me and threatened to kill me if I didn't hand over the Jewel. Another priestess, bound him to me with a rosary. InuYasha wasn't a threat anymore. Instead he hung around, for the jewel he said, and protected me from demons that wanted the Jewel. But, I shattered it."
Akane had a fairly solid idea of who 'puppy' was now.
"Anyway, we made some friends, defeated the bad guys, fixed the Jewel and after a year, our quest was over and I decided that I had to choose between an era. I couldn't keep traveling between times. You see, I would go back home every once in a while, sometimes InuYasha would come with me, to stock up on supplies or take a break. Gramps explained away my absences by telling every one I'd been in the hospital."
"You mean you were never sick?"
Kagome winced. "No."
Akane glared at Kagome. "You could have told me this sooner! Here I was, feeling guilty about never visiting you!"
"Sorry -"
"Hush Akane dear," Kasumi soothed. "Aren't you relieved that Kagome never suffered a terrible disease?"
"Well...yeah," Akane admitted sourly.
"...Obviously I choose to stay in this time for good. With my family," Kagome emphasised.
Akane forgave her with a 'hmph'.
"And then you came here because you weren't getting over your precious dog-boy," Ranma stated, also correctly guessing 'puppy's' identity.
Kagome blushed, and choose to ignore him. "What I don't get, is how that demon knew about the Shikon Jewel..."
Nabiki coughed.
Everyone turned to look at her.
Akane moaned. "You didn't...did you?"
Nabiki shrugged. "You should have seen the check."
"How could you sell out Kagome like that? Especially with the state she's in?"
"Hey! I'm doing much better!"
"Shut up Kagome! Nabiki, I can't believe you!"
Nabiki grinned, used to her family's impression of her...dealings. "Then you definitely won't wanna hear what I have to say next.
AN- Sorry! It's been a while.......
At least with this chapter, I'm feeling better about the fic now. In fact I think I'm going to write some more now.....as soon as I get another chapter of Forward up...............anyway, I was reading through the past chapters, and it's just full of errors. Errors galore! Even one little continuity error, where Ranma wasn't at the funeral to meet Kagome, but then talks about how he saw her at the funeral. Sigh. Once I've finished this story, I'm going to go through it and re-do it, so it's all....better than it is currently. One day.
Meaning of Chouko: Butterfly child. Original and subtle, right? Lol.
Meaning of Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken: Imperial Roasting Chestnuts in the Fire Fist or, Chestnuts Roasting over an Open Fire Fist. (-.-")
Meaning of Bakusai Tenketsu: Breaking Point. This attack only works on wood or rock apparently, but.....meh. Fighting a stone/rock/gargoyle demon thing, I guess is kinda the same thing....
And, I know, I kinda go between the Japanese titles and the English translations a bit....but I've changed/grown in my style a little....and besides, I prefer Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken to whatever looooong sentence it translates to.
Review, pretty please???