"Inuyasha, still on patrol?" Sango sighed, rolling to the side to look at Miroku, his back resting against a tree with a sleeping Shippō and Kirara in his lap. They were camping out in the next village over from Kaede's; investigating a rumor about some sort of Yōkai sorceress that was causing havoc amongst the villagers. They didn't know much about the sorceress since it seemed like the Yōkai had a different appearance with each victim. This particular information sparked their interest; it seemed like something Naraku would do since it was how he went around undetected for fifty years.
"Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see him at all tonight." Miroku sighed as he ran his fingers through Kirara's fur, receiving a purr from her.
"Do you think Kagome returned to the other world that Inuyasha spoke of?" Sango muttered, turning to lay on her back as she looked up at the stars; it was a crisp and clear night, the stars were shining as she took in a deep breath before slowly letting it out. She had always been curious about Kagome's world; she wondered how different her world was to theirs.
She remembered how fascinated she was when Kagome would talk about all these different things that were there, like these huge metal chariots that would take them around places without a horse. It made her envious of Inuyasha; she didn't understand why he was able to travel into Kagome's world, and she couldn't, she just assumed it was because of his dog Yōkai blood; since his father was such a strong Yōkai.
"I believe so, three weeks is a long time, even for Kagome." He watched as Shippō stir in his sleep, gripping Miroku's robe as he rolled over into his chest.
"I wonder what happened between those two? Do you think it has something to do with the Illusions?" Sango asked, a shiver going down her spine as she remembered her terrible illusion on how she had to pick between her brother and the monk. That alone would have destroyed her if she hadn't been put in a similar situation before, she couldn't imagine the terrible things those two had to go through.
"Well, it's not something he likes to talk about. But he did tell me that night at the Well; Kagome couldn't bear to hear him speak her name, let alone touch her." Miroku brought his hand up to his face at his words. It must have been hard for Inuyasha; to get rejected by Kagome for something they both didn't understand. Kagome must have seen something in her illusions that scared her, or maybe she saw something or someone that she wished she hadn't.
"I feel for him. Inuyasha must be lonely." They both looked out into the dark woods; Inuyasha would most likely not return until morning. He has been heading back to the village every three days to check to see if Kagome had returned. He didn't need to go there every time physically; they were close enough to the village that if she did come back, he could smell her. He had been doing this ever since he returned alone from the Well the night Kagome had left. They had followed him to the river when he returned only to see him thrashing his hands in the water like he was trying with all his might to get something off them, but just couldn't get them clean enough; whatever it was, was upsetting him.
Inuyasha feared and hated being alone, but what he hated more was when someone tells him he is loved because it was a lie. No one loved him, could ever love him; he was a good for nothing Hanyō, a waste of breath and life. He had closed his heart to love when his mother past and the villagers took her from him, not even letting him see her one last time before they disposed of her body and dumped him into the woods to die like the stray he was.
Humans and Yōkai alike hated him; there were no middle ground, no exception for which side could love him. In their eyes, he was weak and a poor excuse for a Yōkai; to humans, he was a monster that could never be like them, and how could a terrible woman such as his mother commit such a sin, fornicating with a Yōkai and giving birth to that abomination. Abomination, at least that was something that they agreed on, that to both sides, human and Yōkai he was an abomination.
Inuyasha locked away his human heart a little more every year; he walks away from his mother's grave. The woman who has ever loved him, taken from him for unknown reasons except that it was somehow his fault, the villagers didn't fail to mention that as they left him in the woods. He was alone, left wandering through the wild, his heart empty as he ran from all the things that wanted to murder him in the night.
Living with a cold heart for so many years can take its toll on the spirit of that person; it made him uncaring. Humans and Yōkai annoyed him because they had to put in their two cents about how worthless he was, so he tends to keep his distance. He remembered how much it destroyed him inside when he ignored the screams of a nearby village that was in no doubt getting raided by bandits. His human heart screamed at him to help those who couldn't defend themselves, but he forced himself to stay put, to remain where he was, his ears twitched with each blood-curdling scream.
He visited that village afterward, seeing it scattered with bodies and drenched in blood. He wandered around until he stumbled upon a child, who was slump on some stairs in a puddle of blood, his ears twitching with each faint heartbeat, his eyes trained on the shallow breath of the child as he inched closer.
Inuyasha jerked back a bit when the child raised her head, her eyes glaze over as she was inching closer to death, but she was smiling when she looked at him. However, he soon realized that she couldn't see him, well not enough to notice that he wasn't human; if she knew what Inuyasha was, he was sure that she wouldn't be smiling.
She probably thought that he was there to help or save her, but she didn't say anything. She just reached out to him with her little hand, wrapping her fingers around one of his fingers as they both froze. She must have felt his claw against her skin, no, he knew she felt his claw because he saw a wave of emotions washed over her face; first confusion, then fear until it rested with what looked almost like content as she bought it close to her little frame; in what look like a hug.
Inuyasha took in a sharp breath as he watched her scooch closer to him, he waited with her for what felt like hours until scooping her up in his arms — letting her weak, limp body rest against his chest as he sat there, staring up at the night sky as not to scare her with his amber eyes. He sat there with her for hours, hearing her heart grow fainter with every breath she took until he felt her little hand unclench from his finger.
Inuyasha's finger twitched at the memory as he slowly opened his eyes, the wind forcing the grass to dance when it swept by. His ear twitched as he felt the cold, wet grass starting to dampen his suikan, but he didn't care, he just lay there, looking up to the night sky filled with stars; Kagome's favorite. She loved to stargaze; she told him once that the stars barely showed in the night sky in her world because of the city lights, she said that the city never slept; whatever the hell that means. He could still feel Kagome's weight at his side as he remembered back on that night; she had fallen asleep against him. He remembered how natural it felt with her so close to him that he allowed his fingers to run through her hair. He smiled to himself as he thought about her excited face as she tried to teach him all the constellations she could find; it reminded him of a child. However, Inuyasha's smile dropped as he covered his eyes with his arm; his hand clenched into a fist; he was asking too much of life. It was almost too perfect and now look, that precise moment snatched away from him because Kagome won't even let him touch her, let alone repeat her name.
"Kagome…" Inuyasha whispered, almost whimpering. He deserved this; he had somehow hurt her, the only person who seemed to care about him besides his mother, a hanyō to the point where she didn't want anything to do with him. He couldn't blame her; he was weak and couldn't even bring himself to get past the door of the Well house no matter how many times he tried to push past his self-loathing.
He couldn't bring himself to do it though; he couldn't bear to see Kagome's face look so hurt as it did that night at the Well and couldn't bear to accept that he was the one who made her make that hurt expression.
His ears twitched again as a breeze caused the fur there to tickle inside his ears; his nose scrunched up with the breeze as it brought a new scent into the area. Once, he was able to pinpoint how far it was his ears perk up, alerting him that whatever was the owner of this scent was close and bad news.
"Hmph, something foul around here, nasty bitch," Inuyasha muttered under his breath as he stood up, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand.
The scent made his nose burn; it was a mix of ink and human blood with something else that he couldn't pinpoint, but he wasn't sure how long he could stand it before it sent his senses into overdrive; he will have to finish this fast.
He unsheathed Tessaiga as he started walking through the tree line farther away from the group, Tessaiga shaking violently in his hand as he slung it over his shoulder. His whole body was telling him to turn back, not to go any further, that whatever he was walking into might be more dangerous than he first thought.
What he walked into caused his body to freeze as he saw two girls who looked to be twins covered in blood that was around the same height as Kanna, standing in a middle of a field, surrounded by bodies of demons and humans that were all torn to shreds.
They looked human enough; they wore short dark kimonos with a giant dragon design on the back that wrapped around to the front with waves of the ocean at the edge of the fabric. They didn't have any sandals on, just long white dirty socks, and had a strange moon cycle tattoo on the inside of both arms. They could fool any villager that was stumbling through the woods unless they took a good look at them, noticing that they had ram-like horns in their short bluish-white hair.
But the thing that sent chills down Inuyasha's spine is their laugh. It was uncontrollable, manic; their eyes crazed with bloodlust as they ran around each other. They grasped at each other until one tackled the other to the ground, wrapping her hands around the other's throat, squeezing hard, forcing Inuyasha's ears to twitch uncontrollably from the crushing noise. However, nothing compared to the repeating sound of a knife going in and out as he watched the other twin; the one getting choked, stabbed her attacker in the side with a large knife over and over again; their laughter was growing louder.
What the fuck!
Inuyasha could only watch in horror as the two try to kill each other until their laughter abruptly stopped, both their bodies falling limp in a puddle of blood. Everything was quiet, uneasily quiet, as his eyes remained transfixed on the twins, their body unmoving. His instincts were screaming at him now; he needed to leave, now, something wasn't right; those two were still a danger to him, even though they appear to be dead. His eyes widened when their body turned pitch black, and the strong scent of blood and ink drowned the air, kicking his senses into overdrive. It forced him to drop Tessaiga when his eyes started to get blurry; his mind felt like it was being cracked into two when it hit him with a wave of dizziness.
He was brought down to his knees as he tried his best to keep his eyes open, bringing his suikan up to his nose, trying to block as much as the smell as he could. Inuyasha felt his body jerk when he noticed their bodies starting to move, trying to push himself off his knees as their laughter began again, their eyes crazed as they rose to their feet. They stood next to each other, mirroring their movements as they looked at each other, grasping their hands together. However, their limbs just dissolved into each other's bodies until they formed into one person. The darkness poured off her body instantly, seeping into the earth and disappeared. She looked exactly like the twins, sharing the same short bluish-white hair with ram-like horns and crazed smile, no, she was the twins.
"When the dog smells the rabbit's blood, he comes running, but not to help. Isn't it nice to shed blood once in a while? It sure is messy, isn't it? But what is better than being covered in the blood of your victims." She muttered to herself quietly as she turned to look over her shoulder at Inuyasha. Inuyasha felt that creepy chill that he got from the twins earlier, but it was worst with her, he figured that those twins must not have been real, or that they were part of her body like Naraku's. Could this be him? No, she was different; there was something off about her.
"I've heard about a dog hunting me down, but I didn't think it would be a mutt." Her smile dropped to a bored expression as she eyed Inuyasha, watching him as he grabbed hold of Tessaiga, struggling to stand, he stabbed the sword into the ground, using it to support him as he rose to his feet.
"Who the fuck are you?" Inuyasha was able to spat out, trying with all his might not to pass out. The scent of blood and ink getting thicker in the air as she took a step closer to him, putting him on edge. There was no way he could fight her, not with this sent burning his nose; he was barely able to stand, let alone hold Tessaiga without passing out. He was fucked.
"Thana'." She answered as she looked at the scattered bodies around her; she dragged her hand through a puddle of blood, making a thick smear across the earth. She let out a sigh, becoming bored with the blood as she looked up at Inuyasha again, a hint of irritation flashing on her face before she forced it back to appear expressionless.
"How boring, you can't even stand. I should just kill you now." She narrowed her eyes at Inuyasha as she wiped her bloody hand against the fabric of her kimono, leaving a smeared handprint there. The pressure in the air seemed to grow even thicker as he noticed the glare she was burning into his face.
"You got two legs and a heartbeat. What's stopping you?" Inuyasha barked out, pulling Tessaiga out from the earth and pointing it towards her, shaking. Why he had to act cocky in situations like this, he didn't even know, look at him, shaking because he was too focused on trying not to pass out; if she didn't want to kill him before she sure did now. He watched as her left eye twitched in irritation at his comment and movement, that just the mere thought of a Hanyō bearing his fangs at her was an insult.
"How about we make things interesting Hanyō." She pulled a dragon scale and a brush out of her sodegochi; she painted a straight black line through both her tattoos on the inside of her arms, connecting the moon phases. Then she started carving a full moon on one palm and a crescent moon on the other, letting the blood drip into the dirt before dropping the scale and brush into the puddle. She slammed her hands together with her index fingers pointing up to the moon, her eyes closed, before whispering.
"Let's see how strong your Yōkai is." She pressed her hands tighter together, forcing the blood to seep through, dripping down her arm, mixing in with the black ink that she painted on her arms. She took in a deep breath before snapping her eyes open, but they were different than before, they were a light purple with three rings surrounding the pupil.
"Wakeru." Her voice came out loud, louder than what her small frame should be capable of, meaning that her original form must be much larger than what she was putting out. The rings in her eyes darken with the word, making them look sharper. Inuyasha thrust Tessaiga back into the earth to prevent himself from falling as he felt something shoot through his body when his eyes caught hers, and a high pitch noise priced his ears, forcing him to winch from the sudden pain. Before he could regain control of his body, he found himself surrounded by black fire; he tried to move, but his body wasn't listening to him; it was like the flames were holding him there. His head was killing him; it felt worse than before; it felt like someone was repeatedly slamming his head against a rock; determine to see his brains scattered about. His vision was starting to become blurry, and he swears that he saw double.
What the fuck did she do to me?
There was a heartbeat,
Then the wind change,
Then there was darkness.