"Kya!" Hasumi shouted, blasting Azumamaro's soldiers with rays of reiki energy.
She was fighting alongside Shishou and his grandchildren, Xinya and Delan, quite well. Hopeful that Liuxian and Meioshi would return soon, Hasumi was honored that she had allies, but her heartbeat became irregular when she remembered what the ugly goblin said to her and Homugi. She then started to get scared. What if everyone finds out about everything and leaves her? She didn't want to be all alone again. Even worse, what if that monster kills everyone? She didn't know how to kill him herself! The more she thought about it, the blurrier her vision became. Before long, her sorrow overcame her and she lost the strength to fight. She was tired of fighting. She was tired of being alone. Shishou pulled his grandchildren back gently as he smiled at them. He then nodded to Hasumi and walked towards her. An orb of protection and light surrounded them without the children knowing why, but the Shaolin monk knew quite well what was protecting them. It was Chen-bi. When Hasumi smelled sweet oranges, she looked up to see the soldiers backing away and Azumamaro forming from their remains. He watched her sniveling form gather warmth and another little girl that he didn't recognize standing before him with contempt in her eyes. She was wearing a snow coat over a thick kimono and summoned a scroll with an unfamiliar mark on the back of it. Without warning, a wall of ice formed and snowy winds started picking up as a strong light beamed over the group of holy warriors.
"Who are you, you little brat?" Azumamaro demanded, lifting a hoof as a threat to stomp her out.
"Back off, jerk!" the little girl threatened.
"Remove yourself from the girl or I'll devour you next!"
"This is for my friend!" the little girl retorted, making the walls of ice grow taller and thicker. "I'm immune to your threats!"
"So be it!" Azumamaro roared, pouncing on the group.
He leapt into the air to stomp the child into the ground, but he felt a familiar blast of reiki energy coming from the light and an unfamiliar burst of wind coming from the little girl. The child then said, "I am the lantern that guides thine path!"
With that, she summoned a gust of wind and snow that shot the demon back. When he stumbled just long enough, icicles formed and shot at him like arrows. A distinct shriek of surprise and pain escaped the demon's long mouth. He proceeded to exact his vengeance on the little snow girl.
Hasumi had just caught the snow girl looking back at her before Azumamaro charged at her again and she shouted, "A-a-are you, Hon'no?"
"Don't give up, Hasumi. Meioshi will find a way to save you," Hon'no replied, smiling brightly.
"What's that, doctor?" Hasumi asked, looking at Meioshi's golden sun necklace.
"This is Chen-bi, Lady Hasumi," Meioshi said gently and confidently. "I'll be gone for a while, so I want to make sure you feel safe even if you can't see me. There's a special person within Chen-bi's warm rays who will help you find a safe place to go if you're in trouble. She's very sweet and quite feisty!"
"Someone's... inside of it?" Hasumi questioned, taking Chen-bi into her hands. She poked it a couple of times and heard giggling! When she heard a person giggling in the trinket, she shot back and held out Chen-bi while yelping, "Yah!"
"That tickles!" a child's voice said.
"That sounds like..." Yuko started, crawling over to Chen-bi. "Little wolf?"
"Hi, Yuko!" the voice said happily.
"Little wolf! It is you! What are you doing in the trinket?" Yuko asked, tears forming in the corner of her eyes. She was happy.
"Meioshi said I could stay with Chen-bi before I went home with Piao and daddy. It's warmer in here!" Hon'no replied, releasing a sweet orange fragrance. "Plus, I like Chen-bi. He makes bubble shields! Bubbles are cool!"
Meioshi giggled before saying, "Hon'no knows exactly what it feels like to be alone. So does her sister, Piao. A demon destroyed their home and took them from their families while they were still young much like you. I think... if no one else can help you or even comprehend what you've been through, they most certainly can. I trust them more than anyone else to protect you and be your guide. Do you think you can trust them?"
Hasumi brought the trinket closer to her, placed the necklace on her neck, and clutched Chen-bi in her hands. Almost immediately, Chen-bi released a small shield around her and she could feel warmth surrounding her. She closed her eyes to feel it and relaxed. When she opened her eyes, Meioshi was there wrapping her arms around her, too. The longer she looked into Meioshi's eyes, the more she could see the resemblance between her... and her mother... Yonamine.
"You should hug her, too," Liuxian said to his own kids, watching them all embrace her with cheerful smiles.
"Hasumi!" Xinya and Delan cheered, tackling her to the floor and tickling her.
The little miko let out a laugh before she looked at Liuxian and Shishou. She started to tear up more when the resemblance between the two men matched her father, Manzo, and her grandfather, Lord Doppo. She lost them all to that monster. She missed them so much. If she could see them one last time, that would be the greatest gift anyone could give to her. But... if Hon'no was inside of Chen-bi... and has gone "home" to the afterlife then... she's with her family and probably visits the doctor. Hasumi didn't want to just visit Meioshi. She really liked her. She really liked Homugi and Yuko, too. She really liked Liuxian and Shishou and Xinya and Delan. She wanted... to be selfish. She wanted a family again... but... not in the afterlife. Will any of them... let her be selfish with them?
"That's going to take some courage," Hon'no said, making Hasumi look down.
"What is?" Hasumi asked.
"Asking the question that's in your heart..."
Hasumi nodded, took a deep breath, and held her hands in a particular position with Chen-bi hanging in the middle. She might not be able to kill this beast, she might not be worthy to go to heaven, but... she could do whatever it was going to take... to protect Meioshi and the people she enjoyed her few days with. She could be their sun to light the rest of their days just like Hon'no. Azumamaro hissed and struck at Hon'no violently to get Hasumi to stop, but she whispered strongly, "Taiyoko-sen. Rejoin."
Chen-bi's shield dropped. Hasumi opened her eyes and a beam of light engulfed her before shooting into the sky. With that command, three beams shot into the sky in ascending order and hit the akashita demon above to encapture it. From the Floating Citadel, Milady's ears perked up and her eyes widened before she rushed out of the throne room in a hurry.
That's impossible! Milady thought, taking flight to Sozosora. Manzo, Yonamine... they were all killed! Only Hasumi...! How did she get out without the key?
"Lord Sesshomaru! Above you! In the center!" Reijiro shouted from the cave.
"Meioshi! What's happening?" Homugi questioned, trying to back away from the light but not too far to where she couldn't reach the doctor.
"In the sky! Look! That ray of light is being connected with something else," Jaken tried to explain while covering his eyes from the blinding light surrounding the doctor.
"You have to go! Summon what energy you have to link my shield back together!" Kouumoto instructed to Meioshi as the night sky started tightening around them. "If we can call on the Four Heavenly Kings, that might seal the demon for good."
"I can't!" Meioshi said, reaching out to Kouumoto's spirit. "You said you didn't know who Azumamaro is! I have to figure out why he's with the akashita demon!"
"He might be the one who took Hasumi out of the jewel! Find it!" Kouumoto instructed, feeling Meioshi being shot out of his prison and all being quiet for a stale moment...
Author's Commentary Corner: I actually don't have much to say here, so this is a legit reader-writer interaction. *unrolls a scroll to read reviews from Chapter 100 to 119*
The 100 Chapter Mark: Thank you so much for making this milestone possible. This is true sappiness at its finest, but I truly appreciate everything you all have been doing for this project. To my fiction friend, marsmargari, you a real one. XD Thank you for investing your time to give me feedback and general reactions to these developments. I'll do my best to make this project worth the read, and a shoutout is the least I can do for the support you've given me. I genuinely look forward to sharing more moments with you all regardless of the chapter count. I don't know how many chapters this project will be, truthfully. I only know how many main episodes I've settled on. The filler episodes are being used as fill-in-the-blanks until I'm satisfied with jumping to the next main episode. Over time, there'll be less of the filler or fluff pieces, especially when a character's story reaches completion.
On Meioshi's character and personality traits: My poor baby has gone through so many changes. It's actually embarrassing. X3 But, I'm glad you all are enjoying the fullness of her personality. Despite being righteous, she can be just as sweet and goofy as anyone else. I wanted that kind of person to be a main instead of a shounen/shoujo trope. It's actually unfortunate that she'll eventually become a legit side character and cameo for a future story arc once Kagome and the others make their full reappearance.
On Toga, Inu no Taisho: Whoo! Y'all are gonna HATE ME when Season 3 comes out if he's your favorite character. XD My feelings towards him are not mixed. I DO NOT like his character in any context. I'll explain why in the Author's Acknowledgements section, but it's too much for me to do it here as a footnote. As we go along, you'll get a sense of how I viewed him but it's only scratching the surface. I'm not bashing his character like I want to, but I am dissecting his character so that I can understand him better. That, of course, includes his relationship with Milady. Again, I don't 100% believe that their relationship was one-sided. That's just me, though.
On the Green Pheasant and his family: They actually appear often. We're just not at the point when they make a full return to the mortal world. You'll get to learn more about them in relation to Meioshi and the hell traveler family pretty soon. The same goes for King Shanwang, who also met Meioshi when she was little, and the other oni characters. Sesshomaru goes through character-learning segments when he investigates more about Meioshi. His interest in her military background, along with Kirameku Ha's, caught his immediate interest. He's already on his path to wanting to find out more about his human allies and whether or not their time on the battlefield attributes to their powers as holy warriors.
On Meioshi's Netherworld Predator form: That particular form appears more often than the oni form for a reason. We just haven't gotten there yet. X3 Gah, so many secrets! We'll actually be a little while before I reveal why she has that form and why she fears it.
On Sesshomaru's character growth in this story arc: The main purpose of this arc is to show that he's ready/willing to fix past hurts now that he's seen someone(Meioshi) overcome her failures and become more powerful as a result of it. That's the part of her that he envies and finds inspiring. He essentially is admitting that he would like for Meioshi to be there as he overcomes his failures. As a smaller objective, this arc is also meant to show that Jaken wants to be more useful to Sesshomaru but not in the way he's accustomed to. He wants to be more like Meioshi and Kirameku Ha - people who are able to reprimand Sesshomaru and/or counsel him when necessary. In a way, he's looking to make his relationship with Sesshomaru almost symbiotic.
On Grand Monk Shishido: The gentle giant! XD I love my red bull! Gotta love a character who's not intimidated by Sesshomaru in the slightest and actually loves him like a son or grandson. It's great! XD Both he and Naonobu will become important later. Right now, I'll leave the mystery as the mystery.
On the side couples: Manzo and Yonamine just stole all my thunder! X3 I love it, though. They're such sweethearts! I'm ecstatic that you all love them, too. They'll appear again, though. Don't say goodbye to them just yet.
How do you update so fast? To be perfectly honest, this is a result of mainly 4 things. One, I got time 'cause I do nothing outside of work. Since I come home relatively late, I'm physically drained by the time I eat and have maybe an hour or two left in the night before I go to sleep. Within that timeframe, if I'm not reading one of the books in my library (a.k.a. "bookshelf") or watching my 20th YouTube video, I usually choose then to envision what I want to see happen in an episode and just type that out. Two, the stream of consciousness writing style is everything. XD I don't think about what I'm writing, just what I want to see in a new episode to keep me hooked. Not having internet at work also helps because I get to read books during break and get inspiration elsewhere when I feel myself getting writer's block.
Three, I have specific moments that I want to get to in the story and I'm not doing it fast enough. X3 That becomes a dilemma when you get writer's block. Hahaha! But, it's also motivation to keep going. I think when you have a particular event that you want to get to, but you know there's need to be some context for it, that pushes you to catch up more. ;-D Last but not least, I don't have a choice. :/
The unfortunate truth is Hell Doctor is my least read and my least popular story. There's over 98K stories written in English alone for Inuyasha, and that's just too many people and too many stories to compete with. My story drowns within a week if I'm lucky. The only way I can stay relevant at all is by my update speed not frequency. The other thing is the story's tags. Mystery and humor pieces aren't popular in the Inuyasha fandom, so this story doesn't even appear in a quick search. Romance, fantasy, and drama are the king, queen and jack of the deck. While I do have romantic pieces within the story, they're not the brunt of it. The mystery and humor is because a) you still don't know much about the female lead and she's the one solving most of the mysteries and b) the characters have diverse personalities. There's life to them. I can't choose romance or drama as tags when that's not what this story is even about. Another thing I've noticed is my story is not popular among female readers. As crazy as this sounds, this story gets more male attention than it does female. So, I'm just out of luck unless I put up a romance scene between the two leads like ASAP. Hahaha! Furthermore, the pairing situation with Sesshomaru is perhaps one of the bigger pieces to the puzzle. Sesshomaru X OC stories don't get picked up as much, and mine will drown immediately when a more established story gets updated. I think SessXOC stories tally in at about 1K while SessXKagome stories tally in at the highest and SessXRin is right behind that, so I'll let you visualize how rapidly I disappear.
Otherwise, I think I've covered everything I wanted to cover. You all have been tremendously helpful in your feedback and PMs. I honestly can't thank you enough. Your reviews are humbling and worth reading and commenting on. With this said and done, I will see you all again next time. Toodles!