InuYasha Fan Fiction / Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ The Blue Anshan ❯ Revenge 3 - Redemption ( Chapter 3 )

The Blue Anshan

By Alesyira

Summary: Sometimes wisdom isn't very… wise.

Chapter Rating: PG.

Disclaimer: Inuyasha is owned by Rumiko Takahashi, and Yu Yu Hakusho is owned by Togashi Yoshihiro. OCs are my own. I make no profit from this piece of fiction.

Author's Note: Originally posted 5/7/07.

Arc 1 - Revenge 3 - Redemption

1500

I hoped the mogura matron would feel sympathetic to my plight. "I came for knowledge regarding my family," I said, "especially my mother, because I only have a few stories about the years before she met my father."

Her aged eyes squinted against the dim light of evening as she looked over my appearance. Her soft sound of recognition did not go unnoticed, "You are the son of Kasei and Hananoki." At my nod, she continued. "I have not seen you for a very long time." She sighed lightly, and a melancholy smile graced the old woman's face. "Your mother was very special - very kind. Your grandparents were terribly sad to hear of her disappearance." She sighed and turned back toward the entrance of the den.

"Wait - is that all you know?" I asked, taken aback at the abbreviated memory.

"Of course not, child. Join me inside for tea - Just be sure to watch your step. We do not use much light."

I believe that qualified for the understatement of the century. As I followed her echoing footsteps into the dark depths of their lair, I felt acutely aware of the fact that I was walking blind into throngs of creatures directly related to those that had slaughtered my extended family.

My sight slowly began to adjust to the dark, allowing me to discern blobs of dark, dark grey amidst the black. But without any light, I doubted I'd be able to see much more.

The tunnel we walked through opened into what sounded like a large cavern, judging by the way her footsteps faded into ambient noise. I could hear whispers of children and adults alike, but it was near-impossible to pinpoint those youkai due to the confusing pattern of echoes and the distortions created by the uneven rock face. Sure, I have great hearing, but I'm not a bat, you know.

I turned right and followed her down a tunnel, but just as I began to suspect her motives might be nefarious, I realized everything had become visible once more under a faint red glow.

"This room is a place we normally send our younglings to play, for it takes our kind five winters to become fully aware of their hearing." We stopped in a small room that had several of the glowing stones my grandmother had shown us when we were little.

"While you are here, you may use this room to rest and collect yourself. To remain in the dark for days on end can be unsettling to a stranger. I doubt you remember me from your childhood. My name is Tsuchi." And with those words, the mogura matron had welcomed me into their midst.

To say that the next few weeks were awkward would be another great example of understatement. The mogura clan (sans the matriarch) believed I was planning something dastardly (like killing off the lot of them) to avenge the loss of my family, and I was convinced that I was being watched, all the time. I felt as though, should I let my guard down for even the shortest of moments, they would flay me alive and add my bones to some freaky collection of lost travelers.

Needless to say, no one got any rest... except the matron, of course.

It was hard for her to remember everything my grandmother had told her, and she'd lived for so long that some of her memories were confused or lost amidst thousands of others. She came to the dimly lit room as the sun set each evening (or so I was told) to tell me about something else she'd remembered. It was just too bad that she hadn't used some kind of system to record such tidbits as they occurred, like writing.

(One day, they'll figure out how, and the old bag can stop worrying about her faulty memories.)

I sometimes felt a little cheated when her stories twisted away from truth and toward the more fanciful embellishment. I was beginning to notice the differences in her speech when she shifted between children's stories and history. Perhaps she did it to entertain her people, but I was looking for fact, not fiction.

There really wasn't much for me to do during the very long and boring hours between each session with the matron. I had to wonder what the hell she had to do during the rest of the day, given her weak physical condition.

I grew curious and began to explore the tunnels and caverns using various illusions to sneak about without scaring the mogura... too much. (I couldn't help it a few times, though... it seemed that at least a few of the women had the classic, deep-rooted fear of tiny rodents.)

I learned to somewhat rely on my hearing and sense of touch while traversing the darkness of those tunnels. It took quite some time to gain a basic familiarity of how sounds bounced off of the tunnel walls, and I knew that the skill each of the mogura possessed must have taken decades to fully learn.

There were times that I could not rely solely on my other senses to reveal the answers to questions that occasionally surfaced, so I worked on producing very small flickers of foxfire from one of my fingertips. With my enhanced sight, even that tiny amount of illumination could easily light up my surroundings enough to see, but it also temporarily blinded any mogura that happened to be nearby (as well as seriously piss them off). I had to be very careful about how often I used it.

It was interesting to discover how very little control I had over my foxfire. I could produce the blue flames at will, and it almost always centered on my hands.

But how can someone turn an instinctual thing into something one does? It seemed like it took forever to get the handful of flame to shrink into a mere candle flicker. And even then, I had to work on controlling it enough so that the initial light wouldn't destroy any sense of night vision I'd acquired.

(I knew I'd eventually need to learn how to make more flame, rather than less...)

On one of my excursions through the tunnels, I met a teenaged boy that seemed a little bit younger than I was. He and I were wary of one another, but he apparently had more guts than the rest of the adults and actually asked what my name was. We spoke very little at first, and I felt like he was judging how much of a threat I might be. He tailed me the first day for a few hours without saying anything more, but the next day he sought me out and told me his name. "Kuusai," he said. "Why are you here?"

"I need to hear the stories Tsuchi-sama has to tell about my kind."

"Is your family dead, like mine, then?"

I had to smile at the boy's straightforwardness. I had been worried about revealing my orphan status to the lot of them, but with this kid I felt a bit of immediate kinship. "Yeah." He didn't hang around me all of the time, but we found conversation more than once.

Sometimes during the early hours of the evening, I'd notice a few females leaving the safety of the den to collect certain supplies they wanted from the surrounding woods. I didn't think too much of this, until I learned that everything they needed could be found underground. One of their tunnels extended to a bubbling spring that supplied a few separate pools with freshwater to drink or wash in, and as they ate various types of vegetable matter, most of their required food could be found in their tunnels by simply looking up.

Some of the tunnels ran close enough to the surface that there were literally gardens of tubers and plant bulbs that lined the ceilings. The thinner roots that poked through the walls elsewhere were used as a source of sustenance in times of need (or when someone grew too lazy to go find a suitable meal).

After nearly a month had gone by (and boy, I was feeling the lack of sleep by then) the tunnels seemed to reverberate with a terrible screeching roar.

It was impossible to be sure where the sound had come from, so I took off (in a careful sprint) to where I knew I'd be able to find Kuusai.

Some of the adults were racing in a specific direction, probably to fend off whatever beast dared enter their den, but a few noticed my approach and fled in sudden fear. I'm pretty sure a few of them thought I was the one attacking… but that roar? They had to know it couldn't be me!

Kuusai stood in a defensive stance in front of the slim tunnel leading back to the younglings' sleeping areas, and as I drew close to him, I could tell by the relief on his face in that inky darkness that he'd almost thought I was behind the attack, too. The tunnels shook under the force of another impact right before that horrendous screech stung our ears.

"I need you to help me find this thing! I might be able to help!" I hurriedly said, reaching out to yank on his hand. He was hesitant to move at first, and I could see him look back over his shoulder at the tunnel behind him. "Whatever is in here is probably too big to fit down there! Help me!"

He must have been able to see the desperation in my expression, because the next thing I knew, I was being dragged down the dark corridor by my hand faster than I'd be able to go on my own.

He zipped me around corners and under shelves of rock so fast that I scraped my arm and hit my head, but then he slowed and said, "There!" I was clearly able to see several of the mogura youkai swiping their massive clawed hands against a wall that seemed to move in an odd, wavy pattern. But the occasional flashes of light told me that whatever it was had a serious layer of armor, and they weren't doing very much damage.

"What is it?" I asked him.

"I don't know... maybe a hebi youkai... sometimes we get smaller ones trying to find a new burrow, but they're never this big..."

"They're attacking its side. Is there any way you can get me in front of it?"

"Uhm..." he paused for a moment. "Yeah. This way – watch your head this time!"

Again I was led through a series of tunnels and small walkways with ceilings just a bit too low. He stopped and whispered, "Here... It's just ahead of us..."

That fact was terribly obvious when the thing let out another ear-splitting roar. "Damnit!" I shouted, covering my ears. "Shield your eyes!" I pushed him behind me and allowed my foxfire to alight, temporarily stunning the snake-like youkai with the sudden bright illumination.

It was barely wide enough to fit in this particular tunnel, with only a small amount of room on each side for it to writhe and flex to push forward. "Aren't you a little big for this place?" I shouted, flinging burning liquid into its exposed eyes and mouth.

The thing screeched and tried to twist away, but the quarters were so cramped that it couldn't do much more than scoot backwards to escape the burn.

I had to play it safe. To attack the beast relentlessly would make it feel cornered and unable to escape, and a fight or flight reaction underground could lead to massive destruction of the mogura den.

It shrieked and roared as I irritated the sensitive orifices of its face with near-effortless flicks of burning liquid. Kuusai must have known what I'd had in mind, for he was giving me information on how long the tunnels ran back towards the surface. "My people know what it is that you are doing," he shouted to be heard above the angry beast's roars. "They are making sure that it backs the right way out of our tunnels."

"Do we have any way of keeping it out once it's out?" I shouted back over my shoulder at him.

"Hopefully it'll be scared enough of getting its nose burnt off to not come back!"

Likely. Once I got that thing out in the open, all it would see would be a tiny Shippo-Snack. I could just see it rearing back and staring down at me with those singed, angry red eyes... its huge mouth open with massive fangs dripping–

"Shippo!" Kuusai shouted from behind me.

I should have figured that daydreaming about a messy death while still in the face of danger was a bad idea. ...Especially when a few boulders that had been knocked free from the tunnel ceiling missed crushing my tail by mere hairs!

The snake youkai finally backed out far enough to find purchase in the ground, for its head suddenly retreated. Within moments, moonlight had spilled into the now-empty tunnel, and I found myself surrounded by confused, sheepish looking, and a few disgruntled mogura. A few murmured thanks and nods were given as the crowd of youkai dispersed, leaving only a few curious stragglers, Kuusai, and the old matron Tsuchi-sama.

She gave a deep bow. "Our people are indebted to you for helping us with such disregard for your own safety. I've come to recognize the mistrust between you and our kind, but with your display of bravery on our behalf, perhaps my people will show you the respect befit an honored guest."

"Maybe," I half-heartedly replied.

But as the next few days went by, it seemed that she'd spoken the truth. When the matron and I met to hear another one of her stories, we were joined by a few new youkai I had not yet met. And so it went for a short while, until the meeting hall seemed packed full of them. One evening, after the matron finished speaking, someone voiced a request to hear some of the tales I had to share.

Although I felt a bit off finally speaking to the lot of them, I began the story of our group's hunt for the Shikon no Tama. The mogura clan had been appalled to learn of the jewel's existence, as well as the horrible things that had occurred from of its shattering, especially because of the direct damage it had caused to their people.

I also heard more than one of them mutter about 'irresponsible humans' and their 'evil artifacts.' I was sorely tempted to lash out against those that thought so poorly of Kagome and her constant self-sacrifice to help so many... but I held back my anger and used their ignorance to embellish a few stories of my own. Truly, by the time I'd left the safety of their den, the mogura believed Kagome had been a goddess incarnate. I can't help the smug smile I get every time I remember the new sense of profound awe they felt toward her.

In between the story-sessions, I suddenly had plenty to see and do, thanks to Mister Snake. That beast's flailing had caused a great deal of damage to several tunnels and caverns. There were collapsed walls, cave-ins, and one or two of the smaller cavern dwellings had been completely lost. So, in exchange for their hospitality (they'd gotten much better at that since the attack) I offered to lend assistance wherever I could.

I soon discovered that most of the adults in the clan were female. Of course, this didn't make much of an impact on their clan due to the basic equality between their males and females, but it was still impressive to see how much physical labor they could accomplish in the dark depths of their den.

A group of females taught me the basic claw technique the mogura used to cleave through the soil, which, when applied with a certain measure of youki, would dissolve the rocks into nothing, allowing more efficient digging and no need to drag piles of stones and dirt back to the surface...

It took some time to get used to the method. The females that used the technique had massive arms built to effortlessly swing and hack away at the tough soil, but my arms were rather skinny and useless in comparison. By the time most of the needed repairs had been finished, though, I had gained a great deal of familiarity in identifying sounds in the tunnels, quite a bit of upper body strength, and an interesting collection of stories and experiences the matron had been able to share.

She told me about the sparse gatherings of kitsune youkai across the land, as well as how rare it was to meet another family of the same species. She hadn't known why there were so few...

I also learned something from her that I'd never expected (and sometimes I still wish I hadn't heard).

My father and mother had been joined as an agreement between their families. (That was a harsh blow to the warm and fuzzy feelings I'd gotten while thinking about their budding relationship...) I had always believed that they'd fallen in love at first sight and had fawned over one another until the day their union had been destroyed by Mother's disappearance. I knew that they'd loved one another very much, but now it was hard to imagine their relationship before they'd reached that point. Did they love each other when I was conceived? Did they even have time to get to know one another before they were forced into their joining?

Fortunately, the matron had no answer to those questions... I don't think I could have handled the news that my mother had married against her will. It didn't fit with my happy memories of our short years as a family.

"I met your aunt and uncle once at the ceremonial joining of your mother and father," she told me one evening. "She was your mother's cousin, although they bore very little similarities aside from their beautiful red hair. He was a strange youkai that dressed in foreign clothes and occasionally spoke an unfamiliar language. His ears extended from the top of his head like a true kitsune, and his hair was a silvery white that I've only seen upon the shiro inu and of the youkai more familiarly associated with colder climes, and it led me to believe that he was not of Japanese descent. It's hard for my kind to be sure, for we spend so many of our days below the earth.

"Your mother spent a great deal of her adolescent years with your uncle's family, although I'm not sure why. She never mentioned her parents or siblings the few times our clans met. If you wish to find out more about her, it would be wise to find your uncle's home."

I sat quietly for a moment as I let this information soak in. "And since you believe him to be a foreigner, you think it would be in my best interest to begin looking... where?"

"In the snowy foreign lands, of course!" I'd almost forgotten that we weren't alone as I heard several murmurs of agreement.

...You know, until that moment, I'd thought the matron to be a somewhat wise youkai versed in at least some local lore and the basics of the world. She had shown me up by using more common sense than I, in at least a few situations...

But that response sent me for a loop. How in the world could I possibly find anything with such a vague description as that? "You aren't able to be a little... more specific... maybe?" I asked, strangely feeling a bit disrespectful.

Tsuchi-sama quirked a frazzled eyebrow at my question before answering. "Of course I can." I almost sighed in relief before she pointed to her left. "Go west, across the water." Had I been prone to comic maneuvers in moments of disbelief, I might have fallen over sideways from my spot on the floor.

But I stayed still, even when a few youkai around me snickered softly. "What do you think I am, child? A walking archive?"

"With the memory this old bat has, it's surprising she can remember anything," said a youkai sitting somewhere behind me. A pebble sailed across the cave and bounced off the disrespectful youkai's nose. A few others snickered as I sighed. It was at about this time that I began to suspect that I'd learned from her pretty much all I could to extend my search for relatives.

By the next evening, I'd decided it was time to go home. I knew they'd ask me to stay a little longer to share more stories, but I promised I'd come back some day.

I'd been away for only a few months, but I knew much may have happened during my absence...