InuYasha Fan Fiction / Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ The Blue Anshan ❯ Seeking 6 - The Eclipse ( Chapter 10 )

The Blue Anshan

By Alesyira

Summary: Shippo and Hu stumble across the outskirts of a final-battle scenario.

Chapter Rating: T.

Disclaimer: Inuyasha and Yu Yu Hakusho are not mine. I made a few OCs to fill in my gaps.

Arc 2 - Seeking 6 - The Eclipse

1506

Looking back at it now, I realize that Hu accompanied me on my fool's errand for much longer than any normal being should have cared. She had become a dependable constant in my life after months of traveling, running, foraging, and sleeping under the stars. She taught me many things I'd never known of or experienced during the years living with our ragtag group of shard hunters. I learned much about myself during that time in my life, and we did our best to stumble through the mysteries of my recently acquired skills.

You know, in all the years we hunted for those shards, I never really considered how other groups of people in far-away lands might have handled the weird nonsense we had experienced on a near-weekly basis, like epic shard-enhanced battles, crazy immortals bent on vengeance, badguys seeking world domination, angry ghosts, or time-traveling mikos.

Hu and I came across the very outskirts of such a weird event as we skirted a mountain range. It was around midday, decently windy and not a cloud in the sky, and we both noticed it was getting weirdly dark. We looked up for any sign of disturbance and found the sun being slowly blotted out by a dark mass. This wasn't completely out of the ordinary; Kagome had once explained the concept of an eclipse to me, and it wasn't too difficult to explain the same idea to Hu in a way that she'd understand.

What made it weird was that when the shadow reached its midpoint and the sun was nothing more than a burning ring of fire in the sky, the wind immediately died down to just a fraction of its previous strength, and the decaying leaves that had been whipping by us in a frenzy now slowly floated by. A bright white rabbit that had been startled from its hiding spot in the snow seemed to be leaping through molasses. Hu and I exchanged a glance, and in curiosity I walked over and carefully picked it up by the back of its neck. Its little gaze eventually slid to me in terror and I could see it begin to move in a new direction just a bit in its slow-motion struggle to escape.

I put the poor creature down under a nearby bush and walked back to where my partner stood. "Something's definitely wrong here."

Hu nodded her agreement.

"Should we go see if we can help?"

Hu shrugged. "Could be dangerous. I'm not feeling very adventurous today."

The chill winter temperature noticeably warmed and the ground began to steam, bringing about a thick fog. A shiver wracked my body as an unrecognizable magic crept across my skin. I stepped closer to Hu and muttered, "if we aren't gonna help, we should probably get out of here." Wisps of light began rising from the rapidly thawing ground to float toward the mountaintop. "This is really creepy."

Hu didn't reply at first as she tilted her head toward something I couldn't detect. "Listen," Hu's voice took on a strange, shivering tone. "Something is calling the dead." I was getting really weirded out. Her eyes began to glow a pale silver as she whispered in growing horror, "My father… his aspect is death. I recognize—" she trailed off. "This voice is saying things that should never be spoken in this realm."

The ground shifted slightly beneath my feet. I stepped sideways, glancing down at the uneven dirt. The trees were sparse in the foothills, and I could easily see the earth moving in odd lumps here and there as half-rotted things pulled themselves free from shallow graves. A partially-eaten deer with entrails dragging behind it trotted past us. A small pack of what may have been wolves that had been beheaded raced past with patchy fur. The overpowering scent of death and decay oozed around us, and I had to hold back a gag.

"Okay, if we go hopping into this fray, how are we going to be able to tell who are the good guys? Those dead things might be running to help save the day or they might be a zombie army meant to cause trouble."

Hu nodded slowly, and the two of us shuddered in unison. "This is disgusting." Then she turned to me with a puzzled expression, "What is zom-bee?"

I laughed. Kagome's odd references sometimes managed to sneak into my speech, and never failed to lead to interesting questions from the people I met over the years.

An explosion of light near the peak of one of the mountains pierced the eclipse-darkened sky, startling a flock of living birds into a slow-motion exodus from their perches in the nearby trees. I was terribly curious about what was going on, but we both knew it would be a bad idea with this much unknown magic in the air. We stood at the foot of the mountain for a short while longer, watching the bursts of colored light in the distance. I hoped whatever was going on ended up right for those on the side of good.

The trouble with having a vague sense of "the future's gonna be okay" is that, yeah, maybe things turn out fine, but was I supposed to help or not help? Was I supposed to poke my nose into all the heroic activities, or stay out of trouble that didn't directly involve me and just bide my time?

I didn't know enough. I wished I knew more.

At the same time, I was happy I didn't know enough to cause myself extra trouble. Kagome had known things about human history that had sometimes caused her a great deal of stress. She knew some future leaders we had met on our travels would end up being cruel people. She had the burden of knowing things would happen but that she couldn't and shouldn't interfere.

Should she have interfered? Maybe she went home and discovered she was meant to stop some lunatic and it ended up changing the course of history. My head started to hurt.

Hu took my hand and tugged my attention away from the light show. I looked into her glowing, worried expression and smiled. "Let's run away," I suggested. She grinned, and maybe I felt a little guilty at abandoning the unknown heroes to their fate, but we ran.

As our feet flew through the darkened forest away from whatever was going on, my thoughts drifted back to some of the larger battles I had witnessed and participated in during our hunt for the shards. I had told Hu some of these stories, and so when I spoke she understood. "Some of the fights I've seen were great crowds of people and creatures. Hordes of monsters would fly at us from unexpected directions. We could only trust our allies that we'd known ahead of time, because the bad guys would often try to trick us any way they could. Fake friends and allies happened more than once."

Kagome wanted to believe the best in everyone we met. Sometimes we fell for the ruse, hoping to have a new friend to put the odds more in our favor. Sometimes we ended up prevailing, getting the fake friend to actually become a true ally that had seen how wrong they had been. But not every team of heroes is trusting and willing to believe random strangers wanting to help. We could have easily been attacked by the heroes expecting us to be maligned.

I really feel like we made the best choice we could by not interfering. And this time, things didn't go crazy because I kept out of stuff I didn't understand, and no villages burned down! The guilt still clung to me, though.

Bleeding heart syndrome, learned from the best. Thanks, Kagome. :(