InuYasha Fan Fiction / Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ The Blue Anshan ❯ Seeking 11 - The Fire ( Chapter 15 )

The Blue Anshan

By Alesyira

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

Summary: Trouble is brewing and forces are divided. What could possibly go wrong?

Chapter Rating: T

Arc 2 - Seeking 11 - The Fire

1511

The years passed faster than I'd have thought possible. The language barriers fell away, and I could speak fluently in most of the languages used in the community. Granted, a lot of it was probably highly inappropriate for polite company thanks to the teachers I had amongst the warriors I spent much of my time with, but Angara's language and writing lessons kept it from becoming too corrupted with filthy slang.

Angara was the key to understanding my abilities available at the time. She was still terribly curious about what the pink holy magic was capable of doing, but she never risked trying to force it into use after she'd heard about what it could do to some youki. I still suspected someone would have to be pretty bad to get the killing kind of reaction from the magic, but that's probably not something I'd tell her. I can just imagine how slowly they'd dismember me if I gave her the idea it might be safe and she ended up killing herself. Plus, I liked Angara. She was a sweet kid.

One remarkably sweltering summer morning, Baikal Khan's voice thundered across the courtyard. "Gather the others. A scout has returned with word of another attack. A village is burning." Several squads collected their weapons and emergency supplies before racing off to provide aid. It wasn't too out of the ordinary for groups of people to drop everything to help friends and families that chose to live away from the keep.

Living apart from the central hub meant more space to spread out, a peaceful blanket of silence without the usual community bustle of clanging tools or the scattered markets with their chatter of visiting shoppers, and freedom from the hordes of tiny tots that occasionally caused a bit too much mischief. But it also meant that aid from the main group of warriors and healers would take some time to arrive once help was summoned.

No one hesitated when the call came, though. Everyone had their part to play, and forces would evenly distribute in times of emergency so as to not leave the primary community undefended.

Angara had gone to the family wing when the sun set that evening, intending to read or practice calligraphy or whatever she did once we'd stopped our joint study and practices for the day. With so few warriors in the keep to distract me with their jokes and stories, it seemed like a perfect time to just curl into a corner of the family library and study some more writings, which were slowly becoming something I could almost read without assistance.

The silence of the compound grew as the hours of evening crept on. I had just set aside my notes on some damned confusing sentence structure when I heard a surprised shout of "Hey-!" that abruptly cut off. My attention snapped in that direction, immediately suspicious.

I heard multiple whistles in the quiet before a small grey ball trailing a line of purple smoke sailed through an open window and ripped through the paper wall on the far side of the room. I caught a whiff of that smoke just before the small item released its poisons and had the sense to hold my breath. I knew this weapon; Sango had used similar smoke bombs in the past to incapacitate warm-blooded youkai to make easier work of clearing out dangerous infestations.

It worked just as well on the big creatures as the small ones, and we were in trouble.

I threw aside my materials and wasted precious breath to shout a warning at anyone within earshot, "We're under attack! Don't breathe the smoke!"

Hu had gone that morning with the small contingency of fighters accompanying the khan. My only thought now was to get to Angara. I didn't bother treating the flimsy walls with care and barreled through any barrier made of anything less than solid rock. I had no idea who was attacking, and without being able to rely on my sense of smell, I felt hindered. I crashed through another wall and sprinted down a hallway, still dozens of feet from Angara's rooms. The sight of thick smoke filling the air was my only clue that something had caught fire.

Angara had crumpled to the floor halfway across her room in her attempt to escape. Another ball with its thick purple smoke rolled around on the floor nearby, blanketing the room with its paralyzing mist. I scooped the awake but unresponsive girl into my arms and whirled to head back along another pathway out of the building. Something crashed into a room I had just passed and exploded with surprising force, throwing us sideways into a solid wall that knocked the breath out of me. I managed to land in a half-crouch, but accidentally inhaled once my lungs remembered how to work. The effect was sickeningly quick. Angara slid from my arms and landed in a small heap before me, staring up at me with panic in her eyes. I could no longer hold myself upright and I crumpled, face-first into the floor sprawled over the girl I'd tried to save. I choked on my next breath of the fume-laced smoke. 'Shit shit shit!'

As I lost control of intentional functions like movement and speech, I also lost the ability to hold my breath, and my nose gave a clear picture of the building's current status. It was burning, fast. Whatever the goal of the attack had been, I was pretty sure Angara and I were about to die in a blazing inferno.

Angara poked me. Not in a physical sense, but in her magic-twisting sense. She unleashed whatever careful control she must have had in place when we'd worked together in the past, because something frantic and raw in her power stabbed through me like a dull sword and if I hadn't been paralyzed I might have shouted in pain.

Grasping fingers of her power latched onto something unfamiliar within me and yanked. The smallest thread of fire magic that I assumed had given me the ability to attack with burning magic was pulled to the surface and exposed like a raw nerve. Her power clamored over this untested youki, and using brute, merciless force she pulled it open. My fingertips ached as the heat of the magic slid over my skin.

I had to push aside the growing terror that we were about to burn alive in order to focus on my magic and whatever the heck she was trying to do with it, hopefully to save our lives.

Fire licked closer and she pulled on my magics again. The fire shriveled. The walls caught and went up in a maelstrom of blazing heat, and she yanked again.

Something about this, aside from being so close to imminent death-by-fire, felt intimately familiar. I knew this. I saw the fire for what it was, energy, and let it flow over me. Fire consumed everything, giving itself to anything it could.

There would be no need to focus on taking this energy, because the fire wanted everything to share in its glory. (Most stuff can't handle fire's gifts and just turns to ash. Lucky me, I'm special.)

I took everything the fire was willing to give. More, more, more, and it rippled through me as fast as I could draw it in. All I could feel was the fire and its gifts and it fell upon us with ravenous joy. The absorbed energy literally burned through me, searing through the toxins that had paralyzed me, and I found I had a voice again. Angara punched through my magic over and over again, focusing my excess into a physical projection of my barrier around us as the building continued to burn.

Things got a little hazy after that. The attackers were killed or chased away, someone heard my screaming amongst the blazing fire and risked their fur to see if anyone could be saved, and we were extracted from the building moments before the roof collapsed. Over a dozen others had been caught by the paralyzing smoke and had perished in the fire.

I spent some time writhing around with a fair crowd of harried but thankful onlookers watching as I got my third tail and a new stripe. I came back to my senses with a pounding headache and ringing ears, surrounded by the clinging scent of woodsmoke, burnt fur, and meat. I rolled over onto my side and groaned.

Someone's hand gripped my shoulder and I could hear my name being called. "Five more minutes," I muttered, remembering Kagome's favorite morning phrase. The murmured responses around me were a little confused but mostly relieved.

Angara knelt at my side, bringing with her a swirl of scents: relief, joy, smugness. "Shippo?" Her small fingers rubbed across my cheek, tracing the new stripe I had attained. An unexpected sensation of tiny sparks nipped through my skin and down my neck. I cracked open an eye to peer up at her tear-streaked sooty face. "You scared me," she whispered. "I worried I had killed you."

I rolled a shoulder in an attempt to shrug. "We would have both died if you hadn't tried."

When they began clearing the family wing of the destroyed sections, someone found the spot we'd been stuck had been had been mostly untouched by the flames. It was kind of impressive.

My new stripe was strange. It wasn't blue like the ones I'd gotten on my fingers, instead it was some weird slash of glowing ember across my cheek. I couldn't remember anyone in the family having such a marking.

Gatai's mentoring helped hone whatever Angara had done to expand my connection to fire. Using my fire skills no longer drained me. As the flames burned, I could draw in that energy once more and recycle it for additional uses.

And his stupid sneak attacks with that stick of his? I could sense the fire in him now and he could no longer catch me unaware. My barrier made short work of anything wooden in his vicinity. He introduced me to the tailor that worked on flame-resistant clothing.

Win.

Also, did you know that the more tails you get, the more it becomes a literal pain in the ass? You can't sit straight on chairs that have solid backs, getting into and out of outfits gets more troublesome, and then you start worrying about what next life-changing event is going to result in another one of the blasted things getting even more in the way.

I wasn't sure I wanted to play with others anymore if it was going to eventually result in an apparently useless and annoying fourth tail.

Threading a single tail through a gap in my clothes was fine. Many in the community had a tail of some sort, and clothes were tailored accordingly. The second tail became a bit more irritating to accommodate with double the fluff (I hesitate to go into how it actually seemed to connect to my backside). And now a third?

I had an epiphany as I dressed for the first time after the fire. I didn't have to leave my tails on full display, just like I no longer had to run around with cute fox-paw feet. I was a shapeshifter, and pulling back on another part of my appearance should probably feel just as natural.

I centered myself, drew in the magic, and felt my form settle. The tails vanished in a swirl of warmth.

I think this may have been one of the first times I thought about what it might be like to do the opposite, unleash that same magic and shift into a full kitsune form.

Drop the facade that made me more human-like.

Was that even something I could do? No one in the community had openly displayed such an ability. Maybe it wasn't something that could be taught?

Hu knocked on the frame of my door, drawing my attention. The others must have just returned. Her smile was like the sun. She strode into my room and used her sleeve to wipe a lingering smudge of soot off my cheek before pulling me into a fierce hug. "I cannot leave you alone for a single day without you getting into trouble!" she complained. Her frown slipped and she grinned. "The khan is most pleased that you saved his daughter."

I laughed. "I was just the tool. She used me to save us both. But I think that attack might have given us a clue to find the jerks behind all the trouble."