InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Another Opens... ❯ The Women ( Chapter 19 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Namiyo11 
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Adventure / Drama / Romance / Angst | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 04.27.2008 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.4K | Visits: 190 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Adventure / Drama / Romance / Angst | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 04.27.2008 | Pages: 3 | Words: 3.4K | Visits: 190 | Status: Completed
Chapter 19- The Women
Recap: The Panthers have been broken, and Tohan returns to her lands alone. Ayami summons her Dokueki. The Inutaisho are together again and united, the Swords of the Fang, much improved, restored to their owners. What happens now? Who will win? Read on!
**Ok, a warning here! Mature subject matter and adult themes and violence. Again, the story’s about to earn it’s rating. So please be aware of the chapter content.**
No, I do not own, nor do I make money from Inuyasha or related characters. Kokuzoku and the Dokueki are mine, as are Yotogi and the Hamayami.
Ayami hid, sniffing. No Kirara. No Kirara! She needed all of them, damn it! All of them had to be sacrificed to restore Naraku. The Panthers, the ones who’d been loyal, in any case-had been clear on that point. Everyone who had caused the death of the one slain had to be used. Without the neko...there was no bringing him back from the afterworld, nor could she make even herself believe she’d have another chance. So, she would do this. Wait, and help his children avenge him...and follow after, to be with him in the afterworld. She was alone, and it scared her. But Ayami promised herself that if no one else, one of them would die under her claws. The hanyou bitch Kagome.
The tragedy, though, was that it wasn’t Ayami’s first error.
She was correct in the requirements of the ritual of restoration. But she was wrong in one thing. Samiyousho had watched-but had not seen what was needed that day last year. The people who hunted her now weren’t the ones who had truly killed Naraku. To raise someone in this method, you needed a soul...his had been devoured by a thousand youkai. She would truly never see him again, even in the other world.
***
“I don’t smell her.”
They had to find her. It was a race, now, with an unknown number of Dokueki loose, ones she could control. They quartered the Temple, hunting. With the wards gone, an easy enough task, if a cautious one. Just destroying the place was a bad idea, they had to know she was dead. Naraku had taught them all that, if it was a needed lesson...if you didn’t see her die-you couldn’t be certain.
“I don’t either. You three sense her?” Inuyasha scowled up at Kagome, worry in his eyes. His packmate was keeping to the rafters, sniffing and her bow ready to provide cover as Sesshomaru had taught her. An archer worked best from a distance, after all. Sango had found Hiraikotsu, and Miroku again had his staff. Tossed in a room with a pile of other things...including Kokuzoku’s swords. Meaning he too was likely here. With nothing to lose now. She had killed his pack. Sweet Kami, he didn’t want to think about that one...
“The wards shattering has left this place covered in residue. She’s masked,” Miroku answered. All three of them were weary from the effort of shielding Kagome, but kept at it, trying to see where the wolf was.
“I’m going ahead,” Kagome said, pushing into another hall as they hunted, separating as they spread out to go faster. Ayame had to die, and now.
Kill her-and they could leave, then deal with the Dokueki safely enough with some breathing room. But she had to die, because when she did-Naraku’s threat would truly be ended. The monk could almost pity her. If he’d known more of what had happened to her, well-he would pity the wolf in truth.
They all would.
***
Over two years before.
“Let me go!!” a tied up Ayami screamed as she was carried aloft by a large feather.
“No. Naraku has ordered you brought here. Stop screaming, it won’t help!” Kagura snapped, she was getting a headache.
She was brought down into a ruined keep stinking of death, and thrown into a locked and shielded room. No getting out. Crying, injured, Ayami lay on the floor, wishing and hoping for someone, anyone, to come save her. Kouga. Even his odd hanyou rival! She was alone, though...and held by Naraku.
Because of Kagome. A mortal girl! He’d left her for a mortal girl. The wolf knew Kouga remembered his promise, to marry her when she returned from the mountains. But-he lied. Said he didn’t. Huddled on the wooden floor, she tried to plan. To think. It was all been going well! She’d found a jewel shard...and had been trying to practice seeing it as the mortal could. But instead it had drawn Naraku.
They left her there for a month. Fed, seen to, but left alone. Strictly alone. Wolves were never meant to be all alone, especially not ones in packs...
By the time they brought her before Naraku at last, she was not the girl she’d been. That day, Naraku had explained she might be of use to him as the very shard she’d been using to practice, now dark with stored misery, had been pressed into her neck. Ayami belonged to him now, she was told. Kagura looked on her with pity as she stood next to Kohaku and Kanna in what passed for Naraku’s court. She knew what that meant.
Ayami was his servant now, she was told, and her education began. When she helped him kill her own Grandfather months later, a passenger in her own body. But unlike Kohaku, she was made to remember both that and the outcasting called on her for the betrayal of her tribe. With that, her training was completed. She was nothing but his creature by then, the death-blow given to the wolf who was...and she was one of his servants, set to use her abilities to hunt for the shards like the others.
But Kagura was killed for her betrayals, Kanna proved unreliable and was reabsorbed, and Naraku simply decided he needed the shard he used on the wolf for other purposes. The ambitious program of self-improvement he’d embarked on required more of the jewel each time just to keep his disparate parts under control. He had been betrayed by his own children now, and he did not trust anyone fully in any case. Ayami was a possible liability.
Naraku considered. The answer was both simple and amusing. It seemed the most effective and simple way to deal with the matter. So, he summoned her into his private chambers the night Kanna again became a formless part of him. Kohaku escorted her in silently, and bowed himself out.
“Ayami,” Naraku gestured, toying with a broken mirror. Ayami sat at his feet, thinking it no more than one of his lessons. There were times he would speak to her like this, teaching her what she needed to be useful to him as a servant. She had come to cling to those times, to the illusion she had status still.
“My Lord?” she asked, looking up curiously. He took her chin in his hand, and nodded to himself. Young. Healthy. Some skill in combat and hunting. Not displeasing, he supposed, though it would be easier if her hair was black.
“I have made a decision. You will have a singular honor. I will take you to wife, Ayami, using youkai custom. Undress, and we shall begin. By dawn, you shall be mine forever. Does this please you?” Naraku asked curiously, eyes thoughtful as he looked at her with the measuring gaze of a prospective buyer of perhaps...a good horse.
“My Lord! I will never do other than please you! Thank you!!” she’d wept with joy, and Naraku had sighed to himself. He rose, taking her hand and leading her to the sleeping mat.
She might be entertaining, he supposed, he had taken no woman since he transformed himself from the mere bandit he had been into a greater power. It should be interesting, yes, but he made quite sure it was dark. Naraku discovered he was thinking of another to get through it, imagining her under his hands as he bedded a woman he didn’t care for, one he merely wished to bind to him. And the name he moaned at the height of passion in the darkened chamber cut his shivering, awkward ‘bride’ like a sword.
“Kikyou!”
Inuyasha wasn’t the only one Urusue had sent into a certain introspection with her revival of Kikyou. Naraku had loved the Priestess as well-in a different, twisted way. He’d made his pact to obtain her for himself, after all, not just power, and then she had betrayed him with the hanyou. Killing her had been sweet, but too swift an ending...he was left with only his power. Now, he also had a new toy, who knew she was a toy, yet obeyed regardless.
Then there was the outfits he’d bidden her to don whenever he’d summoned her to his bed afterwards. He was with her, Ayami, yet wanted others, and it destroyed her. She was the one he claimed and his spider mark was set on her throat...she was his mate, and yet he’d wanted others! Ayami hated them-and the implications, more than anything else. Wolves looked only to one that way.
One outfit, his favorite, was a white haori and scarlet hakama. The other, worn every once in a while-was a short green skirt and an odd fitting white top, copied from a strange mortal girl. Even when the girl in question had outgrown it. Ayami had often wore them when she played at being Kikyou to please him...or Kagome.
***
Ayami hid in the eaves, waiting for her chance and her Dokueki, nerves taunt and mind shattering slowly under her rage and grief, the strain of so much lost...and dared peer into the halls to see them. She saw her slipping lightly along the rafters, bow in hand as she scouted ahead of her packmates. She saw it.
Short green skirt. Sailor top. Not only was she here, and had again ruined Ayami‘s dreams...she was dressed in those. Damned. Clothes!
‘Ayami. You will be Kagome tonight, I think...’ Ayami’s eyes blazed. She’d stolen Kouga. Naraku too, in a way. Even the hanyou panted at her heels...she could smell her-and all of the pain of months and years blended into one mindless act at the sight of those hated clothes, triggering something deeper than madness, deeper then anger. Ayami snapped.
“YOU BITCH! YOU WHORE!” Before anyone could react to the scream-she leapt at her!
“DIE!” Kagome screamed. This was not a fight with mighty weapons and inborn powers, in the eerily beautiful manner of normal youkai combat. It was claws and fangs, bestial.
“You stole them! Be Kagome! Be Kagome! Always he wanted you in his arms, never me! Naraku wanted you!” Ayami screamed, claws lashing right for her opponents eyes as they fell off the rafters, landing hard as Kagome tried to hold her off!
“You murderous bitch!” Kagome returned the favor as she desperately tried to grasp the wolf’s wrists and the pair rolled, snarling. Bad, and the hanyou felt something stir as the Hamayami slid from her grasp...as claws slammed into her belly...Ayami, enraged, was too strong for her...
“n-no...” a soft moan as she felt her control slip...as something rose...as claws slashed and blood flowed...
They reached her too late. Far too late. That part of the brothers attuned to ‘Kagome’ changed...and suddenly the screams changed in pitch, rising to something horrible...and stopped. There was a series of inhuman snarls...
What they saw when they reached her mere moments later filled them with horror.
A figure in rags and covered in blood was rending her kill, enjoying it, free at last. She looked up-and it was not Kagome. Kagome’s hanyou form was a version of Inuyasha’s, a copy from the same template. But now she was a version of someone Inuyasha himself had only seen reflected in a magical mirror. Green stripes. Red eyes. Elongated claws. A green arrowhead mark on her forehead, as she was a Clanmate as well as a youkai, a full one. A tongue licked her longer fangs, and there wasn’t a trace of Kagome in that face now...only madness. The limp, lifeless form she had shredded was tossed aside. It was barely recognizable as a wolf girl...
“Sesshomaru! You must bind her,” Kaede snapped and he ignored her, well aware of the problem. She would kill them if any approached. Bind yes, but the question was what came after. Kagome was not born an Inu. All of them had feared this day and worried that if she transformed, there might not be a hanyou to summon back. He was her pack leader, and that mark on her forehead might be her only hope...the symbol of a noble born youkai.
She growled and slid away, eyeing her opponents. What ruled her had no desire but to kill again, to feel the sweet flow of blood...Sesshomaru knew exactly what to do. A glance at Inuyasha was all that was needed. They were pack now, this was a hunt...and his packsecond, wanting to die inside, understood. She’d done this for him as well, more than once. They had to either get the bow to her hands, or bring her down. At bay, she crouched, watching them all and snarling as they stayed still and alert. Anything could trigger an attack. Stalemate.
“Kagome! Damn it, come back to me!” Inuyasha yelled, and she growled, leaping! He grabbed her wrists as they slid, his eyes huge at the expression there. “Kagome...stop...” he pleaded, staring into empty, murderous eyes. Her claws flamed as she struggled, but she was forced onto her back, her knees shoving upwards to force him off her as she snapped and growled. Inuyasha grimly held her, seeing her blood seeping into his firerat. He was her packsecond, stronger...but he couldn’t harm her. Even her youkai knew it.
“ENOUGH! SHOW THROAT!” his brother’s thunderous order made her scream defiance. Kagome struggled like a mad thing, her neck visibly straining against the order. But her pack leader gripped her throat in dominance when Inuyasha forced her to be still.
To their relief, she went limp in submission. Kagome was pack, not an outcast, and both sides of her nature had long since accepted Sesshomaru and Inuyasha as the only beings in the world she showed throat to. She could not, even as a full youkai, defy them both. The red eyes flicked brown for an instant...and she fainted. It was Sango who placed the Hamayami into her hand and closed it on the youkai wood. Sesshomaru, to his brother’s unsurprise, laid his hand on her hair gently for a moment as a tiny sound escaped her lips. They looked at each other.
“Your clothing,” Sesshomaru said, she was all but nude, as though the dead wolf had aimed as much at her garments as at Kagome herself.
Inuyasha wrapped her in his firerat, and she barely stirred as his scent comforted Kagome when it was wrapped around her fragile seeming frame. Inuyasha carefully picked her up, the tajiya helping him keep the bow in place as he cradled her. The bow visibly pulsed.
The hateful stripes...the forehead mark...they faded as her claws shortened. Inuyasha held his hanyou beloved again, not the monster that preserved her life at such cost. Badly shaken, he held her tight.
“Leave this place, and attend to her,” Sesshomaru ordered and seeing his face, they nodded.
“We’ll have to go around the near border of Inu territory, Sesshomaru. And-the center post of the Sanctuary controls the old cell magics. That has to be destroyed to break the place,” Sango told him in warning, knowing he planned to follow when the Sanctuary was ruined.
“Understood,” he gestured for them to leave. They gathered her up and left, Hochi transforming outside. Inuyasha kept her carefully tucked into his arms as she slipped into exhausted sleep. He looked back over his shoulder once as they flew away.
***
Sesshomaru didn’t watch them go. He had things to attend to. Like a traitor. Who he found in his cell.
“Let me out!”
“No, Kokuzoku. A fitting end, I think,” Sesshomaru answered, and the traitor snarled.
“I’ll get out! And I’ll kill her as I did those bitches who bore you, you spoiled human-loving brats!!” Sesshomaru paused as Kokuzoku raged. The former Lord was throwing himself at the door, eyes maddened, after the loss of his pack he had nothing now...nothing to live for, and nothing to lose.
“Indeed?”
“Let me out, and prove that vaunted Inutaisho strength! Kumori-she screamed like a coward when the arrow struck, and Izayoi! The poison...it burned her insides into nothing, but it didn’t take the hanyou whelp...Kagome will pay too...” Kokuzoku hissed, eyes blazing with the need to avenge his pack. Sesshomaru wondered. Arrows? Poison? Lady Kumori died in battle, a stray arrow...and Izayoi of fever...hadn’t they?
“You dare...” Sesshomaru turned, and walked to the doorway. A hand did not touch the ropes...but he smiled slowly as his hand hovered close to them.
“I killed your Mother and helped lead your Father to his death, Sesshomaru. Let me out to settle it...” Kokuzoku whispered, clothes torn by his own claws, eyes cold with madness.
“Why? I need not have a door open to finish it. As she would say, why allow an opponent an opening?” he said. Then his claws spit poison into the cell. He impassively watched Kokuzoku die before he left.
Moments later he stood in the main sanctuary, considered, and smiled to himself. He transformed into a full Inu and dealt with the place. Even three legged...it wasn’t hard.
He flew out soon after, leaving nothing but melted, flaming remnants.
Author’s Notes-Well. Ding dong the villain's dead! Anyways. A few notes. This chapter was very, very hard to write, so any constructive, non-flame comments would be much appreciated. Hopefully, it was alright to read. Action and this kind of drama are very tricky for me, so hopefully it had a ring of believability and was interesting. I’ve known I wanted it to end like this for Ayami since shortly after starting this monster of a story, but I’m still not entirely pleased with how it reads.
Ayami’s er-issues and insanity have been hinted at, but I wanted to go into the whys a bit and have it be her final downfall. She’s in many ways a tragic figure, to me at least. But we aren’t done yet. Many loose ends are left, and those do get addressed later. Thanks so very much for reading!-Namiyo
Recap: The Panthers have been broken, and Tohan returns to her lands alone. Ayami summons her Dokueki. The Inutaisho are together again and united, the Swords of the Fang, much improved, restored to their owners. What happens now? Who will win? Read on!
**Ok, a warning here! Mature subject matter and adult themes and violence. Again, the story’s about to earn it’s rating. So please be aware of the chapter content.**
No, I do not own, nor do I make money from Inuyasha or related characters. Kokuzoku and the Dokueki are mine, as are Yotogi and the Hamayami.
Ayami hid, sniffing. No Kirara. No Kirara! She needed all of them, damn it! All of them had to be sacrificed to restore Naraku. The Panthers, the ones who’d been loyal, in any case-had been clear on that point. Everyone who had caused the death of the one slain had to be used. Without the neko...there was no bringing him back from the afterworld, nor could she make even herself believe she’d have another chance. So, she would do this. Wait, and help his children avenge him...and follow after, to be with him in the afterworld. She was alone, and it scared her. But Ayami promised herself that if no one else, one of them would die under her claws. The hanyou bitch Kagome.
The tragedy, though, was that it wasn’t Ayami’s first error.
She was correct in the requirements of the ritual of restoration. But she was wrong in one thing. Samiyousho had watched-but had not seen what was needed that day last year. The people who hunted her now weren’t the ones who had truly killed Naraku. To raise someone in this method, you needed a soul...his had been devoured by a thousand youkai. She would truly never see him again, even in the other world.
***
“I don’t smell her.”
They had to find her. It was a race, now, with an unknown number of Dokueki loose, ones she could control. They quartered the Temple, hunting. With the wards gone, an easy enough task, if a cautious one. Just destroying the place was a bad idea, they had to know she was dead. Naraku had taught them all that, if it was a needed lesson...if you didn’t see her die-you couldn’t be certain.
“I don’t either. You three sense her?” Inuyasha scowled up at Kagome, worry in his eyes. His packmate was keeping to the rafters, sniffing and her bow ready to provide cover as Sesshomaru had taught her. An archer worked best from a distance, after all. Sango had found Hiraikotsu, and Miroku again had his staff. Tossed in a room with a pile of other things...including Kokuzoku’s swords. Meaning he too was likely here. With nothing to lose now. She had killed his pack. Sweet Kami, he didn’t want to think about that one...
“The wards shattering has left this place covered in residue. She’s masked,” Miroku answered. All three of them were weary from the effort of shielding Kagome, but kept at it, trying to see where the wolf was.
“I’m going ahead,” Kagome said, pushing into another hall as they hunted, separating as they spread out to go faster. Ayame had to die, and now.
Kill her-and they could leave, then deal with the Dokueki safely enough with some breathing room. But she had to die, because when she did-Naraku’s threat would truly be ended. The monk could almost pity her. If he’d known more of what had happened to her, well-he would pity the wolf in truth.
They all would.
***
Over two years before.
“Let me go!!” a tied up Ayami screamed as she was carried aloft by a large feather.
“No. Naraku has ordered you brought here. Stop screaming, it won’t help!” Kagura snapped, she was getting a headache.
She was brought down into a ruined keep stinking of death, and thrown into a locked and shielded room. No getting out. Crying, injured, Ayami lay on the floor, wishing and hoping for someone, anyone, to come save her. Kouga. Even his odd hanyou rival! She was alone, though...and held by Naraku.
Because of Kagome. A mortal girl! He’d left her for a mortal girl. The wolf knew Kouga remembered his promise, to marry her when she returned from the mountains. But-he lied. Said he didn’t. Huddled on the wooden floor, she tried to plan. To think. It was all been going well! She’d found a jewel shard...and had been trying to practice seeing it as the mortal could. But instead it had drawn Naraku.
They left her there for a month. Fed, seen to, but left alone. Strictly alone. Wolves were never meant to be all alone, especially not ones in packs...
By the time they brought her before Naraku at last, she was not the girl she’d been. That day, Naraku had explained she might be of use to him as the very shard she’d been using to practice, now dark with stored misery, had been pressed into her neck. Ayami belonged to him now, she was told. Kagura looked on her with pity as she stood next to Kohaku and Kanna in what passed for Naraku’s court. She knew what that meant.
Ayami was his servant now, she was told, and her education began. When she helped him kill her own Grandfather months later, a passenger in her own body. But unlike Kohaku, she was made to remember both that and the outcasting called on her for the betrayal of her tribe. With that, her training was completed. She was nothing but his creature by then, the death-blow given to the wolf who was...and she was one of his servants, set to use her abilities to hunt for the shards like the others.
But Kagura was killed for her betrayals, Kanna proved unreliable and was reabsorbed, and Naraku simply decided he needed the shard he used on the wolf for other purposes. The ambitious program of self-improvement he’d embarked on required more of the jewel each time just to keep his disparate parts under control. He had been betrayed by his own children now, and he did not trust anyone fully in any case. Ayami was a possible liability.
Naraku considered. The answer was both simple and amusing. It seemed the most effective and simple way to deal with the matter. So, he summoned her into his private chambers the night Kanna again became a formless part of him. Kohaku escorted her in silently, and bowed himself out.
“Ayami,” Naraku gestured, toying with a broken mirror. Ayami sat at his feet, thinking it no more than one of his lessons. There were times he would speak to her like this, teaching her what she needed to be useful to him as a servant. She had come to cling to those times, to the illusion she had status still.
“My Lord?” she asked, looking up curiously. He took her chin in his hand, and nodded to himself. Young. Healthy. Some skill in combat and hunting. Not displeasing, he supposed, though it would be easier if her hair was black.
“I have made a decision. You will have a singular honor. I will take you to wife, Ayami, using youkai custom. Undress, and we shall begin. By dawn, you shall be mine forever. Does this please you?” Naraku asked curiously, eyes thoughtful as he looked at her with the measuring gaze of a prospective buyer of perhaps...a good horse.
“My Lord! I will never do other than please you! Thank you!!” she’d wept with joy, and Naraku had sighed to himself. He rose, taking her hand and leading her to the sleeping mat.
She might be entertaining, he supposed, he had taken no woman since he transformed himself from the mere bandit he had been into a greater power. It should be interesting, yes, but he made quite sure it was dark. Naraku discovered he was thinking of another to get through it, imagining her under his hands as he bedded a woman he didn’t care for, one he merely wished to bind to him. And the name he moaned at the height of passion in the darkened chamber cut his shivering, awkward ‘bride’ like a sword.
“Kikyou!”
Inuyasha wasn’t the only one Urusue had sent into a certain introspection with her revival of Kikyou. Naraku had loved the Priestess as well-in a different, twisted way. He’d made his pact to obtain her for himself, after all, not just power, and then she had betrayed him with the hanyou. Killing her had been sweet, but too swift an ending...he was left with only his power. Now, he also had a new toy, who knew she was a toy, yet obeyed regardless.
Then there was the outfits he’d bidden her to don whenever he’d summoned her to his bed afterwards. He was with her, Ayami, yet wanted others, and it destroyed her. She was the one he claimed and his spider mark was set on her throat...she was his mate, and yet he’d wanted others! Ayami hated them-and the implications, more than anything else. Wolves looked only to one that way.
One outfit, his favorite, was a white haori and scarlet hakama. The other, worn every once in a while-was a short green skirt and an odd fitting white top, copied from a strange mortal girl. Even when the girl in question had outgrown it. Ayami had often wore them when she played at being Kikyou to please him...or Kagome.
***
Ayami hid in the eaves, waiting for her chance and her Dokueki, nerves taunt and mind shattering slowly under her rage and grief, the strain of so much lost...and dared peer into the halls to see them. She saw her slipping lightly along the rafters, bow in hand as she scouted ahead of her packmates. She saw it.
Short green skirt. Sailor top. Not only was she here, and had again ruined Ayami‘s dreams...she was dressed in those. Damned. Clothes!
‘Ayami. You will be Kagome tonight, I think...’ Ayami’s eyes blazed. She’d stolen Kouga. Naraku too, in a way. Even the hanyou panted at her heels...she could smell her-and all of the pain of months and years blended into one mindless act at the sight of those hated clothes, triggering something deeper than madness, deeper then anger. Ayami snapped.
“YOU BITCH! YOU WHORE!” Before anyone could react to the scream-she leapt at her!
“DIE!” Kagome screamed. This was not a fight with mighty weapons and inborn powers, in the eerily beautiful manner of normal youkai combat. It was claws and fangs, bestial.
“You stole them! Be Kagome! Be Kagome! Always he wanted you in his arms, never me! Naraku wanted you!” Ayami screamed, claws lashing right for her opponents eyes as they fell off the rafters, landing hard as Kagome tried to hold her off!
“You murderous bitch!” Kagome returned the favor as she desperately tried to grasp the wolf’s wrists and the pair rolled, snarling. Bad, and the hanyou felt something stir as the Hamayami slid from her grasp...as claws slammed into her belly...Ayami, enraged, was too strong for her...
“n-no...” a soft moan as she felt her control slip...as something rose...as claws slashed and blood flowed...
They reached her too late. Far too late. That part of the brothers attuned to ‘Kagome’ changed...and suddenly the screams changed in pitch, rising to something horrible...and stopped. There was a series of inhuman snarls...
What they saw when they reached her mere moments later filled them with horror.
A figure in rags and covered in blood was rending her kill, enjoying it, free at last. She looked up-and it was not Kagome. Kagome’s hanyou form was a version of Inuyasha’s, a copy from the same template. But now she was a version of someone Inuyasha himself had only seen reflected in a magical mirror. Green stripes. Red eyes. Elongated claws. A green arrowhead mark on her forehead, as she was a Clanmate as well as a youkai, a full one. A tongue licked her longer fangs, and there wasn’t a trace of Kagome in that face now...only madness. The limp, lifeless form she had shredded was tossed aside. It was barely recognizable as a wolf girl...
“Sesshomaru! You must bind her,” Kaede snapped and he ignored her, well aware of the problem. She would kill them if any approached. Bind yes, but the question was what came after. Kagome was not born an Inu. All of them had feared this day and worried that if she transformed, there might not be a hanyou to summon back. He was her pack leader, and that mark on her forehead might be her only hope...the symbol of a noble born youkai.
She growled and slid away, eyeing her opponents. What ruled her had no desire but to kill again, to feel the sweet flow of blood...Sesshomaru knew exactly what to do. A glance at Inuyasha was all that was needed. They were pack now, this was a hunt...and his packsecond, wanting to die inside, understood. She’d done this for him as well, more than once. They had to either get the bow to her hands, or bring her down. At bay, she crouched, watching them all and snarling as they stayed still and alert. Anything could trigger an attack. Stalemate.
“Kagome! Damn it, come back to me!” Inuyasha yelled, and she growled, leaping! He grabbed her wrists as they slid, his eyes huge at the expression there. “Kagome...stop...” he pleaded, staring into empty, murderous eyes. Her claws flamed as she struggled, but she was forced onto her back, her knees shoving upwards to force him off her as she snapped and growled. Inuyasha grimly held her, seeing her blood seeping into his firerat. He was her packsecond, stronger...but he couldn’t harm her. Even her youkai knew it.
“ENOUGH! SHOW THROAT!” his brother’s thunderous order made her scream defiance. Kagome struggled like a mad thing, her neck visibly straining against the order. But her pack leader gripped her throat in dominance when Inuyasha forced her to be still.
To their relief, she went limp in submission. Kagome was pack, not an outcast, and both sides of her nature had long since accepted Sesshomaru and Inuyasha as the only beings in the world she showed throat to. She could not, even as a full youkai, defy them both. The red eyes flicked brown for an instant...and she fainted. It was Sango who placed the Hamayami into her hand and closed it on the youkai wood. Sesshomaru, to his brother’s unsurprise, laid his hand on her hair gently for a moment as a tiny sound escaped her lips. They looked at each other.
“Your clothing,” Sesshomaru said, she was all but nude, as though the dead wolf had aimed as much at her garments as at Kagome herself.
Inuyasha wrapped her in his firerat, and she barely stirred as his scent comforted Kagome when it was wrapped around her fragile seeming frame. Inuyasha carefully picked her up, the tajiya helping him keep the bow in place as he cradled her. The bow visibly pulsed.
The hateful stripes...the forehead mark...they faded as her claws shortened. Inuyasha held his hanyou beloved again, not the monster that preserved her life at such cost. Badly shaken, he held her tight.
“Leave this place, and attend to her,” Sesshomaru ordered and seeing his face, they nodded.
“We’ll have to go around the near border of Inu territory, Sesshomaru. And-the center post of the Sanctuary controls the old cell magics. That has to be destroyed to break the place,” Sango told him in warning, knowing he planned to follow when the Sanctuary was ruined.
“Understood,” he gestured for them to leave. They gathered her up and left, Hochi transforming outside. Inuyasha kept her carefully tucked into his arms as she slipped into exhausted sleep. He looked back over his shoulder once as they flew away.
***
Sesshomaru didn’t watch them go. He had things to attend to. Like a traitor. Who he found in his cell.
“Let me out!”
“No, Kokuzoku. A fitting end, I think,” Sesshomaru answered, and the traitor snarled.
“I’ll get out! And I’ll kill her as I did those bitches who bore you, you spoiled human-loving brats!!” Sesshomaru paused as Kokuzoku raged. The former Lord was throwing himself at the door, eyes maddened, after the loss of his pack he had nothing now...nothing to live for, and nothing to lose.
“Indeed?”
“Let me out, and prove that vaunted Inutaisho strength! Kumori-she screamed like a coward when the arrow struck, and Izayoi! The poison...it burned her insides into nothing, but it didn’t take the hanyou whelp...Kagome will pay too...” Kokuzoku hissed, eyes blazing with the need to avenge his pack. Sesshomaru wondered. Arrows? Poison? Lady Kumori died in battle, a stray arrow...and Izayoi of fever...hadn’t they?
“You dare...” Sesshomaru turned, and walked to the doorway. A hand did not touch the ropes...but he smiled slowly as his hand hovered close to them.
“I killed your Mother and helped lead your Father to his death, Sesshomaru. Let me out to settle it...” Kokuzoku whispered, clothes torn by his own claws, eyes cold with madness.
“Why? I need not have a door open to finish it. As she would say, why allow an opponent an opening?” he said. Then his claws spit poison into the cell. He impassively watched Kokuzoku die before he left.
Moments later he stood in the main sanctuary, considered, and smiled to himself. He transformed into a full Inu and dealt with the place. Even three legged...it wasn’t hard.
He flew out soon after, leaving nothing but melted, flaming remnants.
Author’s Notes-Well. Ding dong the villain's dead! Anyways. A few notes. This chapter was very, very hard to write, so any constructive, non-flame comments would be much appreciated. Hopefully, it was alright to read. Action and this kind of drama are very tricky for me, so hopefully it had a ring of believability and was interesting. I’ve known I wanted it to end like this for Ayami since shortly after starting this monster of a story, but I’m still not entirely pleased with how it reads.
Ayami’s er-issues and insanity have been hinted at, but I wanted to go into the whys a bit and have it be her final downfall. She’s in many ways a tragic figure, to me at least. But we aren’t done yet. Many loose ends are left, and those do get addressed later. Thanks so very much for reading!-Namiyo