InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Divided Loyalty, Demonic Love ❯ In Catastrophe ( Chapter 2 )

Divided Loyalty, Demonic Love

By c2t2

Part: 2/(?)

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha; but I DO have a big white dog with fluffy ears, and I tweak them all the time. Korisu (a.k.a cannon fodder) belongs to me… what's left of her, anyway.

Chapter Summary: The girls' Zen getaway turns into the vacation from hell.

Warning(s): Abrupt changes of mood may lead to whiplash.

 

ANs:

Apologies for the delay. The past few months have included my moving across the country, a lengthy hospital stay, and the temporary loss of yet another computer.

 

As a humor specialist, I was experimenting with action/suspense sequences in this chapter. But old habits die hard, and a certain amount of my old genre managed to sneak in.

 

Please enjoy!

 

 

 

Chapter 2: In Catastrophe

 

500 years in the past…

 

Under Goshinboku, Inuyasha's nearly-identical scent was lost to her human senses.

Kagome tried to ignore the bone-deep cold as the leafy boughs above snared any heat from the sickly beams of sunlight. Brief warmth replaced the now-perpetual cold as the enchanted haori was shed from his body and gently wrapped around her shivering, rail-thin form.

 

“What did you want to talk about out here?” her voice was hoarse as she resisted the urge to cough. But recently, it always was.

 

The emotions shifting through his golden eyes were too numerous to name.

 

Inuyasha shifted his gaze to something behind her. Although he was absolutely silent, she could feel the presence at her back. They were both here, it seemed.

 

“Kagome…” Inuyasha whispered, and he briefly pressed a soft kiss to her lips as she closed her eyes to savor the moment. When he drew back, she saw grief in the lines of his face and swirling through those expressive eyes.

 

She knew that they grieved. But now, even though it had been far too short, here, in the end, she was happy.

 

“Kagome,” he pulled out of their embrace, anguish roughening his voice, “Live.”

 

And then he tore her world apart.

 

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

 

Present day…

 

The honk of an automobile horn startled Kagome out of her memory and drew an enormous yawn from Ash. She hastily blinked away the pooling tears and thrust the garment in her hands back into its box and took it along, unable to leave it behind. Ash sleepily climbed to his feet and padded after her as she hoisted the heavy pack on her shoulders.

 

SQUANK! SQUAAANK!

 

Was that what they were going to try to drive into the mountains? With extreme reluctance, Kagome eased out the front door, coming perilously close to walking to the well before adjusting her trajectory and forcing herself down the shrine steps to the vaguely car-shaped pile of rust waiting below.

 

SQUANK!

 

That was the most annoying car horn Kagome had ever heard.

 

OOOOOGA-OOOOGA!

 

And apparently it could make more than one sound. Joy.

 

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

 

Ayumi's cousin was insane.

 

Her name was Korisu. She took corners on two wheels, ran stoplights, (SQUANK!) and nearly played chicken with a wide-load semi (OOOOGA!). All while working the obnoxious horn more or less like a clutch. That was before she even entered the mountains.

 

Zen simplicity had apparently been thrown out the window, as the car was stuffed to bursting with anything and everything the other girls thought they might need over the weekend. Kagome would not have been surprised to find the clichéd kitchen sink when they unloaded at the resort. At this point, she wouldn't be surprised to find the cliché itself hidden in the trunk. Kagome distracted herself for a minute trying to imagine what a cliché would look like. Probably shiny.

 

Anything, anything to distract herself from the car… teetering on the very edge of a sheer cliff, on a crumbling road slick from several days of rain. Kagome realized she was giggling slightly hysterically. Ayumi was crying, and Korisu was assuring her that she was `practically a professional driver'. Kagome hurriedly nudged Ayumi and whispered that Korisu, trying to calm Ayumi, kept taking her eyes off the shameful excuse for a road.

 

Ayumi stopped crying. From her downturned face only Kagome and Yuka on either side of her could see the light of grim desperation that allowed for such a feat of willpower. Eri was white-faced, white-knuckled, and silent in the front seat, following the map. Ash whimpered and tried to crawl from the floor into Kagome's lap like he was still a tiny puppy.

 

“Okay, after this pass, our destination should be this next peak.” Eri was the most iron-willed of the other girls, since no one knew of Kagome's experiences, and she didn't offer to trade places. Road maps confused her anyway.

 

Oh god, they were all going to die.

 

“We're through the last pass, now just down the other side and up toward that peak…” Eri's voice was unnaturally steady as Korisu gunned the engine and sped down the twisting slope. (SQUAAAANK!)

 

Kagome didn't particularly want to die, so she couldn't help herself, “Careful, it's been raining!”

 

“So you're afraid we'll get stuck in the mud? Isn't that a reason to go fast anyway?” Korisu briefly flashed a manic grin back at Kagome revealing cigarette-stained teeth and eyes that were slightly too glassy which heightened Kagome's unease. In another situation, Korisu would be … interesting. But right now Kagome just wanted to tear the girl's wavy hair out.

 

Korisu was still turned to look at the back seat when the girls all felt a sickening lurch. The car began to slide… and then to skid.

 

The ancient, battered vehicle spun out of control on the wet stone slick from rain. Every girl in the car shrieked at the top of her lungs and Ash howled as they barreled forward toward another sharp curve in the road, which appeared to drop off into a bottomless abyss.

 

Skidding sideways, the car slid at an angle toward the edge, gritty sand scraping futilely beneath the tires, and just before giving up all hope, there was a jarring crunch and they shuddered to a halt. Kagome peeked out between her fingers and saw a dizzying drop below her. After a panicked moment, she realized that there was a smallish, skeletal sapling that they had (understandably) failed to notice growing from the six inches of space between “Road” and “Abyss.” They had slid into it and knocked it loose. One end was presumably under the car, the other was caught in a fork of a pine that had been hidden by the edge of the road. Due to the angle, both of the passenger-side doors opened on the road, although the front one just barely. The driver's side was suspended over god knew what.

 

“Phew! Thank kami-sama the tree was there, or we would be at the bottom of that thing,” Korisu said almost cheerfully. She cut the engine, and then in the silence…

 

Creak.

 

…

 

“Oh. My. God. EverybodyGetOutRightNow!” she shrieked.

 

“Yasha!” Kagome lapsed while calling his name, and followed it with a sharp gesture. Ash, not needing to be told twice, quickly leapt over the girls and out the open window. Yuka quickly opened the door and followed. Ayumi was panicking, staring blankly as Kagome frantically unbuckled the poor girl and shoved her toward the door, calling Ash, who, showing intelligence almost beyond canine, clamped his jaws around Ayumi's jacket when Kagome opened the door and helped drag the girl out of the car, Kagome hot on her heels.

 

The back seat safely evacuated, Kagome realized Eri, who had braved the most terrifying views to navigate all through the trip, had reached her limit, and was shaking too hard to unbuckle herself. The car was now jolting from the slow collapse of the tree keeping the front end suspended. Apparently, even though the large sapling wasn't about to break, the split pine it rested on was slowly tearing out of the rotten stone by the roots. Korisu reached over to the passenger side, nearest to the cliff and unbuckled Eri, opening the door and shoving her out, where Kagome barely kept the girl from staggering over the edge. At that moment the tree gave its most ominous groan yet, and Kagome realized their mistake.

 

The weight of the car had been distributed evenly, but now the weight not in the trunk was in the corner of the car furthest from safety.

 

Korisu met the others' eyes, and they all realized at the same moment that she wasn't going to make it. The car tipped over the cliff; the last thing they saw before the drop was her expression of shock shading rapidly to terror.

 

In the silent eternity watching the car fall, leisurely spinning in the air, reality ceased to exist for those few endless moments. Then the rear bumper touched the ground. The car seemed to stand perfectly still for a single moment… then it crumpled like an accordion, windshield facing the sky.

 

It had landed not too far below, on the very road they had been driving. After another sharp switchback, they would probably have been driving over it right then, were it not for this.

 

The junior-high friends followed Kagome's lead as she rushed down the road and back to the crash site to try and figure out how to get Korisu out of the wreckage without slashing her to ribbons on broken glass.

 

Kagome's mind was working at hyperspeed as she carefully picked her way toward the driver's side door. What would her friends from the Sengoku Jidai do? Miroku would grope all her friends, which probably wouldn't help right now. Inuyasha would use his claws and superhuman strength to tear a hole in the metal roof of the car… well, that wasn't happening. But what if it turned out Korisu couldn't be moved? Then he would use his superhuman powers to sniff out the nearest occupied residence and bring back help…

 

Well, they lacked youkai powers to find help in the most expedient way possible, but they had the next closest thing: a world-class endurance runner with honed navigational skills, and Ash's sense of smell. Since the others seemed uninjured and she could hear some kind of trickling water nearby…

 

After taking quick inventory: sweatshirt, mostly-full water bottle in sweatshirt pocket, serviceable shoes, still some time until sunset… Kagome nodded sharply. “I'm going to find help, so don't move,” she ordered her friends, “stay together no matter what, and see if there's anything you can salvage from the wreck without cutting yourselves up. If Korisu wakes up and calls out, let her know that help is on the way.” With that, Kagome took off down the road they'd been following, Ash trotting at her heels. She knew there was absolutely nothing for an hour's suicidally-fast drive in the other direction. Now she would just hope to find a residence, or an emergency phone, or…

 

There came another, even more ominous groaning. This was no creak of falling trees, it seemed to come from the mountain itself. For a split second there was a sound like a thousand muffled explosions. Then, unceremoniously, the road caved in.

 

The mountain collapsed beneath their feet. Kagome watched in horror as her friends, finding themselves suddenly weightless, disappeared from sight. There was an ear-rending crunch, and a cloud of dust bloomed so thick Kagome couldn't see her friends at all for a minute, only hear their coughing. When the dust cleared, the first thing Kagome saw was the underside of the car now pointing toward the sky. As Kagome scrambled to the edge in a panic, she realized they had apparently broken into some kind of small cavern.

 

Without thinking twice, she dropped to her knees and threw her arms around Ash, burying her face in the fur of his shoulder. “Yasha, I need you to go find help. Please hurry!” she whispered into his silver-white fur. When she loosened her embrace Ash turned and trotted off, giving her a final golden-eyed glance over his shoulder before disappearing around another turn.

 

Kagome lowered herself to her belly on the edge of the collapsed cavern and dangled from the edge, convincing herself to drop the last of the distance.

 

`It's only slightly more than your body height,' she reminded herself, forcing her fingers to relax and bracing for the impact. `Now drop! …tucking your shoulder and rolling… ow, dammit!' a large fragment of broken glass embedded itself into her shoulder as she tumbled across the cavern floor to absorb the impact, she unthinkingly reached up and yanked out the shard, surprised as she felt the warm gush of blood. `You're now bleeding severely. Well done Kagome.'

 

She banished the sarcastic self-deprecation and focused on the scene. First aid training took over and she assessed the damage to her friends. Eri had suffered a relatively minor head wound. Yuka was cradling her foot and looked intensely pained. Ayumi had broken both arms, probably trying to stiff-arm her landing, although not compound fractures from what Kagome could see where she lay.

 

She then approached the twisted heap of crumpled metal that had recently been a car and dropped to her knees beside it. “Korisu?” her voice was barely above a whisper, not really expecting an answer.

 

“Guys? I… think I'm hurt pretty bad.”

 

A curious mix of relief and distress flooded her thoughts only to be quickly replaced by a cold, aching, mass of guilt forming an enormous anvil of pressure on Kagome's conscience that pushed.

 

`Someone is going to die because we needed a car!'

 

Kagome made a decision. But it was her only choice, really.

 

She used the hole the glass had left in her sleeve to tear the rest of it off and tie it tightly around her shoulder as a makeshift bandage. Without missing a beat, she scooted over to the car, avoiding broken glass as best she could. She didn't see Korisu, but…

 

Kagome gave a gasp of surprised relief when she saw the small box she had held this morning within easy reach. She yanked it out with some effort and released the heavy, fire-red haori from its imprisonment, wrapping it around herself with a shiver of memory and longing.

 

In general Kagome tried to take it out and touch it as little as possible. She wanted the scent on it to never fade. It seemed like it never would, but Kagome took no chances.

But right now she needed it to protect her from the razor-sharp splinters of glass that clung to the windows and scattered across the ground around her, sunlight glinting off them like a field of stars.

 

Kagome closed her eyes for a moment and indulged in breathing the fragrance, so much like the tree that she had known since childhood, for a few moments before once again facing the present.

 

The scent had been so soothing when she had first met Inuyasha, and had almost certainly bolstered her patience with him and tolerance of his antics. At first she had assumed that it was because he spent so much time in Goshinboku's branches, but after a while, she realized that even if they didn't go anywhere near Edo for weeks, he still smelled astonishingly like the Sacred Tree. For a long time she had thought the cloth of the fire rat had been pressed against Goshinboku for so many decades that it had permanently incorporated the scent into its fibers.

 

But the first time she was close to Inuyasha when he wasn't wearing his clothing, Kagome discovered that she had been wrong. The Tree of Time had somehow become a part of his very skin.

 

“Um, Kagome, are you okay?” one of her friends queried from across the clearing.

 

After opening her eyes and forcing the blush down as far as she could, Kagome, using the red garment to protect herself from the ubiquitous shards of glass, sparkling like a thousand diamonds in the sunlight, reached as far into the window as she could, cringing as her full weight bore down on the jagged edges. The glass couldn't cut through the enchanted fabric, but it was horrifically uncomfortable nonetheless.

 

“Hang on in there, I'm coming in,” she spoke to Korisu, reaching as far as she could into the passenger side, since the driver's side was up against the stone wall, and she didn't dare try and move the wreckage. She tried to feel for any part of Korisu, still speaking in soothing tones.

 

“I can help you but only if I can get some form of skin to skin contact.” Eureka! She felt cloth that was not blanket material, and it was warm. “Korisu? What am I touching?”

 

“That's the middle of my back,”

 

Shit. Kagome couldn't reach any other part of her, and the middle of the back wouldn't have any bare skin near it. Kagome, with a brief apology used a shard of glass to cut a hole in Korisu's shirt. Of course she also sliced into the body underneath, but that couldn't be helped. Kagome felt that the other girl only twitched, not jumped. That was not a good sign.

 

She closed her eyes and concentrated, but even without seeing she knew she had begun to glow as she slipped one finger into the trapped girl's shirt, and a moment later sighed when a soft blue lit up the car, and she poured her healing energy in.

 

After a moment she heard a slightly stronger voice, “What are you doing? No, I can tell what you're doing, but how are you doing it?” Kagome could hear surprise, awe, gratitude... but no fear, which is what Kagome had hoped to avoid. Then again this was Korisu, and she was insane. Hopefully her friends would allow her to help them before screaming and running away.

 

“That's a long, complicated story,” she answered Korisu's question. She paused for a moment, the drain on her energy making her head spin and her stomach twist nauseatingly. When she had used all the power she dared, she eased out the window with a sigh of relief turned and with a sinking heart saw her friends giving her wary and distrustful looks.

 

“What are you, some kind of youkai?”

 

Kagome felt the corners of her mouth twitch into the beginnings of a hysterical grin as her eyes filled with tears. `Don't break down, Kags, you're the only one here who's gone through worse... multiple times, even! If you crack, there's no way they're going to hold themselves together, and we'll all die.' Pushing herself off of the support of the wrecked car, Kagome straightened, “No. I am one hundred percent human, and that's not important right now,” she said while studying her friends. She had dealt with the worst-off, who was second?

 

Eri looked faint, she was losing too much blood. Kagome walked over to her and placed her hands on Eri's. Eri didn't cringe away, but it seemed she was barely hanging onto consciousness anyway. The blue glow spread from her fingertips and in a few long minutes the lacerations closed as if they never existed.

 

It would have been much faster except Korisu had drained the majority of her energy. She had just poured in energy without giving it specific direction, largely because she had no idea the nature or extent of the injuries, and the energy would naturally be directed by Korisu's body to healing the most life-threatening problem first. She had also done it because there was no point in giving direction to repair specific damage if pretty much everything was damaged anyway. Kagome was sure that every speck of power would be used to help heal something, none going to waste. The only question was whether she had bought Korisu enough time for them to be found in time to save her.

 

After examining her other two friends, Kagome looked at the still-nearly-panicking Ayumi with an apologetic half-grin. “Sorry hon, I can't just heal broken bones, I can hasten the healing, but I'll have to set them first, or they'll heal wrong. After thinking on it for a while, she used the straightest branches of the collapsed tree and sapling that she could find as splints, thanking the gods when she realized that the base of the larger tree was still above ground. If she could climb it and if it could hold her weight, there was still an escape possibility left.

 

She addressed the last of the group, “I'm sorry, I can't help you Yuka. Bones were definitely crushed in your foot and you probably need surgery as soon as possible. Speeding the healing is the worst thing I could do.” Yuka nodded.

Kagome sighed and leaned against a particularly comfy-looking rock. She was so, so tired. She just needed to rest for a moment…

 

Sleepy.

 

“Hey, the sun's going down,” Yuka pointed out, “It's getting dark, and it's going to get cold.”

 

“Any chance getting the trunk open to get to our stuff?” Eri addressed Kagome.

 

“The trunk is now in the back seat.” Her remark probably came off more foul-tempered than she had intended, and it was true that she was the only one that had been close enough to the wreck to tell for sure. Her head felt like it was stuffed full of steel wool and her stomach begged to empty itself on the ground in front of her.

 

“Well, any chance of getting the back seat open?” Eri replied gamely.

 

“Not unless we get a crowbar, and the only even vaguely possible candidates for crowbars are being splints. And before you think it, Ayumi, they would most definitely fail, and then we'd have neither crowbar nor splint. So unless someone else has superpowers they've been hiding, we're out of luck.” After a few seconds of silence Kagome sighed, trying to shake her mind clear of the dark shadows stealthily wrapping around it “I can see whether I can salvage anything from where I crawled in to heal Korisu… Just don't follow me, the entire thing's covered in broken glass and I don't want to heal any of you again.” Kagome rested her forehead on her knees for a moment, exhausted.

 

“Won't you get cut?” Yuka asked.

 

“Mm,” Kagome mumbled, “there really isn't any other option.”

 

“We could try collecting all the shards.”

 

Kagome gave an abrupt snicker. Yes, shard hunting! What could possibly go wrong?

 

“Yeah, I bet if we find … shards … keep them safe…”

 

“…nobody else will get hurt!”

 

Kagome was drifting on a sea of whirlpools as she felt her thoughts shut down, dissolve, and vaporize. The nonsense voices were coming from so far away…

 

“Kagome? Kagome, come on! We need you to help us find the shards! You can see them best out of all of us, you know.”

 

Everything drifted away.

 

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

 

She woke up slowly. `Oh thank god it was all just a dream.' Although when she thought about it, passing out from overexertion really wasn't any better.

 

“Kagome,” Eri's voice cut in, “it's almost too dark to see the glass, but we got most of it while you were asleep.”

 

Oh please no.

 

“You sure were sleepin',” Ayumi sounded rueful, This was the first time Ayumi had spoken since the accident that Kagome could recall, and was relieved that she was at least attempting to be herself. There was a strained quality to her voice that worried her, but there was nothing she could do about it at the present. Ayumi continued, “I kept yelling at ya before I knew you were asleep, but you didn't even move!”

 

So how much of that was a dream, anyway? Before Kagome could panic Yuka spoke. “Anyway, now there's just the glass left connected to the frame that'll slice ya up.” Kagome wondered if she was deliberately parroting Ayumi's speech patterns before getting to the task at hand. She squeezed into the window as best as she could and started to yank on random objects, seeing if any came loose. After about fifteen minutes she had managed to liberate a cooler and three travel-blankets. The cooler contained five sandwiches, two bottles of water, and three wine coolers. Kagome immediately gave the first wine cooler to Ayumi, stowing everything else back in the cooler except the two bottles of water. She drew her own water canteen from her sweatshirt pouch and placed it next to them. At this point Kagome realized she had automatically taken control of the situation, and her friends had let her. They must still have some kind of trust in her… or they were in such dire straits that they would accept a leader they did not trust. Either way, she didn't have to worry about them fearing her for a while yet, anyway.

 

“Where are the other two blankets?” Ayumi asked, interrupting her thoughts.

 

“Squished up against me,” came Korisu's muffled voice.

 

“Oh good! Well, what do we do now… tell ghost stories?” the alcohol was definitely having some effect on Ayumi. At least she didn't seem on the edge of a breakdown anymore.

 

“Telling stories sounds like a good idea, and we've got a couple of bottles of water,” Yuka said contemplatively.

 

“Kagome!”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Maybe you could tell us what th' hell you were up to in junior high!” Ayumi had definitely started to slur slightly.

 

Yuka and Eri quickly shushed her before glancing guiltily at Kagome.

 

Kagome tried to play it off, “Ha! Junior high was just a string of illness after illness and one hospital after another. Booo-riiing.” Suddenly an idea struck her, “But… I'm good at making up fairy tales! That's what I did to pass the time, I made up a huge fairy tale story. It's an adventure story and a love story. This is the story of romance and danger, of royalty and magic, of good and evil, five hundred years in the past…

 

She began:

 

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

 

“Take me back, Kirara,” Kagome muttered angrily, jumping on the cat-demon's back and zoning out as she took to the sky. She rubbed Kirara's ears absently, and felt a purr rumble through the demon's feline body.

 

Kagome was relieved to be finally going home at last. This had been one of the most insane series of events that had ever happened to her, which was especially impressive considering how her life had been one chaotic mess after another since Centipede Jourou had emerged from the well and dragged her five hundred years into the past, into the Sengoku Jidai.

 

Their group had entered a village decimated by wolves. A fight with a lethally fast demon, a kidnapping, a declaration of love, and a battle later, and Kagome was still trying to sort it all out.

 

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

 

“Whoa! What?” Ayumi gasped.

 

“Er,” Kagome stumbled, train of thought derailed. Maybe that had been a bad place to start? Well, it was a good story… There was absolutely no way she was going to start all the way back to Centipede Jourou, but she could back up a little. Should she start with the kidnapping? No, wait, better back up just a little bit further…

 

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

 

The air was thick with the smell of blood. The shard hunters ran into the village and froze, horrified at the sight of an enormous wolf pack devouring the poor villagers with abandon. How was this possible? Wolves didn't prey on humans! How…

 

The wolves had noticed them.

 

In moments they were surrounded. The group stood back to back, facing outward at the wolves on all sides. In moments the wolves leapt for their throats, and Kagome only had a moment to panic before a blur of silver and red flashed before them. The score of wolves fell to the ground in a spray of blood and pained howls, the remaining handful backing away and turning tail, running to a small rise before sending up a chorus of howls.

 

The group of shard hunters only had moments to wait until a demonic aura and a whirlwind appeared, racing towards them. Kagome gasped, “Jewel shards, closing in fast!” a moment before the whirlwind reached them.

 

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

 

“Whaaaaaat?” this time it was Eri who interrupted. “Jewel shards?”

 

Kagome sighed in frustration. “I don't know where to start!”

 

“Duh, at the beginning!”

 

“I have no idea where… the beginning? The beginning is at the dawn of time! The story begins at the very birth of the universe!”

 

“Um. Cliff's notes version?”

 

“Er, I can try… I guess?” Kagome said hesitantly.

 

“We've got time.”

 

“Well, okay. You asked for it! Here goes…”

 

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

 

End Chapter

 

Next up: Kagome tries to tell the story from the very beginning, and doesn't get more than a few minutes of her friends' attention spans. Hyper girls, even after high school! Adult ADD I tellya. All of `em.

 

I got some inquiries about the pairing/s, which I hadn't mentioned earlier because the reasoning behind them is really complicated. The short version is that it's looking like pretty much equal parts Kagome/Inuyasha and Kagome/Kouga, (so predictably - if you'll excuse the colloquialism - Aint nobody happy `bout that.) A few other pairings, canon and otherwise, will pop up in the background. Further explanation (along with review responses, chapter notes, and misc stuff) can be found at my fanfic LJ: squizbee (dot) livejournal (dot) com

 

Reviewers earn my eternal gratitude.