InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Facets of the Living Jewel ❯ Et tu, Inuyasha? ( Chapter 69 )

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or the other characters, Ms. Takahashi does.

 

Hi…I'm back. *winces at all the mental messages of “Finally! It's about time!”*

RL kept me away for a long time, plus I had to study theoretical physics, but now I'm concentrating on writing and `Facets' will get done a lot faster. Sorry for the delay!

 

No beta…any mistakes are my own. To the best of my (limited) knowledge, the descriptions used in this chapter are consistent with brane theory. According to the work of Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum, there could be other universes separated from ours by a microscopic distance…something that could be bridged by, say…a Meidou-powered Tessaiga?

 

Fonts:

[Inuyoukai]

(Inuhuman)

`Inuyasha'

 

Et tu, Inuyasha?

By Licentia poetica

 

 

“Aaaah!” Kagome screamed in shock as she was ripped from Inuyasha's arms the moment the normally peaceful time slip opened. For a brief moment she could feel a rapid acceleration as a great force pulled at her, centered on her right hip where she had pocketed the Moonstone, before the tunnel of the time slip began to whip around her as if it was a wind sock battered by a hurricane.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

Kensei gasped and fell to his knees as the time dwelling twisted violently again, nearly wrenching his anchors from his control. The building groaned as the structural supports vibrated as if they were strings plucked by a giant hand. `Gods! What is going on? There is no time variable in the foundations of this building!'

 

“Hayato! There is an object that negates time in Kensei's worm hole!” He could barely hear the panic-filled voice over the eerie, almost human sounding moans of the tortured building as a Time Lord in the blazar's room screamed at his father.

 

Kensei winced against the pain in his head as his anchors vibrated in distorted space time, barely hearing his mother as she cried out,“Hayato! The time variable!”

 

“Sayuri, hang on to me! Hold on to our mind meld, too!” his father yelled.

 

Kensei looked over toward his parents and struggled to bring them into focus in spite of the double vision generated by his splitting headache. `Oh gods, they look warped, as if even the air is—' Kensei stared in horror at his parents as their forms distorted. `It's like some Dali-derived nightmare!' He toppled over as the floor abruptly became a ceiling before it reverted back to proper position; the internal walls of the building vanished completely at the same instant. The blazar pulsed rapidly in the center of his vision, effectively blinding him for a moment before he looked away. He barely registered his parents staggering toward him as his eyes were drawn to a brilliant streak of light arrowing toward the blazar at incredible speed. `What the hell is that? It's coming from the Sengoku Jidai.' At the front of the streak a sphere pushed a shock wave before it and trailed a tail of deformed space-time like a warped comet. As the glowing sphere whipped around the blazar it reversed direction and the abrupt reversal of momentum tugged hard at his anchors; he had to grit his teeth against the pain it caused. `Damn! It's at orbital velocity, but how long until it pulls the worm hole into the blazar?' He blinked against the glare of the blazar as he noticed a thin tracing of light following behind the sphere as it moved toward his anchor in Tokyo. `What in all the hells?' A few moments later he felt the sphere contact with his anchor. `Kagome?'

 

At that exact instant a barely controlled Time Lord's flux penetrated his power and the sphere plunged back toward the blazar; he lost control of the small island of reality left around the modern Shrine of the Well. “Innin!” he screamed in agony, the mental anguish of losing his wife eclipsing the incredible physical pain as the anchor shattered.

 

His father gave a startled yell and he heard his mother scream, but in his grief he did not notice the thin stream of light trailing the sphere, augmenting a faint remnant of light from the first passage. The end of the thin thread was embedded in the splintered remains of his modern anchor.

 

He automatically reinforced the anchor at the Sengoku Jidai as Kagome's sphere vibrated the foundations of the time dwelling again and suddenly became aware of a masculine voice cursing at him. `Inuyasha.' Reeling with mental and physical pain, he focused on the voice to help ground him in reality as the time dwelling warped around him again, but a particularly vitriolic stream of invective made him frown. `A fucking bastard, am I? You little punk!'

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

`Oh gods, not again!' Sota grabbed Mao with one hand and his grandfather with the other as the ground under their feet groaned, lurching and rolling as if a giant, unseen hand was shaking it like a carpet. The Goshinboku's limbs began thrashing in a gale force wind that pummeled the trio, driving Sota to his knees. Grunting with effort, he wrapped his arm around the diminutive nekoyoukai and pulled her close. As she struggled in his grasp, he lost his balance and cried out in surprised pain as a sudden gust slammed his unprotected back into the unforgiving bark of the Goshinboku. He felt his grandfather clutch at the front of his shirt.

 

“Sota!”

 

He could barely hear his grandfather over the shriek of the wind and the howl of the tortured ground. He ignored the pain in his back and reached for the mental links that had saved his little group the first time the world had disintegrated around him. `The Goshinboku….but I don't remember enough about this time line! Will the connection hold?' Anchored by his time powers to the fundamental force of the tree, he squinted through wind-generated tears and sought the fragile strand of reality binding his current timeline to the Shrine of the Well. Portions of the thread vibrated wildly, bending in the grey-black time flux like a plucked string. He pulled his grandfather and Mao closer. `I can barely see it! How do I keep this time intact?'

 

He ignored the cries of horror from his charges as the remnants of his home disintegrated, swallowed by the encroaching grey-black signature of the time flux, and clung desperately to the anchor of the Goshinboku. His desperation increased as his grandfather's body suddenly seemed to grow larger and Mao's petite form shrank. He looked down at her terrified face; her ears had migrated to the top of her head and her eyes had become golden, increasing her resemblance to her former body. `I'm losing this time line!'

 

Mao stared pleadingly at him as her body shrank again in his arms and her face became childlike. `No! I've got to hold on!' Flinging his time powers across the almost invisible bridge to the Shrine, he sought to find an anchor on the other side. He felt a momentary brush with a mind that was so familiar to him that he unconsciously melded to it, immediately continuing his desperate search for something to bind his current reality. `The well…somehow, I've got to find something to hang on to!'

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

Kagome heard Inuyasha yell “Kagome! Gods! Kagome! I can't get through!” but his voice receded so rapidly that she could barely hear the final words.

 

She stopped screaming and tried to calm her rapid breathing as she continued to fall. `He can't get through? Now he's going to be angry and never let me through the well again!' She tried to reach him through a mind meld but gave up almost immediately as the tunnel's circumference shrank abruptly in response, black void eating away at the blue aurora.

 

`Gaah! I can't access him like I did before and if I try to use my time powers in here…what am I going to do?'

 

She tumbled without any perspective of direction for a full minute, much longer than the normal transition through the well, before gasping as she felt the mate connection slam into her consciousness; Inuyasha's aura was permeated with rage and the fear of losing her. The powerful emotions augmented her own feelings and fury began to replace fear as she continued to fall; her body ceased tumbling as she stopped flailing and her speed increased. Dropping like an arrow, she lit the tunnel with the blaze of her houriki as it began to flare with her anger. `Can't I have one day, one momenteven, of peace? I've had enough of being the gods' plaything!'

 

The circumference of the tunnel narrowed around her and the tugging sensation at her hip pulled her closer to the edge of the time slip. The Moonstone!' Digging frantically in her pocket, she struggled to pull the stone out but could not move the insignificant weight against the force of her acceleration. Centrifugal force pulled her around a sudden kink in the worm hole and her vision blurred as blood drained from her head. `What was that flash of light? Did I get hit with something?' She became utterly disoriented and flailed in a desperate attempt right herself as she felt her forward progress slow and the tug on her pocket turn her around so that she was facing the direction from which she had come. `What's happening?'

 

The well of her own time began to form around her and she was suspended in midair facing the dusty floor. She reached out to grab the ladder to stop herself from falling on her face, seeing the scuffed footprints of Inuyasha's bare feet with an odd clarity against the blue glow of the time slip.

 

She had just gripped the bottom rung when a force slammed into her; the solid metal seemed to evaporate beneath her touch and she was forced back into the worm hole.

 

The acceleration was worse than her first trip through, causing her vision to grey out for a moment as the pull, centered on the Moonstone in her hand, began to rip the seams of her pocket. `What?' The inky blackness that she could see through the blue-tinged aura flared to a bright white just as she passed the kink in the worm hole; gravitational forces nearly caused her to black out again. Speechless with confusion and fury, she felt the same odd sense of deceleration as she neared the well in the Sengoku Jidai and Inuyasha's youki began to envelop her. She gasped as the white-hot anger pulsing through him reinforced the mate connection, but she was barely able to register the red of his suikan and the relief in his aura before she began to move backwards again. Suddenly realizing that she was trapped in the time slip, she reached out to him with her mind and voice, screaming “Inuyasha!”

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

“Asshole! You fucking bastard! Let me through!” Inuyasha punched the side of the well in frustration.

 

[She is returning.]

 

`Thank the gods!' Inuyasha reached for Kagome as she began to materialize in the blue coruscations of the time slip, only to snarl as his hands went right through her arms and she disappeared again.

 

“Kagome!” he roared as she screamed his name. Slamming his fist into the side of the well as the sound of her terrified voice faded, he yelled “Damnit, you bastard! Let me through!” He leaped up to the edge of the well and jumped down again, but his second attempt to enter the time slip just repeated the results of the first: a jarring landing in the slightly muddy bottom. “Damn you to all the hells, you bastard! Why won't you let me through?” He bounded out of the well and crouched down to try again.

 

(You called her father a bastard and an asshole, baka!)

 

He slammed his fist into the ground next to the well. “Fuck! She was screaming!” He felt his fangs lengthen as his youki flared, whipping his hair and the long grasses growing from the crannies of the aged wood.

 

[He has closed the portal against us and we can't protect our mate!]

 

“You bastard! What is it? You didn't want the dirty hanyou touching your daughter so you're keeping me out?”

 

(You're reminding him we've mated Kagome? Baka! Listen to me! You have to calm down!)

 

[She is in danger. Can you not feel it through the mate connection?]

 

He leaped down again, only to be met with a squelching sound as his feet hit the bottom. “Let me through, you fucking asshole! She's in trouble!”

 

(Baka! Why don't you try asking instead of cursing at him? You're not going to get very far treating her father like shit!)

 

He shuddered as control of his body wavered between his human and youkai. Drawing the Tessaiga, he held it point down, stepping back away from the side of the well as the katana transformed in his grasp. He gripped the tsuka with both hands and touched his forehead to the kashira, breathing heavily as he tried to get himself under control by reciting the dojo kun. “Hitotsu….respect others…hitotsu...develop self-control.”

 

A green aurora, completely different from the normal blue of the time slip, began to surround him and the Tessaiga changed to Dragon-scale form, burning his hands and forehead as the tsuka and kashira turned white-hot. He pulled his head away as his hair began to smoke. `What the fuck? I didn't will Dragon scale!'

 

Power fed into his hands from the Tessaiga and his youki flared in response.

 

“Damn you, you bastard! Give her back to me!” He stabbed the fully transformed Tessaiga into the center of the well. The katana responded with a burst of power that coupled the Wind Scar with the electricity of the Goraishi. The bottom of the well bubbled as youki forced the green aurora to bend around him; the walls of the well vibrated like a plucked string and the earth trembled as his Tessaiga-generated youki followed the mate connection directly into the heart of the time slip.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

Sota gave a cry of despair as his perception of the Goshinboku split into two. `It's the only anchor I've got. I have to hang on!' He concentrated on the green leaves of the ageless tree to help anchor him in reality, even though double vision blurred each one he focused on. He pulled the tiny form of Mao close and felt his grandfather's arms wrap around him. `I'm smaller again! Mama, Sis! I can't lose you!' Closing his eyes in concentration, he didn't perceive that the feathered scroll, still clasped in his grandfather's fist, abruptly distorted and narrowed to a beam of youki, following his mental link across the bridge like an arrow.

 

Nor did he see the oddly distorted green meadow and forest that began to appear through the black void surrounding the Shrine of the Well moments after the youki entered the well. The reality of the Sengoku Jidai era shimmered with ghostly radiance around his small island of time.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

Two powerful streams of youki flowed from opposite sides of the well, one following Sota's anchor to the Goshinboku in the Sengoku Jidai and the other following the mate connection to Kagome. As the sphere of warped space time surrounding the Moonstone and the young Time Lord neared the periapsis of its orbit around the blazar, each youki began to interact with Kagome's houriki and the three objects flared to a blinding brilliance that rivaled the blazar's light.

 

Variables that had been fixed changed, distorting Calabi-Yau manifolds as alternative realities slipped into close juxtaposition. The time dwelling's foundations buckled beneath the strain and the few Time Lords remaining on their feet fell as the walls and floor began to collapse.

 

Kensei felt his mother's mind meld snap into place as the time dwelling began to disintegrate around them.

 

“If those forces make contact with the blazar it will form a brane/anti-brane interaction!” He could barely hear his mother's panic-filled voice over the eerie, almost human sounding moans of the tortured building as she screamed with her voice and mind.

 

“Sayuri, hang on to me! The rest of you, get back! Go back to your anchors! We'll be annihilated if we stay here! Keep your mind meld with me or Sayuri at all times or we'll lose contact!” his father yelled to the other Time Lords. “Kensei!”

 

Kensei struggled toward his parents as the floor warped beneath him. `Mom's the theoretical physicist, but…branes?' The other Time Lords disappeared but faint traces of their connection to his mother or father shimmered in the air and lateral connections appeared between the threads. `That's not normal…what the hell is happening? It looks like a damn spider web!' He had just formed the mind meld with his father when the forces collided.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

The youki from Inuyasha caught up with the sphere and surrounded Kagome's houriki. A split second later the youki from Yourei Taisei blasted into the combined forces and the resulting concussion ripped the Moonstone from Kagome's hand. Time and space compressed in the warped throat of a Calabi-Yau manifold as alternate variables manifested.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

A feminine scream tore through the remains of the time dwelling and Kensei almost lost the mind melds to his parents as the universe twisted. “Kagome!” he yelled. He had one moment of clarity to notice that the sphere had captured the spider web of connections binding his parents and the other Time Lords. The web blazed against the dark aspect of the blazar, but when the light returned the connections went black.

 

Then the shockwave caught up to him and he was blasted backwards toward his anchor in the Sengoku Jidai; it shattered.

 

He had a moment of extreme disorientation before his head cleared and he found himself standing next to the well in the Sengoku Jidai with an unconscious Kagome sprawled a few feet away. `What? How did I…how did she—' His thoughts were interrupted as Inuyasha leaped out of the well and landed in a defensive crouch in front of Kagome's limp form.

 

“Who the fuck are you?” the hanyou snarled.

 

Kensei couldn't help but smile coldly and narrow his eyes. `Finally, you little punk. This is going to feel so good!' He took a step forward and Inuyasha's snarl deepened into a fierce growl. Ignoring it, the Time Lord took another step and began to harness his freed time powers. “All those times you made her cry, you little punk,” he said calmly.

 

Inuyasha stopped growling abruptly and tentatively sniffed the air. `That scent! He's…ooohhhh shit.'

 

Kensei continued to advance, speaking quietly. “All those times she had to argue with you just so she could go home and see her family or take care of her school work.” He advanced within striking distance and stared unblinkingly into Inuyasha's eyes. “The heartache you gave her over Kikyou. All the names you called her…and we're not even going to talk about what you just called me.”

 

[He's an alpha. Our mate's alpha.]

 

`Ooohhhh shit.'

 

(I tried to warn us.)

 

Kensei turned his cold smile into a fierce grin and drew back his fist. “You know, you could try to avoid this, but I'm a fully trained Time Lord.” Manipulating the time variable to counteract Inuyasha's youki-enhanced speed, he punched the hanyou in the jaw, augmenting his strike with the weight of three years.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

Et tu, Inuyasha? Latin; You too, Inuyasha? (Caesar's last words, a bit modified for this fanfiction)

 

Japanese:

Kensei's father: Hayato: haya "falcon" and to "person"

Kensei's mother: Sayuri: sa "small" and yuri "lily"

Kashira: the buttcap holding the same and ito in place on the tsuka of a katana.

 

In the chakra colors, green signifies the heart chakra (chakra 4; social identity, oriented to self-acceptance). This is related to love and integrates opposites in the psyche (mind and body, male and female). Blue signifies the throat chakra (chakra 5; creative identity, oriented to self-expression) which is related to communication (fitting for the well) and creativity.

 

Periapsis: the point of least distance in the orbit of an astronomical object from its center of attraction.

 

Brane and anti-brane: not typos. Physicists suggest that the Big Bang was caused by the interaction of a brane and an antibrane. Originally in theoretical physics a “string” was a 1 dimensional extended object in the ten dimensions that make up the universe in string theory; in the 1990s it became clear that the string theory could be expanded to include higher dimensional objects and the term brane (membrane, p-brane) came into use. A point is a 0-brane, a string is a 1-brane, a membrane is a 2-brane and each p-brane sweeps out a (p+1)-dimensional world line (unique path of that object) as it propagates through 4-dimensional spacetime. Each point in our 3-dimensional space (time being the 4th variable) may contain six additional variables twisted up into hidden dimensions called Calabi-Yau manifolds. The number of possible Calabi-Yau shapes is linked to the number of possible universes. A “throat” of a Calabi-Yau manifold is a theoretical extension of a Calabi-Yau shape that could connect alternate universes. Rather fitting for this fic…it's an AU!

 

Long-overdue thanks:

 

First of all, thanks to all of you who “kept the faith” and are reading this still!

 

Thank you doggieearlover and malitiadixie for nominating `Facet's in the 1st quarter IYFG!

 

PM:

Stonesneatstuff, Ranuel, Neko-sama, psyco_chick32, Come Hither, Madjax36 (even if it wasn't to me personally), doggieearlover, LavenderRose

 

FF:

EireVerde, snowecat, Inuyasha05, hanyou master, tweakinuears, and thanks to all of you who either added me as a favorite author, `Facets' as a favorite story, or placed `Facets' on your story alert! It truly kept me going at a bad time!

 

MM:

Knittingknots (x 2), Asyla the Ctarl Ctarl, inuyashaloverr, CatLover260, sakuralovesinuyasha, Come Hither, Emilee, Kryptoinuyasha.

Oh yeah, and Independent.C. Anonymous posts…geez. Vir sapit qui pauca loquitur. I explained very early on why I write the titles in Latin and the translations are always included at the end, but perhaps this will help you: they're my signature and most readers enjoy the play on words. You don't have to read them if you don't like it.

 

Bless you for reading!

iPoe