Annoying Author Blurb: Hmm, little later than usual, ne? Well, hope to have more then. Let's see how far I can get. This story's been nominated for Inuyasha 'Drama' at Project Protégé. More information can be found in my bio.

Vote for it at http:// protege. just-in-dreams. com/misc /vote /inuyasha. Html

(without the spaces)

Disclaimer: No ownership of any of the below characters belongs to element-chan. She is but a poor author with poor-er writing skills which will hopefully soon change with the upcoming prospect of at least three new betas. ^_^;;

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Hollow Eyes

By Elementsofmine/elementalspirit125

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Becoming The Lure

(To Reel The Shark In)

also named

Mirrors

(And What Can Be Found In Them)

This story is rated R. The ratings vary from chapter to chapter. This chapter is rated PG-13 for language and adult situations. I must add, due to Fanfiction.net's strict rating system, I have to up most of my story ratings.

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Tarot Card Portrayed: The Fool

Upright- New beginnings, unlimited possibilities, new adventures, new opportunities, thoughtlessness, rashness.

Reverse- A bad decision, indecision, apathy, hesitation, childishness, a warning to be more responsible.

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Punishment quarters, southernmost portion of estate basements.

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Kohaku could not remember a time where his skinny body had not hurt. The pain had lessened in the damp atmosphere of the Pit until it had resided back to a dull ache, but his right leg still refused to move from the awkwardly bent position underneath him. His left ankle felt sore and swollen and twisted strangely when he tried to walk.

There wasn't much a slave could do once thrown into the Pit. There was no sense moving off too far from where they were dropped off into the deeply hollow cavity; he would only get lost among the endless darkness. The only source of light came from high above him, a flickering of a candlelit hallway where troublesome slaves were brought to, and then sent off the edge of the outcropping into the black abyss below. No slave or servant had ever ventured into the basement above the Pit to measure the exact length of the crater. Kohaku guessed it stretched almost as wide as the entire estate built above it, with only a random motif of scattered beams to support the inner floors of the manor.

It was stuffy in the Pit, with little air being squeezed in. The floor was hard and cold, stiff with littered debris. Kohaku was afraid to venture further than the point where he was thrown in. His imagination played havoc on his already frightened mind, showing flickering dots in the darkness that resembled small flittering eyes.

'It's not that bad,' he told himself. 'It's not that bad.' His mantra looped itself, repeating over and over again. 'It's not that bad. It's not that bad.'

At least Souta hadn't been found yet. And neither had Kagome. Sometimes, he could hear the guards above him exchanging the day's latest gossip. Souta and Kagome were still free, maybe even together somewhere far, far away.

'It's not that bad. It's not that bad.'

He kept it up, keeping himself company in the lonely darkness. Carefully shifting his sleeping legs to a better position, he heard a grunt as his legs bumped into something. Something furry and soft brushed by his bare ankle, and the thing yawned loudly, showing rows of luminescent teeth. It grinned.

"Howdy."

Kohaku screamed.

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Sesshomaru suddenly awoke from his sleep with a pounding headache. Holding one clawed hand to his temples, he felt the pulse of his blood quiver under his nails. The sparsely decorated bedroom suddenly seemed stifling, strangely so even though the opened windows were blowing a soft wind into the room. The slaves had also left a new change of clothes on the stand next to the bed, white ecru linen with a single gold bracelet hoop nestled in the curve of a deep violet sash.

Images fuzzily hazed out in his mind. A young girl, crying for her dead mother. A slave (was it boy or girl?), clipped head bowed humbly. And a female wolf-youkai, baring her fangs and fighting like a madbeast as a whole troop of soldiers tried their best to control her.

Sesshomaru felt uneasy, feeling as though something he should have done a long time ago had not yet been accomplished. There were far too many bygone actions made by him during his life for him to remember a single few. His day would most likely be ruined now, the answer to his dreams forever daunting him.

What had he been dreaming?

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Sango felt childishly jubilant.

Having pulled the longer straw from Miroku's fist (and narrowly escaped one of his twitching fingers), she won the opportunity of being able to play 'host' for the new girl. Miroku himself had tried proving he would be better at taking care of the girl, but a quick demonstration with waiting on Kikyou proved him incompetent at anything but groping. However, as Miroku was the only one who could boast rightfully of actually talking to her, he was grudgingly held in some sort of respect. And Miroku, being Miroku, was milking it for all it was worth.

"The sensuous bright eyes," he moaned. "Those eyes! They could drive a man half-mad."

Kikyou snorted. "Ask me if I care."

"And the hair! Oh my god, Sango, remind yourself to ask her what shampoo she uses."

"Do you even know her name? Or were you too busy gaping at her chest?" Kikyou accused. Having enough with Miroku's apparent new crush obviously made her testy.

Miroku spluttered, his enthusiasm short-circuiting. Shamefacedly, he admitted to memory loss.

Kikyou sighed. "Show you can beat Miroku in the brains department and get her name, won't you? I hate referring to her as just 'her'. Okay Sango?"

Sango was already long gone.

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As soon as Kagome felt she had some control over herself again, she slid off the bed and wandered into another door that once opened, proved to lead to the bathroom. Even with her misleading befuddled vision, upon entering Kagome immediately resolved never to enter without shoes. The multicolored stains on the floor and sink were highly suspicious. So was the growth on the showerhead.

A grimy mirror had already been broken into several large pieces, but stayed mostly intact. When Kagome tried smiling in it, the cracks added jagged lines that dissembled her face sharply. Where her mouth should've been, an empty rusted hollow where a piece had fallen out grew, leering back at her in the macabre reflection. In her mind, Kagome saw the crescent-shaped cavity twist itself impossibly and grin.

'Slave…' it whispered, using her own face in the mirror. 'Ugly slave…go back to the gutter where you belong…Inuyasha won't care, no one will….no one loves a filthy slave.'

Deeply disturbed, Kagome turned her face away.

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In the years to come- she would have a long life ahead of her- Sango would never forget the strange eyes of the girl that inhabited room 421.

Turning the corners of a hallway bend, Sango hummed merrily, hands thrust deep into her pockets. Eager to see who Naraku's companion had been, she walked straight into the room their guest was roomed in without knocking and ran into a body entering. Both women squeaked and backed up a few paces to eye each other warily. Sango started at the bottom and saw a messily-clothed girl with grungy clothes. She met a slim, closed face as her eyes wandered up. Black hair pooled around her small shoulders, natural highlights glinting slightly in the cheap room lighting.

But her eyes! Sango couldn't help but stare. Two round emerald eyes defiantly watched her, green with darker grey-edged lines, unnatural in a woman of eastern decent. Stubborn in their unique hue, yet quivering with barely held fright.

"Eek! I'm sorry! Gomen! Did I come in on a bad time? If I did…I can always com-"

The girl was startled out of staring at Sango and quickly beckoned her in. "Of course not, come in! It's not my room anyways…"

Sango followed the girl into the room and nervously played with the fringe of her apron.

"Well…"

"Um…"

"I'm Kago-"

"Sango, at your service!"

Having said all of the above at almost exactly the same time, both girls looked over at each other and burst into laughter.

"I'm Sango," the informer said warmly, smiling gently. "If you ever need any help here, you can ask me. You'll have an excuse if you have any problems, seeing as you're new here and everything."

Kagome nodded steadily. "Kagome," she murmured, not taking her eyes off the older girl. While Sango had found much interest in her own eyes, Kagome was finding out much more from Sango's own pair. Soft, honeyed eyes above a small freckled nose decorated a pretty feminine face. Kagome only needed one look before she memorized the face in her mind, and needed only one look more to make a startling comparison in her mind's collection of faces.

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"Damnit Naraku, you've gone too far this time! Do you know what you've done?"

Naraku jerked his head back a few inches, but besides that, didn't move. His eyes were hooded, giving the impression of being half-asleep. Inuyasha wasn't fooled; he knew as well as everyone else in the room that Naraku was paying close attention to what was happening.

"You've brought a slave into our midst. She's a damn slave. She worked for Sesshomaru." Seeing the cringes the name brought out around the table, Inuyasha repeated it for effect.

"Sesshomaru. Sesshomaru. Sesshomaru! She worked for that bastard and has no right to be here!"

Miroku desperately tried to hold Inuyasha down, fearing the hanyou would soon take out his anger on Naraku. "Inuyasha," he panted, "Calm down! He didn't know!"

"He knows now, and that's what you can tell the coroner later!" Inuyasha roared.

He broke free of Miroku's arms and lunged at Naraku, claws elongated and face a fury-red. At that exact moment, Kouga opened the door to the meeting room. Seeing as the startled looking Naraku was about to become pachyderm meat, Kouga crashed headfirst into the howling Inuyasha, preventing Naraku from dealing with a serious hospital bill.

Shippou, outside the room, curiously placed one ear on the side of the wall nearest the conference room to be able to hear better. Having been set down on the floor with a stern 'Stay put!' from Kouga, he was more anxious than ever to see what was going on inside the room. He was still a child, no matter how high his IQ, after all.

All he could hear from outside the thick walls were the occasional shouts. What he could make out came along the lines of…."Naraku…too far…damn….right…down….Arrrggh!"

Shippou blinked. That certainty couldn't be what was going on in there…could it? A sudden shout from inside echoed clearly even through the walls.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Kouga screeched. Peering through a thin crack in the closed blinds, Shippo watched, round-eyed. Inuyasha was in mid-air, leaping with all caution thrown aside, looking very much like the wolf out of Little Red Riding Hood about to pounce on the grandmother. Naraku seemed to play to part of the old lady, not moving an inch but looking caught. Amidst all the confusions and yells, Kouga charged in like a line-man, aiming for Inuyasha.

However, having had no time to correctly judge the power he needed to distract Inuyasha from his target, Kouga and Inuyasha ended up flying across the room, and would have continued for many yards if a wall hadn't been in their way.

Ouch. Shippo winced. If that didn't send them both to bed for the rest of the day, nothing else would. Forgetting Kouga's instructions just seconds after they'd been issued, Shippo painstakingly crawled off in search of the girl he had come to meet, arms straining as he pulled himself across the floor.

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"First off," Sango said, eyeing Kagome's attire dubiously. "We should get you some clothes. Why don't you take a shower now, and I'll let you borrow some of my clothes when you're done. We'll go shopping after to get you your own closet."

Sango watched as Kagome lowered her gaze to the floor. "Well, go on. I'll go get a new outfit for you."

Kagome twisted the edge of her shirt in her hands. "Um…I don't exactly have a clear way to repay you," Kagome said bluntly, with a hinted emphasis over 'repay'.

Sango only laughed. "Who said anything about paying with money? I'll just sell you off into slave labor once we're done with you." Seeing the younger blanch at her off-hand joke, Sango rolled her eyes. "Humor, humor! Just a joke, kami forgive, not for real. You need to stop hanging around Naraku, that dope's non-existent appreciation for humor's starting to rub off on you."

Finally getting a small smile from Kagome, Sango eagerly went ahead and pulled Kagome out the door and ran down the hallway with the startled girl in tow. "There's so much to do!" Sango cried, looking back at the bewildered Kagome. "So many people to meet…wait 'til you meet this girl, Kikyou, it'll be like looking in a mirror, I swear…"

Kagome laughed, feeling the joyful noise erupt with transparent childish happiness. But upon hearing the words 'looking in a mirror,' Kagome was reminded of the cracked flass in the bathroom and had to choke back something that crept up her throat.

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St. Paul's Institution

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The man, heavily bandaged, lay stiffly. There was little he could do. His legs refused to obey him. Otherwise, he would have walked out long ago. Even with the promise of the best of comfort, he was still unsatisfied. How could life be so cruel? The world held so much from him. It was taunting him, leaving everything just centimeters out of his grasp.

He stored that in his mind. Maybe if he ever became a writer, he would write that. Yeah, that would sound good. He almost laughed. Like he wanted to become a writer. Writers were hopeless, stuck fast in daydreams all their life. He was going to be big, bigger than anyone ever before. Bigger than Jack the Ripper, bigger than Al Capone. Then again, he could always hire one of those writers to do it for him. Make a biography, one that everyone would want to read. Only the big-shots made it up that far. It would take endurance, but he had that.

Endurance was what made him what he was now. Not many people world could tell what it was like to hold a lit bomb in his hands. Not many people alive, anyways.

The door to the hospital room opened. A nurse meekly stuck her head in. "Excuse me, sir. Is there…anything I can get you, Miste-"

The man's eyes flashed. "Onigumo," he insisted. "Onigumo!" The nurse recoiled instantly. The man's voice was horribly cracked, as though he had never drank water from the moment of his birth 'til now. No creature on earth could look at him for long. His whole body was burnt, whatever skin left was dried up and clinging to his thin form. Flakes of ash piled around the floor of his bed.

The nurse backed out slowly, trembling with fright.

Onigumo used to last of his energy to give a short, animalistic snarl. If the nurse had had any sort of confidence upon entering the room, it vanished entirely. Whimpering, she dashed out of the room with a -click- as the door shut itself.

Onigumo sneered. The world would soon pay for what it had did to him. He'd be back.

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Annoying Author Blurb: Gomen!!! ::hides under steady barrage of flamethrowers, knifes, sporks, and lasers:: I didn't mean to be almost half a month behind in updating!!!

To those concerned about Yume no Naka: Unfortunately, I won't be updating that for a bit. It still irks me, and I'll most likely have to rewrite that. But for now, I'm sticking to Hollow Eyes. Sorry!

Things found in last chapter: Lots of bits and ends found in this chapter. Sesshomaru's dream (of course) is a particularly interesting one. You find three hints of different people in it.

One, 'A young girl, crying for her dead mother.' Two, 'A slave (was it boy or girl?), clipped head bowed humbly.' Three, 'And a female wolf-youkai, baring her fangs and fighting like a madbeast as a whole troop of soldiers tried their best to control her.'

I can assure you one of them is indeed Kagome, but it is not the first. ^_~

I wasn't going to add the last part in, but decided to, as a consolement for those poor people out there that waited for half a month and received this pitiful excuse for a chapter instead. -_-;;;

Notice how the man Onigumo says, 'Endurance was what made him what he was now. Not many people world could tell what it was like to hold a lit bomb in his hands. Not many people alive, anyways.'

^_~

Word To The Wise (elementalspirit125):

The following are reputed to be actual statements found on insurance claim forms where car drivers attempted to summarize the details of an accident in the fewest possible words. The instances of faulty writing serve to confirm that even incompetent writing may be highly entertaining.

Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don't have.
The other car collided with mine without giving me warning of its intention.
I thought my window was down, but I found it was up when I put my head through it.
I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way.
A pedestrian hit me and went under my car.
The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve several times before I hit him.
I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother in law and headed over the embankment.
In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.
I had been shopping for a plant all day and was on my way home. As I reached an inter-section a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision and I did not see the other car.
I had been driving for 40 years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident.
I was on the way to the doctor with rear end trouble when my universal joint gave way causing me to have an accident and damage my big end.
As I approached the intersection a sign appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.
To avoid hitting the bumper of the car in front I stuck a pedestrian.
My car was legally parked as it backed into another vehicle.
An invisible car came out of nowhere, stuck my car and vanished.
I told the police that I was not injured, but on removing my hat I found that I had a fractured skull.
I was sure the old fellow would never make it to the other side of the road when I struck him.
The pedestrian had no idea which direction to run. So I ran over him.
I saw a slow moving, sad faced old gentleman as he bounced off the roof of my car.
The indirect cause of the accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth.
I was thrown from my car as it left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows.
The accident was caused by me waving to the man I hit last week.
I knocked over a man, he admitted it was his fault as he'd been knocked over before.

Feel free to send any funny 'life' comments you have yourself. They always make my day! I'll post some of the funnier ones.

Appreciation: I give my thanks to Victoria and Andrew for their undying 'bothering' and 'boredomz' that finally convinced me to either write the next chapter of die in the agony of dullness. For a while, the second choice appealed to me more, seeing how even though I would die in agony, I would be surrounded by my best friends. Jamie, I'm lost for words about how I can describe my thanks to you. Your beta-ing….wow, I'm just touched by how long you've stood by me, through computer crashes and horrendous grammar. Thank you. ^__^