InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Once Upon a Time ❯ Once Upon a Time ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: Inu & Co. don’t belong to me. If they did, there would be a whole lot more lemony goodness here.

A/N: This was the very first Inu fic I ever did, now more than two years old. I finally decided to put it up here, since I went ahead and posted some of my shorter pieces here already. Once Upon a Time   1. A Better Idea?  

The girl climbed over the wooden side of the old well. She paused briefly, taking in the sights and sounds of the little village that had somehow become almost more real to her than the everyday world in which she had spent the first fifteen years of her life. Turning her back on the village, she walked into the nearby forest, heading for the centuries-old holy tree that was an integral part of the ancient Shinto shrine in which her family had lived for generations.

It was a short walk to the Goshinboku. She stood before it, looking at the holes left by the arrows that had nearly killed her on her first visit, and thought of the first time she had entered this distant past.

“Oi, Kagome!”

In her home world five hundred years in the future, a voice calling her name from the branches overhead would have seemed strange at the very least. Looking up, she saw an admittedly odd sight. What appeared to be a boy no more than a year or two older than herself lounged on one of the broad branches, leaning against the massive trunk. He was dressed in clothing of bright red, and wore an ancient sword at his waist. A long strand of beads that she knew were not purely decorative hung around his neck. The only hints that the boy wasn’t entirely human were the claws on his hands, his unusually sharp-looking teeth, his amber-colored eyes, and the two furry ears sticking up through the flowing white hair that fell to below his waist.

“Inuyasha! What are you doing up there?”

His expression and tone were bored. “I knew you were back. I thought you might get lost between the well and the village.”

Something in his oh-so-superior tome was comforting. “I’m not lost.”

He dropped lightly to the ground. “So why are you here instead of there?”

She paused, thinking about her answer. “I don’t know. This is a comfortable place for me. Peaceful.”

Even though his own associations with that particular location were somewhat different, as he had been sealed to that very tree with an enchanted arrow by a powerful miko for a period of fifty years, he understood her thinking well enough to see that her attachment to the spot was due both to the fact that it was here that they had first met and also that this tree was the only thing he knew of that had survived form his time to her own. He was not, however, without a certain amount of pure orneriness. “Peaceful? What’s so peaceful about it? You didn’t spend fifty years pinned to this tree like a dead bug!”

Instantly sorry that she had reminded him of Kikyou, the miko who had been tricked into attacking him in spite of their growing attachment, she changed the subject. “Where are the others?”

Startled out of the bout of brooding that invariably followed even the most oblique reference to his lost love by the sudden change of subject, he answered quickly and without thinking. “Back in the village. We’ll be--” His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why are you here today? You knew we weren’t going to start following Naraku’s trail until tomorrow.”

Though she frequently lost track of the moon’s phases when she traveled back and forth between her time and this one, Inuyasha’s behavior could generally be counted on to give her a clue. As a hanyou, someone with one youkai parent and one human parent, he periodically lost all of his demon characteristics and became fully human. Since a hanyou was particularly vulnerable at this time, the frequency and timing of these events was a closely guarded secret.

Surprised that he was willing to spend this night anywhere near a human village, she asked, “So why are you here? Shouldn’t you be going into hiding now?”

“NANI?”

Before he could work himself up to a really good rage, she continued, “I mean, you usually don’t want to be around people when that happens.”

Glancing up at the early afternoon sun, he shrugged, feigning unconcern. “There’s time. Besides,” he said, glaring at her with his arms crossed over his chest, “You came back.”

She knew better than to ask him how he’d known--he had demonstrated his ability to track her by her scent on more than one occasion. She turned away, back toward the village. “Well, I’m not going to stand here all day. Are you coming back with me?”

“Back? With you?”

His brief confusion gave her an idea. “That’s it!” At his startled expression, she continued, “That’s how we can keep you safe tonight--you can come back through the well with me and stay with my family for the night.”

He considered the matter briefly, weighing the inherent danger of three more people learning of his weakness with the fact that the city in which Kagome lived seemed to be conspicuously lacking in youkai. Suddenly he nodded--it may not have been the best possible solution, but he could not fault her intentions. “Let’s go, Kagome.” To his surprise she set off through the trees in the direction of the village, not the well. “Where are you going?”

She glanced at him over her shoulder. “I have to let the others know what’s going on--and I brought some things back for them from my world.”

Without waiting for him to start grumbling, she headed off again, leaving the hanyou little choice but to either follow or stand there looking like a complete fool.

They approached the village from across the rice fields and ponds that provided much of the sustenance for the small population. Near the innermost ring of planting areas they found an old woman with a patch over her right eye gathering medicinal herbs to preserve for future use.

Since the death of her older sister more than fifty years ago, she had served the village as its miko, first by using her knowledge of healing and then, as she grew stronger and matured, by defending the small village from both human bandits and the occasional hostile youkai.

“Kaede-babaa.”

Picking up her collecting basket she looked at the pair. When the girl who had begun as a reincarnation of her sister and had since grown greatly in power had first entered her world, she never would have expected that she could have had such a profound effect on the wild creature that had nearly leveled her village in a blind rage. “Inuyasha. Kagome.” Looking again, she added, “Kagome, you’re early. I didn’t expect you back until tomorrow.”

With a brilliant smile, the girl explained that she had always intended to return at this time. “I know. I wanted to come back today--so we could get an early start in the morning, you know. Anyway, that’s all changed. We’re going back later on today, and we’ll return again tomorrow.”

“We?”

“Kagome thinks it will be a good idea if I stay with her family tonight, so we’ll be leaving soon. In the meantime, Kagome wanted to come here and tell the others about the change of plan.”

The old miko thought about it, and realized that the plan was a good one, at least in theory. As one of the handful of people who knew when Inuyasha’s periods of relative helplessness occurred, she had been prepared to face a long, sleepless night in order to protect the hanyou from any dangers that might threaten. If he were to spend the night of the new moon in that strange future world, it might be harder for dangerous youkai to find him.

She led them back to her home on the edge of the village square. A young woman sat outside, polishing an object that seemed to resemble nothing so much as an outsized boomerang made from a gleaming ivory-colored substance. She was so engrossed in her task that she didn’t notice the new arrivals until the tiny cream and black cat curled up at her side ran forward to greet them.

Without missing a beat, the cat ran straight to the hanyou and leaped to his shoulder, enjoying the ride. Sango looked up, a puzzled expression crossing her face for a moment. As the daughter of a long line of youkai exterminators, she understood them far better than most humans. Unlike many, she realized that not all youkai were necessarily evil--her cat was a case in point: not only could she change form to an enormous, formidable beast capable of carrying a number of people for long distances, but she also had the extremely useful ability to determine the true nature of any creature, whether youkai, hanyou, or human: she would only go to someone possessing a genuinely good heart.

Then why, she wondered, was her pet so drawn to the hanyou? She had been told a fair part of Inuyasha’s past history, and it seemed to her that his motives had frequently been somewhat less than pure. Still, she had been traveling with Inuyasha and the others for quite a long time now, and he had often behaved with at least some concern for others.

Looking around, Kagome noticed a knot of young village girls gathered under a nearby tree. The hanyou turned to see what his companion was watching and nodded: business as usual. “Miroku!”

A tall young man wearing the robes of a Buddhist monk emerged from the crowd and walked over, nodding at the new arrivals. “Inuyasha. Kagome-sama. What are we going to do today? I didn’t expect to be doing much of anything, so I thought I would work on my supply of sealing charms.”

He held up a fistful of paper slips with protective symbols on them, almost as though in an attempt to prove that he had indeed been working. Sango looked at him with a skeptical tilt of her head and glanced back to where the village girls seemed to be waiting for his return. Rather than let the situation deteriorate any further, Kagome looked around at the villagers going about their daily business. “Maybe we should talk about this inside.” She shifted the overstuffed backpack she carried. “Where’s Shippou-chan?”

Sango looked around in surprise--the little fox youkai had just been there a few moments ago. “He was right here.” She looked at the little youkai curled up happily on Inuyasha’s shoulder. “Kirara? Would you find Shippou and bring him back here for us? Kagome-chan is back early and wants to talk to us about something.”

The little cat blinked her great orange-red eyes and was gone with a swish of her two black-tipped tails. Sango stood up, slung her weapon across her back, and turned to the door. “Let’s wait inside.”

Settling themselves on the floor in the central part of Kaede’s home, they waited. Inuyasha, however, was growing increasingly restless. “Where is that brat?” he snarled. Not exactly charming at the best of times, the hanyou was growing even more ill-tempered as sunset approached.

Kagome was prepared to overlook the outburst because she understood how he hated any hint of weakness within himself. She opened her bag and started unpacking the supplies she had brought. Although much of what she had carried consisted of first aid supplies and lightweight, freeze-dried foods, she always managed to tuck in a few special treasures for her friends.

“What did you bring me?” A tiny figure with brilliant red hair and a bushy fox tail raced into the room. Shippou had been the first to join Inuyasha and Kagome on their travels after his family had been killed by a clan of thunder youkai. Although he appeared to be only about three or four years of age, nobody knew exactly how old he really was, as youkai age so much differently from humans, some of them bordering on immortality. Still, it seemed best to treat this particular youkai according to his apparent age.

Digging into her bag, Kagome brought out a big bag of candies unlike anything that existed in this world. Giving it to the child with an admonition to not eat it all at once, she returned to her search. Miroku received some of the lemon-flavored canned tea that Kagome had first given him after he had been poisoned by Naraku’s flying insects and some charms created by her grandfather to protect the family’s shrine. She brought Sango a large tube of a very strong adhesive to help her in maintaining her weapon as well as a bar of purely feminine herbal-scented soap. Kaede received a recent book on herbal medicine as well as some lotion to soothe work-roughened skin. Even Kirara received gifts in the form of canned tuna, salmon, and shrimp. Naturally, she had also brought along one of Inuyasha’s personal favorites--potato chips in a variety of flavors.

Once all were gathered together, Kagome began her explanation. “I know we weren’t going to start tracking Naraku until tomorrow. What I don’t understand is why everybody thought I’d stay away until then. We’ve been together long enough to understand that it’s a dangerous world out there--for all of us. But, you know, we’ve all gotten stronger in recent months: we could probably all survive on our own. My question is this: why should any of us have to?” She looked at the circle of faces around her, trying to gauge their reactions, from Miroku and Shippou’s varying degrees of agreement to Kaede’s surprise that one so young could have such an adult grasp of things to Sango’s slowly dawning realization to the hanyou’s sheer disbelief. She stared straight into Inuyasha’s golden eyes and continued, “We’re much stronger together than apart--we all know that. So what idiot has been running around telling everybody that I’d be staying away tonight?”

In the silence that followed, all eyes turned to the hanyou. As Inuyasha began to look decidedly uncomfortable she continued, her voice softening. “We’re companions. We’re friends. That means that we protect each other when we’re at our weakest. That’s why I came back today.” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, I had an idea when I got here today--I want to take Inuyasha back with me to stay with my family tonight. It should be safer for him there--there aren’t a lot of youkai where I live.”

Miroku, a rather unconventional young monk who had joined the group when he learned that they also hunted Naraku, the hanyou that had cursed his family with an unstoppable weapon --a kazaana in the palm of the right hand that would, unless Naraku was destroyed and the curse broken, eventually consume him as well--nodded. “It sounds like a good plan. If you take Inuyasha out of our world during the time when he loses his powers, we will all be safer. Not only will he not be vulnerable to dangerous youkai, but you will also remove the shards of the Shikon no Tama that you carry from the area as well.”

Shippou looked up, eyes wide. “Does this mean that we can sleep tonight?”

Inuyasha himself answered. “You can all sleep tonight. Damn good thing, too, since we begin a long journey tomor--” He stopped suddenly, staring out at the red glow of the setting sun. “Damn! Kagome, it’s too late! The sun will be gone soon.”

She leaped to her feet and ran to the door. “It’s only a few minutes’ walk to the well, but we have to go right now.” Without further delay, she walked out the door.

The journey to the well was not a long one, but there was no time to waste. Even though the village had been little bothered by either human armies or youkai for decades, that had all changed when the Shikon no Tama had been reborn into this world through Kagome. When she accidentally shattered the jewel while preventing a youkai from stealing it, she started a war among youkai and humans with evil in their hearts all trying to recover the countless slivers. Since even the smallest shard of the Shikon no Tama could increase a youkai’s power greatly, these splinters were eagerly sought by them. The few small pieces Kagome carried in a tiny bottle around her neck were enough to make her a target.

Inuyasha cursed fluently under his breath as they walked along through the growing darkness. Even though it was not yet full dark, he could feel the changes starting. His senses of hearing and smell diminished, becoming no more acute than those of natural humans. The sharp teeth and claws disappeared, making him feel utterly defenseless. The canine ears at the top of his head vanished, replaced by ordinary human ears. Finally, his silvery hair darkened to a shining black while his eyes turned a more typically dark brown.

That’s why he never knew of the huge, dark-furred rodent like youkai until it was charging across the grass toward them. Twice the size of a horse, it scrambled to head them off before they could reach the relative safety of the well. Seeing Inuyasha as no threat, the demon focused its beady red eyes on Kagome, the source of the power that had drawn it there. It sprang at her, the impact throwing her against the side of the well.

The last thing Kagome saw was Inuyasha in his human form attacking the monster form behind. Then her vision faded and she knew nothing more.

When Inuyasha saw Kagome injured he abandoned all caution. Drawing the Tetsusaiga, the sword left to him by his father, he attacked. Though he couldn’t use the weapon’s full power in his present state, he hoped he could distract the youkai until he could get Kagome to safety.

He hacked at the hairless tail, unable to penetrate the thick skin with the dull, rusted blade. Holding the Tetsusaiga high, he stabbed the sword’s point into the waist-thick tail, feeling the blade sinking deep into the soft flesh beneath the leathery hide.

The youkai roared in pain and surprise. Its tail twitched, sending Inuyasha into the trunk of a nearby tree with a sickening crunch. The youkai turned, slicing at him with claws that opened a deep cut across his left shoulder and chest. The ratlike youkai reared up to strike again, and Inuyasha ducked beneath the slashing claws, dashing across the clearing to the motionless form of Kagome. He turned to see the youkai almost upon them.

With no time to plan and few options, the wounded human grabbed the girl and threw himself into the well, performing an impossible midair twist to keep from landing on her at the bottom.