InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Once Upon a Time ❯ The Fan and the Mirror ( Chapter 9 )

Disclaimer: I still don’t own Inu & Co. Damn.

9. The Fan and the Mirror  

She watched the travelers from behind a tree, secure in the knowledge that she would not be found. Not only was the light breeze blowing toward her from the group sitting in the small moss-carpeted clearing--something that would prevent the sensitive nose of the hanyou from identifying her--but she was also shielded from detection by the presence of her childlike older sister.

Still, although Kagura generally found eavesdropping on others’ conversations tedious at best, she wasn’t yet ready to give up her search for someone who could free her from Naraku once and for all. She held out little hope that she would find her liberator among those she now observed--none of them came anywhere near Naraku in either power or fighting skills. Even so, it was undeniably true that this group was directly responsible for Naraku having to go into hiding to recover from the damage he’d sustained in their last confrontation. Apparently, the group as a whole operated at a level significantly beyond the sum of their individual abilities, rather like Naraku himself, who was considerably more than the sum of the youkai from which he had been formed.

Kagura considered approaching them to form an alliance, then changed her mind: though she did not know them well, she had fought them all on a number of occasions, and it seemed to her that they would not be terribly pleased to be approached.

She gestured to the small, pale figure who stood nearby holding a round mirror with a little crack along the edge. “Come along, Kanna. I don’t think we’ll find any help here.”

Folding the fan she had been holding at the ready in the event of trouble, Kagura pulled one of the feathers from her hair and used it to take herself and Kanna back to Naraku. Maybe, she thought as the winds she controlled carried them all along, that bastard Sesshoumaru was right--maybe the only way for her to gain her freedom from Naraku would be to reach out and take it from him herself.

The biggest question in Kagura’s mind was exactly how she could rebel against Naraku and still survive. When Naraku had said that he held her heart in his hands he had not been speaking metaphorically. Kagura realized that the best fate she could hope for was to be absorbed back into the monstrous form from which she had been created. In that moment she understood the limitless freedom of one with nothing left to lose.

She would, she decided, have her freedom--either the freedom of separation from Naraku or the freedom of oblivion. Either way, she would not return to being simply a part of Naraku.

But how, she wondered, to proceed? What good could her wind weapons be against Naraku?

Kagura was startled out of her speculations by the wispy voice of her sister Kanna. “What did you say?”

Kanna’s head was bent over her mirror as though to contemplate its depths. “It’s all an illusion. This isn’t a war of weapons--it’s a battle between souls. Only the biggest and brightest of them will triumph, although some of the lesser souls will also survive, and none of them will emerge unchanged.”

Though Kagura was familiar with the vague speech of her sister, this was even more obtuse than usual. Shaking her head in confusion, she adjusted the course of the winds that were carrying them back to Naraku for what she hoped--as always--would be the last time.