InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 2: Defiance ❯ A Reason to Live ( Chapter 36 )

~~Chapter 36~~

~A Reason to Live~

 

“Get a move on, you slow-assed bastard!” InuYasha snarled as the two sprinted through the cover of night. The landscape provided enough shelter from curious human eyes, if there were any awake at this hour to see the two figures moved in a hazy blur. Their footfalls crunched against dry, dead leaves, on pebbles and twigs that littered the ground as they ran.

 

“Shall I beat you down now or later, baka?” Sesshoumaru asked, his tone as dry as his expression as he refused to spare his half-brother as much as a glance.

 

InuYasha snorted. “Feh! Just bring it if you think you can.”

 

That earned InuYasha a somewhat bored scowl. “Remind me after I find my son.”

 

InuYasha hurtled over a fallen tree. “I'll remind you, all right . . . .”

 

Sesshoumaru sped up, passing InuYasha in a blur of movement but not quickly enough for InuYasha to miss the obvious concern in the depths of his half-brother's gaze. `Fucking bastard . . . what the hell was he thinking was gonna happen? Damn it, Toga . . . you'd better still be in one piece or I'll . . . . Hell, I'll do something . . . .'

 

 

-=-0-=-0-=-0-=-0-=-0-=-

 

 

Toga glanced around the small clearing just outside Osaka with a slight frown marring his brow. He could smell the neko-youkai. He'd tracked them here from the scene of the last known attack. Their stench was thick in the air but he couldn't locate their hideout. In the darkness of the starless night, the moonlight was hazy, blocked by clouds and choked by the shadow of the earth. The thin sliver of a moon couldn't compete with the gloom, and the black shadows gave away nothing.

 

The midnight fur of his Mokomoko-sama billowed in the breeze behind him. Extending over his shoulder, the comforting and wholly disconcerting scent of Sierra that clung to the fur gave him strength even as it left him feeling oddly empty, wholly alone. He shook his head, willing his mind to clear as he slowly stepped into the clearing.

 

A sharp hiss erupted on his left side as a singsong wail announced the arrival of then neko-youkai. “Who are you?”

 

Toga kept his expression blank as two more youkai stepped out of the shadows beside the first. “Keneko, he reeks of the Great Dog,” one of the lesser-youkai hissed.

 

Keneko's pupils dilated in the thin moonlight. “The Great Dog? Then you're his son . . . the next Inu no Taisho,” he scoffed.

 

“If you know who I am, then you know why I'm here,” Toga countered as he let his concealment dissipate without taking his eyes off the pitch-black cat.

 

The third cat youkai laughed nastily, brandishing his claws in a flash of captured light, his green eyes glowing like filmy twin flashlight beams in the dark. “Sent you, did he? What'd you do to piss off your old man, puppy?” he demanded arrogantly, stroking his short-tufted, orangey-yellow streaked hair away from his face.

 

Toga didn't blink as he snorted derisively and flicked his gaze to the tabby cat and back to the leader once more. “Feh. I volunteered.”

 

The screechy quality of the youkai's laughter grated on Toga's already frayed nerves. The three cat-youkai literally fell over one another as the sounds of their mirth rose in the predawn skies. They circled Toga slowly, cautiously. He saw the glint of their claws in the miserable light, knew that they were planning on attacking together. The thought made Toga's lip curl derisively. `Damn cowards . . . strength in numbers? I think not . . . .'

 

Toga was ready when they pounced. With a loud snarl, a bestial hiss, the neko-youkai howled as they lunged for him. Toga was faster, rolling out of the way before they could strike. The orange tabby and the silver-gray cats---the lesser-youkai---caught each other with their razor-sharp claws, and their pained yowls split the night like a jagged tear.

 

The third neko-youkai altered his course in mid-air, landing beside Toga. “Clever puppy!” he spit angrily. “Cleverness won't keep the skin on your back! Jiromura! Yamagoro! Get him!”

 

Toga brushed dirt off his hands and cracked his knuckles as the youkai stalked toward him. With a fierce howl, the leader of the cats sprang at him. Toga's claws flashed in the moonlight as his hand shot out to catch Keneko across the center of his chest. Keneko's screech of pain hammered through his head as Toga's claws shredded through the thin fabric of the cat-youkai's shirt, digging deep welts into the flesh underneath. Blood raced to fill in the lines left behind by his claws, oozing thick and hot as the scent of the rich fluid shot straight to Toga's brain, unleashed a rush of adrenaline as something far more primitive exploded inside him.

 

“Damn you, dog! You'll pay for that!” Keneko hissed.

 

Toga stared in fascination at the blood that stained his claws. The scent was intoxicating. “Did that hurt?”

 

With a savage howl, the cats plunged toward him, needle-sharp claws slicing through the air in a blur of movement, a whistle of sound. The fabricated noise rang in Toga's ears as he dodged both Jiromura and Yamagoro. Keneko caught his arm.

 

His gasped exhalation was the only discernable evidence of Toga's discomfort as he slid back. His thick leather coat protected him well enough, but he knew it wouldn't last for long. Neko-youkai had some of the sharpest claws of any of the mononoke . . . .

 

“Did I push the puppy?” Keneko nearly purred in self-satisfaction. “Not very agile, are you, son of the Great Dog?”

 

Toga ignored the blatant taunt.

 

“Why don't you turn around and run back to Papa, little puppy? Tell him you couldn't find us, and we'll let you live.”

 

“Funny,” Toga remarked in a deadly quiet voice as he narrowed his gaze at the two cats who were trying to slip around behind him. “I don't recall being frightened of the likes of you.”

 

Keneko flexed his fingers, stretched his hand as his claws seemed to grow longer, catching glints of moonlight like steel in the darkness. “You should be.”

 

“Haven't you heard?” Toga countered softly, icily. “Dogs always chase cats.”

 

The two lesser-youkai lunged at him. Toga ducked in time to avoid Yamagoro as his hand shot out toward the second. Jiromura's screeches split the night. Toga winced at the high-pitched yowl that rang in his ears as his claws cut deep into the youkai's neck. Blood spurted from Jiromura's ruptured jugular, showering Toga in the hot, sticky flood. Time seemed to falter as the cat's eyes widened in shock, a dizzying gurgle producing a horrifying black-tinted bubble from the gaping wound. It quivered with a tremulous resonance as it grew larger---oily, pungent then popped. Jiromura's gaze dulled slowly as his life slipped away, and he crumpled in a pitiful heap at Toga's feet.

 

“Jiromura!” Keneko keened, his cry both shrill and unforgiving, like the shattering of glass. His black hair stood on end, his lips curled back in a vicious snarl. With a cry borne of frustration, of anguish, Keneko rushed at Toga, his sing-song wail rising behind a dreadful vale.

 

Toga spun away but couldn't avoid the youkai's claws. Piercing the leather, the puncturing claws razed his right shoulder as he winced and faltered, catching himself before he hit the ground as he rounded in a crouch and shot to his feet once more. Ignoring the blistering pain erupting from his wound, Toga bared his fangs in a slight grimace, grinding his teeth together as he willed away the sting. The heat of his blood soaked the fabric of his shirt, spiraled down his arm, dripped from his fingertips onto the ground like black rain with a coppery smell.

 

“Is that the best you can do?” Toga goaded, blanking his features as his father so often did.

 

`Never give them the satisfaction of seeing your emotions,' Sesshoumaru's voice whispered in the recesses of Toga's mind.

 

`Thank you, Father. Rather sound advice . . . .'

 

He gave his head a quick shake. The scent of his blood was confusing; the vertigo that edged closer was hard to ignore.

 

“I'll gut you,” Keneko promised as he unleashed five blades of air at Toga, much like Uncle Yasha's Hijin-Ketsusou attack but without the blood.

 

Toga dodged, eluding all but one of the air blades that grazed his cheek. The white-hot pain cleared the dizziness away. “Try harder, kitty,” he growled as he slowly wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his left hand.

 

With an irate hiss, Yamagoro barreled forward, yellow eyes glowing fiercely, angrily, completely malevolent. Toga whipped around to avoid the cat and sliced through the night in a blur of motion. He could feel his claws tear through flesh and tissue, the wet rip of muscle and the crunch of shattering bone a vindictive reward as Yamagoro fell on Jiromura's corpse. The neko-youkai groaned, the thin hiss, the gurgling belch of life expelling as Yamagoro reached for Keneko with a trembling hand. He pitched forward, his blood leeching black on his filthy white shirt as his body stilled.

 

“Damn you!” Keneko screamed, his youki popping and snapping with static energy. Unleashing a wail that brought a war cry to mind, the cat threw his head back, his arms out at his sides, his eyes glowing with obsessed rage. “I'll kill you!” he bellowed. “For Jiromura and Yamagoro, I'll kill you!”

 

The breeze shifted, cut with a bitter edge. Keneko shot forward, claws whistling as Toga leaped back. The cat's face contorted into a morbid facsimile of a smile, a line of spittle hanging from his lip. With a piercing shriek, he pummeled both hands into Toga's chest, laughing maniacally as his claws flexed and contracted. Toga uttered a half-growl, half-yelp as his skin tore, as a jolt of excruciating pain shot through his body.

 

Thrown back from the impact, Toga slammed into a stout tree and slumped to the ground. Dazed, unable to regain his breath, he lay sprawled on the ground. His shoulder throbbed, his head felt like something was inside fighting to get out. His chest burned with every movement, and his back felt like it did the one time Uncle Yasha had accidentally caught him with the blunt side of Tetsusaiga. Blinking into the darkness as his lungs struggled to fill, Sierra's face flashed through is mind, and suddenly, Toga laughed.

 

He closed his eyes, sensing Keneko's rapid approach. `What did it matter, really?' he asked himself as he sat up slowly, shaking his head to ward off the dizziness. `Nothing's mattered to me at all . . . not since the day she walked out of my life . . . .'

 

Blinking away the fuzziness that clouded his vision as he forced himself to his knees, then to his feet. Keneko split into two then merged back together, his arm drawn back as he closed the distance between them.

 

Toga flexed his claws and stood his ground. He wasn't going down without a fight---damned if he would. “If I go, I'm taking you with me,” he mumbled, unsure if he had spoken out loud or if he had just thought it.

 

A hiss, a low hum, a flash of green light streaked past him as Keneko started to bring his claws down. Toga stopped with his arm drawn back, his brain registering the familiar scents even as Keneko's body flew in the opposite direction.

 

“Fucking damn it, pup! What the hell are you trying to do?”

 

Toga frowned as InuYasha glowered at him. “Why are you here?” he countered as Sesshoumaru's energy whip---the flash of green light---retracted into his father's hand once more.

 

“You are my son, Toga,” Sesshoumaru commanded sternly. “Fight for your mate. You cannot save her if you cannot save yourself.”

 

Toga stared at his father, his mind trying to understand the implications of Sesshoumaru's words. `Sierra . . . . My . . . mate . . . ? Father knows . . . .'

 

Keneko snarled in outrage as he got to his feet, inspecting the seared flesh on his shoulder where the energy whip had burned him. “I'll finish you off, puppy; then I'll take care of your father!”

 

`Fight . . . to save Sierra?'

 

Her scent wrapped around him again, and Toga swallowed hard. A surge of strength shot through him, the desire to see her face again precluded the reckless need for carnage. Ignoring the pain that rattled through him, Toga braced himself, sprang off the ground to meet Keneko in the air. His shoulder erupted in a flaming hot gush of fresh blood as he drove his fist forward, as he felt the soft tissue of the neko-youkai's stomach rip. Toga's claws shattered the youkai's spine, passing straight through as the cold night air hit his blood-soaked hand. With a violent shove, he wrenched his hand free, sending Keneko sprawling back. His body exploded in a blast of dust and wind before he hit the ground.

 

The sun broke over the horizon as the earth seemed to stand still. Toga stared at the crimson fluid that coated his hand as his stomach rolled in revulsion. He'd never killed before. The closest he had ever been was when Allan had insulted Sierra. He closed his eyes for a moment. He wasn't a killer. The only reason he'd volunteered to do this . . . .

 

“Can you travel?”

 

Toga blinked a few times before hesitantly raising his gaze to meet his father's inscrutable stare. “Yeah.”

 

Sesshoumaru turned and started away. Toga's voice stopped him. “Why did you come after me?”

 

Sesshoumaru stopped but didn't face him. For a moment, Toga didn't think his father was going to answer. “Your blood can save her, Toga . . . and she . . . she can save you.”

 

“Why didn't you tell me this before?”

 

“I didn't think you needed to know that,” Sesshoumaru admitted quietly.

 

“What?”

 

“You didn't tell me she would become sick, and you didn't tell me your youkai chose her.”

 

“Damn it---”

 

“Hash it over later, pup,” InuYasha grumbled as he grasped Toga's good shoulder to propel him forward. “We got a long way to go, and if we don't hurry, your mother is liable to send out a search team.”

 

Toga winced as he wiped the thickening blood off his cheek with the back of his left hand, watching in silence as Sesshoumaru flicked his whip out once more. The bodies of the lesser-youkai disintegrated in a thick cloud of ash, leaving behind no trace of the neko-youkai as the tai-youkai turned on his heel and stalked away.

 

With a sigh, Toga trudged after his father, suddenly feeling so very old. Unfortunately, Uncle Yasha was right . . . .

 

 

-=-0-=-0-=-0-=-0-=-0-=-

 

 

Toga tried not to wince as Kagura spun around on her heel to pin her son with her formidable glower. He knew what was coming. He really had hoped that she'd wait a day or two before she let him have it, though. No such luck, not with his mother. He plastered on his best contrite expression and braced himself for the storm to come.

 

“How could you not tell us, Toga?” Kagura demanded in a much quieter tone than he had expected which could only mean one thing, as far as Toga was concerned: Kagura was past furious and was struggling to keep reign on her soaring temper, and that certainly didn't bode well for him, at all.

 

“I didn't know it would matter,” he told her.

 

“What do you mean, you didn't know it would matter? You think that your father and I wanted to see you like that?”

 

Toga opened his mouth to point out that Sesshoumaru had been dead-set against his being with a human. Kagura held up her hand to silence him. “It makes all the difference in the word, and you should know that! Do you think your father would have been so stubborn if he had known that your youkai had already chosen Sierra?”

 

Toga made a face as he stared at his mother. “Yes, I do.”

 

Kagura sighed. “You can't really believe that.”

 

He shook his head slowly, wincing when his shoulder throbbed as he tried to sit up straighter in the bed. “He made his wishes painfully clear, Mother. What else was I to think? And he never told me about the healing properties of mixing our blood, either.”

 

Noticing her son's discomfort, Kagura hurried over to fuss over him a little more. “He didn't think you'd need to know. He thought you'd choose a youkai. I'm not saying he was right, but I do know he'd rather see you with a human than lose you.”

 

Toga didn't answer right away as he stared at the cell phone in his hand. Kagura had dropped it onto the bed when she'd first breezed through the door. It seemed to him that she had every intention of staying until he made use of the thing to call Sierra. He set the phone on the nightstand and shot his mother a pointed look. “It's the middle of the night there,” he explained when Kagura arched an ebony eyebrow. “Besides, I'd rather call her alone, if you don't mind.”

 

Kagura pursed her lips and sighed, obviously disagreeing with him despite his reasonable tone. “All right,” she gave in, looking completely irritated by the concession. “But you promise me you'll call her soon?”

 

Toga nodded and smiled just a little. “Of course, Mother.”

 

“And promise me you'll get some rest.”

 

Toga nodded again, deciding against pointing out that his injuries would likely only take a day or two at most to heal.

 

Kagura hurried over and kissed Toga's uninjured cheek. “I'll come by later to check on you,” she promised. Toga managed to hide his grimace as he watched her go.

 

Minutes later he heard the front door close, and only then did he release the sigh of relief that had been building inside him. As much as he loved his mother, there were times when her concern could be more than a little stifling. Both Uncle Yasha as well as Sesshoumaru had tried to talk Toga into returning to the mansion to recover. Considering how much Kagura had fussed over him in the few hours since her arrival, he couldn't help but be thankful that he'd stubbornly refused the hospitality.

 

Toga winced as his chest muscles twitched painfully. The neko-youkai had been his first real challenge, his first real battle. His body wasn't used to the strain of the exertion and while he would heal quickly enough, Toga decided with a wry grin that he would leave the fighting to his hot-headed baka cousin from now on. Ryomaru thrived on the adrenaline of the fight. Toga found that it left him full of undisguised distaste.

 

He sighed as he stared hard at the phone in his hand. Would Sierra even listen to him? After their last conversation, he wasn't all that convinced that she would. He stared at the cell phone for a long time as he tried to gather his thoughts. How could he get her to listen?

 

Drawing as deep a breath as his battered body would allow, Toga reached for the phone and punched in the numbers to her cell phone---the numbers he knew by heart. `Come on, Sierra . . . just listen to me . . . .'

 

She answered on the seventh ring, just when he had been about to give up. “Hello?”

 

Toga tried to speak. His throat was dry. Sierra's voice was husky and low. He winced. “S-S-Sierra?”

 

She didn't respond right away. He could hear the creak of the phone, as though she was holding onto it as tightly as she could. “Toga.”

 

“Sierra,” he forced himself to say, brushing off the fear inspired by the resigned tone in her voice. “Listen, there are some things I have to tell you---”

 

Sierra sighed. “You've already said more than enough,” she replied stiffly. “There's nothing left to say.”

 

He winced as the connection cut off. He hadn't missed the tears in her voice. He hadn't missed the pain, either.

 

`Damn!' he thought as he hung up only to redial the number again. `Damn it, Sierra, just listen!'

 

He spent the next three hours calling both her apartment and her cell. She must have had both off the hook because he got nothing but busy signals.

 

He tried to summon the strength to be angry, furious at his father for not having told him all this sooner. He tried to be optimistic, that he could somehow get Sierra to listen. He couldn't quite manage either emotion. As he dropped the cell phone onto the floor, as he let his head fall back against the headboard, Toga closed his eyes and willed away the hopelessness that precluded every other emotion in him. He was exhausted, his body ached, and he just didn't want to think any more---at least, not now . . . .

 

 

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A/N:

Neko: Cat.

Keneko: Strong Cat.

Yamagoro: Fifth son from the Mountain.

Jiromura: Second son from the Village.

Hijin-Ketsusou: fly, blade, blood, and claw: Blades of Blood.

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Final Thought from InuYasha:

Baka pup . . .

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Blanket disclaimer for this fanfic (will apply to this and all other chapters in Defiance): I do not claim any rights to InuYasha or the characters associated with the anime/manga. Those rights belong to Rumiko Takahashi, et al. I do offer my thanks to her for creating such vivid characters for me to terrorize.

 

~Sue~