InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Strange Wishes ❯ Expiation ( Chapter 7 )

After Kagome had fled down the well, InuYasha had not returned to the village. He’d hunkered down by the well, peering over its wooden lip until the crescent moon sank into the horizon and the sun began to rise, and even then he did not leave the clearing of the Bone Eater’s Well.

As the inhabitants of Kaede’s village awoke to start another day’s work, the inuhanyou after whom their forest was named was to be found stretched out on his stomach with his head in his hands, only a few scant feet from the waterless well.

A bird chirped nearby, causing his fuzzy dog ears to flick once as he continued to glare at the well as if looks unraveled the tightly woven secrets of females.

InuYasha was at a loss. He just couldn’t figure out what had made it go so awry. He’d been telling himself all night not to keep dwelling on that kiss, but nevertheless that kiss was what he’d thought about the entire night. He wasn’t realizing for the first time that she had a power over him that had nothing to do with his prayer beads.

“I don’t understand,” The hanyou grumbled to no one in particular. “Why’d she push me away?”

When we were--doing that--it felt like she was enjoying it just as much as I was, He thought with a sigh, recalling that rainy evening; how it felt to be ripped out of paradise.

‘We can’t,’ Those two words cut him to the quick. ‘I--’

InuYasha’s brow furrowed, “What had she been about to say?”

I’m sorry? I’m scared? I can’t force myself to pretend to love a dirty hanyou?

InuYasha cringed, Maybe--maybe I disappointed her. Maybe she had higher expectations.

InuYasha could almost hear the thoughts rattling around as he shook his head, growling, “This is Kagome! I know her! It doesn’t feel like it right now, but....”

He buried his face in his arms, and for the umpteenth time his thoughts returned to that night and Kagome’s kiss.

I meant what I said to her though, even if I was poisoned.

He held her fragile human body close against his, ‘I never knew this kind of fear until I--I realized your getting hurt was a possibility.’

InuYasha had always loved Kagome’s scent, but two nights ago, when he touched his nose to her skin, the smell of her sent shivers of inebriation running up and down his entire body.

InuYasha groaned, “Why is she so damn forgiving? Takakuri, good? Ha! What youkai that uses some weird hypnosis like he does could be good? Just because he didn’t slaughter those villagers doesn’t mean he isn’t as bad as Sesshoumaru.”

The sun had been fully up for hours now, the shadow of the old well moving and changing before his eyes. A rabbit bounded out of the forest, but as soon as it saw him laying there, it scampered away in terror as he pursued his introspective pondering.

It was the damn poison. The snake venom made me do it--made me get so close to her. But when she kissed me, InuYasha keened involuntarily, the poison wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t have stopped. I could’ve--I just didn’t.

“Maybe it’s better she ended it when she did,” He tried to convince himself. “I wouldn’t want the others makin’ fun of her. Well--Sango wouldn’t but the pervert would. And all the humans and demons who hate hanyous...they already ridicule her just for befriending me.”

That’s right. His mind seemed to taunt him, You’re just a filthy, half breed abomination. You don’t have the right to touch her.

He clenched his fists over the blades of grass, “Why shouldn’t I be allowed to touch her; to want her?”

He was distracted by the familiar scent of his own blood. He relaxed his hands, finding four weeping orifices where his claws had pierced his flesh.

His mind seemed to have the last laugh, Hmph. That’s what I get for wanting a miko, the purest of human maidens.

The hanyou wiped his blood on the grass, the wounds already starting to heal.

Kagome was a miko, just like Kikyou had been. She was his first love’s reincarnation, after all. InuYasha wondered if maybe it was Kikyou that made Kagome break away from the kiss.

Kikyou...sometimes having both her and Kagome here makes me ill, he thought dourly, recalling all the times his encounters with the resurrected priestess had made Kagome jump down the very well he was pining in front of.

“But...Kagome has always stayed by my side, even when I couldn’t chose between her and Kikyou. She knows perfectly well that I can’t just erase my past.”

Nothing could make him completely forget Kikyou, even the sweetness of Kagome’s lips. So long ago they had fallen in love with one another, and it felt like only yesterday that Naraku had torn them apart.

The spot where Kikyou’s arrow had pierced his chest seemed to burn at the thought, Kikyou would never have taken me as I am--as a hanyou. The only way we could have been together was through the power of the Shikon no Tama; if I had become a weakling--become human.

“Kagome...I’ve grown to care for her as much as--no, more than--I cared for Kikyou. Even if Naraku had never come between us, I doubt I would have grown to care for Kikyou as I do Kagome.”

Memories of the two years he’d spent with Kagome played over in his brain at random, We’ve never said we love each other using words but...sometimes when she looks at me; and when we hold hands when we’re alone....

InuYasha’s nose twitched, and just as he picked up the scent the monk called out to him, “They say only those who have gone truly mad hold conversations with themselves.”

The hanyou’s cheeks pinked, “Shut up.”

InuYasha wasn’t sure where exactly the wealth of negative emotions toward Miroku had come from, but it grew stronger with every step closer the Houshi came to him, eventually sitting down beside the sprawled form in red fire-rat robes.

The silence between the two was fraught with unresolved contention, the gently clanking rings of Miroku’s shakuju making the only noise as InuYasha waited for the lecture he had come to deliver.

His thoughts were bollixed when he found that Miroku didn’t plan on lecturing him just yet, “Shippou’s doing better. The wounds inflicted by Kagome’s miko arrow haven’t totally healed yet, but they should have by tomorrow.”

“And you’re telling me this--why?”

“Thought you’d like to know.”

InuYasha’s snort echoed around the glade, “I bet Sango told you that to prove your worth you had to get me to go through the well.”

Miroku gave him a subdued smile, “Alas, I came here of my own volition.”

InuYasha frowned at him, “She’s still not talking to you?”

The monk’s eyes grew forlorn, “No, she has not yet deemed me worthy, but I will continue doing all I can in hopes of appearing acceptable in her eyes.”

Hmph. I guess I can at least listen to whatever it is he has to say, InuYasha thought as he looked over at the still somewhat bruised face of one of his few friends, his own face softening as he realized the futility of his reclusive querulousness.

“All right monk, I won’t kill you, so you can tell me whatever it is you got on that dirty mind.”

InuYasha could have sworn the monk grinned, but when he spoke it was with earnestness, “I came to apologize.”

“For?”

“Well--Sango and I disturbed you in the middle of a compromising situation the other night. I know how you are about feelings--” His voice gave out when he spied InuYasha’s inflamed countenance.

“How am I?” The hanyou snarled, sitting up.

“Well--you don’t like to show them.” He then added in a mutter, “I can’t say that applies to your more truculent feelings.”

InuYasha however, was not paying attention, Ugh, the monk’s got a point. I’ve spent too long keeping my feelings from Kagome. She probably didn’t know what to think when.... His face reddened a bit more.

“InuYasha,” The hanyou started when Miroku addressed him. “I’m going to give you some advise, man to man,” He looked into his friend’s golden eyes, “Stop moping around.”

“And what? Go down the well?” InuYasha said restively. Miroku was pushing him a little too far out of his comfort zone.

“That’s not what I’m saying. I trust you to make up with Kagome, whatever the reason may be that she has left, but for now the most expedient course would be getting up and doing something--something to take your mind off of Kagome.”

InuYasha’s face was shadowed, but when he turned it upward Miroku was a little surprised to find not anger or nonchalance, but poignant ruth. The Houshi was even more taken aback by the simple words the hanyou uttered, “I can’t.”

Miroku blinked, “Pardon?”

“I just--can’t fucking get my mind off of her.” He looked up at the speechless monk, becoming irked that he wouldn’t say what he was thinking, “Oh, so you think I don’t deserve her, huh? That I need to stop thinking about her? Well--I can’t! I can’t stop thinking about the way she looks, about the way she feels; the way she sounds; the way she smells; the way she tastes!”

InuYasha’s volume escalated with each word until he was standing, bellowing at the top of his lungs. In the calm that followed the hanyou breathed heavily, showing Miroku his back. One benefit of InuYasha’s harangue was that several things had been made clear to the monk, and he would never tell him, but he took pity on his friend.

“I take it you and Kagome shared a kiss?”

InuYasha cringed. When he turned to face him his cheeks were as pink as ever they had been, “It was all Sango’s fault anyway! Always leaving us alone on purpose.”

“You knew about that?”

InuYasha sputtered, “Of course! You’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to! What I’m wondering is how the hell you knew.”

“Shippou told me,” He said with all dignity.

“That runt knows too much,” InuYasha grumbled, though his eyes betrayed that he wasn’t actually angry.

“So,” Miroku regained his attention, “What went wrong?”

“You mean with the--the kiss?” He managed.

“Yes,” The monk waited with steepled fingers. For once the lecherous sparkle in his gaze was absent, or as absent as an innateness like that could be.

InuYasha plopped back down to the grass, eyes glazed over, “She just....”

“Yes?” He prompted.

The hanyou sighed, and his body seemed to sag, “Stopped.”

Miroku’s eyes widened knowingly, then he grew puzzled, “I have no idea why she might’ve done that. I am positive she feels very strongly for you. Unless--perhaps she is torn in her feelings between you and another.”

The temperature immediately increased, and InuYasha brandished his fist, “What? Are you saying she’s in love with that wolf? Or that human kid?”

Miroku sweatdropped, “No! No--no of course not.”

“Keh!”

The monk swiped his brow in relief before looking back to him, “InuYasha--”

“What now?”

Miroku waved his hand, “Peace, my friend, peace. Just as Kagome once told me to talk my problems out with Sango, so am I obligated to tell you that we would all be better off if you went to see Kagome.”

“You and Sango isn’t the same as me and Kagome.”

Miroku lowered, “InuYasha....”

“Feh,” The hanyou stood up, his eyes alighting on the well. “Fine.”

Just as InuYasha reached the lip however, he stopped dead, looking up. Miroku followed his gaze to see one of Kikyou’s shinidamachuu cloud-skimming overhead, a captive soul in its clutches.

“InuYasha, don’t--” Miroku started, but when he looked back to the well the hanyou was already gone, but he hadn’t gone down it. A rictus contorted the Houshi's mouth, “Sango is going to kill me.” - *- *- * -  

It had been near to an hour since he’d left the Bone Eater’s Well, chasing the soul-collector over acres of green forest sprinkled with the occasional blooming sakura.

He could smell her; she was close. It wasn’t the smell of Kikyou or the soil from her grave however, that made him rip the very air in his haste, but the scent of her spilt blood that singed his nostrils and made his own blood seethe.

The white demon dove beneath the canopy ahead of him, and InuYasha let himself fall beneath it as well, the leaves parting like mossy waters until his feet made contact with the earth. He flattened the dirt under his feet as he charged toward the clearing ahead that was swimming with shinidamachuu.

“Kikyou....”

InuYasha halted as he emerged from the trees to see the miko facing away from him, kneeling down before a large pond, most of which was indistinguishable as it melded with the shade of the trees. The undead priestess was covered in blood, her tattered white chihaya imbrued with it. She didn’t seem to have noticed him as he stood, gazing at her with a statue’s stillness. Her shinidamachuu swept past her, dropping souls into her body in order to enable healing.

Kikyou gazed into her reflection that shimmered in the pond’s surface with the pale glitter of death. The pink petals fell, the surreal picture wavering with the lightest touch to the water. Kikyou blinked as a fresh soul was dropped before her, as if she were coming out of an enchantment. She cradled the soul in her outstretched hands, holding the sphere before her face as its otherworldly light stroked the water’s surface, yet did not ripple it.

As InuYasha stole up from behind her, he peered over her shoulder, and in the water he was disturbed to see that her face was entirely blocked out by the soul she was absorbing, her lengthy black tresses falling about a bright, featureless orb. The sensation didn’t last long however, for the soul disappeared into her body, revealing the quixotic countenance of his first love.

After two years her face did not seem to resemble Kagome’s as it once had; having two women in his life that looked so similar and yet were such altogether different people had made their few physical dissimilarities more distinct in his eyes. There was a discrete curviness in Kagome’s nose that Kikyou did not possess, and their eyes held countless contrasts. InuYasha flouted his naiveté at ever mistaking Kagome for Kikyou, for now he knew that the two were just as different as he and Sesshoumaru, related though they were. It wasn’t blood that connected the two mikos however, but the soul they shared.

Kikyou sighed, her eyes fluttering open and alighting back on her reflection, only to see a silver-haired figure looming behind her. Her eyes widened, “InuYasha?”

She wheeled about and stood, her shinidamachuu swimming around them eerily as she faced him with her arm resting over a rather large tear in her shirt, “You would come upon me in my indecency?”

InuYasha repudiated the accusation, “No! Kikyou, I--who hurt you? Tell me who did this to you.”

Kikyou turned away from him, letting her arm fall to her side now that he could only see her back, the great splashes of blood that soaked the snowy cloth visible whenever the breeze parted her curtain of ebony hair.

“Please Kikyou, you have to tell me who it was that hurt you,” InuYasha’s voice contained an overtone of desperation.

Kikyou stared down at the pond with narrowed eyes, watching her former love’s reflection as she spoke, “And if I told you? Would you make another promise to me? A promise to hunt my attacker down and make them suffer as they have made me.”

InuYasha stared at her back, speechless. She didn’t move as the wind rustled the sanguine fabric of her hibakama, and they both were silent for a time, weltering in their own thoughts.

Kikyou’s voice was the first to break the silence, “Do you know the location--of Naraku?”

InuYasha moved a bit closer to her, “Is he who hurt you, Kikyou?”

The miko closed her eyes, a pained expression upon her face as she grimaced, “You did not answer my question.”

“And you didn’t answer mine,” He retorted.

Kikyou’s shoulders sagged as she acquiesced to his recalcitrance, “It was the wind sorceress, Kagura, who inflicted these wounds upon me. I’d heard of her planning to betray Naraku, but not until recently did I discover that she had met with success. The wind sorceress took his fragment of the Shikon no Tama.”

InuYasha blinked, “Kagura has Naraku’s fragment? Why can’t Naraku just kill her? He has her heart, doesn’t he?”

Kikyou continued staring at him in the pond, his hand frozen midway to touching her as he stared at the back of her head, “I too, thought that. Then I found out that Kagura, in her betrayal, also managed to take back her heart from Naraku.”

“Shit,” InuYasha gasped.

“This act of hers was not in my best interests, and so I endeavored to destroy her, thus regaining the Shikon no Kakera, which I would then have returned to the severely weakened Naraku. Unfortunately, I failed in retrieving the fragment. A great conspiracy has arisen among Naraku’s reincarnations, and he has fled with the help of the few still loyal to him. No one knows where he has taken refuge.”

“And Kagura is looking to kill him,” InuYasha added, comprehension dawning on him. Kikyou saw his face become angered on the surface of the pond, “Kikyou, why did you try to get the fragment from her? Kagura could have killed you!”

It was then that he reached for her, his hand gently grasping her shoulder. Kikyou whirled on him, slapping his hand away harshly, not seeming to care about her torn shirt anymore as she glared at his afflicted face.

“Keep away from me!” She spat, pushing him away with a shock of miko power.

InuYasha stumbled back, the small burst of energy tingling his chest as he stared, stunned, at the angry woman in front of him, Kikyou, do you still hate me?

InuYasha’s guilt overwhelmed him. What had he done to deserve anything but her hate? He’d failed to trust her, thus causing her death. Even after she’d been resurrected he’d secretly wished her back to her sleep of death, the place where she was meant to be.

At that moment, as he reminisced about all the misfortunes that had befallen them, he wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms as he had always wanted to do to her when she’d been alive, and tell her she was safe. Surely with all his power he could save her from the terror of her death, the pain of the specious betrayal. If only he could reach her, coax out the Kikyou she had once been that he knew lay deep below the surface of the tormented, hate-filled creature she had been forced to become.

She gritted her teeth, glowering at him abhorrently, “Is my reincarnation not here?”

InuYasha blinked, Is that what she’s mad about? “Kagome? She’s not--no. I followed your soul-collector here alone.”

Kikyou froze, her eyes gradually softening as she looked at him, “Oh.”

InuYasha drew close her, securing her in his arms as she stared up at him with wide brown eyes, “Kikyou, let me protect you. I promised you I would protect you. I’ll kill that bitch so that she won’t hurt you again.”

Kikyou leaned against his shoulder where he held her, nostalgia taking hold of her as she inhaled his scent, “Baka--I will be the one to destroy the wind sorceress and claim the jewel shard.”

InuYasha grasped her shirt through her hair, holding her tighter, “I’m the one who protects you.”

Kikyou’s lips turned up in a quiet smile at his fervent words, “Will you hold as true to your other promises? Would you still come to Hell with me, even if I asked it of you this instant?”

InuYasha muscles tensed around her, but he nodded his head. He glimpsed a sad light in his eyes as he stared at himself in the pond, “I would die with you--if you asked it of me.”

Kikyou sighed against him, “I do not plan to take you now, but when we defeat Naraku I shall bring you with me to Hell.”

Her words reverberated in his mind as she put her lips close to his ear, “But I will ask of you one thing for now. If you would...stay with me a bit longer.”

He closed his eyes, “Of course.”

He felt Kikyou’s hold on him tighten as she returned his hug, but then she pushed herself away from him slightly, looking up into his eyes.

“Kikyou? What--” He started uncertainly, but anything else he might have said was drowned into silence by Kikyou gently putting her lips over his.

The kiss was so tender, and a part of him wanted to lose himself in the memories of the past that had been tugged out from under them, let them inundate him for all eternity. But somehow, after sharing a kiss with Kagome only a little more than a day ago, the touch of her lips wasn’t as pleasant as he remembered it being. It felt wrong.

He pulled his lips away from hers, chagrined by the irony of denying her kiss just as Kagome has refused his, “No, Kikyou.”

She looked up at him with shock for a hot second before her brows knitted, brown eyes blazing, “What do you mean, ‘no’? You are mine, InuYasha!”

She shrugged his arms off, backing away from him until she was in the shoal, the legs of her hibakama getting drenched. InuYasha ran in to take hold of her before she went any further into the pond, his own feet immersed as he waded toward her.

She glared at him furiously, “What is your game, InuYasha? What is your purpose in coming here?”

She tried to fight his hold, but when she looked up at him, expecting an answer, she was surprised to find that he would not meet her gaze. She ceased her struggles, her heavy breathing slowing up as her heart grew heavy. His arms slackened when he realized her anger had abated, but the bitterness in her eyes was equally disquieting. She extricated herself from him, taking a few steps back.

They stood facing each other in the pond, the water having calmed around them as Kikyou met his golden gaze, her own eyes looking more dead than they ever had before.

“Why--have you sought me out?” She asked him weakly.

InuYasha contemned the question. She had spoken it as if she already knew. “Kikyou--all those years ago...would you only have been with me as a--as a human?”

I light breeze played with her hair as she answered him levelly, “That is the only way I could have ever been with you, InuYasha. If you had refused to use the Shikon no Tama to become human, thus destroying the jewel, we could never have hoped to be together.”

InuYasha wasn’t satisfied by her answer, “What I mean is--would you have only loved me as a human?”

I have to know. I can’t loose Kagome. I’d do anything to prevent it. I’d do anything to be with her--to make her happy.

Kikyou’s monotonous voice intruded on his thoughts, “You wish to know whether I think Kagome will only love you as a human.”

InuYasha felt as if a caliginous cloud had descended over them, restricting his breathing. He bent his head, he couldn’t meet her eyes.

He heard the water at her feet slosh around before her lukewarm voice reached his ears, “I do not know the girl, but I have seen her blatant affection for you on enough occasions.”

InuYasha raised his chin uncertainly, and when she looked at him he flinched unintentionally. Her eyes were callous and disdainful, “She is a miko however, and such a pure maiden and one such as you, tainted with the blood of a youkai, can never be together.”

She turned away from him, crossing her arms over the rip in her shirt once more as he stared at her resignedly.

“I suppose it is my fate then,” InuYasha spoke in a low growl, standing strait and proud in the shallow waters.

She rounded on him. “Your fate is in my hands. The day Naraku is destroyed is the day you come with me to Hell,” She hissed scathingly.

InuYasha sniffed, and found that his usually acute sense of smell was failing to pick up the potent scent of Kikyou’s blood. He tilted his nose skyward. The sun was sinking toward the horizon, the sky growing red with the approaching sunset.

He moved his feet through the water, stepping out onto the shore of the pond as Kikyou’s shinidamachuu slithered past him, gathering about their mistress. He looked over his shoulder at her, “Well, if I can keep a promise to you, then I can certainly keep my word to Kagome.”

With that said, he sped off into the forest, leaving Kikyou standing in the pond with her soul-collectors.

InuYasha ran as fast as his feet would carry him, feeling his demon power fade away a bit more with every inch the sun descended toward the horizon. It took him a lot longer to reach the well going back; his exceptional speed was an attribute of the demon power that was fast leaving him for the night of the new moon.

The gathered legs of his hakama were dry and his hair was still silver when he reach the blessedly empty glade just beyond the village, and he jumped into the well without a backward glance, hoping he wasn’t too late for Kagome’s dance.

He was thankful that the sun had not yet completely set when he was able to leap strait up and out of the well, bounding up the stairs to slide open the door of the well house. He froze on the threshold, staring out at the rain coming down in heavy sheets, the sound of droplets hitting cement filling his ears.

It wasn’t until that second that he remembered the circumstances of his and Kagome’s last parting, and a pang of nervous uncertainty hit him hard as he stared across the shrine to her house. His determination to keep his promise to Kagome had blinded him to the consequences of seeing her again, and now he wasn’t sure if he was ready.

He glanced back at the well as he held onto the door, but he couldn’t make himself go back. No matter how much he may have wanted to go down that well, the thought could never hope to rival his resolve to keep his word to Kagome. It was this acknowledgement that made him shut the door to the well house behind him and sprint through the pouring rain, leaping up onto Kagome’s roof to slip in through her window. He cursed the fact that he couldn’t smell if she was in there or not; he didn’t want to disturb her if she wanted privacy.

Once he had noiselessly dropped inside her dusky room however, he saw that it was empty. He wasn’t exactly sure what to do, and was debating whether or not to wait or to go and search for her when something on the bed caught his eye.

It was an opened package, containing a white kimono that resembled his fire-rat robes to a degree, or as far as he could tell just by examining the folded fabric from where he stood in front of her window. He approached the bed slowly, wondering at the clothing that he was sure had been tailored for a man about his size when he heard the door swing open. He stopped dead, turning to see Kagome framed in the doorway.

She had frozen too, her eyes locked on him as she gasped, “I--InuYasha!”

Threaded in with his trepidation at what she would do next was a realization that she was no longer wearing her usual casual skirt and shirt, but a white dress of some lovely, silky material that was wrapped about her like a calla lily. He couldn’t help but sweep his eyes over the folds of the dress that was such a contrast to her midnight hair as he marveled at the effect a simple change of clothes had on her (and him).

His attention was instantly ripped from her choice of dress when she sniffed, tears forming in her eyes, and ran at him, successfully baffling and knocking the wind out of him all at once when she caught him in a fierce hug.

She was sobbing and babbling almost incoherently into his haori, refusing to let go of him even as the rainwater seeped into her dress, “I’m so glad you came! I was so worried--I was afraid you’d wouldn’t come, or that you’d gotten hurt or...I’m just so happy your okay.”

“Kagome, what--?” He pulled back enough so that he was still holding her, but could look into her watery eyes, “Why would anything have happened to me?”

She blinked up at him, still clutching at his shirt as if he would fly away at any second, and he brought a single hand up to cup her face, wiping a tear from under her eye with his thumb. A blush crept into her cheeks, and she avert her eyes shyly, casting about the room for anything that might serve as a conversation topic.

“I...um...,” Her eyes alighted on the strange white kimono. “That’s--uh--yours,” She said, a coy smile making her rosy face all the prettier as she indicated the clothes sitting neatly on the bed. “It’s for the dance.”

InuYasha was too busy staring at the girl in his arms to glance over at it, and he felt his resolve solidifying as he embraced her. Her putting her arms around him, completely unexpected though it was, had been the best thing she could have done to quell the exposed and rejected feelings stirring within him. She wasn’t taking her eyes away from his, and his heart was responding enthusiastically. His youkai blood was crying out at her touch while his human side shouted its need for her in much the same way. It became clear to him then that he would do anything to earn her love.

It was time to find out why she’d pulled away from his kiss. He gulped, “Kagome--”

A sudden rapping on her window made them both jump, and Kagome’s eyes widened when she saw a certain kitsune bouncing outside her closed window, his entire body soaked from the storm, “Shippou?”

“What the hell?” InuYasha stared as the kit pounded on the glass with his burned hands, Kagome running over to let him in. “How’d he pass through the well?”

She quickly opened her window, snatched the sopping wet kit out of the rain, then pulled him in. The kit looked up at her with distraught eyes, waving his not-so-puffy tail behind him in a panic.

“Kagome!” The young fox did a double take when he saw InuYasha come up on her side, as if he were surprised to see him there. “InuYasha?”

“Shippou, why are you here?” Kagome asked him urgently, the kit’s agitation unnerving her.

Shippou blinked away from InuYasha, seeming to remember as he clutched to Kagome’s dress, “It’s Kagura! She’s attacking the village! And Hiraikotsu isn’t fixed yet and Kagura brought Naraku’s Saimyoushou to poison Miroku if he uses his wind tunnel!”

“Kagura?” InuYasha growled, hot furor roiling in the pit of his stomach as he remembered his meeting with Kikyou.

“We have to help them, InuYasha,” Kagome said with finality as she turned to face him.

Just then, a wind that had nothing to do with the storm outside blew through the room, and InuYasha felt the familiar sensation of his demon power falling into dormancy for the night as the dark moon rose in the dreary sky beyond the window. His claws and fangs disappeared as his thick white mane turned inky black, his dog ears turning into human ones. He clenched his jaw as he looked down at Tessaiga, knowing that what had come to him as his father’s fang would be useless tonight.

He nodded once to Shippou and Kagome, “Let’s go.”