InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Edge of Resistance ❯ Our Wake-Up Bomb ( Chapter 6 )

The Edge of Resistance

Book One: The Dreaming World

 

 

Chapter 7: Our Wake-Up Bomb

 

 

"To die will be an awfully big adventure." - J.M. Barrie

 

***

 

Inuyasha and his companions cleared the small chain of low, green mountains near Midoriko's cave. They passed over the wide valley in the shadow of Mt. Asama in less than a day, and continued at such a pace that Kagome even nodded off as she clung to Inuyasha's shoulders. The landscape that blurred past seemed to be on a repeating loop: gentle green mountains, wide valleys with little rivers, then the same green mountains again.

 

The landscape changed after continuing westward on the second day at the same pace. The company had gotten a late start the day after Midoriko's cave. The combination of the heat and the beauty of the summer morning had made a bath irresistible to Sango and Kagome. They lay down on a lush, green hill to dry their hair and blow at dandelions, all the while ignoring Inuyasha's grunts and heavy sighs of impatience. Shippou, on whom the urgency of mortal enemies was lost, was content to sit and watch the billowy clouds sail like ships over the mountains. When he touched Kagome's hair, spread out on the grass, it was so warm it felt alive. She turned and squinted at him, then smiled with the stem of a dandelion between her fingers and teeth. He smiled back.

 

Inuyasha, meanwhile, paced nearby in his restless and useless fuming. They were getting nowhere. They were making good time, but without direct leads they could only follow the rumors and whispers that Naraku left in a trail of dread and nightmares.

 

Why was the bastard running? Where was he going? Naraku's flight was bizarre in light of the fact that, until now, he had spent so much time and energy near his old haunt, Edo, as though he were unable to tear himself away from sore spots in his head. Inuyasha would jump to say that Naraku was running in fear of himself but, inwardly, he knew better. What was he up to?

 

“Do you mind?” Inuyasha stood with his arms crossed, tapping his foot. “By the time you people get going you'll have us stopping again for lunch.”

 

“Probably,” Kagome answered in a flippant tone she knew drove him crazy. He glared at her and stalked away. She was in such a good mood she had to laugh.

 

“Okay, okay Inuyasha,” she sighed with a tragic air. “Don't hurt yourself over there. We're going.”

 

They were on their way less than ten minutes later. They followed the road that was littered with dark rumors of an unknown terror, a vamperic phantom that stalked the night and poisoned the air. They could not be certain that these tales implicated Naraku but, at present, it was the best lead they could get.

 

It was a hard road to keep through the mountains, no longer the gentle green slopes of the Musashi and Shinano country. These were the Hakusan. Their peaks soared into the clouds where winter came early and stayed late. The weary travelers did not want to lose time and energy by going over the mountains, but they strove to keep the straightest path possible as well. By late afternoon, the trail was winding through the dense forest that covered the lower slopes. Kagome saw dark paths arched with forbidding looking trees that turned from the main path, and she wondered aloud what made them, guessing perhaps that they were game trails.

 

Inuyasha glanced to either side and snorted. “Not likely,” he said. “The biggest game around here are deer, and those paths are too straight for that. A deer couldn't walk in a straight line if its life depended on it.”

 

“I believe he's right,” Miroku said. “These are likely the homes of outsiders, hermits—those souls who forsook the world of civil war and violence and sought the ultimate solitude.”

 

Kagome peered down one of the lonely paths and shuddered. “How awful!” she exclaimed.

 

“There are worse things,” Miroku murmured.

 

According to Shippou's way of thinking, this forest was not a nice place. As they moved closer to the center of the valley, the trees closed in around them in a malevolent way, and the path was getter more and more dim and narrow. His senses were, he admitted at least to himself, not quite as sharp as Inuyasha's, not yet, but nonetheless he sensed an ominous, surly presence. He trembled.

 

“I don't like these woods,” he admitted aloud. “Doesn't feel right.”

 

“It's just your imagination,” Inuyasha told him, but he did not sound very certain.

 

Kagome pulled the front of her sweater closed more tightly, even though it was so warm the air was suffocating, and looked up at the canopy.

 

“I think Shippou is right,” she said. “The sooner we get out of here the better.”

 

Miroku and Sango were quiet, but their expressions agreed.

 

After another hour or two, however, it did not seem like the forest was getting any lighter. Instead, the air had warmed to a suffocating blanket. They were getting hungry but, even though no one said it aloud, they all agreed it was more important to press on.

 

The interminable gloom was broken without warning and the afternoon July sun stabbed their eyes.

 

They stood dazed for a moment, blinking at the light like startled owls and trying to construct the landscape. It was not so much a clearing as a raised plateau that, since water drained away into the valley, did not have the dense vegetation of the surrounding hills. Also, they could now see other slopes with dark, unfriendly forests rising all about them. It was not encouraging.

 

“Okay guys,” Kagome tried to sound cheerful. “Let's eat.”

 

They had their lunch on the scruffy grass beneath one of the few beech trees that grew on the terrain. Despite the knowledge of the path looming ahead, they found their spirits lifting in the fine summer afternoon. It was still a beautiful day after all, when one could see the sky. After they had eaten their fill, they lounged on the grass. Kagome tried to make a crown of daisies, though it did not hold up very well. Miroku and Sango sat talking quietly. Inuyasha lay back in the boughs of the tree.

 

In the past few years or so Shippou had grown at a rate Kagome considered rather unfair. He was already far too big to carry. In fact, he was only a head shorter than Miroku. He existed on the edge of adulthood, bounding after butterflies one moment and trying to put on a display of serenity and altogether grown-up composure the next. Sometimes Kagome worried that he was not getting the rearing he needed, having spent the latter half of his childhood with a group of teenagers. But there was nothing to be done, and he seemed happy enough.

 

Just when she could feel the impatience of Inuyasha starting to bristle in the air and was waiting for him to insist that they get going; the serenity of the scene was shattered.

 

Inuyasha's nose picked up a detestable scent and in seconds he was on the ground, sword drawn. The others leapt to their feet and began looking around in alarm. Years of traveling together with the dog demon had taught them to recognize the danger signs.

 

“What is it?” Kagome cried, her voice raising an octave or two.

 

“Naraku!” Miroku spat out the name. “He's coming this way.”

 

“Get ready!” Inuyasha shouted to his friends.

 

They tried to make themselves ready for anything. But they could not, for out of the opposite edge of the forest and into the clearing came not Naraku, but his vassal, Kagura.

 

Kagome did not know quite what to expect from Kagura after she had saved Kohaku in the canyon, but it was clear that the demoness had not come to fight them because at first she seemed unaware of their presence. When she did notice them, she stopped and regarded them for a moment. Kagome wondered why she had not been flying as she usually did. When she was closer, Kagome was shocked to see what she thought were the tracks of tears on her face.

 

In truth, Kagome and her companions were seeing a Kagura that they had not had the privilege of seeing before, one devastated by a prolonged rancor brought to unbearable extremes.

 

“Kagura?” Much to her friends' amazement, Kagome ran across the clearing to get a better look at her.

 

Kagura took an answering step back and lifted the wrist of her right hand, the hand that clutched her fatal fan. “Stay where you are,” she warned.

 

“I wasn't going to attack you.”

 

Inuyasha and her other friends stared at Kagome in stupefaction. Inuyasha moved closer to her.

 

“It's just that…” Kagome hesitated. “It looks like you've been—

 

Kagura cut her off. “Doubtless you are looking for Naraku,” she said in her harsh voice. “Let me tell you, you are off the mark.”

 

Inuyasha grunted. “I don't need directions from you.” He lowered his sword at her.

 

She ignored him and leveled a gaze at Sango. Her scarlet eyes were dead and empty, an expression that Sango would never be able to put from her mind.

 

“You had better find another path for yourself, slayer,” the demoness said. “There is nothing for you at the end of this one but revenge, even if you were blessed enough to get it, which I highly doubt.”

 

Sango drew herself up as if to retort, but then her eyes widened. “What are you trying to say?” she demanded in a high-pitched voice. “Has something happened to Kohaku?”

 

Kagura was silent, and then she looked away and shrugged her shoulders. “Naraku says he is dead.”

 

Sango's hands flew to her mouth and she dropped her weapon. She had imagined this moment a thousand times but remained unprepared for the declaration made in such august solemnity. She made no sound, only stood staring at the demoness in disbelief. Kagura still did not raise her eyes.

 

Even as her insides wasted, Kagome was sure she had not imagined it. Kagura's eyes were those of one who had been weeping.

 

Then the wind sorceress raised her hand in that old familiar gesture and plucked a feather from her hair. Within a heartbeat, she was sitting in her airy vessel and had moved to turn away.

 

But then Kagome was there. She knew she must have been out of her head, but she could not resist a compulsion that pulled her with slow but resolute strength, as if through water. Kagura's state of affliction was now obvious to her, and was an unmistakable and convincing proof of something Kagome needed. She took hold of Kagura's arm with such force that the demoness was pulled right off her vessel.

 

Kagura was too surprised to react at first; she stared up at Kagome in amazement of her audacity. At last, she grabbed the girls arm and shouted at her.

 

“What the hell do you think you are doing?”

 

“Please, don't go.” Kagome's eyes were sunken in misery, but still determined. “You can—

 

“You can stay with us.” Sango murmured with her head downcast. Miroku and Shippou turned and stared at her in astonishment. “You have saved Kohaku, probably many times. We will protect you.”

 

Inuyasha was too much beside himself at this point to say anything. He was almost dancing about and frothing at the mouth.

 

Kagura's eyes widened and then against her will, and much to her consternation, filled with tears and desolation once again.

 

“You're crazy,” she scoffed. “You've finally lost your mind.” She tried to pull away, but Kagome would not let go.

 

“I know you don't want to,” she exclaimed pulling at Kagura harder. “Why do you? Stay here!”

 

“You don't understand anything!” Kagura shouted. “Kagome! Kagome, I'm warning you—let me go!”

 

Kagura tried pushing the girl away, but then froze in terror. It was distant, but there could be no mistaking it. She felt Naraku's presence approaching like a cyclone. She pulled away from Kagome's grasp but the idiotic girl just pulled on her again, grabbing her arms, her kimono, anything.

 

“Damn you! Stupid girl!” Kagura was nearing a state of sheer panic. If Naraku arrived now and saw her in this company, he would surely kill her on the spot, and her ridiculous resolution to be just like Kanna would be even more stupid. Then she realized that this was her true destiny, and that Naraku had known it from the beginning. He had sent her on this errand to let her own machinery drag her towards death.

 

It was too late. He would be there any second. At the same moment that Inuyasha sniffed the air and clenched his teeth by instinct, Kagura's legs gave out from underneath her and she sank to her knees. The last of Kagura's once prodigious spirit faded. She resolved to wait for the end with abnegation.

 

“It's too late,” she lamented. “He's coming. He's here.”

 

Kagome stared at the suddenly dispirited woman in amazement.

 

“Kagome!” Inuyasha shouted. “Naraku is coming! Get away from her, now!”

 

“No!” she shouted back. “I won't!”

 

This was the scene when Naraku burst through the trees, gleeful over his final victory over the slave who thought she was so clever. Kagura, for her part, did not even look up.

 

“Inuyasha!” Kagome shouted, her voice terrified, as she tried to pull the now listless Kagura away. “Help me!”

 

Inuyasha swore and dashed to her. He dragged them both out of harm's way a moment before the hammer stroke fell. As soon as he landed, he turned back to Naraku.

 

“I don't care why you're here,” he declared. “It doesn't matter now. Now that you're here you're ass is mine!”

 

Naraku glanced in the direction of the raging dog demon and laughed a short, ugly sound. “I have not come here to fight you, Inuyasha, and this time, you will not interfere.”

 

That statement, along with Naraku's next move, would be the most devastating Kagome had ever known. Naraku's fictitious handsome form melted away like a misty mirage and he was revealed as a thing of unimaginable horror. Immense, ancient, and wholly corrupt, Naraku's body was the foul amalgamation of countless demons he had devoured. Nonetheless, they still moved together in the perfect unison of a huge, monstrous spider.

 

“This is it,” Kagura whispered, still kneeling with her head hanging, beside Kagome. “Who would have thought it would be today?”

 

Kagome was about to berate her for surrendering with so little resistance, but she could not bring herself to believe her own words in the face of such dreadful force. She kneeled beside the decimated Kagura and she comprehended the withering of all hope within both of them.

 

I have no right to ask her to resist; she was always on the edge of resistance and we didn't bother to see it.

 

She looked for her friends and saw that each of them had been ensnared with such brutal velocity that there had never been a change to put up a resistance anyway. Naraku's body was comprised of a series of sinewy extensions that moved like the tentacles of a sea-monster come out of myth. None of them, not even Inuyasha, could move.

 

Kagome closed her eyes, to regain her sense of reality, or maybe to awake from the nightmare. She shuddered to remember how the day had started with such promise, such ease, and now she had to swallow the bitterness of being despoiled of everything before receiving a bloody and pointless death.

 

Naraku had not ensnared or pinned her or Kagura, however. Kagome could well imagine that he had plans that were more self-indulgent in mind for the two of them. The particles of his body shifted again, like a million points of putrid, sickly light. He repossessed his human body, but it was now more horrible than the spider, because it was now a true abomination—a man's torso and head upon the body of the foulest horror.

 

“Kagura,” Kagome whispered urgently. “Where is your heart? Do you know?”

 

“I think,” the she-demon struggled, “he keeps it in his own chest.”

 

Kagome was relieved. She had hoped that was the case. She looked at the despicable creature leering down at them.

 

This'll never work, she thought.

 

But if she was going to die anyway.

 

Mother…

 

“How sweet,” he mocked them, “a picture of friendship. Are you united by a common cause, or a common death?”

 

The despicable devil did not even change expression, but Kagura gave out a low cry and clutched her chest. She bent gasping, her head cradled on knees. Kagome then understood that Naraku could crush the heart within.

 

Kagome drew herself inward, like a spring, and tried to forget her terror. She left the dying Kagura and her struggling friends and all the blame of a past of a thousand squandered chances, and advanced upon the most terrifying thing she had ever seen, her feet heavy with the resolve of the dying. Naraku laughed with genuine mirth.

 

“You must be joking!” he mocked her. “I will give you this much, Kagome, you are no coward.”

 

“No, Naraku,” she answered calmly, still advancing. “I'm nothing like you.”

 

Kagome could her Kagura gasping her name, trying to tell her to run away. Inuyasha was screaming the same thing, even though his lungs were collapsing under the slow pressure of a mountain. They don't get it, she thought, where is there to go?

 

Naraku's eyes narrowed a fraction at her insult. Without a word, he hurled his putrid flesh at her, intent on crushing her with no more effort than a tiny insect between his fingers. Kagome clenched her fists around her bow and, praying to every god she could think of, she blocked the filth with a swing of the weapon and sent it hurling back in his face.

 

He was surprised to say the least, but she was nowhere near victory, or even escape. She knew at that moment that she was still too weak to ever defeat him. But the only option left to the weak that cannot run away, is to charge into the other direction, into death and oblivion. And that is just what she did. While he was still surprised by the blow, Kagome ran as fast as she could, straight into the monster and into ruin. Inuyasha screamed her name in horror, and Kagura, Sango, and Miroku were petrified by terror and disbelief.

 

“Kagome!” Shippou wailed in agony. “NO!”

 

She could not breathe. The very air was as thick as slime, slime made of poisonous ash and fire. This is what hell must be like, she thought, she had hurled herself deliberately into hell. And then, in a second or two, she was right next to him. Naraku stared at her face for a moment, overcome by incredulity, until the light of his malice returned and he grinned.

 

“I had no idea,” he almost purred, “that you were so eager for my company. How touching.” With that, he placed two hands with indulgent slowness and unrelenting rigidity around her tender throat. “So much the better, I will enjoy this much more.”

 

Despite her terror, Kagome noticed for no reason that he carried the stench of burning flesh and singed hair.

 

Or is that me?

 

His fingers curled around her like serpents, eager, relishing every moment of knowing he was powerful enough to befoul the flesh of the purest of the pure.

 

“So foolish,” he smiled. “So pathetic. Did you honestly think you could harm me? I am unassailable.”

 

“So it goes,” she managed to answer, gasping and tearing with pathetic fury at his fingers while her own began to burn. “But not so much!”

 

With that, she did the one thing she could think of. She reminded herself with frightful coldness why she was here and she reached out her arm and plunged her hand directly into his chest.

 

Naraku gasped in surprise, but it took every ounce of spiritual power she could muster to break the casing of his fabricated frame. Beyond that tiny victory however, her powers were laughable. Nothing could have prepared her for the pain of meeting Naraku's noxious insides. She was sure that, even if she ever did get away, she would not be able to keep that arm. The attack upon Kagome's flesh was not just an attack upon the body. The pain carried with it a brutal trap of nostalgia that forced her to recall the terrible day her father died, so the pain of it moved from her heart and became concentrated and localized somehow in her right arm. It was this moment that truly changed everything, because now Kagome, for better of for worse, fully understood the nature, the threat, and the true terror of Naraku.

 

She realized however that she did still have a hand, because she finally closed her burning fingers around something very solid and round, the size of a large grape. She prayed fervently that it was either Kagura's heart or Naraku's sacred jewel shard. Her lungs burning with suffocation, and already near the agony of death, Kagome tried to pull away. But it was not that easy to get away from the immensity of him, and Kagome saw with a new terror that he could, and probably would, absorb her into his own body, for no other reason than to carry her tormented and desolate soul around for eternity. Panic froze her heart and she was amazed that she had not foreseen this possibility. Simple death would have been too easy. If she had been able to breath, she would have begged for release. She would have bargained away anything whether or not it was hers to give. She struggled harder. The pain was smashing in her head, breaking her mind, but still she tried to focus on the cries of her name coming from behind her.

 

Now Naraku was pulling in. He made the same movement when he wanted to vanish, to escape. There was a pull on her like a centrifugal force. Her ribs creaked against that power, like a house in a typhoon, and she screamed again in anguish. Her lungs filling with ash, her body on fire, and her mind overcome with blackness, Kagome was dying.

 

She screamed, over and over as loud as she could, the name of the only person she thought might have done this better. Then darkness took her, and she knew no more.

 

---

 

Inuyasha was on the verge of sheer panic. He could not imagine his life without Kagome and right now that seemed a very real possibility. What she had not realized in the throes of death was that she had in fact managed to save them all, at least for the moment. Naraku, in his amazed distraction, had withdrawn his body from them, just in time to spare them from suffocation. But Inuyasha was still powerless. He could see nothing ahead of him but a confusing wind and whirl of shifting lights. Naraku's inky miasma was clear, but now it was mingled with the faint glow of a familiar rose glow. It was the same light of the pure Shikon jewel and of the purifying arrows. All the same, none of them could make out either of the struggling opponents, so they dared not strike.

 

“Inuyasha,” Kagura rose to her feet. “What are you waiting for? Use your sword! Kill him! Now's the time!”

 

“I can't!” he shouted at her. “Don't you get it? I can't see them, I could kill Kagome!”

 

“Inuyasha,” she screamed, “she's already dead! This may be your only chance! Inuyasha—”

 

“SHUT UP! I'll—”

 

But Inuyasha was cut off. They stood frozen for only a second, and then strained their ears to pick up the sound of Kagome's agonized voice screaming out a name in terror. Kikyou. Again and again, she cried for Kikyou.

 

The air was pulling with the force of a spinning planet. At first, it was not powerful and they were too focused on their friend's cries to comprehend it. But then those cries stopped utterly and the force of the air stole their breath. They began losing ground. Inuyasha drove his sword into the earth, held on to it with one hand, and grabbed Shippou with the other. Sango and Miroku in desperation clung to a tree, the same tree under which they had peacefully taken their lunch on this very day.

 

None of them could breathe. Sango wanted to cry out, to scream anything, just to add her own puny voice to the scene. But her lungs felt as though they were made of stone and her voice squeezed out as a tiny whistle, swallowed by the wind. The desperation bereft Kirara of her strength. She lost her footing and transformed in midair. Sango reached for her without hesitating, and Miroku felt their grip become undone and he was sure that somehow they were about to go wherever Naraku was going, and they would not survive it.

 

Then Kagura was there. It took every ounce of her strength but she used her power of the winds to create a small pocket of resistance against Naraku's pull. It was weak, however, and would not hold out for long.

 

But just then, everything stopped, and became as still as stone, as frozen as Midoriko's monument. Miroku wondered if he was witnessing the creation of another jewel. It was a moment that felt endless, capturing them in an amber world a second long and a universe wide.

 

“It's too late! It's all over!” Kagura shouted. Her voice was shrill, but in that towering silence it rang with a hollow resonance. Then she threw her head back and laughed as one gone mad.

 

“Now to ruin!” she cried. “To the top of the world!”

 

She spread out her arms and began running toward the calamity, as a child might run into the ocean, but she never reached it.

 

It all exploded. The noise was deafening, and the force blew them around like rag dolls. Kirara in her natural genius caught Sango and Miroku in midair and saved them from a certain and sudden death. The force flattened trees and hurled rocks an unfathomable distance. The forest and the mountains, the very earth, groaned with the power of that shocking detonation. In their old age, Sango and Miroku would remember that sound, which would come to them in nightmares down through all the decades.

 

***

 

 

[End of Chapter 7, ending the “dry and dusty road” period]

[Next chapter: Higurashi and Yuka]