InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Tomorrow ❯ Chapter 13 ( Chapter 13 )

Chapter Thirteen

 

Kazeko pasted a subservient and loving smile onto her face as she filled her father's bowl, but inside she was screaming in fear. Why was he here so soon?

 

“The main force is still moving north,” he said triumphantly, knowing full well that the villagers surrounding the door could hear him, “But the creatures are fleeing in our path, and we can't move fast enough. So I called up all the armies from the west which were decommissioned. It's not such a large force, but we should be able to catch up to the mononoke as we move, stop them escaping. I rode night and day to get here soon enough.” There was a lot of muttering around the doorway. Kazeko's mother smiled broadly.

 

“But that's wonderful!” she said. “We weren't expecting you for the longest time, and to be frank we've been seeing more odd travelers. I thought they couldn't be human.”

 

“Of course not,” the captain said with a smug grin. “And since they are not humans, wearing our forms is thievery. Such evil creatures should not be able to mingle with decent people.”

 

Kazeko gritted her teeth, stopping herself from saying what was on her mind, knowing that if she admitted a connection to any youkai that didn't involve killing them would be seen as betrayal. She thought of SesshoMaru-sama saving them from the lowlife bandits and clamped her jaw, stopping herself from asking whether `decent' could really apply to most humans. She faintly caught the word `youkai' in the crowd's murmurings, and prayed that her father wouldn't hear.

 

“In any case, if you see an injured youkai, you should kill it. If you see a living one, the army is encamped only a couple of hour's march away, less than an hour on horses. We will deal with these monsters wherever we find them.”

 

“To bad ye weren't here a couple o'moons ago,” one old man muttered loudly. Kazeko felt her breath freeze. “Ye'd've found one then.” Kazeko stared at her father, silently begging him not to have heard, but he turned and stood, facing the elder.

 

“Were you attacked?” he asked seriously. “Was a youkai here?”

 

“Aye, there were,” the old man continued, ignoring Kazeko's sudden trembling. The old man'd tell her father. She started to stand.

 

“I told you that you should have killed it, Kazeko,” her mother said placidly as she filled her own bowl with vegetables. “No use healing it, I don't care how often it insisted that it only wanted the bandits dead…”

 

Kazeko wanted to run, but she couldn't seem to move. Her father had turned, slowly, on the spot, facing her, a dark rage igniting behind his eyes as he let out a visceral growling noise.

 

Kazeko braced herself for the first blow, but even so she hit the floor when it came. She gasped sharply when her father grabbed her arm and jerked her upright again. The assembled villagers screamed and ran. Kazeko's mother went white, realizing what she had said, but made no move to defend her daughter.

 

“HOW DARE YOU!” Yamazaki roared, slapping his daughter again. “Sheltering a youkai! SAVING ITS LIFE! HOW DARE YOU?”

 

The blows kept coming, hard, as he raised his hand to her time and again. Kazeko hit the floor when he let go of her arm, only to be kicked in the ribs. She curled up, spitting out blood. Her mother screamed.

 

“Stop! STOP!” She pleaded, tugging at her husband's arm. “You'll kill her-“

 

“And we'll be better off for it!” He spat, pushing her away. The woman hit the wall hard and slumped onto the floor, unconscious. Kazeko took the time to pull herself upright and to try to run, but she felt pain all over, and she could barely do more than hobble. She clutched at her left arm. It was at a horrible angle. She couldn't move it.

 

Out of the corner of her eye, as she staggered under the trees, she saw her father chasing her, sword in hand.

 

“Ah-HA!” He yelled. “Going to get your youkai friends to kill us, eh? My own daughter, A YOUKAI-LOVER!”

 

Kazeko staggered on, horribly aware that her father was running much faster than her, impeded only by his lack of knowledge of the forest. She left the trees to find herself facing the cliff. She couldn't return to the forest- she could hear her father crashing towards her through the bushes- so she limped along the cliff edge, hoping to make it down to the path. She shrieked with pain as her fathers' sword grazed her arm, and she instinctively leapt away, in the wrong direction...

 

And she was falling, falling into darkness...

 

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SesshoMaru narrowed his eyes as he stared down at the huge army encamped less than a mile from Kazeko's village. Kazeko's village itself was barely ten miles from Rin's. A considerable distance for humans, yes, but still unsettlingly close. Why were they here so soon?

 

It didn't matter. Yamazaki was definitely at home, then...

 

SesshoMaru stood, turning to the village. A nagging sense of unease, oddly familiar, was growing. He started to run. He had seen Yamazaki kill his own men. If he found that Kazeko had saved a youkai...

 

As he came near to the cliff- her­ cliff- a scream suddenly pierced the evening. The strong scent of her blood came to him, and he looked to the cliff, his sharp eyes perceiving the falling body, and the man with the sword standing at the edge...

 

Pouring on speed, he shot vertically up the edge of the cliff, catching Kazeko and tearing the arm that held the sword from Yamazaki. The human fell to his knees, clutching the bloody stump, but he did not scream, did not even whimper, only glared malevolently at SesshoMaru.

 

“I know how much that hurts, trust me,” SesshoMaru said softly, then looked at Kazeko, held against his Mokomoko-sama. Her skin was almost pure black. “But it's less than you deserve...” He cracked the claws of his left hand.

 

“Kazeko!”

 

The tigress- Mitsuko- landed atop the cliff edge and saw SesshoMaru holding Kazeko. “What'd that bastard do to her?” she whispered. Then she raised her own claws, glaring at Yamazaki with the light of hatred in her eyes. “I'll kill him!”

 

“Mitsuko! Stop!”

 

Rin's nephew, the houshi and taijiya's oldest boy, had scrambled up the cliff and grabbed the tigress around the waist with one arm, her right wrist with the other, stopping her attacking the man. She clawed at his arms with her left hand, drawing blood, but he did not let go.

 

“Calm, down, Mitsuko!” he grunted as she kicked him, but the girl refused to still, her eyes turning red with rage.

 

“No, I won't!” she spat. “He killed my family, he's killed dozens of other youkai, and he's not going to kill one more person-“

 

“Look at him!” Kazuki yelled. SesshoMaru glanced back at the man to see that he had collapsed, unconscious, the huge loss of blood weakening him. “He's hardly able to fight back now!”

 

“He didn't give his victims a chance to fight back!” Mitsuko screamed, angry tears pouring down her cheeks.

 

“Exactly!” Kazuki said. “Do you really want to take yourself down to his level? Look, he looks about to die from blood loss anyway, and if he does it's no more than he deserves, but you're better than him, Mitsuko, I know you are! Don't be like him. Please.”

 

Mitsuko stopped struggling, and the boy tentatively let go of her. SesshoMaru lowered his own claws, both irritated and relieved that the boy was right. The tigress was sobbing again, sinking to her knees, clearly thinking of her lost family. Kazuki sat down beside her, carefully putting an arm around her shoulders, comforting her as she cried. He looked up at SesshoMaru.

 

“Is that Kazeko?” he asked. SesshoMaru nodded slightly. “Chichi-ue and the rest are making preparations to leave as soon as possible. If you take her back to the village now, we can patch her up and take her with us, to safety.” SesshoMaru did not reply, but leapt down the cliff, heading to the village. Behind him, Kazuki picked up the still-sobbing tigress and, with one last contemptuous glance back at Yamazaki, followed.

 

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Kagome, with Mitsuko's aid, carefully washed Kazeko's cuts and massaged a herbal salve into the bruises. She was pale-faced, but managing to remain professional. InuYasha, Rin, Miroku and Sango, however, were all staring at Kazeko in varying degrees of shock, and Kohaku looked on the verge of tears. InuYasha managed to bring himself to speak first.

 

“You only told us that she was a human girl that saved your hide,” he said slowly. “You didn't tell us that she looked and smelled exactly like-“

 

“I know who she looks like,” SesshoMaru said quietly. “I know who perhaps she once was. And I also know who she is. I should think that you would understand that better than anyone.”

 

InuYasha returned to silence. SesshoMaru's words had brought back memories that he'd tried to forget, as well as the memory of a day that he knew SesshoMaru remembered better than he did, a day that smelled of blood and flowers...

 

“What do you mean?” Mitsuko said in confusion. Kazuki, standing by the doorway, stared from one face to the other, trying to discern some hint as to the girl's identity. SesshoMaru glanced once at Kazeko, then turned and left the hut. Kohaku sighed deeply, trying to compose himself.

 

“InuYasha-sama,” he said quietly. “You said she even has the same scent as Kagura-sama did?”

 

Some comprehension dawned on Kazuki's face, but Mitsuko remained confused. InuYasha nodded.

 

“It's like... only Kagura's scent, not that bastard Naraku's,” he said, and to a questioning look from Kagome, said, “Well, it's like, Naraku's scent was her base scent or something, but she developed a slightly different one of her own, and- aw, dammit,” he said to continuing looks of confusion. “Look, it's a nose thing. Don't question it.”

 

“What are you talking about?” said Mitsuko, sounding thoroughly bewildered. Kazuki beckoned to her to follow him.

 

“I'll explain it,” he muttered. “It's a bit too complex from their point of view...”

 

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“So what's the deal with that Kazeko girl?” Isamu asked Kazuki when he appeared by the lake edge. “Why did Otou-san and the others look so freaked out when SesshoMaru-oji-san brought her here?”

 

“Well,” Kazuki said, noticing that Yuki and Haruka were there too, “according to everyone's eyes and a couple of noses, she's probably Kagura's reincarnation.”

 

Yuki and Haruka looked at each other, and Isamu's eyes widened, and Mitsuko grew more frustrated.

 

“Who is Kagura?” she asked angrily. Isamu looked over at her, and she was surprised at how sad he looked.

 

“Was,” Haruka said softly. “She died twenty years ago.”

 

“She was a highly skilled Kaze-youkai,” Yuki said.

 

“She was one of that bastard Naraku's “children”, but Kohaku-oji-san says that she wasn't evil like him.” Kazuki said. “We'll explain Naraku in a minute,” he added to a fresh look of confusion from Mitsuko.

 

“And...” Isamu added, looking around, as if he didn't think he had the right to say what he was saying. “Okaa-san thinks... she was in love with Oji-san. And they think that he... he cared about her too.”

 

Some comprehension finally came to Mitsuko. She looked back at the hut, and the solitary silver figure standing on the roof, watching the south. For once, she could see not the future, but the past. An immeasurably sad past, a past of almost too much loss to be borne, saved from more by loneliness, yet followed by another loss of the only one who had breached those defences.

 

He was holding a feather.

 

“All right,” she said quietly. Then she turned to Kazuki. “So who's `Naraku'...?”

 

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InuYasha walked to the door of the hut then jumped backwards, landing neatly on the roof in front of SesshoMaru. In a rare instance of tact and respect, he did not look at his half-brother until the sound of something small and soft being quickly stowed into armor had faded.

 

“How far away are they?” he asked evenly, remembering Kagome telling him of Mitsuko's cryptic message; Three days. It had been nearly two days since. Miroku and Kohaku were at the doorway to the hut, and he knew that though the women were inside, they could hear them.

 

“A little over a day,” SesshoMaru replied stoically. “They may be delayed by their general's injury, but equally he may be spurred on to move faster because of it.”

 

“We need to move soon, then,” Miroku said, watching the skyline. In the fading light, there was a distant orange glow on the horizon, to the right of where the sun had set.

 

“We need to delay them,” Sango added. “The kids getting away safe is a priority.”

 

“I've got an idea,” Kagome said thoughtfully, looking at the thin main path that threaded through the rice fields to the village.

 

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InuYasha is the property of Takahashi Rumiko-Sensei, and I claim no ownership of any of it. All couples not involving original characters will be strictly canon. Aside from Haruka, Yuki and Kazuki, I made up all of the kids, though since birthdates other than Kazuki's were never really stated in the manga, nor names, I've made these up as well. This fanfic will make little sense if you have not read the entire manga, and I'm afraid that to read the last twenty or so volumes you will have to (at the time of writing) venture into the internet, but I strongly suggest that you do buy the Tankoban volumes for yourself, so that Takahashi-sensei can afford to continue gracing us with her imagination. Anyway, hope you enjoy the fic. ^_-