InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Tomorrow ❯ Chapter 28 ( Chapter 28 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

It wasn't quite a mountain anymore, but it was one hell of a pile of rubble, as Kazuki had commented. As Isamu and the others ran up to the jagged rocks, Isamu caught the scent of a huge number of Youkai, a fair number of humans, and even a surprising number of hanyou. There was also the scent of a lot of fire and cooking food.

“Breakfast?” Yoshinori mumbled, waking up.

“As soon as we find someone to hang out with...” Yuki said, climbing carefully over one of the scree piles.

“My thanks for leading us here,” Ryoichi said. “I am going to try to find my brother. What will you do?”

“I'd be very surprised if I couldn't find anyone that I knew here,” Shippo said. “Good luck.”

“You too,” one of the sons said, as they followed their father up the mountain.

“By the way... Shippo-san...” Yuki said thoughtfully. “When you were talking to that rabbit-woman, you called our parents...”

“The Shikon No Tama, with its colourful history, and Naraku, with his, were very famous. What became of them, and who brought about their downfall, are already legends among the youkai,” Shippo explained.

“'Colourful' is certainly one way of putting it,” Kazuki remarked drily.

“Well, mostly red,” Shippo conceded. “Anyway, the hanyou and miko of legend are obvious, as are the monk and the taijiya. The reason that Kohaku is known as the `possessed child' also ought to be obvious. And the fact that Rin-chan- as a human child, no less- actually travelled with SesshoMaru would have made her famous enough even if he hadn't gotten mixed up with Naraku, and thus the legend. Names fade pretty quickly and are easily mistaken, so people generally remember them by those monikers.”

“Cool,” Kazuki said. “So we can get in with pretty much any youkai on our parents' fame?”

“Probably,” Mitsuko said. “I've heard that legend too.”

“I can't believe that something that only happened twenty years ago is already a legend,” Satsuki said.

“I know, it's- whoa.”

Isamu could understand why Kazuki had cut off. He had smelled it coming, but Kazuki, as a human, had only sensed a large concentration of youki. He still probably wasn't prepared for the sight greeting them, which was dozens of bonfires, tucked in sheltered positions among the piles of rock, each surrounded by assortments of humans, hanyou and youkai.

Satsuki got off from Shippo's back and he stretched out, returning to human form.

“See anyone we know?” Kazuki said, looking around. Yoshinori sat up in Mitsuko's arms.

“Wow,” he breathed. “There's so many...”

Shippo was sniffing around. Then he grinned.

“Ah, perfect,” he proclaimed. “Just our kind of people.” He picked up Satsuki and ran off. Isamu looked at the others, shrugged, and followed the Kitsune.

They found him laughing with a very... eclectic group of people. Though most youkai who took human forms didn't have any noticeably youkai features, beyond the colour of their hair and eyes, these eight people around the fire were quite obviously not human. One girl had a tail. One had purple skin. There were three with animal ears, like Kiki. There was another pair- probably twins, looking at them- who had vividly striped, bi-colour hair, much like Mitsuko's, only it was green and orange. And one was just so bloody huge. He made Ryoichi and his bulky sons look like dwarves.

“What's he mean by `our kind of people'?” Yuki said, staring at the little gathering. Isamu sniffed the air.

“Hanyou,” he replied.

“Isamu! Guys! C'mon over!” Shippo called.

“Bloody hell, he does look like that arrogant twit,” one of the animal-eared women replied.

“Ah, I see you know Inu-oji-san?” Kazuki said, setting Kazeko down and flopping down by the fire. “Damn, am I gonna be feeling those extra hours of running tomorrow.”

“I'll get out some blankets, see if we can't set them down without waking them up,” Haruka said, gesturing to the younger children.

“Don't worry about it, we're not going anywhere for at least three days,” The girl with the tail- which, upon closer inspection, was like a fish's. “There's a tsunami winding up. We're going to make our move between that and the first snows.”

“I'm not gonna question a fish about water,” Yuki said, “but isn't our little camp a bit... exposed?” She had a point, Isamu could see; most of the various gathering were surrounded by rock, but theirs was open. None of the hanyou looked concerned about a tsunami.

“I think Shiori's in charge of handling that,” Shippo said, jerking his thumb at the purple girl, who waved.

“We've not introduced ourselves yet, have we?” said the man with bull's horns, sounding surprisingly timid. Surprisingly because, like Ryoichi's family, he was big.

“Leave it to Shion to remember the manners,” commented the girl who would look convincingly human if it weren't for her bright green hair. “Well, i'm Asagi. I'm an inu-hanyou.”

“You're what?” Isamu said with a start. It was then that he noticed her golden eyes.

“Yeah, I know there's no actually clan anymore,” she said, “but I was eleven for five centuries, so can you forgive me for being a bit out of touch? Maybe i'm you're great-times-whatever aunt or something.”

“They're from Horaijima,” Shippo explained.

“Oh... ohhhhhh,” Kazuki said. Mitsuko and Kazeko looked at each other and shrugged.

“Mythical Island of immortality,” Asagi said. “In actual fact, it was originally meant to be a safeguard for hanyou children so that they could grow up in peace. Time only stopped when the Shitoushin took over and needed to keep the meat fresh.”

“The `meat' being the hanyou,” One of the twins explained. “He's Dai.” He jerked his thumb at his twin.

“He's Roku,” the twin said, mimicking the motion. “We're identical twins, as you may not have guessed if you were blind. We're fire-hanyou.”

“Which explains why, as you may not have noticed even if you're not blind but merely extremely dim,” Roku said, “There doesn't happen to be any wood in that fire.”

There was an en masse double-take as everyone looked at the bonfire which indeed, Isamu saw, was not burning on anything.

“I'm Moegi,” another girl volunteered. She wasn't large in the over-muscled way that bull-youkai were, but she seemed to simply have been built to a larger scale than normal girls. This was explained by the bear's ears sticking out of her brown hair. “Bear-hanyou.”

“And i'm Ai,” the littler girl with the fish tail said. “I'm a fish hanyou. Bet you never guessed.” She flicked her tail and giggled.

“And this great shy lump is Shion,” Asagi said, patting Shion's arm. He gave them a timid little wave. “We all spent a few centuries together on Horaijima, so we're sort of friends.”

“I'm Shiori,” said the purple girl. “Bat-hanyou. I can make shields, as I think you know. I can't make them as powerful as I could with the Blood Coral, but they're good enough to keep a little wind off.”

“And I'm Jinenji,” said the last one, the huge one. “Horse-hanyou. I grow healing plants. I don't like fighting.” He showed them the large pack he was carrying, full of green leaves with the scent of medicine.

“What is it with the size-to-violence ratio?” Dai said. “I mean, Shion-kun, Moegi-chan and Jinenji-kun are all fucking huge-” Moegi stuck her tongue out at him “- and they're practically scared of their own shadow.”

“Other end of the spectrum,” Roku picked up, “You've got Ai-chan. Midget-”this time Ai stuck out her tongue “-but do you have any idea how much it hurts to be bitch-slapped by a fish tail?”

“Yeah, but you love it really,” Dai teased, poking his twin in the side.

“Ah, so you guys are all together now?” Shippo said.

“Yeah,” Asagi said, grinning cheesily, as she sat on Shion's lap. Ai curled her tail around Roku, while Dai put his arm around Moegi. “Just kinda happened, really.”

“Anyway, this is my mate, Satsuki,” Shippo said.

“Heya,” Satsuki said, tucking blankets around her children. “These three are Hotaru, Satoshi and Momo. If you forget any of their names, they also answer to “trouble”.”

“And these are InuYasha and Kagome's kids,” Shippo said, “Isamu and Kiki.”

“Knew they were together,” Dai and Roku said in unison.

“And these're Miroku and Sango's kids,” Shippo continued.

“I'm Yuki, and this is my twin, Haruka,” Yuki said with a wave. “This is baka- sorry, Kazuki, our little brother, and the sleepers are Michio, our littler brother, and Hitomi, our little sister.”

“And these are our cousins,” Haruka added, pointing to said cousins. “Yoshinori is the older boy and Takumi's the younger. The baby is Tsukiko.”

“I'm Mitsuko, not related to any of them, and this is my little brother, Akira,” Mitsuko introduced herself, reaching for a blanket for Akira.

“And i'm Kazeko,” Kazeko said. “Don't ask about the arm and really don't ask about why i'm here.”

“Fine, just so long as you're not secretly planning to kill us all,” Asagi said flippantly, “Like usagi-baka seems to think. You ran into her?”

“Rabbit youkai?” Kazuki asked. “Big thin streak of paranoia?”

“That's the one,” Ai said. “She spent ages interrogating every human to come near her- well, generally until their mates or children threatened her. That eagle-youkai- Shuichi, I think his name is- his mate's a human, but Usagi there didn't give him any trouble for the same reason she backed down from Shippo-kun.”

“'Prey',” Yuki commented with a chuckle.

“Yeah, and when he figured out that she was scared of him, he volunteered to be a guard,” Moegi said, giggling softly. “No-one likes her much, but she is incredibly perceptive. She dealt with some rogue youkai who attacked when people first started congregating here, so she became in charge of the guards.”

“Hell, do we need guards?” Kazuki said. “I mean, chichi-ue and the others stayed behind to fight `em off, and I can't see them getting beat by a few humans, y'know? The army's probably gone home in buckets by now.”

“Yeah, but we can't count on that,” Haruka said. “For all we know, they did.”

“Come on,” Asagi said. “I remember your parents. They beat the Shitoushin. Humans're nothing compared to them.”

“We hope,” Kazeko said. Then she turned to Ai. “By the way, where's the Tsunami actually coming from?”

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“Disembark!” Hayashi called. The men started moving down the ramps, running through the chill rain to the villages clustered around the coast. “Move quickly! Before the storm hits!”

“Gently, gently...”

Hayashi turned to see some of the monks leading several soldiers down the gantry. They were carefully carrying a stretcher carrying general Yamazaki. The man's injuries had been healing well, but the mononoke's attack had set him back. They were going to hide him in the house of the headman of the nearest village.

Satisfied that the soldiers could get themselves off of the ships and into the huts without killing themselves, Hayashi walked down the gantry to said headman's house. The old man was twisting his hands nervously.

“We're sheltered by the mountains here, Hayashi-sama,” he said. “Ye'll be safe here until the storm passes.”

“Have any of your villagers seen any strange travellers?” Hayashi asked. “They could have been youkai in disguise.”

“Aye,” the headman said. “We've seen an odd number of travellers north for this time o' year. And then Seiji saw...”

“There was a fish-lady!” A boy cried, running out of the house. “A fish-lady pulling a boat! And there was a big guy with horns like a bull, and a big girl who was even bigger'n you, and these two boys who were throwing a fireball at each other like it was a toy ball! It was so cool!”

“Seiji! Do not be fooled!” The headman admonished sternly. “Those were youkai! They are evil monsters! You should be glad that they did not spot you! You would have been killed!”

“But they did see me,” Seiji said, in that infuriatingly superior way of all small children. “The fish-lady gave me a fish, that big one that I brought back, remember? They were nice.”

“That fish was given to you by a youkai?!” The headman's wife shrieked, and ran back into the house, presumably to dispose of the fish. The headman grabbed the boy by the arm and slapped him.

“Do not take gifts from youkai, Seiji!” he said angrily. “You could have cursed us! We could've died if we'd eaten that fish!”

Hayashi watched the exchange without a word. As the soldiers with the stretcher approached, he walked into the house, calling behind him, “Yamazaki-sama and I will stay here. Once the Tsunami is over, we shall move out and exterminate the youkai. Have you any idea where they are headed?”

“I... well, I don't know, really,” the headman said with a shrug. The boy was wandering off, muttering under his breath and rubbing his cheek. “Where do youkai go? The forest, maybe.”

“I heard somethin' from the headman's wife a village over,” the woman said, reappearing with a cloud of steam from what must be the kitchen. “They say the youkai are headin' for the ghost's mountain.”

“Ghosts?” Hayashi asked.

“Well, they say a couple o' decades back, there was a mountain sanctuary there called Hakureizan,” she explained, “And If you prayed there, you'd be forgiven any sin. But then these murderers they executed there, their ghosts come back, see, and start killin' people! Then, a week later, the entire mountain crumbled to the ground, an' all the lakes and rivers around turned to acid `till a miko come purify `em!”

“Ghosts?” Hayashi said with a snort. “Probably youkai. Makes sense that it would become a meeting place for them. Once the storm has passed, could someone guide us here?”

“I'm sure someone will,” the headman said, “or at least to a village nearer to the mountain.”

Yamazaki, now inside the hut, laughed. Hayashi jumped; he hadn't realized that the general was awake.

“We'll have them now,” he said with a cold smile. “They may be close to the sea, but they won't escape us now. We shall have them!”

Hayashi said nothing.

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Usagi means “bunny” (it's Bunny's name in the Japanese version of Sailor Moon) and it isn't the rabbit-youkai's name, it's just how those who aren't her natural predators refer to her :P

Asagi, Shion, Dai, Roku, Moegi and Ai are the six hanyou children from the fourth movie, Guren No Horaijima (Fire on Horai Island). Horaijima, in Japanese myth, is the island of immortality, and one of the five treasures of Kaguya-hime was the jewelled sprig of Horai- a branch from a tree on the island. Shiori and Jinenji are both hanyou who turned up in the manga.

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. ^_-