InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ When We Awaken ❯ Chapter 9: Deception ( Chapter 9 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Chapter Nine: Deception

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“Surprised, Inuyasha?” queried the demon behind him with a sneering smile. “Now you will finally get out of my way!”

With that, the appendage around his neck squeezed tighter and another appendage wrapped around his other leg, effectively pulling him in two directions. He was being strangled and pulled apart at once.

And Kagome was nowhere to be found…

Kagome’s heart beat in time with her running legs. She had just seen him. It was impossible, but she knew it was him. She knew that her young charge, Naraku, had just slipped behind a tree. She bounded after the small boy, his hair fluttering like curly black ribbons.

“Naraku!” she yelled out one more time. “Please stop…!”

With a shuddered, breath she spun her body around the cherry tree that the kannushi had chosen. There she was face to face with the impassive visage of the young boy she had long since given up for dead. He stood before her wearing a white silk kimono and hakama pants made of purple silk. Dropping to her knees in front of the boy, she looked expectantly at the pre-teen. “Naraku, is that you?”

The solemn young face that she stared at looked at her with eyes that were far too wise for their young years. A slow and warm smile drew itself across the boy’s features. “You remember…

The young man’s mouth opened in astonishment. Hesitantly, the young kannushi reached out with his hand, as if to touch her lips. But his fingers only ghosted over her mouth. “I missed you so much, Kagome…”

Stormy blue-gray eyes widened in astonishment and confusion. Even though he was an exact facsimile of the boy she had left behind five hundred years ago, she still hadn’t expected him to respond in the affirmative. “What? You can’t be…”

The miko had been staring at the young boy so intently, that she never seemed to notice the older man who had walked up behind the young kannushi, squeezing the lad’s shoulders.

Shaking her head in bewilderment, she looked up at an extremely handsome man. The features of the two were very similar, high cheeks bones, eyes of coal, long black hair that curled like tendrils. The man gazed down at her with a hesitant smile. He was wearing a formal purple kimono, with golden flourishes. His long hair was swept up in a topknot. It was his face that caused Kagome to stare. He looked very handsome and regal. But what made her pause was how familiar he looked, like an older version of the young boy she had trained and then lost to demons.

“Who…?” Kagome questioned.

The older man continued to squeeze the young boy’s shoulders and if the young lad found the actions irritating or painful, he only stared dumbly ahead. Both only looked at her with glimmering smiles.

“Do you know who I am?” asked the older man.

“No,” answered Kagome as she stood and brushed the dust off of her pants. “Should I?”

The man’s smile faltered momentarily, before his eyes narrowed and he sighed. “No, of course you wouldn’t recognize me. How could you? I have changed so much in 500 years.” The older man looked down at the young Naraku in front of him. “You remember him, yes?”

The young boy looked up at Kagome in wonderment, a shy smile gracing his lips. A smile the older man did not share.

Kagome could only nod. “His name is Naraku, but how could he be alive and so young after all of these years?” The miko seemed to think for a moment and grasped the young boy by his arms, her hands brushing against the older man’s.

She was so busy at looking into the eyes of the young man, that she never noticed the intense longing the older man showed as their hands briefly brushed against each other.

“Did you…”Kagome stumbled over her words. “Did you sleep like I did? Did you sleep for 500 years?” She then hugged the boy, tears of joy cascading down her cheeks. “Naraku, I’m so happy to see you again.” Kagome pulled away from the hug, looking at the young boy’s befuddled smile. “But how can you be walking?” she looked down at his shoes and noticed for the first time that he was standing tall without any support. “How is it that you ran away from me?”

The older man coughed and the younger boy looked up at him. For a brief second they shared a look, before the younger boy took Kagome’s hands away from him and regretfully walked away.

“What, Naraku, don’t leave…” pled Kagome as she saw the young kannushi disappear through the trees.

“Kagome,” the older man looked at her intently. “You have to understand. We are both Naraku.”

“What?” Kagome’s brows furrowed in confusion. “What…how could there be two of you? And you both slept for 500 years?”

The older man sighed and motioned for Kagome to walk with him. Somewhere deep inside of her, the miko knew there was someone else she was supposed to be with, someone else that she never wanted to be parted from. But the memory was dim, like the wisps of a dream. Images of a young man with silver hair flashed through her mind before being replaced with the man standing beside her.

She took his hand and followed him to the edge of the koi pond where there was a rising gray mist. Their forms disappeared as they walked into the encroaching fog.

Inuyasha supposed that he should be terrified. There were two twin demons attacking him. One had a tendril wrapped around his leg; the other demon had one around his neck. He was being choked and pulled apart all at once.

But somewhere, deep inside of him, he felt the growing calm of someone who was used to battle, someone who knew how to handle situations like this. He grasped at the feeling and let it take over. His eyes hardened and a smirk fell across his face.

Using one hand to hold the tentacle in place and the other to bring his sharp claws to it, he cut the extremity that encircled his neck. The blackened appendage fell away with inky ichor spurting from the wound he had caused.

He heaved a breath of clean air before reaching for his blade that had been secured to his belt. With practiced ease the sword leapt into his hands, becoming the glowing Tessaiga of legend, towering his own frame. Effortlessly he sliced at the tendril laced around his leg and jumped to his feet.

If the demon he had been fighting felt any fear at his sudden freedom, the creature didn’t show it. It only sneered at him with cold disdain.

With an alacrity that he didn’t know he had, Inuyasha realized that the demon behind him was about to attack. With a quick leap, high into the air, he landed on a branch of an ancient cherry tree.

Arching black webs sprung from the two bodies to land as a quivering mass of oozing flesh where he had once stood. The pulsing ebony heap seemed unsure of where to go, now that its target was gone. After a moment of indecision, the flesh then poured itself back into the two circling forms. Blackened sludge seemed to reform within the two monstrous figures as they turned as one to look up at him.

Inuyasha felt the bough he stood on bend under his weight. From his vantage point, he could see both demons, whose reddened eyes tracked his every movement.

With an eerie calmness, the two figures slithered on the ground toward him in a macabre synchronicity. Each demon circling the perch he was on as if they were cats creeping upon a bird in a tree.

The entire situation should have made the hair on his body stand on end; his heart should have been racing. He only grinned as he clenched his glowing sword in his fist. Fighting made him feel alive in a way that he never truly felt before. It was as if he was finally being himself when he was in combat, as if he had been sleeping and was just waking up.

“Oi! Uglies, up here!” He knew that he was goading them, but he would be damned if it didn’t feel good to taunt the very demons that had been attacking him since he woke up Kagome from her long sleep.

The quivering blackened shapes moved in a semi-circle underneath him. This time a dark fog started to emanate from their bodies, shrouding the area like a gray muslin cloth.

For a moment, Inuyasha had started to worry. The last time he had dealt with this demon’s miasma, it had been poisonous. The air had stung his nostrils and he remembered the unsettling worry he felt about what would have happened to Kagome had she swallowed the toxic vapors.

He sniffed the air tentatively and realized it wasn’t as dark and thick as it was before. Today the fog obscured his vision and wreaked havoc on his sense of smell, but it didn’t seem to be killing any living thing it touched. For some reason the demons below only wished to disguise their attacks.

There was little time to react when flying tendrils, like creeping vines, leapt to the branch he had been standing on. With a speed that surprised even Inuyasha, he managed to jump away, just as ebony strands of oozing flesh landed where he had once stood.

The tree limb he had been standing on was quickly overwhelmed with bubbling blackness that spread to cover the entire tree. Then the tree shuddered as it cracked and heaved under the ebony mass. As if the shapeless black form had a mind of its own, it quickly flew to the demons it had come from—reattaching itself.

Inuyasha didn’t like the idea of playing a mouse to these predatory creatures. He decided it was time to go on the offensive.

From his crouch on the ground he screamed as he jumped at the nearest demon, hacking away at it as if he was a butcher cleaving meat. Almost every piece of slithering mass that fell away simply rejoined its owner, welding itself to the larger flesh as if it were simply putty.

Tendrils flew at the hanyou, and each attack only met the burning blade of the Tessaiga. Inuyasha didn’t notice the parts that did not go back to their sire. Before he realized it, a blackened mass had reformed behind his back. Just before the oozing flesh spiraled into a cone that was going to spear him in the gut, he managed to leap into a nearby tree again, barely missing the attack.

The other demon attacked in tandem—flying blackened globs of flesh chased him up the tree. Inuyasha had just landed on a branch when he had to leap again, in quick succession—each landing finding an ebony mass bubbling in his wake.

Inuyasha tried attacking again, wielding the Tessaiga with swift unending strokes, but the demons that attacked him would only reform. As he tried to evade their multiple attacks, he found himself starting to weary. He was fending off attacks from in front and behind him, without any backup.

He needed to change his tactics and his mind quickly recalled the past two times he had fought such a demon with amazing clarity. The only thing that had stopped the past two attacks had been Kagome’s spiritual arrow and the Wind Scar.

He tried to distance himself to formulate another attack, when one demon on the ground chuckled darkly. The top half was that of a man with long dark hair and malevolent red eyes, the bottom half was just a quivering mass that looked like a large black maggot entwined with crab-like pinchers and octopus-like appendages.

“Will you use your ‘Wind Scar’ again, Inuyasha? I wonder where Kagome is? Would she be burned alive by the power your sword unleashes?”

“Shit!” Inuyasha quickly leapt again, clearly on the defensive as he simply tried to dodge each coming attack. There was no reason to continue his hacking attacks. The demon was right, only the Wind Scar could free him at this point. ‘But where the fuck is Kagome?’

Mists enshrouded Kagome as she walked next to the man who called himself Naraku. She noted how noble and striking this dark haired man looked. However, there were several things that didn’t seem quite right. It was as if she was comparing him to someone else, but she just couldn’t remember who that might be. Kagome shook her head in dismissal. If the man next to her was Naraku, she instinctively knew that she could trust him. Wasn’t he the one she had been with for many years?

“I don’t understand. The Naraku I left was just a boy…”

“Five hundred years have passed for me, Kagome. For five long centuries I have waited…”

His words only confused her. “Waited? For what?”

The man only drew himself up close to her. He looked elegant in his kimono and long black hair. She was mesmerized by his presence. It was almost as if he was a magnet that tugged at her, making her gaze at his dark eyes.

“I was only a boy when I first fell in love with you. Now I am a grown man. I’ve waited for you…only for you…” the older man replied. He cupped her chin, bringing her eyes to look steadily into his.

Her heart should have leapt into her throat at such a declaration and she was confused as to why it hadn’t happened. Her lips parted in confusion. Her mind was pushing her to kiss this man. Telling her to trust him, that he was the only one for her. She had no other love…

But there was a very real part of her mind that fought against those words. Images of a red kimono, a flashing sword and silver hair leapt within the confines of her mind.

Suddenly, golden eyes shimmered in her mind and she pushed herself away from the man who called himself Naraku. The move was so sudden that she found herself on the ground.

“Kagome?”

She pulled her blouse tight around her fists. Something was not right. Something was playing havoc with her mind.

“You!” she yelled as he turned to point an accusing finger at him. “Who are you and why are you confusing my mind?” She took a deep breath and reached inward, calling forth the spiritual energy that normally powered her arrows, but now it enveloped her body. Reiki flashed and settled on the girl, her ebony hair whipping around her as if a storm had just erupted.

The lingering fog that had plagued her mind was suddenly swept away, like the burning of a bright sun.

The man’s eyes drew together in both anger and disappointment. His hands shook with rage.

His voice erupted with a hiss. “Everything I have done, I have done for you! I let demons devour my body whole, so that I could be worthy of you. Then I patiently waited five centuries. I even sent HIM to awaken you!” The man’s eyes flared. What were once blackened eyes now were demonically red.

Confusion marred her features. “You…you let those demons consume you? Why would you ever do that? You’re a kannushi. You are the embodiment of purity and you defiled yourself?!”

“I was an invalid, left to live a life with no meaning. And worse, the day I could no longer walk, HE replaced me as your companion. Then he had the audacity to ask you to be his wife.” The man licked his lips. “I couldn’t do anything about it. You were going to marry him, when it was me that you should have married. I was trained in the spiritual arts like you were. I was your companion, not HIM!”

Kagome’s eyes were pained when she turned to look at the man who was once her charge. “You killed him…” she whispered. “You killed Inuyasha…you’re the shape-shifter.”

Anger flickered over his features. “What else could I do? He seduced you. He used you. You were supposed to be mine. Not his!”

Tears started to meander down Kagome’s cheeks.

The man startled when he saw her tears. His angry tirade seemed to deflate. He reached out an arm to her and then stopped when he got too close to her face. Sparks erupted when his hand was within millimeters of her cheek.

His voice was filled with sorrow as he spoke. “Kagome?”

She turned to look at him; tears still coursing down her face as she shook her head. “You were like a brother to me. I never thought of you as…”

Naraku’s brows drew together in confusion. “We were meant to be together, Kagome. And we still can. I’ve waited so long…”

“Stop it! I never thought of you that way. You were the brother I could never have—my family. And you thought you could kill the only man I have ever loved and I would be fine with it?” Her voice grew in anger as she spoke.

“Love me!” he cried as he finally did reach and grabbed onto her arm. At his touch, flames started to meander up his arms and his flesh started to burn. His arms sizzled and darkened, but he did not let go. “I need you. I have always needed you.”

The look she gave him was only one of pity. “Naraku, you need me only as a sister. I will never be anything else to you.”

As she spoke the flickering reiki started to change everything it touched. The man’s strong, young arms morphed into something gray and sprinkled with liver spots. His blackened hair started to turn deep gray, before being peppered with white. His handsome face became laced with fine wrinkles that deepened as the seconds flew by. His eyes became sunken into holes of gray.

His eyes glowed a deeper crimson at her words. “No. You need to understand. You need to think as I do.”

This time Kagome’s eyes flickered with anger and indignation. She pulled her arms away from Naraku. The man’s old, gnarled flesh started to reknit and resume its youthful appearance. Within seconds, the handsome man stood before her again.

Her words coursed with rage. “You cannot control my mind while my reiki is active. Stop it, Naraku! I thought I taught you better than that! I taught you to be giving, to serve others, to put their needs before your own!”

A mocking smirk appeared on his features. “And where did that get me, Kagome? It left me as a young cripple, rotting on the floor of a hut. A boy without the means to gain the love of the woman he had always desired. No, I have chosen a better way. I now think only of myself. I will have you one way or another…”

“You will never have me. You killed Inuyasha. Do you think I’ll ever forget that? He was the only man I will ever love.”

Naraku’s crimson eyes narrowed in derision. “Don’t be so sure of that Kagome.”

“Naraku, what you feel is not love, but an obsession. And it has gone on for too long. Let go! Be the young boy I once knew…not the murderer that you have become…”

The man sneered. “Maybe you’ll think differently when his reincarnation joins him in the afterlife.”

Her eyes widened. “No…Inuyasha! Naraku, stop!”

The dark man lunged at her, pining her with his hands on her arms. He almost snarled as her reiki tracked back up his arms again, transforming him into a hunched old man with sunken eyes and gray skin.

“You will stay with me. You will love me!” he commanded, his eyes glowing like blood red rubies.

“Don’t make me do this, Naraku. Step away…before it’s too late,” she begged, desperation tinting her voice.

“Too late for what, Kagome?” he sneered as his wizened old face drew close to hers. Wrinkled, gray-blue lips moved to press themselves against her youthful pink mouth.

The girl only recoiled in horror.

Then a storm churned around her as her reiki flared. Flames widened, exploding off of her body, making the air around her flash like a lightening bolt had just hit the ground.

The old man holding her to him would not let go, his features burned away with the energy surrounding them, first his hands became ashes, before his arms and body followed him.

She heard him speak before his life sputtered into ash and then was swept away by the sudden wind. “I love you, Kagome…”

The young woman fell to the ground, holding her arms against her small frame, as if she was trying to hug herself.

On the ground where the old man had once stood, was a small pile of smoke-gray ashes and a blackened husk that once had been a wooden golem.

A sudden crash from the corner of the wooded park drew her attention. She seemed to be waking up from a spell. Without pausing, she twisted on her heels and ran back to where she had been. “Inuyasha…” she whispered to herself. “How could I be so blind?”

Inky blood spurted as Inuyasha clawed his way from the black globules of flesh that were trying to wrap themselves around him. Ebony tendrils tried to spin themselves around Inuyasha just as he managed to wrench himself free from their grip.

He bounded away, his breath heaving.

This was a battle he was losing. Without his ‘Wind Scar’ the two demons attacking him would eventually wear him down. They had nearly swallowed him whole into their murky flesh. Only his adrenaline had kept him from defeat. But he knew he would tire, he knew that without unleashing the fury of the Tessaiga, this battle was lost.

He just couldn’t fathom letting the Wind Scar loose knowing that Kagome was nearby, without being able to tell exactly where she was. If there was one thing he was certain of, it was that he would never risk her life, even if it meant saving his own.

The miasma that filled the air had obscured his sense of smell as well as his sight. The only thing that he could still rely on was his hearing.

Another salvo of tendrils leapt at him. He managed to bound away in time, but not before the seeping mass wrenched the branch he had been on from its limb. Timber cracked as it fell to the ground and the ghoulish twin eyes of the demons still tracked his every movement.

It was then that he heard the scraping noise of sandals on pebbled ground. His ears twitched; someone was running toward him. Without even thinking, his feet quickly leapt in the direction of the sound.

At first, all he could make out was the dense mists and trees that surrounded him, but soon he saw a running gray figure that materialized. With each step he could see her more clearly, he could see the gray change to wavy black hair, red skirts swishing in the wind and a face pale adrift with determination. “Kagome!”

Before she could even tell that he was near her, he had already captured her small form in his arms. She stiffened momentarily, before her body softened.

He grinned as he sniffed her hair. Her scent seemed correct, but Naraku was able to duplicate that before. He had to be certain…

Gray-blue eyes, the color of a sea storm met his own. Time seemed to bend as he gazed at her, churning emotion wavered in their depths before she put her arms around him, grasping on for dear life. “I’m so sorry, Inuyasha…I shouldn’t have…”

Inuyasha silently chided himself for pulling the girl into his arms, when she could have been just another shape-shifter. But he seemed to be drawn to her, like a magnet tugging at his chest. His instincts seemed to tell him that she was real and he wasn’t about to question them.

With a deft movement, he managed to spin her around onto his back. As her weight settled against him he couldn’t help but to notice how right it felt to have her there. She belonged with him. Why in the hell had he ever felt otherwise?

With a cocky grin in place, he ran back into the obscuring mists and back into battle. It was with a sense of satisfaction that he felt Kagome wrapping her legs and arms around him tightly.

The fog that choked his nose and obscured his vision, fell away as he got closer to the clearing where the two demons that were attacking him. But this time he would be ready, this time he wouldn’t hold back the power of the Tessaiga.

Two creatures came into view. The bottom of their bodies looked like swollen, blackened slugs and the upper part of their bodies were still the same twin men. Men whose hair was long and black and whose eyes were blood red.

The demons sneered as he came near and then inexplicably, their faces morphed into rage.

Kagome peered over his shoulder and then stiffened at the sight. “Naraku, what have you done?”

“You know these assholes?” queried Inuyasha in confusion. Somewhere in the back of his mind, there was recognition of the name—something that made his stomach churn, something that caused him immense disquiet. But try as he might, there was no understanding for his strange emotions.

He only felt her nod against his back as one of the creatures lashed out at him again. Blackened tendrils whipped up against his arms and legs, but despite his weariness he was quicker than his opponent. Kagome was on his back and he’d never let anything touch her. Adrenaline was coursing through his blood and it made him faster and much more deadly.

With a bounding leap, he managed to land at the exact point where all three combatants seemed to line up. He smirked as he lifted his blade; it sprung to life, shimmering against the dense fog, clearing the air around it.

The demons known as ‘Naraku’ seemed to quaver, as if anticipating the half demon’s next move. Then they both simultaneously smiled a deep Cheshire grin.

Inuyasha didn’t know why they were smiling—perhaps they had no idea that they were about to die. He shrugged off his doubts. He knew this battle had to end quickly. If he continued on, he would eventually tire and make a mistake that would cost both their lives.

The large crescent moon on the Tessaiga glistened above him, glowing with demonic power. He leveled the sword as Kagome swung from his back and stood behind him.

He sniffed and tried his best to find the wound in the air—the place where his demonic sword’s power and those of the demons called ‘Naraku’ met. He could almost see the disturbance in the atmosphere, where the two opposing coils of energy met and rebounded.

Inuyasha aimed the power of the blade at that spot. With a clear cry of ‘Wind Scar,’ he brought the sword down in an arch, scorching the ground and the air in front of him with unmitigated destructive energy.

Just as he let the Wind Scar loose from the blade, he noticed a small boy running across the field between him and the demons. The monsters grinned as the boy ran right in the face of the churning energy that was as hot and powerful as any lightening strike.

His face blanched and for a brief second he considered pulling the power of the Wind Scar back into the blade, but such an action would kill Kagome who stood right behind him. “Shit!”

With narrowed eyes he saw the boy’s eyes widen in terror before being hit with the full force of the Wind Scar, causing his young form to dissipate into ash white flakes before being blown away by the bright energy.

The ground rumbled like thunder. Five huge gashes wracked the ground, racing outward from where Inuyasha loosed the attack. The demons were simply swallowed up by the cruel energies that pulled them apart before filling the clearing with a flash of light.

Inuyasha heaved his sword down, letting the bright blade fall once more into its dull sheen. He could only look at where the demons had once stood and see the destruction he had wrecked.

It looked like an earthquake had struck the area, leaving fire it its wake, turning the few remaining trees into charcoal husks.

But all he could think about was that small boy…the innocent life he had just killed.

He turned his weary eyes toward Kagome. He expected to see anger or at least disappointment on her face for his crime. He was quickly confused by the stoicism she portrayed.

Inuyasha swallowed and gestured toward the destruction behind him. “I…I killed that boy,” he mumbled. “Shit!” He closed his eyes, letting his own agony sweep over him.

A cool hand touched his shoulder. “It wasn’t a boy, you were only to think that it was…”

“What?” Inuyasha’s eyes opened as he stared at Kagome, only to find her looking over his shoulder at the clearing that had been obliterated.

“That young boy, he was Naraku as well…”

“What?”

Kagome sighed and turned back to look Inuyasha square in the face. “Naraku. The Shape-shifter.” She gestured to the ash-like grove. “I found out today he can take on more than one form at once.”

“No shit,” answered Inuyasha. He was perturbed and he had no idea where she was going with this. The name, Naraku, seemed to flicker in the deep recesses of his mind. He knew of the name, it reminded him of something he disliked and someone who wasn’t much more than a boy. The thoughts confused him, since the things he just fought were obviously older.

She sighed and looked up into the sky. She blinked rapidly and then gazed at Inuyasha’s golden eyes once more. “Naraku was once my adopted younger brother. I trained him to be a priest. I knew he had a crush on me, but I didn’t think…” The girl shuddered and then continued. “He made a pact with the demons of the dark and let them take over his body. It gave him the ability to shape-shift.” Her tiny fists clenched to her side. “He killed Inuyasha.”

For a brief second, Inuyasha had no idea what she was talking about. ‘What do you mean he killed me?’ was all he could think. But a sudden coldness wrapped around him as he looked at her stony face and reddened eyes. She meant his uncle had been killed by Naraku; she was angry about something that had happened to that damned guy he really wanted to forget about.

“The young boy I just saw before I left you, that was him, Naraku. And…,” she stopped to take in a shuddered breath. “And he also came to me in his adult form. There were two of them, a boy and a man. He tried to take control of my mind…” She gazed down at her hands as if she couldn’t believe that they were attached to her body. “I killed him…” She met his eyes squarely again. “You killed the remnant of Naraku that looked like a little boy. But neither of us has really done any killing. All we really destroyed are his demon puppets. He still remains.”

She looked at him with eyes that were shimmering with welled up tears. He wanted to hold her and comfort her, but a part of him recoiled. She was looking at him with longing and regret. Who was she seeing, himself, or his uncle, the man who had perished 500 years ago?

Inuyasha quickly sheathed his sword and turned to walk away. His own hands clenching and flexing with a disquiet that he could not place.

A young man stood behind a tree before walking away from the scene he had just witnessed. Perhaps today wasn’t as successful as he had hoped, but then he was rarely victorious when he ran into battle in an emotional rage.

Thoughts still seethed in his mind. Images of Kagome with Inuyasha plagued him. Knowledge that the bastard would be sharing her room at night made his anger churn.

He tried to collect himself and to plaster a pleasant smile on his face. He’d have to wait and carefully plan out his next attack. He wouldn’t stumble into a fight in passionate fury again. He knew he only had to bide his time. This next time he would succeed, because he would make sure that Inuyasha would not be able to wield the Tessaiga.

‘Until next time, hanyou…’

The Next Chapter: I Am Awakened…see you in a month!
Author's Notes:
#1: Confused about Inuyasha in this chapter? Remember the title of this story is ‘When WE Awaken.’ Seriously folks, didn’t you see this coming? Oh and that’s NOT the plot twist. It’ll happen very soon though.
#2: In modern Japan, you are not allowed to walk around with a samurai sword, but I’m going to let this one slide. Perhaps everyone just thinks that Inuyasha is a cosplayer (especially since he is seen walking around with a garbed miko) and that his mangled sword couldn’t possibly do any damage…
#3: Eggry thought this Naraku was horribly creepy. What did you think?
#4: Did anyone catch the ‘Labyrinth’ quote in this chapter? ;-)
#5: Sorry that I took so much time to update. I really want to have a new chapter out every month. If you don’t see a chapter in time, just send me a nice review and that usually gets the words flowing again.