InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ While You Were Gone ❯ Old Friends ( Chapter 1 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: King Baka 
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Comedy / Romance / Angst | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 09.03.2017 | Pages: 5 | Words: 2.8K | Visits: 405 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Comedy / Romance / Angst | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 09.03.2017 | Pages: 5 | Words: 2.8K | Visits: 405 | Status: Completed
Disclaimer: I don’t own Inuyasha. I will make no
money from this fic; I write for my own enjoyment and the enjoyment
of my readers.
A/N – this is, as you might guess, a collection of stories centering on Inuyasha’s adventures in the Sengoku Jidai during Kagome’s absence. At this point I don’t know if it will only be a few stories or many more. The first three stories are in chronological order, but subsequent entries may not be. Unless otherwise noted, the stories in this collection will be manga only.
Old Friends
Inuyasha felt a small grin tug at his lips as he sprinted through the trees, genuinely enjoying the chance to stretch his legs, and the accompanying sense of purpose. He didn’t mind traveling with Miroku, but the monk was only human so they had to walk most of the time. Carrying him would have been awkward for a number of reasons, and neither one of them had ever made such a proposal. It had taken them six days to reach the site of the current job, which to this point was the farthest they had journeyed from home.
Home. Even after half a year, that concept still seemed odd to him. It was something he had never truly expected to have, except for that brief period of time after he had agreed to become human for Kikyou and live with her. Even after waking from his fifty-year slumber, he had seldom permitted himself to think of anything beyond slaying Naraku and dealing with the Shikon no Tama. He had learned long ago that dreaming of the future was a pointless endeavor. Nothing ever seemed to work out the way he wanted it to. That thought caused the dull ache within his chest to throb faintly, the same ache which he had borne for the last six lunar cycles. It was no surprise that home didn’t really feel like home, considering what he had lost.
Still, he was grateful. He had been accepted into the village community, and remained a significant part of his friends’ lives. He valued their support and companionship more than they would ever know. Sango was currently at home, just past the midpoint of her pregnancy with the couple’s first child. Or children, unless his ears were deceiving him. He hadn’t quite found the right way to tell them that he could hear two distinct heartbeats coming from Sango’s belly. Maybe that blabbermouth kitsune would do it for him, the next time he visited.
A shift in the scent trail broke Inuyasha from his musings, and he turned to follow it. He and Miroku had come here, as they usually did, at the behest of desperate villagers seeking a solution to their youkai problem. They never knew exactly what to expect, whether the youkai was living within the village in a disembodied form, or lurking outside of it in physical form. The former was Miroku’s area of expertise, but the latter he usually left to his hanyou companion. It was a pretty good system, in Inuyasha’s opinion, even though it sometimes annoyed him to travel for days only to find that there was nothing for him to do. Such was not the case this time. There was some debate as to what type of youkai had been taking their livestock, but all agreed that it was a large beast. And once the livestock was gone, no one had any doubt that it would start taking people next.
It hadn’t taken Inuyasha long to pick up the scent of a bear youkai, one of the prime suspects. He was currently tracking its scent deep into the nearby forest. The elevation constantly increased as he ran, but the trees showed little sign of thinning out yet. A mountain loomed up ahead, and he wondered if the creature had chosen a cave as its lair. Killing it wouldn’t be much of a challenge either way, of that he was fairly certain. He hadn’t fought anything approaching a difficult battle since Naraku’s demise. In the past, that probably would have irritated him, but lately he found that he was pretty mellow about the whole thing. He actually enjoyed helping people, now that good deeds were no longer serving as distractions from some grand mission. Helping Miroku ‘meet expenses,’ as the monk liked to describe it, was also nice. Even if the prices he charged, particularly to wealthy customers, were sometimes an absolute rip-off.
The trail shifted again, and this time Inuyasha shook his head to clear it. The scent was growing stronger; it was time to stop daydreaming and focus. His greatest fear was that these carefree days would cause him to lose his edge. One never knew when a powerful enemy might come along, so he needed to maintain his fighting skills as best he could. The next time Sesshoumaru came around, maybe he would ask him if he wanted to spar. And if the stuck-up bastard said no, well then he might just have to force the issue…
Damn. He was daydreaming again. Focus, you idiot! Once he did, he realized that his nose was picking up traces of a new scent in addition to the bear youkai. New, yet familiar. He rolled his eyes as he identified it. Great, just great. Well, I guess this was bound to happen sooner or later… That didn’t mean he was looking forward to it. Sure enough, he soon came upon none other than Kouga the wolf prince standing atop the freshly deceased carcass of the bear youkai.
“I thought I smelled something foul on the breeze,” Kouga observed with a fanged smirk. “And it wasn’t the bear.”
“I could say the same thing,” Inuyasha replied, crossing his arms over his chest. “What’s the big idea killing my prey, bastard?”
“Your prey? This thing was trespassing on my lands, Inu-kurro. It’s mine.”
“My job, my kill, fleabag!”
“My lands, my kill, mutt!”
“I’ll kick your ass!”
“Oh yeah? Bring it!”
At this both males paused, as if in expectation. Kouga broke the silence first, snorting in amusement and relaxing his stance.
“This is where Kagome always stepped in and stopped us,” he observed, craning his neck to look behind Inuyasha, even though his nose could probably tell him that the miko wasn’t here. His brow furrowed in confusion as he sniffed in his rival’s direction, and Inuyasha knew exactly what Kouga was smelling. Or rather, not smelling. The utter lack of Kagome’s scent on his person could only indicate that he hadn’t been in her presence recently, which must have come as a surprise to the wolf, given the circumstances of their last parting.
“Where is Kagome, anyway?” Kouga asked, his voice low, somewhat guarded.
“Kagome’s not here,” Inuyasha answered quietly, his tone sinking with renewed melancholy.
“Did you let something happen to her?” the wolf growled, obviously sensing the hanyou’s change in mood.
“Kagome’s safe!” Inuyasha snarled back, to which Kouga’s eyes widened in apparent understanding.
“Oh, so then you fucked it up with her already? I should have expected as much from an ingrate mutt.”
“I didn’t fuck anything up, you bastard!” The sheer vehemence of that retort must have convinced Kouga of its truthfulness.
“So then what happened to her?”
“Fuck off! I ain’t telling you shit!”
With that, Inuyasha turned and stormed off through the trees, Kouga hot on his heels.
“Don’t turn your back on me, Inu-kurro!”
“Kiss my ass, wolf-trash.”
“What the hell happened to Kagome?!”
“Keep following me and that’ll be the least of your worries!”
“Inu-kurro!”
“Fuck off, I said!” Inuyasha shouted, punctuating his words with a half-hearted swipe that Kouga easily avoided. Instead of backing off, however, the wolf zoomed around in front of him, forcing him to come to a halt. When he spoke, Kouga’s eyes were glowed with a fierce light, and his voice was cold steel.
“Listen, you ungrateful cur! I let Kagome go with you without a fight because it was what she wanted, and what you needed. So you are damn well going to tell me what happened to her!”
Inuyasha glared at him for several moments, then heaved an exhausted sigh, his entire posture slumping. He didn’t have the energy for this right now; the reminder of Kagome’s absence was too painful. And Kouga was right; if anyone deserved to know what happened to her, it was him. So with something of a petulant glare, he settled himself against the nearest tree and waited for his audience to do the same. They stared at each other across the brief divide, each reveling in mutual dislike. Then Inuyasha began his tale. He started at the beginning, with how Kagome had come through a time portal from a world five hundred years in the future. He skipped over most of their adventures in the feudal era, focusing instead on the final battle with Naraku and the unfortunate aftermath. When he finished, he watched as Kouga attempted to process all of the information. The wolf’s logical mind probably tried to convince him that it was all lies, but eventually he seemed to accept that his one-time rival had been completely honest with him.
“Wow,” he finally said, shaking his head in amazement. “To spend three days in darkness waiting for some idiot to reach her…and to stay strong the whole time. She always was incredible.”
Inuyasha grunted in agreement, letting the insult go. He held no insecurities concerning his own role in the final confrontation against the Shikon no Tama. Kagome was not supposed to last as long as she did, and he was never supposed to reach her. They had both performed far beyond what anyone outside of friends and family would have expected of them. If Kouga thought that he had somehow failed her by taking too long to reach her, then he was just being ignorant. Those who had actually faced Naraku and the Shikon no Tama that day knew the truth.
“I never would have guessed that she was from the future,” the wolf continued, as though thinking out loud. “Though I guess that explains her strange clothing.”
“School.”
“Huh?”
“It was a uniform from her school,” Inuyasha elaborated. “That’s where young people in her time go to learn shit.”
“‘Learn shit,’ huh?”
“Yep,” Inuyasha replied with a grin. “Though why she insisted on wearing that thing back here, I’ll never understand.”
Kouga thought about it for a moment. “She was probably homesick.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Wouldn’t you be a little homesick if you spent all that time in a strange world? She probably wanted something that made her feel connected with her friends and family back home.”
Inuyasha stifled a grimace. That…actually made a lot of sense. But he’d be damned if he told Kouga that.
“Shut up, wolf-turd,” he grumbled, cringing at how lame that sounded.
“Why, you pissed that I figured out something that your halfwit brain has been stumbling over for years?”
“I said shut up!”
Kouga shook his head in mock derision. “I honestly don’t know what Kagome ever saw in you. You’re not very strong. Or good-looking. You have the maturity of a child and the intelligence of a pile of dog shit. And with the way you treated her half the time…I’ll never understand it.”
Inuyasha couldn’t muster anything to say in response to that assessment. His heart felt raw, its deepest insecurity exposed for all the world to see. Perhaps Kagome had not come back…because she’d realized that he was unworthy of her? Without comment, he stood to leave.
“Hey.”
The sudden seriousness in Kouga’s voice stopped him, and he turned to find the wolf glaring at the ground by his feet.
“If Kagome has a choice in the matter,” he began, sounding as though each word was catching in his throat, “then I’m sure she’ll come back someday. And…it won’t be for me. So, if she returns, I won’t interfere. You have my word on that.”
Inuyasha blinked at this shocking turn of events. Idly, he realized that he previously would have rubbed the wolf’s nose in something like this. Instead he felt only humility, and gratitude. His one-time rival was offering him an olive branch, and he would be a fool not to accept it.
“Thank you,” was all he could think to say, but it was enough. Kouga nodded, his expression taking on a fierce glint.
“Any more heartache though, and I’ll personally beat you to a bloody pulp.”
“If that happens, I’ll let you,” Inuyasha replied solemnly. The next few moments passed in awkward silence, as Kouga lost himself in his own thoughts and Inuyasha debated whether to extend his own olive branch. Eventually, grudging respect won through over mutual dislike.
“If Kagome does return…would you want to see her?”
Kouga seemed surprised by the offer, but only had to consider it briefly before nodding. He rose to his feet, his lips twisting in a teasing smirk.
“Though that might not be such a good idea for you. If Kagome sees me, she might remember what a real man looks like.”
“Last time I checked, ‘real man’ doesn’t mean mangy fleabag.”
“It doesn’t mean overgrown puppy either.”
“Bastard.”
“Baka.”
“Keh. Run back to your cave, wolf-turd. You can keep the bear. I’m gonna take credit for killing it though.”
“It’s my bear. It’ll feed my pack for days. You can tell the humans whatever you want. As long as they don’t bother us, we won’t bother them.”
Inuyasha nodded, having no trouble believing that the leader of a once man-eating tribe of wolves had truly changed. Such was the power of Kagome’s influence.
“See ya around, Inu-kurro.”
“Hopefully not too soon.”
“The feeling is mutual, believe me.”
With that, he was gone, and for once Inuyasha didn’t even mind not getting the last word in. He didn’t think he would ever like Kouga, or see him as a friend. But it was enough to know that the wolf would respect Kagome’s decision as to whoever she chose to be with. And if she returned, he would honor his own word and bring her to reconnect with an old friend.
For now, he would return to the village and make sure Miroku hadn’t gotten into any trouble. Then, the two of them would collect their earnings and begin the long journey home.
A/N – this is, as you might guess, a collection of stories centering on Inuyasha’s adventures in the Sengoku Jidai during Kagome’s absence. At this point I don’t know if it will only be a few stories or many more. The first three stories are in chronological order, but subsequent entries may not be. Unless otherwise noted, the stories in this collection will be manga only.
Old Friends
Inuyasha felt a small grin tug at his lips as he sprinted through the trees, genuinely enjoying the chance to stretch his legs, and the accompanying sense of purpose. He didn’t mind traveling with Miroku, but the monk was only human so they had to walk most of the time. Carrying him would have been awkward for a number of reasons, and neither one of them had ever made such a proposal. It had taken them six days to reach the site of the current job, which to this point was the farthest they had journeyed from home.
Home. Even after half a year, that concept still seemed odd to him. It was something he had never truly expected to have, except for that brief period of time after he had agreed to become human for Kikyou and live with her. Even after waking from his fifty-year slumber, he had seldom permitted himself to think of anything beyond slaying Naraku and dealing with the Shikon no Tama. He had learned long ago that dreaming of the future was a pointless endeavor. Nothing ever seemed to work out the way he wanted it to. That thought caused the dull ache within his chest to throb faintly, the same ache which he had borne for the last six lunar cycles. It was no surprise that home didn’t really feel like home, considering what he had lost.
Still, he was grateful. He had been accepted into the village community, and remained a significant part of his friends’ lives. He valued their support and companionship more than they would ever know. Sango was currently at home, just past the midpoint of her pregnancy with the couple’s first child. Or children, unless his ears were deceiving him. He hadn’t quite found the right way to tell them that he could hear two distinct heartbeats coming from Sango’s belly. Maybe that blabbermouth kitsune would do it for him, the next time he visited.
A shift in the scent trail broke Inuyasha from his musings, and he turned to follow it. He and Miroku had come here, as they usually did, at the behest of desperate villagers seeking a solution to their youkai problem. They never knew exactly what to expect, whether the youkai was living within the village in a disembodied form, or lurking outside of it in physical form. The former was Miroku’s area of expertise, but the latter he usually left to his hanyou companion. It was a pretty good system, in Inuyasha’s opinion, even though it sometimes annoyed him to travel for days only to find that there was nothing for him to do. Such was not the case this time. There was some debate as to what type of youkai had been taking their livestock, but all agreed that it was a large beast. And once the livestock was gone, no one had any doubt that it would start taking people next.
It hadn’t taken Inuyasha long to pick up the scent of a bear youkai, one of the prime suspects. He was currently tracking its scent deep into the nearby forest. The elevation constantly increased as he ran, but the trees showed little sign of thinning out yet. A mountain loomed up ahead, and he wondered if the creature had chosen a cave as its lair. Killing it wouldn’t be much of a challenge either way, of that he was fairly certain. He hadn’t fought anything approaching a difficult battle since Naraku’s demise. In the past, that probably would have irritated him, but lately he found that he was pretty mellow about the whole thing. He actually enjoyed helping people, now that good deeds were no longer serving as distractions from some grand mission. Helping Miroku ‘meet expenses,’ as the monk liked to describe it, was also nice. Even if the prices he charged, particularly to wealthy customers, were sometimes an absolute rip-off.
The trail shifted again, and this time Inuyasha shook his head to clear it. The scent was growing stronger; it was time to stop daydreaming and focus. His greatest fear was that these carefree days would cause him to lose his edge. One never knew when a powerful enemy might come along, so he needed to maintain his fighting skills as best he could. The next time Sesshoumaru came around, maybe he would ask him if he wanted to spar. And if the stuck-up bastard said no, well then he might just have to force the issue…
Damn. He was daydreaming again. Focus, you idiot! Once he did, he realized that his nose was picking up traces of a new scent in addition to the bear youkai. New, yet familiar. He rolled his eyes as he identified it. Great, just great. Well, I guess this was bound to happen sooner or later… That didn’t mean he was looking forward to it. Sure enough, he soon came upon none other than Kouga the wolf prince standing atop the freshly deceased carcass of the bear youkai.
“I thought I smelled something foul on the breeze,” Kouga observed with a fanged smirk. “And it wasn’t the bear.”
“I could say the same thing,” Inuyasha replied, crossing his arms over his chest. “What’s the big idea killing my prey, bastard?”
“Your prey? This thing was trespassing on my lands, Inu-kurro. It’s mine.”
“My job, my kill, fleabag!”
“My lands, my kill, mutt!”
“I’ll kick your ass!”
“Oh yeah? Bring it!”
At this both males paused, as if in expectation. Kouga broke the silence first, snorting in amusement and relaxing his stance.
“This is where Kagome always stepped in and stopped us,” he observed, craning his neck to look behind Inuyasha, even though his nose could probably tell him that the miko wasn’t here. His brow furrowed in confusion as he sniffed in his rival’s direction, and Inuyasha knew exactly what Kouga was smelling. Or rather, not smelling. The utter lack of Kagome’s scent on his person could only indicate that he hadn’t been in her presence recently, which must have come as a surprise to the wolf, given the circumstances of their last parting.
“Where is Kagome, anyway?” Kouga asked, his voice low, somewhat guarded.
“Kagome’s not here,” Inuyasha answered quietly, his tone sinking with renewed melancholy.
“Did you let something happen to her?” the wolf growled, obviously sensing the hanyou’s change in mood.
“Kagome’s safe!” Inuyasha snarled back, to which Kouga’s eyes widened in apparent understanding.
“Oh, so then you fucked it up with her already? I should have expected as much from an ingrate mutt.”
“I didn’t fuck anything up, you bastard!” The sheer vehemence of that retort must have convinced Kouga of its truthfulness.
“So then what happened to her?”
“Fuck off! I ain’t telling you shit!”
With that, Inuyasha turned and stormed off through the trees, Kouga hot on his heels.
“Don’t turn your back on me, Inu-kurro!”
“Kiss my ass, wolf-trash.”
“What the hell happened to Kagome?!”
“Keep following me and that’ll be the least of your worries!”
“Inu-kurro!”
“Fuck off, I said!” Inuyasha shouted, punctuating his words with a half-hearted swipe that Kouga easily avoided. Instead of backing off, however, the wolf zoomed around in front of him, forcing him to come to a halt. When he spoke, Kouga’s eyes were glowed with a fierce light, and his voice was cold steel.
“Listen, you ungrateful cur! I let Kagome go with you without a fight because it was what she wanted, and what you needed. So you are damn well going to tell me what happened to her!”
Inuyasha glared at him for several moments, then heaved an exhausted sigh, his entire posture slumping. He didn’t have the energy for this right now; the reminder of Kagome’s absence was too painful. And Kouga was right; if anyone deserved to know what happened to her, it was him. So with something of a petulant glare, he settled himself against the nearest tree and waited for his audience to do the same. They stared at each other across the brief divide, each reveling in mutual dislike. Then Inuyasha began his tale. He started at the beginning, with how Kagome had come through a time portal from a world five hundred years in the future. He skipped over most of their adventures in the feudal era, focusing instead on the final battle with Naraku and the unfortunate aftermath. When he finished, he watched as Kouga attempted to process all of the information. The wolf’s logical mind probably tried to convince him that it was all lies, but eventually he seemed to accept that his one-time rival had been completely honest with him.
“Wow,” he finally said, shaking his head in amazement. “To spend three days in darkness waiting for some idiot to reach her…and to stay strong the whole time. She always was incredible.”
Inuyasha grunted in agreement, letting the insult go. He held no insecurities concerning his own role in the final confrontation against the Shikon no Tama. Kagome was not supposed to last as long as she did, and he was never supposed to reach her. They had both performed far beyond what anyone outside of friends and family would have expected of them. If Kouga thought that he had somehow failed her by taking too long to reach her, then he was just being ignorant. Those who had actually faced Naraku and the Shikon no Tama that day knew the truth.
“I never would have guessed that she was from the future,” the wolf continued, as though thinking out loud. “Though I guess that explains her strange clothing.”
“School.”
“Huh?”
“It was a uniform from her school,” Inuyasha elaborated. “That’s where young people in her time go to learn shit.”
“‘Learn shit,’ huh?”
“Yep,” Inuyasha replied with a grin. “Though why she insisted on wearing that thing back here, I’ll never understand.”
Kouga thought about it for a moment. “She was probably homesick.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Wouldn’t you be a little homesick if you spent all that time in a strange world? She probably wanted something that made her feel connected with her friends and family back home.”
Inuyasha stifled a grimace. That…actually made a lot of sense. But he’d be damned if he told Kouga that.
“Shut up, wolf-turd,” he grumbled, cringing at how lame that sounded.
“Why, you pissed that I figured out something that your halfwit brain has been stumbling over for years?”
“I said shut up!”
Kouga shook his head in mock derision. “I honestly don’t know what Kagome ever saw in you. You’re not very strong. Or good-looking. You have the maturity of a child and the intelligence of a pile of dog shit. And with the way you treated her half the time…I’ll never understand it.”
Inuyasha couldn’t muster anything to say in response to that assessment. His heart felt raw, its deepest insecurity exposed for all the world to see. Perhaps Kagome had not come back…because she’d realized that he was unworthy of her? Without comment, he stood to leave.
“Hey.”
The sudden seriousness in Kouga’s voice stopped him, and he turned to find the wolf glaring at the ground by his feet.
“If Kagome has a choice in the matter,” he began, sounding as though each word was catching in his throat, “then I’m sure she’ll come back someday. And…it won’t be for me. So, if she returns, I won’t interfere. You have my word on that.”
Inuyasha blinked at this shocking turn of events. Idly, he realized that he previously would have rubbed the wolf’s nose in something like this. Instead he felt only humility, and gratitude. His one-time rival was offering him an olive branch, and he would be a fool not to accept it.
“Thank you,” was all he could think to say, but it was enough. Kouga nodded, his expression taking on a fierce glint.
“Any more heartache though, and I’ll personally beat you to a bloody pulp.”
“If that happens, I’ll let you,” Inuyasha replied solemnly. The next few moments passed in awkward silence, as Kouga lost himself in his own thoughts and Inuyasha debated whether to extend his own olive branch. Eventually, grudging respect won through over mutual dislike.
“If Kagome does return…would you want to see her?”
Kouga seemed surprised by the offer, but only had to consider it briefly before nodding. He rose to his feet, his lips twisting in a teasing smirk.
“Though that might not be such a good idea for you. If Kagome sees me, she might remember what a real man looks like.”
“Last time I checked, ‘real man’ doesn’t mean mangy fleabag.”
“It doesn’t mean overgrown puppy either.”
“Bastard.”
“Baka.”
“Keh. Run back to your cave, wolf-turd. You can keep the bear. I’m gonna take credit for killing it though.”
“It’s my bear. It’ll feed my pack for days. You can tell the humans whatever you want. As long as they don’t bother us, we won’t bother them.”
Inuyasha nodded, having no trouble believing that the leader of a once man-eating tribe of wolves had truly changed. Such was the power of Kagome’s influence.
“See ya around, Inu-kurro.”
“Hopefully not too soon.”
“The feeling is mutual, believe me.”
With that, he was gone, and for once Inuyasha didn’t even mind not getting the last word in. He didn’t think he would ever like Kouga, or see him as a friend. But it was enough to know that the wolf would respect Kagome’s decision as to whoever she chose to be with. And if she returned, he would honor his own word and bring her to reconnect with an old friend.
For now, he would return to the village and make sure Miroku hadn’t gotten into any trouble. Then, the two of them would collect their earnings and begin the long journey home.