InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Metamorphosis 2: Legacies ❯ The Barrier ( Chapter 6 )

~Chapter Six~

~The Barrier~

 

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Trudging along the sun-dappled path through the forest, Kiri said nothing as she lagged slightly behind Jirou and Marisaiko. It was a slightly muggy morning, and she had little doubt that it would be a lot more unpleasant by afternoon, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky, either, and she let out a deep breath, sending the bangs on her forehead flying straight upward.

 

Face crumpling into an expression of complete self-disgust, she shook her head. To be honest, she'd meant to sneak out of the hut last night while everyone was sleeping. She was better off on her own, and she knew it. Having any kind of attachment to anything or anyone was nothing but stupid. She knew that better than anyone.

 

But it was so interesting, watching the family's interactions, that she'd sat at the fire pit for hours, even after Marisaiko, Ai, and she had helped Kagome clean up after the meal despite the matriarch's insistence that they should just relax. At the time, she figured that it was the least she could do, considering that the food was more delicious than anything she could remember, even Jirou's roasted rabbit. She'd even said more than she meant to, told them more about herself than she ever told anyone, but it was easy—too easy—to talk to Marisaiko and to Kagome, and even to Ai.

 

InuYasha was a little more perplexing. The way he spoke was borderline rude, almost abrasive, and yet, the more he blustered, the more Kagome smiled, and no one seemed to be the least bit bothered by it, either. As though they were used to his behavior, and Kiri supposed that they had to be, they all seemed to just laugh off his brusqueness.

 

Jirou, however . . .

 

Jirou was entirely beyond her comprehension. Offering his family almost shy smiles, even occasional soft laughter, he didn't say much, barely more than a few sentences here and there, but she'd caught him staring at her a few times—staring at her in an entirely unsettling kind of way—like he was trying to see into her mind or to figure out something about her.

 

Most of his initial irritation seemed to be gone, at least, which had to account for something.

 

Even so, if anyone else had noticed, she didn't know, but she'd watched in silence when he'd refilled his bowl with stew and had slipped out of the hut, only to return a little while later with an empty bowl and no comment. She didn't know what he'd done with it, but she had a sneaking suspicion that he'd given the food to the guy that hadn't left since he'd followed InuYasha home.

 

Just now, though, she had to wonder about the soundness of his decision to do such a thing, given that the strange guy was following them.

 

She wasn't sure when she'd first noticed that they had a shadow. It wasn't too long after they'd left the village when she'd first spotted him, ducking behind a tree. It was just unsettling at first. Now, nearly two hours later, it was annoying, and if either Jirou or Marisaiko realized that they were being trailed, she didn't know since neither of them seemed to be the least bit concerned, and, while they were walking in silence, it was a comfortable kind of silence: the kind that only people who had known each other for a long time could actually achieve without it feeling stilted or unsteady.

 

She'd only agreed to go with Marisaiko to the taijya village to get farther north, anyway. She could have traveled alone—that's what she was used to—but it was nice to travel on the roads instead of having to stick to a less-direct route, which was more normal for her. Even so, she'd learned long ago that it was better to try not to draw too much attention to herself.

 

It was her coloring, she supposed. She could vaguely remember her mother, tossing a blanket or a shawl over her head whenever they encountered people on the road. Even in the sweltering heat of summer, it happened. Back then, she hadn't realized why. After her mother died, though, she had found that people tended to look at her strangely or even with unfounded suspicion, and as she grew older, she'd started to realize that people didn't trust foreigners, and that was what they automatically assumed she was.

 

So, she'd learned to avoid people for the most part. Life, she found, was easier that way, even if it was a little lonely sometimes.

 

"Should we take a break?" Marisaiko asked.

 

"Tired?" Jirou countered.

 

She shot him a grin. "Nope," she replied. "I could use a drink, though."

 

Kiri considered that as she shielded her eyes against the sunlight and looked up at the sky. Not a cloud to be seen, but the mugginess in the air was growing steadily worse. "How much farther?"

 

"We're about halfway there," Marisaiko said, turning just enough to speak over her shoulder, though she didn't stop walking. "You'll like my parents."

 

"What about him?" Jirou asked as casually, jerking his head vaguely to indicate someone behind them.

 

Marisaiko giggled, but raised her voice so that it would carry. "I don't know, considering he's still trying to hide . . ."

 

Jirou chuckled, his little ears twitching, when he suddenly stopped short and held up a hand to halt the others. "I know you're there. Come on out."

 

For a moment, Kiri thought that he was speaking to the guy that had followed them from the other village, but the hanyou's gaze was still fixed straight ahead, and a moment later, a very odd-looking being stepped out of the trees. A sudden shiver raced down her spine as she eyed the stranger warily. Pasty, white skin, owlish, hooded black eyes, but it was the weird way that his limbs all seemed to be garishly elongated that stopped her in her tracks.

 

"White hair . . . dog ears . . ." The stranger trailed off, deliberately lifting his chin slightly, deliberately sniffing in Jirou's direction. "And the stench of the inu-youkai—and human."

 

Kiri frowned at the interloper, anger flaring to life at the unmistakable mocking in his tone.

 

Jirou, on the other hand, just shrugged. "And you're an eel-youkai . . . Did you want something from me?" he asked in an almost bored tone of voice.

 

"You're his son, aren't you? The one they call InuYasha . . .?"

 

This time, Jirou heaved a very loud sigh and crossed his arms over his chest. "Let me guess: he killed one of your kin?"

 

"Why, yes." The eel-youkai chuckled nastily. "Fight me."

 

"I don't fight anyone for no reason."

 

"Well, he's not here, so I guess you'll do."

 

Jirou shook his head. "No, thanks."

 

"Jirou-kun, I—"

 

A low growl from Jirou cut Marisaiko off abruptly. "Stay out of it, Mari."

 

She sighed but took a step back.

 

Satisfied that she was going to comply, he shook his head. "Get out of our way."

 

"How dare you make light of me!" the eel-youkai growled, his voice trembling, breaking in his rage. "Damn you!"

 

Kiri blinked as the eel-youkai shot forward in a blur of motion. Jirou barely had time to raise his arms, crossing them in front of his face to keep the eel from hitting him dead-on. He slid back, but didn't lose his footing.

 

With a loud screech, the interloper dashed toward Jirou again. Jirou managed to sidestep him, eliciting a menacing growl from the eel, who spun to the side, swinging a fist at the hanyou and missing him entirely. "I don't want to fight you," Jirou stated once more, hopping out of the eel's way again.

 

"Well, isn't that too bad?" the eel-youkai spit, his eyes narrowing dangerously, barreling forward, smashing his shoulder into Jirou.

 

Jirou stumbled back a couple steps but caught himself easily. "Then by all means," he retorted dryly.

 

The eel-youkai was undaunted, launching himself at Jirou once more. Jirou spun around, whipping the sword out of the scabbard, moving so fast that the blade whistled as it sliced through the air, as he swung it, as it smacked, flat-side hard against the eel's side.

 

He fell to the ground with a sharp hiss, bracing his hands on the ground to push himself back to his feet, only to stop when Jirou leveled the sword, holding it mere inches from the eel-youkai's throat. "Get lost," he said in the same even tone of voice.

 

The eel-youkai glared hard at him. "Finish me!" he hissed. "Isn't that what your father would do?"

 

"I'm not my father," Jirou replied, lingering for another long moment before turning on his heel, dropping the sword back into the scabbard once more.

 

"Jirou-kun, watch out!" Kiri heard herself scream as the eel shot to his feet, as he swung his claws at Jirou's back.

 

In another blur of motion, in flashes of metal that glinted in the hazy, late morning light, the eel-youkai hissed in pain as Marisaiko's chakram impaled his arms, bore him down, flat on his back, pinned him to the ground.

 

Jirou pivoted, arms crossed over his chest as he shot Marisaiko a dark look.

 

The taijya ignored him as she stomped over to retrieve her weapons. "He wasn't going to finish you off, but I might," she said in a deathly-quiet voice.

 

"Bitch!" the eel-youkai hissed.

 

The hiss turned into a groan, however, when she stepped on his arm at the elbow joint before leaning down to yank the first chakram free. Then she stalked around him to plant her foot on the other arm. "Are you going to leave now or shall I finish you off?"

 

He glowered at her for a long moment before finally, furiously, jerking his head once in a nod. Marisaiko leaned down and very slowly, very deliberately, yanked the second chakram free.

 

It took a minute for the eel-youkai to get to his feet this time, but when he did, he spared a second to glower at each of them before he headed off into the trees.

 

Marisaiko waited until the youkai was gone before she knelt down to wipe the chakram in the sparse grass beside the road.

 

"I didn't need your help, Mari," Jirou finally said in a tight, clipped tone.

 

"I know," Marisaiko replied quietly.

 

He sighed. "Thank you," he grudgingly added.

 

She started to say something, but the thought died before it was put into words.

 

"You!"

 

All three turned to watch as the guy from Jirou's village ran up behind them. Stopping short, bending over with his hands resting on his upper legs as he struggled to catch his breath, he raised a shaky finger to point at them. "You," he repeated, straightening his back, though he didn't lower his hand.

 

Marisaiko glanced from him to Jirou then back again. "Me?"

 

He nodded. "You . . . Will you be my sensei?"

 

 

~*~*~*~*~*~

 

 

"There it is."

 

Jirou stopped beside Marisaiko at the bottom of the steep hill surrounding the taijya village. From where they stood, they could only really see the outlying huts that surrounded the village proper. Over the years since the first one had been destroyed, it had prospered, well enough that people who didn't know about the destruction wouldn't have realized it, but the huts on the outside of the great stone wall surrounding the actual village were inhabited by those who were apprenticing in the art. They hadn't earned the right to move into the sanctity of the walls yet.

 

From what he had been told, the walls had originally been built of wood, but when Sango and Miroku had decided to rebuild the village, they'd constructed the stone walls, complete with the ancient symbols etched deep in the anchor stones—the symbols that held the barrier permanently in place over the village. Miroku meditated daily to strengthen that barrier so that the village could never be breeched by youkai, intent on doing harm.

 

"Looks like everything's under control, sensei," Jirou remarked.

 

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. "I'm not anyone's sensei," she retorted, smacking Jirou with the back of her hand, though not hard.

 

Jirou barely managed to hold back the grin that threatened. All things considered, he couldn't help it.

 

"That's your village, sensei?"

 

Face screwing up in a marked grimace, Marisaiko shot the newest addition to their traveling party a very dark glower. "I'm not your sensei," she pointed out for the fiftieth time in the last few hours since he'd finally gotten the nerve to approach them.

 

The guy frowned thoughtfully. "Then . . . Uh, what should I call you?"

 

She heaved a sigh. "My name is Marisaiko," she replied. Then she nodded toward Jirou. "That's Jirou, and that's Kiri."

 

He blinked, almost like he was surprised by Marisaiko's introduction. "Marisaiko-sama," he repeated.

 

She rubbed her forehead. "And you are . . .?"

 

He looked surprised that she'd asked his name. "M-Me?" he stammered, drawing a raised-eyebrow-ed expression from Jirou. "Oh, uh, Kuro," he hurried on to say. "Just Kuro."

 

"Okay, come on," Jirou said, heading back toward the path that led up the hill. Glancing at Kiri in passing, he stopped. Staring at the village with a strange sort of foreboding in her gaze, she looked like she was trying to decide whether or not she actually wanted to approach. "Something wrong?" he asked with a frown.

 

Blinking quickly, she shot him a startled kind of glance. "No," she replied, sounding more casual than she looked. "Nothing at all."

 

"If you could teach me how to fight, then I'll do whatever you say," Kuro said, hurrying after Marisaiko, who increased her gait in an effort to get away from the poor guy.

 

Jirou shook his head. To be honest, he wasn't entirely sure, what to think of Kuro, either. He'd felt sorry enough for him last night to take him a bowl of fish stew, but had spent the entire time, listening as Kuro wracked his brain, trying to come up with a way to convince InuYasha to train him.

 

"He's your father, right? So, you know him pretty well, right?" Kuro paused long enough to wolf down a bite of the stew. "This is . . . really good . . . Do you think he'd agree if I tried a different approach?"

 

"Why do you want to learn how to fight?" Jirou asked, shifting his gaze up to the myriad of stars dotting the skies.

 

Kuro sighed. "I just . . . I have to," he replied before digging into the bowl once more with gusto.

 

"Oyaji . . . He's not very good at changing his mind," Jirou warned mildly. "Why him, anyway?"

 

Giving a little shrug, Kuro frowned, setting the bowl aside and pushing the billowing sleeves of his haori up so that he could hook his hands around his bent knees. "Because he's the best—the toughest. At least, that's what they say . . . They say he defeated Naraku and that butterfly, too. They say he's the bravest, that he can stare down even the mightiest of youkai, and he doesn't even bat an eye. They say he's never lost a fight."

 

Jirou didn't respond to that. What Kuro said was true enough. InuYasha was an undisputed fighter—everyone knew that, and, as InuYasha's son, he knew it better than anyone. It wasn't the first time that someone had sought him out to challenge him, in one way or another. Usually, they wished to test their skills against one of his caliber. Sometimes, they wanted to have InuYasha teach them a technique, and occasionally, he did, but no one outside of the family had ever gotten him to agree to any kind of long-term training, either. The puzzling thing about Kuro, however, wasn't his request. It was the man himself, despite the midnight hair that hung to the middle of his shoulder blades, clubbed back in a low-hanging ponytail. His clothing was pretty unremarkable—a dark blue haori, cream-colored, rough linen hakama, white socks, and hemp sandals—but his bearing bespoke something else entirely. From the upright stature, almost rigid, actually, to the way he held his head, just a notch or two higher than anyone else, Kuro seemed to hold onto an air of regal refinement that even his clothing couldn't hide. There was something almost unsettling about the way his dark brown eyes shifted in the moonlight, almost like he was trying to keep tabs on the surrounding area, like a seasoned soldier, even if he wasn't. If Jirou hadn't already seen how clumsy Kuro was, he might not have believed it, but he was no commoner, either.

 

And, too, he had to admit that the idea of Marisaiko being Kuro's new target 'sensei' rather amused him.

 

"You can ask my mother," Marisaiko suggested, increasing her gait once more as she tried to shake off the persistent human. "She's a much more experienced taijya than I am."

 

"But the way you took down that youkai!" Kuro insisted. "It was like . . . like . . . magic!"

 

That statement wrung a very loud snort from Jirou, mostly because he was the one who had bested the eel-youkai first.

 

"You . . . You fight well."

 

Blinking in surprise as he shot Kiri a quick glance in time to see her duck her chin, to catch a strand of hair that was being tossed into her face by the moist air and tucked it behind her ear. Cheeks pinking delicately, she stared down at the ground, but kept moving. "Th-Thanks," he stammered, unsure why he suddenly felt a little bashful.

 

She said nothing for a moment. Then she shrugged. "You could have killed him, couldn't you?" It was more of a statement than a question.

 

"I don't kill anyone if there's any way around it."

 

Turning her head, letting those sky blue eyes meet his, she seemed to be trying to figure out something , and he stubbornly refused to look away. "But he was going to kill you. If it wasn't for Marisaiko-chan, he would have," she stated. "You should have done it."

 

Jirou frowned. "You're welcome to do the fighting the next time," he replied stiffly. "Otherwise, keep it to yourself."

 

He felt her sigh more than he heard it. It was more of a slight, sharp rise and fall in her shoulders. "Won't do much good for anyone if you're dead," she retorted.

 

Halting abruptly, Jirou reached out, grasped her arm to stop her, too. "Like your parents, you mean?"

 

She seemed surprised by his softly uttered question—surprised and a little taken aback. Almost as quickly as the surprise surfaced, though, it dissipated, only to be replaced by a more guarded expression—one that made her seem a hell of a lot older. "Maybe."

 

Letting go of her, he started walking once more. She fell in step beside him, but she could well have been a million miles away. Behind them, he could hear Marisaiko as she tried to dissuade Kuro, but he didn't listen to them. Too busy, trying to figure out exactly who Kiri really was, he frowned at nothing in particular as he kept moving.

 

"It doesn't look very secure," Kiri ventured, waving a hand in the general direction of the village.

 

"Secure enough," Jirou remarked, only paying half-attention. "The barrier keeps it safe."

 

"A barrier . . .?"

 

He nodded. "Sure."

 

"But what about you?"

 

He shrugged. "It won't purify me, if that's what you're wondering. My mother's blood keeps it from affecting us."

 

"Because you're half-human?"

 

"Nope, because Mama's the strongest miko alive; that's why."

 

They walked on in silence. The faint smell of smoke coming from the small fires within the huts on the outskirts of the village to the left of the path wafted to him—a comforting scent that carried with it the familiarity of things he'd known his entire life. A few children were playing in a little field farther along, and the sounds of their laughter, their hollering, filled his ears, too. Back when they were children, Ai, Marisaiko, and he would often be found, playing with the other children in that same meadow, and that memory made him smile just a little bit.

 

"I changed my mind," Kiri suddenly said, spinning on her heel, crossing her arms stubbornly over her chest as she shot Jirou a belligerent sort of look.

 

"About what?"

 

Jerking her head toward the village, looming on the horizon, she frowned. "I don't want to go there," she stated.

 

"Where do you want to go?" he countered, arching an eyebrow to emphasize his question.

 

She shrugged. "I'll just . . . just keep going," she said.

 

"Alone?" Marisaiko asked as she drew abreast of them.

 

"Sure. I'm used to being alone."

 

Marisaiko shot Jirou an imploring glance. "But you're welcome to come with me," she reminded her.

 

Kiri shook her head, took a step back in retreat. "It's fine," she insisted. "I'll just leave you here." Turning to go, she stopped for a moment but didn't look back at them. "Uh, thank you," she said.

 

Jirou scowled as he watched the diminutive girl disappear into the trees on the right side of the path.

 

 

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A/N:

 

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lianned88———cutechick18

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Final Thought from Jirou:

What's she doing …?

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Blanket disclaimer for this fanfic (will apply to this and all other chapters in Metamorphosis 2: Legacies): I do not claim any rights to InuYasha or the characters associated with the anime/manga. Those rights belong to Rumiko Takahashi, et al. I do offer my thanks to her for creating such vivid characters for me to terrorize.

 

~Sue~