InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Splendent Shorties ❯ The Fundoshi Incident ( Chapter 3 )

This is just a silly little something that was inspired by an indirect Tumblr challenge I more or less did to myself, LOL. The inspiration? Feral Inuyasha in a thong, LOL. I decided to go canon rather than a Feudal AU where he’s just ALWAYS in his fundoshi, which was actually the hypothetical being discussed. Almost instantly as I was picturing him I came up with a plausible scenario for how it could ~temporarily~ happen to our beloved hanyou. Here’s the post via my reblog: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/splendentgoddess/66096617131776409 6

I opened my big mouth, LOL, so here it is! The addition to my Splendent Shorties collection I promised everyone!

The youkai was a horrible, nasty thing. Reptilian in nature, or so they guessed, whatever it had once been was unidentifiable now. The size of an upended school bus, it was a putrid mix of green and black and looked like a cross between a gecko and a bear...that had been bitten by a zombie. Thanks to the power of the jewel shard lodged in its forehead, it had gained the ability to spit out a foul miasma that would give Naraku’s sludge a run for its money, and so Inuyasha now faced off against the creature alone, everyone else safely within Miroku’s protective barrier.

Kagome tried not to scream, so as not to distract him, as he dodged yet another blast from the creature. The miko was rightly worried since Inuyasha was only dressed in his kosode and hakama, his fire-rat suikan still draped around her head and shoulders from when he’d dropped it on her after barely shoving her out of the way of a fatal hit in the nick of time. She had still been fighting by his side after that, at first, trying to get a shot in with her bow, but the beast’s breath was so corrosive it dissolved her arrows before they could make contact. After Hiraikotsu took some major damage that would take Sango a long time at her old village to repair, Inuyasha had ordered Miroku to get the lot of them within the safety of a barrier.

Kagome had tried to give him his suikan back, but everything had just happened so quickly, and then after she was already behind the sparkling pink barrier and unable to pass the demonic robe through Inuyasha had told her, “Don’t worry about me. Without distraction I’ll be fine!” as he’d charged back into battle.

She hadn’t taken anything personal by the comment. Unable to aid in the battle, having to keep an eye on her was a distraction. Knowing his friends were all safe, Inuyasha could focus solely on his target without having to peek over his shoulder from time to time. He’d already blasted the beast once with the Kaze no Kizu, but unfortunately the jewel shard made it powerful enough to resist that attack and rapidly heal from any damage it sustained. Inuyasha had gotten slightly singed by the miasma a couple of times, there were some large holes in his kosode now and some smaller and slowly repairing holes in his hakama, a few speckles of burnt skin on his hands and face from splash-back when he’d used Tetsusaiga to deflect a few blasts of miasma he couldn’t dodge, but all in all he was holding his own until the beast decided it was tired of the stalemate.

Sending a mighty blast of miasma Inuyasha’s way and making the hanyou dodge yet again, the creature suddenly charged straight for Miroku’s barrier, lured by Kagome’s jewel shards. Inuyasha’s eyes widened in terror when he saw the youkai wasn’t charging at him and he raced to beat it to the others. He had to get in between the youkai and the barrier and beat it back with another Kaze no Kizu. Unfortunately the youkai was faster than him, and it fired a large blast of miasma like an acid-breathing dragon straight for Miroku’s barrier.

Inuyasha, still running towards them, cried out Kagome’s name. He had no idea if the monk’s barrier could actually withstand a direct assault like that.

The miasma hit, and was repelled, Miroku’s reiki not strong enough to actually purify the sludge on contact thanks to the power of the jewel shard, although it could at least stand up against it and not crumble in the face of such powerful jyaki, either. The splatter of miasma went everywhere, like a blast of water would, hitting a sphere. Unfortunately, the rapidly approaching hanyou could not dodge that in time, and he was covered.

“Inuyasha!” Kagome screamed.

The hanyou wasn’t knocked over, but just sprayed where he stood. If it weren’t toxic sludge made of powerful jyaki it could have been funny, but it was anything but when the hanyou screamed in pain at the same moment Tetsusaiga reverted to its dormant state and he dropped the sword on instinct to try to wipe the gunk from his face with both hands. Several large, smoking holes were all over his hakama, and his kosode was in tatters and barely clung to his body in shreds as he flailed. Pink, burned flesh was visible all over his face, arms and torso, and then the burns started to turn black. Kagome couldn’t look away and actually tried to toss off his robe and run to him, but Miroku grabbed her at the last second and prevented her from leaving the barrier.

“You know he heals fast! You wouldn’t survive this stuff but he might!” the monk shouted logically, even as he silently prayed for their friend’s survival.

The youkai had stopped its assault on the barrier by then, but thankfully paid the suffering hanyou no further attention as it appeared to contemplate how to go about gaining Kagome’s jewel shards, and then they all felt it, the powerful pulse of uncorrupted youki, not jyaki, coming from their severely injured friend. For the first time ever, Kagome’s first thought at the realization Inuyasha was transforming was ‘oh thank the kami’ because she knew, even with as powerful as he was as a hanyou, he was even more powerful as a full youkai.

The transformation only took a second or two to complete, and then while still standing on his two legs but hunching forward a bit, he shook like a wet dog, flinging away the last of the miasma that had still covered him. The move did in the rest of his tattered clothing, the mostly melted kosode falling off his arms and so he tore it the rest of the way off, himself. The belt to his hakama had also apparently been burned through and snapped during his shaking, Tetsusaiga’s scabbard falling to the ground with a clatter while the oversized pants dropped to his feet. Unfazed, the hanyou-turned-youkai merely stepped out of the temporarily ruined trousers. They would eventually repair themselves, but they had sustained a lot of damage, while thankfully protecting his legs in the process. Standing there now in nothing but his fundoshi, the first thing Kagome noticed was all the rapidly healing burns on his arms, chest and face that were going from charred black to tender pink and then fully healed, right before her eyes. She also saw a sparkly white energy around the healing wounds that felt like an extra blast of his youki and she suspected Inuyasha had done it on purpose, a power flex of youki to force the healing. She had seen Sesshoumaru do similar tricks in the past but didn’t know Inuyasha was also capable of it while in this form; that was something worth remembering.

The second thing she noticed was that those purple stripes of his didn’t only appear on his face.

She felt her face heating up a bit at the sight of her now fully healed hanyou standing there in nothing but a medieval thong, jagged purple slashes above each hip and accentuating his abdominal muscles before disappearing into the top of his fundoshi. She wondered how far down they went.

No, bad Kagome! This is serious!

He stood there, smirking at the enemy, completely unfazed by his state of dress – or lack thereof – and then raised his right hand and lazily examined his overgrown claws before flexing his fingers and cracking his knuckles as he turned his sights back on the beastly youkai again. The youkai that had paused in its attack to reassess the situation, able to sense how much more powerful Inuyasha now was.

“He can’t seriously be thinking of facing off against that thing in just his fundoshi,” Sango whispered, her mind logistical.

He was vulnerable without his protective fire-rat. Even the fire-rat had proven to not be completely resistant against that miasma, but it was still better than nothing. Maybe during this brief pause they could at least give him his suikan back, but of course in order to do so Miroku would have to lower the barrier, and the beastly youkai was standing a little too close for comfort to consider doing something like that.

“Should’ve killed me when you had the chance,” Inuyasha said then, his voice a lower timbre than usual and unnerving with his shift in personality, as he chuckled menacingly.

Sango and Miroku both shuddered at the sound, disturbed by the change in him, but Kagome, as always, was only worried for him, and now even more so than usual. He charged the beast, which spat another blast of miasma at him, but he was thankfully, easily able to dodge. Kagome sucked in her scream, hand over her mouth to keep herself silent and still not a distraction. She kept her eyes on him, unable to look away, and the teenage girl in her couldn’t help appreciating the view as he ran around in nothing but his fundoshi. Trying to slice at the creature with his claws, he ran and jumped, dodged and leapt, and ran and jumped again. His legs were toned, his buttocks finely sculpted with tight, defined muscles that flexed alluringly with every move he made. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him.

She was pulled from her unintentional appreciation when it dawned on her that she’d just witnessed him get hit with a bit of spray on his right arm as he made a swipe for the beast’s head, but he shook it off and the affected skin only stayed a mild pink, like the faintest of burns from accidentally touching hot metal, perhaps. She knew now that he actually had the ability to fully heal it if he so chose, at least while in this form, so he was obviously just not bothering, choosing not to waste the energy, she’d guess. He slashed at the beast again, and dodged the blast sent his way that time by a hair’s breath.

“I hope none of that stuff hits his fundoshi,” Shippou piped up then, the boy’s quiet words reminding Kagome of his presence on Miroku’s shoulder.

Miroku cringed at the mental image, and maybe unconsciously shifted his legs a bit closer together, but the kit’s words conjured up a different sort of mental image for the young miko, and she felt her face flame for the second time. Feral Inuyasha in a thong was bad enough; she did not want to imagine what expression would be on her face if he lost his final bit of covering.

Although it would at least give her the answer to that question…

No! Bad Kagome!

Getting her head back into the game, she observed as failed attempt after failed attempt, Inuyasha tried to make a swipe for the beast’s head, but it was too fast for him, not letting him get around it to attack it from behind. It kept spitting miasma at him to keep him at bay, and thus the stalemate continued.

“You’re really trying my patience, you ugly, bellowing stink pile!”

Still my Inuyasha deep down inside, she thought with an amused grin that quickly dropped from her lips when he had yet another near miss.

As appealing as it was to just stare at his nearly naked form all afternoon as he flew through the air like the superhuman he was, shimmering white hair whipping in the wind, muscles flexing under taught, bronze skin that glistened with a fine layer of sweat, she knew things couldn’t go on like this forever. Something had to give.

She just hoped that ‘something’ was a mistake made by the beastly youkai and not her hanyou.

Maybe I should let myself be a distraction, she realized then.

A distraction for the beastly youkai.

She timed it right, waiting until after Inuyasha had dodged the latest blast.

“Hey, ugly!” she shouted then, as she grabbed the bottle of jewel shards from within her shirt and pulled the cord up and over her head in order to hold the bottle high in her hand, waving it all around. “This is what you want, isn’t it?!”

The youkai turned to look her way immediately, and she shifted her eyes for the briefest of seconds to meet Inuyasha’s terrifying, crimson gaze, to see if he understood what she was doing. If the wicked grin and nod he sent her way was any indication, they were on the same page.

“Come and get ‘em!” Kagome said then, bravely – or perhaps stupidly – sticking her hand holding the jewel shards outside of Miroku’s barrier.

The youkai charged, but she quickly yanked her hand and the shards back within the safety of the barrier, while at the same time Inuyasha charged, and successfully leapt up towards the beast’s head from behind that time, slicing cleanly through its neck and decapitating it in a single swipe. Miasma poured out of the severed neck as the beast’s body fell to the ground with a sickening splash, as if its innards were comprised of nothing but the tangible form of tainted jyaki and nothing else. There was no blood, or if there was, it was indistinguishable from the thick black sludge that was the miasma. Time was of the essence, before the beast’s head could reattach due to the shard, but the whole area was now a putrid, acidic swamp, the viscous slim several inches thick, and even though he was normally more reckless in battle, even Full-Youkai Inuyasha seemed to realize that that noxious slurry wasn’t something he should just stroll on through.

“Here,” Miroku said suddenly, handing Kagome one of his most powerful, purifying ofuda. “Perhaps the strength of our combined reiki will be sufficient.”

Taking the ofuda, she nodded her understanding and quickly grabbed one of her few remaining arrows.

“Stay back, Inuyasha!” she warned, as she slapped the ofuda onto the side of her arrow and then knocked it in her bow.

Seeing what she was up to, the hanyou-turned-youkai took many steps back.

The arrow began glowing much more brightly than usual, and then with Miroku’s barrier still up – which was the only thing preventing the rapidly spreading muck from reaching them where they stood as it flowed all around them – she fired. In an explosion of purifying light that was almost blinding with its intensity, the arrow shot like a rocket harmlessly through the barrier and struck true, skewering the decapitated beast’s shoulder. The youkai’s body, and most of the miasma, disappeared in a brilliant flash of sparkles, and sighing in exhausted relief, Miroku lowered the barrier.

“Wow, Kagome! That was powerful!” Shippou exclaimed as he jumped down off of the monk’s shoulder.

“Oh, Shippou-chan! My arrow didn’t hurt you, did it?” Kagome asked, concerned.

“Nah, just tingled a little,” the kit answered.

Kirara mewed her agreement as she jumped down off of Sango’s shoulder.

Flashing them a relieved smile, Kagome quickly rushed up to the severed head, and just as she was about to bend down and pluck the jewel shard from its forehead the beast came back to life and growled at her, but thankfully no miasma came forth from its mouth. Apparently it had all been generated within its body, so no body, no miasma. It snapped its elongated fangs at her, but she was able to sidestep and come around to approach the head from behind, and once she reached down and yanked out the jewel shard, all life left the creature and the deceased head decomposed into a pile of black dust. The shard instantly purified at her touch, as per usual, and grabbing the little glass bottle again, she added it to their collection.

Inuyasha, who had been standing back and observing her, smirked at her then, and Kagome swallowed down the nervous lump she felt in her throat at his confident approach. Whether she was nervous about the fact that he was still in full-youkai mode, or that he was still only wearing his fundoshi, she wasn’t sure.

“Keh, that bastard was no match for the likes of us,” he said, as he reached down and picked up the discarded Tetsusaiga along with his slowly mending hakama.

Grabbing the scabbard and sheathing the blade, Inuyasha reverted himself back to normal, which wasn’t surprising when one remembered that he’d already done so once before. In Kagome’s mind, once he’d chosen the Tetsusaiga over his claws during his fight with Ryukotsusei, that had been the end of the risk his transformations posed as far as eating away at his human soul. It had been logical in this instance to remain in full-youkai form because he had been more resistant to the miasma that way. It’d been a tactical decision.

Approaching him the rest of the way, then, Kagome immediately handed Inuyasha back his suikan, which he casually donned, although the waist-length jacket did nothing to conceal what she was valiantly trying not to look at.

He can’t be unaware of his state of dress, she thought, but maybe it just doesn’t bother him.

After all, this was the same hanyou who had actually run naked into her bedroom once.

“Th-thank you, for saving me...again,” she said lamely.

“Keh,” he replied. “Don’t be stupid.”

She must smiled at that. Typical Inuyasha.

And then accidentally glancing down again, she felt her face heating up for the nth time. Inuyasha seemed to finally, belatedly realize what his state of dress did to her, and that realization finally had the hanyou blushing, as well.

Holy shit, she’s aroused by me?!

He knew she cared for him, but that thought put it on a whole other level, which he wasn’t quite sure he was ready to think about just yet. At least not in front of the monk.

“Uhhh…” Examining his hakama, they were still riddled with holes, but the holes were slowly closing. The belt had mostly repaired itself, which was the most important thing in that moment. “Sorry,” he mumbled lamely then, as he awkwardly handed her the sheathed Tetsusaiga so that he could don his pants.

All sorts of witty remarks were on the tip of her tongue. From ‘I’m not’ to ‘Turn about is fair play’ in reference to the numerous times he’d caught glimpses of her in various states of undress, but the two of them were not alone, and glancing off to the side revealed a smirking Miroku while Sango tried way too hard to look interested in the damage done to Hiraikotsu.

Kagome latched on to that as the perfect excuse to avoid making any reply to Inuyasha whatsoever, as she instead said, “Oh wow, Sango-chan, that looks bad! I’m so sorry.”

The once polished surface of the giant bone boomerang was now dull and pockmarked, as if it’d sustained centuries of wind and rain erosion, but the damage was not irreparable with the equipment left behind in her old village.

“Don’t worry, Kagome-chan, it can be repaired,” she told the miko then. “Although it will take a while, and definitely needs to be done right away.”

Kagome nodded her understanding.

“If you guys want to head to the Taijiya village, then, Inuyasha and I can make our way back to Kaede-obaa-chan’s.”

Sango and Miroku shared a knowing look at the same time Kagome glanced shyly at Inuyasha, who blushed faintly and tried to look disinterested in the conversation, but Shippou was the one who spoke next, breaking whatever awkward tension might’ve otherwise developed.

“Can’t I come with you two, Kagome?”

The kitsune was not really looking forward to tagging along with Sango and Miroku. It would just be a lot of him being a lech and her slapping him.

Shooting another glance at the hanyou, who decidedly wouldn’t meet her eyes, although she could swear that was a faint blush on his nose, Kagome bent down a little to be more eye-to-eye with the kitsune and said, “Well, you can if you want to, Shippou-chan, but Inuyasha and I will be passing through the well as soon as we get there, and will probably be staying on my side for several days since it’ll take a long time for Sango-chan to repair Hiraikotsu, and so with Sango-chan and Miroku-sama at the slayer village you’ll be all alone with Kaede-obaa-chan.” Then acting as if she’d just thought of something, she added, “Come to think of it, she could probably really use your help with sorting herbs and carrying bundles for her as she does her rounds in the village, so actually if you wanted-”

“That’s okay, I’ll go with Sango and Miroku,” Shippou interrupted.

At least that way he would have Kirara to play with. He had fun with the village children at Kaede’s, too, but knowing the old miko, he’d probably wind up stuck with chores and wouldn’t get to have any quality playtime.

“I suppose you wanna catch up on your school stuff,” Inuyasha said then, trying to sound indifferent.

“Well, yes,” she admitted. “I mean I may as well, right? We shouldn’t go back out on the road again until Sango-chan’s weapon is repaired.” Giving him a soft smile, she then added, “But I also believe I owe you a new kosode, since yours only got ruined because you gave me your suikan. We don’t need to waste what small amount of money we have in this time to buy you one. The design hasn’t changed all that much, and Mama will be more than happy to get you one in my time.”

He blushed a bit darker at that, not from the simple fact that he needed a new kosode, but from Kagome’s offer to buy him one. Nobody had ever bought him anything before. Except, well, of course, she did provide all of them with her Ninja foods and medical supplies, and obviously he knew that cost money in her world, but that was different. A robe was...personal. But like she’d said, his had only gotten ruined because he’d given her his fire-rat, so then in that way she was saying she owed him a replacement. Even so, he was truly touched.

Little more was said on the subject as the lot of them decided to find a spot to make camp for the night, since late afternoon was making way for evening. After around an hour they found a decent place to set up, near a stream that contained small fish. Those plus the last of the ramen made for a hearty dinner. Kagome had decided there was no reason to try to ration the last of it since she would now be able to restock in just a day or two, depending on how long it took her and Inuyasha to reach the well. A part of her wasn’t in any hurry whatsoever. She tried not to stare as he sat there at camp, his hips and thighs still visible through the side slits in his now almost fully repaired hakama. The high, twisted sides of his fundoshi were not visible and it gave the illusion that he wasn’t wearing any underwear at all. The naughty part of her mind that usually wanted to sneak in an ear tweak was itching to brush her fingers against that exposed flesh, instead, but she knew that would be taking things way too far.

At least while they still had an audience.

Morning couldn’t come fast enough.