InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Edge of Resistance ❯ Light Years ( Chapter 20 )

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

The Edge of Resistance
Book Two: The Dissidents


“With heavy breath, awakened regrets, back pages, and days alone that could have been spent together, but we were miles apart.Every inch between us becomes light years now.” – Pearl Jam

Totosai was still staring after his former hammer, floating away and slowly sinking in the thick, melting power of the lava river.

“Do you think you could get my hammer back?”

Kagura looked at the colossal tool drifting away.

“Umm…be there?” she said, indicating a spot on the bank of the little island.

Nothing happened. The hammer receded from sight.

Totosai sighed. “Do you have any idea how long it takes to make one of those?”

“You should have thought of that before you started swinging it at everybody!” Kagura shouted at him.

The old demon hung his head.

“Oh well, guess I’d better get to work. Let me know when you figure it out.”

He turned and left her staring at his back in exasperation.

Shippou, having been released from Momo’s horns, approached her, rubbing one shoulder while rotating the joint.

“Are you alright?” she asked him.

“Yeah, I’m fine. So, how did you do that?”

Kagura looked back toward where the hammer had gone.

“I really don’t know. I just wanted to move it.”

“But you can’t do it again.”

“It does not appear so.”

“Well, keep trying,” Shippou put a hand on her shoulder. “We can’t go anywhere until we get you a weapon.”

Inside Totosai’s hut he had built a stone surface, shaped like a bowl, that was filled with molten rock. The heat inside was suffocating but, for lack of anything else to do, Shippou endured it to watch the old man at work. All that afternoon, the old demon sat cross-legged before his furnace, alternating between pounding on the steel anvil and blowing on a glowing chunk of iron with his cyclonic lungs.

Meanwhile, Kagura sat outside, trying in vain with sheer will to move an acorn that had blown in from across the river. She had thought that it would be easier to deal with something so small, but she ended up feeling absurd, waving her hand over it and commanding the stupid thing to do something that should have been impossible.

She began to believe that it was impossible. Perhaps there was another explanation for the hammer moving. Could it not have been that the old man had simply dropped it?

As the sun went down, Shippou came out to check on her progress.

“It’s no use,” she declared in a cross tone. “I don’t believe I ever could do it.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.”

She gave him a questioning look.

“Maybe you have to believe you can do it,” he explained.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffed. “If that was all it took, you should be able to grab your own neck and hold yourself at arm’s length.”

“I don’t believe I could do that, Kagura.”

“But what if you did? Or what if you convinced some idiot that they could do it?”

“That’s an interesting question,” he mused.

Then he stared off in the distance, murmuring, half to himself.

“I wonder if I could get Inuyasha to try that.”

Kagura chuckled.

“If believing was all it took,” she went on. “I would have lifted myself in the air the first time I tried.”

Shippou’s eyes widened. “Air!”

“What?”

“That’ s it! You don’t move objects, you move air. You always have!”

Kagura started to say something, then her eyes widened as well. She flicked her wrist over the acorn and the little nut suddenly appeared at a spot a few yards away. Kagura laughed with sheet delight. It was the first time Shippou had seen such an expression on her face. He was surprised to discover that she was really rather pretty.

“I was trying to move the acorn. I only needed to move the air around the acorn! Shippou, you’re a treasure!”

She threw her arms around his neck, still laughing.

Shippou was not sure precisely why, but he felt a surge of triumph.

***

“This is where I saw them last,” Inuyasha announced.

The sun was rising, and Jinenji calculated that they had traveled some forty or fifty miles from his house. They stood now in a deep forest near a shallow, lazy river. It had been a little more than a month since the Rains had ended, and though the land was still swampy, brown, and gray, most of the excess water had drained away into swollen lakes and streams.

“What now?” Jinenji’s voice rumbled in the dim silence.

Inuyasha had been surprised by the giant’s ability to keep up with him. As he always did, Inuyasha traveled at a dead run, his feet barely touching the ground. Jinenji tagged behind him, taking huge strides with his earthquaking feet. He did not bother to jump over or move around most obstacles, he simply walked through them.

Inuyasha sniffed the air.

“Wait here a moment, let me see if I can pick up their trail.”

Jinenji nodded and lumbered to the river side, drinking pools of water from his huge hands. Inuyasha, meanwhile, darted around the clearing, sniffing at the air and the ground, and examining the area for tracks.

“I think I got 'em,” he declared after five or ten minutes. “They went this way. I think Nazuna said something about having a place nearby.”

Inuyasha moved at a slower pace, so that he would not miss any tracks, and Jinenji followed him.

The sun was hanging in the middle of the sky when they encountered stone steps, surrounded by walls choked in vines and weeds.

“I’ve been here before,” Inuyasha murmured.

The climbed the steps until they opened to a stone courtyard. Here and there, small saplings had pushed through the flagstones. There was one square building near the back that was still standing, though it looked more like a cave than a house. Only birds and insects broke the silence. Jinenji thought the place must have been abandoned.

“Nobunaga! Nazuna!” Inuyasha called out without warning, making Jinenji start. “Are you guys here?”

To Jinenji’s amazement, two startled human faces peeped out from the dark doorway of the stone building. They looked at each other, than back at the two half-demons. They emerged from their hiding place into the afternoon sun. The man was dressed formally, but not richly, and he wore a sword on his hip. The woman was dressed in the simple, brown kimono of a peasant woman. Her face was young but her eyes were as hard as flint.

“Inuyasha-sama!” the man exclaimed. “I did not expect to see you again.”

“You must have come here looking for us,” the woman remarked.

Inuyasha looked at them in silence for a moment. Then he waved his hand toward his companion.

“This is Jinenji,” he said. “He’s a half-demon, like me. He’s a much better person than I am, though, so you can trust him.”

Jinenji simply bowed his head as Inuyasha introduced the man and woman to him.

“Let’s go inside, I have a lot to tell you and I don’t want to waste any more time.”

Nobunaga and Nazuna appeared startled, but they obeyed.

Despite the autumn chill in the air, there was no fire lit inside the house, and it was pitch black at first. Inuyasha and Jinenji blinked, adjusting their sight to the dimness. There was only one room and, Jinenji could not help but notice, only one bed. He and Inuyasha sat on the floor in front of the central fire pit.

Inuyasha was silent. Nobunaga, Nazuna, and Jinenji sat staring at him, and he found he did not know how to proceed. Every sentence that came to him sounding ludicrous in his mind. They’ll think I’m crazy, he thought.

He jumped to his feet with a cry of dismay when a blazing white light filled the room. He heard the others cry out and he saw them covering their eyes. The light receded as quickly as it had come, and standing in the center of the room was a human woman.

Inuyasha recognized her. It was Midoriko. He drew in a sharp breath, a thousand questions leaping to his lips, but she spoke first.

“Get on with this Inuyasha-sama,” she said in an echoing voice. “Time is shorter than you think, and you still have much to do.”

He noticed that he could see through her and his blood ran cold.

“What do I have to do?” he demanded. “Why don’t you just tell me? I’m not that smart, you know.”

She smiled gently. “You have exactly forty-two days before you must stand before me with all your companions, and believe me, that is not as great a time as it sounds.”

Inuyasha was dumbfounded. “Companions? Do you mean the ones I traveled with before?”

The priestess did not seem to hear him, and she continued in a whisper.

“Look for me in the west by the sea, in the fields of eternal snow. By the sea, by the sea...”

Her voice faded and he realized he could no longer make out her eyes. She was gone. The room was dark and empty.

Inuyasha took a deep breath.

“That answers that,” he said aloud.

Nazuna and Nobunaga had pushed themselves as far against the wall as possible.

“Inuyasha!” Nazuna cried. “What was that?”

“You have just seen the great priestess, Midoriko,” he told them, smiling. “You should be honored. I’m sure it was difficult for her, considering she’s dead and all.”

He sat back down, and put his chin in his hand, his eyes lost in thought.

“I knew she had something to do with all this,” he mumbled to himself.

“Inuyasha!” Nazuna cried again.

He looked up at their frightened and confused faces.

“Oh, right. Okay, so here’s what I know, or what I’ve guessed.”

He told them everything he had told Jinenji, and more. He explained how his meeting Jinenji was just the last in a series of repetitive events.

“That’s why I came back for you two,” he said. “I don’t think the meetings are random; there has to be a reason.”

They were silent. At last, Nazuna spoke. Her eyes were cast downward and her voice left her throat with a deadened weight.

“You are saying that what happened to you that day, it caused the Rains?”

“Yes.”

“Who did it?” she demanded, her hard eyes hard with a desperate need. “Was it you? Kagome? Naraku?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see how it was me, but beyond that…” he shrugged.

She peered at him for a moment, then stood and stalked out of the house.

“What’s her problem?” Inuyasha demanded.

“Inuyasha-sama,” Nobunaga spoke as if to a child. “People suffered because of the Rains.”

Inuyasha’s eyes flashed. “I know that!” he shouted. “It’s not my fault!”

“I didn’t say it was, and I don’t think Nazuna thinks so either, but it’s still hard for her.”

“Has she said anything about what or who she lost?”

“No,” Nobunaga answered, betraying a slight frustration. “She won’t say anything.”

***

Totosai insisted that he could do nothing else until he finished fashioning himself a new hammer. Kagura was not upset at the delay. She passed the time testing her new powers. She soon learned that she could fly again simply by lifting the air around her. In fact, she discovered that she could make others fly, if she wanted.

Shippou, after being sent fifty feet straight up in the air without warning, was less enthusiastic about this discovery than Kagura.

“I was only testing it,” she told him.

Shippou, once on the ground again, glared at her.

“Maybe now you won’t threaten to carry me around by my feet,” she suggested.

He stalked away, muttering to himself. Kagura laughed and continued her exercises. At one point, she lifted a small amount of lava from the flow that surrounded the island and  concentrated on shaping the glowing blob into an smoothed, spherical shape.

“That’s very pretty,” Totosai said from behind her.

Kagura jumped and the lava landed with a heavy plop.

“But what good does it do to move things? How will that defend you?”

“Are you going to make me a weapon or not?”

“I dunno,” the old man shrugged. “Maybe...”

Suspended in mid-air, above a steaming stream of molten rock, Totosai began to see things from Kagura’s perspective.

When he was on firm soil again, he wiped his brow.

“Honestly,” he said. “I’m not sure what you need with a weapon. But I guess we can come up with something.”

He went into his hut, and forbade either of them to disturb him.

“I have to think,” he said. “I’m sure neither of you would understand.”

“That has to be one of the most annoying persons I’ve ever met,” Kagura complained.

“Pfft,” Shippou scoffed. “You need to get out more, Kagura.”

They waited.

And waited.

The sun rose, traced her brilliant path across the blue November sky, and sank again. As is customary with the sun, it all happened again the next day.

And they waited.

Several times, Kagura resolved to storm the hut and shake the old demon by his large, wooly ears, but Shippou always restrained her.

“Just be patient Kagura,” he told her. “We can afford to wait if you get a weapon out of it.”

“I don’t think I need a weapon anymore anyway,” she said.

“Oh really? Could you throw demons around like that? Demons that are busy trying to kill you? Large numbers of them at once? Will be you able to kill them or just move them? What about someone like Sesshoumaru or even Naraku? Do you think it would be a simple matter of hopping him to the moon?”

“Hopping?”

“It’s the only way I could think to describe what you do.”

“Oh.”

“Think of Inuyasha’s sword,” Shippou went on. “It also uses wind.”

Kagura remembered the weapon that would tear the air into shreds and send the energy back at you.

“What if you came up against something like that?”

Kagura could not think of an answer.

“As I said, Kagura, just be patient.”

They were silent. Kagura looked at the young fox demon, struck by the amount of time they had spent together. Four months was probably not a long time to most people, but to her it felt like a lifetime. She understood in a sudden epiphany that to her, it was a lifetime, a new lifetime. She realized that she had trouble picturing herself on her own without him. The thought surprised her, but all the more so because she did not regret it.

“What is it?” Shippou asked, catching her gaze.

Too overcome to say anything, Kagura looked away. “Nothing.”

It took almost a week, but Totosai emerged at last. He carried a large, canvas sack over one shoulder and in his right hand a tall staff with an evil-looking blade attached to the end. A gauzy piece of cloth was tied under the blade that waved in the wind like a banner. It was blue, almost black, with a sheen that made the exact color hard to discern. He put the bag down and presented the staff to Kagura in almost a formal way.

“Your weapon, my dear,” he said with pride.

She took it from him carefully and set the end of it on the ground. She looked up at the blade.

“It’s quite heavy,” she remarked.

“There’s a special reason for the weight, but you’ll have to figure that out on your own. But anyway, you’ll get used to it,” he said. “Inuyasha could not even lift his for a while.”

“Oh yes, I remember that,” she murmured.

“Listen closely,” he said. “The weapon has many possible uses, and it will take you a long time to master all of them, but I can tell you the basics.”

He pointed to the unadorned end. “If you aim that end at something, the target will be simply thrown away. It augments your own power, but nothing more. How far and how hard they are thrown depends on you.”

“If, however, you use the blade end, your power will be sharpened, so that it will seem as if the blade has stabbed your target, even if it hasn’t left your hand. They will most likely be sliced to ribbons.”

Kagura swallowed hard. “I see.”

“You will have to learn to decide quickly which to use, and also how to direct and discharge the force with rapid precision so that you can fight multiple opponents at once.”

“What about this fabric?” she asked. She could not take her eyes from it, the color seemed to absorb her.

“The fabric is interesting,” he almost chortled with self-satisfaction. “It’s an experiment, you see. I thought that if you could move air, maybe you could learn to change air. If you can manipulate air, you could control what people see or hear in the air around them. In effect, the cloth has the ability to create illusions.”

“Illusions?” she gasped, tearing her eyes away from the mesmerizing cloth.

“Yes, but you will have to learn to use it.”

Kagura looked at the weapon, taking in everything.

“Your reputation is well-earned, old man,” she said. Kagura knew how to give a compliment when it was merited.

“What’s in the bag?” Shippou asked, nudging it with his foot.

“Be careful with that!” Totosai said sharply.

He squatted in the dirt and opened the bag. From within he brought forth a gleaming, metal ball.

“Your talent has all kinds of possibilities,” he said to Kagura, “so I got creative. These are fascinating little beauties. They are filled with small, poisoned daggers. You have only to throw them, and when they land they will explode, sending the points in all directions. Be certain that you have no allies near. The weapon will not differentiate!”

Shippou started to count them. “You can’t reuse them, can you?”

“No,” Totosai answered. “When they’re gone, they’re gone. If you can, come back and I’ll make more.”

“You have done a great deal for us, Totosai,” Shippou said, bowing. “I hope we repay you someday.”

“Try to get rid of all these critters crawling everywhere, these spider-demons. They’re a menace to a poor old man like me. I’m getting too old to be harassed like this, hounded in my dotage.”

“I don’t think you’re that far gone,” Shippou laughed. “But we’ll do what we can.”

“I advise you two to stick around a little bit longer,” Totosai suggested. “She should train more before you go off trying to attack Naraku with your teeth.”

***

They talked into the early morning hours, trying to decide what to do. Inuyasha was inclined to return to Edo, reasoning that he would find his friends there. Nobunaga was against this plan.

“In the first place,” he said, “from what you’ve told me that is what your enemy will expect you to do. If you go there, you may find him waiting for you.”

“All the more reason!” Inuyasha declared.

“Don’t be a child, Inuyasha-sama,” Nobunaga said. “You’re not ready for that confrontation yet. And you can’t do it alone. I doubt just the three of us are going to make much difference.”

Jinenji agreed to this emphatically.

Inuyasha grumbled but did not argue.

“She said ‘look for me in the west, by the sea’,” Nobunaga went on. “Do you know anyone who lives by the sea, west of here?”

“No, no one,” Inuyasha answered, then he scratched behind one ear. “Well, there is someone, but it’s a long shot.”

“Oh?”

“My half-brother, Sesshoumaru, supposedly lives out west somewhere, and I’ve been told the house was beside the sea. But that was a long time ago, I have no way of knowing if it’s still there.”

“That’s it then,” Nobunaga declared. “That’s where we’re supposed to go.”

“How did you arrive at that conclusion?” Inuyasha demanded.

“Midoriko-sama made a point of saying that to you. I think it means something.”

“Seems kind of sketchy to me,” Inuyasha said doubtfully.“Do you have anything better?”

“No, not really,” Inuyasha sighed, then shrugged. “I guess we can go in that direction and see what happens. But I warn you, Sesshoumaru is not the sort to invite guests in for tea.”

“We’ll just have to deal with that when we get there,” Nobunaga said.

“What about her?” Jinenji, who had not said much during the debate, asked suddenly, nodding his head out toward the courtyard.

Nobunaga sighed. “I’ll go talk to her.”

He rose and left.

Inuyasha shrugged and went to a corner, placing himself against the wall and leaning his sword on his shoulder, intending to sleep for a full night for the first time in months.

The next morning they were all ready to leave. Inuyasha did not know what Nobunaga had said to Nazuna and he did not want to know. Her expression was calm, even placid, as she strapped a leather bag to her back and secured her bamboo hat to her chin.

“Which way are we going?” was all she said.

“West,” Inuyasha answered, pointing the way.

She immediately set off in that direction, followed by Nobunaga. Jinenji looked at Inuyasha, shrugged, and followed as well.

They could not travel as fast as Inuyasha would have liked, but he resisted the urge to run ahead and leave them behind.

Can’t do that stuff anymore.

That night they camped in the forest. Inuyasha guessed that they were about forty miles southwest of Edo. They ate a meager meal of dried pork and rice, trying to be careful with their rations, and they gathered around a small fire to sleep. Inuyasha did not sleep that night, but sat staring at the multitude of stars above and at the legions of startled eyes that came close enough to gaze at the fire in soft astonishment, but then always receded back into the shadows.

He thought of Kagome. Had Midoriko spoken to her? Was she waiting for him? He realized with surprise that he had not had the paper-monster nightmare since he met Jinenji. He breathed a sigh of relief. It was just another sign that he was on the right track.

Please, don’t blame me ‘cause I’ve tried. I’ll be coming home soon to you.

The next day they came out of the thick forests of the mountains and into a valley about ten miles long and, in places, five miles wide. Several villages huddled here and there against a few winding rivers. The villages were filling up again with the people who had fled into the hills during the Rains. Still, want and misery were everywhere. The air was heavy with the stench of filth and disease. Inuyasha grew nervous.

They were walking along the banks of one river, trying to find a place shallow enough to cross, when sudden shouts and the thudding of many feet were heard behind them. Inuyasha turned and saw that they were surrounded by a dozen shabby men and, by the looks of their clubs and rusty knives, they were not interested in chatting about the weather.

“Leave your food,” one man, a heavy-set character with only one eye, said. “And the woman, and you can leave.”

Nobunaga drew his weapon without hesitation. Inuyasha put his hand on his sword.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he said. “Get lost.”

The men snickered and advanced on them.

Jinenji, who had trailed behind some distance, caught up with them. The men took one startled looked at him and bolted like rabbits into the woods.

“Where’ve you been?” Inuyasha demanded.

Jinenji did not appear to understand what had happened. With a puzzled expression on his long face, he brought forth a fist full of flowers, pitiful little daisies that grew alongside the river.

“I thought they might cheer her up,” he said. “They’re not much, but all I could find.”

He offered the bouquet to Nazuna. She stared at him in disbelief, then a sudden smile broke across her face.

“Thank you, Jinenji-san,” she said with a  little bow, taking the gift.

“You are welcome,” he rumbled.

Inuyasha stared at them, then threw up his hands and continued down the river banks.

“You’re not trying to steal my girl, are you Jinenji-san,” Nobunaga teased the half-demon as they walked.

Nazuna blushed.

“No, no,” the gentle giant said with a  shy smile. “I just don’t like to see women unhappy, especially human women. My mother was a human, you know.”

“Oh really?” Nazuna asked. “What was she like?”

The three of them continue to chat as they strolled along, while Inuyasha made a valiant effort not to scream at them to pick up the pace. He busied himself looking for shallow places in the river. Finally, he interrupted them.

“We can cross here,” he announced.

They were startled as if they had forgotten he was there. They looked out at the river. The stream had widened and there was a small island in the middle of it. They could see that the river on this side was shallow and ran quickly over many flat, gray rocks.

“What’s it like on the other side of that island though?” Nazuna asked.

“I don’t think it’s deep,” Inuyasha answered. “But I can carry you if need be. I want to cover more ground going south today.”

As they crossed the stream they did not talk, concentrating instead on staying on the rocks, made slick by the water and algae.

Nobunaga swore under his breath.

“What’s the matter?” Inuyasha called back.

“Nothing,” the young samurai answered. “Almost fell.”

Inuyasha shrugged and kept going. “You could use a bath anyway.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“You don’t exactly smell like a meadow in springtime, you know,” Nobunaga accused. “There’s a reason that none of these insects are landing on you. I’m just glad the wind is not blowing from your direction.”

“Right,” Inuyasha agreed. “It’s blowing your stink right up my nose.”

“I might have a few things with me that you could put up your nose, Inuyasha-sama.”

Jinenji and Nazuna decided not to contribute to the discussion.

***

Kagura and Shippou stayed with Totosai for ten days, during which time they both worked on perfecting their attack and defense abilities. On occasion, Totosai would assist them by offering himself as a sparring partner or even a target.

One day, he took them across the lava river to the forest, looking for new targets.

“I don’t sense any of those spider-demons,” Shippou said.

“No, but then you wouldn’t,” Totosai answered.

“Why is that?”

“Didn’t you say you fought them before?” Totosai asked.

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t notice that they didn’t have a demonic sense, or even a smell?”

Shippou thought about it.

“I guess I had too much on my mind,” he admitted. “But, how can something have no smell?”

“I don’t know. I only know that they don’t.”

The old man’s eyes went distant and they scanned the area.

“Ah!” he said at last. “There’s a demon boar over yonder. A big one too. I’ll go flush him out in your direction.”

“And then what?” Kagura demanded.

“That’s up to you,” he shrugged. “But I wouldn’t let him ground me into mincemeat. It’s your body though.”

Shippou climbed a tree.

“Where are you going?” Kagura called to him.

“This is your exercise,” he said. “I’ll be here if you get into trouble.”

Kagura muttered a few choice phrases under her breath and put both hands firmly on her weapon. She began to hear trampling sounds in the distance. Within a minute or two, the huge, shaggy beast came roaring into the clearing, eyes maddened with rage. He spent some time gouging an unoffending tree with his alarming tusks before he turned glaring at Kagura.

“Well come on then, you ugly brute,” she said, trying not to think about her trembling legs.

I’m just out of practice, she thought, not used to fighting anymore.

With a shrieking squeal, the monster charged at her like an avalanche. Kagura leveled her weapon and directed all her thought into casting the monster back.

It worked. The boar was thrown almost a  hundred yards and into a tree. It lay on the ground, twitching.

Kagura was thinking that the whole business was finished, when the boar got to its feet again, screaming.

“Kagura,” Shippou called down to her, “don’t throw it, kill it! It won’t stop coming at you.”

The trouble was, the piercing attack of her staff covered a much smaller area.

“What if I miss?” she shouted.

“I wouldn’t.”

Great. Very helpful.

The nasty brute charged again, even more ferociously than before. This time, Kagura leveled the blade end of her weapon at the charging monster, trying to aim for its chest. She commanded the air to move, and felt the energy blaze forward like lightening.

Nothing happened. The beast kept charging.

“Shit!” she managed to say, before it collided with her. The blade, still held low, sank into its chest with a sickening, sawing crunch. A fountain of blood gushed from the wound and foamed in the boar’s mouth.

“Kagura!” she heard Shippou shout. “Get out of the way!”.

But the boar was thrashing in the mud and she could not get from underneath him. She was caught with a smart rap on the temple by her own weapon and then the boar’s tusk smashed into her ribs. She was thrown into the air.

When she regained consciousness, she was lying on a pile of straw mats in Totosai’s hut. Shippou and Totosai were sitting on the ground near his furnace. The growing night was pressing in from the edges of the shades that covered the door and window.

“She’s a demon after all,” Totosai was saying. “She’ll be fine.”

“You take too many chances, Totosai,” Shippou replied. “I’ve gone through a lot to keep her alive, not to have her killed by an overgrown swine.”

Kagura groaned. She felt like she had been sitting out in the rain, and it had been raining boulders.

Shippou came to hover over her. “Are you okay?”

“What is that smell?” she asked, rubbing her sandy eyes.

“Pig,” Shippou answered.

He went back to the fire, stuck in a long knife, and brought out a hunk of steaming pork.

“Want some?”

“What I don’t get is,” Totosai said from where he was sitting, “why you decided to spear him with the blade instead of your powers. And I really don’t understand why you thought you could break his tusks with your ribs.”

In an instant Kagura was fully awake. She jumped to her feet, grabbed a staff that had been left leaning in a corner, and advanced upon the old demon with grim resolution.

Shippou sat on the floor and continued to gulp down roasted pork, ignoring the curses and cries for help that came from behind him as Kagura proceeded to give Totosai the thrashing of his life.

***

They pressed on through the populated valley, but Inuyasha insisted that they avoid the villages.

“Half-demons like Jinenji and me are seldom welcome even in good times,” he said. “Now’s not the time to test the limits of peasant hospitality.”

On a few occasions, Nobunaga would go into the settlements alone, hoping to find either food or information. Food was hard to come by, most believing that what food they had was worth more to them than anything Nobunaga could trade for it. Information was easy, however. Nobunaga returned one evening with a rolled up parchment and a worried frown.

He offered  the scroll to Inuyasha.

“What is it?”

“Something you should see,” Nobunaga answered.

Inuyasha unrolled the document and glanced at it. He scoffed.

“I can’t read, Nobunaga.”

“Oh,” the young man said, taking it back. “I’ll read it for you then.”

Being that the Lord Henshin has sought to restore peace and prosperity to the land, and that he is charged with the sacred duty of protecting all good people from the influence of evil, this warrant has been issued for the following persons for high crimes of plotting to inflict suffering, of inciting disease and starvation with black magic, of various acts of perverseness, and, most heinous of all, of dissidence. The following dissidents must be arrested on sight, taken dead or alive and, if alive, put to death.

He went on to read detailed descriptions of just about everyone Inuyasha knew on this earth. The dog demon felt a secret thrill when he heard Kikyou’s name.

“This is good news,” he said when Nobunaga was finished.

Nobunaga and the others stared at him in amazement.

“How can this be good?” Nazuna demanded.

“This warrant, or whatever you call it, definitely came from Naraku. There’s not a soul on here who is not his enemy. I don’t know if Henshin is Naraku in disguise or is a puppet of Naraku, but it doesn’t matter. If Naraku is hunting these people, then he has reason to believe that they are still alive, and I guess he would know if anybody did.”

“I thought you already believed that they were alive,” she said.

“I did, but this is more proof.”

“These are some pretty serious accusations, Inuyasha-sama,” Nobunaga said. “He all but accuses you of causing the Rains and those spider-demons and every other unfortunate thing.”

“This is evidence, I think,” Jinenji said in his deep voice, “that Naraku himself is behind all these things. He aims to deflect blame.”

“Exactly what I was thinking, Jinenji,” Inuyasha replied.

His expression grew thoughtful.

“I am worried about Kaede though.”

“This Sesshoumaru, this is the brother we’re going to see?” Nobunaga asked.

“Right, and if anyone is fool enough to go after that guy because of this warrant, it’ll be their swan song.”

By the next morning they passed through the valley and reentered the mountains, following a common road. The weather was turning bitter cold and though the sun was unclouded, its light was wan and pale. Nobunaga and Nazuna wrapped themselves in fur pelts, tied with leather twine, and pressed on grimly. That evening, when they made camp, Inuyasha went off into the forest alone and returned some time later with a dead deer draped over his shoulders.

“Nobunaga and Nazuna can’t be expected to walk to the ends of the earth on rice and water alone,” he said.

He borrowed a large knife from Jinenji and began butchering the deer with expert precision.

Nazuna looked away with a shudder.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Nobunaga suggested.

Nazuna nodded and they walked hand in hand into the forest.

“You’ve been walking all day!” Inuyasha shouted after them.

They ignored him.

“Don’t go too far!” he called, and then turned back to his deer, shaking his head.

Jinenji watched as the two disappeared into the shadows.

“Are they married?” he asked.

“I don’t see how,” Inuyasha answered, not taking his eyes off his butchery. “They only met a couple of weeks ago.”

Jinenji looked puzzled.

“Don’t even worry about it, Jinenji,” Inuyasha told him. “If they want to go off alone to entertain each other, it’s none of our business.”

Jinenji nodded and, without changing expression, began gnawing on a piece of bone.

The next morning, before sunrise, Inuyasha received a rude awakening. A sting and an itch told him that something small was taking its lunch from his nose. Without opening his eyes, he swatted at it. This was met with a groan and a sigh, following by repeated sobbing.

“Oh Inuyasha-sama! Inuyasha-sama!” a tiny voice blubbered. “I thought I’d never see you again!”

“What is that?” Nobunaga exclaimed, coming awake and fumbling for his sword.

“Relax,” Inuyasha said, peering down at the emotional flea on his hand. “It’s just Myouga.”

“Oh!” the little demon flea continued to bawl. “Inuyasha-sama!”

“Stop that!” Inuyasha snapped. “I’m fine. Have you seen any of the others?”

Myouga gulped down his tears.

“No. I only just found out what happened. I was at the Plateau yesterday, and I put it together. I thought you were dead!”

He wailed again and pressed his face into Inuyasha’s thumb.

“I said stop it,” Inuyasha growled.

Then he thought of something.

“The Plateau? You mean it’s near?”

Myouga nodded. “Just beyond this next mountain.”

Inuyasha looked at Nobunaga.

“Wake everyone up,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

Nazuna was a bit surly about being jostled awake before sunrise, but she was able to be civil after she had eaten and washed her face and hands in the freezing stream. They followed Inuyasha, who followed the directions of his miniature retainer. It was almost noon when they came upon it.

“Great Hachiman!” Nobunaga swore.

Six months had passed since that terrible day. To Inuyasha it felt like years and on the other side of the moon. Seeing it did not alter this feeling. The area was a sudden clearing in the surrounding forest. All the trees lay in tangled and gnarled heaps. The greater ones had torn out huge chunks of the earth in their deaths, and these depressions were overrun with weeds and ferns.

“What is this?” Nazuna asked in an awed whisper, looking around.

Inuyasha sighed.

“The end of the world.”

***

Totosai was nothing if not a glutton, and after stuffing himself silly with roast pork, he forgave Kagura almost before his contusions and bruises healed.

“I don’t know why it didn’t work,” he told her. “You probably just missed. You have to work on your aim.”

“I have pretty good aim for old geezer heads,” she said ominously.

Totosai ducked behind Shippou for protection.

They cured some of the pork, and they packed this tough meet in a bag along with a couple of blankets and water jugs.

“It’s time we got moving again,” Shippou said to the demon sword smith. “I’ll come back with Inuyasha if I can find him, or send word to you if necessary.”

“Don’t worry about me, I can take care of myself,” Totosai answered.

“Goodbye then,” Shippou said simply.

He transformed into the giant form of his hawk and he and Kagura took to the air and headed south.

“Still going to the Hyouden, I guess?” Kagura asked.

“Yep.”

Kagura sighed but decided not to argue.

They traveled at a good speed, keeping straight south, for less than an hour before they ran into Tsuchigumo. They saw the wiry, spindle-limbed demons moving voraciously through a valley.

“Time to practice your aim,” Shippou called to Kagura, who was flanking him.

She nodded. “Be careful.”

They plummeted down on the heads of the monsters without warning. It seemed that they had been simply moving from place to place and were not prepared for a fight. Shippou picked up several of them at once, soared back into the air, and dropped them to their deaths. Kagura’s wind cut huge swathes through them, knocking them about into trees and into each other. By this time they began to attempt some counterattack, but without effect. They had, until this point, focused their violence on humans, and these powerful attacks from the air were quite beyond their experience.

Kagura realized that she did not even need to aim. There were so many of them that she could just send her slicing air attack forward in their general direction and she was almost guaranteed to maim and kill large numbers of them at once. Shippou continued tossing them through the air, or simply crushing them in his talons. Several of them attempted to spear him as he descended, but it was difficult to concentrate on their aim while Kagura continued to cut off heads and arms.

Before long, they had decimated this group of Tsuchigumo. Shippou landed and changed back to his normal shape, panting and looking about with wild eyes.

“That was exciting,” he grinned at Kagura when she joined him.

“I thought so,” she purred, giving her kwan dao a loving stroke.

“Want to go find more?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” she laughed, already ascending again.

This went on a for a few days as the pair pressed on southward, cutting a path through swarms of the crawling monsters. They seldom stopped to rest and could never sleep in such a hostile country. Even Shippou began to show signs of exhaustion.

November gave way to December without anyone noticing. The cold began to wear on Shippou and Kagura, as they expended too much of their energy in battle to use it to keep themselves warm. The noon sun hung pale and weak in the sky, obscured now and then by smoke from burning forests and villages. Shippou returned to his normal shape and met Kagura near a bare, rocky knoll among the hills.

“This is ridiculous!” he vented. “How many of these damn things can there be?”

Kagura sat on the edge of large outcrop of rock, rubbing her fingers against her scalp, tussling her hair. The joy of the kill had quickly lost its luster. She was so exhausted that she ached all over, and the cold clung to her fingers and toes with an iron grip.

“We need to rest,” she said. “You sleep first and I’ll keep watch.”

Shippou protested, but Kagura would not relent. At last too tired to resist, he found a spot that was somewhat sheltered from the wind by a large boulder, crawled into a fetal position, and fell asleep. Kagura let him sleep for about four hours before taking her turn. He sat beside her, his chin resting on his knees, listening to her gentle breathing and fighting to keep his eyes open.

The waning moon was hanging low over the horizon when Shippou awoke with a violent twitch. He got to his feet.

“Damn it! Stupid!” he cursed himself.

Kagura only teased him a little when she learned that they had both slept like babies out in the open.

“Oh well, at least we got plenty of rest.”

It was true that they both felt much better, stronger and warmer.

They nibbled on some of their store of food and were about to take to the sky again when they heard shouts of dismay and screams of terror coming from the forest to their western side. They hurried into the air, Shippou transforming even has he ran. It only took them a few minutes to come to a village, one of the few they had seen intact. Shippou looked down and could see that the men had herded the women and children into the center of the village and were preparing themselves for a last stand against the enemy. They were encircled by Tsuchigumo, who stood stamping and beating their chests with their fists, working themselves into a frenzy.

“Kagura!” Shippou called. “Be careful of the villagers!”

Then he let out a scream that pierced the cold night. The Tsuchigumo looked up in dismay as his shadow blocked the moon and stars. Many never knew what hit them. As others watched their comrades being torn and smashed by the giant bird, Kagura came down on them like a swift arrow, and began throwing large numbers of them away from the village.

The villagers drew back from the struggle, taken by surprise by the viciousness of this new attack, and watching in amazement as their former assailants were torn to pieces. Some of the Tsuchigumo managed to get away, and Shippou and Kagura did not bother to pursue them. They landed and approached the terrified villagers.

“Why do they cringe from us?” Kagura asked him. “Don’t they see we just saved them?”

“As far as they know we saved them so we can eat them ourselves. The world is a scary place for people who are powerless, Kagura.”

Shippou approached the huddle of humans, extending his hands with palms upraised.

“We will not hurt you,” he told them. “We are friends of humans. We have come to save you.”

The men, still forming a thick blockade in front of the women and children, looked at each other warily.

“It’s a fox demon,” one of the men said. “They’re tricksters. You can’t trust them.”

Shippou let his hands drop.

“Please,” he said. “Let me help you.”

“You can help us by leaving us alone!” another of the men declared.

The others murmured their agreement.

“Come on, Shippou,” Kagura said angrily. “They don’t want us here.”

Shippou turned back to the humans.

“The Tsuchigumo will be back. There are more of them then there are stars. We must all work together to resist them! They are not just your enemy.”

The men looked at each other, and this time Shippou could see by some of their faces that he was getting through to some of them. Then, one of their number came forward alone. He was thick-bodied, with a long braid of black hair hanging from his crown.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“I am called Shippou, and this is my friend, Kagura,” Shippou indicated to her that they should both bow. “Perhaps you have heard of Inuyasha, or Kagome, or Kikyou?”

“If you mean Kikyou, the priestess of Edo, we have heard of her. But she is dead.”

“We were her friends nonetheless,” Shippou lied glibly. “As we are friends to all humans. What can I do to make you believe me?”

“What do you know of these monsters?”

Shippou realized he did not actually know all that much, but he guessed quite a bit, and for now, that would have to do.

“There is a great demon, the most powerful, the most perfidious ever known, named Naraku. He aims to enslave all living things. His power has grown so great because he has possession of the Shikon no Tama. He has created these monsters. He is also the one who caused the Rains.”

“How did he do that?” the leader demanded suspiciously.

“His enormity knows no limits,” Shippou swept on, trying to gloss over a number of pesky details.

“But you say he is a demon, like you.”

“There are many wicked humans in the world, are there not? Do you claim kinship with them, just because they are human?”

The man considered this.

“It may be as you say. But what proof do we have of your good faith?”

“What better options do you have? What do you have to lose?” Shippou countered. “He is demon, and you know you will never defeat him on your own, not if the gods had made you three times greater than you are.”

There was a murmur amongst the men, and Shippou feared he had pushed them too far.

“If we agreed with you, what then?” the leader persisted. “Do you have a plan?”

“We must gather all men, human and demon, who can fight.”

“And then what? What will we do with our women and children in the meantime? Leave them to fend for themselves?”

“No,” Shippou answered firmly. “We will have to take them with us.”

There was an outbreak of dismay and protest.

“As you say,” Shippou shouted over the clamor, “there is no other way. We will have to keep together.”

The leader was silent for a moment, and then he went back into the throng. They conferred among themselves for some time, throwing furtive glances in the direction of the two demons. Shippou could feel the air around Kagura bristling with suppressed indignation. She plainly did not care for waiting on word from humans. Shippou saw that some prejudices had been inherited after all, and would have to be corrected.

While he waited, he could not help but remember how many times Kagome or Miroku had been obliged to persuade reluctant rural peasants that they were friendly. Not for the first or the last time, he wished they were here, that he did not have to be the one to take on all burden himself. But those days, his youth, seemed so far away now, years away and on the other side of the stars.

“You are right.”

Shippou was jerked back to reality. He saw that the leader was standing in front of him.

“My lord?”

“You are right,” he repeated. “We have nothing to lose. To tell you the truth, we are without homes, without food, and without hope.”

Shippou gave a slight bow and indicated, with a rib-gouging thrust of his elbow, that Kagura should do the same.

“I give you my word that I will improve your circumstances.”

Some of the villagers went back to their ruined huts to gather what provisions and weapons they could salvage. The rest made other preparations to leave.

“What happened to going to Sesshoumaru’s?” Kagura asked.

“We’ll get there, eventually,” he answered. “This is more important right now.”

“Do you really believe all that stuff you told him, about Naraku?”

“More or less.”

Kagura looked over at the villagers with obvious distaste.

“Get used to it,” he told her. “We’ll end up leading a lot of them before this is done.”

Kagura shook her head. “I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”

[End of Chapter Twenty-One]

[Next chapter: Where the Streets Have No Name]