Omoide no Mori
Forest of Memories
***
Fushigi na natsukashii kodou
Kikoete'ru deshou?
Tooi kioku wo ima
Tsunaide'ku monogatari ga hajimaru...
You hear the mysterious beat
That's reminiscent of days gone by, don't you?
Linking distant memories
Now the story begins...
***
chapter three:
*Crows, Concerns, and Departure for Torinishi*
"Naniiii?"
Inuyasha's jaw sagged, and his eyes widened in disbelief as his ears flattened against his head.
"Kaede-babaa, zaken ja nee...! Tell me you aren't serious...!"
Kaede gazed at Inuyasha with her good eye and sighed gustily.
"Sumanai, Inuyasha," the old woman replied, fiddling with the sleeves of her white gi. She folded her arms over her chest. "There really wasn't anything we could do..."
Inuyasha scowled, and then the scowl turned to an outright pout, and Kagome stifled a giggle at the sight. She rolled her eyes as the hanyou flopped down on the ground on his rump, the soles of his feet pressed together as he grumbled something no one could quite make out.
Kagome sighed.
He was absolutely incorrigible...
She smiled apologetically at Kaede, and the old woman chortled and smiled back, shaking her head, her long silver-gray hair swaying in the cool breeze of that autumn morning. Kagome found her thoughts straying back to the first time she had met Kaede, on her first visit to this Sengoku Jidai... She bit back a laugh as she recalled that Kaede had actually tied her up. It had been...quite a memorable episode, to say the least...but then, Kagome was quite certain that there was not a single moment of her time here in the past that she would easily forget, even had she wanted to...
Kaede was the younger sister of the late Kikyou, the priestess who had died protecting the very village in which they now stood from the very hanyou they stood beside.
Kagome sighed again, but pensively this time.
It had been...such a sad tale...
Dragged into a web of deceit and lies, Kikyou and Inuyasha, though very much in love, had each been led to believe that they had been horribly betrayed by the other. Inuyasha had been after the Shikon jewel, hoping to use it to become fully demon, when he had fallen in love with the priestess...but in the end, it had been Kikyou that had pierced the hanyou's heart--quite literally, in fact--her magical sealing arrow pinning him to the Goshinboku, the ancient holy tree that had lasted through the hundreds of years to remain standing at the Higurashi Shrine. Kikyou, fatally wounded in the battle, had insisted that the Shikon no Tama be burned with her remains, so that the struggle for the jewel might never again cause such a horrible fight, and her wish had been granted.
But there had been one flaw in the plan...
No one had been expecting Kagome.
No one had expected Kagome to end up being the reincarnation of Kikyou's soul, and surely no one had expected that she would stumble 500 years into the past into the Sengoku Jidai to find them. It had come as a shock to everyone (especially Kagome) when a demon had torn the jewel from her very body! And...well, that had rather been the catalyst of everything, for surely Kagome would not have remained in the past had the Shikon not been rediscovered.
She sometimes wondered whether that had been a blessing or a curse...
Kaede had seen immediately the likeness between Kikyou and Kagome, and had thus held the girl prisoner until Kagome made it clear that she had no intention of using the Shikon no Tama for anything--she didn't even know what it was! To be honest...Kagome had thought it had been nothing more than a fancy pink marble, like the hoaky keychains her grandfather had tried to sell at the shrine...
After the record had been sufficiently set straight, Kaede had turned out to be quite a good ally, and a wealth of knowledge.
Inuyasha continued his grumbling rants, and Kagome shook her head, turning to Kaede.
"Daijoubu, Kaede-baa-chan," she said smoothly, waving one had in the air, "don't bother with what he says. Nobody expected the villagers to fight off a youkai..."
"A youkai?" came a questioning voice.
"What kind of demon was it?" asked a second.
Everyone turned in time to see a slender man in a long robe emerge from the shadows of the forest, a second figure--this one barely the size of a young child--perched upon his right shoulder.
Inuyasha gave a wry smile.
"That's very like you, Bouzu," he sneered, "always eavesdropping..."
Miroku snapped his arm out and whacked Inuyasha on the head with the carved end of his staff.
"And that is very like you, Inuyasha," he retorted, "to go off shard hunting with Kagome-sama without us..."
Shippou nodded in miffed agreement from the monk's shoulder as Inuyasha rubbed the bump forming on his head, and then the little fox demon jumped down to leap into Kagome's arms.
"And how very like the lot of you," a new voice piped up, "to just up and leave me behind!"
Kagome turned to see who the good-natured--if not slightly annoyed--voice belonged to, and grinned widely as the silhouette of a young woman appeared at the treeline.
Miroku circled back at the sound of the voice and grinned sheepishly as the figure stepped into the morning light.
She was tall and lean, with long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail high atop her head, and large, warm brown eyes. Dressed in black-and-salmon armor and carrying her huge off-white Hiraikotsu--bone boomerang--over her shoulder, she looked every bit the part of the taijiya.
"Sango-chan," Kagome greeted warmly, "ohayou!"
Miroku paused wordlessly.
Taijiya Sango...
Then he looked at the ground.
Well...she really didn't do that much any more...her demon-exterminating days had mostly come to an end... Now there was only the occasional trip to help some villagers out with a pesky youkai or two every now and again, plus it was usually a good way to earn a hot meal and a warm bed for the night, but Sango had all but given up her days as a taijiya. He supposed it reminded her too much of events done and gone...
Her entire past was a rather touchy subject. Her parents dead, her brother being manipulated by an elusive and shadowy half-youkai monster known as Naraku, Miroku found it astounding how Sango managed to remain cheerful most of the time.
He sighed as his eyes moved from Sango, to Shippou, to Inuyasha, to Kagome, and then to his own right hand, his palm turned skyward. He shook his head and clenched his fist.
What a battered bunch of broken souls they all were, he mused rather bitterly.
Sango, who had lost her family and her entire village to youkai attack; Shippou, whose father had been slain by the infamous Thunder Brothers, leaving the young fox demon an orphan; Inuyasha, torn internally by the eternal struggle between his vicious youkai blood and his compassionate human emotions, between his hatred for Naraku and his remaining love for Kikyou; Kagome, who had been sucked into the middle of a war that had started over half a century ago, and had been forced to go through things that surely would have brought a weaker human to their knees...
He relaxed the fist and looked down at his hand, wrapped in purple cloth and wound in blue rosary beads.
And then...there's me...he thought, whose life will eventually be taken by his own accursed hand...
Literally.
Literally...for within the palm of the monk's right hand was the Kazaana--the Air Rip--a void, much like a Black Hole which, when opened, would suck all in its path into the gaping vacuum of its existence, never to be seen again.
Miroku clenched his fistso tightly his knuckles whitened.
Such was the curse of his bloodline...such was the curse of his family. His father had been consumed by the Air Rip within his own hand, his grandfather in the same fashion. Naraku, the nefarious result of the convergence of many youkai souls into the body of a human, had placed the curse on Miroku's grandfather decades ago, and caused the hex to be passed down from father to son, so that each child brought into the world tied to the roots of Miroku's family tree would be born with the promise of, live with the condemned power of, and die by way of the Kazaana.
Miroku scowled.
Feh, he snorted to himself. He'd see to that.
Miroku had promised himself long ago that he would not fall prey to the same cursed demise of his father and grandfather. He had decided years ago that he would definitely succeed where they had failed...
He would live through what had killed his predecessors...he would give his father's name the future it deserved.
He would avenge his family.
He allowed a faint smile to cross his lips as he glanced up again to gaze at the others.
No...he would not die so quickly...not now...
He had friends to live for now.
Six months ago...when he had still been wandering the earth alone, living solely for revenge against Naraku, he might not have necessarily been so adamant about staying alive. He might well have given up his life for the chance to rid his family's name of the dratted curse of Naraku's Kazaana...but...
...but now...
He grinned.
Well, he couldn't just leave them...he couldn't just up and desert them. They had all cared for him more than he could ever recall anyone ever had. Even Inuyasha, who seemed to pride himself on his gruff aloofness, had put himself on the line to help him before...
Miroku squeezed the blue rosary beads in his palm.
They were his family now... They had become what he had always been lacking, and he would not abandon them to be drawn into the cold endlessness of death.
Not without a fight.
He drew a soft breath as he looked them over.
A miko's reincarnation, a hanyou, a kitsune, a taijiya, and a houshi...
Miroku smiled.
Perhaps family truly did know no prejudice...
Miroku's mind snapped out of its pensive paralysis and back to the present as he quickly rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, the other tightly gripping his shakujou.
"Aiya, gomen, gomen, Sango," he apologized quickly with a slight bow. "We did not wish to wake you."
The taijiya narrowed one eye playfully at him.
"Uh huh..." she muttered, and cast a glance toward the small, two-tailed feline youkai seated on her shoulder. "I think you were just trying to save all the fun for yourself, Houshi-sama,"--she winked at the cat demon--"don't you agree, Kirara?"
Kirara slowly blinked her large red eyes, but made no reply other than a rather birdlike chirp.
Sango laughed, and dropped down to a crouch to place Kirara on the ground. She then stood again, slowly, and cast her squinted eyes to Miroku, who suddenly looked a tad wan under her irked gaze.
"So anyway," she said, turning her attention to Inuyasha and the others, "what's all the excitement about?"
Her dark eyes were glittering in anticipation.
Inuyasha snorted.
"There isn't any," he remarked rather sourly, "since the shard that was here got stolen..."
"Stolen?" Shippou echoed. "By who?"
"Some blasted bird demon ran off with it," the hanyou grumbled. He scowled. "Or rather flew off..." he corrected himself peevishly.
Sango rolled her eyes.
"Mou, Inuyasha," she scolded, "it's not like the villagers could have done anything about it..."
"Well, they could have tried..." he pouted.
Kagome turned to Kaede.
"Did you see what sort of youkai it was?" she asked.
The old woman shook her head.
"Iie," she said slowly, "I'm afraid not. It happened very early this morning, before the rise of the sun... It was too dark to tell for certain." She cast her eyes to the sky. "It was not so extraordinarily large," she continued, pointing, "and it flew off toward the forest, headed West."
She glanced at Inuyasha.
"It was dark in color itself..." she added as rather an afterthought. "A crow, I would gather."
"Feh, then let's get going," Inuyasha said, rising to his feet. "If it's nothing but a crow demon, then this should not prove very difficult at all."
He took a step toward the forest.
"Matte, Inuyasha," Kaede called as the hanyou prepared to bound off into the woods. He paused, his legs still coiled to spring, and glanced back over his shoulder.
"Nani?" he asked.
The old woman's face was somber and stern, as though she were about to utter the secret of life itself. She slowly blinked her one eye.
"Take care, Inuyasha," she said ominously, and squared her shoulders. "Something is amiss."
"Amiss?" Sango echoed, and Kaede nodded.
"Something is not right," the miko continued, rolling the words carefully off her tongue as though they were some sort of incantation. "The wind carries an ill song within its arms, and the earth is trembling beneath us, I can feel it."
She paused, and Miroku figured it was probably more for dramatic effect than anything else.
"Something is going to happen," Kaede said after a moment, "something sinister, something dangerous. There are terrible forces at work, I'm sure of it."
Inuyasha gave her a look that registered as nothing short of bafflement.
"What the heck are you babbling on about, you old crone?" he asked, squinting one golden eye.
"There's something wrong, can't you feel it?" Kaede asked him rather incredulously. "I can't quite put my finger on it, but the forest is not right today..." She furrowed her brow. "Just be cautious."
He flattened his eyes at her.
"Hai, hai, hai," he said in a very complacent manner, and extended one hand toward Kagome. "Hayaku, koi," he urged her, and hoisted the girl onto his back.
Then he looked to Miroku.
"Miroku," he said, "you, Sango, and Shippou look from the sky with Kirara. Kagome and I will take the low from the treetops." He grinned wickedly. "We'll find that blasted crow and get our shard back, ne?"
He leapt up into the air and paused a moment, clinging to a tree.
"If you find anything, send us a signal," he called over his shoulder, and then vanished into the foliage of the treetops.
Miroku paused, blinked, then glanced over at the taijiya standing behind him.
"Awfully motivated today...isn't he?" he asked wryly, and Sango glanced at him, then moved her eyes to watch Kaede shake her head rather hopelessly and disappear into her hut. She twitched her mouth up in an expression of contemplation and shifted the weight of her Hiraikotsu from one shoulder to the other.
She pressed one finger against her chin, and said, "Well, I suppose he would want to get things taken care of before sundown."
"Ha! Sou da!" Shippou gasped, slapping the palm of his left hand with his fist. "That's right, there's no moon tonight!"
"Aa, I had forgotten," Miroku replied absently, inwardly wincing as an icy hand gripped his heart with cold bony fingers.
The anxious feeling he'd had all morning had just intensified from a throbbing knot of uneasiness to an acute stab of apprehension.
The First Night.
The night when the moon's silvery glow was completely obscured from the sky.
The one night when the stars alone held silent vigil over the earth after the fall of the sun below the horizon, and no shadows were cast upon the hills.
Oh, the plague of being only half youkai...for that was the biggest weakness of a hanyou. One night of every month (the First Night, in Inuyasha's case), their demon powers faded, and they would revert to the half of the ancestry that was not youkai, which left the poor dog/man hanyou completely human--and one hundred percent mortal--each time the moon was obscured from sight by the shadow of the earth.
But...why did it have to be tonight, of all nights? Miroku wondered, clenching his fists.
Inuyasha had never been known for his prudence, that was for certain, but each night of the New Moon, when he became a human, it seemed that he lost all his common sense along with his demonic power. It was almost as if he tried to make up for his lack of power by being overly reckless.
Feh, the monk snorted spitefully. What an idiot. All being rash in his decisions and reckless in his actions will get him is killed.
Miroku frowned.
He was really starting to wish this feeling would go away...this sensation of dread in the pit of his stomach... He was sure he was going to have an ulcer by lunchtime at this rate.
"Houshi-sama?"
Miroku blinked--"Hn?"--again being snapped out of his trancelike state of contemplation by a concerned voice. He glanced up and met the uneasy eyes of the taijiya.
"Are you all right?" Sango asked, and Miroku gave an exaggerated laugh.
"Daijoubu, daijoubu," he insisted, waving one hand. "It's nothing...I was just thinking."
"Oh? What's the occasion?"
He flattened his eyes.
Sango giggled.
"Kidding, I'm kidding," she assured him, and leaned down to scoop Shippou up by the tail. "Come on, let's get going," she said, and nodded to Kirara.
The little cat demon was suddenly engulfed in a cyclone of flame, and when the fires died away, she had grown much larger, her small feline body having become that of a huge saber-toothed beast--her true demon form. She tossed her head, eager to run on her powerful leonine legs. Plumes of bright red-orange flame licked her dark feet, giving her quite a dangerous look about her, but it was quite clear who her master was when the huge cat kowtowed down on her front legs to allow Sango to clamber up onto her back, Shippou perched upon her shoulder like some sort of unusual bird.
"Ikimashou, let's go catch up to Inuyasha and Kagome-chan."
She extended her hand to pull Miroku up onto Kirara's back alongside her, making sure to keep an eye out for wandering hands...as Miroku seemed to have a bit of a problem controlling himself where women were concerned.
Especially where Sango was concerned, so it seemed...
She paused a moment when he made no move to pinch her bottom, or even to "accidentally" grab her chest as he lost his balance and plunked down on the ridge of Kirara's spine. She glanced over her shoulder at him as he slid the shaft of his shakujou across her abdomen.
That seemed to be the only way he could maintain a handhold on Kirara's back without getting slapped. He had tried once or twice to grip her shoulders (among other things), and they had rather compromised and decided that, if Miroku was to use Kirara as a mode of transportation, he would have to find a way to keep a grip without gripping Sango. While he had seemed a little reluctant, the shakujou method was actually quite functional.
He still would rather have held onto her arms, for reasons the reasons of her comfort if nothing else. Surely the staff across her middle wasn't the most pleasant of sensations...but he knew that it would never fly.
Sango noticed as she peered over her shoulder that his eyes had moved to the trees, a speculative expression upon his features.
She squinted one eye.
Now she was sure something was bothering him.
Making a mental note to question Shippou about it later, the taijiya urged Kirara forward, and they bounded into the forest.
Seated between Kirara's mighty shoulders, his hands gripping both ends of his staff, Miroku's mind was not at all on finding the stolen Shikon shard or the flying youkai who had pilfered it...he wasn't even contemplating how to grab Sango's butt should the opportunity present itself.
He had other things on his mind... This uneasiness was not going to go away on its own, of that he was quite certain...
But...what was it? He felt as though he were being watched, like someone's eyes were upon him...but whose? And whatever for?
The strange, flickering images at the edges of his consciousness were nothing too reassuring, either. It was as if the mental correspondence someone was attempting to send him was being intercepted, and now the message was all garbled.
...
Wait...that was probably a bad thing...right?
But, perhaps the more troubling thing was not so much that he sensed some odd presence, or that his mind's eye seemed to be having difficulties focusing today, but the fact that it all felt...familiar. It was rather like a scent one never quite forgot, or the lyrics to some old song you didn't know you remembered until you heard them again.
Whoever...or whatever this presence was, and whatever it was trying to tell him, Miroku had the sneaking suspicion that this was not the first time he had encountered it.
Well...only time would tell, he supposed. Whatever this was, he decided he wasn't going to let it keep him from helping Inuyasha and Kagome find that shard.
He put it out of his mind for the time being, and instead decided to look for the next available opportunity to paw Sango.
Otherwise, the taijiya, being ever-observant, might suspect that something was on his mind.
But as Kirara took her three passengers deeper into the cool dampness of the forest, Miroku failed to notice the wiry shadow figure trailing not too far behind them, darting nimbly from tree to tree like a squirrel, its lithe and agile body bounding effortlessly from one limb to the next. Two large pointed ears crowned the figure's head, poking out of a wild, untamed mane of jet black hair. The ears twitched, then flattened slightly in contemplation.
It was rather useless to follow them that way, the figure knew that well enough. A creature of her stature could never keep up with the speed of a full-breed fire-cat demon in its beast form, it was nearly impossible. She lashed her long tail and squinted, then leapt down out of the tree, landing softly on the ground.
Rising slowly, bathed in the late morning sunlight, she cast her eyes skyward in thought.
She was of average height, perhaps slightly over a meter and a half tall, with slender limbs and a thin, angled face. Her skin was a rich tawny cream color, her hands and bare feet darker than the rest of her, her eyes shaded darkly, like the mask of a tanuki. Two dark stripes adorned each cheek, and her ebony hair fell in tousled locks across her brow, her dark, sepia-colored ears cocked in a very feline manner. She wore a bright crimson red Chinese-collared dress, accented with golden trim, and a long, slim tail with a dark brown tip curled graceful behind her toned legs.
She paused a moment, tapping the large wooden fan she carried against her hip, then a thin smile spread across her lips, revealing a flash of fangs. With a chortle, she leapt back up into the tree.
She knew whereabouts they would be headed.
That stupid crow demon...
Feh, she snorted, leaping through the treetops. Crows were so predictable. She knew exactly where it would go...to the far West corner of the forest...the Torinishi...
Crow territory.
Surely the hanyou would know that, as well...
She snorted again.
Torinishi...bah! Nowhere else was there such a conglomeration of stupidity within the boundaries of the forest.
She scoffed.
Crows...
Ugh...she so hated working with them. But...if that was what the boss wanted...well...so be it.
Bounding gracefully through the trees, she grinned wickedly in anticipation.
This was going to be far too easy...
* * *
Kanjite mada minu chikara
Wakatta ita deshou...?
Feel the unseen power
You knew, didn't you...?
~CHAKA
* * *
Author Notes:
Muhuhahahaa, and our anti-heroine is introduced! >:]
*Glossary of Terms*
I am assuming we all know the Inuyasha basics, like youkai, hanyou, Shikon no Tama, etcetera, so those will not be translated here. Also, I'm only gonna put translations once, so as the story goes on, the glossary will dwindle. I'm hoping your memories will serve you, because otherwise the glossary will be absolutely enormous! Some chapters probably won't even need one, so I hope you guys can keep track of words already translated. Let me know if it gets too tough.
zaken ja nee: "zaken ja nai," as it would be properly written, means "don't joke around with me!"
sumanai: a formal and polite way of apologizing. This can also be shortened to simply, "suman".
gi: the folded-front shirt Kaede, and Kikyou wear, as well as the shirt we don't see much that Inuyasha wears under his haori. It's sort of like a kimono shirt, more or less, so far as I'm informed.
Goshinboku: we all should know this one, but I just thought it was kind of interesting the way it can be literally translated if the word is broken up. I'm not entirely sure of the kanji used to write it out, so I could be wrong about this, but as far as I can tell, to directly translate this word means "most honorable tree of the heart". ^_^ Kinda poetic, ne?
-baa-chan: using this suffix, Kagome refers to Kaede in a familiar and rather endearing way, almost like her own grandmother. Kaede would make an awesome grandma, don't you think? ^.^
-sama: oops, I forgot to translate this one last chapter, but I think we're all familiar with it anyway... This is a suffix used to refer to someone you have great respect for, or someone with a higher status. Miroku always refers to Kagome as Kagome-sama, "Lady Kagome", more or less...not necessarily because he sees her as a senior or anything, but more due to the fact that she is from a time much more advanced than his own. I dread how Viz is going to translate this (and Kazaana, for that matter...) when they dub my poor, poor bishounen... I've been informed that his American voice actor is the same guy who did Goku for DBZ... I...await the instance when Miroku accidentally does a Kamehameha instead of using his Kazaana... ~_~ Plus, Sango calls Miroku Houshi-sama, "Sir Monk", as it were, more or less...another thing I dread the Americanization of... Why can't they just leave titles as they are?? Sango seems to call Miroku this not really out of respect, but more to remind him to keep his hands off her...sort of like verbally keeping him distant. Hido~o~oi... But after a while it seems more like habit than anything else, even when they end up getting closer. ^_^ They're so cute!
gomen: did I translate this one already? ::scratches head:: I forget... Well, in case I didn't, it's just a less formal way of apologizing.
matte: "wait!"
hayaku: "hurry up!"
"Sou da!": "That's right!"
Aa: an informal sound of affirmation, usually masculine... Sorta like saying "uh-huh".
ikimashou: "let's go."
tanuki: think Hachi, everybody...yah, Miroku's loveable (if not somewhat cowardly) sidekick. He's a tanuki, in case you didn't know. For those who are unfamiliar with Japanese folklore, here's a fun little snippet: The tanuki is celebrated as being sort of like a drunken buffoon (which is probably why Hachi and Mushin get along so well...), and ceramic tanukis can often be found at the entrances of nomiya (literally, "drink shop") and other drinking facilities. ^_^ Heh, Hachi's such a delinquent.
Torinishi: this is a place I made up myself, not from the original storyline, but I figured there were probably lots of parts of Inuyasha's forest we haven't seen yet. Torinishi would translate directly to "Bird West". ::shrug:: Self explanatory, really...in the Western corner of the forest...lotsa birds live there...are we following? :)
Mmkay, that's all for now! Arigatou, minna! Emails make me happy.
~~hikari