Omoide no Mori
Forest of Memories
chapter four:
*Troubled Thoughts and Rodent Problems*
"D'you see anything?"
"Iie..."
"Sense anything?"
"Nope."
"Nandemo?"
"Nandemo nai..."
"Feh..."
Inuyasha scowled as he and Kagome bounded through the treetops. His ears flattened against his head in anger, his hands clenched into fists, he scanned the trees with his piercing golden eyes, searching for any sign of the winged filcher who had stolen away with the jewel shard.
Come on...how hard can this be? he wondered.
Surely searching for a Shikon fragment...
...in a forest this size...
...couldn't be...
...so hard...
Could it?
Feh...right, bloody easy as pie. Perhaps next they could go look for a needle in a haystack.
He sighed audibly, and felt Kagome pet the top of his head.
At one time, it had been a rather irksome habit, but it seemed he'd been forced to get used to it, as Kagome appeared to have no intention of stopping.
To be honest, it really wasn't such an unpleasant sensation...
...but he was never going to let her know that...
"Daijoubu?" she asked.
He nodded quickly.
"Aa...I'm just..."--he sighed again--"a little flustered, that's all."
"U...Un..." she replied, unsure of what to say.
She knew.
She knew he was flustered.
She knew it was frustrating, she knew just how badly he wanted to find the shards of the Shikon, to complete the jewel and partake of its awesome power...
To become a complete youkai...
But then...perhaps that was the most frustrating part of all...
Inuyasha longed to shed the human part of him...the half of his existence that kept him from reaching his true demon potential. The Shikon no Tama could easily grant him that wish, should all the pieces of it be reassembled... He wanted it so badly he could practically taste it...like an intangible sort of satisfaction he found he could never quite grasp...so close he could touch it, graze it, barely brush it with his fingertips, but never quite catch hold of it...not yet.
Or...was it that it was within his reach...that perhaps he could have wrapped his fingers around the desire he so longed for...but something else held him back, trapping him behind a net of hesitation he just couldn't seem to break from?
As much as he longed to become fully youkai...the thought frightened him a little...
~ * ~
"Idiot Monk! I want to use the jewel to become a full youkai, of course!"
Inuyasha sneered at Miroku across the orange flames of the campfire as the monk lifted his ebony eyebrows.
"Oh ho, is that so, Inuyasha?" he asked.
"Feh...what good is a pathetic human body?" the hanyou demanded. "One moment of weakness in battle and you're dead!"
Miroku paused and regarded Inuyasha seriously.
"Perhaps... But I wonder, Inuyasha..." he began, and Inuyasha narrowed his eyes at him. "I wonder...when you become a full demon...using the power of the Shikon...will you still be yourself?"
"Ehhh?"
~ * ~
Inuyasha growled silently at the recollection.
Yes...he remembered the monk's words that night... And, as much as he hated to admit it...Miroku did have a point...
If he gave up his humanity, would he in turn relinquish his heart? Would he lose his very soul and psyche to the consuming darkness that was the youkai existence?
Would he become like the others? The demons he himself had vanquished? The terrible creatures he had been protecting the others from?
Would he become, rather than their defender...that which they would need to be defended from?
Would he become like...like his brother?
Inuyasha shuddered.
Sesshoumaru...
The mere thought of his full-demon half-brother was enough to make the hanyou's very blood boil.
Sesshoumaru...
The wretched and blackhearted monster who had taken the lives of no less than a thousand creatures, friend and foe alike...who had no remorse for any creature, no care for neither the living nor the dead...
Sesshoumaru...
He, who had desecrated the grave of their own father, who had nearly killed Kagome there, within the grave, and several other times since... He who had allied himself with Naraku, if only long enough to bring the hanyou's defenses down and his friends to their knees...
Sesshoumaru...
That bastard...
No, Inuyasha told himself. No way...
He would never be like his brother.
He would never become like Sesshoumaru.
Not ever.
No...he would become like...
...
Like...
He balked.
Come to think of it...he really couldn't think of any demon who had used the Shikon's power for good...
~ * ~
"Inuyasha...have you ever seen anyone perform heroic acts with a shard of the Shikon jewel?"
"S...Sore wa..."
He blinked.
"Well, no..."
Miroku's eyes were somber as he gazed at the hanyou across the flames.
"My theory is this," he said, and cleared his throat. "I believe that, in exchange for using the power of the Shikon...the bearer loses their soul..."
Inuyasha snorted.
"Feh...I don't ever recall saying I wanted to be a good demon, anyhow!"
He folded his hands within the sleeves of his cloak.
Miroku narrowed one eye.
"Yet you wish to protect Kagome-sama, don't you?" he asked. "Do you not wish for the power to do that as well?"
Inuyasha looked away.
"Inuyasha..." Miroku frowned. "When the jewel makes you a complete demon...might you not find yourself slaughtering and devouring both Kagome-sama and Shippou...?"
~ * ~
Feh... Inuyasha snorted to himself. Like that would happen...
Then he paused a moment.
Or...might it?
His demon blood had been released before...once or twice...when he had lost his hold on the Tetsusaiga...
He had been quite stunned to learn that the sword he carried--the Tetsusaiga--proved to be more than a simple weapon... Created from the fang of his own father, Tetsusaiga also served to suppress the demon power within Inuyasha's hanyou body...to prevent the youkai blood from fully awakening and thus...
Thus...destroying his body with powers it would not be able to tolerate.
But above that...above the harm it might well have one day inflicted upon his own body...what scared him more than the idea that the demon blood within him might actually kill him one day...was the idea that it might cause him to harm someone he cared for.
The first time it had happened, the first time the youkai blood within him had boiled to the surface, was when Tetsusaiga had been bitten in half by the iron jaws of Goshinki, a huge oni borne from the hellish powers of Naraku.
It wasn't until much later that he had learned just exactly what he had been given the Tetsusaiga for...it wasn't simply for self-defense against others, but rather, first and foremost for self-defense against...himself!
His father had known the perils his hanyou child might face one day, and had left Tetsusaiga to his younger son for the sole purpose of saving him. Inuyasha hadn't known what to do the first time it had happened...and it had unnerved him greatly.
Kagome had managed to reach him that time...to bring him back to the world he knew...to return him to the hanyou they all knew him as...but it had been only just barely...
He recalled another time he had been told it had happened... One other time the youkai power had truly burst from his veins...
He had been nearly dead...badly wounded and trapped within a cocoon of deadly poison held at bay only by Miroku's Houriki.
The two of them were certain it was really the end that time...
Until Inuyasha had realized one thing--he did not want to die...
When his soul had screamed from within him that he wanted to survive, when his heart had cried out vehemently that it was not ready to cease its rhythmic beat, the powerful blood of his demon father had roiled violently in his veins and awakened a side of him no one--not even the hanyou himself--had known existed: A red-eyed demon with more power than any of them could have imagined, with a taste for killing and a lust for blood...
He didn't remember it happening...he couldn't even remember the deeds he had done when in that terrifying youkai form. He remembered that it had happened...he recalled how his anger had crawled beneath his skin and how a burst of furious crimson had flashed before his eyes...
But then he recalled nothing else...nothing between the moment he had transformed, and the moment his eyes had fluttered open from the dazed fuzzy obscurity of semi-consciousness the battle had left him in.
He recalled nothing...
Nothing, but for the reeking black blood caked beneath his claws...
And that had scared him.
It had really scared him.
He didn't want that...not at all... If that was what it meant to be a true youkai...then maybe...maybe he didn't really want...
But...was that truly what would happen? Would it really end up that way?
He would have liked to believe that he was strong enough to become fully youkai and still remain the person he was...but the truth of the matter was that he honestly didn't know. He just didn't know, and every time it occurred to him that if he wasn't strong enough, and he might turn on the others...turn on Kagome...
It always made him stop short...
...Shippou...
...Sango...
...Miroku...
...Kagome...
The image of their blood spilled by his hands, their bodies torn apart by his claws...it was almost more than he could bear. The idea that they might be killed by his demon power...the power he had so yearned for...the strength that they had all spent so many days...so many weeks trying to acquire...
God...the smell would never come out...the smell of their blood would cling to his hands to the end of his days...
Sour...bitter...angry...like a stabbing reminder of the monstrosity he had become...
Was it worth it?
Was it really worth it? Worth all the risk?
It made him wonder...
"Inuyasha!"
Kagome's cry snapped him out of his thoughts like a blast of cold wind from the North, and he silently cursed himself for letting his mind wander so.
"Nani?" he said, pausing in the middle of his stride.
"There," she said, pointing ahead and to their right, "Shikon no kakera no kehai! There's the presence of a Shikon shard...up ahead!"
The hanyou grinned.
"Yoshi!" he exulted. "Isogou ze!"
And with that, they bounded off in the direction Kagome had indicated.
Feh...he supposed he would hurdle the obstacle of what to do with the Shikon no Tama when the time came...he wasn't going to allow it to distract him so much now.
For the time being, all he was after were the shards. He would worry about what to do with them after the jewel was complete...
*
"But I need all of you there," came an angry voice, "and I need you there now!"
The small, stocky creature dropped his arms to his sides, and his leathery wings, attached like those of a flying squirrel, made a flapping sound as he wrung his hands rather helplessly.
"Shikashi...Neko-sama," he protested, "I can't do that, it's just not possible. I can't round them all up, not on such short notice like this!"
Her blue eyes narrowed.
"You are their leader, are you not?" she accused. "I suggest you discipline your underlings a little better, in that case."
"But...but..."
The catlike youkai folded her arms over her chest and sighed.
She hated dealing with koumori... Bat demons were almost as stupid as crows, she had been dismayed to discover.
Idiots...they could hardly tell their heads from their backsides...
Still...if one needed a large number of youkai, the koumori were usually a safe bet. They were like ants--if you found one, there were likely to be about twenty or thirty more nearby.
"Bah! Fine!" the cat demon hissed angrily, throwing her arms in the air. She swatted her unruly bangs out of her eyes. "But you just make sure you're where you need to be, tonight, right after sunset, are we clear?"
"I can get you six."
The cat demon gawked, her eyes nearly popping from their sockets.
"S...Six??" she echoed, and her arm snapped down to press her claws into the soft flesh of the bat demon's bare chest. "Six?" she said again. "Joudan ja nai ya! Would you care to try that again?"
The koumori casually backstepped to avoid the claws, and shrugged its bony shoulders.
"It's not like we're getting anything out of this deal, anyway," it explained simply. "Kurayami-sama didn't promise us any sort of recompense. My brothers and I are doing this solely as a favor to you, Neko-sama."
The bat leapt up into a nearby tree and hung upside-down by its claws, looking quite...bat-like, actually... It narrowed one glowing yellow eye.
"You'll get six, Neko-sama, I'll risk no more of my brothers on Kurayami-sama's stupidity."
The bat grinned, it's teeth nearly as yellow as its eyes.
"Besides," it said after a moment, eyes gleaming mischievously, "despite appearances, you are a complete youkai, aren't you?" it laughed. "Why would you need the aid of the koumori to slay a half-breed?"
The bat giggled insanely.
"Unless, of course...you don't think you can handle it...?"
She glared at him, her blue eyes flashing in fury as she cracked her knuckles menacingly.
"Begone, Fool," she snarled, "else I'll see to it that my claws taste your blood long before the hanyou's."
The bat demon's inane giggling stopped abruptly, and it hoisted itself upright in the tree, diving upward and into the foliage with an alarmed yelp.
The cat demon shook her head.
She supposed it was, indeed, as they always said...
If you wanted something done right...
She chuckled to herself.
Who knew? Perhaps this would turn out to be more entertaining than she thought...
* * *
Once that you've decided on a killing
First you make a stone of your heart
And if you find your hands are still willing
Then you can turn a murder into art...
~Sting
* * *
Author Notes:
Holy koumori demons, Batman! ^_^ I made up my own breed of youkai! Go me! ^_~
*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.
iie: just the strict dictionary translation for "no". it's pronounced "eeh-eh", for anyone who might be a trifle confused by the double vowel... :)
un: did i do this one yet? i forget... ::scratches head:: well, remember how "aa" was the informal way for a guy to say "yes"? "un" is just a more feminine expression.
"S...Sore wa...": Inu's just sorta stammering here, trying to figure out what to respond with. "Sore wa" would be how to begin a sentence such as Sore wa chigau desu, "That's wrong," and so the sore wa part itself is a rather meaningless pronoun without the rest of the sentence.
Houriki: Buddhist spiritual powers. Go Houshi-sama! ::squeeeeze:: ^_^
"Shikon no kakera no kehai!": Kagome says this a lot... It means, as she proceeds to repeat, "There is the presence of a Shikon shard!"
Yoshi!: pronounced "yoh-sh", the i is silent. It's an exultation...sorta like "sweet!"
isogu ze: Let's go, or Let's hurry! A more masculine variation.
shikashi: "but..."
Neko-sama: I think most of us know a neko is a cat... This title that the lesser demon uses is just a formality...sorta like saying "Mistress Cat".
koumori: doesn't get any simpler than this... koumori=bat demon... koumori is the Japanese word for bat. ^_^ I made them up, there haven't been youkai iknown strictly as koumori... There were the Hyakki koumori from later manga, but these bats demons are completely unrelated.
Kurayami-sama: This will play itself out later. >:]
And that will do it for this chapter. I'd love to hear from you!
~~hikari