...ah, 'twould be such a wonderful world...to be ruled by such fantastic storytellers.
Oi! You! Yes! You there! The one who hasn't seen The Two Towers yet! Why the hell not?? Get going, fool! What are you stalling for?? Legolas is waiting!!! @_@
Omoide no Mori
Forest of Memories
chapter eight:
*Revelations and Much Ado About Bentou*
"Inuyasha, what did you do with that other bentou box?"
Kagome looked up from the math textbook that sat open in her lap, and met eyes with Inuyasha.
"The other...?"
He frowned, looking a mite confused.
She sighed, and closed the math book, deciding she had seen enough equations to last her the rest of the week. The first box had already been devoured, thanks to Shippou, who seemed to have taken a great liking to Mrs. Higurashi's yakitori.
Now, it appeared that Inuyasha had misplaced the second box.
Kagome scowled.
Dangit, and she was hungry, too...
"The other box," she reminded him, "I gave it to you for safekeeping." She shot Shippou a playful glare, and he sweatdropped. "Demo...Inuyasha...where did you put it?"
She pouted.
He shrugged.
Kagome flattened her eyes.
"You lost my lunch..."
"Ano...exactly how does one lose someone else's lunch...?" Miroku asked with a laugh.
The five of them were seated on the floor of Kaede's hut, still a trifle shell-shocked from the surprise attack earlier. Sango had changed out of her armor and was now dressed casually in a two-tone pink yukata with a second green sarong skirt wrapped around it, her hair tied back in a low ponytail. Kirara, back to her compact "travel size", as Kagome had coined it (though no one else seemed to quite understand the humor in that) sat in her lap, purring. The taijiya chuckled at Miroku's comment, then crawled over to where Kagome was seated to take a peek into the math textbook, intrigued by the unusual symbols and strange geometric drawings.
She was sure it was some sort of spellbook or the like.
"Inuyasha~a~a~a," Kagome whined. "if I don't come home with her good floral napkins, my mom will have my head!"
Miroku opened his eyes wide, and raised one hand to his neck, making a small choking sound.
"Eeulll," he said, scrunching up one side of his face in a grimace. "Kagome-sama, is everyone so brutally attached to material objects where you come from?"
She sighed.
It never failed.
She kept forgetting that there was more than a simple generation gap between her time and this Sengoku Jidai.
Nobody ever seemed to get her little colloquialisms...
"Nevermind," she muttered, waving one hand and reaching for her math book, which Sango was still sufficiently engrossed in, "just find it before I have to go home."
He puffed out his chest.
"Temee," he said gruffly, "don't tell me what to do..."
Truth be told, the hanyou was much to preoccupied to even recall being given the bentou in question. He was still thinking about the disturbing dream he'd had last night...and the peculiar neko onna who had attacked them earlier. Surely two so very unusual events would not have happened in such short succession if they were not connected in one way or another...
He frowned.
But what connected them?
The camphor to the North, Inuyasha... Come at sunset...
The onineko's words were still ringing in his ears, and her countenance danced in front of his mind's eye, as though taunting him.
Who was she? Where in the world had she come from? Why had she tried to hurt him, and what did she want from him?
And, more importantly, how had she even known who he was?
It seemed that, whoever she was working for had informed her quite well. She had known to steal the Shikon shard to draw him into the forest, and she had known that her fan blade would not cut through his Hinezumi cloak... She had known about the Tetsusaiga...why, she hadn't even been impressed by its transformation! She had known, it would seem, a lot about him...but...how?
He scowled down at Kagome's ribbon, still tied snugly around his injured foot. The bleeding around the puncture had stopped, and the wound across his ankle was slowly starting to close up, but it still stung like the devil! He wondered if there hadn't been some substance coating the blade of the fan that would make the wounds it delivered even more painful...?
Feh, but he supposed that wasn't even close to his biggest worry...she had practically sliced the bone in his ankle! The blade had been ridiculously sharp. Had he not been wearing the Hinezumi cloak, Inuyasha figured he might well have been relieved of his right arm!
But that fan... That fan had served another purpose, too...one that he'd had experience with before...
Kagura, a servant of Naraku Inuyasha had been less than pleased to deal with several times, had possessed one similar to it, and had used it to wield power over the wind and air. This cat demon had been able to do something akin to that, but on a different level.
Unlike the onineko, Kagura had been unable to block the Kaze no Kizu with her fan, and where Kagura had used her weapon to do several wind attacks, the cat girl had used it for things other than wind. She had used lightning and fire, as well... And, while Inuyasha had been able to break through Kagura's defenses to effectively defeat her several times, the onineko had been much too fast for even him. She had, he hated to admit, put him out of the fight almost before it had begun...and that was annoying him to no end...
But what had him worried more than what had happened...were the events to come...tonight at sunset, not to put too fine a point on it. He just couldn't figure if the onineko had called him to meet her at sunset because she knew of his weaknesses as a hanyou, or if it was simply out of mere coincidence.
But how? he wondered. How could she know?
Not even Naraku...not even Sesshoumaru--his own brother--knew of the perils Inuyasha faced on the New Moon...so that basically ruled them out as co-conspirators in this case... Inuyasha was confident that the only ones who knew what would happen tonight were Kaede, Kagome, Shippou, Miroku, and Sango.
So...it had to be a coincidence...
...right?
Well, and then he supposed there was always Myouga, the old flea man who had been Inuyasha's mentor, of sorts. He knew, too...and had been quite upset when he found out, considering he'd been forced to watch it happen instead of his pupil telling him so. Of course, now that he knew, Myouga was never around on the First Night.
Feh, and Inuyasha knew why...they all did...
Myouga, while he had a big mouth, was rather a cowardly little creature, and often turned tail to run at the first sign of danger. And, since danger seemed to follow Inuyasha wherever he went, like some sort of sinister shadow, Myouga only showed up when he was certain the situation was safe...and thus wasn't around very much.
Come to think of it, Inuyasha hadn't seen the old flea in quite a while... But he had no doubt that Myouga would show up at some point in the near future, with some snide comment or piece of random useless advice.
But, aside from them, Inuyasha was sure no one else knew...so how could the onineko have had any idea?
It had to be a coincidence.
But then something occurred to him...something that he hadn't noticed before.
In the nightmare, he had been human, he remembered that quite clearly. He also remembered there had been a song lilting through the night as he ran through the woods...and words spoken from a smooth female voice...
What he hadn't caught until just that moment, was the fact that the voice...had been that of the cat demon.
Yes, he was certain!
Ki wo tsukete, kudasai...Hanyou Inuyasha...
Yes...it had surely been the cat demon's voice... And, what was more, was the eyes he had seen within the trees...they had been blue...a bright, clear blue, like watery glass.
The same blue of the cat demon's eyes...he was sure of it!
But then...
He frowned.
If it had been the cat girl's voice warning him of the danger...why was she the one who was trying to kill him? Or rather, if she was the threat...why was she warning him of it? It was all very confusing, as far as Inuyasha could tell. Although--
"Inuyasha?"
"Gyaaha!"
Letting out a startled cry, the hanyou launched himself backward as Kagome leaned her face in close to his, concern clouding her dark eyes. On his rump on the floor of Kaede's hut, his feet sprawled out in front of him and his heart in his throat, he stared at Kagome with wide eyes.
Kagome scratched her head.
"Mou, Inuyasha, doushita no?" she asked in a pouty voice. "What's with you today? You're spacey."
Inuyasha didn't respond, rather he cursed himself under his breath.
Why was this troubling him so? Why couldn't he get the cat demon's face out of his mind? He shouldn't have been allowing the situation to distract him so. He shook his head to clear it, silently berating his own lack of awareness. He couldn't let this dream or the onineko continue to keep him off-guard like this...it would put the others in danger if he kept drifting off in thought.
He regained his bearings and got to his feet, brushing off the back of his pants as he did so, and then started to say something to Kagome. He facefaulted when she let out a horrified shriek.
"N-Nanio??" he cried.
"Kyaah!" she wailed, leaping at the spot where Inuyasha had risen from.
He sidestepped quickly, and watched her pick up something from where he had been sitting and hold it defeatedly, like broken fragments of a shattered vase.
"You..." she sniffed, turning to look at the hanyou with big watery eyes, "you...you sat on my nikuman!" She held up the box and sniffed again.
Mou...and this was the second time today he had destroyed her nikuman!
Inuyasha flattened his eyes, then held up his hands in a gesture of innocence.
"Oi, you were the one who jumped at me," he said flatly.
"I did no such thing," she countered, folding the floral napkin and pressing it into her pocket. "Besides, if you were yourself today, you wouldn't have been so distracted as to where I could surprise you like that."
She noted absently that he did not respond to that as she plucked at the flattened meat buns and poked the smashed sake maki. She licked some soy sauce off her finger.
"What's bothering you, Inuyasha?" she asked. "You should not keep troubles to yourself."
She sat primly on her knees, and her voice was serious.
"I must say I do believe that there is something very unusual going on," she admitted, and Inuyasha leaned against the wall of the hut. "The presence of the Shikon no Kakera was muffled by something, and I can't even figure what. I've never felt anything quite like that before...it was like there were cottonballs inside my brain..."
Inuyasha had no idea what these so-called "cottonballs" were, but didn't say as much.
"It was as if everything was lost within a cloud," Kagome continued, and then smacked her palm with her fist. "I definitely think that there is something more to this than simply a swindled shard!"
"A cloud?" came a questioning voice.
Everyone turned to see Kaede stride slowly back into her hut, her arms full of herbs from the nearby fields. She stooped to place them on the floor near the doorway, and grabbed a bowl and pestle from a shelf.
"Did you say a cloud?" she asked. "That the Shikon's presence was muffled?"
Kagome nodded.
"Hai," she affirmed, "as though something was masking it."
"Everything in that whole area was muffled," Inuyasha clarified, "even my sense of smell. I couldn't tell where the enemy was coming from at all..."
Kaede's eye narrowed.
"Tell me more," she instructed, "about this enemy."
"She had an Osaka accent," Kagome said immediately, miffed to no end as to how that was possible in the first place.
She blinked at the blank stares she got from the others, suddenly reminded of the fact that none of them knew where or even what Osaka was, much less anything about the city's unusual dialect.
"Er...nevermind," she muttered, resolving to figure out on her own just how the enemy managed speak with an accent that didn't even exist yet.
Kaede picked up a few of the herbs she had brought with her and sat down on her knees, dropping them into the bowl.
"Did this enemy attack using martial arts," she queried, grinding the herbs into a paste, "or a weapon?"
"She had...a fan," Shippou said. "And she used these weird incantations and attacked using the fan...like...like..."
"Like magic," Sango concluded for him. "I've never seen anything like it. Of all the youkai I've encountered, she was the first one to ever possess power of that sort before."
"Incantations?" Kaede echoed. "As in, more than one?"
"Several," Miroku replied. "They were elemental attacks. I've never known of a demon who possessed shamanic powers...but..."
He rolled up his left sleeve, and everyone let out a startled gasp. There were half a dozen bright red scratch marks on his arm, as though he had been on the losing end of a battle with an angry alleycat.
"Houshi-sama," Sango said, leaning to see the wounds more closely, "did she scratch you?"
She restrained herself from taking his arm in her hands, for fear that he would misinterpret.
Miroku chuckled at the concern in her voice.
"Not with her claws," he said, a sly smile on his lips.
"What are you saying, Houshi-dono?" Kaede asked, walking on her knees toward Inuyasha.
She waved one hand at the hanyou, who narrowed one eye at her, but obediently dropped to his knees and slid aside the shoulder of his cloak and gi to allow the old miko to apply the ointment she had made with the herbs.
"If not with her claws," she asked without glancing up from her task, "then how...?"
"Fuujin," he replied with a shrug, and Kaede whipped her head around over her shoulder.
"What did you say?" she demanded.
Miroku jumped, a little startled by the sudden urgency in her voice.
"Fuujin," he repeated slowly, and then rubbed his chin. "At least...I think that's what she said..."
"Aa," Inuyasha agreed, grimacing as Kaede untied the ribbon from his foot to apply the herbs to the puncture and the gash on his ankle. "She also used one called Raijin."
Kaede paled, if that was possible, as she was quite fair of skin anyway, and finished rubbing the ointment over Inuyasha's ankle. She retied the ribbon and gazed solemnly at the hanyou.
"Fuujin...Raijin..." she repeated, "were there others?"
"Kajin," Miroku said, recalling how his holy barrier had only barely held up against the fury of those deadly flames, "and I think she said something along the lines of Jishin."
"And before she vanished," Shippou piped up, "she went up in this purply smoke after she said--"
"Tejin," Kaede interrupted.
Silence.
"Kaede-sama," Miroku spoke up finally, "you are familiar with such terrible sorcery?"
Kaede got to her feet and made her way over to where the monk sat, and dropped to her knees in front of him, taking his left arm. He winced as her fingers brushed the scratches on his arm as she pulled back his sleeve.
"I am," she said, dipping her fingers in the ointment and smoothing it over the wounds on his arm, "but I never expected to hear of their use again..."
Miroku grimaced again, making a small sound quite like a squeak, and Kaede paused.
"Kurushii no ka, Houshi-dono?" she asked. "Are they that painful?"
He frowned.
"They barely bled," he said, eyeing the wounds, gritting his teeth, "but they hurt terribly..."
He cast his eyes to the miko.
"They are not ordinary wounds..."
She shook her head.
"They were made with the Fuujin," she told him, applying a little more ointment with the lightest touch she could muster. "Fuujin is a wind attack, it has the ability to turn the air itself into a weapon, causing a cut to be made with a vacuum... It was said to bleed very little, but to be extremely painful."
Miroku nodded, half in understanding, and half in total agreement with the latter half of the explanation. He pulled his sleeve down.
"How can she do that, though?" he asked, cocking his head in confusion. "What manner of sorcery grants the power to manipulate the elements?"
Kaede's eyes flashed.
"Nanatsu no Tenkei," she said.
"Ehhh?" came the collective response.
"What's that?" Kagome asked.
"A jewel," she replied, getting slowly to her feet, "similar, in effect, to the Shikon no Tama, in that whoever holds it will be granted amazing powers...powers, however, over nature itself."
She motioned for the others to follow her.
"Power over nature?" Sango questioned as she rose, picking up Kirara to place the little cat demon on her shoulder. "How is that possible?"
"Nanatsu no Tenkei," Kaede said again, pausing by the exit as the group slowly stood to follow her. "The Oracle of Seven. It grants its wielder seven elemental spells."
Inuyasha frowned, and tucked his hands in his sleeves.
"Oi, Babaa," he asked, walking up behind her as she waited in the threshold, "but how would a neko youkai get her paws on something like that?"
Kaede's features were a mix of confusion, dread, and anger.
"Patience, Inuyasha," she said, and slid aside the bamboo curtain serving as the door, stepping out into the sunlight, "come with me and we may just find out..."
*
SLAM!
"Chikushou..." the onineko grumbled, slamming her fist into the ground at her feet. "Chikushou! Dammit...dammit! Why did it have to be him!?"
She flopped down on a stone ledge, and glared at her hands, which were now red and raw from punching the rocky floor of the cave.
She hung her head.
"Chikushou..." she said again. "Naze...? Naze--?"
She froze.
Her eyes narrowed. She felt a presence within the room.
"You seem troubled by something, Koneko," a smooth male voice said out of the darkness, and a pair of copper eyes gleamed in the obscurity.
The onineko scowled.
"I've told you before not to call me that," she growled. "I am not in the mood to play your games today, Kurayami-sama...I'm here to make my report and then I'm leaving..so spare me your sweet-talk."
She glanced around at her surroundings, suddenly feeling a tad vulnerable.
The dark, ominous interior of the old cave in one of the many the hillsides of the Torinishi didn't help the fact that she was not having a particularly good day. It was dismal and damp, as one would expect the inside of a cave would be, she supposed, but there was something about this particular cavern that had always given her the creeps.
She shuddered as a bony hand touched her shoulder.
Perhaps it was the resident of this cavern, more than the cavern itself, that spooked her.
She flinched out from beneath the soft touch of the phantom hand, and looked coldly over her shoulder at the figure attached to it.
"Tell me what ails you," the voice said, and a man stepped into the light.
He was tall and thin, thin to the point of looking somewhat ill, with long, straight obsidian hair that fell in smooth tresses well past the small of his back, wound tightly near the end with a dark copper ribbon that nearly matched his glowing eyes. He had long, tapered ears like an elf, and a single dark blue V-shaped stripe beneath each eye. His clothes consisted of a floor-length black-and-silver robe, tied at the waist with an indigo sash, garnished with a long cape that rested regally on his shoulders, made of ebony feathers that shone as if they were oiled.
The cat girl got quickly to her feet, her eyes flashing.
"Nandemo nai ya de, Kurayami-sama," she said hotly. "'Tis nothing you need to concern yourself with."
"Datte--"
She glared at him, and he shut his mouth, but not before his ivory fangs glinted in the faint light of the cave.
"I said it's nothing," she repeated icily, and clenched her fists.
Kurayami lifted his hands in a placating gesture.
"Calm down, my kitten," he said soothingly. "I am merely concerned for your well-being..."
She scoffed.
"Feh," she snorted, "you mean concerned for the well-being of your operation, ya to?"
She narrowed her eyes coldly.
"That's all you're really worried about, isn't it?" she growled, and snorted again as he fumbled for a response. "Don't bother trying to come up with an excuse, Kurayami-sama," she snarled, tapping her fan against her hip, "you never were very good at finding them anyway."
She straightened her back and ran her fingers over the smooth surface of the blue jewel on the fan's tassels.
"In any case, you need not be distressed for the sake of your plans, My Lord," she said with an exaggerated bow of her head. "I will carry on as devised...everything is in place. 'Twill all be taken care of tonight."
And, before the man had a chance to reply, the onineko had stormed out of the cave, lashing her tail in agitation.
The nerve of that Kurayami, she fumed silently. Honestly! Trying to comfort me, as if we were old friends?! Who does he think he is?? Cripes! The idea!
She hopped up into a tree and sat there for a moment on the branch, her fist pressed against her chin.
Still another four hours or so till sundown...she thought to herself, glancing at the horizon. She snapped the fan open and closed once, then stood. Plenty of time to get to the Great Camphor...
She leapt up to a higher branch, then to another tree, lightly bounding through the canopy of the forest as though hopping rocks in a river.
She sighed.
Miroku...she thought, the priest's dark indigo eyes flashing through her mind. Houshi-han...'twas not really you...was it?
She shook her head quickly, brushing away nostalgic thoughts.
Feh, it doesn't matter. Houshi-han or no Houshi-han, I have to take care of that Inuyasha...
She chuckled bitterly to herself. She would take care of him all right...
With a triumphant cackle, she picked up her pace. She still had another stop to make before heading to the camphor, to make certain the koumori leader hadn't "forgotten" his promise from earlier... She hurried through the trees, whizzing through the forest as gracefully as a dolphin darting through the waves.
She didn't want to be tardy for her sunset rendezvous...
* * *
Author Notes:
Cheesy Narrator Guy: What does the onineko have planned for our half-bred hero at the Camphor Tree to the North? Will he be able to survive her relentless attacks a second time? And as a mere mortal man?
And just where does Kaede get all those herbs from, anyway??
Find out in the next exciting installment of Omoide no Mori!!
...sponsored by United Airlines...cuz we need all the help we can get
Well gang, this does it...I'm getting laid off. ::big sigh:: So as your New Years present from me, I'm gonna upload two chapters this time, since I'll be away again in January. Sorry I took so long to update, my internet service got ganked for a while. I was going through some serious withdrawal for a while there! @_@ Merry Christmas, my internet service got canceled...on Christmas Eve, no less. -_- How rude. Well, I'm back now, so...yah. Hurray.
*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.
bentou: Lunch! ^_^ Itadakima~a~a~asu!
yukata: Did I translate this already? Gomen, if I did... For those of you who may not know, a yukata is a summer kimono, made of cotton.
-dono: Again, sorry if this is a repeat, I've lost track. -dono is just another honorific suffix, similar to -sama, but not as formal, though more formal than -chan or -san.
Kurushii no ka?: Does it hurt? (It hurts here...and...here...and here, and...)
Nanatsu no Tenkei: Heh, I made up a jewel of my very own. ::feels proud:: Literally translated, it means, as Kaede explains, "Oracle of Seven".
Naze?: Why?
Koneko: Kitten. Sort of a pet name in this context.
Kurayami-sama: We'll be seeing more of him later, but his name literally means "Dark Night".
ya to?: Another Osaka-ism. This added to the end of a sentence implies doubt or mistrust, similar to a sarcastic, "yeah right", for lack of a better explanation.
-han: Yet another honorific suffix, this one is used mainly in Kansai-ben. It's not overly formal, similar to a simple -san.
Not too many this time. Are we following okay?
~~hikari