A great combination of InuYasha and Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
the two demonic shows we thought couldn't mix. (Tim Seltzer, seltzer@seltzerbooks.com) Disclaimer: Don't own the shows, don't plan on trying to,
none use this fic without permission.
Author's Notes: This is an edited and
corrected version of the story originally posted to
Fanfiction.net January - March, 2004. The content is still
essentially the same as the first version, but I fixed some
consistency glitches, typos, and Japanese usage errors.
This story takes place after the second
Inuyasha film, "Castle Beyond the Looking Glass," (after Episode
74 in the series), and after the Buffy series finale. Contains
spoilers for events that happen in all seasons of Buffy, through
the beginning of the final season of Angel, Inuyasha episodes
1-74, and the second Inuyasha film.
Naraku's Castle, late 16th-century Japan
Locked in? Now what do we do? thought
Buffy. After a second of consideration, she turned off her
flashlight, to save what remained of the battery.
Kirara's flames provided plenty of
illumination, now that they weren't fighting.
The firecat stalked over to the base of the
ladder, and stood there for a long moment, looking up at the
trapdoor fifteen feet above, and growling softly Then the giant
firecat crouched and leapt upwards, forepaws extended.
With a loud bang and the sound of cracking
stone, the trapdoor flew off its hinges.
Sango slung Hirakotsu over her shoulder, and
ran for the ladder. "Come on, Buffy-chan! We have to hurry!"
Buffy was close on Sango's heels as they
climbed the ladder out of the cellar. "Maybe we should go get
Inuyasha and the others."
Sango paused in her ascent, and looked down at
Buffy, her gaze wide-eyed, almost panicked above the metalwork
of her mask. "No time," she said, tersely. "He'll get away."
How had he permitted this to happen?
Naraku raged as he dragged his crippled body along a corridor
leading away from entrance to the cellars.
He had underestimated those two little human
girls, and badly. When he had finally recognized his danger,
they had already injured him, and were enthusiastically carving
him to bits. He had tried what defense he could quickly summon,
but the youkai-taijya were tougher--and stronger--than they
looked.
And Naraku's speciality was crafting servants
to carry out his work. Not in fighting enemies himself.
Losing mass and mobility faster than he could
regenerate from the raw materials in his cellar, he chose to
retreat, galling as it was.
All he needed was a little time to regroup,
and he would fashion an avatar that would destroy those two
humans--and their allies-- in an instant.
In the meanwhile, he was having a difficult
time quelling an incipient rebellion among the youkai that
formed his body. They were interpreting his strategic withdrawal
as retreating in defeat, and long-suppressed resentments were
boiling up in his various parts. Some of the absorbed youkai
were actually trying to detach on their own, and abandon him.
That was unacceptable.
Naraku stopped in his flight and turned into
one of the side-chambers. Concentrating, he exerted his will,
beating down the disloyal elements, stripping them of their
remaining strength and will. He regretted losing their cunning
and skills, but if they could not be trusted, henceforce, they
would serve only to feed or repair his loyal components.
The part of him that had once been Arashthoth
the Gatekeeper was still howling for the Portal Key borne by the
foreign girl, but Naraku quelled his demanding voice. One key to
unlock the gates separating the worlds was sufficient. He did
not want a second key badly enough to sacrifice his dominion to
the oddball alliance of youkai, hanyou, and humans that hunted
him.
Somewhat sulkily, his remaining youkai settled
themselves, and began the task of healing the damage Naraku had
endured in that preposterous attack. Satisfied that all was in
order for now, he resumed his human guise, and prepared to leave
the chamber.
Only to find his way blocked by the taijya
girls and the youkai firecat.
He tried to sweep them out of the way with a
long pseudopod, but Sango was faster, and Naraku felt the
burning pain of her bone blade slicing through his flesh.
Damn. He would have to distract them,
somehow.
And he knew just the way to do it.
Naraku sent out a silent summons to the boy,
and with admirable speed, the young taijya appeared in the
corridor behind the two girls. He must have been lurking nearby,
attracted by the invaders' commotion.
The firecat sensed him first, and her
plaintive meow distracted Sango. Naraku saw her turn away from
the doorway.
Sango gasped when she saw the boy, which was
just as Naraku had intended.
But he was displeased to see that the boy also
stopped when he saw her, though Naraku was certain that the boy
did not, could not remember her. Naraku had been careful to bury
those memories so deeply that they could never be recovered.
He saw Sango's attention focus fully on the
boy. She relaxed her grip on her weapon.
Foolish, weak human heart! Naraku
gloated.
He activated a compulsion through the Shikon
shard embedded in the boy's back. Kill them!
"Who's that? Is he one of Naraku's
detachments?" asked Buffy, reluctantly dividing her attention
between Naraku and the newcomer.
The kid standing behind them looked about
twelve years old, and he was wearing the same kind of leather
armor as Sango, reinforced with youkai-bone plates at shoulders,
elbows, and knees.
He was holding a weapon that looked like a
sickle, with a long chain attached to the handle, but his
posture wasn't threatening. He actually looked kind of harmless,
compared to the other things Naraku had sent against them. But
he wasn't wearing a mask, and the deadly miasma filling the air
in this part of the castle didn't seem to affect him.
As a precaution, Buffy hefted the now-dulled
naginata.
"No." Sango had drawn her sword, and Buffy
noticed that her friend's hands were shaking, badly. "That is my
brother. Kohaku."
Oh, man, Buffy thought, with a pang of
sympathy. What else did Naraku have in store for them?
"Thought your brother was dead." He didn't
look like a zombie, but there was something subtly wrong about
him.
Sango gave a single nod, her gaze never
leaving Kohaku. The boy was staring uncertainly at her, frowning
a little.
"Naraku reanimated him with a shard of the
Shikon-no-Tama. Then stole his memories." The utter desolation
in Sango's tone made her words sound flat, unemotional.
"I--I think I remem--" the kid began to say.
All of a sudden, his expression went eerily
blank, as if someone had flipped a switch and turned him off.
Without warning, he swung the sickle at the
end of its chain, and aimed for his sister's legs.
She managed to avoid the blade itself, but the
chain wrapped itself around her knees, toppling her to the
floor. She turned aside his next blow with a frantic sweep of
her sheathed katana, and the half-moon blade of the sickle bit
deep into the floorboards next to her face.
Buffy moved to join the fight, but she noticed
that Naraku was taking advantage of the diversion, and gathering
a thick cloud of miasma around him. Without thinking, she
grabbed Hiraikotsu from where it had fallen after Kohaku's
initial attack.
She swung it up and over her shoulder in a
smooth arc, just like she'd practiced it with Sango, then
released it. The heavy boomerang left her hand, and flew
unerringly toward Naraku.
She heard its heavy impact, and several limbs
flew out of the dark cloud that surrounded him. They lay,
writhing, on the bare floorboards.
"Kohaku! Delay them!" Naraku commanded, and
once again, a great wind began to rush through the chamber. The
sliding door that led outside to the courtyard splintered
outward.
Buffy reached out and caught Sango's boomerang
as it returned, but before she could swing it around for another
shot, Naraku levitated, and whooshed out of the castle in a
whirlwind of poisonous fumes and oversized bees.
Oh, shit. Buffy ran after him, but
Naraku was already just a small, dark cloud moving rapidly
through the sky.
"Shit!" she screamed at the sky.
I can't believe I let him escape!
Then, because she didn't know what else to do,
she went back inside to help Sango fight her kid brother.
Sango was faring badly. It was hard to cry
and fight at the same time, Buffy thought, and Sango was
furthered hampered by the fact that she was trying to avoid
seriously injuring Kohaku, while he was going full-out on her.
Buffy shook off her sick sense of failure and
ran forward. Second-rate youkai-taijya or not, she was still the
Slayer. There had to be someone in this world whose ass she
could kick!
His attention was focused completely on Sango
as they circled one another, him swiping viciously at her with
his sickle, and she parrying his blows with her katana--still in
its sheath. The smooth lacquered wood was already badly cracked
and scarred.
Buffy disarmed Kohaku by the simple ploy of
sneaking up behind him, and yanking his weapon from his hand.
She tossed it as far down the corridor as she could.
He turned on her in a flurry of fists and feet
like a miniature Bruce Lee.
Uneasy at beating up a kid, Buffy went easy on
him at first, but he was ferociously strong and fast. And she
was injured, the wound in her leg burning as she dodged and
kicked at him.
From the corner of her eye, Buffy saw Sango
draw her blade from its scabbard at last, and knew that her
friend had decided her brother must die. Above her mask, Sango's
eyes were still shining with tears, but her gaze had gone cold,
determined.
"Sango, no!" Buffy shouted, thinking, I
can't let you do it. I don't want you to have his blood on
your hands--or your conscience.
"I have to," Sango said, so softly that Buffy
barely heard her.
At her words, Kohaku took his eyes off Buffy
for one fatal second.
She spun on her heel and lashed out at his
chin with her other foot, not holding back this time. The kick
snapped back his head, and sent him flying through the opening
that Naraku had made.
She heard a heavy thump, and ran after him. He
was curled around the base of one of the pillars outside,
unconscious.
A loud snarl--stronger and deeper than
Kirara's--caught Buffy's attention. She looked up, and saw
Kouga, still in his huge black wolf form, lunge forward and snap
at Kagura, who was looking distinctly tattered and bloody at
this point.
The demoness jumped out of the way. Barely.
Kouga tore off the sleeve of her kimono with his teeth, and
Buffy saw him tense for another leap.
Kagura pulled something out of her hair, and
in the next instant, she had jumped aboard a giant white flying
carpet thing, and was wafting up, out of reach of the enraged
wolf.
Kouga jumped high, higher than Buffy would
have thought possible, but he still missed Kagura's escape pod
by several feet.
Buffy heard her laughing as the wind lifted
her higher and higher into the sky.
When Kagura saw Naraku's dark cloud spiral up
to the sky, rage at his abandonment gave her exhausted limbs new
strength. He was fleeing, leaving her behind to serve as the
wolf-prince's dinner!
Oh, no. I won't be your sacrifice! she
thought.
Another near-miss from the wolf's jaws, and
she was able to whip the magic feather from her hair, finally
making her escape on a hastily-conjured updraft.
She was alive. But pain ruled her world--in
addition to the damage inflicted by the miko's purifying arrow,
she had lost several large chunks of flesh to the wolf's hungry
jaws.
Kagura derived some satisfaction from knowing
that she had injured him as well, though not enough to penetrate
his rage and slow him down.
Higher, higher. Almost free of the castle.
Then, she looked down, and saw Kohaku,
sprawled unconscious in the ruins. She huffed in
exasperation--returning would be dangerous, but unlike Naraku,
she wouldn't leave the boy behind if she could help it. They
were fellow slaves here, and if they didn't watch out for each
other, no one would.
Even if he was just a human.
She steered her fragile vessel around,
spiraling down. Another gust of wind sent her skimming low over
the castle roof, then down to the gravel courtyard, past Kouga's
startled muzzle, and over to the edge of the pillared verandah.
Kagura reached out in passing, and caught the
boy by the collar of his armor-suit, hauling him on board. She
felt like screaming at the pain in her arm, but she managed to
get him safely positioned in her lap.
"No!" she heard someone scream, and looked
back over her shoulder to see Kohaku's sister sprinting toward
them.
But they were already aloft again, and rapidly
leaving the building behind. Kagura braced herself for one last
nasty surprise--more purifying arrows, perhaps--but nothing
came.
The wind carried them in Naraku's stinking
wake. Kagura sat stiffly upright on her feather, holding on to
the battered boy with one hand, and directing their passage with
subtle movements of her fan with the other.
She had done it. She had survived the
invaders.
Unfortunately, so had her master.
Those pitifully weak humans and youkai!
They failed again!
Someday...someday, she would finally escape
Naraku's clutches. She would reclaim her heart from whatever
corner her master was hiding it, and then she would fly away.
She was the mistress of the winds.
And yet, the smallest breeze possessed what
she did not: freedom.
