by
Anaphalis
Summary: Kagome's got a horny kitsune, an invisible 'friend' and a kamikaze quest with a five hundred year deadline. Oh yeah, and she's disguised as a boy. But when did that ever get in the way of "twue wuv? Let's just not answer that... Rurouni Kenshin X Inuyasha crossover. Drama/Romance.
Chapter Summary: When all else fails, bring in the big vines.
.
Distribution: My site and FF.Net. All others please ask before taking.
Feedback: Much appreciated at [email protected]
Disclaimer: Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi and Shonen Jump. Rurouni Kenshin belongs to Watsuki Nobuhiro and Jump. Brushes on this page courtesy of Pure Anodyne.
Quick Vocabulary:
Shi- death
Kage- shadow
"To yield readily-easily-to the persuasion of a friend is no merit with you."
"To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either."
-Jane Austen, "Pride and Prejudice"
"Maybe we should try to rent an apartment- I mean we are going to be in the neighborhood for quite a while. Your 'friend' promised us that we wouldn't have any more out-of-area jobs until the big bang."
I grunt as I turn the page. "We've got the money- why not use it?"
"Don't you ever want to live somewhere for longer than a few days? Don't you ever get tired of always moving?"
I put down my book and look over at Shi lounging on the bed. He's far too beautiful to be a guy, but that's a kitsune thing. Damn- he knows I'm looking and he's starting to smile. Every woman we've ever met, and quite a few of the guys have been conned into losing their shirts by his smile. Of course, I've known him since he was three feet high and spoke in a high-pitched whine, so the smile doesn't work on me. Well, not most of the time. I can resist some of the time- Okay! Fine! When he smiles I'd hand him my ass on a platter if he asked. He knows it too. Strangely though, he only uses it when he really, really wants something. Damn- now he's using the "sincere" eyes. It's a fatal combination.
"I know that you have your reasons for not wanting to stay in one place, but we're nearly there Kage."
Don't you dare come over here, you arrogant kitsune bastard! No... No! No touching! Oh... Gods... I really needed a massage. Damn you.
I can feel the tension seeping out of my body and all I really want to do is curl up in my best friend�s arms and go to sleep. Unfortunately that�s not an option.
�Shi?�
�Uh huh?�
�Could you go make some popcorn?�
�We�re going to watch movies!?!�
He looks like I just told him his birthday came early. For godsakes he�s practically bouncing as he heads into the kitchenette. Shi�s such a little kid sometimes and I love that even after everything that�s happened some part of him is still that� innocent. It makes me feel a little better that nothing I�ve made him do has managed to destroy that happiness he keeps in his heart. I guess we were both lucky that he was already a pretty strong, fully developed person by the time I met him.
I remember when we first found out that he was a lot older than he'd been letting on. Inuyasha found him without his disguise spell and nearly tore him to pieces. Shi just grinned and said that it was all worth it to have gotten so much bath time with Sango and I.
Maybe that's why Shi stays with me- he's got a long-term death wish.
Time to stop daydreaming. Shi�s back and he isn�t happy about the tapes I�m about to put in the VCR. Aww�. What an adorable pout. And no- I�m not falling for it.
"Why can't we just watch porn?"
"Don't think I don't remember the last time you picked out porn for us to watch."
It�s not quite as bad as it sounds. Really. Shi and I were very, very drunk- Come to think of it a lot of our stories start with �Shi and I were very, very drunk��. But anyways we were totally smashed and I started telling Shi about that distant lifetime when Eri had tried to make us watch a porno for her sixteenth birthday and he said that he�d never actually seen a porno and one thing led to another and Shi came back with �Foxy Girl�. I think the first five minutes of that movie sobered me faster and more completely than any hangover cure I�ve ever come across.
"Hey- it's not my fault that 'Foxy Girl' was literally a fox!"
I glare at him and he seems to realize that it's a good time to keep quiet. Frankly I don't care if Shi's sexual preferences run to the furry as long as I don't have to watch the mentally scarring evidence. Well, maybe I care a little.
"Getting back on topic- she's finally asleep and I've set up the wards as best I can. If she decides to purify the prefecture we should get some early warning. I don't remember anything that exciting ever happening, so I'm pretty sure that we'll manage to stop her anyways. If we can skim the day's tapes then I can get some well-deserved sleep."
"Hey! I need sleep too!"
"Whatever demon-boy. I remember that time in Hakone you went for three weeks without sleeping and still managed to wake me up at dawn Every. Single. Fucking. Morning.�
Shi sticks out his tongue and I return the favor and we both flop onto the bed to watch the day�s surveillance tapes. He�s right though- most of the day is about as exciting as watching paint dry and to top it off I�ve already seen it live. But then of course there�s the fight.
Shi turns to me and I can see his popcorn as he loudly chews and talks. "You know- I don't remember her being that violent when we first met. And isn't she a little old for stuffed toys? What the hell happened?"
I watch as Mom and Souta drag her up the steps of the shrine, beyond the range of my camera.
"Her Dad died."
Shi stops chewing the popcorn and lays a hand on my arm. It's almost touching until he opens his mouth. "I can relate to that. Repressed anger and all that shit."
"You know, you were doing fine until you started talking." I smile at him to take some of the sting out of my words. "If it makes you feel better, she'll transfer schools for middle school and all the violence will disappear."
"Until she shows up five hundred years in the past."
"Yeah, well, nobody's perfect. And purifying demons is therapeutic."
Shi�s eyes flicker for a second before he returns to his new favorite topic.
"It'd be a lot easier to set up permanent surveillance if we had a long-term place to stay. Not to mention that we wouldn't have to smuggle the equipment around and you wouldn't have to spend your days and nights getting up close and personal with the local bushes."
"I'll give you the equipment smuggling and I agree that the cameras would work for the evenings, but how could I watch her during the day without getting 'up close and personal'?"
Shi's eyes shift, a sure sign that I'm not going to like whatever he's come up with.
"You could tag her."
"No. Way. In. Hell."
"If you attach the energy to her clothing, it won't even touch her soul. You can set it so that it'll disappear when she comes home and it won't have time to have any effect. It'll work far better than the camera and you'll know if she tries to tap the miko powers."
"And who's going to be the fucking conduit, Shi?"
"I'll lend you a plant.�
And that's when I know that he's really serious about all of this. Kitsunes are supposed to have an affinity for plants and nature and spend their day frolicking in the sun. Obviously they seriously fucked up when they made Shi. Plants literally shrink away when he walks in the woods. I've seen patches of grass disappear if he stands in one spot too long. No joke. One night I spiked all of his drinks with the strongest sake I could get my hands on and asked him about his black thumb. He told me that it was because he'd spent too much time in the cities. The plants said that he "tasted like steel". The only thing I really learned out of that was that Shi tries to protect my feelings even when he's drunk. It isn't cities that make Shi taste like steel.
Focus Kage! Blanking out isn't going to help you figure out why Shi is so determined to have an apartment that he'd lend you one of his precious vines! He's only got three- mutants of some kind that don't seem to mind his 'taste'. He had to kill to get them. Literally. Being a conduit is potentially destructive and will possibly contaminate his vine so badly he won't be able to touch it after we're finished....
Let's see exactly what Shi is asking. "Tagging" someone involves taking a piece of my energy and attaching it to someone. If I'm within a reasonable distance of the energy I can focus it from a distance so that it acts as a window into the area around it. Turns out Kanna's mirror was really a focused form of spiritual energy and a modified form of my own energy will do sort of the same thing. Minus the soul-sucking.
There are a couple of problems with this. One- to get the visuals back to where I am I need a window of my own. Unfortunately, unlike Kanna, I can't just grab some stupid mirror- I need a living host willing to be exposed to miko energy for long periods of time while projecting images through their very own energy tag. Two- with the kind of stuff going on in my body and mind, my miko energy can have 'strange' effects on the tagged host and the tagged victim. Frankly my energy ain't as pure as it used to be. After the incident with the sociopathic priest, I swore off tagging altogether.
Shi's solved the problem of contaminating my target, but there's a good chance that I'll inject his vine with so much miko energy that it will hurt him if he touches it or that I'll destroy the vine completely with my nasty energy contamination. I can't see Shi handing over his babies with such an uncertain outcome. He's named them for godsakes!
"Look- I know that you hate leaving pieces of your energy on anyone, but if you use Po, he's tough enough to handle whatever you can dish out."
Five hundred years and it's still strange to hear Shi use modern slang. Well, 'modern' as in the last hundred years sense, but still. More importantly though, I like Po. Po's pretty cool. For a vine. Well- for an evil vine.
It seems like he can read my thoughts because he�s crawling over the bed and up onto my back.
�See! He wants to help! How can you resist those adorable er� leaves?�
�Shi- I�m not going to risk contaminating your pet vine.�
�Po�s not a vine!�
�Then what exactly is he?�
�He�s a liana!�
�And what the hell is a liana?�
�A woody plant that climbs larger plants in the understory and wraps itself around the taller trees that form the canopy!�
�So� Po�s a big vine?�
Silence.
�Shut up.�
As I said before, Shi�s adorable when he pouts. I�m leaning over to give him an affectionate pat on the head while trying not to dislodge Po when the pain hits.
The first seizures quickly knock Po off my shoulder and I curl up in a little ball and wrap my arms around my knees. I've learned from experience it's better to just ride out the pain- if I try to fight it, it just gets worse- Aw, fuck it. The truth is that this pain reduces me to a whimpering sobbing ball, even after five hundred years of exposure. Those assholes haven't beaten me yet, but they sure have managed to destroy the last shreds of my dignity.
"Shi...."
I hate this. I hate how helpless this makes me. I hate how much I need comfort when I'm like this.
"Shhh.... It's okay.... I'm here...."
I try to lean back into his arms, but I�m seizing so hard black spots are moving in front of my eyes. Shi doesn�t move away even though he�s likely going to have bruises from my flailing. When it finally stops I�m too drained and embarrassed to even lift my head to thank him. As always, he knows exactly what to do, pulling me back against him while he gently brushes the hair out of my eyes.
�We�ll do whatever you want, Kage. I won�t ask about the apartment or the tagging again- if you�re more comfortable on the move I don�t have any real problems with sleeping in hotels.�
He could have taken advantage of the fact that he'd just proven how dependent I am on him to make his point. He could have guilted me into buying him half of Tokyo for the amount of crap that I've managed to dump on him over our time together. Instead he relied on me to remember his reasonable, well-thought out argument in favor of a reasonable, well-thought out plan.
Damn you, Shi.
"We'll go look for a place tomorrow."
"You know, I just might have a few ideas-"
In spite of myself, I can't help grinning at the slow smile that spreads over his face. I'm woman enough to admit when I've been played.
"When did you put the damage deposit down, Shi?"
"Last week."
He doesn't even blush. Damn kitsune.
He grins.
Damn gorgeous kitsune.
I so need to get laid.
Awards Contact Links Extras Main