beso6

Chapter 6

"Why did you push me!?" 
"Why do you think??" Kagome shot back, as they materialized at the bottom of the well in the feudal era. "Just looking at you makes me furious!" 
"Now you know how I feel!" he barked back, his amber eyes nearly glowing with belligerence. 
"Then why did you bring me with you!?" 
"Keh! Reflex. Go on back to your own time!" 
"Fine!" she snapped, drumming her fingers on her arm, waiting for him to take a hint and climb out of the well so she didn't make the mistake of taking him back with her. To her great annoyance she noticed the color of the sky was lightening. It was dawn already, and she hadn't slept a wink. 
He pursed his lips, and fumed audibly before he hopped out. She watched him depart through narrowed eyes. But, needing to get the last word in, he hovered over the roof of the well and spat down at her, "And when you get there, STAY THERE!" 
She gasped in offended shock, but quickly fought the tightening in her chest with a shaky retort. "Oh, you thought I'd actually come back? And for a womanizing, arrogant pervert, no less?? Well think again, ass!" 
Kagome didn't wait to see his reaction. Every new insult seemed to make her feel that much worse inside. She had to get away from him before she lost it completely. She focused on the floor, and shifted her weight, readying for the portal to suck her back in. 
"KAG-OM�" he broke off, mid speech, with an alarmed, "Hn!?" 
Just about that time, Kagome noticed a long, eel-like shadow cross the well, and she couldn't stop herself from tilting her head back. What she saw made her stomach drop. 
The soul snatchers�
In the heat of their argument, she'd nearly forgotten. Kikyo. Naraku. It was time. Inuyasha's gaze lingered on the luminescent things, and after a moment, he looked back down at Kagome, his expression wholly changed. 
"Kagome," he said with an underlying intensity, his eyes more worried than angry. "I mean it. Go back to your time." 
She gawked at him. "Idiot! You think I'd run away from this?" She started scrambling up the walls of the well. "Besides, what if it's a trap? Just a cover for Kikyo to lure you out and kill you? Someone needs to--"
"Will you shut up already about Kikyo!?" he yelled, and then grimaced, clearly not wanting to delve into that unresolved issue again. 
Kagome reached over the ledge of the well, and he blocked her. She shoved angrily at him, but it was like trying to move a brick wall. "Oi, Inuyasha. Why are you being so difficult?" 
"I won't let you come!" he snapped, and pried her fingers loose. She yelped and fell back, scuffing her rear along the stones on the way down. 
"You don't have a choice!" she screamed, getting up again. This time as she scrambled the masonry, she called out a very clipped, "SIT!" It was followed immediately but a 'fwoomp!' and Inuyasha's muttered curse. Still in her pajamas, Kagome swung her legs over the edge of the well, fighting a shiver that crawled down her spine as the soul snatchers writhed impatiently about them. 
"Let me get my bow-"
"You," he seethed, staggering to his feet. His shoulders were bunched tightly, and he shook like a skyscraper in an earthquake. "You don't get it!" he barked. "I can't be worrying about you getting hurt this time!" 
She took a step back. "But-"
"You're a distraction! A nuisance! The shards are already gathered, so we don't need you anymore." 
Kagome gawked, mutely. Is that all I've ever been to you? She felt the blood drain from her face as her self-confidence plummeted. "I�I thought�Miroku said you fight better when I'm here�"
"Feh!" he spat, breaking eye contact. "What difference does it make if I'm wasting all my time rescuing your pathetic, human ass from trouble?" 
The validity of the statement hit her like the side of a mountain. If Kagome had an Achilles heel, then that was it. Unbidden, the memories of a hundred rescues flashed behind her eyes, and she realized he was absolutely right. How could she not have seen it earlier? She felt the strength seep out of her legs and she plunked down against the outside of the well. She looked up at him through teary eyes, and he turned his back to her. "You�mean this, Inuyasha�" she stated, more than asked. 
"Yes," he muttered, refusing to meet her eyes. "You're weak. Nothing but a hindrance." 
"Oh�" She dropped her watery gaze to her hands, which were oscillating in inches. The tightening in her chest became unbearable, and her lips quivered with emotion. She stared at his back, at that long mane of angry silver hair, wondering in her growing insignificance if she ever had a place in this age to begin with. 
"Go home, Kagome," Inuyasha said, the bravado gone from his tone. "Your work is done, here." With that, he departed, disappearing like a wayward arrow into the woods after the soul snatchers. 
The empty, despairing uselessness hit her like a colossal cankerous wave, and watching Inuyasha leave like that made her feel, quite literally, that a part of her had died. A huge part. And she was left to ponder the nature of their friendship, and if he'd ever really cared about her at all. 
"KAGOME!!" 
She blinked. Sango's voice. Urgent. She slowly lifted her head to see her friends - if she could in fact call them that - riding the great white Kirara overhead. Soul snatchers led the way. Miroku had her bow and arrows in his hand, waving down to her. 
Kagome sat motionless as the fire cat touched down in the grass, and Sango motioned for her to join them. "Ah. Good. I thought you'd still be in the future. Have you seen Inuyasha?" Then the demon exterminator frowned, finally catching on that something was different. "Kagome? Are you alright?" 
Kagome wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. "Go on without me," she managed through the lump in her throat. "I'll just be in your way." 
Miroku hopped off immediately, and crouched down beside her, resting a solid hand on her shoulder. His face was worried. Concerned. "Kagome-sama, what happened?" 
She turned away from him. From them both, as Sango had now joined him beside her. Shippo, fortunately had been left behind. "Nothing," she hiccupped. "I just realized that I'm always in your way. That-"
She found herself heaved up on her feet by an uncharacteristically impatient Miroku. "Nonsense. We need you," he said heatedly, clenching his voided hand before them. "This may be our chance to destroy Naraku," he seethed, the pain of his grandfather's curse apparent in his eyes. "And we need you there, Kagome. Every youkai you fell with your arrow is one less for us to take out." 
"He's right," Sango said, the passion in her expression par with Miroku's own. "You're an asset, and Naraku must be stopped at all costs." 
They meant it. And because they meant it, she started to believe it again. Picking up what was left of her courage after Inuyasha had shattered it, Kagome walked shakily over to Kirara and hopped on. 
She told herself over and over as they ascended into the air that she wouldn't need rescuing this time. That she would make a difference, and prove Inuyasha wrong. Somehow. 
* * *
"KOHAKU!!"
Kagome stiffened mid-shot when she heard Sango's scream. She looked over barely in time to see the boy fall to the ground like a marionette with the strings cut. The Shikon shard that had breathed life into his dead body was now in the clutches of one of Naraku's nasty youkai appendages, reeling it back to the accursed villain like a fish on a line. 
The demon exterminator collapsed over the corpse of her now-dead brother, oblivious to the monsters around her. Kagome raised her bow, and began to take out the snake-like demons that hovered near them, one by one. The woman had just lost her last living kin. Her shock couldn't be helped. 
Oh, Sango�
Naraku's booming laughter sounded in her ears. She looked up to see the monstrous form hovering in the air like some demented, writhing sea urchin, its tentacles made up of snapping youkai heads. In one of its tips was the Shikon no Tama - complete. 
Just as Kikyo had anticipated. 
She'd better do it, now, Kagome thought in rising resentment. Work her magics, like she said� She scoured the battle field for the miko during those brief pauses in between attacks, her eyes taking in and assessing all. 
It was day, but the sky above them was blackened with Naraku's dark aura like a cloud of ill omen. It was terrifying, the sickening sounds of death all around her. Fortunately, her body ran well on nervous energy, and the adrenaline served only to make her shots more accurate. 
But still, Kikyo had been a fool not to let them attack last night. Be it by fate, or chance, she had located Naraku's residence, but had gambled on the day that he would change into his weakened human form. And she'd been wrong. 
So wrong�
Instead of finding him debilitated and cowering in his rooms, they found him invigorated, and empowered by the quantity of the Shikon no Tama in his possession. And then of course he had produced four more offspring that made his earlier creations look like chibi toys. 
A loud clang of metal sounded, and Sesshoumaru touched down not far from her. She hadn't been surprised when he showed up, no doubt summoned by Kikyo as well. Apparently Naraku had done a stupid thing when he'd kidnapped Rin and used her against the dog demon. 
A very very stupid thing. 
The moist thud of falling chunks of flesh filled her ears as Sesshoumaru's latest victim rained in pieces about them, and he dashed without skipping a beat at the next creature that stood between he and Naraku. 
A sudden movement in her peripheral vision caused Kagome to swing and fire her arrow, eliminating another lesser youkai that had been about to attack her from the side. In her line of sight after it fell, her eyes landed on Kouga, whose calves were both bleeding profusely. He'd been attacked by the same creature that had yanked the shards off her own neck, its main weapon being invisibility. That was what started the battle, actually, and she was impressed and relieved to see that Kouga was holding his own, despite the lack of the Shikon shards in his legs. And against Kagura, no less. 
"KAZE NO KIZUU!" Inuyasha's battle cry rang out as he chomped down on another of Naraku's children in the distance, and it dissipated in the blast of Tetsusaiga. The hanyou jerkily glanced over his shoulder at her, as he'd done a hundred times since she'd arrived - his initial irritation at her for coming drowned out now by worry and panic at her well-being. 
The brief distraction cost him the advantage, however, as a putrid, globular youkai slammed into him, knocking him clear back by her feet. He hopped up on the rebound and flung at it. 
Kagome nearly doubled over at the surge of guilt that flooded her. It was just like he'd said. She was a distraction. The smattering of demons she killed was laughable in comparison to those that the real fighters had--
A whoosh sounded over her head, and the mandible of a youkai fell at her feet. She looked over to see Miroku running over to her, staff in hand. "Kagome-sama� Is Sango-"
Kagome nodded with her chin at the fallen exterminator, her voice shaky. "Kohaku is dead." 
The monk's lips thinned, and he looked over at Sango with more emotion in his face than she'd ever seen. "Damn him," he hissed through clenched teeth. "Damn Naraku." 
As though on some twisted cue, Naraku's maniacal laughter clapped at them, as loud as thunder. Kagome leaned into Miroku, not taking her eyes off the villain, who was glowing red with some virulent, destructive energy. 
"Where's Kikyo!?" Kagome screamed, terrified of Naraku's awesome power level now that the Shikon no Tama was in his hands. "The ball is complete. She said she'd-"
"Juro sea unsofredor�" came the miko's voice, as she chanted a spell several yards away. Her hair floated eerily about her as she was consumed by a blue aura that raised her into the air like an apparition. Her face was barely strained, but undeniably focused on the Shikon no Tama in Naraku's clutches. Though hushed, her words carried with them the momentum of a tsunami, and the villain visibly flinched. 
"Kagome," Miroku panted, eyeing the swarm of hornets overhead with great irritation. "We can't count on Sango right now, and our demon allies have their hands full. Protect Kikyo from the hovering youkai, and I'll cover her from the other side. She must complete this enchantment!" 
Kagome nodded breathlessly, and strung another arrow. "Hai!" 
Swinging his staff like a morningstar, the monk charged off to battle a batch of slithering evil from the side. 
"Hurry up, Kikyo!" Inuyasha screamed, as both he and Sesshoumaru were pushed back, placing them at an equal distance between Kagome and the miko. The situation was dire, but Kagome couldn't deny the feeling of raw power she got from watching the brothers fight side by side - as though it was meant to be from the beginning. 
As though they were fools to ever be enemies. 
"Kikyo," Naraku called out over the clangs and screams of the battle. "You think that you can stop me now!?" 
The miko scowled in response, the cadence of her words speeding up. Kagome noticed with growing hope that Naraku's confident expression shifted to alarm when the Shikon no Tama began to oscillate violently, its color shifting from blood red to an ominous gray. It was happening. The ball would swallow Naraku whole, soon. 
Naraku snarled, and slapped the Shikon no Tama to his mouth, swallowing it. The ball lodged in the center of his bulbous body, glowing even through the thick layers of youkai skin. 
It must not have been a good sign because Kikyo's voice faltered, and both Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru swore. The villain's irises swelled black as he glared at the miko - hatred in its purest form. Then he glanced at Inuyasha, distracted. Kagome didn't know what thoughts were running behind his evil eyes, but she nearly stumbled from the force of his animosity alone. 
Especially when his malevolent gaze locked in turn on her. 
She took a step back as his lip curled. Inuyasha caught on to what was happening before she did, and outright screamed. 
Two bolts of black lightning snaked out so fast, Kagome's brain didn't even have time to tell her legs to move. Her death flashed before her eyes, and her breath caught�
And something solid moved between she and the blast, thumping into her body with enough force to knock the wind from her lungs. 
Inuyasha!
It hit, flinging them both back, and her hearing was filled with the hanyou's cry as he took the blow that was meant for her, dead on. He landed on top of her, immobile, and groaning, and as she lifted her head, she saw that his entire upper torso was charred, the skin bubbling off his back in thick, sizzling clumps. 
"No" she breathed, her eyes filling up with tears. She nudged him slightly for a coherent response, but he just laid there rigor mortis, stiff with pain. Kagome stifled a sob. Fear shifted to panic which shifted to a vortex of despair. "Inuyasha, you should have let me take it�"
I came to help... I didn't mean... She broke down. It happened just like he said it would. He risked his life to defend her weakness, and now he was hurt. Really bad. 
Naraku's laughter boomed. "I knew you'd save the girl over the miko, Inuyasha." 
Inuyasha flinched, "Kikyo" 
Oh no Don't tell me With her stomach in her throat, Kagome turned her head to peer through Inuyasha's heavy mane of silver hair to see the miko� 
In pieces. 
Shattered shards of red clay littered the ground where the woman had stood in a disturbingly human outline. Her clothes flattened to the ground like a deflated balloon, no longer supported by a whole form, and her long black hair had gone white and brittle, flaking off in the putrid wind. Half of Kikyo's face was left in tact, but her one eye was hollow, the bitter soul having been released from its confinement at last. 
Kagome nearly retched. She would have died ten times over rather than be spared in this terrible manner - salvaged at the last minute by Inuyasha because he'd assumed wrongly that Kikyo had been strong enough to withstand the same blast. Even Naraku had foreseen it, and now not only was the woman he loved dead, but all hope was lost as well. The spell hadn't been completed. 
Kagome had screwed it all up. 
"Gods, I'm sorry," she sobbed in the hanyou's hair, thinking that the words sounded wholly inadequate for the gaping chasm of guilt that swallowed her awareness right then. "So�so sorry, Inuyasha." 
He was trembling from the pain of the blast, unable to even look up at her. Even if he'd been capable, she doubted he would have made eye contact. She'd just inadvertently sent Kikyo's soul to hell-
Kagome blinked the water from her eyes. Kikyo's soul She searched for it, like she searched for the Shikon shards. Desperately. It was the only coherent thought that pushed through the weight of Inuyasha's maimed body, and the chaos of her anguish. 
And she found it, a feint, cloudy apparition, simmering around the clay corpse with a macabre tenacity, trying in vain to adhere back to a body that was no longer there. Her soul just wouldn't let go. 
Acting on impulse, Kagome reached her hand out and called to it. Kikyo didn't belong in hell, she decided. Far from it. The soul that was once sundered apart needed to be rejoined before any other force could claim it, be it heaven or hell. 
The question was, could she do it? 
* * *
Kouga leapt to the left as Kagura blew another attack at him. He dodged it easily, just as he had the rest of her onslaught. For some reason, it seemed like she was fighting for show rather than with the intent of killing him. It was both humiliating and confusing. Though he hated to admit it, the bitch could have finished him off if she'd really wanted to by now. After all, she was the one who had slaughtered hundreds of his brethren, and then in some sick display of heartlessness, reanimated their corpses to fight against the wolf prince. 
It was by far the most horrible, most poignant moment of his entire life, and he hated her for it. Loathed her. One day he would kill her, even. But first, Naraku. If she'd just stop toying with him and let him pass. 
Inuyasha' scream distracted him. Horrified. Desperate. As though the hanyou had intended to stop the chain of events by voice alone. His head swiveled in that direction, and he choked. 
Two black bolts lanced out from Naraku's monstrous, ambiguous form, heading for the miko and�
"KAGOME!!!" 
He lunged forward, not noticing nor caring that Kagura moved aside so he could. But he was too slow. He stifled a cry as a flurry of silver and red materialized in front of Kagome at the last minute, and took the hit. But then his vision was blurred by dust particles when the very same blast shattered Kikyo. Literally. No blood, no rips in her flesh. Just skinless chunks of pottery. 
Kouga leapt over her remains, cringing at Naraku's laughter. The others were engaged in battle, but all he could focus on was the pale, terrified face buried underneath the hanyou's torched body. 
Kagome's hand was stretched out to him. Kouga paused. No. Not at him, but at the miko's pieces behind him. She was trying to do something, and he jolted as a soul passed through him, as angry and bitter as he'd ever felt. At first he thought it was an errant youkai on its way to hell, but then he recognized the vibe. 
It was the miko, torn from this life before she could finish the spell that would destroy their nemesis. Kagome was trying to claim her spirit for herself. It hovered through and past him, a cloudy apparition that was more confused than coherent. Kouga gasped as it reached the tip of Kagome's fingers and was sucked in immediately, as though it had no place being anywhere else. The girl pulsed once with an eerie blue light, and then her focus was redirected in its entirety on the hanyou. 
Regaining his senses, he ran over to her and knelt down, wincing at Inuyasha's injuries. He saw more bone in his back than flesh, and even some of those were charred beyond recognition. Sure the guy was half demon, but Kouga had never seen anyone recover from such severe injuries. And no small part of him was sincerely grateful for his old rival's sacrifice. After all, it had saved the wolf prince's woman. 
"Inuyasha," Kagome hiccupped, tears streaking her face in dark, dirty lines. Her hands stroking a crimson face that was closed in a grimace of pain. "Can you hear me?" 
Kouga reached over and gingerly lifted the hanyou's body off of Kagome, laying him face down in the dirt. Kagome sat up and wept over him like a widow in mourning, and Kouga couldn't help but to wonder if she'd feel equally upset at his own demise. 
The monk, the dog demon, and firecat were battling the remaining youkai, and it suddenly occurred to Kouga that they might lose. Naraku's power radiated off his form with an insane intensity, and he realized that the Shikon no Tama was once again complete and in the wrong hands. The wolf prince's survival instincts kicked in, and he grabbed Kagome's wrist. 
"We cannot win, here," he said, forcing her to peel her stare away from the hanyou and look at him. "And I have no intention of letting you die." 
Her face scrunched, and she opened her mouth to retort when a piercing scream straightened his spine. They both swiveled their heads to the noise. And Kouga blinked. 
The one they called Sango, rose steadily to her feet over the corpse of her fallen brother, boomerang clenched tightly in a white-knuckled grip. Her exterminator mask was covering half her face, but her eyes� He could have sworn he saw demon in them. And more than just that. 
All the righteous indignation of a God of Vengeance. 
"NARAKU!" she cried, her shoulders trembling. 
Both Miroku and Sesshoumaru turned and watched her with widening eyes, as did the demons they fought. 
Naraku began to mock her. "Kukuku Sango. Are you upset over the loss of your brother?" he said in that eerily melodious voice, more amused than intimidated. "Don't worry. He merited his death ten times over in my service-"
His words were abruptly silenced by a whirring boomerang that sliced through his foremost appendages, shutting him right up. Kouga gaped. When had she thrown it? 
Naraku hissed and recoiled, his earlier cocky expression shifting into pained shock. Before the Shikon no Tama could regenerate his lost limbs, the exterminator had caught her boomerang on the rebound, mid leap, and flung it at him again. Naraku's eyes widened and he moved just in time to keep from being decapitated, but in the process lost another good chunk of youkai flesh. 
"Wench!" he snapped, and Kouga couldn't deny that he was encouraged to see the villain finally lose composure. Granted, the Shikon no Tama would regenerate his missing limbs any second, but damn. That had to hurt. 
Slithering bolts, not unlike the one that had destroyed Kikyo, shot out at Sango from Naraku's extended mouth. But she leapt about them like a winged insect, and Kouga couldn't help but to be in awe of her awesome, inhuman strength. Sango was enraged�crazed� And it served to their advantage. Sesshoumaru tore away from his opponent and charged them, clearly capitalizing on a moment when Naraku was being distracted. 
Kouga's grip on Kagome's arm loosened. There might be hope yet. "Stay here," he muttered and ran to aid the monk in battling the random youkais, to keep them from molesting the dog demon and the exterminator as they took on Naraku. 
In his peripheral vision, he saw Sango's next vicious attack, which enabled Sesshoumaru to slice open Naraku's gut. "Ha!" Kouga breathed as the Shikon no Tama dislodged from Naraku's flesh and started to fall. Sango, on the ground below raced forward to grab it. 
"NO!" Sesshoumaru screamed, disentangling himself from Naraku's wailing youkai heads. "Don't touch it!" 
It was more emotion than Kouga had seen the ever-composed dog demon express. But Sango was still acting on an incoherent adrenaline rush, and she ignored him. In a blind flurry, the dog demon lunged forward to stop her, a streak of robes and white tresses. But he was too late, barely managing to grab her at the same moment her fist closed on the falling Shikon no Tama. 
And then they vanished. Just like that. A flash of light and Sango and Sesshoumaru were gone.
"Ah!" the monk came to a skidding halt beside Kouga, gawking. "The Shikon no Tama� It�it absorbed them!" 
"What!?" Kouga asked, clearly not liking the odds now that both Sesshoumaru and Sango were added to their list of casualties. It essentially left he, the firecat and the monk to both protect the hanyou and Kagome. And somehow stop Naraku� 
"You cursed creatures!" Naraku cried out, his face contorting hideously. "You nullified it! You neutralized its power!!" Wounded though he was, Naraku was still driven by an unholy force. And he still had his acolytes and his offspring at his side. 
"Kikyo's spell," Miroku panted, his face strained. "it was only half way finished. I don't know what happened, but they're gone." 
"No shit!" Kouga panted, backing up as Naraku's forces closed in on them. "We're getting out of here." 
"We can't leave them-"
"Are you blind!? We'll die!" 
"It's now or-"
"INUYASHA!" Kagome screamed, interrupting them both.
Kouga and Miroku's attention was drawn to the girl, who was rocking back and forth with the hanyou's bloodied form in her arms. She was outright sobbing. Kouga made to take a step towards her when she snapped her head up, and the look in her eyes as they locked on Naraku sent a chill down his spine. 
Like Sango moments earlier, something had snapped inside of her. She stood to her feet, her fair lithe form looking as effeminate and delicate as a butterfly wing. Her hair billowed about her in animated rivulets. Something was moving inside of her. Something huge. Kouga couldn't identify it, but he was nearly knocked to his feet by its intensity - a sudden, inexplicable power that radiated off her form in tangible waves. 
And he wasn't the only one taken aback by its stupefying effect. Miroku was mute with shock, as were their assailants. As a matter of fact, the fighting stopped all together as this human girl who had shown little, if no power prior, suddenly walked towards Naraku with all the morbid determination of an Angel of Death. 
Her irises had whited out completely, now nothing more than penetrating, glowing orbs in her skull, and her body was consumed in a luminescent flame that licked and spat at the air about her. Her face was frozen in a grimace, and her hair was living and dancing about her with an energy all of its own. 
Kouga got the odd, unnerving sensation of looking at a complete stranger, and could only watch in muted awe. 
"Naraku," Kagome said lowly, her lip twitching. Her voice was split in dual tones, and carried eerily across the bloodied ground, raising every hair on his arms. "You die." 
She levitated into the air, and with a cry threw her arms towards the villain. A stream of searing hot energy crackled out of her palms and spewed at Naraku's abominable form. 
He barely threw up a shield in time, his expression echoing everyone else's sentiments, though with a slightly more panicked edge. Where did this come from!? Their forces collided with enough impact to rip apart mountains, and Kouga and Miroku were blown back, their bodies flipping through the air with the rest of the youkai. 
A splintered tree stump finally stopped Kouga's flight, impaling itself through his abdomen with a wet sloshing sound. He gasped in agony, and would have screamed had his lungs not been punctured. 
Shit! His vision blurred, but he fought to focus through the mind-numbing pain on Kagome and Naraku, and saw to his horror that Naraku was not only fighting back. He was winning. 
"So you have a hidden reserve of power," the dark youkai bellowed out, inebriated with the sheer force of his own strength. "Idiot girl. It is still no match for my own!" 
Kagome's joints locked and her face froze in panicked fury as the dark energy of Naraku began to swallow up her beam of light, lapping at it with disturbing enthusiasm. 
"K-Kagome!" He mouthed, having no more strength to speak out loud. Fight it! he sent silently, knowing there was nothing he could do for her, now, but hope. But Naraku was gaining ground, and he got the ominous feeling that in a couple more seconds, all would be lost. 
But then something unexpected happened. 
Kagura. 
Naraku's offspring, the bane of Kouga's existence, fluttered by. The look of crazed, venomous determination in her face was locked not on Kouga, nor on Kagome, but on Naraku himself. With a tremendous cry, she cast the same wind at her maker that had shamed Tetsusaiga, and it slammed into Naraku's festering torso - that great, unnatural bed of worms that donned a human head, and threw it off balance. 
"Now, girl!" Kagura cried at Kagome desperately. "Finish him!" 
"KAGURA!" Naraku roared. "YOU DARE BETRAY ME!?" 
He opened his mouth to continue, but a renewed burst of energy from Kagome was flung at him almost simultaneously, and it was too much for even Naraku to handle. With a great booming scream, Naraku petered out under her onslaught, being not only torn apart piece by piece, but quite literally disintegrated. Emulsified. 
To nothing. 
Youkai all around them withered and died, no longer puppeteered by their organizer. A feint light escaped from the line of fire, and floated merrily over to Kagura, and the youkai threw her head back and embraced it, a triumphant, exhilarated smirk on her pretty features. Kouga got the impression that she'd just been liberated from an enslavement. 
He watched as Kagome fell lightly to the ground, unconscious. Kouga let the darkness and pain start to claim him. It was over. She'd done it. Naraku was no more. In his fading vision, he saw the monk reclaim the Shikon no Tama, and slump Inuyasha's bloodied body over the firecat. Then he retrieved Kagome and hopped on behind the hanyou. 
They approached Kouga, whose head had begun to loll back, and he was faintly aware of a conversation. 
"You have no room for the wolf prince, monk." It was Kagura's voice. He'd recognize it in the depths of his nightmares.
A brief silence. "But he needs help." 
"I'll return him to his people." 
Pause. "Why would you do that?" 
A deep, maniacal chuckle. "To defy the last order Naraku gave me." 
"To kill Kouga." 
"Hai," she said in a vindictive tone. "I'll spit on my maker's memory by salvaging the wolf prince instead. A token of my independence." 
"Very well," the monk said. "Up, Kirara" A swooshing noise followed of their departure, and Kouga hissed in agony as someone yanked his body roughly off the stump, and dropped him on a soft�something. 
He was losing a battle with his consciousness, and could barely make out a floral-patterned dress next to him. She smelt of the elements - wind and fire. And something indisputably, undeniably feminine. Kagura braced his shoulder with her hand, and he felt the air on his face as they ascended on her feather. 
"Kagome" he breathed, not thrilled about being separated from his woman now that it was finally over. 
"Still pining after the human girl, wolf boy?" came the mean, silken tone. "It was the hanyou's demise that caused her transformation. Not yours. You can't compete with that, no matter what kind of lies you may tell yourself." 
The last real thought that fluttered across his awareness before his pain was drowned in the blissful oblivion of unconsciousness, was that Kagura had a point.

Chapter 7 >>>

Chap. 1

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