Redemption

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha, etc. This story is for entertainment purposes only.

REDEMPTION

Summary: Specters of the past bring forth questions for the future. Can she save his soul, or will he wander forever in darkness?

WORDS

neko - cat
Hiraikotsu - Sango’s giant boomerang, made of demon bone

WARNING! DARK IMAGERY AND ADULT TOPICS, BAD WORDS AND SPOILERS (EPISODE 122+)

A/N - This was actually a hard chapter to write. Spent many agonized hours over it, and I must humbly thank my darling LaTausha for help in dark hours. This chapter is dedicated to you, Aetos. (Fate)

CHAPTER TEN

And so the days unfolded, like precious pearls dropping one by one from a released strand to fall into his cupped palm, a sight of wonder and magnificent to behold. For as each day passed, Bankotsu seemed to look anew upon the world that had always seemed so barren and wasted, so small and callous. All that was rich in this world was opened once more for his tasting, and that more guileless part of him that had always been kept hidden away and protected behind a hardened exterior of cold disdain and uncaring swagger was allowed a bit more freedom as he drew inner strength from the woman at his side.

She, too, seemed to unfurl like a shy little flower greeting the warm breath of the sun after a long night of dark and lonely shadows. Spirits scarred and battered by all that was harsh and unforgiving in this world slowly healed as they used one another’s strengths to shield the weaker and lesser sides of their dual natures, supporting one another like any shield-brother or loyal-sworn companion.

Bankotsu rather liked her laugh, which could be light and dancing, unexpected as it was. It seemed to burst forth from her, and she always seemed surprised even as her brown eyes lit with merriment and her mouth curved up in a smile. So he strove to bring it out of her at every opportunity, even resorting to outright tickling of any spot he could dare to reach when her mood became too serious and withdrawn, as was often her wont. Her gasps of outrage would make him grin as she struggled to no avail, for he had discovered (quite by accident), that she was very ticklish, and not in any one area.

She often had her revenge, though, for she had had an extensive training in hand-to-hand combat from a father who worried about her weaker strength against many a stronger foe. Not that she was weak, by any means, and she showed that strength and speed by how quickly she could drop him on his ass with a casual kick to the back of his knee, or a sudden, sharp push to his side that had him sprawling over with a startled yell as he went down in a tangling tumble of arms and legs while she stood over him, smug and preening, or wiping the tears from her eyes while laughing so hard she had to hold sides which hurt from doing so…

At times they acted like the youngest of children, fighting over the littlest thing, squabbling over who knew more than the other or whose opinion was weighed more heavily by experience and actually knew what they were talking about. She was as stubborn as a mule, and he was more than a match for her there. Their arguments were half-hearted though, and quickly forgiven as he was quick to break off with a cocky grin and a sly comment that had her glaring furiously one minute and laughing at her stubborn self the next.

She was his silent comfort, and would often draw him out of the long, broody silences he could so easily fall into with a hand laid lightly on shoulder or arm, a mere offering of her silent presence to keep the darker thoughts at bay. The wealth of her simple understanding of the shadowy wraiths from his dark past that would haunt him at those times would serve more poignantly than any gifted spattering of awkward words to dispel it, and he drew more strength from her steady, quiet presence than she could ever know or realize.

Often they fell silent, comfortable with each other in the quiet relaxation of topic and tease. Her simple presence would soothe him, as she fell asleep leaning next to him, their backs against a steady tree trunk and her head propped on his shoulder. He would lightly touch the tousled black hair of her bangs with a mixed feeling of trepidation, comfort and awe, wondering at the strange closeness they shared. His eyes would take on a tender look that she would never see in waking, and he treasured the quiet peace in his heart as old wounds slowly healed and dark burdens were laid aside, if but for a single, long moment of aching awareness.

For he did not see the same wonderingly soft look in her own dark eyes as they would rest on him for those brief moments when she could look upon him without danger that he would see the vulnerable feelings laid bare in her opened gaze. If he suddenly turned to grin or smirk at her, the flicker of emotion-filled yearning was gone, armored against the rejection that might come of baring her soul to another. For still they were wary of unburdening too much, and they had had too little time to trust yet that the other would not hurt them, even unintentionally.

But they took the most from each moment that they could, and drew closer as that basic understanding that defines the deepest of friendship and closest of lovers bound them ever so slowly together. He strove hard to find out the simple things that she might like or prefer, and would try his damnedest to get them, seeking to impress on her just how much she might need him, even for the little things---like hunting up the wild mushrooms she craved like a greedy child for sweets, or trading away the last flask of his precious sake for woven sandals to protect her bare feet.

And when he finally came upon a village large enough to be able to take his pierced money in place of bartered goods, he paid out coins for more ointment, bandages and herbs rather than the good vintage of rice-wine he had been eyeing, turning away with a dramatic, heavy sigh but lighter of heart for the choice he had made. With the additional medicines he had bought, he was better able to heal the wrist and ankle that had made her seem so helpless before.

And if he occasionally looked at her with the deep blue intensity of awakened desire, he quickly smothered it behind a careless veneer of casual camaraderie. For he understood her shy modesty and her awkward uncertainty when it came to men and how to deal with them on any other basis than as fellow warriors and men-at-arms. The unfamiliar ground of man and maid as they related to one another made her feel inept and stupid, feelings which were all to ready to turn into questions of her own competence in other areas to which she felt she failed at in some inner measure of her own insane creation. It was a path toward easy depression and self rebuke that he did not want her to take, and so he avoided any gesture that she might consider flirtatious, with a care of her feelings that would have stunned anyone who might have known him before, when he had not given a good damn about what others felt, so long as he could do as he chose.

But she was made of sterner stuff than he often gave her credit for, and she would often surprise him in some small way that he was not expecting, like when she asked if she might use first his several daggers of varied size and weight to strengthen the weakness from her wounded right wrist, and then humble permission to try lifting his giant halberd, once the strength and flexibility had returned with the exercise of lighter items.

He had laughed and scoffed at her ability to lift his mighty weapon. Three normal men could not carry his beloved companion, what made her think that she, a GIRL, could ever do it? He thought the idea of watching her strain herself into tiring would be amusing, and so had granted his permission with smug disdain.

Her dark eyes had flashed, her jaw firming in what he called her ‘stubborn mule’ look, and she had grasped the leaning blade with both hands, her shoulders tensing. For a long moment, he was able to grin as he watched her silent struggle, even laughing outright as her arms shook with the effort of trying to lift the giant halberd. But he worried for the strain she put on herself, and was about to force her to let go in defeat when she astonished him by hefting the sword, slowly but steadily, inch by inch, until she held it at level with the ground. She could not hold the position long, and was forced to lower the blade faster than she had raised it, but he was still amazed that she could lift it at all.

His astonished expression must have spoke volumes, for she burst out laughing, even as she wiped the sweat from off her brow and staggered back to lean against the tree Banryuu shared with her. She gasped breathlessly as exertion and mirth caught up with her, and was too weary to even flinch back like she would normally have as he pulled a square of ragged cotton from out of the packs and carefully wiped the beads of sweat from neck and cheek.

She saw only the impressed admiration in his dark blue eyes, but there was warmth there as well, for she had done more than the unthinkable by lifting that giant sword---she had pulled his heart in to her keeping.

Which made him smile wryly---trust it to him to fall in love with the only woman who could ever lift his beloved sword. Though this one, beautiful and unheeding of that beauty as she was, could lift his other sword as well, and if he did not hurry up and back away from her right now, sweaty and tangled and glowing in smug triumph as she was, than it would become rather embarrassingly evident.

If she was surprised at how quickly he retreated, than she hid it well, only teasing him lightly that he was a sore loser.

Which he was.

For now that he had lost his heart to her, he became even more assiduous in his vow to keep her with him, trusting that he would one day be able to make her realize just how much she needed him, while denying how much it was that he now needed her.

She seemed unknowing of the jealous thoughts that now nibbled at him, and while he strove to maintain the easy companionship that familiarity had lent them, it grew harder and harder to disguise from her just how intense his feelings were. For Bankotsu was not one to skimp once he had made up his mind on something, and he wholeheartedly accepted that she was the one and only one who would ever be able to call up the strangely new and unsettling feelings within him. She seemed to have no knowledge of this new twist in his regard of her, and he was not one who would easily admit first that he had been totally and thoroughly trounced by her into the foils and foibles of love.

For a man in love was a stupid man, and well he knew it. A man in love was weakened by that most fragile and yet enduring of emotions into acts of idiocy that he made poor excuse for by saying it was all for love. Putting his heart into the keeping of another---could he trust her enough to keep it safe, to honor and treasure it, and perhaps, just perhaps, one day, RETURN it?

He THOUGHT he might be able to, but there was still that niggling doubt that hovered in the back of his mind that trust was no easy a thing earned, and well did he have reasons enough not to trust anyone ever again. Time was his enemy in this, in that he had fallen so quickly and had not yet had the time to establish that unquestioning trust that would need to exist between them if ever love were to be returned and cherished unhindered by doubt and unfettered by uncertainty as it should be.

But could that trust ever be built upon the lies he had created by asking the aid of the Shikon shards embedded in Banryuu’s hilt? For it was only with their help that Sango could temporarily forget the existence of her friends who, he hoped, were even now growing tired of the long days of fruitless searching and would finally give it all up---and her---as lost. For it was only then that he might lift the mental guard that wove itself around the girl’s thoughts, making her mind slide across their faint memory with scant attention or heed.

For it hit him, that he played her false by veiling her true memories from her awareness. For occasionally her brown eyes would take on a faraway look, as if something nibbled at the back of her mind, and it was then that he, ever sensitive to her every mood, would quickly finger the cracked shards hidden in the great sword’s crescent-shaped hilt, and quickly direct her musing thoughts in some new direction by asking her an abrupt question or lightly teasing her to stubborn, eye-flashing ire.

And if his blue eyes were hard at that particular moment, than it was with the renewed determination that maybe this was for the best. Because now that he had found her, he desired to keep her, and he knew deep down in the hidden recesses of his newly-awakened heart that while it was wrong, it was, perhaps, the only way he might do so.

For she needed him, though she did not know it yet.

Even more than he now needed her.

Right?

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The banked fire lent little light to the dark clearing. No moon danced overhead to part the black night with its milky, time-worn face, or to softly lighten the huddled forms who slept so wearily below. The monk, a kitsune and staff in his lap, leaned back against a sturdy tree, eyes closed and breaths slow and even. Two black-haired heads sheltered together in entwined arms, a sleeping bag draped over them with the red robe of the Fire Rat as their pillow.

Cracking a careful eye open, the saber-toothed neko cast a wary eye over her sleeping companions. Nothing stirred the still clearing except for the kitsune cub’s soft snores. Exhausted as all of them were, the unwelcome respite of the night of the new moon was more needful than any of them wanted to admit. Patience and tempers had frayed as their hunt had led them deeper into wild forests none of them had ever penetrated before.

Everyone was discouraged and downcast at the endless chase that drew them on in a strangely arcing circle that had started out to the south and east and was slowly turning them back toward the shallow hills that undulated across the northwestern part of this region. They had suddenly realized today that they had nearly doubled back on their earlier trail, crossing a mere trace of a lonely road that seemed oddly familiar. It was Miroku who had pointed out that this was the road they had followed Bankotsu down long, worried-filled days before, and that they were cutting across forested territory they had once traveled alongside.

The continual frustration of their days-long search had all of them on edge. Inuyasha seethed, growling that the damn mercenary was merely playing a stupid game with them. Miroku, his eyes grave, remained silent, but determined to go on. Kagome, when continuously questioned by her impatient mate, remained stubbornly certain that the Jewel shards were just beyond them and just out of reach. But they could hardly give up, could they? For Sango was what drew them on far more than any consideration of shards or settling of old scores.

Kirara longed to tell them that all was fine with their young friend. But the ancient miko’s warning kept the secret hidden in the neko youkai’s heart, and she could only sigh and try and comfort as she may when they worried.

Which they did---deeply.

Raising her creamy head, Kirara tested the air for any sign of her comrades’ waking. Nothing and no one stirred, and so she surreptitiously climbed to her feet. Walking soft as only a large cat could, the youkai circled around the banked embers of the fire, pausing to sniff over the huddled packs for the familiar scent of her missing friend. Batting aside the small pack she wanted, she lifted the bundled belongings carefully in her teeth, using the tied knots of the blue shawl’s ends as a handy strap.

Ghosting back across the camp, the large neko dropped the small bundle beside the larger boomerang that Inuyasha had casually leaned against the third tree that ringed this small clearing. Twin tails lashed as Kirara considered the best way in which to transport the huge weapon. Her ears flicked back as one of the others moved slightly in their sleep, but they did not awaken to watch as the neko, decision made, reached up with one black paw to free up the tangled strap Sango normally used to carry the boomerang diagonally across her body from shoulder to waist, securing it to her back as she walked.

Whiskers twitching, the neko measured the space the strap’s length would give and oozed herself, paw, shoulder and head, into what little space was available to her larger frame. The boomerang tilted against her, and the neko tensed, making as little sound as she dared, until it rested in a rather awkward position across shoulder and head. The strap dug uncomfortably into the creamy fur of her chest and under her right foreleg, but she would be able to carry it.

Picking up the abandoned bundle of Sango’s clothing and armor with her teeth, the great cat crept almost daintily back across the clearing, until she reached the far edge, which was veiled by unbroken shadows. Casting a last look back on the camp with her red, glowing eyes, Kirara blinked them closed in a silent, fond farewell. She wished she could tell them where she was going, for they would worry, but they would soon be following her path, and she must trust to the timeless one in this, as she had in other matters.

It was Sango who needed her now, and with a buoyed heart, the neko youkai launched herself into the night’s dark depths, the trail of her fiery feet soon flickering into mere pinpoints of orange-gleaming light as she ran across the cloud-wreathed sky.

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“Damn it!” Inuyasha, his silver hair and superior strength and senses restored by the fiery sun’s ascension, grit his fanged teeth as his claws curled into a fist at the utter helplessness he felt at all the shit that kept happening to them.

“Sango’s pack is gone, and so is Hiraikotsu.” Miroku said, blue-black eyes grave and sensuous mouth tight with concern.

“Kirara!” Shippo sniffled, pounding a childish fist into the dirt of the leaf-ridden ground in strange emulation of the inu hanyou he would never willingly admit to imitating. Ready tears slipped down his reddened cheeks as he wailed the loss of yet another member of his ‘family.’

“Kirara must have taken them.” Kagome said with a worried frown as she hugged her arms across her chest in an attempt to keep hidden the sudden shiver of fear that crept down her spine.

“Why?” Inuyasha growled, a curled fist hitting his other palm with pent-up frustration. He had traced the neko’s path to the edge of the clearing, where it disappeared at the point where she must have taken to the cloud-shredded sky above. The fiery sun, rising like a blood-bloated stain on the eastern horizon, cast a strange pall across the angry clouds that leached away the warmth of the morning. A chill wind rose, and the scent of coming rain and storms brooded on the tension-filled air.

But it was something else, something worse, that made the young miko pause.

“Inuyasha…” Kagome whispered, her brown eyes drawn to the concealing trees around them, a specter of fright crossing her white expression.

Even Shippo froze in the sudden silence.

“Demons.” Miroku’s bead-wrapped palm tightened on his be-ringed staff, which chimed faintly at the movement.

“Yeah.” Inuyasha said, his golden eyes intent. “And there’s a lot of ’em.”

“Do you think…Kirara?” Kagome ventured tentatively.

“Maybe.” Inuyasha said. But it was not likely.

“What are you waiting for?” Shippo yelled up at them, his fists on his hips as he glared round the tensed group with wide green eyes, tears forgotten.

“Shut up, runt.” Inuyasha tossed back with a scowl, though it was a half-hearted volley, for they all heard the faint roar of challenge in the far distance, a roar muffled by the thickening grey clouds that were smothering the bloody promise of the glowering sun as the storm-swollen clouds quickly approached.

Kagome gathered up her bow and arrows, shouldering the quiver with a clattering protest of the jostled shafts within. Tucking her bow out of the way, she felt that faint stirring that told her of the close proximity of the shattered fragments of the Shikon no Tama.

“Inuyasha, the Jewel shards…they’re close. Very close.” Kagome imparted anxiously as she clambered up on the hanyou’s bent back. White claws tensed slightly as his arms curled around her bent legs.

“Let’s go.” Was all he said to Miroku, whose shoulder had suddenly sprouted a rusty-tailed kitsune with glittering green eyes, his little paws clinging grimly to the folds of the houshi’s dark blue robes.

The monk merely nodded, and they were off, running for the tangled forest of brooding shadows as thunder grumbled menacingly from above.

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The ambience in the abandoned tomb slowly changed as expectant evil was stirred by a shift in the shared balance of power between miko and ancient menace. Something dark and sinister chuckled madly to itself in delighted anticipation as the weight of dormant power was spilt in its favor. The bulging orbs of the stone-entrapped dragon burned with a ghostly aura of red and fuchsia-touched light in a dancing glimmer of sadistic satisfaction as the staring, unseeing gaze of the warrior-priestess remained silent and still.

There was no answering flicker of challenging blue awareness in that dead gaze, and the trapped dominions of hell who had resided unwilling for so long in the dragon’s stone body whispered their raspy dreams of final victory and conquest in that seemingly endless, centuries-long battle of wills between them. For they, themselves, made up half of the balance of what was good and what was vile in the worlds of this and the after, and their aim was ever to triumph over that which was pure and un-spoilt by their tainted, ever resentful, seething hatred.

They taunted the unresponsive stone miko, hissing their expectations and delight to one who seemed oddly contained and still, as if all hope had died within her…

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He had fallen asleep on his back, with his arms crossed lazily behind his head and the girl nestled into his side. Of course, Sango had gone to sleep lying more beside him than ON him, but he had gently rearranged her so that she could be more comfortable with his chest as a hard pillow, and she had eventually draped herself closer to his warmth as the lengthening night chilled into the promise of icy rain in the creeping clouds of an early dawn, one split by the crimson, storm-warning grimace of an angry sun.

He felt the beast’s presence long before the horse stamped and snorted nervously in its tethered graze. The shards in both body and blade stirred with dull warning, recognizing the demon’s aura long before he could have detected it on his own. He waited, knowing the thing would likely approach prey that seemed more easily caught for being asleep and unguarded.

But the beast roared even as it pounced for his throat, the snarling cry of a grass-cat rippling across the sky as Sango abruptly woke up, protests muffled as he rolled her under him to protect her from the sharp, wide-spread claws reaching for them both. The horse screamed, fighting its tether as the shadow of the giant cat swept past it.

Bankotsu continued his roll, pulling the girl after him, as he bound to his feet and dove for his beloved Banryuu. Sango fought his hold on her wrist, and he nearly choked as she did the unthinkable. Wrenching herself free of him, she actually turned and ran right for the fire-cat, her brown eyes dancing and her arms spread wide in welcome.

“Sango!” He yelled, his soul bared in that heart-wrenched cry of fear.

She ignored him, actually embracing the great cream-colored beast with a sob of pure joy and recognition, the fogged half-wisps of memory constrained by his wish on the Jewel shards suddenly vanishing as her full awareness returned upon sight of her staunchest ally since childhood.

“Kirara!” Her cry was just as heart-torn as his, but it was for the neko, and not him, and Bankotsu froze as the realization socked him right in the gut. For it was there, in the tear-swept, honeyed gaze she turned on the youkai, all the unfettered love and longing he had wished to see turned toward him. But it was all for her, the cream-colored cat who was purring like a small thunder-cloud and nuzzling the slender young slayer with every evidence of fond familiarity.

The sudden stab of jealousy that gripped him shocked the hell out of him, but a small part of him died at the seemingly abrupt betrayal of all his whispered hopes, and the chilling stab of it went straight to his heart, which clenched tight in his chest. And that part of him, which had laughed and scorned the weakness of so-called love just starting to kindle, now laughed the harder in contempt at emotions so easily wrung by so simple and petty a gesture on her part, given freely to another, and a YOUKAI at that, and NOT to him, NEVER TO HIM.

The malignly-fueled shards in his resurrected body and remade halberd glinted with taunting amusement, flaring to fuchsia-funneled life. The malice and hate that bathed the Jewel shards in pure evil enveloped him, pouring forth into the weakened vessel of his mind, torturing him with the renewed bitterness of dying hopes and dreams that he should never have contemplated in the first place. For she could never see him more than what he was---a cold-blooded killer, a mercenary of bought loyalty and dubious honor, who could be nothing more to her than her avowed enemy, and in the darkest parts of his soul, where the denied rage of a sobbing, helpless child dwelt, the inescapable ferocity of bitter anger rose to engulf him, as it never had since the death of his family and clan at the hands of men.

Lightning flared across the dawn-darkened sky, and thunder cracked across the heavens, unheeded by those trapped on the earth below. The girl buried her face in the creamy fur of her neko, ducking under the giant boomerang carried awkwardly across the youkai’s back and shoulder, her arms encircling the fire-cat with a strength that never wanted to let go. The neko purred in softer counterpoint to the clashing storm above as icy rain suddenly burst down on them, as if the sky wept for the darkness unleashed in the small soul of a single man, battleground of the gods.

Indigo eyes flashed with hot rage, and the bitterness of scathing jealousy gripped him with maddened fury. Love could be so easily turned into hate and loathing, and somewhere far off in the distance of a lonely, abandoned tomb of a limestone cave, demons trapped in stone laughed with triumph as the bitter rage circled round his soul and his fist clenched on the crimson-flaring hilt of his sword until the knuckles whitened.

The neko raised her head, her purr deepening into a growl of warning as the fur rose up on her back at the sudden presence of danger. Twin tails lashed and the unheeding taijiya, memories suddenly awakened and reclaimed, sat back in surprise.

“Kirara?” She asked in confusion, as the demon’s eyes glowed in response and the growl rumbled, echoed by the crash of thunder above. Icy rain lashed with a thousand tiny stings to the skin, and the trees creaked and groaned in the sudden rising of the wind that howled madly around them.

Lightning snapped across the sky, and Sango’s eyes widened at the dark look of utter fury on the mercenary’s stilled features. Ice shot down her spine, making her shiver more than the chilling touch of the rain-whipped wind. She sensed the struggle within him, and the creeping darkness that would engulf Bankotsu’s very soul. Her fingers tightened in Kirara’s sodden fur and her eyes narrowed, for she was not one to just lay down and die, even if her lonely soul wept for the release death might bring.

A questing hand found the strap holding Hiraikotsu to Kirara’s shoulder, and fingers plucked at the knots that tied the boomerang in place even as a young girl’s heart broke at the necessity of it. Kirara’s red eyes glowed crimson, the cross-shaped symbol blackened on the neko’s creamy forehead above her glowing eyes stark as lightning flashed and thunder cracked the heavens in two.

Bankotsu froze, his eyes arrested on that tell-tale shape, so similar to the one dyed in a purple stain across his own tanned flesh. Rain soaked hair and armor, chilling him in icy punishment, but he stood unmoving and uncaring as SOMETHING abruptly split the growing darkness within him, slicing through it like a steel blade of veracity. His eyes widened as he stared unseeing for what seemed like an endless eternity, caught up in a hazy blue light that kissed itself along his soul and spun him up in gentle arms to cradle his pain in a humbling revelation of a truth he had never known and could never have realized…

*Midoriko?,* His mind asked in dazed confusion as his soul was touched by one not of this earth and what he had always held as true and evident in this world was shattered in a single instant of unlocked perception. His mind cried out in terror at sight of things he had never known, even in death, and he fell to his knees in a humbled abandonment of all he had conceived as true in this world. His soul was laid bare for his true vision, and he flinched at the judgment he decried on himself for how small and narrow a thing it was.

*Lost…*

:But not forgotten…: That gentle voice whispered to him, and his soul wept at the understanding and forgiveness in the miko’s world-wearied gaze. Stars mingled in the blackness of warm night as he stared into those dark depths. Terrible they were, and so utterly, heart-wrenchingly COMPASSIONATE that it made him feel so small and petty a thing, even as that star-touched black gaze held him close, comforting his loneliness and misdirection in pure and untainted love and understanding…

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He was caught up in revelation, and did not know or heed as the taijiya whispered softly, urgently, her brown eyes sweeping from where he had sunk to his knees in the mud to the shivering trees around them that seemed to hide a rising shadow of menacing hunger. “Kirara---do you sense them? There are demons approaching, and quickly.”

The neko growled in answer, sharp teeth flashing as the cat’s lips curled back in a warning snarl. Glowing red eyes became bloody as Sango slowly reached for her bundled armor of black silk, her fingers pulling away the simple yukata she wore with the ease of long practice as she slipped one garment for the other. Even with the icy rain numbing her fingers and weighting cloth with damp disdain, she was quickly armored in the skin-smoothing silk, its fabric sewn with thread made from demons defeated by the taiji of her lost village and proof against most attacks a demon could spawn.

Feeling more herself and armored as best she could, Sango picked up her giant boomerang with casual ease, flexing a wrist no longer weak or wounded. Her mouth set in grim determination as she unconsciously positioned herself in a guarded stance between the defenseless mercenary, lost and unaware, blank eyes wide and staring, mouth dropped as if in dazed shock, his black hair plastered to his skull by the rain that poured forth from the belly of the tumultuous sky. She knew not what ailed him, but knew he was caught up in something gods-touched.

Awareness shivered across her spine, and her fingers tightened on Hiraikotsu’s strap. Kirara’s growl was swallowed by the clash of thunder as she circled behind them, glaring into the darkness as the menacing aura of countless demons surrounded their position and closed in. The horse, forgotten and tethered, screamed with almost human terror and fell abruptly silent. Sango’s heart clenched in pity, her face grim. He had not deserved such an end. She tried to peer through the murky gloom, her vision obscured by slashing rain and startling bursts of jagged light as thunder clashed.

For a moment, everything paused with bated breath, and then they struck.

Wrenching her arm back, Sango swung. “Hiraikotsu!”

Kirara rowled as claws raked and demons screamed. Howling darkness swarmed over them in a unending mass of glowing-eyed monsters, drawn by the tainted Jewel shards and their ambient evil. Sango whirled the giant boomerang over her head, slashing through attacking wyrm and ogre before letting it fly to clear a devastating path through the howling menace. Drawing the slim katana at her side, she dodged under reaching three-fingered claws and aimed for the demon’s belly, laying it open and evading his downward plunge. A skull on bat’s wings dove for her unprotected back, but she spun in place, slashing through the papery membrane, tearing away a wing and sending it careening into the dirt. Kirara roared behind her, slashing with claw and sinking her fangs into the neck of her screaming foe. Sango braced for Hiraikotsu’s return, and ducked behind the boned boomerang’s long length as acid was shot at her from the left.

Awareness became reflex, aiming for one target and looking for the next. Thrust, and parry, slash and swing. Round and round, her muscles tightening and flexing as she swung boomerang and sword to devastating effect. The demons kept coming, and there was no end in sight. Sango fought on, and Kirara yowled her challenge as they circled around the mercenary, who was still caught up in a vision, protecting and shielding him from the youkai who would take the tainted shards from his body for their own.

*Gods help us, there are so many of them!* Her mind growled as she grimly hung on. The attacks doubled, and she fought past weary muscles and the slight pain of many small wounds, prepared to fight unto the death, when salvation erupted in the welcome bellow of a friend.

“WIND SCAR!”