Through The Well

Chapter Ten





Although this Koga was still pretty fast on his feet, he wasn't fast enough to lose Inuyasha. He kept the wolf in his sights as they raced through the trees back toward the village. Luckily, the brats were still out of sight when they hit the village, so Inuyasha had no problem racing straight through the middle of it without taking any unnecessary detours.



He dodged the villagers going about their daily business by leaping onto the roofs and running nimbly across them, hopping from one to the next and ignoring the people who pointed or called out to him. Almost as quickly as they'd entered the village, they'd come out the other side and headed back into the trees.



Instead of returning to ground level, the hanyou opted for running along the branches of the trees above Koga with a surefootedness borne of spending the formative years of his life escaping any youkai looking to make a meal out of a hapless child.



Those memories were old and easily ignored when he had something to focus on, like the vulnerable back of a certain wolf sprinting below him. He waited until Koga had broken through the undergrowth into a small clearing, and then launched himself from his current branch.



He hit his target dead center and the two of them went down in a rolling tangle of limbs. Inuyasha managed to keep his grip on Koga's back until he could pin the wolf flat on his stomach and rub his face deep into the mud and grass, grinning evilly the entire time. He didn't care what anyone said; revenge was sweet, he thought in satisfaction.



He only got to enjoy it for a few moments, however, before Koga managed to get the leverage to buck him off. He tumbled to the side, and a well-aimed kick to the shoulder knocked him properly off balance. While Koga swore under his breath and pulled bit of grass out of his mouth, Inuyasha righted himself and absently brushed the foot-shaped patch of dirt off his shoulder.



The blow hadn't hurt at all; it had glanced off him, if anything, but even then, it hadn't even been hard enough to bruise. The Koga he knew wouldn't have held back that much, and he wouldn't have thought anything of it. He gave as good as he got. But did this mean he was going to have to pull his punches now? Damn it, there were so many things different in this world.



"I don't know how I'm going to keep all this shit straight in my head," he muttered.



Koga looked up from where he sat across the clearing. "I can't be that different, can it?"



"You'd be surprised," the hanyou sighed. "Even this is a bit weird for me."



"What?"



"This." Inuyasha gestured between the two of them. "We're talking and there's no fighting. That sort of thing only happened when we were teamed up to fight Naraku back in my world. We didn't get along." Inuyasha paused. That gave him an entirely new thought. "Hey... how did you meet the other me?"



Koga blinked. "How we met?" The wolf scratched his chin. "Let's see... it's gotta be at least a hundred years ago by now. You expect me to remember that far back?"



"A hundred years?" Inuyasha gaped. "The other me put up with you for a hundred years?"



Koga picked up a small rock and threw it at him, which Inuyasha easily dodged. "That's what I should be saying," he mock-growled. "Now shut up and lemme remember... Oh, right, I guess it was after that big flock of Birds of Paradise came after me..."



Inuyasha watched as Koga's blue eyes became a little distant and hazy with memories as he started recounting the tale and, in spite of their usual antagonistic attitude toward each other that he hadn't yet gotten over, he found himself sitting quietly and listening as the story unfolded.

~*~