FicWad

I do not own Inuyasha, or any other character that seems incredibly familiar to anime and manga fans. Sniffle. That would be Rumiko Takahashi. She rocks my figurative socks. Not my real ones though, cause I wear sandals in summer.
(When I wrote that, it was summer.)


Without further ado….

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Future Uncertainties
Chapter 2
Silver Spring
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“Are we there yet?”

“No, not yet.”

“Are we there yet?”

“No.”

“Are we there yet?”

“No, Shippo, we aren’t there yet,” sighed Kagome for what felt like the hundredth time, but was probably more like the thousandth.

“How ‘bout now?”

“No, Shippo, I’ll tell you when we get there.”

“Now?”

“No.”

“How about now? Are we there now?”

“No, Shippo, and for god’s sake stop asking before Inuyasha blows up!”

The child glanced at said Hanyou. His hands were drawn into fists and his fangs bared as he fought to control himself lest he get his face slammed into the dirt road by another one of Kagome’s hated ‘sit’ commands. The look on his face was enough to silence even the chatty little fox demon for a moment.

But only for a moment.

“Are we th…”

“SHIPPO, SHUT THE HELL UP BEFORE I THROW YOU OVER THE NEXT TALL THING I SEE!”

Shippo gasped and whimpered slightly. “Mean.”

“Oh, I’ll show you mean, you little—“

“Inuyasha!” snapped Kagome. Oh no, not again! “SIT!”

An extremely frustrated half demon felt his knees buckle as the enchanted rosary around his neck began to pull him towards the ground with an unbelievable force. As hard as he tried to stay standing, and he tried hard, he had only a second before his body was slammed against the dirt road. He didn’t fail to notice that the blow lacked the usual venom. Apparently it wasn’t beyond Kagome to find Shippo a bit annoying at times. Inuyasha just wished she would let him pound the little brat into the ground. That’d show him.

“Come along. If we make good time, we should be able to get to the next town before nightfall,” said Miroku, as Sango went over to help Inuyasha up, although he was on his feet again before she could reach him. Miroku was behind her in an instant, and the next thing anyone knew, Sango had pelted the monk with a stone, muttering about perverts and collecting heavy things for ammo. Miroku’s usual reddened check was replaced by a bruise on his forehead, although he still looked softly self-satisfied.

It was the story of their lives. Here they were, wandering the county side as they had so many times that Inuyasha and Kagome had both lost count, after yet another rumor of yet another shard. They had believed that Naraku had all but one piece of the jewel, until recently, when Kagome had begun to sense fragments all over. That, coupled with rumors of shards suddenly springing up all over was enough to force the exhausted group back into action.

There air around the four fighters was tense, all sharing a single thought. If the jewel shards were suddenly popping up, that meant Naraku had somehow lost them. If the rumors were true, what could have happened to free them from his grasp?

Everyone was on edge, though none would admit it. Instead each person was showing their nerves in their own way. Shippo was being more annoying than ever before, deliberately trying to drive Inuyasha to drink, although were he’d get the sake was beyond him. Kagome, while being overly sweet, was always ready to send Inuyasha to eat dirt. He, possibly as a result, was biting everyone heads clean off every chance he got. Miroku groped every girl he came across, which, come to think of it, might not have had anything to do with the stress he was under, while Sango had taken to pelting him with larger and larger items, often catching hard enough to make him black out and they’d need to either stop or put him on Kirara, which Inuyasha, always so annoyed with Kagome, refused to help them do. Sango occasionally worried that she might really hurt him one day and resolved to stop, only to be on the receiving end during one of his lecher moments and have all thoughts of mercy driven from her mind.

The journey continued in silence for a while, broken only by Inuyasha’s angry mumbling and Kagome’s sighs as she caught a bit involving her name. still, she ‘sat’ him twice more before night finally fell and the five, realizing that perhaps the town Miroku had mentioned was farther away than they had thought, decided to make camp.

As soon as the set up began, Sango and Miroku started fighting about sleeping arrangements, Shippo pulled Inuyasha’s ear, prompting him to attempt to beat the kitsune senseless, Kagome ‘sat’ Inuyasha once for the Shippo thing, and once more just for good measure, and the entire group ended up one gigantic argument, embittered by recent strains between the lot. Although none of them would stop yelling long enough to say it, they all knew one thing.

It was going to be a long trip.

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“INUYASHA! INUYASHA, WHERE ARE YOU!”

He sighed to himself but didn’t answer. After that night’s blow out, he didn’t feel much like talking to Kagome at the moment, or anyone else for that matter. Normally, it was he who had his temper so close to the surface, who burst at the slightest thing. Compared to the other three, Shippo not included, he looked like a tame little puppy. He wasn’t really any gruffer than usual, but the rest of them were practically devouring each other at every turn. He just wanted things to go back to normal. He didn’t think he could handle hanging around with a group full of people with tempers like his own.

“INUYASHA! COME HERE! YOU CANT SULK AROUND IN THE WOODS ALL NIGHT!”

Well he’d been managing all right for the last several hours. He didn’t see any reason to return to camp. He was much more comfortable up in the branches of the tall oak where no one could see him or bother him. The camp was too tense. One more minute in the presence of those raving lunatics and he knew he might do something bad, say, hurl one of them (or all of them) off a cliff. He would regret it later, but the quiet would be nice. He sighed again and leaned more heavily against the tree trunk. Nope. No way. He was staying right there.

“INUYASHA GET OVER HERE, IT’S DINNER TIME!”

Yeah right like he was going to fall for that one. Uh uh, she was not about to coax him down from that tree. He wasn’t coming down till he was good and ready!

“I’M GOING TO SAY IT INUYASHA!”

NO! He was up in a tree, for god sakes. That one was going to hurt. She couldn’t! She wouldn’t!

Hell yes she would!

He really didn’t want to do a face plant for the fifth time that day, so he stood and prepared to jump down the very long way to the ground. At least that way he would land on his feet.
“SIT!”

He never had a chance.


CRASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

God, did those damned beads suck!

The next thing Inuyasha knew, he found himself sprawled at the feet of a shocked looking Kagome, his whole body aching as though a giant hammer had been trying to grind him into the ground. Clearly it hadn’t occurred to her that he might be up high, that it would hurt him to use her word of subjugation. She hadn’t meant any harm by it.

That didn’t make him any less mad.

“DAMN IT KAGOME!” he shouted as loud as his voice would go with no air in his lungs.

“Oooo, sorry Inuyasha. I forgot to check the tree. I didn’t mean for you to fall that far.”

“Yeah right. You just wanted to play with the stupid thing for fun.” He said, gesturing to his necklace as he pulled himself up onto his hands and knees.

“What do you mean by that,” snapped Kagome, her voice rising as she defended herself. “I only ever use the rosary when I have to!”

“LIAR!” yelled Inuyasha right back, on his feet this time. “There’s no way in hell you needed it five times today, or four times yesterday, or thirteen times this week!”

“I…I…I didn’t…” Oh, yes she had. She knew there was nothing she could say to that. He had a point. She really didn’t want him to know it, but he had a point. She had been taking out her frustrations the only way she could without directly snapping at her friends, by snapping at the necklace instead. She tried hard to swallow her guilt. It didn’t want to go down.

“You did and you know it! You’ve been abusing that thing ever since we heard about shards of the jewel. Everyone is on edge and acting psycho and you’re taking it out on me. Just because I’m not human doesn’t mean that that doesn’t hurt!”

“Oh yeah! Well, maybe if you weren’t always in such a mood…”

“No, you don’t. No way I’m letting you turn this one around on me. This is all your fault!”

“MY FAULT?!”

“YES, YOU’RE FAULT!”

“Grrrrr,” growled Kagome. “Well you want to know where you can stick your blame?”

Apparently he didn’t. He had turned his back on her sometime during her growls, and was walking away in the opposite direction of camp, farther into the woods. She knew she ought to let him cool off, that she shouldn’t follow him, but she couldn’t help it. No way was he getting the last word. She could feel the tears welling behind her eyes, but before she let them out (which had the added bonus of seeming to make Inuyasha feel really guilty even when he hadn’t actually done anything) she had a few choice words for him of the cussing variety.

Kagome soon found herself jogging through the woods in an attempt to keep up with Inuyasha’s break neck pace, despite the fact that he seemed to be making no effort to lose her, confident that, if he wandered far enough, she would manage to lose herself without his help. She was determined not to let that happen. She broke into a run to catch up with him, only to lose sight of him completely. Feeling slightly panicked, mostly frustrated, she pelted through the woods were she had last seen his retreating back…

Only to run headlong into that same back a moment later.

“What did you go and stop short for! I almost knocked you…”

She froze mid hand gesture the moment she saw what she almost knocked him into. Directly before Inuyasha’s feet there appeared to be a spring, though it was unlike any spring Kagome had ever seen. The water didn’t seem to be water at all, but what she assumed was molten silver, though the cold spray coming from where the liquid met the bank felt like water to her. The spring flowed into a small lake, with a water fall right across the banks from herself and Inuyasha. It was that that he appeared to be staring at, and after a minute, she saw why. What she had taken to be a water fall appeared to be more some sort of water climb. Rather than falling over the cliff it flowed to, and obeying the law of gravity, this Spring seemed to have decided that it preferred the upper bank, as it was flowing from the lake up over the ridge 20 feet above it.

The hanyou in front of her was staring at it with a slightly open mouth. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Sure, he had heard about the Silver Spring, but he had never really believed it had existed. Who hadn’t heard of the ancient spring said to give anyone who drank from it amazing powers? He glanced behind him at Kagome. Judging by the confused look on her face, she was the answer to that question.

The pair of them gaped blankly at the rushing waters. It was Kagome who spoke first.

“What…what is that?”

“I think it’s the Silver Spring,” Inuyasha answered, his anger forgotten. “I’ve heard of it, but I never thought it was actually real. This is incredible!”

“Why?” asked Kagome. “What’s so incredible about this spring? I mean, its cool and all, but it isn’t that amazing.”

“That’s just ‘cause you have no idea what you’re looking at, Kagome.”

“Ok then, Mr. I-think-I-know-everything, what am I looking at?” said Kagome, her voice falsely sweet enough to make honey want to puke.

“This is the Silver Spring.”

“Yeah, smart one, I had gotten that. I meant what is so special about this stupid Silver Spring?”

“Are you kidding?” gaped Inuyasha, aghast. “I can’t believe you’ve never heard of the Silver Spring.”

“Well, I haven’t, so feel free to enlighten me.”

Inuyasha, missing the sarcasm completely, finally tore his eyes from the waters to look at her, swallow hard, and nod.

“Well, see, there’s this legend. They say that a young lord heard about the water once, a long time ago. He heard that if someone where to drink from the spring where the silver water flows, they would receive amazing powers, making them invincible. So, the lord searched for many years for this spring, depleting the resources of his kingdom completely. Eventually, because of war and no food production, see he had every subject searching non stop instead of growing things or hunting, his entire kingdom perished.”

“Wow,” said Kagome, disgusted and taken aback by such unbelievable selfishness.

“Yeah, tell me about it. What’s worse is he actually did find the Silver Spring, and drank from it, only to find that the legend was true.”

“And that’s worse because…?”

“Well, the guy was a self-centered asshole to begin with. Give a guy like that power, and he’ll go mad with it. And that’s exactly what happened. He started fighting every kingdom in his path, and taking over, not honorably, but with trickery and subterfuge. In all, he ended up destroying several kingdoms, eradicating a bunch of clans, and killing thousands of people, and any demons who tried to help, which, though few, were powerful sources of human-demon peace, without whom that peace collapsed.”

“Then what happened?” asked Kagome, so absorbed in the horror of the story that she forgot to be sarcastic or mad.

“The Lord, who was completely loony by then, began to believe he was invincible, so he started taking stupid risks. Eventually, some smart vassal challenged him to prove it.”

“And…?”

“And the Lord Lunatic accepted the challenge, brought the man into the mountains along with any one who rebelled against him to whom he wished to prove himself, and he threw himself off a cliff.”

“And…?” Kagome prodded impatiently.

“What do you mean and? And the guy went splat. He was invincible, as in unbeatable in battle, not immortal. In minutes he went from ruler of all he could see in any direction to an oversized pancake. Naturally, everyone was overjoyed. But there was a priestess who saw the danger of something like that happening again. She put a spell around this place in order to prevent anyone in search of power entering. In fact, if you are looking for the spring than it is impossible to find it. It only lets us through cause we had no idea about its existence and weren’t looking for it or power. We were just thinking about each other.”

Kagome felt a cold breeze stir around her, though oddly enough it didn’t lift her or Inuyasha’s hair or ruffle their clothes, and it seemed to go right through her and stay put somewhere in her stomach. “That’s so cool,” Kagome admired, but Inuyasha shook his head, looking at her oddly. She understood why. There was nothing at all cool about anything like that. That was awful, so why had she said that?

“No, it isn’t. See, that isn’t all the priestess did. She tried to take the power off the water completely, but she couldn’t. All she could manage was to make it so any power gained from the drinking of the silver water is temporary. That, and if the person who gets it uses the power in any way for personal gain, then they lose whatever they posses that is of the most value.”

“What, you mean like money?”

Inuyasha shrugged, giving her an appraising look. “It varies with each person. So does the power, come to think of it.”

Inuyasha broke off and glared suspiciously at the water as though expecting it to jump up and try to force itself down his throat. Kagome, however, was gazing longingly at it, as though under a spell.

“I wonder what it tastes like,” she mused. Inuyasha’s glared snapped to her immediately.

“What do you mean? You aren’t considering drinking from it are you?”

“And why not?” Although she had heard the words come from her, she couldn’t believe she had said them. Something was very wrong, and she knew it. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to say anything about it,

“I don’t believe it, you are thinking about it. Kagome, what has gotten into you? You were never power hungry before.”

“Hey,” said Kagome defensively, “I just think it would be nice to be able to protect myself is all. Me and my friends. What about you? You wanted to become full demon so you could be more powerful!”

“I wanted the jewel to increase my own power. You want to steal some power from a stupid spring. It isn’t the same. Besides, it’s too risky, you can lose the most valuable thing you have.”

“I wonder what it is I would lose.”

“Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? The most valuable thing you have is the Sacred Jewel, or at least your fragments of it. You wouldn’t risk losing those, would you?”

“Of course not!” Kagome exclaimed, but Inuyasha didn’t look relieved, and for good reason, as the next second Kagome added “I wouldn’t use my powers for personal gain.”

“Kagome, you can’t be serious!”

Kagome hadn’t been when she had mentioned the idea, but the more she defended the theory in her head and to Inuyasha, the more it began to appeal to her, and she especially didn’t like to see Inuyasha, who only wanted the jewel for the same reason, being all high and mighty, telling her it was a bad idea. Where did he come off thinking he knew better than she did?

“And what if I am serious?” Kagome challenged him. Inuyasha looked genuinely shocked.

“Kagome, you can’t mean it.”

“I can if I want to!” Kagome retorted. The hanyou boy gaped at her. He didn’t even look angry, merely stunned.

Kagome knew something was wrong. These things she was saying weren’t what she was really thinking. She could feel the voice that was talking and the one inside her head beginning to separate. She realized with a thrill of terror that she wasn’t in control of her body or voice anymore.

“What’s happened to you?” he asked her quietly. “The Kagome I know would never risk the jewel and all the lives it could take in the wrong hands just to gain herself a bit of temporary power.”

“Well, maybe if I had the power I would be able to protect those people.”

“I can protect them Kagome, and I can protect you to. I always protect you, and so does Sango, and Miroku, and even Kirara and Shippo.”

“Well, did you ever think,” snapped Kagome viciously, unsure of why she was getting so angry at Inuyasha, when he truly wasn’t saying anything untrue, or even anything she didn’t know, deep down. “Did you think that maybe I want to be able to protect myself for once?”

“Kagome, I always protect you, no matter what.”

“Oh, well, I’m so sorry to burden you, Inuyasha!”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that, just like you know that this is a terrible idea!”

“Oh, of course, I had forgotten that all my ideas are terrible ones to you, aren’t they?” screeched Kagome, close to tears. Inuyasha was completely nonplussed, she could see it, and she took some sense of cruel satisfaction from the unease on his face, although she hadn’t the faintest clue why. Her mind was screaming at her to shut up, to walk, no run, as far away from the spring as she could get, but another part wouldn’t allow it. That part simply wanted the pleasure of ripping Inuyasha a new one for no real reason, of watching him scrounge for a way to stop her, and that part wanted to drink that water and maybe use her power on her favorite hanyou, her friend who she loved, just to show him up. That part of her was unfamiliar. The wasn’t her at all, she knew it, but she couldn’t seem to stop.

“I never said that!” Inuyasha argued desperately. “This isn’t you, Kagome!”

“Ha, as if you know me!” screamed Kagome in a manner so unlike her own, and the part of her being crushed under the cruelties weight recognized the presence as it revealed itself for a moment. Naraku was in her head, and it was him who was doing the talking now. He was losing power fast, but for know it had her completely, and she suddenly feared that it would hurt Inuyasha. She knew in that moment what Naraku planned to do with her, and she knew it was going to be bad.

“You aren’t Kagome!” yelled Inuyasha, having seen the flash of something evil behind his friends eyes, and the part of Kagome that was truly her felt a rush of gratitude toward him for recognizing that. “Go away and leave her alone.”

Kagome laughed a cold, shrill laugh. “I don’t think so, hanyou scum,” said her voice icily. “You know I honestly didn’t think you’d get it. I never pegged you as brilliant, you know. I must say I am pleasantly surprised. This is much more fun.”

“LEAVE KAGOME ALONE!” shouted Inuyasha, but the thing inside her only laughed again.

“Not just yet. First, I think I’ll take our girl for a little swim!”

With that, Naraku used the last of his power over her to plunge Kagome sideways into the freezing waters of the Silver Spring. Kagome could hear Inuyasha’s cry of “NO!” but could do nothing to respond. Before she regained control of her body, Naraku threw her down under the waters silver depths, opened her mouth, and took a huge gulp of the silver liquid. The second it touched her throat, Kagome knew something horrible had happened. The last she heard of Naraku was a dark chuckle inside her head, and then silence.

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Well here it is. Finally. Chapter 2 of Future Uncertainties. I wasn’t sure where to go with it, so I simply sat and started writing for no reason, and came up with this. I hope you like it. Please review. Love to hear your thoughts.