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KURAMA: Where are my garments?

Done at three.

KURAMA: What?

I sent them out.

KURAMA: To where?

A laundry service. I thought you'd want them washed before you took them back.

KURAMA: No! I was- washed?

Washed.

KURAMA: As in, purified from the touch of your demented hands?

Exactly. But with fabric softener.

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There was something uncanny in those eyes. No fear, no malice... They were completely empty.

"What did you say?" Kagura warned.

The human only choked and she reluctantly relaxed her grip enough for his toes to graze the earth. There was a sound of footsteps behind her. Kagura raised her fan and sent another volley. The wolf prince cursed and sprawled into a pair of fangs.

"I ... said ..."

Your world's going to end.

Kagura felt a new darkness in her heart. Could this human see the future?

"... you're ..."

Somewhere off to the left, her serpent puppets were entertaining Inuyasha and the firecat. Sango and Miroku were useless except in brief bursts when the kitsune could light their way. And speaking of useless... The girl in the middle, with blind and searching eyes, and a bright collection of jewel shards around her neck. The wind sorceress made a slashing motion with her hand, and the snake demons eased up on the two human fighters to focus on the Kagome and her prize.

There was a sliver of a chance that Naraku would forgive her for losing three jewel shards, even under these circumstances, but if she slew one of his precious toys before he'd finished playing?

"... going to ..."

Kagura's thoughts stopped short as the human struggling against her grip gave a twist.

"... leave Kagome alone!" he finished.

The next thing Kagura knew, he'd twisted half out of her grasp and dropped the quiver. The elemental was fingering the soft spot on her face before the arrows spilled into the grass.

A wind volley shoved him back, "That was it?" she demanded of the gasping human. "That was what you were building up to? That was your master plan?" she shrugged mockingly as he rubbed his throat with one hand. "Wolf boy! Your taste in associates has gone sour!"

The human looked up. "Oh give me a break; I've never hit a girl before."

The wolf boy looked away from his scaly opponent long enough to grunt something that probably had to do with this foolish human's parentage or personal habits.

"I hope you savored the experience," Kagura beckoned, and the smallest serpent youkai turned its crushed skull toward the sprawling stranger. "It will be one of your last!"

I have to finish this, she thought with as much firmness as she could stand. Get what I came for and get out. Another of her demon minions lunged past Inuyasha and there was a high-pitched, female scream.

"Kagome!"

Before he can make Kanna see for him again!

Something gave a gleam.

The wind sorceress paused. Something was glinting from between the fingers at the prophet's throat, something that Kagura recognized very well.

Power.

The human looked up, fingers closing around the pulsing amulet. He hadn't been protecting his half-crushed neck; he'd been trying to hide it from her.

Power had been the point of all this.

"Don't..." the human managed as the wind sorceress bore down on him like a storm toward the harbor. "Don't take it from me..."

His other hand closed around the necklace, as if flesh and bone could hide its pulsing point from her view. Unknown talisman, shard of the Shikon, alliance with a Demon Lord; it was all about power.

And only power could set her free.

Whatever this feeling is, it's new. Kagura mused as she struck the human across the face and pried his hands away from his neck. And if I've never seen it before, then perhaps Naraku hasn't either...

"Don't!"

Kagura's fist closed around the clear stone.

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He could have sworn he'd covered it. Hadn't moved his attention for a second. Like he gave a fuck what the stupid human was talking about with Kagura!

But even so, one of the wind demon's slithering pawns shot past him, filling his world with her scream.

He remembered the sting of venom on his wrists. Healed and gone already, but to a human...

"Kagome!"

Tetsusaiga swung out and down, slow as a razor through a wound. Why wouldn't the damned thing just move? From the corner of his eye he could see her face, even slower than he was, eyes searching uselessly in the dark. No way in hell she'd make it out of the way...

The blade sheared the shriveled scales, parted dead flesh, and hit bone.

There was a wet thud as the beast's head hit the grass and its broken tail convulsed. Only a minute before Kagura had it superglued and back in their hair again. Inuyasha couldn't let his eyes off of it for a second, not a heartbeat, not a-

His knees hit the ground as he touched her shoulder with one hand.

"Kagome?"

Somewhere behind him, something spoke, "...take it from me!"

"Kagome are you all-" she began to nod, Shippo struggling in her death grip. "-right? You stupid girl! You should be more-"

The world erupted somewhere behind his ears, breaking loose in fire and screams.

Fire rat. Made of the fire rat.

Inuyasha ducked forward, deathly glad that Kagome hadn't been carrying anything sharp, though Shippo squirmed liked a panicked rat and probably tried to bite him more than once.

The flames seethed and swirled, filling the clearing, his ears, his tight-shut eyes as it caught on the evil air. Inuyasha wondered blankly if fire rat fur could protect them from an unholy storm of demon wind and unknown flames.

Both died down.

Inuyasha lifted his head in time to hear a clear, slightly scolding voice:

"I did warn you..."

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Sango lifted her head.

Why wasn't I burned? It doesn't make any - damn it! Sango jumped back, raising her blade in defense against the blue-scaled apparition hovering not three feet from her face. A split second passed, and she realized with an unsettling relief that it wasn't moving.

"What the hell was that?" Kouga's voice pierced her concentration. "No matter," he growled. "Kagura's blood is owed for my fallen comrades!"

From the corner of her eye, Sango could just make out the wolf demon's silhouette. "Shippo!" she insisted. "Light, Shippo, we need light."

"Fox fire!"

On her right, Miroku finally pushed free of his oddly vacant blue-scaled attacker and crushed its neck with his staff.

It didn't even flinch! /Sango realized sickly, then pulled in a breath, /They can't all attack at once! Kagura controls them like puppets, and cannot let her hands sit idle.

The wind flared up again almost as suddenly as it had gone, in time to send Kouga flying. Sango parried the blue serpent's half-controlled strike as the light died down again.

"Did you think that these petty flame tricks could hold me for long, human?" Kagura's snarl seethed into the thick air.

There was a struggled cry that could only have come from-

"Hojo!" cried Kagome.

"What the fuck are you worried about h- Shit!"

There was a serpentine hiss and the sound of steel on air on flesh. There was a sickening squish and the dog demon's smirking grunt.

"I can bring them back more quickly than you can rip them apart. You will tire; I will not!"

"Fox fire!"

Sango's eyes cleared just as Inuyasha's freshly-decapitated snake demon re-formed and reared back, moving rapidly toward where Kagura had pinned Hojo to the ground. The wind sorceress' hair and clothes were badly singed, but the blades of her fan fluttered back and forth, pulling the serpents in time with the unholy air as Shippo's flash began to fade.

"If I can't take the talisman from you, then I'll take it from my minion's belly!"

"Guys!" came a high-pitched male yell.

Don't be a fool, Hojo-san! Just run!

"Fox fire!"

Sango held in a gasp. Hojo had managed to get upright. The human's mouth worked noiselessly as the serpent youkai reared back to strike. Hojo seemed to cast his eyes about for something and finally snatched up a clublike branch from the ground. He took a swing and missed pitifully.

There was an odd silence on her left as the dog demon shifted his feet.

"Do I-"

The monk sighed. "Yes, Inuyasha, you have to."

The dog demon sighed loudly, hefted Tetsusaiga and headed off.

Kagura's fan clicked and a second serpent moved to head him off.

Something crystallized in Sango's mind.

"Miroku, the wind tunnel!"

"But Sango," Shippo shrilled the question that she could see in the monk's face. "She's Naraku's incarnation! She'll have brought the poisonous insects!"

Kagura's head jerked in their direction for half a second.

"Just trust me," she insisted at Miroku. "Do it!"

Shippo lit another flare.

Kouga struggled dazedly to his feet.

Inuyasha ducked a strike from the serpent.

Kagura's eyes darkened. The monk unsealed the air rip, and one unnatural storm became two. Sango felt her breath catch, half-ready to be wrong. She looked to Miroku. What if...

The wind sorceress gave an angry cry and cast two of the serpent youkai between herself and the portal into nothing, their lifeless tails thrashing at the air as they were sucked inside.

Shippo squeaked and the darkness closed in. "Careful!" Miroku lashed the rosary around his palm. "Shippo!"

The kitsune gave an exhausted whimper, "I can't..."

"But if I can't see, I might pull one of you into the wind tunnel!"

"Shippo..." Kagome's whisper slipped away in the dark.

"Fox... Fox fire!"

Another blast, weak, but enough to see by. Enough to see Kagura's two remaining allies dropping numbly to the grass, and enough to see a feather the size of a lady's mare, with a single rider, slipping away into the starless night.

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The monk!

Kagura cursed the monk, cursed Naraku for making his enemies so powerful.

I should have known he would try this. The blasted fool always tries.

The beads were loosening on his outstretched hand. Kagura cast her eyes to the boy with the fire stone, the girl with the jewel shards... She had to leave with something of power!

Power had been the point. The power of the Shikon jewel was what had enabled Naraku to create incarnations, to kill or reabsorb them at will. It was his power that kept her heart in his hand.

...that allowed him to choose the night of his monthly regeneration.

It was why she'd found this nest of serpent youkai, guided their violence in stolen moments when Kanna's attention was elsewhere. It was the reason for the timing, how she'd waited for the rumors to boil, to convince someone with jewel shards that this was the place to get more, and to stay until Naraku's monthly regeneration left her free to move. The snake demons hadn't been empty enough for her to manipulate completely, but their near-mindlessness had left her plenty of room to make "suggestions."

Like the perfect place for an ambush. Like the perfect way to lure a party of hunters.

...like the use of three jewel shards, stolen from Naraku at the beginning of his weak time.

Kagura forced her mind to calm. ...and forced two of the blasted worms in between her and the air chasm. There was only one power she needed now.

Escape!

This plan had failed, but there would be others.

Kagura looked over the edge of her feather as the fox-child lit the area again. The strange human was dusting himself off, looking around helplessly.

My world's going to end...

And why should that thought give her hope?

Naraku is the rotten core of my world, she thought coldly. If that is this doomsayer's end, then I welcome it.

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KURAMA: Actually, yes, I was going to have my boxers laundered before wearing them again.

Ha ha! I guessed right! Now what do you say?

KURAMA: Do not tempt me.

C'mon!

KURAMA: Very well. "Thank you."

You are welcome.

KURAMA: . . .

Do I get a kiss?

KURAMA: No!