Adult-FanFiction.org : Inuyasha / Yashahime

A Twist in the Myth
By : Dunkelgelb
Category: InuYasha Crossovers > General
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Disclaimer: See full disclaimer in Chapter 1
Chapter List
- 15
- 16
- 17
A Twist in the Myth
Chapter 16: Hanyou Ascension – pt. 1

Chapter summary: Sesshomaru transports InuYasha back to the village of Hideki Saito in the hope that the healer there can treat the hanyou warrior’s envenomation by the oni Kuno’s fangs. The healer proves unable to deal with such powerful, exotic venom, and the flea demon Myoga arrives to provide his unique, blood-sucking assistance.
~~~~

(Soundtrack: Avantasia – Dying for an Angel)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd98tDYlPOk
            After killing the oni Kuno with InuYasha’s help, Sesshomaru flew himself, InuYasha, and the village lord Hideki Saito away from the mountain cave in which Kuno had made his den, returning to Saito’s village at the foot of the forested mountain. During the fighting, Kuno had bitten InuYasha and infused him with his oni venom, for the purpose of transforming the hanyou warrior into a monstrous oni like himself. Instead of becoming an oni out of hand, after being separated from Tetsuseiga, InuYasha’s body entered its full demon form, allowing InuYasha to resist Kuno’s venom and giving him enough power to fight the oni hulk openly without his sword. Now, InuYasha and Tetsuseiga were reunited, and with InuYasha’s demon blood sealed, Kuno’s venom was once again free to work its effect. The result: InuYasha would either become oni or he would die.
            For InuYasha’s sake, time was of the essence, so Sesshomaru used his daiyoukai magic to transform himself, InuYasha, and Saito into a levitating sphere of bright, glowing light. Able to fly in such a form, they covered the two or three miles of mountain forest between Kuno’s den and Saito’s village in around fifteen seconds. This translated to a flight speed of more than 500 miles per hour. Ahead of them, Shippo flew toward Saito’s village in his Fire-Fox form, carrying Kagome on his back as well as Yume and Jun, Saito’s twin daughters whom Kagome, Sesshomaru, and InuYasha had rescued from Kuno.
            Shippo flew much more slowly than Sesshomaru, in consideration for his passengers’ safety, and so Sesshomaru reached Saito’s village first, giving Shippo a wide berth of a couple hundred yards so as not to zip right by him and frighten him or the women on his back. In perfect control of his speed and direction, the transformed daiyoukai guided himself down to the main street of Saito’s village and decelerated from a speed of 500+ miles per hour to a complete stop in the space of less than a second. The resulting G-force would have been instantly, gruesomely fatal had Sesshomaru not morphed his body and the bodies of InuYasha and Saito into a single mass of demonic energy that did not conform to the laws of ordinary physics.
            The sight of Sesshomaru in his glowing sphere form, hurtling toward them at such high speed, gave the villagers in the streets below quite a fright, sending many of them diving for cover behind whatever reasonably solid objects they could find. Upon touching down to the ground, Sesshomaru reverted himself and his passengers to ordinary corporeal form. The moment he did so, Saito stumbled away from him and fell to his knees in the dirt, fully emptying the contents of his stomach out his mouth with a long retch and several rasping breaths.
            InuYasha shook and trembled, groaning in Sesshomaru’s arms, simultaneously dealing with the pain of Kuno’s venom in his blood and the sensation of his own stomach nearly turning inside out. Sesshomaru realized his mistake immediately, having not considered the effect that ‘glowing sphere travel’ would have on anyone but himself. “I…apologize for your discomfort,” he said to Saito and InuYasha at once, though InuYasha was less than fully conscious and perhaps unable to hear. “I should have warned you to how I intended to transport us.”
            “Oh…that, that is quite all right,” Saito forgave Sesshomaru immediately, coughing hard to clear his throat and wiping his mouth on one of the vambraces of his red armor. Standing up, he looked at Sesshomaru directly. “The healer, I will take you to him now. Please, follow me.”
            A few minutes later, Shippo reached the skies over Saito’s village. Since all the various houses and other buildings in it looked generally alike from above, the fox demon identified Saito’s by the unmistakable figures of Ah-Un and Jaken waiting outside in front of it. He descended gently and landed near Sesshomaru’s two-headed dragon and imp-like vassal, then crouched to let Kagome, Yume, and Jun dismount. Saito’s twin daughters hurried inside the house and from their place outside, Shippo and Kagome immediately heard the cries of joyful reunion: Keiko’s joy at seeing her daughters again and Yume and Jun’s joy of returning home to their mother alive. Shippo reverted to his humanoid form and followed Kagome inside, greeted by the other members of InuYasha and Sesshomaru’s respective packs.
            “Kagome!” Miroku exclaimed, approaching the miko from the future along with the others. “You’re safe! We heard the fighting from here. We heard…and felt InuYasha go full demon, so we sent Shippo to find out what was going on. Please, tell us what happened.”
            “The oni that attacked this village, his name is…or was Kuno,” Kagome explained, correcting herself mid-sentence to account for Kuno’s recent, grisly end. “We arrived in time. Sesshomaru and InuYasha killed Kuno before he could do anything more to Yume or Jun, Saito and Keiko’s daughters here. But…something’s happened to InuYasha. Kuno bit him.”
            Sango’s expression, generally pleased from seeing Saito and Keiko’s daughters returned to their home safely, sobered abruptly. Given her education in the study of the various species of demon that inhabited 16^th-century Japan, she immediately recognized the significance and the danger of an oni’s bite. InuYasha would either die, or become the same kind of beast that had bitten him. “Oh, no…oh, no!” she hushed. “Where is InuYasha now?”
            “Sesshomaru and Saito are taking him to the village’s healer,” Kagome said to Sango. “Come on, let’s go find them!”
            Kagome turned and left Saito’s house as quickly as she had arrived, the rest of the pack moving to follow. At this point, Keiko, Yume, and Jun had been locked in conversation with one another; Yume and Jun were describing their terrifying ordeal being in Kuno’s captivity when Keiko noticed Kagome and the others all leaving at once. Looking among them, she realized that while her daughters had returned, her husband, Sesshomaru, and InuYasha, Sesshomaru and InuYasha being the two perhaps most directly responsible for her daughters’ rescue, had not. Beginning to worry again, Keiko hushed her daughters with a polite, yet firm wave of a hand and followed after Kagome and her friends. “Kagome-sama?” she called, stepping out the front door of her house and into the street. “Where are you going?”
            In her hurry, Kagome was already out of earshot by this point, so Shizu stopped and turned around in order to speak to Keiko. “It sounds like InuYasha’s been hurt somehow,” she explained. “I’m not sure what’s going on, exactly. Maybe we should all go together?”
            “Yes, good idea,” Keiko agreed with Shiori’s mother. “Yume, Jun! Come with me, please!”
            The village healer’s house sat about a hundred yards down the village’s central street from Saito and Keiko’s house. With Sesshomaru carrying InuYasha, he and Saito reached it some minutes before Shippo arrived with Kagome, Yume, and Jun riding on his Fire-Fox back. Inside, the village healer, an older, grey-haired gentleman perhaps 60 years of age, tended to several people who had been injured when Kuno attacked the village earlier in the day. Saito entered the house and his ornately-armored form immediately caught the attention of everyone inside.
            “Saito-sama!” the healer greeted with a relieved smile as he finished tying a bandage over the arm of a teenage boy who had suffered a burn from one of the various fires that Kuno had set during his attack. Once he finished bandaging the boy, he stood up and approached Saito to make his respect to his village lord directly. “You’ve returned! Thank God. I take it you were successful? How are your girls?”
            “Hello, Keiji,” Saito greeted back, addressing the village healer by given name. “My girls are fine, thank you. But there isn’t time to talk. Right now, I have…an unusual patient for you.” The village lord looked over a shoulder and stepped out of the doorway, gesturing for Sesshomaru to bring InuYasha into the healer’s house. As Sesshomaru entered, Keiji’s breath and the collective breaths of all his patients left them, and Keiji shrank from him and Saito.
            On his own, Sesshomaru was an intimidating figure, his seven-foot height allowing him to tower over the average human of the region and period. He was tall enough that he had to duck his head in order to fit through the front door of Keiji’s house and ad hoc hospital. Further, the immaculate white silk his clothes were cut from, his polished armor cuirass, twin swords, silvery mane, facial markings, and golden eyes told Keiji and his patients that he was not any ordinary demon, but one of nobility and extreme power.
            Keiji then looked to InuYasha as Sesshomaru held him in his arms and noted the hanyou warrior’s similarity in appearance to the exotic demon lord. They appeared to be youkai of generally the same species, perhaps even related to each other. “Keiji, this is Lord Sesshomaru and his brother, InuYasha,” Saito said, introducing his village healer to the two silver-haired dog demons beside him. “They helped me rescue my daughters from the oni. They killed him outright, and now our village is safe.”
            “Goodness,” Keiji hushed, stepping forward to approach Saito again, satisfied that Sesshomaru and InuYasha were not a threat by the fact that it was his own village lord making the introduction. “I’d heard rumors that a group of demons had come by and actually volunteered to help us. I would have gone to see for myself, but I’ve been busy all day with the injured here.”
            “The people you have here now,” Saito began, looking among the dozen or so men and women that Keiji had been treating. “Are they well enough to move?”
            “Yes, I think so,” Keiji replied. “Fortunately, no one suffered any truly serious injuries today. I was just finishing up now.”
            “Good,” Saito approved. “Send everyone home, or if their homes were damaged during the oni’s attack, send them to stay with a friend for the time being. Starting right now, I want you to give your full attention and the full range of your skills and talents to InuYasha here.”
            “Yes, my lord,” Keiji obeyed. Quickly, the healer shepherded his patients out of the house, then approached the obviously infirmed InuYasha as Sesshomaru held him and began to make a cursory examination.
            “He’s been bitten, by the oni,” Sesshomaru said to Keiji, to set the healer on the right path. “Look to his right shoulder.”
            Indeed, Keiji found InuYasha’s right shoulder to be hideously perforated by Kuno’s fangs, as Sesshomaru indicated. “Kami…what teeth that beast had!” he noted with morbid awe. Despite all the blood that had soaked into InuYasha’s clothes, a subtle contrast given the Fire-Rat cloth’s red color, Keiji found no other obvious wounds. He then moved away from Sesshomaru and InuYasha to begin gathering his medicines and supplies most relevant to an envenomation, gesturing to a clean, white futon vacated by one of his recent patients. “Please, Lord…Sesshomaru, was it? Lay InuYasha down over there.”
            Kagome and the rest of the pack soon arrived at Keiji’s house. Without Saito to guide them there, they found their way by Kagome’s extrasensory ability to divine Sesshomaru’s distinctive demonic aura. Worried for both Sesshomaru and InuYasha at once, Rin ran inside ahead of everyone else, followed by Kagome, Miroku, and Sango. Keiji’s house was relatively small, so the others decided to stay outside so as not to crowd the interior.
            “InuYasha!” Rin cried out as she spotted the hanyou warrior laying upon a futon on the floor as Keiji and Sesshomaru tended to him. The amount of blood covering his clothes was especially concerning to her, regardless that it was actually Kuno’s blood, not his own. “Oh, InuYasha, what’s happened to you?” She went to InuYasha’s side next to Sesshomaru and he opened his eyes to give her a pained smile.
            “Hey, Rin…” InuYasha spoke weakly. “Had a fight with that oni. Ugh…he got me pretty good…”
            Kagome, Miroku, and Sango each took special notice of the way Rin acted toward InuYasha. In Rin, they saw more than just ordinary, friendly concern for InuYasha, but thinly-restrained terror from the thought that he might not survive. They had to ask themselves: was she in love with him? Such fear of loss could only stem from love.
            “Lord Sesshomaru?” Keiji asked hesitantly to the daiyoukai across from him, glancing between him and Rin. “InuYasha’s haori is in the way. Would you help me remove it?”
            “Very well,” Sesshomaru nodded to Saito’s healer. He then looked over a shoulder at Rin as she knelt behind him. “Rin. Give us some room,” he instructed.
            Kagome stepped forward and bent down to grasp one of Rin’s upper arms, gently pulling the younger woman to her feet and urging her to move away from Sesshomaru and Keiji. The daiyoukai lord and Saito’s village healer then unfastened InuYasha’s haori and the kosode beneath, easing him into a supported sitting position to slip the bloodstained garments off his shoulders and down his arms. InuYasha’s blood and Kuno’s venom had clotted into a sticky, red-and-green mess that cemented the hanyou warrior’s haori and kosode to the hideous puncture wounds the oni hulk’s fangs had made in his shoulder. Despite his stoic nature, Sesshomaru found himself wincing as he peeled the layers of clothing away, slowing tearing the puncture wounds back open and causing InuYasha to give up a groan of pain.
            Sesshomaru lay InuYasha back down and Keiji began to examine his bite wounds. “There’s still so much venom in these punctures – we need to remove as much as we can,” Keiji said. He looked to Sesshomaru. “My lord, this venom is likely toxic to me, regardless of whether I actually ingest it. A demon of your class must have far greater resistance. Would you…?”
            Dutifully, Sesshomaru agreed. While Kagome, Miroku, Sango, Rin, and Saito looked on, the daiyoukai lowered his mouth to the two oozing holes in InuYasha’s shoulder and sealed his lips around one of them, drawing deeply and filling his mouth with a mixture of the inu hanyou’s blood and Kuno’s venom. He scowled at the taste and Keiji presented a wooden cup to him. “Here, spit into this.”
            Sesshomaru purged the contents of his mouth into Keiji’s wooden cup, then repeated the process for InuYasha’s other wound, siphoning what venom he could and transferring it to the cup. Keiji then took the cup to a table along one of his house’s walls, setting it down and opening a series of ceramic bottles to begin combining samples of their contents with samples of the blood/venom mixture, observing the reactions with each.
            For her own part, with her knowledge of her time’s medicine, Kagome regarded Keiji’s work – apothecarial alchemy – with interest, but skepticism as well. Having Sesshomaru suck out whatever venom he could was a good start, but she knew that the only real solution to an envenomation of any kind was an antivenin. Unfortunately, she also knew that the only way to make such antivenin was to inject some kind of test animal with the venom to be counteracted, then harvest its blood and isolate the antibodies within. That required expertise, specialized equipment, and time that they simply didn’t have, so Kagome forced herself to stay quiet and let Keiji do whatever he could.
            Sesshomaru studied Keiji’s work with interest, as well. “What are you doing?” he asked to the village healer.
            “These bottles contain herbal distillates I’ve made,” Keiji said to Sesshomaru. “Certain herbs that grow around here have useful anti-venom properties. Some work well against snake venom, others work well against spider venom. Unfortunately, this is the first case of oni venom I’ve seen. I’m testing what I have against it to find out what to use.”
            After a few minutes of experimentation, Keiji settled on one particular herbal mixture of his, dissolving it into clean water for InuYasha to drink. He transferred a proper amount of it to another wooden cup and, holding the cup carefully, he moved from his work table back to InuYasha’s side. “Sit him up, please,” Keiji instructed to Sesshomaru.
            Sesshomaru lifted InuYasha’s upper body off the futon with one hand, opening his mouth with the other, and Keiji poured his herbal mixture in. InuYasha swallowed with some difficulty, as Kuno’s venom was causing him partial paralysis in his throat. Sesshomaru then lay him back down. “What now?” the daiyoukai asked.
            “Now, my lord, we wait,” Keiji answered. “The effect of this herb is not immediate. It must first be absorbed into the blood through the digestive tract. We will need to monitor its effect in the coming hours and administer more, as necessary.” The village healer looked from Sesshomaru to Kagome, Rin, Miroku, and Sango as they stood nearby. “In the meantime, I will need more of the herb in order to make more medicine,” he said to them. “Would you go and get some for me? It grows in large amounts in the meadows near here, so it will be easy to find.”
            “Yes, certainly,” Kagome affirmed on behalf of herself and her friends. “What does it look like?”
            Keiji reached for an unground, uncut herb on his work table, an example of the kind he needed for InuYasha. He offered it to Kagome and she took it from him, studying it closely. It was leafy green in overall color, except for the distinctive light blue tips of its leaves. “Yes, this shouldn’t be a problem,” Kagome agreed. The miko from the future turned to Rin. “Rin, would you like to help us look?”
            Rin looked at Kagome, then to InuYasha as he lay incapacitated on Keiji’s futon. She clearly hesitated to leave him, leading Kagome to add: “InuYasha will be fine while we’re gone. Sesshomaru and Keiji will be here with him. This is all right with you, isn’t it, Sesshomaru?”
            Sesshomaru nodded his consent, trusting Rin in the company of Kagome, Miroku, and Sango, InuYasha’s friends and, in the case of Kagome and Sango, InuYasha’s lovers. Kagome then led Rin outside, followed by Miroku, Sango, and Saito. Keiko greeted Saito as he exited Keiji’s house, happy to see her husband unharmed after his mission to rescue their daughters. Yume and Jun greeted Saito as well, their presence confirming to him that Kagome and Shippo had delivered them home safely.
            Shippo, Shizu, Shiori, and Kirara in her housecat form approached Kagome, Rin, Miroku, and Sango as the latter four stepped outside Keiji’s house. With Jaken and Ah-Un standing nearby, the entire pack, minus InuYasha and Sesshomaru, was reconvened. “How is he?” Shippo asked urgently to Kagome, referring to InuYasha.
            A worrisome expression crossed Kagome’s face and she looked back behind her, watching Sesshomaru and Keiji tend to InuYasha through the open doorway of Keiji’s house. She looked back to Shippo. “It’s too soon to know, yet,” she said. “Keiji, the healer here, is giving InuYasha a liquified herb to counteract the oni venom. Right now, he doesn’t have a lot of the herb on-hand, so we need to go find more.”
            Saito excused himself from his wife and daughters to speak with Kagome and her friends. “The meadows Keiji spoke of – you’ll find them to the south and east of here, within just a few hundred yards,” he explained. “Shall I show you to them?”
            “Yes, please,” Kagome agreed.
            Happy to help those who had helped him so dramatically, Saito instructed his wife and daughters to return to their home, then gestured for Kagome and Rin to follow him. As always, Naraku remained a concern, so Miroku, Sango, and Kirara went along with Kagome to protect her in case the psychotic oni lord attacked. Jaken and Ah-Un followed for a similar reason – to protect Rin while Sesshomaru was occupied with InuYasha’s care. At the very least, Kirara and Ah-Un could provide transport for their friends and a rapid means of escape in the event of danger. Meanwhile, Shippo, Shizu, and Shiori remained near Keiji’s house in order assist InuYasha in whatever way they could.
~~~~

            After a few minutes’ walk, Saito led Kagome and the others to a meadow directly south of his village. Partially-framed by forest, it boasted several species of lovely wildflower, its serene beauty inadvertently reminding Kagome and her friends of the scene of Kagura’s death some years before. They immediately set to work searching the meadow for the herb they needed for InuYasha. The grass and flowers were tall and thick enough that the roughly two-foot-tall Jaken would have had great difficulty in moving through it, so he and Ah-Un waited at the meadow’s edge.
            Kirara perched her tiny feline body on Sango’s shoulder as she and Miroku combed through the flowers, looking for examples of the herb. Saito searched, as well, some yards away from Miroku and Sango. Finally, Kagome and Rin searched alongside one another with several more yards of separation from the others. Somewhat surreptitiously, Kagome led Rin further away until she was certain that they could speak to each other at a practical volume without being overheard. She saw an opportunity to speak with Rin semi-privately and took it.
            “Rin?” Kagome began, gaining the young woman’s attention as she combed through the meadow’s florae. Already, she had gathered a sizable bundle of Keiji’s anti-venom herb – if it wasn’t all they needed, it was at least a very good start. Considering her next words carefully, Kagome decided to go straight for the heart of the matter. “What’s going on between InuYasha and Sesshomaru?”
            Rin paused visibly, then looked up at Kagome as the two of them knelt in the meadow. She blushed and smiled nervously. “Uh…what do you mean?” She then looked back down to resume her search for the anti-venom herb, focusing her attention there as if to somehow escape Kagome’s steady, knowing gaze.
            “You may not know this, but InuYasha and Sesshomaru haven’t always been on the best of terms,” Kagome said. “The first time I met Sesshomaru, he and InuYasha were trying to kill each other. InuYasha was the one that took off his arm. Back then, Sesshomaru basically tried to kill me, too. Not in a ‘you are my sworn enemy, so die’ sort of way, but in a ‘away from me, insect’ sort of way. Now, suddenly, they’re not fighting. In fact, they’re working together against every random evil demon we meet, not just Naraku. Sesshomaru was the one to bring InuYasha to Saito’s village, took him straight to the healer. He’s working to save his life right now, so please tell me, Rin, what’s going on?”
            “Sesshomaru…he’s changed,” Rin said with a hush. “He’s not like how you said he was, anymore. He says…that I made him change.”
            “Last night, InuYasha told me that he and Sesshomaru had some kind of ‘talk,’” Kagome revealed. “You must have been there. What did they say?”
            “Sesshomaru wants…to make up with InuYasha, to atone for the things he did,” Rin answered. “He wants to make it official.”
            “Official?” Kagome repeated. “How?”
            “By letting InuYasha have…me.”
            Kagome stared at Rin for a second, then couldn’t help but break out into a grinning laugh. Miroku and Sango looked her way and she forced herself to quiet down. “So, Sesshomaru wants to give you to InuYasha? As in sexually? Am I hearing you right?”
            “Well, maybe not give, but share, yes,” Rin confirmed. “Uh…it may not have been all Sesshomaru’s idea, either…”
            Kagome gave Rin a sly smile. “I knew it,” she whispered with restrained pleasure and absolutely no anger, but approval. After all, she allowed InuYasha to take not just herself to bed, but Shizu, Sango, and sometimes, even Shiori. She had no objection to including Rin in that list. To her, Rin was utterly worthy. “I saw how concerned you were when you saw what happened to InuYasha today. I’ve seen the way you look at him.” Rin’s blush became even hotter and Kagome continued: “Do you love him?”
            Rin swallowed thickly, her heart hammering in her chest. “Yes,” she declared honestly and aloud for the first time. Contemplating her love for InuYasha, she realized that she had grown up seeing him on a regular basis. From a distance, he looked so much like Sesshomaru, but his personality was completely different. He could be a little abrasive, but she knew that his semi-coarse exterior was a façade he used to conceal a heart of gold. The intensity with which he protected his friends and the times he had protected her, personally, had earned him her respect and adoration, and as she became a woman, that respect and adoration became love outright.
            Kagome saw the resolution in Rin’s eyes and next asked: “Do you want him?”
            Now, Rin could barely manage a squeak, remembering the heights of pleasure to which InuYasha and Sesshomaru took her the night before, all without really touching her. “Y-yes!” she answered. Her desire for InuYasha was only logical. She harbored an emotional love for him already and she wanted to take that love to the physical level.
            Beaming Rin a warm, accepting smile, Kagome reached out with both hands and grasped the younger woman’s shoulders, shaking her gently to emphasize what she said next. “Then you’ll have him. Let’s take these herbs to InuYasha and help him get well again. Then, I’ll show you how much fun he can be.”
            Rin returned Kagome’s smile with barely-contained excitement and clutched the herbs she had gathered to her chest. Kagome gathered her own bundle of herbs and led Rin to rejoin first with Miroku, Sango, Kirara, and Saito, then with Jaken and Ah-Un as they waited outside the meadow. Together, they all hurried back to Saito’s village, with Kagome and Rin especially eager to speed up InuYasha’s recovery.
~~~~

(Soundtrack: Edguy – Key to My Fate)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knCHNdln-P8
            When Kagome, Rin, and those who had accompanied them to the meadow returned to Keiji’s house inside Saito’s village, they immediately heard cries of pain resounding from within. Those cries were InuYasha’s. They had been away from him for less than an hour and already, his condition had worsened. They rushed back inside to find him writhing and struggling blindly upon Keiji’s futon, held down by Sesshomaru’s superior, armored weight as Keiji force-fed him another dose of anti-venom medicine.
            As InuYasha choked down his medicine, Keiji saw Kagome and the others enter, noting the herbs they carried. “You’ve got the herbs! Good!” he approved. “Please, give them to me.”
            Kagome handed Keiji her bundle and the bundles that Rin, Miroku, Sango, and Saito had collected. The village healer took the herbs to his work table and began stripping their blue-tipped leaves from their stems with a small knife, working with visible urgency. While Keiji prepared more medicine, Kagome and Rin went to InuYasha’s side next to Sesshomaru.
            InuYasha’s thrashing became weaker and more lethargic as Keiji’s latest dose of medicine became effective, allowing Sesshomaru to use less force in restraining him. Cold sweat had broken out on his brow and his bare upper body, his breathing rough and labored. Even with Keiji’s medicine at work within him, he struggled to cope with Kuno’s venom. Kagome and Rin felt cold, hard fear grip their hearts at the wretched sight of him, to say nothing of how Miroku, Sango, or any of the others felt by the terrible sounds he had been making.
            InuYasha opened his golden eyes to look up at Sesshomaru. By the effect of Kuno’s venom on his sight, the daiyoukai’s face was blurred to him. The expression that Sesshomaru saw in InuYasha’s eyes and upon his face was one of near-mindlessness, mindlessness through raw agony alone. InuYasha blinked as he stared at Sesshomaru, tears welling up over his eyes and slipping away to be lost in his silvery mane as it lay beneath his head. “Dad?” he asked, with all the innocence of a young boy meeting his estranged father for the first time.
            Sesshomaru grew tense as an unfamiliar sensation overcame him: helplessness. InuYasha was delirious, hallucinating in mistaking him for the late, great Inu no Taisho, and he knew of nothing he could do about it. InuYasha next looked at Kagome, this time mistaking her for Izayoi, the human noblewoman with whom the Inu no Taisho had sired him. He spoke with the same heartbreaking innocence: “Mom?”
            The significance of a proud, powerful half-demon warrior like InuYasha reduced to calling out for his mother was not lost on Rin. She began to weep softly and Kagome pulled her close, fighting back her own tears. The miko from the future countered her despair with her knowledge and reason. “Don’t worry, Rin,” she reassured. “InuYasha’s been through a lot worse than this.”
            Sesshomaru turned to look down at Kagome as she held Rin. Less optimistic that her, he agreed with her in principle, regretting that more than a little of that ‘worse’ she referred to consisted of things he, personally, had done to InuYasha. Silently, he appreciated the comfort the miko offered to his mate, recognizing the bond growing between them. That bond was one between two young women, each of whom would call a silver-haired, sword-swinging dolt like himself or his brother ‘husband,’ or ‘mate,’ or even ‘beloved.’
            Having ground up some more anti-venom herb and mixed it with water to create a thin, runny green solution, Keiji returned to InuYasha’s side with a cup of the solution in hand. Again, Sesshomaru helped the healer get the stuff down InuYasha’s throat. “How much more of this will InuYasha need?” the daiyoukai asked insistently.
            Keiji shook his head in dismay as he used a soft, wet cloth to wipe away excess medicine from InuYasha’s mouth, then dab away the sweat gathered on the inu hanyou’s forehead. “I’m afraid I can’t say, my lord. We’ve already given him far more than what should have been sufficient. This venom that the oni put in him…it’s the most resilient I’ve ever encountered.”
            Starting from about two hours past noon, several more hours passed and night came. The sun disappeared below the forested horizon and in its place, a waning half-moon rose to cast Saito’s village and the mountain behind it in dim moonlight. Keiji worked diligently without rest the entire time, but against Kuno’s venom, he and InuYasha were fighting a losing battle, and the hanyou warrior’s condition deteriorated little by little. During this time, Saito shifted between his own house and Keiji’s, checking on his family and InuYasha and his pack.
            Kagome and Rin sat together on the floor of Keiji’s house, clasping together in total silence. Miroku and Sango sat across from them, silent as well. Saito entered Keiji’s house, immediately perceiving the grim, hopeless atmosphere. “It’s getting late,” he said to everyone present, Sesshomaru included. “Would you like something to eat?”
            Kagome looked at Rin, then at Miroku, Sango, and Sesshomaru in turn. Not one appeared to be interested. On behalf of all, she replied: “If InuYasha doesn’t eat, then neither do we.”
            Then, a large, shaggy black dog burst into Keiji’s house, barreling straight into Saito from behind. It knocked him down and the village lord sat up on the wooden floor, not angry with the dog, but surprised. “Well!” he exclaimed. Having a natural affinity for dogs regardless that a very powerful dog demon like Sesshomaru was present, one who would likely take offense if he was anything but cordial, he began to speak to the dog as if it could understand. “What’s your name, my canine friend? Where are you from?”
            The dog panted heavily, appearing to have run a long distance, a long amount of time, or both. It then sat on its haunches and used one of its hind legs to scratch behind one of its floppy black ears. Once it had satisfied its itch, it stood back up and turned around to leave as quickly as it had arrived. Across the room, Sesshomaru took to his feet, immediately recognizing the scent that the dog had brought into the house. “Myoga,” he addressed boldly.
            Kagome, Rin, Miroku, and Sango perked up at the name. “Myoga!?”
            A tiny black shape remained upon the floor of Keiji’s house where the dog had just stood. Less than half an inch in height, the generally humanoid shape began to move, bounding across the floor toward Sesshomaru with a speed and agility that would have been impossible for a human, if that human had been shrunk down to the same size. Sesshomaru knelt and presented the back of a pale hand to the shape, allowing it to leap onto him.
            Kagome, Rin, Miroku, Sango, Saito, and even Keiji gathered around Sesshomaru, and the daiyoukai stood up to extend his hand toward them, allowing them to see. There, atop his hand, stood Myoga, a tiny, sentient flea demon and former servant of the Inu no Taisho. With receding gray hair and dressed in tiny versions of a peasant’s haori and hakama, the little flea looked rather like Keiji, except for his extra pair of arms, his blood-sucking proboscis, and his peculiarly-large, tiny-pupiled eyes.
            Myoga lowered himself to a prostrate position atop Sesshomaru’s hand, making maximum respect to the towering demon lord. “Good evening, Lord Sesshomaru!” he bid. He then stood up and bowed to all the people gathered around to see him. “Hello, everyone.” From Sesshomaru’s hand, Myoga saw InuYasha laying on Keiji’s futon, clearly in pain, and turned to face Sesshomaru again. “I felt Master InuYasha transform into a full demon. I came as fast as I could. What has happened, my lord?”
            “InuYasha and I engaged an oni in battle,” Sesshomaru said. “It is dead, but it bit InuYasha before he and I could kill it.”
            “Bit?” Myoga repeated, grasping the nature of InuYasha’s condition. “Kami-sama. I must try to purge InuYasha’s blood right away! Please, set me onto him.”
            Kagome looked at Miroku and Sango with sudden hopefulness, seeing the same expression on their faces as they looked at her. All three of them knew of Myoga’s ability to purify a person’s blood of venom or other poisons. Some years before, Myoga had used that ability to save their lives after they were attacked by Mukotsu, the poison-making chemical weapons expert of the Shichinintai, the Seven Man Army. Back then, Mukotsu had stealthily flooded a house they were staying in with some kind of toxic gas. Myoga’s act of sucking their blood to extract the poison they inhaled had prevented them from dying. Now, they hoped he could do the same with InuYasha.
            Sesshomaru stepped away from the others and lowered his hand to InuYasha’s chest, letting Myoga hop off his hand and fall a few inches to land on a spot right over the hanyou warrior’s heart. By the small size of his body compared to InuYasha’s, InuYasha’s heartbeat was as rapid, booming thunder beneath the flea’s feet. Its harsh, erratic rhythm worried him and he knew he had to hurry.
            After a few quick leaps, Myoga reached InuYasha’s neck, positioning himself directly over his pounding carotid artery. Sesshomaru held down InuYasha’s hands, so that in his unconscious state, he wouldn’t be able to swat Myoga flat undeservedly. Myoga aimed his proboscis for InuYasha’s artery and plunged in, drinking deeply of the oxygen-rich hanyou blood flowing through it.
            Myoga savored the taste of InuYasha’s blood. For a flea like him, it was utterly delicious, laced with demonic power inherited from his master, the great Inu no Taisho. However, he could soon taste Kuno’s venom, as well, as potent and virulent as any poison he had encountered up until that moment. Fed a steady stream of InuYasha’s blood, his body acted as a filter, separating Kuno’s venom from the blood and storing it, allowing him to inject only purified blood back into InuYasha’s body.
            Several minutes passed and little by little, Myoga’s body began to swell up as it filled with Kuno’s venom. The venom had no effect on him as it occupied only his curiously-evolved demonic digestive tract, not his own bloodstream. Once he could no longer taste any venom in InuYasha’s blood, he disconnected his proboscis and released his grip on InuYasha’s neck, his swollen body plopping to the futon InuYasha lay upon with all the grace of a tiny whale beaching itself on a tiny shoal.
            “Oh…oh, my,” Myoga lamented, clutching his distended stomach with all four tiny arms as he rested on the soft, supporting fabric of the futon beneath him. “I feel like I could burst…”
            Comically fat with venom, Myoga did not walk or crawl, but rolled himself upon the futon away from InuYasha until he reached the futon’s edge. He forced himself over it and fell a few inches to land on the wooden floor with a tiny thump, bouncing off the floor slightly by how the liquid contents of his body shifted within him. Kagome collected him from there, cradling him in her hands carefully so as not to crush him.
            “Oh, God...” Sango whispered suddenly, pointing at the place on InuYasha’s shoulder where Kuno had bitten him. “Look!”
            Starting at the wounds left by Kuno’s fangs, InuYasha’s skin began to turn an olive green, the same as the oni’s skin. It was a discoloration that seemed to spread from within as a very sudden, rapid bruise until it saturated his whole body. Elsewhere on his body, his blood vessels began to swell, standing in stark profile upon the muscle beneath by their rising pressure. Soon, that muscle, too, began to bulge out and rearrange its structure to become visibly more angular, more lethal. InuYasha started to struggle and thrash again, and Sesshomaru found that his weight alone wouldn’t be enough to hold the hanyou warrior down for long. It seemed that Kuno had won at last; InuYasha was becoming oni.
            A terrifying growl flowed up InuYasha’s throat and he opened his eyes to reveal to Sesshomaru that they had flooded over glowing blood red, as if he had gone full demon again. Holding InuYasha as best he could, Sesshomaru glared over an armored shoulder at Rin and everyone else present in Keiji’s house. “Run!” he ordered with a snarl.
            Altogether, Rin, Miroku, Sango, Keiji, Saito, and Kagome as she held Myoga, scrambled out of Keiji’s house, leaving Sesshomaru to grapple with InuYasha alone. InuYasha’s strength was increasing by the second and Sesshomaru manipulated his youki aura to form it into an invisible wall at his back. It served as an immovable object that allowed Sesshomaru to keep InuYasha wedged firmly to the futon beneath him.
            “InuYasha…InuYasha!” Sesshomaru barked to try to gain and keep InuYasha’s attention. Recognition seemed to flash through the green-skinned hanyou warrior’s glowing red eyes and he seethed through clenched teeth, his magenta facial stripes shining, burning at new levels of brightness. “Fight it, InuYasha,” Sesshomaru continued. “Don’t give in!”
            A strangled cry of venom-induced madness ripped from InuYasha’s throat and he broke his arms free from Sesshomaru’s grip, sinking his claws into the daiyoukai’s upper arms. He drew blood from the pale, muscle-filled flesh the daiyoukai concealed beneath his white haori and held tight to smash their skulls together in a vicious head-butt. However, he chose to butt heads with perhaps the only being in the world with a thicker skull than himself, and Sesshomaru rose to the challenge, meeting the hanyou warrior blow for blow.
            Frustrated with his inability to knock Sesshomaru off him, InuYasha worked his legs up between his body and the daiyoukai’s. He bent his knees, planted his bare feet squarely on his brother’s armor cuirass, and pushed with all his might. Sesshomaru grunted by the pressure InuYasha created on his midsection, feeling his armor beginning to bend and buckle by the hanyou’s incredible, oni-like strength, but the invisible youki wall at his back did not budge, and InuYasha only succeeded in driving himself deeper and deeper into the futon beneath him.
            The floorboards of Keiji’s house gave first, cracking and splintering as InuYasha inadvertently thrust himself and the futon he lay upon right through the floor and into the earth below. He was a dog demon with a predisposition to dig, so instead of fighting Sesshomaru any longer, he flipped himself over and began to tunnel his way down, throwing broken wood and large amounts of dirt up into Sesshomaru’s face.
            Sesshomaru allowed himself a small smile, reminded of InuYasha’s dog-like nature and his own. Squinting his eyes and turning his face away from the fountain of freshly-excavated earth blasting up at him, he reached down and seized InuYasha by an ankle. “Oh, no you don’t,” he chastised as he ripped InuYasha out of the tunnel he had started to dig.
            His voice warped by partial oni transformation and producing nothing but a stream of guttural, unintelligible curses, InuYasha hung upside down, dangling ankle-first from Sesshomaru’s clawed hand. Immediately, he used his own clawed hands to slash wildly at his brother’s silk-clad legs, but the daiyoukai’s arm was long enough to hold him well out of reach. Unfortunately, InuYasha’s inverted position seemed to tell the oni venom in him to focus on his arms and suddenly, in a surge of grotesque skeletal and muscular transformation, one of his arms grew much larger and longer than the other. This put Sesshomaru’s legs in range of at least one set of his claws.
            InuYasha used his new, giant arm to slash at Sesshomaru’s legs again and this time, his claws hit home, slicing through the white silk of the daiyoukai’s hakama and lacerating the flesh beneath. “Hn,” Sesshomaru contemplated with a grunt, his eyes narrowing viciously by the pain. For his own part, the daiyoukai recognized that InuYasha was increasingly dangerous in his semi-oni state, and he knew he had to get him away from Saito’s village and everyone in it as quickly as possible.
            Gripping InuYasha’s foot tight, Sesshomaru turned and flung InuYasha’s entire body overhead to slam him down into the floor of Keiji’s house, sending him right through the floorboards and giving him a hard stun. He repeated this action three or four times, leaving three or four vaguely InuYasha-shaped holes in the floor. Then, the demon lord summoned his youki, manifesting it about his body as a rippling green field of incandescent light. He directed it to begin turning his body about the heel of one of his booted feet, causing him and InuYasha to begin spinning in place. With him holding InuYasha by only one of his feet, InuYasha’s body acted as a crude, segmented, ivory-maned flail, smashing through shelves and tables and blunting over the walls, thoroughly ruining the interior of Keiji’s house. Sesshomaru attuned his youki field to suit his own mass and InuYasha’s, and they began to spin faster, faster, and faster…
            Outside Keiji’s house, InuYasha’s entire pack, as well as the village residents, heard the fight raging within, listening with mounting apprehension. Being the house’s owner, Keiji himself was especially concerned, dreading the scene that awaited him when he got back inside. Suddenly, the ones standing closest to the house all leapt back or fell to the ground, searching for cover as a howling, InuYasha-shaped projectile smashed through the roof in a red, white, and green flesh-colored blur. The hanyou warrior sailed into the night sky on a ballistic trajectory that took him at least a mile out of the village, in the general direction of the nearby mountain. Sesshomaru stepped out of Keiji’s damaged house just in time to see the final moments of InuYasha’s flight, seeing him entering the mountain’s thick forest canopy head-first and hearing the splintering, crashing racket that resulted a few seconds later.
            “Sesshomaru!” Kagome cried out as she, Rin and the rest of InuYasha’s pack rushed forward to meet the demon lord that had just hammer-tossed InuYasha into the next prefecture.
            Brushing fresh dirt from his haori with one hand, Sesshomaru held a sheathed Tetsuseiga in the other, slipping it underneath his golden obi alongside Tenseiga and Bakusaiga. Judging from InuYasha’s glowing red eyes and facial markings, he reasoned that the oni transformation affecting his brother had driven his demon blood out of control. In the coming minutes, he predicted that Tetsuseiga’s calming, sealing effect could be vital to reining him in.
            As InuYasha’s friends approached him, Sesshomaru glanced briefly at Kagome, then at Myoga as the miko from the future cradled the small, venom-gorged flea demon in her hands. “Myoga. You drained the venom from InuYasha’s blood, yet he has transformed anyway. Explain,” he demanded.
            Myoga forced himself up into a sitting position in Kagome’s hands, so as not to speak to Sesshomaru while lying on his back. “It seems I was too late, after all. Please forgive me, my lord,” he apologized. “I removed all the venom I could from Master InuYasha, but in the time between when the oni bit him and when I reached him, the venom must have somehow bonded with his insides.”
            Concerned with what this meant for InuYasha, Miroku looked down at Myoga and asked: “What can we do now?”
            Myoga turned his head to listen to Miroku, then returned his attention to Sesshomaru in front of him. Realistically, the flea knew that the daiyoukai had only two options. The first: kill InuYasha. If InuYasha really had become oni, if he had transformed into some kind of wild, rabid, dog/ogre demon monster, then putting him down might be mercy for him and a service to the entire population of the Japanese countryside. However, Myoga found the idea wholly repugnant, to actually suggest that one son of the Inu no Taisho kill the other for any reason. He felt it would be an unforgivable disservice to the memory of his late master. Besides, Myoga couldn’t be sure that if he uttered the terrible words, Sesshomaru wouldn’t cleave him in half on the spot.
            Therefore, Myoga spoke the only remaining option. “Bite InuYasha, as the oni did,” he said to Sesshomaru, to the demon lord’s intrigue. “Replace the oni’s venom with a superior one, your own.”
            Shizu and Shiori glanced at each other with uncertainty. “God, what will that even do?” Shizu asked of Myoga.
            “Potentially, it may do several things, milady,” Myoga said, answering Shizu directly. “It may neutralize the oni’s venom in InuYasha’s blood and return him to a normal hanyou, or it may do nothing at all. It may kill him, or it may elevate him…into daiyoukai.”
            Sesshomaru’s golden eyes narrowed. Daiyoukai. The silver-haired demon lord grew thoughtful. He knew that for all InuYasha’s life, he had exploited the difference in class between them. Before he met Rin, he had been quick, relentless to remind InuYasha of his status as a ‘mere’ hanyou and took full advantage of his own, greater power in their various fights. InuYasha’s acquisition of Tetsuseiga had leveled the playing field somewhat, but their separation in class remained, a product of their differing parentage. Now, Sesshomaru desired to atone to InuYasha for his past transgressions and beyond giving him sexual access to Rin, the demon lord could finally see a way to make his atonement more complete, more meaningful.
            By making InuYasha into a daiyoukai, Sesshomaru could restore his brother to sanity, and in the process, give him the same power that he himself enjoyed!
            A terrible, powerful roar, distressed rather than menacing, resounded from the mountain where Sesshomaru had tossed InuYasha just a few moments before. Great flocks of birds, sleeping up until that moment, fled their nests by its report. To Sesshomaru and all the others, InuYasha sounded to still be in great pain. The daiyoukai knew he had to act immediately and he looked down among InuYasha’s pack gathered around him. He focused his attention on Kagome. “Kagome. The subjugation necklace that InuYasha wears – you can activate it, correct?” he asked.
            “Yes,” Kagome answered truthfully, yet anxiously.
            Sesshomaru extended a hand toward the miko from the future. “Good. Come with me.”
            Kagome turned to Miroku and handed Myoga off to him, then faced Sesshomaru again. With only a little hesitation, she stepped closer to the demon lord, taking his hand as he offered. Grasping Kagome’s hand securely, Sesshomaru spoke to the rest of InuYasha’s pack. “The rest of you, follow as quickly as you are able. Kagome and I may need all of your help before this is over.”
            With that, Sesshomaru scooped Kagome off her feet and summoned his youki to rise into the air, high above InuYasha’s other friends and the surrounding village. Once he felt he had reached an appropriate altitude, he remembered how Saito reacted to what he was about to do, and he warned to Kagome: “Brace yourself.”

-To be continued-
- 15
- 16
- 17
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A Twist in the Myth	By : Dunkelgelb Category: InuYasha Crossovers > General Views: 18090 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
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A Twist in the Myth