Fantastic Feudal Fusion by ladybattousai

Lovely Locks Lost

Lovely Locks Lost

Dressed in her heavy miko robes, Kagome strolled down the dirt road, her hands behind her head, cradling it gently as she soaked in the warm, spring sun.  The long, feudal winter had been tough.  Both cold and confining, she had spent most of the last four months sequestered in the tiny Edo village she had come to call home.  Now while she had learned quite a bit about the healing arts, her thirst for adventure and energetic soul had languished with every snow-heaped day.

She grinned and closed her eyes, relishing every sunbeam that kissed her skin.  Those days were done.  Most of the snow was gone, turning old, dried up creeks into thundering rapids.  And the first wisps of bright green dusted the hillsides.

A few paces ahead, Inuyasha was all business as usual, walking briskly as he surveyed the land.  But every so often he paused and took in a deep breath, absorbing the chilly air and crisps scents, slowly forgetting the months of sooty hearth fires that had dulled his senses.

Hearing him sigh with particular satisfaction, Kagome giggled.

“What are you laughing at?” he asked brusquely, suddenly self-conscious.

“You.”

The hanyou scoffed and crossed his arms.  “You wanted me to go on patrol with you, so here I am.  If I wanted to be laughed at, I could have just stayed back at the village with Miroku and Sango’s demons.”

“They’re children.  Not demons.”

 He scoffed again, far from dissuaded.  He was quite sure those particular terrors could only be demons.

“You’re awful.”  And though he was outwardly petulant, she spotted his fleeting smirk at her outrage.  “And you’re a liar.  You are having a good time.”

“Feh!”  He strutted off.  “Hurry up!  It’s almost noon.”

Smiling, Kagome watched him go, and then she closed her eyes to cherish the sun yet again.  In the distant forest, she could hear the cacophony of birds chirping and not too far from the woods there was a bustling village with farms radiating on all sides.

Something buzzed by her head. 

Kagome’s eyes flew open.  She heard it swerve away to drop into the rustling grass.  Stopping, she looked out at the field beside the road and saw nothing.  Her lips scrunched, she waited and then shrugged.  It must have been just a bug.

When she started to walk again, another shadow flew by her head.  She squealed.

“What happened?!” Inuyasha called out, his hand on his hilt as he moved to bound over to her.

Her face turned pink.  “There’s a bug.”

“A bug?!” he said incredulously.  “You squealed because of a bug?  Is it a wasp at least?”

“I don’t think so.  It sounded too… hollow.”

“You make no sense, woman.  Why are you scared of a bug?”

Two more shadows flew past her and she gasped when one alighted on the road.  Mottled green and brown in color, it was a giant grasshopper.  The black dot at the center of its hard, bubbled eye watched her as its mouthparts moved back and forth, spreading hot, yellow saliva.

Inuyasha’s eyes narrowed.  It wasn’t just a bug.

The bright, spring morning started to turn dark, and they both looked up to see a black cloud in a formerly cloudless sky eclipsing the white sun.

The hanyou muttered an expletive and made for Kagome as that heavy cloud burst into a rain of locust demons.  They hailed down, their droning wings singing in a flute-like symphony.  Thump, thump, thump, they struck the ground, turning the fields and road into a writhing mass of scurrying insects.

The miko screamed as one landed in her hair and another struck her in the back.  More began to pelt her, their sprawled legs clinging to her clothes.  Their saliva dripped from their mouths, and with a hiss, it started to dissolve her clothes.

Inuyasha landed beside her and batted them away, grimacing in disgust as they oozed purple when he squashed them under his feet.  Her clothes shredded, Kagome stared in shock at the clumps of her raven hair sticking to her coat and spilled on the floor.  They were melting her hair.

Anger boiled in her and she grabbed the bow on her back and nocked an arrow.  These little cretins would pay now.  A blazing, pink light shot across the field, incinerating the gorging locusts in its path.  Inuyasha followed suit, swinging Tessaiga, and a brilliant claw of energy raked the earth.

Back to back, they fought, burning the swarm as it devoured the hillsides.  Then they heard the horrified screams of the villagers.  The locusts were heading for them.  It wouldn’t take more than a few minutes for the youkai insects to destroy not only their crops, but the entire village.

“Inuyasha!” Kagome cried out.

He nodded.  “I know.”  The hanyou leapt away to head them off and the miko ran to flank them from the forest.

Again and again, her purifying arrows and Kaze no Kizo ripped across the fields, but the locusts kept pressing, pushing them back.  Inuyasha felt the softness of freshly turned soil under his feet and cursed.  At this rate, there was no way that either of them could save anyone.  There was just too many of them.

Kagome reached back and felt the feathered end of her last arrow.  She pulled it from her quiver and set it in her bow, but before she could let it fly, a deep, baritone voice spoke up.

“Scantily dressed as usual, miko?”

Her eyes wide, she spun around in shock.

As smug as she could remember, it was Sesshoumaru.  He raised a brow.  “I had thought your modesty standards had improved since joining my half-brother’s house.”

After glancing down at her dissolving clothes, she blushed.  “The locusts ate them.”

“Hn,” he snorted with a vaguely appreciative tone, turning her cheeks into more nuclear hues of red.

“We have to kill them.  They’re going to destroy that village.”

“And the forest,” he added.

She nodded, seeing now a glimmer of hope in his arrival.  The forest was part of the western lands, his territory.  She only had one arrow left and Inuyasha wouldn’t be able to defeat the swarm in time.  But if the youkai lord joined in, there was a chance.  That’s if he didn’t destroy the village in the process.

“Step aside, miko,” he said as he drew Bakusaiga from his hip.  Doing as he asked, she moved behind him as he raised it.  Energy billowed off the bright blade in wisps, and with a sure swing, its disintegrating power flew off of it in a wave.  Over the infested field, it turned the demonic pests into dust.

Seeing the impending, corrosive wave rushing toward him, Inuyasha abandoned his position and ran to through the village, grabbing a few villagers along the way as they whacked at the locusts with their pitchforks and hoes.  The hot blast singed his firerat robes and turned several of the outlying buildings black before they crumbled into ash.

Laying out a long line of expletives, Inuyasha shouted at Sesshoumaru.

Sesshoumaru ignored him.  The fields, the hillsides and half the village was completely black, but nothing squirmed or writhed.  The locust infestation was gone.

Bedraggled but no worse for wear, the hanyou landed beside his brother and continued to seethe.  “What did you think you were doing?”

“I was sparing that miserable human village from destruction.”

“You burned half of it!  How is that ‘sparing” it?!”

“There are times when you must amputate an arm to save a body.”

“Feh!  You would know that!”

The daiyoukai’s eyes narrowed, and he started to raise Bakusaiga yet again.

“If that’s how you want to play!” Inuyasha shouted as he pulled Tessaiga from his belt.

Indifferent to their usual pettiness, Kagome looked around and spotted some movement in the tree above Sesshoumaru’s head.  There poised to leap down was the last locust.  She smiled and raised her bow.  Boys spend too much time posturing.  It always took a girl to finish the fight, and how she finished it.

“Let’s go, Kagome,” Inuyasha growled and grabbed her arm.  “I don’t want to listen to this bastard any more.”

The sudden jerk from his grip threw her off balance and the sparkling arrow nicked the poor bug before barreling through the branch and into the sky.  Purple and yellow poured out of the stricken insect as it tumbled out of the tree and into Sesshoumaru’s perfect, silvery hair.  There was a hiss, and the daiyoukai’s heavy head of hair suddenly felt much lighter.

Shocked.  Confused.  Utter disbelief.  There was no one state of mind that could describe the demon lord’s expression as he stared at his generous locks of hair lying limply on the ground.

In equal wordlessness, Kagome and Inuyasha stared as well, her bow still out and his hand still on her forearm.

Sesshoumaru blinked, his numbing surprise lessening.  He felt the back of his head for the shortest strands and gathered it all together in his hand.  Then with one grand sweep of his sword, he cleaved off what hair was longer, evening it out.  The strands fluttered down, and his hard, golden glare looked up at the hanyou and the miko.  A penance was coming.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Crouched down around a soapy tub filled with laundry, Sango steadily scrubbed a shirt while her children worked earnestly beside her.  Then her eyes lit up.  In the distance, she spotted the familiar shades of white and red approaching the village from the road.

“Inuyasha!  Kagome!” she called out as she stood up.

Neither waved and her mirthful smile faded.  Inuyasha could be grouchy and unfriendly, but that was hardly Kagome.

“Kagome!  Inuyasha!” she yelled again, thinking that they hadn’t heard her.  This time she was certain they were within hearing distance, especially for the hanyou.

Still neither reacted, and instead trudged along like beaten warriors from a lost battle.

Truly concerned now, Sango wiped her hands on her apron and rushed over to the road, her progeny in hot pursuit.

Then her mouth dropped.

Kagome’s shredded clothes aside, neither had much hair left to speak of.  Even the long locks that hung around Inuyasha’s face were shorn to his jaw line.

Sango’s mouth opened and shut until she finally found enough voice to form a sentence.  “What…?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” they said in unison, and together they passed her by.

And not another word was uttered.

A/N: The fourth installment of Tangerine Dream’s Tournament Challenge.  My opponent was Zandrellia, so if she does submit a story, please read hers as well as mine, and cast your vote over which one you like better.  And because I'm nice, no pie.