"I'm going home. Buh-bye, animal! It's been real!"
Inuyasha thought about Kagome's departing words as he leapt back to the village.. He snorted mentally, Good riddance! With her gone, I feel like I've had a leash taken off! So why was there this hollowness gnawing at him? He beat the notion back with a sturdy mental stick.
As he entered the village, his spirits were sent on alert as a pack of girls carrying instruments of dee-struction flew up to confront him. And by confronting, I mean attacking with those same instruments of dee-struction.
Inuyasha used his youkai quickness to evade the slashes and the chops that the women were trying to deliver to his personal body. With only a quick curse, the dog-boy used his youkai speed to grasp the women's limbs, and came crashing down on a few others, forcing them to relinquish their weapons.
"Well, well!" he growled, shaking a few of his attackers by the scruff of their kimonos. "If it isn't the village women! What have you against me, huh? And make it good, because I'm in no mood for any humbug!"
"Do not harm them!" came a strangled scream from Lady Kaede, as she propped herself up weakly.
"Kaede, you witch." Inuyasha tossed the women aside as he would a handful of limp rags. He bounded to Kaede's side, crouching as he addressed her. "What are you up to, all drenched in blood? And any idea why your women are after me?"
For an old woman with failing vision and much blood lost, Kaede gave Inuyasha a very sharp, withering glare that was totally ignored by the half-youkai youth. "As tactful as ever, I see…" she murmured. She directed her gaze at the village women, who were rising from the ground more like marionettes on wires rather than the animate creatures they were. "They are bewitched by some power unknown. Where is Kagome? Call Kagome and bring her here!"
Inuyasha grunted a confident grunt, cracking his knuckles. "No need, Hag!" he said, rising to his feet and the occasion. "I can take care of this myself!"
"No! No, you must not!" pleaded Kaede with all the strength she could muster in her condition. "This time, with this opponent, we need Kagome!"
Up in a nearby tree, Yura twitched her fingers, each one tied with a strand of almost invisible hair. "What a pretty head of hair!" observed the youkai. "This time I really must get the neck!" She winced as she poked the lump peeking through her short raven hair. "Only this time do it more discretely. Oh, my head…" she added, pained.
"Inuyasha! The village girls are not in their right minds, and do not deserve your claws!" Kaede half-yelled, half-croaked. A gang of five of the village women surrounded Inuyasha, wielding axes, sickles, and large cooking knives. They also wore blank, soulless expressions and floated six inches off the ground, slumped over like badly-handled marionettes… the string kind.
"Spare me your 'higher morality', Kaede!" growled Inuyasha. "Didn't they almost kill you?" At Inuyasha's words, Kaede clutched at the bleeding wound in her arm, delivered to her by one of these large cooking knives. She was already looking a bit pasty from the loss and stress of being chopped.
"You understand nothing!" hissed Kaede, stronger than her condition would seem to allow. "Unless you defeat the one who manipulates them from the shadows—"
"This is no time to be so careful!" snapped the dog-boy, jumping up to meet an attacking woman with an axe. Or, if Kaede was to be believed, a woman made to attack by an unknown attacker.
"The hair, Inuyasha!" rattled the old miko. "Cut the hair attached to the girls!"
Hair? Yes, indeed! Kaede had seen the wires manipulating these marionettes. Fine, almost invisible hairs wrapped around the bodies of the floating women. But ordinary hairs they were not, for no ordinary hair could support the weight of these women. And there was a further reason why this wasn't ordinary hair.
"What hair?! I don't see any hair!" yelled Inuyasha as he lunged at one of the women.
Yes, that was the other reason. Inuyasha, with all of his sharp doggy senses, couldn't see the hair that the old bat Kaede could, with her failing vision and only one eye. A sort of mystic cloaking device.
Inuyasha swiped at the helpless woman who was threatening Inuyasha's well-being. (Wrap your head around THAT sentence!) The woman vanished into thin air, however. Inuyasha looked up to see her floating even higher. The other women moved in.
"NO! FLEE THE HAIR! ESCAPE, INUYASHA!" screamed Kaede.
The women spun about Inuyasha, and the dog-boy immediately understood what Kaede had meant by hair. He was getting wrapped up in something quite strong, pinning his arms. The women fell around him limply, losing whatever animation they still possessed.
Inuyasha didn't like this one bit. "Is this puppeteer a fool?" he asked rhetorically. "Even if I can't see the hair, I can drag out whoever's at the other end!" With that, he jerked sharply to the side a good distance. However, he was surprised when he fell onto bare earth without the hair even offering a token resistance to being tugged.
"Sorry to disappoint," Yura of the Hair (and the lump on the head) giggled. "But the hair grows!"
Yura intertwined her hands once more, doing a complicated jig with it. Pulling apart, she revealed a loop in the hair like a cat's cradle. "Now then," she purred, "it's time to offer me your neck!" With that, Yura tugged sharply, drawing the loop closed.
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(Posted Mon, 17 Jan 2005 22:57)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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