Growing Pains by MontiK

Unusual findings

Disclaimer:The characters of InuYasha are not mine, they are property of Rumiko Takahashi, Shogakukan, Yomiuri TV, Sunrise, and Viz Media. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

 A young girl's sigh echoed the peaceful morning air of the forest. Her traveling companion had yet to wakeup and was stilled curled safely in the hood of her cape, his bushy auburn tail curled about him for extra warmth. They had left a nearby village about half an hour earlier to make their way back to Edo. The road they were traveling was quiet and less traveled so they wouldn't have to bother with avoiding merchant wagons and soldiers on the more traveled routes.

 She took a moment to pay attention to her surroundings to ensure no enemies were near. She had taken up training with Kaede since her return to the feudal area and her spiritual senses and abilities were now developed quite well. In the near forest she could sense nothing but the benign auras of nearby wildlife.

 A shift in her cape broke her concentration and she stopped walking for a moment to turn and peek at her traveling companion. Groggy green eyes peered back at her as they rapidly blinked away sleep. 

 "Morning." She greeted cheerfully.

 The little kitsune smiled as he stretched and transfered himself to his perch on her shoulder and nuzzled his cheek against hers. 

 "Morning Kagome." He managed to return through a rather loud yawn.

 Shippou opted to stay in the village with Kagome after she returned from her era. He still went once a year to the kitsune testing grounds to show off his ever growing skills in illusion. Traveling to neighboring villages with Kagome when she went to help heal injured or sick villagers was common place these days. Inuyasha usually stayed behind to protect Edo so Shippou always went with to help navigate and keep away from danger by using his youkai senses, even though Kagome could take care of herself. 

 He quickly took a test sniff of the air and looked at their surroundings to ensure everything was safe. Something caught his notice as he used well trained muscles to twitch pointed ears a minute amount to better here the disturbance. 

 He crinkled his brow in confusion not knowing exactly what to make of the noises. "Kagome?" He pointed out to the forest with a tiny finger around the ten o'clock position from where they were standing, "What do you sense off in that direction. Somethin' sounds weird..", He trailed off at the end leaving his companion a little worried about her normally playful traveling partner's change in demeanor.

 Kagome quickly stretched out her senses in the direction Shippou indicated. She figured it must be pretty far off the path since she had already checked the immediate area. About a half-mile away she sensed a larger concentration of youki. Her brow crinkled to match her companions expression as she stared off into the woods. 

 She honed in on the area to see what exactly could draw such and odd combination of wild lesser youkai to one place. Somewhere in the mix but slightly away from the others she found a strangely familiar presence. She couldn't quite put her finger on what was familiar about it since it was so small. Pulling her bow from her shoulder and checking the small wakizashi blade at her side she took a step off the path into the forest to go see what was going on.

 "What does it sound like Shippou? Do you smell anything familiar?", Kagome whispered to her companion, not wanting to alert their unknowing prey.

 Tiny claws clutched onto the haori cloth beneath him as he hunkered down bunching his muscles in preperation for attack. "It's downwind so I can't smell much but is sorta sounds like a mix of a bunch of youkai. They're definetly worked up about something to be making so much noise."

 They crept on quiet feet the entire way through the forest. The process was slow since they had to take care to avoid thick brush and anything that could cause undue noise in their approach. 

 Kagome stopped her approach around twenty feet away hoping to remain unnoticed by the preoccupied throng of youkai. She narrowed well-trained eyes trying to discern what had them so enamored. She caught flashes of white through the small openings in the wall, a little bit of black. Maybe armor? She thought. 

 Shippou stilled on Kagome's shoulder and she peeked out of the corner of her eyes in question. She saw him quickly motion for her to shoot into the throng as he pulled out a leaf and his toy snake from his vest. 

 She nodded in answer and expertly notched an arrow aimed it into the swarm. She took a moment to imbue it with as much power as she could hoping to get most out of the way before they were noticed. The arrow-tip glowed a very faint blue just as Kagome took aim to shoot at the thicker side of the circle andloosed her arrow on the unsuspecting youkai. 

 A quarter of the throng disintigrated in a flash of blue light and loud pained screeches. Kagome darted her eyes about quickly for the next best target and prepared another arrow as some of the wild creatures turned on them in an effort to protect whatever food source they were hiding. 

 Shippou sprung into action when he saw the arrow fly. Quickly inacting his simple, but hopefully effective strategy. He held his leaf and toy snake together with a shout of, "Fox Magic!" The snake shot through the opening and coiled it's large body around the prone form in the center of the swarm and hissed threateningly at the nearest youkai.

 Kagome sidestepped an oncoming attack and loosed her next spiritual arrow at the oncoming youkai. Her and Shippou had worked out a strategy together in their free-time at the village and both immediately went through the familiar motions of inacting it against the blood thirsty horde coming upon them. Shippou carefully leapt from shoulder to shoulder using his foxfire to keep the attackers far enough away and herding them into a line in front of Kagome so she destroy them expiditiously with spiritual energy.

 An exhausting ten minutes later all of the youkai had been destroyed or driven off and the priestess and tiny kitsune stood panting with their backs turned to the previously assaulted clearing. The transformed snake that was guarding their charge fell to the ground reverted to it's toy form. A vicious snarling alerted them to both the unhappiness and inhuman nature of whatever they had just saved.

 Curiousity compelled them to look upon the beast as the slowly rotated to face the clearing. Shippou immediately leapt up into a tree to a high branch and clutched to it for dear life. A breath caught in Kagome's throat as she gazed upon the snarling, angry, red-eyed, prone, and in immense pain (if the writhing was any clue) form of Sesshoumaru. Blood was crusted to his skin at the junctures his armor and his claws were dug deep into the soil fisting handfuls of dirt in an attempt to abate the pain he was in, though he showed no outwards signs of injury from claw, bite, or sword.

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Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed it! Come back for the next chapter. I <3 reviews!

MontiK