Once published on FF.net, the beginnings of this Shiori-centric tale were later removed after I decided not to follow through with the would-be ShioriInuyasha epic I’d originally had in mind. I still think about this story from time to time and regret that I killed it off so soon.
Who knows, maybe I’ll resurrect this one someday.
Prologue
It began as all good fairytales do, with a young girl in the face of danger.
The gigantic barrier warped and shivered, glowing like fire as it deflected the hanyou boy’s powerful attack. Kneeling in her grandfather’s palm, Shiori clutched the blood crystal before her in trembling hands, her face a mask of pure concentration.
Strong, she thought, biting down on her lip, how can he be so strong?
Just as the barrier began to give way, the attack subsided, and Shiori exhaled in a rush, lowering the red sphere to her lap. Her head hung slightly, her shoulders continuing to shake. If the boy unleashed such power a second time, she doubted she would have the strength to resist it.
“Good work, Shiori!” Taigokumaru said, laughing deeply. “Who would have guessed a half-demon could possess such strength? Your attacks are useless, brat.”
“Shut up, you ugly old bat!” the hanyou boy shouted from the shore, brandishing his massive sword at the bat youkai. “I’m just gettin’ started!”
Taigokumaru laughed again, gathering his youki between his jaws. Shiori could feel the searing heat of it on the back of her neck. Dark energy crackled in the air like lightning, radiating from the budding echo beam.
The hanyou boy grit his teeth.
“Get back!” he yelled to the small group of humans standing behind him.
As they retreated, another figure advanced, half-stumbling in the sand. Shiori’s violet eyes widened when the moonlight revealed the figure’s face.
“Kaa-chan!” she exclaimed, both happy and afraid.
The large clawed fingers encaging her twitched slightly. Shiori felt the ball of youki behind her dissipate.
“What’s this?” her grandfather muttered in annoyance.
“Taigokumaru,” Shizu said, drawing to a halt, “stop this!”
“Foolish ningen,” the bat youkai chuckled darkly. “Haven’t I told you already? Demons don’t make promises with mortals.”
Shizu’s hands clenched into fists at her sides, her dark eyes flashing with outrage. “Even if you won’t keep your word to me, you should at least honor the wishes of your son! When Shiori was born, Tsukuyomaru ordered the bat demons to stop attacking the village. He wanted our daughter and I to be able to live here in peace.” She closed her eyes briefly, her lashes glittering with tears. “That was his last wish.”
“Honor his wishes?” Taigokumaru said with scorn. “Tsukuyomaru defied me. Not only did he fall in love with a human, he threatened to abandon his duties as guardian of the barrier. My foolish son. He left me no choice but to…”
“But to what?” the hanyou boy shot back. His dark brows knit together in a way that sent chills down Shiori’s spine. “You…you killed him, didn’t you?”
Shiori gasped, her fingers tightening around the crystal.
No! Ojii-san…?
Her grandfather shifted, flexing his enormous wings. She could almost feel his smile.
“With Shiori to serve as guardian, Tsukuyomaru was no longer needed. And so,” he paused, the sky around them seeming to darken with his malevolence, “I sent him to the netherworld.”
“No!” Shizu cried in horror, collapsing boneless to the sand. Seeing her fall, a strangely-clad girl rushed across the shore to her side.
Shiori scarcely saw any of this. Her mind was reeling from Taigokumaru’s revelation.
My father…he murdered my father.
Around that word, her thoughts spun, sharpening against it like a knives against a whetstone. Murderer, murderer, murderer!
The orb in her hands flared, matching the fiery glow in her eyes.
“Hn?” her grandfather said in surprise.
Shiori’s head snapped around, searing him with her burning gaze. The barrier pulsed angrily.
“Out,” she seethed, her voice rising. “Get out!“
The barrier surged, contracting, and the bat youkai within were violently expelled. They hurtled through the air, screaming. Recovering quicker than the rest, her grandfather turned, staring at her in mingled awe and rage.
“Such power…” he rumbled, his eyes flashing crimson. “I will never surrender you to the ningen!”
His open jaws began to glow, his attention falling on Shizu and the girl.
“No,” Shiori wailed as she began to fall toward the ocean. “Kaa-chan!”
Her grandfather’s echo beam blazed through the night sky—a blinding streak of pure energy. Shiori watched its course in speechless terror, heedless of her own peril.
Kaa-chan, no! You can’t die…!
As the beam hurtled toward the pair of frightened humans, the hanyou boy launched himself into its path. He crouched into a battle stance, his bare feet digging into the sandy earth. The light from her grandfather’s attack illuminated his sharp features, making his hair gleam like molten silver, and Shiori was momentarily struck by how handsome he was.
He raised his sword high.
“Bakuryuha!” he yelled as he brought the blade down in a sweeping arc, unleashing the same powerful cyclone that had nearly destroyed her barrier. The cyclone spiraled around her grandfather’s beam, twisting it, turning his own attack against him.
Disbelief flickered across Taigokumaru’s monstrous face for an instant, and then he and his tribe were no more.
“Oomph!” Shiori uttered as she fell into a pair of waiting arms. She blinked, looking up at her savior.
“You okay, miss?” the tanuki demon holding her asked kindly.
“Hai,” Shiori replied, her cheeks tingeing pink. For a second she’d thought it was the hanyou boy who had plucked her from the sky.
He was standing a short distance away at the edge of the shore, looking toward her mother and the odd, lovely girl at her side. The tanuki carried Shiori over the water and set her down lightly on the beach.
“Kaa-chan!” she cried, sprinting toward her mother the moment her feet touched the sand.
“Shiori!”
They met halfway, Shizu enfolding Shiori in her arms. Still clutched in the little girl’s hands, the red crystal lay dormant between them.
Overwhelmed with joy, Shiori did not at first notice the heated conversation occurring nearby.
“…then I’ll just have to find an even stronger barrier and defeat its guardian!” the hanyou boy growled.
On his shoulder, an old flea youkai jumped frantically up and down. “But, but—”
The arms around Shiori stiffened. It seemed her mother had caught more of their words than she had.
“You came here to strengthen your sword by killing Shiori?” Shizu demanded warily.
“Yeah, at first,” the hanyou admitted in a gruff voice, his harsh words not quite meeting his eyes. “But I’ve changed my mind.”
Shizu relaxed, the ghost of a smile tugging at her lips.
Shiori watched as the boy’s golden gaze slid away from the western shore. In the east, the sun was beginning to rise.
“Let’s go,” the boy said to his human companions.
Shiori frowned in contemplation, watching as they started to walk away.
The power of the guardians…
Breaking gently free from her mother’s embrace, she called after him.
“Wait!”
The boy’s silver dog ears swiveled. He glanced back at her, one brow arched slightly in question.
Shyly, Shiori approached him, holding the barrier crystal out before her.
“This blood crystal is the source of the bat youkai’s power. It has been passed down through the generations, gaining strength from each guardian who possesses it. If you break this crystal,” Shiori ventured cautiously, “you may be able to absorb the power it contains.”
A grin spread across the boy’s face, and she saw a glint of fangs.
“All right!” he said excitedly, unsheathing his sword. “Let’s try it!”
As Shiori nodded, the crystal gave a sudden throb, releasing waves of dark energy. Shiori breathed in shock, and her mother knocked the sphere from her hands, burning her own in the process.
The crystal fell, making a crater in the sand where it landed. Before their eyes, the youki surrounding the crystal coalesced, taking the form of her grandfather’s face.
The air trembled with dark laughter.
“You think you can escape your fate, granddaughter?” the ghost of Taigokumaru sneered. “I will drag you down to hell with the rest of us!”
The hanyou boy lunged, but her grandfather’s spirit evaded his strike. As the boy spun back to attack again, the phantom lurched toward Shiori and her mother.
With a jolt of fear, Shiori realized that the boy was simply too far away; the evil spirit would certainly reach her first.
Shizu cried out, grabbing Shiori and shielding her with her body. As the spirit closed in on them, Shiori felt another presence appear in their midst, enveloping her and her mother in its warm embrace.
The ghost barreled toward them, its frightful jaws unhinged, yet as it swooped down, a wall of shining blue light arced up to meet it. Her grandfather’s vengeful spirit crashed into the barrier with an awful shriek.
Before the ghost could even attempt to recover, the hanyou boy leapt forward, delivering a well-placed slash.
Taigokumaru’s ghost wailed in agony, its ghastly face crumbling to nothingness. As the spirit faded, a crack appeared in the blood crystal. The fissure widened rapidly, cleaving the orb in two.
As the group looked on in stunned silence, the two halves cleared, spilling their bloody magic across the sands.
The hanyou boy dipped his sword into the spill, and the blade transformed, drinking in the power of the crystal and turning as red as the orb itself had been.
“Tetsusaiga has absorbed the power of the barrier crystal!” the little flea proclaimed.
Tetsusaiga? Shiori wondered as the hanyou’s human companions began to cheer. His sword has a name?
The hanyou smirked in triumph. He gave his transformed sword a practice swing, and Shiori marveled when he returned the blade to its too-small sheath in a burst of light.
He looked up at her then, his gaze piercing, and Shiori’s face flooded with heat.
“Something else was here, wasn’t it?” he asked. “Something protected you and your mom from that ghost.”
“There was a presence around Kaa-chan and I,” Shiori answered hesitantly, struggling not to glance away in shyness. “It was warm and kind.”
Shizu took her hand. Her dark eyes were solemn, her smile sad and tender.
“That was your father, Shiori. He protected us.”
Shiori felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes. She turned away so the boy wouldn’t see and looked out over the wide blue ocean. For a while, she and her mother stood this way in silence, hand-in-hand, and when at last Shiori looked back, she saw that the hanyou and his friends were gone.
The young girl felt a pang of regret, of loneliness. Before him, she had never met another hanyou like herself. How many things she would have liked to ask him. Yet she hadn’t even had the chance to learn his name. For some reason, this troubled her most of all.
“Kaa-chan?” she spoke up hopefully, meeting her mother’s eyes. “Did the hanyou boy tell you his name?”
“No,” her mother replied, and Shiori’s heart sank in her chest, “but I believe I heard one of the others call him ‘Inuyasha.'”
“Inuyasha,” the little girl repeated, her voice soft with wonder as she gazed toward the east.
In the distance, the sun burned over the hills, a blazing disc in the cloudless sky. Light washed over the land, cleansing away the shadows. With the dark threat of Taigokumaru vanquished, the villagers had begun to creep back to their damaged huts. Perhaps this new day would be the start of a different life for them all.
Perhaps today, beyond that distant horizon, the young half-demon who had saved her would find whatever it was he was searching for. In her heart, Shiori wished him luck.
Inuyasha, she thought with a wistful smile, I hope we’ll meet again someday.
She remembered how strong, how brave he had looked when he’d jumped in to defend her mother, and a curious sort of pain blossomed in her chest, unlike any she had ever felt before. Uncertainty and elation followed in the wake of this strange, sweet ache, though a lifetime would pass before Shiori would trace the feeling to its source.
And so it was, as in all good fairytales, that the young girl found herself falling in love.
Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi