[CHAPTERFIC] Mukashibanashi Chapter One (Inuyasha)
Title: Mukashibanashi [ FF.NET ]
Pairing: KagomexInuyasha
Rating: PG-13 (For Language)
Genre: Action+Adventure/Romance/Drama/Humor/Alternate Universe
Word Count: 2,407
Summary: [A Tale of Long Ago.] Inuyasha is an ordinary junior high student who has a most extraordinary fifteenth birthday. Pulled into the past, he unseals Kagome, a hanyou who is just looking for some answers. An AU variation on the series.
Note: I’ve had this idea for years but am just sitting down to right it now. Talk about a sudden strike of inspiration. I haven’t even really thought about writing IY fic for almost a year. Yes, this story reverses Kagome and Inuyasha’s roles. No it does not just retell the story with their places switched (and the places switched between other characters). It should be closer to a completely different story than it will be to a retelling. That’s my hope at least. I also hope I'll be able to update this soon. :)
Japanese Glossary-
Mukashibanashi- A tale of long ago.
Kosode- A traditional jacket/top worn by both men and women. The top Sango wears in her casual outfit is a kosode.
Hakama- Very wide legged pants that tie at the waist. The wide legged pants several characters wear in the series are hakama. Some tie at the bottom like Inuyasha and Naraku’s. Others are open like Kikyou’s.
Bachi Hebi- Cursed Snake. Based on the Tsuchiniko, a much smaller mythical snake of Japan. Bachi Hebi is another name for the Tsuchiniko, but I umm… supersized it.
Tenrousei Inuyasha’s fifteenth birthday started out like any other of his birthdays. He woke up, opened a few gifts from his mother (a couple of new shirts, a video game, and a check), and then he and his mother took the bus to the Dusk Shrine a few kilometers away. Inuyasha’s mother had made it a tradition to visit the shrine every year on his birthday morning to ask for another year’s blessing in his life. He brought his backpack along and slipped on his school uniform before leaving, not thinking he’d have the time to drop by their apartment again before he went to class.
The Dusk Shrine grounds had been considered sacred for the past eight or so centuries, or so it was said. The daunting set of stairs and the current shrine architecture were not even a quarter that old. However, Inuyasha’s mother told him that they had been built upon the grounds of an area that was rich with mythological history and had previously held another shrine. He didn’t pay much attention to any of that. Unlike his mother, he wasn’t particularly religious and didn’t have the same interest in history she did.
Once they’d reached the top of the stairs, Miss Tenrousei greeted the priest and immediately headed into the shrine. Inuyasha stayed behind. He would go in after she finished. He turned away from the shrine house and came face to face with the enormous Goshinboku tree that shadowed the grounds with its leaves. The God Tree was known to be several hundred years old, gauged with scars of unknown origins and a trunk of formidable thickness. It was an impressive presence, and Inuyasha stared up at its semi-transparent green leaves, the morning sunlight sifting through them.
A sudden breeze shifted the branches and the leaves and whipped Inuyasha’s long black ponytail in front of his face. He spit a piece of hair out of his mouth and frowned, shoving his ponytail back behind him and pushing a forelock behind his ear. If Inuyasha had not been so non-descript in other aspects, he would surely have gotten a lot of attention at his junior high school. Thick black hair that fell to his rear (always in a ponytail, as otherwise the school would not let him keep it long), wide violet eyes, and an extremely unusual name should have made him stand out. But he was neither a broody outsider nor was he charismatic and popular. He was just normal, like the huge majority of the other students in his class. He went to school, got decent grades, attended cram school occasionally, and found things he enjoyed in his free time.
It was all he could do to make his mother happy. It was difficult to find a part time job at his age, and he hardly had the time anyway. Away from school he had a temper, and even at school he wasn’t very talkative. He bit his tongue and kept complaints to himself, trying his hardest not to stand out. Inuyasha was all his mother had. His father had died when he was just an infant in an accident and as they hadn’t yet married, nothing had been left for his fiancé and her son. Inuyasha felt nothing but resentment in regards to his father, who had made no arrangements to provide for them in case something happened. His mother worked two jobs and they got by with few major problems, but Inuyasha thought she deserved better. He always had.
A moment later there was the ring of a bell, Inuyasha assumed, from his mother. She had placed a donation in the offering box and proceeded to ring the shrine bell afterward, as was custom. He figured she would be a few more minutes, so he sauntered away from the Goshinboku and reached into his backpack for an apple. He hadn’t had time to eat breakfast. A short distance away from the Goshinboku was a very old well house Inuyasha had never ventured into before. He sat down on the steps and bit into his apple, leaning back to breathe in the crisp morning air. A muffled rattling noise startled him and he swiftly turned around, his focus turning to the wooden door of the ancient well house.
He was bewildered. A faint blue glow crept through the cracks under and between the doors, and the light rattling noise continued. Against his better judgment, Inuyasha stood up and ambled towards the door, slowly and with trepidation in every step. The doors creaked as he opened them, even though he did so with as much care as possible.
Inuyasha stepped inside.
The blue glow came from the well itself. It was sealed shut, but it shone out of every crack of the old wooden well and all along the lip. It was light blue, the color of hot flame. The rattling also came from inside the well. The slab of wood that was cut to seal the well had a few ofuda slapped on it and was the source of the rattling. Or rather, whatever was in the well was rattling it.
“Must be someone in there,” he whispered to himself. “Maybe that’s a flashlight and they’re trying to get out?” It seemed reasonable, although that would make it a powerful flashlight and the well, covered in cobwebs and even a bit of mold, looked like it hadn’t been unsealed in quite some time. He made his way down the few stairs, each creaking under his weight, and leaned over the well, the soft dirt of the floor beneath his feet.
“Oi!” He yelled. “Oi, do you need help down there?” His voice echoed throughout the small musty building. No response.
The rattling grew louder and the top of the well shook more intensely as he leaned further over the well. Startled, Inuyasha’s eyes widened and he backed away. “Listen, I’m going to go and get the shrine keeper.” He spoke, nervousness betraying him.
But as Inuyasha turned around to leave, the well burst open behind him. Shattered pieces of wood exploded across the well house and a few hit him, one tearing straight through the sleeve of his upper arm and causing it to bleed deeply. The blue light glowed blindingly bright, and Inuyasha shielded his face with one hand to stop it from doing so and to prevent debris from getting into his eyes. All of this happened within a moment, and when he began to recover from the shock, he thought to run. However, as he put his first foot forward to do so, his movements were halted when he was grabbed from behind. Something coiled around his center, thick, scaly and serpentine. He tried to squeeze out of its grip but it only constricted further when he did so.
Terrified Inuyasha turned to see his attacker. The eyes of a snake met his gaze. Its head was big as his own but twice as wide, and its dripping fangs were visible in its half opened mouth. Inuyasha dared to look away and down to the coils that were wrapped around his center. They were substantially thicker than the upper part of the serpent, as if its central area was much wider than the rest of the creature. Fear gripped him again and he tried to yell, but the hold the snake had on his center, around his lungs, made it difficult to breathe, let alone scream. “What… what are you?” He finally managed, his voice shallow and gasping.
The serpent did not respond but instead merely flickered its tongue, whipping its head back towards the well and diving down, taking Inuyasha with it.
The blue light surrounded him as the snake leapt into the well. He waited for the impact of the bottom, but it did not come. He and the serpent were suspended in the light, which had changed into an inky velvet blue, almost black, with patches of lighter blue throughout it. The situation was so surreal and terrifying that Inuyasha was not surprised when the snake spoke. Its voice was a hiss of a whisper, with a slightly masculine edge to it.
“You have it, you have the shikon no tama. Strange, I expected a miko.” Inuyasha unthinkingly wriggled in his grasp and the snake tightened his coils. “Foolish. You’re just a boy though. I suppose this will make it easier to kill you.” He snickered haughtily.
Inuyasha fought to conserve his air, as he could tell he had little time left to breathe. The serpent smirked at this, as well as a snake could smirk, and opened his jaws, his lethal fangs dripping venom. “Bachi Hebi. Remember my name….”
His fanged maw bore down upon Inuyasha and he finally managed to scream, his hand against the coils wrapped around his center. White light flared from his hands and exploded, throwing the serpent from his torso immediately. Nonplussed, Inuyasha stared at his hands, which glowed faintly.
He than chanced a look at the serpent and felt promptly ill. Flesh was melting away and sloughing off from the area Inuyasha’s blast had hit, revealing the innards of the grotesque serpent. Then, the most surprising thing in what could have been the merely thirty seconds (but the worst thirty seconds of his life) since he was grabbed by the serpent, occurred. Bachi Hebi, as he had called himself, simply vanished. And a few moments later, before he could even catch his breath, Inuyasha found himself sitting upon the hard dirt at the bottom of the well.
He took time to catch his breath now and relieved, glanced up. No sign of Bachi Hebi, but he was greeted with burning sunlight instead of a musty old well house. “What the fuck…” He glanced around the well for a way out and noticed a rope vine that reached the bottom. He grasped it, but then pulled away, looking at his hands once more. Nothing. No faint white glow or anything out of the ordinary. Shaking his head, he climbed up the vine and out of the well.
Sitting on the lip of the well, Inuyasha took in his surroundings. A meadow, green and flourishing with flowers dotting the grass here and there. At the edge of the meadow began a forest, its shady boughs still letting enough light in for him to see into it. He took a deep breath, and before he could assess his surroundings further, noticed the deep gash the splinters of wood had wreaked upon his upper arm. “Shit.” The bleeding hadn’t stopped so he quickly ripped off the lower part of his torn black sleeve.
Something told him he wasn’t going to run into any teachers that cared about his uniform being ripped any time soon. He folded the piece of fabric in half and pressed it firmly against the wound, then proceeded tie it off in a makeshift bandage. “Should at least stop the bleeding.”
He went back to surveying the meadow. Bachi Hebi was long gone. Somehow Inuyasha knew this, as if he could feel it. He didn’t ponder that feeling further, too perplexed by the mere idea. The more important issue was that the well had taken him somewhere, and in absence of the well house or any other part of the shrine (let alone the rest of Tokyo), he wished desperately to find somewhere familiar. Familiar… He hoped his mother was okay.
The only way out of the meadow was through the forest, so Inuyasha walked towards the wood, careful of every step, listening for any possible sound. He stopped at the sound of birds, the rustle of small animals, and the falling of leaves. Everything seemed oddly normal here to the point that would have wondered if he’d dreamed Bachi Hebi if the well hadn’t dropped him off in another place.
At the edge of an expanse of trees, Inuyasha chanced upon a clearing. The grass was bright and untouched, and there were no trodden trails signifying civilization as there had been in other parts of the forest. Some distance away was a bridge across a ravine, but here it was pristine.
That was, until he spotted the tree in the middle of the small clearing. He recognized it immediately- the Goshinboku that had occupied the Dusk Shrine grounds. He was momentarily confused by the fact that the tree was both here and there, but that confusion was forgotten when he noticed something that was very different about this tree. There was a figure against it, or rather on it. Vines were wrapped around its limbs and up across its torso and he could see it was wearing green clothing. He jogged towards it to investigate further, and stepped onto the bottom root of the tree.
It was a girl; about his age, perhaps, with long black hair and a somewhat petite figure. Her eyes were closed as if sleeping, but Inuyasha could feel that she was not dead. Once again, he did not understand how. He felt something from her, a sensation caused by her presence. Nothing like the one he felt from Bachi Hebi, as this one did not make him uneasy. Her clothing was archaic, and she was dressed in a masculine manner, a light green kosode and a pair of dark green hakama.
His eyes averted from her bare feet back up to her face, where he noticed something he hadn’t before. Her ears were not normal human ears, but were perched on top of her head rather like a dog or a cat’s ears. They were fuzzy and pointed and stood out starkly against the rest of her very normal (albeit quite pretty) appearance.
“Oi,” he tried. “Wake up will you?” She did not, and Inuyasha furrowed his brow and climbed further up the roots. “Hey, I know you’re not dead, woman.” He gently reached up and flicked her cheek, then one of her ears. Nothing. He tried to shake her shoulders, as much as he could with the roots wrapped around her. She still did not stir, and Inuyasha was about to give up and go try to find someone else when he felt something approaching behind him.
It was that same malevolent feeling from before. It discomfited him to his core and he shuddered, fearfully turning around. At the edge of the woods and slithering towards him, was Bachi Hebi.
Pairing: KagomexInuyasha
Rating: PG-13 (For Language)
Genre: Action+Adventure/Romance/Drama/Humor/Alternate Universe
Word Count: 2,407
Summary: [A Tale of Long Ago.] Inuyasha is an ordinary junior high student who has a most extraordinary fifteenth birthday. Pulled into the past, he unseals Kagome, a hanyou who is just looking for some answers. An AU variation on the series.
Note: I’ve had this idea for years but am just sitting down to right it now. Talk about a sudden strike of inspiration. I haven’t even really thought about writing IY fic for almost a year. Yes, this story reverses Kagome and Inuyasha’s roles. No it does not just retell the story with their places switched (and the places switched between other characters). It should be closer to a completely different story than it will be to a retelling. That’s my hope at least. I also hope I'll be able to update this soon. :)
Japanese Glossary-
Mukashibanashi- A tale of long ago.
Kosode- A traditional jacket/top worn by both men and women. The top Sango wears in her casual outfit is a kosode.
Hakama- Very wide legged pants that tie at the waist. The wide legged pants several characters wear in the series are hakama. Some tie at the bottom like Inuyasha and Naraku’s. Others are open like Kikyou’s.
Bachi Hebi- Cursed Snake. Based on the Tsuchiniko, a much smaller mythical snake of Japan. Bachi Hebi is another name for the Tsuchiniko, but I umm… supersized it.
Tenrousei Inuyasha’s fifteenth birthday started out like any other of his birthdays. He woke up, opened a few gifts from his mother (a couple of new shirts, a video game, and a check), and then he and his mother took the bus to the Dusk Shrine a few kilometers away. Inuyasha’s mother had made it a tradition to visit the shrine every year on his birthday morning to ask for another year’s blessing in his life. He brought his backpack along and slipped on his school uniform before leaving, not thinking he’d have the time to drop by their apartment again before he went to class.
The Dusk Shrine grounds had been considered sacred for the past eight or so centuries, or so it was said. The daunting set of stairs and the current shrine architecture were not even a quarter that old. However, Inuyasha’s mother told him that they had been built upon the grounds of an area that was rich with mythological history and had previously held another shrine. He didn’t pay much attention to any of that. Unlike his mother, he wasn’t particularly religious and didn’t have the same interest in history she did.
Once they’d reached the top of the stairs, Miss Tenrousei greeted the priest and immediately headed into the shrine. Inuyasha stayed behind. He would go in after she finished. He turned away from the shrine house and came face to face with the enormous Goshinboku tree that shadowed the grounds with its leaves. The God Tree was known to be several hundred years old, gauged with scars of unknown origins and a trunk of formidable thickness. It was an impressive presence, and Inuyasha stared up at its semi-transparent green leaves, the morning sunlight sifting through them.
A sudden breeze shifted the branches and the leaves and whipped Inuyasha’s long black ponytail in front of his face. He spit a piece of hair out of his mouth and frowned, shoving his ponytail back behind him and pushing a forelock behind his ear. If Inuyasha had not been so non-descript in other aspects, he would surely have gotten a lot of attention at his junior high school. Thick black hair that fell to his rear (always in a ponytail, as otherwise the school would not let him keep it long), wide violet eyes, and an extremely unusual name should have made him stand out. But he was neither a broody outsider nor was he charismatic and popular. He was just normal, like the huge majority of the other students in his class. He went to school, got decent grades, attended cram school occasionally, and found things he enjoyed in his free time.
It was all he could do to make his mother happy. It was difficult to find a part time job at his age, and he hardly had the time anyway. Away from school he had a temper, and even at school he wasn’t very talkative. He bit his tongue and kept complaints to himself, trying his hardest not to stand out. Inuyasha was all his mother had. His father had died when he was just an infant in an accident and as they hadn’t yet married, nothing had been left for his fiancé and her son. Inuyasha felt nothing but resentment in regards to his father, who had made no arrangements to provide for them in case something happened. His mother worked two jobs and they got by with few major problems, but Inuyasha thought she deserved better. He always had.
A moment later there was the ring of a bell, Inuyasha assumed, from his mother. She had placed a donation in the offering box and proceeded to ring the shrine bell afterward, as was custom. He figured she would be a few more minutes, so he sauntered away from the Goshinboku and reached into his backpack for an apple. He hadn’t had time to eat breakfast. A short distance away from the Goshinboku was a very old well house Inuyasha had never ventured into before. He sat down on the steps and bit into his apple, leaning back to breathe in the crisp morning air. A muffled rattling noise startled him and he swiftly turned around, his focus turning to the wooden door of the ancient well house.
He was bewildered. A faint blue glow crept through the cracks under and between the doors, and the light rattling noise continued. Against his better judgment, Inuyasha stood up and ambled towards the door, slowly and with trepidation in every step. The doors creaked as he opened them, even though he did so with as much care as possible.
Inuyasha stepped inside.
The blue glow came from the well itself. It was sealed shut, but it shone out of every crack of the old wooden well and all along the lip. It was light blue, the color of hot flame. The rattling also came from inside the well. The slab of wood that was cut to seal the well had a few ofuda slapped on it and was the source of the rattling. Or rather, whatever was in the well was rattling it.
“Must be someone in there,” he whispered to himself. “Maybe that’s a flashlight and they’re trying to get out?” It seemed reasonable, although that would make it a powerful flashlight and the well, covered in cobwebs and even a bit of mold, looked like it hadn’t been unsealed in quite some time. He made his way down the few stairs, each creaking under his weight, and leaned over the well, the soft dirt of the floor beneath his feet.
“Oi!” He yelled. “Oi, do you need help down there?” His voice echoed throughout the small musty building. No response.
The rattling grew louder and the top of the well shook more intensely as he leaned further over the well. Startled, Inuyasha’s eyes widened and he backed away. “Listen, I’m going to go and get the shrine keeper.” He spoke, nervousness betraying him.
But as Inuyasha turned around to leave, the well burst open behind him. Shattered pieces of wood exploded across the well house and a few hit him, one tearing straight through the sleeve of his upper arm and causing it to bleed deeply. The blue light glowed blindingly bright, and Inuyasha shielded his face with one hand to stop it from doing so and to prevent debris from getting into his eyes. All of this happened within a moment, and when he began to recover from the shock, he thought to run. However, as he put his first foot forward to do so, his movements were halted when he was grabbed from behind. Something coiled around his center, thick, scaly and serpentine. He tried to squeeze out of its grip but it only constricted further when he did so.
Terrified Inuyasha turned to see his attacker. The eyes of a snake met his gaze. Its head was big as his own but twice as wide, and its dripping fangs were visible in its half opened mouth. Inuyasha dared to look away and down to the coils that were wrapped around his center. They were substantially thicker than the upper part of the serpent, as if its central area was much wider than the rest of the creature. Fear gripped him again and he tried to yell, but the hold the snake had on his center, around his lungs, made it difficult to breathe, let alone scream. “What… what are you?” He finally managed, his voice shallow and gasping.
The serpent did not respond but instead merely flickered its tongue, whipping its head back towards the well and diving down, taking Inuyasha with it.
The blue light surrounded him as the snake leapt into the well. He waited for the impact of the bottom, but it did not come. He and the serpent were suspended in the light, which had changed into an inky velvet blue, almost black, with patches of lighter blue throughout it. The situation was so surreal and terrifying that Inuyasha was not surprised when the snake spoke. Its voice was a hiss of a whisper, with a slightly masculine edge to it.
“You have it, you have the shikon no tama. Strange, I expected a miko.” Inuyasha unthinkingly wriggled in his grasp and the snake tightened his coils. “Foolish. You’re just a boy though. I suppose this will make it easier to kill you.” He snickered haughtily.
Inuyasha fought to conserve his air, as he could tell he had little time left to breathe. The serpent smirked at this, as well as a snake could smirk, and opened his jaws, his lethal fangs dripping venom. “Bachi Hebi. Remember my name….”
His fanged maw bore down upon Inuyasha and he finally managed to scream, his hand against the coils wrapped around his center. White light flared from his hands and exploded, throwing the serpent from his torso immediately. Nonplussed, Inuyasha stared at his hands, which glowed faintly.
He than chanced a look at the serpent and felt promptly ill. Flesh was melting away and sloughing off from the area Inuyasha’s blast had hit, revealing the innards of the grotesque serpent. Then, the most surprising thing in what could have been the merely thirty seconds (but the worst thirty seconds of his life) since he was grabbed by the serpent, occurred. Bachi Hebi, as he had called himself, simply vanished. And a few moments later, before he could even catch his breath, Inuyasha found himself sitting upon the hard dirt at the bottom of the well.
He took time to catch his breath now and relieved, glanced up. No sign of Bachi Hebi, but he was greeted with burning sunlight instead of a musty old well house. “What the fuck…” He glanced around the well for a way out and noticed a rope vine that reached the bottom. He grasped it, but then pulled away, looking at his hands once more. Nothing. No faint white glow or anything out of the ordinary. Shaking his head, he climbed up the vine and out of the well.
Sitting on the lip of the well, Inuyasha took in his surroundings. A meadow, green and flourishing with flowers dotting the grass here and there. At the edge of the meadow began a forest, its shady boughs still letting enough light in for him to see into it. He took a deep breath, and before he could assess his surroundings further, noticed the deep gash the splinters of wood had wreaked upon his upper arm. “Shit.” The bleeding hadn’t stopped so he quickly ripped off the lower part of his torn black sleeve.
Something told him he wasn’t going to run into any teachers that cared about his uniform being ripped any time soon. He folded the piece of fabric in half and pressed it firmly against the wound, then proceeded tie it off in a makeshift bandage. “Should at least stop the bleeding.”
He went back to surveying the meadow. Bachi Hebi was long gone. Somehow Inuyasha knew this, as if he could feel it. He didn’t ponder that feeling further, too perplexed by the mere idea. The more important issue was that the well had taken him somewhere, and in absence of the well house or any other part of the shrine (let alone the rest of Tokyo), he wished desperately to find somewhere familiar. Familiar… He hoped his mother was okay.
The only way out of the meadow was through the forest, so Inuyasha walked towards the wood, careful of every step, listening for any possible sound. He stopped at the sound of birds, the rustle of small animals, and the falling of leaves. Everything seemed oddly normal here to the point that would have wondered if he’d dreamed Bachi Hebi if the well hadn’t dropped him off in another place.
At the edge of an expanse of trees, Inuyasha chanced upon a clearing. The grass was bright and untouched, and there were no trodden trails signifying civilization as there had been in other parts of the forest. Some distance away was a bridge across a ravine, but here it was pristine.
That was, until he spotted the tree in the middle of the small clearing. He recognized it immediately- the Goshinboku that had occupied the Dusk Shrine grounds. He was momentarily confused by the fact that the tree was both here and there, but that confusion was forgotten when he noticed something that was very different about this tree. There was a figure against it, or rather on it. Vines were wrapped around its limbs and up across its torso and he could see it was wearing green clothing. He jogged towards it to investigate further, and stepped onto the bottom root of the tree.
It was a girl; about his age, perhaps, with long black hair and a somewhat petite figure. Her eyes were closed as if sleeping, but Inuyasha could feel that she was not dead. Once again, he did not understand how. He felt something from her, a sensation caused by her presence. Nothing like the one he felt from Bachi Hebi, as this one did not make him uneasy. Her clothing was archaic, and she was dressed in a masculine manner, a light green kosode and a pair of dark green hakama.
His eyes averted from her bare feet back up to her face, where he noticed something he hadn’t before. Her ears were not normal human ears, but were perched on top of her head rather like a dog or a cat’s ears. They were fuzzy and pointed and stood out starkly against the rest of her very normal (albeit quite pretty) appearance.
“Oi,” he tried. “Wake up will you?” She did not, and Inuyasha furrowed his brow and climbed further up the roots. “Hey, I know you’re not dead, woman.” He gently reached up and flicked her cheek, then one of her ears. Nothing. He tried to shake her shoulders, as much as he could with the roots wrapped around her. She still did not stir, and Inuyasha was about to give up and go try to find someone else when he felt something approaching behind him.
It was that same malevolent feeling from before. It discomfited him to his core and he shuddered, fearfully turning around. At the edge of the woods and slithering towards him, was Bachi Hebi.