#JUST LITERALLY SCREAMING AND BEATING HIS HEAD AGAINST AZURE'S SWORD

[imminent-danger-came]

Like my absolute fear in this scene. I forget how scary it is. I forget

[jafndaegur]

Noise of Rain | Chapter Two

Inside My Soul, I Hear You Calling

Sesskag

｡☆✼★━━━━━━━━━━━━★✼☆｡

Sesshomaru’s brow arched and slowed his stride. The overwhelming stench of familiar hanyou approached at an alarmingly fast pace. His footsteps paused completely and he tried to sort the odd feelings that wormed in his chest. 

It had been a long time since he had last seen the little Shikon Jewel group. He didn't know the exact time—that was a human thing. But Rin had grown a bit, and the seasons had changed from the balmy to near-cold.

And all through that time he'd not heard a peep of Inuyasha or his group. It was as if they'd disappeared completely from the earth.

"M'Lord?" Rin called from her spot next to Jaken, her skippy step half-hearted.

Sesshomaru’s brow furrowed as the dirt road kicked up dust and the wind blustered about them.

If it wasn't for the scent of utter desperation and surprising lack of hostility—the daiyoukai would have drew his sword before a heart beat.

Face to face with the horrid truth, Sesshomaru watched with growing alarm as Inuyasha sunk to his knees the minute he landed. His forehead touched the ground and his hands rested palm down against the earth. His body heaved, breathless, and his voice rasped.

"Please," he wheezed. "Please Sesshomaru."

"Get up you stupid brat," Sesshomaru gripped the boy's collar and yanked him up.

Inuyasha sat back on his heels, displaying the full front of his face. Hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, dulled bronzed color to once belligerent glare, the half demon hardly looked recognizable with a characteristic face fallen to the world. No fight, no charge, the hanyou was a shell.

"Please Sesshomaru, you have to help us find—"

"I will do nothing if you continue to snivel, Inuyasha," he snarled.

"Sesshomaru, Kagome is gone." Inuyasha pressed on. "You, bastard, are literally our last chance. It's been...it's been too long. We've searched, and searched, and—"

Sesshomaru flexed his fingers, not appreciating the discomfort roiling in his belly. "Have you considered, little brother, that she may be dead? If significant time has passed, I doubt she's been on holiday." However even as he spoke these words, he felt angered and uncomfortable. The idea of the little miko being dead was not pleasing. 

Inuyasha stared, appalled.

Sesshomaru continued smoothly, eyes hooded and corners of his mouth tugged down. "But she is not as inept as you believe either. She can take care of herself. Unlike you she is not a child."

The smallest of sparks flitted through the hanyou's glower before it disappeared. His gaze swung to the side and grew laden with guilt. "Kikyo came back. Alive. Normal. The same time Kagome disappeared. We—I—started looking the moment we knew something happened."

"Hn." Sesshomaru doubted that his little brother started his search so soon. But the undead priestess being alive made things troubling. There was one way for her to regain her humanity… "What do you know?"

Inuyasha's ears perked up. "There were no signs of struggle. She didn't put up a fight, all of her things were neatly tucked away at our camp, she'd left while we were sleeping. There's no trace of her scent, Miroku has looked for her aura. It really is almost like…"

"So you have nothing useful then." Sesshomaru sneered. 

Inuyasha bared his fangs. "Look. I checked on the other side of the well. You know...where she lives."

Sesshomaru had the vaguest idea, not the exacts, but enough to follow. Not that he would say—especially to Inuyasha.

"Her scent is stale. Her family is worried. She hasn't been back home in a long long time."

Turning on his heel, the daiyoukai gave his attention to his steward. "Jaken. Take Rin and head north. Make camp there. This Sesshomaru will find you once this has blown over."

"M'lord!" The imp screeched, but whether it was in affirmation or indignation, Sesshomaru could care less. 

"Lord Sesshomaru, please find lady Kagome," Rin chirped out, her expression scrunched with worry.

He nodded and looked over her shoulder. "Where was the little priestess last?"

"We were somewhere unfamiliar. A mountain range to the west, we'd been going that way to find a shard. Maybe three days by foot from here. But we had to stop, there was a bad evil presence there."

He would start there then. He did not say goodbye. He did not promise anything. Sesshomaru flew off with a gust of wind in his wake, his mokomoko trailing behind him.

…

The little miko disappeared the same day that he and his group had passed through the area. Sesshomaru recognized their own path and the path that they had once taken as well. When they had crossed ways however and he had checked on them, something had been off about the girl.

He couldn't place what. But it was dark and alluring, a radiance quite different than her reiki but perhaps not as suiting. As he had observed it more with his youki, he couldn't find a word or placement for it. So he left it alone. The presence clearly was not harming her.

But if he'd said something that day, parted with a word, would she have still disappeared? Was that aura within her something he should have warned her about? Not that he cared.

His body phased through a surprising barrier guarding the mountain range. The energy seeped in anger, the strong hatred spread through mountain range was alarming. No pure evil aura, as far as he could tell, the only thing he detected was resentful energy.

He landed on a high outcropping, a bright yellow patch on the dark grey mountainside having caught him off guard. When he observed the area, he realized it was sheet upon sheet of yellow talismans. Not unlike the ones that the monk with Inuyasha used. But these...Sesshomaru’s nose wrinkled. These were written with blood.

We can't stop, Sesshomaru followed the trail of talismans leading him along the wall. The blood on the talismans, without a doubt, belonged to the miko. Their trace lured him with a tumultuous power drawing him closer and closer. We won't drop. 

He stood at the epicenter of the mountains, a steep crevice before him—it's maw stretched wide. How far it went down he couldn't guess. But he noted the strand of talismans that appeared from the dark depths and lined one on top of the other up the wall. Like a rope.

Sesshomaru lifted his brow with a disdained calculation. The only questions now, how did she end down there, and why all the bizarre talismans?

The bloody writing had darkened and faded, the smell faint and on its last legs of detectability. So Kagome hadn't been in these mountains for a while, his guess was she left around the tail end of the warm season. 

But where would she go—if not home or his brother?

A pulse surged through the air, a reverberation that rattled his teeth and caused his bones to shake with a single word. "Follow." Sesshomaru would not heed a command save his own, however after piecing apart the summons, he detected Naraku's aura and his brother's. So the spider had made a move. But the strange emulation of power was not his. It was new and foreign, something that had a strong tantalizing irregularity that beckoned him closer.

Light surrounded him and Sesshomaru sped in the direction of the scents, his blood rising in excitement—the overwhelming joy of a hunt starting to circulate through his veins. He appeared with gust and gale, his sword drawn. Except the the battlefield was not what he expected. 

Dead saimyosho littered the ground, along with various unidentifiable incarnations. They were not mutilated or in any way harmed. Just cold and prone. While Inuyasha and his group fought to disperse the miasma on ground level, the overwhelming sound of a fife echoed through the air in a haunting and lilting call above the dark cloud. There, at the center, were two forms. 

One was a figure dressed in a pale grey yukata and and dark green haori. Dark, inky hair wavered dangerously while fingers danced over the flute with ease. The music clawed through the air, while midnight tendrils danced around the figure in the sky. The flutist reverberated with overwhelming power and energy. 

Sesshomaru’s eyes widened.

No more smiles you fake.

As Sesshomaru sped closer, his heart pulsed violently as the song summoned his. Bright, glowing crimson eyes lured him in closer. His pulse raced in his veins.

Thus—

The second figure at the epicenter was a writhing Naraku. His body trapped, quite appropriately, in a web of the dark inky tendrils produced by the melody of the fife. They twisted him and rendered him like a puppet, manipulating him like strings until a small but dazzling orb was produced from the hanyou. The orb. The Shikon Jewel. The figure fished the jewel back to themself—herself, Sesshomaru noticed as he grew closer. The scent of miasma no longer blocking it out with the growth of his proximity.

His eyes widened, the familiar smell bracing his senses. He hurried faster, shouting. Shouting what? A warning? A command? A plea? So unlike him.

But the darkness that warped Naraku into something unnatural, the darkness that she commandeered—it was unlike her.

She raised her arm to the air, the round and complete Shikon now clutched in her fingers.

—the hands of the clock that passed the twelve—

The resentful energy violently lashed through the air and into the jewel. In an instant it darkened. Time paused

—will pierce the starry sky,  as crimson eyes flashed to azure as the jewel dispersed into dark flecks of dust.

The woman stared at him as the pieces fluttered away, as Naraku howled angrily, as the world around them quieted.  

"You have a lot to explain," Sesshomaru growled, "Miko."

Her brow furrowed and lips pursed, her eyes screamed outragers drive me nuts. "Ah Sesshomaru. I've a hard time believing this is concern speaking. No offense."

His lips curled in distaste. 

"Hold that thought," she smiled sheepishly as the red steeped back into her eyes.

Outragers drive me nuts. 

The dark tendrils flashed into ravenous fury, attacking Naraku again without relent this time. Sesshomaru lurched forward, intent to prove that with his power and sword would be the demise of the spider.

She laughed as the resentful energy tore Naraku to pieces instead. She flashed the daiyoukai a girlish grin as the spider hanyou fell to the earth below. With a satisfied nod, she wiped her hands on the hem of her haori.

"Defeat Naraku, check. Shikon Jewel wished away? Check. Miasma gone to help them down there?" She gestured down to Inuyasha and her old friends below, now watching with disbelief as the poison cloud faded with the death of its creator. "Check."

He stared at Kagome with a narrowed wary gaze.

"How's that for just a shard detector?"

The raging howl of the underdog.

[help-its-a-dot]

Alright so when I took this job they said all I had to do was narrate. You know, just follow this guy around and relay what he’s doing, make it sound interesting, yada yada yada.

Ok now that I say it out loud I realize that I’ve probably looked like a stalker for the past few days.

Fun.

ANYWAYS I was going somewhere with this; I had a point. Right. My point was that I didn’t think I’d end up in the middle of a burned down park, cowering in absolute terror behind some rocks that I really wish were bigger, and longing with all that's left of my heart that I could be one of those people that are, given the situation, naturally sprinting away whilst screaming at the top of their lungs.

Should I run away? I mean, it seems like the more logical option here; If I could get over that bridge, then I’d-

*bridge disintegrates*

Well there goes that.

Looks like I’ll be narrating then! Yippee. So, I should probably warn you, I haven’t exactly been paying attention to my assigned main character, ergo I don't have that much background knowledge. Oh who am I kidding, I have none.

Anyhow, sorry, I know I should be narrating. I’m getting to that. Background knowledge. What do I know?

Uh, actually nothing much happened to this dude. A few weeks ago he found a dead body in his bathtub. Now that I think about it, that’s probably where I should’ve started paying attention….

Ah, fucked this up, didn’t I.

Also, as a side note, I’m gonna be calling this dumbass Jake because my dumbass kind of sort of didn’t ever really at all catch his name.

Alrighty folks! I’m gonna…. Be brave…. And peek out from behind these rocks…. Did I mention how much I wished they were bigger? 

Ahem. *clears throat*. Narrator voice. *nods decisively*. Lets go.

There’s fire everywhere. On the tops of trees like snow at the peaks of mountains (how are there even still trees here) bushes have morphed into bonfires, while patches of grass are practically leaking little flames like a dope game of ‘the floor is lava’.

Jake stands, looking at the devastation with wide eyes. Smoke billows out into the sky, painting the already grey clouds black.

A deafening crash sounds behind him- you know, the kind you get when a boulder squishes a four story building like it’s a three year old’s structure of off brand legos. He’s thrown to the ground, and waits, breathing heavily.

Aw god why did I forgot my flask of vodka today? I freaking need it.

And as if that weren’t enough, a spaceship just blipped into the sky.

Should I run?

I should probably run.

Sorry, sorry, I’m not very good at this narrator thing. In my defense, I didn’t think they were serious! Alright, I’m gonna try that again.

Suddenly, and quite literally out of nowhere, there’s a fatally blinding blue-red light, making everyone in the immediate vicinity-- which isn’t that many people anymore, most have used their last few remaining drops of common sense and fled for their lives --squeeze their eyes shut and hastily bury their heads in whatever was nearest and most convenient to shield themselves from impending blindness, wailing in a mix of surprise and agony. All flames previously terrorizing the verdure are extinguished and the smoke is blown out as a single gust of forceful wind, which also effectively topples the few remaining, yet charred nonetheless, trees, buildings, and people.

Augh, ew, eurgh, I got a mouthful of Martin’s grocery bag. How do I know it’s Martin’s? They have a distinctive taste of mild sadness and resignation. Right, right, the spaceship. 

See, when I say spaceship, I mean cool looking flying saucer thingy appearing like it was plucked right out of a conspiracy theory and given some upgrades. It’s a giant, azure/ultramarine blue, except for the bottom which shines in a weirdly mesmerizing yellowish glow, squished sphere. Oval. Pancake. Sorry, I don't know my shapes. It seems to be practically thrumming with energy, like it drank five red bulls followed by ten extremely caffeinated coffees and finished it all off with a few five hour energy drinks. 

I cannot tell you how much I hope it doesn't do what it looks like it’s gonna do and explode.

Meanwhile, Jake has picked up… a sword. Well shit. Medieval, much? Not a gun? No? Personally, I think a gun would be extraordinarily effective against the horde of what looks like blobs but are probably extravagantly dangerous aliens filing in a weirdly orderly single file line out of the saucer and immediately beginning to lomp closer and closer and closer crap did I mention they were getting closer?

Should I run?

I should probably run.

Hold up, no, that reminds me, I’m supposed to be narrating. God, I’m atrocious at this, aren’t I.

He feels sweat break out on his brow. The sword is heavy in his hands, and he can barely lift it, let alone decapitate a blob, but he’s in too deep to let his weariness show. He’s gotta be strong and save what’s left of these people, this city, or die trying. Which is probably what’ll happen in a few minutes. But ah, well, he’ll die fighting for Americanos , which can’t be all that bad.

Technically, if you think about it, he’s suicidal, because his colossal ego will not, quite literally, for the life of him, allow him to take a smart route, like getting into that convenient truck and bowling over all the blobs, or snatching up a gun from that store across the street, or even just alerting someone who is actually capable at dealing with an event like this like the authorities.

But what can he do, he is American, after all. It's simply unavoidable; part of the culture description. *white people i swear

He watches morbidly as Martin’s grocery bags blow past from the ruins before him, and glances up as the spaceship above him gives one final thrum and blips away, probably back to wherever it came from, leaving him alone with an army of blobs bouncing threateningly towards him.

In truth, he didn’t know what they were. All he knew was that if they kept destroying everything at this rate, there won't be a single McDonalds left in America, and he couldn’t have that. Of course, by then there wouldn’t even be an America, and everyone would have to go to the McDonalds’ in Russia. Russia has McDonalds, right? Oh, he simply could not do that to his fellow citizens! 

He pondered this, along with whether or not Australia exists, all the while counting down the seconds (...7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… dammit 3, 2, 1… 3, 2, 1… 3, 2-- he’d get it eventually) until his doom and willing his arms not to shake with the incredible weight of the sword in his hands. Whose idea was it to make swords out of metal, anyways? It’s incredibly stupid-- nowadays 90% of America wouldn’t even be able to muster the courage to touch one, let alone the strength to lift one. 

Ugh, he knew he should’ve gone with that plastic light saber he’d seen at the mall. At least then he could’ve gone down with style.

As if on cue, there’s another, at this point expected, crash resounding behind him, and he turns to watch in despair as said mall tumbles almost comically to the ground. 

There goes the light saber.

And another McDonalds.

Ohh, things were getting bad.

The park, if you could still call it a park, is deserted now save for the occasional Martin’s grocery bag skittering about, and he can’t help but give in to the desire to reflect upon his life. He wasted it, playing video games and other shit like that all day, every day. This is the first time he’s been outside in a long time. He now knows with absolute certainty that if he were ever granted such an opportunity he’d go back and redo it all. He’d try harder to beat that level, he’d get the better controller, he’d stay up later working on his technique. But all that was a distant dream now, something he could not hope to accomplish now.

He wished that maybe, just maybe, heaven would have a nice game console for him.

When he’d gotten selflessly sucked into this adventure, he never thought he’d actually die, never expected anything to really happen- If he had, he of course would never have turned the power of his last 8 braincells away from a computer screen and into the real world to start investigating.

Ah fuck, sorry for interrupting, I think I twisted my wrist or some shit while trying to get a better vantage point on these still too small rocks. 

Should I run?

I should probably run.

On a different note: I’m really sorry guys. When you take a narrator job they never tell you anything about your person. Had I known he was American, I would have immediately sabotaged this entire thing; I could never in good conscience have subjected you guys to.. well.. this.

But alas, now I’m stuck narrating an American who is going to get me killed.

Unless… Unless there’s a loophole. My parents were lawyers, so I excel at finding those.

The rules are, you have to stay with your hero and narrate their adventure. How an American turned out to be one of the heroes, I know not, it must be a glitch in the system. But I’ll be fucking damned if this glitch gets me killed. Literally. So! Once the hero, inevitably, dies, you’re free to go. There’s nothing much left to narrate afterwards. And since Jake is closer to the horde of blobs coming our way than I am, as soon as he’s bowled over I’ll sprint. To the side, like a smart immigrant would do. Not straight back, because then the blobs’d just follow me and kill me, so the only logical conclusion is to circle around them and see if my apartment is still intact. I didn’t finish my cream puffs and I really don't want them to melt.

They’re getting closer. He can hear their squelching, and the chicken nuggets in his stomach churn unpleasantly. There’s bits of goo flying off them in all directions, and when said goo makes contact with something it immediately disintegrates that unfortunate something, leaving nothing behind. Is this really the fate that’ll befall him? Is this how the world ends?

Well, death by disintegration it is then. Oh, he can’t wait to brag to his boys about this.

Oh, wait, no, that’s not right. He’ll be dead.

And, in the last few moments before the blobs reach him, he reconsiders. There’s still so much this cruel world has to offer, and he never took advantage of any of it. Nor was he ever grateful for much of it. 

He suddenly feels a new feeling. Determination. He will destroy every single one of these vile creatures, and he WILL come out of it intact. He has to. 

With new resolve he scrapes together the last of his strength and raises his trusty sword over his head, every nonexistent muscle tense, ready. They’re getting closer. Closer. 50 yards. 30 yards. 20. 10. Just a few feet.

He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes dramatically. Swings his sword.

And is immediately squashed with the most sickening squelch there could ever be.

Ew.

Should I run?

I should probably run.

Yeah, I’m gonna run.

[ghostofnibelheim]

azure-steel​:

‘Living is a choice’ he’d heard him say.

Was it? Or was it merely some sort of twisted punishment; keeping him alive to exact whatever means this man needed him for before ending him anyway? Sephiroth was a killer, cold and callous, Cloud had seen that with his own eyes, had almost become a victim to the vile splintering sting of the Masamune himself. How he didn’t perish that day would remain a mystery to him. And yet here he was, in the company of the man who’d tried to kill him and listening to his words of reason.  

That notion in itself made him feel sick to his stomach.

With the way Cloud was feeling right now; nauseous, cold and so miserably hollow, he wasn’t so sure if life right now was a gift, or simply a means to an inevitable end. But he chooses to remain silent in the face of that suggestion. There really was nothing he could formulate in terms of a response. Even when Sephiroth speaks about the hatred he harboured, cultivated and nurtured since the day reality itself had listed and his childhood home literally went up in smoke, still, Strife says nothing. Instead simply offering little more than a disdainful glare from his seat against Zack’s sword.

Still, there was something about the way in which the man spoke just now, with a startling amount of clarity, a frightening calmness to his tone so very different to the words he’d heard him spit back at the reactor.

                                                        -‘Don’t test me!’-

Cloud’s vision blurs into a brilliant white at that moment, the world around him dissolving out of view where all that was left were his own ragged, laboured breaths and the beating of his heart hammering against his chest.  

                                                       -‘Don’t test me!’-

Those words screamed through his head, so loud it was painful, and he lurches forward then with a pained grunt, a hand flying to his face in a frail attempt to ease the crippling agony blistering through his mind. Hot flashes of rising flames shot before his very eyes, an agonised scream he could hear curdling to the blood, the shivering gleam of ice cold steel and the soul fracturing hue of serpentine pale jade eyes. What was this?!

What’s happening?!

           ‘Stop!! Please!! Make it stop!’

It was the touch of Sephiroth’s hand upon his face which drags Cloud out of his stupor, with a start and a startled inward gasp as his gaze settles once again on those fierce alienesk eyes. And he feels the blood in his veins turn to ice in the wake of that memory, in the very face of those hues once sought to destroy everything Cloud knew and loved, and yet the contact of that leather clad hand burned beneath his skin. It felt disgusting, and all he can do in that moment is sit there and quiver beneath that hand.

He can’t stand it. So much so that he feels something fall away inside himself and fall into the black. He needs to get away.

“NO!” he lurches back, his back colliding with the buster sword still sunk into the ground behind him as he lifts a single hand with strength he didn’t know he had, summoned from the deepest darkest parts of him, and swats Sephiroth’s arm away with a surprising amount of force.

“Stay away from me! Don’t touch me! Don’t you EVER touch me!”

It appeared both men had been drifting off in their thoughts, unaware of the situation until it escalated. Sephiroth himself was pulled back to reality when the other yelled at him, shoving his arm out of the way violently.

For such a strong reaction, the ex-SOLDIER remained extremely collected, eyes blinking to then follow the movement of his hand with only the mildest display of confusion. Like a chemistry student observing an unexpected reaction in his experiment.

He thought it was an understandable demand, everything considered. Yet a difficult one to comply to.

“Unless you believe yourself able to get back on your feet, that’ll be hard for me to do.” With a quiet sigh, he retrieved his weapon, getting back on his feet.

Strong breezes blew from the high cliff looking over the sea nearby. Sephiroth turned to face it, looking over the dark, gray coat in the sky that was slowly creeping from afar. Soon, there’d be an unwelcome change in weather.

“… Shinra is after us.” He informed him, after taking a few steps away. He figured some time without his presence looming right on top of him, the younger male would find it easier to retrieve some semblance of calmness. “We cannot stay in the same place for too long. Leaving tracks of camps behind would give away our presence here.”

For the time being, he had spotted no searching teams in the area. His last clash with Shinra had been back in the mainland. But how long would it be before the far-western islands would become a likely lead?