Sesshōmaru turned swiftly. The moment he recognized the object in his hand for what it was, he acted without hesitation. The black pearl sat in his palm, and as his yōki poured into it, the pitch-dark gem blazed with a deep, azure light,a light that tore open a rift in the very air. Beyond that rift lay endless darkness. The cleft of the underworld. The place where Tōga's tomb was hidden.
Sesshōmaru did not look back. He spared not a single glance for Inuyasha. His white figure stepped into that rift as though walking through an ordinary door. Jaken scrambled frantically after him, clutching the Staff of Two Heads.
"Lord Sesshōmaru! Wait for me—!"
Unfortunately, a second later, Jaken was hurled straight back out. The black agate pearl, crafted by the daiyōkai Hōsenki, clearly did not welcome him.
Jaken tumbled across the ground, rolling several times over, battered and disoriented, and didn't manage to get back up for a long while.
The full moon hung high above. Left behind with nothing but a hole in his collar where Tenseiga had pinned and then been withdrawn, clutching his right eye, his face a mask of utter bewilderment, Inuyasha sat on the ground and blanked out for a moment.
Then he erupted.
"Sesshōmaru, you bastard! That was left to me by the old man, my mom was always going on about! GIVE IT BACK!"
He had clearly realized something. He'd figured out the origin of the thing hidden inside his eye. He tried to stand, tried to chase but his body, dead for over two months, only now seemed to register its own state. He was so weak he couldn't even stand steady. His knees buckled, and he crashed back down.
And worse he noticed.
His yōki. Gone. That searing, burning power that had flowed in his blood for as long as he could remember, vanished. No dog ears. No claws. No fangs. Even his sense of smell had dulled to the sluggish level of an ordinary human.
He'd become human. Completely human. Like every night of the new moon he'd ever endured except this time, the moon was shining bright in the sky.
Inuyasha froze in place. Then, at last, he noticed Shinji, who had been standing beside him the entire time. Crimson demon mask. Flowing white hair. The gray robes now restored to their normal state. Those scarlet demon eyes were watching him calmly.
Inuyasha's reaction,
"You! You're one of Sesshōmaru's goons, aren't you!"
He jabbed a finger at Shinji. His hand was shaking, whether from rage or sheer physical weakness, it was hard to tell. "That bastard took my stuff and ran! You damn bootlickers—!"
What followed was a torrent of exceptionally fluid profanity, spanning Sesshōmaru's ancestors back through eight generations, without the slightest consideration that Sesshōmaru's ancestors were, in all likelihood, also his own.
The curses were varied and imaginative, his vocabulary rich. Though his stamina wasn't what it had been a moment ago, he made up for it in sheer duration.
Shinji stood where he was, arms folded, and listened to the entire tirade. Then he nodded.
"You're absolutely right."
Inuyasha: "…Huh?"
"That guy really is a piece of work," Shinji said, his tone perfectly sincere. "Robbing his own little brother of the keepsake their father left him, in broad moonlight no less. Anyone who heard about it would have a few choice words."
Inuyasha's mouth opened, then closed. He clearly hadn't expected this reaction. In his limited life experience, the people around Sesshōmaru, Jaken and his likes, were all bootlickers who wagged their tails at that bastard. This demon-masked guy in front of him… was cussing him out with him? He was stunned!
"You're… not with him?"
"No."
"Then who the hell are you?"
"The demon who pulled you back from the pile of dead."
Inuyasha froze again. Pile of dead? He furrowed his brow and tried to think. The memories were hazy. He remembered the battlefield.
The chaos of warring armies. Being attacked by both humans and yōkai at the same time. He remembered the moonlight dimming, his yōki fading and after that, nothing.
But one thing, he remembered.
"I… died?"
"Dead for over two months. I summoned your soul back. But… only the human half."
"Over two months… and, the human half?!" That meant he'd become human—?
Inuyasha looked down at his hands. Pale fingers. No claws. Unmistakably human hands. In that instant, his expression grew complicated.
There was shock. There was unwilling resentment. But beneath that, in some deeper place, there seemed to be something else. Something faint. Buried.
Surprise.
Joy.
All his life, because of his half-demon blood, he'd been rejected by both humans and yōkai. Humans feared him. Yōkai looked down on him. There was no one to teach him how to become a full demon, and whenever he tried to live as an ordinary person, those damned dog ears always got in the way.
That was why he'd died in the first place. His half-demon body had weakened as the new moon approached. Humans wouldn't accept him. Yōkai wanted to kill him. When arrows and claws came at him from both sides, he hadn't even known which direction to block first… and so he'd died.
If it had only been the yōkai attacking, Inuyasha could have fled. If it had only been the human soldiers swarming him, he could have escaped unscathed. If just one side hadn't struck at him, if just one side hadn't blocked his path, the outcome would have been different. And now, no more dog ears. No more claws. Even his yōki had vanished.
He had become an ordinary human boy. Black hair. Brown eyes. He looked no different from any random youth you might pass on the street.
"I… I've become human?"
"Mn."
"Completely? Not like the new moon, where it goes back the next day?"
"Most likely."
Shinji didn't bother explaining the finer details. Inuyasha fell silent. And to Shinji's complete lack of surprise, this half-demon, who in the original story had been hot-tempered, impulsive, and stubbornly refused to ever back down, did not fly into a rage upon hearing those words.
He simply lowered his head. Stared at his own human hands. And stayed quiet for a very long time.
Then he lifted his head. In those deep brown eyes, something glimmered.
"…Not bad, actually."
His voice was very soft. So soft that even he seemed a little unsure of it. But the expression on his face in that moment, Shinji saw it with perfect clarity. It was the relief of someone who, for the very first time, had been released from that in-between place, neither here nor there, and was finally, truly standing on solid ground.
Though he had sought the Shikon no Tama before, it had mostly been in hopes of becoming a full yōkai… but if the human side was where he landed, he could accept that too. After all, his mother had been human. As long as it was whole, complete, that was enough.
Inuyasha was quiet for a while longer. Then he suddenly lifted his head, raised a hand, and scratched roughly at his hair, once silver-white like Sesshōmaru's, now raven black. It felt completely different from before.
"Oi."
"Mn?"
"You're the one who brought me back?"
"That's right."
"…Well. Thanks."
He said it awkwardly. Like he had a rock stuck in his mouth. Muffled. Grudging. But he said it. Inuyasha wasn't someone who didn't understand gratitude, he just wasn't used to expressing it.
Besides, this demon-masked guy standing in front of him, scary as he looked, had just joined him in cursing out Sesshōmaru. By Inuyasha's rough-and-ready standards, that made him one of their own.
"Mn," Shinji acknowledged again, his expression beneath the mask unreadable.
Nearby, Jaken had finally shaken off his daze and scrambled back to his feet. The little green-skinned yōkai crouched atop a boulder, the Staff of Two Heads laid across his knees.
His gaunt, sharp-featured face was tightly pinched. He cast a sidelong glance at Shinji. He could feel the yōki emanating from this demon warrior. Far, far weaker than Lord Sesshōmaru's but stronger than his own. Considerably stronger.
Even with the Staff of Two Heads that Lord Sesshōmaru had given him, he'd most likely just get thrashed. That staff worked on lesser yōkai or ordinary demons but against anything remotely strong, it was a joke.
Jaken's mouth opened, then closed. No arrogance. No screeching. When Sesshōmaru wasn't around, his bravado receded like the tide, shrinking straight back down to his ankles.
Those who understood the times… were the true sages, after all!