The Hanyo prince ran through the trees, a strong scent of an oni filling the undergrowth. He was near a village, and decidedly, this was the place Myoga spoke of. However, he couldn't sense the aura of its youki anywhere in the vicinity. He slowed down and carefully approached the mortal home, which was abnormally quiet for a place that would usually be bustling with people at this time of day.

"I don't like this," Inuyasha mumbles to himself. He could smell blood, but as he entered the trail where the housing resided, he saw nothing, and heard even less. "Myoga, what the hell is going on?"

Waiting a moment, he flicked an ear in irritation. The little coward must have jumped onto Kagome before he left. Folding his arms into his sleeves, he walked forward, trying to take in his surroundings. He still didn't see anyone, but he swore, he could hear the rustle of cloth from people moving around.

Suddenly, he felt something and ducked as a garden knife flew over his head and he turned around, crouching as he saw two woman, floating in the air. Gardening tools were gripped tight in hands that hung limply at the elbow. They were slouched, hanging as though they were being held by ropes strung under their arms. Above them was open sky.

Oh yeah, this was definitely this place.

"Is somebody gonna tell me what the hell is going on around here?" He snaps, as suddenly the two girls behind him were flung forward by the force and started trying to hit him with their weapons, more village women following suit.

*****

Kagome urged her horse forward. The pulsing of Inuyasha's demon aura was getting more powerful, enveloping her as she kicked the horse again, and she knew he must have stopped. There was no way a mortal horse could ever match the speed of a Inu-yokai, even if it was one with the limits of a humanoid, unchanging form.

"Lady Kagome, I believe we are nearing the village!" Myoga chirps from his place gripping the horse's mane.

"Inuyasha stopped there then," She says, "We're definitely close to him." Suddenly her horse jolts to a stop and the mortal princess was flung forward, rolling across the ground. The sound of liquid pooling on the ground flooded in her ringing ears and she felt warmth licking at her legs, no doubt the now dead animal's blood splattering over her.

She lifted her head, seeing the body of the sweat covered animal laying in a smear of blood on the ground. It's head, what was left of it anyway, rolled to the ground at her feet, making her tremble. She let out a small scream as she saw the hair of its forelock moving, scrabbling back against a tree. The flea demon poked his drill like nose from the blood-soaked hair, shaking his head, causing Kagome to let out shuddering gasps as she realized the dead thing wasn't actually moving to come after her. She clutched the jewel at her chest in relief looking up at the sky, trying to catch her gasping breath.

"My Lady! Are you alright?" Myoga asks, leaping over and landing on her knee. She glances at him, nodding as she continues trying to catch her breath.

"I'm fine," She says, trying to reach out and find the threat but quite puzzled to only find the pulse of Inuyasha's aura and no other anywhere near her. "I'm just trying to figure out what happened. How the hell was the horse beheaded?" 

"That I do not know, Princess," the flea demon replies, looking down at her bloody dress in wonder, nibbling at a piece of the blood coated cotton. "I didn't even hear anything or notice an aura, so it wasn't a demon laying in wait. 

"Then what cut his head off?" she asks, looking over at the tree branches near the blood covered scene she was admittedly feeling a little squeamish over. Glancing up again she realized she saw, something, getting up, she watched as a drop of blood fall to the ground into the puddle that had formed around the poor animal.

Looking back up, above the body, she realized she could see where the blood had been coming from.  

It was hard to see, with all the branches of the trees above her. But something, something wasn't quite right. Something didn't belong. Reaching up, she pulled herself up with a tree branch and stood. Something glimmered in the branches above her, a straight stand that glimmered in the light of the sun through the trees, a stream of light gliding along it.

The red of blood shown in the low light, showing a straight, wire-like structure wrapped between two tree trunks, right at where the horse's neck had been.

"It almost looks like a stand of hair," Kagome says softly, backing up a little as she realizes there are numerous other little lines crisscrossing the trees. "Lots of strands of hair. Almost like a web hanging in the trees above us." Her husband's miniscule retainer crawled up onto her shoulder.

"Hairs? What hairs are these you speak of, Lady Kagome?" The flea murmurs.

"You don't see them?" She asks, stepping forward and wincing as she felt something graze her cheek. Reaching up, she felt a small sting and pulled away her fingers to see a small line off blood across them.

"I see, it is part of the oni's spell," Myoga says, "Only mortals with the gift of reiki are able to see the web of hairs. Oh this is bad, very, very bad."

"You mean worse than Inuyasha running off to fight some oni he knows nothing about?" She says and the flea leaps up and down.

"This is not just some oni!" he cries, "This is the oni sorceress, Yura of the Hair! She creates puppet slaves with her web of razer hairs and takes the heads of those she wishes to scalp and add to her web. The mortals being manipulated and falling ill will no doubt begin attacking innocent people and cause harm. Not to mention the sorceress manipulating them against our lord, in which case he will not be able to properly fight back nor free them if he cannot see the hair. You must make haste, Princess Kagome! I fear this was all a trap!"

"Got it!" She says, shaking off the stinging on her cheek. Looking down at her mud-covered yukata, she quickly pulls up the skirt and ties it into her obi, kicking off her zori so she didn't trip over them. "I knew he shouldn't have so easily left me behind." Running forward, out of the forest, she stopped as she saw the village, looking around as she tried to pinpoint where Inuyasha was among the web of hairs absolutely covering and winding through the huts.

*****

Inuyasha shoved another woman away, dodging as her weeding tool swung past his head. Knocking her away, he felt a binding wrapping around him, suddenly pulling his arms and legs together. He saw nothing but felt as his arms and legs were pulled in against his strength. He could feel a deep growl of annoyance at this game that someone was playing, too frightened and weak to properly face him.

"This damn puppet master," He growls, "He should know better than to wrap me up, seeing as I can just pull him out by whatever he's used to bind me!" Leaping back, against the direction the women had come from, he expected to feel resistance, but only landed on the ground with a grunt. The binds began dragging him across the ground, pulling him towards the mortals that were seeming to multiply, more and more of them emerging from the houses, hanging by their arms.

Struggling to stand up against the unseen binding, Inuyasha was suddenly flung up against a tree, feeling the trunk impact hard against his back and knocking the wind out of him, which was a feat in it of itself. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the tree bark being cut into on either side of him. He suddenly felt something wrapping itself around her neck and trying to dig into him. It wasn't cutting his skin, but he could feel it tightening, closing off his airway. He tried with all his might to pull his hands apart and use his claws to tear through whatever was trying to hold him, but it was futile.

He was stuck.

Kagome looked around in horror, seeing the sleeping, knocked out mortal peasants scattered across the path, rudimentary garden tools gripped and held like weapons. Each and every one of them were wrapped in the hairs that lead off in the direction of a growling sound. 

A direction that she also felt the pulsing of youki of her husband.

"Lord Inuyasha!" Myoga cried out and Kagome turned around a corner seeing him bound in strands of black that crisscrossed his body, his wrists themselves wrapped several times. "She has him by the throat, trying to behead him! Please, do something!" She trembled as she looked up at him, seeing one of the threads wrapping itself around his neck. Searching on the ground, she wrapped her hands around a discarded scythe beside an unconscious farmer who had been drug in from the rice paddies. Concentrating as she saw her protector, her friend strung up by his neck, she felt a flare in her power as tears of desperation ran down her cheeks. The blade edge glowed with the same pure blue light one of her arrows might, and she looked up, through her tears as she tried to find the line of hair in the web that lead over to Inuyasha.

Finding several that shown strongly, woven into an extremely intricate pattern no doubt using a great amount of strength and energy to bind someone who was fighting his binds as hard as the hanyo prince growling in the tree was. They were too high up above for her to sever them all, but maybe, just maybe with the extended reach of her weapon might cut enough of them to allow Inuyasha to break free.

Raising her it up, above her head, she unceremoniously slashed through the hairs that her weapon would reach, landing awkwardly and uncoordinated from her wishful attempt, falling to the ground.

Feeling the slight and sudden loosening, Inuyasha thrust his arms apart and broke away from the tree, landing on the ground and grasping his throat as the air found its way back into his lungs. The tree behind him crashed to the ground, sliced into numerous pieces where the unknown binds finally succeeded in severing the trunk.

"Inuyasha?" an ear flicked as his wife's voice called out his name and he lifted his head to see her on her knees, her hand gripping a curved blade that slipped from her fingers. Her pale blue robe was tattered, smeared with blood and mud, though he could tell immediately it wasn't hers. There was a cut across her cheek and a few scrapes across her knees that he could see from where she'd tied up her skirt, but other than that, the mortal princess looked relatively unharmed, much to his relief.

"I told you to stay at the castle!" He growls, pulling himself to his feet.

"If I hadn't followed you, the oni sorceress would have killed you!" She yells, standing up and casting the scythe on the ground.

"You're pretty dumb to think that something like that would kill me," He grumbles, still rubbing his neck as the dark spots that had started to invade his vison as he was bound to the tree dissipated. "How the hell did you catch up with me?"

"A horse and my reiki tracking your aura," She says, nodding to the way the clawed hand rubbed the red marks left from the hairs, "A thank you would have been appreciated, seeing as I just literally saved your neck."

"What, did you cast a spell with its innards or something, Witch?" Inuyasha asks realizing the red smears covering her most definitely carried the scent of horse. She huffs and points at the tree that was spliced into logs behind him.

"No, what just almost happened to you happened to it!" Kagome says, stepping closer to him. "It blundered into the hairs as I was traveling here and it's head was cut off."

"What hairs?" He asks and the young woman just blinks at him, confused as to how it was possible that he really didn't see the net that surrounded them, a web that crisscrossed the entire village, some of it trying to snake out and move around them.

"I told you, My Lady," Myoga says, crawling out of her quiver. "Only one with the eyes of a priestess, a divine miko, can see Yura's hairs." The young woman looked down at the sacred jewel on her chest and clutched it.

"You mean to tell me she actually has the sight?" Inuyasha asks and the flea leaps over to him, clinging to one of the beads of the black and white jade rosary on his chest.

"Lord Inuyasha, she may not be a trained priestess, but you and I both know Princess Kagome has great capabilities due to her powers of purification," the flea murmurs, "Of course she would have such simple powers as sight through simple sorcerer's illusions. Yura of the Demon Hair, a powerful Oni princess is behind this if what Kagome has seen is to be believed."

"Fine, just point me towards this sorceress and I'll deal with her," Inuyasha scoffs, shaking the dust from his sleeves. Kagome let go of the jewel and looked up at him angrily.

"Look, I know you don't think very much of me, but this is my fight!" She says, making him look up at her. "She's after the Shikon Jewel, which makes this my business just as much as yours. I'm not going to just be left behind!"

Inuyasha felt his lips pulling back as he resisted the urge to snap back at her. She was challenging him, his orders for her to stay where she was, where she would be safe. If this thing had been able to bind him, to resist his strength to break free from them, he didn't want her anywhere near it.

"My Lord," Myoga pipes up earning the angry glare being thrown his direction, "Princess Kagome has already traveled a long way. If you don't allow her to accompany you, she'll likely find a way to continue to follow you. I'd say it's possible your wife is even more stubborn than you considering what she did to get here."

"Nobody asked you!" the hanyo growls and Kagome just stands there, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Even if I did simply tell you the direction I sense the demon hairs leading anyway, you will only get tangled in them again," she says, trying to give him a reasonable explanation, "I won't let you walk into a battle blindly if I can help it. She wants me, so who's to say that the moment you go off, she won't just leave her stronghold and come after me, out here all by my lonesome. Wouldn't it be better to just let me tag along and be your eyes to confirm her trail then leave me, a weak mortal woman out in the middle of a demon possessed village? After all, my horse was killed, and it was half a day's ride here so there's no way I could ever get back to Musashi Castle by the time night falls."

The dog-eared man flicked one of the soft furred, white appendages, hating how much sense she was making. The sky was already stained with the beginning of nightfall and the villagers were stirring, likely the oni preparing to start up another attack. Letting out a near silent growl, he shucked off his suikan and tossed it at her. Kagome looked at him, confused.

"Your robe?" She asks and he quickly turned his head away, ear flicking.

"If you're coming, put that on," he says, "It's made from fur of the fire rat. You've already gotten cut on whatever the hell these 'hairs' you keep seeing are. The robe should be able to offer you some protection from it." She looked down at the red fabric in her hands, feeling the softness as she rubbed it between her fingers.

"You mean, you're actually gonna take me with you?" she says, having expected more of a fight.

"You said it yourself," Inuyasha says, "It'd be pretty stupid to leave a weakling like you in a place like this."

Rolling her eyes at his barbed remark, the princess pulled the long coat of demon fur around her shoulders. The sleeves reached well past her fingers and it ended at her knees. He didn't seem that much bigger than her, so how on earth was the suikan so massive on her? Before she could say anything back to him, a clawed hand gripped her wrist and pulled her towards him, causing her to stumble and fall into his back.

"Hold on tight because if you fall, I ain't gonna stop and pick you up," He grumbles. Kagome blinked her eyes at the way his hand gripped her wrist, and she carefully adjusted her bow and gripped onto his other shoulder as he crouched down and reached back, grabbing onto her bare legs, making her blush. She felt him stand up as though she weighed nothing and turning them around, "Now wench, which way do these hairs of yours lead?"

As Kagome scanned the area, looking at Kami knows what that he couldn't scent, Inuyasha tried desperately not to think about the heat of her body searing into his back, not to mention the way the soft skin of her legs felt beneath his callused fingers. Her scent fell over him in waves as she leaned over his shoulder and pointed in front of them.

"I can see it," she says, "The pulsing of the Oni Sorceress' power is flowing from the hairs in that direction. They must be the leads. Yura will be that way."

"Gotcha," He replies, and Kagome lurches a little as he leaps forward, his bipedal legs somehow gaining the speed and falling into a lope, similar to the leaping run she used to witness her grandfather's hunting dogs do as they chased a deer across the back fields, only much, much faster as he held her against his back.

*****

Meanwhile, deep in the forest, a lone woman sat inside her cocoon of black hair, smiling to herself as she combed the remaining scalp of a desiccated head, one of many that filled the chamber. Her short, chin length hair parted a little as she leaned forward, showing off the pointed yokai ears that were usually covered easily in the thick strands. the red comb in her hand vibrated and she looked at the stray silver hair wrapped around her finger.

"La?" she said softly, "So, the princess and her puppy are coming already? Oh I cannot wait to add that pretty silver fur to you! And with the added power of the Shikon Jewel, we truly shall become the strongest of all the oni."

Setting down the skull she had been holding, she stood up, holding her comb up and opening the side of the cocoon. The moonlight shown above her, and she smiled, knowing how hard it would become even if the young miko could see her hairs against the black forest.

"Come along, my dears," She says, "It's time we had some fun with the so called yokai royals."

*****

"Left!" Kagome cried out as lock of black shot out in attempt to grab them and Inuyasha dodged out of the way as she continued to shout out the incoming attacks. Growling, he crouched down as he heard one sweep past his ear, slashing out with a hand to tear apart the unseen enemy.

"I think she knows we're here," He grumbles and Kagome gasps. Looking up, he saw a great sphere of wound hair, so dese with the oni's power that even he could see it with out even trying to scent it's location. "So, you actually managed to lead us in the direction of the witch's stronghold." Before Kagome could let out a biting remark, she saw another lock shooting out, straight for them.

"Look out!" She calls out as she was suddenly on the ground as he was pulled up into the trees, "Inuyasha!"

"A little late on that one!" He calls back, to her as he feels his arms and legs being pulled apart as he was strung up in the trees, in front of the oni woman.

"Oh my, look at what I've caught in my web," The small woman says, walking carefully across the hairs that made up the web he still couldn't see. "If it isn't the weakling little half dog prince." Inuyasha glared at her as she continued her approach.

"So, you know who I am, do you witch?" He snarls through gritted teeth.

"Yes indeed," She says. "The half demon runt of Toga no Taisho, Inuyasha. You have quite the reputation among we oni. A scrappy little thing, aren't you?" Reaching into her scabbard, she pulled a long-pointed sword and slashed it across his chest, making Inuyasha let out a low grunt as he felt the sting of pain.

Kagome watched from below as the tightrope walking woman walked upon the hairs towards her husband. She wore very little clothing, just a black leotard and bands on her arms and legs like an acrobatic performer. Her short, bobbed hair, the odd color of her eyes, and her voice, though, was oddly familiar. Blinking a moment, she stood up and allowed the robe to fall from her head.

"La!" the oni woman giggles, "You know, you really should be cut to pieces from earlier. I suppose that meddling young mortal woman who carries the jewel must have gotten to her precious doggie in time. At least Crimson Mist still works. I would hate to lose my quarry of that pretty white mane of yours. Half demon or no, you do carry the most important inu-yokai trait in my eyes, Lord Prince," Kagome lets the bow fall from her shoulder and pulls an arrow, shakily aiming towards the demon above her.

"I know you," She calls up, having recognized the woman's odd laugh, "You're the maid who braided my hair before I was brought to Musashi!" She remembered now that the maid had disappeared before her mother arrived and it was only the three usual attendants who accompanied her to the procession. She had assumed the girl had simply slipped out amongst the chaos of the day to attend to other matters, but clearly, that had not been the case.

Yura smiles and places her hand upon her chest giggling, "I'm flattered to see the rumors of the selfless Shikon Princess are true, that you would take the time and remember the face of a simple servant who you only met once. It's too bad you were so flustered over having to bed the pathetic hanyo to notice my youki, Little Princess" She giggled at the thought before adding, "I wonder, did you take you from behind like the dog he is, Princess? Maybe end up stuck inside you like a common hound?"

Inuyasha let out a growl, his cheeks red at the implication, but It was Kagome who truly lashed out in that moment.

"How dare you imply such things about us! My marriage is my own and not yours to judge!" She screamed out, her entire bow glowing as she was filled with rage, "Damn You!" An arrow of pure, glowing light flew towards the two yokai causing Yura to leap back as several binds were snapped by the wave of pure, spiritual power raced through the trees. Inuyasha felt his own body tremble at the purifying power she had just unleased and he shot her a look from where he was still strung up.

"Watch where you're aiming that thing!" He snaps at her but quickly turned his head in the direction of the oni woman's gasp. He saw that there was large, melted spot through the giant sphere and skulls, too many to count, were falling from the wound, tangled together by black hairs faintly clinging to dried scalps.

"No! You've attacked my dear children!" Yura cried out, watching as her fortress fell apart. She turned to look back at Kagome and raised the comb in her right hand. "You'll pay for that you little bitch!"

Suddenly, flames fell down the strands of hair in her comb and shot towards the mortal woman.

"Kagome!" Inuyasha called out, praying that she understood what he was telling her as the flames suddenly tried to consume her.

"It's useless," the oni says, leaping towards him once again, shoving her sword through his shoulder, clearly toying with him more than attempting to go in for the kill. "She will be burned to nothing but ashes from which I will pluck that precious jewel you dogs have held onto for so long. But don't worry, little puppy. I'll make sure you join her soon enough. After all, a pet shouldn't outlive his mistress."

Growling, Inuyasha felt that one of his arms had started to loosen and he swiped his hand forward, willing his claws to work, but she was just out of reach for him to be able to slice her apart with his power. Then, feeling for where her sword had sunk into his chest, he gathered his own blood beneath his fingers and threw his claws again.

"Blades of blood!" He growled and watched as Yura arms were scored with wounds and her sword hand was severed. She just made a face at him, and he felt as the severed arm slashed its sword across his back.

"Now, now, that was a naughty thing you did," She says. "You need to hold still so I can make a clean cut and not stain that pretty hair of yours."

He was about to bite back a remark when he heard something below them, a rustling in the brush. Flicking an ear, he turned his head a little, seeing a small glimpse of red against the black of the hairs. Smirking, he looked up at her.

"You really think that pitiful mortal wench is my mistress?" He asks and Yura shrugs. "That I would be tamed by a weak little mortal woman? Don't make me laugh."

"If the rumors are to be believed, you have been tamed before," Yura says, leaning over him, "That woman didn't fare any better than your wife just did when she fought by your side. What was her name again? Oh yes, it was Ki-"

"Don't you dare speak her name!" Inuyasha snaps, feeling his blood burning with the urge to tear out the conniving woman's throat. Despite the sword at his side, he could feel the beast of carnage reaching for his heart, trying to awaken inside him.

Reaching forward with a clawed hand, he shoved his fist through the oni woman's chest reaching through her heart. However, he felt none of the resistance of such a structure and pulled nothing but dark, lifeless blood back out. He snarled at her, barely noticing as the detached hand stuck it's blade through his gut.

"You don't even know me and yet you stick your hand in my chest?" She asks, "My my, Doggie. What a naughty one you are, scratching me like that." Before he could bite back at her, he heard more rustling. "La?"

The woman's head turned to look down at Kagome as she started to climb the tangled mass that flowed up to the skulls. Taking the chance, he reached for Tetsusaiga and pulled it, feeling it roar to life in his hand. Yura had turned and was glaring down at the mortal girl pulling herself up, her pale, unburned skin shining in the moonlight.

"Why that little! How are you still ali-" The sorceress was cut off as the steel cleaving fang slashed through her body.

"Don't turn your back on me!" Inuyasha snarled, but to his great displeasure, she still seemed completely unbothered by the injury, as though she couldn't even feel the pain. Yura sneered at him and simply waved her comb, and he felt as the binds snaked around his limbs, tight once again once again. However, as he glanced at his arm, he realized he could see the hairs.

The spell that masked her was weakening and she had clearly lost her focus as Kagome went after something. Something likely still only she could see.

"What'd she find that's got you so anxious?" He sneered, "Must be important to get you so riled up when nothing I did worked." Yura shot him a look and leaped forward, going after Kagome. The hairs suddenly yanked upward, and the mortal woman started losing her grip.

Growling, Inuyasha felt his claws flex against his binds, ripping the weakened hairs away. As he felt himself gain freedom, he swung down with the single remaining thick lock of demon hair, flying past the oni, and grabbing Kagome, landing lightly on the ground below. Yura stood, graceful as a cat on the lines of hair above them, sneering as the hairs fell from being continually ripped away.

Kagome looked at him as he set her on the ground, seeing his linen kosode stained dark with blood and slashed to pieces.

"Inuyasha," she gasps, "You're bleeding!" He just stares at her a moment before grabbing her shoulders.

"Don't mind that!" He says, "What were you after?"

"What do you mean?" She asks as Yura suddenly jumped down, causing him to push her back behind him. She was glaring at them the hairs wrapping and winding around her body and repairing her wounds. "I was just trying to get off the ground so I might get a better shot off."

"Something was up there." He says, "Something she doesn't want you to find." Inuyasha looked at her a moment and glanced back at the dark, lifeless blood on his claws, a thought suddenly occurring to him. "Her soul isn't in that body! Find it, Kagome!"

"Her what?"

"She doesn't have a heart, or any organs inside her, only the dead blood of the people she's killed," Inuyasha snarls, not having time to spell it out for her, "I need you to find out where she put her real body., cause you're the only one who'll be able to see the damn thing."

The young woman looked around, searching through the darkness and the swirling of the oni's dark aura. It wasn't leading to the woman who stood in front of them, but off towards the pile of scattered bones among the hair, flowing into a sort of brightness near the center of it. 

He was right. Her soul was in there, hiding among the desiccated heads and weathered scalps.

"What about you?" She asks and Inuyasha raised his sword, pointing it as the sham of a body the sorceress was using. Tetsusaiga pulsed in agreement with him.

"It's been a while since I've fought someone I actually want to injure," He says before glancing back at her. "Get going. I'll do what I can to keep her out of the way, but I can't promise anything if you don't hold up your end, Wench."

Despite her worries about the wounds that were clearly still bleeding and not just the little scratches he played them off as, Kagome felt him leave her side as she crouched down and started looking through the skulls. As she touched each one, she felt the darkness of the tortured soul but did her best to ignore the dread that all this death was trying to leach into her, trying to distract her from her task.

She began tossing aside those that were not tied to the hairs that glowed and pulsed with her demonic aura. She could hear the grunts and shouts as her husband clashed with Yura of the Hair, but she didn't dare look towards Inuyasha. She couldn't waste the time he bought her, injured as he was.

Kagome still couldn't believe the power of the fire-rat fur, how she hadn't even felt heat from the flames as she curled up in a ball on the ground under the suikan, having heard Inuyasha call out for her, clearly wanting her to brace herself. She also figured that having sacrificed its protection to her had resulted in the wounds that were so easily inflicted on him by the oni princess' sword.

She would not fail him. If he believed that she could find the dark soul, she wouldn't let him down.

Kagome looked up and saw it, just a few feet in front of her. A skull shimmering with power, something glowing within it. The pulsing hairs all lead there and were connected to the hand that held her comb as she swiped forward, blocking a strike from Inuyasha with a curtain of hair.

"Inuyasha, I think I found it!" 

He heard her call out and he saw the flash of annoyance in the oni woman's face as she sneered in Kagome's direction, her dethatched hand that still held the sword shooting towards the princess before he knocked it of course and sliced off the hand that held the comb.

The sword suddenly stopped in midair and as he looked back, he could see Kagome raising one of her arrows above her head in both hands, stabbing at what looked to him like a random skull. However, he could see Yura had stopped in her tracks, frozen as though by some spell. Suddenly, he heard the cracking of the bones as her arrow finally pierced the skull and purified the demon's heart inside with a blast of intense blue light.

Yura's red eyes went pale and lifeless like a corpse, her body turning grey and blowing away in the wind as it scattered like ashes, leaving only her clothing and a red handled katana clattering to the ground. Her scent dissipated and the hair dissolved away, leaving the area littered with white bones and nothing more to suggest the stronghold that had been there just heartbeats before.

Looking over at the mortal woman, Inuyasha held his injured shoulder as he walked over to her. She reached into the broken pieces of bone and held up a red painted piece of ivory, a semicircle broken in half by her arrow.

"So, her heart was hidden inside the comb?" he said, and Kagome looked up at him, her eyes confused.

"This, is her soul?" She asks and he nods.

"It that really so hard to believe?" He asks her.

"I suppose not," She says, turning the ivory over between her fingers, "I mean, I've read stories about yokai being able to hide their hearts or cast them into something, but a creature like an oni?"

"It was probably the comb itself that manifested into an oni, not the other way around," Inuyasha replies, "It was probably used to comb the hair of the dead." Kagome looked at her fingers in horror and dropped the comb, hearing it clatter in the bone shards. "What?" She narrows her eyes at him, and he just raises an eyebrow.

"I really didn't need to hear that," She says, feeling chills up her spine. A possessed comb running through her hair, one that had been used on dead bodies. That was more than she really wanted to try to stomach after wading through the skulls of Yura's victims.

"Yeah, well, come on," he says, "the smell of death here is making me sick." Kagome reached inside her clothing and clutched the Shikon Jewel. His shirt was stained a deep red like blood, blood even her weak mortal nose could smell the metallic tang of.

The whole thing made her heart sink. He was hurt, torn into by that blade so severely that he was clearly in pain. And all for what? To protect some mortal woman who had barely been able to draw her bow and yet was entrusted to the one thing that all dark yokai seemed to hunger for.

This was about honor. He barely tolerated her existence and yet he was riddled with wounds of the oni's blades, taking the brunt of the attack because she wasn't strong enough to attack on her own. Inuyasha took care of her because it was his duty as her husband, and while he clearly didn't want her that way, he would honor the protection offered to her through the marriage contract.

It was as simple as that.

"Hey, you comin' or what?" she heard Inuyasha call back to her, and she let go of the jewel, nodding as she stood and walked on her sore, scrapped feet after him, away from the remains of their battle.