Deep in a vortex of darkness and a strange dark purple energy, Haruto was taking things well by first screaming his head off and then losing his breath when looking at what had pulled him in, and was still dragging down the boxer into the well. He came face to face with the horrible sight of a real monster. It had the upper side of a naked woman with long black hair and five arms, with one of them actually missing. The most horrifying part was that from the waist down her body was that of a centipede's.
"Power… I need more… And your essence is filled with it…." The dark haired centipede woman said, clutching Haruto closely with her five arms, letting him see she was missing one.
"What're you?!" He asked, trying to break free, but the centipede woman pressed their bodies closer… and he certainly did not like the way she was looking at him. It was like he was a piece of meat, but not the kind she wanted to eat. That feeling was justified: the blond cringed when her long tongue shot out and licked his right cheek, causing shivers of displeasure to shoot up his spine.
"The pure energy in you… It's like that of a demon but… so much purer and stronger than the jewel's… Why…" here she grinned in a sultry way and licked her lips with that abnormally long tongue of hers, "I could just…" she was groping his ass! "… eat you up!"
Playing dirty was never Haruto's style, but in this situation he'd make an exception. With a loud cry of "Dinner and movie first!" he slammed his forehead on the centipede woman's. She let go of him, to which he countered by rearing back his right fist and throwing it forward in a spiral motion, "Corkscrew!" he slammed his knuckles directly in the woman's face, his punch sent her backwards and allowed him to fall down.
By that time, the hard sensation of his back slamming into the hard surface at the bottom of the well alerted him that his fall had ended. He groaned, and was glad that there was no monster woman trying to do horrible things to him. He would greatly appreciate that making sweet love with a woman included him with someone that had a body far easier to hold in his arms. He let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding, looked at the nearest wall, and started to climb out of the well.
After getting out of the well, that action only managed to get him even more confused. He could see around him that the night covered everything. But there was a major difference than before, there were trees, grass, and not a single sign that there ever was a city, a temple, or anything at all… just your typical dead girl nailed to a tree with an arrow in her chest. To this our hero could only come up with the most logical and intellectual of solutions, which was to yelp and nearly fall backwards.
"Come on, this is several layers of fucked up." He muttered under his breath, feeling a cold sweat building all over his face from the shock and surprising horror of finding a corpse. He was really trying to keep his cool and analyze the situation logically, "Is this some sort of dream or did I get dragged into some reality show playing pranks on people?"
And then… the girl's eyes stirred, "So loud…" she groaned, opening amber orbs. He also took notice of the arrow in her chest and… gulped. He forced his eyes up and his blush to die. She was really blessed there…
She was a bit small, Kagome was probably around his height but Haruto stood taller than this girl. She had pearly skin, and a very well formed body: slim waist, nice hips and a sizable bust and derriere that easily eclipsed Kagome's. She wore a crimson kimono kept firmly closed with a yellow sash. The red robe had a short skirt that left her shapely long legs bare for people to see and showed that she was also barefoot. To keep her body better hidden she had several bandages around her breasts to avoid any eyes trying to take a peek… but their outline on the kimono left little to the imagination. But what he noted the most was the long silver hair that reached her curvaceous and well-proportioned rears, and the dog ears atop her head.
But regaining his thoughts, he had only one logical thing to say, "You're alive?!" he asked, falling flat on his ass from the shock.
Even when nailed to a tree, the girl looked down on him from her high and mighty cloud, "And you're a loud one, human… no, wait…" she stared at him, her eyes narrowing at him, "Your smell… Are you even human?"
Haruto spoke with his voice showing his awe and shock, "I should be the one to ask that." He aimed a finger to the arrow in her bosom, "First of all, how can you even breathe with that arrow in your heart, let alone talk? Who are you and… wait, wait, wait…" he finally stood up, dusted his tracksuit, and stared at her to take in her features better. "You called me human… Is that part of some act?"
The girl stared at him with a confused glare, "What're you talking about? This is no act, you fool! I've been sealed here for a long time, and the scent of the one who did this to me is nearby. Your strange smell just happened to wake me up."
Haruto sighed and crouched before her, looking up at the dog-eared girl, "You're not making any sense, you know?"
She gritted her teeth, "You're not showing a functioning head, you know?!"
Haruto let out another sight, stood up, leaned his back on the tree, and sat on the grass beside the silver haired lass, "I got time for you to explain things to me, and I had a pretty weird day, so surprise me."
She stared at him in dumbfounded interest. One's first reaction to her insults would be to get mad or piss off, but this guy took in her insult and just sat by her side and expected to talk with her? "Are you stupid?" she asked bluntly, to the point like she had always been.
He chuckled, "I'm willing to take anything you may throw at me, so go ahead. I just want to know what is going on, and you may help me. Truth be told, I don't expect you to… But here we are, with nothing to lose, nowhere to go, and pretty much lost in the long road of life… or something along those lines." He scratched the back of his head at the last overly dramatic words that came out of his mouth, they were oddly familiar.
The girl stared blankly at him, "Do you even understand the words coming out of your mouth?"
"To tell you the truth, no, I don't." Haruto replied with a casual shrug, "But I'm not going anywhere, and by the looks of it neither are you. So, what do you want to do? Remain here all alone with no-one around, or talk to some random idiot?" he then turned to her and smiled, "In all honesty, if I were in your situation I'd be pretty damn scared of being lonely, so if you say you want to be alone, I'd still sit here."
The girl growled, "So you'll be a pain either way?!" She closed her eyes, trying to figure out a way to get him as far away as possible, until she remembered the arrow in her chest, and grinned, "How about you pull out this arrow from my chest?" she asked causally, "If you want to make yourself useful and stop being an idiot, then help me out." She said while still looking down on the sitting boxer.
Haruto turned his eyes to said piece of wood, and replied, "What for?"
She blinked, "What do you mean what for? Just pull it out and get me free!"
Haruto stood up and aimed a finger at her face, "How do I know you're not a bad girl?" he then stepped back, "For all I know, you could be there for a lot of reasons." He crossed his arms and leaned his head forward to stare at the girl right in the eye, "And you're asking me to do this after insulting me."
She could feel her blood rising to her head from anger, about to make her veins bulge in her forehead, but she needed to, get free, "Then—"
"So!" Haruto said, raising a finger at her face once again with a large grin and his eyes closed cockily, "You can start by calling me Haruto-sama!"
The girl felt her face grow hotter from embarrassment and, mostly, hatred, "I'll bite your balls until they pop!"
Haruto mockingly tapped her nose, "Will ya?" he asked and took a step away before she could bite off his fingers, "Now, it's not hard, ojou-chan. You have to say two words, my name and the proper suffix."
"I'm not going to let you enjoy having me humiliated, you idiot!" had glares the power to kill, Haruto would have been a puddle of molten body parts.
Haruto chuckled, "Fine, then how about The Great Haruto-sama?"
"That's even worse!"
"Not for me." Haruto finished with a grin. He stepped back and looked at the girl once again, "Do you really want to get out so badly?"
"To kill you, yes." She replied casually.
Haruto nodded, "Isn't there something else you'd like to do? I mean, you're in that tree, getting easily annoyed by some lame lines I chose."
She growled, but then her ears flicked, "You mean you were pulling my leg?"
Haruto scratched his right cheek with his index finger, "I'd like to be called Haruto-sama, yes, but I'm not that cruel." He replied with a sheepish grin, and then aimed his finger at her once again, "But, I know you must be here for a reason. So, ojou-chan, what's your deal? What do you want to do if I were to set you free?"
"For starters, make you pay for this humiliation." She replied without missing a beat, but then, "After that, I want to become a demon."
Haruto's eyes widened at that. That word, demon… For some reason it bothered him ever since he could remember. Not that he had any religious issues against it or had experienced anything bad with such a word. Hearing that one word, even if off-topic, just sent something bad to course through him.
But he couldn't ignore what she said, "You want to be a demon?"
She grinned, "Yeah, what of it? You can try to pull this arrow off or leave it there for all I care now. I bet I'll find another way to get free in due time."
"And what would you want to do after that?" he asked, genuinely curious.
She opened her mouth, but opted for glaring before replying, "None of your business. It's not like you'd even understand, fool."
"Yeah, I can't." he replied casually, "Someone as cute as you becoming a demon… I just can't see it."
The girl's cheeks took on a pink hue at his words, thus she let her anger show more than her embarrassment, "You got no right to judge what I want to become."
That was something he agreed with, "You're right, I don't have any reason to do so." But… "I just don't think you're thinking straight with that much anger."
Amber eyes stared at him confused, "What're you even talking about?"
Haruto crossed his arms again, "You get angry so easily, it made me think that if you react as bad as you did with some bad joke, then there's something you're not telling me."
She growled, "Why do you care?"
Haruto shrugged, "I could try to get home, but right now I have no idea how to do that, and, as I've said, I don't want to be alone, or to leave you here all on your own."
Staring, that was all she could do with this boy. There was no way to tell what he was doing, it was like he had more mood-swings than someone with a mental disorder, but at the same time he stood up for what he believed. To put it simple, he was getting her angry with that kind of attitude, but the way he spoke sounded kind of familiar. It reminded her of a friend, someone who tried to help her be more, and that angered her.
She bared her teeth at him, showing long and sharp canines, "I've heard all that shit before, now see where it got me."
Haruto was about to reply to that, until he and the girl felt the entire ground shake! The blond turned to where the tremors felt the strongest: the well. He gulped, "Not her again, I'm not ready for a second date." He growled and raised up his fists.
Sure enough, up in the sky he and the girl could see a five-armed figure rising with a long segmented body following it. However, something was off, aside from the fact its face was split to show a large array of sharp fangs. It wasn't actually coming out of the well, but it seemed to be moving towards said old wooden structure. The centipede demon then returned to the trees of the forest, hiding her enormous figure in the darkness while Haruto gritted his teeth, waiting for her to come out… But finding Kagome there instead!
"Haruto?!"
The girl was as shocked as him, but that shock was eclipsed by the horror of the centipede demon shooting out of the trees and ready to bite into Kagome's side with that wide maw of hers. She cried, and he acted.
A single instant was all it took, just when the centipede woman had been about to sink her teeth on the paralyzed girl to immobilize her, the blond reacted. Haruto's feet moved forward until he was beside the schoolgirl. He stopped and stomped the ground so hard that his foot left an imprint on it, and his right fist shot itself so fast through the air that gales of wind moved out of its way. But it wasn't only his fist that caused the air to ripple, even his body created gales around him. Kagome and the dog-eared girl gasped for the second they saw it, a textbook counter with Haruto's body moving on both instinct and skill.
The centipede demon gasped and then let out a muffled cry when Haruto's knuckles landed squarely on her left cheek with the strongest hook he had ever delivered in his life. Her blood stained his hands, she felt her teeth rattle and loosen in her gums, and the force of the strike caused her throat to feel like she was getting choked when in reality it was a muffled scream of shock and pain that couldn't get out due to the mouthful of fist she got. The punch was like a semi-truck hitting another; Haruto's feet remained firmly planted on the ground while the centipede woman's body shook as it absorbed the blow.
She rolled to the side midair, landing flat on her back with a weak grunt. Haruto for his part dashed backwards with his fists still up and a ragged breathing, "That… was…" he gulped, still feeling the cold sweat coating his body from the shock of seeing the demon and having to punch it in the face in just the single instant he saw Kagome in danger. He took a deep breath, "Weird…" he let out with his breath.
The silver haired girl, who had seen it all, felt her jaw fall down, "You call it weird?! Are you even a human?!"
Kagome blinked, and then yelped, "She's alive!" she cried, aiming a finger at the girl with the arrow still in her chest.
Haruto turned to the schoolgirl, "She's also very loud." He stated and turned his attention fully to the raven haired girl, "And you, how're you holding up?"
Kagome smiled, "After seeing you, I think that I'm doing a lot better." She then turned to the centipede woman, trying to let what she was seeing sink in, "Now I know Sota's story of you beating a yakuza may be true."
"May?" he asked, but decided to shrug it off, "Anyway, speaking of Sota, he sent me here… But that thing…" he nodded at the knocked down centipede monster, "Pulled me through the well."
He really wanted to leave out the details of how the monster woman possibly had pondered on raping him, but life wasn't that kind, "Hehehe…" and with that laugh, Haruto's breath was knocked out with a dangerous and vicious grip around his torso, Kagome was slammed into the tree with the dog-eared girl, and the centipede woman was up with her segmented body coiling around Haruto's, keeping his arms pressed to his sides as she wrapped herself tightly around him.
He grunted, feeling a rib about to pop and utterly disliking the way the centipede woman was licking her lips, "Can we take this easy…?" he groaned, just wishing he could get out and fight back.
She smirked and turned to the girls on the tree, "Fufufu… Why should I leave you with such girls when a woman like me could use your services?"
The two girls blushed, furiously, "What're you talking about, you bitch?!" the dog-eared girl shouted, "He's nowhere near my league!"
The centipede demon cackled, "That would be a pretty low league, hanyo girl…" the silver haired lass glared harder, making the demon chuckle, "Yes, I heard the tales about you… Naruko, a little hanyo girl wanting the Shikon Jewel for power. Sadly for you, both the jewel and this cute thing will be mine to use and abuse." She hugged herself, "So much power coursing through my body… Oh, I can hardly wait!"
Haruto blushed in a mixture of fear and confused arousal, in any other circumstances he'd have enjoyed the idea of having a girl wanting him and badly. This situation was the opposite of what he hoped for that: a gigantic monster wanted some power from him, some strange jewel, and was ready to kill Kagome and the dog girl Naruko.
Kagome blushed, but heard Naruko speak, "Hey, human woman!" she shouted, "Do you want that big bitch to rape your man?!"
The schoolgirl blushed at Naruko's words, "He—"
And she cut her off, "Then take out this arrow in my chest!"
Kagome looked at the weapon nailing Naruko to the tree, then at the large woman that was thinking of killing her and doing unspeakable things to Haruto, and back at Naruko. The centipede demon's eyes widened and she coiled her tail all over the tree, hoping to crush the girls into a pulp…
What happened next surprised even Haruto. Large red ethereal blades of pure energy sliced the air and the centipede demon's body!
Naruko was free, and she had on a massive shit-eating grin on her face, "Human man…" she said to him, clenching the air with a hand that had nails more akin to claws with their length and sharpness, "After this, your ass is mine!"
The centipede woman growled and lunged at Naruko. And with a swift swing of her claws, the insectoid demon was sliced clean in half, her face going first when Naruko casually split it vertically in two, following with her torso and the rest of her lower segmented body until reaching Haruto.
The blond chuckled sheepishly, "So… Naruko, huh? That's a cute name."
She cut the tail around his torso and pulled him by his collar to her face, showing an angry sneer, "I'll deal with you later." She pushed him away and turned to Kagome, raising her claws threateningly, "I want the Shikon Jewel inside of you, woman."
Kagome gasped, "What?!"
Naruko growled, "That demon bitch wanted that jewel, so you must have it. And right when you pulled that arrow I sensed it… You have it inside your body…" she flicked her claws, sneering harder, and then twitched her ears.
For Kagome, it happened in an instant, but Haruto and Naruko were a yard away from each other, with Haruto's left cheek carrying a large gash that went from below his eye to near his chin and Naruko's right cheek having a small bruise. His fists were up in a defensive stance, and her claws were ready for some wild maiming.
"You asked me if I was stupid." Haruto commented, showing a very strong defense that the dog girl saw no openings in, "But I think it's pretty stupid to not thank the one who set you free, and downright moronic to try to hurt them for some stupid jewel."
Naruko replied by dashing at Haruto and throwing wild swings with her nails cutting the air, "You're way out of your league, human!"
She threw a wider swing, to which Haruto ducked under. She gasped, seeing that her arm was stretched and Haruto right under it, making it impossible for her to throw another strike. He didn't waste any time, and before Naruko knew it, Haruto swung up his right fist while keeping it close to his body. The hanyo girl felt a fraction of the punch that sent the centipede woman down, and even while she knew Haruto was holding back, the punch had been enough to send her body down.
To say she was mad was putting it lightly. She bolted to her feet before one could blink… and found Haruto's left fist inches from her face, stopping just before the blow could connect to her. Something else hit her face, though. It was a warm liquid, a familiar one, blood. Naruko looked up in shock, finding Haruto's mouth wide in a silent scream, his eyes almost as wide, and his face very pale. She looked down… Her kimono was open and her makeshift bra was unwrapped. He got a nose-bleed from seeing what she kept hidden after his upper-cut forced her generous valleys out.
In that instant, the two of them and even Kagome let out cries of shock. Haruto and Naruko backpedaled, with him shaking his head furiously before working on his bleeding nose, "Damn, those were good!"
Naruko was absolutely livid, "I will kill you!" she shouted, but before carrying on her words, she had to redo her bandages around her chest and keep her kimono together. So much time sealed hadn't allowed her to change the bandages that the arrow ripped off.
And at that time, more people came in lead by an elderly woman with an eye-patch, her hair in a braid, and priestess clothes. Naruko bared her teeth at them, inwardly happy that she had already redone the security of her hidden valleys, and readied her claws to kill once again. That was… until finding a strange collar with blue beads and strange fangs around her neck.
That night, Naruko learned one thing: she hated Haruto and Kagome, a lot.