InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Double Vision ❯ Chapter 28 ( Chapter 27 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

This author does not own Inuyasha, nor does she own the short stories of Ray Bradbury, including the ones about Uncle Einar, CeCe, and little Timmy (I think it was Timmy, it’s been like 40 years). I hope there is a collection of his short stories still in print. Ai is a little like CeCe, I think… If you have time, you should definitely check it out.

It was nighttime, and the inside of the Cloud Palace was dark. That’s the way Ai liked it. She gazed out at the moon and stars, which looked so close and bright. Ai was very old, so old she couldn’t remember her own mother or father, or what part of the world she originally came from. If she tried very hard, she could remember flashes of memories of things that must have happened very long ago. A scene of a huge flood, animals that had not walked the planet in a thousand years, an angry god yelling unintelligible things at her. Part of her life had been spent as a captive in a cave on the Continent. That was when she first met Inutaisho. He had come seeking enlightenment from the oracle. That was her. She was in the guise of a young human girl, and Inutaisho had found her beautiful. She couldn’t tell him her name, because she couldn’t remember it, so he named her Ai. She didn’t even know that the form of a slender, dark haired girl was not her true form. He had to fight the spells and bonds that held her there. It was a fierce and epic battle, involving huge monsters that looked like strangely colored bulls with many eyes, and giant snakes. She thought that maybe it was the angry god who had placed her in the cave, perhaps as some kind of punishment, but she really couldn’t remember. The gasses which rose up from the deep cracks in the rock that made up the cave had driven her mad, and at that time she was capable of little coherent thought indeed.

Inutaisho took her back with him to Japan, and made her his mate. She began to regain her senses, if not her memories, during her early years on the island. She found that she could change her form so easily that she could not figure out what her true form actually was. She settled on appearing as Inutaisho’s female counterpart most of the time, though she did like to mix it up a little, for special occasions. She bore him one son, Sesshomaru. Her child was a little like her and a little like his father, as is usually the case with children, and he grew in size and strength, as children tend to do. Inutaisho called him his “pup”, and put him through hard training as a warrior. His trainers were high-ranking soldiers home on leave, so he learned many different things, relative to fighting and life as a whole. Those were the years that Inutaisho built his reputation as the Great Dog General. He was gone a lot, and had little time for her or his pup. When he visited them, it was usually because he was recuperating from severe wounds. At these times he would make Sesshomaru demonstrate what he had learned in his absence. Inutaisho showed little interest in Ai, whom he had once found so captivating.

Sesshomaru lived to please his father. That’s how he became so obsessed with power. He practiced with his sword for hours each day, and learned sorcery from a strange, white-bearded old magician at night. He resolved to become learned, and arranged to be tutored in many foreign languages. His life was very full, but singularly lacking in love. His mother tried, as much as she could, but she was very old, and very different. Her attentions usually took the form of riddles and taunting. Her nature was not nurturing or supportive in the least. As he matured, female demons began to make advances toward him. He wasn’t sure if it was because of his position, or his personal attributes, as his admirers would have him believe. By this time, his father had become the ruler of the Western Lands, and many other pieces of real estate, including huge tracts of land on the Continent, where he had originated. His son would make a fine catch for any demoness. But Sesshomaru felt no attraction toward any of them, and gave them no encouragement. A few of the more enterprising females sought to entrap him, but he evaded their snares. He became more cold and solitary with each passing year.

He was an adolescent, still small and spare, when his father impregnated a human princess named Izayoi. There had been many other human women in his father’s life, but this is the first one he got with child. Suddenly Inutaisho decided it was time for him to step up to the plate and be a father. Not a father to Sesshomaru, who he had begun to see as an up-and-coming rival, but to the unborn half-breed pup of Izayoi. He made an official announcement that he intended to acknowledge his half-breed child. When he broke the news to Sesshomaru, he made sure to tell him that, while he had once thought he loved Ai, it hadn’t been true love. And, of course, that he really, really loved Izayoi. He notified his mate that he no longer wanted her, and that he was leaving her. He soon entered into a battle with a huge and powerful dragon lord who took exception to Inutaisho’s acceptance of a half-breed child. He was gravely injured in the battle. Izayoi awaited the birth of her son at her family’s manor, surrounded by her father’s samurai soldiers and other human vassals. A past lover of the beautiful princess, Lord Takimaru, drove his sword into Izayoi’s pregnant belly as she prepared to go into labor. Inutaisho hurried in his canine form over land and sea to reach her in time. The samurai guarding the castle did their best to fight off the already mortally wounded demon lord, and he arrived at Izayoi’s side stuck through with arrows and bleeding from a hundred sword wounds. He defeated Takimaru, but not before the human lord ordered that the manor be burned to the ground. Inutaisho barely made it to his lover’s side in time to use the Tensaiga, his sword of healing, to bring her and the baby back to life. With his last dying breath, he named the baby Inuyasha. Injured beyond hope of recovery, Sesshomaru’s father perished in the burning manor house.

Ai now lived in the Cloud Palace, guarding over the gate to hell and using her powers to keep track of the doings of Inutaisho’s sons and any other beings that caught her interest. Her son visited the Cloud Palace only rarely, and then only when he wanted something. Usually, she treated him much as she had when he was a child, but this time was different. Ai had been watching Kagome since she first emerged from the well in Inuyasha’s forest, and had come to feel a kinship for the strange little priestess such as she could not remember feeling for any other being. She had resolved to do what she could to assist her. If Sesshomaru could protect Kagome well enough to reassure the kami that Kagome’s soul was not in imminent danger of being used as an instrument of evil, they would set aside their intention to take her soul for themselves. The rest she would leave up to her son.