InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Finding Power ❯ Chapter Three ( Chapter 3 )

Warnings: this chapter…um, violence and dissection of canon events and um, violence

 

Disclaimer: I do not own any Inuyasha, Sesshoumaru, or anything related to anything in this story. Everything here is the property of Rumiko Takahashi

 

~*~

 

Chapter Three

 

Sesshoumaru watched her hair dance as it was silhouetted before the pale light of the full moon before her. Her perch stumbled and lurched unsteadily as she sat on the shoulder of the massive oni she'd procured the night before. Perhaps she should have considered a more graceful creature. They'd been traveling nearly all day and the daiyoukai suspected that if she had been any less of a being she'd be suffering from both nausea and a headache. She wouldn't admit that she wasn't far off from both as it was.

 

Perhaps, she decided, I should consider an alternate means of travel from now on. To her left she heard the excited cackling of her traveling companion.

 

“Sesshoumaru-sama,” he began excitedly.

 

Please, don't say it. Please, just once, don't say it.

 

“We've arrived,” the imp screeched, pointing out the obvious, and Sesshoumaru barely resisted the urge to wince. She did not, however, resist the urge to bring a closed fist down upon the squawking creature's skull. A slight rumble passing from the leathery skin she was using as her seat informed the white youkai that the oni found her predicament amusing. Well, when this was over she'd have to correct his assumption that he could find entertainment at her expense. If he survived that long, which she severely doubted.

 

“Jaken,” she addressed her subordinate, “be silent.”

 

“O-of course, Master,” the imp stuttered before realizing his very assent was disobeying her. Sesshoumaru watched in amusement as his face blanched; turning a rather pale tone of green, the brown markings on his skin becoming that much more pronounced. Smiling slightly--an action which served to terrify silence in the tiny youkai beside her--Sesshoumaru turned back to the moon they seemed to be nearing. Another gust of wind blew her hair around her once more, and again she watched the display the strands made as they fluttered over the pale image.

 

She was doing the imp a disservice and she knew it. Perhaps she shouldn't have struck him. It was the imp's doing that she was engaged in this little reconnaissance mission to gain her father's coveted power. It was only through Jaken that she'd learned of the hanyou's awakening and only through Jaken that she'd learned of its current whereabouts. Although she'd had the vague idea of where the creature had been sealed for the last several decades--the area being named `Inuyasha's Forest' had been a big hint--she'd assumed he would flee the area after being awakened. It was what a reasonable creature of limited strength would do. Fleeing the place of one's capture in order to prevent recapture. But she'd had no real idea of what the creature's intelligence or instincts would lead it to do.

 

She'd never felt any particular interest in the hanyou that marked her father's shame. The boy was her father's problem, not hers. And her father's passing did not mean she would accept that responsibility. It's not as if a creature born with such a liability as human blood could actually survive. So she'd paid little attention to the hanyou's activities. Less than a half-dozen times had she run across the boy and not once had she'd been impressed. The last she remembered, it had been little more than a toddler. Fluffy white hair she suspected was actually fur made it look like little more than a white ball of fuzz wrapped in red clothes and topped with tiny, twitching ears. But, for all that it was a helpless, ridiculous looking creature, it was loud, boisterous, and full of undeserved pride.

 

Only by accident had she heard that it had been caught under a miko's curse. Some ridiculous story that it had fallen in love. If that was the truth, then it was probably better off anyway. And if the boy was susceptible to such a weakness than it deserved its fate. Because only the weak fall in love.

 

The daiyoukai was well aware that she was biased toward that opinion because she would never be able to experience love herself. Convincing the world that she was male tended to drive off any men who might be looking for a life-mate. And even if they knew her true gender, she was not a normal woman. Although she disguised herself into a man's form, her personality was quite real. She'd been raised to be strong and decisive. Maintaining control over her territories had made her cold and impersonal, some would even say cruel and vicious. In a word, she was powerful. Not like the weak-willed and simpering women that populated hers and every other species. From the moment she'd first bound her breasts and took the position of a man, she'd known she'd doomed herself to a lonely life.

 

And she knew envy was one reason she looked down upon love. Of that, she refused to lie to herself. However, there were plenty of other, more legitimate, reasons to scorn the emotion and those who would fall prey to it. Many men claimed a love that seemed to be so fickle. They would love one woman and then, in a heartbeat, turn around and love another. To the cynical daiyoukai, it seemed love was simply an excuse to rut. And being a inuyoukai, Sesshoumaru didn't quite understand the need for an excuse, although she did understand some species placed a higher regard on physical intimacy. Like wolves, who mated for life.

 

But worse were the leaders who took love more seriously then just a drive to rut. They were the ones who cast aside responsibilities such as duty and family and even honor in the cursed name of love. Her father had been an example of such. Becoming more and more enamored with his human bitch until he'd ignored his territories and it was Sesshoumaru who kept back intruders and challengers in her father's name. He'd even given up Sesshoumaru's training, telling her that she was as trained as she could get and only experience would make her power grow. Experience, my ass, she thought more than a little bitterly. He just didn't want to waste his time with me anymore. By the time the little monstrosity was born, her great and terrible father had been spending so much time fitting in with humans he was little better than they were. Love had made the powerful daiyoukai lose his mind. Ultimately, this weakness had even caused his death.

 

It was this insanity that must have caused the great Inu no Taisho to hide Sesshoumaru's inheritance from her. And perhaps his newfound human sentimentality that might have caused him to leave a clue with what remained of his great love affair with the human woman. A tinge of excitement and nervousness pulsed through the youkai's body as she contemplated how close she might be to actually finding the damn tomb. And although the inuyoukai couldn't see the hanyou through the thick cloud cover that was beginning to form, she could see the Mu-Onna acting out her part. Ahead of the inuyoukai, who stayed perched on the oni's shoulder, a carriage floated, seemingly drawn by otherworldly steeds. In the back rode the Mu-Onna, the lesser youkai disguised in the image of the human woman the Inu no Taisho had supposedly loved. Around them, she was beginning to cast out her illusions. Sesshoumaru waited impatiently for the dark-haired woman's signal to move into the field herself. After a few moments, she heard it.

 

“Inuyasha,” the dark-haired woman cried out in a voice that was eerily similar to the one that sometimes haunted Sesshoumaru's memories.

 

Digging a poisoned claw into the thick cords of the platysma muscle running up the oni's neck, the daiyoukai whispered a command.

 

“Attack.”

 

Sesshoumaru didn't even bother to look down at the boy she could now smell below her, instead keeping her eyes on the Mu-Onna as the oni carried out her command. The woman's fake brown eyes widened in real shock as the oni's massive claws crushed through her illusionary carriage. Okay, so maybe Sesshoumaru hadn't been entirely truthful about what she planned but, the less the Mu-Onna knew about exactly how the daiyoukai would provoke the hanyou, the more believable her performance would be. The shape-shifting youkai wasn't the only expert on creating illusions.

 

The white inuyoukai was quite impressed with the soul-stealing youkai's performance as she watched the false woman dangle from the clawed fingers of the blue oni's fist, elaborate kimonos and phony chains fluttering around her. But the daiyoukai's assessment of the other woman's illusions was disrupted by an enraged scream from below and an answering blast of flame from her left. A streak of white and red angled away from the flames to land on the scorched grass below while Sesshoumaru glared at the small youkai at her side.

 

“Jaken,” she snapped, getting the imp's attention as battle lust began to fill the small body. “We must speak to him before we kill him, remember?” Shame spread across the small youkai's face and his hands trembled around the still-smoking Nintoujou.

 

“Of courses, Master,” the imp replied before looking back down at the field, a sadistic grin quickly replacing his shamed grimace.

 

It was another shout from below that finally drew Sesshoumaru's attention to her true goal.

 

“You bastard!” a white-maned hanyou screamed from below. “It's you, isn't it!? Sesshoumaru!?”

 

Sesshoumaru didn't let a muscle move out of place on her face as several surprises assaulted her at once. This boy standing defensively beneath her was no longer just a boy. He was nearly a man. Sometime in the last century since she'd seen him, the hanyou had grown up. He still had that white hair and those silly ears--he was even still wearing the fire-rat outfit Father had gifted him with--but he was no longer a ball of fuzz. That fluffy hair lay against golden, toned skin and golden eyes glared up at her with apparent intelligence. Somewhere along the line, he must have gone through adolescent awkwardness because now he appeared to be growing out of it, the baby-roundness of his face beginning to thin.

 

She was also surprised to hear that he not only remembered who she was, but actually recognized her. Well, that made things easier. No introductions would be required.

 

“Congratulations,” the daiyoukai commented as her eyes locked onto a pair so alike yet so different from her own. “It appears you remember your elder brother's face.”

 

A flash of something close to amusement sparked in those expressive golden eyes and it was only belatedly that Sesshoumaru realized that she'd been so caught up in examining her brother's features that she'd missed that he wasn't alone. Hiding behind the almost-grown hanyou was a simpering human girl. The frightening daiyoukai sent a frigid glare at the girl and smiled as she heard the mortal's heartbeat increase and breathing almost stop. Just like all the other humans, a coward.

 

“How precious,” she commented, a sardonic smile still gracing her face, “you've picked up a human girl.”

 

Sesshoumaru listened as the girl's already accelerated heartbeat picked up further but, surprisingly, not out of terror.

 

“You got a problem with that?” the mortal girl shouted, sending back a glare of her own.

 

Interesting, the youkai thought as she watch the girl tremble in anger instead of fear. There is something different about this one. No matter.

 

“How fitting that an abomination such as you would be accompanying a human,” she remarked to the hanyou below, ignoring the human girl's question and presence entirely. Just because the girl was an odd example of a mortal didn't mean she was worthy of this Sesshoumaru's notice. All that mattered here was finding her father's tomb. So now that everyone was reacquainted, back to work.

 

Sesshoumaru reached down and grabbed a handful of the chains still flopping around the Mu-Onna's form. Finding one that wrapped conveniently around the woman's neck--she is good with these illusions--Sesshoumaru pulled the creature's head back. The illusionary mother gazed with tear-filled eyes down to her supposed only son.

 

“Especially since your mother was a pathetic human,” the inuyoukai continued while pulling the chains tighter in anger that was only partially feigned, “who brought shame upon Father and our family.”

 

A low growl reached the youkai's ears and the hanyou appeared to be losing his temper. Perfect. An interrogation is so much easier when the subject cannot control himself.

 

“Sesshoumaru,” the hanyou growled in a voice that was so rich with anger and masculine power, the youkai was actually rather impressed, “you better not have come all this way just to fuckin' insult me.” Wow, that was almost threatening.

 

“Of course not, stupid hanyou,” she answered, releasing the woman's chains and crossing her arms back into her sleeves, “if I had the spare time, this Sesshoumaru wouldn't waste it on you.” Leaning forward slightly, the white inuyoukai dropped her sarcastic smile and all sadistic playfulness left her deepened voice, “I came so you could tell me where to find Father's tomb.”

 

Anger fled the hanyou's face as he just stared up at her for a moment and Sesshoumaru wondered if something had short-circuited in the creature's mind. It had to happen some time, after all. It would be really bad timing if it happened now, however.

 

“Father's tomb?” the hanyou repeated as he continued to stand there for a moment.

 

Oh no, not another person who just repeats what I say, the white inuyoukai thought as she watched the hanyou watch her. I'm still trying to break Jaken of that.

 

Then the hanyou stepped back and smiled at her. A sadistic grin that almost rivaled hers--as proved when she felt the imp step behind her as if she were a shield--crossed the hanyou's face.

 

“I dunno,” the white-maned hanyou laughed at her. “I don't have a clue.” Fear, doubt, and anger ran through the youkai's veins at the mere suggestion that this was a fool's errand. Sesshoumaru wanted to wipe that victorious look off the beast's face, and with her claws, it was a bloody possibility. After Sesshoumaru took a moment to calm her throbbing pulse and control her rapid breathing, she smiled back down at the hanyou--showing him the face of true cruelty. And reminding him that nobody fucked with Sesshoumaru.

 

“Is that so,” she all but purred, “then I guess I have no choice. Your pathetic mother will just have to suffer.” Again, she thrust poisoned claws into the oni's flesh and watched as his fist tightened around the Mu-Onna's body. Now would be the moment that decided how successfully the minor youkai had convinced the half-grown hanyou that she was truly his mother.

 

But then the infuriating creature laughed as he watched the image of his mother become contorted, her torso twisting back into a position no mortal could survive.

 

“Fucking bastard,” he called out, “just how stupid do you think I am?”

 

Well, I was hoping…

 

“Mom died years ago…that's a fucking fake,” he finished. And in those eyes was pain. Sesshoumaru watched them for a moment, hardly worried for her plan--this had been prepared for, after all. But those eyes held a hurt that went beyond the hanyou's words. Much more than watching the perceived image of a mother go through unimaginable pain. After all, he believed she wasn't real. What was it that put such pain in those eyes? Not that she particularly cared. There were many things the daiyoukai could claim curiosity about but the hanyou's eyes were not among them. And as such, she snapped herself back to the matter at hand.

 

“You truly are an idiot,” the inuyoukai commented, mocking smile still perfectly in place. “How you have managed to survive this long confounds me. You see, just for your pathetic benefit, this Sesshoumaru brought your mother's soul back from the land of the dead. I even gave her a body.”

 

“No!” the hanyou responded in denial. But he was clearly considering it, Sesshoumaru could see the horror on his face as the hanyou realized that he could truly be watching his mother be slaughtered.

 

The daiyoukai watched as the Mu-Onna reached out a hand, stretching it toward her son--or should she say meal--in a desperate plea for help. “Inuyasha…” the woman breathed just loud enough for the youkai and hanyou to hear and the inuyoukai had to give the shape-shifter credit. This torture wasn't the fraud the lesser youkai had been told it would be; Sesshoumaru just wanted to make it more realistic than that. Yet the woman was still fulfilling her part flawlessly.

 

“Please, don't worry about me,” the tormented woman gasped, amazingly through both smiles and tears, “I've been through this before. A second death…is nothing.”

 

Watching the hanyou's indecision in the face of such marvelous acting was beginning to wear on the inuyoukai's patience and, once more, she thrust poisoned claws into the oni's forearm. The Mu-Onna let out a marvelous scream of tortured agony as she was crushed in the oni's fist. Finally, it was enough to make the hanyou act.

 

“Shit,” he growled as he leaped into the air to rescue his supposed mother. Sesshoumaru watched in some amusement as the hanyou even drew his claws back to attack. Who knew the creature had claws?

 

“Sankon Tessou!” screamed the white-haired hanyou as he shredded through the oni's arm letting the broken figure fall to the ground. The oni screamed in agony, but Sesshoumaru just watched. Everything was going just fine; the abomination had just rescued his mother and now everything was in the hands of the Mu-Onna. Closing her ears to the bellowing oni, the youkai reminded herself that the oni had been expendable anyway. Too bad she hadn't figured in how much noise it could make.

 

On the ground, that mortal girl was trying to rouse the Mu-Onna.

 

“Kagome!” the hanyou shouted down at them, “take Mom and get outta here!”

 

“No one leaves,” Sesshoumaru commanded, her artificial voice booming over all the commotion. Leaping away from the enraged oni, Jaken digging those grubby fingers into her pelt, Sesshoumaru gave it the order to attack. And yet, just as the oni reached down to finish off the small group, a burst of light engulfed them. When the blast cleared, the Mu-Onna, the hanyou, and the mortal girl were gone.

 

“Jaken,” she stated above the roaring of the oni, “follow them.”

 

“B-but, Master,” the imp stammered, “how will I get there?” As expected, a sharp, narrowed glare silenced any further questions from the vulnerable youkai. “Of course,” he gulped, “right away.” Letting go of Sesshoumaru's fur, the little creature scrambled off in search of the Mu-Onna's illusion. As soon as the imp was headed in the right direction, Sesshoumaru turned back to the still-bellowing oni.

 

“Silence!” she barked, her order echoing far above and beyond the tiresome beast's roars. And yet, the exasperating creature continued its bellowing. “If you do not cease that infernal noise this second,” she started, floating up before the enraged creature's face, “I shall silence you myself.”

 

Apparently forgetting their previous encounter, the oni swung out at the airborne inuyoukai with its remaining arm. “How am I supposed to survive,” it raged, “with just one arm!? That fucking brat broke off my arm!”

 

“Are you so weak you cannot manage with such a minor inconvenience?” the white youkai remarked as she easily dodged the wild blow. “If you are truly so pathetic then this Sesshoumaru shall take pity on you.”

 

At her words, the oni finally quieted and the inuyoukai wondered if the blue-skinned monstrosity realized what kind of `pity' she would have to offer. Sesshoumaru watched the trees tremble as the ground shook when the oni grabbed his bleeding stump and collapsed to his knees. “Please,” the creature begged, “please, help me.”

 

Even on his knees, the creature towered above the inuyoukai as she landed softly before him. Levitating herself a few feet off the ground the inuyoukai inspected the rib cage of the beast before her. “Pathetic,” she stated as she finally thrust her poisoned claws through the oni's ribs and straight into his heart.

 

A heavy injection of the acidic venom straight into the creature's circulatory system allowed the poison to pass quickly, if painfully, through the massive body. He jerked back one last time, roaring his agony to the skies. Sesshoumaru slid out of the way, flipping the creature's rancid blood from her arm, as the beast finally collapsed into death.

 

“Be careful whom you ask for help,” she advised the massive corpse as she followed her imp's steps toward the Mu-Onna's illusionary world.

 

~*~

 

Annoying A/N-I'm embarrassed by my last chapter, but I'm not going to rewrite it and I hope this one begins to make up for it. However, since my husband has pointed out that my battle scene descriptions in chapter two sucked, I've rewritten small parts of it and reposted it for anyone who wants to reread it. If you don't, don't worry about it. Nothing big changed, just some descriptions.

 

Also, I want to thank my wonderful reviewers, you're all so nice, even when I don't deserve it.

 

Special thanx to:

 

Miss War-Chan

Demitria Miriam

Sparkangel

Lady Yueh

 

Thank you to everyone who has read this so far and please review and let me know how I'm doing.

 

~Silence~