A huge, slimy tentacle exploded out from under the ground, sending dirt and rocks flying everywhere. It flailed around as though trying to crush something. Trees, houses, everything was quickly turned to rubble, but it seemed as though the tentacle hit everything except the original target. In the middle of a particularly powerful flail, the tentacle suddenly split in two. InuYasha, the cause of the split, landed perfectly on his feet, with Tetsusaiga in hand. Turing to look at the now sliced up tentacle, he said "That's the tenth one of those things attacking these villages! What the hell is going on?"

"InuYasha!" Kagome ran over to him. "We've been looking all over for you!" Kirara, carrying Shippo, a pissed off Sango and a Miroku with his face covered in red handprints, arrived right behind Kagome. "You shouldn't go running off like tha--oh my god what happened here?" Kagome finally came out of her relief for InuYasha's safety to realize that InuYasha was actually the only thing left that was safe and sound; being that the rest of the area had been totally obliterated. Meanwhile, Sango had walked over to the limp tentacle, and was examining it.

"I think I know which demon this tentacle is from," Sango announced, "it seems to be from a Sakana Youkai, a fish demon. But Father said these demons were relatively small. How did it get i this /i big?" Kagome, Shippo, Miroku, and InuYasha joined Sango to try and ponder the mystery. Suddenly, Kagome realized the answer.

"I sense a jewel shard! This demon must have the final shard to the Shikon no Tama!" With this new information revealed, InuYasha smirked.

"Heh! And here I was thinking these tentacles were just good practice. I should have known something was up."

The others stared at him, surprised at this little tidbit of information as well as the last.

"Y-you mean you've seen these tentacles before?" Miroku managed to stutter even though he was as shocked as the others were.

"Yeah, I've been cutting them up since they've been attacking the villages lately. It's probably why they were mostly abandoned. What of it?" InuYasha replied.

Shippo leapt onto InuYasha, practically knocking him to the ground. "Why didn't you tell us earlier? We thought it was a war or something that destroyed all of the Jyuu-machi!"

"Jyuu-machi?" InuYasha asked, confused by the reference.

Miroku sighed. "Yes, InuYasha. These ten towns that are in the little patch of fertile land here between the mountain and the sea are called the Yama to Umi no Jyuu-machi, Jyuu-machi for short."

"Okay, why give them a name?" InuYasha asked, a little testily.

"Who knows? Someone just felt like doing that I guess." Miroku replied just as testily.

"Oh, and where's that coward Myoga?" InuYasha asked, noticing the flea's absence.

"Myoga? Oh, he ran away from here as fast as he could when we saw the first destroyed village and thought a war was going on. Of course, if a war was bad enough to scare him away, this would have made him go impossibly fast...whoa?" Shippo's story of Myoga's whereabouts was cut short due to the fact that the ground beneath him, and pretty much only him, was shaking like someone had turned that spot into a maraca or something, and that ground then started rising. When the shaking stopped and the dust cleared, Shippo was no more than a speck atop a giant fish head, the rest of the body of the Sakana Youkai!

Quickly, the group began to attack. The Sakana Youkai's tentacles were plentiful and everywhere. Sango cut off a few tentacles with a mighty throw of her hiraikotsu, while Kirara used the space that made to her advantage and began to try and rescue Shippo. Kagome's arrows took off more tentacles, and then she called to the others "When I shoot this arrow with a ribbon on it, it should hit the Youkai near the location of the shard!" and shot the arrow with the ribbon on it. The ribbon was a pretty blue color, but that was not the most important factor. The final shard of the Jewel was now pinpointed, but first they had to get Shippo to safety, and Kirara had him on her back and was doing just that. Suddenly, the wounded tentacles began to grow back!

"It regenerates!" Miroku warned them. InuYasha grumbled at how this would just delay them a little, and then promptly began to chop the demon up again. Sango, Kagome, Miroku, and Kirara quickly followed suit, and in five minutes most of the Sakana Youkai's body was little cubed bits of fish. Kagome ran up to the severed fish heat to retrieve the jewel, but as she reached it the head leapt up and swallowed her part of the Shikon no Tama, which only needed that one shard to be complete! Knowing that the Jewel would probably fuse into the completed sphere inside the now quickly regenerating and transforming Sakana Youkai's body, Kagome took an arrow and stuck it down the throat of the demon. She fished around with the arrow for a while, and then drew the arrow out again. Sure enough, on the shaft of the arrow, her necklace with the Shikon no Tama was hanging.

"Okay! I got the last shard!" Kagome yelled to her friends, "we can focus on defeating the Sakana Youkai completely now!" Joining the rest of the group behind InuYasha, they braced themselves as InuYasha executed the Wind Scar, re-cubing the Sakana Youkai.

"Be careful, I'm going to clean up!" Miroku yelled, "Wind tunnel!"

The void was opened, sucking up all demonic debris in its path.

The traveling companions gathered around Kagome, who was quietly holding the Shikon no Tama, which was now a complete sphere. InuYasha, who was next to her, voiced the thought that was in everyone's minds. "Our journey for the Jewel is finally ove-hah?" His expression quickly turned from a solemn and serious one to one of surprise and disbelief in a second as he examined the spherical Shikon no Tama that he had coveted for so long. Pointing to a point on the sphere, he stammered "T-the J-Jewel...S-s-somethin...somethin's wrong!"

Kagome looked worriedly at InuYasha. "What do you mean something's wrong?" she asked, followed by a gasp and an expression to match InuYasha's. The others followed their astounded gazes and then the entire group was staring.

"Why do I suddenly have a weird feeling that the shard in the Sakana Youkai wasn't really a shard of the Shikon no Tama?" Miroku pondered aloud.

"I think you may be right..." Sango told him. Just then, there was a crackling noise, and the green shard cracked off of the rest of the pink Jewel. Glowing, it floated in mid air and stopped in the middle of the ring of friends, who were staring at it, dumbfounded, and began to rotate. Kagome, hit by a sudden instinct, slipped the Shikon necklace back on, while still transfixed to the rotating, glowing, green thing. InuYasha quietly and carefully began to inch towards the midori shaado, the green shard, which was starting to revolve at an increasing rate of speed. Acting on a sudden impulse, he reached out to grab it, but just as he came within five inches of his goal, the shard turned into a ball of light. The ball dropped to the ground, turning into a disk under the feet of the InuYasha gang. And of course, the disk became a portal hole, so they all fell through into another dimension.

NOTE: Kikyo and Sesshomaru fans, I suggest you do not read most of this last paragraph. It reflects the opinions of my friends and of various magazine articles, and yes, Kikyo and Sesshomaru are about to get made fun of.

While they were busy embarking on being transported to another dimension, Kikyo and Sesshomaru appeared. Both were wearing their regular clothes, but had T-shirts over them. Sesshomaru's shirt said 'Pretty Boy: I love my looks more than my chicks', and Kikyo's said 'I'm a bitch that adds confusion to pretty much every episode I'm in'. The two then took off their T-shirts. Sesshomaru immediately whipped out huge vanity table and chair from somewhere, and began a major obsess-fest. Kikyo, on the other hand, started to dance like a crippled monkey doing the disco. The portal-disk-ball-shard thingie grew a sign that said 'WARNING: Portal to another dimension! Do not fall throu--oh wait, a bit late for that, isn't it', then disappeared completely.

Author's Notes:

Yama to Umi no Jyuu-machi – 'mountain and sea's ten towns', literally.

Midori shaado – 'green shard'