sakuraneoneo: Hello again, fellow fanfiction readers.. slash.. writers.. yeah! Well I know I said I'd update all my other stuff, and no worries, I'm updating!

Sesshomaru: -cough- Slash she's NOT!

sakuraneoneo: -shocks- I am. -smiles- Team Super Sesshy and I are updating for Christmas once more, and the others are slowly coming along! Now enough about that and more about this fic!
The storyline is threeyears in the making, from when I started Grade 7. (What a nice way to finish Grade 9! )
Just a small synopsis, but it's all about anookamiyoukai (wolf demon) tribe and their trials, lives and other stuff! (I suck at this stuff.. and yes, Koga IS in it later on!)

Sesshomaru: MEANING I'M NOT IN IT IN A DEMEANING WAY? THANK GOD!

sakuraneoneo: -shocks a few more times- Just read on and ignore him. -sighs- I might be blowing half the storyline of Lifeblood of the Dying Team here, since this is the prequel, but I don't care... enjoy!

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Inuyasha nor any characters in the show...although I do ownhalf the charactersdepicted slash written about in this fic! Enjoy!

Chapter 1

" Kurayami."

The girl didn't raise her head, nor respond to the voice directed towards her. Her head was lowered, eyes blank, feeling nothing.
Why would there even be the need to feel anything? Why would she ever need emotion again?

" Kurayami," the voice repeated, now stern.

Kurayami still didn't lift her head as a woman knelt before her, clasping, what seemed like, a pink zircon to the front of her white fur cape.
Hushed whispers filled the area behind her.

" But she's not ready..."
" She's far too young for this!"
" There.. is no other option for her.. is there?"

She heard the whispers. She knew what they were talking about. Yet... she didn't care.
Life was meaningless to her now, nothing more than an endless void of existance that wasn't meant to be. An empty feeling flooded her near-empty shell of a body She didn't want to live longer.
No one cared.
Her emotionless eyes lifted as the woman before her raised her chin by a hand.

" Be brave, my granddaughter. We're all saddened by the loss of your mother and brother, but we must move on."

There it was. That empty feeling again. Her mother.
This was... all because of her mother. Her death. Tai's death. If it were possible, Kurayami would've started crying. But no.
Her emotion stayed sealed up, unable to let free.
Now that her mother and Tai were now free from the living world, her life would never be the same. No one would treat her the same.
It was because of her mother that they treated her so well during her years.
No other reason.
Kurayami was the youngest of three. Her siblings were Tai, the eldest, and Kem. Her sister. On thought of her, Kurayami's head lowered again.

At one point in her life she had blamed Kem for her misfortunes. Then, she'd only been childish. Kem was the eldest girl of the family. She would carry on the leadership of the tribe.
Not her, Kurayami, the "reject" child. Her father had rejected her. He'd never looked at her the way he did towards Kem and Tai.
That is... when they had been alive.
Now her siblings were deceased, just like her mother; the only one other than Kem and Tai that had showed her love.

" Moving on would be the first step. Giving the brat proper training would be second."

Kurayami flinched to the cold voice of her father. The uncaring voice he'd always used towards her. Never the proud voice he'd used for the elder children.

" ...no."

Her hands clenched tight, her eyes becoming clouded over by her own rage. She lifted her head, ripping the zircon off and throwing it on the ground.
The area went silent. Her father stared at her with shocked, hateful eyes.

" I... I won't lead you, I won't! I'm only a second-hand replacement to Mama and Kem! You can't use me this way!"
Kurayami turned and ran out before her grandmother could catch her arm.

" Kura-yami!"

Her voice echoed behind Kurayami, but she just kept running through the cold snow. The chilled air was burning her lungs as she fought to catch her breath, but she kept on running, unstopping, not turning back.
Tears flew back through the air as her cries began, emotion finally feeling time to free.

' M-Mama... O-ne-chan... O-nii-chan...'

To keep the flowing tears from burning her eyes, Kurayami shut them tightly, continuing to run, the matter that she could easily run into something not mattering to her.
She never needed to go back to them. They wouldn't even care if she went back. They wouldn't even find her, just leave her to die.

The small ookamiyoukai had forgotten to open her eyes as she continued to run through the silver-coated forest, eventually coming to trip. Her sapphire jewels widened as far as they could as she noticed she'd hit a cliff, and her trip had made her fall down it.
Her scream shattered the coated silence and echoed as far as how loud she could release a cry.

" D-aaaaaddddyyyy!"

Kurayami's voice failed her as she forced her weight against the mountainside, digging her claws into the rocks and trying to stop from sliding.
The sharp rocks of the cliff cut into her feet, hands and wrists as she tried to stop herself, but she wasn't powerful enough.
Her claws lost grip of the rocks and she fell, face-first, toward the ground. The instinct she inherited from her mother kicked in, and as she nearly met the ground, she put out her hands, pushing them off the ground and flipping herself on her feet.

The force from the landing broke her right wrist, but she payed no notice to it as she continued to run. Her crimson blood flowing freely from her wounds left a trail behind her.
Not much later, when pure darkness had fallen, she got very light-headed and lacked the energy to go on. The girl fell down into the snow, her fire-red locks falling against her pale, yet rosy cheeks.
One more voice of wind brushed through the ravine as Kurayami's world began to go black, her eyes narrowed and blank.

" ..Kurayami... I'm.. sorry..."

Her sapphire eyes closed, in what she wished was a permanent slumber; from which she could never be awakened. One from which she could never be disturbed.
Her mother, her brother, her sister. They were all waiting for her. "...I'm so sorry..."

Since Hikari had been killed, the leadership of the tribe had never been the same. The tribe, itself, had never been the same. The loss of their leader, and not only their leader, but their leader, their heiress, and their heir, had been hard on them all.
Especially the younger heiress. The one whose fate was forever tied to the tribe, her blood meant to carry on what the tribe had meant.
But she was too young.
Someone so young could not take the leadership without proper training. Training which she'd never heard of until the moment she was summoned to the "throne."
Worries did arise among the other ookamiyoukai of the tribe, but they had total faith in her. She was the daughter of Hikari, after all. Her mother's daughter. The blood with the instinct flowed through her veins.

" You two take East! We'll take West!"

At first, they had never thought much of Kurayami. But the few that did see her sheer determination to prove herself when she was training with her mother or brother knew, that she would, someday, amount to more than they could ever believe.
Kurayami had never believed it at all in her mind, especially not when the deaths of her family caused her to fall deep in emotional shock.

" Yes ma'am."

Of course, she would have never believed what her tribe had become to be, either. No leader had surpassed Hikari in spiritual strength and determination to keep her tribe, her family, safe.
No leader.. until the one that was the head now took the head.

" I don't see anything this way, what about you?"

" No. We'll just have to keep looking."

The duo rushed through the forest, their footfall almost silent against the packed snow. They were unbeatable together, a team whose bond could never be broken.
The female ran ahead of her partner, pushing herself through the air above the hill. Her deep eyes were lined with deep concentration, serious for the moment, not her childlike eyes she had when she wasn't needed to be focus.
Harmoniously, she and her partner slid down the hill, jumping, and running deeper into the forest.
She was a leader that Hikari herself would have been proud of if she had lived to see it.

" Are you sure we'll--"
" Kouta. Trust me."

She gave him one of her encouraging, warm smiles. " If we have to find it, we'll find it."
A voice from their lefts interrupted her.

" My lady! Kurayami! Over here!"

She smiled underneath her red locks, blue eyes flaring the way someone's eyes would after winning something. " Don't doubt this tribe, Kouta."

sakuraneoneo: Kinda short... yeah... but I've got a lot of work to do. Slash I'm sick.

Fellow Akatsuki-ists/Sesshomaru: SHE'S A WHINEY LITTLE BRAT!

sakuraneoneo: I am not... -chibi eyes- anyways, read and review!