I do not own YYH. Please support the official release.

Hello again. I have been thinking about this for a very long time. I hope you enjoy the second installment of my Story.

Chapter 1:

Jen banged her fists against air that was as solid as any wall. She let her hands slide down until they touched bare earth. Jen stood and stretched as far as she could reach, but the wall extended far above her. She could not escape. She had tried everything she could think of-which wasn't much. Inari had her trapped inside a circle of some kind. If she stood dead center she had just enough room to step two paces in any direction. On the other side of the "wall" she could see designs and symbols scratched into the dirt. Beyond that, a dark shape that stuck to the shadows.

"INARI! LET ME OUT!" Jen screamed and pounded her fists into the wall.

"Oh Jenney-whenney, do calm down." Inari purred and stepped to the edge of the symbols.

"What are you going to do?" Jen asked.

Inari stepped up to the wall, careful not to disturb the designs on the floor. Behind him attendants began to enter the room and set themselves at key marks on the design. A smile spread itself across the god's face.

"I shall simply be taking back what is mine." Inari said.

"I don't understand." Jen whispered, though she had the sinking suspicion that she did.

"That power coursing through your veins is mine. I want it back." Inari said.

"W...will it hurt?" Jen asked.

The last of the attendants settled himself at the edge of the circle. Jen was now surrounded by kitsune all the colors of the rainbow. Male, female, child, elder, all sat Indian style with their feet tucked atop their knees.

"I honestly don't know." Inari said and stepped back.

Chanting began to rise and fall on all sides. Jen didn't understand what was said, the language was like nothing she had ever heard before. Like Japanese, the consonants were sharp and quick while vowels were stretched and rounded. But the way the sounds mixed and wove together was odd and almost unnatural for speech. The design began to glow and cast odd shadows around the room. The glowing began to move towards her.

Jen began to panic. Nothing good would happen when that gold light reached her. Jen threw herself at the wall. She hit hard and used her momentum to push herself forward. It was like running head first into a brick wall. She stumbled and fell back but didn't stay down. She punched at the wall until her fists bled. Still the light crept closer.

"Struggling won't help you, darling." Inari chuckled.

Jen gave one last frustrated scream and slid to the ground. She threw her head back and clenched her fists into the dirt. Suddenly it hit her, maybe she could dig? The light was just inches from her when she plunged her hands into the ground and began to dig.

Three things happened at once. The gold light hit Jen, Inari stepped forward, and the chanting stopped. Suddenly it felt like the very air pressure had changed. Everything was so still and Jen wasn't sure if it was silent because no one was moving or if the air had simply become so thick that sound couldn't travel through it.

The pressure was growing, growing, growing, then it burst. It slammed into Jen hard enough to flatten her to the gold glowing ground. She couldn't breath! She opened her mouth and gasped like a fish, nothing happened for a moment and she was afraid of suffocating. Then she could breath, but it wasn't only air that came. There was power. A power that filled her up like the ocean fills a shell. It filled her up to the brim. Something inside her clicked. She knew that power, it was part of her but also part of something else. She could almost make out a golden line that extended from her chest to Inari. This power...they were one and the same. He was her and she was him. Suddenly the power burst.

It was like being born.

That was the only way she could describe the newness. It was like seeing, hearing, crying, laughing, resenting, loathing, loving...everything for the first time and all at once. For a brief moment, she felt the heavens move. She felt the universe dance, the call of earth and all living things. She knew the meaning of life. Now, not only did she understand they 'whys', but how the 'whys' worked and into which order they belonged. Jen knew everything there was to know and everything that there ever would be to know. She knew this information was too much for a mortal mind, and she briefly wondered why she wasn't going mad.

Jen put her hands under herself and pushed up to a sitting position. She had fallen and she hadn't even realized it. The sudden understanding of life itself had been so profound that it had taken all earthly sensations away from her. Jen slowly picked herself up as the meaning of what it was all about ran through her head. Life...was meant to create life. The answer was so simple, yet so complex that one could not wrap their mind around it. Life was the purpose. Life was the dance. The epic tune to which everything danced. There was no rhyme or reason. There was only creation

Jen picked herself up and locked eyes with Inari. He was so beautiful that she couldn't keep the tears from running down her face. Inari was life, but he was also death. He was the beat to which she danced. If she were the song, he was the conductor. It was his power that moved her. His song that filled her body with life. And she knew that he wanted her song to end. The body she possessed was nothing more than a hollow shell of magic that he kept animated with his will alone. It had taken a great chunk of his power to create her. Now he wanted that chunk back, even if it meant ripping her very soul apart to get it.

She didn't want to die! Not now! Not when she finally understood what everything meant and why it was all here! She was life. She had a song! She was not going to die here, not now, now ever! Her song began to change. It was a song of hope and it didn't have an end. No, hers was a song that kept going and going and going. It was a song composed of an infant's first cry. The heat of a lover's gaze, the joy of creating a new life and holding that gift in your arms. Hers was the blush of a lover's fist kiss, the hand of a mother on a sick child's forehead. The holding of a loved one as they slipped to their grave. The compassionate hand that helped a stranger. The female willingness to bring utter destruction. The merciless willingness to sacrifice oneself so that the young could live. Hers was a song that had no beginning and no end.

Jen looked to the ground and she suddenly knew what she was standing in. It was a circle of power. The marks on the ground were symbols so ancient that only she and Inari knew their true meaning. They were marks for taking, for possessing, of theft. They were marks to own, take, consume, need, posses. Inari began to chant the final right. It wasn't so much words as an invocation of power. The sounds and shapes of the words themselves had no meaning, yet at the same time they did. The very shape and sounds were the raw elemental creation of the symbols themselves. It was as if he were speaking the very essence ownership itself.

Jen began to chant back at him. Two could play at that game. If he could take, so could she. The power that stretched between them was a double edged sword. Both sides could cut and cut deep. She knew when Inari understood what she was trying to do. He began to chant faster, suddenly it became a race to the finish. He who finished first would own the power, the other would die. Their song would end. Jen threw her arms out in front of her, palms facing Inari, fingers spread wide. Her lips had never moved so fast before. Power built between them in a golden tide. Jen took a deep breath, inhaling the power. It flowed to her and she took. She consumed it until it burned. The symphony of life boomed in her brain.

"Only I can have it, Jennifer! You don't know what to do with it! Let it go!" Inari screamed.

But Jen didn't let go. She called out with that part of her that controlled the magic, controlled the song. She offered herself to the music, never before had she been so willing. She stood naked before it, giving it her flesh, bone, blood, her very soul. The power took her but not all of it. Inari had more control and had used it longer. What little would go, came to his hand like a well trained dog. Jen upped the music that sang through her, fighting Inari for control of the power. She wanted to live, lusted after it like she had never before. But she could not break his hold, so she did the next best thing. She absorbed as much of the power as would come to her then let go. The ground trembled beneath her and the circle fell away into nothing. She bent the very fabric of time and reality itself. She needed to get away. Far away from Inari before he could take her and end the symphony. She vanished into thin air leaving death and destruction behind her.

Inari fell to his hands and knees gasping great gulps of air. He had failed at retrieving the power he had used to create Jen's new body. What was worse was that now she had somehow managed to turn his own ritual against him. Once he had been a god of creation. Once he could mold the very essence of life to his will. He had the power of what was both male and female, able to combine the best of both attributes into one unit to create life. Now, he was missing the female aspect. Without that part of him, he was unable to create. Without the whole spectrum of his power, all of his children would become barren. The last thought that slipped through his mind before he fell unconscious was that without Jen, life for kitsune could not go on.