Disclaimer: I still don't own Inuyasha, and I'm still extremely sad about it. So while I go off into a corner and pout about that, please continue reading. ;)

A/N: Thank you so much, merci beaucoup, muchas gracias, arigato gozaimasu, vielen danke and all that other good stuff to the ever-wonderful InuKagSanMirFan (and to answer your question, Shippo does kind of view Inuyasha as a father figure, but not in the literal "my daddy is an inu hanyou!" sense or anything. It's just that Inuyasha is like the dominant male in his life, so he views him as protective and strong...and as to your other question, you'll just have to read this chapter to find that out...hehe!), and also to SpaderStallion as well as Demon Slayer Houko for the Favourite Story Add and to Griddlebone for the review. :)

...And now, on to your regularly scheduled fanfiction.

Chapter 4 - Battle at the Shrine

The sky changed to the steel grey colour that precedes morning as Inuyasha's eyes slowly opened. The first thing he noticed upon awakening was that his hair had turned back to silver. Instinctively he reached up to the top of his head and his hands met with two fuzzy dog ears. He sighed with relief, content with the knowledge that he was no longer fully human. Looking to his left, the hanyou spotted Shippo, still fast asleep on the tree stump where Inuyasha had plunked him, still unconscious, the night before. He semi-grinned and stood up, stretching his arms as he did so.

Inuyasha's mood would not stay this decent (for that was the only word to describe how his mood could be given the circumstances at the moment) for long, though, because no sooner had Inuyasha contemplated waking Shippo from his slumber so they could continue travelling, than he saw a huge whirlwind-shaped cloud moving quickly toward him in the same direction Inuyasha had come from the night before. The particular shape of the whirlwind, and its speed, told Inuyasha immediately who was heading in his direction.

Koga.

It took next to no time at all for the wolf youkai to come to a stop directly in front of Inuyasha. The two of them stared each other down and bared their fangs menacingly at one another.

"What the heck are you doing here, wolf?" Inuyasha snarled, not moving an inch.

"I'm following the youki I sensed a while ago that's coming from that village up ahead, not that it's any concern of yours, dog-breath," Koga shot back, then continued, "where's Kagome?"

"Keh," Inuyasha scoffed, finally backing up a few feet from the wolf youkai, "why do you even care? Hasn't she made it obvious to you already that she's not interested in you?"

Koga's eyes hardened. "What makes you think...I never said that was why...you BAKA!" Koga bellowed, letting his emotions get the better of him for the first time ever. What Inuyasha had told Koga rubbed him the wrong way, because as far as the wolf youkai was concerned, Kagome was his woman, and nothing was going to change that. He tightened his hands into fists and moved slowly forward to where Inuyasha stood, a short distance in front of him. "I'm going to ask you again, mutt, where's Kagome?" he asked, his voice lowered in a threatening manner. Inuyasha keh'd again but didn't answer. "I'm warning you, dog crap!" Koga continued. Rather than answer, Inuyasha grabbed Shippo from the tree stump, stuck him under his arm, and walked straight past Koga, heading down the road toward the village.

Koga saw red. No way is this mangy mutt gonna ignore me and get away with it! he declared inwardly, chasing after Inuyasha and overtaking him in about half a second.

"Where the heck do you think you're going, mutt?" Koga asked, stepping in front of Inuyasha and crossing his arms.

"Same place you're going, baka." Inuyasha retorted, side-stepping Koga and continuing on his way.

The two continued in this manner all the way down the road: Inuyasha would begin to run, then Koga would overtake him and start questioning him again, usually about Kagome. Angry at Koga, and unable to see why he should have to answer to the wolf youkai, Inuyasha would snarl at Koga, sidestep him and start running again, only to have Koga catch up to him in next to no time.

After the first twenty minutes or so like this, Shippo stirred under Inuyasha's arm. He opened his eyes slowly and let out a yelp of surprise when he finally realized where he was. Inuyasha didn't notice the kit squirming under his arm trying to get free, because he and Koga were still verbally battling each other, so Shippo had to push himself forward with all his might to get free of the hanyou's strong arm. He plopped to the ground with a thud, directly between Inuyasha and Koga. Looking from the youkai to the hanyou and back again, the tiny kitsune had absolutely no idea what was going on, but decided it was probably best not to ask. He quickly scrambled out from between the two fighters and began to walk ahead by himself. Inuyasha still had not noticed him.

"Wolf, I swear, if you don't shut up I'm going to arrange a meeting for your head with Tetsusaiga!" the hanyou growled, gripping the hilt of the sword with his right hand, ready to pull it out at a moment's notice if the wolf tried anything stupid. That was when Inuyasha noticed that his right arm was no longer burdened by anything. "Oi, Shippo!" Inuyasha cried when he saw the kit walking down the road in front of him, "Get back here! The village isn't that far ahead and if you get there before we do, whatever's there will rip you to pieces before we've got a chance to save your sorry hide!"

Shippo turned around and looked at Inuyasha, a look of utter fear on his face. At the hanyou's words, the kitsune ran back and leapt up onto Inuyasha's shoulder. Normally Inuyasha would have unceremoniously flicked him off in less time than it takes to blink, but today, he barely even noticed. Turning back to Koga, Inuyasha growled deep in his throat and took off running at top speed. Shippo clung to Inuyasha's haori for dear life as the hanyou sped off down the dusty road, Koga right alongside.

In next to no time, they had reached the village. The youki was so overpowering now that it sent all three of the travellers into a semi-daze as they walked through the main road. Trying to keep composure, they looked all around them for signs of a fight, but there were none. Every single home they passed was intact, no bodies littered the ground, and there was no distinct metallic scent of human blood. The only oddity they noticed was that there did not seem to be anyone around. What was going on?

The three continued through the village slowly until finally, once they had nearly reached the edge of it, they came to a shrine. Like all the other buildings they had passed, no one was nearby. There was one difference here, however. Inuyasha, Koga and Shippo gasped in silent horror at the sight that met their eyes once they passed through the entrance to the shrine's main temple:

Numerous dead bodies were scattered about the ground.

Kagome pounded the dusty earth as she ran along at nearly breakneck speed. As though the idea had come to her sometime in the night, she realized that the most likely place Inuyasha and Shippo could have gone (since she had not been able to find them anywhere near the campsite that the group had been staying at) was the village with the strangely strong youki that they had all planned to head towards before their huge fight. They must have gone to check it out! she realized. Suddenly, as she ran ever faster, she felt the presence of a Shikon Jewel shard.

Make that two shards.

Koga's around here too? she wondered, completely confused, Okay, what the heck is going on?

With that, Kagome picked up speed even more and darted down the road, ignoring the stitch forming in her side as the presence of the jewel shards became more pronounced with every step.

"What the - ?" Inuyasha exclaimed, dashing toward the temple. The bodies scattered on the ground at his feet were freshly felled - they had not been dead for long. What made this extremely strange, however, was the fact that there was no blood anywhere! The bodies, too, were free of any cuts, bruises, or any other signs of a struggle. The people were clearly dead, but how had it happened? It was as though they had simply keeled over where they stood and died on the spot.

Inuyasha knelt down beside one body. This one belonged to a young man, probably no older than 25 or so. His eyes were closed, like the rest. Inuyasha inspected the body closely for a few moments until he discovered something strange: tiny holes, no bigger than pinpricks, covered every exposed inch of the man's flesh. The holes were so small that they would have been impossible to see from a distance, but upon close inspection, they were visible. Some of the holes were slightly red and inflamed, but some looked as though the skin had merely been pricked with a sharp twig.

"Oi, Koga, get over here!" Inuyasha called to the wolf youkai, who was a few feet off, gazing around at the sea of bodies and shaking his head. Begrudgingly Koga made his way over to Inuyasha. "Take a look at this." the hanyou told him. Koga knelt down and looked at the spots Inuyasha was indicating, eyes widening.

"What the - ?" Koga said, in a perfect imitation of Inuyasha, almost whispering, "What the heck does this mean?"

Inuyasha was just about to shake his head when, as if to answer Koga's question, the temple door slid open with a bang. Shippo, Inuyasha and Koga looked in the direction the noise had come from to see the door, wide open, with no one standing in it. All that could be seen was what looked like a large, flat dark grey patch of something heading down the main steps toward the group. Inuyasha stood up and unsheathed Tetsusaiga, Shippo trembling in fear on his shoulder, while Koga charged directly toward the moving grey mass. Once he had made contact with the front of it, he began to yelp in pain. The grey shadow-like object was crawling up his legs.

Wishing he had any other choice but this one, Inuyasha ran toward Koga to see what was crawling all over him. From this vantage point, he could see at least thirty tiny little flea youkai making their way up Koga's body. They sank their barbs into his exposed flesh in their tiny bodies swelled as they sucked out his blood. The wolf youkai's legs, torso and neck were covered in the youkai. The more he managed to bat away, the faster more would climb onto him and begin to feast on his blood.

Inuyasha was frantic. He had no idea what to do. He couldn't do anything about the youkai while they were attacking Koga, but he couldn't let them simply suck out his blood. Although it had long been one of his dearest desires to rid himself of the wolf as quickly as possible, he refused to let it happen like this. No one deserved to die this way, not even useless wolf bakas like Koga. Inuyasha knew, instinctively, that this must have been what happened to the villagers around the shrine. It would have explained why there was no bloodshed and the corpses looked as though they had not been harmed.

"Inuyasha," Shippo asked in a terrified voice, "what are we gonna do?" The flea youkai were beginning to make their way onto Inuyasha's legs now and if he did not do something, he would soon be covered in the disgusting creatures as fast as Koga had been. Ignoring Shippo and thinking fast, Inuyasha leapt up to the roof of the shrine temple and called down to Koga.

"Oi, wolf!" Inuyasha cried, "Listen to me! Get yourself to higher ground if you can, and stay the heck back from anywhere the Tetsusaiga might touch you. Keep trying to get those things off you, and I'll talk care of the rest."

Koga did as he was told. As much as he hated taking orders from the flea-bitten (pun very much intended) mutt, he knew that Inuyasha happened to be right this time. He jumped onto the porch of the temple and crouched down. The flea youkai seemed to have stopped pouring from the main doorway now, but as the only bodies on the ground outside had already been drained of all their blood, it would only be a matter of time before the youkai would get bored and come after bodies with live blood still flowing through their veins.

Up above, Inuyasha raised Tetsusaiga over his head and roared "Kaze no Kizu!", sending an immense blast of energy to the ground. In next to no time, the hundreds of flea youkai peppering the ground disappeared from the force of the blast. The only ones that remained were the ones still clinging to Koga, gorging themselves and becoming thick with his blood. He swatted them away, some with difficulty, and stamped on them with his foot.

"Mutt!" Koga called, "Get down here!"

Inuyasha dropped from the roof and joined the wolf youkai, who was covered from head to foot in tiny marks, some of which were swelling slightly.

"You all right?" Inuyasha asked begrudgingly, not meeting Koga's eyes. Koga grunted, by way of an answer.

"What the heck was that all about?" he asked, gazing out at the bodies.

"No idea, but those fleas were way too easy to destroy. I don't get it. There's still a strong youki here, too." Inuyasha said, crossing his arms. An uneasy feeling tugged at him and he knew that the worst was yet to come.

And come it did.

Neither Inuyasha, nor Koga, nor Shippo knew exactly when it first stood in the doorway of the temple, leering at them. It was so silent that even their sensitive youkai ears could not pick it up. They felt the presence of the youki increase once more and it was not until the three of them began to look around that they noticed that something was standing behind them.

Something cloaked in a full baboon skin.

"You!" Koga exclaimed, whirling around to face the being, which laughed deep in its throat.

Inuyasha spun around as well and bared his fangs. "Naraku" he said, barely above a whisper. This explained everything. As he had done the day before, Inuyasha now felt completely numb. He felt no emotion, and only the burning desire to destroy the hanyou standing in front of him. This one goal coursed through his body, heating him from the inside like a sudden flame. He knew it was now or never.

"Ku ku ku..." the baboon chortled, not moving or showing its true face to them, "you are sorely mistaken" it told the group.

Unblinking, Inuyasha shot back, "What the heck is that supposed to mean?"

The baboon merely replied, "I am not the one you seek."

What? Inuyasha thought incredulously. Not the one...wait a minute, this thing isn't Naraku? You've got to be kidding me. But this had happened before. A youkai puppet, taking on merely the guise and voice of Naraku - the evil hanyou against whom so many in the Sengoku Jidai had a personal vendetta - often presented itself before Inuyasha and his group, normally to lure them into a trap using its youki and to divert their attention away from finding the real Naraku, wherever he happened to be hiding at the time.

"Where's Naraku hiding?" Koga demanded boldly, forming fists and raising one, staring the puppet down with his fierce eyes.

"Ku ku ku..." the puppet began, "that is purely for me to know, and for you to find out. If you are capable, that is."

Inuyasha rolled his eyes and began to raise Tetsusaiga above his head. "Enough of this!" he snarled, "Time to tear this baka to pieces!" But just as he prepared to attack, Inuyasha heard his name being called from somewhere above him.

"Inuyasha!" a female voice called. Inuyasha followed the sound and looked up to the sky, where he saw Kirara in her full neko youkai form, and astride her, holding the Hiraikotsu in a ready attack position, was Sango.

"Sango!" Inuyasha exclaimed, "Stay up there, will ya? Don't come any - !"

But the youkai exterminator didn't give him a chance to finish his sentence. "Hiraikotsu!" she cried, flinging the huge boomerang in the direction of the youkai puppet, who made no move to escape. It was soon clear why the puppet was not worried about being hit by Sango's weapon: as it came within inches of the puppet, the Hiraikotsu merely bounced away, presumably in mid-air.

"A barrier!" Inuyasha cried in realization. He decided to use the moment that Naraku's puppet was watching the Hiraikotsu fly back to Sango to break the barrier down. His Tetsusaiga began to glow a violent red and Inuyasha brought it swishing down through the air. After a number of seconds, the Tetsusaiga obliterated the barrier and the puppet was exposed. Once it realized that its barrier had collapsed, it flew into a violent rage and launched itself into the air as Inuyasha raised the sword for another attack. "Kaze no Kizu!" the hanyou yelled, sending another blast of energy upwards toward the puppet, still suspended in mid-air. The baboon-skin clad puppet, however, was much too fast and dodged the attack seconds before it hit. Furious and wondering why the heck the useless puppet hadn't bothered to attack him back, Inuyasha raised the sword once again and was just about to bring it down when he heard another voice coming from behind him, this one from the ground and not calling out his name.

"Kazaana!" the voice cried. Inuyasha already knew who was behind him, but he did not want to turn around and break his concentration. Koga, however, spun around at the sound of Miroku's voice.

"Hey, it's that monk!" Koga exclaimed.

"Miroku!" Sango cried, still in mid-air, some ten feet from the puppet, sitting astride Kirara.

Miroku said nothing in response, still focussing all his energy on his Kazaana and sucking the puppet into it before it could do any damage. It was not long, however, before a faint buzzing could be heard in the air, somewhere behind the puppet. The dark figures of Naraku's poisonous insects zoomed out from behind it and came rushing toward the monk, soaring directly toward his Kazaana.

"Saimyosho!" Miroku spat acidly, not covering the Kazaana. I can't close it up, the monk thought to himself, if I do, the puppet won't be destroyed. This is a fast one; it doesn't look like Tetsusaiga is going to be any good.

"Close it up, baka! You'll be poisoned! You should know how this works by now!" Inuyasha roared, still not turning around. The puppet was still suspended overhead, not moving, preferring, it seemed, to let the Saimyosho do all the work.

"Inuyasha's right, Miroku! Cover up your Kazaana or you'll be killed!" Sango called from the air.

Once again, however, Miroku seemed deaf to the warnings of his friends. He held fast, refusing to give in, and the Saimyosho began to enter the black void in his hand, one by one. Miroku's face was contorted in pain but he did not move. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, Kirara and Sango swooped down and the youkai exterminator grabbed the monk, pulling him onto Kirara's back. Finally, he closed up the Kazaana.

"Miroku, you baka! Why did you do that?" Sango snapped, directing Kirara higher into the air to avoid the remaining three or four Saimyosho who were hot on their trail.

"My dear Sango," Miroku began, sounding weak, "I had no choice in the matter."

And with that, Miroku slumped toward her, unconscious, coming to rest on her back with a thud. The poison was already taking effect. Sango yelped in alarm and threw the Hiraikotsu at the Saimyosho, ripping them to pieces as they flew.

Back on the ground, Inuyasha, Koga and Shippo turned all their attentions to the youkai puppet, still suspended creepily in mid-air, waiting for them to make their next move.

"This is getting annoying! I hate wasting my time on useless puppets!" Inuyasha exclaimed, raising his Tetsusaiga one more time. Koga bent low to the ground, hands in fists, ready to leap into the air and take on the puppet if it moved away from the attack of Inuyasha's sword. Shippo had climbed up onto Inuyasha's head and also looked ready to kill. In one flash of the Tetsusaiga's great fang blade, Inuyasha called "Kaze no Kizu!".

At the exact moment he uttered the name of the attack, another cry came from somewhere behind him. This voice was the one that he had missed above all others; one that he had secretly longed to hear since he had last heard it when it was yelling at him, the day before. It was just one word, one little syllable, but that was all Inuyasha needed to hear.

"Go!" Kagome cried, sending one of her sacred arrows flying into the air toward the puppet, right alongside Inuyasha's Kaze no Kizu. The power of the arrow increased as it travelled and met with the golden blast of energy from the sword, and the two combined to form one massive superpower as they met with the puppet's body and shattered it to pieces. Its various body parts floated through the air and slowly began to disappear before the group's very eyes, as the same cold, sinister voice echoed through the cloudless sky.

"Ku ku ku..." Naraku's voice began, "do not fret, Inuyasha, the one you seek still awaits your arrival. He will be most pleased to know that you have made it this far, given the pains he took to lure you here." At this, Inuyasha's muscles tightened once again. The puppet was speaking in Naraku's voice, but using the third person, probably to confuse the group. "Even he did not think that you would be so stupid as to fall for yet another trap involving a mere puppet and the death of worthless humans."

And with that, the puppet disappeared altogether, leaving nothing but clear blue sky in its wake.