A/N: I always come back.
*Chiji·chi, noun [tsuzuki] – Continuance; succession; a sequel.
He says that below the waves there are demons far stronger that he is – far stronger than anything above the waves. Far more frightening than anything we could imagine… But they can't survive on land. Fortunately for us, as he'd like to remind.
He says that there are some who can survive on land, but can't move. It's impractical. Impossible. The simple things about him being a winner? He was the strongest sea creature capable of surviving on dry ground and able to assume a form that could walk on land.
That's all.
…Before the Time of Slaughter…
The waves rolled in and there was a humanoid figure on the beach. It was black. Solid black, with what looked like a dorsal fin protruding from below the nape of its neck, and from its waist began a tail. A whale-like tail.
The fisherman ran over, both curious and worried about the individual, "S-sir? C-c-can you hear me?"
The individual was face down, but when he was spoken to his head turned to the side. The fisherman jumped as he saw the face. The individual had no noticeable nose; black eyes; his face was black down to the upper lip, then was white from the lower lip passed his jaw to mid-throat. He seemed to be smiling with a mouth full of sharp teeth.
"I did it," the demon said with a raspy voice. His eyes searched around then he looked up to the fisherman, "Human? Huh. You look different standing…"
The human looked around as well, "What…?"
The demon raised his arms, planted his palms into the sand and raised his upper body, "How do I do that?"
The fisherman looked beyond confused, "What?"
"That. …Stand."
"Umm.. you stand?"
"Ah," the demon looked at the sand then pushed himself up onto his knees. "Hm."
"You're not standing yet. That's kneeling. Get your knees up," the human gestured up with his hands.
"Ah yes," and so he pushed himself up again and stood. He wobbled but regained his balance, "…Fascinating."
"You did it," said the fisherman lightly.
"Now how do I..?"
"Oh. Walk? Well you raise your right foot," he demonstrated, "move if forward. Step. Then raise your left foot, move it forward and step. Then right foot, left foot, right foot and so on."
The demon stared and nodded. He looked down, "Right foot…" He stepped with his right foot, "I did it. I have walked on land."
A sweatdrop rolled off the fisherman, "Left foot…"
So the demon stepped with his left foot, "…Amazing."
"Looks like you got the hand of it. I-I'll be going now…" the fisherman began to walk away.
"Wait. What's over there?" he pointed inland.
"The rest of the land. Forests. Animals…" he walked away.
"I see…" he stepped with his right foot again. "Thank you, human."
"…No problem?"
"Left foot…"
Grandpa sighed, "They've always been weird… I guess it's because they don't know land...?" He shrugged, "What he said about there being more powerful demons under the sea is true. When ever 'The Fish' came back it would be a new one. The son. The nephew. But they all look alike, and act the same… It's a little creepy."
Kagome raised her hand, "Grandpa, an orca's not a fish…"
"I know that; he told us," he snipped. "We say that out of affection…" he added with a slight grimace.
Inuyasha looked at her, "They're not?"
Kagome stared at him, then noticed how some of the others were looking at her too.
"They're not?" repeated Shippō.
"No. They breathe air," said Kagome and Grandpa simultaneously.
They both flinched and looked at each other.
"Moving on," said Grandpa as he broke eye contact with the priestess. "Him being able to breathe air is a major factor for why he was able to move on land. That and learning to walk."
"Get on with it then."
Grandpa's eyes widened and he looked toward the back of the room. The voice that had spoken was Sesshōmaru's.
"Ah at last he speaks," Grandpa pointed in his elder grandson's direction with a snap of his fingers and a smirk.
Rin and Jaken stared up at their lord.
"You said that a king of the sea fought with a king of the land. Aren't you going to recount how that happened?" Sesshōmaru continued. Admittedly he was finding the tale entertaining even though he had heard it before. He had been told that Grandpa's stories were interesting to watch as well as listen to because of his animated gesturing, but when Sesshōmaru was young his grandfather was no longer so able bodied—this isn't to say that the old man kept still while he told stories. It was actually… kind of nice. To listen. And watch. With Rin by his side. Now if only some other people weren't there in that room with them then this whole situation would be…
"Ah-hah, anxious for me to get to the good stuff eh~?" Grandpa tilted his head to the side, "Well you do kinda have a bit of a violent streak," he sighed wistfully.
He clapped his hands together! "There's a scary thing that orcas can do…" The corners of his mouth pulled to the sides - the glimmer of a fang.
"Come here, fish!" A demon ran through the trees, chasing another demon. The smell of the sea became stronger and stronger and then he stopped once he was at the beach. The 'fish' was gone…
Then crashing from the water a blackness came from it – jaws of daggers!
Grandpa slowly paced about, "Of course, The Orca was at a disadvantage fighting in his true form on land: couldn't walk. In his humanoid form he was small, as opposed to the rest of the participants who were much larger… He did this instead: lure them while in human form to the beach with a significant head start. When the other would arrive at the beach he would have already dived into the sea…" He carefully looked from one side of the room to the other.
"Then he would beach himself with a force mightier than herds of bulls to bite down into his prey!" He stomped forward suddenly and threw both fists out before him – grabbing – choking at the air! Some of those in the crowd jumped!
The demon was caught between The Orca's jaws – crushed by those serrated teeth! And then The Orca pulled itself back into the waves…
Grandpa stepped back carefully while lowering his arms, "Those bastards are stronger and more able than what one may initially assume."
He sighed, "Now The Tiger versus The Orca… unfortunately there were not many eyewitness accounts." He began to pace back and forth, "Too many who drowned in the tsunamis produced from this clash, or were discouraged from watching due to said waves. Even the accounts given by them, the very ones of the battle, are at times conflicting. The Tiger lifted The Orca by the dorsal and tossed him onto land. The Orca bit into the The Tiger's ankle and dragged him into the sea as the latter clawed to remain on shore…"
"Wait a sec, they both lived?" Inuyasha spoke up.
The man swung his hands behind his back, "Why yes, they both did. We were many at first, but as the weeks passed our numbers dwindled ultimately becoming a mortal struggle between youkai of great power… And things noticed. You can't cause that much death and destruction and not be noticed."
"Things?" Inuyasha echoed while raising an eyebrow.
His voice lowered, "Things that had been in a deep slumber, hidden away from the world…"
The earth cracked open! The beasts that were in battle stopped and looked in the direction from whence the sound came and what they saw was a mountain rising…
The ground continued to tremble, the trees on the mountain began to topple over and at last it could be seen that the mountain had the form of a man with arms and a head. It looked at the fighting and injured youkai, tilting its head down at them.
They also looked up at it; unsure of what to do they stepped back. Were they so exhausted that they were seeing things?
An arm began to rise, they stepped back more and glanced at each other, then the mountain screamed as its fist came down!
His voice became firm again, "I would not call all of those things youkai… For some, they could be described as such. One could use their words to paint a picture of them~ But there were others that for no better word could only be described as monsters."
"Like *gulp* what?" asked Shippō while hugging Kilala tight.
*meeeooww* Too tight.
Grandpa faintly smirked, "Abominations. Otherworldly abominations." He stood in the center again having halted his pacing, interlaced his fingers but did not clasp shut his hands, and looked at them with half-closed eyes, "There is one tale of something that was in the sky…"
He shut his lids, "These are merely the rumors of what that may have been, and today it appears that those tales have faded from many memories." He slowly opened those eyes again, "Perhaps they wanted to forget that it exists?"
It was after a fight, the survivor threw its head back and called out their victory and then that winner saw heaven split open… as though something was tearing through… The sky became blindingly bright and something – something…!
"Those who watched from afar were said to have gone blind. It was up to the witnesses from farther still – the few terrified and curious who dared to investigate the mysterious occurrence."
The land was barren, scorched of its greenery; the dirt blackened, and in the center of it all was a body. A maimed and charred body, but not a drop of blood in sight. It was without legs from below the knee; without arms from below the elbow…
"They say his pupils were wide and white. He did not respond to any stimuli. He only lay there – dead but not dead."
Grandpa stood with crossed arms, contemplating the floor before him, "Furthermore they say that his remaining stumps did not give off the appearance of having been severed, or torn, neither was there the implication of cauterization. The closest comparison one was able to give was that it looked as if he had been born limbless…"
"Y-you're making that up right?" Inuyasha suddenly demanded.
Taishō eyed his younger son- Is he… on edge? he wondered.
The corner of Grandpa's mouth pulled up, "Am I? Or do you want it all to be a tall tale~?"
Inuyasha tensed up and pressed his lips together. He didn't want to answer one way or the other, not even to himself.
"Hmph, well if it brings you any comfort I and some fellows did… drive one of those things away," Grandpa continued. "I would love to say that we killed it – in fact some people do say that – but I know better…"
The sky was an unnerving color. It did not look stormy. It looked… unnatural.
From the ocean rose something twisted! –it rose with a twisting motion in fact. This abomination was all white and as it straightened itself arms unwound from its body; a body which did not look hard but strangely soft and malleable. However when its head with its barely definable neck turned into place what it revealed was uncanny: a gaping maw full of teeth. Not sharp fangs but large square teeth spaced apart from one another – and in its mouth another like it. It had no eyes nor any other facial features and then it screamed… This was no animal's scream, no monster's scream—
"The closest I can describe it is that it sounded like a man screaming. Not in anger or pain or sorrow just… screaming. One that came from the very core." The man shook his head softly, "But we were there," he said with more certainty.
"The Dragon was there, The Serpent was there, and I was there. We had been fighting each other when the world around us became off-colored and we sensed that there was something in the sea. We had heard about those other incidents by that point, and when we saw that horribleness we stopped – just for a moment we stopped – long enough that we glanced at one another and knew well what we had to do without ever making a sound…"
The three youkai turned their attention to the abomination. It was huge – towering above them. The Dragon took to the sky leftwards, the Dog charged by foot rightwards and the Serpent slithered toward it directly but was rapidly undulating its body side to side!
The one in the air bit down on the creature's shoulder as best it could, raised its hind quarters and planted them on the side of the neck! The four-legged one jumped up at the hand with those wide rectangular fingers and bit down on them, then clawed the side with its rear legs until it had a grip! The limbless one dove into the water, coiled itself and sprung up from the waves, bit into the closest thing that could be called the white one's stomach and tried its best to wrap the remainder of its body around it!
It groaned out another scream and the trio squeezed their eyes shut, biting down to hold on for dear life.
The creature lifted its free arm in what to the rest looked to be in slow motion to pull off the Dragon but he scurried around to the other side of its neck. It attempted to lift its other arm, the one with the Dog at its fingers, but as it did so the Snake leaped out and bit the Dog's tail. Instead of yelping with an open mouth the canine willfully bit down harder and clamped down its front paws on the large one's hand.
"The Serpent lashed around until its tail caught my hind leg," Grandpa motioned to his knee, "and when he had secured a decent hold on my leg he began to slither around my body," he continued while drawing out with his hand a path up his torso. "When he got above my shoulders he kept on slithering up that thing's arm…"
Before the abomination grabbed the Serpent, the Dragon fired an energy attack from its jaws aiming for the other monster's teeth. Although its teeth did not crack there was enough of an effect that it twitched buying enough time for the Serpent to wind its body around its neck. The Dragon climbed its way to the top of that round head.
"Eventually I let go and focused on attacking its torso. We clawed, kicked, bit, and blasted that thing like hell. We didn't want to die." He sighed, "It would be grand to say that we defeated it. We managed to bite off chunks of it here and there – it tasted awful, but if somebody was watching from afar they would have seen that we weren't making a dent. Honestly, I think it became annoyed with us. Decided it wasn't worth all that trouble, and so it sank back into the depths from whence it came…"
"That's… insane," someone announced in disbelief.
"It is. Very much so," the family patriarch responded nonchalantly.
Miroku shifted around in his seat, stroking one his daughter's heads, "I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't know the answer, as it was likely not your concern, but you've described changes in weather and with the size of all of these fighting demons-"
"Oh I see what you're asking," Grandpa said. "I'm sure the humans thought the world was ending. And it was in a way. Smaller demons probably thought the same. At times a youkai would bring snow out of season; tsunamis were produced; the earth shook; attacks strayed off into other directions. I'm sure we threw each other into villages many times. Since the fighting destroyed so much surely the smaller youkai began to invade surviving villages, and a humans suffering produces more youkai too doesn't it?"
"And that's why it's called the Time of Slaughter," Auntie spoke up. "There was vast loss of life and wanton destruction," she nodded.
"That's, that's horrible," Sango lamented.
"Yup," she responded back. "But that's how this family got started and why you all get to enjoy Inuyasha and Sesshōmaru. Because Otō-sama didn't die and fought for his land and power." She nodded knowingly.
"Mijin-mii, you called them by name," Rin commented with mild amazement.
"Excuse me, grandfather," Izayoi began to ask, "your wife, was she with you at this time?"
"Hm?" Grandpa raised an eyebrow in her direction. "She was, at least we were married by this time. By then I had acquired one follower actually, and when the fighting started I sent both of them away – back to the island far south from here and far away from the fighting. How could I start my great family if I had no one to start it with, right?"
Just outside the door, listening in, were some of the servants, including that first follower.
The python that first welcomed the resurrected and new family members, the one who went by Hakujoō now, she gently leaned her head on the door…
They had been instructed that he would send a messenger bird with a red cloth tied around its ankle to them when the fighting ceased and if he were still alive. How he would manage this he did not elaborate – how would that bird know to find them? How would it know to go to that island hundreds of miles away, let alone to the two of them in particular?
And if they got word that the fighting had stopped but no message from him, then they were to assume that he had died. Move on and live your lives in peace; forget about me – wasn't that what he had said?
But one day a bird came. With a red cloth tied around its ankle and a lock of silver-white hair with it…
To be continued...
Next chapter will be the conclusion to Grandpa's story-telling. I'm sorry I've been gone for long I got stuck :(
I wanted to give you guys something so here it is and I hope I did a decent enough job.
Hopefully I'll publish the next chapter much sooner than I did this one!