It still amazes me after all this time how many hits I receive on my stories even when I'm not posting. More so to find some of my older stories still being listed as favorites years after they've finished. My Audience may be silent for the most part, but what there are reamin loyal and dedicated. It almost makes up for the crazy lameness of work. It sometime amazes me more so that the two top fics for visitation are Feral and this fic which is arguably, not my best.

heh, the work thing requires lots of overtime and things have just gone completely out of control, but I blame management as per usual. We're gearing up for an expected visit from the FDA. We don't know the exact day to expect their sudden audit, but there is a general consensus that it will be in the next few weeks. Which really means nothing to me or even the other people working in the lab. What we're really stressing about is this so-called record year we're expecting. they keep hiring new people without buy more equipment. How we're expected to run more tests on instruments we don't have amazes me, but there you go. Management fails to notice reality.

ah whatever, it's about time for me to get some sleep. I have to work later today and I'd like some sleep before I get up and swim before work. It's good exercise and I need it.

Standard disclaimers apply and here's another chapter of one of my most popular fics.

enjoy!

Lost in Translation

Despite the general belief that children are naturally greedy creatures, it is only adults that will accumulate with the mere intention of showing off. Children will slowly pick this tendency up over the course of time and maturation, like all other habits generally are, initially it is a behavior they fail to understand. For example, Takara had never really understood the reason her grandfather's house was always such a great size. He certainly didn't need the room.

It was moments like these that really brought this seemingly incidental issue to the forefront of her mind.

Takara raced down the long hallway that threaded through the majority of the first floor in her Grandfather's house before reaching the only set of stairs that went down to the underground portion of the building.

The manse actually had two basements, an eccentricity created by the Taishou responsible for creating the initial structure that served as the current mansions foundation. Her grandfather had told her at one point (during one of his long-winded and pointless efforts to inform his grandpup of the clans history) that the house had been built low to the ground originally because the first people of their clan had lived in underground dens and weren't wholly comfortable sleeping anywhere else. Takara had dutifully taken note of the detail despite wondering why, with all the available room the subsequent Taishous had ever had a reason to build up after that.

As a child of such tender years, Takara had yet to learn that wealth could only serve its true purpose when put on display in ways that drew envy from all the neighbors. And she couldn't know that the original Taishou domicile lacked defined rooms as she understood them. The house had been built when the clan habit was to sleep in piles for comfort and warmth, the lacking invention of central heating making such a real necessity of a winter's night.

It would never have occurred to her such was the case. Her lessons in History had not progressed that far and she probably would not have made the connection without the truth being explicitly pointed out to her. A girl of her age was more in the mode of learning by listening rather than using the information provided to create intellectual connections of her own.

She did occasionally sleep with her parents and younger brother, but usually she slept by herself in her own room. It was how all her family slept and, as far as she knew, every other kid of her acquaintance was the same. Parents slept together and kids generally had their own rooms, though Hiro's younger sisters, Kaoru and Mari technically shared a room.

The Broken Pack were strange, as well Takara knew. So, though she knew that many of the her aunt Akemi's pack sisters slept in groups in various rooms of the house, she never thought of their behavior beyond being another part of their inherent strangeness.

One strange thing she had taken note of, none of the Broken Pack cared to explore the basements much. But she wrote that off as being a grown up thing rather than a Broken Pack thing. Neither of her parents cared to go down there much either.

Which might make it seem strange that her father was down there now. But it simply wasn't so.

Hiro loved the lower levels of the great house. Takara was fairly certain his joy in their existence was more due to his using them to scare his sisters than appreciation for having something to explore. Consequently, her papa and Uncle Miroku often wound up down here about once a day to chew him out for terrorizing Kaoru and Mari. And more recently, the Broken Pack.

Hence why she was racing that way now. It was a standing agreement between Inuyasha and his daughter that she come to get him the minute her mother got home. Takara loved when her parents proved how close they were as a mommy and papa should be, especially with the way Kagome had been acting when she got home from council meetings these days.

Lately Kagome returned from her meetings ready to breathe fire in every direction, and while she had thus far managed to avoid taking it out on anybody undeserving of it, Takara was certain it would be better for everybody if she got papa to make her mommy feel better as soon after she got home as possible. Besides, it usually put her papa in a better mood too.

A happy family was Takara's greatest goal in life.

Now if only Hiro would start to cooperate. The child heaved a deep sigh as she neared her father and uncles current location quickly picking up on the undertones of lecture underway minutes before they came into sight. Boys were stupid.

"Hiro, you know better," she could hear her Uncle Miroku scolding her sometime playmate wearily. This sounded like a fairly well-worn harangue to her. "You are not allowed to steal Grace's cane and use it as a pole to hold up your misrepresentations of ghosts to scare the wits out of Hikaru and the other poor females whilst they bathe," his voice sounded weary with a tight note that Takara well knew meant he was fighting to hide an amused grin. "I do not think I need to even address tieing up your younger sisters and locking them in the broom closet under the stairs again."

So that's why she hadn't seen the younger girls trailing after Hiro in his mad dash from the bathing rooms. They normally were never away from their elder brother without something forcing the issue.

"I wouldn't have to do it if they would just do what they're supposed to," Hiro grumbled darkly over a pair of hesitant sniffs, Takara identified as coming from the two sisters mentioned previously. She was actually surprised he could say that. The girls never refused to do anything Hiro told them to unless it was a request to leave him alone.

For the most part, Hiro put up with his younger sister's constant presence. Mischievously dragging them into trouble with him something that usually got him into even more trouble. Such behavior never had set well with Takara, something that had only become more pronounced since she became a big sister herself. It was her job to keep Shin out of dangerous trouble. Not to drag him into it.

"Keh," Takara heard her papa huff. "You need to do more than just talk to him this time, somebody could've been hurt in the panic." This was true. The females had all but stampeded out of the bathing room, barefoot and without clothes, slipping on the bare floors in their haste to escape. Takara and Rin had been pushed into a wall fairly hard too, if not for Rin attempting to protect and shelter the younger girl, Takara could have been more than a little scared at the rough handling. "And the girls nearly suffocated in that closet because he locked it and left the key in the lock. These old rooms aren't built like the ones upstairs."

"I know," her Uncle Miroku sighed. "I'll have to discuss it with Sango at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps Kagome might have some ideas too."

"Why don't you ask Aunt Akemi, too?" Takara asked as she perceived an option they weren't considering. Takara took in the scene as the others reacted to her suggestion. Kaoru and Mari were each clutching one of Uncle Miroku's pant legs, one of his hands rubbing soothingly over each dark head while her own papa stood cross-armed and glaring at the delinquent Hiro. "She's the alpha isn't she?"

"Kid's right, Miroku," Inuyasha declared gruffly. "And it's her pack he's been harassing again. Even if you and Sango decide to actually punish him on your own, it's her right to address a threat to her pack." Inuyasha bent to swing Takara up into his arms with a sigh, "He may not be as big a threat as some of those close-minded fools upstairs, but the havoc he's creating with the submissive ones is serious. A pack stressed out and terrified made more demands on its alpha. If Sesshoumaru finds out about it, he might just leave the boy with scars without consulting his alpha. Akemi's been stretched so thin already that Hiro antagonizing any member of the pack might cause complications in her pregnancy when she tries to go the extra mile to deal with the fall out." And everybody was well aware how real that threat was.

Takara hadn't thought of that, but now that it had been explained to her, she glared blackly at her nominal cousin. "Maybe you should tell Uncle Sesshoumaru instead of Aunt Akemi," Takara growled, the care of pack was a serious thing. "She didn't even come into look over the broken pack after she got back from the hospital."

"That's not good," Inuyasha grumbled.

"They're back already?" Miroku asked carefully ignoring the little girl's suggestion to tell the merciless beta in place of the more placid Feral alpha. It was strange to think he felt safer reporting his son's behavior to a Feral than Sesshoumaru, but he well remembered how the inu felt about his alpha when she wasn't breeding. It didn't take much imagination to realize that if he told Sesshoumaru that Hiro was responsible for complicating Akemi's already difficult tasks, he may as well start planning his boy's funeral.

Takara nodded, "Mommy is too. Rin's probably already lead her up to the school room to get rid of all the dummies." For the males who took her uncle's classes were universally understood to be the biggest dummies of all. "Uncle Sesshoumaru headed for their den the moment he realized Aunt Akemi didn't come in the house."

"We'd best get upstairs to help evict the morons," Inuyasha shifted his little girl before glaring back at Miroku sternly. "Grab your boy and don't let him go for anything. We're probably going to kick out everybody that isn't staying the night. It looks like you've got tonight with Sango to decide what you're going to do because tomorrow I will be informing the alpha about it."

"Inuyasha..." Miroku sagged.

"I may only be half inu, monk," the hanyou growled gruffly, "But I know you don't terrorize your pack mates, especially when they're already fragile, and you never increase the burden of a breeding female. You've had your chance to correct his behavior. Several times before this. Now it's an issue for the alpha to address. Perhaps Akemi can think of something to curb his unruliness finally."

"But Inuyasha, she could demand blood, whipping, exposure -" the monk protested.

"I know that," Inuyasha cut him off. "Believe me I know. But I also trust Akemi, and while you try to protect the brat, others of the pack are suffering from your leniency. It's not fair to them, especially when they can't handle it at the best of times. And it's wrong for Akemi to bear the brunt of it in her condition. More so that she doesn't even know the cause of the worst of it."

Miroku grew silent and tightened his grip on Hiro as they reached the stairs to ascend to the ground level of the manse.

Takara glanced back over her papa's shoulder and felt sorry for Uncle Miroku, though not so much for Hiro. Hiro deserved whatever came to him for scaring the Broken Pack like he insisted on doing all the time. More so since he knew better and didn't seem to care for the consequences. She and Rin had gotten to know quite a few of the other females in the pack and they knew exactly what kind of results Hiro's little pranks generally had. "Don't feel bad, Uncle Miroku," Takara tried to comfort her uncle and by extension Kaoru and Mari who had started crying quietly for Hiro, convinced he was going to die for some reason. Really the two were weird. Beyond just liking to be around Hiro weird. "At least it won't be Inu no Taishou in charge."

Inuyasha smirked down at his pup, "There is that. Akemi might be Feral but she's still Akemi. She's hardly likely to give him a sentence permanently detrimental to his well-being."

Miroku failed to look relieved. "What would a Feral deem permanently debilitating to a child? You know as well as I do that Akemi had never seen living children before coming out of the wild. She doesn't know-"

"And you don't know a thing about pack if you ever think Akemi could possibly do anything that would hurt a member of the pack," Inuyasha snorted. "Perhaps you and Sango should reevaluate what you're getting out of being part of this pack if you want to refuse to play by pack rules.:

"I know the result of Inu no Taishou's care of his pack, and he's sane," Miroku grumbled to the side

"Where's Sango," Inuyasha gruffly demanded. "She's severely neglected your education if you don't know better than to compare Akemi to my father in any capacity at all."

"I think they're up in the classroom where mommy went," Takara replied helpfully. Truly she thought her papa was taking too long to get up there as it was, though she could understand the need for such a careful pace. The last thing anybody needed was for Hiro to get loose once again.

"Akemi and Inu no Taishou don't even begin to have anything in common beyond being inu,"
Inuyasha gruffly mumbled under his breath. "She's a natural alpha and he's a mis-educated fool."

Takara glanced up at her parent in surprise. He was usually the most lenient of all her grandfather's detractors, but at this moment he didn't sound even marginally supportive or proud of the relation. "Papa?"

"Sorry baby," her papa tightened his arms around her briefly. "Akemi's just been hurt so much without her pack making it worse." Takara nodded before pensively noting that today her papa just might need her mommy to cheer him up as much as Kagome needed Inuyasha to cheer her up.

Perhaps she could distract her ever present grandfather with Shin to help prolong her parents' private time as soon as they got home. Takara knew they didn't get much time to themselves, and she didn't know what they needed such privacy for, but she was certain they needed more privacy than they were getting due to her live-in grandpa.

Inu no Taishou could no longer live up at his house anymore after all. And living with her Aunt Sango and Uncle Miroku had apparently never even been considered. Takara had never really understood why though.