A/N Wow, thanks for all of the great reviews, I am very surprised that so many people like it, but glad. As for questions, Sesshomaru isn't necessarily bad, because you don't know the whole story right? He is the antagonist, or the opposite of the protagonist who is Shippo. Shippo isn't necessarily "good" either, because I am a strong believer in the many parts of a single character that show though in different situations. Thanks to: Starmoon, Eden, Aztec Dragon Demon, Kagome-chan, Okami, Psychokell, firecat, mistress pen, shippou1990 and tsunami-chan for the comments.

Yes, and I finally chopped off my hair.the lady said it was five pounds worth.my head is so light! Anyway, I realized I forgot to put a disclaimer last chapter so:

Disclaimer: I do not own Inu-yasha or any related things as such. Any Questions?

Chapter 4: What love?

"Father, I failed." Sasuke pulled herself together and faced Sesshomaru with a straight face. Hopefully he would be forgiving.

"Yes, I see. A half demon is obviously no match for a full blooded little human boy and an immature little fox demon."

Sasuke flinched, but didn't say anything. Sesshomaru would have struck her by now if he were going to at all. Obviously getting the jewel wasn't so important to him now.

"I've thought of something now that I need you to do."

"Yes father."

"You must follow the pair to wherever it is they are going. I presume they are going to find my brother and his wife, the priestess. Go with them, help them find what they are looking for. When you are there, with Inu-yasha, kill the two boys and return here, luring my brother back. I must face him."

"Yes father." Sasuke gritted her teeth. Sesshomaru wasn't so cool as he thought he was anymore, and had become lazy and fat. Since Jaken had died years ago, he had stopped really caring about anything but raising his children into fighting machines. Well, the ones he could find. Sasuke was the oldest and the only girl; the others were all very young, and all full demons.

"Have you any other requirements of me?" she asked.

"No. You are free to go, my daughter." He waved a hand, and Sasuke turned and exited his room quickly. When she was outside she took a breath, then shook her head, long pastel hair falling out of its sloppy ponytail. So she would have to kill the boys then. This was a test of her strength and durability, and her cold heart. They must not get through to her, either of them.

Sasuke checked in on the nursery for a moment, say goodbye to the old nurse who had raised her since infantry, and seeing her brothers.

"Oh, Sasuke, hello dear." The nurse was a kindly old lady, a friend to her mother, who volunteered to stay and take care of the baby. Now she had her hands full with the new additions to the family, two little twin infants, and two toddlers sat on the floor, playing like normal children. But that wasn't all of them. Sasuke knew of one other, unknown to their father, who lived in a village not far from where she had been born. She had almost brought him to stay with them in the castle, but decided against it when she confronted his adoptive human parents.

"I am taking him to his real family." She had said. This was back when she was about fifteen years old, and was sent to find the other children abandoned by the demon mothers.

"No, please. Don't take him from us. We love him." Those words had stopped her in her tracks. Love?

Love? This baby brother of hers had Love? Who was she to take that away? After that she had stopped looking for her siblings. Maybe they also had love. She didn't, not from her father anyway, or her mother, who had abandoned her after birth to travel alone. Sasuke supposed that the nurse loved her, but it was a very private thing. Other than the nurse, it was likely that Sasuke was unlovable. She never had any friends or male admirers.

Sasuke touched her lips thoughtfully. Shippo had kissed her. Could he love her? The demon girl shook herself back to reality and faced her only friend.

"I'll be leaving soon, and I won't be back for a while." The nurse paused in her rocking of the twins and looked up at Sasuke sadly.

"Another one of your father's wild missions?"

"But of course!" Sasuke said, smiling. She leaned down and kissed the nurse on the cheek, then waved at her little brothers on the floor.

"Come give your sister a kiss before I leave." She asked. They scrambled over one another and latched on to Sasuke. She was their favorite playmate.

"Goodbye sister!" one of them said.

"Bye-bye Sas-kay" the other echoed. She knelt down and looked them, fidgeting, in their golden eyes.

She was quiet for a moment, contemplating, then she whispered something to them so that the nurse couldn't hear.

"I have a secret to tell you that you can't tell anyone, okay?"

They nodded gravely.

"Okay. The secret is that I love you." She kissed them each on the cheek and they squirmed away, laughing and going back to their playing. Sasuke stood up and looked back at the nurse.

"Take care of them," she said solemnly. The nurse smiled.

"Of course dear. They behave much better than you ever did." Sasuke laughed, remembering her tantrums and screaming fits, then gave the nurse one last kiss on the cheek, and left.

Her family behind her, she only needed to stop thinking of them and she would be fine. Fine, fine, fine, she told herself, sniffling. They were safe, so everything was fine.
****

"Shippo, this is boring. When are we gonna get to that village you told me about?" Miroku dragged his feet in the dirt as he walked, a few paces behind the fox demon, and stared at the ground.

"Now." Miroku snapped his head up and glanced around eagerly, but was severely disappointed.

"There's nothing here but a clearing and some fields! You said it was a village!"

"It was a village. I told you that it was burned down in that huge battle. There was a well around here somewhere in the forest, but the location was hidden by a spell. I need to find this flea thing to see if he knows how to get past the spell."

"Who put the spell on there?" Miroku asked. He wasn't quite following everything Shippo said, but if they needed to find a flea.might as well start looking.

"Here flea-flea-flea-flea!" Miroku called. Shippo knocked him up the back of the head.

"What are you stupid?" Shippo asked. "First you wave the jewel around and now you call a flea like lost cat?" Miroku rubbed his head, pouting. He thought it was a good idea.

"Yes? Did someone call on me?" a little annoying voice called out from a rabbit nearby.

"OH! A talking rabbit!" Miroku rushed over, only to be kicked in the behind by Shippo.

"Myoga!" Shippo exclaimed.

From the ground, Miroku could see a little speck jump from the rabbit to the shoulder of his fox demon companion. The rabbit fled in terror.

"Wait rabbit! We need you!" Shippo grabbed the little monk by the back of his robe and stopped him short.

"Yes, you are stupid. Look, this is the flea we were looking for. He was on the rabbit."

"Oh." Miroku fell to the ground yet again when Shippo dropped him, but got up in a hurry when the flea began to talk to him from Shippo's shoulder.

"Why, if you aren't Miroku's son, then I'm a fox demon!" the flea said.

"I am Miroku II, son of Miroku, and noble monk." Miroku said proudly. The flea nodded his tiny bald head.

"Yes, yes, very good. And I haven't seen you in years Shippo, why did you ever stop coming to visit your dear old friend Myoga?"

"Dear old friend my tail you bloodsucking old freak." Shippo said. He wasn't surprised to find the flea as cowardly as ever. Some things were regular with reassuring certainty.

"Tell us how to get past the spell on the well."

Myoga turned pink in the face. "I'm afraid I can't tell you that, master Shippo, it was a secret that the lovely priestess refused to tell even me."

"Bull!" Shippo grabbed the flea in his fist and squeezed. "I know that she told you, because she told me that she did in case I ever needed to go see her!"

Miroku looked on in awe.

"Look Mister Flea, we have to see the priestess because we have something for her." He said.

Myoga turned his head and pathetically nodded.

"Release me and I'll tell you, kind master. Under one condition."

Shippo narrowed his eyes, not giving up on his grip on the flea.

"What condition?"

"You must take me to the era of the priestess."

"No."

"Oh please, master. I must go see my friends. You know that."

"No."

"Pl-"

"No."

"Then I wont tell you."

"Oh?" Shippo squeezed a little bit tighter and watched in satisfaction as the flea's face turned bluer and bluer.

"Alright! Let-me-brea-the-" Myoga squeaked. Shippo loosened his grip and stared expectantly.

"Well?" he asked. The flea sighed, but answered it was no use arguing with Shippo.

"To get past the barrier, all you have to do is have a firm desire to do good in the time that you are going, but to pass through the well, you must have a shard of the jewel."

"Like the spell on the cave to Midoriko's cave! No wonder you can't get through you blood sucker! Ha!" Shippo moved to toss the flea away, but then stopped, reconsidering.

"Wait, we still don't know where the well is. I don't remember! Augh!" Shippo's mind was going in circles of confusion. The flea piped up again.

"Well if you think I remember you're sadly mistaken! I'm too old for adventures now, my poor old brain, you had to let that nice fat juicy rabbit go, did you. Well then your confusion serves you right!" Shippo did throw the flea now, as far and hard as he could, and with his demon strength, it was pretty darn far.

"Useless parasite." He muttered. Miroku laughed as Myoga's shriek died away, and wandered off a bit to explore the place where the village used to be. He, unlike Shippo, had never been there before, and wasn't plagued by memories. Shippo hadn't been back here at all since that day, and he really wasn't prepared. It was pretty, flowery, normal. Void of people or demons of any kind because of its legacy and what happened here twenty years ago.

"Hey Shippo look at this!" Miroku called out from a hill a ways away. Shippo was standing on the very edge of the village, where he had thrown Myoga, and was sweating with nerves. One more step and he would be there again. One more step and he would be in the place. One more step.

Shippo closed his eyes and remembered the horrors that his young mind had witnessed there, in that village, one step away.

"AAAUUUUGHHH!" Miroku's scream cut through his thoughts, and the fox demon sped away without hesitation, violating the place where twenty years ago there had been a huge battle with thoughts of rescuing the boy.

Within a moment he was at the scene of the attack, a flowery hill at the top of a long climb of crumbled steps, the steps to Kikyo's grave.

"Miroku! Stand very still and don't move." Shippo ordered the young boy quietly. A halfway transparent demon in the shape of a woman had a dagger to the boy's throat, and with its other hand was reaching into his cloak for the jewel. It hadn't seen Shippo yet; its single focus was on the jewel.

Shippo took advantage of that and plucked a leaf off of a nearby tree, chanting a spell quietly and placing the leaf on his forehead. Subtly, he began to disappear, until he was invisible and unscented.

The demon looked as if it had found the jewel and was slowly, agonizingly slowly, pulling it out by its chain from under the monk's robe. Shippo crept up behind it and grabbed it in a headlock, freeing Miroku to run.

The demon gagged, reaching behind it for the invisible thing that tried to hurt it. The leaf was knocked off of Shippo's head and he became visible.

"Miroku, run!" he yelled, hanging on to the demon's neck with all his strength. It didn't seem to matter however, and in a moment, his arm went through the flesh and he fell to the ground with a thud.

"You dare defile my grave?" the demon asked. Shippo's eyes widened.

"Kaede." he said. But it didn't look like Kaede. This was a pretty young woman, eye patched, a priestess. She didn't acknowledge Shippo other than swinging her arm down in attempt to destroy him. Kaede would never do that.

"FOXFIRE!" he yelled, green fire exploding from his clasped hands. He rolled over and dodged the arm; it shattered the stone beside him.

"Lady Kaede its me, Shippo!" he realized too late that this was no demon, it was worse, a ghost.

"You have no business here, demon. Leave at once and I will spare you." Kaede told him. Shippo crouched and eyed her.

"I thought you went in peace, Kaede, why do you haunt this dreadful site?" Shippo was sad almost to tears that his dear friend was being kept from rest after life.

"I died in chaos and destruction. I know no peace. I guard my grave, and the grave of my sister. Leave us be demon!" the ghost screamed in anger, then turned to see that Miroku, instead of running away, stood petrified against a tree a few steps away.

"YOU WILL DIE!" she screamed, exerting a force towards where Miroku was standing.

Shippo felt as if trapped in slow motion. Miroku was going to die so soon in their journey, and Shippo couldn't save him.

****

CLIFFHANGER BWAHAHAHAH (sorry, next chapter in a few days) Please tell me what you think ^^