Kagome fell from the second floor with a hard crash and landed in the center of the wasteland that used to be her home.
Lifting her dirt coated body out from underneath the weight of furniture and drywall; Kagome opened her eyes to the destruction all around her. Only a few paces away from where her injured body had fallen, stood Inuyasha; his eyes sternly focused on the shape of a silver haired man that stood just outside the radius of devastation.
Rubbing her dirty forearm across her eyes, Kagome managed to look past the fog of dust that obscured her vision, and slowly came to realize who Inuyasha gazed upon with such ferocity; and she became afraid. Although the purple marks on his face had somehow vanished, and his ears had become more human like, it was unmistakable. Standing before her in black khakis and a loosely hanging dress coat, was Sesshoumaru - the destroyer of life.
"Little brother, I thought that was you I smelled," Sesshoumaru said as he casually stepped off the grass and onto the pile of broken and splintered wood. Raising his sword behind his head, he coldly smiled as he walked towards Inuyasha. "Please satisfy my curiosity, how is it that you have returned from the world of the dead?"
"I don't know what you're talking about!" Inuyasha hollered as he gleamed towards the transformed Tetsusaiga held in Sesshoumaru's intact left arm.
Nothing in Kagome's understanding allowed her comprehend what force could have brought Sesshoumaru into her world, however from the inquiring expression on his face, she could tell that he was as unsure of Inuyasha as she was of him.
For seemingly endless moments she watched the two stand only a short dash away from one another, each poised for a battle that would come all too quickly, and be all too bloody.
"Enough of this!" Sesshoumaru barked as he dashed forwards and swung his sword to slash at Inuyasha. Drawing his weapon, Inuyasha blocked his brother's attack with the full force of his own Tetsusaiga. With their weapons locked against each other, and their eyes starring into the cold expression on one another's face, both warriors jumped backwards to be away from the deadlock.
As quickly as if he had wielded the Tetsusaiga for a hundred years, Sesshoumaru summoned up a powerful force of wind energy and knocked Inuyasha hard against the ground.
Casually walking forwards to the point where his brother had fallen, Sesshoumaru came to stand over Inuyasha, and pressed the pointed tip of his sword against his half-brother's throat. "I will not kill you like this," Sesshoumaru said with a vicious gleam in his eyes. "For all of these endless years I have longed for the chance to play upon your death, as a cat plays with a mouse. I have never been able to forgive myself for finishing you swiftly and without pleasure; and I have vowed that should I ever have your ghost within my grasp, I would savor your death, and make it last the leant of your every strained breath." Removing the blade of his sword from Inuyasha's neck, Sesshoumaru stepped backwards. "Get up, I have not tired of you yet."
Rising to his feet, Inuyasha grasped the Tetsusaiga firmly in his hands and stood directly opposite of Sesshoumaru. "You should have finished me when you had the chance!" Inuyasha screamed as he lunged at his brother.
Swiftly dashing to the side, Sesshoumaru dodged his brother's mad charge. As Inuyasha stumbled forwards in the absence of his target, Sesshoumaru swung the blunt edge of his sword around to strike Inuyasha in the back of his head, and again sent the hanyou against the ground with a loud crash.
"The underworld has made you soft and reckless," Sesshoumaru said. "This is not the glorious battle I had envisioned it would be."
"Why don't you just shut up!" Inuyasha barked as he braced himself against the Tetsusaiga to help lift his body into a standing position.
When the flow of dark energy collides with the wind, a riff can form. "Wind Scar!" Inuyasha screamed as a massive pulse of yellow energy radiated from the moving blade of the Tetsusaiga.
"Who do you think I am?" Sesshoumaru hollered as he passed his own Tetsusaiga through the air and summoned up an equal and opposite Wind Scar. The opposing forces clashed somewhere between the two brothers, and in a brilliant explosion of florescent golden light – neutralized one another.
Dashing forwards through the cover of smoky destruction, Sesshoumaru grasped Inuyasha's skull in his powerful right hand and lifted his brother off the ground. With a deadly green poison seeping from his hands and burning into his screaming brother's face, Sesshoumaru threw Inuyasha across the splintered remains of the Higarashi Shrine.
With his body rapidly sliding across the broken and twisted debris, Inuyasha came to a stop only a breath's distance away from where Kagome lay hidden behind a pile of scattered rubble.
Patting his clawed hands against his clothes as he rose to his feet, Inuyasha brushed the light spray of dust off of himself, and for the first time since being attacked by his brother, noticed Kagome. "Please be careful Inuyasha," Kagome said as she looked towards his bloodied and poison burnt form.
"Don't you worry about nothing Kagome," Inuyasha said. "I'm just getting warmed up, that's all."
Pressing her hands against Inuyasha's shoulders, and watching her tear stained expression in the golden reflection of his eyes, Kagome embraced him for what she thought may become their last shared moment. "I don't want you to get yourself killed on account of your pride, can't you understand how very much you matter to me; you are living for more than just yourself you know."
"Kagome, I…"
"You should be paying attention to me!" Sesshoumaru hollered as he came out of nowhere and wrapped the clawed fingers of his right hand around Inuyasha's neck and again lifted him off the ground. With a quick motion of his wrist, Sesshoumaru swung the blunt edge of his Tetsusaiga against Inuyasha's right arm, and caused him to drop his sword. Letting the poison seep from the palm of his hand and burn into the flesh of Inuyasha's neck, Sesshoumaru held his weakened brother suspended in the air.
"Sit Boy!" Kagome screamed, and the power of the rosaries around Inuyasha's neck sent him tearing from Sesshoumaru's grasp. With his injured body pressed against the ground, Inuyasha reached out towards the hilt of his fallen sword and swung at Sesshoumaru's legs.
Somersaulting backward out of Inuyasha's reach, Sesshoumaru avoided the attack. Had it been within his capacity, he would have laughed at the futility of it all. None of Inuyasha's clever tricks would amount to anything in the end.
"I could have gotten out of that myself you know," Inuyasha commented to Kagome, his eyes never leaving his brother.
"It was all I could think to do," Kagome remarked as she looked towards the severely injured and utterly exhausted Inuyasha, and then at the cold and relaxed Sesshoumaru.
"Just look at the way you pant with every long breath, you have already lost your passion for battle," Sesshoumaru said as he dashed towards his brother, and swung his blade against Inuyasha's.
Both Tetsusaiga's clashed against each other with a loud clang of metal against metal, and with a quick motion of his right hand, Sesshoumaru summoned up his razor whip and struck its sharp edge across Inuyasha's face until he was forced to withdraw.
As Inuyasha backed off, Sesshoumaru swung the blunt edge of his sword upwards and caught his brother under the chin, sending him flying backwards through the air.
Inuyasha's body flew hard against the ground beside Kagome; and although nothing could have taken from him his will to survive, he did not have the strength enough to rise to his feet.
Looking down onto the broken form of the hanyou that had always protected her in times of danger, Kagome found solace in the realization of her own impending death. Even though Kagome had never given up hope on him before, she knew that he did not have long left in this world, and from the way Sesshoumaru's eyes gleamed in satisfaction, she also knew that that time would be the worse kind of torture, and last all too long.
Forcing himself to again rise to his feet, Inuyasha looked past the blood in his eyes, and stood for the sake of defiance alone.
"I've tired of you!" Sesshoumaru said as he dashed forwards and thrust his clawed right hand into Inuyasha's chest. Holding the inside of Inuyasha's body on the edges of his fingers, Sesshoumaru injected a poisonous vapor into his brother's veins. As Inuyasha began to scream in agony from the effects of the poison, Sesshoumaru smirked. "I have released my poison into your body, it will burn through you from the inside out; and quite slowly I'm afraid."
The poison seeped deeper and deeper into Inuyasha's body, and with each beat of his fading heart, it brought him that much closer to the point of death. Unable to control the pain of the venom cutting through his arteries and burning his tissues from the inside, Inuyasha screamed in pain before falling to the ground – his body unable to move.
"Your death is so much sweeter this time," Sesshoumaru said as he walked towards his brother. "Do you not remember that day I found you waiting beside that very well over there those countless years ago," he said as he motioned towards the direction of the Bone Eaters Well. "I killed you swiftly, and took this sword from your cold dead hands. But even with the blade of destruction in my grasp, I was unable to wield it. So I used the sword that father had so disgracefully given me to revive your flesh, and then cut from you the one thing that I needed," raising both the transformed Tetsusaiga and his left arm high it the air, he continued to speak. "With one slice I both regained the limb that you had taken from me, as well as the power of father's sword – I must thank you, little brother."
By the time Sesshoumaru had advanced towards the point where Inuyasha lay motionless, Kagome had lost all hope, her only hero now lay convulsing in his own unending nightmare. With her body beginning to tremble in fear, Kagome looked up into Sesshoumaru's cold eyes.
"I recognize this woman now," Sesshoumaru said, his voice a combination of insight and confusion. "How is it that your wench still lives in this world?"
"Drop dead and maybe I'll tell you," Inuyasha joked past the pain.
"Very amusing little brother, but I know ways of making even the most stubborn of men talk," he said as he stepped forwards and wrapped his right hand around Kagome's arm and pulled her off her feet. "I don't see this part of father's taste," he said as he looked down at Kagome's terrified form. "But I suppose that even he could have fooled himself into believing that mortals are somehow equal to ourselves, the truth is that I did – once," he said before he threw Kagome hard against the ground.
Inuyasha watched Kagome scream as her body struck the splintered wood, and even though the sight of Sesshoumaru attacking her was far worse than the pain in his body, there was nothing he could do to stop him.
"Tell me what power has brought you two before me," Sesshoumaru said as he pressed the point of the Tetsusaiga against Kagome's neck. When she did not answer, but only whimpered before his blade, Sesshoumaru became annoyed. "If you do not tell me, then you will die before the poison takes your lover," Sesshoumaru said as he raised his sword to strike her down.
Fighting through every urge in his body to just give up, Inuyasha rose to his feet. Even through the pain, he could sense the flow of the wind; and even through the torment of his body and his mind, he could find salvation in hope.
"You plan to summon up the Wind Scar against me," Sesshoumaru said as he prepared to destroy the insolent female that had denied him his curiosity. "Have you learned nothing, I will just neutralize it as I have done before," Sesshoumaru said as he turned his eyes away from Inuyasha and focused on the frightened girl before him.
As the blade of Sesshoumaru's sword moved through the air towards Kagome, the weapon reverted to its normal state and struck the girl across the waist, but did not cut her. As if sensing the evil within Sesshoumaru's heart, the Tetsusaiga refused to bare its full power to him.
"Wind Scar!" Inuyasha screamed as a powerful yellow energy radiated from his weapon, and raced towards Sesshoumaru.
With his sword returned to its weakened state, Sesshoumaru was unable to defend himself. The Wind Scar cut through his body – and tore him apart.
The Tenseiga pulsed.