With sweat running down his face while the padded headpiece matted down his silvery-white hair, the young boy breathed in carefully. The top of his red gi was soaked with sweat, and he was trying to keep his hands from clenching too tightly. His nails were getting a bit longer than they should have been, and they were beginning to dig into his palm a little too much. But right now, his concern was on the older boy in front of him, who was decked in green sparring gear while there was an audience around them both.

The ref gave the call, and the other boy was the first to move, but with a swift shifting of his posture, Daniel brought his left arm up and caught the punch, then brought his right hand about to land a hit on his opponent's chest. The ref called point, they resumed ready position, and it began again. A powerful kick came as the first strike, one that Daniel this time ducked under, then leapt in a flip to avoid a sweep kick. His own left leg, as his feet hit the ground, swung down, and barely missed catching the other boy. A few hand strikes, and the one in green gear managed to make a solid scoring hit. Daniel sighed as they both again resumed a ready stance.

Once more was the call given. The older boy grunted as he kicked out, Daniel smoothly deflecting with the side of his arm before he swiftly wrapped his hand around the leg, then gave a solid kick of his own that connected and scored him the point that ended the match.

He breathed heavily as he and the other boy bowed to each other, then pulled off his own red head gear and let the dog-ears on top of his head stand up, unconfined and able to hear better now. After a moment, he pulled off his gloves as well, noting the small marks left in his palms from where he had been holding his fists a little too tightly.

Ten years old, and already he was taking part in the local tournaments. Not only that, he was probably in better shape than the other boys who were older than him, as well as more impressively toned for his age. It probably came from five straight years of martial arts lessons from Sensei Ookami. Then again, Daniel Stevens always had been something of an oddity in terms of physical development, and a prodigy at learning how to fight, no matter how much he actually hated real violence.

He glanced over to where his parents were sitting in the stands, and smiled before twisting open the cap on a bottle of water and starting to chug it down. To be perfectly honest, he wasn't so sure how much longer he should be doing this, because he was getting very tired already, and he'd been in a variety of matches for almost an hour and a half. More so, he'd been in matches with people almost four years older than him, and, with a varying degree of success, been winning most of those bouts. No doubt, some of those guys were a little sore about being beaten by a ten-year-old. Thankfully, however, he'd not gotten much flak about his mutations.

He looked around then, trying to find any sign of Sensei Ookami, finally noticing him in a corner talking to one of the other teachers at Wolf's Den. He capped his water bottle, grabbed his gloves and helmet, and walked over, quickly giving a bow to his teachers. "Sensei."

"Not a bad job in there, kid," Kouga remarked appraisingly while patting the boy on the shoulder. "You looked beat though. You wann'a sit the rest out and recover?"

He almost declined, but Daniel knew he was, by all means, done. He wasn't sure how much longer he could keep going with this before he fell over from exhaustion. "Yes," he finally said. "I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be the only one who gets all the glory."

Hard working and modest. Kouga grinned at Daniel, then nodded to him. "Go ahead and sit with your folks. Morgan will probably love to take over for ya."

The boy breathed in, bowed, then ran into the stands to join his parents. His father clapped him on the back, telling him he did good, while his mother handed him a teriyaki chicken bowl. He quickly poured in the little dish of sauce, then stirred it while watching the next match that was going on. True to what his teacher had said, Daniel saw Morgan Faunt going into the bout in his place. He smiled while he popped a mouthful in and chewed, then washed it down with some water.

Something tickled in the back of his mind at that moment. Something odd, almost like a pin prick, but it was getting larger, turning now into a chilling sensation that went down his spine. He tried to ignore it, taking another bite of his food, but it got worse. He could barely hold his eyes open, and then, he lost all vision just as he dropped his lunch and fell over.


Bright lights. It hurt his eyes. Noise, incoherent voices, but it was starting to clear up. And then, he could see people surrounding him. Daniel groaned, blinking while his eyes tried to adjust, and he could feel that he was on the mats. Kneeling over him was a medic, who was monitoring his vitals. The man sighed and nodded to someone who stood just out of his visual range, and then, Daniel turned to see his parents. "Mom? Dad? What happened?"

"You all right?" came Kouga's voice as the man came into view. He helped Daniel sit up slowly, still wary of what had happened. "Had us scared there, kid."

His mother sighed with relief as she knelt down. "You passed out, Daniel."

The boy blinked in surprised, then glanced to the medic for explanation. With a shrug, the man handed him a bottle of water. "Most likely, he just over exerted himself. Does he have a history of this?"

Both Grace and Ryan shook their heads. The medic nodded, then with Kouga's aid, carefully helped Daniel to his feet. "No more for you today, kid. You need some rest, and lots of water."

That went without saying. "I was already doing that," he softly replied. It was then he sighed and walked over to his parents. "Maybe we should go home," he whispered, his ears now pulling down in some kind of display of beaten self-esteem. He'd had his fun, but with this now having happened, it was better to keep the loss of face from getting worse.

But then, out of the corner of his eyes, he saw something. It was quick, he almost didn't see it, but something darted across the walls, like a shadow almost. He blinked, and it was gone. He'd really overdone it this time, now he was seeing things.

His parents quickly gathered his gear, then went out with him to the car, where he sulked his way into the back seat and was quiet. His confidence was once again shot through like swiss cheese, all because he'd just been working too hard and passed out. The boy had almost no ego, which was both a good thing and a bad; he couldn't believe in himself.

"No one is going to think of you as any less of a person," his father finally said as he turned into the on-ramp of the freeway. "You really have been doing a lot the past few days, I'm not surprised that happened." He sighed, noting how upset Daniel was with himself. "You're only ten years old, Danny, you can't expect to be able to exert yourself like that and not have a few problems."

The boy only nodded while looking out the window. He did feel tired, but it wasn't just from having gone so long without a break. He'd been just fine until he'd felt that chill down his spine. But what had caused such a reaction? He had to have been seeing things after he'd come to, because that odd flicker of shadow had almost looked like a fox or a dog. That was impossible, because no pets had been allowed at the competition, and there weren't any foxes that lived in the region.

Maybe everything he'd been doing was finally getting to him. He'd been having really odd dreams lately, like those he'd had when he was little; a large white dog with three tails, an inky black shadow with red eyes, and sometimes what looked like him, but older and dressed a really weird red outfit. Oh, and that really big sword, the one that looked like a fang.

He was tired though, but he didn't really want to deal with those dreams again. Every time he had one of them, he ended up screaming so badly that his parents had to run in and wake him up. It was like reliving the worst thing possible in his life, except he knew that it had never happened.

A ringing chime broke the silence, and Grace reached into her pants pocket to pull out her cellular phone and flip it open before hitting the talk switch. "Hello?" she greeted. It was then she looked back at Daniel and nodded, mostly to herself. "Yeah, we're still heading home." With a faint smile, she handed the phone back to him. "It's Sensei Ookami," she stated.

The boy nervously gulped and took the phone. It was awkward, since his ears were so high up, but he could fortunately still hear the voice from the tiny speaker. "Yes sir?"

"Pup, you alright?" the concerned voice over the phone asked. "You don't sound so good."

He was silent for a moment. "I'm just not in that great of a mood," he said tersely. His voice was barely above a whisper, though would could still glean from that voice just how depressed he was. "I screwed up and worked too hard, it's my fault I passed out."

"I don't wann'a hear that kind'a attitude from our rising star," Kouga snapped, though it was more in humor than actual anger. "It happens to everyone at least once, kid, don't worry about it. Stop by the dojo later, I got something that you might wann'a pick up."

After a few more minutes of Kouga talking the boy into cheering up, Daniel finally started smiling again. Both his parents could see the change in his disposition, and even after these five long years, still were amazed at how much Kouga Ookami could get that boy to grin.

Finally, Daniel said his good-byes and hung up, closing the phone and handing it back to his mother. "Sensei wants me to drop by the dojo later today, says he's got something for me to pick up."

As he chuckled, Ryan glanced back and nodded. "We'll go over after dinner," he replied. "And you best hop in the tub when we get home, because we're eating out tonight."

The boy's eyes lit up. If they were going out for dinner tonight, after he'd just been through a competition, he knew exactly where they were going. "Tony Roma's!" he cried excitedly. That smile on his father's face told enough that he didn't need it said. "Alright!"

"All you can eat ribs, kid," Ryan stated while making the turn-off. "So make sure you eat all you can, because I don't wann'a hear you getting up in the middle of the night for a midnight snack."

Daniel nervously laughed while he scratched at an itch behind his ear. "Um, I thought I cleaned up that mess."

"You made enough noise that we didn't need a mess to know you were up at one in the morning," Ryan cracked as he continued into their neighborhood. "No wonder you passed out today, you didn't get enough sleep last night."

Now the boy was blushing bright red, almost matching his gi while his father pulled up into the driveway. He gulped, tried to flush out the red in his cheeks, and grabbed his bag before unbuckling and getting out of the car. His mother was already headed for the door by the time he shut the back door of the car, and he followed her inside before heading off toward the basement to drop his bag downstairs in the gym that they'd set up for him.

For a moment, he paused before the large kick bag that hung from the ceiling. It wouldn't hurt to get a bit of practice in for a few minutes before taking a bath. He dropped the bag on the ground, then took a deep breath and started punching rapidly. He went through a few different methods of style, then suddenly yelped when he felt something cut his palm. He pulled his hand away from the bag, thinking for a moment that there was something there, but then noticed that his hand was bleeding; it wasn't something on the bag, it was his own nails. And when he looked closely, he saw why; they'd become sharp in the time it had taken for the ride home, with edged points that made them look like claws.

"Mom!" he cried out, scared of what he was looking at on his own hands. He grabbed a towel to wrap his bleeding palm, then ran back upstairs. "Mom, dad! Something's wrong!"

"Danny, what is it?" Grace asked as she walked over. The minute he showed her the cut in his palm and his nails which were starting to look more and more like small claws, her eyes went wide with shock. "Daniel, what happened?"

He shook his head while she led him to the sink and washed his hand off. "I was just doing some practice before I took a bath, and then, it hurt to punch, because my nails got like this."

As the water kept washing the blood off his palm, Grace went to a cupboard and pulled out a box of band-aids. Within a few moments, she dried off his hand and quickly put a pair of bandages on the wound. It was then she took a better look at the boy's nails to see that they were rather sharp looking now. They looked just fine earlier before the competition, why had they suddenly grown like this so quickly?

"Let me get the clippers," she said to the boy, walking off and into the bathroom to grab a pair of nail clippers. When she came back, Grace held his left hand, then proceeded to clip his nails down to normal length. She repeated with the other hand, then took a look at the pieces that she'd cut off. They were indeed sharped like claws, and thicker than normal. Something very odd was going on with her son now, but it seems like it was easy to remedy.

With a sigh, Grace threw the clippings into the garbage and looked over to Daniel. "Go hop in the tub and get washed up, and be careful with that cut."

He nodded and headed to the upstairs bathroom, closing the door behind him and peeling off his gi while the bathtub filled. What was happening to him? Granted, he'd let his nails get a little longer than normal, but why had they suddenly turned into claws like that?

He slid into the bathtub, laying there for a few minutes while he tried to rationalize it all as best his ten-year-old mind could. Was this just another one of those dog-like traits of his that were developing? That was the most obvious answer, as offsetting as it was. He'd thought that his habits and physical features had been it, but if more were growing in, then it was time to rethink things.

Fifteen minutes later, he finished washing up, dried off, and wrapped a towel around himself before heading across the hall into his room. Quickly getting dressed, he pulled his long hair up out of his shirt and tied it back with a trio of hair ties. His shoes pulled on and laced a few moments later, and he bounded down the stairs again. He'd lost his lunch thanks to that black out, so, he was hungry, and he wanted to eat, soon. That all-you-can-eat ribs deal was sounding really good now.


Well after seven, and they finally were heading home. It was a good thing Ryan had insisted on getting Daniel the all-you-can-eat, because the boy's appetite would almost make one think he'd been starving for the past several weeks. He's managed to pack down at least six more half-racks after the first main plate, and even then, they'd still had enough leftovers to take home, because knowing Daniel, he was going to be hungry come sometime in the middle of the night.

There was one stop to make on the way home, though. They made a detour and pulled into the lot next to Wolf's Den, Daniel racing from the car and to the door of the dojo while his parents just calmly walked behind him. Inside, some people were practicing, but the major thing of note was the small party that was going on. How well had they done after he and his parents had left?

"There he is!" came the rough and familiar voice of Sensei Ookami. The dog-eared boy grinned as Kouga walked over, then bowed while the man returned it. "I was wondering when you'd show up. Feeling better?"

Daniel quickly nodded. "Yes, sir."

"I just hope this trend of being overly polite extends to when he hits thirteen," Ryan remarked jokingly while walking over and shaking hands with Kouga. "Five years of this, and I still am amazed at the job you did with Danny."

A smirk from Kouga as he ruffled the boy's hair up a bit. "Now if he'd just stop having confidence issues all the time," he replied. "But, I'm sure that will be fixed the minute he's a teenager and he thinks the world owes him something just because." It was then his eyes lit up and he gestured for Daniel and his parents to follow. "I got something that belongs to you," came the statement as he led them into his office and reached behind his desk to pull out a trophy. He held it out to Daniel, noting the surprise in the kid's eyes. "You earned it, kid, more than anyone here. They wanted to give it to Morgan, but he insisted that it was yours."

Eyes still shining with disbelief, Daniel took hold of the award, looking at the engraved name plate. "Daniel...'Inuh...' what's that say?"

"InuYasha," Kouga stated to help the boy. "It means 'dog demon'." He paused for a moment, then grinned. "Technically, it means 'female demon dog', but Japanese is kind'a notorious for ignoring gender fixatives in names like that. Remind me to tell you about a woman named Rumiko some time." Again, he ruffled Daniel's hair, then noted the sparkle in his eyes. "It's kind'a your nickname with us, kid. All you kids here are our pups, but you're a lot moreso like a dog, and in a good way; loyal, insane senses, and those ears of yours."

Ryan raised a brow. "And 'demon'?"

Now there was a chuckle. "He resembles what one might imagine an inuyahsa to look like," Kouga replied before he explain. "They were supposed to have a human form with canine features. There's actually old legends back home of such creatures, who were fierce warriors, and so, it kind'a stuck." Again, he reached behind his desk and pulled out a small paper wrapped package. "Almost forgot about that," he said as he handed it to Daniel. "That's something else you earned today. I would have given it to you at the competition, but you were better off getting some rest. So, call this the informal presentation, and we'll do the more official one next week."

With his eyes lighting up like fireflies, Daniel tore open the paper wrapping and gazed down at what Kouga had given him. It was his purple belt, signifying his rise in status and rank in the martial arts style he trained in. "Sensei, I..." He paused in his words. The main reason he'd risen so quickly, learned so fast, was because Kouga had taught him personally so often. "I'm not ready for this yet."

"Like heck you ain't," the man replied while laughing faintly. "You took on guys at that rank today and did a shine better than most anyone else would have, especially at your age." He shrugged, then looked at Daniel's parents for a moment before glancing down at Daniel again. "You're a natural fighter kid, and the fact you don't have a big desire to fight is the sign of a real martial artist. A few more years, you'll probably be at red, if not starting through your black belts." He smiled and knelt down to pat Daniel on the shoulder. "You should be proud of yourself, Danny. I know that your parents are, and if they were around, your real parents would be too."

Confusion flickered in Daniel's eyes, and in the expressions of his parents. It didn't elude Kouga, who quickly grinned as he stood up. "I mean, who wouldn't be? If he were my kid, I'd be proud, so I'd like to assume that his natural parents would be." Good, they were nodding as the questioning looks faded. Managed to salvage that one, he inwardly said to himself. "You guys are welcome to stick around for the party, those kids are still having a tug-a-war over who gets to put the big trophy on the rack."

Daniel looked up at his father, his eyes expressing his agreement, but Ryan slowly shook his head and sighed. "Thanks, but we probably should get home and get the pup to bed. Danny got today off from his tutor, so Jim is coming in tomorrow to make up for it."

"Dad..."

Again, Kouga gave a faint laugh while he patted Daniel's head. "Get the extra sleep, kid. We'll give you a little party when you come in tomorrow night, because we all know you earned it." A flicker in his eyes. "We'll even leave the DDR set-up here tonight and call it another kick-back and have fun class."

That earned an enthusiastic smile from Daniel. He and his parents, as they departed, said good-bye, and then, they were gone. Hajime walked over to Kouga as he stood by the office door, looked at the dojo entrance, then smirked. "Strange how much he's almost nothing like the flea-bag."

There was a flash in Kouga's eyes again, but it was a defensive one this time, even if he was smiling. "That's my old friend you're talking about," he said sharply. "And if he were still alive, I'd be helping him beat your ass down for calling him that." He went back into his office and flopped into the desk chair, glancing to the picture in the frame that sat on his desk. "It's been so long, and I actually still miss him." There was a sigh. "I want to tell him, but he'd never believe me, and his parents wouldn't get it at all even if the kid did."

"You could show him the old photo."

His gaze was on the weathered old Polaroid in the frame. It was the biggest piece of evidence he had to his old friend and rival's existence, as well as the reason they'd been rivals. "He's got a good life with those two rasing him," he finally said after a long moment of silence. "I'm not gonn'a screw it up just to relive something of the old days. He may look like the dog, have the same eyes and hair, but it doesn't change the truth about Daniel, Hajime, something that even I had to accept."

"And that is?"

With a resound sigh, Kouga turned the frame around and pointed to one of the people in the photo. It was a young man in red robes, who looked a lot like some older version of Daniel. Standing next to him on one side, dressed in a Japanese school uniform, was an Asian girl with black hair, and on the other side was a younger Kouga, though he was dressed in furs instead of anything remotely current day. A few other people were in the picture, but it was that young man in red that Kouga brought attention to.

"He's not his father."