Well, I have no more Dot Hack games to play, so I will be updating a bit more. Even though I don't get many reviews, thanx to the ones who do. And just as a warning, the chapter is a bit gruesome near the end. Rating will probably go up if I continue being morbid.

Ch. 3

Sesshoumaru sat heavily on the futon.

"Chichi-ue, this is it," he said, looking at a painting of his father that hung over his night table. "I never wanted it to be this way, but my first war is come. And I admit I am afraid. Did you ever become afraid at times of war? I wonder…but I want peace in my lands, just like you.

"And so I shall win…"

Sesshoumaru pulled something tattered from under his bed. Another obi. This one was longer than his and red and blue…

After the Inu no Taisho's death, Sesshoumaru had eventually decided to try and salvage a memento from the building. Any little thing that would remind him of his dearly departed father.

The young Inu Taiyoukai's eyes roved feverishly over the collapsed building his father had died in. He desperately wanted to find his father's body, to take it and bury it like it should be…

All he found was a flame-charred obi…

"For you Father, if nothing else," he vowed, "I shall win!"

Midnight arrived much too soon for Kagome. She was still sluggish as Sesshoumaru roused her.

"Come, Kagome. You must put your armor on," he said in his deep monotone.

When the Inu-gumi was finally dressed, they looked battle ready; Kagome was wearing loose pantaloons and a light chest plate as well as a helmet. She had her bow, arrows, and naginata at the ready.

Miroku wore a helmet and shoulder guards.

Sango wore her taijiya attire.

Inuyasha was armored to the teeth. He wore a set of armor very similar to Sesshoumaru's, but it was in the style of their late father's armor. Bracers and gauntlets went down his arms and his hair was in a bushy ponytail.

Sesshoumaru wore a much heavier, but identical set of armor to his normal set. On his one arm, he had full arm bracers and gauntlets. Under his pantaloons, he wore knee and shin guards. Securing the armor in place was his father's obi.

"Let's go," he said somberly.

The samurai were already separated into platoons with the youkai.

"You know, for short, we could call our groups 'toons,'" Kagome suggested. "It's something I read in a war book, and it really helped when things needed to be said."

Sesshoumaru didn't acknowledge her, but his words were enough.

"My platoon, follow me. Shock Platoon, trail by about 500 feet with Inuyasha and Miroku. All toons as follows trail by 500 feet behind the other," he ordered, his voice booming over the waves of soldiers like a thunderclap.

He opened the gates to the castle himself. Ah-Un, Talon, Tenebrus, Maya, and Koto stood right outside. Each commander boarded their steed. Inuyasha had Talon pull next to Sesshoumaru.

"Scared?" he asked.

"No," Sesshoumaru replied. In truth, he was terrified. "I will lead by air."

Sesshoumaru kicked Ah-Un softly with his heel and instantly lifted off from the ground.

"Hyah!" Inuyasha cried. "Talon, let's go!

Dawn broke as Sesshoumaru came to the borders of the East and West. Surprisingly, Eros' army was waiting for him. He didn't expect that, but it made little difference.

"ATTACK!" he ordered in his powerful voice.

And so it began.

The first toon split in two and the Shock Toon took their lead.

"WIND SCAR!"

"WIND TUNNEL!"

Sesshoumaru was no fool. He knew his commanders. Miroku and Inuyasha were able to destroy hundreds of demons at once, hence their command of "Shock Platoon"

However, after about twenty minutes of ongoing attacks, the houshi and hanyou were tired out and left to more crude attacks. That's when the war really began.

Sango was well suited on and off Koto with her Hiraikotsu. She handily slaughtered hundreds of low and mid class youkai.

Likewise, Kagome and Tauron dispatched mid class snake youkai and dragons together.

Sesshoumaru took the high class snakes and dragons on his own, and was magnificent in doing so.

Moving with horrifying speed even the Inu-gumi had never seen, he unleashed a ballistic barrage of dangerous attacks. One moment, he'd use his whip of poison and energy to sever a snake and the next he'd melt clear through a dragon with his Dokkasou. He also alternated physical, bare-handed attacks with attacks from the Toukijin.

All in all, the first battle of the war was most definitely one to remember.

When it came to an end, Sesshoumaru's army had soundly gained about seven miles of Eros' land against him before he retreated.

Sesshoumaru did not, however, that Eros' army didn't expend many high level troops. No matter how hard he, Sesshoumaru, fought, he could never destroy as many high-level demons as he wanted, and that made him even more apprehensive.

At the moment, however, he was sort of preoccupied—his shoulder blade had been fractured, and Inuyasha's arm needed patching where a dragon had sliced him. Still, the taiyoukai was curious…

What could that coy dragon be up to…?

"I've never seen Sesshoumaru-sama fight so tenaciously," Miroku said, rubbing his sore right hand.

"I know," Sango replied. "He fights with absolute passion, and you can tell it's not for the sake of killing…"
"I do it for the sake of my lands."

Sango, Miroku, and the others turned to Sesshoumaru, who was holding his injured arm in an awkward position.

"I may not fight for what you believe, but I do fight for what I believe. What I believe is that war is hell. Chaos. I would rather make less trouble in the West by making alliances than sully my claws with unnecessary bloodshed. I care not whether you approve of my ways."

So saying, he leapt 15 feet away (effortlessly) and sat, wincing as he jarred his wrenched shoulder.

Later on, at midnight, most everyone was asleep. Even Sesshoumaru was drifting…

Suddenly, a shrill, high pitched squeal assaulted his delicate sense of hearing.

He gasped in pain, pupils contracting as he jammed his hand over his right ear and pressed the tip of his tail into the left.

Inuyasha staggered to him, looking ill.

"D-d'you hear that?" the hanyou groaned in a strained voice.

"I…can't…take…it…"

The sound may have made Inuyasha's head throb so that he felt nauseous, but Sesshoumaru's senses were much more powerful; his pupils proceeded to contract; dilate; contract again in a never-ending cycle of pain.

Just then, the smell of Eros' army came to his nose.

"D-Dammit!" he snarled "Damn bastard!"

Sesshoumaru let out a decisive bark, but the animal youkai were all falling victim to the whistling.

"WAKE UP!" he yelled.

His samurai and all the other creatures unable to hear high frequencies bolted up.

"The dragon's army! They are ambushing us!" he cried.

Sesshoumaru growled as his ears began to bleed, but the sound slightly dampened the high-pitched sound, at least. He turned to Inuyasha, who had fallen unconscious.

"That could be me soon," he thought urgently.

With his inhuman speed, he weaved himself into the front lines, all the while feeling all the more sick as the whistle reached a higher octave and his arm began to give off stabs of pain.

"You will regret ever ambushing Sesshoumaru!" he snarled.

Crimson bled into the whites of his eyes and his fangs lengthened.

Sesshoumaru slashed instinctually, his whip sliding from his fingers to tear through a snake youkai. He then withdrew it quickly and slashed back through the demon's gut, pulling out its intestines. He dropped the warm, fleshy mass and took a moment to lick the blood and other internal juices off of his fingers and claws. He smiled and gave a growling laugh before leaping upon a dragon and ferally tearing it apart with his fangs.

The blood, it ran through his mouth, dripped from his jowls…and he loved every bit of it! He ripped into the flesh deeper, letting his jaws close around the heart, tearing an enormous section of it out. Leaping away, blood staining his bangs and nearly everything else about him, he swallowed the gigantic hunk of muscle he had removed. The blood was creating rivulets down his chin as he threw his head back and laughed psychotically. This was power! Power was rapture!

The demon lord had lost his mind in rage.

Soon enough, his reckless killing caused him to be surrounded by seven powerful dragons roughly a third the size of Ryukotsussei. In response, he bared his fangs and brandished his claws, turning in every direction dizzyingly; he was trying to intimidate them!

However, despite his horrifying were-ish appearance and all the blood he was soaked from head to toe in, the dragons merely laughed.

"Oh, how the mighty hath fallen," one sneered. "Look now at what Sesshoumaru, the most controlled demon in the whole of Japan, has been reduced to."

Crimson rage in his eyes that matched the fluid covering him, the taiyoukai began to spin on one foot and wind his whip around him. All the while, he snapped his jaws and sent blood flying from his bloody fangs. The attack soon exploded outwards, hitting the dragons full on the chests.

They barely flinched, blood running from superficial cuts.

"NARGHH!"

Sesshoumaru attacked one, slashing with his fangs and claws. The creature howled as its internal organs flew and Sesshoumaru began to swallow great gulps of its blood, seemingly unaware of the twisting and jumping his stomach was now doing.

This was what the other dragons had been waiting for.

Three of the remaining dragons took each of his limbs and the seventh took hold of his tail. He struggled madly, only succeeding in dislocating his already injured shoulder. He howled animalistically in pain.

"You lose," the dragon of before said. It crunched his tail nearly in two.

"Game…"

His right arm was broken.

"Set…"

Left leg.

"Match."

Right leg.

Sesshoumaru groaned and fell from their mouths to the ground.

He coughed blood and felt a trickle as even more gushed from his ears. The whistle seemed so much nearer. It maddened him, made him rise painfully to his broken legs and kill. He wanted to kill, kill, and kill!

He heard only one more thing before the dark cloudiness of uncontrolled rage took him completely over.

"KAZE NO KIZU! Die, damned dragons! Sesshoumaru, are you okay?"

And then he lashed out at his brother with claws of poison.

Please R and R! I'm desperate!