Author's Note: Thank you everyone for reading through my 2nd chapter, and apparently continuing on to my 3rd chapter. I got a grand total of 1 more person since I posted my last chapter, but I can't feel too bad about it since it was at like 3 in the morning, and it's only a couple hours later. (btw, it was actually 43 people, not 50+ lolz).
What you can expect in future chapters: I'm going to try and add a lot more depth to my writing. After reading more chapters of my friend's fict which ends up taking some rather psychotic twists near the end which had my head ping pong-ing at how OOC Sesshoumaru seemed (of course everything was clarified and justified according to the story). If you want to read it, he is HennyoRyu7, and it's like his only fic. So I couldn't really stir you wrong with that.
What off topic there (sorry it's very early and I haven't slept). I'm going to be experimenting with a few things to add more flavor to my writing so that the excitement will continue to grow throughout my fict. Also, I'm hoping that one of these days, I can have an author note shorter than 3 paragraphs. . ;;
Now it's time for Inuyasha!
Chapter 3: Three Way Feud
Sesshoumaru stood on the top of a tall cliff overlooking a decently large forest. Passed the forest, there was a cluster of a couple rather large mountains. He could tell he was getting closer to closing in on Naraku's position. He was determined to be the one to kill him. 'I will not let you live, Naraku.'
"Jakken, Rin. Let's go." They both nodded and made a sound of confirmation.
As usual, Rin was riding on Ah-Un. As for Jakken, he followed Sesshoumaru closely behind on foot, even though that usually caused him to be left behind a lot, but it also allowed him to assist Sesshoumaru quicker if he ever needed him, which he never truly did. "Lord Sesshoumaru, do you know where we are going?" Jakken asked. Sesshoumaru suddenly stopped walking. Jakken, however, didn't and ran straight into Sesshoumaru's leg. He scrambled back onto his feet in a slight fright. Sesshoumaru glared at him and then continued on with, "Let's keep moving."
Meanwhile, Kouga was still trying to track down Naraku as well. He wasn't having much luck either. "Damn, where the Hell could that guy be hiding."
"Kouga!"
"Wait up!" Following far behind Kouga are his two companions desperately trying to keep up with as usually. "Do we really have to go so fast?"
"Can't we slow it down a bit?" agreed the other.
"Quit your whining, both of you." He had a cocky smirk on like usual. "We got to find that jerk and avenge our fallen comrades. That's not something we can slow down for." His mind suddenly seemed to wander for half a second and a slight look of shyness appeared on his face as it occurred to him that Kagome was also looking for Naraku. "Besides, if we don't hurry up, Kagome might end up facing Naraku before we get a chance to take care of him, and we can't trust that dog-crap to protect my woman!" The two just gave each other a look of utter defeat because they knew that they would never win with Kouga. "Now common, I think I spell something."
Sesshoumaru's aim was the mountain. He decided that would be the best place for Naraku to hide in if he were anywhere around the area. When they reached the end of the forest, he stopped. "Rin."
"Yes, Sesshoumaru-sama?"
"You stay here with Ah-Un."
"Hai! (yes)"
"Jakken." Sesshoumaru began walking again. Jakken followed quickly behind after saying, "Yes, Lord Sesshoumaru."
As Sesshoumaru began to approach the mountain, he couldn't feel any youki (youkai energy) come from anywhere in it. However, somehow, he knew that this was where he was hiding. Almost like a sixth sense. "Lord Sesshoumaru!" Jakken exclaimed with much excitement. "Look Lord Sesshoumaru, the youki crystal we got from Kagura. It is responding to this mountain!"
"There is no doubt about it. This is where Naraku is hiding it."
Inuyasha began growing impatient. Everyone was taking so long to get ready to go, and they were starting the day off later than usual. Everyone insisted on eating breakfast before they left, though, and even Inuyasha slurped down a cup of instant ramen. However, his haste in eating it was in vain, since it seemed like nobody else was in a great hurry to start the day off searching for Naraku without any leads. However, they realized how anxious Inuyasha was to find Naraku. So they hurried a little bit.
"Shall we go?" proposed the monk.
A big vain appeared on Inuyasha's head. "I've been prosing that for the passed hour!" he complained, obviously very annoyed that they still haven't begun searching for Naraku yet.
"Inuyasha, we've been searching for Naraku blindly for 3 days straight. We don't even have a way of locating him. It's kind of hard to be enthusiastic about it," Kagome explained.
"Whatever, let's just get going."
There air seemed pretty calm all morning, but coincidently enough, the breeze picked up right at that moment blowing Inuyasha's hair slightly to the left as he walked. The search seemed futile, but Inuyasha wouldn't give up on it. He was determined to keep searching, even if he had no way of finding him except randomly stumbling upon his hideout.
They figured out from the tree youkai that there was a cave in the mountain that had a girl in a baby living in it that matched the description of Kanna and Hakudoushi. They figured that they were going to check there first, as soon as they could find it, at least. They had been aimlessly scaling the sides of the mountains that the tree youkai pointed them to, but still haven't found the cave they were talking about.
"What are you doing here?" Sesshoumaru asked aloud without even looking back to the approaching wolf youkai.
"It's you again. What the Hell are you up to?" Kouga replied.
"Don't ask me foolish questions. I'm off to kill Naraku, of course." At that, he turned slightly so that he could look at Kouga with a sideways glance.
"Like Hell you are! Naraku's mine!" Kouga replied very cocky as usual.
"In that case," said Sesshoumaru, drawing his tokijin. "It seems I will have to take care of you first."
"Bring it on!"
Kouga was the first one to make a move. Sesshoumaru didn't usually make the first move, and when he did, it was usually some easy to dodge move that would simply to things going. "Take this!" Kouga jumped up in the air did a complete turn and swung a very strong kick at Sesshoumaru. Sesshoumaru stepped back quickly and dodged it and countered with his kenatsu attack (see author notes on bottom for more detail).
Kouga landed on the ground and quickly moved out of the way, skidding on the ground. He retaliated be dashing over to Sesshoumaru and delivering a barrage of punches and kicks that Sesshoumaru effortlessly dodged. "Hey, you're not bad," Kouga said in a cocky voice. Sesshoumaru replied coldly, "Don't take me so lightly."
Suddenly, Kagome's senses started to pick up. "Inuyasha, I sense the shikon shards! There's two of the. So it…"
"You don't have to tell me; I could smell it from a mile a way. But why do I smell Kouga and Sesshoumaru. Are they fighting?"
"What? You smell Sesshoumaru too?" repeated Shippou.
"There's no mistaking it," Inuyasha needlessly confirmed. "I'll go on ahead. You guys stay here. I have some old scores to settle, and I don't want you interfering."
"Inuyasha!" Kagome called to him, but there was no stopping him. He was way too fast. "Common, we have to follow him and make sure he doesn't get hurt!"
"Right." They all got on Kirara and headed after Inuyasha. "Kirara, don't lose Inuyasha's scent." She gave a growl to confirm that she understood.
Sesshoumaru was the first to sense it. "Inuyasha," he said coldly. He glanced to his right, holding tokijin in his hand, in the direction Inuyasha was coming from.
"What?" Kouga said in shock, dropping his guard for a second. Then he sensed it, too. "Heh, dog-crap is coming to? Looks like this is going to be fun."
Inuyasha jumped up and landed facing the two other combatants. "Sorry I'm late," he said jokingly.
"Inuyasha," Sesshoumaru said again. "You came to destroy Naraku as well? I shall defeat him myself, and if you get in my way, I will kill you as well."
"Keh, try it."
All three warriors stood in a triangular shape in the forest. All of them were ready and just waiting for somebody else to make the first move. The tension was heavy as they stood with weapons drawn and guards up shifting their eyes from each other to see who was going to make the first strike.
All at once, almost as though they were reading each other's minds, they all darted off at each other like a bolt of lightning. Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha clashed blades, and Kouga swung a roundhouse kick at Sesshoumaru. Sesshoumaru released his sword from Inuyasha's and quickly dodged the kick. This was immediately followed by Inuyasha doing kaze no kizu to Sesshoumaru, which Sesshoumaru merely cut right through with tokijin. At the same time Kouga threw a strong-powered punch at Inuyasha that he deflected with his sword.
Sesshoumaru flew back and did a back flip onto a branch and darted at Kouga. Inuyasha was busy dodging a jumping back kick from Kouga and then began his counter attack. Kouga caught on to Sesshoumaru's attack just in time to miss Sesshoumaru's feet slamming him through the ground at full speed.
Inuyasha swung his blade over his head and down as fast as he could and did a kaze no kizu directed right for both Kouga and Sesshoumaru. It was already too close to get out of the way so Sesshoumaru blocked it with tokijin's own kenatsu attack, and Kouga ended up taking the whole impact. However, it put him in a perfect position to land his roundhouse right into Sesshoumaru's back.
Sesshoumaru retaliated by swinging the tokijin around and slicing the air with a yellow energy, but Kouga was able to dodge it by doing a backwards handstand onto his feet. Then Sesshoumaru immediately had to dodge Inuyasha's next Kaze no Kizu, but in the blinding light, he didn't notice Kouga coming up on him until he socked him right in the face.
All three warriors retreated back to a triangle formation again. None of them were badly injured at all. They had already grown accustom to such intense fights, even though they had all been hit with strong blows.
At that time, Kagome and the others were just arriving on Kirara's back. "Inuyasha!" She screamed! "Are you alright?"
"Kagome, stand back. I'll handle this!" Inuyasha replied.
"Kagome!" Kouga suddenly seemed oblivious to everything around him. "You've come to watch me fight." All Kagome could do was stand there and giggle a little bit because she was way to nice to be able to ever tell him that she just wasn't interested, and even though he already knew that deep down, he still refused to believe that, especially if it meant losing to dog-crap, he would think.
Of course, the amount of attention Kouga was giving to Kagome caught Inuyasha's attention. "Keep your hands off of Kagome you mangy wolf." Inuyasha did a kaze no kizu at Kouga, which he dodges with ease having completely seen it coming.
Sesshoumaru decided to take advantage of the moment. "Fools!" he declared and swung his tokijin, using its kenatsu attack again. Both of them were hit with the full impact of the attack. In retaliation, Kouga just a huge chain of kicks to Inuyasha from a roundhouse to a spinning back kick and into a crescent kick and then into a dragon kick and an aerial spinning back kick, and after dodging all of those effortlessly, he couldn't dodge Inuyasha's kaze no kizu and got hit by its blast. Thus the fight was on again. Kagome didn't even bother getting involved. She was afraid she would miss her mark because they were all moving so fast. Sango and Miroku were equally as helpless against two full blooded youkai. So they could only stand and watch and believe in Inuyasha while staying out of the way.
The fight continued on as fierce as ever. Sesshoumaru used kenatsu, directed toward Inuyasha, and he turned around and turned it into Bakuryuuha, which Sesshoumaru then deflected using Souryuuha. After that Kouga began an assault on Inuyasha, which he countered with koun gou sou ha that Kouga dodged fairly easily and then had to dodge Sesshoumaru's Dokacho (poison claws) as he quickly put away his sword for a moment to use and then drew it back out.
The battle kept continuing for a long time. All three warriors were taking lots of hits, but still had a lot of fight left in them and refused to let the others defeat them and most importantly wouldn't allow any others to tarnish their pride. However, the battle had final ended when Sesshoumaru suddenly put away his tokijin and stopped fighting. Both Inuyasha and Kouga just stared at him. "I'm not going to waste any more time on you two," he said. And as spontaneously as the battle began, it ended. "Do as you like," he spoke again. "No matter what you do, I will kill Naraku with my own claws." And he walked away.
Author Notes: Kenatsu is what I like to think of as the Tokijin equivalent to the Tetsusaiga's Kaze no Kizu. Even if you are a big Inuyasha fan (which you probably are if you are reading my fic), and even if you do watch it in Japanese instead of the HORRIBLE English dubs, you still might not know exactly which attack this is at first read. Like most other attacks Sesshoumaru does, when he does attacks with his Tokijin, he doesn't normally announce what attack he is doing, with the exception of Souryuuha (Dragon Strike). The ONLY other attack he mentions for his Tokijin out of the several common ones he does is Kenatsu, which is only announced one single time in the third movie.
Kenatsu is that big blue energy, usually a sphere, but sometimes it turns into an attack that follows the ground like kaze no kizu, that he releases from his sword.
Anyway, thank you for reading my 3rd chapter. I hope you remain loyal readers, and I will remain a loyal writer. And Hopefully, in the future, I will be able to maintain this quality of writing.
Ja mata.
Sesshoumaru