AN: (falls over dead) It's finally done! My apologies to everyone for the wait... Writer's block can be a real bitch sometimes.. I've been reworking this thing like crazy after spending days just trying to get it all out, and now I can't stand to edit it anymore. Ugh. Why is it I always do the worst job on the chapters that are actually important? But, before I forget..

(grins stupidly and tosses out peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies to lectaelf, Kanerva, and Lady of Perfection) Reviewness is much appreciated!

DISCLAIMER: (wow... I've remembered this several chapters in a row... amazing..) I still don't own any of the characters from Inuyasha (shniffles) but I do own Maina, Miharu, and Mai, and I am willing to send my muse out to assassinate anyone who attempts to steal them - just because he's adorably fluffy doesn't mean he can't slice plagiarizers to bits.

Chapter Fourteen - Eternal Innocence

In one brilliant instant, the energy whip slashed through the dense granite of the boulder and sent the top half flying. It hit the earth heavily as the whip disappeared into the index and middle fingers from whence it came. It was a clean, perfect cut - the rock's surface was sliced so flat that one might have been able to see his reflection in it. Sesshoumaru, however, looked on it with disdain. It still wasn't good enough. In order to perfect his attack, he needed to make such a clean cut on a moving target, to do what he'd done to the boulder to an enemy youkai as he simultaneously avoided its counterattacks.

He stepped up to the top half of the boulder, inspecting it closely, searching for even the slightest uneven patch on its cut surface. His golden eyes narrowed with intensity. A small, nearly black mineral within the granite was sticking out by about three millimeters near the edge of the cut. The claws of his right hand began to glow a sickly green.

In the blink of an eye, the boulder half fell into five pieces.

"That was awesome, Seisou!"

Sesshoumaru spun, his silks whipping around him. The child only smiled, her brilliantly clear golden eyes watching him in adoration. He knew full well that she could pronounce his name correctly by now, but he had not the heart to demand of her the same respect everyone else was expected to show him.

"Mai, haven't I told you before not to follow me to the training grounds?"

"But I like to watch..," the girl pouted. Sighing, he walked toward the small girl and lifted her until they were eye to eye.

"Watching is one thing, but if you happen to be hiding behind my next target, I might accidentally hurt you."

"I wouldn't have to hide if you'd let me watch in the first place.." Her stoic older brother's face cracked into a grin.

"You're right, Mai. You've outsmarted me." Mai giggled as he propped her small form against himself, holding her with just his left arm. "So just this once, I'll let you watch."

"You'll do a trick for me?" she gasped.

"I do no tricks, Mai. The things I practice are battle skills," he corrected. "Now, pick a target."

"Um.." She glanced all around her, idly chewing the nail of her index finger, which would not harden into a claw for another year or two. "How about .. Ah!" she exclaimed suddenly, whipping her finger from her mouth and pointing off to the right, "that tree there!"

Still rooted to the spot, Sesshoumaru concentrated his youki in his right hand, once again forming his energy whip. In less than a second he lopped off a large branch from the tree and, before it hit the ground, retracted the whip, sped towards the airborne branch, and sliced to bits its leaves with his claws, sending the pieces flying around Mai and himself like confetti. His young sister laughed and tried to catch the raining leaf bits as the branch finally hit the ground.

"Hey, Seisou..," she began a moment later.

"Yes?"

"I was wondering.. If you're practicing for battle, then why don't you use a sword like Father does?"

"Father says I must perfect my natural abilities before ever training with a weapon."

"Why?"

"Training exclusively with weapons would make me vulnerable. I would be dependent on them in battle, and if the weapon was lost, I would be helpless. This way, I can depend on my own strength, using a weapon only to complement it."

"Okay.. I think I understand.." Sesshoumaru smiled fondly at the girl. She really was too young to worry about such things. Their father had already decreed that her training was not to begin until she was at least six - and that was just over two years away.

"If your curiosity is satisfied, I'll cut my training short and we'll head back to the dens. I'm sure Mother is looking for you."

"Aww.." Mai whined.

"Will you come willingly if I promise to play whatever game you like when we get there?" The girl's already bright eyes lit up even more as she began to lightly bounce up and down in the crook of his arm.

"Really, Seisou? You mean it?" The slight nod of his head was enough to send her into a small fit of laughter and clapping.

"But," he began, "you have to promise that you won't follow me to training anymore without me knowing."

"Does that mean I can come if I ask first?"

"Perhaps," he conceded with a sigh.

"Okay, I promise!"

"Good," he said, picking leaves with his free hand from the soft white hair that hung loosely around her shoulders and then brushing the remaining ones from her pale yellow and purple kimono as he began to walk.

"Can we fly back? Please?"

"All right," he said with a breathy chuckle, "I suppose we can." Mai laughed with joy as she watched the swirling cloud forming around her brother's feet, lifting them up from the ground and high above the trees.

The normally talkative girl quieted as the two of them flew, reaching out a curious hand to touch the lower clouds. Sesshoumaru smiled to himself. By the time she was old enough to begin training, she would be developing her own powers and would no longer need her older brother to fly her around. He was curious to know if she would inherit the same powers as he. His father was certainly more endowed with youkai power than he was - his young sister could very well surpass him if Inutaishou's genes prevailed - but then, she might take after their mother instead, having few powers but enough skill with those few to hold her own against much more powerful creatures.

Despite this curiosity, however, Sesshoumaru was reluctant to admit to himself that Mai would not always be the innocent child she now was, clinging close to her admired older brother with no sense of the dangers of the world, but with games and natural wonders like flowers and clouds instead on her mind. A great part of him dreaded the day that innocence would leave her, the day she became secretive and bitter like him - the day she discovered the corruption that threatened to tear their family apart. She would have to hold that truth within her, just as he did, just as their mother did, and never tell another soul. Mai truly amazed him at times - the way she always told everyone what was on her mind, simply because she had not yet learned adult restraint. That freedom had been stolen away from him long ago - he couldn't bear to imagine such a fate for her, though he knew he could not protect her from it. She would not remain a child forever…

"Seisou, what's that?" Ridding his head of the wandering thoughts, he gazed below them at the area Mai was pointing to. A mass of bodies moved as one up one of the many hills that surrounded the dens.

"Those aren't… the males, are they?" she asked him tentatively. He snapped his eyes back to her.

"What do you mean?"

"The males all went out hunting a little while after you left for training.."

"What! All of them went?" Sesshoumaru demanded.

"I think so.."

"Idiots!" he growled. "Those aren't the males. There are far too many of them for that."

"Then what are they?"

"They're an army, Mai," he replied, holding her tightly as he doubled his speed, "and they're heading straight for the dens."

Miharu, standing outside their den in the cliff-side, waved to her children as they began to descend. She ran up to her son as he touched the ground, embracing the small girl in his arms.

"I've been looking everywhere for you, Mai! Don't tell me you followed Sesshoumaru to training again!" she exclaimed.

"Mother, there's an army headed this way," Sesshoumaru interrupted. "They'll top the south hill any minute." Miharu might have dropped her daughter if he were not still holding onto her.

"What? That's… that's impossible! I would have smelled them!" she stuttered.

"They're traveling downwind. No doubt they planned it so."

"But the men are all out hunting! The only ones here other than the women and children are the two elders!"

"They may well have planned for that also," he said, pushing Mai into his mother's arms. "Take her inside and hide her, quickly!"

Sesshoumaru sped along the perimeter of the dens, warning everyone he met to hide their children and prepare for battle, but even he was not fast enough. As the women were scrambling to warn others and round up all the children that had been playing outside, a thunderous roar sounded from the top of the south hill. Sesshoumaru spun around to see a humongous panther youkai, of a size rivaling his father's inu form, standing atop the hill, surrounded by his fellows in their humanoid forms. He recognized the giant as the centuries-old leader of the panther tribe - he had entered into battle with Inutaishou several times in recent years in attempt to gain territory. The women screamed along with their frightened children and ran in panic to their dens as Sesshoumaru hurried back to his. With all of the tribe's warriors gone, the best thing he could do now was defend his own family and hope the women and elders could hold their own.

With their leader's command, the panthers swarmed down the hill like locusts, countless in number, and spread out to every den and hiding place in groups of ten or twenty. The female inuyoukai stood before the dens where their children were hiding, just as Sesshoumaru stood with his mother before their own. All along the tribe's cliff-side home the women were changing into their more powerful inu forms, though they were nearly half the size of the males, Sesshoumaru's form being only slightly larger because of his young age - but the panthers were overwhelming. Four women fell prey to them before they had even begun to grow, and three others were killed in mid-transformation. The rest fought as best they could, but the agile panthers dodged their attacks and even acted as decoys for organized groups of attackers - and Sesshoumaru and Miharu, with their central den, were right in the middle of all of it.

He could have easily knocked all of his attackers senseless with a single swipe of his paw, but the panthers were too swift for the large inu. They leapt onto him, hanging from his legs, back, and even from his ears and the back of his neck, not doing any major damage but spilling blood nevertheless. They were well prepared for the poisonous saliva, those on the ground avoiding the space beneath his mouth, and those attacking him latching onto places his mouth could not reach without risk of exposing his throat. His mother was not faring much better, nor were the few females and the elder he could see in his peripheral vision. The elder, largest of all the inu present, actually seemed to be having a worse time at fighting off the panthers. Despite his age, the former warrior was skilled - it was his size that seemed to hinder him. The small humanoid panthers darted all about him, easily dodging his attacks with movements much quicker than his size allowed him to make. Even in the more deadly inu form, it was all he could do to defend himself - surely, then, the rest of them could not effectively protect those hiding within the dens for long.

Sure of his reasoning, Sesshoumaru returned to his humanoid form, throwing his attackers to the ground as the bulk they had latched themselves onto disappeared. Before most of them could get up, he had readied his energy whip and cut them through, simultaneously attacking those that had been in front of him with the claws of his other hand. Leaping over a pair of corpses, he called back his whip and attacked with his dokkasou three of the panthers that were assailing his mother. The rest of the group that had targeted her were momentarily distracted, and Miharu took the opportunity to take on her humanoid form. As before, the attackers fell from the transforming youkai and were open to attack. The claws of the mother and son soon were stained with the blood of all the nearby panthers, and the ground was littered with their bodies.

However, they were not so successful for long. Many inu around them had already been slain, and the panthers who had not gone to investigate the now unguarded dens were coming for Sesshoumaru and his mother, as the panther leader stood watching and directing from his vantage point atop the hill.

At least twenty of the panthers, stained with the blood of the dead inuyoukai, surrounded Sesshoumaru such that he could not attack one without falling victim to the blows of the others, and all he killed were quickly replaced by more of their fellows who, having just killed yet another of his tribesmen, had come to join the new battle. Every now and then he was able to catch a glimpse of his mother in the short moment he had between killing one panther and being attacked by another, and he could see she was not able to hold her own as well as he was - she was skilled with the dokkasou attack, but had no far reaching weapons like his energy whip. The panthers were able to get closer to her than they did him, and he could smell her blood, even amongst all the rest of the blood that had been spilled around him.

As the panther before him mockingly dodged his claws, another sliced into his left side, this one a female with short blue hair. With his left hand he struck out at her, still trying with his right to hold the other at bay, but she leaped up and out of the way. As his claws at last reached the bothersome male, the female returned to the earth, digging her claws into his shoulders and kicking into his back with both her feet as she fell in an attempt to break his spine. Sesshoumaru, however, merely lost his footing and found himself instead pinned to the ground beneath her weight.

The other panthers surrounded him until he could see nothing other than their legs and feet, clawing simple flesh wounds into him and laughing as they did so. They were playing with him as their beastly counterparts did with mice or rabbits..

Suddenly, over their laughter, he heard the loud thud of a body hitting the ground to his right, though he could not see it, and the accompanying grunt was undoubtedly his mother's. Desperation fueling him, he managed to free his right arm, which had been trapped beneath him, and instantly he sliced off the legs of the panthers before him at the knees. As they fell, a space opened up through which he could see the other circle of panthers standing to his right - Miharu's silver hair was pooled on the ground at their feet. He struggled against the female that still pinned him down, even as she dug her claws deeper and deeper into his shoulders. He jerked from side to side in attempt to throw her, but to no avail - even his energy whip could not touch her as she managed to dodge without losing her hold on him.

Miharu's loud cry of pain pierced Sesshoumaru's ears, cutting through the raucous laughter of the panthers.

"Mother!" he yelled, but this only made the despicable creatures laugh harder. His need to protect his mother and his escalating hatred of the panthers somehow combined in that moment to give him one last burst of strength, with which he was finally able to push himself off the ground and throw the female from his back. Eyes burning red, he dashed towards his mother, ripping out with his bare hands the throats of those in his way, but not quickly enough. Seeing the attacker coming, the panthers that were holding Miharu down knew their fun was over and quickly finished the job, their victim letting out one last agonizing cry as they tore out her entrails.

Slaying the last panther that stood between himself and his mother, Sesshoumaru was just in time to witness her death - and a mere second too late to prevent it.

He became almost paralyzed at that moment; his anger drained away, replaced by a terrible empty numbness. He could do nothing but stare into the deep golden eyes that mirrored his own - the eyes that remained open, staring at him as if her soul still lingered somehow, as if she could still see him - and at the face that bore no peace, but retained the grimace of her final pain even in death. He heard nothing around him for that brief, eternal moment - it was only the sudden movement of the remaining panthers that stirred him from his trance.

They were moving toward the den.

As he realized this, his senses came rushing back and forced him to follow them, though his body was torn, bleeding, and sluggish. Pure, unsullied fear pushed him forward, sustained him, refused to let him surrender the fight, and through it he overpowered the panthers who stood by his den's entrance, killed in one swipe the one who had infiltrated it as far as the main chamber, and sped to his sister's room. Fear pushed back thoughts of his mother and forced all his focus on getting to Mai. She was still so young.. too young to defend herself…

He reached the entrance to her room, but could not pass its threshold. His legs seemed to go numb the instant he arrived. and soon they simply gave out beneath him. Sesshoumaru fell to his knees, breath hitched in his throat, and felt his heart stop cold in his chest.

Two panthers squatted before him, drenched in the same blood that stained the earthen walls of the small room, leaning over a tiny body. But what lie on the floor between them was not Mai - it was nothing more than a lifeless pile of mutilated flesh…

Sesshoumaru's eyes snapped open as he caught a breath at last. What he saw before him was only the simple thatch roof of a hut.

Gathering his wits about him and remembering where he was, he pushed himself up into a sitting position and wiped the sweat from his brow. His abdomen stung slightly with pain as he moved, but he did not care.

As he forced himself to banish the images of the dream from his mind, his thoughts instead latched onto Naraku. It was he who had wounded him, he reasoned, and without the wound he would not need sleep, and without sleep he would not have to face the memories that plagued his dreams. All of it was because of him.. He looked forward to the day he left the village, not only because he would be rid of the humans and his hanyou half-brother, but because leaving meant he could go back to his wandering lifestyle - his sleepless lifestyle.

He looked across the room, where the hanyou and the monk were still sleeping. He was somewhat surprised that Inuyasha had not been awakened, as he had been keeping himself on alert. Perhaps, Sesshoumaru briefly wondered, he had actually grown used to having him around - learned to trust, at least a little, that he would not harm any of the humans so long as he was here to heal.

The hut was still quite dark, but he refused to sleep any longer that night, and so decided he would venture outside until the others awoke. His wound did not pain him a great deal, and he had always found the night air somewhat soothing - at any rate, it would certainly calm his nerves more than lying in the hut and waiting out the oppressive silence of its sleeping residents. Noiselessly he rose from his bed, not bothering to pull on even the inner layer of his haori, and left the hut.

Ah-Uhn, hitched to a post just beyond the door flap, made a throaty grunt as his master walked by, but with his nod of recognition the two-headed dragon beast fell silent again. The greater part of the sky still was dark, but far in the east the slightest hints of dawn could already be seen. All the village was quiet - not even the farmers and field hands had risen for their chores. Sesshoumaru walked as far as the edge of a slight ridge, perhaps a hundred feet from the hut, and sat at the base of the large tree that stood there, simply watching as the colors of the sky lightened and changed above the distant, snowy mountains and the fields and rice paddies that stretched out below him.

Naraku watched the taiyoukai settle beneath the tree with great distaste.

"He's alive," he muttered to himself.

"Yes, Master Naraku," Kanna replied in her quiet monotone, "and he resides in the same village as the target." Naraku grew pensively quiet for a few moments, watching the image in the silver mirror that the ghostly white girl held in her small hands. The saimyoushou hovering around Kanna buzzed impatiently.

"As long as he lives," he thought aloud, "the plan cannot be put into motion." Reaching out with a clawed hand from the mismatched pile of youkai parts that was his current body, he pulled toward him a large cask from the corner of the dungeon-like room. As he removed the lid, glowing red vapors began to spill out. Plunging his arm into the cask, Naraku pulled forth a red, fleshy orb.

"Come," he commanded one of the saimyoushou. When the massive bee flew to its master, the orb was pressed against its body and absorbed into it. The saimyoushou glowed red for a moment, but afterwards looked no different from the others.

"Do you have a plan to get rid of him, Master Naraku?"

"Yes, Kanna, quite a simple one," he replied as he placed the lid back on the cask. "If Sesshoumaru will not die by my hands, then I shall have Inuyasha take care of him for me…"

AN: Okay... so it took more than the intended week, but this chapter is a lot longer than most of my other ones... maybe even the longest of all. First of all, I had some terrible writer's block going into the battle scene. Second, I absolutely and completely SUCK at writing battle scenes. (if anyone out there has battle tips, please tell me..) Doubly screwed, and I still finished it in a little over a week. For me, that's actually pretty good... And that's why I can never be a professional writer. I just can't work with deadlines, even self-set ones. Sigh.

It still needs a lot of work, if you ask me, but I've already altered the battle scene three times... And there's no way I'm rewriting anything again. It took me this long just to make it somewhat acceptable. Also, I haven't had as much time to edit and revise as I usually do, so it sucks all the more for it, but I'll probably come back to it later and fix it up a bit. For now though, I feel like stabbing it, and I never want to look at the damned chapter again.

Needless to say, the next update is gonna be more than a week in coming. I need to get my brain off this fic for a while.. (falls out of chair and passes out on the floor) Until then, feel free to review, even if that means bitching about how bad the battle scene is. The RR&R policy (read, review, & recommend) still stands. Authoresses are often motivated to get off their lazy butts and write if they get reviews.. -hint hint-