New chapter! Sorry it's short. I think making them eight pages long is part of the reason for the quality decline. But baf has been posting, and I really must keep up!

HURRAY! WE'VE PASSED A HUNDRED REVIEWS! EVEN IF SOME OF THEM ARE THINGS LIKE SILVERFINGERS RESPONDING TO REVIEWS, FROM BEFORE THE REVIEW REPLY FUNCTION WAS INSTALLED! YAY! Everybody gets one of the cupcakes I just took out of the oven, 'cause you're cool people. Oh, and welcome, Al's-best-friend, since you made the 100th review.

Dedication: This one's for Helen, even if she does keep insisting I'm a vampire.

Disclaimer: Inuyasha, Miroku, Sango, Shippou, Kagome, Kouga, Ginta, Hakkaku, Kagura, and Naraku are the property of Rumiko Takahashi-sensei, as is this interpretation of the Sengoku Jidai. I claim literary rights to Aerie, Trisak, Kileb, Erisu, the wolves, and Yanagi.

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Kouga turned out not to take much finding. He had left a trail in his rush toward them and back, and by the time they were halfway there Shippou and Kirara could both smell wolf.

And no wonder. Kouga came into view below them amid what was more or less a sea of fur. Nearly three hundred wolves. What were they eating? Sango wondered, and tried not to think queasily of the massacred villages they had first located Kouga in. Surely he wasn't feeding his wolves human, she told herself, there weren't even any around here. She turned her thoughts forcibly back to the sheer numbers. Half Japan must have lost its wolf population by now.

"Well, look at it this way," she said, craning her neck to look downward, "they'll be able to dig through a mountain in no time at all."

"But there's hundreds of them, Sango! They won't all be able to reach!" exclaimed the pink globe which floated beside them, beginning to bounce slowly up and down on Sango's head. Shippou had transformed to lessen the weight on poor Kirara, who was not used to carrying three, but he seemed to have forgotten this.

"I wonder what Kouga's done to the ecology by dragging them along," murmured Kagome. Aerie tended to rub off on people.

As soon as Kirara had settled gratefully onto a high rock and they had both slid off her back, Kagome set off in Kouga's direction, threading her way through the crowd of wolves. They ignored her, although a few of them eyed her friends not without interest.

"Uhm, Kagome?" Sango called. "Are you sure that's safe?"

"No!" she called back. "Tell me if it looks like anyone's going to try to eat me!"

Kouga had looked around at the sound of Kagome's name. It would have been fairly amazing that he had failed to notice a giant flaming feline descending from on high, except that he was standing, feet braced, between two large, angry wolves, holding them apart through brute strength and apparently reprimanding them soundly. "Kagome!" he called over his shoulder. "Welcome! Where's dog-breath? Just let me finish up here and I'll be right with you!" he went on, not waiting for an answer. He went back to the wolves. They were beginning to look penitent as Kagome approached him from behind. "And don't let me see you doing anything like that again, you understand?" he said, looking from one to the other. "No fighting. We all know I'm the head of this pack, right?" The two wolves, either of whom could have taken Kagome's head off in one bite, whined agreement. Kouga let go of them and they slunk away looking shamefaced. "Now, Kagome, I'm so pleased to see you," he said, spinning and taking her hand without missing a beat.

Kagome wondered how to point out that his right hand, which had been holding the more russet-coated wolf by the jaw, was still covered in wolf slobber. There didn't seem to be a good way to say this, so she tried to ignore it and smile at him. She needed his help, after all. "Nice to see you too, Kouga," she said.

"Of course it is," he said, looking pleased. "Oh, and you brought some of your friends," he added, looking over her shoulder at the rock, where Shippou had just decided to stop being a giant beach ball with teeth. "Well, I guess we can make room for them if you really want me to, Kagome. Have you finally got tired of looking after the puppy and come to stay?"

"Well, not exactly, Kouga," said Kagome, looking as sad about this as she dared without encouraging him too much. "It's actually about Inuyasha that I'm here."

"What's he done now? He just doesn't know how to appreciate a beautiful woman. I'll settle him!"

Kagome, predictably, blushed. "Oh, no, that's all right, Kouga. I really wish you two wouldn't fight."

Kouga's chest inflated a little further. "Well, anything for you, you know that. I won't hurt the puppy unless he starts it, I promise."

"Amazing," Sango remarked to Shippou. "How does she do it? She's got him eating out of her hand."

"I eat out of her hand, too, when she brings back candy," Shippou said. "I hope she doesn't give him any…"

"Thank you, Kouga," said Kagome, her voice dripping flattery, "you're always so reasonable. I was wondering if you could do me a favour…."

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"What are we digging for, again?" Ginta asked Hakkaku, dumping another load of rocks. The slope was thick with enthusiastically excavating wolves. Kouga had them working in loosely defined shifts; when he noticed them getting tired he'd shout for a new crew. Ginta and Hakkaku hadn't gotten time off yet.

"The hanyou, remember?"

"Well, yeah, but why are we trying to get him out? I mean, it's not like we're friends with him or anything…"

"But I'm going to kill him, not any old load of rocks," said Kouga, sliding down the slope with a boulder held over his head. Ginta and Hakkaku leapt out of the way as it came thudding down. "Besides," he added more quietly, looking over at Kagome, who was perched on top of a giant stone, handing smaller ones down to Sango, who handed them to Shippou, who staggered down the hill with them and dropped them on the growing pile of rocks-no-longer-on-top-of-Inuyasha-Miroku-Aerie-and-Trisak, "if he's dead she'll have to see a body before she'll forget about him, won't she?"

"Oh," said Ginta. "OK."

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Thok. Thok. Thok. Thok. Thok. Thok. Thok. Thok. Thok. Thok. Thok.

"What the hell are you doing, wench?" Inuyasha demanded finally.

Aerie looked over at him, somewhat startled. "Carving," she said, holding up the small knife and rock she had been using as hammer and chisel for proof. "I think this wall is a slab of limestone," she explained. "See?" Inuyasha bent down to see. Aerie had, after numerous false starts, produced a witchlight like the one Trisak had had, although Inuyasha was getting tired of everything being shades of purple.

She had carved a few stars and spirals and a handprint, then hammered out three foot-high figures that looked vaguely like the three of them, and put speech bubbles over their heads. Inuyasha, unable to read the English, looked at her suspiciously but couldn't actually pin her down for anything. She gave him a look of complete innocence and went back to carving.

Inuyasha went back to pacing. One. Two. Three. Step over Miroku, four. Five. Six. Seven. Roof's too low to stand up anymore but if you hunch over eight, nine, turn around and start over again. One. Two. Three… "Aarrrrrrrrrgh!" he growled, the noise reverberating in the small space.

Miroku rolled over, then sat up. "D'you have to do that, Inuyasha?" he asked drowsily, rubbing the back of his head. His recently cropped hair, mussed by the forty-seven times he had already rolled over trying to find a comfortable spot on the rocks, was starting to stand up, making him look like some sort of black dandelion. "Some people want to sleep."

"How can you sleep at a time like this?" Inuyasha demanded.

"Better than worrying, isn't it?"

"Nothing we can do," Aerie agreed. "Besides, it saves air. Who knows how much we've got left?"

"And that's something else to worry about," muttered the hanyou, throwing himself down in a corner and crossing his arms. One thing the space they were trapped in did have was an abundance of corners. Various chunks of stone and dangerously bulging heaps of rocks made up seven uneven walls, while the ceiling was comprised of two separate slabs, wedged up partially by Miroku's staff and the Tetsusaiga. "You sure you can't suck the ceiling down your hellhole as soon as I grab Tetsusaiga?" he asked one more time.

"If you pull out your sword, we'll be crushed from every direction," Miroku told him patiently. "I can only face one way. Please excuse me, I'm going back to sleep. You still can't eat me." He flopped over sideways, remarked "ow," and then did indeed appear to become dead to the world.

I can't believe we're just sitting here waiting to be rescued, Inuyasha thought. This is not how I do things. What if they've decided we have to be dead and gone away? He sighed. OK, so Kagome wouldn't do that. But she also can't dig us out of here all by herself. Even with Sango and her cat helping, it'll take them a thousand years to get to us. Blast it, I feel so helpless! He raised his fist to punch the wall, then thought better of it and put the hand back in his lap. Steady, steady. He wasn't ready to commit suicide yet by any means.

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"You squished them?" said Kileb, his eyebrows slightly raised, his mouth graced by a cheerful smile reminiscent of the one Hiten had worn just before punching through a woman's face. "The girl and the one with wings, too? I had particularly wanted to pay my respects to dear old Trisak."

"You completely ignored him yesterday," said Naraku boredly. He had resolved not to celebrate Inuyasha's death-by-rocks until he was quite certain, since one of the most embarrassing things that can happen to a villain is to have the hero come slicing his way into the celebration of his own demise.

Kileb made an irritated hissing noise and seemed to decide not to bother getting angry at Naraku. "Of course I did. That was to annoy him. He always did love to be the center of attention," he said scathingly, with a certain irony which he did not appear to notice, although Naraku did. "Anyway, now you've squished him and he's gotten away from me," he continued, pouting slightly. His ability to rapidly and totally shift emotional states was something that never ceased to astound Naraku. "I do hope the girl isn't dead already. It would be so anticlimactic." The redhead heaved a deep sigh and leaned back on his cushions. Naraku continued to sit in the region of deepest shadow. They held this silent tableau for some minutes, before Kileb bounced into a sitting position again. "Oooh!" he said. "You'll never guess!"

"What will I not guess?" asked Naraku.

"Guess!"

"You have decided to join a whorehouse and become an oiran," said Naraku sarcastically, somehow managing to indicate that he did not find this such an unlikely thing for Kileb to decide. To achieve, possibly.

Kileb drew himself up. "I beg your pardon," he said haughtily. "Do I look to you like a woman of easy virtue? Don't answer that," he added, flopping backward. "No, I have not decided anything of the kind." He rummaged under a cushion and pulled out a floppy object. "I've got bagpipes!"

Naraku did all he could not to flinch. "I hope you understand that there is no chance of my playing those," he said.

"Aw, come on!"

"No."

"Pleeeeease?"

"No!"

Yanagi edged away slowly from the peeking hole. This was not good. All plans would have to be postponed until they knew whether the dog and his squad were still alive. And if they weren't, everything would have to be rearranged. Everything hinged on getting them into the castle before everyone died. She would have to start plotting again now, just in case the hanyou never came out again. Curse it all, she needed him! He had better not have gotten himself killed.

She hurried down to the kitchen. The cook and Erisu were alone in it at this hour. Erisu was bent over some kind of dry root, patiently grating it. "Erisu?" she said.

Erisu looked up. "Yes?"

"We need to arrange twenty-four hour surveillance up there. We can't afford to miss anything anymore. There've been some unexpected developments, so head up the north side and get everybody who's there. I'll take the south."

"Alright, General," said Erisu wearily, standing up and putting the roots aside. She turned around suddenly. "Yanagi?" she asked. "Look, I know you're much cleverer than I am, but…are you sure this will work? I mean, are you sure it's worth all this work? Mightn't it be better to just forget about it?"

Yanagi sighed inside. Oh, dear. She started to give Erisu a pep talk, then stopped. After all, it was only the two of them. She didn't have to worry about keeping the group together, and Erisu deserved not to be treated like a child. Child? Yanagi was irritated with herself. Erisu was ten years older than Yanagi. If anything it should be the other way round. "No," she said, "I'm not entirely sure it will work. Things go wrong. No one's ever tried what we're doing before. But am I sure it's worth it? Completely. If we let ourselves give up, we're nothing. The youkai think we're spineless worms. I don't think we should let them be right."

"Lovely speech," commented Kagura from the door. "Did I hear you're calling a meeting? Might interest you to know that I've got to take the unpronounceable blonde out to the cave where Naraku thinks he's squashed the dog for surveillance, so I'll be gone for a while."

"Thank you, Kagura."

"Don't mention it. Especially around Naraku."

"As if I ever speak around him."

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"Time to call it a night, wouldn't you agree, Kagome?" asked Kouga. The sun had sunk an hour ago, and work was proceeding by two days' waxing worth of moon, which was quite a thin sliver. Ginta, Hakkaku, Shippou, and most of the wolves had drifted off to a flattish spot not too far away to sleep. (There had been a brief and almost very unpleasant incident before Kouga explained to the pack that Shippou was neither available for consumption nor a furry toy.) Kagome could barely stay upright, although she was still attempting to move stones, and Sango seemed to have achieved the feat of falling asleep on her feet, mechanically carrying stones to where they needed to be without seeming to be aware of her surroundings, except when her grip occasionally slipped and she dropped a rock on her toe. Kirara's pads were bleeding slightly.

"But they could still be down there…could suffocate," Kagome protested.

"But you can't do them any good if you kill yourself, can you?" asked Kouga. "The job's half done. Come, my beauty, it's time for you to sleep." He swept her up in his arms and she struggled.

"Hey…too familiar," she said thickly. The last time he had picked her up, he had been kidnapping her, and had thrown her over his shoulder. She was not much happier about it this time.

"Oh, very well," he said grumpily, setting her down. "Remember, though, Kagome, you're still my woman."

"Whatever." She had to admit to herself, though, that he was right. Not about her being his woman, of course, about it being time to rest.

She tottered over to Sango. "Sango, time to stop," she said. When this produced no response, she poked the woman in the arm. "Sango?" She gripped the arm and shook it slightly. "Sango?" The taijiya twitched, jerking away, overbalanced, clutched at Kagome for support (no one has very much experience at waking up standing on a hill; it can muddle the best of us) and brought the both of them tumbling head over heels down the slope.

"Na?" said Sango in confusion, only half-awake. She possessed just the presence of mind to curl herself up into a defensive ball, although she wasn't sure what was going on, and to let go of Kagome so she could fall on her own.

"Ow! Agh! Ow! Yah! Ow! Ow! Ow!" said Kagome, before she fetched up against a large boulder. Sango continued to the bottom and stayed where she was, waiting for the dizziness to go away. "Mom, I think the gate at the top of the shrine steps is broken again," said Kagome vaguely, reliving a childhood occasion on which she had fallen down those long steps. "Don't let Grampa fix it this time. I think he forgot the bit where you fasten things together."

"Definitely time for bed," said Kouga, and he and Kirara helped the muddled humans over to the flattish bit. Kouga couldn't have been more pleased. Surely Kagome would see that he was better than the puppy! Several minutes later he retreated with a slap mark on his face.

"You alright, Kouga?" asked Hakkaku, roused by the earlier hullabaloo.

"Fine," he growled, setting off to look for a place of his own to sleep. "My Kagome's just a little feisty. What're you looking at?"

"Nothing, Prince Kouga! Nothing!"

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Heh. And that's that. D'you know, during the first draft of the beginning of that I got confused and had Miroku with the folks on Kirara? It's so hard to separate him from Sango and Shippou in my head these days! Then he was in the scene underground and I went 'waaaaait…' Because unless he had recently mastered the trick of being in two places at once, something wasn't right.

:Chibi Naraku runs past, hotly pursued by Kileb with bagpipes:

And, you know, I'm really thinking maybe the only reason Kileb hasn't 'gotten mad' at Naraku yet is because not doing it is so much the worse punishment… Hehehehe….

Trisak: Can I co-host your author's notes while I'm MIA in the story?

TrisakA: Uhm…sure.

Trisak: Right, folks, and here we are in the Sengoku Jidai. I'm Trisak the Amadaun, here with my co-host

Trisak Aminawn. Well, the drama's cooling but Inuyasha, Aerie, and the monk are buried alive, and poor defenseless Kagome is left with Prince Kouga of the wolf clan. What do you think, mon Ami?

TrisakA: I think that I changed my mind. Gimmee that microphone!