Hey all! Bwahaha! I have not yet disappeared into the dark regions of time and space! -Clears throat- I mean, uh... Here's an update!

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha, I only own the figment that is his fictional daughter which is totally made up... duh...

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It was now, nightfall, and Kagome and the others were still waiting for the return of Kaede and InuYasha.

"Where could they have gotten to that would take so long?" Kagome asked.

"Perhaps we should go searching for them ourselves?" Miroku pondered aloud.

"Yeah, I have a bad feeling about this. Kirara!" Sango commented and then called for the demon cat.

Kirara transformed and Sango and Miroku hopped aboard her.

"Kagome, stay here and wait for InuYasha and Kaede, and we'll go look for them," Miroku suggested.

"All right, you guys be careful!" Kagome said as she waved them off.

"So what do we do now?" young Shippo asked with tired eyes.

"Well, the man that we talked to earlier offered us a place to stay for the night, maybe we should take him up on his offer and wait this thing out. What do you say?" she asked cheerfully.

"Sounds good to me!" Shippo said jumping up into her arms.

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"I think Kaede went this way," Sango thought aloud.

"It's too bad that we don't have either InuYasha or Kaede with us, otherwise we would be able to have them found by scent alone," Miroku commented.

"Yeah, we'd probably cut our search time in half if we had either of them here to help... I wonder why they're taking so long though? Something's not right," Sango added

"I agree. We have to find them and fast. I have a bad feeling about this..." Miroku said sullenly.

"Can you sense any demonic aura's?" Sango asked as she and Miroku flew towards where Kaede had gone off to.

"I can't sense much... I believe that we should head in that direction! It seems that's where the aura is emanating from," he pointed in a northern direction.

"Right! Let's go Kirara!" Sango ordered and the demon cat as she shifted directions and flew off.

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Kaede was still running and destroying the spider demons that were trying to capture her. With every swing at another demon the girl was growing more and more frustrated. As she thought she would be escaping another demon would appear and would force her to slow down in order to destroy it and move on, then other demons would catch back up with her and she would have to battle with them.

Just as Kaede thought she was clear of the demons, she sensed a jewel shard move quickly in front of her and she came to a screeching halt.

"You are incredibly fast! But it did not help the half-demon, and it will not help you!" the demon yelled as it sprayed webbing at the girl.

Kaede managed to move quickly out of the path of the web and then asked, "What half-demon would you be referring to?!"

The spider demon chuckled and said, "Of course, you know the other one, he smells very similar to you!"

"You mean Inuyasha?" Kaede asked, now worried.

"Yes, I got word from some of my underlings, not long ago, they he had started to wage battle with them, and wasn't doing very well," the demon taunted.

Kaede held up her sword at the demon and then said with a smirk, "Well then I guess I'll just kill you, get your shard and go and help him won't I?!"

Kaede jumped up and swung her sword at the demon and it moved out of the way just barely, almost not able to move fast enough and was just barely sliced by the blade.

"Damn you! You won't get anything from me!" The demon jumped to attack at Kaede, shooting webbing at her and then preparing it's fangs to bite.

Kaede easily avoided the beast and then yelled, "Enough playing around! I don't have time for this!"

She jumped up in the air and drew her sword back and yelled, "WIND SCAR!"

The wave tore into the demon as it growled in anger and in pain.

"DAMN YOU!" the demon yelled as it's body was torn and shredded into nothing.

Kaede felt the aura of the other spider demons catching up to her and she quickly sheathed the Tetsusaiga and ran to grab the jewel shard. Before she took it upon herself to take the shard she stopped and noticed that it was tainted with the malice of pure evil.

"Naraku must have loaned him this shard. I better get it before one of his insects do!"

Kaede picked up the shard and with her spiritual energy, automatically purified it. It's light turned from pure black to a bright purple color and the girl put it away in her kimono. Just as she was ready to leave, the other demons managed to smash down on her almost from out of nowhere.

"IRON REAVER SOUL STEALER!" Kaede threw her clawed technique at the demons and managed to destroy them easily.

"See you later!" Kaede taunted as she took off in a new direction.

Before making a complete getaway, one of the spiders shot out some webbing and managed to entangle the girls' fast moving legs in it. Kaede tripped and at the speed she was running rolled onto the ground and slid on her stomach harshly until coming to an abrupt halt. She quickly sat up and started to slash at the webbing, destroying it enough to where she could almost get back up and run. As she did this, another demon approached and shot webbing at her left arm, encasing it in the thick, sticky substance.

"Damn!" Kaede yelled getting frustrated as she concentrated her efforts into getting the webbing off of her arm.

The demons stood together and all at once shot some of their web at the girl.

Kaede managed to move and miss being hit by most of it, but her legs were, once again, tangled and her arms were practically unable to move. One of the demons lunged forward from behind Kaede as she tried her best to shred the webbing. It bore it's fangs and moved in to bit the girl.

"HIRAIKOTSU!" a voice yelled as a giant boomerang came out of nowhere and chopped off the head of the demon that was about to bite Kaede.

"Sango! Miroku!" Kaede shouted happily as she saw them fly to her and land.

Sango and Kirara turned to the demons to battle them as Miroku ran to Kaede, who was now lying helplessly on the ground.

"Are you hurt?" Miroku asked as he began to use his staff to help him rip the web substance away from the girls' body.

"I'm fine, just help me get this crap off of me!" Kaede said frustrated.

Sango and Kirara were able to fend off the spiders long enough for Miroku to aid Kaede.

"I've never seen this many spider demons in the same area! How is this possible?!" Miroku asked as he prepared for battle alongside Sango.

"It's another trick of Naraku's! He's somehow multiplied these demons and enhanced them! You'll never defeat them all because it's almost as if there's a never-ending supply of them!" Kaede explained.

"Well we have to at least try!" Sango prepared her Hiraikotsu for another blow to another demon.

"We can't waste that kind of time!" Kaede yelled angrily.

"What's wrong Kaede?" Miroku asked.

"Dad might be in trouble and I have to find him! I can't stay here and play around with these damn things all year!" Kaede explained in frustration.

"What?! InuYasha is in trouble?" Sango became very worried.

"It's clear that we cannot stay here, Sango! We should leave quickly!" Miroku stated as he put his hand with the wind tunnel up.

"Right! Kirara!" Sango shouted.

The demon cat flew over to behind Sango and Miroku and the monk unraveled the beads from around his hand and released his wind tunnel. The spider demons flew into his hand by the thousands, and still did not stop.

"I told you that they're never going to end! You're not going to solve anything this way!" Kaede informed the two fighters.

Miroku let up on his wind tunnel and turned quickly to board Kirara along with Sango.

"Hurry Kaede! Get on before the demons reappear!" Sango demanded.

Kaede scoffed and said, "I can run on my own!"

Miroku hit Kaede on the head with his staff and pulled her aboard the back of the demon cat as they flew off into the night air. Just as they did, more spider demons appeared and engulfed the area that they had been in.

"What the hell was that for?!" Kaede shouted at the monk, rubbing her sore head.

"There are many things that we should discuss about your favoring to run away from us. But first we have to ask that you try and sense out InuYasha before we lose the chance to aid him!" Miroku barked orders.

Kaede was almost ready to knock the monk from there to next Tuesday but she realized that she was the only one that might have been able to locate her father. She lifted her head and used her keen sense of smell to inhale the air, at the same time trying to sense her father's own demonic aura.

"It's faint... Very faint! But I think I can sense him over there!" Kaede pointed.

"Are you sure?" Sango asked.

"Yeah, I could feel the ground shake earlier from that direction, and I believed it to be from his Wind Scar technique. It's definitely him!" Kaede reassured the two.

"Let's go then!" Sango ordered Kirara.

"Now then, we need to come to an understanding about something Kaede. We need to know if you plan on leaving us every time you want to fight a demon!" Miroku commented.

"Look, if this is about earlier-" Kaede began before she was once more hit over the head by Miroku's staff.

"This isn't about just one specific time. This is about you taking the chance to leave us whenever you please, leaving us and yourself at a possible disadvantage if a battle ensues. Every time that you take a chance like that, you're not only endangering yourself, you're worrying everyone else. And we can't focus on battling very well when we're wondering what's happening to you," Miroku explained.

Kaede's face was blood red with anger but she tried to stay calm.

"Then DON'T... Easily solved..." she seethed.

Miroku, once again, knocked the girl over the head with his staff, "That's not an option that we can afford unfortunately."

"WOULD YOU STOP WITH THE HITTING-ME-OVER-THE-HEAD-WITH-THE-STAFF THING!" Kaede screeched in agony, holding her bruised skull.

"Maybe you should take it easy on her Miroku," Sango suggested.

"Nonsense. She may be a woman, but she is also a demon, and she can afford a few bumps to the head easier than a human could. She'll be fine!" Miroku said cheerfully.

"I like Sango's idea!" Kaede whined.

"Sometimes brute force is the only way to make a point," Miroku explained.

"Look! I'm not dense like my dad is. I understand the consequences of what I do. But what you need to understand is that I've always just gone my own way, and that's the best way that I work," Kaede explained, still rubbing the bumps on her head.

"If you understand the consequences, then you already know how sick you had made Kagome when you left," Miroku added.

"Sick? What do you mean?" Kaede was a little confused, Kagome smelled okay when she got back so what could they mean?

"Yes, for the first two days that you were gone, she was so worried that she became very ill. She was lucky that the unborn version of you didn't fall ill as well, otherwise you may not be here with us right now," he continued.

"I...I didn't know that she was sick..." Kaede was shocked that no one had told her this.

"Yes... InuYasha spent most of his time at the well waiting, and Kagome worried herself into being ill. It took her until the night before you returned for her to be well again," Miroku explained softly.

Kaede didn't know how to justify a response to learning this bit of information. Her mind was shaken from thought when Sango announced, "Look! A large vast amounts of spider demons! That must be where the nest is!"

Kaede looked up and saw what Sango was pointing to.

"Yeah, I can definitely smell him now. InuYasha is right down there!" she said pointing to a portion of the web.

Standing up on Kirara's back, Kaede stood with her hand on the hilt of the Tetsusaiga.

"What are you doing?!" Miroku asked.

"You guys do what you have to do, and I'll do what I have to do!" she said as she dove off of the demon cat.

"Kaede!" Sango yelled after her.

"We've got our own problems right now, Sango!" Miroku said pointing at the band of spider demons ready to pounce at them.

Kaede landed in some of the trees, above which seemed to be where the bodies of the demons' victims were wrapped in webbing. She smelt around for a moment before looking over one that had a familiar scent. She jumped from the trees and landed next to the large ball of web.

"It almost looks as if there's more parts of a web attached to dad... That must be how they're draining his powers!" Kaede suddenly realized and raised her hand up in the air.

"IRON REAVER SOUL STEALER!" Kaede shouted as she swung her claws and broke through the web cocoon.

"What's this?!" Kaede looked at her father as he fell out of his prison and she caught him.

"He's... He's human?!" the confused girl looked down at her young, sleeping father.

Kaede looked to the night sky and then looked back to InuYasha and said, "Dummy, you should have known, full well, not to go off by yourself into the night if it was your period of weakness..."

The girl loaded her father onto her back and then heard a pained growl from a familiar demon.

"Kirara?" Kaede asked herself and then jumped to the tops of the trees and looked to see what was going on.

Kirara fell from the sky, to the ground, hitting it at full speed and then transformed back into her small cat state. Kaede was shocked and gasped. She then looked back up and saw Sango and Miroku following the same path to the ground and jumped from the tree branches at such a frantic pounce that the branches actually broke off completely and the tree bent halfway over. The girl jumped to the aid of Sango and grabbed her first, throwing her over her left shoulder, and then fell a few feet and grabbed up Miroku, throwing him over her right shoulder. She landed near where Kirara was and put her friends down on the ground, the demon cat regaining some sense of herself and standing back up on her feet. Kaede could hear the spider demons approaching quickly and she looked down at her unconscious comrades.

"Kirara... Take them... Take them and hurry away from here... Keep them and yourself safe... Please..." Kaede said, her head hanging and her fists clamping so hard that her claws drew blood from her hands.

Kirara looked to Kaede and gave a heartfelt "meow".

"Please Kirara! Hurry!" Kaede pleaded with the demon cat.

The cat then transformed into her larger form and Kaede loaded the three friends onto her back. Before Kirara took off, one of the three awoke.

"...K...Kaede? Is that...you?" a pained InuYasha looked up at the girl.

Kirara flew off, and InuYasha's blurred vision saw the image of Kaede unsheathing the Tetsusaiga and jumping towards many spider demons, who were also lunging at the girl.

"No... Kaede..." and he was unconscious once more.

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It was nearly sunrise and Kagome had been sleeping well until just then. She awoke with worry in her heart and carefully removed the sheets from her without waking the young Shippo. The girl walked outside into the darkness and looked around. She didn't see anything but, for some reason, she knew that something was wrong.

"Where are you guys? You should have been back by now..." Kagome thought sadly.

Just as she was about to turn and walk back into the hut, she heard the growl of a familiar demon. Looking around, Kagome finally spotted the demon cat, Kirara flying back to the village. She gave a wide smile and waved to the cat.

"Hey! Kirara! There you guys are! Where have you -" Kagome began.

Before her smile had a chance to flourish into a relieved face, she saw the unconscious bodies of Sango, Miroko, and InuYasha. Kirara landed and ran to Kagome, showing her the three on her back.

"Oh no! Guys! InuYasha, wake up! Come on Kirara, we have to get them back to the hut!" Kagome asked, looking at the demon cat's own wounds.

After doing some of her healing, Kagome had managed to wake Sango and Miroku and was now tending to InuYasha's wounds.

"The demons were far more fierce than we had expected them to be. There was no way that we would have defeated them. After we were knocked out, I suppose Kirara managed to get us away from there," Miroku explained.

"But what happened to Kaede?" Kagome asked worried.

"I'm not sure. One minute we were fighting demons and being knocked away, and the next we were here. Only Kirara really knows what happened," Sango replied.

Just then a hand grabbed Kagome's arm and she gasped and turned to see it.

"InuYasha! You're awake!" Kagome said cheerfully.

The human boy sat up and gritted his teeth in pain.

"She's... still out there! We have to...go get her!" he spoke.

"Stay still, you're injured!" Kagome scolded.

InuYasha moved his feet as though he were going to stand.

"She's right, InuYasha!" Miroku began, "Kirara is injured, as are yourself along with Sango and I. How do you think that we could get there right now? I'm afraid that Kaede is on her own for right now."

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"WIND SCAR!" Kaede yelled as she swung her sword.

Even though she was more than three quarters demon, Kaede had been fighting for hours and she was growing tired. Although she knew this, she also knew that making a getaway was out of the question. If she were to leave now, the demons would ultimately pursue her and attack the village where her friends and family currently resided. She had to see this battle to the end.

"WIND SCAR!" she shouted again, destroying one hundred more demons with one stroke of the sword.

"I've got to finish this! I can't let anyone get hurt because I ran from them!" Kaede reasoned to herself as to why she couldn't just let this go.

Kaede mowed down more and more demons as she lunged forward more and more, destroying every disgusting spider that she could. As she did this, she noticed that all of the demons were coming from the same direction.

"Something's not right here!" Kaede realized.

"WIND SCAR!" she yelled one more time before sheathing the Tetsusaiga and jumping into the highest trees.

Kaede took off towards the direction that the spider demons were coming from and as she did this, the demons that she passed turned to follow her. She sped off as quickly as possible, avoiding attacks from the demons as they climbed the trees to grab at her. After traveling this way for just a few minutes, Kaede finally came upon something very interesting.

"Is that... Is that a rat demon shrine?!" Kaede asked herself.

A much larger version of a rat demon shrine stood in the middle of a small clearing. It was being lit up by the, now, rising sun. Spider demons were pouring out of it by the thousands.

Kaede smirked and unsheathed her sword saying to herself, "If I destroy that shrine, I can finish off all of these demons and be done with it all!"

Jumping from the tops of the trees, Kaede readied her sword for the attack.

"WIND SCA-" however she was cut off by several of the spiders rushing to her and spraying her with their webbing.

Kaede lost grip on the Tetsusaiga and it fell to the ground, transforming back into it's neutral state.

The girl was covered with the web substance and she thought that it was going to be then end just then when she heard a voice.

"So you thought that you could destroy us?!" the voice of a spider demon sounded off.

"What?!" Kaede looked around herself to see the largest spider demon that she had ever seen.

"You're friends couldn't get away, and neither will you!" the demon chuckled as it approached closer to the girl.

"What the hell are you talking about?! My friends are long gone from here!" Kaede was confused, she could have sworn that the scents of her friends had fled hours ago.

"You may only believe that they had escaped, but not long after they fled, we captured them and killed them!" the demon explained proudly.

Kaede struggled against the tight hold that the web had on her and shouted, "I don't believe you!"

"Oh really? You don't believe that we killed three unconscious humans and a demon feline?! Well perhaps when we kill you, and you rejoin them in death, then you'll finally understand how weak you and they really are!" The demon said as he watched his underlings wrap the girl in the sturdy material.

"And after we kill you! We will go to the village in which your other friends are and kill them as well! We will have defeated you as easily as Naraku said we would!" The demon laughed uncontrollably.

Kaede's anger grew in intensity. She looked to the ground and saw the Tetsusaiga, untouched, and then looked to the shrine in which more and more demons were emerging from, and then thought of how they could actually kill everyone in the village, and how her friends and father may have met their early death. She began to growl in anger and her body quaked with power.

"What's this?!" the demon stopped his laughing and looked down at the girl, whose body began to pulse as it was completely wrapped up into a web ball.

"You're...not going...to kill me... NOT HERE, NOT EVER!" Kaede shouted as she ripped the hardening substance from her body as if it were nothing more than a thin paper.

"What?! How are you doing this?!" the demon shouted as it's shocked expression grew amongst the other spider demons.

Kaede had been looking down to the ground but now she looked up from the black bangs of hair that hung over her face. Her eyes had turned red, the pupils were beady and blue. She had four purple streaks across her cheeks, two on each side. Her body pulsed again and her hair changed from dark black, to silver, dog ears appeared in place of her small, pointed human ears.

"What are you waiting for?! Kill her NOW!" The giant spider demon ordered and the smaller ones lunged at the girl, burying her in piles of themselves.

The larger demon smiled once more and chuckled saying, "You never had a chance at winning!"

The demon began to laugh once again, until he felt the pulsing from under the pile of demons, "What's this now?! She couldn't possibly have lived through that!"

The smaller spider demons exploded from the pile that they had formed over the girl and they were destroyed easily. The explosion settled and the larger demon looked to see Kaede standing, just as she had before the demons had covered her.

"Damn you, wretch! I will destroy you!" The large demon announced as it rushed at the girl, who wasn't moving.

"Prepare to die!" the demon said as it approached within inches of Kaede.

The full demon woman raised a single hand, which bore claws that had extended and as the demon was about to kill her. Kaede swung the one hand with a small, swift motion, and the demon fell to the ground, sliced and shredded to death. The woman looked to the demon and then back to the rows and rows of other spiders which surrounded her.

"...Let's do this..." Kaede growled in a dangerous tone before she jumped up and started slashing away at the demons, killing them as she made it towards the large shrine, destroying it just as easily and killing off the only way that the demons could have overcome her as a three-fourths demon.

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Chapter Teaser!

"Wait a minute... Kagome," InuYasha called.

Kagome turned back towards him and said, "What is it?"

InuYasha gave the girl a firm and concerned look and asked, "Do you still have those prayer beads?"

Kagome opened a little pocket in her backpack and found the small cloth, holding the separated beads.

"Yeah, here they are," Kagome replied looking at InuYasha and wondering what he was wanting.

"Keep them close at hand... You might find a use for them in a few minutes..." InuYasha said quietly.