"Why? Why go through all of this?" Rosalie asked Sesshōmaru.

The strange man didn't reply. Instead, he continued to stare at the small girl. He took in everything he was seeing.

She was small, but stature didn't signify anything in their world. Her hair was as light as starlight and as soft as silk. Yet the curls seemed to be fighting for dominance over each other. Her face had a scratch on her cheek, partially healed. Who was this being who had invaded his life?

"Stay away from my brother. He destroys without cause. He simply cares for nothing in this world other than himself."

Rosalie stomped her hiking boot covered foot. "That's not completely true, now, is it? He cares a lot for the fake mother you brought him."

"Tch, he has always cared for things that do not matter."

"Your opinion doesn't make things law" Rosalie continued to argue. She glanced to the side where Kagome was wrapped up in chains, eyes open but unseeing. She saw that the old flea man was busy standing on Kagome's shoulder. Deciding not to bring attention to the little man, she continued her banter with the tall, dark, and mysterious asshole in front of her.

She also chose to ignore the heavily beating heart within her chest.

"Stay away from my brother. That is an order."

Rosalie laughed, throwing her head back at the ridiculousness of the statement. "An order? And who are you to order me around? You don't pay my bills, or take care of me, or have any sort of control over me. You aren't my father."

"No, I am none of those things" Sesshōmaru stated with a nearly imperceptible sigh. "This Sesshōmaru thought you were smart. A mistake was clearly made."

Suddenly a sound of a slap echoed through the clearing. Rosalie turned her head towards the sound, only to see that Kagome had woken from her silent vigil to slap at the flea man who had apparently taken advantage of the situation and tried to drink some of the poor trapped girl's blood. Kagome sat up, the chains freeing themselves from her, hand still rubbing her left cheek.

"What do you know? I'm less paralyzed than I thought" Kagome announced. Rosalie groaned at how vapid her new friend sounded. Kagome snuck off to find Inuyasha, leaving Rosalie to her conversation. Rosalie figured her friend didn't think twice about her before she left after her non-crush.

Rosalie and Sesshōmaru stared at one another in silence. Rosalie closed her eyes before letting out a sigh and opened her emerald, green eyes to look back up at Sesshōmaru. "I don't know why I'm here. But I have a task, a task I need to finish. So please, let's just not fight."

Sesshōmaru cocked his head sideways at the small girl before moving to walk in a different direction. He never commented on or acknowledged what Rosalie had just stated.

"E-excuse me?" Rosalie called out as he started bounding away with his long stride. "Does that mean you agree with me?"

"It means nothing. Leave this place. Go unnoticed" was the only response Rosalie got. He didn't even face her or slow down as he spoke. He was intent on getting to wherever it was he was heading.

Rosalie followed out of curiosity and lack of anything else to do, seeing as everyone else either magically popped away or ran off already.

Rosalie came up over a wooded clearing to find a lake with Inuyasha halfway absorbed into a faceless woman who was wearing his "mother's" clothes and Kagome shouting "sit!" Inuyasha fell from the woman absorbing him into Kagome's arms.

"Oh, Inuyasha! Are you okay?" Kagome asked, holding onto Inuyasha's arms to help stabilize him.

Inuyasha was panting, trying to come to terms with what just happened. "How dare she!" He shouted, sounding offended and hurt. "You pretended to be—I fell for it! I can't believe I thought she was my—"

But Kagome interrupted his rant. "But it was Jaken and your brother Sesshōmaru who—"

Inuyasha, not one to let Kagome interrupt him without a follow up interruption, interjected. "What did you—" but he couldn't finish his question. He groaned from pain or exhaustion, Rosalie wasn't sure which, as Sesshōmaru finally revealed himself to everyone other than herself.

"Inuyasha" Sesshōmaru teased, drawing out his little brother's name. "I know where it is now."

"Sesshōmaru" Inuyasha shouted, but that's all he had time to do before Sesshōmaru somehow sprinted in the blink of an eye over to his smaller younger brother, picking him up by the neck, and holding him in the air to look at him in the eyes. Inuyasha struggled but was unable to free himself. "You. . . Bastard. . ." Inuyasha fought to get out as he was gasping for air, choking on the firm grip his elder brother held his throat with.

Sesshōmaru seemed unfazed by his brother's theatrics. "Of all the places for him to hide it. All this time, beneath our very own noses. Or to be technical, above out very own noses."

Rosalie snorted at the sarcastic correction Sesshōmaru had made. She knew it wasn't the time or place for it, but this all seemed too ridiculous.

Sesshōmaru raised his brother, who was still behind held by his throat in Sesshōmaru's left hand, higher in the air as if his brother weighed nothing. "Right above, on might say. Father was determined to keep it a secret, which is why he chose here to hide it."

"What are you talking about?!" Inuyasha shouted, grasping at his brother with his clawed hands. Sesshōmaru either didn't feel his brother clawing at him, or he simply didn't care. "You're making no sense at all!"

In Sesshōmaru's calm deep sinfully sounding voice he decided to take a small mount of pity on his brother. "Well, then, little brother, since it was obviously done without your knowledge, how would you like to come with me and find out?"

Sesshōmaru stuck out his pointer and middle right finger towards his brother's right eye, and Inuyasha struggled to get away from the long elegantly clawed fingers coming dangerously close to his eye.

Rosalie thought Sesshōmaru was going to rip Inuyasha's eye out but knew there was nothing she could do so far away from everything on the hill she had first seen Inuyasha and Kagome from. Kagome looked equally as scared and tried to get up to pull Inuyasha out of his brother's grasp to no avail.

Inuyasha yelled as lightning appeared to come from his brother's fingers. Inuyasha's yelling got more pained as Sesshōmaru pulled his lightning shooting fingers away from his brother's eye, but the length of the lightning appeared to grow as the distance grew. After a few moments something insane happened.

Sesshōmaru pulled a small ball from Inuyasha's eye. Rosalie couldn't believe her eyes. Another fucking thing pulled from someone that had no business being inside of them. She was going to get an x-ray and any other scan possible once she got home, she decided. Fuck the notion of being an unknowing carrier of mystery gems that cause more issues than they're worth.

Sesshōmaru looked pleased as the lightning receded into his fingertips once more, leaving the small black gem in his hands. He dropped Inuyasha to the ground without a care or even noticing he had dropped his brother. His sole focus was the gem in his hands.

Rosalie had a sinking feeling again that things were about to get much worse. Kagome rushed to Inuyasha's side, as Rosalie finally started sprinting towards the group.

Sesshōmaru started to chuckle as she ran past him. "No wonder searching for it beneath ground was useless. Seeing yet never seen, protected yet never known to its protector. Our father's tomb hidden inside a black pearl deep within your eye."

Inuyasha was still on the ground, holding his hand over his right eye grimacing and shaking with anger. "And all for something like that?!" He shouted up at Sesshōmaru. "You pretended she was my mother!"

Sesshōmaru smirked for reason's unknown to Rosalie. "Hmm…" he said to himself, contemplating something. "You're not amused?"

"No, I'm not. You bastard!" Inuyasha jumped from the ground to try and attacked Sesshōmaru, but Sesshōmaru jumped into the air to avoid his brother's feeble attempts. While in the air, he sent a whip of light towards his brother with his fingertips once more. "Die" he simply said, attempting to whip his brother. Inuyasha tried to jump to evade the light whip several times, but eventually he ran out of energy and was struck, falling hard back onto the ground. Just as Sesshōmaru reared back to land the final strike, something unexpected happened.

The no face mother impersonator jumped in front of Inuyasha, taking the killing blow for him instead. She landed with a dull thud onto the ground, her clothes, now torn from the whip, swaying slowly to the ground.

"The Un-Mother!" the flea man said in surprise.

Kagome, hands over her heard, was shocked. "She gave her own life to protect him."

The old flea man continued his explanation from Kagome's shoulder. "Demon spirit or not, she still had a mother's heart. And isn't protecting her child what a mother can't help but do?"

Rosalie had no answer. She had no real mother that she could tell. But even she couldn't deny the fabricated emotion that must be hurting Inuyasha at this very moment.

"Sesshōmaru, was this your idea of a joke?" Rosalie demanded, tired of seeing the cruelty of everything in this time period.

Sesshōmaru simply ignored her, choosing instead to call out for Jaken, his toady henchmen who proudly displayed his two headed staff once more. Sesshōmaru grabbed the staff and put the black pearl up to his own eye. "At last, the moment has come."

Without fanfare, he simply turned his hand to let the pearl drop onto the ground, where it bounced slightly before settling. Sesshōmaru raised the staff high above his tall head and hit the pearl with the heel of the staff. It released a bright light, and the elderly bearded head of the staff opened its eyes and started to laugh in a crazed manner that made Rosalie's skin crawl.

"The old man laughs!" Jaken announced in wonder, as if anyone needed a narration of the current events. "It means the tomb will open."

The bright light that had been released from the black pearl changed to a purple hue before disappearing back into the pearl and opening a black hole or portal. Rosalie tried to shield her eyes from the inexplicably dark but bright light being released from the swirling portal.

Sesshōmaru and Jaken, without quivering, fell into the portal and were absorbed into its nothingness.

"They're gone!" Kagome whispered loudly.

"The portal! We must move quickly before it's closed." Myoga, the elderly flea man shouted as he hoped from Kagome's shoulder to Inuyasha's. "Do you want your brother to take sole possession of your father's treasure?"

In a surprise turn of events, Inuyasha with a voice thick with anger and resentment, replied "Let him. What do I care?"

"But Sire!" Myoga pleaded, jumping up and down on Inuyasha's shoulder to emphasize his point.

"I never said I'm not going in there, okay?" Inuyasha growled out, teeth clenched. He grabbed his injured right shoulder from the whip wound. "Say your prayers, Sesshōmaru." Growling, he threw his arm comforting his wound to the side dramatically before turning back to the two girls. "You girls stay here! It's too dangerous for you—huh?"

Inuyasha, in his own self-obsessed world, hadn't realized that Kagome and a reluctant Rosalie had already started climbing into the portal.

Shouting over her shoulder, Kagome addressed Inuyasha. "What do you want? An invitation?" she shouted before finishing climbing through the portal and dragging her reluctant curly haired friend with her. They flew, or floated, Rosalie wasn't sure, through space without the drag of gravity. Their surroundings as they floated, arms outstretched as if they were wings, was if it was made of purple smoke with embers floating by. Inuyasha joined them shortly after, having been able to catch up with them somehow in the void.

"You realize Sesshōmaru's there"

"Well, duh!" Kagome snarkly replied. "That's why we got to go. No one does that, no matter who he is!"

Rosalie sighed. "Is this really any of our business?"

Kagome swatted at her as they floated along the abyss.

Rosalie avoided it somehow but continued. "No listen! He wants his father's treasure. Does it have to do with us? Not really. Is it family drama? Oh, fuck yeah. But does it involve the sacred jewel? Probably not."

"But it could!" Kagome argued. "Don't be such a chicken! He was rude! We can't let him win!"

"Win what?" Rosalie asked. "It's not some competition."

But the conversation ended there as white light overtook their view. The black abyss changed in a blink of an eye to a blue sky filled with fog, rock cliffs, and a large bone filled tomb. It was huge.

It made Rosalie feel insignificant and as if she were trespassing.

That's what she realized they were no longer flying but instead free falling. That is, until a flying skeletal being swopped underneath them and let them land on it's back as it cried out its deathly rattling call.

Doing her very best not to overanalyze the situation and wonder how a skeletal being could breathe, fly, or even function, she grabbed onto Kagome's waist and refused to look anywhere other than the inside of her eye lids.

Flying with her father was safe.

Flying on a mysteriously dead and inexplicably flight capable monster? No, that was not safe in the slightest.

She heard the muffled conversation of Kagome and Inuyasha but was focusing on trying to keep her breathing regular and prevent hyperventilation. She felt the beast take a dip and that they were flying downwards, deep into a cavern of sorts. The warmth of the sun, real or fabricated, was no longer on her skin. So, she feared that they were going underground.

"Sesshōmaru!" Inuyasha shouted suddenly, forcing Rosalie to look up from where she was hiding her face. They were in what appeared to be the pit of the stomach of the beast, its ribs encasing everything. In the center of the pit stood Sesshōmaru, Jaken, and a sword resting hilt up in a bone platform.

Rosalie had to contain a hysterical giggle at how similar to the sword and the stone the situation felt.

They jumped from the skeletal beast and landed on one of the giant ribs.

Inuyasha jumped dramatically from his perch on the ribs down to where his elder brother was standing. "We're not finished yet." He attempted to gash his brother with his claws, but Sesshōmaru easily dodged out of the way of his younger brother's clumsy attack, resulting in Inuyasha landing roughly on the ground. Jumping up, unphased by the rough landing, he put up his fists. "Now, where'd he go?"

"Look up Inuyasha!" Kagome shouted, pointing up to where Sesshōmaru was resting on a rib high above everything.

"Be respectful" Sesshōmaru ordered. "It's our father's tomb."

Outraged, Inuyasha took the bait. "Look who's talking! You're the one who's robbing his grave! Why not respect him by leaving?"

Rosalie couldn't here what happened next, but she saw Inuyasha turn to face the sword. She shimmied down the ribs like a giant slide before landing on her hands and knees onto the ground. At first, she assumed it was just crushed up dried bone, and she was partially correct.

The collection of bones that filled the floor were simply other being's bones. Skulls, vertebrae, long bones, short bones, and every other bone imaginably littered the area, causing her to get goosebumps and shiver. She said a silent prayer up to Inuyasha's father and anything else that found its final resting place where she was at, begging for forgiveness for trespassing, and hoping nothing decided to haunt her or follow her home as she tried in vain to avoid stepping on bones of things long forgotten.

Kagome, heart of gold and full of ignorant sass, walked over the bones as if it were a regular Tuesday afternoon for her.

The brothers were fighting verbally with Myoga over who should pull the sword from the stone.

"You, Lord Sesshōmaru, you couldn't pull it out, could you?" Myoga taunted.

"Do you mean to say Inuyasha can?" Sesshōmaru asked, baffled.

"Of course!" Myoga answered, a laugh in his voice. "It was always intended that Lord Inuyasha should inherit it. He—he was entrusted with the tomb, wasn't he? That should be proof enough, if you ask me."

Rosalie had her doubts after hearing how unsure Myoga sounded with his justification but kept silent. She figured their father wanted to rest peacefully and hide away anything that could potentially hurt the world. If he was that important, that is.

"Now hurry! Hurry and claim what's yours!" Myoga egged Inuyasha on.

Inuyasha, hardheaded dog man that he was, didn't budge. "What entrusted? What inheritance? For all I care, he can keep the rusty piece of junk!" He growled before turning to face his brother higher up once more." What I do mind, though, is all the other stuff! Good thing you're in a grave, because you're going to die!" Inuyasha jumped up and started to chase after Sesshōmaru.

Inuyasha eventually was egged on by Kagome to pull the sword out simply because his brother couldn't, but despite Kagome shouting at him to go harder, it was in vain. The sword, despite its light show and Inuyasha giving it his best, didn't budge.

Inuyasha, who Rosalie suspected was seconds from losing whatever little bit of his temper he had left, picked up Myoga and pinched the elderly flea man in between his fingers. "Yo."

"Yes?" Myoga asked.

"I couldn't pull the sword out, could I?" Inuyasha asked, emphasizing each word by squishing the flea between his fingers.

"N-not r-r-really, no" Myoga struggled to answer.

"Are you done?" Sesshōmaru asked, sounding bored at the antics. "I am." Sesshōmaru rushed towards his brother, and they started fighting once more. Inuyasha was not doing well.

Rosalie just shook her head at the dramatics. They had real issues, like the sacred jewel shards to find. But she supposed to herself, family drama was bound to happen on their quest. Best to get it over with sooner rather than later. She turned to address Kagome, but the girl wasn't where Rosalie had last seen her.

Instead, she was standing by the sword's platform, sword in hand with a simple "whoop" as explanation for what she had just done. "It just. . . came out?" she stated, sounding more like a question than a anything else.

Everyone just stared at the teenage Japanese girl, in a short skirt, school loafers, and a dark sweater on holding a sword previously believed impossible to unsheathe from the stone within the pit of two demon's monstrously large father's bone graveyard stomach.

"Sorry?" She asked, still admiring the old, dilapidated sword.

Rosalie facepalmed. She was lost for words.