Author's note: I'm not sure how many ethnically Chinese people are reading this but I hope Wei is convincing as a Chinese person. Discounting the being superhuman part at least.

Chapter 49 Full Throttle

"SESSHOUMARU!" Wei shouted with the voice of thousands, "LET'S END THIS!"

The leviathan's mouth opened to its fullest and a geyser of annihilating light meters wide tore across the sky towards Sesshoumaru, tracing his path across it, homing in on him with frightening speed. In a persistent nightmare from which he could not wake, Kouga watched as either insanity or a suicidal urge gripped Sesshoumaru.

He actually flew towards Wei's leviathan, twisting and turning through the air in an erratic path that tried to evade the focused beam of annihilation. Sesshoumaru's evasions were of extraordinary beauty and grace; virtually poetry in motion, but to Kouga's horror the deadly light eventually found him.

A titanic flash of white blinded all eyes for a moment, but the ears were deafened by a howl so loud the vibrations of its timbre could be felt in the bones and several buildings collapsed in response.

The dazzling white faded from Kouga's vision and his jaw dropped in shock.


In his transformed state, Sesshoumaru's perception drastically changed, the sounds of battle and the scent of blood were so much richer; almost sensual in their intensity. It made him heady and he had to fight to keep his mind from being overwhelmed by sensory input and letting base instinct decide his actions.

Focus is everything. A disciplined mind does not succumb.

Ignoring the lightning Wei unleashed into his chest and which blasted away at his flesh, turning his pelt crimson, Sesshoumaru lunged forward and sank his glistening jaws deep into the hell serpent's neck. Its hide was like armor though and refused to yield easily beneath his fangs. Not bothering to try and bite through it, Sesshoumaru instead wrenched his head to one side and slammed its monstrous bulk against the side of the mountain. The impact was enough to cause an entire side of the mountain to shift and an avalanche to fall on both combatants as Sesshoumaru twisted the serpent's head back and redirected the lightning into the sky like a deadly beacon in the night.

Wei however, had only begun to fight; a moment later and Sesshoumaru felt the coils of the abomination try to encircle him like an eighty-ton anaconda. Sesshoumaru dug his claws into the leviathan's hide and, while maintaining his grasp on the neck, pushed back against the coils now constricting around him. Muscles bulged and strained visibly beneath his pelt as Sesshoumaru struggled against the unbelievable crushing force brought to bear against him.

Bit by bit though, the coils tightened around him, promising a slow but inevitable death in their unrelenting embrace.

Sesshoumaru considered his situation and possible escapes when he noticed a figure running up along the serpentine coils towards him. One dressed in samurai armor and holding a blade that was wreathed in flame.

Wei...


"What are you looking for?" Isamu asked while obeying Kouga's instructions to keep his torch just outside the room Kouga was in.

"I'll know it when I see it," Kouga answered as he searched frantically through the armory. It's got to be in one of these chests or barrels.

Prior to meeting Kagome, Kouga had not thought much of humans. They were prey and that was about it. However, with gentle but irresistible force, Kagome forced him to broaden his perspective. Now he viewed humans and by extension, their works with greater consideration. In some cases it even approached appreciation. One aspect in particular that struck him as both intriguing and confounding was the art humans called technology.

As was the case with most youkai, he understood little of technology. Youkai preferred what came naturally to them, whether it be claws, fangs, tendrils, illusions, or any other gifts from one's bloodlines. Technology seemed strange and unnatural to him, but it was clear humans used it to make up for their own frailty.

And human skill for this stuff is making them increasingly more powerful.

Rather than waste his time trying to stamp out human ingenuity, Kouga had begun to adopt certain practices they had, especially as it came to war. His conquests of other wolf tribes had not come through numbers and brute force alone, but by observing human armies and the ways in which they maneuvered. Watching their battles and learning the tactics they used, Kouga then trained his own tribe to emulate the military precision of human armies.

Here it is, Kouga thought, as the smell of charcoal and sulfur filled his nostrils.

"I'm going to pass you one of these barrels, keep it the hell away from the torch if you want to stay in one piece," Kouga said, while rolling a barrel to Isamu and taking a barrel under each arm. "Let's see about giving Sesshoumaru a hand with that freak outside."

One human invention that Kouga had definitely come to respect was gunpowder.


Wei studied the defenses surrounding Kagome and ran through several scenarios for how to capture her with the least difficulty. Currently, her luminescent form was sitting a good distance away from the fortress on one of the curves of the mountain path. Arrayed around her in a protective ring were around thirty wolf youkai guarding against an attack, including the two he spared earlier.

Tearing through them in a straight forward attack would be doable but inefficient, especially seeing as such a course of action increased the chances of seeing her spirited away and he was already using the majority of his strength elsewhere. No, he needed an approach that would take full advantage of the element of surprise, neutralizing the youkai present and simultaneously incapacitate Kagome.

Sometimes extreme physical violence was simply not that answer. It was rare, but it did happen.

I'll have to reapportion my power some, but as a side benefit, she may be thrown off balance by the sudden withdrawal.

Wei concentrated on the bodies he would use for this, reducing them to a single pool of blood and causing the clothes they were wearing to collapse in a heap. A moment later a carefully crafted body emerged. One which would be able to draw close to the youkai without raising an alarm. Grabbing the recently shed clothes, Wei used a knife to cut them more appropriately for the task he was going to have to carry out.

Despite your reluctance, you will assist me in rewriting history, Kagome.