Path of the Heart : 2 : The Crystal and the Weilder Chapter 1: Reintroduction to the Scene, an inuyasha fanfic

A/N: FIRST THINGS FIRST! This is the Second Part of a Multi-Story Series, if you haven't read the First Part, you won't understand what's going on here. DO NOT BEGIN TO READ THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY READ Path of the Heart : The Crystal and the Blade, as this picks up Right Where That Left Off.

Another note on that, I'm still working on the way in which things are denoted with font emphasis, but most should be self-evident, like how italics are used for thoughts in most average situations, unless other indicators are necessary to remove confusion and 'separate one set of thoughts' *from another.* I'll also be experimenting with what kind of scene separations ?-?-?-?-?-?-? *^*^*^*^*^* ^-^-^-^-^-^-^ I can get away with using on this site, the doc editor is a bit tricky in what it accepts. But again, most of it I will try to make self-evident and not overwhelmingly distracting, there will be a bit of emphasis for a dash of flavor but I'll try not to pepper it black!

Secondly, a few brush-up notes coming into this story.

Shippou looks about, eh, fourteen-ish here, and has grown in his second tail. Think of Kohaku at the end of the Final Act, or if you've deigned to watch Yashahime (which this whole series defies, by the way, so don't look around for Moroha, she's not here) then you can relate his look to the iconic transformation scene where he briefly looks how everyone always pictured him in all the fanart that shows him older, only in my mind his bangs would be longer than they showed in that spin-off (which was NOT written by Rumiko Takahashi herself!). And also, just for emphasis, Two Tails. Yes, that makes him Just Over one-hundred years old, as I followed the traditional Japanese theorum of kitsune aging and tail accumulation.

The first story picks up about ten years after Naraku's death, it's been a few weeks of Hell, literally, which also had this like transdimensional space-time warping effect like all hells always have and especially the Japanese version, but you could still say we're starting about the turn of a decade since Naraku died, or about seven years after the very end of the Final Act when Kagome came back. Roughly. We're not being Too Specific here.

But Also on that note. Because I am a specific kind of person and I like to fill people's heads with useless knowledge. If you look at the Inuyasha Fandom wikis, they believe that Inuyasha was born in 1347. After Extensive personal research into lunar eclipse charts and what seasons and where on the planet Earth they would have been visible at what point in time, I've discovered...NOT POSSIBLE. Closest I found was 1338. To be VERY specific, 1338 February 5th 2:59pm GMT (most of Japan is 9 or 10 hours ahead depending on location so local time would be 11:59pm February 5th west Japan or 12:59am February 6th east Japan local time) was the nearest time to that Clearly Unresearched Approximation when a full total lunar eclipse as depicted would have been visible in Japan. If the shadow of the moon had been a downward sweep rather than an upward, it would have corresponded to another date, which was ALSO NOT in 1347. I wish people did their research. Ironically, this means that without realizing it...or without Telling Anyone, which seems less likely, Rumiko flawlessly wrote in a character that was born on the stroke of midnight on the night of a lunar eclipse, further encompassing the awesomeness of universal coincidence in both fiction and in life. Which was the real point of me telling you all of that. :D

What else? Sesshoumaru saved Kagura from her limbo in the afterlife where her soul lingered, though giving his clothing to Shishinki as payment for a swift escape means he's naked now. You're welcome. Also, he agreed to be Her Wife, and she agreed to be His Husband, and NO, I didn't make a mistake there. He's growing into his Dog Nature, you know, the goofy silliness we humans are so accustomed to seeing in most dogs. His new outfit will be even prettier, don't worry! ;P

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Sesshoumaru and Kagura were somewhere in the maze for quite a long time. The faint echoing of indeterminate noise through the many corridors was somewhat sheepishly drowned out by Shippou's decision to hang up, ironically, a few wind chimes. Though whatever sounds the rest of the group nearby did hear were hardly distinguishable, the fox felt that Sesshoumaru and Kagura would need some privacy regardless.

The two apprentices returned, as predicted, many hours after they'd left, but they had a good explanation.

"So we were gonna just pick up the first outfit we could get," Saitou began, "but then we realized Lord Sesshoumaru is a very well-respected youkai and he can't wear just any old thing."

"There were a lot of simple farmer towns nearby, but we decided to go to the castle just on the other side of the mountain here," Maku piped up, "since we figured that's where we'd find the merchants with the good clothes."

"It took us a long time to convince them to let us through the gates to speak to the merchants, and then we had to look through all his wares to find something that seemed like it would suit him," Saitou added.

"Then I had to get fitted-oh, when we showed up, I melded two transformations. I didn't want to Look like him, well not really, because I didn't want anyone to recognize the face and mistake me for him-so I did a transformation of his body and then just aged my own look in the face. The merchant was also a tailor of course," Maku said.

"And you paid him fair and square?" Shippou raised an eyebrow at them suspiciously, not even taking the bundle they had proffered just yet.

"With every last coin you gave the both of us this past month, and then some," Saitou pouted, "but yes, we did."

"We were lucky he settled for that price," Maku huffed, "but I think it was because that's not exactly a typical pattern."

"Yeah, it's not a look a lot of people can pull off," Saitou agreed, "but Maku here thinks it's gonna look good."

Oh no. Shippou didn't like how that sounded...or, well actually, now that the thought crossed his mind, he would only be that much more amused if it was something embarrassing. After all, Sesshoumaru will have to wear Something.

"It will, I promise. He'll like it. I saw what he was wearing before," Maku huffed, pushing the bundle towards his Sensei. "Here, Sensei Shippou, give it to Lord Sesshoumaru when he...hey, where is he anyways?"

"Hiding in the maze to elope with his wife, where else?" Shippou snickered.

"Oh, so that's why you have the wind chimes up, to disguise the noise of their love-making," Saitou nodded.

"D'ya think he minds that she smells like algae?" Maku wondered out loud.

"I actually thought Sensei Shippou did fairly well in blending her scent with the available field herbs and spices. When my nose catches her scent, it's not the algae I notice first, it's the perilla leaves and sansho peppers. The bits of flower smells and algae hit me second to those."

"Yeah, but from where his nose is gonna be-"

Inuyasha blushed furiously. Since his brother had returned and temporarily run off with Kagura, leaving his armor and swords inside the cave, and all the friends present saw no reason to leave yet, they'd all settled into the camp they'd made and idly loafed about. Now, hearing the little kitsune make such a remark embarrassed him, though for what reason, he couldn't actually define. It was Sesshoumaru they were talking about, not he himself.

"Isn't that a little Inappropriate for you two to talk about?!" Inuyasha squawked, red-faced.

The two younger foxes blushed a little, and Maku smiled with nervous sheepishness.

"W-well, we're a lot older than we appear. I'm sure you guessed we don't age like humans, since most youkai don't, and since you're a friend of Shippou then you probably know we don't even really age the same as most animal youkai either. It's not exactly always gradual for us. Both of us are only a little younger than Sensei Shippou, in fact we're pretty close to our second tails ourselves, and in the many years we've been alive...well, you see things and start to put the facts together yourself after so long."

Inuyasha blushed even deeper and turned his head, his ears twitching and his nose quavering as he tried to keep his head from spinning off his shoulders. It wasn't 'shocking' per se, just really, really weird and awkward suddenly.

"Uh, s-so what's up with those clothes, Shippou? Do they look good?"

Shippou almost unfolded the bundle, then with a smile, he moved his hand away from the neatly tied cloth.

"I want it to be a surprise, Inuyasha. That way, I can't be blamed for allowing it. And if it does look real good, well then Maku will get the credit he deserves. But it'll be up to Him to present it, since He picked it out."

Oh-ho! Inuyasha's blush turned into a grin as Maku gulped and sweatdropped nervously. That wasn't what he expected.

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This was mostly an icebreaker chapter, a refresher, a re-introduction to this storyline after a long unexpected hiatus, if you'd like to comment that's fine but there's not too much I expect you to have to say about this one. On to the next! :P