It's a Dog's Life
emeralddarkness
Summary: Life? It's gone to the dogs.
Rating: PG/K (May possibly be raised to PG-13/T later, but no higher)
Disclaimer: No, I don't own Inuyasha or anything affiliated. Anything you don't recognize, however, is mine and mine alone. NO STEAL.

Before I start, just wanna say that hi, I'm not dead, nor have I forgotten this story. It does, however, desperately need two things. One of them is rewriting, which I'm doing right now. The other thing is a beta reader. Please. Really.

For those of you wondering about which ship this story is sailing with, I can only tell you that I'm not sure. At the moment there isn't anything, except implied canon pairings, but know that this might change if the characters decide so. Notice the might, there is nothing definite. No slash, however, and I don't think either Rin or Naraku-gumi are gonna figure much.

One final note: I'm not going to post a disclaimer up at the top of every chapter anymore, so just take the above for the entire story, mk? kthnxbai

- - -

Chapter One
Kagome

It started in a semi-normal fashion. What, you ask? What started in a semi-normal fashion? When is any part of my life even partially normal? Why am I telling you this? I'll answer… well, most of those in one, which is that this first small sentence is (somewhat pathetically, to my views) probably the best that can be said of my day. And the really sad thing? The reason that it was semi-normal was not because I got to wake up to the teeth-grating buzz that my way old alarm clock makes so that I could crawl out of bed, slither into my uniform and trudge off to school. Oh no. That's for other people. Frozen waffles? Scrambled eggs? Psh, they're for weaklings. No, because I'm an intrepid shard hunter, semi-normal means being woken up before the crack of dawn by a small fox demon, trying to ignore said demon because there was frost on my sleeping bag and it was (as previously mentioned) before the crack of dawn and there being frost on the ground and then being unable to fall back asleep, as any sane person would try doing, because of what sounded like a tree suddenly falling nearby to the accompaniment of much swearing in a loud voice. And then what sounded like another tree, crashsmackCRUNCHsplintersplinterCRASHbang. And more swearing.

Yup, that's semi-normal for me. Wow, don't I have a fun life?

"Kagome!" A small, urgent whisper was my cue to wakefulness.

"Ngh. Five minutes."

"Kagome!"

I finally cracked an eyelid and, after a few seconds, managed to identify the tiny form that was shaking my shoulder pretty insistently for such a little guy. "Shippo?"

"Come on, we have to move!"

"Ngh," I said again, attempting to lose myself in the folds of my sleeping bag. It was too early for this and my sleeping bag was lovely and warm and I wasn't feeling good and there was frost all over the place-

"Kagome!!" Is it horrible of me to wish that I could ignore him? But I couldn't, he sounded too worried. And if he sounded that worried, there might be a cause for it. There had better be. But then… Naraku had attacked the other day and everyone except me and him had been hurt. Miroku was almost paralyzed from poison and Sango was only slightly better; Inuyasha and Kirrara had been affected by something else, something that hit demons harder then normal. I think. I had a fever when they tried to explain – which is, incidentally, the only reason Shippo and I had escaped. I'd been sleeping somewhere nice and safe and far away at the time, Shippo had been guarding me. Anyway, the point is that if he sounded this worried there could well be a reason for it.

There had better be.

"Wha'is it?" I muttered from inside my cocoon.

"Come on, you have to move!" he said pleadingly.

"Donwanna."

"They're fighting, you have to!" And then came the first tree, snapCRASHcrunchsplinterSNAPthunk. And then the swearing.

"Inuy'sha?" I mumbled, more in disbelief then anything else.

"Yes, come on, we have to move, he smelled Sesshoumaru-"

Now me, I blame the fever. There aren't many other reasons that I can think of to explain why, at the mention of that name, I struggled out of my nice, warm sleeping bag not to do the intelligent thing and make tracks in the other direction but to stumble off towards all the crashing and banging and splintering, all to the accompaniment of a string of curses that would have been impressive to most anyone not used to Inuyasha. I wish I could tell you what I was thinking, but I can't because I'm not really sure. It was something like 'I'm sick you jerks, now go fight somewhere else so that I can get back to sleep.'

Like I said, I blame the fever.

As I struggled through the trees and Shippo trailed me, protesting and trying everything he knew to get me to turn around before finally vanishing (presumably to go get Kirarra, in an attempt to keep me from killing myself), I was complaining bitterly to myself that I hadn't been born in America. America was a very nice place with no magic wells that took you back in time to the stupid Feudal era where there wasn't any cold medicine or soft beds or readily available chicken soup and where your rest was disturbed on frost-covered mornings by youkai and hanyou decking it out in a forest on the outer fringes of nowhere. Nope. None of that. England didn't have that problem either.

Stupid Japan. Only I liked Japan. I just wasn't sure if it was worth the grief. Not stupid Japan, then, I told myself. Stupid wells, they're where the problem is. Yes, stupid time-traveling wells. There was that cleared up. You know what would have been nice? If someone had warned me. I'd like to be able to warn whatever poor shmuck comes after me, that's for sure. Of course, if I managed to get all the shards and get rid of the jewel she might not have to worry about anything. But there are two small points against that – the first, THAT IT'S APPARENTLY IMPOSSIBLE, and the second being that this cold was going to kill me; watch. I mentally composed a letter to the poor girl.

Dear reincarnation, please do yourself a favor and move to France.
Your friend, Kagome
PS, stay away from dry wells.

Satisfied with this, I mentally addressed it and sent it off. Well, someone needed to warn her. Because honestly now, wasn't enough enough? But oh no, on top of coming out of a magic well at a time in which there were no such things as hot baths, it also had to be a time in which you had to go endlessly, endlessly collect stupid shards of a stupid jewel and half the guys were prettier then you were!

Really, what is up with that??

At this point I had come close enough to be about 90 sure that Shippo had been right. I could make out enough of the individual words to know – probably – that Inuyasha was swearing at Sesshoumaru. Sesshoumaru was (so typically) apparently not responding, or at least not loudly enough for me to hear. I swear I wanted to deck him. I mean, it's one thing to be a prissy, stuck up, insufferable, stoic prick as he is – I suppose he can't help it. But couldn't he just give up on the stupid Tetsusaiga? HONESTLY!! He can't even hold the stupid, stupid thing!

Most days I'm glad that I pulled it out of the little stand in Inuyasha's dad's skeleton, really, I am. But today, right now, at what was probably five in the morning (I mean, it was still dark) as I was staggering through a frosted forest with a fever towards a stupid fight over a stupid sword that I had stupidly pulled from its stupid pedestal, well… let's just say I wish I had never seen it. Yup, it could have just stayed locked up down there forever and I would have been perfectly happy.

But, what's done is done.

Unfortunately.

I managed to hold onto the last few lingering shards of my hope, the hope that maybe everyone had made a mistake and it wasn't Sesshoumaru and things would be easier to resolve then they seemed, right up until I reached the edge of the clearing – rapidly expanding as more trees went ripsplinterCRUNCHcrashbang. This hope was, of course, extinguished as soon as I actually managed to get there since the universe isn't nice to me like that. It was indeed Sesshoumaru, floating in the light from false dawn on the breeze like a snowflake. Yea, a snowflake that could kill people. He had the same affect that cats did when you watched them move – he was so graceful and so fast that he looked like he was moving in slow motion. Oh, your brain would think when you saw him move, I have plenty of time to get out of the way, at which point he'll have removed your head, leaving you to look up at the rest of you and wonder when he'd managed to do that.

He looked over towards me with that same, eternally bored look that he always wore, dodging backwards from Inuyasha without apparently paying any attention. This was when I remembered that I was standing there in nothing but my rubber duckie patterned flannel pajamas and the shoes I'd shoved my feet into upon rolling out of the sleeping bag, most conspicuously without a weapon of any kind.

Oh crap. Well, there went any maybe-plans that I might have had. They all flew right out of my head.

He apparently noticed me and looked mildly perplexed. I don't honestly blame him. "Oy! Sesshoumaru! I'm the one you're fighting!" Inuyasha yelled, jumping forward once again to swing down Tetsusaiga, but Sesshoumaru simply glared at him as he jumped further towards me. I couldn't help remembering that the last time he'd done this I'd nearly ended up as a puddle of toxic goo. This, of course, helped with the reaction.

"Hey!" I yelped, and reacted instinctively. The demonic power (which had suddenly increased, HELP) felt abrasive and, in response, my own power flared. Now, I wish to repeat this again because I have no desire to be blamed for this; it wasn't my fault. Yes, Kaede had been attempting to teach me how to control my power, but attempting was the key word of that sentence. I hadn't actually learned all that much yet. Which explains some of it.

My power (which, as mentioned, I'd been working with recently – or that's the only reason I can give for it flaring at all as it certainly hadn't done so in any of the previous fights I was in. I think) spiked, which I suppose I also blame, because if not for that I'd have never had the idea. Maybe, I'd thought to myself in that delirious way you start thinking when you have a fever, you know? Maybe if I just purify some of his youki then he'll go away. How, realistically, this would have worked I'm not quite sure, but I had a fever and I didn't have my bow and my power was spiking anyway.

So anyway, I grabbed my power and threw it off with some attempt at control which I honestly think would have worked, if not for the fact that it was right then that his youki flared again. And then my power, I suppose in response, jumped all out of control. You want an example? Ok, think of a garden hose. Then take that garden hose and attach it to a fire hydrant, then turn it on full blast. Guess who the hose is? Hah hah, that's riiiiiight

My power ripped out of me like an avenging angel, like a volcano erupting with enough force to blow the cone off, and started eating up his youki. And eating. And eating. And it just kept going and going, trying to destroy the threat, for what felt forever and ever and no, stop, I would go mad – and then something even worse happened. I felt my power start to run dry, and still while his youki raged around me, slowly closing in.

I couldn't see it, but it looked green. I couldn't smell it, but it smelt of flowers and of acid – a bright, caustic scent laced with a poison sweetness like honey. I couldn't taste it, but it was somehow both bitter and far too sweet to be born, still with that acid tinge. I couldn't hear it, but it buzzed. The one thing that I could do was feel and it lapped against my skin like sandpapery cat tongues and I couldn't let it go, though I tried, though my power was down to the dregs. I couldn't pull my power back into me, away from the green sea pulsing around me, the sea that my power was rushing towards and trying to drain and basically, I was in trouble.

Frantically I tried to pull our powers apart, to separate mine from his and get mine back inside me, mine back where it belonged, and was unable to.

I felt the green, caustic, sweet/bitter, roiling sea (much diminished but still very large) close in around me and over my head as I pulled at it more and more and more, whether I wanted to or not. More and more and more. I wondered what happened when my power ran out, if I would crumple, utterly defenseless against this pale prince. The cold, apparently, wouldn't have time to kill me – Sesshoumaru would beat it to the punch.

It didn't quite happen that way.

I had no idea he was so strong, were my last real thoughts before I crumpled down to the ground, my own miko energy gone but the youki still flowing like poison into me.

- - -
Sesshoumaru

Though it is somewhat unseemly to admit as well as unpardonable for me to have let my attention waver so, I must say that I had been somewhat distracted while traveling. I tell you this to set the record straight, as it is the only reason I came close enough to that idiotic half-brother of mine for him to so much as detect my presence. Not, of course, that I need to make accommodations to him or any other being, but I had a headache and was tired and simply did not wish to deal with him. I had been lately dealing with the kind of difficulty that bred migraines; the North was attempting to quietly expand their boundaries over land that was rightfully mine (significantly, beyond the minor border skirmishes that always occur), as it had been since I'd taken it. They had not, however, done anything that I could call them on, which meant that I had two choices. The first was call war early on, marking myself as the aggressor and lowering my chances of any substantial aid. Or, at the very least, aid as prompt as might be wished or aid free of bribery – I was powerful enough that my enmity was a stupid thing to garner for such a small thing as refusing your ally the aid promised long ago. And then there was the other option, which I was currently employing, of endless rounds of diplomatic meetings with the Kitsune leader of the North.

War was beginning to sound more and more attractive. After all, war had been declared for less reason then this. Yes, war was sounding good.

I am a dog, and at my core I love simplicity. The kitsune as a whole revel in tricks and doubletalk and clever disguise. I abhor clever disguise, and because of this I'd been suffering more and more headaches over the past few months as I sat through meeting after meeting, each one seeming to accomplish less then the last one. And in each one, progressively as I felt my headache get worse, I'd been wishing more and more that I'd simply traveled up and killed those who challenged me. I had the power, and I did not need to answer to anybody. I might have been overwhelmed if I tried this by myself, true enough, but I might not have been. And it might have been nice to kill the lesser demons; killing such is often remarkably therapeutic.

I was thinking all things through, as well as the fact that I am Sesshoumaru and don't need to inconvenience myself so for anyone since I am powerful and I do what I wish, and that was when my dear younger brother apparently sensed me and came to blindly attack.

With a headache pounding behind my temples, it was hardly a distraction I wished for. If I'd simply been frustrated it might have been a wonderful release, but at the moment I only wished to sit down in a dark room and do nothing, which was why it was highly frustrating. Being attacked when I didn't wish to be attacked was made yet more unbearable by the fact that he had attacked me for no reason within my own boundaries. He was some distance from Edo, after all, well inside the West, and though he stank of poison and fatigue and injury he'd decided to try and kill me. Apparently before I could try to steal his sword or kill his companions; as if I would lower myself. I will not go out of my way simply to step on ants unless there is a reason to, and as for the sword… though he does not deserve Chichue's heirloom, he had no reason to suppose I would attempt to take it from him when I cannot touch it myself. Such logic had apparently failed him, however (not an unusual occurrence), leaving him to try to attack me and swear when he failed. Loudly.

If not for the fact that he'd been downwind of me, I would doubtless have been able to avoid the mongrel altogether. I would have smelled him out long before his weak nose managed to find me, and as I didn't wish to see him I simply would have avoided him; it would have been simple enough. It was, however, too late for that, and therefore I simply dodged his usual ungainly attacks.

I was pondering how to incapacitate him (I honestly didn't want to kill him right then, only to be allowed to get home) when a girl stumbled through the trees, smelling of illness and anger. She was wearing some outlandish outfit, though I must admit the cloth appeared to be of good quality. But then all of her clothing seems to be this way, which has always made me wonder at the poor choice of clothes. Such excellent, fine cloth deserves to be used in some kind of worthy garment, and the green thing that she usually wore hardly even deserved the name.

I looked at her curiously, wondering, but perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. She always seems to be doing some outlandish thing or another. This, however, seemed to be more so then usual. I moved closer to investigate, but that motion seemed to alarm her. Wise, I suppose. I felt her power stir uneasily as she yelped and backed away while at the same time Inuyasha yelled behind me.

"Oy! Sesshoumaru! I'm the one you're fighting!" If 'fighting' was the right word. Still, his brash voice annoyed me, and my youki flared in warning as I shot a cool glare over towards him. This simple action, however, had unexpected consequences. I felt the miko's burning power flare wildly in response to my own and then attack it, latching onto my power (instead of, as would have been more usual, my person) to begin eating away at it like a drop of strong acid working its way through a bolt of cloth. My youki flared more strongly in response to the attack, of course, but that only seemed to make her attack grow. I was surrounded by a wave of purity that was attempting to eat away at my own energy.

Her powers were undeniably quite impressive, but I was not unduly worried. Midoriko was the only miko yet born who could try subduing me with such tactics. Any other would burn herself out in the attempt. With this knowledge, I simply waited. And waited. And waited. And while it took some time I did eventually begin to feel the girl's power fizzle out. Admittedly, it was much longer then I'd first supposed – she was untrained and ill as well. It made me wonder what kind of power she boasted. Still. Not enough. No, not enough.

The last dregs swirled and were gone, and I waited for her collapse. Inuyasha would doubtless blame me for it which was unfortunate simply because it would involve more yelling and fruitless attempts to hit me with the Tetsusaiga, but it wasn't as though there was anything that he could really do unless I allowed it, which I wouldn't.

I hadn't moved before because the girl's power would have burned me if I tried, I didn't move now simply because I was waiting for the inevitable, for her collapse, before I turned and sent Inuyasha to join her in the land of unconsciousness. But the unthinkable happened. She wavered and fell, as expected, but the tug on my youki did not lessen.

"Soul-shattering iron claws!" Inuyasha had apparently decided that he'd waited long enough and was attempting to attack me again. I, confused as well as annoyed now, the headache still throbbing behind my temples and scraps of what would have been alarm, if it had been anyone else feeling it, stirring in me decided that I'd had enough. I jumped high, summoning my whip of youki and lashing with it, catching Inuyasha on the back of the head with enough force to knock him across the clearing and into one of the trees. Crunch went yet another tree as Inuyasha fell to the forest floor, unconscious, but I didn't particularly care. My whip flickered out before I intended it to as I grew yet weaker.

I could still feel my youki being tugged from me and towards the girl, who had collapsed.

Impossible. Her power was gone.

It was fading, onwards and onwards, leaving me with less and less and less-

Her power was gone, I could not sense it. I was sure, so sure

I leapt again, but this time stumbled and fell back to earth – except that, of course, was impossible because I was Sesshoumaru and this Sesshoumaru did not stumble-

Her power was gone, I was sure of that for there was no burning dancing across my skin but my youki was still fading, leaving me weak – only that was impossible as well because this Sesshoumaru was not weak-

I could feel my senses growing dim – eyesight, hearing, smell, all of them fading as my power was drained like blood from a wound, but the girl was knocked out and drained of her power, impossible, it was utterly impossible. She did not have the strength to kill me and was not doing so because this Sesshoumaru did not die-

I felt my power, down to the dregs itself now, stir and scream but it too was dragged from my body and it felt like it was pulling my veins with it, carrying it in white hot wires that had been inserted into my abdomen and pulled out in chunks.

Impossible, I thought once again but the last of my power was going and then it was gone and I was left to sink down into the welcoming blackness, still wondering How. How, How, How, How, How.

- - -

So whaddya think?

A bit of Japanese that I have/might use/d, for those of you who don't know:
Hanyou – half breed, as in the case of Inuyasha
Youkai – the closest English equivalent is 'demon,' but the two terms don't match exactly because of the differences in culture.
Youki – a youkai's energy, 'demonic power.'
Chichue – something along the lines of 'honorable Father' or 'Lord Father,' a more archaic and respectful form of 'Father.'
Hahaue – something along the lines of 'honorable Mother' or 'Lady Mother,' a more archaic and respectful form of 'Mother'
Kitsune – a fox demon and trickster. Kitsune can grow multiple tails – the more tails one has, the more powerful it is. They delight in playing tricks and pranks.
Miko – priestess with holy powers, a shrine maiden
Inu – Dog
Osowari – the 'sit' command used for dogs
Taiyoukai – a powerful youkai
Edo – the approximate area Tokyo is today, and about where Inuyasha's village (probably) was.

If you'd like to beta, please drop a review. And even if you wouldn't. I love reviews.