AN: This fic has been heavily revised. If you read the original, you'll need to reread this.

Prologue

In the Higurashi shrine there was an aging scroll that very few people had read, kept in one of the dusty corners of the storage shed, hidden behind the main house. Kagome and Souta Higurashi were lucky enough to have had the chance to read it (during Grandpa Higurashi's 75th birthday, as the elderly man had gotten drunk on some sake and passed out on the couch, sleeping like a log).

The honorable ancestor and shrine keeper Kikyo Higurashi had written down a very detailed first-hand account of how the world of men had ended. She described how the blue, cloudless sky over Tokyo had suddenly darkened to an especially angry red. Her sister, Kaede, noticed the animals first. Birds suddenly started falling from the sky, dead, and squirrels and rabbits that peacefully lived in the woods around the shrine simply vanished.

And then all hell broke loose. Quite literally.

Demons that had been sleeping beneath the land awoke with a thunderous roar that toppled men and buildings. Planes lost control and were lost in the waters, swallowed up, some said, by behemoths that were to this day hidden beneath the waves. Mountains rumbled and spectacularly exploded as waves of molten creatures tumbled out, deprived of light and air for so long. Deprived, all because of the ancient warriors and magicians that had sealed them away in a war that had been forgotten long, long ago.

A history forgotten by the ignorant masses, who paid with their lives when history came back to bite them when they least expected. And suddenly, everything was lost.

It was brought back, quite abruptly, by a new world order.

This part, though, Kagome and Souta knew. The end of men had occurred three generations ago. They lived in the world of demons, where demons made the laws, where demons controlled wealth, where demons governed the right to live or die.

The Higurashi siblings carefully returned the scroll to its dusty corner in the storage shed, and went back to the main house to poke and bother their passed out grandfather.

Of course, as one of the rare few who had access to such wealth of information, one would assume the recipient of this important source of knowledge would take heed and not drop their guard, taking pains to ensure they would never face their doom because of a lack of preparedness.

Nope.

Kagome was screwed.

"Dammit!" Kagome inwardly screeched as she rounded a corner and nearly slid to a halt. "Stupid Souta, stupid law, stupid demons!"

It was way past curfew. Souta needed his cold medicine. Worst of all, today was Kagome's 15th birthday.

Birthdays were not fun. Especially for young, unmarried women. Most girls in human settlements were engaged to another as soon as they could walk. Being engaged apparently lowered their value to the traffickers, because that meant there was an extended family willing to fight and protect their daughter. The bigger the family, the safer you were. But Kagome didn't live in a settlement. She lived on a shrine in the middle of Tokyo. Tokyo, a city that had essentially been deserted over five decades ago.

Kagome had gone out to scavenge the streets for herbs. Mom had sprained her ankle foraging the woods, grandpa had thrown his back gardening, and Souta had caught a cold. Kagome thought she was being a responsible daughter. She thought no one would come snooping for easy money here.

She was wrong. So, so wrong.

"Keh." A flash of white appeared before her, making her stumble and nearly fall over. "End of the line now, wench."

Kagome clutched her backpack straps, panting and sweating from the furious chase. She looked into the eyes of amber, and cringed at the smirk that revealed a pearly white fang.

She was so, so screwed.

AN: Yes, I assure you, this is a Comedy. I also plan on doing my best to keep everyone in character. I know, shocking. (I think my one-shot Just Watching is my only other effort at keeping anyone in character, and that was purely accidental. No, it's not a shameless plug.) My only exception to the in-character rule, however, is...Sherlock Souta, because baby, he ain't going nowhere!*

*If you haven't read my other stories, Sherlock Souta is basically an OOC Souta. Don't you worry your pretty little heads over it.

Of course, my plan for no OOC could probably spiral out of control and everyone might just end up being OOC. It happens.

In regards to the length of chapters, I plan on doing short drabbles for the rest of this fic. That is, if I could stick to the plan. Which I never do.