Inu-Yasha 1/2

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Chapter 1

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"For the last time, NO!!" Inu-Yasha shouted as stomped towards Kagome as she hauled her huge backpack towards the Bone-eater's well and the portal back to her own time.

"I don't care what you say, I'm going to try and find out what happens to you. There must be some clue. After all, it's not like you haven't existed. This is the past. Maybe I can find out something about how our quest turns out." She said calmly as she turned towards him when she reached the edge of the well.

"I don't care! I don't want you doing this!" he shouted.

She couldn't understand why he didn't want her to find out what happens to them, after all, if she could find some proof that they would succeed or fail their quest to find all the shards of the Shikon jewel, maybe they could make sure that the get all of it. For instance, what if she found that one of the demons killed her or Inu-Yasha before they finished gathering the shards? She could then come back and tell him and they could figure out a way to make sure that they both succeed.

Inu-Yasha, on the other hand, knew that messing with history was dangerous and futile. If someone was fated to die, than nothing could stop them from dieing. "You stupid wench! If I have to tie you up to keep you from going through with this foolishness, I will!!" he shouted and immediately knew he had said the wrong thing as she scowled and said crisply, "Sit."

She watched as he crashed to the ground at the word. It was a reaction from the prayer beads around Inu-Yasha's neck. Kaede, the village priestess, had done it to him to protect Kagome incase he ever tired to hurt or kill her, but most of the time Kagome yelled sit when she was annoyed at him.

"You bitch!" he yelled as he stared at her angrily.

"I'll be back when I find something out. Don't follow me." She snapped and jumped into the well. She landed on the dirt at the bottom of the well, and then threw her bag back up and over the side of the well. She quickly clamored over the side also and looked around the well house that was a part of her family's shrine.

"That jerk." She grumbled under her breath as she grabbed her bag and dragged it out of the well house and into the main house. "I'm home." She called as she headed up to her room.

"Welcome home, dear, but could you please come to the living room? There is someone I want you to meet." Her mother called from the other room.

"Sure." Kagome called back as she put her bag down and headed towards where her mother's voice had called her. "Yes, mom? Who did you want me to meet?" she said as she entered the room, but she quickly stopped as she caught sight of a handsome boy about her age sitting on the couch next to her mother.

"Kagome, this is your cousin Ranma Saotome. He's going to be staying with us for the next month or so." Her mother said as she and Ranma stood up.

"It's nice to meet you." Ranma said in a soft voice as he bowed to her in greeting.

"It's nice to meet you too, but I didn't know I had a cousin." Kagome said as she bowed back.

"His mother is your Aunt Nodoka and he's been on a training journey since he was five years old." Kagome's mom said as all three of them sat down again.

"You mean to tell me that he is the cute little boy in Aunty Nodoka's picture albums? The one she adopted?" Kagome exclaimed as she remembered her and her aunt looking through old albums a few years before on one of her infrequent trips to her aunt's house.

Ranma blushed at being referred to as cute, but nodded anyway.

"Ranma is staying here with us because he wants to learn more about his adoptive family and as  his father in an only child and we are his mother's only family, he came to us to learn about his adoptive family." Kagome's mother said brightly and Ranma smiled hesitatively at them, almost as if he halfway believed that they were going to tell him that he wasn't welcome there.

"Ok, sure, that's fine. He's staying in the guest room?" Kagome said and her mother nodded.

"Yes and I've already sent grandfather to go prepare it for him. Why don't you two chat awhile? He can tell you about his trip and you can tell him about your own."

Nodding the two teens turned to each other while Kagome's mom went to prepare some dinner. "Why don't you go first?" Ranma said nervously.

"Ok, I'm sure you're not going to believe me, but the well in the well house is a gateway into the past where I go to hunt for shards of this jewel that can make demon incredibly powerful. I hunt them with the help of Inu-Yasha, who is half human and half dog-demon." Kagome said as she studied her clasped hands in front of her.

"That sounds pretty cool." Ranma said and Kagome looked up at him startled.

"You believe me?" she asked.

"Sure why not? Stranger thing have happened to me. It's perfectly possible for something like this to happen too." He said with a careless shrug.

"Like what? What's happened to you that's so weird?"

"Well, I've battled demons, godlings, and the most powerful people in this world. I have at the moment five fiancées but only three are actively chasing me at the moment while a fourth says that she doesn't care that there are the others but then gets so jealous of them that she punts me over the horizon with her mallet. Not to mention my father turns into a panda with cold water and I turn into a girl with the same. We change back with hot water though. Not to mention that I've been to the [ast was well using a magic mirror." He said and she stared at him in shock.

"Wow, that's even weirder than what I go though."

"Well, I'd say that it's about even." Ranma said indifferently. The sat there for a moment in silence before saying, "Will you tell me about Inu-Yasha?"

"That jerk!" she said to herself, gaining a surprised look from Ranma, not that she notice as she was to busy calling Inu-Yasha names to herself. By the time, she had looked at her cousin again he had his facial expressions under control.

"Inu-Yasha is half dog demon and half human. He was in love with Kikuyu back in the feudal times where he lives and they were going to turn him fully human so that he could marry her. But then a shape-changing demon took his form and attacked Kikuyu to try and take away the Shikon jewel she protected. She survived, but believed that Inu-Yasha was the one who had attacked her and her village so she shot him with a magical arrow that sort of killed him. An arrow can't kill him, but the spell on it was powerful the only way for him to wake up or live or what ever, it had to be removed by Kikuyu. So he slept for fifty years until I was dragged back there by a demon and was attacked.

"I ended up pinned against Inu-Yasha and the tree he was pinned to by the monster and he woke up. You see, I'm the reincarnation of Kikuyu and I had the Shikon jewel in my body. Just me being near him woke him up, but he was still helpless with the arrow still in him. He demanded that I remove the arrow and he would kill the demon, unless, of course I wanted to die." She said the last bit sarcastically and Ranma just shook his head. Kagome paused for a second to gather her wits before she continued her story.

"Anyway, I decided that I really didn't want to die so I grabbed the arrow and pulled it out and he destroyed the demon in about two seconds. Then he turned on me to get the Shikon jewel, which had been ripped out of me when the monster had slashed at me earlier in the fight. A bunch of thing happened and Inu-Yasha ended up with these prayer beads around his neck. Now, whenever I say sit, he's smashed to the ground and can't move for a minute or so. Now, he is a reluctant helper when we go and search for the jewel. I accidentally shattered it when I was shooting at a crow demon that had stolen it. We have about half of it, but we still need to find the rest before other demons find the pieces. Even a tiny shard would cause them to get unbelievably strong." She finished and Ranma shook his head in wonder.

"Sounds like you have your hands full with this Inu-Yasha and the Shikon jewel." He said and she nodded. Before she could say anything, though, a voice spoke up from the doorway.

"That maybe true, but I have worse troubles trying to keep you from getting yourself killed every two seconds." Inu-Yasha snapped as he crossed his arms over his chest.

"What the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you not to follow me, Inu-Yasha!" Kagome shouted as she jumped to her feet.

"Moron, you don't realize how much you're in danger with what you're trying to do." He snapped. "Trying to mess with history can get you…urk!" he exclaimed, as he was suddenly smashed to the floor by Kagome as she shouted sit after he had called her a moron.

"Wow, that looks like it would hurt." Ranma said as he stared at the prone half-demon.

"It does." Inu-Yasha snapped as he struggled to get up. Finally he gave up and settled for glaring up at Kagome as she glared at him. "You are going to get every one killed, Kagome." He snarled as he struggled not to insult her like he wanted to.

"What the hell are you talking about?" she snapped back.

"If you try to find out what happened to us and our quest, you would try and change the past and that could mean that the village could be destroyed it you screw up, not to mention when you got back to this time, things would be different." He explained slowly, as if to a small child.

"What?!"

"You know, he's right." Ranma said as he stood up and approached her. "If you try to change the past you could create a parallel timeline and if you saved someone who was supposed to die, than it could affect the future, just like if someone was killed that shouldn't have been. You could cease to exist, like if you killed your great grandmother or something, then her kids wouldn't have had kids which means that they wouldn't have had you."

"What?!!!" she screamed and sat down heavily on the couch.

"How did you know that?" Inu-Yasha asked as he stood up and dusted off his red kimono and tossed his white hair over his shoulder.

"I've had some experience with time travel before. It was with a magic mirror that Happosai had. Cologne warned us all about it so we were every careful not to change past events to much." Ranma said, looking Inu-Yasha over.

What he saw was a well built man about his apparent age, though he knew that according to Kagome's story, he was much older, with long white hair that almost reached his knees and golden eyes that gleamed in the light.

Inu-Yasha, himself was studying Ranma and he was an athletic teenager with long black hair that was pulled back into a braided pigtail, wearing black pants held up with a white sash and a red sleeveless silk Chinese style shirt tucked into them. His eyes were also a piercing blue.

Kagome was just getting over her shock when she got another. Suddenly, Inu-Yasha started to change right in front of her and Ranma's startled eyes. As they watched, his hair darkened and his dog-ears melted and flowed down to form human ears. The claws on his hands and feet smoothed themselves and became regular fingers and toes.

"Damn it!" Inu-Yasha exclaimed as he realized what had happened.

"I forgot that it was that time again." Kagome said with a small smile at the irritated Inu-Yasha.

"What happened?" Ranma asked, looking between the two of them.

"Every new moon, Inu-Yasha becomes completely human." Kagome said while Inu-Yasha just stomped over to a chair and threw himself into it.. Then something caught her eye as Ranma sat down in his seat, which was near where Inu-Yasha was sulking. Wanting to confirm her suspicions she came up with a quick idea.

Jumping up, she rushed over to the startled Inu-Yasha and said in a rush, "I need to braid your hair real quick."

"You need to what?!" he yelped as he dodged away from her hands.

"Come back here! I'm serious!" she yelled as he danced out of her reach again. Finally she shouted, "Sit!" As he crashed to the ground again, she jumped over to him and with quick fingers braided the mass of hair into a neat braid that went a little longer than his knees. She finished just as he jumped to his feet again.

"What the hell was that all about?!" he shouted, but she wasn't paying any attention to what he was saying. Quickly she grabbed Ranma's hand and dragged him off the couch until he was standing next to Inu-Yasha.

She smiled as she confirmed her thoughts. They looked identical. Their faces were the same and with the black hair, even if it was different lengths, the only way to tell them apart was their eyes, as Inu-Yasha's was still gold.

Ignoring their protests, she grabbed both of their hands and dragged them out of the room and up to her room where she shoved them in front of the bureau mirror and said, "You guys look identical except for your eye colors."

 The guys threw her startled glances before they turned to the mirror and confirmed it for themselves. "Wow, she's right. With your hair braided like that, we do look almost like twins." Ranma said and grinned at them.

"I can't believe it, you're actually right about something." Inu-Yasha snapped mildly at Kagome who glared at him and thought about saying sit again, but decided that three sits in less than an hour was a bit much.

"I wonder if he's related to you some how." She said instead.

"Maybe I'm a descendent." Ranma said thoughtfully while Inu-Yasha was getting creeped out.

"I think I'll head back now. Bye!" he said and rushed out of the room with Kagome and Ranma right behind him. They ran though the house and out into the well house where Inu-Yasha jumped in, followed quickly by the others with Kagome shouting for him to stop.

The three of them emerged from the well, and Inu-Yasha stopped short, seeing his half brother Sesshomaru as he was talking with his servant Jaken.

Sesshomaru smirked when he caught sight of his brother. He had been searching for him because he was bored and wanted a fight. Now, here his brother was, but never like how he had seen him before. But he knew it was Inu-Yasha, as only he could smell like that. "Why brother! What on earth happened to you?" he asked in a mock concerned voice.

"Sesshomaru, I should have known that you would show up when I'm having a bad day." Inu-Yasha snapped as he took up a defensive stance.

"Poor brother dear."

"Shut up and go away, Sesshomaru." Kagome snapped at the full-blooded demon. Turning to Inu-Yasha, she said irritably, "What the hell is your problem?"

"Nothing." Inu-Yasha snapped back.

"Right. I say you look like Ranma and you bolt like I had some sickness. Now I want you to tell me what's wrong or I will drag you back though and lock you in a room with me and Ranma until you tell me. I know some very annoying songs I can sing to pass the time you know." She snapped.

"Ugh, not that Barbie song again." Inu-Yasha shuddered as he backed away from her.

"Yes the Barbie song along with a lot of others." Inu-Yasha shuddered again, then turned around and ran away, almost slamming into his brother before he could get away. Sesshomaru watched his brother disappear into the forest with Kagome yelling at him to stop as she chased him, in shock. Jaken had been flatted by Inu-Yasha in his escape and was in no shape to even notice that two out of three visitors were gone. But the third was still there, casually leaning against the well.

"They act just like me and Akane used to sometime." Ranma commented as he watched the forest for any sign of them coming back.

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TBC