Shadow Wolf here!
Sorry that it took so long with typing up this new chapter. I hope that I can have the three one up as soon as I had this one. It may take a while as I have test and midterm to study for.
If any of you are wondering, then yes, Shika and Neko both have parts in this story.
Also, if you are confused on something that happens in the story, then all you have to do is ask me to elaborate. I will try to explain about it without accidently giving away some of the story's future chapters.
I would also like to repeat that I don't own Inuyasha, nor I own Dragon Knight. If I did then I'd make it so that Inuyasha would be nice to Kagome from the very beginning, and Lord Lykouleon wouldn't have died in the end of the book.(I always felt sad about that part.) T.T
Anyways, I hope you like this new chapter.
Chapter One: The Ties That Bind Us
Kagome slowly opened her eyes, revealing twin orbs that were a stunning, flame-like blue in color. She blinked, confused and bewildered, as she looked around at the pure white, chamber-like, room that she currently found herself in. Kagome snorted quietly, "if this is the afterlife, then the owner really needs to hire a new decorator", she muttered to herself, shaking her head in disbelief.
The ravenett nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard the sounds of a light chuckle come from behind her. She spun around startled, only to see a woman. The surprised look on her face turned to shock when Kagome recognized exactly who the woman was. In front of her was none other than the Shikon no Tama's creator, the miko known only as Midoriko.
Midoriko smiled softly at Kagome. "You would be right, little miko, if this was truly the afterlife. Sadly, this is not." Kagome noticed that her voice was melodic and filled with kind amusement. Kagome, who's brain took a while to calm down from being scared out of its wits, took awhile to register what the older woman had just said. When she finally did register it, she frowned, a look of confusion on her face.
"If this isn't the afterlife, then what is it?" asked Kagome. Her head was tilted like that of a puppy. The older chuckled into her raised hand. "This is what I like to call The Between", said Midoriko, who was still somewhat amused. Seeing that the younger's blank look she elaborated a bit more. She gestured, with her right hand, at their surroundings, "The Between, the Crossroads, the place between the realm of the living and of the dead."
Kagome's eyes lit up in resignation, but soon dimed back into her perversely confused look. She looked at Midoriko warily, "But didn't I die? If so, then why am I here and not in the afterlife?" Midoriko sighed tiredly in response. She should have known the young one would have asked her about that. She just wished that she had had more time to come up with a better answer than the one that she had now. "That, little one, is partly my fault. I have made a grave mistake." Midoriko sighed again. Looking up, and upon see that the youngster was going to open her mouth, the older woman pended Kagome with a sharp stare. Kagome was taken aback by the stern look and swallowed the questions that were on the tip of her tongue.
Midoriko continued, "Now, I know that you must have many questions," here she paused to see if Kagome was staying with her. "But I want you to promise me that you will hold onto them till I tell you to. It is already a somewhat hard tale for me to tell." She finished.
Kagome, seeing that the request was reasonable, nodded in agreement. Midoriko eyes soften from their previously hard look. She started her tale. Her voice was now both soft and tired sounding.
"As I said before, I have made a grave error in the past. Long ago there was a prophesy told to all of the miko. These prophesy told of the rise of the half spider that you know as Naraku. It told of the person who would fight him and of his downfall at the hands of that same person that fought him." Kagome, upon hearing this, started to feel a knot forming in her stomach. Midoriko showed no sign of noticing as she continued to speak.
"I later found said person, a little girl." The knot turned into a stone. "For many years, as she grew up, I watch over and protected her whenever I could."
The older woman's face took on a somewhat sad expression. "One day I was distracted and had turned I focus elsewhere for a bit, no more than a day or two, thinking that the child would be safe when I turned back. How wrong I was to think that. When I refocused on the child, she had vanished without a trace. It was as if she had never even existed. In despair, and fearing what would happen if the prophesy wasn't fulfilled, I looked for a person who could take her place. A person, to take her place, and who was of the same spirit as her. After looking far and wide in the place I called home, and not finding the right person, I looked elsewhere. So I came to a place, a world that was filled with magic, and in that world I found that replacement."
Midoriko grimmest, not at all happy, even now, with what she had done. Glancing over at Kagome, she noticed a dawning look of horrified recognition had appeared on her face. The elder nodded sadly at the unasked question that was found in Kagome's eyes.
"I took from that other place, a girl, young woman really, who held ,not only the same face and name, but also the same spirit as the missing child." She laughed bitterly, her midnight hair falling to shadow her eyes from view. She glanced up, thru the curtain of hair, to look at the now shell-shocked younger woman.
"You can probably guess as to whom it was that I took." The silence was thick in the room as both women tried to gather their thoughts into to some kind of order. After a while Midoriko raised her head, while taking a couple deep breaths so as to settle her emotions. When Kagome motioned for her to continue, she did.
"Sadly, when I took you away, the trauma from the transportation, coupled with the nasty situation that I had first found you in, caused you to lose most of your memory." A single tear slipped from Midoriko's eyes to run down her cheek, only for it to vanish into thin air soon after fall off of her chin.
"I had to watch as the Higurashi, in thinking that you were their missing child, took you in. Having to watch them as they taught you, a girl from a different place, the past of your look-a-like, and knowing that, back in your home, your true family cried in loss."
Soon after a second, and then a third, tear run down the Midoriko's face, only to meet the same fate as the first. Kagome, now mostly over the internal shock, felt a small pang of grief for her unknown family, whomever, or whatever, they were. Strangely enough, while she know that what Midoriko did was wrong, she could not feel it in herself to be angry at the older woman for what she had done. After all, if she herself was in the same situation, would she have not done something similar? Sniffling a bit, she wiped her now watery eyes, before turning her attention back into what Midoriko was saying, as she had began to speak again. "I know what I did was bad, terrible even. Yet you still helped me by killing Naraku, even if you didn't know about what I had done. So, in order to make it up to you, I can you a chose."
Midoriko, now tear free, once again pinned Kagome with a stern look. "You will have two chooses. You may only pick once, so you must make that one chose count. Once you have chosen the one that you want there will be no turning back from it. No repeats. Weather for better or for worse; you will be stuck with it."
Kagome nodded in understanding before leaning closer so as to hear what Midoriko was saying better. "The first choose is simple. You may pass onto the afterlife. To peace and well earned rest. The second choose, if you reject the first, is that I will use the rest of my abilities to send you back to your original home, to the family that I had taken you from, and try to hopefully regain your memories."
Kagome was wary, as it seemed too good to be true and so she asked, "What's the catch if I choose one over the other?"
The elder miko gave a tiny smile of amusement. "You are right to ask about that as each one has its good and bad parts. If you were to choose the first, then it's simple. You just finish passing on to the afterlife. You will never know of your birth home and will lose the ability to regain your memories. Your family in that place will forget about you, as if you were never born. Basically, the ties that bind you, however small, will be cut.
If you choose the second, it would be the opposite of the first choose. The ties to this place will be severed, though whether or not the friends that you made here will still remember you is, as of now, unknown. I will say this though. There is no guaranty, that if your choose the second choose, that your old memories will come back. You may get them all as soon as you wake up there. You may get only one or two memories to ever come back over time. Heck for all I know, you might never regain them for the rest of your life. We can never really know for sure. Also, as I only have a little bit of power left you would be sealed into the body of a child. (A/n: Think of how the fairy Tinlet, the girl that the water knight Rune likes, was turned into a child. It's similar to that.) If you start to regain your memories then once you get most of them back, then the spell will brake and you will be returned to that of as you are now. If you never get them back then you will stay as a child until you ether, find someone that is powerful enough to break it break it for you or you grow up normally. You would also be meeting to very familiar people when you get there. If you choose this path then they will be your protectors, as it would be hard to deafen yourself when you're in the body of a child."
One thing bothered Kagome, about what the woman had said, "Ties? What do you mean?"
Midoriko nodded. "Ties are, in essence, what hold you to a surton place. They are basically like invisible anchors that that show you were you belong. A good example, when I had kidnapped you. When I took you from that place the 'anchors' that bound you to there had been constantly trying to pull you back. When I brought you here, after a while new 'anchors' bound you to this place and you became a part of it. If we were to cut away one of these 'anchors' then it would the same as if someone disowned their family name. You would basically no long belong to that place."
Kagome nodded, though she was still in a little bit of shock. She wasn't a Higurashi anymore, never was one to begin with. She wasn't even from this place; she was from a different continent, maybe ever a different world. Midoriko, one of the most revered Miko in history, had kidnapped her.
She noticed that as Midoriko had been talking about her chooses, two items had popped up a little ways in front of her. She blinked in slight surprise. 'How did i not notice them until now?' She mental shock her head, it really was all that important. Stepping closer, she silently studied them.
The first item, which was on her left side, was a large floating door. It was a bright gold in color and seemed to be made out of some kind of metal. Stamped into the top middle portion of said door was an intercity carved symbol of a cloud with a setting sun showing behind it. Kagome assumed that it represented the afterlife.
Looking to the right she spied the second item, a necklace. And what a strange necklace it was. It consisted of a small diamond shaped crystal attached to a simple piece black leather cord. The crystal itself was a deep red in color, it kind of reminded her of the color of blood oddly enough, and seemed to glow briefly, when she got near to it, with a soft inner light. Finally the whole thing was hanging, by the cord, on a store display hock. It represented the other chose.
She pondered her options for a while. While she would rather not go to afterlife just yet, she was a bit wary about taking the second option. 'Is it worth the risk?' Kagome thought.
On one hand, if she was to pick the first option, then she would truly be dead. She would not have to fight for her and her friend's lives against another demon or human just to stay alive(she had lost count of how many times an enemy had come close nearly taking her head off when she was trying to retrieve a jewel shard), or just to prove that she wasn't an easier target than the others of her small miss matched group. Nor would she have to travel anymore while sleep with one eye always open in case of a surprise attack. The thought of not of never again having something trying to make her their lunch was also slightly tempting.
It was as complicated and as simple as that.
On the other hand, if she was to pick the second option, she would be able to her original home, where ever that place was, but she would lose the home that she had made for herself here. Also, if what Midoriko said was true, even if she went to her original home there would be almost no guarantee that something might not go wrong or for whether or not she even got her memories back. Frankly, if she was to be honest with herself, the thought of be turned into a child and the slight chance of having to go through puberty again didn't really sit well with her. At all.
Kagome sighed as she massaged her temples in order to get rid of the growing headache that she was just starting to feel. Each chose had its own pros and cons. She looked at the door and necklace again. she would ask Midoriko one last question before finally making a decision.
Midoriko had said something about have protectors if she was to choose the latter option. Who was going to be those protectors? Curious as to who they would be, she asked.
Midoriko smiled softly, she had been wait for the younger to ask her about hat part. She was in for a big surprise.
"I did say something about that didn't I?" Midoriko mused. " Well let's just say that they are both people that are very close to you."
Waving her left hand lazily at an open area, the older woman started to summon something. Soon small, multi-colored, balls of light started to appear from out of thin air, in between the two woman. After awhile the tiny balls al started to merge together and shift into two distingivly human-like shapes. Once completed, the light shattered to reveal the sleeping, and very much alive, forms of Shika and Neko. Kagome's jaw dropped. When she had asked Midoriko the question, she had not expected this. Feeling her eyes start to water, Kagome rubbed at them to keep from crying. Now was not the time to cry.
looking back at Midoriko, she was startled to see that the older woman was starting to fade away, becoming more transparent with each passing moment.
The older one's smile turned slightly bitter. "I don't have much time left, as I can feel my powers weakening. For this to work you must touch one object. The door, for the afterlife, or the necklace, for the home. If you wish to choose the second option then you must do so now or else you will be stuck with the afterlife option."
Kagome nodded and, after taking a deep breath, she made her decision.
She reached out and touched the necklace. It seemed to hum, slightly in content, under her finger tip, as well as give her a sense of da-sha-vu. The power that she could feel coming off of it made her feel warm and safe. She blinked, shaking herself out of her self-indoost daze. The door sunk back into the floor as the necklace reappeared around her neck.
Midoriko tilted her head in amusement," is that your chose?"
Kagome nodded."Yes." she said.
"Very well then" said Midoriko. "Let us begin."
The older woman started chanting, in a language that Kagome didn't know. As she finished the long chant a large runic array, that glowed a deep silver color, appeared on the flood underneath Kagome, Shika, and Neko. When the array's glow had strengthened to an almost blinding level, Midoriko absently said one more thing.
" Also, I hope you like the gifts that I gave them. They should be very helpful in were your going." she said idly with a small smirk on her face.
Kagome blinked owlishly. She opened her mouth to ask about what the woman meant, but was interrupted when both she and her two close friends were turned into three large, familiar, balls of light. the three balls shrank from the size of a person to the size of a small basketball before spiraling upwards, one after another, to disappear through the ceiling. Soon there was only one person left in the room.
As the last of Midoriko's form faded into noting, the last of her energy had been used to power the array, she smile. Said array that was still on the floor, its purpose done and with nothing to keep powering it, shattered like glass, and the large chamber-like room was once again empty.
Finally, I finished typing it. it took me forever.
Oh well, here's the second chapter. I hope that you all enjoyed it.
Please review if you did.