What to put here...

Ah, I guess I could tell you how old all the characters are at this point. I mean it's quite obvious they're not the same age as the anime.

Kagome and Inuyasha are seventeen, nine months apart actually, because I like to be really specific. Inuyasha is the elder though it's hard to tell sometimes. Sango is eighteen and Kohaku, not that he's in this fic, is thirteen. Akemi is nineteen, if you know how to add you already know this. This of course puts Sesshoumaru at twenty-three. (It's math darlings, math!)

Inu no Taishou's age is ridiculously unnecessary to know. Just know he wasn't particularly young when Sesshoumaru was born.

I think you'll really enjoy this chapter. Kagome gets pissed off, and you know how fun she can be when she's volatilely pissed. And Sango's not trying to talk her out of it. Sango's pissed off too. And all this anger is directed at the one handily responsible for it. The TAishou.

Oh and we get to see what Akemi wrote in her little note in this chapter. It just adds fuel to Kagome's fire though.

Tee-hee!

Next chapter we get a closer look at this school the Taishou sent Akemi to. But for now we get the slightest inkling of just what has been done to Sesshoumaru's betrothed.

OH and everybody you recognize from the anime is not mine.

enjoy!

Revelation

"Sango," Kagome growled. "Give me the Phone."

"Kagome, don't you think – "

"Now!" Kagome's eyes flashed fire at her friend. "I'm going to get to the bottom of this and he has to come along for the ride!"

Sango gulped. Kagome was pissed and the Inu no Taishou was about to be introduced to her full wrath. Quickly she dug out the special youkai phone she kept on her always.

The Phones were expensive and difficult to come by. Sango only had one because of a hereditary family predilection to work as exterminators. Her people were called in to eliminate Ferals that moved into inhabited territory. The non-feral youkai were usually the ones to call her in. Popular superstition had it that the blood of a Feral could contaminate any youkai exposed to it. It wasn't true of course, but it kept her in business, so she didn't complain.

Kagome snatched it out of Sango's hand the moment she produced it from her purse. Without pausing to apologize to her friend she furiously dialed Inu no Taishou, adding a bit of her own power to strengthen the compulsion to answer.

It often took several minutes to establish a sufficient connection. The second Inu Taishou appeared in the window produced by the phone Kagome launched right into what she had to say. "Taishou, you demented son of a shaved cocker spaniel, get your ass down here, now!"

Holy shit! Sango stared at the miko glaring death at the ancient inu youkai. She'd never heard Kagome talk like that to anyone. She hadn't even known Kagome knew the correct way to insult a high inu.

Apparently neither had the Taishou as he sat stunned on the other side of the communication window. "Kagome what's the matter? Where's Akemi?" he began in alarm, but Kagome cut him off.

"Gone," she declared, flint and steel in her voice. "And from what I could see Akemi's been gone for years. Get moving Taishou. I said now and I meant it!"

"I'd start moving before she gets mad enough to make you, Taishou," Sango suggested dryly. "She's pissed. And so am I."

"Look girls, I can't just drop everything because Kagome wants to throw a tan-"

"Akemi's gone, Taishou! Don't you get it?" Kagome yelled at the inu turd. "The longer you sit there the longer she has to get away and the longer it'll take for me to figure out how to fix what you let happen to her!"

"Akemi's going Feral, Taishou," Sango cut him off before he could say something else stupid.

"What?" he demanded in disbelief.

"There was blood in her eyes," Sango continued. She was a slayer; it was common sense to know the signs of her prey. "She sat with us, unthreatened, for fifteen minutes, trying to hide in the open. She barely tolerated Kagome's touch and made sure to keep several feet away from me."

"Her youki was on alert as if expecting an attack at every moment," Kagome growled. "I want to know what's been done to her and I want to know now! Get moving Taishou, because if I count to ten and you're not here, I will permanently remove any chance of you ever siring anymore sons!" And with that she severed the connection. "Hmmph! I might just do it anyway!"

"It's not like he doesn't deserve it," Sango lead the way out to the car for her gear. She never left home without it. Exterminating Feral youkai required immediate response, not that she was planning to exterminate Akemi. Rather, if she was going to hunt up the fools responsible for Akemi's current state, she was damn well going to be prepared to properly kick their youkai ass.

"Where is that lowlife, bald, mini-chihua-" a clawed hand cut off Kagome's impatient stream of words.

"Watch it little girl," the Inu no Taishou growled in her ear. "Just because you're betrothed to my youngest does not mean you can ins-"

Kagome's eyes flashed fire and her power flared brilliantly to singe every hair up his arm. "Don't annoy me Taishou, I'm not in the mood," Kagome growled when he hastily removed his smoking hand. "Now," she leveled a firm glare at the flabbergasted youkai who seemed to finally see her for the first time. "After Sango gears up we are going back into the station and you are going to buy us all tickets to this school you sent Akemi to."

"Why are you wasting time going back there when even I know that's not where Akemi would go? We should be tracking her down to –" Taishou obviously wasn't a very fast learner.

"Track her how?" Sango snorted. "Kagome taught Akemi how to hide her scent when she was nine."

"What? Why would you do something so –"

"She's really quite good at it," Kagome added. "So we're going to proceed with my plan. Move Taishou! I want to know what pushed Akemi to this point and all the answers lie in that school!" she sneered the word.

"But –"

"Move it Taishou! I'm not playing games with you!" Kagome prodded the male with a miko charged finger.

"Should I bring Kirara?" Sango wondered.

"Might as well," Kagome shrugged. "We may want to return faster than we left. Besides, I really don't like leaving her in the trunk all day even if she can get out on her own."

Sango nodded and retrieved her firecat to perch on her shoulder. "You may proceed Taishou," she offered her own stern prod to get the youkai moving.

In fifteen minutes, they were all ensconced in a luxury cabin headed toward the North Country that had apparently been Akemi's prison for the better part of ten years. Sango slowly stroked Kirara's warm, glossy fur in attempt to soothe her own straining nerves. She was a woman of action. Sitting on a train in wait went against everything her better sense told her the situation warranted, but at least she was able to sit still. Kagome was pacing.

Prowling more like. The miko's power flared irregularly with each spike of worry and anger at this situation. All the other youkai in the car could surely feel it through the walls of their tiny cabin.

"Kagome sit down," the Taishou suggested reasonably and Kagome leveled a glare on him powerful enough to level a house.

"Don't fry him yet, Kagome," Sango advised the miko mildly. "We may need him further today."

"Oh I'm not going to fry him," Kagome smirked evilly. "At least not until he's informed Sesshoumaru as to just what the school he sent Akemi to has turned her into, and what it has cost him. And that some of the damage could have been prevented."

"What are you babbling about? I have yet to see any evidence of irreparable harm done to Akemi beyond the words of two hysterical, angry human women!"

"I believe the Taishou wants some proof, Kagome," Sango spoke blandly, concealing her rage at the insult bestowed upon herself and her friend.

"Do you think we should give him the note Akemi left for him," Kagome wondered just as blandly.

"I don't see why not," Sango shrugged. "We certainly have the time while we wait."

"You're quite right," Kagome nodded as she fished out Akemi's message and flung it at the fool youkai who dare to still question her integrity, her ability, and her reason.

"I thought you hadn't even seen her," the Taishou growled to himself.

"Because Sango could see the blood in her eyes from miles away," Kagome scoffed.

Inu no Taishou ignored her comment in favor of opening the letter from, what he was sure was a perfectly lucid, Akemi. What he found was most distressing.

"Well," Kagome prompted. "What does it say?"

"I can't read this," he growled to conceal his confusion. One of the songs of praise sung about the school he had sent Akemi to was about its writing program. Akemi had always been an imaginative storyteller and her penmanship had been magnificent for such a young age – or so he'd been lead to believe. What was going on? Had Akemi's early tutors praised her overmuch? He shook his head, even if they had; Akemi had been gone to this school for nine years. Surely more progress should have been made even if she'd started learning from scratch.

Kagome plucked the letter from his bewildered hands. "Ah," she nodded as if she'd expected something like it, as if she knew to expect as much. "Now I know why she stopped writing me."

"What do you mean?" Sango asked curious despite of her anxiety. Kagome turned the paper so Sango could see the shaky letters scrawled across the page. It looked like one of the letters her brother Kohaku sent her on his better days of physical therapy. "Still not getting it."

"Would you like a direct comparison?" Kagome offered and scooped up her purse from the cushioned bench she'd never quite settled on. "I've still got the last letter she sent me. Akemi had beautiful penmanship."

"You've carried it around with you for four year?" Sango asked in admiration.

"It was all I had of her to hold on to," Kagome shot a glare at the youkai observing them from his seat. The letter Kagome produced was decently long and the smooth clear letters neatly scrolling across each page reminded Sango strongly of the Akemi she remembered as a little girl. That quiet creature that had been seated across the table from them was so far from her past experiences with the inu female, she'd hardly recognized her. Just as it was with the handwriting on the two letters before her.

"Now I see," Sango nodded sadly, fully understanding what it meant. "Care to take a look, Taishou?" She held hers up next to Kagome's.

He wanted to dispute the common source of the letters, didn't want to admit what they meant. Kagome wasn't about to let him and neither was the scent on both the letters.

"Now what do you think could cause such a detrimental effect on a person's handwriting, Sango?" Kagome asked her friend pointedly. She didn't need to know the answer. This act was purely for the benefit of the idiot youkai before them.

"Severe nerve damage, either in the dominant arm or hand," Sango answered without compunction.

"What could cause such damage in a youkai of Akemi's youth, strength, and healing ability?" Kagome continued.

"Repeated breaks or fractures in the same area of tissue that occurred too close together in time for the damage to fully repair itself between breaks."

"And what does that tell you Akemi has suffered through?"

"Severe physical abuse," Sango's eyes were hard as granite and Kagome's were harder as they glared at the Inu no Taishou.

"How long has this been going on?" Kagome demanded.

"For such deterioration of fine motor skills?" Sango asked rhetorically. "Several years."

"Several years, Taishou," Kagome growled and Sango thought it was her turn to help illustrate the situation properly to the dense youkai staring back at them.

"Kagome, when was the first time you fore-warned about the coming of Danger?" she asked, not needing the answer.

"Before my father and your parents were killed when I was eight," Kagome growled.

"Have you ever been wrong?"

One word. "No."

"Have you ever before warned of danger that wasn't fatal?" Sango's throat closed.

"Kohaku was merely paralyzed," Kagome spat at the youkai who dared ignore her warnings. "Paralyzed along half his body."

The Taishou blanched as he finally grasped where this was going.

"When did you first warn the Incompetent Inu no Taishou of danger for Akemi?"

"Four years ago." Kagome growled.

Taishou gulped as he realized just what kind of fool he'd been.

After several minutes putting the youkai in the hot seat Kirara bumped Sango's chin with her head and drew attention back to the letter to Taishou in her hand. "Would you like to know what it says?" Sango asked the silent inu across from her.

"You can read it?"

"It's not much worse than the letters I get from Kohaku." She had begged the elders to listen to Kagome the night he got hurt. They had only scoffed at her and come back, grimfaced, with her nearly dead brother on a makeshift stretcher behind them. "Why are all elders such fools?" she sighed.

"Age does not bring wisdom," Kagome snorted. "Only experience and arrogance."

Sango shook her head and tapped the letter in front of her. "She has called off the engagement." Whatever color the Taishou had regained he lost again. "She writes that Sesshoumaru deserves better and the guilt would be too much for her if she stood in the way of him finding that." Sango nearly growled at what that sentiment conveyed to her. The people at this strange school had utterly destroyed Akemi's self-esteem and confidence. "She leaves you her name which she will no longer need and her bankcard as payment for the expense raising her caused once in your care, with the exception of that school."

"What does she mean she leaves her name?" Kagome demanded.

"Each youkai clan has its own customs and the like," Sango explained. "For the Taishous the leader leaves his name behind when he assumes the roll of alpha. As a female, Akemi's name would be left to the pack upon leaving it either to mate outside the clan or death."

"What?" Kagome hissed.

"I believe Akemi meant to signify a spiritual death rather than a physical one," Sango studied the paper in her hands. "She asks that you refuse to pay more than half of the tuition demanded for her schooling as she hopes you are too honorable to want to pay her abusers and…" Sango trailed off as she leaned closer trying to make out what came next. "I can't make it out," she sighed in frustration. "She fully understands if you pay them anyway."

Kagome growled, "I'm not liking what I hear, Taishou."

"I'm not liking what I read, and I'm only getting the gist of things," Sango growled herself. "The language is so convoluted and turned it's almost as if she's afraid to ask for anything."

Kagome ran her hand through her hair in agitation. "She is, and it runs deeper than just on paper."

"What?"

"Every time she asked a question her expression may not have changed but her youki did. It retracted from us. Violently, as if she expected us to beat her," Kagome sighed in anguish.

"I do not think we are going to like anything we find at Akemi's so-called school," Sango observed darkly as she stroked Kirara's ears.

Kagome gave an abrupt, mirthless laugh. "AS if there was any question about that."

"Then why do we waste time going there?" the Taishou sighed, wearied by what he'd been forced to acknowledge. There was something wrong with Akemi and it just might be his fault.

"We have to know what's to be gotten over before we can help Akemi get over it," Kagome snorted.

"If we can help Akemi get over it at all," Sango added sadly. For it was entirely possible it was already too late.