The city was packed, filled to the gills with people. Merchants, houshis, mikos, headmen, even simple villagers were all abundant in the city streets. All of them were jostling each other and shouting at the top of their lungs. All in all, it rather reminded Kagome of downtown Tokyo during rush hour.

"Well, this is strange," Gaka commented, his brow furrowing. "I have never before seen the city this...full...before. I wonder what could have caused it."

Kagome was about to reply to him when she spotted a couple of merchants who had set up shop on the ground staring at her and whispering. Sango noticed too, jabbing Miroku in the ribs and asking, "I wonder what's up with them?"

Miroku gave a small shrug, the rings on his Shakujou jingling as he did so. "I don't know-what do you think, InuYasha?" InuYasha didn't answer. He was too busy glaring at nothing in particular.

"They are probably staring at Kagome-sama," Gaka commented. "If I am correct in thinking, they might have heard about, or maybe even seen my Amaterasu, and they know that Kagome-sama was my inspiration." As if they had heard him, the merchants put their hands together and bowed, their lips moving in silent prayer. As they did so, other heads soon began turning, and other people started bowing and praying.

"That's...weird," Kagome said nervously. She never liked it when people bowed to her.

"Hmm." Gaka strode forward and knelt before a merchant who was dealing in charcoal and parchments.

"Why are they praying to me?" Kagome asked nervously, as a young couple next to her gasped and instantly started praying as they hurried out of the town.

InuYasha shrugged irritably. "Who fucking cares?" he growled.

Kagome glared at him. "Uh, I do! I don't like it when people stare at me, okay?"

InuYasha glared right back at her and ground out, "Join the club."

"Well, I am now more confused than ever," Gaka said as he returned to the group. "Apparently, all of the people who are staring at Kagome-sama have seen my Amaterasu, but most of these people would not even get past the gates of the castle, let alone get invited to the lord's meeting-room to see my Amaterasu. How very odd." Gaka, who was lost in thought, cast his eye around the crowd, then sat up with a sharp jolt.

"What is it?" Shippou asked from his perch on Miroku's shoulder.

"I can see Harunaka over there; he is a guard at the castle. If anyone can explain what is going on here, it is him." Gaka shifted the pack on his shoulders and headed towards the guard in question, who was currently seated at someone's saké cart.

"Good morning, Harunaka," Gaka greeted as he stood next to the cart nonchalantly. Harunaka, a youngish man with a ratty topnot and a flabby-looking face, hiccuped slightly as he turned towards the artist.

"Whada yer want?" he asked rudely.

"I just wanted to ask about the crowd in the city, Harunaka," Gaka clarified, lifting his hands in a pacifying manner. Harunaka hiccuped again as he turned towards the group standing rather awkwardly behind Gaka.

"Whader those people doin' there?" he gurgled. "Some kinda travelin' kabuki group?"

"We're not a kabuki group!" Kagome cried indignantly.

"We are actually youkai-taijiya, my good man," Miroku calmly added, casually stepping closer to the inebriated guard. "And very good ones, at that."

Harunaka snorted into his saké cup. "Or very good actors."

Gaka quickly intervened before Miroku could bash Harunaka on the head like he so clearly wanted to do. "So, Harunaka, could you please answer my question?"

Harunaka grunted and leaned back on his stool. As he did so, he caught sight of Kagome. "Shit," he guffawed, "tha' whore looks jus' like that picture that guy painted!" Harunaka waved one meaty hand around at the crowd. "Tha's what all these people are here for, ya know? Alla them wanna see the picture. Whell, whoop-de-fuckin'-do, tha's all I'm saying."

Before Gaka could ask his next question, InuYasha walked forward and bopped the man on the head. "Kagome is not a whore!" he snarled.

"You would say that," Harunaka grumbled, rubbing the knot on his head. "Whore's probably the on'y way you gonna get any, you bein' a half-breed 'n all."

Once again, Gaka had to intervene (with some help from Kagome) to prevent Harunaka's impending disembowelment by a certain pissed-off hanyou. "Why do they all want to see Amaterasu, Harunaka?" he asked as Kagome tried to calm down a very enraged hanyou while remaining calm herself.

"Cuz one o' the shervants came shcreaming out inna shtreets one night, hollerin' about how the paintin' had a 'holy aura,' or some shit like that." Harunaka gulped down the rest of the saké and reached for the clay jar on the cart's table to get some more drink. When the jar turned out to be empty, Harunaka banged down more gold, and the cart's tenant placed another in its stead. Harunaka picked up the jar and drank greedily, forgoing the cup completely. "Shure enough," he gurgled on, "shome other people turned up an' ahsked ter see ther pantin'. Were willin' ter pay gold fer it, too. Lord'sh been down on hish luck, sho he lettem in. They all shaid that they had sheen the aura, an' it all wen' down'ill from there."

"So all these people are here to pay to see Amaterasu?" Gaka asked, his brow furrowed and a frown on his face as he jerked his thumb towards the mass of people behind him.

"Prolly," Harunaka muttered into his jar. "Lord e'en mada shrine outta one o' the old shtorehoushes, an' has some of ush guardsh gettin' the money from the masshes ash they come in ter shee her."

"Thank you, Harunaka," Gaka said. "Make sure you do not drink too much."

Harunaka snorted again. "No shuch t'ing ash too muchs."

Gaka turned back to the group, the frown still on his face. "I do not like this. I do not like that the lord is using my creation for such unholy purposes."

"What unholy purposes would those be?" Miroku asked, one eyebrow raised.

"He means that he doesn't like the lord scamming people out of their money," Sango replied, glaring at Miroku. "A concept you should be familiar with, houshi."

Miroku looked playfully affronted. "I do not know what you mean, my dear Sango! I only help the needy by exorcising the unseen youkai from their homes; nothing more, and nothing less."

"Yeah, right," InuYasha snorted.

"One does not even need the inner eye to see the liar in this situation," Gaka sighed. Miroku stiffened, his amethyst eyes flashing as the grip he had on his Shakujou tightened considerably. Completely oblivious to the death-glare he was now getting, Gaka clapped his hands and said, "All right, let us go see what they have done with my Amaterasu. Poor thing. She was never intended for anything like this."

"Why are we doing this?" InuYasha grumbled, kicking a patch of dust halfheartedly as they trailed behind Gaka.

"Two reasons," Kagome said, then held up her fingers. "One: Gaka has a shikon-no-kakera that we somehow need to convince him to give to us, and two: The aura that's like a shikon-no-kakera is in the direction everybody's heading." Kagome put her fingers down and gave the two men a rather stern glare. "I know you two don't have a very high approval of Gaka, but can you please be more cooperative? It's very rude for you to stand around griping like this!"

"Whatever," InuYasha mumbled, though he said it far beneath Kagome's hearing level.

They continued to weave through the packed streets, although the going was made slightly easier by the fact that everyone who had already seen the painting knew that Kagome looked exactly like the woman in the painting and treated her with the utmost respect, usually resulting in the people giving Kagome a wide berth. The people going to see the painting didn't know that Kagome was the star of the picture, however, and there seemed to be a lot more people going to see the painting than there was people leaving the city.

Finally, they made it to the castle gates, which were wide open to allow the people to come and go as they pleased, although there were guards stationed at the entrance to the actual castle to prevent anyone entering the lord's domicile. "Wow," Shippou said, standing on Miroku's head so he could see better over the mass of human bodies pressed all around them. "I've never seen so many people in one place before. It's kinda strange."

Kagome, who was used to large crowds like this when she went to places like the movies and rock concerts, was nevertheless disconcerted by the sheer amount of people around them. 'I didn't even know there were this many people in the Sengoku jidai,' she thought as she stared around. "We're almost there," she told Sango. "The aura is getting stronger."

"I hope my Amaterasu is unharmed," Gaka fretted as they neared the gates. "She was never meant for excitement like this. Maybe I should...no, that would not work..." Gaka trailed off, lost in thought as he walked into the courtyard with the rest of the wave of humanity. Sango exchanged a look with Kagome that Gaka missed, but the two men in the back caught perfectly. Then, they giggled. 'If we didn't know any better,' Sango thought, 'you'd think he was talking about a woman and not a painting.'

'Gaka wasn't kidding when he said his art was his greatest love,' Kagome giggled to herself. 'I wish I was loved like that.'

The impromptu shrine was in the lord's courtyard, and it was positively surrounded by people. Two guards were standing at the door, monitoring who went in and who went out. The only comforting factor about this whole situation was the fact that here, more people were coming out of the shrine than going in.

"Halt!" the guards called, crossing their spears in front of the door.

"We just want to see my Amaterasu," Gaka said politely.

"It don't matter if'n it's your Amaterasu," the guard on the left sneered, "You still have to pay five gold pieces to see her!"

"That's highway robbery!" Miroku objected.

"So speaks the tiger to the wolf," Gaka muttered under his breath, then said in a louder voice, "I suppose I can pay five gold pieces, then we can come in, right?"

"Oh, was I not clear enough?" the same guard snickered again, while the guard on the right sighed and looked to the sky, clearly asking for patience. "It's five gold pieces for each of you."

Gaka blinked, then turned around and quickly did the math in his head. Four humans, one hanyou and two youkai: even if the youkai weren't counted against them, that still measured up to twenty-five gold pieces, and that was money Gaka simply didn't have. "I...cannot afford that," he told the guard shamefacedly.

"Yeah? Then yer not gettin' in," the guard replied with a snaggle-toothed grin.

Kagome decided to step forth and see if she could somehow convince the guards to let them pass; after all, she was rather curious about the aura she sensed, which had gotten stronger than ever now. "Isn't there any way we can get in?" she asked as she stepped out from behind Gaka, where she had been waiting.

As soon as she stepped into their line of vision, both guards goggled at her for a few seconds, then both of them snapped sharply to attention. "Didn't even realize...sorry, marm, you and your friends can go in free of charge," the guard on the right said. "Sorry we didn't notice you before."

The guards parted and let the seven people enter the shrine. Now everybody could feel the faint but powerful aura emanating\ from behind the thick curtain which somebody had hung up to prevent the people from seeing the painting from the open doorway.

"Now you shall see my masterpiece," Gaka whispered, then he lifted the curtain aside and entered the room beyond.

There was a collective gasp from the group as they laid eyes on the painting for the first time. Since they hadn't seen any of Gaka's work, they had no idea how well he painted, and they thought that it might just be the aura that drew the people there. All of their theories were blown out of their heads when they saw the magnificent painting.

Painted upon a fifteen-foot tall scroll was the most beautiful woman that any of them had ever seen. She wore the simplest of clothes, which consisted of light silks and battle-armor, and her hair floated free from her shoulders, black, but with every tint of the rainbow painted into her ebony tresses. Her forehead was decorated with some kind of headdress which gave her the look of a regal and long-lost queen. The background was just as incredible as the painting itself. If Kagome hadn't known any better, she would have thought that Gaka had managed to bottle sunlight and used it to paint the background of the beautiful goddess. Her entire body was wreathed in warm golden light, so real that Kagome wondered crazily why this room wasn't on fire. But it was the painting's aura that stunned everyone the most. The painting of Amaterasu emitted a calming, perhaps even divine aura. Everyone felt it wash over them, soothing and healing, a caress from an unseen breeze. To stand in the painting's presence was to feel that perhaps everything might be all right after all. Counting up all that, Amaterasu was absolutely magnificent.

"Wow," someone said, although no-one was quite sure who said it.

"Let us try to get a little closer," Gaka whispered as he moved forwards.

As they moved closer, everyone could now see why all the people in town had been bowing and praying to Kagome. The beautiful painting of Amaterasu looked very much like Kagome in battle-armor, and seeing as the picture looked so real that it seemed like Amaterasu could walk off the scroll, it was no wonder that many people thought Kagome came from the painting and not the other way around.

"It's beautiful," Sango murmured. Miroku, Kagome and Shippou nodded dumbly in agreement. InuYasha just huffed. He was hard-put to compliment anything of Gaka's, but it really was a rather beautiful painting.

"Gaka," Kagome whispered, awe and respect clearly shining in her voice, "how on Earth did you manage to paint such a beautiful painting? It's the best painting I've ever seen!"

Gaka smiled radiantly. "Let us depart from this madhouse and I will tell you."

So they left, and Gaka led them to an inn, where they could set up shop for the night, since the time seemed to have run away from them yet again. "It was a challenge; painting my Amaterasu," Gaka said as the inn attendants brought in some food for their repast. "First, I needed a perfect model, which I found in you, my lady." He respectfully inclined his head to Kagome, who blushed. "Then I found the gemstone that the Kami sent me, and I put it in an ordinary pot of black ink. Lo and behold, the ink started changing colors right before my eyes! All I had to do was immerse myself in what my painting should look like, and the Kami did the rest for me! It was splendid, absolutely splendid!" Gaka sighed dreamily and looked out through the open door at the inn's gardens.

Kagome, InuYasha and Miroku all looked at each other skeptically. While it was true that Gaka was not nearly as mad as Kotatsu had been, it was clear that the power of the shikon-no-kakera had gotten to his head. If he wasn't careful, Gaka would probably end up selling his soul for his next masterpiece.

"Don't get me wrong, Gaka-san," Miroku said cautiously, "but are you sure that it's a good thing to go into a trance like that? For all you know, this gemstone of yours isn't from the Kami."

Gaka bristled, his black eyes becoming as hard as flint. "It is a gift from the Kami; I painted a beautiful painting with it, a painting the Kami themselves would be happy to own if they could. Do not speak to me of such heresy." He turned away, muttering, "A houshi, of all people."

'Just another way of proving that you shouldn't go for looks alone,' Kagome thought. Now she definitely knew that Gaka was like the artists in her time; perfectly sane one moment, ranting and raving the next. Gaka, meanwhile, had taken out his sketch-parchment and a charcoal stick and was drawing something, his tongue sticking out from between his teeth as the charcoal moved skillfully over the parchment, pausing here and there as Gaka considered his work.

Night fell totally and completely not long afterward, and Gaka soon stood up, stretched and headed outside to the gardens, calling out, "I am going to sleep outside. I can never get used to the indoors like most people." The artist gently closed the door behind him as he settled in the sparse grass of the garden for the night.

As soon as he was gone, the others leaned in and began talking to each other. "Should we tell him that it's a shikon-no-kakera he carries?" Miroku asked, his amethyst eyes grave.

"I don't know, he might take it badly. You saw how he reacted when we hinted that it wasn't a divine gift," Kagome pointed out. "Maybe we should tell him that his fortunes'll only get worse if he continues to carry the shard. After all, the Shikon-no-Tama brings despair to whoever comes in contact with it. If he learns this, maybe-"

InuYasha snorted and interrupted with, "Yeah, right. He's crazy! You heard how he ranted about the trance he went into. He's completely insane and can't be trusted with good judgment."

Kagome looked at him, her mouth lifting in a sardonic smile. "InuYasha, since when have you ever used good judgment?" InuYasha flushed and looked away, muttering darkly to himself.

"What about that painting?" Shippou asked as he gnawed on some of the dried meats that the servants had brought (and everyone else had forgotten). "Why does it have an aura like that?"

Kagome leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes as she thought. "Well," she said slowly, "Kotatsu's youkai paintings had youki because of his ambition and greed, so maybe Gaka's devotion to his art and his feelings about the Kami are reflected in his painting. The shikon-no-kakera he carries is absolutely pure, like the painting. He may be crazy, but he isn't impure." Kagome did have a point; Gaka was nothing if not devoted to his work. If he did have one flaw, it was that he was devoted to his art to the point of total obsession.

"How about we sleep on it?" Sango suggested. "We might be able to make a better decision in the morning." Everyone (with the exception of InuYasha, who thought that they were being 'puny humans' again) agreed with Sango's statement, and soon everyone had settled down to rest.

Gaka sat in the garden, working by starlight to finish his sketch for a new masterpiece. He didn't know why this scene had played out in his head when he had looked at InuYasha and Kagome, but his artist's soul had begged him to draw, paint and breath life into what he was sure was a scene from the future. As the last line was drawn into place, Gaka leaned back and admired his work.

'Truly one of my better ideas,' he thought, absurdly pleased with himself. Now, if only he could start painting it without attracting too much attention from his new friends...

Gaka smiled to himself as he mixed some of his charcoal with water, mixing it to form a crude paste, to which he added his shikon-no-kakera. The effect was immediate: the crude ink flashed and frothed, becoming a strange, rainbow-tinted mixture. Gaka selected a horsehair paintbrush from his pack, spread out one of the nicer parchments he had bought in the city that very day, and began to paint the scene depicted in his sketch.