DISCLAIMER: I don't own Inuyasha… I just exploit it ;)

EXTRA SUPER SPECIAL THANKS TO: WitchyGirl99, my lovely beta, for putting up with me.

Early A/N: Model UN trip coming up this weekend! How exciting, right? It'll be my first. I had to write a position paper on it- absolutely no fun. I'm representing a country that's fairly obscure. Almost everyone I asked had no idea it even existed! It's very difficult to write a position paper on your country's stance on a certain subject if that country has virtually no presence. So, enough with my rambling…. Here it is!

Owarinai Yume

Kikyo frowned. The young woman standing in front of her huffed in frustration and glared at her from under immensely long eyelashes. "Chinatsu-san, it will not do you any good if you cannot identify which herbs are good for medicinal use and which are not."

Chinatsu didn't stop glaring. If anything, the intensity of her glare grew. "It's not my fault that they all look the same. Besides, I don't even want to be a priestess."

Kikyo sighed. This girl was difficult. She hadn't wanted to be a priestess either, but it wasn't as if there was a choice in the matter. What had to be done had to be done, and that was that. "Your wishes do not matter. The village headman has already decided that you are to be the next priestess, and your parents are in full support of his decision."

"But I want to be able to have a family! I want to be able to do what I want. I don't want to be chained to some stupid duty just because some old fart-"

"Chinatsu-san, you will speak politely of your elders in my presence."

"Just because some old fart wants me to!" Chinatsu finished, purposefully emphasizing the title she had given to the headman.

"Chinatsu-chan!" Another girl from the village ran up to join them. "Why are you here with Kikyo-sama? Aren't your lessons finished yet?"

"Just finished, Riko-chan. Kikyo-sama was just leaving." Chinatsu looked pointedly at Kikyo. Kikyo, for her part, gathered her red cape and swept off, shooting an icy glare at Chinatsu, despite her best efforts not to. Aside from their personal differences, they looked almost the same. Sharply cut bangs, pale skin, wide brown eyes, and long hair characterized both; except that Chinatsu wore her hair down and Kikyo pulled hers back in a ponytail.

Chinatsu scowled one last time in Kikyo's direction. Shaking her head, she turned towards Riko. "So, what were you saying?"

---

They had arrived at the village of Edo exactly one hour ago, according to the position of the sun in the sky and Renkotsu's ability to tell time. And so far, Bankotsu would be damned if they could find this girl Naraku wanted so desperately.

One of the small oil paintings that had been given to the Shichinintai was now in Bankotsu's hand. Renkotsu, Suikotsu, and Kyokotsu held the other copies. Bankotsu and Jakotsu had so far been to the market place and compared the portrait to every girl they could find, and were now searching the rice paddies that branched out from the village. Of course, the fact that the painting had been slightly smeared with blood and was ripped in a couple of places didn't help.

A young woman's face peered out from the torn paper. Black bangs, wide brown eyes, and a straight nose decorated the portrait. Her mouth was relaxed, neither smiling nor frowning. Two lines extended from the end of her jaw and trailed off, meant to indicate the approximate likeness of her neck. Aside from that, the paper was empty.

"Do you think that she'll be here?" Jakotsu wondered idly. He had fallen into step next to Bankotsu, no longer a subordinate, but as a friend and an equal.

Bankotsu thought for a moment. If they had managed to cover the areas they agreed to split up into well, then the odds were that one of them was bound to find the girl. "Dunno. I hope so."

"Me, too. I find it to be rather tedious to look for some flighty wench when we could be doing other things." Jakotsu nodded seriously. He gave Bankotsu a sideways glance to check his friend's reaction.

"What other things? The China escape left us trapped here. Not much to do around this place, if you've noticed." Bankotsu scowled. Playing fetch for some rich client was not his style. He was a mercenary, not a bounty hunter. This girl that they were looking for must be one hell of a catch if seven mercenaries had to be hired to retrieve her.

Jakotsu nodded his agreement, voicing the words Bankotsu had thought. "Yeah. It's sad when mercenaries have to become bounty hunters."

They lapsed into a comfortable, contemplative silence, continuing their trek out towards the fields.

---

Kagome tossed her bag up and out of the well first, then used the vines snaking down its length to climb out herself. The walls of the well were much easier to shimmy up with the help of the thick green ropes. She grabbed the well's rim and pushed up to support her body as she clambered out of the well onto solid ground.

Her pink bicycle, faithful as ever, was leaning against the Goshinboku. Its tires were slightly deflated, but it was still usable, at least until her next trip back to the modern era.

"I'll have to bring the tire pump with me next time," Kagome muttered to herself, appraising the bike's current condition. It also needed another coat of paint.

She promptly grabbed her yellow bag, which was sitting a few feet away, and plunked it on the rack attached to the back of her bike. Then she fastened it to the rack with some old bungee cords she had found in a random shelf in her Jii-chan's storage room and wheeled the whole thing towards the road leading to the village.

The road to Kaede's village was one of the better ones. At best, it was dry and fairly smooth near villages because the villager's footsteps and the occasional horse had worn it down. At worst, it was muddy and impossible to bike over. It was a direct pathway through the rice paddies surrounding the village to the main residential area, and branched out through the fields for the farmers' convenience.

Kagome hopped on her bike with ease, pushing off from the top of the hill of Inuyasha's forest and gliding down towards the village. The weight from her backpack added to the momentum of her downhill ride, and she shot down the hill, happy to not have to pedal. People dotted the rice paddies, planting the seedlings of their crops.

A girl about Kagome's age was in one of the closer paddies, being harassed by what looked like to be two men; one was completely unburdened and the other looked as if he were serving as a pack mule. She observed the interaction between them distantly, interested, but not intrigued enough to go over to find out exactly what was happening. The unburdened man with the blue bandana was showing something to his partner, and the girl was going about her business uneasily, ignoring them.

"What are they doing…?" she wondered aloud.

"Simple, my dear girl. They're looking for someone." An ancient voice came from out of nowhere. Kagome jumped in surprise, and her bike gave a funny little hop to the side, tilting and jerking off-route. It was now en-route to crashing into a paddy and potentially ruining some poor villager's crop.

"Myouga!"

The tiny little flea demon's response was simply to stick his mouth into the vein in the crease of her elbow. Kagome, irritated, slapped him off. The motion caused her to lose grip on the handlebar of her bike… which sent it toppling over, unbalanced, straight into the paddy where the men were.

"Please do accept my sincerest apologies!" squeaked Myouga at the sight of the men. He made a tiny bow before darting off to wherever he had come from.

"Kagome-sama! You're back!" the farmer girl peered down at her in delight from her position above Kagome.

"Oh… hi?" Kagome greeted the girl quizzically. She felt bad for not knowing who the girl was.

"Are you okay?" the girl bent down and hoisted the bike off of Kagome's sprawled form. She put it aside, placing it on the road it had fallen off.

"I think so…" Kagome hoisted herself off the ground and adjusted her skirt uncomfortably. The stares she got from the two men unnerved her a bit- especially the one from the man with metal all over his face. It seemed to almost be drilled into his skull.

Her helper nodded and gave a little bow. "I'm sorry, but I have to get back to work now. Kaede is out in the herb garden if you need her." She abruptly turned away from the miko and began shoving seeds into the ground.

"Um," Kagome gave the two men a once-over. "Can I help you?"

The metal-man stepped back, allowing his blue-clad friend to step forward. The man in blue gripped a small sheet of paper in his hands, and Kagome could just make out the vague outlines of a portrait from the back. "Are you her?" he squinted at the paper, then at Kagome.

"I don't know. Who are you looking for?" Kagome climbed back out onto the road, righting her bike and getting ready to mount it. "Do you know what she does?"

The man drew another piece of paper from his pocket and consulted it. "It says she's a priestess in training..."

Damn. Just this one time, was it so much to ask to just not be bothered by everyone? Jewel shards were difficult enough to hunt down without getting involved in other things. Normally, she would chastise Inuyasha for that mind-frame, but sometimes, it was understandable. Her profession, as gratifying as it was, was not what she would have chosen given a choice. "That's me, I think."

"You think?"

"Well, I'm a miko and I'm in training, so yeah…" Right foot on pedal, Kagome thought. If the men get too weird, bike.

"Do you know Naraku-san?"

Light bulb. And an important bit of information. Naraku was looking for a priestess-in-training, who was almost definitely not her, for some nefarious purpose or another. She didn't know exactly what for, but she knew Naraku was in need of something with spiritual powers now.

"Well?" the man asked impatiently.

"I know him," Kagome smiled politely. Finding Inuyasha was a priority now. "Sorry, but I really have to get going. I'll see you later, maybe!" With that, she pedaled off as fast as she could go to the safety of Kaede's hut.

---

"Oo-aniki will be pleased."

"Gesh, gesh."

"She seems to be the one. The picture looks just like her! And she's a real miko. I could feel the ki radiating off her… makes me uncomfortable."

"Gesh, gesh."

Renkotsu rolled up the papers and stuck them back in his pocket. Granted, the picture did look like the girl on the strange pink contraption. But, it also looked like a dozen other girls he and Ginkotsu had come across in the past few hours. Obviously, the artist who had made the little painting did a shit job of it. The only real lead on this particular girl was the miko-training. Power came off her in waves. For the amount that they were being paid to retrieve her, she had to be powerful. Two plus two equaled four.

"Okay. Let's go."

---

"Runt. We're late. Let's go." Inuyasha tapped his foot impatiently on the side of a nearby tree root. Two plain grave markers stood at the base of the tree the root belonged to. A bit of moss clung to one, and dandelions grew at the base of the other.

The clearing they stood in was small, no more than ten feet in diameter. It was nestled in the middle of a dense, thick wood. Luckily for the smaller, less resilient plants, the majority of the trees weren't very tall, so sunlight was allowed to stream through.

"…" Shippo glared at Inuyasha from the corner of his eyes. He was bent down in prayer before his parents' graves. Earlier, he had solemnly laid down small bouquets of wildflowers in front of the markers. His mother's flowers were purple, since it had been her favorite color. His father's flowers were green. His father had always said that green was the greatest color of them all, because it was the color of his mother's eyes.

"We've been here hours. Kagome's probably back at that old hag's place waiting for us."

"Okay." With the mention of Kagome, Shippo gave one last deep bow of respect to his parents and jumped on Inuyasha's shoulder.

Upon contact, the hanyou dashed off into the trees towards Edo. "Took long enough."

Shippo said nothing, instead choosing to look back at his parents' grave one last time before they disappeared into the mass of greenery that surrounded them.

---

Kaede bustled about her herb garden, plucking weeds with the efficient speed of years worth of practice and harvesting the plants that had fully matured. Her basket was about half full with various types of herbs- not all, which Kagome was loath to admit, she could identify.

Kagome had spent about two years learning about herblore from Kaede. Actually, it was only about a few weeks if the time she actually spent on herbs were to be calculated. A few hours here and there were dedicated to identifying and using the medicinal plants, but it hadn't done all that much good. Sure, Kagome could now ID several of the more important herbs, like ones that would speed healing or relieve food poisoning (hey, sometimes the ingredients in the feudal era weren't exactly the cleanest), but otherwise she knew jack-shit about what she was doing.

"They've all gone. Inuyasha and Shippo are at Shippo's parents' graves, and Miroku and Sango took off to go see that priest with the fat badger."

"You mean Mushin-sama?" Kagome stared at Kaede quizzically. It wasn't like the old woman at all to call Mushin "that priest with the fat badger." She had never once heard Hachi described as a "fat badger," true as it was.

"I guess ye would know better than I, child."

"Will they be back soon?" Disappointment flooded through Kagome. If they weren't there, then it was moot to even go to the feudal era. In spite of her growing control over her powers and her progress in fighting, she would probably die at the hands of a minor, power-hungry demon without Sango, Kirara, Miroku, or Inuyasha.

Kaede paused in her harvesting. "I know not. Mayhap they are already on their way back. Sango and Miroku said they would only be a few days. They should be arriving here shortly. As for Inuyasha and Shippo, they ought to have been here by now."

"Maybe they just stayed a little longer by Shippo's parents' graves. To pay their respects, you know?"

"Yes," Kaede agreed. "You are most likely correct."

"I guess I'll just wait it out here, then."

---

"I think that you've taken a wrong turn."

"Impossible."

"Well, I don't recognize any of this."

"That's because we're walking in the opposite direction."

"But, houshi-sama, wasn't there a waterfall somewhere?" Sango glanced at her surroundings and tried to recall the wilderness she had traversed on the way to Mushin's temple. A waterfall had most definitely been a part of that. And somehow, if the monk was right, it had mysteriously disappeared.

"Maybe." Miroku's voice was edged with frustration and his stride was tense.

Sango had two words for this situation: Oh. Shit.

---

"You found her?!" Bankotsu was elated. Renkotsu had managed to do his job properly for once. He had actually found the damned girl, even when everyone else couldn't. Granted, it had been more like she had found him, but Bankotsu wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Renkotsu folded his arms across his chest and nodded solemnly. "Yes, Oo-aniki. She is in the village with the old woman as we speak."

"Great! This is great. Now we just need to grab her and go. Is anyone around to interfere?" Bankotsu rubbed his hands together and turned towards Jakotsu.

"I know as much as you do." Jakotsu replied.

"Renkotsu!"

"Yes?"

"Is there anyone to interfere?"

"I don't believe so, no. All her companions are supposedly out on their own separate journeys at the moment." Renkotsu withdrew a map of the town from his kimono. "This is a map of the area. The old priestess's hut is this one." He used his finger to indicate which of the squares belonged to Kaede.

"So, you write this down for me, okay?" Bankotsu plowed on without waiting for a response. "We'll surround it. I'll go this way, and you can go that way, and Jakotsu can wait right here, and Suikotsu can pretend to be injured…"

---

A/N: I beg you all for forgiveness! I know that it's been slow. Excruciatingly so. I'm trying to figure out how to deal with everyone right now… I do have a plot in mind. Wait until next chapter, my lovely readers… it should be coming soon…

Much love, NYCGirl89