This one is dedicated to "Seleni Argyrios." Thank you for your opinions and for your compliments of my story. I hope you continue to enjoy my writing!

There's another Problem, of course there is

"We're almost there, right? Please tell me we're almost there." It isn't a whine so much as a prayer. After our oh-so-helpful chat with Kyouryoku, I demanded we head back to the Bone Eater's Well. I mean, I still have Kagome's stupid, broken, stone after all. I needed to get rid of it as soon as possible before we started some epic journey across the western lands to the Satsugai Mountains where Kyouryoku's sister lived so she could get our matching set of demonic jewelry off. Sesshomaru didn't agree with me so readily, but he knew I would not go anywhere with him willing if I did not get the stone off my person – and a willing Katsumi is an easier Katsumi.

Don't ask. This stone gives me the creeps. Of course once you find that a stone is magical enough to ignore the laws of physics and slip past solid things such as skin and muscle and bone and you find that this stone was once inside your body, you'd want to toss the sucker as much as me.

So now it's nightfall, nearly full-ish moon on our hands, and we're still walking. Rin of course gets to sleep on the two-headed dragon-horse-thingy… can you say "not happening?" And Jaken guides the thing speaking to Sesshomaru about how unnecessary it is to go to Kagome and how there's no reason for the Lord of the Western Lands to be indulging me, a puny and weak little girl. His words, and they might be his last.

"You know I can hear every word you say?" I growled at the toad. It jumps as it whips some old, probably cursed, staff in my direction. "Don't talk about me as if I'm not here." I get out of the way of the staff, I'm not ignorant. It looks creepy, so don't touch it.

"Know your place, human," he screeches at me, tires on a blacktop – I swear!

"You mean the place where I'm sticking my knife in your gut? How's that ear treating ya, by the way?" I'm sure if he could he'd loose all the blood in his face. Stupid toad. Stupid magic well. Stupid fate for making me care so much about my cousin – who is totally fine, by the way! She doesn't need my help in the least! She can handle monsters and demons all on her own, keeps one as a pet too. Lets it sit on her shoulder and everything!

Not to mention her best buddy, Mr. Half-Demon. She's doing just freakin' peachy keen without me.

"We are here." Sesshomaru says, breaking my staring contest with the toad. He looks irritable; considering he's a marble statue most of the time I can see the differences in him now. The tick in his jaw, the narrowing of his eyes, the twitch in his hand, all signs he is the least happy of us all right now.

But I am the most relieved. I rush past him in my haste to get to Kagome, to be rid of her magic rock. One less burden and one less worry to fret over.

The shack they were staying in is lit and I can feel a sob of relief working around my throat. Shoving it away, hard, I burst through the door in a mad act of getting to my cousin faster. All of her friends are there, eating dinner, and looking about as shock as if I had burst in on them while on fire.

I don't look that crazy, people!

"Katsumi!" Kagome exclaims. She rises to her feet and rushes toward me. It probably looked like a very emotional scene to outsiders, probably full of sparkles and some instrumental music in the background, yeah very moving. That is, right up until I toss my soiled, bloody shirt at her face.

She falls back as I snarl, my words working harder than normal to pass by the sob from earlier, "Take your damned jewel back!"

Kagome looks murderous as she pulls the fabric away but the stone lands in her lap and she's mildly distracted. I take it as my cue to escape. With sharp, quick movements I try to slip back out the shack, the monk stops me. He puts a hand on my hip, to try and comfort me maybe, and smiles with charming boyish looks.

"Now that is no way to treat your cousin, Katsumi, she was very worried about you."

I hit him. Right in that charming face of his. No slapping, not for what he'd done. And he flew out of the shack, right out onto the dirt porch, right onto his perverted ass.

"Jerk!" I called after his body. But I'm not done with him; I follow the monk, cracking my knuckles as I do. It isn't enough for what he'd done.

"He's gonna get it now." Inuyasha drawls behind me.

"I can't believe he did that to her, after he saw the way she used those knives." Sango muttered in a sigh.

"And she's obviously frazzled over something; he really should have waited at the very least." The fox offers in mild pity.

So they all knew he did that? All the time? To any woman? Sango said he was a womanizer, but I figured he was a major charmer, lots of pretty talk, but he's a lecher.

"I'll kill you, monk." I promise as I draw ever closer. "And I won't feel a bit sorry about it."

"H-h-h-hey now!" He calls as he holds one hand up toward me, like he could ward me off while he pushes himself away with his other hand. "I-I-I-I didn't mean anything by it!" As he continues to crawl away he bumps into an obstacle. Soft silk, two strong legs, Miroku's senses jumping in alarm as he sensed this specific demon's presence.

"Sesshomaru," Inuyash snarls, "What the hell are you doing here?"

The demon lord turns towards the half demon with a bored expression, "I escorted the woman."

All of them, excluding myself, blink in open-mouth shock. Of course Miroku's attention was suddenly shaken when I jump on him. "W-wait! Katsumi! I won't do it again!" He cries as I slowly draw one of my knives, I can only imagine what color my face is. My ears are so hot they hurt.

In a rush of cool air I watch as Miroku's struggling body grows farther away from me. I land on my feet and glare at Sesshomaru. His clawed hand gripped my forearm like a vise, though he managed not to hurt me. "You should not kill the monk." He says in that cold, indifferent voice.

"You don't know what he did to me," I counter.

His features soften around his eyes before he turns to look at the monk at his feet. He doesn't say anything, just waits for Miroku to say what he did. The monk straightens his posture and his robes before clearing his throat, "You can't blame me, Katsumi. My hand, it's evil and has a mind of its own."

I throw a rock at him. "Save it! Like I haven't heard that one before!"

"He really isn't worth the effort, Katsumi," Sango interjects. "He won't change his ways for anybody." She sounds hurt, angry, and there's a threat under all her words.

Kagome finds me in the middle of my killing intent and snaps, "What gives? Why'd you throw the jewel at me?"

"It's cursed." I answer simply without looking at her, preoccupying myself with sliding my knife home. If I ever get the chance I'll rid the monk of his "evil" hand. He catches my eyes for a second and he knows this. A warning for now, a promise for now, but if he ever lets it happen again it would be nothing but truth.

My cousin sounds offended, "Cursed? It's not cursed! I've been holding it for months. You've had it for a couple of days and suddenly you can't handle-"

"Don't presume to know everything, Kagome." I cut her off. She bristles indigently, but she drops the topic.

"And what the hell is he doing here?" Inuyasha snarls at Sesshomaru.

I glance at the demon lord; he still looks as comfortable as standing on a bed of hot coals. "He helped me get here," I answer. The demon jewelry seemed to weigh a ton and the skin in contact with it started to itch. Should I tell them about it?

Inuyasha scoffs, "Yeah right! You don't care enough about humans to help them." I felt myself getting angry with the half-breed even though I believed every word he said.

Sesshomaru only gave a mild sneer to the loud half-demon. "She had the jewel; I thought it was best to make sure she made it back to the girl before other demons knew what she had. Or should I have let her wonder the woods, alone and lost?"

"Psh, Don't feed me that bullshit. You're here to kill me, don't lie."

"HEY!" I snap at Inuyasha, "This isn't about you, got it?" I stomp foreword and snatch at Kagome's forearm. "Com'on Kagome. We're going home."

She struggled but I barely felt it. "I'm not going anywhere! I still have to collect the jewel shards. I still have to help my friends." She buried her feet into the dirt, clawed at my hand, pulled with all her lightweight in the other direction.

"You can't just decide she's going home with you." Inuyasha forgot about Sesshomaru as he followed the two of us.

"Shut up, dog!"

"Don't talk to Inuyasha like that!"

"Shut up, Kagome!"

"Yeah, Kagome. I don't you to defend me."

"Well, excuuuuse me. Next time I won't stop Katsumi from putting you down."

"Good, no one asked you to stop her."

"Both of you shut up! I'm taking Kagome home with me, we're going to have a serious talk about her future and then I'm going to blow this freakish nightmare out of the water!"

"What does that even mean?"

"You're not going to do anything to my well."

"Watch me."

"What's she saying Kagome?"

"It's my well, not yours."

"It's for your own good. If your mother knew what this place was really like, she'd have stopped you from your expeditions a long time ago."

"I don't care what you think! It's my well, I get to decide-"

"Fine! Decide: Kerosene or dynamite, it's your choice."

"Hey! Kagome! What's she talking about? You can't take Kagome anywhere with you!"

We both turned towards the half-demon and screamed, "Shut up!" then we turned to look at the well. It was so close. A couple more feet and I'd be flying back to the present and living in a world I understand.

"No way!" Kagome cried out as she bit my hand this time.

In surprise I let her go with a yelp, "Don't be such a child!"

"You're the one being childish," she accuses as she points her finger at me.

I snatch her hand out of the air and drag her behind me again. Her friends sound alarms and protests as they rush to our side to stop me, to pull Kagome away – something! But we were at the well, within inches, and nothing was going to stop me now.

Nothing except some invisible force that gave me the worst bitchslap in my life.

I fly backwards a dozen feet, yards maybe, and land hard on my back, my breath leaving me all at once. It's like a ram slamming into my stomach; though that's never happened to me before, I can imagine. And let me say, Not Pleasant.

I may have blacked out for a second there too, because the next thing I know I see Sesshomaru's pale as moonlight features and his crystallized amber eyes boring into mine. Now I can't breathe for a whole other reason.

"Damn it all!" it should have been a cry to the heavens, but it comes out like a whimper. I feel tears in my eyes, stinging them and causing my chest to ach. "This is your fault I bet."

He sneers at me, a slight movement on his part, just a hint of fang peaking at me as his eyes harden. "It appears you are not allowed to leave my side."

I point all my fingers at him as if to place a curse on his devastating beauty, "Don't act like you know everything." I can feel the worst of the aches in my back and ribs making the last of my words sounding far less threatening than I wished. "Just act how you really feel. You're shocked and a little be worried. It's ok."

Something in his eyes flashes like lightning, powerful and terrifying and amazing all at once. Here in an instant, gone in a flash. My head hurts too much to focus on his fleeting displays of emotions. So I close my eyes and groan out my discomfort.

"Is she dead?" I hear Inuyasha somewhere far off like I'm in a tunnel or underground.

"Of course not you idiot," my cousin answers, she's worried, like she may have been crying.

It is now that I just realize that Sesshomaru is holding me. My legs stretched out on the cold grass while the demon lord has an arm wrapped around the middle of my back. It's not romantic, he doesn't look any different than normal, there are other people around asking questions and crying, and I feel as if I've been stuffed into a blender with a couple of bricks.

"What happened?" Sango asks softly as if she knows my head hurts like nobody's business.

I stare at Sesshomaru when I open my eyes again. Should we tell them? What worse could happen if we did? I mean, it would explain some things and they may even have some insight we overlooked.

Alright, so that last one is a bit of a stretch.

"Hey, Kagome?" She's there on my other side, not touching me, but there are tears in her eyes and streaking down her face. "I got into some trouble." Before she can gasp out a word I press foreword, "A demon came after me and…" I look down at my hand. Kagome follows my eyes and frowns at the pearl band.

She rubs the tears away, "What are you saying? What is that?"

Sesshomaru's grip tightens around me, claws etching warning in my bruised ribs. "Sesshomaru's got one too. Naraku sent them to us as a gift. You know, 'welcome to the feudal era, Kagome's cousin'."

Everyone crowds around me as they all try to get a look at our matching set. I'm not claustrophobic, mind you, I can't be in my line of work, but it was draining – all the pain I was going through. The beatings, the sleeping on earth, the constant threats of my nightmares taking over, the stress of dealing with a child and a toad, and…Sesshomaru in general tires me out. Fighting his spell, reading his expressions, waiting for him to tire of me and kill me, there was only so much a girl to take.

I pass out.

There'sanotherProblem

It seems so like her to start something and leave me to deal with the heavy work.

No, I could not say that about her. I did not know her well enough to make assumptions. Humans were lazy, but not all humans were so. She surprised me numerous times already, what was one more shock to my senses?

If the humans had kept their distance she would not have sought seclusion in her subconscious to avoid their insistent chatter.

Now it seems fitting of a punishment to leave me to explain everything to them while she sleeps off whatever had attacked her by the well. Something I never even felt coming, whatever it was that attacked her. It may have, in a sense, angered me to know that something touched her, hit her even without my sensing it first. Few things angered me.

"So, um, what is it?" The girl asks as she peers at the cuff.

I sneer at her. Which set off my foolish younger brother's hackles. Before he could bark some more, however, I pulled back my sneer and I answer her. "It is demonic made. The woman wears its pair."

"Yeah, we got that part," the demon hunter said.

I stare at her and she shuts her mouth real quick. "A demon named Kyouryoku made them and gave them to Naraku."

"What would Naraku want with them?" the monk interjected. Could these creatures honestly not be silent for one moment?

"Naraku meant to bind myself to Rin."

"RIN?" the girl cries out. She's fortunate that Rin was sleeping in another room and did not awake to her scream.

"Yes, it is logical that Rin would have been Naraku's intended for the other band. There was no possibility that he would have know of your kin."

"So why is this so important?" My brother's crass voice sneers from behind me, dripping in disgust.

If I had the lower graces I would have sighed in exasperation. "The jewelry is demonic made, Inuyasha. Since when has anything demonic ever boast good news for humans."

"Uh, is that sarcasm?" the girl asks while pointing a finger at me. She looks as though I had suddenly grown another head. "Seriously, was that sarcasm? Did no one else hear it?"

"Kagome, focus?" Inuyash drawls.

"Right, sorry."

"My immortal life is now tied to her human soul. If she dies, I die." When I finally give them all the important information they have nothing to say.

It is moments before the monk speaks, "So you have a weakness that Naraku can use. Interesting that he would have to make one up."

"Guess he wasn't expecting a demon hunter to take the other band," the other woman says. When the girl gives her a questioning look she continues. "You saw the way she fought off those demons, and her reaction to Inuyasha, it all points to the same thing. She's a hunter."

"No…" the soft voice pulls everyone's attention to the woman in the doorway. She looks wild and breakable all at once. That pull to go to her, to touch her is strong. I suppress it like I suppress all my emotions, all my wants. Interesting that I find myself wanting her though, she is dangerous. She devastated an entire hoard lightly and then forgot about it. She wielding a terrible weapon to my kind, and she repeatedly refused to listen to me.

She continues as she moves toward me, ignoring all others in the room, like she knows I'm holding something back. "I'm an Executioner. It's a bit more advance than just a 'hunter.' And just so you all know, I'm not so weak as to let myself die just 'cause some demon wants it so." The bitterness of her words drips like venom.

There is a collective silence as the inhabitants of the room stare in a mixture of appall and shock. I find myself trying to decipher her words. Who is this woman?

"Now," she states in that commanding way of hers, "all I wanted was to go home –" she turns to me – "and not die on my own." She turns back to the group, "But seeing as that's not going to happen, then Sesshomaru and I are heading to another demon living in another mountain so she can separate us."

The humans begin asking questions, each trying to take the initiative of how best to deal with the situation. It is irritating. How can they stand each other long enough to get anything done?

She stares at me as they press in on her. Her violet eyes deep, like a thunder storm. "There's something else, isn't there?" she groans.

As the chatter stops I speak to her alone, because this really is a matter of only the two of us. "The demonic lords and ladies of the Lands are holding a Council." She frowns. "It happens once a year and is a meeting I cannot miss."

She sighs in exasperation, "And no humans allowed?"

"Precisely, though there are exceptions." I am surprised by how harsh my words are. I bite each word off as if it pains me. When did this happen?

Her eyes darken, narrow, there are promises in them I cannot decipher and it is like a promising hunt. What does she want of me?

"Outside." She demands, pointing one slender finger towards the door. "Now."

I do not move, but she doesn't wait. In a flurry of rushed movements she vanishes out into the dark. The females stare at me with disapproval. The males wait to see if I will obey her command. To be rid of the suffocating room and its people I slowly move outside to breathe in the cool air of the night. She's a ways off, holding herself to the biting chill, her back to me.

She should not be moving around so much. I take quick strides to her.

"What's wrong with you?" She bites.

"To what are you referring?"

"In there," she nods at the shack, "there's something bothering you and I want to know what."

"What would you do with that information?"

"So you are upset by something?"

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't deny it either."

I pause, such a problematic, clever woman. "Were you really going back to you're home and never coming back?"

She narrows her eyes, expecting a trap. "Yes. Sorry I didn't let you in on the plan. But this place," she gestures wildly at everything before her then shakes her head, "I have a job to do back home."

"Yes, executing monsters."

With a smirk, where one side of her mouth lifts in mirth, "Yeah, there's always that."

"You were running away."

"And there's that." If humans were anything, they were liars. She should have denied what I said. Instead she agreed, and readily enough, before she brings her cuffed wrist up to look at. "This never happens back home." She sighs again. "It was probably a stupid idea, but you could have focused on…well…your life if I went back home."

"I would have been thinking about you the whole time." Her face…it…softens…her guards drop for the briefest of moments. "It is best you stay with me."

In a second she turns away and her defensives are back and running. "Except to this Council of yours. How are we going to pull that one off?"

"Give me time, I will think of something."

She scoffs, "Yeah, sure you will." Then her voice quiets, leaving it personal to my sensitive ears, "Of course you will. When does this Council go down?"

"In five days time."

"Are you kidding me!" Such a hellcat she is when angered or surprised or frazzled. "Five days? Only five days? When were you going to tell me about this?"

"I saw no reason to, considering Kyouryoku was supposed to know how to separate us."

We pause. She huffs before turning away from me, wrapping herself up in her arms again. I have very little grasp on what the temperature truly is. Rin always speaks up if she is too cold or too hot. But Katsumi's flesh is chilled and the wind is whisking her hair vigorously and she stands right next to me without saying a word. I wish to do something, to touch her and will the chill away from her.

It is foolish, these wishes and desires of mine that involve this woman.

I feel the presence of the two females as they try to sneak. She stiffens, so she knows they're there too.

"What do you want, Kagome?" she groans.

"We have a solution to your problem." Sango answers. "Actually it was Inuyasha's idea. So you be sure to thank him."

I narrow my eyes suspiciously, Katsumi does the same.

"See, you said there were exceptions to humans attending this council meeting," the girl picks up, "so when we asked Inuyasha about it, he said the only reason he could come up with for an exception would be…" She smiles, there's something malicious about it.

"If you were his mate!" the demon-hunter finishes, as she holds up a finger smiling brightly as well.

"No!" we say in unison.

Finals week and I'm sick. Isn't that just peachy? Anyway, figured while I was coped up at home with the day off from work and all, I'd reward my readers with the next chapter. I like to think every chapter is super important, like a tv series that you have to have seen every episode to get what's going on. But y'all will tell me what's up and help me with my blinded biased view.

What you're favorite part so far? Personally, I like when Katsumi gets knocked back by the invisible force. Of course my really favorite part is later so you'll just have to wait. Please review! You don't much more motivated than when you have animate readers breathing down your inbox! Hope y'all had an awesome Thanksgiving!