Chapter Nine: The Present is Today

Sesshoumaru's Manor, The Rogue Lands

Two Months Prior to Present Day

The Dog Demon of the revived House of the West, the Lord of the manor bearing his name, put his pants on just like everybody else in the world: one leg at a time. It was shimmying them up over his hips and tying them off with only one arm that took ample amounts of practice and finesse to be able to do without looking like an ecdysiast dancing for coin. But the loose linen drawstrings of his modern pajamas were far more user friendly than his standard hakama and sash.

From the over-sized bed his partner stretched and vocalized a satisfying moan of pleasure at her cracking joints.

He looked over at her thoughtfully.

Sprawled width-ways across the mattress, the wolf's warm skin and loose brown hair complimented the deep reds of his silks. Although he would have much preferred to see the stark contrast between the sheets and Kagome's cooler color scheme and ivory paleness, the relaxed form of Kumiko was just as welcome. Besides being without a stitch of clothing, Kumiko was disheveled and sweating from more than the Demon Realm's unrelenting summer heat.

She had a habit of being indulgent when something was weighing on her mind.

Sesshoumaru stepped over to where her head hung over the edge and locks spilled to the floor. He brushed away the strands that had stuck to her cheek and traced the hills of her lips before leaning down to kiss them.

Kumiko's voice made him pause when he was just a breath's distance away.

"I'm going to need your help sending her back through the well."

For a moment the only sound between them was the air cycling through their lungs as he thought about the implications of her request. Never before had the Demoness asked for him to interfere in the timeline that she protected so fiercely.

"What would you have me do?"

The woman looked up at him with evergreen eyes, dark and full of the mysteries and secrets that lay just beyond the glade. He was one of the select few privy to most of what she held sealed. Soon enough her original time would be upon them and she would be free to unleash her true form once more, but until then she clung to the shadows like moss to a tree, listening and watching as the forest grew around her. Playing her important role in the ecosystem so discreetly as to be completely overlooked by any traveler passing through.

"You have to tell her to grow up. You to make her feel like she's inadequate and pathetic and that going to the past is her only option."

"But that would be a lie." He replied coolly. "Even as a human adolescent you have always been more than capable of succeeding in your endeavors. Your strengths transcended the physical, age had never been a factor."

She signed, but not in a dissatisfied sort of way. In fact the sound sounded down right pleased.

"True or not." She started. "This is how the story needs to play out. We can't just tell her to go back through the well—it would change her thought process and change the timeline. She might even rebel against it.

At that point Kumiko pushed herself up to rest on her elbow while Sesshoumaru settled in beside her. The bed dipped under his weight.

"No, it needs to follow what already happened. I had a role to play in the past—a job to do. Everything else I learned along the way about myself and others was just an added perk. She'll be more inclined right now to go the past thinking it's to better herself so that she can save her friends than if we told her it's her responsibility as guardian. She's vulnerable. She'll figure it out, don't worry. I know what's going to happen with Kagami will play out the same way whether she grows up or not, but her thinking that she needs to learn her powers and grow up before she can face him is what makes her jump."

To keep the emotion in her voice clinical and sterile the Ookami trained her focus, picked up the strands of his trailing silver hair that had pooled beside her, and began to braid their ends. She breathed even and steady, spoke sure and firm, but her fidgeting touch conveyed to him her nerves, her lightly floral scent belied her worry and sadness. No matter how hard the woman tried to play the part of the impartial bystander, she was never be able to completely separate herself from those emotions that made her so passionate and irresistibly unique.

That characteristic made her decisions carry more weight, as well as satisfaction when things went well.

But this choice would be different than the countless others that she had made before then, and the countless lives she had altered for the sake of maintaining the integrity of the timeline, because the life she was altering was her own. It was a story that she already knew, but she was the one who needed to pull the correct puppet strings in order to make it a reality.

Whether or not those tactics sat well with her shouldn't have mattered, because for the Priestess they had already happened and were considered ancient history. However, the mighty general Kumiko was, at the end of the day, Kagome Higurashi, and the thought of hurting anybody—even her own past self—left a sour taste in her mouth.

Sesshoumaru hummed and picked apart the strategy of how she was facing this task surrounding her younger counterpart. "You are preying on your past weakness." He noted. "The lapse in judgment brought on by your sudden demonic transformation and the subsequent identity crisis, to bring about the end result that you've already achieved."

"Exactly." The Kitsune in Wolf's clothing confirmed. "I already have Koenma on board and we're about to bring Yusuke up to speed on what he needs to know. His role is just as important as yours, if not more. Still..." Kumiko paused. The silken strands of hair must have become lead in her fingers, because her hands flopped back down to the mattress when she looked up at him once more. Those eyes glowing from within only accented the hesitation chiseled into her brows.

That was a rare sight for the Inu Youkai.

He hadn't seen the girl show hesitation in years—not since she left Koenma the breadcrumbs that led to Sensui, knowing full well what would become of the second Spirit Detective and how that would tear the Spirit Prince apart.

"He's probably going to hate me for it." Kumiko continued after averting her eyes with a sign and laying her head down on her crossed arms. "I need him to attack me both physically and mentally. It goes against his core beliefs, but it's the blow that breaks the dam. I just hope he can forgive me after the smoke clears and he realizes that the 'future seer' Kumiko was me all along."

So that was it.

She hadn't been fretting over her own pain and suffering after all.

It was the boy. Koenma's Atavism Detective that had won the Dark Tournament, had begun the cultural reform of the Demon Realm by starting the Makai Tournaments, and that she defended and praised so fiercely.

Leave it to that woman to chew on something so trivial.

Sesshoumaru gently ran the tip of his claw down the length of her spine and back before gathering her hair so that he was able to touch his lips to the bare skin hidden beneath. He ignored the glamoured points of the Wolf's ears that felt real enough to his own touch, but did nothing for her own senses, and instead moved up the length of her neck and jawline to rest his nose in the hair at the top of her head where her real ears were hidden so well.

If he held his breath and focused, he was able to pick up on the near silent sounds of their twitching.

He took deep satisfaction in the fluttering of her blood beneath his touch and the flush that warmed her cheeks.

And so he sang a song of reassurance, for her ears only.

"If the boy is a fraction of the person you've built him to be in your stories, then forgiveness should be easy to find."

Tokyo, Present Day

Mrs. Higurashi's hand on the steering wheel tightened when the passenger side door closed. She waved and watched the young woman ascend the ancient stone steps of the Sunset shrine. As soon as she crested the hill out of view, Mrs. Higurashi put on her blinker and pulled away from the curb to pick Souta up from his morning soccer practice and take them out to lunch as she'd been asked.

No doubt to stall for time as the young lady settled her business without them being in the way.

That young woman.

The one with the long, thin brown hair that hadn't aged a day in fifteen years.

Her best friend since adolescence that she spoke with on the phone nearly every other night.

And more.

The lady who occasionally gave her flowers when she went shopping.

The frequent parishioner with freckles and her little brother she'd played with as a child.

The little black cat that followed Mrs. Higurashi from time to time when she swept the shrine grounds.

Her daughter.

They had all been her daughter, watching and protecting unseen until that day; the day that her younger self had gone back in time for the last time to live out her extended, demonic life.

When the light in front of her changed from yellow to red and her vehicle came to a complete stop Mrs. Higurashi slumped forward, pressing her forehead to the wheel.

It was a lot to take in.

Her daughter had returned to her, just as she had promised. Yet the Priestess' mother couldn't help but feel as though she'd just lost her only baby girl. Without a single word of warning or farewell her daughter had leapt through the cursed well with the intent of staying in the past.

There was finality in that.

She'd returned, yes—without even a gap of absence to make her disappearance noticeable from the time they'd spoken on the phone the night before—but she hadn't returned unchanged.

She'd returned a stranger with her child's face aged two years from the time she'd seen her last and five hundred years' worth of earthly memories and experiences.

She'd become a woman ten times over in the barest blink of her family's eye.

Behind her a car honked. Mrs. Higurashi pulled herself upright to continue the commute.

Kagome had admitted to them that she hadn't been able to keep herself away from her family completely. She'd been paying frequent visits to the shrine in her various disguises since her Grandfather was a young man. Kagome had seen her own mother through the spring of her youth and young adult hood. Had attended Mrs. Higurashi's wedding as her best friend. That same best friend who had 'moved away' shortly after Kagome was born and had become a long distance friend over the telephone.

Her daughter's visits to the shrine under other guises hadn't slowed until her younger self had turned fifteen; at which point the visits dipped drastically. Kagome only dared to stop by when the fledgling teenage Priestess was away on her longest visits to the feudal era; when there was time for the wind to thoroughly scrub the leaves and cobblestones free of her scent. lnuyasha was a reoccurring fixture in their household in those years, after all, and while his nose might not have recognized any lingering remnants straight away as Kagome, he would have recognized her as a demonic presence requiring investigation.

She took every caution and precaution available to keep her identity a secret while integrating into their lives as seamlessly as possible. Without even realizing it, the girl's mother had learned so much about her own child's second life through the hundreds of conversations they'd had; Kumi's adopted son had been Shippo the entire time, her grumpy neighbor Sesshoumaru, the community center the Wolf den, her career as a security systems administrator her job as the Guardian of the Realms.

And the stalker she'd been digging up information on to bring to the proper authorities?

That was the demon that now threatened Kagome's present.

Mrs. Higurashi had never had any qualms about her daughter becoming a demoness—it had never really affected them or their relationship.

But now.

But now she had just learned that her closest friendship was built on a lie—Kumi did not exist.

Kumiko Kouken.

The Inspirational Priestess.

The Guardian.

Mrs. Higurashi blinked away the mist that threatened to blur her vision and pulled a sharp left into a convenience store lot. The parking brake stuck a bit, just as it always did. Stiff but familiar.

She closed her eyes and sank into the rhythm of the idling engine.

She would remain calm.

She would keep herself together as she'd always done in the face of turmoil and emotion, like any well-mannered housewife her age was supposed to.

As she sat there in silence without the whirring of the fans or lull of static radio filling the dead air, the back door of the vehicle opened and latched shut. A few seconds later so did the front passenger door.

The old man only spoke once he had perfectly adjusted the seat that'd been set back to accommodate his granddaughter's longer frame.

"Would you have preferred if she hadn't told you?" The elder Higurashi asked, surprisingly level headed despite the demonic nature of the subject matter. He had remained silent throughout their breakfast with the mature Kitsune woman that he had once bounced on his knee as a toddler. "Would you have wanted her to slip back into her old life and pretend that nothing changed? To keep us in the dark to everything she's been through?"

The middle aged woman slumped lower in her seat as if the puppet strings holding up her shoulders had suddenly been severed. Her knees rested against the steering column.

In that moment she was one more a hesitant teenager, confiding in her father just as she had been the day she admitted to him that she had fallen in love with a boy from her poetry club and not the guy that he had set her up with at the marriage meeting.

"I don't know, Dad."

The hand that still held her beloved wedding ring rose to her mouth, trying to cover the fear and loss coupling there.

Her father's lips pursed and he reached over to pat her knee.

"Did she look healthy?"

Through her rising tears, Mrs. Higurashi nodded.

"Did she look happier?"

"So much happier."

"Are you upset because your friend had been Kagome all along, or because your baby grew up without you?"

A knot rose in her throat and she had to look away to keep her face from the judgmental, prying eyes of passing pedestrians.

Grandpa hummed.

He waited a minute before asking. "Did her smile look like a stranger's smile or Kagome's smile?"

Through the redness of her cheeks and the moisture of her eyes, Mrs. Higurashi smiled.

"Like Kagome's."

"Exactly like Kagome's. We haven't seen that smile in months. So you weren't there to hold her hand through the hard times or to see her grow—that's okay. We probably wouldn't have seen her change so much in our own lifetimes, anyhow. You may not have been with her physically, but we were with her in spirit. It was the foundation that you build for her that set Kagome's morals into stone, and my lessons that helped to prepare her for life living among youkai. She didn't change into a monster and ravage the earth. Even as a demon, Kagome is still your daughter at the very core of her being."

The elder Higurashi pulled his hand away to dig in the center console for the little yellow cotton handkerchief that was kept there.

"And your daughter will always need her mother, no matter how long she has lived."

His own daughter graciously took the handkerchief with shaking fingers. As soon as she finished dabbing her face she peered over at her aged father and gave him a smile that looked like a sunflower blooming through the cracks in a sidewalk—a glimmer of light despite the weight of Kagome's story. The smile made it to her eyes and put the deep creases of her laugh lines to work.

"You always know just what to say, Dad."

His laughter crackled.

"I'm supposed to. I'm your father."

══════ With Reason ══════

"Show your true face, Fox. "

Botan blinked and looked between the brown haired newcomer and her fiery companion. He was as tense as a box spring and ready to pounce while she remained... serene. Sure, her shoulders were proudly straight and she'd settled back on her feet that said 'I'm relaxed, but if you jump so will l.'

Surely she had seen the lady before in Koenma's office.

But surely she had been a Spirit Guide. Not a Fox.

Surely Hiei was mistaken.

Or so the Reaper thought before the woman began to shift and change right before her very eyes.

With a hazy shimmer, like looking through warped glass or a heat mirage in the desert, long brown hair became even longer black tresses. Green almond eyes widened to oceanic blues. Tan skin lightened one shade and then another until it was porcelain pale. Curved humanoid ears pointed before curving once more to rounder, humanoid cartilage. One by one the demoness in front of them untied the knots of the pieces to her glamour and stripped away her disguise until a very familiar Priestess had taken her place.

The very same Priestess who had only just left.

Only, she wasn't the very same.

She'd grown.

Before Botan had just barely been the taller of the two but now Kagome towered over her by a mighty inch. The girl's face had lost some of the youthful roundness in her cheeks, giving her an ageless appearance that many demons maintained throughout their adult lives. The blue military jacket that she wore fit her like a well-tailored glove, whereas before it had hung a bit baggy along the arms.

This was Kagome Higurashi as a full-fledged adult demon.

She really had traveled to the past to live her life.

A gasp escaped Botan before she could cover her mouth with the tips of her fingers. Soon afterwards dew began to cling to her thick lashes. Kagome had only just left, it was just so surreal seeing her again so soon and so different. She barely even had a chance to process the demoness' departure. That big of an info dump was worth at least a day's recovery time.

Yet there she was. Smiling at them like they were old friends.

Hiei interrupted Botan's awe and fascination.

"Tch." He spat. "Is that all you'll drop?"

The ferry guide looked back at him, standing still and brandishing his scraped sword with a ridged grip. He looked more insulted than disappointed at Kagome's reveal.

"In the heart of Tokyo?" The Priestess asked in response. "This'll have to be enough for now."

Botan wasn't given the opportunity to be confused before Hiei flit forward and attacked. A delayed wind threw her hair in a tousle well after the black streak of his figure had passed.

"Hiei! What on earth are you doing!?" She shrieked as Kagome sidestepped and evaded his furious barrage.

The demoness wasn't faster than the smaller apparition, but she made a show to match his movements tit for tat. The two moved in circles around the courtyard, like dancers in a boxing ring. Hiei's blade sliced through the air, sliced through the leaves falling on the wind between them, and even through the branch of a small tree, but he hadn't gotten close enough to slice skin.

The one time he had gotten close, Kagome dropped down low. Instead of leaving a nasty welcome home gift across her neck, the tip of his sword tore the elastic holding together her high ponytail. The suddenly loosed locks fell in a torrent over her shoulder and pooled around her crouched knees.

She was both carnal and composed.

Wild and refined.

The display was beautiful.

Hiei, on the other hand, looked to be swimming in irritation and venom.

Not that that was new.

Avoiding the swipe of the demoness' leg, Hiei jumped back.

The grim reaper squeaked and scuttled behind a bench when black flames engulfed the steel of the forbidden child's sword. He wasn't stupid enough to unleash the full dragon in the middle of a city, but there were other tricks up his sleeve.

The fire was hot enough to heat the raised lips of the blade's scratches—the minuscule aberrations caused when he forced his sand covered blade back into its sheath—to a bright red glow. Soon enough they liquefied and began to accumulate along the edge.

A jerk of his wrist sent the molten droplets hissing to the ground.

Once more he sped forward, intent on facing the Priestess head on with relentless bombardment to overwhelm her.

A tactic she must have anticipated.

Kagome met his next series of swipes with a shimmering pink barrier. The contact of metal and fire on its surface sent a spray of glowing sparks flying, but the wall held firm.

From where she was crouched, peeking through the slats of the bench, Botan caught an odd shift of light. The bubble that surrounded the demoness had begun to stretch and grow, curving behind Hiei's back while his attention was glued to the female inside.

"Hiei! Look out!" Botan couldn't help but call out to warn the prickly little demon that had been her teammate for so many years, even if he had been the one to start the stupid fight. "She can manipulate the barrier!"

His barrage stopped for just a second as he glanced to assess the energy creeping behind him, but whipped back when something caught his blade. He'd turned just in time to see Kagome's hand reaching towards him—the sword embedded in the solidified Miko power.

A tug on the hilt.

Nothing.

Hiei's weapon was held captive in a pane of impenetrable, malleable glass, the tip of it well within the occupant's reach.

Just when Botan thought Hiei was going to sacrifice the sword and try something new, she saw the fire apparition smirk. Nervously, her attention shifted to Kagome. The building heat of the fire within the barrier was no doubt immense. She could see the Priestess was beginning to sweat, her breath beginning to grow more labored as the flames fed off of what little oxygen was trapped within the dome.

The collar of her jacket began to smoke.

Hiei's grip tightened on the tattered hell fire bindings that protected the sword's black iron hilt—the same bindings that

swathed the black dragon on the skin of his arm—and he let the hell break lose.

An inferno of hungry, ink-black flamed filled the cavern around the demoness.

Unable to continue watching the horrifying display burning before her, Botan hurtled herself from her hiding spot.

"Stop this! You're going to kill her!"

Without looking at her, or even acknowledging that the Grim Reaper had spoken, Hiei removed his hand from the blade. Without the stream of his aura to feed it, the angry flames began to wither and die until nothing but smoke filled the barrier.

Not even the priestess.

Botan's eyes widened. Her hands rose to cover her gaping mouth as an intense feeling of panic began to set in.

Hiei killed Kagome!

He incinerated her!

There was nothing left of the woman! Not even ash!

Even Hiei was staring at the barrier in shock and disbelief.

No.

He couldn't have.

"Hiei." Botan began, her voice throaty and trembling. He took a step back, cautiously searching the area outside of the barrier. "What have you d—"

From the empty air behind him swung a boot-clad foot. A loud clap echoed across the clearing, causing the Grim Reaper to flinch. When she reopened her eyes Kagome was there in her singed clothing but otherwise unmarred. Hiei had caught her kick before it could make contact with his nose, however the force pushed him back.

Back and away from the wall of solid light holding his sword captive.

He didn't take his eyes off from the demoness, even as the light began to dissipate. Even as the crude-but-sharp blade was flung to the other side of the small shrine grounds. Even as Botan stormed towards them.

"The both of you!" She yelled, not bothering to hide her relief at seeing Kagome unincinerated. "Knock it off this instant! We're supposed to be working together! Not fighting!"

Deaf ears ignored her command as the two powerfully ranked beings faced off in razor sharp silence.

Hiei broke contact first.

He released Kagome's boot and bare knee, and leapt away to put distance between them, all while keeping her in his sights.

"So that's it." The Fire Apparition said with a toothy smirk. Botan swore she could hear mirth in the bite of the little monster's voice. "That's how you were able to follow me undetected in the Demon Realm. You can conceal your barrier and anything in it. The pink one was a distraction."

Feeling like a spectator back in the arena at the Dark Tournament—or better yet like the announcer, situated between the two contestants as she was while they tested each other's power—the blue haired Spirit turned to Kagome for her response.

The demoness' cool, aloof expression that she'd been wearing since the spat began split with a smile. Her blue eyes glittered with amusement like rippling water catching the sun.

Even subdued, Botan had never seen her so genuinely expressive.

"Well, hush." Kagome teased the now younger boy. "You're going to give away all my secrets."

Botan looked back to Hiei and caught the tail end of his smirk.

And once again he was off like a flea, hands raised in fists.

This time, instead of countering or blocking, the black haired Miko fled to the limbs of the huge tree above them.

He gave chase.

His black boot tapped to one branch, and then another slightly higher.

He was about to land on a third branch when suddenly the living wood erupted beneath him in a burst of purple demonic energy and slivers. The explosion was strong; it threw him out of the tree and knocked Botan flat on her back. It ripped the remaining brown leaves from the Goshinboku, a confetti of their torn and disintegrated pieces fell to the disrupted snow in a perfect circle outlining the radius of the blast.

Groaning, the Grim Reaper put a hand to her ringing ears and pulled herself up on her butt.

A ways away from her, Hiei had managed to remain standing. Aside from the ragged transformation of his long black pants to capris and an angry burn encircling his ankles, he seemed unharmed. There was a mark on the ground where he had used the momentum of the blast to slide and pick his sword back up. He was crouched low and defensive, looking around the courtyard slowly like a wild animal scouring for the threat it knew was looming close but just out of sight. The snow around his feet had melted away completely and the cobbles were beginning to steam. The third eye on his bare forehead was open wide and glowing.

Searching.

That was when it occurred to her for the first time that Hiei might not be able to sense Kagome.

Since day one the Priestess' aura had been so tightly concealed that Botan herself was never able to feel the energy of the girl, but the Jagan had always been able to detect things that were well beyond the radar of everybody else on their team. He was a literal sonar device for demons! For him to be unable to sense something, particularly the power of such a highly classed demoness, well...

Well, it was a bit frightening.

It was extremely relieving to know that the time-traveler was on their side.

She... was on their side, right?

The sound that Kagome made as she landed back on the ground alerted them to her location. Hiei spun around to face his opponent once more, sword raised.

Kagome just stood there, barely a meter away from the forbidden child, with arm outstretched and fingers splayed.

Neither one of them moved.

A shiver ran down the ferry girl's back, but she couldn't tell what—or who—had caused it.

The Jagan was still active, so for a hot second Botan assumed that Hiei had done something to restrain the demoness. But then the eerie glow of the eye began to fade. The steam at his boots fizzled to nothing. The flame and smoke that previously encased the sword had been purified by the Miko's barrier, leaving behind nothing but a clean, tempered blade.

A bead of sweat rolled down the curve of his face.

"You're toying with me." Hiei spat.

"You're holding back because we're in a human city." Kagome replied.

He scoffed, but didn't deny it.

Then the winds shifted. As quickly as it had started, the fight was over. The shorter Apparition stepped out of his fighter's stance and sheathed his blade. The stiff formality and tension in the Priestess' shoulders fell away. Her arm dropped to her side. Botan's head spun with mental whiplash as she stood to her feet and began to brush the melting ice and leaf dust from her kimono.

A greeting such as that was something she would have expected out of Hiei and Yusuke, or even Yusuke and Kuwabara. Never would she have expected such a raucous display from the gentle, timid, emotionally scarred—

No.

That was the five hundred years younger Kagome.

This one was a stranger to them all, wasn't she?

All of them except Koenma, it seemed.

"Are you satisfied?" Kagome's nearly whispered question caught her ear.

Overly curious and a little bit nosey, the ferry girl listened for Hiei's muffled response.

"Not until the terms of our agreement have been met. You haven't forgotten while you were off playing in the past, have you?"

"Of course not." She answered. "We'll find her."

Ah.

Botan swallowed the cluster of nerves building in her throat at the reminder of Yukina's disappearance. But there was a strength in the Miko's response, a promise in those three words that gave her hope.

They would find the ice maiden.

They would save her.

And soon.

"Does that mean you've got information on the demon that attacked us?" Botan asked as she made her way towards the two to re-group. She wanted more than anything to shake the black clad firecracker and call him a dunderhead for Iunging at their ally and friend the moment she reappeared and maybe even scold the Priestess for that show of explosive retaliation that bruised her bottom, but she needed to focus on the more important matter. The entire reason why Kagome had chosen to leave them in the first place.

The Shadow Beast.

The woman turned to acknowledge her for the first time.

"Later." Was all she said. "When we're all together."

It might have been the stress of the past few days getting to her or shock of the whole weird situation, what with all of the time travel, temporal paradoxes, and secrets floating about, but the weight of it all crashed down right then as she got a closer look at that older version of the girl they'd practically kidnapped and imprisoned. Botan felt herself begin to tear up. Her stride quickened.

Would any of their mess have happened if she hadn't portaled the scared but duty-driven Shikon Guardian to the Spirit world that first day?

Closing the last of the gap between them, Botan threw herself into the open and welcoming arms of the Priestess.

"I've missed you so much!" She cried into her new—and yet somehow old—friend's shoulder and twisted her fingers in the windblown lengths of black hair that swung freely to the woman's ankles.

Kagome blanketed her in warmth when she returned the embrace.

Hiei downright scoffed at the display of emotions. "It's been hardly ten minutes since she left."

"I know." The Grim Reaper sniffed and burbled. "It was the thought of her being gone. It has been years and years for you and—oh, I didn't think your hair could possibly get any longer!"

"Get ahold of yourself." Hiei's voice was blander than rice crackers and held the deeply embedded impression of an eye roll.

"It's fine." Kagome told them both with a chuckle. "I've missed you too. Both of you."

The sound of disgust that the Fire demon made caused Botan to snort.

She pulled back and wiped at her eyes with her long, pink sleeves. "We have so much to catch up on! Well, not us. You already know what we've been up to, certainly. But you! I have so many questions! Did you meet the Kagemono? What have you done? Seen? Is Shippo with you? How big has he gotten?"

Kagome shook her head and smiled apologetically. "Sorry, he's not with me. I sent him away on an errand until this mess with Kagami is sorted out. Shippo is the type to jump headfirst into the fray, if I let him. But this is my problem that I need to fix and I don't want him getting hurt fighting my battles for me. But he's so excited to see you again; he's been taking about you all non-stop since you showed up at the last Dark Tournament."

Botan gasped. "He saw that!?"

"Of course! Everyone in Makai saw that! I watched the broadcast, but Shippo just needed to go in person. He blended into the crowd and everyth—Wait." The demoness pressed pause on her train of thought. It seemed that she was just as excited to finally share her stories as Botan was to hear them, but something else was more important. "I'm getting ahead of myself. We can catch up soon, but there are still a few things that I need to take care of here first."

She pointed up to the sky above them, at the barrier that caught the light like a soap bubble to the eyes of the spiritually aware. It was a good barrier, one barely noticeable unless you were looking for it or had passed through the electric energy, but it was old. As it was the barrier stood out like a bullseye on a map; which was exactly what Koenma had pointed out when he'd sent Hiei to Tokyo in the first place under the pretense of checking it out and investigating the girl.

"This needs an upgrade. I worked on it a bit in the 20's, but the original weave is almost 500 years old. Kagami shouldn't know about my family here, but I'm not taking any chances. Then there are a few other things that I need to wrap up."

The Priestess turned to Hiei who had stepped up to perch with his hands in his pockets on what remained of the thick branch she had sacrificed in their little match.

There was grass growing around it, through the snow and through the cobblestones; feeding on her residual energy.

"And I should probably do something about that, too, before the police show up to investigate the noise." She looked from the severed tree limb to the demon. "We can all meet back at Genkai's temple afterwards. Hiei, if you could bring the other detectives up to speed on everything you know while I'm finishing up, to make things go a bit smoother, I would really appreciate it."

He glared at Kagome as if she were an idiot.

"You already asked me to do that."

"Did I?" Her brows knit in thought before she clapped her hands together. "That's right, I did. My bad, it's been a little while. Do you still think you could do that for me?"

"Hn. I won't make any promises."

"I can help!" Botan chimed in, happy to have a task where she was finally in the loop. "We just need to let them know that you went back in time, right?"

"Well, yes. But it's actually a bit more complicated than that."

"Kagome was born as a human." Hiei blurted. "In this era."

Okay, so maybe she wasn't as in the loop as she'd thought.

"What?! You're joking!"

The demoness gave Hiei a withering look before she signed and confirmed. From her skirt's pocket she pulled out the Shikon no Tama by the chain and latched it back in place around her neck "That's the Cliffs Notes version, yeah. I grew up here and started traveling back in time when I was a teenager. It wasn't until the final battle with Naraku that I was transformed by the Jewel into a demon."

As Kagome was talking, the Grim Reaper had pulled her guide book from the folds of her cotton Kimono and started flipping through it.

If what she was saying was true, then certainly...

"What is your date of birth?"

"Hmm?" Kagome asked before seeing the little booklet. "Oh! October 24th, 1981."

Both the Priestess and Hiei watched over Botan's shoulder with curiosity as she flipped through the magically endless pages of her book of the dead. She came to an abrupt stop and skimmed.

"Well I'll be." The Grim Reaper said out loud to nobody in particular. "Kagome Higurashi. Daughter of a widowed ex-shrine maiden. Hard worker but slacking in school. Fiercer loyal to friends and family. Moderately athletic, and enjoys volunteer work and spending time with classmates. Your entire profile is in here! But look at this." She folded the page to reveal the profile of the next person. Where the ink of the second profile was crisp and dark like it had just come off of the printer, Kagome's entry was worn and faded as if someone had tried to erase it. "It's ghosted, but not checked off. Just like Yusuke's." She straightened the page to examine it closer. "It looks like it hasn't been updated for a couple years. But it was completely ghosted just a few months ago."

Kagome tapped the two dates at the bottom of the page. "That was my fifteenth birthday. The day I got pulled down the well. And that was the day of the final battle. The day I stopped being human."

That made sense!

"It seems to not have been able to keep your profile updated after that because you were no longer stationary in our timeline. And, of course, the book of dead only records human lifetimes—"

Botan froze mid-sentence.

She took a closer look at the second date before turning to face Kagome, horror stricken.

"You had only just become—! And we had pulled you away like some sort of fugitive! Poor dear, you must have been so frightened! You must not have known—"

"I know now." Kagome responded, gently grabbing the blue haired girl's shoulder. "You're fine, Botan. I know everything now. You did everything right. Exactly as I needed you to."

In the distance sirens started to sound.

Sirens that could have been prevented if someone had been able to control their firefly temper and wait to spar with the newly grown and mysterious Priestess. Kagome released Botan and took a few steps back.

It was time for them to go.

"I'll clean up here. Let's all meet at Genkai's in about two hours, alright?" She asked before opening a portal beside her.

It opened to a shady spot in the woods, likely the same location in Kyoto where her younger self had woken Hiei earlier that morning. The fire apparition didn't even give an answer before disappearing into the forest in a streak of warped black fabric. Botan was about to follow hesitantly through the strange pink rift—since when could Kagome create portals?—when a hand stopped her.

Kagome smiled softly.

"l think I can trust Hiei to take care of this for me. You go on and head back to Spirit World. Koenma wanted to be the one to talk to you and Yusuke personally. He's had to keep things from the both of you for a very long time, for my sake, and I know that's been eating at him. He cherishes you two very much. Any of the lies he told you or secrets he kept were done because I asked him to keep my existence hidden for the sake of the timeline. He did everything in his power to prevent any changes to the future. So please, forgive him for keeping you in the dark."

The Grim Reaper tore her pink eyes away from Kagome's steady gaze and looked at the ground, ashamed at herself for having been upset with the Spirit Prince when she first realized that he'd been sneaking around and for trying to spy on him. Then she shook her head to clear it of the awful, hurtful thoughts she'd had, put on a calm, neutral expression, and nodded.

Her wooden oar summoned to the palm of her hand and she sat upon it.

"Alright." Botan replied. "Then I'll head to his office straight away. I'll see you in a few hours?"

Kagome brightened.

"I'll see you then."

And then the ferry girl of the River Styx waved and flew off into the sky, leaving behind the shrine with it's thin layer of snow that looked as if a pack of wild kindergartners had just finished running around in it and the enigma of a Demoness who'd grown up on that property as a human child.

She would get her answers soon enough.

══ Inuyasha X Yu Yu Hakusho ══

It took a little bit for Hiei to gathering his bearings after the portal of cotton-candy glitter snapped shut behind him. He had assumed at first that she would have deposited him right where he'd started off that morning—up Mt. Minato, which was a quick jump to Genkai's temple on Mt. Horai—but he was please to discover that she'd kindly placed him much closer to the city.

Just outside the grounds of the illustrious red Enryakuji temple of Mt. Hiei.

Hilarious.

Rolling his eyes at the woman's attempt at humor, Hiei set off down the forested mountain slopes and into the wards of Kyoto that lay below.

He'd managed to relieve some of his tension during that fight with the fox, and she had done... well.

She wielded her power with control and accuracy, had taken him off guard with her ability to conceal herself and her active energy from the Jagan, and had planned far enough ahead to plant her trap in the God tree well before they had arrived at the shrine that morning—a move that he would have expected from Kurama.

She was cunning.

She was lithe.

She was a Fox.

The Fire Youkai thought back to her final threat; that show of power without the power, the confidence that burned in her eyes as she held forward her hand. While he hadn't been able to see the electric energy building there, the hairs on the back of his neck had alerted him to the immediate threat. His sixth sense screamed danger, even when he felt only nothingness between them.

By hiding the extent of the attack behind her distorted barrier and mask of calm focus, she'd ingeniously left it up to his imagination to fill in the blanks.

And he imagined the worst.

A simple but effective form of mental warfare.

Hiei felt oddly... proud that the pitiful little demoness had come so far from the whimpering mess she'd been when she sought after his confidence and comfort in Makai.

Stopping on the metal conductor at the top of a power pole, he checked himself. Gruffly shoving his scarred hands into his pants pocket, the Apparition shook out the falling snow from his hair and glared out over the urban skyline.

No.

He wasn't proud of the woman.

He had no reason to be proud of her.

They didn't have the sort of relationship for him to have such useless emotional responses towards her success. They weren't friends. He didn't even like her, despite what Makuro foolishly believed to be a growing softness for the woman. She was a nuisance through and through.

A fascinating, rapidly evolving beast of a nuisance that had put the whole of her trust in him for no reason whatsoever when all he wanted was to pave the forest with her blood.

Hiei shoved that intrusive thought away. He didn't have time to dissect how he felt about the woman.

Not with Yukina still missing.

Each minute spent not focusing his efforts on his sister was time wasted.

In a mad dash of black, Hiei cleared the remaining districts within a matter of minutes. The shingle roof of the Minamino household greeted him with familiarity and the window to Kurama's bedroom was cracked as it always was for the very purpose of allowing the Fire demon to slip in whenever he needed to speak with the Silver Fox or if it was raining and he happened to desire shelter.

Kuwabara, who was sitting backwards on Kurama's spinning office chair, toe tapping and arms crossed, startled when Hiei appeared behind the glass to yank the window open the rest of the way and dropped down to the wooden floors, muddy boots and all.

The redhead—the wrong redhead—glared at him as if he were a filthy wild pig crashing a Christmas party as he tracked across the room to the closet, dug out a white strip of cloth from the bag he had stashed in the corner, and wrapped it around his forehead.

"What're you doing here?" Hiei spat when his headband was tied tight back into place, although he was secretly pleased that the lug was there for him to bicker with and get his mind away from the Fox—the wrong Fox.

"For your information, Pipsqueak, Yukina's been kidnapped by that insane shadow dude—not that you care or nothin'—and we're not gonna wait around for Yusuke to show up from wherever the heck he's run off to or for Kagome to come back to her senses! We're not just gonna sit here on our hands doin' nothing about it!"

"But you are sitting and doing nothing." Hiei countered.

The damn bursting on his anger, the bulky human jumped to his feet and kicked over the chair a little too hard.

He was absolutely pissed.

And rightfully so.

Hiei might not approve of Kuwabara's disgusting infatuation with his sister, but he did respect that it made the man protective of the girl and her well-being.

"I'm just waiting for Kurama to finish getting ready to go! We just got here!" With a growl that sounded damn near demonic, he ran a hand through his orange curly hair and started pacing the space. After three passes around the felled sitting device Kuwabara stopped to take a deep, ribcage inflating breath. The red splotches that freckled his cheeks in his anger had begun to fade as he turned back to his spiky haired teammate.

"Look." He started, addressing Hiei with more rationality and severity than the little Youkai ever thought possible from the oaf.

"We're heading out to Genkai's to gather information. It might not be much, but at least it's something. You gonna come? I've got no clue where Yusuke is. We called his place but he didn't answer. No one picked up at Genkai's either—not that that's weird. She never picks up. it's all just makin' me really jumpy, ya know? The not knowing."

"Did you try his communicator?"

"Of course we did. It was the first thing I tried. Give me a little credit; I'm not as stupid as you like to think I am."

It was no good.

Hiei had actually looked forward to the banter that he usually parried with the oversized walking dumpling. Berating the man usually gave his cold heart a sense of satisfaction and helped to cool his jets, but Kuwabara wasn't any fun to mess with when he was genuinely upset to the point of being sensible.

With a sigh the demon slumped back against the windowsill.

"Keiko is still at Genkai's, so he doubtfully would have strayed far."

The two detectives turned to look at Kurama as he entered his bedroom and shut the door behind him. With properly dried hair and a fresh outfit that hadn't been pulled from his hamper in a rush, he looked ready to conquer the day. If the day was a job interview at the local bank and not the looming threat of battle, what with that white dress shirt and pressed slacks.

Ignoring the Fire demon's judgmental stare, he gave the dirt on his freshly cleaned floors an accusatory glance, walked over to the closet door that Hiei'd failed to close, and pulled from it a green corduroy drawstring bag that was stuffed with what Hiei presumed were proper fighting garments. After the bag was swung over his shoulder, the Fox made a point to slide back the door slowly until it clicked.

"Kagome had something important that she needed to take care of, but we left a message with Shizuru so that she will be aware of where we are at." The Kitsune continued as if he hadn't just been non-verbally chiding Hiei. His green eyes, dark and narrowed with skepticism, fell on his ally and friend for the first time. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about her sudden errand, would you Hiei?"

Hiei glowered to smother his amusement.

There was no way in hell that he was going to comply with the Vixen's wishes and tell Kurama about her predicament. It was going to be way more entertaining to watch the Fox squirm as things played out around his ignorance.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

A bolt of lightning crackled within the weight of the storm clouds building in the room.

Kurama stepped close to the much shorter demon—so close that they were nearly touching and Hiei was forced to crane his neck to look up at the Fox looming over him—and placed his glamoured human hand on the wood at the top of the window's frame, above Hiei's head. They stared at each other, battling it out in a clash of willpower nearly as intense as the fight Hiei had just had with Kagome. Despite the force of the two thousand year old Kitsune's glare and the pressure of their auras building within the room, he kept his expression closed and his mind tightly sealed.

Suddenly, like the turning of a tap, Kurama's aura snapped back under its usual restraints.

"Of course." He said; his voice cool, calm and pleasant.

A sure sign that he was completely livid.

Just for the sake of adding kerosene to the flames, Hiei added. "But she's bound to show up eventually. You know how fickle Foxes can be."

The taller Youkai shut the window behind Hiei with a bit more force than was necessary. The panes of glass vibrated.

"Uh, guys?" Kuwabara asked hesitantly.

Kurama made an abrupt about turn and made to exit through the front door like the normal human being that he never truly was.

"Let's head out." He said to Kuwabara as he passed.

Hiei smirked as he pushed away from his spot against the window and followed the two men out of the house and into the

streets of the city.

His anticipation for the events that would follow were going to far outweigh the guilt he felt for not complying with Kagome's wishes.

Exponentially.

═══════ Tsarashi ══════════

Light as a feather, Kagome touched down on the stone steps that led to the ocean behind Genkai's temple.

Over the years, as she learned to control the placement of the Jewel's portal beyond simply locking on to a specific person's energy signal and opening blindly, the Priestess also learned to appear outside of where people were most likely to gather—or better, she'd been told to by Ginta, who she'd scared half to death more times than she could count by popping up behind him out of the blue.

The Tori arch at the top of the grassy hill heralded her like a weary old matriarch against the backdrop of luscious forest new-growth created by her younger blast of untamed energy. Its already faded red stain had been scarred by the wave of lesser demons that had wandered out that far, but the structure refused to fall. It was tenacious and sturdy.

And hopefully, Kagome thought as she stepped over the thin crack in the stone paving at the top landing with a grimace, it was a sign that things were going to progress smoothly from then on out.

She stopped there, before the slab of rock turned into the beaten dirt path to the Temple.

Her nose twitched at the harsh scent of tobacco, but she was able to ignore it.

"Master Genkai." The Kitsune addressed as she turned to face the short elder who was leaning casually against the wide pole of the arch and smoking one of her full bodied cigarettes.

Blowing a cottony cloud of the white smoke, the old woman held up her hand to prevent Kagome from saying anything else before she could speak.

"Koenma just left. He let us know that you'd be stopping by."

"He did." The Fox breathed.

"Yeah, he did." Genkai paused again to take a long drag. Her voice was gruff when she spoke again, but not angry as she had been the last time the two of them spoke. "So, you're the Guardian of the Realms, huh?"

"Yeah." Kagome repeated, mirroring the older woman's blasé attitude. "That's me."

"Hmmf." Genkai grunted at that. "It's always something with you damn kids."

And then she smirked.

Just like that the tension of their reunion blew away like the smoke on the wind. Kagome found herself able to laugh and relax as Genkai pushed away from the wood and started leading them down the path and into the woods.

"It's good to see you again, Genkai."

"You sure took your sweet time getting here. Didn't think to pop in before my home was destroyed?"

The Priestess' smile faltered, but only for a second. "You know I couldn't have."

"Someone who actually follows the rules. Great. That's going to take some getting used to." The ancient martial arts master scoffed and stopped on the side of the trail where a strawberry vine had decided to start growing up the trunk of a young cypress and snuffed out her cigarette butt with the heel of her shoe. She waved her hand as if swatting away a fly, even though the bugs were too preoccupied with the fruit to bother them. "Well, I guess it doesn't really matter, now. Everything's back up and I even got some upgrades out of it. That old tube TV was starting to get staticky."

The two of them talked a bit more about the little things that had changed in the rebuilt main building as they walked towards it: the new refrigerator with doors that didn't squeak, the fresh tatami that no longer had burn marks from Yusuke's training, the strange new panel in the bathroom that kept the tub water warm, and even the old pottery that had been replaced with equally old and valuable pieces. They'd just begun discussing the tragic loss of her Street Fighter save files when they finally turned out of the forest and into the cleanly landscaped courtyard. When Kagome stopped walking and dropped the conversation, Genkai didn't comment. instead the human elder continued along the stepping stones, up the new steps, and disappeared passed the Spirit Detective hanging out in the open doorway.

The Fox currently disguised as a human who'd spent the last four hundred and fifty years hiding as a Wolf swallowed when she caught herself staring.

Unfortunately, the guidebook she'd given herself stopped giving her hints and events of the future the moment her younger self returned to the past, the moment she'd caught up to the present.

From that point on her duty as Guardian and Koenma's adviser was a job that she would have to do on her own, relying on her personal experiences and history to give her insight and predictions for events and choices to come.

However it didn't matter how many months she'd been preparing herself for that particular reunion. Yusuke was very much a loose cannon and nothing she did could foretell what would happen when he saw her again after learning the truth.

All she could do was stand tall.

"So." He started, eyeballing her slightly older form up and down like he was taking in a new opponent in the ring. "You're really her. Kumiko the Seer."

"Yeah. I was Kumiko."

"The whole time?"

"The whole time."

The Mazoku clenched his fist and even at that distance the Demoness could see the fire building within those red-brown eyes of his. Anger, frustration, and hurt rolled off him in both waves of scent and slips of leaked energy.

"You played me. You played me like a freaking fiddle."

Kagome didn't flinch at how sharp his words were. They felt more like a wooden stake to the chest than a simple declaration of the truth, but then, Yusuke was never one to hide the bitter grit of his emotions.

A trait that she had very much taken advantage of.

The Black Fox nodded and told him the truth, because he deserved the truth. "I did." His jaw flexed. Her eyes softened. "I'm sorry, Yusuke."

She watched, still and steady, as he jerked away from the sliding wooden door and stormed down the steps like leopard moving in for the kill, each step quicker than the last. She braced for impact when he pulled her close by the collar of her jacket as he had done the mere night before in Koenma's office, when she was still the Wolf with foresight to guide their path and he was none the wiser.

After the emotional roller-coaster that she'd just put him through, Kagome felt like she actually deserved to be on the other end of his fury this time.

The Kitsune wanted him to be angry with her.

But Yusuke Urameshi was never one to comply with people's wishes and expectations so easily.

Instead of tearing into her, the Spirit Detective threw his arms around her neck and pulled her into an uncomfortably tight and stiff embrace.

After a silent moment of confusion, Kagome tried to pull away.

"Yusuke." She began, but he shook his head and refused to let go. He had her so close against his chest that she wasn't even able to pull back far enough to see the expression on his face. There were so many emotions clouding his scent that it was nearly impossible to differentiate between them and sort through the mess at such close quarters. It was like trying to tell each drink that was used to make the mystery punch.

Even though he'd been a demon for nearly five years, his emotions were strong, unpredictable, and still very human. And if he was anything like her—which he was considering they had both started their lives as one thing before becoming something else entirely—that was likely never going to change.

Briefly Kagome wondered if that was how she came across to Sesshoumaru and Shizume when she was upset; what they had only ever been able to describe as her ingrained humanity that still managed to catch them off guard, even after so long.

Or perhaps Yusuke's was unique. He was a hybrid, after all, not a full blooded demon like she had become.

That whirlwind mixture of demon and human. Human and demon.

it was almost overwhelming.

"I hit you." He eventually said over her head.

The ridged stiffness that had worked its way into her shoulder blades fell loose. She released her breath, wrapped an arm up to place a slender hand on his shoulder, and nodded against him.

"You did. Knocked me pretty good, too."

"You told me to be a jackass to you. The now you told me to hit the younger you."

"I did." When he growled, she added. "You don't need to apologize for that Yusuke. You just said it. I made you do it. I'm not upset with you—"

"But you were, though, right?" He demanded. His tone was accusatory and rising with anger. Not that really meant anything. He used that tone a lot. It was the same tone he'd used when he scolded the little boy that he saved from the car the first time he died.

"This whole stupid thing is making my head hurt and I don't really get how any of it works. I'm totally peeved that you've been hiding undercover behind my back for who-frickin-knows how long. I'm pissed at Koenma for keeping it from me. I mean come on! The toddler keeps pulling secrets out of his ass and presenting them on a silver fucking platter every time shit's hitting the fan. You'd think I'd be able to do my goddamn job better and prevent this shit if you bastards were just upfront about everything from the beginning. Yeah, yeah, fate of the future and all that noise. I get it. Seriously. But l also get that l ripped a freaked out, depressed, defenseless girl a new one, physically assaulted her, and then she lived with that for hundreds of years."

Yusuke stopped just long enough to take a breath. "You know now that you're the one that had me do it. But how long did you not know that?" The anger in his throat that was projecting his voice cracked. His final question was much, much quieter. "How long did you hate me, Kagome?"

The boy was smart.

Not book smart and law abiding, like Kuroko had been, or a calculating genius like Sensui. He was emotionally smart, able to reason through actions and interactions once his initial outburst had passed. Once he'd had time to settle his thoughts and think things through thoroughly. It was what held him back from taking his teacher's life for the sake of power during the Dark Tournament. It was what allowed him to befriend those who had once aimed to put his head on a pike, and to accept some of the hardest truths that Koenma had thrown at him over the years, between the more comfortable realms of black and white.

It was what made him the best detective of the three.

The Atavism would have known if she lied to him then. Not because he could smell the changes in her scent, or could read it in her voice, but because he already knew the answer.

"A long time." Kagome confided. "l was angry with you for a long time."

His already solid hold around her shoulders tightened.

"Good. You should have been."

"But I was also grateful."

"Noo." Yusuke hissed like an exasperated child and dropped his chin on her head, smooshing the relatively small Fox further.

"I might not have made the decision to leave without you. You were an important piece of the puzzle that built my timeline."

"No, don't do that. Don't justify this. Be mad. Be pissed. Make me feel like dirt and tell me to make it up to you."

Yusuke had an honor code, no matter how screwed up it seemed to the casual observer. He was quite egalitarian when it came to beating people up. Everyone was fair game According to him, he never had a problem hitting a girl, an old foagy, or even a toddler, so long as they deserved it—Kagome doubted that he would have ever hit an actual toddler, no matter what they deserved, but he didn't seem to have any problems hitting Koenma to prove a point during his fight with Sensui, and the Prince has still yet to reach his celestial childhood, so she counted that.

By forcing him to do something so against his personal beliefs—to torment someone so undeserving of it—Kagome felt that she'd been as bad as Risen when the ancient Mazoku had taken over the boy's body to deliver the finishing blow to the suicidal Sensui.

But this he wasn't blaming her as she had expected.

Having the victim and the antagonizer being the same person seemed to have thrown a wrench in his usual pattern.

"You might not care anymore, but that whole party is still fresh for me. It happened yesterday. Or, like, a couple days ago. Recently. And the version of you that I hurt isn't here to accept my stupid apology."

Using her demonic strength—certainly more than he was expecting—Kagome pried herself back.

"You want to make it up to me?" She asked, incredulous at the very thought of it.

Yusuke released her to rake his hands through the loose, clean strands of his hair. He must have been too stressed to do it up in its usual gel that morning. That or maybe it was because he'd stayed at Genkai's place and there wasn't a supply of his products in the newly restocked bathroom.

He let out a long breath through his teeth.

"What do I have to do?"

For a while Kagome said nothing. She stared at the young Hanyou and mulled over the absurdity of their situation.

Neither one of them wanted an apology from the other. Both of them wanted anger from the other party, not forgiveness. Both thought they themselves were in the wrong.

It was a temporal paradox of who hurt who, an ever turning cycle of blame; a chicken and the egg.

They could have argued about it for the rest of time without ever coming to an agreement on just who was the victim and who was the culprit.

So Kagome did what she thought was best to extend a truce between them.

She extended her hand, and laid down her list of demands.

"You can start making it up to me by becoming my ally." Before he could protest she added. "And you can help me finish what I started with Kagami."

Yusuke started dumbly at the hand. His frizzy eyebrows knit together. "Wait. Koenma just told me you wanted to beat the punk on your own."

"Would that have stopped you from joining the fight?"

Those eyebrows shot up into the mop of his hair. "Hell no!" His own hands curled tight into fists at his sides. "That nutcase already fucked with me and Hiei, Stole Kurama's face, kidnapped my friend, and seriously hurt my girlfriend. His ass is grass."

"So instead of acting as a vigilante against somebody you know nothing about, fight alongside me." The Kitsune took care to word her request in a way he would want to hear; to pacify both his desire to fix the pain he'd caused the younger Kagome and to get back at the man who'd caused such a stir. "Help me fix this, and that'll more than make up for what your actions put me through."

The detective's stare moved from her offered peace torch to her face and his eyes squinted as he scrutinized her. Then, when he found something in her determination that he found agreeable, he let his fists loosen. Yusuke scratched at his hairline before finally slapping his hand in hers.

It felt like a contract more than a handshake.

"I guess that's something I can do." He said that, but it was obvious that he still wasn't completely satisfied. "What else?"

That was an easy one.

"Be my friend."

The noise that scoffed from Yusuke's throat was a lot lighter hearted, more amused than annoyed, and that relieved the Fox.

"That's not a real demand and you know it. What else?"

Ice broken, Kagome decided to hit a touchier subject matter.

"Then let me heal Keiko."

The Mazoku froze.

His eyes were as sharp as glass as he silently interrogated her once more. Kagome could see the hairs rise on his arm. But then he swallowed and the spring coiled up inside of him unraveled completely. The worry that he'd been holding back crashed down on the boy in one big, curling wave of relief.

So protecting the woman he loved really was his demonic urge.

That was fascinating considering that generally a Mazoku's urge was to amass power. It was because of this that they were considered to be one of the most powerful—if not the most powerful—races of demons that existed in humanoid form. Their potential had no cap. The only thing proven to stem their growth was death itself.

Death or, it seemed, love.

It appeared that Raisen had passed on more than just his genes and his demonic energy to his ancestral son. He had passed on the trait that had gotten the ruler to completely ignore his own inborn urge and diet for so many decades. While that love had resulted in Raisen's ultimate loss of control and death, it had become Yusuke's greatest strength and driving factor.

"Shit. I've been waiting for you to say that." Yusuke said in a long breath. Bitterness finally colored within the lines of his relief when his grip on her hand squeezed into a vice and he pulled her forward. "She's inside. Her temperature went back up after Yukina disappeared. That gash on her back is mostly gone, but she's been in so much pain. You know you're really a dick, right? You could've just let Little Kagome heal her. Even then your power was stronger than Genkai and Yukina's combined, right? I mean, you fixed up Kurama like it was nothing."

The Priestess allowed herself to be dragged inside, past the great empty greeting room with its clean new tatami mats and Buddha statue, and into the more modern living area.

"I was afraid it would've given me a sense of purpose." She admitted when they made it to the short row of guest rooms where she had found herself recovering so long ago. She left out the fact that her Miko healing only worked so well on Kurama because it was a wound that her own powers had inflicted it to begin with. "Little Kagome, that is." She added, using his pet name for her younger self to easily differentiate the both of them.

Yusuke stopped, dropped her hand and grimaced.

"Dude. Harsh." Was all he said before pushing open the door to the room where they'd moved Keiko when she'd woken that morning.

Genkai was already in there, beginning to remove the bandages that were binding the girl's torso.

"Well, here she is." Yusuke announced. For a brief moment Kagome thought he was talking to her. He wasn't. "The mighty

Guardian of the Realms, at your service."

The air in the room by every right should have been tense and heavy.

But thanks to Koenma's visit to the temple to tell them her story, all that lingered was... curiosity, really.

Curiosity and the Zing of rubbing alcohol.

Politely, the demoness bowed her head. "It's nice to see you again, Keiko."

"Wow." Came the human girl's delicate exclamation. "You really don't look much different at all."

The distance between them in the small room was closed in just a few steps. Kagome reached over to pick up where Genkai had left off with the wrappings, but paused to glance back at Yusuke for confirmation before coming into contact with the skin of his injured girlfriend.

The Detective raised his hands. "Hey, don't look at me. The 'no touching' rule was your idea. Go to town."

A gentle smile warmed her lips. "Just checking." She said before turning back to her patient.

"May I?"

Keiko blushed and averted her eyes. But she did nod her permission.

So Kagome continued to unwind the dressing. They must have been changed recently, because there was very little blood or sticky platelets gluing the clean strips to the open sore that still remained just beneath where the lowest rib connected to her spine. It wasn't caked tight to her back as it probably had been when she woke up that morning, but it was still stuck enough to pull and make the girl flinch.

Keiko bit her lip throughout the process, but she didn't cry.

Compared to how the gash had been when it first happened, it was actually healing quite well thanks to the diligence and care of the Ice Maiden.

While the Demoness was focused on her task, Genkai turned to Yusuke who was still lingering in the open doorway.

"Get out, dimwit."

"What!?" The Atavism responded. His stupid grin and amusement made a poor mask for his concern. "Why? It isn't anything that I haven't seen before!"

Kagome almost lost her grip when Keiko jerked to throw a pillow at his face.

"Don't be lewd Yusuke." Keiko scolded in a matriarchal voice that rivaled her own when she was forced to chide the unruly Wolf pups at the den.

Yusuke's barking cackle echoed in the living room. "Lewd? Who, me? Never!" He caught the second pelted pillow and groaned with all the dramatics that his comedic defense mechanisms could muster. "Fine. I'm going, I'm going!" He eventually conceded and began backing out. "See? This is me leaving and not looking at my girlfriend's tits. Jeez, if you kick me out when you give birth too I'm gonna really be pissed. I'll be right out here!"

He had to yell the last but after Genkai slammed the door on his nose.

Then the old woman raised her eyebrow.

"Girl, you're not...?

"No!" Keiko was a burning bush of flustered embers. "I'm not. He wants them but I told him we need to wait until we're married, first. But even then..."

Even then Keiko was going to age and grow old as any other normal human while Yusuke was going to remain his sprightly young self for a very, very long time, and it seemed that most everyone around him had realized that except for the Detective himself.

Neither woman pressed her further.

The three of them sat in silence for a few minutes after that as Kagome discarded the rest of the bandages and stripped the patch from her arm that covered a different scratch. The skin beneath was still raw, but the infection she'd contracted the night after the attack was completely cleared from her system.

Koorime were like natural Z-Packs.

It was impressive, really. While the Miko worked wonders on battle wounds, disease was completely out of the realm of her ability. Infection fell somewhere between the two in terms of difficulty. Bacteria were tenacious little buggers that had a bad habit of hiding from purity in spots completely unrelated to the wound itself and festering anew some two days later.

But Yukina had cleansed it from the girl's entire system like cold spring water filtering through charcoal.

With a word of warning, Kagome touched the girl's back where the sore was the worst and began to heal. Keiko released a gasp when the warm, soothing glow seeped into her skin and illuminated the space around them while Genkai supervised.

Once the initial shock of the new sensation had settled—Kagome's heat-pack tingled compared to the numbing of Yukina's cold compress—the human girl began to fill the quiet of the room with the thoughts that had been eating at the back of her mind.

"I knew you were a demon." She started, quietly at first and staring at her hands lying on the blanket that covered her lap. "Everyone said so. But I guess... I didn't really see you as one before. But now you're, well, l think l can see it now. You look different. It's not that noticeable—maybe I wouldn't have even noticed without Koenma telling us—but you do look older. However I can't help but wonder..."

Her words drifted off.

Kagome was about to say something when Keiko spoke up again, her words tumbling one after another in a rush to find freedom.

"Is this it? Is this really you this time? Was this whole time travel thing a one-time deal, or will you go back again?" The brunette cupped her flushing cheeks and looked away, even though Kagome was behind her and already out of view. "I'm sorry, I'm prying."

After everything that Keiko had gone through with Yusuke; his multiple deaths and resurrections, his disappearances to the Demon World and bouts of training, it was perfectly understandable why she would want to know if her new acquaintance was going to be a permanent fixture or just another heartbreak waiting to happen.

The young mortal woman jumped a little bit when Kagome brushed her brown hair back from over her shoulder and moved to the cut on her bicep.

"No, go ahead. Pry away."

Keiko swallowed.

Then she dove right in.

"It's not just that." She began, brown eyes trained on the knit of the blanket she was worrying. "I've seen demons change. I saw Kurama's other side during that tournament, and Yusuke jokes sometimes about Hiei being green. And there were others. It's hard for me to trust what I see, with demons. But I want to trust you. You, or at least the younger you that I knew, seemed like a really good person. I want to get to know you. And I want you to be able to be yourself, when you don't have to hide. I'm not totally naive. You haven't been yourself for so long—Koenma said you've been pretending to be someone else for over four hundred years, which is such a long time. And Kurama hasn't either. I know he lost his human form and he's just been acting like nothing's changed. I know that you two are pretending to be human for our sake. Forgive me if I'm wrong or if I'm being too presumptuous. I don't really know how any of this works." Keiko glanced down to watch as the scrape on her arm stitched itself together in a timelapse of the normal healing process. "But I want you to know that I won't be scared, you know, if you are different. You can be open with me."

When Kagome was finished and satisfied with her work, she let her hands fall to the mattress. The one on her back did scar a little bit, just a little pucker of a white star, but the Priestess had expected that to happen because she hadn't gotten to it right away and the scar tissue had begun to form on it's own. It could have certainly been worse. But her arm looked as good as new. Then, inspection complete, Kagome pushed herself up and crawled up to sit cross-legged in front of the girl.

She took Keiko's hands in her own and squeezed them.

"It was a one time deal. From here on out I'm stuck in the present." She reassured the younger girl with a warm smile. "Keiko, I want you to be able to trust me. I want you to trust that I'll protect you and your friends from now on. And I want you to trust that I won't be keeping anymore secrets from you."

Kagome looked across the room to where Genkai was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, looking deceptively bored and like she was not at all listening in to every word of their heart-to-heart.

"Master Genkai, would you mind if..."

The old woman scoffed and rolled her eyes. "I'm insulted that you're even asking."

Nodding, the Kitsune turned back to the younger of the two human women and closed her eyes. Soft and serene. Slowly, so not to spook the girl, she pulled at the remaining threads of the glamour that she'd held onto relentlessly since Koga had been killed. She stripped herself of every mask and seal aside from the most important one at the core of her being that held her aura under lock and key—the aura that Kagami was able to track as easily as finding the only red tree in an otherwise empty field of flowers.

For the first time in four hundred and fifty years, Kagome lay her truest appearance bare.

Her long, silky black tail spilled from beneath her combat skirt to curl up and over her thighs.

The tall, sensitive ears topping her head were trained on the heartbeat of the girl in front of her.

And when she opened her blue eyes, they glowed from within like starlit jellyfish shining beneath tropical waves of ocean blue.

"Allow me to properly introduce myself this time. My name is Kagome Higurashi and I am a Kitsune. But when I was born, I was born a human. When we first met, you were actually older than me by a few years. I used to protect the Jewel that separated the three worlds, now my job is to protect those three Realms and act as the adviser to Koenma. I know it's only been a few days for you, but it's been a little bit longer than that for me. So please trust me when I say; it is really good to see you again, Keiko."

There were stars shining in Keiko's eyes.

No. Wait. Those were tears.

The saline scent of Keiko's happiness had just begun to tickled the tip of Kagome's nose when the demoness pulled the girl into a hug—one much more delicate than the manhandling that Yusuke had given the Fox earlier.

"I'm so sorry, Keiko. You have every right to blame me for this. You were hurt so badly because of me."

The brunette shook her head and returned the embrace. "No way. I won't blame you for what happened. You came all this way—lived all that time—to fix things, right?"

"That was the plan."

"They you're fine. I am upset. I'm upset with the man who hurt me. But until you lash out at me directly, I won't blame you for anything, Kagome."

"Oh, Keiko." Kagome twined her fingers in the girl's brown hair and smooshed her in the Demoness' most maternal embrace. "You're angelic. Yusuke doesn't deserve you half of the time, but you've really been a blessing for that boy."

As if summed by black magic, Yusuke took it upon himself to barge into the guest room at that exact moment, communicator in hand.

"Hey, Kuwabara and the others are—oh." The Kitsune turned to look at the young Detective, her vulpine ears pinned back to the top of her head. Then he grinned from ear to ear. "So that's a thing."

Kagome reached behind Keiko to pull a blanket over the girl's bare shoulders to protect the girl's modesty before removing herself from the bed.

"You said that they're here?"

Yusuke craned his neck to stare at her swishing tail with unedited fascination. "Uh, yeah." He stumbled over the words before blushing and rubbing the back of his neck when he realized he was staring at something coming from the backside of a woman other than his girlfriend. "On their way at least, the message was pretty old—You know, that's a lot bigger than Kumiko's."

With a firm chuck, using her newly healed muscles, Keiko through her last pillow at him.

The two started bickering, which gave the Priestess an opening to slip out of the room and into the empty hallway, closing the door gently as she left.

She felt them long before she saw them.

As she made her way back through the living area and greeting hall of the temple's main building, Kagome locked onto Hiei's bitter aura that grossly overpowered any of the others there, simply because the Fire Demon had no reason to restrain his aura for her alone. His burnt sugar scent soon followed.

Kuwabara was just cresting the long ancient staircase to the front entrance when she slid open the wooden door and stepped barefoot onto the deck. He was the first one to see her. However, he didn't smile and wave as she'd expected him to.

Instead he stopped at the top step, confusion clouding his expression.

He'd seen her ears and tail before, so surely that wasn't what made him pause.

He must have expected her to look at least the slightest bit older, now that he knew of her travels.

But no... It was almost as if he was seeing something so foreign, so completely out of place from what he'd intended to find there at Genkai's temple.

It was almost as if he hadn't expected her to be there at all.

From the trees behind the carrot top flit Hiei in his customary blur of black billowing fabrics. He didn't even give the Demoness a passing glance as he took up a spot on the deck some five paces beside her. Instead, he was staring intently at the stairs.

Perhaps he was pissy because she'd refused to drop the extent of her glamour during their little fight, but she was now standing fully exposed within the safety of the secluded temple grounds.

Or perhaps...

Kagome watched with bated breath as the third member of their party came into view, his shock of crimson hair rising slowly from the pathway.

The Silver Fox's ascent slowed when he asked Kuwabara what the matter was.

Then, when he looked across the courtyard to the female Kitsune fully garbed in her blue regalia, his steps halted completely. The glamoured green of his eyes widened. His lips parted.

Confusion.

Perhaps Hiei hadn't told them a single thing.

Amusement danced from the demon next to her. If she'd been able to tear her eyes from Kurama at that moment she was sure that she would have seen a smirk on his lips and dark humor in the reds of his pupils as he watched the minds of his friends spin and turn helplessly out of control.

"Hiei." Kagome eventually said like a curse under her breath. "You're a jackass."

═════ 犬夜叉 X 幽遊白書 ════

Chapter Nine: End

(I know you have all been waiting patiently for this, and I'm sorry that it took so long. But look! 14,000 words!)