Chapter 10: The Journey Begins

Words: 1,000

"Oh, come on! Why can't I go?"

"I've told you, Miko-sama," Koenma said, struggling to keep his tone respectful as Kagome glared fiercely. "It is unnecessary and dangerous to send you along. My team is more than capable of finding your friend. They should be back within the week with an update on their progress, if not a full success, so you should just–"

"I can help you find him," Kagome argued, not for the first time. She stood before a group of almost entirely non-human beings, her arms akimbo and her eyes fierce, telling off the second most powerful man in Reikai. "I traveled with him for a year. Even if he doesn't recognize my scent or aura, my aura remembers his. I could easily seek him out and–"

"Kagome-san, I think Koenma-sama is right to ask you to stay here, in Reikai," Kurama said in what was meant to be a placating tone, but only served to further stoke the flames. "To have such a powerful miko in our midst would only bring about unwanted attention that would hinder our progress."

"Scheming, lying traitors don't get a say in what I do," Kagome said with a powerful glare at Kurama. She was still sour that she'd let herself be taken in by his sweet words enough that he'd been able to plant a bug in her apartment for three weeks. Really, she should have known better. "Koenma–"

"I could set up a video station so you could watch their progress," Koenma suggested, growing fatigued by this back and forth. "It's too dangerous to let you go into Makai with them, but if you had a direct link to their progress..."

Kuwabara–who'd been brought in and up to speed after he'd interrupted their previous meeting–nodded thoughtfully. "It's true, Higurashi-san. It would be much safer for you to stay here and watch us with a monitor or something."

Kagome took another long minute to stew in her anger before she conceded with a "Hmph!" and a warning look. "Fine. But I want to be kept in the know at all times. If anything happens, anything at all, I hear about it immediately, got it?"

"Yes, ma'am!" Kuwabara quickly agreed with a mock salute as Kurama and Koenma let out simultaneous sighs of relief.

"Why don't I bring you to the observation room, hm?" Botan offered, hopping up on her oar and patting the space next to her. "We'll get you all set up there and then send these guys off." Kagome nodded wordlessly and joined her, watching the three men below turn into tiny specks as they flew off.

"The observation room is actually very big, so I should be able to set you up a private area there so that no one will disturb you. We have cameras stationed all over our portion of Makai, but I'm sure Koenma-sama will equip Kurama and Kuwabara with personal cameras so that you'll never lose sight of them."

As Botan continued to ramble on, Kagome couldn't help the small smile that spread across her face. There was a time when she would have been like this, chatting aimlessly and enthusiastically. But those times were long gone. All Kagome wanted now was to see the kitsune she'd come to think of as her son.

"Here we are!" Botan announced, setting Kagome down in a spacious room packed with monitors. They'd bypassed the main portion of the observation room, leaving them without company. "I'll go make sure everything is set up with Koenma-sama, and then I'll bring you some things to make the place more comfortable. I assume you won't be leaving until they find him?"

Kagome, at first startled by the assumption, soon cracked a wide smile. "That would be correct," she said, and Botan laughed.

"All right. Be back in a jiff. Don't you go anywhere!" And with that, she was off. Which left Kagome all alone with a bunch of blank screens.

She looked at them for a moment, then at the only chair in the room, and sighed before plopping down, prepared for the long haul. She knew it was foolish to expect them to find Shippou in a week–Makai was huge, after all–but she could hope, anyway. With no other connection to the past, she was desperate to find him again, no matter what the cost, to herself or her clock.

The screens came on after only a minute or so of waiting, displaying images of a world Kagome couldn't have dreamed of. There were environments of all types: swamps, forests, deserts, oceans. All swarmed with demons, some humanoid, some animal-like, some strange masses that could hardly be compared to anything. But one screen in particular caught her eye.

"That's–"

The Goshinboku looked the same as it always had, tall and comforting, with an indent at the center where a certain dog demon had been trapped for fifty years. Its leaves rustled faintly in the light breeze of the demon plane, and at once Kagome knew she had to go to it. It probably wasn't even the same tree, just another like it, but that indent... She would recognize it anywhere. The familiar sight of the tree pulled her in, soothing her, but at the same time, it ignited her curiosity. How was it that one tree could be simultaneously in two different realms of existence, could give off such a holy aura in a world literally soaked in youki?

"All right, Miko-sama," Botan said as she drifted back into the room, much more slowly than she had left. "I've brought you some living essentials, but if you want me to get anything more specific, I can–"

"Hey, do you mind if I borrow this?" Kagome asked, grabbing the oar and hopping on. "I'll be back soon, I promise!" she called as she rode off with a very confused Botan in her wake, determined to figure out the trick of the God Tree.

~o~o~

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