"A problem well stated is a problem half solved."
- Charles Franklin Kettering
-- Early hours of May 19, Tokyo, Japan --
Kagome flopped onto the loveseat, completely exhausted. Matsuro looked to be about to join her. Not wanting to keep track of his hands, she twisted her legs up to rest on the armrest opposite her head. He grinned at the subtle refusal of company and sat down on the couch across from her. Mischa sat on one of the window seats, using a knife from the kitchen to cut up a cardboard box. It seemed a relatively safe way to vent unspoken frustrations. Inu-Yasha occupied the other window seat, tugging on the tacky necklace that kept his demon features hidden. Chame was lying on her stomach, half-heartedly trying to get Buyo off of her back. His loud purring as he kneaded his claws into one of her tails echoed through the otherwise silent room.
Two days of questioning, and none of them had anything to show for it. Nothing they seemed in any hurry to share, Kagome thought, noting the slightly guilty look in Mischa's eyes, the thoughtful look in Matsuro's as he watched Mischa finish cutting up the box, and the look of utter annoyance Inu-Yasha had as he mumbled something about someone named Myouga.
Chame was the only one in the room who seemed at ease. Though even her play was less than it could have been, for the girl was annoyed at Buyo for deciding her tails were an excellent place to sleep.
"Would you quit that already?" Kagome said to Mischa, who had finished with the box and was now absently twirling the knife between her fingers, eyes closed as her mind thought over what she had learned.
Mischa opened her eyes to look confusedly at Kagome. She looked down to the knife in her hand, and seemed startled to find it there. She blinked at it a few times, then gave Kagome a sheepish grin as she tossed the knife over Matsuro's head. It flew into the kitchen slid cleanly into the knife rack it had come from.
"I don't need a haircut, wolf," Matsuro said, too tied up in his thoughts to either get angry or make a more vulgar comment on her attempt at being a barber.
Kagome was too shocked by the odd move to say anything.
"If you're done showing off, pup, perhaps we could get back to discussing this Shinin the wench's would-be kidnappers spoke of?" Inu-Yasha said, annoyed.
"I thought we already agreed nobody's heard of him," she replied.
"I know the name from somewhere, damn it. And that coward Myouga has yet to show back up with anything on him," he grumbled.
"Who's Myouga?" Kagome asked.
"A flea demon," he told her.
Chame giggled from her spot on the floor. "It would be the bug youkai who manage to make it through the world without illusions."
"Children should be seen and not heard," Inu-Yasha told her.
"Then why are you still talking, puppy?"
"If we could get back to the topic at hand?" Matsuro said wearily. "It's been a very long and completely useless day, and I'd like to get it over with and find someplace to crash for the night."
Kagome opened her mouth to again offer the couch, but Mischa cut her off. "He has found other places the past two days, Kags, he can do it again."
Kagome made a small disgusted sound in the back of her throat, but let Mischa's argument slide. The redhead was right, it had been a long day, and Buyo's idea of getting some sleep looked to be the best idea any of them had had.
Matsuro considered commenting that he hadn't exactly slept the past two days, but decided the ensuing arguments would just lengthen the amount of time they were going to be spending trying to figure out what else they could do to discover what was going on around the miko. Besides, by the look in the wolf's eyes as she glared at him, she was no longer merely suspicious of him. She knew something. He rather dreaded that confrontation.
"So what have we figured out?" Kagome said.
"Shinin is some guy we think wants to kidnap you," Chame said unhelpfully.
"And we don't know whether it's for your magic or whatever it is you guard," Matsuro added gamely.
"And someone else is after you because they think they've found a way to draw your power out of you before your blood transmutes it into human magic." Chame spoke with the knowledge of one who had dealt with magic all her life. Judging by the short amount of time it took for the tiny kitsune to find a loophole in the shrine's wards that allowed her to actually hold her human illusion for a time, Kagome thought it very possible that the girl had used magic since birth.
(Green light sparkled around Chame and her twin black tails reappeared, along with cute fox ears Kagome had to fight herself with to keep from tweaking. "You've got pretty powerful wards, Shin-sama. My illusion's basic magic I don't even need to think about to hold, and I had to really concentrate to keep it up just for fifteen minutes.")
She hadn't exactly wanted a word-for-word recap of everything she had told them, but the kitsune seemed to be having fun telling her everything she already knew. She had asked for it, she thought glumly.
"And the taiyoukai think your wolf can keep these people off of you."
"Or else think Musha's smart enough to call in reinforcements." Kagome didn't think much of the so-called reinforcements they had somehow picked up. A pervert, a magic-using ancient child, and a continuously irritated half-demon.
("He has contacts in many places, Kags, that will tell him everything they know just to get him to leave them the hell alone. And he could beat me in a fight with one arm tied behind his back.")
Kagome had yet to see him do anything remotely helpful, beyond the earlier warning against the youkai in the building across from where she worked.
"And the people after you- probably Shinin- figured that out and blew up her apartment." How had Matsuro known of that? She knew Mischa wouldn't have told him, nor would Inu-Yasha, and Chame didn't know either. And there were no names given to the press.
"But that didn't work, so now they're just going to skip the 'kill the hanyou' part of the plan and head straight for the 'nab the miko' part of their twisted, evil plan."
"Now you're just making this up," Kagome told Chame.
"Makes sense to me," Matsuro said. "I'd skip killing her and spend all my time on nabbing you. Grab you right when you leave work while you're still in that wonderfully short skirt, tie you up so you can't escape, gag you so you won't call for help- though that really takes away from the-"
"Shut the fuck up already!" Inu-Yasha said. "Fucking pervert."
Kagome silently thanked the man for shutting the kitsune up. She really didn't want to hear anything more he would do. They were supposed to be figuring out what someone else would do. Hopefully whatever youkai was after her, if he was youkai at all, was not a kitsune. She was having enough trouble controlling her blushes just around the two she already knew.
Now she understood Mischa's warning. Anything you said or did was encouragement for him to make a lewd remark about it. And that was the very least of what he would do. Nor did he seem fazed at all by the fact Mischa was a child by youkai terms. He hit on her even more often than he did on Kagome.
"Get this stupid fat furball off me," Chame said.
"Now, now, Chame-chan, he's comfortable. And as old as Buyo is, he needs something soft to sleep on," Kagome said with a smile.
"Would you get him off if I said I was allergic to cats?"
"You haven't sneezed yet," Matsuro noted. "And youkai don't have allergies."
"But she didn't know that," Chame muttered.
Kagome grinned. The two of them seemed to be settling in to the notion they were family very easily. Of course, they treated the rest of the people in the room much the same way.
Come to think of it, Mischa was being even more silent than usual. She turned concerned eyes to the brown-clad figure curled up on the window seat. Mischa looked to be asleep.
"Now that's what I call trust," Matsuro said, following Kagome's gaze, "sleeping in my presence when she's only known me a week."
Mischa silently raised one hand up to give him the finger, then put it back down.
"Much better," he said with a grin. "I'd hate to have bored you to sleep. That would just mean I'd have to try harder to-"
Kagome was getting the hang of shutting him up. Interruption. "Ne, Mischa, what are you doing over there, if you're not sleeping?"
Mischa opened one eye to look at Kagome. "Trying to get to sleep."
"Like you're stupid enough to sleep around those two idiots," Inu-Yasha said.
"Yeah," Chame added as she managed to lift her head up from the floor to rest on her arms. "Trying to get to sleep around Inu-Yasha would be pretty stupid. You'd never get any rest, what with him yelling all the time."
"Fuck off, midget."
"You get kicks out of kids doing that, mutt?"
Mischa's explanation that youkai liked to hate each other looked to be proven true.
"Shinin," Mischa said, ignoring the argument, "is a name I read in the paper."
The argument stopped immediately.
"And you just now think to tell us this, you mangy wolf?" Inu-Yasha yelled.
"Honestly, Mischa, couldn't you have told us this earlier?"
She shrugged, offering no explanation as to why she hadn't.
"Shinin-Kino Enterprises," she elaborated.
"There was a big ruckus in the papers," Matsuro said, understanding. "They're famous businessmen merging their companies into one massive over-corporation. Kind of like the Time Warner-AOL thing over in America."
Kagome vaguely remembered reading a few headlines concerning the matter.
"But why would a business company be after her?" Chame asked.
Nobody looked to be able to answer that question. The hanyou and youkai knew better than to tell Kagome they knew that both businessmen were powerful youkai. Sesshoumaru was not the only youkai with an interest in the business world
"Maybe if we got some sleep, we'd be able to think better," Kagome said.
"Would your bed be open, Kagome-sama?"
"Put a sock in it, fox, you ain't going in her room."
"No harm in trying." He got off the sofa and carefully picked Buyo up from Chame's tail and set the fat cat on the ground. Before Buyo could decide to reclaim his sleeping spot, Chame jumped to her feet.
"We'll be back in the morning," he told Kagome as he grabbed his leather jacket and keys.
"I think it already is morning," she said, looking at the clock on the wall.
He grinned. "I love keeping girls up all hours of the night."
"Quit flirting and let's go, brother," Chame said, pushing him to the door to grab their shoes.
He gave a mocking salute to the two hanyou. "I'll be sure to read up on Shinin before I come back."
"Feh, like you would ever waste your time on learning to read."
"The ladies love an intelligent man."
"I'm not seeing how that applies to you," Mischa said.
He raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to reply.
"Will you be reading up on Kino as well?" she asked.
He closed his mouth, realizing what she meant. The other occupants of the room looked puzzled at his change in mood.
"Of course," Chame said, not understanding what Mischa had meant by the question.
Mischa waited until she could hear two light steps on the staircase before speaking again. "Good night, Kags, inu." She disappeared.
"What the fuck was up with that?" Inu-Yasha said.
Kagome had no idea. "Why did she ask him if he would read up on Kino as well? It's Shinin we think is after me, not Kino."
"Did she find out something she didn't tell us?"
"I could ask the same of you," Kagome told him.
"I'm not sharing until I have proof, that's all. We've got enough unconfirmed information already we don't need more messing with our heads."
Kagome didn't look convinced, but was too sleepy to argue. "Sure," she said half-heartedly. "Good night, Inu-Yasha."
She walked up the stairs, leaving the hanyou on the window seat to wonder why Mischa had left the house.
-----
Kagome's sleep was troubled. Her dreams were a hodge-podge of memories.
---
"Kagome, dear, could you get that?"
Her mother sat in the kitchen, speaking with her older sister, who had shown up a few hours earlier. Kagome sighed and put down the book she was reading to open the front door.
A girl looking to be thirteen stood outside, hands in her pockets, looking bored. Her hair shoulder-length and looked like it had never been brushed in her life. She wore a heavy gray sweater and light khaki pants. A brown backpack lay at her feet where she had set it down to knock on the door. Kagome thought the girl looked a lot like she did when she was a little younger. The girl said nothing, merely stared at Kagome impassively.
"Can I help you?" Kagome asked.
"I'm looking for my mother." The girl had a deeper voice than she had expected.
Kagome had no idea how to respond to that. "Um."
"Is she here?" Something about the girl's voice said she already knew the answer to the question, even if Kagome didn't.
Kagome looked back inside, then back at the girl. "What's her name?"
"Meirin Mikomi."
"You're her daughter? I thought she said her daughter was twenty."
The girl said nothing.
"Excuse me? You going to answer?"
Her aunt came up behind her. "Mischando, what are you doing here?"
"I could say the same of you, Mother. You should be in Niigata."
Kagome stepped out of the way so Mikomi could walk past her and start straightening up her daughter's hair. "Never you mind that, Mischando. You need to brush up before you leave your apartment. Honestly, child, do you like looking like a mess?"
Mischando shrugged.
Mikomi turned her attention to Kagome. "Ah, Kagome, meet your cousin, Mischando. She's not very talkative, I'm afraid."
"Standing right here," Mischando said, her voice oddly not annoyed by her mother's aside to Kagome.
"A pleasure to meet you, Mischando," Kagome said, wondering why the girl had come, and if she really was twenty.
"You too," the girl replied. "Please do not call me that."
Kagome looked confusedly between mother and daughter, but shrugged. "Sure thing. Mischa okay?"
The girl nodded. "It's fine."
---
A fifteen-year old Kagome peeked into the well house.
"Buyo?" She called, looking for her missing cat. Souta stood behind her, using her as a shield for any monsters the closed-up building might hold.
She walked into the building. "Souta, this is going to make me late for school."
"Aw, sis, you were going to be late anyway," he said, not following her in.
Kagome peeked down the well. Buyo sat at the bottom, hind leg in the air like a flagpole as he licked the base of his tail.
She spotted a ladder leading down into the well and climbed over the ledge and down. Buyo meowed at her as he noticed her coming.
"Buyo, you stupid cat, how did you get down here without breaking anything?"
He meowed again, as if to say 'a cat always lands on his feet.'
She grabbed the cat and climbed back up. "Next time he does this, Souta, you're getting him. There aren't any monsters in here and you shouldn't be scared of it." She put the cat down and he raced outside.
Souta stood, staring over her shoulder. "Uh, sis," but the rest of what he said wasn't understandable.
"Souta, what is your problem?" She placed her hands on her hips to stare down angrily at him.
"There are monsters in here," he said.
She turned around. A giant thing with lots of arms was diving down at her, shouting something about a jewel. She screamed.
The hands grabbed her, and both monster and girl fell into the well.
---
A younger Kagome raced to school. It was her first day of junior high, and she didn't want to be late.
Not paying close attention to traffic, she dashed across the crosswalk. A car honk and the squeal of brakes made her freeze, turning to the noise. A silver sports car was speeding her way, brakes squealing furiously as the driver tried to slow down enough to miss the child, not able to turn out of the way because of the cars in the other lanes of traffic.
Just before the car hit the girl, a pedestrian leaped from the sidewalk to grab her, and they both fell hard on the ground on the other side of the street. Kagome could hardly breathe, all the air had rushed out of her lungs in the fall, and the weight of a grown man on her back didn't make it easy to inhale.
He stood. "You don't fucking stop in the middle of the road, you stupid kid," he said as she stood dizzily. Through blurry eyes she could make out a tall blonde man dusting his red coat off.
"I'm so sorry, sir, I was in a rush to get to school. Kyaa! I'm going to be late! Thank you for saving me!" she called as she continued her mad dash to school.
The last thing she heard him say was "fucking Akira," before he was lost behind her in the crowd.
---
A tall man in black and purple monk's robes knelt before he, holding her hands in his. He had a serious look to his face, but there was a slight sparkle of humor in violet eyes peeking out from under black bangs. "Beautiful lady, would you bear my child?"
"Pervert!" She said, freeing her hands from his grasp and slapping him. "Honestly, Miroku-sama, do you have to keep asking that of every pretty girl you come across?"
"One of them may yet say yes, Kagome-sama, and I shall continue my search until I find her," he said as he pulled himself up off the ground and dusted the dirt from his robes. "I didn't hear you say no, Kagome-sama. Have you finally changed your mind?"
"I'm not bearing your child!" she shrieked.
He sighed.
---
Souta was waiting outside the school with another girl as Kagome and Mischa walked up.
"Sorry we're late, Souta. I had to stop by the bank to deposit my paycheck and the line was longer than expected. Who's your friend?"
The girl looked Souta's age, with short, not quite chin-length hair dyed a realistic shade of green. Her brown eyes looked almost red and she smiled at the two older girls. "I'm Ayame. Maybe Souta-kun mentioned me?"
Both shook their heads. The girl didn't seem to be upset. "Souta-kun," she teased, "are you ashamed to tell your sister about me?"
He blushed. "I never got around to it," he defended.
"Yeah, we don't see each other as often as we used to," Kagome said. "That's why we're going to the park today. Want to come with?"
The girl shook her head. "No, I've got to get home. Father will be upset if I am late."
Kagome smiled. "They can be overprotective, can't they?" Ayame made a disgusted face, but she ignored it. "Nice meeting you, and stop by the shrine sometime and meet our mother."
"Kagooommeee," Souta said, embarrassed at her offer. Ayame giggled.
"Sayonara!" The girl walked off in the opposite direction the trio took.
Mischa turned her head to watch the girl. "Oi, brat," she said, her voice a bit puzzled.
"What is it?"
"What was her family name?"
Souta looked thoughtful. "I think it's Kino."
----
Kagome shot up with a gasp.
Ayame, that girl Souta was always meeting with, her last name was Kino! Had Mischa remembered that? Was that why she asked Matsuro if he was going to look into the man?
She didn't worry about the rest of the strange dreams as she ran down the stairs to the guest room Mischa was staying in. Flinging the door open, she discovered an empty room. The bed was made, looking as if it hadn't been slept in. The alarm on the nightstand beside it read it was slightly before six and hadn't been set. She had gotten less than four hours of sleep.
Where was Mischa?
"She never came back," a voice behind her said. She shrieked, turning around to see Inu-Yasha still sitting on the window seat, looking outside to watch the sky. She hadn't noticed him there when she came past.
"Who, Mischa? She left?"
"It's why I stayed. You shouldn't be left alone, but she seemed to think whatever she had to do was important, so I'm covering for her." He looked annoyed. "Go back to bed. You look like hell."
Kagome stuck her tongue out at him. "Do you know when she'll be back?"
"Hell if I know."
The adrenaline rush from the realization Souta was somewhat connected to the people seemingly after her had faded.
"Hey, Inu-Yasha," she started.
"What?"
"Souta knows someone called Kino Ayame."
"And Kino's the other part of Shinin-Kino Enterprises. Think she's his daughter?"
"Or something. I just wanted to tell someone before I forgot."
She headed back upstairs to her room. Lying down on the bed, she fell asleep instantly and had no more dreams.