Title: Tie Me to the Future
Author: Tsubasa Kya
Disclaimer: Sorry, I do not own Inuyasha or Yu Yu Hakusho people. I'm just a fan.
Chapter fourteen: Trouble Learning
-Realm of Opposites-
Kurama stared at the gate to the Realm of Opposites. It was not really much but what looked to be an extremely tiny crack in a fence. He wondered why Koenma had picked him for a rescue mission. It wasn't that he didn't have faith that he could do it, but he figured that Hiei was faster and could have it done quicker.
Shrugging the questions off, Kurama slipped through the barrier. Instantly the world began to shift around him. He saw instead of the same crowded streets of Tokyo, a long wide street lined on either side with large mansions, each one behind gates and inside tall walls, seemingly impervious to intruders.
The place was overgrown with plants the likes of which Kurama had never seen before. Everything about the world was inverted. The sun was blue yet emitted the same glorious shine that the normal world's sun did. The ground was dirt; the sidewalk was overgrown cement. The entire world appeared to be inverted in color and it made Kurama feel slightly dizzy in truth.
He thought about the map that Koenma had given him. If he were to think logically and the map that Koenma had given him was as inverted as the rest of the world, then he had to follow it opposite what was written. However, if Koenma had already done this conversion, and Botan's warning from Koenma was any indication and he went the wrong way, he risked taking more of a chance running into creatures looking for a fight.
Kurama didn't want to go the wrong way, but it appeared he had no choice but to take that risk. Koenma might not have realized that the entire place seemed to be backwards. Kurama began walking down the street, picturing the map in his mind. The gates to the mansions began to open, he noticed, and he was shocked to find that the creatures coming out looked exactly like him at his various ages. Some of them looked like Shuichi, and some of them looked like Yoko Kurama at the various stages in each of the two separate entities of life.
"Do not hesitate to use force..."
-Ka's mansion-
"That's wrong! Wrong!" Ka yelled at Kagome yet again. "Do you want to be able to control this force? This power? If not for yourself, do it for those people who need your protection!"
For two hours already, though it felt like much longer that they had been at the training, Ka had been trying to teach Kagome the mathematics involved in being a priestess. It was precision, timing, accuracy, and equations, all rolled into one, and sometimes it was even coordination of hand or body movements. That and learning the proper words for the larger spells; not all spells required the user to chant the spell because some were smaller and accosted less energy.
Kagome was, needless to say, doing very horribly at it. Ka was a natural and catching up with her opposite was not easy. It could be done, Ka had promised her, but Kagome just wasn't seeing it happening at all, much less any time soon. Ka had promised her that just because they were opposites did not by any means mean that whatever Ka could do, Kagome couldn't do and vice versa. It did not mean that.
It meant that whatever Kagome was a natural at; Ka struggled with and vice versa. That theory was being put into play with Kagome and her mathematics. Kagome was ready to begin smacking her head with the math book, but every time she moved to do so, Ka was right there to smack her hands with what appeared to be a ruler or a stick of some sort.
"I'm trying!" Kagome yelled right back. "Don't you understand? Do you see me trying?" Kagome felt weird yelling at someone who looked exactly like her, but she felt good at the same time being able to yell at someone other than Inuyasha. She still felt no hurt at his memory, though Ka had told her why and had told her that as soon as she left the Realm of Opposites, the spell would wear off and she would be forced to face the truth.
Ka simply smacked Kagome's forehead with the stick. "You're not trying hard enough." She told her. "If you were, you would have at least figured this out. It's the mathematics to a simple illusionary spell." As she spoke, Ka pointed to the math problem she was talking about. "It's the most elementary spell out there for us!"
"Maybe I'm just a hands-on type of person!" Kagome winced at how whiny she sounded and rubbed her forehead. "Are you trying to poke my eye out?"
Ka jabbed at her eye with the stick and pulled it away, putting it in front of Kagome's other eye. "No. If I wanted to, I could just do this."
Kagome screamed and fell backwards at seeing her own eye, her greenish-yellow eye staring at her from the stick, blood dripping off it. Seeing it made her feel pain and her hand went to her eye as though to make the bleeding stop. She found that her eye was still there, quite intact and had never been poked at all. It was an illusion.
Ka laughed at her behavior. "Idiot! That was painfully obvious that it wasn't your eye! For one, if I poked you through the eye, the iris would have been face down on the stick. How's that for hands-on?"
"You're really cruel!" Kagome yelled at Ka. "That was a disgusting joke!" She crossed her arms over her chest and the nightshirt that she was still wearing rode up on her thighs. It wasn't like there was anyone else around that could see, but it still embarrassed her, so she uncrossed her arms and pulled it down again.
Ka snickered at her some more. "You're just too easy to mess with. Now, continue practicing." When Kagome glared at her, she sighed. "Fine, I'll try to help more." She waved the stick and the illusion disappeared. "As soon as you understand the math, the rest comes really easy."
-Spirit World-
Koenma yawned and looked at Botan. "How are Yusuke and the others doing? We know how Kurama's doing, and that's not so good. I should have told him that I had George invert the map. All these intelligent thinkers really get on my nerves sometimes."
"Well, Koenma, sir, Yusuke and the others have been keeping an eye out for the demon, but there's no indication that he'll come." Botan answered.
-Realm of Opposites-
"You've got to be joking." Kurama muttered under his breath as he lashed out with his rose whip, slicing the strange creatures that looked like him to pieces. It was painfully obvious that they were not he, considering he was right there. He was not one to be fooled.
He had quickly found out that the creatures regenerated themselves and so had taken to running, inverting the map in his mind and unknowingly going the wrong way. It had been quite a few hours before he realized his mistake since the road he wanted was not there.
Working his way back to the start of the strange labyrinth-based city was no easier. It seemed that each corner he turned there was a mob of himself waiting for him there. Each time, it was a larger mob too, as though they were trying to outnumber him and defeat him that way.
He was starting to wonder if he would ever make it to find the girl. He did not like the mission one bit. It was difficult, true, but only because the mobs kept coming. Where they came from, he wasn't sure. Why they came, he knew even less.
"Pst! Pst!" Kurama turned sharply and lashed out with his rose whip. The thing almost cut another of the Shuichi-based look-alikes to pieces, but this one just barely dodged, cowering against the ground. "Ah! Don't hurt me! I'm too young to die!"
Kurama, confused, looked at the mob that was quickly regenerating, then back at the strange look-alike who had not acted like the rest of them. He then realized why the place was called the Realm of Opposites and why everything was so inverted. He had found his opposite, it appeared. He wasn't too sure he liked the fact that his opposite was a coward.
Kurama groaned. The mission was turning out to be the most annoying mission yet. All he could think of was the girl better be very important to Koenma. "Then get out of my way." Kurama told him quietly. He could most likely not hurt his opposite in truth, but he certainly wasn't immune to disliking it either.
"Follow me!" His opposite got up and raced into one of the nearby mansions, darting through the gate. Kurama followed and the gate closed behind them, locking the mob on the other side. "I swear, I must have more gray hairs than—"
"Who are you?" Kurama asked the look-alike. He was beginning to become impatient and his arms were admittedly becoming slightly sore from lashing out so much with his rose whip. He could use a glass of water as dehydration was quickly settling in.
"My name is Ku. I am your opposite. You shouldn't have come here! Why did you come here? Oh a rescue mission?" Ku wiped his forehead. "I'm sorry if I seem a bit...weird. I am your opposite, so I am able to know everything you're thinking."
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