Warnings: None

Daughters of Destiny

Chapter 06:

"Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"

"So it's about demons?"

"Yes!"

"And time travel?"

"Yes!" Lia nodded, mouth stained with chocolate syrup and the biggest smile I'd ever seen her wear. "This girl Kagome time travels to the Feudal Era and that's where she meets them! You're gonna love it!"

As Lia tucked back into her banana split, I stared at the intro playing on Lia's TV with a frown. Lia had told me I'd like this show, since it had demons like Yu Yu Hakusho, but I wasn't so sure yet. Time travel wasn't typically my favorite device in fiction. Even as a middle schooler, I saw all the ways time travel could mess up your own future or change reality completely. Dad had made me read "The Sound of Thunder" too early for me to enjoy time travel shenanigans like those in Inuyasha, I guess.

Still. The look on Lia's face spoke of affection and excitement, and I'd hate to ruin her fun (so many people's eyes glazed over when I talked about YYH, and I wasn't about to do the same to her—not when she was my only anime-loving friend in the whole dang world). I settled in for the episode marathon with a sigh, reaching for the bag of Doritos. Suspension of disbelief, here I come...

"And who's the Yoko-Kurama-looking-guy in the red pajamas?" I asked as a boy with silver hair, pointed animal ears, and golden eyes appeared. Lia stuck out her tongue at the description, but her eagerness left no room for vexation.

"That's Inuyasha. He and Kagome are in love—well, sort of, if you don't count Kikyo, but we'll get there," Lia said—and then her eyes glazed over with the gooey, overstated affection of a teenage girl. "He's cute and stuff, but his older brother is way, way smexier."

Lia had quite a thing for Sesshomaru, I learned. In the coming months she'd show me her DVD collection, which covered the first few dozen episodes of the series, as well as the vast number of pictures she'd printed from the series, squirreled away in photo albums for her private perusal. These were the days of dial-up internet, after all. She printed the pictures when her parents weren't home to nag her about wasted toner. She even made me a binder of Hieis and Kuramas as a present—given at random, because Lia was a generous soul, awkward but infinitely loveable. While I never quite grew to love Inuyasha the way she did, by the time we graduated high school, I at least had working knowledge of the show's main characters and overall themes…the ones from the start of the series, anyway.

The series hadn't finished airing by the time Lia and I parted ways after the ninth grade.

"But you've gotta see the ending when it drops," she said to me on our last day of school together. She shoved a birthday gift bag into my arms, even though it was June and I wasn't turning fifteen until September. "Sesshy will remind you!"

Mystified, I shifted the tissue paper in the bag, but my eyes widened when I saw what lay inside. "I can't take this!" I said, lifting her well-loved Sesshomaru plushie from his nest of paper. I recognized his fraying hair, courtesy of many hugs and countless kisses. "Lia, he's your favorite!"

But Lia only giggled. "That just means you gotta take really good care of him, OK?"

I kept my word, I'm happy to say, even long after we lost touch in our twenties.

That Sesshomaru plush sat among my Yu Yu Hakusho dolls at home, just as cherished as my Kuwabara and Yusuke, even till the day I died and began my life as Yukimura Keiko.

"COME BACK HERE, TIGGER, YOU LITTLE GODDAMN BRAT!"

My voice echoed off the walls of the gorge like gunfire, but no one responded, and Kagome's cute face most certainly didn't appear over the top of the ravine's high wall. I stood at the bottom of that hole, screaming, until my voice grew hoarse and my eyes watered from craning my head back for so long. Eventually I heaved a heavy, annoyed sigh and let out a feral screech of frustration.

Kagome had left me here. She'd just left me! She'd up and ran after those stupid little snake-monsters, leaving me behind quite literally stuck in a hole. What the hell had happened to sticking together, to not getting into trouble, to keeping our noses clean and our heads down?

Kagome had happened, I guessed. Girl was too exuberant, too excited to explore the world of Inuyasha for her own good. Reminded me a bit of that girl I'd known in middle school—Lia? Yeah. That was her name. Lia, who would talk your ear off for hours about her favorite anime series, and would more than likely run headlong into danger just like Kagome had if given the chance.

Ugh.

Just—ugh!

When it became obvious that Kagome wasn't coming back to help me climb out of this stupid hole, the only remaining option left to me was…well, to get myself out of the hole, without her help, so I could rub her face into it later. Taking a deep, bracing breath, I walked to the side of the ravine and gave it a thorough inspection. Though the dirt was too soft to support my weight, roots of trees wound through it in a dense tangle. I pulled on an exposed root, tugging at it hard, and grinned when it didn't come loose of its dirt mooring.

"I am going to get extra fucking dirty just to make her feel bad," I resolved, and then I started climbing. Grabbing a root here, shoving my foot into the cup of a curling bit of wood there, I made my slow way up the wall—muttering all the while.

"Stupid Tigger," I grated between clenched teeth. "Stupid, stupid Tigger and her inability to focus for even a single goddamn second. Stupid teenage brain and stupid impulse control issues—ack!"

A root gave way under my foot, but I had enough arm strength (thank you, Hideki-sensei!) to keep from falling to my death. I peered down and realized I was halfway up the twelve foot wall—not too shabby for the girl who'd hated rock climbing in her past.

"See, Tigger?" I said to the absent girl. "I don't need you. I don't need help. I can manage all on my own, and—" the root in my hand shuddered; my body dropped, hand scrambling desperate for a new hold "—oh sweet Jesus no no no no no!"

I needn't have cursed, however.

Just as I began a free-fall back into the ravine, roots all giving way with a series of cracks and pops, a hand latched around my wrist.

A strong hand.

A large hand, one that most definitely did not belong to my diminutive friend Kagome...because this hand wrapped all the way around my arm and overlapped its own fingers on the other side.

Yeah. Not Kagome. But who?

I couldn't see my savior's face for the sun silhouetting him, hiding his features from view, but I barely had time to look, anyway. He lifted me up and swung me out of the ravine like I weighed nothing at all. My shoulder spasmed with the pain of supporting all my weight, but soon my feet hit solid ground and I stumbled forward, toward the person who'd caught me. Call me a damsel, but I expected them to catch me, ask me if I was hurt and help me stand.

Instead he stepped back, evading my touch, leaving me to fall to my knees on the hard earth.

For a minute I could only sit there, breathing labored, clutching my shoulder—but then my eyes caught on the slippers standing just before me. My eyes rose from them and over billowing white pants, up to a purple and gold sash and the hard plates of a samurai's black armor, up past silken sleeves embroidered with vivid designs, up to a spiked shoulder pauldron and an enormous, fluffy cloak-type-thing (if that's what it even was) on his shoulder. This furry cape seemed to billow behind this figure on an unfelt wind, tangling with strands of long, white hair—

Wait.

White hair?

"You smell like the demon that this one seeks."

His refined velvet voice cut the air like a knife, like the sword he carried on a sash around his armored waist. Slowly, I raised my eyes past his body and to his face.

Golden eyes, cold and cruel, bored into mine like needles, their color made all the richer for the magenta markings on his gorgeous cheeks, and the violet crescent moon staining the pale expanse of his white forehead.

I stared at him without speaking.

Because—surely not?

Surely I wasn't looking at who I thought I was looking at.

Surely this wasn't—

When he spoke, and I heard the tenor of his silken voice again, all my doubts fled—fled the way I longed to do, because in all my adventures as Yukimura Keiko, this was surely the most dangerous figure I'd met yet.

"You," said the demon Sesshomaru, "will take this Sesshomaru to the one he seeks." He lifted his chin, every inch a king. "If you refuse, little human, prepare yourself to feel this one's infinite wrath."

Judging by the look on his face, I don't think he expected me to start laughing…but that's exactly what I did. Because I was pretty sure meeting him meant I was going to die, again—and sometimes in the face of unfathomable fear, the only thing to do is laugh.

NOTES:

Surprise! Rogue chapter of this story to tide people over on my hiatus. Enjoy!

Chapter's title is the name of the song going through NQK's head at the end of this chapter.

Realized this story has a fundamental flaw that I will rectify with the addition of a prologue. Stay tuned for that, in a week or two!

MANY THANK TO THOSE WHO REVIEWED PREVIOUSLY! You rock. Ahyeon, girlalmightys, Kaiya Azure, xenocanaan, rya-fire1, Counting Sinful Stars, sousie, CrystalVixen93, Miqila, dunno, wennifer-lynn, Lady Hummingbird, Sesshomaru Luvr, Selias, giant salamander, Vixeona, KaylaMarie517, Nameless Angel 00, Night Sky 21, FireDancerNix, Lady Ellesmere!