:: Author's Note ::

I don't happen to own "Inu-Yasha" or any of the related characters ... I am merely using them to create an odd rendition of Rumiko Takahashi's story line that doesn't make a lot of sense yet and may never ... it's okay though ...

*Emphasis*
/Japanese/
\Flashback\
Thought

I just realized a mistake that I made in Chapter two. The computer that Nyoko is given couldn't have been one "slightly older than the one Nyoko had recently purchased for her children," because they just made a thirty-three year voyage and she bought the pc *BEFORE* they left . . . that idea is totally irrelevant and should be ignored. I'll fix that right away, though it won't make much difference to returning readers (assuming I have those ^^;;).
The Hanyou Project
Phase Three
"The Past"
By Jann
Sota was wandering.

He had always enjoyed wandering. He had worried his mother a time or two and when he had started middle school, he had skipped his first few classes to wander and landed himself with a week of detentions the first day. It hadn't bothered *him,* though. He had known the school better than anyone else in his grade and though it rarely proved useful, it was knowledge he had relished in possessing.

"When you twist the words, it seems a little odd that I can still remember exactly where everything was," he murmured in thought. Thirty-three years was a long time and he didn't even feel a little jet-lagged.

An orangeish blur shot past him and Sota stepped back against the wall, jolted and startled. The gravity on Swenson was very different from that on Ko and the form had racked Sota's balance.

"Today you die! I don't care what the mother says, you're a menace!"

Sota braced himself this time for another persona and sure enough, there was another shift around him and a form, this one much taller than the first, darted past him.

"Don't hurt me! I'm just a little kid, come on, what'a you think you're doing, you sadist?!" the first figure squealed from ahead. He was a bit quicker than his pursuer, but it was obvious he was tiring and would be caught, sooner or later.

Amused, Sota followed, first trotting, upping to jogging and finally sprinting after them. However swift the orange-blur was, Sota was easily faster than them both and caught up to the taller figure presently. "What're you doing?" he asked suddenly.

The asked character, a young man who didn't look but a few years older than Sota's older sister, was obviously startled by the unexpected voice and he faltered, if only a little. "I'm chasing the runt," he growled, recovering aptly. "If you're smart, you'll stay out of my way."

Sota looked him over. He was of average height, a bit gangly and as Japanese as any inhabitant of Ko. It was actually quite pleasant to see someone of similar descent inhabiting the military base. His black hair was thin and what little of it there was had been pulled into a small, low, ponytail. However, though he seemed irritated, Sota didn't think he was really angry and also didn't think he was as tough as he wanted to believe.

"What did he do to piss you off?" Sota wondered.

He reddened. "None of your business, ya pygmy."

Sota raised an eyebrow, but didn't question him further.

"Miro~oku~u!" the first voice whined as its owner slowed. "I swear, it was an accident, and I won't ever bother you ever *ever* again!"

"That's cuz you won't *live* to *see* me again!" Miroku snarled, seeing his opening. Sota stayed at his side as they caught up with the pip-squeak, shorter than Sota himself, and less of a blur now. He had turned to back into a corner and now that he had stopped, Sota studied his face. He looked around his own age and sported a head of light auburn hair, tied back with a blue ribbon. His ears were pointed and his nose upturned. A extra appendage suddenly slid out from behind him and Sota's eyes widened. A tail?

The kid was a Youkai.

The young Youkai smirked at the look on Sota's face, but didn't back out of his corner. "You're new around here, aren't you?" he asked, keeping a weary eye on his opponent, who had also turned to face Sota. "You've never been to Swenson before, have you?"

"Uh, no," Sota squeaked.

Sensing a decrease in the impending danger, he stepped forward and to the right to avoid Miroku to hold out a small hand equipped with thin fingers that ended in little claws. "Where're you from, then?"

"Ko," he replied, hesitantly holding out his own hand to shake with the alien.

"Ko?" Miroku asked suddenly. "That's, like . . . at least twenty-five, thirty years away!"

"Thirty-three," was Sota's cautious answer.

The Youkai nodded. "It makes sense. You wouldn't know about the Alliance, then, would you."

It was a rhetorical question, but Sota shook his head anyway as his new acquaintance continued.

"There was a treaty, about twenty years ago," he recited. "The leaders of my clan agreed to cooperate with the human race to annihilate any clans offending the Treaty of the Alliance. For the past, oh, ten, fifteen years, the Akera clan, named so to suck up to the humans, obviously, has been allied with the human race."

Sota nodded, forcing himself to be open-minded. After seeing the vid albums of the First Invasion and later the Imp and Stoic Invasions, it was hard to look at a Youkai, any Youkai and not see an enemy. "I've been sleeping for thirty years," he said unnecessarily.

"Damn, you're older than me, kid," Miroku chuckled. "You're older than . . . my mom!"

"The name's Shippo," the kid truced with a grin, offering friendship in his voice.

"Sota."

"How long are you gonna be on Swenson?" Shippo asked, taking another step or two away from Miroku.

"Probably the rest of my life. My mom and older sister are working on some science project. I don't think I'll go back to Ko. Everyone'll either be old or dead," he pointed out.

"Older sister?" Miroku asked, his face brightening.

"Don't mind him," Shippo said with a roll of his eyes. "The guy's sort've a lech."

Miroku's eyes narrowed. "Don't think I forgot. Kid, you're as dead as you were the second you opened that door!"

"It was a clo~oset!" Shippo squealed, taking off again.

Sota chuckled to himself and followed close behind.
+++
09 March 2168
Universal News
INVASION
Military Officials finally reach Ueda to find that time has already run out
Barnett

(Comm. Akera, Ueda).

"It was just . . . barren. Akera was gone," says Captain Levine of the military world of Precht.

Levine's assessment of the situation is in no way mild. Ever since 02 April 2167, when the distress signals were first interpreted, military officials have been fending off attack from the "Youkai" as the people of Ueda have deemed them, a word meaning "demon" in the form of the Japanese language used hundreds of years ago. They are a brutal enemy with an insistence to destroy all human life, as translated from the few messages the Union Military has as of yet interpreted.

"This is the last straw," threatens Private Tabar. "We've got to hit the [censored] and we've got to hit 'em hard and we've got to him 'em fast. This thing'll be over before these [censored] can blink twice. We're gonna be ready for 'em before the [censored] can attack again, [censored]!"
"If only they could've done it," Kagome murmured. She knew without referring to later periodicals that Ueda was later devastated, just as the Youkai had promised it would be.

"What're you doing, Kag? Don't you want to see these subjects? They're quite . . . intriguing," Nyoko called from the holding room. She had begun to carefully unfreeze the animals that the other scientists had plunged into suspended animation after Kikyou's death. She had decided that they would be vital for their research, though why continuation was commanded was becoming more and more difficult to understand. Why call a scientist over if the hanyou couldn't be removed from it's cell? Why drag a scientist from a planet thirty-three years away to look into empty work? There had to be a reason that Nyoko wasn't seeing.

The idea of coming invasion waved over Nyoko's mind. Was there something the public wasn't being told?

Nyoko let her gaze drift to a collection of rabbits, each tagged and dated. She would have to check their tags when everything was awakened to know the exact observations that had been made on each, but the particular batch Nyoko was eyeing was disformed in ways beyond comprehension. They were each caged separately, as it was obvious that some would probably attack the others and eat them. They looked like super-bunnies injected with steroids with tempers to match. Huge fangs littered some and enhanced ears and toes, others.

She must have done a lot of studying, Nyoko thought as she picked up the next frozen cell. She traced the outline of the rabbit within with her forefinger. Its features were prominently rabbit, save the fangs that were open in what looked like an angry squeal, the claws that burdened his delicate feet and his deep, red eyes. If not for years of research, how could Kikyou have come up with something as flawless as the Inu-Yasha on the first try? Some of the rabbits were limping against extra appendages and others unable to move at all. She knew the one in her hand would be another vicious member of the growing club from the scarlet in its eyes. So far, from mice to rats to rabbits, that fact hadn't failed. She wondered vaguely what color Inu-Yasha's eyes were.

"I'm just reading the periodicals on these disks," came Kagome's preoccupied reply to Nyoko's previous question. "The ones before and during the First Invasion."

Nyoko remembered reading the same periodicals herself 150 years before, though to her it hadn't been more than twenty. Such is life, was her quaint reply within her mind. "If you want to read those later, I think you may be enlightened by these reawakening," Nyoko suggested, using her thumb-print to open the small freezing cell. It seemed the bigger the test animal got, the more clearance it required to open them, elevating to a whole hand on most primates.

"Yeah, sure," Kagome murmured.

Inside the cell, the rabbit blinked in the quickly draining fluid and it's jaw snapped shut. It let out a growl that Nyoko never would have guessed rabbits could make and she quickly released the dazed creature into a cage she had already readied for it. The last thing she needed was a bite from a half-Youkai, half-Earth-mammal monster. She hadn't read the reports on that section yet, but she didn't presume it would do good things to her insides.

Within minutes Nyoko heard the scrape of the chair across the tiled floor that indicated Kagome was getting up to help her mother with the unfreezing. She picked up one of the last of the small rabbit cells. "Kagome, if you're coming in here anyway, will you please bring some of the drogts out?"

Drogts were animals found on the planet of Lahti. Most of the animal life on foreign worlds was sparse and while a portion of it was odd and exotic, there were a lot that were similar to Earth animals, though there were never anywhere near as many species as Earth had spawned. Beyond that, almost all of them were in no way capable of achieving sentience for any number of years below millions and millions. Drogts resembled small monkeys with the intelligence of cockroaches. They made good testing animals because there was an abundance of them and their systems were so similar other humanoid species. After the controversies near 175 years before had died down, they became imperative in any modern lab.

"Yeah, sure," Kagome repeated.

Outside the holding room, Kagome stopped before the cell of the Inu-Yasha in her trek to retrieve the drogts for her mother. His passive face, containing such soft, anthropomorphic features, mesmerized her. She reached up and for the second time that day, touched the glass that hovered over above his perfect cheek. Was he really the spawn of a mere experiment? Could it be that this Inu-Yasha had been sired in a test tube with the same seed as the malformed drogts and chimpanzees?

Kagome averted her eyes from the hanyou to inspect the control panel that lingered about a head below eye level. This cell was just as intricate as, perhaps more so than, the one she had made home in for thirty-three years. The technology that haunted it surpassed that of the chimps and rats by far. She reached over and wiped a line the width of her finger of dust from the palm panel. It came to life, expecting use.

It'll never be used again though, Kagome mused. That Kikyou made sure of that. A stripe of red ran across the top of the pad and the lights beneath the setting-buttons came to life. With a snort and a smirk, Kagome looked self-consciously to the left and the right. She already felt stupid, but it wouldn't do for her mother to witness something so foolish as she was about to attempt. While it was perfectly fine to know her childish notions in the back of her mind, it would be quite another thing to make them public.

When she was sure Nyoko hadn't left the holding room, Kagome swiped the rest of the dust from the gel-panel and pressed her hand firmly to it. She left it sit there for the few seconds she knew it would take, fifty-year-old technology as it was, and awaited the beeps of rejection.