NOTE: Inuyasha is not mine. There, happy? ^_^

Prologue

            Where am I? Kagome wondered as she looked around the beautiful, strange, and disconcerting world she had suddenly (inexplicably) found herself trapped in.

            "Hello?" She asked tentatively, her voice echoing in the swirling mists, then fading in the light that was coming from everywhere and yet from nowhere. When no one answered, she tried again, bolder: "Hello!? Is anybody here!?"

            There was no answer, no sound. All the same, however, Kagome became aware that someone was indeed behind her; her heart leapt into her throat (spending most of your time in an era where 90 percent of the beings want to kill you will do that to you), and she wheeled around to face what she thought was a foe. Instead, she saw…

            "Inuyasha…," she whispered. "Wh…what are you…"

            "Doing here? Feh, can't I be where I want to be?" He said, crossing his arms and smirking. Yet despite his words—and the ever-present arrogant smirk—the normal impatience, anger, and annoyance were absent from his words.  

"What do you mean 'Where you want to be'?"

            Inuyasha smiled as he began walking towards Kagome, the eerie light playing about his features and making everything around him dark as he grew brighter all the time; the winds swirled faster and faster around the two as Inuyasha drew closer. Kagome held her breath as he got closer…he was only five feet away…now three feet…now none.

            He leaned close as he whispered, "I can't just be here with you?"

            Kagome flushed bright red at his answer, and then hastily averted her eyes to the ground and stolidly resolved to keep them there.

            "Inuyasha, I…I can't…" She stuttered, but Inuyasha put one clawed fingertip under her chin and lifted her head up to where she was looking straight into his golden eyes.

            "Can't what?" He laughed softly as he leaned close and kissed her deeply. Their lips were locked, each feeding the fire inside the other's soul, for what felt like an eternity, but to them was as brief as a second.

It was Inuyasha that finally broke the eternal kiss, and Kagome just stood staring into his eyes.

"Kagome, I…" He started, then faltered.

"Yes, Inuyasha?" She asked, her breathing and her heart stopping simultaneously.

Inuyasha composed himself, then drew himself so close that Kagome's nose was less than an inch from his own.

            "Kagome, I…I…" Inuyasha began, and then…

            Kagome opened her eyes to the vast expanse of starry heavens above her and sighed as she thought, 'Just perfect…another dream. Why do I always have these dreams after we fight?' She groaned inside her own head. 'Stupid Shoujo manga…my mom was right, that stuff does poison your mind.'

            She rolled over, intent on going back to sleep, but was thwarted in that attempt when she saw Inuyasha sitting erect and awake in a nearby tree, and—although it was too dark and too far to tell—she felt certain he was watching her now.

            She "Hmph!"d as she spun around, her back now to the cranky hanyou who was more than likely to be even crankier tomorrow since he had not gotten any sleep tonight, and thought one final thought before sleep took hold of her once more.

            'Still…and it's not like I WANT him to kiss me of anything,' she added hastily to herself, 'it wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen to me…'

            About that same moment, said cranky hanyou was sitting in said nearby tree. Although his outside appearance portrayed unbreakable calm, his insides were eating each other alive warring with each other.

            Two forces in particular, Inuyasha's head and Inuyasha's heart, were both fighting tooth and nail for control of poor Inuyasha, and neither seemed ready in the least to back down.

            "You know, you really should apologize," Heart-Inuyasha nagged.

            "Why should I? It was her fault in the first place!" Head-Inuyasha snapped back.             "Hontou? I don't recall Kagome as being the one that bashed Kouga over the head with the Tetsuaiga!" Heart-Inuyasha retorted.

            "Well what was I supposed to do, let Kouga have his way with her?"

            "BAKA! You know Kagome isn't in love with Kouga, he's just too blind to see she doesn't like him! She's his friend, nothing more, just the same as Sango; and if you keep this up that's all you'll ever be with her!"

            Inuyasha was silent (well, silent inside; he'd been silent for a while on the outside) for a moment before he responded.

            "Keh, he deserved it…"

            Heart-Inuyasha snorted.

            "Well did Kagome think he deserved it? Apparently not by the way you two started fighting after she 'Osuwari!'d you about ten times so Kouga's friends could drag him away."

            "Feh! After she did THAT you still think I should apologize?"

            "Of course you should, whether you want to admit it or not!" Heart-Inuyasha replied forcefully. "You're not always right, no matter how much you think you are! It's high time that changed!"

            "Keh. You're starting to sound like the wench, you know that?" Head-Inuyasha grumbled back.

            "Well, at least you'll have something to remember her by if you keep pushing her away like this…," Heart laughed darkly, and Inuyasha felt a little twinge of guilt as he felt both voices 'leave' and silence fell within the battlefield of his soul. This twinge of guilt, however, quickly subsided and he began thinking to himself once more as he shifted his gaze down to Kagome.

            'I'm not going to apologize. I'm not. I don't care if Kagome is mad, that wimpy wolf had it coming to him. Even if I was wrong, which I'm not, I wouldn't apologize. I will not apologize, I will not apologize, I will not apologize, I will not apolo...'

            Inuyasha heard a faint, "Hmph!" from Kagome's direction and saw her roll over to turn her back to him.

            '…gize.' "Sigh." 'Crap, now how the hell am I going to do this?' Inuyasha groaned as he began sulking in his tree. He turned his head skyward as he lapsed once more into deep thought.           

Chapter One

Golden sunlight cascaded down through the green tapestry of the forest as a beautiful morning sun arose in a clear blue sky, driving the night away. The sunlight seemed to creep stealthily along the ground until it reached the village where Inuyasha, Kagome and the rest of the gang were staying. It seemed to hesitate for a moment before reaching Kagome's sleeping form, then, in a burst of decisiveness, it leapt forward into her eyes.

            "Hm?" She groaned sleepily as the bright light blazed into her dreams and forced them away, trying to nudge her back into reality. She rolled over in her sleeping bag in an attempt to escape the offending light but it would not let her go that easily: sunshine leapt across the entire landscape. With no escape, she hovered on the edge of a dream, debating whether or not to cast herself over the edge into reality.

            Kagome teetered for just a moment more—then opened her eyes to the sun-soaked mass of green life around her; flowers were in bloom every direction she looked, the grass rose up around her, and a doe with her fawn could be seen foraging off in the distance.

            Kagome blinked sleepily, then smiled and thought to herself, 'How did I ever live in modern Japan full-time? This place is so much more peaceful…more dangerous, perhaps, but far more peaceful and beautiful than all those noisy machines…'

            She rose from her sleeping bag and yawned mightily, then looked around the small camp that she and her comrades had called home for the night. She kept looking until something occurred to her.

            Miroku and Sango normally awoke earlier than she did, and were hard at work making breakfast by now (well, Sango was normally hard at work making breakfast: Miroku was usually too busy nursing the injuries he had sustained from groping Sango to help with breakfast), yet there was no smell of burning wood or any breakfast being cooked.

            "Keh. About time you woke up, girl." Our favorite silver-haired hanyou (cranky as predicted, despite all efforts) grumbled from in his perch at the top of a tree. Kagome turned around, and craned her neck up to get a good look at him.

            Instead of her normal response (which would involve an 'Osuwari!' and a hanyou cursing fit to make a sailor blush), Kagome just glared at him sleepily; yawned; tried to blink out what sleep remained in her eyes, and finally just wheeled around on one foot and began rolling up her sleeping bag.

            'Great. So much for trying not to piss her off today…' Inuyasha growled to himself. 'Keh. May as well try…'

            "Oi, Kagome!" Inuyasha called down.

            Kagome continued rolling up her sleeping bag, apparently ignoring the sulking hanyou.

            "Kagome!" He yelled in a harsher tone.

            She growled and shot a glare up at Inuyasha, suppressed her desire to sit him to kingdom come, then finished with her sleeping bag and began building the base of a fire to cook their breakfast.

            'Crap, I'm trying to apologize her and this is how she treats me!?' Inuyasha growled in his mind, typical anime-style vein popping in his forehead and his eyebrow twitching as he glared down at the young miko.

            "Oi, Kagome!" Pause. "Well, wench, at least you're still making breakfast, even if you are ignoring me…"

            That did it.

            "INUYASHA! OSUWARI!"

            BAM!

            The spell itself was powerful enough already, so it didn't help matters much for Inuyasha that he was approximately twenty feet up in the tree. Instead of the normal vaguely body-shaped imprint, there was now an Inuyasha-sized hole extending down about three feet.

            "BCH WHT THE HLL DD YOU DO THT FR!?" he roared, muffled by the heavy dirt three feet underground.

            "Excuse me? I'm sorry, I didn't hear that properly." Kagome smiled, a fell light glittering in her eyes as he climbed out of the hole into a face that had about twenty "Osuwari!"s written all over it.

            Needless to say he was quite taken aback.

            Rather than be sat, he instead turned his head and said, "Keh. What the hell did you say 'Osuwari!' for!?"
            "Because sunup is far too early for you to get on my nerves, baka!"

            "Trying to give you these is me getting on your nerves?" He growled, reaching into his bright red kimono and producing a collection of beautiful, flattened roses.

            'Hope that damn monk was right about women liking flowers; I'm not even sure if that's what he said that night, anyways…'

            Kagome paused, blinking stupidly for a second, before squealing, "Oh, they're beautiful! And you already pressed them so they'd last longer!"
            "THAT WAS FROM THE TWENTY-FOOT FALL!"

            She looked quite sheepish for a moment, then looked up at Inuyasha, hugged the flowers close, and said, "Thank you, Inuyasha."

            "Keh. Now hopefully you won't get mad at me and we can get back to shard hunting."

            Both he and Kagome stayed silent for a moment; both were looking straight into each other's eyes; and both were trying to figure out how to apologize to the other without making it look like they were wrong and wondering what the hell they were going to do. Or at least they were, until Kirara decided to make an appearance with a sudden, "Mew!".

            Both she and Inuyasha jumped about a foot in the air, blushing furiously, at this intrusion from Kirara. Kagome was satisfied with merely holding her head down and hiding her embarrassed face; Inuyasha, however, was not content until he had picked the firecat up by the scruff of her neck and roared, "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT!?"

            Kirara growled at his display of anger, then bit his hand, causing him to release her, and bounded over to Kagome. Kirara then began tugging on her sock insistently, mewling the whole time.

            "She wants us to follow her, in case you couldn't guess," Inuyasha grumbled, stalking in the direction the little cat was trying to pull Kagome. "Let's go."

            Inuyasha and Kagome began running after the incredibly-fast-for-her-size Kirara, and realized that they were headed towards the same spot where Miroku and Sango had gone last night but had not returned from.

            When they reached the monk and the exterminator, Kagome gasped and Inuyasha could only gape at their present condition. Both Sango and Miroku's faces were pale and sallow, the skin seemingly belonging to a corpse rather than a living human; puddles of vomit lay both on their clothes next to both of them, dripping down and running down the hillside; finally, both he and Sango were shaking so badly that all grass within a foot was vibrating madly.

            "Unhhhhh…," Sango groaned as she rolled over and opened her hollow eyes to Kagome and Inuyasha.

            Not much of a cliffhanger, but I'm sleepy, I need to get my homework done, and I finally finished my accursed precalculus homework! (HAH! KUTABARE SUUGAKU NO SENSEI!!!!!!!!!!!) I've already got the next chapter planned out; however, it may take me a while to write it up, so hopefully these will tide you over and entice you enough to keep reading ^_^. This is my first published fanfic; I have others stored on my computer, but they're just bits and pieces of other things…above all else, please R&R this story! Thanks!