Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha or any of its characters.

"You're not interested!?" Kagome sputtered. Why is he acting like this, she thought frantically. Normally he jumps at any chance to fight Naraku on any scale. "What is that supposed to mean!?"

"There is nothing to gain from it. Even if I am sealed," he explained in a flat voice, "there is no threat to me here. As soon as I am unsealed, I'll immediately have to fight for survival again."

Kagome gawked at him. There was a long moment when they just stared at each other. Kagome snapped her mouth shut. "You're not Inuyasha," she stated firmly as she raised her chin. "Either that, or you're acting under some influence, but there is definitely something not right with you."

He shrugged. "Think what you wish."

It's like he's being completely objective to the point of absurdity, which is absurd since he is never objective! Kagome thought. That idea seemed to snag something in the back of her mind, something she had learned in one of her short visits back to school. …something about divisions of the mind.

"Inuyasha?" she asked quietly. "Are there other parts of you in here?"

"Of course," he answered easily.

Id, ego, and superego, she thought with a roll of her eyes. Damn Freud. If we can find the others though, maybe they can be put together somehow. "Can we see them?" Kagome asked.

"Why?" he asked tilting his head slightly to one side so that his dark hair slipped over his shoulders. Suddenly the absurdity of having to talk Inuyasha into a risky situation hit her, and Kagome had to suppress a small laugh. Very small. The gravity of the situation had not left her. If they could not defeat Naraku here before the mark disappeared, then both she and Inuyasha would be trapped forever.

The other problem was she had no idea how long ago she had fallen asleep. "One more warning, Kagome," Kaede had said to her before she had swallowed the sleeping brew. "We've no idea how time may run within the mind. A day may seem like only seconds there, or vise versa. Move quickly."

"Er," Kagome said slipping out of her train of thought. If this was Inuyasha's ego, then the best way to convince him was with logic, backwards as that may seem. "It just seems logical," she started slowly, "that if you're going to be spending…time…here, that you should know who else is here." Kagome peeked through her bangs to see his expression.

He seemed to think about it for a moment. "You think they could be a threat?" he asked earnestly.

Kagome stopped herself from rolling her eyes. He may be being logical but she doubted he was being very intelligent. Why would different parts of him be threats to each other? Abruptly, the thought of self-destructive behaviors came to mind, and Kagome grudgingly accepted that perhaps his point might be valid. Who knows what the rules are here, anyway?

"We won't know till we go see them," she said hopefully.

He seemed to hesitate for a moment before answering. "Ok," he said without moving.

"How do we find them?" Kagome ventured after yet another pause. Looking around, she saw that they were standing in a large sunlit field although no sun shone in the clear blue sky. The light seemed completely indirect here. There were no shadows.

"This way," Inuyasha said holding his hand out to her. She took it and in unison the two stepped forward. Suddenly, their surroundings swirled around them, and they were seamlessly placed in the center of a small village. People moved strangely silent along the roads, their faces oddly obscured so that Kagome could not focus on any of them.

"Why do they look like that?" Kagome asked.

Inuyasha looked at her blankly for a moment. "This is a memory," he stated simply.

"So you don't remember what their faces look like?"

He shook his head, his eyes remaining forward. Kagome watched him for a moment before she too began to search the memory around them with her eyes. Suddenly from amid the many faceless people passing, a group of children ran into view. They were immediately distinct in the memory. Each small face could clearly be seen. There were three of them, a tiny Inuyasha smiling in the middle of them.

At first Kagome thought that he was part of the memory like the Inuyasha of the previous memory, but then he looked up and smiled at her. Her lips parted slightly in surprise as he jogged over to them with a kind of carefree skip that reminded her sharply of Shippo.

With a smile Kagome scooped up the small Inuyasha. She felt sure he would not appreciate it but he was too cute like this!

"Keh!" the human Inuyasha snorted to her right. "We can look for the other then. He's of no threat."

"Kagome! I'm so happy you are here!" the tiny Inuyasha said with a grin.

Ok, Kagome thought, this is just weird. I've got one Inuyasha that needs everything to stay logical and I've got one that's openly admitting he's glad I'm around. I guess we really aren't just the sum of our parts. "Uh, Inuyasha," she said rather disconcertedly to the child. "I'm here because Naraku has sealed you again. If you're to wake, we must find and defeat him here as quickly as possible."

"Then we'd better hurry," he replied in a distinctly unchildlike manner. "Without me, the others won't be able to defend themselves against anything bigger than a spider demon."

At this statement, Kagome had to stifle a laugh. Inuyasha was Inuyasha, no doubts about it. From his perch in her arms, the small hanyou leapt toward the scowling human Inuyasha and roughly caught on to the long locks of black hair that framed his face.

"Yowch!" he practically yelped. "Get offerme!" he growled and quickly tried to grab the squirming child. As soon as their skin touched however there was a quick flash of gold light. Instinctively, Kagome reached up and covered her eyes.

When she looked again, only one Inuyasha stood beside her. This one was neither hanyou nor human but a mix of the two. His hair was still black but a pair of white ears stuck through it and his eyes were golden with flecks of brown.

They looked at each other for a moment before Kagome suddenly realized that the town setting around them had disappeared as well. Now they were surrounded by a dense jungle.

"Come on," Inuyasha said as he started to walk down a small trail. His voice had regained some of his normal aggressiveness. "He not going to come to us, you know!" he said as if she knew what he was talking about.

"Er," Kagome mumbled as she moved to follow him. "What's that?"

"You wanted to find the other one, right?" he asked irritably. "Well, he's not exactly people friendly, so we go to him."

"Oh," Kagome said as she hurried after him. Although Inuyasha was walking, she was having a bad time keeping up with him just due to the uneven terrain. "Uh, Inuyasha," she said stepping over a particularly large root.

"Yeah?"

"Back there, at the village," she said. "Who were those children? If you remembered their faces, they must have meant something to you, right?"

"My friends when I was young," he stated without hesitation or emotion.

"But," Kagome started as she stumbled over another root.

"But I'm not supposed to have human friends?" he interrupted with a growl. "Listen, my life hasn't been a walk in the park, but that doesn't mean I'm too pathetic to have ever had friends." He continued to stalk down the rough track without looking back.

They walked in awkward silence for a few moments until Inuyasha stopped suddenly. Kagome, who had been keeping her eyes glued strictly to the terrain beneath her feet, ran straight into his back and fell to her back. She looked up at him curiously.

Kagome opened her mouth to question him but he quickly silenced her with a raised hand. He glanced down at her. "I can smell him," he said before his gaze returned to the jungle around them.

A/N: Oh my god! I'm so sorry this took so so frickin' long! There is really no excuse for that hiatus. Well, there was a small excuse but it only runs for about a week…and that ended about a month ago. Well to be perfectly honest, I'm not really enjoying this story. Oh well. We'll see where it goes.