~A/N: Thank you for your reviews, and always big hugs to E_Evee who was a big help with this!! Now on to the story~
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies
-Oscar Wilde
Chapter 3
***Last time***
Kagome smiled when she saw the box on her desk a while later. Her mother was so thoughtful and selfless. Guess that was a trait that ran very deeply in the family. She yawned and took the box with her to bed. The moment her head touched the pillow she fell asleep.
***NOW***
Kagome awoke to the smell of something cooking downstairs. She stretched and cocked her head to the side. She looked inside the box to see the small demon staring at her. The small creature looked so frightened. Kagome forgot about the smell that was making her stomach growl, and she assumed that the demon mistook her growling stomach as a sign that she was going to eat him. At least she assumed that the demon was a 'him'.
Slowly, as to not frighten the small creature, she got out of bed and made her way to the demon. As she approached, it cowered back into the box as far as it could. She leveled to the small thing and wished it a good morning. Her stomach growled and the demon look like it wanted the ground to swallow it up.
"Sorry, guess my stomach is hungry, and you must be famished too. What do you say for some breakfast?" Frankly, she didn't care what the creature wanted, all she knew was that she was hungry, and the creature was coming with her. She looked at the small creature and smiled, and it seemed to warm up to her. Well, not really but it was cautious.
The demon nodded its head. Kagome placed her hand inside the box, and the demon crawled onto her hand. She smiled. She giggled as it sniffed her hand. As patiently as she could, she told it, "My name is Kagome, and you are in my home. You are safe here; there is nothing or no one that will harm you. So little one, what is your name?" She asked as she descended the stairs to go into the kitchen. The demon was looking around, the future and its technology had the demon enthralled.
"My name is Yukiro, and thank you for saving me." So he was male. "Why did you bring me here, and where are we?" His eyes grew to the size of his body as he looked around.
"We are in my home about five hundred years in the future." Kagome cringed waiting for the demon to start screaming that she was crazy.
What really startled her was the fact that the demon nodded and asked, "Was this my fault?"
She stood shocked but gently shook her head. "No, I did this. We'll talk all about this later, but first I'm so hungry."
They walked into the kitchen. Grandpa, Souta, and her mother were all sitting around their kitchen table eating. They each said their good mornings, and she sat down next to her brother. Souta was thrilled to see that the tiny demon was awake. The grandfather made a fuss about demons at the table, and how grandchildren lack in manners; Yukiro jumped up and hid in Kagome's hair.
Everyone scolded the old coot, and finally Yukiro decided to come out so he could eat. All the food looked foreign, but it all tasted like heaven. So the only thing that the tiny demon could do, he ate three times his body weight. Kagome laughed and her mother took that as a compliment. What chef/cook wouldn't?
Today, Kagome decided that it would be best if she did not go to school. Besides what was another day? Instead she found herself talking to her grandfather about places around here that could be able to help her out with her powers. The mother understood her unasked question, and the grandfather seemed proud that Kagome wanted to follow in his footsteps. He almost started to weep in joy. If he only knew.
The only acceptable one that the he could come up belonged to his sister. The mother and daughter were quite surprised that he even had a sister. He never talked of her, and they had assumed that he was an only child.
No time like the present for a family reunion. So the grandfather got up and made the call. He returned a few minutes later stating that Kagome would go there immediately and train until her powers were controlled.
All of this seemed quite sudden for her, but she was up for the challenge. After all this is what she wanted. She finished eating and she went upstairs and started to unpack and repack her yellow backpack.
While Kagome was getting ready, she got to know more about the little demon that she had saved. He was a fascinating and determined creature. He was the thirteenth child of the thirteenth child: which meant that many people wanted him dead. He was a time demon like his father and a shape shifter like his mother. He was the prophesied child that was going to bring darkness to the world, or that was what his father had told him before he threw Yukiro out into the cold night.
Kagome felt her heart break for him, and informed him that he was more than welcome to stay with her. Both seemed to like this little arrangement. He had a home and she had someone that she could talk openly to. Now with her clothes repacked for training, and the extra ramen taken out to fit more clothes, she went back downstairs. Her mother was waiting patiently for Kagome to be ready to leave.
******
Two hours after leaving her house, Kagome was walking through a forest that was to lead to the temple. She felt something evil lurk in the depths, but she felt that it would not cause her any trouble so she left the creature to its devices and kept walking.
She walked out of the forest and was in awe of the temple in front of her. She felt so much power here that it almost took her breath away. She felt Yukiro tremble, and she patted the small creature that was resting on her shoulder.
She was greeted, albeit a bit oddly, but a short, old woman and a punk who looked just a few years old than her. It turned out that old woman was to be her teacher. The guy introduced himself as Yusuke, and she was floored when she found out that she was actually a year older than him. He also called their teacher a slave driver. Kagome smirked. That meant that she had found the teacher she was looking for. Her mentor, Genkai, was really her grandfather's sister.
They both had one thing in common: both were serious about their spiritual powers. However, her grandpa didn't really have any, he just thought he did.
Genkai showed Kagome to her room and told her that when she was ready, she would be training Yusuke outside, and for her and the demon hiding in her hair to meet up with her there.
Other than Kagome meditating on expanding her powers, nothing eventful happened. Yusuke asked her why there was a demon on her shoulder during supper, and Kagome told him very little about her situation. However, the guy liked to hear himself talk, and told her all about being a spirit detective and how it was his duty to protect the earth from demons breaking through the barrier.
Much of this went over Kagome's head, but that would explain the reasoning for there being no demons in this time, and so many back in the feudal ages.
That night Yukiro would tell Kagome about his life and what he could do with his demon powers. Kagome told him that he should practice too. Killing two birds with one stone. They would both become stronger in order to fulfill their own destinies. Instead of a shoebox, the small demon was content to sleep at Kagome's head.
For the next week all Kagome did was try to expand and retract her powers. It seemed mundane, but she was determined to master her powers. During this time Yusuke had warmed up towards her, and Kagome found herself telling him about the Feudal Era, but she was cryptic and sounded like a philosopher. To her delight, it went over his head, but she continued on with her stories. It was nice telling her problems to someone other than family, even if they were enigmatic. Even she knew that she should keep a few aces up her sleeve, so she only told him the basics: like demons trying to kill her at every turn, metaphorically speaking. Kagome came to the conclusion that Yusuke found her to be a good story teller.
Later, one night a week and a few days after they arrived, Yukiro told Kagome a secret. At first she was scared, but as the idea sunk further into her mind, she became curious, followed by eagerness. Yukiro was a time demon; therefore time was under his control, so for the next hundred days it would all repeat as a cycle. The day would repeat itself and only Kagome and Yukiro would know so that she could harness her powers. Yukiro would work on his shape shifting abilities, so she could use him as a sparing partner.
The plan seemed to work. Kagome's power seemed to grow over night, however in all reality fifty days passed. Yukiro mastered the shape shifting part; he just could expand his body so that he could become a formidable opponent.
Kagome thought he was cute in his little demon form. Although she was not condescending him, he still took that as an insult and tried even harder.
One night while doing a late night training session, Kagome finally mastered the ability to hide her powers. She would still give off a scent, but she was human, and that could not be avoided. She could reel in her miko powers so it seemed that she had no spiritual powers at all. The next cycle, she spent the entire day sneaking up on Yusuke and scaring him. Without her powers, he couldn't track her movement. Genkai thought Kagome's training was coming along marvellously, and that Yusuke's training would become much harder. The poor guy was forced through some bone grindingly impossible tasks, and left him near dead after. Kagome found that when Yusuke's body was almost to the brink of death, she could use her powers and try to heal him.
It was good practice. Since he was human, she couldn't kill him with her powers, and it was training her powers at the same time. Again two birds with one stone.
The last day of the cycle was coming to an end. She was really excited about it because eating nothing but pickles and rice for a hundred days really grated on her taste buds.