The mob arrived almost before the demons did.

It was the shouting that first warned Miya that something was wrong. In the house, cleaning absently as she turned her conversation with Sanzo over in her head, Miya heard the sound of angry voices on the wind and ran for the door, her kausinge in hand.

The townspeople were gathering around the house. Miya darted forward to join the other four, standing loosely back to back and asked dryly, "I don't suppose you managed to figure out who the demon is, did you?"

"Unfortunately, the mob had already started to gather when we got there," Hakkai replied grimly. "We could still run."

"We could just kill the fucking bastards." Gojyo was clearly fed up with the whole situation.

"Better yet, I could shoot them all in the knee. The one that explodes is the demon," Sanzo suggested icily and Miya briefly grinned at the thought.

"Kill the demons," someone shouted, separating himself from the crowd, clearly the leader, and Miya's eyes narrowed. It was the man with Tanaka, who had threatened her the day before, and, abruptly angry, Miya shouted, "What the hell is this, Rikyu, you said we could have three days!"
"Three days so you could kill more of us?" He turned cold, self – righteous anger on her, pitching his voice so that it would carry to the crowd. "We know what's going on, Miya. You hired these demons to kill the people that saw what you for what you really are: a monster with a pretty face."

"You're an idiot, Rikyu, and you always have been," Miya snapped, disgusted. "Does that even sound to you like something a demon would do? You had better believe that if I wanted to kill any of you, I would have done it myself!"

"She admits it!"

"Kill her and her friends!"

"Murders!"

"That wasn't very helpful," Sanzo snapped at her. "Which one of them is the demon?"

"How the hell should I know?" Miya cried. "If I did, I would have told you, believe me."

"Stop arguing and think," he shot back harshly. "You know which one it is, now figure it out."

"Damn it, Sanzo, I…"

"What is it that you really want of me, priest, that I prove myself to you? Or is it simply that you know that you need to see with the eyes of your heart?"

Her own words came back to her and she froze. Sanzo was watching her with clear, cold blue eyes that saw through her and dimly, she was aware that the crowd had surged toward them, that Gojyo and Goku were fighting off the people nearest to them, knocking them out, and that the crowd was growing angrier. Hakkai had backed up a step to protect the two of them, but very soon, they would have to deal with everyone, unless…

"Sanzo, she can't, if she's wrong, we'll lose her too," she heard Hakkai say sharply, and Sanzo answered, "We'll just have to risk it."

The eyes of the heart…

She reached for the stillness inside of her, focusing herself as she had a thousand times before, holding on to the question as she searched for the answer…

The faces of men that she knew, humans that she had lived alongside for months, their faces twisted with hate and anger as they advanced on her where she huddled in the roots of a tree…

"No!" Miya staggered backwards, stunned. She had forgotten the fears of the last few days, had forgotten the dream that had haunted her the night before.

Why now, what the hell is happening to me? she thought desperately, and fought to find that stillness again, concentrating on the question.

…huddled in the roots of a tree, as the men advanced on her, and she let her hand drop away from her power limiter. Dizzy and sick from the lack of blood, she let her head fall back against the tree and saw the body of the demon she had killed, across the clearing from her…

"I don't understand," she whispered, confused. "That was a different demon, a different town, a different mob…"

… the body of the demon she had killed…

"Better yet, I could shoot them all in the knee. The one that explodes is the demon."

…the body…

The faces of the men, so familiar to her… familiar because one of them stood before her now…

"You BASTARD!!"

She leapt upwards, kausinge already extending around her, well aware that – in human form – there was no way he could escape her. Rikyu had fallen back a step at her cry, his eyes widening, then he reached for the chain around his neck and as he yanked it free, his form began to blur. She knew her kausinge would miss and she landed lightly and spun. The crowd, stunned by her attack and Rikyu's transformation had fallen back and she heard someone scream.

The others were already there, backing her up. Goku and Hakkai were behind the demon, and it was Gojyo who knocked him to the ground with a single, well – aimed punch. Then Sanzo stepped forward, demon – banishing gun in hand.

"You know what this is?" he asked casually and Rikyu snarled, but his eyes were frightened. "Good," Sanzo went on, unruffled. "Then talk before I use it."

"And tell you what?" the demon sneered, but Miya had come up next to Sanzo, her kausinge coiled in her hand.

"You came here intending to kill me almost a year ago," she stated coldly. "Why, and why did you wait so long before you tried?"

"I vowed I'd break you the day you tried to take me down the first time," the demon sneered. "I would have done it earlier, but you pissed someone important off and they paid me a lot of money to wait and do it in front of Sanzo and the other filthy traitors he travels with."

"Who hired you?" Sanzo asked coolly. Rikyu sneered again.

"Like I would know that. They used an agent and I didn't ask questions." He grinned cruelly. "I saw what happened to her out there, after she thought I was dead. She'd hunted down so many demons, I figured she deserved another taste of what it was like to be hunted herself. Then the agent who hired me said that if I could get her to kill a human, she'd switch to the demons' side, and that made it all the sweeter – betrayed by her own people, just like she did to us. All I had to do was kill a few humans that didn't like her and watch them go after her, all over again. " He spat at her feet, then grinned again. "If I was lucky, maybe before she killed them, the humans would use her again and I'd get my turn…"

"That's enough," Sanzo said and fired.

Rikyu shattered in a burst of darkness. Miya allowed herself a little sigh and stepped back, snapping her kausinge back into a slender rod, then turned, feeling the others gather around her as they took in the crowd.

"Are you satisfied?" Sanzo demanded coldly.

Most of the people cowered backwards. A few looked openly uncomfortable.

"Well, she is a demon, you can't really blame us…" the nervous man from the day before began, then trailed off awkwardly.

"Stupid shits, when are you going to learn that you can be as bad as any demon?" Gojyo snapped.

"It doesn't matter." Miya pitched her voice to carry. "You saw the real killer. I trust that you have nothing more against Sanzo and his party."

"No." It was Tanaka who stepped forward, meeting Miya's eyes steadily. "You have proven your innocence, Rin Miya and no one here will dispute that. And… thank – you."

Miya nodded curtly.

"Then I'm leaving here tomorrow," she finished simply, "and I won't return."

---

The crowd had dispersed quickly after her announcement. A few people had come up to her, offering her a quiet apology, or, from some that she had been closer to, their well – wishes. Miya had accepted them simply, without fuss, for she wasn't angry. She was tired, though, and had been more than a little relieved to follow the other four into the house.

They had ended up in the kitchen. Outside, it had begun to rain again and night was falling quickly. Miya had turned on the lights and turned to face the others, who were starting to stir, and knew that they were just starting to think about moving on.

"I know you're in a hurry," Miya said with a smile, "but it's late, you still haven't actually told me what your quest was about, you haven't eaten, it's raining, it's a long drive to the next town and as I said before, the road isn't safe. I'll be here until morning, so…"

"Yeah, we can stay one more night, can't we, Sanzo?" Goku finished eagerly.

"She does have a point about the road," Hakkai added, a rather mischievous sparkle in his eye. "I don't know how much more unexpected shit I can take tonight."

"And we don't know if we'll find another place to stop," Gojyo added. "Especially not one with a beautiful girl to wait on our every need…"

Hakkai began to laugh. "You may find a beautiful girl here, but I'm pretty sure she'd not going to wait on you at all, my friend."

Gojyo grinned. "Maybe she has a need that needs filling."

"Heh, like you'd be able to help," Goku snickered.

"Just what the hell are you trying to say, monkey – boy?"

Miya leaned back against the counter, smiling, but her attention on was on Sanzo. He hadn't said a word since they had gotten back inside, and now he sat at her kitchen table watching them all with irritation, but he also hadn't made a move to get up…

She hadn't quite told him everything, before. Watching him, Miya wondered if he knew it. She hadn't lied to him, and she hadn't left anything important out of the things that she told him that she had seen – or perhaps felt was the better word for it. It was simply that there was a detail that she was fairly sure he wasn't ready to hear, that, if he suspected it himself, was nonetheless something best left unspoken. Miya was fairly sure she understood what it was that she was to do for them, what it was that they had come for.

But he can still walk away. The thought was quiet, serene. He can still insist on destroying any hint of fate and make the choice that will prove – at least to him – that this was all nothing more than coincidence… whether it truly was or not.

She was fairly sure that, somewhere, he knew it to. Sanzo met her eyes for a moment, and she waited silently for his decision, as she had before. Abruptly, he turned a warning glance on the others.

"We leave first thing tomorrow morning, understand?"

Everyone settled in quickly for the night.

The evening passed even faster than Miya expected, made considerably more pleasant by the knowledge that they were in no definite danger. She and Hakkai made dinner, while Goku looked over their shoulders and got in the way and Gojyo and Sanzo played poker on the kitchen table; over the meal, they told her about their quest, about the demon god and the dark magic that was trying to revive him, the dark magic that had corrupted the demons. Later, they lingered over desert and their drinks in her living room, gambling and talking. No one really seemed to want to go to sleep; Miya herself wasn't sure when the conversation she'd been in slipped into a dream.