Okay, this is the second chapter in this group...so, enjoy! .

The Land of the Dead

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"Kikyo?!" Inuyasha's eyes grew wide as his body refused to hold him up. Sinking down on his haunches in a boneless motion, he studies the ground directly in front of him without looking up.

He swallowed past the painful lump lodged in his throat and relived his last encounter with his lost love. "...Kikyo," he murmured her name much as Kagome had done moments before.

Boton bit her lip and forced her eyes wide in an effort to keep the tears in her eyes from falling. She had watched Inuyasha suffer over this woman before and it had not become any easier for her to dismiss his obvious pain.

"I thought you had gotten rid of that zombie," Youko spoke harshly through Kurama's taught mouth. He retreated at Kagome's sharp look but spared the time to growl angrily at the figure below them before giving control back over to the red head.

Inuyasha winced at the term and lay his ears back, refusing to meet anyone's eyes. Before he could defend her, Boton spoke up.

"We did. This is the land of the dead, after all. She has every right to be here..." Her quiet conviction and ready acceptance relaxed Inuyasha enough that he could look up at her apologetically. The worry in his eyes was also slightly lifted by her small return smile.

"Shouldn't she have moved on? Reincarnated or something, by now?" Yusuke asked the ferry girl while scratching halfheartedly at the scab covering his arm.

"She did," Boton pointed out and gestured toward Kagome who was gazing sadly at the lonely figure sitting still and silent below the giant tree.

Yusuke blinked and frowned at the spirit guide. "That doesn't make sense. How can she be here and be there at the same time? If she reincarnated, she must be...but if she's there, she's..." he looked from Kagome to Kikyo and back again several times before sighing loudly. "Explain." he demanded and turned to face the bemused deity of death.

Boton shrugged and squinted at the figure. "I can't," she admitted and met the speculative eyes of several edgy males. "I'm not sure what is going on."

"Whatever it is," Hiei interrupted them, "She has the Shikon Shard and we require it."

Kurama lifted a comforting hand to Kagome's tense shoulder and brushed his fingers over the pulse point at her neck in reassurance. "I agree," he said softly. "We need that shard to complete this mission..."

Kagome took a few steps forward and wrapped her arms around her middle. Finally able to speak she stunned them into silence, "She seems so sad and alone," Kagome said and the look of compassion on her face made them turn to look at the woman again.

Strangely enough, Inuyasha was the one to protest against the obvious disregard for the past harm the other miko had done. "But Kagome," he sputtered and met her eyes, "what she did to you...How could you?"

"What?" Kagome smiled softly. "Forgive her? How could I not? She IS me." Kagome took a deep breath and tilted her head to the side to contemplate the unmoving woman.

"Is she, though?" Yusuke butted back in. "If she is, then how are you both here?"

Kagome deliberately broadened her smile so that everyone could see that she was prepared to meet with her incarnate on friendly terms and urged them to follow her lead. "I am not sure, but there is a way to find out...let's ask her." Kagome jauntily took those first steps down the slope and Kurama shook off his pride and disbelief to walk by her side.

The others exchanged worried glances and followed nearly on her heals.

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Koenma watched with puzzled eyes as his prize team of detectives approached a lonely figure dressed in red and white. "Ogre!" he yelled unhappily. "Haven't you fixed the sound yet?! I can't hear a damned thing! What the hell is going on out there?!"

Two red oni's in grey employee hats frantically attempted to bring sound to the screen in Koenma's office. One rapidly yanked at the color coded cords in the control panel found in the wall while the other whispered hurried instructions from the massive manual in his hands .

"Cut the red one and rewire it here..."

SNICK

The screen turned to snow and Koenma jumped up on his desk waving his pudgy fists in the air. He was yelling obscenities that never should have been said in front of a toddler and this only served to send the two ogres into a frenzy of wire snipping and frantic reworking of the tangled mass into a semblance of order.

"The blue one! The blue one!"

SNICK

"No the other blue one!"

SNICK

"Now tie these here to...to...hmmm we should have cut the yellow one."

SNICK

"Where's the green wire?"

SNICK

"I DIDN'T SAY CUT IT!"

Koenma dropped his head in his hands and felt the urge to sob. What else could happen?

"So, now if we have the orange and the pink..."

SNICK

SNICK

"Will you stop doing that! Here, cut the weird brownish goldish wire...

"..."

"Well?"

SNICK

Koenma didn't even look up as the power in the entire room cut off. He needed to seriously find out who hired the staff and fire them...

"Uh, Koenma-sama?" the talkative red ogre asked softly. "Do you have a flashlight?"

"Are you guys sure you're maintenance?" he asked tiredly without looking up.

"Maintenance? Us? No, we work in the manifestation department. We catalog new souls." the ogre answered proudly.

"Then WHY are you HERE?!" he whimpered since he couldn't seem to find the energy to yell.

The ogre answered somewhat hesitantly..."Ah well sir....you dragged us in here as we were passing by, remember?"

Koenma banged his head on the table three times before he pitched his pacifier at the dark wall and it's two saboteurs. With a wet thunk, the spirit infused teether met the solid wall and sparked some of it's energy into the surface.

"Hehehe We'll just get George for you..." he said and hauled his companion out the door in a hurry to escape the tiny rulers crazed gaze.

"Oh, poopie, " he finally sighed and reverted back into the language of a child. "Now I'll never know what that other Miko is still doing here..." he frowned. "And why didn't I know about it?"

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As Inuyasha got closer to Kikyo, he was disturbed to see the same empty expression in her eyes that she had while "living" soulless in the feudal ages. Those hollow brown orbs were not even glancing at him, but were set firmly on Kagome. Shaking off the bad feeling that he was getting from the previously un-dead miko, he inched closer and tried to draw her stare from her incarnate. "Kikyo," he urged her to look at him and both waited for and dreaded her gaze to fall on him. He was rewarded with the slightest turning of her head and the intensity of her void eyes focusing on him.

"Inuyasha." she greeted him back and the slightest turning of her lips into a smile sent shivers down several spines. "It seems I did not have to drag you down to hell after all. You have found your own way here..."

" Lady Kikyo!" Botan exclaimed and pressed the tips of her fingers to her lips. "I-uh..." Botan struggled for something to say...anything to say... "Um..this isn't hell..."

"Isn't it?" the priestess sighed and the others caught a glimpse of the sadness and loneliness that Kagome could sense right off, and then it was gone again. "Perhaps you are right..."

"Kikyo?" Kagome murmured politely. "Why are you here?"

Kikyo gazed at her reincarnate for a long time before she answered mockingly. "You would know that better then I."

Several of the team members exchanged suspicious glances and slowly moved to circle the calm miko in case she did indeed pose a threat to their Kagome. Kagome ruined their intentions by dropping to her knees directly in front of the other girl and leaning forward. "I don't understand," she admitted to the other version of herself. "What do you mean?"

Kikyo ignored the question to wave vaguely at the landscape. "Please sit," she offered to the others who refused the invitation with various levels of impoliteness. She turned back to Kagome and asked a question of her own without attempting to explain her previous words. "Why are you here? You are neither dead nor a deity. Since when do the living walk the land of the dead?"

"Since when did the dead begin to walk in the land of the living?" Hiei countered from above them in the tree.

"It is not the same thing," Kikyo replied.

"I do not see the difference," Yusuke frowned darkly at the girl that looked so much like his friend.

"Yusuke," Kagome warned quietly. "Kikyo was not given the choice back them. Do not place all the blame on her shoulders."

Kikyo gazed impassively at the Tentai's and their newest members and then narrowed her eyes when they landed on Kurama who was growling low in his throat. "You hold great anger towards me," she said. "Why? Do I know you?"

Kurama snarled angrily and took several threatening steps forward before Kagome's strong arms circled around his legs. "Must you ask?" he demanded harshly but stood still under his lover's touch. "That soul you stole does not belong to you," he spat. "You will return it."

"Who are you to talk?" The miko frowned and swept her gaze over the kitsune's tense form. "You, who are two souls in one body?"

"Please stop," Kagome sighed and shook her head. "This is unimportant."

"Unimportant?!" Kurama spoke again. "Kagome, she still carries a piece of your soul!" The fox pronounced. "Do you not want it back?!"

Kagome hesitated and met Kikyo's chocolate brown eyes with her own bemused grey blue eyes. She searched Kikyo's face as if the answer lay there and bit her lip. When she could find no answer, she pleaded silently with her incarnate to find the core of this dilemma and explain it to her.

Botan spoke up before Kagome was able to find the words to express her confusion. "Kikyo, why are you still here? Why haven't you moved on and allowed Kagome to take back the remaining soul that you share?"

Kikyo addressed her answer directly to the other priestess. "Do you wish for it back, Kagome? When you lost that part of yourself, you felt different, did you not?" she asked her reincarnate. Kagome nodded and waited patiently for the other Miko to continue. "So did I," she admitted and looked down at the ground. "It changed both of us, in a small but significant way. I could not give it back to you without losing who I am, any more then you could receive it without it changing you as well. Do you wish to change?" she asked the younger girl.

Kagome thought hard about that and then shook her head in a silent denial. "I like who I am..."

Kikyo nodded as if she had expected this response. "I thought that might be your answer. It would not have been my place to make that decision for you, though Reikai left me many more options then I expected. I can not reincarnate again, as I have not a complete soul. It will be the same for you when you pass into this realm" she said as she stared into Kagome's bemused blue eyes. "Your soul is no longer complete either. Until we are able to fuse the pieces back together, we will be forced to wait..."

"So that is why you have not moved on, Kikyo-sama?" Boton asked politely.

"Partly. It is...more complicated then that." She admitted reluctantly.

"How so?" Youko asked, not yet softening toward the woman that had brought so much grief to his mate in the past. He felt his hair starting to silver at the ends and the prominent triangular ears appeared on top of his head. Kagome nudged him none too gently with the point of her elbow.

Kikyo watched him with equal intensity and twisted her mouth at the corners in a little used smile. "I am not entirely certain," she said seriously. "But I have a few suspicions...now that Kagome is here, I had hoped that she could tell me." That intense gaze switched over to Kagome's perplexed one. "Tell me," she leaned slightly forward to face her reincarnate, "You have traveled between times?"

Kagome wrinkled her brow but answered steadily. "Yes, five hundred years..."

"And you have traveled between worlds?"

Youko rolled his eyes and stared at the empty landscape of the Reikai.

"Yes." Kagome answered simply, knowing that Kikyo was directing her to some enlightenment.

"How did it feel each time?"

"Feel?" Kagome leaned into the solid form of Kurama at her back in her surprise. She lowered her head until her bangs shielded her face from view. "Well, Time travel was weird at first...but later it was kinda familiar. I guess I got used to the magic of the well..." she reached behind her with questing finger tips to find Kurama's hand while she absently tried to remember the sensation of traveling through the portals to each world. "The other...well, it was also familiar to me. The energy..." she paused to gather her scattered thoughts.

"Familiar..." Kikyo repeated, thinking as well. She sighed and met the other girl's eyes. "There is more, isn't there?"

Kagome blushed and bit her lip before shooting a worried look at Kurama who was watching them carefully. "Uh, yeah..."

Kurama raised a brow at Kagome's admission and silently urged her to finish her thought.

"It kinda hurt...to pass through."

What ever they had been expecting, that was not it. Kurama drew in a rapid breath and turned his mate to be to face him in concern. They had been portal hopping frequently while chasing the dog demon this past week. "Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded and ran his hands over her body to assure himself of her continued good heath.

She blushed and shoved the red head with the silver streaked hair off of her, but not before she spotted the ears perked in her direction from the top on his head. Automatically reaching up to rub one, she grumbled, " because I thought it was normal...no one said anything about what the portal felt like and I didn't really think about it till now. It wasn't overly painful, Kurama...more like a tug or a push..."

Youko turned vivid golden eyes on the other miko and growled. "Why?" he demanded.

Kikyo regarded him silently for several long seconds before responding. "Again, I can only guess."

Narrowing his eyes in response to her evasive answer, he took a menacing step toward her. Kagome held him back and scolded the fox in the ear he kept turned her way. "Leave it be," she whispered. "It wasn't that bad. And Kikyo wouldn't ask if she already knew the answers."

"Hn," Hiei finally said in response to the scene. "She speaks the truth."

Kikyo raised her brow and met the crimson red gaze of the hybrid demon. He stared back, neither giving any ground to the other until Kagome returned their attention to the conversation.

"Kikyo, how is it we are both here? How can we both exist here like this?" she asked and tipped her head to the side.

Kikyo actually smiled a genuine smile that lit up her face in the same way that Kagome was able to. Her smile was flashed more at the ground than at any particular person and she sat straighter against the tree at her back. "That should be rather obvious," she said. "Time."

"Time?" Kagome rubbed her hands over her eyes as she thought that over. "But..."

"There are no certainties." Kikyo pointed out. "Especially not with something as fragile as Time. There is nothing that is impossible."

Kagome bent her knees and rested her chin on them in an effort to get more comfortable while she tried to sort out this mess. "You died." She waited for the other woman to humor her and nod before continuing. "I went back in time. You were brought back as a shell of your former life." Again the confirming nod. "We both existed then in the same time because neither of us belonged there...You moved on, taking a small piece of my soul into the Rekai with you...five hundred years ago." Kikyo nodded again. "This is where I get confused." Kagome admitted. "When you died and were reincarnated, I had a whole soul. When it was divided, you brought a piece back with you here. So, for five hundred years, you have been sitting here like that?" Kikyo answered a simple yes. "And when I was born, I was born with a whole soul even though you were already sitting here with the piece of it taken from me?"

"Correct." Kikyo agreed.

"So that means that there was a small piece of our soul that , for fifteen years, was either in two different places at once, or that had doubled and there were two identical pieces in the same time line..."

"Correct again," Kikyo nodded.

"But how is that possible?" Botan pressed. "How is it possible for something to exist like that?"

"Time," Kagome finally sighed, understanding slightly what Kikyo meant. "Changing time and traveling through time creates the past and the future to collide in the present. It creates multiples of the things that time can not truly change...like souls."

"What do you mean when you say that souls don't change?" Yusuke frowned. "Isn't there some differences from you and Kikyo?"

"Between us, yes. Between our soul itself, no. A soul can be created, or destroyed, but not changed by something like time. Time is a passive force..."

A passive force?" Kuwabara frowned. "Growing old and dying doesn't seem all that passive..."

"That happens to your body, not your soul. Time is not concerned one way or another what affects it has on you."

"So what is a soul, then?" he asked.

Everyone turned to Botan who blushed unhappily under their demanding gaze. "Uh," she began. "No one really knows."

"What?!" Yusuke demanded. "You mean that you are the deity of death and ferry souls between the living worlds and the land of the dead and you can't even identify what you are carrying? And Koenma?! He governs the spirit world with out having a clue what he is governing?!"

Botan nodded and stared at the back of her hands miserably. "Souls just are. We don't bother trying to explain them. When new ones appear, there is no source or explanations. They have always been and endure through all natural events until an outside force destroys them. Or they fade away..."

"Like what?" Hiei asked suspiciously.

"Purification," Botan waved a hand at the two mikos as an example. "Magic...external forces that come from divine powers..."

"And fading away?" Yusuke frowned.

"Just like when a new soul appears, some simple fade out of existence for no particular reason." She shrugged apologetically. "I don't know any thing else to tell you..."

Kagome suddenly shot to her feet, gaining everyone's undivided attention. "The jewel shard!" she exclaimed.

"You can feel the jewel?" Inuyasha cheered. "Where?"

"No, no," she shook her head violently. "I thought that we were safe from Naraku finishing the jewel if there was still a shard in the future. But the Shikon is made from souls! Don't you see?!" She demanded. "The jewel is not affected by time either. It would always exist as well and if forced to move through time, it could also duplicate itself!"

"You mean there are TWO jewels?!" Inuyasha asked horrified.

"Maybe," Kagome swallowed.

"I don't get it," Inuyasha hissed. "Explain!"

"There is the original jewel that was "destroyed" when Kikyo died the first time." Kurama explained trying to clarify the issue. "It was not actually destroyed, but moved. It manifested itself into Kagome when she was born."

"That is the same Shikon? Only one Jewel?" Inuyasha demanded.

"Listen," Kurama sighed. "That Shikon also existed in some form in that time between Kikyo and Kagome."

"But it is just the one jewel, right?" Inuyasha persisted.

"Shut up!" Hiei hissed at the hanyou.

"So far," Kurama agreed. "BUT, when Kagome went back in time with the jewel, it duplicated itself. There was the jewel that was in limbo between the lives of Kagome and Kikyo and the Jewel that the future Kagome takes to the past."

"It gets more complicated then that," Kikyo spoke up again.

"How could it possibly get more complicated?" Yusuke sighed. "And how would you know?"

"I have had five hundred years to think this over," she pointed out. "IF you succeed and finish the jewel in the past, there is a whole Shikon that will exist in two places at once. If Kagome leaves the jewel in the past with you, there will be two jewels that exist until the point in time that Kagome leaves with it to the past for the first time. But if the jewel has already duplicated itself, where is the other jewel? It would not be destroyed..."

"So what will happen to it?" Inuyasha asked.

"I don't know. Like the piece of soul that I carry, when Kagome lost it back in time, there became only one here in the present when she returned. I have no idea where the duplicate piece went...but it was not destroyed."

"This is too confusing," Yusuke sighed. "Just give us the Jewel shard you have and we will worry about all the other stuff later."

"Oh yeah," Kuwabara scratched his head. "I forgot that was why we came over here."

"I do not have a jewel shard," Kikyo frowned slightly at them and met Kagome's eyes.

"Oh come on!" Yusuke shouted. "Kagome said she felt it here," he announced and looked at the priestess's calm demeanor.

"That is the residue of the Shikon from the past. It has marked me," she closed her eyes and explained. "It has marked several others in the same way. I have felt them."

"Residual energy?" Kagome sighed. "So how am I too find the actual shard?"

Kikyo smiled. "Maybe you already have. Your future self may have found it in the past...Meaning that it does not exist here in the present anymore..."

"My head hurts," Yusuke whimpered and clutched at his hair.

"I still don't understand," Kagome sighed. "How am I supposed to search for something that may or may not actually exist...or may exist on several different levels at once?"

"You don't," Kurama sighed. "The miko is right. There are no certainties at all. None..."

"I don't like this," Kagome confessed. "I don't like feeling like there is no order to the world...and what if the shard is here in this time and I have to take it back to the past? How do I separate the feeling of residual Shikon energy attached to the people that were effected by the jewel, the Limbo Shikon energy of the original jewel, the Restored Shikon Energy from the jewel that we will complete in the past, and the physical shard we are searching for now?"

"You don't," Kikyo sighed. "Tell me, where have you felt the jewel's call since you started this search?"

"I felt it when we got here to the Rekai. Then I felt it with the dog demon we were following. Again on you, and every time a portal was opened..." she said.

"And when was it strongest?" Kikyo asked with a thoughtful frown marring her brow.

"When we first came here, it was strong, but it was fluctuating like it was behind a barrier..." Kagome explained.

"A barrier?" Kikyo sounded surprised as she stared into the distance... "That would explain..."

"Explain what?" Kagome asked hesitantly, as if she were afraid of the answer.

"Do you wonder why I was not surprised to see you?" Kikyo asked instead. At Kagome's wide eyed look, Kikyo continued. "I have seen you before. Your future self came and paid me a visit a long time ago...As a matter of fact, all the things that I have told you, were the things that you told me, long ago."

Kagome abruptly sat back down while the others took deep calming breathes to keep their wits about them. "I did?"

"Indeed."

"So you told her what she told you what you told her what she told you?" Kuwabara asked.

"Yes."

"Why are you telling me this?" Kagome rubbed the heals of her hands into her eyes hard.

"Because you told me to." Kikyo smirked.

"Did I?" Kagome sighed. "Why would I do that?"

"Simply because that is what you remember you heard."

Inuyasha smacked his head on the solitary tree several times to try to clear it. "Fucking shit!" he exclaimed. "This is getting us no where."

"Perhaps,"Kikyo actually laughed. "Then again...your future self came to tell me something more then about the conversation we just had. Which, by the way, she was very confused about even then. She also told me why she was wondering through here. She had just created a barrier spell to contain a hanyou...a barrier that was created to both keep something in and other things out... She said that it was something from her past that wasn't meant to be discovered until the right time...something like a jewel shard, perhaps?"

Kagome gasped, "But why would my future self allow a jewel shard to go uncollected?!"

"Because your future self had already completed the jewel!" Kurama smiled finally understanding the point. "She had to leave it for your past self to find!"

Kikyo smiled sadly.

"But...if my future self was here, " Kagome bit her lip, "Then that means that I die..."

The silence surrounded them as they let that thought sink in. Kikyo dropped her head and hid her face from them. There was much more going on then they realized...but Kagome...the future Kagome was right...now was not the time to tell them. They had enough distractions as it is...was...will be...

"Wait," Kuwabara strained. "But if the future Kagome was here dead, and you are here dead, then your whole soul was here and you COULD have moved on again...right? Right? Hey guys!?"

"Kikyo?" Kagome whispered, "do you know where this barrier is?"

Kikyo smiled sadly again and nodded. "You showed to me once before...I can take you there should you choose to go."

Kurama wrapped his arms around Kagome's shoulders in a fierce hug. "You will not die!" he exclaimed rather desperately.

"It does not seem that I have a choice," she whispered and turned silently into his embrace and clung to him with a vigor that matched his own determined hold. "But I will stay with you as long as I can...that I can promise...."

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So, did I confuse everybody??? lol. I think I may have successfully set up the remainder of the story! It will all make sense before the end, I promise! I will be gone for about a month...read my profile in place of author's notes. Any information on updating will be posted there...

Thanks to all you loyal readers that have stuck with me for so long! Thank you Thank you Thank you!

Sylvannastar

Did you know that spell check doesn't like the word poopie? It was determined to turn this word into "potpie" ! . but it just did not have the same effect.....