Disclaimers: I don't own InuYasha or any other copyrighted characters.

A/N: These transaction scenes might seem a little choppy, but I'm doing my best here.

And whatever sick thoughts you may have while you're reading one of the scenes in here, think twice. I'm trying to keep this PG-13, people!! Though if there was a way to make it PG-14, I could let go a little more with the language... regretful sigh

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Three Way Mirror
Chapter Eight
Binding Spell
---

It took a while to explain the Mark's effect on everyone. It took even longer to explain how Kagome could be possessed by Kikyou. All in all, it was a very draining afternoon. Sesshoumaru and Kouga tried to explain the effects of youkai mating, and as a result, several nights of confusion were spared.

Presently, Kagome was sitting with her legs folded on her bed, staring at the two halves of the Shikon no Tama. Her arms were also folded, her elbows leaning on her knees. InuYasha was curled around her, fast asleep. He had been sleeping a lot after they pushed back Kikyou. Of course, Kouga and Sesshoumaru explained this.

InuYasha was using his soul to push back Kikyou's consciousness through the mark. This was taxing, and he needed plenty of rest. Sesshoumaru was the one that guessed that he would be back to normal in a week if she wasn't able to absorb that part of her soul completely or begin to suppress Kikyou herself. She was relieved to know that InuYasha would be back to normal in a week, but she was beginning to get impatient. Not to mention youkai were coming left and right to try and steal one of the pieces of the jewel. Everyone decided that it would be easier for InuYasha and Kagome to wait out the week in Kagome's era.

That was why they were in Kagome's era in Kagome's house in Kagome's room on Kagome's bed, and why InuYasha was coiled around her, sleeping.

They had to figure out a way to merge the two halves of the Shikon no Tama, or else Kikyou would always be a threat. Just as Kagome's life was tied to the jewel since birth, so was Kikyou's once it came into her possession. There had to be a spell somewhere that would bind the two pieces together. If they didn't find it soon, InuYasha was going to get them both killed by trying to protect his mate. If he defended her from a youkai, his attention was divided, and Kikyou's submission was compromised. If he concentrated on the submission "hold," the youkai would get to them.

It was because of this that Sesshoumaru and Kouga declared that they would stick around until they could merge the Shikon no Tama into one piece. They brainstormed several ideas, but none seemed to work...

-:-

"How are we gonna do this?" InuYasha wondered aloud, Kagome nestled comfortably in his lap and all but hidden behind his large sleeves. Shippo was covered by said sleeves as he snoozed in Kagome's arms.

Kilalla mewed on Sango's shoulder, and almost seemed to shrug. Kagome suddenly remembered something.

"Ne, InuYasha?" she inquired to get his attention.

"Hm?" InuYasha replied.

"Do you remember the spiderhead youkai?" The answer she received was a growl that vibrated against her back. "Well, when the youkai swallowed the shards, they were whole when we got them back."

"Oh, yeah," Kouga scoffed, "let's just go hand the entire jewel to some random demon and say," -- he imitated a high, squeaky voice, supposedly Kagome -- "'Here, mister youkai, sir, could you swallow these jewel pieces and then spit them back out for us so I can get my psychotic previous life under control?' Pff. You know what the youkai would do? It'd swallow the damn thing and run off. And we'd have no way of catching it."

Kagome pouted a bit as InuYasha glared at Kouga. "I guess that idea's out, then."

"There must be a miko somewhere in this land that knows a simple bondage spell," Sesshoumaru announced his thoughts monotonously.

This earned him a glare from the elderly miko attending the fire. "'Simple' is hardly the word I would use for it," Kaede barked.

-:-

The rest of the conversation had pretty much followed the same lines, Kagome reflected. Someone would come up with an idea, and someone else would shoot it down.

Swearing InuYasha's laziness was contagious, Kagome lightly shook her mate awake. "Mm... mmwah?" he said drowsily. Kagome smiled.

"Hey," she whispered. "Move over so I can lay down, too."

--

Miroku burst into the hut, nearly ripping the matt off the frame. His face was flushed with excitement, and he was panting like he had just been running. Sango looked up from where she was chopping vegetables for the stew Kaede was making. Shippo was at once awake and on all fours, tail fluffed out in agitation. Miroku entered the hut further, eager to tell everyone what he'd heard. InuYasha nudged Kagome awake. She blinked in his lap, and turned to Miroku.

"I have wonderful news!" he announced. Sango put down the knife she was using, and Shippo calmed down. Kirara bounded in after Miroku in her kitty form, and nuzzled into Sango's lap. Kaede remained calm. "There's someone that can bind together the two halves of the Shikon no Tama!"

Kagome was now fully awake and attentive. "Who? Where? How? When can we leave? How long will it take to get there? What--" InuYasha cut her off by covering her mouth with his hand. She had a million questions, but they had to wait.

"A miko to the east," Miroku began, sitting next to Sango near the fire pit. "She is only an apprentice to a sage, but she has enormous talent and potential. They're a good week's distance away, and according to the rumor, there's always a price. If we have to take things with us, I would gauge about a week and a half's time."

Before Kagome could even begin to ask her other questions, there was a shout of alarm from several people of the village. In stumbled two men holding a young boy between them. The boy looked like he had been to hell and back. "Lady Kaede!" one of the village men panted. It obviously took more effort than it looked like to hold up the boy, even with his weight split between the two. "He was found just outside the village. We think he was attacked by youkai!"

Kaede was on her feet as quickly as she was able. She directed the two men into another room, where she could attend to the boy. His hakama was all that was left of his clothes, and even that was torn beyond repair, and left just enough for him to be remotely descent. His upper body was riddled with cuts, scrapes, bruises and blood. His breathing was labored, his face contorted in pain.

Kagome huddled into InuYasha's arms, now suddenly silent. She was all but lost behind his large sleeves. InuYasha frowned at the door Kaede was behind. She took the basin with her, which was already full of water and accompanied by a clean cloth. She would have brought the jar of healing herbs, but that had been broken on Kouga's head. Instead she took a small box with the herbs inside it. The sliding door closed behind her.

Shippo leaped under InuYasha's large red sleeves to hide in Kagome's lap. Kirara stood facing the door, bristling. Miroku and InuYasha shared a look. They, too, had sensed it. The presence of a youkai.

"What do you suppose happened to him?" Sango inquired quietly, gauging how far away and how quickly she could grab hiraikotsu. The vegetables and stew were quickly forgotten. "Could it really have been a youkai that attacked him?"

"No," Miroku stated, the lilt of excitement gone from his voice. "He wasn't attacked."

Sango frowned at him. "What do you mean?"

"He means," InuYasha growled, curling around Kagome and Shippo, "that he was in an actual youkai fight for dominance. It could be dangerous to keep him here."

"But the wounds seemed days old," Miroku pointed out. "Several were already healed where there was blood."

InuYasha nodded. "He escaped."

They sat in silence for a while, and the two men that carried the boy in left. A few minutes later, there was a shattering sound. Kaede cried out in alarm, and the injured boy stumbled to the door and managed to get it open. But the price of doing so was losing his footing and falling to his knees, clinging to the doorway for support. InuYasha's hand immediately went to the tetsusaiga, holding Kagome close. Shippo burrowed under Kagome's shirt to hide further away from the boy. If Kagome wasn't hidden in a sea of red cloth, she wouldn't have let him do so because it was indecent.

Sango went for hiraikotsu, and Miroku jumped to his feet. The boy's hair, which was black when he entered the hut, was now a white that seemed to have blue hues in it. His eyes were glowing green, claws adorning the ends of his fingers. He panted with the effort it took to stay up. Sango prepared to strike, and Kirara transformed in a blaze of light and heat. The youkai boy held up a hand in an attempt to placate the group. Kaede sat in the corner of the other room, glaring holes in the youkai's back.

"Wa... wait..." he panted. "I came here... not... not to... to fight," he struggled. As he spoke, his claws turned back into human nails. "I am here to... to ask of you... your... your assistance."

Sango indicated her boomerang. "You are in no position to make requests," she said harshly.

Miroku nodded, in a defensive position. "You deceived us to gain our presence. We don't even know your name nor what you really are."

"Ri... Riku," he struggled, trying to rise to his feet. "M-my name i-is Riku. I'm not... a youkai."

"Nor are ye human," Kaede commented angrily.

Riku shook his head. "I'm a shapeshifter," he explained. "I can... I can be... whatever I want." InuYasha drew his sword, pushing Kagome behind him as he stood. "No, p-p-please," he begged. "I-I'm in n-no condition to... to fight back."

"Who was it that did this to you?" Kagome demanded from behind InuYasha, peeking over his shoulder.

"Kiy... Kiyo... Kiyoshi. Another shapeshifter." Riku's knees shook, and he fell again, but this time to a sitting position. "Please, you have to... to help me. My whole village... will be destroyed."

"A village of bloodthirsty shapeshifting youkai!" Shippo piped up.

A ripple of power coursed throughout the room, a result of Riku's change. He didn't change his appearance from what it was, but he puffed himself up, held himself higher, possibly made his legs longer in order to seem that way. Riku's -- or any shapeshifter's -- technique was to bluff as much as possible. Make yourself look tougher and maybe your opponent will back off. Maybe. It was more of an instinct to defend his village's honor than an actual challenge.

"Bloodthirsty only in war, shapeshifting, yes, youkai, never for real!" he raged. Like Kouga, he was a proud member of his clan. His anger gave him better stability, allowed him to stand on his own. "You only speak so bold because you have your friends to protect you! You couldn't last a week on your own! You're still a kit! You don't know the real cause and price behind war, famine, sacrifice! Know your place before you boast!"

"Shippo," InuYasha growled low, only enough for the kit to hear.

"Yeah?" Shippo replied in the same way. "What?"

"Shut up." Shippo was about to protest this before InuYasha continued. "Injured or not, he could become something to gobble any of us in an instant. Understand?" Shippo nodded. Sure, InuYasha felt bad about Shippo being talked down to after all that the kit had gone through, but Riku had a point. It was his friends that backed him up, and he had never fought a real kitsune's battle. He felt even worse, though, about that. About not being able to stand up for him. But that would have only made Riku's point all the more clear. Shippo had to learn to fight on his own, but that didn't mean InuYasha had to be happy about it.

Just as quickly as Riku had stood, he fell again. This provoked several intriguing questions.

"Just who is Kiyoshi?" InuYasha inquired, sheathing the tetsusaiga and releasing some of the thick tension in the room.

Riku relaxed visibly, and until then no one really realized he was tensed. "Kiyoshi is my intended mate," he admitted. InuYasha raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"Your intended did this to you?" Kagome asked flatly from behind him, though not hiding as much as before.

"Sounds suspiciously like a certain relation ship I know of," Miroku chuckled to himself. Sango glared at him.

"Kiyoshi means quiet, right?" InuYasha said. "This don't look very 'quiet' to me..."

Riku smiled bitterly at the irony of it all. "Sure as hell wasn't."

"Don't youkai have fights for dominance all the time?" Shippo inquired.

"I'M-- NOT-- A-- REAL-- YOUKAI!!" Riku shouted, enraged. His eyes flashed in anger. "SHAPESHIFTER!! NOT YOUKAI!! THERE'S A BIG DIFFERENCE!!!"

"You're a shapeshifting youkai," Kagome pointed out. Riku didn't reply.

"Are you going to help me or not...?" he said cautiously after a while.

InuYasha tossed his head to the side and gave Riku a condescending look. "Sorry, kid, but we got other business to do."

"You're going to bind the Shikon no Tama together, right?" The group faltered for a moment. "The miko you want is Taiyo. Kiyoshi is her friend, and if you can stop Kiyoshi's rampaging, she'll do anything for you."

Miroku got up close to Riku and gave him a shrewd look. "And just -how- would you know -that-? Experience?"

Riku glared right back at him. "Who wants to know?"

"She'd do anything?" Miroku continued.

Riku bashed him with the basin that was sitting behind him, and it broke with the force of the blow. "She has her morals!!!!" He sat back down. Sango smashed Miroku's head further with hiraikotsu, and sat down in a huff near the far wall, chopping vegetables again. "Besides, she's mated to Sait."

Shippo broke in. "Wait, wait, wait. Mated?? I thought she was a miko!!"

The shapeshifter heaved a heavy sigh. "Perhaps you should let me explain for a moment..."

--

A while later, when Riku was comfortably seated in the corner of the room and everyone had had a warm bowl of the stew (and after Riku was supplied with new clothing), the explanation would begin. Riku would allow them all to ask him questions, and he would answer them to the best of his ability, and perhaps even give them a visual. Though the visuals never lasted very long due to Riku's current weakness, they got the point across.

"Now," Miroku began, sitting next to Sango, but out of arm's reach. "You said that this miko-- Taiyo, you said-- was -mated- to a man named Sait. Yet she is also a miko. Tell us, how is this possible?"

The boy settled into a comfortable form, that of a blue-ish-silver haired boy with green eyes that nearly glowed in the dim lighting. He kept his claws as a pure security thing, and covered himself with a fine layer of flesh-colored fur. It took close inspection to see it, but it was there once you noticed it. "Did you think that only humans could be mikos? How shallow." (He often commented to himself with two-word phrases like that. He could not seem to keep his thoughts to himself.) "Taiyo is half human and half kitsune youkai. So is Sait. To make them even more rare than kit-hanyous, they're both white. Sait has the northern lights running through his veins. His mother was the queen of the arctic kitsune clan up in the arctic. Taiyo descended from a red kitsune youkai and a human. The human was also red-headed. She's white from her purity of heart. It's really quite amazing how she kept her sanity through all she's conquered."

"And just what is so amazing?" Kaede asked suspiciously.

"She's witnessed her village, of kitsune youkai, get slaughtered by a war band. She saw her mother, father, elder brother, all die. She had a younger sister, too. Sait met up with her in the chaos and said he would take care of the younger kit, and told her to run. Later she came back and her sister was dead. Sait did his best, but it wasn't enough. She traveled with him for a while, and she was quiet. They got back, got separated, Tai met Kiyoshi, found Sait again, killed the guy that staged Sait's death, and settled back down in her old village, and now she's focusing on rebuilding it. The village is the guarding post for one of the gates of Heaven and Hell, and she doesn't want to remember it all demolished when she dies. She doesn't want the last thing that the souls of the dead remember of Earth to be of a wasteland, either. The amazing thing is that she's remained unchanged, untouched, pure and chaste throughout all of it. Sixty years. Not long for a youkai or hanyou, but a considerable amount of time to suffer."

"She's that strong?" Sango questioned.

Riku nodded. "Strong enough to survive, strong enough to cast a spell, strong enough to resist, you name it, she's strong enough."

"Has she ever been defeated?" Shippo inquired.

That required some thought. "Once..." he said slowly, unsure of the answer. "I believe Kiyoshi beat her when they first met. Fighting over the kill of something. I don't know. Kiyoshi won, but she's never lost at -anything-. They're pretty much on the same level, but I think Kiyoshi would have a bit of an edge if she ever fought with everything she had."

"And you survived a woman like that for how long?" Miroku mused. "It must have been torture living with a woman that always won."

"Not as difficult as you might think," Riku shook his head. "She's ignorant for sure, but she's way modest. She thinks little of herself, but she's one person you'd want to avoid getting angry at any costs."

"Just where are they, then?" Kagome wanted to know.

The shapeshifter pondered for a moment. "About a week and a half's journey east." Miroku sent the others a strange look, as if saying, 'See I was right and you doubted me. I'm soooo misunderstood.' No one paid him any mind at all. Not even Riku gave half a grain of rice.

Kaede decided to intrude once more. "What is the relationship between Taiyo and Kiyoshi?"

"Mmm..." Riku hummed in thought. "They're friends, if that's what you mean..."

"What -kind- of friends, though?" Miroku pestered. This earned him a smack from both Riku and Sango, rendering him unconscious.

"Is he -always- like that?" Riku demanded.

"Sometimes," Kagome sighed.

--

Two days later and Riku was completely healed, thanks to Kaede and her healing herbs that were now stuffed into one of Kagome's purses. The jar broke on Kouga's head, the box was demolished with Riku, and the basin was cracked over Miroku's head. She was not having a happy time with the location of her healing herbs. Riku apologized profusely, though, and offered his services wherever she may need them. She made him promise to bring her several storage boxes to keep her herbs, and a new basin.

Sesshoumaru came to escort the little group to their destination. He said he would be the one to kill InuYasha, but in reality he wanted to test his theory on InuYasha's powers. It didn't matter what the cause, though, as long as he didn't kill anyone traveling with them.

Just as they were about to depart, Miroku brought up an interesting point. "How long would it take to get there if we fly?" he asked Riku. Riku was taken aback.

"F-fly?" he stammered. "Uh... I didn't... I mean I've never really thought about... Um..." He cleared his throat, and tried again. "Two.. three days tops, stopping at nights..."

--

"C'mon, Riku, you're falling behind!" Shippo cried, riding on Miroku's shoulder, who in turn was riding Kilalla. Kagome was on InuYasha's back, easily keeping pace with the fire kuma above them.

Riku sped up fractionally, but still wasn't enough to keep up. At the pace they had set, it would take longer than the estimated three days to reach Taiyo's village. It didn't help that Riku didn't jump from tree to tree like InuYasha, but rather ran along the ground. Sango sent a glance to InuYasha, who nodded.

"Kilalla," Sango said abruptly. "Do you think you can manage carrying Riku, as well?"

With an affirmative roar, Kilalla circled back and caught the shapeshifter as he was in midair. He shouted in surprise. He landed behind Miroku, and clung to the monk's back when Kilalla rose into the air. Shippo gave Riku a curious glance.

"What's wrong?" the kit inquired. Riku gulped.

"N-n-nothing!" he insisted a little too cheerfully. Miroku gave him another shrewd look.

"Are you afraid of heights?" he wondered in a dry tone.

Riku shook his head vigorously. "Of course not!"

"Mm-hmm," Sango said dryly.

"Really!" Riku persisted, forcing a smile. Beads of sweat were starting to form on his brow, and his breathing shallowed. "I'm fine!" Hardly two minutes later, he passed out.

---

(Comments have been deleted because they are completely irrelevant)

Ja ne, minna-san.