AN: The outtakes section is for character history, I suppose. Flavor stuff mostly unnecessary to One Wish's plot, though I'm ditzy enough that I'll refer to this stuff in the story, completely forgetting that some people don't read everything an author writes. (I'm just a little weird in that I do...)

Query. I heard somewhere people nod their heads in Japan to show disagreement, not agreement. Fact or fiction?

Summary: How did Mischa come to be a hogosha anyway? Hints dropped in One Wish fully revealed on a train bound for Tokyo.

Disclaimer: OCs from One Wish. Please do not borrow without permission.

Death Rides the Railways

Trains, she decided, -and the people who rode them- stank.

She was glad she had bought train tickets for her human day. The stench was overwhelming enough that she probably would have passed out had she been in her usual hanyou form.

She stared gloomily out the window.

She had gotten what she wanted, hadn't she? Escape from the hellhole she had been born into, the taunts, the teases, the threats, the beatings... She imagined she would miss her mother, but not the rest of them. Not really. What place did a half-human have among youkai?

She wasn't too sure what she expected from Tokyo. University had primarily been an excuse to leave, but her mother had looked so happy to hear that she would be furthering her education into something that wasn't solely youkai. No hiding, no violence, and a graduation requirement of a speech course. Her mother, in her prim fashion, had been thrilled.

She hadn't pointed out she had little intention in finishing the first semester, much less actually graduating.

Someone settled into the seat beside her. She ignored them, intent on staring out the window, focusing on nothing as she continued to think upon her reasoning for being on this train.

Silence. The farm had none, a continuous bedlam of screams, laughter, running, breathing, everything. For her, everything had always seemed too loud. It came, she supposed, from her silence.

She didn't remember much before it had happened- a tall serpent picking up a screaming hanyou when everyone knew her few protectors were away. The first thing he had done was to shut her up. Voice boxes, the farm would come to learn, were a bitch to regenerate. Especially for a hanyou.

The next things he had done were more unpleasant. She frowned. She had wanted to leave half-forgotten memories behind her, where they had happened, but it seemed that was not going to happen.

The ruined voice box meant an inability to vocalize needs, wants, complaints. She had grown adept in speaking with her body- a kind of stuttering in the youkai tongue. She had grown even more adept in watching, learning what people hid behind their words- in their stance and especially in their eyes.

She never used the knowledge. No one would believe the baby hanyou had she told them what she had learned from listening, from watching.

No one except her mother, who already knew everything she would say, and Fukii, who would store the information away for blackmail or barter. Knowledge was power, for the older wolf. Though strength was power as well, and Fukii learned that too.

She could read the way her grandfather watched his young granddaughter. Fukii, when she was old enough, would take his place. She had the physical strength lesser youkai respected, and the intelligence the family heads respected. Though she didn't have much sense. She spoke too much. And the more you spoke, the less you were heard.

Her words were few, well chosen, and listened to by those smart enough to realize that she never spoke without reason.

After all, it hurt to speak. The regeneration of her voice box would never be complete. Each syllable, each word, each sentence that fell from her lips, the pain grew worse. The longer her silence, the more the pain receded. It disappeared entirely on days like today, when she was human.

So she spoke through her body for everyday use. 'Quit kicking me' became a narrow glare. 'You're stupid' was a different glare, sometimes a rolling of the eyes. 'Are you coming?' was a half step away, a turn of the body, a tilt of the head, a question in her eyes. 'Stop nagging me' was closed eyes, feigning indifference to the whole matter. 'I'm hungry' was simply finding food and eating it, without permission.

And claws running angrily down her arms, tearing whole chunks of flesh out, blood dripping freely from open wounds, was a simple 'I want to die.'

Demon blood healed the wounds quickly. She always hated being hanyou. Too human for her youkai family to accept her, too demon to ever see her human family. A test subject for a mind-manipulator in how to best hurt someone through magic they were supposedly immune to. Too youkai to ever admit to emotions, too human in having those feelings.

And when she tried on days like today, when the demon blood receded and all that was left was a lonely young human, amber light would knit together the wounds mere seconds after she opened them. Earth magic, from what she understood of the elements. The ability to grow, re-grow, create, shape. No matter how much she hated what she was, her body refused to follow through with her mind's request to stop living.

She hadn't noticed that she had been running fingers down her arm, down the paths her claws took so often.

"Amazing how quickly the wounds heal, the scars fade."

She looked up to the man beside her. Dark red hair, graying at the temple, pulled back in a short ponytail, brilliant aquamarine eyes sympathetic as they looked at her hands, cleft jaw that made him look a bit like George Clooney.

She had never met him, but recognized enough of his facial features to realize it had been his son that had stopped the serpent youkai.

She didn't like it when powerful youkai went out of their way to speak with her. It was never good news. "What are you talking about?"

He continued on as if he hadn't heard her. Even considering how quiet her voice was, she knew he had heard her. "It does not work on days like today either. For all that the mind has no will to live, the body continues to hold it captive."

He was speaking of the very same thing she had been thinking about. She didn't think he was telepathic, but she wouldn't put it past him either. Why was he talking to her, though? She wasn't under his jurisdiction. She was quiet for a long time, then asked, "What do you want?"

"How long after reaching Tokyo do you plan on throwing yourself into traffic and causing a mess?"

She glared. It wasn't something to joke about.

His smile didn't reach his eyes. "If I gave you something to live for, would you stop?"

Easily translated. 'I have a favor to ask, but I am hesitant to ask, if you plan on dying before you do as I ask.' She debated telling him what he could do with his 'something to live for,' but crassness was par for the course for a kitsune and she didn't feel like sinking to his level about it.

His smile disappeared, replaced by a look she was very familiar with. 'I am older, wiser, and much more powerful than you can even hope to become, and you disgust me.' Usually it was aimed at her when newcomers smelled the human blood, but his look said the disgust was for something else. For that part of her that kept trying to run away from everything. It was mildly discomforting coming from Inu-Yasha and her mother. It was painful bordering on lethal from the ancient youkai narrowing his eyes to glare at her.

"Maybe they let you get away with that behavior, or maybe they were all too stupid to catch on, but hell if I am going to lose anyone on my watch to suicide."

Tokyo was his jurisdiction. While still in the North's territory, she was bound for the South. Obviously he was making sure if she was going to do something stupid, it would be while she was the North's problem. And she had no intention of returning, which meant he had to convince her- without using anything more powerful than a kitsune's natural gift of persuasion- not to do said stupid thing while she was under his protection.

No matter that she was hanyou, she was a part of the North's family and the Lady of the North would be very upset if something happened to any of her blood while visiting someone else's territory. So him being here had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the blood that was currently in recession.

So what was his argument for life, before she decided to make his life a hassle just for the hell of it? "And what would you have me live for?"

"To begin with, revenge." A human would miss the flash of startled pain that she knew showed up on her face, but he wouldn't have. What did he know about what had happened to her? "All I ask in return is that you live, and that you keep one eye, preferably two, on this junior high student."

He pulled a photograph from out of his suit jacket and handed it to her. Giving him a 'what drugs are you on that would make you think I'd babysit someone as my reason to continue breathing?' look, she looked down at the photograph. And promptly stopped breathing.

There was a long silence as she stared at the cheerful teenager grinning out of the photograph at her. Wavy black hair looked almost blue in the sunlight, eyes closed to allow for a wider smile, and one hand held upwards in a frozen wave. Trade that happy face for a blank one, and the green and white fuku for an oversized brown polo and khaki pants, and she was looking at herself. As a human, anyway.

She looked up from the photograph at the kitsune whose grin had returned. "She's-"

Had his teeth been any brighter, she probably would have seen her reflection in them. "The resemblance is uncanny, no?"

"Who?"

"One of your cousins."

Kouga, left with Ayame and Fukii to meet with Tsukikage, weeks gone. Father, meeting in Kyoto with Sesshoumaru, left days ago. Mother, gone to Tokyo to help her sister with a troubled pregnancy, not due back until after the birth. A clawed hand reaching down to pull her up by her ponytail, other hand grabbing small legs as she tries to kick him away.

-"No one cares about you now."-

Smiling at her from the picture, the child that pregnancy had resulted in. Staring angrily back at the smile, the abandoned daughter who had had to live through three months of poking, prodding, bleeding, burning, before anyone even cared enough to investigate the whimpering noises she could make. Seated beside her, the grandfather of the child who had found her.

It would make for a very awkward conversation, the coincidences life dealt you.

"No."

"She is a miko, even more powerful than your mother." Which didn't say much. Her mother's power lay in her control of her Sight. "But she has no one to protect her, unlike your mother."

She wanted to yell, 'And who was there to protect me?' She didn't, but he could read it easily in the angry hurt glare she gave him.

"She is just as attached to family as Tsukikage is. And for all that she is a miko, she seems not to mind what blood someone has."

Read between the lines. You guard her, she will always be there for you. Miko meant accepting someone as innocent until proven guilty. Young teenager meant hanging out with an older cousin would either be cool and done all the time or else stupid and evaded through girlish wiles.

It was her fault she was like this in the first place. And now she was being asked to keep an eye on her? An eye certainly, but she wouldn't raise a hand to keep the chit out of trouble.

She had forgotten he read body language better than she could control hers. "That is a very unfriendly gleam in your eye, young one. You might learn something from her. How to smile, for example."

Play nice or I will hurt you. Meaning caught loud and clear. Agreement struck- she would watch the girl, make sure no one bothered her. But she was still stubborn enough to not get her out of the little problems.

The interplay between words and body language was a study even an immortal could never learn entirely. He accepted her terms and the conversation changed. "Have you ever heard of something called a hogosha?"

It was a strange change in topic, however. Except hogosha meant protector. The change in topic was suddenly merely a continuation. She shook her head in disagreement.

"Hogosha, I am sure you know, means protector. But for youkai, it is something else entirely. It is a youkai chosen to guard a human." He caught the question in her eyes. "The human is usually a guardian of a demon artifact. The guardian protects the artifact, the hogosha protects the guardian."

And just why would someone barely old enough to have her menses be a guardian?

"Even I could not explain how artifacts choose their guardians. I merely see when an artifact loses one and chooses another. Sometimes the transfer is not that smooth. Guardians can be forced to renounce what they watch, and give it up to someone else. Usually right before that someone else kills the guardian, since even with the renunciation, the artifact stays with its guardian until their death."

Short life span. This was beginning to look interesting.

She could tell that he was telling himself he should have known that was what she would catch on to.

"A human guardian has a youkai hogosha."

And the smugness she felt in catching him unawares deflated. Youkai. She was hanyou. Her fingers returned to tracing invisible scars on her arm.

"Stop that. I am the taiyoukai of the South, the senior of all the lords. What I say, goes. And if anyone has a problem with me naming a hanyou hogosha, they will answer to me and then to their god."

Over the top, like all kitsune statements, but reassuring in a completely disturbing fashion. And now his presence had driven her to oxymorons. Wonderful.

"Besides, you have other abilities to make up for the fact that a hogosha is normally a magician."

His smile was entirely too malicious for her to think anything good about his reassurance. It was always a good time to die, why not go out with a fight? It would certainly reassure Inu-Yasha that his student wasn't suicidal, the moron.

The kitsune was right in that everyone either didn't care or was too stupid to see what she did. Only her mother, but she knew enough to know what her daughter was doing to herself wouldn't kill her. Physically, anyway.

"Fine."

He knew the reason why she had accepted it. If guardians protected their charges until death, that meant that there was someone out there who wanted to shorten that time period. And she was agreeing to stand between that person and the guardian. Maybe she'd get lucky and get herself killed. Some said death was the beginning, but it wasn't. Dead was dead, the end. And she wanted an end.

At least this way she'd go out with a bang, show them that she existed and wouldn't take their shit anymore.

"Give me your hand."

Tactile contact with youkai. Another unpleasant feeling. Live for revenge, kill the serpent for making her physically sick every time a demon touched her. She hated magicians.

She gave him her hand.

After he released it, she didn't feel any different and eyed him quizzically.

"Check the mirror tomorrow, little one. No hogosha is a hogosha without a symbol of their duty." Something in his words gave her the impression that the duty came before suicide and that whatever it was he had done, it would keep her from clawing her arms up anymore.

She couldn't care enough to glare at him as he got up and walked down the empty aisle to disappear into the next railcar.