Nobody guessed the right word, though some came close… cough cough grin

Wow, I almost forgot about his story. Anyway, it's gonna finish in this chapter and then there'll probably be an epilogue, and then I'm done with it. I'm really happy with this one in retrospect. I broke three of my writing records: Longest story ever, most run- on dialogue, and the most characters in one story. Speaking of characters, I seem to have lost Jaken somewhere along the way. Hmm…. Where is he?

"Look, I don't believe in reincarnation, I don't believe in demons, monsters, or little kids with dog ears. I just want to go home, where the weirdest thing I come in contact with is the occasional drunk."

Kagome was still staring at her reincarnation in awe. This was her… from the future?

"So he told me," Kikyo continued, gesturing at the kitsune, who had chosen to remain outside, "that we could get some priest to purify the energy trails or whatever. So will you do it?"

"Your … er… companion isn't quite right. It would take an exceptional amount of power to fix something of the magnitude you're describing."

"So I'm stuck here?"

"Not quite."

From within the folds of her haori, Kagome drew a small, marble- sized jewel. It glowed slightly.

"If you were to wish on this, it might fix the well."

It would also cause the jewel to cease to exist, though Kagome didn't feel this was necessary information.

Outside, Shippo's tail twitched. Slowly, he rotated around, one degree at a time. If they were talking about what he thought they were talking about… well, that would be rather interesting, indeed.

They were.

Shippo choked.

"What's wrong with you?" Kikyo asked, temporarily taking her eyes off the path home.

"That's the… the …"

"Stay back, demon," Kagome said calmly, without looking away from her reincarnation. "It's not meant for one such as you."

"Nah, I don't want it, but… man, I never thought I'd actually get to see this thing! So this is where you humans have been holing it up, eh?"

He dropped down beside the two women, folding into a sitting position.

"Can I touch it?"

"No."

"Aw, come on!"

"No."

"Shippo, stop being a pest."

"I'm not being a pest. If I was a pest I would do this."

Shippo pulled half a dozen leaves from his pouch, and scattered them about the room. They erupted in balls of smoke and the room was full of Shippos.

"Please?" They chanted. "Pretty pretty please with sprinkles and whipped cream and garlic and cherries on top?"

"NO!" Kagome shouted, holding the jewel away from them.

"Why not? Huh? Huh? Huh? HUH?"

Kikyo whacked a random Shippo upside the head.

"Shut up," she told it.

"Oww! What was that for?"

The rest of them disintegrated, turning back to leaves.

Kagome took Kikyo's hand and pressed the jewel into it.

"Wish on it, and the well will open."

Kikyo nodded, and silently wished.

Sesshoumaru scrutinized the obviously not dead Kagura, who was standing over the slightly more lifeless Naraku and examining the shattered pieces of her heart.

"Well, I thought I'd kill him and be the hero for you, but it seems you can take care of yourself."

"Damn straight."

"Kanna ought to be around here somewhere then, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so. You can never really tell with Kanna."

"Um, on the subject of you not being dead… why?"

"I am dead."

Sesshoumaru, in one of the most OOC acts of the story, poked her shoulder.

"You don't look dead."

"Well, I'm not dead now. I'm dead five hundred years from now. My heart from now is still sealed, along with the other Naraku."

"Um… yeah, I knew that."

"So what'll you do now?"

Opening his mouth to make a smart remark, Sesshoumaru stopped.

He didn't know.

"You don't know either?"

"Well, what are you doing? There's no one to run from anymore, so…"

"I have five hundred years to live, and counting. Might as well make the best of it, right?"

Sesshoumaru grinned.

"Wait until the nineteen hundreds. You have to see Vegas, you'd love it."

"I'm sure it'll be awesome. So, what do we do for the four hundred years until then?"

"We?"

"Sure. I've got nobody else. It's not really much fun talking to Kanna."

"I bet. It's the same with my little brother, he's always shooting off his mouth about nothing."

Sesshoumaru checked, realizing what he had said.

"You have a little brother?"

"Yeah. A hanyou."

"Where is he?"

"I dunno. I don't really care, either."

"Why not? Get in a fight?"

"It's his fault my father's dead. Him and his mother."

"That sucks. So he probably hates you then, right?"

"… no."

Kagura sensed something long and dramatic, and so didn't say anything else.

"I tried to kill him when I found out about my father. And he still looked up to me. But I guess little kids are like that, right?"

"I guess so."

There was a silence. Kagura watched Sesshoumaru, who was watching the ceiling. His face was totally blank. Probably the long dramatic speech was playing through on the inside of his mind. Kagura was almost sorry she was missing it. It sounded like a good one.

"So you want to go find him?" She asked eventually.

"What?"

"Can't hurt."

"… fine."

"So where was the last place you saw him?"

"Was that it? I just wish on the thing and that's it?"

"N-no," Kagome stammered, looking at the intact jewel. "It should have disappeared."

"Maybe it's out of range," Kikyo wondered aloud.

"What?" Shippo piped up.

"Oh, in my time sometimes two things can't influence each other if they're too far away. Like, my old car alarm had to be set off from about three inches away."

"So… we have to get closer?" Shippo deciphered.

"Yeah."

"So come on, let's go."

"Wait!" Kagome interrupted. She eyed Shippo suspiciously. "Can I trust you?"

"Sure. Why not? It's easier to trust and be deceived then to suspect everyone who crosses your path. I personally won't be playing any tricks on you."

"And you?"

"I just want to go home."

Kagome considered for a moment, then nodded.

"All right."

She watched the two of them disappear through the doorway, and hoped she hadn't made a mistake.

As the others walked on, Inuyasha suddenly checked. Looking around at the thick trees surrounding to path, she raised his nose in the air and sniffed.

"Sesshie!" He yelled, bounding off into the makeshift path and, once again, into the trees. Miroku and Sango shared a look, and started off after him.

"I used to want a little brother," Sango said, trying to keep track of the red dot in front of her. "But this is too much work."

Miroku grinned at her, she didn't notice. Several seconds later they came to an abrupt stop, faced with a rather interesting scene. Inuyasha was perched on top of Sesshoumaru's shoulders, looking right into his face from a rather close vantage point. From a slight distance, a red- eyed teenage girl tried to hold in laughter.

"Hi Sesshy!" Inuyasha called, a bit more loudly than was really necessary.

"Get off my head, you little runt!" Sesshoumaru shouted, trying unsuccessfully to dislodge his younger brother.

"Don't kill him!" Sango begged, suddenly drawing attention to herself. "It's not his fault!"

"Yes it is, but I'm not going to kill him," Sesshoumaru said slowly. "Providing, of course, that he LETS GO OF MY HEAD!"

Inuyasha finally released his grip, dropping to the ground. Then, being a six- year- old, he bounced right back up and grabbed his brother's hand instead.

"Guess what Sesshy! Guess!"

"You've been abducted by aliens," Sesshoumaru said sarcastically.

"Nope. We're gonna bring Dad and Mom back to life!"

The daiyoukai stiffened. Was he serious? I mean yeah, magic may exist here, but is there a way to bring the dead to life? Or maybe his little friends just told him that to make it seem less real. He aimed a glare at the two of them.

"What's he talking about?"

"We think, since we're in the past and all, that we can keep all of our parents from being killed in the future," Miroku explained. "Since they were all killed, directly or indirectly, by Naraku, killing him now in the past would effectively save their lives."

"Yeah," Sesshoumaru said, nodding a bit uncomprehendingly.

"But that won't work," Kagura interrupted, stepping forward."

"Wait, who are you?" Sango asked.

"Kagura, if you really must know. But look, if you kill Naraku now, you'll go back to the future and everything will be the way it was and everyone will be full of love." This was accentuated by a few rather sarcastic hand motions. "But then you won't have a reason to come back here and kill him. So he'll live. So your parents will die. So you will come back and kill him. The whole vicious cycle repeats."

There was a minute of silence as this now information was processed.

"So… what do we do?" Sango asked finally.

"I say we kill him anyway," Sesshoumaru answered. "It's the only hope we've got."

"But what if it doesn't do any good?"

'Then we'll mark it down as an act of revenge and move on," Miroku said coldly.

No one said anything.

"Are we close enough yet?" Shippo asked.

"No."

"How do you know?"

"I just wished a minute ago, and it's still here."

"Well wish again!"

Kikyo wished again, and watched as the jewel totally failed to disappear.

"See? Are you happy now?"

"Yes. I am."

A slight breeze blew down the road the pair traveled. Shippo sniffed at it.

"Hey, weren't you with a bunch of kids?"

"Yeah."

"Where are they?"

"How should I know?"

"Well, there's a bunch of kids up ahead. I was just wondering if they were the same ones."

Following his words, a line of figures appeared over the next hill.

"Let's see, a red bouncy ball, a couple of ten year olds that sound like college grads, and a teenager with anger management problems. That's who I was with."

"Well, there's one more teen now, but I think these could be your guys."

"Yup."

Kikyo watched warily as the red- clad six year old ran ahead to her, waving. The others followed behind, a bit more slowly.

"Hi Kikyo!" Inuyasha yelled, reaching the two adults. "I thought you were going home! I'm glad you're still here. Wanna come with us some more! Cuz it was fun when you were around."

"No, that's okay, Inuyasha. I'm still going home. I just had to take a little… side trip."

"Really! Where'd you go? Did you have fun? Who's that?"

"Shippo, at your service," Shippo said, bowing low and pretending to take off a hat. At this point the others had caught up. Kagura and Sesshoumaru still kept their distance.

"Hi, Kikyo. I thought you were going home."

"I was. Am."

"Oh. Well, good luck."

"Can you tell us how much further to the village?" Sango asked.

"About another three miles. But there's not really anything there."

"We're going to see a priestess named Kagome."

"Really?" Shippo asked, shocked. "Why?"

"We're going to bring our parents back to life!" Inuyasha piped up from the ground. Kikyo got a bit pale.

"Is… that so?"

"Yes," Sango affirmed, nodding. "Kaede, another priestess, told us that by using a jewel Kagome has, we can kill our parents murderer in the past, and so they'll live."

"And, this jewel… you really need it, huh?"

"Yeah," Sesshoumaru said from the back. "Apparently nothing else can kill that guy."

"And this is a really touching reunion and all, but we have to go," Kagura told them all. "It's gonna be dark soon, and we have three more miles to go."

"Nice seeing you guys!" Inuyasha yelled back, waving even more, as the kids continued walking. Kikyo stood frozen, staring at the jewel in her hand.

"By the time they figured out you have it," Shippo whispered to her, "we can be long gone."

Kikyo still didn't take her eyes from the jewel. As she watched, dark strands wove their way through the light pink… only to disappear.

"It's their parents, Shippo. I can't take that away from them."

Shippo watched with a slight grin on his face as Kikyo ran after the retreating children. She said a few words, but he couldn't hear them. Then she pressed the jewel into Sango's hand. Sango looked from the young woman to the jewel and back. Then she did it again. Then, without warning, she pulled Kikyo into a hug. Her mouth was moving franticly. Shippo couldn't hear her, either, but he guessed she was saying something like 'thankyouthankyouthankyou!'

Kikyo disconnected from the girl, backing up. Shippo almost laughed. She was not cut out to deal with children. Very few people really were.

"So," He asked casually when she returned to him a minute later. "How'd it go?"

"Oh, shut up."

"So where to now?"

"Let's go back to the well. Maybe somehow it opened up again?"

"I doubt it."

"Let me see it! I wanna see! Come on, Sango, lemme see it!"

Sango obligingly lowered the glowing sphere to Inuyasha's height.

"And we're gonna use this to get our parents back?"

"Yeah. All we need to do is figure out how to purify what is basically a rock made of pure evil," Kagura said dryly.

"There's no such thing as pure evil," Miroku responded. "There is a little but of good in everything."

"Have you ever MET my dad?"

"In a sense," Miroku said, holding out his right hand.

Up ahead of them, the cave that housed Naraku's prison appeared. In the light of the setting sun, the opening looked black and foreboding, not so much like a mouth as a garbage disposal. Shivers went in unison down the backs of the five children.

"Do… do you think maybe we should wait for morning?" Inuyasha suggested.

"Aw, quit being a baby," Sesshoumaru rebuked him. He could see a lot better than the humans due to his demon blood. "There's nothing in the dark that isn't there in the light."

With those inspiring words, they made their way slowly into the cave. A light came off of the Shikon no tama, bathing the inside of the stone walls in a pale pink light. It bounced off the facets of the black crystal, which was glittering almost menacingly.

"So we just wish on it?" Sango asked.

"Not really," Miroku answered, thinking. "Kaede said we needed an incarnated innocence to basically exorcize it. Just breaking the stone would only release him."

"And then we're screwed," Kagura added.

"Quite."

"So that means…" All eyes turned to Inuyasha.

"I gotta do it?"

He was met with four solemn nods. Sango held out the jewel to him. As it touched his hand, it glowed brighter then it had. It was almost hard to look at in the gloom surrounding it.

"Bye," he said solemnly.

"That's right," Sango breathed.

"We won't remember each other."

Miroku and Sango looked at each other. Sesshoumaru and Kagura did the same.

"You'd still be alive in my time, right?" Sesshoumaru asked. "We might still get to meet."

Kagura shook her head slowly.

"No, we won't. Inside the crystal, Naraku still holds my heart. I'll be killed, too."

"What! Then… we won't do it! There's gotta be a way, you don't have to-"

"No, there isn't a way. Trust me, you aren't his only enemies. At least this way I'll die happy, knowing that bastard's going with me."

With something like horror, Sesshoumaru saw the look in Kagura's eyes. She was absolutely sure of what she wanted.

"Alright. Good luck in your next life."

"Yeah right. I'll probably end up as a slug or something…"

"Well, the good news is that slugs have a life span of about a month. So you won't be one very long."

He was being totally serious, but Kagura laughed anyway.

"Are you guys ready yet?" Inuyasha asked. He stood between his two friends, who each had a hand on his shoulder.

"Yeah."

"Go for it," Sesshoumaru told him. "Little brother," he added, quietly.

Wrapping his hands around the glowing jewel, Inuyasha mouthed his wish. For a moment, nothing happened. Everyone peered curiously at the dormant jewel. Then it exploded into pure white light, effectively blinding all of them and leaving flickering after- images. Then it was gone, though nobody could tell in the almost blackness. A fierce wind blew outward from the crystal, carrying a sound like blowing leaves. A crack splintered through it, but it did not break. Some of the blackness began to dissipate from the center.

Inuyasha screamed, but it was cut off after only a few seconds.

"He's gone!" Sango exclaimed. She reached out in the dark for Miroku, but the moment their fingertips touched, they too disappeared.

Sesshoumaru almost fell backwards as Kagura crashed into him. He wrapped his arms around her, keeping her from falling. Her skin burned to the touch, but she kept her face impassive. Hiding pain was something she could do.

As the wind blew harder then ever, the sound of leaves reached a crescendo. It wasn't leaves at all, but people's voices. Sesshoumaru could hear his own, and Kagura's, having conversations that would never happen. Had never happened.

He felt her dissolve in his arms, and a second later, he, too, was gone. The wind died down and stopped altogether. The voices, too, stopped, if they had ever really spoken to begin with, leaving the cave empty, save for a crystal in the middle. The clear stone had a lattice of cracks running through it, red as the blood that would now never be spilled.

Epilogue

Sesshoumaru woke up with a strange sense of urgency, like there was something that really needed to be done. After a minute of desperate thinking, he marked it down to a dream, already forgotten.

As if sensing his brother's awakening, Inuyasha bounded into Sesshoumaru's room, jumping up onto the bed, where he proceeded to bounce annoyingly.

"Don't you ever knock?" Sesshoumaru grumbled, removing himself from the shaking bed.

"No," Inuyasha replied truthfully. The dog ears which had graced his head for almost a month twitched as he listened to his brother muted cursing.

"Breakfast is ready!" Izayoi called from the kitchen. Inuyasha bounded off in search of food. Pulling on a pair of jeans and a T- shirt, Sesshoumaru followed him.

His father was sitting at the head of the table, puzzling over the sudoku in the newspaper, and saying assuredly that they were impossible and no sane being could ever finish one. Izayoi, coming over with a pan of bacon in hand, pointed out the locations of at least three numbers.

For some reason, this average scene seemed a lot nicer than usual.

"Wow, the teenager smiles," Izayoi said, a smile on her own face as she pretended to take his temperature. "Should I check for pods?"

"Nah. It's probably just a phase."

"Aw, come on, Dad."

"I had the coolest dream ever," Inuyasha interrupted. Sesshoumaru tuned out as his little brother rambled on about wells and priestesses. Demons or no, that stuff didn't happen in real life.

"Did you know tonight's the first full moon since that demon scare last month?" Sango asked her parents.

"Let's just hope we don't get any monsters this time," Her father said, half- jokingly.

"Either way, you're staying home tonight, little taijiya," Her mother told her. "No buts."

"Aww, but"

"No buts."

"But. But but but." Sango giggled. "But but but."

"That's it," her mother replied, picking up the game. "You're grounded forever."

"But!"

"Well, if you want to go out, do it now."

"Okay, I will," Sango said with fake haughtiness. "I can see you don't love me."

Pretending to cry, she walked out the front door onto the sidewalk… just in time to almost get hit by a bike. Said bike swerved to avoid her, toppling it's rider onto the ground.

"Geez, I'm sorry," she said, helping the boy up. "I didn't even see you. That was totally my fault."

"Nah, don't worry about it," he said, looking up at her. "It wasn't your… have we met before? You look really familiar."

"Yeah… you too…"

Two thousand miles away, on an island known as Oahu, a flower bloomed. This particular flower was known as a hibiscus, a beautiful flower that died each night and bloomed again in the morning sun. The sun this morning rose high, bathing the blooming bud in warm rays of light. A warm breeze blew, and the flower rocked back and forth on its stalk. It looked a bit brighter, a bit more orange than the others… but it may have just been an illusion.

And, several miles away, and at least five hundred feet down, a pure white crab scuttled back and forth across gray sand. Not that either of these colors mattered. The frigid, crushing water above them blocked every ray of sunshine. Which was just as well. Not even the sun wanted to be that far down.

The end.

… wow, it's finally over. So, howdja like it? I had to really work to keep the ending from being tacky. I was gonna make Naraku into an evil kelp plant… but I didn't.

Any questions, comments, concerns, all welcome!