Hurray! Harroo! Harinamous! Whatever, it's another installment of my favorite fanfic! heehee!

And I'm in an especially good mood so I thought I would give a list of just WHAT Aki carries around in her very own mystery bag. You may or may not care, but I thought people might want to know.

There are actually two lists because Aki didn't exactly pack her bag the first time with the idea of not having any other luggage with her. If you remember, all she had was whatever was last minute packing for her camping trip.

So for the first part of this story, Aki had: some tarp, an iron skillet (smallish), some rope, trail mix, puzzle book, pencil, some bandages, one can of condensed soup, can opener, tooth brush and tooth paste, one rough handmade mug, some instant hot chocolate, a water bottle, empty film tube, chopsticks picked up on the way, bar of soap, and an extra pair of socks. This is not counting what she happened to be carrying in her pocket which doesn't really change much.

AFter Aki's unfortunate encounter with the witch, Aki had the chance to go home and pack a little better for her trip. A lot of the items remained the same: The tarp, rope, soup, can opener, toothbrush and tooth paste, hot chocolate, skillet, film tube, and bar of soap all remained the same, but she added a bit more spare clothing, a new unsentimental mug (after all, Sesshoumaru might throw a fit again or something!), Shampoo and conditioner, an actual first aid kit, and a container of Aloe Vera. This is of course, an incomplete list, and the items will change over time. Just like with the first batch of stuff, some will get lost, some will be damaged or destroyed and again it doesn't include what she happens to be carrying around inher pockets like a cell phone and a pocket knife for cutting rope etc.

Of course Aki's bag has nothing on The bag Rumiko Takahashi created for Kagome. that bag and those characters are quite impossible to surpass sometimes. Good thing they're all my playthings until long after my grandchildren are dead.

Tail Feathers

It is said that gravity is one of the most common attractive forces in the universe. One would think that something responsible for so much bruising and broken bodies would be considered repulsive. Add in that gravity is also responsible for shortening or limiting a great number of people's height and you really do wonder what is so attractive about gravity.

Granted, without gravity, the air would be too thin to breath and our evolution may well have not included walking upright for up (and any other direction) is relative to our own orientation caused by gravity. Without gravity, ground animals would have to live in the ground and muscle growth would be practically pointless.

Even so, gravity is damned annoying. Especially when you're standing next to a cliff and about to be shoved off.

"I told you I don't care to learn," Aki grumbled darkly.

"And I think you should," Kikyou pushed a little more.

"Why are we starting so high anyway?" Aki demanded.

"If we tried shoving you out of a tree like a bird you'd just jump," Fred answered. Oh he was behind this a full forty percent. He didn't like Kikyou. He didn't like knocking Aki off a cliff, but she needed to learn how to fly and the miko was solid enough to force the issue. More than that, Kikyou could provide the safety net almost no one else could. True, the 'safety net' would more than likely molest Aki before they were done, Fred thought ruefully, but better molested than splattered all over the ground.

Kikyou gave another push, moving the shorter woman about an inch. Aki had dug her shoes in firmly and was definitely making the miko earn every inch of ground they moved forward. "Why are you being so stubborn?" Kikyou half-grumbled between pants for air. She hadn't thought the dead could get out of breath.

"I could ask you that," Aki retorted. "Why are you so determined for me to learn to fly? One might almost believe you were concerned about my well-being if you weren't trying to throw me off a stupid cliff."

"You. Are. Going. To. Learn. How. To. Fly." Kikyou declared, punctuating every word with a shove. "For all you know you might enjoy it."

"They say I might enjoy sex too, you don't see me running around doing it though," Aki retorted aiming to embarrass the miko.

"Normally the people that say that are trying to get you in trouble," Kikyou responded with an extra firm push. "This is different."

They were actually getting pretty close to the edge. Aki could peer into the abyss without leaning forward now. "How is this different?"

"I'm trying to prevent you from being in the kind of trouble that can be fatal," Kikyou gasped with effort.

"You mean like being pushed off a cliff?" Aki asked with sardonic humor.

"Well, yeah I guess so," Kikyou muttered.

A giant red-eyed youkai lumbered into the clear area near the cliff's edge. "GIVE ME THE SHIKON NO KAKERA!" he demanded.

Aki and Kikyou completely ignored him. For Aki, Kikyou was the more immediate danger. Kikyou was already dead and determined not to give Aki the chance to get out of this.

"You will fly!"

"Someday maybe, but I'm not going to waste my time trying to learn now!"

"Um guys?" Fred tried to get their attention. He really didn't want Aki dead and looking at the big youkai they were ignoring, it would be difficult to prevent that outcome if they didn't start paying attention.

One of the reasons some creatures ventured to evolve into such large bodies is due to their extreme desire for attention and their distaste for being ignored. Once they achieved a size in which they could demand the attention they craved with violence, they are normally content because no one is stupid enough to ignore them…

That is not to say that they will take being ignored in anyway gracefully or with any kind of tolerance. Exceptionally large, dim-witted youkai are no exception. They really don't like being ignored.

See the thing about large youkai getting angry is that they are a great deal stronger than large angry animals. So when large youkai are moved to violence, whole mountains stand up and pay quivering attention.

Or in Aki and Kikyou's case, a great big chunk of the cliff face would quiver and attempt to run away.Unfortunately it just happened to be the chunk of cliff they were standing on.

Aki glanced at Kikyou, "Please tell me, we did not just feel that."

Her answer was the slow motion shifting of the ground at their feet as the trees and the giant began to tilt away from them. "Now would be a really good time to fly," Kikyou shouted.

"If we live through this, remind me to smack you," Aki growled as she latched onto Kikyou's arm and leapt away from the giant rock that used to be a part of the cliff face.

Five seconds later they were still falling. "Are you going to even try flying or do you want me to call my Shinidamachuu?" Kikyou demanded quite annoyed to still be falling.

"If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it my way, now shut up and enjoy the ride," Aki hollered against the rushing wind.

"I will when you actually do something!" the miko yelled. Aki just snorted and ignored her.

"I'm afraid I have to agree with the miko on this one," Fred announced near her ear.

"Fred!" Aki blinked in surprise. "How are you managing to keep up?"

"I grabbed a hold of the miko's soul since I can do that," Fred answered.

"The 'miko' has a name and still demands that Aki do something if she's going to!" Kikyou interrupted him.

Aki sighed exasperatedly, "Oh fine then." She snapped her wings out and steered them into a graceful loop back up to the top of the cliff.

"What are you doing?" Kikyou gasped as Aki performed a mid air turn that would save them from flying upside down at the top of their arching maneuver.

"I'm double checking that big youkai for Shikon no kakera," Aki answered absently. "I want to be sure before we leave."

"You going to lead this one somewhere it'll be less disruptive?" Fred inquired.

"You think there's anywhere else less populated, with less to destroy that we can get to without crossing into more populated areas?" Aki asked rhetorically. "No shard."

"You knew how to fly, didn't you?" Kikyou accused her ride.

Aki raised an eyebrow and with an otherwise flat look answered her, "I knew the mechanics of it. And I kind of fly when I run, but this is absolutely the first time I've full out flown with my wings."

"How do you steer without tail feathers?" Fred asked out of the blue.

"I'm just gifted that way," Aki declared without really answering the question. "Kikyou, you might want to call your pet youkai."

"Why? You're flying just fine," Kikyou wondered aloud.

"Because something might decide to fly up here and eat me and I'd like both hands free in that event," Aki answered evenly, "And all that clay is damned heavy!"

Kikyou threw her a rather offended look as Aki struggled not to drop her. The miko sighed and ordered up her shinidamachuu. "Remind me to smack you when we're back on the ground," she grumbled.

Aki gave her a half-smile before dropping Kikyou into the tangled nest of blue-white bodies. "Then I guess I'll just have to fly until we both forget. It's just as well, I like flying and I'm not likely to do it much in the future."

"Why not?" Fred asked from where he still clung to his grasp on Kikyou's soul.

"Not a lot of places available to launch from. At least not for a body my size," Aki answered. She was getting the hang of judging air currents and thermal updrafts.

"True, you're not exactly the size of a bird are you?" Fred observed.

Before Kikyou could get her own weighted revenge, Aki laughed and said, "It's a lot harder to launch a house than a little bird!"

The ghost laughed as the flying youkai sailed ahead of them and began to attempt trick maneuvers.

"Can't this mass of serpents go any faster?" Fred grumped at the miko.

"I don't know? How much do souls weigh?" Kikyou asked coyly.

"It doesn't matter, even if souls do weigh something, though I don't believe they do, you've got a great deal more of them than I do," Fred answered maliciously.

"What impairment was Aki suffering from when she decided to let you stay around her?" Kikyou wondered.

"You don't know a damned thing about me or her and I'd prefer it to stay that way. Aki may be willing to forgive a lot because you're already dead and can't succumb to her – "

"Fred," Aki called to the ghost. "Check this out!" She dived down steeply, only snapping her wings open at the last possible second so that she could trail her fingers in the water of the large lake they had been passing over.

"Damnit! Aki! You better be damn glad I can't have heart failure," Fred hollered. His shout was answered with snickering laughter as she continued to flit across the star-studded sky. "If it wasn't so irreversible I'd kill her!"

"As if I would allow that," Kikyou sneered.

"Like you have any say," Fred growled.

"I could always 'eat' you,'" Kikyou cast a sideways glance his way.

"I'd like to see you try it!" Fred glared back. "There's no telling what Aki would do in such an event."

"She'd probably thank me," Kikyou replied haughtily.

"I don't think the indigestion would be worth it," Aki called as she flew circles around them playfully before sailing ahead of them once again.

Both the dead people interpreted Aki's statement in a way that made them look superior to the other.

To Kikyou, Aki had clearly meant that Fred was such a horrible person as to taste extremely bad and disagree with Kikyou's constitution. The last also left the miko feeling as if the youkai had kindly indicated she was delicate in someway.

Fred's interpretation was vastly different. He believed that the statement meant that his very awesomeness as a person would prove too much for the stupid soul eater. If Kikyou did manage to consume him, he would find someway to give her a hard time from the inside and the ghost was certain that Aki knew that.

"What are you smirking about? Aki clearly agrees with me," Kikyou declared sweetly.

"You need to clean your ears out because Aki was definitely indicating that she preferred me," Fred replied snootily.

"My but you are delusional," Kikyou mocked him. "Perhaps when you died you completely lost your ability to see the truth right in front of you."

"I can't help it if your soul eating has left you deranged, but it's clear that the truth is on my side," Fred replied condescendingly.

"I don't get what you have against me. I don't believe we've ever met before Aki, so when could all this anger have come from? Unless you truly are deranged yourself," Kikyou responded sympathetically.

"He's not angry, just jealous," Aki corrected the miko as she came within range. "He dislikes that you can touch and feel and smell when he can't. And what I meant was that saving me wouldn't be worth the effort of trying to eat Fred." And she flew off again.

"I am not jealous!" Fred bellowed. Aki's dismissive laughter floated back at him in response.

"Why does she say stuff like that?" Kikyou asked the air.

"Aki is in a lot of emotional and psychological pain," Fred muttered in explanation. "She suffered a great deal of loss and seen too much blood and death. She's afraid to reach out and care about others because they will probably suffer the same fate. It's leaving her in a crippled state that she can't find her way out of." Kikyou blinked. "She needs to be able to open up and air out the wounds she's sustained, find a new life to live and she needs help to do it. Which is why she's so willing to be slightly open with you," Fred snorted. "She figures you're already dead so she's not likely to kill you by being friendly or spending time with you. But you're not going to be able to help just because of what you are. Like a rock helping a gazelle to fly, it just won't work. Aki needs some one to love and care about her, not more sorrow and pain. She needs someone genuinely concerned about her, not just a habitual tending of injuries. She needs the warmth of Friendship from a living breathing person that won't be killed through her loving them. She doesn't need vengeance or hate and you can't be anything else," he glared at Kikyou.

"That is quite a dilemma," Kikyou acknowledged. "If she is that damaged, healing cannot be done with the dead or with memories of better times. At this moment, there is no one who can give what she needs," the miko stated, "therefore I will make sure she lives until there is."

Fred blinked at the miko before glancing away from her, "Alright then, truce?"

"I doubt it, but the thought is appreciated," Kikyou mocked him.

"Fine then, but don't come crying to me the next time you get beat down," Fred smiled.

"You do realize that you have yet to actually achieve that particular maneuver, right? Personally, I believe it is rather impossible for someone as slow as yourself to do," Kikyou gave him a condescending smirk. "I've known snails that are faster."

"Oh ouch! Cheap shot to the soul," Fred muttered. "Fine, make fun of the fact that ghosts don't move quickly. You're just lucky I'm a gentleman otherwise I might comment on the puffiness that appears around your middle every time you eat."

"Such delusions,' Kikyou shook her head. "You're no more a gentleman than Aki is a grain of sand."

"My but you're a small thinker, for all you know, we are all grains of sand in someone's far greater universe," Fred suggested.

"Such nonsense, but if we are all grains of sand, then you're still not a gentleman and quite assuredly a piece of dirt," Kikyou returned.

"Yeah but then so are you."

"I already knew I was made of dirt," Kikyou replied nonchalantly. "It is a clay body after all."

"I –" he began then failed to come up with something.

"Face it Fred, she got you," Aki laughed.

"Never!" the ghost denied.

"Now kiss and make up," Aki laughed and flew away from the sputtering pair again.

"Do we really have to?" Kikyou asked the ghost.

"Knowing Aki, probably." Fred shrugged, consciously refusing to explain to the miko that they didn't have to actually kiss. "Hey look on the bright side, at least I'm intangible."

"So?"

"So you're not likely to feel much and you won't actually touch me," but Fred would. Now it might seems strange that Fred would be willing to kiss the soul-eater he so despised previously, but when you really think about it, it makes a strange kind of sense. The ghost could actually feel Kikyou, and when you can't feel anything else, you take every opportunity to feel what you can.

Fred settled closer to the miko and leaned down to kiss her. It was awkward at first, but once they got started…well Kikyou did ask for more. And Fred was so floored by the strangely intense sensation of it that he obliged without a second thought.

"Hey you guys! I said kiss and make up, not make out," Aki teased playfully, embarrassing them both. With a laugh she rolled down to skim a few leaves off the upper most branches of some trees before soaring higher.

"No one would blame us if we killed her right?" Kikyou growled while blushing like mad (or as mad as a dead woman could).

"It's perfectly justified," Fred coughed, hiding his own ghostly blush.

Their eyes slightly gravitated towards each other before rocketing away from the brief contact.

"That was…" Kikyou began. She didn't bother to finish it out loud. It had been better than kissing Inuyasha, better than arguing with Fred, more like being alive than being alive had been and it left her feeling flushed and flustered and definitely confused."

"Yes it was…" Fred replied embarrassed. How to ask for more? So much more. After all, he was only male and Kikyou was likely the only action he'd get for a long time. True there was more to this than there ever was with any of his girl friends, but he'd never admit it.

Aki swung her tail down between their faces as she flew off laughing at their awkwardness.

"Kill her now?" Fred Asked.

Kikyou nodded, "Right now," as she urged the shinidamachuu to move faster in pursuit.

The leaves Aki had dislodged in her playful flight floated serenely through the air to land on a youkai who wasn't having a very good day. The demon's enraged red eyes tracked the figure that mocked his inability to move. There she danced across the sky with the joy of free movement while he was too weak to do more than growl with displeasure.

He glared as her laughter rang through his ears taunting him with how far beyond his hardship she was, blissfully moving about free of his injuries and pain, beyond his reach. He snarled his immense distaste for the situation. He truly was having a string of bad luck recently.

First he had his arm cut off by his detestable half-breed younger brother. As if that wasn't bad enough, he had hallucinated and invented himself an impossible human female to tend and annoy him. And when his imagined companion had taken off he'd torn after her in a rage only to find himself badgered by the real, uneducated and smelly, thing. But he got over that, even dismissing the nagging questions about how his weary mind could have come up with such a unique and contrary character on its own.

Then he went after Tessaiga a second time and again failed to claim it. What's more, the whelp's human miko wench had landed a hit on him. That girl had tweaked his curiosity briefly, reminding him slightly of his imagined healer. But she wasn't a match and his fevered brain won out on creating an impossible character.

Then he'd tried for the sword again, only to have its fiercest attack used on his person. Sesshoumaru's own worthless sword had awaken to save his life but failed to do more than that. What a truly worthless piece of junk! He'd get rid of it if it hadn't belonged to his fool of a father.

Sesshoumaru thanked whoever was responsible for small favors that his father's folly was not an inherent part of his bloodline, though Inuyasha was striving to prove that false.

Now that Sesshoumaru was forced to sit still from weakness yet again, he found himself almost wishing for the return of his eccentric hallucination from his last weakness to take care of him and distract him. This time, there was only a shy little human child who would do no more than smile and bring him food he would not eat. He could tell she needed it more than he did and her silent adoration set him on edge.

She didn't talk, didn't argue with him. She had no crazy ideas to tell him. There was no mysteriously safe guarded warmth to this girl. The child wore her heart on her sleeve and it was plain to see when she'd been hurt.

Sesshoumaru was still holding out hope that the child would turn out to be yet another hallucination like the first had been, but it wasn't likely. The first had been so impossible that this child didn't seem to be from the same source by her very normalcy.

The playful flyer was slowly slipping out of his view and he found himself wishing she wouldn't leave. For all that he was angry at his inability to lash out and ground her, he wanted her to remain at least where he could see her. The flyer and her companions reminded him somewhat of his impossible healer and with her around he at least had something to think about that was slightly pleasant.

In his secret heart of hearts, his strange imaginary friend had seemed more and more appealing as time went by. Sadly, he'd never been visited by that hallucination again.

Sesshoumaru shook himself mentally. Such madness. Perhaps his father's folly really was passed down to his offspring. What a terribly awful thought!