Before this chapters I want to say that there is a sequel to this: Remind me, Please…It doesn't need to be read, if you don't want to…I'm just being weird by making the prequel and sequel at the same time, but it's just so I can get more ideas flowing. If you want to read it, it's on my favourite's list.
Chapter 1: "Beautifully Executed"
Naraku chuckled to himself, peering through his crystal ball, content that everything went according to plan. Leaving the pilot without any directions to get back, would guarantee that the passengers in the back, who were waking up from their doses, wouldn't try to trick him into telling the way back. As a bonus, he wouldn't have to pay that greedy assassin. He grinned at his cleverness, pleased, and if all went well, everything should fall in place, the way he wanted it to.
His expression grew confused as Sesshoumaru saved the girl from the dangers of the forest, running towards the village. Insecure thoughts started floating about and he questioned with them, what if everything doesn't fall into place? What would you do?
I would cease to exist…
She found herself in a hut, wrapped in thick blankets. She groaned, pulling the blankets more loosely around her. She wondered, as memories came flooding back to her, why she was kidnapped. The pilot had mentioned a name. Naraku… Who was he? She knew no one by the name of Naraku. An ache came to her head. Just thinking about the whole thing was mind numbing. By the heat of the sun, she guessed it was around noon. She carefully unwrapped herself and folded the blankets in a pile and walked out, searching-
For…Where was he?
A small boy, with peasant clothes on, crossed her path and stared at her with wide eyes, quickly averted them and then ran away.
What was the matter with everything here?
Am I a monster, maybe was a better question.
She entered a larger hut, not bothering to even think that they had wanted privacy. She was still upset at frightening that little boy. Fortunately for her, she had walked into the right hut. Inside, it held a small group, including the man who had been kidnapped with her. They were all holding hands and a wrinkled woman stepped into the middle of the circle, sprinkling some herbs into the air. She stood watching by the doorway, until the old woman made a gesture for her to come in.
Her hair swayed lightly, taking small steps, joining the circle, awkwardly. "Hey," she greeted the group with a little wave.
A charming smile appeared on a handsome man with a pony tail pulled back. "Good afternoon, Kagome-sama."
A few belated seconds later, the rest of the group chorused mixed greetings.
The old woman spoke up, "We should all introduce ourselves. You've just woken up, and we don't want you getting anymore confused than you are already." She started to point, "This is-"
The handsome man interrupted. "Kaede-sama, would it not be better if we introduced ourselves? That way, she can get to know who we really are. After all, I think we would be better at describing ourselves, instead of someone just pointing out our names."
The woman put her hands on her hips. He brought up a good point. They should all be familiar with each other. "That sounds like a good idea. Kagome-san, I am Kaede, the village priestess."
She saw the handsome man begin to open his mouth to speak, but a little boy piped up before him. "I'm Shippo, the fox demon."
The man began to speak again, but a young lady clad in a tight suit and boomerang, pushed him aside, stopping him. "-and I'm Sango the demon exterminator."
The purple robed man got his chance. He kneeled down in front of her and took both hands in his own and with shining, brilliant purple eyes, he spoke, "I am Miroku, the wandering monk, I travel far into exotic lands, but never have I seen such beauty. Please allow me the pleasure of bearing your-"
Miroku had been knocked over by the force of something heavy and solid. He looked up to see Sango standing over him, triumphant. "Is he going to be okay?"
Shippo laughed, his tiny body shivering with laughter. It looked so much like he was going to topple over that Kagome patted his tiny back, to get him to stabilize. "He's been all right all the other times she's done it."
Kagome was stunned at this display. "I guess he deserved it." She became unfrozen and chuckled, stiffly.
The boomerang wielding woman smiled at her. "Just gotta watch out for those roaming hands."
There was something itching at her with this picture. These names…these people…this village…these occupations and identities…and worst of all, the language. They spoke in Japanese, very fluently. Surely this couldn't be-
She turned to the other man that hadn't been introduced. "And you are…" She started, waiting for an answer.
"Wait a minute." Miroku was surprised. He clarified his confusion through a question. "You two don't know each other?"
"No," Kagome answered.
"How did he know everything about you then?"
Knowing, that he would be found out eventually and to save his own precious time, the business man's voice was finally heard. "I searched through your pockets and found this." He tossed the green wallet to her.
Kagome opened it and was alarmed. She had left all her personal information in her wallet and he dared to just take it from her and inspect it. She felt violated. She growled. "I hope you don't go doing this to everybody you meet. Didn't anyone teach you any good manners?"
"Now Kagome," Miroku stood in between the two. "Let's not argue." He replied sensibly. We have to continue the ceremony." He continued, even though he didn't notice Kagome's questioning tilt of the head. "This ceremony will help determine who the person who kidnapped the both of you and left you on this island. It will explain a lot. The only way we can do this is if we all cooperate, by holding hands together like this." He demonstrated by grabbing Kagome's hand. "-and Kaede will then perform a spell, that will bring us back into your memories, to see when you encountered this…Naraku."
Simultaneously, around the room, there was a drop in temperature and Kaede, Shippo, Mirouku, and Sango didn't hide their reactions as shivers traveled through their bodies.
Kagome thought about it and of all her memories, they were all embarrassing and painful. They were painful then and they still were now. If a bunch of strangers were to see her whole life flash before their eyes like a slide show… She just couldn't take it.
At her alarmed look, Miroku chuckled as if he knew what she was thinking. "Don't worry. The spell will search for the right memory, before allowing all of us to view it. Now then, who would like to start first? Sesshoumaru Nakaharu or Kagome Higurashi?"
"Neither," Sesshoumaru boomed from his corner. "We do not need this magic to help us find the reason why."
The face of the exterminator's fell with sadness. "Nakaharu-san, we were doing fine before. We were holding hands and-"
"Do not address me with a simple 'san'. I will be addressed as Nakaharu-sama, or Sesshoumaru-sama. If none are sufficient, then refrain from using my name at all."
"Why not call yourself Lord Sesshoumaru?" Someone stepped out of the shadows, making all their hearts skip a beat. He had the demeanor of a hard working man, but a young man that looked like he had little experience. He shared similarities with the businessman that were astonishing. The same silvery hair, although, this man seemed to have it thicker, and the colour of their eyes- rare traits that usually mark relatives.
Miroku sighed resignedly. "And so it begins again."
In an instant, Sesshoumaru was on him. "What do you know? What are you keeping from us?" He whipped his head back to the newcomer. "And who the hell are you?"
Kagome stood up, fed up with the whole situation too. "I frankly do not care who is who or what is what. I want to get back to normal life, where I have a boring job and I can get back to my lonely apartment, but before any of that happens, can someone tell me, please, where we are? It would definitely help the situation." They all shifted uneasy glances between themselves.
That same deep voice that always brought bad news along with him, decided to take a stab at it. "It is not where we are, imbecile," he added for good measure, "but from what I deduce, it is when we are. We seem to be surrounded in premature dwellings of early feudal Japan."
"He's right," the figure at the doorway said. "this is approximately 500 years from whatever year you guys are in right now. Naraku has dropped off many people onto this island, who all have perished, but when some started surviving, because of some of his assassin's sloppy jobs, we started to get answers. We figured out that this island basically sends anyone from the modern time, back a few years."
"A few years," Kagome repeated weakly. "500 years you mean! I can't live that long!" She exclaimed, "I have things to do! I have to feed my cat! I have to pay the bills!" She put her head in her hands. She was starting to feel faint and continued, hysterical. "My life was already horrible. I didn't think it could get any worse," she moaned and then lay on her back. "I'm going to sleep, forever."
A name popped up in Nakaharu's mind as soon as he heard the word sleep.
The man by the door retorted. "There is one person in this room who can survive 500 years, no problem." He whispered to himself, "and already has."
"Inuyasha," he said with realization.
"Huh?" A grin started to form on the hanyou. "Finally recognized me, eh? Was it that hard? I'm your own brother!" He sounded offended.
"You are not a full blood relation and a dirty hanyou, which I do not even associate myself with."
"The modern life, with all its diversity didn't teach you anything useful about being humble." At Sesshoumaru's glare he concluded, "I guess not."
Kagome butt in angrily as she recognized the man who stole her wallet. "You! You're that rich guy! You have a steady job- a dream job!" She sat up and pointed accusingly. "You're lucky! You have nothing to worry about. On the other hand, I have to worry about paying bills, normal things. You have it easy. You're filthy rich, you're good looking and you seem to know people from this time." She wasn't even herself enough to remember as long as they were stuck here, none of those points would have any value. "Talk about advantages," she muttered angrily.
She looked stunned and then quietly asked, "How do you know that guy in the corner anyway?"
Inuyasha looked amused and eased into the role of divulging a terribly interesting secret. "You've heard of demons haven't you?" At her hesitant nod he continued, "Demons aren't mythical. They live in Japan." He reached out and comfortingly held her hand tightly. "I'm a demon."
Kagome pulled out from his grasp and stumbled into the wall behind her. "I-I…" she stuttered at a loss for words. "You too?" She said to the stoic statue to the right of her.
"I'm standing here in a business suit," was his wry reply.
She paled like a ghost.
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Inuyasha swore loudly at some birds that were blocking his air space and swiped at them. Their squawking woke up the unconscious girl in his arms. Noticing that his passenger was awake, he brought them closer to the ground and then finally landed.
Kagome's initial reaction to being held by a stranger, him being a man, related to that arrogant man who was kidnapped with her and was a demon, made her feel ice cold dread flow throughout her whole body, and Inuyasha, noticing his passenger's unease, dropped her.
"Ow!" She rubbed her derriere.
The group surrounded her, all in different ways. Sango, Miroku, and Shippo landed on the ground next to her via huge flying cat, which she later learned was Kirara, Sesshoumaru stopped his walking pace to stop and she and Inuyasha had…dropped from the sky? She dismissed the idea and thought it must have been something 'demonic' he did to make himself fly. Being brought up in an area where they considered Satan and anything mentioned along with it as blasphemy and spiritual suicide, she believed it all.
She was jumped out of her musing as Inuyasha called out to everyone. "We can walk to the site now. It's pretty close."
Feeling another one of her frequent headaches coming, she asked them where they were going.
No one answered, each unsure if the other was going to answer, because of their own tentativeness at answering the question. In the case of Sesshoumaru, it was just the fact that he'd have to waste his breath to a ningen, but he answered, his gaze fixed on the goal up ahead. "We're going to the place where the pilot rolled down the-" He paused and his eyes darted sideways. The stop in speech made the others stop their walking and all turned to look at him. "Move!" He yelled out. Everyone jumped out of the way except Shippo, who had been looking at his toes and was in a complete daze.
Kagome sensed the danger as soon as Sesshoumaru did and the unknown feeling prickled at the base of her skull with urgency. Her feeling was confirmed when he yelled out a warning. She saw a blur coming down from the sky, to swoop down on little Shippo. Immediately something told her that she needed to protect the little guy no matter what happened. Maternal instinct? She wouldn't know. If her insignificant life was on the line even…well, so be it.
She foolishly dove in to the rescue.
The blur materialized into a fist, coming from a gigantic youkai heading at such a speed that she would never reach him in time, but by the size of the fist and at the speed she was going, get crushed along with him. Something deep in her abdomen formed and it was sent pulsing throughout her body, to her limbs, and it filled her to the brim with unimaginable courage and power. This power, made her go fifty times as fast and she reached him in no time, grabbed him and sped off.
She jumped out of the way of the giant fist to fall into a bush, while she felt the magnitude of its force through a ground breaking earthquake and the sound ripped through her. She could only smile, to think she was weak for now, but soon, she would kick that monster's butt from here to Timbuktu…if only she could get up.
She was too tired to hear the amazement of Sesshoumaru, who ran to her rescue, and then realized he was not needed. "Beautifully executed," he murmured his praise.
