Do as Infinity: Chapter two: Shining Collection
Before Kagome could pause to wonder about why Rin and Sesshoumaru had suddenly disappeared from right in front of her face, she was dropped unceremoniously on her rear end by whatever force had spirited her away from her previous location.
Grimacing, she stood up and took in the features of the land around her.
She nearly fainted when she saw that what had been, mere second ago, the skyscrapers and homes of Tokyo, were now trees. A forest thick with foliage in bloom for the summer.
As she reeled from the awe of seeing such a startling familiar sight something rather heavy latched onto her back and knocked her flat on her face.
"Kagome, its you! You're really back!"
"Get ye off the girl and let her gain her bearings."
Kagome pulled herself to her feet and immediately felt tears well up her eyes as she recognized the two people with her.
"What's wrong! Aren't you happy to see us?" Shippou asked worriedly as his friend started crying.
"I believe those be tears of joy. Come along Kagome. There be other people who wish to see ye." Kaede directed as she led the crying girl out of the forest by the arm.
By the time the tree had reached Kaede's village, Kagome's tears had slowed down only to begin anew when she caught sight of a familiar scene.
"I can't believe you! Don't you have any respect at all you letch!" Sango demanded of Miroku before slapping him open palmed and storming into one of the huts and returning with her Hiraikotsu with which she proceeded to chase Miroku around the village yelling about respect and common decency.
"What's she upset about? He's always been a big lecher and she's never gotten this upset before." Kagome asked a few moments later as she sat down to tea in the Kaede's hut with the elderly miko and Shippou while Sango continued to chase Miroku around, both having paused to spare a greeting to her before continuing with their familiar game of cat and mouse.
"Yeah," Shippou began as he nibbled on some strange orange colored candy he'd found in the bottom of Kagome's backpack. "Well, they weren't married before."
"Married? To who? To each other!" Kagome asked shocked
"Aye, for nearly a year now, though not much has changed between them." Kaede answered with a sigh as Sango entered the hut, still fuming about letches and how she should have known better.
"Er-So what else has changed since we last saw each other?"
"Kouga and Ayame had kids!" Shippou answered excitedly "Four of 'em!"
"Really? So he finally returned Ayame's feeling and agreed to take control of the Northern Lands?"
"Eh-Not in those exact terms." Miroku answered as he entered the hut (Sitting clear across the room from one very pissed youkai-exterminator) "He lost a bet with Ayame's grandfather."
"What was the bet?" Sango, Miroku and Kaede exchanged a brief worried glance before wordlessly decided that the truth was best.
"Whether you would use the wish from the Shikon no tama on yourself or on someone else." Sango answered
"Namely Inu Yasha." Miroku added earning glares from the two female residents of the muromachi period.
"Oh," Despite feeling her heart leap several kilometers into the air at the mention of the name, Kagome made sure to keep the excitement out of her voice. "And what did he have to say about that? I-Inu Yasha, I mean."
"We haven't seen him either since the jewel vanished." Shippou said matter-of-factly, still gnawing on the candy from Kagome's bag. "And it's a good thing to. He would have never stopped beating me up if you weren't there to stop him."
"Oh." Kagome said, trying and failing to keep the disappointment out of her voice.
"How did you get back here in the first place, Kagome-chan? I thought the wells powers vanished along with the jewel." Sango said, in a hurry to change the subject
"I ran into Sesshoumaru and Rin. Not the ones from this time but the older ones from mine."
"Well that's logical," Miroku began "If they existed here then Sesshoumaru wouldn't have spent 500 years like the blink of an eye since he's practically immortal as a full-blooded Youkai, but Rin…Wasn't she that little human girl that was always trailing along behind him?"
"I thought she was human but she's obviously not. She's the one who sent me here. She used some weird spell. An energy I've never felt before. Something about Striver I think. She said it and all of a sudden she and Sesshoumaru disappeared and I was here."
"Striver, ye say?" Kaede asked, making speculative noises and rubbing her chin
"Yeah, and said something about Solphied, the Goddess of Time and Beauty and being her servant."
"Solpheid is the name of a goddess from another plane of being. From where some of the most powerful youkai are able to draw power from." Sango supplied "Are you sure that's what she said?"
"Yeah, and something about 'restoring the irregular flow of time' around me. The next thing I knew there was a flash of green light and I ended up in the forest."
"If this be true…Then ye'd best be careful if ye happen to run into that girl again. If she be capable of using that kind of power then she's definitely very powerful." Kaede warned
"But that doesn't explain how she'd be alive in my time."
"If she's using the power of a youkai deity then either she'd become one herself or she's become a priestess of Solpheid. Either way it would have made her immortal and considering her relationship with Sesshoumaru its not all that surprising." Sango answered
"What relationship? He's like a father to her right? I mean he practically raised her from I saw." Kaede, Sango and Miroku exchanged looks again and silently agreed that that was one question of Kagome's that they were not going to go into.
Several hours later and after intense speculation as to how exactly Kagome was to return home with the well out of service, while everyone else in the village had long since gone to sleep, Kagome lay awake in Kaede's hut pondering a new set of questions.
If Sango and Miroku were truly happy with each other; especially given the monk's continuing habit of lechery.
If Kouga and Ayame had managed to work things out between each other and felt the same way about each other or whether they were just obeying Ayame's grandfather.
Just what Rin and Sesshoumaru were to each other since her friends had refused to elaborate on the subject and how Rin had managed to become such a powerful being?
Whether or not her family was worried about her or if they had assumed that she had found some way to get back through the well without the jewel.
And whether or not she would actually be able to get home without it.
But their question that plagued her mind most, one that she kept going back to over and over again in her thoughts.
Just where in the hell had Inu Yasha gotten to?
There hadn't been any word from him and none of their friends had even heard anything about him since Kagome had purified the Shikon no Tama. Since she had vanished with it and wished that everyone who had had their lives altered by the jewel would live the rest of their lives out peacefully.
She hadn't meant to be so damned egalitarian about the whole thing!
In fact, she had meant for her wish to be the same as Kikyou's had been when she had been the jewels protector.
That Inu Yasha would become fully human and would live with her happily ever after for the rest of their mortal live.
Murphy's Law had intervened, however, and the passing thought Kagome had had after Naraku had been defeated and the jewel completed had been taken as her actual wish and was granted by that damn little pink jewel that had wrecked havoc over all of Japan for nearly a thousand years.
And the end, she was the only one who had been exempt from the wish.
The jewel had irrevocably damaged her life by reversing the effect it had on her. Instead of granting her peace, it had brought her two years of depression and sadness by taking the most important person from her.
Shaking the thought from her head and determining not to let herself sink into he hole of despair she had so often found herself in lately, She decided that sleep was going to elude her that night and left Kaede's hut as quietly as possible, heading for a very familiar spot in the forest just off the village.
For a very familiar tree in the forest. One that she connected with the happier times in her life and one she knew could be counted on to cheer her up.
The one she had freed Inu Yasha from just over two years ago.
Upon reaching the tree, Kagome fingered the notch where Kikyou's arrow had pinned the hanyou in a death-like sleep and the arrow the she, being the miko's reincarnation had been able to pull out.
Suddenly Kagome remembered everyday she had spent in the segoku-jidai with Inu Yasha and their friends.
All the good times and bad.
Like when Miyouga had run away from his bride to be and when Hachi, pretending the Miroku, had convinced several villages that the monk was even more of a pervert than he actually was and had nearly gotten him arrested for it.(1)
She remembered when Urasue had stolen Kikyou's bones and had brought the miko bought to life, intensifying the already complicated love-triangle between the two incarnations and Inu Yasha.
She remembered every struggle with Sesshoumaru for the Tetsusaiga and later with Naraku for the jewel shards as well as their very live.
The memories overwhelmed her so much that she forgot her earlier vow and begun to cry again before quickly stifling her tear.
Youkai tended to be attracted to human tears, viewing them as a sign of weak and easy prey.
She was too late as it turned out.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up as she sensed a demonic aura behind her.
Turning around slowly she came face to face with another familiar sight.
"Ah, I know you. You're the little wench who made to sacred jewel disappear! I've been waiting to pay you back for that for quite a while!" Kagome's feet were frozen to the ground in fear as the centipede youkai reared up on its 50 hind legs and advanced toward her.
Collapsing against the tree, Kagome tried to calm down and force herself to run away where Sango and Miroku could easily dispose of the demon.
The frantic distress signals to that she sent to her legs had no effect and Kagome resigned herself to death. Thankful at least that she would be wearing clean underwear when the villagers found her mangled half eaten body.
She felt her consciousness slipping away with that last thought as her would-be murderer crawled faster and closer.
The last thing she saw and heard, as the youkai was less than a foot away, before the darkness claimed her, was a clang of steel and the flutter of a fire-red kimono.
(1)A/N: I think that's what happened. Entirely sure.
Author's Notes: Wow, This is taking me entirely too long to type up. I've already handwritten up to chapter 28 and I'm just typing up #2. I've really got to speed things up…Or just pay Darkdragonwriter to type it…