Okay, so I know it's been forever, and some of you are probably pretty annoyed with me, but here's a new chapter so maybe you don't have to be. The problem is I have about five different options of which way I could take this and this is the one I've finally settled on. Now if any of you are disapointed with the turn or dislike it be sure to tell me, because if enough people dislike I can always take it down and try another twist on the plotline okay? So I'm asking for opinions, and I'll try to get the next chapter up a lot sooner than I got this one.
Her breath left her in heavy puffs as she walked away, trying to decide if she was more angry with Yusuke or with herself. She really needed to start keeping better tabs on herself. One more near slip and they were going to find out about everything she was trying to keep concealed. And how would she explain everything then? Oh I just fell down a well and… yeah that one always worked out well. Sighing Kagome plunged her hand into her pocket smiling a little when her fingers brushed against the small plaque her grandfather had given her years before with a fake jewel attached. Her fingertips drifted over the engraved surface to the thin line connected, pausing for a moment to enjoy the smooth fibers of the string for a second before progressing to where the jewel would be. She shook her head and began her mental lecture. All this time and she hadn't thought to check for it, some guardian she was turning out to be, too worried about herself to even think about the jewel that they'd barely managed to get back, a jewel that could still cause any number of devastating disasters. She pinched the string between her thumb and pointer finger, loving the soft carefully woven strands she'd replaced her grandfather's string with when it had broken in her first attempt to replace the fake jewel with the real one. It had only taken a few after that for her to succeed. Sudden relief washing through her Kagome stopped in the ring of light provided by a street lamp and pulled the keychain from her pocket, wondering why she'd always thought it was so much heavier.
Her eyes widened as they examined the frayed end of the string and the nothing hanging from it.
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He would have to do this quickly, the emergency personnel may have come and gone, but the investigators would be returning to do their jobs any time and that left him with only a small amount of time to do his own search of the demolished room to try to figure out exactly what had happened here.
He stooped to examine the drops of blood staining the carpet, barely able to pick out the smell of it enough to be able to tell it was a demon's, as far as he could tell his hopes had been realized and she at least had left this room unharmed. He couldn't help a tinge of relief as he stood, eyes scanning the rubble quickly as he did so, ears searching for anyone approaching. From what he could see Hiei was likely responsible for the wall, though he would probably never tell him why he'd done it. Whatever Hiei's connection to Kagome was it wasn't one he had been able to figure out yet, and Hiei wasn't about to explain himself about anything even to his friends, and he considered the use of the term loose. And he wasn't sure he wanted to hear what Kagome might tell him, the truth or more likely, the lie she would tell to keep it hidden.
His sharp eyes swept across the room quickly as he attempted to discern anything of importance among the scattered debris, but they found nothing but pieces of crumbling sheetrock still clinging to tattered wallpaper strewn across the carpet with the dully sparkling chunks of splinters of glass. Absently he moved toward the broken out window, listening to the engines in the distance, they would be arriving sooner than he'd expected. Sighing a little Kurama turned back to the room, letting his eyes sweep over it again in one final, nearly desperate search for clues. He wasn't sure exactly what he'd been expecting to find, truthfully he should have known that there would be nothing there, no taped recording of what had happened in the room earlier, no written transcription of whatever conversations might have been held. Actually searching the room had yielded him no new information at all.
He turned to the door preparing to leave only to be frozen in place as something sparkled at him out of the far corner, a glittering in the room's darkest space. With little hesitance he moved toward it, well aware of the fact that more investigators would be coming rapidly closer to the building he stood in, but also knowing that he could easily evade them if it came to that, which he doubted it would. There was something different about the glint meeting his eyes from this corner, it wasn't like the fragments of glass strewn across the floor, this was a softer light somehow and he could have been mistaken, he was sure he probably was, but he almost detected a pinkish tinge to the reflected light. Frowning a little to himself Kurama approached the corner, bending down a little as he twisted to allow the light past him into the darkened corner.
The small orb had sunk nearly half way into the tall, thick carpet fibers, leaving less than a third of its curved upper surface exposed to the room. He knew it almost instantly from the small crevice marring the glass smooth surface, the tiny crease in it darkened to a thin line of brownish red that still held a slight scent of blood, probably from where she'd cut her finger only a week ago. Had it only been that long? He could have sworn that Kagome had been around far longer than that. Kagome would definitely miss the stone, it seemed to mean a great deal to her, even if it was broken. The smooth surface was warm against his fingers as the tips brushed it and the tiny globe almost seemed to throb as it rolled into his palm. Kurama considered it closely for a moment. The glass in the center was clouded with a tint of pink and white that almost seemed to swirl inside the space, the colors almost seeming to shift and sparkle. He could nearly feel energy thrumming inside of it, radiating out as if into his arm, and he wasn't sure he liked it. This was certainly an odd little keepsake that she'd been carrying around. While he wanted to stare at it for a moment, consider the treasure he'd just discovered Kurama knew that he didn't have much longer to be standing around, already he could hear footsteps on the stairs at the end of the hall. He slipped through the door and rushed in the opposite direction, darting into the staircase at the far end of the hall just as the door opened allowing several men to come strolling into the hallway. Kurama watched them for a moment before smiling to himself as he turned to go down the stairs, congratulating himself on a painless and effortless escape.
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Panic froze her in place as she stared at the dangling keychain and the string fluttering lightly in the wind that clawed at her with icy fingers.
Kagome wanted to hit her knees as she continued to stare helplessly at the broken key chain. She could feel her heartbeat rising, her veins wanting to burst in response to the equally rising pressure. Her muscles tensed instinctively, holding her rigidly in place as the keychain slipped from her fingers and clattered loudly on the floor. She forced herself into motion suddenly; digging frantically into her pockets, hoping that the string had snapped as she tried to remove it, that the jewel would be sitting harmlessly in her pocket, but as usual luck wasn't on her side. She repeated the actions, searching her pockets again and again only to continually run her fingers across the seams holding them together and nothing else.
She forced her brain to slow, silencing the hysterical thoughts rushing through her mind as she tried to steer them toward more useful pursuits. How long had the stone been gone? It couldn't have been long. Sesshomaru had given it back to her in the hotel room just after his questioning had started, so she had to have lost it between there and here. It was nothing to panic about; she would just walk back and find where she'd dropped it. It had probably been when she'd bumped into Yusuke. Yeah it must have fallen out when she'd hit the ground. Clinging to that reassuring thought Kagome turned to go back in search of the jewel, trying to steady herself enough to be able to sense the jewel wherever it had bounced or rolled away to. But it didn't seem to be anywhere near her. She may have been out of practice searching for the jewel, but it seemed to be flitting around the edges of her awareness, and no matter how she tried she couldn't seem t o figure out exactly where it was. That was when it vanished entirely.
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There was something strange about this little decoration of hers. He'd assumed that he'd imagined the waves of energy that seemed to radiate from it, but the longer he held the thing the stronger that energy seemed to become. It was as if it was trying to absorb his energy, or force him to absorb the power it seemed to be giving off, he wasn't entirely certain which and it was somewhat disturbing to him. At first he'd assumed that it might have absorbed some of Kagome's energy, it was a treasured object of hers, and there was a chance that she'd unwittingly infused the jewel with her own spiritual energy over the time she'd been carrying it, but he'd felt her spiritual energy when it spiked, and this seemed different.
He watched the jewel closely as it sparkled half-heartedly in his palm, trying to see the waves of energy he could feel slowly peeling off of it. He couldn't make out anything but the reflected light being bent by the orb and reflected off of its glinting surface. He allowed his own energy to spike a little in an attempt to replace hers with his own, but as soon as he suppressed the force again the fractured crystal seemed to return to precisely the way it had been. Absently he tucked the item back into his pocket, deciding to wait for the proper moment to return it to her, Kagome surely would have missed it by now, but he wouldn't be able to return it to her directly without her possibly figuring out that he'd been following her, if she had known she had it with her in that room and he handed it to her she would have known he had been there as well.
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Questioning Hiei had been pointless. The fire demon had only scoffed at him a few times, rolled his eyes once and then disappeared before actually saying anything. Yusuke was still grumbling as he walked down the sidewalk toward home, hoping that Kagome had actually gone home this time like she had seemed to be going. He didn't think he could handle another couple hours trying to find her. He was definitely going to have to watch her closer in the future, she had a tendency to disappear and worry most of them half to death. He wasn't even sure how he was going to find Kurama and tell him that she was safe and that he could stop looking. He figured he'd worry about that later, for now he was just planning on going home, maybe yelling at Kagome for a while, or apologizing for yelling at her, whichever mood suited him when he got there now that she should be safe, and then going to bed. Sleep certainly sounded like a great idea.
He rounded a corner headed for the straightaway that would lead to the building, looked up and froze. "Kagome…?" She was standing on the sidewalk with her back to him, staring at that stupid keychain of hers on the ground intently. He moved toward her, "Hey Kagome…" She remained stiff, her eyes only half open and staring unblinking at the ground. Absently Yusuke bent down, gathering the tag and string from by her foot and held it out, "Here, looks like you'll have to get a new one…"
"That's impossible…"
"I thought you're grandpa had boxes full of them…"
"Oh…" She blinked, "He used to, but they're all gone now, that was the last one…"
"That's too bad. Maybe it'll still turn up somewhere." He shrugged one shoulder, saw the way her eyes narrowed and her brows squished together, "We'll look tomorrow okay, let's just get going…"
"Yeah… sure…" She almost didn't follow him when he walked away, but something was interfering with her ability to sense the jewel and standing around wasn't going to do her any good. Kagome found herself chasing her thoughts as she walked silently. What had happened to the jewel? If she'd just dropped it why couldn't she sense it? Had Sesshomaru taken it maybe? But why would he, even in the feudal era he'd had no interest in the thing, and why would he have given it back to her if he was just going to steal it again? She knew that she didn't know Sesshomaru very well, but that didn't seem like his style. She hadn't been around anyone else who knew what the jewel was, or that she still had it, she hadn't even told Hiei that the jewel was still with her, she told him that she'd gathered it up and Inuyasha thought she did, but never confirmed it, and she definitely didn't want to think that the only friend she'd made here that knew about her adventures in the past would betray her like that. She couldn't think it. Hiei wouldn't have taken it from her like that, she was sure. But then where was it? Why couldn't she sense it? And so the loop began again.
Before she realized it Kagome was up the stairs, and on the third or fourth rotation of her thoughts as she followed Yusuke into the apartment, her eyes still on the ground, her brain frantically searching for any explanation for where the jewel could be.
"Kagome…" She turned toward the female voice only to pause as Keiko held out Yusuke's phone to her, "It's your mother…"
She was on auto-pilot as she walked over to the girl and accepted the receiver, bringing it to her ear, "Mom…?"
"Kagome thank goodness…" her mother's panicked tone was all it took to snap Kagome into reality, she couldn't even ask what was wrong before the world turned sideways and her stomach twisted as the bottom dropped out of it, "Sota's missing…"