Chapter Five

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Author's Notes: I've a new blog at :-)

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Hanako was ... eerie ... Kagome decided, watching the other slayer covertly.

Sometimes, she wondered if Sango hadn't been a Slayer in the supernatural sense, not just the professional sense. It would have explained a lot about her. And it would have been suitably ironic, and Kagome was convinced that the gods of fate were passionately in love with irony.

Hanako didn't look completely like Sango -- she was taller and indefinably healthier, for one. Better nutrition and health care would easily explain the physical differences between the two even if they'd been identical twins, which they weren't.

The young slayer wore her hair differently from Sango too; it was pulled back into a tight french braid to the nape of her neck, then allowed to flow free in a ponytail past her shoulders. But her eyes were the same, as was the way she moved, and the way she smiled. Kagome had known from the moment she'd seen the other girl walk through this door who her soul had once been.

But even though the resemblance was utterly striking they weren't the same. That had been obvious the first time Hanako had giggled -- because Sango had never giggled like that. Had Inuyasha experienced the same mental whiplash with her own similarities to Kikyo? Kagome wondered.

This was a Sango who'd never known the loss of all her friends, family, village. Sango's entire world had been wiped out by Naraku, except for Kohaku, who'd been a world of tragedy all his own. This was a Sango who'd grown up in Kyoto in an ordinary neighborhood in the modern world and who'd become a Slayer only through a twist of fate. Her life had been good, even inoffensive, until relatively recently.

But she has a fate that was probably preordained. Some souls are just meant to save the world, repeatedly. We're born for it. We can't escape it. It is who and what we are.

"So how long have you been in America?" Sango asked -- or, rather, Hanako, Kagome reminded herself, and she knew sooner or later she was going to screw the names up and call this not-Sango girl by the wrong name eventually.

"About three and a half years." She followed Buffy and Xander down the steps to the hotel's basement -- where she was unsurprised to find a gymnasium set up, complete with a large open area for combat training, and various training weapons hung on the walls. Spike had mentioned to her that the Watcher's Council was renting space from Angel for training and boarding of Slayers for an LA branch of Slayer School. The school was just getting started.

"Your English sounds very good."

"Yours isn't bad," Kagome said, politely. Hanako's English was actually very rough; Kagome got the feeling it was entirely based on what she'd learned in school. "You'll learn more pretty quickly. Though I warn you, Buffy kinda uses a lot of slang, it's hard to understand her sometimes. And Spike -- have you met Spike yet?"

Hanako shook her head, a negative.

"Spike uses a whole different set of slang because he's from Britain. Though he's good about explaining if you ask him. You'll like Spike -- he's a vampire, but he's a good vampire. He's got a soul." Kagome realized she was babbling, mostly because Hanako made her nervous, and she trailed off and grinned apologetically. "Sorry, I talk a lot."

"It's okay," Hanako said, as Buffy directed everyone to sit on the floor. "It's good to actually talk to someone. The only other person here who speaks any Japanese is Andrew, and he's kindof a geek. Sweet boy, but the conversation tends to be limited to his interests, if you know what I mean."

Kagome snorted agreement. "I know!" She'd run into Andrew regularly while in the company of Spike. The last time had been at Take Two, and a mildly drunken Andrew had expounded on the merits of Dragonball Z for at least an hour, ignoring her polite hints and Spike's not-so-polite requests to change the subject. She'd finally succeeded in getting him directed to another topic, but only by bringing up Star Wars.

"So do you have a boyfriend?" Hanako asked.

Kagome held her hand up, displaying her engagement ring. "Yeah. Fiancé. Uh, I'll warn you, he's half-demon and he's got some history with the Slayers. There's some very bad feelings there. I hope you'll give him a chance; he's a good guy, just a bit rough around the edges ..."

"Half-demon?" Hanako prompted, sounding intrigued.

"Inu-youkai hanyou," she said, then added, "Most of our adventures were written down by Kaede, as dictated by Inuyasha and Miroku," she hesitated half a second, "and by Sango. I've got a copy of her journal if you want to read it. At any rate, you'll meet Inuyasha in a little bit."

Should I tell her who I think she is? Kagome wondered, then decided, No. I can personally attest to how hard it is to wonder if people see you as you or if they see you as a substitute for someone very dear and very long dead.

Kagome asked curiously, "Do you have a boyfriend?"

"Nah," Hanako shook her head. "Had a guy in Japan, but we broke up when the Slayers drafted me. He couldn't deal."

I wonder where Miroku is, if his soul is reincarnated also, Kagome thought, mournfully. Miroku could've dealt. Miroku would've followed her, with good cheer. But there wasn't any guarantee that this incarnation of Sango would ever find Miroku, or that Miroku was even alive. Though she'd certainly keep an eye out for a familiar face, a gentle voice, and a slyly lecherous hand and promptly play matchmaker if she found him!

Buffy cleared her throat, and Kagome realized, to her embarrassment, that she and Hanako had been talking loudly in Japanese when everyone else had fallen silent. She glanced around the room, noting that there were eight new Slayers besides her and Hanako, plus Andrew, Spike, Angel, and Xander. And Willow, who was just walking in the door and who wasn't dressed for LA summer weather. The witch had on a heavy sweater and gloves and a jacket over one arm.

"Kagome, will you translate for Hanako? I want to make sure she understands this," Buffy requested.

"Sure ..."

At that moment, there was a familiar prip! from the open doorway that led to the stairs. Kirara bounded into the room and then stopped short, eyes gone wider than usual. She stood motionless, the absolute center of everyone's attention, eyes fixed on Hanako.

Yeah, that clinches it ... Kagome thought, with amusement. If she'd had any doubts about Hanako's past life, Kirara's reaction dispelled them.

The cat opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. No noise came out, not even the tiniest of meows. Suddenly, she sat down, cocked a back leg up, and started licking it. Her pose said, I wasn't really surprised, not at all.

"That's Kirara," Kagome said, for the benefit of the rest of the room. "She fights with Inuyasha and I."

"Against what, mice?" One of the new slayers inquired, with a laugh. Kagome glanced over, noting she was a brunette with anglo features and a silver ball piercing her upper lip. New, Kagome diagnosed, Not familiar with demons.

Spike said dryly, "Rodents of unusual size, maybe."

Andrew snickered. Buffy rolled her eyes. Xander choked out a laugh. By their responses, Kagome assumed Spike had told them what Kirara turned into; Spike had seen the cat up close and personal a few times. He'd been duly impressed.

However, she got the feeling she'd just missed a Western cultural reference -- she spoke the language well enough to get by after three years here, but the culture was something else. Sometimes, things that Americans did and said just left her baffled. For that matter, she'd missed a sizable chunk of general pop culture by living in the Feudal era for so long ... She looked at Hanako and shrugged and said in Japanese, "He said against 'unusually big rodents' ... don't ask me why that was funny ... Kirara's a neko-youkai and she can transform into a cat the size of a small horse."

"She's cute," Hanako said, dubiously.

"C'mere, Kirara, I think Buffy has a lecture to give ..." Kagome patted the floor, hoping Kirara would cooperate.

Kirara stood up, padded over, and stood in front of Hanako for a long moment before abruptly hopping into her lap. Hanako hesitantly scratched the cat's ears, and Kirara contentedly curled up, all three tails over her nose, purring happily.

"She likes you," Kagome said, for Hanako's benefit, because Hanako was clearly nervous. "She'd never hurt you."

"So. Any more interruptions?" Buffy inquired, a bit acidly. Kagome winced at the tone. "No? Good. I'm turning the floor over to Andrew."

Kagome mentally groaned. And I'm supposed to translate him for Hanako? I don't even understand him when he speaks Japanese. Right. Thanks, Buffy.

The boy -- she couldn't think of him as anything other than an overgrown boy -- stood up. It amused Kagome to glance at the other Slayers, most of whom were very new and had never met Andrew before. He was currently wearing tight jeans, a silk shirt, and a duster that was very obviously styled on Spike's.

In truth, the guy wasn't actually bad looking. The jeans fit snugly over muscular legs; he did work out, and she could see under that silk shirt that he had quite a bit of definition and not much body fat. He moved like he'd had some combat training as well; that was standard for Buffy's non-Slayer people, so she supposed he could fight if he was forced into it. She distinctly remembered him squeaking and hiding in the bathroom when Inuyasha had gone full youkai in front of him, though -- and Inuyasha had been desperately sick at the time, and she'd promptly sat him, and there had been two Slayers, Spike, and Willow in the room.

Coward, Kagome diagnosed.

But the other Slayers were going Yum, mostly, at this point. Because Andrew, if you didn't know him, was a yum sort of guy.

She glanced again at them. Most were staring at him, as she'd assumed. One, the brunette with the pierced lip, glanced covertly at Buffy. And then did it again.

Hmmm, Kagome thought, smiling to herself. Not Buffy, woman, but you might try that look on the red-haired witch and see where it gets you. Spike says Willow's between girlfriends at the moment.

"So. I'm Andrew and you guys are all Slayers, which, as you know, means you are uber-powerful hot babes who kick demon butt." Andrew grinned at them.

"What did he say?" Hanako whispered.

"Just that he thinks we're hot," Kagome said, in Japanese, with a roll of her eyes.

"Oh."

"I'm here to tell you about the worst enemy we have faced since this organization was founded. He is a General under Queen Mab, who we cannot touch because she does not live in this plain of existence and may no longer be living; none know. Our villain is a foul and desperate creature. Know him as fey or faery or sidhe, he is the offspring of a baoine sidhe and a mortal man, and by dint of great vile effort and treachery he has risen through the ranks of the unseelie forces for centuries until he has reached the pinnacle of his success and now he is a threat to us, to those we love, and to the whole world. In short, he's an apocalypse in the making. His name is Torin and we have come to despise him."

Kagome considered that speech, then summed it up for Hanako, "Bad guy's name is Torin. He's a hanyou cross between a banshee and a mortal man and he's got power."

"Two weeks ago, we thought to destroy him and sent two hundred of our best and brightest against his forces. A pitched battle was waged beneath the city streets of New York; we lost half our girls, and many more were wounded. Buffy herself took a blow from the foul sword of our fouler enemy ..."

Buffy cut him off suddenly. "Torin surprised us. We weren't expecting him to have hellhounds or turok-han, and he's got both. I came this close to killing the bastard anyway, but one of the damned hounds got me from behind. He tried to take my head off with his sword, but Spike hit him with a axe in the back and the blow got me in the arm instead. It'll heal. Torin was wounded, but our intelligence says he lived."

Since Kagome thought that Andrew was being too flippant about that many deaths, she wasn't surprised by Buffy's reaction, or the defensive tone in her words. Both Buffy and Andrew were undoubtedly in emotional agony of this -- and both were trying hard to conceal it from those outside their inner circle. Kagome wondered what Buffy's meetings with her Scoobies were like right now ...

Buffy gestured at her arm in its sling, grimly. "Girls, ninety-seven of us were killed that day. But we stopped Torin from opening a Hellmouth under New York City and beat him into retreat, back into the shadowy dimensions where he lives." She bit her lip for a moment, and Kagome finally saw anguish in the older Slayer's eyes. "I led those girls to their deaths. I cannot promise that it won't happen again, either. Some of you may die. Some of you know what we fight against already ..." Buffy glanced at Kagome. " ... some of you are new. This is for real. This is a real war, against real and true evil, and I've been fighting it since I was fifteen years old."

Silence, from the girls. Kagome took the brief break to explain the dialogue to Hanako, summing it up with, "Buffy pointed out we could get killed."

"I know," Hanako said, very quietly. "I've seen ..." she trailed off, and Kagome wondered what this alter-Sango had seen or had done that had brought her to the attention of the Slayers. Something bad, by the sudden dark look in her eyes.

Kirara pripped. Hanako absently scratched the cat's ears, head bowed.

Andrew cleared his throat. "Anyway, girls, this is what we found when we reached Torin's inner sanctum. They fled before us, into retreat but not defeat ..."

He had glossy 8X10 photos in his hands. He handed the stack to Kagome, who froze in horror even as her stomach flipped over with nausea.

Children. Dead children. Splayed out in a circle, tied to the ground then tortured to death, around the goat's head seal of a hellmouth.

"The ceremony they were doing wasn't completed," Buffy said, voice very tight and controlled, "We got there in time to stop them, and to temporarily close what they tried to open, but not in time to save the kids. Or we'd have much, much bigger problems. Kagome, one of the first things I want you to do for us is to get rid of that seal like you did here. I'll be sending you to New York with Wil tomorrow to deal with it."

"Of course," Kagome said. She would go, even though she remembered very little of erasing the last seal -- she'd done it with the last strength of her dying body as her life's blood poured out. She supposed she'd figure it out when she got there.

The next picture in the stack was of symbols carved -- or perhaps burned -- into the back of a dead little boy. Hanako said tightly, in Japanese, "Are these real?"

"Yeah." She handed the first two pictures to Hanako, who hastily passed them on to the next girl. "They're real ... oh, shit ... these are real pictures, Hanako-san. They really happened."

"I want to kill this bastard!" Hanako hissed in English, managing that much of the language for Buffy's benefit. Her eyes narrowed into angry slits.

"Welcome to the club," Buffy said, with a dark smile that held quite a bit of predatory threat and no humor. "We want this guy dead. I haven't wanted a big bad dead like this in several years."

Spike snorted, apparently at some shared memory.

"This one's gotten personal. Torin's toast. He just doesn't know it yet." Buffy flipped her blond hair over her shoulders.

"What's an Unseelie want with a Hellmouth?" Kagome asked, passing the rest of the stack of photos to Hanako. She'd seen enough to know she would help with utter and righteous rage pushing her on, and she didn't need to look at anymore. She'd have nightmares enough as it was.

The photos had been in full color and the blood and organs were very, very bright. Memories of past battlefields rose, and Kagome could almost smell the meaty scent of the gore, the foul odor of shit, the tang of bile, all coating the inside of her nose with a stench so strong she could taste it... She swallowed back an urge to vomit, and rose, before Buffy could answer, and said, "Excuse me, I think I need some air ..."

Buffy nodded understanding and nobody tried to discourage her from leaving. Children. He killed children.

She'd seen dead children before. Naraku. This is another Naraku.

Up the stairs and in the lobby, it was growing dark and Inuyasha wasn't yet back with the pizzas. However, Shippou was standing in the lobby, back to her, watching the door. He probably brought Kirara with him, Kagome realized.

"You can come downstairs, you know. Buffy's briefing us on the bad guys." The nausea faded as she focused on the welcome presence of a friend.

He glanced over his shoulder at her. "Something's wrong."

"What?" She followed his gaze. Outside, she could see nothing but normal city things -- cars, pedestrians, other buildings. It was dark; perhaps something was lurking in the shadows.

"I've been watching for maybe ten minutes. Something's wrong." Shippou said. "Can't you feel it?"

She closed her eyes and extended her miko senses. She could feel Shippou next to her -- and he was blindingly powerful, far more so than had been as a child in the Feudal era. She'd never seen him in a serious fight, but had a strong inkling he could more than hold his own. Shippou was full youkai, full grown, and had been raised by Inuyasha, Sango, Miroku and Kaede. Yeah. He could fight. If he had to.

The Slayers, and Spike and Angel, and Willow were almost directly beneath them in the basement.

And ... a growing power. It was faint, and she never would have felt it if Shippou hadn't said something.

"What is it?" Kagome said. "Inuyasha and I dealt with a couple Unseelie earlier."

"I don't know. I've been trying to figure it out." Shippou's hand rested on her shoulder, a protective gesture. Brotherly. He was worried for her safety, because whatever was coming would almost certainly be dangerous. That worry scared her. He added, "It's from deep within the earth, can you feel it?"

No, she couldn't -- she wasn't that sensitive. She shook her head.

"Where's Inuyasha?" He asked, bluntly.

"Getting pizza. He should be back soon."

"Call him and tell him to hurry." Shippou flashed her a grin that displayed slightly pointed canines. "I'm hungry."

She laughed, but pulled her cell phone out, because she knew what he really meant -- that Inuyasha's claws might be needed. He picked up on the second ring, and said, "Oi, woman, I'm coming, I'm coming!"

"Yeah, yeah, we're starving ..." The banter slipped easily from her lips.

Shippou grabbed her cell phone from her hand, apparently impatient with her for not coming directly to the point. He was more worried than he was letting on, she realized. That sobered her. He said shortly, "Inuyasha, it's me. There's trouble brewing."

She didn't hear his response, but Shippou grinned. "No, not the Slayers. Something else. Something massive. Somebody's messing with some big power. Can't you feel it?"

No, Inuyasha couldn't; he was less aware than Kagome herself was to power and magic. Shippou snorted a laugh at whatever Inuyasha had said, and grinned, and responded, "Yes, bring the pizzas. A good fight always makes me hungry ..."

It was then that the world outside the windows disappeared. She heard a burst of static from the phone at Shippou's ear; he hastily snapped it shut, thrust it at her, and put himself protectively between her and the glass doors. The city visible outside was simply gone ... it had been replaced by a churning black nothingness, a void.

The lights went out.

Cries of surprise floated up from the basement. It was utterly pitch black. Kagome snapped her cell phone back open, and the green light revealed that Shippou had moved with silent, deadly speed to within a few feet of the doorway.

She followed, casting the light from her phone towards the door. The glass reflected some back, revealing ghostly images of her own frightened face, and Shippou's worried one. She could sense the power now -- it swirled around the building with frightening intensity. What radiated through the negligible barrier of that glass was vile evil. She could see swirls of insubstantial black fog curling against the glass, seeking a way in. Tendrils crawled around the cracks around the door, then dissipated in the clearer air inside.

"Miasma?" She asked, worried.

"Of some kind." Shippou's voice was loud in the dark silence. He sniffed. "It's not poisonous."

That was a relief. "You think this is the Unseelie?"

"It's a youkai attack of some kind," Shippou reached out and opened the door, to her surprise. The hair rose on the back of her neck as he stepped into that dense black fog. She reached out and grabbed the door as he walked further into the darkness -- her cell phone light was dim, and within a couple of strides she couldn't see him at all.

"Shippou?"

There was a sizzling pop and he reappeared, shaking his hand. "Thought so. There's a barrier." Her light illuminated his grin. "Bet you two slices of pepperoni that Inuyasha has it down in under five minutes."

"No bet, fox-boy," she was relieved when he stepped back inside. And he was right about Inuyasha and barriers.

"Kagome!" Buffy appeared, with the rest of the people following her close. They had a couple of flashlights; Spike cast his all around the room, obviously looking for threats lurking in the shadows. "You okay?"

"Yeah, fine. Buffy, this is Shippou ..." She indicated the kitsune with a nod. Buffy glanced briefly at him, then gave him a longer look when her flashlight illuminated his fox tail.

Shippou made a suddenly strangled noise. He'd seen Hanako when Spike's light had flickered over her. Under his breath, just loud enough for Kagome to hear, he muttered, "Ah, shit. Not her again."