Chapter Three:

Dangling on the Edge

"Inu-Yasha, are you saying that you honestly believe us to have been transported forward to Lady Kagome's time?"

He gestured to the well house, "How fast do you think the villagers can build a thing like this, Monk? Especially with us sitting at the bottom of the well."

"But we've never been able to use the Bone-Eater's Well," Sango said softly, "so why and how can we now?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know? I don't even know how they got here." Inu-Yasha exclaimed as he pointed to a still-unconscious pile that consisted of Ginta and Hakkaku — in wolf form — Kouga, Shippo, Rin, and even Jaken… albeit as a toad. Sesshomaru was nowhere to be seen.

Miroku shrugged, "At least one good thing has come of this."

"And what's that?"

"They're all human," the monk said as he gestured to the lack of pointy ears and tails on the youkai, "somehow, the well not only transported us here, but turned our youkai companions to humans."

Inu-Yasha smirked, "Feh, wish that bastard Sesshomaru were here. I'd cut his other damn arm off. His head, too, while I was at it."

"Inu-Yasha, don't you think it would be wise to alert Lady Kagome of our presence? She may wish to know that she has more company than usual."

"All right, but you're all coming with me so you don't touch anything. Kirara can watch the fleabags." He grumbled as Kirara—now an actual single-tailed cat—meowed and sat guard next to the still-sleeping wolves, Shippo, and Rin.

Grumbling over how it was always up to him to do things and about the overall shoddiness of the situation, Inu-Yasha directed them to follow him as they headed out of the well-house and towards Kagome's place, hoping someone was there to help them.

Five minutes later…

Stepping into the house, the first thing Inu-they heard was music. It was soft, gentle, like a breeze rustling the trees of the Goshinboku, that cursed tree to which Inu-Yasha been pinned by the woman of Kagome's previous life, the priestess Kikyo.

Thank the Gods she hadn't come here too.

Heading to the living room where the music came from, he tugged the others to keep up and stopped in the doorway, surprised by the sight that greeted him.

Kagome sat straddling the windowsill with her back toward them, clad in a pair of weird blue hakama and a small blue shirt. Her dark hair was pulled in a high bun, two strands framing her face like twin calligraphic strokes. On both wrists she wore silver bracelets, and in her left hand she held what looked to be an instrument, black in color with a wide base, narrow neck, and four strings across a dark fingerboard. In her right hand she held a matching black stick with cream-colored hairs that she drew back and forth across the strings of the black instrument. The music that resulted was beautiful, and they were all three mesmerized by the movements of her fingers to create the different notes.

And then she sang.

The song itself was gorgeous, but the tonality was heavy, overflowing with sadness and the feeling of being confined. Inu-Yasha knew the feeling all-too well to mistake it for anything else. The words were of no language he'd ever heard, but it was enjoyable, for the most part. The thing that made him wonder was what had happened to Kagome to make her feel the emotions portrayed in this song? And if she could play and sing so well, why hadn't she ever done so for them on their long trips?

She definitely had some answering to do. Test, huh? If she just wanted to get away to play music, why hadn't she just told him so? It wasn't like her to lie about why she was going home, so what was the reason for doing so now?

Still, she was playing so nicely that neither he, nor Sango or MIroku wanted to stop her. The music was like a spell that struck its victim motionless, too captivated to do anything other than listen.

She stopped then, the song trailing off on what seemed like a cliffhanger. Setting the strange instrument across her lap, Kagome frowned as she took a pencil from behind her left ear and began writing something down on a piece of paper held down by her right leg. She finished, frowned again, erased what she'd just written, and began grumbling as she wrote something else, seemingly satisfied with these new notations.

Not wanting to bother her and just wanting to listen to more music, Inu-Yasha forced himself to be the harbinger of doom as he stepped forward into the room and cleared his throat, "Hey, you got a minute?"

She turned to look at him calmly, as though she'd known of his presence all along, "Hm? What?"

"I asked you if you had a minute. We need to talk."

"We do?" She asked as she propped the instrument up on her left knee and held it by the neck, he guessed she was imagining her hands around his own neck, "Funny, I'd like to think I'd know if I needed to talk to someone. Well, you're here, so what do we need to talk about?"

"You don't see anything wrong with this?" He asked as he gestured to Miroku, Sango, and himself.

She looked at them each in turn, examining them carefully, and then shaking her head, "Hm, nope. Though I will ask this: what are you all dressed up for? Is there a festival going on today that I somehow didn't know about and am missing out on?"

"Sama? Are you in here?" Called a voice as a red-haired man stepped in with a relieved look on his face, "Ah there you are, I wondered where you'd wandered off to."

"Wander? I didn't 'wander' anywhere; I've been in the same place for the past two hours." She muttered as she grabbed her pages of paper, hopped down from the sill, and stood with an air of — confidence? — to face the taller man.

Inu-Yasha frowned at that. Kagome never stood like that… unless she were jabbing his chest with her finger before telling him to 'sit'. Sure, he knew she had other clothes, but she'd never shown her stomach before and he'd rarely seen her wear jewelry. Her voice seemed different, too, now that he thought about it… and had her ears always been pierced?

"Whether you wandered or not, Raven needs you to check out the keyboard. Says he thinks something's wrong with it."

"I'll get to you in a minute, just as soon as I'm done dealing with these folks over here," she said as she transferred the stick to her left hand and gestured to the hanyou-turned-human, the monk, and the demon slayer, "did you schedule this meeting and didn't tell me? Said they needed to talk to me and I can't figure out what it's about and it's nagging me."

He shook his head, "Nope, haven't the slightest idea who they are. I don't schedule your appointments anymore, remember? You left that to Raven."

"I did? Really? Oh! Now I remember, that's right, I did. You kept making all those x-rated phone calls."

"They called me!"

"Tell that to my phone bill," she grumbled as she put the instrument and stick in its case and shut the lid, "now then, back to business. So who are you people anyway? You look like choreographers, and, if you are, then I don't think we need to spend anymore time together because I already have one. Good day to you."

Miroku stepped forward then, a quizzical look on his face, "You mean you don't recognize us?"

She looked over at him over her shoulder, "Can't recognize someone I don't know."

The monk looked perplexed, looking the strange young woman over and then seeing a chair in the corner of the room, "If I could ask for just another moment of your time to ask you one more question?"

"Sure." She shrugged, instrument case in hand.

"Tell me," Miroku began as he pointed to the chair, "what do you do on a chair?"

The red-haired man smirked, "I could think of a few things…"

"He wasn't asking you," she half-snapped before looking from MIroku to the chair and back again, "on a chair? I don't know… sit on it?"

There was an expectant pause between the five of them and it was Sango who commented, "Nothing happened."

"Do you think the well neutralized the beads?" Miroku asked as he looked at the young woman and back to Inu-Yasha's necklace.

Inu-Yasha came over his feeling of joy at the 's'-word not working, a frown working its way onto his face, "Where's Kagome?"

The woman seemed to become defensive, though she didn't even move, "What do you want with Kagome-chan?"

"So you know her?" Inu-Yasha pressed.

She rolled her eyes, "Would I be in her house if I didn't know her? Besides, she's where she always is at this time of day: school."

"Then who are you?"

"I could ask you the same thing," she said as she handed the red-haired man the instrument case and hooked her thumbs in the pockets of her blue hakama-like garment, "I've known Kagome-chan since we were kids, and I've never seen either of you. I've also never heard of people even remotely like you. So, seeing as how I can offer up that much information, I ask you: who are you?"

The three of them contemplated their answer, for it was obvious the woman wasn't going to let them remain silent. It was Miroku who spoke next.

"We are also friends of Lady Kagome, and I doubt she talks about us very much. How many people do you know would admit to having friends that dress as we do?"

She looked them over once again, "Believe me, I've dressed in clothes a lot worse than those and she still talks about me."

"But not to us," Miroku said calmly, "we've never heard of a young woman like you as you have never heard of us. Just as we have never seen you."

She seemed to relax, even just a fraction, as though deciding Miroku were… an opponent, of some sort, "You know, you and Tora are pretty good at this whole smooth-talking business. Tora, tell the man what you learned the hard way."

"This woman," the red-haired man began, "will not believe anything she doesn't see for herself or else know for a fact to be true. So unless you can prove it to her, you're stuck. Anyway you can prove you're Kagome-san's friends?"

"She has a large yellow bag." Sango shrugged, not knowing what sort of proof the woman wanted.

She snorted, "Any stalker could know that."

About to come up with another bit of proof, the three were stopped as the front door opened and Sota burst through, followed by his mother, "We're home. Sorry we were gone so long, but… oh, Inu-Yasha, so good to see you. Ah, who did you bring with you?"

"Hi Mom," the girl said with a small smile before gesturing to the three strangers before her, "you know them?"

"Oh sure. Well, I know Inu-Yasha, and I've only ever heard of these two," Mrs. Higurashi said, planning her words carefully, "I just never thought he'd be able to bring them with him. Strict rules you know."

She nodded, knowing what it was like living with rules so strict it seemed as though even your next breath were planned, "And Kagome-chan knows them?"

"Absolutely, they've been friends for a while now. I meant to mention it to you, but I didn't think we'd be seeing them."

Nodding once again, she looked them over one last time, attempting to find even one ounce of charlatan within any of them. She was that way, she supposed, needing to find flaws in everyone she met. Though she hadn't majored in history, she guessed their clothes to be that of the Feudal Era, or somewhere close to that time.

"Nice to meet you then," she said with a soft smile and nod of acknowledgement, "I'm Lilaya, but most friends call me Lila."

Inu-Yasha returned the nod before turning to Mrs. Higurashi, "The others are back in the well-house sleepin'. Guess the three of us weren't enough."

"There are more of you? How many more?" Lilaya asked as she shifted her weight to her other foot.

"Five," Miroku answered for her with his sly, perverted smile, "well three, actually, if you don't count the wolves."

A loud -thwack- resounded through the room as Inu-Yasha hit the monk on the head and Sango looked ready to do the same. No one wanted to hear that there were wolves on their property.

"I'm sorry, did you say wolves?" Tora asked as an unreadable look had come over Lilaya's face.

The silence was thick in the air, and Inu-Yasha was sure even his Tetsusaiga couldn't have cut through it, "In the well-house, you said? May I go see? That is, if Mom doesn't mind having wolves on the grounds?"

"Of course not," Mrs. Higurashi smiled, "I know they'll be kept in check. Besides, there have been worse things at this shrine than wolves."

"And I'm one of them," Lilaya thought grimly before forcing a smile on her face, "so? Would you mind? I don't know your names, but I think we're going to get along just fi-…"

"Kagome-chan!" Exclaimed the voices of a young girl boy voice as said children came bounding through the living room and latching themselves onto each of Lilaya's legs.

Confused, Lilaya put her hand atop their heads and smiled, "No, no, no, I'm not Kagome, I'm Kagome-chan's friend."

It was obvious the two weren't listening, so Lilaya gave up… not that she could talk anyway, for three — two, Lilaya, learn to count — wolves poked their heads into the living room, two with dark gray coats and the other…

Startling blue eyes and hair like onyx stepped forward, holding her fast where she stood… as if the children weighing her down weren't enough. She couldn't breathe, couldn't move… it was strange, this pulling sensation she felt. Stronger even than that of the pocky she'd bought earlier because it had called to her to buy it.

Kagome had certainly made no mention of this friend, he who walked with wolves and walked like one himself… no, the man didn't walk; he stalked, almost. Like a cat ready to pounce unbeknownst on some poor piece of string.

What sound did string make when nervous?

-Dangle, dangle.-

A/N: ((April 4, 2007))

Sorry for the delay! Six whole pages of random crappiness, I know, but I've rewritten this chapter four times already… -cries- Also, sorry for the cliffy & crappy ending, but I wanted to get it over with because I felt as though I were beating the proverbial dead horse one too many times as it was.

So anyway, please enjoy this, I promise to keep this nice and organized with as little Mary-Sue-ness as possible. She's just kinda cocky, not all-powerful, okay? Lilaya likes to make people thing that she is all-powerful, and she is... but only in her music. When you create something, you become the master of it, so she is the master of her music. Bear with me! She has kinks! I will work them out as best I can.

And as a side note: I had my birthday yesterday & I spent the majority of it typing this up for you… so please be happy/patient with this.

Thank you,

O-chan