Sunset's Shrink

by Tsubasa Kya

Cyborgs, lovers, the mafia, best friends, the police, childhood crushes, crazy scientists, pretend babies, kidnappers... this story pretty much has it all.

14. Fourteenth Chapter

By the time they had reached Tokyo two hours later, both Shuichi and Kanna were fast asleep, exhausted by the thrashing they'd taken and given. It was one o'clock when they entered Tokyo and Kagome took out her phone, calling her mother at a stoplight.

As she listened to the ringing sound she decided upon a scenario that could be the cause of the procrastinated answering. Souta and Kohaku beating each other up to get the phone? No, that was a few days ago. No one home? That seemed more likely. At the eighth ring—the Shrine didn't have an answering machine—she hung up and tried her mother's cell phone.

She only had to wait three rings before she heard her mother's voice on the other end of the line. Her mother's voice rang with good cheer and in the background Kagome heard the tell-tale sounds of a bridal shower. Kagome felt the pangs of guilt hit her gut.

She was supposed to be the maid of honor; where was the honor of being a no-show? She would have to make it up to her mother. "Hello, Kali Onigumo speaking—"

Kagome felt guiltier that she would ask her mother where her father lived. Her mother would think her to be procrastinating even more. "Hey mama." Kagome said quietly. She didn't want to wake either of the sleeping teens.

It was strange to think of them both as her children; she wasn't all that much older than them but for a few years separation.

"Oh, Kagome! Excuse me ladies, I must take this call!" Kagome winced at the happy tone of her mother and wondered how to word it. Her mother answered her question as though she was expecting it though and Kagome didn't even have to ask. It was more of an order coming from her mother.

"Kagome, before you say a word, I want you to turn right back around, head to West City, and get your father. He promised me he'd walk me down the isle and he's not here! He promised he'd come so now it's your job to go fetch him. Whew, now that that's out of the way; how is Kanna? Kagura and your roommate Sammy are here at the Shrine; Sammy's just a pleasure!"

"Oh, um, everything went basically accordingly...though I do have another boy I sort of adopted..." she muttered the second part into the phone, not expecting her mother to hear.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on which side the situation was viewed from, her mother had excellent hearing.

"Who is the boy?" The background sounds dimmed considerably and Kagome assumed her mother had completely walked away from the group of bridal shower participants.

"Kagura can tell you all about it. Where does father live?" Kagome dug in Kanna's backpack, pulling out a pen. At a stoplight she wrote the address on her arm as her mother gave it to her. "You can count on me, mama." Kagome told the woman.

"I'll bring him back for you. I'll be home late tonight and I'll swing by the Shrine on my way to the apartment so the dress can be fitted. Promise."

"Oh, the ladies are begging me back. I've got to go. See you tonight, swee—" Kagome's phone died just then and she couldn't hear anything more except silence. She stuck the cell in her pocket with a sigh.

Kagome wasn't sure if her mother was distracted by the party or what, but something was bothering her mother. Perhaps it was that her father hadn't shown up when he obviously was going to. Either way, Kagome had his address and was going to bring him home.

She pulled into a gas station, went and bought a city map of West City, and then followed the directions to the apartment building her mother said he was living in.

"Where are we?" Shuichi's boyish voice was back, so Kagome could only assume it was Shuichi talking and not Youko. She knew that would get to be very confusing for a while but eventually she would learn to predict when he would change personalities. Kagome turned the vehicle off and unbuckled. "Miss Kagome?"

"I can't believe my father is living in a shit hole like this!" Kagome whispered. She was horrified. Hadn't she made sure her father had enough money? She'd paid her mother back for every cent she gave him! "Stay here with Kanna, will you?"

She didn't wait for an answer before heading towards the sidewalk path that lead to the ground floor apartments. She was looking for apartment thirty eight. She almost walked right by it until she stopped to look around and found that the apartment the woman was cleaning was indeed thirty eight.

She checked the apartment number on her arm and the one on the door and began to get worried. Had she heard her mother wrong? Did she hear the wrong number?

Standing in the threshold to the room, she peered around the room, looking for any sign of her father. There was none. There was nothing of the cherry mint scent that mysteriously always called to her when she was young...there was nothing of the aftershave that he often used...the room was cold. Cold like death. It made her feel fear. Was her father dead? Would he just pop off the world without saying goodbye?

Well Kagome, a snide voice said in her mind, it's not like the Grim Reaper is very forgiving. I'm sure he had plenty of other people to take—it's a tight schedule you know! Ah! What am I doing cracking jokes in my head? This is most certainly most definitely not the time.

"What can I do yah fer, hun?" the woman cleaning the room asked in Japanese, snapping her gum.

Kagome ignored the woman's rude mannerisms—the degrading "hun" remark and the snapping of the gum—and jumped right into her question. "The man who was living here, Naraku Onigumo was his name right?"

"Sure was, hun."

"Where is he?" Did he leave for Sunset and just have a flight delay or something? Her mother had not mentioned what time or when he was supposed to arrive... She felt her pulse racing in her eardrums. She could hear her fast beating heart steady in her eardrums as well like the sadistic beat to a death march.

"Did he leave for the airport?" Kagome could hear the desperation in her voice and it served to frighten her more. She knew the disease he had made it so he could have died any day. She didn't want him to have died. He couldn't, he just couldn't be dead yet!

The woman gave an icy laugh and it made Kagome feel colder than before, if that was even possible. The ice she felt seemed to go all the way down to her soul and she wasn't sure if she would ever recover from that laugh. "Oh he left alrigh'." The woman sneered.

She was obviously displeased with Naraku for something he'd done. "Never paid his rent, that one. Then he up and left. Well, at least I saw him leave in the body bag. Hmph. Jackass. That's one less cheat in this world. Some boy came to visit him and found him dead. He said he'd take the stuff to the family. We took enough of the finer clothes to pay for the jilted rent and—"

Kagome felt each and every one of the woman's slanderous words like a terrible blow to the gut until she forced herself to block out the woman's voice for her own sake. If asked to recall how she got back to the vehicle and whether or not she thanked the woman for her help, she couldn't do it.

The icy feeling she felt inside was worse than the petrified feeling she always got when she was on a plane. Daddy... The word kept repeating over and over in her head. She'd avoided him for so long that now it was too late.

The maid had given her the news in a terrible manner. She was rude and vulgar about the situation and that made everything so much harder to deal with. She could have at least softened the blow a bit, not acted like Naraku was a complete stranger.

Of course, he no doubt was a complete stranger to the woman and there wasn't much to indicate Kagome's relation to him either. It wasn't like she was wearing a big sign on her forehead saying "Naraku is my father—diss him and die."

Tears coursed down her cheeks and she rested her head on the steering wheel of the old junker vehicle. The news would break to her mother better if it was in person. That meant that she would have to endure the pain alone for the duration of the trip home. She wouldn't try to confide in Shuichi or Kanna. They didn't need to worry about her.

"Are you okay, Miss Kagome?" Shuichi's boyish voice broke through her pained reverie and ripped her back to the real world. Kagome wiped her face off when she realized she was crying. She was still so exhausted. It had been over twenty four hours since she'd slept at all and the blow had been 'below the gut'.

Normally she didn't allow tears to escape the confines of her eyelids, but this was just too much to chew along with the side dish of all the insanity that had happened before that particular moment.

"I'm fine Shuichi. Thanks for your concern. Just a little over tired. I haven't slept in over twenty four hours." She tried at a smile and failed miserably, but was grateful for the excuse anyway. "Let's...go home."

She started the vehicle up but Shuichi unbuckled. His voice became deeper as he spoke to her, opening his door. "You should not be driving."

"Get your ass back in this vehicle now, Shuichi." She snapped, though she didn't mean to get upset at him and she didn't mean to swear. Her father's face as she had seen it last was imprinted in her mind.

She had yet to register the maid saying something about a boy coming to see Naraku. Shuichi didn't listen to her. He walked over to her side of the vehicle and opened the door.

"I know sixty two different ways to render you unconscious and well over two hundred different ways to subdue you; I suggest you calm yourself, Kagome," said that deep voice.

Kagome couldn't help it. She dug her face into his shoulder and cried out her frustration, her tears soaked the collar of his shirt. "I'm such an idiot. I just kept procrastinating until the very last minute and now he's gone! Gone as in I'll never get to tell him how much I loved him and that everything would be alright and that he was the best there ever was..."

She felt Shuichi patting her back comfortingly and it was as though he understood or put two and two together at least.

Kagome wondered if she was going mad. Inside her mind she could hear her father's voice singing to her, apologizing through song. It seemed to fit the situation but it served only to make her cry harder and cling to Shuichi as though he was a lifeline, much like Kanna had clung to her when Kagome was going to adopt the girl.

He wasn't perfect, and she knew that. Who was perfect? Hadn't she learned that no one was perfect when she found out Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha were sexually abused by their step-mother? She'd accepted her father for his flaws, even if she'd constantly wished for his death because of those same flaws.

He'd gone mad years ago when he started beating his children and she knew had he meant to do what he'd done, he could have done far more damage than just whip Kagome and Souta's backs with a belt. But he was gone and he couldn't really apologize, could he? He was just...gone.

He had changed, just before it was too late. He had apologized to Kagome while she was in the hospital, and she had assured him that his apology was heard and accepted. After all, anyone no matter who they are or what they did deserved a second chance.

Some just needed more second chances than others. But Kagome doubted that her exhausted mind really believed that she was the reason for his change.

He had said he was sorry, but Kagome knew it was more than that. Something had happened in that one moment's time. He had admitted his soul to her, even unconsciously, and she knew whatever physical pain he had ever put her through was nothing compared to what he would have to endure mentally after finally regaining his sanity and realizing how wronged his children were by him.

She knew he wanted a chance to be a part of their lives but something was pulling him back away, disallowing him from doing just that. For the tears that she had both shed and not shed he grieved.

He was gone now, and he would never again laugh or cry or help Kagome pull pointless little pranks on Souta and Kali. She wanted to giggle her childish high pitched giggle again while he chased her and Souta around the library acting like he couldn't keep up though he could have if he wanted.

She wanted to cry out again while he held her still and put a Band-Aid on her toe after she stubbed it on one of the many stairs in the Shrine. She wanted to scream in frustration when he put shaving cream on her hand while she was sleeping and tickled her nose.

He'd proven he could become a new man and he'd shown Kagome the side she hadn't known still existed. She cried harder as she watched his face float into her vision again.

Whether she was the reason for the changes he'd undergone or not...he still was dead. Nothing could change that now. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. She just wanted her father back, though that was one wish she would never get no matter how hard she tried, of that she was certain.

Everyone dealt with grief differently. Youko—the demon spirit inside of the boy Shuichi who had lived hundreds of years after the end of the 100-year war and only died fifteen years before—was only just learning this.

The boy, Shuichi, dealt with his sadness over his lost mother by making Youko control their body and retreating into the deep dark recesses of the mind to hide. Kanna dealt with her lost family by holding closer those who she still did have or becoming silent.

Kagome may not normally cry over the loss of something, but fatigue was doing something to her head and made her tear her mind apart in grief.

Youko could not remember a time when he had lost someone he cared about. He had not found love for a mother and father he had hardly known some several hundred years before when they had abandoned him to fend for himself as soon as he was old enough.

He had not found love for any 'significant other'. The only one he had truly ever found he cared for was the boy Shuichi, almost like a sibling relationship.

They shared a physical core for fifteen years. There was nothing about Shuichi that Youko did not know, and the same went likewise.

Youko realized just how different he was then. He learned just what set him apart from everyone else. It was not his age or wisdom or powerful magic over plants.

It was not his cunning or skills in theft and deception. It was that he had never known emotions. How could anyone who had never felt emotion truly know wisdom? In the days when he lived and fought in the 100-year war, he had been a powerful ally and a deadly foe.

None of his enemies could have prepared him for the shock he had just received though. It was a challenging slap in the face and it was definitely not something he could figure to be either good or bad.

Kagome slept most of the plane ride out of pure exhaustion. Shuichi had not been lying when he said he'd followed her for three months. He knew where her apartment was, he knew where the Shrine was, and he knew how to get to Sunset in three and a half hours rather than four.

It was nearing eight PM when they pulled into the town of Sunset and Kagome was barely awake. Kanna was awake and staring into the milky surface of her mirror as though if she stared long enough it would provide answers to questions unanswered.

Kagome could see little worms going past her eyes, sparkly like stars. She could remember her father's eyes were crimson like the bright Earth sands. Were. The word haunted her already. It was past tense, and it made her wince.

"Take a right." She told Shuichi firmly as they neared the crossing point in which they could either turn and go to the Shrine or continue straight and go to her apartment. Once they had turned that particular corner, it was a straight drive out to the Shrine.

If a person missed the Shrine, and Kagome couldn't fathom how anyone could miss the building which spanned four miles, the trip would just take a person right around a very large circle and right back to the Shrine again.

"Just...leave your stuff in the Rent-A-Car." Kagome got out and stumbled slightly, feeling dizzy before her head cleared and she could walk straight again. She felt like she was inebriated but that was no new feeling.

She'd been drunk before—it was nothing big. It was overrated and solved absolutely nothing. At the moment, the "inebriated" state she was in was from lack of sleep and an overwhelming of emotions. Sometimes she hated being the daughter of a shrink; it made her feel like she knew too much.

Kagome looked behind her to see that Shuichi and Kanna were eying her warily, as though afraid she'd fall down at any moment. She gave them a weak grin and led the way up the steps to the courtyard.

The snow in the courtyard was windblown. Kagome smiled up at the "God" tree. The apple tree's branches were bare, but as always it managed to look majestic in any weather.

"Head on in, you two. I'll be right there." Kanna hesitated, but Shuichi rested a hand on her shoulder, shaking his head. "She needs this moment alone." Shuichi whispered in Kanna's ear.

Kanna nodded mutely, though she was clearly confused by the entire act. Kagome had been happy before, and now she looked so sad that it made Kanna want to cry again.

Kagome wasn't sure how long she'd stood there in front of the old apple tree, staring up at the tree's top as though it might provide answers as to why her father had to die before she saw him again, but she knew it must have been quite some time because her brother came outside to take out the trash and found her standing there. As soon as he'd put the trash into the buckets, he walked over to Kagome, standing next to her to look up at the branches. "You're beggin' for a cold." Souta told her. Ironically, she sneezed.

"All those years he spent beating us, I always wished that he would just die." Kagome sobbed as she felt Souta's arms wrap around her shoulders comfortingly. "We both just kept wishing he would just die."

Souta didn't have to ask who she was talking about or why she was bringing the subject up. Even if Hakudoushi had not received the phone call from the Tokyo morgue, it wouldn't have mattered because Kagome had obviously not brought Naraku home which would mean he was no longer alive.

He held his sister in his arms nervously as her words sunk in. It was true; he had wished that Naraku would just die...impale himself... get run over by an elephant... have a house fall on his head... It was humorous at the time, but as he looked back at all the supposedly humorous situations he found he had concocted for Naraku's death, he didn't want to have ever thought of them.

"If I hadn't procrastinated, I might have gotten to say goodbye." Of course, Souta had nothing on Kagome's feelings. Not truly. Kagome was always Naraku's favorite and when they were little, most of what Naraku would do for Souta would be done double for Kagome.

Kagome had always loved Naraku in some deep part in her soul, even when he was beating on her she still loved him. "A few days ago, I would have laughed at the notion that your world could change in an instant...but Souta, it's true. Don't ever believe otherwise."

"Shh...come on, let's go inside. What you need is some of mama's hot cocoa, some clean clothes, and a long bath. Dad's not gone. His presence is inside of you..." Kagome let Souta lead her inside and listened to the boy's voice.

She didn't think Souta realized how much like Naraku he actually sounded. Their voices were near copies of each other. "Come on, just a few more flights of stairs."

She followed Souta up to the third floor, knowing that anyone who saw her would find it strange that tears were coursing down her face. She hardly ever cried. It was just too much to handle Naraku's death.

While Souta ran the bath water and poured in bubbles for Kagome, she sat down on the toilet and began to take off her socks. Her shoes were still by the front door; she'd kicked them off on her way in.

Souta seemed to decide she wasn't moving with enough will on her own, so he pulled her socks off and began unbuttoning her shirt. The movements were nothing at all intimate; they were more superficial than anything. They were done purely to get her to respond to the real world and it worked.

Kagome slapped his hand away. "I can do it just fine." She told her brother. She stood and turned her back to him, pulling the shirt off and unclasping her bra. Souta was not watching her movements, but was digging in the small closet in the bathroom towards the back where Kagome's bathroom supplies were stashed away.

They were dusty from four years of not being used so he took a washcloth and wiped off the dust. Behind him he heard a splash: Kagome getting into the bubble bath.

"Here, Kagome." Souta set the bath items next to the bath before watching her slip under water. He wasn't worried for her trying to drown herself; he was more worried she'd get the bubbles in her eyes. She could shape shift. He knew that she'd transformed and no longer could be a priestess.

As soon as Souta left the bathroom, he found Yuri giving him a curious look. She held up a piece of paper and he walked closer to read it. "Nope. I haven't seen a pink notebook."

He told her and headed for the stairs. There were some of Naraku's old clothes in the room he used to live in; old expensive kimono type outfits that Naraku wore before madness settled in.

It was during those days that Naraku had never even given leather a thought. Leather was expensive, but compared to the kimono that he used to wear, leather was a bare penny's worth price. Souta's intent was to find something for Kagome to wear to give her a feeling of closeness to their now deceased father.

"It's getting late." Kali said with a sigh to her son. "Kagome should have been out of the bath by now. The water must be freezing." Kali was beginning to get worried. She still didn't know about Naraku's death; Hakudoushi had told Souta not to tell Kali so that she could be happily married. Kali looked up when Hakudoushi and May walked into the living room, Karei on their heels.

"Where are the children?" May inquired looking around for any sign of Shuichi or Kanna but finding none. May threw her beautiful blond hair over her shoulder and sat next to Kali on the love seat. Hakudoushi sat comfortably on the recliner. "Karei, don't be so stiff, dear. Sit down next to your cousin. He won't bite."

Souta raised an eyebrow at Karei who sniffed and looked away. "I'd rather eat dirt—" Karei started, but a voice cut her off coming from the entryway to the living room.

"Karei, you'll find plenty of it outside then. Insult him further, and I'll feed it to you." Souta peered around Karei to see his sister standing in the door. "Sorry if I worried you, mama." Kagome apologized.

Kagome was wearing the grey kimono that Souta had picked out. Each of the different layers from the top one to the bottom one varied grey colors, getting darker each layer.

Behind Kagome stood Kanna and Shuichi, both looking sleepy on their feet, but they were warm in clean clothes and looked like they'd just taken showers. "Mum, may I lie down?" Kanna asked Kagome and again she felt shocked to be called "mum".

"Yeah, I'm pretty tired too." Shuichi's quiet boyish voice was back. Kagome wondered exactly how the two spirits figured who would be in charge at each different time.

Kagome nodded and waved to the two couches in the farthest corner of the room. There were pillows on the couches and a pile of heavy blankets. "Go ahead and make yourself comfortable." She told her 'children'.

As the two slid sleepily across the floor, Kagome turned her attention to the rest of the people filling the room. Kagome was surprised Kagura was not there, but Sammy had probably wanted to go home and Kagome knew Kagura would keep her word and stay with Sammy. "Oh damn." Karei sneered, crossing her arms over her stomach. "And here I was hoping that your plane would crash."

"Karei!" May said, shocked that her daughter would say something so crude.

Kagome shrugged it off. If there was anything she needed, it was normality. She needed to feel that nothing drastic would change just because her father passed on. The world didn't revolve around any one person, though at such times as death it was hard to remember that. "Don't worry about it Aunt May."

Turning to Karei, Kagome walked over to the girl and examined her carefully. "You seem to have a growth to your belly. Abnormal one."

Karei became silent and her eyes seemed to glaze over, making Kagome wonder if the 'growth' was what she thought it was. "Sit down, Karei." Kagome whispered gently. "There is much to discuss here this night." For a moment it seemed like Karei would not obey, but the moment passed with no hesitation. Kagome sat next to Karei on the couch.

A silence filled the room for a moment while each person filled their heads with their own thoughts. Kagome glanced back at Shuichi and Kanna to find them fast asleep.

Kanna was curled under her blanket as though she couldn't get enough warmth with just a bit of white hair and her nose sticking out. Shuichi was sprawled across his couch with his blanket falling off as though he was too warm under the simple blanket.

The two probably had been exhausted after the hectic day, even though Kanna slept most of the car rides and the plane ride. Kanna's emotions probably were still haywire after the deaths making her just want to sleep. The same may have been said for Shuichi, what with his mother's death.

With a heavy sigh, Kagome turned back to the silent adults and looked at her mother. She doesn't know. The stunning realization startled her and she knew her mother ought to know about her ex-husband's death.

There was so much to talk about though and she wasn't sure where to start. Thoughts flittered in and out of her mind and she wondered which to go with and which one was an inappropriate start to the conversation.

Finally she decided, though she still wasn't sure if it was the best start to the conversation they would be having. She began with Sammy's situation at the start and explained from there exactly how things had happened as she had learned them.

After Sammy had been the phone call from Child Services. She had decided to go to Raspuit and at the airport she had met Shuichi. She didn't leave out that he had tried to steal her wallet because that was basically how their whole relationship began—with theft. When Shuichi had ended up in the Child Services department in the Police Station, she'd made the decision to help him too.

She explained how she had met Lea and found out that Lea was a Private Detective, and she explained how after the adoptions finished, she'd driven to Snowsville to stay the night with Genkai.

She told about her trip to Raspuit in the middle of the night to get Kanna's things and about how strange it felt that there would already be a for sale sign on the lawn as though it had been expected to happen. When she had been writing the note she'd intended to leave for the realtor, the realtor had come thinking she was a burglar.

After switching cars with Genkai, they began their way to Tokyowhere Kagome had every intent to call Kali and ask for her father's address. Soon she had reached her father's apartment complex, but the state of disrepair had horrified her.

She could recall thinking about how it wasn't too late to turn back, but she had made a promise to bring her father back. It was at this point that Hakudoushi had tried to get her to stop telling her story, but Kagome snapped at him, furious that he would try to stop her.

"It is the right thing to do, Uncle!" Kagome's voice sliced through the tense atmosphere almost like a chef's knife cut through a loaf of bread: the knife killed the bread but eventually managed the cut.

Hakudoushi's lips pursed in a frown and he said, "Kagome, it's the right thing to do at the wrong time." He told her, quite serious. His eyes held a dangerous tone, but it seemed he agreed with her on some level.

"Kagome, please just finish your story." Kali told her with a shifty glance towards Hakudoushi. She never liked to be in the dark about things. True was the fact that she was the most informed person in Sunset. Everyone came to her with their problems. She was very trusted.

The schools no longer employed the position of "psychiatrist" because instead they were sent to her. Kali's work load in the past three years had sky-rocketed because the schools had discontinued the positions and she was constantly having to schedule and reschedule several appointments for later dates.

At that point, she was booked until June and it was just nearing the end of January. Plus she had her wedding to contend with.

Kagome leaned back on the couch with a sigh. "Be careful what you wish for." She started and she could feel the atmosphere intensify. "I used to wish for daddy to die..." she trailed off as a tear rolled down her cheek, the hot liquid burning her cold cheeks.

Not one person listening in the room couldn't figure out what she was saying. It was so obvious: Naraku was dead.

Tears shone in Kali's eyes, but they did not fall. "Thank you for telling me, Kagome." She stood from the loveseat, brushing her suit skirt off. Even though it was getting to be late at night, she had yet to change into her sleep ware.

"Excuse me..." She left the room but even though she was leaving the company of the living room, Kagome knew she wouldn't let the tears fall. The library was her destination.

After a few moments, May and Hakudoushi stood and left the room. Silence filled their absence until Kagome brushed away the tear that had dried to her cheek already. Souta gave his sister a hug and then he ambled out of the room. Kagome was left only with Karei and the two sleeping teens in the corner.

Karei was surprisingly the one to break the quiet. She nervously reached out and pulled her hand back, only to reach out again and place a hand on Kagome's shoulder. "I'm sorry for the hell I've always given you." Karei told her.

Kagome looked at her cousin and felt a soft smile spread across her face. She couldn't help it; after so many years, it just felt good to hear the words from Karei. "You're forgiven." Her eyes wandered to Karei's slightly growing stomach. "Is that just excess fat, or..." At the pained look that crossed Karei's face, she stopped, having her answer. "Who's the dad?"

Karei bit her lip and then just decided to out with the truth. She had told her mother and father the feeling between the person and her had been consensual but it wasn't. It was rape. "I got a job at Sara's Café and some big trucker decided that I was ripe for the picking." She hoped Kagome would understand, because she didn't want to have to say the word.

She wasn't surprised when she found Kagome bristling with anger. "Kagome, please don't be angry with me, I gave him hell about it... I'm not a demon for nothing, you know!"

"I'm not angry with you." Kagome spat but then she bit her tongue. She was still fatigued, so it was hard to keep her emotions still enough to deal with.

Whoever thought up the idea that demons didn't need as much sleep as humans had been cracked up on dope, she decided, because even though they can stay awake much longer without feeling the effects of fatigue, when they do start to feel it, it is ten times worse.

"Kagome, your mom...Kali said you're a private investigator...Would you take the case? I'll pay you." The nervous tone in Karei's beautifully natural soprano voice was what made Kagome stop for a moment and think.

Sammy worked at a café and it was a trucker that had raped her. Karei worked at a café and it was a trucker that had raped her. Was it all just a coincidence? She couldn't help but wonder.

"You don't need to pay me. You're family, even if we have differences. I protect my own." It had always been her saying, the saying in "Hell's Kitchen" which was her territory.

The East side of town was "Hell's Kitchen". "We protect our own" was the common phrase that seemed to somehow instill safety in some and fear in others. When or how it had been started was unclear, but Kagome had never forgotten it.

Karei lifted her shirt and pulled down the pant line of her jeans. Kagome had thought the jeans seemed just a bit too loose for someone of her favor, but now she realized why Karei wore them. They were to hide just how pregnant the girl was.

The shirt was very loose though not recognizably so. Karei had to be three months pregnant, maybe four. "Mom and dad think that the feeling was mutual between the trucker and me. After the kidnapping, they were all tiptoes around me and it was like living in a prison. If I told them it was rape, they'd never let me out of their sight."

Kagome wasn't sure if it was the lack of sleep that made her say it or what it was, but she said, "You can come live with me if that happens. But I want you to tell them. Now I have barely slept in two days. I really need sleep."

Kagome found herself engulfed in a back breaking hug and feebly returned it. Karei was on her feet as quickly as she could and rushed over to the corner where the two teens were sleeping, picking up the pillow and blankets, making a bed on the floor for Kagome.

She had a bed made before Kagome could even drag her tired body off the couch and make her way over. It was strange to have Karei tuck her in but she was grateful anyway for the twenty-two year old. She was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

---

Raine had been unable to sleep and still was unable. The police were still searching the house as though they expected to find something. Well, they weren't going to find Kikyou inside a broken VCR and they weren't going to find Kaede inside an old computer monitor. The items might have been abnormally large for their use but they certainly weren't that large.

"Hey! That's my underwear drawer! Do you mind?" Raine yelled at the man searching the drawer. She slammed the drawer shut and felt a grim satisfaction as his fingers got stuck in the drawer. "Hmph." She stomped over to another man who was running greasy burger fingers over the rolls of expensive cloth that Rin had in a closet.

She slapped his fingers and pulled him away. "Don't touch that! Now, look! You've ruined at least five hundred dollars of cloth! You're going to pay for that, Mister!"

Rin also was getting irritated. She felt her face flushing angrily as she watched Mr. Greasy-hands go back to touching her cloth, but if she tried to deal with him, she might get over enthused and break his wrist.

The muscles of a Cyborg meant abnormal strength and Rin could easily heave every single one of those men in the basement up the stairs—one at a time of course—and throw them out the door. If she was holding one by the scruff of their neck, she could easily snap their neck with a shift and twitch of her wrist.

She definitely had to be careful. She watched Raine shove Mr. Greasy-fingers towards the stairs. "Get out! Out of this house right now! You've searched every where, even in my underwear drawer and the tampon garbage! You're pissing me off! I want to see that search warrant you said you had! You never did show it to any of us did you?" Raine was never one to hold back swearwords when she was angry.

Rin watched the men file out moments later after a giant argument between Harvey and the policemen. There was no search warrant; they had claimed there was one though.

It was an invasion of a private residence, and Rin knew that Raine would not let things stand. Harvey would probably also do his best to humiliate the police for such evils. Curinrin...Rin couldn't figure out Curinrin any more.

The woman seemed to have known all along about Rin and Raine and about Raine's profession, but it was almost as though Harvey was in the dark about it all still. One thing was that Curinrin was definitely not the simpleton that she made herself out to be. She was a mystery; more a mystery than anyone that Rin had ever encountered.

Even Rin's mechanical brain, full of possibilities of what could and couldn't happen, hadn't figured that out as a possibility.

But a question that was posed to Rin was: Why couldn't the police get a search warrant from the police chief if they thought Kikyou and Kaede might be there?

Curinrin would have a lot of answering to do...in the morning. Whispering through the hidden door after the police had long gone, she told Kikyou and Kaede, "Just lie on the floor and get some rest if you are not already. There are blankets in there. If it is safe in the morning, then we will open the door."

Rin knew they needed help. The two girls were not safe anymore. Rin was sure Raine knew it as well and that they would need outside help. Was Relic out of the question? Was he even trustworthy anymore? She wasn't so sure.

---

Relic wondered if he had done the right thing the night before. He had learned of the false house raid, and called Curinrin to warn her. He didn't doubt that Kikyou and Kaede were there. It was shamefully obvious when it was learned the blood trail ended just feet away from Raine's house.

His uncle, the police chief, had refused to sign the search warrant because there was no evidence that the girls had gone into the house, so some of the police were going to do a false house raid.

Relic turned the light off in Tea's room and closed the door behind him.

The nightlight in the room turned on as soon as the overhead light's glow had stopped making Relic wonder if Raine had more secrets than he had initially thought. Raine was a smart girl, very witty, very charming. She made that so painfully obvious sometimes, but she was clumsy as well. She was never clumsy about her work; it was her feet that got her in trouble.

Now it made Relic wonder if that clumsiness was just an act. "Is she playing me? I have no doubt she could." It was well after midnight and he knew he should get some sleep but he found he was not at all tired. That would catch up with him later, he knew. When he had to be doing something important, he would be slow because he was tired.

So was Raine tripping over her feet, scattering her books everywhere, making a fool of herself for some strange yet somehow very explanatory reason? What could she be hiding? Other than the Motshuria girls, of course.

---

Gytha Motshuria narrowed her eyes dangerously as she stared at the man before her. She was seething. How could they have been so stupid? They were supposed to be looking for cracks in walls, cut rugs on floors, disheveled pictures, and secret rooms.

Instead they had ogled underwear and scrutinized fabric. Now the family would be alerted to the fact that the house was being watched. Kikyou and Kaede were in there; Gytha was sure of it.

In order to get the press off her back, Gytha needed someone to blame for the murders that had occurred in her house.

The police chief would have to go, she decided. If he wouldn't be turned to her cause and do as he was told, then he didn't have a point in the world, did he? Things would be so much easier if she had someone on her payroll to be chief of the police department.

"Get me the police chief." She commanded of the man, her voice so frighteningly soft and trusting that the man wanted to scream and run away.

He'd never heard anyone ever use their voice to such advantages before that they could make him fear them yet want to whisper all his secrets to them at the same time.

---

She giggled and danced circles around her little Cyborg. Demons were so fun! He had lived through the operation. The boy sat on the floor playing with toys because she had ordered him to do so. He feared her, and she reveled in that fear.

For the first time since she had kidnapped him, she actually looked at the boy. She had killed his parents after he had called out for them. There was no need for competition, after all! But he did look like the man who was his father.

The boy was bald at the moment with just the barest hint of fine red stubble on his head. She'd had to shave it in order to replace half of his brain with the mechanical parts she'd wanted.

She was actually surprised there was stubble on his head already but it appeared that demon hair grew twice as quickly as a human's. Or was it her priestess power that made it grow so quickly? She giggled. It wasn't important.

She continued dancing in circles. It was late at night, but she didn't mind. She was hardly tired. A genius needed less sleep after all! After a moment, she heard a clatter and saw her little Cyborg had fallen over.

She stopped and knelt next to him, placing her ear by his mouth. He had stopped breathing. She checked for a pulse in his arms. Nothing.

Shrugging, she went and got gloves. She felt giddier than before. She would get to try again! She needed an older test subject. Perhaps someone in their teens, or early twenties?

The city of Sunset was near enough that she could easily snatch someone away with no one the wiser. Export them to West City, and then back again and thoroughly confuse anyone who might be on her tail.

She washed any trace of her off of the boy, left him naked, and put him in a trash bag. The 'contents' of the trash bag, she had an android drop in a dumpster some three miles away. She couldn't wait to try again!

What was the best part of it all? The blood, the feeling of it on her hands and arms, and the knowledge that she holds the life beneath her in her hands.

It was cold. The android had taken the bag away, but the lady had been so distracted he knew he had to try at least. To say he had grown up quickly was an understatement.

He'd been forced to grow up, and the electronic part of his brain made his real brain forcibly coherent. The plan to play dead worked and he was out of the frightening metal room.

He climbed out of the dumpster, his limbs sore still from the recent operation. Her priestess powers had completely healed him though. It was just exhaustion settling in.

He was surprised at how easily it had been to stop the blood from flowing through his arms. A normal human or demon would never have been able to do that, and a normal demon or human would never have been able to hold their breath for ten minutes. Maybe some could manage four, but never ten.

Shivering, he walked stark naked down the streets of the strange town. He had no clue where he was, or where to go. He didn't know that he was just in a tiny village on the way between Keysville and Sunset.

He saw a blanket up on a clothes drying line and ran through the cold snow over to it. Someone had probably hung it up to air out that morning but forgot about it.

The boy was grateful they had forgotten and though it was just a thin blanket covered in dog hairs and smelled of urine and was barely large enough to be considered a towel, he was still glad. He pulled it off the line and pulled it around his body, continuing on his way. He had to get away as fast as he could.

He didn't know how long he'd been walking but he knew it must have been a long time because the sky was starting to get lighter and his feet were bleeding from the cold. His fingers and toes felt like they were going to split like hotdogs cooked too long.

The little village was long gone behind him, but he knew he was going away from the crazy lady. He had no doubt that he was headed in the right direction.

Finally he could walk no more and he collapsed on the ground right in the middle of the road, curling up in the tiny blanket hoping it would provide warmth. Maybe a car will run me over.

He sobbed but no sound emitted from his throat as he remembered his mother making him promise never to go into the road alone. He was in the road alone now, so where was his mother to come yell at him for it?

Mummy! I want my mummy! His father and mother had always been so special to him. Why did they look away? Did they not like him anymore?

Or was the crazy lady just so good at kidnapping little boys away from their parents that the mother and father never realized their baby was gone?

The first thing he wanted to do when he woke was scream because he had thought he was back in the metal room with the crazy lady, but when he stopped trying to shout from a throat that would emit no sound he found he was in a very different place.

The smells that bombarded his nose made him feel queasy as he recalled it had been a couple of days since his last decent meal. Looking around as his eyes adjusted to the light of the room, he noticed the unkempt state of the room.

He saw dirty laundry littered the floor, empty take-out containers were bursting the seams of the garbage, dust was caked on every possible surface and the books on the shelf in the corner of the room were dropping off their positions because the bookshelf was not properly poised at an angle.

After the cleanliness of the metal room, this room was like heaven and would have been if it weren't for the boy's stomach being so judgmental at the moment. He heaved and the tiniest bit of liquid shot out of his mouth onto the heavy blanket that covered him.

He vaguely noticed he lay on a piece of living room furniture of sorts, though that didn't seem to beg too much of his attention.

The boy wondered if he would dislike all clean places or if it would just be the metal room he feared. The fear stuck in his gut like a pin but he couldn't help but think that whoever's place he was in would be a good person because they didn't fell that every speck of dust needed to be destroyed immediately or they may melt like the wicked witch of the west.

Despite the mess he had made on the blankets he still lay down among them, his eyes drifting closed. Among his slightly disturbed thoughts about the crazy lady, he heard a voice whispering, "Hey, pops... his pulse is really strange...it goes fast and then slows."

---

"Daddy, can I read to you tonight?" the five year old girl with pig tails and a pink nightgown begged of her father. She gave him a big toothy grin and held up a book to him, the front cover reading "The Wood Fairy, retold by Virginia Haviland". It was a very old story.

Naraku smiled at his daughter and picked her up, resting her on his hip while he walked towards Kali's bedroom where Kagome slept at night with her brother and mother.

"Of course you can!" Naraku told the little girl with a smile and began to dance with Kagome in circles as they made their way down the wide hallway.

Kagome's tiny minute fingers clung to her favorite book as she giggled and laughed. She did not cling to her father; she trusted him to hold her tight as he always did. He never let her go, at least not truly.

As soon as she was tucked in, snug in her blankets, she opened the book and looked at the pictures on the page, beginning to read. She was smart for a five year old, but she still wasn't able to read all the words.

She struggled through the first few sentences before giggling and handing the book to her father who sat on the floor beside the bed listening to her as though she and he were the only ones left in the world and only what she was saying was important. "Can you read it now? I want to hear you read it!"

Naraku complied and took the book, placing a tender kiss on her cheek. The scruff of the beard he'd had that night tickled her skin and made her giggle, but she rolled over to face him and ran her hands through his long silky black hair. She wanted hair like his and said so several times while growing up.

"Once upon a time there was a little girl named Betushka. She lived with her mother, a poor widow who had only a tumbledown cottage and two goats. But in spite of this poverty, Betushka was always merry." Naraku began, speaking softly so that he would not wake the sleeping boy nearby. Souta went to bed half an hour before Kagome because he was younger.

He continued and as usual, Kagome did not move throughout the entire story except to run her fingers through his hair. "From spring to autumn, Betushka drove the goats each day to pasture in a birch wood. Every morning her mother put a slice of bread and an empty spindle into her bag." He continued to read the story to her, until it dwindled towards the end of the book.

"Nothing, however, gave her such delight as she had had dancing with the wood fairy. Often she ran to the birch wood, hoping to see the beautiful maiden, but never again did the wood fairy appear."

Naraku closed the book and looked at his daughter. Kagome never fell asleep during the story, so Naraku was not surprised to find her still awake. Every night for the past month she had asked for the same story. Finally he was about to find out why she liked it so much, in a rather round-about way.

"My teacher read me this book like forever ago, daddy." Kagome smiled and a yawn escaped her. "I like it so much! I like it this much!" she spread her arms as far apart as they could go to emphasize how much she liked the story.

"When I think about the wood fairy, I know she is a protector! She protects and I want to be just like her, but I won't just protect little girls, daddy. I want to protect everyone! Mama protects everyone, doesn't she? 'Cause I heard some people talking about how mama is called Sunset's Shrink and so I asked my teacher what it meant and she said that mama is a person who helps people who are hurting inside."

Naraku listened to every word of his daughter's babbling with a smile on his face. Some people might have had trouble keeping up with her excited gibberish but he had never found that problem. "Sounds like your teacher is very smart!" he agreed. "I'm sure that someday when you're bigger and tough like your dear ol' dad you'll be able to take on anyone who tries to harm those who you want to protect."

Kagome giggled. "You're not tough!" she chided him. "Otherwise me an' Souta wouldn't be able to beat you in tickle wars! You're weak as a little girl!" Naraku chuckled, enjoying his chat with his daughter. Suddenly a sleepy Kagome said, "Will you come watch me at the dojo tomorrow? Me and Sango get to fight each other!"

He nodded and tucked her in. She fell asleep just as the words fell from his mouth. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."

Kagome woke late in the morning feeling so comfortable that she didn't want to get up. She'd finally had a good dream instead of the normal nightmare she found herself dealing with when she woke.

She was surprised that she even remembered the story from so long ago. She had heard it every night for almost a year straight until her father had hidden the book from her. Where had he put it? she wondered.

When a face entered her line of vision, she was startled and yelped, pulling the blanket up to cover herself more. The grey kimono outfit did seem to be a bit big and the outfit was falling off her shoulders but she needn't have worried because it was only Kanna.

"Are you awake, mum?" the snowy girl asked and Kagome shook her head, closing her eyes.

"No, I'm not," she whispered, hoping to catch her dream as it drifted fast away. She wanted to keep dreaming because it was in her dreams that her father still lived and it was in her dreams that she could talk to him again.

Kanna, however, had other plans for her. When Kagome pulled the blankets over her head to try to block out the midmorning sunlight that streamed through the windows in the living room to the shrine the snowy girl took the blankets and pulled them right off her body.

Kagome could have put up more of a fight for them but instead was more keen to just curling up in a ball on her bed. "I want to see Kagura." Kanna whispered in her ear, her voice dragging Kagome farther still from her dream.

Kagome tried to clutch onto the dream, to keep her father with her, but he would not stay. The dream fell from her grasp and was near forgotten no matter how hard she tried not to forget it.

She could remember the title of the story Naraku had read to her and her promise to become a protector of everyone who needed it like the Wood Fairy, but everything else was just gone.

"Sema rito gaba ko yoer." Kagome muttered, which was sleep talk and meant something along the lines of, "Go away, I want to sleep and if I'm not allowed to continue dreaming I think I might just end up waking up."

"Sema rito gaba ko yoer?" Kanna mimicked her. "What does that mean and what language could you possibly be speaking in?" All Kagome wanted to do was just dream happy dreams where she was jovial and where she still had her father.

She wondered how Kanna felt to have lost Miss Nina and her foster parents all in the course of just a few hours. How was Kanna coping with it?

It was these thoughts that made her sit up and give Kanna the biggest smile she could muster under the present circumstances. Kanna was so strong to be able to handle the death mostly on her own.

The healing, if Kagome remembered correctly from what her mother had said years before, after a death was done mostly in the first few hours afterwards. Kanna had to handle it alone and it would have been a very hard blow to deal with.

Kagome strengthened her resolve and began standing, adjusting the kimono outfit's shoulders so she wasn't giving the world such a cleavage show.

When Kanna gave her the widest, happiest smile she had seen for two days, Kagome felt better about the lost dream. It was just a dream after all and if she had one good dream, doubtless she would have another.

"I promise we'll see Kagura yet today, okay Baby girl?" Kanna's head bobbed up and down and Kagome found herself pushing her grief, not her father, towards the back of her mind. Perhaps she was healing, but it was a slow process indeed.

If she could speed the process up she might have but she knew that only time healed such deep wounds...and sometimes not even time could cure them.

"Shuichi is in the kitchen eating lunch with your mum." Kanna informed her, grabbing her hand and dragging her down the hall. The young fifteen year old was surprisingly strong for how weak she looked, Kagome had to admit.

Kagome was surprised that she had slept so long that it was lunch already. She hadn't slept in like that for nearly three years so why did she start now? Did she not have a job to do, a college to enroll in, two teens to enroll in high school, and so much else to do?

She had to find a rapist, thoroughly question Karei and Sammy on their rape accounts so she could find the rapist, talk to all her old friends and catch up on old times, find out what Medallion was up to lately (because keeping in touch with old enemies was often wise in her mind), find an apartment for Kagura, Hiei, and Yusuke since they would probably not go to Raspuit now that their reason for going was in Sunset, and she had to wear a dress in a wedding that may be turned into a funeral instead because the man who she loved more than anyone had to go and die on her.

Kali looked up from her lunch salad and gave her daughter a smile. "Rin is on her way over now so we can get you fitted for that dress." Kagome nodded and sat at the table, noticing finally that she had taken the bottom to the kimono off at some point in time during the night, probably had been too hot to keep them on.

Her father had been taller than her so the top fit well enough, going down to her mid thighs, but it exposed more legs than she was used to. She found herself pulling at the hem of the multiple layers of tops to try to cover more of her legs when Shuichi looked her way.

She had no idea which of the spirits it was that kept glancing at her but the demon spirit had made it very clear that he found her attractive right from the beginning.

Kagome realized how little she had eaten in the past couple of days—a few cookies and a bowl of oatmeal were all she had that she managed to keep down. After her bath she had spent ten minutes vomiting because she was still so unnerved about how the maid had phrased her father's death.

Unsure if she would be able to stomach the lettuce, she declined the offer when her mother made it. She didn't want to risk it even if she was hungry.

"Shuichi and I were just discussing the 100-year war, Kagome. I know you like the subject, would you care to join us?" Kali offered giving her daughter a worried look. Kali was probably wondering if Kagome was still thinking about Naraku.

Kagome gave her mother a small smile and shook her head. "No, mama, I'm fine."

Kali's brow creased together and she said, "I was not asking how you were, Kagome."

"Oh, you weren't? Silly me..." Kagome chuckled at the look on her mother's face. "I'm sorry mama, I couldn't resist." At this, her mother seemed to relax a bit.

When Kagome felt a tug on the kimono top, she looked towards Kanna who was the only one close enough to her to have done the tugging. Kanna was giving her a docile nervous look as though she wanted to say something. "What is it, Kanna?" she asked the young girl.

Kanna bit her lip for a moment before answering and Kagome gave her a small smile. "Can I sit on your lap, mum?" Kanna asked, fidgeting nervously. Shuichi gave Kanna a curious look and Kali had to hide a smile behind her hand and wasn't quite managing to hide the entire thing.

Kagome chuckled and nodded, letting the girl curl up in her arms. She fixed the kimono top on her shoulder as it began falling down and began to prepare herself for a battle of words with her mother though she knew she would lose on the topic before she even began.

"Mother," at this, Kali sat up straight. Kagome swore she could see the argument swimming in Kali's eyes already. Kali was prepared for this battle of wills that she would be having with her daughter.

"You and I both know how much I hate dresses of any sort. What in the name of Grandmother Madison were you thinking when you offered that I would wear a dress?" Kagome eyed her mother for a second before continuing, a little more determined than before.

Her mother just sat there daintily eating her salad as though at the moment all she was interested in was her healthy lunch. "Grandmother Madison never got all dolled up for weddings so why must I be forced to?"

Kali carefully set her fork down and Kagome recalled how her father used to set his fork down. He'd always been careful when eating so he wouldn't get any food on his clothes. Kagome shook herself mentally; she wasn't prepared for an emotional battle, especially after she just wok up.

Kali wiped her face on her napkin before she spoke, her food swallowed. "Grandmother Madison also was a warrior priestess during the 100-year war and during that time she was usually one of the protectors at the weddings, there to make sure nothing bad happened to those involved. I doubt anything is going to go wrong at the wedding unless Kohaku trips, but that is the likeliest bad thing to happen."

"But Kohaku may trip over the ungodly dress I will have to wear, so I shouldn't wear one." Kagome said grinning; she was so sure she had won the battle but it was far from over and Shuichi was the one who destroyed her chances at winning.

"Lady Madison had a fancy of getting prettied up at any chance she got and liked to pretend she was a part of the royal house. When she was in her armor versus when she was in what she considered to be beautiful clothing, she was completely unrecognizable and would often trick men, both demon and human, into cavorting with her. She was, needless to say, as deadly in a dress as in armor."

It was Shuichi's boyish voice that supplied the information, but Kagome was sure the demon spirit Youko was the source. She gave the boy a slight glare before looking at her mother.

Kagome was pouting and she knew she was. She now had a beautiful dress in her possession and a death threat hanging over her head that if anything bad happened to the dress before the coming wedding on Wednesday, Kali would murder her.

Kali had taken Kanna and Shuichi to be enrolled in school and to help them get their school uniforms for Sunset Private Education School, ordering Kagome to take the dress to her apartment and place it somewhere where it would be safe.

How about in the bottom of the garbage disposal? Kagome wondered with a frown. Is that a safe enough place? She doubted her mother would approve though, so instead she put it in her closet and then looked at the clothes that Kagura had picked out for her.

Kagura had bought her some dresses because there were no doubt going to be some formal instances where Kagome would no doubt need to wear a dress, but she had stuck to Kagome's guidelines: she needed to be able to move her legs freely.

Even if she didn't have some bad guy to chase down or some evil woman to apprehend, she still didn't like fabric getting caught in her legs. Other than the few formal and semi-formal outfits, there were the usual clothes that both Kagome and Kagura found themselves apt to wear: tube tops, tank tops, mesh shirts, baggy pants, khakis, low cut pants with loose legs, tee shirts that were form fitting and tee shirts that were not.

"Where is she?" Kagome turned abruptly, startled by Kagura's sudden voice. Kagura gave her a small smile, but there was worry in her eyes. "I heard you come in—I was in the bathroom. A girl's gotta do her business you know."

Kagome nodded her agreement and turned back to the closet. She was ready to take a nice long hot shower. "Kanna is with my mother and Shuichi. They're getting themselves enrolled in school and picking up a few clothes. Mama is going to drop them off here later on when all is said and done."

Kagome chose a blue tube top and a pair of blue pin stripe pajama pants, searching the dresser for the drawer that held undergarments. "How is Sammy?" Kagome questioned and Kagura was silent for a long moment, so long Kagome worried she might not answer. "Kagura?" she encouraged.

"'Gome...we went and got a home pregnancy test and"—Kagome already knew where the subject was going—"Sammy is pregnant unless the test erred. She's very upset and won't come out of her room to eat even. She locked herself in."

"I'll take care of it." Kagome said with a sigh. "But first I need a bath and some light chicken soup and crackers. I haven't eaten for the longest time."

Kagura gave her a relieved smile. "I'll find your soup; your towels are on the shelf in the bathroom along with your bath supplies."

---

As he heaved up the soup that the man had given him, he felt the man's cool hand on his forehead. The other hand was holding him steady so he could stay standing over the toilet.

It hurt to vomit, but he'd been so hungry that he'd eaten the soup too quickly and ended up vomiting all over the kitchen table, floor, and bathroom. As the bile rushed out of his throat, he felt soothed by the man's presence.

The man had saved him. He'd found him in the middle of the road and picked him up. The man's father was looking for his mummy and daddy. He couldn't wait until he was reunited with his mother and father. They would have to be so worried.

"It's going to be alright." The man told him. "Just let it all out."

When he finished vomiting finally, he curled up in the man's arms and cried. Tears dripped down his face and he didn't know that he was limited now to how many tears he would be able to shed. Soon his tear ducts would dry up and he would be unable to release his sorrow in such a simple manner.

He would learn to love the rain and showers, because when the liquid would flow down his face he would feel as though he was able to cry again. He didn't know that as he aged, he would never grow beyond the short height of three feet five.

He traced letters on the man's chest—his parents had been teaching him to write, though at age eight he was hardly good at it. "You're safe," the man agreed, answering the question that the boy was posing him. "It's okay, you're safe now."

The boy smiled, looking up into the man's brown eyes. "Thank you..." he mouthed, though he sobbed when no sound emitted from his throat to match his words.

The woman had destroyed his life when she took his voice. He loved to talk, he loved to sing, he loved to giggle, he loved to laugh, but he would never get to do any of that again.

---

The woman looked at the slip of paper she had received in the mail with pursed lips. Her eyes scanned the card that had two silver doves and a red ribbon on white parchment on the cover before she slapped the paper down on the desk.

"I don't want to go to any stupid wedding! Hmph! A gift indeed! Oh ho ho," she giggled as she danced her way over to the phone. She had the perfect gift, though it was for a woman only. Why would she want to give the groom a gift when she knew him not?

"Life is so fun on the edge!" she chanted as the phone on the other end rang. She pulled herself up onto the points of her feet and twirled in circles, her gown flowing around her. Why wouldn't she want to live on the edge?

But the audacity the woman had, sending her such an invitation when she was busy making plans to kidnap another child! Oh for heavens sakes, she did most certainly not want to go, but she knew she must. It was after all the polite thing to do when someone invites a person.

"What do you want?" The person on the other end snapped.

She pursed her lips and stopped dancing to fall into the desk chair. "Oh, you are angry with me?" She pouted. "I have money! Come to a wedding with me? The bride wants a gift."

She giggled again and thought of the bride with her brains spewing from a hole etched in her forehead by a bullet. She clapped her hand to her mouth to keep from shrieking out at the image.

"Yeah, when is the event?"

"Wednesday." She managed to choke out before bursting into a fit of giggles. "Oh, we'll have so much fun! Oh ho ho, so much fun!"

"Sure, whatever. I'm going." The person on the other end hung up and she did as well. She was having a great time, and now she would be able to rid the world of someone she heartily agreed to be a nuisance to the world.

---

Inuyasha narrowed his eyes at the phone in his hand. What kind of an idiot would call him and ask such a favor from him? Seriously, they had to be cracked. He wasn't even old enough to do as they were requesting.

Heaving a sigh, he slumped against the wall, wondering who he could call that would help him out of his predicament. How many twenty one year olds did he know? Medallion was twenty three, but he was in West City.

He obviously couldn't ask Sesshoumaru. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he recalled Kagome was twenty one. "It's a fat chance, but I could ask...I could bribe her. What could I use against her?"

---

Kagome sighed happily and let the water wash away the physical aches her body had and all the thoughts in her mind with it. She didn't want to think about Naraku being gone or she knew she would tear up.

It still wasn't the right time to think about it. She felt her long hair caress and tickle the scars that covered her back. If she had been born a demon instead of a human, those scars would have healed, never to be seen again.

Instead, she had been born a human and transformed into a demon half-breed.

She heard her ring tone going off on the other side of the curtain but ignored it. She was tired of everyone interrupting her; when she wanted to speak, when she wanted to shower, or when she just wanted time to herself.

She just let the water soak her body and she knew it would be a long time before she got out. Perhaps when the water was cold she would think about getting out; she wasn't sure.

"While you may think that all is fine and dandy," Sango said wisely, "I want answers. I'm not stupid and I've already figured out that they're here." Sango blushed under Rin's blank stare. "Okay, I suppose I should explain myself, huh?" she muttered.

Rin blinked once, then twice, then a final third time before shaking her head. "I understand you, Sango. I am afraid I must object though. Kikyou and her sister Kaede are not here." Rin was lying and she knew it, but she couldn't help it.

The house was no doubt bugged though Raine was searching the premises for such strange objects that may lead to the downfall of Kikyou and Kaede Motshuria.

"Oh, come on, Rin. You can tell me, it's not like I'm going to go off and tell someone!"

Rin's mistake lay in the discrete nervous glance she sent at the stairwell downstairs. Sango knew it was rude to do so, but she crossed the room before Rin could react, yanked the door open and began down the stairs. "That is not for you to choose to walk so freely around a house, Sango!" Rin told her. "You are a guest!"

"Holy hell," Sango whispered as she saw Kikyou and Kaede sitting together on a cushion watching the news. Kikyou gasped but then covered her mouth trying not to show her apprehension. Rin slid out of the stairwell and heaved a sigh.

"Ne—" Rin slapped her hand over Sango's mouth to keep her from finishing that sentence. She shook her head angrily.

"Horrifying, is it not?" Rin said quietly. "The ruined fabric amounts to nearly six hundred dollars."

Taking her cue from Rin, Sango realized that Rin believed the house to be bugged. "I'm sorry...I have to go see Kagome." Sango left as quickly as she had come; was trying to act as though she had not just found out something very crucial. Rin was harboring Kikyou and Kaede.

Was this frightening, or noteworthy? She couldn't decide.

Sango had never really been able to keep very much from Kagome. Kagome and her had been best friends for the longest time and for as long as she could remember, Kagome had always been the one who she would share the juiciest information.

As she looked at the apartment number that Kali had given her, she wondered if it was wrong for her to come forward and tell someone she trusted. After all, it wasn't her secret to tell. But then again, what could Rin and her sister Raine do to protect Kikyou and Kaede?

At last, she came to a decision and turned the car around. Kikyou and Kaede trusted Rin and Raine, so it was only fair for Sango to also trust her friends' judgments. She found she was both angry at herself for the decision and yet oddly content.

It would be the first secret she had deliberately kept from Kagome. Kagome was the first to know when Sango had lost her virginity, Kagome was the first to know when Sango's mother had died how much it hurt Sango, and Kagome was the first to know when Sango had crushed on Miroku.

She had kept nothing from Kagome but all that was about to change. She didn't realize it could only benefit Kikyou and Kaede if she told Kagome.

---

Kagome had been about to go talk to Sammy when her phone rang again. She picked it up with a sigh. "This is Higurashi—" yet another day, yet another interruption.

The male voice on the other end was familiar to her and she bit back a miserable groan. Why could the Nokugami boy's not stay out of her life? She didn't want them calling her, she didn't want to hear their voices, and she didn't want to think about them at all.

So then why were they calling her, why was she hearing their voices and why was she being forced to think about them?

"Hey, Kagome, it's Inuyasha."

"Why am I such a nice person?" she complained as she hit her head on the horn of the Rent-A-Car. Once more in her life she had found herself parked in front of the police station, ready to bail a man out of jail when she knew it may be best just to let them sit there and rot. Unfortunately it really was her fault that the man she had come to get was in jail. She was the one who had told him.

As she unbuckled and got out of the car, she grabbed the keys to the car and pocketed them so that there was no repeat of history and her car could not be stolen.

She could recall what had happened years before with her father when she bailed him out of jail and while she doubted that the man she was going to pick up would steal her car, she didn't know how long she would be in the police station and it was that fact that made her pocket the keys. There were many people in Sunset who were less than honest and may resort to stealing the car.

She locked the door and skipped up the steps, two at a time. It was time to make the best of the situation and she felt a grin come to her face as she thought of the taunts that she could toss at Sesshoumaru. She leaned casually against the receptionist's front desk and awarded him a wide grin. "Good afternoon! Long time no see!"

Startled at her sudden appearance, the man looked up and slowly a smile spread across his face. "Kagome! You are certainly right; it has been a long time. How is your father? I haven't seen him in for a long time."

Kagome forced the grin to stay in place as she tried a casual tone and said, "He's not going to be visiting anymore. You could say he's renewed his license in life." She glanced at her fingernails and noticed the sharp edges were back.

She hadn't even noticed. She tried to keep her fingernails trimmed but they grew very fast. "How are your wife and daughters, by the way?" She figured that if she was going to be taking a trip to the police station, she might as well say "hello" to those that she was familiar with.

"They're great." The man was grinning widely as he reached for his wallet and opened it to show her the picture inside. It looked to be a recent family photo of him and his family. He sat beside his wife, who sat on a chair as well, and their two daughters stood behind him.

They looked very happy and that happiness made Kagome's smile widen. "You have a lovely family Harvey. Oh wait, is she Rin? I know her."

Harvey nodded beaming down at the frozen image of his family. "And that's her sister Raine. Curinrin and I are very proud of them both. They're twins and we adopted them, but it feels like they're our own. Curinrin and I are unable to conceive so we jumped on the chance when the government offered it." He replaced the picture in his wallet and the wallet back in his pocket.

Kagome scratched her arm and yelped when she broke the skin with her sharp nails. That was why she tried to keep them trimmed—because she could cause bodily damage to herself and others far too easily with them. She peered over his desk.

"Do you have a tissue?" When he offered her one, she took it and covered the tiny wound with the disposable cloth. "Does the government normally involve themselves in the adoption of children? I mean, I thought they left that to Child Services, which isn't exactly the government."

With a shrug of his shoulders, Harvey spoke again quietly. "My daughter, Rin, is a Cyborg. I trust you not to run around telling everyone, though. My wife doesn't know yet and I fear her reaction if she were to find out."

Kagome's eyes went wide as she thought about that. "So she's not real? She seemed perfectly real to me when I saw her earlier today." The possibilities of Cyborgs seemed to be too far-fetched for her to actually believe it.

Rin was too normal to be a machine. Her movements were fluid, she was meticulous in the things she did, and she could go in water.

In the back of her mind she could hear Mrs. Zeishun, one of her old teachers speaking to her. "These babies are very expensive, so be careful with it, though you don't have to worry about water, it can go in it. It will drown if you hold it underwater."

If an android could be in water, could a Cyborg? And what exactly did he mean by Cyborg? Was it some sort of advanced android or was it a half-human, half-machine creation like portrayed in books and movies?

"Oh, she's very real, Kagome." Harvey told her, folding a piece of paper and putting it in an envelope, licking it shut. "She's human, but some parts of her are mechanical. If it weren't for the operation, she would have died years ago." Kagome took another tissue and replaced the first; the blood had bleed through and filled the first tissue. "Anyway, what have you been up to? How was Snowsville?"

Kagome pulled herself away from potentially dangerous thoughts: Cyborgs are unnatural. She gave Harvey another grin and replied with, "Snowsville was great. It was a refreshing change, actually. I made a few good friends, somehow pulled myself through the college and got my P.I. badge, and started a small business of my own."

"P.I. badge? Wow, Kagome. I guess I mostly assumed someone like you would become something more of a science researcher of the sort. I guess it just goes to show, eh?" Kagome nodded her agreement and put the bloody tissues in her pocket.

She knew she could heal the wound, but she preferred just to let them just heal on their own. They wouldn't scar if they were left to heal. "So, Kagome, would you like to join me and my family for dinner some time this week?"

Kagome was honored for the offer but knew her week would be fairly hectic as it was. For him to offer her dinner at his home meant that he thought highly of her, and she was pretty sure that was a good thing.

"I'm afraid I must decline for any day before Friday. Mother is getting married and unfortunately I must force myself to attend the wedding, dress and all."

Harvey burst out laughing. "You don't sound very excited. Is it the dress or the man?"

"The man I love. The dress, less!"

"So what have you popped by for, Kagome?" Harvey questioned, calming down enough to speak without laughing. "Somehow I don't think you're here for a pleasant visit."

Kagome rolled her eyes. "No, but I'm procrastinating. You see, the man I'm here to get...I don't even like him. Hey, is Shino Takai around?" She looked towards the door that led to the inner sanctum of the police station. "If he is, I'd visit him too while I'm here."

Harvey nodded. "Sure, I'll let you through. Go on in; his office is right straight back."

As Kagome walked over to the door, there was a buzzing sound as Harvey pushed the unlock button for the door. She opened the door and the sound stopped.

I could get a part-time here if I wanted. She thought and chuckled. She'd feel too confined if she did that, but she would have all the cities juicy information of trouble.

At least if she did that, she wouldn't have to bulk all her Grandfather's money into college. She would have a fairly steady income, so it was something to think about.

The police station in Sunset was much different than the one in Raspuit. The room was split in two, and unlike the very lucid atmosphere in the Raspuit police station, the atmosphere in the SPD was very problematic. She could have sworn that a single word said in the room would erupt the waiting volcano.

She saw very few females in the office; in fact she actually saw no females in the office. All of them were male and she could feel herself attracting stares.

She couldn't have cared less if they were looking at her face, but unfortunately she saw they were looking at the stomach and cleavage shown by the blue tube top that she wore. She had to remind herself that she would not make it out alive if slapped any one of the men.

"Raine?" she heard someone call just before she entered the office reading "Detective Shino Takai". "Oh, sorry, I thought you were Raine." She looked towards the man who had mistaken her for someone else.

If memory served her, she supposed she did look something like Raine from Harvey's photo, only her hair was longer and she had different colored eyes than brown.

"Don't worry about it." she told the brown haired guy. She continued into Shino's office and sat heavily in a chair before his desk. She would have to wait for Shino, because she sure as hell wasn't going to go out into the male atmosphere.

She would wonder about that though because she knew for a fact that there were females on the police force; or at least there had been three years before.

Kagome wanted to thank Shino for inspiring her to do something such as the police force, but mostly she wanted to inquire about Medallion. It was always a good idea, always a good idea to keep an enemy in memory.

She also wanted to know why the Mayor had passed a decree making it so that a person had to be twenty one to bail someone out of jail. Three years before a person only had to be sixteen.

Shino's day had been miserable so far. He had ended up getting to work late, which inevitably meant he would have to stay longer just to get in his normal workload, and he had missed lunch break. The friend who had bought him his computer, the one he used at work, had been killed some days previous and that made him very upset, but he knew it wasn't smart to get riled up especially in the line of police work.

As the day had flown by, he wondered how his son was doing at home. Medallion had picked up a stray, or so to speak. The boy was strange. His tongue had been cut out but it looked like it had been done many years ago and the boy was really no help at all in the matter because he couldn't speak and could barely write his alphabet much less write words.

"Distracted on the job, Shino?" he heard a voice say as he was settling down in his office. Startled, he looked up and it was as though Kagome appeared before him because he couldn't remember her being there before. "I heard that's not the safest position to be in." Her grin told him she was joking, but she had sounded so serious.

He was startled at her appearance. She was as eye catching as Lea had been. The woman with her suit skirts—people had laughed at Lea for wearing those outfits but Lea proved she didn't need her legs to move around. She would just mutter a few words in some foreign language and her entire body would disappear in mid air, only to reappear seconds later in front of her offender.

She had called it Teleportation, but Shino always thought that was something from a fairy tale. But then again, so were demons, but he'd known from experience that they were as real as he was.

Kagome, however, was much less expensively garbed. She wore a simple brown coat with the inner side wool, her pants were blue jeans, faded and old looking, low cut around her hips yet they looked snug on her waist.

The tube top seemed rather inconvenient and showed more skin than it covered but Shino could see the P.I. badge that hung casually from her belt, the belt worn purely for the purpose to hold her badge, phone, and gun holster which appeared to just be a small simple handgun. Still, a tube top seemed like the sort of thing a P.I. would want to stay away from. What if it fell down?

"I never expected to see you here, Miss Higurashi." Shino said, setting the files in his hands down on the desk. He ran his hands through his scruffy unkempt hair in an attempt to bring it to order but gave up when she snickered at him, amused by his sad attempts. "What's up? What have you come to me for?"

She shrugged, her delicately tanned shoulders raising and then lowering in nonchalance. "Just visiting you could say. I'm actually thinking about getting a part-time here, just to pass time. What's Medallion been up to lately? What's been happening here in Sunset these past three years? I come home and everyone is all tight about everything."

He watched her for a moment and then sighed. "There has been a lot of death in the recent years. Children have been disappearing, only to reappear in dumpsters around Sunset. Autopsies show they have metal and flesh as though someone tried to combine their bodies with that of a machine."

Kagome listened to Shino talk and learned of as much as she could from him. Information in the world of technology was the key to survival, she recalled Sango say once.

There had been two deaths recently in the Mayor's house, in Kikyou and Kaede's room. Two police officers had been killed; one of them was Shino's friend.

Apparently Kikyou and Kaede had killed them both in cold blood, but somehow Kagome couldn't picture either of them killing anyone in cold blood, much less having the strength to tie a grown muscular man to a chair to do so. She asked questions, and Shino answered them to the best of his ability. Shino knew quite a bit about the event.

He told of the false raid that some of the police officers had done and the strange behavior of the Mayor and some of his fellow police officers. "Some of these guys I think are throwing around far more money than they're making, if you get my drift." Shino surmised.

"But anyone who questions it gets put on forced vacation time. The Mayor passed a decree that any and all decisions of the SPD will be her command."

At Kagome's shocked expression, he continued, his look grim. "A lot of us are upset, but mostly only females have spoken up about the fact. The only females left not on forced vacation are working the night shift."

"So that's why there was a lack of 'em." Kagome murmured. "I was wondering... Don't you think it's rather odd that the Mayor, who is supposed to leave any and all decisions to the chief of the department, would resort to passing a decree for control?"

She twirled her hair on her finger and heaved a quiet sigh. She would have to talk to her mother about everything. Apparently a lot had changed, and if anyone knew anything about it all, it would be her mother. There had to be at least one person from each family seeing her mother.

"Yep. The Mayor was angry when the chief wouldn't sign a warrant for the search of Harvey Legume's home. Harvey is the—"

"Yeah, I know. Front desk guy. Why search Harvey's house though? He's a man in his late fifties; it isn't like he's got too much to hide." It struck Kagome even before she finished speaking and she felt the last word die away, a look of realization swirling across her face.

The closest place from the Mayor's house was Rin's home, which was two miles or so away. "Holy moley...they think Harvey is hiding Kikyou and Kaede? Well, if what you said is true and the footsteps stopped just before their house..." she trailed off again and shook her head.

"Yeah, but Shino, that could be just a coincidence you know. Truckers often drive that road because it's quickest to get from Keysville to Saga if you take that road."

"That's my thought. The two decided to hitchhike and it just happened that they were in front of the Legume home." Shino scratched the back of his neck, a frown on his face. "It's not the worst part either. We can't question the false raid either. The participants in the raid were suspended immediately by the chief but the Mayor brought them back."

He busied himself with his files, straightening them as he spoke as though nervous. Kagome realized how large the situation was through his movements. The man was nervous. Those women aren't on forced vacation... she thought. They're on pre-funeral beds!

"Is there anything I can do?" she asked, wanting to help him. She stopped playing with her hair, looking him directly in the eyes. He would think there was little she could do, no doubt. He would think she was a newbie at dangerous or potentially dangerous situations.

Unfortunately, or fortunately whichever way one were to look at the situation, he didn't know about her years growing up, prowling the streets and getting into fights with the bullies from the public school.

Shino shook his head, "No, not unless you have some strange death wish. But hey, everyone needs a wish to live on. Mine is that I see my son have grandchildren."

Kagome decided a change in subject was due. They had talked for several hours already but she still didn't know about Medallion and he was a main thing she wanted to talk about.

His handsome face floated in her vision for a moment and she couldn't help but grin as the image altered to become heavily bruised. Medallion was her favorite punching bag back at those times.

"How is Medallion anyway? Is he still up to his old tricks?" Shino gave her a confused look and Kagome laughed. He didn't know about Medallion's skipping school all the time to heckle the private school students. "I mean is he still as rambunctious as I remember him?"

"Well, no. He certainly has calmed down quite a bit. He doesn't have a new girlfriend each month, thank goodness, but he had just recently been in college for his first semester and for some odd inexplicable reason came home. I guess it's good he did because of the boy he found on the way home, poor kid..." Kagome watched the emotion flicker over the police detective's face and heaved a sigh.

She knew she had to do something to help Shino, but at the moment her mind was overloaded with all the people she wanted to help. How did the Wood Fairy decide who to help? She wondered. Did the Wood Fairy have as much trouble as she was having?

Shuichi, Sammy, Kanna, and Karei...all of them she had to help, and she wanted to get to the bottom of the fishy mystery of Kikyou and Kaede. She didn't even have to do anything, but she wanted to.

Oddly enough, the strange thought popped into her mind. "There are too many people with their names starting in 'A' and 'S'." she told Shino and he laughed.

"I agree on that. Far too many. I was thinking of changing my name to Onihs, but then it would just sound weird."

---

Kagome chuckled, leaning against the cell door with a grin. She had warned him that he would go to jail if he didn't leave things to her, and now there he was, sitting behind bars.

"You're such a nuisance. I told you not to do it, but you did. Now here comes Kagome, to the rescue."

Sesshoumaru stood from the cot and Kagome recalled it was the same cell she had been in when she'd been in jail for beating up Naraku. She thought it was funny how everything seemed to bring her thoughts back to her father, no matter what it was. "Hmph. I enjoyed beating him. I don't regret it at all." He told her.

Kagome reached her hand into the cell, holding it out knuckles up expectantly. "Kiss it." She smirked. "Call me Queen, beg forgiveness for not listening to me, and maybe, just maybe, I'll get you out of here."

She found extreme humor in the thought of him humbling himself enough to beg, considering he was a prince. She felt that smirk widen when he looked at her like she was cracked up on drugs. "You heard me. Kiss it. Humble yourself before me, Mister Royal-Pain-In-My-Bum."

She thought for a moment and added as an after thought, "And kneel too." She was irritated at him and she wanted to watch him embarrass himself in front of her. It would cheer her up, at least, after all the bad things happening around her and within her life.

Sesshoumaru rolled his eyes. "Would you be surprised if I didn't do it?" he asked her, his hand running through his hair. Kagome noticed the difference between Sesshoumaru and Yuri then; Sesshoumaru wore a charm to cover his demon traits and Yuri did not. Sesshoumaru was afraid to show his demon heritage, and Yuri was not.

She shrugged. "Not really, but then again, would you be surprised if I left you here for the next thirty days to cool off after your charge of disorderly conduct? Inuyasha said that your father was uninterested in getting you out of jail. Kiss it, or miss it."

She felt the curious tug at her lips go further towards her ears when he began walking over to her, but found herself to be very disappointed when he grabbed the bars of the door and leaned his forehead against them. He didn't appear to be kneeling very well, did he?

"Kagome Higurashi..." she felt her eyes lock onto his and found she enjoyed the way her name rolled from his mouth. What would he do? Would he kneel like she asked, or would he not?

Why was he speaking to her in that voice, and why couldn't she move her eyes from his? What was he doing to her? Why was she feeling so light headed?

"...You've got a bloody nose." He wasn't doing anything to her, but instead it was just her nose interrupting her fun. She could feel the blood dripping onto her lips and it was none-too-pleasant.

She now had reason to be angry with a body part, because while the rest of her body wasn't doing it, her nose was conforming to the populace and interrupting her right when things were getting interesting.

Her hand clutched the bar of the cell and she could feel her head spinning and had to lean against the cell for support. "Damn." Kagome reached into her pocket and took out the bloody tissues, placing them to her nose. "Must be my allergies acting up." She gave him a glare. "I'm allergic to dogs."

"You're the worst liar I have ever been privileged to meet." He informed her. He still wasn't kneeling, or calling her Queen, or doing anything she told him to do really. She sneezed and more blood started coming out of her nose; her eyes were beginning to blur.

"Aww. This is really irritating." She nodded to the man behind the glass down the hall and the cell door began to swing open. "You owe me big time." She felt cheated that she was letting him off the hook and he wasn't humiliating himself in front of her.

To see a prince humble himself before her would have been a memory she could have looked back on and laughed a great deal, but instead her nose had to be evil. Besides that, she had blood dripping from the soaked tissues and was in need of new ones. "I need a vacation..." Kagome muttered.

On their way out, Kagome stopped in Shino's office again and when Shino heard her enter he looked up from his work. He gave her a startled glance and then looked to Sesshoumaru as though wondering if Sesshoumaru had hit her. He hadn't, of course, but Shino didn't know that.

"Miss Kram—" Kagome interrupted him, feeling a slight satisfaction for interrupting someone else for once. "Just Kagome, Shino. Got any tissue? My nose is bleeding."

Shino shook his head and scratched his neck. "I see that...Not really. I've got a 'kerchief though. That's a lot of blood...are you okay?"

Kagome's head was reeling. "Make it stop spinning..." she muttered as the world began to spin around her head. Blood was dripping down her arm into the wool of the jacket.

Two tissues weren't enough to hold it all. She collapsed then, knocking into Sesshoumaru, who had been unprepared—he hadn't been paying attention.

Both of them went sprawling across the wooden floor in Shino's office, Kagome's head landed on his thigh and her hand fell away from her nose. Blood began to soak his clothing and he stared at it blindly. Her eyes were unresponsive.

Shino was on his feet immediately. To Shino, it was clear that Sesshoumaru—though he was going to medical school—was disgusted by blood. Perhaps it even made the boy sick to his stomach. The time to ponder isn't now, Shino berated himself.

"Here are two prescriptions, just be sure to take them and you'll be fine." The doctor told her, his hands busy marking up a piece of prescription paper. The nurse had left already and Kagome was not sure if she was ready to be alone with the lecherous old man who had, just a month before, decided her breasts were ripe for the touching.

Kagome took the slips of paper and thought about Shino and Sesshoumaru who were waiting out in the lobby for her. "What do they do?" Kagome asked, looking at the slips of paper dubiously. She wished she had someone in the room with her.

Her head was still woozy feeling and her arms felt like jelly for some reason, so she knew if he decided to be perverted, any attempt at stopping him in his tracks would be laughed off. Hell, even Sesshoumaru would be a god-send!

Fortunately for her, the doctor—Mr. Pilaf—was distracted by other things. She didn't know what those things were or if she wanted to know, but he kept his hands where they were supposed to be throughout the check up.

She had passed out in Shino's office, but when they got to the hospital she'd been fading in and out of consciousness. Mr. Pilaf had given her something that kept her from falling out again.

"The Ampetunicince is a pill you'll take when you get the bloody nose or if you begin coughing up blood. The Portaculant is a liquid and it will help your body get used to the transformation you previously went through almost three years ago."

Of course he would know about that, Kagome thought. The information would be in her medical records. "I will warn you to use the Portaculant only as recommended because it is also used to replace blood. If you get a nose bleed after taking the Portaculant, take one Ampetunicince and that will clear it up."

"And this is going to work? You are sure?" Kagome asked him, running a hand through her hair as she looked at the slips of paper. One thing was for sure, she could only be happy to get rid of the freakish version of her mother who kept trying to kill her in her nightmares.

He handed her a third slip of paper, his movements brisk as he did so. She got the feeling that someone had said something about her that made him nervous and it was that thought that made her smile. Finally something went right.

He attempted a lofty voice as he said, "Of course it will. Who is the doctor here? I should think I would not have to tell you not to double dose. If you miss taking the Portaculant once, do not take a double dose of it, as you could easily end up with internal bleeding, and the Ampetunicince does not clear the internal bleeding up."

Kagome quirked an eyebrow at him as he pointed to the third slip of paper, "That is a prescription"—Thank you, Captain Obvious, Kagome thought wryly—"for the pill form of Recotunpario. It will—"

"Relax me. It's a stronger form of Valium. I know." Great, just what I needed, an even stronger Valium to get hooked on. Toss me the pills, doctor. Thanking him but not voicing her thoughts, Kagome slipped off the bed and walked towards the waiting room.

Shino met her at the door to the waiting room and she gave him a slightly embarrassed grin. He didn't have to wait for her. The fact that he did made her think she was more than just some chick that he had put in jail at one point in his life.

She wasn't sure why it bothered her to think that he would think of her as only a passing glance but she knew it did bother her. Am I attracted to the man? Am I fickle? The thoughts were reasonable she supposed, but the fact that she got no answer to them unnerved her.

"What did he say?" Shino asked her in a soft voice as they rejoined Sesshoumaru and she slipped the three prescriptions in her pocket.

She wasn't sure why the doctor had given her Recotunpario, but she wasn't sure if she would fill the prescription. She figured Valium worked well enough, she would just use the Valium she had if she found she needed to be calmed.

"He gave me a couple of prescriptions and said I'd be fine if I didn't overdose on them." Sesshoumaru snorted his disdain, earning a frown from Kagome. "Hey, you. I could send you right back to jail, so shut up." She was his 'get out of jail free' card, and she was most certainly going to hold it against him.

She had done him a favor, and she always reaped the most benefit from those favors she gave to people she didn't like. It was her way of doing things. Of course, most of the time those people didn't realize it, which also suit her well.

Shino felt a wide smile crossing his face as he watched Sesshoumaru bristle. These two are quite the cute couple, he thought, though he did not know that Sesshoumaru and Kagome were not a pair and were in fact quite the opposite.

But still, Kagome and Sesshoumaru would be a cute pair, if only they would see that as well. Unfortunately, love is a blind; when it is down you cannot see to the outside. It would be a while before anyone opened the shutters for those two.

"You could send me back to jail, but somehow I get the feeling you don't have the nerve." Sesshoumaru spat. He could feel his anger growing, but he clenched it tight.

He had never lost his anger before, not even when he was beating up the trucker Sammy had identified as the perpetrator who raped her.

He knew that soon that pride at holding his continuously growing anger in containment would end because the bindings would snap and he wasn't sure what would happen then, but he also knew that there were only two things that could result: something good, or something bad.

He desperately wanted it to be something good, but knew that most likely it would be bad. After all, bad things tended to formulate around him just as much as he was a magnet of weird people.

Kagome narrowed her eyes at him, trying to leash her anger. She would only be laughed at if she threw a fist at him. She was as weak as a kitten at the moment. "You're such an ass, Sesshoumaru. It couldn't hurt you to thank me once in your life for helping you."

She plastered a smile on her face and said her goodbyes to Shino, who was barely managing to contain his smile, before stalking past Sesshoumaru. The police station was where she parked her car, and thankfully the police station was also right across the street from the hospital.

She had to get away from Sesshoumaru. He irked her last nerves like no one else could, and he managed to do it with only one sentence too.

As Kagome was driving back to her apartment, her mind found its way back to the kisses Sesshoumaru gave her. She was always left breathless, as though she were riding an avalanche down a mountain, or trying to outrun one anyway.

The very first kiss between her and Sesshoumaru out in those woods had been so exhilarating. She had never in her life been kissed like that before. She had never felt so much emotion in a kiss and it was as though she had truly been born, or woken up, at that moment.

She had learned just months later that he had always had a crush on her. That had been a slap in the face. To think, she'd always thought that he was in an arranged marriage with her cousin and had harbored a secret crush on him as well, until finally one day she had woken up and instead of Sesshoumaru being the one who gave her heart eyes, it was Kohaku.

All that time she could have been with him, but Karei had to lay a claim on him instead. She hadn't wanted those days to end, she recalled. During the Christmas that she had spent with the Nokugami boys, she had found she wanted to just let time stop.

Every kiss, every brush of their arms, every glance he had sent her way made her hungry but not for food; and she had to hide that fact too, which was not easy.

Kohaku, mysterious though he had become after the kidnapping, was no match for Sesshoumaru. Kagome was in love with mystery, and Kohaku was only an apple blossom on the tree of mystery.

Sesshoumaru was a fully ready lush red apple ripe for the picking; he was an enigma and she found that she wanted to know everything about him. It was a startling realization to admit that to her self; a large piece of pie to swallow.

She thought it inappropriate for her to be thinking about Sesshoumaru so much while not sparing Kohaku a single thought but as she reasoned in her head at a red light, it was her thoughts, who was she to tell them what to think about?

The image of herself yelling at her mind for thinking of Sesshoumaru made her laugh. The woman in the vehicle next to her saw her laughing and gave her an odd look before turning the corner.

Kagome tried to contain her laughter until she got home and just barely managed to do so, falling onto the floor in the loft and cracking up in hysterics as her mind struggled to think about something funny to give reason to her laughter but there really was nothing funny aside from the thought of yelling at herself and that wasn't that funny.

Her mind whizzed with all the very un-funny things that had been happening in her life recently, or the lives of others would be more accurate to say. She seemed to attract all the people who were magnets for trouble, and didn't really have too many of her own problems. Perhaps that was why she liked mysteries?

By the time her mind had finished reviewing all those sickening, infuriating, and scandalous memories, she was crying. She didn't care whether or not she was the only one in the apartment or that Kagura had come up to the loft to see what the noise was about; she didn't care that Kagura had wrapped comforting arms around Kagome or that she was digging her dangerously sharp nails into her shoulders trying to hug herself to death.

The truest bad thing to happen to Kagome in her entire life—and not even the beatings could compare!—was her father's death. She wanted him to be alive more than anything.

She couldn't deny that everything was leading back to him. The town was small and she and her father had covered almost every inch of it together in her youth. They had gone shopping together, and they had sung karaoke together, and they had played in the park together... there was so much she had done with him!

She would never be able to escape his memory and worse yet she wasn't sure she even wanted to. She was sure she would rather hurt inside, berate herself for procrastinating, than have him living a life pained by the curse the android's flesh gave him.

Oh, but what she wouldn't give just to hear his voice one more time...just to hear him read to her one last time...just to be tucked in one final time...

---

The man on the stage took a deep breath, his blue eyes scanning the crowd in the bar called the Rave. He and his small band played twice a week at the Rave, which was quite the privilege. He knew his band was good, but to be good enough for eight days at the Rave a month was a big deal. Other bands—and there were several small bands in Sunset—were lucky to play just one day a month.

His smile spread as he eyed the packed place, though it was no more packed when his band played than any other night it still gave him confidence versus if there were only a few people in the club. He looked at his digital watch and saw the time was nearing seven PM.

He turned to face two of his closest friends, Hiten and Manten Dansuka, and gave them the thumbs up. Trying to talk to them in the noisy bar would have been ridiculous, because they wouldn't have heard each other and they weren't magically able to read lips—that was a taught skill, not inborn.

It was a wonder that anyone heard their songs over the raucous, but they were paid one hundred dollars for each night they played—each. In his mind that was pretty good money considering they only played for three hours a night.

As the lights in the main area of the bar dimmed, the noise in the bar seemed to heighten, but Kouga was unfazed. The first time he had played in the Rave he remembered being terrified of the fact that the noise got louder; he'd always had the idea that when lights were dimmed the attention would be on the only place in the room that was still lit.

Unfortunately an intoxicated mind worked much differently than a sober one more often than not.

The microphones were on, the amps were turned up, and the band began to play. Kouga, or Wolf Man as was his band name, was the vocals and guitar player. Manten, or Big Guy, was on drums and a back up vocal. Hiten, also known as Thunder, was on keyboard or the bass depending of the song and was a secondary vocals.

Today Hiten was playing the keyboard. All the songs were written by the fourth member of their band, though that member preferred to remain anonymous considering if the prince were to reveal himself as a simple band player, he felt it would drag to much attention to him. Kouga loved the attention.

Kouga began singing the song that he and the others had memorized. He let the music wash through his soul as he sang, though if he told anyone that he tried to put his soul into his music he was sure they would either think him gay or cracked.

Either one wasn't very prospective, though, so he wouldn't tell anyone that he put his heart and soul into the things he sang. "I find myself in the odd position, still helplessly loving you; I cannot fathom this insane mission, I'm still helplessly loving you. I find a drink, 'Just one' I'll say, but find myself drinking all my wiles away."

Manten crashed the cymbals with his drumsticks and Hiten sang the first part of the chorus. Kouga knew Manten wanted to sing, but unfortunately the large fellow had zip to no voice so that was why he was a 'back up' vocal.

"Miles away, you laugh and you cry; deep down inside, I know the fault is mine." Kouga could barely hear Hiten's voice and as usual he worried that they weren't loud enough, but knew they would sound ridiculous if they started getting louder all of a sudden.

Kouga raised his voice again and began singing once more. "I couldn't stay though, love; I had to leave. You'll understand when you're happy with another man."

This time as the second part of the chorus came up, Kouga sang with Hiten and he could only hope that his and Hiten's voices were on the same key. "My tears, my sorrow, my joy, my heart; that is you, girl, it has been from the start...Miles away, you laugh and you cry; deep down inside, I know the fault is mine."

Hiten's attention diverted to the keyboard and Kouga stepped slightly back from the microphone, watching his finger movements to get a particularly tricky set of notes right. Normally he didn't have to look at his hands, but he couldn't hear what he was playing and he didn't want to screw up the song.

After the slight interlude, Kouga moved to the microphone again. His father disapproved of him playing at the Rave; he said that music was useless and a waste of time. Kouga didn't think so; he thought music moved the soul and kept life in the world.

"To say I am happy with what I have done, t'would be a lie and that's a drink of which I'll have none...Honesty, baby, that's something you loved; but you treat me like baggage and it makes me wonder if your love dissolved..."

Hiten took over the microphone and Kouga stepped back. He was so into the music that he started bouncing on his heels to the tempo of the music. He couldn't hear Hiten over the huff of the bar, but in his mind he knew what was coming next.

"And how was I supposed to know that you loved me right back, when all you did was drag me to the sack? My tears, my sorrow, my joy, my heart; that is you girl, it has been from the start...You'll never know that I still love you, because I know you'll be happy just being without me."

Kouga moved back to his microphone and sang the last verses with Hiten. They had already decided to omit several stanzas because otherwise the song would exceed their planned time.

"Miles away, you laugh and you cry; deep down inside, I know the fault is mine... My tears, my sorrow, my joy, my heart; that is you, girl, it has been from the start... My heart, my joy, my tears, my sorrow; I'll love you today and all of tomorrow..."

They played for another hour and ten minutes before it was time to take a ten minute break. When the three of them were in the band room, the sounds out in the main area of the Rave had dimmed considerably and they found their ears ringing at the sudden change. "I hear bells!" Hiten said, shaking his head to clear it. "Manten, how are you feeling?" Hiten said with worry towards his brother's condition.

Manten was sitting in a chair taking deep breaths and held his hand to his chest. He looked pale. "I'm okay, big brother." He said, though it seemed a startling statement for him to make considering he was bigger than his older brother.

Manten had recently undergone months of chemotherapy to cure breast cancer—which was not uncommon for men to get, though slightly more unlikely—but a couple side effects of the successful treatment was his hair fell out and shortness of breath.

Kouga was glad that Manten had survived because he knew how it was to lose someone to breast cancer as he had lost his mother to the disease.

"Hey, Manten, why don't you take a longer break, huh? Hiten and I'll take care of things on stage and—"

"No!" Manten said angrily. "If Hiten can do it, I can too!"

"Kouga, can you go get some water? We've still got seven minutes before we have to get on stage again and I'm parched." Kouga didn't have to be asked twice; he knew Hiten intended to talk his brother out of going back on stage. The heat of the lights on the stage served only to make Manten shorter of breath.

Kouga left the room to go to the bar in the main room. The barkeep was already filling up a pitcher of water for him and had three glasses ready. Unfortunately, as fate would have it, he ran into a lovely young girl before he could get to the bar.

The girl yelped and went crashing into a big guy, both of them sprawling over the ground in a tumble of limbs and grumbles. "Oh, no!" Kouga helped the girl to her feet. He wondered what had possessed him to stop paying attention to his surroundings; normally he didn't randomly run into chicks.

"Sorry about that!" Kouga shouted to be heard over the bar noise. He began dusting her off before blushing and realizing just what body part he was brushing off.

"Don't worry about it." The girl shouted back, flipping her brown hair over her shoulder. Kouga had to admit, she looked pretty cute. Her mud-brown eyes were framed with long feminine lashes behind her glasses and her lips were swollen as though she'd just been kissing someone.

He wouldn't doubt it if she was in this place, but when he looked away from her face to survey her clothing, he realized it was probably very likely that she was recently kissing someone. Kouga hadn't ever seen a girl wear clothes like she was wearing, though he knew they were made.

She wore the tightest black leather pants that showed off tight seemingly impossible (for a girl) formed muscles, black open toed stilettos that showed crimson painted toenails, a tight leather jacket that was zipped slightly but showed more than enough cleavage to make a grown man cry with wanting and showed much of her stomach allowing the world to see her abs.

Her hair was cut to her shoulders but seemed to frame her face, her lips were covered with crimson paint and her eyes harbored the same shade of eye shadow, her fingernails were long, perfectly manicured, and crimson covered.

She was sleek, sexy, and he liked her look, that was for sure. He also couldn't help but notice she seemed to have quite the noticeable bust size, which was a good plus in his mind.

"I'm Kouga Wolfe—" He was cut off by the distinct shout of BAR FIGHT by one of the many drunken Rave frequenters before the girl was sent flying by the big man that Kouga had bumped her into. His eyes went wide and he felt his anger growing as he realized that a man had just hit a woman.

He had grown up learning that a man should never hit a girl—he had never known exactly why a man should never hit a woman but it had grown up to be one of his morals in life—but before he could confront the man, the girl was getting up off the floor.

The bar had gone silent the instant the girl had hit the floor. Bar fight news traveled fast and everyone wanted to see what the outcome would be before the police came to break the fight up. Many people found their ears ringing with the fight induced silence and when the girl spoke they clung to the small amount of noise her voice made.

"You'll regret that." She informed the man, turning to face him before she bent down to pick up the glasses that had flown from her face, inspecting the broken item. "Hmph, do you realize I had to pay three hundred and eighty dollars for these things?" It was as though she didn't care that there was a large blue bruise forming by her eye.

"Spilled all my drink!" he waved to the wet spot on his pants. His eyes were quickly becoming blood shot as his anger enhanced his inebriated state. His hands clenched and unclenched; he was more than ready for a fight.

"What's your problem? If you're that bothered by it, you could pass it off as you wet your pants—I'm sure that no one else would notice much a difference from your normal state." She had suggested that the large man wet his pants on a daily basis, proving that the man could get angrier than he'd already been.

If Kouga weren't worried the woman would get the shit beat out of herself, he might have laughed. He was actually debating stepping in between the woman and the large man, but he was unable to do so as the man beat him to the punch and had the girl by the throat and was holding her up off the floor.

"You!" The large man snarled. Contrary to popular belief, Kouga would have never believed what happened next if he had not seen it in person or heard it.

"And here I thought we got through the introductions!" the woman wheezed.

She stretched her lithe body, wrapping her legs around his arm. Kouga was reminded of a cat and how it could stretch its body into such impossible positions to clean itself. He actually had the inappropriate thought of what it might be like to have such a limber woman wrap her legs around his waist and...Where are these thoughts coming from?

A snap interrupted his thoughts and he saw the woman fall to the ground on her hands, her legs still wrapped around the man's arm which was held at an angle that certainly should not have been humanely possible. The man's scream permeated the air and Kouga felt a pop in his ears as his eardrums burst.

He concentrated on his ears for a moment, telling his body to heal the popped drums, and slowly they mended, though the blood that had come out of his ears before he healed them was still there. He used his sleeve to dab at the blood while the woman was letting go of the man's arm, tipping herself back onto her feet.

"Step back!" there came the police voice, moments too late. The man was crying and the bone was sticking out of his arm. Kouga would have been surprised if the man didn't cry.

Drunk or not, that had to hurt, and seeing a wound always made things seem so much worse; Kouga had had plenty of broken bones courtesy of someone he preferred to call "mutt-face" and wouldn't mention his name so he knew this from experience.

Slowly the crowd was parted and the police—who Kouga could only assume were called by the evening managers—walked up to the man and woman. There were two—one male and one female police officer.

"What's going on here?" The male police officer asked, examining the broken arm of the big offender.

The female officer looked at the woman in leather, examining the woman's black eye. "I think it's obvious, Kor. The guy attacked her!"

"He punched me and then tried choking me, so I broke his arm." The woman said, placing her right hand on her left hip, and her left hand on her right hip. With the fight broken up, the crowd began to disperse and the noise level of the bar began to grow again.

Kouga sighed, glad the woman would be alright, and moved to the bar, grabbing the pitcher of ice water. The male police officer was taking the man out of the bar; the female police officer was following them out.

Kouga saw the woman looking around and walked up to her again. He felt he should apologize considering he was at fault for the entire situation being the one who knocked into her. "I'm sorry." He told her seriously.

"No problem—what did you say your name was again?"

Kouga waved to the door saying "band personnel only" as the noise reached its' peak once more. "Why don't we talk about this where it's quiet? And it's Kouga Wolfe." He wondered how she got out of going down to the station, but then disregarded it. Some people were lucky, he supposed.

The woman nodded and seconds later they had made it to the band room. As soon as the sounds dimmed enough that they could hear themselves think, Hiten confronted Kouga.

"Dude, we're on in like less than a minute!" He took the pitcher of water and drank the water right out of the large carrier.

Manten coughed slightly, receiving a worried glance from his elder brother, but it was only a simple cough. "Who's the lovely lady?" he inquired when he could speak without sounding weak again. "I don't think I recognize you, miss..?"

Manten was quite the gentleman when he wanted to be, charming even if he wasn't all that good looking. He took her hand in his and placed a gentle kiss on the knuckles.

"Yukimura. Keiko Yukimura." Her crimson lips were quirked in a smirk of irony. "Charmed, I'm sure." She, in turn, gave him a kiss on the cheek and laughed when his cheeks turned the same hue as the lipstick stain now on his cheek.

Kouga took the pitcher of water from Hiten and took a gulp of the ice cold liquid, then handed the pitcher to Manten. "So..?" he asked Hiten quietly. Hiten didn't need to be a rocket scientist to realize what Kouga was getting at and he gave a small, tight smile and shook his head.

"Ready Manten?" Hiten asked. "If you get tired, I want you just to get off the stage."

"Geez, I'm not a little kid anymore, Hiten." Manten said, blushing further to be talked down to in front of a woman. The two left the room to go up onto the stage.

"I'd like to speak with you, but I've got to sing." Kouga grumbled. He had completely lost track of time during the fight and that usually wasn't like him.

If only he wasn't thinking about having Keiko's legs wrapped around his waist and crushing those still swollen lips to his...Stop thinking, Kouga! He yelled at his mind.

"I'll watch you, and you can speak with me afterwards. Perhaps you can help me out too."

The idea of her staying to watch him, though it was strange considering he only met her a few minutes before, made him strangely pleased. "Cool." He dashed out of the room to get up on the stage and time seemed to go so slow.

He had never before wanted the evening singing to get over faster. She was sitting at the back of the room in a booth, her legs split up in a very suggestive position. He admired her thin, very attractive body and found his eyes locking with hers.

After they were done singing, Kouga, Manten, and Hiten had to pack up their equipment and load it in Kouga's van so Kouga could take it to the Sunset City Hall Monday night or else they would not be able to play during the reception of Kali's wedding.

Kouga had been very pleased when Souta had asked for his band—it was such an honor to be able to do something like that for Sunset's Shrink.

"See yah later," Hiten told Kouga with a grin and a glance towards where Keiko was seated. Kouga rolled his eyes and muttered, "It's not like that," but Hiten didn't hear; he was too busy driving off down the street towards home.

Kouga went and sat in the booth that Keiko was in and found even more inappropriate thoughts dragging into his mind, ranging from simple ones to the more complex such as how many ways could Keiko use the tongue that was currently wetting her lips.

"So Keiko, are you new to town? I'm sure I would recognize such a beautiful girl." He gave her a grin and tried to force the thoughts out of his head but it wasn't working.

"You could say that." Keiko admitted her eyes half lidded as she took a drink of her alcoholic beverage.

"I'm...um..." Kouga stammered; even more thoughts had bombarded his mind and he found himself incomprehensible.

He normally was much more sure of himself; all of his girlfriends that he'd had he'd been very possessive of, but that usual arrogant possessiveness had flown out of him and he felt like a weak little kitten. He ordered a drink and came back to her table, sitting at it.

During the first drink, Kouga found her to be quite an interesting woman; he couldn't honestly say he remembered much of what they talked about after that.

When they had decided to go back to Kouga's apartment, he couldn't recall, but at the time it had felt so right. He would wake up with an enormous woman and a beautiful hangover in his arms. Wait, did he have that backwards? He was too drunk to know.

---

Kagome sighed and shifted on the couch, grumbling irritably. She decided the couch really wasn't the best sleeping place, but she had no where else to sleep. Already she could see having to get an apartment somewhere else, but where?

Kanna and Shuichi, against Kagome's better judgment, were sharing her loft bed though she honestly doubted anything would happen between them. Shuichi was a thief, but she was sure he wouldn't steal what was in plain sight.

Kagome would have shared the bed with Kanna, but she would have gotten woken up when Kanna went to school and she didn't want that.

Sometime around three AM, she heard a pounding on the wall next door and frowned. She didn't want to know, she didn't want to hear, and she was disgusted to even think of it. She and Kohaku had not been so noisy!