As she came to the water's surface and wiped the water from her face, she hardened her resolve to make the best of her bad situation. As she smoothed her long hair from her vision, she caught the sight of a head of black hair and blue eyes peering out from a bush at her.

With a seconds hesitation to gather her breath, Seika released an ear splitting scream, startling InuYasha so badly that he nearly fell from his tree. A moment later, he had launched himself in the direction Seika was facing, only to drag out his monk companion.

"Miroku, what the hell are you doing?" The hanyou yelled, then as a side note, "Not that I really need to ask."

The monk immediately began to defend himself, "InuYasha, it's not what you think. I merely saw a beautiful woman alone and worried for her safety. I was keeping watch for anyone that may try to take advantage of her."

"No, that's my job. You're one of the people taking advantage of her," InuYasha let go of his friend and crossed his arm, sparing a quick glance in Seika's direction to make sure she was fully clothed. "You're lucky Sango isn't around."

The monk laughed and scratched the back of his head, "That's very true."

"Who knows, though? She may hear about it some how," the monk squirmed uncomfortably under the threat. If there was ever one thing ingrained in his memory, it was that an angry demon slayer was never something you wanted directed at you.

Seika stepped carefully over to the two, hovering just behind InuYasha as she introduced herself. "Since no one is fighting I'm going to guess you're one of Kagome's friends, too. My name is Seika."

The monk immediately sidestepped InuYasha, who only rolled his eyes at the spectacle to come. "Yes, my name is Miroku." He took the girls hands in both of his as he continued, "Forgive me, I was simply raptured by your beauty, and it was my hope that you might bare my children." He gave her his sincerest look despite the scoff from InuYasha's direction.

Seika took a moment to make sure she heard him right before she instinctively tore a hand away and threw it across the man's face as hard as she could. "I just turned sixteen, you pervert! And I don't even know you!"

Even the half demon was surprised by her reaction; not so much by what was said as that was a near daily occurrence, but because it was the most energetic she had been since she first arrived. He couldn't help but snicker, then out right laugh when he heard a woman not too far off yelling for Miroku, surely having heard Seika yelling at him.

The monk shrunk behind the silver haired man as a livid brunette stormed up to them brandishing an over-sized boomerang. "I should have known you'd be here trying to catch a glimpse of some innocent woman!"

"Sorry about him," the woman sighed with a small smile. Though she looked nice enough, Seika had seen the dangerous side of her. The evidence sat against the wall throbbing on top of the monks head. "He does that to every pretty face that crosses his path. I'm Sango," she said, changing the subject, "This is Kirara," A small cat jumped up onto the table and sat proudly in front of the woman.

"I'm Seika," she replied, giving the small animal a scratch. Kirara mewled happily at the attention.

"You don't seem to be from around here," Sango hummed, looking the girl over, "Where are you from?"

Seika scratched the back of her head and glanced back at InuYasha who was watching her for her answer. After a moment of thought, she replied awkwardly, "I came from the same place Kagome does."

"Really?" Her eyebrows shot into her hairline, "We've never met one of Kagome's friends. Did you come through the Bone Eaters well, too?"

Kaede had mentioned something about a Bone Eaters well the night before, she remembered. And Kagome had said she used a well to come and go between eras. Seika shook her head, "I came through a tree in the forest."

"And fell right into me," InuYasha snapped from his and Miroku's gloomy corner of the hut.

With a huff, Seika growled back, "It's not like I expected it to happen. When people touch normal trees, their hand doesn't melt into it." She waved her hands around for emphasis.

Miroku sat up with an expression somewhere between shock and disbelief. "Not everyone," he muttered. Everyone turned a curious eye to the monk who had become strangely serious. "There's an abandoned shrine deep in a thick forest where a small group of women used to live. They were Chikyuu Majo*."

"Earth witches?" The strange woman shook her head again, "I don't understand."

The half-demon scoffed, "What's not to understand? They were witches, they controlled plants and stuff. End of story."

Miroku rolled his eyes at his lack of interest, "To over simplify it, yes, they controlled 'plants and stuff', but it was more than that." The monk went on to explain how the women would speak to trees to gain ancient wisdom and help crops grow in suffering villages. He also described their ability to call on the nature around them to aid them when in danger and that even the weakest among them made a formidable foe.

"That explained what happened earlier," Seika mumbled to herself. "I was attacked by this giant bird and these vines attacked it and made it let me go. Only I have no idea how I did it. Or how I got that tree to bring me here for that matter."

"What kind of tree was it?" Sango inquired only to smile apologetically once she saw the exasperated look come across the girls face.

"It was the Tree of Ages," InuYasha spouted with irritation when the girl came up short on the answer. He was getting tired of babysitting her and it was becoming increasingly obvious if to no one else but Seika.

"That would explain it then," Miroku nodded to himself, ignoring InuYasha's growing bad attitude. "Your latent abilities tapped into the link between the Tree of Ages in this time, and the one in your own and pulled you through to this era."

Seika groaned and rubbed her eyes before laying on the floor. "Hooray, more things that I hardly understand," she stared at the ceiling unhappily. She hated how confused she seemed to be all the time. She felt like a helpless child and it frustrated her to no end. And InuYasha's more or less constant grumbling about having hold her hand through everything wasn't helping things.

"Hey, I'm back!" Kagome's voice reached them before she did. She hesitated at the entrance of the hut, taking in Miroku with his lump and Seika lying on the floor, and immediately assumed what any of them would have. "Miroku, you already pulled a move on her?" She sighed, "Why am I surprised?" She set her heavy backpack on the ground beside InuYasha, ignoring how he almost instantly dove in to it looking for snacks, and took a seat at the table with the other two women. "Where are Shippo and Kaede?"

"In the fields gathering herbs," Sango replied.

Kagome nodded then turned her attention to Seika, "She was really happy to get a letter back from you."

The green eyed girl lifted herself up off the floor enough to thank her friend before returning to her place. At the curious pairs of eyes that seemed to linger on her she loudly huffed, "Can we please not talk about me anymore for a while?"

"Well, I guess we should tell you a bit about ourselves considering how much we already know about you," Sango agreed and took it upon herself to start off the explanations, "I'm a demon slayer. The last actually." And in those few words the entire atmosphere in the hut thickened. "A demon named Naraku destroyed my village and everyone in it. Ironically, he's the reason we're all together now."

Seika sat up immediately, suddenly feeling guilty for moping about her predicament when she realized the people around her had so much more to hurt over. Miroku spoke next with a solemn expression, "Naraku cursed my family," he held up his right hand wrapped with a guard and prayer beads, "I have a hole in this hand that grows little by little each year. It sucks up everything in its path and if I fail to kill Naraku in time, it will eventually swallow me whole."

"Shippo, he's a fox demon you'll meet later," Kagome hummed, "His family was wiped out by a pair of demons called the Thunder Brothers. He's an orphan now so he travels with us. I'm the reincarnation of a priestess named Kikyo. She took care of the evil human that created Naraku, Onigumo. She..." Kagome glanced at InuYasha as he angrily stormed out of the hut. She sighed then continued, "She and InuYasha were sort of together, and Naraku tricked them into killing each other to get the sacred jewel that has the power to make demons stronger. Kikyo pinned InuYasha to the Tree of Ages, thinking he was trying to steal the jewel to become a full demon, and then died, having the jewel burned with her body to get rid of it and make sure Naraku could never have it."

"If Naraku is after this sacred jewel and Kikyo had it burned with her body, what is he still after?" Seika asked

"The jewel," the priestess scratched her cheek sheepishly before continuing, "When I first came here, the jewel was ripped from my body by a demon that was in the Bone Eater's well and I, uh…I kind of broke it. So now we have to find all of the shards before Naraku does."

Seika dropped her eyes from Kagome to the table in shame. "I feel so petty now, given what all of you have been through. Is this why you've missed so much school, Kagome? Because you're looking for the jewel shards?" she asked, looking back up to her friend.

"Yeah," she sighed, "I hate lying to my friends, and I hate how much trouble Hojo always goes through to help me 'get well', but I can't really tell everyone I'm running back and forth from the feudal era fighting demons every day. I'll be committed."

Seika nodded in agreement, before a question surfaced in her mind, "Why did InuYasha storm off?"

Kagome sighed and looked down at her lap, "He's really sensitive about what happened to him and Kikyo, especially because a witch resurrected her and for a while she kept trying to kill either me or InuYasha, or both of us. I think what really gets to him is the fact that she's not really alive. She has to use the souls of the living to keep her own soul grounded to this world."

"InuYasha isn't a man that talks about his feelings," Miroku pointed out, "Frankly; I would have been surprised if he didn't leave like he did."

"Goodness," Kaede's elderly voice interjected as she entered the hut with a small child following close beside her with a full basket of herbs, "What's got InuYasha in such a mood this time?"

"We were filling Seika in about Naraku," Sango explained.

"Ah," the aged priestess nodded in understanding as she joined the other women. "That would do it."

"Hi, I'm Shippo!" The child said enthusiastically to the new comer, seemingly impervious to the dark mood in the hut. "You smell really nice, like Kagome always does."

Seika blushed slightly and discreetly sniffed her hair. "Thank you?" She replied awkwardly. "Um, I'm Seika and you have a tail…" The words spilled from her lips before she even had a chance to think about them.

The group around her laughed at her reaction. "Shippo is a fox demon, Seika," the demon slayer said with a good-natured chuckled.

"Oh," she blushed again and tried hiding it under her curtain of hair.

"Don't be embarrassed," Kagome smiled, "I said the same thing when I first saw him." The group chuckled at the similarities between their two otherworldly visitors.

Seika took a moment to take in the site of the people she had met within the last 48 hours, glad for the feeling of calm that settled in her heart finally. Looking on as the group interacted with one another, she was glad that she would be able to be a part of them given the loss she had to sustain to achieve it. Kagome was one of the few friends she had in her time. Pained as she was to leave her family behind, the gift of friendship closer than family that sat in front of her helped her bare the burden.


*This translation is based of Google translate, so I can't be entirely certain of its accuracy.

A/N: How about that? Two chapters in less than a twelve hour time span? SHENANIGANS! Again, I'm really sorry about the delays. If it makes you guys feel any better, I've been working on this story more than I have my FFVII story :D

~Nox