Well, being kidnapped was certainly an, uh, interesting experience. She couldn't even slap the fucker who was carrying her for molesting her, because the only way he could hold onto her was grabbing her hips and ass with her slung over his shoulder like she was. He was probably going to get stung when he set her down, though. Maybe she'd even go so far as to full on zap him. Meanwhile, she made conversation because aside from the manhandling he'd been quite intriguing – and all the wildlife in the area that were intelligent enough to speak to her (prey animals like sika, serow, and boars were stupid and not worthy of conversation, seriously; but birds, reptiles, some rodents, and predators were, even if they weren't developed enough for sending telepathic speech) praised his leadership. "So, using shards to augment your speed? That really is a shame – you seem like you're beyond powerful enough you shouldn't need some pitiful jewel shards from a false, twisted, possessive power to augment your abilities."
They had reached the caves by the time she said that, so his entire pack that was in the cave heard her words, and as he cautiously set her down and looked at her, he asked – not demanded, thankfully; he saved himself from a zap – what she meant by that.
"What I mean is that I was born with that vile thing in my body. Do you want to know what it did to me, just because I was housing it without ever having a choice? It made my alpha invisible and when he gained a semi-solid form, stripped his sense of touch from him. He is inu. It caused my father to begin refusing me any sort of affection whatsoever only a short time after I turned three years old – as I was raised as one would raise an inu yōkai child, you can imagine the devastating effect this had on me. It is currently forcing my betrothed to wait until I take care of it before he can regenerate himself, despite the fact that we should have been mated as soon as I was fifteen.
"Oh, and, not to mention, if you keep those shards in your legs, I can promise you that one of Naraku's incarnations will come and slaughter all but about eight members of your tribe, you will be able to do nothing about it, and will spend the rest of this year trying to avenge your tribe, but ultimately fail because your enemy will have far more jewel shards than you and is shamelessly cheating, allowing the vile Shikon to seed chaos as it wants, and oh, also, he will take your chance for revenge away by killing the person who slaughters your pack before you can do so yourself.
"Before you ask, I know this because this is the second time I have done this with my soul and body. The first time I was able to wish the Shikon away – and it reached through time and ended up creating a circumstance that broke me so thoroughly that I willed myself to death. Tell me honestly, after finding this out, do you really want to keep something like that anywhere near your tribe? Not to mention my first point still stands – you are young enough that if you focus on controlling your yōki, restraining it, using earth-ki and reiki to enhance it, you will become faster than you ever could with those jewel shards, and I have it on very good sources that you are already the fastest ōkami to exist right now – not even Ayame of the Northern Tribes can beat you, can she?"
He plopped down onto the ground and two humanoid ōkami came to sit beside him, one with silver hair covering his head in something like an overgrown buzz cut, with a black patch standing up in front. The other one had a startlingly intriguing white mohawk, and Kagome immediately decided that they would make great younger brothers for her – as would this ōkami prince, if he wised up and listened to her. Fortunately for everyone involved, ōkami did not just use strength to measure ability for leadership, and soon he ripped the shards from his legs and his arm and handed them to her, before promptly asking, "Alright – you might look ningen but you sure as shit don't act like one, or, after a second take, smell like one either, so I'll treat you like a yōkai. What do you want? And I want proof of your betrothal, please, just so I know you aren't tricking me, because frankly you'd make any yōkai a damn good mate. That's why I kidnapped you."
She smiled and nodded, pulling her hair back to the side so they could see the fang piercing her left ear. "The yōki threaded through mine matches the inu yōkai travelling with my pack – not the hanyō, he is my stepson by my betrothed. As is Sesshōmaru, Lord of the West. Toga is simply, as I stated earlier, being prevented by the Shikon from regenerating wholly at this moment. We have measures where he can become solid in his humanoid form for periods of time, but as he is not supposed to be interfering in this quest anyhow, this is as ideal of a situation as we can expect."
Before he could faint at her implications, she stated, "My name is Kagome, and you are? Also I am taking a trip to see Ayame-san, my beloved wishes to arrange an alliance with her father, and I think it would be a very good idea for you to try an arrange an alliance of sorts with her or her father as well – if you can unite the largest ōkami tribes, imagine the sorts of things you could do. The Eastern Lands are powerful, but they are fractured and not working at their whole strength. Just from feeling your aura and experiencing your intelligence it shows me that you have the ability to unite them and turn the Northern and Eastern Tribes into an entity that nobody would dare contest."
The blanched look on his face had turned into a flushed sort of pleasure – he was being thoroughly praised by the future mate of the Inu no Taishō; despite the fact that he had just kidnapped her. "I'm Kōga, these scoundrels next to me are Ginta, with the patch, and Hakkaku, with the mohawk. We'll go with you to travel to the Northern Tribes Elder, I think I mighta made some sorta promise when I was a kid to that Ayame chick, so that'll be a plus if I did, but that's something that benefits us, and even returning you to your pack ain't enough payment for the favour you did us in letting us know what'd happen if I kept those shards. So, what is it you want?"
"Stop eating ningen. The forests surrounding your territory are overflowing with boars, serow, and sika, to the point the surplus is damaging the habitat. You don't need to eat ningen anyway, plus my dear little friend and Sesshōmaru-kun's ward Rin-chan was eaten by your pack and had to be resurrected. He really holds no enmity, you don't have to worry about that – he is yōkai after all, and until very recently would have congratulated you for culling off some of the stupider members of society. However, beyond just being a repayment for me I will let you know something – as a second favour you can let any yōkai who preys on them know this – ningen actually weaken your bodies when you eat them because they carry diseases and imperfections in their blood that yōkai bodies are not designed to handle. Eating lesser yōkai, game animals, and fish is what your bodies are designed to do."
"This Kōga swears on his blood and on his yōki that neither he nor any member of his direct pack will ever prey on ningen again."
Oh good. Not just a promise – but a yōkai Vow. If he reneged on the Vow his blood would turn to fire in his veins until the Vow felt he had been punished enough for breaking it, and his yōki would become unmanageable for a fortnight afterwards, effectively leaving him helpless. His entire pack, or at least representatives of all the families in his pack, must be in the cave for him to do that or he could suffer from them unknowingly breaking the Vow – and it was smart of him to say his direct pack; he would not be punished for additional members who were unaware of this new rule breaking it.
Then Kōga turned towards her, his light blue eyes shining with excitement, "Now, if you can say, this Kōga would adore knowing why the Inu no Taishō is seeking an alliance with the Northern Tribes."
Kagome had to smirk at that. "We have heard that the Southern Lands are suffering under a cruel Lord, and the Kami Themselves decided that my beloved would be the perfect replacement. We have his son's support – if we gain the support of the leader of the Northern Tribes as well, then nobody will be able to contest it."
"Oh, thank fuck. Kagome-sama, you need to know – the Southern Lord is not a beast yōkai. He is a fire elemental turned bad. Nobody knows what happened to give him greed and ambition, but he is really horrible and needs to be taken care of before he runs those lands permanently into the ground. Regardless of if you gain the support of the Northern Tribes, you have my full support. The Eastern Lands don't have a proper lordship, and I'm what comes closest to it; so even without him you'll still be uncontested."
Oh, fucking hell. No wonder the Kami wanted Toga to deal with this. The Western Lands had been completely ravaged by famine, drought, and war when he inherited them, so he was well used to this kind of situation. "Toga, koishi – the Southern Lord is a Kamidamned fire elemental. Nobody knows what gave him ambition and greed, but he is killing the land. Kōga has offered us his support regardless of if the Northern Tribes support us – he is clever, strong, intelligent, and loyal; as well, I checked around with some of the animals on the way here – his pack is actually even larger than the Northern Tribe's main pack – not the collective amount of the Northern Tribes, plural, but the main pack is significantly smaller than his. Also, he not only promised, but gave me a yōkai Vow that neither he nor any member of his direct pack will ever hunt ningen any more as prey."
"Give me a moment please, I am communicating with my betrothed about the situation with the Southern Lord."
Kōga nodded, but Kagome heard his two companions whisper to him (none of them knew her senses were enhanced, after all), "Can we ask her to be our ane-san, Kōga?"
He whispered back that only if it was because they admired Kagome-sama herself, and not because of her son and her mate, to which they furiously nodded their heads. At that, he whispered to them that he wanted to ask the same thing, so once she was done they would ask that to be the terms of the alliance.
She was having a hard time hiding her pleased smirk while she listened to Toga – shockingly enough the entirety of the tribe was staring at her now, and she realised her lover was showing off, damn him. Oh well, this was just more proof of her honesty – only an incredibly strong daiyōkai would be able to telepathically communicate with a group of beings this large from such a distance. Strong yōkai could project to a good number of beings from large distances but Kōga had an enormous amount of ōkami in this cavern. "Well damn, no wonder the Kami thought I needed to be the one to take over – yōkai elementals are usually very secluded and either loners or live in small groups, when they develop qualities like greed and ambition it always ends badly because they are ridiculously overpowered. Thankfully for everyone involved I know how to deal with fire elementals, and the fact that the Kami allowed me to keep my yōki means I have the power of five centuries in addition to the millennium and a half, or more, I wasn't exactly positive of my age when I died, from before then – no yōkai alive is as old or powerful as I am.
"You might not know this, but when a proper daiyōkai takes over the lands, he bonds them to him with a ritual – the stronger and more controlled his power is, the faster the very earth itself is able to recover from the previous mistreatment. Not just the plants but the animals, ningen, and yōkai who live upon those lands as well. Since elementals cannot inherit, attain, or gain daiyōkai status, only beast yōkai can, they cannot aid their lands in this way or prevent the lands from going to ruin because of mistakes they might make. Not to mention, because their minds are simply not designed to comprehend negative emotions like anger, greed, lust for power, and jealousy, when those anomalies develop they take over the elemental completely and eventually destroy their sanity.
"Kōga; this Toga would ask that as a part of your alliance with my future mate, you offer up any shards you come across – not just for your safety, but because the sooner the Shikon is restored and disposed of in the way my betrothed plans to do so, the sooner I can challenge the Southern Lord and begin renewing the lands. I shall leave you be now; I will see you when you return, little one."
Kagome huffed but grinned, "I'm not little any more, you ass! Just cos you're like the size of a fucking mountain. Hmph."
She sent it mentally just to make sure, but he would have known her reaction anyway – to be fair she adored the nickname, it made her feel small and sweet and precious. She just didn't like being called that in public. Sighing, she turned to Kōga, Ginta, and Hakkaku with a smile, "So, alliance – you offer us any shards you happen to come across, do your best to protect innocent ningen against other yōkai, and support us in this war against Naraku. In return for that we offer to aid you in any confrontations you have with the being called Naraku and any of his incarnations. My eldest also will give his aid in resurrecting any of your pack who die in confrontations with Naraku, his puppets, or his incarnations; you guys in here – listen the hell up right now. Sesshōmaru-kun has a sword that can resurrect the dead – only once, but it can do so once. The length of time that lapses between his arrival and the time of death matters greatly, but he has an incredibly fast means of travel, firstly, and secondly if you fight your death it takes longer for the messengers of the dead to take your soul into the afterlife.
"Not to mention, the reason that my betrothed's fang was able to create such a sword is because he has an inherent ability to resurrect people – this ability is unlimited, unlike Tenseiga. So even if you have had Tenseiga used on you, do not give up when you are dying. Yes, his current humanoid form is only half-solid, and only that much so when on specific lands; but I have a Fang that allows him to assume a wholly solid form, with all abilities and attacks intact. His purpose here is not to interfere with my disposal of the Shikon; thus why he does not simply keep my Raimei on his person at all times. But if we can get to you in a reasonable amount of time, which we likely can, you do not have to just give up and die when you are injured. My wakizashi Jinrai heals injuries and illnesses, as well, and you can be assured that if you call out for Toga, I will be following behind unless there is something really big going down."
The tribe all, simultaneously, and very much to the surprise of Kagome, howled then, and soon she was mobbed with four-legged ōkami and humanoid ōkami and completely surrounded.
Dude; what the hell was going on?
Finally she was left almost alone, quite dazed, as Kōga sat behind her and held her back against his armoured chest, Ginta and Hakkaku each to one of her sides – oh, they had kept her from falling over! That was quite kind of them. Seiza was stable but even it could not hold up to an enormous mob of ōkami attacking you for seemingly no reason. Before she could ask what the fuck had just happened, Kōga softly stated, "This Kōga's pack has accepted you as backup alpha, with his full permission. If this Kōga is ever out of commission, this pack will obey your orders just as they would his own. Because your care for our life and our health is beyond anything that we thought possible from one who was not of our own kind, and you are worthy of the position. This Kōga welcomes you, and wishes to know if he and his pack might address you as our sister?"
"Um. I. Wh- Uh… O-kay?"
It had been a very long time since Kagome had felt overwhelmed, but that was definitely the feeling plaguing her now. Alpha of an enormous ōkami tribe in addition to her own small pack? Holy shit. Backup alpha, yeah, but being backup alpha was more of an honour than any other position barring alpha itself. It meant that the tribe implicitly trusted you with their safety, health, and order in a situation which would cause their own alpha to be taken out of being able to command them.
If the Kami were interfering again, Kagome was going to pitch a fit. So, she did the only thing she could, "Amaterasu-Ō-Mi-Kami-sama, would You happen to have anything to do with this? Because You do realise that if You are behind this I reserve every right to pitch a royal fit at You for interfering directly when You are not supposed to be interfering any more until the Shikon has been taken care of."
A tinkling laugh responded to her words – one which stilled every single ōkami in the cave and made them stare at Kagome. She could care less about the staring – seriously; Kagome had enough on her plate already. This was a huge honour but it was also a huge responsibility, and she had a ton of those already! Killing Naraku and his incarnations that couldn't be swayed to her side, saving Kohaku, helping Kikyō fulfil her destiny, gathering the shards and making her wish on the Shikon, and then helping Toga take control of the Southern Lands and rule them well, not to mention, oh, shaping the whole of Nihon so that hanyō, yōkai, and ningen all survived into the future intact and mingling amongst each other freely instead of any race hiding themselves.
"I promise you, little Kagome, that This One had nothing to do with these particular happenings, despite Her admitted fondness for Her wonderful ōkami children. But She is beyond pleased because this means that there is a much stronger chance of ōkami surviving into the future, instead of becoming extinct as they are in your previous world. It wasn't just the Eastern Tribe that Kōga dearest rules that gets slaughtered because of the machinations of Naraku; the Northern Tribes suffer similarly, and maybe with this alliance and your background leadership the ōkami yōkai will not find themselves lessened by over half their previous population in less than a year."
Kagome thought that over seriously, recalling her lessons on endangered species and unnatural wildlife extinction. Ōkami yōkai had literally been completely wiped out by her era, and even their their animal counterparts became extinct around a hundred years before she was born. Ōkami yōkai were already suffering a disadvantage compared to normal yōkai – only the alpha pair of a tribe and one other pair of mates, differing each year, were allowed to have cubs – yes, they almost always had several, but even so, that was a disadvantage. That was why the ōkami yōkai existed in many tribes; otherwise they could not reasonably procreate. And yes – ōkami were by far the most numerous yōkai out there, but less than half of them could actually take a humanoid form at all, and of those that could, probably only an eighth of them could take both humanoid form and beast form.
Kagome was under no delusions that her education as a child had been anything less than grooming for a position of total leadership and ruling. And not just of the Southern Lands. The Kami fully intended for Kagome to be the driving force behind creating a Nihon where ningen, hanyō, and yōkai coexisted peacefully and happily together – with the land, not fighting it every step of the way. Hell, Kagome knew that half the reason ōkami ate ningen was because they didn't want to end up decimating the prey populations in their areas, not realising that it would be really difficult to do despite their numbers, especially since they could also eat the mindless beasts that lesser yōkai were.
If Kagome took an older sister and backup alpha role to both Kōga and Ayame, that would mean that any time one of the Eastern or Northern wolf tribes needed aid, she could give it without incurring a debt that they might not be able to pay. Especially because, unbeknownst to anyone excepting Toga, Sesshōmaru, Sesshōmaru-kun, the yōkai who forged Raimei, Kagome, and the Kami Themselves, Raimei could only make Toga solid because it could also resurrect the dead. Twice, in fact. So even without Toga's presence, their allies had three chances of surviving a fatal attack or poisoning.
"Sister, the others of us without voices to speak with as our two-footed brethren do have decided that they wished for me to speak for them. This place you came from has no ōkami? Even our less sentient brethren are gone?"
She nodded slowly and solemnly, "We have some in zoos – basically a place for people to see wild and endangered animals in safety where the animals are provided for without having to scrounge for food and try to live in a society where ningen have destroyed the land around them… But none in the wild. Not all over the world, just in Nihon and a few other places. Part of the reason I am here now instead of over there any more is because the Kami want me to prevent such a thing from happening."
"If that is the case, then you have the support of every single ōkami in our natural shape, in all the tribes in Nihon. We will force this alliance you will be seeking with the Northern Tribes if we must. It is not known outside of ōkami, but as our backup alpha you have earned this knowledge – those of us in our natural forms are actually more powerful than those of us with only two feet, unless they can shift between forms. Our Kōga is nearing that point, and you are very right – using those shards would have prevented him from making that next step, possibly permanently. We owe you many great debts, and offer you our support even outside the alliance. Would you be amenable to having one of us permanently travel with your group and eventually reside in the shiro with you when you live there, so that you can learn our ways and thus to not make a mistake that could be avoided in the case of if you ever need to act as alpha for us?"
Kagome was, frankly, stunned beyond belief – especially when Kōga took one of his claws and pierced her right earlobe, in a strange diagonal to her betrothal/mating piercing. Instead of a thick fang piercing her ear, there was a claw inserted into her ear – an animal form claw, not a humanoid form claw. "That marks you as a backup alpha and a protector of our kind. Alphas do not wear these, because it is clear we are supported by our furred brethren. This makes it clear that any ōkami yōkai will support your decisions, even if they do not overtly seem like they will work directly for our benefit. I will willingly give you one of my brethren – or one of their family members if it is decided one from another tribe will do better – to educate you in our ways, our culture, and our ideals; as well as our instincts and behaviours.
"That can wait though. Ginta, would you carry Kagome-ne piggyback, I feel that will be far more comfortable than riding over my shoulder again, and I need to focus on picking the best member to become Kagome-ne's companion. No doubt she is feeling overwhelmed and needs to be back with her family and her betrothed. So we will take her home, camp a suitable distance away, and tomorrow decide if we even need an official alliance any more due to her new position in the pack. Certainly she has the support of the majority of us whether us two-feet want to give it or not."
He chuckled wryly at that and helped Kagome mount onto Ginta's back, and then they were off. They didn't travel anywhere near as fast as they had previously, but part of that had to do with the fact that Kagome's vial – on a spider-silk necklace that was enchanted in such a way that it could not be removed from her person without her willingness, unless her mind was not her own, in which case any wholly sane and in control member of her pack could remove it – had two more shards in it. That made a dozen now.
She was well aware that he was still travelling slower than possible, but as he was making an incredibly serious decision, conferring with the other members of his pack (every damn ōkami was with them – Kōga was apparently taking no chances that this absence would result in the slaughter of his tribe), it made sense, and Kagome wryly wondered if she would ever stop having lessons in her life.
Translation:
Serow – a type of goat-antelope native to Japan.
Sika – a type of deer native to Japan.
A/N: Sika are the primary large game animals in Sengoku Jidai Japan. For smaller game animals there are boars, serow (they are protected in the modern era due to over-hunting, but plentiful in the Sengoku Jidai), rabbits, hares, martens (similar to sables and weasels), pheasants, tons of chickens (both wild and domesticated), and of course there is tons and tons of fish and seafood. I fully intend on being as accurate as possible in this fic as to how they eat in the wilderness areas they stay in since there will be no ramen noodles, nope! I know that that's sort of a staple IY thing, Yasha loves ramen, but it just doesn't work in this fic.
Contrary to how I am treating that aspect, however, the whole Amaterasu-sama/wolf thing is not actually based on any Japanese folklore. Unlike Inari Ōkami-sama, whose messengers are foxes and thus is usually seen as a patron deity (Inari Ōkami-sama is portrayed as both genders, depending on who is writing Them) of kitsune, traditionally Amaterasu-sama has no particular animal She is connected to; She is simply the sun Goddess.
It is however based on a really rad video game called Ōkami in which you play Amaterasu-sama in the form of a wolf. I have decided to integrate this into my fic as Her being very fond of ōkami. It's fairly minor (at least right now) and probably (hopefully) will not change anything; Kagome's the one changing everything!
Yes, I realise that a deity with Ōkami as part of Their name being a patron of kitsune rather than ōkami is a bit strange. Idgi either, but hey, what culture says, goes. Maybe part of it has to do with Them having no specific gender and kitsune traditionally being shapeshifters? -shrugs-