Chapter Twelve

As soon as Miroku and herself had entered the battle-link sector, Wallace had come winging out of nowhere, pushing and directing the both of them in different directions with flustered haste.

"Soryu! Your instructor has been patiently waiting for thirty minutes already! Where have you been?! No, don't tell me, I probably don't want to know. Kagome, dear, please get changed in the southern locker rooms today, one of the uniforms in there should fit you. Soryu! Where are you going?! You are in the usual rooms for today!"

After being herded into a locker room she had never been in before, and the doors had been shut, Kagome felt rather disheveled and flummoxed. Scratching the back of her head, she turned to inspect the room she had been shoved into.

It didn't look like the militarized locker rooms she was used to. Instead, the material that made up the room was made to look like wood with a warm finish to it. Beige colors coated the walls, and with dawning comprehension, Kagome had realized that this was a meditation prep room. Along the right wall were low benches, made of the same faux-wood, and pegs holding many towels. On the left were the small cubbies that held the light woolen training sets that she remembered wearing in school.

Walking along and reading the tags for sizes, Kagome found a size slightly bigger than her own and tried it on, satisfied at the relaxed fit and that it wouldn't fall off of her during duress. She had learned, at an early age, that just because it was a meditation room, it didn't mean that things wouldn't get physical. It was best to have full maneuverability, just in case.

She hung up the lab uniform she had hurriedly put on that morning and walked through the far doors leading to a matted rectangular room with the same beige walls. There was no one else in the room, so Kagome figured she had time to wait for either her instructor or Wallace. Sitting in the center of the room with her legs crossed, she immediately started on relaxing her body. Old habits die hard, and she had done the same meditative routine for ten years.

As soon as she had relaxed enough to begin searching for her psychic ability, she heard the doors open. Immediately leaving her inner world, she opened her eyes and turned to see a rather surely old woman scowling at her from the doorway.

"Higurashi?" Her voice cracked like a whip and had Kagome leaping to her feet.

"Ah, yes ma'am!"

"Hmph. Skinny little chicken, aren't you?"

Kagome blinked and was reminded of the spar she had been in with Taisho the other day. Was it customary for the elderly instructors to make cutting remarks these days? Not knowing if she should respond to the rather rude question, she instead studied the old woman standing stooped before her.

Long salt and pepper hair was tied back into a severe looking bun, making the wrinkled face appear intimidating and sour. Gnarled, arthritic hands clasped the top of a crooked cane that was clearly used to help the woman walk. Her clothing was bland in color, but Kagome could tell, by the fabric and design, that they were highly expensive. Finally, Kagome clenched her teeth and met with the dark gray-green gaze that stared back with condemnation.

"Well? Done staring me down, girl?" Her accent made the word girl sound like gehl. Wrinkling her nose slightly at the snooty tone, Kagome placed her hands on her hips.

"Have I done something to offend you in some way?"

The woman snorted, ignoring the question and turned to glance about the room. "Really. They couldn't have this little lesson in a better setting?"

"It's a meditation training room. Not a hotel suite." Kagome snapped waspishly and inwardly cringed. Jeez. She'd spent too much time verbally sparring with Taisho. She opened her mouth to apologize when the woman snorted again.

"Of course it's not. Do you think me too senile to know the difference, girl?"

"Well, you-"

"Enough of this. I tire of your voice already." Kagome left her mouth hanging at the woman's audacity. "My name is Natalia Azarov. I was asked to be your instructor for today."

Struggling to hold her temper back, Kagome took a deep breath and attempted to smile. "I'm-"

"Kagome Higurashi. Yes." Her eyes swept over Kagome's frame. "I know."

Kagome stiffened in affront and her head jerked back slightly, eyeing the woman closely. What was this lady's problem?!

Natalia took a few hobbled steps forward until the both of them were face to face. Her hand reached out and grasped onto Kagome's chin, tilting her face this way and that, before Kagome jerked back out of her hold.

"What are you-!"

"Not much to look at, either. Only thing really noteworthy are your eyes."

Kagome knew she was blushing, but couldn't decide if it was due to anger or embarrassment.

"Tell me, girl. For what reason was I ordered here to train you?" Natalia demanded, straightening from the lean she had been in over Kagome's slightly shorter frame. "Did you seduce some milk-sop from the upper echelon to bully me into being your teacher? Did you think this would allow you to get farther ahead?"

Kagome reeled back, almost snapping her spine at the speed she straightened, to stare in rage at the old woman before her.

"Y-you think…" She was so angry, her words were getting jumbled about in her head and she couldn't seem to make herself say what she wanted. "…seduced! What-!"

Natalia sniffed dismissively and turned from the trembling girl in front of her. It didn't matter to her what the little chit had to say. She wasn't impressed by what she felt from the girl, and truly didn't think she was worth the effort to train personally. However, an order from above was absolute. Regardless of how long she had been retired, and her feelings over the issue, she would have to train her.

"Assume the lotus position and draw out your power, girl. I do not have all day to waste over this futile endeavor."

Instead of following the woman's directive, Kagome turned and paced away. Her hands were clenching and unclenching repeatedly as she tried to work through her anger. Nothing would have satisfied her more than to tell the lady she could shove her lesson down her own throat, but she held back. This lesson was ordered through the Inu no Taisho himself and it probably wasn't in her best interests to leave without starting.

Taking a couple of deep breaths, and ignoring the nagging litany coming from Natalia, Kagome finally lowered herself back onto the mats and again attempted to reach her inner core. Her trembling muscles slowly loosened and her breathing became even and deep. As she sank deeper into herself, she let go of the last of her agitation and embraced the welcoming warmth of her own energy.

Allowing it to gradually spill over the container she imagined it to be held in, she felt it suffuse her limbs with warm light. Taking it under her control, she used it to sense the area about her, giving her information she wouldn't otherwise know.

The first to register in her mind was the residual energy still trapped within the mats she sat on. Apparently, a very conflicted male had been in this room recently to work through his issues with meditation. If the echoes coming from the doorway was any indication, he hadn't achieved what he had set out to do. The second thing to register was the highly irritated form sitting adjacent, watching her intently.

Kagome felt her brow furrow as she cautiously approached the energy surrounding Natalia. She jerked her energy back quickly when it felt as if Natalia had burned her. As if the woman's energy was a writhing wall of acid. Almost like the woman's personality, Kagome grumbled to herself as she eyed her instructor's wavelength.

"Hmph! The audacity, child! To think you yet have the right to approach one such as me!" Natalia's voice lashed out and Kagome clenched her teeth, her energy whipping about in her mounting temper.

"At least you have some potential." The old woman huffed, taking her time to examine the way the girl in front of her used her energy. The feel it gave off whispers of promise, but Natalia refused to budge from her first impression just yet. "What is it that holds you back, girl?"

Kagome ignored any implied and outright insults and concentrated on what the woman was asking her. She felt Natalia's energy poking about her own and stopped herself from snapping back at it.

"What are you talking about? There is nothing holding me back." Kagome minced out through gritted teeth as she swatted at the 'tentacles' that Azarov was prodding her with.

Natalia snorted once more and prodded harshly in retaliation. "Of course there is! I wouldn't be here if there wasn't something keeping you from your full potential." She examined the girl's energy thoroughly, catching a slight pinch in the pattern it wove. "I can see clearly that you have somehow crippled yourself. Got some emotional baggage? Did you have an old boyfriend that said the wrong things? Daddy not love you enough? Mother too harsh with you?"

"No! What are you talking about?!" Kagome spat out, her anger once more climbing with each question. "My childhood was fine!"

Natalia's eyebrows lifted slightly as she caught a ripple from the corner of her "eye" and followed it through the girl's energy. Ah. The wrong direction in the questions then.

"I see. Got to feeling too important; high up on your pedestal, is that it?"

The way the girl's energy stilled slightly made Natalia smirk. She was just too good at her job, she mentally sighed, watching the young Higurashi closely.

"I see it now. Praised daily on the amazing things you could do? On how fast you learned new things? Told you were advanced beyond your years, perhaps?" Natalia allowed a pitying smirk to cross her features. "A prodigy?"

Kagome felt her hands clench as the woman went on, Natalia's voice conveying a high level of smugness in its tone.

"So, what of it?" She gritted out, determined to keep her head as level as possible. Though it was true she had been praised all throughout her schooling, she had taken it all in with a grain of salt and continued on. She had always felt that, even though many had told her otherwise, she was rather average. The only thing that set her apart, in her mind, was her desire to follow where her curiosity led. Wherever it would lead, good or bad.

Natalia shifted where she sat, taking in the girl's darkening mood. "And you believed them? Ha!" She allowed her face to break into a sardonic smile, though neither could see it. "Girl, your energy is all twisted up with your own preconceptions! There is no way you'll be able to get any further than this with how you are right now. You can't even see the problem in your energy, can you? A prodigy, my ass! Mark my words, girl. You're going to get your partner killed with how you are right now."

Kagome, though feeling insulted, turned her attention to her own energy once more, but couldn't see what the woman was talking about. Doubting the reliability of the instructor, Kagome opened her eyes and pinned the old woman with a hard stare.

"You're wrong."

Natalia opened her own eyes and stared back into the swirling blues across the room. Neither said anything for a while, and Kagome was the one to look away first.

"Clearly this is a waste of time for the both of us." She said quietly and stood from her spot on the mat. As she headed towards the locker room, she heard Natalia stand as well.

"You just wait and see, girl. Your negligence will cost you."

Though inwardly scoffing at her words, Kagome couldn't help but feel a small sense of impending doom deep down. Shaking it off, Kagome changed out of her training gear and headed for the doors leading out into the connecting hall. The training session was supposed to have been two hours. Looking to the time projected on the wall, Kagome noted they had only used an hour of time. That gave her seven hours until her training session with Taisho.

Feeling slightly guilty over leaving a lesson, she decided she would rather take a dressing down for disobedience then spend another moment in that crotchety old woman's presence. Letting out a sigh, Kagome made it over to the lifts, deciding a couple hours in her hothouse was what she definitely needed.


Hideaki Taisho folded his hands atop the table in front of him, and looked from one projected image to the next of the three other commanders in charge of the cardinal fleets. To his right sat the disgruntled, and ever unsatisfied militaristic commander of the southern fleet; Christian Moreau. To the right of Moreau, and directly across from the Inu no Taisho, sat the elderly civilian commander of the eastern fleet; Mateo Perez. Finally, to the right of Perez, and to the left of Inu no Taisho, sat Kendal Hall; the psychic northern fleet commander, as well as the only female of the four.

"Well, for what reason were we all assembled here today, Taisho? I have a food shortage that needs to be sorted out and this is cutting into my valuable time." Moreau started off, waving his hand over his screen, indicating the important figures he still needed to go over.

"Yes, speaking of, did you receive the supplies we sent your way?" Perez asked in a low voice, his old age softening his tone.

Moreau glanced to the eldest at the table and gave a short nod, his lips thinning somewhat. "Yes. Thank you ever so much." If his tone was snide, no one commented on it.

Perez nodded, a smile stretching his own face and his eyes flashing in satisfaction over the fact that Moreau was galvanized over the situation. Inu no Taisho hid his own amusement and shifted his gaze to the reports still spread over his screen.

"I called this meeting because of some disturbing things we have recently discovered within the western quadrant."

Hall glanced down at the reports appearing on her screen and scanned them quickly, her brows lowering at the information she was processing. "This is the hidden meteor base fiasco from a few days previous, is it not?" She asked looking up and over at Inu no Taisho. "Isn't the council looking into this?"

"Yes. If the council is looking into this matter, why bring it up now in an emergency meeting?" Moreau asked, his tone still snide.

Perez kept quiet, trusting the Inu no Taisho wouldn't be wasting their time for nothing.

"Yes, the council is looking into the incident, as well as the things found therein. However, I believe there is reason to, not necessarily doubt the council, but to question their motivation for finding answers."

Hall snorted and put her elbows on the table, leaning forward to place her head in her hands. "God, Taisho. Stop making this into a poetry contest and just spit it out already. We all already know it's foolish to place our trust in the council completely. Now what exactly are you getting at?"

The others turned their gaze on Inu no Taisho, silently agreeing with the northern commander.

"I have reason to believe that the armband found in the meteor base is linked to the string of…bad luck our assassins have come upon recently. Including the three failed missions that ended in us losing three very well trained assassins and their psychic partners."

Hall was staring at Inu no Taisho through her laced fingers, head still in her hands. Perez was reclined in his seat, thoughtfully staring down at the table and Moreau was sitting with his arms crossed, his eyes narrowed.

"What are you talking about? The council said the armband didn't have anything that could give our positions away stored in it. So what would make you think this was in anyway linked to the assassination failures we've had for the past couple of months?"

Inu no Taisho snorted and turned his gaze to Moreau. "As if you didn't have your own informant in that lab like the rest of us." He caught the dark frown that crossed the other commanders face before he continued. "It wasn't the information stored in the armband. It was the energy surrounding the damn thing."

"What are you talking about?" Hall sat up and brought her screen before her, going over the reports once more. "The lab concluded that it was merely the same Baasratu energy trap they put on everything."

Taisho's eyes gleamed as he silently watched the others read over their own reports. A movement in front of him had him meeting the curious gaze of Perez. "Tell us, then, old dog. What have your spies ascertained?"

"The energy radiating off of the armband was created by human means."

All eyes snapped to the western commander.

"Human means? What the hell does that mean?" Moreau set his elbows on the table before him, his eyebrows scrunched in disbelief.

"It means that someone within the human race is non-verbally communicating with the enemy." Inu no Taisho stated softly and allowed the other three to let that sink in. It had taken him a couple of days to completely take it in himself.

"And what exactly are they trying to communicate?" Perez mused out loud as he rubbed his bearded chin thoughtfully. "You believe this has something to do with the failures in our assassination class?"

Taisho gave a short nod and his lips thinned in seriousness. He swiped his finger over a waiting icon on his screen and waited for the three chimes to signify the report had been sent to the other commanders. "This is a compilation of the things found in certain battlegrounds that coincide with the timings of the attacks perpetrated on our assassins."

"This is a lot to take in on such little proof." Hall murmured as she looked through pictures of the same strange energy fields and the connections they had to certain incidents. "Are you sure you aren't making a stab in the dark and hoping it hits something?"

Moreau, who would usually be the first to scoff at such things, sat back and contemplated the information before him. The fact that he hadn't said anything caught Perez's attention.

"Nothing to add, Moreau?" He asked with narrowed eyes. "Or did you already have the same direction of thought?"

Moreau let out a small sigh and looked over to the older commander. "Nothing solid…however the information I could gather had been leading in the same direction." He scowled darkly down at the table before him. "I lost my best scout ship and two of my assassins to this…bullshit."

Inu no Taisho nodded. "Yes. The loss of two of my own scouts and an assassin prompted a deeper investigation. The question that troubles me, however, is whether or not the council is involved in this." The mood in the room became somber.

"If they are…it's going to be a nightmare tracking down the culprit. Especially if they have their hands in the council directing things. Almost impossible." Hall grumbled as she sat back and rubbed her hands over her face once again. "Why is it that whenever we have these little get-togethers, I wind up with more grey hair then before I entered the conference?"

"That's just because you're showing your age." Moreau sniped and Hall growled back.

"Watch it, kid. You haven't even fully earned your wings. Don't make me cut them off before you learn to fly." Hall hissed back and Perez let out a soft chuckle.

"Ah, speaking of the assassination class." Perez started, glancing over to Inu no Taisho. "I hear congratulations are in order?"

Taisho felt the satisfied grin curling his lips and couldn't stop it. Moreau snorted and Hall shook her head.

"Tch. The only reason you got the Higurashi girl to partner up with your oldest is because of the advanced terraforming technology on Eden. You sneaky bastard you." Moreau sulked as he crossed his arms and sat back in his chair.

Perez chuckled and leaned forward slightly. "Ah, but I hear it's been a chore getting her to sign on permanently. Heard you had to coerce Azarov to give the girl extra lessons."

Hall let out a laugh of her own as she crossed her arms and leaned forward, grinning at the grimace crossing Taisho's face. "Ouch. That's going to cause a headache later."

Moreau grumbled a "serves you right!" as Taisho let out his own sigh. "Yes. However, it was necessary for what we need her to accomplish. When she completes her training, the both of them will be rather formidable." His eyes darkened to a honey color. "If what I think is happening is actually happening, then they will be exactly what we need to fight back."


Ayame snapped her wrist sharply, sending the whip out with a slight hiss. She scowled darkly when the end wrapped around below the target she had been aiming for. Clicking her tongue, she tugged the weapon loose and recoiled it. Sweat dripped from her neck and down her back, while her hair spiked due to the moisture.

She had been training for nearly two hours with Ginta, and the silence coming from her partner was starting to get on her nerves.

'That's it. What the hell is your problem now, Ginta?!' she snapped and was pleased when she felt the resounding shock coming from her partner. 'Are you still freaking out over the lab thing with Hadani?'

Ginta let out a harsh breath and she felt his energy trace down her shoulders, easing her tension. She hated when he did that. It meant that they would be in for a long talk and she wouldn't like the subject matter.

'No. I'm not still thinking about that horror fest. Thanks for reminding me though!' He grumbled and sank back into his brooding silence for a moment. 'Your grandfather shot me a communications line this morning.'

Any kind of relaxation that had been coursing through Ayame left in a whoosh of breath. Her eyes stared blankly in front of her as she tried to get herself to think past the panic now rushing through her veins. It was too soon for him to be poking into her business again! Unless he was starting to get impatient…

'W-what did he say?'

Ginta allowed his energy to work at the knots in her back as he stalled for time to form the words he wanted.

'You know what he had to say. The same thing he has been hounding you about for years.' He paused as she kept quiet. 'What I don't understand is how I came to be the mediator between the two of you.'

Ayame let out a huff and gently placed her whip on the hook she had gotten it from. 'That's because I stopped accepting his calls, and if you had any sense, you wouldn't accept them either.'

Ginta let out a sound of disbelief. 'Yeah, ok. Just reject a communications line from one of the most prestigious senators from the northern fleet. Not to mention the head politician of the ship the whole of my family lives on! Great plan there, princess. Ya know, if I had any idea that becoming your partner would lead to me being interrogated by a big shot politician every other week, I might have reconsidered taking the job!'

Ayame felt a brief stab of hurt, followed by her own rage. 'So quit then! I never asked for that old fool to interfere in my life, let alone use his connections to stalk my linking partner! If Captain Taisho can go through multiple psychics, I'm sure I'll be able to have a new partner by the end of the day!'

'Oh whatever! As if you could have anyone else besides me anymore! We've come too far together to call it quits now!' Ayame made a noise as if to interrupt what he was saying but he cut her off. 'But you really need to get this whole issue with your pops straightened out. I'm not running interference for you anymore. I have my own problems, Shiro. I don't need to worry about yours too.'

With that decisive statement, Ginta left their link, and Ayame, standing slack-jawed, in front of the locker room doors. The doors sliding open had her blinking up into scarlet eyes. Kagura lifted a brow and cocked her hip at the dazed look on her teammates face.

"What's wrong with you?" She asked and Ayame shook her head.

"Too much to deal with right now." She almost growled as she passed the taller female and hurried to get out of her training gear and into the shower.

'I'm not running interference for you anymore.' He had said. She let out a harsh sigh and scrubbed at her red locks. Of course he was tired of having to deal with her overbearing grandfather. Hell, she had been too! That was why she had stopped responding to his calls.

She had joined the military and hopped a flight to the western fleet in order to escape his hands, for crying out loud!

Since a young age, not long after her parents had passed on and she had been given into the care of her grandfather, he had been grooming her in order to take after him in politics. Needless to say, she had little interest in politics and even less interest in the social circles the older man had attempted to push her into.

Regardless of her stance on the matter, her grandfather, Senator Kiyosuke Shiro, had pushed her all through her schooling, making sure she was instructed in government and economics, as well as many other subjects to prepare her for entering the "grand game" as he liked to call it. When she had adamantly refused to keep up on her grades in those subjects, he had decided to change his strategy.

When she was fifteen, maybe a day after her actual birthday, he had come forward with a large collection of marriage candidate photos and profiles. The fight that had ensued over the initial broaching of the subject had become legendary on the ship they had currently been living on. The fact that, as a senator, they were required to move every few years hadn't made either of them think about the rumors that would float around after that.

What had been baffling to her had been when a few of the said marriage candidates had begun to approach her. She had quickly learned her grandfather had decided to encourage his protégé's into pursuing her on their own. For a year she had put up with the passive-aggressive attack her grandfather had launched on her.

The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back had been when, on her sixteenth birthday, the old man had thrown an extravagant party in her name. Every. Single. Person. At the party had been a marriage candidate. Including the one person who had, unknowingly, given her an idea on a way out.

She had been ducking behind a pillar, avoiding the crowd of ambitious soon-to-be politicians, when a boy a little older then herself had run smack into her, spilling a rather large plate of food down her dress.

"Aw, crap! Sorry!"

Ayame looked down at her dress in shock, watching as, what appeared to be, chocolate cake slowly slid down the middle, leaving a dark brown stain in the pink fabric. Movement in front of her caught her attention and she looked up into a pair of incredibly blue eyes. Still kind of in a daze, she looked over his handsome face, noting the scrunched brows and dark hair falling just above his eyes. Her gaze traveled slowly over his face to his mouth. His moving mouth. With a start she realized he had been talking to her.

"-hello!? Jeez, are you a ditz or what? I'm trying to apologize here and you're just gonna stare at me like a creeper?"

"Who's a creeper?!"

Ayame exploded and had a flash of satisfaction when the boy startled and took a step back.

"Look what you've done to my dress, you ass!" She angrily pointed down at the cake smear, trying to tell herself it was anger that had her cheeks flushing. "How are you going to fix this? This was a very expensive dress! I demand you take responsibility!"

The boy had been staring at her with a dumbstruck look before he clicked his tongue and roughly grabbed her wrist, dragging her behind him.

"Fine! Jeez! Keep your panties on!"

Ayame had stumbled after the boy, rather incredulous over his rough handling and offensive language. No one had ever talked to her, Senator Shiro's granddaughter, like that. Ever.

They marched around the perimeter of the dance hall and towards a small door guarded by one of the on-ship militia. The soldier caught her eyes first and lowered his brows, opening his mouth and switching his gaze to the one dragging her around. However, when he saw who it was, his face relaxed and his brow quirked in question instead.

"What have you done now, Kouga?"

"Eh, spilled cake on the princess here. Gonna wash it off in the kitchens in back." The one pulling her, Kouga, answered quickly; moving past the guard and into the short hall leading to the kitchen area. Ayame caught the surprised exclamation from the guard at the door and flushed even more so. He apparently knew who she was.

'Oh god. Gossip fodder for the soldiers.' She bemoaned silently and nearly ran into her "escort" when he abruptly stopped.

"Do you wanna take off your dress?"

"What?!"

Ayame jerked back from the boy and raised a fist. "Pervert!"

Kouga jerked back from her himself and raised his arms in defense.

"What? No! Jeez! You wanna clean off the front of your dress right!?"

"So you want me to get undressed?!"

"Well, yeah! Jeez. I have sisters! Nothing I ain't seen before!"

All she could do for a moment was stare in mortified shock.

"Oh my God. Just get me a cloth!" Ayame lowered her fist and resigned herself to the fact that the older boy had brain damage of some sort. Or she really wasn't as attractive as she had thought she was because he apparently didn't see her as a female. The last thought kind of hurt.

When he had brought over a damp cloth, Ayame had thought he would have headed back out to the party, figuring he had done all he could for the situation. She was surprised when he had crouched down and examined the greasy chocolate mess on her dress.

"How do you get this stuff out, anyway?"

Ayame stared down at the look of concerned concentration on his face and couldn't help herself. The laugh bubbled up and spilled over before she could stop it.

"I have no idea. No one has ever spilled cake on my satin dress before."

She rubbed at the streak with the damp cloth and both watched in confusion as it only seemed to spread the stain out.

"Maybe you gotta rub at it harder?" Kouga suggested as both examined the large dark brown spot. "Wanna try soap?"

"On an expensive dress like this? What if it ruins the fabric?"

"Well, hell. What should we do?"

Ayame let out a breath and set the cloth down. "Screw it. I'll just go home. Didn't want to be here anyway." She mumbled the last part and stepped back as Kouga stood from his crouch. "What are you doing here? You aren't like the other guests at this party."

Kouga looked up from the stain and scratched the back of his head. "Eh. Family obligation. Was supposed to come here to meet some chick my gramps wanted me to marry, but found the buffet table first."

Ayame let the unintended insult slide. "You don't want to marry her?"

"Nah. Gonna join the military. Be of some use, like my dad, ya know?" Ayame felt the kindling's of an idea spark to life.

"The military, huh?"

"Yeah…well, um, I'm really sorry about your dress…" Kouga trailed off and looked around as if uncomfortable. Ayame let out a small sigh and shook her head.

"Don't worry about it. You should get back to the buffet table. I'm gonna sneak out that back door and head home. No sense in going back out to the dance hall looking like someone couldn't make it to the bathroom in time."

Kouga let out a guffaw and looked down at her dress again. "It really does!"

Idiot. She thought softly and headed for the door. "See ya, Kouga. And thanks." For many reasons.

That night she had waited for her grandfather to come home, withstood his lecture on her leaving her own party without notifying him, and set her plan in motion.

"Grandfather. I've found who I want to marry. But he's joining the military and I have to as well to chase after him."

She had spun on her heel and relished the total silence that had settled after she had dropped the bomb. She had made it to her room and locked her door before the old man had recovered enough to chase after her. Ignoring his rants, she had gotten to work contacting her private tutors and her school instructors over her change in career options.

It had been a rocky couple of years, but she had made it through and achieved what she had set out to do…kind of. She had just used Kouga as an excuse to get her grandfather off of her back and add some legitimacy to her plan. She had never imagined that she would run into the boy, now a man, again. Strange how things worked out.

Stepping out of her shower and heading for the changing room, she steeled herself for the talk with an old man she hadn't spoken to in three years. Ginta was right, this couldn't continue the way it was. It was time to set her grandfather straight.


Kagome stuck her electrodes on and slid into her pod's seat. She still had a few moments before she was scheduled to link, but the sense of impending doom that had been building inside her all day had her nervous. Natalia's words rang in her head like a death knell. Clearly the old woman had disliked her from the onset, so it was easy to see the woman had been wrong in her assessment. After all, she had been examined by multiple instructors before that woman and not a single one of them had mentioned her being "crippled".

What the hell did that mean, anyway? Kagome felt another spark of irritation as she thought about earlier that morning. Regardless of what one bitter old woman said, they'd be just fine. She concluded in her head as her pod's top dropped into place and the stasis gel flowed in.

xXx

So, I usually keep my a/n short and sweet, mainly due to the fact that I don't want to get in trouble. However, I would like to answer a few reviews that I haven't been able to pm back due to various reasons. (Not signed in, pm is disabled, no free time on my part…that last one is probably my major issue.)

To Artemis Black from : Honestly speaking, the sci-fi part of my story was two years in the making, influenced by a wide variety of different space and paranormal books and movies out there. There isn't any one specific book or movie that has directly influenced my imagination.

I started writing this fanfiction to hammer out all the dents in the world that I have imagined, in the hopes that I could find all the faults before I attempt to get myself published. I've never been good at planning ahead, and knowing this, I decided the best way to flesh out my world was to write a story about it.

To Imani Joain from dokuga: I can't tell you how many times I've read and re-read your review! I am extremely humbled by your words and I don't think I could adequately describe how much they mean to me. Thank you very much! Regardless of how it may seem, I have written and rewritten many of my chapters due to the struggle it is to keep the characters in line with what I want them to do. Chapter Ten alone went through multiple rewrites, at one point I had to erase ten pages because I wasn't satisfied with the way that I portrayed Totosai and Sesshomaru.

Getting the feedback I have, from the few reviewers I have, makes it seem like it is all worth it, so thank you again!

To Noelani from dokuga: Aw, thank you! To have the ability to draw you in, even at work, is high praise indeed! I thank you for your kind words, and I hope I have continued to meet your expectations, and continue to do so. Though I don't think I'm at New York Times bestseller level just yet, your words give me hope that I can one day achieve that. Thank you very much for your encouragement!

To Guest from : Ah to be more specific, the guest that reviewed every chapter as you read them. Thank you so much! I was having a bad morning that day and it really made me laugh to suddenly get ten consecutive reviews from each chapter. I had actually been contemplating taking my story off of because I hadn't been getting the responses I need, so thank you very much for changing my mind! Really wanted to let you know that!

To the many others that I have not yet responded to, I'm trying to get myself together to answer all of you! I do want to let you know, especially those that have enjoyed Her Voice (even though they don't like sci-fi!) that I appreciate all of you for reviewing, thank you very much!

I lack a lot of confidence in myself and I critique my writing severely, so when I get positive reviews, I feel that it's all worth the effort I put in. Thank you very much for reading and please leave a review!