Hallowed by Akibozu

And so this tale unfurls

She remembered the constant buzz of cicadas and the sensation of a lime popsicle trickling over her slick skin as she quickened her stride under the thundering train tracks as the Choco Cro slid into view. The sky was a hazy grey, but the atmosphere around her permeated with Ueno humidity and the usual crows aiming to get a hit in on the unaware. She spread her umbrella not because she was afraid of water raining down on her, for water would be quite welcome now, but something else. The obsidian bird perched on the street light ahead definitely had a malicious gleam in its eye as it squawked out an obscene avian phrase.

Kagome had only rarely ventured into the business district of Tokyo before, preferring the much more friendly air about her shrine and the local area surrounding it. Ueno only had one redeeming quality in her book, and it was most assuredly not the smell.

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. Yes, that had been why she ventured so far out of her safety zone in the first place. Ueno's underground bazaar was known by few, but those few who seedily traded swore that it was the place to go if anything rare was to be found. Its oddities ranged from items pilfered from tombs to crystalized ether, of all things. Even stranger were the patrons who sold those trinkets and the energies she could even now feel radiating from them. She had always assumed that youkai had died out before her era as the world subsumed to humans and their crafty inventions over the ages but her intensive miko training proclaimed otherwise. The demons had simply become slier in their ways of deception.

A pleasing smell wafted by as the miko hesitantly pulled at The Choco Cro's shop door. Her stomach growled from the mere fare of buttered toast that morning and, seeing as her attempts to quell it were quite futile, she deducted in a rather abrupt manner that a chocolate croissant should suffice to please it. She slapped one on a pink tray and brought it to the register where a smiling girl politely told her that the total came to 120 yen. Flashing a timid grin back, Kagome paid and retreated to a dark corner to munch on her prize.

That was delicious, she thought as she daintily licked her fingers of any crumbs or confectionary goodness. Perhaps she would pick one up for Inuyasha after her business was finished. She shook her head slightly. No, that twit would scarf it down and demand more chicken ramen anyway. With a sigh at his lack of appreciation for the finer things, the girl brushed off the remaining unsalvageable tidbits from her lap and stood gingerly from the spindly chair. It was now or never, and she much preferred now.

With a hefty yank at her bag, she strode stiffly to the back room and disappeared before the server girl could delicately shriek her protest.

Her first reaction was to bolt right back through the door. Mildew hailed her new sense of smell and the dank, dark atmosphere limited her quickly adjusting vision to only a few feet ahead as she traveled down a roughly hewn flight of stone stairs. A curious glowing blue fungus lined the walls ahead, but it still wasn't a very efficient way to light the rock interior. Her previously perspiring skin before now puckered into little bumps with the cool, damp air sending her hairs on end. If she wasn't so shocked at the sudden change in temperature, Kagome would have smirked at the novelty of having a very youkai-like establishment in modern day Tokyo. Ancient magics fluttered through the passageway and, when she turned to look for the door she came from, it had vanished. A cold shiver ran along her spine as she clasped the Shikon shard in her pocket. Hopefully her miko training would pay off and the resident youkai would confuse her for just an aura-masked demoness. She had a feeling that humans didn't venture down here often and that other powerful beings, such as mikos, were usually dealt with quickly and silently before they could cause too much trouble.

There was a slight decline in slope so she only could assume that the tunnel led deep below ground level. The dull, throbbing pains in her calves told her that it had been awhile since she first entered, but it already seemed impossible to judge how long ago she had entered this hell hole. She continued on, devoid of a sense of time and place determined to get to her destination. The musky air clouded her thoughts and intoxicated her wits, but one question remained present through it all.

'Why the hell am I here?'

It had been the spring of her eighteenth year when the bamboo stalks blossomed and Naraku had finally retreated, maimed and powerless, into the eternal night of death. The Shikon no Tama had been restored all but for two pieces and a melancholy red haze settled upon the Shard Hunters as they looked to one of the missing jewel fragments imbedded into the back of a young boy named Kohaku. Sango had mourned for her dead brother once, but the group decided that a second time would be too much for the demon slayer. So they, against the wishes of the jewel to become whole again, left it incomplete and trusted its safety in the hands the miko Kagome.

Such happiness, however, was not meant to last while the jewel wished for completeness.

Kohaku quickly faded away after Naraku's demise as the shard pulsated with a malevolent energy. It consumed the boy and its tendrils of dark magic slowly crushed his heart from the inside as Sango held back tears and drew his frail body to her chest. Kagome couldn't purify it regardless of how many times she tried. Finally, she attempted to fuse the Shikon no Tama in his back, but the evil shard was not of the jewel. Its reaction caused an immense wave of energy to go straight into the chest of the priestess, knocking both her and Kohaku unconscious. She awoke several days later, Kohaku did not.

She had dreamt during her blackout, but of what she saw she could not recall later... except for a mournful wail whose keen still brought tears to her eyes. It shook through her body on occasion, but she told no one of it nor of the bloody dreams which soon took place after the incident. She was still worried about Sango who had retreated within herself after her brother's death and such a trivial thing as a scary dream seemed minute in comparison to her friend's loss. The woman spoke little as it was and would seek comfort in the arms of Miroku the monk. He, for the most part, held off on his perverted antics for her sake as he gently eased her out of that pained inner shell.

In a way, she was a little bit envious of their budding relationship. Inuyasha and herself had established that they would be no more than good friends after she lost her childhood crush on him and he saw too much of the woman who betrayed him in her. Out of desperation, she had finally gone back home and accepted one of Hojou's dates, immediately regretting it later when he droned on about the medical properties of ginseng during Spiderman and tried to delve his sloppy tongue into her mouth when T.M. Revolution started singing the ending credits. In a huff, she had declared that she had somewhere to be and took the subway home. She sulked all the way back to the feudal era, not noticing that passerby's were staring at her strangely bright eyes.

The root of all her problems took place once she hit the well bottom that instant. She felt lighter and slightly woozy as she pulled her way up the vines and stumbled over the rim to hit the grass beneath her. It was night, and an impressive Hunter's moon loomed over the Forbidden Forest. 'Funny,' she yawned. She didn't remember the moon looking this big. With a languid stretch, she curled up into a ball by the Bone Eater's well, seemingly without a care, and drifted into the inky oblivion that is sleep.

Kagome awoke with a start and almost instantly felt that something was not right. For starters, everything was much too bright and a humming sound purred throughout her entire frame. Ugh, she thought. Never shall I consume movie popcorn again! Knowing Hojo, he'd probably spiked her buttery snack with an oddity of herbs just to keep her healthy long enough to ask out on another date. Why couldn't her grandfather come up with a reasonable excuse, like paying a relative a visit in the States? No, she mused. That would be too simple. Senile old man indeed!

With a drawn out sigh she stood on wobbly legs, wondering what on earth she had ate that caused her to snooze so suddenly. Whatever it had been, her sinuses had certainly cleared up. The scent of warm grass and decaying leaves assaulted her nose along with other fragrances that she couldn't quite name. It gave her an extra bounce in her step and, with a new burst of energy, she took off towards Kaede's village to see her friends.

Shippo was playing outside of the old miko's hut when she slowed her pace and sauntered up to the little kit. The kitsune was stalking a beetle and his complete attention was on the harassed bug when she crept up behind him, intent on making the small fox squeal. Just as he was about to pounce, Kagome shot down and grabbed the youkai under the armpits and hefted him up while he shrieked his protest as his prey unfurled its iridescent wings and flew away. His chubby child's face was held in a pout until he turned around and beamed at his Kagome.

"Kagome! You came back! Did'ya bring any sweets?" Completely forgetting about his lost insect, he pawed at her pockets until he found what he was looking for in her jacket and popped the lolli in his greedy little mouth.

She laughed and ruffled his russet head of hair, asking him if Inuyasha was behaving himself. Shippo proudly exclaimed that he had graffitied the Inuyoukai's face while he dozed in his tree and the volatile demon hadn't noticed yet. This made her wonder how long Inuyasha went without bathing and caused her to wrinkle her nose. Probably too long.

And with that, an enraged roar echoed throughout the forest causing both of them to face each other and snicker at the grumpy demon's plight.

Through the cheerful facade, she knew that there was still one shard left unaccounted for and that the Shard Hunters would have to seek it out to complete the Shikon no Tama's will. Sango's emotional state would hold them back if she didn't have time to heal properly, but the tug of the four souls urged the miko to make them whole once again. It was destiny pulling at her heartstrings with the added fear of not being able to heed its call one day that scared her senseless at night. She often wondered what direction her life would take if she finished the quest for she had no reason to stay in the past. Would she forget about all her friends in the feudal era and continue on with her dreams of the present? She paused to think about that. What did she want to do after this was all said and done with?

She had wanted to become a doctor before she had fallen down that fated well, helping sick children and making them better again, but somehow she couldn't stand letting that one child slip away, of telling a little girl who had just barely started her life that she had cancer throughout her entire body and was going to die in six months. It was too real for her, too scary, too... hard to cope with. It made living with youkai seem downright hospitable. But she couldn't very well stay here, could she?

The Monk and the Taijia would probably wed and start a family of their own, Inuyasha would seek out his past love and confront what fate would have with him. Shippo would remain a kit for ten or so years before blossoming into an adolescent and would probably live on for centuries past her natural death. The thought saddened her that she'd never see the little fox take on a mate and have his own kits one day.

Her powers needed training, as of now she was an unstable vessel for spiritual energy that very well could result in the accidental purification of her demon friends. She couldn't control it anymore than she could control the wind woven about her and that erratic power made her very vulnerable indeed. Perhaps she should stay and train with Kaede. The old miko had proclaimed once that she had so much potential and that could quite possibly be more powerful than Kikyo if she just trained properly. She felt like she belonged here more than in the present, but that still didn't curb the loneliness she felt. Perhaps it was just the broken Shikon no Tama talking, but she didn't feel quite complete.

Maybe she was just destined to be like Kikyo and live the life of solitude she had.

Inuyasha, Miroku, Shippo, Sango, and Kirara all snuggled around the cozy campfire that Kagome was heating water in. Somehow, Inuyasha had managed to furiously scrub half of the kitsune's artwork off his face with his hatori but had neglected to get it all. Even now there was an artistically drawn goatee and pirate patch still lingering on his face which Shippo had conveniently forgotten to point out at clawpoint. The group had to refrain from looking directly at the hanyou to avoid bursting at the seams with laughter.

It had been a long day of chasing after half rumours of a powerful demon said to be in the possession of a shard, but all it turned out to be was a variation of the bedtime story meant to frighten young children. The hanyou was still jittery, constantly taking off to scout the area and snapping at the monk when asked a simple question. Kagome couldn't tell exactly what caused Inuyasha to be so on-edge when their travels came this far west, but she assumed that it had something to do with his older brother, the Great Taiyou of the West. They hadn't seen him in quite awhile and she often wondered if he had finally settled down content to torment his younger sibling from afar.

Kagome dumped the steaming water in the ramen cups before sniffing the air and catching the distinct odor of sulfur on the chilly wind. If she had a tail, she certainly would have wagged it. A bath! It had been too long by her standards since she had partaken in the art of bathing. She rummaged through her gigantic yellow backpack and drew out her bath supplies, picking up her bow on impulse and brushing her way past the surly hanyou.

He looked at her with weary eyes. "Where do yer think yer goin'?"

"Bath," she said simply. "It's a sacred ritual non-smelly people do to remain non-smelly. You should try it sometime." With that, she took off in the direction where the scent was the strongest.

"Feh," was his only retort as he drew Tessaiga closer. He was too tired to argue and he trusted the miko would keep herself safe. Kagome had long since grown up out of that accident-prone adolescent whose mouth was much too big for her age and whose arrows often ended up nearly hitting them more than their opponents. She was almost eighteen now and her spindly legs were no longer sticking askew from her school skirt. She had opted a pair of jeans and hiking boots after numerous sprained ankles and being upskirted by one particular lecherous houshi once too often.

It seemed so long ago when he first stumbled upon Kikyo's reincarnation, but it had in fact only been a scant few years past. The fiery priestess was nothing like his first love and he often wondered why he confused the two in the beginning. Even when Kikyo was alive her sorrow cut through the very aura of life surrounding her. Kagome was so radiant, so full of joy. A youthful scent of happiness mixed in with her natural smell of a just-budded hyacinth had gotten her mixed up with Kikyo in their first encounter, he assumed. It was such a strange odor to have for a human, thought he as the hanyou inhaled her lingering scent. Inuyasha sighed as he settled down for another restless night camping in his brother's territory, totally missing the second more subtle fragrance laced within Kagome's.