Reincarnation.

A/N: I don’t know if this will be the last chapter or if I’ll have another. We’ll just see how I feel. I guess not too many people liked this one, or else I’d have more reviews and hits. Oh well. I like it. And maybe people’ll like my next one, the oneshots one? I’ll keep her Kagome in that one; maybe it was the thinking that Kagome became a completely different character that turned people off. *shrugs* dunno.

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Chapter 14: What’s It Feel Like to Be a Ghost?



Several years had passed since the gang had gotten settled into their new lives. Minako was eight and starting third grade, and Aiko was five, starting kindergarten; Suzume and Minoru were as happy as ever when they welcomed their second daughter, Jade, into the family when Aiko was two. Kimiko had given birth to her and Inuyasha’s baby, Naoki, their third son and sixth [?] child shortly after the world had been full reverted to the way it should have stayed. When this certain day came, the boy was nearing his fifth birthday.



This particular day was a bright and cheerful one. Inuyasha had just finished his last class for the day and sent the rambunctious group of teenagers home to terrorize their own parents with their newfound karate skills. He walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water. The hanyou stopped dead in his tracks when a familiar scent caught his nose. He slowly proceeded into the kitchen and stared when he saw a young kitsune man sitting at the island counter. Yash blinked. The young man looked just like Shippo, with the same orange and blonde hair; it was short and messy. His eyes glinted a mischievous, bright orange that matched. He grinned at the hanyou. “Hey, Grandpa,” he said loudly before taking a sip from his own glass.



Yash just stood there, staring. Kimiko came bouncing in from outside. “Yash! Moriko just called! She said the baby’s-” She stopped dead in her tracks and stared at the young man sitting at her counter. “Oh, wow,” she mumbled. “You look-”



“Exactly like Father?” he asked. He smiled at her. “Hi, Gran.”



Kimiko overcame her shock almost instantly. She let out a high pitched squeal, causing her mate to back away from her, holding his sensitive ears. “I’m a grandma! Oh my Gods, I’m a freakin’ grandma!” She covered her mouth. “I’ve got to go find Sue!” She dashed out the back door in search of her best friend. Inuyasha glared after her. “Yea, go make annoying noises with her, not me,” he shot at empty air. He turned back to his grown grandson. “So. You’re… half kitsune, quarter shapeshifter, and a quarter Kami?” he asked.



The young man nodded. “I am.”



Yash blinked. “What’s your name? I figured you’d have told us by now.”



He shrugged, standing. He was as tall as his grandfather, and about as buff to boot. “Aidan.”



“Fire,” Yash said, nodding and looking his grandson up and down. He smirked approvingly. “I think it’ll suit you.”



He clapped a hand on his grandfather’s shoulder. “Ah, I hope so, Grandad Yash,” he told him.



All of a sudden, there was a pull, an otherworldly yank that grabbed hold of both men. They looked at each other. Right then, Kimiko and Moriko both came running into the kitchen. “You guys feel that?” Moriko asked them. They both nodded. “Me and Mom did too,” she replied breathlessly.



Right then, they were all four yanked into another plane. Yash had never been here before, and, so far, neither had Aidan, though the youngling had already experienced it with his mother. This was a place made of fire, of life. It was bright, but his eyes didn’t hurt. He looked down at himself, and realized that he was made of this fire. He looked at Kimiko. She was beautiful, burning a brilliant, deep blue, and she burned even brighter when she smiled at him. ‘Welcome to the Second Plane,’ she told him. He knew that she wasn’t really speaking; her lips never moved. He turned and looked at Moriko and Aidan; Moriko glowed dimly, her body a deep amethyst color, the color of her eyes. Aidan looked like a lit match, a mixture of yellows and reds and oranges. He looked at himself, and he was a solid gold.



He looked at his mate. ‘Why don’t I burn like you three do?’ he asked voicelessly. Kimiko smiled at him again. ‘You’re not like us,’ she answered. ‘That’s why. You have power… just not fluid, like ours. Yours is built into you; it cannot be altered or taken.’



Then they felt the pull again, and Kimiko grabbed Yash’s hand. She led him and her daughter and grandson to a place that burned the purest white. When they got to a small group of beings, Yash gulped [inwardly, not physically]. There were four of them, and they all burned even brighter than Kimiko did. He knew how much power and strength his mate held in her hands, and he somehow knew that these were way out of her league. They regarded them with a stiff, official nod. They all looked male and female at the same time, essentially genderless. Yash looked at the others and also noticed that they looked genderless, even though Kimiko and Moriko had maintained their breasts. He blinked, looking down at himself; Inuyasha sighed in relief when he saw that his own genitalia were still there, even though now he felt embarrassed. And weird.



‘You have arrived,’ one of the ethereal beings murmured. They stared at Inuyasha, then switched over to glaring at Kimiko. The young goddess stood her ground. ‘Of course, she is young in their presence,’ Yash thought. The white beings looked at him. He blinked. ‘Oh, yea,’ he said. ‘I’m not thinking when I do that here, am I?’ he asked.



Kimiko looked at him grimly. Her light dimmed a little. Yash knew that she was afraid of these beings. ‘No, dear, your thoughts are your words while we’re here.’



‘Why are we here?’ Yash shot off, looking at the white beings. Moriko bit her lip nervously, knowing her father. And knowing her father’s temper. And knowing that her father knew absolutely nothing about Kami politics and society.



The leading white being turned to him. ‘You did not complete your task, Inu,’ it said to him. ‘And you assisted Kimiko with defeating your backup.’



‘I can’t control her,’ he told the being. ‘I love her.’



He felt [FELT!] a shudder roll through the being. ‘Love is not an emotion you were designed to feel,’ it told him, the feel of its words stern and angry. ‘You were supposed to feel anger and hatred. That is how you were supposed to be when you slew her or captivated her. You did neither.’



‘Oh, I felt anger toward her!’ Inuyasha said wordlessly. Kimiko was watching him. He looked her in the eye. He smiled at her. ‘But not for long. She is… good, and she is kind. And she is pure.’ He turned back to the white being. ‘How can you hate someone so pure?’ he asked. ‘So good?’



He saw Kimiko beam, and it was like nothing he had ever witnessed before. She burned and burned until her light matched the four ethereal beings before them. He gasped. He had never known she could do that.



The leader snapped at her voicelessly, and she stopped, reverting back to her usual bright blue and staring at her. The being looked at Inuyasha, who was watching. ‘You’re Izanami,’ he asked, ‘aren’t you?’



The being only stared at him. ‘She was never meant to contain this much power,’ he told Yash. ‘She has grown in her power so much that she matches the older ones of us, the ones who run the show we call the universe.’ He moved toward Kimiko. ‘This came of the love built between you. It gives her strength that she was not meant to have.’ Kimiko floated closer to Inuyasha. He took her hand in his, which comforted her. He knew it would.



‘You two have defied every law we have set up,’ Izanami told them. They watched him. ‘As a punishment, you must both be stripped of power.’



Kimiko gasped and hugged up to Inuyasha. She felt hot against him. ‘I thought I couldn’t be messed with?’ he asked her gently. She looked up into his eyes. ‘They made you. They can take you back apart.’



He nodded. He was strangely calm, although he knew his death was right around the corner. Something struck him. ‘Wait!’ he called. ‘What about Minako? And Naoki? And Moriko and Aidan?’ He watched Izanami, his eyes pleading.



‘We will spare the children,’ the god answered. ‘As for Moriko…’ Izanami smiled at the half-goddess. Moriko brightened a little under his gaze. ‘We have plans for her.’



All of a sudden, Inuyasha saw Kimiko flash, and she dimmed. He and the others watched as her light slowly kept on dimming. She smiled at Inuyasha, but she glimmered no more. There was a pop, and she was gone. Yash cried out, diving for the space she had occupied, then disappeared himself.



Moriko and Aidan stared at Izanami. ‘Why didn’t you wait?’ Moriko asked. ‘I wanted to say goodbye.’ Her son held her hand, comforting her. Izanami only smiled at her gently and reached over, tapping her gently on the forehead. Another light flashed, and she and Aidan had disappeared.



The god shook his head and turned back to his fellow gods, ready to begin the process of rebuilding their two children.

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Year: 2023



“Kagome!”



Nishi Kagome looked up, seeing her husband storm into the dining room, small Naoki in tow. She sighed and put her hands on her hips, smiling a little at the paint-covered child. Inuyasha pointed savagely at their son, anger gleaming in his eye. “I found him in your studio. It’s a real mess in there.”



Kagome laughed. “Inuyasha, really, it’s probably fine. I’m sure Naoki didn’t mean any harm, right, son?” she asked him. She took Naoki’s hand into her own and led him and her husband to the studio on the other side of the shrine. Inuyasha had been right, though; their five-year-old had just thrown red, blue, green, and purple paint all over the floor and walls. She giggled, seeing it. She smiled sweetly at her hanyou husband. “We’ll just… paint over it.”



Naoki still looked sullen. Inuyasha saw him and grinned, picking him up in his arms. “Feh,” he said quietly to his son. “It’ll be fine. Okaa can fix it up.” A smile formed on the child’s face. He looked just like Inuyasha, but with Kagome’s black hair and chocolate eyes.



They brought the boy with them into the dining room, where they other children were already eating at the table. Kenji, 17, was telling Hotaru, 15, about his new boyfriend. Yume, 12, was snickering about the fact that his older brother had a boyfriend. Minako, 8, just blinked and ate her pancakes. Kagome smiled at Inuyasha.



“I never could have asked for anything more than what you’ve given me,” she told him, giving him a peck on the lips.



She laughed as their orange and red dog ran around her legs. He grinned up at her, and she smiled and petted his head, scratching his ears a little. “Hi, there, Aidan,” she greeted him. Inuyasha snorted. “I still say that dog looks more like a damn fox than a dog,” he told her. She just gave him a look.

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Later that night, as soon as his owners were all fast asleep in their beds, Aidan snuck out. He met a tall, young woman in the woods near the big house, and there he transformed into his human form. He smiled at his mother. “They’re doing fine,” he told her. He snickered a little. “Did you know that Uncle Kenji is gay?” he asked.



Moriko laughed a little. Her bright blue eyes sparkled in the darkness. “No, I didn’t,” she told him. She looked at the dark house. “But it explains some things.” She looked at her son. “Keep an eye on things for me. I’ll return to this time shortly to check up.”



She disappeared, and Aidan transformed back into his canine form, running back to the house.

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A/N: Whoo!! Done! The end!



Okay, lemme clear up some things that I didn’t explain in the actual story, so some of you may be a little confused:



1) Shippo wasn’t reborn with the rest of them because the poison at his soul right up; basically, when Izanami and the others got down to it, there was no soul to reincarnate. They don’t miss Shippo because they don’t remember him.



2) They chose to make Moriko into the goddess of time in Kimi’s place because a. she knew how to do the job, being Kimi’s daughter and all, and b. her lover, Shippo, was already gone; they knew there was no chance of her repeating Kimi’s mistake. Not saying her seeing Inuyasha was a mistake, but that’s what they obviously thought.



3) The reason I started off with the whole Kimi’s Kagome’s reincarnation thing… that was basically just all of them playing along with Minoru and Suzume and Miroku and Sango. They didn’t tell the humans because they figured it’d be too much for them to handle, and the less they knew, the less likely they’d also suffer the gods’ wrath for their “misdeeds.”



4) When they got reborn, the gods basically yanked Moriko and Aidan out of the equation. Even though they are still by blood Kagome and Inuyasha’s daughter and grandson, they weren’t actually born to them in the remade world. It was situated where, in 2006, they had Kenji; two years later, Hotaru, and so on and so forth.



So. That’s the end. Look out for the series of oneshots… I’m gonna keep her Kagome in it, but she’ll be pushing that her name is Kimiko sometimes. It’ll be called “Divine Intervention,” after the song by Taking Back Sunday.



Soundtrack to “Reincarnation.”



1. “Divine Intervention” – Taking Back Sunday.

2. “What’s It Feel Like to Be a Ghost?” – Taking Back Sunday.

3. “Teardrops on My Guitar” – Taylor Swift.

4. “Desperately” – Michelle Branch.

5. “Should’ve Said No” – Taylor Swift.

6. “My Blue Heaven” – Taking Back Sunday.

7. “Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off” – Panic! At the Disco.

8. “Lips of an Angel” – Hinder.

9. “Rooftops and Invitations” – Dashboard Confessional.

10. “Everything’s Too Cold But You’re So Warm” – The Early November.

11. “Fall to Pieces” – Avril Lavigne.

12. “Trouble” – Coldplay.

13. “Error: Operator” – Taking Back Sunday.

14. “Yellow” – Coldplay.

15. “Stay” – Lisa Loeb.



Ok. NOW I’m done, haha. Bye for now.