Mad World

Learning everything around her wasn’t as easy as she had expected it to be, there were many things that were similar but others that were completely different. Over the weeks of being at home Kagome had gotten used to much of it but to her it seemed like a blending of her two time lines themselves, it was to say the least surreal for her in the beginning. One thing she had done since the incident at the hospital was to completely hide her aura, her aura felt to the rest of the world as though she was just a normal person, the hospital had insisted that she take classes to learn her powers, basically it was mandatory. She had not liked that one bit, but through all her life times her own body, mind and soul had been something that she had retained.



Her sanity was one side of a fine line, and on the other was crazy, she cake walked this line like a pro, she was the Cheshire cat now, and no longer Alice, though her mother wasn’t so sure of such things. Many nights Sayuri had woken to Kagome awake and outside of bed in the courtyard either practicing her powers, or doing things with her body that she and her husband had never seen. Sayuri never really brought it up but there were many nights when the moon was well upon its zenith that she had watched her eldest do simple exercises that left her body moving like free flowing water. These exercises were neither taught nor able to be learned from what she could see, and the fluidity of her daughter’s movements were hypnotic. It was a night like this that Sayuri had finally confronted her daughter about their meaning.



Kagome had been dreaming again, it was something she didn’t particularly like to do, her dreams were not fictions and fantasies of her mind but past or possible future events that had either happened or were yet to come. Often times the players of these mind games were reoccurring so she had no true way of finding out, her only clue was the emotion that she could feel raw within her when it came to these dreams. She trusted her instincts when it came to the people in her time lines, because depending on the situation they were not always the same, only up to the point when she un-pint the hanyou from the tree was life the same, every moment there after was new to some degree.



Her dreams were tragically beautiful at times, blessing and cursing her with the people that she often found she loved the most. Sometimes Kagome wondered how she could love him the most. In almost every life he was the same, and that was more then likely why she loved him so, he too was a constant, so strict in breeding and fortitude that he would forever force himself to be the unmoving unyielding and never changing Sesshomaru. Through so many opportunities to see the errors of one life verses another she had come to a great understanding of the mysterious male, the killing perfection. She could understand greatly why he held himself back in such a way, and that had been why she had begun to love his constant being.



It had come to no surprise to her in other life times that certain events and people were fuzzy and dreamlike in her memory, she found after time that if she didn’t see them much in the last life she hardly remembered them in the next, and the longer the life the harder it was to remember them at all. There had even been lives like this one, that she could hardly remember the hanyou whom she freed after un-pinning him. Some times it would puzzle her, frighten her, and even upset her that his face to her mind was not as well defined as it had been in others, she could remember that his hair was not white or silver but a light shade of grey, and that his eyes were neither gold or amber but a tint of bright brazen mustard.



Either way she knew of him but she was losing him, and them, their names were burned into her memory and that could never be forgotten, and yet the rest of them were sometimes easily done, this time she was determined not to be bothered by it. This time she had consciously made the decision that she would not stay beyond un-pinning him, she had realized after what happened at the hospital that the new memories had forced out many of the old for those of the new. Even faces that she had ingrained deeply in her thoughts, were gone from her.



It troubled her more then she wanted to let on and so when she woke from these seemingly faceless dreams, one of the few ways she knew to ride herself of these unsettling feelings, were to channel and focus her powers. It was something she had learned on one of her longer lives, she’d met someone, she couldn’t remembered just who, but they had taught her this. Her body glowed blue with her aura and powers mixed together creating one rather then two, it allowed her to pour both parts of herself into her physical being, and allowed her to come to par with the fastest and strongest of youkai. For one thing it was nearly impossible for a human to do simply because often times no human had a soul that could withstand such a feat, she on the other hand was an exception.



The normal human soul was rather small… the size of a basketball, transparent, and often times ‘steal-able.’ Her human soul was nearly eighty times larger then it should be, or that was the general consensus at the time, her human soul was strong enough to surpass the weight and pressure of time travel many times over without being compressed in upon itself..



Her soul was more like the essence of youkai, but to the opposite and extreme, it was why she alone as a human could do such a thing to mix her aura which was a direct product of her soul, with her powers which grew from both. This unique and bothersome form of exercise kept the ability to call it forth within ease, not that she needed such power, such power in a human was dangerous, but she supposed as the container for the Shikon it was necessary, for the container would always need to be more powerful this its contents.



Kagome could feel her mother’s eyes on her often, and was not shocked at all when Sayuri had confronted her about the technique, Kagome had given just enough of an answer to sate her mothers need to know, but nothing more to cause her further thought into the matter, it was an evasive tactic she had learned first hand from Sesshomaru. She sighed as she sat at her dinning room table, her hands on the cup of tea that was now cold, her mother having gone to bed an hour before.



This life was so much more different then any she had lived in before, this world was different, the history was different, everything was the same and yet different. Youkai and human walked the same street together often in companionship as she had done during her traveled but as existing counterparts in society. The concrete jungle she had left the day she had turned fifteen wasn’t nearly as tall or as polluted, or as metropolis as it had been before she had fallen down the well in this time line.



It was times like this, sobering hits of her current reality, that she often understood the situation, and it was this moment weeks later, when the whole of her future was changed that she realized when she had gone down the well she had done so with her book bag, but when she was found there was none. She sipped calmly on her tea at the revelation, again she was faced with the possibility, the chance, the flip of the coin, to jump willing down the rabbit hole, and embrace Alice holistically, or leave life that way it was.



Was life so stagnant and changed, altered beyond recognition for her that she would willing change this, giving up her father and younger sister to the whims and fancy of time and fate, or should she leave the information out there, where it had obviously been found. She could credit years of facing a foe so deigning and unimaginably crazy that this sort of thing did not phase her, it should very well scare the shit out of her that a history book from her future, an algebra book, along with a Japanese mythology book were lost in her past, giving them a time tempting miko’s guide on how to do anything and everything up to 2002 the year the book was printed.



She inwardly marveled at her own growth, anyone, young or old would be running around like their head was cut off, and yet, she weighed the situation with logic. It was horrible obvious from the amount of change that someone had indeed found and used the knowledge that had been left for them. Said person would have to be foolish not to, to look such a kami sent--literally because she was certain only kami’s played with such insane fancy as throwing a girl down a well five hundred years into the past to save the future-- gift, and use it to the best of their abilities to change and make things the way they wanted. But then she had to weigh in the factors that the books might not still exist, if said person found the information, and changed one thing it was a possibility that they could change her having those books when she fell into the well, and yet she had fallen into the well with the book regardless of past events.



She closed her eyes as she hurt her own head with that thought and smiled a bit to herself, she decided she would take up the theory of quantum physics at school, such a heavy and foreboding topic but she had finished school half of her lives and save ‘the history of the world; the basic information had not changed, as such she was rather brilliant in school to some degree having studied it often enough never to need to read the book again, but other subjects were not so grand. Once long ago math had been a most hated subject and now, it was a constant, and a favored, science fell into this as well, as did philosophy, many days she had thought both her father and grandfather into quiet stupors for hours, much to her and her mother‘s amusement. And often times she would simply leave them lost to their thought while she played with her little sister, or took care of the shrine, while the men thought their brains into a funk.



She smiled against her tea cup as she took another sip. Whatever the situation was, history was over, had passed, and was no longer a subject of this life that she was willing to change, relearn and deal with yes, change, not until she turned fifteen again. Her nightly exercise had been productive, dreams of kitsunes, two tailed cats, and dog-eared hanyous had woken her, fluid blue energy and aura had calmed her, and now she would train her mind, still sitting in her place at the breakfast table Kagome crossed her legs and assumed a lotus position.



Her minds eye was sharp, her aura and mind working together as one as they began to map out the house, and slowly the courtyard and forest that surrounded the shrine. ‘Mapping,’ was common for Kagome, something she did for an hour each day, after coming home she had placed many sutra and talisman around the shrine grounds, infusing them with her powers, and protection was added little by little more each day, these protection barriers were already strong but she figured she had a lot to protect now.



Having checked each one, her eyes shot open seeing her mother coming down stairs to start breakfast, this meant it was time to train her body as well, she liked this part best. She headed outside to the supply shed and got her favorite staff and sword, the staff was made from blessed petrified wood from the tree of ages, many miko’s had pushed their blessing and power into the unbreakable wood. Many of her own family in fact, the wood had always seemed to warm to her touch no matter the occasion, which she liked as well. She moved her body with practiced ease, each set and motion done with calculations to precise that it was foreign to the family that watched.



She had noticed long ago that her brother had taken his eye into following the movement, and it had not shocked her that he too would come out and join her following her lead as master and student. It was an unspoken bond that she and Souta had. The eight year old and only boy had never known his sister to be so knowledgeable, but had taken to following her lead in this matter. She never woke him up for it, telling him that he needed sleep but that she would not stop him from following if he woke himself, and so though he was often late because she had no set start time, both practiced the staff.



The sword too was the same pace, practiced stances, and pose, pomp and circumstance, and yet it was beautiful, and to her parents eyes deadly. There were things that she had lived through that had changed their daughter, they both knew this, understood this, and did not question it but they always watched with both awed and worried eyes. What parent could watch their child untrained to their knowledge practice ways of such a prefect killer and not be some kind of alarmed. And so both parents, her grandfather and both siblings, lived with the one they had known all her life, and yet was a complete stranger to them. They lived and learned to love her as she had been before, and in truth she was not all that different but she was, and yet they loved her, and kept her and all her wonders to themselves.



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Time changes all things….



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After three years of keeping her secret word had somehow gotten out that an immensely powerful miko lived in Tokyo, though none knew she was in fact the Shikon Miko reborn again, the word was still out, deranged demons, and humans that lusted for power either their own or someone else’s started coming out of the wood work. As Kagome knew it now, laws here were different then in any other time she had lived before, in this Japan, in this Mad World, where demons still existed, existing in fact along side peacefully for the most part as humans, there were certain rights a human had in defense against someone wanting to hurt them. Tokyo was called the ‘City of Light‘ or the ‘City of Purity‘, for it was by far the highest populated city with miko, monks, priests, and slayers, not to say it was a bastion of purity for truly even this city had its dirty members of society, it was by far not the Tokyo she remembered.



They had called the police again, another kuro-miko had come to steal her soul, or her power, or her blood, unfortunately for the kuro-miko, Kagome had gotten to her first. An arrow embedded into the dark miko’s shoulder with a sealing spell, her little sister bloodied from the fight that had ensued, and Kagome was pissed, no one touched her family, no one, had she not had honor she would have killed the bitch for even touching Rin.



She couldn’t believe it, even in her new life when everything seemed so wonderful it seemed that she could not escape her violent fate, and what was worse she was bringing her family into danger just by being with them. Knowing that the dark miko was sealed and unable to move, Kagome turned to assess her sisters health, but not before her cold eyes left Tsubaki one last time, Rin had been cut badly, her blood covering the stone ground of the shrine, quickly Kagome went to work, she knew she was above the standards of the normal spiritual ratings of this world, hell what she held in would dwarf most if not all of the living beings on this island save a few, but it didn’t matter to her.



Looking at the tear stained face of her little sister she made up her mind, to keep them safe she would leave them, Souta, and her mother had enough power to keep the family safe, as did her little sister though it still lay dormant, it would surface if she needed it. It still amazed her, in this world every human was taught how to bring about their natural spiritual powers, and what you did with them was your own choice, it was like deciding to be a doctor or a basket ball player, the humans here simply accepted that it was a talent of yours.



Her mother and brother, she shouldn’t have been surprised by this fact really, at least with her brother, she herself had dormant powers until she was fifteen, Souta having them shouldn’t have shocked her, but in her lives, she had never noticed her mother with anything like this, perhaps that’s why her mother had always been so un-naturally calm about her travels. Decision made though she could not let them come to danger because of her, she would get things ready before she left, after all that was why she had taken a job for when she returned, every bit of money she had ever gotten from her small paychecks had gone into an account so that she could leave them when the time came, because secrets, even when kept by the strongest keepers eventually got out.



She had protection charms set up all over the shrine, so that no matter where in the globe she was, no one would ever be able to harm her family so long as she lived, not to mention individual charms made for each member of her family, so that they could not be used against one another to get information about her when she left, because she would leave no word of where she would go. Kagome was so busy in her thoughts, that she had been caught healing her sister when the healers came up. Her head turning to the sound of shocked gasps to her left where the stairs were, ‘and now the government would be after her as well‘, she thought dejectedly. Kagome was no fool, the government sought out strong miko’s, slayers, monks and priests in an attempt to cross breed, and genetically create a stronger defense against the few very powerful youkai out there, along with the mass of weaker demons and hanyous should they become a problem.



Humans, no matter what agreements they had with these timeless powerful beings would always be scared of them for the simple fact that theirs was a power unknown, their existence, was something that would always scare the weak, for almost no youkai was weak as humans were. She sighed, Kagome could always feel them when near but she knew youkai having traveled time over and over again, so long as you respected them and stayed out of their way, they had no reason to do a thing to you unless you warranted it, or unless you were like her, and had power which they coveted. She didn’t want to become apart of the system, apart of a thing that only reacted out of fear of the unknown.



It was funny how life hand seemingly changed, her not going around all of Feudal era Japan had allowed the youkai to live through the human demon holy wars, and those who had survived that had also survived the world wars, as well as many injustices, and have even come to live along side humans as equals, or more so just not as hostels. Terms were still shaky and there were still human, hanyou, and demon deaths so it was like a constant warring states, which resulted in the unofficial standing as Tokyo as the holy city, and Kagoshima being deemed the ‘City of Sin‘ or ‘Kuro City‘, the demons city, where as Sapporo was the Half city where most of the hanyou, hanyou lovers and decedents there of lived. Though all kinds of people lived everywhere really, those cities were over populated with their respective kinds while few others lived in any of those cities, few demon were brave enough to live in Tokyo, just as few humans or hanyou lived in Kagoshima, and hardly any full demon or holy people lived in the hanyou city either, but in each there were a few. Kagome didn’t know where she’d settle when everything was over.



‘Back to the task at hand‘, she thought, getting Rin to stop crying was easy, she had simply promised to give her a cookie when she got inside, sending her sister off into the shrine, to her brother and her Jiji, Kagome went to speak to the police. Informing them that another kuro miko had been caught trespassing, she created the necessary spells to get her out of the area safely, while still keeping her sealed. The kuro miko looked familiar to her but Kagome was not aware of who the grey haired youth was nor did she intend to deal with her in long terms anyway.



But there was an odd sensation that over came her as she took in the site of the woman, she had long grey hair as though she should be far older then she appeared. A small golden shell pendent at her roots, her eyes a dark and unusually blue, but spiritual being often had odd color eyes, Kagome’s own were pale blue like the sky, so this was not it. But there was something about her, it made her head hurt, was it that his kuro-miko was another incarnation like Rin? Another being that she was destined to meet and deal with regardless of the time stream? It felt like it, and with that thought Kagome had more to worry about.



Tsubaki was pissed, the little twit had thwarted her and had even managed to bind her powers before stripping them completely, purifying their darkness before sealing them into a tree of ages. Now the kuro miko was nothing more then a bitter human who had attempted to take the life if another miko, a crime punishable by death. She wanted to be angry but she had been shown up beautifully, the little girl knew her stuff, she could at least admit that. If she were younger she’d swear revenge, but now powerless, human, and ready for death she just accepted it, the young miko she had gone against would be hell to deal with again, and her vengeance would know no bounds should it be provoked. She hadn’t even been at full force earlier when they had fought, but the moment the little girl, her sister, had gotten hurt it was like a whole other being had taken her place, there was murder in that aura, and the control she exhibited was astonishing. Tsubaki was lucky to live though an experience with Kagome Higurashi.



It seemed, Kagome thought after hearing about that law, that some old laws were still intact, she had killed a few demons already but this had been the first kuro miko, whom she did not feel bad for, had this Tsubaki just practiced more she’d have her own powers to use, and would not need that of another. With that she went inside to stop the tears of the little miko, her sister, bribery of her tiny sister was not beyond her. It would only be a few more years and the little girl wouldn’t be so easily dealt with, Kagome knew this, she felt reluctant to leave her sister’s side, though she knew she’d need to sooner then later. Rin was eight, Souta only eleven, her Jiji was getting up there, and her father and mother, were well not youthful but not aged either. This would make them safer, she thought, she’d stay with them as long as she could and she’d leave when there was no other option, she sighed at the thought. Who would have guessed that instead of running around in another time she would be forced to run to another place in the world.



It wasn’t more then a week later that her family got the call to come down to the local official’s office, and then down to downtown Tokyo for Miko assessment tests. Kagome sighed, at least she knew now they were going to go after her, all was well at the Higurashi shrine the night before the test were to take place, no one in the home knew of what Kagome had planned, and all went to bed thinking and worrying about the eldest Higurashi child for what tomorrow held for her. Only Jiji noticed when she slipped out of bed, and out her bedroom window, none noticed her aura leaving the grounds, and Jiji knew that the rest would not find out until morning that the girl was gone, completely.



Kagome His eldest grandchild, the bright miko she was, was beyond talented, and he the aged decrepit old man was thought to be only senile to a fault, that was not the case. Jiji was well aware of what his granddaughter was giving them, what she was doing to keep them safe, it was what she felt needed to happen to keep her family safe. That was Kagome, always thinking of others before herself. He walked down the hallways of their house, his bedroom downstairs so that he wouldn’t have to walk so many steps at his age.



There on their dinner table was a small wooden box and letters, each one addressed to a member of the family, Jiji simple made tea and thought of everything that was going to happen tomorrow when all hell broke loose. They had never known that she had trained for so much in life, that in her past lives she had training in so many art forms that even if she could not remember them they were still ingrained into her nature, into her being so deeply that she did not have to remembered them to know them. Her concealment spell was unparallel, there was no trace of her outside of the shrine grounds, it was almost as though she had disappeared. He smiled a bitter sweet smile, knowing that it was time to let her go, she would return when she could.



That night the eldest child had boarded a flight out of Tokyo to Kyoto , from Kyoto to parts unknown, they had been able to find that little trace three days later, but by then Kagome Higurashi had vanished off the face of the planet. Her family understood though they were saddened by the girl’s choice, they didn’t want her to be a tool of the government either, and it seemed Kagome had her own thoughts about it.



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Sesshomaru sat in his study looking at the object that had been his most prized, the object that had been rendered useless against time, the history book. It had been a most peculiar thing upon acquiring it, he had taken it and memorized its entirety, it had been rather easy once he learned to read the different kanji, and understood the different meanings. The thing had then been stored away for filing, nothing thought of it, until he had seemingly changed some of the contents of the history of this land. He had gone to see if something was correct in the book because he‘d had nothing better to do, and taken it upon himself to fight when before no one had, he’d thought nothing of it, until he realized that he had in fact changed history. What he expected to happen next did not, so with much pain and exhaustion years later on his servants behalf, the book was found again, and to his surprise its contents changed.



It hadn’t taken him long at all to figure out that the book changed as history did, and so he began to make ‘his’ empire, he had only the West before, when the book came to equal time lines, he would have all of Japan as his, and the world around it if possible. He was usually not a demon to use powers not his own, but the book had fallen into his hold so it was within his power to use it as he saw fit. He had been pleased when demons began to appear in the book as more then just ‘ghosts’ and figments of the human mind, but in fact became a part of history, even more so when his own name became infamous in the book, having a full chapter, not detailed mind you because he was a deeply private being but good enough, on him and his own history.



He had never truly wanted to find the girl, but he had to find out all that he could about her, he was not sure of her origins, only that she had vanished in a well near the place his brother had been sealed. He had gone after finding out about the books secrets to the village near the well, and ‘talked’ with the aged miko, this had been years later though and the old one was far older then any human he’d ever seen before. She had been one of very few that he had some modicum of respect for, she did not willingly divulge information on the young woman at all, in fact it had taken quit a few deaths of her villagers for her to give out the information needed. He was not at all surprised when the old woman told him of the girls involvement with the future, or that she had vanished into the well in a stream of light, even his spy had told him such. No, what did seem to shock him was that she was the supposed reincarnation of the elder’s long dead sister, and Inuyasha’s would have been lover. His jaws, he remembered had tightened painfully so in that moment. That was when his brother showed up, stopping him from killing the old miko of Edo .



His brother, he sneered at the thought, the impudent hanyou had not been there at all when needed against the panther divas, instead pinned to a tree by the human he ‘loved‘, and upon being released had done nothing of help to anyone. It seemed that the dog-eared cad had wanted to kill someone, some other hanyou named Naraku, had done everything in his power to make it so, and yet he had not be able to beat this foe. Sesshomaru himself had burned the memory of when his own brother had come to him for help to find and decimate the evil, never having been one to assist, Sesshomaru had asked for undying loyalty from his pack and brother, submission. It was a small thing to ask as he should already have it from the brat, but it had been given however unwillingly and a tentative familiarity had grown between them.



He still hated his brother, but it was more along the lines that Inuyasha was his, and no one but him was able to do anything about it. Inuyasha’s life was his, and everyone knew it, they had at the time, hunted the spider hanyou, Sesshomaru would never admit it even to this day that when they found him, and Inuyasha killed him he’d been very proud of his little brother, the boy was rather ruthless. And so their odd relationship began, he could count to some degree on the boy and though there was no love lost between them there was some odd form for brotherly respect, however warped and twisted it was Sesshomaru and Inuyasha would only be pleased with the other‘s death if it was at their own hands, anyone else who sought such things met the wrath of the other. There was none stronger then the hanyou save Sesshomaru, a true testament to their father’s great blood, and so they the sons of the most great and most terrible InuTaishou conquered Japan .



He sighed, it was rather out of character for him to do so but, it had been done this day, he’d received an odd bit of information. The history book had been his most prized procession, and after weeks of intense thought it had occurred to him that the onna, the mystic miko from the future would have still fallen down the well despite the changes he had inflicted upon her history and his future, for the book to still be in his possession.



This had brought to mind that in the future he would need to have her well and as he found later shrine safeguarded against everything at least until she fell down the well, and so hundreds of years of planning he had finally found her when she was about three, a curious human she had been, her bright blue eyes had seen him even when no other had. She hadn’t had one bit of fear in her being for his own, in fact she had giggled madly and clapped her hands as if he was a puppy for her amusement, he was not one to lie to himself but she had been a rather adorable pup.



He’d made a yearly trip to her presence, finding an odd peace with her being, even as a small child she had brought him a sense of peace. His people, demons and humans alike stayed ever the virulent watch over her and her family, he was informed of anything that was important, from bullying, to her first period, it was odd to feel so protective over something or someone, but she was the one that had given him his path to conquest, and thus she was to be protected, as she was in some way his. He never mentioned her to Inuyasha, the hanyou had changed too much in five hundred years, looking too much like their father for Sesshomaru’s liking, and acted like the old man too, only he was not so powerful, nor was he near the charmer their great and terrible father had been.



The great Inugami that was the Killing Perfection, was finally informed when she fell down the well, and came back out, it was the last time he had her watched from that point on Kagome was on her own. He remembered feeling a bit of loss at the idea of no longer needing to protect her but if anything he was a logical and rational demon, she had served her purpose, and there was no longer a need for his protection. He didn’t give way for his thoughts about her younger sister seeming familiar to him, nor that she herself felt so familiar to him, and he had not seen her in over three years, hadn’t had a report on her or anything, he found it even odd that now he was thinking about her. He shook his head a bit to clear his thoughts, and looked out the window of his penthouse apartment, the moon was so bright, and felt so real this high up, he loved it.



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AN: well what do you think?