I seem to have gotten myself in a pattern. Have you noticed? Every chapter begins with Inuyasha waking up, and the one before it ends with him blacking it. I think it's a psychological thing about starting the day fresh. That's three now (although the middle one was actually just going to sleep, which is a normal thing to do so I don't hold myself responsible) so I'm thinking this has got to stop. I assure you, Inuyasha will be fully conscious at the end of this chapter.

Disclaimer: (For those of you who read this anywhere but ff.net, you might be wondering why this is here. It's necessary on ff.net which doesn't offer a section for chapter or story notes, and also good for mm.org because I don't like writing it in the chapter summary. I also post new chapters on every site all at once, so I don't do any editing further than grammatical and spelling corrections. So that's why its here all the time.) I don't own Inuyasha, but luckily Rumiko Takahashi does. I don't feel like trying to be clever after that little explanatory paragraph, so that's it. No own. End of disclamation.

P.S. I just wanted to mention that this chapter presented a great challenge, because I really didn't know where I wanted to take it in many ways and I am still really unsure. Any comments and suggestions you have are welcome!

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Boy of the Future, Girl of the Past

Chapter 6

Better Bird Demons Than Liars

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Inuyasha came to abruptly, finding that the cause was two hands with a death-grip on his shoulders, shaking him roughly.

"Wake up! Where are we? Oh, c'mon, get up."

"Stop that!" Inuyasha demanded, completely conscious immediately. The motion was causing his right side, which he was pretty sure he had only made worse with the fall, to protest very loudly. "That hurts, Kagome."

She let go of him quickly, pulling away in the small, dark space they were sharing. "Sorry," she told him. "I'm panicking. I woke up here next to you in this pit, and I can't even see the sky anymore and I don't know what's going on."

"We fell in the well, last I remember. What do you mean, ‘can't see the sky'? Where did it..." He froze as he looked up and saw no sky above him. What he saw was a slightly angled roof made of damp wooden slats. The inside of the well house. He sat up quickly, ignoring the way his side burned at the movement.

"I think we might have gone back through the well," Inuyasha said, awed. "So that's really all there is to it? Jump in a well, time travel? No Delorean? Just glorified falling over? Huh."

Inuyasha stood carefully, Kagome rising with him to help. He didn't protest the assistance, eyes trained on the roof a dozen feet away.

"We've gone to your time?" Kagome asked, the panic in her voice replaced by confusion. "I've gone to your time?"

"Apparently. Let's get out of here and I can see for sure."

"What? No! We have to go back and find the jewel before the crows do!"

Inuyasha shook his head. "Hey, look, your world, your problem. This is where I belong, and this is where I'm staying."

"But..."

"But nothing!" Inuyasha interrupted. "I was only there for like a day! You all did fine in your world without me for hundreds of years. I am supposed to be here. This is my time. You can go back to yours any time you want, as soon as you figure out how exactly you do that. I'll help, but I'm not going. It has nothing to do with me!" Inuyasha fumed at her. Before she could even answer, he grabbed hold of the vines growing inside the well, and, without stopping to worry about them holding his weight, he pulled himself up as fast as he could, ignoring the pain it caused.

He reached the top and hoisted himself out, seeing that Kagome had followed him, having a great deal more difficulty climbing the natural ropes then he did. Rolling his eyes, Inuyasha reached down, grabbed her wrists tightly and pulled her up, careful to use only his arms in the effort to avoid hurting himself. Kagome watched wide eyed as he lifted her easily, and set her on the ground beside him.

"How did you..." Kagome started to ask, but Inuyasha turned away before she finished and stalked up the few stairs hurriedly, pulling the door back as soon as he reached it.

Inuyasha stood in the doorway for a minute, relief washing over him. It was daytime here, as it had been when they had fallen. It didn't look like much time had passed while they were unconscious, provided he didn't count the several hundred years. Everything was just as he had left it the morning before when he had skipped school. The tree stood exactly as he had remembered it a hundred yards away. It looked so much closer now with the forest cleared away than it had in the past. The abandoned shrine sat, graffiti covered as always, looking a little desolate in the early light from emptiness.

After taking in his surroundings, Inuyasha headed down the few steps, walking straight past all the structures without stopping, and going down the long staircase to the street level. He could hear Kagome's faint footfalls as she followed him, but he didn't turn.

At the bottom of the staircase, he stopped at a familiar looking shrub long enough to grab his backpack that he had nearly forgotten hiding there right before he had been pulled into a parallel universe. He tried to put it on properly, but it was painful, so he settled for carrying it in his hand as he dashed across the street, Kagome padding along behind him. Within seconds, he was standing at the door that led into his kitchen, taking a deep breath and preparing for an onslaught of parental worry and anger. Kagome jogged up behind him, and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Um, Inuyasha, where are we? What is this place? Is it ok to go inside?"

"Don't worry, its fine. This is my house."

"You live here?" Kagome asked, incredulous and admiring at the same time.

"Yeah, so what?"

"Its so, so big and tall!"

Inuyasha laughed a little at her reaction. "It's really not that big. Its four bedrooms, two floors, and an attic. It's actually pretty standard."

"Wow, it's incredible," Kagome gasped, staring upwards towards the second floor. Inuyasha had to smile a bit at her reaction, all raw nerves or not.

"If you're here long, remind me to take you on a mansion tour."

"A what?" Kagome asked, but Inuyasha had turned his attention back to the house. With another deep breath, he grabbed the handle on the sliding door, noting that it was unlocked, and pulled it slowly open.

The inside was cool and dark. Inuyasha flicked the switch on the wall and light flooded the room. He dropped the bag on the floor beside the door and took a step in, Kagome following slowly.  It was eerily empty, not remnants of breakfast or evidence anyone had been inside it recently. Everything was totally clean. Inuyasha could guess the reason behind that; his mom cleaned when she was worried. He bet it would've been safe to drink out of the toilet after he had been missing for a few hours.

"Sesshomaru, is that you?" Izayoi, Inuyasha's mother, called from the stairs. "I've got a few more number's I want you to call, just in case he..."

His mother had entered the room with a large rolodex in hand, and was sifting through the pages as she came through the doorway. Almost at the table, she looked up, and spotted Inuyasha standing in the doorway, flanked by an intimidated looking girl dressed in a medieval priestess costume, wearing the same clothes as the day before, only now they were torn and blood stained in several places.

Izayoi dropped the rolodex on the floor, not even noticing how it cracked and shot sheets of paper everywhere. Inuyasha knew he must really have worried her; she was such a neat freak, and to not notice...she must have been going out of her mind. She took in his appearance for a minute, staring open mouthed at him.

"Hi mom," said Inuyasha sheepishly.

The sound of his voice seemed to rouse her, and before he could stop her she was upon him, pulling him tightly into a hug without a word. His right side was not pleased.

"Ah, mom. Let go. Ow." His mother jumped back immediately at his ‘ow', her eyes scanning him worriedly.

"Inuyasha, oh my god, Inuyasha, we have been so worried about you! Are you alright? You look awful. Who is that?" She gestured to Kagome, but left no time for an answer. "Where have you been? Where does it hurt? What can I do? Oh god, where's your father, he has been going mad. How did you get back? Does she have something to..."

"Mom! Mom, relax okay?" Inuyasha interrupted, his hands out to placate her. "I will explain everything! Just calm down for a minute. Breathe!"

"Daiyo!" Izayoi called up the stairs. "Inuyasha is here!" With that, she slumped numbly into a chair, looking as though she hadn't slept the entire time he had been gone. Which, he realized, was likely.

Inuyasha's father thundered down the stairs an instant later, barely pausing to take in the sight in front of him before grabbing Inuyasha shoulders in a firm but caring grip, as though making sure he was really there.

"Inuyasha," he said seriously, his face close, "are you ok? Have you been hurt? What happened?"

"Everyone, relax, ok! I'm back, I'm fine...more or less, and I can explain. I think."

Daiyo released Inuyasha and took a step back, taking in his clothes, exactly the same as the ones he had left in the day before, in bloodstained tatters now, just as his mother had.

"Where are you injured?" his father asked calmly, but seriously.

"It's no big, really. I broke a few ribs," Inuyasha said with a shrug, lifting his shirt a little to show them the bandages wrapped around his abdomen. His mother whimpered from the chair. "It's really ok," he said to them, but mostly to her. "It will be gone in no time."

Daiyo nodded, looking unhappy, and then turned to look at Kagome. She standing unobtrusively by the door, looking embarrassed and out of place. Her bow and arrows were strapped to her back, and his eyes narrowed. Something about the look worried Inuyasha, because his father looked like he knew exactly who she was and what was going on.

"That's Kagome," Inuyasha gestured toward her. "She's a...um...friend."

"I see," said Daiyo. He dropped his glare and put his head in his hands. After a moment he raised it, and then regarded Inuyasha again.

"Are you sure you are all right? Aside from your chest, of course." Daiyo glared accusingly at Kagome.

‘Something is not right about this' Inuyasha thought, watching the look, but he said only "Yeah."

Daiyo nodded. He went over to the phone on the wall and pulled it from the base, before turning to Inuyasha. "Okay. Go with your mom and...Kagome upstairs, and let her have a look at you. I'm going to call Sesshomaru, he's out looking for you, and tell him to come home. Then, we all need to sit down and talk." He gave Izayoi a meaningful look. Inuyasha turned and watched his mother, who met his father's gaze intensely. At first she had looked on the verge of tears, but now she looked incredulous and displeased. She nodded once to him, almost imperceptibly, and turned back to Inuyasha. She rose and placed her hand on his shoulder.

"Come on upstairs. Let's check you over." With that she turned and headed for the stairs. Inuyasha shot Kagome a confused look, which she returned, and followed slowly after his mother, Kagome rushing over to his side and staying close.

"This is your family?" she whispered.

"Yeah, this is them," he said back in a hushed voice. "But usually they don't act like this. I think something is wrong."

Izayoi led the teenagers into the bathroom, and asked Inuyasha to sit down on the rim of the large, claw-foot tub in the corner because it was the proper height to keep him in reach. Kagome stared around the room, amazed, trying to figure out the functions of everything. Inuyasha mouthed ‘I'll tell you later' and she nodded and moved into a corner out of the way. Izayoi had Inuyasha take of his shirt, yet again, and unwound the bandages in a way so gentle that only a mother could manage it. Despite what he suspected was a new break, or perhaps a healing bone re-broken, Inuyasha felt nearly nothing under her ministrations. When she saw the angry bruising and tears in the skin, she gasped and patted Inuyasha's head sympathetically, and then proceeded to douse him with antiseptic, and roll gauze around the area before bandaging it with a stronger ace bandage, the longest one Inuyasha had ever seen in his life.

As his mother worked, Inuyasha tried to listen to his father's voice downstairs. He caught only snippets of the conversation, gathering that Sesshomaru had been sent around looking for him, and how they were stupid not to think of the shrine. Inuyasha couldn't understand how they knew anything about the shrine, but he guessed it had something to do with Kagome's outfit. Sesshomaru was told to come straight home, and Inuyasha thought he heard that he would be there any minute. Then the call ended.

Officially rewrapped a few minutes later, Inuyasha followed his mother down the stairs and back to the kitchen, Kagome trailing behind them. When they arrived, Sesshomaru was already there. He and Izayoi shared a look, and suddenly something clicked in with Inuyasha.

They were all in on this. He had no idea what, but the whole family new something that they had been keeping from him. He flashed back to something Kaede had said, about him being unaware of his heritage, and swallowed. He had a sneaking suspicion that he might have heard what they were about to tell him before.

He hoped fiercely he was wrong.

"Izayoi, we have to tell him now," his father said to his mother, as she pushed Inuyasha gently down into a seat, and Kagome into the one beside him.

"Daiyo, no, he's not ready. He's so young."

"Honey, it's time. He has to know. If he's been...Well, he has to be able to take care of himself. Now that he's seen."

Inuyasha listened uneasily to the exchange. It was just like the game they played so often with him, the one they had played that morning before he had ended up in the feudal era. But this was wrong, like a mockery of the light-hearted banter. His mother looked ready to cry, and his father looked resigned, like he was heading off to the firing squad. It looked frighteningly similar to a vague memory he had of a funeral years ago when he had been young. Sesshomaru stood by the door, leaning against the frame, regarding his younger brother with a mixture of sadness and understanding. There was none of the usual teasing in his expression, and when their eyes met, he smiled at Inuyasha reassuringly. It was one of the few times Sesshomaru had ever really been brotherly towards him. Again, he was reminded of the funeral, when Sesshomaru had sat beside him, a hand on his shoulder, as the pair watched the body being carried away down the aisle. It was an expression of support.

It was much scarier that any sneer would have been. It meant that something very big and very bad was happening.

As though on cue, the rest of the family took seats around the large table, all looking at Inuyasha. No one spoke for a long moment, and then his father said "I want you to tell us, honestly, where you've been and what has happened to you since you left here. Don't spare any details, Inuyasha. Tell us everything. We won't be mad about it, I promise."

Inuyasha looked from his mother, to his father, to Sesshomaru. All regarded him expectantly. He felt like he had fallen into someone else's bad trip.

"One question, first. Has everyone besides me totally lost it in the last 24 hours? Has the whole world gone insane? If I went down the street now, would I see people wearing underwear on their head and singing ‘Oh, Canada' in Japanese? ‘Cause, let me tell you, it's been feeling like that lately."

"No one is insane here, Inuyasha," Sesshomaru answered, smirking slightly in an attempt at teasing but not quite managing it. "I think you, what with the ‘Oh, Canada' thing are the closest though. Just tell us, ok?"

"Alright," said Inuyasha. "But, remember, you asked." He launched into the story, starting where they knew, with the nasty comments Sesshomaru had made at breakfast (Izayoi glared at the older boy for that, who averted his gaze) and moved on to the running to school and getting there early. He told about how he had come back instead of going, and walked over to the shrine for no real reason except he felt he should. He described the scratching, the falling, the arm, and everything that happened from Kagome's capture of him, all the way to the attack by the crows and falling back into the well. He tried to tone down the pain involved, for his mother's sake, but otherwise left no detail out, including the assertions made by Kaede before he stormed away.

"When I woke up, Kagome was freaking out and shaking me, and I realized we were here. That pretty much all there is."

For several long moments, no one said anything. But they seemed to believe him, well enough. His mother was looking daggers at Kagome, as she had every time he mentioned anything involving her shooting or aiming her bow at him. Those parts had been difficult to smooth over.

"The well?" said his father after a moment, a look of deep thought on his face. "The well next door, in the shrine, is a portal." He thought for a moment more, and then laughed. "After all that work keeping this from you, protecting you from this, you find your own way into it next door! Unbelievable. I guess sometimes fate... is just fate."

Nobody at the table looked too pleased. The three pairs of eyes of Inuyasha's family were all averted to various points on the wood grain table and walls.

"Ok, seriously," said Inuyasha after a minute. "What is going on here? This is ridiculous. Do you think I'm too stupid to tell that you all know something you aren't telling me? Well, I'm not, and I can see something huge is going on here. So why don't you all just fucking share already?!"

No body spoke, not even to comment on his language. Inuyasha slumped back in his chair, crossed his arms high over his chest, and waited, glaring at each one in turn. Finally, it was Sesshomaru of all people to raise his head and meet Inuyasha's eyes. A fierce look was burning in his own, something almost like pride. Inuyasha couldn't be sure, he didn't recognize anything not involving a sneer.

"Well, to start," Sesshomaru began, all eyes suddenly snapping to his face. He ignored all but Inuyasha. "I'm not really your brother."

"Oh, joy, my Christmas wish came true," murmured Inuyasha, but he was ignored.

"What I mean is, I'm not your full brother. Although your father is my father, your mother, Izayoi," he turned apologetically to her as she spoke, and she smiled softly at him, "is not my biological mother. Although she has raised me, like you, for most of my life, my biological mother was not...well, she was not human, Inuyasha."

Inuyasha stared for a moment. He didn't speak.

"You see, son," Daiyo said, taking over, "before I met your mother, I was involved with a woman who was a...demon. She and I were not close, and were together mostly because of pressure from our packs. She bore Sesshomaru, and then she died."

"Packs?" Inuyasha asked, picking up on the unfamiliar term.

Daiyo smiled slightly, almost sadly. "Yes, Inuyasha. Packs. You see, that woman, Sesshomaru, and I...we are all demons. Dog Demons to be specific. You have heard of them, I know. We are a high form of demons, and have ruled parts of Japan for thousands of years." Daiyo paused, waiting on Inuyasha's reaction. When none came, he sighed and continued.

"Shortly after her death, I left the rural part of Japan I had lived in with my pack. I no longer felt any need to be there, any connection with the place. I suppose that my time there had served its purpose. I left my domain in capable hands, and came to Tokyo with Sesshomaru, who was small then. Shortly after arriving, I was exploring the city a bit, trying to figure out how to assert myself into life there. You see, though I have lived a long time, longer than you imagine, I had spent most of my life with my pack. We don't, when we live together, carry on like humans do, although we have changed greatly with the times. It's not necessary for us. Being a part of the ruling class, I never had a day job, as you might call it. I needed to take one now, in order to maintain the life I had chosen with your brother."

Daiyo looked suddenly at Izayoi, and Inuyasha figured her place in the story was getting close.  Normally, Inuyasha wouldn't have allowed the story to go on for as long as it had without interrupting. Of course, normally in this sort of situation, Inuyasha would be believing some of what he as hearing, absorbing it, considering the possibility. Instead, his mind felt kind of numb. They were telling him here that he wasn't human, that his father, his brother, weren't human. They were telling him that his entire life had been a lie, that a huge secret of his identity had been kept from him for years. Kept from him by how own family. He simply couldn't absorb that. Instead, he had to settle for listening and remembering, and trying to sort it out later.

"I was walking down a street, not paying attention," Daiyo continued, his gaze sliding from Izayoi to Inuyasha again, more warmth in it then before, more confidence in his words, "When I bumped right into your mother. I must have been very absorbed in my thoughts. Under normal circumstances, demons do not simply bump into people. Anyway, skipping over extraneous details. We started seeing each other, often. Both Sesshomaru and I had to be cloaked at all times in public by magic, as certain details of our appearances are slightly...off putting to humans, one might say. But, of course, as I got relaxed, and saw how Izayoi was with Sesshomaru, I became happy, and so I became careless. One day, a normal day, she came over, and I didn't have myself cloaked. She came in, saw my face, and screamed. She recognized a demon from pictures she had seen, of course, as I'm sure you would, Inuyasha. Now, I expected her to scream and then run, but she did not run. Instead she grabbed a kitchen knife and demanded to know what I had done to myself, or rather, what I had done to Daiyo, the human man she knew lived there." He smirked at Izayoi, and she smiled back, slightly embarrassed. "It took an hour or so to explain the truth to her, or at least the rough details. After, I asked what she felt, and she simply told me that nothing had changed. She felt about me exactly as she had before. She loved me. And then she kissed me. And then, we married and you showed up a bit later."

At last, with his story over, Daiyo gazed at Inuyasha. "I suppose I should get to the point," he said, when the boy did not react. "I am a demon, a full demon, as I was when you were conceived and born. Izayoi, your mother, was, as she has always been, human. The blood of humans and demons can combine in that way to create half demons. And so it did in you. In some cases, the children are terribly deformed by the combination of demon energy with a human life. We were, understandably, very worried when we learned of her pregnancy, although we knew you would spend your life cloaked anyway. However, when you were born, our fears turned out to be in vain. You were beautiful and very nearly completely human looking." At that, Inuyasha finally found his voice.

"What do you mean, I'm nearly completely human looking? I do so look completely human. I don't understand. If this is the truth, why is this the first I'm hearing it? This all sounds really impossible."

Daiyo sighed.  "We are cloaked Inuyasha, cloaked well. By magic. Demon's have a type of magic of their own. Demon priests have long since created cloaking spells to keep our existence a secret from humans. As a full demon, what was done with you would not have worked on your brother or myself. But, because you are half, we were able to device a way to cloak you so completely that you yourself could hardly tell the difference. The fact that it was detected at all means you must have met a very intelligent priestess on your adventure."

"I still don't understand," Inuyasha told them.

"Perhaps, showing you what we, your brother and I, are truly like would help. Sesshomaru?" Daiyo asked, standing. Sesshomaru got up as well, and both men pulled the collars of their shirts down a little, revealing similar, nearly identical tattoos. Inuyasha recognized them, as he had seen them on his father and brother many times before, as long as he remembered. He had never thought much of them, except to wonder why Sesshomaru had a tattoo so young.

"Now, remain calm, Inuyasha. Remember, nothing but our appearances has changed." With that, both his father and brother touched their hands to their tattoos. For a second, nothing happened, and then both were engulfed in blinding light. When the light subsided, they were gone.

In their placed stood two fierce and beautiful demons. Both had long, white hair. Daiyo's seemed to have grown several feet, where as Sesshomaru's had simply bleached entirely of its normal blackness. Their ears were pointed slightly at the tips, and their faces...along the lines of their cheek bones, each man had sharp, pointed lines of purple. Daiyo had one thick line, and his eldest son had two on each side. Their teeth had transformed and elongated into fangs, their fingernails into claws. His father had seemed to age slightly in reverse, looking younger than he had before. On Sesshomaru's forehead was the shape of a small, purple crescent moon.

Inuyasha stared at the demons who had been his family seconds before, trying to reconcile the two images in his head; His happy, smiling father and uptight, teasing brother with the...It took a moment, but then the images clicked.

"Oh," said Inuyasha. Daiyo nodded quietly.

"You believe," he said. It was not a question.

"Kinda hard not to, now," Inuyasha answered anyway.

Without changing back, the demons sat down at the table. Inuyasha glanced at his mother. She was watching him, not even sparing a look to the two non-humans at her dinner table.

She really had seen it before, then.

Inuyasha exhaled slowly, trying to keep himself composed until he had learned what he wanted to know. Then, he had a few choice words he wanted to share.

"And me? I'm cloaked too? I don't have a tattoo, though, so how..." he let the words trail off.

"Yours is different, Inuyasha. It had to be. You are not a full demon, so your abilities work differently. We weren't sure how much demon power would present in you, but we decided, for your own good, that you shouldn't know until you were grown and could deal with it. We were going to wait until you had gone to college. You see, since your brother and I have abdicated our throne, you would have the option to take it. I didn't want to foist that choice onto you just yet. So, we had a spell made especially for you. Not only does it conceal your true appearance, but it also covers your aura almost completely, and limits your abilities greatly."

"My abilities," Inuyasha repeated blankly, tonelessly. Daiyo nodded.

"Your senses too. I think it is time to remove that spell." Beside her husband, Izayoi groaned quietly. "I know," he muttered to her.

Getting up, Daiyo opened the first aid kit Izayoi had brought from upstairs, and rummaged through it. He was thwarted, apparently, because he closed it looking annoyed a moment later, seemed to consider, and then went to the cutlery drawer instead. Izayoi took a moment to realize what he was up to.

"Oh, absolutely not! Not a chance. I am not about to let you...with a...NO!" she said angrily. Inuyasha was taken aback. His mother was rarely angry. Daiyo looked shamefaced at the chastising, but picked up a short, sharp blade anyway.

"Honey, we have to. It will only hurt a minute. He has to see." Izayoi relented, looking extremely displeased, and Daiyo approached Inuyasha slowly. Inuyasha, on his part, started to feel a bit nervous.

That feeling intensified greatly when his father held out a hand and said "Give me your right arm," in a firm but gentle voice.

Inuyasha looked at the blade in his fathers hand, and then into the face of the demon who had raised him. He quirked and eyebrow.

"Will I be getting it back?" he asked sarcastically, lightly, as he stood and did as he was asked. His father smiled, and then turned to his arm. Inuyasha could feel the tip of the blade as his father pressed gently on a spot and inch below the crook of his elbow. He paused

"Are you ready? This will hurt for a minute, and then you will feel very strange. But this is important. I wouldn't do it if it weren't."

"Just get on with it," Inuyasha said with a nod, sounding impressively blasé.

Daiyo nodded, and pressed slowly the blade down. It cut through Inuyasha's skin slowly, and he gritted his teeth to avoid making any noise. Compared to what he had been through in the last day, it was hardly anything. But it still wasn't pleasant having a knife slice through your skin, and he wished his dad would hurry up. He was distracted from the pain by as gasp behind him. Inuyasha turned to see Kagome standing too, looking very much as if she was about to either run or jump in. He was surprised. He had completely forgotten she was there.

"Would you calm yourself?" Inuyasha growled at her, his annoyance intensified by pain. He turned back to his arm without waiting for his answer. A moment later, Daiyo withdrew the blade, pulling something sharp with it.

Sitting on the blood-stained steel, right at the tip, was a fang. It was loner than any human tooth, and it looked as though it would fit flawlessly into Daiyo's mouth. Except Daiyo had his fangs in place.

"You might want to sit down," the demon told his son, who did no such thing.

For a moment nothing happened at all.

And then it seemed the entire world came crashing down on him. The noise got to him first. Everything seemed incredibly loud all of a sudden, as if the radio had been turned on at top volume. He could hear every heart beat in the room, Kagome's gasp at whatever was happening, the cars on the street, an argument that seemed to be coming from the house next door. He clapped his hands over his ears only to find that they had vanished. Panicked, he wrenched open the eyes he hadn't noticed closing. He caught sight of his hands as he did so. The nails on his fingers had extended into claws. His eyes shot around the room, and he could suddenly see everything in much greater detail. He could make out the tiny warning label on the toaster ten feet across the room, could see every line in sharp definition.  His nose, too, felt like it was under attack by sensations. He could smell the distinct scents of each person in the room, and tell them apart. He could feel, in some other sense, where the humans and where the demons were.

Groaning, Inuyasha slumped into the chair, though he didn't feel weak in the least. On the contrary, every muscle in his body felt supercharged. His arms and legs tingled with unfamiliar power. He felt as though he could pick up and juggle the table if he wanted.

The sudden assault on his senses slowly subsided. His hearing, vision, smell, and strength didn't seem to fade, but he slowly began to feel like he could deal with them. They faded back into the automatic part of his mind where they belonged, and he looked up.

His mother was gazing at him worriedly, her eyes not leaving his face even when he covered it. His father was smiling, looking pleased about something Inuyasha didn't care to consider. His brother looked appraising, and he smirked a little when Inuyasha caught his eye. Kagome, he saw last, looked utterly shocked. She had pressed herself against the far wall, and she was staring at Inuyasha as though he had grown another head, which, he realized with a jolt, might not be so far off judging by what he had been told.

Abruptly, Inuyasha jumped up and went into the hallway between the kitchen and the stairs, making a mental note of how quickly his body responded to his desire to move. When he got to the mirror, he kept his gaze averted for a minute, mentally preparing himself. Then he looked up.

His hair was the first thing he saw. It had gone as silver as his father's and brother's, practically luminous. At the very top of his head sat two pointed, dog ears. He swallowed and reached up to touch one, half suspecting fakes. As his hand brushed one, it flicked away. He felt both the touch on his hand, and the movement in the new and unfamiliar muscle atop his head. He concentrated on them for a moment and deliberately tried to turn them straight ahead. He watched and felt as they obeyed instantly. Roughly, Inuyasha pushed the hair away at the sides of his head where his ears should have been. There was nothing there, no break in the mane of silver. Gasping, Inuyasha's glanced at his own reflection, his mouth hanging slightly open.  Inside it, he could see that his canines had decided to take themselves seriously, elongating into fangs the likes of which could have been pulled from his own arm a moment before. With the memory, his gaze shot to his arm where his father had cut him. What had been a small but bleeding wound was now a thin pink line, hardly more than a scratch from a cat. It had healed in minutes.

For a long moment, Inuyasha met his own, still golden eyes in the mirror.

It was true, he realized. His parents had told him the truth. Indignant, he realized it was the first time in his life he could actually say that, at least about this. He was part of a family of interbreeding humans and mythical creatures. He wasn't normal. He really was a monster, a freak, just like Kagome had thought. He was a demon.

Well, half anyway.

A long moment passed. Finally, Inuyasha turned toward the kitchen to find two human women and two demon men blocking the doorway to stare cautiously at him. As he caught them, the all averted their gaze and dispersed back into the kitchen as he entered the room behind them.

No one spoke for a minute.

"I'm a half-demon," Inuyasha finally said. Silence. He looked over at Kagome. "You guys were right about me."

Kagome nodded slightly. The shock seemed to have passed. Her face was composed once more. "Yeah, apparently," she agreed.

Inuyasha nodded his head slightly. "Yeah. So, does this mean you are going to try and shoot me again?" A growl sounded behind him, but he ignored it. Kagome did too. She merely smiled at Inuyasha nervously.

"Of course not. I told you. We don't care anymore. I'm not going to try and hurt you. Especially seeing as how you really had no idea."

Inuyasha nodded again. He then turned on his family.

"So, what? I have to walk around like this now? I have to go to school like this? What now?" Inuyasha demanded, his bitter anger seeping strongly into his voice.

"No, of course not." Daiyo told him, a note of placation in his voice. "How about you go upstairs and change out of those clothes, and then come back here. I need to get something for you." With that, Daiyo disappeared off into the hall and towards the living room.

Not knowing what else to do, Inuyasha headed upstairs to change. He could hear Kagome following him, but he didn't acknowledge her. Instead, he let her tag along as he went into his bedroom, and gathered new boxers, jeans, and another tee shirt, not really looking at what he grabbed. He turned to tell Kagome to get out so he could change, to find her examining every corner of his room with interest. At the moment, she was gazing in awe at an electrical ball that seemed to shoot lightening bolts from inside at the surface when it was touched. He snorted to himself. He had gotten it from Spencer's for 8 bucks, but she seemed to think it was magic. Instead of banishing her, he simply growled "don't touch anything" and went into the bathroom.

He dressed hastily, not looking in the mirror, knowing it would distract him. He forgot entirely to be careful of his injured side, but it didn't bother him anyway. Once he was done, he caught his reflection and laughed once, harshly. He had, unintentionally, chosen one of his favorite tee shirts. It was white, with red writing on it that said "And I thought yesterday sucked."  It was such an appropriate sentiment, that he figured his subconscious had picked it on purpose. Then he was again distracted by the dramatic change in his appearance. With an angry huff, he slammed his way out of the bathroom (nearly giving Kagome, who had come to wait by the door for him, a heart attack) and bounded down the stairs and back into the kitchen. They were all there again, waiting for him.

"Please sit down, Inuyasha," his father asked. Inuyasha crossed his arms over his chest and didn't move.

"I'd rather stand," he growled back. He couldn't believe like they were acting like something major had not just happened. It not as though they had finally revealed that the goldfish they had told him had run away when he was six had actually been flushed by mistake. He had just learned that his entire life they had not only lied about his identity, but about the entire world he lived in. He felt incredibly betrayed. His own family had lied about who he was, about who they were. His human mother had known, but he, a demon, hadn't been told. He couldn't bring himself to trust them. He definitely wasn't letting them off this easy.

Daiyo sighed, understanding. Without another word, he picked up a box from the table that hadn't been there minutes before.

"I knew this day would come eventually, when you would need to know the truth and I would need to remove the cloaking spell. Now that you have traveled through a portal, the like of which exist all over the world, and seen where your destiny lies, you can not be kept in the dark anymore. You must always be alert now that your demonic aura is uncovered. You must be able to sense and fight anything that might approach you." Daiyo opened the box and pulled out a small, beaded rosary. After a second, Inuyasha realized it was a necklace. It was made of purple beads, punctuated every few inches by fangs not unlike the one that had been pulled from Inuyasha's own arm that morning.

"This rosary holds a different spell then the fang did. Although it will change your appearance, and hide your aura somewhat, it will have no effect on your own perceptions. Your hearing, sight, sense of smell, and strength...all the abilities you now possess, will not be altered. You will be able to move about as a human." Daiyo handed Inuyasha the necklace, and, after a moment of speculation, he slipped it over his head.

Kagome gasped. He turned to her, his look questioning.

"It works," she told him before he asked. "You look as you did before. And your aura is subtler. I can still feel it, but plain old perceptive humans won't. Priestesses won't be fooled though."

Experimentally, Inuyasha tried to turn his ears forward again. He felt them respond as they had before, the same unfamiliar muscles working. It was a cloak, no more.

"We should begin your training immediately," Daiyo said suddenly. Inuyasha looked at him, not understanding. "There is much you must learn. It begins with..."

"No," Inuyasha interrupted.

Daiyo looked confused. "What?" he asked. It was a genuine question, the voice speaking it utterly nonplussed.

"I said no. I don't want to be trained. You lied to me! You all lied to me for my whole life. Or did you just forget to mention that demons from medieval stories actually exist? You kept from me who you are! You kept from me who I am! How could you just lie to me like that, right to my face every day for 17 fucking years?! How am I supposed to trust anything you say?"

The family gazed at its youngest member in shock. Apparently, they had never considered the possibility that he would be angry about being kept in the dark all that time. It was Izayoi who seemed to recover the ability to speak first.

"Honey, we were trying to protect you! Once you knew, once the spell was removed, you were in danger. There is no way we could have shown you this without taking it off of you. You would need to see for yourself, we knew that. We were doing what was best for you."

Inuyasha turned his glare on her. In the wake of his mother's gaze, the anger in his own eyes dimmed. Instead, the hurt and betrayal showed brilliantly in the amber-gold orbs.

"You lied to me," he said again, quietly.

"Inuyasha..." Daiyo started, but he ceased as soon as he caught sight of his son's expression.

No one spoke for a minute. They all just looked at Inuyasha, gauging his reaction. He carefully made his face as blank as he could manage, as anger boiled under the surface. Still, no one said a word as the anger became so fierce that Inuyasha thought he might explode, spewing hot lava on everyone.

Without a word, without a glance, Inuyasha turned and walked out the kitchen door. His family and Kagome came after him a moment later as he made a beeline for the shrine stairs.

"Where are you going?" Sesshomaru demanded, sounding more freaked out then angry.

"I'm going back."

"Back?"

"In time," Inuyasha said, stopping in the middle of the road and turning.

"Back in time?"

"Yeah. Back in time. At least there the people trying to kill you are honest about it."

He turned again, and kept going.

"Inuyasha, we weren't trying to..."

"DON'T FOLLOW ME!" he barked at the footsteps behind him. Three sets ceased, and one continued after him as he all but ran up the steps.

At the door to the well house, he spun to yell at the person following him, his mouth open to shout.

"What?" Kagome demanded before he could say anything. "I live there!"

Inuyasha ignored her, and turned back towards the well.

He was dimly aware of the sound of tears he should not have been able to hear falling back at the road beside his house where he had left his family. In his anger, he couldn't think enough about them to care.

Without a backward glance, Inuyasha threw himself down the well, not caring for the moment where or when he ended up. He just wanted to be away.

The sense of betrayal flared as he fell, and was engulfed in brilliant, unnatural white-blue light, and the painless burning sensation set in. He could feel Kagome's presence with him in the unnatural space of magic and nothingness, as he was transported back in time, to a world not his own.

For a moment, he didn't care about where he was going or where he as leaving. Fury burned in his throat, and all he wanted was to be away from the feeling that his family had turned on him.

And if he had to fight a pack of demon carrion crows to get away, he would. He smiled bleakly at the thought. Maybe he would even have fun with it.

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I'm sooooo sorry this took as long as it did to put up. I know I had promised it several days ago. To make up for it, this chappie is extra extra extra long. 17 pages on word. I had to cut myself off or it would have ranted on for a while. The next one should be ready much quicker. This one gave me a hard time. I had to make a lot of decisions. I still have many more decisions to go about how and where to take this story. But, this portion is done, so that's good at least. AND, added bonus, this was verrrrrrryyyyy exposition heavy, and we leaned a huge amount. So, exposition wise, the next several chapters should be light and full of fun, action-y, goodness.

Oh, what did you guys think of the shirt? I have never seen one that said that, but I definitely think I need one sometimes. It was so perfect I had to do it. Now, if I ever see someone wearing anything bearing that slogan, I will be completely and thoroughly convinced that it was my idea first. Then again, when I was five, I was convinced that I had invented Oil of Olay, the moisturizer, because I used that name when I played potions. So I might just be blocking it out.