InuYasha Fan Fiction / Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Darkness Falling ❯ Chapter 2

As her life progressed, Kikoru learned everything from herbs and magic to demons and beyond. In the mornings, she would study herbs with Kaede until noon. She learned a myriad of useful information. Where best to cultivate certain herbs, what purpose each plant had, be it medicinal or aesthetic. It seemed she had a certain aptitude for all plants, and Kaede took special pains to keep the child's interests keen.

 

After a break for lunch, Kikoru would learn to harness her newfound powers, both miko and demon. Kaede didn't know much about her demonic aspects, but it seemed that they were nature-oriented in any case. She deemed meditation the best route to control, and it seemed to work fairly well; excepting the creeping tarragon plants along the fences and overwhelming mint population, that is.

 

Her miko powers were another matter entirely. Kaede had presided over Kikyou's training when they were both little, and though Kaede had not inherited the power, she still remembered most of the techniques. Kaede found it quite simple to teach the willing Kikoru healing (both with and without the herbs the old woman loved so much), barrier-casting, and simple purification, though Kikoru's aura was never the pure pink Kikyou's was. Instead, it was a silvery green.

 

When Kikoru was thirteen, Kaede sent her to train at a dojo. The Hirokimi family that ran it was old as the hills, and still kept up their demon-slaying trade, even if their quarries' populations were failing. There, Kikoru met a girl only a few months older than herself. They got to be such good friends that they performed a special ritual known only to little girls, and thus they became blood sisters, closer even than family. It was only after several months that Kikoru realized her sister was anything other than normal, much less a child of her revered sensei.

 

“Hey Sango,” Kikoru asked her friend after her fifteenth birthday, curiosity getting the better of her once again, “does one have to have a surname to go out into the world?” Her glamour twitched with her head, and for a moment her doglike ears could be seen. Not that Sango minded in the least. Kikoru was just another student here. No-one need know she was related to anyone other than the revered Kikyou.

 

“Not that I know of. But it might be a good idea. Why?” Sango looked at her sideways, one eyebrow quirked above the other. “Don't you have one?”

 

“No. I didn't think you did either!” Or maybe it was just that Kikoru never really paid attention during the first of the year's roll call.

 

“Of course I have one! Didn't you know?” Sango didn't mean to sound patronizing. It just sort of came out that way.

 

Kikoru shook her head, her sister's tone flying right over her head. “Nope!”

 

“It's Hirokimi, silly!”

 

Blink. Blink. Blink. “You're Sensei's daughter??”

 

“Yeah! I thought you knew that... We're still friends, right?” Sango looked a little hurt. She didn't want to be friends with someone just because she was Sensei's daughter - that's the way it had always been, and she had really hoped this time was different.

 

Kikoru actually laughed aloud, a sound Sango had previously thought completely out of character. “Of course! Nothing as trivial as a surname could ever break us up!”

 

“So…Do you want one? I'm sure we could think something up.” She didn't want her sister thinking too much on it, but feeling left out was something Sango knew very well.

 

“Nah, I think I'll wait. I don't think you can choose your own until you're an adult anyway, right?”

 

“You're probably right. Keep thinking, though!”

 

~*~

 

By the time Kikoru was sixteen, she had risen to the top of her class. Her best performance was with her throwing knives, but she could put up a good struggle with any weapon, excepting Sango's own giant boomerang. She and her sister often sparred late at night after the others had gone to bed, having too much fun practicing to be tired.

 

The middle of the year swung around and passed them by, and soon she had completed her training. It had been a long and tiring process, but with the help of her sister, she had pulled through in record time. The Hirokimi family might not discriminate sexes upon accepting, but they nevertheless had differing standards between the two. Kikoru might not have been the best of the boys, but she was by far the best of the girls.

 

As if the weather sympathized with the sadness of their parting, the rain decided it would be a good idea to start just as Kikoru stepped outside. Even so, all she could think about was leaving her new-found sister. Both girls cried when she left, Sango with her heart-rending sobs and Kikoru with her trademark silent streams of tears.

 

“Promise to write?” Sango asked, holding her sister at arm's length as if to memorize her very being.

 

“I swear it,” Kikoru intoned, hugging her one last time. “I'll miss you, Sango. Come visit me soon, alright? I would like to try that Hiraikotsu again.”

 

“I will visit, once I finish my training!”

 

Regretfully, Sango let her free, and Kikoru took her leave.

 

Traveling through the wood on the way home later that week, in no hurry to return home, Kikoru took a whiff of the air and decided it might be a tad too boggy later in the afternoon. It was unusually quiet, so she took refuge in one of the larger oak's upper branches just as the rain hit. She breathed a sigh of relief. Getting her haori wet would not have been fun. A giggle came from a few branches up. Not wanting to startle the interloper she slowly moved her eyes until she could see a small kitsune. Apparently her antics were more amusing than she'd first thought.

 

“Hello, little one,” she said, startling it. “Are you hiding from the rain, too?” The child nodded, shivering a bit. “Are you cold?” Another nod. “Then come here. Shall we keep each other safe until it's over?”

 

“If you say so.” The boy sounded no older than ten. He crawled onto her lap and curled up into a ball, orange tail wrapping around her arm.

 

“What's your name, little one?” Kikoru kept her voice down so as not to run him off. He still seemed a bit skittish.

 

“Shippou,” he muttered into her haori.

 

“I'm Kikoru. It's nice to meet you.” She smiled a bit. “Why are you out this late, Shippou? Shouldn't you be at home?”

 

“I have no home,” he sniffled, almost inaudible over the rain.

 

“Oh, you poor thing! Can you tell me what happened?”

 

“The Thunder Brothers took my papa,” he sobbed.

 

Not that she had any clue who they were, but still. “Oh! How horrible!” She hugged him close. “Do you want to stay with me for a while?”

 

“Would you mind?” His hopeful gaze broke her heart. Poor kit.

 

She smiled and shook her head. “Nope! I'm heading home, but you can come along, if you will.”

 

“I do will!”

 

It didn't normally take this long to go home, but Kikoru decided it was better to give Shippou the company than hurry home. Besides which, her birthday wasn't for weeks yet, and she needed to kill some time. Kaede didn't expect her home until the day of, anyway. Instead, she concentrated on becoming good friends with Shippou.

 

He taught her a few of his illusions, and though foxfire was a little out of her league, she could make anything disappear in the blink of an eye - not just with sleight of hand, either! In payment for his teaching services, Kikoru taught him how best to escape an assailant, no matter what weapon they used. Once away, Shippou could ideally use the vantage point to pelt his attacker with foxfire. Or just run away, which was more in line with the kit's current techniques.

 

Her timing impeccable as always, Kikoru led Shippou into the village on the morning of the fiftieth anniversary of her birth; or her seventeenth birthday as a coherent individual, whichever the case may be. Kaede performed a small coming-of-age ceremony about three hours after dawn, and then the unlikely duo was again on its way.

 

All along the winding road home, Kikoru had told Shippou every conceivable thought she had about her parents: who her mother was, how she'd created a portal into the spirit world, how much she didn't know about her father. Shippou had the bright idea to look for clues, and Kikoru jumped on the bandwagon right then and there.

 

A month on the road, Kikoru found no sign whatsoever of her father. No one knew much about the priestess Kikyou or her secret lover, only that a powerful woman had once guarded the sacred Shikon no Tama up until fifty years ago, and then suddenly was gone. It wasn't until the full moon that they stumbled upon someone who could tell her more than “I don't know.”

 

Shippou's nose had gone on overload a few days before. He said he'd smelt way too much youkai for comfort, and he scampered away after supper that night. Over the next day and a half it had become increasingly lonely without the kitsune's constant chatter, and increasingly obvious why he'd fled. By the end of the day, her luck had caused her to bump into the very youkai he'd run from: a great demon lord and his entourage.