InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ EQUILIBRIUM: Crescent of Light ❯ Graduation Day ( Chapter 1 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Chapter One

GRADUATION DAY

*Warning:

Slight religious ordeals

***

Kagomeawoke with a startled gasp. Pale lids flew open to reveal deep blue eyes as she realized where she was and what she had been doing. Her face flushed as the pressure of her peer's eyes sprung her into hasty action. She quickly sat up straighter in her plastic seat and tried to compose her young features into an attentive visage, mentally berating herself for falling asleep.

“Wow Kagome,” snickered a teasing voice behind her, “I don't think I've ever seen you sleep when you were on campus! Did you fall asleep at your college graduation too?”

She ignored her friend, Heather, who's teasing was nothing new to her. She concentrated, instead, on the fat, bald spokesman on the outdoor stage, dressed in a ridiculously miss-matched outfit, who was struggling to keep his audience's interest, failing miserably. About half a dozen napkins littered the ground around the man's feet, a result of his frequent sweating.

C'mon girl, pay attention! It's not much longer, just hang in there for a few more minutes.

She chanted this like a mantra inside of her head, determined to salvage some respect that she had probably lost during her little nap.

You're fighting a losing battle, sweetheart, came the unwelcome voice of reason.

The anger in her eyes intensified, her irritation more angled towards the fact that she couldn't control her attention span, rather than actually missing the speech. The implications of this only served to irritate her more and she had to resist the urge to stomp on her own feet.

And still the dream lurked, almost hauntingly, in the back of her mind and she tried to push away those thoughts. What was the point, she frequently asked herself. The only recollections she had of them were momentary flashes of lights and brief bursts of sounds that compiled into a huge jumbled mess of useless memories that had no semblance of order and made absolutely no sense.

Then again, why did she even care? They were just stupid dreams, right?

Kagome blinked and nearly kicked herself as she realized that another section of the elaborate speech had just bypassed her attention and she once again scrambled her brain, in a vain attempt to pay attention.

She sighed wearily; it had always been like this, fighting to pay attention, failing in her almost foolish attempts more often than not.

Stray laughter caught her ears and she looked in the direction of the distracting sound to see a few kids playing catch. The spokesman's words seemed to muffle as she watched the children dive and jump for the small white ball that proved to be quite elusive for a few of them. As the ball sailed through the air, the speech now nothing more than unpleasant background noise, she saw the small white ball change. The whitish blur slimmed and darkened slightly and she saw in her mind's eye an arrow fly through the air.

Her eyes widened as recognition struck her conscious and a bit of the dream came back to her. A new series of flashing colors registered in her brain as she found herself digging through her mind before she could even try to stop herself, scrambling to try and fit together the random flashes and sounds into an order that made some form of sense.

Several moments of memory probing proved to be futile and she huffed in frustration. This stupid dream used to absolutely terrify her when she was a little girl. But not anymore, now it was just annoying. Maybe if she could remember it once, just once, she might be able to exorcise its recurring presence in her mind for good.

Mercifully the dreams never happened every night; it was always off and on. Sometimes she would have them for many days in a row, other times she went without them for almost a whole month. But they always came back, and of all the times of it to do so, it just had to be on one of the most important days of her life.

So many times she had found herself studying at her desk all night, trying to make up for all the things she had missed in that day's lesson, only to go to class the next morning and not being able to concentrate on one single thing the professor said, which made the process repeat over and over again.

When she looked around in the classroom she saw honest, hardworking people who wanted to work for a prominent animal clinic and make their living as well known veterinarians. Though Kagome tried to convince herself otherwise, and she'd never admit it to anyone, not even to herself, she'd be lying if she said that she felt the same as everyone else here.

This was why she had refused the award of Valedictorian; she couldn't have taken an award she thought that she didn't deserve. It would have gone against everything she stood for.

She sat up a little straighter in her seat, glaring attentively at the speaker as he wiped his sweat soaked brow with his eighth napkin as though it was his fault she couldn't pay attention. She listened intently, treating every word as if it were her lifeline.

“… Standing before you, ladies and gentlemen, are not mere students. They are disciples of the noble art of healing some of God's creations. They seek not riches or fame, only to make the world a better place for everyone to live. Why, just the other day…”

The words were inspiring enough but he might as well have been reading her the water bill, the way he droned on and on and on. Who could blame her for falling asleep?

She scowled again. She couldn't think like that. Such thoughts were mere excuses, and excuses never boded well for people seeking perfection. Ever since she had started this she had sworn to show nothing but perfection.

From the moment she had entered Carrolton University she had been dubbed with the “model student” label.

Oh sure, she was pretty enough, with thick, slightly wavy, dark brown hair that travelled down to the bottom of her shoulder blades. Peach skin accentuated deep blue eyes, a small button nose, and full lips, forming a rather innocent face. A petite, curvy body attached to shapely legs, lifting her to a meager height of five and a half feet. Though Kagome wasn't flashy or haughty about her physical attributes, no one could say that she wasn't beautiful, and Kagome would have been a fool to not notice how many heads she turned everywhere she went.

But to her, all of that dimmed in comparison to the things that would appear on her resume, the things that truly mattered. At least that was what she tried to tell herself every single day.

Her resume showed her desired perfection with the boldness of white text on black paper. Straight A's nearly all her life, participating in a fair amount of clubs, and long hours spent at the humane society for charity painted a picture that drew in universities like moth to a flame. Her exceptional work helped her get into the most prestigious veterinarian school in the state, and perhaps the entire country. People who knew her for her reputation labeled her as the type that had been obsessed with her grades since she had known what the word meant. People who knew her well knew better. They knew about Oliver. They knew about her father.

Allowing herself to once again drift away from the droning voice she took a pleasant stroll down memory lane.

If her life were a fairytale, it would have started out something like: Once upon a time, there was a girl named Kagome who never knew her father.

Kagome had interrogated her mother about her father for as long as she could remember. She had grown somewhat of an obsession in her early childhood, so obsessed that it got to the point where it was unhealthy. She wanted to know everything about him, how he talked, what he looked like, how he smelled, not one bit of information was spared its removal of the offending veil that she called the unknown.

She remembered when she was six years old she used to use the information she had gained from her frequent interrogations to carry on imaginary conversations with him. She would carry on conversations with him for hours and eventually she had taken them out of her room. She started asking his opinion about things and people, what he wanted to eat or to do. She started to believe he was truly there.

At first, her mother had thought it was cute — she had an imaginary friend! — But when she had discovered the name of her new found companion she had put an immediate end to it. “He's dead, Kagome!” she had said, “And you had better learn to deal with it, because there's nothing you can do to change it!” Kagome had cried a lot that day.

Since then she had grown up. She never again had another imaginary accomplice. However, her frequent interrogations about him never ceased.

Then one day, a spokesman had come into her seventh grade class to talk about their future careers. Most kids in her class had no idea what they wanted to be when they grew up. And the spokesman had only smiled and said it was natural that a child their age didn't have their future planned now, and that it was natural not to plan for it the next day. To Kagome, it was just another reassurance that she wasn't completely normal.

It was that day she began to plan her future step for step… because she knew exactly what she wanted to be.

She would never forget the day she had asked what her father had done for a living. She was ten years old. The reason for asking it was long lost, but her mother's reaction to it would be engraved in her memory for as long as she would have the power to recall it.

When she had asked it, her mother looked strangely alarmed. Then, she remembered, that a slight smile played at the corners of her lips, a lonely tear running down her cheek. She had turned to her slowly; eyes alit with unshed tears and a radiant smile on her face as she told her that he had worked as an animal doctor.

Kagome never learned why that particular question brought on such behavior, reactions like that weren't familiar and she wasn't sure how to handle it, but she made sure to limit her questions about him since then, fearing another emotional onslaught.

Following the spokesman's advice on current preparation, she had immediately asked to visit an animal hospital the next weekend. Her mother convinced her to settle, instead, for a trip to the local zoo, which proved to be the weirdest day of her life.

She had been fascinated by the screeching primates in their house-like cages, the dark lights of the cool reptile room, and no one could have wiped her smile from her face on that extensive safari ride. But nothing caught her interest more than the aviaries.

Passing the chamber that held all of the birds — including those big ones, like swans and eagles — she was intrigued by a cardinal that stared at her with an odd curiosity from inside the glass, as if it were spying on her. The winged creature seemed to call to her, there was something that told her that she loved that cardinal, along with every other bird that resided in that tall, glass replica of the wilderness.

She had spent hours in that cage, all the while the birds showing an uncanny interest in her. A lot of the smaller ones even sat on her finger like they did in those fairytale cartoons you see as a child. The big ones tended to keep their distance, but they came closer to her than anyone else, all of them looking at her with the same look that cardinal gave her. Even today she could whistle to them and they would come to her. She didn't do it often; she didn't want to draw unnecessary attention to herself. But sometimes when she was feeling a bit lonely — like when she started to think about the father she never knew — she would wander out to the gardens at her mother's house, or to the balcony of her apartment, and call to them and they would come. They would sing to her the most beautiful melodies; tunes that people nowadays seemed have forgotten to appreciate.

Kagome knew that what she had felt during that trip was real; it wasn't just some weird coincidence, because from that evening she couldn't eat the chicken that was served to her as dinner. Even today things like eggs, turkey, duck, and anything that came from any kind of bird was permanently off the menu for her.

It was the trip that had reinforced her decision of her career path. Too many times she had seen people act selfishly, blinded by instinctual greed and lust for attention. All the while, creatures around them acted altruistically. Birds would gather sticks and moss for nests that would cradle an expectant batch of hatchlings while destructive children would demolish their masterpiece. It fascinated her, called to her, and she truly couldn't see herself doing anything else.

She sighed. Maybe a zoologist would have been a better option.

But here she was sitting in this very seat, graduating at the age of twenty-five, a year early of most Carrolton graduates, awaiting the rewards of all her hard work.

“… and now to our valedictorian, we present the reward of all her hard work. Ladies and gentlemen please give a round of applause for, Kagome Higurashi.”

It was funny that her mind had drifted so far away from the speech, letting an extensive amount of words slip by her conscious mind, only to be brought out of her daydream by this one sentence. While she had refused the award of Valedictorian or sitting in the front row, the school had remained firm in their insistence that she receive her diploma first and Kagome had grudgingly accepted the deal. She remembered the arrangement and gulped. This was it, the moment she had waited for all of her life. Although, she couldn't say she had enjoyed the process much, she couldn't deny that the destination had intrigued her for a long time.

Slowly she made her way up to the stage, and with a shaky hand she accepted the rolled up certificate, the reward of ten years hard work. She shook hands with the chairman, Mr. Glade, who whispered in something in her ear that would stay with her for the rest of her life.

“Well done Kagome,” he said. “I'm sure you will go on to do great things.”

Kagome smiled brightly and thanked him. She walked off the stage, towards the deafening cheers of the audience and she caught the eye of her proud mother, wiping a stray tear from her face. Sitting next to her was her grandpa who looked bewildered at the loud noises. She suspected he had been sleeping throughout the whole ceremony, and somehow that eased her guilt a little. Slowly taking her seat once again, she placed her diploma on her blue clad lap.

She looked around as people started to get up one by one, accepting their proof of four to five years of hard work. She looked down at her own diploma, unfurling it hurriedly and frowned.

The paper was ordinary as far as she could see. In big, bold print she could see her name at the top and she found herself in the uninvited feeling of doubt. Was this it? Four years of hard work attributed to this? A piece of paper with her name on it was the `reward of all her hard work?'

She suddenly grew angry at herself. The anger surprised her, but at the same time she accepted into her sudden, unexplainable, rage of hormones. But it dissipated immediately as she was faced with her teary eyed mother.

She blinked as she realized that the ceremony was over.

Her mother dropped her hand bag as though it meant nothing to her and embraced her daughter with a tight hug. “I'm so proud of you, honey!” Her voice slightly trembled as she rocked them from side to side.

She hugged her mother back as she caught a glimpse of her grandfather's disapproving look at all the unwelcome noise coming from the celebrating graduates as he sat waiting for them on the spectator's bench.

She pulled back and took her mother's hands in her own. They were near mirror images of each other, and for a woman approaching her fifties she looked pretty good. Shoulder length hair, exactly the same shade as her own, contrasted nicely with the formfitting red blouse she wore. She had the same shaped face, and the same button nose as Kagome, the only differences being the eyes, which were a chocolate brown.

“Mom, you should see yourself, do you realize how hard you're crying? I mean, it's only graduation!

“Only graduation?!” her mother exclaimed passionately. “Who are you, and what have you done with Kagome?”

Her response was cutoff. “EVERYONE, GET READY TO THROW THE CAPS!” someone shouted through a megaphone.

Her mother wrenched herself from her daughter's hands and dove for the handbag she had discarded for, what Kagome knew was, her digital camera. She rolled her eyes as she reached for the brim of her blue cap, her mother was a little overzealous about her scrapbooking. The resounding boom of the whole graduating class' voices rumbled through the air as everyone removed their caps.

“ONE!”

An imaginary drum roll echoed in Kagome's ear as her heart pounded. She could hear her mother's camera clicking rapidly and she tightened her small fingers around the brim of her cap.

“TWO!”

She could hear a couple of party poppers go off, stray, impatient cheers could be heard as the graduating class held their breath.

“THREE!!”

Two hundred blue clad arms shot into the air, releasing their square caps into the air as confetti rained down onto the graduates. Unified sounds of whooping, and cries of joy could be heard for miles and Kagome let out an answering howl to the screams.

Who said she wasn't any fun?

As the caps came raining back down onto them along with the confetti, she wondered what her grandfather would say to her afterwards.

Several unidentified hands clapped her on the back and she fleetingly acknowledged them with a quick nod as she wondered what kind of “great things” she would go on to accomplish.

But most of all she wondered, as she looked onto the grinning faces of her best friends, the proud gaze in her mother's eyes, and the reluctant smile on her grandfather's lips, if her father were here today; would he be proud of her?

~~~

“Your father would be so proud of you, dear.”

The fresh new car smell permeated the air inside the blue Chrysler mini-van that was zooming down Earl Twine Road. The window was simply a glass case around a moving picture of dense wood and the occasional open field where horses of all sorts of colors grazed the neatly kept acres of land.

Kagome sat in the mid-section of the car, enjoying the soft breeze of the air conditioner that gently swept her face; the summers were hot in northern Georgia.

“Thanks mom,” she said quietly.

“I still think you should have been a doctor,” piped up her grandfather from the passenger seat. He was so squat; you couldn't see the top of his head over the headrest.

She rolled her eyes in response to his usual banter.Here we go again, she thought wearily.“How many times do I have to tell you Gramps? I have nowhere near the patience to go to medical school.” She mentally snorted, knowing that she barely had the patience to go through vet school. She had to admit that waiting for her real life to start, where she didn't have to rely on her mother's occasional loans and didn't have to work at dingy fast food restaurants for a salary that was barely above minimum wage, was growing to be quite tedious.

Gramps replied with a stubborn “hmph!” and let the matter drop.

She was grateful; she didn't like having to explain her reasoning for her career path. Not only was it a bit awkward but it was also discouraging to have doubts about it herself at times.

Since she had started her path to becoming an animal doctor, she had always had this feeling, she couldn't really explain it, but there was this feeling she got sometimes that she was supposed to be off doing something else, that there was somehow more out there for her than animal doctoring. Between her dreams and these random feelings, she had begun to think that she was going insane. However — not unlike the dreams — she had learned to ignore the false voice of destiny.

Sighing, she dropped her gaze and traced the scar that ran up the middle of her right hand.

Another question without answers, the scar was in the shape of one of abroad S. It was much more defined than the natural hand lines that riddled any human's hands. She had another scar on the side of her stomach that she got from tripping on the garden hose when she was seven.

She winced; of all the places that Gramps could have put that broken steel pipe! Unlike the small reminder of the clumsiness of her juvenile years, the scar on her hand was as noticeable as a tattoo and had no explanation. Her mother guessed that she may have cut herself as a baby; too bad that a wound capable of this kind of scarring would probably have severed an infant's hand.

The car took a slight drop, and then it went up again telling her they had just they had just gone over a gutter. She looked up again to see a well kept lawn with a curved sidewalk and full bushes outlining the gap between the lawn and a white porch that was ornamented by dozens of small metallic trinkets dangling from the ceiling making a soft chime in the cool May breeze. Attached to the porch stood a medium-sized, two-story, white house. Kagome grinned, she was home.

She loved her own apartment, but a visit to her mother's house was always something to look forward to. It had the more rustic and old-fashioned look, that she really had grown to love. The green lawn was dotted with small plastic gnomes. In the middle of the lawn was a small orange tree with branches that spread out like a canopy and provided shade for the elegant bench that stood by the trunk of the said tree. Off to the side stood a small, neat garden where her mother grew the herbs she used for cooking. Her mother was probably the greatest cook she would ever meet.

As she got out of the car and stepped onto the driveway she heard a loud barking. Everyone turned in the direction of the racket to see a yellow Labrador darting towards the slightly startled veterinarian. Kagome barely had time to squeal, “Maxie!” before the enormous canine's front paws were on her shoulders and was smothering her with a dog's traditional greeting. Giggling and reaching to scratch him behind the ears, she looked at her mother questioningly.

Her mother smiled. “We fetched him from your apartment before we headed to the ceremony.”

Kagome smiled brightly and continued her pleasant scratching. As with her supernatural association with birds, her dog, Max was another creature in which she had an eerie relation. It wasn't like nobody else could get him to listen — he was probably the smartest dog in the world — it was the fact that when she talked to him (yes she talked to him; go figure!) he really, really seemed to listen. Also, despite the fact that he had previously belonged to her father, before she was even born — which was another reason she loved him so much — he seemed just as energetic as a puppy, and hadn't seemed to have aged a day for as long as she could remember. Yet another odd mystery in her wacky life!

With Max at her heels she walked into the front door and got a whiff of seemingly delicious home-made pizza. Max hurriedly raced into the living room and pulled down his favorite blanket that was hanging from the couch, spread it to accommodate his size, and curled up for a quick snooze, knowing that his best friend would soon join him, with a good probability at some leftovers. Kagome heard her Gramps sigh; he didn't like it when Max was in the house.

Following a mouth-watering dinner, Gramps asked her to accompany him to his room.After being forced to tell Max not to tag along — Max didn't really like to listen Gramps — and climbing the stairs at an annoyingly slow pace due to Gramps' age, they finally reached his room.

Gramps set his cane down and turned to look at her. His posture was tall and proud even though he was so short.

“Well, I've said it many times before, Kagome, I —”

“Still think I should have been a doctor, yeah I know” she finished for him.

He narrowed his eyes in a silent scorn and she giggled.

She loved her Gramps but she reckoned that probably had a screw slightly loose somewhere in his brain. It was one of the reasons he stayed here, so her mother wanted to keep an eye on him. It wasn't that he was some kind of mental case; he was just a little obsessive with his religion. Even now, when you walked into his room, you couldn't help but feel like you were walking into the home of the pope.

The walls were festooned with crosses of all shapes and sizes like a patchwork pattern on fabric. Religious quotes weaved their way through what little space was left on the wall, and on the floor next to the water bed lay a massive jug of holy water.

Gramps had the crazy idea that evil spirits lurked everywhere in the world and it was essential to be sprinkled with holy water at least once every twenty-four hours. If you didn't lock your door every night, he would sneak in and make sure to run his holy water doused hands on your fore-head; sleeping or not. And even if you did manage to keep him out during the night, you would pay for it the next day by either coming out of your morning grogginess by a short quench of holy water in your face, or spend a half-hour getting chased around the house by a briefly insane, squat, old man with a vat of the “purity juice”, as Gramps liked to call it. In fact, Kagome believed that if the water wasn't so old, he would start to use it to swallow his nightly medication.

Despite his quirks, Kagome loved him dearly and wouldn't change him for the world. She found his tight grip on the traditional lifestyle amusing, and his fierce loyalty towards his family — which were constantly shown in his disapproval of sharing her lunch or belongings with anyone, and his reluctance to letting a friend into the house — to be utterly amusing, if not sometimes annoying. Her thoughts were thrust from her mind as Gramps continued to speak.

“Nevertheless, I am proud of you, not many people graduate veterinarian school at the age of twenty-four. Therefore I shall give you a little something.” He stooped low to rummage through the trunk at the end of his bed. After a few moments of swift searching he produced a small leather- bound book and was quick to thrust it under her nose.

She raised an eyebrow at the dusty, brown book. “What is it?”

Her grandfather grinned with excitement, it was clear he thought that it was the best gift ever. “Open it,” he whispered.

Kagome took the book and sat down on the bed. It looked normal enough; she wondered what kind of book it was to make him grin so arrogantly. She cast a narrowed eye at Gramps, who looked particularly proud of himself, before she opened it to look at the first page. What she saw made her heart stop.

In hastily scribbled letters she read:

THIS DIARY IS THE PROPERTY OF:

Oliver Higurashi

She stared at the writing on the clean, white page as if she had never seen English before, her mind was strangely blank. What was there to say? Obviously she was extremely grateful, but… This was her father's writing! Her father's hand had actually held a pen and had written these letters to form words, his name. His fingers had actually touched this paper. She suddenly found herself savoring the texture of the old pages.

She had proof that he was real, this diary had belonged to him… her father… Oliver Higurashi. The person she never had gotten the chance to know, yet somehow felt like her best-friend. His thoughts, his dreams, his very soul lay within this book, stories that she couldn't hear from her mother's lips, tales that she had always wanted to hear from his point of view. Now she finally had that chance.

She looked up and fixed Gramps with a radiant smile, who smiled back. His slicked back white hair looked neatly combed, and the wrinkles on his aged face gave off a pattern of sound waves that a child would draw coming out of radio. His eyes shined with pride that he had chosen such a good present for her, and she got the impression that he had been saving it for this day for a long time.

“I took that from Oliver after he proposed to your mother” he explained rather pompously.

She looked at him incredulously. “Why?”

“I wanted to verify he wasn't a crazy hoodlum,” Gramps growled. “I had to be absolutely sure he was the right man for my daughter.”

Kagome rolled her eyes at his fierce concern for his daughter. She rose from the bed and embraced him lovingly, having to bend down a bit to do so. “Thank you so much Gramps.”

“Anything for my favorite granddaughter,” he replied as he hugged her back.

“I'm your only granddaughter.”

She felt him chuckle softly at their long-time joke.

The moment was ruined by a loud barking, echoing up the stairwell. Max was apparently getting tired of waiting for his best friend to feed him the scraps from dinner.

“That mangy dog!” barked Gramps, grabbing his cane and heading for the door with a slight limp in both of his legs, giving him a staggering posture as he walked.

Kagome smiled and followed her grandfather into the hall; she had to make sure Gramps didn't beat Max over the head with his cane!

~~~

“Amy my dear, I can't keep up this charade any longer.”

The T.V screen seemed like a beacon of radiance from a light tower, illuminating the otherwise pitch-dark room. Gramps sat in the plush armchair, obviously sleeping. Kagome and her mother sat on opposite sides of the couch, with Max in the middle with his head on Kagome's lap.

“What do you mean, Rick? I thought we agreed to not keep any secrets from each other.”

They were watching their favorite drama show that happened to be showing that night — at least it was Kagome's and her mother's favorite, Gramps had screamed himself sleepy at Max who had broken his most favorite, and most horrible vase, that was supposedly a “sacred idol”. He was already asleep by the time they came in.

“I know, but… I couldn't tell you these things earlier, but I can now…”

The big secret about the main character was about to be spilled, and both of the women seemed tense with anxiety. They knew only as much as all the other characters knew, and the suspense was killing them. Viewers had known that Rick was harboring a big secret; they just didn't know what it was, but not for much longer.

“You probably won't believe this but —”

The picture cut off and was replaced with the Local News emblem; the `Emergency' sign in the top right corner of the screen was flashing red.

“We interrupt this program to bring you a special report from your local news station.”

“NOOOO!!” groaned Kagome's mother, waiting for months to discover one little secret, only to be foiled when the moment finally presented itself tended to infuriate viewers.

Kagome was also irritated with the timing of the interruption, having followed the show as long as her mother had. “I wonder if they do this on purpose,” she grumbled.

A somber looking man with short black hair that was slightly tinged with gray, combed to the right side of his face. He was sitting solo behind a wooden desk.

“Good evening viewers,”he said importantly, “I'm Tim Wesley, and we apologize for this brief interruption. There has been another murder in our quiet town, the body was found in an abandoned factory on Bookman Avenue…”

Kagome groaned, the show all but forgotten. Another murder? She squealed inside her head, that's the sixth one this month and May's not even half-way over! There had been many mysterious killings for the past several months and people were starting to get uneasy, the fear was starting to become apparent to every single person who resided in their town. Kagome was no exception.

She looked at her mother who also seemed to have forgotten about the show.

“For more on this subject, here's Gretchen Myers.”

The screen split in two to show a young blonde woman in her early thirties, holding a microphone, Tim was still in the left half of the screen.

“Thanks Tim,”she said, the screen enlarged to take up the whole screen, revealing a yellow tape restricting her access to the open yard that housed a worn down factory.

“Witnesses report that the victim had entered the building as a dare, when the victim didn't come out for nearly an hour, the friends panicked and called 911,”

The screen cut to a young high school age, brunette girl with tears in her eyes. A label briefly appeared under her to read:

KAYLA HOUSING

And under that in smaller letters it read:

Friend of the victim.

Her mother, who had lost all interest in her disrupted program, sighed. “Oh dear, not again.”

“It w-was supposed to be a j-joke!” sobbed the young girl. “I was th-the one who c-came up w-with the idea, it was m-my fault I —” she stopped mid sentence and turned away and the image cut back to Gretchen who looked noticeably gloomy.

“While police are no closer to catching the culprit, the citizens of this town seem to be having much better luck.”

The screen cut to an old, stern looking, black woman.

“I was there walkin' my dog on Vernon Hue Drive when I looked in the alleyway an' there was a pair o' red eyes just starin' straight at me,”The image noticeably cut to a part further into the interview, “My dog went crazy an' I just high-tailed it out o' there, I was scared half to death! There be demons runnin' around this city, I ain't EVER goin' outside again.”

“Vernon Hue Drive?” mused Kagome's mother, “that's not far at all from here.”

The image cut back to Tim who wore a grave expression, “The witness' last comment would have been put off as nothing but a joke if not for many other sightings of these mystErious red eyes that have appeared in alleyways, roof-tops, and even at people's windows.”

“Ignorant fools!” yelped Gramps, who had seemed to have finally woken up, “It is obvious that evil spirits are among our city!” Gramps took a quick glance at Kagome then without warning, flicked the long awaited holy water into her face.

Kagome rolled her eyes and wiped the perspirationfrom her features when he turned his head. He'd probably just splash her again if she was caught wiping it off.

She suddenly she felt extremely tired. The day's events seemed to have finally caught up with her. She slowly stood from the couch and yawned. “Listen mom, thanks for dinner but I gotta go.”

Her mother shook her head, “No dear, that murder happened much too close to here, you're not going anywhere, you can leave tomorrow.”

“Oh, mom.” Kagome groaned.

Her mother held up a finger, “This isn't a request”

Kagome sighed, when her mother made up her mind about something, there really wasn't much you could do about it, she was extremely persuasive.

She trudged up the stairs, with Oliver's diary in hand and Max in tow. She walked slowly down the hall, her eyes skimming past photographs that served as a sort of timeline to her life. She was wondering when the pictures from today would appear on the wall.

Who am I? she thought. Earlier today, all those people, all my hard work, was it really me? She glanced down at her father's diary, examining its soft leather cover. Is this me?Her fists clenched tightly around the diary, and her eyes burned with anger. Of course it was her! She was there! She felt it, saw it… she lived it. But then… why was there this hole inside of her, a hole that she just couldn't seem to fill. Was this really the way it was supposed to be?

She groaned and rubbed her temples delicately. I have to stop, she thought tiredly. This is my life, I chose my path and nothing's going to change my mind, no matter how many times that stupid voice inside my head bugs me about it.

And as if on cue, You're only fooling yourself, dear.

She glared and shook her head violently, expelling the voice from her head. She grimaced as she realized it had spoken to her twice in one day. Not only that, but she was even acknowledging it!

Not good.

She sighed and continued on her way to her old bedroom. It's just because I haven't had much sleep, she told herself. She felt enormous relief as a heavy yawn escaped her mouth, reassuring her theory, as she turned the brass knob of the door to the room at the end of the hall. Happy memories flooded her conscious as she looked around her old room. She couldn't help but smile and all tenseness seemingly melted off of her body, as if she had opened a door within herself as well.

Her mother had kept everything exactly as it was, her plush dolls still rested on the top of the shelves, under which, were many books she hadn't bothered to take with her to the apartment. The walls were still a pale blue and her bed spread was still a slightly worn out black.

Max hopped onto the bed and took his familiar place on the far side of it. He twirled around and around before finally curling contently up in a ball and looking at her with his head cocked a bit to the side, and one ear up and the other one down. The expression he used to get him out of trouble countless times.

She smiled at him before placed the diary on her bedside table and opening the closet on the far side of the room to find what little clothes left she had in there. After a few minutes of rummaging she pulled out a relatively soft, pink night gown that she had no memory of ever buying. She shrugged indifferently and hurriedly changed.

She sighed as the soft silk ran down her body like waves and her eyes grew even heavier than before. She fought to stay awake by shaking her head slightly and the leather-bound diary caught her eye in the process. She eyed the diary with indecision. Maybe she could read it; just one page before bed.

Kagome sighed and reluctantly declined her curiosity in favor of exhaustion. Tomorrow, she promised herself. As of now, she'd be lucky if she got to the bed, let alone read an entire diary entry.

Her feet dragged across the floor and she stumbled onto the comfortable furnishing, clumsy from the lack of rest. As she laid her head on the pillow she played over the words that Mr. Glade had said to her.

“I'm sure you will go on to do great things.”

She smiled and thought about the long journey she had taken to get to this point. The zoo, high school, college, veterinarian school and now, at the young age of twenty-two, after years of racing she had finally reached the finish line in first place and the rest of her life ahead of her. The feeling gave her the first genuine — however slight — sense of completion.

All I have to do now… is find a new goal, she thought sleepily.

All thoughts left her as she closed her deep blue eyes, letting Max's soft snores take her into deep slumber.

It is a funny thing how people plan for their future, no matter how old they are. Little girls pick out there wedding gowns, and boys choose which cars they wish to possess.

As they mature, the world changes and because of this we adjust the way we see it, changing our opinions and sometimes even our very morals and values. But while their view of the world changes, their desires never do. Girls maintain the aspiration to look beautiful on their wedding day, while boys always hope to have a presentable vehicle to exemplify their independence or their public appeal.

While a man may have no wish to continue a legendary career in sports or music, they always yearn to be remembered for it. They find new ways to reach their ultimate desire as they, and their view of the world changes.

So as Kagome slept, she had a specific way she saw the world and therefore she followed the path that her father had taken so as to keep his memory alive. That was her ultimate desire, and caring for ill animals was the way she saw the world. That was her opinion.

But little did she know that by tomorrow's end, her view of the world would change forever, and she would soon realize that she could keep her father's memory alive in ways she never could have imagined.

Desires never change but the world and the way we see it does, and Kagome's world was about to change forever.

~=~*~=~)(~=~* ~=~)(~=~*~=~)(~= ~*~=~)(~=~*~=~) (~=~*~=~)(~=~*~= ~)(~=~*~=~)(~=~ *~=~)(~=~*~=~

::Author's Notes::

Whew! That'll probably be the longest chapter I'll ever write - over 7,000 words!

Feedback is greatly appreciated and I don't mind flaming too much.

Thank you all for taking the time to read!

Acknowledgements

~None at the moment; but that could change!~

*wink*

NEXTCHAPTER:Full of Surprises

(Brace for one hectic day of hardcore shopping, heartache, and one helluva cliffy)

~Eyes of Eden~

~><~