Altered by BananaFlavoredEskimo

Prologue

Prologue

By: Banana Flavored Eskimo

Disclaimer: Inuyasha is not mine no matter how many times I wish it to be.

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Blunt nails clawed angrily at the soil beneath her in a desperate manner. Crimson liquid trailed down her left arm from a large gash that was weeping with blood. Ignoring the cries of her body to seek help, she continued to dig mercilessly at the earth. Tears now flowed down her face, causing streaks of her porcelain skin to be revealed beneath all the grime her flesh had collected.

"No! No please no! Please let me through," she sobbed desperately, her shoulders now slumping with exhaustion.

"Kagome?"

Wiping roughly at her face with her bloodied sleeve, blue gray eyes looked upwards with a sense of defeat. "I need to get back..." her voice trailed off as she succumbed to darkness.

"KAGOME!"

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Maemi Higurashi twisted the small cotton blue handkerchief in her hands, causing the fabric to wrinkle and twist from the actions. Her hands were relentless in their act, turning, wringing, pulling at the cloth in attempt to relieve her anxious nerves.

"Mom?"

Her deep brown eyes looked to her side meeting the exact mirror of her own chocolate orbs. Except this one was glassy with unshed tears, threatening to spill over his rounded cheeks. Abandoning her actions with the handkerchief in her lap, she reached towards the child and ran a hand through his dark brown tresses in a soothing manner. "Souta."

Souta leaned into his mothers gentle caresses, his small frame beginning to shudder with sobs. "Mom. Will she be ok?" came his soft voice.

Wrapping her arms around her youngest child, Maemi placed a gentle kiss upon his temple. "She'll be fine love. Our Kagome is quite the fighter. She's strong and will pull through," she responded reassuringly. "You'll see darling. You'll see."

Despite his mothers assurances, Souta clung to the fabric of her navy kimono, staining the cloth with his tears.

"Mrs. Higurashi?"

Looking up, Maemi found an elder gentleman standing before her in a crisp white lat coat. He was European from what she could tell. He spoke with a heavy accent that one would think came from Ireland, but it was hard to decipher exactly. He held a clipboard in his weathered hands as he checked it over with a quick sweep of his light blue eyes. "You are Mrs. Higurashi correct? Mother of one Kagome Higurashi?"

Maemi nodded her head not bothering to correct that she was a Ms. and not a Mrs. "Yes Doctor," she paused for a moment squinting at the identification badge upon his left breast. "Horner. Dr. Horner," she pronounced slowly, stringing out the foreign name to her best ability. "How is my daughter."

Dr. Horner's face grew grave, his finger fiddling with the collar of his shirt finding it suffocating at the moment. "I'm terribly sorry Mrs. Higurashi, but..."

His voice seemed to trail off as Maemi suddenly found herself very week. Swaying slightly, her legs gave way and she collapsed into a graceless heap upon the cold floor beneath her. She didn't need to hear the rest. The tone of his voice and his words said it all. "N-no," she choked softly.

Souta kneeled next to his mother, offering the same comfort to her she had done so to him only moments ago. Wrapping his small arms around her body, he hugged her tightly in attempt to keep himself from breaking down himself. He couldn't. Not now when his mother needed him the most. "Mom."

"M-my b-baby gir-rl," she sobbed brokenly, clutching upon the sleeve of his shirt and twisting the fabric in her slender fingers.

Pale blue eyes closed tightly; guiltily as he watched the woman before him sob upon the floor. Bowing his head, he took a slight step backwards as he felt his insides twist painfully. He needed to leave. He had to get away from the image the woman was displaying. "I'm terribly sorry for you loss," he said somewhat rushed as he took off in the opposite direction of the broken pair.

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"Absolutely brilliant," she whispered in a heavy British accent. "It defies the law of science itself!"

Scowling at her words, he fixed the female with hard stare. "I wish you would stop referring to her as an it. You can clearly tell her gender just by simply looking at her."

Quirking a fiery brow at the response she propped a hand at her hip, while the other twirled her pen lightly between her short bitten nails. "You fancy it don't you?"

"That's preposterous!" he denied, although from the dim fluorescent lighting you could see a light cherry staining his pale cheeks.

"My Gods you do! You fancy it," she paused, giving him a saucy smirk at seeing the narrowing of his eyes when she once again referred to the female as an it. "My mistake Hiro. Her. You fancy her."

His lips thinned as he busied his hands with shuffling through a small stack of papers. "You're delusional."

"Am I also delusional to believe that blush playing across your features is just a trick of the light?" she teased lightly.

"Make yourself useful McKinley and stop bugging me," came his clipped reply.

"Aren't we snarky today. What's the matter dear Hiro. Find yourself alone at nights with thoughts of her dancing inside your head with only your hand to help out?" she questioned, silently relishing in the tensing of his shoulders. He was far too easy for her to taunt and she so loved to see the boy squirm.

"McKinley," he growled warningly.

"Yamamoto. McKinley. I'd hate to interrupt this lovers spat, but you realize that the Doctor gave you a specific assignment to monitor the subject and not flirt."

Jessica McKinley - or McKinley as people seemed to favor calling her as of late - merely brushed a long fiery strand from her shoulder with a wicked gleam in her emerald eyes. "As if Hiro was even in the same league as me. He'd be lucky if he was even in the audience."

"With the way you play the game McKinley, anybody can hit a home run," responded Hiro with a sneer on his pale pink lips.

Jessica curled her fist, her uneven nails biting into her flesh as she looked ready to attack the Japanese man. "Why you filthy prat!"

"Enough! Both of you," he interrupted once again. "You're both adults, act like it."

Hiro set his dark eyes upon the speaker, their supervisor John Riley - or babysitter as he and Jessica had referred to him as - wearily. He was a large round man with a pinkish face and dradle like physique. It amused him to no ends whenever he spied the balding American. His round torso supported by his thin limbs defied the laws of science itself.

"Yamamoto, has there been any changes with the subject?"

Hiro slid his onyx eyes to the screen to his side and gave a short shake of his head. "Her vitals are constant. No change."

"I see, and her scarring."

Jessica cleared her throat lightly. "Gone save a small sunburst mark upon her hip. Otherwise, it's all gone."

"IMPOSSIBLE!" exclaimed the portly man as his hands fumbled for the chart printouts, flipping through them in rapid succession. "What the hell is this girl?" he question in awe.

"In-intriguing."

The three present, jumped at the deep stutter that cut through the silence. Hiro bowed to his Japanese superior. "Dr. Toshiro."

Doctor Michio Toshiro, head of the Neurology department in Tokyo University and current leader of their current project. He was a quiet man that tended to stutter terribly whenever he spoke. A speech impediment made increasingly worse whenever he spoke a foreign language like English, but with more than half the staff of a different race it was something he couldn't very well do without.

His tendency to hunch made his tall broad shouldered frame smaller and more withdrawn than it really was. Piercing brown eyes peeked from behind a pair of thin wire spectacles that usually glittered brightly whenever confronted with a problem.

If Dr. Michio Toshiro was anything, he was a man that loved puzzles. It was quite common to see him sitting in a corner to himself going over the papers crossword with only a steaming cup of coffee to keep him company.

"A-any prog-ogress?" he said with his usual stumble.

"Dr. Toshiro. It has-"

"Miss Mc-Mc-Kinley. You re-realize tha-tha-that this "it" as you seem so ad-adept to re-refer to her as is-is in fact a female. A-a female with a na-name."

Jessica scowled, muttering a few choice words under her breath. "I wasn't aware."

Hiro smirked at the fuming red head. The fiery female was jealous. She was jealous of an unconscious individual. The thought made him want to laugh outright. It was no secret that she was practically smitten with Dr. Toshiro. As to why someone so outgoing and gregarious as Jessica McKinley was attracted to someone like Michio Toshiro boggled the minds of everyone. However, it was always entertaining to see her get wound up over the man.

Oh how that must have pissed the British bitch to no end. "Of course you weren't," said Hiro with a wicked gleam in his onyx eyes.

The woman merely scoffed at his words and turned her head away from the other three in the room. 'Men,' she thought angrily.

John slid his gaze to his superior, his round face contorted into one of confusion. "She has a name? Why is it not on our records?"

Michio gazed at the lifeless form laying prone upon the bed, a twisted smile playing across his lips. His voice seemed to take on a deeper octave and what was more puzzling was his clear speech pattern. "Because according to the rest of the world, Kagome Higurashi is dead."

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AN: Alright, it's just the prologue so of course it's going to be on the short side.

Yes, there will be more familiar faces, the plot will eventually reveal itself and of course the reason for Kagome's current state. I wanted to do a present day fic, but I I didn't want it to be cliché, so the plot bunny hopped on over to me and presented this wonderful idea that I'm VERY excited about!

Michio WILL be playing a large roll in my story and I have BIG plans for him. Just know that of all the new characters introduced, he is essential!

Stay with me everyone. I promise to make this a story worth reading. I do have a public live journal dedicated to my fics and other random things I decide to post. www(dot)livejournal(dot)com(slash)users(slash)bananaeskimo

I'm not sure when I'll be updating this, but it is Summer break and the school year will not be starting till June.

Thank you, hope you enjoyed and please review. I love hearing feedback.