CHAPTER 1: The Boy Who Overcame Time And The Girl Who Was Just Overcome

"Ha ha ha ha ha!" a voice called out, startling the quiet of the morning. A young girl, dressed all in red, sprung up from the village shrine, clutching something on her hand.

Down below, the villagers were filled with terror. Although it was true that they could never fully trust the girl, they had come to uneasy terms with her. But her sudden outburst of destruction proved they had been right all along about her. And they were terrified, because the girl had the powers of a demon, and she was clearly very unhappy.

"You villagers will only get what you deserve!" the girl cried out, leaping and destroying buildings on her way to the forest. "Now that I have the Shikon Jewel, I'll be unstoppable!" she shouted gleefully.

She finally entered the forest, about to escape to the wilderness with her prize, when a shinto priest of about 18 years approached. It was all over in less than a minute. He skillfully shot an arrow at the girl, hitting her right in the heart, and sealing her to the tree she was standing next to.

"W...why, you..." she managed to gasp out. She dropped the item, which fell to the ground and rolled a few inches away. Then her head fell onto her chest, and she was finished.

The priest stepped forward and picked up what the girl had dropped. "The jewel... for such a thing..."

A small group of villagers came running over. The priest dropped to the ground. It didn't take much to tell that he was severely injured. His shoulder was bleeding profusely, and there was a long trail of blood in the direction he had come.

"Brother, are you okay?" a little girl with a bandage over one eye asked the priest urgently.

"I... don't have much time..." he panted. "Here. Take this and burn it with my remains," he said, thrusting the jewel at the little girl.

"Br-brother?"

"You must do as I say!" he exclaimed, once again thrusting the jewel at his sister. He suddenly clutched his shoulder and then fell to the side.

"Brother? Brother?!"

Later that day, he was cremated, holding that mysterious object, the "Shikon Jewel" in his hands. He died having two wishes: that this powerful object would never fall into the hands of evil, and to be reunited with his love in the afterlife.

Unfortunately, neither of those wishes would come true for a very long time.

"Shikon Jewel, Grandpa? What would I care about some hokey old jewel, anyway?"

"It is a very important part of our shrine's history, boy!" the old man exclaimed.

"It's just a keychain with a marble on it," the boy said, unimpressed.

"Well, of course, these are just replicas. The real jewel vanished without a trace nearly 500 years ago," the man said matter-of-factly.

"Yeah, whatever." The boy suddenly remembered something. "Hey, Gramps, you know my birthday's tomorrow, right?" he asked eagerly.

"Yes, of course. I have your present right here!"

'Right here?' the boy thought. If his grandfather had his present in the storage room, it couldn't be anything good.

And it wasn't. "Here you are!" the grandfather said, pulling out some... thing. It was dark green, and clearly very old. With webbed toes and claws... well, it was definitely not something a teenager wants to get for his birthday. "It's the mummified hand of a kappa water sprite!" Grandpa was obviously very pleased with himself.

"I think Buyo will like this a lot," the boy said, giving the thing to the cat.

"What?! Don't do that! Do you know how much that cost me?"

'And I thought after last year's mermaid skeleton he would've learned his lesson,' the boy sighed inwardly.

His name was Souta Higurashi. He was the oldest child of his family, followed only by his 8 year old sister Kagome. He lived on the Higurashi shrine with his sister, his mother, and his grandfather. "Gramps", as he called him, was his father's father. Mr. Higurashi, Souta's and Kagome's father, had died in a car accident when Kagome was just a toddler.

Gramps was the shrine's priest, and was always trying to peddle fake little trinkets and weird "artifacts" to visitors. It was always annoying to Souta, but it and the donations were the family's only source of income, so he always supposed he could just let it slide.

And as he woke up on the morning of his 15th birthday, he had no idea how much his life would change, or how soon.

He was about to leave for school when he saw his little sister looking worriedly into the little shrine. This piqued Souta's curiosity, because the two were forbidden to go into the shrine. All they knew about it was that there was a dry well inside, and that there were "scary rumors" about it. Souta had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but he kept thinking of "Ringu" and wanted nothing to do with wells anyway. But he decided to see what his sister was up to.

"What's up?" he asked, startling Kagome.

"Oh, it's the cat. I think 'e went in here, and I don't want him to get hurt," she replied.

"So, why don't you go in there after her?" he said, completely unconcerned.

"Because it's dark in there, and I don't want to get eaten by a monster or anything!"

Souta sighed. "Isn't that just like a little girl, scared of the dark. Alright, I'll go get Buyo." Even though Souta had reprimanded his sister for being scared, he was shaking on the inside. It was dark in there. And dirty, and smelly, and mysterious.

As he walked down the stairs to the the well in the center, a soft rattling started up.

"What's that sound?!" Kagome asked from the doorway.

"Gee, I dunno, maybe... the cat?" Souta said sarcastically. He suddenly felt something on his leg, and his heart jumped a mile. "Wha-?" He looked down, and saw it was only Buyo. Relieved, he said, "See? Here's the cat now!"

But the rattling continued. And as it got louder, both Souta and Kagome realized it was coming from the covered well. In fact, it looked like the cover itself was what was rattling.

"B...bro?" Kagome asked nervously.

Suddenly the cover shot off, and a creature most foul sprung up from the well. "Jewel... you have... the jewel..." it cackled. Then it grabbed onto Souta with its many arms and pulled him down into the well, leaving only an uninterested Buyo and an extremely scared Kagome.

In the well, which seemed too long, too light, and too blue to possibly be the same well he just fell in, Souta got a good look at his kidnapper. It was a freakish creature, with the face and torso of a woman - except for the extra arms - but with the extremely long lower half of some sort of insect.

"The jewel! Give it!" the creature yelled, licking Souta's face.

Souta nearly vomited. "What jewel? What the hell are you talking about? Let go!" he yelled back, about to punch the thing. And then it exploded.

A weird, pinkish light emanated from Souta's hand, and the strange creature broke into several pieces. Then Souta and the pieces of the thing finally hit the bottom of the well.

"Ouch, that smarts!" Souta said, standing and rubbing his bottom. "Hey, Kagome! Get mom for me, will ya!" he yelled up. This was followed by no response, but he did scare a butterfly away. It took a few seconds to register the presence of a butterfly in what he had assumed was an old, enclosed structure. 'Maybe there's an opening somewhere?' he thought. But doubt began to creep further in when he noticed all the vines growing in the well, and how light it seemed to be inside. He took a good look up, and saw... the sky?! "What...? I must've... hit my head or something?" he tried to reassure himself, but he really didn't believe that. With one last look at the pieces of the creature, he grabbed hold of a vine and climbed out of the well. And then he really began to wonder what was going on.

His home, the shrine, was completely paved in concrete, except where the storage rooms, the house, and the well shrine were, in addition to the God Tree, or the Tree of Ages. The Tree was the only piece of plant life in the shrine. So Souta was understandably confused when he saw the place where he had grown up was completely green. All around the open well - which was uncovered and not in any building whatsoever - was wild, untamed grass. A few meters to either side were trees. Lots of trees.

"Where... am I?" he wondered, looking around. Then he spotted something very familiar. "The Tree! When I was younger I could always find my way home when I spotted it! Our shrine must still be nearby!" he gasped as he ran towards the tree. Although it was pretty obvious he wasn't still "home", he ran away. Because when you're under extreme stress, logic tends to escape.

And when he got to the Tree, in the midst of a forest that had surely not been there 10 minutes ago, he stopped in his tracks. The Tree was covered in vines, and was a little smaller than he had remembered, but that wasn't the strangest part. There was a girl on the tree. All Souta could see was that she had white hair, was dressed in red, and was clearly sleeping, and she was wrapped in long, thick vines. This puzzled Souta - didn't that mean she had been there for a long time? He decided to take a chance and maybe ask for her help.

"Excuse me, miss?" he called, walking towards her. "Miss?" He finally got right up to her, and saw that, in addition to her soft, white hair, she had two things on top of her head that looked suspiciously like... "Cat ears? No, maybe dog ears?" Then he couldn't resist his urge to feel them, to see if they were real. The girl did not stir. Had Souta been paying more attention, he would've noticed that the girl was clearly not asleep, as she wasn't breathing at all, and he would've noticed the arrow that pierced her heart. Had he been paying any attention at all, he might also have heard the large group of people approaching.

But he didn't notice, at least not until they started firing arrows at him.