Categories > Anime/Manga > Inuyasha > Boy of the Future, Girl of the Past
Boy of the Future, Girl of the Past
0 reviewsSome fun with role reversals. Inuyasha is a normal boy living in modern day Japan, but when he gets pulled down an odd old well, he finds himself 500 years in the past. Can he live up to the advent...
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Ever wonder what the story of Inuyasha would have been like had their roles been reversed? What would it be like if Inuyasha had grown up normally in the modern era, as a human, with a family, and Kagome had been born five hundred years earlier as a priestess? What if, one day, modern Inuyasha fell down a well, and found himself in feudal Japan, with a destiny he had never guessed existed. Well I have, and so I decided to make it up.
If you don’t know enough about Inuyasha to know which characters belong to Rumiko Takahashi, and which ones I pulled out of my ass, then you really aren’t a fan and therefore have no business reading fan fiction, you non-fan weirdo. So there.
p.s. Don’t you just love how that can be a legitimate end to a conversation, when in reality it makes no sense?
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Boy of the Future, Girl of the Past
Chapter 1
The Well
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A teenaged boy with long dark hair and bright amber eyes sat at the kitchen table, listlessly chasing stray cheerios with a spoon, his head resting on his hand, elbow on the table. His mother hated when he put his elbows on the table, but he wasn’t much bothered by that. A beautiful black haired woman stood at the counter, pouring what looked like dark brown pencil shavings into the coffee maker. The woman hummed happily as she did so, gazing longingly out the kitchen window at the perfect autumn day.
“Honey,” she said, turning to her son, who glanced up indifferently from his half eaten breakfast. “You really ought to get dressed for school, or you’re going to be late.”
Her son sighed audibly, taking a quick look at his outfit. He was wearing slightly baggy jeans that hung low on his hips, though not low enough to fall off like some boys wore, and a plain red tee shirt with nothing on it except black writing across the chest, which read ‘Don’t piss me off, I’m running out of places to hide the bodies’ in jagged black lettering.
“I am dressed, Mom,” He answered. His mother looked him up and down again, noting the denim and black sneakers on his feet.
“Of course you are. Eat your cereal before it gets cold.” In mom talk, the boy took this to mean that his mother was not pleased with his choice of dress. He didn’t really care. He loved his mom and all, but the day when he let her give him a fashion tip would be the day he went to school for fun, and not because it was required by law. Just then, his father walked in to the room. The first thing he did was walk over to the boy’s mother, who still had her back turned, patting his young son on the shoulder as he did.
“Morning, runt,” he said affectionately to the boy, who grunted in reply and used his spoon to trap an o of cereal between the utensil and the edge of the bowl, but the thing jumped out of the bowl onto the table. His mother would have been displeased had she not been too distracted by his fathers brand of good morning.
The man in his early forties, with eye length silver hair and a handsome face, swept over to his wife, and before she could so much as turn, had dipped her so low the she screamed, planted a kiss on her mouth, and returned her to a standing position, arms wrapped around her waist..
“Good morning, oh light of my life,” he said fondly into her hair as she pulled a plate of toast towards herself.
“Shut it, you,” she snapped playfully, stuffing the first, slightly burnt piece into his mouth. He snickered happily into the buttered bread.
“Ugh, gross,” said their son loudly, in order to make his presence known to them, as they seemed to have forgotten. He was glad his parents still loved each other, of course, as many kids’ parents had long since split up, but he really preferred not to see displays of parental affection, especially not when he was trying to eat.
“Son,” said his father, patting him on the shoulder. “I think its time you started being interested in girls,” he joked. “They don’t have cooties, you know.”
“Duh,” said the boy.
“Well son, at 17 you really ought to know a few things by now. Honey,” he added turning to his wife in mock seriousness. “I think its time we tell him.”
“Oh no, Daiyo dear,” said the woman, going along with the joke, “Anything but that.’
“We have to, dear Izayoi,” he said. Then, turning to his son, he said in a resigned voice.
“Inuyasha, Santa clause isn’t real.”
“Gosh,” said Inuyasha blandly.
“Your mother is the tooth fairy.”
“Oh no, woe is me.” Inuyasha, despite feigning apathy, loved his father’s stupid jokes.
“And the Easter bunny…”
“Oh no, you aren’t going to tell me the Easter bunny’s a fake too!”
“Oh, no he was real, but last year I accidentally ran him over in the drive way, and buried him with the begonias.”
Inuyasha couldn’t help himself. He cracked a small smile. He tried not to, but the running joke was just a little too much for his poker face.
“OH MY GOD!” screamed his father, jumping up as though burned. “Izayoi, he smiled! Quick, get the camera! I knew you could do it, son. It’s a miracle!”
His mother pretended to fumble around for an imaginary camera and snap a photo, just as Inuyasha’s older brother walked in. His hair was even longer than Inuyasha’s waist length mop, and just as dark. He sat himself at the table across from his younger sibling, who was looking slightly disgruntled as he chased another cheerio out of the bowl.
“God, Inuyasha,” he said in place of a morning greeting. “You have the table manners of a dog. We ought to just put down a bowl on the floor and let you eat from that.”
“Bite me, Sesshomaru,” Inuyasha retorted.
“Wouldn’t that be your job, mutt boy?”
Inuyasha smirked cruelly at that, as his mother scolded her eldest son. “Sesshomaru, leave your little brother alone.”
“Aw, don’t worry about it, mom,” said Inuyasha with mock sympathy. “He’s just moody. I’d be moody too if I were in my twenties and still living at home.”
That was Sesshomaru’s sore point. He hated the fact that his parents insisted that, since his college was only a few miles away, he live at home, as it was cheaper and easier that way, and it was the one thing that was sure to get him pissed. Naturally he wasn’t about to let that go.
Sesshomaru stood abruptly, although keeping his face completely impassive. “At least, little brother, I am able to attend college, unlike a certain Taisho boy, who shall remain nameless, who is failing almost everything he takes.”
Now it was Inuyasha’s turn to jump to his feet. “I am NOT failing everything!” he protested angrily, although it was mostly untrue. It wasn’t that Inuyasha was unintelligent. Quite the contrary. He was quite smart, and as such found the work rather boring. So he didn’t try. He never did homework, rarely studied for anything, and spent class time doodling and passing rude notes about the teacher, when he bothered to show up at all. He didn’t usually fail tests, but even those high scores weren’t enough to save him. In fact, the only class he managed to stay at the top of, as it had no homework or tests, was…
“Gym doesn’t really count as a class, mutt boy,” Sesshomaru countered, hiding his triumph behind the holier-than-thou expression in his amber eyes that matched his fathers and brothers. Though the boys looked fairly similar, clearly related, they had extremely grating personalities which led to fighting, bitter fighting, all the time.
Sesshomaru, much to Inuyasha’s chagrin, was not wrong. Inuyasha had always excelled at gym. He was unusually strong for his age, or any age frankly. His muscles were lean and defined, but he was not exactly a body builder, bulging with oddly shaped muscular lumps, and had no desire to be. He didn’t seem to need to. In fact, Inuyasha’s strength was so unnaturally disproportionate to his size that it was almost supernatural, though he knew that was ridiculous. He was also very fast, exactly how fast he didn’t know, as he had learned young that showing of the true potential of his abilities tended to freak people out a little. He was rarely injured, never incurring worse that a broken arm, despite his participation in every sport under the sun, including motocross (without his parents’ knowledge, of course). Still, no matter how may times he was thrown to the ground or slammed into walls, clocked with sticks, or kicked with cleats, he never seemed to break as easily as other people. When he did get hurt, like the one time with his arm, he had healed abnormally fast, and ended up having the cast taken off three weeks early, after a week and a half of him insisting to his parents that it was fine and his arm didn’t hurt anymore. Still, he had to jump into the pool with it to get them to so much as check. Inuyasha had loved gym ever since he learned to control himself enough to use only a portion of his abilities, just the right amount to win at any sport, any time. So, he liked it and did well. And, usually, showed up.
“Boys, enough already. Sesshomaru, apologize to Inuyasha. Inuyasha, you do the same to your brother,” their father demanded.
“No way!” Inuyasha shouted.
“Well, I will father. I’m sorry, Inuyasha. I’m sorry that you are such a worthless waste of air. I’m sorry that you are too stupid to find your way out of a paper bag. I’m sorry you’re going to end up living in a basement, fat and bald by thirty, and I’m sorry that you will never be any good to anybody, no matter what you do, and that this family would be better off without you! I’m so sorry for that Inuyasha.”
“Sesshomaru!” gasped Izayoi, shocked by her son’s cruelty.
Inuyasha, however, was not about to sit around for any more of that. “I’m out of here,” he said, pulling his school bag up onto his shoulders, and taking off out the front door. He could hear his father arguing with Sesshomaru, and his mother calling to him to come back, that they would drive him to school, to please talk to them for a minute. He ignored it all. He walked over to the sidewalk, looking across the street to the shrine that had been there as long as he could remember. It was old and out of use, but the land was regarded as historically valuable, and forbidden for trespass or development. As such, the old shrine, complete with well house, simply sat there, crumbling. No one bothered with it much anymore, though it was covered from top to bottom with graffiti that had piled up in the late eighties.
Inuyasha made it to school in half the time it normally took him, as he had forgotten in his anger to walk at a normal pace, and had instead moved at a speed he knew no other student could match. There was a half an hour left before the building would open to students, and an hour before his first class would begin. He gazed up at the clean, rectangular building, and felt a sudden loathing for the place. He didn’t want to go in there. He hated school. He didn’t have any friends, not really. Most of the kids had known him since kindergarten, and therefore had been there for the incidents his strength had caused before he knew to control himself. Many were scared of him. They assumed that his tough demeanor made him a thug, and so avoided him. Other so-called bullies hung out with Inuyasha all the time. People like that thought he was cool and mysterious. They would follow him out onto the grounds and smoke and cuss, thinking it would earn them his favor. Needless to say, it didn’t work. He didn’t like any of those kids, nor did he care enough to set them straight. Instead, he let the morons chase after his approval, then went home and brooded over it.
He didn’t want to do that today. The pessimistic part of him had teemed up with the much larger, self loathing part, and they were telling him things like ‘if I’m such a waste of air like Sesshomaru said then what’s the point of going to school?’ and ‘its not like I’m going to need any of this crap anyway for my life in the basement’ and ‘an idiot like me doesn’t need to waste the teachers’ time.’ Those parts convinced him to turn around. He ran at top speed back to his house, making the 45 minute walk into five minutes, unaware of how he accomplished such a feat. He caught his breath for a moment, looking at his house. Both his parents’ cars were gone by then, but that didn’t necessarily mean that Sesshomaru had left, and Inuyasha wasn’t willing to risk it. He wasn’t going into that house. Instead he turned directly around to find himself looking right at the shrine.
Something about the ancient, decrepit building was calling to him. He didn’t know why, but he really wanted to go in onto the grounds and look around. Perhaps it was because he wasn’t allowed there, or perhaps it was something else, but whatever it was he was compelled inexplicably to obey. Walking slowly, he stepped off the boundary of the road and up onto the curb of the property. Immediately, it felt as though some gigantic invisible weight had been lifted off of him, and on overwhelming sense of purpose overcame him. He knew, without knowing how he knew it, that this was the right place, that this is where he needed to be, and it was only he who needed to be there. It was a good feeling, almost like the very air was pining for him. Shaking his head to clear it, he began to explore.
Before continuing, Inuyasha slid his bag off of his shoulder, looking around for a place to put it. He could always carry it around, but he didn’t feel like lugging the thing around school, much less dragging it on his little hooky-adventure. He spotted a rather thick bramble beside the road, overgrown as though it hadn’t been pruned in several dozen years. Perfect. Slipping his pack into the bush, he turned to face the hill-set shrine.
There was a large, steep staircase leading the way up to the shrine itself. There it stood, old and dusty, yet solid. Beside it was a small shed, which Inuyasha recognized as a well house. Across the way, at the very edge of the hill, stood an old and humongous tree, which Inuyasha recognized as the famed sacred tree, and the chief reason why the site was land marked. He started toward the door of the shrine, but was distracted by a noise. He couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but it sounded like something scratching on wood with nails or claws. He stood very still listening intently for the faintest hint of the sound. For a moment, nothing, and then…
Scratch, scratch
Inuyasha stared around for the source of the noise, his eyes coming to rest on the well house. Cautiously, he walked toward the door, and slid it open, stepping into the cool, dark, damp room. He wasn’t afraid, but his heart was pounding anyway, beating a rough tattoo against his Adam’s apple. Descending the stairs, he strained his ears for the sound again. A moment later, he was rewarded.
Scratch, scratch
The sound seemed to be coming from the other side of the well. Inuyasha moved around the wooden covered well slowly, stooping and picking up a piece of wood that seemed to have fallen from a beam in the ceiling. He rounded the bend slowly, slowly…
And there, one the ground, sitting next to the sealed well, sat a rather fat calico cat, licking the back of its paw without a care in the world. Feeling idiotic, Inuyasha dropped the wooden plank loudly to the ground, releasing a breath he hadn’t noticed taking or holding. The thud of the wood hitting dirt scared the cat, which arched its back in a hiss. Guiltily, Inuyasha knelt by the cat to calm it, lifting it into his arms. For a moment, the cat stayed, still and complacent, purring in the boys arms as he rubbed the bases of its pointy little ears.
“You scared me, stupid cat,” scolded Inuyasha, to no affect. The animal simply gazed innocently up at him as though it had no idea what he was talking about. Inuyasha continued to pet the cat until he heard it. The same noise again.
Scratch, scratch
It couldn’t be. The cat had been making that sound, he had been sure of it. But if it wasn’t the cat, then what else could it be?
Scratch, scratch. Scratch, scratch, scratch
Inuyasha turned slowly, swallowing hard, looking first at the ground for a second cat. There was none. Reluctantly, he raised his eye to the sealed well. There was a small light coming through the spaces in between the wooden slats. The light began to brighten slowly, and the calico hissed again and scratched Inuyasha in a bid for freedom. He dropped the cat unceremoniously, getting a yowl of distaste, but he didn’t care. He was standing transfixed, staring at the well as the light got brighter and brighter until it was like daylight within the small structure.
The scratching sound grew louder, until suddenly it stopped completely. For a moment all was silent, then a high pitched, keening laugh filled the air. It made Inuyasha’s skin erupt in goose bumps and grated at his mind like a knife on glass. Clapping his hands over his ears, he tried to block out the sound to no avail. The laughter became a piercing shriek, and the well’s cover exploded outward, showering the boy with bits of wood. He turned his face away from the wreckage of splinters, throwing an arm over his head to protect his eyes and face.
He didn’t see what happened next, but he felt it. Something very strong wrapped around his waist tightly, squeezing as though trying to crush the life out of him. He was lifted off the ground and pulled down something narrow, and damp that reeked of mold and rotten wood. The well.
Inuyasha braced himself for an impact with the well floor, but none came. Instead, his entire body was engulfed in tingles, like being gently electrocuted, but without pain. Heat rose around him, and though he could feel it, he did not burn. The laughing thing was still wrapped around his waist, despite his struggles against it. Twisting around, he lashed desperately out at it with his hand, not knowing what he was doing or why he was doing it. Something happened. He was too far away to have connected to the creature’s body, but yet he had somehow felt his hand make contact with the thing, which squealed, and loosened its grip.
The next thing he knew, Inuyasha was thrown hard onto the dirt floor of the well, where he lay panting, chest heaving as he drew the breaths he couldn’t while that…whatever it was had hold of him. He froze. The thing that had been squeezing him was still there. He could feel it, wrapped loosely around his chest. Pushing himself up onto his hands and knees, he looked down at his midsection, expecting to see a rope or binding of some sort.
He saw an arm. A pale, feminine arm was wrapped around him, with unnaturally elongated fingers that clutched his tee shirt. There was no body attached to the end of it, and no blood where it had been severed. Instead of a bone or sinew, the arm seemed to be composed of black gunk.
Inuyasha sat frozen for a minute, unable to register what he was seeing. It was the grossest thing he had ever seen in his life, and he really didn’t want it touching him anymore. As though switched on suddenly, Inuyasha cried out, jumping to his feet and flinging the arm as far as he could without gripping it. It smacked into the opposite wall of the well and fell to the ground where it lay motionless. The well, however, was only about five feet wide, and Inuyasha wanted to be a lot farther away from the thing then that.
There was a network of vines that he hadn’t noticed before lining the walls inside the well. He was just wondering if they would be able to support his weight were he to try and climb them when he heard a rustling behind him. Gulping, he turned to see that the arm and rolled onto its hand and was crawling toward him like some grotesque spider. Inuyasha jumped in shock…
And when he landed, it was on the grass outside the well. He was halfway through mentally inquiring the possibility of that, when he saw something was wrong. The well house was gone. There was not even a trace of its remains. No splintered wood or broken beams, no stairs, not even any difference in the ground height. That wasn’t the only thing missing. The shrine was absent from the scene as well. In fact, Inuyasha seemed to be standing in a field he had never seen before, more a clearing really, surrounded by a forest. The trees were fairly tall, but he could see the mountains beyond. What he could not see where buildings, sky scrapers, billboards, or planes. Not a car or even a road in sight. There was no sign of Tokyo at all. This was clearly not good. Inuyasha had no idea what happened to him. He backed up a few steps unconsciously, only to bump into the side of the well. Perhaps if he jumped back down the well, he would end up back at home. It was worth a shot. He turned and put one foot up on the edge, then froze. He had forgotten the arm. The spider-like limb was pacing the bottom of the well like a sentry, and the last thing he wanted to do was jump down and start fighting with the disembodied limb again.
With a sigh, he turned towards the forest and started walking in a random direction. After twenty minutes, Inuyasha’s already strained patience was wearing dangerously thin. He changed direction and headed back to the well, determined to get back home if he had to jump on the spider-hand thing and stomp the little bastard to death. He never got that far. On his retreat, he noticed something he had missed before. There, a bit past the well, was the sacred tree, the same one he had been seeing every time he looked out his bedroom window since he was five. It seemed to be the only thing that was unchanged in the area. He walked trancelike up to the base, running his hand over the trunk in familiarity.
“You there, what do you think you are doing?” cried a voice behind him. He jumped and spun around, his back pressed firmly to the tree trunk.
“Wha…what?” stammered Inuyasha in response.
“I asked what you think you are doing,” repeated the voice. It belonged, he saw, to a young woman, dressed in what he vaguely recognized as feudal style clothing of a priest or priestess. She was probably no older than him, and had long black hair, though shorter than his own, and dark, brown eyes that were alight with suspicion. Inuyasha would have found her quite pretty if not for two things. Firstly, she had a group of at least ten men behind her, many carrying short swords, knives, ropes, or projectile weapons. Secondly, the girl had a bow pointed at him, with an arrow cocked and trained directly at his heart.
“I’m not doing anything. I was just…” But what he was just doing didn’t seem to interest the girl. At any rate, she never found out, as he had, without realizing, taken a step towards her in that moment, and before he knew what had hit him, she had shifted her aim, and let loose an arrow.
There was a loud thud of wood on wood, and a searing pain in his left shoulder. The girls arrow had struck his shoulder high up, mostly getting shirt, but cutting also through the flesh of his collar bone a little to close to his throat for comfort.
“Hey!” he shouted angrily, the searing pain in his shoulder adding to his already mounting aggravation with wherever he had ended up. “What the hell is wrong with you?! You could have killed me!” he reached to pull out the arrow, only to have it zap his hand as he tried with what may have been electricity. The wound started to ache worse and worse by the second.
“And if you don’t tell me what I want to know, I still might,” the girl replied, pulling another arrow out and readying it too. “Tell me why you have come here. What are you looking for?”
“Look,” said Inuyasha hotly. “I don’t know what you want from me, or who the hell you are, or who you think you are going around shooting people with arrows like that, and I really honestly don’t give a crap. All I want is to get home and forget this ever happened.”
“Where is this home you speak of?” asked the girl, bow still pointing at his chest, the string creaking audibly as though hungry for his blood.
“Stop pointing that thing at me and maybe I’ll tell ya.”
“Tell me and maybe I’ll stop pointing this thing at you,” she snapped back, tightening the string and preparing to fire.
“I’m from Tokyo, ok, you crazy wench?”
The girl looked puzzled. “Tokyo? Where is this Tokyo? I’ve never heard of such a place.”
“Its in Japan,” Inuyasha answered. “Actually I think it’s supposed to be right here, but it seems to have disappeared. I don’t know how this happened. How can an entire city just disappear? And where is the shrine? And where is my house? And what the hell is going on here?”
“Lady Priestess,” said one of the men, speaking for the first time. He was a short, balding man wielding a short blade and was staring at Inuyasha as though he’d prefer to see him sautéed and served with butter then standing pinned to a tree. “Clearly the boy is mad. He may be a danger. I believe we should simply kill him and dispose of the body.’
“What?!” shouted Inuyasha, stricken.
“We aren’t killing anyone, Matomi, so please relax.”
“But, my Lady Priestess…” the man, Matomi, argued.
“I have already given my answer to you,” Said the girl, kindly but firmly. “Kanichi, Suri, please come and help me with him,” she added, apparently speaking to the man with rope and another, younger man who appeared to be unarmed.
The three, the priestess, Kanichi, and Suri, approached Inuyasha with extreme caution, looking more like they were trying to corner a wounded animal then going to peel a pissed off teenager from a tree.
Inuyasha tensed as the came up to him, not trusting a single one of them in the slightest.
“Kanichi, bind his hands, please,” the priestess girl ordered, and the man with the rope came forward. Without being asked, the man called Suri came to help, pulling Inuyasha’s hands roughly in front of him and holding them in place, Inuyasha hissing through his teeth as they did so from the strain on his injured shoulder, which was worsening still it seemed.
“What is your name,” the girl asked him, eyes narrowed in suspicion. He felt like rolling his own. As if he was a danger injured, tied, and stuck to a tree.
“I’m Inuyasha,” he answered defiantly.
“Interesting name. Tell me, Inuyasha, are you by any chance…a demon?”
Inuyasha stared at her completely nonplussed. Either this was some big, tasteless joke, or he had just fallen into a nest of serious crazies.
“I don’t think so,” he answered sarcastically. “Tell me, priestess, are you by any chance a nut job?”
The man, Kanichi, slapped him hard across the face. “How dare you talk to Lady Kagome like that, you worthless gutter scum. I oughta gut you for your tongue. Or perhaps I should just cut it out,” he considered, pulling a long blade that had been hidden inside his kimono into the open and holding very close to Inuyasha’s face. Inuyasha didn’t so much as flinch, meeting the man's glare with equal vehemence.
“Kanichi, that is enough!” Kagome said moving forward, placing a hand on the man’s arm.
“But Lady, during this dangerous time...”
“Just because the states are warring, Kanichi, doesn’t mean it is acceptable for us all to fight each other. He has done nothing wrong that we know of, and we won’t punish an innocent man.”
Kanichi looked displeased by these terms, but lowered his weapon nonetheless. Inuyasha did not miss the relief that flooded Kagome’s eyes for a moment. It was not reassuring.
“You two go wait with the others at the base of the roots,” she addressed both Kanichi and Suri. “I need to remove the spell from this arrow if we want to get him off this tree. Then we will take him to Lady Kaede. She will know if he is a threat or not, and how to deal with him.”
Kanichi didn’t look happy about this, whereas Suri scurried away immediately looking relieved to be out of the line of fire. Kanichi followed him, shooting resentful looks back at Kagome, who ignored him, turning her attention to the arrow that now felt like it was searing the flesh from Inuyasha’s shoulder. He had his teeth bared like fangs, but his mouth closed over them so as to avoid the people in the weird place noticing that they just happened to be abnormally long. The pain was intense. It was all he could do to keep from making any noise or crying out.
The girl, Kagome, was muttering a strange sounding mantra under her breath, holding the shaft of her arrow, careful not to shift or turn it. After a moment, the whole thing glowed pink, and the glow spread the Inuyasha’s shoulder. The severe burning stopped, as though he had been given a magical anesthetic, fading to a dull pain that was uncomfortable but bearable, and Inuyasha loosened his bite before his teeth cracked under its force.
Kagome tightened her grip on the shaft of the arrow, and braced her other hand against the tree. Before Inuyasha had time to dread what was coming next, she said “This is going to hurt,” as if commenting on the weather, and tugged the arrow as hard as she could.
Inuyasha could feel every movement as the barbed tip of the arrow was pulled back through the wound, ripping any unharmed flesh it came in contact with. Inuyasha bit down hard on his lip to keep himself quiet, tasting blood as it spilled over his lips from the cut he had made with his sharp teeth, but no sound escaped him.
He could feel as his knees begged to buckle, but he refused to allow it. Swaying slightly, he allowed Kagome to lead him, by the ropes, back over to the many armed men, and the group and their disgruntled prisoner set off for the village.
Inuyasha had no idea what was going on. He didn’t know where he was, or even when he was. Crazy as that thought sounded, even to him, he had difficulty dismissing it. Either way, he could tell that something was definitely off.
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This story kinda hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m still ironing out some details… ok a lot of details, but I just thought that a little role reversal, walk a mile in another’s shoes could be fun. I now the characters are a little bit different, but this is an AU, one that assumes the characters have led totally different lives than those of the anime/manga characters. It stands to reason that they’d be somewhat different.
If you don’t know enough about Inuyasha to know which characters belong to Rumiko Takahashi, and which ones I pulled out of my ass, then you really aren’t a fan and therefore have no business reading fan fiction, you non-fan weirdo. So there.
p.s. Don’t you just love how that can be a legitimate end to a conversation, when in reality it makes no sense?
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Boy of the Future, Girl of the Past
Chapter 1
The Well
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A teenaged boy with long dark hair and bright amber eyes sat at the kitchen table, listlessly chasing stray cheerios with a spoon, his head resting on his hand, elbow on the table. His mother hated when he put his elbows on the table, but he wasn’t much bothered by that. A beautiful black haired woman stood at the counter, pouring what looked like dark brown pencil shavings into the coffee maker. The woman hummed happily as she did so, gazing longingly out the kitchen window at the perfect autumn day.
“Honey,” she said, turning to her son, who glanced up indifferently from his half eaten breakfast. “You really ought to get dressed for school, or you’re going to be late.”
Her son sighed audibly, taking a quick look at his outfit. He was wearing slightly baggy jeans that hung low on his hips, though not low enough to fall off like some boys wore, and a plain red tee shirt with nothing on it except black writing across the chest, which read ‘Don’t piss me off, I’m running out of places to hide the bodies’ in jagged black lettering.
“I am dressed, Mom,” He answered. His mother looked him up and down again, noting the denim and black sneakers on his feet.
“Of course you are. Eat your cereal before it gets cold.” In mom talk, the boy took this to mean that his mother was not pleased with his choice of dress. He didn’t really care. He loved his mom and all, but the day when he let her give him a fashion tip would be the day he went to school for fun, and not because it was required by law. Just then, his father walked in to the room. The first thing he did was walk over to the boy’s mother, who still had her back turned, patting his young son on the shoulder as he did.
“Morning, runt,” he said affectionately to the boy, who grunted in reply and used his spoon to trap an o of cereal between the utensil and the edge of the bowl, but the thing jumped out of the bowl onto the table. His mother would have been displeased had she not been too distracted by his fathers brand of good morning.
The man in his early forties, with eye length silver hair and a handsome face, swept over to his wife, and before she could so much as turn, had dipped her so low the she screamed, planted a kiss on her mouth, and returned her to a standing position, arms wrapped around her waist..
“Good morning, oh light of my life,” he said fondly into her hair as she pulled a plate of toast towards herself.
“Shut it, you,” she snapped playfully, stuffing the first, slightly burnt piece into his mouth. He snickered happily into the buttered bread.
“Ugh, gross,” said their son loudly, in order to make his presence known to them, as they seemed to have forgotten. He was glad his parents still loved each other, of course, as many kids’ parents had long since split up, but he really preferred not to see displays of parental affection, especially not when he was trying to eat.
“Son,” said his father, patting him on the shoulder. “I think its time you started being interested in girls,” he joked. “They don’t have cooties, you know.”
“Duh,” said the boy.
“Well son, at 17 you really ought to know a few things by now. Honey,” he added turning to his wife in mock seriousness. “I think its time we tell him.”
“Oh no, Daiyo dear,” said the woman, going along with the joke, “Anything but that.’
“We have to, dear Izayoi,” he said. Then, turning to his son, he said in a resigned voice.
“Inuyasha, Santa clause isn’t real.”
“Gosh,” said Inuyasha blandly.
“Your mother is the tooth fairy.”
“Oh no, woe is me.” Inuyasha, despite feigning apathy, loved his father’s stupid jokes.
“And the Easter bunny…”
“Oh no, you aren’t going to tell me the Easter bunny’s a fake too!”
“Oh, no he was real, but last year I accidentally ran him over in the drive way, and buried him with the begonias.”
Inuyasha couldn’t help himself. He cracked a small smile. He tried not to, but the running joke was just a little too much for his poker face.
“OH MY GOD!” screamed his father, jumping up as though burned. “Izayoi, he smiled! Quick, get the camera! I knew you could do it, son. It’s a miracle!”
His mother pretended to fumble around for an imaginary camera and snap a photo, just as Inuyasha’s older brother walked in. His hair was even longer than Inuyasha’s waist length mop, and just as dark. He sat himself at the table across from his younger sibling, who was looking slightly disgruntled as he chased another cheerio out of the bowl.
“God, Inuyasha,” he said in place of a morning greeting. “You have the table manners of a dog. We ought to just put down a bowl on the floor and let you eat from that.”
“Bite me, Sesshomaru,” Inuyasha retorted.
“Wouldn’t that be your job, mutt boy?”
Inuyasha smirked cruelly at that, as his mother scolded her eldest son. “Sesshomaru, leave your little brother alone.”
“Aw, don’t worry about it, mom,” said Inuyasha with mock sympathy. “He’s just moody. I’d be moody too if I were in my twenties and still living at home.”
That was Sesshomaru’s sore point. He hated the fact that his parents insisted that, since his college was only a few miles away, he live at home, as it was cheaper and easier that way, and it was the one thing that was sure to get him pissed. Naturally he wasn’t about to let that go.
Sesshomaru stood abruptly, although keeping his face completely impassive. “At least, little brother, I am able to attend college, unlike a certain Taisho boy, who shall remain nameless, who is failing almost everything he takes.”
Now it was Inuyasha’s turn to jump to his feet. “I am NOT failing everything!” he protested angrily, although it was mostly untrue. It wasn’t that Inuyasha was unintelligent. Quite the contrary. He was quite smart, and as such found the work rather boring. So he didn’t try. He never did homework, rarely studied for anything, and spent class time doodling and passing rude notes about the teacher, when he bothered to show up at all. He didn’t usually fail tests, but even those high scores weren’t enough to save him. In fact, the only class he managed to stay at the top of, as it had no homework or tests, was…
“Gym doesn’t really count as a class, mutt boy,” Sesshomaru countered, hiding his triumph behind the holier-than-thou expression in his amber eyes that matched his fathers and brothers. Though the boys looked fairly similar, clearly related, they had extremely grating personalities which led to fighting, bitter fighting, all the time.
Sesshomaru, much to Inuyasha’s chagrin, was not wrong. Inuyasha had always excelled at gym. He was unusually strong for his age, or any age frankly. His muscles were lean and defined, but he was not exactly a body builder, bulging with oddly shaped muscular lumps, and had no desire to be. He didn’t seem to need to. In fact, Inuyasha’s strength was so unnaturally disproportionate to his size that it was almost supernatural, though he knew that was ridiculous. He was also very fast, exactly how fast he didn’t know, as he had learned young that showing of the true potential of his abilities tended to freak people out a little. He was rarely injured, never incurring worse that a broken arm, despite his participation in every sport under the sun, including motocross (without his parents’ knowledge, of course). Still, no matter how may times he was thrown to the ground or slammed into walls, clocked with sticks, or kicked with cleats, he never seemed to break as easily as other people. When he did get hurt, like the one time with his arm, he had healed abnormally fast, and ended up having the cast taken off three weeks early, after a week and a half of him insisting to his parents that it was fine and his arm didn’t hurt anymore. Still, he had to jump into the pool with it to get them to so much as check. Inuyasha had loved gym ever since he learned to control himself enough to use only a portion of his abilities, just the right amount to win at any sport, any time. So, he liked it and did well. And, usually, showed up.
“Boys, enough already. Sesshomaru, apologize to Inuyasha. Inuyasha, you do the same to your brother,” their father demanded.
“No way!” Inuyasha shouted.
“Well, I will father. I’m sorry, Inuyasha. I’m sorry that you are such a worthless waste of air. I’m sorry that you are too stupid to find your way out of a paper bag. I’m sorry you’re going to end up living in a basement, fat and bald by thirty, and I’m sorry that you will never be any good to anybody, no matter what you do, and that this family would be better off without you! I’m so sorry for that Inuyasha.”
“Sesshomaru!” gasped Izayoi, shocked by her son’s cruelty.
Inuyasha, however, was not about to sit around for any more of that. “I’m out of here,” he said, pulling his school bag up onto his shoulders, and taking off out the front door. He could hear his father arguing with Sesshomaru, and his mother calling to him to come back, that they would drive him to school, to please talk to them for a minute. He ignored it all. He walked over to the sidewalk, looking across the street to the shrine that had been there as long as he could remember. It was old and out of use, but the land was regarded as historically valuable, and forbidden for trespass or development. As such, the old shrine, complete with well house, simply sat there, crumbling. No one bothered with it much anymore, though it was covered from top to bottom with graffiti that had piled up in the late eighties.
Inuyasha made it to school in half the time it normally took him, as he had forgotten in his anger to walk at a normal pace, and had instead moved at a speed he knew no other student could match. There was a half an hour left before the building would open to students, and an hour before his first class would begin. He gazed up at the clean, rectangular building, and felt a sudden loathing for the place. He didn’t want to go in there. He hated school. He didn’t have any friends, not really. Most of the kids had known him since kindergarten, and therefore had been there for the incidents his strength had caused before he knew to control himself. Many were scared of him. They assumed that his tough demeanor made him a thug, and so avoided him. Other so-called bullies hung out with Inuyasha all the time. People like that thought he was cool and mysterious. They would follow him out onto the grounds and smoke and cuss, thinking it would earn them his favor. Needless to say, it didn’t work. He didn’t like any of those kids, nor did he care enough to set them straight. Instead, he let the morons chase after his approval, then went home and brooded over it.
He didn’t want to do that today. The pessimistic part of him had teemed up with the much larger, self loathing part, and they were telling him things like ‘if I’m such a waste of air like Sesshomaru said then what’s the point of going to school?’ and ‘its not like I’m going to need any of this crap anyway for my life in the basement’ and ‘an idiot like me doesn’t need to waste the teachers’ time.’ Those parts convinced him to turn around. He ran at top speed back to his house, making the 45 minute walk into five minutes, unaware of how he accomplished such a feat. He caught his breath for a moment, looking at his house. Both his parents’ cars were gone by then, but that didn’t necessarily mean that Sesshomaru had left, and Inuyasha wasn’t willing to risk it. He wasn’t going into that house. Instead he turned directly around to find himself looking right at the shrine.
Something about the ancient, decrepit building was calling to him. He didn’t know why, but he really wanted to go in onto the grounds and look around. Perhaps it was because he wasn’t allowed there, or perhaps it was something else, but whatever it was he was compelled inexplicably to obey. Walking slowly, he stepped off the boundary of the road and up onto the curb of the property. Immediately, it felt as though some gigantic invisible weight had been lifted off of him, and on overwhelming sense of purpose overcame him. He knew, without knowing how he knew it, that this was the right place, that this is where he needed to be, and it was only he who needed to be there. It was a good feeling, almost like the very air was pining for him. Shaking his head to clear it, he began to explore.
Before continuing, Inuyasha slid his bag off of his shoulder, looking around for a place to put it. He could always carry it around, but he didn’t feel like lugging the thing around school, much less dragging it on his little hooky-adventure. He spotted a rather thick bramble beside the road, overgrown as though it hadn’t been pruned in several dozen years. Perfect. Slipping his pack into the bush, he turned to face the hill-set shrine.
There was a large, steep staircase leading the way up to the shrine itself. There it stood, old and dusty, yet solid. Beside it was a small shed, which Inuyasha recognized as a well house. Across the way, at the very edge of the hill, stood an old and humongous tree, which Inuyasha recognized as the famed sacred tree, and the chief reason why the site was land marked. He started toward the door of the shrine, but was distracted by a noise. He couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but it sounded like something scratching on wood with nails or claws. He stood very still listening intently for the faintest hint of the sound. For a moment, nothing, and then…
Scratch, scratch
Inuyasha stared around for the source of the noise, his eyes coming to rest on the well house. Cautiously, he walked toward the door, and slid it open, stepping into the cool, dark, damp room. He wasn’t afraid, but his heart was pounding anyway, beating a rough tattoo against his Adam’s apple. Descending the stairs, he strained his ears for the sound again. A moment later, he was rewarded.
Scratch, scratch
The sound seemed to be coming from the other side of the well. Inuyasha moved around the wooden covered well slowly, stooping and picking up a piece of wood that seemed to have fallen from a beam in the ceiling. He rounded the bend slowly, slowly…
And there, one the ground, sitting next to the sealed well, sat a rather fat calico cat, licking the back of its paw without a care in the world. Feeling idiotic, Inuyasha dropped the wooden plank loudly to the ground, releasing a breath he hadn’t noticed taking or holding. The thud of the wood hitting dirt scared the cat, which arched its back in a hiss. Guiltily, Inuyasha knelt by the cat to calm it, lifting it into his arms. For a moment, the cat stayed, still and complacent, purring in the boys arms as he rubbed the bases of its pointy little ears.
“You scared me, stupid cat,” scolded Inuyasha, to no affect. The animal simply gazed innocently up at him as though it had no idea what he was talking about. Inuyasha continued to pet the cat until he heard it. The same noise again.
Scratch, scratch
It couldn’t be. The cat had been making that sound, he had been sure of it. But if it wasn’t the cat, then what else could it be?
Scratch, scratch. Scratch, scratch, scratch
Inuyasha turned slowly, swallowing hard, looking first at the ground for a second cat. There was none. Reluctantly, he raised his eye to the sealed well. There was a small light coming through the spaces in between the wooden slats. The light began to brighten slowly, and the calico hissed again and scratched Inuyasha in a bid for freedom. He dropped the cat unceremoniously, getting a yowl of distaste, but he didn’t care. He was standing transfixed, staring at the well as the light got brighter and brighter until it was like daylight within the small structure.
The scratching sound grew louder, until suddenly it stopped completely. For a moment all was silent, then a high pitched, keening laugh filled the air. It made Inuyasha’s skin erupt in goose bumps and grated at his mind like a knife on glass. Clapping his hands over his ears, he tried to block out the sound to no avail. The laughter became a piercing shriek, and the well’s cover exploded outward, showering the boy with bits of wood. He turned his face away from the wreckage of splinters, throwing an arm over his head to protect his eyes and face.
He didn’t see what happened next, but he felt it. Something very strong wrapped around his waist tightly, squeezing as though trying to crush the life out of him. He was lifted off the ground and pulled down something narrow, and damp that reeked of mold and rotten wood. The well.
Inuyasha braced himself for an impact with the well floor, but none came. Instead, his entire body was engulfed in tingles, like being gently electrocuted, but without pain. Heat rose around him, and though he could feel it, he did not burn. The laughing thing was still wrapped around his waist, despite his struggles against it. Twisting around, he lashed desperately out at it with his hand, not knowing what he was doing or why he was doing it. Something happened. He was too far away to have connected to the creature’s body, but yet he had somehow felt his hand make contact with the thing, which squealed, and loosened its grip.
The next thing he knew, Inuyasha was thrown hard onto the dirt floor of the well, where he lay panting, chest heaving as he drew the breaths he couldn’t while that…whatever it was had hold of him. He froze. The thing that had been squeezing him was still there. He could feel it, wrapped loosely around his chest. Pushing himself up onto his hands and knees, he looked down at his midsection, expecting to see a rope or binding of some sort.
He saw an arm. A pale, feminine arm was wrapped around him, with unnaturally elongated fingers that clutched his tee shirt. There was no body attached to the end of it, and no blood where it had been severed. Instead of a bone or sinew, the arm seemed to be composed of black gunk.
Inuyasha sat frozen for a minute, unable to register what he was seeing. It was the grossest thing he had ever seen in his life, and he really didn’t want it touching him anymore. As though switched on suddenly, Inuyasha cried out, jumping to his feet and flinging the arm as far as he could without gripping it. It smacked into the opposite wall of the well and fell to the ground where it lay motionless. The well, however, was only about five feet wide, and Inuyasha wanted to be a lot farther away from the thing then that.
There was a network of vines that he hadn’t noticed before lining the walls inside the well. He was just wondering if they would be able to support his weight were he to try and climb them when he heard a rustling behind him. Gulping, he turned to see that the arm and rolled onto its hand and was crawling toward him like some grotesque spider. Inuyasha jumped in shock…
And when he landed, it was on the grass outside the well. He was halfway through mentally inquiring the possibility of that, when he saw something was wrong. The well house was gone. There was not even a trace of its remains. No splintered wood or broken beams, no stairs, not even any difference in the ground height. That wasn’t the only thing missing. The shrine was absent from the scene as well. In fact, Inuyasha seemed to be standing in a field he had never seen before, more a clearing really, surrounded by a forest. The trees were fairly tall, but he could see the mountains beyond. What he could not see where buildings, sky scrapers, billboards, or planes. Not a car or even a road in sight. There was no sign of Tokyo at all. This was clearly not good. Inuyasha had no idea what happened to him. He backed up a few steps unconsciously, only to bump into the side of the well. Perhaps if he jumped back down the well, he would end up back at home. It was worth a shot. He turned and put one foot up on the edge, then froze. He had forgotten the arm. The spider-like limb was pacing the bottom of the well like a sentry, and the last thing he wanted to do was jump down and start fighting with the disembodied limb again.
With a sigh, he turned towards the forest and started walking in a random direction. After twenty minutes, Inuyasha’s already strained patience was wearing dangerously thin. He changed direction and headed back to the well, determined to get back home if he had to jump on the spider-hand thing and stomp the little bastard to death. He never got that far. On his retreat, he noticed something he had missed before. There, a bit past the well, was the sacred tree, the same one he had been seeing every time he looked out his bedroom window since he was five. It seemed to be the only thing that was unchanged in the area. He walked trancelike up to the base, running his hand over the trunk in familiarity.
“You there, what do you think you are doing?” cried a voice behind him. He jumped and spun around, his back pressed firmly to the tree trunk.
“Wha…what?” stammered Inuyasha in response.
“I asked what you think you are doing,” repeated the voice. It belonged, he saw, to a young woman, dressed in what he vaguely recognized as feudal style clothing of a priest or priestess. She was probably no older than him, and had long black hair, though shorter than his own, and dark, brown eyes that were alight with suspicion. Inuyasha would have found her quite pretty if not for two things. Firstly, she had a group of at least ten men behind her, many carrying short swords, knives, ropes, or projectile weapons. Secondly, the girl had a bow pointed at him, with an arrow cocked and trained directly at his heart.
“I’m not doing anything. I was just…” But what he was just doing didn’t seem to interest the girl. At any rate, she never found out, as he had, without realizing, taken a step towards her in that moment, and before he knew what had hit him, she had shifted her aim, and let loose an arrow.
There was a loud thud of wood on wood, and a searing pain in his left shoulder. The girls arrow had struck his shoulder high up, mostly getting shirt, but cutting also through the flesh of his collar bone a little to close to his throat for comfort.
“Hey!” he shouted angrily, the searing pain in his shoulder adding to his already mounting aggravation with wherever he had ended up. “What the hell is wrong with you?! You could have killed me!” he reached to pull out the arrow, only to have it zap his hand as he tried with what may have been electricity. The wound started to ache worse and worse by the second.
“And if you don’t tell me what I want to know, I still might,” the girl replied, pulling another arrow out and readying it too. “Tell me why you have come here. What are you looking for?”
“Look,” said Inuyasha hotly. “I don’t know what you want from me, or who the hell you are, or who you think you are going around shooting people with arrows like that, and I really honestly don’t give a crap. All I want is to get home and forget this ever happened.”
“Where is this home you speak of?” asked the girl, bow still pointing at his chest, the string creaking audibly as though hungry for his blood.
“Stop pointing that thing at me and maybe I’ll tell ya.”
“Tell me and maybe I’ll stop pointing this thing at you,” she snapped back, tightening the string and preparing to fire.
“I’m from Tokyo, ok, you crazy wench?”
The girl looked puzzled. “Tokyo? Where is this Tokyo? I’ve never heard of such a place.”
“Its in Japan,” Inuyasha answered. “Actually I think it’s supposed to be right here, but it seems to have disappeared. I don’t know how this happened. How can an entire city just disappear? And where is the shrine? And where is my house? And what the hell is going on here?”
“Lady Priestess,” said one of the men, speaking for the first time. He was a short, balding man wielding a short blade and was staring at Inuyasha as though he’d prefer to see him sautéed and served with butter then standing pinned to a tree. “Clearly the boy is mad. He may be a danger. I believe we should simply kill him and dispose of the body.’
“What?!” shouted Inuyasha, stricken.
“We aren’t killing anyone, Matomi, so please relax.”
“But, my Lady Priestess…” the man, Matomi, argued.
“I have already given my answer to you,” Said the girl, kindly but firmly. “Kanichi, Suri, please come and help me with him,” she added, apparently speaking to the man with rope and another, younger man who appeared to be unarmed.
The three, the priestess, Kanichi, and Suri, approached Inuyasha with extreme caution, looking more like they were trying to corner a wounded animal then going to peel a pissed off teenager from a tree.
Inuyasha tensed as the came up to him, not trusting a single one of them in the slightest.
“Kanichi, bind his hands, please,” the priestess girl ordered, and the man with the rope came forward. Without being asked, the man called Suri came to help, pulling Inuyasha’s hands roughly in front of him and holding them in place, Inuyasha hissing through his teeth as they did so from the strain on his injured shoulder, which was worsening still it seemed.
“What is your name,” the girl asked him, eyes narrowed in suspicion. He felt like rolling his own. As if he was a danger injured, tied, and stuck to a tree.
“I’m Inuyasha,” he answered defiantly.
“Interesting name. Tell me, Inuyasha, are you by any chance…a demon?”
Inuyasha stared at her completely nonplussed. Either this was some big, tasteless joke, or he had just fallen into a nest of serious crazies.
“I don’t think so,” he answered sarcastically. “Tell me, priestess, are you by any chance a nut job?”
The man, Kanichi, slapped him hard across the face. “How dare you talk to Lady Kagome like that, you worthless gutter scum. I oughta gut you for your tongue. Or perhaps I should just cut it out,” he considered, pulling a long blade that had been hidden inside his kimono into the open and holding very close to Inuyasha’s face. Inuyasha didn’t so much as flinch, meeting the man's glare with equal vehemence.
“Kanichi, that is enough!” Kagome said moving forward, placing a hand on the man’s arm.
“But Lady, during this dangerous time...”
“Just because the states are warring, Kanichi, doesn’t mean it is acceptable for us all to fight each other. He has done nothing wrong that we know of, and we won’t punish an innocent man.”
Kanichi looked displeased by these terms, but lowered his weapon nonetheless. Inuyasha did not miss the relief that flooded Kagome’s eyes for a moment. It was not reassuring.
“You two go wait with the others at the base of the roots,” she addressed both Kanichi and Suri. “I need to remove the spell from this arrow if we want to get him off this tree. Then we will take him to Lady Kaede. She will know if he is a threat or not, and how to deal with him.”
Kanichi didn’t look happy about this, whereas Suri scurried away immediately looking relieved to be out of the line of fire. Kanichi followed him, shooting resentful looks back at Kagome, who ignored him, turning her attention to the arrow that now felt like it was searing the flesh from Inuyasha’s shoulder. He had his teeth bared like fangs, but his mouth closed over them so as to avoid the people in the weird place noticing that they just happened to be abnormally long. The pain was intense. It was all he could do to keep from making any noise or crying out.
The girl, Kagome, was muttering a strange sounding mantra under her breath, holding the shaft of her arrow, careful not to shift or turn it. After a moment, the whole thing glowed pink, and the glow spread the Inuyasha’s shoulder. The severe burning stopped, as though he had been given a magical anesthetic, fading to a dull pain that was uncomfortable but bearable, and Inuyasha loosened his bite before his teeth cracked under its force.
Kagome tightened her grip on the shaft of the arrow, and braced her other hand against the tree. Before Inuyasha had time to dread what was coming next, she said “This is going to hurt,” as if commenting on the weather, and tugged the arrow as hard as she could.
Inuyasha could feel every movement as the barbed tip of the arrow was pulled back through the wound, ripping any unharmed flesh it came in contact with. Inuyasha bit down hard on his lip to keep himself quiet, tasting blood as it spilled over his lips from the cut he had made with his sharp teeth, but no sound escaped him.
He could feel as his knees begged to buckle, but he refused to allow it. Swaying slightly, he allowed Kagome to lead him, by the ropes, back over to the many armed men, and the group and their disgruntled prisoner set off for the village.
Inuyasha had no idea what was going on. He didn’t know where he was, or even when he was. Crazy as that thought sounded, even to him, he had difficulty dismissing it. Either way, he could tell that something was definitely off.
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This story kinda hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m still ironing out some details… ok a lot of details, but I just thought that a little role reversal, walk a mile in another’s shoes could be fun. I now the characters are a little bit different, but this is an AU, one that assumes the characters have led totally different lives than those of the anime/manga characters. It stands to reason that they’d be somewhat different.
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