"About this tall, Officer," Souta said hoarsely, holding his hand at thigh level. "She has long, white hair, and I mean long. She was wearing the same clothes she always wears: beautiful, red robes. Her eyes are...a very unusual shade of hazel. Yes...they look almost golden. Her name is InuYami."

"Where did you last see her, and who was she with?" the officer asked, scribbling down Souta's description.

"At the park...with her younger brother, Tsugaru."

"And he's missing as well?"

"Yes, sir."

The sergeant flipped the piece of paper with InuYami's description over and set his pen down on a new page. "Tell me about him."

"Well...he's short for his age. Six years old. InuYami is nine. Tsugaru is probably about three-nine, maybe three-nine-and-a-half. He's got short black hair, and his eyes are very light brown. He looks so much like my older sister...Where was...Oh. Yes. He was wearing blue shorts and a blue shirt. If their parents weren't kidding, they're definitely together."

The sergeant nodded and closed his book. "We'll call you if we find anything out," he promised. "In the mean time, you and your mother take it easy for a while...settle down and relax. Don't worry. They're young children and they've only been missing for an hour. They can't have gone far." With that, he left.

Souta sat down hard. "Maybe if they were human," he muttered.

;-:-;-:-;

InuYami padded along the dark street. Tsugaru poked his head up from her mane of white hair. "Yami...I'm scared," he whispered. "I wanna go back with Grandma and Uncle Souta."

"Me too, Tsuga," InuYami murmured. "But you know what? We're lost. We're not gonna find them." She sat down on the street corner with a sigh. "I say we sit here and wait for them to find us. But it might be a while, so we have to stay strong. Okay? From now on, if we find any food, we save it. At least, a little bit...'cause we don't know how long it'll take for them to find where we are."

"Who's lookin' fer you?" a raspy voice asked. InuYami turned to see an old-looking man sitting across the street from them. He had something clenched in his right hand, and appeared to be very unsteady. Being the naive child that she was, InuYami decided that he could help her out, and crossed the dimly lit street with Tsugaru on her back.

"Excuse me, sir, but do you know where Higurashi Shrine is?" the youkai asked politely. The drunk wrapped his free hand firmly around the street lamp. He leaned close, and InuYami flinched away from the harsh smell of alcohol.

"Y'got dog ears," he muttered, slurring his words. "Lookit 'em. All white 'n' furry. Don'cha jus' wanna touch 'em?" He stretched out two fingers to touch InuYami. The youkai allowed him to stroke her white ears. Hey, if she made him happy, maybe he would help her. It was always worth a shot.

"Do you know which way the Shrine is?" she asked again. The drunk leaned closer.

"Y'know, puppy-girl, yer kinda cute. How's-a 'bout you 'n' me find a nice, quiet alley an'...y'know..." He made a few gestures. InuYami, still with Tsugaru clinging to her back like a baby monkey, backed away.

"I...don't quite understand..."

The drunk man lunged forward suddenly, hands grasping for the youkai child's robes. InuYami reacted quickly, kicking his hand away and leaping onto the nearest fence. Tsugaru screamed fearfully. InuYami clasped a hand over his mouth and ran, holding him in front of her like a baby. She raced along the length of the fence, the drunk shouting curses after her. After running for nearly a mile without stopping, InuYami stumbled and fell, toppling off the edge of the fence.

Thankfully, she fell on the side with the grass rather than the pavement. The fall knocked her mind blank. Tsugaru gripped in unconscious sister's hand tightly, whimpering. He didn't know that the drunk was long since left behind. After seeing how fast InuYami could run, even his cloudy mind knew better than to try and catch up with her. The shadows gathered around the hanyou, laughing evilly, sneering at him. He shook his sister's shoulder.

"Yami...wake up! I'm scared!"

InuYami groaned softly and opened one golden eye. She sat up slowly, rubbing the back of her head. "Ts...Tsuga. Where are we?" The youkai girl stood up shakily, leaning on her brother for support. "Where's everyone?" She slumped back down to the ground, still dizzy from her recent fall. She moaned. Tsugaru did the only thing he could: wrap her into a tight hug and offer what little comfort he could. They stayed there, in the darkness behind the fence, locked together.

After a while, InuYami's mind began to clear, and she regained her strength. She was about to tell Tsugaru to get back on her back when bright lights flashed around them, blue and red. A shrill shriek rent the air, ripping through the youkai's sensitive ears. To two small children who had never heard a police siren before, it sounded like someone being murdered. InuYami removed the upper portion of her robe. "Hide under here with me," she hissed. Tsugaru hurried to obey. Shivering with fear, the two listened to the unfamiliar sounds of the city, their minds creating fearful images to go along with the sounds and smells.

"Tsugaru! InuYami!" a voice called. InuYami shivered. It was the spirit of the person who had just been killed. It had seen the two of them run, and was asking for them. It wanted to know why they had fled instead of helped. Now it was dead, a spirit, and was calling for the two demons to pay for leaving it to die alone. She put her arm around Tsugaru's shoulders. Please...don't hurt us, she pleaded mentally. We're just lost and scared...we don't know where we are or how to get home! Forgive us!

The screaming siren started up again, fading slowly into the distance. When the world was quiet again, InuYami sat up, replacing her robe around her upper body. Tears were running down Tsugaru's cheeks. "InuYami, I wanna go home," he whispered. "Not just back with Grandma and Uncle Souta. Home home. Back to where the air doesn't stink, and it's peaceful and quiet at night. I wanna see Ms. Sango, and Mr. Miroku, and Kilala, and Shippou...I wanna go home!"

InuYami let him rave and cry. She didn't bother telling him to stop being a baby. If they were lost back at home, it wouldn't have been a problem. Back in feudal Japan, the air was clear enough that InuYami could track her father down from a distance of nearly thirty miles. But here...she could barely even smell where she and Tsugaru had been. Too many odors entered her nostrils, confusing her sense of smell. She shook her head hopelessly. They were lost in the city of Tokyo, lost by not only miles, but by thousands of years.

"Come on, Tsugaru," she ordered. "Hop on my back. It's dark enough that no one will see us if we jump high like Dad does."

Tsugaru sniffled softly. "C...Can you jump like him?" he asked.

"I can try." InuYami crouched down, waiting until she felt Tsugaru wrap his arms around her neck and grab his fist securely. Then she shot into the air, soaring an easy ten feet, straight up. Tsugaru gave a muted whimper of excitement. InuYami smiled as the wind roared in her soft, white ears. The rush of air made her feel much better, ridding her of the achy feeling in the back of her head. She touched down on the roof of a nearby building to rest, tired out by the sudden flurries of activity that had taken place in only the past few hours.

"We gotta stop for a while," she panted. "I can't breathe...It's like this air is heavy...it's so thick..." She leaned back against the side of the apartment building. Tsugaru sat down beside her. InuYami was scared. Why couldn't she breathe? She had never had problems like this back home. She could run for hours on end and not be the slightest bit out of breath. But now...She coughed. Air pollution was slowly sapping her breath. Tsugaru had a flash of insight.

"Yami! Breathe through your robes!" he said, jumping up and down. "Don't breathe the air right in. Breathe through something first."

Shakily, the youkai lifted her robe-sleeve to her nose and sucked down air through the fabric. The filter did some good, and eased the stress her panting had placed on her lungs. Soon she could breathe again. "Tsuga..." she rasped. "I don't think we can survive here..."

"Hey! Get off the roof, ya crazy teenagers!" an angry voice snapped. Startled, InuYami grabbed her brother and leapt down from the roof, landing neatly in the branches of a young tree. She felt a brief pang of longing for the ancient, sturdy tree outside their house in feudal Japan. She stifled a wave of tears at the thought of her home. Will we ever see it again?

"InuYami...I changed my mind," whispered Tsugaru nervously. "I don't care if it's back to be with Grandma and Uncle Souta. I want to be anywhere but here."

"Me too...but I don't know how we're going to get back." InuYami's golden gaze shifted from the silhouette in the second-story window to the square of light cast onto the stubby grass of the lawn. She dug her claws into the branch, biting her lip hard.

"Why don't we ask someone?" the hanyou asked innocently. InuYami sighed.

"Look at me, Tsuga," she whispered. "You look human. You have some demon blood, but not enough to change your appearance. Me, on the other hand, I have no human blood to speak of...I can't possibly look human. I'm a freak here, Tsuga. A freak." Angry tears spilled down her cheeks. "No one would help me. I look like some witchcraft gone horribly wrong! And I can't change to make it any better."

"You can turn into a dog," Tsugaru pointed out.

"No...I am a dog. That form you saw...that's what I really am." InuYami didn't dare look her brother in the eyes. "What you see now...that's not how I really look. I bet I was born looking like a dog, and then turned into what I am now."

Tsugaru was silent for a few minutes, letting the realization sink in, InuYami guessed. Finally, he wrapped his arms around her. "I don't care if you're a big, fluffy doggy or a pretty, fun girl. You're my sister. You can't change that just by turning into something else."

InuYami cuddled her brother close. "I'm glad I'm here with you," she whispered. Then, dropping down, she tried to duplicate a feat. Tsugaru scratched behind his ear.

"What'cha doing?" he asked.

"I'm trying to change into my true form," was the muttered reply. "You can walk around the city with me, and I'll pass for your pet dog."

"But Yami, you didn't look like a normal dog."

InuYami's hope deflated instantly. She sighed and slumped down against the tree. "You're right, Tsuga...but I really wish you weren't."

;-:-;-:-;

"What did they say, Souta? Have they found them?"

"No, Mama, but they have a lead."

"What? What did they find?"

"The sergeant says he found a drunk man who claimed to have seen a white-haired girl in red robes, with a blue-clothed boy on her back. What makes it even more interesting is that the drunk also claimed that she had two white, fuzzy dog ears. Of course, the sergeant brushed the ears off as a drunken hallucination, but we know better."

"So they may be close to finding them?"

"They may be. But if he saw her ears, then InuYami wasn't wearing the hat, and she's likely trying to hide from anyone who comes near her. I told her that if she lost her hat, no one could see her, and she should come and find me."

"Souta...do you think they'll find those two before Kagome and InuYasha get back?"

"I hope so, Mama...I hope so..."

;-:-;-:-;

The morning came, cool and crisp, with slight traces of fog in the air. InuYami nudged Tsugaru. The hanyou awoke, blinking his eyes sleepily. "Wha' time's it?" he mumbled. InuYami scanned the horizon carefully, sketching a few figures in the air with her claws. She sat back down.

"Little after six," she replied.

Tsugaru groaned and curled back into a warm ball under his sister's robe. InuYami, feeling stiff and sore and very cold, quickly joined him. She snuggled up beside him. "I hurt everywhere," she moaned. "How about you?"

"Everywhere and even places where nothing is," was the mumbled reply. InuYami understood what he meant. In the darkness below the red robe, she felt her knee. The injury had bled on and off during the night, staining the grass reddish-brown. She knew Tsugaru would have the marks of his bully fights all over him. Her stomach snarled hungrily.

Demon children, both hungrier than they could ever recall being and battered from un-belonging, curled up together to sleep, hoping that when they next awoke, things would be looking better for them.

A/N: All right, here's where I need help from you. I need suggestions of misfortunate (and non-lethal) things that can happen over the course of the days awaiting until InuYasha and Kagome return. Yes, this means you might have to wait for the next chapter. XD