"It's not exactly magic? It's - actually it harnesses tiny bits of lightning and then uses them to do math, and then it turns the math into pictures and sounds, I think, which I realize sounds very magic, but it's actually just something that people figured out how to make in the future, like clothing or swords, except it's more complicated and it takes more people. I figured the lightning would have melted the inside, too, but I guess it must not have."

" - anyway, I think that's everything. I'm not sure what happened to my bow, but I guess we can probably find another one somewhere."

(Shippo will hop up on Kagome's makeshift bag and hope that nobody objects to this.)

"Probably." He'll go find some warlord and beat his goons up, he's got a few days free.

Hup! Let's go!

All right!

She is going to be paying attention to how much he seems to be slowed down, right now. He keeps saying he's fine, but he always says that, and he lost a lot of blood and took a lot of hits during the fight. If it looks like he needs to stop sooner than usual, today, she's prepared to tell him that she'd like to stop for her own sake, so that she can rest, even though riding on Inuyasha's back is actually pretty restful.

As far as her own injuries go - in a few hours she's going to have some very ugly bruising, but the pain meds she brought help a lot with the headache and with everything else, so she figures she got off pretty lucky in the end.

He does, actually, seem to be slowed down a little, however much he's hiding it; he's trying to avoid touching things with his burnt hands and arms, and breathes a little heavier than he normally does.

But he heals really fast. And he doesn't actually seem to have trouble carrying Kagome and Shippo and all her stuff, either.

Well, if he doesn't seem to be having too much difficulty, she doesn't think she actually needs for them stop. Probably the best thing is to get to the well as quickly as possible so that she can get everybody bandages and food and a comfortable place to sleep off, uh, everything that just happened.

It's night, by the time they make it back to Kaede's village.

"Do you want to come across?" she asks Inuyasha. "We can feed you, at least."

"Nah, I've got stuff to do." Warlords to mug! Demons to interrogate! Ranged attacks that don't rely on his own blood to try to invent!

"...all right, if you're sure. You don't need to eat more after a battle like that?"

"I figured I'd go roast a pig."

"All right then. I'll be back in a few days, okay? I'm not sure how many."

"Sure, sure. Don't take too long, we've got more jewel shards to find!"

"Where are you going?"

"Oh!" Right, she was going to not tell people about the well? But Shippo's hurt, and helped to save them both, and she doesn't think that he has anywhere to go. "Here, I'll show you."

She scoops him up and jumps into the well. ...and Shippo disappears as soon as she hits the bottom.

Shippo falls to the bottom of the well.

"Hey! She just disappeared!"

"Yeah, she does that sometimes."

He clambers back up the side of the well. 

"Where did she go?"

"To the future! It's where she's from."

"Oh." Shippo's never heard of that, but there are a lot of things that Shippo's never heard of. "...but she'll come back soon?"

"In a few days."

"Oh."

Actually, she's coming back right now.

"Sorry, Shippo! It doesn't always take people across, I'm not sure why. I got some food and some bandaids, anyway." She pokes her head out of the well. "Inuyasha, can you watch him while I'm getting supplies, or do we need to figure something else out?"

"Psshh, is he a demon or isn't he? He can take care of himself."

"He's a little kid, and his parents just died. Someone's got to look after him."

"Hey, is that so, Shippo?"

Shippo considers his options. He really doesn't want to be alone, but Inuyasha was hitting him earlier.

"Yeah. I'm a defenseless orphan. But I wanna stay with Kagome."