Then they can provide food! (Rice and small amounts of vegetables, of the sort easy to grow alongside rice.)

Kaede will give her a funny look while she eats, though. Possibly this is just the time-traveler thing?

Well, the entire situation is pretty weird. She would probably stare, too.

Eventually she'll need to figure out how to take care of herself and not just expect to impose on everyone around her forever. She's still figuring out how to ask about that. Maybe they'll throw her a lifeline there once it's clearer that she doesn't have anywhere to go back to.

"You look like my sister used to," Kaede says abruptly.

Best to get it over with. If she's going to turn into a monster, she should turn into a monster.

- oh is she supposed to have an answer to that? Was that not just a friendly observation?

"I do?"

Kaede nods. "She died a long time ago."

"Oh. ...I'm sorry."

And at some point this girl will - 

No, instead the GIANT CENTIPEDE MONSTER is back for Round Two! She's announcing her arrival by punting a horse through the wall of the building, the horse apparently having been left here.

"Give me the JEWEL!" she snarls.

(Things she is apparently immune to include spears, arrows, and accidentally running into buildings. The buildings get the worst of it.)

Ack! 

She doesn't have a jewel! Why does the centipede think she does! She said something about that before, right, something about the jewel of four souls. She knows that phrase, now that she thinks about it again. Her grandfather was talking about a jewel of four souls when he showed her the keychains that they were going to sell to tourists, yesterday, but if he said anything remotely useful about it, she doesn't remember.

She doesn't still have one of those plastic replicas on her, does she? That can't be it, can it?

She'll have to think about this while she runs. The centipede is clearly after her, not any of these other people. If none of them can fight it, then she's putting everyone else in danger for no reason by being here, and she needs to get out of the village as quickly as possible. 

She runs. 

Oh, it is absolutely after her. It's got no real interest in anyone else! "I can smell it on you, priestess!"

HOW COULD SHE POSSIBLY BE SO STUPID -

"You brought the shikon jewel here???" No wonder Mistress Centipede is after - 

- wait how did she get - 

- oh no -

She is, however, Insufficiently Fast for Kagome not to be able to get away very quickly.

At this point, it's late enough that it's pretty dark everywhere, barring the giant mysterious glowing light back in the forest where she came from.

Is this a positive or a negative, when it comes to determining a running direction?

Why is there a giant mysterious glowing light!!

The villagers can't do anything to it, and it's much, much faster than Kagome is, so she won't be able to get very far. She doesn't know what's in the forest, right now, but the last time there was a mysterious glowing light, it was pretty bad for the centipede, so -

Into the forest! Back towards the tree, so that she can find the well, because if there's nothing actually useful in here then the only thing that even might work is trying to go through the well again, even though that'll almost certainly fail -

And Mistress Centipede completely breaks off fighting the villagers (who will, indeed, shoot a last few futile arrows) before chasing Kagome!

"Give me back the Jewel of Four Souls!"

She's really very insistent! She has a little trouble maneuvering between the houses and trees without knocking them down, but that does not stop her from picking up speed exceedingly quickly, on the flat!

"I don't have it!" she yells, patting herself down to make sure she also doesn't have anything resembling it. She doesn't seem to. Nothing to throw to the centipede, then, and hope that it's somehow satisfied. 

She darts into the forest, wincing at the sound of things crashing behind her. There had better be something else in here, because her chances of making all the way to the well are looking like slim to none, from here, and she has no idea how to trigger whatever she did last time.

"Someone!" she screams, as loudly as she can. "Anyone! Help!"

Mistress Centipede is not going to believe this woman's LIES. Not when she could, instead, eat her.

There is, as it happens, something else in here. The glow seems to come from the great sacred tree, almost completely... or, in part, from the arrow in it.

Or, perhaps, from the young man whose chest the arrow is embedded in.

"Why are you toying with her, Kikyo?"

His smile is vicious. "Isn't Mistress Centipede beneath you?"

"I'm not toying with anyone! I don't have it!" 

It does not actually occur to her that he might be suggesting that she fight the thing, instead of just giving it the jewel she doesn't have. Not that she's at all sure how he knows about this supposed jewel, either.

"You're letting her think she has a chance. I'd say that's toying with someone. Seems to be a specialty of yours, isn't it?"

This conversation isn't making any sense. She'd like to be able to figure out what pieces she's missing, but she doesn't exactly have a lot of time to spare for a drawn-out negotiation, and she's barely holding it together anyway. She can't even keep the anger and fear out of her voice. "I have no idea what you're talking about!"

A tree crashes to the ground behind her. There's no time.

"Can you fight it?" she demands.

Why does Kikyo even need to - 

He sniffs - 

"You aren't Kikyo, are you?" He grins, showing fangs. "Girl, I can fight anything."

That seems kind of doubtful, but she's loving the confidence right now. Even if he is... also a monster? She's kind of not buying the saying about the devil you know, right now. Probably whoever coined it was dealing with a less immediately destructive devil.

"I'm not Kikyo," she confirms. "And if you want to know anything else about it, you'll need to kill the thing that's after me, or I won't be around to have any more of this conversation."

"Fine with me. Now just pull -