InuYasha Fan Fiction / Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ In Pursuit of the Green Dragon ❯ Dinner and Dragons ( Chapter 4 )

Tokyo, 1997

It was late, nearly suppertime when Higurashi Kagome put down her pencil and stretched, the sound of her shoulders popping startlingly loud in the empty classroom. Finally done with the last of her make-up tests!

This one had been Japanese history, which had become her best subject. And no surprise, since she spent every weekend--and a lot of weekdays, too--time-traveling to the Sengoku-jidai, the Warring States Era, where she and her friends were engaged in a desperate quest to gather the shards of the shattered Shikon no Tama.

She handed her test paper to her teacher, who had been grading papers at his desk, but who looked happy to be going home, too. Then, she gathered up her school bag and hurried outside, hoping Inuyasha would be there to meet her.

It had become routine for him to come fetch every Friday afternoon and escort her through the time-slip to the Sengoku-jidai. He also carried her backpack for her, heavy with camping supplies and homework.

She crossed the now-deserted campus, the late afternoon sun casting the schoolyard in shade, second-guessing herself on some of her test answers. Now, she knew for a fact that Oda Nobunaga had allied himself with Oda Nobumitsu, but was that before or after the assassination of Oda Nobutomo in Kiyosu Castle?

Even having met some of the Oda family, she had a hard time keeping all of those Nobu- names straight.

Ah, well, too late now, Kagome told herself.

She saw a sudden flash of red as Inuyasha dropped lightly to the ground from where he had been sitting in one of the schoolyard trees. As usual when walking around in her era, his distinctive dog-ears were hidden by a bandanna tied around his head.

"Oi, Kagome," he greeted her, in his slightly husky voice.

"Inuyasha, I'm sorry I'm late--" she began, hoping to stave off his annoyance, but he didn't seem annoyed.

"Eh, your mother," and he used an old-fashioned, very respectful term to refer to Mama, "said you had to take more of those test-things. So, she fed me some onigiri, and your grandfather made me clean out the storage shed. I didn't break anything this time," he said, proudly. "But I did find a couple of dragon scales tucked away in a box--I could smell them 'cause dragons stink, don'tcha know, and the old coot got really, really excited."

"I'm sure I'll hear all about it when I get home," Kagome said, with a sigh. She loved her grandfather, but he did get excited by the oddest things. She still remembered the dried kappa paw he had given her for her fifteenth birthday.

Inuyasha turned and presented his back to her. "Hop on--I don't want to miss dinner. Your mother's making that chicken dish I really like."

"Too bad it's not curry," Kagome teased him, as she felt his clawed, calloused hands under her thighs, boosting her up onto his back.

"Very funny," he snorted. "I don't understand how you can eat food that burns your mouth like that."

Holding her securely piggyback, he jumped to the top of the wall surrounding the schoolyard as if they were both weightless, balanced there for a second, then started a bounding run that ate up city blocks in seconds.

"Speaking of dragons," Inuyasha said, as he touched down lightly on the roof of the train station, then took off again. "Sango said she's heard rumors of a powerful dragon on the loose. And he's acting weird, doing stuff like demanding that the local peasants pay taxes to him."

"Do you think he might have gotten hold of a Jewel shard?" Kagome asked, referring to the powerful fragments of the shattered Shikon no Tama, the Jewel of Four Souls.

"Maybe. Or maybe he's just an asshole--most dragons are," Inuyasha said over his shoulder. "You know, I am the manifestation of the power of the earth, blah, blah, blah. The only thing dragons like to do more than destroy shit is to talk about destroying shit and how they're divinely empowered to destroy shit, and stuff like that. Like I said, assholes. Boring assholes. They never shut up."

Kagome giggled this, turning her face into Inuyasha's neck as he easily leapt from one rooftop to the next, crossing high above busy streets. She felt him tremble as her lips brushed against warm skin above his jacket collar by accident, and he stumbled on his next step.

"Kagome, dammit, stop moving around," he grumbled, but without rancor. "You're throwin' off my balance."

"Sorry," she said, pulling back.

But her gaze returned to the smooth, tanned skin of his nape as his silver hair blew up, and she found herself tempted to lean forward again, and accidentally-on-purpose repeat the almost-kiss.

But, doing that on purpose...that would be like kissing him, wouldn't it? she wondered. And she wasn't even sure if he wanted to be kissed by her, though she had spent many hours staring out her classroom window, wondering what it would be like to kiss him, really kiss him.

With a sigh, she let her head rest against his shoulder, his long hair tickling her cheek, and her nose filled with the slightly musky scent of his fire-rat jacket.

He shifted a little to settle her more comfortably against him. "Tired, Kagome?" he asked, sympathetically.

"A little," she murmured, letting her eyelids droop. She liked resting like this, with her arms and legs around him, feeling his muscles move against her. He was so strong... "I had to take three tests after classes ended: geometry, English, and history. I hope I passed them--I wonder what will happen if I really do flunk out of school." she said, more to herself than anything.

But he heard her with those supernaturally keen ears of his. "Don't worry. If you 'flunk out,' I'll take care of you. I wanna be with you forever, Kagome."

Does he mean...? Her fingers tightened on the rough fabric of his fire-rat as she willed herself not to raise her hopes too high. This wasn't the first time he had mentioned wanting to stay with her forever, and she always wondered if he was saying it because she was his first real friend, or whether he meant something more.

"I want to be with you, too, Inuyasha," she told him.

And it was true. She didn't know what would happen after their quest ended. Would they finally win against Naraku and gain possession of all the fragments of the shattered Shikon no Tama? Would the Bone-eater's Well that served as a bridge between Inuyasha's era and hers remain open? What if they were separated forever?

She didn't want to think about it. So she closed her eyes, snuggled closer, and let herself doze a little as Inuyasha carried her home to her family's shrine.

oo0oo

After supper, Jii-chan, predictably, started talking about dragons. Kagome's younger brother Souta had been bouncing eagerly in his chair, torn between his excitement at Inuyasha's visit, and his eagerness to hear all about the dragon tamed by his namesake great-uncle.

Mama had made fried chicken especially for Inuyasha, and further yielding to her soft spot for him, she had gone shopping for a selection of pickles to serve as side-dishes. He gobbled everything in front of him with gusto, especially the brightly-colored pickles piled high in mounds of yellow and fuschia.

At least he was using chopsticks, instead of his hands. Kagome saw Mama smile fondly down at him as she rose to refill his plate with a third helping of chicken and a generous scoop of rice.

Despite his obvious excitement over Inuyasha's discovery, Jii-chan managed to restrain himself until everyone had finished eating.

As Mama and Kagome cleared away the plates, Jii-chan hurried out of the kitchen, returning with a large lacquered box. Placing it on the kitchen table, he opened the box and scooped out the dragon scales.

Kagome took one, ignoring Inuyasha's ostentatiously-wrinkled nose.She couldn't smell anything, so it was just too bad for him.

The scale was an iridescent celadon-green color, larger than her hand, and slightly curved, as light and delicate as eggshell porcelain.

"Amazing," she breathed. "Great-Uncle Souta really tamed a dragon?"

"Thing is," Inuyasha said, snatching the scale from Kagome, and tapping it with one clawed finger. It gave a faint musical chime, like a crystal wine glass. "I've never seen a dragon with wimpy scales like this. I'd have a hard time even scratching most dragons with Tetsusaiga--" he jerked his chin at the battered-looking katana leaning against the nearest wall, and Kagome found herself remembering his desperate fight against Ryuukoutsei. "--but I could crush this thing to powder with just my bare hands."

His fingers began to tighten around the scale, as if demonstrating his point, and Kagome grabbed his wrist as Jii-chan gave a wordless yell of protest. :"Inuyasha, don't!"

He froze, and opened his fingers. "I wasn't gonna--" he grumbled, as Jii-chan sagged in relief.

Kagome extracted the dragon scale and handed it back to Jii-chan, who cradled it protectively, glaring at Inuyasha.

He wrinkled his nose and shook out his fingers. "I'm going to go wash my hands," he announced. "They stink of dragon. Really wimpy dragon."

"Perhaps it was just a baby," Mama ventured. "Which is why Uncle Souta was able to tame it."

"Nah," scoffed Inuyasha. "Dragons are hatched fully-armored and mean as anything. The only thing they do as they grow up is get bigger."

Jii-chan sat up proudly and stuck out his chest. "My older brother Souta was a powerful priest. He probably bound that dragon with ease, using the family's special charms, which have been handed down for four hundred years--"

"I guess they worked better than the crappy charms you use," muttered Inuyasha, clearly still resentful about Jii-chan's feeble attempt to exorcise him at their first meeting.

"Shh," Kagome elbowed him in the ribs. "I want to hear this." She raised her voice, interrupting her grandfather's soliloquy on the history of the Higurashi Shrine's paper charms. "How did Great-uncle Souta get hold of a dragon?"

"Well, it was before the Great Kanto earthquake, and before the Second World War. I don't remember much, since I was very young, and Souta-nii-san didn't allow anyone except himself to visit the dragon…"

oo0oo

Later, when Kagome had finished packing for her expedition to the Sengoku-jidai, and they were balanced on the rim of the Bone-eater's Well, ready to jump down and activate the portal to the past, she ventured one more question about dragons. "Are they all bad, Inuyasha? Couldn't Great-uncle Souta's dragon have been a nice dragon, one of the noble ones, like in the old stories?"

"Keh," Inuyasha snorted, winding an arm around her waist preparatory to leaping down into the well's depths. "Give it up, Kagome. Dragons are assholes, and that's the truth."

And with that, he scooped her up and jumped. Kagome saw the familiar glow of the time-slip portal activate as they floated down.

oo0oo

Historical and canon notes for this chapter:

Inuyasha's sword: The name has been transliterated both as Tessaiga and Tetsusaiga, based on some unclear printing in early editions of the manga that confused whether the "tsu" was a helper character or not. Both spellings are technically correct: a small "tsu" is a silent helper character in Japanese, indicating a double consonant (in this case "ss") A large "tsu" is pronounced. Viz, in its English subtitling for the anime series, chose to go with Tetsusaiga (pronounced "Tessaiga"), so I've decided to go with the "official" spelling, as well.