InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Parallel Dimensional Fairytale ❯ Wicked wenches, wounds, weaknesses and wine ( Chapter 5 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Inuyasha - A parallel dimensional fairytale

Chapter 5

Wicked wenches, wounds, weaknesses and wine.

Disclaimer: IF I owned Inuyasha, seriously, do you think I'd still have the time to write this shit? Or would even bother?

AN.: My first action scene ever... and something that a twisted mind (like mine) might consider WAFF... Oh and anyone who might feel offended by descriptions of alcohol abuse, back off! There might be some...

Kagome ran a while, her speed fueled by the fear of the girl chasing them, and Inuyasha, who was still trembling with slight giggles, let himself be pulled along.

She stopped under the tree where they had met a few hours before, leaning against it. Finding that even after that sprint she was only a little bit out of breath - Aww that girl's body sure rocked, though she wouldn't want to have to go working out every day to maintain it - she realized that she was still holding Inuyasha's hand and peevishly loosened her grip so his would slip out of hers. But to her surprise it stayed where it was, because, as she now saw, Inuyasha was holding her hand, too, rather firmly. She looked up from where they connected to search for a reason in his eyes, but he was not looking at her, he was glancing around frantically.

"Errr.."

She cleared her throat. His eyes locked with hers. She lowered hers to their hands and his followed. When he saw what she was so hesitatingly hinting at he blushed madly - to Kagome's surprise, he hadn't struck her as someone who'd blush that easily - and demonstrably ripped his hand out of hers, mumbling something incoherent, then stepped back and folded his arms.

" - confusing wenches, damn it anyway, that's not the point. We lost her!

"What?"

"The god damn girl who fucking has the shard, who else!?! While you were busy feeding that bitch the most unbelievable excuse I've heard in my life, that wench got away with the shard."

"Aww darn! What do we do now? I can't sense the shard anymore, you're right, we lost her."

Great! Now they were going to have to spent another school-day looking for the shard, because there was no way they'd find a girl they didn't even know the name of in a city as large as this one appeared to be, judging by the faint, constantly humming noise of metropolia that imbued the silence of the now empty school yard.

And Inuyasha didn't look overly pleased either, no surprise there, still, that was a shame, when for a moment it had seemed that he had somehow let his guard down, holding on to her hand, for a reason she yet had to figure out.

She'd meant what she said earlier, she wanted to get along with him, but that seemed impossible with a person who was as closed up and defensive they'd not allow anyone to even touch them. He didn't particularly seem to mind touching her, though, her hand at least, so maybe that meant that he was loosening up a little around her..? Kagome's wandering mind was caught and brought back to reality by the boy in question, who, after some brooding and moping finally seemed to be willing to effectively focus on the problem at hand and unfolded his arms to stuff them into his pockets.

“And what do you suggest we do now? Pretty much seems like we'll have to wait 'till tomorrow to get the shard. Not that I care, really, but I recall you fearing for our body-landlords scholar career.”

Kagome wretched her mind for any way of finding the girl with the shard today.

"Maybe if we just walk around in the city a little, we'll find that girl? I mean, I can sense that shard from quite a distance. And perhaps she's still around here somewhere or doesn't live that far from this school..." , she offered at last.

Inuyasha mustered her silently for a while, then agreed.

“Yeah that might work, it's only about three right now, so we have plenty of time... It's not like we have anything else to do anyway.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

„Sooooo...“

After they had walked around aimlessly for what Kagome felt must have been an eternity without even the slightest tingle at the back of her mind indicating that the shard was somewhere near she decided it was about time that she interrupted the thick silence they trotted in, side by side, in favour of any kind of conversation.

Inuyasha kept on staring ahead but countered with a careful:

„Sooooo...?“

„So, how's it you knew about the Shikon no Tama? From what Miroku told us it must have been banned from our dimension centuries ago, so what could you possibly have had to do with it?“

This time Inuyasha did turn to face her, but only to shoot her an irritated glare.

„That is just as much none of your business as my death is! Why would I tell you?“

„Well -.“

Kagome reminded him calmly in an attempt to hide her growing irritation at his stubborn refusal to even the score and tell her something about him when he already knew all sorts of things about her from that letter.. or that was what she chose to believe her motives were.

“- As we're going to face a shard of that Tama in the near future I'd say we should both know as much as possible about it so that we're prepared. And if you know something I don't then you'd better tell me, right?“

Hah! He could not deny that, especially not when he'd been the one who pointed out the probability of the attempt to gain the shard turning into a fight over it.

But he still hesitated and while he just kept silent Kagome felt her irritation slowly fading.

She wasn't even sure why, except maybe out of a general nosiness, she was so eager to learn more about that boy.

He seemed to have taken her silence as a sign that she had finally given up, because he started scanning the area again... yeah what about that, it wasn't like danger actually did lurk behind every corner, they had passed dozens of them and nothing had happened, but Inuyasha sure acted like it was. He seemed to be on the edge constantly, paranoid almost.

'I'm a godamn hanyou, fighting is the only thing I've ever done in my life.'

That sentence returned to her now, when he'd said it, she hadn't spared it a second thought, but now she realized that it offered a very reasonable explanation for his behaviour.

'... the only thing he's ever done... '

What kind of a life made you fight constantly? Was it just his nature to do so? He had quite a temper, maybe he just kept on provoking these kinds of situations? But as as she watched his rigid back, and his head twitching at every foreign noise, she couldn't quite believe that.

'Maybe he just had to... '

Maybe he'd just been, kind of, cast out his whole life, or followed, maybe he really had had to fight in order to defend himself.

Kagome sighed. Why was this bothering her so much? Why did he bother her so much?

Maybe, she managed to admit silently, she just wanted to get to know him. He was just... fascinating her in a way, She didn't really buy the whole apathetic asshole scheme, she couldn't help but wonder what was behind all this... she probably really wanted to get to know him. Whatever her motivation might have been.

'Well he's kinda cute, for instance. Remember the ears? Will you just shut up? '

Sometimes Kagome wondered whether it was actually normal to have voice's in one's head that were among other things taking delight in mocking her just by being brutally honest. It was hard enough to be honest to all the rest of the world already, and Kagome really liked to think of herself as a honest person, but she kind of wished she had at least herself to lie to sometimes. Whee...

Back to the point, though: So she did want to get to know him, whatever her motivation might have been... that didn't give her the right to keep on prying into his affairs, or however it might have seemed to him, but then again that knowledge didn't fell like it would actually keep her from doing it... and she was right, before she was able to stop herself that stupid proposal left her mouth.

„ How 'bout that, then? If you tell me I owe you a favour?“

'Really, girl, just how weird does that sound?'

„ A favour?“

The expression on his face that he had turned in her direction again was unreadable, but Kagome was convinced she'd seen a spark of interest flickering through his eyes.

„Yeah a favour. Like, I don't know...“

When she saw the beginning of a blush forming on his other wisely neutral face she felt her face heat simultaneously. She stopped to jump away from him.

„No not that kind of favour you hentai! What kind of a girl do you take me for!?!“

His hands shot up defensively.

„No! That's not what I-“

he started to defend himself when Kagome suddenly lifted a finger to his mouth to hush him and with a distant look in her eyes said:

„It's back again, I can feel it, faint but there.!“

Probably thankful for that distraction Inuyasha dropped his hands.

„Yeah? You sure? Where's it?“

„It's -“

Kagome closed her eyes to concentrate on the strange, tingling feeling that tickled the back of her ... mind, she couldn't think of way to describe her ability to sense the shards any better.

„It's... coming towards us!?!“

„What? Are you sure?“

She opened her eyes again to find Inuyasha frenetically scanning the area, again. They had been about to round a corner, stepping out of a narrow, empty street aligned by tall buildings onto a slightly broader but just as vacant one. The sun had begun to set and painted the brick walls ahead of them a soft Indian yellow and reflected from the windows of a few parked cars and the houses, dazzling her as she exited the smaller street to point out where she felt the shard approaching from.

„I think the girl with the shard is coming down that street, towards us.“

„Well then, let's go intercept her.“

Inuyasha immediately stomped ahead.

Kagome followed shortly after him, but despite her hasty departure her thoughts trailed behind a few minutes and she silently wondered whether he really had thought of that kind of a favour... because, even though she really had been rather appalled by the idea at first, she figured that had been more out of a reflex of modesty she'd been brought up to possess than any heart felt disgust. Somehow the thought that someone thought of her that way was not wholly unpleasant, especially if that someone happened to be able to evoke similar thoughts in her... She mentally slapped the back of her head.

'Quit that, stupid! Concentrate on the shard!'

But still, while she sped up to catch up with Inuyasha she found herself mustering the top of his head and sighing when she once again was reminded of the absence of any twitching fuzziness.

'Those ears sure were cute... Shut up! The shard, concentrate on the -'

Realizing the tingling feeling had intensified a lot while she had been caught in one of those weird battles of herself and the other self that seemed to enjoy alerting her to her more... carnal urges, she told Inuyasha:

“It really feels kinda near now, I think we should be able to see her now!“

Her soon to be partner in crime pointed to a group of people across the road, a few hundred meters ahead of them.

“Yeah I know, she's over there, I recognize her from before.“

Now Kagome, too, was able to make out a group of teenagers on the road that seconds ago had been empty, though how Inuyasha recognized the girl without being able to see the pinkish glow of the shard she emanated she didn't know, they'd only seen her for but a few seconds before her 'girlfriend' had attacked Inuyasha in an explosion of jealousy.

The group consisted of a few girls, four to be exact, probably some of those who had eagerly surrounded the one with the shard back in the school corridor, but also of six boys, none of which Kagome remembered having come across yet.

And yet again all of them eagerly crowded around the one girl in a way that made Kagome wonder just what kind of power that Shikon no Tama shard gave to her.

But as she silently took in the sight of the animatedly chattering group that reminded her a lot of those times when she herself had been out with her friends and some guys, she remembered what Inuyasha had told her about the likeliness of a peaceful shard exchange:

„Uhm Inuyasha?“

Inuyasha went from mustering the teens to mustering her.

„Yeah?“

„You do realize that they are ten of them and only two of us, right? You said we were going to have to fight the girl about the shard, but what do we do now? We are a little outnumbered I would say.“

He stared at her bewilderedly.

„We'll fight her about the shard of course, what do you think? You are the one who is in such a hurry to get this over with so that our counterparts won't fall behind on their studies. So we do it now, before we loose her again.“

And with that he started marching across the road.

Kagome stood dumbfounded as she watched him coming to a halt a few meters away from the group, hands on his hips, and with a loud

„OI!“

gaining their attention. When each and everyone of them fell silent and looked at him in surprise he announced their options to them in a way that had the more humorous part of Kagome comment 'Well no, it certainly weren't his negotiation skills that they had him accompany me for... '.

„ Hey bitch, yeah you, the one with the blue shirt, I want that necklace you've got there. Give it to me or I'll take it!“

As Kagome started walking towards Inuyasha, inspecting the girl with the shard more closely she realized that, how ever he managed to figure that out, he was right. The pink glow surrounding the girl had it's source in a tiny splinter of pink glass that she wore as a pendant on a silver necklace around her neck.

Inuyasha seemed to grow inpatient as by the time Kagome had arrived by his side none of his supposed opponents, not even the girl in question had graced him with a response yet, they just kept on staring at him as if he had suddenly fallen out of the sky in a bunny costume and had demanded that they accompany him to his home planet... or at least that was what Kagome considered appropriate with the amount of total bewilderment that showed on their faces. Surely a guy trying to mugg them was not that much of a surprise?

Inuyasha had grown impatient, indeed.

„So which is it, bitch? You gonna give me the goddamn thing or not?“

This time the girl did respond, though probably not the way Inuyasha had expected her to. She laughed, a surprisingly light hearted and girlish laugh. Secretly Kagome had, according to Miroku's descriptions of evil hearted humans and youkai misusing the Tama for their purposes, imagined the girl to be more... intimidating and obviously evil. But she just smiled sweetly.

„Keichii, really, you had me there for a second. What is this about? A joke? A bet?“

When Inuyasha just sighed impatiently and folded his arms over his chest her face soddenly dropped and the glow of the shard intensified slightly.

„You know I told all of you suckers that I am not to be joked with, so piss off and leave me and my friends alone, before I decide to waste my precious time on thinking of a way to remind you where your place is, you scum.“

'That's more like it, really'

the humorous part of Kagome, never short of a superfluous comment, observed, while Kagome actually flinched and turned to look at Inuyasha. If he reacted as harshly every time she insulted him in some way then just how would he react to this? But she found him calm and collected, with a stony glare fixing the one of the girl when he repeated:

„Hand over the shard or I'll take it!“

And, to prove he really wasn't joking, he started walking towards the girl.

It wasn't until then that Kagome became aware of the obvious logical mistake in his reasoning a few minutes ago, and while she mentally fended off a bunch of grinning 'DUH!' monkeys she grabbed his shoulder forcefully, this time ignoring the fact that he hated to be touched without his permission, pulled him back and bowed to whisper into his ear in a voice low enough to keep anyone else from overhearing.

“Inuyasha! We didn't have to face her now, are you really that stupid? We could just as well have followed her until she parted with the others and take the shard when she was alone! Why are you endangering yourself in that way? Have you forgotten that you are human in this dimension?“

She figured with the body of a hanyou, if it was half as powerful as what myths said about that of a youkai to be, facing ten teenage humans would have been no problem, but he was human for Christ's sake, and more that a little bit on the skinny side! But he just glared and snapped conceitedly:

“One or ten that's no fucking difference to me! In my original body, as a hanyou, I used to take on more that fifty humans one- handedly-“

He interrupted her as she tried to protest

“And when I said fighting was all I ever did, I meant it! I've been forced to defend myself just about since I could walk, and believe me I was way weaker than this body is, back then! Fighting is mainly about technique not about actual strength!“

At this surprising piece of something about himself Kagome closed her protesting mouth and searched his eyes through which just for a moment the hint of a feeling akin to hurt had flickered, but now they were as stony as before.

'Since he could walk? Who would intend to hurt a small child? How cruel is that?!'

But she was ripped out of her musing by the hands that roughly shoved her away from Inuyasha while he was gripped by another pair of those, pinning his arms to his sides.

Obviously the girl had grown mad enough with Inuyasha, who in the body of Keichii, a boy she seemed to know somehow, had offended and threatened her, to send the boys to teach him a lesson of some kind, or in her words remind him where his place was.

Kagome immediately shot forward to help him but the boy who had shoved her away and another one held her back. Meanwhile the three boys left gathered around Inuyasha and the one who held him still and positioned them self for the classical, teenage-bully, four against one defenceless victim beat up. Kagome struggled half heartedly, there was no way she'd be able to shake off two boys at once, but to her surprise their grip on her upper arms loosened.

' Riight, I forgot, my counterpart's body!'

And with a barely suppressed squeal of glee she ripped her arms out of the boy's grip, rushing forward to Inuyasha who was just about to receive the first punch, or maybe already the second, aimed at his stomach.

Suddenly the girl with the shard spoke up again:

„Hey you morons! Take down the girl first, she's the actual danger here! Keichii isn't going to take but one of you to be held back, but she, you know her, she's that maniac, gay rambo chick!“

The boys turned immediately, except for the one who held Inuyasha and all but fell over each other in an rushed attempt to comply and get a hold of Kagome. She shrieked and Inuyasha, perhaps heroically trying to regain their attention taunted:

„So you're not only ganging up against one single man, but also willing to fucking hit a woman? You are even more of a bunch of fucking honour less cowards than I first thought!“

But the boys ignored him and advanced on Kagome who stepped back with every step they took towards her, until she, suddenly, found herself locked in the grip of the remaining two again. Before Inuyasha was able to throw the next piece of his mind at the boys Kagome was, without a further word or hint from her attackers, hit by two fists, one snapping her head to the side as it connected with her jaw and the other one ramming into her stomach so forcefully that all air was pressed out of her lounges and she sank to the ground, suddenly deprived of the power to hold herself up any longer when the boys holding her released her arms.

She groaned as black seeped into the edges of her view and curled up as if that would somehow prevent the pain from robbing her conciousness. She closed her eyes only to open then again as she heard an almost bestial scream of utter rage that echoed through the street. Was that Inuyasha?

If the sight that presented itself to her within the following minutes told her anything those were basically two things: Firstly Inuyasha had been right when he said that fighting was more a question of technique than anything else, she saw that now.

But Secondly he had obviously forgotten to mention what kind of , well, positive ? effect anger and feral aggression could have on the strength department.

Within seconds after the boys had punched Kagome he had bent forward and thrown the boy who clutched his arms across his back to the ground. He regained his footing immediately and brutally jumped onto him, knocked the air out of his lounges, then crouched down and with a well aimed punch against the solar plexus knocked him out completely.

He sprung up and leaped towards the rest of the boys, who were only just about to understand what was going on there behind their backs, and tackled the one who had punched Kagome's jaw against the brick wall behind him, drew up his knee, rammed it where no man wants to have another one's knee rammed into, set his foot back on to the ground, swiftly grabbed the boy's head when he doubled over in pain and pushed it down to meet his other knee. By the time the boys nose broke with a sickeningly loud and wet noise the others had only just finished turning around to face Inuyasha, mouths hanging open in surprise.

„Kagome!“

It took her a few seconds with her hazy mind to articulate a cracked voiced answer.

„Yes?“

„Get the hell away from here, you don't want to be hurt more than that, right?!“

„Oh, ok.“

And while Kagome crawled away from the wall and over the boy with the broken nose to be out of the way, silently wondering how much she was allowed to interpret into that comment, or the fact that he had actually called her by her name, Inuyasha waited for the remaining four boys to attack.

Kagome managed to lean against the tire of a car parked at the pavement and watched in awe as Inuyasha fought. While he did that she found it surprisingly much easier to picture him the way she knew he really looked like, his wild and deadly stile of fighting somehow reminded her of that aura of untamedness and underlying aggression he had emanated back in that weird soul store room.

The way he fought was no martial art, at least if 'art' meant to suggest that there should be something aesthetic about it. His movements didn't look as graceful or regulated as those of the TV fighters, or even live tournament fighters Kagome had seen so far.

Every move he made was to inflict the most damage possible, not to look good, and he fought in wild abandon, not with stoic control. Efficiency was his concept, not art.

Kagome felt a strange shiver of sympathy surge through her as she realized that she could only just begin to imagine what kind of a life he must have lived to learn to fight that way. But as the fight went on she found herself unable to focus on that feeling. A more amoral part of her took over and decided that among other things watching Inuyasha fight was also damn entertaining.

When the boys charged onto him, all at once, he waited until they were just entering punching range, took a step to the side in what looked like an attempt to escape but then, with an almost wicked grin playing on his features that made Kagome wonder whether he actually enjoyed this, turned and send the boy closest to him to the ground with a quick, forceful kick against his kneecap, that was once again accompanied by a loud cracking noise.

He jumped across his latest victim and behind his next, the tallest and toughest looking guy of the group, grabbed his left arm, twisted it against the boy's back, at the same time in a blur of motion forcing his knees bent with two quick kicks into the hollows of his knees. When the boy lost his balance and began sinking to the ground he shoved him forwards, grabbing his other arm in the process and jumped onto the poor boy's back to increase the impact his face hit the ground with. He lost his footing for a split second, standing awkwardly on the back of the guy, and the remaining two used that second to finally get their hands on him. One grabbed him by his arms and twisted them behind his back and before Inuyasha could hurl him over his back like he'd done with his comrade the other one began hitting him with anger fuelled force. Inuyasha took a few punches struggling only slightly, so that Kagome wondered whether they had him now and immediately tried to lift herself off the ground to help him, but the slightest movement sent jolts of pain through her body and she collapsed again with a groan.

She dared not actually make that connection but a uselessly (and twistedly) romantic part of herself pointed out that somehow her pain seemed to give Inuyasha the motivation to fight, he hadn't started to do so until those boys had hit her and now again, as soon as she groaned in pain he seemed to come to life again.

He suddenly tensed, then threw his legs high up into the air, slinging them around the neck of the boy hitting him and with a twist of his hip threw him off balance. As the boy fell he set his legs back onto he ground again and bent to throw the boy holding him over his back, ripping his arms out of his grip. As the two boys lay on the ground before him he mustered them with disgust for a second.

Then he turned and left them to scramble to their feet and do the first reasonable thing since that girl had somehow made them attack Inuyasha: They stumblingly hurried away with tiny whines of panic.

Inuyasha spared the scene before him, the other fallen boys, a quick glance, then went to crouch down next to Kagome.

“Can you get up?”

“Yeah, I think I can.”

Kagome slowly pulled herself up with the aid of the car behind her and managed to stand on shaky legs. She touched her aching belly and groaned, then smiled slightly, despite her discomfort.

“So it's really all about technique, eh? That rambo body of mine really was no use at all...“

Inuyasha looked at her a little surprised, then reached out to carefully touch her jaw, which sent a jolt of pain through it despite his tenderness.

“That's gonna be one hell of a bruise tomorrow, your counterpart will freak as soon as she sees herself.”

But Kagome just gawked in surprise, dumbfounded by this completely non characteristic, at least non characteristic for what she'd seen of him so far, display of badly hidden concern. And he was probably even worse off than her, his lip was split awfully and had yet to stop bleeding, as did his nose, and there was a sore spot on his cheek that seemed to swell while Kagome looked at it.

As if he'd read her thoughts Inuyasha abruptly dropped his hand and turned around again. He stiffened suddenly, probably because he just realized what Kagome did that very moment:

The girl was gone again!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Gods who would have thought that shard hunting could be that exhausting?”

Kagome struggled to even her breathing as she leaned against the tall brick wall assumably surrounding a large garden. And somewhere inside that garden there stood a house, and somewhere inside that house there was a girl and around that girls neck there was the shard of the Shikon no Tama, which she was intend on finding now more that ever, and if only to be able to leave this aching, worn out body.

Yes, to Kagome's absolute delight she had, after a few seconds of total shock, realised that the girl with the shard, despite her obviously hasty departure, was still within the range of her 'shard radar'. So they had been able to follow her and initiate 'plan B' that actually was 'plan A': follow and corner her when she's alone, not accompanied by a bunch of guys.

But, they had, due to their, well, kind of wrecked means of transport, their bodies, not been capable of running any more, or at least Kagome was, and so when they arrived at the gate leading to the assumed home of the shard, eh girl, she'd already gone inside.

“I would.”

“Huh?”

During her recapitulation of the last hour or so, Kagome had forgotten that she'd posed a question, though, actually that had been a rhetorical one, anyway.

“Well, I would have thought that shard hunting would be that exhausting, cuz' when that fucking jewel is concerned, things just won't go easy.”

Inuyasha had, obviously just as worn out as Kagome felt, simply dropped to the ground besides the gate, from where he now avoided her stare as soon as he realized that he had clumsily reminded Kagome of the fact that he knew something about the Shikon no Tama that she didn't know.

Kagome just slid to the ground along the wall and sighed.

'Oh well, if he's so reluctant to share that info... I guess that's alright, probably it's just something very personal, or he wouldn't make such a fuzz about it.'

Or maybe he would, just to spite her, but anyway, right now she was just to tired to bother.

For a while they just sat in a somewhat comfortable silence but the longer Kagome let her thoughts trail unhinderedly, the further back they travelled, until she found herself unable to keep a neatly buried, nailed shut realization from surfacing.

She was dead. She had, by her very own stupidity been ripped out of her life, a life that by any one else's standards might have had to be called insignificant, but to her it hadn't been, cause there had been people that loved her, more importantly people she loved, her friends, her family, her Mama... gods, how she missed her Mama... and to think that maybe... in case they did not manage to recollect the shards, she was never going to see her loved ones again, she would be reborn and would just forget about them,would never get the chance to tell them all how much they meant to her...

And now that she thought about it, she was dead, that meant that they would grieve, would mourn, that people would cry because of her, that her Mama's heart would break another time, like it had when she lost her husband... And she herself, she would never get the chance to live her life to it's fullest, she had died before she'd fallen in love for the first time, a few crushes, yes, but love... She had never been so engulfed in the thoughts about that one person that even breathing seemed unnecessary compared keeping that picture floating around your mind. Right now she even longed for the pains that feeling brought along with it, she would have liked to believe the world had ended just because of what she felt for someone before her world ended for real.

Nostalgia mingled with longing and wrapped around regret as hope suddenly stood to hurriedly leave the room and she felt like a surge of energy left her as her arms dropped to the ground.

Kagome felt a flood of tears waiting to break free from her tightly closed eyelids as grief manifested in her the way it always did when it became to much for her mind to bear: her insides clenched into a tight cramp of agony and she doubled over as her lower lip started trembling along with her shoulders.

She was well aware that she was drowning in self-pity, acting stupid and weak, and she normally knew better than to give up on things before they even started, she had been called strong willed more than once, but right here, in this foreign world, caught in a foreign body and with no-one around to offer her comfort except for Inuyasha (who, considering his closed-up-ness, really counted as no-one), she simply was unable to drag herself out of that whole she knowingly spiralled into.

So she just let it all out.

“I was after it myself, once.”

“Huh?”

As the first tears spilled from her eyes Inuyasha's voice suddenly cut through the hypnotic hum of the blood pounding in her ears and she lifted her head to find him looking at her with a strange kind of intensity, his eyebrows drawn together in an almost reproachful frown, that eased and turned into one of insecurity and maybe even fear as soon as he saw the tears, now unhinderedly falling from Kagome's eyes in a steady, salty stream.

Yet, casting his eyes away from hers again and staring at something behind her, he repeated what he said seconds ago, explaining his words.

“ The Shikon no Tama. I wanted to have it for myself once, long time ago.”

“But how?”

Between two shudders that brought forth new eruptions of salty liquid from her tear glands, Kagome managed to choke out that that question through her slimy throat, glad to have something else to focus on except well... what she didn't want to focus on.

“You don't appear to be much older than I am, and Miroku said the Tama was banned from our dimension centuries ago! Just how... “

Hanyou. The word suddenly appeared in her mind, in a way of answering her own question.

“I'm a -”

“Hanyou. Is it cause you're half youkai? Do youkai live longer than humans?”

His eyebrows drew up before he answered, and he went from staring at that something behind her to glancing up to the sky that was turning anthracite as the sun had sunk a while ago.

“Yeah, youkai are immortal in a way, they don't die, unless they are killed that is... about Hanyous I don't know... I never heard of any of them growing older than what could be considered an average human lifespan, but none of them died naturally so...”

Kagome all but gawked at him as he spoke, dazzled by this sudden exposure of his, and of course the implications of what he told her.

“How old are you then?” She dared to ask.

“That's a little hard to tell... but by Christian reckoning I was born in 1204.”

“You were what!?!?!”

Kagome's tears ran dry as she stared at the boy in disbelief.

“1204? But then you're actually...”

she quickly did the maths but he was faster.

“Seven hundred years old, yeah, or I would have been nearly that old, I died in 1984, that's twenty years before I would have reached that age.”

She had to crane her neck to even make out his words, he was mumbling almost incoherently, speaking slowly as if he rolled every word around his mouth before uttering it, carefully weighing the impact it might create.

“But that's not actually true either, you know my life used to be a little complicated once and... well you could say that I spend 'round five hundred years in some kind of an artificial coma, y' know, banned 's all you need to know, and so in my head I'm really only about two hundred years old.”

'Only two-'

Thoughts stumbled over one another inside Kagome's head as she tried to process what she'd just been told in that nonchalant way, ' y' know, banned 's all you need to know' hah! Was not!

She stared at that strange boy - or should she be saying old man really? - stared at him so long that the tears on her face dried into an itchy film, which she rubbed away with the sleeve of her blouse absently while she thought about what to say.

Thought about what to say very carefully, because she realised that if a guy who thought that everything that concerned him did just that and nothing more, a guy who might be diagnosed almost anti-social, well no, more like social-phobic tendencies, if that very guy suddenly chose to expose himself to an almost stranger, then no matter his possible motives, you had to handle him with caution so you didn't provoke him into taking it all back and closing himself in again.

A technical question was probably better that a comment, so:

“You've been banned for 400 years? When did you wake up again, then?”

In the meagre light she couldn't be to sure, but she had feeling that he was watching her out of the corner of his eye, all the while pretending to watch the sky. But when she spoke again he actually turned to face her, mustering her curiously, as if that had not been what he'd expected her to ask, and reluctantly answered.

“I woke in 1927. I later figured that I had been banned in 1454, so it lasted actually only 473 years.”

Wow. He actually told her something about himself. Weird that he did that just when she'd been about to cry, but oh well, coincidences wouldn't be coincidences if they just happened, they happened at a good time or a bad one. And then he didn't just tell her anything but this, the most unbelievable thing she'd heard in her life. The ears, the eyes and the claws she had almost no problem to accept... but that jerkish, immature... well, jerk actually was 700 years old? Or 200, that was just as unbelievable.

She was about to ask something else when suddenly her stomach rumbled so loudly that a bird that must have been sitting on the wall over them, flew away hurriedly.

“You hungry?” Inuyasha asked, maybe amusedly.

Kagome grinned peevishly, as she felt the pressure of that moment seconds ago ease, along with Inuyasha's willingness to talk, but oh well, she knew something now.

“I didn't realize until now but it figures, I haven't eaten a thing since we entered this dimension. You haven't, either, actually.”

“Yeah I know, I'm kinda hungry, too. Just doesn't bother me that much... well then.”

He suddenly stood and dusted off his clothes.

“What are you doing?”

He looked at her like he thought she was mad.

“I'm going looking for something to eat, what else? There's no way we're gonna make it through the night and will be up to facing that bitch tomorrow without it.”

“Well I'm coming with you.”

She began to rouse carefully.

“No you're not! “

“Am too! Who knows what you'll do when I'm not there to think for you? ”

He ignored that insult, she hadn't really meant for it to be one anyway, it was just true, and kept on arguing.

“Someone has to stay back here and watch the house, what if that girl leaves again?”

“So what? She lives here, she'll return eventually.”

“We don't know that! She could be at a friend's for all we know!”

“I can sense those shards from quite a distance, if we stay close enough I'll realize as soon as she moves and we'll be right after her again.”

When she saw him already struggling to counter that she added:

“Please Inuyasha? Please, I really just don't want to be alone right now... “

He looked a little scared now, what of though... anyway, he suddenly turned and walked away. Kagome followed, catching up easily despite the state she was in.

He didn't look like he was about to converse, but still, just not being alone would hopefully keep her thoughts off all those things lurking at the back of her awareness.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You still feeling that shard?”

Inuyasha broke the silence as they neared a small shopping mall.

“Huh? Oh yeah, hasn't moved an inch since we left.”

Kagome, who had been busy humming a weird medley of some of her favourite songs because she had found that to be the perfect way of keeping her mind off of... certain facts, assured.

They entered the mall and marched towards a grocery shop in front of which Inuyasha stopped and turned to her.

“Ok. I'll go in there and organize us something to eat and you'll stay right here and keep an eye - no your mind... whatever on that shard. I won't be long just wait.”

And before Kagome could respond the automatic doors had already closed behind him again. She figured that she would survive a few minutes alone as long as she kept up the humming so she spared herself the useless going after him and engaging into yet another discussion of the 'is not' - 'is too' kind.

As she stood there humming she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her skirt she suddenly realised something essential.

They were empty. ...well, except for a used handkerchief, a few of those thingies you open cans with, a small pocket knife, as well as something squishy she didn't want to identify, but the point was, there was no purse or anything that would contain money in it and she knew for sure that there hadn't been a similar thing inside Inuyasha's pockets. (Not that she had been checking out his ass or anything... ) So the million dollar question was... How was he going to 'organise' something to eat - no scratch that, she could very well imagine how - but what on earth was he thinking!?! If he got caught Kagome would have to go after that shard alone, and that was not something she'd chose to if given the choice, considering around whose neck that shard hung. And he would also get his counterpart into serious trouble, not a very nice thing to do, either.

She was about to storm into the shop to prevent that catastrophe when the doors parted and Inuyasha stepped out, concentratedly unwrapping an energy bar of some kind and motioning with his head for her to follow as he walked towards the exit of the mall.

When he passed her Kagome saw that he was now wearing a backpack she'd never seen before and the only thing that kept her from screaming abuse at him was that she really did not want to face that girl alone.

Which did of course not mean that she'd let that slide just like that. So as soon as the automatic doors had closed around them she took a deep breath and... was, before she could verbalize her hurt righteousness, grabbed by her hand and with a low voiced

“Keep walking and shut up!” pulled along by the culprit himself.

About to protest vehemently she was interrupted yet again, this time though by a slightly muted cry from inside the mall that sounded suspiciously like

'There it is! That's my rucksack!”.

At the very same time Inuyasha broke into a sprint, whatever he had stolen clunking inside the backpack, and she had no choice but to join him as he was still holding her hand.

'Nooooooo' her muscles and most of all her still hurting stomach screamed. 'No more running, pleeease!'

But it couldn't be helped, when they rounded a corner she threw a brief look back and saw that there were at least three people following them now, people one of which was a bulky security guy.

She ran as fast as she could, hardly paying attention to her surroundings, but Inuyasha did, she realized, because shard feeling grew stronger the more they ran, which meant that they were, despite their hasty flight, returning to the shard-girl's house. It was definitely not bad having someone like him around. Though, then again each of the situations where his... survival skills had proven useful were completely his very own fault...

They had managed to enlarge the distance between them and their persecutors a little, their bodies were even in this rather wrecked state still those of two very sportive teenagers. That and the fact that it was completely dark by then, heightened their chances to escape successfully, Kagome noted, allowing herself a careful bit of relief.

As they slithered around another corner they entered a road Kagome remembered them having walked along before, and somewhere on the other side of that road there stood an empty, old house that had caught her attention because it looked so romantically haunted.

“Hey Inuyasha.”

she panted as soon as she saw the house in the bright light of the street lights, pointing towards it.

“Let's just hide in there and wait until they pass us!”

“No. Come on.”

Instead of crossing the road and doing the logical thing Inuyasha pulled her behind a large public garbage container.

“Why not? Behind here they're gonna see us as soon as they pass us.”

“No. They are going to go looking for us in that empty house as soon as they find the street empty cause hiding in there is just the clichÃ©, adolescent thing they'll expect us to do. Now hush!”

She planned to tell him to go screw his paranoid reasoning and just hide inside that house without him, but she was to late, she heard voices nearing, angry voices, and then fragments of a agitated conversation along the lines of:

'... are they... hiding somewh... must find... kill... 'king bastards'

When their followers stopped only a few meters away from their hiding place and in perfect hearing range, Kagome, who felt the beginnings of a healthy panic gripping her, overheard them discussing the optimal course of action, and when she was just about to release the breath she held in anxiously they suddenly agreed to try - the empty house across the road because it was “just like those doped and fucked up teenage muggers to think that's a brilliant idea.”

And with tears in her eyes (from holding her breath that long not from being so relieved.) she glanced around Inuyasha and watched them cross the road and enter the building in question.

She didn't need to look at his face to imagine the smuggedysmug expression on it.

“Ok so you were right... thanks I guess.” she forced forth, hoping to pacify his boosted self-opinionated urges as well as her own hurt ones.

She stood and started walking down the street until Inuyasha caught up with her. When she faced him then his grin had almost faded.

“Come on we don't have that long until they'll realise that we're not in there.” and he sprinted off yet again.

After they had ran along a few more roads, entering the villa-area that girl lived in, they allowed themselves to slow down into a slight jog until they stood in front of the very same wall they had sat by some time ago.

Inuyasha struggled a little to calm his still unsteady breathing.

“I don't think it's that good of an idea if we spend the night here, in front of the house. Let's ... “ He glanced around, then pointed to something behind her. “ Let's climb up that tree there.”

When Kagome turned around she saw what he was talking about: a few meters behind her, inside the garden surrounding the house but close to the wall stood a large tree, some of it's branches reached over the wall, one even stretched almost across the whole pavement. But the wall was rather tall, and so were the branches, so that Kagome, who couldn't even recall the last time she had climbed up a tree, was bound to protest.

“There's no way I'll manage to get up there, and what if I fall asleep on it? I'll fall and break my neck again - no thank you!”

Inuyasha sighed impatiently.

“About the climbing up: I'll show you how, it's easy. About falling down: I've spent more than a century of my life sleeping in trees, it's no problem as long as the branches are thick enough, and these are. That tree is just the best hiding place around here, and we have to hide somewhere, cause if someone sees two kids in their school uniforms hangin' around in front of a villa in the middle of the night they won't just walk on by and those guys from the mall might still be around.”

That sounded almost sensible, but still, the tree looked awfully tall and unwelcoming.

“Well, I don't care what you'll do - “ He briskly walked past her, “I'll go up there now”

And he jumped, grasping the lowest branch, slung his legs around it and then acrobated himself on top of it. He balanced towards the trunk, across the wall, and went to climbing further up, then suddenly halted and looked down to her with a grin.

“Besides, I still have all the food...”

Ohh the nerve of him! That teasing, arrogant prick! ...But she was almost starving... or so she felt. And he probably wouldn't throw something down for her.

'Looks like I don't have a a choice. Just wonderful!'

Well she wasn't too eager to meet with those guys Inuyasha obviously had stolen the backpack of, either.

'But god help me if I let that prick tell me how to climb up there. I'll do that on my own.'

And so she determinedly stepped under the branch he had used to mount their assumed lodgement for the night.

After a few dissatisfying moments of dangling she decided that it would have been for the best had she stopped being a child a few years later because then she'd now remember how on earth she was supposed to bring her legs over her head and around that branch.

A few more seconds passed during which her arms seemed to gain a few inches in length until it occurred to her to just use the wall right in front of her to help her up and somehow, once she koala beared the branch, with the wall the rest was fairly easy, so she climbed after Inuyasha, through the thick tangle of twigs and leaves, her already rhythmically grumbling stomach urging her to hurry.

She found him sitting on an almost comfortable looking, broad branch, leaning against the trunk, the backpack on his knees about to retrieve something from it.

Before he could utter any comment, either about the fact that she had climbed the tree although she didn't want to or that it took her so long, and that comment was sure to come, she sat down on the same branch, straddling it, and reached for the backpack.

“So what did you 'organize' there? I'm starving.”

“Well, “ he obviously would be able to do without a comment and instead began digging things out of the bag.

“Choice is yours, I'd say. I got some fruit- “ he briefly lifted a net of oranges then dropped it again “One more of those energy bars, though they aren't that tasty, I also have bread and some cheese, some chocolate and oh yeah, if you want to drink something I got water, juice, and red wine... and some weird yoghurt drink stuff. And you can have some of that artificial crab meat, I took some of that, too. If you want something warm, I have some very suspicious looking self heating instant ramen.”

Kagome felt her mouth slightly gape open as he continued to enthusiastically list the things he had in that bag.

“How on this earth did you manage to steal that many things in that short amount of time? Do they employ only blinds in that shop? Why didn't anyone notice? That shop was full of people!”

He shrugged.

“I just am a very experienced shoplifter. And most people don't really care whether anyone steals something or not, they just look away, or whatever. Well and in case someone does alarm the security, that's why I always use someone else's bag, you can still claim that you found it or anything, after all you can prove it's not yours. Now what do you want? I think I'll try that ramen.”

“Are you saying that you just walked in there, took someone's backpack and walked around openly putting things in it? And then what? You just passed the checkouts with that backpack and no-one suspected a thing? With that beat up face?”

“No, I did the old 'buy something cheap, which was that awful energy bar, and behave naturally while you bags are full of stuff' trick. I found a little change in my pockets.”

Kagome briefly pondered whether she ought to lecture him about shoplifting being amoral and such, but she was so very hungry she couldn't quite muster the strength to care, and so she just took the package of ramen Inuyasha offered and hurriedly twisted the thingy that started the chemical reaction heating the soup.

They didn't have chopsticks, so it got a little messy when she tried to taste it, but after a first sip she decided anyway that she couldn't imagine herself being hungry and desperate enough to be willing and able to eat this. It tasted like a lot of things, chicken among other things, but not the good chicken, the 'chicken' everyone who ever ate meat of a strange animal claimed it tasted like. Who knew just what they put in there to create that taste. She just offered it to Inuyasha who took it gladly, he seemed to actually like that crap, a lot judging by the way he devoured it.

She ate bread with cheese and some of the crabby stuff instead, drank one of those yoghurt drinks and then began to peel an orange. More out of habit than anything, she and her brother often shared - no used to... share oranges while watching TV, she gave half of it to Inuyasha who was now exterminating the rest of the fake crab. He accepted it surprisedly, he probably thought she was still mad at him or something, and she would have been normally, but he even brought chocolate, Kagome just couldn't hold a grudge against someone who gave her chocolate... so she generously forgave him his teasing and overall arrogance.

Or would till his next lapse.

Miraculously Inuyasha had also managed to 'organise' a blanket, it was actually supposed to be a tablecloth and had a incredibly ugly fish pattern on it, but it was better than just a summer school uniform, it had gotten kind of chilly the longer there was no sun to heat the atmosphere.

As soon as she leaned against the trunk on another branch a little above Inuyasha's, happily letting chocolate melt on her tongue, she realised that Inuyasha must have been making the stuff about sleeping in trees up. There was no way she would not fall out of it as soon as she fell asleep, even if she weren't a person who trashed around a lot in their sleep, which she happened to be. But climbing down again seemed out of question, too, she was so tired now, her arms felt like they would just rip off the next time she'd use them to lift something heavier than a bottle of water, leave alone support her full bodyweight. She'd fall either way. She decided to at least try sleeping right here, and hope that if she fell she wouldn't fall deep, maybe even onto Inuyasha to punish him for insisting that they sleep here. So she wiggled around a little until she was about comfortable, snuggled into the blanket and closed her eyes.

“Fuck!”

Kagome had been about to doze off slightly when suddenly Inuyasha cursed loudly. Lazily she looked down to see what was up with him and found him frowning at a dark green bottle, probably the wine he'd been talking about earlier.

'Yeah 'bout that. Why did he bring any in the first place?'

“What is it? Got the wrong year?” she half joked.

He shot her a short glare but she was taken aback anyway. His eyes screamed of angry frustration, he really was very upset about something. The wine for some reason, obviously, judging by the way he continued to glare at the bottle.

“I took this wine but in my rush to get that useless blanket I forgot to take a corkscrew. I can't get the fucking thing out!”

“Jeez so what? We still have plenty of water and yoghurt drinks. It's not like wine tastes good or anything. Just leave it be.”

But he didn't really seem to be listening, just poked at the cork sealing the bottle.

Suddenly he began murmuring, in a way of asking her but probably talking to himself.

“... Now, which is better, pushing the cork inside, though then it tastes awful and gets in the way all the time, or chopping the neck off, though that might cause splinters...? well this isn't my body anyway...”

Kagome could not quite believe what she was hearing.

“Are you out of your mind? Just because this is not your body doesn't mean you can just go and waste it like that! Eating pieces of glass might even kill this body! Gods, are you really that desperate?”

She suddenly remembered the pocket knife she had found earlier and all but threw it at him.

“Here.”

He caught it swiftly, unfolded the corkscrew device and began screwing it in immediately.

“How about thanks?”

She really was about to get irritated again, big time, she didn't even fell particularly tired anymore. He graced her with a short nod, interrupted himself when he managed to open the bottle. He sighed happily, leaned back against the trunk and began gulping down the wine hurriedly. Then he set the bottle into his lap and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Dear god, what are you, an alcoholic?” Kagome inquired, slightly disturbed.

That snapped him out of his happy trance like contentment. He glared at her, obviously enraged.

“I'm not an alcoholic! I just can't fucking sleep without having drunk at least a few beer, nothing more!”

Kagome glared right back, wondering whether she should be laughing or beating him over the head. Both perhaps.

“You know, that is usually one of the most obvious hints that someone has an alcohol addiction! Does that mean that you were drinking on a daily basis when you were still alive?”

“None of you business.”

He took another swig from the bottle.

That again. Well she knew now that there was no way she'd get anything out of him he didn't want to talk about, but maybe he would do so by himself if she just didn't pry, like before.

What a strange boy he was. One moment he was plain immature and jerkish, the next he was all subdued, almost melancholic and one could easily detect that he must have been hurt a lot during his life, then, when it came to fighting or anything he was suddenly frighteningly calm and wild at the same time, and deadly efficient, experienced, and then there were these rare occasions where it seemed like he, beneath all that, actually did care about someone other than him.

And now, on top of it all, he also was some kind of an alcoholic. It would be sooo fun working with him... No she shouldn't be thinking that way, she scolded herself. He wasn't all bad, he probably really was a lot more thoughtful and concerned than he let on, he had, in fact, brought her chocolate and even a blanket and had actually, although in mid fight, taken care that she wouldn't be hurt further. Alcoholism was, after all, a disease, a mental and physical illness and was to be taken serious, she knew that because one of her uncles had had the same problem, with the unpleasant addition that he was a drinker of the aggressive kind, the ones that tended to loose their temper so fast under the influence of alcohol they would even beat up their loved ones. He also, much like Inuyasha, had been in denial about his addiction, unwilling to accept help until one night in a drunken frenzy he had hit his wife. He had sought help then, and was still in therapy but things went well...

Kagome gulped as she felt the familiar lump build in her throat, she'd let her guard down for a second and immediately the cleanly suppressed and ignored memories of her family, her life back when she still was alive, sneakily found their way back into her awareness, and she was but one step away from the familiar spiral leading to self pity and eventually tears.

She fought the draw of that spiral for a while, she even fell back on the stupid humming thing but now every song she mixed into her medley seemed to remind her of something that only fed the spiral, increased the suction of it's current.

In the end she gave in, what was the point fighting it, anyway? She knew all to well that suppressed feelings didn't just disappear, they just became a constant part of your personality, thus making you even weaker than you could ever be in the very moment you gave into them. So she allowed herself all the pessimism and sadness that crowded her mind.

They'd never ever collect all jewel shards, she was just plain useless, couldn't defend herself properly, even with such a body, Inuyasha was just way to impulsive and had a serious drinking problem. What a team they were. But if they didn't collect the shards she wouldn't be given back her life and she'd be reborn to forget all that once held her heart, just like they would eventually forget about her...

Shoulders slumped, insides clenched, lips shook and tears began to spill as Kagome pressed the blanket against her mouth to mute her sobs.

“It's the only way... “

Again - was she allowed to see a trend here? Inuyasha's slurred voice snapped her out of her despair, or managed to keep her mind of all the things causing it, at least. Glancing down through watery eyes she could make him out sitting there, looking up to her. She blinked until her eyes were tear free and mustered him silently for a while, wondering whether he actually did this on purpose, whether he somehow knew when she was about to cry and this was his way of comforting her. Oh yeah, he had said something, too, something weird actually.

“... The only way?”

“Theonly fucking way ta make idall go away... to calm me ... no-one can sleep withese things in their head, b'lieve me... It's been like that 'ver since... no maybe it's always been like that... once ... once when I was takin' a pause withall the shit I didn't sleep fora whole month... no 34 days exactly ...y'know with humans the delusions startafter 52 hours or so... with hanyous it's 29 days exactly...”

It took her a while to figure out that he was talking about drinking, about why he drank, to be exact. He had obviously drunken the whole bottle of wine, at least he didn't seem to have it anymore, and was now seriously plastered, probably his dimension counterpart didn't share that hobby with him, at least his body didn't seem to be used to alcohol at all.

He was still looking at her, was trying to, more like, but he seemed to have trouble focussing sometimes, his eyes were watery and reflected the moonlight breaking through the leaves and his cheeks were slightly tinted.

'He looks like an innocent child now... well if it weren't for the bruises he would... at least he's not an aggressive drinker... at least that seems so...'

When he began talking about delusions she actually focussed on what he was telling her.

“You mean you spent...” He was, even in this state, faster than her when it came to calculations... what a disgrace..

“...5 days seeing things... feeling things... yeah...” He snickered. “ To think that some people pay to expir- expp- exp'rience that shit...”

“And then?”

34 days of insomnia. She'd once spent 34 hours awake, on a sleep over party that just wouldn't end, totally hyper on all the coke she'd drunken... but 34 days? And then delusions? Seeing things? She'd once read that the delusions caused by sleep deprivation could get as fierce as those of withdrawal or serious mental illnesses, that one actually died after more than 60 or so hours without sleep.

“I gave in, drank and passed out in the bar.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Someone threw me out when they wanned to close 'n couldn't wake me up... I dunno what happened then, but I woke a full hour train ride away near the Wannsee... I slept wonderfully, though...”

“The Wuannosae..? “She struggled with the foreign word.

“That's near Berlin.” He explained.

“That's in... Germany. What were you doing there?”

“Living since the late seventies.”

“You lived in Berlin?”

She'd always wondered when on earth she'd ever need all that information of her endless History classes on the Cold War; had she been told back then that some day they would make her able to converse with a drunken Hanyou whilst sitting in a tree in another dimension... she would probably not have believed that.

“Western Berlin or Eastern Berlin?”

“Western, I wasn't that muchofa socialist to willingly live under a fuckin' total- totallyt totalitarian regime... “

Yeeha, she actually knew what he was talking about! (A.N.: If you don't, but want to, I'll leave a link to a site explaining it at the bottom A.N.s... if I find one that is neutral and not totally non liberal, that is.)

“But how did you end up there in the first place?”

Kagome inquired, silently thanking Inuyasha for being of the talkative drinker kind... he would probably hate her tomorrow, if he remembered what he'd told her... but oh well they weren't actually discussing anything intimate or anything so there was no need to feel bad about it.

“I fled... couldn't stand it any longer...”

He shut his eyes and shivered, obviously, whatever had made him flee somehow still haunted him.

Oh. Maybe they were discussing something intimate.

“I had to escape it... they were everywhere... a new one each day...”

He drew his knees to his chest, curling into himself as to protect himself from whatever drove him away back then.

Kagome felt her heart swell with sympathy. Life had obviously never gone easy on him. She dared not ask what it was that still scared him so.

“To think thadonly a few years before, I'd been practically livin' in my personal heaven... everything was fuckin' perfect...”

He suddenly straightened again, a fierce expression on his face.

“Those goddamn disco motherfuckers! I wish I'd known back then who invented that fuckin' shit, I would've gladly killed that bastard! Stain' alive my ass!”

Her jaw dropped.

“When you're saying that you fled you mean you did it to escape disco music?”

“Damn right! It was fuckin' everywhere! Can you imagine that? Every shop you passed played the crap, dozens of tha very best radio stations just changed their fuckin' program, or just stopped... though...”

He seemed to calm down a little. Kagome couldn't help but silently laugh about herself, about the whole situation. There she was, five seconds from patting his head to console him and he'd been this haunted because of disco...

“Though.. to be honest... 'twas really all over already... prolly wasn't really their fault... they'd all been fucking selling their souls ever since Woodstock anyway... Born to be wild my ass!”

He was now sullenly staring off ahead, and a little bit of sadness flickered over his face, or so it looked like in the rather meagre light.

There was a Rock fan in the throes of nostalgia, Kagome thought amusedly, she wasn't all that ignorant when it came to music, she liked all kinds, also the older kinds, and she knew, once again, what he was talking about: The over all commercialisation of the rock music that had gotten so popular throughout the mid and late sixties, first an expression of the youth movements, the protest, some liked to claim the revolution against the overly conservative society, record firms had all to soon realised just what amounts of money could be made with that and had taken over the scene, slowly depriving the movement of it's spirit. That really must have been tough for such a die hard fan as Inuyasha seemed to be one. Oh well...

Looking down to the boy in question she saw that he was still sitting and staring, and she decided that it'd be best to leave him alone now, he didn't look that talkative anymore and she wasn't about to test her luck and ask him another question.

Besides that she really was awfully... tired now...

A.N.:So the spacing isn't screwing with me anymore.

Yeah and here's something about the whole Cold War thing I mentioned, for anyone who's interested, just remove the spaces and there you go, it's not actually a very good site or anything but the point is brought across and it's not too prejudiced:

w w w. rp fuller.com/ gcse/ history/ 9.html