InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Black as Night, White as Snow ❯ Truth Time ( Chapter 10 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Hello all! Finally, a chapter with substance! And plot...and all that ‘good’ stuff! Only five more chapters after this. Told you this would be a short story.

Thanks completely for all reviews! They’re food for my writer’s soul...

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Disclaimer: Je n’ai pas d’Inuyasha ou Snow White.

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Black as Night, White as Snow

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--- Last Chapter ---

Kouga grinned evilly and his ice blue eyes glinted mischievously as he poured the Queen a glass of water from the well he’d accidentally dropped the curry in...

--- End of Last Chapter ---

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Chapter Ten: Truth Time

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“Well?” The small flea demon asked impatiently, all of his arms crossed in a huff as he glared up at older youkai.

“Huh?” The man asked stupidly, absently scratching at the spot between his bulging eyes.

“Totosai...” Myouga started off slowly, “I’ve gone through my request THIRTEEN TIMES!” The tiny youkai ground out between clenched teeth. Oh how he wanted to just hop up there and suck all of the blood out of this...this...ignoramus!

“Well...” Totosai looked off into the distance behind the flea.

Myouga leaned forward in earnest to hear if this ‘Kagome’ was truly the maid, and if she, in turn, was royalty. “Yes...?”

“...I forgot...”

---PING---

“Are you okay Myouga?” the old man bent down to pick up the flat-on-his- face flea demon, “It’s really stupid of you to jump from such heights!”

“Yeah...I’m stupid...” The flea glowered up at the sword smith, an old friend of Inuyasha’s family. “Well, Totosai, I shall state my query again.” Myouga sat in the palm of his hand and settled himself down. “I was wondering if you have ever heard of a young maiden...A Kagome?”

“I need more to go on than that,” Totosai flopped down and sat cross-legged on the floor of the cave dwelling. “The name 'Kagome' is not popular, but a ‘young maiden’ is.”

“Yes, I see,” Myouga’s nasal voice floated to Totosai’s hearing. “Well...she is roughly seventeen or eighteen years of age and lives in the forest of Queen Kikyou’s realm.”

Totosai’s eyes, if possible, grew larger. “Oh, her? I know exactly who you’re talking of!”

“Really?” Myouga looked up hopefully.

The flea face faulted when the old man looked down at him in confusion. “Really what? What were we talking about.”

Myouga would have pulled his hair out---if he’d had any. “Totosai! Focus! Who is the young maiden that goes by the name of Kagome! She lives in the forest of Queen Kikyou’s land! YOU OLD FOOL!”

“Oh, you mean the young orphan princess?”

“YE—WAIT! Did you just say the ‘orphan princess’? So she is a princess?” Myouga was just short of hitting his head repeatedly into the cave’s rock wall.

“...Yes. Kagome. I met her mother when she was pregnant with the girl. Roughly seven years ago her father, the only person the young Princess had left since her mother died soon after the birth, passed on. Kikyou, that stoic, spoiled brat, ascended to the thrown and basically stripped Kagome of her title. But a princess is a princess, I always say.”

“Wait. So you mean that Kagome is an actual, real as corn princess? That means my Lord can marry her! And then I won’t get squashed!” The small demon hopped up and down, a tiny speck in the larger demon’s hand.

“Oh? Really? Well I’d hurry! You only have six days left, including today!” The elder of the two reminded the almost equally as old youkai.

“How do you know such things, Totosai?” Myouga turned a suspicious gaze upward.

Totosai shrugged and struggled to his lanky limbs. “Oh, you know, I get around. So...what’s for dinner?”

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“You came!” Kagome called, the giggle evident in her voice.

Inuyasha opened a golden eye a narrow slit and regarded her with silence.

“You came.” Kagome ground out as she repeated her earlier statement.

“So?”

---THUNK---

“OW! What the fuck was that for wench!”

“You broke tradition!” she snarled before flopping down in the dirt, a laughing Shippou clinging to the front of her kimono. “And, if you don’t mind, I’d like that bucket back. Once you’re done with it on your head of course...”

“You threw it at me! It’s your fault it’s there in the first place,” he retorted, yanking the offending wooden water bucket off of his silver head. He glared heatedly at Shippou. “Why’d you bring that again?”

“Him.”

“Huh?” Inuyasha said intelligently.

“Him. Not ‘that’. Shippou is a ‘him’, not an ‘it’!”

“So?”

---SMACK---

“Why, onna, do you carry two buckets around with you!” he bellowed, yanking the second one off his head.

“In case when I throw the first one you don’t shut up.” She looked up at him coldly...before bursting into giggles.

“What now?” he grumbled, lowering himself beside her, eyeing the woman apprehensively.

She peered at him from the corner of an ocean eye. “Your ear---It’s all tilted to the side and flopped over!” she laughed and tweaked said ear.

He glowered back at her and blew out of the corner of his mouth, causing his bangs to fly up. “You find the weirdest damn things funny,” he scowled.

“I thought it was funny too!” Shippou squeaked his protest.

“Hey kid,” Inu looked down at the fox, sitting in the maiden’s lap.

“Yeah?” Shippou looked back up curiously.

“There a cliff over there,” Inuyasha pointed a clawed finger northward.

“Yeah, so?”

“Why don’t you go walk off it?” Inu smirked when the comment got the girl to laugh. She giggled and slapped his arm in hysterics.

“You’re a nut!” she declared, quirking an eyebrow in his direction.

Shippou crossed his arms and sulked. Kagome wasn’t supposed to respond like that! She was supposed to defend him! Growling he crossly thought that the half-breed had muddled her brain. “Hey, can I go do something else? Your flirting is killing off my brain cells,” he complained.

Kagome blushed slightly crimson. “We’re not flirting! Gods Shippou, can’t two fairly grown people enjoy each other’s company?”

“Uh...no? Yes? Maybe? I don’t know, I’m seven!” he pouted before leaping off her lap. “So...can we do something? Or not?”

“Why are you so cross today? You’re acting like him!” Kagome pointed over her shoulder at the hanyou.

Shippou looked horrified. “No! I can’t! Oh no!” he groaned.

Kagome giggled. “Don’t worry, all you have to do is show some manners and you won’t have to worry about sounding like him anymore!”

“I’d hit you, but I was taught not to hit woman...” Inu glowered. “Of course- !”

“Don’t you even dare say ‘you’re not a woman so it’s okay’!” Kagome frowned in his direction before pursing her lips. “You are evil...”

“I am NOT evil!”

“Uh huh...sure...Anyway, what are we going to do?” Kagome changed the subject, letting her attention wander.

Shippou gave a toothy grin. “I know!” he announced before flopping backwards in the grass.

Inuyasha blinked. “We’re going to take a nap in the dirt?”

Shippou rolled his eyes. “That’s what you do! We’re not pigs...”

“Pigs don’t have sweat glands, that’s why they roll in the mud,” Kagome said matter-of-factly.

Inuyasha blinked again. “That was random.”

“I know...walls have ears...” Kagome continued.

“That was even more random...”

“Exactly! Anyway, Shippou what do you think we should do?” Kag smiled kindly down to the little fox.

“Cloud watching!”

“Oh, wow, a cloud...we’re done.” Inu stated dryly pointing up to a piece of white fluff in the sky.

“That’s cirrus...It’s normally a sign of bad weather in a few days time.”

“How do you know these things, wench?” The hanyou stared blankly in her direction.

She shrugged, “I don’t know. Did you know that the average person has eight dreams in one night?” she asked.

Two demon heads shook slowly back at her. “Can we stop with the facts?” Inuyasha growled bluntly.

“Oh! A bunny!” Kagome pointed back up at the pre-mentioned cloud.

“Finally! Took you two long enough to get to the game!” Shippou glared before turning green eyes back to the sky.

“What game?” Inuyasha asked, completely missing Kagome’s bunny sighting while searching for said rabbit in the trees.

Shippou sighed. “You look at the clouds and try to find shapes in them,” he explained to the half demon that the fox still thought of as having a horrible childhood.

Inu snorted. “What are you? Stupid? Like we’ll really find a triangle in a cloud!”

The two others face faulted.

“No!” Kagome tried to keep her anger down. ‘In with the pink, out with the blue’ she reminded herself before giggling. That always did the trick. “What Shippou means it, you try to find a cloud that’s shaped like something. Do you get it now?”

“No,” Inuyasha said while nodding.

Kagome sweatdropped before sighing. She looked up for a brief instant before pointing out a cloud. “See that one?” she waited for him to nod before going on, “It’s looks like a parasol. See it?”

Inuyasha stared for a few good seconds before answering. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Good. Now you try,” she smiled in his direction and ignored the gagging Shippou at her sweetness.

Inuyasha tilted his head up and looked for awhile. “Oh...see that one?”

Kagome followed the line of direction from his clawed finger. “Yeah.”

He smiled proudly. “It looks like a bowl of ramen!”

“...Sure, why not?” Kagome commented while nodding and smiling. Her father used to tell her that to survive in the world, all you needed to do was nod and smile. It normally got you through without having to actually know what you were agreeing to.

“I got the hand of this game!” Inu announced flopping down beside the red haired fox cub.

The ex-princess shrugged before joining them on the grassy hill.

Eight more bowls of ramen sightings, a dead body with a sword through it, a dragon roasting someone, and a dead ‘Fluffy-sama’ (whatever that was) later, Inuyasha dubbed himself the winner.

“We have to get going. Shippou can’t come tomorrow,” Kag told the dog demon sadly and ignored his cries of ‘yay!’ “Oh, I’m sorry. But I won’t be coming tomorrow, I’m going to head over to the mines.”

“The mines?” Inu asked sitting up, looking forlorn at the thought that she’d be gone.

“Yeah, where my friends work,” Kagome explained. “Oh, and in five days I can’t come either. My friends and I are going to celebrate something so I’ll be busy.”

She would have went on further, but at her words the man had seemed to have gone into deep thought. Shrugging it off, she picked up Shippou and placed him at her brown clad hip.

“Bye!” She called cheerfully. “I’ll see you back here soon.” After Shippou called a few more insults and good-byes, the two went on their ways.

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‘Five days?’ Inuyasha asked himself sullenly. He’d barely noticed the girl and her little friend’s departure.

The words ‘five days’ had jogged his memory. And it wasn’t a good memory.

In five days, no longer counting the day that was close to ending, he’d be forced to marry Queeny.

Not that he had any particular reason to not marry her, he realized, it was just the whole situation. His brother, who’d never treated him fairly, expected him to marry a woman he didn’t know, all for his older half- brother’s selfish, greedy gain.

Okay, insuring the fact that their kingdom had a powerful ally at their border may not seem greedy, but Inuyasha was sure he’d find the fact in there somewhere.

‘Now that I think about it...Queeny didn’t look half-bad. But she did seem a year or two too old for me. She also seemed...distant. And, I could never allow myself to marry some psychotic idiot who put a dining fork next to a katana.’

It was personal thing.

Where was he going to find a royal twit to help him get out of the situation? Maybe he could find a princess somewhere that was in a similar situation? As soon as they married to get their relatives off their backs, they could separate.

Damn Myouga!

“It’s all that stupid flea’s fault,” Inu muttered out loud. ‘He let me put this off too long! On purpose too, I bet! Evil bloodsucking...’

Hmm...

...Speaking of that bloodsucking retainer, where was he?

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“Lord Inuyasha! Don’t do anything stupid while I’m on my way there!” Myouga called out to the dusk.

‘Oh why did I have to have such short feet? I can’t believe Totosai wouldn’t be kind enough to give me a ride on his cow!’

“It’s a conspiracy,” the old youkai concluded as he continued on the long, daunting journey back to his master to deliver the good news.

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“Kagome-sama, do you really think it is wise to come with?” Miroku asked as he helped the maiden lock the front door the next morning.

Kagome smiled and patted the monk on the head, much to his displeasure.

‘I’d rather be patted somewhere else...’ he grumbled to himself while eyeing her rear end.

He couldn’t help himself.

---SMACK---

“Miroku!” Kagome screeched.

“Sorry Lady Kagome...It was calling me! My hand just wandered. Hmm...do you think those are magpies or blue jays?”

“...Sorry Miroku-sama, but you’re the only one who can see the birds. You’ll have to figure it out on your own,” Kagome sulked as she stomped off to join the steaming Sango.

“Well I think they’re finches, on second thought!” Miroku announced as he raced to join up with his friends, earning him a knock to the head from Sango. “My dear...” His violet eyes starry, Miroku turned to look deeply at the furious taijiya. “I have traveled the world and I have never met another woman who can hit as hard as you can.”

“I think that’s a compliment,” Kagome whispered as she leaned down to Sango’s ear.

“That’s what scares me...” Sango eyed the swaying monk before walking off with the full-grown woman, laughing and smiling.

Miroku pouted before hanging back from the others to talk with Naraku...The only other male member with an adult working brain such as his own. And that wasn’t saying much.

“What I want to know,” Miroku started eyeing the backside of the shorter of the two women walking ahead of them, “Is why does Lady Sango seem only violent around me?”

“Maybe it’s the fact that you treat her like an object...” Kagura muttered under her breath from behind the two men. “Why do you say that?” she asked louder, joining the conversation.

“Well, with Kaede-sama or Lady Kagome or you, Lady Sango is such a sweet person,” he paused to daydream for a second before coming back. “She’s not angered easily or feels the need to render someone unconscious unless I’m in the room too.”

Kagura looked at him for a moment before blinking. “You know what? I think you’re right. Wow.”

“How can he be right,” Naraku asked, eyeing the perverted houshi.

Kagura shrugged. “Sango-san is pretty gentle and nice unless the hentai is with her.”

Naraku chuckled. “I know why...” his dark aura pulsed. “Sango knows that Miroku is a glutton for punishment, he feels loved when a woman hits him upside the head. So she, since she’s so full of manners, grants his wish by hitting him every chance she gets.”

“Aw---how sweet!” Kagura cooed before walking ahead, laughing her ass off. Naraku followed shortly after.

Miroku watched her go before looking back at Sango. “She has the smoothest backhand I’ve ever seen...”

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-Tink-

-Ting-

-Smack-

-Crack-

-Thunk-

“Is it always this loud in the Shikon Mines?” Kagome yelled over the sounds of the dwarves hammering away at the rock walls, fingers in her ears.

“WHAT?!” Sango yelled back. She stopped hacking away at the jewels in the wall to face her friend.

---CRASH---

“I said- is it always this LOUD?” Kagome called louder.

“What? Where’s a clown?” Miroku asked, fearfully looking around while shivering. He hated clowns.

“Not clown. LOUD!” Kag corrected.

“Don’t frown, be happy!” Miroku cheerfully commanded.

“I’m not frowning, I said LOUD!” Kagome glared at them all.

“I don’t care how much you miss your crown, stop whining!” Kagura complained.

---SMASH---

---CLINK---

---TINK---

“NOT CROWN! I SAID LOUD!” Kagome screeched at the top of her lungs...just as all the noise stopped. “...Oops...?” she blushed while sweatdropping.

“Of course it is, girl, we have to actually do work. If it was me, I’d hire minions to- OW! FUCK! SHIT! DAMN IT HOJO! NOT AGAIN!”

Kagome watched, half smiling, as Naraku chased the sandy-haired human around the mine, raising a pickaxe threateningly.

Sango and Kagura scowled, used to the action. “Gods be damned...Can you two work together once without doing this? It’s getting old...” Kagura drawled, watching them all as if they were inferior to her.

In her mind, they probably were.

“Come on, let’s get back to work,” Sango said grimly, hoisting her shovel to her kimono clad shoulder. “Midoriko-sama won’t appreciate it if we slack off at the end of our working days.”

“Can I help?” Kagome asked cheerfully.

“Uh-uh, Kagome-chan, it’s our assignment. It’d be wrong to make you do it,” Sango smiled gently at her friend.

“Okay, just say if you do need help,” Kagome began to tear at the hem of her brown kimono.

Sango was about to raise her shovel to begin to dig, but stopped out of curiosity. “Say, Kagome-chan? What are you doing?”

“Hmm?” Kagome started to stuff the fabric into her ears. “I didn’t want the noise to bother me anymore.”

Sango shrugged before signaling to the rest that they should start working.

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“Kikyou? Why do you look so grim?” Kanna whispered from her position in her mirror. She forgot to mention the fact that the queen always looked grim, but today she looked especially cold.

“Kanna! Do not forget your place,” Kikyou narrowed her steel gray eyes at the youkai child. “But I shall answer you anyway. It seems that I have finally located a method to dispose of my bothersome sister.”

Kanna’s face showed slight interest, her normally blank light blue eyes opened a little more from their half-lidded state. “Wouldn’t that be cause for celebration?”

Kikyou nodded slowly, “It would, if it weren’t for the problem of the plan.”

“And that would be...?” the mirror enchantress raised a snow-white eyebrow.

Kikyou’s thin, peach lips twisted into a frown. “I was looking through some spell books of my evil great-aunt, and I found a recipe for poisoned food. It has an immediate effect on the taster.”

“How is this a problem?”

“I was getting to that,” Kikyou snapped, her temper shortened. “It takes four full days to create this poison. If I start immediately-,” she broke off, “What time is it?”

“Mid-afternoon,” Kanna answered quickly.

Kikyou started where she’d left off, “If I start at this moment or near to it, I won’t finish until the night before my wedding. If you add in the time it takes to get to my sweet baby sister,” she sneered, “I won’t have her dead until the morning of my wedding. If it goes smoothly, which it seems to never do, I’ll come home the hour before I marry.”

“So don’t screw up,” Kanna suggested in monotone.

Kikyou scowled, “I didn’t plan to,” she retorted before whipping around and stomping away.

Kanna’s eyes became heavy lidded once again. “Kagome...you are a smart girl. When you actually try to be, that is. Don’t let this fool,” she stared emotionlessly at the door Kikyou had left by, “trick you.”

Small whisps of smoke and fog glowed around her tiny body, and then Kanna of the Void was gone.

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“Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go. Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum. Hi ho, hi ho, hi ho!”

Sango trailed behind the others, softly shaking her head. “Oh dear Gods...I can’t believe he got Kagome to join him in that damn song!”

Kagura patted her shoulder in a comforting gesture. “It’s okay to fall for idiots, you know? I’m just sorry you had to fall for the king of them...”

Sango shook her head slowly; “Miroku’s not the king. He’s the jester!”

Kagura snickered.

“Lady Kagome! That was beautiful! Let’s have another go at it, shall we?” Miroku smiled merrily.

Kagome grinned, “Yay! Let’s!”

Deep breath.

“HI HO, HI HO...”

“Is it me, or does that song get worse every time we hear it?” Naraku asked quietly.

“I don’t know about ye, but I’ve despised it from the beginning,” Kaede answered dryly.

“Yeah...you can say that again...” the evil hanyou muttered, trailing sullenly after the happy pair of singers.

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“Lord Sesshoumaru-sama?”

“Yes, Rin?”

“Why is Uncle Inu not here?” the small girl asked as she munched on her octopus and rice ball dinner.

Sesshoumaru sighed and looked at the little girl out of the corner of his sharp, golden eye. “If we’re lucky, Uncle Inu won’t ever be here again.” He drawled coldly.

Rin pouted, “But I like Uncle Inu, Sesshoumaru-sama!”

“Yes Rin, I understand that. You shouldn’t grow attached, he’s a complete slob,” he stated coldly.

Rin grinned, proudly showing off a missing tooth. “That’s why I like him!” she announced.

“Hn,” Sesshoumaru tsked. “Uncle Inu is not here because I’ve set about ruining his life,” he answered her original question.

“Oh...are you having fun?”

“Oh, yes. Yes I am...”

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Hmm...names that are songs that children play and sing...

Duck, duck, goose?

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No.

The Bunny Hop?

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No.

Conga?

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‘Uh, that’s not a game,’ Inuyasha scolded his mind.

‘But ‘poker’ is!’ he consciousness argued back.

“Yeah, but not a song! Gods, and I thought you were supposed to be smart!” Inuyasha grumbled out loud.

Back to the mind game.

Ring Around the Rosy?

Rosy?

Rose?

...

Those could work, but she didn’t really sound like a Rose.

“Ring around the rosy, Pockets full of posy, Ashes, Ashes, We all fall down,” Inuyasha sang as he continued to think of names.

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‘Hmm...what is his name?’ Kagome thought over dinner.

“Shippou?” she asked aloud.

“Huh?” Said boy looked up from stuffing his face with shushi. Don’t ask how she’d gotten and made it...It's a rather disgusting process.

“Did that man tell you his name?” Kagome looked at the small boy. Although both would readily deny it, she had a feeling they actually liked each other. They bonded.

“...Yes,” he said slowly, remembering the translation he’d made of it a few days before: dog forest spirit.

Kagome perked up, “Will you tell me it?”

Shippou frowned at her. “Kagome! He told me not to!”

“Alright, Shippou-chan,” she went back to her dinner. She’d just have to figure out a way to get his name.

The next meeting would need to be truth time between the two...hopefully, that is...

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Um...well, I’m not going to skip any days since there are only four days until the wedding of Inuyasha and Kikyou.

Ja ne!