InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Demons, Inc. ❯ Chapter 07: Two Hundred and Seventy Reasons Why Not to Kidnap a Mortal ( Chapter 7 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Stars Came Out 
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Comedy / Adventure | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 05.24.2009 | Pages: 3 | Words: 6.4K | Visits: 145 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Comedy / Adventure | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 05.24.2009 | Pages: 3 | Words: 6.4K | Visits: 145 | Status: Completed
DEMONS, INC.
Chapter 07: Two Hundred and Seventy Reasons Why Not to Kidnap a Mortal
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"What are you working on?" Inuyasha asked Kagome as he wandered into the living room of their brand new apartment. They were running short on cash and he needed a distraction so that he wouldn't have to consider getting another job. Kagome usually provided.
"I am making a list," she declared with the self-importance of a politician. "It's a list of reasons why it's a bad idea to kidnap a mortal, such as my stunning self."
"Fantastic," Inuyasha replied sarcastically, stepping over her. She was sprawled out in the middle of the floor and since the room had the dimensions of a cardboard shipping box, she took up most of the area.
"I'm on reason two-hundred and sixty-eight," she told him quite proudly. Reason two-hundred and sixty-eight said, Because I like macaroni and cheese.
That's when Inuyasha noticed what she was writing these "reasons" on.
"Hey! That's my best shirt!"
Kagome gave it an appraising look. "Now it's even better!"
Inuyasha glared at her but found he didn't quite have the energy to chase her, as she was clearly expecting. Instead he plopped down on a plastic chair, the single item of furniture in the entire apartment. (They had stolen it off their new neighbor's balcony.)
"Guess what?" Kagome asked delightedly.
"What?"
"I found you a job!"
"What?!" Inuyasha repeated with quite a bit more energy, like a broken record heating up for its grand finale.
"I was looking in the newspaper, and I called in and scheduled an interview for you." Never mind how that had happened, since she didn't understand a single word of the local language. She unfolded another one of Inuyasha's shirts. "Let's see, I wrote down here that the interview is at 8:00 AM, today!"
"Shit!" Inuyasha swore, quickly changing into his "best shirt" and running down the hallway to collect some more work-appropriate pants (he was wearing his pajamas pants, which Kagome had been delighted to find were decorated with army ants; she had made utmost haste in adding fairy wings to each one of them). It was already 7:37, according to his inate sense of time. (He was actually a bit off. It was really 6:59. He had yet to adjust his clock for All Light Savings Time, which is a random event that takes place in the demon world where all demonic nations' governments cooperate in changing what time of day it is without telling their subjects for no reason but that they feel like it. To date it is the only recorded event in the history of all seven separate dimensions of the universe of multiple governments fully cooperating with one another.) Miroku and Sango, still trying to sleep, groaned as Inuyasha raced through the single bedroom of the apartment, looking for his shoes. This room was about the same size as the living room. Since they didn't have any beds, they had dumped a bunch of blankets and dirty clothes onto the floor and slept on them in a distracted, communal sort of way. There had been lots of black eyes and mysterious bloody noses. Not to mention how late they stayed up gossiping, returning to the fond days of middle school slumber parties. Kagome, on the other hand, felt it was an improvement because it meant no one was afraid of her anymore. It also gave her ample opportunity to practice her slumber party pranks on people. These included drawing cat faces on Inuyasha with permanent marker, putting Inuyasha's hand in warm water in an attempt to get him to pee himself, and braiding Inuyasha's hair.
"Bye bye, Inuyasha!" Kagome called cheerfully as he rushed out the front door. Shippou came out of the kitchen, where he had been eating a breakfast of sauteed tangerines that Kagome had 'prepared' for him, and grinned. (Kagome had a frightful preoccupation with the stove, one could say.)
"Did you tell him what he has to do at the job?" Shippou asked.
Kagome smiled devilishly. "Of course not."
Before they could discuss this further, Sango appeared from the bedroom and cornered Shippou, explaining that they would be enrolling him in the local school district...much to Shippou's unending horror and revulsion. He screamed and fell out of his chair, which sent it flying in the opposite direction. Never mind that physics wouldn't allow for this sort of thing, but everyone knows physics will change on you at the least desirable moment so that you have to throw ten years of research away.
Thus ensued a merry chase around the tiny apartment, to Kagome's delighted amusement. (Especially when she got to use the stove again.)
Except that he did, and he would.
Kagome, who had been trying to get around Inuyasha (who was blocking the entrance of the single bathroom) in order to cause some mischief, the nature of which she had yet to reveal, let out a delighted squeal and raced into the other room. She was a celebrity!
She got there too late to see the picture, so she deflated like so much sauteed milk cartons, without any fire. The photograph that had been there featured an attractive young woman with normal black hair and plain brown eyes, and an expressive mouth showing quite a bit of fear. It wasn't the most flattering picture in the world and was also quite fuzzy, having been capped from a security tape of some sort. Kagome would not have been impressed anyway.
The story (most of it was fiction, fabricated by the media like 99% of everything they ever report on, in any alternate dimension) of her "dangerous" appearance in the demon world concluded and made way for another exciting news story about breakfast cereal scams, which mostly involved a battle over a copyright for the amount of sugar to be placed in two different types of cereal. Kagome didn't even know you could copyright that sort of thing. It also appeared the top legal leaders of the country did not know you could copyright that sort of thing either, but were making a mad dash to ensure the possibility.
"Shit!" Inuyasha swore. It was his favorite cereal that was losing. Kagome flared her nostrils and told everyone they were blockheads and that she wanted to see her picture on the television. Miroku taped a hasty picture that Shippou had earlier drawn of her (playing the banjo; he was going to staple it onto the top of his school folder later) onto the screen and Kagome was quite happy again, watching her sketchy pencil face take on all the colors of the news story behind it. It gave her paper skin an attractive blue tint.
Suddenly, everything that had happened since Kagome's arrival refused to make any sense at all to Inuyasha. Then, remembering that it hadn't even made the tiniest bit of sense before this particular point in time, either, he shrugged and went back to blocking the bathroom door, since Kagome was now trying to get back in there.
"I know you used the toilet half an hour ago!" he screamed at her. "You can't possibly need it again!"
"Just goes to show what you know!" Kagome yelled back. "I have highly important things to do!" Like racking up the water bill. Or releasing a tub full of water into the wild. Or, really, the possibilities were endless. The lack of furniture to destroy didn't dissuade her in the slightest. "May I remind you that I'm wearing your boxer shorts and have had a total of eight sodas today!"
Inuyasha was tired, too, but couldn't sleep just then. He was tired because he had missed out on many of his required hours of sleep in light of Kagome's commotion, not to mention the fact that he had been the one who had to re-route the pipes back to proper working order. He would never understand how she got the toilet to flush into the bath tub.
"Reason number two-hundred and sixty-nine," Kagome declared as she fell over and woke up, "girls just wanna have fun."
Inuyasha snorted and changed into his work uniform, leaving the human who had caused all his troubles in life on the floor. Sadly, he realized that he was putting more hours into his current pinky-white, unexciting job at the Magical Kingdom than he had put into his career back home. And he didn't even get a lunch break here.
She had quit her scheming weeks ago, shortly after this routine had started, because there was rarely anyone home with her and the demons typically ignored her when they were home. She realized quite readily that she was in a rut, one like she had never felt before, and she couldn't quite pinpoint the reason beyond the superficial. It felt different that homesickness. Briefly she envied the fact that demons never had psychological issues more pressing than a bruised ego or a bad hair cut. Not even Inuyasha suffered from those, she thought bitterly. Inuyasha's self-confidence bubbled bigger every day, like an overhealthy population of bacteria on an elementary school's water fountain. With chewing gum stuck to the bottom. And he was quite proud of his silver tresses.
Kagome slid open the balcony door and boosted herself up on the rail to watch the grass move below her. It was a rather windy day but the weather was mild, so she spotted several other demons out on their balconies, too, enjoying the sunshine with books or drinks or cigarettes. Their next door neighbor gave her an appraising look, one that seemed to say, You stole my furniture and I know it. Kagome gave him a neighborly grin before going back into the apartment.
She turned on the television. There was only one channel she could understand and it was showing an infomercial for perfume, or rather some kind of bottled scent that would kill a normal human (or at least make him convulse spastically) but was immensely attractive to demons. The name was odorous burnt rubber, by n'Estee Laundry.
She sighed again and went into the bedroom. Sango was snoring softly in the bed pile. Kagome flopped down onto the floor and watched her for awhile before taking a nap herself. Soon, Shippou came home from school. Miroku finished at work and came home and then Sango left. Miroku followed after feeding Shippou and Kagome dinner. Then Kagome and Shippou went to bed after he completed his homework. Inuyasha arrived home.
Day after day. It was like an eternal and lonely summer vacation. So why did it feel worse than all those other boring summer vacations when everyone else had gone on trips without her?
She had no energy for anything anymore.
He sighed and went back to his pillow. It was a nice pillow. It did all the things a pillow should.
It wasn't long until he was asleep.
While he slept soundly, dreaming of sugar plums and sugar fairies and all those other sugary things except for tea, a tall demon with hard eyes (if that were, of course, possible) entered the store. The dainty bell on the door failed in waking Inuyasha, which didn't surprise anyone. Or, it wouldn't have surprised anyone if somebody had been in there to notice. As it was, this tall, absurd demon stood in the entryway as the door closed behind him. He was much misplaced in this magical setting, dressed in a business suit and donning a cold face like an unfeeling miserly fellow from a Victorian novel. Still, he took careful stock of the store and narrowed his eyes at the man sleeping at the register. As Inuyasha attempted to roll over and landed with a most unprincessly thump on the floor, the businessman raised one humored eyebrow before giving a quiet chuckle and leaving the store, which made the security camera wonder why on earth this man had come in here in the first place. Not that it cared at all after the moment passed. It was time for it to put graffiti on the walls anyway. It so loved to torture Inuyasha.
"Bye bye, I'm leaving the apartment now," she announced before standing up and leaving the apartment. It was a nice night, reasonably cool with a fresh wind blowing in from somewhere, but it smelled distinctly of the sea. Kagome, still dressed in a most fashionable mixture of everyone else's clothes because no one ever took her shopping, ever, stretched out her limbs and took in her freedom. It was much nicer to be outside of the apartment. She trotted down the steps and crossed the quiet courtyard, heading into town. She wasn't quite sure where to go. She had Inuyasha's credit card, or at least one of them. Shippou had the other and used it to buy stuff from infomercials during the weekends when he and Kagome were home alone all day long. But Kagome had the other card, so monetarily she was safe (demons aren't especially bright at figuring out forgery). Kagome didn't want to go to a movie because, for one thing, she didn't want to go by herself, and more importantly she still didn't know any words of the local language. She wasn't especially hungry, so she didn't want to go to a diner. She wasn't sure what other things would still be open at this time in the demon world. So she just walked along the sidewalks.
She didn't pass too many demons as she walked, but she found a nice area with a few cafes that were closing up for the night, and a seaside restaurant that stayed open until midnight. She decided to check out a small building nearby, which was one of those high class bars, with romantic lighting, a few little round tables, and a piano in one corner. The piano wasn't being used since it wasn't a weekend, but the radio was on playing some love songs from some well-hidden speakers. As she sat down at the bar, she got an evil eye for her outfit from some of the patrons, but she had been out of a normal social circle for so long that she didn't even recognize the look. She just returned it in her cheeky way without realizing it wasn't socially acceptable before trying to order something that wouldn't require an ID, which was a lot harder than it looks when you can't speak the language.
"Ulio ni tehera-sa?" the bartender said pleasantly, with a warm dark voice that didn't interrupt any conversations going on nearby or disturb the music. It was a nice voice for a bartender. It had just finished wiping down the counter and was now rearranging glasses in order to look calmly, slowly busy. The bartender didn't even look remotely human, so Kagome didn't try to guess what sex it was.
"Hmm," Kagome hummed, hoping that was okay for now.
So he fumed around the apartment, looking for the anomaly. Everything was fine...he winced...which meant...he went into the bedroom. There was Shippou, sleeping sweetly. But of no surprise, Kagome was not there. His face turned red as a tomato in his ire, which was commonplace with regard to Kagome.
"Wake up!" Inuyasha roared. Shippou shot up into the air and exploded with fearful squeals. Like a dud firework, or a cell phone that knows when it's about to be replaced with a newer model so that you can't donate it because darn it, it loved you best.
"What?!" Shippou grumped, staring blearily up at his cousin. His messy hair and tail fur gave him the appearance of an outraged cactus.
"Where the fucking hell is Ka-Kagome?!"
"Kagome's gone?" Shippou whined out, wide-eyed. He started to cry.
Maybe that was the problem. Ever since she and her demon caretakers had arrived here in this country, the golden moment was over. She was all by herself all day and had time to think about all the things that bothered and scared her about this world. All the safety nets she had possessed before felt ripped away. The demons all worked and Shippou went to school, and she watched their brief closenesses fall away around her. She missed her family in the human world even more. She had no idea where she had left her shoes. She wished at least one of the demons didn't have to work.
She tried to put her mind off it by watching the bartender, and then the romantic dining couples. The back wall of the bar was lined with windows, which offered a darling view of the night time sea and the moon's reflection melting in it. She watched that for awhile, too, and felt it was all very surreal with the love songs overhead, mostly because the love songs sounded like they came out of the 80s with lots of crystally synth noises. She tapped her bare foot against the rosewood paneling of the bar and shifted on the stool. Kagome kept distracted track of the couples as they left and came, but had no way of keeping the time. But Kagome knew that Inuyasha would be home by then.
She grinned suddenly with some of her old mischief. He would be ticked off that she was gone. He would be livid. Insanely angry. She wondered if he would come find her or if she would have to return to the apartment to face his tomato face and bared puppy teeth. She almost laughed out loud as she remembered the way his eye twitched in time with one of his ears when he got really angry. She hoped he came to get her so she could make a big scene in public, with lots of hair-pulling (his hair, of course) and screeching. Then she could jump around the outside of the building, go down to the ocean. That would be good. She could grab a little boat and---
Her face fell again. And then it would all be over, and everything would go back to being lonely and dull. She hated being in a rut. Two minutes later Inuyasha blundered into the bar, having followed Kagome's distinctive scent (the one that was actually a mixture of someone's cologne and someone else's aftershave; the bartender was trying with all its might to politely ignore it---a smell like that had to be glandular).
Kagome had been watching the sea when he entered, so she didn't notice him come in and she missed his eye twitch. He stomped over and roughly spun her around. She nearly fell off of the stool.
"What the hell are you thinking?!" he growled at her. "You're fucking going to get us into serious fucking trouble!"
She scowled at Inuyasha. "I am having a perfectly nice drink!" She snorted and thought for a moment. Was it worth talking of her troubles at all to him? She couldn't take much more of living so withdrawn. Here she was in a new world and she wasn't allowed to leave a tiny, contained bubble of it. But it was probably pointless to tell him as such because Inuyasha was a demon, and demons didn't have feelings. Did they? Maybe they did.
"You need to fucking go home, right now."
She frowned. "That's what I've been trying to tell you for months," she hissed before slamming her glass down and heading to one of the back windows.
Inuyasha knew something important was happening in that girl's brain. It was more than scheming, but more or less a similar kind of thought pattern. He ignored the upset bartender and watched Kagome's back for a moment. He scratched his forehead. A little of his fury had gone away, now that he knew she was safe. How to approach? He liked it better when she was a maniac.
He scrubbed his face with a hand and, fuming and fidgeting, went to stand beside her. She was watching the sea with a forced determination, trying not to cry or scream or erupt.
"What the hell is wrong with you lately?" Inuyasha snapped.
"I don't know," Kagome said quietly, her shoulders slumping. "I'm not really---I don't, well, I can't define it."
Inuyasha rubbed the back of his neck and rolled his shoulders, bunched up his lats so they made that funny ridge against his shoulder blades, relaxed them all, moved from one foot to the next, cursed silently at the moon for no good reason, and surprisingly did not spontaneously combust as he searched for the words he was supposed to say, the ones that would click perfectly into place in this conversation. He hadn't once in his entire life said the right words. But Kagome wasn't exactly right in the head, so maybe that counted for something.
"Is it?" he wasn't really sure what else to say. "Huh...angry?"
She glared at him. "No," she said. "Don't be an ass hole."
"What?! I'm not being an ass hole, I'm being nice!"
"You don't know anything," Kagome spat belligerently. Sometimes she hated him for being so obtuse. It wouldn't be any problem at all if she understood what exactly was happening to her metaphorical heart (the real one was working quite nicely, with a healthy resting heart rate of 62 beats per minute). "You know nothing at all!"
"I fucking know everything!" Inuyasha insisted. The bartender tried to make hushing noises, sighed and gave up. These were the only two customers at the moment, might as well let them go at it as long as they didn't break anything. Demons need a huge dosage of personal fighting in their daily lives. It is sometimes hard to fit it all in in this workaday world.
"Then why don't you know what's wrong with me?" she pressed in an angry, desperate sort of way, like the way you talk to your flashlight as it gives out when you know there's a dinosaur hanging around somewhere just waiting to eat you the moment all the lights go off. (More of Kagome's wisdom from bad horror movies.)
"Because you're fucking deranged! You're mopey and grumbly and you're stupid!"
"I am not!" Kagome retorted venomously. "I am perfectly normal and sane! You're the one who doesn't ever know what's going on!"
"It's your fault! Why don't you just fucking grow up and get over it?!"
"You're the one who abandoned me!" Kagome yelled out, eyes bright with fury. She jabbed a finger into his chest.
She stopped and blinked, moving a finger to her lip in a thoughtful expression as if she had just heard a quaint, curious little story on the news.
"Oh," she said suddenly, having an epiphany. "I see."
Inuyasha didn't like all this; he was spitting and fuming like a train losing its mind, still trying to process what exactly it was she had told him. His brain was coming to an impassible stopping point, like a calculator that has encountered a divide by zero error. And then he had his own epiphany.
Surprisingly, and most disappointingly, angels didn't start to sing and an unseen sun didn't shine down upon them. The moon's reflection continued quite placidly to slide around the sea waves like butter. The bartender had a glass of water and watched, wishing it spoke this other language. It was sure there was potential for a soap opera in those unknown words.
"You what?" Inuyasha repeated dumbly.
Kagome sniffed. "Nothing." The 80s romance songs continued to sparkle from the hidden speakers and Kagome chewed her bottom lip. Who knew? The reason she felt so bad was because everything seemed, to her, like Inuyasha had left her behind, wasn't going to remember her anymore. She could have laughed with the stupidity of it all, except that it still hurt even now that she had words to describe it.
"I didn't abandon you!" he growled, looking a bit confused. "Why the hell would you think that?!"
Kagome shrugged and began drawing pictures with her fingertip against the cool glass. "Because you and everyone else...well, no one's ever at home anymore, and you least of all, I guess, I don't know, I mean really it's just...Don't get any ideas, I'm just by myself all day and no one ever even talks to me anymore...I guess it just feels like any day you'll all give up and go home and leave me here, and I...miss you." Her eyes burned. She wasn't sure if she was angry still or just upset.
Inuyasha blinked. "But we're all doing that because we're trying to keep you safe!"
Kagome sighed and wrapped her arms around herself. "Doesn't make it feel any different..." she told him gloomily.
The bartender tried not to be too obvious a rubbernecker as Inuyasha clumsily put a hand on Kagome's shoulder. The bartender just loved this stuff, that's why it worked there. It dimmed the lighting a bit more, so the ocean was a bit crisper through the window; how romantic. Despite its valiant efforts, it still watched them with blatant interest as it "cleaned" the counter top. They didn't really seem to notice it.
"Look, uh, I can take---maybe, I'll take a day off a work each week to uh, stay home and make sure you don't cause trouble."
Inuyasha thought that it was very generous of him, and the perfectly best thing to stay in that particular situation. It may have been the nicest thing he had ever said. But Kagome started crying.
"Wh---"
"I want a hot chocolate," Kagome announced. "Right now."
"Uhh, sure." Inuyasha looked over at the bartender, sneered, and barked out a request. The bartender calmly attended in a somewhat bewildered fashion. The hot chocolate was kind of trivial, usually spiked with alcohol. It was really just some chocolate powder and milk, nothing very tasty.
Kagome thumped down at the bar and put her hand against her cheek, plucking up the silver spoon with her other hand as Inuyasha handed the bartender some change.
"Thank you," she said to no one in particular, stirring around a swirl of sugar. Her eyelids were still heavy but she had gained a little control of her outburst. Inuyasha sat down beside her. "Yes," she told him. "Please stay home."
Inuyasha just nodded and let out a sigh. He was exhausted. He couldn't handle this kind of emotional roller coastering.
Kagome peeked up at him from underneath her shaggy bangs and managed a little, watery smile. Inuyasha only rolled his eyes. He began plucking at a paper napkin, the kind only used to set drinks on, as Kagome silkily pursued her hot chocolate. When she was being serious, it was like she was an entirely different person. She wasn't the crazy, uncontrollable, and purely illogical schemer with a mad scientist's personality (which Inuyasha wouldn't admit that he liked just fine, or actually found quite entertaining as a matter of fact). She was a little female with a surprising amount of cleverness and more strength than he gave her credit for, and had an amazing set of lungs. And serious, it was much easier to see her as a whole being, not just some human who had scrambled into his world and turned everything upside down. A whole being with thoughts and feelings and ambitions. Someone who couldn't just be locked up in a house somewhere. Despite the fact she caused him endless amounts of inconvenience.
Though, he had to admit the journey had been fun. He had always known his work at Demons, Inc. was boring for him, but it wasn't until she came in, demanding all his attention, that he realized just how boring...and how much more interesting everything was with her causing trouble.
"Inuyasha," Kagome mumbled as another song came on, a sultry voice singing about guiding stars in comparison to a lover. She gently spun the spoon around some more. "I really didn't mean to make so much trouble, I mean it."
"Keh, it's okay. You didn't wander too far from the apartment I guess..."
She scowled at him. "Not that, I mean here, the demon world. I'm sorry I caused so much trouble, like with your job and life and family, but...I'm not sorry that I'm here. I'm really glad I met you."
Inuyasha's breath scratched a bit, trying to catch in his throat but failing. She turned to face him completely. She was pink. He gave a cocky half-grin to hide his own embarrassment at this sudden confession.
"Of course, I am wonderful, after all," he announced quite meaningfully.
She laughed, blinked hazily and seemed to relax into the ambiance. Their eyes rested on each other's for a moment, lips slightly parted. Inuyasha leaned in and Kagome warmly moved forward. He was close enough now that Kagome could feel his warm breath against her lips as she watched him with content, half-lidded eyes. The bartender watched with excited anticipation as Inuyasha allowed his clawed hand to hover near the side of her head, not really sure what to do next. If this were a romance story, they would have kissed just then. But it's not a romance story.
A demon in the shape of a hairy bat swooped down, having been hidden up among the lighting, totally non-moving all that time. It had been there for most of the day. The bartender said, "oh yeah" to itself, remembering when the bat had come in earlier and refused to be prized away, just as the thing scooped Kagome up and fled the restaurant with horrendous speed like...well, like a bat out of hell. Kagome's horrible screech followed it all the way out.
Inuyasha stood blinking for a moment, trying to compute. Say nice things to girl who makes life miserable, almost kiss girl who makes life miserable, girl who makes life miserable gets abducted by giant bat who makes life even more miserable, life has always been miserable.
"What the fuck?!" he roared before tearing out of the bar. There was no sight of them anywhere, and he couldn't catch a definitive scent in any direction because the bat had been flying. "Fucking hell!"
He began racing through the street, accosting random passersby to demand if they had seen any of this at all.
And that's how he temporarily wound up in a mental hospital.
Reason two hundred and seventy, he thought to himself, grinding his teeth, as Sango greeted him with an evil grin when the doctors released him at her approval, I am the one who always gets in trouble for the mortal's sake.
Chapter 07: Two Hundred and Seventy Reasons Why Not to Kidnap a Mortal
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"What are you working on?" Inuyasha asked Kagome as he wandered into the living room of their brand new apartment. They were running short on cash and he needed a distraction so that he wouldn't have to consider getting another job. Kagome usually provided.
"I am making a list," she declared with the self-importance of a politician. "It's a list of reasons why it's a bad idea to kidnap a mortal, such as my stunning self."
"Fantastic," Inuyasha replied sarcastically, stepping over her. She was sprawled out in the middle of the floor and since the room had the dimensions of a cardboard shipping box, she took up most of the area.
"I'm on reason two-hundred and sixty-eight," she told him quite proudly. Reason two-hundred and sixty-eight said, Because I like macaroni and cheese.
That's when Inuyasha noticed what she was writing these "reasons" on.
"Hey! That's my best shirt!"
Kagome gave it an appraising look. "Now it's even better!"
Inuyasha glared at her but found he didn't quite have the energy to chase her, as she was clearly expecting. Instead he plopped down on a plastic chair, the single item of furniture in the entire apartment. (They had stolen it off their new neighbor's balcony.)
"Guess what?" Kagome asked delightedly.
"What?"
"I found you a job!"
"What?!" Inuyasha repeated with quite a bit more energy, like a broken record heating up for its grand finale.
"I was looking in the newspaper, and I called in and scheduled an interview for you." Never mind how that had happened, since she didn't understand a single word of the local language. She unfolded another one of Inuyasha's shirts. "Let's see, I wrote down here that the interview is at 8:00 AM, today!"
"Shit!" Inuyasha swore, quickly changing into his "best shirt" and running down the hallway to collect some more work-appropriate pants (he was wearing his pajamas pants, which Kagome had been delighted to find were decorated with army ants; she had made utmost haste in adding fairy wings to each one of them). It was already 7:37, according to his inate sense of time. (He was actually a bit off. It was really 6:59. He had yet to adjust his clock for All Light Savings Time, which is a random event that takes place in the demon world where all demonic nations' governments cooperate in changing what time of day it is without telling their subjects for no reason but that they feel like it. To date it is the only recorded event in the history of all seven separate dimensions of the universe of multiple governments fully cooperating with one another.) Miroku and Sango, still trying to sleep, groaned as Inuyasha raced through the single bedroom of the apartment, looking for his shoes. This room was about the same size as the living room. Since they didn't have any beds, they had dumped a bunch of blankets and dirty clothes onto the floor and slept on them in a distracted, communal sort of way. There had been lots of black eyes and mysterious bloody noses. Not to mention how late they stayed up gossiping, returning to the fond days of middle school slumber parties. Kagome, on the other hand, felt it was an improvement because it meant no one was afraid of her anymore. It also gave her ample opportunity to practice her slumber party pranks on people. These included drawing cat faces on Inuyasha with permanent marker, putting Inuyasha's hand in warm water in an attempt to get him to pee himself, and braiding Inuyasha's hair.
"Bye bye, Inuyasha!" Kagome called cheerfully as he rushed out the front door. Shippou came out of the kitchen, where he had been eating a breakfast of sauteed tangerines that Kagome had 'prepared' for him, and grinned. (Kagome had a frightful preoccupation with the stove, one could say.)
"Did you tell him what he has to do at the job?" Shippou asked.
Kagome smiled devilishly. "Of course not."
Before they could discuss this further, Sango appeared from the bedroom and cornered Shippou, explaining that they would be enrolling him in the local school district...much to Shippou's unending horror and revulsion. He screamed and fell out of his chair, which sent it flying in the opposite direction. Never mind that physics wouldn't allow for this sort of thing, but everyone knows physics will change on you at the least desirable moment so that you have to throw ten years of research away.
Thus ensued a merry chase around the tiny apartment, to Kagome's delighted amusement. (Especially when she got to use the stove again.)
* * *
"Oh, hell no!" Inuyasha declared out loud as he scuttled to a stop outside of a bright pink building that said, in quite curly, white letters, The Magical Princess Kingdom of Magical Princess Rin. The address on the building matched the one Kagome had written down for him, and somehow he did not think that this was a mistake. "I ain't going into that store, and I will not work in it!"Except that he did, and he would.
* * *
"Look, Kagome's on TV again!" Shippou yelled around his toothbrush (Sango was forcing him to reinstate a personal hygiene regimen at night now that he had to go to school). The TV was a splendid little affair, cased in an attractive shell of white plastic with a shiny, pink plastic ribbon glued to the top. It was very small at a reasonable 8.2 inches and had been lifted from Inuyasha's new place of work. Inuyasha still had his uniform on, which had a pink carousal pony on it. As a matter of fact, the pony looked a lot like the television. The thing about magical princess items is that they must all be pink and white. And a dash of lace, glitter, and ribbon never hurt anything, either.Kagome, who had been trying to get around Inuyasha (who was blocking the entrance of the single bathroom) in order to cause some mischief, the nature of which she had yet to reveal, let out a delighted squeal and raced into the other room. She was a celebrity!
She got there too late to see the picture, so she deflated like so much sauteed milk cartons, without any fire. The photograph that had been there featured an attractive young woman with normal black hair and plain brown eyes, and an expressive mouth showing quite a bit of fear. It wasn't the most flattering picture in the world and was also quite fuzzy, having been capped from a security tape of some sort. Kagome would not have been impressed anyway.
The story (most of it was fiction, fabricated by the media like 99% of everything they ever report on, in any alternate dimension) of her "dangerous" appearance in the demon world concluded and made way for another exciting news story about breakfast cereal scams, which mostly involved a battle over a copyright for the amount of sugar to be placed in two different types of cereal. Kagome didn't even know you could copyright that sort of thing. It also appeared the top legal leaders of the country did not know you could copyright that sort of thing either, but were making a mad dash to ensure the possibility.
"Shit!" Inuyasha swore. It was his favorite cereal that was losing. Kagome flared her nostrils and told everyone they were blockheads and that she wanted to see her picture on the television. Miroku taped a hasty picture that Shippou had earlier drawn of her (playing the banjo; he was going to staple it onto the top of his school folder later) onto the screen and Kagome was quite happy again, watching her sketchy pencil face take on all the colors of the news story behind it. It gave her paper skin an attractive blue tint.
Suddenly, everything that had happened since Kagome's arrival refused to make any sense at all to Inuyasha. Then, remembering that it hadn't even made the tiniest bit of sense before this particular point in time, either, he shrugged and went back to blocking the bathroom door, since Kagome was now trying to get back in there.
"I know you used the toilet half an hour ago!" he screamed at her. "You can't possibly need it again!"
"Just goes to show what you know!" Kagome yelled back. "I have highly important things to do!" Like racking up the water bill. Or releasing a tub full of water into the wild. Or, really, the possibilities were endless. The lack of furniture to destroy didn't dissuade her in the slightest. "May I remind you that I'm wearing your boxer shorts and have had a total of eight sodas today!"
* * *
Shippou was at school and Miroku and Sango had decided to go out for a morning on the town to scope out their new surroundings as well as find jobs for themselves. Inuyasha was sitting dejectedly on the bed pile and reading Kagome's list of reasons why not to kidnap a mortal. The human herself was sitting with her back against his and dozing, tired after having spent much of the night locked in the bathroom and making an awful lot of needless noise as she tried to re-route the pipes.Inuyasha was tired, too, but couldn't sleep just then. He was tired because he had missed out on many of his required hours of sleep in light of Kagome's commotion, not to mention the fact that he had been the one who had to re-route the pipes back to proper working order. He would never understand how she got the toilet to flush into the bath tub.
"Reason number two-hundred and sixty-nine," Kagome declared as she fell over and woke up, "girls just wanna have fun."
Inuyasha snorted and changed into his work uniform, leaving the human who had caused all his troubles in life on the floor. Sadly, he realized that he was putting more hours into his current pinky-white, unexciting job at the Magical Kingdom than he had put into his career back home. And he didn't even get a lunch break here.
* * *
Kagome sighed as she looked out the window. Everything had changed since the group had left the cabin in the mountains. Miroku worked in the mornings; he had scored a job at a local studio as a film editor. Sango worked as a night chef at an all-hours cafe, and Miroku spent that time in the restaurant leeching wi-fi and pretending not to be there for the sole purpose of bothering Sango, who in turn told her boss that she had no idea who Miroku was and also dumped hot sauce in his coffee. Shippou spent most of the day at school, and then came home and did his homework. Inuyasha was working full time at the Magical Kingdom. Kagome spent the entire day in the apartment and every day everything felt more and more closed in around her. She wasn't the type of person who enjoyed a cage. There aren't many who do, really, but Kagome especially didn't like being trapped. Not to mention all the alone time had given her too much time to think about her situation and how much she missed her mother.She had quit her scheming weeks ago, shortly after this routine had started, because there was rarely anyone home with her and the demons typically ignored her when they were home. She realized quite readily that she was in a rut, one like she had never felt before, and she couldn't quite pinpoint the reason beyond the superficial. It felt different that homesickness. Briefly she envied the fact that demons never had psychological issues more pressing than a bruised ego or a bad hair cut. Not even Inuyasha suffered from those, she thought bitterly. Inuyasha's self-confidence bubbled bigger every day, like an overhealthy population of bacteria on an elementary school's water fountain. With chewing gum stuck to the bottom. And he was quite proud of his silver tresses.
Kagome slid open the balcony door and boosted herself up on the rail to watch the grass move below her. It was a rather windy day but the weather was mild, so she spotted several other demons out on their balconies, too, enjoying the sunshine with books or drinks or cigarettes. Their next door neighbor gave her an appraising look, one that seemed to say, You stole my furniture and I know it. Kagome gave him a neighborly grin before going back into the apartment.
She turned on the television. There was only one channel she could understand and it was showing an infomercial for perfume, or rather some kind of bottled scent that would kill a normal human (or at least make him convulse spastically) but was immensely attractive to demons. The name was odorous burnt rubber, by n'Estee Laundry.
She sighed again and went into the bedroom. Sango was snoring softly in the bed pile. Kagome flopped down onto the floor and watched her for awhile before taking a nap herself. Soon, Shippou came home from school. Miroku finished at work and came home and then Sango left. Miroku followed after feeding Shippou and Kagome dinner. Then Kagome and Shippou went to bed after he completed his homework. Inuyasha arrived home.
Day after day. It was like an eternal and lonely summer vacation. So why did it feel worse than all those other boring summer vacations when everyone else had gone on trips without her?
She had no energy for anything anymore.
* * *
Inuyasha was sitting behind the register and listening to cheerful princess songs on the company soundtrack, which was available for purchase at the front register. Nobody had been in all day, but that was to be expected because all the kids were in school at this hour. Around noon high tea would be served to the same three old women who came in every single day, but until then there would be nothing. So Inuyasha had commandeered a princessy pillow from one of the shelves and put it on the countertop for his head. He smashed his face into it and was delighted to find that this dulled the pain of his humdrum existence somewhat. He hated serving tea more than anything else in the world. There were all kinds of teas and he hated each and every one of them. He liked to spike them with the dregs of someone else's tea and see which people expressed their distates. It was rather boring because those who came in for high tea generally didn't care what their tea tasted like as long as it was tea-y and had a hint of fruit or some other delicate sugary thing. So he started spiking the butter for the scones instead. He didn't even want to think about how pitiful it all was. He was not even as creative as the delinquent teenagers whose glitter-glue graffiti he had to clean off the side of the building daily.He sighed and went back to his pillow. It was a nice pillow. It did all the things a pillow should.
It wasn't long until he was asleep.
While he slept soundly, dreaming of sugar plums and sugar fairies and all those other sugary things except for tea, a tall demon with hard eyes (if that were, of course, possible) entered the store. The dainty bell on the door failed in waking Inuyasha, which didn't surprise anyone. Or, it wouldn't have surprised anyone if somebody had been in there to notice. As it was, this tall, absurd demon stood in the entryway as the door closed behind him. He was much misplaced in this magical setting, dressed in a business suit and donning a cold face like an unfeeling miserly fellow from a Victorian novel. Still, he took careful stock of the store and narrowed his eyes at the man sleeping at the register. As Inuyasha attempted to roll over and landed with a most unprincessly thump on the floor, the businessman raised one humored eyebrow before giving a quiet chuckle and leaving the store, which made the security camera wonder why on earth this man had come in here in the first place. Not that it cared at all after the moment passed. It was time for it to put graffiti on the walls anyway. It so loved to torture Inuyasha.
* * *
It was night time. Shippou was fast asleep and Inuyasha wasn't quite home yet. Kagome was sitting at the kitchen table, drumming her fingers and staring at the fridge."Bye bye, I'm leaving the apartment now," she announced before standing up and leaving the apartment. It was a nice night, reasonably cool with a fresh wind blowing in from somewhere, but it smelled distinctly of the sea. Kagome, still dressed in a most fashionable mixture of everyone else's clothes because no one ever took her shopping, ever, stretched out her limbs and took in her freedom. It was much nicer to be outside of the apartment. She trotted down the steps and crossed the quiet courtyard, heading into town. She wasn't quite sure where to go. She had Inuyasha's credit card, or at least one of them. Shippou had the other and used it to buy stuff from infomercials during the weekends when he and Kagome were home alone all day long. But Kagome had the other card, so monetarily she was safe (demons aren't especially bright at figuring out forgery). Kagome didn't want to go to a movie because, for one thing, she didn't want to go by herself, and more importantly she still didn't know any words of the local language. She wasn't especially hungry, so she didn't want to go to a diner. She wasn't sure what other things would still be open at this time in the demon world. So she just walked along the sidewalks.
She didn't pass too many demons as she walked, but she found a nice area with a few cafes that were closing up for the night, and a seaside restaurant that stayed open until midnight. She decided to check out a small building nearby, which was one of those high class bars, with romantic lighting, a few little round tables, and a piano in one corner. The piano wasn't being used since it wasn't a weekend, but the radio was on playing some love songs from some well-hidden speakers. As she sat down at the bar, she got an evil eye for her outfit from some of the patrons, but she had been out of a normal social circle for so long that she didn't even recognize the look. She just returned it in her cheeky way without realizing it wasn't socially acceptable before trying to order something that wouldn't require an ID, which was a lot harder than it looks when you can't speak the language.
"Ulio ni tehera-sa?" the bartender said pleasantly, with a warm dark voice that didn't interrupt any conversations going on nearby or disturb the music. It was a nice voice for a bartender. It had just finished wiping down the counter and was now rearranging glasses in order to look calmly, slowly busy. The bartender didn't even look remotely human, so Kagome didn't try to guess what sex it was.
"Hmm," Kagome hummed, hoping that was okay for now.
* * *
When Inuyasha got home, he knew something was wrong. And he really didn't want something to be wrong on that particular night, because it had been a bad night. Earlier in the evening he had discovered that those pesky teenagers were not just scribbling graffiti on the walls of the Magical Kingdom, they were also rearranging all the tea labels (somehow without his knowing) so that he had to spend an extra hour putting everything back into order before he could go home. Inuyasha hated putting things back into order. On top of his hatred for tea, it hadn't been a good night at all.So he fumed around the apartment, looking for the anomaly. Everything was fine...he winced...which meant...he went into the bedroom. There was Shippou, sleeping sweetly. But of no surprise, Kagome was not there. His face turned red as a tomato in his ire, which was commonplace with regard to Kagome.
"Wake up!" Inuyasha roared. Shippou shot up into the air and exploded with fearful squeals. Like a dud firework, or a cell phone that knows when it's about to be replaced with a newer model so that you can't donate it because darn it, it loved you best.
"What?!" Shippou grumped, staring blearily up at his cousin. His messy hair and tail fur gave him the appearance of an outraged cactus.
"Where the fucking hell is Ka-Kagome?!"
"Kagome's gone?" Shippou whined out, wide-eyed. He started to cry.
* * *
Kagome slumped her chin down into her hand and looked at her glass of water. It was a nice glass of nice water, she thought absently. A perfect little glass of water, not a single lipstick print. Just a few squidges from her fingers. She sighed. She wished she had someone to talk to. At least she was out of the apartment, though. It just made her feel lonely instead of trapped, but she realized she had been feeling lonely at the apartment, too.Maybe that was the problem. Ever since she and her demon caretakers had arrived here in this country, the golden moment was over. She was all by herself all day and had time to think about all the things that bothered and scared her about this world. All the safety nets she had possessed before felt ripped away. The demons all worked and Shippou went to school, and she watched their brief closenesses fall away around her. She missed her family in the human world even more. She had no idea where she had left her shoes. She wished at least one of the demons didn't have to work.
She tried to put her mind off it by watching the bartender, and then the romantic dining couples. The back wall of the bar was lined with windows, which offered a darling view of the night time sea and the moon's reflection melting in it. She watched that for awhile, too, and felt it was all very surreal with the love songs overhead, mostly because the love songs sounded like they came out of the 80s with lots of crystally synth noises. She tapped her bare foot against the rosewood paneling of the bar and shifted on the stool. Kagome kept distracted track of the couples as they left and came, but had no way of keeping the time. But Kagome knew that Inuyasha would be home by then.
She grinned suddenly with some of her old mischief. He would be ticked off that she was gone. He would be livid. Insanely angry. She wondered if he would come find her or if she would have to return to the apartment to face his tomato face and bared puppy teeth. She almost laughed out loud as she remembered the way his eye twitched in time with one of his ears when he got really angry. She hoped he came to get her so she could make a big scene in public, with lots of hair-pulling (his hair, of course) and screeching. Then she could jump around the outside of the building, go down to the ocean. That would be good. She could grab a little boat and---
Her face fell again. And then it would all be over, and everything would go back to being lonely and dull. She hated being in a rut. Two minutes later Inuyasha blundered into the bar, having followed Kagome's distinctive scent (the one that was actually a mixture of someone's cologne and someone else's aftershave; the bartender was trying with all its might to politely ignore it---a smell like that had to be glandular).
Kagome had been watching the sea when he entered, so she didn't notice him come in and she missed his eye twitch. He stomped over and roughly spun her around. She nearly fell off of the stool.
"What the hell are you thinking?!" he growled at her. "You're fucking going to get us into serious fucking trouble!"
She scowled at Inuyasha. "I am having a perfectly nice drink!" She snorted and thought for a moment. Was it worth talking of her troubles at all to him? She couldn't take much more of living so withdrawn. Here she was in a new world and she wasn't allowed to leave a tiny, contained bubble of it. But it was probably pointless to tell him as such because Inuyasha was a demon, and demons didn't have feelings. Did they? Maybe they did.
"You need to fucking go home, right now."
She frowned. "That's what I've been trying to tell you for months," she hissed before slamming her glass down and heading to one of the back windows.
Inuyasha knew something important was happening in that girl's brain. It was more than scheming, but more or less a similar kind of thought pattern. He ignored the upset bartender and watched Kagome's back for a moment. He scratched his forehead. A little of his fury had gone away, now that he knew she was safe. How to approach? He liked it better when she was a maniac.
He scrubbed his face with a hand and, fuming and fidgeting, went to stand beside her. She was watching the sea with a forced determination, trying not to cry or scream or erupt.
"What the hell is wrong with you lately?" Inuyasha snapped.
"I don't know," Kagome said quietly, her shoulders slumping. "I'm not really---I don't, well, I can't define it."
Inuyasha rubbed the back of his neck and rolled his shoulders, bunched up his lats so they made that funny ridge against his shoulder blades, relaxed them all, moved from one foot to the next, cursed silently at the moon for no good reason, and surprisingly did not spontaneously combust as he searched for the words he was supposed to say, the ones that would click perfectly into place in this conversation. He hadn't once in his entire life said the right words. But Kagome wasn't exactly right in the head, so maybe that counted for something.
"Is it?" he wasn't really sure what else to say. "Huh...angry?"
She glared at him. "No," she said. "Don't be an ass hole."
"What?! I'm not being an ass hole, I'm being nice!"
"You don't know anything," Kagome spat belligerently. Sometimes she hated him for being so obtuse. It wouldn't be any problem at all if she understood what exactly was happening to her metaphorical heart (the real one was working quite nicely, with a healthy resting heart rate of 62 beats per minute). "You know nothing at all!"
"I fucking know everything!" Inuyasha insisted. The bartender tried to make hushing noises, sighed and gave up. These were the only two customers at the moment, might as well let them go at it as long as they didn't break anything. Demons need a huge dosage of personal fighting in their daily lives. It is sometimes hard to fit it all in in this workaday world.
"Then why don't you know what's wrong with me?" she pressed in an angry, desperate sort of way, like the way you talk to your flashlight as it gives out when you know there's a dinosaur hanging around somewhere just waiting to eat you the moment all the lights go off. (More of Kagome's wisdom from bad horror movies.)
"Because you're fucking deranged! You're mopey and grumbly and you're stupid!"
"I am not!" Kagome retorted venomously. "I am perfectly normal and sane! You're the one who doesn't ever know what's going on!"
"It's your fault! Why don't you just fucking grow up and get over it?!"
"You're the one who abandoned me!" Kagome yelled out, eyes bright with fury. She jabbed a finger into his chest.
She stopped and blinked, moving a finger to her lip in a thoughtful expression as if she had just heard a quaint, curious little story on the news.
"Oh," she said suddenly, having an epiphany. "I see."
Inuyasha didn't like all this; he was spitting and fuming like a train losing its mind, still trying to process what exactly it was she had told him. His brain was coming to an impassible stopping point, like a calculator that has encountered a divide by zero error. And then he had his own epiphany.
Surprisingly, and most disappointingly, angels didn't start to sing and an unseen sun didn't shine down upon them. The moon's reflection continued quite placidly to slide around the sea waves like butter. The bartender had a glass of water and watched, wishing it spoke this other language. It was sure there was potential for a soap opera in those unknown words.
"You what?" Inuyasha repeated dumbly.
Kagome sniffed. "Nothing." The 80s romance songs continued to sparkle from the hidden speakers and Kagome chewed her bottom lip. Who knew? The reason she felt so bad was because everything seemed, to her, like Inuyasha had left her behind, wasn't going to remember her anymore. She could have laughed with the stupidity of it all, except that it still hurt even now that she had words to describe it.
"I didn't abandon you!" he growled, looking a bit confused. "Why the hell would you think that?!"
Kagome shrugged and began drawing pictures with her fingertip against the cool glass. "Because you and everyone else...well, no one's ever at home anymore, and you least of all, I guess, I don't know, I mean really it's just...Don't get any ideas, I'm just by myself all day and no one ever even talks to me anymore...I guess it just feels like any day you'll all give up and go home and leave me here, and I...miss you." Her eyes burned. She wasn't sure if she was angry still or just upset.
Inuyasha blinked. "But we're all doing that because we're trying to keep you safe!"
Kagome sighed and wrapped her arms around herself. "Doesn't make it feel any different..." she told him gloomily.
The bartender tried not to be too obvious a rubbernecker as Inuyasha clumsily put a hand on Kagome's shoulder. The bartender just loved this stuff, that's why it worked there. It dimmed the lighting a bit more, so the ocean was a bit crisper through the window; how romantic. Despite its valiant efforts, it still watched them with blatant interest as it "cleaned" the counter top. They didn't really seem to notice it.
"Look, uh, I can take---maybe, I'll take a day off a work each week to uh, stay home and make sure you don't cause trouble."
Inuyasha thought that it was very generous of him, and the perfectly best thing to stay in that particular situation. It may have been the nicest thing he had ever said. But Kagome started crying.
"Wh---"
"I want a hot chocolate," Kagome announced. "Right now."
"Uhh, sure." Inuyasha looked over at the bartender, sneered, and barked out a request. The bartender calmly attended in a somewhat bewildered fashion. The hot chocolate was kind of trivial, usually spiked with alcohol. It was really just some chocolate powder and milk, nothing very tasty.
Kagome thumped down at the bar and put her hand against her cheek, plucking up the silver spoon with her other hand as Inuyasha handed the bartender some change.
"Thank you," she said to no one in particular, stirring around a swirl of sugar. Her eyelids were still heavy but she had gained a little control of her outburst. Inuyasha sat down beside her. "Yes," she told him. "Please stay home."
Inuyasha just nodded and let out a sigh. He was exhausted. He couldn't handle this kind of emotional roller coastering.
Kagome peeked up at him from underneath her shaggy bangs and managed a little, watery smile. Inuyasha only rolled his eyes. He began plucking at a paper napkin, the kind only used to set drinks on, as Kagome silkily pursued her hot chocolate. When she was being serious, it was like she was an entirely different person. She wasn't the crazy, uncontrollable, and purely illogical schemer with a mad scientist's personality (which Inuyasha wouldn't admit that he liked just fine, or actually found quite entertaining as a matter of fact). She was a little female with a surprising amount of cleverness and more strength than he gave her credit for, and had an amazing set of lungs. And serious, it was much easier to see her as a whole being, not just some human who had scrambled into his world and turned everything upside down. A whole being with thoughts and feelings and ambitions. Someone who couldn't just be locked up in a house somewhere. Despite the fact she caused him endless amounts of inconvenience.
Though, he had to admit the journey had been fun. He had always known his work at Demons, Inc. was boring for him, but it wasn't until she came in, demanding all his attention, that he realized just how boring...and how much more interesting everything was with her causing trouble.
"Inuyasha," Kagome mumbled as another song came on, a sultry voice singing about guiding stars in comparison to a lover. She gently spun the spoon around some more. "I really didn't mean to make so much trouble, I mean it."
"Keh, it's okay. You didn't wander too far from the apartment I guess..."
She scowled at him. "Not that, I mean here, the demon world. I'm sorry I caused so much trouble, like with your job and life and family, but...I'm not sorry that I'm here. I'm really glad I met you."
Inuyasha's breath scratched a bit, trying to catch in his throat but failing. She turned to face him completely. She was pink. He gave a cocky half-grin to hide his own embarrassment at this sudden confession.
"Of course, I am wonderful, after all," he announced quite meaningfully.
She laughed, blinked hazily and seemed to relax into the ambiance. Their eyes rested on each other's for a moment, lips slightly parted. Inuyasha leaned in and Kagome warmly moved forward. He was close enough now that Kagome could feel his warm breath against her lips as she watched him with content, half-lidded eyes. The bartender watched with excited anticipation as Inuyasha allowed his clawed hand to hover near the side of her head, not really sure what to do next. If this were a romance story, they would have kissed just then. But it's not a romance story.
A demon in the shape of a hairy bat swooped down, having been hidden up among the lighting, totally non-moving all that time. It had been there for most of the day. The bartender said, "oh yeah" to itself, remembering when the bat had come in earlier and refused to be prized away, just as the thing scooped Kagome up and fled the restaurant with horrendous speed like...well, like a bat out of hell. Kagome's horrible screech followed it all the way out.
Inuyasha stood blinking for a moment, trying to compute. Say nice things to girl who makes life miserable, almost kiss girl who makes life miserable, girl who makes life miserable gets abducted by giant bat who makes life even more miserable, life has always been miserable.
"What the fuck?!" he roared before tearing out of the bar. There was no sight of them anywhere, and he couldn't catch a definitive scent in any direction because the bat had been flying. "Fucking hell!"
He began racing through the street, accosting random passersby to demand if they had seen any of this at all.
And that's how he temporarily wound up in a mental hospital.
Reason two hundred and seventy, he thought to himself, grinding his teeth, as Sango greeted him with an evil grin when the doctors released him at her approval, I am the one who always gets in trouble for the mortal's sake.
* * *
Comments: It pleases me to inform you that Kagome will be back to her normal self by next chapter. ;] I just realized that I really needed some character growth in this... "story."