InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Movie House Hanyou ❯ Return to the United States ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha. I just warp things a bit and write fanfics

It felt nice to be back in the United States. Living in her original homeland of Japan for the past two years had been nice, especially since it helped her recuperate her pathetic language skills, seeing as how she didn't use much Japanese in the US, but, truth be told, she was more than happy to move back into a predominantly English speaking country. Living in the Sumida prefecture of Tokyo was not exactly something she would long for once she was out of the damn country. Her lack of "formal" education in the writing systems had her reading at a particularly low grade school level. Japanese teenagers her age knew how to read and write 2000 to 3000 different kanji; she? More like 300 at most. Even with a decent vocabulary she couldn't read shit. 2000 was the minimum needed to bullshit one's way through a Japanese newspaper.

She sighed and then went back to unpacking her computer in her new room. Her family had chosen a nice, newly built townhouse just northeast of Downtown on the other side of the many bridges that cross the Mississippi River. Her family would be the very first owners. Some of the other townhouses on that stretch of land were still in construction. She wondered what this area used to be before the area was likely mowed down and transformed into the more than accommodating abode in which she now stood.

It was so convenient, location-wise. She would attend high school right in Downtown only a 15 minute walk from her mother's new workplace, somewhere inside the American Express Financial Advisors building on 7th between Marquette and 2nd.

Once she got her driver's license, which would take a while due to the need for not only driver's ed, but also waiting an additional six months between getting her permit and taking the license test, and even then it would only be a provisional license that could be revoked for even the slightest traffic violation as long as she was less than 18 years of age, or was it 19? The laws here were really strange and confused her… but anyway, the point was that once she got her license she would have freedom everywhere, but that even while she still couldn't drive, she'd be able to make do with the local public transportation system for any destination whose walking distance did not agree with her.

"Mom!" she called out from the "basement" of the townhouse up the stairs at her mother. "Mom, I'm going out for a walk in the city, to look for a job, okay? I promise I'll be back before it gets dark, 'k?"

Her mother's thin and pale face, framed by her short, mildly curly hair, appeared over the stairwell edge from the kitchen. She was obviously tired from unpacking, but nothing could wear her down. She always wore a smile, and this afternoon was no different, though it was mildly shadowed due to the lack of light shining back up into her face.

"That's fine, dear, but just be sure to take a street map with you. I've only been to this city for job interviews myself, so this place is new to me as well. I'd rather you not get lost your first full day in Minneapolis. It may not be New York City, or Chicago, but it's not exactly Homewood, Alabama, either."

"Homewood?" Where the hell is that?

As if reading her daughter's thoughts, she immediately answered, "A suburb of Birmingham, AL. It's one of the places I lived when my parents still did that 'up and move every few years' thing. Really boring, I must tell you."

Kagome raised an eyebrow and asked, "Is it a place full of rednecks?"

"You know I prefer you not use such terms, dear, but yes, admittedly so. Now, be sure to write down our new phone number, cuz you'll NEED that for job applications. How else'll they contact you?"

She rolled her eyes at her mother and replied that she wasn't a half-wit, keeping a smile on her face to show she wasn't trying to be rude. "I already know to stop by the government center to get a state ID first, and from there I'll go seeking applications." She smiled again, adding one final thing. "Later, Mom!"

~*~

Three hours later, she had a stamped yellow carbon-copy of her Minnesota state ID, some food in her belly from the Food Court on the third level of the City Center, and several applications to fill out. It had been easy to get a state ID here because her Illinois one was still valid, as well as her passport. Fewer questions to deal with than if she had only brought her Japanese ID. No one here would be able to read the damn thing; hell, she didn't know what half the shit on it said. Stupid kanji, she grumblingly mused to herself.

Tired from walking so much, she took the skyway across Hennepin Ave into a very nice, obviously currently-in-renovation building. An Applebee's was currently in construction, but a sign read that they only took walk-in interviews and would only do that on a small spread of dates a couple weeks away.

Kagome looked around and walked into the Border's Bookstore that was right across from the restaurant-in-progress. After a quick chat with a "sales representative" she quickly left, annoyed that they wouldn't hire someone her age. The hell?! She was about to turn 17, for crying out loud! Tomorrow, in fact. April 9, 2003 equals a night out on the town with her mom, a nice dinner at some random place they would happen by. Stupid bookstore only wanted people under 18 who had previous work experience in the damn country. She'd had a job at a small convenience store in Sumida, but she'd never held a job before in the US. She hadn't been old enough when she still lived in Chicago.

Then, a large banner hung along the top of the wall across from her caught her attention. It advertised a movie theater in the building. Movie theaters hire people at age 16, she thought hopefully to herself with a grin. After wandering semi-aimlessly for half a minute, she found the ticket counter and asked a customer-free box office employee about hiring.

The light-skinned black girl, whose nametag read 'Denise,' softly but boredly told her to hold on a sec while she went to get her an application.

During the very short wait, Kagome took a look at the light-up board on the wall behind the counter. It listed all the movies, ratings, and showtimes. However, nowhere could she find the ticket prices. She silently wondered just how expensive movie tickets cost here in Minneapolis. She shuddered at the thought of having to fork over $15 for an evening price ticket, the yen equivalent of which she had become accustomed to over the past two years. Sure, Japan was expensive in general, but she also recalled high ticket prices in New York as well. Yeesh.

"Here ya go. By the way, the manager's desperate to hire people. We have a high turnover rate here. It's likely we'll be working together soon," the box office cashier named Denise returned and said to her, interrupting her thoughts. She smiled as she handed her a blank job application. "There's a pen over by that computer monitor," she mentioned, pointing.

Kagome stood at the counter in the corner and filled out her application. She had to check her yellow thing to make sure she wrote down the correct home address. Again, it was nice for things to be completely in English, a language she understood and could easily BS her way around in if she got stuck. At last, she finished and handed her application back to Denise, who took a quick, spying glance at the neatly scribbled info, even curious enough to take a look at her job history. Man, she's nosy, she thought to herself but said nothing out loud about it.

Before she left the counter, she took another look around and asked to no one in particular, "Where's the rest of the movie theater?" Denise piped up, as she still had no customers since it was a boring, slow April afternoon, stating that the box office was on the skyway level while all other aspects of the movie theater were located on the floor above, the third floor. She pointed to the escalators and staircase off to the right.

Kagome cocked her eyebrow, making a mental note that Minneapolis was strange. Cheap, kinda, but strange. And she'd heard there was no sales tax on clothing. She grinned evilly, very much looking forward to a several hundred dollar shopping spree that she knew would be funded by her mother tomorrow.

~*~

The next morning Kagome woke up to her alarm clock singing out "Itadakimasu" over and over again. She rolled over sleepily and turned the damn annoying thing off, continued to nap for a few minutes longer, and then finally got up, digging through some boxes to find her in-between-extreme-seasons clothing. She knew that Minnesota, like Illinois, got very cold during the winter but very hot during the summer; thus, she assumed the autumn and spring seasons were an odd mixture of the two. Time to get out normal springtime clothes, only slightly warmer. Although she wasn't sure to believe it, she'd heard it could snow in April here.

~*~

School for her would officially start the following week. She and her mother needed some time to totally unpack, and it was just the two of them living there. So, after spending a couple hours online, she finally signed off, then jumped at the sound of the ringing telephone. Racing into the kitchen, she picked up the receiver. It was 9:00am. Who the hell would be calling this early in the morning to a single-parent family who had just moved in a few days earlier?

"Hello?" Thankfully, living in Japan had not fazed her ability to properly answer a

telephone in America.

"Is a Kagome Higurashi available?" spoke a tinny, nasally voice with a slight Russian accent. She froze. She'd only turned in one application the other day. Could that Denise have been right about the movie theater managers really being that desperate?

"H-hai, wata- uh, I mean, yes, this is Kagome. Are you from the movie theater?" She anxiously tried to keep herself from stuttering and switching into Japanese like the robot she had almost become.

"Wow, good guess. Absolutely right, too. I am the hiring manager at Pierce Theaters MegaPlex 15, and my name is Mr. Allen Sashka. I took a look at your application, and you're what we're looking for. Can you come in tonight say, after 6:00pm for an interview?"

"Tonight is my 17th birthday, so my mother is taking me out for a celebration right around that time." She hoped the man on the other line couldn't sense her nervousness.

"Okaaaaay…." he drawled out in that odd Russian accent of his, and she heard a scratching noise in the background, like he was scraping his fingers on his chin. Then after a cough he continued, "Tomorrow evening okay? Same time?"

This was definitely working out. She smiled, though she knew he couldn't see it.

"Tomorrow is fine, Mr. Sash- er, uh, Allen," she blathered, not sure what in the hell he'd said his last name was again.

"All right, be sure to bring proper ID and stuff, cuz if we hire you, we're gonna have you fill out the paperwork right then and there, and we'll need two forms of ID to make copies of for our records, something we can make copies of."

Uh oh. "Uh, I just moved back to the US from Japan, so will my Japanese ID work along with my US passport, or…" she trailed off. There was a pause. "I only applied for a Minnesota ID yesterday so I just have the yellow paper. Nothing plastic yet for a while."

She heard the manager tell her to hold on, and she waited patiently, listening to the sounds of another person talking to him. Then he came back to the phone and told her that what she had was okay, along with her yellow paper, and then ended the call with a happy birthday wish. She breathed a sigh of relief.

~*~

Later on that evening, a slim but decently built figure in the red Pierce Theaters supervisor uniform shirt and black dress pants readjusted his Akira ball cap for the umpteenth time, not liking the way it loosely fit on his head of not so neatly combed silver hair. Most people asked what kind of bleach he used to get it that way, and he always gave them the same bogus lines, lines about some stuff that had worked on some of his lighter-haired friends but left his darker-haired friends, especially those back in Japan, ones he hadn't seen in years, with gooky orange fluff that wanted to fall off in wisps.

He stood in the men's room on the first floor of Border's, looking in the mirror, trying to keep the hair on the sides of his head fluffy and full and his bangs nice and choppy. The ladies liked it that way, made him look like a younger kid. And at times he wanted to feel younger, look younger than he was. He was careful to make sure that the strands that framed his face stayed like that. No way for him to tuck it behind the ears. The rest of his silky yet messy locks were tied back in a low but tight ponytail, but the stuff in front… he always made sure it dangled in front of his shoulders in those gorgeous tufts the ladies liked to play with.

Then he readjusted his belt and hoped to goodness that tonight was not as boring as last night. Some of those employees he had to keep in line were not exactly mature individuals. He shuddered just thinking about that obnoxious little brat and her whiny, squeaky, ghetto voice. If he didn't live in modern civilization, he would have beaten the living shit out of her long ago and left her for dead in some deserted area.

However, this was 2003, and not only was shit like that illegal, but she was only 16. Just beating her senseless and leaving her for dead could constitute as rape, or assault, or whatever, and he didn't need the bacon on his back. He worked with enough cops at the movie theater to know that they took things seriously. Maybe not everything they should, like some of the shit going on that he got mere hints about but never witnessed anything substantial enough to make claims about. Besides, One of the cops was fucking Mrs. Kagura Harmon, the General Manager's First Assistant. Who knew what kind of crap went on behind everyone else's back?

Inuyasha Umezu shook his head and proceeded to exit the lavatory, making his way back up to the skyway level just outside the bookstore, then up the elevator to the third level. It was close to 5pm and he was scheduled to work tonight. He silently gagged on the smell of dry popcorn. Stupid FatGirl probably didn't use enough oil and used too much yellow salt in the most recent batch. He sighed and shook his head, rolling his eyes.

A/N: I love reviews! please shower me w/ them ;)