InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Cereal Box Romance ❯ Dog ( Chapter 3 )

A/N: Sorry for the delay. I've been lazy. And I've been working on Primal. See? I told you I hadn't abandoned it.

 

Thank you, all my reviewers on FFnet, MMorg, AFF and A Single Spark, and to my wonderful beta and sounding board thyme_cat. You guys keep me going.

 

Disclaimer: I do not own any character created by Rumiko Takahashi.

 

 

 

Dog

 

Xxxx Present xxxX

 

Tiptoeing with the stealth of a woman who had survived many a demon attack, Kagome crept quietly though the dark kitchen until her pinky toe wrapped itself around the leg of the dining table. Good thing there weren't any demons around.

 

“Shit!” she hissed through her teeth, folding at the waist and cringing as she grasped her foot in her palm and prodded the throbbing digit. “Ow ow ow!”

 

The luminescent blue clock of the microwave mocked her as it blinked from 3:23 to 3:24. Kagome scowled, knowing perfectly well that she shouldn't be sneaking around the kitchen in the dead of night to open more boxes of cereal. The look her mother had sent her as Kagome had propped against the back door the last black garbage bag stuffed with baggies of cereal should have been enough to squelch any mutinous thoughts of digging through more cereal. Should have, but wasn't.

 

She had to find that damn ring. There was just no way around it. What else could she do? Talk to him? Now that was crazy. With a derisive snort, she dropped her foot to the cold linoleum and padded to the pantry, giving the dining set a wide berth.

 

If she hadn't been so clumsy in the first place, then she wouldn't have been in this situation. She'd had it and had been careless, but if Inuyasha hadn't made her so mad…

 

Kagome froze mid-thought as cold fingers walked up her spine, raising the fine hairs at the back of her neck. As if submerged in gelatin, she turned slowly to the kitchen widow, the blank eye of the night that threw back her own eerie reflection, wide-eyed and ghoulish in the blue light of the microwave clock. It was watching her…something was watching her from the blackness.

 

A heavy thump shook the glass in the window and Kagome leapt out of her skin, her breath escaping her throat in a keening whistle as two iridescent green eyes blinked at her from the shrouded night.

 

“Meoooow!”

 

The chill was gone as quickly as it had absorbed her, leaving her twitching in the aftermath of a rush of adrenaline and feeling immensely silly: the kind of silly where one giggles nervously at oneself after having made a mad dash from the bathroom to under the bedclothes so as to avoid a bogeyman's invisible, snatching fingers.

 

“Damn it, Buyo!” she hissed at the cat, trying to swallow her heart back to its appropriate place in her chest.

 

Clearing her throat and briskly rubbing the back of her neck, she turned her back on the stare of the window and the family cat's pleading eyes. She opened the pantry, only to gasp in dismay at the final three boxes of Golden Puffs cereal that lined the shelves.

 

Completely forgetting her bout of the creeps, she snatched up one of the boxes and gave it an intimidating glare. The Golden Puffs bunny grinned back, flourishing a Demon Decoder ring under her nose. Giving it firm shake, she hissed at it, “You better have it.”

 

`I'm crazy. Why else would I talk to cardboard rabbits?' With a sigh that welled from the bottoms of her heels, she marched to the cupboard and pulled out her favorite cereal-dumping bowl and proceeded to fill it with sticky yellow nuggets. Though the kitchen was dark and cloaked in shades of gray, her eyes easily locked onto the baggie and its plastic contents. Her blood pounding in her ears, she reached into the bowl and pulled it free.

 

Xxx Two and a half weeks ago xxxX

 

Kagome crawled out of the Bone Eater's well with a decidedly smug grin. The manufacturer of Golden Puffs' cereal toys did, in fact, make a Dog Decoder Ring, one of which she had safely tucked into the pocket of her skirt. Lucky for her, Souta was a shameless collector of all things stupid, from Pogs to gaming cards that he didn't play to Happy Meal toys, and with a well-placed hint about the hentai manga collection shoved under his mattress, he'd relinquished to her the entirety of his Demon Decoders with a growl of, “If Mom finds out about those, I'm so gonna kill you!” and then had slammed his bedroom door in her face.

 

The small collection had comprised of another Cat ring, a Fish, a Raccoon, a Dog, for which she had been undyingly grateful, and a ring that had no kanji on top whatsoever. After squealing and hopping in a tight circle, she tossed the Cat, Raccoon and Fish on her bed and shoved the Dog into her pocket. The blank ring was dropped into her tote for future perusal and not given a second thought. A smear of lip-gloss and mascara later, she'd launched over the side of the well and into the past.

 

“Yes I need, I need my samurai,” Kagome hummed under her breath, adding a hip shake and a bounce to her step. “Ayi, yi, yi, I'm your little butterfly.”

 

Humming, grinning, and snapping her fingers, she crossed the clearing in no time and entered the verdant gloom of the forest. Giving the neckline of her camisole a quick adjustment and her boobs a small fluff, she glanced down at the short, yellow, flared skirt that swung about her legs. She looked great, felt jazzed up, and was more than ready for her summer romance to start - and she finally had the tool she needed to woo the shy, confused, mostly likely virginal hanyou. Now eighteen, she thought it was high time they explore the joys of sex together. Or at least make out. Or kiss, for kami's sake.

 

It only occurred to her later that though she had a ring that read the minds of dog demons, it in no way guaranteed her a particular hanyou's heart.

 

Really, it should have been no surprise to her when she spotted soul stealers sliding through the trees like spectral, insectile, salamanders. Nor should she have been shocked to see Inuyasha and Kikyou standing closer than necessary. Yes, they were just talking, but there was no mistaking the tense, yearning lines of his body or the softness of her normally cold brown eyes.

 

The decoder ring chose that moment to kick in and demonstrated another truth that she should have thought of before as a low, subsonic buzzing hovered in the back of her mind. Clear thoughts did not manifest, for he was merely half-demon, but the force of his emotions was almost crushing in its intensity. Love: brilliant, pure and untainted, resonated through her skull and thrummed with her heartbeat. It swept through her in a heady rush, as if she'd just plummeted from the top of a waterfall and into a pool of warm milk that buoyed and sustained her even as it dragged at her with an irresistible current back under the torrent of emotion.

 

For long minutes, she stood behind the thick trunk of the tree, face pressed against the rough bark as it molded ridged patterns into her skin, and basked in the balmy radiance of her friend's love, pretending for that time that it belonged to her but knowing that it could never be. Her love may have transcended time, but his reached past the curtain of death and clung with desperate tenacity.

 

With a shaking hand, she pulled the little ring out of her pocket and dropped it into her tote, and the deluge of feelings stopped with an abruptness that left her breathless with relief. As silently as she crept up to them, she stole away, a familiar burn at the backs of her eyes, not only for her shattered dreams but also in utter mortification. If only she had known how he felt before, then she wouldn't have pursued him as she had. She wouldn't have sat him for going to see Kikyou and never, in her wildest dreams, would she have considered him her boyfriend. There wasn't room for two women in that kind of devotion. If only he'd just said something!

 

`I'm a fool.'

 

Scuffing her sandals on the worn little path, dragging her heart behind her on a rope, Kagome sulked into the village. She wasn't going to cry: this was what she'd wanted to know, wasn't it? She was not…

 

`Drat.'

 

A tear had snuck its way down her cheek and was now hanging wetly from the end of her chin. `And I bet my mascara is running, too,' she groused as she rubbed it away with the back of her hand, not surprised when it acquired a small black smudge.

 

“Kagome!”

 

Her head snapped up at the sound of Sango's voice and she hastily dabbed at her under-eyes with her fingertips as the slayer waved to her from the back of a giant firecat. Waving back with her other hand, she made her best attempt to appear as if she had a speck of dust in her eye.

 

“Hi Sango!” her voice rang out to the village square where her best friend sat with false cheeriness as she carefully dug at her eye.

 

Kirara reached her in one fiery bound and Sango stared down at her in resigned commiseration. “Oh, Kagome.”

 

“No! I have something in my eye-“

 

“Of course you do,” she replied with a pitying smile.

 

Kagome hated that smile. She'd seen it so many times over the years on so many faces: the sad upturn of the lips, the concernedly drawn brows, the eyes that shone with sympathy for unrequited love. At first, her friends had been angry for her, railing against Inuyasha for leaving Kagome to see Kikyou. Eventually, they had given up, but she couldn't remember exactly when their indignant anger had been replace by pity: pity, for she had held on to the crush despite all of his unspoken signals.

 

He had told her: in deed and gesture, in the flickering of golden eyes. She had simply refused to listen.

 

“So, you're leaving?” Kagome interrupted the uncomfortable silence that had fallen between the two women, needing to fill the void with words that didn't involve herself or Inuyasha.

 

Sango nodded, relief relaxing her face into a true smile that held her strength and energy. Hardly aware of the tension draining from her own muscles in the warmth of Sango's friendship, Kagome smiled back. “Just passing through on my way to a job.”

 

“By yourself? Where's your apprentice?”

 

Shrugging, her dark ponytail bouncing jauntily with the motion, Sango said, “I gave Akako the day off. Besides, I used to slay demons alone all the time!” She blinked as a thoughtful, almost sly expression crawled across her face. “Would you like to come?”

 

Did she want to leave? Skip town without a word to Inuyasha? Abandon a day of basking in the sun for an afternoon of grime and demon guts?

 

“Uh…yeah. I think I would.”

 

For the first time in many months, she wanted to beat the crap out of something that would fight back.

 

XxxxxxX

 

Wiping her face with her hand, Kagome sighed as it came away with the last of her mascara and a generous portion of slimy green goo.

 

“They don't usually explode like that,” Sango commented from several feet away as she prodded an unidentifiable bit of demon with her booted toe.

 

Kagome had to wonder what a youkai resembling a flying, bulbous sack of lime-flavored Jell-O usually did when hit close range by a sacred arrow, but there was still demon yuck on her face and mouth and it did not taste like lime Jell-O. She assumed, anyway. She was not about to open her mouth and find out, not for all the smart-ass remarks in the world. Rubbing the last bit of clear arm-skin over her lips, Kagome settled for glowering at her slayer friend.

 

The ground squelched as the slayer strolled over to her friend, reeds and long grasses rustling against her leather body suit. The marsh was smelly, humid and treacherously soupy in places, but Sango picked her way through with practiced ease.

 

“You missed a spot,” Sango tapped the side of her cheek with a remarkably clean finger. Then again, Sango had ducked behind Hiraikotsu just as Kagome's arrow had struck the pustulous youkai, bringing Kagome to the conclusion that while Sango may not have expected such a flatulent, messy eruption, she had certainly expected something unpleasant.

 

As Kagome no longer had a clean spot on either of her arms, she glanced down at her trendy little tank and skirt in the off chance that they were slightly less slimy than her face and bust. No such luck: while they may not have been coated in the stuff, the splatter pattern left few large clean spots. Giving Sango another heart-felt glare, she stalked across the squishy ground toward her tote, which had been secured on a slight rise of earth, and fished out her beach towel. She hated to ruin it, but sometimes sacrifices had to be made for the greater good. And if she had puree of demon on her face for one more minute, she was going to scream. Or cry. Maybe both.

 

“I need a bath,” Kagome grumped when her face was finally clean of the slippery stuff.

 

Sango opened her mouth to reply when a young man from the village called out to them, his voice wheezy from sprinting through the wide stretch of grassy marsh toward them. He couldn't have been more that fifteen, which sounded so young to Kagome at her mature age of eighteen, and his glistening, worshipping eyes didn't help the image. Clutching a crude wooden spear in one hand and holding an ill-fitting helmet to his head with the other, he skidded to a stop in front of them, bowing and panting.

 

“Lady Sango, Lady Kagome!” The two ladies shared a knowing look, then gave the boy similar patronizing smiles. His dark, overeager eyes had followed them the moment they'd arrived in the village by the marsh. Kagome had avoided him and even Sango, in her quest to find her friend a husband, had studiously ignored him. “I've come to help you!”

 

“That's very kind of you, but we have everything under control,” Sango assured him, her smile tightening slightly as the boy adamantly shook his head.

 

“I wouldn't dream of leaving such lovely ladies to handle these youkai alone,” he exclaimed as he adjusted his ridiculous helmet to a rakish angle, mussing his dark hair in the process.

 

`Great, a hentai in the making.' Kagome sighed and scrubbed at her arms with the towel, choosing to let Sango handle this one on her own. After all, the woman was nothing if not experienced with handling perverts.

 

“Lady Kagome,” the youth spoke right next to her, starling her slightly. He bent down, picking something out of the muck and extending it to her with what she assumed was supposed to be a suave smile. Instead, he simply looked goofy. Poor guy, maybe womanizing wasn't as easy as Miroku made it look. Though why the guy was even interested in her, covered in green sludge as she was, was beyond her.

 

“You dropped this.” Her eyes fell to his hand and she almost winced at the sight of the dog decoder lying in his calloused palm.

 

“…thanks,” she reached to pluck it out of his palm, but before she could draw away, his grimy hand closed wrapped around her sticky fingers.

 

“Anything, for you, lady,” he crooned in a voice that was as far from debonair as one could get.

 

`There's such a thing as trying too hard,' she wanted to inform him. `And I'm not going to bear your children.'

 

“Um…yeah.” Kagome pulled her hand free and backed up a couple of steps; suddenly aware that his intense gaze was not exactly fixed on her face. Catching Sango's mocking grin and throwing a withering glare back at her, she dropped the little ring in her pocket and dragged the towel over her chest, not missing his disappointed frown as her cleavage was hidden from view.

 

Then again, hadn't she wanted a little romance? If she wasn't going to get it from Inuyasha, what could be the harm in flirting with this guy, ridiculous as he may be? At least she could get some practice in for when she met someone worthwhile. Her mental debate made it no further when Sango's irritated shout shattered her thoughts, probably for the best.

 

“Damn it! There's more!”

 

The young man startled and hunched in on himself, but he held his ground and his spear shakily in front of him. Dropping the towel, Kagome snatched her bow from the long grasses, nocking and firing an arrow in a graceful, practiced movement, unknowingly earning her an appreciative stare from her admirer.

 

With a wet splat, the first of the bog youkai popped and showered the marsh with green goop, though thankfully it was out of range of the miko, who had another arrow already in place. A balmy breeze picked up, tossing around the stench of decay and sticking her skirt to a bit of slime on the backs of her upper thighs.

 

`Just a little higher...'

 

The words whispered through her mind and she was suddenly hyperconscious of the shortness of her skirt. She faltered, her arm loosing its tension at just the wrong moment, and her arrow made a wavering path into an unthreatening patch of reeds. Turning to glare at the boy from the village and give him a piece of her mind, she saw that his attention was wholly fixed on the approaching swarm of bog youkai and not in a position to be ogling her skirt, or more precisely, what her skirt was failing to cover. Face pale and jaw fully open, he was doing his best impression of a wall-eyed frog.

 

`I hope that isn't his “o face”,' she thought uncharitably before she was hit in the stomach by an overzealous sack of shrieking slime. The youkai scrabbled at the hem of her camisole with blunt, pudgy fingers, and while it didn't hurt in the least, Kagome was seriously grossed out.

 

“Ahhh! Sango, get it off! Get it off!” Batting at it with her hands, simultaneously trying not to touch its sticky, banana-slug colored skin and still get the thing off her person, Kagome did what came naturally: she purified it.

 

Blat!

 

Kagome wailed as the bog youkai popped against her. Another came flying toward her, howling in a lawnmower voice and wildly waving its spindly arms. She ducked; throwing herself to the ground and hitting the mud on her hands and knees as the youkai narrowly missed her head. Hiraikotsu whizzed by, slicing through soft youkai bodies with nauseating splats.

 

`Ah yes, an appropriate position for a bitch.'

 

`I am so going to smack myself a pervert.' Scrambling out of the muck, she grabbed her bow and whacked the boy upside the helmet. He yelped and dropped his spear, cowering under his own arms as he backed away from the crazy woman and few remaining bog youkai. In a masterful swoop, the bone boomerang destroyed them as well and whirled back to its mistress, who managed to catch it without getting any of the mire on herself.

 

Speaking of which…Kagome glanced down at herself and groaned. Not only was her skirt now glued to her ass, she was coated from head to toe in a thick layer of demon yuck. It was sticky. It was foul smelling. It had better not stain. `Next time I've got boy troubles, I'll just go shopping.'

 

“Kagome, what's wrong with you?” Sango glanced between her incensed friend and the youth, who was still sidling away from the two women and clutching his helmet to his head.

 

“He…he slimed me!” she gestured disgustedly to her new coating of green goop.

 

“Not that! You hit the poor kid-“

 

“Did you hear what he said?” Kagome snapped back, wiping futilely at skirt to get it to lie somewhat decently against her thighs and thoroughly failing. As soon as she got the front to cooperate, the back would ride up and she knew by the cool air against her skin that anyone behind her was getting quite the show. She could feel the eyes on her backside. Damn that kid-

 

`Higher, little skirt…'

 

“See!?” Kagome all but shouted and then her brain tripped over itself as she realized from where the voice was coming. Sango couldn't hear, let alone see it: it was inside her head! `Then who…what…?'

 

“He didn't say anything-“ Sango stopped mid retort and stared over Kagome's left shoulder with wary eyes. “What is he doing here?”

 

 

A/N: The lyrics Kagome was humming was from Smile.dk's “Butterfly”. Anyone who can guess where the “o-face” reference comes from gets a cookie.