InuYasha Fan Fiction / Outlaw Star Fan Fiction / Tenchi Muyo Fan Fiction / G Gundam Fan Fiction ❯ Love Has No Boundaries ❯ Chapter 2 ( Chapter 2 )

Love Has No Boundaries

Chapter 2: Strange Friends

Miroku and Shippo found InuYasha up in a tree by the Bone Eaters Well later that afternoon. To them, it looked like he was hard at work thinking about something.

"Is she gone again?" Shippo asked.

"What did you do this time?" Miroku added.

InuYasha looked down at them. He would be damned if those two were going to ruin his plans of spending the week with Kagome. "I didn't do anything." With that comment both Shippo and Miroku shot him the "I don't believe you" look. "Look, she said she was going on a family vacation. So I let her go. Got a problem with that?"

"What do you mean, you let her go?" Miroku asked. In the time that he had known InuYasha, he had never once seen him give in and let her have her way. He always put up a fight and ended up in a shouting match with her, which usually ended with him face down in a two-inch deep hole. It was hard to believe that InuYasha would just let her go without a second thought. Suddenly a thought occurred to him; she probably told him to sit so that she could leave, and he wants us to believe that he was trying to be a nice guy for once.

"I mean what I said. I let her go. She'll be back in one week. I think we can live without her till then. Besides, she needs to spend time with her friends." He trailed his gaze from them back to the tree branch and returned his thoughts to that last moment with her. He didn't want to lose that memory, but he did wish to enhance it.

"She told you to sit, didn't she?" Shippo asked. He also knew that InuYasha wasn't one to give up so easily. He figured that InuYasha had gotten in Kagome's way, when she tried to go home, and she had to resort to making him sit to get her way. He looked up at the older demon and noticed that he looked hurt. He had also noticed a hint of sadness in his voice, but for some reason he was trying very hard to hide it.

"No, she didn't. Neither of you have to believe me, cause I know what happened and that's all that matters. Now, leave me alone. I have some thinking to do."

"Ah ha," thought Miroku, "Now the truth comes out. He let her go and now his brain is working over time to try to figure out a way to get her back. But wait, how come he looks sad? Did she do something to him? No, I've never known Kagome to do anything to him, other then tell him to sit. He must not be able to comprehend what he did and he's trying to compensate for it. I wonder if there is more to this story."

"Are you going to follow her? You know, if what you say really happened, then she won't like you following her. She'll think you're jealous."

InuYasha looked at the priest, growled, and showed him his fangs. "Grr, shut up Miroku. I'm not jealous. What do I have to be jealous about?" He shifted his gaze back to the tree limb and lowered his voice. "She's not my girlfriend. I can't stop her from seeing other guys in her time. What can she possibly see in a half-breed like me? She thinks I'm a jerk and she probably hates me right now." He let his thoughts trail off; he thought he had already said too much.

He continued to think about what Kagome must be saying to her friends about him, if she was saying anything at all. "He's a big perverted jerk. Why would I go out with him? You should have seen him, drawing me close, trying to kiss me. Yuck, good thing I pushed him away from me just in time." He closed his eyes and could picture her, making faces to show that she was disgusted with him. "Boy am I going to get it when she gets back. No, I want to go to her and tell her to forgive me for being so forward. Will she forgive me? Got to get to her."

"InuYasha, are you listening to me?" Miroku was saying and InuYasha looked at him, not noticing that he was now sporting a very bright red blush. "I was just saying that you should find a way to go to her, without her thinking that you are jealous. Then you should pull her aside and have a nice one on one chat with her, alone. Seems to me that the two of you need to tell each other your feelings. Doesn't it seem that way to you, Shippo?"

"Huh, yeah I guess. But why does he have to get her alone? Why can't he just say what's on his mind in front of everyone?" Shippo asked and was now totally confused. He was still young and thus didn't understand how adult relationships worked. It seemed to him that InuYasha liked Kagome and vise versa, but he didn't understand why they acted like they hated each other. It was very apparent that InuYasha liked protecting her and in some ways Shippo thought that was a good thing.

Miroku looked at Shippo. "I'll explain it to you when you're older!" He then glanced back up at InuYasha. Shippo just shrugged and decided he'd keep his mouth closed and listen to their conversation.

InuYasha looked surprised. "F... Feelings for each other." He changed his expression back to the sad look from before. "I told you, she hates me. What makes you think that she's going to want to have a chat with me, alone? I can see it now, I go to have a chat with her and she slaps me, tells me to sit, and then exclaims that she never wants to see me again. I can't live with that."

"InuYasha, you're being too hard on yourself. She doesn't hate you, far from it actually. She does think you are a jerk, but that's only because of the way you treat her. If you treated her with more respect then she'd really be falling for you!" Miroku was hoping InuYasha would see the errors in his mannerisms toward Kagome.

"What are you talking about priest? Do you know something that I don't know? Cause if you do, you'd better share it with me. If you don't, then I'll pound you. Has she been talking to you about me?"

"Wait, no she hasn't been talking to me about you. It's the way you two interact with each other. Any half-brained dimwit can see she adores you and you her. If you would only get over yourself then you could see it too. I have a feeling that you already know how she feels, but you are denying it."

"You got the half-brained dimwit part right, you idiot."

Miroku let that comment slide, and Shippo let go a little snicker, but quickly cleared his throat as Miroku shot him an evil glance. Miroku looked at InuYasha again. "Look, I'm just trying to help you. But I can see that you don't want help. Come on Shippo lets leave him to wallow in his own self-pity. Maybe one day he will come to his senses and start treating Kagome better."

Shippo jumped on Miroku's back as the priest turned around and started walking towards Kaeda's village. InuYasha watched them go. He was glad that they were finally leaving him alone. What did that priest know about women? He's the one who goes up to any woman he sees and asks her to bear his child. He recalled the time that Miroku had asked Kagome to bear his child. She had rejected him then, but did she want Miroku now? He was beginning to get a headache just thinking about that possibility, not to mention the effect that it had on his brain. He began to imagine Kagome pregnant, with Miroku's child, and the two of them hanging all over each other, kissing and hugging. They were taunting him. He suddenly felt sick to his stomach. He closed his eyes and tried hard to get that thought out of his head by remembering his earlier daydream.

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The tents had been set up and bags unpacked. Kagome was cooking dinner, a scrumptious mix of fried rice, vegetables, beef, and shrimp. Huca was sitting at the table cutting various vegetables for a salad. Ayeka had set out into the woods to find some firewood so that they could build a blazing fire. Ryoko had found a beach lounge chair, propped it up near the site of where the fire would be, grabbed a walkman and headphones, placed the earphones in her ears, turned the walkman on, laid on the chair, and quickly drifted into her own world.

Kagome was startled to hear a loud bass sound, which sounded muffled to her. She turned around to find Ryoko lying on a lounge chair. Then she glanced up and noticed the earphones. She wondered what in the world the girl could be listening to, but she just turned back around and continued fixing dinner. Huca had also turned around to look at Ryoko, but she figured that the girl wasn't doing any harm. As long as her and Ayeka weren't shouting at each other, then it didn't matter. She too went back to what she was doing.

Ayeka returned from her firewood jaunt in the woods with arms full of kindling. She laid the wood in the spot she had designated as the firewood pile, which was to the left of the fire circle. Then she noticed Ryoko lying on a lounge chair. "Ryoko, why don't you get up and help out?" After a matter of seconds with no response from Ryoko, Ayeka then noticed the thumping noise and the earphones. She walked over to Ryoko, grabbed the earphones, and pulled them away from her ears.

Ryoko was startled, but when she saw who it was that had disturbed her, she changed her attitude and sat up. "Listen here Princess, I was listening to that. What gives you the right to come over here and take these from me?" She snatched the earphones from Ayeka's hand and held them in front of her face. "Don't tell me it's because you're a Princess, cause you have no jurisdiction here!"

Ayeka pushed Ryoko's hand away from her face. She was getting mad at Ryoko. "Oh. you. how dare you? Your just lying around like the useless demon you are. What was that junk you were listening to? You know your going to destroy your hearing listening to it that loud."

"What, are you my mommy now? Why do you care about what I do to my hearing? Useless demon, you say? I recall saving your hide once or twice, so don't give me that junk. As for what I was listening to, it is some guy called Rob Zombie; I liked his name so I grabbed the CD. Do you have a problem with that, princess?"

Kagome and Huca had heard the start of the conversation. Both had stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to the other girls. Ryoko was now standing in front of Ayeka, who had her hands on her hips. They were staring at each other and the friction going between the two was odvious. Ryoko balled her fists. Noticing this, Kagome decided to intervene. She went over and stepped between the two, both shoulders pointed towards them. "Please stop you two. This is our vacation. Ayeka, Ryoko wasn't hurting anything by lying there. You didn't have to disturb her." Ryoko started to snicker, but Kagome continued, "Ryoko will have clean-up detail tonight after dinner. So you can let her go back to what she was doing."

Ryoko stopped snickering at that and her face turned to that of surprise. "What, m.. me, clean-up detail? Your kidding right."

Kagome faced her and put a very stern look on her face. "I don't think I stuttered and I'm not joking. YOU HAVE CLEAN-UP DETAIL TONIGHT! Tomorrow you will cook, Huca will clean and so forth and so on. We are on this camping trip to have fun, but we all need to work together."

Ryoko crossed her arms and said, grumpily, "Yeah, whatever." She sat on the lounge chair, laid down, inserted the earphones back into her ears, turned on the music with the volume set on high, and started head banging to the music.

"Good plan, Kagome. That Ryoko can be so lazy at times." Ayeka had kept from laughing at the demons obvious defeat, but now she was sporting an amused smile. Kagome looked at her. "Why did you call her a useless demon?"

"Oops," Ayeka thought, "What have I done? I wasn't supposed to say anything about what Ryoko is. Ok, this is not a big problem. What does it matter if they know she's a demon? They would probably think I'm making it up. No big deal."

"Because she is a useless demon. I don't know if you know any demons, but Ryoko is one you need to watch out for."

Kagome thought that that comment was very odd. She started thinking, "I felt the cold shiver of a demon the first time I met Ryoko, but I shrugged it off because I thought I was just paranoid."

"You mean she's a real live demon?" Huca was now very interested in the conversation. She had heard of demons in school, but she had never thought they existed in real life. Now she relished the thought of actually being friends with a demon.

Ayeka looked at her. "Why yes, she's a real live demon. Haven't you ever seen a real demon before?" With that question she had looked at both girls.

Huca replied, "I've read about them in fairy tales and heard about them from legends, but I never thought they existed in real life. This is so cool!"

Kagome didn't know how she should answer. Of course she'd seen demons, plenty of them. Heck, she had a half-demon admirer, or so she thought. "Yeah, I've heard of them also. I've seen a couple here and there. It was nothing exciting though."

Huca looked at her friend. "Kagome, you never told me that you've seen demons before. That's so cool."

Ayeka was staring at Kagome. She remembered what Washu had said, "Kagome seems to be a very important person. I'm picking up a demonic vibe from her aura; this could mean that she is a friend of demons. I am also picking up some sort of spiritual powers from her. The space-time continuum is being disturbed and I think that this girl has something to do with it; I think she can travel back in time."

"Yeah, well, its not like it happens every day or anything. So its no big deal." Ok, so it did happen every day, but her friends didn't know that. Furthermore they didn't need to know. She liked her secret life; she liked battling demons day in and day out. She'd grown accustomed to InuYasha, Shippo, Miroku, Sango, Kaede, and their strange world. She didn't want to change her life for anything.

"Kagome, are you really as sick as your grandfather says? Do you really have gout, diabetes, or any of that other stuff he claims you have?"

"Gout?" Ayeka looked surprised as she glanced from Huca to Kagome. "She doesn't look sick to me. Kagome, is your grandfather telling stories?"

Kagome was blushing and looking at the ground. She had forgotten about her grandfather's lies to try to hide the fact that she went back in time. She didn't understand why he told each person that she had a different disease. She had heard the rumors going around school that she was going to die any day now. Her friends had often wondered why she bothered going to school at all. "Well, I'm not as sick as he says I am."

"You can say that again. I don't think you would have come on this trip if you were as sick as he claims." Huca was now thoroughly confused. She had never believed the stories that Kagome's grandfather told. But she did think that it was weird that Kagome often disappeared for days or weeks at a time and didn't go to school, so she had accepted the stories as fact.

"Yeah, why is your grandfather telling stories? Is he hiding something for you?" Again, Ayeka remembered what Washu had said about Kagome being able to go back in time. However, Washu wasn't too sure what the girl was using as her teleportation device. All Ayeka knew was that Washu had seemed very excited to find out what the teleportation device was and where it was located.

"Uh, what makes you think he's hiding something for me? Why would he do that?" Kagome was now looking at both girls. She was thinking about how much she would like to kill her grandfather, but he was acting on good intentions, so she couldn't be too mad with him.

"Oh, its just the look on your face, that's all. But if you say he's not hiding anything, then he's not hiding anything." Ayeka wasn't content with that answer, but she figured that she wouldn't get anything further from Kagome at the present time. She walked past both girls and set about gathering more firewood.

Huca nodded and turned back to chopping vegetables. Kagome returned to fixing dinner and was glad that both girls had stopped that conversation. She didn't want them to prod any further into her secret life, and she was running out of excuses. She hoped that they wouldn't ask further questions as the days went by, but she knew that this subject would come up again.

"Hey Kagome," Huca said, "Don't you think that those two are weird? I mean Ryoko calls Ayeka a princess and Ayeka calls Ryoko a demon. Plus they are always fighting. I wonder what Ryoko meant by that comment about her saving Ayeka's life before."

"Its hard to tell. But don't you think its odd; we just met them a couple weeks ago around the same time we got that ditsy English teacher Mrs. Mihoshi. What about that new guy in class? Didn't he show up around the same time also?"

"Come to think about it, yeah. All of them showed up at around the same time. What is his name again? Tenko?"

"No, I don't think that's it. Tenki maybe? No, that doesn't sound right. Hum.."

Meanwhile, Ryoko had been listening to their entire conversation with growing enthusiasm. She had turned down the volume of the music, but made it look like she was still lost in her own world. She had also remembered what Washu had told them about Kagome, and she wanted to find out if the girl really was a friend of demons. Now that the conversation had turned in Tenchi's direction, she got up and got behind Huca.

"His name is Tenchi." Both girls turned around to find Ryoko standing, hands on hips, behind Huca. "What's wrong with him, huh? Do you have a problem with him?"

"No, no problem. Wait a minute, you like him, don't you Ryoko?" Huca could see Ryoko starting to blush.

Ryoko put her hands on her cheeks and started to smile, but one look at the other girls made her change the grin to a frown. "That's none of your business. Unless you like him too; if so I'll have to fight you for him."

Both girls shook their hands in front of their faces and said, "No, you can have him." Huca added, "Yeah, Kagome already has a boyfriend and I'm still looking. I'm not in any big hurry, however. I'll find a guy eventually."

Kagome was now sporting a very bright blush, "I. I have a boyfriend?"

"Yeah," Huca had turned around to look at her. She noticed that Kagome was now blushing, "you and Hojo, remember? The two of you have been out on a few dates, right?"

"Uh, yeah. But that doesn't make him my boyfriend. Besides, I don't have time for a boyfriend."

"Ah ha," Ryoko was now very interested, "you like another guy, don't you?"

Kagome's blush became brighter and she could feel her cheeks getting very warm. Was it that apparent? She guessed that it was. "Uh, what makes you think that Ryoko?"

"It's written all over your face, that's why. Come on tell me, who's the mystery man?"

"Mystery man? There is no mystery man. I'm way too busy for a guy to keep up with me, much less me keep up with him. Besides, I'm only seventeen years old. I think I have plenty of time to find a boyfriend." Kagome hoped that Ryoko wouldn't try to prod any further into her personal life, but she figured that it was useless. She knew one half-demon, a kitsune and had fought plenty of full demons, thus she knew how they acted and how stubborn they can be.

Ryoko had a sarcastic tone, "Yeah, right!" She didn't believe Kagome's explanation and wished to pry further. She was really curious to know if Kagome had a demon admirer. Ryoko smiled at that thought and wondered if he would get jealous and follow Kagome. Ryoko decided that he most likely would get jealous, if he was a full demon. Ryoko got excited at that thought; she wanted to meet this guy to find out if Kagome had good taste in men.

"You don't have to believe me." Kagome turned around and stirred the meal she was preparing. After a few moments of silence, she announced that dinner was ready.

Ayeka had returned with another armload of firewood. She dropped the wood off in the woodpile and noticed that the other girls had started preparing plates of food. She went over, prepared a plate, sat at the picnic table, and started eating.

They ate in silence for a good while before anyone said anything. "So, do we have specific sleeping arrangements?" Huca asked because she figured that if Ryoko and Ayeka shared a tent, then no one would get any sleep. One look at Kagome affirmed that she also had the same thought.

"I figured that you and Ayeka could share one tent and Ryoko and myself could share the other, if that's fine with everyone."

"That's fine with me." Ryoko said, she figured that would give her a chance to prod the girl further about her admirer.

"Yeah, sure I guess." Ayeka didn't sound like she liked the idea, but she really didn't want to spend the night in the same tent as Ryoko. After a few minutes of silent contemplation, Ayeka nodded and smiled. "Actually, Kagome that's a great plan."

Kagome couldn't figure out why Ayeka sounded like she hated the tent arrangements and wondered if Ayeka and Ryoko really liked each other, but liked putting on a show for other people. She figured that simply couldn't be. She had noticed that Ryoko was tensing up and had tightened her fists, as if she was ready to fight Ayeka, just before dinner.

Content with the tent arrangements, the group finished eating dinner, then spilt up the clean-up chores. Ryoko set to washing dishes and Huca helped by drying them. Ayeka and Kagome were over at the fire circle. After about ten minutes, they had a brilliant blaze going. The girls found some chairs, placed them around the fire, and sat down to relax. Having finished the dishes, Huca and Ryoko joined them at the fire.