InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Bad Mojo ❯ A Chance Encounter ( Chapter 1 )

A/N: Squee. My second InuYasha fanfic. PH33R M3! Right. Whatever. This is Bad Mojo, a humorous tale of Seduction, Mysterious Old Woman and learning to finally be polite.

My first Multiple Chaptered Story, I'm not sure how long its actually going to be. A few Chaps, neh.

And just so we all realize this, Buyo rules.

Beta-ed by Ammeh, without whom every otherword would be capitalized and is rather good for bouncing deas off of. Go read her Stuff. It amuses the stuffing outta me. Lookie in my Fav. Authors section.

Disclaimer: I dun own InuYasha. If I did, I would lock myself in a room with Sesshoumaru and do unspeakable things with.

...That came out dirtier than I meant it to. XD

Chapter 1

A chance Meeting

There are some very simple things in life that men, as a rule, need to learn from an early age in order to function in society without looking like an inept moron. They include, but are not limited to, Do not leave the toilet seat up, which is perhaps one of the most important, as no girl wants to touch the seat where countless people’s arses have rested. Another is to always answer no to the question, ‘does this make me look fat?’ If a male were to be particularly clever, (which while doubtful, is theoretically possible), he might add on a compliment to the effect of calling said female beautiful, or at the very least pretty. Avoid saying fine, as this is a generic comment and could indeed go either way, and will make the target female worried and cause her great emotional distress. A third rule is that the female is, indeed, always right. Regardless of ones personal feelings towards the manner, or if the female is indeed correct, she is right. This particular concept is difficult for many males to grasp, and as a result, is often left out of the normal curriculum. Another rule is that the chocolate must not be questioned. It is always needed and one must not question the wisdom of the chocolate.

But perhaps the most important of all rules, one that all males must realize if they are to have any hope of surviving beyond their 15th birthday, is that one must always treat Mysterious old woman encountered on the side of the road with courtesy and generosity. This rule is generally applied to all beings, regardless of gender, but as females generally possess the common sense whereas a male might not, it is generally considered a rule for a male person. The reason for this rule is one does not know when, in fact, the mysterious old woman is in fact some mysterious, mystical being in disguise, capable of placing all manner of curses, hexes and general, all around bad mojo upon one’s person.

Unfortunately, no one told InuYasha this.

One really can’t blame InuYasha for this. After all, one must take into account that the rules previously set forth are perhaps modern compared to the time period into which InuYasha was born. One must also take into account his own past, losing his father very young, his mother when he was not much older, and his brother held him in something that could only very loosely be defined as contempt. Hatred, loathing, sheer enmity, came closer than mere contempt to define the feelings between InuYasha and his brother. Half brother, were you to mention one in hearing of the other.

So, having little to anything that resembled guidance in his early years, InuYasha was forced to run, hide, and essentially perform the act of not dying. Demons and Humans alike would try to kill him, simply because his parents couldn’t keep it in the pants, or hakama as might be the case, regardless if he had done anything to provoke such attacks or not. He was half blood, simple as that, and so he should die. It was prejudice at its best, or its worst, given one’s viewpoint.

Also, its unlikely that InuYasha even knew what a toilet was and therefore would not understand the Taboo of leaving the seat up.

One might also think that InuYasha would perhaps, somehow be excused from the ‘Insulting of the Odd Old Woman’, due to his continued ignorance, along with his tough childhood leaving him to be rather untrusting and dare you say, rude? After all, he was not exposed to the plethora of fairy tales that a modern day male was exposed to, what with Disney and Brothers Grimm and similar things. He didn’t know of those things which our modern day sensibilities would call common sense, such as not accepting the apple offered by the old woman, that the old woman you met in the woods with your sibling who lives in the candy house is bent on fattening up and eating you, that the old woman in the bed is not actually grandma, and most importantly of all to not insult and refuse the mysterious old woman who seeks a favor from you. These things which, while all involving old woman, also give one clues on how to live one’s life to the fullest, and safely allow one to move past their 15th birthday.

So one might put some stock in ignorance, allow some forgiveness to take way. But none-the-less, common courtesy can go a long way and count for quite a lot. ~

Kagome had not been having a good day. InuYasha, in all his… idiotic glory, had been an ass to her for most of the day. It seemed the Half-demon was just asking to be sat to within an inch of his life. She, rapidly approaching her breaking point, would be rather happy to oblige his seemingly masochistic desire. Sometimes, she had to admit, even if she loved the idiot, he could be rather… Unbearable? Asinine? Irritating? Just plain dumb? Stop her when she was got something that fit, she had been working up to this all day.

Heaving a sigh, she looked around quick before hoping from her perch on the well’s wall, heaving her monstrous yellow bag over with her. The thing appeared almost like a giant corpulent… Well, something, because what could one compare a giant yellow bag to convey the proper imagery? There isn’t much one could say beyond a canary with a glandular problem.

Sighing and swinging it over her shoulder, she lamented the fact that InuYasha wasn’t at her side to carry it as he usually did. He had come about 4 hours too early, trying to drag her (Against her will) back to the feudal era, intent on resuming their search for Jewel Shards and Naraku. And thus, arguments ensued, resulting in the irate half-demon storming away and through the well, like some spoiled child who hadn’t gotten what he wanted. And she was the one who didn’t have her priorities straight. Sometimes, she really didn’t understand him.

It always, invariably, ended up something like this, her trying to lug her monstrous, heavy bag towards Kaede’s home where she would rejoin her companions. In her head she ticked off a list of things she had brought specifically for each person. InuYasha had Ramen of course, though she had half been tempted to accidentally leave that on the counter where her mother had helpfully left it for her, ready to pack, but then she would have to deal with his whining and sulking and really, she just couldn’t take much more of the Half-Demon’s childish antics. Shippou, she had chocolate. All she had to do was keep him from eating it all at once and getting a stomach ache. For Kirara she had a cat toy. She’d brought the fire-cat one before and it hadn’t lasted long before being destroyed, but she was certain the feline would enjoy it in her smaller form. For Sango, she had soap, a nice scent she thought the Demon-Slayer would enjoy. And for Miroku… Well, she had been tempted to bring a roll of duct tape, but that was definitely more for her than for him unless he had somehow developed a fetish for being bound in tape and having his hair ripped out, which is a disturbing thought. No, for him she had brought one of those irritating brain teasers, one of those games made of twisted nails or horse shoes that one had to get apart. That one she had gotten more on a whim than anything else, and she thought the Monk might enjoy it. Plus it might distract his hands a little, give her and Sango a reprieve from his… Attentions. She had yet to figure the damned thing out, which frustrated her no end.

Lost in her thoughts, Kagome carefully picked her way through the forest, a way she knew well, having walked it more times than she cared to count. She knew each tree, each blade of grass, each rock and bug and sapling. Or, so she liked to tell herself. This seeming in-tuneness with the forest, she felt, gave her an edge that she thought helped her notice when something had changed. Take now for example, the birds had stopped chirping, the animals stopped rustling and it was deathly quiet, unnaturally so.

Wait, what? Pausing in her trek, Kagome glanced around worriedly, searching for anything that might be out of the ordinary. She didn’t see or sense anything, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything there, as she knew all too well. Suppressing the shiver of fear that wanted to travel along her spine, Kagome opened herself, straining her ears to hear something, anything, ordinary or not. Why, oh why, had she had to fight with InuYasha? She could have just let it go, cut short her time with her family cut short again, and come back here and be lost in the unnatural silence with her nice, big, strong, scary-but-never-to-her Half-Demon nearby. Nothing much would bother her with him nearby.

Knowing it was futile to think on that, Kagome finally started moving again, peering around fearfully as if she expected something to jump out and scare her. Her pace, leisurely and somewhat time wasting before, was now clipped, hurried and tense. Fighting down the stirrings of panic that wanted to possess her, she kept going, hoping, praying that something, nothing, anything wouldn’t jump out at her. Of course, when something finally did move, she nearly had a coronary right then and there.

“Excuse me, young Lady?” Came the voice, somewhere in the vicinity of behind her. Of course, Kagome, being tuned to everything and nearly ready to drop her bag and go running away as fast as she could, back to home or to Kaede’s, whichever her panicked mind decided was closer (She was opting for InuYasha at the moment, no matter how much she might want her mommy), nearly passed out. She screamed, jumping and whirling around, hands up and ready to defend herself against her assailant who was… An old woman? Just as her mind registered this, Kagome went tumbling down in a heap, forgetting in her fright the insanely large and heavy bag she had swung over her shoulders. So, down she went with a second cry, pained now, her bag pressing her to the ground.

“Oh, dear… Are you alright, Miss?” Came that voice again, the old woman’s voice, concern laced into the words.

“Ungh…” Kagome replied brilliantly.

“What was that, I didn’t quite catch it…” Came the Old Woman’s voice again.

“Ahh, I’m… I’m sorry, you surprised me is all!” Kagome finally replied, trying, mostly in vain, to worm her way out from beneath her bag.

“Oh, dear, I should apologize. I hadn’t meant to startle you…” Said the Old Woman.

“Oh, no! It’s fine, I was just… Just going home is all. And I’m fine, perfectly all right.” She said, still trying to roll over, get away from the bag, do something.

“Let me help you, Dear. That bag looks heavy…” Said the Old Woman (As Kagome now termed her in her head), as Kagome heard footsteps from her position prone beneath the bag, and then felt, like a boulder lifted by some gods given miracle, the bag elevate. She didn’t even give herself time to wonder how on Earth the woman had lifted the heavy bag, before she was up, trying to even her breathing out, adrenaline still pumping, as she turned to study her assailant/rescuer. Her gaze was met by shrewd brown eyes, and a face that looked like leather. The woman wasn’t much taller than Kagome, and she wore a light traveling yukata. Her feet were bare and mud stained, as if she had been traveling for a long while.

“…sorry, dear, that I startled you. Didn’t mean it at all, I just was wondering if I could ask you something.” With a start, Kagome realized the Old Woman had been talking and saying something, and she too caught up in studying and regulating her breathing to notice. Oh, she was doing wonderful in the first impressions category, no doubt. Fleetingly, she thought of her first impression of InuYasha, Savior then attempting murderer (That wasn’t what she was supposed to be thinking of right now, but Kagome knew from experience it was hard to banish the Half-demon far from her thoughts ever).

Realizing she probably looked the part of a village idiot escaped from her attic where she was locked up and fed fish heads, Kagome finally kicked herself mentally and replied to the woman.

“Ahh, it’s ok, completely alright! And you say you wanted to ask something?” She finally managed to get out.

“Yes, dear… I was wondering if you might spare a bit of food or something, as I have been traveling for a long time and haven’t eaten for quite a while.” Said the Old Woman.

Now, Kagome had grown up with the plethora of fairy tales and Disney movies, and so she knew that it wasn’t wise to offend mysterious old woman. Granted that normally those mysterious old woman didn’t look quite so… tough, and more like one would expect grandma to look on a Sunday with hair curlers and one of those odd MooMoo-robe type things, but the sentiment was generally the same. Of course, this was far from her mind at the moment, but Kagome was safe from retribution seeing as she was generally a kindhearted person (A certain red-wearing, Tetsuiga wielding, Dog eared Half-Demon, just so there’s not any doubt, might beg to differ) and thus she was able to act in a way that preserved her life as she knew it beyond her 15th birthday. Of course, she was 15, almost 16, but that was really not the point.

The point was, Kagome had no compunctions about giving Old Woman some of her food. Which she demonstrated when she moved to her bags side, with an exclamation of ‘Of course!’ and dug into the monstrous yellow thing in search of one of the meals her mother had packed her in a cooler, that she might eat later on. Pulling out the smaller bag with an exclamation of triumph, she turned with a smile to the Old Woman, in her hands a complete meal, wrapped in saran wrap and with a cute little note from her mother on the top. Snatching the note and offering the lunch, Kagome smiled brightly, trying discreetly to not rub her ankle which hurt like the dickens.

The old woman smiled at her, a kind smile which softened her browned face and lessened the shrewdness of her eyes. She looked genuinely happy, and she took the proffered meal, only quirking a brow at the wrap which to her was quite odd. Kagome, being from a modern day was used to saran wrap, but Japanese people 500 years in the past were certainly not, but Kagome wasn’t too bothered by the woman’s lack of reaction to what InuYasha had once termed as Flexi-able glass. Kagome had often given pause to wonder how, exactly, InuYasha knew a term like flexible, even with his atrocious pronunciation, but she was side tracking herself as usual. Remembering to grab the plastic once it was removed, since it wouldn’t do for some random archeologist to find a 500 year old piece of saran wrap, Kagome kept her smile on her face.

“Ahh, thank you Dear. It is nice to see such kindness in today’s youth!” Ignoring the fact that the old woman’s comment was something much more suited to her own time period, Kagome continued to smile brightly. As the woman finished up, she looked at the young girl and gave a small smile, a mysterious one.

“Well, Dear, I do thank you again. That was rather tasty.” The Old Woman said an odd look in her eyes.

“Since you’ve shown kindness to an old woman my dear, I’ll give you a gift. Should you ever need a favor or some help, simply call my name aloud 3 times and I will come and help you with whatever you need.” Her voices tone had dropped, a certain quality to her suddenly husky tones that had Kagome resisting the urge to shudder. The Woman was odd, and suddenly Kagome felt a certain fright that perhaps the old woman was in fact a demon, regardless if she could sense nothing in her aura to suggest such. What she did feel was a mysterious quality, almost like encountering another priestess or something, but far, far different. Nothing malicious hung about the woman, just mysteries like a cloak of shadows.

So lost in her musing on the woman’s change of voice, it took Kagome a moment to realize what exactly had been said. Now Kagome, while slightly naïve and rather quick to trust, was also smart to recognize a complete loon when she saw one. And the Old Woman rather fit the bill to that particular train of thought. So after a brief moment of simply staring blankly at the old woman, Kagome broke into a bright smile, so wide that it almost made her face hurt. Her survival instincts were kicking in, demanding that she move away from the crazy person, because she was already late, and had enough on her plate as it was, and insane charity cases were simply too much for her to handle. Politeness be damned, she was getting out of here and the Old Woman’s mysterious aura was actually her insanity, and let the lady live in peace and think that she could grant wishes or whatever.

Turning, she bent and lifted her hefty sunshine coloured bag and began that arduous process known as saying goodbye. Opening her mouth and deciding to humor the strange, creepy, crazy lady, Kagome spoke.

“Well, Very nice to meet you, errr… Ma’am! I must be on my way, my friends are waiting for me! Ahh… Bye!”

Then turning, knowing that already she was late, Kagome began to quickly pace away, missing the bemused expression that crossed the Old Woman’s face. As she paced away, her walk maybe faster than necessary, Kagome heard the woman’s voice one more time.

“My name is Jeniru, Kagome!”

Kagome froze suddenly to the spot, turning around as quickly as safely possible, lest her bag topple her once again, glancing back to where the Old Woman had stood and found her not there. Thoroughly freaked, Kagome looked around wildly, trying to spot the old woman. Surely she couldn’t have gotten away that fast! And how in the world did she know her name? Kagome hadn’t told her name! She distinctly remembered not telling the Old Woman her name! Looking around fearfully and not seeing the woman anywhere, Kagome finally gave up and turned once again towards Kaede’s village and her companions. And maybe she walked faster than she might need to, but who could blame her, what with crazy old ladies thinking themselves a Fairy Godmother or something else insane like that and silent forests where nothing made any noise and there were no birds and… and… and screw this!

Trying most unsuccessfully to stifle a whimper, Kagome’s gait increased in speed, as much is allowed when one is balancing an oversized and heavy bag atop their back. Even if she was huffing and puffing by the time she got back, there was no way in hell she was staying around where the creepy crazy lady was. Even if she wasn’t a demon or anything, she still could be something scarier, like an axe murderer serial killer type person, biding her time until she found someone worth skinning and making a nice Kagome Suit out of. Kagome didn’t let herself wonder when serial killer became scarier than blood thirsty demon. She just wanted her InuYasha.

A/N: Ha.