InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Just This Once ❯ Past and Present ( Chapter 9 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Chapter Eight

Notes: Yea, I know, the last chapter was extremely confusing, and totally sucky. You'll have to excuse me, was under extreme pressure from all you wonderful, demanding readers…*sweatdrop* You know, I just updated Give Me A Reason, and nobody even cares. *sweatdrop* Omg, PLEASE read it! *weepweep* Nobody likes it…I only have four reviews there, and it's one of my favs now. Oh come on, I can't be THAT horrible….(I'm already the worst, as it is. ^-^;;;;) Come on, read it and review. It won't kill you…might blind you, but not kill you…

Disclaimer: Argh, I'm too stupid today to think of a witty comment for this section telling how I don't own Inuyasha. Hmm…I know:

Wait. I just forgot.

R&R: Review, review, my lovelies! *pets readers* Thanks for helping me reach the 100 goal in Survivor, now let's see if we can do it here! I'm already on 90, shouldn't be that hard! Hmm…*thinkthink* What should I do as a celebration for meeting the 100 goal? Hmm…

On!

P.S. Inu/Kag appears to be winning…^-^

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Just This Once

By: elementalspirit125/ Elementsofmine

Chapter Eight

Inuyasha ducked behind a tree. There she was again! Maybe it was just his mind. Shaking his head irritably, he flattened his ears to his head and stalked behind a building to follow the girl from a distance. Stupid ears… he thought. A mark of a demon, yet he was a hanyou. Demons these days were rare, hanyous even more so.

As he hid behind a rusty ladder leading up an apartment complex, he tried to catch another glimpse at the girl. Nope, she was gone. Whistling carelessly, he swung his arms behind his head and walked off in search for a main street that would take him back to Kagome's apartment. He smiled at the thought of her. She hadn't gotten mad at him at all. In fact, she was cleaning up for him…

Thinking that gave his conscience a guilty prod. Not that he had much of one. Brushing aside the thought as easily as you would to a fly, he carried on his tune and walked home, not realizing that the same girl he had been following was now following him.

"Shrime shome!"

Teeth clenched tightly on a plastic bag's handle, Miroku staggered into the hallway, trying in vain to close the door. With all sorts of groceries spilling from his arms, he kicked the door shut without looking behind him.

"Oof!"

Inuyasha stalked in after him, rubbing his nose angrily. "Hey, watch where you're closing the door."

"Schoory."

Dusting her hands on her apron, Kagome straightened up from her position looking in on the oven. The poor oven had just about had a heart attack from Inuyasha's disaster encounter with the kitchen, and was refusing to cook the chicken inside.

With a resounding slap, Miroku joined Inuyasha in searching for band-aids. Kagome sniffed angrily. "Men," she muttered. "Don't have the hands to shut a door but always have a free hand when it comes to groping."

Miroku's voice reverberated from the hallway. "Well looky-here…"

Kagome gasped automatically, and darted out of the kitchen, leaving the oven to fend for itself. "Miroku, whatever you do, do NO-"

Skidding to a halt at the hallway, Kagome ran in right in the middle of Miroku's infamous pickup line."

"Will you bear my child?"

Sango, standing petrified, breathed in and out steadily. Kagome tightened her hold on the meat cleaver she had grabbed beforehand. Miroku smiled harmlessly. The tension stretched clean thin before Sango replied, a little too calmly in Kagome's ears.

"Aw, that's so sweet!"

Miroku brightened visible. "Really?"

Sango looked slightly behind Miroku, as though thinking hard. "Ahh….no. Fire away, Inuyasha."

Finding herself doing the same as Miroku and looking behind him, Kagome found an evilly grinning Inuyasha who nodded quickly before releasing the prize in his hand. The poor, still uncooked chicken from the oven met a dreadful end by landing right plop onto Miroku's face, and then leaving a slimy trail down Miroku's shirt. Standing shocked, Miroku was only able to close and open his mouth wildly.

"Excuse me?"

Everyone turned to the door, where the grouchy face of the landlady appeared. "Could you please refrain from throwing raw chicken at each other? I run a respectable apartment flat, and kindly ask for you teenagers," she spat out, "to control yourselves around your dinner."

Turning around to leave, she didn't notice the maelstrom of evil smiles forming behind her. "Why, when I was young, I never, NEVER played with my food. No, it was always being goooo-!!!"

With a gooey slap, the chicken found a second home; in the old landlady's hair.

Quickly shutting the door in her purpled face, Sango laughed along with the rest of the group. Inuyasha scratched his head. "Dang, why don't you guys ever get kicked out?"

Kagome grinned. "I always pay her extra, she just never says anything about it. She's such a witch, she just keeps the extra money and lets us live here."

Miroku sighed, looking down at his ruined shirt. "Well, it's off to the showers for me." Casting another innocent smile at Sango, he finished slowly, "Unless someone would like to join me…?"

Another slap answered his question. He sighed, holding his reddened nose. "Well, I guess not."

Turning around to the showers, he almost tripped over an enthusiastically digging Inuyasha, who had been going through all the groceries. Standing up, he proudly displayed his prize.

"Ramen!"

After a quick dinner, composing of none other then Inuyasha's apparent favorite, Ramen, the group quickly organized a sleeping space in the living room, with a sleeping bag for not only Miroku, Inuyasha, and Kagome, but also Sango, seeing that she would be sleeping over. Carefully making sure that both she and Sango were located a few feet away from the ever- hopeful Miroku, Kagome crawled into her sleeping bag and turned out the lights.

After a few minutes, everyone was asleep, even though Miroku had somehow managed to inch his way over in between Sango and Kagome…

Inuyasha's Dream

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He was in his favorite tree again, back home where he had lived for most of his childhood. Dangling his feet below him, he felt strangely free from all the troubles he had now. Noticing that someone was beside him, he turned to his right to see another person, a girl, intent on looking down at the ground.

The girl had long, chocolate crown hair which locks had been pushed impatiently behind her ears. Still, wisps of brown determinedly pushed past her ears and blew softly across her forehead in the light breeze. The rest dangled down her back, perfect for a young maiden outside on a fine spring day. A pert nose was dead-center, with a small mouth tightly shut in concentration. Her age was that of an ordinary girl's, but her appearance was not. Dressed in gauzy silk that seemed to be wrapped around her thin frame, she was anything but. Her feet were enclosed in simple, open-toe sandals.

Inuyasha nervously waved his hands in front of her face.

"Yo," he said, waving his hands in front of her. "Hello?"

The girl started, and turned to him, surprise changing to happiness. "Inuyasha!" she cried. "It worked, it really worked!"

Inuyasha met her eyes and almost fell off of the branch. While she looked like a regular teenage girl, rather unnaturally pretty, but still a girl, her eyes contradicted everything.'

Looking into her eyes, he felt that every burden of the world was in those eyes, and had been passed on to him, making him feel tired and heavy. Her eyes were a misty blue-grey from what he could tell, which was not much. Too much smoke clouded her eyes, but what he could see was still startling. Tiny pinpricks that resembled scars dotted her eyes.

"Who are you?" he asked, realizing his voice had gone dry. She gave him an odd look.

"We talked this morning, silly."

He stared incredulously back at her, trying to peer through the smoke of her eyes. "K..kari?"

Not replying, she merely looked back down at the base of the tree. "I thought it better if I could bring you back to where we first met. Look!" She pointed down to two figures at the bottom of the tree. "See, there's you, and me, you at age 4."

Peering down, Inuyasha found that she was true in her words. There was him, much smaller, and much more fragile in the way of the world. He had tripped, running after a ball and was now sitting below the tree, crying. A shimmer sparked beside him, and out of it appeared a younger version of the girl beside him. She stood there for some time, not doing or saying anything. The younger Inuyasha stopped crying after a while, and stared back at her, blinking through his tears.

"You shouldn't be here,' his younger self told the girl warily. "If my daddy or his guards see you, they're take you away and kill you."

The girl merely stared back. "They can't kill me."

His younger self stood up, hands on his hips and lower lip jutting out defiantly. "Yes they can! And anyways, girls are stupid, my big brother Sess told me and he's always right."

The girl bent forwards and looked at him curiously. "Oh really?"

"Yep," 4-year old Inu told her proudly. "He's this big!" Stretching out his arms as wide as they would go, he showed her a proud example of his brother's height. The girl continued staring at him curiously.

Young Inu shuffled his feet nervously. "Where are you from, anyways?"

"Another world."

Her bold remark didn't seem to faze him, only intrigued his young mind. "Really?"

She nodded sagely back. "Uh-huh."

The four-year old Inuyasha seemed to ponder this for a moment before accepting it. "Kay. Wanna play ball?"

The young girl nodded, and the two began tossing the ball back and forth. "Hey," Inuyasha asked, while still tossing the ball. "What's you name?"

"Kari."

"Oh. S'kay. My name's Iiinnnnuuuuyyyyaaassshhhaaa," he told her, stretching out every syllable.

"Who are you talking to?"

Turning around, the young Inuyasha saw his brother walk towards him, only eleven, but showing every air of confidence and arrogance.

"Ah…" Inuyasha pointed at Kari.

Sesshomaru stared at him oddly. "Who?"

Inuyasha tried reply, he really did. Only problem was that his lips had stuck together immediately when he tried to do so. Prying at his mouth with his chubby fingers, he tried in vain to open it. His older brother merely sniffed and left, muttering, "Younger brothers…"

After he left, Inuyasha's lips flew open, surprising the youngster, causing him to fall on his bottom. Smarting a bit, he grimaced and looked up, finding the angry face of his new friend, Kari, glaring angrily back at him. "You stupid head, don't you know anything?"

Definitely angry at being called stupid head, Inuyasha valiantly countered her attack with his. "Well, you never said I couldn't!"

Kari gave an impatient huff. "Dontcha know a guardian when youse sees one?"

Inuyasha stared at her. "A guardian? Like, the fairy godmother in Cinderella?"

"Eggs-zactly"

Inuyasha found this funny and repeated the word to himself. "Eggs-zactly, eggs-zactly, eggs-zactly. Funny word!"

Kari smiled, only a little, but it tugged at the corners of her mouth anyways. Inuyasha, surprised that he had made his strange friend smile, pointed excitedly at her. "Look, look! You're smiling!"

And Kari replied, "I will always smile, as long as you promise never to say anything about me to anyone and promise not to ever stop believing in me. As long as you do, I'll always help you and be your friend. When you go shopping, I'll come with you even though nobody will see me. When you go home, I'll come with you but nobody will know. When you grow older and stop calling girls stupid, I'll even help you with girls."

Inuyasha made a face at the last comment. But, however young then and however silly the deal sounded to him, he still understood the seriousness of the pact. "Deal."

And with a wise handshake, both went back to playing ball.

Up in the tree, Inuyasha looked back at his guardian sitting beside him with a ghost of a smile on her lips. "How do I know if you ever kept smiling? You hardly ever show up to me in person these days."

Kari smiled serenely. "I have always kept my side. And I always will, until the day we both die."

Inuyasha thought for a moment. "What did you mean back then when you said that stuff about girls?" he asked, turning for a reply.

But he was talking to thin air.

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