Sway From The Rain; Fall To The Storm

A/N: Hm. Well. I got a lot of positive feed back for that last chapter. Let me see what I can do in this one . . . [Insert mischievous grin here.]

Before we begin -yes, it's a short a/n =P – I wanted to let you all that Prof. Onigumo/Naraku and Kinky-hoe (Nice nickname guys lol) have not fallen off the face of my fictional, lusty world; they come into play soon enough. (I did tons of day-dream-planning these past weeks considering I have had no computer access due to grounding ((I am doing this in secret.)).)

So, let's get this ball rollin'.

WARNING!: IF YOU CANNOT NOT TAKE LONG, DRAMATIC, SCENE-CHANGING CHAPTERS THAT AN AUTHORESS MAKES AS AN APOLOGY FOR NOT UPDATING AS MUCH AS SHE SHOULD, THEN . . . Well . . . You're completely and utterly screwed. HAH!

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Chapter 14~ Welcome Home

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As it turns out, Souta and Inuyasha had a disagreement about a specific Kendo move and it resulted in wooden swords clashing; both boys managed to maneuver the other into the same mud pit towards the front of the yard.

The women didn’t say anything for what seemed an eternity, leaving the boys in a sudden state of silent panic, amber and chocolate eyes flitting from one miko to the other. When the women shut up, men knew they were in huge trouble.

“Go clean yourselves up.” Mrs. Higurashi finally sighed, shutting the water to the sink off with a quick swipe of her hand. Her expression wasn’t stern but level when she turned her gaze on them. She had just mopped that floor.

Inuyasha and Souta looked at one another then marched across the tile to the guest bathroom across from the washroom, leaving a minimum amount of filth on the floor.

When she thought they were out of earshot, Kagome muttered, “Really want me to have his kids?”

With a short chuckle her mother made her way into the living room, calling over her shoulder, “If they take after you personality wise and have Inuyasha’s physical attributes.”

Kagome laughed, stood up with her dishes, and walked over to the sink, unaware of the hanyou who had stood in the doorway long enough to hear the second part of the mother/daughter conversation.

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Hojou, one of Kagome's high school friends and one of Inuyasha’s high school enemies, showed up at the shrine later that same afternoon. Ironically, after Kagome had chosen to travel with her grandfather all around the Asian continent throughout her high school career and used random illnesses as excuses, Hojou, who tried to fix all of them with home remedies and ancient medical practices, went to medical school and became a nurse -Grandpa Higurashi's nurse to be exact. And the old man hated it.

Kagome had never seen her grandfather as cranky as he was when the still youthful-looking boy showed up at the doorstep. The stubborn man immediately began a long, unpleasant rant on having a boy nurse instead of a young woman.

Everyone in the house ignored him.

Kagome, on the other hand was delighted to see him and the two old friends exchanged a familiar hug and chatted for quite a while before Inuyasha decided that he had had enough and faked a sudden worry over Shippou. That had the miko beyond pleased and she quickly relinquished her conversation with Hojou and said her 'see you laters' to her family.

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Kagome had started up work again the day after the duo had left the Higurashi shrine, leaving Inuyasha and Shippou mindlessly watching TV and eating Cap'N Crunchies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner all throughout the next week. Occasionally, she'd bring home something, but most of the time the miko thought they at least ate some of the Ground-Beef-Helper she'd stocked the pantry with before the end of her vacation. Yet, Friday night, when Kagome finally got off for the weekend and dragged herself into the pantry for a snack to munch on while she finished sorting her papers, she was, not necessarily surprised, but irritated to see all four boxes exactly where she left them . . . Sunday.

“Men . . .” She muttered, grabbing a Rice-Crunchy treat before shutting the pantry. Listening for her demons, the miko stopped in the doorway of the kitchen.

Silence.

There was NEVER silence when Shippou and Inuyasha were in the same room.

“Shippou! Inuyasha?” She called, waiting.

Nothing.

Though slightly worried, she shrugged it off and went into her bedroom, not bothering to shut the door behind her.

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Inuyasha lounged carelessly on a sticky, pink-plastic, fold-out chair by the complex's pool while Shippou did the same, only he was floating around in the pool on a turquoise inner-tube.

“What time does she get off again?” The hanyou muttered, trying to come up with a better word for his current state besides 'bored.' This wasn't boredom, it was beyond that. Depression? No. Uselessness? Lackadaisical?

How Inuyasha knew that word, he had know idea.

But, maybe.

He groaned.

Shippou didn't bother to open his eyes, he simply answered, “I dunno,” and kept right on floating.

A long drawn out silence passed between the two, and the one to break it was neither kitsune nor hanyou.

Wolf-demon.

Inuyasha smelled the stench before the wolf-shit had even made it up the rest of the walkway, but he didn't even blink. He was going to kill a little bit more time until his Kagome got home and that stupid piece of wolf-shit better not mess with him. Besides, he'd already won.

Ego already inflated to the point of bursting, the hanyou grinned smugly while recanting the Tanabata festival’s after-events.

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Kouga pushed open the gate to the pool and took in the pathetic sight of two bums lazily sprawled about. “Well, this looks like one helluva good time.” He commented, knowing very well his commentary was undesired in every sense of the word.

Shippou cracked an eye, “Hi, Kouga,” he said dully.

“Hey, champ. Hi-“ the wolf-demon turned his attention to the silver-haired man basking on the manly-pink chair, “mutt.”

“Fuck off, Kouga.” Inuyasha growled while sitting up to glare at the sudden annoyance. Said annoyance just grinned toothily.

“Kagome doesn’t like you guys fighting.” Shippou, realizing his ‘bum time’ was over, paddled his way to the stairs and crawled out of the pool, inner-tube in hand. He shot a low-browed look at the two men who both stared at him as he walked out of the gate and back in the direction Kouga just came from.

“He’s more mature than you, mutt.”

“Yeah, because it was so mature of you to come and start some shit.”

“It’s a public pool! I can-“ Kouga stopped mid-sentence and focused his gaze on something over the rooftops of the other complexes. “What’s that?”

Frowning, Inuyasha almost didn’t look, thinking he wasn’t going to fall for whatever the wolf had in-store for him, like a smack to he back of the head, but since Kouga was sooo mature, the hanyou followed his gaze.

Above the trees behind the apartments, a huge, black mass was forming.

Inuyasha squinted, trying to figure out if it was smoke or a flock of birds, but he could only guess; it was too far away for even his demonic line of sight to make out.

“Fire? Smoke?” Kouga asked, his expression nearly identical to Inuyasha’s.

The hanyou let out a fake snort. “How many fires you seen that let off entirely black smoke and move around like that. My bet’s on a really big flock of birds.”

“I’m gonna go check the news.” Kouga declared, walking back out the gate, making sure to let it slam shut behind him. Inuyasha winced and his ears swiveled back.

“Asshole!”

Kouga’s middle finger appeared over his shoulder, but it dropped quickly. The half-demon heard Kagome’s giggle and the wolf-demon’s ‘Kagome greeting.’ Bolting upright, Inuyasha scrambled out of his chair, tripping in the process, and jogged up the walk until the miko came into sight, then slowed to a trudging walk. Why let her know he was so eager to see her?

“Inuyasha!” Kagome smiled at him as he closed the last bit of distance between them; all the while he felt his heart doing little flips from her smile.

Damn woman.

Kouga, not too particularly happy about the way Kagome greeting the pathetic, silver-haired mutt, narrowed his eyes. He figured that maybe they had just gotten over a fight, but the poor wolf was far off.

And in the back of his mind, he knew it.

“Inuyasha, he looks like you!” Shippou’s little voice bounced up from his place on the ground where he sat with a little, fluffy, white Pomeranian with greenish-yellow eyes in his lap. Sadly, the dog was almost as big as the kitsune was.

The hanyou frowned while his ears twitched in the direction of Kagome’s giggles and he scrutinized the puffball of an animal. Aside from the pointy ears, they did not look alike.

And if that dog was a boy, he was a cat-demon.

“Fag-ass looking dog; we do NOT look alike, Shippou. Shut up.”

“You do too!”

Readying his fist, Inuyasha raised his arm only to have the miko shoot him a threatening look. As an alternative to squishing the blind runt into the ground, he began grumbling angrily.

“Inuyasha.”

“If I hear my fucking name one more time I am going to lose it. -Don’t you dare, Shippou- What, Kouga?” The hanyou snarled, earning yet another look of disapproval from the raven-haired girl next to him.

Kouga opened his mouth to toss back an insult, but caught another whiff of the stench floating through the air. How did that stupid mutt not smell it? “Do you-“

“Yes.”

So the dumbass had, Kouga thought; why didn’t he bring it up?

“What?” Kagome asked, now kneeling to rub the fuzz-ball affectionately behind the ears. Inuyasha ignored the pang of jealously and crossed his arms over his chest, his nostrils flaring.

“Kouga’s smoke isn’t smoke.”

“It looked like it!” The wolf shot back.

“So you are speaking in code now?” The miko straightened from her place on the ground, bringing the little dog with her.

Before either could reply, Shippou chose that moment to start complaining about the ‘dumpster.’

“No, it’s smoke.” The hanyou clarified sarcastically, mentally sending a birdie to Kouga who finally snapped after that last stab at his intellect and started snarling out an explanation of why he thought it was smoke, mixed up in a variety of creative insults. Inuyasha chuckled, but stopped when Kagome touched a soothing hand to the seething wolf-demon’s shoulder.

“What smoke?” She asked and looked down, raising an eye brow when Shippou, who had his nose pinched shut between his fingers, began yanking at her pants, begging to go back inside in a high-pitched, nasally voice. Suddenly, she missed having the empty apartment to herself.

Removing her hand from Kouga when he uttered his last curse at Inuyasha, the miko bent and scooped Shippou up with her free arm. He scuttled up onto her shoulder and made a gurgling noise of disgust from deep in his throat. “How do you not smell that, mommy?” he asked, leaving his adoptive mother confused and sniffing the air.

“Smell what?”

“Damn human senses suck.” Inuyasha rolled his eyes. "There was something above the apartments-" he paused and thought of something smarter than Kouga's 'smoke', "like a big, black thing just up in the air." The wolf-demon snorted, suddenly over his tirade. 'Big, black thing' wasn't much better than 'smoke.' 

Eye brows drawing in contemplation, the miko thought of what it could be. "Maybe it was a forest fire . . . The smoke is really dark from those . . ."

"Hah! The lady thinks it's smoke too!"

"Keh! Sure take his side!"

"Kagome! Those bugs are going in your apartment!"

The miko followed Shippou's tug on her hair and almost dropped the dog in her arms. Her door, that she trustingly left open to see the puppy the kitsune discovered, was giving free entry to a bunch of what looked to be huge wasps carrying smoke grenades.

Before she could make a dash forward, Inuyasha and Kouga were halfway up the stairs, claws bared.

"What the hell are these?" Inuyasha growled, snatching one out of the air. The bug didn't fight, but instead stabbed at the little black ball it was carrying with it's stinger. The hanyou studied it for a moment, trying to figure out what in the hell possessed these things to act this way, but released the insect demon with a hiss of pain as the little orb made contact with his hand. "Fuck! What the fuck?" Kouga didn't duplicate Inuyasha's actions and instead ran first into the apartment.

Bugs.

Everywhere.

And they just kept filing in, all carrying the little balls with the purplish-black gas, penetrating the orbs as they went.

Inuyasha, after shaking off the little injury, appeared in the room next, followed by an utterly shaken and shocked Kagome.

"What is going on . . ." She squinted, wavered, and brought a hand up to her head. "I smell it now." She tripped over her words, her heart feeling like it was about to either beat from her chest or stop from the sudden wave of numbness washing over her.

Inuyasha grabbed her arm and turned her towards the door. "Go back outside." He commanded. Knowing she was about to protest, he cut her off. "What do you need from here? Tell me so I can get and we can call someone."

Kagome felt her legs turn to jelly and backed up to the doorway, pressing a steadying hand to the frame. The hanyou took a step toward her and swatted a bug that was about to open up his container of poison in the miko's face. He knew what she was feeling, but not at the level she was feeling it. It wasn't affecting him as bad, but he still had to get out before it did.

"My briefcase, phone, um . . . " Kagome blinked when spots began darkening her vision.

"I'll get it, Kagome, go. Now. Kouga!"

The wolf-demon stopped trying to kill the endless legion of bugs one by one and rushed over to Kagome, grabbing her waist just as she fell forward. "Our picture, Inuyasha." She mumbled as Kouga lifted her and hopped over the balcony, landing with a thud next to a crying Shippou on the grass below.

The half-demon heard her almost silent request and quickly ran into her bedroom. He found her briefcase easily and stuffed the papers scattered about her bed into it, grabbed their phones off the night stand, and ran out, snatching up the picture and tucking it under his arm as he bounded from the room, slamming the door behind him.

When he made it to the lower level, he saw a small crowd of people forming already, consisting of Kouga's brothers, Kaede, and a handful of other neighbors. He grumbled and shook off a small wave of dizziness. He stuffed the phones in his pocket and set down the picture and bag next to Shippou who Kaede was trying to console with her gruff, yet soothing voice. Inuyasha reached out and took Kagome from Kouga, cradling the unconscious woman to his chest while the wolf-demon, despite the circumstances, narrowed his eyes.

Cops showed up very soon after and took one look at the situation before calling back up. Within ten minutes, they had a large number of black uniforms in gas masks running caution tape around the apartment while others were urging people to stay back and go home.

One of them, a woman in her early thirties name Kagura, began questioning them.

“So, you’re telling me this is just a freak accident?” She pursed her red lips and alternated her gaze from one man to the other in search of honest confirmation. They nodded, having nothing else to add to their statement. How do you describe a swarm of ball-carrying, wasp demons infiltrating your girlfriend’s apartment in a sane way?

There is no way, and it was obvious that this officer thought there was more to the story than them just standing around when the bugs went psycho.

“Any enemies?” Kagura tapped her pen to her notebook impatiently. She could already feel a migraine coming on.

Kouga instantly denied having any grudges against him that he knew of, but a light-bulb went off in the hanyou’s head.

“My ex?” It was less a statement, more a question, but better than nothing at all. He thought for a moment, having no clue about Kagome and Sango’s encounter with not only Kikyou but Naraku at the local supermarket when he first moved in with Kagome, so he left it at just Kikyou.

Officer Kagura rolled her eyes and took down the information Inuyasha was providing on this ‘Kikyou’ woman.

How cliché, she thought, her pen scratching roughly on her pad, I bet it is the ex; it would make my job easier.

“Do you have alternate housing?”

“I can move ye all into another apartment for the time bein’,” Kaede’s gruff voice had all three heads turning toward it. She half-hobbled over to them, hand intertwined behind her back, Shippou on her shoulder, the eye that wasn’t covered with the black eye patch slide smoothly from one adult to the other. “I have a few that aren’t occupied at the moment across the complex.”

Kouga and Inuyasha looked relieved at the idea, but Kagura shook her head. She pointed her pen at the half-demon. “If it is your ex, you need to go somewhere else, but you,” she turned the writing utensil to the wolf-demon, “should be fine in another apartment since you weren’t the primary target.”

Kagome stirred in Inuyasha’s arms and he looked down swiftly. “Kags?”

“I don’t feel so good . . .” She murmured, bringing up one of the hands folded in her lap up to her forehead.

“Sh, baby, just go back to sleep. Everything is being taken care of.” The hanyou mumbled, hoping she didn’t turn to look at her apartment which was still swarming, despite all the cops’ efforts, with the uncontrollable demons and their poisonous gas. She whimpered in his arms and tucked her face into his shoulder.

Kagura watched with veiled interest. “Current girlfriend?”

“Obviously.” Inuyasha didn’t mean to snap, but he could already hear the interrogation that was about to begin.

“This is your apartment?”

Kagome twisted. The hanyou understood it as a silent, 'set me down,’ and carefully set the unsteady girl to her feet, not liking the way her face was contorted in discomfort. He wanted to scoop her back up, tell the officer to shove it, and take his Kagome somewhere where no one would ever hurt, or attempt to hurt, her ever again.

“It is.” The miko said stiffly, breathing in slow deep breaths, trying to keep her emotions in check. She wanted to cry, scream, run into her home with an electric fly swatter and start swinging, but what good would it do? She couldn’t even make it past the threshold of her door.

“Have any idea who would want to do this to you? Kikyou?”

Hit the nail on the head with a huge mallet. “I had a run-in with her at the grocery story. Her and my old professor who goes by the name Naraku now.” She said smoothly, leaning into the half-demon when his arm snaked it’s way around her waist and squeezed.

“What happened?” The pen and pad rose slightly in expectation and ruby eyes studied the victim thoroughly. She seemed straight-forward enough. The air about her was naïve. Who would go to this extent to get back at her?

Kagome snuck a quick glance at Inuyasha from under her lashes and took another deep breath. “Sango and I-“ She paused at Officer Kagura’s look, then corrected herself. “my best friend and I were picking up ramen for my son and Inuyasha when we over-heard her leaving him,” Kagome jerked her thumb over her shoulder, “a voicemail begging him to come back. Then a man, who we found out was Naraku, accused her of actually falling in love with Inuyasha. Kikyou denied it and said it was just for the Taishou fortune and that’s when I stepped in and she and I exchanged a few choice words.”

Inuyasha felt his gut clench but ignored it. He always suspected something, but hearing it for the first time was like yet another punch in the face. His hand squeezed Kagome’s hip and she leaned her head against him, guilty for letting him find out like that.

“She was your ex-fiancé? You never knew about her trying to marry into money? Why did you split?”

The hanyou’s teeth audibly ground together. “I found out she was sleeping with her boss.”

“Naraku.” Kagome added. “I think I need to go talk to Kaede about another apartment.”

“No.”

Kagome looked at Inuyasha in question. “No?”

“We’re going to go stay in the Taishou house for a while.”

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A/N: Sorry. Writing in secret is harder than I thought it would be. Yes, a cliffie.

I have been going to the local library to work on this, so I'm going to start Chappie 15.

Look forward to it?