A Parallel Dimensional Fairytale

Inuyasha – A Parallel Dimensional Fairytale

Chapter 1


First time hurts, they say ...


Disclaimer: I don't own the series Inuyasha.

The feeling of his soul being forced into the self of another was something, Inuyasha decided, he would not even wish for his pain in the ass half-brother to have to experience. It was not painful, it just felt absolutely wrong, like kicking baby bunnies or maybe like the man in that Kafka novel must have felt when he woke to find himself changed into a giant insect.


The feeling of wrongness was so strong that the moment his consciousness fully merged with the new body he struggled to suppress the urge to throw up so much he had to close his eyes and tried to take deep even breaths.


Unfortunately it wasn't until right then he realized that the other self, its body rather, had been running pretty fast when Inuyasha took it over. He staggered but managed to keep his balance, stopped and opened his eyes. He barely had the time to make out that the ground beneath him consisted of red, dusty stones when someone rammed into him from behind and he fell, this time losing his balance. The person that ran into him fell on top of him and his chin hit the ground really hard. He groaned and closed his eyes again.


"Fuck! Are you crazy?" The person atop of him stood quickly and started yelling. "Why the hell did you stop? You gave up your lead, damn it! You were a good two seconds ahead of me! What's going on, man?"


Inuyasha then decided it was about time he started taking in his surroundings. He lifted his head off the ground and glanced around. He'd fallen onto the middle of a sprinting lane, he figured, and around him stood a group of boys, wearing sports clothes and staring at him. To his right he saw a large area of lawn with groups of people practicing all kinds of sports. To his left he saw some small spectator stands and behind these, a few hundred meters away, a large building, maybe two or three.


Remembering he had been asked a question sometime in the not so distant past he turned to the boy in front of him who looked at him expectantly, struggling to make up a good excuse for his, or rather the body's real owner’s, clumsy behavior. In the end he just went with the truth. "Umm ... I suddenly felt kinda sick... I still do ... I think I should just go now ... you know ... drink a glass of water ..." He got up.


"Wait! You can't just leave like that. Training's just begun. At least tell the trainer!"


Rubbing his still aching chin Inuyasha decided that he didn't like that annoying boy, would just ignore him, leave and go looking for that girl so they could go looking for that damned shard, and break that ... son-of-a-bitch-bozou, Miroku's legs for having him go into that dimension first. Had they sent in the girl first, the body's legal owner would most certainly not have been in the middle of a fucking sprint.


He started jogging in the direction of the larger building, assuming it was the school both he and the girl were supposed to be attending, but that unnerving boy spoke again, pointing to a smaller building left of the stands "The changing rooms are over there, and the showers too, you do realize that, don't you? I mean if you’re gonna leave just like that you should at least take your clothes with you."


If there was one thing he absolutely hated it was people who constantly knew everything better and thought it was their god given duty to enlighten the whole world with helpful pieces of advice. "Shut up, faggot! No one asked you. Just leave me the fuck alone," was his rather aggressive reply. But, Inuyasha turned and ran towards the changing rooms nonetheless. The annoy-boy was right, after all.

OOO

OO

O

OO

OOO

It took him a whole lot more time to finally leave the PE area and go looking for Kagome. Weird, normally his brain more or less refused to bother with names, but hers he had no trouble recalling ... maybe because he had been the one to remind her that Kagome was her name 'n all. Yeah ... more time than he would have preferred, but once having arrived inside the boy's changing room he realized he had no idea which of the clothes were his.


Figuring trying on each of them was out of question he then simply tried to identify them by scent which was difficult enough as his dimension counterpart lacked all his superior senses. Besides that, burying his nose into nine sets of worn teenage boys' clothes had in no way helped him with his nausea as some of the boys REALLY seemed to be a little unclear about how the principle of hygiene generally was defined and applied.


In the end he managed to find a pair that smelled right.


Standing under the large tree in front of the main building Miroku had suggested as a meeting point for them, as trying to find each other in a school of more than 900 students would have been close to impossible, he still could not believe his counterpart voluntarily wore this ridiculous uniform. He knew of some schools back in his dimension that had girls wear sailor suit like uniforms but the boys normally wore plain, dark suits of some kind. In this dimension though, or at least at this school the uniform for boys was a suit that looked suspiciously similar to the one he remembered the wench wearing, well ... sort of wearing, maybe more like filling out ... rather nicely ... yeah ...


He noted with annoyance that the girl (annoying and not worth a second thought girl as he had decided when she kept on countering every single rude remark he shot at her with a reply he couldn’t help but call... witty. Eew!) had sneakily found her way back into his head again and snorted and shook his head to refocus on the more current subject of his in some way always current discontent: the uniform.


He wasn't quite sure what disgusted him most: the fact that it consisted of white trousers and a mostly white shirt, the most repelling color of all besides, perhaps, beige; the fact that the trousers weren't just trousers but SHORTS ( No man who possessed even the tiniest bit of self esteem would voluntarily wear shorts outside the few hottest days of the year ... or at least that's what Inuyasha thought.); or the fact the shirt had a broad, blue stripe at its hem as well as at its collar, a collar that was simply too large and square shaped and just... too Popeye-ish for his liking.


It was her arrival, at last, that managed to snap him out of his brooding. While she looked at him insecurely and timidly asked, "Inuyasha?" to make sure she wasn't about to go confuse some random schoolboy A LOT, he never had any doubts the girl in front of him really was her counterpart. Miroku’s description of what Sango had told him to expect had been accurate.


Before him stood a girl that was tall to say the least. She stood a good half head taller than his counterpart’s body did and he had already been the tallest boy of the sprinting team he left behind. And just in case that was not enough to identify her, he now saw that Miroku had indeed not been kidding when he'd said that she was going to have hardly more than an inch long, purple dyed hair, a fact that seemed to be still rather hard to grasp for Kagome, too, as she kept on absently tracing her hand over her scalp. Add to all this the bulkily muscular legs and arms her sailor suit uniform barely managed to cover (Yes, the girls apparently wore them too, Inuyasha was glad to realize. At least he would not be the only one suffering.) and you had one stereotype of a radical feminist, men despising, macho lesbian, complete with the cliché nose ring. For a few seconds Inuyasha tried not to laugh, then remembered he had absolutely no reason not to and burst out.


That was probably enough of an answer for the girl, as he had reacted exactly the same way when Miroku first told them what her counterpart looked like. "Hah hah very funny. I should be laughing really. At least I am looking cool and dangerous. You, POPEYE, are just looking ridiculous!"

That managed to silence him quite well and he stopped laughing to growl at her (Which, as he realized his counterpart really was no half dog demon but obviously completely human, came out not even half as intimidating as normal.). "Well it's not like I chose to wear this weird momma's darling boy outfit-"

"And neither did I choose to cut off my hair and do bodybuilding. That was our dimensions-pals' doing so let's just get this over with and go looking for that shard somewhere."


With a last growl, he accepted her peace offering, a little surprised that she let it slide just like that when she'd reacted that harshly before.

"Yeah. Sense anything yet?" he went straight back to business.


"Sense?" Kagome answered him quizzically.


"The shard. Miroku said you were able to sense them, remember?" Inuyasha reminded her with a “Duh!” tone to his voice.


"Ah! Well, actually, I have no idea what this “sensing” is supposed to feel like but right now I don't feel anything strange. What do you think we should do?"


"Dunno ...” he shrugged his shoulders.


They both pondered on that question until Inuyasha suggested, ”We could just walk around the school area, inside and outside, and see if we come across anything strange or if you sense anything out of the ordinary."


Kagome nodded slowly. "I guess that makes sense ... but what about our counterparts’ lessons? I think there's lunch break right now but later they are going to miss some lessons."


Yeah right. That social thing again. "Keh! So what? It's not like we even know what classes they have so why bother? And whatever we might learn, they aren't gonna remember it anyway."


"But perhaps they'll be in trouble later when they have their bodies back!" Kagome said, sounding honestly concerned.


Inuyasha could care less. "And that's our problem, because ... ? Come on, if that bothers you so much then it should be in your interest to find that damn shard today so we can leave as soon as possible. You said there's lunch break right now? Then most of the students will be in the cafeteria. Let's go there first."

"Yeah, I guess you're right,” Kagome reluctantly agreed. ”I mean I don't even know where my locker is so I guess we should just hurry and leave as soon as possible."


”Yeah,” Inuyasha started running towards the building Kagome had emerged from a few minutes ago. "Let's go!""That's incredible!" Kagome beamed happily when they reached the cafeteria doors in no time.


"What's incredible?" Inuyasha glared at her suspiciously.


"We ran the whole way from that tree 'till here and I'm not even out of breath! That is incredible. I mean, I've always hated sports. I would have been a sweaty, panting mess by now if I still had my own body!"

"Right … " Inuyasha struggled, once again, to shrug off the unwanted pictures of Kagome's ”own body”, this time a ”sweaty and panting” version, and pushed open the doors to the cafeteria.


He had been right; most of the students were in the cafeteria that very moment. It would not have surprised him if someone had told him that all of the students were present. He barely managed to suppress a growl. He hated large masses of humans. They were just impossible to predict. You never knew what would happen next because you couldn't keep track of everyone's actions at the same time and he hated having so little control over the situation. Kagome, though didn't seem to mind. On the contrary, she looked totally at ease and glanced around the room curiously. Well, she was used to this after all. She turned around to talk to him.


"Let's go sit down somewhere. I think we are going to evoke some unwanted attention if we keep standing in the doorway." And indeed a few heads had already turned towards them, most watching them with expressions of total surprise and utter disbelief. So they entered the room and slowly began walking towards an empty table.


Suddenly a boy, one of those who had been watching them, stood and came over to them. Recognizing him as he approached Inuyasha groaned and covered his eyes with his hand. "The annoy-boy. What have I done to deserve this?"


"What?" Kagome, who had examined the room, her eyes closed and a concentrated expression on her face looked at him confusedly as he murmured, "Some boy who can't seem to leave me alone. Uh, here we go --"


"There you are! Man I've been looking everywhere for you but at the nurse's station they said you never appeared. Where've you been?" The boy, having arrived and now standing in front of Inuyasha, lowered his voice, "And what are you doing with HER? She's gonna castrate you the moment you turn your back to her."


"WHAT did you just say?"


Inuyasha and the boy turned to Kagome who now looked rather irritated, hands on her hips and glaring at the annoy-boy. Inuyasha grinned. He was glad that he, for once, was not the object of her wrath, and he couldn’t feel even the slightest bit sorry for the annoying boy. But, to his surprise, when the boy stammered something like, "Ummm nothing really ... you know I ... that is ... heh, heh." instead of yelling at the boy like she'd done to him she just folded her arms and continued to stare at him.


The boy squirmed under her glare. "Sorry, really ... ‘Twas a stupid joke after all, it's not like anyone really thinks you'd..."


She grinned, not very friendly, not at all, and tensed the muscles of her upper arm. "I wouldn't be too sure about that ..."


'Jeez she's scary ... Yeah, the pleasures of having an intimidating build - ' Inuyasha sighed wistfully and cast his own skinny body a glance. His real body was not as ... impressive as that of Kagome's counterpart but still way better than this assembly of frail bones and skin was. Especially after people had a little glimpse at what he could do with it. Then he continued to watch amusedly as Kagome went from folding her arms to cracking her knuckles, the grin never leaving her face ' - and the fun you can have with it.'

"Ehehehee ... " The boy hurried to turn away, grasping Inuyasha's arm in the process. "Come on Keichii. Let's get going." He tried to pull Inuyasha along but he refused to move and tore his arm free.


"I don't think so. We have some matters that are definitely none of your concern to discuss here. Just leave me the fuck alone, I told you that before."

"But ..."


"Go! Damn it!" The boy hurried away, a hurt and confused expression on his face. "Finally!" Inuyasha turned to find Kagome glaring at him, which was no pleasant sight., She was rather scary. It seemed as if the intimidating build worked on him, too. "What?" he snapped defensively.


She sat down at the empty end of the table. "I can't believe you're that stupid. I mean it was obvious that boy was a friend of your counterpart's. Why'd you chase him away like that?"


Inuyasha took a seat opposite her. "I knew that. I met him before. He just got on my nerves. And I hate it when people touch me without my permission. He did that too. ” He leaned back in his chair, folding his arms in front of his chest defensively. ”Besides, this way he only thinks his buddy's having a bad day or something, so he's gonna stay away. You never know what he would have overheard had he kept on bothering me."

"A bad day?” Kagome snorted. ”You treated him like dirt. You probably destroyed their friendship and your counterpart won't even know what he did wrong."

"That's none of our business. They'll get over it. Fuck,can't we just drop that and get to the point? Do you sense anything?"


Kagome didn't look like she really wanted to let it slide, just like that, this time but still, she nodded. "Shortly before your friend there arrived, I felt something strange, like something was tickling my ... I don't know … mind? And I think I saw something at the other side of the room, a soft pink light, but that's gone now and the feeling gets weaker and weaker. I'm not sure what all of this means but ..."


"But what?" Inuyasha leaned towards her.


"Well, Miroku said that the shards are most probably in the possession of some demon or an evil human so I think ..."


"You think? Get to the point already, wench!"

"Well, I think that one of the students here has got the shard, and he or she left the cafeteria; that's why the feeling keeps getting weaker."


"Well of course, who did you think had the shard? The goddamn house palm over there? Anyway, you think you can track the guy with the shard by that 'tickling'?"


"I can try."


"Then let's get going. If we hurry up enough we might be back in time for our counterparts to be in time for class, and you wouldn't have to worry about destroying their school careers."


"Oh, I'm so sorry I care about people other than myself."


"We've had that before. I don't, so what? Let's go already!"


In the end they did not manage to track the owner of the shard in time. In fact Kagome, being new to the whole spiritual power thing and all, lost the track so often it took them until shortly before end of classes to arrive in front of a door which Kagome proudly announced as ”The right one, this time.”


"You sure?"

"Very."

"Alright, then. Let’s go in."

Kagome reached out to hold him back but stopped, perhaps remembering him saying he hated people to touch him, and instead just jumped in front of him. "Wait! That's a classroom. Listen, they're having class right now, we can't just go in there and wreak havoc while taking that shard."

'Yeah. The being nice and social thing again.' "So what do you suggest we do instead?"

"Well, if school’s out here about the same time it is in our dimension,it won't be too long until whoever has the shard will come out of that room.


"Whatever." Inuyasha leaned against the wall besides the door and closed his eyes. The shard hunting had worn him out a little, his dimension-pal's body was one of a sprinter, not of a marathon runner and most certainly not of a hanyou, so naturally it sucked. He was lost in pleasant thoughts about familiar clawed hands doing splattery things to the one who owned that shard and had chosen classes all over the three school buildings, on purpose, Inuyasha suspected irrationally, just to spite him, when Kagome cleared her throat.


"Sooo..."

He opened his eyes half way to look at her. "Sooo?"

"How'd you ... you know … die?"

"What?"

"How did you die? You know how I died so it's only fair if I get to know your story." She smiled slightly and peered at him expectantly.


He couldn't help but find that a little morbid, considering the subject. "You don't need to know that. It's nothing interesting like falling down a well. I just died, OK?"


Her face fell again. "Yeah, right. You can't be older than eighteen. People your age don't just die like that. So you don't want to tell me. That's OK. But you know I think we should at least try to get along a little. We're gonna be stuck together for more than a little while. That can't be too much to ask now, can it?"


"Keh!" He didn't really know what to answer. She was probably right, and it wasn't really that he hated her or anything. He did realize that in spite of her rather fierce reaction back in the soul depot she was a very friendly and concerned girl. She'd said it herself: she cared about people. It wouldn't be hard to like her. But if you spent your whole life building up a wall around yourself, thickening it after every hurtful experience, after every disappointment it was too much to ask for him to just try and get along with somebody because you just never knew were that led and he'd promised himself he'd never, under any circumstances, let someone in again.


Fortunately, the bell rang, interrupting the awkward silence he'd created when he kept on avoiding her eyes so he wouldn't feel obliged to explain himself at the hurt he was sure he'd find there. Grasping that very convenient straw, he tugged at Kagome's sleeve. "Come on! We better go hide behind that corner, the teacher doesn't need to see us standing here."


They had just rounded the corner when the door was thrown open and a flood of students poured into the corridor, chattering loudly and walking towards the stairs opposite the corner Kagome and Inuyasha hid behind. Already when the first few students had passed Kagome tapped Inuyasha's shoulder pointed into the bulk and whispered, "There's that pink light again! And the feeling's stronger than ever before; I was right this time. What do we do now?"

"Follow the owner on his way home and corner him as soon as he's alone, I'd say."


They mingled with the crowd of students, Kagome following the shard and Inuyasha following Kagome down the stairs and to the corridor where the lockers were.


"Can you distinguish who's got the shard?" He glanced around her surveying the corridor. He didn't see anything suspicious happening.


"Not exactly. See that large crowd of girls over there? I think it's one of them." She pointed to wards a bunch of loudly chattering girls, who, as Inuyasha observed, seemed to be more or less crowded around one girl.


"Yup, see them." He started towards the girls but stopped again when he realized Kagome wasn't following. "What?"


"I thought we were going to follow the shard's owner out of school and confront him alone?"


"Sure we are. But it would be nice if we knew who it is that has the shard and perhaps find out what power it gives to him, whether he's physically strong and such, so we can face him prepared."


"Oh."


From the realization dawning on her face Inuyasha could see she had not even wasted a single thought on the possibility that whoever had the shard might not just hand it over if they asked him -- or her -- nicely, but that they'd have to fight him over it. Keh! That girl sure was naive. He snorted. "You honestly thought we were just going to walk up to that person and ask them for the shard? What do you think they had me accompany you for? My negotiation skills? I'm a goddamn hanyou; fighting is the only thing I've ever done in my life."


"But the owner obviously is a schoolgirl. What harm could she possibly do us?"

Inuyasha refrained from reminding her that the body she currently inhabited was that of a schoolgirl, too, and that he could imagine a whole lot of harm she could inflict upon anyone with it. Instead, he just went back, grabbed her sleeve and pulled her along, stomping towards the girls. "It's still better to be prepared. Now get going. They are already leaving."


The group of girls had now started towards the exit of the school and because they were walking now they didn't stand as close to the, yes indeed, girl, they all seemed so obsessed with, anymore so Kagome and Inuyasha could cast a first glance on their target.


The closer they got, Inuyasha hurrying through the corridor still pulling Kagome along though she followed him willingly now, the more it became clear to him that there was absolutely nothing special about that girl, at least concerning her looks. She was averagely tall had mid-length, light brown hair and, when they caught up with them he saw that her face was not remarkably pretty either. Nowhere as pretty as ....other faces he'd seen recently. Gah! That stupid girl couldn’t seem to keep out of his head and it didn't help that in spite of the very, very masculine appearance of her dimension counterpart, they still seemed to share one trait: their scent. Somehow that ... golem whose sleeve his hand still clenched managed to have the very same effect on him, both calming and irritating, soothing and hurting.

Lost in these thoughts he had sped up even more, so that now they were already walking ahead of the shard owner, which caused Kagome, who stumbled behind him struggling with that stupid speed right between walking and running, to grasp his hand that still held her sleeve, and tug on it to stop him.


"Inuyasha? What are you doing? I can't keep track of her if she's behind us, we should stay behind her!"


That finally snapped him out of his confusing line of associations which to his irritation all centered around the even more confusing girl behind him, and he stopped to turn to her and find a good excuse for his behavior.

Before he could utter that excuse though, he was tackled by someone and pushed into the lockers to his left, his arm was grabbed and twisted behind his back and a knee was pushed between his legs. The air rushed out of his lungs and as he still struggled to comprehend what exactly was going on and how this attack had managed to escape his normally perfect awareness, the attacker snarled into his ear, "Just what do you think you are doing with my girlfriend, you goddamn son of a bitch manwhore? You honestly think that any attempts to even awake her attention will not eventually end up in a futile attempt to produce offspring without the proper equipment? EH?"


What Inuyasha realized through the paralysis of total confusion were two things: Firstly, his attacker was not as strong as he had thought him to be, he had just taken him by surprise; and secondly, he could feel that besides the knee between his legs there was also a pair of breasts against his back, so the attacker was a girl, too.


Not wanting to risk any injuries as he did not know how flexible this new body was compared to his hanyou one, he chose a course of action that consisted less of twisting and more of brute strength to break free. He pressed his thighs together, trapping the girl’s knee and roughly pushed her backwards with his free arm twisting the trapped one so that she had to let go of it, which caused her to lose her balance with her leg trapped, then turned his upper body -- urgh! so that was already the limit of flexibitity -- hands darting out quickly and grabbing the girl around her neck in mid fall. Pulling her up, he let go of her legs and turned around completely, for the first time looking at her. She wore the same uniform Kagome did, naturally, and the same enormous combat boots, but she was a whole lot smaller and more delicately built than her assumed girlfriend whose body was occupied by Kagome -- speaking of which, what was she doing and why hadn't she helped him? He looked to his left and found her standing there with a rather not-so-pleased expression on her face. But, she wasn't looking at the girl who had attacked him, it was him!


Forgotten was the kicking female clawing at his hand and he snapped at the other one, "What? Why are you looking at me like I did something wrong now, wench?" There it was again. Why would her opinion on what he did mean anything to him? But, her reproachful glare made him feel uneasy. How did she do that? "She was attacking me goddamn it! And I haven't done anything to provoke that, so why am I not allowed to defend myself?"

"You are stranglingher, that's why I'm looking at you that way! Just let go of her neck and we might even find out why she did this before she dies by air deprivation."


Helooked at the girl in his hand. She had stopped kicking and was turning a little blue. "Oh." He loosened his grip on her neck and grabbed her arm instead. She sucked in air noisily then turned to face Kagome instead of Inuyasha.


"Why are you talking to that scum, you bitch? I thought you were the one who always told me the smell of men made you sick! Changed your mind? Suddenly in need of some DICK?!” The girl was enraged, obviously, and kept on getting louder and louder and at the same time more and more creative finding expressions to vent her jealousy.


Great. So Kagome's counterpart did not only look like one stereotype of a radical feminist, men despising, macho lesbian but she obviously was one, complete with an overly jealous girlfriend. How very convenient.

Kagome seemed to be at a loss for words at that curtain fire of reproaches and insults and looked at him pleadingly. Hah! He wasn't going to make himself the object of anger for that banshee. Besides she knew he would not care whether the beast was hurt or not and Kagome knew that and didn't like it. So, he kept silent.


Then she obviously had an idea because she suddenly smiled and out a hand on the screeching girl’s shoulder to snap her out of her ranting. "I'm sorry but I think you mistook me for someone else. I don't even normally attend this school, I'm his cousin --" she nodded towards Inuyasha "-- and I'll only be staying here for a few days."


The girl did at least stop screaming; now staring at Kagome in disbelief while Inuyasha, turned to press his head against the locker behind him, bit on his hand to suppress his laughter. That was the worst excuse he'd heard in his life and his life had been long, indeed, still this was so uncreative and stupid, no one was going to buy that! No one!


And the girlfriend didn't. "Do you think I'm totally brain-dead? I still am able to recognize my own fucking girlfriend, thank you very much! What's this mean? Is that a totally absurd way of telling me it's over? Did that scum brainwash you with his testosterone infested ways so you'd break up with me?"


She turned to Inuyasha again who was now vibrating with suppressed laughter. "And you! You think this is funny? Was it your idea? Are you blackmailing her? What's going on damn it?" Her hand darted out to either grab his collar or hit him, but Kagome prevented that when she grabbed Inuyasha's hand that still held the girl's arm and pulled him away and towards the exit quickly, calling back to the girl left behind,


"Honestly I've never seen you before. Go looking for your girlfriend and she'll prove this right!"


A.N.: Urgh, did I really write that way just a few months ago? Geee... well, it's edited now, those of you who read this version only, be glad, the one before was crappier.