How Kagome Got Her Groove Back

*Hey guys, sorry this one took a few days, but my relatives are in town, and my aunt likes to hold eighty-zillion hour long conversations with me about how much menopause sucks. Fun times, fun times. Anywho, here’s chapter 6, and thanks for the rates and reviews, they’re delicious, and make me want to write faster! And don’t forget to mention if you want e-mail updates, or you can shoot a quick e-mail to me at ilikesweatervests@hotmail.com*

As she drew closer to Kaede’s hut, Kagome couldn’t help but notice that it was getting significantly more difficult to walk. She deduced that there were a number of reasons for this unfortunate recent development, but the most likely cause was the young fox cub clinging to her left leg furiously and saying her name over and over again in a voice so high-pitched and shrill that it could have given a castrated chipmunk a run for its money.

Much to his surprise, Shippou’s death-grip on his friend’s ankle, which was quickly turning her foot the most brilliant shade of puce, had little to no effect as she hobbled towards her destination, and the glazed-over look in her eyes only helped to confirm that his darkest nightmare had indeed come true.

“…..INUYASHAAAAA!!! KAGOME’S TURNED INTO A…A… ZOMBIE! I KNEW IT! I ABSOLUTLY KNEW IT! I KNEW IT WOULD HAPPEN, AND IT FINALLY DID! SOMETHING ATE HER BRAINS!” Ever since Kagome had entertained her traveling group one evening by retelling the basic plot of “Night of the Living Dead,” (something she had regretted once Shippou had proceeded to wake her up every evening for the next month by burrowing under her shirt and whimpering pathetically, ripping holes in a few of her nicer bras) he had been positively convinced that this particular enemy was one even more dangerous and imminent than Naraku, and was constantly on the lookout for suspicious behavior.

The kit dissolved into sloppy tears as the remainder of his companions burst out of the small house looking panicked and slightly confused, and Kagome was only vaguely aware of their presence, along with the fact that she should probably be a little miffed that someone had suggested she no longer had brains. Shippou wailed loudly and dug his little claws into her calf in what he undoubtedly considered a sign of affection, causing instead the priestess to yelp in pain and snap back into the reality she had been so ignorant of as she finally caught a glimpse of the intense worry in the faces of her dearest friends.

“Oh…um, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…um, I thought you would be asleep by now. I, um, ha, it was an interesting night…”

She was cut off by the little fox demon, who now was plagued by a gnarly case of the hiccups thanks to his rather vocal despair.

“Oh (hic) Kagome! We couldn’t sleep (hic) while we didn’t know where you were (hic)! I wanted to spend all night (hic) looking for you, but Miroku (hic) said since there didn’t appear (hic) to be a struggle, we should wait and see if you (hic) came back on your own!”

Kagome was thankful for the monk’s level-headedness, feeling ill at even the thought of the fight that might have erupted had her companions barged in on her harmless little healing session.

“Oh, haha, yeah, right, about that…” Kagome was nearly dead on her feet. It had been a long night full of strange and inexplicable events, a few of which she wanted the chance to relive in the comfort of her own sleeping bag, where she could safely dissect their meaning, and she didn’t feel like explaining her absence and participating in the heated argument that was sure to follow. “Um it wasn’t really anything and Miroku was right, there was no struggle, because it wasn’t a big deal, and I did it and it’s over and it’s done now, mmkay? Ni-ight!” She said the last word in a sing-song, hoping to give the illusion that she was in a perfectly chipper mood to avoid further questioning as she practically skipped back to the hut with a cheesy used-car salesman grin plastered onto her face.

“Kagome—” DAMNIT. She growled inwardly and gritted her teeth, prepared to knock out the person who dared to question her further if that was what it took to get them to SHUT UP, but immediately her uncharitable thoughts were banished as she felt strong arms encircle her waist and a rich, woody smell tickle her nose, and let her muscles relax as she leaned into one of Inuyasha’s rare voluntary gestures of affection. His words were warm as he whispered into her ear: “Kagome…I—I’m glad you’re back. I was worried.”

She felt her heart swell with feelings of friendly affection and camaraderie and crossed her arms over her chest to grab and squeeze the hanyou’s shoulders in their slightly awkward yet undeniably sweet backwards bear hug, affronted when he moved a calloused hand to her chin, angling her face towards his own in what she had hoped might be a passionate kiss that would lead a boinkingly good mattress mambo, but instead he opted for the utterly unsexy option of smelling her face. She heard a rattling snarl form in his throat, and her heart dropped down to have tea-time with her stomach when she realized what exactly had made him so upset, and was surprised to feel a pang of rejection in her gut as she realized Sesshoumaru’s display of wanton passion was solely to infuriate his younger sibling.

“Ah, um, haha, funny story, actually…” She forced out what she hoped might pass for a nonchalant giggle, but winced as she felt Inuyasha’s nails bite into her hips, deciding grumpily that demon’s had to learn to be more careful with their stupid claws.

“YOU WERE WITH MY BASTARD HALF-BROTHER?!?!”

Kagome wiggled out of his now painful grip and turned to face the livid half-demon, whose eyes looked like they were about ready to burst out from his skull. In an effort to distract herself, she mused that she would award herself ten points if they actually DID pop out of his head, and another twenty if she was able to catch one. Double score if she caught both.

Inuyasha let out a feral howl and slashed at a nearby tree with a flailing fist, and Kagome made a mental note to ask him later, when he wasn’t about to punch her lights out, how he always managed to avoid getting splinters.

“WE SAT HERE, WORRYING ABOUT YOU, NOT KNOWING WHERE YOU WERE, THINKING YOU HAD RUN OFF TO TAKE THIS BATH THAT COST US HALF A DAY’S TIME IN THE FIRST PLACE SO YOU COULD SNEAK OFF AND DO DISGUSTING THINGS WITH MY SLOBBERY SLIMEBALL OF AN OLDER BROTHER?!?!” The veins in his temples were throbbing incessantly, and Kagome thought it a little hypocritical that he referred to his sibling as slobbery when there was a thin and silvery ribbon or drool hanging from the corner of his own mouth. She was too tired to fight back, and merely gave a frustrated sigh.

“Inuyasha, please do us all a favor and get a rabies shot.”

Miroku and Sango gawked at the audacity of their little priestess friend, their eyes clearly betraying a worry for whether or not she was going to make it through this without receiving a foot through her stomach, and both clutched their weapons tensely in case they had to intervene.

“I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT A RAY BEES SHOT IS, BUT I BET IT’S NOT HALF AS BAD AS GETTING FLEAS FROM HAVING A SPITTY, DISGUSTING TONGUE BATTLE WITH THAT BIG GIRLY ASSHOLE!”

Kagome rather resented the insinuation that she had fleas, and her fatigue quickly lost the intense war against her sweeping fury.

“WELL IT’S NOT MY FAULT THAT YOUUUUU,” she pointed an accusatory finger, “COULDN’T EVEN SCORE BIG WITH A HOOKER AFTER SLIPPING A ROOFIE IN HER DRINK!” Inuyasha’s rage subsided for just an instant as he wondered what exactly hooks and roofs had to do with one’s beverage…“AND FOR YOUR INFORMATION MR. MCSUCKS-A-LOT, ALL I DID WITH YOUR STUPID BROTHER WAS ONE STUPID LITTLE FAVOR, HE BARELY GOT WITHIN TEN FEET OF ME AND SAID LESS THAN TWENTY WORDS, AND HE’S STILLLL BETTER COMPANY THAN YOU, NOT LIKE YOU EVEN DESERVE TO KNOW THAT MUCH IN THE FIRST PLACE, AND ALSO, IN ADDITION TO THAT, YOU TOTALLY SUCK AND I HATE YOU! SIT SIT SIT SIT SIT SIT SIT SIT SIT SIT!” She halted her string of the “s” word once he was stuck in a crater about three feet deep and unable to move, letting out a noise that sounded suspiciously like a pregnant water buffalo, and since she was still feeling particularly murderous, she knelt at the edge, leaned forward and pinched his bicep. Hard.

Wiping the dust and grass off of her knees, she turned to her remaining three companions and smiled brightly. “Well, I’m off to bed. I’m incredibly tired. It really was an interesting night, and I’ll be sure to tell you all about it in the morning, but for now, if anyone else disturbs me, I’m likely to throw up in his or her face, so it’s probably best to save any questions you may have for tomorrow. Okay, sleep well guys!” She said the last few sentences loud enough so that she knew Inuyasha could hear before turning on her heel and leaving her friends in utter disbelief for the second time that day.

As she wiggled into her sleeping bag, she heard the hanyou yelling at his friends to let him pass, and gave a satisfied smirk as she heard Sango give him a firm knock on the head with her Hiraikotsu. Kagome was unwilling to acknowledge the sharp pain she felt at the realization that Sesshoumaru had merely used her to aggravate Inuyasha, and opted instead to sink into a peaceful sleep in a world where she would finally be free of all things dog and demon.


***


“Hey Sesshoumaru, I know what we can do to make Inuyasha REALLY mad.” Kagome twisted her lips into a mischievous half-smile, eyes half-lidded as she knelt, straddling the dog demon’s lap as she slowly began to unbutton the blouse of her school uniform.

His eyes smoldered as they danced over her now exposed chest, and he let a hungry smirk grace his elegant features as he slid his hand across the sloping curve of her hip, fingertips reveling at the feel of the powdery silkiness of her exposed skin. “Is that so, miko? Then by all means, make me privy to your methods. I believe I will find them most enjoyable.”

Kagome let out a hushed mew as she felt his hand brush the material of her shirt off her shoulders, toes curling at the feel of his mouth sucking gently on the flesh of her collarbone, her own hands slipping under the heavy fabric of his haori to stroke his fevered skin, gasping as she felt an insistent pressure on the underside of her left thigh and rocked her hips slowly against his own, eager to relieve the insistent ache that had pooled directly behind her navel. She smiled as she burrowed her face into his neck, inhaling the silver spiciness that flavored his person so richly, and sighed happily as she felt his bare chest against her own.

BOW CHICKA WOW WOW!

She blinked in confusion as she heard heavy, tinny synthesizers in the background rattling off a rather sleazy melody, and wondered if that sort of thing was supposed to happen when one was getting their jollies on, and glanced upwards at Sesshoumaru to see if he was hearing the same thing.

Clapping her hands over her mouth in horror, Kagome leapt backwards off the demon lord’s lap, repulsed by his recent acquisition of a particularly large, chestnut handlebar mustache and dumbfounded by how his traditionally stark white garb had transformed somehow into an unsettlingly revealing fireman’s uniform.

The demon prince gave the priestess a sordid wink, and fiddled with the end of his ‘stache as he rose and began to gyrate his hips slowly, removing his jacket and tugging at the suspenders holding up his bright red man-thong, something Kagome was willing to bet was not part of a fireman’s standard dress code.

“Hey baby,” he drawled with a thick accent she couldn’t place, “got a fire you want me to put out?”

“AIYEEE!!! NO!”

The girl squealed and covered her eyes as he began to spank himself enthusiastically, muttering things like “Mmmm baby” and “Ohhh yeah,” and Kagome decided that she would rather have him run her through with toukjin a thousand times before she ever had to witness him get down with his dirty self again, and let out an ear piercing shriek.

Next thing she knew, she was sitting straight up in her sleeping bag, hands clutched firmly over her eyes and gasping for breath, unwilling to open them again for fear of what she might see until she realized where exactly she was.

Cracking one eye open only slightly, she surmised she was safely within the walls of Kaede’s hut, and as such, she was spared from the harrowing sight of any more man-thongs. She placed her hand over her heart in an act of gratitude to the gods that she had merely been dreaming, and closed her eyes as she felt her pulse slowing and returning to normal.

Shaking her head furiously, she tried valiantly to physically force some of the more unsettling images from her brain. She was mortified. She’d had a sex dream about Sesshoumaru. Kagome wasn’t faulting herself too much for this fact alone, her mind had undeniably been taking long vacations into the gutter as of late, and he was certainly easy on the eyes, so she reasoned it wasn’t really that far of a stretch.

The more puzzling aspect of the whole ordeal was the shift in the atmosphere of the whole thing, and she attributed to a rather graphic video she’d found one afternoon in the storage shed by the well, aptly titled “Come Slide Down my Fireman’s Pole.” Deciding it had been placed there by a mischievous band of miscreant burglars or something (because there was no way it was her grandfather’s, because there was no way he had any sort of sex drive, because ewgrossdisgusting, and it was time to stop thinking about it right about…now), she’d watched it out of sheer curiosity, and had thusly tumbled, bleary-eyed and unwilling, into the world of kinky fireman sex.

However, the more pressing question was WHY her seemingly enjoyable sleepytime tryst had to take such a twist for the jankier, and Kagome sighed dejectedly when she happened upon the answer. That was probably the farthest any of her dreams had ever gone without her waking up in a feverish daze, and considering that (shudder) cinematic achievement was the only physical standard she had for what exactly doing the humpity-dumpity LOOKED like, she wasn’t able to imagine actually doing it without the unwanted appearance of the aforementioned handlebar mustache. How utterly pathetic.

Such an epiphany only steeled her resolve to do “the deed” before the end of the month, and with that heartening realization in tow, Kagome was able to revisit the image of Sesshoumaru punishing himself for being a bad, bad boy, and she allowed herself to break into a fit of hysterical and maniacal giggles, deciding that she might deserve being ripped apart with poisonous claws for letting such a thought shimmy into existence.

Sango, Miroku Shippou, and a grouchy-looking Inuyasha walked into the hut to find their friend sitting in the corner with a serious case of bed-head, laughing wildly at nothing in particular, and wondered for the umpteenth time in the last twenty-four hours whether she’d had an unfortunate run in with a patch of hallucinogenic mushrooms.

“Er, Kagome?” Sango ventured a shaky foray into conversation. “Um, are you feeling more…rested…after your, um, difficult ordeal?”

Kagome felt absolutely giddy, and shot her friends a breathless grin.

“Oh, haha, yes, of course, hahahahaha, I feel lots better this morning.” Kagome stretched and let out an impressive yawn, unleashing an unpleasant wave of morning breath onto her companions, which they kindly pretended not to notice. “Sorry for being edgy about it, I was just sleepy. Anyways, it wasn’t a big deal or anything, Sesshoumaru snuck up on me while I was bathing and brought me to his camp so I could help that little girl who travels with him, she was in a pretty painful situation, it turns out. Anyway, I helped her, bada bing, bada boom, and I’m back. Oh, and also he licked the side of my face or something so you would smell it and get mad, Inuyasha,” she nodded towards the hanyou, who looked like he’d just witnessed his own shadow jump out of the wall and start punching him. “Looks like it worked, huh? Haha, oh man, point for Sesshoumaru!”

His right eye twitched at this assessment of the situation, but he thought twice about commenting, clearly fearful that the unstable miko might take another stop in looneyville and purify off his…um…Inuyasha Jr.

She stood up and tried to smooth out the wrinkles of her uniform before beaming at her dumbfounded companions once again and walking out the door intending to find some water with which to prepare breakfast, running her fingers through her sleep-tangled hair.


***


After their morning meal was enjoyed in a rather uncomfortable absence of conversation, and after Kagome was able to stall for the next two hours by insisting she NEEDED to wash her clothes first, that she HAD to help repair the ceiling in one of the village elder’s huts, then she just MUST gather some medicinal herbs, before she was absolutely REQUIRED to sit there for fifteen minutes itching her nose or do something equally menial before the group became rather insistent that they get their things together and head off on their journey.

The knot in Kagome’s stomach tightened, realizing she could no longer delay the inevitable. She folded her hands nervously in her lap and began worrying her fingernails.

“Ummm…actually, I can’t come with you yet. Sesshoumaru is coming today at noon and bringing me with him so that I might spend the next few days further helping his ward.” The very walls of the already small room were shrinking around her, and she felt her vision go blurry, so she added quickly, “But, um, I’ll be back in like, three or four days, which is no time at all and when I’m back we’ll look double hard so it works out perfectly, see?”

Kagome marveled as time held still for an instant, allowing her to take one final deep breath before the reaction she was dreading.

“WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!” Inuyasha’s yell was so loud, Kagome was sure her mother had heard it in modern Tokyo, and she put her hands up to her ears to stop the ringing.

“I can’t HELP it, Inuyasha! It’s not something I volunteered for! He’s MAKING me, and, if I don’t do it he’ll make things ten times harder, and you know it! We’ll be delayed a lot longer than just three days waiting for him to get what he wants!” She was grasping at straws for anything that would slow his ragged breath, force him to release the hold on Tessaiga that had turned his knuckles white.

“Keh! I can take that bastard, no problem. He can deal with his own damn business, we need you to see those shards!”

“Gee, Inuyasha, I’m really glad you enjoy my valuable company and all that. You know, you’re just about as bad as he is. Between the two of you, I’m not actually sure who I’d have a WORSE time with. Besides, you CAN’T ‘take care of that bastard no problem,’ you’ve tried a million times, and it’s just going to be a huge pain if I don’t go!” Before he could respond, she cut him off. “ALSO! Also, he said that he’s going to make you an offer you can’t refuse or something,” she had to force herself to resist picturing Sesshoumaru in a black suit as the head of the mafia, “So maybe he’s got something good and this will work out for the better!”

The hanyou stuck his nose in the air. “Hn. I doubt it. What kind of offer?”

Kagome huffed. “Ugh, I don’t know Inuyasha. Next time maybe he’ll put it in writing for us, and on top of the page draw a picture of you two holding hands and skipping through a field of freaking daisies!”

“I think not.” Kagome froze as she heard that impossibly engaging voice; it rolled off of his tongue like steel wrapped in blankets of honey, and once again, she welcomed the familiar tingle as it tweaked at her senses.

As if knowing his presence would make the situation ten times worse, Sesshoumaru had shown up an hour early. Kagome made a mental note that the next time she met any sort of dog demon, she was just going to kick it in the cha-cha and run like hell.