How Kagome Got Her Groove Back

*Blah blah blah, mention in reviews or send me an e-mail if you want to be on the update list, thanks for your reviews, you guys are champions and I want to marry you, blah blah blah, words and stuff.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, meaning, not important at all, I had the WEIRDEST dream last night, and Sesshoumaru was sure in it! Skip ahead to the story if you don’t care about the madness of it all, my feelings won’t be hurt, haha, I just feel like sharing this little gem.

~MY CRAZY DREAM!~ Mmkay, so, it’s present day, and Sesshoumaru is a physics teacher at my school (haha whaaaa?!?!), and he’s crazy rich, and for some, unknown reason, he decides to invite us all to his house, which turns out to be this gorgeous and wicked big mansion, and he gives us a tour, and it turns out his house somehow became haunted? Except for I guess it must be a few years in the future, because there’s almost no grass left in the world, and he only has a little bit on his roof, and I tell him I wish we could have lawns and lawns full of grass, and he looks at me and says, “I know, Sarah, I know,” and we share a tender moment, hahaha. THEN, he tells us if we concentrate really hard, we can feel a ghost hugging us, so I try, but it knocks me over instead! So I’m like jigga-whaaaa and a little offended the ghost tried to punch my lights out, and he says it’s because I had to read a letter the ghost wrote first or something? I didn’t really understand, so instead we went to a gas station and he bought me purple tortilla chips.~END DREAM~

IT WAS BANANAS! My dreams are officially on drugs. Thanks for reading, and ENJOY!*

Kagome watched with bated breath as the two brothers engaged each other in a glaring contest so epic it made her briefly reconsider whether or not they actually had eyelids.

“You’d better get out of here, Sesshoumaru. Kagome doesn’t want to waste her time helping some stupid jackass.”

She winced, dreading the sight of Inuyasha getting an emergency tonsillectomy, but was flooded with a sense of confusion as the demon lord merely smirked wickedly.

“I have difficulties accepting that to be true, hanyou, seeing as she has had no objections to ‘wasting her time’ with a ‘jackass’ such as yourself, thus far.”

As Inuyasha proceeded to do an admirable impression of a trout, Kagome heard a raucous studio audience burst to life in her head, whistling and shouting a chorus of “Oooooooooh,” “Daaaayyyummmmm,” and “You GO girl!,” but she was surprised to find herself siding against Inuyasha in the little spat. Really, though, he’d been such a little wiener lately, she couldn’t help herself.

The younger brother howled and unsheathed Tessaiga, lunging at his stoic counterpart, and Kagome had to steel every last bit of her resolve not to join the cheering in her brain and shout, “JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!” whilst running around in circles and pumping her fist in the air.

Entirely unperturbed by the impending attack, Sesshoumaru merely jumped to his left as if he were dodging a slightly disgruntled caterpillar, his sangfroid entirely intact, and betraying neither effort nor any other emotion on his regal features.

The fight continued on in this manner for the next few minutes, and Kagome considered slinking off to go do something slightly more interesting, like stare at some grass, but refrained when she realized all of the demon lord’s actions were defensive, and he’d yet to make a move towards harming his half-brother.

“Inuyasha, give it a rest, he’s not even fighting back and you’re STILL losing! This is pointless!...And kind of boring!”

“Shut UP, Kagome!” At this, she glared and flipped him the bird. “I’d be done with him if he’d JUST—ungh—STOP—kyuh!—MOVING!”

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t be in my best interests, Inuyasha, but I’m glad to hear your skills have improved to the point where you can now injure immobile object. You should be very proud.”

The hanyou let out a strangled yell and unleashed his windscar, which served to do little more than decimate a rather undeserving tree.

“Do desist this childishness and listen to your wench,” This remark earned a second one-finger salute from a scowling Kagome, but only because she was reasonably certain that the demon lord didn’t know what it meant. “Now you may either continue attacking the foliage you deem most threatening, or you can listen to what I have to offer you.”

Inuyasha’s face was currently battling his fire-rat robe to see which could be considered redder, but he sheathed his sword nonetheless and crossed his arms over his chest.

“A wise decision. Perhaps the first you’ve ever made.” The younger brother looked like he might just belch fire if he opened his mouth, and Kagome breathed a sigh of relief as he merely twitched and kept it shut. “Now you will surrender the miko to me without argument until the cycle of this moon is complete, and upon her return I shall impart unto you my knowledge of Naraku’s whereabouts.”

Inuyasha held up his façade of rage, but nonetheless, he appeared intrigued “Keh, as if I would trust a bastard like you to hold up your end of the bargain. Besides, how the hell would you have any idea where he is? Even Kagura didn’t know.”

Kagome let out a barely audible gasp as she felt her pulse spike at hearing a low rumble deep within Sesshoumaru’s chest. She was still confused by her body’s reactions to him, and watched as his eyes flashed scarlet.

“You will refrain from questioning my honor and integrity again, half-breed.” His words were laced with a feral snarl. “And you will trust that my words are the truth. However, if you need further convincing…” Sesshoumaru’s hand disappeared into the folds of his kimono, reemerging with a sizeable fragment of the shikon jewel, and Inuyasha’s eyes widened hungrily. “There is your proof. I have no need for it, though I’m sure a hanyou such as yourself could greatly benefit.”

“Inuyasha…” Kagome cursed her voice as it betrayed her trepidation, falling past her lips in a quivering whisper, “that’s more than we could find in the whole of the two weeks. And really, it’s only a few days, we’re gaining more than we’re losing, if you think about it…” She tried to convince herself she was only insistent that Inuyasha agree for Rin’s sake, but had trouble squelching the little voice at the back of her head insisting she had other reasons driving her; other tall, well-built, naked reasons. She found herself grouchily wishing the stupid little voice would be replaced by that studio audience. THEY would never betray her.

The half-demon mumbled something incoherent before reaching a decision. “Fine. But if anything happens to her—”

Sesshoumaru scoffed. “Undoubtedly, she will be safer in my mere presence than she ever was under your…meticulous…protection.” He gave a wolfish half-smile as he tossed her over his shoulder, reveling in the fury on his half-brother’s face as he allowed his hand to linger on the backsides of her bare thighs longer than necessary, and Kagome could barely breathe as her companions burst into the small clearing, demanding to know why Inuyasha had let her go.

The Lord of the Western Lands once again made his exit on a shimmering red cloud, and as Kagome fervently fought to distract herself from their intense proximity, she mused thoughtfully that Sesshoumaru was likely the only male in existence to make even traveling via a puff of sparkles seem somewhat masculine.


***


When Sesshoumaru was convinced they were far enough away from her companions, he roused Kagome from a rather adult-rated daydream that involved a private tutoring session with the renowned Professor Fleshoumaru (complete with sparkly magic clouds and a feather whip) by surreptitiously tossing her onto the forest floor, and she was unable to do anything except stare up at him stupidly for the next few minutes, wondering idly where his leather cowboy chaps had gone.

“I trust you’ve had enough time to remember that you are, in fact, capable of motion?”

“I…uh…what? Oh right, haha, yeah, motion. Yep, I’m a regular motion-machine; I’ve got bones and muscles and the whole shebang right here, hehe, I am all-set for motion, whoo boy…” Trying to hide her mental forays into the land of the lascivious, Kagome attempted to play it cool, but ended up sounding about as calm as a hummingbird who’d just discovered the joys of crack cocaine.

To her immense relief, Sesshoumaru merely gave her an unreadable stare and turned to continue his path through the trees, and while she still had to jog to keep up with his speedy gait, it was undoubtedly better than chasing after him on that stupid cloud.

She felt her heart lurch as she realized she had absolutely no idea what she was going to teach the little girl when she got there. After mentally lighting Sesshoumaru’s hair on fire, she racked her brains for any information a prepubescent female might find at all pertinent, pausing at the memories of her junior high home economics class.

Kagome slapped her forehead at how utterly ludicrous the whole situation was. Basically, Sesshoumaru had entreated her to be Rin’s HEALTH teacher!

A disturbing visual image of herself in a magenta sweatsuit with oversized aviator glasses and a whistle took over the priestess’s thoughts, and she wondered if showing the child how to put a condom on a banana should be included in the curriculum. She decided against it, and considered her other lessons in human growth and development, wondering if anyone in the Feudal Era would know what she was talking about if she told them to get checked for herpes, ultimately reasoning someone would probably just try to exorcise her if she went from village to village chanting, “You can’t go wrong if you cover your dong!”

No, that probably wouldn’t be the most useful of lessons, Kagome concluded. But seeing as Rin was a woman of the Sengoku Jidai, and most females of this time period were expected to do little more than look pretty and pop out a couple of ankle-biters, she realized she should probably instill in her the joys of motherhood . She had a vague recollection of spending the week taking care of little egg-babies while she was in middle school, but nixed the idea when she remembered that particular exercise required a partner. (This part of the project was much more vivid in her mind as she’d been unfortunately paired up with Chikara, the boy who ate his own earwax.) Asking Sesshoumaru to help Rin care for an egg with a face drawn on it could only end badly, as he’d no doubt be infuriated that his egg-baby-momma was not a youkai, and little Humpty Dumpty Jr. probably wouldn’t like it when his daddy vaporized him with his poisonous claws. Then Kagome would be forced to give the demon lord an ‘F’ on the assignment, which greatly increased her own chances of meeting an equally undesirable fate of glowy green pointy things.

Unfortunately, her brilliant planning was brought to a grinding halt as the two travelers ended their journey in a small meadow where Rin was skipping and humming gaily, throwing flowers into the air and looking adorable while Jaken, being his true charming self, was burning butterflies with staff and cackling like a disturbed chimpanzee, and Kagome thought to herself that they made a rather nice contrast for one another.

Sesshoumaru nodded at the miko, and elegantly folded his body under a nearby tree, resigning himself to what Kagome had noticed to be one of his favorite pastimes; namely, sitting and staring at nothing, and she took this as her cue to begin.

Plastering a smile to her face, she made her way brightly over to the beaming little girl, who had the tiniest smear of pollen smudged across the tip of her nose, and the older girl thought she could melt from the sheer cuteness of her new little gap-toothed friend.

“Hi, Rin! I’m not sure if you remember me, but my name’s Kagome, and I was the one trying to help you feel better last night.”

The girl smiled wider, and fell to her knees in a deferential bow, her forehead touching the damp soil in front of her as she bobbed her head up and down. “Oh Kagome, yes of course I remember! You helped me so much, there’s no way I could ever, ever, ever, ever repay you! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

The priestess laughed as the girl bowed herself into an obsequious oblivion. “Haha, it’s okay, I was happy to do what I could. I’m glad you’re feeling better, by the way!” Feeling slightly awkward, she added, “And, um, it’s okay, you really don’t have to keep bowing, I mean, um, it wasn’t a big deal…”

“Oh but it was! I am so grateful to you, Kagome! You must be the most powerful miko in Japan! And so kind! And so beautiful!”

The older teenager blushed at this, “Well, you know, eat your green veggies every day, I always say, hehe…”

Rin finally slowed down her incessant bowing, but it was only to give Kagome a look of utter confusion. “One becomes infused with holy powers by eating iron-rich vegetables?”

“Umm…kind of?” Kagome’s blush turned to one of embarrassment. “You know what? Never mind, it’s not important. But, um, oh! Oh, okay, um, I have something that will help you take care of the bleeding. I just have to show you how to…um…hmm. Is there a stream nearby?”

The child nodded and grabbed her new friend’s hand as she dragged her to the banks of a nearby brook with more force than any twelve-year-old girl should possess, and Kagome briefly wondered whether or not Sesshoumaru had miraculously stumbled upon steroids well before their discovery, or if maybe he gave off radioactive super-rays that improved the strength and stamina of everyone around him. She was rejuvenated with the knowledge that her little tutoring sessions might actually lead to her being turned into one of the X-Men, and she decided she wanted to be the girl with the skin-tight costume, thinking her odds were pretty good, considering that was, um, all of them. Unfortunately, she needed to have slightly bigger ta-tas to fill out one of those spandex jumpsuits, and she briefly wondered whether or not asking for a gargantuan rack on the shikon jewel could be considered a “pure, unselfish wish.”

She was brusquely ripped from her musings as she heard Rin splash into the water chasing after some tiny, silver fish, and concluded that teaching the girl might not be as easy as she’d previously assumed without a nice, healthy dose of Ritalin, since both of them seemed to suffer from rather insistent cases of ADD.

Digging through her backpack, she beckoned her pupil, “Um…Rin? Could you come back over to the bank?” She gave a triumphant cry as her fingers wrapped around what she’d been looking for. “Okay, this is, um, a secret from my village, which is like, really far away, so don’t even bother asking where it is. Anyways, this little thing is gonna save your life!” Kagome waved the little object over her head, her face split into an enthusiastic smile.

Rin, however, did not share her excitement. “Oh. Umm…what is it?”

“This!” Kagome exclaimed joyously, as she peeled back the wrapper, “Is a tampon!”

The younger girl gave a little frown as she saw the small white stick clutched in the miko’s hand. It certainly didn’t look very tasty, and she was not sure if it was worth it to help with the bleeding. Judging by the little tale hanging down from the bottom, Rin was reasonably sure that “tampon” could be loosely translated to “dead mouse,” and Sesshoumaru had done a decent job of teaching her not to play with dead things. A useful lesson it was, too, seeing as when one traveled with Sesshoumaru, most things you ran into ended up pretty darn lifeless.

“Okay, well, I know it looks weird, but it’s really so helpful. Watch!” Kagome crossed her index and middle finger at the top, leaving a little gap in between. “So, um, that little hole between my fingers, that’s your…um…your…where the bleeding happens, okay? And so you take this little guy—” Rin cringed, now knowing it was a boy mouse, but glad she didn’t have to eat it, “—and you put through that little hole, and then you push this little bottom part through, and voila! After that, it should just kinda stay there, and, um, it takes care of, um, of the blood, and it makes things, um, less messy!”

The little girl stared at her new teacher, dumbfounded. “So you’re saying I have to put that dead mouse—”

“—Oh! Oh, no! Gross! No, it’s not a mouse, haha, no, it’s um, cotton fibers, um, like, what makes your yukata…”

“Okay, so I have to put that…fiber thing…”

“…Mm-hmm…”

“Up my…?”

“Yup!”

“And it will…”

“Yeah!”

“…Okay…how?”

“Oh, right! That’s why I brought us to the stream! Okay, well, so, it’s inside, right? And it’s going to absorb, like this, see?” Kagome held the string and dipped the tampon below the surface of the stream, watching it balloon outward into a small cloud, and turned, beaming, to her little pupil.

However, rather than smiling along with her, Rin was ashen-faced, her features frozen in a mask of sheer horror, and the miko looked at her with confusion until the little girl let out and ear piercing shriek.

“YOU WANT ME TO…I’M SUPPOSED TO… PUT THAT…THAT DEAD MOUSE INSIDE ME AND LET IT FEED ON ME UNTIL IT GROWS AND GROWS UNTIL I CAN NO LONGER GET IT OUT AND I AM OVERCOME BY A GIANT DEAD MOUSE BECAUSE IT HAS EATEN ME FROM THE INSIDE OUT?!?! NO, KAGOME! I WILL NOT! I WILL NOT BE DEVOURED BY YOUR DEAD MOUSE THAT INSISTS UPON FEASTING ON MY BOWELS!”

Kagome’s jaw hit the floor in sheer shock, and she was unable to get a word in before a squealing Jaken and irate Sesshoumaru joined them on the banks of the creek.

“M’lord! M’lord, this foul wench is attempting harm upon your household! Dispose of her! DISPOSE OF HER!”

The flustered priestess helplessly shot a pleading look to Sesshoumaru, who answered her gaze with a menacing and violent sneer, and she scrambled for the words to defend herself.

“I—wait! It’s not, it’s not what she says! She misunderstood, I—I was just showing her how to use this!” Kagome pulled the tampon from the water and watched as it dripped harmlessly onto the rocks lining the brook. “It’s something we use back where I come from! It’s not at all dangerous, I promise! She was just…surprised, I guess! It doesn’t get a bit bigger than this, it’s just cotton, it’s entirely safe, really! Here, see for yourself!”

She handed the offending object to the daiyoukai, and watched, trembling, as he proceeded to wring it out between his strong fingers and sniff along its seams. Ordinarily, the great demon lord of the western lands rubbing his nose against a tampon would have been a comical scene to bear witness to, but Kagome was too busy not peeing her pants in sheer terror that she failed to see the humor. He gave the miko a final glare before tossing it into a small patch of grass.

“It is safe. Nothing more than a mere scrap of material.”

Kagome heard a loud whooshing noise that she recognized as the air she hadn’t known she was holding in escape her lungs, and she barely registered as Rin’s arms fastened themselves around her neck in something that felt more like a headlock than a hug.

“Oh Kagome, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean not to trust you! I will put hundreds of…um…tompans inside of me to make up for it! Does Kagome forgive me?” The little girl was sobbing into the priestess’s hair, and she began to rub small circles on her back in an attempt to calm her down.

“Shhh…it’s okay, you don’t have to cry, it’s not a big deal. I forgive you, please don’t be sad!” She felt immense relief as the girl’s sobs slowly subsided, but the sensation was immediately quashed as she heard the stupid little toad demon letting his lord know where his opinions stood on the matter.

She couldn’t make out every word he said, as it was distorted by his insufferable yawping, but Kagome was relatively sure she caught a definite “heathen,” “sorceress,” and “intolerable pile of repulsive, wenchly goo” as he suggested to Sesshoumaru that the situation would be greatly improved if the woman was impaled on something sharp and pointy, and Kagome couldn’t help as a bubble of aggravation made itself known at the forefront of her mind. She delivered a solid kick to Jaken’s torso and smiled gleefully as his little form toppled over and slid for a few feet, but felt her stomach constrict as she observed the complete silence following her experiment in violence.

Jaken blinked, trying to figure out what exactly had just happened to him, and let his toady face fall into a mask of murderous rage as realized it had been the priestess who had acted against him. “M’LORD! M’LORD! THE HUMAN HARRIDAN HAS ONCE AGAIN ACTED AGAINST YOUR DOMINION! TEACH HER A LESSON!”

“I intend to.”

The words chilled Kagome to her very soul, but the smirk that spread across Jaken’s mossy, wrinkly visage was infuriatingly audible.

She let her eyes slide closed as she heard the soft footsteps of the demon lord, but they shot back open as she heard the dull thud of his shoe colliding with a stomach, and the small “Oomf!” that followed, flabbergasted to realize the recipient was not her, but the small green toad as he flew into the forest with a less than graceful arc.

“Miko, next time, be sure to use the muscles in both your upper and lower appendage, it makes for a much more satisfactory trajectory. There. I have taught her a lesson.”

The youkai spun gracefully on his heel and retreated towards the camp, and was joined by a limping green blob, crowing indignantly, and a giggling Rin, who had managed to squirm free of Kagome’s embrace, who was left sitting in the mud with her mouth agape, trying to process whether or not she’d just heard the Sesshoumaru, demon lord of all things scary and powerful, make a joke.


*Also, Phoenix Wolf left me a really sweet review, and I heart it, but it says that your e-mail is hidden, so I’m sorry I couldn’t put you on the update list! If you get a chance to see this, just leave your e-mail in another review, or if you don’t want to shout it loud and proud to the whole world, send it to me at ilikesweatervests@hotmail.com*