It had been a long week for Kagome Higurashi.
"What makes family vacations so stressful?" She was mumbling to herself, but her family didn't seem to notice. For the life of her she just couldn't figure out what had possessed her mother to pack everyone up and fly to this dinky little town in China. She couldn't even read the brochure.
'Inuyasha has already been chewing me out for spending so much time on this side of the well. Wait, why do I care? That jerk has no say in what I'm doing with my life. This is where I belong anyway! Why am I even thinking this? Ugh.'When she came out of her internal rant, Kagome noticed that her brother was watching in amusement. Color rushed to her cheeks, but she refused to acknowledge the sight he must have just witnessed.
'Right, focusing on the guide, and not appearing crazy. That would probably mean I should stop talking to myself. Okay, stopping, now. Or now. ARGH.'
After a few minutes of discreetly arguing with herself, Kagome was able to divert her attention to the long winded tour. The guide's accent was really thick, Japanese obviously not his first language. They had been following him around all day and not once seen anything remotely interesting. Well, Kagome had to assume that since there were no 'Oooooh's or 'Ahhhh's to pull her out of her thinking.
They were surrounded by terrain that might have been interesting to a normal person, almost untouched by civilization as it was. The key word there would be normal. Kagome, of course, was about as far from normal as it got. Her attention was called to a vaguely humanoid shaped stone statue that looked a bit like something she had seen somewhere in her travels through feudal Japan.
"And here we have famous stone statue of Lord Pekingo. Very mighty ruler who make all of China able to make growing from once very hard ground with no life."
Kagome wondered briefly where the man had learned Japanese. He was barely able to form a simple sentence correctly, his stories were beyond her understanding at all. Well, besides the fact that he was obviously making it up. She had to fight to keep herself from calling the portly Chinese man on his ridiculous story. However, her grandfather nodded excitedly and quickly jumped in with a story of a very similarly named Lord Tokingo, not so very distantly related according to him, that had saved all of Japan from sinking into the ocean. They spoke of their lords for the next twenty minutes. Each was trying to outdo the other. By the time they reached a quiet restaurant, Pekingo saved the entire population of Asia from being overrun by pandas and Tokingo discovered America and started a population that would later become known as Native Americans.
Kagome thought the conversation would die out as they ate, but the extra nutrition seemed to fuel the competition to even greater heights. The large man was listing off every great Chinese hero and creating fictional ones to fill in gaps while her grandfather seemed to be telling of every great Japanese hero and blowing her adventure into epic scales. She was thankful that he was giving new names for every encounter he listed off, but wasn't going to sit through it any longer.
"Souta, you seem to have all your energy still, let's go for a walk."
He responded quickly, "Yeah, soccer hasn't been nearly as hard on me as when I started. I'll show you some moves." The exchange was almost unheard. Her mother gave a nod, but the men arguing at the table paid them no mind at all.
Kagome gave Souta a signal, "Permission granted, let's move out." Well, he was pretty sure that was what it meant. She seemed relieved to be getting away from the crazy old men, but he wasn't so sure that he wasn't just leaving one crazy for another. Not that it mattered much to him. His sister was actually entertaining. Oh, the hilarity of watching emotions flicker by on her face, happy, pissed, confused. He could almost put the soap opera with the expressions.
"Fernando! I'm so glad to see you, it's been months."
"He did whatwith my sister? Fernando, is it true?"
Souta saw Kagome looking at him with a raised eyebrow. "Was that out loud?" The eyebrow raised higher. "Ouch, guess so. I was just remembering where my favorite show had left off. Wow, look at those pools. They aren't hot springs, are they? Now that would be an attraction worth visiting."
Kagome looked out at the springs dotted about the large field they had just come upon. 'Operation distract Kagome status: success,' Souta resisted the urge to throw his fist into the air as he entertained himself.
"No, they aren't hot springs, there's no steam, but they are unusual. Maybe it's some sort of nursing ground for fish." She looked curious and Souta couldn't help but begin to wonder about the strangely placed pools himself.
"None in this one," Kagome found herself yelling across the field. Souta had seen a sign across the way and was going to see if it had any information. "or this one."
'We probably missed the season. Is there a season for raising fish?'
"Sis! You better come look at this!" Souta sounded like he was torn between being worried and a fit of giggles. Kagome decided she should err on the side of caution in case he was actually just terrified of whatever information was on the sign. She started towards him at a light jog.
"Miss Lady! You has stop!" The poorly worded warning slowed Kagome, but the quick look she shot towards the guide caused her to miss the rock that sent her face first into a frigid pool.
Kagome's vision swam. The splash, she had steeled herself for, but when she came up from the water everything was different somehow. An onslaught of smells rushed to her nose confusing her and the voices of the people surrounding her seemed to pound into her head.
"Miss Lady," the guide looked disappointed, "I told you not go farther."
There were some shouts from her grandpa in an angry tone. Kagome felt a twinge of fondness for the old man. It was nice to have someone stick up for her instead of calling her out on the clumsiness she had just proudly displayed. The "demon" comment might have been taking her defense a little far.
Kagome's mother was pale as a sheet and Souta looked like he had just seen Santa. The look on her mother's face felt like she had just stepped out of her own grave and the eager expression of awe her brother fixed on her was more than a little creppy. "Cool sis. You look just like Inuyasha!"
She had been trying to shake the water out of her ears, but the comments were slowly sinking in. The gears in her head seemed to protest the direction her thoughts were going and she froze. Grandpa's comment suddenly seemed to have a whole new meaning. 'There's no way.'Kagome tried to rationalize away the conclusion she had just reached. 'For one thing, being any part demon would most likely throw off or eliminate my spiritual powers. Never mind that I can't use them enough to test that at the moment. Since it's not true. Yeah, that's another thing. There is just no way that a person can change their heritage. So I can just look into this pool and see that some kind of crazy plant is stuck on my head or something.'She unwillingly looked into the pond her brother had just helped her climb out of.
"Okay, so I seem to have somehow become half dog demon." Through her newfound denial she managed to sound completely unfazed. Her now amber eyes turned to the guide. "How?"
"This is spring of drowned hanyou. 800 years ago dog demon and beautiful human fall in love. They has baby. She know that baby be mistreated so she brought little girl here to save her pain of growing up. Is very tragic tale. Now any who fall in spring become half dog demon." She understood this tale well enough and would have dismissed the guide's story completely if she hadn't just experienced it first-hand.
"I thought the sign was a joke, or just misinterpreted from the Chinese." Souta eyed the spring as if contemplating having a dip himself.
"No you don't sonny, we've got enough demons running around. I'll have to write up some more sacred sutras as soon as we get back home. Don't worry Kagome, I'll seal that demon blood for you." Souta looked disappointed, but didn't hop in. Grandpa was still the man of the house after all.
"Is this permanent?" The truth was very slowly sinking in and Kagome thought of her friends. Would they still accept her? She knew they would, but worried that Inuyasha would still end up thinking her weak. That, or she'd for sure manage to make an ass of herself and he'd never let her live it down. It'd be just like him to brag about how much better he still was than her.
"…ack to normal." Kagome realized that she had tuned out something important.
"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" Color flooded her cheeks as the guide gave her a surprised look.
"Half demon really are stupid." This man was asking for some trouble. Insulting Inuyasha like that. She growled at him before realizing that, of course, he had no other demons to judge by and she wasn't exactly giving herself a good rep. "And scary." He cowered away and quickly repeated what she had missed, "I say you be half demon with cold water. Have hot water and then you back to normal."
"It's really that easy?" Kagome bit out before the Chinese man nodded quickly. For a moment she simply mulled it over before muttering, "It almost sounds like it's too easy."
She worried her lip in thought and tasted copper. The sharpened tooth slicing through her lip had stung some, but the blood it caused was much worse. It was almost overwhelming, no taste had ever been so potent. The metallic scent hadn't helped either. By the time this had all registered, it was over, the small wound had already sealed itself.
Her eyes locked with her mother's. The middle aged woman had regained her color and was looking at her daughter with a concerned curiosity. Kagome couldn't see the visions of dog eared children running around the shrine, but she could tell that her mom was reaching the point of acceptance.
"Mom? Are you alright?" Kagome ventured a question to be sure of her observations.
"Honey, are you alright?" Her motherly instincts were a jumbled mess. They wanted to scream that this was something terrible, but having seen Inuyasha, she wasn't so sure. The young man was so much stronger than a regular person. She could rest a little easier if she knew that her baby was stronger, but she had to have confirmation of this first.
"Yeah Mom, I'm fine. I just don't know what to think. This is so confusing, I feel all weird."
"Well, for now there's nothing to be done. Let's get back to the inn and get packed for the trip back." Kagome was glad to agree but was a bit disappointed to return to the inn. They had gone on a vacation to get her away from the feudal era. Why couldn't they have gone somewhere with a real hotel? At least they had western style beds. That was, after all, one of her most missed luxuries when traveling in the past. That and toilet paper, hot baths, hamburgers, ice cream. She was surprised at the direction her thoughts were going. She should be tired after walking all day and this whole fiasco, but all she could think about now was food. She wasn't feeling tired at all. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. Just figure out how to keep up with Inuyasha. She could do that, it should only require some time training. Then, when she was confident of her skill, she would tell everyone. Inuyasha wouldn't be able to say anything and she might actually get to be useful for once.
She popped her knuckles and admired the claws that still somehow left her hands looking dainty. With a new feeling of confidence she decided that she'd start training in secret as soon as she could slip away from her friends. "After all, it can't be that hard, right?" Her ear flicked as she took in her own voice. A smirk danced across her face. Maybe she was just spending too much time around her hanyou, but she felt like this could turn out to be the most fun she'd had in a long time.