One-shot, or continue? Reviews feed authors like delicious, steaming hot fresh from the oven cookies. =D Especially since this author is in boarding school five days a week!
Based on "The Little Red Riding Hood" - you probably know about that story now. XD

Inuyasha (c) Rumiko Takahashi

Original Word Count: 2,746

The girl wandered the forest, alone once more, in her hands a basket of carefully-wrapped pastries and a bottle of wine, and she whistled to herself a happy tune.

Her hair swished back and forth as she hopped down the worn-down forest path. Her white cotton dress rippled with the movement, and her blue eyes were brimming like they were smiling. She was; she flashed her sharp, clean, even teeth to no one in a broad grin as she closed her eyes and took in the scent of the forest. In her head, memories of a tiny cottage in the middle of it started to flash, with the butterflies and the flowers and the smiling face of her ailing grandmother.

Suddenly, a new smell caught her nose and she blinked. She knew that smell—wildflowers and roses. She pouted, suddenly, as her mind attacked her with the voice of her brother, saying Don't stray from the forest-path, sister, and the reminders of her mother saying about the demons that wandered the forest. But, oh, how bad she wanted to get those flowers for her grandmother! The gruff voice of an old wolf she had met earlier played in her head: Oh little girl, can't you smell the fragrant flowers ahead? And the flowers were too teasing and tempting. She stepped a step away from the path and looked around—nothing. She took another—nothing. With another step she was finally clear from the road, and still there was nothing. She decided to go pick some flowers and, fixing her basket so that there was space, she trotted down the forest.

It was easy spotting the flowers—the forest was, after all, mainly a plain green and brown. Their colors were a splash of colors in the greenery, and she smiled. They smelled wonderful, indeed. She plucked one carefully and put it near her nose, just enough to smell its scent. She sighed in content. They were all beautiful. She knew her grandmother would love them. She wandered around and she took one, and another, and another, until the basket was already full of the colourful little things; roses, wildflowers, daisies, periwinkles, and everything else she could find.

Suddenly she looked up and saw the sun; it had risen quite a high way up, and she suddenly became increasingly aware of the warm and irritating stickiness on her pale skin. She frowned once more, like a little girl, before finally deciding it was probably time she really headed straight to her grandmother. She went back to the path and started to hum to herself, again, another happy tune.

Because she was only human, with a human nose and human ears and a human pair of eyes, she did not notice the light track of another pair of feet or the extra scent of imminent danger that lingered in the air as she neared her grandmother's humble cottage.

The happy girl tidied her hair and knocked at the wooden door of her grandmother's cottage, saying a very energetic "Good morning!"

Immediately there was a soft voice which sounded very tired and ill that asked in response, "Who is there?"

"It is your granddaughter, Kagome," the girl answered. "I brought cake and wine and best wishes for your health, from my mother and brother, and myself."

"Lift the latch," the voice answered, strained. "I am too weak to go and get up. You can do it yourself, surely."

The girl did as she was told, and the door opened with not so much as a noise. She stepped in the little cottage, the scent of honey and tea and lemon invading her senses, and she closed the door. But when she looked up and saw that her grandmother was tied, suddenly unconscious and dumped in the corner of the cottage, she realized that it was a different person that lay on the bed. She gasped. It was a boy—a man—with dark eyes and a brown shade for his skin, and dark hair. He wore furs all over his body, and he smelled of blood.

"You are not my grandmother!" she shouted. "Who are you? What have you done to her?" She glared at the intruder before she dumped the flowers and the cake and the wine, and they dropped with a noisy thud on the wooden floor. She ran toward her grandmother and crouching by her, she murmured as she tried to untie the tightly-done rope, whispering, "Are you okay? Grandma, please don't…"

"Little girl," the intruder said, and when she looked up she realized he was already standing by her. She tried to glare at him, but the fear was already transfixed on her eyes, and she couldn't do it too well. "Do you seriously think I would be afraid of you?" He took her by the neckline of her dress, gripping hardly as she struggled.

"Let go of me! Let go of me! AAH! Pedophile!" she shouted loudly and angrily as she tried to kick as she wailed in all directions possible. She wanted to get away and run to the kitchen, where in the top cupboard her grandmother kept her bow and arrows, but she couldn't. He was too strong.

The demon grunted. "Pedophile, you say? But we're almost the same age in human standards!" The girl looked up at him in awe and puzzlement at the same time. "I am a wolf-demon. A highly territorial and a possessive one at that, so I'm going to bring you to my den, and you shall be my slave-girl."

The girl looked up at him with a surprised expression, of course mixed with the fear and the anger and the desperation. "A wolf-demon, you say? Ah, how come the one I met earlier wasn't as mean as you?"

"Silly girl," he said, laughing a little in a menacing way as she glowered at him. "That was a friend of mine. No, he works under me, even. I didn't think he had a good enough acting talent to even deceive you!" Then he paused. "Wait, then again, you're just a little kid!" He laughed even harder.

The girl frowned, and the tears that have welled up on the corners of her eyes started to drip down her cheek uncontrollably. Suddenly she didn't want to be there, because the sweet scent of honey, lemon, and tea in the house was covered by blood, and because her grandmother was in terrible danger, and because there were no butterflies to chase, and because she was held captive. Suddenly she felt the world crash down on her and she didn't know what to do, so she simply whimpered and put her head down in defeat.

The wolf-demon looked at her, confused. "What, that's it? You're giving up? Ahh, you're such a bore, you little pest! You're doing nothing right in your life; you can at least give me some entertainment." Under his grasp, the girl bit the bottom of her lip, trying hard to control herself from screaming at him. She bit on it until it started to bleed, and the blood dripped from her lip to her chin to the floor. That drove the wolf-demon mad. "And now you're making a mess? Clean that up! Now! Clean it!" he said. "I can't have a worthless slave in my home. You'd have better worth dead!" he shouted, and he dropped her hard on the floor. She fell on her knees and she started to cry. "Being a wimp now aren't we? Hurry up! Wipe yourself up with that white dress of yours!" She didn't bother to look up and answer back at her attacker. Her black hair serving as a curtain to her facial expressions and emotions, she wiped her face with the ends of her dress. She was about to use it to polish the floor when the doors of the cottage burst open and in came their trusted stable boy.

"Shippou!" she gasped, staring at the little fox-kit and the horses that were tied in front of the cottage for lunch. The kit stared at the wolf-demon, the old woman, and at the girl, and there were a lot of questions suddenly clouding his eyes. "Go! Run!" the girl shouted. "Run before he decides to kill you!"

But the kit was frozen in his spot, his eyebrows twitching as everything started to fall into place. Being a demon, even if he was only a kit, his nose was more powerful and he knew particularly what that scent was—it was of Kouga. He headed a wolf-demon group that had just decided to take over practically the entire forest in terms of territory. Everything was about scent and territory and power in most the demon world, and Kouga had marked everything he claimed was his.

In short—Shippou could see how complicated the matter was already.

But he still did not run. Kagome started to panic. She took the wine bottle and tossed it toward her antagonist, and because he was caught off guard it hit his face before falling to the floor with a loud THUD. She ran to her grandmother and pulled her off the ground, carrying her to a horse and putting her there before telling Shippou to go to the village and tend to her. But the wolf-demon prince started to rise. By the time she had already finished sending them off speedily, the demon went up at her and charged her with a strong whack on her face. She was sent tumbling down ungracefully to the wooden floor.

"You dare do that to the one who can take your life! You really are a brave girl. But a silly and brave one at that! You will pay for what you did!" the demon shouted, and was about to give her a round of hard torture-like beating if another person had not interrupted him.

"KOUGA! You bastard! You were here all along! TCH! This place reeks of your ugly scent. I've been searching for you ALL THIS TIME!"

The wolf-demon turned around from his prey, and searched for his challenger. He saw who it was: a white-haired half-dog demon, a hanyou. He looked angrily at the hanyou for the interruption. "Mutt, you smell like dog shit. And you're just a hanyou! I'm a wolf-demon, a prince at that. What do you plan to do to me? You think you can?"

"I sure well hell give you the best shit I got!" the silver-haired one shouted, his amber eyes flaming with bitter anger as he pulled out his sword, and it became a large fang. "You've taken so many things away from me! And I'm sure as hell gonna get them back!" He jumped up and attacked the wolf-demon, making the latter have to draw back with a jump. He went outside the house.

"That's all you got, hanyou?" He asked the newcomer angrily, thinking to himself that he was underestimated. "What a fool!"

The wolf-demon pounced up, kicking the sword with both his legs out of the hanyou's hand. There was a strangled gasp in the hanyou's throat, but he ignored it. The fang returned to its original form of a rusty blade. The hanyou decided to change his tactics—he thought he'd have better chance if he worked close-contact and used his claws instead. He ran again toward the wolf-demon, but he was only tossed away with a kick.

There's something in that bastard's feet! He shouted in his mind. He pulled off his haori and dropped it to the ground, checking the stinging part. He growled as he rubbed the sore spot in his stomach where he had been hit. A little bit more and it would've been his solar plexus, and he would've been driven unconscious despite his demon blood. He smiled—I still got a chance, don't I?

He stood up and ran quickly in the shadows of the greenery, pouncing at the wolf-demon only when it was close enough that he was on the demon's back. He yelled a loud "Sankontessou!" as he dug his claws deep into the tender flesh and muscle of the demon and pull it out after making a long line of deep wound and blood. The demon hissed as he jumped away into the trees.

He checked over his shoulder to see the wound. His face contorted into one of bitter pain. He turned to look angrily at the hanyou and said, "I'm going to get back at you, Inuyasha. Trust me on that one." Then he went off, the fluttering of a few leaves the only ones betraying his passing.

Inside, the hanyou—Inuyasha, as the wolf-demon had called him—wanted to follow and stalk the wolf-demon and get rid of the misery the demon was living. But he didn't, what with the smell of blood and tears that suddenly mixed in the air that annoyed him. He wrinkled his nose as he turned to the open door of the cottage.

The girl lay there, confused, exhausted, and hurt. Tears ran freely from the corners of her eyes to her chin to her dress. She was bloody and her head was spinning, and she felt lost and disoriented. She looked up to her amber-eyed savior with a thank-you lingering in her eyes, and a question as well—a very bold and very curious why.

But he did not answer her. Instead he picked her up from the floor and put her on the bed that still stunk of the wolf. He wrinkled his nose again, and walked away to the kitchen to look for some water. He found some cold and took a glass and drank it all in one gulp, two triangular tufts of ears on the top of his head twitching.

Kagome only noticed his two dog ears, like an Akita Inu's. She giggled lightly, but he ignored her. He stepped back in front of her and told her coldly: "Your fox friend will reach the village. I saw him." He turned around from her and stomped out. "I'm going. Stay in. He's not going to be here any soon."

He started to walk off, and Kagome felt her legs stiffen, yet melt in a jelly at once. She put her feet out by the side of her bed as she struggled to stand, but her feet did not follow her order. She saw the tuft of silver start to walk away, and she wanted to say or shout something to him but she couldn't. She scrambled up on feeble legs and tried to chase him, but she was ailing and he was not, so it was hard. She shouted the name she caught earlier: "INUYASHA!" and he turned around to her, balancing his feet on a tree branch.

"What is it, wench?" he asked a little grumpily as he stared back at the weak human who was already having a hard time just keeping on her two legs.

"I just wanted to say thank you…" she murmured, a little irritated at his behaviour as she diverted her eyesight down to her feet. Something had caught her attention down there—nothing at all. She felt her face flush at his stare which she felt at the back of her neck, and she wanted it to stop. To disappear.

The hanyou snorted. "Keh! Don't think I'm always going to be here to save your sorry ass when you're in danger!"

But still she turned around, as she wanted to thank him, but when she looked, he was no longer there, and the only memento of his earlier presence was the red haori he had left behind on the ground beside her.

She picked it up, and put it on, with a smug smile on her slightly crimson face.