Disclaimer: Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi, I am using her character with no permission or profit involved. Everything else in this story is mine.

Ok, so I could see the description (along with the first couple chapters) being confusing. What I did here was take poor, much put upon Inuyasha, spirited him away from his happy(sorta) home and entangled him into a story of my own construction. It may take a few chapters for it to come clear where he is (find Waldo!) and what exactly is going on (it is meant to be mysterious) so bare with me. If confusion really drives you crazy, feel free to drop me a line with questions (and perhaps suggestions on how to make things more clear.)

Thanks

Catpig

I was sitting in a stall when the door swung open and shut with a sigh of displaced air. I fumbled for the toilet paper, then stopped, listening. There it was again. Hardly audible over the florescent light's hum came the metallic whisper of scissors. Not something you usually hear in the john. There was no rustle of paper or cloth, and the soft snip, snip, snip continued with barely any pause.

I stepped out of the stall filled with curiosity, barely remembering to finish zipping up. It was Ian. He was leaning over the center sink, his face less than a foot from the mirror. One hand was catching handfuls of his short black hair, while the other wielded the scissors. He didn't seem awkward doing it, like I would be cutting my own hair. He just chopped away, like he didn't care how he'd look afterwards. Little pieces fell like someone put a shadow through a paper shredder. I could see his face in the mirror. It was blank enough for math class, except for a little frown, a grimace like between the eyes. But his eyes reflected wide and empty. They weren't really black, just dark, dark gray.

Then he saw me and scowled. After two more deliberate cuts he shoved the scissors in his pocket, slammed on the water, and walked out with it still running. When he passed me his eyes had sharpened to the color you get by pressing down as hard as you can with a pencil.

Back in class I sat staring at the back of his head, trying to remember for sure if the hair that hung to the middle of his left ear had really only brushed it's top that morning. So that's what the scissors were for.

Ian Matabe had only been going to our school for about a year. He moved from somewhere, I remember hearing something about new foster parents. I had a couple classes with him. He looked really Japanese, hair and eyes and real tan, and short. He talked normal though, and his height didn't slow him down much. He was the kind of short guy with something to prove, guys like, twice his size didn't even faze him. His face was almost pretty. All that saved him as a guy was the eyebrows. He was one of those people who look angry all the time, even when they're not. Maybe it was to make up for looking like a girl. His haircut was normal, short. He always seemed like an okay guy. Quiet maybe, but he was new.

I ran into him a few days back in the office. I was there delivering attendance sheets. He was looking unhappy and bruised, sprawled in a little plastic chair. One foot kicked at the rubber strip where the carpet met the wall.

"Hey Ian," I said. He relaxed a little.

"Hey."

"You look pretty messed up," I said.

He looked away. "You should see the other guy."

But he said it in the wrong tone of voice. Not the one you use for somebody you just beat up, more like the one for someone you know who was in a car crash. I might have said something else then, but he was called in. The sullen slid back over his face like a window shade, and he got up. As he turned I noticed a pair of little metal scissors in his back pocket. I found out later that he was in a fight with Joey Marten, who came out of it with a sprained neck. He probably had it coming. Joey's a dick. I still don't know what Ian's foster parents pulled to keep him from getting suspended.

I guess I should tell you something about myself, if you're still listening. Summers I stay with my dad up in Oregon, but during the school year I live with my mom. She's a Freelance Practitioner, which sounds a hell of a lot more professional than witch for hire. She doesn't deal with as many crackpots and jokers as you'd think either. That's cuz she put something in her ads that attracts the sincere people. She says I wouldn't understand it beyond that. Probably not. Anyways, the people who come to her usually have real problems, and sometimes serious ones. I mean serious. She doesn't like me involved with the really bad stuff, but with that kind of thing, shit happens. So I've seen a lot more than most people believe in. And been through a couple things that were totally, mindbendingly weird. Mom thinks I might have the spark, but I've been putting her off about testing for it. Magic isn't all cool light shows and bad poetry, let me tell you. I'm no wimp or anything, but I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, all sweaty and sick feeling, just from remembering things I've seen. But I have picked up that the occult is out there, and ignoring it won't protect you.

Anyways, all of that is basically just to say: most people who noticed someone's hair coming out longer after it was cut would just assume they remembered wrong. I didn't. In the next four days, Ian left every class I had with him to go to the bathroom at least once per day. The times I went into the bathroom after him, I found little pieces of hair in the sink. Also, he stopped hanging out with the group I sometimes eat lunch with. I'm pretty sure he started avoiding people in general. A day or two later he was absent. Quickly tapping into my mad espionage skillz, I offered to bring him his homework.