Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or any of the other characters thought up by Rumiko Takahashi. In fact, I don't own anything worthwhile. THERE!

A/N: Here it is people! It's back on, revised, and hopefully much better than before! The first time I brought it out, I forgot to mention that this story is pretty much supposed to be making fun of high school life. So forgive me if something seems pretty incredulous.

On with the story!

"Blah" is speech.

'Blah' is a thought.

- is a paragraph break.

.:o:. blah .:o:. is a flashback.

Going Against the Flow

Chapter 1

Who?

"So who am I supposed to watch out for?" Kagome was sitting on the edge of the bed of her best friend-and, as they both knew, her only friend-Sango. Tilting her head to the side, she irritatedly waited for a response.

Although "Kagome, you are so hopeless..." was not the one she'd been looking for.

"Why do I have to watch out for any one at all?"

"Because... well... because you're not exactly the most liked person in the world. And this guy is, so you've got to watch what you say around him." She pursed her lips slightly, waiting for the volcano that was her friend to erupt.

"Okay, okay... so if I see a particularly regal-looking person I stay out of their way and act all calm and docile?"

"Yep, that's about right." Unfortunately for Sango, Kagome had been joking.

Kagome had had it with all of the precautions that she had to take... she went to high school! She shouldn't have to watch what she said, or be nice to people to keep up appearances. Or should she? Well, it didn't matter, because she didn't want to! It was as if she was some major-and yet frequently insulted-pop star with paparazzi following her everywhere she went. But instead of the paparazzi the whole school was buzzing with senseless newspaper editors who thought that they were all that.

"But it's not fair, Sango! I'm anything but a person who should get followed around everywhere... I have no sense of gossip and everyone hates me." She managed to keep a tear from leaking through her tightly closed eyelids.

"No they don't, Kagome." But Sango didn't look like she believed it herself, in fact, she seemed extremely tense, and yet again she prepared herself for an explosion.

Kagome sighed. "Come on, Sango, you can be honest with me. We're best friends, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah... forgive me if I wanted to spare your feelings!" She still looked sheepish however. "So I'm your only friend, it doesn't really matter, and you can have a fresh, clear slate when you get into university. Am I right?"

"I guess..." The tears that Kagome had been forcing to stay hidden behind her thick lashes trickled down the smooth skin of her face. "Why can't people just not notice me? Instead, they hate me and they have to add insult to injury... Day after day."

"Oh, come on! You're exaggerating."

"You know I'm not..." Kagome managed to roll her eyes, although she wasn't feeling very in tune with her sarcastic side.

"If only you hadn't-"

"Shut. Up."

Kagome opened Sango's bedroom door and sprinted out and down the stairs, narrowly avoiding Sango's little brother Kohaku as she flung herself out of the front door. Rubbing at her eyes and face furiously, as if she were the victim of a swarm of mosquitoes, and managing to turn her slightly pink face into a mass of red, she ran to her own small shrine and flung the door tightly closed, soon falling back against it and slowly letting herself slide down to the floor, so that her back rested against it as she stared sadly at her clean parquet floor.

She could remember that fateful day as if it were yesterday...

.:o:.

Kagome, the most popular ninth-grader, walked up the school steps, feeling brighter than usual. It was April Fools Day and she had planned the most wonderful prank ever (in her eyes). It was set in the girls' bathroom and was meant to duck who ever was in one of the stalls in a toilet.

'I have to admit that this is pretty ingenious!' she thought to herself. 'I wonder if it's possible that people could love me even more than they already do?'

She winked at a group of boys that was passing by, delighting in their reddening cheeks and the incessant tug of their hands trying to loosen their preppy ties ('Hey, they're all members of a wannabe fraternity, so why not indulge them?') as their shirts suddenly got a little too tight. Smirking slightly she continued on to her destination, the girls' washroom. As if she would ever even think of setting foot in the boys' washroom. Her disgust at this 'chamber of doom' as she and Kikyo liked to call it, wasn't just full of life because of the ridiculously small bladder most boys seemed to have, no, it was also because it was rumoured to be completely filthy, with the stench that would raise the hairs of even Kagome's neck. And she wasn't afraid to get dirty either.

As she came ever-closer to the door of the girls' washroom, Kagome sighed. She heard the chatter of little seventh-graders, who adored her, and whose hobbies seemed to include, above all, the stalking of both her and Kikyo. The former shuddered, and readied herself to bring on what she liked to call the 'older sister psyche'. Sure enough, when she alighted in the doorway, what seemed like tens of bright eyes immediately turned towards her, hungrily staring at her and drinking in her appearance. Kagome cleared her throat, it looked like she had interrupted some strange ritual. All of the seventh-graders sat with their legs splayed out in front of them on the dirty linoleum floor. All of them were holding glasses of some clear substance and papers with messily scrawled handwriting on them, and yet they managed to hold hands and bounce on the floor simultaneously. Needless to say, the popular girl was very disturbed and, although her excitement about the prank couldn't be quenched, found herself having to use all her willpower not to back slowly out of the door and pretend that she hadn't seen anything.

With their eyes never leaving her own, they listened very attentively to her stuttered words"Um... would it-would it be all right if... um... you could all leave? And... um... I could continue with my... uh... secret prank?" She paused, then carried on at a different angle. "If you could... um... hm... well, could you not tell anyone? You're the only people who know!" This was a bold-faced lie, and Kagome felt the tiniest pang of guilt, but she knew that it had to be done, otherwise she might have had to carry on with her plan with all of these frightening seventh-grade drones watching her with those huge, Bambi eyes.

A sudden spark of excitement lit up all the faces in her band of followers, and again she felt a bit of guilty gnawing at her, 'But still', she thought, playing with the bangles that covered her wrists as the seventh-graders trooped out of the bathroom in one big clump, 'it's pretty worth it.'

Immediately she set to work on her prank as soon as her hangers-on finished filing out of the bathroom door, quite content and feeling an ever-growing confidence welling up inside her. Her prank was going to be a success, for better or for worse, but much mroe probably for better.

But what she hadn't planned on was that her best friend Kikyo-equally as popular as she, and her accomplice in whatever 'cute' crimes she came up with-was in one of the stalls at the moment... setting up a prank of her own, thanks to the clever insights of Kagome. It was designed to flush a toilet when someone sat down on a seat.

Word had gotten to her that Kagome was 'planning' on setting up a prank of her own, so being the generous best friend that she was, she wanted to do it before Kagome embarrassed herself, so that she could both of their reputations, which, although not a very nice justification for attempting to steal the limelight of her own best friend, was a much more philanthropic light to Kikyo's prank than the facts. Kagome's setup was so cleverly concealed that Kikyo didn't notice it.

Of course when she set to work on her prank she was heavily dunked into the toilet that she had been reluctantly bent over. And, as an added bonus, she had triggered her own trick. Her beautiful, recently permed hair was twisted painfully about. Of course she knew it was Kagome's work. She gave a loud, horrible shriek and, secretly hating Kagome in the first place, decided to end Kagome's reign as one of the queens of popularity.

She drew herself out of the toilet that she had been dragged into, and she resigned herself to wringing out her clothes and putting on her back-up outfit and more makeup, although unfortunately for her all she could do was to angrily brush it, leaving it a mess. She wondered why she had even bothered to tamper with a disgusting toilet anyway, and haughtily stood to her full height.

Kagome never knew what hit her when people from the school newspaper swarmed around her with flashing cameras and declared her the most hated girl in the whole school. She fainted. Only to find a still hot-off-the-press bundle of newspapers being pushed at her face. The bold headlines stated: TWO QUEENS BECOME ONE QUEEN AS THE PLIGHT OF KIKYO AND THE BETRAYAL OF KAGOME COME INTO FOCUS. Needless to say, Kagome was devastated and from then on, whenever anyone looked upon her, reverence was replaced with disdain on their cold, scornful and sometimes altogether sneering faces.

The girl was never the same again. Inside and out.

.:o:.

"Kagome, dinner's waiting!" That was definitely the voice of her mother. Gentle as usual, even in the midst of her nagging.

"Kagome, hurry up! I'm starving and mom won't let us eat without you!" And that one was undeniably Souta, her annoying but sometimes adorable little brother, rude as usual.

"Kagome, I'm going to have to agree with your brother Souta on this one!" Kagome ignored the third voice, grandpa, and continued in her task of getting out her small journal. She only used it to vent out her anger at the world around her. Ironically enough, she always felt this way, due to the imbecilic attitudes of everyone at her school, including the teachers, and most of the time exlcuding Sango, she she wrote in the plain, black journal consistently enough.

Dear Diary,

The calls of mom, Souta and grandpa are starting to get on my nerves. I am not hungry, and them insisting that theyare is very aggravating. Can't they see that my life is already over and that I shouldn't bother eating? It's September... school's tomorrow... and all Sango can worry about is me being nice to some stuck-up person whose first day of school happens to be at my crummy school? How can everyone think that the person's popular if they've only seen their picture? What is wrong with everyone? Since my little incident with that lousy excuse for a priestess-in-training everything's been going all screwy and warped! Doesn't anyone else notice this? Has the whole world gone insane? Or more importantly, have I gone insane!

"Kagome! Get your filthy butt down here!" She looked up accordingly, scowling, and decided that she would have to teach him a lesson when she was feeling up to it.

"Souta, calm down and stop being rude to your sister. You have to respect your elders and others too." Kagome was pleased to hear the slight note of anger in her mother's voice and, feeling slightly more self-satisfied than she had just a few moments before, she began to rise from her bed, checking briefly in front of her mirror to make sure that her eyes were swollen and red no longer.

"Especially your elders!" Grandpa cut in strongly. At this, Kagome paused in her analysis of her slightly smudged face, and rolled her eyes. Ageism was her biggest pet peeve-next to sexism, racism, and most of the people that went to her school-expecially when it came from the mouth of her sometimes quite politically-incorrect grandpa.

"That's right!" And, oh no, her mom was in on it, too.

"This whole house wreaks of ageism, right Souta?" Kagome had just entered the kitchen, her face sour, while everyone else schooled their responses and focused on eating, having the sense not to comment on her expression.

"Uh huh." Souta said humourlessly, giving her one reproachful glance, "Finally, we can get back to business."

'I wish I could get back to mine,'Kagome thought unhappily as she sat down at the dining table.

A/N: La la la. What to say? I'm kind of happy with the outcome, at least it was a much better go at editing than the first. Please review, even if you faithfully reviewed to both my original version and my first try at major editing! Thanks to those of you that did! And I'm hoping that all of you guys will have a happy Valentine's Day, whether alone, with friends, or with that certain special someone! Once again, review please!