SOTD: "I Do" ~Colbie Calliet~

QOTD: "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment, for even the very wise cannot see all ends."

Disclaimer: I don't own InuYasha, and the way things are going, I'm starting to get the feeling I never will.

Uchigo Raidon, a modern day Japanese student at his local high school was running frantically around his kitchen, trying to throw together a decent enough breakfast so his mother wouldn't yell at him for not eating a healthy enough meal. She was always going on and on about how breakfast was the most important meal of the day; she sounded like one of those corny American mothers he sometimes saw on television when she went on like that, but he wasn't about to tell her that. It always seemed, at least to him, that she got on his case more than she did his sisters' when they grabbed a Pop Tart and ran out of the house without eating anything else. Not that he could entirely blame her; when he was gone she had no way of knowing if he was in fact eating right, which, most of the time, he wasn't. He didn't always have three square meals a day and he didn't always eat healthily like he knew she'd prefer. In fact, even though she stocked him up on extremely healthy, and quite frankly disgusting, food before he left every time, he usually stopped off at the store and purchased some junk food, stuffing it into his backpack after he paid for it so his mother wouldn't see it and confiscate it. Then he hid it in the back of his closet before his mother saw it and slipped it back into his back pack after she loaded it up with her crap. She never knew. Was it deceitful? Yes, but if he didn't do that he would go hungry before eventually having to eat the crap she packed, and he just couldn't see himself doing that. Not again. So what did he do with his mother's highly healthful and equally disgusting food? Well, for some odd reason, his friends seemed to like it, so he let them eat it. Though occasionally he did convince them to eat some of what he normally ate, they didn't prefer it.

They're so weird, he shook his head slightly as the whole-wheat toast popped up out of the toaster and he grabbed it, placing the two pieces on the plate before him next to his white rice, cut in half grape-fruit, few pieces of crispy bacon, and cup of coffee. There, his mother couldn't complain about that. Okay, so maybe the bacon and the coffee weren't part of the meal she'd have him eat, but so what? At least he wasn't having Frosted Flakes with extra sugar or Pop Tarts or any of the other crap she kept in the house but didn't normally let them eat. No, if they wanted junk food for breakfast they had to get up before her and get some, rushing out of the house with it so when she came downstairs she wouldn't see them eating it and make them throw it out.

He sat down at the table, spreading strawberry jam on one piece of toast and butter on the other, and then dug in. He wanted to get done as quickly as he could so he could get to school, take his tests, get back to the house, and then go home. He felt guilty about leaving his friends the way he had, but he had to; he promised his parents years ago, when he first started going over, that he'd keep his grades up, and in return they let him go back there, as long as he wasn't gone on test days. Attendance wasn't exactly mandatory at his school, as long as he showed up on test days and did a decent enough job, he would pass, and as long as he passed, he was allowed to use his father's device and go back. It was a generous deal on his parents' part; since test days didn't come around too often he was gone a lot of the time, so they didn't get to spend alot of time with him anymore. He'd started using his father's device when he was fourteen, and he was almost seventeen now, so he'd been doing it for going on three years, meaning his parents missed out on three years of his life.

What was it like? he wondered as he stared absently at the clock on the wall above the door way, bringing a piece of toast up to his mouth and crunching off a piece, chewing thoughtfully. Sending your fourteen year old son off to a different time period then having him come back, injured in most cases, a few inches taller, or more muscular, or with the beginning of a beard, or at the very least some stubble? What was it like missing your only son grow up? He had an older sister, and a few younger sisters, but no brothers; He was their only son and they were missing some of the most important years of his life. He felt a pang of guilt for doing that to them, for running off and making them miss out on his life, but, knowing what he knows now, he'd feel even more guilty if he didn't go back and help his friends out. Sure, he could stop going back anytime he wanted to and just live the normal life of a Japanese teenager-go to school everyday, hang out with friends, date girls, stuff like that-but that's the thing: he could, but he couldn't. He didn't want to. As much as he knew it would crush his parents to hear this, his life was back there, not here, not now. He wanted to live the rest of his life back then; he'd always felt like he belonged to a different era, and now he knew why... But this was no time to think about all that; until he graduated high school, he would keep coming back, but after that... Who knows?

He finished his food quickly and put his soiled dishes in the sink, then hitched his backpack onto his shoulders and started for the door, but remembered his mother would worry if she came downstairs and he was gone; she might think he'd decided to head back early and skip Test Day for once, so he scribbled a note telling her she'd still been upstairs when he left and that he'd see her after school. Though he did consider, even for just a second, skipping Test Day and heading back early, he knew better than that; his first hour teacher, who was tight with his parents-it was a scientist thing-and knew all about Raidon's adventures in the past, would call his mother and tell on him if he didn't see him during first hour. Ugh, such a narc, Raidon hissed mentally. Even at school he couldn't catch a break!

He pushed open the back door and started on his way to school, making sure his keys were tucked inside his pocket and that his money-for the junk food, of course-was safely inside his backpack.

His feet grew heavy with each step he took toward the school, he didn't have any particular problem with school itself, nor the tests he was about to take, it was what came with going to school that he had a problem with.

The faces he walked past, the buildings that flew by, the cars and busses, the bikes... All of it was just so... Irritating to him. It was so loud! People talking on cell phones, talking and giggling with each other about completely trivial things, honking horns, bumping into each other and barely pausing to apologize, teenage couples making out on park benches, leaning against buildings, on the bus... Seriously, what happened to modesty? He was just thankful his school had required uniforms, though the girls' skirts were a bit too short for his liking, plus their gym uniforms... Ugh, he shuddered at the thought, once again thankful the boys and girls did different things in gym class, otherwise...

"Hey, Raidon-Sempai!" Three girls giggled, suddenly appearing at his side. Inwardly, he grimaced, but outwardly he smiled at them, everytime Test Day came around they met him a few blocks from the school and enagaged him in menial small talk; He humored them, mostly because he knew Hojo could use a break from these three sometimes-though he was too polite to say so-and the only time that happened was on Test Day.

"Hey Yuka, Eri, Ayumi, how are things?" Kamie never looked at him like that, and neither did Mika, another great thing about life in the Fuedel Era: if a girl liked you, she didn't make it so... obvious. You really had to hunt around and pay attention, unless of course it was an arranged marriage, though he didn't have to worry about that. Okay, so sometimes women looked at Jiro like that, and girls looked at him and Yoshi like that, but only for the first five minutes, after that they were able to compose themselves. These girls, on the other hand, could never do that.

"Fine," Yuka sighed, falling into step beside him. Damn, he wasn't going to get a second more with his thoughts now until he left tomorrow morning, was he?

"Just fine?"

"Yeah, just fine." Eri confirmed, nodding half-enthusiastically.

"It'd be better, but Kagome's still not here. She's got mono, so she probably won't be in for a while... Hojo's really bummed about it, because, you know, mono's the kissing disease and he thought she really liked him. He doesn't know about the bad-boy boyfriend of hers that she probably caught it from." Ayumi giggled, probably thinking about how Kagome caught it. These girls really need boyfriends, Raidon thought to himself, noting absent-mindedly that girls back home didn't talk about things like that in front of men they weren't extremly close to, or otherwise married to.

"Higurashi's out sick?" Was all he could muster, resting one of his hands on his stomach gently, though even that small bit of pressure sent a wave of pain through his whole being. Before he left, they'd gotten into a battle, as it were, and things didn't exactly go their way. The guy who they'd fought-His name was Naraku, he'd never forget that-had stabbed him in the stomach with a poison laced sword and, well, that doesn't just heal over-night. It was wrapped up tightly beneath his uniform shirt, but he could still feel it slowly seeping blood. He had extra bandages in his backpack, so he'd probably have to change them during lunch or, at the very latest, before P.E..

"That's right. She's always out sick. She had such perfect attendance until last year, but now she misses just as much school as you, only she doesn't always show up on Test Days. You I understand-your parents are super-genius scientsists-but Kagome? She's an average girl just like us, she should be showing up a whole lot more."

"You know, when I think about it, her poor attendance started right around the time she started dating that boy-What's his name?"

"Inu-something..."

"Right, but what? Inu-"

"InuYasha?" Raidon asked suddenly, turning his head in interest, Kamie's older brother was named InuYasha. He felt his heart speed up nervously, maybe it was a coincidence, he tried to calm himself down, but InuYasha wasn't exactly a common name, not even back then. Still, what were the odds of there being two time-traveling teens at the same school, going back to the same period? 1 in 10 trillion.

"That's right. How did you know?"

"Oh, uh, she mentioned him to me once in passing. She was irritated with him... because... He... kept going off to... See an ex." That sounded plausible, right? To them it did; they were nodding in approval. Clearly, whoever this guy was, he'd guessed right as to what his personality was and what their current situation was. Thank Kami Kamie had told him alot about her brother. InuYasha. Dog Demon. If it was a mere coincidence, their personalities were way too much alike! Still, this was going to bother him for the rest of the day... Hm, maybe after school he'd stop by the Higurashi Shrine and pay Kagome a visit. Until then, Test Day had to have it's turn.

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Raidon finished all his tests on time and was pretty sure he'd passed them all with flying colors-as per usual. He chatted with his first hour teacher during lunch as he changed his bandage about what happened and how he got the injury, then, as he was leaving for his next class, his teacher handed him some books he'd come across while researching-though he wouldn't say what he'd been researching exactly-and told him to make sure to read through them as carefully as he could before he went back the next morning. He went to P.E. class and brushed off concerns about his injury, then beat the pants off of all his classmates in the mini-marathon they had to run. Yeah, life here was good, life here was easy, but that's not the sort of life he wanted to live.

He was just setting out from school for the Higurashi Shrine that afternoon after the final bell rang when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Uchigo-Sempai," Hojo greeted cheerily, despite the news Raidon had heard about his rare down-cast mood that morning, hojo seemed his usual up-beat self. Apparently, the girls had been wrong, otherwise he was just really good at hiding his sorrows. He turned around and smiled crookiedly at his underclassman, for some reason, the fact that he obviously couldn't get Higurashi, the one girl at the school he really wanted, filled Raidon with a small sense of satisfaction, but why? He didn't really know the pair, not personally, anyway, so why should he care about who dated whom? He didn't, not normally, but in this case he somehow found himself very interested...

"Hojo-san, what's up?" Raidon asked, keeping the impateience out of his voice. He figured, if Hojo could put up with those three girls every damn day, he could at least humor Hojo for two minutes, though Kamie's patience, or lack thereof as it seemed to be, seemed to have rubbed off on him, because he already found himself fidgiting from standing still for too long when he had the knowledge and feeling of freedom, not the imprisonment that he felt during school hours.

"Nothing much, I just had a question for you, do you have a minute?"

"Yeah, of course, man," He nodded, though in the back of his mind he was disagreeing strongly, he felt he could spare a few minutes. The Higurashi Shrone wasn't going anywhere, and neither was Higurashi herself if she in fact did have mono like those three girls had said.

"Great, thanks. So I was talking to Eri, Yuka, and Ayumi during lunch earlier and they mentioned that Kagome mentioned her boyfriend to you before; I was just wondering if it's true. If she has a boyfriend, I mean, and if she really caught mono from him."

"Er," Damn, he should've known this was going to come back around and bite him in the ass. Oh well, nothing he could do now but try and snake his way out of this one. It'd help if he actually had the answers, but there was nothing he could do about that at the moment either. "Well, yeah. I mean, she's seeing this boy, though I don't know if she uses the term "boyfriend," and I'm not exactly sure if she caught mono from him or not, but regardless, she's not here right now." Did that even make sense? Probably, since making sense was intertwined in his DNA, but it didn't make sense to him. When he replayed the words back over in his head, he couldn't help but wonder how much of that was actually truth and how much was just a lie.

"Oh, so do you know this boy? I've never seen Kagome hanging around any boys before..."

"Yeah, kind of. I mean, I'm kind of seeing this girl who just so happens to be the guy's younger sister." Why did he say that? Him and Kameko weren't exactly dating, and he didn't know for certain that this guy was her older brother, but, somehow, it sounded right. Hm, he'd have to ask-Oh, right, he couldn't. He remembered, with a pang in his heart, what had happened just the day before, why he was injured, and how he'd made it out alive. Kami, he owed Kamie so much... That's why he wanted to get back as soon as he could; he had to save her. She'd saved him so many times before, well now it was his turn to save her.

"Really? Hm, small world. So what can you tell me about this guy? Is he really the bad-boy type like Edi, Eri, and Yumi said? Is that what Kagome's into?"

Raidon felt his cheeks heat up at Hojo's last sentence, even though he grew up here, he was still very modest, very private, and didn't like talking about certain things. Discussing what his under-classman was "into" was one of those things. So he decided he'd just ignore that question and deal with the other one as best he could, still unaware of if what he was saying was the truth or not.

"Well, he's stubborn-really stubborn-and he can be mean; he's got a short-temper and when you get him going he throws words sharp as knives carelessly, unaware of the injuries he inflicts. His pride always gets in the way of him apologizing, even when he knows he's wrong, but really, everything he does to put up the tough-guy facade, it... You can see through it once you really get to know him. He's an ass, sure, but he's gentle with Higurashi-san, he... he really cares about her. If you're worried about her, don't be; she's safe with him." He hitched his backpack up onto his shoulder, where all of that had come from, he didn't know, but it pleased him to know he didn't know; for once, the "genius" that was Uchigo Raidon didn't know something. Good, that'd show his father.

He allowed Hojo to engage him in some more chit-chat about Kagome and the boy, then stuff about the happenings of the school that he'd missed while he was away-not that he cared-and then finally Hojo said he had to get going; he had an after-school job that he couldn't be late for, so Raidon bid him farewell and started towards the Higurashi shrine, calculating everything he could to get his mind off the throbbing pain in his abdomen. It'd take him fifteen minutes to get to Higurashi Shrine at the pace he was going, then he planned on talking to Kagome for roughly ten minutes, it was another half-hour from Higurashi Shrine back to Uchigo Lab, but he had to stop off at the store ten minutes away from Uchigo Lab and spend another ten minutes getting all the stuff he'd need for when he went back the next day, then when he got home... Hm, he didn't actually know what would be waiting for him when he got home, all he knew was that it was not going to be good. All in all, this was going to take him over an hour, not even taking into account all the red lights he had to wait through, plus chit-chat with Kagome's mother... Oh well, his mother and sisters would just have to wait for him to tell them what exactly happened and how he got so hurt. They had scientist blood coursing through them; they were used to waiting.

zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba

"Stupid InuYasha!" Kagome hissed under her breath, stomping out of the well house and throwing open the back door, who did he think he was? Talking to her like that when she was just trying to help! Ugh, he was such a child sometimes! No, children can be reasoned with, he was beyond childish, he was babyish. Ugh, such a baby! She called out a starined "I'm back!" and climbed the staircase up to her bedroom. She wanted to see her mother and grandfather and little brother, she did, but she couldn't right now; she'd snap at all of them, and they'd all been so understanding of everything, even covering for her whn she was back in the Fuedel Era doing her thing, so she had to wait for herself to calm down before she went and said hi in person. Stupid InuYasha! He ruined everything!

She wouldn't even mind him snapping on her like that if he'd just told her what was wrong, but did he? No, as soon as she started asking questions when they were alone he clammed up and started with the attitude, pissing her off and making her "sit" him which only pissed him off more, leading to a huge fight and her storming off and coming home early.

"Hmph!" It was just the same, she plopped down on her bed and spread herself out, streaching and relaxing every muscle she could, she needed to come back anyway; today had been Test Day and she missed it, so she'd have to stay here for a few days anyway to make up the tests. Who knew when she'd go back over? Everytime she came over it was for three days, so she expected InuYasha to come for her then, but she didn't know if she'd be any less pissed at him by then or if he'd even come-he was so stubborn sometimes! He let his pride and ego get in the way of everything! Though she didn't exactly make it any easier; when he started getting all defensive and everything, she didn't have to start yelling at him. Looking back, she realized that was probably a huge mistake.

Kagome sighed and stood back up, she was sweaty and sore and dirty; she could use a soak in the tub before she did anything else.

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

A full twnety minutes later, Raidon was standing at the front door to the Higurashi Shrine, knocking lightly on the door and musing to himself that that was a lot of stairs to walk up. He ran around Fuedel Era, Japan and walked miles upon miles every damn day, but seriously, that was a lot of stairs! Maybe he wouldn't have minded so much if every step he took up wasn't followed by a sharp stab in his stomach, but it was, so that just made it all the more worse. Still, he was able to steady his breathing just as the door was being pulled open.

"Oh, hello there." A middle-aged woman Raidon immediately assumed was Kagome's mother opened the door with a smile on her face and a chiper tone in her voice. He smiled back at her politely, though he was screaming on the inside; he needed to clean his wound, he needed to rebandage it again, but he couldn't; he didn't have the necessary items on hand, so he'd just have to grin and bear it until he got back to Uchigo Lab.

"Hi. I'm Uchigo Raidon, I'm a grade ahead of your daughter-I go to the same school as her-and I was just wondering if I could talk to her for a minute." He tried his best to seem convincing-maybe he was just an upper-classman checking up on an under-classmen he was worried about or maybe he was just dropping off homework or something; he would sell whatever she wanted to buy if he could just talk to Kagome for two minutes.

I'm gonna stop myself right there for today.

What do you guys think of Raidon? I'm not quite sure how he's coming across to you guys yet, but I've already got a feel for what he's like. He's definitely complex, you know? Eh, you guys will understand him sooner or later.

Man, Kagome was so pissed at InuYasha. Wonder what he did this time... He's always pissing her off. I'm starting to think he gets off on pain. Think about it: We all know InuYasha's got a thing for Kagome, and Kagome's clearly got a thing for InuYasha, yet all he ever does is piss her off so she 'sits' him, which we all know must hurt him, which leads me to believe he gets off on pain.

Anyway, I wanted to make this much longer, but I've got plans that don't involve making this chapter any longer than it currently is. Oh, do I have plans...

Peace out,

~Hisa-Ai~