YES!!! SUMMER HAS COME!!! Lead the Scorpio to her promise land! ^_^
"Families are like brownies; sweet with a few nuts."
Chapter 15: Math Tutor
About around afternoon, the group set up camp some few feet away from the main road. The sun was still up, so Kagome sat down, and pulled out her math book. Kagome huffed sadly as she turned to the right pages. Shippou came scampering over, "What's wrong, Kagome?"
She looked up at him and said, "My study guide is still missing. I'll never be able to figure out these formulas!"
Sumiko was out in the forest picking fallen acorns from the grass when she heard a deep rumbling growl behind her. She looked up and her ears twitched trying to locate the source of the growling. She turned her head to look over her left shoulder. She saw trees, some bushes, and some other floral life, but nothing else.
She slowly turned her head back around when all of a sudden, a leopard sprang out of hiding and jumped at her. Sumiko jumped onto the first branch of a tree, as the leopard went headfirst into a thorny bush. It crawled out and rubbed it's scratched up face with it's paw. Sumiko kneeled on the branch still holding the acorns in the sash around her waist and giggled. "Silly spotted kitty!" she laughed.
The leopard was not amused at all. It growled angrily up at her and pounced at her again. Sumiko jumped again to a different branch as it jumped headfirst into the trunk of the tree it was just on. Sumiko laughed even harder this time making the leopard even angrier. She jumped through the trees while the leopard chased her, finding the whole thing humorous she went.
Then she landed on the ground and stood facing the leopard with a huge grin on her face. She was offguard doing absolutely nothing as it charged her growling and gnashing it's teeth. Just when it was about to take her down, Sumiko set a leaf on her head and in a puff of fox fire became a great dog demon.
The leopard skidded to a stop and looked up at her and shrunk to a scared little kitten.
"GROOF!!! GROOF ROOF!!!" Sumiko the dog demon barked.
The leopard zipped away in a flash of terror and yellow fur. Sumiko shrank back to her regular size and fell over laughing.
"This is hopeless!" Kagome said, flipping through the pages of her book. "The instructions in here are useless! I can't do this without my study guide! I mean – listen to this!" she said to Shippou, who didn't know what she was doing anyway so it probably didn't matter. "Six measures of a convex octagon are congruent. Each of the other 2 angles has a measure of 20 more then the measure of each of the six other angles. Find the measure of each angle."
She looked up at Shippou's face when she was done reading. He looked about as confused as she was, if not worse. "See! This teacher's out to get me! No one can understand this crap-!"
"-130 degrees for the six angles, and 150 degrees for the other two!"
Kagome and Shippou jumped as Sumiko's head stuck out of the tree branches above.
She hopped down and sat next to them. "Hi!" ^_^V
They looked at her still shocked. "You know how too do this??" Kagome asked.
"Yes'm!" Sumiko said and drew the study guide out of her kimono. "I was looking at the pretty pictures in this thingy, and what you said reminded me of them."
Kagome took the study guide from her, "Where did you get this?!"
"In the brown back thing." Sumiko pointed at Kagome's bag.
Kagome sighed and fell face first into her math book. Sumiko and Shippou watched her until she finally sat up again and asked, "Uh, Sumiko? I never thought I'd ask you this, but could you help me with my homework?"
Sumiko smiled and nodded.
After the first few minutes, Kagome was amazed at how Sumiko could take the evil, complicated math book language and turn it into terms so simple, Inu Yasha could probably learn it and re-teach it to Kouga.
"This is amazing!" Kagome said. "I can't believe how smart you are!"
Sumiko grinned, "Gracias, seniorita!"
Kagome wrote down the next problem as Sumiko asked, "Mama?"
"Yes, Sumiko?" Kagome asked, smiling and concentrating on her writing.
"Where did Mama get all of stuff?" Sumiko asked looking at the backpack.
Kagome looked up at her inquisitive expression and said, "Well, I don't actually live here in the feudal ages."
"Ee?" Sumiko's ears twitched.
"Yeah, it might sound weird, but I live in the future and that's why I have homework with me. It's hard to balance school and shard hunting, but I try!" Kagome said. Explaining it to someone always felt weird to her.
"It's hard?" Sumiko asked.
Kagome nodded. "I mean math is hard enough, but add my other classes, my responsibilities at home, keeping it all a secret, dealing with Inu Yasha's behavior, demons, Naraku! Gah! I'm getting a headache just thinking about it!"
Sumiko thought about it then asked. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why does Mama go to feudal ages when she have homework and responsibility at home?"
"To look for shikon shards of course." Kagome said. She finished that problem and went on to the next, but she got a warm feeling on the side of her head. She glanced up at Sumiko who was still staring at her. "What?"
Sumiko shook her head and continued to stare at her.
Kagome sweatdropped and went back to writing. 'What?? What does she want?? Does she expect me to say something else??'
Sumiko just blinked and picked up the study guide. "Sumiko see something when reading." She reached between two pages in the booklet and pulled out a photograph that had somehow gotten filed in with it.
Kagome took the photo and looked at it. It was a picture of herself and Inu Yasha standing against a fence. Kagome was smiling and putting one arm around Inu Yasha's arm, while he looked at her and blushed, a bit embarrassed.
Kagome looked up at Sumiko who smiled and petted Kirara as she purred loudly and rubbed her head against Sumiko's knee. Sumiko smiled and acted like she had forgotten all about the conversation she was just having with Kagome.