Author's Notes: Well here I am again, moving on to a fourth chapter. I was pretty pleased by your reactions to Kirara and Shippo. I decided to shoot for something original that people wouldn't complain about and it looks like it was a success. The whole reason I made Kirara human is because I wanted to give her a shot at being something other than a cat.
In this chapter, I'll bring in another character and hopefully we can move on to thickening the plot next chapter. I don't know, really. I'm just making all of this up as I go along.
Also, I am aware that there are a number of spelling and grammatical errors. I hope to have those fixed sometime this weekend. Unfortunately, the only program on this computer that creates text documents, because I can't work with html for my on eccentric reasons, has no spell checkers. So, don't worry, the errors will be fixed in good time.
Let the Music Be Your Master
Chapter 4: Cafeteria Conversations
Kagome and Sango had no idea how much worse their day could be until they got their lunches only to realize that the entire caefteria was now full, save for the table where Kirara and the losers were sitting. They stared in horror for a minute before looking to one another. "How did this happen?" Kagome asked.
"Don't know," Sango replied, "don't want to know. All I know is, we're stuck. Remember the last time we threw people out of their seats so we wouldn't have to be at the same table as dog-boy?"
Oh yes, Kagome remembered that well. For some inexplicable reason, Shippo got away with ritualistically swindling the student body, but if ever she or Sango set one foot out of line, they were tossed in detention before they could turn around. Were the teachers siding with the losers or something? Were the losers bribing them? Kagome shook her head resignedly. "Well, we better get this overwith."
**************************
Inuyasha turned up the volume of his music a little more. Shippo and the new girl Kirara had really hit it off. They acted like two little kids who thought they had found their first love. And it was so sweet and adorable it was beginning to make him sick.
He flicked his ears slightly in surprise when he saw Kagome and Sango approaching their table as if it were the gallows. He glanced around briefly and noticed that there table was practically desserted and the rest of the cafeteria was packed to the brim. 'Perfect,' Inuyasha thought cynically. 'Hopefully they'll just keep their mouths shut and not harass us over anything.'
Kirara seemed to be the only one who wasn't surprised when Kagome and Sango sat across the table with as much dignity as they could muster. After a moment though, Shippo's face split with a toothy grin and he laid out three cards. "Find th-"
"No!" Sango snapped.
Shippo simply took his cards back and smiled aologetically, causing Kirara to giggle slightly.
An awakward silence set in. It was finally broken when a senior with long black hair and dressed up like a goth strode up to the table and sat down beside Kagome without a word or even a glance.
"Hey, Naraku," Inuyasha said off-handedly. "How's it going?"
Naraku shrugged. "Same old, same old."
"Naraku," Miroku said, "have you met Kirara yet? She just came in today."
Naraku looked up from his food and gave a polite nod which Kirara responded to with her usual smile. "Nice to meet you," she beamed. "I assume you're friends with Inuyasha, Miroku, and Shippo?"
The goth boy nodded once again. "For a couple of years now."
"Naraku's the quiet type," Shippo explained. "Nice guy once you get to know him, though."
Naraku smirked, a rather creepy gesture by itself, and let out a faint chuckle. "Hardly. I'm selfish, heartless, and anti-social."
Inuyasha tried to hide his smile at Kagome's failed attempts to hide her shivering. Naraku had an incredible talent for scaring the daylights out of people without even trying. No one would have suspected that the goth punk actually planned to be a business major and act as manager for his friends' nameless band when he was able to.
"Hey Miroku," Kirara suddenly said, "out of curiosity, why do you always wear that glove? Does it have a purpose? Doesn't it bother you sometimes?"
Miroku glanced at his hand. "Just a fashion statement," he said with a smirk.
"Liar," Sango muttered under her breath.
Miroku still heard it, though, and smiled at her. "Very insightful, my dear. Brains, beauty, and intuition. I like that."
Sango scowled darkly at Miroku who continued to smile innocently. Inuyasha never understood just how the band's bassist, who was a con artist on par with Shippo (albeit with a different style, being a smooth talker instead of a fast talker) could manage to constantly look so innocent. "Anyway, she's right. It is a lie. There's an interesting story behind this actually."
Kirara leaned forward to get a better view of Miroku, obviously interested in what he had to say. "Well? Are you going to tell us or what?"
Miroku cleared his throat and began fiddling with the beads of his bracelet as he began talking. "About four years ago, I was out with Inuyasha and his older brother Sesshoumaru. We were wandering around town trying to cause a little harmless trouble. Don't let Sessh tell you otherwise, he had and still has a very boyish side to him. Anyway, I got seperated from them in a crowd, and wandered alone for a half-hour trying to find them.
"I ended up getting mugged. The guy who jumped me pulled out a switchblade and tried to stab me when I fought back. He would have gotten me in the throat or the face if I hadn't raised my hand in time. A stupid move, I know, but I was fighting for my life, and my first instinct was to protect all vital organs first. I ended up with the palm of my right hand cut open and I probably would have been worse off if the police hadn't been passing by at the time. If it weren't for the fact that they saved me life, I probably would have complained about how contrived it all looked.
"Anyway, the police questioned me about my attacker. Everything moved so fast, and the light was so poor, that I jumped to conclusions and gave them the name of the one person I knew who had really long wavy dark hair like the mugger did."
"Me," Naraku said flatly.
"Naraku was taken in, and since he had a weak alliby and no one to vouch for him, things looked pretty bad. Until they picked the real guy up for armed robbery a few days later, that is. I recognized the guy immediately, identified the knife, and Naraku was free to go.
"After my hand healed over a month or so later, Naraku gave me the glove to cover up the scar. It was his way of saying there were no hard feelings."
Naraku simply shrugged. "I'm not the type of guy to hold a grudge. Wasn't his fault, anyway."
"Cool!" Kirara grinned. "That would be one hell of a story to tell future generations."
Inuyasha glanced over at Kagome and Sango. He noticed that they were eating quickly without trying to make it look that way and that they carefully kept their eyes focused on their trays. This really annoyed him. He and the others had been behaving fine, and yet those two could only think about getting away as fast as possible.
"Hey," he growled. "What's your problem? Is our company really so unbearable that you won't even look at us?"
No response. The girls continued to quietly eat as if nothing had happened.
"I must admit, Inuyasha has a point," Miroku said softly. "We hear what you two always say about us in the halls, and yet you sit here while we have done nothing and treat this as a punishment. I can't help but feel a little insulted."
Sango growled and slowly lifted her eyes to Miroku, fixing him with a piercing glare, though the boy seemed unaffected. "Insulted? You're one to talk. I still haven't forgotten that incident at camp back in 6th grade, for one thing."
"My intentions were pure," Miroku said levelly. "I thought the snake was venomous so I did what I was always told to do and tried to suck the poison out. How was I to know it was only a rat snake?"
Sango huffed indignantly. "So you say."
"Give him a break, Sango," Shippo said. "Miroku may not be a shining example of morality, but he has some standards."
"You're hardly one to talk about morals, runt." This time it was Kagome. She sat there, still focusing on her tray, though there was a very cold look on her face.
Kirara looked at Kagome in shock. "That's not fair, Kagome, and you know it. Shippo hasn't done anything to you."
Inuyasha just folded his arms over his chest. "Don't bother, Kirara. I can tell already that this is a losing battle. Here, you're either like them or you're like us, and it's people like those two that personally see to it."
"Just what is that supposed to mean?" Kagome snapped.
"It means," said Naraku from beside her, "that you girls and all the other popular kids in the school try to enforce the little social castes you've created. You need us to make sure you stay popular. In the words of Laurence Olivier, 'One of the disadvantages to being a Patrician is that occasionally you are obliged to act like one.'"
At the blanks stares he recieved from the girls however, Naraku shook his head. "Don't you people watch movies? Spartacus? Marcus Licinius Crassus? Forget it."
"Let's just get out of here," Inuyasha said with a sigh. "It's obvious we're not wanted here."
The group got up to leave, though Kirara stayed seated. "I'll catch up with you guys in a minute. I have a few questions."
"Suit yourself," Shippo said with a shrug. "Just don't expect good answers."
***************************
Kagome inwardly sighed with relief when the losers left. Now they just had to find a way to get rid of Kirara. She was a nice girl, really, and it's not that she wanted to get rid of her, but Kagome couldn't afford her reputation this late in the game. It would officially be Spring next week and there was only a couple months left after that to maintain her social status among her peers before she could stop worrying about it. When did she become so wrapped up in this anyway? When did it become so crucial?
She looked up to see Kirara with a questioning look in her eyes. "What do you want to know?" Kagome asked as politely as she could.
"I want to know why you acted so cold and rude just a minute ago. What did they do to deserve being treated like that?" Kirara was very straightforward. She got right to the point and by the look on her face, she wouldn't go until she got a satisfactory answer.
"Miroku's a lying pervert," Sango began, "Inuyasha's an anti-social maniac, and Shippo's a sneaky little con-man." It was the standard reply if ever such a question came up. Sango even sounded as if she had rehearsed it many times before.
"What evidence do you have to support that?" Kirara asked evenly.
This time it was Kagome's turn. "The instant we get to the table, Shippo starts trying to get us to play his stupid game. We seem to be the only ones who know it's a scam."
"Obviously" Kirara replied. "But if people are stupid enough to fall for such an obvious set-up, aren't they just as much to blame?"
'Damn, she makes a good point,' Kagome thought. But Kirara wasn't done.
"Shippo says he's been doing this since the beginning of the year. That's over six months! And in that time, only the so-called 'losers' never played because they understood from the start that they couldn't win. Don't you think those other people should have figured it out by now?"
Kagome and Sango were silent. No one had ever put it to them like that before. Sure, they knew the jocks should have wised up months ago, but they didn't. It was only the outcasts who never played.
"Anything else? What other evidence do you have?"
"Well," Kagome began, trying to scrounge up something, "there's Miroku. He's such a skirt-chaser. He hits on every woman with a pulse, for god's sake!"
"And this is different from other guys, how?" Kirara lifted an eyebrow questioningly. "The only guys who don't think of women every ten seconds are either dead or gay. I live with my single father, have four uncles, a nephew, and all of my cousins are male. I like to think I know what I'm talking about."
"Well have any of your cousins groped women in public?" Sango shot back. The tone in her voice and the expression on her face left little doubt which women, or rather, woman she was talking about.
"A couple slaps on the butt may not be appropriate, but it won't kill you," Kirara returned with a shrug. "The first and only time a guy ever did it to me, I took it as a compliment, though I kindly warned him to watch it in the future. Besides, Inuyasha and Shippo already explained Miroku's reputation to me. Half the incidents seem to be caused by bad timing. Next?"
"Well," Kagome began again, "Inuyasha has been suspended countless times for fighting. He's always beating the crap out of our friends."
"Does he go around picking fights?" Kirara countered.
"Well, no... actually," Sango admitted.
"Then they must have been provoked. My father's a psychologist, you know. The first thing he taught me about people is that they don't do things unless you give them a motivation to."
'How does she do this?' Kagome wondered. 'Why is she making so much sense?' She noticed Sango pursing her lips and avoiding making eye contact with Kirara from the corner of her eye and suddenly realized she was doing the same.
"Well, I guess the guys were right," Kirara said, standing up. "This is the best I'm going to get out of you, isn't it? How disappointing. I thought you two were nice when I first met you, but it seems first impressions can be wrong." With that, she turned on her heel and strode out of the cafeteria in the direction the boys went.
Kagome and Sango sat mute in their seats for a while before looking to one another. "Sango, just how did we end up the bad guys here?"
"I don't know," Sango replied. "I just wish she hadn't so much damn sense. Now I'm actually starting to wonder..."
Kagome nodded, understanding what her friend meant. Kirara had seemed like the poster child for popularity. She was pretty, smart, and nice, but she chose to hang out with the school's misfits, and the three most notorious members of the lot at that. Why? What did they have to offer that she found so much more desirable than to be friends with two of the most popular and well-loved girls in the school?
Kagome would be stuck with this thought for the rest of the day. She could not understand what it was Kirara found so appealing about the misfits, but later that night, she finally realized the reason she couldn't understand was because she refused to think of those boys as anything other than misfits.
In this chapter, I'll bring in another character and hopefully we can move on to thickening the plot next chapter. I don't know, really. I'm just making all of this up as I go along.
Also, I am aware that there are a number of spelling and grammatical errors. I hope to have those fixed sometime this weekend. Unfortunately, the only program on this computer that creates text documents, because I can't work with html for my on eccentric reasons, has no spell checkers. So, don't worry, the errors will be fixed in good time.
Let the Music Be Your Master
Chapter 4: Cafeteria Conversations
Kagome and Sango had no idea how much worse their day could be until they got their lunches only to realize that the entire caefteria was now full, save for the table where Kirara and the losers were sitting. They stared in horror for a minute before looking to one another. "How did this happen?" Kagome asked.
"Don't know," Sango replied, "don't want to know. All I know is, we're stuck. Remember the last time we threw people out of their seats so we wouldn't have to be at the same table as dog-boy?"
Oh yes, Kagome remembered that well. For some inexplicable reason, Shippo got away with ritualistically swindling the student body, but if ever she or Sango set one foot out of line, they were tossed in detention before they could turn around. Were the teachers siding with the losers or something? Were the losers bribing them? Kagome shook her head resignedly. "Well, we better get this overwith."
**************************
Inuyasha turned up the volume of his music a little more. Shippo and the new girl Kirara had really hit it off. They acted like two little kids who thought they had found their first love. And it was so sweet and adorable it was beginning to make him sick.
He flicked his ears slightly in surprise when he saw Kagome and Sango approaching their table as if it were the gallows. He glanced around briefly and noticed that there table was practically desserted and the rest of the cafeteria was packed to the brim. 'Perfect,' Inuyasha thought cynically. 'Hopefully they'll just keep their mouths shut and not harass us over anything.'
Kirara seemed to be the only one who wasn't surprised when Kagome and Sango sat across the table with as much dignity as they could muster. After a moment though, Shippo's face split with a toothy grin and he laid out three cards. "Find th-"
"No!" Sango snapped.
Shippo simply took his cards back and smiled aologetically, causing Kirara to giggle slightly.
An awakward silence set in. It was finally broken when a senior with long black hair and dressed up like a goth strode up to the table and sat down beside Kagome without a word or even a glance.
"Hey, Naraku," Inuyasha said off-handedly. "How's it going?"
Naraku shrugged. "Same old, same old."
"Naraku," Miroku said, "have you met Kirara yet? She just came in today."
Naraku looked up from his food and gave a polite nod which Kirara responded to with her usual smile. "Nice to meet you," she beamed. "I assume you're friends with Inuyasha, Miroku, and Shippo?"
The goth boy nodded once again. "For a couple of years now."
"Naraku's the quiet type," Shippo explained. "Nice guy once you get to know him, though."
Naraku smirked, a rather creepy gesture by itself, and let out a faint chuckle. "Hardly. I'm selfish, heartless, and anti-social."
Inuyasha tried to hide his smile at Kagome's failed attempts to hide her shivering. Naraku had an incredible talent for scaring the daylights out of people without even trying. No one would have suspected that the goth punk actually planned to be a business major and act as manager for his friends' nameless band when he was able to.
"Hey Miroku," Kirara suddenly said, "out of curiosity, why do you always wear that glove? Does it have a purpose? Doesn't it bother you sometimes?"
Miroku glanced at his hand. "Just a fashion statement," he said with a smirk.
"Liar," Sango muttered under her breath.
Miroku still heard it, though, and smiled at her. "Very insightful, my dear. Brains, beauty, and intuition. I like that."
Sango scowled darkly at Miroku who continued to smile innocently. Inuyasha never understood just how the band's bassist, who was a con artist on par with Shippo (albeit with a different style, being a smooth talker instead of a fast talker) could manage to constantly look so innocent. "Anyway, she's right. It is a lie. There's an interesting story behind this actually."
Kirara leaned forward to get a better view of Miroku, obviously interested in what he had to say. "Well? Are you going to tell us or what?"
Miroku cleared his throat and began fiddling with the beads of his bracelet as he began talking. "About four years ago, I was out with Inuyasha and his older brother Sesshoumaru. We were wandering around town trying to cause a little harmless trouble. Don't let Sessh tell you otherwise, he had and still has a very boyish side to him. Anyway, I got seperated from them in a crowd, and wandered alone for a half-hour trying to find them.
"I ended up getting mugged. The guy who jumped me pulled out a switchblade and tried to stab me when I fought back. He would have gotten me in the throat or the face if I hadn't raised my hand in time. A stupid move, I know, but I was fighting for my life, and my first instinct was to protect all vital organs first. I ended up with the palm of my right hand cut open and I probably would have been worse off if the police hadn't been passing by at the time. If it weren't for the fact that they saved me life, I probably would have complained about how contrived it all looked.
"Anyway, the police questioned me about my attacker. Everything moved so fast, and the light was so poor, that I jumped to conclusions and gave them the name of the one person I knew who had really long wavy dark hair like the mugger did."
"Me," Naraku said flatly.
"Naraku was taken in, and since he had a weak alliby and no one to vouch for him, things looked pretty bad. Until they picked the real guy up for armed robbery a few days later, that is. I recognized the guy immediately, identified the knife, and Naraku was free to go.
"After my hand healed over a month or so later, Naraku gave me the glove to cover up the scar. It was his way of saying there were no hard feelings."
Naraku simply shrugged. "I'm not the type of guy to hold a grudge. Wasn't his fault, anyway."
"Cool!" Kirara grinned. "That would be one hell of a story to tell future generations."
Inuyasha glanced over at Kagome and Sango. He noticed that they were eating quickly without trying to make it look that way and that they carefully kept their eyes focused on their trays. This really annoyed him. He and the others had been behaving fine, and yet those two could only think about getting away as fast as possible.
"Hey," he growled. "What's your problem? Is our company really so unbearable that you won't even look at us?"
No response. The girls continued to quietly eat as if nothing had happened.
"I must admit, Inuyasha has a point," Miroku said softly. "We hear what you two always say about us in the halls, and yet you sit here while we have done nothing and treat this as a punishment. I can't help but feel a little insulted."
Sango growled and slowly lifted her eyes to Miroku, fixing him with a piercing glare, though the boy seemed unaffected. "Insulted? You're one to talk. I still haven't forgotten that incident at camp back in 6th grade, for one thing."
"My intentions were pure," Miroku said levelly. "I thought the snake was venomous so I did what I was always told to do and tried to suck the poison out. How was I to know it was only a rat snake?"
Sango huffed indignantly. "So you say."
"Give him a break, Sango," Shippo said. "Miroku may not be a shining example of morality, but he has some standards."
"You're hardly one to talk about morals, runt." This time it was Kagome. She sat there, still focusing on her tray, though there was a very cold look on her face.
Kirara looked at Kagome in shock. "That's not fair, Kagome, and you know it. Shippo hasn't done anything to you."
Inuyasha just folded his arms over his chest. "Don't bother, Kirara. I can tell already that this is a losing battle. Here, you're either like them or you're like us, and it's people like those two that personally see to it."
"Just what is that supposed to mean?" Kagome snapped.
"It means," said Naraku from beside her, "that you girls and all the other popular kids in the school try to enforce the little social castes you've created. You need us to make sure you stay popular. In the words of Laurence Olivier, 'One of the disadvantages to being a Patrician is that occasionally you are obliged to act like one.'"
At the blanks stares he recieved from the girls however, Naraku shook his head. "Don't you people watch movies? Spartacus? Marcus Licinius Crassus? Forget it."
"Let's just get out of here," Inuyasha said with a sigh. "It's obvious we're not wanted here."
The group got up to leave, though Kirara stayed seated. "I'll catch up with you guys in a minute. I have a few questions."
"Suit yourself," Shippo said with a shrug. "Just don't expect good answers."
***************************
Kagome inwardly sighed with relief when the losers left. Now they just had to find a way to get rid of Kirara. She was a nice girl, really, and it's not that she wanted to get rid of her, but Kagome couldn't afford her reputation this late in the game. It would officially be Spring next week and there was only a couple months left after that to maintain her social status among her peers before she could stop worrying about it. When did she become so wrapped up in this anyway? When did it become so crucial?
She looked up to see Kirara with a questioning look in her eyes. "What do you want to know?" Kagome asked as politely as she could.
"I want to know why you acted so cold and rude just a minute ago. What did they do to deserve being treated like that?" Kirara was very straightforward. She got right to the point and by the look on her face, she wouldn't go until she got a satisfactory answer.
"Miroku's a lying pervert," Sango began, "Inuyasha's an anti-social maniac, and Shippo's a sneaky little con-man." It was the standard reply if ever such a question came up. Sango even sounded as if she had rehearsed it many times before.
"What evidence do you have to support that?" Kirara asked evenly.
This time it was Kagome's turn. "The instant we get to the table, Shippo starts trying to get us to play his stupid game. We seem to be the only ones who know it's a scam."
"Obviously" Kirara replied. "But if people are stupid enough to fall for such an obvious set-up, aren't they just as much to blame?"
'Damn, she makes a good point,' Kagome thought. But Kirara wasn't done.
"Shippo says he's been doing this since the beginning of the year. That's over six months! And in that time, only the so-called 'losers' never played because they understood from the start that they couldn't win. Don't you think those other people should have figured it out by now?"
Kagome and Sango were silent. No one had ever put it to them like that before. Sure, they knew the jocks should have wised up months ago, but they didn't. It was only the outcasts who never played.
"Anything else? What other evidence do you have?"
"Well," Kagome began, trying to scrounge up something, "there's Miroku. He's such a skirt-chaser. He hits on every woman with a pulse, for god's sake!"
"And this is different from other guys, how?" Kirara lifted an eyebrow questioningly. "The only guys who don't think of women every ten seconds are either dead or gay. I live with my single father, have four uncles, a nephew, and all of my cousins are male. I like to think I know what I'm talking about."
"Well have any of your cousins groped women in public?" Sango shot back. The tone in her voice and the expression on her face left little doubt which women, or rather, woman she was talking about.
"A couple slaps on the butt may not be appropriate, but it won't kill you," Kirara returned with a shrug. "The first and only time a guy ever did it to me, I took it as a compliment, though I kindly warned him to watch it in the future. Besides, Inuyasha and Shippo already explained Miroku's reputation to me. Half the incidents seem to be caused by bad timing. Next?"
"Well," Kagome began again, "Inuyasha has been suspended countless times for fighting. He's always beating the crap out of our friends."
"Does he go around picking fights?" Kirara countered.
"Well, no... actually," Sango admitted.
"Then they must have been provoked. My father's a psychologist, you know. The first thing he taught me about people is that they don't do things unless you give them a motivation to."
'How does she do this?' Kagome wondered. 'Why is she making so much sense?' She noticed Sango pursing her lips and avoiding making eye contact with Kirara from the corner of her eye and suddenly realized she was doing the same.
"Well, I guess the guys were right," Kirara said, standing up. "This is the best I'm going to get out of you, isn't it? How disappointing. I thought you two were nice when I first met you, but it seems first impressions can be wrong." With that, she turned on her heel and strode out of the cafeteria in the direction the boys went.
Kagome and Sango sat mute in their seats for a while before looking to one another. "Sango, just how did we end up the bad guys here?"
"I don't know," Sango replied. "I just wish she hadn't so much damn sense. Now I'm actually starting to wonder..."
Kagome nodded, understanding what her friend meant. Kirara had seemed like the poster child for popularity. She was pretty, smart, and nice, but she chose to hang out with the school's misfits, and the three most notorious members of the lot at that. Why? What did they have to offer that she found so much more desirable than to be friends with two of the most popular and well-loved girls in the school?
Kagome would be stuck with this thought for the rest of the day. She could not understand what it was Kirara found so appealing about the misfits, but later that night, she finally realized the reason she couldn't understand was because she refused to think of those boys as anything other than misfits.