(AUTHOR'S NOTE: The author does not condone anything that happens in this story. It is both wrong and stupid to eat a whole bunch of things that you don't know what they are. It is also wrong to make fun of old people, cuss, grab Sango's butt, and blow up half of a forest. Now granted, that doesn't stop Inuyasha (except the part about Sango's butt), but if you honestly think you have his healing ability, you probably shouldn't be reading this story. Or watching anime. Now go seek help before you have your significant other try to pin you to a tree with arrows or before you start jumping down random wells.)

(Oh, and true sci-fi film geeks will get where Shippo's punchline to Inuyasha comes from. Thanks again to all for reading and reviewing–you won't be forgotten!)

EPISODE FIVE-O: IT DOES A BODY GOOD!

"Aaah!"

Shippo abruptly sat up, trembling in fear and looking around frantically. "Where–" Then he realized with a sigh of relief that he wasn't fighting the Thunder Brothers again, but was only in the campsite with his friends. Everyone else slept soundly, especially Miroku, whom Sango had knocked unconscious. He had availed himself at the first opportunity to grope her as soon as she and Kagome had returned from Kaede's village. Shippo decided that Miroku apparently enjoyed being pummeled by Sango, since he wore a smile of contentment and the color had returned to his face. When the kitsune had returned to camp after finishing his chocolate bar, he had never seen anyone so pale as Miroku had been.

Something moved in the bushes, and Shippo nearly leapt out of his skin. Fragments of his nightmare came back to haunt him. Even after he saw that it was only a frog, the night was still terrifying. He crept over to Kagome and gently shook her until she made some independent movement. One eye blearily opened. "Uhh...what is it..."

"I had a bad dream," Shippo said timidly.

The eye closed and Kagome rolled over, having never quite woken up from her own dream. "In my backpack...something for you...white..." She was actually speaking to Hojo in her dream, and in her backpack was Inuyasha with his white hair, waiting to tear the young, terminally naive teenaged boy apart. Shippo had no way of knowing this, however, so he only nodded and hopped over to Kagome's bulging yellow backpack. He quietly unzipped it and went through its contents, most of which were books and clothes. Finally, he saw a flash of white and picked up a bottle of some kind. Inside were white, round things. He carefully opened it. Not being able to read, Shippo did not notice the kanji reading Childproof Cap, so it posed no barrier to him. He plucked one of the white, round things out of the bottle and ate it. It was crunchy, but after some vigorous chewing he got it down. "Say," he whispered, "those are pretty good." He looked over at Kagome. "She's so nice." He bowed to Kagome, then softly clapped his hands twice and ate a few more.

The next morning, they broke camp and headed west, once more on the trail of a Shikon jewel shard. Tending to Inuyasha's injured back had given the demon with the shard time to escape out a secret entrance to the cave, and it had been spotted terrorizing a village a day's journey away when Kagome sensed the shard. All of them were impressed with Kagome's growing ability–most of all Inuyasha, though he would eat his own left foot before he would admit it.

When they stopped for rest around noon, Kagome opened up her backpack and dug into it. "That's strange," she said to herself, looking at the bottle. She was careful to hide it, because she didn't want to have to explain to Inuyasha why she had to take vitamins every day. If he found out she did it to help herself stay in shape, he might want some too, and there was no telling what they would do to a hanyou's system. Still, she wondered if he and Miroku had been going through it while she, Sango, and Kaede had been bathing. The bottle had been full when she brought it back to the Sengoku Period and now it was almost half-empty. She glanced at Inuyasha, but he was his same old, irascible self. Everyone else was no different either. Wondering if she was losing her mind, she downed two vitamins, as her mother had told her to do every day, and replaced the bottle.

They had been back on the trail for another hour when the demon suddenly attacked.

It was a comparatively small demon, no bigger than Sango or Kagome, but what it lacked in size and strength it made up for in ferocity and speed. It nimbly skipped out of the way of Sango's hiraikotsu, then zipped past Inuyasha and Tetsusaiga, taking a nibble out of the fire rat coat on the way. Inuyasha shouted an obscenity that turned Kagome's ears red.

Kirara snarled and leapt forward to slash at the demon with its flaming paws, but the demon only laughed insanely and nimbly leapt upwards as the sabretooth's claws tore a divot out of the grass. "Miroku!" Sango screamed. "Quit thinking about Kaede's saggy old butt and use your Wind Tunnel!"

Just the thought of Kaede was almost enough to make the young monk pass out, but he steeled himself, loosening his prayer beads. "It's too fast!" he yelled. "I'd pull you in too!" The demon took a swipe at Miroku, missed, made faces at Inuyasha, pulled one of Kirara's tails, and dodged one of Kagome's arrows, all in the time it took for Miroku to complete his sentence. As it somersaulted past the arrow, it suddenly smelled the Shikon jewel fragment that hung from Kagome's necklace, turned, and came straight at her, faster than the eye could see. "Kagome!" Inuyasha shouted.

Shippo leapt in front of his adopted mother, determined to buy her time to nock another arrow. "Foxfire!" he yelled, and tossed tiny fireballs of blue flame.

Except they weren't tiny fireballs, but rather one gigantic one that shot from his splayed hands. The blue flame crackled as it roared through the demon, disintegrating it, then went past to slightly scorch Inuyasha, scare the hell out of Kirara and Miroku, set the edge of Sango's waist sash on fire, blow apart an acre of forest, and obliterate the boulder that Inuyasha had thrown his back out with in Episode Three before it finally dissipated.

There was silence in which one could count five, then it was broken by Kagome, who blinked away the spots on her vision and said two words that summed it up:

"Holy shit."

Sango abruptly realized that she was in danger of going up in flames, but luckily Miroku was there, beating out the flames with the upper half of his robe and getting his daily ration of the demon-slayer's rear end as he did so. Inuyasha walked up to Shippo, who was staring at his hands in wonder. Inuyasha put his hand on the kitsune's shoulder like a father who has just seen his son accomplish a great thing. "Shippo," he said gravely, "how the hell did you do that?"

"I...er..." He remembered something Kagome had said to Inuyasha when her accuracy with the bow had improved. "I've been working out," he said proudly.

Inuyasha rammed a fist into the kitsune's head. "Wrong answer."

Shippo instantly kicked Inuyasha in the shin and raised tiny fists. "You'd better watch out, Inuyasha! I'll turn you to cinders!" The hanyou drew back, suddenly afraid that somehow, Shippo might be capable of carrying out his threat.

"Wait a minute," Kagome said, opening her backpack. She held up the bottle. "Shippo, did you eat these?"

"Yeah! You said I could last night."

"I did? When?"

"I woke you up 'cause I had a bad dream. You said there was something for me in your backpack that was white. Those are white."

"Oh, no," Kagome groaned. Now everyone was looking at her for an explanation.

First she had to explain her dream, which had ended in Inuyasha literally kicking Hojo to the moon. Inuyasha thought that quite hilarious.

Second she had to explain who Hojo was. This made Inuyasha the butt of several jokes about him being jealous even in Kagome's dreams.

Third she had to explain what vitamins were.

"Gimme those!" Inuyasha yelled, and easily pulled off the top, since he couldn't read Childproof Cap either. Before anyone could stop him, he poured out a heaping handful and crushed them into his mouth.

"No! Kagome didn't say you could have any!" Since this statement didn't apply to Shippo, he snatched the bottle out of Inuyasha's hands and downed what few remained.

"I'll show you power," Shippo and Inuyasha said at the same time as they crunched on vitamins with decidedly evil grins. The three humans (Kirara was hiding behind a tree) watched helplessly, Kagome afraid to osuwari Inuyasha while he had a mouthful of something. Lightning flashed between kitsune and hanyou, and both turned their backs on each other, Shippo raising his hands and Inuyasha the Tetsusaiga. Miroku, Sango, and Kagome joined Kirara behind the dubious safety of the tree.

"FOXFIRE!" Shippo shouted.

"WIND SCAR!" Inuyasha yelled, not even bothering to swing Tetsusaiga.

Nothing happened. Slowly, Miroku opened his eyes. The birds were still singing, the sky was still blue, and Japan still existed.

"I'm afraid to look," Kagome said. "Did they blow themselves up?"

"No," Sango said. "They're both bent over on the ground." She shaded her eyes against the sun. "What are they doing, Houshi-sama?"

Miroku peered closer. "Eating grass."

They were never able to explain how Shippo had suddenly manifested the power of Son Goku. Kagome thought that perhaps it had something to do with the vitamins and chocolate mixing together with the magic inherent inside Shippo, but she never tested the theory. Shippo didn't complain much, as he and Inuyasha had spent the next day and a half throwing up. Kagome explained what had happened to her mother, and Mrs. Higurashi had agreed that from now on, Kagome would just pack some oranges for her daily dose of Vitamin C. The vitamins were left in the kitchen cupboard, hidden where not even Inuyasha could find them.

Kagome secretly kept a smaller bottle in a drawer of her desk, however, for when the group finally caught up to Naraku. He was in for one heck of a surprise.