Disclaimer: No owning Inuyasha for me. Lucky Rumiko Takahashi. But I own Keitaro.

Keitaro: Umm... that's not strictly true...

Shut up, you.

Keitaro: Two words - copyright infringement.

Aaaugh... all right, I own your name and your personality. Doesn't that generally amount to owning you?

Keitaro: ...

A/N: Goodness, where were these boys - and girls! - raised? In a barn? Anyway, thank you medlii, for the reviews; ... I really can't think of anything else to say. On with the story.

4

The Gloves Are Off

The hanyou sprang at Keitaro, who dodged. Miroku stepped in smoothly, sweeping the monk staff down in a low strike, forcing the youth to leap over it. Inuyasha leapt for him again, and even as Keitaro sidestepped the tackle, the Buddhist's staff flashed up toward his head and caught him a glancing blow. He staggered. Inuyasha crowed and bulldozed him to the ground, claws digging into the other man's throat.

"OSUWARI!" Kagome screamed.

"Aaaaauuuugh!" Twin shouts of pain accompanied a resounding fwump as Inuyasha's rosary took hold and drove both the hanyou and the young man under him into the ground. Sango darted toward Miroku as the monk tried to intervene. Weight for weight, even with Miroku's staff as an equalizer, the taijiya was more than a match for him. One small scuffle later, he too was knocked to the ground.

"Bitch," Inuyasha groaned mutedly. Keitaro just groaned. Miroku rubbed his head and glared at Sango, who was holding his own staff threateningly over his head.

"Just shut up and listen for a minute!" Kagome ranted at them. "You morons! Do you even have brains! Or just lumps of rock and muscle!"

"You don't complain when it's your asses we're saving," Inuyasha growled through painfully clenched teeth. "Oh, wait—yeah, you do!"

"Osuwari!"

"Eeaaugh!"

"Hey, I'm under here, too!" Keitaro protested, puffing.

"You shut up!" Inuyasha wheezed.

"Both of you shut up!" Sango snapped. She jangled the staff's hoops warningly when Miroku opened his mouth. "I'm not—"

"What the hell is wrong with you two!" Inuyasha grated, trying futilely to lever himself upright. "We're trying to save your goddamn skins! Again! He could be anyone! He could be some bastard just trying to get into your pants! He could be working for Naraku, for fuck's sake!"

"Watch your damn language!" Kagome snarled.

"You have no proof he's anything but what he's told us," Sango told both the monk and the hanyou heatedly. "You took me in, and I was trying to kill Inuyasha! Is he that much different?"

"We didn't just 'happen' to find you," Miroku snapped. "You weren't just wandering around waiting to be picked up. I don't believe in coincidence."

"Nothing's happened yet!" Sango shot back exasperatedly.

"You call this nothing?" The monk's expansive gesture took in the entire scene, from the Inuyasha-Keitaro sandwich to Kagome's livid expression to the staff the taijiya was holding over his own head.

"This is what happens when you two go running around waving your arms like chickens with your heads cut off and don't bother to think," Kagome retorted.

"No, this is what happens when you go bug-eyed over some long-haired freak!" Inuyasha yelled over his shoulder. The rosary-spell was wearing off; he was getting to his feet.

"I'm getting tired of that," Keitaro told the hanyou conversationally, also pushing himself up. "Especially when your hair's longer than mine." Inuyasha just growled and glared; Kagome suspected he had nothing to say to that. She bit back an 'osuwari' just in time.

"Sango," Miroku appealed. He'd been silent for a while, eyeing his confiscated staff warily. The taijiya raised it slightly, threatening. "No—please, just let me speak."

"Now you want to talk," Kagome growled. "Five seconds ago it was 'throw him out!' "

"This is getting us nowhere," the houshi pointed out reasonably, getting cautiously to his feet. "I wish to say something."

"Be quick and say it, then."

He gave Sango an injured look, then continued. "This may have been a misunderstanding on our part—"

"I'm getting real tired of you switching sides, bouzu," Inuyasha growled warningly.

"—and it may not have been," Miroku persisted over the hanyou's complaint. "I still don't like to trust so easily when we know there's danger in doing so."

Surprisingly enough, of the three of them, Keitaro looked the least offended by the houshi's statement. Kagome rubbed her temples, muttering soft imprecations. "Then what do you propose we do, assuming for the moment that he is dangerous?"

"A test," Miroku said simply. "We find someone who can tell truth from lies, and have them question him."

Inuyasha didn't look any happier, but he stopped growling for a moment. Keitaro nodded, mostly to himself. Sango hesitated, then shrugged.

"All right. If it'll knock some semblance of sense into your heads."

Kagome was less happy. "Why is this even necessary?" she protested. "Keitaro's said he doesn't want to hurt us, he's had plenty of opportunities to do something and hasn't taken any of them... how can we not trust him?"

"Easily," Inuyasha muttered under his breath. Kagome didn't hear him, but Keitaro had to have. The blond youth still didn't take any offense whatsoever. Instead, he spoke to Kagome.

"Miko-sama," he told her gently, "they have it more rightly than you. If I were in your places, I would take precautions with anyone I met on the road. Appearances... can be deceiving." His eyes flickered for a moment, then regained their steady grip on her gaze. "I don't want any of you to doubt me. This is the surest way to clear my name."

"But I know you're not evil!" she pleaded. "I can feel it!"

He smiled, a bit sadly. "I don't doubt you. You're a miko, after all. But does everything exist in black and white? Are there ever only two sides to one story?"

She started to protest again, stopped, then lowered her gaze. Her gray-blue eyes were dark, unhappy. "No," she answered quietly. "There isn't." When she looked up again, there was a bit more life in her face, but she looked a little disappointed. She made herself sound brisk. "All right, Miroku. Did you have anyone in mind?"

"Well," he replied gravely, "we monks are given the power to—"

"Nuh-uh," Sango interrupted emphatically. "This is going to be an impartial judge."

Miroku drew himself up haughtily, which didn't do much with his staff still in Sango's hands. "Are you implying that a houshi would succumb to temptation?"

"Why don't you ask all the girls you've felt up?" Kagome put in cheekily. Inuyasha and Keitaro smirked at the same time. The hanyou scowled immediately.

Miroku sighed. "No respect," he muttered. "All right, we'll go to the next village and ask for a Buddhist, if you don't trust me."

Sango's expression softened a touch. "I do trust you," she told him, a bit defensively. "Just not about this." He sighed again. The taijiya looked very much as if she wanted to hit him over the head with his staff.

The five ambled back to the camp, Keitaro in front, the two girls conferring together a few steps behind him, and the other two young men grumpily bringing up the rear.

"Load of help you were," Inuyasha grumbled at Shippou as he took the first watch.

"A guy could get killed getting mixed up in that sort of stuff!" Shippou said indignantly, through a face-splitting yawn. Kirara purred.