Disclaimer: Don't own Inuyasha? Join the club. We've got jackets. (Name that movie! .) This time, though, I can actually claim an original character! I own Hyakunan. Hope you like him, cute li'l spawn of Loki that he is. Thank you for your kind words, my loyal reader(s?).

3

All Sorts Of Trouble

The sounds of fighting were still coming from Kaede's hut, so Shippou decided to steer clear of there for the time being. Unfortunately, there wasn't anywhere else to go that was particularly interesting. The kitsune heaved a sigh. Two minutes without those two, and already he was bored…

His little fox ears twitched, and he sat up straighter, looking around. Someone was sneaking…

"Psst!"

Shippou yipped and darted for cover, peeking out from behind a fence post.

"You squeal like a girl," the disembodied voice noted. It had a truly strange accent, wispy on some of the consonants and treading heavily on the rest of the sounds.

Shippou's manly pride, being a bit more mature than the rest of him, stung him to retort, "Do not!"

"Do so," the voice shot back.

"Do not!"

"Do so!"

"Do not!"

"So!"

"Not!"

"So!"

"Not not not not not!"

"So so so so so!"

"Not infinity!" Shippou yelled, rather pleased with the proper application of the phrase he'd learned from Kagome. To his further delight, it worked; the voice fell silent, stymied.

"So."

"You can't still say 'so,' I already said 'infinity,'" the kitsune pointed out. "Y'know, like forever?"

"I know. Where'd you learn it?"

Shippou pointed solemnly toward the full-voiced "BAKAAAAA!" that rang from the interior of Kaede's house. "Her."

"The miko?"

"You know her?" Shippou asked, startled.

The other voice gave the impression of a shrug. "Seen her a few times. Kami, she's ugly."

"Kagome is not ugly!" the kitsune contradicted hotly.

"Who's Kagome?"

"The miko, baka! An' she's beautiful, even if Inuyasha no baka says she's not—"

The speaker audibly perked. "Inuyasha? The hanyou with the Tetsusaiga? How d'you know Inuyasha?"

Shippou wasn't in the mood to be generous. Plus, he was curious. "Come out an' I'll tell you."

Slight rustling. "No tricks?"

"'Course not." It never occurred to him that crossing your fingers behind your back—another excellent piece of knowledge courtesy of the twentieth-century girl—was not necessarily a nice thing to do. Besides, you couldn't just make promises like that. There were mitigating circumstances, after all.

Pause. "'Kay." And the owner of the voice stepped out.

It didn't really surprise Shippou that the speaker was a boy about his age, with short, fine, ponytailed hair—spring leaf green, for some odd reason—and wide, appealing eyes that nevertheless looked as if they didn't miss much. It wasn't even too odd that one of those eyes was the bright yellow of the ramen cups Kagome brought from her world, while the other was a bluish color valiantly attempting to be black. His clothes, though they looked as if someone had attacked him with an artist's palette, were of normal style. Even the pointed ears, universal symbol of youkai-dom, weren't all that shocking. Or, at least, not by themselves.

"You're a youkai, right?" the kitsune asked doubtfully.

The other boy scratched self-consciously behind one ear. "Sorta."

"Are you or aren't you?"

The boy fidgeted. "Ummm… kinda."

"You can't be 'kinda' a youkai," Shippou argued crossly. "You don't smell right. What are you, if you're not a youkai?"

"I am so a youkai!" the other youngster declared, glaring. "I'm just… not… from here."

Skepticism fought a quick battle with curiosity, and lost. "Where're you from, then?"

The boy's mismatched eyes turned mulish. "Nowhere."

Shippou squinted in what he hoped was a threatening, penetrating way. "Yeah, right. And your otou-san is a kami, right?"

"No!"

The kitsune blinked; what had he said? The kid didn't have to get so mad about it, he'd just asked a question.

Oh, well. He shrugged it off and chose a safer topic. "I'm Shippou. What's your name?"

The kid unbent a little. "Um… well, in your language it's Hyakunan, so just call me that."

Shippou grinned. "'All sorts of trouble.' Cool name."

Hyakunan looked at him oddly. "'Cool'?"

Oh. Sometimes Kagome's slang confused people. "Good name."

"Thanks."

The pause that followed was saved from awkwardness by a loud, repetitive banging issuing from the unlucky couple's battleground. Shippou winced; from the sound of it, an iron pot was meeting something equally hard and dense. Probably Inuyasha's head.

Hyakunan listened with obvious interest, and no little bit of awe. "What are they doing?"

"Fighting," Shippou replied drily.

"Who's winning?"

"Nobody."

"They're that good?"

"It's that bad," the kitsune corrected. "They won't admit that they like each other. I don't know why Kagome likes Inuyasha, though," he confided. "He's stupid and violent and has a bad mouth. Kagome's too nice for him; she brings me candy."

"Sounds good." The smile on Hyakunan's face suddenly acquired Mischief with a visible capital. "Is Inuyasha fun to bother?"

Shippou shrugged. "If he doesn't catch you, yeah."

"You get caught?" The green-haired boy looked astonished.

"He's fast," Shippou defended himself. "And he hits hard." The kitsune had the head lumps to prove it.

Hyakunan dismissed that with a shrug. "You just have to be clever."

"Easy for you to say. You don't travel around with him," Shippou pointed out crossly.

"Oh. Good point."

Another CRASH tinkle tinkle from inside the hut. Hyakunan craned his neck toward the noise, eyebrows raised. "She seems to do it easy enough."

Shippou grinned. "She's had practice."

Hyakunan glanced sidelong at the kitsune, then grinned back. "Maybe we just need practice."

Shippou briefly considered the idea of a partner in crime—twice the fun, half the blame if we get caught—then nodded emphatically. "Deal!"

………………………………………

Anyone wandering by that particular tree on the edge of the woods might have been heartily puzzled by the low but distinct stream of blistering language it seemed to be pouring out. Anyone who was familiar with the habits of a certain silver-haired hanyou might have been less puzzled, especially if they looked up. Anyone who knew where he'd been ten minutes ago would have been absolutely gobsmacked if they hadn't heard the words 'wench,' 'bitch,' or 'Kagome' sprawled somewhere amid the rest of the word flow. Anyone listening wouldn't have been disappointed.

In this case, however, 'Anyone' was equally apportioned into two smallish, youngish, youkai-ish, mischief-seeking packages. And a certain dog-eared boy's sulking was more than enough to draw their attention.

Inuyasha was unaware of these developments. He was growling a steadily less-inventive barrage of swearwords at the air in front of him. He was paying far less attention than he should have been to the air above him—but that was shortly remedied.

Thock.

"Oi!" Inuyasha nearly fell off the branch trying to see what had hit him. The missile had bounced into a bird's nest on the limb below—a river pebble, with a hole neatly bored through its center. "What the—"

Thock.

The hanyou swore expressively and rubbed his scalp. That one had been much bigger, and there had been no hole to reduce the mass. He glared up into the thick branches. "Listen, asshole, if you don't come down here and fight me like a real whatever-you-are, I'm gonna—"

THWAPP.

"Fuck!" Inuyasha fought a losing battle with gravity, and ended up dangling from the branch by his claws. There are some things that will knock even an inu-hanyou out of a tree, and a generous faceful of mud is one of them.

Well, not exactly mud.

Inuyasha sniffed, then gagged. "Shit!"

"He guessed it!" Shippou wheezed to Hyakunan, clutching his sides as if it would help keep his ribs from cracking. The two of them were in as much danger as Inuyasha of falling out of the tree, but in their case it was a matter of being convulsed with hysterical laughter.

"You're DEAD, you rat-faced little monkey shit!"

"Guess it takes one to know one," Hyakunan gasped, still rolling around in a fit of belly laughing as far as it was possible to on a tree branch.

"Throwing—fucking—COW SHIT—on—my—head?" the hanyou roared, lurching back onto the branch as his legs scrabbled in the air. His fingers slipped in a splatter of leftover cowpatty, and a trailing "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!" ended in an abrupt landing that sounded much like a belly-flopping elephant. This triggered further paroxysms of hilarity.

"GET DOWN HERE!"

"Run," Shippou squeaked, still laughing, and suited action to words. Hyakunan followed right on his tail, the two leaping across the interlaced tree branches and scurrying down an adjacent trunk. The sounds of a royally pissed-off inuhanyou ripping up bushes sped them on their way out of the forest.

"That was good," Hyakunan said decisively once they'd found a safe hideout in the village. "You do that often?"

"Not that," Shippou admitted. "How'd you hide the smell? I thought he'd catch us for sure."

The green-haired boy shrugged. "Masked it. Isn't hard to copy tree-sap scent."

"Good one."

"Yeah."

"Wanna do it again?"

"Yeah."

"Wrong answer," a voice grated from a considerable distance above their heads.

Shippou froze. In retrospect, he would realize that this was not a good reaction. It probably would have been smarter to jump three feet in the air and take off screaming, like Hyakunan. Instead, he found himself hoisted up by his bushy red tail. A set of upside-down, bared white fangs above a dog nose and golden eyes that could have passed for demented solar flares appeared in his line of vision. Eww, dog boogers—does he know that there's cowpoo in his hair still? he thought vaguely as the rest of him shrieked and wriggled vainly.

"Any last words, runt?" Inuyasha growled. "I always said you'd make a nice rug someday."

"Kagoooooomeeeee!" the kitsune wailed, praying that she hadn't been chased out of earshot by the hanyou's presence.

Inuyasha's eyes narrowed, darting nervously away from his captive to search the surroundings. Shippou seized the opportunity two-handed and latched his little teeth onto the hanyou's sensitive nose.

"Aaaaagbth! Ged off ob by dose, you liddle jid!"

Shippou gnawed harder, growling. He didn't have full youkai fangs just yet, but that didn't mean he couldn't do some damage.

"Ged—off!" Inuyasha yanked the little kitsune away from his face and hurled him ten feet into the bushes. This time Shippou didn't wait for his attacker to realize his mistake. He pelted away as fast as his little fox feet could carry him.

"Kaaagooooooooomeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"