A/N: So sorry this has
taken me so long! I have become swamped with end-of- the-year
madness. Just a warning that updating may take me a bit longer for
the next couple of weeks. But don't worry, I'm still thinking and
planning for this story...
Disclaimer: Don't own it.
Yet...
6. Kagome Lays Some Groundwork
As Kagome walked
up the steps to her house, her mind was whirling like crazy. She
had the feeling that, if it could have, it would have made a mad dash
for one of her nostrils and attempted a break for freedom. Luckily,
the laws of physics and biology currently forbade that course of
action. Instead, Kagome pushed open the door to the house, ignoring
the traditional rusty squeak ("it gives the house an air of
charm!") and wandered into the living room.
With an
absentminded greeting for both her mother and her little brother,
Kagome headed through the house and up the stairs to her bedroom.
Once inside her sanctuary, she exhaled. The sun was
shining through the window, a light breeze was ruffling the curtains,
and her bed was looking extremely inviting. Plopping down right
in the center, Kagome lay back and stared at the ceiling.
Directly
above her head was a crack that had been there as long as she could
remember. Depending on the angle it was viewed from, it either
looked like a scottish terrier with a fedora or a mouse with a really
pointy nose. At that moment, it looked like a scottish terrier,
which persona she had, in her infancy, named "Bob." The
mouse, of course, was "Snaggletooth Mousington the
Third."
Staring up at Bob, Kagome winced. "Dogs,"
she said out loud, a mixture of disgust, terror, bewilderment, and
fascination coloring her tone. Dogs were the reason she was
about to get into so much trouble. Or, to be more specific,
dog-boys. Especially dog- boys named Inuyasha. That and her
stupid inability to say no. Sango had explained to her that she
and Miroku had overheard the conversation that she had had with
Inuyasha and had decided that they wanted to help her in her quest to
liberate Inuyasha. Kagome paused for a moment out of sympathy for
the world. She had a feeling that Inuyasha might cause a bit of a
stir.
Although Sango had not spelled it out for her in so many
words, Kagome could easily see why she, the innocent high-schooler
who'd never even so much as borrowed a pencil and then forgotten to
return it, was being asked to mastermind a jailbreak from a highly
secure government lab of a potentially dangerous individual whom she
had met just once. No one would suspect the anonymous school-girl.
That is, not until she turned up missing at exactly the same time as
a certain notorious yellow-eyed boy who happened to be an inhabitant
of her current place of part-time employment.
"Shit,"
Kagome said to Bob, "I think I may be in a little over my
head."
She fought down an imminent panic attack. Just
because she was about to violate about a gazillion federal laws to
break a boy she hardly even knew out of an unfair imprisonment did
not give her any excuse for a panic attack. She could do this.
She was logical. She was sneaky. Okay, maybe not
sneaky, but damn if she wasn't tenacious.
"Plus," she
reminded Bob, "there's no one else to do it. Sango and
Miroku could lose their jobs. He has no one else to turn to."
Of course, she could lose her future, but she wasn't going to
think about that right now.
Kagome glared at Bob, but gave it
up with a sigh and a squeeze of her pillow. She was going to
help him anyhow, so there was no point in obsessing. "I'll
do it!" she announced to Bob, with what she hoped was a
dangerous glint in her eye. Actually, it was more like an exaggerated
squint, but at least she was trying.
Ok, so maybe she
barely knew Inuyasha. It didn't matter; he deserved as much a chance
at life as anyone else. He had never done anything wrong, at least
not that she knew of, and he was being held against his will. It
didn't matter that she hardly knew him; he still needed her help.
And his great body and sexy yellow eyes had nothing whatsoever
to do with her decision.
Besides, she'd given Sango her word
and promised to come up with a plan by Saturday, at which point they
could all work out any bugs together.
That is, after someone
broke the news to Inuyasha.
An hour and a half of intense
plotting later, Kagome's bedroom was littered with little scraps of
balled up paper. But she had the start of a plan. Now she
just needed to go and lay some groundwork.
"Hey mom,"
she called as she toddled into the kitchen. "Where'd mom
go?" she asked, turning towards Souta, who was wriggling around
in one of the corner cupboards.
"I think she's out back,"
Souta replied without exiting his cupboard. Mrs. Higurashi had
recently discovered a latent passion for gardening and now spent all
of her free time trying to turn their backyard into an earthly
paradise.
"Thanks," Kagome said. She'd
given up trying to understand her little brother, she found that it
was best to just ignore him and move on. Kagome exited the
kitchen and soon her mother turning up soil with a spade in
preparation for some late spring bulb-planting.
"Hey
mom!" Kagome chirped, then winced. Way too chipper a tone,
her mother was going to be suspicious. A teenager should never show
too much enthusiasm she reminded herself.
She was right. Mrs.
Higurashi straightened up and eyed her only daughter, absently
dragging a hand across her forehead as she did so. "What's
up?" she asked her unusually cheerful daughter. Like all good
parents, she recognized the tone that Kagome used whenever she was
about to ask for something she thought she might have to beg
for.
Kagome toned down her nervous smile a little and tried
again. "Well, you know how spring break is coming up?" she
asked.
"Of course I do," Mrs. Higurashi smiled, "I think
you mention it just about every day."
"Right, well, I was
just thinking," Kagome paused, the next part was the bit that she
really didn't want to mess up on, "We aren't doing anything
this year are we?"
"You know we aren't," her mother
answered. "We talked about this a while ago. It's
just not financially feasible this year. You said you were okay
with it."
"I am, I am," Kagome hastened to reassure her
mother. Didn't want her to start feeling defensive. "The
thing is, I was talking to Eri the other day, and we were thinking,
umm."
"Yes?" Mrs. Higurashi prompted.
Kagome
cleared her throat, which had mysteriously just become very dry. She
really wasn't the best liar in the world, having been built along
the lines of "open and innocent" rather than "devious and sly,"
but she was giving it her best shot.
"We were thinking
maybe I could, um, go and visit her for a while in the city...?"
Kagome let her voice trail off, very aware of her mother's
scrutiny. It was a plausible setup. Eri had been one of
Kagome's best friends in primary school until her family had moved
away.
"I think that's a great idea," Mrs. Higurashi
gushed to Kagome's astonishment. "But first, what about
your job? And what do her parents think about it? And how
will you get there? And how long will you stay? Do you
think I should talk with her parents?"
Kagome stared at her,
feeling mildly overwhelmed by, and thoroughly unprepared for, the
flood of questions. And then the last one seeped in. "Huh?
Oh, no, um, no, it's uh, no. You don't have to call
her parents. See, we, er, we don't quite have everything
squared away yet. I'm still waiting for an email confirmation
from her, and then I'll start worrying about all that other stuff.
But you are saying that it's okay on this end, right?"
"Yes,
of course dear," said Mrs. Higurashi. "I think it's very
important for you keep in touch with your old friends." Then
she picked her spade back up, and began turning more soil.
Kagome
left to go back inside, oh so happy that her mother had this new
gardening obsession to keep her from paying too close attention to
her children's lives. "Thank god for spring break," she said as
she walked into the kitchen, feeling only a little bit guilty for
being so deceptive. Maybe she would go and see Eri over part of the
break, just to keep from being a total liar. Besides, she
reminded herself, it was all for a noble cause.
The next day,
with the prospect of seeing the "noble cause" face to face right
in front of her, Kagome was feeling slightly more nervous. She
hoped he wouldn't try to strangle her again.
It was a good
thing Sango had waited until Thursday to tell her everything, because
Kagome could hardly sit through school that Friday. She
couldn't concentrate on any of her classes. Instead, she kept
seeing Inuyasha's face on the blackboard, growling at her. "Please
diagram this sentence, Kagome" sounded like "Trying to kill me,
are they? I'm going to kill you, Kagome." Not that
she didn't trust him. Okay, so maybe she didn't, but she
was still sure that he was going to turn out to be really nice.
Probably he was a real softie on the inside and just didn't want to
ruin his image.
Finally, her work
day, another eight long hours spent alternating between the filing
cabinet and the washing-up sink, came to an end. Kagome punched out
at the usual time, but instead of going out to her car and driving
home, she went to the payphone in the lobby and called her mother.
A
little bit of Kikyo-bashing later ("Mom, I hate my boss, she's so
unfair...making me stay late again. Can't I just come home?
") and her mother was practically ordering her to spend the night
in the lab if need be. It was amazing how easy adults were to
manipulate, Kagome felt. They would let you do anything as long
as they though you didn't want to do it.
After that Kagome
had a few hours to kill. She decided to putter around the downtown
area a little, maybe pick up dinner.
Several hours later,
Kagome Higurashi, school-girl and soon to be wanted person, her
stomach full, re-entered the Smollet laboratory. With almost no
hesitation, she followed the maze of corridors that led to the door
to Inuyasha's chamber. Outside the door stood Miroku, his
hair in a jaunty ponytail. "Come on," he said, "I'll
let you in. And after you tell him, call us--we'll be
watching on the monitors--and we'll go over everything together."
Kagome nodded to him, and he opened the door.
As she
stepped through into darkness, Kagome heard the door click shut
behind her. A feeling of déjà vu swept over her. She
was locked in with no way out and no more excuses. She really
was going to go through this. Well, first step was to tell him. She
took a deep breath.