Marshmallows

Author's Note (A/N): Hi, this is kawaii-kitti here again, but now my name is x Moonlight Mistress x! I'm so grateful for the reviews I've received; and I am absolutely astounded that someone actually enjoys my little story! grins happily Well, here is the first chapter of Marshmallows! Sorry it took so long for me to update, I was working on another project. Please tell me your honest opinion on my stories, I really want to improve! (One of my teachers read an assignment of mine and exclaimed, "Man, this person OBVIOUSLY failed the english Literacy test..." I felt soo ashamed. And I take academic english too...)

Disclaimer: Inuyasha ain't mine.

Chapter 1: Flaming Shikon and Undercooked Broccoli!

An alarm clock in a large, marvelous mansion rang shrilly.

"Inuyasha, turn the stupid thing off!" grumbled Sesshoumaru. He came out of his room from across the hall and threw his white fluffy dog-shaped pillow at his slumbering (and drooling) brother. He then went back to sleep.

Inuyasha groaned and awoke, stumbling out of bed and into the bathroom down the hall. His eyes were still half-closed even as he was brushing his teeth.

'My toothbrush feels different…newer somehow' thought Inuyasha dreamily. He brushed the thought away and gargled slowly. There was a reason why he had set his alarm clock to ring earlier than usual, but what was it? He tried remembering, but the reason eluded him.

He lathered some of his father's expensive men's' soap onto his face…and got some in his eyes. "AAAAARRRRGGGGGGHH!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. He had sensitive eyes and hearing (inherited from his dad).

Sesshoumaru ignored the scream; his mother merely adjusted her sleeping position. His swift father immediately ran in to see what the commotion was about. Inuyasha had his eyes tightly shut and gasped, "Gimme a wet towel or something! AAhhhh ! My eyes are burning!"

His father rolled his eyes and gave his foolish son his wet face cloth. Inuyasha rinsed the soap out of his eyes and mumbled a thank you to his father. Once again, he looked like a pathetic loser in front of his prominent father.

He hungrily dashed downstairs to the kitchen and made a huge potato salad/bologna/peanut-butter/tuna/chocolate chip sandwich and ate quickly. Normally, he was not a morning person and was always the grumpiest member in the house. He had pleasant dreams about cooking gourmet food…and pigging out… (Very weird…)

He glanced at the time on the oven. 5:23 AM. It was still so early! He decided to go watch TV. His mother was the last person to have watched television, so as soon as he turned on the TV, it was tuned to a food show. 'And then, fold the batter gently….' rambled on the lady on TV.

o.0 o.o 0.o

The reason why he had to wake up early finally hit him—he had to go to school and learn basic cooking stuff from Kaede! He swore out loud and ran back upstairs to get dressed.

"Man…" grumbled Inuyasha as ran back upstairs and pulled on a red dress shirt and baggy white pants. 'Is the school even open this early!' he wondered. Inuyasha quickly brushed his short silver hair.

He hurriedly rushed off to school, getting grumpier each minute at the thought of being bossed around and forced to wake up this early every single morning. He tripped over a huge pothole that went from the street to the sidewalk. "D-mn hole!" he cursed.

"Good morning, Inuyasha" greeted Kaede seated on a stool, immersed in a book called Cooking for Dummies. She had a huge pile of different cookbooks in front of the table and an even larger pile stacked beside her. She added C.F.D. to the pile on her side.

"You still study cookbooks, even though you're like the 'best cook'? Don't you have a life?" asked Inuyasha mockingly.

"Yes, I occasionally browse through cookbooks, but I am currently skimming through these to assign to you," answered Kaede.

Inuyasha's eyes narrowed, and he said, "There is no way I am going to spend my time reading that many stupid books on learning how to cook. What can I learn from reading? I need experience. Tch!"

"By the way," said Kaede, changing the subject, "did you bring the dessert recipes I asked for?"

'Cr-p! I totally forgot!' thought Inuyasha to himself. He grabbed his bag and said, "Uhh….hold on a second, I, um, left them in…the washroom. Yeah, that's it!"

He ran outside the kitchen and into the hallway, taking out his doodle book (which he always had for boring classes!) and a pen and jotted down two quick recipes for a random fruit that popped into his mind: apples.

He went back into the kitchen and ripped out the piece of paper, handing it to Kaede, who had added yet even more books to the pile Inuyasha was required to study.

Kaede read the dessert recipes.

"……….." (long silence).

Inuyasha had written (in barely legible writing):

Apple Pie: apples-------------enough to fill the pie crust

Pie crust-----------one

Sugar--------------enough so it tastes sweet

Cinnamon---------couple spoonfuls

Ice cream---------huge scoop on top

Mash up the apples after peeling and slicing, mix with cinnamon and sugar, put in pie crust, put pie onto greased pie pan, bake until golden brown, let cool, serve with vanilla ice cream

o.O

Tart tatin : caramel---------------------enough to coat the apples and berries

Apples----------------------maybe 2 or 3…or 4, 5?

Dried blueberries----------a pint?

Tart shell (or pie)-----------one

Basically melt caramel, cover the fruits with it, put in tart and bake!

Kaede groaned at these vague and obviously just written recipes. She was starting to get a headache before the lesson even really started!

"Inuyasha, this is really disappointing. I expect a much more detailed recipe by tomorrow morning. Ever heard of TV? Or the Internet? Use those if you don't have any other good recipes. No, wait; write down the recipe for the tart you made yesterday. "

Inuyasha nodded sheepishly. He gathered up the books guiltily and stuffed them into a plastic bag he found. "So, what are you going to teach me anyways?"

"Today, you will make something very simple: steamed vegetables."

Inuyasha was sceptical. "Why do I need to learn how to steam vegetables? Anyone can do that! And they taste so bland and boorrringg." He crossed his arms in defiance.

Kaede said, "I need to test your food preparation skills first. I am going to examine everything you do, and see your cooking style."

Inuyasha gulped. This was beginning to sound complicated and he was seriously beginning to feel butterflies in his stomach. (Or perhaps he's feeling nauseous from the bologna/peanut-butter/tuna/chocolate chip sandwich that he ate…)

Kaede gave him his first instructions, "Wash the vegetables in the orange bowl from the fridge." Inuyasha washed the vegetables as thoroughly as he could.

"Now cut the vegetables."

Inuyasha was getting a bit nervous. He really did want to learn how to cook better, because he loved experimenting with food, but he hated being studied so intensely. After cutting the vegetables neatly, Kaede continued ordering him around.

"Done," said Inuyasha. He was allowed to put in the vegetables into the Chinese steamer layers in the order he wished, so he put his favourite at the bottom (potatoes), carrots next, asparagus at the next layer, and lastly, broccoli at the top layer. After a while, he started to read a funny cookbook that had corny food jokes instead of watching the vegetables, not noticing Kaede was still watching him.

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Meanwhile, an oil truck was passing by early in the morning and hit the huge pothole. The truck tilted to its side and hit the flag pole. It hit with such force that the huge pole broke and a hole was left in the side of the truck. The driver, a large man named Joe, stepped out to examine the damages. A lot of oil leaked had leaked from his truck, and he had caused property damages. He cursed the pot hole, "D-mn hole!" and tried to speed away before someone at the rich school noticed him and sued him. He wasn't a smart man, or he would have known that he could have sued the city for not fixing such a huge pot hole… He drove through the spilt oil and it splashed over the sidewalk and coincidently on the kitchen window!

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Back to the steamed veggies… Inuyasha removed the vegetables from the Chinese bun steamer. He tried some. He noticed that the potatoes, carrots and asparagus were okay, but the broccoli was seriously undercooked and still almost raw! He winced. He hated broccoli, and raw broccoli was even worse!

Kaede took a bite of everything too, and sighed. "Can't even steam vegetables. Boy, ye have quite a bit to learn."

"See, cooking is like a combination of art, food and chemistry. Mix in a couple laws of physics and math and you've got the fundamentals of cooking. You see, hot air may rise, but there were other layers of vegetables blocking the way to the broccoli, which is a hard vegetable, and that is why they were undercooked. The asparagus should have been on the top."

Inuyasha said angrily, "Screw this." 'She can go to hell.'

"Hmph. Never mind. Your preparation skills were okay, but ye need to understand cooking rules first. However, right now I need to test how well ye can measure ingredients and use leftovers. Ye shall make….fried rice using all of the steamed vegetables."

"What? Potatoes and asparagus in fried rice? That's not normal..."said Inuyasha. He grumbled, knowing that Kaede was trying to get him to mess up to lecture him some more.

"Listen, anyone can make great food out of the best ingredients and follow recipes, but it takes masters to use leftovers and turn them into gourmet dishes, not that I am expecting you to be a master or anything. I just want to see your creativity." She then handed him a recipe to follow, and told him which ingredients he could substitute. She sat down and drank her cappuccino while observing her new pupil.

Inuyasha took out a wok, some leftover rice and a bunch of other ingredients and quickly got to work. He added and subtracted mentally. After chopping, dicing, beating and seasoning stuff, he was ready to use the wok! He always thought it would be totally fun turning up the heat and flipping the wok like chefs did on TV. He really wanted to try, which was why he was working very efficiently.

He added oil to the wok, turned the heat on 'High' and waited until the wok was hot. He scrambled some eggs, then added fresh shrimp (which he had to de-vein himself), and yesterday's leftover grilled chicken which was coated in mashed potato/flour batter. Next went in the broccoli, and the carrots, and other vegetables. He added the rice, seasoned the stir-fry and was ready for THE FLIP!

'Inuyasha has a very ecstatic and passionate look on his face…the same look that Narumi was famous for' thought a surprised Kaede. Inuyasha had successfully incorporated the steamed potatoes into the fried rice by mashing them and using them to make tempura chicken.

Suddenly, everything seemed to happen in slow motion, as Inuyasha grinned and lifted the wok. 'YES!' thought Inuyasha.

"Inuyasha, you aren't trying to flip the rice are you? But you're only a beginner…!" said Kaede frantically.

Inuyasha was in the zone now, not noticing anything around him. 'Up goes the rice, down goes the rice! I love fire!' He only saw the flicker of the intense blue flame, and the wok-ful of rice. He didn't notice a spark flying out of the window, and landing on the oil-covered grass outside.

A fire erupted outside the window, Kaede started to panic. "Inuyasha, hurry, turn off the stove and get baking soda!" She went to the kitchen sink and got the extendable hose and rushed to the window. A couple of scared students ran away, while some idiotic ones threw cigarettes into the fire, and gum wrappers, laughing as the fire grew.

Inuyasha finally snapped out of his rice-flipping/fire obsession and got some baking soda from the back of the fridge. By the time he got the window, however, the fire had spread to half of the front lawn of the school. He knew it was his fault, so he climbed on the window sill, poised to jump out.

"Inuyasha what are ye doing? Get down from here! Ye can't fight fire with baking soda only!"

Inuyasha was being pulled to the fire; he was obsessed with the dancing flames. All of a sudden, his older brother Sesshoumaru appeared out of their 'everyday limo' and pushed the crowd of idiots away, pressing some sort of device. The silver gadget transformed into a fire extinguisher and immediately put out the fire. Next, Sesshoumaru stepped towards Inuyasha, about to hug him----and he scratched Inuyasha's face!

"AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" cried Inuyasha, in a lot of pain.

Kaede was dumb-founded. "You get one month of detention for that, young man," said Kaede sternly, after she recovered from shock.

"What did you do that for!" shouted Inuyasha angrily at Sesshoumaru.

"You used my toothbrush; I smelled your putrid morning-breath on it! The toothpaste couldn't even get rid of the scent! In other words, you ruined my toothbrush! That is UNFORGIVABLE," replied Sesshoumaru, using the scariest death-glare in history. (A/N: Actually, Sesshy was angry at the fact that his brother accidentally used the same toothbrush, and he didn't know until he used it and noticed that it was wet before he touched it. There was no 'putrid morning-breath'…Sesshoumaru's just a swollen-with-pride liar.)

Both Inuyasha and Kaede backed down, the detention sentence silently cancelled. This man was not one to be messing around with. "Oh, and Inuyasha, I will have to test ye again tomorrow, I'm afraid." She thought that the potato-tempura chicken would have gotten Inuyasha a good mark.

Inuyasha grunted, kind of disappointed.

End of this chapter….

Thank you note: I would like to thank the following readers for taking their time to give me an input on the prologue of Marshmallows: the writing spirit, Cindydemon Tamer, Inuyasha friend,observaant-not-mean, and last but not least, petpeeves12, and ALSO, my kind-of editing cousin who gave me helpful suggestions that I couldn't use.

A/N: You may find wanting to flip rice weird, but I have tried flipping food and failed horribly…. Eeeeeep. And yes, I agree, the ending totally sucked like one of those lame Saturday morning cartoons..what can I say? I had to start a fire SOMEHOW heehee.Rest assured, I'm actually working on developing the plot. Kouga is scheduled to show up soon as a young, rising rival chef . Should I make Kagome and Sango develop some cooking skills too? Do you notice that there are too many author's notes in the middle of the story as well?Please review!