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Title: Teenage Mutant Inuyasha!

Chapter 3: The Price of Freedom

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Inuyasha took off in a full run. He had been exposed to two people today, a record that hand not been breached in a very, very long time. It was a bit unsettling, he being so antisocial and whatnot. This being so, he wasn't quite ready to see Kaede again. He decided to collect himself high up in an old oak in the city park. Nobody could see him there, so it didn't matter so much that he was hatless.

He began to ponder. Kaede had immediately suggested that Kagome go into his lair, she knew full well about the barrier, having been there when it was created and all. She must have known from the beginning that Kagome was a Miko. That was the only explanation. What did it matter though? She probably didn't think it was anything of consequence. Or did she? Maybe this was Kaede's subtle way of telling him something. She was old and senile; it wasn't too farfetched of an idea.

"Whatever," he muttered, closing his eyes. He'd really have to remember to wear a hat next time he left the sewers. No amount of electricity was worth his exposure. He wasn't going to be another side-show freak paraded around on TV, the newspapers, and even worse: tabloids. After that things would get even uglier. He shuddered at the thought. No, that was not the life for him.

Come to think of it that was the reason he never left his home to begin with. The whole world was way too nosey. Actually, all things considered, it was pretty damn amazing he had the whole 'urban legend' thing going for him. But he kept it as such that you would have had to know him to know about him. How did his existence leak? There was hardly a chance for him to be seen unless of course you practically fell on him like that stupid girl had.

Speaking of stupid girls, she looked a lot like… nope. No she didn't- his mistake. Hmm, look at the time, he should start home. It was 7:00, he had shows to watch, Kaedes to interrogate, and food to eat… he was starving, so much so in fact that there had been a tiny, minuscule part of him that had almost been tempted to stay and have dinner with Kagome's family. He pictured the lot of them, there were at least twenty of them, men, women, and children, and they all had Kagome and her mother's faces. They were all chattering aimlessly and the ones with Kagome's mother's face kept grabbing at his ears. It was unsettling. Yeah, he'd done the smart thing by taking off.

Best of all, he'd probably never have to see that dumb girl ever again. He bounded off happily in the shadows with the comforting thought.

When he reached his lair, he found Kaede waiting patiently, the cot had been put away and there was some food cooking for him. At that moment he loved Kaede… so very, very much.

After he inhaled the food Kaede had so graciously prepared, he decided he could ask her some questions.

"So Granny," he said. "How did you know Kagome was a Miko?"

"Hmm?" she replied. "What? Oh that's right… the barrier. Well to tell you the truth, Inuyasha dear, it didn't even occur to me."

"Oh," he said. There went his theories.

"And even so, I have the ability to sense holy auras as is," she shrugged. "My senses must be getting duller with age. Of course there is always the unlikely possibility that her aura was so familiar to me that I simply over looked it."

"How could that be?" he asked. "Neither of us had ever met her before today, so how could her aura be familiar to you?"

"That's why I said it was unlikely," she explained. "Unless of course…"

"Yeah? Unless of course what!" he asked.

"Unless she is a reincarnate of some Miko, or other that I had been particularly close to in my youth… though I didn't know many that survived the Purge…" she said sadly.

"Okay Granny," Inuyasha demanded, "What exactly are you suggesting here?"

"Nothing, nothing!" she declared with a grandmotherly warm smile. "Now it's getting late! I go to bed at 8 now, you know. At this rate I won't get to sleep until 8:30!"

"Oh heaven forbid!" Inuyasha said sarcastically. "Now tell me what you were suggesting, dammit!"

"Don't worry yourself, Inuyasha," Kaede advised. "I'm an old woman with wishful thinking. Besides, there's a very small chance we'll ever see her again. She seemed pretty eager to be gone from here from what I saw."

"Yeah," he calmed down. "I guess you're right. Need help out?"

Kaede smiled. "That would be lovely dear."

Inuyasha carried Kaede to the street level and they bid their goodbyes. Inuyasha promptly went back into his layer and flipped on his TV. Heh, some idiot made a public stand against the Government again. You'd think people would learn after a while. There was nothing they could do about it. And besides, everything was for their own good.

The Government was only trying to protect them, there were things in the world far worse than strict rules and harsh punishments, things the people didn't want to know about, and so didn't know about. Things Inuyasha himself had come across in his agonizingly long life. Things he would rather not remember.

There was no ending the Great Discomfort as the members Government Circle ominously referred to it every once in a while when there was an information leak to the public. There was no known defense against it in existence, except to prevent its spread. To do so they had to limit freedoms. As I have stated earlier, every good thing comes with sacrifice; a price, if you will. For protection, the price was freedom.

And the fact of the matter was; the people were lucky, they just didn't realize it.

Old memories resurface in Inuyasha; he was wracked with nightmares that night and so couldn't sleep. He stayed awake to infomercials selling useless products and miracle cures all night. Not that he'd admit it, but he knew he wouldn't be able to get a moment of sleep until Kaede returned the next day.

Inuyasha did indeed find salvation the next day when Kaede arrived. She knew what happened. She'd seen that haggard look on him before. She fixed him some tea to calm his nerves and left him alone to rest.

There was a pipe, old and dilapidated, that Inuyasha favored for cat-naps. It was surprisingly comfortable and out of his stuffy little area. It was where he always slept after the nightmares came. He didn't know why, but he guessed it had just become habit somewhere along the line.

He slept peacefully there for some time.

Kagome had a simply lovely evening with her family. They seemed to have an unending supply of questions for her about the strange dog-eared young man that walked her home from the library. And what could she do but be incredibly vague and just hope they would eventually drop the subject? Which they didn't, by the way. And then they pulled into question the bandage over her left eyebrow. Clumsy Kagome, she walked right into a book shelf... where Inuyasha found her... and decided to help her home after fixing up her eye.

If she ever did get him to agree to dinner, she'd have to make him well versed on the life she bestowed upon him.

School the next day was a welcomed break from her family's incessant nagging. Of course almost anything was better than that...

Kagome sat slouched over in her seat as she stared idly at her history teacher as she twittered adamantly about Government History. She sighed. It was such a boring class; it literally seemed to suck any ounce of joy from you as you sat in its grasp. As Ms. Shaman drew a diagram up on the board, Kagome flipped through the pages of her book.

Big mistake.

She found herself on chapter twenty-one, the chapter solely devoted to the Great Purge of 2030. Her breath caught in her throat. She closed the book and glanced around the room to see if anyone had noticed her reaction. Luckily for her, most of the class was either too preoccupied writing notes or sleeping to have paid her any attention. She sighed with relief and tried to force herself back into her old position.

Oh she was so thankful she hadn't been born until 2036. By then the Great Purge had been over for around three years. Earlier in the school year she had looked up the Great Purge in the glossary of her history book, it read as follows:
The Great Purge: A successful campaign by the Government to remove all persons and objects deemed a threat to National Security. Duration: 2030-2033

That was the glossed over version. The real story was gruesome, terrible, horrifying, and undeniably disturbing. When the book had said "all persons… deemed a threat to National Security," it had been referring to all people having holy auras; Mikos, Monks, they were all taken. No one could say with any real certainty what happened to them, but it was a common conception that they had all been wiped out, as in murdered. It always made her sick to think that her own home country might have had a mass genocide of, in a way, all her people merely because of something they had no control over.

And what was even more frightening was the fact that the Government had given absolutely no explanation for their actions. Sure, they had claimed the people were a "threat", but in what way was a complete mystery to anyone outside of the Government Circle.

Lucky for Kagome, it was now believed that there were no more Mikos or Monks in existence anymore. As long as she kept a low profile, no one would have to know and she wouldn't have to worry about undergoing the same fate as her predecessors, whatever that may have been.

At lunch Kagome's friends (the "average high school students" who had made their appearance earlier in our story) noticed the weary look in her eyes and the bandage on her head. When the inquired (or interrogated, depending on whose end you were on) about it, she smiled brightly and explained that she had been up late the night before studying for math, her weakest subject, during which, she fell asleep and smacked her head on the corner of her desk. They bought it. They always bought it. Of course, she had plenty of experience in lying.

After school let out, Kagome regretfully told her friends that she had chores to do at home and couldn't hang out with them. They walked her to her alleyway, and then left her to her own devices. When a minute had passed, she peaked out of the alley. When she was sure no one was around, she timidly approached the lid of the manhole.

She had never tried to lift one, but she had always assumed that they were heavy. But she figured that if that kindly old woman from the day before could lift it, then so could she. Before she set to work, she made a quick scan of the area for rats. The cost was clear.

With her fingers firmly jammed in the little notches, she rose, remembering to do so with the legs. And it was up… sort of... It was so heavy! She inched her feet over and laid the lid to the side. Oh yeah, she was awesome.

Kagome grabbed her bag, making sure to check for her wallet (which was still there), then climbed down into the darkness. Being prepared, she pulled out a flashlight when she reached the bottom and shone it around… looking for that dumb mutant.

And she found him. He was lying on a dilapidated old pipe. Kagome tip-toed up to him. He looked so peaceful… he wasn't dead, was he? No, he was breathing. Kagome liked him a lot better when he didn't talk. Plus those ears of his were something. She couldn't blame her mother for trying to touch them now that she herself could get a clear look. How cute! But… he would probably wake up if she touched him, besides she was on a mission.

She poked him in the side, "Inu-ya-sha."

Oh how she hoped he wasn't cranky after a nap!

He wasn't moving. She poked him again. "Inuyasha!" she whispered more sternly.

Still no reaction. It was a shame for the boy that Kagome wasn't more patient. She shook his shoulder and yelled, "Wake up you mutant!"

That did it. However, "it" might not have been so good. In one swift movement, Inuyasha growled and pinned the girl to the ground. She looked up at him, pale with fright.

He snorted at her. He wasn't about to admit he'd made a mistake. "You are really annoying, you know that?" He got off her, stretched, and cracked his knuckles.

She stood and regained her composure. 'He's not going to hurt me,' she chanted. 'He's not going to hurt me.'

"Did you want something," he asked. "Or did you just come here to bug me? Because if that's the case, you are doing a really great job."

'Stupid…grrr!' she thought. "Well if you woke up the first time I poked you none of this would have happened!"

"Pardon me for thinking if I played dead you'd get bored eventually and leave!" he cried. "How was I to know you'd go all psycho and scream in my ear, which happens to be very sensitive, by the way!"

"Me going psycho!" she cried indignantly, "You were the one who tackled me! And if I had known your ears were so sensitive I wouldn't have done that. So I apologize if I hurt them."

"Good," he spat.

She stared at him.

"What!"

"Don't you have something you'd like to say to me?" she asked.

"Um… leave?" he tired.

"How about 'I'm sorry I tackled you and hope I didn't give you a concussion!'" she fumed.

"Keh," he replied. "That was your own fault!"

"You stupid mutant!" she yelled.

"Would you quit calling me that!" he demanded. "I'm not a fucking mutant!"

"Then what's with the ears?" she asked, cocking her head to the side.

"None of your business," he said crossly. He decided it was time to change the subject. "Why are you here anyway?"

"Oh," she said. "Right. Well, I came to invite you to dinner at my house."

"No," he replied without a second thought.

"I'm afraid I can't take 'no' for an answer." She put her hands on her hips and stared him down.

"Too bad," Inuyasha crossed his arms defiantly.

"You don't understand!" Kagome cried. "I'm going to be grounded if you don't have dinner at my house in the next week!"

"And I care because…?"

"Because… you are kind and compassionate?" she tried.

"Nope," he shook his head. "Try again."

"Because I'll really, really owe you! I'll be in your dept! I can, I don't know, cook food for you… buy you food… um… I'm not sure what else I could do but…"

"No," he said. "I don't want anything that would involve you anywhere near me for any reason."

"Ok…" She would have to try from a different approach. "Then I will just show up here everyday until you agree, and if you don't agree to come this week, I'll just spend every spare moment I have here. I can be very persistent, as you will soon find out."

His jaw dropped. No… no, this was not happening. This girl was not threatening him! She would not have power over him! "I'll go if you promise you won't bother me ever again afterwards." Ok… maybe she would… but just a little bit! But after he'd be rid of her for good! And that was worth it, right? Right?

She grinned, "Promise."

It was the price of freedom. Besides, it was just one dinner, what damage could it possibly do?

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:AN: Oh yeah, and to respond to a couple of reviewers…

Lil'Inu-Yasha: Actually I'm very obsessed with writing. I just get easily side-tract when new ideas pop into my head… I've got at least 20 unfinished stories and such saved on my computer. There would be more, but every once in a while I go back and remove the ones I know I'll never touch again and can't do anything with. LoL… I'm just not that confident in my abilities of keeping up with a particular fic… I have a very good feeling about this one though, so no worries! Oh, and thank you for the very nice compliments! …And, uh, sorry about the flea problem…I loath biting insects.
Chibified Youkai 101I do hope I updated fast enough this time!
Xue1Thank you so much for the compliments! Oh, and I took care of that mistake in chapter one (supposing I did everything right…), thanks for pointing it out to me!

Neko-Yuff16: Oh man, I know… parents can be so annoying at times… LoL! Thank you very much for the review!

And a large, billowing 'thank you' to the rest of my reviewers who may not have been mentioned here!

Please R&R!

OH, hey! When (and if…) you review, could you tell me your predictions? I want to see how transparent I am (or deluded, as they case may be…)! And please, please tell me if I made any typos/ grammatical errors, that way I can go back and exterminate those nasty little buggers!

Thanks so much!

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-DRC-