It's been a long time, dear readers. I profusely apologize...I mean, really I do. I would write the word "sorry" repeatedly, but that would show how many times I've been hit over the head by a pillow filled with tinker toys by my sister and her evil friends from the nether regions of space.
I got into medical school and for that reason I'm suddenly managing a project to create a health franchise. I can't vote yet, but I've already been dragged into it with three months worth of paperwork, in addition to moving into my new house, getting my books, my shots, and hopefully a pension by the time I'm 28. Damn them all.
Well, I was inspired while I was away (I was away...did I mention that?) and have now decided to continue a fanfic whose outline lies in a paper I wrote about the dictator of China and Fidel Castro...the human mind is an enigma...I hear about blood and social revolution and I start thinking of all the times my mother was pregnant (twice from my memory...I can't really include myself) and suddenly Inuyasha comes to mind....
Off I go! By the way, the spacing here's on crack...I hope you can follow this somehow.
Kagome thumbed tearfully of the pages of Going It Alone, the single woman's guide to raising a baby, while Inuyasha stared at the back of the glossy pink cover with slitted eyes. Alone? He was right here.
"Are you still mad about the baby store?"
Kagome flipped him off and turned the page, stifling sobs about the story of Jacquelyn and her evil, demented, skirt-chasing, minimum wage, dog demon nuthouse partn—no wait, that was her. She was crying at herself.
Inuyasha realized the law would have expected him to comfort her at this point, but male instincts outweighed the Japanese legal system and he sank back into the couch, his ears flattened on his head—partly out of feeling shame without knowing why and partly because he was bored.
Suddenly, for a woman slowly turning into a funhouse mirror (Inuyasha snickered at his own thoughts), she jumped up quite quickly and declared:
"I have it! The internet!"
"That's already been invented, Kagome, and I can assure you, it has very little to do with the actual parenting as much as it has to do with the process--"
Her confused look quickly turned to an eye squinting, nose crinkling look of "ewwww".
Inuyasha knew when to shut up and followed her into her study.
Miroku realized, that, at the end of his rope, at the end of his mass supply of pick up lines, when Sango finally buys clothing made from 22% titanium strategically placed in the areas of her body that his hands loved to visit the most, near the edge of a relationship where she was about to fling out a restraining order, he would have to resort to what he considered the big guns:
Sensitivity to a mutual interest. In their case, Kagome and Inuyasha's Mrs. Higurashi-Induced-Relationship-From-The-Mouth-Of-Hell. They were also having a baby, which was probably psychologically ill-advised.
"Inuyasha's really not a bad guy," he began.
"That's the fortieth time in the past hour and a half you've been trying to start that conversation with me and this will be the fortieth time I'm telling you that it's a load of crap. It's because of him I'm stuck with you, anyway."
"Well, I have no other friends. Anyway, you shouldn't really be so judgmental about Inuyasha. Sure, he's possibly homicidal, insane within an inch of hospitalization, photo shops gay pornography with his brother in it and sells it on the internet, has never had a stable relationship...," Miroku registered Sango's expression, "...but there's a great reason for it! A superb reason!"
"He's the son of a rampaging dog demon who feasted upon the entrails of our ancestors to secure his power as the most evil of taiyoukai across the universe?"
"Nope. He once lost a testicle in a firecracker accident." It took Miroku a full half second to realize what flew out of his mouth.
Sango's look of incredulity turned to horror as she leaped for the phone. Miroku took the opportunity to grab her in a way that would be a cross between spooning and a full nelson.
"You can't tell Kagome! It would destroy her even more! And Inuyasha! If he isn't bad now, he'll be worse once his secret is out." He was wondering why he was playing this up. Perhaps because it was hilarious in a jackass sort of way and he would be in Costa Rica (with Sango hopefully) once Inuyasha found out.
"You're right. But we should go over there in case he breaks into some kind of abnormal emotional hysterics."
"Indeed, dear Sango, let me get our jackets," Miroku aided the rambling Sango to the door.
"No wonder he seems to be so violent towards Kagome...I mean, he must be horrible to all pregnant women who were obviously with very fertile men...with both their nuts! Imagine! It's like I understand Inuyasha for the first time!"
"Me too, Sango, me too." And they left.
"I'm only in my first trimester Inuyasha, so this will be the last time for the rest of the nine months I'll be slightly more rational than you. We're going to take advantage of this by getting all the shopping done."
Inuyasha opened his mouth just long enough for Kagome to realize what she had set up for herself, so she pelted him in the stomach.
"Just sit here and nod if I ask you anything."
They made it through four minutes of baby clothes, Inuyasha noted with some nausea that it was yellow, before she stopped.
"I'm hungry."
"Again?! Wench, you could out-eat a starved wolf-demon in front of a flock of sheep!"
"Inuyaaashaaa," Inuyasha had secretly named this whining as Evil Female Manipulation Technique Four, Ear Abuse continued.
"All right, all right already...you women like a raw slab of beef, right?"
A two foot sandwich and a diet coke later, she considered the raw slab.
"But make sure it died a natural death, Inuyasha. I was basically a vegetarian before this baby."
"Do you consider a claw to the brain natural?"
Miroku and Sango walked the six blocks to Kagome and Inuyasha's apartment in silence.
"Think they'll be glad to see us?" Miroku asked.
"I think Kagome will be grateful...poor thing...all alone in there with a deranged man who her mother is convinced will make her truly happy...it's like a tragedy. Kagome's always been so soft spoken and--"
They reached the outside of the apartment where people had gathered, pressing their ears against the door.
"What's wrong with Hachi for a name?! Hachi would fit any child that came out of you!"
"You scum sucking bastard! Hachi's the name of Miroku's raccoon; don't think I don't know what you and your friends do to small furry animals!"
"What the hell are you talking about, you lumpy refuse of a human female? Raccoons are soft, you chicks like soft things!"
"This ISN'T what I had in mind when I wanted to pick out baby names! Now let's just go with Kenji and—"
"Kenji?! KENJI! That's the name of a balding old man!"
"He'll be born bald!"
"How do you know it'll be a HE? For all your feminism, didn't even occur to your our kid would be a girl?"
"How would you know that? You barely recognize me as a girl and since when is it OUR KI--"
The door flew open with a crash like an incoming Peace Corp army. That was a paradox. "Surprise Kagome! We're here to um...help you with children's names."
"Well, you're too late for that, I'm going BACK to looking for clothes." And she turned away in a huff to the monitor.
Inuyasha mouthed "help me" to Miroku, who eased Sango towards Kagome for moral support, and then dragged Inuyasha into the kitchen.
"She's insane!"
"She's pregnant."
"I can't do this...would she settle for my worth in money?"
"Inuyasha, fifteen cents won't give her the support pregnant women need at some level. Besides, she's getting used to you. She looks lonely when we're here in the apartment and you're still at work. She doesn't do any of this name picking and clothes shopping without you. It might really only be her baby and some stranger's from the sperm bank, but it's slowly turning into your baby. This is the time when the baby and the experience of having it is shared with the person who encompasses her life, husband or no husband. I even hear her call Sango "Inuyasha" whenever she's about to make an important decision." Miroku decided to put that down in his Little Book of Advice to Incompetent Morons.
"So now she mistakes me for a chick that lives for spandex?"
Miroku pinched his nose between his fingers until the blood subsided. "No, what I mean is...she may look like Kikyo, but she isn't Kikyo, and she won't ever be Kikyo and the only way you'll ever be jailed because of her is if you don't stay with her. Also, um, may you be plagued with the guilt of a thousand assassins for leaving a pregnant woman to fend for herself." Miroku figured he should sound somewhat monk-ish and occult if he wanted to get across to a feudal dog demon.
"Miroku," Inuyasha said after some contemplation, "Nothing could save a thousand assassins pitted against a pregnant woman."
In the next room, over Kagome's violent mouse clicking, Sango's heart softened.