"You don't need to come out," Sesshoumaru said. "I think I hear someone coming."
Sure enough, a few seconds later, a woman came out of the forest. She
was tall and a bit overweight, with brown hair and green eyes.
"Hey, Jaken, it's your Mom," Sesshouamru said.
"Any chance you're adopted?" Rin asked.
"SHUT UP!"
"Jaken!" The woman said, zeroing in on the wooden door. "You get out here THIS SECOND or they will never find your body!"
"…yes Mother."
The door swung open, revealing a very sad-looking Jaken. (By this point
the looks like the little toad-demon we all know and… uh… love. Yeah.)
"Why didn't you come home last night? And…" his mother examined him a bit more.
"You look different."
"YA THINK?"
"What happened?" With a little more precision, she looked around at the
people in the clearing, from the dog eared boy on the ground to the
regal white haired man to the oddly dressed teenagers and finally back
to her own son. "What happened to all of you?"
"All of us?" Inu no taisho protested. "Hmmm… Jaken, IS there any way that you're adopted?"
"I don't think-"
"Why? What's all this about? You guys aren't Satanists, are you?"
"No, my dear woman, we are not Satanists."
"THEN WHAT HAPPENED TO MY LITTLE BOY?"
"Please, stop shrieking," Sesshoumaru, pressing his hands to his overly- sensitive ears. "That hurts."
"Hmm… this is interesting." Inu no taisho said, thinking. "Jaken, you
are most certainly a youkai, but your mother seems to be human.
Something is horribly drastically wrong here."
"Youkai? What's a youkai?"
"Um… something like a demon."
"You shouldn't have-" Jaken started.
"SATANISTS!"
"This is gonna take awhile," Inu no taisho said. As it turned out, he
was wrong. Jaken's mother fumbled at her throat, coming up with a large
silver cross on a chain. Holding it out, she slowly backed away from
the others.
"You stay away from me…"
"Dad, will that-"
"Nope. Totally harmless."
"Mom, you're overreacting, put the cross away-"
"You stay away too!" His mother cried, pointing the cross directly at
Jaken. The boy slumped, taking his height down to a foot and a half.
"I'm going to get my husband, and don't you even think about following me! Christ will keep your evil at bay!"
With that, the woman turned and ran into the forest. No one made a move to follow her, and christ had nothing to do with it.
"Well that was interesting."
"Interesting? My mother just turned a cross on me!" Jaken dropped to
the ground, looking sadly at the dirt. "I can't go home. So what do I
do now?"
Rin went and sat next to him. Sesshoumaru noticed that Jaken was just wearing a T-shirt, which looked comically big on him.
"It'll be okay, Jaken. You'll see."
"If it helps any, there's no way that woman can be your mother."
"Yeah, thanks," Jaken snapped. "That helps a lot. You know what, how
bout you guys and your super powers and your vaguely- human looking
bodies leave me alone for a while? Yes?"
"Jaken…"
A huge rock flew at Jaken. The boy barely had time to register that it
was there before it was on top of him. He pushed it back, and it went
flying off into the woods.
"What the HELL WAS THAT?"
Inu no taisho, who had thrown the rock, sighed.
"Well, given your current stature that rock should have killed you, but
it didn't, proving that you're a lot better off than you think you are,
as far as demonic power goes, so quit complaining."
"Thanks for the sympathy."
Rin put her arm around Jaken.
"Come on, lighten up. It'll be okay. You'll see."
"No it won't."
"In any case, we might not want to stay here. Jaken's parents will no doubt return shortly and try to exorcise us."
"Is that bad?"
"Usually not, because they call on christ and not the ancient purifying
power, but it is still rather annoying. See what normally will happen
on one of these moons is a bunch of humans become hell-bent on
exorcising everything in sight. Whole towns can rally just to try to
purify one family, but that's mostly in the middle east. Anyway, today
is going to be chaotic, everywhere in the world. Normally what happens
is this. Some new demon gets their powers and marks. Convinced they're
the only ones in the world going through it, they flee their parents
and friends, like you three did. Then we, the parents, have to track
you guys down. And then there's people like Jaken, who for whatever
reason, don't have a youkai parent to tell them all of this. They're
the problem kids."
"What happens to them?"
"Usually they can cover it up, and live out their lives pretending to
be human. Sometimes they flee to wherever they can get away and become
hermits. Sometimes they allow themselves to be purified, which never
helps, and kills them if it works. Sometimes they kill themselves,
convinced that they are becoming a tool of satan."
'That's awful!"
"And not very likely, we're hard to kill."
"And what happens to us? What do I do? I've got nowhere to go except maybe the circus."
"And that's where you're wrong. See, there's a choice that we make. All
of us. There is, through a fluke or a spell or whatever, a portal to a
long-gone past where youkai are common. Many of you will choose to go
there. Many will stay behind, choosing their past lives over their
possible futures."
"So we have to pick between a life a thousand years in the past of a life here as freaks?"
"Actually, Jaken, youkai like you usually have little choice in the matter."
"Daddy? I wanna go home. I'm bored. Can we go home?" Inuyasha suddenly reappeared, tugging on his father's hand.
Inu no taisho looked into the forest where Jaken's mother had gone. He sniffed and looked troubled.
"Yeah. I think that would be best."
Sesshoumaru listened hard. He heard a lot more noises than he could
identify, but one he could was the sound of people coming, and by the
smell of it, quite a few of them.
Jaken's mother must have gotten more than her husband.
I'm sorry for this, religious fanatics are just too much not to make fun of. I read this 'anime is the work of satan' article and it was so stupid the author gave me the base for the character of Jaken's mother.
This chapter is dedicated to my dear enemy Tyko because she stopped IM
ing me for long enough that I could write it, and for talking to me on
the phone, even is she was using an electric razor to shave the
receiver at the time.
Also, to InuRyuuyoukai, for providing me with five minutes of
entertainment while I tried to work out what your name was. Very
original.