Kagome was the first to wake up. The first thing she noticed (before she opened her eyes) was that there was something strange on her face. The next thing she noticed was that it was unusually difficult to move her arms forward. When she opened her eyes, she noticed that it was rather dark, which was strange because the last thing she remembered was the bright afternoon sky, on top of the mountain, and the flying-saucer thingy in the valley, below. It was then that she realized she was lying face-down on the ground. Something pushed against her side, and she reached blindly to find the thing that pushed against her. Instead, she overshot and found the ground. She braced her hand against it and rolled over--
--and over and over and over and over and over! Kagome's mind went berzerk as she tried to comprehend what was happening to her: first she saw the pretty evening sky through treetops, which was quickly replaced by complete darkness, then the trees reappeared, then they disappeared, and this cycle kept repeating itself over and over again! For a moment, Kagome felt something sharp dig into her side, momentarily disrupting the pattern of near-darkness and total-darkness. Suddenly, she was flung on her side, and for a fraction of a second, she saw that the ground was tilted in a strange direction, and then the ground gave out from below her feet, and gravity dragged her, feet first, over a short ledge! She wanted to scream, but she landed too quickly and too hard that she didn't have time to realize that she didn't know how far above the ground she was. She landed on her feet, but the landing was so hard that she twisted her ankle and landed on her back, followed by three and a half reverse-sommersaults down the hill-- BAM!!
Kagome had closed her eyes from the first moment she got dizzy, so when she opened them again, she had no idea where she was. This time, the ground was above her, and when she looked down, towards the place where her feet should have been, she saw her feet, all right-- she was standing on the treetops!
Wait a minute! That's not right! Why don't I feel anything under my feet? she thought. She was suddenly overcome by a wave of nausea, and she took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. A moment later Kagome reopened them ashe wriggled out of her upside-down position against the tree, and rolled over onto her stomach, while the fluids in her inner-ear finished sloshing around. She looked up the hill, and she saw a cloud of dust rushing downhill towards her!
The dust cloud came to halt right in front of her, and Shippo hugged Kagome, sobbing into her shoulder. "Oh, Kagome! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to push you down the hill! Are you okay? I'm so sorry, Kagome! I'm so sorry! I really didn't mean it! " Kagome was speechless, as she would never have expected Shippo to push her down a hill like that. Kagome returned Shippo's hug and gazed upward at the hill, but she couldn't see where she'd fallen from.
A crashing noise suddenly caught Kagome's attention. The surprise wore off quickly, however, when she heard Kouga and Inuyasha shouting at each other. Kagome looked for the source of the sound, and she saw a huge object rolling quickly down the hill.
AT THE SAME TIME INUYASHA...
It started when Kouga rolled over in his sleep. It ended with Inuyasha and Kouga snarling at each other, staring each other down. In between these moments in time, Inuyasha and Kouga were rolling down a slope, tussling the whole way down.
"You bastard! What the hell did you think you were doing!"
"I just rolled over in my sleep, but you just had to park your no-good stinkin' carcass right next to me, and LOOK WHAT YOU DID!"
"What I did? You were the one that decided to roll over!"
"I can't help--!" BUMP! They hit a small tree, and changed direction. "--it if I roll around in my sleep!"
"You CAN help it if your going to roll OVER SOMEONE!"
"I would have rolled over you anyway, mutt-face!"
"Grrrrrr!" BUMP! "Stop calling me that, asshole!"
"Hell no!"
"And keep your paws the hell off Kagome!"
"And let her fall into your traps! What kind of idiot do you think I am!"
"The kind of idiot that uses his dumbass hitmen to shoot himself in the back!"
"Ginta and Hakkaku are out looking for food, dog-turd! They didn't hit us!"
"Then who the hell did?!"
"How the hell should I know?"
That question was never answered. It was at that moment that the tumbling pair dropped off a shallow ledge, into a mountain stream! SPLASH!
"Yikes! That was cold!" Inuyasha came up shivering.
Kouga resurfaced a few meters away, coughing up water. "You stupid-" cough, cough! "-imbecile! Look what you-" cough! "-did!" Inuyasha was too busy climbing up the riverbank to answer Kouga's insults, and that pissed Kouga off even more. "Hey, mutt-" cough! "mutt-face! Come back-" cough, cough! "Come back here!"
MEANWHILE...
Sango stood on cliff, over looking the village. Soldiers around her were expecting something to happen-- why else would they be so tense? Suddenly, there it was! The bird-of-paradise rose above the treetops, and opened its mouth, and a moment later, it released a ball of energy. The cliff in front of her exploded, and the blast knocked Sango off her feet. She landed on her back on the edge of the cliff. Suddenly she couldn't move! She wanted to get out of the way as the creature closed on her, but her body wouldn't respond! It was then she noticed that the cliff under her butt was shifting, sort of like... rubbing her butt!
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Mirouku was satiating his perverted desires when the hand came out of nowhere and--
Well, in the end he had four large bumps on his head, the wind knocked out of him, and his ears were still ringing from the shouting-at that he had been on the receiving end of.
Sango hugged Kirara close, and finished Mirouku's punishment: "DON'T YOU DARE GROPE ME WHILE I'M SLEEPING EVER AGAIN!", while glaring at him in a way that would make even Naraku want to hide in a corner and disappear.
Kagome heard screaming, and when she looked uphill toward the source of the sound, there was Sango!
A LITTLE WHILE LATER...
"How did we get here?" Kagome, Sango, Shippo, Mirouku, Kirara, Inuyasha, and Kouga were all together now, sitting in a circle, but nobody had any idea how to answer the question. Nobody, that is, except for Inuyasha and Kouga!
Inuyasha opened his mouth to speak, but Kouga instantly cut him off with his own report: "The last thing I remembered was eating lunch with the people wearing the strange clothes. When we were about to go to the saucer, we were attacked. Everyone was knocked unconcious, and the next thing I knew, mutt-face here had pushed me down the mountainside." Kouga shot Inuyasha a look that basically meant "how dare you!"
Inuyasha blew a strawberry and then said "Feh! I remember eating a strange lunch that the strange people pulled out of a strange box. At least the lunch was good. Afterward we started going down the mountain, and that's when everything went black."
"Funny, Inuyasha. I don't remember anything like that," Mirouku declared.
"I only remember being hungry, and I was running toward something. Then my memory just... stops, I guess," Shippo said.
"You know, I remember the same thing." Apparently, Sango was also in agreement with Shippo.
Everyone was quiet for a moment until Mirouku realized that 22 did not equal 5. "How come Inuyasha-sama and Kouga-sama remember eating lunch, but the rest of us don't?"
"Inuyasha and Kouga always remember what they ate for lunch. Especially if it was tasty," Kagome replied, as though the answer should have been obvious. She knew very well that she had just stated the obvious.
"Wait! Kouga, what did you just say about a saucer?" Sango asked.
"I said we were going to check out the saucer--" Kouga began.
"What saucer?" Kagome looked confused.
"You don't remember the saucer? Jeez, Kagome, can't you remember ANYTHING?" Inuyasha could not believe that they had come this far, and suddenly everyone forgot why they had even come in the first place!
"Sit boy!" WHOMP!
"Was that necessary?"
Shippo sighed. This was going to take a while.
"In your case, it's always necessary, mutt-face."
"Shut up, Kouga! You haven't been around long enough to say that!"
"The moment I saw you, I knew you needed the pain!"
"QQQQQUUUUUIIIIIIIEEEEETTTTTT!" Mirouku shouted. "Okay. Let's listen to Miss Kagome before we start jumping at each other's throats."
"Thank you, Mirouku. Okay, so... where were we?" said Kagome.
"You had just said that you didn't know what saucer Inuyasha was been talking about," replied Sango.
"Ah, yes. The saucer. Inuyasha, where did you say the saucer was?"
"It should be just on the other side of the hill, but where we are now, I haven't a clue."
"Why don't you climb a tree. Then you should be able to see where we are," suggested Mirouku.
"I'll do it!" Kouga was up the tree before anyone else could object.
Suddenly, Inuyasha smelled somehing. More accurately, he had been smelling something, but he hadn't realized that he had been smelling it. Whatever it was, it certainly smelled good! And the delicious aroma came from Kagome's backpack! "Kagome?"
"Yes?"
"What's in your pack?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Because something smells good."
"Oh, no you don't! You already ate everything!"
"So did Kouga!"
"What did I do?" Kouga inquired from half-way up the tree.
"You and I raided Kagome's backpack, remember?"
"The hell I did!" Kouga started climbing again. "It was all you, dog-turd, and you know it!"
"Shut up, Kouga." Sango entered the conversation. Kirara sat up in Sango's lap, but even she went out of her way to give Kouga the "evil-kitty look-of-DOOM". And then she went back to her cat-nap again, with Sango's hand resting on her furry head.
Kouga glared from the treetop down at Inuyasha because he blamed Inuyasha for every little thing that went wrong in his life (except for his birth, for which he can only blame his mother. After all, he IS a sonofabitch). Inuyasha looked at Kagome, expecting her to say something soon. He wasn't disappointed.
"Inuyasha, what 'saucer' was Kouga talking about?"
"Kagome? Do you remember when we were hiking on the mountain? Do you remember WHY we were hiking out that far?"
"Of course: to collect jewel shards."
"Kagome?"
"Yes, Inuyasha?"
"Can you think of any other reason why we might be on this mountain?"
"Well, no. I mean, Naraku lives out there-" she pointed at a large manor house that was barely visible near the horizon, and very far away.
"Kagome? Do you remember anything strange happening recently?"
"Of course! We just woke up here."
"What was the last thing you remember happening, just before you got here?"
Kagome leaned back against her backpack and thought for a moment. "The last thing I remember, we were chasing Shippo."
"And then?"
"And that's it. And then suddenly we're all here." Kagome paused for a second before continuing. During that pause, she made a face and clicked her tongue. "I have a funny taste in my mouth." Kagome proceded to the stream to wash her mouth out.
"Kagome," Inuyasha prodded, "do you know what that funny taste in your mouth is? It's food! Don't you remember where Shippo was running to? He was chasing the smell of FOOD!"
"Did you KISS me?"
"Kagome-!"
"Sit, boy! How else could you know what that taste in my mouth was? How dare you!" Kagome rinsed one more time before she turned around. The fresh-water stream was refreshing, but it was freezing! "I thought it tasted familiar, though."
"The guys called it 'shikabob.' Or something like that." Inuyasha answered as best he could with his head in the ground.
"You mean 'shiSHkabob' mutt-face. Get it right," Kouga piped up, again.
"Whatever, Kouga!"
"Hey, Kouga?"Sango had a question.
"Yeah, Sango?"
"What did you see when you were in the tree?"
"The mountain top is about a hundred meters that way-" Kouga pointed uphill "-and from there, we should be able to see how far we are from the saucer."
"What saucer, Kouga?" Sango asked.
Kouga was shocked. Did no one else remember the saucer? How could this happen? "Remember the bright thing in the sky a couple weeks ago?"
"You mean the thing that Kaede said had plowed through three villages in the Valley, and flattened several others?"
"I guess. Was it round?" Kouga had not been there when Kaede broke the news to the gang.
"Yes."
"And it was really bright, and fast?"
"Yup. That's it. And you say it landed just over this mountain?"
"Yeah."
"Wow! Let's check it out!"
Kouga blinked his eyes for a few seconds. He couldn't believe that nobody remembered that they had been looking for the saucer.
"You all right, Kouga?" Sango asked, wondering why he blinked.
"Huh? Oh, yeah. I'm all right," Kouga replied. At first, Sango didn't look like she believed him, but before he could say more, she got up, and walked over to Kagome.
"Kagome, do you think we should keep looking for the 'saucer'?" Sango asked.
"Sure. And especially if it has jewel shards," Kagome replied.
"That thing probably had a lot of jewel shards. It could be dangerous," Inuyasha warned.
"And why do you think that, Inuyasha?" Kagome asked.
"Have you ever seen anything that big, before?"
"How big was it?" Kagome, Shippo, Mirouku and Sango asked, almost in unison.
Jeez. "Nevermind. The thing was humongous, and it made a really loud thunder sound when it flew in the sky. It was round, and it lit up around its edges. It also leveled Kaede's village, and it THREW ME OFF MY TREE!" Everyone laughed when Inuyasha finished his complaints.
SEVERAL MINUTES LATER...
When everyone finally finished laughing, it was nearly dark. The first-quarter moon was visible overhead as the last rays of sunlight dipped below the horizon. As the gang had already set up camp, they had already begun to bed-down for the night. Everyone, that is, except for Shippo and Kirara. Sango had told Kirara to keep an eye on Mirouku, and make sure he didn't try anything (Sango does value her virginity, you know). Just as everyone was finally falling asleep, Kirara nestled against Mirouku, so if he moved, then she would be the first to know. Shippo, on the other hand, sat by the smoldering campfire a little longer before he wandered off into the woods, looking for berries.
He wouldn't be alone for long...
A/N:
I bet Inuyasha would think that if he were ever to read my story.
Does anybody know the name of the valley that is closest to modern-Tokyo?
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Whenever Inuyasha asks permission to talk here, he's not being polite; he's being cautious, lest he accidentally give Kagome ample reason to "Sit!" him. Notice he ONLY asks Kagome.