Mrryl: Alright, I'm gonna be working on my novel more now... my Mom is starting to get annoyed that my "practice work" is getting in the way of my real writing. Sorry, but it's going to take longer to write more chapters! Wait... I have an idea! I'm going to alternate in my writing! Each night I'll dedicate to writing one of my fanfics! So that I'll write one night on Inu Yasha, another on Resident Evil, then another on my Novel! Yay!

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Litadrene: Congrats! I wanna read your novel... let me read what you got so far!

Mrryl: Ummm... no. You can read it after I'm done the next chapter... alright?

Litadrene: Okay... Damnnit....

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Inuyasha awoke in the hut he had come to know quite well recently. Kaede was changing the bandage, with Nekogome holding onto his other side, restraining him as he tried to get up, the pain of the old bandage ripping at the scab was unbelievable in it's magnitude.

Nekogome blushed when he grabbed her lower arm and squeezed from the pain, her face turning a slight pink as her hands pressed down on his chest while Kaede worked off the bandage that had crusted with blood.

"I need this cleaned, I shall ask one of the village women to do it, please wait here, air would do the wound well anyway," Kaede said as she shuffled off, leaving the two alone.

"So, Nekogome... is it bad?" Inuyasha asked jokingly, a smile on his face. The smile vanished when he noticed the sad and frightened look in her eyes.

"I thought you were gonna die," she confessed after a few seconds of an uncomfortable silence. She shivered slightly, but continued on.

"I brought you back and told Kaede what happened, she brought you back in and when we took off the odd clothing you wore, the blood started coming," her eyes glazed with unshed tears, "I didn't think you would make it, so I ran away with Shippo... so he couldn't see you die. But the villagers didn't give up, they kept you going," she finished, the tears running down her face. He then noticed something.

"Hey, where did that cloth you wrapped around yours eyes go?" he asked, she blushed, her hand going down towards the wound on his stomach, stopping over it.

"After they stabilized you, I stayed with you all night... I slept next to you," she blushed furiously at this, her body radiated heat. "Half way through the night, I awoke drenched in your blood... I didn't know what to do, the bandage they put on you was drenched and the blood flew through it, like it wasn't there. Kaede had told me when she first gave me that cloth that it had been treated with some foreign plant that took away pain, and slowed blood flow. So I took it off, felt for the wound and I kinda... err... tied it around your wound, then I ran to get Kaede." She finished, her face red and the tears still flowing, but her voice barely quivering anymore.

"Oh! I forgot to tell you, Kaede gave us this little hut... umm... as our own little home," Nekogome said, then quickly said, "But if you don't want to share it with a half-breed, I understand, after all, she did officially give it to you-" Nekogome started, but was cut off by Inuyasha.

"Maybe I want to share it?" Inuyasha said, his voice slightly quivering.

"Really?" Nekogome asked, her eyes glittering.

She's beautiful... Inuyasha thought to himself, entranced by her current expression, the quivering lip, the teary eyes. He bent upwards, ignoring the searing pain and the way his nerves screamed at him to lay back down. When his lips were a mere centimeter from hers, they both heard a light yawn.

"Shippo!" Nekogome managed to gasp before she pulled herself away, Inuyasha fell backwards to lay on the ground again, his nerves seeming to scream in pain.

The little fox youkai sat up, yawning louder and stretching. He looked at the two, noticing their flushed faces.

"What's going on? Is Inuyasha going to be okay?" Shippo asked, his eyes filled with concern for their human companion. (Gee, I never thought I'd EVER refer to IY as the "H" word... hehehe.) He slowly walked towards Inuyasha, jumping onto his chest and sitting there, then stating, in a loud voice, "I thought you were hurt bad! I talked Kaede-san into helping you quick! We thought you were dead! It was scary... plus," a playful edge snuck into his voice, "Nekogome was REALLY worried about you! She nearly sucked the blood of your wound! Any demon knows about the healing properties of a cat demon's lips," he said as Nekogome flushed a deep scarlet, grabbing Shippo and slapping him firmly across the face.

"How dare you tell him that! You-have-no-right-to-tell-him-something-as-personal-as-that!" she said all this in one breath, leaving her gasping slightly as she shook him some more, making him cry a bit as he struggled out of her grasp. She rose from her sitting position, chasing after him, extremely miffed at his intervention. When they heard Kaede's voice yelling at someone in the distance, Nekogome's cat's ears perked up as she heard a familiar voice.

"Wait... is that him?" she asked, Shippo's eyebrows perked in confusion.

"Who? Nekogome? WHO IS IT?" Shippo shouted, his patience expended within the first few seconds of waiting for an answer. Inuyasha stood up, grabbing a cane from the nearby wall and hobbling outside, his body screaming at him to sit, yet his curiosity getting the better of him as he followed out the shaking neko hanyou as they left the hut.

Outside was Kaede, standing in the middle of the street, arguing with someone who looked like a teenager, easily Inuyasha's own age. He'd have thought that this was just another villager, except for the fact that the young man wore expensive looking robes and had two other major differences: One of those was a set of elf-like ears, the other was a long cat-like tail that wrapped around his shoulder and ran down to his waist, flipping in the wind, the exact contrast to it's owner's dour face. The crescent moon on his forehead seemed to glisten purple in the sunlight. He was arguing with Kaede about Nekogome, and Inuyasha was wondering how he knew her when she gasped.

"Souta!" Nekogome gasped, he merely looked at her and smirked in scorn.

"So, sister... I see you have awakened. I thought you were gone forever," he said, then began to turn, only to have her run after him. He merely turned when she was within arm's reach, backhanding her smartly across the face to send her reeling and landing on her back.

"You are merely a filthy half-breed, I won't tolerate you anymore... maybe when Mother was alive, but I was always better than you were...." Souta said as he turned and began to walk away again, casting a glance over his shoulder at Inuyasha, who was helping Nekogome get up.

"So, you are like Mother? You really should stop taking company with humans, they are a bad influence and merely cattle. I advise you to stay away from them," he finished as he kept walking, Nekogome stood there, watching his retreating form with tears in her eyes.

"I thought we were close..." she said when he was almost out of sight. Finally the tears began to flow, at first small trails down her face but then they ran down in face in gushes, she fell to her knees, broken. After a few moments of not knowing what to do, Inuyasha limped over to Nekogome, kneeling next to her and putting an arm around her. She shrugged him off angrily.

"Leave me alone, human!" she growled as she got up and dashed off, disappearing into the forest.

"Damn! Why did she decide to call me 'human'?" Inuyasha asked no one, only to get a response from Shippo, who had walked up to his side, unnoticed, when Nekogome ran off.

"Hmmm... maybe it's because she wants her little brother to like her, and she thinks you're the reason?" he said.

Inuyasha was annoyed by this, but patted Shippo on the head as he began to follow Nekogome into the woods, her woods.

There you have it! This is the end of this chapter (obviously) and I just hope I haven't taken too long so that all the readers have stopped reading it – if they have then I'll stop writing this but hopefully that won't happen.