A/N (Super Ceech) ...Yeah. It's extremely late. Let's all look accusingly at Spacey. –everyone looks at Spacey who is distracted by her new foamy Sesshoumaru keychain– Riiight...that's not getting us very far... I guess you'll just have to read the chapter...
A/N (Spacewolf) I had a scary thought while writing this. You know how Sesshomaru and Inuyasha are both dog demons? Does that mean they can lick themselves?
"Please master Sesshomaru, let me stay with you! Let me stay, let me stay! Always with you! Stay! With you! Always! Staying with you!"
Rin was singing.
It was an original piece made up on the spot. As passerbys could clearly hear. But to proud papa Sesshomaru, it was the most beautiful song he'd ever heard.
Today was an important day for Sesshomaru; he was looking for pieces of Jaken. You see, last week Jaken had read some scary poetry to Sesshomaru and had been killed. But now, a week later, Sesshomaru was beginning to realize that without Jaken, he was going to have to start doing his own work. And well, Sesshomaru of the western lands wasn't about to start doing his own work!
So he was gathering up little bits of Jaken to put them together and bring him back to life and then never lift a finger to do anything else again in his life. It seemed like a good idea to him. He'd now gathered up all of Jaken's body parts.
"Rin," he said looking over his shoulder. "Go play!"
"Yes, Master Sesshomaru!" she agreed eagerly.
She dashed off to go play, leaving Sesshomaru to assemble Jaken by himself. To pass the time, Sesshomaru was singing a song of his own.
"The head stump's connected to the neck stump, the neck stump's connected to this thing, this thing's connected to that other thing..."
..:V:..
"Staying! Forever! With Sesshomaru! Oh Sesshomaru! Hum, hum, hum! Let me stay! I'll play all day! If I can stay! I'll behave if I can stay!"
Rin was happily frolicking through a meadow full of wild flowers since they were so common in the forest.
"Psst," said a sharp voice to her right. "Hey you! Kid!"
Rin turned around and looked at the shady figure, hunched over a gnarled cane wearing a long tattered cloak.
"C'mere!"
"Me?" Rin asked, pointing to herself.
"Yeah you! Git over here!" the crone commanded.
"Okay, sir!" Rin agreed.
"I'm a woman!" the crone shouted indignantly.
Rin stopped.
"Oh," she said with great surprise. "But you look like man!"
"No, I don't!" the old woman snapped.
"Yes, you do," Rin insisted. "Look! You've got a three day beard!"
"It's just the shadows!" the old woman snapped, hastily covering up the lower half of her face.
"It's stubble!" Rin insisted. "But it's okay to look like a boy and really be a girl. My daddy Sesshomaru looks like a girl but is really a boy."
"Listen, kid!" the old woman snapped, getting really irritated. "I am not a man, okay? I'm a woman! I'm a beautiful and independent woman and I don't need a man, or a razor to make me feel good about myself, okay?"
"Why would you need a man to make you feel beautiful when you look like a man?" Rin wondered innocently.
"Alright, that is it!" the crone shouted. She shuffled towards Rin angrily. "I was going to give you candy and tell you what a pretty little girl you are, but now I'm going to lay a major wammy of a doo-hickey of a curse on you!"
Rin thought that sounded kind of mean. But just then, Sesshomaru strode into the clearing.
"Rin, how many fingers did Jaken have?" he asked with a frown. "I thought he only had six, but I found seven..."
Rin hurried over to look at the disembodied bits in Sesshomaru's hand.
She beckoned Sesshomaru down and whispered in his ear, "That's not a finger Fluffy-sama."
Sesshomaru straightened up and nodded.
"It must be his nose," he agreed, walking away. "Thank you Rin. Good day, sir."
"I'm a ma'am, not a sir!" the crone shouted. But Sesshomaru didn't hear her. The seething crone turned to Rin. "Okay, little lady," she growled. "You're going to get it now!"
Rin didn't know what it was, but she was hoping it would be a puppy.
She liked puppies. They had cute wet noses, and they let you pet their bellies and they licked your face and looked so cute when they scratched themselves.
Just like Sesshomaru!
Except for the scratching thing.
The crone then cast a wicked spell most foul upon Rin.
She reached for all the powers of the netherworld and turned Rin into a young saucy thang like the lady in the cursed sugar had last week, that Rin didn't remember because she went skinny dipping in the fountain of youth and forgetfulness.
And again Rin was busting out of her kimono with sixteen year-old hotness. Since Rin is a manga and anime girl, she was naturally a little better endowed then most sixteen year-old girls would be. But in her tight kimono, stretching to conceal every contour of her now older body, nature and anatomically correct proportions were not important!
"Gee," Rin said, looking down at her now almost completely exposed chest. "Is this it? I was hoping for a puppy!"
The crone laughed wildly.
"Ah hahahahaha! But what use would a cat have for a puppy?" she asked with a devious smirk. She touched her pinky to the corner of her mouth before she realized she was infringing on a about a billion copyright laws.
"I'm not a kitty," Rin protested.
"Ah, but you are!" the crone laughed. "You are now a hot young neko youkai! You have cute furry ears, you have claws and you have a tail coming out the bottom of your shamefully short kimono! And you have a power whip."
"Can I trade the whip in for a puppy?" Rin asked excitedly.
The crone glared.
"No, you can't trade the whip in for a puppy!" she replied in aggravation. "Heed my word, foolish mortal!"
"But I'm youkai now," Rin protested.
The crone grit her teeth.
"Okay, heed my words, foolish ex-mortal!" she grated. "You must, within a week, find a youkai male and make him fall in love with you! And it must be true love! He must wed you, and you must consummate your marriage, all before the sun sets on the seventh day!"
"Could you give me an hour range?" Rin asked curiously.
"Huh?" asked the crone.
"Well if you say seven days, one could argue that it's seven days after today, or one could argue that it's seven days starting today. There's just this big discrepancy with how long I really have so I'd feel much better if you could give me a rang of hour to narrow my time down."
"Yeah sure," the crone said with a shrug. "Uh, how about 168 hours, starting next hour on the hour."
"Thanks," Rin said with a happy grin. "But I'm afraid you over looked the fact that it's impossible to form a long lasting and substantial relationship with anyone in just 168 hours. I mean there's no way I could know enough about anyone after only a week to marry them for the rest of my unnaturally long youkai life, or consummate anything with them. It would cheapen me and it would cheapen true love."
"Honey," the crone said. "Save it for a demon who cares!"
"B-but what if I can't do it?" Rin asked, weeping at the crone's insensitivity. "What happens if the time runs out and I haven't found him?"
The crone cackled gleefully. "Oh, I don't recommend that, child!"
"W-w-why not?"
"Because something disastrous will occur! Something unfathomably, horrendously and stupendously awful! Something so mind-bendingly and mind-boggling bad that you'll cry yourself to sleep for years and years and most likely decades to come!"
"...But WHAT will happen?" Rin asked blankly.
The crone snapped her gaze to the girl before her, giving her a glare. "Shut it, kid. All you need to know that it's really bad! Really, really bad! You won't like it! It'll be painful and crushing to your soul and mind and heart alike! Trust me, steer clear of the consequence!"
"Errr...oookay..." Rin reluctantly let it go. Then another thought occurred. "But I've never been in love!" she shouted desperately. "How will I know? I need more time then a mere 168 hours!"
"Well you should have thought about that before I cursed you!" the crone snapped. "Besides! Looking for your true love is easy! Just look for the guy with the bubbles, or the sparkles or the stars around his head. He should look kinda pastelly and blurry and you should hear bad music!"
"Oh. Well that's handy!"
Rin then proceeded to skip away, singing a new tune.
"Oh where oh where has my true love gone? Oh where or where could he be? I'm looking for sparkles and bubbles that shine to prove that he's really mine!"
Avril Lavigne began spinning in her grave at these lyrics. Even though she's not born yet and technically can't be dead.
As Rin frolicked, she happened upon Sesshomaru, who was still trying to stick that final bit of Jaken onto the imp demon's nose. It was not working.
"Maybe it's like a stamp," Sesshomaru wondered idly, eyeing the bit in his hand. "Maybe you have to lick it to make it sticky..."
That struck Rin as a very bad idea, and so she stepped into the clearing to speak up against that.
Before she could utter a word though, she was struck by something else. How incredibly hot Fluffy-Sama was!
His long silver hair undulated in a convenient breeze. His high cheekbones gave him an aristocratic and regal look. His eyeshadow added some much needed colour to pallor of his ivory skin. His kimono, for reasons science cannot yet explain had come partially open and Rin could see his strong youkai chest beneath it. Glistening with sweat because sweat is sexy and Sessy is sexy therefore he must be sweaty.
"I can see clearly now, the rain has gone..." warbled a voice in the back of Rin's head. As if on cue.
At once the forest dropped away and was filled instead with a flat background of pastel bubbles. Each glinting with the same light that dappled Sesshomaru's features.
"And my heart will go on, and on!" the voice in the back of Rin's mind continued wildly off key.
Then the sparkles rolled in. Big and glittery and luminous. They sprinkled themselves lovingly like star dust across Sesshomaru's features. Bathing them in their light.
"Row row row your boat..." the voice continued, for some reason singing the entire line in the key of high F.
'Wow,' Rin thought sluggishly, too mesmerized by Sesshomaru's beauty to think clearly. 'I wonder if he's my true love?'
Made bold by the sparkles and the bubbles and her new found hormones, she approached, kneeling beside Sesshomaru and taking his hand before he could test his stamp theory.
Sesshomaru, puzzled that he'd been stopped and preparing to kill something, glanced at her.
"Fluffy-sama," Rin said, her tail coiling about her coyly. "It's me, Rin."
Sesshomaru looked her over.
"Yup," he agreed calmly. "So it is. Rin, who cursed you to be older and hot this time?"
"Some old man," Rin replied, rising to her feet, suddenly shy. She turned away from him and walked a few steps. Sesshomaru rose as well.
"You're youkai now, huh?" he wondered.
"Yes, Fluffy-Sama," Rin agreed in a tearful voice. "I'm a cat youkai!"
"Yeeee-ah," Sesshomaru agreed. Eyeing the ears and the tails.
"Oh, Fluffy-sama!" Rin exploded, turning to him again.
(She didn't literally explode folks, it's an expression, otherwise this fic would be a lot shorter!)
"I must find myself a youkai mate, fall in love with him, true love, and we must consummate this love within 168 hours!"
Sesshomaru nodded thoughtfully.
"Well do you have any idea who your true love is?"
Rin felt very kittenish, mainly because she was now a cat youkai, but also because she was shy.
Softly, she answered. "He is very tall, and handsome."
Sesshomaru pulled out a note book and began to take notes.
"He has long, long hair, and markings on his face..."
"Good," Sesshomaru muttered to himself. "That'll make it easier to find him!"
Dismayed, Rin added.
"He wears a kimono..."
"Ah, wonderful; no nudist for you, Rin!" Sesshomaru congratulated her good taste.
"He's a dog youkai," she added pointedly.
"All the best are!" Sesshomaru bragged.
"He's got a giant fluffy thing," Rin told him, giving him a look...which he failed to notice because he was jotting that down.
"Wonderful, I'll find him in no time!"
With that Sesshomaru put the little note book back where he'd gotten it from (you DON"T wanna know) and then he turned into a ball of light and zipped away.
Rin felt it most keenly in her heart as her true love became incandescent and zoomed from her side. Sighing bitterly, she sat down and waited for her lover to return to her. So she could explain to him that HE was her lover.
"If you get down on me I'll get down on you!" the voice shrilled.
..:V:..
"For the last time!" Kouga snapped, slapping Ginta upside the head roughly. "That is not how 'I Like Big Butts' goes!"
"Actually it's called baby got back," Hakkaku said helpfully.
"That's how I sing it!" Ginta snapped angrily. "I can see clearly now the rain has gone!"
..:V:..
"Rin!" Sesshomaru said excitedly, reappearing. "I found your lover!"
He dropped Naraku in a disgruntled heap in front of Rin.
The girl regarded Naraku in great surprise.
"Naraku?" she demanded. "He's not my lover!"
"I told you," Naraku muttered, angrily.
"But he's got the long, long hair, and the markings on his face," Sesshomaru protested serenely.
"It's eyeshadow!" Naraku snapped.
"And he's got the fluffy thing!"
"It's a baboon pelt!"
"It's fluffy, isn't it?" Sesshomaru countered.
"He's not a dog youkai," Rin sighed patiently.
"But Kagura called him a bitch," Sesshomaru answered.
"It's not the same thing," Rin told him patiently.
"I'll take him back," Sesshomaru decided.
"My lover has long SILVER hair," Rin said firmly.
Sesshomaru nodded and a disappeared again, to return Naraku to his castle, or rather to drop him in the nearest lake.
..:V:..
Rin was picking flowers when next Sesshomaru reappeared. She may have had the body of a sixteen year-old, but she had the attention span of a kitten.
"I found someone new!" Sesshomaru said proudly, brandishing his newest acquisition.
Rin looked the youkai over and said, very slowly. "My lover has to be a boy, Fluffy-Sama."
"Oh. Sorry miss!"
The silver haired female youkai with a big fluffy purse, sniffed and marched away, much offended.
"A boy you say?" Sesshomaru asked. He nodded and then disappeared once more to fetch Rin a male husband.
..:V:..
Sesshomaru was bursting with pride when he returned.
"Look, Rin!" he said proudly. "You can marry Inuyasha! He likes humans, maybe he likes ex-humans too! And he's got that fluffy thing on the Tetsusaiga!"
While Rin was impressed with Sesshomaru's ingenuity, Inuyasha was not. He was being restrained by his older brother, muttering curses and insults too foul for Rin's delicately new cat-like ears to stomach.
"Fluffy-Sama!" Rin said finally, having had enough of these games. She marched up to him and took his face in her hands. Inuyasha was starting to feel really uncomfortable with this whole thing.
"My one true love, whom I must marry and consummate the union with is named Sesshomaru!"
Inuyasha stared at Rin, making gagging sounds.
Sesshomaru blinked in some surprise before he dropped Inuyasha and straightened up, rising to his full height.
Inuyasha scrambled away, gagging and whimpering at the thought of his brother consummating anything!
"I see," Sesshomaru said slowly. "That's a very fine name, Rin."
"A very fine name indeed Fluffy-sama," she agreed in shaky relief.
"You have good taste," Sesshomaru added slowly.
"The very best taste," she nodded, happy that he was at last catching on.
"I'll go find him!" Sesshomaru promised and vanished.
Then again, maybe not.
..:V:..
Rin was asleep when Sesshomaru returned.
"I couldn't possibly have failed," he bragged. "Come on out!"
Rin watched in amazement as a tall, dog youkai with long, long silver hair stepped out of the shadows beside Sesshomaru. He had purple lightning bolts on his cheeks and a purple sun on his forehead. He wore a powder blue kimono with armor over his left shoulder and a big fluffy cape over his left arm.
Rin stared at Fluffy-sama's almost exact duplicate, swallowing hard.
"This is your one true love," Sesshomaru said proudly. "Sesshomaru."
The demon at his side blinked.
"Actually, my name is Zesshomaru," the demon corrected. "That's spelled with a Z not an S."
Sesshomaru sighed and looked at Rin.
"Close enough, right?" he asked weakly. He was getting tired from all this running around.
Rin rose and approached Sesshomaru, taking his hand and looking right into his eyes. Apparently, she was going to have to be very firm and direct with him.
"Fluffy-sama," she said, quite patiently, all things considered. "You are my one true love!"
"Me?" Sesshomaru demanded.
"Yes!"
Sesshomaru nodded, a million things clicking into place.
"Wait here," he commanded. "I'll go find me!"
Rin stared after him, her heart slowly crumbling to pieces within her chest. Sadly, she shook her head and sank to her knees, crying bitterly.
"Why are all the hot ones stupid?" she demanded raggedly.
"There, there," Zesshomaru said kindly, patting her shoulder. "Nick from the Newlyweds asked me the very same thing!"
..:V:..
"Sesshomaru-sama?"
Lord of the Western lands lifted up a rock and peered under it determinedly. Besides some crawling grubs and worms and one little tiny centipede demon who gave Sesshy come hither looks, there was nothing interesting under the rock.
He dropped the rock and straightened up.
"I'm definitely not there..." he decided and strode off. He peered behind a tree but found nothing of note there, except Kikyo frantically huffing from a small white cylinder. Sesshomaru thought about asking her, but he could never understand anything she said anyway.
Sighing heavily, Sesshomaru continued to look for himself. Finally he stumbled upon Inuyasha and his friends, Inuyasha was regaling them with a strange tale that seemed to upset them all.
"And then she said consummated!" Inuyasha sounded horrified, like a seven year-old boy who had just been kissed, by his mother in public. "And she was looking at Sesshomaru like a deer looks at a big block of salt!"
"And how is that, Inuyasha?" Sango asked curiously.
"Brother!" Sesshomaru called out to the gang. Before Inuyasha got a chance to explain what salt licks had to do with his brother.
They all stiffened and stared at Sesshomaru in horror as he approached them.
"He doesn't look like a salt lick to me," Shippou muttered to Kagome, who nodded her agreement.
"What do you want, you bastard?" Inuyasha demanded, putting a hand on his sword.
"I want your help," Sesshomaru replied in his grandly emotionless voice. "I am searching for Rin's ideal mate."
"Yeah, I got that," Inuyasha nodded. "I was there, it was disgusting."
"Yes, well," Sesshomaru replied ignoring that. "Rin has told me that the name of her one true love is Sesshomaru."
The Inuyasha gang neither gasped, nor blinked twice. They merely exchanged sidelong glances which plainly said, 'This surprises me how?'
Anti-climactically Sesshomaru added, "That's me."
"Yeeeah," Inuyasha drawled. "I figured that."
There was a long awkward pause while Sesshomaru waited expectantly for their help, and they waited just as expectantly for him to continue his explanation.
"Well," Sesshomaru sighed.
"Well what?" Kagome wondered.
"Well, have you seen me?"
Silence rang.
Inuyasha opened his mouth to speak.
"Ah..."
Miroku held up his hand to stop him.
For a long, long time there was an awkward silence.
Suddenly, Sesshomaru gasped, a light dawning in his eyes.
"There it is," Miroku said triumphantly as the lanky dog demon walked off, back towards his castle.
..:V:..
Rin was awoken from a deep and peaceful sleep by a furious tapping on her door. Groaning the new neko got to her feet and slunk to the door. She pushed it open and glared balefully at the person there.
"Hey, you kid," growled the cloaked figure with the gnarled stick. "By the way, I'm adding something to your curse!"
Rin blinked in incomprehension.
"Can you do that?" she wondered.
"Sure, I cursed ya, didn't I?" the cloaked figure demanded. "'Sides, my boyfriend broke up with me yesterday and I'm feeling bitter and I can't curse him since I know he'll come back to me because I know he really meant it when he said he loved me and cursing him would ruin our reunion so I've decided to double curse you. Enjoy!"
"That seems really unfair," Rin pointed out judiciously. Hot or not, she still had the moral code of an innocent eight year-old. "Fluffy-sama wouldn't like it if he knew you were being unfair."
"Yeah, well, bite me and your Fluffy can bite me too! Now you also have to conceive and give birth to a demon child. Enjoy!"
With that, the very bitter crone stomped off into the night.
A few seconds later, Sesshomaru slipped out of the shadows, a silver knife against the black velvet of night. He approached her slowly, with a determined look on his face. Rin, for a moment, couldn't move, she was held immobile by his beauty.
Sesshomaru came to her, like in a vision, he swept her into his arms. For a split second neither spoke, they merely stared into one another's love starved eyes.
"You're my true love," Rin said uneiciarily.
"I know," Sesshomaru nodded. "I figured that out myself... sort of."
"And now we are together, at long last," Rin whispered, her voice warm and dreamy.
"Yes," Sesshomaru agreed. "I figured that out myself."
"And now," Rin said breathlessly. She pressed herself against him, snuggling into the warmth and solidity of his chest. Feeling safe and cherished. "It is time, to consummate our love."
"Yes," Sesshomaru replied, just as breathlessly. He stared hungrily at her lips, longing making his golden eyes blaze.
"I love you, Fluffy-sama," she whispered, in a fragile voice.
Sesshomaru began to dip his head slowly forward, as if to kiss her.
Rin eagerly lifted her own face. Wanting to meet him halfway, since all good relationships work that way.
"I care for you Rin," Sesshomaru answered. His lashes lowered and his mouth descended even more. Their lips were a fraction of an inch apart.
"Oh, and there's this new thing," Rin added, halting momentarily.
Sesshomaru growled deep in his throat at the delay of their kiss.
"We're also supposed to conceive and give birth to a child."
"We are?" this time he was growling in just flat annoyance.
"Well I think I'm the one who's supposed to actually give birth," Rin added helpfully.
"Oh good," Sesshomaru moaned in genuine relief. "Because I really don't think my figure could handle a kid."
She was a little hurt by his sudden coldness, but she knew that since Sesshomaru was icy enough to make snow shiver, that she really shouldn't take it personally.
Sesshomaru gave Rin a thoughtful look.
"Well," Sesshomaru said with a faint smile. "Why don't we sleep together before we worry about the kid?"
Rin nodded.
Smiling tenderly, Sesshomaru led her to the bedroom.
..:V:..
–Fifteen minutes later–
"Some how this wasn't what I was expecting," Rin sighed to herself as Sesshomaru snored away, which he had been doing the moment he had hit the mattress (it was a Sealy). He rolled over, stealing all the covers. "For some reason I never took you for a cover thief."
Growling in frustration, she grabbed the floral sheet and tried to tug it away from him. To no avail.
"Mmmmmine!" he moaned sleepily and rolled onto his stomach. He was now so thoroughly wrapped up he looked like one of those little mini hot dog thingies wrapped in like... I dunno, Pillsbury dough stuff? You know? They serve that at parties or something like this. They're piggy in a blanket? Well Sesshomaru looked like one of those, except he was a Sesshy in a blanket.
Sighing tolerantly, Rin lay down without any sheets and grabbed Sesshomaru's hair. She covered herself with that and then feel asleep.
Tragically though, because Sesshomaru was so exhausted by all his searching, he actually slept for a week and nothing Rin did would wake him up. So alas, she became a human and an eight year-old again, losing her new neko hotness.
Sesshomaru was a little sad that Rin was a human again, but since it meant he didn't have to have a kid with her, he figured it balanced out. Frankly he just didn't have the energy to walk around and be followed by two kids.
As for the hideously decrepit old crone, well, she and Naraku got back together again after a night of hot passionate... tiddly winks. And have never been happier.
Everything resolved itself nicely and tidily as stories have a habit of doing, all except for one last thing, one unanswered question, one lingering doubt...
"THAT'S what consummate means?" Sesshomaru demanded in horror, staring at his Webster's Dictionary in revulsion. His eyes narrowed as he closed it. "I suppose that leaves only one last thing, one unanswered question, one lingering doubt" he looked up and called out. "Jaken, where do babies come from?"
There was no answer.
Jaken was still dead from the previous chapter of this fanfic. Sesshomaru had never actually gotten around to resurrecting him. Which really didn't bother most people.
A/N Hi, Spacewolf here, I'm sure many of you are wondering just what I was getting at with the whole deer and a block of salt thing. Bye now!