Um, woops! This was supposed to go up last Thursday!
Ah well, You're not dead yet soitcan go up today instead. It's just a small chance to give Sesshoumaru a hard time again. AS the title suggests, there is mud and a kitsune (fox) in this chapter. Hmm, I wonder who it could be? Anyways, there is one more chapter to this part before i start up the next part. Are you keeping up with where these chapters fit in so far? ARe the characters incredibly OOC? Do you think I've fallen over the deep end of reality? Tell me! Since I'm not really sure if the review stuff even works anymore or if you're all just lazy I figure I'll be nice and give you two ways to really lay into me for updating late.
The first is of course by e-mail. I have a hotmail account under the name haruchan23. And then there's my AIM name TerraLeeRose. I'm always on-line and people have been known to keep me on their buddy list just to read my away messages. I have many and most are extremely unique. So if you're the vengeful type or the extremely, born-with-a-red-pen-in-my-hand type, you know how to reach me.
And finally, Whatever character you don't recognize is mine. rumiko Takahashi can't take credit for them, though she may wish she could. The rest... well, i'm sure you know by now who it belongs to, she's just taking a break so I thought I'd seize the oppurtunity and take over.
Foxy Mud Wrangling
There's a time, in the wee hours of the morning, between midnight (middle of the night) and dawn in which revelations are born. Usually their birth is preceded by a great deal of contemplation and restless attempts to sleep. After all, who wants to be stuck with a never-ending case of insomnia? In Sesshoumaru's Case, it didn't require all that.
Sesshoumaru's revelation, if revelation it can be called, came because of his inherent need to perpetuate the order in his universe and Aki's blatant disregard for it.
Just shortly before dawn Aki dozed off. Her puzzle book had long since been finished and before she'd carefully thrown the pages into the flames; Sesshoumaru had glimpsed the neat handwriting on every page. So she had been speaking the truth he mused to himself, all the while studying her slumbering features.
His view floated down to scrutinize her clothing. The upper garment that covered her torso was an odd thing that covered much of her skin with its long sleeves. At least it did when one of the sleeves wasn't rolled up and fastened there in some way. He glared at it. Clothing should have some amount of symmetry and her garment had until she secured just the one sleeve in a position above her elbow.
It was bugging the hell out of him. So Sesshoumaru expended the energy to move over to the girl. He mentally sighed as he realized he could not undo the sleeve with one hand. Instead he had to scrunch (how he hated to scrunch!) the other sleeve up her arm. It's a lot harder than it sounds.
Sesshoumaru was just getting used to the idea of only having the one arm and Aki's arm just would not oblige him and stay still. Before he could get too frustrated though, he caught a glimpse of four wounds on her pale skin that seemed vaguely familiar.
Some half remembered image flashed in his mind as he slid his clawed fingers over the marks. Claw marks. They were his claw marks, but the wounds were strange. He had inflicted pain but just barely any. The wounds had been inflicted with just enough of his toxins to be certain they scarred the human but not enough to leave her in agony.
He mentally frowned as more images from the night before flew through his mind, his thumb still absently rubbing her arm.
Aki opened her eyes and raised an eyebrow at the youkai's strange behavior. Then she noticed his thumb rubbing over the claw marks on her arm. She'd intended to keep them hidden. The arrogant youkai hadn't seemed to remember anything about what happened before he woke up so she was just going to forget it. But now, it certainly seemed like he remembered some of it. "Do you always react to ghosts that way, or was my friend just special?"
Sesshoumaru blinked. She'd caught him entirely off guard with the question. He'd thought she was asleep. And if anything, she should question his reactions to her, not the ghost. "I cannot explain my reactions when I was not myself," he answered carefully.
"But you remember them," Aki commented.
"Some."
Aki's eye was itching to start ticking. He still hadn't stopped caressing the wounds on her arm and the skin was warming to the friction it caused. "What do you remember?"
"What I remember is very disconcerting. My reaction to the ghost you allude to makes more sense than my reaction to you. With you I acted like – like," his stomach turned at what it seemed like.
"Like you wanted to see just how deep you could sink under my skin," she offered, unblushingly.
The minute widening of his eyes was as close to wincing at her indelicacy as he would ever come. Still, Sesshoumaru continued on with his oral examination of his behavior without missing a beat. "In the situation as it was, you should have been dead. I should have, at the very least, threatened the both of you rather than warning you."
Aki shrugged, "Who cares what you think should've happened, it didn't." She stood up in the predawn light and kicked some wet dirt over what was left of the fire. Efficiently she tore down her makeshift camp, tarp and all. The former English tutor took a deep breath of the damp air and sighed as she continued to pack up while the youkai just stayed where he was curiously watching her. Brief mumbled comments of "So that's where that went," punctuated her movements.
"What are you doing?" Sesshoumaru's curiosity escaped through his lips. Seriously, what was up with his lack of control over that?
"Well, I'm awake and I've got to get a move on. As much as I've enjoyed your company," she rolled her eyes discreetly, "I don't have anything I wouldn't mind you smashing to bits. You appear to have regained enough strength to survive well enough on your own, so there's no reason for me to stay. Your nightmare is over," she snorted.
"You haven't been dismissed yet. This Se-," Sesshoumaru was forced to choke on his own illustrious name as she cut him off.
"Shh," she assumed a pose of intense listening and awareness with her hand up as if to stop his speech with it. "Do you hear it?"
He narrowed his eyes, how could this human possibly have heard something before he did. And yet he didn't hear anything. "To what do you refer?"
Aki looked him in the eyes, her face serious, "the day is breaking." And in the stunned wake of that statement she took off while Sesshoumaru fought to get over the wrongness of the terrible pun. It was Aki's semi-derisive laughter that spurred him into action.
With a roar of no little outrage, Sesshoumaru followed after the quickly disappearing girl.
Sometime around mid-morning, a slightly muddy Aki smiled innocently up at her friend as he finally caught up with her.
"The day is breaking?" Fred asked incredulously. "Tell me you didn't actually say to the violent, feral youkai that you could hear the day breaking. Please tell me you didn't do something so insanely likely to get you killed." She just nodded up at him with a cheeky grin on her face. "Why don't you just have 'fast food' tattooed to your forehead while you're at it? Do you have any idea how dangerous that could've been? Only I'm allowed to do bad puns like that!"
Aki snorted and rolled her eyes, "I had to do something, Fred. The guy was going to lunge at me like he attempted to last night, only this time he was strong enough to pull it off. I needed to distract him."
"What? Did he want more of last night?" Fred asked flippantly. "Speaking of, just how far did the deliriously gorgeous I-wish-he-was-a-girl guy get?"
"You're sick," Aki muttered. "How far do you think he got?"
"Well, knowing you and the state he was in, not far," Fred admitted. "Maybe a kiss. Did you get a kiss out of it?"
"I'm sorry Fred," she snorted and pretended to batt her eyelashes at the ghost, "I'm still saving my first kiss for you!"
"I wish I could smack you," he said blandly in response.
Aki just smirked before whatever she would've said was cut off by a thunderous voice and a dark shadow.
"HAND OVER YOUR SHIKON SHARDS" the voice thundered.
Aki traced the shadow back to the source, a rather medium-sized ball of orange fur that was declaring at this moment "I AM THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE SHIPPOU, FEAR ME!" It was so unthreatening compared to some of the company she'd had in the last twenty-four hours, she couldn't help but burst out in uncontrollable laughter. You know the kind. The laughter that starts over something small and is sporadic due to left over nerves and then won't stop until all the stress is gone. It's the kind of uncontrollable laughter found on college campuses around the time of midterms and finals.
Poor Shippou. He was getting rather tired of people brushing him off as an inconsequential threat. It was insulting. It was degrading and he had definitely had enough. This was the last straw!
The little kitsune charged Aki and managed to knock both her and himself sliding down the muddy side of a shallow hill. Shippou's attack, however, did not achieve the desired effect. Aki didn't stop laughing except for a mild exclamatory noise upon coming in contact with the ground. It started right back up again right after and continued until the both of them were totally covered in mud.
"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" Shippou yelled in frustration, pulling back to kick the laughing woman.
"I wouldn't if I were you," a strange voice said in his ear causing Shippou to reel back and face this new foe.
It was when he got a good view of the third party of the altercation that Shippou froze in startled fear. Ghosts were unpredictable and often times the source of much grief. His mother had told him so long ago.
Fred drolly took in the look the child gave him. Really, did the kid expect him to break out with fangs and gore or something? "To hell with it!" he muttered. "BOO!"
"Ahh!" the boy screamed in panic that cracked his voice. "Kagome!"
"What! Runt!" a gruff voice bellowed from up the hill.
"Aki-chan?" Kagome gasped as her and the dog boy came into view.
By now the older girl's mild case of hysterical laughter was slowly abating. "Kagome?" Aki blinked. "Inuyasha? Is this ball of fur yours?"
"Shippou-chan, it's alright," Kagome soothed the kitsune. "These are friends. See that one's Aki-chan," she pointed to the woman, "and that's Fred."
"You sure he's alright?" Shippou asked suspiciously.
"Wow! I guess that youkai's reaction to you last night isn't that uncommon," Aki blinked. Fred nodded somewhat flabbergasted.
"It's alright Shippou," Kagome reassured the boy. "He can't even touch you. How could he harm you?"
"If you say so Kagome," Shippou replied cheerfully.
"Feh," Inuyasha commented from the peanut gallery. "Oi! Weren't we on the trail for more shards?"
"Aki has them," Kagome answered brushing him off.
"What?"
"Right here," Aki nodded as she dug them out of her pocket.
"Wow, I didn't know people still carried these around," Kagome remarked on the film tube.
"Oh yeah," Ai replied, "They're great for holding little things like change and jewelry, but nowadays the m & m mini canisters do the same thing just as well."
"How'd you get so many?" Shards of course. They'd both been hunting for about the same amount of time, but Aki had collected far more.
"Just luck, I guess."
"Yeah that and the little buggers seem to like her," Fred teased. Aki shot him a look and sharply shook her head. He needed to learn when to shut up.
"You managed to kill all the demons that had these?" Inuyasha asked incredulously. She was turning out to be something formidably surprising.
"I haven't killed anybody for these," Aki denied. "Though that guy last night may have been asking for it."
"You keep mentioning a demon from last night, what's that about?" Kagome inquired.
"Oh it's nothing serious," Fred answered. "WE just came across this real piece of work demon last evening that had a few hundred personality issues."
"Stop that!" Aki snapped. "You're just upset that he didn't like you and didn't even try to be nice about it. You'd be a little grumpy too, if you'd just been maimed."
"Who'd been maimed?" Shippou asked.
"Just this big, bad youkai that was too pretty to be real. Too bad he wasn't female!" Fred whined.
"It wouldn't have made any difference, you're dead!" Aki grumbled.
"Yeah, but I can still flirt!"
"Oh brother," Aki rolled her eyes. "You know, come to think of it, he kind of reminded me of Inuyasha. Same hair and eyes," She shrugged.
"Sesshoumaru!" Inuyasha yelled in disbelief.
"Who?" Aki asked, slightly confused.
"Inuyasha's older full demon half brother, Sesshoumaru," Kagome informed her. "He came after Inuyasha the day you left. Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha don't share any kind of fraternal love."
"Are you telling me Inuyasha's the one that cut off his arm with that new pig-sticker of his?" Aki couldn't believe it. How could anyone allow their sibling rivalry get to the point of blood shed?
"You helped that bastard!" Inuyasha couldn't believe it either.
"Yep! She did, patched him right up, annoyed the hell out of him and evaded his pursuit," Fred related proudly.
"You helped him!" Inuyasha was sometimes like a skipping record.
"Inuyasha she didn't know!" Kagome yelled over the hanyou's growling.
"And wouldn't have cared anyway!" Aki declared. "Your feud has nothing to do with me and I'll have nothing to do with it, end of story." She placed her hand on his chest to stop his advance on her person. The sleeve on that arm had been imperfectly scrunched and was now stuck that way by the drying mud, revealing the marks Sesshoumaru had placed there.
"Aki, what'd you do to your arm?" Kagome asked in concern.
"I didn't do anything to it," Aki answered shortly withdrawing the arm to slide her sleeve over it. Unfortunately, Inuyasha wasn't having any of that.
"Let me see," he demanded.
"No!" Aki shook her head firmly, shoving her sleeve over both her arm (which had been revealed again by the dog boy) and consequently Inuyasha's clawed hand, which had latched onto her wrist.
"Aki-nee-san," he whined.
"No! It's none of your business!"
"Nee-san?" Shippou questioned.
"Don't ask me," Kagome shrugged. "I was there when he started that and I still don't get it."
"Did that bastard hurt you? I wanna know!" Inuyasha demanded.
"It doesn't matter if he did or didn't because it's none of your business!"
"I'm not playing. I need to check something. Did he hurt you?"
"I still say it's none of your business!"
"Aki-nee-san!"
"Inuyasha leave her alone!" Kagome yelled getting rather annoyed with the noise.
"Just let me see it!" he demanded, completely ignoring Kagome.
"No way," Aki found all kinds of ways to keep the hanyou from getting a clear view.
"Damnit wench! Stop being so difficult and let me see. It's for your own good," Inuyasha continued to pursue the elusive glimpse of her forearm.
"Oh yeah, like I'm going to do it after you both insult and patronize me. Good going braniac," Aki grumbled. "Since you asked so nicely," she flashed him the opposite forearm.
"I think I'm going to like her," Shippou gleefully told Kagome and the teenager rolled her eyes.
"Anybody that annoys Inuyasha in a nonviolent way is awesome, hmm?" Fred observed conspiratorially with a chuckle. "You'd think he would've learned by now that you can't make Aki divulge something she doesn't want to. Hell, I'm sure that demon last night understood that much."
"What do you mean?" Kagome asked, slightly intrigued.
"She wouldn't tell him her name," Fred laughed, he'd managed to catch that bit the night before in one of the few periods of awareness he'd had while being invisible.
"Sesshoumaru doesn't strike me as one to put up with that sort of thing, especially if he demanded to know it," Kagome frowned in thought. "How did she manage to pull that off?"
"She bested him in a verbal sparring match," Fred grinned.
"And she's still alive?" Kagome gasped in disbelief. The ghost merely motioned to indicate the still arguing pair.
"You damn bitch! This is serious!" Inuyasha bellowed.
Kagome's eyes darkened. Hadn't they gone over the name-calling? Aki didn't deserve that. "Inuyasha!" Kagome yelled and the hanyou tensed nervously, "Osuwari!"
"Damnit!" Inuyasha plunged into the ground.
"Don't call Aki names!" Kagome added for good measure before realizing she had essentially sat Aki as well.
"Kagome," Aki whined, "ow!"
"I'm sorry Aki!" Kagome cried.
Inuyasha used his grounded state to finally examine Aki's wound while she lay recovering from their joint descent. What he saw had him cursing the passing dust bunnies. "He marked you, that bastard!"
Everybody blinked at him.
"You sneaky jackass," Aki accused as she snatched her arm back and shoved the sleeve down to cover it.
"That bastard marked you!" Inuyasha bellowed disbelieving what his senses were telling him.
"We heard you the first time," Kagome said in a very you-don't-have-to-be-so-loud voice.
"He marked her," maybe if he said it enough times it wouldn't be so hard to understand.
"Yeah, and?" Fred encouraged the dog boy. "I don't think every body understands what you're getting at. He marked her. What like marking trees?"
Inuyasha growled, "We are not dogs! We're dog demons! Youkai!"
"Right, right! We got it," Kagome soothed the hanyou's ruffled fur. "But like Fred said, just how did he mark her? What was she marked as? What does it mean?"
Inuyasha sighed at their apparent stupidity. "There are different kinds of marks. The most common is done by scent, skin-on-skin contact. The amount of scent helps others define the type of relationship between youkai. It's the easiest to perform and the hardest to screw up because the relationship itself defines the amount of time spent together, defines the amount of contact, which controls the amount of scent transfer. These marks can fade over time."
"Really," Kagome mumbled, "that's very interesting."
"Don't interrupt!" Inuyasha huffed. "That's not the kind of mark Sesshoumaru used because it wouldn't have worked. Aki doesn't carry or give off any kind of scent," he growled wishing it wasn't so true. "The other widely used form of marking involves scarring and the different meanings are derived from the different placement and methods used to cause it. It defines to others, what your relationship is to the youkai that caused the scar. In other words, it tells other youkai just how important you are to the youkai you belong to.
"I'm not sure what others will think of it when the scent wears off completely," which it was doing at this very moment, "but I can firmly say that he marked you as his."
Aki glared, "His what? His lunch? His punching bag? His teddy bear?"
"Aki," Fred coughed as Shippou laughed, he didn't know what a te-di ba-ru was, but it sounded funny.
Inuyasha ducked, "I'm not sure, but the marks themselves suggest that you are not to be harmed and you belong to a demon strong enough to assume a humanoid form that has claws and toxins for such shallow wounds to scar."
"So I just keep 'em covered and no one'll be the wiser," Aki shrugged and looked away.
Inuyasha blinked. "Why would you want to do that?"
"No offense, but humanoid demons with claws have a tendency to scare off the smaller youkai just by the scent of them. And how many humans do you know are going to give Shikon no Kakera to a youkai scarred human, whatever the reason?" Aki explained.
Fred nodded, "It's difficult enough trying to approach the little people as a strangely dressed human and a harmless ghost."
"It wouldn't be so hard if you'd just ditch the ghost," Inuyasha muttered.
"What was that?" Fred demanded, glaring at the hanyou accusingly. "I'm not letting Aki go anywhere alone. That's one of the few things I can do."
"I really wish you'd let that go," Aki sighed.
"Well I'm not going to, so what are you gonna do? Sit me?" he teased.
"Oi! Leave me out of this!" Inuyasha interjected.
"We tried that, but you keep butting in," Fred quipped.
"I hate you!" Inuyasha growled.
"Ooh look! Inuyasha's mad at me," the ghost responded in a childish voice. "Look at me, I'm shaking in my boots!" he made a big show of trembling.
Unfortunately, Shippou took it literally and blinked when he noticed what Fred was wearing. The kitsune pointed and gave Kagome a quizzical look.
"Fred," Aki began. "You weren't buried in boots."
"What? Damnit!" he gazed mournfully down at his ghostly shoes whose shine was muted by the deathly transparency all of him bore. "Tell me again, why did you let mom bury me in these shoes? I hated them in life."
"I wasn't invited to the funeral," Aki replied shortly.
"What's a fu-ne-ra-lu?" Shippou asked, stumbling over the strange term.
"It's like a wake held for someone who has died," Kagome replied. "People come to pay their last respects, give their last good byes, that sort of thing."
"Why weren't you allowed to go?" Shippou asked his new friend.
"By the time Fred died, people were afraid that whatever had killed my family and then my friends would spread to the rest of the family. So I was asked not to attend," Aki replied blankly. "Fred was the last of my friends and I hadn't been able to go to any of the other funerals due to circumstances beyond my control."
"I'm sorry Aki," Fred apologized softly.
"What for? It's not like I missed my chance to say good bye," she snorted. "You are here after all." He gave her a rueful grin.
"Just what kind of relationship did you two have that he would stay with you even after death?" Kagome asked slightly envious. "Were you lovers?"
Aki burst out laughing barely hiding the derisive note in it. "Me and Fred," she laughed, "lovers?" She looked at Fred a moment then cracked right up.
"No, I assure you, Aki and I never took that route in our relationship. We're just friends," Fred smiled.
"Besides the standard back up plan, we probably never would've either," Aki smiled indulgently. "I'm not exactly Freddy's type."
"I will not answer to that! Call me Fred if you must call me by a name that isn't mine, but Freddy isn't going to happen!" The ghost growled irately.
"He preferred dumb blonde stick-insects. I'm too smart, most assuredly not blonde and never was that disgustingly thin," she continued, happily ignoring his outburst.
"I don't know, you're certainly pulling off the stick-insect look these days," Fred pointed out sardonically.
Aki made a face at that, "I'm still too short." The ghost laughed.
"What's a stick-insect?" Shippou asked, having difficulty keeping up with the conversation with all these strange phrases and terms dropping in his way.
"It's an incredibly can't-imagine-how-they-can-remain-upright thin person, typically of the female gender," Aki explained.
"None of my girlfriends were that thin," Fred protested.
"Sure they were," Aki disagreed. "They were the kind of super thin that everyone secretly prays will die young just to prove how unhealthy it is to be that skinny."
"I did notice you never liked any of my girlfriends," Fred commented.
"I thought you could do better than Chronic Nail filer: IQ of 7 and Teaser Comb: IQ of 4," she replied evenly.
"Neither of them was that dumb, and Theresa only filed her nails when she was nervous," he defended his exes.
Aki snorted, "And she was always nervous around me?"
"Yes, you can be quite intimidating when you want to be. And you have to admit that you were really trying to make her uncomfortable," he retorted.
"I'm sorry. I just have a problem with people who's first words to me are 'Oh my god! Did you realize you were wearing last month's Vogue pumps?'"
"Point," Fred sighed in defeat. He couldn't argue with that, Theresa's obsession with fashion was one of the reasons he broke up with her.
Kagome laughed at Aki's victory. "So why did you stay with Aki if you weren't lovers?"
"Oh it was because I had to get back at her for scaring off my last girlfriend and I died before I could get satisfying revenge." Fred answered jokingly. "I needed to chop down her rather inflated opinion of herself somehow and the rest of her life seemed like just enough time to be effective."
"Well Fred, your plan has backfired," Aki told him seriously. "I now think more highly of myself for putting up with your constant presence and stupidity."
"Damn," Fred muttered, mock seriously. "Guess I'll just have to settle for barely bruising it by the time you croak." He grinned at her.
"No really, why did you stay?" Kagome really wanted to know.
"I made a promise to," Fred gave her a straight answer.
"I'm telling you promises like that expire after you're dead," Aki scolded him.
"Well, mine don't," Fred declared. "You've lost all your family and with me that last of your friends, I'm not leaving you alone. I said I wouldn't and I won't!"
Shippou walked in front of Aki and motioned her down to him. "I lost my mom and dad too," he confided in her and patted her cheek comfortingly.
"And has the monster that took them away been taken care of?" Aki asked gently.
"Yep! Inuyasha got them!" the kitsune declared cheerfully.
Aki smiled sadly, "My monsters haven't been," she told him quietly. "And they probably never will be."
"Why don't you have Inuyasha kill them?" he asked just as quietly.
"Because I don't believe Inuyasha would kill the monster that caused the death of them all," she replied.
"Why not?"
"Because the cause of it all is me," she declared bitterly before retreating from the immediate area and leaning quietly against a tree.
"And that's the worst monster known to the world," Fred declared. "There's no one half so evil or impossible to defeat as the monster that stares out at us from the inside."
"She does have it sort of right though," Inuyasha commented. "The curse is on her and has struck out at everyone she cared about. In fact, I think the curse should've taken her out and because it couldn't it tried to weaken her by hitting everything that gave her strength so that it could."
"Inuyasha," Kagome cried horrified. "That's a terrible thing to say!"
"Think about it, Kagome, look at it from her side. None of the victims of the curse had anything else in common except their relationship to her," Inuyasha argued his case. "Though I doubt the curse was placed on her specifically. It probably just fell to her from someone else. When it hit her she stood like a roadblock that couldn't be affected causing the curse to spill over into other avenues. I just wonder who it was and what the hell they did to deserve such a malicious curse."
"Maybe we'll look into that later," Fred smiled at the Hanyou.
"Don't maybe it!" Inuyasha growled. "The longer you leave it the more time it has to wear her down to nothing!"
"Don't worry about Aki," Fred smiled. "She's not going down, whatever the odds. She has the gods' own luck and a strong constitution. The earth, the seas and sky would have to work in concert to drag her down now. She promised it."
"I very much doubt she used those specific words," Kagome muttered suspiciously.
"Who cares, it still achieves basically the same thing," Fred shrugged.
"Besides," Kagome continued confidingly, "Promises can be just so many words to some people, offered to placate others but empty of meaning."
"Listen here you," Fred practically did his own growling. "A promise means something to Aki, and damn well oughta mean something to you. If anybody around her makes a promise and blows it off she just might take it into her head to do the same, and I like her breathing thank you very much!"
"Yeah wench! Without honor you're no better than the animals in the wild," Inuyasha accused.
"I never said I was like that!" Kagome yelled at the top of her formidable lungs.
"Like what?" came Aki's soft but annoyed inquiry. "What could you possibly be discussing that warrants arousing the active attention of the entirety of Japan?"
"Oh nothing in particular," Fred answered nonchalantly, the picture of youthful, albeit dead, innocence.
"You never were a good liar, Fred," Aki dismissed his statement and façade.
"Aw, what gave me away that time?" he whined.
"You mean besides the question you just asked?" she raised her eyebrow. "My personal knowledge of Kagome. I know Kagome would not have presumed to use such volume over 'nothing', it might not be over something large, but definitely not 'nothing'. Thus, knowing what I know, it automatically says it is something and you're telling me falsehoods." Fred only scowled; she really was too logical sometimes.
Inuyasha 'fehed' at Fred's expression and rather horrible attempt to keep Aki from knowing the subject of their previous conversation. If it'd been him, he would've thought of something better than 'nothing'.
"Inuyasha accused Kagome of not keeping her promises," Shippou informed her, still slightly confused at the pointless lie about something so unimportant.
"Why would he do that?" Aki asked the honest little kitsune.
"Because Kagome said that some people don't think promises are more than just words," he answered.
"Did she say she was one of those people?" Shippou just shook his head and Aki raised her eyebrow at the three individuals shifting uncomfortably in front of her. "I really don't see how a simple statement of fact could lead to such a senseless accusation. Of course the whole conversation doesn't make a whole lot of sense to begin with. Just how did you get on to the subject of promises anyway?"
"They were talking about you," her informant answered.
"Oh I get it now," Aki gazed blandly on the others. "Fred told them about my promises. Kagome stated her personal observation about people and promises. Fred defended me and Inuyasha, misconstruing Fred's intent, made the accusation. It all makes sense, thought it's all very asinine."
"Wow! How'd you know all that?" Shippou asked in amazement.
"I just pieced together what little I knew of each of them and what you just told me," She answered, shrugging off his amazement.
"What's asinine mean?" the boy asked earnestly.
"It's just a fancy word for silly," Aki answered.
"What! I am not silly!" Inuyasha bellowed.
Shippou blinked, "I don't think he knew what asinine meant."
"Probably not," Aki agreed.
"He's not very smart," Shippou continued in the same vein.
"I heard that you little runt!" Inuyasha yelled and proceeded to chase Shippou around before he inevitably caught him by the tail and shook him real good. "I dare you to say that again!"
"Kagome!" the kitsune whined, alligator tears standing in his eyes. "Inuyasha's picking on me!"
"Osuwari!" Kagome yelled. "Leave Shippou alone!"
"I think we should be going," Aki stated evenly.
"Eh?" Kagome blinked, "But you shouldn't travel alone. You could join us, you know."
Aki offered the girl a shallow smile, "That would defeat the purpose. The idea was to cover more ground, more quickly."
Kagome blinked, "I guess."
"Which way were you guys headed?" Aki asked.
"Oh, Inuyasha and I had just found an old abandoned boat that was still sound. We were going to ride it down stream a bit, see what turned up, when I sensed the shards and then Shippou ran ahead and started wailing for help," Kagome explained. "I imagine we'll get back to that now. When'll we come across you again?"
"I'm not sure, but it'll definitely happen," Aki replied absently. "After all, all it takes is for one of us to come in range of the other." Kagome nodded with a half-hearted giggle. They were like radar or something. "I think I'll head upriver then," Aki informed the ninth grader. "I'll probably head back to the well in a couple days. My arm and ankle are almost back to normal and I want a hot shower and a great deal more hot chocolate."
"How's your first aid kit?" Kagome asked with a little concern.
"It's fine. Besides, you're more likely to use it with the wonder boys on your side," Aki commented dryly. "After all, I'm not fighting for the shards, you are. And if a shard requires a fight for any kind of retrieval, I locate it and tell you and the wonder boys about it."
"Sounds sensible I guess," Kagome nodded doubtfully.
"Whether it sounds it or not, that's what I'm doing," Aki stated firmly.
"Alright, alright!" Kagome put her hand up in defeat, before a thought struck her between the eyes. She should've let Inuyasha talk to Aki about this. Darn it! It was too late now though, she had already conceded defeat. Kagome shrugged it off. After all, there was always next time.
"Later Kagome," Aki started walking, "Tell the wonder boys Sayonara for me will you? They're kind of busy arguing right now." And as she disappeared from view Kagome swore she could hear her say something about a bath after the water had warmed in the sun a few more hours.
"Kagome!" a whiny voice broke her quiet amusement as she turned to sit the older 'wonder boy' real good.