6/27/05
Ooookay! I'm back! We're out for the summer at last, exams are done, and that means I can get to work properly. Of course, I just had oral surgery and it hurts like the dickens, but all's well that ends well, yes? Sorry for the wait. Now, I have a problem. The problem is something that I abruptly noticed while rereading a few weeks ago. The problem is that AS FAR AS THIS STORY IS CONCERNED, KIRARA IS STILL IN KILEB'S ABANDONED TOWER! I can't believe that I, my beta, and all of you overlooked this. I love Kirara! So Kirara went in, was misplaced, and never came out, and Sango has not even mentioned it. Sigh. This cannot be left as is, so I'm going to be changing it, but the question is, should I go back and alter it so she did come out and she's been here all along? (Easier now that I've put off the battle scene a couple of chapters.) Or should I change it so Sango's been worried and bring her in later? (My preference.) Please vote. Once you have, I will take it into consideration and edit, inform you, good readers, of the change next chappie, and we'll all pretend it was always like that. Sound good? As I said, I feel really bad about this and by way of making it up….
Dedication: This chapter is dedicated to all the cats that have ever owned me. Strong hunter Dinah; her lost sister Mao-se-tung (say it aloud and you'll see why it's a good name for a cat); the luckless Oatmeal; the venerable Beau; poor murdered Jaguar; that lazy rogue Rascal who is now putting scratches in my leg; and milady Mithrandir. Wow, we've had a lot of queens, only toms on that list were Oatmeal and maybe Jaguar. Please advise, Mother, if I left anyone out.
Disclaimer: Takahashi Rumiko-san writes in kanji. I do not. I also cannot hope to mimic her style. This should make it clear that we are not the same person. Right?
Review replies: (Uh, wow, some of these never made it to my e-mail. Huh. And here I thought I was being ignored.)
NefCanuck: Thank you kindly, glad you like it, thanks for the encouragement.
biggest anime fan: Shokran for such a complimentary review! XD I like Kileb too, in this incarnation. Believe me, in the old days he was really boring…. He's glad you like him, I assure you. Aw, you think so? I'm so glad. I wasn't sure about that scene, but Keeks fascinates me with pity…just like most of the other characters. Why is almost everyone in the inu-verse so pitiable? Heh. Tris rocks! Let it be noted that I said that because he's looking over my shoulder but I might have said it anyway. He's a loony, though::gets bonked: Owch. Yes! CHICKENS! They're all chickens! Anyway, thanks and loveya! I did update, you see? Even though it took me about two months…. Did you get my e-mail?
Ganheim: O.O Wow, this is loooong…. You know; the number of quotations you use would give my English teacher fits. She's obsessed with proper use of quotes. OK. You're going to have to open your review to understand this, unless you've got a photographic memory.
Yeah, I know, I almost really dropped into that this chapter. Would you believe it sat there for four weeks trying to be a six-page angsty battle scene? I don't write comedy by nature, this is practice in it, and I know I can't write a story that's just plot and humor. I am trying not to let the characters obscure the story, though! The umlaut was I playing around with the alt-num pad and then remembering I had to write the chapter. Yes, it could, and no, she doesn't. Yes, this is essentially useless dialogue but it will have some point later on. Patience. Same for the entire appearance-of-Kikyou. No, no, remember what Kikyou did to Kags back in book 8? She did it again, and then tried it on Aerie. Hm, guess I should have been more specific there, thanks.
About the paragraphs – I've received formatting advice from baf since I wrote this chapter, on another story, rest assured it won't happen again! (And it's her second language, too! Believe me, it was embarrassing when she told me!) My mother liked that run on, so phooey to you. I haven't seen the anime, and I can't read Japanese, so if I'm missing something keep the bengoshi away from me! I was talking about when they first met! All right, he was threatening more than trying, but whatever! And exactly. She feels like he cares a lot more about Kikyou, at least as far as I've gotten. She doesn't have a privileged audience position. OK, I'll fix that line confusion when I'm on editing. You're right, I don't like that sentence either. I'm morbid and so is she! Other revision recommendations noted. I did so say his hair was red! At least twice! In the tower and when he got to the castle! Why does no one ever remember these things? Happens a lot. Am I too casual about slipping in descriptions or something? O.O ARE YOU INSULTING YANAGI? Look, if you want to insult her, go ahead, but make sense while you're doing it so I can take it into account. Yanagi isn't a coward…. Or are you just trying to make a Wizard of Oz reference? It sounded awfully sarcastic.
I can use Japanese words if it makes me happy! Feh! I KNOW I could use 'group' and 'human' and 'idiot' but this is more fun! Don't be a killjoy! Oooh, did my divider get deleted? Hee, and forsythia, my friend, is a kind of whippy bush with pretty yellow flowers that blooms in late March or early April in upstate New York! Thanks for all the comments on what was funny, and for being so very thorough! I ought to fire my beta, all she ever does is point out two grammar mistakes per chapter…. This is mighty long. Bye!
Elf.hanyou: What of yours did I review again? Remind me to check when I'm on a computer that doesn't load one page after about twenty minutes. Well, welcome, and thanks for yours!
Gem Gamgee: §? Just that? §? I'm not sure what to think. What is that symbol for, anyway…? Anybody know?
Birds were going slowly silent amid the close-set trees. Midmorning light slanted through them, falling on the leaf-covered forest floor and the silver bark. It lit up the faces of the inu-tachi and made them blink, while it threw the newcomer's faces into shadow and set their pale hair afire, halos of reflected light standing out around their heads. Their flat eyes glinted miserably.
"What do you mean, they're going to kill us!" Inuyasha demanded. "I don't intend to get myself killed by any far-ee things!"
"Fine," Aerie said, "They're going to try to kill us."
"Right," Inuyasha said. "Glad we cleared that up."
"You're welcome."
"Aerie-sama?" Miroku said, "If you know these people, could you make any suggestions as to how best to fight them?" Aerie opened her mouth to answer, and then the fourth elf arrived.
He leapt in over the heads of his comrades, landing in front of them, a naked sword in his hand. He was all in green, and his eyes were the vivid color of oak leaves when they've just unfolded in late April, but otherwise he was much the same as the first three. He darted a glance across them as if checking for the highest head to cut off first. Aerie made a choking sound.
When Miroku saw that she would offer no further council than the choking sound, he called out, "Who are you, strangers? Do you regard us as your enemies?" If the leader's drawn weapon was any indication, they did, but they were also not attacking. The leader gave a jerking nod. It was an odd counterpoint to the grace of his leap. "I don't suppose it would do any good to ask why." Another nod. "Very well, then," the houshi said with a sigh, "Inuyasha?" The hanyou leapt forward readily, his great blade slicing the air.
"Don't!" Aerie shouted. Startled, he pulled up, almost tripping over his own feet.
"Damn it, wench!" he shouted, "Why?"
"Because!" she replied, which wasn't an answer and they all knew it.
"Because what, wench?" Inuyasha demanded.
"Because – because of him!" she pointed at the lead elf, the one with the cold green eyes.
Inuyasha growled in annoyance. "What about him!"
"Lelentaeli…." Aerie said. "Lelentaeli, what has that smiley maniac done to you?" The green-eyed elf made no response. He did not even look at her. "Lelentaeli!" she shouted in a commanding tone. "Fall out!" His body started to comply before the order passed through his mind, and then he froze. He assumed his old position with no hint of the chagrin he might be expected to feel. But with no other emotion, either.
"Lelentaeli?" asked Kagome, "Is that his name? You know him?"
Aerie nodded wearily. "I know him," she agreed. She raised her voice. "Lelentaeli, please! Come back! You can do it!" The oak-leaf eyes, when they met hers, were almost totally indifferent. But she thought she caught a flicker of something….
"This is a warning," he said in a measured, emotionless voice. "Heed it well."
As his words ended, a blade bit into Inuyasha's back. He cursed, trying to reach it and get it out, but it was lodged in just that bit of back that you never can reach, unless you're very limber, even when it itches. Then the blade tore itself free again, severing further muscles and rendering Inuyasha's left arm unusable due to lack of tendon. Half the tachi had already whirled to face – Kohaku. "While one holds your eyes," Lelentaeli said, "the other attacks from behind."
"Lelentaeli!" Aerie shouted, still facing him, as Sango let out Kohaku's name. "It's about Dishinabi, isn't it? He's using your guilt to control you, just like Naraku with Kohaku!"
The elf's green eyes narrowed slightly, but he said nothing. He really did resemble Sesshoumaru, Aerie found herself thinking, like this. Even normally, come to that, especially if he had his warrior-face on. But her friend looked different, he really did, usually you could see an emptiness, of loss, behind his eyes, but not this…blankness. "Snap out of it!" she growled, vaguely aware of the rest of the tachi focussing on Kohaku. Sango had gotten slightly sliced on her upper arm, but Kohaku had apparently balked at actually killing her. They had their own problem to worry about, she wasn't part of it, and they weren't really part of this. Except that their stories were getting mixed up, now…. But she wasn't in a story! They were, though, she wondered vaguely about the ramifications of her presence on the manga and this world's connection to it. Either she was in the manga, or Takahashi was no longer writing the same story as the one occurring here. This was no time for this, she was only trying to avoid thinking about the current situation. She hated it when her brain did that to her. "Lelentaeli!" she called, as if he was eight miles away and hard of hearing. He took a step back, his gaze flitting away from her, resting on that spot just beyond the elbow where gazes rest when people don't want to look at other people.
"Leave me alone," he said.
And then they slipped away, all four, from under Aerie's eyes. Kagura dropped down, swooped Kohaku onto her feather even as Sango attempted to reason with him, and he was gone as well.
"This is bad," Aerie said, looking after their vanished guests, as Miroku got himself thumped for offering to look after Sango's small wound.
"What in particular are you referring to?" he asked Aerie, picking himself up.
"Kohaku, Kagura, and those four were working together," she said slowly, "which must mean that their respective masters have teamed up, too."
"You mean, Naraku and Kileb?" he replied. "Oh, no. That does not make me feel optimistic."
Aerie nodded. "Nor me," she agreed. Inuyasha broke into some snarled obscenity at the thought of having to deal with Naraku and the guy who had done weird things to his mind at the same time. Kagome sat him.
He hit the ground, the tails of his haori flopping upward in an undignified fashion to cover the top half of his body. "I have the right to swear this time!" he protested, raising his head, complete with veil-like headgear of red. "That bastard's the one who made me stop!"
"You shouldn't swear anyway," Kagome replied. "If it didn't come with erasing anything that resembles your mind, I'd wish you stayed like that. At least you had some manners!"
Inuyasha sat up. "Feh," he growled, stung, "I should have gone with Kikyou when she asked me."
The scene froze. Inuyasha was cursing himself for letting that slip, Kagome was in shock that he had been asked to go with Kikyou and stayed, and the three present who followed their relationship like a sporting event were floored that Inuyasha had actually used Kikyou as a weapon. Not Kagome's relationship to her, but the woman herself. He never did that. There were some things that were too important to use as casual barbs….
"She what?" Kagome asked.
Inuyasha glowered at the ground. "Asked me to go with her. Not…permanently, just come travel with her instead of you guys."
"And you didn't?" Kagome asked.
"Stop looking at me like that!" he directed both Kagome and their audience. "You guys need me. Practically every day I save your butts. She doesn't. That's all." There was a silence. "Feh." Inuyasha said. He turned his back and inadvertently presented everyone with a clear view of his wound, which was still bleeding freely and allowing for a very good lesson in the internal anatomy of the inu hanyou, due to the loss of a large amount of skin.
"Eeeee!" Kagome exclaimed, running forward. "I'm sorry, Inuyasha, I shouldn't have sat you while you're sliced up like that…"
"What, this?" Inuyasha asked. "Just a scratch."
"Inuyasha," Miroku said, amused, "Unfortunately, I must inform you that I can see the muscles in the middle of your back, and not because they are well defined. I can see them because your skin is no longer in the way."
"You do realize that if you'd said that to a girl it would have managed to sound pervy, right, Miroku-dono?" Aerie asked, bringing herself back to earth. Not her earth, but she supposed it still had legitimacy as an earth. Somehow, multidimensional questions were less fun to ponder when you had an unnervingly good chance of finding out the answers at some point in the future.
"Uh…." Miroku said. Remarkably inarticulate for him. Kagome busied herself with trying to get Inuyasha to let her bandage him, because she had a huge fondness for bandages. She insisted on putting Band-Aids on little scrapes! Well, admittedly, Band-Aids weren't much good for anything but little scrapes, but you didn't need one every time your skin was slightly punctured!
Now she was trying to stereotype Kags as a popular airhead again, Aerie realized. But that really wasn't fair. If they'd met in either of their normal worlds they would probably have passed each other without a glance, admittedly. But it wasn't as if Kags was the sort of person who went out of her way to trod on social retards. She was just…naturally lovable. And therefore well liked. And she wasn't stupid, either, just relentlessly innocent, and not a coward, just a habitual screamer. Aerie sighed. Everybody had many levels, and the sad fact was she had probably scorned many a decent human being for their same resemblance to a certain, malicious type of girl. Unfair, but there it was.
Aerie stretched. Her back ached, her friend was under the control of his and her greatest enemy, she was hungry, her clothes hadn't been washed in three weeks, her most powerful companion at the moment lacked the use of one arm, and she didn't have a sword. Ah, the romantic life of the wanderer!
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"Well, that went well," Kileb remarked from the bushes where he and Naraku were sitting and watching the events unfold. The bushes had berries on. Bright red ones. Kileb was eating them like popcorn at a movie. This rather disconcerted Naraku, since he was more or less certain that these particular berries were highly toxic. He cocked an eyebrow.
"Are you entirely sure about this approach?" he asked.
"Who's ever sure?" Kileb asked airily. "But there's really not much fun in just getting rid of them. One has to be creative about it." Naraku shrugged. This sounded like Kileb's version of his own belief that there was no point to wiping someone out unless they suffered in the process. "Well, the stage has been well-set," Kileb remarked, then clapped his hands together in a gesture of eureka. If he had been native to another century, Naraku might have looked up to see whether a lightbulb had appeared over his head. "That's it! Your name!"
Naraku felt a sense of impending doom. The redhead was going to pull some new humiliation out of his wide green sleeves. He knew it. He was not disappointed. "Meanings! I knew there was one I was forgetting! Such an impressive, threatening name, Naraku. Abyss…hell…theatre basement…." Naraku restrained a groan. Barely. His hand met his forehead with a ringing slap, which he immediately regretted.
He was right to.
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Aerie spun when she heard the slap. "What?" she said, staring at the bushes. "Oi, Sango-sama, Miroku-dono," she called, since they weren't involved in bandaging operations. "Gimmee a hand with this bush."
"With the bush?" Miroku asked, obediently coming.
"Well, more specifically, with what's in it," Aerie admitted. "Lend me that, Sango?" She took Sango's boomerang and swung it, clumsily, not letting go of it. It sheered the top off the bush very neatly, revealing Naraku and Kileb both ducking to avoid decapitation. They leapt upright and backward. Naraku was unreadable under his baboon skin. Kileb gave the tachi a lazy wave, like a celebrity to his fan club, before grabbing Naraku by the shoulder and dragging him away, escaping before Inuyasha could draw his sword, Sango could get Hiraikotsu back, or Aerie could call up any fire. Especially the last. He was not very strong right now, he'd just finished binding that stubborn elf a matter of hours ago, after keeping him imprisoned for months. Bother. Couldn't face the Lady. How ruddy embarrassing. New topic!
The entire tachi heard him say clearly, as he and Naraku vanished into the trees, "So, can you really play the bagpipes?"
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"…the bagpipes?" Aerie repeated blankly, looking after the fleeing duo. She turned to give a freaked-out/baffled/amused look at Kagome, who gave her one back. The other four stuck with baffled.
"What are bagpipes?" Shippou asked.
"They're an instrument," Aerie explained, "a bag, that is held under the arm and squeezed, with keys on it that you push, and pipes coming out of the top that you blow on. I think. I've never tried to play a set. They look really funny. So does anyone who's playing them. At least, if you're not used to it."
"Oh," said Shippou. He giggled. "I wonder if Naraku really can play them?"
Aerie and Kagome both chuckled at the image. "I don't know," Aerie replied cheerfully. "If he can, I don't think he ever would. Not where anyone could see or hear him. Bagpipes are something of an acquired taste."
"Well, let's get moving," Inuyasha interjected. "We barely got anywhere before they showed up."
"Are you sure you should travel with that wound of yours, Inuyasha?" Miroku asked.
"It'll be fine, monk. If we get into any scrambles, just don't expect me to jump as much as I usually do," he admitted reluctantly. Everyone nodded; jumping could jar his body, reopen the wound, and lengthen the time it would take for his left arm to be functional again.
"Speaking of which," said Aerie as Kagome got her backpack and they made ready to leave, "how's that spear wound Kileb gave you doing?"
"Almost gone," Inuyasha grunted. Aerie winced. His back was not doing so well lately.
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"It's not hard, Kagura," Yanagi said. Kagura had dropped Kohaku off with Kanna and gone with the slim servant, who had been waiting for her when she arrived. "You're already good at moving silently, and you have the added advantage of not being an urchin who would be expected to steal something. Now, we'll try this again." She turned her back on the taller woman. "Pick my pocket."
Kagura walked up behind Yanagi casually enough, not as if she was stalking her – she'd gotten that part down now – but flubbed when it came to the part about getting the little purse out of her sash rapidly and gently. She tugged.
"No, no, no!" Yanagi said, barely keeping her calm teacher-face on. "Now, we're going to have to practice until you remember. Don't yank it out. Extract it so I'd never know."
"Why don't you just do this yourself?" Kagura grumbled, and realized she was grumbling, and felt young and foolish.
Yanagi sighed. "Because it's more than my life's worth to go near Naraku. Everyone who's done so has died rather rapidly. In the early days, while he was still pretending to be Kagewaki, that was one thing, people hung around him for weeks and lived, but now he just lops us up any which way. Before I can get your heart, I need this setup, and I won't survive to do so much as set the scheme in motion if I try to be the one to pull off this theft. And if I'm dead, I can't accomplish the other one, can I?" She meant Kagura's heart.
"Fine," said Kagura, pulling herself together again. "Now, demonstrate the right way to pull something out of a pocket again?"
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Aerie approached Kagome, who was leaning against a tree with her eyes closed. They had settled down for the evening round about sunset, after an uneventful day of hiking. "H-hey, Kags?" she said.
Kagome opened one eye. "Yes?"
"You know that conversation we had this morning, about school work?"
"We did touch on that, yeah," Kagome agreed.
"We-ell, I've been gone a long time and I'm a really be a long way behind my class and when I do get home I'm going to be even further behind and I don't really know what will happen but especially in chemistry I may have to take the course over." Aerie rattled out, doing cruel things to the common comma.
"So you'd like me to help you?" Kagome asked.
"If it's not too much trouble, yeah," Aerie agreed, "I know Japanese schools are better than ours about getting information into people's heads, so even though you have been missing a lot of school…."
Kagome smiled and shrugged, ignoring Aerie's social incompetence with the ease of someone who spent a lot of time with Inuyasha. "I'll help you. It's not as if I was going to get any studying done tonight anyway."
"Thanks," Aerie said, smiling in relief. Kagome opened her backpack and dug through it, looking for her schoolbooks. When she'd gotten them out, she and Aerie sorted them by subject and Aerie boggled momentarily at the sheer volume. "This is…a lot of books to carry around, Kags," she observed.
"I'm stronger than I look," Kagome replied, extracting a piece of math homework from her math book and frowning at it. "You know, I think I see what I did wrong in this equation…." She put the paper down for a moment, to search through her bag for a pencil. As soon as she did, a chicken, which had wandered into the camp without being noticed, promptly picked it up and fluttered away with it. "Hey!" Kagome cried, jumping up and racing after it. She pursued the chicken around the glade they had chosen to camp in, it always only a little way ahead, changing direction without warning and every so often fluttering a few feet before its almost-bred-away wings gave out and it had to land again. "Come on, mister chicken! Give me back my math!"
"That's a female," Inuyasha remarked from his post just a few feet behind Kagome and Aerie's schoolwork setup. Aerie was laughing too hard to go to Kagome's aid, and Inuyasha did not seem to see the need.
"Huh?" Aerie said, looking over her shoulder at him, swallowing her mirth somewhat.
"It's a female." Inuyasha repeated. "A hen, not a rooster. Cocks have combs on their heads." Aerie still looked confused and he added bad-temperedly, "She called it mister chicken."
"Oh," said Aerie, with an exaggerated expression of enlightenment. "Yeah, I know that about chickens, but I didn't know why you were saying it. Well, she's a city girl. Can't be expected to think about that kind of thing. How do you know it?"
"Mother kept chickens," he explained concisely. She nodded and didn't press, picking up one of Kagome's textbooks and opening it. It was written in kanji, which should have come as no surprise. It made no sense to her, which probably shouldn't have surprised her but did. She stared at it.
"Well, that's Greek to me," she remarked. "Or, actually, Japanese, hah-hah."
"What?" Inuyasha asked, looking over her shoulder. He raised his eyebrows. "You can't read?"
"I can't read Japanese!" she corrected. "I can read just fine in English! Look!" She snatched up a sheet of paper from Kagome's binder and the forgotten pencil and scrawled 'Inuyasha is an ignorant, arrogant, two-timing freak' across it.
"That's an awful lot of letters," he observed, "but you used the same ones a lot. How many do you know?"
"Twenty-six," she replied snippily.
He laughed. "Twenty-six? You might as well be illiterate. What can you write with twenty-six characters?"
"Anything!" she snapped. "There are only twenty-six letters in the Roman alphabet! It's phonetic!"
"Feh. Whatever," said Inuyasha, pleased to have gotten a rise out of her.
"Rrrg," she muttered. "Starting now, I despise pictograms."
"What's going on over here?" Kagome asked, having recovered her math homework with the help of the houshi. The chicken was being fed breadcrumbs by Shippou.
"He doesn't believe I can write! Here, do you take a Western language at school? Tell him this alphabet exists!" She thrust the paper at Kagome, pausing to think too late that if Kagome knew English that was not a good idea. But she only glanced at it and nodded.
"Yes, it exists. I hear it's pretty easy to learn, because it's short, but that it doesn't follow any rules very well."
"More or less," Aerie agreed. "Kagome, would it be to much to ask…?"
"Of course not. I'll catch you up. Right, where had you left off in chemistry?" The two girls started talking school talk, sometimes somewhat hampered by confusions of technical vocabulary, but pretty soon they were knee-deep in chem equations.
"But that compound -" Aerie was saying two hours later, peering at the equation by firelight. She broke off as Kagome vanished.
"Oi," said Inuyasha, dangling from the tree and holding Kagome by the collar, "wenches. Time to sleep, or you'll be useless tomorrow."
"Put me down, Inuyasha," Kagome ordered. "What time is it?"
"Three hours since sunset," the hanyou replied. "Bed."
"You're right." Kagome agreed with a yawn. "Bed. Now let me go."
He set her carefully down and she and Aerie began to tidy up.
Someone was watching. They smiled. This was going to be just too easy.
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Heh-heh. Sudden and unexpected 'suspense,' such as it is, after a load of silliness. How's that? Yes, Yanagi has a plan and it involves Kagura learning how to pick pockets. Yes, Kileb is driving Naraku around the bend. Yes, Aerie and Lelentaeli know each other, anyone who remembered him from chapter 7, gets major cookies. And no, there is nothing remotely romantic going on there. Had to put that in because my beta commented. Tell me if you think I'm racking up too many characters. This is the full cast, I promise. I'm even leaving Fluffy-sama out because I know what happens when you clutter the story, and the plot really doesn't need him…. Anyway –
Kikyou: Hey! Sakusha! Why am I still – bawk! – a chicken?
TrisakA: Because I didn't need you for this chapter.
Kikyou: Do I have to stay a chicken until my next – bawk! – appearance?
TrisakA: Hmm…no. Shazam. You're an undead miko again. Happy? Now let me handle the active characters….
Naraku: I would like to protest!
TrisakA: What is it, Kagewaki?
Naraku: I'm not Kagewaki!
TrisakA: Well, you look like him! Fine, Theatre Basement, what do you want?
Naraku: That's just it! I'm the villain here! I protest being degraded like this!
Kileb: Oh, come now, Naraku, am I really that much trouble?
Naraku: Yes.
Kileb: Oh…. Hi, baf! Be nice to me, Naraku has hurt my feelings….
baf: Huh? I'm in an author's note? And it's not my author's note?
TrisakA: Uh-huh! Hi! Welcome! Can you keep him busy for a minute while I deal with Kagewaki here?
Naraku: I told you, I'm not Kagewaki! And he's getting on my last nerve.
TrisakA: I'm afraid you're just going to have to live with it, mister. Look, if it will make you shut up, I promise to write a story all about you some time and have him not be in it, fair?
Naraku: I get a story? Interesting idea….
TrisakA: Good. Now, let's move on.
Kagome: :enters, carrying chicken: Sakusha-sama, we can't figure out who this chicken is.
TrisakA: Who it is? Yike, I thought I'd turned everybody back now. Hello, chicken, who are you?
Chicken: Bawk!
TrisakA: No, come on, tell me, who are you, so I can change you back?
Twenty minutes and a lot of cajoling later….
TrisakA: Hang on…is this the chicken that stole your homework in the chapter, Kagome?
Kagome: Yes.
TrisakA: Then it's just a chicken! I just spent twenty minutes trying to get a chicken to tell me its name::is wreathed in flames:
Kagome: Uh, sorry ma'am::flees:
TrisakA: OK, who set this one up!