Prejudice
Written By: FranceGamble
Corrected By: Gigi-chan, Samantha, and Trinity-33
Chapter One
He stood in front of the stairs that led to the unseen shrine. "I don't think this is going to work," he said to himself as he started to climb the seemingly endless incline.
He reached the top finally. He wondered if he would have been out of breath, had he been human. "If I was human," he said aloud. He sighed longingly as he crossed the leaf covered ground. The sun gleamed off of his silver hair as the ominous wind blew it behind him. He was scared; he wasn't going to fake it. 'Dad will just be happy that I have a job. He won't mind where it is,' he assured himself.
He slowly raised his hand up and knocked on the door. He waited and willed himself not to run away. 'I'm not going to run away from everything!' he thought angrily. He waited a couple more minutes then knocked again. This time he looked at his watch to make sure school hadn't started yet. As if he was really thinking on going.
Finally the door opened and a beautiful woman stood looking at him strangely. "May I help you, young man?" she asked politely. Way more politely than he had expected.
"I'm sorry to bother you, ma'am, but I was wondering if there is any work for me to do here. I need the extra money, and I'll work really hard," he bowed low to her, showing her full obedience. "Please let me work for you."
She stood there looking at the bowing teenager. To say she was startled was an understatement. "Uh, sure. I could use the extra help around here. When do you want to start?"
He straightened up and smiled, "I can start today. Right now even. I don't have school today."
She smiled too, "Okay, then why don't I make a list of things I need done. I will pay you by the hour as long as you continually work. Is that fine with you?"
'Wow, she's really nice,' he thought. He nodded, "That's fine with me, ma'am. I don't care how much I make. I just need some money."
"You sound like such the gentleman. Come inside so I can make that list," she said as she opened the door for him to enter.
He bowed low again and walked into the Main House on the Higurashi Shrine for Humans.
*** ^_^ ***
Her black hair waved in the slight wind as she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you so much, Hojo. I really appreciate you doing the math for me," she sweetly told him as she smiled. "See you tomorrow," she turned around, making sure her hair waved seductively for him.
He smiled brightly and shyly as he walked away from the base of the shrine steps that the sixteen year old just started to climb. "I will do her homework as long as I always get my reward," he said to himself.
Kagome smiled as she walked the many steps up to her home. She was feeling wonderful. She had turned in all of her homework, all of it finished. And she was able to find two boys to do all of tomorrow's homework too. Yup, she was feeling light on her feet. She could almost skip all the way up the sixty or so steps.
Well, she had been feeling wonderful, until she reached the top of the cement stairs. Her feet stopped before she even realized what she was doing. There standing in front of her was something she hated even more than homework. "Youkai," she muttered. Her eyes narrowed as she started towards the evil beast.
*** ^_^ ***
He was enjoying the work that Mrs. Higurashi had given him. It was only small chores, and nothing that would tire him out much. But mostly he liked working because she had given him the most generous pay of all. Minimal wage that a human would have received, not what a youkai would have been paid at all, no matter what job he tried to get. So, what was he doing to show his happiness? He was singing, and dancing too, while he swept the central path to the main shrine. He wasn't off-key either. 'I'm not in the youkai choir for nothing,' he thought as he sang the first verse again to the song from his favorite movie The Labyrinth.
"How you turned my world, you precious thing," he did a quick spin. "You starven near exhaust me.
"Everything I've done, I've done for you," he started to use the top of the broom as a microphone. "I move the stars for no one." As he turned around to continue the song he saw her. A young teenage girl, standing there glaring at him. 'Oh, how embarrassing,' he thought to himself. He smiled at her. She glared stronger.
Thinking maybe he was up-setting her somehow, he bowed to her, "I'm sorry miss."
"Disgusting creature," she yelled at him. Then, in an act that was very un-ladylike, she spat at him, barely missed him. When he came up to ask why she had done that he saw her walking away towards the main house. He followed after her, but when she just opened the door to the house, he figured out she must have been the daughter that the walls were covered with pictures of.
"Nice to meet you, Ms. Higurashi," he said to himself as though the girl were politely infront of him, "My name's InuYasha." In an act much unlike him, he walked to the kitchen window where he could hear the Higurashi women talking. Well, one talking, the other yelling.
*** ^_^ ***
Kagome ran into the kitchen, nearly knocking over the pitcher of water sitting on the table. "What is that thing doing here?!" She looked right at her mother, her mood clearly was anger and loathing. Her green skirt swayed as she paced back and forth in front of her surprised mother.
"Kagome, don't talk to me like that. And I don't know what you're talking about," Mrs. Higurashi said as she turned around and stirred the oden on the stove.
"That freak on the property! How could you hire it!?" Kagome screamed. She crossed her arms and glared at the older Higurashi woman.
"Are you talking about InuYasha? He's not a freak or an it. He's a youkai, and he needed the job. You never want to work anyway, and so he's taking all of your chores on the shrine." There was a moment of silence, then Mrs. Higurashi continued, "Be nice to him, okay?" The older woman smiled, but made sure her point was made.
"I'm not being nice to anything that I can kill with one talisman," Kagome yelled as she stormed out of the kitchen and stomped her way up the stairs.
Mrs. Higurashi sighed and looked out the kitchen window right at the white haired youkai. She smiled at him, "Don't worry about her, but I suggest you try to avoid her."
"Yes ma'am," InuYasha said sadly as he pretended to rake some leaves into a pile
*** ^_^ ***
"Can you believe it Sango?! She hired a youkai! How disgusting can she be!?" Kagome screamed into the phone. She sighed and plopped down onto her twin mattress making her neatly made bed crumple under her. This caused her pink pillow to fly into the air and down onto the floor.
"Well, maybe she did need the help," Sango offered on the other end of the phone.
"No, if she needed the help she would have put an advertisement in the Okinawa Human Times," Kagome said maliciously. She stared out her window at the tree positioned right in her view of the city. The sun barely bringing any light through the changing leaves.
"Well, since I'm your best friend, I won't tell anyone about your youkai worker. But I suggest you don't tell anyone else. If you do, someone, like Kikyo, will use it to make your life miserable. They will call you Youkai lover and ask when you're having the hanyou. It would be terrible. Remember, it happened to that girl named Rin before she finally had to move in fear of her own life," Sango advised.
Kagome remembered the horrible incident vividly, "But wasn't she really in love with the older youkai?"
"It doesn't matter. They could lie about it!" Sango said. Then she mumbled something to someone. Her mood changed as she said angrily to Kagome, "Kohaku is being a pain. I have to go, sorry."
"It's okay. I'm just glad Sota isn't home from boy scouts yet," Kagome answered. "See ya tomorrow."
"See you," Sango said back right before she hung up the phone.
Kagome pushed the off button and laid down onto her bed. 'I can't believe she ruined my life!' she thought bitterly.
*** ^_^ ***
He quietly walked down the street seeing all the rich homes of the humans that surrounded the Higurashi Shrine. "One day things will be different," he promised himself as he imagined himself and his father living in one of the huge homes. "We'll have a human butler, and human maids. And the best cook in the whole country, well region. And we'll be able to walk into any shop. There won't be any Separation Code. And everyone will share everything. There will even be hanyou's born." It was a dream, and he knew it.
It wasn't only his dream though, and he knew that. He remembered the night his older brother, Sesshomaru, had said he was leaving the country to study in a better one. Some place had no Separation Code on Youkai and Humans. Where he and his younger love could live without any ridicule or fear. The young girl was absolutely in tears, InuYasha remembered that too. All he could think at the time was how lucky she was to have the youkai every girl in Okinawa Youkai High had wanted. He had smiled at his brother and wished him luck. Sesshomaru didn't smile back, but only because that wasn't his style. They left during the night to China. One of the only free countries left.
InuYasha sighed as his thoughts also turned to leaving. He could leave too. Leave all the youkai in high school that thought he was the reason Sesshomaru had left. He could leave all the youkai who beated him up daily as well. He could also leave all the humans who yelled, spat at him, and were just plain mean to him. All of his thoughts made him feel angry, but he wouldn't show it. If he did, he would be in trouble. Being a youkai meant he had to be careful. It was a human world, and youkai weren't welcome. 'They would give us an island to live on, but they're afraid we'll take over the world after getting together in mass numbers,' he remembered his father telling him once.
His thoughts went once again to the places he could leave to. "America, Britain, France, Germany..." he started naming off the free countries when he almost tripped on something. He caught himself and stepped off the sidewalk to look at what had almost made him break his neck. "Shippo?"
"They killed them," the little boy said into the sidewalk he was kneeling on. His red hair glistened in the bright moonlight, and from the streetlights of the empty street.
InuYasha kneeled down next to the kitsune youkai. He didn't like the young boy too much, but he wasn't going to let personal tiffs get in the way of comforting someone. "Who was killed?"
"Momma and Papa. I should have gone home when they told me to. I would have been home," the boy cried harder. His green eyes shut tight, but the tears still escaped.
InuYasha's heart felt like it had just fallen to the center of the world, "Who...who killed them?" He had to know if his fears were correct.
Shippo sniffed, "If I had only been there, I would have gone with them! I want to be with them!!" He screamed. InuYasha didn't care if the boy woke up the entire world right then. The child deserved to let his anger out.
What InuYasha did care about right then though, was who had been near his home. "Who killed them, Shippo?" he asked again.
Shippo brought his eyes up from the gray walk, "Yes."
"Who?" InuYasha asked. "Do you mean Y-E-S?"
Shippo nodded. "They killed them both and left this letter." The little boy went into his pockets and pulled out a blood stained piece of paper. He handed the soaked object to InuYasha.
InuYasha carefully opened it and read it:
Dear youkai,
This is a warning to all who think they can overthrow the human race. We rule everything you know. Do anything to oppose us, and end up like them.
Y.E.S.
InuYasha folded the letter again. "Did the police see this?"
Shippo shook his head, "It's mine, and so I took it before the police came. They're there now, probably cleaning up the mess, and making it look like nothing happened."
Shippo was a smart kid. For only being ten he knew a lot, and obviously knew that the human police, who is the only police, would make it look like a murder/suicide. That was what always happened when the Youkai Exterminators Society killed someone. They were the reason Sesshomaru had to leave town.
InuYasha felt horrible for the child, and in a world where youkai would be killed for being parentless, he had to do something. "Shippo, come stay with me for a while. I will explain to my dad what happened."
Shippo shook his head, "I want to die. Please, InuYasha, let me get taken by them."
InuYasha shook his head and picked up the child. "I don't think so. If you die, who will avenge your parents' deaths? You have to live so that when the time comes you can fight."
"Avenge them? How?" Shippo asked while he was being carried across the railroad tracks that separated youkai residence from the human residence, like a barrier from rich, needed people, to poor, dogs who could eat out of the trash.
"Someday the world will change. We'll be free from the human's laws. And we'll be equal to them. We will be able to live in rich homes, be part of the military, and do everything they can do. We won't be separated any longer. You have to live to see that day, and help take out the Y.E.S. You understand right?" InuYasha asked as he made his way to the front door of the run down shack his father rented from a human landlord.
"I will avenge them," Shippo promised. He held up his hand and made a fist. A look of determination on his face. "I promise by the youkai blood running in my veins," he used the common pledge of all youkai.
InuYasha smiled as he unlocked the door and walked into his home to see his father reading The Okinawa Youkai Times. "Dad, Shippo needs a place to stay."
"I know. He can stay here," Mr. Takoshi says as he smiles at the fox.
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Thanks To: The twenty reviewers who reviewed. My sisters for bugging me to death. My class for being annoying and making me get more ideas. And my parents for giving me more chores.
A/N: This will be up-dated on Saterdays. But as everyone knows these are now Hollidays, and so maybe a little slower then usual. I shouldn't fail you though. This is already outlined, like all of my stories, and just needs the fillers. Anyway, I've talked too much now. Review!
France 2003
Written By: FranceGamble
Corrected By: Gigi-chan, Samantha, and Trinity-33
Chapter One
He stood in front of the stairs that led to the unseen shrine. "I don't think this is going to work," he said to himself as he started to climb the seemingly endless incline.
He reached the top finally. He wondered if he would have been out of breath, had he been human. "If I was human," he said aloud. He sighed longingly as he crossed the leaf covered ground. The sun gleamed off of his silver hair as the ominous wind blew it behind him. He was scared; he wasn't going to fake it. 'Dad will just be happy that I have a job. He won't mind where it is,' he assured himself.
He slowly raised his hand up and knocked on the door. He waited and willed himself not to run away. 'I'm not going to run away from everything!' he thought angrily. He waited a couple more minutes then knocked again. This time he looked at his watch to make sure school hadn't started yet. As if he was really thinking on going.
Finally the door opened and a beautiful woman stood looking at him strangely. "May I help you, young man?" she asked politely. Way more politely than he had expected.
"I'm sorry to bother you, ma'am, but I was wondering if there is any work for me to do here. I need the extra money, and I'll work really hard," he bowed low to her, showing her full obedience. "Please let me work for you."
She stood there looking at the bowing teenager. To say she was startled was an understatement. "Uh, sure. I could use the extra help around here. When do you want to start?"
He straightened up and smiled, "I can start today. Right now even. I don't have school today."
She smiled too, "Okay, then why don't I make a list of things I need done. I will pay you by the hour as long as you continually work. Is that fine with you?"
'Wow, she's really nice,' he thought. He nodded, "That's fine with me, ma'am. I don't care how much I make. I just need some money."
"You sound like such the gentleman. Come inside so I can make that list," she said as she opened the door for him to enter.
He bowed low again and walked into the Main House on the Higurashi Shrine for Humans.
*** ^_^ ***
Her black hair waved in the slight wind as she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you so much, Hojo. I really appreciate you doing the math for me," she sweetly told him as she smiled. "See you tomorrow," she turned around, making sure her hair waved seductively for him.
He smiled brightly and shyly as he walked away from the base of the shrine steps that the sixteen year old just started to climb. "I will do her homework as long as I always get my reward," he said to himself.
Kagome smiled as she walked the many steps up to her home. She was feeling wonderful. She had turned in all of her homework, all of it finished. And she was able to find two boys to do all of tomorrow's homework too. Yup, she was feeling light on her feet. She could almost skip all the way up the sixty or so steps.
Well, she had been feeling wonderful, until she reached the top of the cement stairs. Her feet stopped before she even realized what she was doing. There standing in front of her was something she hated even more than homework. "Youkai," she muttered. Her eyes narrowed as she started towards the evil beast.
*** ^_^ ***
He was enjoying the work that Mrs. Higurashi had given him. It was only small chores, and nothing that would tire him out much. But mostly he liked working because she had given him the most generous pay of all. Minimal wage that a human would have received, not what a youkai would have been paid at all, no matter what job he tried to get. So, what was he doing to show his happiness? He was singing, and dancing too, while he swept the central path to the main shrine. He wasn't off-key either. 'I'm not in the youkai choir for nothing,' he thought as he sang the first verse again to the song from his favorite movie The Labyrinth.
"How you turned my world, you precious thing," he did a quick spin. "You starven near exhaust me.
"Everything I've done, I've done for you," he started to use the top of the broom as a microphone. "I move the stars for no one." As he turned around to continue the song he saw her. A young teenage girl, standing there glaring at him. 'Oh, how embarrassing,' he thought to himself. He smiled at her. She glared stronger.
Thinking maybe he was up-setting her somehow, he bowed to her, "I'm sorry miss."
"Disgusting creature," she yelled at him. Then, in an act that was very un-ladylike, she spat at him, barely missed him. When he came up to ask why she had done that he saw her walking away towards the main house. He followed after her, but when she just opened the door to the house, he figured out she must have been the daughter that the walls were covered with pictures of.
"Nice to meet you, Ms. Higurashi," he said to himself as though the girl were politely infront of him, "My name's InuYasha." In an act much unlike him, he walked to the kitchen window where he could hear the Higurashi women talking. Well, one talking, the other yelling.
*** ^_^ ***
Kagome ran into the kitchen, nearly knocking over the pitcher of water sitting on the table. "What is that thing doing here?!" She looked right at her mother, her mood clearly was anger and loathing. Her green skirt swayed as she paced back and forth in front of her surprised mother.
"Kagome, don't talk to me like that. And I don't know what you're talking about," Mrs. Higurashi said as she turned around and stirred the oden on the stove.
"That freak on the property! How could you hire it!?" Kagome screamed. She crossed her arms and glared at the older Higurashi woman.
"Are you talking about InuYasha? He's not a freak or an it. He's a youkai, and he needed the job. You never want to work anyway, and so he's taking all of your chores on the shrine." There was a moment of silence, then Mrs. Higurashi continued, "Be nice to him, okay?" The older woman smiled, but made sure her point was made.
"I'm not being nice to anything that I can kill with one talisman," Kagome yelled as she stormed out of the kitchen and stomped her way up the stairs.
Mrs. Higurashi sighed and looked out the kitchen window right at the white haired youkai. She smiled at him, "Don't worry about her, but I suggest you try to avoid her."
"Yes ma'am," InuYasha said sadly as he pretended to rake some leaves into a pile
*** ^_^ ***
"Can you believe it Sango?! She hired a youkai! How disgusting can she be!?" Kagome screamed into the phone. She sighed and plopped down onto her twin mattress making her neatly made bed crumple under her. This caused her pink pillow to fly into the air and down onto the floor.
"Well, maybe she did need the help," Sango offered on the other end of the phone.
"No, if she needed the help she would have put an advertisement in the Okinawa Human Times," Kagome said maliciously. She stared out her window at the tree positioned right in her view of the city. The sun barely bringing any light through the changing leaves.
"Well, since I'm your best friend, I won't tell anyone about your youkai worker. But I suggest you don't tell anyone else. If you do, someone, like Kikyo, will use it to make your life miserable. They will call you Youkai lover and ask when you're having the hanyou. It would be terrible. Remember, it happened to that girl named Rin before she finally had to move in fear of her own life," Sango advised.
Kagome remembered the horrible incident vividly, "But wasn't she really in love with the older youkai?"
"It doesn't matter. They could lie about it!" Sango said. Then she mumbled something to someone. Her mood changed as she said angrily to Kagome, "Kohaku is being a pain. I have to go, sorry."
"It's okay. I'm just glad Sota isn't home from boy scouts yet," Kagome answered. "See ya tomorrow."
"See you," Sango said back right before she hung up the phone.
Kagome pushed the off button and laid down onto her bed. 'I can't believe she ruined my life!' she thought bitterly.
*** ^_^ ***
He quietly walked down the street seeing all the rich homes of the humans that surrounded the Higurashi Shrine. "One day things will be different," he promised himself as he imagined himself and his father living in one of the huge homes. "We'll have a human butler, and human maids. And the best cook in the whole country, well region. And we'll be able to walk into any shop. There won't be any Separation Code. And everyone will share everything. There will even be hanyou's born." It was a dream, and he knew it.
It wasn't only his dream though, and he knew that. He remembered the night his older brother, Sesshomaru, had said he was leaving the country to study in a better one. Some place had no Separation Code on Youkai and Humans. Where he and his younger love could live without any ridicule or fear. The young girl was absolutely in tears, InuYasha remembered that too. All he could think at the time was how lucky she was to have the youkai every girl in Okinawa Youkai High had wanted. He had smiled at his brother and wished him luck. Sesshomaru didn't smile back, but only because that wasn't his style. They left during the night to China. One of the only free countries left.
InuYasha sighed as his thoughts also turned to leaving. He could leave too. Leave all the youkai in high school that thought he was the reason Sesshomaru had left. He could leave all the youkai who beated him up daily as well. He could also leave all the humans who yelled, spat at him, and were just plain mean to him. All of his thoughts made him feel angry, but he wouldn't show it. If he did, he would be in trouble. Being a youkai meant he had to be careful. It was a human world, and youkai weren't welcome. 'They would give us an island to live on, but they're afraid we'll take over the world after getting together in mass numbers,' he remembered his father telling him once.
His thoughts went once again to the places he could leave to. "America, Britain, France, Germany..." he started naming off the free countries when he almost tripped on something. He caught himself and stepped off the sidewalk to look at what had almost made him break his neck. "Shippo?"
"They killed them," the little boy said into the sidewalk he was kneeling on. His red hair glistened in the bright moonlight, and from the streetlights of the empty street.
InuYasha kneeled down next to the kitsune youkai. He didn't like the young boy too much, but he wasn't going to let personal tiffs get in the way of comforting someone. "Who was killed?"
"Momma and Papa. I should have gone home when they told me to. I would have been home," the boy cried harder. His green eyes shut tight, but the tears still escaped.
InuYasha's heart felt like it had just fallen to the center of the world, "Who...who killed them?" He had to know if his fears were correct.
Shippo sniffed, "If I had only been there, I would have gone with them! I want to be with them!!" He screamed. InuYasha didn't care if the boy woke up the entire world right then. The child deserved to let his anger out.
What InuYasha did care about right then though, was who had been near his home. "Who killed them, Shippo?" he asked again.
Shippo brought his eyes up from the gray walk, "Yes."
"Who?" InuYasha asked. "Do you mean Y-E-S?"
Shippo nodded. "They killed them both and left this letter." The little boy went into his pockets and pulled out a blood stained piece of paper. He handed the soaked object to InuYasha.
InuYasha carefully opened it and read it:
Dear youkai,
This is a warning to all who think they can overthrow the human race. We rule everything you know. Do anything to oppose us, and end up like them.
Y.E.S.
InuYasha folded the letter again. "Did the police see this?"
Shippo shook his head, "It's mine, and so I took it before the police came. They're there now, probably cleaning up the mess, and making it look like nothing happened."
Shippo was a smart kid. For only being ten he knew a lot, and obviously knew that the human police, who is the only police, would make it look like a murder/suicide. That was what always happened when the Youkai Exterminators Society killed someone. They were the reason Sesshomaru had to leave town.
InuYasha felt horrible for the child, and in a world where youkai would be killed for being parentless, he had to do something. "Shippo, come stay with me for a while. I will explain to my dad what happened."
Shippo shook his head, "I want to die. Please, InuYasha, let me get taken by them."
InuYasha shook his head and picked up the child. "I don't think so. If you die, who will avenge your parents' deaths? You have to live so that when the time comes you can fight."
"Avenge them? How?" Shippo asked while he was being carried across the railroad tracks that separated youkai residence from the human residence, like a barrier from rich, needed people, to poor, dogs who could eat out of the trash.
"Someday the world will change. We'll be free from the human's laws. And we'll be equal to them. We will be able to live in rich homes, be part of the military, and do everything they can do. We won't be separated any longer. You have to live to see that day, and help take out the Y.E.S. You understand right?" InuYasha asked as he made his way to the front door of the run down shack his father rented from a human landlord.
"I will avenge them," Shippo promised. He held up his hand and made a fist. A look of determination on his face. "I promise by the youkai blood running in my veins," he used the common pledge of all youkai.
InuYasha smiled as he unlocked the door and walked into his home to see his father reading The Okinawa Youkai Times. "Dad, Shippo needs a place to stay."
"I know. He can stay here," Mr. Takoshi says as he smiles at the fox.
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Thanks To: The twenty reviewers who reviewed. My sisters for bugging me to death. My class for being annoying and making me get more ideas. And my parents for giving me more chores.
A/N: This will be up-dated on Saterdays. But as everyone knows these are now Hollidays, and so maybe a little slower then usual. I shouldn't fail you though. This is already outlined, like all of my stories, and just needs the fillers. Anyway, I've talked too much now. Review!
France 2003