Eighteenth Chap: The Way They Act

A/N: This is a silly and pointless chapter. In fact the only reason I've written it is to buy myself some time. Heh heh… the fact of it is, I'm rushing to post this because I haven't updated in a while. You don't even have to read it to know the story line. It's really just meaningless dribble. But it clears my conscious to know I've at least posted something. Anyway, the real chapter is coming soon. Promise. :D

Disclaimer: sigh must we do this every time? (Takahashi's beefy, bouncer-type lawyers glare through their sunglasses). pouts oh fine! I don't own Inuyasha or the characters from the series "Inuyasha" those who are not property of Rumiko Takahashi or Jump's are MINE :p

The Way They Act

By morning Miroku was practically on a full recovery. He could walk easily again, and jog certain amounts of distance without collapsing of exhaustion. And he was, as always, more than ready to use these useful running and walking skills to track down every beautiful girl in Japan (or if not beautiful, then just willing). A few times he even tried the "I've just recovered from a near-death experience. I'm scarred for life. Pity me. Feel sorry for me… Please bear my child!"

Sango was torn between relief that he was alright and unspeakable rage at the fact that he had once again began womanizing, and not an hour off of his death bed at that.

Little did she know, however, that Miroku was just stalling. The fact of it was: he didn't want to go near Kagome. Because ever since practically the moment he had woken up for good, Inuyasha had been demanding that Miroku "fix" her.

Easier said than done.

"Excuse me, Miss." He called from the far side of a clothesline.

"Oh hello, can I help you?" A young, pretty girl with large, curious brown eyes and dark black hair turned from her chores to look at him. She was kneeling over a bucket of wet laundry.

"Would you mind if I gave you a hand with that?" Came the innocent question.

"Oh! Why, yes, that would be wonderful." Came the naïve response. The village girl, the poor unsuspecting village girl, smiled and brightened at his offer. "You're so kind!"

"Naturally." Miroku smiled charmingly at her as he made his way over to the washtub.

The laundry girl bent over to the clothes bucket again, unaware of his wandering eyes. Her hands dipped into the soap suds and grasped a pile of white bedding that lay dormant beneath the murky water.

"If you could just-"

"Ah! Damn it she's fast!"

The girl turned around, rather alarmed, to see what had caused the monk's sudden outburst. He tore his murky violet eyes away from the road he had been staring down, smiling nervously at her. "Please forgive… Buddah calls."

"What?"

But he was already gone. Far away gone. And running, a cloud of yellowed dust kicked up behind him. The girl at the washtub stared after the holy man, wondering what she could have done wrong when an alarmingly large boomerang whizzed over her head, making her cry out in surprise and duck, inadvertently covering herself with the damp sheet in her hands as she tried to shield her head. Soon the boomerang zoomed back over her head and was caught by a figure fast approaching down the road.

"Come back here you perverted, lying, hateful, filthy excuse of a monk! You insane, dastardly, despicable, pitiful, egotistical-"

The girl stared in wonder out from underneath the sheet as a beautiful woman raced past the hut, moving in the same direction as the monk had gone just seconds before. Her pretty face was livid. And she was letting loose a string of curses shamelessly.

"Um… excuse me-" The laundry girl beneath the sheet raised and timid hand to try and get the woman's attention, but she was cut off as Sango's attention snapped onto her with frightening force, her body rigid as she noticed the other girl's beauty.

To the girl beneath the sheet, the woman's eyes seemed to blaze with fires of hatred as she studied the girl before her with narrowed brown eyes.

"And I suppose he tried to "help" you too, didn't he!" Sango demanded, causing the girl to turn almost as white as the sheet she was now hiding under.

"The monk?" She asked weakly, starting to shrink back beneath the cover, as if that would protect her or suddenly make her invisible.

The woman seemed to bristle at the word "monk".

"Yes'um." The girl managed. "He asked to help me with the laundry, he-" But she was cut off once again.

"The laundry!" The woman exclaimed, apparently even more furious than before, though the girl couldn't understand why something as trivial as laundry would be enough to churn the woman's ire. "The laundry!" Sango spat, as if disgusted before starting after the monk again, screaming once more. "The laundry Miroku! That happens to be your lowest low yet! Stop running from me you bloody, lecherous, scheming, contriving, low-life! You inconsiderate, pompous, self-absorbed, megalomaniac! You damnable, indecent, abhorring, impure, heinous, sickening, sinful, detestable jerk! Of all the inconsiderate, brain-dead, lascivious, disgraceful, disgusting, things to say! Of all the…"

And so the insults dragged on and eventually faded as the girl and the monk disappeared. And now startled and rather confused girl crawled out from under the sheet and carefully looked around before shaking the sheet free of dirt and loose blades of grass, hanging it on the laundry line and finally starting to relax again when suddenly: "OW! DAMN IT! LET GO OF MY EAR!"

"LET GO OF MY ARM!"

"NEVER!"

"SAME!"

"WOMAN, DO YOU WANT TO BE TIED UP AGAIN!"

"NO!"

"THEN STOP BICKERING!"

There was a scream. And the girl watched in stunned fear like a frightened deer as another couple came into sight. There was a man steadily walking up the road towards her, coming from the direction the boomerang-wielding woman and the monk had just gone, and heading in the direction from which the monk and the previous woman had originally come from. But this man, unlike the first, was clearly a demon. His long slivery hair and bright golden eyes declared it shamelessly to be so. His talons gleamed dangerously in the sunlight, much like his fangs as he suppressed a growl within himself. His strong hands were currently locked tightly around a girl's calves.

The girl herself was slung over his shoulder like a sack, and being hauled off to some unknown place. But it didn't look like she wanted to go. In fact it looked very much like she was enraged, much like the woman with the boomerang had been enraged, about the idea of reaching the silver-haired man's destination. And she was putting up a rather good fight too, considering she was only a human and he was a dangerous demon.

The laundry-girl watched in awe at the boldness of the human girl as she pushed into the man's back with her hand, lifting her upper body high enough so that she could reach with her other hand and viciously grab the man's silver ear, yanking it in a painful twisting motion. Apparently this was excruciating for the victim, demon or not.

He grimaced, his face crunching with the pain, golden eyes clamping shut beneath the wisps of silver hair that fell into his face in handsome sloppiness, clearly he had been through somethng. "Would you stop doing that already!" The man snapped.

"Not until you put me down, no!" The girl screamed in reply.

"Ha! Fat chance!" The man shouted, smiling wickedly up at her.

"YOU JERK!" She cried, pulling an extra tug on his already twisted ear. Laundry-girl wouldn't have been surprised if the struggling human managed to yank it off entirely.

"OW! Damn it, Kagome! I'd like to keep those on my head if it's all the same to you!"

"Stop calling me that!" The human girl shrieked, her whole body beginning to thrash, though she kept her grip firmly placed around his left ear. "My name is NOTKagome!"

"ARGH!"

"URMPH!"

And soon they were out of sight and out of earshot to the Landry Girl who stared after them, a little afraid to move. As if perhaps when she tried to resume with the laundry, another shouting couple would come tearing down the road, this time more horrible and ear-shattering than the last two.

But instead there was a soft chuckle behind her and she turned to see her mother standing in the doorway, a mysterious smile on her lips and a knowing twinkling in her eyes. "Looks like love is back in the air, Chiriko." She said softly. "Looks like love…"

"Love?" Chiriko asked as she dipped her hands into the soapy water once more. "Surely you jest, mother."

But her mother only laughed softly, the back of her hand covering her mouth. "Oh you'd be surprised the way people act when they've fallen in love with each other… whether they've realized it yet or not…" Her mother smiled softly, the back of her hand falling the swell of her belly. "Yes, you'd be very surprised."

Chiriko gave her pregnant mother one last skeptical look at her mother before turning back to her laundry. 'Those two couples in love with each other…' she thought as massaged the fabric with her softly pruned hands. 'Yeah right.'