AN: After, what…two or three years?...I'm back to finish this damn story. I've been nice and busy at college and have traded in fanfiction for original fiction and a bunch of art. I really do feel that fanfiction has made me into the bit of a writer (if you can call me that) that I am now and, since I'm sitting in a hotel room in Spain at the moment (I'm doing study abroad in Europe this semester!) I thought I would at least make an attempt to finish this story. Also, I've been getting reviews for it lately with people asking, "what the hell, man?". So, I will try to pick up were I left off and finish INS. No promises, though. Thanks to all those that still read my old crap. I really hope I can still do this…

"This is either brilliant or insane."

"It's remarkable how often the two coincide."

-Pirates of the Carribean, Curse of the Black Pearl.

IT's not sANE

chAPTer 8

There are many, many uncomfortable topics that can come up in conversation with someone that you really haven't seen much of in years. Such as, "Are you having a girl or a boy?...Oh, haha, well, I guess your mother-in-law's food likes you too!" or "Wow…last time I heard, you were doing great. I'm really sorry about the multiple divorces, parental deaths, bankruptcy, lost pets, IRS stake-outs, and horridly obvious hair-loss. I guess when it rains, it pours, eh?"

It was no different with Inuyahsa.

"YOU WHAT?!!"

Have you ever seen a cold tea drink fly up off a table- I mean, really fly- in a high arch, slow motion? It's very slow-motion-y and high arch-y. And the whole time, you're thinking "this is going to be bad when it lands on my shorts" and "why the fuck didn't the fucker tell me about her before?" Well, maybe not the second bit, but you get the idea. Anyways, the point is, you see it happening, know it's going to suck, and can't do anything about it. All you can do is curse colorfully then curse the full Crayola-64-colors-box-worth of curses because the fucker didn't tell you about her before. Or because the tea will probably stain, whichever.

"Look, I wanted to be honest and lay everything out on the table, Kagome. I wanted to tell you. I thought you had the right to know. I know it's really late, but I want us to be on good terms."

Inuyasha, to his credit, looked pathetically sad, upset, disappointed with himself, ashamed, and was using the best puppy dog eyes for a full-grown man I had ever seen. There's just something about him that reeks "loyal puppy" until you figure out that it's more "dig-up-holes-in-the-yard, tear-up-the-furniture, and-piss-all-over-the-place-while-he's-at-it-puppy". Anyways, the point is, he looked downright shitty and that helped a little. A little little. Like a bit of a tad of a smidgeon of a microbe little.

I, for my part, was doing my best impression of a fish out of water that had just been bludgeoned over the head and told "Okay, it's time to walk now. What's your damage? Go on, evolve. Higher understanding and all that, y'know? It'll be easier when your brain gets bigger than the size of a pea. I think."

Inuyasha looked at me sheepishly. "You've got tea on you," he handed me a handkerchief out of his so-nicely-tailored suit that I was getting ready to hurl on.

"Oh," I said intelligently. I took hold of my brain for long enough to take the handkerchief and dabbed at my skirt. Then, in my politest of voices, being sure to take into account our surroundings:

"What the FUCK were you thinking?"

"Like I said, I really tried telling you. I thought you'd leave. I didn't want you to leave."

"Oh," I said, because I really didn't know what else I could say that wouldn't start an all-out riot.

Inuyasha ordered me another cup of tea, hot this time, and I left with it. "I need to think about some stuff," I declared and marched off, full speed ahead, down the road, not caring if I walked right off a cliff.

And I might as well have, because, not long after leaving, I stormed right into a person, spilling tea all over him. Possibly the last person I wanted to see at the moment, excluding the complete dolt and jerk I just left. A person who just so happened to be my boss, the brother of the complete dolt and jerk that I had just left, and quite a jerk himself.

I will be reincarnated as a cockroach, I thought unhappily. Because someone up above obviously did not like me.

"Here, take a seat and I'll get my first aid box. Oh, and you can put your shirt in the wash if you want. It'll take an hour though, to wash and dry." However, as soon as she was finished saying this, I felt a draft on my burned skin and looked down to discover that she already had my shirt unbuttoned. How the hell did she do that? There was only one answer. She was Lucifer reincarnated in the body of a young, Japanese corporate secretary. It seemed the only plausible explanation to me. Either that, or she had had a lot of practice, which seemed highly unlikely. However, that did not detract from the attention I paid her as she carelessly slipped off my shirt with warm, sure hands that may or may not have felt a little good, and disappeared with it into the unknown, dark, and probably girly, depths of her apartment. I shuddered.

I, unhappily, made my way to Higurashi's navy blue couch that was complete with tasteful, but glaringly mismatched pillows. At least it was comfortable. I probably sank a foot into it. However, my mind was not on couches at the moment. There were mistakes. Mistakes all made by Higurashi. Prologue mistake: Entering my life. Mistake 1. Scalding tea spilt onto my shirt and flesh beneath it, which was smarting like a bastard. 2. Dragging me back to her apartment, insisting on fixing the situation which could only be made better if she left my life, changed her name, became a hooker in downtown Las Vegas, and left me a competent, likeable secretary in her place while doing so. 3. She was going to try to fix what she'd done. With bandages. By the time she was through with me, no doubt, I would need someone with a psychology doctorate to fix the damage she would do by fixing the damage. 4. She offered to wash my shirt. She offered to wash my shirt. Subproblem 4a. In order to wash this Armani shirt, I would have to take it off (complete-done for me, while I was dying inside). And unless Kagome had some great-uncle who liked to leave clothes at her house, there would be nothing to take its place (complete- she had not yet returned with substitute clothing). Somehow, I knew being exposed in front of Kagome would only cause me pain in the future, and an unlimited supply of snarky comments from her (yet to, but guaranteed to come). Subproblem 4b. (and possibly the most important of all). My shirt was obviously dry clean only. Note to self: new secretary. Preferably without wit or a washer.

So while my mind caught up after the whole shirt-disappearing-act and I realized I was behind the game, and quite possibly going insane, I listened vaguely to the rummaging sounds coming from the Kagome Cave in the hallway. She appeared suddenly and I wondered if secretaries were being trained in ninja arts nowadays. She was never so inconspicuous at work, but perhaps she was still getting a feel for the terrain.

"I found the band aids and cream," she declared in victory. Obviously, the Kagome Cave had won the battle. Her hair was falling out of its ponytail and I noticed an odd, brown stain on her shorts. "Oh, and here's a towel to put around your shoulders. Sorry I don't have any shirts big enough for you."

I reached for the first aid kit and she pulled it away.

"Can you really fix it yourself," she asked, genuinely concerned, it appeared. "I mean, it won't hurt?"

I goggled at her. Quite frankly, she was freaking the shit out of me. Where the hell had Nursery Mom Kagome come from? And could I exchange her for something less likely to scare small children?

The idea of her touching my chest with those warm, caring fingers almost drove me over the edge. She must have seen me flinch at the new and improved headache I had received instantaneously, because she snapped out of Martha Stewart Mode and became a normal human being again.

"Forget it," she said curtly and shoved the box into my hands. "I'm sweaty, I need to change my shirt. Fix yourself up."

"Higurashi", I said as she headed towards the Kagome Cave. She turned and looked at me. "You've got coffee on you."

Then Kagome did something she had never done to me before. She gave me the finger. Quite energetically.

Thank god for return policies.

After putting away the med kit and checking on his shirt, I went back to the living room and plopped in the chair across from Taisho. I had to ask him. Was it true?

"Taisho, I need to ask you something."

A cool expression of surprise hinted with something else caused his left eyebrow to quirk up.

"Does your brother, Inuyasha…" I paused. This was going to seem very weird to him. There would, no doubt, be annoying, accusing questions after all, but, what the hell. "…does he have a daughter?"

For once, the surprise and shock was so apparent on his face that I almost had to catch myself before my shock gave me cardiac arrest.

"…Why is this of concern to you?"

There it was. The question. Option 1: tell the truth and possibly risk having him blow up not too many hours before you have to attend a gala with him, or risk having him eternally make fun of you at every working day. Option 2: lie to him, which is obviously, the worse option, deceiving, and was completely against my morals.

"He mentioned it and I was curious. I don't really know much about your family." So sue me. He was silent for quite a while and I didn't think he would respond, which was better than circumstances that were otherwise quite possible.

"Yes…he does. Of a sort."

Of a sort? What the hell did THAT mean?

"Sorry, but I'm not grasping how he can semi-have a child of his loins." I shouldn't have said that. Now he's going to think it's a game and get all snarky with me. He'll look at me like and idiot, then call me one.

"She's mine now."

See. I should just never have brought it up. It was stupid of me in the first----

"Say…what?"

"His daughter. She's mine now."

He must have seen the sheer look of incomprehension and intensely stupid shock somewhere around my tonsils when my jaw dropped to the floor, because he decided to enlighten me further.

"Inuyasha had her out of wedlock and after she was about half a year old, it was decided that I would care for her. Inuyasha was not capable at the time. He was still in school and the whole family decided that I would be the best caretaker, for God knows what reason. So I am formally her guardian, and as far as she knows, father."

"What about Rin, does she know about her sister?"

"It is Rin."

"Huh?"

"Inuyasha's daughter. Rin."

Ah. The daughter he had mentioned in a drunken stupor and that had later come up in conversation over coffee. Rin.

"Oh."

Silence. For a very long, long time. Silence. Decades. Millenia. Seconds, at least.

"So you…."

"Yes."

"Oh."

"Yes."

"Hm."

Well…that was certainly interesting.

Now I will be the first one to tell you that the men in my family are anything but pansies (excepting a stunt Inuyasha had pulled, going to Europe). We face the music, and do it with pride. We are an old, dignified family with much to stand for, and stand we do, even in the harshest of circumstances. That being said, I high-tailed myself out of Kagome's apartment as soon as I possibly could. Upon reflection, this was probably not a wise choice. However, hopefully she took it for horrid disgust instead of the pansy ass-ness that it was. I will be frank.

That woman scared the shit out of me. Seriously.

Not because she had a second head, or could beat the crap out of me in a fist fight, oh no, but because I could never, ever tell what the hell she was going to do next. It was obvious that she had fallen painfully head over heels for me (which may be flattering, I hadn't decided yet- by the way, why had she brought up Rin? Why had Inuyasha told her that? When had she been with Inuyasha?) but she was about as predictable as a MPD psycho.

As soon as I had gotten bandaged and shirted, I was out of that hormonal, dreamy, and far too female apartment. Why was it dreamy? Did it have stuffed unicorns on the shelves? No. It was dreamy because it was a woman's apartment. Why was it hormonal? It was a woman's apartment. Far too female? Woman's apartment. And, now, I am a strong enough man to take anything any female (almost any) can dish out, even on her own territory, but there was something that freaked the fuck out of me about Kagome's womanly apartment. Mainly that I couldn't tell it was a woman's. It was ordinary. Neat, but ordinary.

Now, logically, it was what I had expected, but from spending the past months bickering like crazy with my crazy secretary had set me up to expect, somewhere in the back of my mind, that she was of a completely different species. Something that was probably planning a hostile take over of the Earth. Knowing that she was not, indeed, a five-tongued Martian from an alternate-reality Mars was both shocking and (I must admit) a little disappointing. And it made her human. It put us on the same level (and why did she know Rin was Inuyasha's?).

Up until this point, I had always thought of Kagome as someone lower than me, which she was financially and occupationally, excepting her sharp wit which almost, almoar matched mine. Sure, I had a shred of respect for her, but she was still below me. For some reason, seeing her apartment that was plain, efficient, almost as clean as mine, and a tad homey made us equal. I have no good reasoning for it. But it shocked (not really scared) the daylights out of me. (Why had Inuyasha told her something so important?) I didn't know how to react.

"So…you ARE human. Huh. Imagine that. And here, the whole time I was waiting for you to shove your tongue down my throat and fertilize your eggs with with our mutual sarcasm."

Yeah…that would have gone over splendid. The last thing I needed right now was to have my snarky secretary with a secret crush on me, that she wouldn't admit she had, to hate me even more right before we were going to have to spend a whole night together at an event that either of us would rather commit suicide before going to. So I left her apartment with a nod. Plus, she had brought up Rin. That was…odd.

Oh shit. The gala.

I looked in the mirror, and despite the fact that I probably looked nicer than I had in five years, I was ready to vomit. Did I really have to go to this thing? Yes. Did I want to? Hell no. Did Taisho? Probably not. Did he want to go with me? Fat chance. Did I want to go with him? Uh..no. Did we want to attend a company gala of retarded formal character, put on by a greasy scum executive, with the people in our office that we couldn't tolerate? Can you ice skate in hell? That about summed up the situation.

So I stood in front of the mirror and abhorred my existence. Why did the universe hate me? Had I mass-murdered a whole google of puppies in my past life? And made slippers out of them? Because, really. I could feel my karma eroding around me. It made weird bubbling noises as it died.

As I stood contemplating the cruel workings of the world and hating myself and my selfish boss, an annoying thought kept popping into my head over and over again:

Does this dress make me look fat?

AN: So yeah, it's really short, I know. But give me a little while to get back into the fanfic grove. If anybody reads this, please review and tell me how it compares to the rest. Have I lost my touch? Well, the story isn't going to be a whole lost longer. I'm guessing two, three chapters. But we've got some interesting stuff in store. I think. Peace!