BLACK, WHITE, AND READ ALL OVER!

Sure that the was something going on in New Sodom, Miroku followed up Lovegood's card and walked into his office. Lovegood was the editor of the Quibbler, Feudalish Japan's favourite News Limited tabloid.

'Hyuaah!' said a suspiciously avuncular Miroku. 'Whazzup?

'Freh?' erupted Lovegood, saw it was the Buddhist monk and continued. 'Slow news day. Man bit a dog, new hopes of a Norris cancer cure, marauding demons…'

'Demons?' commented Miroku, as an orchestra began to stir.

'Yes. All those demons. Hurt me, hurt things.' the orchestra was choofling merrily now in the background. 'I'll take, a bun. You'll say, a pun. Always, they watch. They stare, at us. Hiding, waiting, communicating. Please don't kill me, I will stay quiet. Please let me go, I will not tell, let the children go, let me leave na-na-na-na-na fuh…-' the orchestra scratched like a record, and stopped. Lovegood glanced at the lyrics written in his notebook. 'Damn I forgot them.' he looked at Miroku. 'Look, what I'm trying to say is, yes, we have demons. A demon. Called Belial. One freaky ass goat. You can go now. Yipeeyiiyoo.'

The lobster phone on Lovegood's desk, who picked it up and clipped the claw onto his ear, body swinging around. Miroku could hear a guttural rumbling emanate from the scorpion's mouth. 'Ayes Rupert? I bugged the newcomers, they don't look like much. No that'd be difficult?' Lovegood yelled at Miroku. 'You should leave now.'

So Miroku did. As he left he heard the journalist agree that 'Troll detection is difficult, they won't admit a thing.'

Meanwhile, Kagome had been roped into presenting the Edo era version of Grand Designs. (Yeah, like a portal to feudal Japan is more plausible. That takes you to a constantly moving temporal point. I'm no food scientist but come on… really…)

'But does it blend into the landscape. I don't think you can build in time.' helpfully added Kagome to a woman who used to work at an alienating job but now works out at home now thanks to Google and by the way dermatologists hate her.

But enough of that carry on, for Inu Yasha's investigations had bought him to New Sodom's premier charm school, Pigpimples.

He peered into the face of Helena Hufflepuff, who was teaching a roomful of underprivileged children the basics of occultism. 'So, any demons recently?'

'Innies or outies?' Hufflepuff peered out of the corner of her eye. 'Aleister, take that out of your mouth at once!' she yelled reflexively.

'The outies. We're homeless vigilantes, not marriage counsellors.' Inu Yasha bellowed.

'There's that weird - stop pulling Rasputin's hair Blatavsky! - goat creature hanging round the school.' the teachers eyes darted out towards her disruptive captors. Lid-ear-ra-lee. Magic makes the use of metaphors more difficult.

'Coolio McDoolio.' Enthused Inu Yasha waving his thumbs merrily. 'By the way, what's the set-up here?'

'We're some kind of magic school. Pigpimples is all about teaching children from a mundane background basic occ- look, I'm sure you can get Godric to explain it to you after he and Salazar come back from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Now I really have to get to work.' she started stabbing the board with chalk.

A little girl, Abigail Williams walked up to Hufflepuff and asked for help with her homework. 'Cahhn U teach me tha evAsion spell agen?' she chirped. Children...

'On the other hand…' Helena faced the demon person again. 'Some more exposition wouldn't hurt, and I think that word was used in my job description. You've met Horsefat Lovegood haven't you? Sure you have, I don't actually want to hear -put that down Rudolf Steiner or I'll send you to Mota - what you have to say. Nice bloke, but don't draw him on astronomy. Help founded the school, along with Godric, Salazar and me. Wants us to call this place Boarbumps.'

'Really.' breathed Inu Yasha. 'You know, recently things haven't been seemed normal, or quite real. I feel like I'm becoming someone else.'

'Uh-hu.' the school teacher's eyes glazed over. 'but seriously now, stop licking that stapler Paracelsus, where in all of fan fiction did you get those PANTS?!'

'Where'd that Rasputin kid get that reliquary he's waving from?' Inu Yasha pressed.

'A present from Mr B. This is his last day in Japan.'

Five hours later the gang had met up at the pre-decided place of meeting, a café called Café.

'What's the deal with airline food?' asked Kagome, staring at the blood banana in her hand

Miroku, using the nine tenths of his brain (or was it ten ninths) mentally rewinding time and erasing Kagom's dismal line, jumpstarted the conversation by saying. 'Lovegood mentioned something about a magical goat thingie-'

Inu Yasha's eyes lit up in anger. 'Miroku, I hope you mean thingie as in creature or object, because we've had this conversation before and I don't want to explain to you how we're trying to maintain a certain rating and your part in that attempt.' Man, New Sodom effects people in strange and justifying ways, an effect of the local Ozzie Osbourne Clarke field. Inu Yasha had picked up his newly-found puritan attitude during a horrific encounter with the Big Knights, in a forgotten fic lost to the abyss of time.

'-a thingie of a creature nature.' was what Miroku ended his sentence with.

'The local education department indicated the same thing.' agreed Inu Yasha, choosing to gloss over Hufflepuff's interest in his pants, because that would only undermine him in front of Kagome.

'Well I noticed that none of the buildings here don't blend well with the landscape and that they can't build them on time with their resources.' Opined Kagome. 'I suspect its because New Sodom is modelled on 1950s San Francisco, yet is in Edo Japan. I think.'

'Uhuh!' nodded the other two, concentrating on their ramen sandwiches. 'Old boy, I must say this really is delicious.' Miroku asided to Inu Yasha.

'And furthermore I propose that after this meal we go ahunting and take down this goat!' concluded Kagome.

'And pull that magic shikon jewel shard out of his-'

Inu Yasha censoriously yelped 'MIROKU!'

'-ear!'