Disclaimer: NO I do not own Inuyasha. That awesome privilege belongs to Romiko Takahashi. Thank you!
....
Chapter 5: Caged
There were no individual classrooms. Everyone piled into a large auditorium like room and waited, most of the talking to each other. Each chair had a tiny desk attached on the left and on stage was a tiny little guy with short black hair who was sweating bullets as people filed in.
"Who's that?" Kagome asked Miroku as everyone found some seats and claimed them. Th furest from the front seemed the most popular.
"Math teacher." he said.
"Yeah. Proffesor Pissed-His-Pants." Inuyasha said dramatically sitting next to Miroku.
"Are you serious?" Kagome asked sitting next to him as Sango sat next to her.
"Yup." he said leaning back. "His first day here. He was shaking like a leaf, sweating like a pig, and halfway through the lecture some one scared him so bad he pissed his pants."
"You scared him so bad he pissed his pants." Miroku reminded him and Inuyasha smirked.
"Oh, yeah. I forgot."
"That's because you started crying because you were laughing so hard." Miroku pointed out.
Kagome shook her head.
"I don't think he'll last much longer. At this rate he's going to have a heart attack." Kagome said looking at the timid little man.
"Kagome, don't give me such hope. It's not nice." Inuyasha said sarcastically.
"So, he teaches math?" Kagome asked.
"Sure does." Sango said as the guards shut the doors and locked them. They flanked them and stood there, glaring out into the crowd of students menanicingly.
"O...okay. T-today we we-we're g-g-going over..."
Kagome tilted her head at the shaking, stuttering mess that was writing on the projecter which appeared on a large screen that everyone could see.
"That's an algebra 1 problem." she pointed out as the lights dimmed.
"Yeah. They think we're stupid." Sango whispered rolling her eyes.
Kagome watched the quivering mass teach, not paying a bit of attention to a lesson she had already mastered, trying to judge when exactly he was going to get the approaching coronary.
He stuttered on and on, his voice weak and shaky and not a single person in the audience paying him a bit of attention.
Inuyasha and Miroku had begun a game of hangman, which Inuyasha kept losing. Kagome liked Miroku and didn't want him to die so she didn't point out that 'xegotopianogy' was not a word. In fact, none of the words Inuyasha was losing to; 'heztomania', 'cigotomy', 'quenology'; were real.
Ayame was busy decorating her desk by carving hearts into it with her claws and putting her and Kouga's initials in them. Kouga was glaring at her, his face red. Sango had fallen asleep and was snoring softly with her head back against the top of the chair.
Kagome shrugged and tried to wait out the monotonic lecture.
At one point, Inuyasha tapped her shoulder and showed her the hangman paper and pointed at the word he had just lost to. 'Akinotopiosis'.
Miroku was behind his back, looking pitiful, at Inuyasha finally catching his fake words. Kagome shook her head and Inuyasha looked at Miroku, growling.
He flinched but Kagome tapped Inuyasha's shoulder.
He looked back and she pulled him down and leaned up so she could whisper in his ear.
Miroku lost that round to tintinnabulation. When Miroku looked at her funny she wrote the definition.
Tinkling.
Inuyasha had sat back, smug and victorious and Kagome had stiffled a giggle at Miroku's unhappy face.
"...questions?" the teacher asked as the lights came back on. "Well....H-here's the uh..uh....as-assignment."
A set of problems came onto the screen and Kagome pulled out a piece of paper and began working them.
"You're doing the assignment?" Inuyasha asked looking at her. The entire gang was looking at her.
"Yes." she said circling her answer. X=45.
"Why?" he asked like she was doing something completely rediculous.
"I'm not staying in this place one day longer than I have to." she said.
Inuyasha looked at her funny for a second then got another sheet of paper from under his seat where they stored the paper and began copying her work.
Miroku did the same. Followed by Sango, then Ayame, then Kouga.
Kagome finished the last problem and circled her answer.
"Now what?" she asked Inuyasha as he wrote down the last answer.
"We give it to the guards at the door. I can't wait to see their faces." he smiled.
A bell rang somewhere and they all stood up, their work in hand.
"I guess there's one good thing about this." Kagome said. "No homework."
"There's no home. How can there be homework." Sango pointed out.
The guards jaws dropped when first Kouga and Ayame put their work in their hands.
Then Sango added there's and waved happily.
Miroku added his, whistling.
Inuyasha dropped his on top, looking smug which Kagome figured was his normal look.
However, when Kagome made to add hers, GD stopped her.
"A trouble maker. I knew it." he said as the other students walked past, no work in their hands.
"Is there a problem?" Kagome asked emotionlessly, staring straight ahead.
"Yeah. You." he growled. "What do you think your doing?"
"Turning in my work then going to lunch?" Kagome asked sarcastically.
"No." GD said firmly. "You're causing trouble."
"By doing my work?" Kagome asked finally looking at him.
"By letting them copy you." he smirked. "Just for that..." Kagome watched as he lifted her work before his eyes and ripped it in halves then quarters.
Kagome had to focus to keep her breathing even as he let the papers drop to the floor.
"Angry?" he asked smiling. "Don't worry. Anger managment is right after lunch."
He laughed and led the other two out of the auditorium leaving Kagome alone.
"Hey. Where were you at lunch?" Sango asked sitting next to her friend.
"Wasn't hungry." she said honestly as the other students came back and took their seats.
"Should have been there." Inuyasha said jumping over the seats and landing perfectly next to her. "Me and Kouga were trying to hit the guards with the mashed potatoes.
"Which was a darn shame because they were delicious." Miroku said sitting next to him again.
"Gross." Inuyasha said automatically without any real heat.
She breifly considered telling them about GD's latest bit of asshole-ness but decided to keep it to herself. She wanted to wipe the grin off his face and she knew tattling would only make it worse. So she kept her mouth shut.
"Woh..." Kagome said as a man in bright orange and blue robes stepped on stage. His bright blond, almost white, hair was braided with bells and beads and his face was calm as he sat on the stage.
Everyone laughed at her expression.
"That's Mr....well...it doesn't matter. He says to call him simply, The Guru." Inuyasha snickered.
"Guru?" Kagome repeated not believing him.
"No. The Guru." Miroku corrected making Sango snicker. "He's our anger managment counciler."
Kagome laughed as the guards shut the door again.
"Hello, my children." The Guru said in what she thought he was sure was a mystical voice. He sounded like he was congested. "How wonderful it is to see you again. Of course. The stars predicted it would happen..." he trailed off and bowed his head, making the bells in his head jingle.
"Is he serious?" Kagome asked cocking her head to the side.
"I'm not sure." Inuyasha admited slouching in his chair.
"Let us all begin with our breathing. And in...." he sucked in a huge gulp of air, " and out..." he exhaled dramatically.
"I bet we could sell him to the circus." Kagome said looking at his gaudy jewelry and waist length hair.
"No." Inuyasha said. "The circus would pay us double to take him back." Kagome giggled.
"Breath in and let the healing energy of the Universe wash over you." he said raising his hands with his inhale. "Then release, letting the toxic bad feelings of your body flow into the energy of the Universe."
"Make that tripple." Kagome giggling quietly. "From the audience."
"Try to escape your physical bonds." he said his eyes closed and his head moving from side to side like a plant in the water. "You're body is an extension of your mind and with enough will, you can leave it completely."
"I can do that without will." Inuyasha whispered. "I have quicker methods. Poison, knife, blunt object to his head."
Kagome snickered.
"Good. Are we all relaxing? Letting the Universe's cosmic energy wash over us?"
"Nope." Kagome and Inuyasha said at the same time.
"Relax, my pupils." he said leaning his head back and stretching his arms out like he was about to hug them.
"Did he just call us pupils?" Kagome asked. "Do people still say that."
"In martial arts movies." Inuyasha told her.
"Relax. Relax. Re...lax."
"Maybe his method of anger managment is to just put everyone to sleep?" Kagome asked looking at Kouga and Ayame who were both out like lights. Inuyasha smirked in agreement.
"Are we all relaxed?" The Guru asked looking into his mostly sleeping audience. "Let's pick up where we last left off. Channaling your anger into other areas of your life..."
Inuyasha yawned, his mouth opening up wide.
"Does he assign work?" Kagome asked him.
"Nope." he said leaning his head back. "He says meditation and anger managment aren't worked on. They're practiced."
"Good." she said mimicking his position and closing her eyes.
"Kagome. Time to get up."
Kagome woke up to Inuyasha gently shaking her shoulder and The Guru floating off stage.
She stretched her neck, trying to get the crick out as she stood up. "Did the whole auditorium fall asleep?" she asked as the gang groggily left their seats.
"Just about. The Guru can put an insomniac to sleep." Sango said.
They had just reached the doors when GD put out a hand and stopped Kagome.
"Making trouble again?" he asked her.
"I didn't do anything." she said trying to walk past him and join her friends who were already ahead of her.
"Exactly." he said stepping in front of her. "You fell asleep in class."
"I think half the guards fell asleep in that class." Kagome told him rolling her eyes.
"They don't need anger management though, do they?" he asked with a sneer.
"What's your point?" Kagome asked.
"Detention should change your attitude quite nicely. Don't you think?" he asked grabbing her arm and steering her out of the empty room.
His grip was vice-like and hurt but Kagome wasn't going to say anything.
"What's your problem?" she asked trying to pull her arm out of his hand. She would be damned if she let him man handle her.
"Letting other students copy you, sleeping in class. You're a bad student, Miss Higurashi." he smirked as he took her towards a dark metal door at the end of the hall.
"Everyone slept in that class." Kagome pointed out. "Why aren't they taking a trip to detention?"
But she didn't need to be told why. None of them were new. They already accepted the guards and teachers power over them. Kagome, however, was new and still had some spirit in her to fight with. They were, naturally, going to break it.
He opened the door and Kagome had to stop fighting him because he was leading her down a case of metal stairs and she didn't want to fall because she knew GD would let go of her then.
At the bottom of the stairs was another hallways, this one much shorter, and lit by dim lights, that led to another metal door.
Beyond that one, were row after row of cages. That was the only term for them. They weren't big enough to be cells.
It was a small, almost closet sized room, with enough room for a very small girl to stretch out her legs and not nearly tall enough to stand up in. There were three tall, one stacked on top of the other.
They were empty, all but one, which held a young man with matted black hair and a haunted look in his eyes.
All the way down the line, too far away to talk to him, he stopped and unlocked a cage on the middle row.
Kagome fought but another male guard, this one a panther demon, came and helped pick her up and put her into the cage and slammed the door on her.
"See you in the morning." GD smirked as the panther demon locked the cage and they both walked away.
Kagome twisted around until her back was against the side wall and her legs sandwitched between the bars of the door and the cement wall behind her.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
...
