A/N:All right, off to another start after a major break, which I apologize profusely for. I wasn't certain what to do exactly with this chapter, and I realize it is short, but it does serve some sort of purpose. Keep in mind this is pertinent information I found that you readers would be interested in knowing. If not, well... I didn't accomplish my exact goal.

Anyways, enough of my rantings. Onward!

xXx

Human Like Me

Nothing Special

Kagome was met by Hojo outside of her house, shortly after she had finally managed to get the shawl to stay just right. She heard someone approaching the door way before anyone had known there would be a visitor, but had tried to smell him from her bedroom with little success. You don't even know what he smells like, and you're not used to your new sense. Of course you wouldn't know who it was.

She opened the front screen door for the youth, her heart dropping and her breath catching in her throat. "H-Hojo-san?" she said meekly, self-consciously twirling a piece of the soft fabric in her clawed finger, "What an… unexpected surprise?" Which is a HUGE understatement. She unconsciously tugged harder on the fabric.

Hojo smiled warmly, but she didn't miss when he took in the material on her head. "Oh, it's been a long time, Kagome-san. Your grandfather said you were in the hospital for gangrene. How're you feeling?" his eyes shot directly to the shawl, which she was doing everything she could to make it look workable. Take a picture, she thought, slightly cynical.

"Oh, much better!" his eyes wavered, but his smile was still genuine. Oh no! Does he suspect? How could he, though? Mayvbe if I keep acting casual... "Actually, I was heading off …to…school…Hojo-san?"

The teen was focused on a point on her face. Her hands flew up to cover her cheeks. I must have forgotten to apply the makeup! She thought, panicked.

"Your eyes…did you get contact lenses?" the boy ventured unsteadily.

With a huff, Kagome dropped her hands from her cheeks and down casted her eyes. Shoot…need the sunglasses! "Oh, um… that's because I have cataracts." She laughed nervously, aware that she was fidgeting like she had sucked back four cups of black coffee. "Erm… excuse me."

She fled up the stairs to snatch the sunglasses that were supposed to be on her dresser. After rummaging around at a speed that made her head slightly dizzy, she was empty handed. Oh no! Where are they?

She detected a presence within the room but was too occupied to notice the scent. "Are you foraging for these?" a masculine, tapered hand held out her pair of sunglasses. His lips quirked up at the side for a passable smirk, though it lacked any true mirth.

Kagome rushed to Sesshoumaru and reached out for the glasses. Quick as a wink they were behind his back. "Sesshoumaru!" she whined. Like a child she stamped her foot, which only served to frustrate her further.

"Now why would you require these? They dampen your vision," he almost scolded, the tone cresting at the tip of his tongue.

"But I need them! No one has yellow eyes anymore."

He hummed and pocketed the sunglasses with careful, meticulous movements, and, as if to rub it in her face, he patted the slight bulge in his pocket invitingly. His cocked brow and slight smirk said 'come and get them.'

Her head spinning, she mustered the courage and lunged for the pocket, but he had moved an inch from her grasp. She tried again, only to be bested once more. This incident ensued several more times before Kagome gave up, floundered.

"That's not fair!" she complained, trying for another chance.

"Is it?" he question, easily sidestepping her anticipated launch. Once again she fell short, and she did not disappoint by whirling on him in her discombobulated state.

"Yes!" she stressed. "Because you're—"

"What?"

She stopped short.

She was the youkai now. He was the human. The reversal had thrown them both for a loop, but ultimately, she now was left with the upper hand in everything. He hadn't been given her miko powers (and secretly she was okay with that. He might have decided to fry her the moment he realized she had stolen his powers). So why wasn't she able to achieve as simple a task as getting her sunglasses from him? The answer was settling into his chocolate eyes, but she couldn't hold his gaze for any longer than five seconds without experiencing a dull, churning ache behind her breast.

Her shoulders slumped in defeat. Kagome might have been given his divine powers, but in reality, where the power was essentially centuries old, she was not even into her second decade of life. Untrained, unreliable, and volatile, she hadn't a clue what to do with her abilities, and he had known all along. She felt like kicking herself for her stupidity.

Sesshoumaru had allowed her to have the expression of conclusion before opining his own advice. "You are not a taiyoukai by birth; therefore, you are merely a pup in reality. You should be an adolescent who is still clinging to your mother and sleeping with your pack mates, and being taught your manners. You are nothing compared to me, even in this state." He said the last words with a sneer that stung her.

She knew that compared to his former resplendent nature she was utterly beneath him , and he knew it. Kagome couldn't do anything about it, though. Sighing, she trudged past him, intent on just submitting to the rapid successions of questions about her queer appearance—it wouldn't be the first time she had been subjected to lie about her 'illness.'

The section of her shoulder that contained her markings brushed his, just slightly; a shudder rippled through her, cold as ice, and sent a pang of aching pain through her extremities. Sesshoumaru edged away from her at the contact, but she assumed it was because of his personal space.

Intent on finding out what that was, she rolled up her shirt sleeve and inspected the solid magenta stripes that ran from her left clavicle almost to her collarbone, and almost all the way down her elbow. When she touched the area it was cool and hummed with some sort of electric current, enough to make her grimace and roll the sleeve back down.

Sesshoumaru tried not to look so pointedly at her exposed, slender shoulder, or the way her long columned throat was now exposed appreciatively, barely restricting any imagination from the peak of cleavage. No, he would not ogle at all. His eyes shifted to a stray piece of detritus on his shirtsleeve, eying it whimsically. It was such a fascinating piece of detritus...

"What was that?" she questioned aloud. Her eyes searched Sesshoumaru's for an answer. He startled her by actually explaining, and startled himself at how rapidly he had recuperated.

"The markings emit a steady stream of youki. Whenever in contact they send a tiny signal to the youkai."

"It's a defense mechanism?" she postulated.

"Hn. I suppose that's the correct assumption."

Kagome studied her now covered arm. Sesshoumaru found himself missing the lovely view she had unknowingly given him. Damn human male hormones... his mind spited. Why is it that human reproductive organs are so bizarre?

"But why would you need it?" Kagome asked, finding it difficult to keep him concentrating on her. It's like talking to a brick wall. Kagome shook her head wanly.

No, she amended.

She'd get more progress with the wall.

"Kagome? Are you all right?" Hojo called from downstairs, clearly inside of the building.

Panicked, Kagome leaned over the railing, spotting the youth preparing to mount the steps. "No! I'll be right down! Just... just wait outside a little longer, okay?"

His eyes flickered uncertainly, but he resigned easily enough. "All right, but we'll be a bit late." He added.

Kagome returned to the room, gesturing for Sesshoumaru to continue, lest the taiyoukai lose his conversational skills so quickly.

Sesshoumaru loathed to continue talking, but did so anyway. "My clan is known to have those markings. They are merely inherited."

"So do you get the moon from your mother?" She tapped the center of her forehead where the blue crescent moon would be prominent if not for the makeup. Strangely, she could feel the coolness seeping from the moon sink into her fingertip.

"Yes."

"And they both have white hair, right? And gold eyes?"

He nodded.

"It sounds like they are closely related," she commented casually.

"Indeed. They were second cousins; fellow related clansmen. Father chose her amongst the thousands of demonesses as the strongest of her blood and produced an heir—myself." As if to affirm this statement he proudly stuck his nose in the air and chuckled dryly.

From his periphery he watched as she nibbled on her lower lip with her sharp incisors as she thought. There was a distant look to her golden eyes that irked him. How could she be so faded from the world enough to tune it all out? At least he had a hold on reality, though it was tenuous.

"So…erm," she began cryptically, "do you know why your father chose Inuyasha's mother?" He could literally feel the awkwardness of her state in the air towards the question. She thought the topic would anger him. He felt no such rage at the inquiry, though a sliver of repentance stuck to his tongue like a lead-weight.

"He did not love my mother, and had always been fond of the fragility of human creatures. He sought her out at first on a whim, possibly to attain a sense of vulnerability of her character. He fell for her shortly afterwards, obviously." He almost spat the last part, but she didn't think he'd been aware of it.

Kagome had always known through Inuyasha, Totousai, and Myouga that his father, the Inu no Taishou, favoured humans. That part hadn't been a mystery. It was what happened to Sesshoumaru and his mother that held her curiosity; it was that gut-wrenching, numbing sensation that came with not knowing.

"Were you upset?" she asked in a small voice. "Was your mother angry over his choice?" she amended softly, breath catching as the expression subtly shifted on his face.

She noticed the small muscle in his eye jump, but didn't comment on it. His eyes remained steadily to the front, giving nothing away.

"Mother wasn't angry. She wasn't sad, either." He amended after a pause. "I suppose she must have anticipated something like this happening. He did not mate with Izayoi, but did not break the bond from Mother, either."

Kagome inhaled sharply. "That's…bad, right?" she implored carefully. She was not fond of the glint in his brown eyes that now she noticed to be salted with gold, nor the scent that wafted from him. It smelled like burnt plastic. It was an effort not to raise her shirt sleeve to her nose to filter the air.

Sesshoumaru regained composure, not quickly enough so mask his distaste for the topic from Kagome's sharp nose. It was easier to slip into a routine of allowing his emotions to be displayed freely when he was human, but it was annoying and a trifle difficult to manage and maintain. Out of all the things that rendered him nonplussed over the human species, it was the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) idiosyncrasies of facial expressions and gestures that revealed everything on a person's mind without conscious thought. Never had he thought it would prove to be this taxing to maintain an appearance around the Higurashi home. Now he understood how exposed Inyuasha must have felt.

Unlike Kagome, who always was and always would be wearing her heart on her sleeve, he preferred to remain reclusive and introverted. It was not an easy feat to become so impassive when battling human instincts. Youkai instinct was much more primal and straightforward; humans tended to be greedy and selfish, mixed with a myriad of emotions day in and day out.

"It's the matter of opinion and your perspective on what would make that decision bad." He finally deigned to answer, his eyes never meeting hers throughout his explanation. "Mother did not have a reason to be angry; he didn't break the bond, and thus, she kept his lands and the treaties and her title they had agreed over when they had been mated. Father got his wish for human interaction and stayed out of Mother's way."

"So you don't think that marriage should solely be based on love?"

"I believe that marriage is strictly a formality used to gain a portion of the others possessions. Love is nonexistent, and is a ploy to enable the human race to reproduce successfully."

"So... no?" she surmised lightly.

"No," affirmed the taiyoukai.

"Not even when Inuyasha had been born out of that love?" She heard his breath hitch lightly, effectively stunned.

"Kagome?" Hojo announced once more.

"Coming!" she shouted back, never taking her eyes off of Sesshoumaru.

In that moment it did not matter to Kagome that she was walking a tumultuous road with a youkai lord, nor did she register that her titillating thoughts were creating sizeable dent into said youkai's thought process. She sufficed that Sesshoumaru was successfully nonplussed by her inquiry, which enabled her to get away with displaying a sly smile.

In a flash of blurring images, Kagome snatched the sunglasses from his pocket when he moved to scratch his unnaturally blunt ear in puzzlement. His eyes widened fractionally—just enough that she could tell he was surprised by either her speed or her outright rebellious actions.

Smirking, she donned the sunglasses and strutted out of the room to face Hojo once more, leaving the taiyoukai stunned to silence.

xXx

"What took you?" Hojo pestered her as soon as she stepped foot out of her doorway. She squared her sunglasses, letting them rest on the tip of her nose.

"Oh, I was just being bantered around by a bitch," she supplied with a smug smile.

"You have a dog?" he ventured, checking behind her shoulder. Kagome stifled a giggle.

"Something like that."

xXx

Many thanks to madin456 for doing the beta-ing. You rock my socks. Many thanks for the alerts! They enlighten and inspire me :) and I am, again, awfully sorry for the major delay. After this it should come more on schedule.