Dog Guardian 25
A/N: ~skree~ Hope you'll enjoy it!
My lovely beta: Cstorm86

The Flame of Revenge

Kagome took her grandfather's words from this morning to her heart. She really didn't want Inuyasha to get hurt because of her not being trained well enough. Of course, she had been doing some training in the past, when she had been visiting her grandpa, but she guessed she had a long way to go still. She had to meditate and practice, so she could get better. After all she was a Higurashi, tasked with the safety of the shrine and gifted with the assistance of the hanyou.

She looked at the man walking beside her down the road out of the village and up the mountain to the shrine. He was pulling the small cart full of their shopping bags. The cart was just a wooden box around a meter long and wide, with two wheels and a long handle. Her grandfather had used it for years to carry stuff from the village and now Kagome found it more comfortable than to just hang bags on the handle of her bike.

Besides, now it wasn't her who did all the pulling, since in her wisdom and cunning she had goaded Inuyasha to do it for her. And he didn't even look like it was that heavy! He was walking with ease at the same pace she did!

She smiled when she got an idea. She could improve her original plan!

"Inuyasha, stop for a moment," she said. Inuyasha grunted, pulled out of his thoughts, and stopped on the side of the road. They were near the end of the village, houses spread comfortably far from each other, lovely gardens and fences surrounding them.. Kagome moved to the cart and started to shift the bags and boxes.

"Okay, done," she smiled brilliantly at the hanyou staring back at her. "We can go."

He mutely scowled at her, sitting among the bags and boxes, a bag of rice in her lap.

"Hey, I'm gonna meditate when you pull this thing, so it's not like I'm gonna take a nap or something," she tried not to look too smug. He still didn't move. "I'll do something nice for you, okay?"

He tilted his head.

"Like what? You already owe me ramen," he pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but it will be something different. But nice, promise," she tried to convey her honesty, despite the fact she wasn't sure what she could do to bribe him. Her grandpa usually had used food, but she wanted to find another thing he liked.

He shrugged and started to walk again, obviously not burdened by the added weight of his miko. Kagome waved at a kid watching them go from the front yard of one of the last houses in the village. The boy stared after them and Kagome wondered briefly if he was jealous of her neat vehicle.

Then she closed her eyes and focused.

Oh, a part of her just wanted to be lazy and let Inuyasha drag her back up the mountain, but it wasn't that big - at least that was what she told herself. She really wanted to try and meditate for a while. She was just being resourceful...

She opened one eye and looked at the waterfall of white streaking down Inuyasha's back. He was pulling the cart with one hand and walking in a steady, rather fast pace. The forest was surrounding them now, but he was still wearing his hat.

"Done already?" he asked, not looking back.

"Oh, no, I just..." she blushed, realizing that she had been staring at the sunlight dancing over the white mane. Blushing, she hurriedly closed her eyes and resumed focusing her reiki. Inuyasha just snorted, but didn't argue.

As they walked away from the village, leaving it behind a gentle curve of the road, they didn't notice the boy moving so he could see them for a while longer, his eyes narrowed as he looked after them and bit his bottom lip.

When they were out of sight the boy returned to the hole he had dug near the house door out and put an egg inside before covering it with dirt and grass. He kinda regretted he wouldn't be around when the egg went bad and started to stink.

.

Kagome sighed as she pulled a big cake from the oven. She put the cake on the counter nearest to the opened shoji - both to help it cool off and to use the scent to entice Inuyasha into coming back from his forest.

She had wanted to repay him for doing all the heavy lifting, bringing their shopping and herself up the mountain. He had scoffed that it was nothing, but she still had decided to do what she thought would be the perfect thing.

She had drew him the perfect bath. She had filled it with hot water and had added some pine scented bathing salt. She had laid out fresh towels and a bathrobe for him, planning on washing his clothes. Then she had pushed Inuyasha inside the steam filled room, telling him to just enjoy the bath.

She guessed that the problem had been that she hadn't predicted the pine fumes would make him a bit dizzy and his pride wouldn't let him tell her about it in time.

Judging from the splashes of soap foam Inuyasha had successfully soaped himself before he had turned on the shower to rinse himself before entering the bath.

It was just an unfortunate thing that Kagome had left the shower on the hot setting, with all the water in the pipes borderline scalding.

It had took her a while to wipe up the Path of Destruction, as her grandfather had called it, leading from the bathroom through the living room outside and into the forest. According to Hiro, who had witnessed the great dog fleeing, he had been a sight to behold, with all that fluffy fur dripping water and foam, in clouds of steam clinging to his form.. Kagome had been in the laundry room, so all she had seen was the result of Inuyasha's hasty retreat and her grandfather chuckling over his soaked newspaper.

'I guess it's a good thing in this whole event that Inuyasha had shifted into a form that didn't require clothing,' Kagome thought sheepishly and glanced outside, to where she could see Inuyasha's clothing drying on a line. The idea of a handsome man with cute ears and no clothes on sitting somewhere in the forest and dripping foam was... Well, it didn't want to leave her mind, no matter what she did.

She just hoped that Inuyasha couldn't learn about that.

She set about making some tea to go with the cake. From the array of boxes she picked up the one with white tea and prepared a kettle. It was just when she poured some of the tea to a cup that she found out that it was way too dark for a white tea. A sip later she realized that the boxes were probably mixed, because that was black tea with orange bits in it. She shrugged, it would be just as nice to have this type instead.

She turned to see if the cake was cool enough to be cut and a brilliant smile spread across her lips.

She spotted a white dog sneaking behind a path of flowers. His tail was dragging behind him and he was hunched down,, but his stark white fur was still giving him away. He was close enough to see that his golden eyes were focused on the cake.

'Stalking food again, eh?' she inquired, giggling when the dog suddenly froze and plastered himself to the ground.

'N-no!' his eyes laid back and Kagome shook her head, still giggling.

"Come here, the cake's actually for you, so you have the right to stalk it. I still hope you'll share a piece or two with grandpa and I," she added when she watched the dog leap the distance between the flower path and engawa. "I made it as an apology for the shower mishap" she added to clarify. Inuyasha rested his paws on the edge of the counter and peered at the heavenly smelling food. His eyes glowed when he looked back at her.

'For me? All of it? Not like just a small piece?' he asked. 'A... gift?'

"The whole thing," she smiled and smothered a giggle with a hand when she saw his tail start to wag. His nuzzle hovered over the cake. "As I said, I'm sorry I left the water on super hot and didn't warn you..."

'It was a while since I had one of those...' he sounded mesmerized by the scent of the cake. 'And the water... I put in on cooler when I went to shower, but after a few seconds it went boiling.'

Kagome tilted her head. It was sometimes hard to read the emotions behind the mind voice, but he sounded hesitant when he told her that. As if he was afraid she would change her mind about the cake, knowing that it hadn't been her fault. So, when he glanced her way again, she smiled warmly.

"Wanna me cut it into pieces for you?" she asked and reached for the knife. "You can dress up when I do it."

'Keh,' the dog left the kitchen to pull the red kimono from the line and duck behind the corner of the house to put it on.

Kagome opened the drawer where they held all the cutlery and stared at it,

For some reason instead of chopsticks, knives and other things the drawer was full of acorns. Slowly she closed and opened the drawer again just to find it still filled with acorns.

"Huh?" That was weird, to say the least. She heard Inuyasha when she heard him come in and was about to ask what was going on, but at the same time he growled low. He was back in his red clothing.

"A kitsune," he glared around the kitchen and walked past her.

"A fox?" Kagome blinked at the hanyou.

"There's a fox somewhere, I can smell his stinking ass," Inuyasha stomped towards the shoji, as if to shield the cake from the possibility of being stolen by a youkai.

"Oh... Is it a bad fox? I mean kitsune can be both good and evil, right? And... What should we do with it?" she asked.

"Chase the stinker away, of course. Good or bad, foxes are wreaking havoc and pranking everyone, we don't need one in the shrine," he grumbled and looked back at her. "I will follow his trail, stay in the house.

"Uh... Alright, but..." Kagome stopped talking because something caught her attention. There, on a tree on the edge of the forest across the yard, she saw something pale. It was a long strip of white linen. The fabric swayed on the wind, held by a shadowy figure standing on a branch. Kagome frowned, she had seen this piece of fabric recently somewhere...

Inuyasha looked that way as well and for some reason his face turned as red as his kimono.

"You furry bastard!" he practically roared and leaped to rain pain and death upon the shadowy figure, who shrieked in a high pitched boyish voice and started fleeing, the strip of fabric waving like a banner after them. "Give it back, dammit, it's mine!"

''Mine... A long strip of linen...' Kagome thought as the chased and chaser disappeared in the forest. Then suddenly she felt heat coming to her cheeks. 'Oh!'

She covered her mouth with her hands A heartbeat later she heard a low, weird voice hissing from her side. A strong smell of smoke filled the air.

"Now, I will exact my revenge on you, miko."

At the same time a howl of rage could be heard from the forest.

A/N: Oh no, what's going to happen to our poor Kagome?