After a lovely dinner, playing catch up with her high school friend, and a dreamless sleep on a cozy futon, Higurashi Hanae took the train back to Tokyo and slipped back into her house just as sunlight streamed through the windows.
Then she found a giant hole in her kitchen wall.
She also found a moustachioed, sobbing man in her kitchen, along with Kagome's new friend (?). A teenage girl she had never seen before.
She didn't know that Kagome had made new friends. There was a lot of Kleenex strewn around the kitchen, possibly because of the moustached, sobbing man?
She found herself wondering if Kagome had asked Inuyasha to make dinner or something else, but the boy himself came rushing into the room a few seconds after the thought crossed her mind.
"It wasn't me!" he yelled. "I didn't do it!"
She suspected 'it' had something to do with the giant hole in the kitchen wall.
"Higurashi-san!" the moustachioed, sobbing man yelled. "Please accept my humble apologies! I had no idea that Akane had tried to make dinner in your kitchen!"
He said this the way people said I'm sorry my daughter tried to detonate a bomb in your kitchen.
"Um...that's all right."
"Or that Ryoga-kun would get lost on your property!"
She didn't know who that was. Another friend of Kagome's?
"Please forgive us! Sadly, I am bankrupt this week. I cannot pay to fix this wall or your son's hospital bills until my other daughter Nabiki..."
"Dad!" Akane said. "You really don't have to tell her."
Hanae stared pleasantly at the pair of complete strangers in her house, waiting for them to finish their long and nonsensical conversations. One could say that she had a lot in common with Akane's oldest sister, Kasumi, absorbing chaos and mayhem with grace and aplomb.
One could also say that the amount of chaos and mayhem surrounding Kagome was far less than the amount of chaos and mayhem surrounding Akane.
Just as she was about to ask who Nabiki was and what she had to do, the ceiling of her house collapsed in on itself.
"Saotome Ranma, you cur. Unfit to become Akane's fiance as you are, you have decided to invade the house of another lady? Come duel me, rascal!"
She hadn't seen anything yet, to put it politely.
A/N: I don't know what people usually name Kagome's mother in fanfics, but I think the name I gave her is nice. I got it from Ichinose family in Maison Ikkoku.:)
