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To answer a couple questions: Inuyasha called Kagome a bitch only because I felt like him calling her that. In no ways does he know that she is really a girl. Not yet, at least. I just think it's funny when someone calls a guy a bitch, because of the irony. I'm not entirely sure if Inuyasha is going to have any types of youkai power. Most likely not. I don't think that'd really fit with the story.. Inuyasha isn't attracted to Kagome yet. After all, he suspects her to be a boy and he is straight. Chapter four: You spin me right round baby.. by Clara Inuyasha was livid. I didn't blame him, though, since he had every right to be livid. I'd be angry too if someone I had only known for three days had the ability to make me fall flat on my face by just saying one word. Therefore, it was pretty obvious that the prior situation made him a lot less friendly towards me. He was literally stomping as far away as he could from me, much less the rest of the group. I think this was because Eiji, Kouga, and Miroku had found him falling flat on his face entirely too amusing, and kept prompting me to say the 's word' again. I said it once, to appease them, and in response got a very pissed off 'BITCH!!' "I'm not a girl," I grumbled to him, crouching to his side. Kikyo was giving me a very interesting look, a cross between spiteful and vengeful. Scary girl. Scaaaary scary girl. "I'm not someone who likes to fall flat on his face," Inuyasha said around a mouthful of rocks. "Owowowowow.." Sighing, I grabbed him by his shoulder and pulled him up. He winced badly at this, as if me pulling him up hurt more than him falling. He leaned on me for a split second, then sprang away and favored me with a furious glare. "Don't touch me," he managed after a moment. I was briefly confused, not to mention hurt, as I set my hands to the side. Then I frowned. "Look, Inuyasha, this isn't my fault, and I'm sorry. It's not like I want to sending you sprawling face first into the ground.." He continued to glare at me. "That last time didn't seem very restrained to me!" "Hey! I said I was sorry..." His glare turned almost hateful. "'Sorry' doesn't cut it." He was hurting me, unintentionally or not. I didn't like to be hurt. Being hurt meant that I might start crying, and if I started crying then it would be guaranteed that the others would start to suspect that I wasn't a boy. So instead of crying, I got as angry as he did. He.. he was acting so damn childish! "Fine!" I bit out, crossing my arms over my chest. He looked at me in surprise, apparently not expecting me to get angry in return, or to even start groveling for his forgiveness. Well, he could bite me. I didn't grovel. I was a Higurashi, and Higurashi's don't beg. "Be like a stupid junior high kid. Even my brother is more mature than you!" He looked astounded. The others looked just as shocked as he did, obviously thinking along the same line he did about groveling. I threw them just as disgusted looks as I did him, then threw my hands to the air and started once again walking in the direction we had been previously heading. The others shared a glance behind me, then shrugged and started following me, a good distance away. I think they were slightly afraid of my temper, at the moment. After a few moments of determined walking, I glanced over my shoulder at the others to see if Inuyasha was there. He was trudging behind the group, a pouty look gracing his features and a posture that forbade any comfort or sympathy. Tensions were running nice and high, now... Sango piped up a few moments after our mindless walking got us nowhere. She sounded slightly nervous, with an underlying current of determination. "Hey! Miroku! It's the Ferris wheel Kagome got all excited about!" She grabbed his hand, blushing ever so slightly, and dragged him towards it. Miroku had a priceless look on his face. "That sounds like a great idea!" Eiji agreed cheerfully. He had this slightly.. devious look on his face, and he stopped walking. I blinked at him when he grabbed my wrist. Inuyasha mimicked my baffled expression when Eiji shoved me towards him. "Hey. You two, grab a seat on the ride," He grinned rather forcefully at us, the smile promising much demise if we so much shook our heads 'no'. Eiji can be scary sometimes. I stared at my messy haired friend, then sighed and shrugged. Inuyasha glared at me, and, in unison, we both turned around and started walking towards the Ferris wheel. "Man, they act like an old married couple.." I could have sworn I heard Eiji mutter. I restrained a slight blush, then turned and gave Eiji my most vexed glare. Eiji just smiled and waved. "HEY!" Kikyo protested, tugging on the arm Kouga had around her to hold the angered girl back. "I wanted to go with Inuyasha!" "Oi, Kiki," Kouga hissed. I could still here him. By the way Inuyasha tensed, I could tell he could still hear him, too. "We need Kagome on the team! If Inuyasha doesn't like him, then.." Kikyo seemed to relax, and it was my turn tense up slightly. Was that the only reason why they wanted me and Inuyasha to be friends again? "Well, if that's why.." Kikyo trailed off, then paused. "Get your arm off me!" "Sorry, sorry! Anyway, that's not just why. Hey, Kagome seems like a nice guy, and if Inuyasha doesn't like him, then.." Kouga left the sentence hanging, and I quickened my pace, my heart beating a bit faster. Could it be possible that Inuyasha really did hate me because of this incident? If he did, he wouldn't be walking by me towards the Ferris wheel, right? "Just so you know," Inuyasha growled out. He still sounded angry with me. "I'm not talking to you." My rage boiled up all over again. Ugh! Of all the immature, stupid, childish things to do! Why did the cute ones always have to be so brainless?! "Good, I didn't want to talk to you either," I retorted. Okay, so I was just as immature as he was, but you know what? Who cares. The dummy deserved it. We walked in silence over towards the conductor, each wearing identical masks of distaste. The conductor blinked and wordlessly handed us both tickets. That was the good thing about this festival, I suppose. We didn't have to pay for anything. Ignoring each other, we both went over to the empty seat that was brought to our level and stepped in. A girl that looked a year younger than us paused from scanning over her magazine and reached over, locking the safety bar into place. Needless to say, Inuyasha and I were sitting as far away from each other as we could. We both had our gazes locked in opposite directions; I had fixated my gaze on a couple of children who were leaning against the rail and watching the people on the ride, while he was staring at the sky with a sort of determined expression. As if he was determined to ignore me, even though I had a feeling he wanted to ask me something. As the ride slowly started to move, and the children get smaller and farther away, I began to remember something I had tucked as far back as I could in the smallest recesses of my mind. When I was three years old, my grandfather took me on an airplane for the first time in my life. I, understandably, was excited, since it was only in my wildest dreams where I was actually flying. I remember pressing my face as close as I could against the window, watching as the cars and people shrunk down to the size of my toys, then to the size of ants, then finally until they were almost completely imperceptible. Then we hit turbulence. And when I say turbulence, I don't mean the small little bumps airplanes fly through that might disrupt your coffee, I'm talking about the kind of turbulence that sends your coffee flying over your head and landing on the person behind or in front of you. It terrified me, to say the least. Turbulence hit, then, ironically, a storm. Flying became hazardous. So dangerous, in fact, we had to make an emergency landing. From this, I became terrified of heights and terrified of airplanes. So when our seat came to a stop at the top of the ride, I reasonably got nervous. Inuyasha turned his gaze away from the sky for a moment to observe me. I must have made a rather comical picture; with my eyes squeezed shut and my hands gripping the safety bar like a lifeline. I was unconsciously chanting a mantra in my mind, trying to calm myself from my sheer terror of being so damn high up. I kept imagining the untrustworthy bolts that kept our seat from falling to the ground loosening then finally releasing our chair to its freedom, inevitably bringing Inuyasha and I to our demise. Silly, I know, but when you're so terrified of something, you begin to imagine things that just wouldn't naturally happen. Like if you're on a ski lift, going to the top of the mountain, and you're scared of heights, you commence looking up, figuring that it's better than looking down. However, when you look up, you notice the unreliable looking cord that's the only thing that is holding you up from the ground. You start analyzing how much the seat plus you and one or two other people weigh. Then you start thinking about how there are so many other chairs are there, and how much they all weigh, added together. You start freaking yourself out even more, but before you can have a complete mental breakdown, the lift ends and you get off, snowboarding or skiing down the slope, only to repeat the ski lift process again. Or maybe that was just me. "You're scared of heights, aren't you?" the ever psychic Inuyasha stated. I briefly wondered if he could read my mind, then banished that silly thought. After all, if he could, then he would know that I was girl. What a messy situation that would be! I peeked open one of my eyes and gave him one of the worst looks I could muster. He smirked ever so slightly. "So? What's it matter to you?" "Why are you afraid of heights?" he asked, completely ignoring my question. I gave him a dry look for his lack of discretion. "I have my reasons." Inuyasha snorted, then looked back up in the sky again. "There's more accidents that can happen on the ground then that could happen in the air, you know�" "Air accidents are more terrifying," I shot back, though my grip on the bar loosened quite a bit. "If you die, you die." We sat in silence again, me mulling over what he said, and him looking at the sky and ignoring me. As much as I hated to admit it, he had a point. "Besides," Inuyasha continued, completely ruining any chance he had at calming me. "You die during the fall, most of the time. Your neck snaps due to the..." My eyes widened. "Oh, THANKS!" I snapped, quickly interrupting him. My grasp on the bar retightened, this time so hard that my knuckles were beyond white.. almost purple. Being as he was, Inuyasha snickered. The tension in the air was slowly floating away, and by the smug grin he had on his face, I could tell he wasn't mad at me anymore. Most likely because he now had an upper hand over me: the fact that I was terrified of heights. But his grin did something to my heart. It sped up; making me feel like the ride was collapsing underneath me and I had no control over the situation. Only� I wasn't scared anymore. Inuyasha, the dumb jerk, was worming his way into my affections already. * When the ride was finally over, I was given the shock of my life. Only, I couldn't exactly call it the 'shock of my life', since that would be a gross exaggeration. It was more like reasonable surprise. The 'shock of my life' came later. Anyway, to cease my incessant babbling, I'll move on. What shocked me was my little brother, walking side by side with a girl his age towards a popcorn machine. They were both sneaking small glances at each other when they thought the other wasn't looking, then blushing when their eyes met. I grinned. How cute. The two kids walking behind me apparently had the same thoughts. They were laughing and making kissy faces at my brother and the girl's back, but not in the mocking kind of humor. More like, when a friend teases you about how you like this boy but whenever you're around him, you act all childish and goofy. Soooo� "HEY, SOUTA!" I called, making several people around me jump. Including my friends, who I had neglected in mentioning. They had returned back to surround Inuyasha and me, Kikyo wearing an infuriated expression. "Who's you're little girlfriend?" Instant blush. The cute thing was, it wasn't just Souta who blushed, but the little girl who was walking by his side. "Kagome!" Souta shouted, reaching up to rub one of his cheeks to try to banish the redness. "Haven't you ever heard of discretion?" "Oh, then I was right!" Souta looked about ready to kick me in the shins. He probably would have, to, if his friends weren't there and we weren't in a public place. But instead, he just blushed, and, surprisingly didn't deny it. My grin widened as he led the little girl over to my friends and me. "Well?" I inquired. "Aren't you going to introduce us?" "Mayu, this is my stupid older si�brother Kagome." Luckily, Souta caught his stumble before he could complete the word 'sister'. Wouldn't that be interesting? "Kagome, this is Mayu, my friend." He put an unnecessary emphasis on friend, looking me in the eye. "This is Shippo and Rin, my other friends." He indicated with his hand a boy with dusky red hair and a girl with a seemingly ever-present smile. Okay, so I'm a girl. I'm a nosy girl. I'm a nosy girl who likes to match make. Soooo� opportunity presented itself and I started getting ideas. I had a feeling that Souta knew what was on my mind, because he gradually started backing away from me. "Ah.. Kagome.." "Hey, Kagome, who's the kid?" Miroku interrupted. He grinned broadly at my brother and his friends. To my amusement, Souta was looking more and more uncomfortable, while his friends were looking more and more interested. "Is this your brother you were telling us about?" I nodded my affirmative, and for a moment the younger half of the group looked at me in confusion, then back to my brother. "Hey," Shippo said, frowning slightly. "You never told us you had a brother, just about your older sister�" Instant attention from a certain boy whose name started with M and ended with I-R-O-K-U. "Higurashi, you've been holding back on us!" He was immediately at my side, looking highly interested. "You never told us you had a sister! Is she younger than you? Older? Is she cute? Available?" "A little desperate, Priest?" I asked, ducking away from him. Great. How did I get myself into these messes again? Oh yeah, I listen to my stupid grandpa. And I have a younger brother who opens his stupid mouth worse than I do. "Ah� uhm� yeah� I have a� much older sister who's� already married with two children and lives in� Texas!" I shot out quickly, making everything up as I went along. Souta dropped his head in his hands, most likely thinking along the same lines as I was. What on earth was I getting myself into? "Really?" Mayu asked, smiling slightly. "Souta never told us about her, just that he had a sister who was a junior in high school� Oh, good, he had to get technical! The highly re-interested look Miroku was giving me was making me feel just slightly uneasy. "Oh! You mean� uh�um� Kekki! She's my� my identical twin sister!" I began to sweat nervously. There was no way anyone was going to believe my hair-brained story. I was getting worse than my grandfather� However, Souta was doing a magnificent job at playing along. He nodded vigorously to everything I said, even though he also had the slightly panicky, disbelieving look on his face. I could almost hear what he would say to me later. 'Good job, Kagome! Digging yourself even deeper, and dragging me along with you!' So we put on our identical 'believe-me-I'm-innocent' looks on our faces and directed our heart-melting smiles at our friends. "Well!" Miroku said, completely buying every word. "When can I� we� meet her?" I literally fell over. * A rather interesting thing happened after the festival and as we returned to the school. It's granted that I would notice the odd looks my friends were sending in my direction, but the one that made me the most uncomfortable was the one Sango was directing me. It was soft, sweet, and expressive, and I got the distinctive feeling that� well, she liked me. Not like one would like a friend, but� Well, you know. My suspicions were partially confirmed when we got back to the girls' school. "Hey! Kagome, can I talk to you really quickly?" Sango asked. Those few words sent on the edge. For the billionth time that night, I could feel the tensions rise in the air, straining until the point where the air was about to snap. I was getting nervous, and Miroku was looking at me in a way that made me want to run for cover. I could almost see the oversized bright red words spelling DANGER across the sky. "Uh� I guess�" I glanced almost apologetically at my livid friend, and he shrugged nonchalantly at me. Battling the feeling of certain demise, I followed my female friend into a more secluded area. I didn't miss the look Kikyo was giving me, though, but I didn't have any time to decipher it. I have the distinct impression that what the look showed was� hopeful? As if Sango and I might hook up? No way. Sango was nervous. That much was easy to pick up. She shuffled her feet almost shyly, then kept sneaking glances at me. I, on the other hand, was playing in turmoil of thoughts in the middle of my mind. What on earth was I supposed to do? What if she did like me? If she did, and I declined her, would that put a strain on our friendship? I didn't want that, especially since she was one of the only levelheaded friends in our group. But I couldn't exactly tell her� Why not, though? A part of me asked, while the other part beat the crap out of that one part. While I was having that mental war against myself, Sango suddenly stopped and stared up at me. I blinked a couple times. Sango looked down at her feet, a shy blush coming up to her cheeks. "Ah.. K-Kagome.. I just wanted.." "Look, Sango, as much as you might like me, I'm sorry, but anything that might have been able to happen between us never will be able to because I'm really a girl disguised as a guy in order to protect my brother!" I said in a rush, dropping my male tone. The girl standing in front of me blinked. Then blinked again. The, for good measure, blinked one more time. "Did.. you just say...?" "Uh... yeah..." "So you're..?" "I.. uh.. yeah. So, look, I'm really sorry, but any feelings you might have for me are gunna be unrequited.." Sango looked confused for a moment, then burst out laughing. "Y-you thought I had feelings for you?!" I frowned. "Well, yeah.. I mean, you were always looking at me with this certain kind of look... and then you called me to ask me over here... and..." "Kagome," Sango interrupted, grinning. "I was going to ask you if you were gay." Time seemed to stand still. I, let me tell you, was frozen solid. For a few moments, at least. "WHAT?!" "Well, yeah. I'm sorry Kagome, but you don't pull off a straight guy very well. But you're a girl?! Why didn't you tell me earlier?!" "I had my reasons. But you thought I was gay?!" "Yeah..." Sango sighed wistfully. "I was kinda hoping you were, too. Then we could have checked out guys together and shopped together and watched cheesy movies together... well, not really the last one, since I can't stand cheesy movies..." I knocked on Sango's head. "Heellloooo... I'm a girl? We can still do those things without me getting all weirded out?" For a moment, the girl looked puzzled. Then she beamed at me excitedly. "Oh yeah! This is gunna be even better, since you're a girl! I can't believe it!" She paused, stopping from her excitement to stare at me. "Hey. If you're a girl, then why are you going HERE? Why didn't you just go to my school?" "When I know that answer, I'll tell you." I deflated slightly and sat down on the bench, sighing. "The best answer I can give you is that my grandpa is a moron..." "So then you're..." "Yes, I like guys." "Okay, okay! I was just making sure..." Sango paused again, apparently mulling over my words. I could tell something was bothering her. She glanced at me thoughtfully, then grinned. "Hey. You like Inuyasha, don't you?" I fell off the bench. My, I was falling a lot, these days... Letting out a resigned sigh, I looked up at her. "Am I that obvious? Man, did you know before I did?" Sango shrugged, leaning against her knees so that we would be more level with one another. "I wouldn't say you're obvious, Kagome, I could just kind of tell. No one else suspects though, don't worry. As open-minded as Inuyasha is about this, he wouldn't exactly be comfortable around you if he thought you liked him while you were a guy. And you don't even want to know what Kikyo would do to you..." She frowned at me, suddenly. "Speaking of 'being a guy', how do I know you're not lying to me and the others didn't set you up against me?" I pulled off my sweater, then unbuttoned the first two buttons of my shirt, revealing enough cleavage to distinguish me from the male gender. Anymore suspicions died in Sango's throat, and her eyes popped out of her head. "W-woah... and the other's don't know? Are you who Souta was talking about when he said he had an older sister, or do you really have a sister named Kekki? If you don't, how the hell are you going to pull this off?" "No, the others don't know... and please don't tell them. I don't think they'd be to pleased if they found out that their new friend was really a girl. And besides, can you imagine how Miroku would respond? He's a great friend, but the guy's a lecher." I sighed, glancing at the tree across the street�the one we sat under every day. "Anyway, I don't think the school would take to kindly to me being a girl... even though there has been discussion in combining our two schools..." "Yeah, but then there's those crazy women activists people..." We both sighed at the same time, then I abruptly stood up. "I better go. Miroku's probably wanting to rip out my throat by now..." "Why would he want to do that?" I gave Sango a deadpan look. "I'm going now..." "No, seriously, Kagome, why?!" I walked off, amist her enraged growls. Oh well, she'd get over it. I was lucky, that time. Miroku, I guess, was in a good mood, because he didn�t try to obliterate me. Of course, this was after I explained to him that there was nothing between me an Sango... * Sigmund Freud, an amazingly brilliant man, studied the unconscious mind because he believed that dreams and thoughts hidden in the deep recesses of our brain's affected our every day life. He believed that if those dreams and those thoughts were brought to the surface of one's unconsciousness, one might be able to control the undesirable actions that are displayed from those hidden thoughts. He examined, studied, tested, concluded, and was inevitably right. I was able to study his practices that night, right when I fell asleep. As soon as I closed my eyes, I started one of the most eerie dreams I've ever had in my life. I don't normally dream, mind you, which is why I got a full night's sleep. When someone dreams vividly during the night, they tend to wake up more often then someone who does not dream so vividly, thus remembering the dream they had the night before. Anyway, I'm getting off topic. My dream, from the start, was weird. One of those hippy-high-on-crack weird, let me tell you. The first thing I noticed about the dream was there was hair. A lot of hair. Zigzagging around the... area I was in like a spider's web, glistening in a light whose source I could not see. The next thing I noticed was that I was wearing a weird kimono. Actually.. the weird part of it was that I wasn't exactly wearing it, but it was almost as if I was holding it around me for protection. And I was wearing a skirt. A short skirt, to be more precise. For some reason, my head also felt abnormally heavy. I reached up and touched the top of my head on instinct, then blinked. My hair! It was back! Abruptly, like Alice in Wonderland falling through the abnormally large house, I realized I was falling in the center of the hair waterfall. I hated dreams. They always make your worst fears come to life. Before I could make a nice bloody smear on the... skulls below me, hair suddenly shot from the sides of me and snaked around my wrists. I didn't feel a thing. "What are you? Why aren't you maimed?!" "Huh?" I eloquently asked, then looked up. To my surprise, Yura was.. well, floating there, holding a sword. She didn't look very happy, either. I blinked at her, then my eyes widened in shock. Something.. razor sharp was cutting into my neck. It felt like a thin thread, trying to decapitate me. I couldn't look down to check, in fear of losing my head, you realize. So, instead... ..I woke up, shooting into a sitting position. My heart was pounding, and something on my wrist was cutting off my circulation. There was a single, strand of hair tied around my wrist like a bracelet. I, let me tell you, almost had a heartattack. .:end chapter four:. An explanation: Kagome dreamt about a past life (which follows the timeline of Rumiko Takahashi's series), but only a small part where Kagome and Yura had that... encounter. The only reason WHY that happened was because of the hair on Kagome's wrist. This only happened to further the plotline in the Yura-Kagome situation. I most likely won't be doing anymore dream-flashbacks, unless inspiration hits. Sorry for the kind of short chapter, btw.. x.x; |