Inuyasha When More Than Spring Is In The Air

**The Characters and World of InuYasha belong entirely to the admirable and talented Rumiko Takahashi. I in no way lay claim to them or make any money off of them....and I'm sure not looking to make any money off any Disney references either. **

When More Than Spring Is In The Air

"….and now in local news, an overnight break in at the Ekizochikku Pet Emporium inadvertently led authorities to uncover what is now believed to be one of the largest smuggling operations of exotic animals into this country in the last fifteen years..."

"Hey, Sis..Listen to this.." Souta waved his hand to attract his big sister's attention. "That place is only two blocks from here."

"....local reports of 'odd ' animals running loose in the neighborhood first alerted the police to the situation early last night.."

" Huh?" Kagome briefly turned her attention from the notebook in her lap to the T.V. Newscaster who's face shared the screen with a clip of men loading a variety of small containers and cages into the back of a police van. "Odd animals running loose," she snorted, "They have NO idea..." and turned back to her studying.

"Aw Sis, listen. This is neat," her little brother insisted.

"....said that it appeared the robbers apparently freed several dozen animals from a concealed storeroom before exiting out a back door into the service alley..."

" Wow, me and Hiro were just in that place last week to look over their new hamsters," Souta said enthusiastically, enjoying a vicarious thrill at having recently set foot into a place of sudden notoriety.

" …..money was recovered from trash can only a few blocks from the scene, there are still a number of small animals unaccounted for. While most of the missing animals are not potentially dangerous, they are...."

"What animals, dear?" Mrs. Higirashi paused in the kitchen doorway, attracted by the sound of Souta's loud comments as he bounced around on the floor in front of the couch.

" The ones that got away from the shop down the street," the small boy bounced around some more. "Wonder if any snakes got away?"

"Oh, lets hope not, Dear," Shaking her head, his mother sat down on the couch next to Kagome, who was peeking over the top of her notes, covertly watching the news as well.

"But snakes would be sooo neat." Souta was already entertaining the idea of maybe catching one,if any had gotten away. "A pet snake would be great! "

"Snakes are not great." Kagome mentally pictured a recent unpleasant encounter with a snake Youkai in possession of a jewel shard from the week before. " Snakes are just...eewww."

Her mother gave a little ' hush you two' type wave so that she could hear what the announcer was saying.

".....the owner, has agreed to furnish a list of customers who have bought pets from the shop over the last three months. Once shop records are reviewed anyone who may have purchased one of the contraband animals will be contacted so that the animals can be picked up..."

" You mean people will have to give up their pets?" Souta asked his mother.

" If they were brought into the country in a way that they shouldn't have been, people wont be allowed to keep them, Dear." Mrs. Higirashi replied sweetly.

" Well that sucks a...."

"Souta !"

"Sorry Mom."

Kagome hunkered back down into the safety of her notes,smelling the definite verbal influence of a certain rough tongued hanyou in her little brother's choice of words. ' Could have been way worse than sucks though,' whispered a sly little voice in her mind.

" ….seeing any unusual animals are asked to call the police or animal control so they can be safely picked up. Remember, even though they may look soft and cuddly, they are still wild animals and may bite." The newscaster shuffled the papers before him and added with a cheesy smile directed at his female co-anchor, " Guess that America isn't the only place with an illegal alien problem tonight..."

Mentally groaning at the remark, Kagome slammed her notebook shut. "Oh please, who's writing his... Ackkkkk!" Tossed up in fright, her notebook flew through the air, scattering a shower of papers as it fell.

" You're Late!" In a blur of red a tall figure literally flowed over the top of the couch to plop down in a disgruntled heap next to her. " You said you'd be back this..."

Eyebrows beetled in rage at being nearly scared out of any wits still lucky enough to be in her possession, Kagome opened her mouth to say the first words that tended to enter her mind in such situations. " InuYasha! Siii.."

"Not in the living room, Dear," Mrs. Higirashi interrupted her smoothly, then directed her attention to the dog eared boy already reflexively trying to brace himself against the arm of the couch. "You got here just in time. Ramen for lunch, Dear?"

Nodding in response to the offer of his favorite food, he watched Mrs. Higirashi start to head for the kitchen before he thought to ask, " In time for what?"

Not sure if asking Kagome was such a good idea, given the dark look she still insisted on directing at him, he wisely addressed the question to her mother. Kagome's expression passed from disturbingly irate to instantly guilty with those four little words.

InuYasha straightened up then leaned towards her, narrowing his yellow eyes slightly, "In time for what, Ka..go..me?" Yeah she was up to something alright, he could tell by the way she started to fidget and lean away. "Well?" he asked a bit gruffly, secretly happy to see the upper hand swinging back into his possession.

" I..uh..kinda..uh.."

" Kinda uh what?"

"Volunteered you." Her expression teetered on the edge of guilt before recomposing itself into that sweetly smiling look of adoration that he didn't have a rat's chance in Cat Hell of resisting.

Somehow, this was going to be bad. "For what?"

" There's a wedding scheduled at the shrine tomorrow afternoon and Gramp's back is bothering him..so.." The smile's wattage tripled in intensity.

"I volunteered you to sweep up the shrine courtyard after lunch."

Which is why, InuYasha found himself out in the shrine yard wielding a broom about forty five minutes later.

True, he could have been a total dick about it and stridently refused to help out, using a colorfully verbal tirade that would have eventually included in his dining pleasure eating more than just Ramen for lunch. But, since he had been trying really hard lately to curb his frequently churlish responses and for the sake of the girl, who was outside with him doing her fair share of sweeping as well, he had agreed. Of course he did offer a token resistance at first, just so Kagome wouldn't get any ideas about him getting 'easy' in the future.

It was while he was dragging the second bag of leaves around behind the storage shed that he saw something small and furry waddling quickly out of sight, the movement caught just out of the corner of his eye. Small, furry, is it?..no..not Buyo... never seen anything lookin' like that before, better go investigate it...sniff sniff sniff...damn thing smells different too..better go look..make sure it's not something that can hurt Kagome..

Bag of leaves abandoned, InuYasha's inner dog trotted him right around the side of the shed before rational InuYasha could have a say in the matter.

Kagome glanced around. "Where in the heck did he go?" She saw the abandoned bag of leaves, it's contents already trying to make their escape back onto the flagstones they had just been removed from. Over near the Goshinboko lay an equally lonely broom. " Oh, he better not have snuck off down the well. Inu.."

"Oi, Kagome," InuYasha's voice preceded him as he came back around the corner of the shed. "Uh, what the hell do you call one of these?"

At first, exactly what she was seeing didn't quite register. It took a moment and oddly enough all that kept jumping into her mind was a character out of an old Disney movie she loved as a child. Only it wasn't the deer and it damned sure wasn't the rabbit.

Clutched firmly by it's bushy plume of a tail, InuYasha proudly held up his living trophy for her inspection. " I know it ain't a cat but..."

"Where did you find that?" she interrupted in a strained and tiny voice.

" Rootin' around in the garbage can." Holding it up to eye level, he rotated his wrist so that he could get a closer look at what he held from more than one angle. " What do you call one of these things?"

Kagome couldn't help herself as her feet began on a trip to edge her further away from InuYasha and his distinctively colored prize. "It's a ...a Skunk and I think you really need to get rid of it. Like Right Now."

"Skunk? Looks like some squatty legged cat. Where do they come from?" InuYasha idly scratched the side of his head as he inspected the little animal from top to bottom and side to side. "It's kinda pretty, all black with those white stripes down it's back."

"Trust me..just toss it far, far away..it must have escaped from that pet shop that was on the news."

" Oi, wench, how dangerous can one little skunkcat be?"

Yes, that was probably the worst statement he could have possibly made at that particular moment in time because somewhere a Kami heard it and snickered. On cue the little animal made a strange purring noise causing InuYasha to turn it around so that he could look it in the eye. Kagome's feet continued their sly, unnoticed shuffle away from something ugly that she subconsciously knew was about to happen.

Fixing InuYasha with a pair of baleful glittering black eyes set in a withering glare that reminded him in an uneasy way of his older brother, the little creature bared a mouthful of sharp little teeth, curled agilely upon itself and nailed the hanyou right on the wrist. Startled more than hurt, InuYasha opened his hand and dropped the skunk which landed neatly at his feet.

"Oh..Oh..Oh my..RUN," Kagome already was as she called to InuYasha over her shoulder.

"What, from that?"

The skunk squared off against the dog, bounced up and down several times on it's tiny front paws in a blatant display of skunkly bravado, raised it's plume of a tail then whirled around so that InuYasha was given an unimpeded view of it's rear. Already aware of just what the affronted little beast intended to do, Kagome picked up her pace and sprinted for the house, scattering unswept leaves in her wake.

" Oi,Kagome.. get back here, this thing is funny," InuYasha turned around just in time to receive the skunks pungent present as the spray hit him right in the middle of his upper chest.

Pigeons took wild-winged to the sky. Buyo the cat decided that it was a good day to inspect the upper reaches of the Goshinboko. Somewhere down on the street a car horn sounded and someone yelled "Hey, watch where you're going ,Buddy." This was all lost on InuYasha however, because as soon as the smell of some hideous union gone horribly wrong between fermented garlic and burning tires, underscored with a few other remarkably pungent counter-notes, hit his nose dog boy passed right out. Using the cover of it's sinus searing chemical attack to make a timely, if unhurried escape, the skunk shuffled off and made for the first convenient sign of cover, the open well house door. Souta,who had actually witnessed the whole incident by ignoring his sister's yelled warning to run, covered his nose, and effectively blocked off any future escape by pulling the well house door shut.

Yep, this was going to be bad.

It was quiet in the courtyard as the cloud settled and the survivors ventured out to stand and pay homage to the fallen. Of course they weren't able to stand too close, not and breathe at the same time. This fact too was lost on InuYasha who had only roused up long enough to wretch weakly before flopping over and passing right back out.

After a few moments Mrs. Higirashi said in a quiet voice, " Well, I better go call someone to find out how to get that dreadful smell off the poor boy."

The solution had been to wash off the skunk oil using a concoction made up of one quart of 3% hydrogen peroxide combined with ¼ cup of baking soda and a teaspoon of laundry detergent. This combination one of the animal control team members who had come to recover their malodorous little visitor assured Mrs. Higirashi, would effectively change the chemical composition of the spray and deodorize their inquisitive ' family dog'.

Said family dog had finally come around in one of the outlying sheds, after being scrubbed down by the Higirashi family. Of course his first waking sight of them had been the vision of three people wearing rubber gloves, goggles, their clothing shrouded in black garbage bags huddled around him as he sat in strange room in a small tub of smelly water. A man born in a later century might have thought he was being kidnapped by aliens for a good probing. Completely startled by the weird sight, InuYasha merely screeched, tried to run , was 'sat' before he made the shed's threshold and plopped right back into the tub.

Finally free of the offending odor, the very put-out hanyou was at last let back into the main house. Mrs. Higirashi made up to him in her motherly way by stuffing him with most of the Ramen currently in her kitchen. The fact that his one and only set of clothing had also been washed, like him more than once, in the same concoction and had been faded into a lovely pale pink by the peroxide, didn't go over with him very well either. He had just glared silently at Kagome over his bowl of noodles when she cheerily pointed out that with his hair, the shade was quite..becoming.

" All I hope is that it gets it's color back before I run into anyone...like that mangy wolf. Or that bastard Sesshoumaru," he mumbled more to himself as he slurped down another bowl of salt saturated apology.

" I thought you said you closed that thing in the well house Souta," Mrs. Higirashi commented a few minutes later as the family continued with their dinner. " The control people went all over that shrine and couldn't find a sign of it."

Everything had been going fine the next day, InuYasha and Kagome got off to an early start jumping back down the well before anyone could comment on that less than floral smell still lingering behind the house. Walking back to Kaede's, Kagome tried to make small talk and lift InuYasha's lingering bad mood. She knew he was still angry after waking up stark naked surrounded by talking garbage bags and being forced to wear an outfit that she was careful not to refer to again as peony pink.

The day may have passed on into eternity as just another day if their friends had not inadvertently scratched the scab off the current sore on InuYasha's psyche.

Shippou, of course, had started the scratching. Accompanying Miroku and Sango,the cheerful kit had bounded down the path to jump into Kagome's arms. After the kitsune had chirruped his happy greeting he paused and took a sniff...then another. Deciding to preserve his skull instead of asking the obvious he found a safe shelter on Kagome's far shoulder, looked inquisitively over at the hanyou and asked in his pointed, dry little way, " InuYasha, why is your firerat pink?"

A low growl thrummed in the cool morning air.

" Yes, why is that InuYasha? " Miroku asked in an innocently inquiring tone of voice, then he too...sniffed. "Whats that smell?" Glancing over at Sango he saw her shake her head, at a loss for an answer.

"I don't know, but I smell it too..Kagome?"

...and the rest of the whole damn day just went downhill from there.

Post script.....

Sometimes the Kami just have to laugh, I guess when you are a God you have the right to make a joke now and then. For most of the world the rest of the day just continued on as usual with nothing odd happening at all however...

Over heard in a sunny glen deep within the forest.

" Look Master Jaken, what is that? Oooo it's so cute.."

" Rin, stop you foolish girl. That is a wild animal. If it harms you Lord Sesshoumaru will surely have my hide."

"But Master Jaken.."

"Stand back Rin, while I deal with this disrespectful creature. How dare it turn it's back on someone of Lord Sesshoumaru's importance. You...creature... You will face the wrath..."

"Oh no Master Jaken, don't hurt it.."

A deeper, measure voice spoke up, " Rin. Step back."

"Yes, my Lord."

"Now, you.. come back here you disrespectful...did you not hear what I said? Come back herACCKKK."

The birds can take to wild wing in the past as well as the present. Woodland creatures are amazing when it comes to picking up and finding somewhere else to be in a pinch. A dead silence settled in the glen and for the space of several heartbeats that's exactly how it remained. Then the silence was broken by that deeper, measured voice.

" Jaken, should you touch this Sesshoumaru....you are dead. Come Rin."

" Yes, my Lord."


End file.
