When they passed the Green Mermaid on the way to Yuki’s condo it took both of his companions to keep Inu Yasha from jumping through the car window to go looking for Kagome straight away. And they almost had to lock him up to keep him from leaving the house to look for her before Yuki could get them settled in.
        "Why can’t I go now?!"
        "Why can’t you stop whining like a spoiled brat?" Yuki shot back as she hung her clothes in the closet of her room, Inu Yasha paced around behind her, and Shippo bounced on the bed. They were both driving her absolutely crazy. "I hope you don’t think I’m putting your clothes away for you, Dog Boy," she grumped with nasty glare over her shoulder.
        Inu Yasha grinned with a wicked sparkle in his eyes. "That’s women’s work," he spat, just to watch her go ballistic. Next thing he knew he was flat on his back on the floor with a throbbing jaw and Yuki standing over him massaging her fist. "Don’t mess with me, mutt—"
        He kicked her legs out from under her, and she fell on her butt with a startled yelp. "Don’t mess with me, bitch—"
        She slammed her foot up between his legs and grinned with immense satisfaction as she watched him clutch himself and curl into an expletive-spouting little ball. She got up and kicked him in the rear for good measure. "Allow me to elucidate: Unless you want Kagome to hate you for life, you do things my way. Get it? Now be a good little punk and put your clothes away, so we can figure out how a shit-for-brains dumbass like you is gonna impress somebody like Kagome Higurashi. Shippo: Help him."
        Gulp. "Uh—ok." Shippo bounced off the bed and scurried off to the room he and Inu Yasha were supposed to share. Right about then, the kitsune wasn’t too keen on the idea of being in the same country with Inu Yasha, much less the same room.
        Inu Yasha rolled to his feet, still partly doubled over but no longer holding himself, and growled his best evil demon growl at Yuki, who wasn’t impressed. "You can have your clothes back, bitch, I’m—"
        "A loser," she finished for him. She squared off with him, arms folded, foot tapping the carpet, matching him growl for growl. With a derisive snort, she added: "I can see why Kagome doesn’t want you around when it’s not business. You’re such an asshole. Hanging around her all the time isn’t going change her mind about you, you know. You have to win her over, you moron." She reached over to smack his head where one of his ears hid under the bandanna. "I mean, come on! You’re a guy with dog ears. There are tons of cute guys running around the beach, and you think she’ll go for you just because you’re in her face?"
        Inu Yasha seethed with fury but at the same time he wanted to cry. Yuki’s words spoke right to his biggest insecurity about his feelings for Kagome: Why should she pick a half-demon from another time when she could have a normal guy who understood her and her world? She was so pretty…she could have anybody, he was sure, any of those "cute guys" Yuki said would be on the beach. He couldn’t bully her into choosing him over a human and (even if he was willing to do it) he couldn’t beg her and expect that to work, either. Anyway, if any of her friends saw him doing it, Kagome would probably be mortified. Why did he ever think this was a good idea? He could’ve just put up with her being gone, then bugged her about what she’d done this week when she returned.
        He plopped down onto the bed with an unhappy sigh, hung his head and tried really hard not to shed tears in front Yuki. Much to his surprise, she sat down next to him and said comfortingly: "I’m sorry, Inu Yasha. I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know what your relationship is like. Though…it’s pretty obvious you care about her a lot."
        Inu Yasha was suspicious of this sudden change in attitude, but the girl had made a valid point about Kagome. "You’re probably right—about her being able to find somebody better."
        "What could be better than somebody who loves her?" Yuki asked.
ERK! "Luh—love?!" Inu Yasha sputtered with a panicky look and jumped off the bed to pace again. "Um…I just really like her…"
        Yuki grinned. "Uh-huh. Sure. What’s so bad about admitting you love her?" Then she nodded knowingly. "Oh, I get it: You don’t think she feels the same way, so you’re scared she’ll find out and reject you."
        "Shut up."
        "That’s what I thought," she sighed as she got up and slung an arm about his shoulders. He shook it off. "My aren’t we touchy? Well, Dog Boy, you know what they say: No guts, no glory. If you want the girl, you have to do what it takes to win her." She winked. "Even if it means going against your nature and actually being a nice guy."
        Inu Yasha gave her one last growl before sulking off to his room. What did she know about his feelings? Bitch. He didn’t understand Yuki at all: First she’s cussing him out and putting him down, then she’s all sorry and nice, then she’s putting him down again! Kagome was a lot easier to understand. At least she didn’t put him down (except for that "sit" thing). He had a sudden nightmare vision of Yuki with the power of Sit and shuddered. Scary woman. And what exactly had she meant with those hints about him paying her back with something other than money? She better not have meant any kind of services, because he was nobody servant—or stud. Except for maybe Kago—ACK!
        "Damn, Inu Yasha! She’s a female you!"
        He snarled at Shippo and got to work putting his new clothes on hangers and into the closet. No way was he going to reveal his ponderings to Shippo! He’d never hear the end of it! Worse, the little brat would probably run and tell Kagome he wanted to do that with her. Gods, she’d really hate him, then! She’d think that’s all he was after, tell him to "sit", go home and never speak to him again. Or (a tiny voice in head argued) maybe she wants it, too, and—NO! She’s too young for that! And she’s not that kind of a girl (at least, he hoped she wasn’t, with all those cute guys Yuki mentioned running around here).
        It took him a while to notice Shippo was handing him the clothes he was hanging up. "Thanks," he muttered. Once all of his clothes were hung, he started looking around for someplace to put his toiletries. Much as he hated the idea, he decided to ask Yuki, lest he screw up and make her mad again. She led him to a small room with a tile floor and a small sink against the wall to the left. Next to the sink was a large, odd-looking ceramic…pallet? Chair? Container? What the hell was that thing? Hmm… Inu Yasha and Shippo investigated it while Yuki put his things into little drawers under the sink. The unidentifiable was white with a long trough on the floor and a ceramic box on a pole, with a large button set into its front . Inu Yasha pushed the button and jumped back in shock when the chair-thing roared at him and swooshed a torrent of water through the trough. He watched in utter fascination as the water washed down a drain at the far end of the thing, under a sort of hood..
       Yuki giggled. "This is a toilet. When you have to…um…relieve yourself, you squat here," she pointed at the trough, "do your thing, wipe with this," she pointed at a stack of filmy white paper on a shelf within reach of the toilet, "then push this button to flush it away." She demonstrated, then suddenly cleared her throat. "Well, since you're male, I guess you wouldn't have to squat to..." she mimicked the male posture for peeing, getting amused looks from the demons. She then went to the sink. "Here’s how you get water to come out of this," she twisted the knobs, making water come out the spout, told them which dispensed hot water and which dispensed cold.
       Then she directed her guests through a door to a small anteroom and said: "Get undressed here," then went on through another door to a larger room with a tile floor and a large, tiled tub at one end. The tub had knobs and a faucet like the sink did. Next to it was a wooden bucket with colorful bars of soap, small cloths and a long-handled brush in it. A selection of thick, dark blue towels were neatly folded and stacked on the floor nearby. Against the wall were four small, low, wooden stools. Now those were things Inu Yasha and Shippo recognized. "This is—"
        "The bath," Inu Yasha interrupted with a smug look. "We have baths where I come from, too."
        Yuki blinked at him. "Really? Just like this? I mean, without the automatic faucets."
        The demons nodded in unison, a little puzzled by that reaction. Yuki explained: "A lot of people have Western-style bathrooms, since they take up less space. My dad wanted to have a traditional Japanese bath here, since my mom wouldn’t have one in the city house. She wouldn’t let him do the rest of this house traditional, either."
        Shippo knit his brows and scratched his head. "What’s ‘Western-style’?"
        She giggled. "Gaijin."
        "Oh!" They nodded knowingly. Foreigners and their weird customs. Poor, uncivilized freaks didn’t even know how to have a proper bath. Well, Inu Yasha had heard that gaijin were smelly and they couldn’t even use chopsticks!
        Yuki asked curiously: "There aren’t many gaijin in Japan back in your time, are there? What are they like? They told us in history class that the Europeans were all a bunch of barbarians."
        Having found something they could actually impress her with, the boys nattered on about round eyed barbarians they’d never actually seen but had heard about. They followed her out to the kitchen, where she got them all glasses of water with little square pieces of ice in them that came from a big cabinet full of cold air. She talked into a small machine for a while, then put it back on its holder and happily told them she’d just ordered something called "pizza".
        "It’s food," she explained. "Someone makes it and brings it here for us to eat. It’s really good, you’ll like it. I’ll go grocery shopping later, so we don’t have to get delivery all the time."
        The lads exchanged puzzled looks. "’Grocery shopping’?" Inu Yasha echoed. "Is ‘grocery’…food?"
        Yuki chuckled, amazed at the number of things she took for granted in her modern Japan. They even knew it by a different name, didn’t they? Japan was Nippon and Tokyo, her home and Kagome’s, was Edo. They didn’t have indoor plumbing, refrigerators, pizza, grocery stores, televisions, radios, cars—they didn’t even put their clothes on the kinds of hangers she did. And they slept on futons on the floor, rather than on a Western-style bed like they had here at the condo and in her Tokyo home. No wonder Shippo wanted to bounce on the bed! He’d probably never seen anything like it (certainly not that springy). Yuki looked upon her charges with new admiration for the calm way they’d dealt with the concepts of a car and a shopping mall.
        Inu Yasha narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. "What’s so funny?"
        "I was just thinking about all the things I take for granted that people don’t have in your time," she replied mirthfully. "Like the thing I got the ice out of," she pointed at the refrigerator. "That’s called a refrigerator. We keep things cold in it, and it has a machine in it that makes ice. I can’t believe how cool you guys were about my car, either!"
        Well, he was just "cool" all around, Inu Yasha thought smugly. Everything in Kagome’s time seemed to be done by machines: People traveled in them, kept food in them, used them to dispense hot and cold water, to communicate with other people. The few times he’d been here, he hadn’t had the time to really experience the way people lived, being too busy fighting a demon or a ghost or something like that.
        "You still haven’t told us what ‘grocery’ is," Shippo reminded Yuki.
        She took a sip of water and told him: "It’s a market, a place to buy food. Groceries are food you’ve bought at a market."
        Shippo asked suspiciously: "Are you a good cook?"
        Yuki assured him she was a very good cook, and so were the people who made the pizza she’d ordered. "Oh yeah, you guys don’t have anything like pizza in your time, either, do you?"
        Inu Yasha shrugged. "Depends. What is it?" Instant ice…hm. It sure was nice to have cold water on demand like that. And food, too.
        "It’s a big round…um, piece of bread with sauce and toppings on it," Yuki explained, drawing a circle on the coffee table with her finger and making motions as if she was dropping things onto it. "You can get anything you like on a pizza—meat, vegetables, fish, eggs, rice—anything. It’s another gaijin import." When they frowned at that, she hastened to add: "They’re not as barbaric as they used to be, and some of their food’s actually pretty good."
        Inu Yasha and Shippo decided they’d believe that when they tasted this "pizza". "So the furniture," Shippo asked, bouncing on the couch cushion. "I guess it’s gaijin, too?"
        Yuki nodded. She wondered how they’d take the truth if she told them about her family, then decided she just as well. After all, if a car couldn’t freak them out, then…"The furniture’s my mom’s taste. She’s American," Yuki confessed in an embarrassed voice. "That’s a country across the sea to the east. It, um, was settled by Europeans a couple hundred years ago. Mom’s ancestors were German."
        She’s gaijin? Inu Yasha looked at Yuki more closely. She pointedly refused to meet his gaze, choosing to stare into her glass instead. Poor girl must get hell for it, but then again, her family seemed to be rich—and a rich man could get his women wherever he chose and expect lesser mortals to just deal with it. His money could even shield his kids from any trouble they might get for being half bloods. So, he thought with a tight, little smirk, Yuki was also the half-blood offspring of a powerful man.
        "Stop looking at me like that!"
        "Like what?" Inu Yasha blinked in confusion. "I was just thinking, um, that—well, I’m a half-blood, too, and…" He had no idea what he wanted to say, so he just sat back, gulped icy water and flushed with embarrassment.
        Yuki laughed, sounding almost as embarrassed as he did. Shippo sighed with relief: He wasn’t up for another Inu Yasha vs. Yuki fight yet. He guessed it was good the two head-butters had something like that in common, unless it just gave them one more thing to pick on each other about. The kitsune rolled his eyes: It would just figure if they did use it as ammo instead of a common ground. Funny, he thought, she didn’t look very gaijin. Not that he’d actually seen one, or anything, but he’d heard they had funny-colored hair and big, round eyes (gee, that describes any anime character you could name, huh? -QOS)
       "What does your mother look like?" Shippo asked. "I’ll bet she’s pretty."
         For being such a big suck up, he got scooped into Yuki’s arms and carried over to the kitchen counter where her purse sat. She dug into it and pulled out her wallet, which she brought back to the couch. Still holding Shippo, she opened the wallet and held it so Inu Yasha could see what was inside, too. "This is my family," she bragged, pointing to the most lifelike little painting either demon had ever seen. And what was that shiny stuff over it? Yuki pointed to each person and named them: "This is my dad and that’s my mom. You already met Kei. And this is my older brother Shunusuke. He’s in his second year at University. Um, that’s a kind of school. What are you doing?"
        Inu Yasha and Shippo were each rubbing a finger over the plastic sleeve that held her family picture. When Inu Yasha tried scratching it, he got his hand slapped. "Stop that! You’ll tear it. It’s called plastic, and I couldn’t even begin to tell you what it’s made of."
        "That’s the best painting I’ve ever seen," Shippo sighed admiringly.
        Yuki giggled. "That’s not a painting, it’s a photograph. It’s made with a machine—"
        "Another damn machine!" Inu Yasha snorted. "Don’t you people do anything for yourselves?"
        "Well, why should we paint a picture when a camera can make one in seconds?" Yuki shot back. "And why should we have to wait for winter and go out to some lake and whack up the ice, when that machine makes it for us all the time? Why heat bath water over a fire when it comes out of the faucet that way?" She put Shippo down and got up to put away her wallet. "It’s convenience, Dog Boy. Why do something the long, tedious, unreliable, hard way when you can do it the easy, reliable way?"
        They scratched their heads but decided she had a point. Anyway, not all of the machines were noisy and obnoxious. Kagome’s bicycle was a good example: It was a machine but it still needed a human to make it go. Unlike Yuki’s car or the toilet. He looked around the room at all the cushy gaijin furniture that ironically was covered with Japanese motifs: Carp on the chairs across from them, stripes on the couch in the same colors as the cloth on the chairs. The table looked like a regular dining table to him, though the one in the kitchen was too tall and had chairs around it. Kagome’s bed looked like the ones in his and Yuki’s rooms, so those were at least somewhat familiar, though he never expected them to be so…bouncy.
        He soon found his mind going back down the romance-with-Kagome trail, as he wondered if her bed was as springy as the one he and Shippo were supposed to share. That lead him to imagine what Kagome must look like as she slept peacefully in her bed, snuggled under her familiar blankets, her head on that big, fluffy white pillow…her hair spread over it like a dark cloud…her lips softly parted…her breasts gently rising and falling with her breathing…
        "Better call a carpenter," Yuki snickered, "we’ve got wood!"
        "Wha--?" Inu Yasha blinked out of his reverie to find his companions having a really good laugh at his expense. "What are you assholes laughing at?!" Then he felt it and looked down. "Shit!" He jumped up and stalked off to his room and slammed the door behind him. "You are the most vulgar woman I’ve ever met!" He shouted to Yuki from behind the door.
        Yuki chortled: "Shunusuke uses the bathroom for that, you cretin!"
        "FOR WHAT?!" He screamed back.
        Shippo and Yuki were too far gone with laughter to answer him, so Inu Yasha threw open the door and stomped back out to hover behind them. "Uses the bathroom for what, bitch?"
        By way of reply, Yuki made a suggestive motion with her hand that sent Shippo cackling straight off the couch and onto the floor. Inu Yasha fumed for a few moments, then grabbed her shoulders and hoisted her over the back of the couch and dragged her into the bathroom, where he dumped her into the bathtub and twisted the hot water knob. Yuki just barely managed to scramble out of the tub before the scalding water hit her skin.
        "You stupid jerk!" She screamed in his face as she shoved him into the wall across from the sink. "You could’ve burned me! It was just a joke!"
        "You don’t make fun of a man like that!" He retorted with fire in his golden eyes.
        Yuki gave him a saucy grin. "Who’s making fun?" She leaned against him and used his sidelocks to pull his face down to her level to steal a kiss.
        What she got was his fist in her stomach. Not hard enough to actually wind her, but enough to startle her so he could free himself from her grasp and get behind her. She spun about, ready for action, but he just jabbed a finger in her face and growled: "You are not a nice girl. I’m gonna go find Kagome now."
        "Better do something about that first," Yuki snarled back and pointed at his shorts. There was nothing going on down there anymore, but she wanted the satisfaction of making him get all embarrassed and look. "Don’t want Kagome to think that’s all you’re after, now do we?"
        He turned on his heel and almost tripped over a very shocked Shippo on the way out the door. The kitsune gulped at Yuki, then trotted after his friend, who was headed for the front door. "Uh, Inu Yasha, don’t you think we should—"
        Inu Yasha picked him up and tossed him onto the couch as he passed it. "I’m going to find Kagome. If she won’t at least talk to me, I’m giving the slut—" he pointed over his shoulder to the bathroom and Yuki "—her clothes back and we’re going home." He turned on his way out to give Yuki a dirty look as she emerged from the bathroom, red in the face and looking like she was about to cry. Puzzling. Why was she crying? That woman couldn’t possibly be feeling shame. "Slut," he muttered, then left the condo en route to the Green Mermaid, his brain racing faster than Yuki’s car.
        He’d never met such an obscene girl! She was nothing like Kagome. Kagome was sweet and sort of shy, especially when he complimented her on something. She would get a cute, little blush on her cheeks, her eyelids would flutter and she’d look away. He could see her fingers coming up to touch her lips as she stumbled over how to reply. And she’d never kick him down there, or make fun of a perfectly natural male reaction—she’d blush and pretend she didn’t see anything. Inu Yasha smiled a little as he walked, his mind so wrapped around Kagome that he didn’t realized he’d been heading beachward until he stood at the tide’s edge.
        All at once, the ocean’s salty scent filled his nostrils, and Inu Yasha closed his eyes to drink it in and let it clear his mind of the memory of Yuki’s assault. He didn’t want to kiss her, pretty as she was. No, she was more than just pretty, but her aggressiveness spoiled her looks completely. Except…why had she been crying? He shook his head and turned toward the Green Mermaid, which he could just see as something big and green farther down the beach. There were people on the beach, building things with sand, or playing in the surf. Inu Yasha breathed a lonely sigh: Most of them would have to be couples, wouldn’t they? Normal, happy, human couples. No dog-eared half-demons with wolf eyes. That reminded him to get his sunglasses out of his jacket pocket and put them on before anybody saw him. What would Kagome think of him dressed like he was? Was Yuki right? Did Kagome prefer the sort of (girlie, yuck) clothes Yuki had tried to make him try on, or did she know him well enough to understand that these clothes suited his personality. He refused to fake anything with Kagome (except for those feelings he just couldn’t bring himself to admit to having).
        Inu Yasha passed a boy and girl who were about Yuki’s age and looked away when they kissed. In a moment, they ran off, hand-in-hand and laughing happily. He tried to imagine the couple was him and Kagome, then shook the idea out of his head. Why would she want to do that stuff with him if she didn’t even want him here? "What am I doing here?" He moaned. "Kagome’s right: I am a jerk."
        A girl’s scream snapped him out of his puddle of self-pity, all senses keyed for combat. He looked frantically around for the source of the scream, then it came again from the direction in which the happy couple had gone. It was them! The girl was in the sand surrounded by three tough-looking young men who were dressed a lot like he was, only without the jacket. Two of the boys were holding her boyfriend while another beat him up.
        "I told you, baka," the bully sneered to his victim between punches, "Karami is my girl! When are ya gonna learn?"
        The girl screamed with every punch and begged the bully to stop. He just grinned at her over his shoulder, then nodded to his buddies. "Ok, boys, why don’t you show ‘Rami what happens to Tachi’s girls when they get out of line."
        She screamed again as one of the guys dropped to his knees beside her and took hold of her blouse, while another grabbed her shorts and tugged. That’s when the cavalry arrived.
        "Leave her alone, assholes!"
        Faster than they could react, he plucked the gangsters off of Karami and tossed them aside, then he turned to the leader and cracked his knuckles at him with a truly evil grin. "Wanna play, little boy?" Without waiting for a reply, Inu Yasha slugged him, then the guys holding Karami’s boyfriend—Bam! Bam! Bam! And down they went with bloody noses and bleeding lips. The other three guys were on their feet again and rushed him en masse, but Inu Yasha took them out with a single roundhouse kick. He danced back, fists ready, and waited for them to get up and attack again. Ah! Violence! Just what he needed to work off all that…er…manly energy. They circled around him, wiping the blood from their faces, looking for a weakness.
        "Get her out of here," he ordered Karami’s boyfriend, who really wasn’t in any condition to get himself out of there, much less take his girl with him. But he staggered over to her and was able to help her up. Leaning on each other for support, they retreated a few dozens meters down the beach, then he collapsed. "Alright. Far enough," Inu Yasha thought sourly and turned his full attention to his favorite hobby: kicking ass. "What’s the matter, Tachi-kun," he mocked the leader, whose nose was quite definitely broken, "did I mess up that ugly face of yours? Awww, ain’t that a shame?"
        Tachi didn’t take the bait. Well, not for himself, anyway. "Well, what are you assholes waiting for? Get him!"
        Inu Yasha waited until the circle had almost closed around him, then he flipped up and over their heads and kicked the nearest guy in the back of the head, spun him around and pummeled him with a series of sharp punches all over his body. The boy wobbled, cursed him, then fell flat on his face in the sand. "Who’s next?" Inu Yasha crowed cheerfully as the remaining five turned to face him. "What the hell! I’ll come to you!" He charged them, laying them out one by one until it was just him and Tachi.
        Inu Yasha grinned and beckoned the bully closer with mocking fingers. Tachi made as if to attack, then turned tail and ran, straight past Karami and her boyfriend, headed in the direction of the Green Mermaid. Inu Yasha strode over to squat next to the formerly happy couple he’d so envied only minutes before. "Are you o—"
       The rest of his sentence was lost as Karami bowled him over with a grateful hug and sobbed onto his shoulder. "I thought we were dead!"
        Her boyfriend sat up and checked his ribs for broken ones. He gave Inu Yasha a pained smile. "Thanks, man, I owe you one. I’m Keiichi Hitachi."
        Inu Yasha disentangled himself from Karami long enough to reply: "Inu Yasha."
        Keiichi gave him an odd look, then nodded knowingly. "Oh, right. Well then, they call me the Shark." Inu Yasha looked over Keiichi’s injuries meaningfully, and the other boy chuckled. "Not that kind of a shark. A gambling shark—you know, like a card shark. Never lost a game." He got to his feet with Karami’s help and asked with a companionable smile: "Do you play cards, Inu Yasha?"
        Inu Yasha shook his head. "No. You sure you’re ok?"
        Keiichi shrugged and joked: "Who said anything about being ‘ok’? I just got the shit beat out of me by Karami’s ex-boyfriend, and she almost got raped. But, thanks to you, our big, hairy knight in leather armor, I do believe we’ll live." He made a small, painful bow and grimaced. "I think something’s broken in there. Well, doesn’t that just put a crimp in our plans for the evening, Rami-chan?"
        She wept profusely. "Keiichi, we really should get you to a doctor." She tried to smile through her tears and bowed to Inu Yasha. "Thanks again, Inu Yasha."
        "If there’s anything I can do for you," said Keiichi, "name it. I’m staying at the Green Mermaid, room 475." He gasped as Karami turned him in the direction of the hotel.
        Inu Yasha hastened to stop them. "I’m staying there," he pointed back to Yuki’s condo, which was just visible through the trees beyond the beachhead and was a lot closer than the Green Mermaid. "Yuki can take you to the doctor in her car." Without waiting for an answer, he lifted Keiichi’s free arm over his shoulder and helped Karami turn him in the direction of Yuki’s condo.
        As they stepped around Tachi’s unconscious lackeys, Keiichi shook his head with a soft chuckle. "That’s two I owe you, friend. And damn you for putting me into Yuki Asano’s debt again." From the tone of his voice, Inu Yasha didn’t think he sounded too disappointed about that.