“Someone to protect,” Kagome said, with a wistful smile.

She glanced toward Inuyasha, whose back was still turned. His head was bowed, his ears slightly dipped. She opened her mouth again to call him back from his ruminations, when a girl’s high, bright voice beat her to it, calling out from the edge of the woods—

“All clear, Papa!”

As Shin phased back swiftly into his human form, Kaori emerged, a conquering taijiya warrior returned from battle. She glowed with pride as she strode toward them, carrying a dead centipede youkai slung over her small shoulders like some kind of ugly, armored boa that happened to drip green-black blood. Inuyasha’s nose wrinkled ahead of Kagome’s at the pungent, bug-juice smell. Despite all this, Kagome was struck once again by how very cute this fierce little girl was.

And she wasn’t the only one.

As Kaori stopped a few paces from them with her prize in tow, Shin swaggered toward her with his practice sword at the shoulder, flashing her a grin Kagome recognized all too well. Here we go again, she thought, sighing inwardly.

“Yo,” Shin said to Kaori, in his best ‘too cool for school’ voice.

Inuyasha’s eyes narrowed. Kagome sighed inwardly again.

“Konnichiwa,” Kaori replied offhand, turning away from Shin toward Inuyasha with her dead centipede upraised. “What do you think, Papa,” she said with a radiant smile, as Shin frowned, put-out, “can a set of armor be made from these plates?”

Inuyasha snorted, crossing his arms at the chest. “Armor for a squirt like you, maybe.”

Kaori beamed all the brighter, not fazed by his snark in the slightest. “I’ll take this kill back home to Mama, then. She’s the best smith in the village, so if anyone can make armor from it, she can.” Dreamily, Kaori murmured, “My first set of youkai armor, from my very own kill. I’ll stay top of the class for sure.”

Recovering from his bruised bravado, Shin said to her loftily, “That centipede’s small fry.” As she cut him a glance, he turned up his nose in a very Sesshoumaru-like fashion. “I’ve hunted ones around here twice as big and nasty as that one, easy.”

Kagome’s mouth twisted. The thought of her son crunching up ‘nasty’ monster centipedes for breakfast wasn’t exactly a pleasant one.

“I swept the woods behind the pasture, and this is the biggest one I found,” Kaori challenged back. “The nastiest one, too—apart from an imp I saw creeping around, but he seemed pretty harmless.”

“Yeah, that’s just Jakken,” Kagome and Shin said together.

Inuyasha chuckled. “So that dumbass toad of Sesshoumaru’s is following the two of you around now? Sheesh…”

Grinning gamely at Kaori, Shin said, “I’ll show you where the real bruiser centipedes are at—if you’re not too chicken, that is.”

“Of course not!” Kaori shot back, taking the bait hook, line and sinker. Turning to Inuyasha, she asked, “Can I go with him, Papa? Please?”

Casting another narrow-eyed glance at Shin, Inuyasha groused out, “I guess.”

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi