Disclaimer: I don’t own any of them. Just myself.

A/N: I once had a nonfiction writing professor show astonishment at my wide-range of random knowledge. He wrote something in my final portfolio like, “And where did you learn all of this…?” Psha! I am Le Nerd. I live to research extinct animals, viruses, bacteria, genetic crap, animals, rocks, volcanology, anatomy (well some of it anyway), sex…so here this is an example of my Nerdism. Rabies is the bomb. Random fact about rabies: India loses 30,000 people a year to it. 70% of all rabies deaths happen in India alone. Yeah…that SUCKS. Anyway, I just randomly found that I had some writing on this story, a short thing for shits and giggles if you will.

MAD SEASON

Inuyasha led the way, as usual. He appeared blithely unconcerned with the possibility that his body had become a ticking time bomb and that soon he might be afflicted with the Madness. Of course, his lack of concern could have stemmed from Kagome’s assurances that there was a cure, just on the other side of the well.

But even so, for the direness that the others perceived in the situation, Inuyasha was markedly unconcerned. He walked several yards ahead of the others with his arms raised over his head and crossed there, as if he were reclining while in midstride. His companions had gathered in a cliquish group behind him, talking quietly together. They watched the hanyou’s back as they walked; worried about him and that he might overhear them.

“What do you know about the Madness, Kagome?” Sango asked, leaning in close to the schoolgirl.

Kagome shook her head, biting her lip as she watched Inuyasha’s comfortable, cocky stride up in the distance. “Not a lot…”

Shippo was on her other shoulder. As soon as she’d spoken he let out a long, sad noise. “Aw, but Kagome,” he shifted, turning on her, gripping her neck awkwardly with one hand like some kind of monkey, and pulled on her backpack. “But you’re carrying all these books with you! I thought they taught you everything there!”

“Well, rabies isn’t exactly a subject like Reading or Math or History…”

“But there is a cure?” Miroku asked, whispering the words in her ear, close behind her.

“Eek!” Kagome scooted away from the perverted monk, covering her rear with both hands. Her abrupt motion jarred Shippo and he clutched at her shirt, nearly falling off. As soon as Kagome was safely away from his reach, sheltered near a now cranky Sango, she tried to hide her reaction. Blushing, she pulled her hands away from her backsides and smiled at Miroku, innocently, as if the thought that he would grope her had never entered her mind at all. “Miroku, don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“My apologies,” Miroku coughed into his hand. He wore a regal, solemn look on his face, as if the thought of groping her—or any other woman—had absolutely never crossed his mind. Ever. “As I was saying, you mentioned that there is a cure?”

Shippo dared to laugh, his little voice chirping. “You’ll have to put it in Ramen to get Inuyasha to eat it!”

Kagome twisted her head around to try and look at the kit as she walked, instantly correcting him. “Oh, the cure isn’t something he could eat.”

“Is it some kind of magic?” Shippo asked, his green eyes widening with excitement. He imagined a kitsune casting a spell over Inuyasha, preferably something mildly unpleasant that would let the others laugh at his expense. Perhaps the cure would be a spell that made Inuyasha’s body itch as if he had a rash?

“No, it’s a vaccination. A series of them actually.” She stared at Inuyasha’s back, at the long flow of his hair like a snowy waterfall. She swallowed thickly, feeling a tremor of doubt. “But it has to be given as soon as possible after a bite or it won’t work. Inuyasha has to have enough time to gain an immunity from the shots.”

“Shots?” Sango asked, catching the new word. “You sound as if this cure is given with a weapon.”

“Well it kind of is,” Kagome murmured, making a face. “The doctor injects you with a needle so we call it a shot.”

“Ew!” Shippo squeaked from her back.

“Do you mean acupuncture?” Miroku asked. (A/N: I’m not sure historically if they would have known about acupuncture, as I think it originated in China, but Chinese influence had crossed the sea to reach Japan before the timeframe of Inuyasha. It’s possible someone like Miroku, who was probably educated fairly well as a monk, would have heard of it.)

“Ack-you…what?” Shippo asked. His tail puffed out, bristling.

“It is a procedure done to help one’s health,” Miroku explained. “It is performed by a physician who has been trained to know the proper points in the body that will offer healing and wellbeing when a small needle is inserted and—”

“That’s horrible!” Shippo squealed. He pushed Kagome’s hair away from her neck and pushed his head underneath the thick black mat of it. Only his tawny tail remained clearly visible with his fox paws, the pink pads of his small feet exposed.

“It’s not acupuncture,” Kagome said, sighing tiredly. “But the people in my time rely on it to keep them healthy. It’s preventative medicine. I had a bunch of them when I was a baby myself.”

“You said the cure must be given quickly after a bite,” Sango said with a deep intensity in her voice. She was concerned, deeply afraid. “How long does he—do we have?”

Kagome fought the sudden surge of pressure behind her eyes, the constriction in her chest. Inuyasha’s red Fire Rat haori and hakama blurred ahead of her. How long? She tried to remember anything she’d heard about the disease. A newscast had played once for a whole day with reporters describing a dog that had bitten a boy. They wanted the dog to be caught and examined. They needed to know if it had rabies, if it had an owner, if it had ever been vaccinated. It was a situation that Kagome had sensed desperation in, a time-crunch. If the dog wasn’t found and determined to be uninfected within a limited period of time then the doctors would have to begin the grueling rabies inoculation on the bitten boy.

Time was crucial. Too late and any vaccine that a doctor gave Inuyasha would be pointless. He would already be sick. Rabies is fatal. Fatal. It was one of few diseases that had such a harsh edict. Kagome wasn’t sure she had ever heard of someone surviving it at all…

She shook her head and sniffed, trying to bury her tears. If Inuyasha picked them out he would scold her and their conversation would be over. “I don’t know.”

But that was a lie. It would take them a week at least to reach the well. It struck Kagome as too long. The boy that had been bitten in Tokyo had never found the dog. The newscast played for less than a day. Kagome had heard it in the afternoon during her lunch hour, and again in the evening when her grandfather listened to the news on television. But the next morning the search for the dog had ended without luck. The boy received the vaccination to assure his safety and his life though there was no way of knowing whether or not he would have contracted the virus.

A few hours? A day? Perhaps two? A week or two weeks—that was too long. She strained her brain, searching for the gestation period. She tried to compare it to something more common. How long did it take to catch a cold? Had she heard three days? Was Rabies similar?

“Kagome?” Sango asked, prodding the schoolgirl gently by touching her arm at the elbow.

Kagome flinched and blinked rapidly. “Oh, sorry, I zoned out for a minute.” She laughed nervously.

“Could you guess how long?” Sango asked, again speaking with a lowered voice.

She tried to control herself but failed. Kagome choked out, “A few days. Probably less.” She wiped her hands over her face, trying to cover up the growing fear and foreboding that made her fingers shake.

“But Inuyasha is hanyou,” Shippo pointed out, poking his head out of Kagome’s hair.

“That’s right,” Miroku chimed in eagerly, even cheerfully. “We can’t forget that. I’ve never seen him catch a cold before, Kagome. Have you?”

Kagome frowned. “I haven’t seen you catch a cold before either, Miroku.” She drew a deep, shuddering breath. “But I really, really hope you’re right.”

“Perhaps we could convince Inuyasha to race ahead and go through the well alone,” Sango suggested, suddenly bright and excited. “One of your physicians could see him and give him the cure then before it’s too late.”

“How soon do you think he could get to the well if we weren’t slowing him down?” Miroku asked.

“I don’t know—he might be able to do it in time. My mom could take him to the doctor.” She pictured Inuyasha in his red cap, grouchily sitting in a waiting room with her mother, glaring at kids with stuffy noses and old men with hacking, wet coughs. Mrs. Higurashi would read a magazine while they waited, patient and calm. Inuyasha would probably fidget the entire time. The thought of missing the scene saddened Kagome, but Inuyasha’s life was on the line.

“What are we waiting for?” Shippo demanded.

“We all should do it,” Miroku said. “He didn’t want to listen to any one of us alone about this. I doubt that now will be any different. We must be united in our decision and our concern.”

“Yes,” Kagome agreed.

Inuyasha was woefully unprepared for the discussion that enveloped him only moments later. He had been aware of the others behind him talking quietly, and he knew that it was probably about him, but he didn’t care. His only motivation for the journey they were undertaking, abandoning the hunt for Jewel Shards for the time being, was that the slightest chance that he might turn on his friends because of a disease gave him enough pause to agree.

Otherwise his mind was free to wander without Kagome or Shippo to walk beside him, bickering or jabbering. He had enjoyed the comparative solitude and had nearly forgotten about the trouble with the fox when suddenly Kilala bounded in front of him and transformed.

He stopped and huffed with surprise. “What the hell? Kilala—get out of my way.”

“Inuyasha,” Sango called, moving to take a place at Kilala’s side, also blocking his path.

Inuyasha dropped his relaxed stance with his arms crossed above his head. He shrugged his shoulders, adjusting them, and then crossed them over his chest. The red haori sleeves were long and billowing and, like a dog that raises its fur along its back, the extra material made Inuyasha look bigger, more intimidating. “What is it now, Sango? You’re slowing us up…”

“We have to talk to you,” Miroku said, speaking from just behind the hanyou.

Inuyasha strangled a yelp and whirled around to glare. He found Miroku and Kagome staring at him. Shippo peeked out around Kagome’s shoulder and gave a timid, faint smile.

“What is going on with you idiots?” Inuyasha demanded.

“Inuyasha,” Kagome started, sighing heavily, trying to restrain the impending tears. “We’ve all agreed we want you to go on ahead of us and go through the well.”

“What? Why the fuck would—”

Miroku interrupted in a smooth, confident voice. “Lady Kagome’s cure on the other side of the well is restrained by time, Inuyasha. We have been talking and we feel the only way for you to reach her time—and the cure—soon enough for the cure to work is by leaving us here and going on as fast as you can alone.”

Behind him Sango added lightly, “We only slow you down anyway.”

Inuyasha growled and his ears fell down flat. “You’re all fucking slowing me down now!”

“Inuyasha—it’s important to us that you get this cure and it has to happen soon, in a few days, less than a week. As soon as possible. If you tell my mother what happened she will know just what to do. Please, go on without us and go through the well.” Kagome stared into his eyes, pleading him as she lost control of her tears and they began to course uncontrolled down her cheeks.

He shook his head and growled, curling his lips with a fierce, surprising anger. “What the hell is this about, wench? Monk? Nothing’s gonna fucking happen to me so stop freaking out!”

Sango abruptly asked, “Inuyasha—have you ever caught a human cold?”

“Fuck no!” He banished the quiver of doubt that passed through him at the lie. He could recall clearly the burning in his throat as a small pup, the way his body quaked with shivering and coughing. His mother hovered over him, desperately worried. She fed him concoctions, called healers and forced them to treat her son, no matter their personal feeling toward his dog ears and bright white hair. It had not been a simple illness like the common cold. It was something else, a disease that had filled his mother with panic and worry. When he had recovered she held him close and cried, filling the tiny Inuyasha with alarm. Later he realized that the illness had killed many of the other children he knew. It was his first recollection, his first realization, of Death. He would never see those children’s faces again. They had been wiped away by the sickness.

The others caught the lie somehow. He growled with rising irritation and self-doubt when he saw Kagome turn away, suddenly sobbing. Even Shippo had stopped looking him in the eye.

“What the fuck is the matter with you people?” he snapped. “I ain’t fucking sick! How many times do I have to say it?”

“Please,” Miroku murmured in a stern voice. “Inuyasha—you must go on ahead of us to the well. We will be fine on our own.”

“Like hell! Every other day some slobbering monster comes along after our Shards! Dammit! I ain’t leaving Kagome here alone with those Shards.” He glared at the monk. If his amber eyes could have killed they would have struck Miroku down in his spot on the dusty road. Their suggestion for him to leave had nothing to do with Kagome’s cure, Inuyasha decided, bitterly. It was about their primal fear of him losing control. If the disease they feared caused such loss of control they would of course try to send him away. It was for their own good. Even Inuyasha would have agreed on that if he had been certain that he were going to fall ill and lose control, harming his friends. But there was no certainty here. Now their reaction pained him, a harsh reminder of how different from them he really was.

“Then take Kagome with you,” Shippo said.

Inuyasha paused, startled by the suggestion. “What?”

“Does having her on your back slow you down very much?” Shippo asked.

Blinking, Inuyasha shook his head. “No…”

If they were trying to send him away because they were afraid of his illness, of his loss of control, why were they trying to sacrifice Kagome? More doubt filtered into Inuyasha, making him hesitate. He twisted the right wrist where the fox had bitten him, feeling the little jolt of pain that the movement brought. He tucked it partly behind his back, conscious of the wound, of the fear it inspired in his companions.

“Will you go, Kagome?” Miroku asked, turning his head to look at her.

The schoolgirl straightened up and wiped at her face hurriedly, trying to cover her tears. Inuyasha scowled at the salty stink of her grief. “Stop the crying, wench…” he halfway pleaded. If he had been alone with her he would have softened his voice, but with the others present he kept it deep and irritated.

She nodded and answered Miroku shakily. “Yeah, of course.” She looked him in the eye. “As long as it won’t slow you down any?”

“Not much,” he grunted.

Her jaw tightened then. “How long do you think it will take you to get to the well?”

Inuyasha glanced toward the trees lining the road, thinking. At their leisurely pace it had taken three weeks to reach the spot where the fox had bitten him during their picnic. They hadn’t traveled in a straight line. They had deviated to investigate Shard rumors. They had also left the beaten path to search for places to make money, and to find inns to sleep at and bathe at. If Inuyasha took a straight route back, cutting through mountain passes and directly through forests to reach Kaede’s village he could shave a full two weeks from their journey back. Without the others tagging along and without sleep he could do it perhaps in three days. With Kagome that time would be lengthened because of the added weight and possibly the need to sleep. It could lengthen to five days.

His golden eyes slid back to Kagome’s earthy brown. He projected confidence at her as he said, “Four days.”

“And if I don’t come?” Kagome asked.

He frowned. “Four days, wench. With or without you. But I ain’t leaving you with those Shards here. Four days is more than enough time for you to go and get yourself kidnapped and killed and all our Shards stolen by Naraku.”

“I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration, Inuyasha,” Sango muttered, scolding him gently.

“Feh—if I left it would fucking happen all right.”

“Then I’ll go with you,” Kagome said, nodding. She had donned her brave face, smiling at him, but the hardness in her jaw had not yet diminished. She was troubled. Inuyasha’s answer had not satisfied her somehow.

“Then let’s go already,” he snapped. He turned and knelt on one knee. With practiced ease Kagome wrapped her arms around his neck and let her ankles fall into the crooks of Inuyasha’s elbows. He rose to his full height a second later and glanced around him at the others. He gave a slight nod at them. “We’ll see you at the well then and you’re all going to feel dumb when I don’t get sick.”

He muttered to himself as he turned away and sprinted for the forest: “Damned crybabies.”

Kagome smiled into his hair and said nothing. She closed her eyes as the trees sped by and Inuyasha’s breathing grew faster but steady. The strength of his body always astounded her. The endless endurance, the heightened senses, and his indestructible feet. It was hard to imagine that he was susceptible to illness, but she had seen the way his ears swiveled when he had told them that he hadn’t gotten sick before. It was a sure tell that he was lying.

She laid her head against his shoulder. Please don’t let him get sick…

Four days had been a very conservative estimate. Kagome dozed on Inuyasha’s back, but the hanyou was not always a smooth runner so at times she found herself jarred awake. Sleeping on his back was uncomfortable. Her dreams were jerky, unclear, stilted. As the days passed she began to think she was the one about to fall ill. Her joints ached, her head spun, and fear chased her, as potent as Naraku.

Inuyasha asked her often if she wanted to stop, but Kagome always told him to keep going. Finally in the evening of the third day Inuyasha had to stop and rest. The moment her feet touched the ground in the cool shade of the forest, Kagome thought she would pass out and sleep as deeply as the dead. Instead Inuyasha did that and she found herself watching him, obsessively thinking of his bite wound. She had doused it in the contents of a water bottle after the bite, but that hardly seemed enough. Was it healing? Inuyasha hadn’t spoken of it. When he began to twitch in his sleep and mumble, Kagome found herself amused and disturbed at once. His hands and fingers twitched, jerkily. She remembered the way the fox had shuddered and twitched.

New knowledge floated to her, a flicker of a memory from her science class. Rabies was a nerve disease. Nerves, twitching…

She covered her lips with one hand and held her breath, trying to clear her feverish, panicked mind. The tears leaked out as she shook Inuyasha awake. “We need to get going! You don’t have any time!”

The hanyou glared at her groggily. His ears were floppy, appearing bigger than usual because he wasn’t holding them erect and at attention. “I feel fucking fine!” he growled.

“We have to get you the cure,” she insisted, licking her lips. “Get up. Let’s go.”

“Shit,” he cursed and the ears flicked as he got to his feet and stretched. The flicker of his muscles, the clenching of his fist all made Kagome feel nauseous.

“We have to go!”

“I’m going!” he griped and knelt, letting her climb onto his back again. The journey began again and didn’t stop for another two days.

On the evening of the fifth day of their grueling travel, Inuyasha burst through the foliage, flying from a high branch, and landed heavily in a rice field. The impact with water sent both of them sprawling. Kagome yelped, tossed into the air as Inuyasha fell. She spluttered in the water, coughing.

The sky was pleasant above them, dotted with white, puffy clouds like perfect cotton balls. Kagome gazed up at it for a moment as she hauled herself out of the water. The clouds made her think of the doctor, of how he would use a cotton ball soaked in alcohol before the shot. Inuyasha would probably vomit from the smell of the rubbing alcohol. She pulled her stringy, wet hair out of her face. Behind her Inuyasha emerged much slower, holding his arms out awkwardly at both sides. His face was twisted with disgust.

“Great,” he grumbled. “Fucking great.”

A man further down the field pointed at them and shouted, “Hello Lady Kagome!”

Although Kagome didn’t recognize the man she felt the fear that had been eating at her insides diminish slightly. She blew out a long breath and stumbled on her aching joints. “We made it, Inuyasha.” But the fear stayed inside her, whispering: but it took five days…

Inuyasha shook at her side, shedding water like a dog. The droplets splattered Kagome and she cringed, backing away from the hanyou. Inuyasha’s white hair had fluffed out a little like Shippo’s tail. He frowned continuously as they began walking once more, pausing to wring out his hair every few steps.

Although she had already waited five days to reach Kaede’s village, it felt impossibly long before they reached her hut. Inuyasha moved as if he would go inside and visit her but Kagome snatched his hand, pulling him past the little hut.

“Kagome—what’s the big idea? I’m fucking starving!” During their rushed journey they had eaten only what Kagome had with her and a few mushrooms, fruits, and berries that Inuyasha had stumbled on while rushing through the woods. Usually Kagome was too worried to feel hunger, only nausea. Apparently Inuyasha did not suffer that same condition of unending worry. She pushed Inuyasha on with speed for once rather than having him do it, calling her slow.

“We’ll get a snack before we leave for the hospital,” she told him, tugging on his hand.

“I ain’t going to any whose-spit-all without eating, you got that, wench?” he snapped, ripping his hand away from her and glaring venomously.

Kagome led the way to the well and was the first to leap through it. Inuyasha followed her at a slower speed, clearly uneager, even apprehensive. On the other side of the well he picked up the pace, leaping out of the well, leaving Kagome inside it to climb out on her own.

“Hey!” Kagome yelled from the bottom. “You jerk!”

“You’ll manage,” he replied, stiffly.

She waited for a moment, thinking of making him sit, but unable to bring herself to punish him when he might have so little time left—and it would be spent in agony, out of his mind. Kagome gripped the sides of the well and forced her tired, shaking muscles to work. She slipped on her first try and broke a nail, cutting it below the nail bed. She hissed with pain and shook the finger until it diminished. Several minutes later she reached the top, throwing one arm over the wooden lip of the well, and blinked with shock when she felt a warm, strong grip close over her wrist.

With an effort she lifted her head and saw with shock that Inuyasha had waited for her. The well house door was still shut. The blackness of the tiny hut enclosed them like the inside of a stomach. Inuyasha yanked on her and Kagome cried out with surprise as he foisted her right out of the well.

His golden eyes reflected the faint light that peeked through the cracked ceiling and the edges of the doorframe. “Told ya I wasn’t fuckin’ sick.”

His ears swiveled once atop his head. It was the signal that he was lying.

She felt a pressure swell inside her chest: dread. “Inuyasha…”

He hadn’t carried her up and out of the well. Why?

The hanyou turned from her and moved heavily up the steps, throwing open the well house door. Golden sunlight, tinged red with the nearness of the sunset, streamed in. Kagome shielded her eyes and sniffled back her tears. He’s fine, she told herself. He’s fine!

A/N: So short and sweet. This is not a big project, just a fun look at this disease. For me it's a treat to look at the disease and wonder how and if it would make someone like Inuyasha get sick. Do hanyou get sick? It seems to me that Inuyasha knew how to treat Kagome's sickness in one episode because he must've been sick himself and learned from his mom how to make it so he could treat himself and others in the future. But then again in the beginning after he suffers some injuries, Kagome tries to treat him and he resists. When she gets a look he's healed and he tells her something like "my body is different." So...how? I find that fun to play with.

It's really annoying but I researched historical plagues and just about nothing shows up about Japan. I know they're an island so they're isolated and there was contact with China, but either they just don't really get sick or...? The only specific reference I got was to some writing in 1500 something about syphillis. Yeah. Zippety doo-dah.