Disclaimer: This story was largely inspired by anonymous573's brilliant story, "Big Brother". Also, I owe deep appreciation to Rumiko Takahashi, for her manga, Inuyasha, which provides the characters of this story.

Kagome looked at her reflection in the mirror above the sink in the hotel bathroom. A bored face with slightly chubby cheeks stared back at her, tracks of moisture still visible from the water she splashed there only moments before. Careful of her eye makeup, she quickly dried her face with a paper towel and adjusted her mussed hair before straightening her back and walking out into the ballroom where the remainder of the guests partied on without her.

This wedding tallied number three for the former Ms. Higurashi, also known as Kagome's mother. As Kagome turned fifteen this year, she could easily remember husbands number one and two, although neither of them were her biological father. The few things she could remember about either of the previous men in her mother's life were nothing short of pathetic.

The first, a former bodyguard named Tanaka Kiyoshi, loved to celebrate, usually with quite a bit of alcohol, any day or night of the week. The cabbies responsible for toting him home even had the presence of mind to look a bit chagrined when her mother sighed and handed them the money for their nightly fare. After half a year of shelling out nearly 4,000 yen a night she had had enough.

Second husband Kurosawa Tsukasa never celebrated. Although he always sent appropriate presents on her birthdays, holidays were supposedly spent by himself, probably typing numbers into his big, fancy computer for his beloved company. After two years a girl a few years older than Kagome turned up with a very pregnant stomach and a court order for child support from one Kurosawa Tsukasa. Apparently step-father two did like to celebrate, only with the sixteen year old interns at his prestigious company.

Shaking her head in the hopes of ridding herself of useless memories, Kagome wandered through the crowd to the open bar in the corner of the room. Ordering something sweet and girly was easy enough, once the bartender took a look at her generously developing chest clothed in rich burgundy Versace. While waiting for the perverted bartender to mix her drink, she turned and surveyed the room, her glance lingering on a beautiful woman in a Western-style white wedding dress who chattered happily with a tall, stoic man in a perfectly pressed tuxedo. At least this one would be wealthy enough to provide for them, and his apparent fame might deter him from knocking up a floozy even if he was a workaholic.

The ballroom sparkled in that way that only a 75 million yen budget could provide. Champagne, warm sake, and a mixture of traditional Japanese and Western delicacies seemed to replenish themselves as soon as they disappeared into the jabbering mouths of the celebrity guests. Kagome spotted her mother elegantly sweeping her way across the room, demurely meeting each guest as if she hadn't been hosting her third wedding.

Suddenly, the lights began to shift from dim and soft to vibrant and brilliantly colored, thumping with the music of a twenty year old band she knew her mother loved. Even though the band never appeared in concert after Kagome's third year on the planet, the prowess of step-father number three forced the band into a temporary reunion. Some of the wealthy and powerful attendees eventually got over their initial repulsion at the choice of music and began a sloppy and malformed conga line, getting bolder and more ridiculous as the drinks continued to flow freely.

She sauntered away from the horrid display on the dance floor and over to the table where crackers and other hors d'ouvres sat, more enticing in smell rather than name. Chunks of what looked like clusters of little black balls were lumped together on some of the crackers, and Kagome wracked her mind to come up with the English name for the seafood treat. "Caviar", that was it. Such a fancy name for what essentially amounted to a fish's menstrual cycle. Sighing inwardly at her somewhat disgusting thoughts, she allowed herself to become briefly distracted by the other foods on the table, accumulating some bits of rice and raw fish that she could recognize, as well as some foreign things that she couldn't.

After seeing the man she secretly called "Mr. Tall, Light, and Handsome" become her third step-father, she couldn't possibly understand how someone like her mother, as beautiful as she was, could bag the literal jackpot. Either the man had some skeletons in his tall, sexy closet, or her mother was a sex goddess worthy of cosmic praise. Kagome thought for a second and decided that a combination of both causes was to blame for the current, hardly believable situation she found herself in. By the time her thoughts in this vein had run their course, the drinks she snagged from the open bar began to set in. Choosing to congratulate her mother and step-father once more and excuse herself before she caused a scene with her tipsiness, she wobbled slightly out of the ballroom and meandered towards the elevators that would take her up to the luxury hotel room step-daddy number three rented for her that night.