InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Dogs in Tokyo ❯ Chapter 6 ( Chapter 6 )

Ryosei finished brushing her hair and stood twisting this way and that, admiring herself in the full-length mirror. She bore little resemblance to the quiet girl in Junkuryo-San's office. Junkuryo-San himself would have drawn a certain amount of sardonic amusement from her altered appearance. Slender and sleek as an otter she sported a little black dress that was off the shoulder and matching pumps.

There was a knock at the door. "It's open." She snapped. The door swung open to reveal a short, tired-looking man in a baggy suit. "Well?" Ryosei barely spared him a glance as she licked a finger to tidy an eyebrow.

"They've left the house and boarded a train heading for the Keio line. The girl was heard to say that they were heading for Keio, Yomiuri Land station."

"Yomiuri Land?!" Ryosei echoed in dismay. She turned again to view her image in its little black dress.

"She was, ah, wearing a short black dress." The man offered diffidently.

"Fine, I'll meet you in ten." She didn't turn to watch him leave as she tore the dress off over her head and flung the closet doors wide open. A total rethink on the outfit was in order.

~*~

The high-speed ropeway from Yomiuri Land Station disgorged its passengers onto a large plaza in front of the park gates. Crowds of people, most of them young, flowed across the plaza all going in the same general direction. Inuyasha looked about him and thought he could've done without changing his hair color. Plenty of the young people there wore their hair in different colors and many of them were surprisingly ugly. Inuyasha stopped to stare at a gaggle of girls with bleached hair and the darkly tanned faces of the lowest peasants struggling along on high-heeled stack shoes. The added height that the shoes gave them seemed to be compensated for by the careful, bent-kneed walk with which they all wobbled along.

Inuyasha shook his head and followed them with his eyes until he realized that they seemed to be looking back and giggling. He snorted and glanced around for Kagome to find she was some distance away in the crowd heading for the gate. She was determinedly ignoring the blandishments of a couple of guys who were moving alongside of her and trying to get her to talk to them. Inuyasha snarled and pushed forward through the crowd.

One of the young men had just raised his hand to touch Kagome's shoulder when a startlingly loud voice blasted into his ear. "Don't touch her, Asshole!" The young man spun to confront this loud person and had a splintered instant in which to register Inuyasha's darkly frowning brows above fierce tawny eyes before Inuyasha's knuckles contacted sharply with his carotid artery on the left side of his neck and he went down like a rock.

The guy's friend stared down at his fallen comrade and stuttered, "What happened Waka-Kun, you were alright a moment ago."

Inuyasha just glanced over at Kagome as she smiled and shrugged. "Your friend must have had too much to drink." She said in the particularly sweet voice that warned anyone who knew her that she was seriously annoyed. "He was acting pretty wild you know."

"Umm, yeah." the guy said and stooped to check on his friend who was groaning thickly as he tried to sit up. His eyes were crossed.

"That will go away in a few hours." Inuyasha's voice sounded harshly above them. "Tell your friend that he better watch his behavior. C'mon Kagome." They walked off together leaving the pair behind in the crowd. Some people were stopping to offer help to the "fainted gentleman" Kagome noticed as they lost sight of them.

"Inuyasha," Kagome hissed as they joined the entrance line, "did you really need to knock him out?"

"Yes. Now, what are we supposed to do here?"

"We're supposed to have fun. This is an amusement park."

"Why?"

"What?" Kagome stopped dead. There was an immediate grumble of protest as the line ground to a halt behind them. "Look, Inuyasha, stop making me wonder about you like that. Tonight is just for fun," she insisted.

Inuyasha gave an irritated snarl over his shoulder at the cue of impatient people behind them and continued forward. His eyes were drawn upward to the swooping movement of a brightly lit contraption that spun up in an ellipse just visible beyond the park gates. He could hear frantic screams and detect the faint sour whiff of human vomit carried on the breeze of mechanical and human stench.

"Fun. O.K. Kagome." He started to fold his arms but found no draped sleeves to tuck his hands into. He glanced around covertly and settled for stuffing his hands into his pockets as he followed Kagome into Yomiuri Land.

~*~

Houjou choked on his soda when he spotted Kagome getting on to the Ferris wheel in company with the longhaired guy from the shrine. As soon as he finished coughing he dropped the soda in a designated trash receptacle and hurried in that direction. He had come to Yomiuri Land in company with a couple of his friends from the high school chess club who had been concerned by his rather bug-eyed appearance at that afternoon's club meeting. He had refused to explain but it was common knowledge around the school that he was involved in a painfully one-sided relationship with Higurashi Kagome, the girl who had spent the last two years catching every disease known to man, some of them twice. Why Houjou continued pursuing a girl who, while very pretty, had such massive health problems and who consistently either stood him up or cut short their dates was a mystery.

His friends broke into a trot to follow him as he jogged to the Ferris wheel. There was not much of a line and he succeeded in getting into the gondola, but one from theirs. He was unable to get into the one that was actually next to theirs because a couple of guys, one with a red neck and a very angry look got hold of it first. Houjou and his friends tumbled into their carriage and waited as the Ferris wheel moved again in a slowly jerking motion.

"Well, uhm…Houjou…Are you just following this girl Kagome" His friend Zesshou leaned against center pole of the gondola and sighed. "So how are we to get to her, oh Commander?"

Houjou sat back as he realized that he could not only not get to Kagome's side but he could not possibly get off the ride before she did. Talk about chess game mistake number one. Do not even begin your opening gambit until you know you have a winning move! "Oh, shut-up!" said Houjou and stared out at the trees as the wheel moved upwards again.

~*~

Inuyasha gazed out in wonder at the verdant parklands spread out beneath him lit by the glow of the numerous rides and concession stands. In it's way it was beautiful. He lifted his head a bit and saw the last of the sunlight outlining the snows on Mt. Fuji's summit so that the summit seemed to drift on it's own like a soap bubble on a lake of violet blue water. It had been a beautifully clear day, the first of autumn.

He looked back at Kagome and she was smiling at him. She was sitting back resting in the curve of the opposite seat with one booted foot up on the wheel around the central pillar which hitched the skirt of her dress up along her black-stocking covered thigh. He laughed. "Well now what do you want, girl?" He said with a helpless sort of affection glowing in his eyes.

Kagome blushed and sat up more erect as she looked around at the view of Tokyo and the surrounding amusement park through the trees. "To be honest, I don't think I can ask for very much more then this moment right now with you."

But Inuyasha wasn't listening. The people in the gondola below them had drawn his attention. Two young men, one with a swiftly darkening bruise on his neck were leaning out of either side of their gondola and making rude gestures upwards at them. Inuyasha stuck his head out between the bars and snarled down. "I thought I told you two assholes to go home!"

"Yea. Bite me Dick-Head."

"We're goanna kick your butt, and get your girl too!" the other guy leaned out of the gondola and called upward cupping his hand around his mouth. There was no mistaking whom they meant.

"Heh! Wouldn't you like to watch that?!" the other laughed raucously.

Kagome lunged after the rapidly disappearing Inuyasha as he wormed himself out of the cage and climbed up. Balancing on top of their gondola roof during a pause in their ascent as people were being let on far below.

Inuyasha settled himself on the gently swaying platform in a crouched position. The wheel was going to move again and he would be at the apex, at which time gravity would favor him so he could climb down to the hub and wait for the idiots carriage to reach the apex after his. Then he could climb straight back up and rip their heads off. 'Those assholes are going to get out of my sight,' he thought as he waited for the next pause.

"Inuyasha! What do you think your doing up there?!" Kagome was easing her body out between the bars to climb up as the Ferris wheel jerkily started to move again and the gondola swung.

"No! Gods-Kagome!" he put his hand out uselessly towards her as she gave a faint shriek and jolted against the bars of their gondola as it finally rested at the highest point of it's turn. "Shit girl! Stay still! Don't move a muscle!" He started to ease himself on his stomach, legs first, down off the gondola roof as the Ferris wheel finally pitched into motion and began its smooth ride.

His feet swung forward and bent slightly, toes contracting on the bar that Kagome was teetering on, his body behind hers. "Get in! When for fucks sake are you ever going to grow any sense?" Within moments Kagome was back in the cab braced between Inuyasha and the central pillar as she shook with a newly discovered fear of heights.

"Inuyasha what were you trying to do?"

"Get those assholes in the carriage below us."

The car swayed and rocked again as they shifted and she gasped and held onto him as if he was safer than the central pillar as the wheel turned. "Well stop it! You're scaring me!" she clenched onto the front of his t-shirt with both hands and he stood swaying lightly with the movement of the carriage and gently enfolded his arms about her back.

"So you don't want me to beat those guys up?"

"No, stop It Inuyasha! Things aren't like that." She hesitated "You can't do that," she hesitated again floundering for words. "It's just not ok for us to do that in modern times-we'll get into trouble."

"Us?"

She snorted somewhat damply against his neck her eyes were closed and she punched at him slightly. "Us, Baka. You jerk! Anything you do immediately involves me! You'll never be alone any more."

Inuyasha rode the carriage down, cradling Kagome in his arms a bemused expression on his face. "Really…?" he murmured against her hair.

They were silent as the cars continued on their ten-minute course and got off quickly followed by the occupants of car seven. The sun was down and the nighttime park came alive.

Kagome tugged him by the hand and he followed, somewhat reluctantly. What was this going to be? Kagome looked back at him, her face mischievous. Her features were half lit by an orange light from across the way, and by a bluish light on the other side of her face from the entrance of the attraction that they were going to. She smiled looking oddly devilish, for such an openhearted girl. "An Oni House, Inuyasha…you should feel right at home!"

He pulled back at her hand dubiously. "An Oni house?" She laughed and pulled at his wrist drawing him after her, her face turning all the way to the blue light giving him an awe inspiring vision of her profile glowing in unnatural color.

Suddenly Kagome turned back to him "These are all familiar to you! It's just a lot of dummies dressed as youkai, but their supposed to be scary…" she grinned, "I'm sure you can handle it."

He drew a breath to give a snorted 'Keh' but choked instead. This place was really too much for him. A moment at the ticket booth; and they were directed to a cart that looked like some sort of love seat surrounded by a black clamshell. Inuyasha carefully drew back the bar, before the attendant had any opportunity to. He didn't want so many people so close to him. There was a faint impulse of panic just below the surface of his thoughts. Too many people; it was difficult to keep up the façade of an indifferent hanyou, even though he was nearly undetectable in this guise the awareness was always there. Maybe one day, with Kagome's help, he would no longer feel that way.

He hoped so at any rate as the bars electronically clanked down into their seats, and they were jerked off into the darkness of their ride.

~*~

Houjou arrived with his friends on his heels, out of breath and staring up at the marquee of the haunted house. Orange light from to a cotton candy stand across the way stained his back, his face was a mask of blue from the light of the marquee that said: Tachi no Jigoku-loosely meaning Mansion of Hell.

The entrance itself was pure creep show. Decked out with holographic windows full of spirits and oni masks hanging from the walls, it was really something else. Plenty of dry ice was being used, making the azure light look spooky and foggy. The recording that boomed from the entrance itself called out in a wicked voice: "Come and enter the mansion of hell! See the demons of the seven hells but beware-they may get you!"

"They went in there," Houjou exclaimed "Quick get seats!"

His friends said "Hai!" in unison and sprinted forward flashing their wrist badges to the surprised looking gate attendant hopping into a car leaving Houjou to climb into another just behind.

A second later there was a thud next to Houjou and he snapped his head around to stare in astonishment at the quite beautiful young woman with purple stripes in her hair that was so suddenly sitting next to him. She smiled politely and dropped her eyes, and then looked up obviously checking him out. "Mind if I sit here?" She asked.

"No, no of course not! Could I offer you a…" *Thump* the bar swung down and crushed him back into the seat most uncomfortably. The car started up with a jerk and trundled off into the darkness, the woman's low laughter trailing behind.

~*~

The cars ran up a straight track to a flame filled mouth. Puffs of air with bright orange light and horrific moans assailed them on all sides. All of the passengers on the ride gave a bit of a squawk as the cars took the first right hand snap turn into an area that was lit with bright blue flames and horrific threatening Oni sweeping their clawed hands out over the heads of the passengers from either side.

Kagome gave a delicious yip and wrapped both arms around Inuyasha's neck. Inuyasha roared "Kagome stand back!" And tried to leap out of the seat but found himself inconveniently held back by the metal bar.

"INUYASHA! SIT!"

"THAT DOESN'T WORK KAGOME!"

"It's just for fun. They are just machines."

"Are you sure?"

"I think so." She looked around as they jerked on the track, and glanced at Inuyasha as he sat there in offended silence with his arms crossed over his chest.

Finally he said, "Keh, well I'm not sure I believe it all." He put his hands down to the seat and leaned forward, peering impatiently out into the gloom. "What is this thing supposed to be about, anyway?"

Kagome crossed one ankle over the other and stared at the top of their carriage lip as she contemplated an answer. There were some bursts of steam and whistles as they went past the next display. "Inuyasha, it is supposed to be…fun…and…for couples kind- of romantic. You know, the girl gets scared into the guy's arms."

Inuyasha turned his head and stared at her. "What the fuck kind 'a good would that do? You know I have trouble fighting full out when I'm carrying you around!"

Kagome looked off to one side, "Oh look, now we have spraying blood from that surgery scene."

Inuyasha looked a little green. "…Bluagh."

Behind them there was another whistle and shriek as the girl next to Houjou got sprayed with some of the fake blood. "YEACK! And this is new too!" She shook her hands out.

"Oh-I'm sorry Miss!" Houjou exclaimed as if it were his fault whipping out a white handkerchief from his breast pocket. "Please, use this!"

She looked at him suspiciously. "Um…thanks…" She muttered taking it and wiping her front off. "I think you might want to take this back," she added dryly, holding it out to him.

Houjou rather reluctantly lifted his hand to take it when their attention was brought forward some hundred yards ahead where a brightly lit Chinese style daemon with great black whiskers and a red face shifted in his golden armor and swung his masumune to the right and to the left. When the swing went to the right a great dark door opened, and echoing shrieks could be heard as those cars swung through that exit and apparently dropped. When he swung to the left doors slapped open and rising squawks could be heard as those cars turned off into an apparent inferno.