InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Dogs in Tokyo ❯ Chapter 8 ( Chapter 8 )

Home the quick way on Inuyasha's back while covered in drying pieces of meat: 7;a bath (sigh): 10; finally getting down to last minute studying: 3.

Inuyasha lay on Kagome's bed on his side head propped up on one hand as he frowned in concentration at the hand held up in front of his face. He was running it through rapid transformations starting with human fingers straight up to full youkai claws. Then he started on single digits. He found that his thumb transformed also no matter which finger he chose. He grunted and started again

"Inuyasha would you stop that?" Kagome asked irritably.

"Stop what?"

"Changing your hand around like that and staring at it."

"Keh, I need to speed up my transformations. This is battle practice." He stated firmly.

"No it isn't! You're just playing with your hand and it looks weird. It's very distracting." She replied.

Inuyasha rolled over onto his other side and took up the exercise with the other hand. "I have to master this, get used to it Bitch."

"Bastard."

"So...we're both right. Now shut up and do your homework and I'll do mine."

Silence fell as the pair quieted and got on with their respective work, until Kagome's eye was drawn by the hanyou's activity again. At first she thought he was lying on his side doing some kind of weird hand stretching exercise. But it didn't look right. It took her a moment or two to focus on the shadowed image of his hands on the wall beside her bed. There was a wolf's head morphing into a bird with fluttering wings. The bird seemed to grow larger and suddenly all that could be seen was a bird's head with a roving eye and a sharp pan tingly hungry beak. When a distant "Caw! Caw!" sounded Kagome let him have it with a pillow.

"Damn it! Can't I get any peace around here?"

He spluttered with laughter. "I can't help it if I'm more interesting then your homework wench! Come to bed."

"I can't, I really have to finish reading this for my anthropology class tomorrow or I'm toast." Receiving no answer she turned back to the paper she was slogging her way through. It was an old monograph printed in the early 1900s on ancient folk customs and she was having a hard time with the old-fashioned kanji that peppered the text like so many ink spots.

'First take blah blah blah and entrap you….'

Kagome paused in her reading and frowned down at the paper. "Damn, there are just too many weird words in this thing, how am I supposed to read this?" She got up and walked over to the wall to get her character dictionary and started counting radicals. Inuyasha peered over her shoulder.

"What are you doing anyway?"

"Looking a word up."

"Why?"

"I can't read it. Looking it up is the only way I'm going to find its meaning."

Inuyasha sighed. He was finding reading very frustrating himself. Legible kanji seemed to have given way to a new style that looked like a bunch of drunken chicken tracks that did not have any meaning of their own. Most of what he saw was incomprehensible.

Kagome smiled a little sadly at his sigh. 'Poor guy, he can't read at all,' she thought and kindly pointed out the complex character she was looking up. "It's this one. I think it may be millet but I can't find this variation in my dictionary and it doesn't really make sense in the sentence anyway."

Inuyasha followed her pointing finger and blinked in puzzlement. "It just says birdlime, Kagome. Don't you know what birdlime is?"

Kagome became very silent and stared at the character. It was a twelve-stroke radical of an obscure word. She tentatively stabbed at another kanji symbol nearer to the top of the page that she had known. "And that one?"

"Bird, Kagome." Inuyasha said patiently. "Are you reading up on ways to catch birds?

I could always just catch them for you."

"It's a paper on country traditions." She looked a little grim. "So, what does this say?" She stabbed her finger at a string of kanji that she had been avoiding.

"Chronic headache sufferer." Inuyasha read off promptly and ran his own claw down that string and on to the next kanji. "That's weasel teeth but everyone knows that's just an old wives tale. It doesn't really work on headaches." He sucked on a fang thoughtfully. "Fun killing the weasels though."

Kagome gave him a dubious glance. Sometimes it was impossible to tell if he was serious or doing a deft job of pulling her leg. Especially since his most recognizable form of humor was to tease others until they were driven to attack, at which time he would bounce around displaying his obnoxious physical superiority. "Really?"

"Yeah," he said with disturbing enthusiasm, "did you know that if you twist--"

"Please don't tell me; I want it to be a surprise. How about you help me with this paper so I can get done sooner."

So together they worked through the document quickly and surprisingly enjoyably. Kagome pointed to the hiragana letters and sounded out the words for him while he read off all the kanji for her in a display of considerable skill. He couldn't resist adding some insights on many of the traditional cures and therapies that Kagome was sure she would get nowhere else.

"You know," she said softly as they finished up, "I find I have to apologize. Gomen, Inuyasha, you have all kinds of skills and talents that I don't know about so I assume you can't do things. I need to get to know you better."

He snorted and slid his arms around her. "Well, I was raised a gentleman even if a lot of it didn't stick. At least I behaved myself better than that hentai monk."

Kagome laughed. "I really don't think you were under all that much temptation."

"Woman, I had a major thing going for you for almost two years straight."

"You? You can't mean that."

"Yes I can -- I'm youkai, remember, and being with you may have made me feel calmer but that's not the only thing you made me feel." He sighed into the back of her neck and ran his hands over the slight swell of her belly. "Think how confusing it was for me Kagome -- waking up after I had been sealed believing I was facing the woman who had done it to me and feeling more turned on than I ever had in my entire life. I couldn't figure it out. Kikyou had never had that effect on me before."

Kagome was silent, letting him tease her with light touches of his fingers, his claws accentuating the movements.

"But after all, it was you," he said, moving his hands to cup her breasts, "not Kikyou at all. I had a very tough two years keeping my hands to myself."

"You never let on," she mumbled.

"I tried to kiss you once but you freaked out on me. At the time I wanted to tell you what was on my mind but I never even got to finish my sentence. After that Kikyou was alive again and everything went to hell in a hand basket: you may not have caught on but Kikyou sure as shit picked up on it right away and saw to it I was on such a guilt trip that I never knew which end was up."

She turned her head to reply but Inuyasha caught her mouth with his and groaned, pulling at the hem of her modest nightdress. "Maybe later," was her last connected thought.

~*~

Meanwhile in scattered locations around Tokyo:

At Yomiuriland corporate offices a high-level meeting was just getting started---

He could see that the master was with clients through the smoked glass "Are you sure it's him? He doesn't like disturbances."

There was a sigh on the other end of the line. " I'm pretty sure. He keeps saying 'I lost it. Tell Master'."

"O.K. fax me a picture." He watched the image come through. The match was positive. He let himself into the meeting room and eased around the parameter to his objective. "Sir, Jaken has been picked up by security. Some accusation of sexual assault on a female."

The high-boned face turned slowly, eyes glittering, "Jaken who?"

~*~

At the surprisingly large and intimidating holding area of Yomiuriland security---

"I demand my rights! You can't keep me here. Where is my accuser Bakkatachi!" He thrust his neck up and shook his fist at the surveillance camera.

"Hey little dude, don't be so uptight. They actually serve you breakfast in the morning before they arraign your ass."

Jaken looked unwillingly at his cellmate. He was a very tall thin guy with bleached hair and a heavily made up face. The guy patted the blanket of the room's single utilitarian bed invitingly. "Room for two, really!"

Jaken spun around and frantically resumed yelling. "You hear that you Bakkatachi! I'm warning you!"

~*~

At Hotel Four Seasons Tokyo--

Ryosei sat tensely in the bar of the upscale hotel she was currently living in not smoking a cigarette. Of course, she had seen to it that there was no lighter. She really didn't want a cigarette at all. What she wanted was a distraction in the shape of a man to come by and try to light one for her. She needed distraction badly.

The little staff was the problem. She had been stroking over the silky hair of the woman on up to its face when it moved and bit her. Damn, the little nick was still bleeding.

~*~

At Silver Rain pachinko parlor--

Clatter, bop-bop-bong! A roar surrounded Higurashi-Jijii as he enthusiastically shook his container of balls into the pachinko machine. Jukuryo-San checked the figures on his palm pilot. "It should start paying out on this spill!"

Jijii-Chan sat back down and took another slug of cold beer. "So, who keeps track of this parlor? Not you." He had to shout.

"No, I have people to work these and let me know when a machine is close to payoff. Boring job, I barely break even since I pay them. I do this for the thrill of winning."

"Nice."

"Interested in selling more antiquities?"

That's pretty much how the night went.

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Ficlets! They are fun. The last four vignettes were 100-words ficlets. I can see why people do these.

Anyway, I feel kind of lonely out here in the dark, please review? I'll give a cookie.