InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Dogs in Tokyo ❯ Chapter 10 ( Chapter 10 )

Chapter 10

Yomiuriland looked a good deal different in the daytime. Gone were the imaginatively dressed youths. In their place Inuyasha found himself surrounded by long strings of uniformed children following adults holding different colored flags and women pushing babies in little carriages. He snorted, following one particularly overloaded carriage that seemed to be carrying enough supplies to last for a week in the wild, didn't the women of Kagome's time ever just pick the kid up and carry it? Maybe their arms were weak.

Actually, all the infants seemed to be bundled up into little packages and carted about. Kagome wouldn't do that with their pups would she? He stopped himself with the sour reflection that pups and when to have them was another thing he had not discussed with his mate.

He grumbled to himself and shrugged through the throng at the gate headed in the direction of the Oni House. At least it was easy to find standing as it did in close proximity to the foot of the giant Ferris wheel. As he glanced around he saw a bizarre figure by one of the benches handing out balloons. It looked like nothing so much as a giant rendition of a toy dog, white with scattered multi-colored stripes.

Inuyasha approached this strange being suspiciously. It certainly didn't look like any youkai that he'd seen and on closer examination didn't smell like one either. The odor was that of a human male of past middle age with the pervasive smell of nicotine and recent overindulgence in alcohol in its blood. He circled it warily and studied the stupid dog costume with a jaundiced eye.

The costumed figure continued passing out balloons to the crowd of school kids in front of it for a few minutes. As the crowd dispersed the balloon carrier kicked up one leg and gave an audible fart while singing out in a falsetto voice about having enough gas for his balloons. The school group thought it very funny but Inuyasha stalked by with a snort.

He soon reached the area of the Oni House only to find it quiet and unlit with a sign that indicated it was closed so far as he could make it out the writing. He lingered a little stymied as to what he should do without access to the interior of the attraction and gravitated to a food stand nearby. It was apparently named Putit Dog with a large plastic version of the dog-suited guy on the sign but he recognized what the place was selling as bread wrapped meat. Oh, yeah, "sando" Kagome called them. He obtained two of the largest ones and looked around for a place to sit. The benches in the sun were full and those in the shade were still wet with dew.

He cast about him with an impatient frown and finally spotted another bench away from the others but close to the fence surrounding the base of the roller coaster. He went and settled there tearing into his food with sharp white teeth. As he chewed rapidly he that from that vantage he had a clear view of the emergency exit that he and Kagome had used last night.

The door stood open and he could see that workmen were using it as a place to run power lines through into the building. There was movement in the dimness beyond and a figure stepped through the exit into the daylight speaking into something held to his ear. Inuyasha could just barely pick up the words with his human ears but to improve his hearing he would have to let his ears transform so he just tried to chew quietly.

"Can you hear me better now? Sorry, they're having to cut the track." The man paused and appeared to listen. "Yep" he said in response to some unheard comment. "Kagitsukeru says he can smell traces of some unidentified humans and dog where the remains are. Yes, yes, our friend was there too, behind the gatekeeper in the previous room. Doesn't matter if he won't talk yet. We've pretty well got him red-handed. See you later." The man put whatever it was that he held in his pocket and suddenly stilled in an attitude of attention.

Inuyasha watched silently as the man looked slowly about the area seeming to be sniffing the air. A vagrant gust of wind swirled some leaves on the path and blew the man's hair up on his forehead carrying the man's scent to him and revealing a stunted pair of horns at his hairline.

Inuyasha felt his spine stiffen and the hair at the back of his neck standing up. He waited motionless as the man shook his head and disappeared back into the open doorway only letting a pent up breath out when he was gone.

More youkai, but why? There didn't seem to be any direct threat from them that Inuyasha could see. Going slashing after this guy seemed pointless until he had some more clues about this group. Kagome had always given the impression that youkai were unknown in her time but the truth seemed to be that animal youkai were scarce. Human appearing youkai of various sorts seemed to be more of a presence in this time than in the past.

He balled up his trash went to toss it away. The trashcan stood on a little concrete platform among the rhododendron bushes that lined the fence. There was a small grassy place beyond which seemed to have been recently disturbed with several clots of turf having been kicked up fairly recently. Something nearly out of sight under the bushes caught his attention and he stepped through the gap to take a look at it.

Once there he found the small, grassy place even more interesting. Here was a combination of two scents only about twelve hours old and with a definite tang of youkai mixed in. The first he recognized as the perfume he had smelled on the Saké Girl from yesterday. The other, youkai, scent was both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. If was as though it was filtered both though a spell and a radically complete change of diet but still carried traces of amphibian.

He shook his head, defeated for the time being. His eyes were drawn again to the object that had first attracted him and picked it up giving it a good sniff. It was clearly a frequently used possession of the Saké Girl's. Her scent marked it strongly. He could feel the faint warmth that meant "battery" to him and he thumbed at its smooth red casing to have it unfold in his hand to display a bank of tiny buttons and a tiny blank gray screen.

"Please keep on the path." He jumped and spun to confront the speaker. There was a park worker in a green uniform with a rake in hand bowing behind him. "For the preservation of everyone's enjoyment in the plantings we ask that all keep to the path except in designated areas." The fellow bowed again and Inuyasha moved out past him with a barely repressed snarl. Gods how he hated being human. He walked quickly down the path towards a stand of trees where a convenient bend hid him momentarily from sight. It was an easy matter to leap upwards into the braches and let his human aspect go.

Once transformed he made his way out of the park using the briefly empty slope of a roller coaster to really get some lift and speed. This was much more like it. He at least was coming away with a few hints and something he was pretty sure that girl had never intentionally left behind. It seemed reasonable to him to pay a visit to Kagome at school and at least find out what the item was. Judging from the sun her lunch would be soon. They could share it.

~*~

It was just as Kagome was finishing up on a pop-quiz in English that a frisson of awareness invaded her concentration and made her look outside. There was Inuyasha large as life and sporting white hair and dog ears waving in at her through a third story window over a sheer drop. He pointed up insistently and suddenly vanished from sight as the teacher came by to collect papers.

She numbly handed the quiz over barely keeping herself from leaping at the window to verify that Inuyasha's sudden disappearance wasn't due to falling off the side of the building. Not that that was really all that likely to kill him in his current form but the effect on his temper could be disastrous.

She had to admire his timing though as the noon bell rang and the class exploded into the usual frenzy of getting ready for lunch. A good half of the students piled out the door in a competitive rush to get to the small room where the soda machines were. Kagome joined in pretending not to hear one of her friends calling out to her to bring a can of soda back with her. Usually she ate lunch at her seat or visited friends in other classrooms.

Forty-five minutes to call her own and a chance to get away from prying questions and be with Inuyasha was worth all the sneaking she was going to have to do. She didn't know if Houjou-Kun had talked about seeing her and Inuyasha together last night or if anyone else from school had seen them but rumors were rampant and she was running out of pat answers.

Kagome quietly slipped away from the group of students she had attached her self to and ventured down the corridor that her school map informed her was the way to the stage door of the auditorium. She had met Inuyasha a few times on the roof of her old middle school but that was then. This was a different school and she had just returned from an absence that had lasted for nearly a month. And yet, here she was, sneaking up to the roof to meet with her lover. How many girls her age had put quite as much time as she had in casing her school for ways up to the roof?

The stage door stood open at the top of its short flight of steps. Taking a deep breath, she clutched her clipboard more tightly and walked quickly up the steps. The entrance was dark, blocked by several thick layers of curtains from the glaring spotlights of the stage. She turned immediately to her right and started to make her way around the back wall, stepping (oh, so carefully) over half seen obstacles in the nearly stygian gloom. The clipboard contained a list of every prop she could think of in a hurry, which she intended to pretend to check if discovered.

As she neared the center of the back she could hear bits of the dialogue.

"Yes, I am indeed beautiful! Sometimes I sit and wonder, in my artless Japanese way, why it is that I am so much more attractive than anybody else in the whole world. Can this be vanity? No! Nature is lovely and rejoices in her loveliness. I am a child of Nature, and take after my mother." The voice carried an assured, almost saccharine sweetness.

Kagome nearly swore, hearing the voice. 'Yukino Satsuke, show-off!' Kagome had a good voice and could have tried for the part of Yum-Yum in the Mikado. But no! She was unreliable and too far behind in her studies to be allowed such extra curricular activities such as trying out for the school play. No, what she got was a life of terrifying adventure and great deeds and…she hung her head a bit at this…even greater love. She shook her head, she must be mad. Lead in the school play.

She winced as the voice on the stage lifted in a warbling rendition of "The Sun, Whose Rays Are All Ablaze". Oh well, their loss. That was one play she wasn't going to. She picked her way even more slowly now, the corner to the far wall of the stage was coming up and she didn't want to run into anyone controlling the lights. She peered around the back scrim. The stool was empty with a can of soda and a half-burned cigarette on the shelf next to it. And beyond it were the metal stairs to the catwalk. Kagome scuttled forward and gained the stairs in an instant. School slippers kept her feet soundless on the rungs as she rapidly made her way up. She kept up a litany of 'You don't see me' in her head as she reached the head of the steps and the beginning of the catwalk. The door she was looking for was there, beyond a thick bundle of electrical wires and hanging ropes.

Kagome searched in her uniform pocket and came up with a small folded packet of offuda and selected the one that said simply "Open Locks". She slapped it on the door and concentrated a moment to hear the lock snick back. The offuda dropped to the floor, its virtue exhausted. But the door was now open. Whatever else anyone could say about Miroku one thing was certain. He really had the goods with those spiritual powers of his. How or why, nobody knew.

Kagome slipped through the barely open door onto the roof of the auditorium and turned to stuff the lock plate with crumpled pieces of paper. She eased the door shut as quietly as she could and sighed in satisfaction as it closed with nary a click. A clawed hand suddenly clapped over her mouth and she was pulled backwards into a warm hard embrace. The familiar swirling lurch of Inuyasha jumping to another location occurred without warning and Kagome squeaked in confusion.

She found that he had taken the both of them to a higher level of the building in a warm and sunny spot tucked in the space left by some transformers and a niche in the wall of one of the stairwells. There was window onto a landing just beyond them but the angle of the wall made it impossible for anyone inside to see them on the roof. Kagome could hear the voices of students and the vibration of feet pounding up and down the stairs though.

Inuyasha moved his hand to the side of her face and pressed his lips to hers not really kissing but nibbling there for a moment before sliding his cheek against hers to breathe against her ear. "Kagome," he whispered, "what took so long? I thought you were never going to look up."

She repressed a giggle. "I was doing a test, Inuyasha. I couldn't look up." She whispered back. "They would've thought I was cheating."

Inuyasha snorted, blowing her hair a bit. "You? Cheat? Shit, you can't even take unfair advantage." He leaned back slightly and ran his finger down the line of buttons adorning the front of her school shirt. "No more tiny skirt." he mourned.

"You wouldn't want me to be laughed at would you? This is what all the girls in this school have to wear. And the skirt's not really that bad." She brushed at the gray fabric. "One of the teachers said today that if my hair got much longer I would have to start wearing pigtails"

"what? Why would you have to wear the tail of pigs in your hair?" Inuyasha scowled at the very idea.

"Not tails of pigs, pigtails! Like this, see?" She gathered her hair up in two bunches on either side of her head and stuck her tongue out at him. He studied the arrangement for a moment and shrugged.

"O.K. if you want to." He said a little dubiously.

"I don't want to." She snapped, "can't you tell? Mou, if you were in school they would make you cut your hair."

"Cut my hair? Are you nuts? Have you ever seen a youkai with cut hair?"

Kagome thought about that but continued with her statement. "If you didn't comply they would shave you head in the principal's office."

"I would kill them." Inuyasha stated flatly and changed the subject. "What is this thing?" he asked, pulling the red plastic item from his pocket.

"A cell phone, where did you get it? It's almost out of juice." Kagome fiddled with the phone for a moment, "Wow, what a lot of messages! Someone must be looking for it."

"No, someone is looking for the owner, remember that girl who was on the ride last night? Well.." Inuyasha explained as best he could about the disappearance of the girl and the presence of youkai in modern times. Kagome listened with the deactivated cell phone in her lap.

"So, no police huh? I hear the paperwork is not worth turning things in anyway. If you want to check the messages we'll have to buy a power adapter but that's not too hard."

Inuyasha smiled slightly and took the cell phone back along with Kagome's hand. His fingers tangled with hers as he looked down at her through black lashes. His other hand came up sliding behind her neck, pulling her forward into a kiss. They wound about each other Inuyasha pressing Kagome back against the warm brick wall of the school.

Kagome blinked and gasped, "Inuyasha, they'll see."

Inuyasha shook his head in negation as he started on her buttons. "They can't see." His fingers twitched impatiently and the top button to her blouse sailed off to bounce across the roof. "Oops, sorry."

Within the school a bell rang. Inuyasha slumped with a grunt. " I know, the warning bell." Kagome sat up and started tucking her shirt back in with a rather sheepish nod. "How about I pick you up at the front when school lets out?" More sheepish nodding, but this time with a grin.

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A/N Can't blame a guy for trying.