InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Dogs in Tokyo ❯ Chapter 15 ( Chapter 15 )

Chapter 15

"I can feel it before us. It's somewhere near here, straight ahead." Jaken's voice echoed off of the ally way wall in an unpleasant manner. It seemed to repeat and finally settle into a ground-shaking roar of traffic heard from some distance back. They had left the others at the house and taken to the rooftops under Jaken's direction, apparently following the subway lines to this point.

Kagome shivered in the light drizzle and looked behind her in the darkness. The lighted streets seemed very far back and the crack of night sky between the buildings very far above. This was a part of town she'd never been in. It was over the fence at the station and down a side street near the nightclub district, Roppongi. She frowned in puzzlement, Inuyasha was right, exactly how long had Jaken and Sesshoumaru been here in this time? The knowledge that Jaken displayed of this city was not that of someone who had been here for a few weeks, but twenty years?

Jaken had insisted that they would find Sesshoumaru's missing staff if they went to the places that Ryosei usually went. When they had arrived here they had followed his lead to where he met her twice a week for exchanges of information. Who would've guessed that the spot those two would pick would be the most dark, dank, noisome, and just plain unsafe-looking ally way in the whole of this notorious area? It seemed to be a dead end too.

Kagome shook her head at her own thoughts. 'Just about anybody would've guessed that.'

Inuyasha stopped at the dead end. There was a pile of crates against a soot-blackened wall and in the most shadowed corner an uneven mouth to an old sewer entrance. Inuyasha pointed at the dark opening, "You really don't mean going down that do you? It's either down that hole or you've led us the wrong way and we should be beyond this blank wall." He slapped at wet brick with his clawed hand in illustration.

He had refused to do anything tonight to disguise himself beyond retaining the modern clothing with human ears and even that was under protest. He was becoming intransigent under stress as usual.

"Look, I'm just going by how I feel. I feel an open path between the Staff of Heads and me. That means no walls." Jaken's hat had wilted even further in the rain and the now oversized shirt he wore was becoming translucent, shin showing green, as he got wet. Despite this, the toad youkai seemed to be thriving in the dank atmosphere and swelling with confidence.

Inuyasha swung back and crouched to look the toad youkai right in the face. "You're not trying to tell me that you really do know exactly where this staff thing is? I thought you said you no longer had an association with it." His eyes glowed dark amber in the twilight of the stony passage.

Jaken drew back and hissed, frowning. "I told you my hold was tenuous and I no longer control it so easily. I still know where it is, Asshole."

There was a faint echoing rumble, like that of a distantly heard explosion and rock dust sifted down to land disturbing a greasy puddle on the pavement. Kagome shielded her face and stepped back. Inuyasha ducked down and shoved Jaken forward into the darkness, a hand fisted in the back of his shirt. He paused at the opening, his free hand outstretched, and palm up. "Kagome, don't dawdle." She caught up fast enough, grasping his hand and following him as ever, into the dark.

Five minutes of scrambling going later and there was the distinct rumble of another blast. The tunnel itself was some kind of oversight of urban construction; built and over built countless times. They could feel the concrete shifting above them and the screeching halt of traffic.

"What the fuck?" Muttered the hanyou as a greenish flare showed briefly through unseen crevices.

"I told you the staff was dangerous." Jaken snapped angrily from where he was in between the other two, attempting to lift the tails of his shirt out of the muddy water that he was in.

"You didn't say she would blow everyone up." Kagome pointed out.

"Jaken, you better tell me what this thing can do!"

"Feh!" Jaken responded. He stopped in the middle of the cramped and rocky passage and drew to his full height (all two feet of it). "This item is Sesshoumaru-Sama's, and not for a lowly hanyou such as yourself to know anything about!"

"You crap! Tell me what it can do." Inuyasha turned his face to stare intensely along the narrow passage. "If I don't know what to expect I can't really protect, you can I?" His fingers flexed, claws clicking as he moved away.

"It can open world gates." Jaken responded reluctantly with a fine mixture of self-importance and resentment.

Inuyasha paused momentarily midstride. "Fantastic, just what we need." He resumed his rapid movement; shoving Jaken forward and half dragging, half lifting Kagome over unseen obstructions (They never missed a beat, those two, like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, they responded perfectly to each other, she following his lead). Look, Jaken, could you tell me why you needed to kill me so bad that you would even lose such an item?"

"You lost--" Jaken spluttered there for a moment in his anger, then recovered himself. " You lost I don't know how many items in your fight against Naraku. I don't see why I should be blamed for loosing only one."

They were now to the end of the passage and there was a set of blocks leading upwards. They both could hear the sound of sirens and some kind of disturbance as they approached the nighttime Tokyo streets.

Inuyasha looked up sighing at the angle of the wall and the tight fit that they would have to go through to get out topside. "I'll have to push you out in front of me." he said looking at Jaken. "Don't go anywhere when you reach the street."

"Don't worry," snarled Jaken "I still need your help."

Inuyasha lifted the toad youkai by his ankles and supported him and then Kagome on their way out.

"Besides," Inuyasha continued as he poked his head out of the ground following them into a weed-covered ditch, under a strangely empty roadway in the center of Tokyo's Roppanogi district. "In Naraku we were dealing with an opponent that could transform himself endlessly and leave offspring like an octopus losses tentacles."

Jaken resettled his hat a little more straightly on his head and sniffed rain into his nostrils. "Now you have an opponent who can bend time and space," he said as the little hat subsided wetly to the other side.

Kagome looked about under dripping bangs. The passage had cut off several city blocks and placed them in the centre of the nightclub district. The lights were on but no one was there. Brilliant neon marquees lit wet streets that were bare of anything but a few parked cars. At night this was normally one of the busiest sections of Tokyo. Mostly what movement she could see were the flashing reflections of police strobes off of some windows at the end of the block. A riot?

"You ass!!" Inuyasha had to squirm on his elbows for an instant, shifting his hips to get through the narrow opening. "Sesshoumaru and I are not out to destroy the world, only each other." With a grunt he got completely out and onto the culvert and was scrambling to regain his balance. "I'm not so sure about wanting to do that anymore either." He ignored the rips in his clothing and moved the tatty old katana from where it was slung on his back to a more accessible location at his waist. "If he challenges me too far…well, we may both end up doing some things we really don't want. But I am damned sure my brother has no intentions of doing anything at your behest."

Jaken didn't respond, turning his back, but he did wait until the hanyou had caught up with him before moving on down the street.

Kagome, of course, had never been to Roppongi after dark and looked about her with as much interest as the youkai. Many of the restaurant and bar doors stood open and she craned her neck looking into establishments where upset chars and abandoned drinks seemed to be the rule. Finally, the others stopped out side of a place that had Doric columns flanking the door.

Inuyasha dropped to the pavement briefly and come up again emitting sharp sneezes. "Hard to say." He said, speaking to Jaken. "These dammed people and their smoke sticks! The stuff gets right up my nose."

Jaken sighed and said, "Yes, terrible habit. Don't ever get into it. But I feel more intense jaki from this doorway than the others."

The sound of heavy footsteps from several sets of feet echoed up the street and all three moved quickly through the doorway and down the short flight of steps to the restaurant beyond.

It was a strange place with circular tables scattered about bearing huge platters of unidentifiable food, unfinished drinks and bottles, still-burning cigarettes, and, in one case, a man's necktie. A strange music filled the air and in the centre of the room was a lit stage covered in a litter of broken dinner plates. Racks of intact plates were waiting off to the sides.

Inuyasha paused and sounded out the sign next to the stage; "Play Greek with your dining pleasure…Plate-braking competition tonight." He stood a moment in thought. "You know, Kagome, Shippou would like to know that this game exists." He remarked turning to find the girl gone from his side and the toad youkai standing next to one of the tables, a purloined cigarette dangling from his lip as he poured something from one of the bottles into a dirty glass.

"Kagome?"

Jaken took a swig of his drink and shivered, eyes watering. "Whoa, retsina. Takes your teeth straight down your throat. Girls' in the bathroom." He said briefly with a quick stab of his cigarette in the right direction.

Inuyasha moved quickly to meet her as she opened the door and stuck her head out to beckon to him. "Inuyasha! I know she's been here."

"How?"

Kagome glanced beyond him at the empty restaurant and pointed behind her at the women's restroom. "In there, under the sink."

Inuyasha pushed the door open.

Kagome was behind him and indicated a small trashcan under the bench-like sink. "Wait." She breathed into his ear." He stilled himself and they waited, pressed comfortingly together. After about five minutes six eyes on narrow pink stalks slowly raised above the rim of the trashcan like an uneven field of daisies.

'Well, now, that's pretty gross.' Inuyasha thought. "That's no youkai I've ever seen."

He could feel the girl nodding her head vigorously against his shoulder as the eye stalks instantly disappeared below the rim of the can. "Ryosei must be opening gates of some sort but I think that's a space alien."

"A what who? Oh, never mind."

"Maybe it's o.k. Maybe it's shy."

At that instant the trash can burst and a towering pink blob overflowed it and surged upwards. The delicate eyestalks writhed above a face characterized by an open, drooling mouth with ten-inch transparent fangs. Like fish fangs, with extra slime, they glittered in the spray from a broken faucet.

Inuyasha jumped back, wedging Kagome between him and the wall. He drew Tetsusaiga and the blade transformed in a flash. The towering blob showed no recognition of the thing as a weapon though and slithered towards them.

"Speak! This will kill you if you do not. What are you doing here?" Inuyasha made a feint in the creatures' direction that made it draw back slightly. It made some globbering sounds as it moved but did not appear to understand Inuyasha.

"I don't think this thing wants to talk." Kagome quavered nervously.

Inuyasha had reached the same conclusion and thrust his katana into the tile floor of the bathroom as the creature made a lightning-swift grab at him with its dripping mouth. He slashed it with his claws and tore it into two pieces, which fell to the floor and began to smoke.

Kagome clapped her hand over her nose and mouth and Inuyasha threw his arm across his face but he could not avoid getting a lungful of the smoke. It smelled incongruously of violets.

Jaken proved to be hiding behind the table he had been at, bottle in hand, and Inuyasha couldn't help but notice that he was smelling distinctly like a pine tree that had been hit with a fish. He grabbed the bottle out of the little toad youkai's hand and tossed it across the room. "She's not here but she's been here and playing games with that staff. Come on, let's get going."

"Hey, my bottle!"

"No, that stuff stinks like pine sap. Stick to business." Impatiently, the hanyou led the way across the restaurant and though the swinging doors into the kitchen. The smells here were powerful but he felt he had Ryosei's scent now and he moved swiftly to the rear exit where he came across a clear scent marking on the wood doorframe.

The door opened onto yet another alley but they could hear the sound of sirens nearby and the confused murmur of human voices. Jaken stiffened, wiping his nose, and eased forward. "She's here. She's got to be, I can feel the staff. Oh, she's fed it. She's fed it all right. I can feel its jaki; it's had human blood, a lot of it. It must be in control now." He stopped and whimpered softly to himself. "Sesshoumaru-Sama will not be pleased with this one."

Inuyasha grunted, "Well, did you really think he was going to be happy?"

The toad youkai cast a venomous look over his shoulder and darted around the corner before the hanyou could catch him. Kagome gasped and they both plunged around the corner to be brought up short. They had found their quarry. She was standing outlined in distant flashes of light against the surrounding darkness at the end of the alley.

"Ryosei!" Jaken hissed.

She turned, raising the staff almost negligently…

~*~

To be continued.