InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Dogs in Tokyo ❯ Chapter 17 ( Chapter 17 )

Chapter 17



They both were still sleepy when they stumbled down the stairs in search of breakfast the next morning. Kagome was wearing her school uniform but Inuyasha had opted for a baggy white tee and a pair of grey sweatpants. "Jeans are stupid." had been his only reply when Kagome had asked him, but one look in the trashcan had revealed the jeans he had worn last night with a broad rip right up the backside. They were definitely not up to the demands of Inuyasha's powerful movements.

Higurashi-San was serving up a western-style breakfast of ham and eggs and Souta was already at the table wolfing it down when they arrived. Jijii-Chan was in the living room, the communicating door through into the kitchen open as he sat flipping channels with his remote.

Inuyasha dug into the food with his usual alacrity, with no more acknowledgement than an appreciative grunt. Higurashi-San appeared pleased anyway and started on another mess of eggs to keep up with what was obviously going to be a two-serving meal.

Suddenly, the muted sound of the living-room TV shot up in volume to a level where the occupants of the house had no choice but to hear it: "As a result of some disturbing developments last night the following school districts have been closed for the day and all government offices are placed on an essential personnel only roster." There followed a long list of central Tokyo chomes (administrative neighbourhoods), which included the schools of both Higurashi children. Souta reacted by throwing down his chopsticks and grabbing his juice to go and finish it in the living room with the TV while Kagome sat with a piece of rolled ham suspended in front of her mouth and a 'deer in caught in the headlights' look on her face. Inuyasha paused briefly to glance at her but resumed eating almost immediately, ears swivelled firmly to catch the entire report.

Higurashi-San quietly replenished Inuyasha's plate before moving to Kagome and gently tweaking the chopsticks with their piece of ham out of her stiffened fingers. Kagome drew her attention back to her mother who smiled reassuringly before saying; "I was up all night and have been following the news reports. Don't worry too much. There have been some bites and panicked people but no one's been killed. It looks as though Inuyasha got the really dangerous ones last night."

"You saw that?" Kagome questioned.

"Oh, yes. See, there it is again."

Kagome hopped up from the table to see the revealing tape from last night with its clear image of Inuyasha's hanyou face, ears perked and eyes flashing as he looked directly over his shoulder at the camera and then turned away to face the swarm exploding from the hellishly-lit alley-way behind him.

"That's a good photo." pronounced Jijii-Chan, muting the sound. "That camera man should be promoted."

Kagome shivered as she heard Inuyasha's faint rumble of a growl behind her from where he still sat at the table. Her mother's light voice interrupted him, calling her back to sit down again.

Inuyasha was sitting frowning down at his plate as if it had insulted him in some terrible way but flicked his eyes up at Kagome as she resumed her seat. "I don't think I can kill everything that got through. I don't think I can protect a whole city from an infestation of mini-monsters," he said in an undertone, his face was shadowed and he stirred at his scrambled eggs in a manner that almost returned them to liquid. There was a repetitive light *caching* from his plate from where his chopsticks hit it.

Higurashi-San laughed a little, as she replied, "Of course not! How could you since the gate may have let any number of things through? You'll have to stop it at its source." She finally took her own seat and nursed a cup of tea between her hands. The pair across the table from her stared at her in puzzlement.

"But, Mama, how could you know?"

"Oh," answered the girl's mother, "I listened - after asking a few questions. That blue-haired man, the one who calls himself Nazukeru? Now, we know that can't be his real name." She laughed a little again. "Well, his real name is Alfred P. Doolittle and he grew up in Cheapside of Welsh and English extraction." She pronounced the English words carefully and with (had Kagome only known) surprisingly little accent. In her youth, Higurashi-San had spent a year or two as an interpreter for English-speaking travellers. Pity her reading of English classics wasn't up to snuff.

"He writes for an internet magazine on the paranormal on the Far-East beat. He was very excited by what was on the TV last night and said that several inter-dimensional gates had been opened in quick succession but only for brief periods of time each. He thought the last one had to have drained most of the power available to whatever was doing it and that it would have to be recharged. He wondered what the operator could be searching for."

Kagome stared at her mother in dismay. "And you believed him?"

"Why not dear? You travel though time and are wedded to a daemon after all." Said her mother. Kagome turned her head to encounter Inuyasha's sardonic gaze. He was resting his cheek on one fist and flicked his ears at her in an annoying manner. She blushed painfully but could not think of anything to say.

"Well, if you two are home today then when am I going to see this appropriate wedding outfit that Inuyasha promised?" Jijii-Chan had tired of the TV and now hunched in the doorway like an irritable gnome. "How 'bout that? You two could pitch in with some of these wedding preparations, you know." He seemed ready to go on for some time to come.

A hard scrape of both the table and a chair on the floor announced Inuyasha's rising and Kagome deftly reached out in time to catch the falling chair while Higurashi-San fended off the table with her hands. Good thing that the old shrine residence had stone flagging on its ground floors, as linoleum would never have made it.

"Do you need to study for those tesuto things of yours, Kagome?" Inuyasha inquired in an oddly polite voice.

She couldn't help but smile; he should know that answer by now. "Hai, please give me a moment to go get my books." He nodded curtly and stood, arms folded, staring through the communicating door at the TV where images of a few of the Home Guard who appeared to be teasing something in an elaborate rat trap.

Whatever it was looked like a bald blue-colored chicken and had a razor-sharp beak. There was a flurry of movement and several of the guards jumped back. He could see a tip of blood on the thing's beak and smiled humourlessly; should teach them to be more cautious. Humans in his time had more proper respect for the unknown.


~*~

Kagome looked behind her as she found herself walking down the familiar narrow path to Inuyasha's home. Should she have reversed her steps the only thing she would have found was the path disgorging straight back onto Inuyasha's doorstep, as it were. Only Inuyasha held the key to this place.

That was probably why his actions in the kitchen had astonished her so. He had actually just stood there in the sight of everyone and pulled out a tiny mesh bag he had hung around his neck. From that he plucked out a pebble of no intrinsic value to toss down and step on as he held her hand firmly in his own. They had been instantly transported as usual but that was the first time he'd ever come even close to revealing what he could do. His only comment had been to tell her that her mother had made the bag for him at his request. After all, trying to keep chips of stone and wood in contact with his skin under jeans and a tee shirt had not worked. All she could think was that he'd gotten pebbles in his shorts, which made her snort. He wouldn't talk to her after that.

Did that mean he was coming to trust her family? She certainly hoped so. As she turned these things over in her mind she followed him down the narrow path to the house. Perhaps it was the timeless quality of the place, or rather, the greatly slowed movement of time here, that caused it to appear to move so slowly backwards through a day of its own. When Kagome had first seen the exquisite little house it had been a perpetual early twilight. But now they moved through the last light of a sunset afternoon.

It was no good asking Inuyasha about such things. He seemed to have a disinclination to even discuss the basics of how such a thing could even exist after the first night that they had shared, here, in this most private of places.

As it was, he split off to do his own thing in the spinney of woods while Kagome advanced into the house, letting her pack of books slide down her arm In the entry to thump gently on the floor. She knelt down next to it and fished out her long-neglected math book and some paper before moving on stocking-covered feet down the gleaming entry hall to her favourite room.

The room was at the back of the house and smaller than the others, projecting in a neat square out into the garden over a Koi pond. The wall screens could be drawn back on all three sides so that it formed a kind of very well appointed porch. It was peaceful enough that whenever Inuyasha came to sit with her there he inevitably fell asleep. There were shelved chests bearing drawers full of old scrolls and antique writing utensils along the back wall and Kagome found it all in all to be a perfect study spot, using it often.

She settled down happily enough, knowing that Inuyasha couldn't be far and would be in a better mood when he reappeared. It wasn't too long, however, before she found that her pen was running out of ink. She remembered leaving a spare in one of the scroll filled drawers and went to look for it.

The first drawer she touched didn't feel right as she tugged it open by its pull. Gone were the scrolls that had weighted it down. The second drawer held nothing but her pen, rolling around in its interior and the third drawer held nothing but a broken fan. She started pulling open the other drawers rather frantically but they were full and just as she had remembered them.

For some reason this made her feel awfully suspicious. Jijii-Chan had not explained what the "small lot of goods" that he and Inuyasha had found in the shrine were. With a faint, nauseated, feeling of panic she moved from room to room. There were occasional items missing from everywhere. Even the Tang horse was gone.

She sniffed, she liked the horse. What had those two been doing? She wiped at an eye, seeing a ghostly pale face for an instant out of the corner of it. The pages of her math book riffled by themselves and the steady note of the bamboo tipper stopped and then rapped forward violently a couple of times.

Kagome knew it was the house kamis. The spirits had to find their own way to speak to her and the last time she had been here she had not even entered the house. A little find, Jijii-Chan had said. All that money. She inhaled through her diaphragm and dropped her voice to bellow, "INU-YA-SHAAAA!"

He popped in over the porch railing in a fast roll that had him back-pedalling before he crashed into her. He was wearing nothing but his fundoushi and had apparently been preparing to take a bath. She did not let this deter her.

"What is this?" she bellowed at the top of her lungs. "Why is so much stuff missing?!"

He was in a wary stance before her, the lean perfection of his body surrounded by the shimmering curtain of his hip-length hair. The pupils of his eyes were narrowed down to the merest slits, giving an appearance of molten gold.

Didn't affect her a bit. She could tell he was going to try to lie.

"You!" She pointed a stiffened finger at him. His eyes almost crossed as it nearly touched his nose. "You and Jijii-Chan! I should have known better." She spun and dramatically pulled the emptied drawers straight out of the chest and held the last one up by its ring-pull. "I hope you two got a good price for these on the black market!"

She had another thought and paced towards him slowly, drawer swinging slowly from an out stretched fingertip. "How did you do it? Or did you take the fact that they weren't old as a loss?" She spoke more softly this time and he answered with his eyes on that swinging drawer.

"I dug a cache in the shrine foundations. Once it's empty we can refill it. It's only logical." He risked a glance at his mate.

She looked ready for tears. "That was your father's gift to you." She shook her head. "Not something for you to throw away for nothing."

Inuyasha looked surprised. "A few billion yen is nothing? Sorry, but I thought your human culture was all off of money."

Kagome seethed at him, well aware she could not sit him. "Those were precious relics of your ancestors. You had no business selling them."

"Auctioning them off to the highest bidder is more like it." He smirked. "Besides, what's wrong with selling off some old pieces of disused junk?" She had left her school clothes on and he reached out to flick the top button off of the side closure.

"I just don't have any control over you anymore!" She gasped as it spun away and off the porch.. His clawed hands swept up to grip her shoulders and she instantly said "Ouch." before he even touched her. Not as an exclamation of pain or to be cute but as a warning of unwanted danger. And he took it as that.

His hands stopped a fraction away and then closed almost gently on her arms. "Kagome, you still control me with your voice."

Kagome looked at him with tears pricking at her eyelashes. "But I don't, Inuyasha. You know that. There is no spell on you. I just try to convince you to follow your good instincts."

He gazed at her and felt yet again another barrier go down without a sound. "Well, then, I think you will always guide me, Koi."

"As long as I'm around, Inuyasha."

His brows dropped in a thunderous frown. "Just what the fuck is that supposed to mean? You're mated to me, damnit! You're not going away while I'm alive and that's going to be for a while. I'm young!"

Kagome shrugged and turned her face away. "Maybe there will be a time when I am a burden. I certainly will be one if you sell all of your possessions for my upkeep. Please don't, I'll find a way of supporting myself. Look, my husband, I'm going to get old and die while you are still young."

The hanyou huffed in flaming annoyance, "What?!! Now you're telling me I can't keep you alive?" He paced off furiously, speaking all the while. "Look at that chest. I emptied it and already it's half-filled. I'm not going to run out of money. Don't you think I can even mate correctly? My life - all my riches are yours and you don't trust me?" He stopped, facing her. "You'll stay alive while I'm alive, Koi. We're almost the same age, so you will age slowly and die when I die, you fucking idiot."

"But your mother?" Her voice was hesitant, her face shocked.

"Suddenly became a hundred fifty-year-old woman and collapsed the moment my father died. She followed him a few hours later. I could barely recognize her." He looked away. "So, I guess you can say the situation has its drawbacks." The room was silent for a moment and the faint, steady sound of the bamboo tipper by the waterfall could be heard.

Kagome thoughtfully sucked at a fingertip. "So-o...Kikyou really did have sort of a point about you becoming human."

He threw up his hands and sat down disgustedly. "Maybe. I don't know. I surrender. Kill me now and you can die with only an extra month added to your natural life span."

"But, Inuyasha, everyone I know will die; Sango, Miroku, Shippou, K.."

"Please don't be stupid," he interrupted impatiently. "Right now all those people are already dust and things in this age will be going on only to be dust at the end of our lives." She made a sound and he looked at her sharply, "Don't you dare cry."

"N-no, of course not." She gulped. "It's just a lot to take in."

He shifted uneasily, "Koishii, is it really that bad? I never thought much about it myself. Everything faces loss. It's just the longer you live it just gets kind'a exponential." He pulled her over to him and she came readily enough now.

"Math again, huh, Inuyasha?"

"Yeah, math." He wrapped her in his arms. "Time too. I get to number all the hairs on your head."

She giggled. "Great, I get to turn in my brush every morning for inspection."

He nuzzled her head and relaxed, "That's O.K. I'm already looking."

"You really are like a hen with one chick aren't you? Boy, you'll be something to see when we have kids." Kagome felt him tense and the half-familiar half-frightening vibration of his purr. "Cut that hentai nonsense out. No kids yet."

"Mmm. But, Kagome, having pups with you is a goal in life."

"We have lots of time but I have finals."

~*~

It was rather late when they came back, stepping in an instant from a spring evening into a decidedly damp and windy fall one back at the shrine. They made their way to the house with Kagome carefully clutching the bundle of Inuyasha's wedding clothes against her chest.

They stomped in through the side door to the kitchen only to be confronted by the sight of Souta sitting companionably at the table with Jaken perched on one of the seats. The toad youkai was currently in an old kimono from Souta's own second or third Boy's Day celebration and looked almost to be his old self. Almost, that is. The little hat had been restarched and again stood up stiffly atop his head but the Staff of Heads was nowhere in sight and he sported a few Band-Aids here and there.

Inuyasha didn't mince any words. "Where is the staff?" He asked, dumping a load of gold-festooned lanterns onto the table in a glittering heap.

"How should I know?" snarled Jaken. "I was expelled from that other world just as the gate was closing up an had no chance to grab it from that stupid girl."

"Before or after the bugs?" Inuyasha inquired distrustfully.

"After. You Baka! You nearly killed me with that Kaze-no-Kizu of yours and I had to hide most of the day before I could even risk coming here." He dropped his eyes to the tabletop and Kagome was able to see numerous bumps and abrasions still evident on the green skin.

Souta spoke up. "I found him hiding in that patch of bushes near the front of the shrine grounds when I came home from school. He was crying so loud that the crickets wouldn't even stay put."

Jaken spluttered useless protests.

~*~

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