InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Dogs in Tokyo ❯ Chapter 25 ( Chapter 25 )

Chapter 25

Inuyasha was still. There was a faint breeze lifting his hair and he could feel the warm weight of the girl resting against his back without the slightest movement beyond the rapid beating of her heart and the light catch of her breath. He stood poised on the banister to the balcony of his brother's apartment perfectly ready to step forward to face him or leap backwards to trust his own luck in a free fall.

Sesshoumaru seemed to be at least partially aware of this and made no move to precipitate any action. He stood at the open doorway of a moderately-sized room containing a large desk and a wall full of books and scrolls visible through the plate glass windows that opened onto the balcony on two sides. The living quarters extended beyond that room in a slightly zigzag manner that opened up a lot of window space. To the left a recessed living room could be observed where both Souta and Higurashi-Sama were apparently talking together on a couch.

Neither brother realized it, but, due to the curfew, the constant thrum of the city was muted if not truly gone. There was no sound of traffic in the streets to speak of and little in the skies beyond the bumble-bee-like wanderings of the helicopter searching for them over the Imperial Palace and the occasional twittering of a late-nesting barn swallow.

A few moments stretched into an eternity before Sesshoumaru lowered the point of Toukijin to the concrete pavement of the balcony and deliberately thrust it in slightly with a grating sound. "The Mahou-Tsukai is no part of this. She should go inside and see her family."

Inuyasha dropped down from the railing of the balcony and allowed Kagome to slide to her feet. She thrust herself backwards to break his loosened grip and stepped quickly to stand shoulder to shoulder with him. Her shoes had been lost at some point. Over Asahi street if she didn't miss her guess.

"Sesshoumaru." She said in a half-whisper. "I have always given you credit for being a civilized being." She could almost feel Inuyasha's attention intensify, his eyes shifting to her in a quick flick before returning to a steady stare at his half brother. "I don't see why you should insult me so."

Sesshoumaru merely lifted his chin and gazed down his nose at her. "Mahou-Tsukai. Witch, I name you. You are no longer a miko; you are a woman with a full life mate that acts with all the lack of restraint of a well-moneyed widow. And yet you can still purify in devastating attack...As I have had occasion to see for myself." He did not smile but his face gentled. "Truly it is not meant as an insult. Go and see your family, I must speak with Inuyasha." His gaze returned to the hanyou.

Inuyasha turned his head towards her and caught her by one knuckle under her chin. In any other situation he would have done no such thing but now, before his brother, he was reiterating his declaration: and took quickly everything from the kiss he could get. He had always been afraid that their "forever" would be too short to bear and he could barely force himself to trust Sesshoumaru even this far.

"Kagome, go inside and see your family. Sesshoumaru and I will have a friendly little discussion about etiquette and the proper fucking way to do things and then we will go home. Should only take a minute."

Kagome's whispered response was almost lost against his mouth but he heard it as a nearly psychic thrum.

"Liar."

She returned the kiss but drew back and, with a decisive step, crossed the balcony to Sesshoumaru. He drew himself up at her approach, sword grating slightly on the pavement. She slowed her steps and came to a stop a mere arm's length away from him. With an almost lazy smile she held his eyes and spoke. "I still prefer Miko. Give me the sword."

What few sounds there were in the night seemed to fall silent as Sesshoumaru gazed back at her without response. His face was still but his right hand slowly reached across his body to rest on his left shoulder, fingers stroking as if to ease some old pain or touch a warmth that was not there.

Her extended hand drifted up slightly as if she too, felt his lack. "No."

She stopped, hand suspended in midair.

"I prefer to retain my weapon unpurified." Sesshoumaru's eyes sought his bother's as he spoke. "I will go and hang it up…Miko." He suited action to the word and swiftly turned away to step inside and place his weapon on the teakwood sword rack that was standing there.

Inuyasha's eyebrows shot up to disappear behind his unruly bangs as he went to stand near Kagome and watch his brother through the window. A movement caught the corner of his eye and he turned his head to see Higurashi-Sama crossing the wide expanse of the living room to slide open a door that gave onto the balcony from there.

"There you are Kagome-Chan, Inuyasha. Kagome, come in and see this amazing apartment that Inuyasha's brother has. Its got three bathrooms, can you imagine that? Three. And such a view too. I think our whole house would fit inside this place with room to spare." She leaned out further as Kagome approached her. "Inuyasha, dear, do ask Sesshoumaru if he wants some tea things set up on the balcony table for you. Tell him it would be no bother."

"Uh, sure." The slider closed behind them and he could see Kagome and her mother making their way across the apartment talking volubly all the while. A step sounded and Sesshoumaru was standing near him staring over his shoulder into the living room where Kagome's mother appeared to be giving a sort of guided tour to the rapt attention of her daughter. They disappeared through a doorway.

Inuyasha looked at his brother, inhaled and then let out the breath with a faint woof. "Kitchen?"

Sesshoumaru frowned faintly, staring at the door the two women had gone through. "No. Bathroom."

"Oh. Figures. Anyway, she told me to ask you…"

"I heard." Sesshoumaru interrupted. "Perhaps it would be more conducive to business to talk in my study after all."

Inuyasha nodded assent and followed him, not without a final glance into the living room. Souta was asleep on the couch clutching something to his chest with a smile on his face. It was a mightily puzzled hanyou that stepped through the slider into the study. Sesshoumaru was already seating himself behind the desk and drawing off a cup of water from a water cooler standing by the wall.

The two walls that were not windows held closed cabinets and a broad set of bookshelves heavily laden with massive tomes and a pair of Tang dynasty horses.

Inuyasha stopped dead. 'Wait a minute..' he thought as he stared at the figurines. The red one he didn't know but the black one… "What are you doing with my horse?!" He stomped over to the bookshelf and lifted his hand to grab the figurine.

*Thwap!* A cone-shaped cup made of white paper bounced off of his wrist neatly spraying him in the face with water.

"It's my horse now and I'd thank you not to get my books wet."

Inuyasha ignored the runnels of ice cold water making their way down the neck of his T-shirt to snarl at his brother. "Whaddaya mean, 'My horse'? It's mine!"

"I mean I bought at a closed auction from a reputable youkai antique dealer yesterday. I think it looks rather well up there. It completes the set." Sesshoumaru sat in disdainful calm as if he had never sunk to throwing a paper cup in his life.

"What are you doing buying youkai antiquities? Don't you have enough junk?"

"What are you doing selling off family heirlooms?"

"It's mine! I can do what I want with it! If I want to sell it I can sell it."

"So? Is that right?" Inuyasha nodded emphatically. "And you offered it for sale on the open market without restriction?"

Inuyasha didn't like where this appeared to be going but nodded his head again anyway. Sesshoumaru folded his arms. "I saw it and recognized it and bought it for slightly more than what it is worth (naming an uncomfortably high sum). Since it was for sale I took advantage of the opportunity."

Inuyasha starting digging in his pockets and pulling out banknotes to throw them down on the desk before him.

"It's not for sale." Murmured Sesshoumaru.

"Damn you Sesshoumaru!"

The door to the room popped open and Kagome and her mother started carrying in tea things. "Here we are. Sorry it took so long. You have such a selection of tea. So hard to choose."

Sesshoumaru reared back slightly as a laden tray was plunked on the desk blotter. Inuyasha surreptitiously wiped at the water dripping down his face only to find himself nose to nose with Kagome.

She frowned, eyes going beyond him. "Planning on borrowing some books?" She said in an undertone. "The walls are thick here but not all that thick. We could hear you all the way to the kitchen." Her eyes caught on something and she made a small sound. "Isn't that the same horse from your.." She trailed off as what her mother was saying impinged on her consciousness.

"My, Sesshoumaru-Sama, so much money. And now I've spilled tea on it. You really shouldn't leave it lying around like that."

"It is not mine."

"Inuyasha's, then. Didn't I ask you to put all this cash in a safe place?" Higurashi-Sama shook her head at Inuyasha and indicated the small flood of banknotes scattered across the desk.

Inuyasha's face was turning red. "The pieces of money paper are Sesshoumaru's. Kagome, you can take my horse back."

Kagome wasn't going for any of it. "Why," she said in a dangerous tone, "should 'I' touch anything? It seems to me that you started selling things from your house and your brother caught you out. It's a pity, I liked the horse. But I like honesty more."

Sesshoumaru gave a soft snort. "If you like it you may have it, human girl."

"Damn it!" Shouted Inuyasha.

Higurashi-San sighed and said. "Please don't make this more difficult, Sesshoumaru-Sama. I was hoping you two boys could settle your differences in a better manner. That is why I agreed to come after all."

"Told you she went willingly, Kagome. Didn't I?"

"Inuyasha…"

Higurashi-San had finished stacking the, now tea stained, banknotes into a tidy pile at one end of the desk and was busy pouring out tea. "Let me see, the white porcelain for you, Sesshoumaru-Sama. And the earthen-glazed for you, Inuyasha. Milk and sugar also, very untraditional. Kagome-Chan shall have this blue lacquer-ware cup. Look inside, Kagome, it is gilded. And I, shall have this nice English china teacup and saucer. The roses are so pretty, and so realistic. I like Western art, don't you, Sesshoumaru-Sama?"

Under her gentle flood of words and efficient service the room was transformed. Sesshoumaru accepted his cup silently and even ventured a sip. Inuyasha took his and retreated to a corner to nurse its warmth in his hand. Kagome took a sip but then stood, gently rotating the wooden cup in her hand and staring into it, watching the tea leaves in the bottom shifting this way and that, spelling out brief fortunes.

"Inuyasha, dear, did you retrieve the staff of heads? Where is the little green man Jaken?"

"Huh?" Inuyasha's ears flicked revealingly, he had nearly been dozing in the corner with his unmentionable brother in the room. He straightened up quickly. "Oh, uh, we have the staff. We will turn it over when you and Souta are home, Higurashi-Sama."

"That is nice, but where is Jaken?" Mama poured herself some more tea and seated herself on the edge of the desk.

"Umm, it's a long story Mama." Kagome interjected quietly. "But he's in hell. I think."

Oo.>>-0-<<.oO

The old motorcycle belched and roared through the empty Tokyo streets. There were manned roadblocks set up by the Home Guard but Jukuryo seemed to know every turn and back alley available to avoid them. The most they got was on overzealous crosswalk monitor, rigged out in his patrol belt and insistently waving his orange cone-light at them.

Jukuryo turned his head and let his eyes flame behind his aviator goggles with an evil cackle. The elderly crossing guard staggered back with a choked scream and collided with a lamp post which he hung onto for dear life.

His wife, alerted by the racket, marched out of their house and found him there. She did not like him guarding the street like this anyway and called him an old fool as she half-assisted half-dragged him inside his apartment building. But he knew what he had seen: An ancient youkai driving an antique motorcycle with a sidecar bearing an old shrine priest holding something evil clutched to his breast.

{He was never able to convince anyone of this. Humans with true sight like that are few and far between. Part of the reason he had married his wife was her total lack of imagination. So she insulted his intelligence and fed him tea and toast until he was able to act like a 'sensible' man again.}

Jukuryo gunned the motorcycle and maneuvered himself and his passenger down the winding street. They had to go slow because someone, or something had been down it vandalizing bicycles culminating in a collapsed brick wall and bent bicycle wreckage. Jukuryo had hit a particularly bad patch and had the bike running at the speed of a slow walk as he picked his way through when Jijii-Chan called for him to stop.

There was a lone figure in the darkness apparently fishing through the mess with impatient movements. Jijii-Chan's eyes had widened as he recognized Houjou, the clueless boy from Kagome's school.

Now, Houjou was a solid favorite with Jijii-Chan. Although not for any reason that Houjou would've liked. Jijii-Chan had simply found him too irresistible a mark and had enjoyed an unprecedented flow of largess in the form of healthy gifts. Those he did not use he had passed out to his friends which accounted for the ever-expanding and changing lists of ills which Kagome had supposedly suffered. So, seeing him out alone on these streets where there really were monsters wandering was too much for his protective instincts. It was the purest of sympathetic intentions that caused him to call out to the boy and gesture him over to the motorcycle.

"Houjou-Kun! Come here. You must be crazy to be out on foot on a night like this. Whatever happened to that fancy bike of yours?"

"Higurashi-San? What are you doing out on a night like this? The streets are dangerous." Houjou looked like he had been pulled backwards though a hedge, complete with twigs in his hair. He brushed self-consciously at it and straightened his shirt. "I should know, my bike was stolen earlier by a pack of lizard-birds and I was assaulted again just a few minutes before I arrived here by some fuzzy guy with blue hair. He let he just gibbered at me and let me go though."

"Pulled you through a hedge, huh?" Asked Jijii-Chan with a twinkle.

"How did you know?"

Jijii-Chan shrugged nonchalantly as he shifted his bundle of hat and staff. "We shrine priests keep to rigorous training in observation." He reached forward to draw a twig of boxwood out of Houjou's hair. "Never mind that now, what are you doing outside? There's a curfew on you know."

"I, uh, was trying to get to a certain address, It's very important."

Jukuryo revved the motor of the bike for an instant before leaning across the side car to speak to Houjou himself. "Well, where to boy? We have important business of our own but we could drop you off somewhere along if you're going our way."

Houjou bowed with alacrity. "Please, if you can sir! If it's not too much trouble. I'm going to the Ichii Building in Roppongi hills. I was hoping to find a bike I could borrow that was still intact."

The two old friends turned to stare at each other in amazement. The end of the staff that was sticking up out of Jijii-Chan's baggy hat quivered. Clapping a hand to it, Jijii-Chan readdressed himself to Houjou. "Well, now, inscrutable and awesome are the winds of fate which blow us to a corresponding direction."

"Sir?"

"He means that we're heading in the same direction." Stated Jukuryo. "Hop on, I see some shadows in that alley that have eyes."

With an alarmed glance behind him, Houjou settled his small backpack with its precious burden of anti-daemon charms and climbed onto the back of the motorcycle to grip its frame tightly as they took off with a roar and a cough down the littered street.

>>>::::O::::<<<

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