InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Dogs in Tokyo ❯ Chapter 27 ( Chapter 27 )

Chapter 27

Sesshoumaru hung up the phone after speaking to his secretary and stared at the staff lying on the desk blotter before him. The item had, now that he considered the whole thing, caused him an inordinate amount of trouble. Maybe it was best to wash his hands of it and just seal the thing away. 'One does end up with so much expensive baggage that one doesn't really want.' He mused as he gently rotated the staff between his fingers from the woman's face to the man's face and back again.

His thoughts were interrupted by the hurried footsteps of his brother who bursts in through the side door and closed it quickly after him. An acrid stench floated on the air disturbed by the wake of his passage. Inuyasha was sneezing and Sesshoumaru's own eyes were beginning to sting as he said in the gentlest tone of voice possible: "To what do I owe this fearsome stench?"

Inuyasha merely rolled watering eyes at him as he stomped past to fling the balcony door open and make good his escape out into the night. Sesshoumaru followed at a more dignified but still swift pace and closed the door behind him. The night air, while strange smelling was a distinct improvement. The far edge of the balcony drew them and Inuyasha took a seat on the railing with one leg tucked under the other while Sesshoumaru took a space some yards away against the corner pillar of the balcony, they both looked down into the main street where they could glimpse the entrance to the building from their vantage point.

A few dozen yards away one of the side doors to the living room opened and closed as Jukuryo put in an appearance, holding his nose and knocking into the bronze outdoor fireplace with a clang as he made his way through the sitting area with its maze of tables, chairs and potted plants.

"Whew, whatever that girl was using is enough to wake the dead." Jukuryo settled himself on the railing between the two brothers, not even bothering to sit but rather stepping up to balance there in a crouched position with his hands in his pockets. He looked quite ready to spring off at any moment to catch a ride on a stray breeze. He turned his head slightly and studied the staff that Sesshoumaru held loosely between his fingers. "Any idea what you're going to do with that thing?"

Sesshoumaru glanced down as if surprised to find he was holding anything at all. "This?" He maintained his negligent pose but lifted the staff in his hand so that the old man's mask pointed down the street where two emergency vehicles and a small private ambulance were pulling up to the curb. Immediately, the mouth of the mask dropped open to reveal a glowing, smoky interior.

The other two sat very still, eyes watchful in expressionless faces.

The mask emitted a slight belch of smoke and Sesshoumaru shrugged, dropping his hand and closing his eyes without looking at them, having had his little joke. "This thing has ever been demanding and difficult to control. I am minded not to use it again."

"After you get Jaken and that saké girl back. Then you can stop using it." Inuyasha broke in, his voice sounding harsh after his bother's smooth tones.

Sesshoumaru's mouth tightened. "And why would I want to get them back?"

Inuyasha's arms folded and his eyes caught glittering reflections of the lights as he turned to answer hotly back but it was Jukuryo who spoke first. "Enough of this game, Sesshoumaru. Did you or did you not order the deaths of both humans and youkai in and around the environs of Tokyo in the past several months?"

Sesshoumaru sat up ramrod straight and replied with a snap. "The last deaths I ordered were those of the bandit Yoshimorou and that rabble that he called an army for insolence in refusing me passage at the Arakawa ford on my way to what is now Tokyo Wan. That was over five hundred years in the past by your accounting of things, Jukuryo. True, the staff, in Jaken's hand, was the agent but it was all justified and above board."

"And how long ago was that by your accounting of things Sesshoumaru?" Jukuryo's head twisted slightly to one side as he sidled just a little closer to Sesshoumaru, still crouched and balancing deftly on the balls of his feet on the balcony rail. "How long since you allowed that staff to be fed?"

Sesshoumaru's eyes widened and his gaze flickered for an instant to the staff he held in his hand. The woman's face was topmost, eyes modestly lowered, lips gently smiling. "I took up residence in this era twenty-eight years ago. Some two years after the events involving Naraku and the Shikon-no-Tama." Inuyasha growled under his breath and Sesshoumaru moved slightly as if in response. "I have not given any orders for it to be fed in this time."

"But it remained in the possession of your minion? The toad daemon Jaken?" Jukuryo persisted. "Unfed?"

Sesshoumaru hesitated and then frowned. "Certainly it did. It has never left his possession since I placed it under his charge until three nights ago when he was apprehended in Yomiyuri Land under an accusation of molesting a female and property damage. There is a report on my desk alleging various other things but I have not read it…I have been otherwise occupied of late." His voice sounded uncharacteristically unsure even to him.

"I think I might have some guesses as to what's in that report, Sesshoumaru-Sama." Jukuryo remarked dryly. "And pretending that there is no staff isn't going to fix the problem we have at hand."

There was a little space of silence and sounds of the trucks being unloaded floated to them from the street on a persistent updraft. Then Inuyasha spoke softly as if he were reminiscing but his eyes were on the scene below where an altercation was breaking out. "Jaken said Sesshoumaru wouldn't listen to him anymore when I first laid my hands on him."

Jukuryo nodded his head. He had been present. Sesshoumaru just sat still.

Inuyasha continued speaking, staring thoughtfully down into the street all the while. "He seemed to fear the staff but he made every effort to regain control of it while I was with him and got pulled into that other world because of it." The argument down on the street was progressing nicely and Inuyasha's rapt attention drew the eyes of the other two.

All three youkai watched in interest as one of the pair of men with blue rubber gloves on burst into a perfect frenzy of shouting and threw a bag of liquid he was holding down onto the pavement. As they all watched, he proceeded to jump on it, squirting what smelled like salt water all over the place as the others continued to shout back at him.

Predictably, the phone started to ring in Sesshoumaru's study moments later. They could hear Higurashi-San answering it.

Sesshoumaru's head jerked up suddenly and, quicker than the other two could take in, he swept the head of the staff up and crisped a large black something out of the air as it glided on silent wings from the roof of the building opposite. Without a cry the glider crumpled up in the blast of fire and plummeted down to the street to land with a wetly smacking thud within yards of the group of arguing men fourteen stories below.

Jukuryo remained perched, hands in pockets, watching as the men suddenly abandoned their argument and piled through the front doors of the building, dragging the equipment and the gurney behind them. Both of the inu-brothers were now prowling the perimeter of the balcony and gazing up at the surrounding roofs. They moved in swift silence, crossing paths with faint checks at each other.

"It was alone," announced Jukuryo. "If another was with it, it would've dropped by now."

With a final sniff at a vagrant updraft Inuyasha turned around. "Protecting humans, Sesshoumaru?"

"I pay their life insurance, Bastard." Sesshoumaru took a last stare up and tossed an impeding chair over the side of the balcony. "Very well. We will reverse the process and retrieve Jaken and you two can question his motives all you want. After that I will seal the staff and that will be the end of it."

"Saké Girl too." Inuyasha said stubbornly.

Sesshoumaru paused for an instant before he flung a second chair over the side of the balcony after the first. "Please don't tell me you are taking on a secondary wife Inuyasha. A human lover and sexually incontinent?" A handsome potted palm shared the same fate as the chairs. "What next? Pet dogs?"

"You take that back!" Inuyasha sent the bronze fire bowl in a whizzing spin that just barely missed Sesshoumaru's head as it sailed off into the night.

Suddenly, a gust of wind slammed into the balcony tumbling the remaining furniture against the windows and clearing most of the balcony floor. "Stop that! Both of you!"

The brothers both turned to look into the wind, hair whipped into wild silver streamers about their heads. There stood Jukuryo, straddle legged on the balcony railing, with eyes like twin coals and the end of a tattered white scarf blowing from the neck of his old black leathers. Both Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru put up hands involuntarily to shield their faces from flying debris and backed up a step away from each other.

Abruptly, the wind dropped.

"Much better." Jukuryo spoke into the ensuing silence. "Inuyasha's goal in securing the Sak…I mean, Yasuku Ryosei-San's release is much the same as my own, Nishigawa-Sama. She was part of what caused this problem and owes some answers. Surely, you do not wish to imply something idle." He looked at the two, Inuyasha with his hair wild and his face grim, Sesshoumaru clinging with determination to his impassivity. Two sides to the same coin and closer in nature than most would guess. "Nevertheless, you said you would reverse the effects of the staff, Sesshoumaru."

Sesshoumaru dropped his eyes the barest fraction. "So I did, Jukuryo-Sama."

Inuyasha blinked a bit at the honorific but remained silent. He could see Kagome through the plate glass windows, standing in the darkened living room, her arm about Souta. Jijii-Chan was peering from what he obviously considered a safe vantage point beyond her shoulder. Higurashi-San was…his ears flickered betraying his shifting interest. Higurashi-San was still on the phone talking soothingly to someone. Inuyasha hoped everyone would stay put and out of harm's way.

OOO:::0:::OOO

Kagome stood with her frightened brother in the circle of her arm as the three youkai out on the balcony continued to talk. She had just started to doze off when a flare of light had caused her to look over the back of the couch where she had been comfortably using Souta's unresisting haunches as a pillow while she watched something or other on NHK.

The fact that they gotten down to arguing came as no big surprise but Sesshoumaru's subsequent decision to throw everything on the balcony down to the street was pretty odd. She had gasped and jumped when Inuyasha threw the fire bowl at his brother's head and had hurriedly started to climb over the back of the couch and get out there to put a damper on the situation when Jukuryo had put a stop the argument his way.

The ensuing crashes and whistling wind had woken Souta up out of a sound sleep convinced that something terrible like an earthquake had occurred and even Jijii-Chan had sat up with a snort and struggled out of the leather lounge chair he had been "resting his eyes in". The Higurashis stared as the group of daemons separated to take up widely-spaced positions on the cleared balcony.

Sesshoumaru stood in the center, holding the staff and spoke briefly to the other two. Kagome could sense the powerful shifts in their ki as Inuyasha drew Tetsusaiga and faced outwards while Jukuryo turned to face inwards towards the windows and held his hands in a ritualistic position. Within moments the faint flicker of a barrier caught at Kagome's eye and the view through the windows became refracted much like the view through a fish tank. Sesshoumaru dropped to one knee and raised the staff above his head and then brought it down to tap the butt end of it smartly on the pavement he was kneeling on. Like rapidly spreading cracks on a sheet of ice runnels of greenish light spread out in a web and bathed everything in an eerie glow.

Houjou wandered into the living room in a search for the kitchen and a glass of water. "Excuse me, where's…" The flickering glow outside the window caught his eye and he interrupted himself. "Hey isn't that..." He broke off as the black hole of a vortex opened above Sesshoumaru's head and all manner of things began appearing over the side of the balcony.

Inuyasha leaped into action. Not so much to destroy the bizarre creatures that hopped, flew and slithered towards him as to enforce order and slow their rate of approach. Sesshoumaru maintained his position with his head down as, in twos and threes, the creatures tumbled willy-nilly towards him and were swept up into the blackness to vanish. The watchers could hear a faint shout from the hanyou as a particularly large and persistent creature grabbed on the railing of the balcony and attempted to crawl back over and escape. A quick slap with the flat of Tessaiga's blade broke its grip and it was sent tumbling to be sucked up with the others.

A sudden thump next to her made Kagome jump nearly out of her skin as Houjou's unresisting body suddenly plastered itself to the window with his arms and legs spread out like a starfish. "Grelp!" he shouted as best he could with his face pressed firmly against the glass.

Kagome clapped an hand to her mouth in dismay. "Of course!" she exclaimed. "Houjou, you must resist it, you've traveled through the staff's portal too!"

Houjou rolled a desperate eye at her and gurgled. She shook her head at him and sighed, "I'm very sorry about this really." and raised her hands to create a tiny blue spark of light between her palms. She frowned in concentration while her family made shocked comments and sent the charge of power to bounce lightly off the back of the trapped boy's head. Houjou gave a jerk and dropped to the floor like a rock.

"Kagome," her mother's reproving voice sounded behind her, "that wasn't very polite."

Kagome flapped her hands helplessly, "Sorry, it was all I could think of to break the connection in a hurry."

"Wow, Kagome, do you think I could learn to do that?" Souta's eyes were shiny with admiration. "Think of what I could do with it at school."

"Uh, I don't think Mama would like that."

As Higurashi-San gently placed a pillow from the sofa under Houjou's head they could see that the flow of creatures drawn to the vortex was finally slowing. With a despairing flutter a last winged thing was sucked up and all was still. The trio on the balcony didn't move as the blackness contracted to the size of a baseball and turned blue. With a whistling sound it suddenly expanded and popped as two bodies tumbled to the ground in front of Sesshoumaru.

Jukuryo looked over his shoulder and nodded as he dropped his hands and Inuyasha allowed Tetsusaiga to revert to a battered old katana and sheathed it. They walked over to look with interest at the pair that they had rescued who were slowly starting to stir and groan. Sesshoumaru got up from where he had been kneeling and walked silently away to stand staring out at the sky. The first pallor of false dawn was beginning to show. He glanced down at the wreckage in the street left by the things he had tossed off of the balcony and decided it was time to contact his secretary and get the cleaning crews busy. He headed back to his study to get on the phone.

Kagome opened the door and stuck her head out. "Aren't you going to help them Inuyasha? We can't just leave them lying there and I need to get Houjou up off the floor too. He's unconscious."

Inuyasha rested his hands on his hips and studied her for a long moment. "Why is Houjou unconscious on the floor again?" he asked, bringing a bright blush to the girl's cheeks.

"It, ah, seemed the best thing to do at the time."

Inuyasha could only nod in approval at this sign of sound reasoning from his mate and stooped to heave an unresisting Ryosei over his shoulder. If Kagome was finally beginning to see the light about the usefulness of a conscious Houjou he for one was not about to complain.

:::OOOO::::

Reviews would be so nice…