InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Fire and Ice ❯ Working Man ( Chapter 1 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha. Inuyasha owns me.

A/N: New story, first chapter. Hope you all likey-likey. This chapter is told from Inuyasha's point of view, just FYI. This is an Alternate Universe fic, also just FYI.

Sorry about all the (-). They're only there to provide proper spacing. T-T

Fire and Ice

Chapter One - Working Man

I sighed. This was not a good day. Maybe I'd just woken up on the wrong side of the bed. Or maybe my lap was still furious at the coffee I'd accidentally spilled on it this morning. Whatever it was, I didn't really care. My bad moods weren't exactly rare anyway.

I made my way briskly across the gymnasium, which was full of chattering monkeys. I mean teenagers, of course. I'm one to talk, I guess. I'm technically only seventeen years old, but because of my demon blood I have remained this age for eighteen thousand, two hundred and fifty days. That's fifty years. I really don't know why that is, it just sorta… is.

I have rather lengthy hair, and if that isn't enough to surprise you than the color certainly will, if you don't think about it for too long. It's white. Not silver, not blonde. White. And if you're guessing that it's that because of my age, the answer is… I honestly don't know. I myself suspect that it's because of my half dog-demon heritage, but hey, it's up for debate for whoever gives a shit. It hasn't mattered for years now. I dyed it black, and you'll find out why when it comes up.

My eyes are amber colored. Well, they were.

When I was a kid, I got beaten up because of those eyes. Because of that hair. But most of all, I was beaten because of my ears. I haven't got those puny, fleshy, human ears. I have dog-ears. Right on top of my head. They were almost unnoticeable when my hair was lighter, only the pink interior of it gave me away. You see, many years ago, there was a war. The most terrible war that has ever taken place on earth. Many years ago, if I wasn't as strong as I had been, I would have been killed. But that's not why I colored my hair and wear blue contacts. This is why…

Half-demons … are half demon, half human. It's only possible to be a hanyou if your parents were demon and human, like mine were. My mother was mortal, and my full demon father fell in love with her, and I was born. And because of my human half, I become a man on the New Moon. My hair turns black and my eyes become a very natural blue-gray. I'd hide when that happened. No humans needed to know about my weaknesses.

So, In other words, neither the demon side nor the human side accepted us. We were feared by humans, but for a long time they didn't dare defy us. I'm not saying we were powerful, oh no. We were the opposite. The human side was too afraid to challenge us, but just imagine what the full demons had in mind…

They had the power. Demons hated my kind! We were an abomination! How could a human woman and a demon share the love that they had to create a little monster like me? That was always the question. But it never got an answer. It only got a war.

The humans and demons actually came together and formed an alliance. An alliance against us. I still feel the cool trickling of fear running down my spine when I'd read it in the paper back at my flat in Tokyo.

I knew what was next. They would plot to exterminate us, and they would excuse it by telling the world that it was only necessary. That the world didn't need us. For a long time, I'd thought they were right.

But then I realized that I was not going to give in. I was not going to let them kill me. I was a real fighter, I guess you could say.

So we plotted. Every week, I would go to a meeting in the sewers where many of us would hide when we needed to. Every half-demon who was willing to fight for their equality came there.

We planned our methods and actions carefully, but it was difficult when your hope to succeed was fueled by bitterness and hatred. All you wanted to do was fight with them until every last human and demon lay dead at your feet. But those desires quickly became a distant memory for me. At least, half of them did.

… She was so… perfect. So alluring in a way that I will never understand. I met her completely by chance. I was walking down the street in the dead of night, on my way to a meeting. I stopped suddenly.

Somewhere nearby there was a soft sobbing. It was clearly a girl. My ears flicked around in multiple directions, trying to pinpoint the sound. I easily deducted that it was coming from an alleyway not too far ahead. I shoved my hands in my pockets, annoyed with the delay, and followed the noises with haste. What if it was a human trap?

I reached the entrance to the alley and hesitantly peered into the darkness. My rather talented eyes scanned the premises, finding a man. And underneath the man lay a now motionless woman. My blood seemed to boil as I realized what this animal was doing. I made to charge at him, my lip curling and my back hunching slightly.

`But she's human.'

The thought sent a shiver through my whole body. Indeed… she was human. She was part of the cause of my pain! She wasn't on my side, and my loyalties only lay within the confines of my side. Would it be betrayal if I saved her? My honor… would it be shattered?

`Please,' I told myself firmly. `I'm just passing through, no one will know I helped her. And I'll never see the mortal again.'

Without another moment's pause I charged, and in a heartbeat the stranger was on the ground, my clawed fingers curled around his scrawny neck. He looked positively petrified, and I smiled at my accomplishment. But it disappeared as I began to snarl at him. “Get. Going. Bastard.”

I growled low in my throat as the man shakily replied. “Y-you have no business h-here, filthy half-breed!”

Not the answer I was looking for.

I stood, and before he could crawl away I raised my leg and plummeted it back down onto his stomach. He screamed and curled into a tiny ball, but I felt no pity for him. I kicked him in the side, sending him out onto the sidewalk ahead. I let him escape. He wasn't worth what time I had. I was already late for the meeting.

I turned and looked down at where the woman had been on the ground, and was shocked to find it empty. I whirled around and found myself facing her. One half of me told me to run, one half of me told me to stay for just a moment.

I stayed for a moment longer, and it was my undoing.

After that night, I didn't go to a lot of the hanyou meetings.

She and I would meet at a small café close to where she lived. After time, she told me that what had happened in the alley hadn't been the first time. She tended to be stupid and think she could walk alone at night to wherever she needed to be. That's what I thought, at least. So I, being the typical asshole I was, told her my thoughts, but all she did was airily disagree with the stupid part.

I was surprised she didn't get angry. I mean, she was human. How had I had the nerve to say something to that to a human? I think now and I suppose things like that just seemed to slip out when I was around her. And she didn't scold me for them. Not that I would care, anyway, but it was nice to be free to express myself.

We would talk at least four times a week at the café, and she seemed to enjoy it. And, no matter how much I denied it… so did I. We talked about music and art, movies and gossip, we shared funny stories form our pasts, and sad ones. But I always enjoyed it, no matter what we talked about. We could've been talking about setting puppy dogs on fire and I still wouldn't care. It felt so refreshing to talk to someone who wasn't always angry at the world, like the people at the meetings. True, maybe I was one of those people, but this woman was healing me, very slowly. She was showing me that there were still people in this world who saw beauty and hope. And, just maybe, I was becoming one of them.

For a long time, she wouldn't tell me her name. I knew she was only doing it to tease me, but it was positively driving me mad. I'd told her my name! I knew it was only fair that she tell me hers, but no matter how much I begged and argued, she kept her mouth shut. Maybe I was being a bit of a hypocrite. After all, I was hiding things from her, as well. Like the fact that I was a part of a small organization that was planning against her kind. Was I even a part of that anymore?

Many times, I would try and guess the name. And not once did I get it right! I started to wonder if she even had a name…

“Kikyo,” she told me one day while we drank our coffee. I looked at her, utterly perplexed. “Huh?”

“That's my name. I thought you ought to know,” she smiled coyly at me from across the small table. I stared at her blankly for the longest time, before I finally smiled back.

I walked her back to her apartment building later that night. It wasn't far, only about two blocks, but I knew she would somehow land herself in danger if she didn't have someone there to protect her. And that someone was me. I could not have been more willing.

But trust me, there wasn't a moment when I was with her where I hadn't felt completely conflicted. There was so much that was wrong about the mere idea of my feelings for her, but it felt so right. But the war was brewing, I could feel it. It would only be a matter of time before my comrades came looking for me.

I kissed her that night. For the first time. And I'd been pleasantly surprised to find that she'd been kissing right back. I bid her a shy goodbye and left her at the doorstep. I couldn't stop thinking about her all the way home. And my dreams were even better.

The next morning, her apartment building exploded. It was all over the front page of my morning paper. A bomb was dropped at four thirty-five in the morning by plane.

It was a half-demon attack on human living quarters. No survivors.

I destroyed everything around me, from all my furniture to the food in my fridge. By the time I was finished, I was so exhausted and broken that I collapsed in my living room.

For weeks, all I felt was pain. My stomach was always in a gut-wrenching knot, making my hunger non-existent. I didn't eat or sleep or drink. I could barely breath. It was like I was dead.

And I was, on the inside. And once or twice I wished I was completely.

I seriously considered joining an army… but which one? The hanyou army? The one that had taken my life away? Or the humans and demons? The animals who wanted me dead? How would I even manage to get past the security if I chose to fight for them? They would question my reasoning and in the end they'd probably just kill me after my service was complete, right? The hanyous would automatically let me join, I could count on that. But I couldn't fight with them. Not after what they'd done.

I knew Kikyo wouldn't want me near any army, but I couldn't sit around and do nothing while everyone else was being sent into battle. I needed to fight for her, for a human. My decision was made. It was all a matter of how I got past security. My plan came to me in a form so obvious that I still smack my forehead for not realizing it earlier.

So one human year later, on the night of the New Moon, I took several buses to the human base in the northern parts of Japan, and joined their army. My blood tests checked, and for the whole night I remained a human, and passed the rest of the tests with flying colors. About an hour before sunrise, I was finally assigned a single tent. I'd hidden several boxes of black hair-dye and eye-contacts within a multitude of secret pouches in my backpack. I set to work on my disguise early, and as the sun came up, I transformed back into a hanyou. I hurriedly clipped my claws, pinned back my ears, and practiced hiding my fanged smile (which really wasn't all that difficult), and as I checked myself in my mirror one last time, I appeared exactly as I had the previous night.

I made it through.

For ten years.

The war lasted as long, obviously. It was like one big, raging fire that never faded away. It only seemed to get worse and worse. No one will ever know the complexity of what I felt while fighting against my own kind. While killing them. My fellow demon and human troops would gape in awe when I slaughtered so many half-demons so easily. All the humans had guns, and so did I, but most of the time I felt they were completely unnecessary. With the hanyous, it was so easy…

In the very end, our army succeeded, and we had found victory. It was bittersweet. The killing had ended.

I'd only done it for her.

You would think I was trying to make an even-trade: their lives for hers. You are wrong. I'd just been getting back at them, just fulfilling my aching revenge…

Now, back to where I left off.

I made my way across the gymnasium floor, keeping my eyes straight ahead as I listened to the babble of the monkeys.

I was at yet another School Assembly. All the humans were recognizing our bravery for fighting in the war. If you asked me, it was really boring. Like, fall-asleep-standing-up-with-your-eyes-open boring. I mean, I wasn't even a human! Nobody knew this, of course, but fuck, I was sick of all of it. I just wanted to go home and be myself again! I'd be known as one of the very last hanyous left alive after the war. And no one would know what I'd done. I'd be dead if anyone found out, of course.

The noise quieted as my fellow troops and I stood in perfect silence next to the podium. They were all so aged. When I'd first met them at the base, they'd all been in their late teens, at least. And now they sported bushy beards and tangled mustaches. I had no problem growing my own beard. I may still be the same age as I was ten years ago, but ten years of not shaving received the same effects as any mortal man. As such, I appeared around thirty, believe it or not.

A man who I assumed was the school Principal walked onto the floor from a back door and made his way to the lonely podium.

“Students,” he began in what I could tell was going be a sleep-inducing voice. “I welcome you here this morning. We are here today to recognize the bravery of these fine men. These…” he paused to release a roar of a yawn. “ …Are only a handful of the many humans and demons who fought against the terrible hanyou armies. They found victory on the seventeenth of April…”

He drawled on and I didn't need to force myself to tune him out. This was so routine now. I lost count of how many different schools I'd been to. `It'll all be over soon, anyway. This is the last one. They can go without me after this.'

I occupied myself instead with glancing around the stadium aimlessly. Anything was better than listening to this.

My eyes wandered to the students automatically. They all looked the same. A dull black uniform for the boys, and a white sailor blouse with green trimming and a rather risqué matching skirt for the girls. Not that I minded the show…

My eyes fell upon one slim-figured girl in particular, near the front of the bleachers, and my eyes traveled from her creamy thighs to her torso until I caught her face.

My throat closed. I wasn't breathing anymore.

It couldn't be.

It was not possible.

I registered my knees buckling beneath me, but I was too numb to feel myself hit the floor.

I held a final thought before I was enclosed in a cocoon of tingling, icy shock.

`Kikyou… are you alive?'