InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Good Twin, Evil Twin ❯ Chapter Eight ( Chapter 8 )

Chapter Eight

When Inuyasha reached the head of the staircase, he was met with, by of all things, a heavy, wooden door. On one side - his side - it was rough and abused. On the other side - which he saw through its sliver-wide crack - it appeared to be finished and well kept as if to blend into a wall. He stuck the blade of his weapon through the crevice to spy with its shiny metallic reflection who or what might have been hiding thereabout. He was at once relieved and at once disturbed by the fact that the hallway beyond was empty. Again, with the leverage of the blade through the crevice, he pried open the door. He could have used the knob but he preferred the old-fashioned, silent way.

Beyond it, from the doorway to the passage, that place - whatever it was he stumbled into - was bright and very utterly quiet. At first there seemed to be no surveillance cameras but he did not let that cloud his judgment. The smell of Naraku was strong and he knew, all too well he knew, that ancient demon did not need human technology to oversee the workings of his lair.

He tiptoed about the tile work of the floor, advancing through the corridor one doorway at a time. All of the entryways were locked - he tried their knobs but they would not turn - but he did not need to see through them to know they were the hallmark of an office building. Now what he wanted to know was the building's name, its location, its address. He searched for signs detailing the identities of the offices and who owned them, who worked them. But the entire location was Spartan with only the minutest of details: not numbers, not letters were etched upon the doors to differentiate one from the next.

From one end of the hallway to another, he searched and found a stairwell. He entered into the shaft of dark and shadowy concrete steps as soon as he gleaned that opening the door would not sound an alarm. Most of the newer buildings forced their tenants to use the elevators and leave the stairs for emergency use only. But that stairwell was not alarmed and he wondered too late if it was a good idea to be taking it for it could have been well used by the building's inhabitants. But it was a risk to be taken. He looked up and saw the steps continued through several other floors, spiraling into a point of singular absolute void. He climbed; the air becoming hot and humid and the smell of Naraku thickening into the verge of being overbearing.

After ten floors ascending through that stairwell became too dangerous. While the basement levels were quietly abandoned the upper levels were full of bustling activity. Also: he could not sense the presence of Inukotsu within the shaft anymore.

Reaching the last floor of the tenuous climb, he pressed his body against the level's entryway and listened. He heard people conversing in low, rhythmic tones whose words were muffled by distance and by whisper. He pressed the handlebar easy and gently that the locking mechanism would not click - and once unlocked he looked through the crack he formed between the door and the wall. To the right he saw the silhouettes of two people further into the passage near the bend of the corridor. To the left he did not see anything dangerous.

He opened the crevice further, carefully tucking his sword into jacket such that if he were spotted he would not be thought of as being too threatening. He stepped through the crevice into the hallway and with the same ease and gentility he let the doorway slide itself shut. His eyes did not leave the visage of the silhouettes at the end of the passage until that entryway was closed. Right then and there he looked back: where once he did not see danger now he saw that the corridor terminated only a few feet away and he found himself staring into the floor's restroom.

And at that moment, heart-racing and palms-sweating, he heard and saw those faraway, distant shadows moving toward him.

Inuyasha ran into the bathroom - the male bathroom - bolted into its first unoccupied stall and shut its partition. There was already a man within the facility, at the urinal, but his attention was neither focused nor bothered by the half-demon's intrusion. It was at that instant that he two unseen but heard shadows entered the restroom; the strangers continued their conversation as they approached adjacent urinals.

He peered through the gaps along the sides of the stall. He could not see the men's faces - only the backs of their heads - but what there was to see of them was enough. He should have known it by the fragments of the coded words they had been speaking throughout. He should have known it by the stench of Naraku's miasma that would be lethal to all, ordinary humans. It was obvious, it was clear and simple, and there it was, staring back at him through the cracks into which he gazed: the men who entered and the man who had been there already were demons.

Their ears betrayed the shape of their heritage.

He stayed there, still and quiet, watching through the makeshift peephole. He waited for the men to turn and pass by his field of view; he could not recognize them but they were definitely and undeniably demons, their eyes were a deep, glowing red and their faces were too unnaturally young.

When he was alone and certain the male demons were far enough away, he snuck out of the bathroom and slunk back into the hallway.

He explored about the floor. He noted the doors were not locked but decided not to venture through them unless it was to hide. Again he saw no signs of video surveillance but decided, too, not to be that bold and reckless.

Quite suddenly and without expecting it he discovered the lobby. Remaining by the far, distant corner of the passage he looked intermittently toward that portion of the corridor with the guard and the elevators.

The elevator opened and what appeared to be a man entered into the lobby. It seemed to be a human, bald-headed, wearing a ragged jacket and looking very much emotionally-unbalanced. He nodded at the guard who was demonic and who let him pass without a word. The guard pressed a button under the table behind which he sat as the man filed past him through the hallway toward Inuyasha's direction.

Inuyasha withdrew; he held onto a doorknob just in case he needed to get out of the way fast. The man, though, stopped before he could be spotted. He looked again through the corner of the passage. He saw the human fumble with a keychain holding ten keys; he watched the man enter a door whose nameplate was marked `H'. Just as quickly as he opened it he shut it behind. Even through the wall he heard the man sigh and felt the human's distress working through his system. There was something wrong about him. But what caught the half-demon's attention more than anything was the scents of Naraku and the traces of blood - human blood - and the hints of death - human death - that clung onto that man's skin.

What was that place? What was happing there?

Gazing into the hallway he was relieved to see the guard left his post. He rushed into the lobby and swiveled the guard's chair from the desk to the elevator. He pressed the button that opened its door and slid the chair onto that boundary between the passage's floor and the elevator's floor.

Satisfied with the setup, he backtracked through the floor running along with swift, long strides. He reached the stairwell, sauntered up to the floor above and then, following similar twists and turns, reached a new yet familiar lobby. Like the floor beneath there was a guard sitting at a table before the elevator. It was not the only demon he had had a close encounter with throughout that level but it was the only demon he purposely approached.

Without making a sound he ran and jumped onto the table. The guard was surprised: he stood but fumbled and fell aback onto the seat. Demon and chair together crashed against the wall and slumped into the floor. It would have been comical if Inuyasha had been in a good mood; such as it was, he rapped the scabbard of his weapon across the head of the guard and knocked him out, clean and cold.

Upon the tabletop was a clipboard with a paper clamped into its jaw. The document listed names - none of which he recognized - with check marks and time stamps. The demon-guard had been keeping track of who was coming into and out of the level and when. The paper, though, was scant; it neither revealed the name of the building nor its address. And it gave no indication of just what was happening there. But it did not matter.

He approached the elevator and with all of his might opened its door. The ceiling of the car was just a few feet below the bottom of the floor. A simple jump and he was upon it.

Inuyasha did not wait long - the guard of the lobby one flood below returned and noticed the change. As soon as the chair was removed the elevator was shut. He could hear it happening but he could not see it happening. He could not see very much at all for he could not see through the elevator car itself.

The shaft, though, was not pitch-black. There were lights throughout the length of the walls - blue, soft light - spread about one bulb per ten feet. The eerie, smoky luminance was dull yet bright enough that he eked out the visual details of the roof of the car. What he need to find was the access hatch; and after a quick search he found it but instead of sliding it away he ripped it away like opening a tin can. Beneath it was the tile of the elevator's inner ceiling. He stuck his sword into the tile, pulled it off and slid it out of the way. Just like that the whole of the inside of the car could be seen and the light within illuminated into the shaft. He saw the panel - the buttons were not far - he could have jumped into the elevator but that would have been too dangerous. Instead he reached with his weapon and with its tip he pressed the up most button. The button of the eightieth floor.

The cables tensed, the gears heaved and the car ascended. He slid the tile back and retreated onto the center of the ceiling of the elevator. He could have sworn the panel contained buttons beyond the eightieth floor but from that vantage point he could not touch them even if he saw them, even if they existed. While he would be going up, he reasoned, he would not be going up to the very top. And he knew whatever secret the building hid it was contained within its apex.

Before skyscrapers, before war, before Japan opened itself into the world, there had been castles and battlements and towers. At their apexes, far removed from the normal, everyday population, demons lurked. Rarely, if ever, they left those lofty abodes on high and if they did it was amid the cover of the night. It was safer to be higher: one could be better prepared and fortified if one could be that inaccessible.

And when skyscrapers were introduced demons found them to be the perfect retreat and they setup roof top societies with their own, secret laws and customs - complete and parallel civilizations - until Naraku infected into them.

At last the elevator stopped and its door opened. Naturally, no one left, no one entered. But Inuyasha did not have the time to contemplate anything about the situation. He searched around the shaft and found an indentation carved into the wall: it was wide enough to allow a man to be within it, safely removed and out of the way of the elevator. It was then and there that he discovered the iron-rung ladder like the kind he encountered within the tunnel under the manhole.

Through the dim, azure light he saw an impossible number of floors above yet to be reached. And without another thought he started going up with all of his speed. He climbed keeping his sword secure along his belt: he could not afford to lose the mystical weapon stuck in that precarious location. Keeping his eyes focused upon the task he could not tell how many floors he passed from one moment to the next. And like a sleeper caught within the trap of nightmare he felt he did not climb fast enough.

The ladder ended.

Inuyasha looked up and saw the machinery of cables and pulleys - and counterweights - that marked the very top of the elevator shaft. Suddenly and unexpectedly he was shocked by a rush of adrenaline as the facts of the situation crashed into his mind. He was a thousand feet above the ground, in a hot and humid unlit shaft. The smell of Naraku was choking-thick and deadened, muffled his motion - there was just that little oxygen left within the atmosphere. And there amid the void he reached the end of the tunnel. There was no where to go, no where to go.

He looked left - there was a door but it was shut and from that position it was inaccessible. He looked right - and smiled, breath taking and heart racing with relief - for above the ladder, right above the last, iron rung, there was the grating of a ventilation shaft.

It was a thin, wire mesh and it collapsed with a punch. He let it, the debris, fall through the elevator shaft. The echo of it hitting rock bottom did not come even into his ears. And now that the vent was clear it was time to enter.

He dug the claws of his left hand into the metal of the elevator shaft and with that leverage climbed onto the top-rung of the ladder. With his right hand he slid his weapon into the vent - its tunnel was level and straight as far as his vision penetrated into the void. He eased his head and upper-body into the hole, pushing himself as deep into the tunnel as the grip of his imbedded claws afforded.

He slunk waist-deep into the ventilation shaft when he dug into the thin, metal sheet of its tunnel with his right hand - with its four, remaining claws. Lifting his left knee onto the wall of the elevator shaft, he jumped with his right leg and managed to slither that leg into the tunnel. Holding as tight as possible he walked his left hand from the wall to the hole and tore that set of claws into the ventilation shaft. From that point more digging and more pushing brought that other leg - and the rest of his body - into the tunnel.

Safe, as safe as anyone could be inside Naraku's lair, Inuyasha felt re-awakened, re-invigorated and he crawled forward into the light.

That light was coming through a vent along the floor of a junction into which the tunnel emptied. The junction was about the size of a closet, profusely corded and tightly cramped, its floor triangularly shaped. On the long-wall, on its base, was that wide thin grating. The adjacent walls, ninety-degrees apart, were the two shafts, the one through which he passed and the other that seemed to be shorter. Peering into it, he found that it was a vertical tunnel with another iron-rung ladder.

Again he secured his weapon, again he climbed the ladder up to its top. There he discovered another triangular junction. Its orientation was twisted, though, as if reflected through a mirror. Still, like the previous junction there was nowhere to go but through the adjacent opening, the other tunnel ninety-degrees askew.

He noticed his movements were slow and sluggish as the Naraku-infested miasma thickened like smog within his lungs -so, to catch his breath, he stopped from time to time and looked through the side-gratings.

The first room appeared to be a lobby. It was impressively large, impossibly huge; though its true dimensions could not be fathomed from that vantage point. He could not see the ceiling itself but he could see it was propped by white, marble columns. The floor, too, was marble composed of green and while patina. The texture of the walls was obscured by the dim, dull light of torches and masked by the dark, full-length fabrics of curtains. Beyond it was the suggestion of elevators and the suggestion of someone - or something - standing before them holding a weapon.

He continued through the tunnel and found the second room. It was smaller and brighter than the first room and, by the looks of it, it seemed to be a waiting room. The floor was still that green, white marble. The walls were a stately, wooden paneling with marble trimming. The ceiling was wooden, too, with modern and elegant fixtures.

And there, upon a grand and sweeping desk by an equally regal and impressive set of doors sat the secretary.

On the telephone, she spoke: “You already know what Mr. Onigumo has to say about Captain Takeshi's performance last night.” The voice was a mixture of annoyed and indifferent; it was arrogant and familiar.

The figure, obviously the secretary herself, swiveled the leatherback chair and faced the wooden seats of the waiting room. Cast under the dead, gray fluorescence her colors were muted but her identity could not be denied: it was Kagura, the telephone in one hand, the fan in the other cooling herself.

The doors opened and - was it possible? Inuyasha blinked, his blood running cold through his veins. But how did he survive?

It was Kohaku, grown-up and older, yet looking young - and innocent - like the boy he promised Sango he would not harm.

Kohaku sat upon a chair and wrapped about his hands the chain of a sharp, pointed weapon while Kagura's red, demonic eyes stared onto its sharp, jagged tip.

Careful not to be loud, Inuyasha crawled further and discovered the third and last room.

The spider's web.

He saw Naraku naked behind a desk. Behind him was a wall of black whose texture was imperceptible and whose form was impenetrable. Everything, everywhere, was wrapped in shadows and darkness yet there was light washing upon the demon's visage - the light came from a point in the middle of the chamber and not from a window. Indeed, then and there he realized that throughout his adventure he had not seen a single, solitary window anywhere.

There was Kanna - an older, teenaged incarnation of Kanna - as emotionless as ever. Dressed in deceptive white and holding a circular mirror she aimed its glass at Naraku. The ancient spider looked into it, utterly transfixed, perversely fascinated by whatever it was he watched.

In his wild and reckless youth he would have crashed through the wall - the old Inuyasha was thoughtless, the new Inuyasha was wiser. He had to be. Things were different. In the modern world he had to be careful the way he used his powers, especially his sword's powers, since most of the demons he faced from time to time had attacks of their own - meaning that if battles involved the use of mutual, mystical attacks they would have been long, violent and very noticeable to onlookers. To human onlookers.

To conform into society and to preserve their anonymity, demons relied upon the quick and dirty methods of the sword more often that not. For that reason he sharpened Tetsaiga and learned the art and discipline of the sword. Thus better judgment and training forbade him to jump into the fray haphazardly without a plan.

He continued through the passage until it terminated at a region of bright, intense light. It was at the site of another ventilation grating - he punched it free and it tumbled into the sky out of sight and out of mind. At last, at long last, there was a window and looking through it he understood that Naraku's lair was among the tallest buildings of Tokyo. Across was a tower with a flat, featureless roof two hundred feet shorter. To the left and to the right were other buildings of various heights well below the vertical limit of Naraku's empire.

He poked his head through the shaft, relishing the cool, unpolluted air. Again he was energized and invigorated. Yet he did not continue, he lingered for a long, endless moment to inhale the panorama of the scene.

A battle with Naraku would not be feasible that deep within the spider-mind's territory. Kohaku would be a problem. Kagura might be impelled to interfere. And what about Inukotsu - she was not dead - and he cold not sense where she was through the fog of Naraku's miasma.

But what did they matter? What he wanted - it was not a fight, it was information.

He backtracked through the passage and discovered another one of those tiny, triangular junctions. It led into a ladder; it led onto a level he assumed to be just above the ceiling of Naraku's office. There, through the tunnel, he crawled until he came upon a portion of the shaft where light, faint and eerie, seeped up through a grating from Kanna's mirror to his face.

What luck! he thought as he started below directly above Kanna.

Inuyasha punched through the grating - it tumbled away straight onto Kanna's head - and without a second thought he jumped into the hole, unsheathing his weapon while falling. There was not as much as a shriek when Kanna was knocked unconscious - she just collapsed like a rag-doll. Like a cat he landed onto his feet with his sword pointed into Naraku's face.

He approached the spider-demon.

“Inuyasha,” Naraku taunted in that low, deliberate tone of voice. The syllables slithered across his lips with an ageless hate and fury. “How nice of you to drop on in.” The head and torso of the naked figure leaned over the desk and laughed.

“I'll take care of this once and for all!” shouted a woman.

Inuyasha turned just in time - he hit Inukotsu's blade with his own.

“Time to finish what I started,” snarled the half-demon as he kicked at the woman's chest. He withdrew, across the desk, from one side of the office to the other all the while Naraku laughed. That area of the room was absolute pitch-black; he imagined it would be impossible that anything about the universe could be blacker.

Inuyasha continued his retreat as Inukotsu continued her attack, tricking her into following him away from Naraku. When he judged they were far enough from the arachnid he swung and she withdrew. He kicked her knee. She stumbled but dodged his blow. Now he took advantage of the reversal, advancing and striking hard and fast all the while she could not think and strategize as she was busy meeting his sword-strokes and keeping herself from stumbling.

“Inuyasha. You know I did not hold a grudge against you,” continued Naraku. The sides of his mouth were transforming from human form to insect like quality. Mandibles, pinching and salivating, protruded through his lips along those places his teeth used to be. “My fight was not against you, I only wanted the jewel.”

Inuyasha ignored Naraku, it was pointless to debate with the spider-mind. He needed all of his powers focused onto the fight. He wanted to finish the brother-sister pair. As long as one lived while the other died it would be personal.

With his sword and his skill Inuyasha brought Inukotsu back into that space by the desk. It was not where he wanted to be, though, that close with Naraku. He broke his advance and circled her body about ninety-degrees until he and Naraku formed a straight line with her in the middle of it - she took advantage of the opportunity to strike but he anticipated that move and met her blade with his own.

“You should have joined with me when I gave you the chance. You could have ruled over these humans like your father. But you chose to join with them to wallow with them through their filth. And now look at you, Inuyasha, you reek.”

Inuyasha and Inukotsu neared and pressed their bodies into each other's sides with their arms holding their swords interlocked through a fearsome struggle - she cursed and he growled and just once, then and there, decided to try one attack.

“You will not destroy Kagome! Wind scar!” At that command Tetsaiga grew into its proper size and it caught Inukotsu off-balance as its blade sliced and stabbed into her flesh. She stumbled aback more shocked than bleeding. The wound was deep, not enough to kill only enough to disorient. He dropped the weapon and grabbed the demon by her neck and her waist - he raised her body over his head and for the first time Naraku showed an emotion beside mere arrogant smugness.

The half-demon threw her toward Naraku - onto what he imagined to be the wall behind Naraku. But it was not a wall, it was a curtain, and when Inukotsu crashed into it she smashed through the windows beneath the covers. Instantly she found herself launched two thousand feet above the streets of Tokyo. She shrieked as she fell out of the sky.

Inuyasha grabbed his weapon - that shrunk back into its relaxed state - and trained his eyes onto the spider-demon: now that there was light he saw Naraku, all of Naraku.

He realized why the monster lived in darkness and shadow. The Naraku he once knew at least kept the form of a man; but the Naraku he now saw was a creature so absorbed with so many of the country's demons that he could no longer contain his body entirely within one, single shape. There was a human-like head, a human-like torso with arms and legs. But coming out of his back there were tentacles, throbbing and winding. And budding out of his unnaturally thin, insect like waist there were four large, round masses like the abdomens of spiders hairy and bristling. There were other, unspeakable forms of flesh, heaving and pulsating, that looked as if they were melting out of solid shape into liquid goop. Parts of one thing that were assembling into parts of another thing as the demon constantly reworked itself.

At the base it grew roots into the substance of the floor - Naraku was not only too large to move about freely but just to stand upright immoveable he had to be fixed into the floor.

“And I reek. I'm normal compared to you,” Inuyasha sneered. “This is power, Naraku? You think you rule this world when you can't even walk around in it -”

“I don't have to patrol my territory - like dogs have to patrol theirs - my web is every where and I feel its every move.”

“Enough bullshit - ”

“Yes, yes. You are here because you know of my plan. Because you deciphered just a small, little portion of it. From that news conference - oh, heh, heh, heh - Captain Takeshi and his detectives will be getting what's coming to them. You should have joined with me when I gave you the chance. Fool! What are these humans to you?”

“I know what you're after and I'll never let you harm Kagome.”

“Me? Me, harm Kagome? Never -”

“You're behind the murdering of those girls. You're trying to find her and kill her.”

Naraku allowed himself a smile - and the rows of the teeth froze Inuyasha's blood.

“And I thought you might have grown wiser with age. Fool, you think you've protected her from me - you've led me to her. I knew she was not of that time but I did not know of when she came. Centuries my agents worked, searching through the countryside for a girl with her looks, with her features that I remembered exactly. Yet, even now, I could not be sure she was of this time. Now, now, I know she's here, Inuyasha.”

Naraku laughed and Inuyasha growled - could it have been a trap to get him to say, directly or indirectly, that Kagome was alive at that place and time?

“Damn you!”

“In this world, what happens that I cannot see? What secrets it hides that I do not know? She'll be found, sooner or later, and she'll be killed. And you're going to watch just like I watched my Kikyo die.”

“Asshole! I'll destroy you!

“Hah, hah, hah! As long as there is evil, Naraku lives!”

Inuyasha rushed into Naraku with his sword fully enlarged. He jumped onto the desk and the spider-demon grew a tentacle out of its chest and swatted him away like a fly. The half-demon fell against his ribs, awake and alert but dazed.

“I told you I get stronger with time! Heh, heh, heh, Kagura bought you time but she could not stop my Kohaku from coming to my rescue.”

“Huh?” Inuyasha whimpered. He stood at the corner between the collapsed curtains revealing the broken windows and Naraku's monstrous and ungodly visage. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he saw Kohaku under the slant of the daylight, approaching and unfurling his weapon.

Inuyasha growled, again, with his sword pointed toward Naraku's face. He ran and landed atop the desk - at that moment Kohaku's weapon soared through the air - with a move as fast as lightning he jump from the table to the top of Naraku's head. It was just a moment and it was just far enough away that the point of Kohaku's weapon only lightly pierced into his arm when it struck against his flesh - he cursed though he knew it could have been worse for the spike had been aimed at his chest. It tore into his flesh as it embedded itself into his arm like a hornet's stinger - he shouted almost falling off of his precarious perch.

Kohaku jerked the chain - Inuyasha jumped, breaking Naraku's neck bone. The spider-demon continued to laugh even as its head went limp. The combined motion of the jerk and the jump forced the blade free of Inuyasha's arm, producing a twisted, deep gash. But he did not stop and look as he landed atop the framework of the windows. With another leap he was airborne and headed onto the roof of the building nearby, two hundred feet below.

“Let him go,” Naraku spoke as his head resumed its stature upon his neck, its bones regenerating themselves. “He'll lead us to her.”