InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Love Thy Enemy ❯ Chapter 3 ( Chapter 3 )

Love Thy Enemy

 

Chapter 3

 

“You know if you're too weak to be up and walking you should lay down, I could bring you your meals. Course it would be cold since I'd take my time…”

 

“Fuck you Kouga,” Inuyasha growled, massaging his shoulder through the white cotton of his shirt. “It was just a twinge, alright. I'm fine.” Kouga smirked and looked away as the hanyou picked the Tetsusaiga back up from the floor of the training room and cracked his neck.

 

“She really did get you good didn't she?” Kouga asked seriously. Inuyasha looked down at his shoulder. According to the armory his fire-rat had been repaired and would be ready for him tomorrow when Sesshomaru gave him his next assignment. His wound had closed but was still subject to infrequent bouts of pain from the lingering purity power.

 

“Forget it, let's get on with it!” Inuyasha snapped, holding out the Tetsusaiga.

 

“Well then,” Kouga smirked, beckoning him forward, “come on.” Inuyasha nodded and charged, swinging and missing as Kouga leapt back. He briefly touched his feet to the wall and kicked off, spinning his leg forward. Inuyasha backflipped out of the way and raised the Tetsusaiga to block another kick. Kouga reversed the direction to kick with the other foot, catching Inuyasha offguard. The hanyou's head snapped right, and he kept turning, swinging Tetsusaiga out. Kouga cried out as the flat of the blade hit in him in the hip, sending him flipping into the wall.

 

“Holy shit,” Kouga grunted, rubbing the back of his head. “I did not see that coming.”

 

“So I figured,” Inuyasha replied, sheathing Tetsusaiga. “Caught you off your guard huh?”

 

“You got lucky ya dumb mutt!” Inuyasha turned at the voice. A short teenager with an unruly mop of crimson curls smirked at him from beside the door to the room, arms crossed and eyes twinkling. In the doorway was a younger girl in a yellow skirt with a white T-shirt giggling to herself.

 

“Fuck off Shippo!” Inuyasha grumbled.

 

“Watch the mouth, there's a lady present,” Shippo said mockingly, wagging a finger. Inuyasha rolled his eyes but lifted his hand in a half-hearted wave.

 

“Hey Rin,” he called.

 

“Hi,” Rin smiled, waving shyly.

 

“How long have you rugrats been watching?” Kouga asked, standing behind Inuyasha.

 

“Hey, the cut-off limit for being a rugrat is ten years old, and we're way past that,” Shippo protested.

 

“I'm two hundred and thirty-seven years old kid, you're only thirty-six. So you'll always be a rugrat to me,” Kouga snickered. “The cut-off age for rugrats for youkai is a century old, depending on your species.”

 

“So does that mean Inuyasha is a rugrat too?”

 

“Hey!”

 

“Nah, he's just a puppy now.”

 

“Fuck off wolf.”

 

Shippo and Kouga shared a grin as Inuyasha bristled. Rin was making herself busy inspecting the blunted training weapons in the racks by the wall.

 

“Fuck that, I'm still older than you ya little twerp,” Inuyasha grumbled.

 

“Yeah, that just means you're not a rugrat to Kouga but you're an old man to me,” Rin giggled, swinging a kendo stick through the air.

 

“Hey, be careful with that, you get hurt and Sesshomaru will have our asses,” Inuyasha warned. Rin shrugged and slid the weapon back, picking up a wooden spear with a plastic head. Rin was one of the very few humans allowed to wander the grounds as she wished, but she mostly stuck near Shippo. She was officially under Sesshomaru's care until he found a human city that took in war refugees, and since he lived and worked at the camp, she had to stay on the grounds.

 

“So did you come here just to bug us or there some other reason we're putting up with you?” Kouga asked.

 

“Yeah yeah, Kagura said there's some foreign guy to see you Kouga, Ban Coat Smoke or something,” Shippo shrugged.

 

“Bankotsu?” Kouga asked dryly.

 

“That sounds about right,” Shippo nodded. “He's in your office.”

 

“Whatever, I'll be there in a few. Get outta here so I can finish kicking the puppy's ass in peace.”

 

“You wish,” Inuyasha growled, glaring. Kouga smirked. The two of them had maintained a sort of friendly rivalry for the last few decades. Inuyasha wasn't entirely sure what it was about Kouga that got to him. Maybe it was some latent inu-instinct towards other canines, he had no clue. Kouga was nice enough, they were almost friends at times, but something about him just made him snarl. Shippo…well he was just a brat, being a kitsune Inuyasha figured it was just in his nature.

 

“Later,” Shippo shrugged, ducking out of the room.

 

“Bye,” Rin waved, jogging after him.

 

“Keep yourself clean kid,” Inuyasha called after her. The two teenagers gone, Kouga rolled his eyes.

 

“What's she still doing around here anyway, I thought Sesshomaru was trying to find a human city to take her,” he muttered.

 

“Yeah, but she's a refugee, most of the cities are shying away from taking them in because of some political shit,” Inuyasha explained. Kouga snorted. Rin - they didn't know her last name - had come to them only three years ago, found by a koumori youkai at the now abandoned home of what had once been a meeting place for youkai sympathizers. By Tsukuyomaru's own horrified testimony, the once luxurious estate had been nearly burned to the ground by dark miko energy and the people inside, at least several dozen, had been slaughtered. Rin had been found half-dead and covered in blood, hers and those of her companions, in the dining room.

 

After nursing her back to health and having to convince her to speak again, Rin, then only twelve years old, had latched onto Sesshomaru's arm during one of his visits to the infirmary. To Inuyasha's surprise his elder brother did nothing more than quietly command her to let go, and she listened. Since then, Sesshomaru had taken over her guardianship while he attempted to find a human city willing to take in a girl orphaned by the hands of the miko. So far, it wasn't going well. But Rin had adjusted quickly enough and once she realized Sesshomaru wasn't around all the time she attached herself to Shippo and he agreed to look out for her with a bemused expression on his face. Inuyasha rarely saw the two of them without the other anymore.

 

“Sesshomaru can't have her running around here forever, there's gotta be a city somewhere,” Kouga insisted.

 

“Well like I said the neutral ones don't want her, and there's no way in hell a miko city will take her. What's he supposed to do?”

 

“Like I know, I'm just saying.”

 

“Yeah yeah,” Inuyasha grunted, drawing the Tetsusaiga. “We gonna finish or what?”

 

“Thought you'd never ask,” Kouga grinned, raising his fists.

 

- - - - - - - - - -

 

“That still doesn't make sense,” Sesshomaru shook his head and tapped his chin, setting the paperwork back on his desk. “Even if they knew there was a delivery that night there is no reason it should have stood out from any other delivery around the area. The shippers were human and we used human contacts to place the order.”

 

“A lucky guess?” Kagura shrugged from the front of his desk.

 

“You know I don't believe in luck, Kagura,” Sesshomaru snorted. “No, somehow they must have been informed of our hand in the delivery. Fortunately the shipment was received and undamaged.” Sesshomaru picked up another paper and studied it. “According to the armory every weapon was accounted for. This is one crate of artillery the miko shall not be getting their hands on.”

 

“As if they could use youkai weapons anyway,” Kagura reminded, picking up the paperwork for the delivery Inuyasha had overseen the other day. The shipment of youki-powered swords from Thailand had been a boon to their army. Sure, the youkai swordsmiths were crafting and enchanting weapons around the clock, but they could only do so much. Currently only the elite and best ranked members of the youkai forces were given such blades. If Sesshomaru had his way, even the lowest and more inexperienced fighter would hold one before the year was done. A lofty goal but one he believed could be achieved.

 

“We've heard rumors some of the dark mikos can, and even if they can't they could still keep the weapons from us,” Sesshomaru explained. “But that is irrelevant, what matters not is what the shipment was but how they were informed of it.”

 

“Perhaps an informant?” Kagura asked. Sesshomaru's eyes darkened. Spies were a regular nuisance in this war, as one would expect them to be in any other. The only problem with youkai spies is that they could smell when one was lying. Thus it was almost impossible to get a spy into the youkai militia. It was one of the few advantages they had over the miko.

 

“I should think that was unlikely, but now I am not so sure,” Sesshomaru admitted. “The shipment was placed through the armory, to myself, and I ordered Inuyasha through you to oversee the delivery. Thus it must have been one of the humans who betrayed us.”

 

“That's probable, you know how cowardly they can be.”

 

“Indeed. Call all of them and tell them to come to me tomorrow. I shall interview all of them in great detail.”

 

“Yes Sesshomaru,” Kagura nodded, making a note of her boss' order on her clipboard. She was more or less the only employee in the militia to get away with calling Sesshomaru by name, well, her and his brother. She knew she only got away with it because of her past romantic involvement with the youkai, but more than that he respected her. Kagura was only a hanyou, a wind-youkai, and she had worked hard her entire life to crawl up from the slum her mother lived in. When her mother had died and her sister Kanna was lost in a sea of legal red tape, Kagura had vowed to earn her back and done a lot of things towards that goal.

 

She had done a lot of things she wasn't proud of to get into a community college, many of them Sesshomaru knew about and just as many she'd rather he not. Between swiping money from her job as a street vendor to slipping a wallet or two from the pockets of strangers, Kagura had skirted back and forth over the legal line in her attempt to prove herself to the world. She wasn't some lowly half-breed whore from a slut of a mother and a savage rapist of a father. She was Kagura Ichiro, and if it cost her every shred of sanity she possessed she was going to ingrain that name on the mind of those that had sneered down their noses at her.

 

She had met Sesshomaru trying to pick his pocket in the parking lot of the shopping center near her vendor area. He had promptly grabbed her arm and asked her to tell him why he should let her keep it. Kagura had ripped herself away from him and refused to explain herself. This was during the truce but the sight of two arguing youkai still drew attention. Sesshomaru at that time had been involved in a high-profile investment firm, and once someone recognized him and started snapping pictures on their camera-phone he had grudgingly asked for Kagura's silence over his outburst. Kagura's price was a job, or she told the press she had almost lost her arm to him.

 

It had taken her a lot of work to stop earning glares from the youkai on the first day she entered his office as his new secretary, but she had won him over in time and worked her way from his office into his bedroom. At first it had been something that happened in the heat of the moment, which Kagura considered turning into an opportunity to advance her goals of power and respect. But despite his initial disgust for her, Sesshomaru had done much for her and she couldn't bring herself to betray him. Once again Sesshomaru demanded her silence over her night in his bed - Kagura's price this time, with a smirk on her ruby lips, had been a second night. And then a third. And eventually a forth until she didn't even have to ask anymore. When the war had begun the sexual side of their relationship ended, but not their professional one.

 

“Is there anything else?” Sesshomaru asked, bringing her out of her nostalgic haze.

 

“Yes,” Kagura slid a slip of yellow paper into his sight. “You got another complaint about Rin, this time she was playing with some sensitive equipment in the infirmary.”

 

“Was anything damaged?” Sesshomaru was almost bored as he began filling out the appropriate spaces on the paper.

 

“Not that I was told.”

 

“Well that's something,” Sesshomaru sighed, handing her back the paper. “That girl needs to learn to keep her hands at her sides and away from dangerous things.”

 

“It's that kitsune, Shippo or something, he dares her to do all those things,” Kagura explained. “He is a kitsune, it's in his nature to be mischievous and at the amount of time she spends with him Rin's going to become a kitsune herself someday.”

 

“Well I can't exactly forbid them to play,” Sesshomaru muttered. “The kitsune is the only one here besides myself and Inuyasha that Rin has taken a shine to. He may not be the best guardian but at least she has someone to watch out for her, and Inuyasha and myself are both too busy to baby-sit.”

 

“Play? She's fifteen and he's thirty-six, in human terms Shippo's old enough to be her father,” Kagura said.

 

“And in youkai terms Shippo just grew out of suckling his thumb,” Sesshomaru corrected. “And factor in he's a kitsune, and they're both a pair of childish troublemakers. They may be teenagers but that just means they know when they're annoying and just don't care.”

 

“True,” Kagura smiled as she remembered the first time she had seen Rin laugh when Shippo impersonated Sesshomaru as a prank on Inuyasha. “Remember when she first came here, so innocent and eager to learn about our kind?”

 

“Sadly, no,” Sesshomaru shook his head. “Our kind is not something she needs to be aware of. This war has already taken her family and her home. I'd rather not see it take her spirit too.”

 

“How sentimental, Sesshomaru,” Kagura chuckled softly. “I only ever thought you were that protective with me.”

 

“Do not be coy with me woman,” he growled. “You and I are no longer involved in such a way. This is a different matter entirely. Rin has a youthful and vibrant spirit inside her. I'd rather not see it taken away by the harsh realities of life. The last thing Rin needs in her life is more death and chaos.”

 

“I have to agree,” Kagura looked over her clipboard. “There's a few more approval forms to fill out.”

 

“Well?” Sesshomaru asked, holding out his hand. Kagura passed him the papers and he quietly began signing them.

 

Sorry for the late update, was busy finishing Displacement's final chapter to get it out in time for its 1-year anniversary.

 

Keep your eyes on Rin, dear readers. I'm taking her as a character in a new direction and have much in store for her.