InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Movie House Hanyou ❯ Disrupted Möbius ( Chapter 9 )

A/N: warning - this chapter contains shounen-ai… aka an Inuyasha/Miroku lime

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Inuyasha arrived at his house later that evening to find his best friend sitting on his front steps smoking a clove cigarette.

It had become humid again after the strange weather, the tornado-thunderstorm, and he'd driven the entire way home with all the windows open and the sunroof as well, and he could smell that clove smoke from about two blocks away. He'd only been mildly surprised to find his friend to be the one smoking it as he walked around from the garage to the front step where Miroku sat with the black thing notched between two fingers, almost dejectedly watching the meager traffic.

Miroku looked up and towards him as he heard him approach. Inuyasha barely glanced at him as he took his keys into both hands to find the house key, a snorted huff being his only acknowledgement of his seated presence there. The sweetness of the cig was making his mouth water. If Miroku still has his common sense, he better share that with me, he grumpily thought.

"Get the fuck inside," came his hollow order as he got his front door unlocked and halfway open. "Now." And he was inside, Miroku only then straightening himself into full posture and following him into the house.

Rather than barrage his friend with the rants currently boiling inside his head, he furiously unbuttoned his work shirt and removed it, along with his belt, as he walked toward the staircase up to the second level.

Miroku, rather than waiting for his friend to ask, dug out his Djarum Blacks pack and pulled out another clove and stuck it behind his ear, his current clove only half used-up. He sat down on the couch in the main room for a couple minutes and decided to get very, very comfortable, knowing his friend would be back when he was good and ready.

Upstairs, the half-clothed hanyou became even more unclothed as he stripped himself of his slacks and footwear, including his socks. Strolling nearly naked and barefoot across the hardwood floor to his large closet with the sliding door, he pushed open the door and dug around in the far left corner until he found a long, heavy silk kimono of black with gold embroidered details and black satin trim along the cuffs and the lapel area. The exotic oriental design depicted a highly detailed yet noticeably repetitive scene of heavily shadowed Chinese buildings and workers tending to chores such as gathering water, trees and flowers about everywhere.

It looked like something a classy older man of high stature might wear as a smoking jacket or a house robe in classic Hollywood movies, almost. The kind of movie character who would also be smoking tobacco from a thin, stylish cigarette jammed delicately into the end of one of those long… mouthpiece thingies. Kinda like the thing Cruella DeVille used when smoking her cigs. He didn't give a hinezumi's ass what the actual term for that thing was, as much of a smoker as he was, so he didn't bother to remember it. He just knew how it fit into that visual.

He removed it from the hanger and slipped it on, despite the warmth. After that, he took out his tongue retainer and replaced it with a plain barbell, also putting his lip rings back in as well. Then he went into another room to gather some… equipment. He needed a visual to get his point across.

Downstairs, Miroku turned his head at the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs to gather in the sight of Inuyasha in the black and gold kimono with its broad trim, his feet bare, a 700 year old sword at his hip and a wooden post standee/tripod in his hands. Miroku cracked a smirk as he noticed the out-of-place, clashing Akira cap still planted firmly on the silver-coiffed figure's head.

As Inuyasha set up the post, he kept his back toward Miroku but spoke directly to him.

"I wasn't shittin' ya when I warned you about touching her," he said as he adjusted the height and fiddled with the tripod's three separate, adjustable legs, "just so you know--"

"It was a handshake, Inuyasha!" Miroku cried out defensively as he took another drag on his clove and then held the smoke in, closing his eyes to revel in the sickly sweet bliss of the spices that hit his nose.

"I didn't say there was anything wrong about shaking hands with her, you fucknut! It's, I know you rarely can keep your hands to yourself, you know, and so before you allow yourself to get too friendly with her--"

"How was I supposed to know she was the girl you'd told me about, anyway?" Miroku interrupted him again in a catty voice after he let out the smoke from earlier. "You're so touchy--"

"And you're so touchy-feely!" Inuyasha snapped back as he finished with the post and centered it, his head turned back over his shoulder to look at his best friend, who didn't seem to be taking him seriously enough at the moment. He rose and turned, coming forward, his sheathed sword still at his hip, hanging from the Western-style belt-loop that was attached to the side of his kimono where a narrow sash was meant to be used, swinging slightly with each of his steps.

Miroku rolled his eyes and smiled. "I can't help it if my hands have a mind of their own at times," he replied with a shrug. "Anyway, the point is," he continued on, pointing a finger at Inuyasha, who now stood before him, "I feel my behavior towards her was nothing for you to bitch about, especially considering I had no idea who she was, so if you don't mind getting onto a topic less like a lifeless-beaten horse…." he trailed off as he saw the less than pleasant expression on his friend's face.

"You fuckin' hit on her!" Inuyasha growled out.

"Stop being unreasonable, already."

"I saw and heard it all from behind you guys," the unreasonable hanyou huffed.

There was a pause, a moment during which neither male spoke.

"'Yash, can I ask you something?" Miroku softly sputtered out, trying to change the subject.

"Give me that clove behind your ear and light it for me, and then you may," was Inuyasha's prompt and curt answer as he moved to the side and sat himself down on the couch next to him, his eyes still half-glaring.

Once he had his own smoke-stick to puff on and had begun to revel in the succulent taste that had teased him since he'd still been in his car, he closed his eyes and sat back with his arms and elbows up on the top of the back of the couch, letting the smoke drift from his mouth and nostrils in delicate tendrils.

"Shoot." He licked his lips and smiled as if he'd just gotten laid.

Miroku cleared his throat after another quick drag. "Well, first, that's the coworker you were telling me about, right?"

"Yeah."

"The one you won't touch, right?" There was a long pause as Inuyasha stared at his friend for a good moment before answering.

"I believe that goes hand in hand with your previous question, baka."

"How much does she know about your… well, about you?" Miroku's expression was curiously serious. He wasn't joking around.

Inuyasha looked at him and thought for a moment before answering. "She's seen my driver's license photo. The one in which I had my ears pinned down and hidden within my hair, you know? She also, quote unquote, knows," fingering quotation marks in the air with both hands before taking the right up to his mouth again to suck on the clove for more smoke and spices, "my birthdate. She knows I'm 28, just like everyone else but the privileged," he continued.

"That it?"

"Nope. I wouldn't explain my hair, said my eyes were natural, said I had cosmetic dental procedures…" he paused for a moment in contemplation, "told her my father was Icelandic--"

Miroku broke into a short fit of laughter that ended up making him cough from trying to laugh and exhale at the same time. "What the hell gave you the idea to tell her that?" he asked with a smirk after he had recovered from his not too smooth coughing fit.

"She's half Japanese. I couldn't risk it with my usual, surprisingly-truthful joke." Inuyasha puffed some more before resting his arm back to its original spot. "Oh. I also gave her a ride on my back. And she knows I'm a bit kinky--"

"A bit kinky?" Miroku scoffed breathily. "Heh, thanks in part to my employee discount at Sexworld, you have your own so-called dungeon complete with toys and apparatuses and--"

"I'm telling you what she knows, baka!" Inuyasha snapped at him and smacked him on the arm. In a softer tone, with a slight smirk, "Shoulda seen the look on her face when I handed her that riding crop that Dawn left in my car and told her it was a toy. She looked like I had sprouted some kind of alien creature from out of my stomach and it had started dancing or something, ya know?"

He paused after snorting amusedly. "But hey, I got her to use it on me, and ooooh, I knew she liked it. Smelled it. Ah," he sighed, "I love having such keen senses. Makes things a lot easier, especially when you're in bed with a lover and you're trying to find out what he or she likes," he drolled on dreamily.

A somewhat unwelcome visual came cascading back into his mind's eye, a visual of a particular young woman, a girl he'd tried to forget for several years, but the images of her would always wash back into his memories from time to time like a rising and falling tide.

"Look, the point is, she probably thinks there's something weird about me, but I doubt she suspects anything yet. All I know is, I want her very much, but there is no way I'm going to risk getting arrested--"

The visual swamped his vision in almost a hallucination, and he could practically see himself in bed with her, the messy sheets half in shreds because he hadn't been careful with his claws, her legs trapping his….

He shuddered and blinked, and the visual went away. He saw Miroku's hand waving in front of his face.

"Hello? Inuyasha? You okay?"

He looked up at his friend and batted his hand away. "Just seeing things again," he answered gruffly with half-narrowed eyes. "I was saying?"

"About not wanting to get arrested," Miroku supplied for him.

"Right. Kagome and I aren't an item yet cuz if anyone, and I mean anyone, found out I was fucking her or doing anything else sexual that technically requires consent that she, as a minor, cannot give, and they told the police, I could get sent to prison. And there is no… fucking… way… that I am going to mess up again. I waited until Zara turned 18 before she and I fucked, so I can wait until Kagome turns 18."

He cursed under his breath in remembrance of Seattle from when he first flew over to America. Stupid, frigid girl, he thought, and her stupid, overprotective father.

"'Yash, will you tell me again about what happened--"

"You think I wanna rehash those old memories?" His eyebrows were furrowed; he was pissed.

Images of two sweaty bodies in mid-fucking, heavily shadowed, his silvery hair dulled in the moonlit room and her inky black hair splayed out around her head where it rested on her pillow, flashed before his eyes again.

He shuddered.

He could hear her feeble moans this time, their increased heart rates, the slapping of skin and his grunts as he--

Feeling sick, he closed his eyes and willed the memories away, delicately placing his fingers to the bridge of his nose and pinching the skin there as if he was trying to flush away a headache. He heard Miroku start talking again.

"I just know that you went out clubbing and didn't come back to the motel until early the next morning. It's been years since you told me what happened. I never remember."

"I picked up a girl at an 18+ club, she took me home, we fucked, her father walked in on us early in the morning cuz we were so noisy, and," he paused, deciding to skip some details that were more than just a bit unpleasant, "well, I found out she used a fake ID to get into the club and that she was only 15.

"Her father started calling the police, and when I asked her why he would do that, she laughed and said that since I was 20, I could be arrested for statutory rape. So I pulled on my pants and jumped out the window and escaped, running as speedily as I could back to the motel. And the rest, you know about first-hand," he finished off his tale.

Miroku blinked a couple times before scratching his head with his unoccupied hand. "My, you're blunt. So, how was she?"

"What?" A tic formed in his forehead near his eyebrow.

"Kikyou. Kikyou Kawarazaki… how was she in bed? You hadn't seemed too happy nor had you looked too satisfied when you'd come back."

Inuyasha tore off his Akira cap, exposing his dog ears; they were flattened back and only enhanced the obviousness of his peeved state of mind to Miroku. He narrowed his eyes and snorted. "Excuse me, but how is it you can remember the bitch's exact name yet you need me to tell you what happened like it was a bedtime story whose details you've forgotten about cuz it hasn't been told to you enough fucking times already?"

The human sat there ignoring the tone of voice his friend was using toward him. He put out his clove by dropping it on the floor and stepping on it, as it was now dead and smoked-up.

The dog-eared hanyou glared at him but, after receiving no reaction good enough to satisfy his annoyance, stood up and walked toward the post, the clove in his mouth and his right hand grasping the hilt of his sword. Halfway to his target, he pulled out the sword from where it hung at his hip and watched with a half-grin as it transformed with a snap of sparking and flaming light into a gigantic, unbelievably oversized, and insanely curved sword, putting Cloud's Buster Sword to much shame. The hilt now appeared shaggy and furry with its own mane.

"That cold and frigid bitch, Kikyou…" he trailed off as he stopped and turned around so that his friend could watch, his golden eyes glistening with fury, "verbally CASTRATED ME!" He stepped a bit to the side and made a quarter turn before making a widely swooping, single-handed swipe, his clawed fingers curled around the handle eloquently and expertly.

The blade met with the upper part of the pole and passed through the material effortlessly, like a hot knife burning its way through a bar of butter. There at first appeared to be no effect on the pole of the post, but then the top part slid off at an angle and clattered to the floor.

Miroku had seen his sword antics before, so to him this was just another cocky display of pent-up emotions being taken out in an only mildly destructive manner, he thought to himself. Still, no matter how childish he felt Inuyasha was acting about this woman, he couldn't help but flinch at the seriousness with which his friend carried himself.

"That girl insulted the size of my cock as well as my 'freaky bedroom behavior' as she so lovingly described it, refused to do any position other than missionary, slapped me cuz I bit her a little too hard, and actually laughed when telling me what statutory rape actually meant, as if all along she had meant to deceive me about her age for the purpose of getting me arrested, like I was just bait in a trap and her father was her partner in crime!" His nostrils were aflare, and his ears twitched in irritation with each of his heavy, deep breaths.

"Get the fuck over here right now, Miroku," he calmly breathed out in a low voice, and he viciously threw his sword toward a wall and watched the blade shrink back into its original form, a good inch or two of the tip jammed into the wooden paneling and the tempered steel thrumming out a wicked resonance from its apparent displeasure at its mistreatment. He was harder and more erect than that goddamn blade he'd just wielded, and all because of the talk concerning the minor he'd fucked and the minor he wanted so badly to fuck. And all Miroku's fault for rehashing memories he'd rather keep locked away and deeply buried.

Making sure his friend watched while silently on his way to the ordered spot, Inuyasha took his clove, or what was left of it, since most of the tobacco had been smoked, inhaled, and burnt away, between his clawed fingertips and jammed the still glowing ashy tip into his left forearm just above the wrist, grimacing and whimpering in pain as he flexed his fingers over and over again in order to manage the pain and allow it to spread evenly.

He heavily panted and shook his head, his fangs tensely bared and strained half-open, trying to keep himself from crying aloud any more. Smoke curled upward faintly, and he could smell his own burning flesh. He liked pain, he wanted pain, and he enjoyed giving it to others. This was nothing compared to the bleeding whip marks he'd received on his back before. But he hated burns.

"What are you doing?!" Upon seeing his friend and once-lover burn himself with his own cigarette, Miroku rushed toward him quickly to cover the remaining distance, pushing him roughly against the wall and pulling his hands apart to stop the self-mutilation before it got serious. He stared deep into his startled eyes. The useless clove butt dropped to the floor silently.

Inuyasha's ears twitched from the sudden movements, and he closed his eyes and sighed deeply before he allowed himself to relax. The concern he knew Miroku felt for him was very comforting. Whenever he slipped into one of his self-destructive moods, Miroku was always adept at keeping him from giving in to his more serious and deathly altercating whims. He breathed in his friend's scent and wrestled his hands from out of his grip, clamping them onto his shoulders.

"Miroku, it's exactly what it looks like. I need to punish myself for lusting after a girl I can't have yet." His voice was strained. "I don't give a shit that I am what I am. I just want to live in the moment, live by the day, but if I'm not careful, I could be discovered. Did you really have to bring her up?" He growled. Lefty, its fur blatantly mussed up as usual, turned toward Miroku as Inuyasha glanced off to the side in a sad frown.

Shit, he's really depressed and strung-out this time.

Miroku took his right hand and reached for his hanyou friend's left ear so he could smooth the fur back into place. The soft, velvety touch of that non-human ear that sat atop his friend's human-appearing body was just too tempting now that he had felt it for the first time in quite a while, and Miroku gave in to his desire to massage the fuzzy white triangles.

The hanyou over whom he slightly towered closed his eyes and groaned slightly from the attention his ears were receiving.

Miroku smiled when he heard the groan turn into the content growl that now softly rumbled from deep within the hanyou's chest, which their friend Zara had long ago dubbed a brux. She had said it sounded similar to a particular noise her pet rats made when in contentment. It was like a cross between the sound of chattering teeth and the purr of a cat, in his opinion of the rat brux noise. And while Inuyasha's noise was much more like a mixture of a growl and a purr, everyone enjoyed the term brux, and so it had stuck.

Inuyasha bruxed for a moment more while receiving his ear massage before he shot his eyes open and licked Miroku on the side of his jaw lightly. His ear masseuse took it as a sign to go ahead and slide his hands down to cup his cheeks in his palms and kiss him firmly on the lips.

He wasn't sure how much comfort his friend was going to want, as after they had broken up as lovers they swore to never get too sexually involved with each other ever again in order to keep their friendship genuine enough, but on occasion Inuyasha would silently ask for some highly restrained company, and it looked like this evening there would be another such request.

The two men were soon lightly kissing each other with their lips, Inuyasha being the first to slip his tongue into the other one's mouth and immediately tasting the lingering sweetness of the clove spices from their Djarum Blacks, Miroku tugging on his friend's jewelry in order to enhance things a bit. It made Inuyasha moan.

He hadn't kissed anyone in such a manner since before his final fight with Dawn, the fight right around his supposed 28th birthday. The fight that led to him exposing his true nature to her in a heated fury.

And she had run.

She had screamed, and she had run and left the state, so he had heard. She had ended up reacting like so many others, and it made him feel sick and disgusted inside. He had scared off so many of his lovers by coming out to them. It was nothing to come out as being bisexual, or sexually deviant. These two things he flaunted. Coming out as being half-demon was what he feared the most about living in a civilized community. No one would understand, even if he was accepted.

In between heated kisses, Inuyasha moved his mouth to Miroku's neck and lightly nipped the skin in the crook below his jaw, moaning as he breathed out a cursing statement, "You unbelievable cockmongrel, you almost told Kagome how old I really was. For that, you owe me big time."

Before Miroku could say anything, and he was already sluggish from engaging in an intoxicating kissing relapse with his best friend and ex-boyfriend, Inuyasha flexed his clawed hands into his kissing partner's shoulders and heavily pressed downward with a grunt, sending him onto one knee.

---

That night, Kagura stood leaning against the cash room doorway in her Timberwolves jacket boredly watching Naraku sitting at his desk as he called in the numbers to the regional manager at her theater in Chicago, the Pierce Crossroads.

It had been a very busy week at the MegaPlex 15, and not only had they been very busy in ticket sales, but the midnight shows had done particularly well the previous weekend. That was a rarity for this Pierce location, so far as they could tell in the seven months they had been running the theater after the previous General Manager, some Mr. Ruston, had left.

They had attempted midnight shows before, but only the really big releases had done anything at all. Downtown just wasn't the place for such late night showings, especially with buses only running till little past 1am and a good portion of movie goers preferring public transportation over the hideous parking ramp fees in the area, even with the parking validation program that Pierce Theaters had going on with five different ramps.

"Yes, Mrs. Nonnenbach, our per cap for the night was 3.22, and thank you and have a good evening yourself," Naraku said with just a subtle hint of rancid charisma into the phone receiver as he ended the call to his regional manager and hung up. He sighed and turned toward his assistant as he fumbled with the papers on his desk, searching for the payroll documentation. "Kagura?"

She looked at him with a jerk of her head, realizing she had begun to stare into random space and now needed to pay attention, and smiled with detachment. "What is it now?"

He handed her a few applications that he had selected from the massive stack that was messily placed in the top bin of his multi-level inbox. "Have Allen interview these applicants sometime next week," he curtly but politely told her with a tired expression. "Stick them in his wall inbox for now."

As she was closer to the wall with the small inbox slats, one for each manager of junior or higher status, it only made sense for her to do such a simple task for him. While she was turned and busying herself with sticking them there, Naraku took out a cigarette and fitted it with a small plastic mouthpiece before he lit the end. While he smoked, he examined the payroll stats for the week, somewhat displeased with the numbers.

Pierce Corporate specifically detailed that weekly payroll should not exceed 15% of the gross income the theater's business brought in. As busy as it had been what with the release of X2: X-Men United, the amount grossed during the week had twiddled and tapered off once Monday had hit, and unfortunately, they had gone slightly over what the Corporate Office would prefer. It seemed that during the weekdays, they had ended up being slightly overstaffed, especially when it came to the more highly paid hourly employees.

He wrinkled his nose in distaste, despite the sweetness of the numbing spices that had been blended into the tobacco of his cigarette and which carried out to tickle his senses both on his tongue and in his nose.

Plus, four of the hourly employees qualified for overtime this week. Naraku hated doling out overtime. In fact, he never doled it out. Pierce Corporate had instigated a policy that as long as a theater location had an adequately sized staff competent enough to take on the crowds to which it catered, no one should be scheduled enough hours to qualify for overtime.

This week he was at 17% for payroll. Not too bad, considering it had been worse before, when he was still adjusting to learning what this theater's crowd trends were like. One week had been particularly bad, very slow, and he had racked up 28% of the week's gross for payroll due to overstaffing. However, 17% was not 15%. Anyone with half a brain could figure that out.

Thinking aloud to himself, he muttered in annoyance, "Damn, why does Inuyasha, a mere supervisor, get paid more than Allen Schultz, a junior manager? Motherfucker racks up $18 an hour in overtime pay, and there is no way in hell he's getting five hours' worth of that this week."

"I believe it's because he's been working here a lot longer, Naraku," Kagura answered his question without being asked, her arms crossed. The look he gave her was one of I didn't ask you so why did you say anything, and she tried to brush off the glare that met her eyes. She turned away from his gaze and walked into the cash room for a moment.

After digging around in a small series of open boxes shoved under the blue counter, she pulled out a manila folder that read Inuyasha Umezu on the front tab. After paging through the massive contents, Naraku half-interestedly taking in her actions, she found the paperwork she was looking for.

"Ah, here we go. This guy got hired in March of 1995, and it seems that Mr. Ruston was quite generous when it came to giving him raises. Oh, and he was even promoted to supervisor back in 1999, around June or so." She flipped through the other documents before continuing, "He doesn't have too many write-ups. He's no angel, but when it comes to customer service, he's highly regarded, it looks like. There are even some print-outs of emails the previous GM received from Corporate in praise of him."

Naraku sighed. "But he's so expensive, Kagura!" He grumpily turned his head away so he could focus his attention on something else, his hand resting on his chin and his brows furrowed.

"Are you insinuating that I take a liking to this particular employee for reasons other than the fact that he knows how to do his fucking job?!" she hounded at him, her bulbous eyes narrowed and her voice dripping with a sardonic tone.

"I never said anything akin to the sort," he replied, his gaze still averted. "Anyway, looks like we'll need to chop off the overtime pay for those four employees."

He pulled out a calculator and did some quick work, writing down the new numbers as he figured out the new payroll figures. After the clacking of the keys on the calculator ceased for the final time once he had written down the last of the new figures, he did one last calculation and smiled when the new percentage figure showed up in green digits on the screen.

"Excellent. Stopping them at 40 hours brings the payroll percentage down to 13.9%. If Inuyasha, Mandy, Allen Schultz, and Dennis want to be paid for their additional hours exceeding the max 40, then we'll just slap it onto the next few paychecks till it's paid off," he rambled off more to himself than to his assistant. "Now, time to draw up and print the new paperwork. It should be ready to be Fed-Exed to Corporate tomorrow afternoon, I am sure."

---

"Lamika, I need you to fill the seed bins--"

"Why me? Can't you have FatGirl do it?"

"You do recall why you, of all people, gave her that nickname, right?"

"Whatever, you ain't my supervisor, Callie," Lamika flatly responded in an air of arrogance, putting off her coworker's request as something not too important. "FatGirl's only a few months along; she can still lift stuff, or at least drag it," she continued with a confident laugh. Bossy bitch….

Callie, not too pleased, sucked in a deep breath and calmly walked toward the doorway that led to the concession stand prep room and fumbled with the door handle angrily before she got it open and let herself into the back. She wanted to scream.

It was the opening day for The Matrix: Reloaded, and everyone working was highly warned about the likelihood of being just slammed at both the box office and the concession stand. Naraku's orders were that everything be fully stocked at all times, especially during the downtimes in between sets of shows, and that all registers in both areas be manned by a cashier at all times. Everyone, in general, had to work as hard as possible, put forth the most effort into customer service, and keep lines as short as possible and everything running smoothly.

Callie used some breathing techniques to quell her desire to scream, and she was just about ready to go back and help with getting things set up when Kagome walked through the door that led into the prep room and proceeded to pass through the door that led to behind the stand when she saw the female-David-Spade-lookalike not looking too happy or stable.

"You okay, Callie?" she asked with concern.

"I'll be okay. Dude, it's great that you're finally here. Look, we've gotten slammed so far, and it's only a Thursday and not even at the evening show schedule yet. Opening weekend for X2 will be nothing in comparison to this weekend, trust me on this," Callie responded. "Can you lift bags of seed?"

"Uh, not by myself, no, but if you can help me get it up onto my shoulder, I can walk it to the popper by myself," she answered truthfully with a sheepish grin.

"Then come on and I'll help you carry it."

Clint came through the door just then to get more lids and yellow salt, but the girls were gone with the popcorn seed by the time he came to pass them by again. The door opened just as he was getting to open it, and Tanaya came bowling through and rudely pushed him aside after bumping into him.

"Stupid bitch!" he called after her as she jetted toward the large refrigerator and opened it hurriedly, grabbing for the uncooked hot dogs and a half-full jar of jalapenos that sat on the lower shelf.

"Suck on this," she called out in her north side bitching voice as she fumbled with the things in her arms and somehow managed to flip up her middle finger at him. She then proceeded to call him a long string of names that could only be uttered from a young black girl with street smarts and who lived in a particularly ghetto area such as she did, on both accounts.

---

Up in the booth around 6:15pm, Kanna picked up the phone on her desk as it rang with an additional beep to indicate an inside call. "Projection booth," she calmly and quietly answered.

"Kanna, this is Naraku. Based on the numbers we've been doing so far for tonight, we're going to cancel the evening shows for screens 6, 7, 9, and 10. You are to interlock the print of Matrix: Reloaded we've got on screen 8 all along the back wall. I want it hooked up to all five projectors as soon as you can have it done, understand?"

She took a glance at the computer screen in front of her. She was already logged into the TIMSBoot database system, but she was only at the very main menu. "Hold on," she quickly whispered into the receiver, which was clumsily notched between her ear and her shoulder, as she typed furiously with one hand and used the mouse with the other to guide her to the window that would display the current ticket sales. Ignoring the impatient voice that droned into her ear, she allowed her eyes to widen slightly in reaction.

The numbers were immensely high. The amount of pre-sale tickets for The Matrix: Reloaded, especially for the late evening showtimes, was enough to be considered normal for a Friday evening.

And this was no Friday. This was a Thursday.

And the figures were updated on a 60 second interval, so she would always have the current stats. This was a prequel to the hell that would be loosed upon the floor staff later on.

"Kanna? Are you listening to me?" the voice coming from the receiver continued on.

"Yes, sir, I was just looking at the current ticket sales for today. You're absolutely right. I'll have the print threaded through all five projectors as soon as the previous showings are done," she calmly answered. "In the meantime, is there anything else needed in preparation?"

"Screens 1 and 15... Interlock them as well. We can cancel the other movie showing on there easily since it's on another screen as well. The ones along the back wall, however, are the priority right now. Get the dead leaders ready. You'll need a pretty lengthy one for along the back wall." She could almost hear his smile as he finished detailing his plans.

"Understood. I'll be right on it. Call or radio me on the walkie if you need me." And with that, she placed the receiver back onto the cradle and went to work on the interlock preparations.

Kanna passed the time by fastidiously working on splicing together enough dead leader to suffice the interlock's needs until she could unthread the prints from the projectors that would be involved in the delicate function. As soon as all the concerned prints were reassembled onto their respective platters and the showing on Screen 8 was finished, she spliced the dead leader to the starting end of the interlocker print and started to thread the leader through the projector at the very far end, Projector 6.

After she had the print through the correct rollers and fitted through all the obligatory apparatuses, she ran it over across to where she could begin the same threading process for Projector 7. One by one, she repeated the same actions, checked the same settings and made sure everything was hooked up correctly with each projector until she had the print and its dead leader threaded through all five projectors along the back wall.

The only sound in the mostly quiet projection booth was the soft, fan-like whirring of the currently running Century projectors. Kanna checked her watch.

It was almost time to start Screens 2 and 13, she noticed. Todd, the other projectionist working that night, would be handling those on the east side of the projection booth. She would just have to start up Projector 2, and then she would have time to check the settings on the audio racks for the back wall projectors before she needed to work on threading Projectors 1 and 15 for their much more meager interlocking union.

With a peaceful sigh, she spliced together the tip of the dead leader with the very end of the interlocked print, so that it would be running in a continuous loop through all five projectors at once. The yellow tape sealed the two ends together.

---

Down in the box office, Cory, Mandy, Denise, and Dominic all called for more ones and fives from the manager working the box office.

"C'mon, we need this stuff quickly, Merle!" Dominic half-yelled urgently.

"I'm gettin' it, I'm gettin' it, don't get your panties in a twist, kk?" Merle responded in a snarky but pleasant manner, her lips curved into her classic don't-fuck-with-me smile.

"Panties, wha-- I'm a briefs man, not some cross dresser--" Needless to say, he was a bit frazzled.

"Look, you got customers, and we're swamped down here, so get back to ringing people up. I'll have the money out pronto," she continued on in her sweet and crazy Chicago accent, her eyes afire with spunk as she went into the back room after collecting money from all of her needy cashiers.

"Get me some more ticket paper while you're back there!" called out Mandy.

The phone rang with a beep, an inside call, and she promptly answered, "Box office, this is Mandy."

"This is Naraku. Start selling tickets for a 7:30pm Matrix: Reloaded on all the screens along the back wall, screens 6 through 10. We've got to meet the demands, and we are not going to turn away any customers for having sold out. Sell them all down to zero, understand?"

"Gotcha, I'll tell the others," she replied before hanging up the phone.

---

"We need more ice in the bin for Clint and Callie's pop towers!" Inuyasha barked out in passing from the other side of the stand to Kagome, who was getting done with a mass bagging of cooked hot dogs. The lines were dwindling for the time being, and so it was the perfect opportunity for a restocking. He needed to run off to the stock room for more nacho chips and bottled water.

"Almost done!" she cried out and wiped her forehead of the sweat that was building up from running back and forth along the stand and keeping things stocked and ready to go.

She'd sold more than 40 Matrix Combos since she'd been on a register, and that had only been a couple hours. Everyone was selling them like hotcakes, and the lines kept everyone busy as all hell. The floor was littered with crushed popcorn and accidentally dropped pop lids and jalapenos and other trash. It was hot and stuffy back there, too, what with both poppers spitting out fresh and steamy popcorn goodness as quickly as they could, and batch after batch being scooped into the display warmers where all the customers in line could see.

After finishing with the bagged hot dogs, she went to the prep room and scooped the large metal bucket full of the chilly ice that tumbled down into the bottom of the ice maker. Some of it had melted and then re-frozen, and it started to stick together like an iceberg. And unfortunately, that meant that the stuff on top could not drop down into the bottom of the bin, the place from where she was to scoop the ice.

She had to hack and chop at the nauseously thick top layer through the little sliding view-window before the stuff crumbled and crashed downward. At least the cold air hitting her face and arms from inside the icemaker was very refreshing, she thought to herself as she scooped the last needed bit of ice into the bucket and flipped the bin door back down before she placed the scoop back in its slot on the side of the icemaker. Now it was time to carry the damn heavy thing back out there.

While running quickly as she could toward their registers, she slipped on a wet area where someone had allowed some ice cubes to melt. With a yelp, down she went.

Not on her butt.

Flat on her back.

The chilling impact as her back hit the floor, her legs straight out and the bucket of ice hitting her thigh bruisingly as the frozen chunks spilled out and into the air, landing on her belly and chest, and the sick sound that came from the meeting between her head and the floor was nothing anyone wanted to hear.

None of the employees saw how she slipped, but as soon as they heard her vocalizations, nearly everyone, including all the customers in line who could see her, focused their gazes on her as they watched her fall hard onto her back. The customers started murmuring with concern when they saw her disappear at a nearly horizontal angle below the edge of the counter. Clint and FatGirl, the two closest concession employees, turned their heads to look at their fallen coworker.

Kagome groaned in pain, her eyes wide open, a chill running over her body from the ice that still covered her. She hadn't bothered to wipe it off and to the side. She could barely breathe, it was so painful. She felt dazed.

And there was a hideous pain in the back of her head, and a smarting bruise just beginning to form on her pant-covered thigh. And she still couldn't breathe, her chest feeling tight.

Meanwhile, the lines continued to move, and her coworkers ignored her, taking her groan as a sign that she wasn't dead and would be back on her feet in moments.

She coughed and sucked in a deep breath as soon as her lungs started working properly again, then moved the ice bucket off of her and onto the ice-covered floor, her limbs trembling and shaking. Trying not to wince from the pain, she slowly got up and onto her feet, and when she saw the customers in FatGirl's line looking at her in concern, she waved to them with an unstable smile plastered on her face. She began to breathe heavily again, her lungs thirsty for clean air but able to swallow enough at a time.

"I'm okay, really, everyone," she managed to squeak out in a tiny, crackling voice, not sure of how convincing she really sounded, as she walked back toward her register. The lines were getting a bit too long, so she might as well feebly walk her way toward her register and help skim off the lines in a more efficient manner than by filling her coworkers' ice bin. They had the ice bucket with what was left of the ice right there by them, so they could do it themselves. Perhaps when Inuyasha was back, he could finish getting the ice.

Once at her register, she brushed a couple half-melted ice cubes off her shirt that were somewhat sticking to her before she announced in a still shaky voice, "May I help someone over here?"

A stylish older light-skinned black woman disconcertedly dropped out of Tanaya's line and ambled up toward Kagome's register.

"Welcome to Pierce Theaters, would you like to try a Mat--"

"Young lady, are you okay?" she almost apologetically asked in her interruption.

"I think I'll be fine, ma'am, really--" she began to reassure her customer before she shuddered and winced from the pain that was sprouting from the bump on the back of her head. Her arm started trembling again.

The woman pursed her lips and dug into her purse, fished around for a little bit, and then pulled out a business card. "Here's my card, sweetie. I'd like to represent you in court for an injury on the job case, if you are interested," she practically purred as more customers started to line up behind her.

It was all Kagome could do not to laugh in her current state of misery and forced cheerfulness. Unfortunately, she lost the battle and allowed a light giggle to pass her lips before closing her eyes, her chest heaving painfully and her thigh throbbing.

"No thank you, I'll be fine. What can I get for you? Would you like to try a Matrix Combo?" She wanted to cry from the apparent pathetic-ness she knew she was exuding, but in a way, it was still something that she knew she herself would be able to laugh about later on, once it had been long enough since this had happened. Maybe a few years down the road. Maybe. In the meantime, her whole body ached in pain, and her work shirt was damp from the ice that had sat on her whole front for a good deal of time.

------------

A/N: in order to make up for the long delay between chaps 7 and 8, here's chap 9 a bit more quickly. Also, Japanese vocab word… hinezumi - fire rat