InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Mr. Dependable ❯ Mr. Dependable ( Chapter 1 )

Mr. Dependable

 

 

Koji threw down the screwdriver he had been using to tighten the legs on the dining room table and swore in frustration. The screw had stripped. He had turned the damned thing too hard. A line from an old television show popped into his brain. Dammit, he was a doctor, not a carpenter. The thought made him smile.

 

It was his turn again to live in the big house on the top of Inuyasha's mountain. His parents had gone back to Japan to stay in Daichi and Mayumi's house, Mayumi and her husband were off running through the wilds of Canada with the wolves, and Kazuki remained blissfully content by the ocean with his sea sprite and their two new babies.

 

Sometimes it bothered Koji that everyone thought of him as the dependable one. Even his father, especially his father, Inuyasha, had a wild streak that couldn't be denied. Kazuki took after their father, and so did Mayumi. Koji shook his head to clear it of such foolishness. He was a grown youkai with children of his own and a lifetime and a half of fooling humans.

 

But sometimes, like today, when he was home doing all the mundane odd-jobs, he didn't feel very much like a mighty youkai. Even his kids thought of him as Mr. Dependable. He gave the table leg one last wrench, and the thing split in his hands, sending the entire table crashing to the floor.

 

“What was that?” his wife called from the kitchen.

 

“Uh, it broke,” Koji answered. “I have to get some parts. I'll be back.”

 

Some parts. More like a whole new table. Make that a whole new dining room set. Apparently it didn't matter if you were a youkai woman or a human woman—things had to match. He had learned that early on.

 

Before Terralee could come out of the kitchen and think of some excuse to stop him, Koji grabbed his car keys and left by the front door, but he didn't feel like taking the car today. He needed to run. He took off down the steep side of the mountain, beneath the deck, in exaggerated leaps and bounds that only a youkai could do. It felt good to stretch his muscles.

 

This side of the mountain wasn't populated with youkai or humans either. Inuyasha had allowed youkai and hanyou friends and relatives to build on the other side of the mountain. It was easier for them all to be together in one place, where they didn't have to hide. But today, Koji wanted to be alone.

 

What was it about him that everybody thought was so safe? He was strong. To prove it, he swiped at a tree in passing and felt it shiver and fall behind him. He was fast. With a grunt, he put on an extra burst of speed, but that only brought him out of the cover of the forest that much sooner. To hell with it, he was fast enough that most humans wouldn't even register his passing.

 

When Mayumi had decided that her youngest was old enough, a mere thirteen years after she had taken over the family house on the hill, and that she and Daichi wanted to run with the wolves, everybody just assumed that Koji would have no problem moving back from Grandma's old shrine in Japan and taking over the house in Connecticut again. What if he had wanted to run with the wolves? Nobody ever thought of that.

 

He sped through the valley with its sprinkling of houses, human dwellings, running just on the edge of the treeline, paralleling the road. He and Kazuki used to go to school this way back when they first lived on the mountain. But then both Kazuki and Mayumi had gone away to live an entire lifetime in the feudal era of Japan, leaving him as the last child to still live with their parents. So he had become the reliable child, the dependable one, going to school and getting his medical degree as much to please his mother as to suit himself. Although he, too, could travel with a thought to the feudal era, he seldom did so except to act as a liaison between his parents and his siblings. And then he had found Terralee, a youkai from his own time and place, and the other piece of his heart. After that, there was no need to travel back in time to an era which had never been his.

 

But it irked him that just because he didn't, people assumed he couldn't. When Mayumi had finally come back to the time she was born in, after spending more than two human lifetimes in the past, there was nothing tying any of Inuyasha's children to Japan's past anymore. So, by unspoken agreement, all three of the siblings had decided not to use their special ability to travel through time. But that didn't mean they couldn't still do it. They all could, even Koji.

 

On the edge of town, he shimmered and threw himself forward just a little bit in time, like Fenn's youkai had taught him to do when he was still a child. They all did it, too. So did Fenn. Just not so long and so far as feudal Japan. That had been an accident that first Kazuki, and then all of them, had discovered, and had more to do with their father's heritage and following the path of an incredibly sentient sword.

 

Koji reappeared at the entrance to the hardware store, at the moment not caring if anyone had seen him pop into existence. No one had. That was another thing that bothered him. Both Kazuki and Mayumi had received weapons of power from old Totosai during their sojourns in the past, and of course his father had Tetsusaiga. But no one thought it necessary for Koji to have a special weapon. He lived in the present, where it was safe, and youkai were just a myth, and therefore he had no need of a magical weapon to call his own. He had a bead from his father's old subjugation necklace, to curb his hanyou blood, but truth be told, he hadn't needed it in years. As he got stronger in power, his youkai blood no longer required binding. But it would have been nice if he'd had a weapon of his own.

 

He stomped through the aisles, casting about for something he could use to shore up the shattered table leg. He figured if he could fix it temporarily, then he and Terralee could go shopping for a new dining room set on the weekend. He settled on a piece of oak that might work, and grabbed a box of wood screws while he was at it. The line was long, but eventually he got through, paid for his purchases and stood out in the parking lot wondering what he was doing. The mighty youkai was now going to run back up the mountain, carrying a piece of wood and screws to fix a table? He should have just driven the car.

 

He trudged down the main road and waited until he reached the cover of some trees before he shimmered again and wished himself home, purchases and all. “Terry?” he called, as he opened the front door. Her scent was oddly missing. “Terry?” he called again, sniffing a little more thoroughly. Maybe she was outside tending her garden. Terralee wasn't a dog youkai. Her strength lay more in the green growing things of the earth, and she spent most of her days in the yard coaxing different plants to grow in the sandy soil. But he hadn't felt her presence outside, either. “Terralee?”

 

Koji deposited his purchases in the dining room and stopped dead, surprised to see that the entire table and chairs were missing from the room. Terralee must have noticed that he ruined the table and gotten rid of the set. Women. Especially youaki women, with their greater strength. He sighed, thinking that now he would have to go furniture shopping even sooner.

But where was his wife? It would be too much to hope for that she had gone furniture shopping without him. Koji sighed again, and turned back to check the kitchen to see if she had left him a message. She had. Meet me at the rock, it said.

He knew which rock she meant. Out in the woods, about ten miles away from Inuyasha's mountain, was a pond, a swamp actually, with a big boulder in the center of it. There was a history behind it, but that wasn't what made it special to Koji and Terry. It was where they used to go when they first met, to be alone. Unlikely as it sounded, it had become their special place. Koji burst out of the trees to see his wife sitting demurely on the rock. He wondered briefly if the rest of their table and chairs had been dumped into the pond.

“Sorry I messed up the table,” he said with a wry smile. “I was going to fix it.”

Terralee smiled back. “I never liked that set anyway,” she confessed. “I'm glad it broke.”

“What did you do with it?” His eyes glanced significantly at the murky water.

“Does it matter?” Terralee asked softly, standing up on the rock and holding out one hand to her husband. He took a leap and crossed the water in one bound to stand at her side. She had eyes as green as leaves. “I was thinking,” she said. “Let's go on a trip, just you and me. Live off the land, let the wind blow us where it will. What do you think?”

Koji held his wife, gazing at her upturned face with a mixture of love and astonishment. “You mean it?” he asked. “What about the house? What about--?”

She cut him off with a kiss. After a long while, she spoke. “The house isn't going anywhere. Let someone else take over for a while. It's all arranged. We're free, you and I, to do as we please.”

Free. Koji smiled. Free, and strong, strong as any youkai. Stronger, in some things. “I have an idea,” he said. “How would you like to go back to Japan? About five hundred years back?”

Terry nodded, tightening her arms around him, and with a thought, they were there.

 

The End