InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ New Age ❯ Reawkening ( Chapter 9 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Claimer: I own what has to be the smallest fraction of Inuyasha possible. So small I can’t remember it. Heh, oh well. Moving on.

Summary: Meet Dr. Kagome Higurashi. She works in a recently developed portion of the Shroud Companies called “Metaphysical Understandings”. What she does is analyze and report the supernatural things she’s given, such as old Japanese Ofudas, Taro Cards, Crystal Balls and so on. And then she was assigned to the biggest discovery of the company: a demon-like creature recently uncovered in a deathlike sleep from under the surface of the Old World.


New Age

Chapter Nine: Reawakening

Blurry. Everything was blurry. Maybe the light was all gone; he couldn’t tell for sure. Where was he, anyway? Moving proved that every part of him was held down – but no way was he going to stay kept that way. He weighed the options of his situation in his mind: he could be captured, which was highly unlikely, and this could either be a way to keep him still or a trap of some sort; on the other hand, maybe something happened and sent his body and mind into relapse. The latter seemed more likely, but then, why was the air he was breathing getting stiffer?

Crap. He was buried. He moved a little, testing with his body which way would be the best for an escape. Seems like his left arm had the most movement, but the weakest point was around his right ankle. He could hear grinding with every motion he made – grinding like the type of rock on rock. . . and some sort of whir. . .

He tensed, bunching up all the muscles in his body, and shoved violently with all four limbs, his tail whipping free as he flipped over and got his feet under him. He climbed up, scraping wildly at the crumbling rock walls around him, until he saw light. Charging up what power has regenerated, he shot a huge mouthful of acid straight up.

And all the rocks began melting, receding, allowing him room to get free. He launched himself upward, hard, out of the prison below. Above the scene, he floated for only a moment before landing – this time as a man. Taking scope of the area revealed things had changed much since he last saw it.

People were standing around in clothing he’d never seen, full body-suits that included name tags, and their boots all had trims of various colors. Three people were injured from his acid, screaming in agony and holding themselves. He also spotted several large machines, all looking to be oversized drills with huge shovels on larger arms. As he looked around, he noticed everyone was stepping back, staring at him with wide eyes, and whispering back and forth.

He caught the name “Inuyasha” multiple times, and decided to investigate a little. A more in-depth scope of their uniforms told him that the one with white trim must be some form of leader, so he approached that man. “You,” he began, watching with a mental smirk as the man looked confused and stepped back.

“E tu hud ghuf yhodrehk dryd luimt ramb oui!” the man declared, waving his hands in front of him.

He stopped still. These men didn’t know his language, and he hadn’t a clue what they were saying. Maybe some painful stimulation would help this, but really, he was recovering and didn’t want them to know. Rather than stay and risk them knowing, he chose instead to leave.

He hadn’t gone five solid steps before he heard something odd and spun around. His reflexes being depleted, however, he couldn’t fully dodge in time – something powerful and electric slammed into his chest. The shock nearly knocked him unconscious, and tossed him back a few feet. He tried to get his feet under him again, instinctively transforming back into him much larger, much angrier dog form, but again didn’t get far.

Now from four locations, it felt, electricity like a dozen lightning strikes struck him, and this time, the shock was too strong – his mind went blank, his eyes saw nothing, and gradually, he heard nothing, either. His last thought was to remember the phrase, “Inuyasha – ra ec zicd mega Inuyasha.”

About half an hour later, Kagome received an email from Mr. Bell. As she opened and read it, her insides seemed to freeze, little by little. Inuyasha noticed her expression and decided that teasing Miroku could wait, crossing the room to her and reading the message over her shoulder.

“Dr. Kagome –

“Precisely thirty-two minutes ago, our diggers at site 457-A were ambushed from below. They described the attacker as a huge blazing white dog with odd fur, which raised from the Earth only seconds after acid shot up and rained down from the same hole.

“The dog then preceded to take on the form of a man, with a few differences. He spoke in what they guessed in his pack language, but as the head of the excavation told him they had nothing, he turned to leave, which is when they detained him. It took several shocks from a level five electric bolt to knock him unconscious. While out, he returned to the form of the large white dog.

“He returned to the form of a man only minutes ago, and we are going to move him while he is unconscious, to your lab. Same rules as with Inuyasha apply: do not release both restraints at once, and try to keep him heavily sedated. He could very well be superior to Inuyasha, and in that case, much more dangerous.

Bell”

“Sesshomaru?” Inuyasha wondered aloud.

Kagome glanced over her shoulder at him. “Sesshomaru? That is. . . your brother, right?”

“Half-brother, but yeah. I’m not surprised he’s alive, but the description is a little vague; it might not be him,” he stated matter-of-factly.

“Might not be him?” she echoed. “You’re insane, you know that? How many giant dogs are there from your time?”

“Honestly, more than you could count,” he snapped back instinctively. Kagome, calling him insane? What was she thinking? “The demons far outnumbered the humans, Kagome-chan. There were numerous packs of demons that shared the exact same characteristics, and most demons that appeared to be animals were several times their size.”

“But he changed into a man,” Kagome argued, fighting back a headache. Now she was going to have two demons to deal with?!

“And most of the dog demons can do that, too.”

She shut her eyes and rubbed her temple. “Guys,” she called in New Tongue. “We’re going to have another visitor. Another ‘something’ uncovered from below the surface. This one is much more dangerous than Inuyasha, so keep on guard. I don’t know what we’re getting yet.”

Ayumi paled. “You’re kidding me!” she squeaked. “I had a hard enough time adjusting to Inuyasha, and now we get another one?!”

“You can go home if you think you can’t handle it,” Kagome told her.

Ayumi fidgeted. After a long pause, in which everyone watched her, she exhaled heavily. “Okay, I’ll stay, but if he goes nuts. . .”

“We’ll keep him sedated,” Miroku promised her.

“Into a coma if necessary,” Sango added. That was a lie, and everyone knew it, but it comforted Ayumi all the same.

For the next hour, everyone was tense. Getting things ready for the new subject was something like preparing for the worst-case scenario. The six officers that normally stand outside and guard were inside, guns fully loaded and ready for firing. All of the beakers and syringes and various equipment to be used were sitting in perfect order on Kagome’s desk, and everyone was sitting – sitting and fidgeting, to be literal.

The demon was brought in, standing up, in a laid-back rectangular prison with several latches at every joint. A dozen guards prison-marched it in while a worker wheeled it to the cage, each guard holding a sparking shockstick. There were slits in the metal casing for breathing, but other than that, you couldn’t see inside at all – and Inuyasha was trying hard to see inside.

They stopped a few feet from the cage, unlatched the box, and four guards took the man out and deposited him within the cage, while all the others stood ready to shock him. As soon as they backed off and latched him down, Inuyasha got a good look at him and jumped up.

“Kenjimaru!” he blurted.

The guards ignored him and put up the shield. Kagome signed a form with her thumbprint that she received the newcomer, and the guards left. After a few more moments of relative silence, everyone a little shocked that Inuyasha knew him, Inuyasha grabbed Kagome’s keycard.

“What are you doing?” she snapped. “You can’t just take things – Inuyasha!”

He already lowered the field – and everyone now knew for certain that Shroud likes all their captives to be naked. Ayumi tried to look away, Sango raised a brow, Miroku frowned, Kagome stood up, and Inuyasha knelt before the man.

“Kenjimaru” wasn’t “Sesshomaru,” but Inuyasha sure recognized him. The first thing Kagome noticed is that he had a cascade of long, white-blue hair, longer than any she could remember seeing. Inuyasha patted his face a few times, saying “Kenjimaru” in low tones, but received no answer. He seemed to get frustrated, and then Kagome watched in complete shock as he sliced open the tip of his finger with a claw, opened Kenjimaru’s mouth, and stuck his bleeding fingertip inside. Kenjimaru twitched a little after a few seconds, and then Inuyasha took his hand back and Kenjimaru opened his eyes.

Like Inuyasha, Kenjimaru only spoke Japanese, saying, “Inuyasha-ojisan? So you are alive.”

“You heard of me recently?” Inuyasha asked.

“Men spoke your name moments after I awoke – what is holding me down?” he added in a growl.

Inuyasha leaned back and rapidly hit buttons, and all the straps unlatched. At that same moment, whatever had been holding the guards in place let go.

Kagome tried to reason with them as they wildly ordered Inuyasha to restrap the “prisoner,” meanwhile Inuyasha was helping Kenjimaru stand up and step out of the cage. The guards aimed their guns and began yelling louder, the air thickening from tension – Miroku, Sango and Ayumi got up and flattened themselves against walls, trying to stay out of the fray; Kenjimaru was asking Inuyasha where he was, and then Inuyasha turned burning eyes towards the guards.

Letting Kenjimaru stand on his own, even as the man seemed very disorientated and was probably feeling strong aftereffects of being shocked unconscious, Inuyasha crossed the room to the guards and snatched one of them up by his armor.

“Fryd tet oui tu fedr rec vin?!” he yelled in New Tongue.

“What is he saying?” Kenjimaru asked sharply in Japanese.

Kagome was busy trying to keep the guards from shooting Inuyasha, and Ayumi was just about ready to die – no one answered him.

Thoroughly frustrated, Kenjimaru glared at Sango and Miroku, repeating his question. Sango pointed at Ayumi while Inuyasha quizzed the guard again, more forcefully, and Kenjimaru looked over at Ayumi. “You speak my language?” he asked, his voice commanding an answer.

Ayumi looked at him, more than a little scared, and nodded shakily.

Kenjimaru crossed over to her and said, “Then tell me what Inuyasha-ojisan is saying.”

Ayumi slid across the wall to put distance between them and stuttered, “H-he’s asking them where your f-fur is.”

And then everything exploded. Kenjimaru’s eyes changed color as he realized his fur wasn’t present on his left shoulder, two guards noticed his change of placement, and one guard shot Inuyasha. All three women screamed at the laserfire, Miroku hugged Sango to him, Inuyasha dropped the guard to place his hand over the wound, and Kenjimaru appeared on the other side of the room, holding up the guard who shot Inuyasha by his neck, his feet hanging above the floor and pressed against nothing but air.

“Where is my fur?!” Kenjimaru shouted, his voice taking on a predatory growl, his eyes glowing red and green in his rage. The guards opened fire.

Inuyasha grabbed Kagome and leapt over the tables, dropping her behind her desk with Ayumi before jumping back to the guards. The two demons had no trouble knocking the guards out, but Inuyasha had a lot of trouble keeping Kenjimaru from killing them. He shouted at Kenjimaru several times not to kill anyone, but two guards were now missing limbs.

Kenjimaru was shot only twice from all that fire, and as such had two thin laser-holes on his body and blood in his hair. His fingernails on his right hand glowed green as he went for a killing blow on a guard, and Inuyasha stepped forward, taking the hit in his right shoulder. Kagome screamed again at seeing Inuyasha bleeding from more than a few places, and now with a clawed hand in his shoulder.

“I told you not to kill them,” Inuyasha was saying. “You want to take your hand out of my arm now? Your poison stings.”

Kenjimaru narrowed his eyes, his rage dying slowly and returning his eyes to normal. He pulled his hand back and stood up straight. “Where is my fur?” he asked in a low, cold voice.

Inuyasha rolled his shoulder back. “That, I don’t know.”

“I want it back, now!” Kenjimaru shouted.

Inuyasha looked over his shoulder and took a deep breath. “How’s your nose?”

Kenjimaru glared. “As good as ever.”

Inuyasha walked across the room, took Kagome’s keycard out of the slot in the cage, and walked back across the room as Kagome stood up, still a little shocked. Inuyasha opened the door with the keycard and said, “Then we should go hunt it down – and your clothes.”

Kenjimaru narrowed his eyes further. “Why should I stay with you?”

“Because I know this place – Kagome-chan, you can’t come this time,” he added as Kagome stepped forward.

“Come?” she echoed. “I’m trying to stop the two of you from doing something stupid!”

Kenjimaru eyed Kagome carefully, sniffed lightly, then looked over at Inuyasha. “This woman is your mate.”

Inuyasha nodded. “We’re not going to do anything stupid. We’re going to find our things; we didn’t wake up naked, you know.”

“You two attacked guards, broke rules, broke laws, and now are breaking out!” Kagome shot back.

“I thought I was free to come and go,” Inuyasha argued.

“Maybe you are, but not to this extent – you’re going to get us all in trouble! We might get fired because we can’t control you two!” She grabbed onto his arm and tried to plead with him, shaking her head. “We can’t exactly go into hiding if you turn into a felon; there’s no where left to hide.”

“Not to worry, I’m a smooth-talker,” Inuyasha tried.

“I’m growing impatient,” Kenjimaru broke in. “We leave now, or I leave you behind and do things my way.”

Kagome looked scared of that. Inuyasha pulled his arm away and pushed her back into the room. “We’ll be good.”

“My keycard doesn’t have access everywhere,” she tried to argue.

“We make our own access. I won’t stand for my nephew to stay naked and without his fur.”

Fur? Kagome’s mind echoed. Nephew? She shook her head as Inuyasha put the keycard back in her hand and went into the hallway.

“That’s an elevator, remember those?” Inuyasha asked, pointing at the double doors a little way down.

“Too slow,” Kenjimaru answered simply. At that same moment, an alarm began blaring, and red lights flashed on and off slowly all around them.

Inuyasha turned sharply. “The window, then, since you set off alarms.”

The two broke into a run and smashed right through the window, and began free falling. Kagome followed them to the window and stared down in shock, wind whipping her hair free of her ponytail and all around her face. She watched them fall until she couldn’t see them anymore.

Around level thirty, they both scented Kenjimaru and dug their claws into solid concrete, sliding to a stop on the building before smashing another window and jumping inside. They wove around halls and doors, avoiding most guards but knocking out those they encountered. At last they broke through a door which held Kenjimaru’s strongest scent, and inside they found their previous outfits and fur.

“Now that we’ve pissed everyone off,” Inuyasha began as Kenjimaru lightly touched his fur, “what next?”

“I leave,” Kenjimaru answered, rage making his hand shake. His fur was latched down and out straight on a long table, though it still moved when he touched it. He ripped the straps to shreds and put it over his left shoulder.

“You really are the spitting image of your father,” Inuyasha commented while Kenjimaru scouted out his clothing and began dressing. “If it weren’t for your crescent being red and your streaks blue, I’d mistake you, easily.”

Kenjimaru glanced at him. “I know this. You, on the other hand, look very little like my father. Only the colors are the same.”

Inuyasha nodded. “Did Sesshomaru die while I was out?”

“Chichi-ue will always live on,” Kenjimaru answered roughly, finishing with his shoes. He threw Inuyasha’s red clothing at him. “How long has it been since we last met, Inuyasha-ojisan?”

“Around seven hundred years,” Inuyasha answered as he undressed. “It’s been almost five centuries since the ‘Fall’ these people talk about. From what I know, society as a whole crashed and they had to start over from scratch.” Now finished dressing, he sighed. “Ah, I missed these clothes. . .”

“You should fill me in on what I’ve missed,” Kenjimaru said roughly, almost ordering, barely stopping himself for respect of his father’s brother.

“We’ll have to leave for that,” Inuyasha countered, picking up a communicator from the desk in front of him. He dialed Kagome’s number and waited for her to answer.

“What are you doing?” she all but screamed. “The alarm’s blaring – don’t roll your eyes at me!”

“Kenjimaru and I are going to disappear for a while,” he told her. “It. . . you know it won’t be easy for me to leave you, but it shouldn’t take too long. Intelligence runs in the family.”

“Family?” Kagome repeated. “So Kenjimaru is related to you?”

“Yeah, and he’ll get offended if you don’t end his name with ‘sama’ so try to keep that in mind. Bye, Kagome-chan.”

“Wait a --”

He turned it off and set it down. Looking up at Kenjimaru, he said, “I’ll explain everything I can as we go, just keep in mind that going much lower than this level will result in entering a heavy, polluted fog.”

“Then we’ll have to fly, won’t we?” Kenjimaru replied. They both stepped to the nearest wall and with a single hard hit, it had a gaping hole. “They call this ‘property damage,’ don’t they?” he asked.

“Yep. Kind of fun, isn’t it?”

They stepped out and onto Kenjimaru’s fur, which expanded and grew into a veritable furry flying carpet. They went up and up, moving faster until they were high above the ground. Inuyasha explained as they went, going in the direction Inuyasha suggested as safest, dodging a few air fighters along the way.

Kagome was left trying to explain why Inuyasha freed Kenjimaru, why they attacked the guards, where they went, and when they were going to return – if at all. And she hardly had an answer, let alone one that made sense.

- - -

“By saying he’ll always live on, you didn’t mean it literally, did you?”

After finding a few landmarks, Kenjimaru recognized where they were, and took a turn. About halfway through the flight, Inuyasha thought to check their clothes for any kind of tracer, and found a total of six between them – one in Kenjimaru’s fur. Now they stood in a cave they had to uncover to reach, in front of a stone slab and small shrine dedicated to Sesshomaru.

“No one knows exactly where he is,” Kenjimaru replied slowly. He always held his father in the highest regard, and as Inuyasha was learning, Kenjimaru was having a lot of difficulty facing his father’s disappearance.

“What happened to him?”

Kenjimaru glanced up and met Inuyasha’s eyes. “As I said, no one knows.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Around a century before this ‘Fall’.”

“You’re bothered by talking about it, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what happened to him!” Kenjimaru exploded. He whipped around and punched the side of the cave hard, making the entire area shake, growling and hissing in an attempt to get a grip on himself again. “You only saw him but once after Rin died; you don’t know how hard he took it!”

“Did he just leave?” Inuyasha asked, trying not to sound forceful.

“No one fucking knows!” Kenjimaru screamed, almost completely losing himself.

“. . .What are you hoping happened to him?” Inuyasha asked more tentatively.

To Inuyasha’s utter surprise, Kenjimaru’s mood changed swiftly. He collapsed, claws digging into the wall and leaving deep scratch marks. He didn’t answer, but remained on his knees, head bent, still and silent. To any onlooker, it would have seemed that Kenjimaru had just died.

And it occurred to Inuyasha why Kenjimaru reacted this way. “There’s a rumor, isn’t there?” he asked, his tone very low and quiet. “There’s a rumor why Sesshomaru left, where he went, and everything. There’s some rumor that you can’t believe is true.”

Kenjimaru took a shuddering breath and said, “They say he went insane, and tried to fly above the sky. They say he died up there, and his body dissolved, leaving nothing but I to prove he ever existed.”

Inuyasha looked over at the stone tablet. The etching on it had faded badly over the years, and reading it proved useless. The small shrine was locked shut, with rusted hinges and splitting wood. Though he hated to do this, he stepped closer to the shrine and broke the lock.

Kenjimaru looked up sharply when he heard the noise, and jumped up. “What are you doing?!” he yelled. “Inuyasha-ojisan!”

Inuyasha looked inside the shrine and saw exactly what he knew would be there – a scroll. He pulled it out and handed it over to Kenjimaru. “Maybe this has answers.”

Kenjimaru took it, staring at it. After a few long moments, he gave a small laugh. “Of course. If Chichi-ue left it there, he knew I would never open the shrine. . . but that you wouldn’t hesitate to smash it.” He glanced up. “Are you sure this would be mine?”

“Open it and find out,” Inuyasha offered. “In the meantime, I’m getting hungry.” He turned to the entrance and left, searching like he used to for any wild animal. Not exactly an easy thing to do, given they were about a kilometer below the ground – the new ground – with a city surrounding them.

Granted it was a mostly dead city, but a city all the same. People here looked sick and old, with very few young ones, and no one cared in the least that he was around. All the shops appeared closed, the buildings were in need of repair, and the odd Shroud worker wandered around, doing this and that. It seemed they were trying to save this city from becoming nothing, and were having difficulty doing so.

Though Inuyasha stood out, no one here knew he had “escaped,” and so none of them were on alert. Feeling bad for some of the people here, Inuyasha decided that when he found something to kill, he was going to kill a lot of it and feed who he could. The small parcels of food the Shroud workers handed around were far too small, even if they were packed with vitamins and such.

The closest thing they had to running water was an exposed water main with a section of metal missing. People who were thirsty came here with bowls and glasses, filled them up, and drank, then moved on. It was a hugely drastic change from the city he knew, where Kagome lived and worked. This place was craving to be wild, natural, and free, yet they had tried to build a civilized, mechanical world above it.

It was only natural it was going to fail.

About roughly a half an hour of searching fruitlessly for animals, he checked back in on Kenjimaru. “How’s things going?”

Kenjimaru looked up, frustrated. “He wrote everything in metaphors. Metaphors that only I know, hiding the meaning of every passage in here. It’s been very long since the last time I heard many of these, so I’m having difficulty deciphering it all.”

“What do you have so far?” Inuyasha asked, sitting down.

Kenjimaru went back up to the beginning and began reading aloud, translating the metaphors. “Kenimaru, never believe what others say,” he began. “Many people are very jealous of the power of our bloodline, and would lie to you. I will admit that I have gone mad, but not so much as to fly above the sky.

“Repeat to Inuyasha this: We are not true brothers. I am certain you are aware of this. We fought for far too long to be trusting of one another, yet for this I require your aid. I am not dead quite yet. Jakken would have left this scroll in its place as I told him, knowing you would be the one to find it. I have trapped myself and done so purposefully.

“You would know in a second where I am. Think of nothing else but where I would go to be separate from the world for as long as I wished. However, getting out is not so simple as I believed. The seal on the ‘door’ has strengthened beyond my means of freeing myself, and over the course of the last few decades, I have been reviving dead members of our kind.

“With their strength and mine, I will send Jakken away from here with Ah-Un.

“Kenjimaru, this is. . .” Kenjimaru trailed off there and looked up from the scroll. “This is just for your eyes alone.”

Inuyasha nodded. “The rest is personal, huh?” He looked towards the entrance of the cave and sighed heavily. “I know where he is.”

– – – –

End.

To put simply, I know what I’m doing now. :P Yes, I gave Inuyasha a nephew named Kenjimaru, the spitting image of his father. And to all you girls out there, he was NEKKID!! Naked naked naked naked naked!!

Have fun imagining that!