InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Island of Dr. Onigumo ❯ Chapter 3

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

Kag ome knocked on the door to Sango and Miroku's apartment later that night. The couple had invited her to dinner so that they could get to know each other better, since they would be working together.

She'd brought along the binder her father had shown her with all the information on Inutaishou and Dr. Takahashi. Sango ushered her in and motioned for her to sit on one of the pillows surrounding a low table. Though couches and plush chairs furnished the adjacent living room and a high, Western styled bed donned the bedrooms, some things would always be the same.

"Reading material?" Miroku questioned, nodding his head towards the black binder and quirking a brow.

Kagome smiled and shook her head, setting the book on the table and opening it to the book marked pages. "Not really, just a few interesting tid-bits about Dr. Takahashi and her work. I thought you might want to look over it."

Sango put a lid on a pot that was steaming on the stove and walked over, wiping her hands on a dish towel as she went. "What sort of information?" She dropped the towel on the floor next to the table and knelt on a cushion. "Where'd you get all this stuff?"

"From my dad. He's got a whole bookshelf full of notebooks like this regarding Nakumaru-Onigumo Industries. Being a testing facility like this one is, they have to report monthly to the Board of Scientific Review and they've been in business for a long time." Kagome flipped some pages back to the beginning of the Inutaishou project. "Of course, my dad's only been in office the past ten years and Dr. Onigumo's been in business for nearly thirty, so he doesn't remember this particular case or he'd have used it to get them shut down. I don't know why they didn't do it at the time."

"I could think of a few reasons," Miroku muttered and tried to look innocent when Sango shot him a glare.

Kagome quirked a brow and looked between the two. Must be another one of those things they can't talk about.

"Is that his mother?" Sango asked, changing the subject. She pointed to an enlarged photocopy of an identification card with a thumbnail sized photo of Takahashi Izayoi and her statistical information. "She had green card clearance. She was important." She indicated the green dot in the left hand corner of the security card.

Kagome frowned in confusion and looked from one face to the other. "What's that mean?" She'd noticed a red dot on her own card, but no one had explained the difference to her. She hadn't really thought about it.

Miroku looked up from the photo. "There's five levels of clearance here and they're color coded. Your level of clearance shows how important you are in the facility and the higher level you are the more information you're privy to."

"Dr. Onigumo's facility is the leading industry in technology like this. He's not only creating what he calls 'test tube youkai', but he's using their blood and DNA to test for cures for illnesses. There are tons of pharmaceutical companies who would love to get their hands on the research developed here," Sango added, elaborating.

Miroku was nodding. "There's red, yellow, blue, green and white levels; red being the lowest. Sango and I are blue level. The only white level that we know of are Dr. Onigumo and his head assistants, Dr. Hyouga Menomaru and Dr. Tsukino Kaguya."

Kagome bit her lip and nodded slowly, letting the information sink in. She'd later write it down in her personal journal so that she'd have it for later reference. It might come in handy in her preparation for the Review Board as well. "And I'm a red card, which is why there's certain things you can't tell me, right?"

"Exactly." Sango stood and went to check on her cooking. "And Miroku has a tendency to speak without thinking," she called from the kitchen.

"But if I'm a red card then there's a ton of information I can't get. What if I need it for my report?" Kagome stood and rounded the table, going to help Sango dump spaghetti and sauce into bowls and then carry them to the table.

Miroku moved the binder out of the way and immediately dug in with his chop sticks. "That's why Dr. Onigumo assigned us to work with you. Anything we think you might need to know or that you ask for that we know, we're allowed to give you. Anything else we have to clear with Dr. Hyouga or Dr. Tsukino. They've got the clearance to give us the okay on anything without bothering Dr. Onigumo."

Kagome twirled a clump of noodles around her chopsticks and shoved them into her mouth, chewing slowly while pondering something that had been bothering her all day, but had really started to grate on her since the revelation over security clearance. "If Dr. Takahashi was green card clearance then she was tops around here, right?" She asked when she'd swallowed. "So, how could Onigumo afford to let her go? What would keep her from selling his secrets to another company?"

The couple shared a look with one another and then Sango shrugged and laughed slightly. "Maybe she was more loyal than you thought?"

Miroku pushed his bowl away as if to get up and knocked soda over, managing to successfully drench Kagome's bowl, shirt, and lap as he had been sitting across from her. She shrieked in surprise and Sango jumped.

"Oh! Geez! Come on, I'll show you where the bathroom is and get you a dry shirt." She grabbed the younger girl's wrist and tugged her up, pulling her into the bathroom on the other side of the apartment. Inside she closed the door and turned on the faucet at the sink.

Kagome was giving her a puzzled look and she sighed. "Naraku has a way of knowing everything that's been said or done anywhere on the compound. We suspect that he's got the higher level buildings and offices tapped to make sure no one sells him out," she explained in a harsh whisper. "Miroku and I were talking about it this morning and we don't think that Naraku actually let Dr. Takahashi leave. We think she may have found a way to the main island on her own and stayed in hiding. Her information was dangerous to Nakamaru-Onigumo Industries and not just in a pharmaceutical sense."

Kagome's azure eyes widened and she sucked in a breath. "You mean, she knew he was doing something that could have gotten him shut down? Why didn't she go to the Review Board?"

"Naraku's had every politician in his back pocket since starting this project...except your dad, obviously. They wouldn't have done anything and she had a baby to think about."

The younger girl closed her eyes. The breakthrough that her father had been searching for was almost within her reach, but the one person with the information was now dead. But that would mean... "So, Takahashi's suspicions that Naraku killed his mom? They could be valid?" She blinked and snapped her fingers in a constant rhythm, a habit of hers when thinking. "Maybe...Maybe if she had any secrets...Maybe Izayoi shared them with Takahashi. Maybe that's why he came after Naraku."

Sango was nodding and smiling. The same things that she and Miroku had thought of that morning while preparing for Kagome's arrival, Kagome was just figuring out. She turned the faucet off and opened the door. "I'll get that shirt."

Kagome was the first to arrive in the observation area the next morning. She'd thrown on a pair of blue jeans and a green cashmere shirt under her lab coat. Her hair was pulled back in a messy bun, held together by two hair sticks. She hadn't slept well the night before and she wasn't too concerned with her appearance since she was going to be working underground. Her lack of sleep was the reason she had come to the sub level observation rooms so early. The night guard had looked suspicous when she'd first shown her clearance card, but after a call to the main tower, he'd let her through.

She closed the tech room door behind her and sat her briefcase on the table, going to the switch board. She flipped the switch which would allow her to look into the hanyou's room without him seeing her. The sun had barely risen over the coast when she hiked down to the lab and she didn't want to wake him if he were sleeping.

To her surprise, however, the light in his room was on and he was sitting cross legged on the cot with his back against the wall. It looked almost as if he were meditating. Flipping another switch she turned the microphone on and lifted it from the base. "Good morning, Takahashi."

One eye cracked open and he watched her from the corner of his eye. "What's so good about it?"

Kagome sighed. "Okay, so I suppose that was a dumb greeting under the circumstances, but I was just trying to be polite."

He shifted his position to stand up and her attention was drawn to the fact that he wore only the red pajama bottoms from the day before. His feet and torso were bare. She blushed crimson and was glad she hadn't opened the window completely and she was still hidden from his view.

"Screw polite, Doc. Just get me the hell out of here."

She couldn't help but grin and grabbed her case after punching in the code that unlocked the adjoining door. "I told you, I'd try, but you have to cooperate. You promised, remember?" She set the case on the table and opened up her laptop. "Now, what's your full name? What's your birthday? Do you have a PID?"

He stretched, bringing his arms over his head and popping several joints in his shoulders and back. "Takahashi Inuyasha, personal identification number 30320303J, born March 3, 3032. Anything else?"

She shook her head and typed the information into her computer and then started rummaging through her bag the khaki bag she used a briefcase. "You can read and write? I've got some standardized application tests that I need to give you to evaluate your IQ."

"Yeah, I can read." His tone was sarcastic, but she ignored it figuring it was just his nature and pulled out a stack of papers.

"Great. You'll have to answer these tests then to evaluate what grade level you perform..." she trailed off when she caught sight of her computer screen and then glared at Inuyasha. "You attended Tokyo University. You could've told me that before I started sounding like an idiot."

He smirked, plopping down on the bed once more and shrugged in a noncommital way. "You didn't ask."

"What'd you major in? Did you get a degree? How did you attend a collage or even a high school and not have had some mention of your appearance?" She crossed her arms over her chest and waited for him to answer.

"I didn't attend collage or high school," he answered simply. "I was home schooled by my mom. I had to go once a month and take a few exams at the local high school, but they do make hats you know. I took online courses at Tokyo U and did the same thing anytime I actually had to go to the university."

He was looking extremely too cocky, as if he'd somehow outsmarted her and she hated it. "I didn't major in anything. I got a standard Associates Degree so that I'd have it to make my mom happy. It ain't like I'd actually go out and get any kind of job. I wasn't a recluse, but I'm not stupid either."

She sat down and shuffled some papers around, discarding half her stack. "I never thought you were," she assured him when his tone had become slightly gruff as if to reflect a slight amount of hurt. "I just wasn't sure about your education. I'll call the university and the high school and have them fax me a copy of your transcripts. Those will really help. In the mean time, I still need you to take a few of these tests." She left the remainder on the stack on the table and then pulled a case from her bag.

"Also, I'm going to have to have photographs, so put some clothes on. I don't need the women on the review panel swooning when they read my report."

"Swooning?" Inuyasha lifted a brow, but before Kagome could say anything another voice came over the speaker.

"Feeling a little lightheaded, Kagome?" Miroku was laughing through the microphone and Kagome blushed a deep red. "Why are you glaring at me, Sango? Kagome's appreciation for the male form is perfectly healthy, isn't that right Dr. Higarashi? OW!"

Kagome wanted to sink into the floor and disappear. Even Inuyasha's cheeks were tinted pink. Luckily the sound of a hand contacting with someone's cheek informed them both Sango had things under control.

"Take your pictures, Kagome, while my fiancé and I have a little talk. Then we'll take Takahashi for his physical exam." Sango flipped the switch to clear the glass and then winked at the two before grabbing Miroku's ear and dragging him into the shadows.

Kagome brought out a digital camera while Inuyasah slipped on a white t-shirt with the Nakamaru-Onigumo logo on the pocket. When he was ready, she snapped several frontal and profile shots as well as a back shot and then started taking close ups of his unusual features, such as his ears, claws, fangs and eyes.

That taken care of, she hooked the camera to her computer and started downloading the images with the rest of the information she'd pulled regarding him from the web.

NOTE:
P.I.D. (personal indentification number) is equivolent to the Social Security Number used in North America. It's a term I came up with for the story.