InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Price of Vengeance ❯ Chapter Twenty-Three: Dignity ( Chapter 24 )

Disclaimer: I do not own any of Rumiko Takahashi's characters or stories. This story is for private entertainment purposes only.

A/N - Yikes! Death threats! (Dodges bullets and thrown knives...) Okay, okay, here's the next chapter... (Thanks for the reviews, by the way! Some of them were hilarious!)

Special Note: Tom, I'm glad you're okay.

Chapter Twenty-Three (Dignity)

"Jaken do this and Jaken do that...I cannot believe that I, the exalted first advisor of me lord SesshouMaru, should be sent out AGAIN as a stupid ningen nanny...stupid, smelly, stinking ningens...I hate stinking, smelly, stupid---ACK!" Yellow eyes bulged to a new diameter in width as the imp nearly fell over from fright, his three-clawed fingers gripping desperately to his Staff of Skulls.

"Hi, Jaken." Rin gave him one of her wide, gap-toothed smiles, popping up from behind one of the heavy tapestries that covered the stone wall of the corridor.

"Stupid brat!" Jaken scowled, trying to recapture his besmirched dignity. "Don't scare me like that!"

"I scared you?" Rin blinked, and then smiled again, before turning dizzy circles in a weird ningen dance around him. "I scared Jaken! I scared Jaken!"

"Shut up, you stupid human girl!" Jaken hissed in affronted ire. *Stupid ningen brat! I'm surrounded with them! Oh, me lord! What have you sunk to!*

Rin stopped, one dirty, bare foot still raised in the air, her brown eyes devilishly delighted as she stared at him. Jaken eyed that dirty foot with a sour expression. Lord SesshouMaru would not be pleased that the girl had taken off her tami socks---again. He just bet that the stinking turnip had tossed off her sandals in the garden, and it would be HIS job to go find them and pick them up. Last time, he had to fish one out of the garden pond, and had ruined one of his best brown robes in the process. Even if the kimono had been cleaned, he knew that it still stank like wet fish.

"Put your foot down, stupid child." Jaken hissed at her. "Why me lord thinks that YOU could be turned into a little lady---smelly human that you are---is beyond me!"

Rin put her foot down, but wrinkled her nose at him. "I don't know why you keep saying I'm the one that smells, Master Jaken, when you're the one that smells like a dead fish."

Jaken screeched in outrage, pointing the Staff at the atrocious little ningen brat. "How dare you! You little turnip! I don't smell! And like a fish...! I swear I'm going to tell Master just what a little brat you are! How dare you! Get out of here before I fry you to ash with my Staff!"

Rin giggled, and spun in a circle, making the sleeves of her red-flowered kimono flare wide. "You're so cute when you get mad, Jaken!"

*CUTE?*

Yellow eyes bulged, and his mouth hung open, but he couldn't even squeal with outrage---his anger and shock were so much beyond simple fury at the girl's impertinence. Rin gave him an airy wave with one hand and skipped down the corridor, her bare feet pattering in odd counter-point down the stone walk as she disappeared.

A slight, chilly breeze brought Jaken back to his senses. He shivered. That wind was just like SesshouMaru's wrath, and the Lord would come up with some new, inventive ways to torture his advisor if he lagged in his special duty.

The Master was eerily cold and distant this morning. Jaken shivered, remembering the tight rein the Taiyoukai had kept over some rage that burned through him just beneath the cold surface. He, Jaken, should be delighted that, at last, his Lord was returning to his normally cold, ruthless self, but something was different. Lord SesshouMaru hadn't shown such...emotion...(another shiver)...since his father's death so many years ago.

It was just awful. All that stinking emotion.

It came from the Lord sullying himself with the presence of ningen. Emotional, worthless, stinking humans. They were to blame.

Well, at least he could save the Lord from one of those stupid humans. And by the Lord's command. That was a reassuring sign: that his great and awesome Lord wanted one of those stupid, insidious human whelps out of his castle, and at all speed.

Jaken's pensive worry turned into a wicked smile of delight. *And me Lord gave that wonderful duty to me! Surely, his trust and respect has returned to this humble, but most deserving, servant.*

With a lightened heart, he scrambled down the darkened hallway. He didn't even mind the long, weary walk to the southern wing that had made him grumble with the indignity of it all just before that stupid turnip Rin had shown up to scare him with her dirty feet. He really must see to getting that irritating girl into a bath. SesshouMaru had no tolerance for dirt in his home---even though he WAS allowing the dirt of humanity into these pristine walls.

But that was soon solved.

He hurried his steps, and was nearly panting by the time he finally reached the wench's guarded door. The guard---a lowly Ash-demon with his ugly pink eyes and his ashy hide---was standing in front of it, a tall spear in one hand and a sword at his side. Not that the lowly demon needed any weapons other than his sharp teeth and claws, not to mention his ear-splitting bellow and stupid fireball that was no comparison to his own beloved Staff of Skulls, but the Lord always outfitted his guards with weapons. Sheer waste, really.

"Let me by." Jaken said irritably, impatient with underlings.

The guard just gave him a bored look, before slowly---and deliberately, the stupid ingrate---moving aside.

Jaken's eyes narrowed at the intended slight. Just wait until he told the Lord about the lazy buffoon! Just wait until the guard found himself defending the night soil pot in the servants' kitchen, keeping freeloading flies from the smelly contents! Then...then!...he would see what foolishness it was to court me Lord's distinguished first advisor's wrath!

The imp frowned, eyes nearly slitted with vexed indignation. He pushed the door---and kept pushing. It wasn't opening. His eyes closed as his beak curled with distaste. *The indignity of it all!*

He turned his head, to see the stupid guard's double-row of sharp teeth grinning at him, the sickeningly pink eyes whirling slightly with amusement at the imp's predicament.

"Open this door!" Jaken hissed, outrage boiling through him. He thudded the end of his Staff against the stone floor in emphasis.

"Of a certainty, advisor." The thing actually huffed a whispered laugh at him while a claw casually peeled off a paper seal that had affixed the door. Jaken glared. *Just you wait, you ungracious oaf! I'll make sure you'll be guarding the tumble bugs in the manure bins for your insolence!*

He must have actually said the words allowed, because the guard gave him a mocking half-bow, and said courteously (at least with his mouth, although his stupid pink eyes said something quite different), "I apologize, Jaken-sama, for whatever way I might have offended your eminence."

Jaken's ruffled pride was somewhat soothed by the officious words, although he knew full well that the ingrate wasn't truly sorry. "We'll see." He gave the guard a darkened glare before once more pushing on the door---which thankfully opened this time without protest.

His anger over the guard's ill treatment still wasn't abated, and it was with some added ire that he squawked angrily for the stupid ningen. "Girl! Where are you? Show yourself!" Picking up his (fishy) brown robes with a disdainful sniff, he stalked from the empty sitting room and through the arch into her bedroom.

The girl was lying, asleep, on the futon, her ugly white body curled in on itself. Tangled black hair couldn't hide some of the bruises and scratches that marred her arms. Jaken's sensitive beak wrinkled. He could detect his Lord's distinctive scent among the foul odors that made up a human's stench, and his eyes bulged in out-right shock.

*How disgusting!*

His poor Master! That stupid human wench had thrown herself at his august Lord like the filthy scraps she was! And, of course, SesshouMaru had used her---why shouldn't he? Even if the Taiyoukai sullied himself with the human leavings of a hanyou half-breed, he had needs, didn't he? But Lord SesshouMaru had probably come to his senses, and probably THAT was why he was so angry---that he had stooped so low as to mingle with a ningen whore. Jaken fought back a shiver of revulsion. *At least me Lord has realized his error, and is sending the filth away!*

With a disgusted glare, he struck his Staff down onto the stone with force. The loud noise echoed through the stone room, and the filthy girl was suddenly awake, her ugly brown eyes blinking once before awareness had her shrinking back across the bed, away from him. *Good! She should fear me!* The imp smiled maliciously.

"You! Whore! Get up and get dressed! You are leaving!" The girl blinked at him. Stupid ningen. Jaken grabbed at a white yukata that was slung over the back of a nearby chair. He pinched the fabric between two claws before throwing it with a wrinkle of his lips at the girl. She flinched away, but the cloth fell short, slithering to the floor beside the bed.

"Get dressed." Jaken hissed. "Me Lord SesshouMaru has seen through your disgusting ways, human whore, and has ordered your removal."

The girl was finally showing something other than stupidity, but Jaken didn't like the flare in her brown eyes. "Toad!" She hissed at him.

"Shut up, you filthy rag! Hurry up and get dressed!" Jaken squealed back at her. He banged his Staff against the floor to highlight his ire. "There is an escort waiting for you outside! You're leaving!"

"I can't get dressed with you standing there, you smelly toad!" The girl actually glared at him. Him!

"I am not a smelly toad!" Jaken screeched back, hating that stupid acronym. Why anyone could think such a handsome specimen of an imp as himself could be a wart-ridden, goggle-eyed toad was beyond the utter limits of sanity, and yet people were always insulting him with it!

The girl just glared, and Jaken realized that while she might be a stupid, smelly human who had just dared to insult him, she still had a point. Giving her a withering glare, he turned and stalked out of the bedroom. Although he turned his back, he refused to leave, and he heard the rustling as the stupid girl got out of bed and into the yukata. She was certainly taking her time about it, and his impatience was growing in strength. Grumbling at the girl's delay, he finally couldn't stand it anymore, and whipped back around.

"What is taking you so long? Don't you even know how to get dressed? Or are you too stupid a ningen for even that?" He squawked at her.

The girl was dressed, but she was wincing as she stepped forward. A soft sound, something like a sad moan, escaped her lips, and she walked with mincing, awkward steps on shaking legs.

Jaken let out an evil chuckle. "Can't walk, huh? Just what you deserve, you---" He let out a string of effective insults, calculated to humiliate and degrade, the helpful phrase "stinking little ningen whore", peppered throughout the entire oral harangue with just enough emphasis to really send home his message that she was merely dirt (and human dirt, at that) beneath his---and his Lord's---feet.

He mentally congratulated himself that he could keep up the insulting oration the whole time she walked unsteadily toward him. He took evil delight in the darkening of her brown eyes, and the helpless rage that coursed through her weak, human body. This was beyond fun, and more than made up for Rin and the guard's awful assaults to his innate dignity as the Taiyoukai's first, and chief, advisor.

He didn't stop his delightful tirade even when the girl came to stand in front of him, her head bowed so that her dark bangs covered her face. *Good! Let the stupid wench know her place!* Jaken grinned mentally, even as he went on to describe just why his Lordship was well rid of nasty human whores who consorted with nasty half-human hanyous.

A small hand shot out and grabbed his Staff with sudden strength. Shocked at the girl's action, Jaken stared, open-mouthed, as the girl casually flipped the Staff over, so that the Skulls were pointed down, gripped it with two hands, and...

*Wha-What?!*

...and swung it with all her not-so-frail human strength.

Jaken sailed through the air, screaming in outrage as the impetus of her swing sent him flying across the sitting room. His screech was cut off as his face smacked into the stone wall, and his beak was nearly buried in his throat. He let out a gurgled moan of agony as his head felt like it was going to split apart under the abrupt impact, and he slithered down the hard, unforgiving surface to land in an undignified heap on the floor.

The wooden door was opened speedily, and the pink eyes of the Ash-demon guard widened slightly as he took in the scene of furious human and sprawled, swirly-eyed toad-imp. The Staff fell out of limp fingers to clatter on the stone floor, and Jaken moaned piteously. But the traitorously evil guard didn't come to help his poor superior up and on his feet. Instead, he was actually bowing respectfully toward the stinking human girl and gesturing for her to precede him out of the room. The door slammed behind them, and Jaken winced as the sound pierced his throbbing head.

He sniffled at the shame of it all, before returning anger stiffened his spine---and made him groan once more in sensitized pain.

*Oh, the indignity of it all!*

*~*~*~*~*

He could not seem to keep the rage at bay.

Part of his mind could step back and look at his dilemma with faintly sneering amusement. Him, the feared Taiyoukai of the Western Lands, famed for his ruthless self-control and pitiless nature, was having a hard time controlling the rage of his inu youkai blood. Another part of him seethed with anger that he would allow a mere ningen girl to affect him so much. Still another part growled at his incompetent handling of the whole affair.

And yet another whispered a faint mournful loss of something precious to him, something he needed.

*Ridiculous.*

He dismissed them all---all the insignificantly pitiful thoughts and feelings that now surged and frothed in him, all on account of that accursed ningen wench. The grip of her humanity was insidious and poisonous to his integrity as an inu youkai. She had betrayed him, just as his father had been betrayed by his love of a ningen noblewoman.

But he did not love her. He was saved from that awful degradation, at least.

There was no way that he could ever love a ningen, no matter how much she might affect him. It was enough that the girl had broken the icy barrier he kept around his soul, that she had somehow pierced the tight control he had always maintained over his own fiery blood as an inu youkai. He was SesshouMaru, Taiyoukai of the West.

That did not pacify his inner rage.

*Why? Why did she call out that filthy hanyou's name?*

He sneered in self-recrimination, sharp fangs glinting in the dull glow of the dying fire of his study. As Lord, he should not care what one pathetic slip of a human girl cried out in the middle of her lust. He did not love her, and he should not care.

But he did.

Eyes flashing with red rage, he swept the table-top of his desk clear with one angry slice of his claws, sending books, papers and ink in a spinning arc to crash against the floor. The fury thundered through him, and he wanted to tear and rip and claw his way out of it, away from it. Blood. He needed blood...death...destruction...release...

With a snarl, the Taiyoukai swept out of his chair and stalked to the opened windows of his study. The moon hung white and full, casting silver light on the approaching clouds that would soon smother it. There would be storms tonight---the Lord could feel the charged energy that hung in the advancing clouds, could smell the fine mist of heated rain that swelled the moon-kissed columns that built in slow, mesmerizing shapes. It was as if the world waited with bated breath, waiting for what he would do...who he would kill...

*No!*

Gold flashed over the red in his eyes, and SesshouMaru battled his own inner demons, stilling the seething hunger of his inu blood. THAT was the gift of his father. Mighty InuTaisho, great Lord of the Western Lands, had given his son---and, perhaps, his SONS---his raging, powerful blood.

The blood that had, in the end, killed him.

SesshouMaru would never allow the rage of the inu---the insatiable blood lust, the all-consuming hunger, the devouring need to dominate or destroy---to control him.

And that was what he risked, allowing the tiniest crack in the armored shield he had erected---through sheer necessity---around his weaker, blood-lusting nature.

He welcomed the coldness, the calm detachment, that suffused his mind, dousing his raging blood and allowing him to step away from the pain the girl had caused him. He wrapped it over his soul like a shield of protection. His eyes cleared, and he straightened. A wind came howling up the mountainside, stirring the long ends of his white hair that glowed faintly in the silver moonlight. The fire behind him flared at the gust, popping to life for an instant, and then dying again into its dull glow.

He watched the clouds that now curled around the swollen moon, cutting off the silver orb and wrapping it in darkness. The air grew heavier, and SesshouMaru watched as a faint flicker of far-off lightening heralded the beginning of the storm.

The girl was being sent back to her village, back to the hut of the dead miko's aged sister. He had worked for this, he had planned for it. InuYasha would discover the girl---and discover that she had been used and discarded like so much debris. InuYasha would know the humiliation of failure---failure to protect her, failure to guard her, failure to save her. SesshouMaru had contemplated his brother's despairing reaction with vicious pleasure, he had thought on how the revenge on his brother---pride for pride---would be the perfect weapon of punishment. He had looked forward to seeing his hanyou brother's face, once he realized just what, exactly, SesshouMaru had taken from him.

SesshouMaru's golden eyes closed, as he felt the first heated drops of rain splatter across the opened windows of his study. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the wind howled through the mountain crags.

And now he did not care.