InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Source of Solace ❯ Chapter Three ( Chapter 3 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: YoukaiFate 
I can't make up my mind if Kouga is OOC...seems a little two mature. XD
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Sci-fi / Romance / Drama | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 10.02.2005 | Pages: 5 | Words: 6.7K | Visits: 276 | Status: Completed
I can't make up my mind if Kouga is OOC...seems a little two mature. XD
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Sci-fi / Romance / Drama | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 10.02.2005 | Pages: 5 | Words: 6.7K | Visits: 276 | Status: Completed
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha, etc. Rumiko Takahashi has that singular privilege. This story is for entertainment purposes only.
THE SOURCE OF SOLACE
A/N: Thanks for the reviews! Muchly appreciated.
WARNING! Dark imagery and lime, adult situations and issues. Foul language omitted on ff dot net.
CHAPTER THREE
Sango carefully stepped around a large docking cable that lay strewn across the deck. She followed the three men ahead of her, her features as bland and distant as any of them. But there was something that dwelt in her deep brown eyes that would have given Dr. Higurashi pause---a spark of awareness that was not present in her fellow Altered. Although her eyes stayed straight ahead, on the green-clad back of the man in front of her, she still took in the controlled chaos of the Shipping and Receiving area.
Passengers had alighted from the Eminence hours ago. Now dockhands crawled over the surface of the ship, carefully examining the exterior for any sign of weakness. The soft whirr of forklifts and clunking thunder of man-haulers made a cacophony of sound in the echoing chamber that housed the docked spacecraft as work-crews shouted back and forth to let themselves be heard over the noisy confusion.
The ship's medic had been assigned the duty of escorting the four Altereds to their work-detail quarters on Yoro. Impatient with the tiresome chore and eager to be about his own business, the medic was brusque as he led them across the frenzied space toward the Dispatch office, which was a mere plaz-glass window facing out on the docking bay.
They waited a few minutes until the frazzled man behind the window finally noticed them. "Yeah?" He demanded. "Whaddya want?"
"In-Processing." The medic scowled back.
Sango ignored the rest of the conversation as papers and work permits were handed over. She allowed her eyes to wander over the chaotic scene. She watched as a man-hauler thumped its way across the floor and grabbed up several red-coded plastic containers. Someone yelled at the dockhand to be careful, and a forklift maneuvered easily out of the way as the man in the metal harness swung his load too wide. More shouts, and this with some rather interesting adjectives.
"Miss? This way."
Sango started. For a moment, panic tightened her expression before she allowed the tensed muscles to relax and meekly followed after the rest of the men, who were vanishing into an opened door in the gun-metal wall. She had allowed her awareness of her surroundings to lapse, and that could prove dangerous. She wasn't certain how she knew that important fact, but it was seeded deep in her memory.
She would not allow it to happen again.
The man, clad in blue-grey coveralls, motioned to her again. Sango slid past him without a second glance. He was short and nondescript, easily dismissed. He did not follow the Altereds past the door. His watery grey eyes were appreciative as he watched the door slide closed on Sango's disappearing figure.
*~*~*~*~*
Captain Reizier was feeling harassed. He had always hated the G-force ratio of a station's spin-drive. He didn't like being stuck in one place, and he sure didn't like having to face the high-and-mighties who kept planetary resources and station-side hospitality under their thumb. Bad enough when it was a human---worse was the fact that Yoro (which circled the third planet, Kyouko, in Yorokuzo's system like a giant, metal moon) was lorded over by a youkai of the old blood.
Reizier had dealt with Lord Kouga before and he didn't like the spoiled little princeling any more than he ever had. Keeping the distaste from his face, he eyed the lounging figure before him with impatience. ~Damn youkai, keeping us here when we should have left hours ago!~
Lord Kouga sat sprawled across the cushiony comfort of a reclining sopha, his feet propped up and his arms crossed behind his head. Long black hair, swept back in a negligent tail, tangled across the back of the sopha. Expensive, butter-soft leather hugged the powerful hips and legs. A loosened shirt, rumpled and wrinkled but still expensively made of natural fabrics, made the ookami youkai look like a degenerate. A spoiled degenerate. But a sharp mind worked behind those narrowed blue eyes, and Reizier knew from past experience that you should never underestimate one of the old Line.
Even more disgusting was the youkai lord's companions. The captain recognized both of them from his passenger-log, but was still surprised to find them here. The silver-haired hanyou---a disgrace to both human and youkai sensibilities---was sprawled across a second sopha, his arm looped over the narrow shoulders of his wife, or mate, or whatever she called herself.
~Disgusting,~ was what Reizier personally thought. The girl was pretty in a winsome way, it was a damn shame she had soiled herself with half-breed filth. Look at the way the dog-eared hanyou was pawing her, but the poor, misguided twit didn't seem to mind at all. She was even sitting forward, her brown eyes bright, chatting happily with Lord Kouga as if it were the most natural thing in the world!
Truly disgusting. What was the universe coming to?
Youkai fangs flashed, and Kouga winked at the hanyou Inuyasha. "You've found yourself quite a jewel there, Mutt-face. I'm impressed."
Kagome giggled as her mate scowled. "Better than you could ever do, ass hole."
The girl just shook her head at the foul half-breed, and wrapped her arms around him to snuggle closer.
Reizier couldn't quite keep the disgust from his face as he cleared his throat, uncomfortable with the disgraceful display in front of him.
All three tensed, and Lord Kouga raised a chilling blue gaze in his direction. The captain stiffened. That couldn't be disgust in the youkai lord's eyes! Disgust...for HIM? It was monstrous. Officious. How dare that hair-ball stare at him as if HE were the one who was beneath contempt? Damn all youkai, anyway! It was the destiny of man to one day rule the universe, by virtue of their superiority, and here one of them sat, smugly aware that it was he, youkai degenerate, who held the reins of power under his unnaturally clawed thumb, and not a human----
But he couldn't allow his envy and loathing to show. Kouga would gut him, damn the unnatural demonic beast!
Reizier was suddenly glad that he had bargained with that strange man clad all in black---agreeing to take on board his ship four Altered people from Station Nine with no questions asked. The man had promised that they followed the same agenda, and he had known a few of the sacred passwords for the loose fraternity that the captain secretly believed in.
The Destiny of Man.
One day the universe would be purged of youkai filth, and man would come to possess his true place among the settled worlds. The captain was a fervent, if secret, believer in that wonderful ideal. He spent too much time between differing worlds, often ruled by youkai Lords, to ever outwardly proclaim his true beliefs, but damn, he hoped that strangely disquieting visitor might be able to start the purging HERE, with HIM---Lord Kouga.
The Lord didn't immediately address him. In fact, Reizier was ignored for the filthy creature standing beside him, the youkai with the white-spiked hair who had escorted him into the ookami’s presence.
"Hakkaku." The Lord's voice was cold, accusing.
"Eh...sorry, boss." The youkai nervously shifted from foot to foot. "I didn't know what to do with him. He said you wanted to see him."
"I would be happy to leave the lists here, if my arrival is inconvenient." Reizier said stiffly, unwilling to add "my lord" to the end, as was proper.
The hanyou had the gall to snort in derision. The ookami's blue eyes narrowed before he dismissed the captain with an off-hand wave, as if he were no more than a mindless servant.
“It is. But I've been waiting for the ship's manifest. You can leave it on your way out." The youkai lord intentionally left off the captain's title. "Hakkaku, take him out.”
"Sure thing, boss." The white-spiked youkai grabbed hold of Reizier's arm before the captain could register what the hell he was doing. Yanking on him none to gently, Reizier was dragged behind the youkai toward the door.
Enraged at the abrupt departure (not to add the disgusting touch of a youkai's claws on his newly-pressed uniform), Reizier simmered, but made a token show of willing compliance. Oh, he was all too willing to leave behind such disgusting beasts! And if he had it his way, the whole universe would one day be free of their filthy presence!
It was but destiny, after all.
*~*~*~*~*
"I want permanent ownership." Inuyasha said bluntly.
A thick black brow rose, and Kouga scowled.
Kagome stifled a giggle---she didn't want to call attention to herself. The two of them were so much alike, hanyou and youkai, even though they were a study in color contrasts. Silver hair glinted in the dimmed light of the overheads, while Kouga's hair was so black it melted into shadow. Amber eyes glared into icy blue as the matching scowls sized each other's determination up. Neither male was one for courteous finesse, both bluntly outspoken and brashly arrogant, they always seemed on the verge of clawing at each other’s throats like bristling dogs.
It was no wonder why they were fast friends.
Kouga had a certain charm (when he chose to exercise it) that her hanyou mate did not. Kagome's first wariness of the rough ookami youkai had dissolved into warm regard as he exerted that charm---much to Inuyasha's irritation---to bring her out of her initial shyness. Kagome wasn't dense; she could tell that Kouga had been amused by Inuyasha's rising ire as he mildly flirted with her. Kouga had only seemed more amused as Inuyasha's protective jealousy surfaced.
She was glad when Kouga had finally ordered dinner. Over expensive plates of crystalline glass and a surprisingly simple fare of natural, fresh foods brought up from the abundant planet that turned gently below them in cloud-swirled splendor, the combative tension between the two testosterone-laden males had faded. While Kagome had sipped at the expensively imported wine of Thetis---a pale rose wine that she had never tasted, as it's manufacture was far too expensive for a person of her limited means, but one which Kouga had insisted she try as it came from her homeworld----the ookami and her hanyou had reminisced over their shared past. Kouga, the ignored son of the old Lord, and Inuyasha, a disregarded half-brother to another, had formed a rather spurious friendship. From the tales they told of each other and the smirking memories that had them grinning at each other in remembrance, the pair of them had been quite a rebellious element, testing the patience of their rather disapproving guardians.
The trip down memory lane hadn't lasted long though. As soon as Ginta, a grey-headed ookami with a diffident smile, had come in and cleared dinner off the table, Inuyasha and Kouga had settled down to argue over contracts and tenure. Inuyasha wasn't coming to Kyouko empty-handed. He wanted to invest, and wanted a part of the action in the growing opportunities of Yorokuzo's prospects.
Now the two of them were in a fang-baring growl over the tiny details that bored Kagome no end.
Neither would give an inch without a snapping argument and counter-argument that made her want to roll her eyes over the pair of bratty children the interplay painted them.
Slipping off of the comfortable sopha, Kagome wandered aimlessly around the room. Inuyasha had looked up at her movement, showing that he wasn't unaware of her---even if he seemed to be totally obsessed in quarreling with his ookami friend. Kagome gave her possessive mate a reassuring smile as Kouga scowled at Inuyasha's distraction, and brought up yet another point of contention with a biting insult. Inuyasha replied with a curse, and called him an ookami idiot. Kouga snapped back, and the quarrel was taken up as if it had never been interrupted.
Kagome noted with amusement that Inuyasha’s white ears were swiveling, keeping track of her drifting tour around the elegant suite, even though he pretended to ignore her in favor of snarling at Kouga.
Kagome wandered over to the data-pad the captain of the Eminence had left on a nearby table. Bored, and idly curious, she thumbed open the visual specs, and scanned the various profiles at random. Sipping at the delicious wine she still held cupped in one hand, she bypassed lists and lists of trade-goods and cargo that had been brought in by the spaceship, and paused over the passenger log.
When she came across her own name, listed as ‘Takahashi, Kagome Higurashi’, she picked up the light-weight pad and slipped back into the comfortable sopha she had abandoned. Curling up, she read the short bio of information available on her and smiled softly over the script that stated that she and Inuyasha Takahashi were legally wed. She felt an odd little thrill over that simple statement of their marriage, and let out a happy, contented sigh.
The argument continued unabated behind her, and Kagome spent her time scanning over the bio-feeds regarding this or that passenger. Some she recognized by their vid-pics as faces she had seen onboard the Eminence, others were complete strangers. There was a surprising mixture of colonists---from technicians and scientists, to planet-side agronomists and station-side entrepreneurs.
It was only in the past few years, since Kouga had taken over at his father's death, that the Yorokuzo cluster had been opened up for settlement and trade. From the little she understood, the old Lord had been rather closed off from the rest of the galaxy, zealously guarding the Ookami Clan's claimed systems and cloaking them in deliberate obscurity.
Kouga had a totally different perspective on how to rule his inheritance, and even Kagome had heard the scandalized whispers of youkai and ningen who didn't agree with Kouga's tolerant attitude toward his planetary systems. She wondered idly if it was friendship with Inuyasha, who was both human and youkai, that had affected Kouga's views. Most youkai were such traditionalists, keeping separate and aloof from the humans they ruled, guarding their power jealously, and playing the dance of politics and intrigue that was known as the Game...
Kagome started at the next vid-pic that came up on the screen, almost spilling her wine in her surprise. Quick as lightening, Inuyasha was suddenly there to snatch the delicate crystal from her fingers with a growl of impatience. Kagome ignored him, her eyes fastened on the startling picture that had distracted her. Her fingers tapped on the smaller frame, and the picture blossomed out to fill the entire screen of the data-pad.
It was the strange girl she had met aboard ship, the girl Sango. Or maybe it was her twin. An identical twin, but with the stunning beauty that Sango's bony features and pale countenance only hinted at. The arch of the brows, the lips that showed no expression, the red tattoo that crossed the lids of her thickly-lashed eyes were the same. The black hair was lustrous and feathered across creamy skin that glowed with health. Even through the frozen image of a vid-pic, there was an aura of LIFE and LIVING that surrounded her. But it was the eyes, the incredible eyes, which held Kagome spell-bound.
You didn't notice the wealth of color in the deep brown depths unless you stared at it, as Kagome was doing. The touches of cinnamon and the deepest darkness of chocolate tints. It was incredible. They were so expressive, so feeling, so EMOTIONAL. There was such contained pain in them, such sorrow that it nibbled at her very soul with overwhelming pity.
It couldn't be the same girl. It couldn't.
But it was.
Kagome condensed the enlarged image to view the available data, and there was Sango's name at the top, with her ID number and her ship's reservations. But, strangely, there was no personal information. No planet of birth, or designated parentage. Only the simple, inescapable word, ‘Unknown’. And the other word, that infected her with perplexity...
~Alteration?~
Only criminals and psychotics were put through the mental rape of Identity Alteration. Not young women who took pictures with such frank, open expressions, as if they had nothing to hide---or lose. And if Sango Jennar HAD gone through Alteration, wouldn't her original crime be spread across the data-pad, as one of the others she had seen earlier and dismissed as interesting, but not really important? That man had been a convicted rapist and pedophile. He deserved Alteration. What could Sango have done that was as awful as that?
Kagome tapped the shrunken vid-pic again to stare at the full-sized version. She studied the open face with puzzlement. She felt a deep conviction that the girl who stared back at her could never have done something so terrible...
She just couldn't have.
She felt warm breath on her cheek and jerked away in surprise. Kouga had leaned down to stare at what had captivated her attention so thoroughly and he raised a black brow at the vid-pic. There was a jaded look of appraisal in his ice-blue eyes. "You know her?"
"Er..." Kagome stirred uneasily. Kouga was almost TOO close to her for comfort. His presence was overwhelmingly masculine and so very, well, YOUKAI.
She wasn't the only one to notice. A strong hand, white claws gleaming, snaked out and hauled her across the sopha and right into Inuyasha's lap. Kagome let out a startled "Eep!" of surprise, and dropped the data-pad with a plastic rattle to the floor.
Kouga's blue eyes glinted with amusement as he casually bent down to pick up the fallen data-link.
Inuyasha glared.
Kagome didn't know whether to giggle or hit him. She did both, which Inuyasha returned with a hard kiss that stole her breath away.
Kouga stared at the vid-pic thoughtfully for a moment before casually turning the screen off. In a gracefully careless movement, he sprawled across the sopha that sat kitty-cornered to the one Inuyasha and Kagome claimed. "Friend of yours?" He asked casually.
"Yes." Kagome sounded surprised by her admission.
Inuyasha snorted.
Kouga's mouth quirked.
"She's just some wacko Kagome met onboard the Eminence." Inuyasha supplied with his usual graciousness.
"She is not a wacko!" Kagome pushed away from her mate and protested with vehemence.
"C'mon, Kagome. She's weird!"
"She's sweet!" Kagome's brown eyes glittered with conviction.
"Feh." Inuyasha shrugged, not liking to argue about some stupid girl his wife had taken in like a lost kitten. Kagome couldn't help finding herself weird strays to adopt...look how she had adopted him, hellion bastard hanyou that he was.
Amber eyes softened into tenderness and he silenced Kagome's next protest with a warm, inviting kiss. The kind of kiss he knew would melt her bones and make her forget whatever she was going to say. He kept at it, until she stared up at him in bemused bewilderment, her scent sparked with passion, and her eyes dewy with love and longing. Her lips were rosy from his ministrations, and Inuyasha looked smug.
"That's pretty effective." Kouga said dryly and Inuyasha just grinned---before Kagome punched him in the stomach for his presumption.
"OW!"
Kouga's fangs flashed in a grin as Kagome stood over her hurting hanyou and proceeded to shout at him what, exactly, was wrong with him.
Of course, the only way to end any argument with the raven-haired onna was with a kiss...
*~*~*~*~*
Sango was assigned a room to herself. It was a standard bunk room, a lot like the one she had had before, on the Eminence. But this one was large, and could have housed at least twenty bodies. There was a lot more space between the beds, which were spaced only two high, instead of three, and there were private facilities at one end, where she could use the necessary or the shower to clean the imaginary dirt from her skin.
It was echoingly empty, and Sango was grateful that it was located on a busy corridor. The noise that would have disturbed and frightened her before was now strangely comforting. She could lie on her bunk and imagine what the people outside were doing, what made them dash down the hall in such hurry or linger, their voices a murmur of different tones and blends, in conversation.
She was assigned by a harassed-looking foreman to the dayshift. All four of them had been detailed to Sanitation. Sango did not mind the work, which was menial and often disgusting. Her tools were simple, a rolling cart, broom and bag-dispenser. She wheeled her cart quietly along the back corridors in the Yoro Station, stepping out to pull the full discard out of the container and lining it with a new one.
This was work usually given to mechanized robots, but she had overheard one of the more vocal shift-leads complain that Kouga didn't want machs stinking up his Station, and so they were stuck with idiots and morons to get the job done. The shift-lead might have seen her standing there, but would not have considered it of any importance. The Altereds’ reputation had preceded them, and no one made any overtures.
And so her life resumed a static pattern of dull duty and listless hours of waiting for her work cycle to begin anew. The familiar routine should have been comforting to her, should have soothed away the edgy restlessness that now plagued her waking hours. It should have allowed her to focus on the little things, as she had been taught in Alteration. But, somehow, it all really didn’t matter, and it wasn’t enough.
Not now.
*~*~*~*~*
Kouga leaned indolently against the rail, the lit tabac dangling negligently from one hand. He watched the dance-floor below him as bodies ground slowly to the music that throbbed throughout the two-tiered room. Lights in blinding flashes swirled across the sweating bodies, lighting the taut muscles of a man's naked chest in icy-blue, touching across the split-skirted thigh of a woman in frost, making Hakkaku's distinctive spikes of white hair turn pale green.
The place was packed, and noisy, and was one of the more lucrative enticements on Yoro Station for young rich tourists to spend their money. The club was simply called ‘Seven’, for its station-wide map designation when Kouga had planned out how he might market Yorokuzo for trade expansion. The older, more conservative members of his clan had been appalled at the idea of opening a nightclub, but Kouga knew what would draw in the rich, young crowds who spent their time spacing from one pleasure-world to another. He knew the lure of sensual-gratification; he had spent much of his jaded youth doing the same thing.
And drawing in the young noblesse brought in perspective investors, more than willing to exploit the financial opportunity those spoiled pleasure-seekers represented.
The first to come, of course, had been those who catered to the rich and obnoxious. But for every brothel or "H" den that opened, there was a need for everyday services...restaurants and cleaners and shops stocking the small necessities. The nightlife of Yoro had given the orbiting station a name, but it was the expanding trade and diverse development that would make the station a feasibly permanent settlement. It had taken a few years, but now this glittering world was only a mere fragment of the station's overall economy.
Kouga took a long draw from his tabac, and absent-mindedly flicked the ashes into the crowded dance-floor below. The upper, VIP floor that rung Seven's dance-floor was in hot demand, but he had ordered his bouncers to clear everyone out. He wanted the balcony to himself, and he was Lord. The people went, grumbling and protesting, but they went.
He was Taiyoukai, after all.
Though he rarely claimed the privilege. But it came in useful, once in a while. Like now.
He felt an odd restlessness, as if he was bored with it all. Perhaps he was. The music, the entertaining, the frivolously superficial existence. It all seemed the same, suddenly.
He thought about the look in the girl Kagome's eyes when she had stared at her hanyou mate. THAT had been a shock. Inuyasha, hard-ass hell-raiser, now a grumbly puppy in love.
Almost sickening.
He had never expected Inuyasha to be caught. But he was. And seemed happy about it. Damn happy.
Whatever.
"KOUGA-KOI!"
Kouga suppressed an impatient growl. Here came Ayame, her red hair bouncing in twin pigtails, her stunning body wrapped in too-little natural cloth of stunning cost. She was a hot little female, in and out of bed, and she knew how to do things to an ookami that made him howl with pleasure. She kept her trim body in superb shape, wore the most expensive clothes---all in white to better show off her carefully sprayed-on tan and continuously dyed, fire-red hair.
Ayame now scorned the club-scene, though that is where he had first met her. She was the granddaughter of one of his father's closest advisors, and a spoiled brat of a female youkai. She knew where the real power lay, and wasn't averse to using her considerable charms in order to get what she wanted. Kouga himself wasn't averse to using her charms either. But never for anything permanent, which was Ayame's ultimate goal.
And despite all of her considerable skills and charms, Kouga was already getting bored with the red-headed hottie who couldn't quite keep the hard ambition from her deep, lens-colored green eyes. Taking a deep drag from his lit tabac, Kouga was soon enveloped in a cloud of heady perfume and expensive white fur. Wet lips kissed his cheek as he shrugged out of Ayame's tight grasp.
"Kouga?" The question was soft and slightly hurt.
Cool blue eyes scanned the youkai from head to toe, missing nothing---including the VERY expensive sapphire that now dangled between pert little breasts barely covered in white silk.
"That's new." He said, a slight growl in his bored voice. Ayame was an expensive bauble to keep.
Ayame warily waved any concerns of money aside. "It's merely a trifle. You can be so silly, darling! The shop owner was more than glad to give it to me for a really paltry sum---almost at cost, really. Seeing as I am your LADY."
Ayame's green eyes flicked over his, trying to see if her sally had worked. She was always dropping overly broad hints that she was expecting to see an even more expensive jewel one day on her finger, proclaiming herself his Lady in truth.
Kouga chose to ignore the slight bitterness in her sharp words, and turned away to lean against the railing once more, his blue eyes wandering over the dancing crowds below. Blue-tinged smoke circled over his head in a cloud, and Ayame coughed delicately.
"Do you have to smoke those nasty things?" She demanded petulantly as she vigorously waved smoke away from her face.
She was acting the brat tonight, and Kouga had little patience with it. He ignored her.
But Ayame wouldn't allow herself to be ignored. Dropping the offended air that would get her nowhere with him, she turned sultrily sensual with the art of a superb actress. Shrugging off the expensive white mink so that it slid off her shoulders and pooled unheeded on the floor at her feet, she stepped forward. Pulling his nearest arm up, she slid under it to press her body along his lean length with deliberate invitation.
Her hands smoothed over the wide expanse of his chest, one coming up to coax his hard chin down for a kiss, the other moving below to stir response. "I've missed you." She breathed into his shirt as Kouga stared down at her. A pink tongue darted out to moisten parted lips, and her green eyes were lit with compelling desire.
For a moment, he paused, to the point where Ayame's green eyes started to darken with anger. Honest emotion, not subterfuge. He then claimed what she was so blatantly offering, and his lips came down in a hard kiss that left the youkai breathless, stirring passion within her until she could only cling to the dark-haired ookami's strength as hers faded...
*~*~*~*~*
Kouga leaned against the pillows heaped along the headboard in the wide circle that made up his bed. He was naked to the waist, where silk pooled around his hips in dark gold and warm beige tones. Ayame bitched that he had no taste, and had tried once or twice to have his suite of rooms redecorated in more vibrant colors. But Kouga would have none of it. He liked earthy tones around him, preferring simple luxury to an extravagant riot of bad taste and splashy colors, which was more in vogue---or so Ayame had claimed.
She also claimed he lived more like a pathetic ningen pauper than a wealthy youkai Lord.
He couldn't have cared less.
Lounging back against the pillows, he picked up the remote and flicked the long wall-display to the current newsreels. The vid-screen faced the bed, which dominated the large room. Yet another archaic anachronism, or so Ayame whined. Technology had risen to a point where one didn't need a remote control to activate vid-screens or any of the other million and one scientific marvels that made interstellar life so easy for the lazy. But Kouga didn't like speaking to a computer like it was a person, just like he didn't like depending on a mechanized robot to do the things any able-bodied human could do.
Ayame made a disgusted noise as he turned the news on. She lay on top of the silken sheets, her perfect body on display for an uncaring audience. She twirled a red pigtail in one hand, bored. The giant sapphire winked invitingly between her naked breasts. She had refused to take it off, even in the heat of passion that had followed them from the bar to his private suite of rooms above Seven's throbbing nightlife. None of the noise crept up into the silent rooms, which were surrounded in thick sound-proofing perma-shield for just that reason.
Kouga stared at the newsreel intently, his bedmate forgotten. He watched stock pricing for commercial interests sliding, and his mind was taken up with the possible reasons that might have caused the trading securities to shift. It could mean nothing, or it could signal the covert, powerful mechanizations of some youkai lordling in the Game he loathed but which but his equals relished.
Ayame hated being ignored. "Kouga-koi..." She began, turning to glide one long-fingered hand across his taut belly.
Kouga jerked away with annoyance. "Not now." He growled, his blue eyes still locked on the flickering screen.
Green eyes sparked as her white hand whipped back as if scorched. "What do you mean, not now?"
Kouga let out an irritated sigh. Ayame's sharp tone let him know that he was in for one of her all-out tantrums. He had put up with them in the past for the gifted way in which Ayame made it up to him in the bedroom. But he was damn tired of her selfish, whining ways and the beautiful youkai was too self-absorbed to realize that her days...hours...minutes...in his bed were numbered.
Ayame slid off of the bed, so that she could look down on him in all of her green-eyed wrath. "Not now? Not NOW? What do you think I am, some two-bit whore you can order about? I'm Ayame! The granddaughter of---"
"I know who your grandfather is." Kouga said coldly, the blue eyes he turned on her hard. "Don't start that up again."
Ayame's green eyes glittered as brightly as the blue jewel dangling between her naked flesh. "Don't start? Don't start? How DARE you!" Crimson seeped into her eyes as her hands balled into fists of rage. "You oafish jerk! Do you think you would be anything if it weren't for your FATHER being Lord of the Ookami Clan? You're a stupid barbarian who’s deluded with ideas that dirty ningen slaves and true-blood youkai can live together like EQUALS!"
He growled in warning, but the fiery red-head ignored it. "Just look at that revolting half-breed dog you call friend! And his mate---a filthy ningen girl! I saw you. You were drooling all over her! How utterly gross!"
"Out."
Ayame paused, her eyes widening in shock. "What?"
"Out."
Kouga's icy blue eyes were filmed over in crimson anger, but he refused to give in to it. His own claws curled over the cracked remains of the remote he had broken in his fury at the youkai's bitter accusations, and Ayame realized---too late---her childish blunder.
Switching gears, she went from tempest to temptress. Green eyes dewy and body relaxing into soft allure, she asked softly, wonderingly, in artificial confusion. "Kouga-koi?"
Kouga's voice was cold, hard, unrelenting. "Out."
Ayame's mouth fell open in astonishment, but Kouga's blue eyes were like ice.
"Now."
*~*~*~*~*
Kagome was on a mission.
"Jennar...Jennar..." She flipped past the scrolled listings on the data-link, humming the repetition under her breath like a mantra.
"What the hell are you doing?" Her mate asked in irritation, looking up from his own flat-screen computer, where he was going over expense accounts.
"I'm looking for Sango." Kagome answered blithely, tapping her finger past multiple names. Inuyasha scowled, but went back to his figures.
"Got it!" Kagome sang out triumphantly, interrupting her mate's concentration once again.
"Damn it, Kagome..." InuYasha let out a growling sigh.
Kagome just giggled, abandoning her seat to come over and hug his irritation away. Planting a kiss on his silver head, she rubbed the ache from his shoulders, which was due to his being scrunched over the computer for too many hours.
"I found where Sango's bunked. I'm going to go call on her, see how she's doing. You wanna come along?"
Inuyasha grimaced. "This accounting crap is a pain in the ass."
"So?" Kagome coaxed, rubbing the tensed muscles of his neck.
"So I gotta do it." Inuyasha let out a gusty sigh. One clawed hand came up to lie over his wife's. He squeezed gently. "Not for much longer, though. And you be safe. I know I can't stop you. But you," He growled softly, pulled her to him for a quick kiss, "be safe."
"Of course." Kagome said blithely. "Aren't I always?"
Inuyasha just scowled.
*~*~*~*~*
The sweep of the bristles against the floor was almost lulling, and Sango could not quite keep the yawn at bay, so she took one hand off the handle of her broom in order to hide it, blinking more from boredom than from true sleepiness.
"Sango?"
Sango jumped, and turned around. The forgotten broom hit the floor with a "thwack", and she jumped again.
Kagome giggled, before smothering the thinner girl in a fierce hug. "It IS you!"
"K-Kagome?" Sango blinked in confusion as the black-haired girl stepped back and delighted brown eyes swept her from head to toe.
"It's so good to see you! I've been all over the Station looking for you, you know!" Kagome scolded her mildly, before her eyes lit up with an Idea. "Come on. I know a great little place we can go and get some Sakurian tea. We can catch up on all that's been happening to both of us!"
"Er..." Sango hung back as Kagome tugged on one hand. "I'm working. Cleaning." She tried to explain.
Kagome rolled her eyes. "Ew. I know! I'm gonna have to speak with Kouga. I can't believe they have you doing such menial work---"
Sango could only stare at the younger girl in confusion. She had forgotten how ALIVE Kagome was---how exuberantly vibrant, how strangely dizzying she was to Sango's peace of mind.
She'd never be bored around Kagome THAT was for sure. Sango tentatively smiled, but still resisted Kagome's pull on her arm.
"I'm still on shift." She explained. "Maybe after six, when I'm off---"
"Six? Oh, heck no! I have plans to go to dinner with Inuyasha at Seven."
"Seven?"
Kagome giggled. "It's a nightclub, silly, not a time. Hey, wait a minute! You should come with us. I bet you haven't been out anywhere yet, and I only have a few more days on Station before we head planet-side."
Kagome was going down to the planet? But of course, she wouldn't be staying on Yoro, with a whole wide world below opening up for colonization.
Sango felt a momentary pang of sorrow, but carefully hid it. Where in all the worlds was all this emotion suddenly coming from? Dr. Higurashi would be having paroxysms over the ineffectiveness of her psychological training...
"Come on, Sango. We haven't talked in AGES. And don't worry about that work nonsense. You are entitled to a break, and besides, I know your boss. He'll understand why you had to leave after I explain it all to him."
With that final bit of logic, Kagome abruptly turned and dragged the bewildered girl after her, leaving broom and bin abandoned behind them.
THE SOURCE OF SOLACE
A/N: Thanks for the reviews! Muchly appreciated.
WARNING! Dark imagery and lime, adult situations and issues. Foul language omitted on ff dot net.
CHAPTER THREE
Sango carefully stepped around a large docking cable that lay strewn across the deck. She followed the three men ahead of her, her features as bland and distant as any of them. But there was something that dwelt in her deep brown eyes that would have given Dr. Higurashi pause---a spark of awareness that was not present in her fellow Altered. Although her eyes stayed straight ahead, on the green-clad back of the man in front of her, she still took in the controlled chaos of the Shipping and Receiving area.
Passengers had alighted from the Eminence hours ago. Now dockhands crawled over the surface of the ship, carefully examining the exterior for any sign of weakness. The soft whirr of forklifts and clunking thunder of man-haulers made a cacophony of sound in the echoing chamber that housed the docked spacecraft as work-crews shouted back and forth to let themselves be heard over the noisy confusion.
The ship's medic had been assigned the duty of escorting the four Altereds to their work-detail quarters on Yoro. Impatient with the tiresome chore and eager to be about his own business, the medic was brusque as he led them across the frenzied space toward the Dispatch office, which was a mere plaz-glass window facing out on the docking bay.
They waited a few minutes until the frazzled man behind the window finally noticed them. "Yeah?" He demanded. "Whaddya want?"
"In-Processing." The medic scowled back.
Sango ignored the rest of the conversation as papers and work permits were handed over. She allowed her eyes to wander over the chaotic scene. She watched as a man-hauler thumped its way across the floor and grabbed up several red-coded plastic containers. Someone yelled at the dockhand to be careful, and a forklift maneuvered easily out of the way as the man in the metal harness swung his load too wide. More shouts, and this with some rather interesting adjectives.
"Miss? This way."
Sango started. For a moment, panic tightened her expression before she allowed the tensed muscles to relax and meekly followed after the rest of the men, who were vanishing into an opened door in the gun-metal wall. She had allowed her awareness of her surroundings to lapse, and that could prove dangerous. She wasn't certain how she knew that important fact, but it was seeded deep in her memory.
She would not allow it to happen again.
The man, clad in blue-grey coveralls, motioned to her again. Sango slid past him without a second glance. He was short and nondescript, easily dismissed. He did not follow the Altereds past the door. His watery grey eyes were appreciative as he watched the door slide closed on Sango's disappearing figure.
*~*~*~*~*
Captain Reizier was feeling harassed. He had always hated the G-force ratio of a station's spin-drive. He didn't like being stuck in one place, and he sure didn't like having to face the high-and-mighties who kept planetary resources and station-side hospitality under their thumb. Bad enough when it was a human---worse was the fact that Yoro (which circled the third planet, Kyouko, in Yorokuzo's system like a giant, metal moon) was lorded over by a youkai of the old blood.
Reizier had dealt with Lord Kouga before and he didn't like the spoiled little princeling any more than he ever had. Keeping the distaste from his face, he eyed the lounging figure before him with impatience. ~Damn youkai, keeping us here when we should have left hours ago!~
Lord Kouga sat sprawled across the cushiony comfort of a reclining sopha, his feet propped up and his arms crossed behind his head. Long black hair, swept back in a negligent tail, tangled across the back of the sopha. Expensive, butter-soft leather hugged the powerful hips and legs. A loosened shirt, rumpled and wrinkled but still expensively made of natural fabrics, made the ookami youkai look like a degenerate. A spoiled degenerate. But a sharp mind worked behind those narrowed blue eyes, and Reizier knew from past experience that you should never underestimate one of the old Line.
Even more disgusting was the youkai lord's companions. The captain recognized both of them from his passenger-log, but was still surprised to find them here. The silver-haired hanyou---a disgrace to both human and youkai sensibilities---was sprawled across a second sopha, his arm looped over the narrow shoulders of his wife, or mate, or whatever she called herself.
~Disgusting,~ was what Reizier personally thought. The girl was pretty in a winsome way, it was a damn shame she had soiled herself with half-breed filth. Look at the way the dog-eared hanyou was pawing her, but the poor, misguided twit didn't seem to mind at all. She was even sitting forward, her brown eyes bright, chatting happily with Lord Kouga as if it were the most natural thing in the world!
Truly disgusting. What was the universe coming to?
Youkai fangs flashed, and Kouga winked at the hanyou Inuyasha. "You've found yourself quite a jewel there, Mutt-face. I'm impressed."
Kagome giggled as her mate scowled. "Better than you could ever do, ass hole."
The girl just shook her head at the foul half-breed, and wrapped her arms around him to snuggle closer.
Reizier couldn't quite keep the disgust from his face as he cleared his throat, uncomfortable with the disgraceful display in front of him.
All three tensed, and Lord Kouga raised a chilling blue gaze in his direction. The captain stiffened. That couldn't be disgust in the youkai lord's eyes! Disgust...for HIM? It was monstrous. Officious. How dare that hair-ball stare at him as if HE were the one who was beneath contempt? Damn all youkai, anyway! It was the destiny of man to one day rule the universe, by virtue of their superiority, and here one of them sat, smugly aware that it was he, youkai degenerate, who held the reins of power under his unnaturally clawed thumb, and not a human----
But he couldn't allow his envy and loathing to show. Kouga would gut him, damn the unnatural demonic beast!
Reizier was suddenly glad that he had bargained with that strange man clad all in black---agreeing to take on board his ship four Altered people from Station Nine with no questions asked. The man had promised that they followed the same agenda, and he had known a few of the sacred passwords for the loose fraternity that the captain secretly believed in.
The Destiny of Man.
One day the universe would be purged of youkai filth, and man would come to possess his true place among the settled worlds. The captain was a fervent, if secret, believer in that wonderful ideal. He spent too much time between differing worlds, often ruled by youkai Lords, to ever outwardly proclaim his true beliefs, but damn, he hoped that strangely disquieting visitor might be able to start the purging HERE, with HIM---Lord Kouga.
The Lord didn't immediately address him. In fact, Reizier was ignored for the filthy creature standing beside him, the youkai with the white-spiked hair who had escorted him into the ookami’s presence.
"Hakkaku." The Lord's voice was cold, accusing.
"Eh...sorry, boss." The youkai nervously shifted from foot to foot. "I didn't know what to do with him. He said you wanted to see him."
"I would be happy to leave the lists here, if my arrival is inconvenient." Reizier said stiffly, unwilling to add "my lord" to the end, as was proper.
The hanyou had the gall to snort in derision. The ookami's blue eyes narrowed before he dismissed the captain with an off-hand wave, as if he were no more than a mindless servant.
“It is. But I've been waiting for the ship's manifest. You can leave it on your way out." The youkai lord intentionally left off the captain's title. "Hakkaku, take him out.”
"Sure thing, boss." The white-spiked youkai grabbed hold of Reizier's arm before the captain could register what the hell he was doing. Yanking on him none to gently, Reizier was dragged behind the youkai toward the door.
Enraged at the abrupt departure (not to add the disgusting touch of a youkai's claws on his newly-pressed uniform), Reizier simmered, but made a token show of willing compliance. Oh, he was all too willing to leave behind such disgusting beasts! And if he had it his way, the whole universe would one day be free of their filthy presence!
It was but destiny, after all.
*~*~*~*~*
"I want permanent ownership." Inuyasha said bluntly.
A thick black brow rose, and Kouga scowled.
Kagome stifled a giggle---she didn't want to call attention to herself. The two of them were so much alike, hanyou and youkai, even though they were a study in color contrasts. Silver hair glinted in the dimmed light of the overheads, while Kouga's hair was so black it melted into shadow. Amber eyes glared into icy blue as the matching scowls sized each other's determination up. Neither male was one for courteous finesse, both bluntly outspoken and brashly arrogant, they always seemed on the verge of clawing at each other’s throats like bristling dogs.
It was no wonder why they were fast friends.
Kouga had a certain charm (when he chose to exercise it) that her hanyou mate did not. Kagome's first wariness of the rough ookami youkai had dissolved into warm regard as he exerted that charm---much to Inuyasha's irritation---to bring her out of her initial shyness. Kagome wasn't dense; she could tell that Kouga had been amused by Inuyasha's rising ire as he mildly flirted with her. Kouga had only seemed more amused as Inuyasha's protective jealousy surfaced.
She was glad when Kouga had finally ordered dinner. Over expensive plates of crystalline glass and a surprisingly simple fare of natural, fresh foods brought up from the abundant planet that turned gently below them in cloud-swirled splendor, the combative tension between the two testosterone-laden males had faded. While Kagome had sipped at the expensively imported wine of Thetis---a pale rose wine that she had never tasted, as it's manufacture was far too expensive for a person of her limited means, but one which Kouga had insisted she try as it came from her homeworld----the ookami and her hanyou had reminisced over their shared past. Kouga, the ignored son of the old Lord, and Inuyasha, a disregarded half-brother to another, had formed a rather spurious friendship. From the tales they told of each other and the smirking memories that had them grinning at each other in remembrance, the pair of them had been quite a rebellious element, testing the patience of their rather disapproving guardians.
The trip down memory lane hadn't lasted long though. As soon as Ginta, a grey-headed ookami with a diffident smile, had come in and cleared dinner off the table, Inuyasha and Kouga had settled down to argue over contracts and tenure. Inuyasha wasn't coming to Kyouko empty-handed. He wanted to invest, and wanted a part of the action in the growing opportunities of Yorokuzo's prospects.
Now the two of them were in a fang-baring growl over the tiny details that bored Kagome no end.
Neither would give an inch without a snapping argument and counter-argument that made her want to roll her eyes over the pair of bratty children the interplay painted them.
Slipping off of the comfortable sopha, Kagome wandered aimlessly around the room. Inuyasha had looked up at her movement, showing that he wasn't unaware of her---even if he seemed to be totally obsessed in quarreling with his ookami friend. Kagome gave her possessive mate a reassuring smile as Kouga scowled at Inuyasha's distraction, and brought up yet another point of contention with a biting insult. Inuyasha replied with a curse, and called him an ookami idiot. Kouga snapped back, and the quarrel was taken up as if it had never been interrupted.
Kagome noted with amusement that Inuyasha’s white ears were swiveling, keeping track of her drifting tour around the elegant suite, even though he pretended to ignore her in favor of snarling at Kouga.
Kagome wandered over to the data-pad the captain of the Eminence had left on a nearby table. Bored, and idly curious, she thumbed open the visual specs, and scanned the various profiles at random. Sipping at the delicious wine she still held cupped in one hand, she bypassed lists and lists of trade-goods and cargo that had been brought in by the spaceship, and paused over the passenger log.
When she came across her own name, listed as ‘Takahashi, Kagome Higurashi’, she picked up the light-weight pad and slipped back into the comfortable sopha she had abandoned. Curling up, she read the short bio of information available on her and smiled softly over the script that stated that she and Inuyasha Takahashi were legally wed. She felt an odd little thrill over that simple statement of their marriage, and let out a happy, contented sigh.
The argument continued unabated behind her, and Kagome spent her time scanning over the bio-feeds regarding this or that passenger. Some she recognized by their vid-pics as faces she had seen onboard the Eminence, others were complete strangers. There was a surprising mixture of colonists---from technicians and scientists, to planet-side agronomists and station-side entrepreneurs.
It was only in the past few years, since Kouga had taken over at his father's death, that the Yorokuzo cluster had been opened up for settlement and trade. From the little she understood, the old Lord had been rather closed off from the rest of the galaxy, zealously guarding the Ookami Clan's claimed systems and cloaking them in deliberate obscurity.
Kouga had a totally different perspective on how to rule his inheritance, and even Kagome had heard the scandalized whispers of youkai and ningen who didn't agree with Kouga's tolerant attitude toward his planetary systems. She wondered idly if it was friendship with Inuyasha, who was both human and youkai, that had affected Kouga's views. Most youkai were such traditionalists, keeping separate and aloof from the humans they ruled, guarding their power jealously, and playing the dance of politics and intrigue that was known as the Game...
Kagome started at the next vid-pic that came up on the screen, almost spilling her wine in her surprise. Quick as lightening, Inuyasha was suddenly there to snatch the delicate crystal from her fingers with a growl of impatience. Kagome ignored him, her eyes fastened on the startling picture that had distracted her. Her fingers tapped on the smaller frame, and the picture blossomed out to fill the entire screen of the data-pad.
It was the strange girl she had met aboard ship, the girl Sango. Or maybe it was her twin. An identical twin, but with the stunning beauty that Sango's bony features and pale countenance only hinted at. The arch of the brows, the lips that showed no expression, the red tattoo that crossed the lids of her thickly-lashed eyes were the same. The black hair was lustrous and feathered across creamy skin that glowed with health. Even through the frozen image of a vid-pic, there was an aura of LIFE and LIVING that surrounded her. But it was the eyes, the incredible eyes, which held Kagome spell-bound.
You didn't notice the wealth of color in the deep brown depths unless you stared at it, as Kagome was doing. The touches of cinnamon and the deepest darkness of chocolate tints. It was incredible. They were so expressive, so feeling, so EMOTIONAL. There was such contained pain in them, such sorrow that it nibbled at her very soul with overwhelming pity.
It couldn't be the same girl. It couldn't.
But it was.
Kagome condensed the enlarged image to view the available data, and there was Sango's name at the top, with her ID number and her ship's reservations. But, strangely, there was no personal information. No planet of birth, or designated parentage. Only the simple, inescapable word, ‘Unknown’. And the other word, that infected her with perplexity...
~Alteration?~
Only criminals and psychotics were put through the mental rape of Identity Alteration. Not young women who took pictures with such frank, open expressions, as if they had nothing to hide---or lose. And if Sango Jennar HAD gone through Alteration, wouldn't her original crime be spread across the data-pad, as one of the others she had seen earlier and dismissed as interesting, but not really important? That man had been a convicted rapist and pedophile. He deserved Alteration. What could Sango have done that was as awful as that?
Kagome tapped the shrunken vid-pic again to stare at the full-sized version. She studied the open face with puzzlement. She felt a deep conviction that the girl who stared back at her could never have done something so terrible...
She just couldn't have.
She felt warm breath on her cheek and jerked away in surprise. Kouga had leaned down to stare at what had captivated her attention so thoroughly and he raised a black brow at the vid-pic. There was a jaded look of appraisal in his ice-blue eyes. "You know her?"
"Er..." Kagome stirred uneasily. Kouga was almost TOO close to her for comfort. His presence was overwhelmingly masculine and so very, well, YOUKAI.
She wasn't the only one to notice. A strong hand, white claws gleaming, snaked out and hauled her across the sopha and right into Inuyasha's lap. Kagome let out a startled "Eep!" of surprise, and dropped the data-pad with a plastic rattle to the floor.
Kouga's blue eyes glinted with amusement as he casually bent down to pick up the fallen data-link.
Inuyasha glared.
Kagome didn't know whether to giggle or hit him. She did both, which Inuyasha returned with a hard kiss that stole her breath away.
Kouga stared at the vid-pic thoughtfully for a moment before casually turning the screen off. In a gracefully careless movement, he sprawled across the sopha that sat kitty-cornered to the one Inuyasha and Kagome claimed. "Friend of yours?" He asked casually.
"Yes." Kagome sounded surprised by her admission.
Inuyasha snorted.
Kouga's mouth quirked.
"She's just some wacko Kagome met onboard the Eminence." Inuyasha supplied with his usual graciousness.
"She is not a wacko!" Kagome pushed away from her mate and protested with vehemence.
"C'mon, Kagome. She's weird!"
"She's sweet!" Kagome's brown eyes glittered with conviction.
"Feh." Inuyasha shrugged, not liking to argue about some stupid girl his wife had taken in like a lost kitten. Kagome couldn't help finding herself weird strays to adopt...look how she had adopted him, hellion bastard hanyou that he was.
Amber eyes softened into tenderness and he silenced Kagome's next protest with a warm, inviting kiss. The kind of kiss he knew would melt her bones and make her forget whatever she was going to say. He kept at it, until she stared up at him in bemused bewilderment, her scent sparked with passion, and her eyes dewy with love and longing. Her lips were rosy from his ministrations, and Inuyasha looked smug.
"That's pretty effective." Kouga said dryly and Inuyasha just grinned---before Kagome punched him in the stomach for his presumption.
"OW!"
Kouga's fangs flashed in a grin as Kagome stood over her hurting hanyou and proceeded to shout at him what, exactly, was wrong with him.
Of course, the only way to end any argument with the raven-haired onna was with a kiss...
*~*~*~*~*
Sango was assigned a room to herself. It was a standard bunk room, a lot like the one she had had before, on the Eminence. But this one was large, and could have housed at least twenty bodies. There was a lot more space between the beds, which were spaced only two high, instead of three, and there were private facilities at one end, where she could use the necessary or the shower to clean the imaginary dirt from her skin.
It was echoingly empty, and Sango was grateful that it was located on a busy corridor. The noise that would have disturbed and frightened her before was now strangely comforting. She could lie on her bunk and imagine what the people outside were doing, what made them dash down the hall in such hurry or linger, their voices a murmur of different tones and blends, in conversation.
She was assigned by a harassed-looking foreman to the dayshift. All four of them had been detailed to Sanitation. Sango did not mind the work, which was menial and often disgusting. Her tools were simple, a rolling cart, broom and bag-dispenser. She wheeled her cart quietly along the back corridors in the Yoro Station, stepping out to pull the full discard out of the container and lining it with a new one.
This was work usually given to mechanized robots, but she had overheard one of the more vocal shift-leads complain that Kouga didn't want machs stinking up his Station, and so they were stuck with idiots and morons to get the job done. The shift-lead might have seen her standing there, but would not have considered it of any importance. The Altereds’ reputation had preceded them, and no one made any overtures.
And so her life resumed a static pattern of dull duty and listless hours of waiting for her work cycle to begin anew. The familiar routine should have been comforting to her, should have soothed away the edgy restlessness that now plagued her waking hours. It should have allowed her to focus on the little things, as she had been taught in Alteration. But, somehow, it all really didn’t matter, and it wasn’t enough.
Not now.
*~*~*~*~*
Kouga leaned indolently against the rail, the lit tabac dangling negligently from one hand. He watched the dance-floor below him as bodies ground slowly to the music that throbbed throughout the two-tiered room. Lights in blinding flashes swirled across the sweating bodies, lighting the taut muscles of a man's naked chest in icy-blue, touching across the split-skirted thigh of a woman in frost, making Hakkaku's distinctive spikes of white hair turn pale green.
The place was packed, and noisy, and was one of the more lucrative enticements on Yoro Station for young rich tourists to spend their money. The club was simply called ‘Seven’, for its station-wide map designation when Kouga had planned out how he might market Yorokuzo for trade expansion. The older, more conservative members of his clan had been appalled at the idea of opening a nightclub, but Kouga knew what would draw in the rich, young crowds who spent their time spacing from one pleasure-world to another. He knew the lure of sensual-gratification; he had spent much of his jaded youth doing the same thing.
And drawing in the young noblesse brought in perspective investors, more than willing to exploit the financial opportunity those spoiled pleasure-seekers represented.
The first to come, of course, had been those who catered to the rich and obnoxious. But for every brothel or "H" den that opened, there was a need for everyday services...restaurants and cleaners and shops stocking the small necessities. The nightlife of Yoro had given the orbiting station a name, but it was the expanding trade and diverse development that would make the station a feasibly permanent settlement. It had taken a few years, but now this glittering world was only a mere fragment of the station's overall economy.
Kouga took a long draw from his tabac, and absent-mindedly flicked the ashes into the crowded dance-floor below. The upper, VIP floor that rung Seven's dance-floor was in hot demand, but he had ordered his bouncers to clear everyone out. He wanted the balcony to himself, and he was Lord. The people went, grumbling and protesting, but they went.
He was Taiyoukai, after all.
Though he rarely claimed the privilege. But it came in useful, once in a while. Like now.
He felt an odd restlessness, as if he was bored with it all. Perhaps he was. The music, the entertaining, the frivolously superficial existence. It all seemed the same, suddenly.
He thought about the look in the girl Kagome's eyes when she had stared at her hanyou mate. THAT had been a shock. Inuyasha, hard-ass hell-raiser, now a grumbly puppy in love.
Almost sickening.
He had never expected Inuyasha to be caught. But he was. And seemed happy about it. Damn happy.
Whatever.
"KOUGA-KOI!"
Kouga suppressed an impatient growl. Here came Ayame, her red hair bouncing in twin pigtails, her stunning body wrapped in too-little natural cloth of stunning cost. She was a hot little female, in and out of bed, and she knew how to do things to an ookami that made him howl with pleasure. She kept her trim body in superb shape, wore the most expensive clothes---all in white to better show off her carefully sprayed-on tan and continuously dyed, fire-red hair.
Ayame now scorned the club-scene, though that is where he had first met her. She was the granddaughter of one of his father's closest advisors, and a spoiled brat of a female youkai. She knew where the real power lay, and wasn't averse to using her considerable charms in order to get what she wanted. Kouga himself wasn't averse to using her charms either. But never for anything permanent, which was Ayame's ultimate goal.
And despite all of her considerable skills and charms, Kouga was already getting bored with the red-headed hottie who couldn't quite keep the hard ambition from her deep, lens-colored green eyes. Taking a deep drag from his lit tabac, Kouga was soon enveloped in a cloud of heady perfume and expensive white fur. Wet lips kissed his cheek as he shrugged out of Ayame's tight grasp.
"Kouga?" The question was soft and slightly hurt.
Cool blue eyes scanned the youkai from head to toe, missing nothing---including the VERY expensive sapphire that now dangled between pert little breasts barely covered in white silk.
"That's new." He said, a slight growl in his bored voice. Ayame was an expensive bauble to keep.
Ayame warily waved any concerns of money aside. "It's merely a trifle. You can be so silly, darling! The shop owner was more than glad to give it to me for a really paltry sum---almost at cost, really. Seeing as I am your LADY."
Ayame's green eyes flicked over his, trying to see if her sally had worked. She was always dropping overly broad hints that she was expecting to see an even more expensive jewel one day on her finger, proclaiming herself his Lady in truth.
Kouga chose to ignore the slight bitterness in her sharp words, and turned away to lean against the railing once more, his blue eyes wandering over the dancing crowds below. Blue-tinged smoke circled over his head in a cloud, and Ayame coughed delicately.
"Do you have to smoke those nasty things?" She demanded petulantly as she vigorously waved smoke away from her face.
She was acting the brat tonight, and Kouga had little patience with it. He ignored her.
But Ayame wouldn't allow herself to be ignored. Dropping the offended air that would get her nowhere with him, she turned sultrily sensual with the art of a superb actress. Shrugging off the expensive white mink so that it slid off her shoulders and pooled unheeded on the floor at her feet, she stepped forward. Pulling his nearest arm up, she slid under it to press her body along his lean length with deliberate invitation.
Her hands smoothed over the wide expanse of his chest, one coming up to coax his hard chin down for a kiss, the other moving below to stir response. "I've missed you." She breathed into his shirt as Kouga stared down at her. A pink tongue darted out to moisten parted lips, and her green eyes were lit with compelling desire.
For a moment, he paused, to the point where Ayame's green eyes started to darken with anger. Honest emotion, not subterfuge. He then claimed what she was so blatantly offering, and his lips came down in a hard kiss that left the youkai breathless, stirring passion within her until she could only cling to the dark-haired ookami's strength as hers faded...
*~*~*~*~*
Kouga leaned against the pillows heaped along the headboard in the wide circle that made up his bed. He was naked to the waist, where silk pooled around his hips in dark gold and warm beige tones. Ayame bitched that he had no taste, and had tried once or twice to have his suite of rooms redecorated in more vibrant colors. But Kouga would have none of it. He liked earthy tones around him, preferring simple luxury to an extravagant riot of bad taste and splashy colors, which was more in vogue---or so Ayame had claimed.
She also claimed he lived more like a pathetic ningen pauper than a wealthy youkai Lord.
He couldn't have cared less.
Lounging back against the pillows, he picked up the remote and flicked the long wall-display to the current newsreels. The vid-screen faced the bed, which dominated the large room. Yet another archaic anachronism, or so Ayame whined. Technology had risen to a point where one didn't need a remote control to activate vid-screens or any of the other million and one scientific marvels that made interstellar life so easy for the lazy. But Kouga didn't like speaking to a computer like it was a person, just like he didn't like depending on a mechanized robot to do the things any able-bodied human could do.
Ayame made a disgusted noise as he turned the news on. She lay on top of the silken sheets, her perfect body on display for an uncaring audience. She twirled a red pigtail in one hand, bored. The giant sapphire winked invitingly between her naked breasts. She had refused to take it off, even in the heat of passion that had followed them from the bar to his private suite of rooms above Seven's throbbing nightlife. None of the noise crept up into the silent rooms, which were surrounded in thick sound-proofing perma-shield for just that reason.
Kouga stared at the newsreel intently, his bedmate forgotten. He watched stock pricing for commercial interests sliding, and his mind was taken up with the possible reasons that might have caused the trading securities to shift. It could mean nothing, or it could signal the covert, powerful mechanizations of some youkai lordling in the Game he loathed but which but his equals relished.
Ayame hated being ignored. "Kouga-koi..." She began, turning to glide one long-fingered hand across his taut belly.
Kouga jerked away with annoyance. "Not now." He growled, his blue eyes still locked on the flickering screen.
Green eyes sparked as her white hand whipped back as if scorched. "What do you mean, not now?"
Kouga let out an irritated sigh. Ayame's sharp tone let him know that he was in for one of her all-out tantrums. He had put up with them in the past for the gifted way in which Ayame made it up to him in the bedroom. But he was damn tired of her selfish, whining ways and the beautiful youkai was too self-absorbed to realize that her days...hours...minutes...in his bed were numbered.
Ayame slid off of the bed, so that she could look down on him in all of her green-eyed wrath. "Not now? Not NOW? What do you think I am, some two-bit whore you can order about? I'm Ayame! The granddaughter of---"
"I know who your grandfather is." Kouga said coldly, the blue eyes he turned on her hard. "Don't start that up again."
Ayame's green eyes glittered as brightly as the blue jewel dangling between her naked flesh. "Don't start? Don't start? How DARE you!" Crimson seeped into her eyes as her hands balled into fists of rage. "You oafish jerk! Do you think you would be anything if it weren't for your FATHER being Lord of the Ookami Clan? You're a stupid barbarian who’s deluded with ideas that dirty ningen slaves and true-blood youkai can live together like EQUALS!"
He growled in warning, but the fiery red-head ignored it. "Just look at that revolting half-breed dog you call friend! And his mate---a filthy ningen girl! I saw you. You were drooling all over her! How utterly gross!"
"Out."
Ayame paused, her eyes widening in shock. "What?"
"Out."
Kouga's icy blue eyes were filmed over in crimson anger, but he refused to give in to it. His own claws curled over the cracked remains of the remote he had broken in his fury at the youkai's bitter accusations, and Ayame realized---too late---her childish blunder.
Switching gears, she went from tempest to temptress. Green eyes dewy and body relaxing into soft allure, she asked softly, wonderingly, in artificial confusion. "Kouga-koi?"
Kouga's voice was cold, hard, unrelenting. "Out."
Ayame's mouth fell open in astonishment, but Kouga's blue eyes were like ice.
"Now."
*~*~*~*~*
Kagome was on a mission.
"Jennar...Jennar..." She flipped past the scrolled listings on the data-link, humming the repetition under her breath like a mantra.
"What the hell are you doing?" Her mate asked in irritation, looking up from his own flat-screen computer, where he was going over expense accounts.
"I'm looking for Sango." Kagome answered blithely, tapping her finger past multiple names. Inuyasha scowled, but went back to his figures.
"Got it!" Kagome sang out triumphantly, interrupting her mate's concentration once again.
"Damn it, Kagome..." InuYasha let out a growling sigh.
Kagome just giggled, abandoning her seat to come over and hug his irritation away. Planting a kiss on his silver head, she rubbed the ache from his shoulders, which was due to his being scrunched over the computer for too many hours.
"I found where Sango's bunked. I'm going to go call on her, see how she's doing. You wanna come along?"
Inuyasha grimaced. "This accounting crap is a pain in the ass."
"So?" Kagome coaxed, rubbing the tensed muscles of his neck.
"So I gotta do it." Inuyasha let out a gusty sigh. One clawed hand came up to lie over his wife's. He squeezed gently. "Not for much longer, though. And you be safe. I know I can't stop you. But you," He growled softly, pulled her to him for a quick kiss, "be safe."
"Of course." Kagome said blithely. "Aren't I always?"
Inuyasha just scowled.
*~*~*~*~*
The sweep of the bristles against the floor was almost lulling, and Sango could not quite keep the yawn at bay, so she took one hand off the handle of her broom in order to hide it, blinking more from boredom than from true sleepiness.
"Sango?"
Sango jumped, and turned around. The forgotten broom hit the floor with a "thwack", and she jumped again.
Kagome giggled, before smothering the thinner girl in a fierce hug. "It IS you!"
"K-Kagome?" Sango blinked in confusion as the black-haired girl stepped back and delighted brown eyes swept her from head to toe.
"It's so good to see you! I've been all over the Station looking for you, you know!" Kagome scolded her mildly, before her eyes lit up with an Idea. "Come on. I know a great little place we can go and get some Sakurian tea. We can catch up on all that's been happening to both of us!"
"Er..." Sango hung back as Kagome tugged on one hand. "I'm working. Cleaning." She tried to explain.
Kagome rolled her eyes. "Ew. I know! I'm gonna have to speak with Kouga. I can't believe they have you doing such menial work---"
Sango could only stare at the younger girl in confusion. She had forgotten how ALIVE Kagome was---how exuberantly vibrant, how strangely dizzying she was to Sango's peace of mind.
She'd never be bored around Kagome THAT was for sure. Sango tentatively smiled, but still resisted Kagome's pull on her arm.
"I'm still on shift." She explained. "Maybe after six, when I'm off---"
"Six? Oh, heck no! I have plans to go to dinner with Inuyasha at Seven."
"Seven?"
Kagome giggled. "It's a nightclub, silly, not a time. Hey, wait a minute! You should come with us. I bet you haven't been out anywhere yet, and I only have a few more days on Station before we head planet-side."
Kagome was going down to the planet? But of course, she wouldn't be staying on Yoro, with a whole wide world below opening up for colonization.
Sango felt a momentary pang of sorrow, but carefully hid it. Where in all the worlds was all this emotion suddenly coming from? Dr. Higurashi would be having paroxysms over the ineffectiveness of her psychological training...
"Come on, Sango. We haven't talked in AGES. And don't worry about that work nonsense. You are entitled to a break, and besides, I know your boss. He'll understand why you had to leave after I explain it all to him."
With that final bit of logic, Kagome abruptly turned and dragged the bewildered girl after her, leaving broom and bin abandoned behind them.