Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha. Inuyasha and characters are property of Rumiko Takahashi. I'm just borrowing them for my own amusement.
I know I should be focusing on updating "Finding the Truth" but this entered my brain and I haven't been able to get rid of it.
Kagome groaned as she stripped off, throwing her demon covered body armour on the floor before cringing at the smell. She hated having to deal with ogres. They were always messy.
She pulled the tie out of her hair, letting it fall down her back before stepping into the shower and standing under the hot spray. She revelled in the heat for a few moments before scrubbing herself down and washing the grime of the night away from her body and hair. She grimaced again as she saw the remnants of dirt and ogre washing down the drain.
Stepping out of the shower and grabbing one of the towels hung just outside she wrapped it around herself and walked into the change room at the side. She closed the door before drying herself off and dressing quickly. She didn't bother to dry her hair properly, not wanting to take the time and effort to do so, only patting it down with a towel and tying it up in a braid.
She knew that the armour would be taken care of by one of the cleaning staff and returned to her locker area before the next evening so she stepped out of the change room and into the brightly lit hallway, making her way towards the meeting room they would be convening in.
Entering the room, she saw a freshly showered Miroku sitting in one of the large leather chairs, his hair still slightly damp. He too had been covered with ogre guts, more than she had so it was hardly surprising that he too had jumped in the shower as quickly as possible. She saw him wrinkle his nose slightly and chuckled to herself, knowing he would be jumping into another shower as soon as he could.
She sat down as the door opened again and Sango entered the room, freshly showered and changed as the other two were. The three of them looked towards the older woman in the room, Kaede who sat at the head of the table, waiting for the three of them.
"Quite a mess the three of you got yourselves into," she smirked, referencing the state of them when they had re-entered the facility after their excursion.
"Yes, unfortunately," Miroku sighed, sitting back in his chair. "There were three more than we had been led to believe. At first it was just the four that had been reported by our field agent but the others turned up shortly afterwards."
"There's something going on." Kagome leaned forward, resting her arms on the mahogany table in front of her, looking towards Kaede. The old woman, while lacking height, was intimidating in her presence. She had seen many things that the others did not know about and the patch covering where her right eye had once been showed that she had once been a hunter, just as they were. "They're gathering for some reason."
"Yes," Kaede sighed sliding a file down the table towards the young woman. "And we will need to determine what that reason is. The oni that you have taken care of over the last four days are not the only ones that have appeared."
Kagome opened the file to see maps of the city, highlighted areas jumping out at her. She noted the areas where she, Sango and Miroku has been both that night and the nights previous but there were also more than she was comfortable with. While they were not the only hunters in the Shikon Organisation, the three of them were the best and routinely picked for the tougher demons that would appear in their city from time to time.
Kagome counted at least a dozen other confrontations over the last two weeks or so. Far more than they had seen in that period of time before. It was concerning to Kagome as she passed the files over to Miroku and Sango.
"What are we going to do about this?" She asked Kaede, running a hand over her hair, unable to run it through it due to the braid. She rested her chin on her fist, watching the older woman.
"We need to find out why they are gathering. It cannot be coincidence that the weaker demons are all gathering at the same time." She sighed, standing up and pouring herself a glass of water, looking out of the window into the pre-dawn city. "It is likely they are being drawn here by a more powerful demon." She turned back to the three young hunters sat at the table. "A daiyoukai."
The three of them looked at each other before turning back to Kaede. While they had dealt with strong demons before, none of them had come face to face with a daiyoukai. They had heard of the last time that anyone in the Organisation had come into contact with a daiyoukai. It had been when Kaede had lost her eye and they had been told that she was lucky to be alive.
Apparently, it wasn't often a human survived an encounter with a daiyoukai of any kind.
That had been forty years ago and they hadn't been told much about what had happened, no one willing to talk about it behind Kaede's back and the old woman not wanting to relive the experience. It was something they understood but the three of them couldn't argue that they were curious.
"What do we do if it is?" Sango asked and Kaede sighed, looking back out of the window.
"All we can do is prepare," she said softly, her tone grave as she watched the sun start to rise. "When it comes to daiyoukai, that is all we can do."
"Are you sure that it is?" Kagome asked, looking between Miroku, Sango and Kaede. "It might not be . . ."
"Kagome's right," Miroku closed the file, dropping it lightly onto the table in front of them. "It might not be a daiyoukai. There could be something else going on. Something that we haven't discovered yet."
"You may be right, Miroku but we need to keep that possibility in mind." Kaede sighed.
"Wouldn't we have sensed if something that powerful was in the city. I mean, we can detect the youki off of an oni, a daiyoukai should be easy to find, right?" Kagome asked and Kaede sighed again, shaking her head and turning towards the three of them.
"Daiyoukai are incredibly powerful in their youki and physical strength. Also, with that, they are able to hide their power, bury it so that it cannot be detected at a distance. It may be that if there is one here, it is able to control its power so that it will not be discovered."
The three of them sighed, hoping that it was not a daiyoukai as Kaede feared it was. None of them had the desire to run into one of those. If it was a daiyoukai that was drawing the weaker oni to the city, they would accept the mission of taking it down.
They just didn't know how they were going to do it.
The three of them jumped as the phone at the end of the table began to ring. They watched as Kaede answered the phone and listened to the person on the other end, sighing gently before placing it back into the cradle.
"There is someone outside," she stated simply, looking at the three of them.
"Someone outside?" Kagome asked as the three of them stood and followed Kaede to the main control room where all the security for the building was centered.
The security officers for the Organisation turned as they entered before standing to greet Kaede, indicating the screen they wished to show her.
Kagome, Miroku and Sango looked at the screen themselves, seeing a young man, looking slightly stressed outside the front door. The black and white image on the screen showed him holding a phone to his ear, for a moment before pulling it away, his expression agitated as he ran a hand through his long hair. Though she should be concerned that he was standing directly outside a secret organisation that hunted demons in the city, she had to marvel at the length of his hair. She had always been proud of her own waist length hair but his surpassed even hers and it was currently tied in a high ponytail so she could only wonder how long it was when it was loose.
He was attractive but she could feel tension as he held the phone to his ear again.
"I wonder what he's doing," Sango said softly and Kagome hummed in agreement. "He might be lost."
"Maybe," Kagome responded, her voice barely above a whisper. "He might be something more."
"Have you been able to scan him?" Kaede asked and the security officer nodded.
"From here, the scans picked up that he's human but while he's directly outside, there's still a bit of distance to cover." He explained and Kaede nodded. "Our cameras caught him walking down the street," he indicated where the higher up external cameras were trained on the end of the street, allowing them to see everyone who walked up and down. The street they were on was not hugely populated so there wasn't much activity. They had to keep an eye out for anything that could be a threat. "We kept an eye on him as he walked down, cause he was looking around and looked a bit suspicious. When he stopped outside the front of the building, we knew to call you. While initial scans show he's human because of the distance, we can't be sure."
"I can check." Kagome offered and Miroku raised an eyebrow at her. "I can see why he's here and see if he's human at the same time." She shrugged as they looked at her. Her miko powers would allow her to detect whether he was human or not as she talked to him. If he was human she would send him on his way but if not they would need to do something with him. If he was a demon, they couldn't let him leave with the possibility that he knew what was happening inside the building next to him.
Kaede nodded and Kagome left the room, making her way outside. She opened the main door slowly, walking towards him carefully. She heard him curse as he pulled the phone away from his ear again.
"Excuse me?" He jumped as he turned around, seeing her standing there, his deep violet eyes fixing on her. She was momentarily stunned by the intense colour as they locked with her own deep brown. "Are you okay?"
"Uh . . ." he sighed crossly, glaring at his phone again as though it had wronged him in some way. "I've been better." He admitted with a small smile and a shrug. She took note of how he was dressed and she got the impression he was on his way to either work or some kind of meeting. Wearing a dark grey suit with matching tie, he was certainly outfitted for that purpose. For a second she was curious as to his occupation which caused him to dress so immaculately.
"Anything I can help with?" She asked as she stopped in front of him, her miko powers reaching out and wrapping around him.
He didn't react to the spiritual invasion as he sighed again. "While I hate to admit it, I'm a bit lost. Maybe you can help me." He gave her the address he was looking for and she smiled at him.
"It's the next block over," she nodded in the direction he needed to go and he gave her a relieved smile as she withdrew her spiritual energy from him, detecting nothing from him.
"Thank you . . ."
"Kagome," she gave him another smile.
"Kagome," he whispered, another smile on his lips. "I'm Isamu," he held out a hand and she took it, giving it a brief shake. "Thank you for your help, Kagome. Hopefully, if I hurry, I can still make it to work on time."
"Good luck," she gave a small wave as he turned and hurried off in the direction she had given him. She stood and made sure that he had turned off the street before turning and heading back into the building, placing her hand against the scanner that would allow her to enter the facility again.
She walked back through to the security room, knowing that they had been watching on the monitors. "He was lost," she explained leaning against the wall, "and human." There was a collective relief in the air as she spoke. "He'd turned down the wrong street and from the way he was cursing at his phone when I got outside, it would seem that he couldn't get hold of who he was trying to call."
"Well, thank the gods for small mercies," Kaede sighed and the rest of them nodded.
The next street over, a young man with long black hair and dark violet eyes walked into an extravagant building at a calm pace, heading straight across the lobby to the large elevator and stepping inside. Placing his thumb on the scanner above the buttons indicating the floor numbers, he stood back as the doors closed. He leaned against the back wall of the elevator and undid the buttons on his suit jacket.
He stood up straight as the doors opened, walking out and down the corridor towards the office at the end of the hallway. He undid and removed his tie as he did so, taking off the jacket and undoing the annoying top buttons of the shirt. Hanging both the offending garments over his arm, he felt the illusion he had held outside dissipate.
As he entered the office, closing the door behind him, he tossed the jacket and tie onto the leather couch before unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt sleeves and rolling up as he walked towards the desk. He felt his features shift as his human image fully dissipated, his human teeth and nails reverting to fangs and claws as the deep violet eyes turned to gleaming amber. He felt the human ears shift and disappear as his easily recognisable dog ears appeared on the top of his head as the midnight black hair turned to the shining silver of his blood line.
He looked to the youkai sitting on the other side of the desk, almost identical to himself barring the unusual ears and the colour of the stripes on his cheeks, one magenta and the other a deep violet.
He smirked as his brother's golden eyes met his own, a fang indenting his bottom lip as a small smile appeared on the youkai's lips.
"Contact made."