Merripit House: The Dark Daiyokai
Trial Run
The bags of new clothes ended up in a pile on the bed, which Sesshomaru never touched. He would have simply thrown the smart phone onto the kitchen counter along with his kimono, hakama and armor, but Jenny seemed rather insistent that he keep it in good condition and charged. So he found an outlet and plugged both it and the cord in before going to the one piece of furniture in this tiny set of rooms that he actually used.
Rosario had furnished the place well for the short time limit given. Overnight, she turned the bare apartment into one passably livable with a bed, chest of drawers, a sofa, two armchairs, a television, a few lamps, and food in the refrigerator. Jenny added a bookcase later, one that reached to the ceiling. In the last few weeks, she alone had given him enough books to fill most of the shelves. Fiction, non-fiction, picture books — he read them all. Whatever she gave him to get acquainted with modern knowledge and the English language, he devoured it instantly.
He took a hardcover book from the bookcase and sat in the window sill where he spent most, if not all, of his nights. The thought of sleep gave him a bitter taste in the back of his mouth. To close his eyes for a moment and wake up in a world that had gone by overnight … he couldn't do it again. Adjusting to this one gave him difficulty as it was. Furthermore, he simply had too much to learn to waste time on sleep.
Tonight's book was Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe. This book offered a different challenge from the others. Reading any of these books in English was like putting together a picture piece by piece without knowing what the completed image looked like. He needed to figure out the meaning of each word before he could understand sentences, then pages, then chapters. Glimpses of stories lay scattered in his memory, but understanding the larger picture didn't matter so much as getting accustomed to the language and grammar. And every night, he learned even more about what humans had discovered.
Thing Explainer, however, had easy-to-understand words and no stories to follow. It was the things that it explained that he couldn't quite comprehend. A vehicle that carried humans all the way to the moon, machines that could burn entire cities, boxes that created power … In his day, even yokai couldn't accomplish such feats. But humans had no end to their creativity when it came to solving non-problems and questions. Getting into the air seemed like one of those things they had a particular fascination with. Instead of coming to terms with walking, they made flying machines, then climbed aboard. Admirable, but at the end of the day, humans walked home on their two feet and he could glide home above their heads effortlessly.
Not that he had any need to gloat.
While this world didn't have forests quite in abundance, he'd come to see the metal, glass and cement buildings as a new type of forest after all these nighttime periods of pondering. The city housed hunters, unsuspecting prey, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores. Life thrived, struggled, screamed occasionally, and was snuffed out in an instant. The only difference was he couldn't hunt near as frequently as he would have liked. He didn't need to eat often — a quick trip out of the city to a nearby forest to prey on a deer every week or so was sufficient — but he didn't like feeling restrained. And Jenny had a fit the one time she caught him snatching a pigeon out of the air. Something about avian flu.
Speaking of the devil, the apartment may have been two doors down from the office, but he could still hear Jenny talking over the phone, typing on her laptop, meeting with late-night clients — all the mundane minutia she didn't feel the need to bore him with. The court she held each day, deciding who most needed help from Merripit House, fascinated him. Policemen with cases that had no answers left with a flippant response and a solution from the ruler of the House. Parents with a runaway child would leave feeling relieved when she got the errant brat under control. She took on ordinary, straightforward cases because only she could see a more interesting mystery underneath the 'red herrings,' as she put it. Then at night, she quietly wrapped up details and eased her clients' fears.
Sesshomaru watched the exit of the apartment complex nightly for the detective to finally leave the office. Earlier Liu and Rosario had left in two separate cars headed the same direction. He suspected that Jenny had sent them to fulfill an assignment and then kept track of them via phone throughout the night. A door shut with some finality and keys scraped in a lock, signalling the exit of the last person to leave the office that night. He snapped his book closed and pushed open his window.
Time to begin the hunt.
First off, Jenny never left from the same exit each night. Front door, parking lot, fire escape, back door - even out the window once. The next day, she had a slight limp and she hadn't tried that one again since. This evening, Sesshomaru thought perhaps she would use the parking lot exit as it had been a while since she had. But then a whiff of rosemary and gunpowder hit his nose from the west. The fire escape tonight.
Dressed in the same leather-like clothes she'd worn in the traffickers' warehouse, Jenny climbed down the ladder and jumped off onto the sidewalk. She slung a purse over her shoulder and began walking down the street. If it weren't for the bright white-yellow — no, the word was blonde — streak of hair cutting across the street, she would have blended right into the city with her dark clothes.
Here, too, came another set of variables. Would she take a bus? Hail a cab? Catch a train in the subway? Or would she just keep on walking? At the moment, she walked.
Before she got too far out of sight, Sesshomaru opened the window wide enough to slip through and stepped out, landing silently in the garden below. The sun hadn't set far enough for him to risk exposing himself by flying, so he followed on foot. He might as well test out the effectiveness of his new clothing. The purpose of such a purchase was to help him blend in, after all. Fifty meters ahead of him, Jenny joined a crowd of commuters headed to the train station, her head low and her hands in her pockets.
Towering over most humans had its advantages as he could keep an eye on the streak of white-blonde hair moving through the crowd - swifty, too. For the first time, heads didn't turn to stare at his clothes like they thought he had some strange proclivities. They now turned upward to see just where his height ended. He never could just blend in. That and the swell of youki that surrounded him made the crowd part unconsciously before him, even if they had no idea why.
Jenny turned down a street with marketplaces all along each side. And suddenly a hat shaped like a blue felt bucket with a brim appeared on her head. Only a moment ago, this hat with an equally flashy blue rose, was hanging on a hook as one of the wares offered by a shop. Once a thief, always a thief. But it did disguise one of her distinctive features and helped make her harder to spot.
As he passed this same hat shop, Sesshomaru snagged a silver-gray one that caught his fancy, and placed it on his head. Two could play this game.
Half the crowd turned toward the train station, and he expected Jenny to go down the stairs with them. Instead, she kept on going straight ahead along the road toward an even more crowded part of the city. Moving through this crowd felt like walking upstream in a rushing river as these humans, if they felt the presence of his youki, ignored all external distractions to get where they wanted to go. With her petite size, the detective had little trouble weaving through the swarm. But as long as he kept his eye on the bobbing blue hat, he didn't worry about the pushing and jostling or losing her.
Right up until the blue hat bobbed down and disappeared entirely. Scanning the crowd wildly, Sesshomaru fought to pick out the woman's scent from all the others. Not many here smelled of gunpowder after all. On second thought, far more people in this crowd had fired guns recently than he had counted on. But constant proximity to the woman had granted him more familiarity with her overall scent than she intended and he could quickly figure out which direction she had gone.
Right around where Jenny vanished, he found the stolen hat off to the side in the street. The crowd nearly knocked him over when he stopped to pick it up. Then he noticed Jenny racing through traffic, dodging the cars and the — he had no name for the narrow two-wheeled vehicles some humans rode at high speeds. She conveniently found ways to put vehicles as large as Ah-Un in between them, then changing directions while she had advantage of a distraction. She didn't even look for these opportunities, like her daily routine included losing a tail that would not shake.
Soon Jenny reappeared on the other side of the street, melting into the crowd as if she hadn't just taken off on a dead run moments before. If any human were following her, they would probably cross the street as soon as possible to keep up with her, which would only expose them. He decided to stay back and wait. His yokai eyes could see her well enough anyway.
As he kept up with her on the other side of the road, he made note that the shoes Liu forced upon him (because "I will not have you ruin a beautiful ensemble with the wrong pair of shoes!") had no grip, rubbed his heels and pinched just a bit. Surely Jenny would see reason in allowing him his armored boots back. If not Jenny, then certainly he could prevail upon Rosario for help. That strange woman with a temper seemed positively enamored with him.
A yellow car topped with 'Taxi' emblazoned in light, stopped at the side of the road right next to Jenny. With barely enough time to speak to one another, the detective climbed inside, passed him a handful of bills, and the car left the curb. Despite the heavy traffic, the taxi pushed its way through the others and got some good distance before Sesshomaru could decide how best to proceed.
Moving like a human proved difficult here. Keeping up with a car by foot would do more than simply turn heads, but perhaps if he kept his speed to a reasonable sprint he could remain unnoticed. Just one problem. Crowds don't suffer one man's sudden course change lightly, nor do they allow for someone to move faster than the average walking speed. Nonetheless, Sesshomaru forced himself through the wall of people, possibly pushing them aside with a wave of youki, and found a break between the crowd and the road where he could run.
Taking a sharp right, the taxi turned down a less populated street, clearly finding that the fastest route to wherever Jenny needed it to go. When it passed the building on the corner, Sesshomaru stepped out into the maze of cars and — seriously, what are these steel carts called? Darting between obstacles nearly fast enough to look like a blur, he got across the street and aimed for an alley that he could cut through. His hat flew off as he moved even faster with no humans about. He absolutely had to get ahead of the taxi, no matter if the few homeless people caught a glimpse of his feet scarcely touching the ground.
Once he made it to the other side of the block, he searched the street for Jenny's taxi. To his dismay, no fewer than five yellow taxis waited at the end of this street. Getting out onto the sidewalk thirty meters away from them, he ducked a bit to see into the windows, hoping to find a streak of blonde hair.
Not a one of them contained the detective.
This, too, was part of the game. He always lost her. But he refused to let her outwit him tonight. With his senses at the height of their capabilities, he sifted through the mountain of information before him, searching for the right concoction of scents. Rosemary. Gunpowder. A hint of spearmint. Newspaper. A voice that had the steady tone of a low flute and spoke sweetly while undermining the status of whomever she talked to. A sharp gaze that drove people away should she choose that.
Then his ears caught a car door opening, a frog's croak, shouts of surprise at an innocuous amphibian leaping from a taxi, and Jenny's deep breath as she recovered from a sneeze. Just past the intersection, a taxi heading to his right had a passenger that released a frog. Sesshomaru allowed himself a smug grin at the reliability of human frailty before diving back into the crowd to follow the direction of this cab. Soon enough, the cab stopped and Jenny escaped. While the driver may have refused to help her escape from her hunter, she now had quite a bit more distance on him.
It didn't take long for Sesshomaru to spot Jenny weaving through the flow of people. Only now she'd pulled her hair to the side and taken off her jacket to look like someone else. She even stole another hat from an inattentive child as she turned with the crowd into the stairwell of the subway.
The subway had given him plenty of trouble before. Not only had he been too noticeable, but if she even did get on a train, he had very little time to get to the station on either direction and check if she disembarked at that stop or went even further along the line. He had soon learned to watch for if she got money out of her pocket to pay for a ticket before she descended into the station. If she didn't, he had a better chance of following her by simply waiting for her to double back.
Today, however, he could join the human throng. And the thought of a new avenue of attack thrilled Sesshomaru to no end.
From the top of the staircase, he saw her standing at a large metal box, pressing buttons and inserting money. Once she retrieved a paper from the dispenser, she repeated the process, but without taking the paper. These tickets were called tickets, or receipts. In any case, everyone who wanted to get on the train needed something resembling these papers. Could she have left the ticket as an act of charity? Or possibly because she knew?
No, she couldn't know. She never checked over her shoulder for a pursuer or acted like she knew someone was there. Her methods of getting lost in a crowd seemed more instinctual than deliberate. Which should beg the question, why does she feel the need to lose potential followers? This could be answered another day.
Pushing people aside with greater force, Sesshomaru forced his way through the throng to get to the ticket box before anyone else could get there. As soon as he reached the metal contraption, he butted in front of some man trying to use it and thrust his hand inside the basket at the bottom. His claws wrapped around a scrap of paper and pulled it free.
Jenny passed through a set of gates where she had to present the ticket in order to get through. Sesshomaru almost forgot he needed to be inconspicuous as he hurried to catch up and take the same route. A feeling of delight surged through his system at the thought of getting farther than he ever had before, of getting closer to finding out where this woman lived and where she might be hiding the Ketsugō-kiba. He nearly leaped over the gate himself, but according to the scowls of the policemen patrolling the area, watching for thieves, that would have been a frowned upon action. Instead, he just kept his eye on Jenny's form merging with the group of people headed for one particular train.
The movement ended at a hallway with columns and benches, flooded with harsh artificial light. Jenny stood at the edge of a ledge where the side of a tunnel began. The floor of this tunnel had two narrow strips of rigid metal, stretching off in either direction as far as the eye could see. Sesshomaru paused behind one of the cement pillars plastered with colorful papers advertising various services and events. He'd never dared to get this close before, and he had no desire to ruin such a good opportunity.
A rumble passed through the area just before a massive metal cart slid into the tunnel, stopping right at the end of the hallway. It had glass all along its sides, and at certain sections, metal doors slid open. He'd seen this invention, a train, many times overhead. It reminded him of a giant metal snake. From the side, it looked entirely different. Almost immediately, travelers inside the train flooded out into the station, replaced moments later by the ones waiting in the hallway. The Harkness woman was one of those, moving with the crowd as soon as they started walking. Sesshomaru followed suit, entering the train several doors away from her.
The train had connected sections to it, but he could see from one into the next through the windows. Standing one section away from his target, he could keep watch over her motions without exposing himself. He took hold of the bar overhead, mimicking the others who hadn't found a seat, and prepared for the carriage to leave. Before the doors closed, warning lights flashed and beeped. Just as they slid shut, Jenny stepped off the train and back into the station.
He scrambled to get to the doors before they closed, but even when he hit the button to open it, they refused to let him back out. The floor lurched to the left and the train went on its way, carrying Sesshomaru away.
Jaw clenched, he turned away from the window, avoiding the sight of Jenny's successful escape. Then he found an empty seat next to a man that smelled like stale beer and cigarettes, and forced himself to not put his fist through the side of the train.
He stayed in that seat until dark. Hard to determine that when most of the train's path is underground. Under cover of night, he flew back home, entering his residence via the open window. Whether or not anyone saw him didn't matter at all to him. He had reading material to return to, after all. He picked up Thing Explainer, turned on one of the lamps and attempted to return to his studies.
Then something on his kitchen counter caught his eye. A white dot flashed on the cell phone. Unobtrusive, but noticeable. Tucking the book under his arm, he followed the directions Jenny had so carefully given him earlier that day and unlocked the phone. He found a little red circle with a '1' in the corner of the text messaging app and opened it.
You saw through the taxi switch. Not bad! You're getting better. Of course, you don't get full credit for following the frog. Tomorrow, I promise won't cheat and use the train.
A wave of disgust ran through him, caused not simply by his crushing defeat at the hands of a normal human woman. Apparently he had been playing her game all along.
