A Spider By Any Other Name…

Inu-yasha and Kagome were walking at leisure through the streets of Venice, passing a cup of take-away coffee between them democratically. They had just been to see an old contact of Kanna's, and – surprise, surprise – learnt nothing. Naraku had visited him two weeks back, trying to wheedle out some information about Kanna's old gang, but had been sent packing pretty quickly.

"What I don't understand is why he wouldn't help Naraku out," said Inu-yasha. "Kanna is still loyal, isn't she?"

"On the surface, yes." Kagome wrinkled her brow in thought. "I suppose she has to be – his reputation is what keeps the club alive back home. But don't you think that with him gone, she's probably got a whole lot looser reins? I don't think she'd openly work against him, but I don't think she'd give him access to her little circle of friends here, either. Naraku is clever, we've seen that before – imagine what he could do if given the leg up here in Venice. He'd rule the city in a year or two."

"And you're right, Kanna wouldn't want that," Inu-yasha nodded. "He's perfect the way he is now – she's still able to use his name when doing work for the club, but she can run it the way she wants. As long as he's weak and on the run, she's got her life ordered just as she likes it. Pity, really."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, if only she'd been a little less loyal to him, she could give us a few pointers in the right direction. And it would open a lot of doors at least here if we had her nod of approval. Remember how talkative Marco became once we mentioned her."

"Such a shame she hates our guts."

"Like I said. So it's Turkey next now, is it?"

"It's not as if we have any other ideas." Kagome snorted, drained the coffee and tossed the cup into a waste paper basket. "We'll have to employ Shippou-istic methods from here on in. Pick up on every single little rumour and don't give up until we can eliminate it beyond doubt."

"It's just so fucking frustrating," sighed Inu-yasha, shaking his head. "I can't help but feel that the trail of the little bastard grows colder by the day. Couldn't he at least have left one or two clues? He's a bad sport."

Kagome looked at him, then pursed her lips and appeared to be thinking hard. Inu-yasha sighed again.

"No, you can't put that on the list of charges. If they didn't accept 'acting smarmy' or 'slimy dress sense' as valid charges they're sure as hell not going to like 'being a bad sport', either."

"They're bad sports, too," said Kagome rebelliously. She sulked for a bit but then brightened up. "Well, if the trail is cold anyway we don't exactly have to rush off to the airport now, do we? Let's enjoy ourselves today; we've earned it. What do you say to a romantic boat tour? Alright, so maybe that was a bad idea," Kagome conceded as she saw his horrified expression. "So what about a romantic walk, followed by dinner?"

Inu-yasha relaxed. "That I can live with," he agreed.

…………………………………

The next morning found them both too tired to even raise their hand and turn the alarm clock off (it kept ringing for ten minutes, to the obvious annoyance of one of their neighbours who kept banging on the wall for the same amount of time). This was normal for Inu-yasha, who had lived his life in that manner until Kagome came along and introduced the concept of rising before eleven o'clock, but for Kagome it was a mark of huge fatigue. Since they had no schedule to keep they agreed to break their habit of getting up at six thirty, and instead spend the morning in bed and have a late breakfast at the motel before they went to the airport. The morning passed peacefully, aside from a brief disagreement on what "late" meant – Kagome said nine and Inu-yasha one thirty – and at the compromised time of a quarter to ten they left for breakfast.

The breakfast room was full when they arrived, and they secured a table before making their way to the buffet. The group of backpackers were (loudly) making plans to go and see something in the centre of town and two Chinese couples who had arrived two days earlier were chattering away thirteen to the dozen, but all noise died away when there was a sudden, violent crash and a table toppled. Inu-yasha and Kagome turned quickly and saw two of the Swedes rush over to help someone who – it seemed – had somehow managed to overturn his own table.

"Are you alright, Mr Ipsen?" called a third Swede, standing up in his seat and peering anxiously towards the others.

"Bit accident-prone, that guy," whispered Inu-yasha to Kagome, who giggled. "First his room gets broken into and then he turns the breakfast room into a percussion orchestra." They watched as the man stood up with the help of the two Swedish backpackers, clutching his arms around his head, and then quickly exited the room.

"Poor guy. Seems like a bit of a goof." Kagome turned back around to the breakfast buffet. "Don't Norwegians and Swedes understand each other, by the way?"

"Think so."

"So why did the guy call out to him in English?"

Inu-yasha shrugged, carefree. "Don't know. Maybe Mr Ipsen speaks a strange kind of Norwegian or something."

"Maybe," said Kagome, and devoted herself to her breakfast.

Forty-five minutes later they had eaten, packed and were ready to go. While the reception guy tried hard to conceal his relief at the news that they were leaving and Inu-yasha went through the luggage one last time to make sure they hadn't forgotten anything, Kagome wrote a few comments in the guest book and signed them out.

"Mr Ipsen left just half an hour ago," she commented, looking at the name above theirs.

"Probably off to the hospital," said Inu-yasha. "He's bound to break a leg sooner or later, the way he's going, so maybe he decided to book a bed in the emergency ward in advance."

Kagome smiled at him, signed their names and turned the book around, pushing it back across the counter. And pulled it back quickly, staring at it.

"What's the matter?" asked Inu-yasha, leaving their bags and coming over to join her. She shook her head mutely and pointed at the name Red Ipsen. Upside down it became clear that what it spelt backwards was

(NE)SPIDER

They stared at each other.

"His room was broken into – "

" – by Kanna's men, because she wants to keep an eye on him – "

" – and we haven't ever had breakfast here at the motel before, but now that we did – "

" – he saw us and was so shocked he turned his table over – "

" – and he left as quick as he could. Hell!"

"We have to get to the airport right now."

Dropping the book back onto the counter, they rushed from the hotel. After a brief pause they rushed back in, picked up their luggage, and were off again.

The guy in the reception took the day off for celebration.

…………………………………

Sesshoumaru bit back an exclamation of undignified outrage, looked around to ensure that no one had noticed and waved for a waiter. After placing an order for a new coffee he settled back in his chair, smoothed out the print-out of Inu-yasha and Kagome's new e-mail (given to him only that morning) and kept reading.

"We chased him all the way to the airport – he had a lead on us by half an hour but we got hold of some of Sota's associates and took a very short cut

Over the roofs.

…yes, over the roofs,

I mean, over the freaking roofs.

Sesshoumaru, is Inu-yasha scared of heights?

I bloody well am not. I'm just commenting on the fact that my life has turned into a bloody Indiana Jones movie.

Yes, yes. Back to the chase. We took a shortcut

OVER THE ROOFS

so we had probably decreased his lead by at least some when we got to the airport. However, there was still the small problem of finding out just where he went. We asked at the check-in desk – well, when we say asked… never mind, that's not important – if someone by the name of Onigumo had recently bought a ticket somewhere. He had, to Thailand. So there we were, rushing through the airport to find the gate for the Thailand flight and generally disturbing people by, for example, knocking their luggage over on our way past.

That was Kagome, not me. – Inu-yasha

Yes, because Inu-yasha wasn't satisfied with just the luggage; he pushed this German guy into a wall and sent his wife flying after. And in case you didn't know – German cursing sounds really bad. – Kagome

German in general sounds bad. – Inu-yasha

Anyway, when we had gone about halfway across the airport, we suddenly heard an announcement over the loudspeakers, calling a Mr Onigumo, because his flight was boarding and he hadn't showed up.

That was the flight for Copenhagen. Two minutes later another call came, this time for the flight to London.

We made our way to the closest check-in desk and made the girl – slip on the keyboard, "asked the girl nicely" was what I was going to write – check the entire register for bookings by one Onigumo, and Red Ipsen just to be sure. She found nothing on Ipsen, but it turned out that Onigumo had bought tickets on seven different flights, all leaving within the hour.

By now, someone had come up with the bright idea

That someone was me. – Inu-yasha

Good boy. – Kagome

that we should contact the airport security, and freeze Onigumo's passport while we were at it. Then we found out that he'd already left on one of the flights, one that had left for Paris five minutes before we arrived at the airport.

Alright, but that wasn't too hard though, was it? We contacted the plane and made them come back in, and when it arrived we went through the airplane to get our man. So we're bringing him back to the States on the next flight!

Sesshoumaru would have grinned and looked pleased, but after the reading the heading of the e-mail ("WE HATE THAT SNIVELLING BALL OF SLIME MORE THAN SPINACH" rather than "YAY YAY WE GOT HIM"), he had the feeling things weren't going to turn out to have been quite that easy.

He was right, of course.

Or not, the e-mail continued. The one in Onigumo's seat was a very bewildered old lady, who had been given the ticket by someone she described as a "very pleasant young man", although when she thought about it she couldn't quite remember why she had agreed to take the ticket and go to Paris when she was really on her way back to Ireland.

Naraku has great charm, and a certain way with words. THIS WILL BE VERY IMPORTANT AT THE TRIAL, SO BEAR IT IN MIND. – Kagome

Actually, on second thought I don't think we need to worry all that much. We have Sesshoumaru, after all. – Kagome.

Sesshoumaru hesitated at that, wondering whether it was a compliment or not to be put on the same level as the smarmiest devil in the criminal world. As was in his nature, however, he decided that it was and proceeded to gloat about the distinction for a few minutes before returning to the e-mail.

Our only choice was to wait and see if he turned up at any of the other flights he was scheduled for. We also put out his picture to all the security, and all the airport staff.

He didn't arrive at any of the flights, and we were at a bit of a loss until finally we got lucky.

Sesshoumaru raised his eyebrows.

To Sesshoumaru, who just raised his eyebrows at the last sentence: we didn't mean "got lucky" in that way. – Inu-yasha.

Sesshoumaru shrugged.

One of the guys at the check-in for a flight to Prague recognized him as a Mr Muso (another alias – how many does the guy need?) who had checked in with a passport that declared him to be from Poland (of all places). So that's the situation now – we're going to Prague. It pretty much sucks to have lived next door to the guy for a week without knowing, but at least now the trail is hot again and we'll – hopefully – have an easier time catching him now.

Now when we have time to reflect over this, it all seems blatantly obvious. From what we've seen of Venice, it's a closed loop – everyone's connected to everyone else one way or another, and rumours spread faster than at a Gossips Unite meeting.

There's an organisation like that? I knew it! – Inu-yasha

It was a figure of speech, Inu-yasha. – Kagome

If he had joined up with anyone in the criminal world they would all have known about it within the hour. But when Kanna has so many connections with that city, for us it seemed very natural for him to want to seek shelter with one of her friends.

He was one step ahead of us. Again. (We're getting really tired of this, have we said?) He went to visit all of Kanna's friends, giving the impression that he was desperate for a hiding place. When we found out he hadn't gotten one anywhere, we were supposed to think he had upped and left. Which we also did.

We hate it when criminals are clever.

It was a smart plan. He couldn't be any more anonymous. He left a trail that was unmistakably his, but instead of fleeing Venice when he couldn't get what he wanted from Kanna's contacts, he melted into the background of the city and became a simple tourist at a hotel. He could have stayed there for ages while we chased off to Istanbul or Beijing or wherever else. Pity he lost his nerve when he saw us in the breakfast room.

Pity for him, not for us. Just wanted to clarify.

"Oh, good," muttered Sesshoumaru. "For a moment there, I wasn't sure."

We're writing this while waiting for our own boarding call. We don't have as much authority here as we'd like to, otherwise we would have grabbed a plane and gone immediately. (Well, we could probably have done that before, only they got a bit testy after they turned around a plane for us only to find the hardened criminal we'd promised them wasn't actually there. They take things like flight schedules very seriously.) As it was, we had to wait for two hours. Thankfully there's only a quarter of an hour left, so we're two happy people on our way to catch a crook.

Well, we have to down an airport drink or two before we get on that bloody flight so we'll be signing off now. Hope you're all doing well back in the States and hope that whole thing with Koga's fluff gets sorted. We're holding our thumbs over here. Go Koga.

By the way... Did she dump you, or you her? I've been wondering about that for a long time. Because if you dumped her, why did you mope about it for a month afterwards? And if she dumped you, wasn't the whole DVD thing a bit too cruel? I mean, talk about adding a massive insult onto injury. – Inu-yasha.

OK, it's time for that drink. Bye from Inu-yasha and Kagome!

Sesshoumaru smiled and sat back in his seat. Well, well. At last, it seemed, they were getting somewhere over there in Europe. Nice to know that the CIA hadn't simply financed a slightly pointless holiday.

And things weren't going too badly for the rest of the YSA, either! They had a phone number to call, a nutty guy in custody and a couple of theories that weren't half bad. Alright, so pretty much all their info had been lifted by the already mentioned nutty person and their suspect was off being chased across Europe, but with a bit of luck they would have a case nice and ready for prosecution when Inu-yasha and Kagome got back with Naraku.

Sesshoumaru sipped his coffee, pretty darned pleased with himself.

…………………………………

...And some distance away, in his apartment, Koga spit his breakfast juice out all over his own e-mail print-out. He reached for his phone, scrolled down to the S section of his address book and dialled the first number.

Sesshoumaru was treated to a five-minute rant about confidentiality, why you shouldn't tell Inu-yasha any kind of gossip, the proper use of the word fluff and all the reasons why Koga did not need to lower his voice at all.

…………………………………

Aargh, it's snowing. I want spring to arrive, but it just keeps on bloody snowing. Grr.

In the next chapter we get to see a Sesshoumaru who is awake early in the morning, a Shippou who is not, and two awkward wolf demons. Sound exciting?

It doesn't, does it. Oh well.

Until next time! Tally Ho!