I don't think I have to explain this fighting term, haha.
This one-shot clocks in at 1370 words.
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Underdog
It wasn't much of a plan. If Sesshoumaru had been capable of arguing more about it, he would have called it a tactical disaster - she could hear him saying it in that tone of disgust that he had, as if he'd eaten something that had gone rancid. As Naraku stared at her, Kagome thought that perhaps Sesshomaru would have been right.
She glanced over at Bankotsu standing in the corner, his finger stretched out along the slide of his pistol. Through the windowed wall, she saw his brothers walk up and down the lines of workers, their heads often turning to look into the office where she stood so that she had eyes on her from every angle.
The mirror - six feet long and framed in tarnished silver - leaned up against the wall behind the spider demon.
"I need to call into work," she said.
Naraku leaned forward. "You seem to believe that this is a negotiation, Detective."
"Well, it is. It's a negotiation with my life," Kagome replied with a shrug. "But the fact is that if you want a detective feeding you any information, you have to have a detective first. They'll knock me back to being in uniform or worse if it looks like I'm skipping work. And if they think I've gone missing? Well, they could already be searching."
"That sounds like your problem, not mine," he said.
"One that I can't solve from here because of you."
She willed her feet to stay planted and her spine to stay straight as he glared at her. "And what do you expect me to do? Write you a note?" he asked at last.
She exhaled. "I'm sure you've got a burner phone or two around that I could make a call from. Untraceable and that you can toss afterward. I'll put it on speakerphone, and you can listen to everything that I say." Her gaze dropped away from his. "You know that I won't risk his life again."
Silence stretched for such a long moment that Kagome wondered if she should be darting out the door to get a head start on Bankotsu. But a second later, Naraku snapped his fingers and stretched his hand out toward the man instead. A phone appeared and was passed over without a word.
Kagome took a couple steps toward Naraku - toward the mirror - to take it from him. His fingers were cold. "I'll have to call my partner. I don't know my captain's phone number by heart," she murmured. "He'll cover for me."
"Say a word that I do not like, and he will hear you die," Naraku said. Even his breath chilled her.
She bit her lip and forced her retort back down as she dialed Miroku's number. It rang, loud and shrill in the small room, as Kagome looked over Naraku's head and out the narrow window that showed only gray sky.
The phone line cracked. "Hello?"
Her smile was reflexive upon hearing her friend's voice. "Hey, it's me."
"Kagome!" She could hear his relief. "Where are you? Whose phone are you calling me from?"
She took a deep breath. "A friend's house. No one that you know."
"The captain is hitting the roof, you know. I was about to call her. She sent me over to your place to look for you."
"Yeah, sorry about that. I should have called earlier." Kagome cradled the phone in both hands. "I just got a little overwhelmed by everything going on."
There was a pause on the other end. "Are you okay, Kagome?"
Her eyes met Naraku's. "I'm fine, Miroku. I just had to get out of there, you know?"
"It wasn't the greatest timing." He sighed. "But understandable. I guess I'll just tell the captain, I don't know, that your grandma died or something. That'll give you a couple days, but you have to be back after that."
Kagome found it difficult to swallow. "I owe you, Miroku."
"Yeah, I'll add it to the list," he said with a huff.
"Thanks. Listen, I'll see you soon," she said, injecting a false brightness into her tone.
His voice turned soft on the other end. "See you soon. Take care of yourself, Kagome."
Naraku wrenched the phone out of her hand as soon as the call ended. "I hope you appreciate that that was your one and only favor. In the future, if you have a problem, you solve it yourself."
"I understand," Kagome said. She tried not to look at the mirror. Even if she managed to smash it, Bankotsu would put a bullet in the back of her head. Instinctually, she knew that Naraku would drop her body in front of Sesshoumaru and luxuriate in the dog demon's grief and rage. It was so close though.
"Is there something else?" Naraku's eyes narrowed.
Her weight moved into her toes, ready to spring toward the mirror, even as the 'no' formed in her mouth. A moment of indecision - jump forward or walk back to Sesshoumaru - kept her in place. It may be worth the risk, she told herself. Or it could separate her from this life - and the dog demon - forever.
She rocked back on her heels and began to shake her head when a scream rolled across the floor.
They turned to see Mukotsu flying. Behind him, framed in the open door, stood Sesshoumaru. Blood dripped from his wrists where the shackles had bound him, and the gauze around his leg bloomed in crimson. His eyes were coals, glowing red in the warehouse's gloom. Kagome took a step in his direction when Naraku caught her arm, throwing her back into Bankotsu. "Hold her," he snarled.
The human's hand closed around her bicep, squeezing hard enough to leave a mark, as Naraku stalked out onto the warehouse floor. Workers were running as Sesshoumaru began to fight Renkotsu and Byakuya at once.
Kagome twisted, even as Bankotsu's fingers dug into her flesh. Somewhere above the pump of blood in her ears, she could hear Sesshoumaru crying out in pain. The mirror was closer than ever.
"Stay still," Bankotsu growled, but his eyes were on the fight unfolding on the floor.
She took a deep breath and lowered her weight, and then, she pivoted and threw her elbow, up and under Bankotsu's chin. She caught him in the fleshy center of his underjaw, and his head snapped back. His grip on her loosened and fell away as he grunted. Kagome spun away from his falling body, and she grabbed the edge of the mirror and ripped it down to the concrete floor.
The mirror shattered. A thousand shards of silver and flashing light scattered across the ground.
And nothing else happened. No glow, no release of light, no feeling of magic flowing over her skin and raising the hairs on her arms.
A hand closed around her ankle and yanked her off of her feet. She cried out as she fell, her arms crashing into the broken glass. She could feel the fragments slice her and draw blood as Bankotsu crawled up her body. He was bleeding too, out of the corner of his mouth. "You absolute b…"
Kagome's hand closed around a large shard and swung with it before he finished his insult, catching his skin just below his eye. He yelled and sprang away. She followed, slashing at him again with the jagged piece of glass and leaving a thin line of crimson down his back.
The gun was on the ground by the door. Kagome scrambled after it, ignoring how the mirror cut into her own hand and how she had left bloody prints across the concrete.
Her fingers just touched the cool metal of the weapon when claws wrapped around her throat, wrenching her aloft. The shard fell from her damaged hand, and Kagome gasped for air as she clutched at the arm that held her.
Naraku grinned. Beyond him, in the middle of her vision that was going black at the edges, she could see Sesshoumaru, bowed and bleeding. Even in her fading consciousness, she recognized that he had lost. No demonic energy flowed back into his body.
The spider demon chuckled. "Oh, Detective Higurashi. Wrong mirror."
