There and Back Again

Chapter Twenty-Two:  High Speed, Inuyasha-style Car Chases

            Laymen's helicopter, safely in the back of the pack of five helicopters, arrived at the shrine in time to see the last vestiges of the light from the tree as Kagome and Inuyasha returned to their "own" time.

            Shippou was still pissed that Kagome and Inuyasha didn't get to stay longer, but the approaching helicopters promised some fun.  An idea struck him.  "Hey, dog-boy."

            "What?"

            "Got any kind of expensive-looking container?  Velvet pouch?  Elaborate box?  Shiny bauble?"

            Inuyasha blinked at the question, but an evil smile spread across the face of his father.  Sesshoumaru produced from his robes a rather large and elaborately-decorated velvet drawstring coin purse and handed it to Ruri in such a way that no one in the helicopters caught the transaction.  For the first time, Ruri had to do the explaining to Inuyasha.

            Shippou gunned the bike to life as the now-cognizant-of-the-plan Inuyasha scooped up Ruri and started for the gate.  She knew nii-san was basically jogging, but that was part of the fun.  As Shippou pulled up alongside, she very visibly threw him the coin pouch.  They went separate directions at the gate.

            Watching them split apart, the helicopters divvied up the chase and Laymen started screaming into the radio for the ever-ready men in black to aide in the chase.  Laymen, of course, forgot that like everything else Nergal, the cars of the men in black bore a very large Nergal logo.  Thus, as Shippou leaned, ducked and dodged the bike through narrow streets, the Nergal cars were careening off of anything in the road and causing quite a bit of damage.  And everyone knew who to send the bill to.  For his part, Shippou was having a great time using the chase as an excuse to just drive ridiculously fast.

            Inuyasha and Ruri, on the other hand, were dancing across cars on the freeway.  Most of the drivers didn't even notice them as they bounced around, especially since the Nergal-branded sedans were quite a bit bigger and more worrisome.  The helicopters broke off pursuit rather quickly once they noticed that both of their targets were headed deeper and deeper into the heart of the city.  Despite Laymen's promises of ever-increasing bonuses if they didn't break off pursuit, the pilots all knew their licenses would be pulled if they strayed in too close to established flight paths.  A bonus on Tuesday didn't matter if you got fired for losing your license on Monday.

            Thus, the pursuit was left up to the less-than-capable ground forces.  Nergal's "pursuit" drivers were little more than limo drivers, which was fine for traveling around with dignitaries and doing a little bit of evasive driving every once in a while if there was an assassination attempt.  However, they weren't quite trained in the art of following at high speeds.  Calls were made to the local police forces for help, but every call ended the same way - with a "Hey, guys, you wanna know what this dumbass is asking for?" from the law enforcement end of the line.

            Sesshoumaru sighed at the stalled traffic.  He was seriously trying to obey traffic laws and still rendezvous with his son someplace.  Finally, he gave up.  Cutting onto the inner emergency lane, he gunned the engine and shot past the traffic.  Many areas of modern life he frankly didn't care for, but his car was an exception.  Of course, it helped that his car was as demonic as he was, even if he didn't particularly care for this particular model's name.  It reminded him of Naraku.

            Inuyasha and Ruri paused on top of a truck.  He could see a couple of Nergal sedans nearby, but they hadn't thought to pop the sunroofs and stick their heads out yet.  He had to give the drivers credit - despite the rather large traffic jam, they'd managed to keep up with the two car bouncers.  Ruri stretched her arms which were cramping after clinging so tightly to Inu-kun.  She watched as the traffic began to free up ahead of them.

            'Where to now, nii-chan?'

            'Not sure exactly, imout-,'  he clipped the word, hearing an all-too-familiar growl coming up the emergency lane on his left.  He and Ruri poked their heads around the corner of the truck's bed as it accelerated to keep up with traffic.  Ruri felt Inuyasha smile in her mind at the sight of the car, which she didn't recognize.  It was a white Ferrari Spyder, with what looked like some custom paint on it.  As the car sped closer to the moving van, Ruri saw that the car had a purple moon painted on the hood, with dark red striping around it.  It reminded her of the markings on Inuyasha's father, which turned out to be accurate when the driver lowered the top on the vehicle.

            Inuyasha pulled Ruri around to hold her in front of him and jumped down into the car which had matched their speed.  They landed in the leather upholstery with a soft thunk.

            "Konnichi-wa, Sesshoumaru-sama."

            Ruri was a bit shocked at his reply of "Whassup?"  Ruri blinked and twisted to look up at Inuyasha for an explanation.

            'Otou-san's personality is a bit... different when he gets behind the wheel,' Inu explained as he helped guide the roof back over their heads as his father accelerated.  It really didn't like closing at sixty miles an hour and hated a hundred, so it needed a little bit of help.  A gear ground in the roof's lift mechanism and he knew he would have some work to do later.

            'Is this more of that 'Bill and Ted' thing?'

            'Hai.'

            'Baka.'

            'Hai.  Don't tell him I said so though.'

            'I won't.  Maybe.'  Ruri watched as Sesshoumaru, Lord of the Western Lands, donned sunglasses that went out of fashion a hundred years ago and spun the volume control up on music that went out of fashion a hundred and fifty years ago.  They looked around them for a while, but apparently all of Nergal's sedans had either decided that they weren't going to chase a Ferrari or had genuinely missed them getting into the vehicle.

******

            Ruri drummed her fingers on the table, occasionally thumbing through the open binder in front of her.  Inuyasha had churned out eight inches of paper and called it a report on what happened and why time travel was impossible.  The last few days had been rather boring after the trip through time and the subsequent anime-approved ridiculous car chase.  Granted, she, Akito-san and Yurika-san got to spend the better part of a week doing nothing at the Inutaishou's summer home about an hour's drive from Tokyo, and she and Inuyasha did get to spend more time hanging out together.  However, Inu had spent most of the days cooped up in front of a terminal pounding out the ridiculousness in front of her.  She listened for a moment to nii-chan standing beside where she was sitting, droning on and on about how it was Laymen's fault the project failed, that Nergal interference also contributed to the failure, and that all jewel shards which remained in existence had been destroyed when Laymen needlessly brought five Nergal helicopters to the Higurashi shrine.

            She sighed.  'When are you going to finish?'

            Without missing a beat from the speech, Inuyasha replied 'Probably forty-five minutes or so.  I'm well aware no one's listening at this point.  I'm obviously on auto-pilot.'

            'I'm hungry.'

            'So am I.  Otou-san's taking us to lunch after we're done here though.'

            Forty-four minutes and thirty seconds later, Inuyasha completed his droning.  The Nergal panel investigating the project asked a few random questions, then went ahead and announced their decision.  Laymen had presented a one inch binder for a report; Inuyasha's was eight.  Corporate custom dictated the winner before the speeches even started.  The panel left the room, and Ruri stood up and stretched as Sesshoumaru, Akito, and Yurika walked up to the pair.

            "Pizza."  There was no question about what Ruri meant by that.  They retreated to a local parlor which Sesshoumaru, apparently an expert in the food, found favorable.  Ruri couldn't argue with his judgment.  The group talked lightly over lunch, the white-haired pair filling their guardians in on any parts they hadn't yet.  They managed to leave out the whole part about the mental link from the transfusion.  Akito and Yurika didn't know about it and wouldn't.  It would be a liability to them if they knew, and Ruri wasn't about to become the subject of a Nergal test facility.  Inu had told his father of the link since there wasn't much chance of Nergal hearing it from him.  After much procrastination the two parties took their leave of each other from the pizza restaurant.  Both sets of parents noticed the lingering sadness from their children as they parted company.

******