A/N: I figured while I have computer access might as well get as much done as possible. Thus, I wrote this chapter a bit faster than usual, so please pardon any typos/grammatical errors!
Disclaimer: Don't own it.
10. Where She Stops...
What Kagome termed to herself as their "Flight into the City" was completely uneventful. Well, except for Inuyasha's tendency to make loud and, Kagome felt, frankly rather cowardly comments from the passenger's seat. She would be driving along just fine when, out of the blue, he would shout out, "A tree! That's a tree! No, turn away from it, wench, away from it!" or, covering his eyes, "Oh god. You do remember which side we're supposed to drive on, don't you?"
As they got out of the car in front of the train station he turned towards her, "Fuck, wench, who taught you how to drive?"
"Just because you've never been in a car before..." she answered loftily. Inuyasha bristled.
"I have too been in cars before. Just none that were driven by blind lunatics."
"Nonsense, Inuyasha. We got here fine. Now hurry up, or we're going to miss our train."
Grabbing the bag that she threw at him, Inuyasha clutched the area where his stomach would have been if, as he was convinced, he hadn't left it about seven miles back on the road behind them and around a particularly sharp curve, and ran after her. Kagome had to bribe him onto the train with a lollipop, but luckily for her slightly nauseated companion the train ride was uneventful.
But now they were at the other end of the train station, and neither of them knew what they were supposed to do next.
"Umm, you mean you didn't plan this half?" Inuyasha glanced at the girl beside him, running a claw through his hair.
"Nope," Kagome replied in the cheerful tones of one who has been up all night, running from the law. "Sango and Miroku said they were going to fix this part for us, but I'm not sure exactly what they had in mind."
"You mean, we're stranded here and we don't know where we're going next?"
"Right in one."
"Oh god," Inuyasha groaned.
"You know, if I'd known you were going to be such a big baby..." Kagome's voice trailed off as the cell phone in her pocket began to vibrate. She'd forgotten that Sango had given it to her for the trip. Pulling it out and flipping it open gave her a good reason to stop the current fight with Inu. Not that she didn't enjoy their "spirited debates", but she felt that having one now would be counterproductive to their eventual goal, along with making them both conspicuous.
"Hello?" she said.
"It's Sango," the young woman's voice came clearly over the line. "Did you make it all right?"
"Yeah, we're fine. Inuyasha is a big chicken though," she grinned at the young man who was currently standing in front of her rolling his eyes.
"Okay great. So, I bet you're wondering about where you're staying, huh? Are you still on the platform or have you gone into the lobby."
"We're in the lobby."
"Good. Now, look around you. Do you see a bench in front of a sandwich shop? There should be an older woman sitting on the right hand side. She'll be holding a book."
"Would that be..." Kagome squinted her eyes to try and bring the book's title into focus, "umm, 'Keeping it Clean: Satisfaction for the Fastidious Older Woman'?"
"Miroku!" Inuyasha could hear Sango's outraged squawk, "What have you been giving her to read?!" followed by a muted 'thunk' which he strongly suspected was the sound of Sango's fist hitting the monk's abdomen.
"You have a dirty mind," he could hear the male agent protesting, "It's only about the difficulties of keeping on top of the housework as one's joints begin to go."
"And 'housework' is a code word for what, exactly?" Sango's voice was still outraged. Kagome cleared her throat.
"Umm, sorry to interrupt guys, but what am I supposed to do now?"
"Oh right," Sango's voice came back on the line, slightly breathless. Kagome spent an idle moment wondering just exactly what it was that she had done to her hapless partner. Whatever it was, they seemed to be enjoying themselves.
"It's pretty simple. Just walk up to her and say 'Kaede, Miroku sent us'. Got it?"
"Alrighty," Kagome beamed at the phone, then, realizing it couldn't see her, turned the look on Inuyasha, who backed up nervously. "Talk to you guys soon! Thanks."
"Let's go, Inu!"
"That's Inuyasha to you, wench."
"I see we're back to wench now?" Kagome scolded. "When are you going to learn not to waste energy? Remember, choose your fights. You shouldn't have spent so much time trying to get my name if you aren't even going to use it." Together they strolled up to the bench and the woman sitting on it.
Kaede, despite her choice of reading material, appeared to be an extremely proper elderly woman. After hearing the greeting given to her by Kagome (Inuyasha, overcome by a sudden bout of shyness, had tried to hide behind the smaller girl despite the obvious physical impracticality of such a move), she carefully looked the two of them up an down before speaking.
"So. You are the ones sent to me by that rascal, are you?"
"Yes ma'am," said Kagome, whose manners had been drilled into her at a very early age.
"Hmph. Well, let's get you home and to bed then."
Inuyasha, who had shot a sudden nervous glance at Kaede's book at the word "bed", hoped very much that the old woman's reading material was as innocent as Miroku had claimed. Somehow he doubted it though--"innocent" and "Miroku" were two words that didn't belong together in the same sentence.
xxx
Kouga was having one hell of a morning and the sun hadn't even risen yet. At this rate, he wasn't even going to be able to tape his cartoons. He sighed, blue eyes highlighted by the shadows beneath them. six hours earlier he had been awakened from a sound sleep and one of his favorite dreams (the one in which he was running across a field of daisies well classical music floated softly down from the sky) to hear his favorite boss on the other end of the line.
"There's been a slight complication at the lab. Inuyasha is missing."
"Wha--? Who?" Kouga was not one of those who, upon waking, immediately solves quantum equations and believes six impossible things before breakfast. Rather, he belonged to the group who stare blankly at a mug of coffee flavored with salt, trying desperately to remember how to get the contents from the cup into their mouth.
"Inuyasha," the voice repeated, "teenager, part dog, you're supposed to kill him. Remember?"
"Kill? Who...me? Where...the daisies?" Kouga was having more than a little trouble trying to separate the dream from the reality. "Cartoons?" he asked.
A loud sigh came across the line. "Kouga. You are an agent, trained by me. Your current assignment is Inuyasha. It is an assignment of a somewhat sensitive nature, but you were supposed to take care of it this week. Now your assignment has gone missing. I expect you to find it and take care of it. Now." Honestly. On the other side of the line, Naraku pinched the bridge of his nose. It was a wonder they got anything done at all really. Although, on the plus side, they would probably never lose any sensitive information to an enemy agent--you had to have the information before it could be lost. "Try going to the labs first," he offered, realizing that otherwise Kouga would never get anything done.
"I'm on my way, sir," Kouga said, as snappily as he could while trying to put his right arm through the left leg of his trousers.
Next thing he knew, he was standing before Sango and Miroku and it was three in the morning with the possibility of him getting back into his bed, or at least back home to turn on his VCR, looking increasingly slim. And Sango and Miroku weren't being all that helpful either. In fact, Kouga peered at them with some surprise. He didn't remember the two of them as being quite this incapable of thinking on their own the last time he had met them.
"And so then we finally got the back-up power on and he was gone." Sango concluded.
"Yeah," said Miroku.
"And we called the base as soon as we knew," added Sango virtuously.
"Yeah," said Miroku.
"And they called you," said Sango.
"Yeah," said Miroku.
"And I got here as soon as I could," said Kouga, finding himself accidentally falling into their speech patterns. The woman was having an almost hypnotic effect on his sleep-deprived brain. Kouga shook his head. Right. The other two agents were staring at him as if they expected him to do something. He stared back with a lifted eyebrow, until he remembered that he was supposed to be the officer in charge.
"Right, um," he cleared his throat in what he clearly hoped was an official-sounding manner and lowered his voice by about half an octave, "I want a team in his room checking around, I want another team on the parking lot. We need to figure out where he went and how he got there. Oh, and I need to see all the surveillance tapes from the past week or so." He stared at the two in front of him. Nobody seemed to be moving.
"Um, you forgot to turn your radio on," Sango pointed out in her most helpful manner.
"I meant to do that," Kouga said gruffly, fumbling for the button that would transmit his words to the numerous forensics teams that were arriving and milling confusedly around the grounds.
xxx
The rising sun showed teams of white-coated, gloved persons still crawling all over the corridors and grounds of Steele Gov't Laboratory. Sango, watching from an unobtrusive corner, glanced at her watch.
"Hey, Miroku," she hissed at her partner, "peanut butter and jelly must have gotten into the city by now. Did we ever tell them how to find the bread?"
"Shit. No," he answered.
"Okay," she said, "Hand me your phone, I lent mine to peanut butter."
The secret agent sighed. He loved his phone, and though he greatly admired his partner, she did have a tendency to be a just the tiniest bit violent. He hoped she would be gentle with it, but before he could issue a warning the woman in front of him had already placed her call.
"It's Sango," she was saying, "Did you make it all right?" Miroku sent up a silent prayer for his phone, and then tuned in to the conversation.
Disclaimer: Don't own it.
10. Where She Stops...
What Kagome termed to herself as their "Flight into the City" was completely uneventful. Well, except for Inuyasha's tendency to make loud and, Kagome felt, frankly rather cowardly comments from the passenger's seat. She would be driving along just fine when, out of the blue, he would shout out, "A tree! That's a tree! No, turn away from it, wench, away from it!" or, covering his eyes, "Oh god. You do remember which side we're supposed to drive on, don't you?"
As they got out of the car in front of the train station he turned towards her, "Fuck, wench, who taught you how to drive?"
"Just because you've never been in a car before..." she answered loftily. Inuyasha bristled.
"I have too been in cars before. Just none that were driven by blind lunatics."
"Nonsense, Inuyasha. We got here fine. Now hurry up, or we're going to miss our train."
Grabbing the bag that she threw at him, Inuyasha clutched the area where his stomach would have been if, as he was convinced, he hadn't left it about seven miles back on the road behind them and around a particularly sharp curve, and ran after her. Kagome had to bribe him onto the train with a lollipop, but luckily for her slightly nauseated companion the train ride was uneventful.
But now they were at the other end of the train station, and neither of them knew what they were supposed to do next.
"Umm, you mean you didn't plan this half?" Inuyasha glanced at the girl beside him, running a claw through his hair.
"Nope," Kagome replied in the cheerful tones of one who has been up all night, running from the law. "Sango and Miroku said they were going to fix this part for us, but I'm not sure exactly what they had in mind."
"You mean, we're stranded here and we don't know where we're going next?"
"Right in one."
"Oh god," Inuyasha groaned.
"You know, if I'd known you were going to be such a big baby..." Kagome's voice trailed off as the cell phone in her pocket began to vibrate. She'd forgotten that Sango had given it to her for the trip. Pulling it out and flipping it open gave her a good reason to stop the current fight with Inu. Not that she didn't enjoy their "spirited debates", but she felt that having one now would be counterproductive to their eventual goal, along with making them both conspicuous.
"Hello?" she said.
"It's Sango," the young woman's voice came clearly over the line. "Did you make it all right?"
"Yeah, we're fine. Inuyasha is a big chicken though," she grinned at the young man who was currently standing in front of her rolling his eyes.
"Okay great. So, I bet you're wondering about where you're staying, huh? Are you still on the platform or have you gone into the lobby."
"We're in the lobby."
"Good. Now, look around you. Do you see a bench in front of a sandwich shop? There should be an older woman sitting on the right hand side. She'll be holding a book."
"Would that be..." Kagome squinted her eyes to try and bring the book's title into focus, "umm, 'Keeping it Clean: Satisfaction for the Fastidious Older Woman'?"
"Miroku!" Inuyasha could hear Sango's outraged squawk, "What have you been giving her to read?!" followed by a muted 'thunk' which he strongly suspected was the sound of Sango's fist hitting the monk's abdomen.
"You have a dirty mind," he could hear the male agent protesting, "It's only about the difficulties of keeping on top of the housework as one's joints begin to go."
"And 'housework' is a code word for what, exactly?" Sango's voice was still outraged. Kagome cleared her throat.
"Umm, sorry to interrupt guys, but what am I supposed to do now?"
"Oh right," Sango's voice came back on the line, slightly breathless. Kagome spent an idle moment wondering just exactly what it was that she had done to her hapless partner. Whatever it was, they seemed to be enjoying themselves.
"It's pretty simple. Just walk up to her and say 'Kaede, Miroku sent us'. Got it?"
"Alrighty," Kagome beamed at the phone, then, realizing it couldn't see her, turned the look on Inuyasha, who backed up nervously. "Talk to you guys soon! Thanks."
"Let's go, Inu!"
"That's Inuyasha to you, wench."
"I see we're back to wench now?" Kagome scolded. "When are you going to learn not to waste energy? Remember, choose your fights. You shouldn't have spent so much time trying to get my name if you aren't even going to use it." Together they strolled up to the bench and the woman sitting on it.
Kaede, despite her choice of reading material, appeared to be an extremely proper elderly woman. After hearing the greeting given to her by Kagome (Inuyasha, overcome by a sudden bout of shyness, had tried to hide behind the smaller girl despite the obvious physical impracticality of such a move), she carefully looked the two of them up an down before speaking.
"So. You are the ones sent to me by that rascal, are you?"
"Yes ma'am," said Kagome, whose manners had been drilled into her at a very early age.
"Hmph. Well, let's get you home and to bed then."
Inuyasha, who had shot a sudden nervous glance at Kaede's book at the word "bed", hoped very much that the old woman's reading material was as innocent as Miroku had claimed. Somehow he doubted it though--"innocent" and "Miroku" were two words that didn't belong together in the same sentence.
xxx
Kouga was having one hell of a morning and the sun hadn't even risen yet. At this rate, he wasn't even going to be able to tape his cartoons. He sighed, blue eyes highlighted by the shadows beneath them. six hours earlier he had been awakened from a sound sleep and one of his favorite dreams (the one in which he was running across a field of daisies well classical music floated softly down from the sky) to hear his favorite boss on the other end of the line.
"There's been a slight complication at the lab. Inuyasha is missing."
"Wha--? Who?" Kouga was not one of those who, upon waking, immediately solves quantum equations and believes six impossible things before breakfast. Rather, he belonged to the group who stare blankly at a mug of coffee flavored with salt, trying desperately to remember how to get the contents from the cup into their mouth.
"Inuyasha," the voice repeated, "teenager, part dog, you're supposed to kill him. Remember?"
"Kill? Who...me? Where...the daisies?" Kouga was having more than a little trouble trying to separate the dream from the reality. "Cartoons?" he asked.
A loud sigh came across the line. "Kouga. You are an agent, trained by me. Your current assignment is Inuyasha. It is an assignment of a somewhat sensitive nature, but you were supposed to take care of it this week. Now your assignment has gone missing. I expect you to find it and take care of it. Now." Honestly. On the other side of the line, Naraku pinched the bridge of his nose. It was a wonder they got anything done at all really. Although, on the plus side, they would probably never lose any sensitive information to an enemy agent--you had to have the information before it could be lost. "Try going to the labs first," he offered, realizing that otherwise Kouga would never get anything done.
"I'm on my way, sir," Kouga said, as snappily as he could while trying to put his right arm through the left leg of his trousers.
Next thing he knew, he was standing before Sango and Miroku and it was three in the morning with the possibility of him getting back into his bed, or at least back home to turn on his VCR, looking increasingly slim. And Sango and Miroku weren't being all that helpful either. In fact, Kouga peered at them with some surprise. He didn't remember the two of them as being quite this incapable of thinking on their own the last time he had met them.
"And so then we finally got the back-up power on and he was gone." Sango concluded.
"Yeah," said Miroku.
"And we called the base as soon as we knew," added Sango virtuously.
"Yeah," said Miroku.
"And they called you," said Sango.
"Yeah," said Miroku.
"And I got here as soon as I could," said Kouga, finding himself accidentally falling into their speech patterns. The woman was having an almost hypnotic effect on his sleep-deprived brain. Kouga shook his head. Right. The other two agents were staring at him as if they expected him to do something. He stared back with a lifted eyebrow, until he remembered that he was supposed to be the officer in charge.
"Right, um," he cleared his throat in what he clearly hoped was an official-sounding manner and lowered his voice by about half an octave, "I want a team in his room checking around, I want another team on the parking lot. We need to figure out where he went and how he got there. Oh, and I need to see all the surveillance tapes from the past week or so." He stared at the two in front of him. Nobody seemed to be moving.
"Um, you forgot to turn your radio on," Sango pointed out in her most helpful manner.
"I meant to do that," Kouga said gruffly, fumbling for the button that would transmit his words to the numerous forensics teams that were arriving and milling confusedly around the grounds.
xxx
The rising sun showed teams of white-coated, gloved persons still crawling all over the corridors and grounds of Steele Gov't Laboratory. Sango, watching from an unobtrusive corner, glanced at her watch.
"Hey, Miroku," she hissed at her partner, "peanut butter and jelly must have gotten into the city by now. Did we ever tell them how to find the bread?"
"Shit. No," he answered.
"Okay," she said, "Hand me your phone, I lent mine to peanut butter."
The secret agent sighed. He loved his phone, and though he greatly admired his partner, she did have a tendency to be a just the tiniest bit violent. He hoped she would be gentle with it, but before he could issue a warning the woman in front of him had already placed her call.
"It's Sango," she was saying, "Did you make it all right?" Miroku sent up a silent prayer for his phone, and then tuned in to the conversation.