Dark as Day
Chapter Eighteen
Perhaps there was some way that this was a mistake. Inuyasha tried to string together possibilities. Sango told him that his father was dead, that he'd died when the headquarters was attacked. They'd lied to him. His father was alive. But what was he doing here? And that… that was his luck.
The man stared at Inuyasha silently, his amber eyes observing the younger, shorter boy with dog ears on top of his head. When the said appendages twitched a look of realization dawned on the man's face and a tiny smile shadowed his lips.
"Inuyasha… look how you've grown," the man whispered quietly. Those words sounded like a shout in Inuyasha's ears and he just wanted to leave this place, leave this vision of his undead father behind.
"Dad?" Inuyasha asked again, still disbelieving that the tall demon before him could possibly be his father. He felt like he'd just been thrown into some messed up Star Wars parody and desperately wanted to escape it.
The man's shadowed smile reappeared again at that simple word. "So, you remember your father, do you?"
Well, that sealed the deal. This was his father, not just some sick copy used for Naraku's sick and twisted mind. The man before him was the father he never knew, the father that disappeared over ten years ago, leaving his mother alone to raise a sealed half-breed son.
A small jolt of rage shot through Inuyasha's being. His father was alive and he'd abandoned his family. And for what? For what?
"What are you doing here?" Inuyasha demanded, his eyebrows knitting together.
The man was silent for a long moment, amber eyes staring around the room as if just seeing it for the first time. He blinked slowly and opened his mouth to speak before his lips fell shut.
Finally, he turned back towards his son.
"I'm the Ring Leader."
Even though Inuyasha had guessed that, hearing his own father say it was a major stab. He blinked in surprise and stared at his father in a look of awed horror. The man before him was everything he'd imagined his father would be like. Tall, handsome, and strong. He just hadn't imagined him on the wrong side. Or undead, for another thing.
"Your seal has worn off," his father said with a tone of mock pleasantness.
'Way to point out the obvious, dad,' Inuyasha thought sarcastically to himself but didn't voice the opinion simply because he was afraid of what his father would be like angry.
"It did on my birthday," Inuyasha murmured, glancing off to the side of his father. He couldn't bear to look at the man who'd abandoned his family and who was responsible for leading a group of demons hell bent on killing humans.
"You're twenty-two now, right?" his father asked, taking a step towards his son.
Inuyasha glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "Yes."
"Hm…" His father looked unhappy. "I'd been hoping that it would keep you sealed for the rest of your life," he said sadly. "Perhaps I can find Kaede and make her make another sealing charm for you."
"I don't want to be sealed," Inuyasha said automatically. He didn't like the idea of being denied something that was part of him. He didn't want to seal away his father's blood. The hollow man before him, who hardly lived up to Inuyasha's mind's eye of his father, wasn't his father anymore. The blood in his veins was the only reminder he'd ever have of his father now.
His father smiled. "That's good to hear, son."
Inuyasha didn't like the way his father spoke to him.
"How could you allow this to happen?" Inuyasha suddenly spouted out, waving an accusing hand in the direction of where Naraku had disappeared. "How can you allow him to do this to us?"
His father was silent for a long moment, his lips quirked downwards in a thoughtful frown.
"Inuyasha," he said finally, "you think that this was all Naraku's idea?"
Inuyasha's mouth fell open and he stared blatantly at his father. His shoulders sagged a little and subconsciously his foot took a step backwards. He had thought it was Naraku's idea. He'd grasped that single hope that his father was somehow innocent, or perhaps blackmailed like he was.
"But…" Inuyasha finally said after a long moment of petrified silence. "Why?"
His father sighed, looking weary. His golden eyes flickered around the room, absorbing everything that was his and always his.
Inuyasha watched his father's movements as he seemed to glide across the large room and position himself in a corner, sitting on a chair he hadn't realized was there before. He motioned for a chair opposite him but Inuyasha didn't move. He remained standing, his hands clenched, and his eye narrowed into an almost-glare.
The older man sighed and sunk into the comfort of the chair and glanced off to his right, not meeting Inuyasha's eyes. The said half-breed watched his father's movements like a hawk, daring him to try and pull wool over his eyes or dart away into the darkness of the institute.
"It almost seems like a dream now," his father's voice shattered the tranquility of the dark room. Inuyasha nearly started at the man's abrupt words but controlled his urges. He stood, stiff as a board, watching his father. "So long ago…"
Inuyasha said nothing as his father collected his thoughts. His jaw was set and her fists were clenched. He was ready for whatever his father could throw at him.
"I once thought that demons and humans could co-exist peacefully. Yes, in my young mind I believed that humans weren't bad, weren't worth killing," his father said gently, his voice filtering through the tensed air. "I was fascinated by humans."
Inuyasha took a step towards his father and stopped.
"But… it was a foolish dream to believe that humans could ever truly accept demons, and vise versa," his father said sadly, his face lifting upwards as he gazed at the ceiling beyond, shrouded in darkness.
"What about mom?" his son questioned quietly.
His father nodded his head. "Izayoi. She was the only one who understood my feelings. But, even she couldn't stop the emotions growing within me. They were strange emotions… things I'd never felt before." His father shook his head and ran his clawed fingers through long silver hair nervously—a habit Inuyasha realized he did, too.
"I wanted to protect your mother," his father continued, not even realizing or noticing the realization Inuyasha himself had just made. "I would have done anything to protect her. Even kill whoever made her angry."
Inuyasha was almost afraid to ask.
"Izayoi used to work at an office, in order to support our young son," as his father spoke his golden eyes flickered to the grown-up son, standing in his taijiya uniform and glaring at him silently. "But she had the worst boss in the world. The kind of boss, she said, that leered at you when you weren't looking and glanced down your blouse should it be too lose to cover up when leaning over."
His father's face contorted in rage for a brief moment, the only genuine emotion Inuyasha could ever remember seeing on his father's face up to that point.
"When she told me that… he'd…" His father's face wrenched again. "I killed the man for daring to touch her."
His father fell silent with that remark and allowed his son to absorb this information.
"Your mother was angry," his father said after a minute of silence, his voice blatantly bitter over the mere thought of Izyaoi's anger towards him. "She told me that he didn't deserve to die. I was angry. All I wanted to do was keep her safe and happy, and now she was angry and upset with me."
His father's eyes stared at the wall opposite but didn't focus. In his mind, he was reliving that day with his human mistress, their half-breed son looking on in confusion from the doorway, his arm still hurting from the shot he'd gotten earlier that week. That night, his father left Izayoi, and was never to return again to the place he once called his home with Izayoi and his young halfling son.
"That's when I met the demons… at that point, I wasn't the Ring Leader. I was simply another minion to the Ring Leader of that time. His name was Ryuukossei, a powerful dragon demon. He'd inherited the league from the former Ring Leader to his time."
His father's shadowed smile was back. "I struggled hard, but soon I was up near the top… much where Naraku is today. One night, I killed Ryuukossei and I became the Ring Leader."
"But why?" Inuyasha interjected. "Why did you abandon us? So you could kill humans?"
"You don't understand, son," his father said defensively. He stood from his chair and towered over his halfling child. "When your mother defended the man I had killed to protect you I realized that all humans were the same. They look down on us demons as heartless monsters who will kill anyone. I realized that your mother didn't trust me…"
"Stop it!" Inuyasha shouted, cutting his father off. "You have no idea what mom and I went through when you left! She was a wreck! She's still a wreck! She fucking loved you, you son of a bitch, and you left her to take care of some freak for a son!"
His father stared down at him in surprise, his golden eyes wide. The young man shifted his gaze away, not baring to stare at his father any longer.
"You left us."
"I wasn't needed."
"Yes you were!"
Suddenly, Inuyasha was sprawled on the ground. He gasped in surprise as a pain exploded in his cheek. He numbly lifted his head to stare at his father. Save for the fist lifted towards where his head had once been, his father hadn't moved. Slowly, he turned his head and smirked down at his sprawled son.
"Don't talk back to me, boy." His face was contorted again and for the first time since entering the room with his father the halfling feared for his life.
"Your mother is just like the rest of them. They'll stick together and fight against us demons until the day they die." He laughed. "And that day will come sooner than later."
"What are you doing?" Rin asked, shaking in her pajamas. Naraku strode around her, tying her to a chair and sticking a strange, metal hat on top of her head, mushing up her already tangled hair.
"Silence," the hanyou ordered as he strapped the last rope around the girl's tiny body. "I can't have you running away."
He turned a dial on Rin's metal cap. Rin tried to lift her head and stared to ask the man a question when he sent her a dark glare that silenced Rin quickly.
Suddenly, Naraku pushed a button and the strange machine Rin was strapped to, the BWATE canon, began to hum and vibrate. Naraku barked a command to one of his minions, who quickly moved and opened the retractable ceiling above. With the BWATE canon pointed upwards towards the open space and Rin hooked up to the machine's core, he was ready to succeed in his master's plan.
He extracted a large purple dart and struck Rin's forearm, inserting a liquid serum into Rin's arm. The little girl whimpered in pain.
"All systems go," he said, laughter in his voice as he flipped a switch and a thousand jolts of pain seemed to shoot through Rin's body.
The little girl screamed.
Kagome pushed her way through the headquarters. All around her, taijiya were running in separate directions, trying to call their partners or their teams, trying to figure out what was happening. All around the city there were signs of strange activity. Kagome had been interrupted from her search for Inuyasha and Rin when Sango had called her down.
Now, she was struggling just to get to Sango. After nearly fifteen minutes of evasive action, Kagome found herself in Sango's office.
"What's wrong?" Kagome asked.
"There's something wrong with the city," Sango said quickly. "Naraku's done something. Everywhere we look we're getting reports of humans and demons alike suddenly falling to the ground and convulsing."
"What's happening?"
"Some kind of pseudo sleep. We're not sure what's triggering it or how it's being triggered, but we do know that it must involve Naraku. People are going into fake sleep, some kind of hibernation, I suppose, and they start convulsing and screaming with nightmares. We've gotten reports of two deaths from these symptoms."
"What do you need me to do?" Kagome demanded.
"Miroku's searching for the BWATE canon. It unleashes a unique gradient signature. If we can find an area with the butt of the canon's blasts, if it's being used, then we can find the general location of Naraku's hideout. You'll lead a team of taijiya there and search the area for the Ring Leader."
"How do you know if the BWATE canon is working?" Kagome questioned as she secured her gasmask over her mouth and tightened her goggles.
"He stole it, for one thing." Sango fiddled with her own gasmask. "And the affects are widespread. The only way that Naraku could spread this pseudo-sleep so efficiently would have to be with the BWATE canon or something similar."
"It's the BWATE canon, all right," Miroku interrupted as he entered the room, gasmask in place. He waved a couple pages of paper. "The radar has picked up on abnormal heat signatures in the third district."
Kagome plucked the papers from Miroku's outstretched hands and scanned the contents. She pursed her lips and glanced at her cousin and the doctor. "This is near the sea."
"Go now, Kagome. We'll send a team after you. Scout out the area and confirm the location," Sango instructed. Kagome nodded and disappeared from the room quickly.
Miroku glanced at her. "What of Inuyasha?"
"Kagome will handle it," Sango said with a dark look.
Inuyasha remembered a time when he regretted never knowing his father. Inuyasha remembered a time when he'd wanted to know his father. Inuyasha remembered a time when he'd imagined his father a great and amazing man, someone who fought for the taijiya and died protecting the people he knew and loved.
Now…
He hated his father.
"All demons are evil, my son," his father said gently as he circled his couching son. "Human-demon activists try to sugar-coat our hard, malicious nature… but it matters naught. There is a glimmer of evil within us, and always will be within us."
"You're wrong," Inuyasha snarled.
"Am I?" His father frowned. "Think about it, Inuyasha. We are demons. We were created by Lucifer himself to aid him in hell. We were created solely to serve Satan in the bowels of hell. We were not made to have feelings, to have a will of our own… we were created simply to be minions."
His father's amber eyes glimmered in the darkness. "But we were cast out. We were proving to be a nuisance. And now, we haunt this human world, never fitting in, but trying to. We're destroying the humans because we want our own world. We have no purpose other than to destroy and kill."
"You're wrong," the young hanyou repeated.
"Your mind has been deceived, boy. Your precious taijiya have given you the impression that demons can reform… that demons can live peacefully among the humans, acting and pretending. But we must always hide our true nature. We are heartless killers."
Inuyasha growled darkly, struggling to his feet. His father promptly kicked him down to the ground again, ripping a small moan from his son's mouth.
"You know what separates humans from animals, boy?" His father paused for a moment. "Humans have feelings. They have a conscious. That is what the humans are constantly preaching about, how they have the ability to feel compassion for their fellow man. Emotions are strictly for humans. Demons don't have feelings. We're just vessels for a much greater, supernatural power."
"Stop preaching to me," Inuyasha snapped out. "I already know this shit. Until I joined the taijiya, that's all I ever heard. Demons are evil. Demons are evil. Demons have no feelings. Demons were made to inhabit hell. You think I don't know this, already?" He knocked his father's foot aside with his forearm when he made to kick his son down again.
Inuyasha struggled to his feet and stood tall, glaring defiantly up at his father.
"Well, guess what, Dad," he sneered, "I'm a hanyou. So what the hell does that make me?"
His father growled darkly, his warning reverberating throughout the room.
"I've always been taught that demons are evil and that humans are good." Inuyasha seized himself up. "But what about the humans? Aren't there criminals among the humans? Aren't there humans that kill and destroy just like demons do? But there are also humans that would never do anything to hurt another being—even if that being happens to be a demon."
His hand coiled into a fist, his razor-sharp claws grazing over his palm painfully.
"Aren't there demons that live peacefully? Demons that do nothing but watch the world pass them by? Aren't there demons that don't kill?" The hanyou spat out at his father. "And what of the half-breeds, Dad? What the hell are we? Good… Bad?"
"Now who's preaching?" his father said coolly, glaring down at his insolent son.
No more words passed between them. Simultaneously, as if beckoned by silent strings of a puppet master, father and son launched at one another, their fists poised and their faces set with determination.
His father proved to be a superior fighter; he dodged and flowed around his son as if made of liquid. He moved and flowed, dancing around his son like the hanyou was a mediocre fighter. Inuyasha fruitlessly through out punches, attempting to catch his father.
The older demon danced across the ground, leaving only the caress of wind behind whenever Inuyasha threw a punch.
"You'll have to do better than that, son," a voice said behind Inuyasha before the impact of a kick slammed into Inuyasha's lower back, sending the boy tumbling across the room, rolling and skidding over the cold floor of the demon's head quarters.
The young man slammed into the wall, releasing a groan from the wall and hanyou. The halfling quickly jumped to his feet, crouching and staring at his father like a dying man does the grim reaper.
His father loomed over him and watched as he grasped something at his side. It was a sword. In a moment, Inuyasha realized that his father was holding Tessaiga.
The sword protested the grasp of its original owner, small jolts of electricity jumped around his hand. But Inuyasha's father either didn't feel it or care about the dancing stripes of lightening slapping against his hand.
Inuyasha glared as his father crouched, pulling the mighty blade behind him, poised to launch towards him.
Instead of launching towards him, however, his father whipped Tessaiga out and pushed it against the ground. Inuyasha watched in a mixture of horror and awe as three lightening strikes rushed towards him.
"Kaze no Kizu," his father shouted, the three words echoing throughout the dark room. Inuyasha jumped just in time to see the three stripes leave deep grooves in the floor and in the wall.
"What was that?" Inuyasha was unable to hide the awe in his voice.
"Your brother," his father said quietly, "tried to teach you the secrets of my sword. But you were a foolish boy who mistook Tessaiga for a mere sword, not a powerful weapon."
Inuyasha's mouth fell open. He couldn't deny that the sword was, indeed, harboring powerful attacks he'd never truly dreamed of. His father had thought up this sword? His father was a genius!
Tessaiga continued to protest in the man's hand, sensing his desire to kill humans instead of protect them. But, at the same time, the sword was unable to protest its former master's will.
"Kaze no Kizu!" his father shouted again. Inuyasha barely dodged it.
This routine continued for what seemed like an eternity. His father threw the sword's attack towards him while he dodged and fruitlessly attempted to attack his untouchable father.
His father was strong. Far stronger than anyone he'd ever experienced before. He'd dreamed that his father was strong. In the young mind of a little boy lacking a father, the small elementary school student imagined a powerful, strong man who he would be proud to call his father. His father was the reason he'd gone into martial arts.
He'd had visions of his father in those days. His father, so far ahead of him, back turned to him. With every step Inuyasha took, the boy grew closer to his father, hand outstretched to grasp his father's back. He'd dreamed of one day he'd finally be able to stand beside his father in that far-off, metaphoric distance.
Inuyasha dove forward, swinging his leg out and catching his father just as he was poised to swing his gigantic fang. His father released a small 'oof' of surprise before tumbling to the ground, his hand still grasping Tessaiga painfully.
"Was it your idea to steal mom, too, asshole?" Inuyasha snarled out as he straddled his father and sent punches towards his father's face, knocking the head from side to side. "Was it your idea to blackmail me with Kagome's fucking life?"
He punctuated each word with a hard punch to his father's cheeks.
"Was it your idea to steal Kikyou away from her family? To steal Rin, a fucking little girl? Was it your damned idea to kill all these humans?" Inuyasha's voice steadily raised in volume with every word he spoke, sending a different punch against his father's face.
A look of realization dawned on his father's face. He heard the dull thud of a punch hitting his cheek and sending him to the ground with an unceremonious curse.
His father stood above him and shoved his foot against his son's back, knocking him into the prone position and digging his heel against his spine. Inuyasha gasped in pain and clenched his eyes shut.
His father knelt before him, sliding Tessaiga before his neck. The sharp blade grazed over his skin, cutting the first few layers of his epidermis.
His father frowned. "Don't pretend to be so high and mighty, Inuyasha."
Inuyasha clenched his fists, feeling his nails digging into his skin and drawing blood. He swallowed thickly, trying to skirt away from the powerful blade of his father, but his father shoved his head forward, coming dangerously close to the sharp end to the blade.
"You're nothing more than a disgrace to humanity," his father whispered in his ear. The said dog ear twitched painfully under his father's dark hiss. "You were never supposed to live. Your mother should have drowned you the moment you were born. To harbor such a disgraceful beast in her womb for nine months and feel no malice for you… it's a miracle."
Inuyasha growled darkly. He would not let his father speak of his mother in such a way. This man, corrupted by the evils of the world and the power he'd captured years ago. His father had no right so speak of his mother. His father had no right so speak of him.
"You shouldn't even be alive, half-breed. You have no place in society," his father continued, a hint of laughter in his voice. "Humans despise you and fear you. They wish you dead. They see you nothing more than a demon. But you don't fit in with demons, either, do you?"
Inuyasha's jaw tightened.
"Oh no," his father continued. "Demons see you as a flawed being. Inferior and unfit to walk among the demons. It must be painful, son, to have no place in this world. You're tethered between two worlds—two worlds that will never accept you for what you are unless you hide your true face."
"Shut up," the man hissed.
"But," his father continued, ignoring his son's command. "You can have a place Inuyasha. Join me. Join me and you can be my right-hand man. You can make your place in society."
Inuyasha felt the blade against his neck. He felt his father's hissed words filtering in his ear. He felt his heart thumping in his chest, longing for a place where he could fit in.
His vision blurred and he saw the purest, oceanic blue eyes he'd ever seen in his life. Soft, pink lips curved upwards in a serene smile as Kagome Higurashi gazed up at him adoringly.
No.
He couldn't.
"I have a place," Inuyasha hissed.
"What?" his father barked.
"I have a place," Inuyasha repeated, louder. He twisted around. He felt the blade slice his skin again as he threw a punch at his father's Adam's apple, sending him sprawled backwards, gasping for air. "And it's sure as hell not with you!"
"A grave mistaken on your part, boy," his father snapped, his eyebrows knitted together in a face Inuyasha had often seen on himself. This truly was his father. And he'd angered him.
Miroku's suspicions were confirmed. Kagome could see a faint glow circulating the district. She couldn't pinpoint exactly where Naraku is, obviously, but she saw that there was a higher concentration of deaths in this area. All along the street people were lying. It was a grim sight and Kagome tried not to focus on it.
She flipped on her communicator and turned it to Sango's frequency.
She was poised on top of a high building, gazing down at the streets below. Her eyes roved over the area, searching for some where she could see the BWATE canon or Naraku.
"Sango? Sango? Do you read me?" Kagome snapped into her communicator. Her eyebrows scrunched together. "Why aren't you answering?"
"Naraku interferes with all frequencies here," a voice said behind her. Kagome whipped around, extracting the dagger in her boot and pointing it at the figure before her. Her eyes widened.
"Kikyou!" she gasped out. She stood up, blinking slowly behind her goggles. "What are you doing here?"
"I tried to contact the taijiya," her sister continued, ignoring Kagome's question. "He found out and tried to kill me. Ever since, he's been blocking all frequencies around his headquarters so that no one could do it again. He only runs a couple frequencies for his own devices, but I don't have access to them."
"You tried to contact us?" Kagome questioned.
Kikyou looked saddened. "I don't expect you to believe me, Kagome… but I really don't want to be here. I know I've betrayed you more than once, but right now, we have more important matters to attend to. He's got Rin."
"What has he done with Rin?" Kagome demanded, feeling her protective nature kick into gear. "Where is she?"
"Rin is a psychic," Kikyou said, frowning. "She's a powerful, dormant miko. She hasn't awakened to her potential yet, but Naraku discovered her powers before we did. He has her hooked up to the BWATE canon. She's the reason why the city's going insane."
"We have to save her!" Kagome exclaimed and searched around, as if expecting some door to appear that would lead her to where her youngest sister was.
"I'll help you," Kikyou said, determined. "Come on, the entrance is this way."
Author's Notes: DaD has won second place at the IYFG for the best action/adventure of the fourth quarter of 2005! Thank you everyone for your support through this story! It means the world to me.