A very important author's note: I'm writing this triple crossover (yeah, triple) for the livejournal community thebwg crossover challenge, which is also a contest. I would love it if you all also checked out the other entries in the contest. There are only two others: Fieryfaerie86 and Quirkyslayer, two very wonderful writers I might add. I've put up links to their fics on my biopage.
An Idle Job
Chapter 1: Security
Man with one chopstick go hungry.
– Chinese proverb, annonymous
The first century after the completion of the Shikon no Tama was a fitful mess of impatience.
During the second century, the impatience steamed and bubbled to such a point that it exploded and became nothing.
This nothing became resignation by the third century, and then trickled quietly into boredom after that. Incidentally, Inuyasha also started the process of completely assimilating into the human world during this century, purchasing a charm to hide his youkai features from a miko. It wasn't hard to blend in after that.
All in all, Inuyasha supposed he could be doing worse things than waiting for Japan to reach the end of the twentieth century so he could see Kagome again. He could be dead, for one, which meant he would have had to wait even longer. But then again, death didn't mean much to him. He had tried to slice his wrists some time during the eighteenth century, but gave up when the wounds kept healing. And in truth, the task of seeing Kagome's smiling face was more of a checkpoint than anything else.
It was all very nice and easy for Kagome to shout "Wait for me!" at him when the well took her back, but she hadn't taken into account that it was mere days of separation for her, and a much greater length of time for him. Kagome had forgotten what time could do to you, forgotten that it washed against mind and emotions until they ebbed away into space. In time, Inuyasha could still vaguely remember that at one point, he had held Kagome in a certain place in his heart, but he wasn't sure if she was still there anymore.
But the promised meeting in the future gave him a purpose, a boundary to the endless territory of his life. All Inuyasha needed to do was concentrate on that boundary, and what came beyond it would be dealt with when the time came.
So Inuyasha didn't think much of his new job when he applied for it, nor did he make much of the fact that he was, according to his hazy approximations, only one year away from seeing Kagome again. When it was time, it would be a simple matter to drop it and go see her. And the job was a mere security guard position for some big family estate.
Inuyasha had never even heard of the family's name before. Sohma, some high and mighty clan who didn't have much faith in their fences and walls for protection and stooped down to the common people for their security.
"You're lucky, you know," his interviewer had told him. "Usually, we'd hire people from the family, but you slipped through the cracks. This may be the first time an outsider lived in the Sohma estate in… Well, it's never happened before."
Which meant, Inuyasha figured, that they usually scraped at the bottom of the family rungs for jobs like this, rather than at the rungs of society. Apparently, the Sohmas would rather entrust their safety to the hands of strangers than of their own, which was just fine with him. They had given him a job after all, a way to pass the time.
And so, Inuyasha packed the few things he owned and reported to the gate of the Sohma estate early in the morning.
There was another man standing at the gate when he arrived. An eye-patched, masked, silver-haired face glanced up at him as he approached, and they nodded warily to each other. Inuyasha wasn't surprised to see him. The Sohma estate had a lot of ground to cover anyway.
"I knocked on the door already," the man said, voice clean despite the mask. "Here as a guard?"
"Yeah," Inuyasha answered.
They examined at each other, Inuyasha taking in the man's baggy blue pants, green vest, and gloved hands, the man taking in his white hair tied at the back, ragged jeans, and leather jacket. He was taller than Inuyasha by at least half a head, and the one eye that showed could keep up a stare just as long as Inuyasha's two could.
The man suddenly blinked, as though the mutual eying from a few seconds ago hadn't happened. He extended a hand and Inuyasha took it with a firm grasp.
"Hatake Kakashi," he introduced himself. "Just Kakashi is fine."
"Inuyasha." He didn't remember what his current surname was, so he left it at that.
The gate opened as they dropped their hands and a bowing, stone-faced lady showed them in.
"Hatake Kakashi and Takamura Inuyasha?" she asked.
Oh. So that was his surname. He had gone through so many over the centuries that it was hard to keep track. Inuyasha concentrated on remembering it. Takamura. Takamura…
Kakashi nodded and that seemed to be enough for her.
"Welcome to the Sohma estate. Please follow me," she told them.
She led them up a road lined with trees and houses on the side. Inuyasha scanned the road ahead and, behind her back, smirked at the bigger, more majestic house sitting on its ass at the road end. Perhaps that house was his guarding post?
But the stone-faced lady stopped about a third of a way down and led them into a house, where they were handed off to an equally stone-faced man, except bigger around the middle and sporting a wormlike mustache.
He slitted his eyes and peered at them as they stood before him.
"Well, you seem to be same men as you were during the interview, or you look like the pictures I was sent in any case," he remarked. "Welcome to the Sohma estate and the first day to your guard duty. You both know each other already? Doesn't matter. You're partners so you will eventually. Maya here will show you to your rooms where you may drop off your things. You will start immediately afterward."
He waved vaguely and Maya, the woman from before, reappeared at his elbow.
"Pardon me," Kakashi asked softly, "But how will we address you? I assume that you are our commander?"
He laughed. "Silly of me to dismiss you without giving you any details, isn't it? But forgive me for not releasing everything at once. My name is Sohma Hiko, and I give you the instructions. Before you ask, just Hiko-san is fine. That's all you need to know for now. Do your job right, and you won't need to know much more."
Inuyasha frowned at this, but Kakashi merely shrugged.
"But exactly are we guarding the estate from, Hiko-san? Surely you will tell us that."
A corner of Hiko's lip quirked, making his mustache curve and look more like a worm than ever.
"I was going to let you discover the paper instructions on your own, but I suppose I'll tell you about it then, shall I? You'll find all you need to know in your rooms. Now if you would please…"
Inuyasha ignored Hiko's shooing motions and said, "I wasn't told that I would have a partner."
It had been a while since Inuyasha had needed to work with another person. He preferred solo work to partnerships. After all, when you had a partner, you had to watch out for each other. As if he didn't have enough trouble looking after himself. The time he had cared enough to care for others had shriveled up centuries ago.
Inuyasha was pretty sure he didn't need it.
Hiko reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He lit one and puffed mightily on it before answering.
"Why do we have to tell you such trivial things?" he huffed. "Is this how you young people think it's done these days? You can't do things right unless there's someone there to correct you, you know. That's why you work in pairs. Do you think the Sohmas can be protected by just one guard at a time?"
He looked at Maya and shook his head. She made no response.
"No, with just one guard, the entire estate will lack protection. What happens if that one guard goes down? It doesn't matter how strong you are. If someone can take you down, it'll be short work on the people. So, Takamura-kun, I don't care if you have 'people problems' as you youngsters call it these days. You will be working with Hatake-kun, and that's that. You are both the chopsticks of the Sohmas' hand, feeding them protection and assurance of their safety. And now that I've given you this speech, now will you leave me alone?"
Oh, so he was Takamura-kun now, was he?
Inuyasha pierced his mouth and followed Maya through hallways and turns. Their rooms were right across from each other and they were to share the same bathroom. She gave them fifteen minutes to accustom themselves to their rooms and to put on the uniform, which, she said, would be on the bed.
The term "bed" was relative apparently, for it wasn't much more than a cot. But it didn't collapse when Inuyasha experimentally stretched out on it, his feet propped on the folded uniform, so that was okay. A single sheet of instructions was placed between the dark blue pants and jacket of the suit making of the uniform.
Inuyasha dug out the paper and picked it up with his toes. He squinted at it.
"'Prevent outsiders from entering the estate,' well I already knew that," he mumbled to himself.
Inuyasha skimmed the rest of the instructions, stopped at the last line on the paper, and stared.
"'Don't hug or embrace anyone'?"
