Scroll Seven:
Tensaiga left behind: a gang war in Tokyo
Sesshomaru sat in the dark parlor, temper smoldering. His face, as always, was as impassive as a church sculpture. An acute observer, however, might tell that his eyes were fierce and feral. If said observer was in any way intelligent, he would also be able to tell that Sesshomaru was very dangerous.
In the twenty first century, however, there were no acute observers, and very few intelligent ones. Everyone looks at the man sitting alone in the corner, serene and impassive as a kabuki dancer, but do not see him. They see what they wish to see, but only in the perspective of their own lives. The girl in the pink tank top sees a man too beautiful to be real, whom she would dearly like to speak too, but is too shy too approach. The young man in the leather jacket with his arm around a beautiful girlfriend sees a serious threat to his sustained status as boyfriend to the beautiful girl next to him. The business man, who routinely stops in for some coffee and rarely notices anything, looks up just long enough to see the crisp new suit the man is wearing and hope that he does not have yet another competitor to his law firm.
They did not care who the man was or why he was there, they cared only for how that man could affect their lives. For as far as they were concerned, the man's only existence was in how he might effect their lives. Such is the twenty first century.
Sesshomaru looked behind himself once again to make sure there was nothing latched onto his hair; it just felt so constricted in a braid, a braid Nirakumi had assured him was necessary to help him blend in to this time period. She had wanted him to cut it, but he adamantly refused. Damn Nirakumi, and damn her assurances!
They had arrived in this time through the well, near a proper looking dwelling with a temple; the house had smelled very strongly of Inuyasha's human, but she had not been there. Sesshomaru felt he should have stayed near the dwelling, laying in wait so he could capture the girl when she came. But Nirakumi had dragged him off toward the great metal towers before he could really get his bearing.
She stuck around just long enough to stuff him into this confining black garment, and make him tie his hair back like some animal, then she had disappeared muttering something about 'episode three' whatever that meant, and told him to wait for her in a nearby structure. Insufferable!
Sesshomaru glanced around the room in annoyance; it was filled with humans drinking a pungent smelling black substance. He suspected the drink was a derivative of the black beans he had sometimes encountered in the Peruvian mountains, but knowing what it was gave him little comfort, he was still not about to drink the stuff.
He was becoming impatient waiting for Nirakumi; if she did not arrive soon he would leave and learn about this time on his own. He knew it would be a foolish thing to do, he did not know anything of the strange world of the future, nothing of the threats this time might pose him, yet still he found himself walking out the door.
As he exited, another man jostled him on his way in. This man wore very similar garments to the ones he himself now wore, but then everyone above a certain age seemed to. This man wore sunglasses and had his hair slicked back. On his face was a sneer of contempt. An unsavory punk, though Sesshomaru would not know it.
Sesshomaru was not about to allow this affront to his person pass; he stopped and glared at the man with an icy contempt that came from ten thousand years of crushing men like these under his heel. Before he could threaten the insolent creature, however, the man snarled at him.
"Watch were your going, you prissy fairy!" now Sesshomaru, who was not familiar with the cultural slang of the era, really didn't understand why these words were supposed be insulting, but he didn't need to, all he needed to know was that they were insulting.
He didn't give a second thought to killing the man. In a lightning quick strike, he sliced the man's arm off and shoved the appendage down its owner's throat. It was not clean, nor efficient, but he felt it was what the man deserved.
It was not just about the insult either, something smelled wrong about the man, or had smelled wrong before he killed him. The man not only was a pathetic coward even for a human being, he was the kind of coward that would sell his own mother to curry the favor of whoever had the most power. It was a scent that reminded him of Naraku. He kicked the man in the ribs as he lay suffocating on his own arm.
When Sesshomaru looked up it was to the shocked faces of a packed Tokyo street. Everyone was stock still, terrified of this man that had committed such an atrocity in broad day light. Sesshomaru couldn't resist the urge to startle them even more.
"Boo." He said. It wasn't even particularly scary, just 'Boo' in Sesshomaru's cold monotone voice. He almost smiled when they scattered like flies in all directions, but did not. He used the mass panic to make his exit up to a nearby rooftop.
Sesshomaru learned something there on that street; apparently it was not common for someone to avenge their honor by feeding someone their own arm; interesting.
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Tarumoto sat behind his desk, hands folded, listening to his scouts report. Upon hearing the entire report, he sighed heavily.
"Well, I can't say I'll miss Itsu too much, but this news is disturbing, nobody messes with the Yakuza, not even that crazy American Resh. Then here come some white haired assassin out of the blue and feeds poor Itsu his own arm." He tapped his fingers on his desk for a moment, thinking.
"Is this man insane? Or is Resh making his move?" he pondered this for a second, not expecting a reply from the scout, the man new better than to say anything unless addressed directly.
He seemed to reach a decision; he dismissed the scout, and waited as the man bowed himself out of the room.
Tarumoto gazed pensively out his window, as if by looking hard enough he could discern this white haired assassin in the seething mass of people.
All he found, however, was an impressive view of the Tokyo tower. He did not like this turn of events at all, if Resh was sending assassins, he was planning something; and if Resh was planning something, it was going to be big. Rumors abounded about this new crime lord from America, but not much in the way of fact.
Rumor had it, that Resh had been in Japan before, but nobody could give him an exact date as to when that might have been. Tarumoto had been in the Yakuza for quite a bit of his long life, and had never heard of this American before Resh's local enforcers Donya Alexander and Don Raphael moved into town and presented him with the gift of Tarumoto's bodyguards head along with the message that their boss was coming to town to protect his business investments.
Since then the yakuza had been gradually loosing territory, yakuza strongholds had been bombed to the ground by an insane pyromaniac that called herself Damian, entire collection groups had been slaughtered by a blood drinking monster that wielded a sword as if born with it in her hands, snipers waited on roof tops wherever he needed to go, but worst of all was Alexander and Raphael; those two had slaughtered there way to his office door once, to present him with their message, and made sure he knew they could do it again. He had searched the world for people good enough to fight Resh and his Mafia, but it seemed Resh already had them all, and curiously enough they seemed to be mostly women.
But this was the last straw; an assassination in broad daylight was an outright declaration of war. He wasn't sure if he wanted to let loose his secret weapons on Tokyo just yet, he wasn't prepared to cover for the wonton killing that would ensue, but perhaps if he chose his orders very carefully…
He turned back to his desk and leaned forward to press a button on his on his keypad.
"Kanami? Get an execution squad together, I've got a job for you." The only response over the line was a low chuckle.
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Resh paced across the room, the Abyssinian was absent from its usual perch.
"It is today isn't it?" he muttered to himself. He had been waiting for this day for quite a while with something close to apprehension. He was unsure of how to approach the coming situation. He had no desire to change anything, but he did not want to leave it up to chance either. He finally made up his mind; hoping he would not regret his decision, he picked up his phone and dialed Alexander's number. It rang several times before someone picked up. The voice was threatening and gruff, but distinctly feminine.
"Yah?" the voice replied. Resh tried his best to sound jovial, but he had never quite gotten the hang of voice inflection, so instead his voice sounded creepily hollow.
"Ah, Raphael, your there too? Excellent, could I speak to Alexander?" there was the sound of the phone switching hands before a second female voice came on.
"Boss?"
"Good Alexander, I have a job for you and Raphael, the Yakuza is becoming more active down in the dock quarter, I want you to go down there personally and observe their movements. You are only to reveal yourselves should they execute someone, in which case you will eliminate all yakuza thugs in the area and bring me the body of whoever they kill."
"Got it boss, any place in particular you want us to concentrate on?"
"Yes, an abandoned building with an open courtyard inside."
"Got it; you want me to take Damian?"
"No, no loud explosions, the police are already crawling all over the place looking for some psychopath who ripped a guys arm off." It felt strange in his ears describing it like that, when he knew damn well what had really happened. He did not have long to reflect on this before Alexander's voice came once again over the phone.
"If that's all, boss, I can get to work right away."
"One last thing, if you see my cat, just leave it be." If she thought this order was at all strange, Alexander did not voice her opinion, and with one last 'understood' she hung up on the other end.
He hoped Alexander took her body guard with her, because if Kanami was there, as he knew she would be, they were going to need all the supernatural help they could get. He wasn't even sure if vampire could stand up to Tarumoto's newest abominations. He knew that on some level he was responsible for their development; Tarumoto was developing them to combat him. But Resh was only taking back what was rightfully his. Of one thing he was certain, he could not go himself, he would like to, but if he went everything would fall apart.
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The first thing Sesshomaru did after leaving the street in chaos was to dawn his own clothes once more, leaving the ripped and shredded remains of his suit with the briefcase Nirakumi had given him to keep his clothes in. he also wiped the cosmetics off of his face, revealing his demon clan markings once more. He had not understood in the first place why she had insisted he try to blend in, he was here to set a trap, not go sights seeing.
It was good to feel like himself once more, he had felt trapped in the confining clothing of this age. But now, standing on a roof top with the wind blowing through his unbraided hair, he felt much more like the demon lord he should be.
He would have felt slightly better if he had Tensaiga, and was unsure why. 'What is the hold that sword has over me?' he asked himself. But it was a moot point, Nirakumi had made him leave it by the well
That was exactly the problem. He had no idea how too get back to the human priestess's dwelling. He was drowning in the miasma of scents that smothered the human city, and could not even begin to search for the scent he would need to guide him back there. All the streets looked the same from up here, as well, despite his photographic memory. The only way he would have any idea how to get back was if he descended to ground level again. He did not intend to descend back into that pit of putrescent human stench however, so he made a third option for himself; choose a direction, and start moving.
He took off, moving in leaps and bounds across the roof tops, his silver hair billowing out behind him in a glorious streak of silver, and the wind moving past his face erasing even the memory of the smell of the city. He nearly flew across the rooftops.
He moved instinctively toward the dock quarter. He did not know why he chose that direction in particular, it just felt like the direction he should be going. It was as if he was being pulled there, there was a charged feeling in the air, as if something momentous was about to happen.
He rushed across the city rooftops, enjoying the rush of clean air. Up here at least, he was away from most of the smells of the city.
Truth be told, from this vantage point it did not seem nearly so overwhelming; if he closed his eyes he could imagine he was instead in Asia, leaping across the mountains of Tibet, and the distant sounds from below could be the great dragon horns the priests used. He wondered if the great temples in the mountains still existed, it would be nice, the temples were grand and beautiful creations, despite being made by humans. He supposed in its own right, the same could be said of this city, if you took away all the humans, the noise and the smell.
But then he had a sudden epiphany; if you took away all the hums the noise and the smell, this grand city would be gutted; it would no longer serve a purpose. It would be dead to an extant the not even the Tensaiga could bring it back.
Here in this place called Tokyo, humans had achieved greatness beyond imaging, and though individually the human life was just as worthless, the mass of humans living and working together had achieved a singular purpose; a civilization that could challenge a demons power.
Humans were still, and probably would forever be, the most disgustingly fragile species on the planet. But with them united in such a manner…
For the first time since his arrival, Sesshomaru began to ponder the absence of demons in this new world. At first he had assumed that he just could not sense them because of the cities veritable cloud of sound and scent, but now he realized that not even his magical senses picked up anything other than the occasional buzz of a psychically aware human. Demons were supposed to live forever, and Japan had been a veritable hive of demons and other supernatural creatures, yet he could find nothing but his own demonic aura.
Perhaps other demons merely found the city as distasteful as he did, but he could not help the feeling of apprehension that slowly wormed its way into his mind. Perhaps there were no others left, or the few that remained hid.
When he thought about it, though, he knew somehow there were others here in this time, that they were few and far between. It was possible they had spread out into the rest of the world; in his travels he had noticed a sad lack of powerful demons in the rest of the world. It was possible that the demons of Japan had moved out and acquired larger territories elsewhere, after all, he himself was doing that as he traveled the world in his own time, roughly six hundred years ago, he had several estates in Asia and Europe, and even one in Siberia.
Another thought occurred to him as he thought about his estates; where was he in this time? His life expectancy was as good as infinite, so unless by some bizarre circumstance he had died somewhere along the line, he, his future self, should be out there somewhere.
Now that was something to think about. He wondered what he had been up to these past six hundred years, perhaps he was ruling an entire country by now, instead of a region. He wondered how in this day and age he would go about finding out. Perhaps he didn't need to, if he met himself in the future, the future him would remember being him when he went to the future, and so would remember were to meet himself in the future. Of course that was relying on the fact that Sesshomaru himself had to be were the future him remembered being, or the meeting might never take place, and that was assuming it took place in the first place, which was a rather rash assumption on his part.
He shook his head trying to clear the headache he had brought on by thinking about by time paradox, he could meet himself later, first thing first, he had to find that damn girl.
And there you have the conclusion to the latest chapter
Who are these massively destructive divas Alexander and Raphael?
Who is Kanami?
And why is Sesshomaru waxing philosophical? (it must be something he ate)
Tune in next time for the next confusing chapter of golden eyes.
AN: This is referring to the fact that in early history, after china was invaded by aggressors, the native Chinese men were required to wear their hair back in braids. This was a symbol of domination, meant to represent an animals tail, but over time china absorbed its conquerors; nobody really remembered who the invaders were any more. Chinese men still wore their hair back in the Queues, however, because it had become a symbol of honor. However, Sesshomaru is probably from a time before the Queue became a symbol of honor, and if he had ever been to China he would associate the braid with an animal's tail.