Disclaimer: I don't own InuYasha, it's characters, or 'Royal Dragon' which this plot is based on.
Summary: Why did life hate her? Kagome's day couldn't get any worse. First, she gets fired from her crappy job, then, she gets kicked out of her apartment and was homeless. But the cherry on top was getting kidnapped and taken to be hunted by demons so she can mate with one of them. Yea…she probably shouldn't have gotten out of bed that morning.
Five days later…..
To think that everything Kagome owned in the world fit inside this suitcase and the backpack on her back.
Everything.
Kagome huffed out a breath as she walked. She wasn't sure what she was going to do. There weren't many options. Shelter, bus stop or alleyway. At least the weather forecast was mild with no rain predicted for the next couple of days. She didn't have any family sadly, since they all perished in a car accident when she was seven years old. Since then, she had Kaede, her foster mom. Only Kaede was more like a grandma than a mother. Tragically though, Kaede became ill and three months later, just days after her eighteenth birthday, she was dead.
Kagome swallowed down a lump that formed in her throat. Seemed like those she loved always ended up leaving her. First her family, then Kaede. It was one of the reasons why Kagome never gotten close to anyone. What was the point, especially if they were going to end up leaving anyway?
She was ripped out of her thoughts when her suitcase was ripped from her hand. A young guy sprinted away with her belongings. Almost everything she owned.
"Hey!" Kagome cried. "Stop!" She shrieked, sprinting after the guy in the hoodie.
After an hour of lugging the thing, her arm felt dead and her legs didn't feel much better. Thing was, there wasn't anything of real value in there. Still, that was it. All of it. Her clothes, her shoes, her life, most of it was in that bag. The last few bits and pieces were in the backpack on her back. Everything else was in there.
The guy was much faster than her, but she was determined. She picked up speed. A low growl of anger and frustration was torn from her. Her arms pumped at her sides and her lungs burned. She wanted to shout at him again but she didn't have the strength to both run and call out.
At first he pulled away from her. Now she was keeping up with him. Pretty soon, the tables were going to turn and then he'd be sorry, he'd be worse than sorry. Kagome ignored the voice inside her that begged her to stop. She ignored her fatigued muscles. She ignored everything and…tripped.
Kagome tried to right herself. She staggered. For a moment there it felt like she might just be able to stay upright, then she plummeted down…down. The pavement raced to meet her. Make that the solid edge of the pavement sprinted towards her. She tried to twist away. There was blinding pain as her head hit hard. Almost immediately, darkness descended.
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-
Kagome awoke to the sound of something vibrating. A knocking noise. It was loud. Her body hurt, but her head hurt even more. She opened her eyes and moaned, putting a hand to her forehead. The noise. The knocking sound. It was her teeth chattering. She was cold. Freezing, bloody cold. It wasn't the worst of her worries. She couldn't see. Not a thing. Panic welled up but she pushed it down. The pain in her head was making it hard to think.
She quickly realized that her eyes were fine. If she really tried, which hurt her head even more, she could make out dark shapes. The freezing room she was in was dark. She moaned again. The sound echoed within the space. Her suitcase was gone. The jerk had run off with her clothes. What the hell was she going to do now? But more importantly, where was she? She rubbed a hand on the floor. It was smooth and cold. It was also clean and had a buffed feel. She certainly wasn't outside. The last thing she remembered was hitting her head against the side of the pavement.
"You're awake." A woman said. There was a high pitched edge to her voice. "She's awake." The same person added.
"Oh good." Someone close by, another woman, sighed out the words.
"Where am I? What happened?" Kagome's voice was a croak. Her lips were dry, her throat and mouth felt the same. "How long have I been here?"
"Not long." The nervous sounding woman said. "Maybe a half an hour or so."
"Where am I?" Kagome hugged herself. She rubbed her arms to try and generate some warmth.
She felt the heavy weight of her backpack as she moved to a sitting position. Thank God she still had that. It was truly all she had left. Her toiletry bag, a few bucks and some snacks. The thought of the bottle of water and cereal bar within it had her mouthwatering. A wave of nausea rolled through her almost in the same breath. Damn, she must have a concussion. It had been a hard fall and it sounded like she'd been out for some time, so it made sense.
"I have no idea where we are." The woman definitely sounded afraid. Her voice quivered and she sniffed. It sounded like she might be crying. "Oh God. Oh God." She chanted. There was more sniffing. She was definitely crying.
"Calm down." The woman closest to her said. "It's going to be okay." Thing was, she didn't sound like she believed that herself. "I'm sure it was all a dream. They must've given us something. There must be some logical—"
The other woman made a sound of frustration. "Logical explanation…" She'd gone from upset to hysterical. "You were picked up by a demon. A fucking dragon demon, no less. I experienced the same thing as you. How could we both have dreamed up the same thing? I had his clawed feet around my body. I could feel the scales."
Say what.
These women were insane. Kagome heard the woman closest to her swallow hard. The tempo of her breathing increased. She sounded like she was trying to calm herself down. "It can't be though. It doesn't make sense." Her voice had lost its calm tone. "There has to be an explanation." Yup, any calm was long gone. Her own included!
"A demon?" Her teeth still chattered. Kagome wished she'd put a sweater into her backpack. She wished she still had her suitcase. Nausea continued to afflict her. She sucked in deep breaths to try and calm her rolling stomach. She wasn't sure whether it was the latest revelation or the concussion that caused her upset stomach.
"Yes." The panicking woman said. "An honest to goodness dragon demon. He swooped down and picked me up."
"That's impossible." The woman said. "Demons don't just kidnap random woman. Besides, from what I heard, they haven't been seen for centuries."
"Not true." Another woman spoke up. "They tend to blend in with us so unless they have some distinctive features, we could easily tell who demons are and who aren't. Besides, there are some demons that live among us, and some come to pick up one-night stands every few months."
"And how do you know that?"
"Because I've heard they frequent certain bars and nightclubs. Usually one weekend a month they go and pick up humans. I gotta say, they are pretty attractive that it's no wonder they always leave with a bed partner for the night."
"Who gives a shit about that?" The panicked woman spoke up. "The fact of the matter is that we were kidnapped by demons and who knows what they're going to do with us!"
The back and forth was making Kagome's headache worse. "Wait. Stop." She held up a hand, which was silly in the dark room. "Please stop talking for a second." She groaned. "I hit my head and your arguing is making it worse."
A noise came from the other room. It sounded like someone screaming. It was muffled but slowly drew closer.
"They're bringing in another one!" The panicking woman whispered, her voice was high pitched. The screaming grew nearer and nearer and then there was the sound of a door opening.
"What's going on?" A woman screamed. She was crying and sounded shocked and beyond upset.
"Sit down." Someone said in an authoritative hiss. It was definitely a man that spoke. And he didn't sound very friendly.
"No. You can't do this!" The new arrival shrieked.
"Sit down and shut up." Their abductor was a man. Not a very kind one. This certainly wasn't good.
"Hey!" Kagome shouted. "We're freezing and hungry."
"Tell someone who cares." The man spat. "Pretty soon you'll wish you were dead anyway so enjoy the peace and quiet while you can."
It didn't make sense. It was starting to look like they had been abducted. There must be a reason why. Kagome didn't want to dwell on what that reason might be. It would cause her to panic and panicking wasn't going to help them out of this situation. Point being, whoever had taken them must want them alive. At least for the time being.
"I could use some headache pills." It was worth a shot. "We're thirsty—"
The door slammed shut. Their abductor clearly didn't give a shit.
"And we can't see!" She shouted even though she realized it was useless, since their abductor had disappeared.
Aside from the odd sniff and whimper, the new girl was quiet.
"Hello." The closest woman to her said.
"My name is Kagome." She said, to no one in particular. "Can we please introduce ourselves and try and get to the bottom of this?"
"I want to go home." The new girl broke into a fit of sobs which lasted for about a half a minute before she calmed down enough so that they could talk. She sniffed and hiccupped.
"I'm Ashley." The calmer one closest to Kagome said.
"I'm Ocean." The panicky one said.
The new girl kept on crying and whimpering.
"Ocean? Seriously?" There was a sneer to Ashley's voice. "Where your parents hippies or something?"
"You don't have to be so mean." Kagome chimed in. Why did people feel the need to be so nasty to each other? Throw people in a bad situation and watch their true colors come out.
Ashley made a snorting noise. "Whatever?"
"Are you from around here, Ocean?" Kagome asked her.
"No. I'm actually from Utah. I'm twenty-seven and I don't work, my husband works." Ocean sounded much less panicked.
"Well, I'm from Seattle, Washington and twenty years old. I am, was, a room attendant. I…."
This elicited another snort from Ashley. "Oh my god. A cleaning lady and a homemaker, how pathetic."
Kagome felt irritation rise up in her. "Can we try and not be nasty to one another? Like it or not, we're in this together. We need to help each other and band together."
"Who made you the boss?" Ashley asked.
"No one. I'm not the boss of anyone. I'm stating simple facts. If I were you, I'd be working at becoming part of the group instead of alienating yourself. If we don't work together…." She let the sentence die. Kagome didn't have a good feeling about this. Not at all. "I was fired last week and kicked out of my apartment this morning for not making rent. I'm essentially homeless. It's been one hell of a day." She felt her cheeks burn. It sucked that she couldn't stand on her own two feet.
Ocean sniffed and Kagome could hear shuffling around. "After being with my husband, who was also my childhood sweetheart, decided two days ago that he didn't want to be with me anymore." She sniffed again. "I had come home just to find all my stuff packed in boxes and the locks changed on the door. He had locked me out and after ten minutes of waiting outside, had the nerve to tell me through the door to get off his property. I had nowhere else to go and no choice but to sleep in a train station." She sucked in a big breath. "I was just on my way to the library to use the computers to search for places to work, when I was abducted. Something swopped down from the sky and the next thing I know, I'm flying and brought here." She huffed out the last sentence like she couldn't believe what she was saying.
The new girl whimpered loudly. "Oh god. Please help me." She moaned. "It can't be true. It can't."
"Hey, try and calm down." Kagome used a coaxing voice. "Did you get taken by a dragon too?"
She whimpered. "No. The creature I saw looked like some type of giant bird." Her voice was thick with emotion.
"A bird?" Ashely pointedly said. "So we go from dragons to bird demons. Oh, isn't this rich."
"Do you seriously have to comment on every single thing?" Kagome asked, annoyed. This woman was seriously getting on her nerves.
"What happened?" Ocean asked, trying to get back on topic.
"I never knew my father and when I was six years old, my mom dropped me off at my grandmother's house and never came back. My grandmother hasn't worked since I turned sixteen, because the company she worked for let her go when they went under new management. Just when she was a year shy of retirement and they didn't even give her the money that was promised to her. Anyway, because of that, I had to drop out of high school and I've been struggling to keep up the payments on the house and putting food on the table for us since then. I'm from Arizona and twenty-one years old and work at Coyote Cabaret, it's a gentleman's club."
"Oh god!" Ashley groaned. "And now we have a stripper."
"It's not like that. Not that I would ever judge." The new girl added. She sniffed a few times. "I'm a bartender. I wear tiny hot pants and a bikini to work, which is humiliating enough. A lot of the ladies that work at the club are awesome. They're single moms or, working at the bar to put themselves through school. They're not all sex workers." She half growled. "You shouldn't judge like that. I wish I had more guts, otherwise I'd totally do it. Anyway…" she sighed. "A month ago, my grandmother passed away. She didn't have much, and the only thing she had left over was enough to give her a proper funeral. The bank foreclosed on our house. I got the letter just yesterday. It's been such a struggle. I was about to lose everything."
She swallowed hard before continuing. "My boss sent me home for looking so glum on the job. Also, I snapped at one of the customers and called him a pig. I was walking by and he grabbed my ass. He totally was a pig." She huffed out a breath. "Apparently he was one of the high rollers and I'm supposed to just let him put his hands on me. No way! I was lucky he sent me home with a warning though." Then she whimpered. It sounded like she was trying not to cry. "Or at least I thought it was luck… It came down from out of nowhere. One minute I was walking to my bus stop and the next I was flying up, up. A dark winged beast had me in his talons. Literally. It didn't hurt or anything. I couldn't see very much when I got here. Wherever the hell here is. One minute there was a dark shape looming over me and the next there wasn't." She paused for a moment. "It was weird. In its place was a guy who told me not to be concerned. He said I was safe. I was so afraid, it came from out of nowhere. Then another man, who was horrible brought me here and you know the rest."
"Yup, the same jerk with the bad attitude also threw me in here." Ocean added. "He wouldn't listen to anything I said."
"It must be demons." Kagome said. "And if he was able to transform and take on human form, he must be a daiyokai. I heard they're types of demons that are very powerful and stronger and smarter than other yokai's. Some are able to assume and have human forms. It's the only logical explanation."
"She also said that she couldn't see anything. Your whole dragon theory is a stretch." Ashley huffed.
"Not really." Kagome said. Her teeth had finally stopped chattering but her head still ached. "All three of you were airlifted here by winged type demons. How would you explain it?"
"Drugs." Ashley said. "We were all drugged."
"And saw exactly the same thing? It doesn't make sense." Ocean said. "We wouldn't all hallucinate the same thing. That's crazy."
"I wasn't drugged." The new girl said. "I was picked up and carried here. How was I drugged? Surely I would need to have swallowed a pill or been injected or something."
"I'm sure they're ways. They're demons after all." Ashley said.
"I'm Pia, by the way." The new girl said, sounding much less freaked out.
"What about you?" Kagome asked, turning to look at Ashley. "What's your story, Ashley?"
There was a long moment of silence. "I don't have a story." She finally said.
Yeah, right! There was definitely a story there. "I'm only asking because we all seem to be in a bit of trouble at the time of the abduction. I had my bag stolen and hit my head on the pavement, it's why I was unconscious. I lost my job, my apartment. Ocean just got tossed on the streets by her now ex-husband. Pia was about to lose her house and possibly her job. There's a definite correlation."
"No there's not. I'm twenty-five years old. My daddy was a multi billionaire, I live in a mansion and I have everything I could possibly need." Her voice had a haughty edge. "I've never worked a day in my life, I don't have to. I don't plan on it either. I drive a convertible. I also have an SUV for pulling the horse trailer. I have nothing in common with any of you. Nothing."
"Your dad was a multi-billionaire?" Kagome asked. "You said was."
"Not that it's any of your business but daddy had a stroke a couple months ago. He died." Not a hint of sadness.
"Sorry for your loss." Kagome said since it was the polite thing to do.
"Well don't be. He…" Ashley sighed. "Never mind. I'm not sorry he's gone."
Oh boy! There was definitely a story there. Prissy Ashley could deny it all she wanted but it was clear. She was hiding something. "How were you abducted?"
"I was riding my prize, imported warmblood mare when…" She didn't say anything more.
"You were plucked up by a dragon demon." Ocean added.
"Or was it a bird demon?" Pia said, in tow.
"No. The demon who abducted me wasn't anything that had wings. It looked like a giant dog."
"A dog?"
"Yes, a dog. It ran alongside me and knocked me off my horse and picked me up in its mouth. My horse was so spooked. Poor Twilight. If anything happened to him, I swear, I'll see these bastards hang. They had no damned right to abduct me from my perfectly, wonderful life."
Again, Kagome got the impression that Ashley was trying too hard to convince them that everything was picture perfect. Maybe she was just trying to convince herself.
"The only negative thing that has happened to me recently was my fiancé calling off the wedding. He got wind that I planned on breaking it off with him and beat me too it. Bastard! My best friend was the one that tipped him off. It had to be Josephine." She sighed. "Like help, decent friends are so hard to find."
This woman sure was something.
The door opened and someone else was deposited into the room. Probably another woman. Aside from breathing, whoever it was didn't make a sound.
"Please, can you switch on a light or give us a torch? We need food and water." Kagome tried again. They couldn't see a thing. It was strange, it seemed that there were no lights on at all in this place. Not even behind the door that was currently open. The only way she knew it was open was because of a light breeze that blew in from it. Goosebumps broke out on her arms. "We're freezing in here."
The man didn't say anything, but instead just slammed the door shut.
"Shit." Kagome hissed.
What the hell was going on? Why wasn't anyone telling them anything? What did these demons want with them? And better yet, what was going to happen to them?
"Am I going crazy?" The new girl whispered. "Was I just taken by a giant dog?" Another whimper that spoke of terror.