Chapter 3 : Questions
"Oi, Shippo! Wake your ass up!"
"Huh? Ah!" Shippo came alive from the top of his desk with a post-it note sticking to the side of his face. His green eyes searched the room for the obnoxious person who woke him up. "Of course it's you Inuyasha."
Inuyasha rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. "Aren't you supposed to be working? Being asleep at your desk ain't exactly professional."
Inuyasha looked at the fox demon with feigned annoyance, but in reality he was one of his closest friends. Inuyasha wasn't really the friendly type and so most of his 'friends' were at best tolerable allies, but after a few centuries Shippo had wormed his way into Inuyasha's circle.
Shippo stretched his long arms up to release the tension from his shoulders. He readjusted his blue dress shirt and brushed his auburn hair back out of his eyes. Shippo flashed Inuyasha a fanged grimace before he yawned.
"I can't help it…yawn…I've got two people out sick, my witch is on her honeymoon, and they've had me here for three weeks straight!" Shippo gestured to the mountain of paperwork on the table in his office. "I've got glamour requisitions and magic requests coming out of my ears. At this point I might as well just live here."
"Well, I guess it's good I brought gifts." Inuyasha looked pointedly near the computer on Shippo's desk where a fresh steaming cup of coffee sat unnoticed by Shippo's elbow. With stars in his eyes Shippo inhaled the crisp smell before taking a long swig.
"Okay. What do you want? If you're trying to bribe me it's working."
"Keh." Inuyasha sat across from Shippo. "Sesshomaru told me to investigate the power surge last night."
Shippo set the half-full mug down and turned to his computer. After typing up a few things he located the file saved from last night. He rotated one of his computer screens to face Inuyasha.
"The weird thing isn't that we felt a power surge. It happens all the time when demons, mikos, and witches gain power. The part that is unusual is the strength and potency of it. On our regulation charts, its really….really fucking off the chart. The only time we have ever sensed anything this powerful was twenty years ago, literally to the day. I pulled the data from that night too."
"Twenty years ago?" Inuyasha scowled. That girl had looked about twenty years old, just about the same age as Kikyo when she died.
"The surge from twenty years ago was traced to a hospital. It only lasted 4 and a half minutes before it disappeared. This time though the surge kept going for hours. It's faint now, but we can still trace the signature." Shippo chuckled "In fact, Haru in Charm Acquisitions is kind of obsessed with it. He keeps asking for updates."
"Do you guys have any other information about it?"
"Not really, there's nothing registered that even comes close to this type of power. I can tell you that when it reemerged last night it was in the downtown area, but since then it's drifted to the University district and now back down to residential areas. We can't quite seem to narrow it down closer than about a mile radius since the aura messes with our tracking systems so it's been impossible for the procurement team to find it."
Shippo handed Inuyasha a map with lines drawn across it showing how the location changed over the past few hours. There was an approximate time frame dictated near certain points showing the direction changes. One jumped out at Inuyasha.
"I damn near walked past the thing this morning." Inuyasha trailed his finger down the red line until it reached the coffee shop he had gone to earlier in the morning.
"It wouldn't surprise me if you did, there hasn't been anything out of the ordinary reported since it appeared. No weird happenings, no disappearances, no destruction, just absolutely nothing. No one has sensed any power either, it's only registering on our system from a distance like it is being cloaked when in short range. You'd think whoever summoned this power would use it for something and something soon. I bet it's exhausting trying to control it." With a shrug Shippo leaned back in his chair. "Until we locate it and figure out exactly what it is, there's nothing to do. I can only track where it's been, not where it's going to be."
"I bet Sesshomaru is expecting updates on every move it makes until we find it." Inuyasha rubbed his face with his free hand. "Can you keep me in the loop too?"
Shippo nodded while sipping at the coffee mug. He typed up something else on his computer and Inuyasha felt his phone buzz in his pocket.
"I sent you a link to my computer program so that you can check up on the progress."
"Great, thanks." Inuyasha hesitated a moment before leaning in close. "I need something else from ya too. I met this girl today-"
"Ohhhhhh. Big bad Inuyasha has a crush on a girl?" Shippo flashed him a fanged smile as Inuyasha glowered back at him.
"What? Keh! No!"
"I'd believe you if you weren't blushing right now."
"I. Am. Not. Blushing." Each word came out in a growl.
Shippo cackled back at the irate half-demon. "Alright what's her name then?"
"Kagome." Inuyasha's face softened slightly as he thought back on the girl from the coffee shop. Not girl, woman. The way her hips swayed when she walked away from him was stuck in his brain.
"And what's so special about this girl? She must be something if you're asking me for advice."
"I'm not asking for advice you idiot!" Inuyasha huffed and forced down the desire to hit the fox demon over the head. "I'm asking you to find her. I don't think she was human and I have to see her again. She looked exactly like…someone I knew from way back"
"From way back? How far back are we talking here?"
"560 years, give or take." Shippo's eyes went wide and his brows disappeared in his auburn bangs. "Some priestess I met back then. This girl looked so much like her I called her by the wrong name. I couldn't tell if she was human or not. She looked human enough, but she could see through my glamour. I couldn't sense any power from her, demonic or otherwise, and then she was gone."
"So you want me to check my databases for this Kagome? It might take me some time, I'll have to run the search under the radar and only a first name is not really much information to go on."
Inuyasha nodded stiffly, already knowing that this was a slim chance. He glanced down at his watch for a moment before standing.
"I gotta head out, more meetings today. I'll check in with you later." Inuyasha was out the door and down the hall as Shippo called out a "See you later".
Kagome stared at the ceiling of her room without blinking. She was sure that the hallucinations she saw this morning had been real. Horns, claws, odd markings, fangs, tails, wings, brightly colored everythings. It hadn't helped when she asked her Grandpa if anyone in the family had gone crazy. Apparently every generation was plagued with a person who could see visions, demons, spirits, or boogeymen. Which led Grandpa on a tangent about how the Higurashi clan were spiritual warriors and for a millenium we protected the surrounding lands from demons.
Demons? No way. No freaking way.
Kagome, still neck deep in denial, stayed in her room for the rest of the day. She responded vaguely to all the messages from her friends about where she was and what she was doing. There was no way she could pretend to be normal around them at the moment. Not when she was either on the road to an epic scientific discovery or to the insane asylum. It was only the pull from her empty stomach that brought her downstairs and even then it was only a few minutes before she was back in bed.
The setting sun threw light into her bedroom window and the golden light sent a shock through her. Gold. There was something else she saw today that was gold. Golden eyes on a very handsome man. The cosplayer from the coffee shop.
He had penetrated her with his gaze, those amber-gold eyes looking almost through her this morning. The silver hair looked odd with his business attire, but those little dog ears were just the cutest thing. At the moment she had seen them Kagome had wanted to see if they were as soft as they looked. Looking back now Kagome faintly remembered them moving? Like they were real? Did he have claws? Kagome could only remember his sharp features and the way his sleeves hugged his arms.
If Kagome wasn't going crazy does that mean he was a demon? None of the people Kagome had seen today had frightened her intentionally, it was just their appearance and if she was being honest she was more startled than anything. She had seen parents with children, school kids, business men, and people laden with shopping bags. None of them had seemed particularly dangerous or intimidating.
The phone ringing suddenly pulled Kagome from her reverie. With a groan she pulled it from her bedside table and glanced at the caller ID. Flinging the blankets off her legs, Kagome jumped out of bed while hitting the answer button.
"I'm so sorry Keiko, I'm on my way!"
Kagome fumbled into her waitress uniform and grabbed an apron from the closet. Bolting downstairs she yelled out her goodbyes to the family and told her mom she would call her when she got off work. Her shoes were barely on her feet and her purse wasn't even strapped properly before she was out the door.
Add late for work on my shitty day list.