A/N: It's around halfway through the next hundred Barks. I know, last months I wasn't too active here and I'm sorry for that, but rl and my bigger stories took most of my time.
Anyway it's the time for the return of - somehow popular - Steampunk AU from me. Be sure to check out chapters 49. 164 and 173.
I'm not sure if I will be continuing this AU - if I will, there will be another part in around 100 chapters I mean I kinda like doing these and from the reviews under the previous ones you like to read them, but I can't do it into a real multichap story and give it its due dedication, research and time. So short pieces to celebrate half-hundred milestones will probably work best for this AU.
Enjoy and review as you please!
New Work Part 3
Kagome waved a hand to Hojo, before she ran outside of the little restaurant beside the Musashi station. She stepped carefully between freshly arranged plants that lined up the front of the building housing the restaurant.
The baggy pants she wore, similar in shape to her miko robes, fluttered on the wind that came from the direction of the landing airship. She shielded her eyes with a hand, since the sun was in the way, and watched the majestic machine land gracefully on the flat field. She loved to watch the landing, there was so much beauty and power in this machine, a true work of art. Sometimes it was hard to believe she was working on it, guarding it and its passengers. Well, she was still new, so it was no wonder she was still amazed by the zeppelin and her new work.
And totally not by the handsome partner she worked with and who happened to be her superior and the younger brother (although not legitimate) to the Lord of the West himself. No, surely, she wouldn't dare to be amazed by Taisho in his grumpy, cute-eared glory.
It wasn't like the memory of him saying he was going to keep her, was replaying in her dreams since their last shift. It had been just a few days ago and Kagome still couldn't stop blushing at the intense golden eyes that had looked at her.
He hadn't been meaning anything by that, just simply stating he saw her fit to do her job well, that he acknowledged her - a woman - to be as good as a man, to be worthy of working alongside him.
It had to be this - it would've been this with any other man. Yet, somehow, as Kagome pondered all that she knew about Taisho, he didn't seem like a man that paid much attention to gender, but to skill. He'd never made any comment on her being lesser than Miroku, who was also a reiki user. He treated her as equal, but didn't deny her the chivalry of a gentleman - well, the amount of gentleman's chivalry that he had in
In the society that looked down on most women trying to work on their own, to do 'man's work', as many would call guarding Ah-Un, his acceptance and acknowledgment was refreshing and heartwarming.
Station officers ran out to anchor it, tying strong ropes to the iron poles. The ship crew joined them, some of them opening the door and arranging the movable staircase to the entrance.
They managed to do it just in time, because the next second they stepped away from their work, a person in white stood in the doorway.
Kagome instinctively tensed and straightened her back. It was the Lord himself, walking down the stairs with purpose, but no haste, regal and otherworldly.
While Inuyasha was like a wildfire barely constrained, his older brother was like a concentrated flame of a gas lamp, controlled to the tiniest bit, deadly and eerie. Some called him cold as ice, but Kagome saw his eyes glowing with the light that resembled Inuyasha's intense eyes. Lord Sesshomaru seemed to be just... Hiding his inner thoughts and emotions, not allowing them to leak out. She wondered if he had been different when his beloved had been alive.
She gulped and bowed when she saw the Lord ignoring the waiting car in favor of her. She saw him stopping a proper distance away.
"Miko Higurashi, rise." he ordered and she obeyed without hesitation.
"Is there anything I can do, my lord?" she asked. A curt nod and...
"A security officer was... maimed... on our way to the station. You have healing experience, see to him before he can be transferred to the hospital," he said. Kagome's cheeks paled and she immediately bowed again, knowing that the lord didn't pay her any attention after issuing the order, he was already walking towards the car. and the kappa holding its door open for him She waited for a heartbeat and rushed towards Ah-Un.
'Oh, gods, don't let it be Inuyasha...' she thought, running up the stairs and calling apologies over her shoulders when she barely evaded running into Hachi. Then she shook her head. 'Bad Kagome! If not Inuyasha, who else is it? Who was on this shift?'
As she thought that her feet never slowed down, she quickly reached the security room.
"What happened?" she opened the door and froze.
Inuyasha sat, as is was customary for him - on the windowsill of the open window. Sango sat on the chair next to the table under said window..
And Miroku rested sprawled out on the floor in the corner, the remains of the other chair put in the trash bin next to the door. The unconscious state of the monk, along with some crude bandages made out of a shirt, indicated that he was the injured officer.
A part of Kagome sighed in relief, immediately scolded by another part. It was not nice to be relieved it was Miroku. He was - for the most part... well, maybe not innocent, but good-willed.
"Sango went to town on the idiot with a chair, that's what happened," Inuyasha barked, obviously amused in the face of his friend's state. Sango gasped, blushed and covered her cheeks when she saw Kagome's expression.
"It was an... accident! And I apologized!" the exterminator exclaimed, flustered and annoyed.
"To an unconscious man? It doesn't count. And don't apologize anyway, he had it coming," Inuyasha shrugged. Then he looked at Kagome. "Well, miko Ka-Go-Me, can you," he wiggled his claws in the air in front of his face. "Reiki him together, so we don't have to put nurses in the situation where they have to tie him to his bed?"
"Um... Oh, I'll see what I can do." Kagome muttered and tried to glare at her superior sternly without looking too aloof. "And reiki isn't going to just heal all wounds instantly, so don't think he will be going back to work after I'm done here," she added. "Especially if there are broken bones involved.
Sango groaned and Inuyasha laughed, making Kagome smile as she knelt down to check Miroku's injuries.
Yes, she was a part of this, a member of the elite security force guarding Ah-Un and its passengers, and each other. And, as odd as it could sound, she felt at home among those people, who accepted her and acknowledged her in their own way. They were a group of misfits - a hanyou, a female exterminator, a fighting miko and a monk that knew nothing what personal space meant.
Or self-preservation.