Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha™ nor do I own any of its characters or its original plotline. They are the intellectual property of Takahashi Rumik…Is anyone else sick of this yet? I don't own this stuff and I never will. I think this has become so long that no one even bothers to read it anymore. Anyway, read the story, stop wasting time on this junk…
A/N: Okay, I don't know what's going on with document uploading, but all of my break tags you know, " " are being removed, even if I try to add them manually, so I'm using horizontal rules for now. Hopefully this will get fixed soon and my aesthetics will be restored. Enjoy this one...things are starting to pick up now.
Kouga Tanaka was having a bad morning. The fact that he was having a bad morning because of the excessive fun he'd had the night before was lost on him, however. The only thing that was able to penetrate through the London Fog of his hangover was the loud banging as the ground crew loaded all of the mail bound for North Africa and Italy .
"Would you PLEASE try to keep the damn NOISE DOWN!" he yelled to the back of the plane. His loud request was met only with snickers from the ground crew and a few rude gestures. They weren't overly concerned—it was this guy's own fault he drank more alcohol than he could handle.
Of course, it didn't help Kouga to know that part of the reason he was on this stupid assignment was the same reason his head was splitting at the seams. 'Note to self: no more drinking in public—there are just too many generals' daughters running around this place…' "Stupid prudish girls…" he unintentionally said aloud.
The crew chief outside shook his head as the last mail crate went through the door and he checked it off the list. There were only two more items on the manifest for this flight—apparently some kind of USO act—and they hadn't shown up yet. After the crate was loudly dropped inside the plane eliciting yet another groan from the cockpit, the crew chief decided to head up to talk to the pilot of the battered looking C-47.
"Okay, Lieutenant, it looks like that's the last of it except for the personnel you're carrying. If you'll just sign here…" the crew chief started to hand the manifest to the rumpled looking pilot when he recoiled.
"What personnel? What are you talking about? I didn't hear nothin' about any passengers--I was told this was just a mail truck."
"Well sir when I woke up this morning there was an updated manifest on my desk and this one showed two passengers in addition to the mail that was already slated to go out. They're only bringing personal baggage so there's no need to worry about extra weight—you're still under capacity."
"But who are they?" Kouga asked just as the sound of a jeep honking loudly started to filter through the windows of the plane. Kouga turned to yell at the approaching jeep, half climbing through the window.
"Quiet down you jackass! Some of us are still waking up after a really rough night. You know for two cents…" As the jeep came closer Kouga was able to see the occupants more clearly. There were two, and there was luggage in the back of the jeep. And then he recognized the driver's face. "Oh hell..."
As Inuyasha wove through the rows of C-47s on the landing strip he grew increasingly worried that their plane was going to leave without them, and so he drove faster. It seemed, though, that the faster he drove the more people seemed to want to run out in front of him so he started honking the horn on the jeep to warn of his coming.
"Inuyasha!" Kagome shrieked as Inuyasha narrowly missed hitting a cargo trailer tooling up the row of planes. He spared a second to give her his best "What?" look before continuing to speed across airfield.
When the plane came into view there was a very agitated looking pilot leaning out the side window yelling and shaking his fist.
"What's he saying?" Kagome asked above the roar of the jeep's engine.
"I don't know, but…" Inuyasha stopped mid-sentence as the angry face of the pilot came into focus. "Oh hell, not this clown. Please tell me that this isn't happening to me."
"What?" Kagome asked. "Who is he?"
"A drunk who can't hold his liquor," Inuyasha explained as he pulled the jeep to a stop amidst the departing plane crew. He climbed out of the jeep to stop the crew chief that was just exiting the plane.
"Hey Chief! What's the story with this guy?"
"Lieutenant Tanaka?" the Chief answered. "Oh, he's a little sore this morning—pounding head and wounded pride. Nothing new. He does one of these almost once every two weeks. He got drunk last night at the O-club and got a little too friendly with some General's daughter or wife or mistress and then made an impressive show of ruining the O-club's carpet. This is his usual punishment—flying the mail truck to the South. Why?"
Inuyasha was a little stunned by the detail he received in answer to his vague question. "Well, we're going to be flying with him today and I wanted to know if he was going to be able to fly okay." Inuyasha left out his own experience with the pilot, figuring he had enough of a reputation as it was.
"Oh he'll be fine," the crew chief said lightly, "just let him have a few cups of coffee once you get aloft and he'll be fine."
"Right. You loaded parachutes?"
"Hey, buddy—this is my job we're talking about here. You were on the manifest, so I loaded extra parachutes for you two in addition to the one the pilot's got. Boy, you USO people sure are pushy. First the sudden manifest changes and scary looking people in suits and now you guys. I gotta get a transfer…" the crew chief trailed off as he walked away.
Inuyasha had stopped listening somewhere around "you USO people" and had started loading the baggage into the back of the plane and lashing it down, grumbling the whole time. Kagome extracted herself from the jeep and started into the plane.
"Wait!" Inuyasha exclaimed. "Wait here. I've got to go have a little chat with the pilot before we get going," he explained to Kagome's annoyed look. She stood outside the plane and waited impatiently for Inuyasha to come back and get her.
Inuyasha hopped into the plane and stalked up to the cockpit in search of his irritable prey. As he got closer to the front of the aircraft he could hear the sounds of muttering and a few more loudly spoken choice words. Inuyasha used the noise to cover his approach behind the tousled pilot and firmly clap his hand over his shoulder—Tanaka stiffened.
"Good morning, Lieutenant. Feeling well today I hope?" Inuyasha's words were laced with sarcasm and contempt.
Tanaka turned slowly in his seat while removing Inuyasha's hand from his shoulder. "I'm fine, private—"
"It's Staff Sergeant now."
"—fine then, sergeant. I didn't realize lapdogs got promoted quite so quickly. Now get out of my cockpit before I remove you forcibly."
Inuyasha glowered at the smug officer and leaned in toward him, causing him to unconsciously lean backward.
"Listen and listen well, Tanaka. We've already had one unfortunate run-in, so let's hope this will be our last. You just concentrate on flying this brick to where we need to go and I won't cause you any further grief. Now, are we going to have any problems on this little hop?"
Kouga straightened and looked defiantly up at Inuyasha. "If you stay out of my way I'll stay out of yours. Just strap yourself into a seat and relax. Just consider yourself lucky that I can't get out of this chair during flight, or I might come back and keep your little girlfriend company while you sleep."
Inuyasha reddened—from anger, of course—and shoved the pilot back down into his seat. "Just get us going. Every minute we spend on the ground is one less minute I get to spend away from you." Inuyasha stomped toward the back of the plane to get Kagome set for the flight while Kouga smirked to himself.
'I seem to have struck a nerve…'
Kagome, still a little miffed at being left outside during the five minutes that Inuyasha had gone to "chat" with the pilot—she got the distinct impression that it was something more than a simple "Hey, how are ya?"—sat quietly in the back of the plane while Inuyasha finished securing their luggage and setting the rear of the plane in order.
A few minutes ago someone from the ground crew had driven their jeep to a safe corner of the airfield after shutting and locking the rear door of the plane. She watched as Inuyasha finally finished his packing job and sank onto the bench seats across from her.
"You all strapped in?" he asked.
Kagome rolled her eyes. "For the fourth and final time: yes, I am. Now quit bugging me. I'm still not caught up on all the sleep I lost this week from our training. I'm going to sleep, if that's alright with you?"
"Keh, that's fine with me. I'm not shutting my eyes though. Who knows what that bastard pilot might do if we both fell asleep?"
Kagome just rolled her eyes again and tried to find a comfortable position to sleep in while sitting up.
Kouga stared numbly at his assigned flight plan from England to North Africa . He'd flown it several times already, but he had only just realized how long and inefficient this flight path really was. The truth was, he could probably save a lot of gas—and cut a lot of time flying with dog-crap in the back of his plane—if he just made a few modifications.
"Let's see, instead of bearing southwest after take off so we can skirt France and fly through Spain, lets just turn southeast and fly straight across central France. That should get me there several hours ahead of schedule." Kouga sat back with a very satisfied grin after marking his map and noting the headings and distances. "This might turn out to be a good day after all," he said to himself merrily while starting up the engines and checking all his instruments. He hummed to himself as he followed the ground crew's directions to the taxiway and then accelerated down the runway.
In the back of the plane Kagome had fallen asleep before the plane even began moving. Inuyasha had determined to stay awake after Tanaka's little comment. Sure, it was pretty unlikely he would actually be able to set the plane to fly without him, but Inuyasha didn't like taking chances.
Once the plane started moving though, Inuyasha remembered how calming the vibration of the engines was when you were sitting in the back of the plane. It wasn't long after takeoff that Inuyasha fell completely asleep to the loud humming of the engines dreaming of a soft cot somewhere in North Africa with his name on it.
A harsh jolt woke the two sleeping passengers in the back of the plane.
While Kagome stretched and worked the kinks out her neck, Inuyasha shot awake, completely alert. There weren't any other bumps following the one that had woken them, so he figured it was probably just turbulence. He looked at his watch and determined that they should still be over the ocean, but nearing the Spanish coast by now. As the clouds beneath the plane broke though, Inuyasha could see that they were solidly over land.
"Kagome, are you awake?"
Kagome rubbed some sleep from her eyes and murmured, "Mm-hmm."
"Good. We might be in trouble here. I want you to start getting strapped into that parachute."
"Okay…" Kagome said, half-awake.
"Hey, are you listening to me?" Inuyasha stood and moved over to her to shake her awake. "Kagome! Wake up." She blinked several times and finally focused on him.
"What? I want to sleep—"
"Kagome, listen to me. We are not where we're supposed to be. I don't know where we are but this jackass changed his flight plan on us and our escort isn't going to find us. Get your parachute on and sit here. I'm going to go have another chat with this guy."
Kagome woke fully as Inuyasha explained the situation. Looking through the windows she could tell by the direction the sun was shining from that they were traveling the wrong direction for how long they had been flying. She moved to start strapping into the parachute harness while Inuyasha took his up front to talk to the pilot.
As Inuyasha moved forward in the cabin he started stepping into the parachute harness and buckling it loosely. 'What the hell does this guy think he's doing? I swear I'll drop him out of the plane without his parachute if he wants to start something.'
"Hey, asshole!" Inuyasha called over the noise of the engines in the cockpit. "Where the hell do you think you're going?" The pilot didn't respond, but rather pointed to a map on the co-pilot's chair, which Inuyasha snatched up to read. After looking at for a few seconds he wadded it up and threw it to the floor. Then he leaned over and got in Tanaka's face so he could hear him more clearly.
"Are you outta your freakin' mind! What possessed your small brain to fly us directly through enemy airspace!"
Kouga just shook his head and grinned up at the irate sergeant. "This way is shorter—less time you have to spend with me, you know? Besides, we're a freakin' mail plane. Who'd want to shoot down a mail plane with a couple of USO performers?"
Inuyasha had been looking out the windscreen while Kouga spoke. Upon his posing the rhetorical question, Inuyasha grabbed him roughly by the jaw and turned his head to look to the front of the plane. "Probably them," Inuyasha grimly shouted.
About that time the two German FW-190 fighters that Inuyasha had been watching approach them head on released a spray of machine gun fire into the plane as they flew overhead. Kouga looked shocked as he tried to perform evasive maneuvers, which were almost impossible in the sluggish cargo plane.
As Inuyasha hurried back to the rear of the plane Kouga started broadcasting a 'Mayday' message to any friendly aircraft in the area.
"Mayday, mayday. This is Pony Express calling Mayday for any allied fighters who can hear me. I have fallen under attack by two German FW-190s…" He trailed off as he stopped to find the map that Inuyasha had thrown on the floor. 'Impulsive idiot…' he thought.
He wasn't really expecting a response, but when he got one he was so relieved he almost missed what they said.
"Pony Express this Redtail 4. We copy mayday. Call out your position and we will attempt to intercept you."
Kouga had just found his position on the map and was getting ready to radio it to Redtail 4 when the Germans made another pass, this one striking the cockpit directly. As the instrument panel exploded in front of him, his last thought before blacking out was, 'I'm definitely swearing off alcohol from now on…'
When Inuyasha got to the rear of the plane he was glad to see Kagome had already finished getting her parachute harness buckled and was attaching her pack to the harness the way Inuyasha had showed her. He checked over Kagome's rig to make sure she hadn't missed anything and then finished strapping himself into his. He was just about to start attaching his pack to his harness when they were hit again and he heard an explosion in the cockpit. The nose started to tip downward suddenly and Inuyasha knew that the supposed 'impossible worst case scenario' was unfolding before his very eyes. He looked back to Kagome who seemed to know what he was thinking, because she had already hooked her static line to the cable running the length of the plane. She looked back at him from the doorway and he gave her a shove out the door, hoping she wouldn't hit the outside of the plane as they continued to nose down.
With Kagome gone he turned his attention to the obviously disabled pilot. He slid down to the cockpit to see if there was anyone there to save and was surprised to find that the pilot was only unconscious. He reached forward and pulled the yoke back and leveled the plane off momentarily while he pulled the out-cold pilot from the seat.
"You're lucky I've already had my fill of death, or else I'd just leave your sorry ass here."
After checking the direction they were flying so he could use the back-azimuth to find Kagome he set the plane flying level once more and moved to the rear of the plane as fast as he could with Tanaka slung over his shoulder. He got to the door just as the plane was starting to dip again. Fortunately Tanaka had had the foresight to strap into a parachute before take-off, so Inuyasha immediately tossed him out of the plane while he held his ripcord.
With Tanaka "safely" out of the plane, Inuyasha turned his attention to his pack. When the plane suddenly lurched and nosed down, Inuyasha decided that his pack was secured "well enough" and leapt from the falling plane into the icy wind outside.