"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - George Orwell


He was crying. The sounds smells of his surroundings were overwhelming to his tiny nose and little ears. Men and women dressed in matching blue crowded around him, trying to soothe the distraught child. Huddled low on the floor, he trembled in fright as one of them tried to pry the red cloth he clutched to his small frame like a lifeline.

"Where are your parents?"

"Where did you come from, little one?"

"What's your mama's name, boy?"

None of it made sense to him. He didn't understand why he was here, and he didn't have answers to the questions these strangers kept asking him. He buried his tear-stained face in the fabric he held so tightly, a familiar but misplaced scent washing through him as he tried to stop blubbering for a moment.

"What's your name, honey?" One of the quieter women asked him. Her voice wasn't so scary.

He sucked in a shuddering breath, one piece of information shining bright amongst the jumbled mess that was his thoughts, and he latched onto it—a name.

He had a name.

"...I-Inuyasha...my name's Inuyasha," he spoke shakily, voice small and worn from uncontrollable sobbing.

The woman smiled down at him, sympathy swirling in her warm eyes as she slowly and tentatively wrapped her arms around him.

"Well Inuyasha, let's see if we can figure out what you're doing here, hm?"


He woke with a start -because when the fuck didn't he- a light sheen of sweat covering him as his body heaved. Wakefulness consumed him as he quickly pushed down the images of the dream that had decided to plague him that night. It was a dream that crept up on him infrequently, some twisted form of the day that he'd seemingly dropped out of the sky and landed in a dingy old police department, no parents and no knowledge of any previous life he'd lived. Nearly two decades later and still, he was haunted.

He pushed himself out of bed to go about his morning routine; not too long, and he'd forget the imagery anyway. Noting the time illuminated in the corner of the window opposite his bed, he made his way into the en-suite, lights automatically turning on as he entered. Standing before the sink, his hand was heavy as he waved it over the sensor that triggered his mirror image. He stared at the reflection the met him.

Well, if he didn't look like shit. Dark circles stood out under his eyes, skin ashen from...what was that? He lifted a hand to his face, passing clawed fingers over his cheek as a fine layer of grime came away from his skin. Dust? He was covered in...

Widened eyes darted back to his reflection, fragments of the night before crashing back into his memory. The explosion. The bomb. The two girls on a bike unlike any he had ever seen that seemed to be the cause of it all.

Kagome.

He rushed from the bathroom then, intent on finding...something. The sliding door that led to his living room opened silently as he approached it, the scent of his best friend hitting him full force as he entered the room. Small traces of blood lingered with it. Fuck, he had been hurt.

He instantly spotted Miroku asleep on the pullout, blissfully unaware of the frantic man bursting onto the scene. Relief washed over him as he gauged he was in one piece. At least they had that going for them. Inuyasha loomed over Miroku as he slumbered, hand grasping the shoulder closest to him to shake him awake.

"Oi. Oi. Wake up," he ordered, loud enough to jostle the sleeping man into a sudden fit of sputtering.

"Wh-what?!" Miroku flinched, head darting up and eyes swirling at the rude wake-up call.

"Get up, idiot. We need to talk about last night," taking a seat on the smooth armchair that sat adjacent to the couch, Inuyasha waited impatiently for Miroku to gain consciousness.

"Last...night?" a beat, a slow blink, "holy shit, that explosion!" Miroku scrambled up without grace, sheet twisting around his legs as he tried to arrange himself.

"Yeah, that explosion. What the fuck happened after? I don't remember us getting back here," crossing his arms over his chest, Inuyasha grimaced. He wasn't that drunk.

"Uh...right. Right," Miroku ran a hand over his face, finally finding a comfortable position after battling with the textiles, "we...you grabbed me not long after it happened, I'd hit my head...could've been worse. Um...officers arrived pretty quickly, but by the time they did there were so many people around we just...left. No one tried to stop us either, so we ended up back here and we just...crashed?"

Inuyasha looked at him then.

"We crashed?"

"Y-yeah."

"We just...came back here and went to sleep?"

"Yes."

"After being blown halfway across the street by a bomb?"

"That's about right," Miroku didn't look quite so convinced himself.

"What the fuck?" Inuyasha jumped to his feet, stopping short when he realised he didn't know what he wanted to do. Storming over to the floor to ceiling window, he rested his forehead against the cool glass, eyes flitting across the twinkling lights. He tried to digest what was frankly an absurd reaction they seemed to have to a bomb going off in their little slice of life. None of it made sense. The image of a girl in skin-tight clothing overrode it all.

"Was that seriously Kagome fucking Higurashi sitting in front of that shop before it went off?"

"Oh...oh shit, yeah! Fuck, I mean, what are the chances? Didn't she get shipped off to some fancy school right before we finished high school? Unless it was a clone or skin or something which would be super weird and unlikely...but that wouldn't make sense because she knew my name..." Miroku trailed off, glancing up before stopping his stream of consciousness. A fleeting look of worry crossed his features, and he coughed awkwardly, hoping to dispel the tension his suddenly changed demeanour caused. Jumping to his feet with the sheet in his arms, Miroku smacked the gleaming button on the side of the couch that drew the pull out back into its original position without pause.

Inuyasha stared at him. Hard. He pondered the look that passed over his friends face a moment ago. Why did he look so...so... his head was starting to hurt. So, he moved on. Like he always did- it was easier that way. Pushing himself off the glass, he moved purposefully into his bedroom to get ready for the day ahead without another word.

He still had things to do after all.


Inuyasha stepped onto the heated flooring, and the overhead nozzle of his shower kicked in, glass partition sliding from its space nestled into the wall. Pre-set to the perfect temperature, he moved under the water as he was enclosed and let it flow over his aching muscles. Or rather, muscles that should have been aching given the previous night's events. But he wasn't about to consider his dumb luck.

Reaching out to the small auto-tap that dispensed his body wash, he began to scrub his skin of the lingering scent of smoke and ash and gunpowder and her. It wasn't there though, not really. Her scent was just a phantom.

Bracing a hand against the sleek wall, Inuyasha closed his eyes, a sigh escaping him as memories of that girl -a woman now- filled his mind. His head was starting to throb, but he pushed through the feeling, wanting desperately to put the pieces together and make some sense of his jumbled thoughts, futile as that was. So, he started with what he knew.

He hadn't seen her in years—almost 6 to be exact if his memory could be trusted, which it very well couldn't be. Miroku was right, she'd always been meant for great things after high school, so when she was accepted into a prestigious University in another city, it came as no surprise. Not to him anyway. That didn't stop the pang in his chest as he remembered the moment he'd learned of her departure.

It wasn't an everyday occurrence for people to leave Angel City. Far from it, in fact. The cost alone was immense and usually came with knowing the right person. The journeys between the few places on earth that still stood were treacherous and infrequent. For a while, rumours swirled around the true nature of her disappearance because it was just so unheard of. But soon, everyone moved on—everyone except him, apparently.

She was a quiet thing back then. They'd ended up at same high school but never really moved in the same circles. He was always...distracted by something else. Or someone else. He'd be the first to admit that he hadn't noticed her those first few years. She was so damn tiny and blended into the crowds of the overstuffed halls so easily, especially amongst peers who were perpetually 'finding themselves' in a world that allowed you to change your look at the drop of a hat.

But in their final year, when everyone was starting to grow up and get over their awkward, dramatic years that made teenagers so teenaged, something happened. He started noticing her. She'd never bowed to the pressure of augmenting oneself, regardless of how easy it would be. Beautiful, in all her natural and tiny glory. She was just...Kagome. And somehow, she had noticed him. They'd spoken a few times; there was this energy between them that he couldn't quite identify. There was a moment not long before she left where he thought that maybe they were on the cusp of something...

His hand slid from the wall as he tilted his head, letting the warm water fall down his back as he stopped his thoughts from going further in that direction. Because nothing had actually happened, she was just gone one day-a few weeks before graduation- leaving without so much as a goodbye to anyone, not even those three girls she was always with. She was offered a scholarship and whisked away, likely to never return to this hell hole, never to be seen again.

He thought about her sometimes, usually when he was feeling particularly sorry for himself. He hated it. They had hardly known each other, not really. A few short months of crushing were hardly long enough for him to taunt her ghost so many years later. He didn't even think about his ex like that, not any more. And yet, the what-if of it all had his blood boiling at the most inopportune times. He knew it was ridiculous to be so hung up on a girl he hadn't even dated. Had almost, maybe dated. That had to be it, the unknown that had him wondering.

And though he'd never tell a soul, he'd looked her up a few times over the years to see what had become of her. She had become the doctor she had always dreamed of being, living and working halfway across the world. Halfway across the world from him. But none of that mattered anymore, because the image of the girl he'd painted for himself clearly didn't exist. Not after last night, if that really was her.

He banished the image of that fantasy girl and in her place stood a terrorist waiting in the shadows. She wasn't the girl he remembered from years ago, and the likelihood of seeing her again was slim to none in a city of 7 billion, not unless she decided the bot-chop-shop on the corner was also in need of renovations.

Because as unlikely as it seemed, Kagome fucking Higurashi was back and she was blowing up his city.


Stepping through the bullet train doors, Inuyasha moved to the side of the door and stood, ears flicking under his hood as the trill of the speakers cut through him. It wouldn't be long before his journey was up; there was no need to take a seat. It wasn't particularly busy for a Saturday morning, public transport usually being stuffed to the brim with people on weekends looking for some reprieve from their daily lives. His nose was glad for the respite.

Glancing up and out the window, he tried to peek the grey skies that barely snuck through the buildings above. He scowled at the glaring lights and colours that shone through the glass, advertising anything and everything his city had to offer. It was always lost on him. He had no need for an all-singing-all-dancing housekeeper-bot. He had no want for cybernetic upgrades that would turn his brain into a living computer. He had no time for the thrills of living in the 24th century, only opting to receive his interface when he was 13. It was near impossible to make it by without one, but it was all he needed. He had his demonic heritage -however strong it was- to thank for that.

While it wasn't uncommon to spot those with high demonic potency wandering around Angel City, it was hardly the norm. Hundreds of years of thinning bloodlines as prejudice and segregation became a thing of the past had seen to that. People were free to love who they loved, and so the inevitable happened. Citizens with trace amounts of demonic blood were everywhere, giving the too-damp air a constant thrum of youki that was easily ignored when you became acclimatised, for those who could sense it, at least.

Demonic origins or not, individualism was non-existent. As fashion and culture began to snowball into obscurity, at some point, the concept of race became inconsequential to the masses. Any look could be achieved in the time they were living in, and those that were here to tell the tale took advantage of it. Inuyasha supposed this helped him blend in, to an extent.

His ears were often mistaken for enhancements, because 'they're so cute'. His fangs were assumed to be some type of fetish, as if he'd added them to use for reasons other than he was simply born with them. The long silver hair that he kept tied back more often than not was always a topic of conversation, but he'd never offer the knowledge that it grew long no matter how often he cut it. The gold of his eyes, so unnatural and rare even amongst the endless possibilities of eye colours, were often seen as a status symbol. As if he were rich or something. He shifted uncomfortably at the thought. It was easier to just let people assume, though it didn't always sit right. Living comfortably didn't come easily to anyone in Angel City. Not to those born without affluence.

He looked up then, taking in the towering skyscrapers that reached hundreds of floors into the sky. There was a reason this place was called Angel City, and it wasn't a representation of its population. The colossal heights the structures reached had earned them that, peaking so high towards the heavens that their pinnacles could never be seen, even on one of those rare clear days. There were people up there, people who had never touched their feet to the ground of the planet they called home. It was easy for them; meandering through the skies from building to building was simple when transport was so effective. Bullet trains not unlike the one he was on at that moment moved smoothly, silently and quickly through the skies, suspended as they carried bodies to and fro with precision. Private cars hovered here and there, often serving only those of importance.

He scoffed. Yeah, it sure was easy for them.

Within mere minutes of his departure, he was at his stop. Disembarking and making his way through the terminal, Inuyasha moved with practised steps. He'd taken this route most Saturdays for the last six years, ever since he'd left this run-down old neighbourhood to live in University accommodation. And now, he had his own place. A much nicer place than he would have been able to afford had he not landed his current job straight out of school. His very own home that was his and only his. If you didn't take into account that it was gifted to him upon accepting his position at Taisho Corp.

Pushing the nagging thought down -because it just nagged at him- he exited the station, feet carrying him along the suspended platform that would lead him to the place he used to call home. Ignoring the colourful characters that went about their day, Inuyasha failed to notice the sights around him; eyes, ears and nose focused on his path as he moved quickly about the rainy streets.

Stopping upon a small opening nestled between a few shops, he walked past the piles of junk and old tech that littered the tiny alleyway. Lit up with glowing signage, a door stood out amongst the gloomy setting. He punched a code into the panel to the left of the door and entered, jogging up the stairs that were situated in the doorway. Having to walk up flights of stairs wasn't a common occurrence in his neck of the woods, the quality of life between now and then always doing its job of reminding him never to get too comfortable where he was. Once he reached the floor he was headed to, he inhaled. Good, the old man had cooked.

The clattering of pans and soft curses met his ears as he entered the small and dingy studio, nose leading him to the kitchenette that sat at the far end of the glorified room. Hovering over an old-style burner stood Totosai, sputtering at the meal he was cooking as if it had personally wronged him.

"Old man," he greeted, taking a seat at the small bar that separated the kitchen from the living area.

"Ah! W-what?!" Oops. He probably shouldn't have startled the poor old guy. He made a note to make an unnecessary amount of noise next time.

Totosai's wide and unclear eyes darted around as he spun on uneven legs, ladle raised as an improvised weapon to take on the intruder. He settled his gaze on an unimpressed Inuyasha and paused...before bringing it down swiftly on the young man's head.

"Ow. What the fuck was that for?" he grumbled, rubbing the sore spot with a wince.

"For sneaking around, dumb boy! You should eat more, then you'll get fat, and I can hear you coming! Stupid...of all the...idiot child...fuck..." Totosai trailed off, returning to his pot of mysteries and virtually ignoring his guest.

Inuyasha sighed, taking in the state of the studio around him. It was cleaner than he had expected, although clean was hardly the word for it. Time hadn't been too kind to Totosai. As his mind deteriorated, so did his ability to look after himself. His little studio -the one that Inuyasha had spent a good decade of his life living in- was a bit worse for wear these days. They'd never lived in luxury, but it was theirs. And now it seemed that Totosai wouldn't be able to keep it up for much longer. Or keep anything up, for that matter.

He swallowed down the rising guilt that built in his gut. Once a week wasn't enough to visit the man that had essentially raised him. But he couldn't afford any more time.

"You gonna let me buy a bot for this place yet?" he mumbled, looking around at the unkempt space. Clothes littered the floor, instant food containers scattered across surfaces. Old and faulty tech seemed to spew out of the walls, adding to the picture he painted of 'crazy old man'.

"A what? No..no, what do I need one of those for? They eat far too much!" Totosai rambled, spiralling quickly at the suggestion.

"They don't eat anything, you mad bastard. It would do the things that you don't want to do, like clean," to emphasize, he tapped an old cup of instant noodles that sat on the bar next to him.

"Bah, don't need that. Besides, there'd be less ramen for us to eat if they took up all the room."

And there it was. The point where the conversation would die because there as nothing he could say to that. While Totosai served his creation into the two bowls he'd set aside, Inuyasha's eyes lingered on his movements. Conversing with Totosai was a constant uphill battle. Already old by the time he'd found Inuyasha, he hadn't always been so blatantly neurotic; not when he'd first come into his care. But as the years went on, it was clear that his guardian lacked a screw or two. It was no wonder few people had time for him. He was stubborn, bull-headed and downright bat shit crazy.

Totosai slid the bowl over to his guest, sloshing the contents unceremoniously before mumbling something under his breath. Taking a test whiff, Inuyasha found it to be acceptable and tucked in. Sometimes there would be...interesting additives in Totosai's food. He didn't often cook and usually saved the occasion for his weekly visits with Inuyasha, opting for the ease of access when he was living on his own once more. There was something about the old man shouting at his pots and pans that warmed Inuyasha's otherwise cold disposition. It was a ridiculous image, but one that he found comfort in.

Especially when he had few things to comfort him these days.


"Hold it," a hand shot out, pressing against Inuyasha's chest to stop him in his tracks. He looked up to see a Street Cop decked out in their usual over the top regalia, his partner standing behind him as they both peered at him with interest, "ID check."

The officer held up a biometric scanner, a bright flash blinding him momentarily before he could protest the handling. Depositing the pen device back into his breast pocket, the officer perused his personal interface as Inuyasha's credentials loaded into the space only he could see.

"Inuyasha Takahashi?" he spoke, questioning his identity as if the photo he would have been looking at didn't match the person standing in front of him.

"Obviously. What's this about?" he knew random ID checks on the street weren't exactly standard, not without just cause.

"Just some routine checks. You seen the news lately, kid?" the Officer was rifling through his information, getting every last detail of Inuyasha's existence that had been recorded. It made his skin crawl.

"Says here you work at Taisho Corp. What're you doing in this part of town?"

"Visiting family."

"Ah, yes...a Totosai Takahashi? Says he lives around here. He's your guardian?"

"You're literally reading the information right now. You don't need me to confirm," this was getting ridiculous. A strange night was now turning into a strange couple of days. He shuffled on his feet, wanting desperately to get home so he could...do something that wasn't this.

The Officer shifted his eyes to him then. Perhaps a little too slowly, his eyes scanned over Inuyasha's face, taking in his features before resting on the claw-tipped fingers that jutted out from his crossed arms.

"Enhancements? Says here you don't have any," the faintest of smiles crossed the officers face. It made him so, so uncomfortable.

"That's because I don't. Born like this," thank fuck he'd thought to pull his hood up before heading to the terminal. His ears certainly wouldn't help whatever this situation was.

"Really now?" he leaned closer then, his partner moving in tandem with him, "you must have demon blood in there then."

"Uh...yeah." Wonderful. This was precisely the kind of conversation he wanted to be having on a Saturday night. Hashing out the details of how he didn't know where the fuck he came from with an officer in the rain.

"Hmm...ah, orphan," well fucking duh, that was the whole point of having a guardian, "I see. Did you know your parents at all?"

"Look, is this actually going anywhere or are we just having a friendly chat? Because if you have no reason to keep me, I have somewhere to be," there was no way he would be divulging what little he know of his life with this dick. Street Cops were there for a purpose; harassing AC's citizens over their parentage wasn't one of them. They had access to more information than would appear on his public profile, and clearly, these two were abusing that power. He would know, part of his job was making sure guys like these didn't go unchecked.

The two officers looked at him, a beat passing as they took him in again. At that moment, Inuyasha thought they might try something with him. The hair on the back of his neck stood, and he felt himself tensing, waiting for their response. Something didn't sit right.

"Nope, no reason. We'll be seeing you," and with that, the officer waved his hand, dismissing him and moving to the side.

Perplexed, Inuyasha tutted as he moved passed them, briefly considering getting their ID numbers and looking into them at work the next day. He decided against it, carrying on in the terminal's direction so he could finally go home.

He was on edge the entirety of short distance to the station. It may have only been a few seconds, but the walk felt like an eternity, his stride agitated as he felt a foreboding he couldn't place. Crossing the platform that led to the terminal entryway, he looked back in the direction that the nosy Cops had stopped him and staggered as he came to a halt.

They were still standing there. Surely, that wouldn't have made his stomach turn under normal circumstances. But these weren't normal circumstances.

They were watching him.


Fin

Skin- and overlay that can be projected onto a person like a second skin. Usually comes with some symbol or 'tell' that lets people know it's not a real image, often the creator's logo. Skin's glitch-out when picked up by cameras to deter misidentification.