Shippo was happily arm in arm with his boyfriend. "Its this way." Aoi turned down one particular street.
"No fair, you have a built in navigator." Shippo protested.
Then he saw the pair of trucks and group of think tanks moving down the street, headed for the highway. He felt it also, a demon was with them. "Hey, Aoi, who're they?" Shippo asked.
"Huh? Oh, judging from the tachikoma, I think that would be public security." He looked, confused, at Shippo, who rarely cared about human affairs that didn't have to do with him. "Why?"
"They have a demon on board their trucks. I'm gonna check it out..."
"NO Shippo!" Aoi hauled Shippo back. Then he hissed in Shippo's ear. "Your abilities as a demon would be mistaken for cybernetics and hacking. And only illegal or government mod cyborgs have the ability to jump trucks and buildings like that!" Aoi hissed. "You'll be arrested!"
Shippo drooped. It was true, nobody believed in demons anymore. Aoi sighed. "Look, I have a friend who works there. We can ask tomorrow okay? For now we have a date right? That new club?" He looked worried. He should have been. Shippo got depressed, any time he was reminded that he had to hide his demonic powers.
Hakudoshi's shrill cry of rage rang out as he charged the pair of thugs. "Its... its... a monster!" One of the yakuza at the hideout cried out.
"Not a monster, and this is not a dream, I'm a demon, and I'm going to slaughter you to the last man!" Hakudoshi, had not aged a day. Unlike normal demons, he didn't have a heart. He and Kagura and any other of Naraku's creations didn't age, ever.
A blood curtling scream rose up as Hakudoshi's ji shot through each and every last man. Spurts of crimson mixed with white as Hakudoshi slashed his way from one end of the base to the other. Then, he turned to the ruins of the Yakuza warehouse, filled with both biological and cyberdrugs, illegal contraband of the worst variety. A few handsigns and it began to burn, smoke curling to the sky.
Covered in blood, staining his white hair and porcelin skin, Hakudoshi let his ji drop. "Human scum." He muttered. Smoke spiraled to the sky from the warehouse. He bowed, muttering a brief prayer. Then he spat at the burning ruins. "Go to Hell." As the fire department came rushing to the scene, Hakudoshi sailed up into the sky. "They can all die."
Kagura walked up the mountains towards a familiar ruin. But she turned aside at the abandoned demon slayer village. "I don't want to see that place. Sango would kill me... if she were still alive." She made instead for the hills above it. She had a good sense of wind direction, and a keen enough sense of smell and 6th sense to pick up. "is that? A demonic aura? It feels sickly..." Yes, she could smell decay.
She picked up her steps. This wasn't how she pictured herself five hundred and thirty something odd years down the road. She was wearing black slacks, a black cotton shirt, and a bandana holding her long hair back. Her red eyes could easily be mistaken for a cyborg's, and the bandana hid her ears.
She used her ability to sense the wind and her own 6th sense to home in on a cave. As she looked up and into the cave's entrance. "Whaaat?" She asked faintly.
The place was a demon bone storehouse, there were enough demon bones to keep the smiths of the slayer village supplied for years and not run out. She looked at them, each and every one, and picked up a massive rib from the pile. A memory came to her mind, something about its shape, and the voice, "HIRAIKOTSU!"
Kagura bowed politely to the creature who's bone she had taken. "Domo arigatou gozaimasu." She hummed a prayer and soon after there was nobody left. But incense and mochi cake were left at the cave. Pressed also into the dust was, "Roads go ever ever on, but what happens when they enter the sunset?"
Kanna and Kira sat in the hospital waiting room. "Mooooom! I'm bored!" Kanna whined.
Why did I name the noisy one after the quietest demon I've ever met? Kagome wondered as she peeked across the way to keep a watch on Miroku's hospital room.
"How long does a body change taaaaake!" Kira seconded.
"As long as it takes, its too bad I don't have a magic word to keep your mouths shut." Kagome sniped.
"But mom! We've been here three hours! How much longer is Uncle Miroku going to be?" Kira asked impatiently.
"Depends on if he tried to grab the nurse's butt again." Kanna grumbled. "Besides, aren't those tales about Inu-Yasha just a story?"
"Maybe."
"Come on mom, we're /twelve./ That's a seven year old's bed time story." Kanna glared.
Then the emergency cart came through, a man with some sort of eyepatch like device, bleeding around the edges, was on it, headed for surgery. Two people who looked like police and an old man who might have been their leader followed, then slowed down when the nurses said they couldn't follow any more. They took a seat a few paces down from the mother and duo of girls.
"Yes, well, Miroku has been grabbing women's rear ends for years Kanna. Including nurses. If I recall correctly he fondled the nurse who brought him out of sleep once his first cyberbody had been completed." Kagome chuckled. "He's a handsome and perverted fellow. But you know Uncle Miroku isn't that bad."
"Yeah right." Kanna sighed.
"Kanna! Stop complaining! It wasn't Miroku's fault that he's in there!" Kira hissed.
"Hmmmph." Kanna looked up at the woman of the two officers. "You better watch it when my pervert of an uncle comes out of the hospital room. He'll grab your butt and your boobs in one dive."
The woman had purple hair, and red eyes, a cyborg, fullbody. "KANNA!!!!" Kagome turned crimson. "I'm sorry, her uncle Miroku's getting his final adjustments to his new body and the two of them don't have enough patience to wait."
"I'm waiting just fine!" Kira declared. "Its fish mouth nutjob here who can't!"
"I'm not a fishmouth!"
The man near her, towheaded and looking tired, spoke up. "Its okay, I have kids too. Though admittedly my little girl doesn't cause as much trouble as yours do."
"I named Kanna after one of the quietest people I've ever met." Kagome said sarcastically. "Kira was named after my partner Sango's cat, Kirara."
"And that partner is exhausted. Miroku was complaining the whole exam and then tried to grab the nurse's arse even as he was being sedated." Sango sighed as she flopped into a chair and wrapped a possesive arm around Kagome's shoulder.
"Wait, we've been here 3 hours and they're just putting him under?" Kanna looked like she was going to explode. "The damn pervert could at least do his niece a favor and hurry the hell up!"
"Wait... aren't you the trainee who starts tomorrow?" The purple haired woman asked Sango.
"Huh? Me?" Sango asked. "Umm..."
"Its alright Major." Aramaki stepped in. "Sango Higarashi isn't it? Batou mentioned you were starting tomorrow. I'm Aramaki from Public Secrurity."
"Oh wonderful, you get to meet your new boss in a hospital room." Kanna snorted. "Tou-saaaaan! Did I mention you have the most messed up luck imaginable?"
"You be quiet Kanna." Sango replied. "Yes, that's me. This is my partner Kagome, and you've met my daughters." Sango sighed. "My childhood friend Miroku had to undergo a body replacement. His second, he's the girls' godfather, so I just have them call her "Uncle" for simplicity's sake." Sango rolled her eyes.
Motoko's eyes narrowed as she took in her new colleague. The second female on the team. Batou had scored her incredibly high on the hand to hand combat portion of the exam, the intelligence gathering portion of the exam, and anything that had to do with hard and high speed combat.
"And I'm not joking." He said. "She only had prosthetic hands. That's all. Her strength was almost super human. She handled working as a team with the tachikoma as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And the last part of the obstacle course she had the most unusual technique. She took an old bent pipe, a /real/ big one too, and when her gun ran out of bullets she flung it at the target. She let out some kind of battlecry, but I couldn't hear what it was against all the noise the other trainees were making, and the thing went spinning through the air, cut the damn target in half, and snapped back to her hand like a boomerang. Her record says she made it to a Lieutenant in the SDF before her CO reccomended her to us. Get this, he said it seemed like she was becoming /bored/." Batou laughed out loud. "The funny thing is though." He said, serious again. "She had a shadow in her eyes, the look in them. For a moment she looked like a fiercer version of the old man, old, seen it all, but still vibrant and strong."
Motoko regarded Sango conversing seriously with the chief. "So what brought all of you here, did somebody get hurt?"
"Our sniper and ballistics expert, Saito. We were on a mission when an enormous white dog attacked us. The damn thing had to be the size of a school bus." Togusa growled in disgust. "The thing nearly ate me. And it shredded the tachikoma."
Sango and Kagome's eyes shot open. "A white dog?" Sango asked, teeth gritted. She was tense over something. Kagome was looking sidelong at Sango, jaw clenched in worry.
Kagome's heart was beating a mile a minute. She looked over at Motoko. The woman's crimson gaze was sliding to her own. Kagome had learned how to make her own gaze smoulder. She forced herself to relax. The Higarashi shrine had longsince burnt to the ground. And during the 3rd World War, an earthquake had collapsed the well. Passage to the Fuedal Era was no longer possible. I'll bet Inu-Yasha's really lonely by now. Kagome thought, not for the first time. I hope he's still alive. Miroku wants to see him again so much.
"This white dog, do you have a visual of it?" Sango asked.
"Here." Sango took the offered cord from Major. Motoko distracted Sango with the image of the battle. She tried to take a quick peek into Sango's mind while the girl was hooked in.
She couldn't do it. Sango sensed instantly what she was up to Sorry, some secrets are better left buried. Sango replaced what Motoko wanted to know with the simple image of the collapsed well, the sense of sadness as she, Miroku and Kagome viewed the once loved landmark for the final time.
With tears in their eyes all three took a grip on the cord of the by now spent and calcified shikon jewel. It was no longer dark and dangerous, or pink and glittering. As one they dropped it into the depths. It clattered between the rocks, splintering one last time on the way down. Then all three bowed their heads and walked away.
Motoko sighed, but was surprised. She'd gotten the sense that what Sango was hiding was both too painful, too dangerous, and too long for her to tell. But she was willing to show Motoko that one last memory of whatever it was. Whatever secret it was, it was buried in that well.
Sango viewed the footage. As soon as she was unhooked she whispered to Kagome via cybercomm. Its Sesshomaru alright. Motoko did succeed in tapping into their conversation however.
What's he up to? I thought he'd gotten over his 'hating humans' thing with Rin.
I don't know, but they've got him prisoner. This'll mean trouble for Inu-Yasha and the others, wherever they are.
You don't know where Shippo and Kirara went to?
Last time I checked, Shippo took Kirara and disappeared into the city. He said he was moving in with some hacker boyfriend of his who's going to university.
Ooooyeee... I miss the little minx. You never did bring me to visit him. I don't even know what he looks like in this time period.
You wouldnt' recognize him anyway. He's made a disguise so he /looks/ human. His boyfriend, whoever he is, Ao... Aoi I think, is reigning him in so that he can pass as a human.
Whatever, what are you going to do?
Drop hints.
But that would...
Its risky I know, but if I think at any time that I can trust them, I can simply fess up to the whole story.
And if they prove hostile?
I clam up.
Sango sighed. "Thank you sir." She'd long since mastered the art of double talk. "If you don't mind, when I come in tomorrow I'd like to have a look at that white dog you mentioned. Maybe I can spot something you all haven't."
"Alright. But be careful."
"Careful is my middle name." Sango smirked.
"Somehow that doesn't to reassure me." Togusa sighed. "No wonder the big guy liked her so much. They've got the same personality."
"See you tomorrow,"
"Lets just hope that Miroku can go through the rest period afterwards without groping any nurses. He doesn't even grope the nurse droids. Just the real ones. You could have a human full body in a room full of androids, blindfold him, with them all looking alike, and all silent, and he'd be able to tell the real one as long as the lot of them were women." Kanna groaned.
"That's funny," Motoko chuckled, "A lot of men can't resist a sex droid."
"Naaaaw, they give him the creeps. He'd rather have something with a ghost on his arm." Kanna snorted.
Kira shrieked. "THAT'S MEAN!!!!"
"Its true."
"It speaks to his character that he doesn't care for them." Aramaki stated tersely. "Now we have our own matters to deal with, Major, Togusa. We'll be off."
Sango, you're playing with fire tomorrow. Dress appropriately. kagome told her koi.
Don't I always?