Inuyasha skulked around the backstreets of Muroran as if he were the shadow of a thief, fast and barely perceptible to the distracted eyes of the human traffic. As he sometimes did when hunting these days, he felt weird not having to seduce a woman to get his fill. Now all he had to do was rap some poor, fat fool on the back of the head and drain him from the arm—that simple. Certainly a different way.

In a crowded place like this, he didn't even have to lure them away from the stream of oncoming people. All he had to do was discreetly knock them out—a quick elbow to the back of the head was most effective, made it look like an accident—and pretend to be helping them up. All the while he cloaked his true actions behind his crouching figure, siphoning their hot blood into flasks specifically for this purpose. Inuyasha only had a few more to fill up for Kagome and Gin. Four lined his deep pockets, but while he was eager to feed his women, he was just as anxious to get back to them. To protect them.

Along the brick wall of an alleyway, he stiffened, thinking of how he mentally grouped the women. "His" women. Both of them belonged to him. It sounded wrong, but felt very, very right. They both had a secure place in his heart. But he couldn't have both. He couldn't love both. His deepest secret, something he tried never to think about—lest Kagome catch telekinetic wind of it—was that sometimes, he pictured Gingitsune and him together in various romantic scenarios, some of which he'd shared with Kagome but others exclusive to his fantasies of Gin. In these daydreams, sometimes, they kissed passionately. Sometimes they walked with a child—their child, a beautiful half-fox with Gin's eyes. Sometimes they made love for what seemed like an endless period of time that could easily have been forever.

In his mental haze, Inuyasha's eyes and fists were clenched shut, his claws digging hard into his palms. Rivulets of dark blood speckled the dusty ground. He growled under his breath, maddened by his sordid truths.

"Goddamn." He wrung his hands together nervously, smearing the blood around both hands. "Stay focused. Staaaaay focused." With a determined grunt, he went on, stalking through the busy street, but thoughts of his lover and his friend still clouded his mind. You have a son, he thought. Phaidron. Think about him. Think about your son, not something you could have had with Gin. A niggling afterthought, something he called "the bad voice", chimed in, Not could have had, but can still have.

His heartbeat quickened to that of a normal human's, an impressive feat for a vampire's heart. No. I can never have her. I don't want her. She's just my friend. That ever-coy bad voice found his denial amusing. Who says you can't have two teisei? Two lovers to carry on your bloodline? To treat you like royalty? To be fair, this was not unallowed. He had even heard urban legends of people having two. But some strange human moralism, he knew, prevented him from seriously entertaining the idea of what was essentially polygamy. To Inuyasha, it just seemed wrong. Just think about it... The bad voice coaxed, and he shook his head as if to throw the thoughts out of his head.

Thanks to the distractions of his intense thinking, Inuyasha wasn't done hunting until early evening, around half past five. It still felt as hot as it was when he first started, and he wiped little beads of sweat from his forehead. His payoff sat in his pockets, weighing him down a bit. He couldn't wait to get back home to his love, deciding not to dwell on specific identities. The previously crowded alley was now practically bare, and Inuyasha knew the criminals and dealers were coming out around this time. While they posed no threat, he didn't want any unnecessary encounters.

Flasks clanked together as he walked down the sidewalk. Inuyasha felt the strangest prickling on the back of his neck—a feeling of foreboding. A quick peripheral sweep turned up no suspicious characters. Though he was on the main street, he was no fool; anything could happen with no one to stop it. And happen it did; no sooner than Inuyasha turned a corner did he hear something metallic whizzing past his ear.

A throwing knife plunged into the streetlight pole that was supposed to have been his head. Its razor sharp shaft poked menacingly through the other side of the pole. Inuyasha looked around the corner with narrowed eyes, but the culprit was nowhere to be found. He didn't plan on sticking around regardless. He continued quickly on his path, on edge and senses heightened protectively.

The tiny bullet of an M39 rifle stopped him cold, piercing his hand in mid-stride. Inuyasha didn't even stop to inspect the wound; he took off in a dead run, passing the apartment complex. If these bastards wanted a fight, they were going to get one—on his terms. Sure enough, as he ran, at least a dozen men followed after him in an unmarked SUV. They were as interested in him as he in they, and they didn't seem all too willing to let him get away. Inuyasha made his way well into an old graveyard, then finally turned to his aggressors, who'd leapt out of the car.

"Who the fuck are you and what do you want with me?" He growled, tossing the flasks out of his pockets. Something told him he didn't want to be slowed down for this. The men stood ready, all decked out in black suits with their respective weapons in hand. One man had an automated crossbow; the others had guns. Probably humans, Inuyasha surmised, or demons who didn't care to get their hands dirty. He didn't care for their classification. They had a problem with him? He'd solve it as best he could.

"Not to kill you. Just to capture you." One of the men, different from the others in that he donned shades and a white fedora, stepped forward, indicating himself as their superior.

"With me, the two will be one and the same." Inuyasha spat on the hallowed ground, wiping his mouth without taking one golden, hawklike eye off of them. "You want me, you'll have to kill me. And I mean dead."

The men eyed each other warily, then looked back at him. Fedora Man cleared his throat, taking a step closer. Inuyasha instinctively stepped back. "We don't want it to come to that. We're hoping to possess you with..." He glanced at Inuyasha's slightly bleeding hand. "...minimal injury."

"Possess me? Ha. I'd like to see that happen. I don't want to have to kill you humans. But since you've already holed up my hand, I think I owe you the favor, don't you?" Without waiting for a response, he dashed forward like lightning, smacking guns out of some lackeys' hands. The ones still armed—including the crossbow guy—fired immediately, round after round battering the old silence.

Inuyasha grabbed an unarmed man, using him as a human shield and replacing him with another empty-handed person when his use expended. Quickly getting wise, the remaining three men without weapons leapt on Inuyasha's back while he tried to fend off the bullets, arrows, and knives. His feet met faces, his fists broke noses, and the men hanging off of him like oversized clothing were used protected him from most of the first onslaught. Clips were reloaded before he had a chance to toss the still-grasping corpses off of him.

This fresh wave of attack was at a closer range now, as Inuyasha had inadvertently staggered closer to them in his attempts to swat away the dead ones. Bullets grazed and marred his face; an arrow struck his calf; the two men with daggers managed to make a superficial cut on his sides before his fangs lunged into one of their necks. While he furiously elbowed the other, the man with the crossbow made his way close to Inuyasha's face and smacked him with the weapon itself. Inuyasha hit the ground, groaning loudly, but he'd yet to give up. Five more were alive and still shooting.

A spinning sweep kick put two of them to the ground, their guns clattering at Inuyasha's feet. He quickly picked up the guns and pistol whipped their former owners. The last two shooters gave loud, menacing shouts, gunning for him now. Inuyasha uprooted a tombstone and bashed them both in the face. Unfortunately for him, behind the obscurity of the large tombstone, the man with the crossbow had gotten into the car and driven away. Breathing heavily, the wounded vampire looked around through one good eye and one swollen eye at the dead suits littering the graveyard. It was nearly pitch black now. He needed to go back home now. Inuyasha stumbled to his dropped flasks and clumsily re-deposited them in his pockets, before heading back the way he ran.

Gingitsune was outside the apartment, getting some fresh air. She needed it; being cooped up in that house was tiring and stifling, and didn't think she could take it anymore. Shippo had fallen asleep, and as she didn't think anyone would be coming in for the kill any time soon, she just decided to get out. Her depression cast a noticeable cloud over her now; heavy bags made her emerald eyes much less pronounced, she had broken out into red splotches that blemished her fair complexion, and her silvery hair was dull and abounded with split ends. To top it all off, she was still hungry, and nobody had come back yet. She was alone.

But I guess that's just something I should get used to anyway. Gin thought numbly, deadened eyes staring at nothing on the floor. She hugged her legs, not cold. By now, she could ignore both her hunger pangs and the furious baby's kicking that resulted from it. She was only two months in and felt as big as a house already. Shippo told her it'd only be another few before...Gin didn't like to think about it much.

Hers would be born about a month before Kagome's, by which time it would probably have murdered the girl. Despite her hatred for the devourer in her stomach, she wasn't immune to motherly instinct, and was already considering naming the child Raiden, derived from the god of thunder. With all the pain it put her through, it seemed a fitting name for a little boy. If it were a girl...she'd name it Kagami. "Mirror", in hopes that she would reflect more good than she seemed to possess.

A distant groan startled her out of her trance. Her head snapped up and she looked around, ready to run away if it was danger. Her eyes went wide when she saw Inuyasha faltering up the stairs, his clothes stained with blood and his face swollen.

"Oh, God...Inuyasha!"