Disclaimer: I do not own any part of Rosario Vampire. I am merely twisting the creator's vision into my own dream. If the supernatural, sexuality, or violence is offensive to you, than you should not read this.

Chapter 279

Tanaka Ito had to admit that dinner with Tsukune had been an eye opener. True to his word, the younger man had given the older a chance to understand him better. A part of what Tsukune had to say had been disturbing. The idea that there were... youkai.. old youkai in positions of economic power was not a comforting one. The more primal motivations were easy to understand, when applied to humans or other things. Animals are known for strutting and posturing for status. Human did the same things, using sports cars, money, or designer goods. The idea of people, or things, with enough money to casually buy and dispose of whole modern buildings for their posturing and maneuvering was... uncomfortable.

Tanaka was not sure if he should feel sorry for Tsukune, or envious. He was still a young man with most of his life ahead of him, and he had already lived a more significant and successful life than most people would ever manage. At the same time, he had paid a frightening price for that success. Tanaka was still making payments to the bank for his house. Tsukune owned a whole building free and clear, which was making money for him, but he had been tortured and nearly killed for it. That he was willing to endure such punishments to do what he felt was right spoke highly of his morals.

Tanaka Ito did now understand why Tsukune was resigning from the police agency. It was, in part, more of the primal posturing that was needed to survive in the frightening world he was a part of. Tsukune was quitting the police and starting his own company to show that he could stand on his own, and hopefully thrive, to prove he was worthy to marry the woman he loved most. He still felt that the timing for Tsukune's decision could be better, but he still wished the young man luck.

XxxxxxxxxxX

x

Inari felt out of place. While she had visited headquarters with Tsukune plenty of times, she had never spent anywhere near as many hours there. He had sometimes spent whole weeks at a time going through records, doing his share of investigation work. The women in the office, while also police officers, were mostly file clerks and office assistants. They respected Inari as a police woman that was able to be a part of "the real action." Now word had gotten around that she and Tsukune were resigning.

There was no way to miss the fact that Inari and Tsukune were resigning at the same time. It was common for woman to resign from the office once they had caught the affections of a fellow officer leading to wedding plans. With the pair resigning at the same time, and they were known to work well together, some wild, romantic speculation was to be expected. What Inari had not expected was to be invited out for a going away party.

In truth the party was held more because there was a reason to have a party, than because of the reason itself. Inari's position as the guest of honor meant that she was singled out to receive the most attention, and to be at the highest risk of embarrassment. As the other woman ate and drank, they directed questions at the young lieutenant.

"...Soooo... Is it serious between you two?..." Was a sample of the kind of questions that quickly came up. In the beginning Inari tried to pretend there was nothing going on between her and Tsukune. But it felt good to have people seeing them as a couple, and a couple of beers helped loosen her tongue. At no point did she become so drunk as to reveal any important secrets, but she did give in to temptation and started sharing carefully edited versions of some of the things she and her captain had gone through together.

"...It was really, really, frustrating," Inari shared her story. "Because the old woman was definitely..." She paused to find the best way to politely describe the old woman.

"Gone around the bend?" Someone suggested.

"Far enough to be closer to the other side than here," Inari nodded. "But it was worth it. I had his promise that he would owe me a favor. That was the start of a game between us. I would do things for him to collect favor points, and then I could collect on them to get him to do things with me."

Her audience erupted in peals of giggles and laughter. Of course they wanted to know what she had done with her favor points. They wanted to know how far the game had gone on.

"After the ball," Inari shared with the others. "When we had fought off the terrorists... When it was all over, and we were finally going home..."

"Together?" A woman asked with bright, questioning eyes.

"We live in the same building," Inari reminded her. "But we road together on his motorcycle. My skirt was messed up from the fighting. I was holding on to him, and his hips were between my thighs all the way home."

"Oh my..." said one of the listeners.

"I did not want to let go of him," Inari continued with a smile as she remembered that trip. "When we go to his building and parked, since I wasn't ready to let go of him, my captain carried me to the elevator."

There were more giggles. The women were caught up in the story, with their minds racing to imagine things that never happened. They were watching Inari, waiting for more.

"I earned a bunch of favor points that night," Inari grinned. "So I finally asked him, how many points I needed before we could..."

"You didn't!" One of the audience insisted.

"Yes!" Another cheered.

"He didn't even let me finish the question," Inari continued. "He said I needed a thousand points."

"A thousand!?" Two women protested together. The others made noises of disbelief, or disapproval.

"But I argued him down to fifty," Inari told them.

"Yes!"

"Way to go..."

"But now that I had a target number," Inari explained. "The game had changed. Now we were both keeping track, and he was trying to keep me from reaching fifty points. When we were called out to help with search and rescue after that last big Earthquake, I almost had him. When we were done, I was almost at fifty points."

"What did you do?" Someone asked. "What happened?"

"He charged me ten points for an overnight date at a hotel," Inari answered with a rueful smile. "He knew what he was doing. He knew there was no way I could pass it up. A private room, a bath together, and then sharing a bed. Arrrrgh! So close, but still not all the way."

"Ohhh. That was cruel," One woman complained.

"Nooo..." Another cried.

"But you got him to give, didn't you?" A thrid woman asked hopefully. "I mean, you were there, alone and everything. There is no way a man could hold out..."

"Tsukune could," Inari complained. "And he did. I topped out at forty nine points."

"What!?" The collective audience demanded, there eyes wide and their jaws dropping.

"It's true," Inari nodded. "I collected forty nine favor points. When we went off to a summer training camp in the mountains, I was sure I would get that last point some how. All I needed was that one last point, and then I would get him alone for the night..."

"And... And?" Someone prompted.

"Everything went wrong," Inari sighed before taking a long drink of her beer. "We were assigned to different training teams. We were not going to be training together. I wasn't going to get any chances to earn that last point."

"Awwww..." The voices of her listeners were thick with disappointment.

"And then things got worse," Inari sighed again. "There was a land slide because of the summer storms. My team and I were trapped and needed to be rescued."

Inari described the shelter. She talked about the rain and the mud, and the terrifying moment when the shelter came down on her and her teammates. Inari told her listeners about being trapped in the cold, wet dark. The smell of mud and blood, and, as the hours passed, less pleasant things.

"And then my captain arrived," Inari said. "I heard him calling my name. We were all excited that we were going to be rescued. Waiting for him to get us free were some of the longest minutes in my life."

"And then he lifted the remains of the shelter off of us," Inari continued. "He had cleared away everything else, then he lifted the last of the shelter off of us and pushed it aside, he was like a hero form a movie."

"He looked so good right then," Inari said with a pained expression. "And there I was, laying in the the mud; dirty and smelly. I looked like a drowned fox."

"Life's not fair," One of the listening women observed. All of them had sympathy in their eyes. They understood that when it came to being with the right man, appearances could be as important breathing.

"When it was all over," Inari continued her story. "I was glad to put it behind me."

"I bet..."

"You poor dear..."

"Life is so harsh..."

"Everybody that went through the training with us stopped at the closest restaurant for a party when it was all over," Inari went on. "We were celebrating that we had made it through the training, and we were all alive. Tsukune had done more than anybody else, so it was no surprise that he did not want to stay very long. He did surprise me when we left the restaurant, because instead of heading for home," And back to Moka, Inari left out, "He took me to the hotel next door."

"Oh?"

"Oh my..."

"He had arranged a room while I was still at the party," Inari smiled. "When we got there, they had given us the honeymoon suite."

"Whaa..."

"No way!"

"Ohmygod ohmygod..."

"So you got your fiftieth point after all?" A woman leaned in to ask.

"Nope," Inari grinned. "Tsukune refused to give me any more points. He said he was proud of me, but that he wasn't going to give me any more favor points."

"That's not fair!" A protest cut the air. Inari and her companions turned to see a pair of waitresses hovering near by. One of them was blushing bright red at her slip, having revealed that she had been listening in on the whole story.

"It turned out alright," Inari said with a smile. "It turned out that I didn't need that last point after all." She did a little wiggle in her chair.

"Hah!" One of the woman grinned. "Good for you."

"Yes it was," Inari agreed with a happy grin and a blush.

Police women and waitresses all burst out laughing together.

XxxxxxX

Tsukune was looking forward to officially opening his own company. He felt that he had most things well in hand. He had asked Nagi for some business management advice, which his friend was happy to give. In return, Tsukune promised to attend Nagi's and Kiyo's wedding in the spring. The old warehouse had been refurbished to be the headquarters for the new company. A part of Tsukune's business strategy, and Nagi had agreed it was a good approach if he could pull it off, was to borrow from a very basic trick found in nature. Look big and impressive.

The company was starting out with its own large building instead of a store front office. In the front parking lot there would be a company patrol car from the very beginning. Any prospective clients would see a company that looked successful, encouraging them to hire Tsukune's services. Any new employees would see a business that looked strong and confident, inspiring them, he hoped, to act the same way. There was not going to be any attempt at being modest for the company. Right from the start it was going to be striving to stand out, and to stand above the competition.

Just like some animals, or youkai, try to look bigger and stronger than they were to intimidate possible threats, Tsukune's company was going to make an effort to appear successful and capable. Having a plan and knowing in which direction he was going to go with his life felt good. Tsukune was looking forward to making it all happen. At the same time, however, he knew he was going to miss some things about being with the National Police Agency.

One of the things he suspect that he would miss was the professional friendships he had built up. Aside from Tanaka Ito, there were officers in the headquarters that he had worked with as a part of the investigations of Tate no Kai. There were the men and women he went on assignments with. There was even just a small sense of pride he shared every time he saw a uniformed officer hard at work, just because they were all a part of the same organization.

On the other hand, there were some things he was glad he would be putting behind him. Just over the weekend Tsukune had discovered that the Public Relations department had produced a new recruiting commercial using previously recorded footage of him and Inari. In the commercial, she was in her SDF uniform driving a truck. The truck was delivering, of all things, a giant pair of handcuffs. The giant cuffs were so a shiny police mecha, which through clever editing had Tsukune at the controls, could arrest a giant not-quite-godzilla monster. He knew that was going to come back to haunt him eventually.

Tsukune tried not to think too much about such things as he returned to the headquarters building for his last week as a police officer. Unless some direct emergency came up, he was going to be spending the week with a pair of young officers that were going to be taking over for him. Both officers were surprised to be chosen for a place within the Imperial Guard. They had not expected to be selected to join the elite security section of the National Police. Officer Yamada Sana had been enjoying his life as a police man in the northern village, but the Imperial Guard was a career opportunity too good to pass up. Officer Ryoshi Otoko was even more surprised. He had just graduated from the academy a few months prior to the appointment, and had suddenly been elevated from waking patrols in a warehouse district.

Tsukune had suggested both men for the job. Yamada, because of his girlfriends, had already been introduced to the existence of youkai, and knew it was important to keep things as quiet as possible. Ryoshi was a half breed. At first Tsukune didn't know the man's history. He had met him during a round of recruiting while hunting for Tate no Kai. He and Inari had both felt the man's youki, and had drawn him in, both as a local contact for their work, and just out of a sense of camaraderie. It turned out that his father, a longshoreman, had impressed a Ningyo woman while drinking one night. It turned out that Ryoshi's father was good Elvis impersonator and had been singing as he drank on the pier. While he was not remarkably powerful in any physical sense, aside from being able to breath underwater, he was able to detect the auras of youkai and other supernatural things. It had been enough for Tanaka that both men were in on the big secret to accept Tsukune's recommendations.

Tsukune was responsible for briefing both men about Tate no Kai. They would be assisting Tanaka with that and other investigations. But first they needed to be brought up to speed. A part of that included a review of all the work already done. For political reasons, how much Ross' side of things was involved was minimized, and no names or other specifics were given about that facet of the work. Tsukune was focusing on the work ahread as he entered the office that morning, and was caught by surprise when he saw a glowering Tanaka waiting for him.

"I need to talk to you," Tanaka growled. "Come with me."