Puppet Without Strings
Chapter 12
Inuyasha woke to the sound of a door opening and promptly wished he had stayed sleeping. He was propped up against something uncomfortably straight. It stood perpendicular to the surface he was sitting on. A wall of some sort. His lower body was stretched out on a surface which, after careful analysis from his fragile mind, he decided felt cold and scratchy. It let off a distinct and musty odour. Concrete.
The hanyou cursed whoever had gone and let loose the swarm of bees that were currently assaulting the interior of his skull. His temple pulsed so loudly that he could hear its rapid beats clear as day in his ears, which miraculously were the only appendages on his body that felt unaffected by the rest of their host's inept state. They twitched in triumph.
However, even the buzzing throb in his head paled in comparison to the sheer agony it caused Inuyasha to move his upper body. In spite of this, a decade of military schooling kicked in and the hanyou ignored the predicament of his battered self in favour of analysing his current situation. He tried to force his eyes open but found even that menial task challenging. They were devoid of moisture and the dry, surrounding air assaulted them in their dehydrated state. The skin that had previously shielded the amber orbs fell back into place over them when glaring orange light met their dark pupils as they raised themselves to glance around.
The sun was low in the sky. It would set in an hour or so. How long had he been out? It didn't matter. All Inuyasha felt like doing right now was going right back to sleep. His body screamed instinctively for rest and repair.
But the hanyou was refused even this luxury. The footsteps of whoever had entered the area grew louder as the person approached. Even without looking, Inuyasha recognised it to be his brother.
As much as it troubled him to do so, Inuyasha fought hard to remember how he had come to be in his current state. He forced his reluctant eyes open and blinked several times until a comfortable dampness was reached. The minute the half-blood took in his surroundings; everything came rushing back with startling clarity. He was still in the same location that he'd suffered the horrendous beating from the shichinintai. Inuyasha vaguely remembered sliding to the floor in exhaustion after his attackers had left. He must have passed out then.
It looked about eight in the evening. The setting summer sun painted its golden colour onto the interior of the deserted warehouse. He must have been lying there for two, perhaps three hours.
Now that the immediate threat of the shichinintai had moved into the background, the hanyou couldn't decide if his brother's impending wrath would be any less perilous than the beating he'd received from Bankotsu and posse.
He sought to pinpoint the exact amount of damage his body had suffered. With how much his head hurt, he guessed he'd hit it a couple of times. His brain hammered against the confines of his skull in fierce protest of its agony. He tried moving his legs and was relieved to see that they hadn't been damaged to any great extent. But the hanyou soon found that not all of his body had been granted the same good fortune. When he braced his hands on the floor to push himself to his feet, he found his left arm unwilling to comply with this intent. He ran his eyes over the limb in question and traced the source of its defect to the gaping hole in his shoulder, made obvious by huge rips in his shirt. He brought his only working hand to his mid-torso. The area was blemished with an unhealthy shade of faded blue-black.
Inuyasha exhaled, relieved. At least his ribs had healed quickly. The injury looked worse than it felt. He'd give the bruising the next day or two to completely vanish.
The hanyou huffed and brought his previously outstretched legs in and pushed off the floor with his good arm to put his body to a stand. He felt his head swim and his vision blur and fade for a second and Inuyasha braced a hand against the wall to get his bearings while his body adjusted to the new position. After a few controlled deep breaths, the half-blood spoke.
"Er…Hey."
The numerous injuries that marred his person made it impossible for the boy to pull a confident act off convincingly, despite his best efforts to appear unfazed by his brother's stormy aura. His left arm hung limply at his side as he stood, hunched before the older demon. Full awareness of his physical state was only reached while in his standing position. Air did indeed get thinner the higher up you got. It had suddenly become a lot harder to breathe. He found himself wobbling on his feet when he stepped away from the sturdiness of the wall to confront Sesshoumaru face to face.
His brother stopped an arm's length before him, straight-faced and silent. Inuyasha knew better than to lower his guard. If there was one thing he'd come to learn in all the time he'd spent under his half-brother's care, it was that the calmer and stiller Sesshoumaru got, the less likely it was that the object of his wrath would emerge from an encounter unscathed. And currently, that… Inuyasha cringed… meant him.
However, the dreaded verbal assault never came.
After an indefinitely long amount of time, in which nothing had occurred but silence and uncomfortable shuffling, Inuyasha started to get impatient. If his brother was going to get all dark and quiet around him he might as well get everything over with. What was the point of just…standing there? Sesshoumaru had yet to meet his eyes. Silken bangs, almost identical in shade to Inuyasha's, shielded his eyes from view. The man appeared to be in deep thought.
"O-oi. Sesshoumaru…"
The urge to extend a finger for a prod was strong. But the hanyou resisted. He nearly jumped back in surprise when his brother's eyes snapped up to meet his face of their own accord. They scanned over Inuyasha's body, assessing the damage it had suffered. They took in the numerous bruises, the caked up blood and the tattered fabric before finally coming to rest on the unsightly rod-made opening in the half-blood's left shoulder.
The silence forced Inuyasha's thinking to go into overdrive. Something suddenly struck him as odd.
He'd distinctly remembered sensing his brother close by during the fight with Bankotsu. Yet the man hadn't stepped in to help. And now here he was standing before him a few hours later, quiet and pensive, doing naught but staring him down while refusing to utter so much as a word of explanation. Inuyasha was suddenly irritated. So much for safety in numbers. Sometimes he wondered if Sesshoumaru even valued his life.
The man ended his appraisal of him with a soft exhalation. He looked somewhat… satisfied. Inuyasha's eyes narrowed. Yes. Sometimes he wondered…
"Where the hell-"
Inuyasha's irritated inquiry was cut short when he felt a sharp blow to his unbruised cheek that sent him careening back into the wall behind him. Satisfied that he would not kill his brother by doing so, Sesshoumaru had delivered a sound punch to his face.
The hanyou cradled his abused cheek in shock as his legs gave out from under him and he slid into a sitting position not unlike the one he'd woken up in. That had been totally unexpected. He hadn't even seen his brother move.
"The fuck was that for?"
Inuyasha heard the soft crack of Sesshoumaru's knuckles when the dog demon flexed his fingers and clenched his right fist; the one that had connected with the half-blood's face. It obviously had been a long time since his brother had used the appendage in any act of violence. His voice resonated in the emptiness of the warehouse.
"That, little brother, is what I think of your damnable impulsiveness. That you have managed land yourself in a pathetic state like this is nothing short of degrading. Father did not go through everything he did to have a son that cannot even hold his own with dignity."
Sesshoumaru's glare could have frozen the fires of hell itself. The slight addition in volume to his usual speaking voice was only a subtle sign belying the true extent of his anger toward Inuyasha. It was strange how the man could elicit such intense ferocity through his eyes alone while the rest of his face remained unmoved. Inuyasha couldn't help the small cringe that had formed. Even in spite of his guilt, he had to fight back the urge to defend himself. It might have been childish, but somewhere in the background, the need to prove himself to his only living family had always existed.
However, in a rare show of discretion, the hanyou chose to keep his mouth shut while his brother continued his diatribe.
"You were out of line, hanyou. You have neither the authority nor the aptitude to negotiate with criminals. Thanks to your actions Higurashi Kagome and an indefinite number of other innocents have now been made unknowing targets of terrorists."
Sesshoumaru sighed deeply. Indeed he did realise that his brother's actions had helped to push the investigation forward. But he failed to see how the hanyou always managed to turn a small problem into a huge one. If he had handled the shichinintai with less hostility and more tact, perhaps they wouldn't have had to resort to such violence. He could have very well lost his life in the process. This was just one more unneeded setback.
The tall demon brought a hand to the bridge of his nose.
What was it about brash decisions? How hard could it be to just think the consequences through before simply jumping straight in to potential danger? Was it some sort of trait that ran in the family? They'd all lost their lives that way. His mother to protect his father, his father to protect his cause and his human step-mother to protect Inuyasha. Seeing all that had practically shaped Sesshoumaru in to the person he was today. Had it not been for his cautious nature, he might have lost his life ten times over during the war.
But, unlike him, Inuyasha had not had the luxury of learning from the mistakes of his elders. Call it adolescent rashness, but already, Sesshoumaru could see parallels between his brother and the rest of his deceased family.
"If you want to get yourself killed so badly, do so at a time when I will not be dragged into the situation. Our purpose here is to find a killer and prevent further nuisances to our government from surfacing."
Sesshoumaru knelt before his brother and yanked the boy forward by what was left of his collar.
"It is not on our agenda to add to the sizeable list of problems Sengoku already has."
Inuyasha growled and slapped his brother's grip free of his shirt. The frowning half-blood turned away from Sesshoumaru, not wanting to meet the older demon's eyes.
Despite the show of defiance, the fact that Inuyasha had chosen to stay quiet and take his lecture without argument, was proof enough to Sesshoumaru that his brother did acknowledge his own guilt. This somewhat abated his anger and the taller demon rose from his crouched position to stand once more over his half-brother.
"Should a repeat of this incident happen ever again, I will not hesitate to drop you from this assignment. In which case, you may or may not be punished for your poor choices."
Sesshoumaru's feet made soft crunches when he turned on his heel and started walking away. His voice seemed to have returned to its normal volume when he spoke next.
"But I suppose your actions were not entirely unproductive and because of that I am inclined to let you off just this once more."
Inuyasha's head snapped up in curiosity. Had he heard right?
"What are you tal-"
"How long do you plan on sitting idly, Inuyasha? You are wasting time."
Inuyasha gaped. Really. The spontaneity of his brother's mood swings could be rather scary.
But the half-blood knew that in his own unique way, Sesshoumaru had been showing some degree of concern for him just then. His brother resented the fact that he had failed to report back to him before choosing to confront the shichinintai by himself, thereby jeopardising his own safety. For as long as he'd known the man, Sesshoumaru had never been one for showing any sort of conventional brotherly affection toward him. The upbringing that came with being the only full-blooded son of an almost legendary taiyoukai had seen to that.
It was a trait for which Inuyasha was grateful. God knew the hanyou would have driven a person any less imperturbable than Sesshoumaru Taisho off the proverbial edge of sanity.
Inuyasha sighed. Even still, did the son of a bitch really have to hit him quite so hard? Inuyasha swore his face must have swollen three sizes already. And more importantly, why had his brother had run off to god knows where while he was getting horribly trashed by the Kotsu's? As it were, Inuyasha decided to leave his questions for later when Sesshoumaru was perhaps more settled. Angry as he was, Inuyasha knew that his brother would still want a full account of what he'd learnt from his little escapade. The man could be hypocritical like that.
"Are you incapable of understanding what I just said?"
The mocking tone of voice achieved its desired reaction, which was to have one annoyed hanyou up on his feet and following after him. Inuyasha growled in irritation and struggled to catch up with Sesshoumaru's quick pace. Struggled being the choice word.
"Oi! A little mercy for the half-dead sibling if you please?"
He received no answer. In fact, his brother only seemed to quicken his stride. He was doing it to spite him. Inuyasha knew he was. He yelled after him again.
"Sesshoumaru!"
The dog demon's pace never slowed even as he gave his answer.
"While you were here lazing around I managed to happen upon some rather alarming information."
Anger was what motivated Inuyasha to quicken his pace despite the pain it caused him to do so.
"What! You left me for scrap and ran off to do your own research?"
Sesshoumaru never even paused.
"If you want to put it that way, then yes."
The dog demon slid the already-opened metal doors wider just a fraction as he strode through. Sesshoumaru didn't want his brother straining himself too much trying to fit his decrepit body through the narrow opening he had previously entered by. The action went unnoticed by his seething sibling, who had stopped abruptly, voice lowered in threat.
"Explain."
Sesshoumaru frowned in impatience and glared over his shoulder.
"I followed them and over heard a conversation between Satsugawa and their employer."
Some people just never knew when to be grateful. He could have very well left Inuyasha to limp his own way back to the school, but instead he'd chosen to return and retrieve him. The decision had been a mixture of brotherly obligation and a stark concern that the hanyou might get himself into more trouble should he be left on his own for any larger amount of time. God knew the boy was a walking magnet for danger.
Even now Inuyasha seemed dissatisfied with his answer.
"And?"
The question was uttered as his brother limped up his side. Sesshoumaru turned away and glanced up the street.
"Not here, idiot."
He tossed Inuyasha his fallen cap, which he'd found along the way to the warehouse earlier. The hanyou had chucked it in one of the alleys he had passed with Jakotsu to aid his brother in finding and locating him. Inuyasha raised his eyes in question as his brother gestured to an approaching vehicle. The boy immediately propped the headwear over his ears to conceal them from view.
"Who's that?"
Inuyasha squinted as the vehicle drew nearer. Its glaring headlights prevented him from seeing anything beyond them.
"Our ride. We're heading to Toutousai's research facility to get you fixed up. Can't have you bleeding all over your school and drawing unwanted attention."
The hanyou rolled his eyes.
"Why didn't you drive?"
"Peak hour traffic. I left my car at the facility."
"Oh."
Miroku pulled up along side the ashen-haired pair in his borrowed Toyota Starlet. The vehicle had seen better days. He supposed it had once been white, though with how old and dirty it was currently, he doubted it would ever regain its original shade. The monk sighed dejectedly.
When Sesshoumaru had rung in to Toutousai's workplace and requested a ride to take him and Inuyasha there, Miroku had jumped at the chance to get as far away from the eccentric inventor as was physically allowed. The hands that the old inventor had tossed his car keys into had been eager and impatient, feelings that had intensified ten-fold when the man had told Miroku to make his way down to the private reserved lot of the facility to look for the vehicle in question. The reaction was of course, with good reason. After all, a highly-skilled, federally employed senior inventor receiving an annual income of hundreds of thousands was supposed to have a killer ride. It was an unspoken, de facto law. One didn't park in the private lot with its heightened security if that wasn't the case.
But, as things went, Buddha must have been punishing him yet again. All those years of napping during prayer sessions had returned to kick him square in the behind. He'd forgotten how many times he'd hurried round the parking lot trying, hoping that the scrap of metal he'd seen before him hadn't been the one he was to be driving and that Toutousai had been talking about the other white vehicle with license number T0T0541. The bloody thing had barely even had enough fuel to make it through the short journey to the river front. Miroku had had to fish out his own spare change to fill the tank up with just enough petroleum to make the journey back to their destination.
Toutousai sure was one cheap bag of bones.
Miroku's mental whining was cut short the minute he caught sight of his half-breed friend when the boy slid into the backseat of the car.
"Holy crap, Inuyasha! I haven't seen you this beat up since you fell off that cliff when you were nine."
For once, Inuyasha couldn't be bothered with a snappish reply. Instead, he resolved for a lazy come back of sorts.
"Nice ride, Houshi."
Sesshoumaru took the front seat and was in the process of buckling himself in when he glanced over to the driver's side in mild curiosity.
"My brother fell off a cliff?"
At this Inuyasha snapped back, irritated.
"Drop it."
But Miroku chose to ignore him. Instead he turned to the older demon.
"Yep. Little Inuyasha tried to hunt down a mountain boar. But the mountain boar decided he didn't like being hunted."
Miroku had always been one for fairness. He thought that as Inuyasha's brother, Sesshoumaru had a right to know…
"I said drop it, monk."
Yep, if life was going to make him miserable, he might as well share the favour with the very person who had put him in his current state. Inuyasha wouldn't be able to harm him in his condition. Plus, he was driving. And unless the hanyou wanted to meet his death earlier than planned on the treacherous roads of Sengoku City, he would be at Miroku's mercy.
"Yep…"
The monk nodded to himself and pulled onto the main road.
"…I'd never seen someone run so fast in my life."
Sesshoumaru now seemed more than slightly interested. Oh yes. Payback was sweet.
The next few days were tough on the hanyou. He'd spent the whole of Sunday avoiding any sort of human contact within the school like a plague. Jaken had delivered his own watered down version of Sesshoumaru's lecture to which Inuyasha had only listened half-heartedly.
After getting cleaned and bandaged up at the infirmary in Toutousai's research facility, the hanyou had changed into a set of clean, borrowed clothes, courtesy of an unwilling Miroku, and been delivered at the doors of Sengoku National in the early hours of the morning. In a rare show of leniency, Sesshoumaru had allowed the half-blood a three-hour nap in the research centre to give his body a chance to patch itself up some. Since he would be spending most of his time in his human body when he returned his duties at the institute, Inuyasha needed every chance he could to recover while in his hanyou form.
By the time he'd arrived at the institution, most of the damage to his ribs had been just about mended. His face still sported a number of faded scars and bruises but nothing that another day or two wouldn't fix up. The only potential hazard to his person that still remained was the wound in his left shoulder. The doctor had seen to it by stitching and bandaging the… hole, as it were, up. It was hardly noticeable through the fabric of his shirt. Still, Inuyasha knew he needed to recover fast. Such an injury would have likely posed a huge problem should he have had an encounter with either Bankotsu's group or the president's assassin in the near future.
Which was precisely the reason he'd spent the remainder of the weekend watching over the Higurashi children, hidden away at a comfortable distance, in his hanyou form. The hastened rate with which his demon blood allowed him to heal was much needed.
Come Monday, and lessons had resumed as per normal in SNIE. Inuyasha had gone to each of his, doing well to act as normal as was possible. Being in his human form only served to make the task more difficult. It was like he had suddenly become hyper-sensitised to the pain he was in. However, Inuyasha couldn't deny that he had recovered immensely. He now hunched only a little, but it was nothing that couldn't be passed off as sloppy teenage posture. He no longer hobbled, merely walked with a slight limp. Any other person would have thought that he'd merely sprained an ankle or done something similar to that.
But what lay at the forefront of his awareness over the next couple of days hadn't been his rate of recovery. Instead, the hanyou found him self overly conscious of what he had learnt from Sesshoumaru after they'd arrived at Toutousai's laboratory.
His brother stated that the shichinintai had been hired by an unknown contractor to do some sort of a job at Sengoku National. But what, exactly, he'd been unsure of. According to the information Inuyasha had dug up from Principal Kinou's student directory, Satsugawa Bankotsu and his brother had only transferred to the school recently. Given the high cost of fees for students lodging in the institute itself, the benefactor must have been of some calibre of wealth, and with the reputation that shichinintai had gained, that financier must also have been intent on getting whatever he wanted here done.
The only important question that remained was whether the seven man group's assignment would have any impact on their own investigation. Of course, on one hand the shichinintai might have absolutely nothing to do with the president's murder, in which case, Inuyasha would have nothing to worry about. But something just didn't sit well in his mind. And thereby came in the second, more troubling scenario. Could it have been coincidence, assuming Higurashi Kagome's powers had surfaced around six months ago when she scheduled all those impromptu doctor's appointments, that Bankotsu had enrolled into SNIE at around the same time?
Of course logically, Inuyasha would have preferred the former of the two possibilities. In any case, there was also the fact that the boy was now the primary suspect in Inuyasha's book, even though he was taller than the physical profile given in the case report. But then, that could easily be understandable. One couldn't trust a couple of fuzzy surveillance videos.
'Hn. With my luck the bastard probably has everything to do with this case.'
Inuyasha grumbled under his breath and rested his face in his good hand. He eyed the dark-haired girl two levels his junior in her English lesson one floor down on the opposite side of the building. Her room was facing his and his position beside the window made it easy for him to see her, but not the other way around. Like him, Higurashi Kagome wasn't paying attention. From his higher disposition, he could see the novel she was holding beneath the desk. Inuyasha clicked his tongue softly.
He supposed from a frontal perspective in the classroom, the girl looked every bit the epitome of diligence. She occasionally took notes, glanced up at the board at regular intervals in a convincing show of conscientiousness, when really she was anything but. He didn't see the need for all that garb. But of course she was the daughter of an ex-president and as such must have been held to higher standards than other teenagers. Even though, as a small smile graced Kagome's face when she read something of amusement, Inuyasha could tell that she wasn't any different from your common, modern day youth.
Well… excluding the fact that her life was now in jeopardy from possibly more than one source.
He turned away just as the girl stiffened and glanced up to look in his general direction. It was as if she'd sensed his eyes on her. Inuyasha lowered his head onto his outstretched arm and sighed, drawing lazy shapes on the surface of his desk with the index finger of his other hand. The position effectively hid him from view.
For a human girl, Higurashi Kagome had unusually keen senses. It must have been a trait that came with her powers.
After some time, the girl passed off the feeling as mere paranoia and turned to her book once more when she saw nothing of suspicion. Inuyasha straightened and went back to his initial pose with his chin in his hand once again. His previous thoughts resumed.
Sesshoumaru and Miroku had agreed that as long as the shichinintai remained unprovoked (and they had both cast pointed glances his way, at this), nothing bad would befall the ex-president's daughter or any of Bankotsu's other clients for that matter.
But Inuyasha knew that if he were to be able to find any semblance of a clue as to what the group's purpose in Sengoku National was, then he'd need to do some more investigating. However, that too had been made highly complicated, what with how the group's leader had threatened the life of the very girl he was supposed to be protecting.
Having to deal with Satsugawa Bankotsu being in such close proximity to himself, as well as Higurashi Kagome, was daunting. Inuyasha found himself being overly cautious in his actions of late. He hadn't let the girl out of his sight since he'd returned from his encounter with the seven man team. Of course, given the threat that they posed, the wise choice would have been to lay low and keep out of the limelight. But laying low would get him nothing where the investigation was concerned and thus, was out of the question. It was already mid-week and still, no further developments had occurred.
In such a situation, the hanyou found himself doing something he'd never once considered him self capable of doing.
He'd started to bide his time. Watching and waiting.
Elsewhere, Miroku's tests on a certain little black sphere continued.
The pill didn't have the characteristics of any medicative substance he'd seen before. It seemed to have neither the stimulative nor anaesthetic properties that most drugs contained. And it lacked the chemicals commonly associated with the damaging of brain cells found in other illegal substances. In fact, it seemed to be rather… harmless.
What had struck Miroku as most startling was the fact that it contained materials strangely close in chemical structure to... bone? Miroku had frowned at that. But the monk couldn't determine if the substance had been human or not. After that little finding, he'd worked for two days straight but had achieved little advancement in his research.
He'd started to feel the first inklings of frustration start to settle around him, when unexpectedly, he'd received an epiphany.
The test had been made entirely on a whim. It had been more of a joke really, since he hadn't been getting very far with any other part of his examinations. If someone was grinding up bone to make drugs then maybe they were psychotic enough to add some blood into the mix, right? Like one of those witch's concoctions little kids used to read about in story books.
Eye of toad, tongue of dog, bone of newt, blood of frog… Stuff like that, perhaps.
Not that Miroku would have ever read something that silly.
In any case, the monk had playfully extracted a small fragment of the pill to be tested for the presence of blood. Who would have thought that right then and there, he'd already received his second break. Sesshoumaru had frowned when he'd reported his findings to him. After all, Miroku had ascertained that the blood had belonged to someone human. Or, at the very least, a youkai that was able to take human form.
But this was something that neither he nor the monk could afford to dwell on.
By the fourth day, Miroku had already prepared a DNA profile with the help of one of the medical staff at the research centre. The favour had come easily. It went without saying that Miroku, being Miroku, would have already charmed the youngest and prettiest out of all the workers there, even in the small amount of time he'd had to socialise.
So now all that was left to do, was match the profile to its owner to solve the mystery of Bankotsu's pill. And as Inuyasha had told him over the phone the other day...
"Happy hunting, monk. Sengoku's population is what? A hundred and twenty million? That means about fifteen people are murdered everyday. Seventy-five percent of the bodies of which are never found."
That was of course, assuming that the blood-donor, so to speak, was indeed dead. Miroku sighed. It was just one problem after another, wasn't it? It seemed like he would never get through this.
Then there was also the possibility that one of the shichinintai members had leant some of their blood to make the pill. But for what reason? He'd been back to the old warehouse to collect some samples. He'd managed to retrieve some of Jakotsu's, being the only one that had shed any large amount of blood, but his DNA hadn't matched the profile at all. It was just his luck that Inuyasha, being the idiot he was, had made the shichinintai overly cautious of the government with his actions. He had severed any hopes of ever getting a sample from the rest of the seven members.
So, with this new stumbling block in place, the monk had turned to another means of drug identification. To find out how it affected its user. And being the self-sacrificing individual that he was, Miroku had used himself as a guinea pig. He'd infused a little of the drug into a sample of his own blood to see how it would react. He was also currently in the process of contacting Sesshoumaru Taisho for a request.
After several beeps on the com-link, the man in question answered.
"Yes."
Miroku eyes crinkled sheepishly.
"Taisho, do you think it's possible to give me Higurashi Kagome's blood?"
Hm. That hadn't come out as well as he'd planned…