InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity ❯ Assimilation ( Chapter 9 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

"Sesshoumaru is pretty impressed with your progress."

InuYasha snorted indelicately, ears flicking in irritation as he gnawed on the pencil that he'd used to fill out the exam form.  "This is stupid," he grumbled, snatching the pencil from between his teeth and snapping it in half.  "Really, really stupid."

Glancing up from the answer key that he was using to grade the test, Shippou blinked but seemed otherwise unimpressed with InuYasha's characteristic lack of patience.  "We told you, InuYasha, in this day and age, you have to have a real profession, right?  And since you aren't really the corporate type, we figured you'd rather do something a little less . . . formal."

"Keh!" he snorted but sat back in his chair to wait.  He wasn't entirely dense.  He understood that much of it, and while he had to admit that the thought hadn't really crossed his mind, he'd have to grudgingly agree.  Back in his time, he'd probably be spending his days chasing down nuisance youkai and dealing with them.  Unfortunately, it had also been explained to him that there wasn't really that kind of trouble now since most of the lesser-youkai had been killed off through the years, and ultimately, that just figured.  He'd sorely love to have a good, old fashioned fight at the moment, but the way things were going, it didn't look like he'd get much action on that front, either.

Instead, however, they'd apparently spent the last five hundred years trying to come up with the best and fastest way to annoy the hell out of him, and they'd done a hella good job of it, really.  In some sort of strange and macabre twist of fate, they'd all decided that he'd do well to get his teaching certification—if he could pass the exams, that was.

As if he hadn't hated it enough whenever Kagome started freaking out about those tests of hers, now he had to deal with the same damn thing?  Figured, didn't it, and he had to admit that he'd been just as annoyed back then.  How often was it that he'd found her sitting by the fire, completely oblivious to everything around her including him when she had her nose stuck in those strange books she'd brought with her to 'study', as she'd called it.  'Keh!  Whatever!' he snorted to himself as a handful of memories flitted through his head.  On those nights he'd ended up sitting beside her, peering at her lessons over her shoulder since he had nothing better to do.  He had to admit that he didn't understand all of the things he'd read, but he'd picked up on a lot of it, especially the stuff that she'd called 'math'.  It was either that or be completely ignored, anyway . . .

"Where'd you learn all this stuff?" Shippou asked, dropping the pen he was using to grade the exam on the paper as he frowned at InuYasha.

InuYasha shrugged offhandedly, folding his arms together up under the sleeves of the red fleece sweater that he'd chosen for the day since it most resembled his fire rat haori.  "It's not like I'm stupid or anything," he muttered, unable to staunch the flow of blood that filtered into his cheeks.

Shippou shook his head and sat back with a grin.  "I never thought you were, you know," he pointed out.  "I just didn't know you'd ever learned any of this stuff . . ."

"If she could learn it, so could I," InuYasha grumbled under his breath.

"Well, you did steal her books a few times, didn't you?" Shippou remarked slowly, thoughtfully.  "Sesshoumaru was afraid you'd have to spend a few months or even years studying for the tests.  You'll do fine on the advanced math test, that's for sure.  In fact, it seems like the only subjects you might need to work on are modern history and language, and even then, it shouldn't take too long."

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Shippou just what he thought of Sesshoumaru's opinion on anything, but the jarring chime of the kitsune's cell phone interrupted before he could, and InuYasha couldn't help the way his ears flattened as he jerked back involuntarily.

Shippou talked on the device for a few minutes then finally hung up.  "That was Rin.  She said to remind you that you swore you'd repair the part of the yard that you wrecked last night."

Wrinkling his nose, InuYasha snorted indelicately and gave a half-hearted attempt to hide his satisfaction at the carnage he'd wrought.  Having felt exceptionally restless, especially when Sesshoumaru and Shippou had kept thwarting him whenever he tried to sneak off the property, InuYasha had felt no qualms in showing off his prowess with Tetsusaiga much to the delight of Sesshoumaru's son, Toga.  The youngster had damn near wet himself as he'd hopped around in complete excitement, clapping his hands and asking InuYasha repeatedly to show him various attacks.

All right, so he really hadn't tried to wreck the yard, no, but then, he couldn't really say that he felt badly for it, either.  After all, the pinched expression on Sesshoumaru's face was well worth the efforts, as far as InuYasha was concerned.  InuYasha wasn't sure if Sesshoumaru was more irked that he'd torn up the yard or that his young son was so obviously impressed with InuYasha's skills.  Either way, InuYasha figured that he'd succeeded in irritating his half-brother just as much as Sesshoumaru had been irking him since he arrived on this side of the well, and that had to be worth something.

"Keh!  I ain't no gardener," InuYasha grumbled, ear twitching as he shot Shippou a darkened scowl.

"Yeah, well, I happen to know that you'd rather chew your arm off than to go back on your word, and you gave your word that you'd fix it," Shippou pointed out.

"I still don't see how you ended up with her," InuYasha mumbled.  Bad enough to try to wrap his brain around the idea that Shippou wasn't the little pesky kit that he'd known not so long ago.  Whenever he tried to reconcile the idea that Shippou was not only grown up but was also mated with kits of his own, no less, it kind of hurt his head to dwell on it . . .

Shippou grinned unrepentantly.  "Are you kidding?  I couldn't shake free from her if I tried," he gloated.  "Followed me around for years like a little lost puppy—no offense."

InuYasha considered that and nodded slowly.  "So in other words, she said no, probably multiple times, but you kept following her around for years until she felt sorry for you and said she'd be your mate as long as you stopped trying to make her feel bad," he concluded with a sage nod.

Shippou's grin widened.  "Yeah, that sounds about right."

InuYasha grunted, but stood up.  It looked like Shippou was finished pestering him, at least for the moment, so he might as well take care of the yard that he'd demolished . . .

Shippou stood up, too and walked around the table, pausing long enough to clap InuYasha on the shoulder.   "I've got to get out of here," he remarked as he led the way out of the room, jangling the keys to what he called a 'motorcycle'—apparently an early present from his mate.  "It's our anniversary, and I promised Rin I'd take her to her favorite restaurant."

InuYasha didn't respond to that, mostly because he didn't understand all of it.  He got the gist, though, and that was good enough, as far as he was concerned.  Stomping down the corridor that led to the doors and the yard beyond, InuYasha sighed when he stepped outside and surveyed the grass.  The once smooth area looked like some really big worm or something had gone on a rampage, leaving behind huge ruts and hollows, all of which he was expected to fix.  The shattered fence that ran along the yard, however, wasn't exactly something that he could easily remedy, though, and he snorted.  Why the hell Sesshoumaru had put up something as stupid as a wooden fence was beyond him.  There was no way in hell that'd ever keep out any youkai who had a mind to get into the yard . . .

The sound of giggling women drew his attention, and InuYasha grimaced.  Kagura had said something about having some ladies over for tea—something to do with some charitable foundation that she worked with—and he made a face.  The last thing he wanted or needed to do was to get sucked into some weird gathering of strange women, after all, and with that in mind, he hopped into the boughs of a nearby tree and launched himself toward the next one.

Making his way around the house, he dropped to the ground on the edge of the front lawn and sniffed the air.  Rain was coming, he could smell it, but he grimaced again when the other scents came to him: of dirty streets and tired sidewalks, of way too many people condensed in way too tiny of an area . . . As much as he hated to admit that he missed his time, he had to concede that he desperately longed for the clean air, the scent of dirt and grass and trees . . .

Frowning as he strode through the neatly manicured grass toward the front doors of the huge estate, InuYasha blinked and narrowed his gaze at the strange 'motorcycle' parked just off the driveway nearby.  He'd assumed that Shippou had meant that it was akin to the bicycles that Kagome had toted through the well with her, but it wasn't.  It was much larger than those weak looking skeletons.

Shippou straddled the contraption and leaned down to fiddle around with something—InuYasha couldn't see what.  Then he grabbed a helmet that was sitting behind him on the long seat and was in the process of putting it on when Toga ran out of the mansion and scooted over to Shippou.  Nodding at whatever the youngster said, the kitsune dismounted the motorcycle in much the same way that one might dismount a horse and followed the pup back inside.

Curiosity drew InuYasha closer.  He'd seen a number of machines like this one since his arrival on this side of the well.  He'd seen a few when he'd gone to the school with Kagome a few times, but those, he remembered, were called 'scooters'—at least, that's what she'd said.  Those had made a most obnoxious buzzing sound when they were moving, kind of like a swarm of bees but louder.  This one looked different, maybe like a grown-up version of one of those scooters.  His scowl turned thoughtful as he slowly paced around the motorcycle.  Did those things change over time?  It seemed like kind of a stupid question, but still, what did he really know about anything on this side of the well?  Kagome's bike had never evolved, but then, he had to admit that he'd broken them both fairly quickly, too.  Besides, he'd seen a lot of things in his lifetime, right?  So who was to say that a bike couldn't one day evolve into something more like this . . .?

This one had a lot of shiny parts on it, didn't it?

Okay, so he was curious, he had to admit . . .


"And we still know not why the miko cannot remember her time spent with InuYasha?"

Shippou leaned against the wall in the opulent office of the Inu no Taisho and Japanese tai-youkai and slowly shook his head.  "It's the damndest thing, Sesshoumaru," he remarked at length.  "I've looked into everything, but it's all just . . . strange."

The roundabout answer earned him a thorough scowl from the regal youkai.  "Do not attempt to impress me with your riddles, Shippou," he admonished.  "I am not one of your students, hanging off your every word."

The kitsune laughed and shrugged offhandedly but wasn't intimidated by Sesshoumaru's acerbic tone.  "Yeah, but don't you have two sets of memories, too?"

Sesshoumaru stared at Shippou for several moments, his expression inscrutable.  "I cannot say that I do," he confessed with a shake of his head.  "That is not possible."

"It might not be possible, but it's true," Shippou contended mildly enough.  "For example, Kagome's fifteenth birthday.   It was the day that she was supposed to have fallen through the well for the first time, right?  Well, I remember that day well enough, but there are two versions, you see?  In the one—the stronger one that seems to be the one that I am supposed to remember, it was my first day teaching at her school, and she was there without a doubt.  In the other one, she isn't, though I suspect I'm not supposed to remember that one at all."

Pushing himself away from the prodigious desk, Sesshoumaru stood and strode over to the window that overlooked the back yard.  "That isn't possible," he remarked at length.

Shippou nodded, stuffing his hands into his pockets.  "That might be, but . . ."

"But?" Sesshoumaru prompted when Shippou trailed off.

"But," Shippou went on slowly, "what if everyone who had interactions with Kagome during those two years possesses dual memories like that?  It would stand to reason that you don't; you took great care not to come into contact with her at all so there'd be no reason for you to have both.  As for everyone else?  You've said yourself that humans are easily fooled, right?"

Sesshoumaru considered that for several moments then nodded once.  "So it would be a simple enough endeavor to convince those humans of the existence of an alternate reality—one in which the miko never encountered InuYasha or the Shikon no Tama."

Nodding, Shippou stared at Sesshoumaru, searching his features for any sign as to what he might be thinking.  "Yes, though that doesn't really explain much about why my memories are different, too."

That was true enough.  Since he was kitsune and therefore a born illusionist, it wasn't really surprising that whatever trickery had been used to create these other memories simply didn't work on him—at least, not in the way that it was obviously meant to.

"Strange, though," Sesshoumaru mused as he stared out the window.  "The memories of the miko's presence five hundred years ago have not been altered."

Letting out a deep breath as he rubbed his forehead in a defeated sort of way, Shippou shook his head.  "The only person whose current memories aren't altered are InuYasha's."

Sesshoumaru nodded but didn't turn his attention away from the window.  "Is that really so hard to understand?" he challenged mildly.

"Isn't it?"

Sesshoumaru's answer was long in coming.  "InuYasha's memories were not altered because he does not possess them.  His existence was five hundred years ago."

"So when he came through the well, he effectively skipped the years that were affected by the altered memories, you mean," Shippou concluded.  "I see.  That makes sense."

Sesshoumaru nodded again as he pivoted on his heel, pinning Shippou with a blank stare.  "It matters not if we know the how of it.  What we need to know is why.  What does anyone stand to gain from the miko's amnesia, and more importantly, who would benefit most?"


Crouc hing on the wide seat of the motorcycle, InuYasha held on with one hand as he leaned way over to get a good look at the strange pipes and tubes that seemed to make up the bulk of the bizarre contraption.  Flattening his ears when a powerful sneeze rattled out of him, he sniffled loudly, pushing himself upright as he made a face and grunted.

All right, so he should've known better than to sniff those stupid pipes on the back of the motorcycle, but he was trying to figure this thing out, and he'd learned long ago that one of the best ways to gather information was by utilizing his senses . . .

He couldn't figure it out.

Kagome had always used her feet to kick start the bicycles that she'd dragged through the well—at least, she had when she'd owned a bike.  InuYasha didn't have the best track record with the things, though.

This one made no sense to him.  It wouldn't budge when he tried to push it; it was much heavier than the others he'd come into contact with.  Sure, he could lift it if he had a mind to, but that seemed pointless enough.  Besides, he'd seen these things move before, and pretty quickly, at that.

Grasping one of the handles, InuYasha fiddled around with the tiny bit of metal that Shippou had called a 'key' before.  Those things were weird, too, as far as he was concerned.  They seemed to come in a variety of shapes and sizes, all designed to open different locks, or so he had been told.  Kagura had a bunch of them on a silver loop that he'd seen the other day.  It was kind of confusing, though, in his opinion.  How the hell did someone keep those things straight when there were so many of them, anyway?

He knew what it was, sure, but . . . but he wasn't entirely certain how it worked.  Tinkering with the key, he blinked when he managed to pull it out of the misshapen slot easily enough.  "Keh!" he snorted as he held up the tiny thing and looked it over for a moment before jamming the key back into place.  What was the point of that when it didn't actually do anything?

Scowling at the end of the key, he grunted.  It had to do something, right?  Jiggling it from side to side didn't do anything.  Pulling it out and shoving it back in a few times didn't do anything, either.  In fact, he was about to give up entirely when he jiggled the key once more, only this time, he managed to turn it a little further to the right than he had before, and when he did, the engine coughed, sputtered, and roared to life.

Flattening his ears against the deafening racket, InuYasha grimaced and nearly toppled off the leather seat, but he caught the handlebars before he fell, turning his hands forward as he struggled to right himself . . .

And that was apparently not the right thing to do.

With a loud screech of the tires on the driveway, the motorcycle shot forward, straight toward the gates of the Inutaisho estate.

"Fuck!" InuYasha bellowed through gritted teeth as he held on for dear life.  He wasn't sure how he'd managed to get it moving, which meant that he had absolutely no clue as to how to get it to stop, either.  Closing in fast on those gates, he heard Shippou in the distance though he couldn't make out his words as the fabricated wind whistled past his flattened ears, as he gritted his teeth and tried his best not to run smack into the gatehouse instead.

Somehow, he managed to avoid crashing into that, which was a far sight better than what he'd feared.  Leaning forward as the motorcycle sped across the street that ran in front of the mansion and onto the adjoining one, he lowered his eyes long enough to glance down, to try to figure out how the hell to stop the damned thing.

A few cars that were on the street blared their horns at him as they swerved out of the way.  The screech of tires echoed in his ears.  His heart hammered painfully against his ribcage as he fought to keep the motorcycle on the asphalt.  Tightening his grip on the handles of the bike, he crouched low.  His hands kept slipping forward despite the tightness of his hold, and for some reason, the stupid contraption seemed to be gaining speed instead of losing it.

Holding his breath as he leaned to the side as he approached a slight curve in the road, his relief that the bike actually stayed on the road was short-lived when he spotted the car parked at the end of the block.  He tried leaning to the side, away from the stationary vehicle with the seal of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police emblazoned on the door.  It was too late.

Squeezing his eyes closed moments before the motorcycle smacked right into the car, InuYasha tumbled off the beast with a grunt as he hit the ground flat on his back.  The stupid bike grunted and coughed but finally sputtered a few times before dying, and only after the noise had faded did InuYasha slowly sit up with a wince.  A few bruises, a good-sized bump on his head, but really no worse for wear, he got to his feet cautiously and glared at the misshapen hunk of metal.

"Serves you right," he muttered under his breath, cracking his knuckles as he glowered at the bent wheels and slightly twisted frame.  A low hissing sound was rising from it, like air slowly escaping.

Snorting indelicately, he turned on his heel and started to stomp away just as a small man clad in a light blue shirt, a dark blue and oddly bulky vest, and dark blue pants came running out of the establishment where the car was parked.  "Stop!" the man yelled after taking a moment to gawk at the motorcycle—and the car.  "You there!  Stop!"

InuYasha kept walking, wondering just how mad Shippou was going to be over the smashed-up vehicle.  'Too damn bad,' he thought with a mental snort.  'Fucking thing should have had a way to stop it.'

"I said to stop!" the little man yelled as he dashed around InuYasha and planted himself in the middle of the sidewalk.  Cheeks ruddy and puffing though InuYasha had a feeling that he was angry and not merely winded, the man wagged a white gloved finger under the hanyou's nose.  "What do you think you're doing?" he demanded.  "You wrecked into my car!"

InuYasha blinked and narrowed his gaze on the man.  "Keh!  I wouldn't have if that damn thing had stopped!" he complained, waving his hand in the general direction of the wrecked motorcycle still hissing on the street.

The little man actually looked even angrier.  In fact, he looked like he was having definite trouble in containing his animosity.  "You . . . let me see your license."

InuYasha blinked again as he crossed his arms over his chest stubbornly.  "What the hell's that?" he demanded.

"Your license," the man stated one more time.  "You can't ride one of those without a license."

"Then you need to take it up with that," InuYasha growled, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder, "because it didn't ask me for one of your license-things before it took off with me!"

The man opened and closed his mouth a few times before holding up a finger to indicate that InuYasha should stay where he was as he dug a cell phone out of his pocket and quickly dialed a number.  "Hello, this is Officer Yamura.  A man just drove his motorcycle into my car . . . yes, into my car . . . Can you send back up, please . . .?  Yes, yes . . . thank you."  A moment later, he snapped it closed then stashed it away again, glowering at InuYasha the entire time.  Squaring his shoulders, he still looked irritated, but at least he looked like he'd managed to get a grip on his emotions.

"Are we done now?" InuYasha demanded, tapping his foot impatiently.

The man caught his arm as he tried to stomp away again.  "Not so fast," he said in a clipped, even tone.  "I think that you're going to have to come down to the station with me."

InuYasha stared at the man's hand on his arm for a long moment.  Sure, he was stronger than the measly human, not that it mattered, all things considered.  The last thing he needed was to draw attention to himself—at least, that's what the others had told him, which just figured.

Letting his arms drop to his sides, he resigned himself to wait, wondering how in the world everything had managed to go so awry.  After all, he'd just wanted to explore the damned contraption, not take it for a joy ride.  It wasn't his fault, no matter what the rest of them said, was it?  Of course, that hardly mattered at the moment, considering the policeman still looked irritated enough for the both of them.  It just figured, didn't it?

He heaved a sigh . . . and waited.