The Mask

By Coco

Chapter I-More then normal

November air: cool, crisp, and slightly tainted with the odor of crime and punishment. InuYasha sat with his feet propped high on the vehicle's dashboard, a mocha frappichino in his left hand, and his right hand behind his head resting against the headrest.

The static flowed from the cackling radio sitting atop the dashboard, every once in a while a fellow officer would come over it and state an emergency and their location. He took it easy though; being in the North part of town he had nothing to worry about. It was more likely to see a cow walking across the street then see any kind of suspicious activity.

His normally present partner, Miroku was in fact doing the tough job that night. He was patrolling down town Tokyo, around and in the alleys where suspicious crimes had been happening lately. A killing here, one there…nothing really noticed or thought of as something worth investigating. That is until bodies started showing up daily in the alleys

…Almost as if they were being dumped.

Thus was why he was there, instead of in the Starbucks parking lot with InuYasha.

InuYasha wondered if he should have volunteered to help out his partner. It only took him a second to flick that thought to the wind. Surely, if Miroku needed help he would have called on InuYasha's cell, or even over the radio.

Miroku had long since ditched his patrol car. And he damn well wished he hadn't. What the hell had he been on when he had done so? Walking through the dark alleys where two, or three chopped or some of other method of killed bodies had been found seemed like a fine idea at the time.

But it had dawned on him as soon as he entered the alleyway that he might need to escape.

Karma had never been on Miroku's side. And this proved it.

He had heard voices, a high male voice and a deep one, one had been whining about the weight of a dead person and the other had threatened to make sure he never could whine again if he didn't shut the hell up.

"Dammit." He growled under his breath.

His hand gripped the butt of his gun and he relaxed for a mini-second. At least he was armed.

His body was flush against the wall in the very back of the alleyway. It started out as a wide space between two brick buildings, and then slowly slanted until it became another wall at the end, four or five foul smelling trashcans were in a line against the back wall.

Miroku had maneuvered his body between the trashcans when he had heard the two voices in the front of the alley.

At a slight disadvantage of where he was, Miroku tried not to sigh or cuss for that matter. He was in deep now; he'd be lucky if he could get out of this alley without being discovered.

A word of profanity slipped from his mouth as that thought dawned on him. There went his vow of only cussing once a day. Not that he would see another sunrise with the way his luck was right now.

Damn karma.

The voices were drawing steadily closer. He could here the faint scuffling that sounded all too much like a body was being dragged.

"Drop her here." Came the deep voiced man. The scuffling stopped suddenly and then a plop was heard as the body was dropped.

"Don't you think sir that maybe the cops will find out about us, and this?" The high squeaky voice mumbled, as if afraid to speak his mind.

"Don't be a fool." The deep voice was getting harder to hear. Miroku assumed he was walking out of the alley. He let out a small sigh of relief and reached quietly for his walkie-talkie. If he could just radio someone-anyone to help-then he could get out of this mess alive and get another stripe added to his badge-so to speak.

Karma struck the next second.

And it wasn't the good kind of karma.

His walkie-talkie slipped from his grasp and rolled onto the pavement close to where the two men had been standing.

They didn't seem to notice till, it cackled.

"What was that?" The deep voice hissed.

"I'm not sure, sir."

Footsteps echoed loudly as one of the men walked to where it lay and picked up the small device.

A hiss that made the hair on Miroku's neck stand straight up was heard a second later.

"This belongs to a cop." The deep voiced man said a second later.

"Search the alley…I do believe we have company."

Miroku mentally moaned.

"Interesting." A sweet voice could have been heard form the top of one of the buildings above the alley. She watched like a cat as two men conversed. It was very obvious that someone was hiding in the shadows. But these two men were either blind or they were just…men.

Men, can't live with them, can't open jars without'em.

Her dark orbs surveyed the scene one last time. She wasn't all that fond of crime doers. One of the main reasons she was even up at this hour. She believed in justice and only that.

No, she was not a cop.

But she could've been one. She worked alone in the dead of night, to do exactly what she was about to do.

Stick a fork in Miroku he was done.

He drew his weapon and stood up slowly, the shadows hiding his face and his weapon but not the fact that he was there.

The man with the deep voice had long, curly, dark hair. His eyes shone as if red. An evil smile lurked on his pale lips.

The other man looked much like a toad. His skin was pale and with a green tint, if he had hair Miroku did not see it, and his face was kind of mashed up as if someone had stuck him in a waffle maker.

"Police." Miroku said managing to keep his voice at its usual loftiness.

"We've noticed." The deep voiced man stated, the smirk still paying at his lips.

The other man said nothing; he seemed too scared to form sentences.

"Drop your weapons, and put your hands where I can see them." Miroku ordered, cocking his gun to aim directly at deep voiced man's face.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, mister police officer." The man said calmly as if Miroku was waving a pixie stick in front of his face.

"And why not?"

The question needed no words spoken as an answer, for the next second the squeaky voiced man had left his too-still position and successfully knocked the gun out of Miroku's hands.

He twirled it on his thumb and grinned a toothy smile. "That's why." He tossed it carelessly to the man with the deep voice.

"Kill him Jaken." The deep voiced man said with a shrug as he caught the gun.

"With pleasure." Jaken's hands circled around Miroku's neck and squeezed hard. Miroku gasped and maneuvered his hands wildly managing to smack Jaken right across the cheek.

Jaken growled at him before kicking him hard in the stomach, keeping his hands firmly on the man's neck.

Miroku struggled against his grasp, feeling what was left of his air escaping him quickly. He began to feel limp. He was taking his final breath when suddenly Jaken's hands where no longer around his neck.

He blinked. Someone, wearing all black was standing in front of him. Jaken lay on the ground motionless.

"Why you little-" The deep voiced man started but never finished. The woman lunged at him, knocking him to the ground.

"I am not little." Her sweet voice filled the alleyway.

Miroku blinked again. Was he seeing things? Surely he was, he must already be on the other side…perhaps he had landed his sorry ass in hell.

The man fought back against the woman using the butt of the gun to savagely hit her on the head with, a thud could be heard as she fell.

Miroku was up a second later, cursing. "Don't ever hit a lady, you ass!" He punched the man square in the face, knocking him backwards and into the wall.

The woman didn't even seem fazed from the blood seeping from her forehead as she got back up and snatched Miroku's gun off the cement floor.

"Don't move." She hissed at the man.

Miroku moved back from the man pinned to the wall as she cocked the gun sideways keeping it square on his heart.

Another surprise attack from the presumed dead man on the ground sent the gun from the woman's hand, sending a round off straight up into the air.

He knocked her flat and pulled a pocketknife from his sock. "You have tested my limits woman." He growled as he bent dangerously close to her the knife catching a glint from the streetlight outside of the alley.

She didn't even blink as she knocked the knife from his hand and sent it spinning into the air.

Jaken cursed her and she smirked. Her foot made contact with his jaw sending him dizzily to the ground in a heap.

She reached into what looked a belt that was clamped around her waist over the skintight black outfit she wore.

A pair of handcuffs were put on the man's wrist.

Miroku meanwhile had the other man in a headlock. He put pressure on his neck trying to make him fall to his knees but the other man wouldn't give in easily. The deep voiced man elbowed Miroku hard in the ribs and took advantage of his slight hesitation to release himself and punch the cop in the jaw.

Miroku fell to the ground holding his jaw and the man took that instant to take off into the night.

The woman turned around and cursed.

She ran to Miroku's side and looked at him. "You ok?" Her soft and sweet voice soothed him ever so slightly. He forgot about the pain in his jaw and ribs for a couple of seconds.

He looked up at her, squinting his eyes trying to see who she was. From what little light he had he could see a pair of big brown eyes, a small nose, and full lips.

She wore a beanie type hat on her head and some kind of mask that covered everything on her face from her forehead to her nose.

"I'm afraid that has to remain unknown." She said backing up slowly. Her lips curved into a small smile. "Goodbye for now detective."

"No…wait." He reached out to her but she only smiled. A second later she was gone as if the darkness had swallowed her whole.

He fell to his knees, in pain. His walkie-talkie lay near by, unharmed and cackling.

Miroku crawled towards it and hit the button, "InuYasha I need assistance, answer you dumb-ass!" He croaked.

"What do you want?" Snapped the reply almost a half a second later.

InuYasha stood baffled. "What do you mean some woman in all black and a mask kicked the guys ass, cuffed one of them, and saved you?"

Miroku looked up at him. He was sitting on a gurney, waiting to be examined. "Oh gee InuYasha, I meant exactly what I just said." He near to bellowed, startling the ambulance crew around him.

He scowled at them and looked at the alley now tapped up for a crime scene.

"Calm down 'roku, so tell me about this woman." InuYasha said leaning against the side of the ambulance causally.

Miroku shrugged. "She was amazing…I know nothing about her except that she was amazing-I saw little details about her, and I saw her style of fighting. But nothing else. She has made me very curious." He said looking off into space.

InuYasha kicked at the gurney nearly sending Miroku off of it. "Watch it." He growled as he nursed his ribs, his jaw was beginning to show horrible blue-black bruising.

"Ain't my fault you got a crush on some crime fighting chic."

The sun rose quicker then it had any day before that. Quietly as a mouse a girl slipped from out the front door of a house on a normal street, wearing jeans and a t-shirt. She went to her dark green Rodeo out front of her parent's house and drove towards the community college.

She couldn't help the grin that came onto her lips.

A newspaper she had picked up much earlier in the morning lay on the passenger's seat of the car. The front headline said "COP ASSISTED BY NOT SO NORMAL CRIME FIGHTING WOMAN"

She shook her head and glanced at the picture of the cop sitting on the gurney.

What the newspaper stated was true.

More later

Review please

CC