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Inuyasha vs Disclaimer: Inuyasha and associated characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. Godzilla and Megalon are the property of Toho Studios.




Inuyasha leaped to the top of the well, grumbling. Kagome was late again. She'd said she'd be back in the morning, and here it was, sun-high and no sign of her. He bounded up the steps of the dim well-house and slid the door aside, scanning the courtyard. Usually when she was late he would come up to find her hurriedly stuffing things in her backpack as she dragged it to the well, full of apologies, or some similar gratifying sign that she knew she should have been ready. But the courtyard was empty.

He was just starting across to her house, already formulating what well-deserved complaints he might make, when he heard her excited voice. It was coming from...the roof? She and her whole family were /sitting on the roof/, jabbering to each other and looking off to the south. A ladder leaned against the house, which Inuyasha ignored in favor of simply leaping up.

"What the hell are you people doing up here?" It almost looked like a picnic; they had brought towels to sit on, as well as drinks and snacks. Kagome's grandfather had brought some of his priestly implements, and was standing apart from the others, chanting and waving a haraigushi to the south.

"Inu no Niichan!" Souta jumped up and pointed. "The monsters are here again!"

Inuyasha was astounded to see what looked like a pair of giant, no, gigantic youkai battling each other, crushing buildings and ignoring what appeared to be buzzing insects; they were miles to the south, in the section of the city that was near the sea. Kagome got up from the towel she had been sitting on with her mother to stand next to him.

"Every few years some giant monsters show up," Kagome peered off at them, shading her eyes with her hand. "Usually one or more will start trashing downtown, and then some others will show up to fight with the first ones. The army comes out and fires at them, pretty uselessly. You can see all the good the Air Force is doing. Then they move off on their own. They don't normally get this far inland; I think they like being near the harbor, or maybe they just like tearing down skyscrapers." She looked back up at him quickly. "Oh, I was supposed to come back this morning, wasn't I? Sorry. I didn't want to miss seeing them. We can wait until it's over, can't we, Inuyasha?"

"I can't believe you're taking this so calmly!" He gesticulated with a clawed hand angrily in the general direction of the tussling behemoths. At that moment a faint roar came to their ears, and one of the creatures went flying into an office building, ripping a chunk of its side out; in seemingly slow motion the rest collapsed. "People could be dying in that building, and you're just sitting here! What's to stop things of that size from stomping over here and squashing you too?!"

"Oh, they can tell well in advance when the monsters are coming, dear, they're pretty loud. They issued an evacuation order early this morning. There's nobody in those buildings." Mama lifted an odd implement to her eyes and peered through them at the scaly horrors. "It's a pity, too, because I was planning a little shopping this weekend in the Ginza. Souta, dear, which are these two again?"

"I'll tell you if I can have the binoculars back," Souta said slyly. With a little laugh his mother surrendered the thing; he took it eagerly and showed her a pair of brightly colored pieces of paper.

"I have the cards for both of them-the green one is Godzilla, of course, and the other one is Megalon. I traded Eichi at school my extra Rodan card for it. I'm lucky to have it, because now that he's come it'll be really valuable!" The child chortled and lifted the binoculars to his eyes, and proceeded to keep them on as if they were glued to his eye sockets. Mama took the cards and looked them over in interest.

Inuyasha tore his eyes away from the cards in horror as the green one, Godzilla, belched an enormous gout of flame at the other. It seemed to have no effect on the monster but the same could not be said for the structures in the vicinity. "Kagome, what are they? Youkai? Dragons? And how do you know they won't come here?"

She shifted her feet and glanced at her grandfather. "Well, they usually don't come this way, when they come inland at all. They generally go for the big power stations on the plains, for some reason. As to what they are, well. The Army scientists say that they're animals that got mutated from the nuclear testing in the Pacific. I don't know for sure."

Inuyasha snorted. "Well, I think they're big youkai." Jiichan stopped his chanting for a moment to turn and look at the hanyou.

"You see, granddaughter? Even this youkai agrees with me! And as long as I say the sacred chants and make the mystic passes, they won't come here!" He went back to chanting more vigorously than before.

Kagome rolled her eyes. "Okay, say they're youkai. Kind of unusual that they're the only ones I see in this time, but I think most of them live on an isolated island anyway."

Cracking his knuckles meaningfully, Inuyasha grinned at her. "C'mon, Kagome. I haven't gotten to use the Bakuryuuha in a long time. I want to see how many green chunks I can dice that youkai into. Got your bow? You can get the other one."

"But Inu no Niichan!" Souta jumped up, almost dropping the binoculars off the edge of the roof in his agitation. "Godzilla's the good guy! You can't kill him!"

"Good guy?" Inuyasha blinked. He looked off again at the monsters thrashing in the midst of what was once downtown Tokyo. Godzilla had just dropkicked Megalon into some previously undamaged real estate. "How can you say either is a good guy? Look at what they're doing. They don't actually care one way or the other that there's no humans being crushed to death under them."

Souta actually looked close to tears. "But Godzilla is a friend to all little children! Of course he's a good guy!"

"I thought that was Gamera. You might want to check better sources than those cards," Kagome casually interjected. She was looking off at the battle again, and then straightened. "Look, I think they're moving offshore. You've lost your chance to get squashed, Inuyasha."

Inuyasha bit back a curse as he saw that the monsters were, indeed, headed off in the direction of the ocean, with choruses of shrieks and groans that were probably giving people closer than them massive headaches. All of them stood and watched, Souta and Inuyasha hopefully, but it soon became clear that they were rapidly moving off and were probably not coming back.

Jiichan gave the haraigushi a final shake, and then briskly moved to the ladder. "Well, that's taken care of the pesky youkai for the time being. I've got to get the shrine ready for visitors...I know everyone will be looking for reassurance from the Kami..." He continued mumbling to himself as he descended the rungs carefully. Mama and Kagome, meanwhile, had been rolling up the towels and gathering up the things they had brought up. Souta and Inuyasha wore identical wistful looks as they gazed to the south, but the monsters did not reappear.

"Inuyasha." He turned around and Kagome thrust a bundle of their things into his hands. "Will you take this down for us? It's not easy to climb down while carrying stuff."

"What am I, your pack mule?" he grumbled, but he held on to the bundle. "Come on, I'll take you back down. We've got shards to find." Kagome noted that her mother had already climbed down out of sight, and hopped on his back, grabbing hold securely. Inuyasha was about to jump down when he saw Souta looking at him hopefully. With a sigh, he said "C'mere, kid, I'll take you too." Grabbing hold of the excited boy around the middle, he jumped lightly down to the ground. Kagome let go and took their things back, and Inuyasha released Souta, who spun around immediately, eyes sparkling.

"This has been the BEST DAY EVER!" Souta waved as he zoomed into the house. "Thank you, Inu no Niichan!"

"That was nice of you," Kagome said, amused. "He gets so excited about that time you carried him around the city looking for me."

"Keh. Go get your bag, woman, and let's get going. We've got a lot of ground to cover today." She turned to go in the house, smiling.

"Hey Kagome." She looked back, questioningly. "The next time those youkai come back, come get me." He grinned. "Just in case Jiji's chants don't keep them away, ne?"



Fin.



*haraigushi: a white paper streamer purification wand, used in Shinto ceremonies