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Scapegoats by itainohime
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"Scapegoats"

by Princess of Pain

1 - Stop for the Night

He was tired. He'd been running for the last four hours, at speeds normally saved for brief getaways. He didn't mind, really, because he understood how worried his master was, and how important it was to get them to a safe place. The master always drove faster when he was worried, never realizing how lead-footed he'd become until a casual glance at the speedometer revealed that they were traveling somewhere between Speeding and Breakneck. And in a way, he was just as worried as his master. The blonde man was not sitting in the shotgun seat, like he always did--he was in the back, draped over the boy's lap. And even over his own stink of grinding hot metal, burning oil, and processed gasoline, Jeepu could still smell the cooked, bloody stench emanating from the monk.

The others all had that same smell clinging to them, especially his master, but the blonde man had been marinated in it.

All the same--in spite of the worry, and knowing how important this must be--Jeepu was tired. No: exhausted. When the master finally stomped the brake, all his plates and gears shuddered with the anticipation of possible relief. And when the master turned the ignition key to OFF, mercifully retarding the sparks and fires that kept his engines going, he could not restrain a happy chirp.

"Does my heart good to know that some-damn-body's happy," the red-haired man said. He'd been sitting in (or, rather, sleeping in) the passenger seat for the entire trip. The lack of growling engine and jittering seat must have waked him. Personally, Jeepu could have done without him waking up. There was something about the mongrel that set the dragon/car off, although were he capable of speech, Jeepu could not have said what it was. He might, though, have eventually decided that "ignorance" would rank the highest.

"He's just as tired as we are," the master replied. His voice was more terse than usual. The worry was making him cranky.

"... is it time for dinner?" the boy in the backseat slurred. He'd been sleeping as well. And, when he was awake, he'd been crying. Not that anyone but Jeepu seemed to have noticed.

"Goddamn one-trick monkey." The red-haired man lit another cigarette. The smell of burning leaves joined the smell of blood, making Jeepu feel a little sick. "I gotta hand it to you, Hakkai. Finding somewhere to crash in the middle of nowhere's no small feat."

The red-haired man had not picked a fight with the boy. They must be ill.

"A happy accident," the master said. Jeepu could hear the smile in his voice. "I don't believe this place is even marked on the maps we have. I'm merely relieved that the lights I've been following belong to torches, and not to will-o'-the-wisps."

The boy: "He's still out of it."

A silence. "That's normal. I closed his wounds, but they were many, and he was bleeding heavily before I could reach him. He will probably wake in the morning, bellowing about his horrible migraine and threatening our lives if we don't bring him beer."

"Your usual Sanzo," the red-haired man observed. "About as charming as a bout of explosive diarrhea."

"... or one of your metaphors."

"So are we sleeping out here, or can we actually go inside?" the boy snapped. Normally, any reference to excrement was enough to paralyze him with laughter. He must be honestly upset.

"Of course. Do you need help carrying him?"

"I got it." Jeepu's left side sighed with relief as the red man slipped out, slamming his door behind him. A few moments after that, the dragon/car was relieved of his burdens entirely. With a soft, happy chirp and a flash of gentle light, Jeepu rearranged his body, compacting and shrinking. Metal mellowed into kid-leather scales; gasoline and oil converted into the little fire in his throat; tires and hubcaps splintered and sharpened into spurs and claws. Aaah. Much better.

"Hakuryu," his master called. The gesture was hardly necessary. The tiny dragon's wings (until recently, they had been a set of doors) had already unfurled, and he caught a small eddy of air that glided him up to his master. As was his habit, Hakuryu curled up on his master's shoulder, his long neck looping to cup the base of his skull.

They spoke more, the master and his friends, but the exhausted little dragon was hardly aware of it. He slept, easily and deeply, and did not wake up again until the small hours of the morning, when the world would become a good deal stranger.

*~*~*

The lady (young lady, really, but to Goku, everyone who was apparantly older than him was a Methuselah) behind the front-counter of the Hotel Kagami fairly shrieked. She jumped up from her previous task of painting her fingernails, the tiny brush flipping to the floorboards and leaving small patterns of violet enamel behind. For a minute, Goku thought that she might throw her hands in the air and give them the combination to whatever armored safe held this place's profits. Her panic was more reflective of a gun being held to her head than four unarmed customers.

Instead, she gasped: "My gosh, do you need a doctor?!"

Goku looked at the unconscious lump of Sanzo in his and Gojyo's arms. The monk looked worse than he actually was. Hakkai's glowy trick had sealed Sanzo up what good, but there weren't exactly any laundromats on the way here. And even if there had been one, the eight billion youkai that had been throwing themselves at the ikkou the way drunk whores threw themselves at Gojyo kind of kept them from thinking about cleaning Sanzo up. The monk had one arm slung over Goku's skinny shoulders, and the other, around Gojyo's broader ones. Someone who did not notice the gaping rips and shreds in his robes, or the dried crusts of dead maroon smeared all over the parchment-white of his clothes, might have thought that Sanzo was giving them a drunken cuddle.

"He's a bit gone for that," Gojyo replied. There was a honeyed sweetness to his voice, a warmth not often present when he addressed his compatriots. Goku gave the idiot kappa a glare. Marvelous. They were in Butt Fucking Egypt, Nowhereland, with a bloodied Sanzo in tow, and Sha fucking Gojyo just had to get his mack on. The despicably-boki cockroach could at least do them the favor of waiting until they got to their rooms before trying to slide into her panties. Now, in addition to worry about Sanzo distracting his battle-addled brain, he had to stand around and wait while Gojyo uttered his dumb-ass lines and made an ungodly fool of himself.

"We'd like a set of rooms, please," Hakkai said, cutting of the redhead's mojo. Good. Stupid kappa deserved it. "A doctor isn't necessary. He only needs rest."

"And a lobotomy," Gojyo murmured.

"Of course, of course," the girl said. She sounded relieved. "We run at near-full capacity, what with there being nowhere else to stay in the area... but I think we've got at least one double suite left." The lady momentarily disappeared behind the counter, on a safari for room-keys.

The sort-of-youkai took a deep, steadying breath. Being in a citadel of civilization was a great relief to his mind. Normally, Goku only appreciated cities for their food, and little else. The smells and sounds in crowded, sweltering-hot places overloaded his exquisitely-tuned senses. The first time Sanzo had ever taken him to the city outside the Temple, he'd thrown up. The special smell of hundreds of unwashed humans jostling down a dung-littered dirt street had been too much. This place was different, by far--the colors dark and sleepy, and the smells almost nonexistent. Probably because his olefactory nerves were obsessed with Eau de Bloody Sanzo.

The lady behind the countertop reappeared. She reached across the countertop, leaning one hand against it to keep her balance, and handed off a set of keys to Hakkai. When she did this, Goku (who was an honest boy, and looked people in the eye when he spoke to them) finally realized why Gojyo was so keen to lay a line on her. She looked like a tent-pole with two melons nailed to it. It was majestic. Goku, who was as naive as he was honest, though of Jell-O and little else.

"God almighty," the hanyo whistled.

Not appearing to notice that Gojyo's apple-red eyes had fallen out of their sockets, the woman said, "These go to two rooms--15 and 16. They connect to each other through an extra door. Will that do for you?"

"It will be more than fine," Hakkai said, probably wanting to cut in before Gojyo could make a perverted pun on what, precisely, it was that would do for him.

~TBC~

Part 2: "Mirrors on the Ceiling". In which Goku (once again) decides that hunger trumps all else, and Hakkai learns a thing or two about lighthearted flirtations.


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