(the fine print: ) I don't own any of the Greenwood boys. They belong to Nasu Yukie. Devil's Kitchen and 'Gareth Riordan' are stand-ins for Hell's Kitchen and its esteemed head chef, Gordon Ramsay, who is verily Teh Sex. I had to reconcile the timelines somehow. I just wanted to do this. There's no other excuse.
Here is Devil's Kitchen
Miss Lola D (formerly Havoc)
Sometimes, Kazuya Hasukawa reflected, life really was not fair.
There he was, in the back of a limousine heading away from McCarran International Airport, pointedly not sipping the champagne (stupid ulcer), on his way to a smashing new Vegas restaurant, and with whom was he sharing this once-in-a-lifetime experience?
"Suka-chan! Try the sashimi!" Shun, his roommate, held out a bit of salmon with his chopsticks. "Mmmm, I'm ordering this tonight."
Kazuya let Shun feed him sushi; it was a welcome break from having his meals picked over by his sempai. Not a break for very long, though. He was there by the grace of Tezuka, and where one of his neighbors went, the other followed. They were Mitsuruandshinobu, the monstrously annoying driving force behind Greenwood.
They were already eyeing Kazuya's plate.
"Would it have killed you to invite Miya?" he asked. "We're going to be on TV. Devil's Kitchen is world-famous!"
"My father said three guests only," said Shinobu. "Think of Kisaragi."
"Besides, who else comes in a convenient, innocent twosome?" asked Mitsuru. "Nagisa and Reina?"
Shun flushed. "My brother is not going anywhere near that woman until he's thirty," he said, as close to growling as he ever got. "I, for one, am enjoying this trip. I've never been anywhere as fancy as this place is supposed to be." He adjusted his long pink hair, which had been styled on the flight over by a talented stewardess. "Hey, do you think we'll meet any cute chefs?"
"You won't, looking like that." Kazuya plucked the champagne flute out of Shun's other hand and drained it. "You did not have to dress for dinner."
Shun, in a white sweater, pink flowered wrap skirt, and lacy pink shawl, narrowed his pink eyes at his perpetually pink roommate. "Some of us aren't afraid of who we are."
A spike of pain hit Kazuya, and he clapped a hand over his stomach. If this was a sign of things to come...
He was beginning to wish he'd stayed in Japan.
"Welcome to Devil's Kitchen!" A smiling blond man with a rough English accent greeted them at the curb. "I am Chef Gareth Riordan, and this is my game show. The contestants will be preparing two different three-course meals tonight." He nodded to the menus in Shinobu and Mitsuru's hands. "Have you decided?"
"Red for me!" chirped Shun.
"Smart girl," said Riordan. "They're the sure bet."
"Bet?" Mitsuru said to Shinobu, very low.
"I have ideas already," Shinobu replied.
Kazuya noticed that neither of his sempai bothered to correct Riordan on Shun's gender. Here we go again, he thought.
Shun, meanwhile, was eating up the attention. "Can you recommend a table?" he asked, eyes wide and girlish.
"I've reserved the best one." Riordan took Shun by the arm and led him inside. Mitsuru followed, but not Shinobu; he had vanished.
"Huh," said Kazuya, and walked into the restaurant -- but carefully.
Shinobu did join them eventually, which was more than they could say for their meals. Kazuya watched him slip Mitsuru a piece of paper.
"Do you ever stop?" he asked, wincing as he bit back yet another cramp. Great, serious gas during the most important dinner of his life.
"What, us?" Mitsuru laughed. "No way. Not even for supper."
Kazuya imagined Shinobu might have joined in if he were capable of outward emotion. As it was, the older boy only nodded slightly in Shun's direction.
"Kisaragi-san, that sweater suits you," he said. "It goes so well with your skirt."
"Thanks!" Shun beamed at him. "Reina bought it all for me. He said his onii-chama should make our family proud."
So Nagisa had paid for some of her crimes. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but for a moment, Kazuya thought he'd seen Shinobu smile.
The maitre 'd materialized out of the shadows behind the sempai; he had probably been waiting for a lull in the conversation.
"Tezuka-san," he said. "I regret to say there has been some delay in the kitchen."
"What kind of delay?" asked Shinobu.
"One of our chefs has been..." The maitre 'd glanced around before handing Shinobu a green dart. "There's a message for you."
Shinobu pulled on the little tab of paper sticking out of the dart. "Hm," he said, reading the message, and "Mm-hm. Ah. Right." He tossed the dart over his shoulder when he was finished. "Mitsuru, I need you."
"How sweet," said Mitsuru. "What now?"
"Have you ever made sashimi?"
Kazuya, up to his elbows in daikon, was not a happy camper. For one thing, he could get sashimi back home. This was not exactly exotic cuisine. For another, his stomach still hurt, and it was worse than ever. "I should've stayed in Greenwood," he mumbled.
"Come on, Suka-chan!" Shun was grating what Kazuya washed. "We can't keep the customers waiting!"
Kazuya mumbled as many curse words as he could, but under his breath; his sempai had knives, after all.
"I wonder if we'll make it on camera?" Shun asked. He had changed out of his new clothes and pulled his hair into a neat bun. He was still pink all over; Shinobu had actually smiled at the sight.
Something Was Up, and Kazuya, as usual, had no idea what.
"I need two sashimi!" Riordan shouted from the wall separating the kitchen from the customers. "Miss Kisaragi!"
"Hai, Chef!"
"You're on plating. Mr. Hasukawa can take over for you."
Shun nodded. "Hai!" Winking at Kazuya, he scooped the daikon into a bowl and ran for the prep counter.
Kazuya eyed the grater with his usual trepidation. It was a giant box designed to shred whatever was rubbed on it. He'd try to keep a reasonable distance between his hands and the sharp little holes. He'd try.
He'd probably fail, but he'd damn well try.
He grabbed one of the white radishes by its blunt end. "I hope this works."
And, miraculously, it did, at least until Mitsuru finished cutting up the fish. "Oi, Suka!"
Kazuya's hand jerked. The daikon broke in two, and his knuckles scraped the box hard. "What?"
"I -- hey, you're bleeding." Mitsuru hurried over, apron and all. "Let me fix that." He took a dish towel from his pocket, and Kazuya recoiled.
"I don't know where that's been," he said.
"Do what you like, but you should get your hand away from the food," Mitsuru warned him. "Chef Riordan won't be pleased if you bleed on the daikon. He almost sent someone home for shedding on a plate." He plucked one of Kazuya's fire-red hairs. "Better go patch yourself up."
Kazuya resumed his seditious muttering as he took himself out of the Red Kitchen via a long, dark, and noisy hallway. People were running up and down with boxes in their arms.
"Watch out!"
Which was how Kazuya Hasukawa found himself in a strange hospital room in an even stranger city, waking to the pinch of an IV in his arm and the mother of all headaches.
"Do you want the good news or the bad news first?" asked Mitsuru, whapping him on the arm lightly with a magazine.
"Bad news," Kazuya said with a sigh. At least that didn't hurt.
"You lost us a very high-stakes bet. Shun took off his shirt, ripped it into strips, and tied it around the gashes on your legs once we dug you out of the crates of flatware."
Kazuya might've smacked himself in the forehead had he been able to move his arm, which happened to be encased in plaster. "You didn't try to scam a world-famous chef the way you got me."
"Hey, it was working! Besides, the profits would've gone towards a new kimono for Shun. We weren't exactly using him."
"And the good news?"
"The doctors caught your appendix just as it was about to rupture. Really, Suka, you should have said something."
"That was the pain?" He sat up, a little too fast, as the room spun around him. "Aah..."
Shinobu, perched on the other side of the bed, held out a bedpan. "Puke there."
Kazuya obeyed his sempai, and gladly. Better out than in, his brother had always said, and the freak was a nurse. He probably knew what he was doing, even if it was strange to be doing it at a private boys' high school.
One more heave, just to be on the safe side. Yeah. "All clear," he croaked.
"Good. It stinks." Shinobu wrinkled his nose. "How far away is the nurses' station? Shun should be back by now." He held the bedpan out in front of him as he took it into (presumably) the bathroom.
"Hey, he's a hero," said Mitsuru. "Maybe he's getting a hero's welcome." He raised his eyebrows, glancing in Shinobu's direction.
And that was the end of Kazuya's dignity. Blood streamed from his nostrils, dripping onto his hospital gown. Groaning, he fumbled for the button he'd seen with the wire that stretched back behind him. If nothing else, he would experience the best painkillers America had to offer.