Disclaimer: Kenshin does not own the Yuu Yuu Hakusho characters (they are the property of Togashi Yoshihiro et al), and does not make any money from said characters.
What Kenshin does own, however, are all the original characters in this work. Any attempt to "borrow" these characters will be met with the katana, or worse.
Original character Ernesto Gonzalez, first mentioned in Idiot Beloved, shares a name of sorts, with YYH villain Tarukane Gonzo, but nothing else by way of nature or habits.
The events in Idiot Beloved take place shortly after the Dark
Tournament; Firebird Sweet directly follows that timeline. As reference I use a combination of the subtitled YYH anime, the American manga, and some of the CD dramas. This tale takes place on the heels of the Cowboy Trilogy, therefore, somewhere during the time of The Book Of Cat With Moon.
Title: Are You Loathsome Tonight? (1: All Shook Up)
Author: JaganshiKenshin
Genre: Action/Adventure, Humor
Rating: K+/PG-13
Summary: Hiei, Halloween, and professional wrestling make a dangerous combo, but toss in a stalking killer, some frightening food, and things go downhill from there.
A/N: This Halloween tale was late in arriving-or early, depending when you read it. In The Cowboy Trilogy it was fun, hijacking the titles of classic westerns and using them as chapter titles. Here I get to play with classic song titles.
In Idiot Beloved, Shayla Kidd mentions the man who had trained her in swordsmanship. Noting her abysmal skills, Hiei surmises much about her teacher's character, but if there's one thing he should know by now, surprises abound. Gladly hanging up her wooden sword, Shayla Kidd has not seen her sensei in years.
As always, thanks for reading this, and please review!
"You ate bugs for a living?"
Are You Loathsome Tonight? (1: All Shook Up)
by
Kenshin
Hiei stalked down the bustling Shibuya-ku street, his black shirt and blacker jeans expressing his mood to perfection,
As for Shayla Kidd, she was trudging.
He glanced at her, unable to detect more than a hint of her gamine beauty. Dressed in gray sweats against the chill, a color that both matched her eyes and served to camouflage her from autograph-seekers ("American Cowgirl?"), she could have been a phantom, but for a few strands of marigold-bright hair peeking from the hood of her sweat jacket.
They were allegedly seeking relaxation.
I've changed a little, thought Hiei, and those changes don't always sit easy. His idea of relaxation? Find a tree as far from humankind as possible and sit in it for several hours.
Such an excursion would not go over well with Shayla Kidd. She would succumb to jaw-slacking boredom in about five minutes, assuming Hiei could coax her into the tree at all.
So when that rare night occurred, a night in which neither of them had to perform in a TV commercial, do a voice-over, appear in a nightclub, or chase down demons, they planted their twins Cecilia and Michael on Kurama's mother, Minamino Shiori.
Maybe next time I get the tree.
Shayla Kidd indicated the trendy new restaurant, Scorn, where a line of patrons stretched onto the street, waiting to be robbed blind. "What about here?"
"Too little food, too many people."
"Just testing."
He hoped these minor disagreements wouldn't escalate into a squabble; this was the third eatery he'd shot down, and their level of tension was already as high as the prices at Scorn.
Since their return from America and his run-in with Reiraku, one of the thieves who had raised him, Hiei and Shay-san had been subject to nonstop action.
Shayla Kidd's successful stint as "American Cowgirl" at the nightclub Bongo Rive was the least of it. There was, of course, the case of the Taiyou Lake House, in which Hiei and Kurama had all but met their match in a horde of jaki, those tiny, seemingly insignificant minion-type youkai.
Hiei and Shay-san stopped in front of Chez d'Or. Hiei grunted, "Too expensive, no raw fish."
"Figured."
Then there was the case of the Psychotic Leprechaun, which Hiei had prosecuted with Urameshi Yuusuke. Who would have thought a creature one foot tall, and resembling a monkey rather than that cartoon guy with the pot of gold, could be so strong? Hiei had been forced to wield his Black Dragon. After its deployment, Hiei had fallen into a trance so deep that Urameshi, unable to rouse him, had covered him with a few sheets of newspaper and left him in the middle of the street.
Hiei had awakened in a garbage dump. Not his finest moment.
Focus on tonight. So it's Halloween. What of it?
The Japanese, although they are catching on fast, do not see this night one in which the veil between the living and the dead grows thin, but rather an excuse to dress up and eat candy.
Halloween. No reason to go nuts. No ghosts hiding behind every streetlamp, no werewolves on the prowl, no zombies ready to consume their intestines like spaghetti.
But there was always something.
It was nearly dusk, and the street grew more crowded by the moment. Hiei didn't do crowded.
He'd gained an insight into his own quirks. Some of them, anyway. Aware that he was behaving churlishly, he led Shayla Kidd to the Silver Moon Cafe, which was something of a sanctuary; no autograph hounds to bug them, and the food put Scorn to shame.
The aromas of fresh-ground coffee and the cafe's justly-famed almond Moon Crescents spoke for him. She sighed. "Finally, something we can agree on."
"Let's grab a coffee."
Then, right there in the street, in full view of everyone, Shayla Kidd turned glimmering gumdrop eyes on him and parted her lips. Hiei tensed, dreading an outburst of Public Affection. But her gifted voice never emerged. Instead, there came a different sort of outburst, a heavily-accented male bellow:
"Ay Dios mio! If it ain't my little ragamuffin sword girl!"
"Your what the what?" Hiei whipped his head around. Emerging from the crowd was a dark-visaged man in his 30s, wearing a black tank shirt emblazoned with the words El Gordo.
Shayla Kidd turned the color of a paper napkin. Earlier in the week, they had gotten an alert about a killer on the loose. Had she spotted him? "G-Gonzalez-s-s-sensei!" she managed.
Gonzalez. The name rang a bell. An enormous temple bell.
"What are you d-d-doing here?" she stuttered.
Communicating with Shay-san through the use of his implanted third eye was something Hiei normally reserved for battle, or pickup from the garbage dump. But her degree of shock alarmed him, and he 'spoke' through the powers of the Jagan: You look like you've seen a ghost.
Just a haunting, she replied.
Perhaps it was at that. This person may not have been the psychotic leprechaun's older brother out for revenge, but he had more than a passing resemblance to the creature: the blocky fireplug physique; flat-nosed face with two little darts of a moustache on a long upper lip; glossy black hair curled thick as sheep's wool on his head, and almost as thick on his body.
The stocky interloper beamed, teeth flashing white against the tobacco hue of his skin. "Shouldn't the question be more like, what're you doin' here, all the way in Japan?"
"We live here," Hiei replied, never having seen Shay-san at a loss for words. "You are-?"
"Wrestlin'."
Pro wrestling. Sweaty men in tights grappling one another within the squared circle. Kuwabara was a fan.
"Oh, you mean who? My fame ain't preceded me? This week I'm El Gordo," he said, indicating the name on his shirt. "Back in Mexico City they call me El Chupacabra."
"Bad choice of names," muttered Hiei.
The hairy interloper thrust out a hand. "Ernesto Gonzalez. Everyone just calls me Gonzo."
Gonzo? El Chupacabra's not bad enough. He has to have the same name as the bastard who imprisoned Yukina.
Clocking the guy in broad daylight and heavy traffic would probably turn heads.
Names meant something. Hiei's own name meant 'Flying Shadow,' and it suited him. Tarukane Gonzo's given name meant 'Authority of Three.' Hiei was aware that the word 'Gonzo' had an American meaning of eccentric, weird or crazy.
"Yo, ragdoll." Gonzalez jerked his head at Shayla Kidd's gray hoodie. "Y'look like you just crawled outta the nearest boxing gym. What's the deal? Goin' out Trick or Treatin'?"
"I'm... incognito." Her voice was a mouse-squeak.
"She looks fine to me," said Hiei, and he could just feel her melt. For her sake, he forced a note of civility into his voice. "So you're the one who taught this female to swing a sword like it was a machete."
Gonzo shrugged. "I'm a wrestler, not a martial artist."
"That's not what it said in your window." Shay-san had recovered the use of her voice, and as she spoke, she ticked off a list on her fingers. "Karate, kendo-"
"Same dif. See, this little girl would've made a great wrestler." Gonzo rolled his eyes. "But no, she's gotta learn that sword stuff."
"-children's parties," she went on. "Gordo the Clown-"
Hiei's mouth twitched. "So you really are a clown."
"I ate bugs. You know kids-they love that kinda stuff."
"Well." Shay-san flung Gonzo a fiercely laminated smile. "How very nice it is running into you, but we-"
"That smell!" Gonzo sniffed the air like a hunting dog. "Is that yakitori?"
"Possibly." Hiei detected a hint of charred flesh emanating from down the street. Bite-sized, skewered meats, yakitori is a favored snack among connoisseurs and pub-crawlers alike.
Grabbing Shayla Kidd with a gorilla's arm, Gonzo pulled her toward an alley, far from the haven of the Silver Moon.
Hiei kept pace. Having recovered from her shock, Shay-san seemed determined to make the best of things, but-Want me to scare him off? He already has three strikes against him.
Gonzalez-sensei doesn't scare.
Oh, I can scare him.
No. You can't. You really can't.
You liked this guy? he thought.
Still do. I should warn you, though-
"Hey, man." Addressing Hiei, Gonzo interrupted their private communique. "What about you?"
Hiei was thoroughly bewildered. "What about me?"
"Wanna work as a wrestler? You got a good look."
"It's the hair," said Shay-san.
"We always need fresh blood," Gonzo said, "an' you seem built enough."
"I could admire his latissimus dorsi all day," she assured them.
Gonzo gave Hiei a measuring squint. "You know how to fall?"
"Fall?" Hiei thought of his forcible ejection from Hyouga, the floating realm of the Ice Maidens. Fall? It's what I do. "Yeah. But I already have a job."
"Hey, wrestling's loss." Gonzo ran a few steps ahead, then stopped, turning back to wave them on. "We're here!"
As if the smell didn't tip me off... Mr. Moto's Skewer was a hole in the wall, reeking of the motor oil they evidently used for frying. A menu was pasted in one grimy window. Gonzo studied the menu. "Octopus balls? Didn't know octopus had-"
"Battered, fried pieces of octopus meat," Shay-san interjected, channeling 1940s British film queen, Greer Garson. "Hiei consumes them."
"She doesn't," Hiei added.
"Hey, we're in luck!" said Gonzo, pulling them into the dive. "There's still a couple empty chairs."
"Wonderful," she said, at her frostiest. "We get to see who can eat the most blackened cephalopod organs."
"Gonzo wins," Hiei muttered, "two falls out of three."
-30-
(To be continued: The evening takes a sinister turn.)