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. Don't sue.
What Kenshin does own, however, are all the original charactersin this work. Any attempt to "borrow" these characters will be met with the katana, or worse.
The events in Idiot Beloved take place shortly after the Dark Tournament; Firebird Sweet directly follows that timeline; it's suggested you read them in order so you don't miss out on character development and certain crucial events.
Title: Peace, Love, Hiei
Author: JaganshiKenshin
Genre: Action/Adventure, Humor
Rating: T
Summary: Uh-oh. The new neighbors are here, and they've got an agenda.
A/N: Sometimes, life tosses you a present. I intended to continue updating either Operation Rosary or Death by Hiei, but instead, I discovered another comical misadventure for Kurama and Hiei, set against the backdrop of IB/FS. Having missed Kurama quite a bit during the writing of Codename Moron, I give him his turn at bat with this first-person four-parter. Accompanying character sketches are up on my LiveJournal homepagey. Thanks. Please review!
"Hiei--you can't just kill hippies at random!"
Peace, Love, Hiei (C1: "Is That MEAT I Smell?")
by
Kenshin
"What would you like in your flower bed?" I asked Shay-san, opening my hand to reveal seeds of morning glory, sweet alyssum, zinnia--all the common flowers she likes, along with rootlets of azalea, daylily, and--just to be cute about it--foxglove.
Biting her thumb, Shayla Kidd gazed at the array like a kid in a candy store, her gray eyes liquid with longing.
Though she wore cheerful marigold tones that emphasized her fire-streaked hair, her gifted voice conveyed sorrow, loss, regret--and a touch of petulance. "None of the above?"
I heard Hiei rummaging around the back of the house. The racket he made was considerable, and I wondered whether that had anything to do with her mood.
"You don't have to choose," I assured her. "I can design a bed incorporating all of them."
"Kurama," she sighed. "If only you could."
"I see no reason to stand here and allow you to insult my abilities as a plant master."
"That's not what I mean and you know it."
"What then?"
"Look." The living room's windows were open, but newly-installed green sheers covered them. It seemed odd. It was a Saturday morning to write home about, with fluffy clouds skating a cerulean sky and a cool fresh breeze making the sheers billow. "Broad daylight," Shay-san elaborated. "Someone's bound to notice if you poke in a handful of morning glory seeds and two minutes later they're mature plants in full bloom."
"Someone in the shape of Mrs. Itoya," I surmised. There is a Mrs. Itoya in every neighborhood, I suppose, and this one was more interactive than most.
For the two years Hiei and Shay-san had lived here, the old lady had made a hobby of studying Hiei's habits, mounting extensive and highly personal inquiries whenever Hiei dragged himself home at some ungodly hour, due to saving Tokyo once again from the latest version of Gojira. "Suppose I grow your garden in the dead of night?"
A frown knitted Shay-san's upswept brows. "Maybe in pots. And way in the back yard."
Something had caused this near-paranoia on her part. Maybe the absence of Michael and Cecilia, now lively four-year-olds, had driven her round the bend. "Why such secrecy?"
Beckoning me to the window, she flicked the curtains aside. "Notice anything about Mrs. Itoya's house?"
"Of course. It lacks her nose, pasted to the front window." Like other homes on this quiet residential street, Mrs. Itoya's was a Western-style wooden frame building, partly hidden behind tall concrete barriers that fronted the street in order to preserve privacy. In fact, Hiei and Shay-san's house was the only dwelling not to possess such a barrier, having been built by an Englishman with a passion for white picket fencing.
"Mrs. Itoya went to live with her grandson and his family. New people just moved in."
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"And I don't know who they are."
"Maybe it will stay that way."
She let the curtain fall back and fixed me with a cool stare. "Don't tell me a big strong fella like you is fwaidy-scared of a little digging?"
"Haven't you heard of 'Work smarter, not harder?'"
"Never."
"And to think of my poor seeds languishing for want of a home--"
"And to think that every time you use your ki, you emit a signal, however small, for someone to trace. Like turning on a flashlight in a darkened room." She shrugged. "Anyway, Hiei has to scrub off a certain amount of physical energy every day or he gets really--" Her eyes went a bit bulgy. "Unpleasant to live with."
I knew how Hiei could get.
Although my friend had adapted to the human world far better than anyone could have predicted, he was still youkai, with all the accompanying physical toughness and peculiarities. And for a long time, there had been no activity on the demon front, and no call for his services.
"He's out back," she continued, "fetching the garden tools."
I stared in genuine shock. "Let me get this clear. You don't mean to say you're making Hiei go to a nursery to buy plants? And then dig holes to put them in?"
"Not holes. A bed." She ambled toward the kitchen. "And I'm not 'making' him do anything. He volunteered."
"I suppose he also 'volunteered' me," I called after her.
"Only if you want dinner," she shot back.
"What are you cooking?" I pleaded.
"Something extremely labor-intensive," she assured me.
At this time, I was, at the urging of my mentor Dr. Smith, pursuing a double load consisting of both college courses and a Physician's Assistant certification, in addition to working for Smith part-time. Due to my long and irregular hours, I was living in a cramped apartment close to his offices. My free time was extremely limited, but what I did have of it I liked to split between Kaasan and these two.
However, this week, my mother and Hatanaka-san were vacationing at the seashore, and had brought the twins Michael and CeeCee along.
Kuwabara-kun, with his raw strength, is a frequent guest at Hiei and Shay-san's 'workfare' program, as is Yuusuke, with his indefatigable energy--but today I had them all to myself. That meant extra helpings.
I shook my plants-to-be back into a glassine envelope and zipped it shut. It seemed a shame to waste them. Maybe I would sneak back in the dead of night and surprise her.
Or maybe--
With Shay-san well out of sight, I grabbed a small ceramic planter that lay on a side table and pinched out the dead stick that had formerly been an African Violet. I don't want to say that Shay-san has a black thumb. You didn't hear it from me.
I grabbed a few chive roots from my stock and hurriedly shoved them into the still-moist dirt, thinking something along the lines of, Chives go well with potato salad.
Then I laid hands on the soil and sent ki flowing down into the roots. In moments, a miniature forest of green spears bristled forth. "So there," I muttered.
Sometimes when my sister-become and I get together, we both turn into nine-year-olds. It can be refreshing.
"That garden's not going to dig itself."
I whirled.
Dressed in sawed-off gray sweats that had seen better days, Hiei had come upon me quite soundlessly from the back of the house--despite what appeared to be an entire farm's worth of heavy equipment in his sinewed arms. His hair resembled a black and white cyclone just barely come to rest, and his crimson eyes were alight with amusement. Hiei glanced at his burden of shovels and hoes and spray cans, most of which he palmed off on me. "You looked lonely without them," he said.
"You don't seriously mean to buy plants, do you?" I asked in hushed tones as we made our clanking way to the front yard. "I brought a gardenful of seeds."
He snorted, vigorously shaking a spray can, regarding me as though he was a graffiti artist with an itch to express himself and I was a convenient wall.
"Okay, okay, okay," I said, holding up my hands in mock-surrender. Then I glanced up at the sky. About ten minutes to noon, and the June days were long. We had to spend the time somehow.
So, with the heavy scent of freshly-spaded earth to accompany us, Hiei and I ended up displaying the sort of love for one another that, between men, expresses itself in detailed attacks on one's ancestry, character, intelligence, and virility.
In between volleys, Hiei aimed a spray can of white paint at the ground, and outlined the curving boundary of the flower bed. When he wasn't painting, he was insulting me, and I egged him on with ever-more-elaborate attacks of my own.
I had paused in stunned, open-mouthed admiration after a particularly nasty lob to center court concerning all four strata of insult, when a dry little voice behind us said, "You're destroying the environment."
Hiei's thumb twitched on the spray tab. Without turning, he said, as glacial as any Kourime, "In what way?"
"You're killing the ozone layer with those fluorocarbons."
"Chlorofluorocarbons," I corrected automatically, and then a feeling like being dipped in warm honey suffused me as Hiei cranked his head around inch by inch to face the interloper. I had come expecting to work and be fed, and now there was a free floor show in the offing.
Our star was a tallish, willowy girl of about eighteen, a year or so younger than me and an inch or so shorter. She was dressed in a long brown skirt, heavy ugly sandals, and a faded red tank top.
The newcomer gave off an aroma of someone who had never been acquainted with the modern wonders known as soap and water. A dirty string attached to a woven Greek bag was slung across her scrawny chest. However, her bone structure hinted at a body not naturally meant to be so thin, but one which was the result of never having anything pleasant to eat.
To call her mud-colored hair unkempt would do a disservice to the unkempt of the world. I wondered, in horrified fascination, what sort of insects might call that personal jungle home. But her ears stuck out almost at right angles, which I found absurdly appealing, and her blue eyes, behind their oval glasses, were lively and direct.
I could tell by her accent that she was an American--and only Americans can be quite so eccentric.
Yet despite all that, she exuded (quite apart from her very own personal miasma) an attractive, youthful enthusiasm.
Like a bird dog, she raised her head and sniffed. I wondered whether she had come to the realization that the 20th century offered such aforementioned marvels, and she needed to run out and buy some. But she merely turned that penetrating gaze on us and said, in deeply offended tones, "Is that MEAT I smell?"
I tested the air myself, and let out a sigh of pure bliss. "Not meat," I corrected. "Chicken."
"With a beer can up its butt," elaborated Hiei.
The girl gaped at us as though we had escaped from a lunatic asylum.
Meanwhile, fragrant barbecue smoke drifted toward us from the back yard, surrounding the three of us in a mouth-watering haze. And, riding on that haze like an apparition of mercy, came the architect of the feast, Shay-san.
Shay-san stopped, tilting her head up at the girl.
From my vantage point they appeared to be of a different species altogether; even in a pair of worn yellow clamdiggers and green oven mitts, Shay-san exuded a sort of well-groomed female glamour that was apparently quite foreign to her taller counterpart. Plus, she bathed.
"Dinner in about an hour," Shay-san announced. "Would you care to join us, Miss...?"
The girl scratched her hair, revealing underarms that had never known either razor or soap. "Rainbow Chakra Freedom."
Shay-san was a lot more hospitable than I would have been. "How about it, Miss Rainbow Chakra Freedom?" she urged.
Miss Rainbow Chakra Freedom's face gave a little spasm of conflicting emotion; immediately I reassessed her.
On hearing the invitation, a delighted smile had flashed across her lips--and just as quickly, was masked by a frown as she flicked her gaze to the side.
I am not psychic; Kuwabara-kun and Shay-san's sixth sense both far outweigh mine. But I caught a glimpse, very clear, of a little girl surrounded by a laughing mother and father and brothers, herself giggling.
She had since been schooled to second-guess her own normal reactions. I wondered whether Hiei and Shay-san had noted this.
"Meat destroys the rain forest," Miss Chakra stated.
"This isn't meat." Shay-san gave her a warm pink grin. "It's chicken."
"With a beer can up its butt," repeated Hiei.
"And it never heard of the rain forest," I added.
Miss Chakra sighed. Reaching into her bag, she withdrew a folded piece of paper, which she handed to Hiei. "I can see that I have my work cut out for me," she said, then turned and clumped back to the house across the street.
"Well," I said into the ensuing silence. "I believe we've just met your new neighbor."
In response, Hiei turned the paper to ash, then let the breeze sift it from his fingers.
"Ash destroys the rain forest," said Shay-san.
I turned to her. "Are you making potato salad, too?" I pleaded.
"Freaking hippie," growled Hiei.
"Hiei," admonished Shay-san, removing her oven mitts to waggle one underneath his nose, "you can't kill hippies."
"I have a license to kill," he replied darkly.
"With onion and green pepper and a sprinkle of paprika on top?" I prodded.
She flared at me. "Don't think I haven't found those chives, Mister!" Then she turned it on Hiei. "And you don't have a license to kill hippies who haven't threatened your family!"
"No matter how much fun it might be?" Hiei said.
"And cole slaw," Shay-san assured me, switching gears with dizzying speed.
I sighed. "Truly are you a goddess of the grill."
"With a dead hippie for dessert," said Hiei.
"I'm game," I said.
(To be continued: Where have all the flowers gone?)
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