Please see Disclaimer in Chapter 1.

Idiot Beloved takes place shortly after the Dark Tournament; Firebird Sweet directly follows that timeline. As reference I use a combination of the subtitled YYH anime, American manga, and the CD dramas. Loathsome takes place on the heels of the Cowboy Trilogy, ie: during the time of The Book Of Cat With Moon.

Title: Are You Loathsome Tonight? (2: Devil In Disguise)

Author: JaganshiKenshin

Genre: Action/Adventure, Humor

Rating: K+/PG-13

Summary: As the night wears on, ominous developments place Hiei, Shayla Kidd, and Gonzo in danger.

A/N: In Idiot Beloved, not only is Shayla Kidd's Spellcasting established, and the Shadow Wars begin, but though we never actually meet him, she also mentions the man who had trained her in swordsmanship. Here, we meet Ernesto Gonzalez.

As always, thanks for reading this, and please review!

"You'd make a great wrestler-The Lady Spitfire."

Are You Loathsome Tonight? (2: Devil In Disguise)

by

Kenshin

Hiei was not the only one with powers. Shayla Kidd had some of her own. And as they settled down at Mr. Moto's Skewer, he wished she would use them.

She shouldn't shoot laser beams from her eyes, though it seemed to Hiei that she could. But this was only the flaring of her Irish temper.

She couldn't wield a dimensional sword, nor summon flames, nor hurl energy bolts.

While she was expert in theatrical wushu, a discipline designed to make movie fights look good, that was mere stagecraft, and a natural outgrowth of her dance training.

She was no martial artist, and in fact carried a small pistol for protection. But though she possessed the accuracy of a sniper, sharp-shooting was not her power.

Shayla Kidd was a Spellcaster.

By the use of her trained voice, she could charm, cajole, command, perhaps even get the attention of the maitre'd at Scorn.

She could just as easily disengage them from Gonzo. But she shook her head, dashing Hiei's hopes.

When I lived in Arizona, the only nearby town was Hellhole; even residents call it that. Sensei looked after me. When thugs came along, he ran them off.

Hiei asked, Why not run them off yourself?

Couldn't use my powers back then. Didn't know I had any.

If you ask me, she's too tolerant. He sniffed at his plate and grimaced. Not that Hiei considered himself a fussy eater. In Makai, to stay alive, he had consumed things that would turn even Kuwabara's stomach inside out.

But Ernesto Gonzalez was in another league. The skewered chicken butts were greasy, bitter, and sinewy, their fibers catching between Hiei's teeth, and Gonzo couldn't get enough.

Sullen counterman flung food at them as though they were devils, and the yakitori were talismans to ward off evil. I've been through worse, thought Hiei. Maybe.

For he, Shay-san, Kurama, and a couple of others were part of an elite advance force.

They were one step below cold warriors, unsung, unthanked, not even reviled by a media quick to dismiss real threats, past or present.

They were Shadow Warriors, prosecuting a secret battle, a battle for which no medals were given, and of which the public remained blissfully unaware.

Civilians who knew of the Shadow Wars were a select few: Yuusuke's friend Yukimura Keiko, Kurama's mother Minamino Shiori, Kuwabara's sister, one or two others.

The Warrior's target: youkai who prowled about the world, seeking ruin. And though Gonzo had a youkai's appetite, he was no demon, nor was dragging them into a yakitori grill a crime.

The counterman hurled another plate of steaming gristle. Gonzo fell upon it like a starving wolverine, washing it all down with enough sake to pickle a mountainside.

No wonder he taught lousy swordsmanship, Hiei directed at Shayla Kidd. Too busy guzzling booze and scarfing chicken butts.

I think I should warn you, Shay-san repeated-

"Why not pig's blood?" Hiei said. "Or a dessicated lizard?"

"Great idea!" Gonzo enthused, frog-marching them down another alley. Super Jump Gulp House advertised organ meats and lamb sashimi but lacked pig's blood. They lasted five minutes.

But the raw-lamb venue wasn't their last stop. Dusk wore into dark, each new venue taking them farther from the heart of Shibuya, both in distance and character.

"Haven't these people heard of salmonella?" Shay-san wondered, as they crowded around a busy counter offering raw chicken hearts and bear spleen.

Gonzo downed a still-beating chicken heart. "Hey, man-you Japanese really know how to party."

"You should see us on weekends."

As Gonzo's English was better than his Japanese, they had settled on that language for their common tongue. "Can you get any of that toxic puffer-fish stuff here?"

"Fugu?" Hiei said. "In this sewer? Wouldn't advise it."

"Maybe the next joint." Swallowing another raw chicken heart, Gonzo beamed at Shay-san. "Imagine runnin' into you after all these years, and in Japan of all places!"

Ernesto Gonzalez did most of the talking, which was fine with Hiei. Gonzo had been born in Mexico City. When he was ten, the family relocated to Arizona, opening a tailoring/dry-cleaning establishment. Now an American citizen, he occasionally returned to Mexico to wrestle, but would take a gig anywhere, hence Japan.

"C'mon, man, who's up for puffer fish?" Hustling them through the streets, Gonzo urged, "Come see me tomorrow night at the Tornado Zone. Give you free tickets, backstage passes, the works, man."

"I can hardly wait," said Shay-san.

The next dive, Famous Happy Idol Singer, stank of sulphur, but it did feature a flashing pink neon sign.

From a teetering barstool, Hiei studied his firebird. Shay-san held a paper napkin to her nose, and looked a bit green around the gills, which made her hair stand out like embers.

Though she could literally command a man's heart to stop, such was her nature that she would not simply ditch Gonzo and go on with something more relaxing: a cup of coffee at the Silver Moon, a movie, a firing squad.

But Hiei found it hard to completely dislike Shay-san's former teacher. There was something about that guy. And not just the fact that he had fugu stuck in his teeth.

Although only a couple of inches taller than Hiei, Shay-san's former sensei had arms nearly as long as Kuwabara's. Considering Gonzo's stumpy bowlegs, Hiei wondered whether his ancestry included several species of lowland gorilla.

Tarukane Gonzo's family name meant 'Drooping Monkey,'but despite the Mexican wrestler's appearance, Hiei decided once and for all that Gonzo had nothing more in common with Yukina's captor than a name.

"This ragamuffin of yours." Gonzo paused to gulp down a mouthful of toxic fish. "Shoulda let me train her up to be a wrestler. She may be little, but she'd be really-"

"Though they are numerous," interrupted Shay-san, still channeling Greer Garson, "my enthusiams do not extend to being flung into the nearest turnbuckle by a Hulk Hogan wannabe."

"See?" Gonzo beamed at Hiei. "She's mad at me, I can tell. She talk that way to you when she's mad?"

"No." Hiei studied the items on his plate. They might have been centipede intestines. "She throws things at my head."

"She'd'a made a great wrestler." Acting like a proud uncle and The Thing That Ate Tokyo, Gonzo downed the bruise-colored goo on his plate, then chased it with more sake. "She came to my dojo when she was play-actin' the part of a priestess. Wanted to learn how to swing a wooden sword."

"She really gets into a part." How could Hiei forget? Hired by a mystery man who turned out to be the powerful youkai White Sands Serpent, Shayla Kidd had occupied a temple which the Serpent had built in the desert. Hiei had not only saved her from El Chupacabra and the Serpent, but once the adventure was over, he found a new calling, and a number of startling new puncture wounds.

"She was a good student, too," Gonzo added. "Didn't give me no lip, and she's got plenty lip."

"Of course not," she said. "I was paying you by the hour."

"Got this Ginger Rogers thing goin' on, man."

"Yes." Hiei squinted at the intestines on his plate. They appeared to be moving. "It's how we make our living." Shayla Kidd had organized Hiei and the others into the boy band, Romantic Soldier. Once their fifteen minutes of fame elapsed, it was churlish-loner-Hiei, out of all of them, who found himself still working as an entertainer.

Great job for a covert operative.

Shay-san glanced at the slimy objects on her own plate, then pushed the plate toward Hiei.

Hiei transferred it to Gonzo.

"I can see it now." Gulping his own share of centipede intestines, Gonzo gratefully accepted Hiei's offering. "The Lady Spitfire. She comes out in this long sparkly gown and then strips it off to beat her opponents over the head with."

"Do they serve anything in here that's already dead and at least partially cooked?" Shay-san asked.

"Try the pig testicles," said Gonzo, ordering some.

"Famous Happy Idol Singer." Shay-san read the neon sign. "Wonder who they mean."

"Not us," grumbled Hiei.

"Everybody loves a celebrity," Gonzo said.

"Not if you knew any." Shay-san spoke from experience; her uncle Paul was a top-flight entertainment lawyer.

They headed back into the streets. One dive melded into the next, each blue with charnel-reeking smoke that left a sour taste in Hiei's mouth. He was almost ready to gargle sake, and he despised sake.

Just one more place.

The phrase became a haunted mansion, conjuring a miasma of reptile eggs glowing like nuclear waste, reeking vegetation, ghoulish countermen, and greasy barstools. When Shayla Kidd refused even to enter Onigumo, which served live tarantulas, Gonzo steered them to Radon, home of the mysterious Special.

In some stubborn spirit of competitiveness, Hiei had tried to match Gonzo bite for bite. It was beginning to tell on him.

He realized too late that for Gonzo, this was no duel, no test of toughness or manhood. This was simply Gonzo being Gonzo, a force of nature, a law unto himself, enjoying a night out with an old student and a new friend.

Chomping on his appetizer, which appeared to be a plate of live mealworms, Gonzo continued from several threads of conversation ago. "That's why stars should remain on their pedestals, see, so you can worship them from afar."

"Thou shalt not make to thyself any idol nor graven image," said Shay-san. The counterman handed Gonzo 'The Radon Special'-a dessicated, grilled lizard on a stick. While Gonzo happily crunched it up, bones and all, she turned greener still.

"You gonna eat your lizard?" Gonzo inquired of Hiei.

Hiei donated the mummified reptile. "Knock yourself out."

"Now you take Elvis," Gonzo continued.

"Bet Elvis never ate a partially-dead lizard on a stick," Shay-san murmured.

"There's this guy on the circuit, dresses like Elvis."

Shayla Kidd shut her eyes. "Two girls died this week. Probably both ate here."

Hiei's firebird was undoubtedly tired and hungry. She had let this slip by accident, surely. But the details of the case had been hushed up, and it was only due to their Shadow Warrior status that they knew this. The girls had not died of food poisoning. They had been murdered.

Japan is not a city rife with murders. Hiei had the feeling this was going to come under his jurisdiction.

"Got a cool finishing move," Gonzo went on. "This Elvis dude. Calls it The Eye."

Hiei felt the stir of Shayla Kidd's amusement.

"The Eye?" she inquired. You should take Gonzo up on his offer to make a wrestler out of you. That could be your move.

Hilarious.

"He stares at his opponent and the guy freezes," Gonzo explained. "Smart. Conserves energy. Me, I gotta go for the hammerlock or somethin'. And okay, I ain't workin' a real big venue, but celebrities sell. Yeah, the Lady Spitfire."

Shayla Kidd raised her hands in surrender. "No, thanks."

"Then come up with your own name. You were always pretty quick upstairs." Gonzo tapped his shiny forehead.

"I decline. Even if you paid me in solid gold boullion."

"They serve that here?" Gonzo peered into the gloom. "By the way, you gonna eat your lizard?"

"Not even to ensure world peace," she said.

"Oh, I bet you would. You're that kind of girl."

"Don't count on it," said Hiei. "She'd make me eat it."

Shay-san pushed the lizard-pop toward Gonzo, who dispatched it in two bone-shattering bites.

"Gettin' late. Just one more stop." Gonzo took another swig of sake and chased it with a fisftul of hot peppers.

Hiei thought, Someone's tailing us.

I know. Ever since the chicken heart place.

Hiei figured it was the killer. Hope springs eternal.

-30-

(To be continued: Mirrors have a way of revealing the truth.)