Author's note: I really have been writing! Just, uh, not on this story. I have one on Ao3 that I started after Christmas of 2012, and have since written more than 170K words. I wish I could get that kind of inspiration and motivation for this story - YYH/Beelzebub together have such a potential for awesome, epic stories. *_* Nonetheless, I will continue this story to the end. It helps that I read the last sixty Beelzebub manga chapters in the last week. I, uh, got a little bit behind because I decided to crochet my own wedding dress.
"Dare I ask?"
Hilda nearly fell off her place on the Ferris wheel. The children glanced around her to see the gardener – Minamino Shuuichi – who had managed to crawl all the way up the Ferris wheel without Hilda sensing him. She felt a chill race up and down her spine. Shura and Hideo, who had been eating candy and making bets on the firefighters, dismissed Minamino in a single glance and went back to their play-by-play. Tousan smiled nervously and attempted to wave, but that meant releasing his white-knuckled grip from his perch, so it was just a pathetic wag of fingers.
"What are you doing here?" Hilda demanded. Minamino ignored her as he easily dropped down a bar, swung hand-over-hand to where Shura was, and then pulled himself upright.
"Hello, sir," Shura said, sneaking one of Hideo's nachos.
Hideo kicked Shura sideways in the shin. "Hey! You can crawl down there and get your own like I did!"
"What happened?" Minamino asked.
Shura shuddered. "Roger Rabbit touched me in a bad place."
Hideo blew a raspberry, which got bits of half-chewed nachos splattered all over Shura and Minamino. With a look of disgust on his face, Shura brushed his clothes off. "It was the back of your neck, you big weenie." She swung her legs from the bars and leaned back, holding the nachos out of Shura's reach. "And then you started flinging electricity all over the place, which made things go sizzle and boom, and then the next thing I know, Hilda-san had dragged us up here to avoid being trampled by the mob of panicked tourists."
Toukan whimpered and clung harder to his bar with both arms and legs. "Can you not swing around like that, Hideo-chan?" he asked in a whisper. "You're making the ride sway."
"Bah. You need to work more on your desensitization," Hideo declared with a toss of her ponytail. She bounced on her bar a few times, which did make the Ferris wheel sway slightly. Toukan closed his eyes and groaned as the metal bar in his white-knuckled grip bent. Hilda was beginning to realize that none of the children were normal. "Besides," Hideo added with a pout, "if you'd actually let me roast a hot dog like I wanted to, I wouldn't even be up here."
"I don't trust hotdogs," Shura said. "They look suspicious."
Hideo swung her legs and leaned back to eat another nacho. "Yeah, gotta watch out for suspicious hotdogs. They have a tendency to steal people's lunch money and give geeks swirlies." She pointed. "Five hundred yen says that one will trip over the water hose in the next twenty seconds." She and Shura sealed the deal with a fistbump.
Minamino sighed and ran a hand through his rumpled red hair. His fingernails were dirty and ragged. "How many credits did Botan-san say you'd earn for this mission?" he asked Hilda with a sympathetic sideways glance.
"Fifty."
"You deserve at least a hundred."
Hilda thought she deserved all three hundred for not killing all three children herself. She just knew that the inability to prevent arson and assault to innocent civilian human cosplayers was going to be a black mark on her pristine record. Oh, the sacrifices she made for her Baby Lord Beelzebub. "One must make do with what one has."
"I'll see to it that Botan gives you a fifty-credit bonus. Hideo-chan alone is worth that. I'll also take over from here."
Hilda didn't know if she should growl in irritation or grovel in gratitude. She settled on growling because she wasn't going to hand over her charges – two of which were direct descendants of the former Three Kings of Makai – to any old gardener. Even if she suspected that drop-kicking said old gardener off the Ferris wheel wouldn't do anything more than irritate him. "I don't accept charity."
"It's not charity. I don't like being left alone to supervise those two, especially her." Minamino pointed an accusing finger at Hideo. "She's every bit her father's daughter." He carefully began to pry Toukan loose. "You can hold on to me – I promise I won't drop you."
"I will stay with them until they have been safely returned to the adults I have confirmed are their guardians."
Shura tilted back until he was vertical so he could look up at Minamino. Hilda bunched her skirts closer together so he wouldn't get a bonus glimpse of her underwear. "Hey, how come you didn't promise not to drop me last year? That was a whole cliff up, and you lied when you said don't worry, the lake below is a soft landing!"
"Actually, I said it would break your fall. I said nothing about it being soft." Minamino finally managed to free Toukan. The boy threw his arms around Minamino's neck in a stranglehold and wrapped his legs around Minamino's waist. Minamino tapped Toukan's arm as his face turned purple. "Can't breathe!"
Toukan whimpered, but eased up enough not to kill the gardener.
"Everyone down," Minamino said, carefully skirting the braces to slide down. With a sweeping green-eyed gaze towards Hilda, he added, "Stay if it suits you. I'm going to take them to the Urameshi household."
Hideo promptly scarfed down the remainder of her nachos, then bunched the greasy paper into a ball and threw it with enough pressure and velocity that it knocked a fireman over when it struck him in the back of the head. "Hah! One for me!"
Shura glared as he stood, balancing on one foot. "You cheated!"
"We never said that I couldn't use my garbage!"
Minamino sighed. Hilda studied him as she jumped from brace to bar until she was just below him. "Who are you, really?" she asked in a low voice. "And if you say you're a humble gardener, I'll stab you with my umbrella. I'm a nursemaid – I know demonic energy when I sense it."
He studied her with a blank face. Then he smiled; it was friendly, genuine, and made the hair on the back of Hilda's arms and neck stand on end. "I'm just a humble human. Been that way since the day I was born."
She tightened the grip on her umbrella and jumped to another lower bar to increase the distance between them. "So was Raizen's grandson. That means nothing." Hilda hesitated for a moment, and then asked, "Are you another Contractor?" She knew about the existence of at least three other Contractors in the human world, but nothing of their identities. Hilda knew of Urameshi by reputation, if not by name, in the demon world. The personal history of Urameshi Yuusuke was wrapped in befuddling myths, exaggerated half-lies, and unreliable third and fourth-hand accounts, but everyone knew about Raizen's grandson, the young man who easily trounced the strongest demons until reaching the finals in the last All-Makai tournament. And instead of battling his opponent, Urameshi had bailed. Hilda hadn't heard of the reasons for bailing; it was hard to believe that Raizen Toushin's grandson would bow out of a fight even against Youko Kurama.
Minamino slid down until he balanced one-legged on the bar beside her. The wind, warm and sooty, ruffled his hair. He was still smiling, although it had taken on a sheepish edge. "No, no Contract for me. I hate to blame whatever you're sensing on the indiscretion and recklessness of youth, but being around Urameshi Yuusuke during his own youth when he awakened his demonic heritage exposed me to high levels of demonic energies. Such are the consequences of being friends with S Class demons, I'm afraid."
And yet this puny human seemed confident and unafraid of having a relationship with S Class demons, to speak so casually of Urameshi Yuusuke. Hilda bit the inside of her lip as she contemplated the odds of Minamino just being oblivious… or exceedingly powerful.
She reminded herself that Fukuichi was an appallingly weak human being, and yet was so close with Oga. "Are you telling me that you somehow managed to…soak up demonic essence like a human sponge?" That might be possible if he were a certain type of empath or psychic. Certain humans with high spirit awareness developed talents that could be mistaken as demonic, especially if they had prolonged exposure. Contractors were made in similar fashion, although high spirit awareness wasn't a necessity.
Shura's amused cough interrupted Hilda's thoughts. She glanced at her other two wards – Shura had draped himself bellydown on a bar above them, his arms and legs dangling freely. He grinned when their attention turned to him. "Yes, Minamino Shuuichi-kun," he said with a purr in his voice, "tell us all about how you soaked up demonic essence, you human sponge you."
Hideo bounced past them, humming under her breath, completely undeterred by the height, and showing very little interest in the conversation.
Minamino's disarming chuckle did nothing to dissuade Hilda's suspicion as he resumed his downward climb. "Actually, a stolen Rukengai artifact was how I first met Yuusuke. He was a fifteen year old juvenile delinquent, recently resurrected by Koenma and made a spirit detective. I was a fifteen year old student, concerned only with the failing health of my mother. This stolen artifact attempted to suck all my life energy away, and the only reason it didn't succeed is because Yuusuke gave it half of his own life energy. The rest, as they say," he jumped and landed on the concrete, "is history. I feel indebted to Yuusuke, because I wouldn't be around to care for my mother, to see her health improve, if it weren't for him." He put Toukan on the ground, and Toukan immediately hugged the concrete with a rapt expression of gratitude. "This debt later bloomed into a great friendship."
"Dad's a good guy," Hideo declared absently, before attempting to dart into the crowd of firefighters.
Minamino snagged the back of Hideo's jacket and pulled her to his side. "Woe there, girl. Your mother will have my hide if I returned you to her with singed pony tails."
Hideo glared at him. "That only happened once, and I still think I could've taken Shishi."
"It's highly improbable that Shishiwakamaru would've let you beat him, no matter how sorry he was about accidentally burning your hair off."
Hilda had already made the mistake of assuming the school nurse was nothing more than a two-bit nothing, and he didn't make her sense of danger scream the same way that Minamino did. Especially when Minamino casually name-dropped S-class youkai that made even Bahamut wary.
"Old Blue Horns said we can have a rematch when I turn eighteen," Hideo declared, bouncing from foot to foot. "And I made Chu swear to train me for that match, although he probably wouldn't remember once he was sober. I'm still holding him to it, though."
Minamino pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why don't I remember any of this happening?"
"You were a bit preoccupied," Hideo said as she crouched down and poked Toukan. "Hey, are you feeling better now that you have solid footing?"
"This place really wasn't that bad," Shura said as he joined them on the ground. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked around. "Aside from the creepy pedophile furry, the wailing sirens, and the smoke, this really is a happy place. I want to come back next month."
Hideo rolled onto her back and kicked Shura in the knee. "You just made the happiest place on earth hell, you ass!" She jackknifed upright and faced him with her hands clenched. "And you stole my nachos!"
"I'll buy you more nachos," Shura said, rubbing his knee.
Hideo relaxed her hands, but red bloomed in her cheeks. "Will you also write an apology note to Roger Rabbit?"
Shura glanced over to Minamino, who was gave Shura an encouraging smile. Shura shivered. "Yes."
Hideo considered Minamino's offer for a moment, one finger pressed against her lips in thought. "I want cheesecake too – real cheesecake, like from that cute little French coffee shop where Mukuro-san got me some for Valentine's Day last year."
"French coffee shop? Do I look like I know where…" Shura risked another look at Minamino. The gardener's smile had taken on a razor-sharp edge in the firelight. "Fine, I'll get you the cheesecake too. Next week, though!"
Hideo cheered and swung her hands in the air. She looked like a firefly in the midst of the floating embers. "Yay! You've restored my happiness in Disney, Shura!"
"I think I deserve a larger bonus," Hilda grumbled.
