The next morning, Hiei was glaring at Shadow whenever he got the chance.
Shadow, of course, was being her normal overly-perky self and decided to
annoy him, which she knew was very stupid, but she also knew she was safe
as long as Kurama was around.
"Hi Hiei!" Shadow said, sitting down beside him at the breakfast table. Hiei looked annoyed. "How did you sleep?"
"Shut up," Hiei said.
"Why would I want to do that? You know me! I can't shut up! I just keep running my mouth and running my mouth until somebody either duct tapes my mouth shut, or they do some horrible, disgusting, bloody violent thing that will make me stop talking! Like ripping out my vocal chords, or cutting off my head!" Shadow said cheerfully. Hiei looked at her and raised one eyebrow.
"Was that a request?" he threatened.
"No. That was just a bit of friendly knowledge and you aren't going to try it on my because then I'll set my killer fox boy on you!" Shadow said. Luckily, Shiori wasn't in the room, so Shadow could refer to Kurama as a fox boy without worrying about confusing his mother.
"Last time I checked, Kurama wouldn't kill me," Hiei said.
"And I'm not yours," Kurama added, walking into the room.
"Hey Kurama! Did you hear all that? Oh yeah, you've got that whole freaky fox-senses thing going on..." Shadow said.
"Yes, I have the whole 'freaky fox-senses thing going on,' and with those 'freaky fox senses' I couldn't help but hear some... people down the hall in the middle of the night. What were you doing?!" Kurama said, leading them out the door.
"What were who doing?" Shadow asked innocently, taking her place between the two boys as they walked down the street.
"She picked the lock on my door and came snooping through my room in the middle of the night," Hiei said, pointing at Shadow.
"Yeah, how did you know I was in your room? I didn't make a sound," Shadow said. Hiei pointed at his forehead, where his Jagan eye made a faint purple glow for a second.
"I can keep my Jagan open while I sleep, and it still transmits what it sees, so even though I'm asleep I can still be completely observant," Hiei explained.
"Wow. That's a pretty cool trick. I want a Jagan eye," Shadow said.
"No you don't."
"Why not?"
"It's extremely painful."
"I can take it!"
"It's extremely painful, even to somebody like me, who has had every painful thing done to them, including having a hole put through my stomach, getting completely set on fire---"
"You're a fire demon, that shouldn't hurt."
"Shut up. It didn't. I also had my right arm completely paralyzed with pain, I've had broken bones, I've come so close to dying it's scary---"
"Yeah, well you can't beat me! I really did die!" somebody said from behind the three. They turned around and saw Yusuke standing a few feet behind them.
"Skipping school again, Yusuke?" Kurama asked.
"Yup!"
"That's no surprise," Hiei muttered.
"Why are you going to school, Hiei? Why don't you skip too? You can't tell me they've actually managed to train the great Hiei to do school work!!!" Yusuke said.
Hiei looked surprised, realizing that Yusuke had actually pointed out something that he hadn't really realized.
"Hiei still has to watch Shadow, and those child abuse officers, or whatever that one guy was, are still watching both of them, just to be sure they stay in school and that they whole 'adoption' thing will work," Kurama explained. "So Hiei isn't being 'trained,' if that's how you want to put it."
"And he's not all that great, either," Shadow added.
"Wait, back up," Yusuke said, stopping Hiei from ripping Shadow to shreds. "What adoption thing are you talking about?"
"I didn't tell you about that?" Kurama asked.
"About what?"
"Okay, you know about the whole Prevention of Child Abuse officer thing, because we went to Koenma about it together," Kurama said.
"Yeah."
"Well after that whole thing, I managed to convince my mother that these two wouldn't be any problem, and that if she would adopt them, I could keep them out of trouble and they wouldn't bother her, and after a lot of puppydog eyes, she gave in and adopted Shadow and Hiei. So now, they live with me. Temporarily. Until one or the other finds themselves another place to live or they get their own house," Kurama explained.
"So now you three are related?"
"Only by the law," Hiei said.
"Hiei and Kurama are brothers now. Wait'll I tell Kuwabara that. He'll freak. Hm. Maybe I'll go to school today anyway, if not only just to tell Kuwabara this whole thing... See ya!" Yusuke said, running down the street towards his school.
"Well at least we got him to go to school," Kurama muttered. He glanced at his watch. "Shoot! We're gonna be late!" All three of them took off running down the street towards their school, hoping that they wouldn't be late, because then they'd all get detention, and Hiei wouldn't put up with that, Kurama wouldn't know what to do with himself (Oh my god! Shuuichi Minamino getting detention?! AAAHHHH!!!), and Shadow... wouldn't care either way because she has no brain.
They skidded down the hall and into their homeroom just before the late bell rang.
"That was close... Stupid Yusuke," Kurama muttered, sitting down.
"Why were you so late, you three?!" the teacher asked.
"We weren't late!" Shadow protested.
"You got very, very close," the teacher replied, walking back to his desk.
"Stupid teacher," Hiei muttered under his breath.
"Yeah, no kidding... At least we weren't late. That would have sucked."
"You have no room to talk! You've never been in detention! We were in there all day yesterday!!!" Shadow said.
"I have a reputation as being a well behaved, perfect student, and going to detention would completely delete that," Kurama replied.
Shadow and Hiei stared at him like he was insane.
"What?"
"Oh, nothing," they said innocently.
After second period, Shadow nad Hiei were walking through the halls when the giant mob of preps blocked the hall again.
"Oh my god. What now, loser?" Hiei asked, crossing his arms.
"We know about your relationship with Shuuichi Minamino," the leader girl said.
Hiei stared at them, wondering what in the name of god they meant by 'relationship.'
"You better not mean what I think you might," Hiei said suddenly, remembering something he had accidentaly come across on the internet before.
"You two live in the same house," the girl said. Hiei blinked.
"No kidding? They're brothers! What do you expect?" Shadow said. "Now if you aren't going to tell us something of some importance, MOVE IT!!!"
The girls looked mad and stuck up and annoyed and everything else, all at the same time, and split up into their classes.
"What is their problem?" Hiei asked.
"Having problems with Minamino's fan club?" somebody asked, walking up to them.
"They're part of his fan club too?" Hiei asked.
"Yeah, just about all the girls in this school are. Why wouldn't they be?" the boy asked.
"Well, they seem to be out to destroy us, so if they're doing that to try to get rid of us so they'll have Shuuichi all to themselves, but if they destroy us, he will destroy them, but they can't destroy us, because---" Shadow was cut off as Hiei grabbed her and started dragging her down the hall.
"See ya later, dude," Hiei yelled, running down the hall with Shadow being half-dragged behind him, screaming like a lunatic. They got to their next class just as the bell rang, but since the teacher wasn't there they didn't get yelled at. They went straight to the back of the room and sat down beside Kurama, who hadn't been with them for the little 'you live in the same house!' incident.
Halfway through that class, the principal came into the class room that Kurama, Hiei, and Shadow were in.
"Minamino!" he said.
"Yes?" all three of them said simultaneously.
"Which two?" the principal said under his breath to somebody standing in the hall. A minute later he called out, "Shadow and Hiei Minamino, come with me."
Kurama looked at the two of them curiously. They all looked at each other for a second, confused, until the principal walked over and grabbed the two of them by their ears and dragged them out of the classroom into the hallway. There, they saw the leader girl who had been harassing them.
"This girl says you two have been harassing her... Threatening her and the like. Is that true?!" he asked, still holding them by their ears. The second Hiei heard that the girl was accusing him of harassment, he pulled out of the principal's grip and stood in front of her with his finger a centimeter from her eye.
"We did not harass you, you lousy slut! How could you say that?!" Hiei growled.
"You answered your own question Hiei. She's a slut, that's how," Shadow said under her breath. The principal slapped her in the face.
"I can understand why this girl is afraid to walk in the hallways! You two are a regular bunch of lousy worms! And kids like you shouldn't be allowed to walk in these halls!" the principal yelled.
"You're disrupting the poor children's classes, you loudmouthed baffoon," Hiei said. When the principal moved to 'punish' Hiei for that comment (aka punch him), Shadow pulled out of his grip and darted across the hallway to where Hiei was standing. That distracted the principal away from hitting Hiei, and the girl who was behind Hiei and Shadow ran around them and hid herself behind the principal.
"You two kids should be shot," the principal growled, glaring at Hiei.
"What for?! Cuz this little slut is lying?" Shadow snapped.
"I'M NOT A SLUT!!!" the girl screeched, coming out from her hiding place. Hiei glared at her and she instantly backed up into the wall and hid again.
"Coward..."
"You've caused enough trouble! I'll end your trouble right here!" the principal yelled.
"First, you're being quite loud and it's very annoying, and second, the second floor hallway of ahigh school is no place for a fight, if that's what you're going to bring this down to," Hiei said coldly.
"Isn't that abuse?" Shadow asked.
"I can do whatever I want to you and your little boyfriend," the principal said.
"Firstly, he's not my boyfriend, he's my brother. And secondly, I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to Hiei. He can't fight you! It's unfair!" Shadow said.
"Not by my rules it's not," the principal said. "I've always settled troublemakers this way."
"No, I meant that to Hiei it's unfair. He'll cream you, old man," Shadow said.
"GIRL, WOULD YOU RATHER THAT I FOUGHT YOU OR YOUR BOYFRIEND?!"
"HE'S NOT MY BOYFRIEND!!!"
"I DON'T CARE WHAT HE IS!!! WOULD YOU RATHER I FOUGHT HIM OR YOU? I DON'T LIKE TO HURT GIRLS!!!" the principal yelled.
"Oh? That's why you slapped me in the face, huh?"
"SHUT UP, BI---"
"WHY DON'T YOU SHUT UP?!" Hiei yelled. "This is getting everybody nowhere. Are you going to fight or not? Because if you do, it'll be very stupid, because first, we haven't done anything, and second, you suck. Big time. You couldn't win a fight if your opponent was a two-year-old."
"You're too arrogant for your own good. Come with me, both of you. You can come, too, if you want," the principal added, looking at the leader girl who had reported them. "I know that if somebody this horrible was about to get put in their place, I'd want to watch them too."
"I'll come," the girl said, sneering at Hiei and Shadow. Before anybody got anywhere, Kurama walked out of his classroom.
"Get lost, boy," the principal snapped.
"I'm not going anywhere," Kurama said. "What are you doing with them, may I ask?"
"I'm taking them for punishment."
"What did they do?"
"They were harassing this girl so badly that she's afraid to walk in the hallways anymore." The principal pointed to the girl, who had somehow gone from sneering, to having tears and mascara running down her face in two seconds. Kurama looked at her skeptically.
"Well, I'm sorry, but I can't let you do that," Kurama said.
"Who are you? Why do you care about these punks?"
"It's only human to care about your family," Kurama said, shrugging.
"Oh. You're Shuuichi Minamino, huh? Do these two get their bad behavior from you?" the principal asked.
Kurama's jaw dropped.
"First, that girl you have there has not been harassed in any way, emotionally or physically. You're just eager to abuse some kids, so you'll believe anything, won't you?" Kurama said.
"Let me just knock him out and get it over with," Hiei said.
"You can't knock him out! Do you know how abnormal that would be for some fourteen year old kid to knock out the principal of the school? And do you know how much this nut would hate you and how much more trouble you would get into if you knocked him out? And how about if you killed him on accident? And what if you break some of his bones? What if he had to go around in a wheel chair for months? What if he made you pay the hospital bill?" Kurama said, freaking out. "And that goes for you too, mister principal guy!"
"This is nuts," Hiei muttered. He walked back into the classroom, ignoring everybody else. Shadow and Kurama followed him.
"What was that all about?" the teacher asked.
"The principal is a bloodthirsty lunatic who needs to be destroyed," Hiei said simply.
"Oh."
After school, Hiei was in his room, plotting how to murder that girl without anybody knowing it was him when somebody knocked on his door. He ignored it, but a minute later, Kurama's voice came through the door.
"Hiei, what are you doing?"
"Nothing," Hiei answered.
"Oh good, then you can do the homework that you left lying on the table," Kurama said.
"Nuts," Hiei muttered. "No. Go away. I'm busy."
"You just said you were doing nothing."
"I changed my mind."
"Well that doesn't make any difference to me," Kurama said, pushing open the door.
"Hey!" Hiei snapped. "Don't just pick the lock and come in here! I told you to go away!"
Kurama walked over to where Hiei was sitting on his bed with his sword across his lap and threw down a huge hunk of stapled together papers and a pen. "Do your homework."
Hiei glanced at the papers and his eyes bugged out of his head.
"What is teh-et-hetra-ay-eth-yull-ammonomionium?" Hiei asked, trying to pronouce one of the words on the paper that Kurama had thrown in front of him.
"It's tetraethylammonium. I guess you could say it's a drug," Kurama said, pronouncing the word perfectly.
"Who's doing drugs? AH! Hiei's door is open!!!" Shadow said from the hallway, running into Hiei's room. "Hello guys! Who was doing drugs?"
"Nobody, you idiot."
"Now now, no need for such name calling," Shadow said. She spotted the papers on Hiei's bed and snatched them up. "What's this? Love letters?" She looked at the paper. "Teh-heh-thretchya-herda-shnerda-fergle-wha??? Anti- chlok-in-ter-state? Teh-heh-trod-dot-toxin? What the heck is this?!"
"My homework," Hiei said. "And you pronounced those even worse than I did."
"They're pronounced tetraethylammonium, anitcholinesterase, and tetrodotoxin."
"Whatever... Tehhetromonomonomium?" Shadow said, trying to pronounce that word again.
"Anyway, all you have to do is define them. Have fun. Come on, Shadow," Kurama said. Hiei watched Kurama walk out into the hallway, dragging Shadow by her ponytail.
"Wait a second!" Hiei ran out into the hallway, grabbed Kurama's wrist, pulled his other hand off Shadow's ponytail, and dragged Kurama back into his room.
"What are you doing?" Shadow asked.
"I need a dictionary," Hiei replied.
About twenty minutes later, Kurama came back downstairs to where Shadow was sitting in the living room, watching television.
"Hello, Dictionary!" Shadow said cheerfully when she saw Kurama.
"Is there anything good on TV?" Kurama asked, ignoring Shadow's joke.
"No, not really... There's some show on about cutting apart dead people..." Shadow said absentmindedly.
"It's called an autopesy, not cutting apart dead people. Cutting apart dead people is what Hiei does," Kurama said. Hiei was just walking down the stairs as Kurama said that and he got a surprised look on his face.
"I don't cut apart dead people! I cut apart living people to make them dead. I don't cut them apart once they already are," Hiei said. Luckily, Shiori wasn't home, so she couldn't hear this 'interesting discussion' the three were having.
"Whatever," Kurama said.
"Since when did you watch TV, brainiac?" Shadow asked.
"Good point. Hiei, you wanna spar?"
"Spar? With you?"
"Yes, duh! You think I would ask you to spar with Shadow?"
"I should hope you wouldn't! She'd be slaughtered..."
"Hey!" Shadow yelped.
"The point of a spar isn't to kill, it's to perfect your techniques and keep in shape. So she wouldn't get slaughtered..."
"Oh, that's good," Shadow said. "But anywho, why don't you two go spar and I'll just watch."
"Okay," the two guys said at the same time as they headed outside. Shadow followed them as they jogged down the street toward the forest where they had decided to spar.
Two hours later, Kurama and Hiei were limping up the sidewalk, covered in bruises and blood. Kurama was limping badly enough that he had to have Shadow support him. As they walked toward Kurama's house, they didn't notice that Shiori's car was there, so they just hobbled in the front door as they were.
Shiori heard the door open and walked in to see who it was.
"Shuuichi! Hiei! Shadow! What happened to you?!" she cried. Shadow had a bit of blood smeared on her here and there, but it was mostly Hiei's because she had to wrestle him to the ground to check on his wounds and bandage some of them. Some of it was Kurama's from having him lean on her all the way home.
"Mother?!" Kurama said, surprised.
"What happened to you three?" Shiori asked again.
"Two," Shadow corrected. "This is Hiei's blood."
"Oh, dear," Shiori muttered, looking back and forth between the two boys. "What happened?"
"We got beat up," Kurama said. Hiei looked at him in a funny way, but he decided that in a way, they did get beat up.
"By who?"
'We mauled each other,' Hiei said in his mind, hoping Kurama wouldn't say it out loud.
"Some kids," Kurama said, shrugging.
"Why didn't Shadow get hurt?"
"Er..."
"They had an honor code," Shadow said to save Kurama's skin.
"Oh dear. Well, can I do anything?" Shiori asked.
"No, mother, we'll be okay," Kurama said. "We just need to get cleaned up."
"You know where the bandages are, Shuuichi. Call me up if you need anything..." Shiori said, looking worried. She waited while the boys limped up the stairs with Shadow right behind them.
Once upstairs, Hiei stared at Kurama.
"We got beat up by some kids?" he said uncertainly.
"Yes! She doesn't know I fight like that. She doesn't know you do either. She wouldn't understand if I said we were sparring," Kurama said, limping into the bathroom where he found a couple boxes of bandages. He threw one to Hiei, got some antibacterial and other wound-cleaning stuff, and they split off into their seperate rooms to nurse their wounds. Shadow hung around outside Kurama's door for a while, then went to Hiei's door. She heard him muttering under his breath, something about 'beat up by some stupid kids... Me? Stupid fox...'
"Hiei, stop muttering!" Shadow said through the door.
"Shadow! Don't hang around outside my door. Get lost!" Hiei said back.
Shadow made some strange, "Nyadda nyadda whatever," noise or something, before she headed to the bathroom to wash the two boys' blood off her.
"Hi Hiei!" Shadow said, sitting down beside him at the breakfast table. Hiei looked annoyed. "How did you sleep?"
"Shut up," Hiei said.
"Why would I want to do that? You know me! I can't shut up! I just keep running my mouth and running my mouth until somebody either duct tapes my mouth shut, or they do some horrible, disgusting, bloody violent thing that will make me stop talking! Like ripping out my vocal chords, or cutting off my head!" Shadow said cheerfully. Hiei looked at her and raised one eyebrow.
"Was that a request?" he threatened.
"No. That was just a bit of friendly knowledge and you aren't going to try it on my because then I'll set my killer fox boy on you!" Shadow said. Luckily, Shiori wasn't in the room, so Shadow could refer to Kurama as a fox boy without worrying about confusing his mother.
"Last time I checked, Kurama wouldn't kill me," Hiei said.
"And I'm not yours," Kurama added, walking into the room.
"Hey Kurama! Did you hear all that? Oh yeah, you've got that whole freaky fox-senses thing going on..." Shadow said.
"Yes, I have the whole 'freaky fox-senses thing going on,' and with those 'freaky fox senses' I couldn't help but hear some... people down the hall in the middle of the night. What were you doing?!" Kurama said, leading them out the door.
"What were who doing?" Shadow asked innocently, taking her place between the two boys as they walked down the street.
"She picked the lock on my door and came snooping through my room in the middle of the night," Hiei said, pointing at Shadow.
"Yeah, how did you know I was in your room? I didn't make a sound," Shadow said. Hiei pointed at his forehead, where his Jagan eye made a faint purple glow for a second.
"I can keep my Jagan open while I sleep, and it still transmits what it sees, so even though I'm asleep I can still be completely observant," Hiei explained.
"Wow. That's a pretty cool trick. I want a Jagan eye," Shadow said.
"No you don't."
"Why not?"
"It's extremely painful."
"I can take it!"
"It's extremely painful, even to somebody like me, who has had every painful thing done to them, including having a hole put through my stomach, getting completely set on fire---"
"You're a fire demon, that shouldn't hurt."
"Shut up. It didn't. I also had my right arm completely paralyzed with pain, I've had broken bones, I've come so close to dying it's scary---"
"Yeah, well you can't beat me! I really did die!" somebody said from behind the three. They turned around and saw Yusuke standing a few feet behind them.
"Skipping school again, Yusuke?" Kurama asked.
"Yup!"
"That's no surprise," Hiei muttered.
"Why are you going to school, Hiei? Why don't you skip too? You can't tell me they've actually managed to train the great Hiei to do school work!!!" Yusuke said.
Hiei looked surprised, realizing that Yusuke had actually pointed out something that he hadn't really realized.
"Hiei still has to watch Shadow, and those child abuse officers, or whatever that one guy was, are still watching both of them, just to be sure they stay in school and that they whole 'adoption' thing will work," Kurama explained. "So Hiei isn't being 'trained,' if that's how you want to put it."
"And he's not all that great, either," Shadow added.
"Wait, back up," Yusuke said, stopping Hiei from ripping Shadow to shreds. "What adoption thing are you talking about?"
"I didn't tell you about that?" Kurama asked.
"About what?"
"Okay, you know about the whole Prevention of Child Abuse officer thing, because we went to Koenma about it together," Kurama said.
"Yeah."
"Well after that whole thing, I managed to convince my mother that these two wouldn't be any problem, and that if she would adopt them, I could keep them out of trouble and they wouldn't bother her, and after a lot of puppydog eyes, she gave in and adopted Shadow and Hiei. So now, they live with me. Temporarily. Until one or the other finds themselves another place to live or they get their own house," Kurama explained.
"So now you three are related?"
"Only by the law," Hiei said.
"Hiei and Kurama are brothers now. Wait'll I tell Kuwabara that. He'll freak. Hm. Maybe I'll go to school today anyway, if not only just to tell Kuwabara this whole thing... See ya!" Yusuke said, running down the street towards his school.
"Well at least we got him to go to school," Kurama muttered. He glanced at his watch. "Shoot! We're gonna be late!" All three of them took off running down the street towards their school, hoping that they wouldn't be late, because then they'd all get detention, and Hiei wouldn't put up with that, Kurama wouldn't know what to do with himself (Oh my god! Shuuichi Minamino getting detention?! AAAHHHH!!!), and Shadow... wouldn't care either way because she has no brain.
They skidded down the hall and into their homeroom just before the late bell rang.
"That was close... Stupid Yusuke," Kurama muttered, sitting down.
"Why were you so late, you three?!" the teacher asked.
"We weren't late!" Shadow protested.
"You got very, very close," the teacher replied, walking back to his desk.
"Stupid teacher," Hiei muttered under his breath.
"Yeah, no kidding... At least we weren't late. That would have sucked."
"You have no room to talk! You've never been in detention! We were in there all day yesterday!!!" Shadow said.
"I have a reputation as being a well behaved, perfect student, and going to detention would completely delete that," Kurama replied.
Shadow and Hiei stared at him like he was insane.
"What?"
"Oh, nothing," they said innocently.
After second period, Shadow nad Hiei were walking through the halls when the giant mob of preps blocked the hall again.
"Oh my god. What now, loser?" Hiei asked, crossing his arms.
"We know about your relationship with Shuuichi Minamino," the leader girl said.
Hiei stared at them, wondering what in the name of god they meant by 'relationship.'
"You better not mean what I think you might," Hiei said suddenly, remembering something he had accidentaly come across on the internet before.
"You two live in the same house," the girl said. Hiei blinked.
"No kidding? They're brothers! What do you expect?" Shadow said. "Now if you aren't going to tell us something of some importance, MOVE IT!!!"
The girls looked mad and stuck up and annoyed and everything else, all at the same time, and split up into their classes.
"What is their problem?" Hiei asked.
"Having problems with Minamino's fan club?" somebody asked, walking up to them.
"They're part of his fan club too?" Hiei asked.
"Yeah, just about all the girls in this school are. Why wouldn't they be?" the boy asked.
"Well, they seem to be out to destroy us, so if they're doing that to try to get rid of us so they'll have Shuuichi all to themselves, but if they destroy us, he will destroy them, but they can't destroy us, because---" Shadow was cut off as Hiei grabbed her and started dragging her down the hall.
"See ya later, dude," Hiei yelled, running down the hall with Shadow being half-dragged behind him, screaming like a lunatic. They got to their next class just as the bell rang, but since the teacher wasn't there they didn't get yelled at. They went straight to the back of the room and sat down beside Kurama, who hadn't been with them for the little 'you live in the same house!' incident.
Halfway through that class, the principal came into the class room that Kurama, Hiei, and Shadow were in.
"Minamino!" he said.
"Yes?" all three of them said simultaneously.
"Which two?" the principal said under his breath to somebody standing in the hall. A minute later he called out, "Shadow and Hiei Minamino, come with me."
Kurama looked at the two of them curiously. They all looked at each other for a second, confused, until the principal walked over and grabbed the two of them by their ears and dragged them out of the classroom into the hallway. There, they saw the leader girl who had been harassing them.
"This girl says you two have been harassing her... Threatening her and the like. Is that true?!" he asked, still holding them by their ears. The second Hiei heard that the girl was accusing him of harassment, he pulled out of the principal's grip and stood in front of her with his finger a centimeter from her eye.
"We did not harass you, you lousy slut! How could you say that?!" Hiei growled.
"You answered your own question Hiei. She's a slut, that's how," Shadow said under her breath. The principal slapped her in the face.
"I can understand why this girl is afraid to walk in the hallways! You two are a regular bunch of lousy worms! And kids like you shouldn't be allowed to walk in these halls!" the principal yelled.
"You're disrupting the poor children's classes, you loudmouthed baffoon," Hiei said. When the principal moved to 'punish' Hiei for that comment (aka punch him), Shadow pulled out of his grip and darted across the hallway to where Hiei was standing. That distracted the principal away from hitting Hiei, and the girl who was behind Hiei and Shadow ran around them and hid herself behind the principal.
"You two kids should be shot," the principal growled, glaring at Hiei.
"What for?! Cuz this little slut is lying?" Shadow snapped.
"I'M NOT A SLUT!!!" the girl screeched, coming out from her hiding place. Hiei glared at her and she instantly backed up into the wall and hid again.
"Coward..."
"You've caused enough trouble! I'll end your trouble right here!" the principal yelled.
"First, you're being quite loud and it's very annoying, and second, the second floor hallway of ahigh school is no place for a fight, if that's what you're going to bring this down to," Hiei said coldly.
"Isn't that abuse?" Shadow asked.
"I can do whatever I want to you and your little boyfriend," the principal said.
"Firstly, he's not my boyfriend, he's my brother. And secondly, I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to Hiei. He can't fight you! It's unfair!" Shadow said.
"Not by my rules it's not," the principal said. "I've always settled troublemakers this way."
"No, I meant that to Hiei it's unfair. He'll cream you, old man," Shadow said.
"GIRL, WOULD YOU RATHER THAT I FOUGHT YOU OR YOUR BOYFRIEND?!"
"HE'S NOT MY BOYFRIEND!!!"
"I DON'T CARE WHAT HE IS!!! WOULD YOU RATHER I FOUGHT HIM OR YOU? I DON'T LIKE TO HURT GIRLS!!!" the principal yelled.
"Oh? That's why you slapped me in the face, huh?"
"SHUT UP, BI---"
"WHY DON'T YOU SHUT UP?!" Hiei yelled. "This is getting everybody nowhere. Are you going to fight or not? Because if you do, it'll be very stupid, because first, we haven't done anything, and second, you suck. Big time. You couldn't win a fight if your opponent was a two-year-old."
"You're too arrogant for your own good. Come with me, both of you. You can come, too, if you want," the principal added, looking at the leader girl who had reported them. "I know that if somebody this horrible was about to get put in their place, I'd want to watch them too."
"I'll come," the girl said, sneering at Hiei and Shadow. Before anybody got anywhere, Kurama walked out of his classroom.
"Get lost, boy," the principal snapped.
"I'm not going anywhere," Kurama said. "What are you doing with them, may I ask?"
"I'm taking them for punishment."
"What did they do?"
"They were harassing this girl so badly that she's afraid to walk in the hallways anymore." The principal pointed to the girl, who had somehow gone from sneering, to having tears and mascara running down her face in two seconds. Kurama looked at her skeptically.
"Well, I'm sorry, but I can't let you do that," Kurama said.
"Who are you? Why do you care about these punks?"
"It's only human to care about your family," Kurama said, shrugging.
"Oh. You're Shuuichi Minamino, huh? Do these two get their bad behavior from you?" the principal asked.
Kurama's jaw dropped.
"First, that girl you have there has not been harassed in any way, emotionally or physically. You're just eager to abuse some kids, so you'll believe anything, won't you?" Kurama said.
"Let me just knock him out and get it over with," Hiei said.
"You can't knock him out! Do you know how abnormal that would be for some fourteen year old kid to knock out the principal of the school? And do you know how much this nut would hate you and how much more trouble you would get into if you knocked him out? And how about if you killed him on accident? And what if you break some of his bones? What if he had to go around in a wheel chair for months? What if he made you pay the hospital bill?" Kurama said, freaking out. "And that goes for you too, mister principal guy!"
"This is nuts," Hiei muttered. He walked back into the classroom, ignoring everybody else. Shadow and Kurama followed him.
"What was that all about?" the teacher asked.
"The principal is a bloodthirsty lunatic who needs to be destroyed," Hiei said simply.
"Oh."
After school, Hiei was in his room, plotting how to murder that girl without anybody knowing it was him when somebody knocked on his door. He ignored it, but a minute later, Kurama's voice came through the door.
"Hiei, what are you doing?"
"Nothing," Hiei answered.
"Oh good, then you can do the homework that you left lying on the table," Kurama said.
"Nuts," Hiei muttered. "No. Go away. I'm busy."
"You just said you were doing nothing."
"I changed my mind."
"Well that doesn't make any difference to me," Kurama said, pushing open the door.
"Hey!" Hiei snapped. "Don't just pick the lock and come in here! I told you to go away!"
Kurama walked over to where Hiei was sitting on his bed with his sword across his lap and threw down a huge hunk of stapled together papers and a pen. "Do your homework."
Hiei glanced at the papers and his eyes bugged out of his head.
"What is teh-et-hetra-ay-eth-yull-ammonomionium?" Hiei asked, trying to pronouce one of the words on the paper that Kurama had thrown in front of him.
"It's tetraethylammonium. I guess you could say it's a drug," Kurama said, pronouncing the word perfectly.
"Who's doing drugs? AH! Hiei's door is open!!!" Shadow said from the hallway, running into Hiei's room. "Hello guys! Who was doing drugs?"
"Nobody, you idiot."
"Now now, no need for such name calling," Shadow said. She spotted the papers on Hiei's bed and snatched them up. "What's this? Love letters?" She looked at the paper. "Teh-heh-thretchya-herda-shnerda-fergle-wha??? Anti- chlok-in-ter-state? Teh-heh-trod-dot-toxin? What the heck is this?!"
"My homework," Hiei said. "And you pronounced those even worse than I did."
"They're pronounced tetraethylammonium, anitcholinesterase, and tetrodotoxin."
"Whatever... Tehhetromonomonomium?" Shadow said, trying to pronounce that word again.
"Anyway, all you have to do is define them. Have fun. Come on, Shadow," Kurama said. Hiei watched Kurama walk out into the hallway, dragging Shadow by her ponytail.
"Wait a second!" Hiei ran out into the hallway, grabbed Kurama's wrist, pulled his other hand off Shadow's ponytail, and dragged Kurama back into his room.
"What are you doing?" Shadow asked.
"I need a dictionary," Hiei replied.
About twenty minutes later, Kurama came back downstairs to where Shadow was sitting in the living room, watching television.
"Hello, Dictionary!" Shadow said cheerfully when she saw Kurama.
"Is there anything good on TV?" Kurama asked, ignoring Shadow's joke.
"No, not really... There's some show on about cutting apart dead people..." Shadow said absentmindedly.
"It's called an autopesy, not cutting apart dead people. Cutting apart dead people is what Hiei does," Kurama said. Hiei was just walking down the stairs as Kurama said that and he got a surprised look on his face.
"I don't cut apart dead people! I cut apart living people to make them dead. I don't cut them apart once they already are," Hiei said. Luckily, Shiori wasn't home, so she couldn't hear this 'interesting discussion' the three were having.
"Whatever," Kurama said.
"Since when did you watch TV, brainiac?" Shadow asked.
"Good point. Hiei, you wanna spar?"
"Spar? With you?"
"Yes, duh! You think I would ask you to spar with Shadow?"
"I should hope you wouldn't! She'd be slaughtered..."
"Hey!" Shadow yelped.
"The point of a spar isn't to kill, it's to perfect your techniques and keep in shape. So she wouldn't get slaughtered..."
"Oh, that's good," Shadow said. "But anywho, why don't you two go spar and I'll just watch."
"Okay," the two guys said at the same time as they headed outside. Shadow followed them as they jogged down the street toward the forest where they had decided to spar.
Two hours later, Kurama and Hiei were limping up the sidewalk, covered in bruises and blood. Kurama was limping badly enough that he had to have Shadow support him. As they walked toward Kurama's house, they didn't notice that Shiori's car was there, so they just hobbled in the front door as they were.
Shiori heard the door open and walked in to see who it was.
"Shuuichi! Hiei! Shadow! What happened to you?!" she cried. Shadow had a bit of blood smeared on her here and there, but it was mostly Hiei's because she had to wrestle him to the ground to check on his wounds and bandage some of them. Some of it was Kurama's from having him lean on her all the way home.
"Mother?!" Kurama said, surprised.
"What happened to you three?" Shiori asked again.
"Two," Shadow corrected. "This is Hiei's blood."
"Oh, dear," Shiori muttered, looking back and forth between the two boys. "What happened?"
"We got beat up," Kurama said. Hiei looked at him in a funny way, but he decided that in a way, they did get beat up.
"By who?"
'We mauled each other,' Hiei said in his mind, hoping Kurama wouldn't say it out loud.
"Some kids," Kurama said, shrugging.
"Why didn't Shadow get hurt?"
"Er..."
"They had an honor code," Shadow said to save Kurama's skin.
"Oh dear. Well, can I do anything?" Shiori asked.
"No, mother, we'll be okay," Kurama said. "We just need to get cleaned up."
"You know where the bandages are, Shuuichi. Call me up if you need anything..." Shiori said, looking worried. She waited while the boys limped up the stairs with Shadow right behind them.
Once upstairs, Hiei stared at Kurama.
"We got beat up by some kids?" he said uncertainly.
"Yes! She doesn't know I fight like that. She doesn't know you do either. She wouldn't understand if I said we were sparring," Kurama said, limping into the bathroom where he found a couple boxes of bandages. He threw one to Hiei, got some antibacterial and other wound-cleaning stuff, and they split off into their seperate rooms to nurse their wounds. Shadow hung around outside Kurama's door for a while, then went to Hiei's door. She heard him muttering under his breath, something about 'beat up by some stupid kids... Me? Stupid fox...'
"Hiei, stop muttering!" Shadow said through the door.
"Shadow! Don't hang around outside my door. Get lost!" Hiei said back.
Shadow made some strange, "Nyadda nyadda whatever," noise or something, before she headed to the bathroom to wash the two boys' blood off her.
