Hiei never expected working with Lord Mukuro to be a piece of cake, but from the moment he got there, he knew it was going to be even worse than he thought.
For one thing, it had never been quite clear what Mukuro actually wanted from him. At first he thought he might be enlisting in his demon army, but instead, he'd been thrown in the caverns of Mukuro's stronghold and, for the past week, had been made to fight off hundreds of A-class demons, whom Mukuro apparently considered to be completely dispensable. He still remembered when he first arrived at the compound. He'd woken up a little nauseous, but it faded with his breakfast, and he decided it was just nerves. Besides, from the second he and Mukuro met, he decided he was probably right to be at least a little wary.
"So you're Hiei." Mukuro looked a lot like he had in the message Hiei had received from him. But he was surprised to see that Mukuro was only a few inches taller than he was, and while this King had a reputation for being the most chaotic and ruthless of them all, somehow Hiei didn't feel afraid. The dank, gloomy ambience of the place seemed to almost soothe him.
"Yes," said Hiei shortly.
"All right then. Come along."
Hiei didn't know if Mukuro was giving him a tour or what, but something told him he should just follow. His nausea was back, but he figured it was just the rotting corpses that they passed every so often. If death was a place, Hiei decided, this is what it would look like.
"I think I've got the run of this place now," he said, trying to make his voice as disparaging as possible. "You can cut the tour short."
"Who said anything about a tour?" Mukuro opened the door to a particularly dank, depressing room, and shoved Hiei inside. "Fresh meat, everyone!"
Fresh meat? As Lord Mukuro slammed the door behind him, Hiei turned to see at least a hundred demons standing there waiting for him. Yikes. This King was not messing around.
It had been easy at first to kill all those demons before they killed him. But the murder attempts never stopped. Hiei didn't get to sleep for more than ten minutes at a time, and while none of Mukuro's demons had managed to kill him yet, he usually didn't make it out unscathed. He'd been given a bucket to do his business (which one of the demons living in his room had the unfortunate task of cleaning out every so often), and someone pushed something fairly edible into the room every couple of days. But he was not allowed to leave.
Lord Mukuro, apparently, was doing the best he could to have the person he'd summoned killed.
By the time his first week was up, Hiei didn't know how much more of this he could take. He was filthy, sleep-deprived, sore, bloody, and sick. When he did get a few moments of sleep before being attacked yet again, he had weird dreams, dreams about his past, mostly. By now, he thought he knew what Mukuro's game was: either get stronger and keep killing, or die.
Hiei tried to imagine how it would go if he went back up and told Mukuro he was sick. How the ruthless demon would laugh in his face. How he'd get thrown back down here, left yet again to defend himself from constant attack amidst putrid squalor. He knew he didn't have to worry about Mukuro killing him on the spot, because clearly he wasn't important enough to be killed by the King himself. It was a very humbling experience, to say the least.
What Hiei didn't get was why this was taking such a toll on him. Sure, it was rough, but it should have taken a lot longer than a week to wear him out like this. He was weaker than he thought if only seven days in conditions like this were all it took to wear him down. On the morning of May 20, he woke up with the horrible urge to vomit. He was still on all fours, puking up whatever garbage he'd been given to eat the day before, when another one of the demons came flying towards him. He stuck out a fist to knock him away, but he had bigger problems. He didn't know why he was throwing up.
"Is the food really that bad?"
It was so much work for Hiei to even turn his head to look at the unfamiliar demon standing in the doorway. "Who the hell are you?"
"My name is Kirin," he said. "Lord Mukuro's second-in-command. I have been sent to check on your progress."
"If Mukuro wants to see how I'm doing, he should come down to this shithole and see for himself," Hiei snapped.
"Lord Mukuro has better things to do than keep track of the likes of you," said Kirin scornfully. "But it appears you are not up to the task. I'll make sure to have someone dispose of your body once one of these nothings manages to kill you."
"Get back here!" Hiei shouted, but as the door slammed shut, he couldn't help but wonder if this Kirin had a point. Maybe he really wasn't "up to the task" of working for Mukuro. He figured this was how Mukuro made sure his new recruits were worthy of serving him, but he felt horrible that he couldn't seem to pass the test. It had only been a week, but he really did feel like he was going to die. Was it the test, he wondered, or was it something in the food? His body was showing the typical signs of trying to rid itself of a toxin—in a phrase, he was sick at both ends, and the place smelled awful.
That evening, when he was trying to get some sleep, he overheard a small group of demons talking.
"This place is disgusting," one of them observed.
"Yeah," another agreed. "I don't know what's worse, the decaying corpses or his illness."
"Why can't Lord Mukuro send someone to clean up?"
"Careful, or you'll be the one who has to empty the bucket tomorrow."
"What do you suppose is wrong with him?"
"I don't know…but he smells funny."
"Of course he smells funny, you cretin, he's as sick as a dog."
"No, no, I mean…" The demon lowered his voice to a whisper, and Hiei knew all of the demons were looking at him, even though he could no longer hear what the speaker was saying. He opened his eyes and watched them warily.
"Nobody else smells it," said another demon, and the others nodded. "How do we know you didn't make it up?"
"Why would I make something like that up?" he said back. "He's probably still in the stage where it's undetectable to most. Besides, most of the lowlives around here would never be able to recognize the smell no matter how obvious it was. But I've always had a strong nose, and I'm telling you, it's true."
More whispering. Hiei felt sicker than ever, and desperately hoped his meal would stay where it was.
"Do you think Lord Mukuro knows?" one of them said finally.
"Of course not," the demon answered. "He'd never have taken him on if he knew. And unless he recognizes the smell like I did, which is unlikely, he won't know for at least a few more months."
"I don't think even he knows," said a third demon, gesturing to Hiei. "If he did, he wouldn't have taken Lord Mukuro up on his offer in the first place."
"Can you stupid goons shut up?" Hiei snapped, and the group looked startled. "Your gossip is even more annoying than your pathetic murder attempts! Either attack me already or let me sleep."
"Ha! That proves it," the biggest demon said confidently. "You have no idea! Wow, I knew you were weak, but I didn't know you were stupid, too! Just had to have one last night with your boyfriend, did you?"
"I don't have a boyfriend," said Hiei, confused.
"Who did it, then, you little whore?" one of them taunted. "Or do you not even know that?"
"What are you talking about?" Hiei demanded. "Who did what?"
"Does it really matter if we tell him?" the demon said, grinning nastily at his friends. "All it means is that we get to take two lives today, not one."
"Sounds good to me," said another demon, his voice deadly low. "Let's get him."
To make a long story short, by the time that group of gossipy demons was dead, Hiei was still alive, but in very poor shape. He was already throwing up again, followed by the need to pee, which was even more annoying because his bladder never felt empty these days. Finally, he fell back against a slimy post, wondering what they had been talking about. Two lives? Boyfriend? And why had they called him a whore? He'd only had sex once, and he had been trying not to think about it since the day it happened.
By the next morning, Hiei couldn't keep anything down at all. He was certain he was going to die. It was ironic, really. So far he'd been able to fight off every single demon that wanted to murder him, but he was going to die of illness instead. Who knew what could be in the food, or what sort of diseases were running rampant in a place like this.
Days blended in with nights. Hiei never saw sunlight. As a matter of fact, he didn't even know how he was still alive. Mukuro's demons had stopped fighting him, probably for fear of his disease. That was smart, he thought, because he knew he was close to death. He couldn't keep anything inside him, and he could barely move. His whole body was so skinny; he'd probably lost at least twenty pounds here. This room, now Hiei's whole world, was dark and blurry as he lay on the dirty floor, his eyelids beginning to close on their own. They felt as heavy as lead, his eyes itching with exhaustion. This was it. He was finally falling into a deep sleep, and he wouldn't wake up. He'd made peace with it. He wasn't strong enough to serve Lord Mukuro.
Hiei felt a woozy smile spreading across his face. If this was dying, it wasn't so bad.
Just before his eyes closed completely, he felt someone's hand grabbing his shirt, and all of a sudden, he was in the air, someone holding him up. He couldn't really see, but he thought he recognized the voice that spoke.
"Disgusting." It was Kirin. "Disease-ridden little vermin. You're leaving."
"Just let me die," Hiei mumbled.
"Not in here, you won't." Kirin flung Hiei over his shoulder as easily as he would a backpack and carried him to the entrance of Mukuro's stronghold, after which Hiei was flung unceremoniously onto the hard ground.
"Kirin!" Hiei flinched as another familiar voice—one he hadn't heard in over a week—snapped through the air. "What are you doing?"
"I am disposing of this weakling, my Lord."
"He's not dead yet."
"But he will be in a matter of hours, if not minutes." Kirin still sounded disgusted. "My Lord, he carries disease. We can't have him in your fortress. Your disposable demons aren't even trying to kill him anymore. No one will go near him."
"Hmm." Footsteps. Mukuro was approaching. Hiei could hear him, even flat on his stomach without enough energy to keep his eyes open. "Kirin, you go ahead and tell them that if they're so afraid of getting sick, they can clean the place up themselves. If they aren't trying to kill him, I'll never know if he's strong enough."
"S-Strong enough for what?" said Hiei, his voice raspy. It was difficult to speak when he was so dizzy. Mukuro, of course, ignored him.
"It will be my pleasure, my Lord," said Kirin, and Hiei could hear him leaving.
"I usually don't give second chances," Mukuro muttered as he threw Hiei over his shoulder the same way Kirin had. "But I'm not willing to give up on you just yet. Come on…"
And that was the last thing Hiei heard before he passed out.