Whee, I survived finals! Granted, I haven't had the guts to look at my grades yet, but hey, writing fics is more important, right? I'm afraid that my updates after this one are going to be pretty non-existent for a while, since I'm headed off to A-kon next week *bounce*, and almost as soon as I get back, I'm getting dragged, not entirely unwillingly, overseas to visit family and see the Lock Ness monster ^_~. I'll have plenty of time to write on the plane though, so hopefully I'll have a few chapters when I get back.
Alastair – Be my muse. Please. I have a free slot and the pay's good. (B0b: What pay? … and what free slot?) *shoves B0b into closet* Ok, so the pay is really only the occasional virtual ice cream sundae. But … but … (B0b: *sticks head out of closet* You can't think of a good reason, can you?) Damn.
Disclaimer: I have nothing against soybeans, really. I just don't think that they should masquerade as real food. (Particularly frozen food, because thawed soybean food is really, really nasty, as in not fit for garbage disposal consumption.)
Now that my ass is covered and the health freaks won't attempt to murder me in a soybean rights protest, on with the fic.
Chapter 2: Revenge
Someone was going to pay for this.
Hiei mentally ticked off the list of culprits in his mind as he was dragged down the street to Keiko only knows where.
Kurama. No. The only way the he could be farther from this whole thing was to be in Makai.
Kuwabara. Tempting, but no. The idiot didn't have the brains to think something like this up.
Yusuke. Possible. If he had actually been in class for once while they had been paired up for this assignment, then he probably would have been the one subjected to this.
Koenma. Another tempting one. The brat had probably known that something like this would happen. And he was pretty sure that Koenma had been the one to put him in Keiko's class for this mission.
Keiko. He lingered on this one the longest. She really hadn't wanted to be paired up with him, and she was too honest to cheat on an assignment…
And since when had he started to make excuses for pretty – if rather annoying – women?
Yup. It was all Keiko's fault.
And he was going to make her pay if it was the last thing he did.
In the meantime, however, he would settle for finding out where they were headed, and possibly prying her hand off of his wrist.
"Oi, wench," he began, intending to be perfectly reasonable.
But no. The woman had to completely ignore him, unless you counted the tightening of her grip and the sharp little fingernails that dug into that tender spot on the inside of his wrist.
What was her problem? He called women 'wench' all the time, and they never got mad at him. Then again, those women were prostitutes in Makai.
Hmm, prostitutes. Note to self: find cute whore as soon as possible and stop looking at Keiko's ass.
Well, ok. But still, it wasn't like it was an insult… Ok, so it was an insult.
Damn.
Hiei sighed. He really hated talking himself into a corner like this. One day, he was going to figure out how he did that and stop it once and for all.
But back to his problem. Now that he had successfully decided that calling Keiko 'wench' was a bad idea, he had to find something to call her. Not by her name, naturally, since that would be conceding defeat. So what then?
Hiei's gaze trailed from the delicate hand wrapped not so delicately around his wrist, up her slender arm, past her lips (and what cute pouty lips they were), to the determined look in her eyes.
And Hiei decided that it was time for plan B.
"Where are we going?" he asked innocently. Or, as innocently as a Jaganshi fire demon could manage. In other words, he growled.
Keiko glared at him without releasing his wrist, not intimidated in the least (what a surprise!). "We're here."
The fire demon looked up at the storefront of the huge supermarket that Keiko had brought (read: dragged) him to. At his confused (blank) look, the woman added. "It's one of our assignments. We have to buy a week's worth of nutritional food for our 'family' on a budget of 15,000 yen."
"You do know that this isn't due for another four weeks, right?" Hiei asked just to make sure.
"The sooner we get this over with the better."
She did have a point there.
Hiei sighed, giving into the inevitable. There really was no way he was going to get out of this.
So … what the hell. If you beat 'em, join 'em. If he was destined to suffer this humiliation, then he might as well have as much fun as possible.
"Um, Hiei, why are you grinning at me like that?"
The fire demon did his best to wipe the rather disturbing smile from his face before he replied. "No reason, koishii." He slipped an arm around the already startled Keiko's waist and led her through the sliding doors into the supermarket.
Oh yes, he thought as he looked down at Keiko's beat red face. This was going to be fun.
Ok, so maybe he exaggerated a little. A lot. Ten minutes later, Hiei was thoroughly bored. He had already dragged their 'son' out of Keiko's bag and convinced (ok, conned) her into carrying it around while they mock shopped. Unfortunately for the fire demon, once Keiko immersed herself in an assignment, she lost the ability to be embarrassed, or get angry, or exhibit any more emotion than a stoned frog for that matter.
Suddenly, something occurred to him. Quite forcefully.
"Oww," Hiei commented intelligently as he picked himself up off the floor where he'd been knocked over by a little human brat on the rampage. Keiko didn't look up from her study of the nutritional contents of unidentifiable soybean product that was attempting (and failing) to do an impression of pizza.
Glad that she was distracted, Hiei prepared to pound said little brat into oblivion. At least until he saw what the kid was holding, a huge vat of …
SWEET SNOW!!!
Keiko suddenly found herself experiencing a strange case of horizontal vertigo (.) as Hiei grabbed her wrist and set off at top speed through the store in search of the ice cream. Poor (ha!) Keiko could do nothing but get dragged through the store, followed by the stares of the other shoppers as the fire demon continued his frantic search.
It ended quite abruptly as Hiei and Keiko found out first hand that tile floors didn't not provide much fiction when attempting to stop. Hiei went face first into a bucket of chocolate, much to his delight. Keiko was not so fortunate.
One minute, Hiei was drowning – quite happily, thank you – in sweet snow. The next, the fire demon was beginning to be worried that the ice cream had somehow damaged his vision (it wouldn't do that to him!), for all he saw was red. Backing up minutely, he realized that the red was actually Keiko's face, flushed with fury.
Some distant corner of his brain was sounding the alarm with all its might, attempting to warn him to watch out for the very pissed off woman in front of him, but …
The sweet snow called. And who was he, lowly Hiei, to deny it.
Keiko seemed to have picked up on the fire demon's fixation on the chocolate ice cream in her hands, for she stopped yelling at him, and moved the bucket to her right. Hiei's eyes followed hungrily. To her left. Up. Down. Everywhere the chocolate ice cream went, the fire demon's eyes tracked it mercilessly.
Keiko grinned suddenly. "Do you want this Hiei?" she asked sweetly. Too sweetly.
He nodded as if in a trance, reaching out for the bucket. Keiko swiped it away from his reach and leaned down as if to whisper in his ear.
"THEN DON'T YOU EVER EMBARRASS ME LIKE THAT AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!"
Hiei blinked. His Jagan eye glowed.
And roughly ten minutes later, Keiko was buying enough sweet snow for Hiei to really drown in.
Koishii – beloved; koibito is often used in the same context, but I think that koishii is a little more correct to use as a nickname, since it's an adjective while koibito is a noun. Plus, I think it's prettier. ^_^;
Hiei: *smirk* Jagan eye – 347, Opposing forces – 0
LL: Actually, it's: Hiei – 1, Keiko – 12.
Hiei: 12!?!
LL: Give or take.
Keiko: *surprisingly Hiei-like smirk* Never underestimate the power of the Keiko. Yusuke did, and look what happened to him.
Hiei: What did happen to Yusuke anyway?
LL: Oh, he'll show up sooner or later to kick the crap out of you … but you aren't supposed to know that.
Hiei: *hides behind Keiko* Save me, Keiko-chan!