Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ The Reikai Tantei's Yu Yu Hakusho ❯ The Harlequin, part 2 ( Chapter 8 )

Hi! I'm Yo-ma! I'm using characters from various Fanfiction and will give the authors credit in the chapters they appear in. The next few chapters will introduce some characters from Koko-chan and the Blue Spanch. Please don't get angry with me for using your characters. If you want me to take the story off of FanFiction.Net, please tell me.

This is my story, it is YAOI (meaning male/male relationships for those unused to the anime world.) If you don't like it, don't read it! Got that?

I DO NOT OWN YU YU HAKUSHO!!! So don't sue me I don't have anything.

This occurs after the movies and ovas.

Thoughts are in Italics. ***** means change in scene.

Please Read and Review! I would love to hear anything you have to say! Flames are even accepted!

To all of my reviewers;

Since I took so long to update, I'm posting two chapters at once. I hope you like part 2 of the Harlequin!

The Reikai Tantei's Yu Yu Hakusho

Chapter 8 The Harlequin, part 2

Kurama knelt in his garden, mulching the roses and thinking. He knew he was forgetting something, but darned if he could remember what it was. The feeling nagged at him like a hangnail, and he crushed a Japanese beetle out of sheer frustration.

"I'd better go in soon." he thought. "The sun's almost gone."

He then got the creepy feeling that everybody fears; The feeling that someone is standing right behind you and grinning, but that was silly. He felt no youki at all, not even an insect's... Wait a minute.

Something had blanked out all the ki in the yard. Something went swish behind him, and, out of pure instinct born of centuries of being attacked out of the night, he held up the dirt-crusted trowel in defense.

KCHING!!

When he pulled the trowel back, half of it was missing. "Aw, man," he moaned. "Mom's gonna kill me."

He heard an unseen blade hiss toward him again, and rolled away just in time to see his rosebush get an abrupt pruning.

Seriously annoyed by this, he grabbed the nearest weapon at hand, the garden hose. Yuusuke wasn't the only one who could get by with strange tactics, so Kurama let his shadowy assailant have it right in the face with a jet of water.

While it sputtered, he grabbed a rose from the stricken bush. "Rose Whip!" he hollered, and snapped the thorny vine at his enemy... Who was not there.

"Where'd he go?!" he thought.

Just then, somebody grabbed the back of his pants and pulled, simultaneously dropping a handful of something prickly down them. Kurama was treated to the world's first confetti wedgie.

"Yoww!"

Whirling around, he saw the Harlequin, still dripping and with sword drawn. Kurama cracked his whip at him, only to have it sliced cleanly in half. Kurama, however, had been studying Greek mythology in class lately, and the story of the Hydra came to mind. Within moments, his Rose Whip was a writhing mass of sharp-edged vines. With an expert flick of his wrist, he caught the harlequin's sword arm and tore the blade out of its grasp, hurling it across the yard.

The Harlequin blocked the next slash with a large card and snatched up a thick chain out of the grass. Kurama had used the chain earlier in the day for planting a cherry tree sapling.

"Oh, crap! I should have put that thing back in the garage!"

The Harlequin wasted no time in demonstrating that he was no slouch with a whip, either. Chain and thorn met with staccato bursts of sound as the fighters strove to prevail, and the garden suffered as a result. Kurama was careful about the topiary, but the Harlequin had no such reservations.

Every plant, tree, and shrub got an unplanned pruning, several bricks had been removed from the wall of the house, and somehow during the melee, fifty pounds of plaster wound up being dumped into his mother's window boxes.

The hose was also used a great deal, and both of them were soaked by the time they had to stop to catch their breath.

The Harlequin was having a grand old time. he hadn't had a whip-battle with an agile youko for centuries, and he was enjoying every minute. He knew he would eventually have to retrieve his sword and shave this kid or something, but that could wait just a little longer-OW! OW! OW! Shit! Damn you, Yashi!

Kurama had barely managed to get the water out of his eyes when he was forced to defend himself desperately against a terrifying series of splashes that he barely countered, getting his whip snarled irrevocably in the chain.

The Harlequin spun around him, wrapping him tightly in the mass of thorn and steel and paused, staring into Kurama's eyes with his own blood-hued ones, and smiled unpleasantly.

A small fireball appeared in his free hand, and he lit the end of the vine-tangled chain with it. The chain sputtered, sparked and started to burn exactly like the fuse of a very large firework. Kurama cried out in fear, for he knew all too well what would happen when that spark reached the main mass...

A flash of silver light shot across the yard, slicing the fuse just before disaster, and stuck with a "chunk" noise in the wall of the house.

Kurama looked at the wall and saw the Harlequin's sword quivering in the brickwork, and then his bonds fell away in a cloud of rust.

His knees didn't want to hold him up anymore, so he sat down in a hurry. Seeing a movement out of the corner of his eye, he turned and saw the Harlequin.

Something was very wrong with the creature. Its eyes kept flashing red and yellow, and it swayed unsteadily on its feet, its face a rictus of agonized fury. It turned a topaz gaze on him, this time in apology, and dissolved into darkness.

Kurama got up once he could rust his legs again and pulled the sword out of the wall. A thin, deadly blade that looked as though it was made of fine silver, with the four card suits enameled on the base of the sword blade in scarlet and pitch black.

Almost absent-mindedly, he rigged a sort of sling for the sword from the remnants of his whip and slung it over his shoulder. he then noticed that a piece of paper had fallen out of his pocket during the fight, and he picked it up and smoothed it out as best as he could. No use, it was totally illegible. "Oh, wait," he said, a notion striking him. "Now I know what I was forgetting! Genkai sent me a letter."

His mind was bruised enough so that he stood there for a few minutes in a warm fog of pride for remembering this, and then a prickling sensation in his shorts reminded him that yes, there was a real world out there.

Until a supercharged cheetah makes the trip, Kurama is the winner of the Fast Feets Award for getting to Genkai's temple in a screaming hurry.

*****

"Genkai!" He wheezed as he slid open the door of the temple. "I'm hallucinating!"
"You aren't the only one." Genkai replied, indicating the presence of Yuusuke and Kuwabara.
"Looks like you seriously annoyed the 'Quinn." Yuusuke said, passing the damp youko a cup of strong tea. "You're wet, torn up, and leaking confetti out of your pant legs. How'd that happen?"
"Confetti wedgie." Kurama managed between gulps.
Kuwabara winced in sympathy. "What'd you do to deserve that?"
"I sprayed it in the face with the garden hose. Pour me another cup, please? thank you. Genkai, just what was that thing? I've never met anything that was as good with a whip as I am."

"Let me guess." Genkai said, retrieving her scroll from its compartment. "You got my letter but never read it."
"I was doing my homework, and then I went out to weed and mulch the garden. I didn't even remember it until after the fight, and by then it was trashed."
"A valid excuse, I suppose. Is this the one that got you?"

Kurama yelped and spilled his tea when he saw the picture. "That's the one! Who or what is that guy, Genkai?"
"If you had read the letter I sent you, you would have known."
"Genkai, please!"

"All right. His name is the Harlequin. He has more than the accepted level of power, and he uses it in ways most whimsical, and often, unpleasant. As you have already noticed, he's more or less unbeatable alone, and his methods are not necessarily honorable. The Harlequin is random, arbitrary, and hopelessly silly. He doesn't have to make sense if he doesn't want to, so don't bother trying to figure him out. What he is, though, is unbelievably dangerous. Lately, though, there has been an actual pattern to his attacks, and this is very wrong. What were you doing when he attacked?"

"Like I said, Genkai, I was working in my garden. Mulching the roses, to be precise."
Genkai pored over the scroll for a minute. "Huh." She said. "Nothing in here about him disliking roses or gardening. Oh, wait; he doesn't approve of petunias."
"Well, that explains the fifty pounds of plaster in my mother's window boxes. She's gonna be mad about that."
"That's small stuff. Tell me the rest of it."

Kurama told his story, even the part about the confetti wedgie. In sympathy, Kuwabara and Yuusuke told him theirs. At the end of it all, Kurama looked mournfully into his empty teacup and sighed. "Poor Hiei."
"Why 'poor Hiei'?" Kuwabara demanded. "Why are you feeling sorry for that shrimpy renegade?"

"If this pattern plays out like I think it's going to play out, Hiei's the next target." Kurama said. "Kuwabara, Yuusuke, consider this; Hiei has a great deal of dignity and no sense of humor whatsoever. The Harlequin has played a number of dirty little tricks on us, from cards to nose-honking to confetti wedgies. How well do you think Hiei's going to take that?"
"Urk." Yuusuke said.
"I think I'll go and build a bomb shelter." Kuwabara added.
"I may join you." Said Genkai. "Kurama, keep an eye out for this creature. If he shows up here again, I want to hear about it. Got that?"
"Yessir!"
"Good boy. Next time, read your mail first."

"Okay." Kurama paused then, remembering something. "Hey, Genkai, the Harlequin was messed up enough to forget this when he left. Would it help?" He pulled the sword from behind him and handed it to Genkai.

"Kurama," Genkai said as she reverently took the sword from him. "I could find out both where he is and what is wrong with him with this thing.
At that point, the teapot's lid shot off, followed by a geyser of water, and all the candles started burning with a red-and-black flame.

"Incoming!" Shouted Genkai.

The others hit the floor as a yellow-eyed shadow swooped down out of a dark corner like an oversized bat and snatched the blade from the floor where Genkai had dropped it, and then disappeared in a cloud of confetti. The teapot stopped spitting at that point, and the candles returned to normal.

"What the hell was that?" Yuusuke asked, lifting himself off the floor. "And for that matter, Genkai, why are you wearing those Groucho glasses?"
"The teapot and the candles were a side effect of the security systems failing to keep the Harlequin out. The Groucho glasses are a side effect of the Harlequin being silly again. By the way, you're wearing a party hat, Kuwabara's wearing a tutu, and Kurama is now wearing a dress. He looks better in it that I would, come to think of it."

Kurama blushed bright red, looking very uncomfortable and incredibly feminine.

Kuwabara was unable to contain his laughter.

"Hey!" Kurama said, still red as a cherry. "You're looking pretty cute too, tutu boy! Especially the pretty pink bows in your hair!"

Things would have gone drastically downhill at this point if Genkai hadn't shoved the two of them into the back room. "There are a couple of robes in the closet." She said. "I suggest that you make use of them."
"Yes, Ma'am." They said in dismal unison.

*****

Hiei sat on top of his favorite pine tree, thinking.

He was reminiscing about last winter at the ice rinks, where Kurama had tried to teach him how to ice skate. Hiei hadn't been any good at it, but he got all sorts of enjoyment watching his friend skim over the ice like a bird. His favorite scene had been a quiet one. The moon had been very full, and the night was still as the heart of amber.

A dusting of silver snow was falling, outlining Kurama in a glittering nimbus as he gracefully skated around the court.

Tonight was much like that night; the moon was just as full, the night just as quiet, the snowfall just as silver. Perhaps he and Kurama could, like that other night last winter, do again what they had done that night in the snowdrifts... Hold it. It's not winter.

Hiei looked up, trying to find the source of the drifting sparkles. Someone was standing right behind him with a fistful of silver glitter and eyes like topaz. Then, to his surprise, his Evil Eye jerked wide open.

He had left his headband off tonight. He had been feeling a little jumpy for some reason and didn't want to be caught unawares by anything. It hadn't worked.

Without his wishing it, Hiei looked into the mind of the Harlequin and saw...

...delighted laughter of innocent children mixing rainbow-colored sweet threads with demented mad merriment of crazed carnivals in a blaze of darkness coming light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming dragon endless curiosity broken in billions of shards in a shattered universe in the mind of mine own memory small jokes big jokes nice jokes nasty jokes the cards are all jokers the tarot says so and I am the tarot hear my singing the discordant music of the itinerant performers freaks and frauds and too-real magicks tangled in the lights that outshine the stars and lend their color to the featureless population there is no reality here mundanes have no faces we have many they are me and I am them and have been them for thousands of thousands of thousands aw you get the picture you see the carnivals the circuses the festivals the feasts it goes further back I'll tell you even the daimyos and shoguns and emperors had to laugh at something at the tricks that brought down egos but only I laughed at the tricks that brought down empires it goes all the way back to the Early Times when the first man-ape thought to put old seaweed on a sleeping chieftain's head he smelled funny for just days they had a good giggle about that I can tell you and it's only gotten better since then every time someone laughs at another's humiliation at another's tricks and jokes it is a prayer to me as you can guess I'm pretty strong by now wanna see you have silver confetti in your hair what were you thinking about anyway your temperature went up several degrees for a moment there did you know that...

Hiei tore his mind away with an effort, for there is always something perversely fascinating about a twisted mind.

He tied his headband on, not wanting to have that experience again. he looked up again, just to make sure that what he saw was real and not a hallucination. It wasn't.

The Harlequin gave him a Mona Lisa smile and vigorously rubbed the rest of the confetti into Hiei's hair. Hiei growled, whipped out his sword, and attempted to stick it up the Harlequin's nose.

Just one problem with that, though. Not only was Hiei short, but he was sitting down. The Harlequin was six and a half feet tall and had stood up straight the moment Hiei went for his sword.

All the same, it nearly worked, missing the 'Quin's nose by a quarter inch.

The Harlequin critically tested the sharpness of the point with one finger, nodded, and drew his own blade.

Hiei wasn't going to take this sitting down. he sprang to another tree and turned to face his opponent. The Harlequin lifted his sword in salute and sprang towards Hiei, his blade flashing silver in the moonlight. Hiei met his attack with the smooth skill of decades of survival practice.

The sound of the clashing swords rang through the night like militant bells as they danced through the treetops, and Hiei found himself enjoying the fight.

Kuwabara had a flashy sword, but he had little skill or technique with it. Sparring with him was boring, but this guy! This stripey weirdo had finesse! The fight soon exhausted the possibilities of the treetops, so they took it down to ground level and battled around the trunks instead.

Down there, however, the fight ceased to be fun as the Harlequin's sword tricks turned frustrating and annoying.

The Harlequin began using confetti again, and it is very hard to concentrate when fireworks are trying to lodge themselves in your ear.

Hiei was in a pretty foul temper when they stopped for a breather in a clearing.

The Harlequin leaned his sword against one shoulder and gave Hiei a faintly puzzled look, as if trying to figure something out.

"What's your problem?" Hiei asked angrily.
His foe gave him a silly grin and made a series of gestures that communicated to Hiei what he was thinking; something along the lines of: "You're a pretty good swordsman, for somebody who's knee-high to a crab louse."

Hiei was very sensitive about his height, or rather lack thereof, and he was in a rotten mood already.

With a roar, he cast away his sword and rushed the Harlequin, grabbing the horns that curled from his temples in preparation of ripping his head right off.

Hiei knew that he had made a serious mistake the moment he saw the Harlequin drop his sword and reach for his chest. He was prepared to fight on with three or four broken ribs, but he had no idea of what was in store for him

Two seconds later, he was rolling on the ground, clutching his ribs, and howling. "AAARGHAHAHAHANONONOSTOPSTOPHELP! STOP!"
Hiei had found out to his horror that he was helplessly, hopelessly, unbelievably ticklish.
The Harlequin eventually stopped and pirouetted away, laughing silently. Hiei dragged himself to his feet, breathless, furious and thoroughly humiliated.

He had had quite enough of this dancing lunatic. His paltry tricks and silly confetti could not possibly stand up to the might of the Black Dragon.

"Kokuryuuha!" He shouted, ripping the bandage off of his forearm.
The Dragon boiled off his wrist with a roar that shattered windows up to four miles away, arching into the sky in a display of sheer power, dimming the moon in a bloody flare.

The Harlequin merely grinned and applauded, as though the Black Dragon was merely an unusual fireworks display.

At that point, the Dragon arced back down again, intent on messy destruction.

A split second before the monster struck, the Harlequin pulled out a card the size of a church door-an Ace of course; he had it up his sleeve-and ducked behind it as the Dragon cannoned dead center into the barrier.

WHAM!!

For some reason, neither the card nor the 'Quin messily disintegrated. Instead, the Dragon struggled to get through, writhed, wavered, and finally slunk back onto Hiei's forearm in the manner of one slightly stunned.

Hiei dropped to the ground on his butt, too weak to stand, but not quite drained enough to pass out face first into the dirt. For some obscure reason, he had a headache in his wrist.

Hiei looked up rather dazedly at the Harlequin, who had turned the card into a beach towel and was standing there and grinning at him with the towel over his shoulder.

Then the collar flashed, nearly doubling the 'Quin over, gasping. Another Harlequin suddenly grew out of the first one's back, one that wore no collar. The second 'Quin stepped around and neatly punched its distressed twin out with a solid, businesslike blow.

Hiei blinked as the original hit the dirt with an oddly satisfying thump. the Carbon-Copy 'Quin then picked up its out-cold brother, gave Hiei a look that spoke volumes of apology, and ambled off into the forest.

Hiei sat for a moment in total bafflement. What had just happened in the last five minutes was totally impossible, but yet all those things had still happened. What had just happened? How could it have happened? Who could tell him the answers?

Genkai. Genkai knew lots of neat stuff. Would she know about a psychotic clown? Probably. Genkai knew everything. Genkai was good. Yeah.

Hiei scrambled to his feet and made fast tracks toward the temple, half-teleporting, half running.

*****

Hiei slammed the temple's door back on its tracks almost hard enough to rip it clean off the wall. He leaned on the door frame for a moment, panting.

Then, with a singularly sour look for all the people inside, he stated clearly: "I'm. Hallucinating."
He then stomped inside, snatched Kuwabara's cup, slurped half of it, and then sniffed it suspiciously.

"Where's the sake?" He demanded.

Kuwabara looked ready to protest over the sudden annexation of his teacup, but took one look at Hiei-tired, charred here and there, jacket full of holes, bandage dangling loosely from one wrist, and confetti falling from his scalp like snow-and wisely decided not to press the issue.

Genkai smiled sagely. "I take it that you met the Harlequin. Tell me what happened."
Hiei glared at her and remained silent.
Genkai sighed. "It was that sort of fight, eh? Oh, all right." She took a clean cup, half-filled it with tea and brought out a small hip flask.
"Genkai!" Yukina said, shocked.
"Yes, I know it's a filthy habit." Genkai said, pouring a liberal amount into the teacup. "It does come in handy at times, however." She added, handing the cup to Hiei, who chugged it.

Two cups of sake-laced tea later, Hiei was definitely mellower. "Fess up, boy." Genkai said then. "Tell me what happened."
Hiei gave her a slightly unfocused scowl, leaned on Kurama's shoulder for support and muttered something.
"What was that?" She asked.
"He tickled me." Hiei grumped.
"He what?!"
"He tickled me, all right?"
"You-You're ticklish?" Kuwabara sputtered, and then he started laughing.

Hiei may have been slightly tipsy, but he was still able to land a respectable backhanded punch on Kuwabara's face, sending him backward through a couple of walls, where he landed with a splash in something.

"My miso!" Hinageshi cried, dashing after him.
"Kazuma-chan!" Yukina cried, following her.
"Frgnhrgin moth-eaten mother of vinegar." Hiei grumbled into his cup.

Yuusuke then noticed something unusual about Hiei's tattoo. "Hiei?" He asked. "Why does your Dragon have a little band-aid on its head? It looks very unhappy somehow."
"He deflected it."
"Hold it." Kurama said in disbelief. "How the hells did he do that?"
"He had a -hic!- an ace up his sleeve. One the size of one of your Ningen church doors."
Genkai, Yuusuke, and Kurama groaned at the stupid joke. "I think you'd better tell it from the top, Hiei." Genkai said gravely. "This is serious. That Dragon counts as a god."
"What, tell all of it?"
"Yup."

Hiei told the story of his fight in a slightly slurred voice as Genkai retrieved her scroll again.
Kuwabara, sporting a shiner and trailing bits of kelp, came into the room in time to hear most of it, and this time, he refrained from chortling at the funnier bits.

As the tale wound down to its finish, Hiei got unsteadily to his feet, clutching his empty cup in one first. "-And then he pulls this big card outta -hic!- his shleeve, and wham! The Dragon hitsh it, and can't get through it and comesh back to my arm and I gotta headache in my wrisht." Hiei raised his cup toward the ceiling in a dramatic gesture of drunken resolve and declared: "And if I ever shee that shtupid guy again..."
Hiei's grip tightened on the cup, and the delicate porcelain shattered. Hiei, however, did not seem to notice; he merely stood there with a curiously lucid expression on his face.

Then he fell like the mighty oak falls in the forest, with only the squirrels to applaud its descent. He hit the floor flat on his back with a soft thud. "Hic!" he said.

Kurama sighed and tried to help Hiei back into a sitting position, only to wind up with Hiei curled up in his lap, buzzing happily.

Kurama blushed and refused to meet the eyes of his teammates. Genkai had been too busy looking through the scroll to notice, fortunately. "Nope." She murmured. "Nothing in here about him hating pine trees, sword fights, or short people." Genkai must have been a little more tired than she thought, for the scroll slipped out of her hands. "Whoops!"

She caught it before it hit her cup, but she wound up holding it backwards so that the illustration was facing Hiei.

With a growl, he leapt off of Kurama's lap with his sword flashing erratically, intent on doing the image in.

Instead, he nearly killed the teapot. Hiei gave his sword a sour, off-center glare, pulled it out of the low table, and curled back up in Kurama's lap again.

Blushing furiously for the second time in as many minutes, Kurama strove to divert attention from himself. "Genkai," Said he, "Just what is the Harlequin? He can't be some renegade Makai carnival reject. It takes a lot of power to fend off my garden and my Rose Whip; this guy had more than enough."
"Yeah!" Yuusuke said. "The 'Quin caught and channeled my Rei Gun like it was nothing! What gives?"
"Or my Rei Sword!" Kuwabara added. "How come his sword didn't shatter when I hit it?"
"How 'bout -hic!- the Kokuryuuha?" Hiei asked. "Psychotic clowns don't deflect Dragons."
He then looked around, smiling rather foolishly in the hopes that somebody would congratulate him for getting through that sentence without tripping over his own tongue. No one did.

Genkai sighed almost sadly and rolled up the scroll. "Sorry for not telling you kids about his true nature earlier, but I was a little frazzled. I get that way whenever a Deity doesn't act the way it's supposed to."

"A DEITY?" They chorused in shock.
"You're telling me that stripey maniac is a God?" Kuwabara demanded.
"Yup, and he's one of the oldest ones, though he's not very well known to the general public."
"Oh, well," Yuusuke said rather weakly. "We've faced gods before. How strong is this one?"
"Believe it or not, the Harlequin is stronger than Koenma."
"Then how come he isn't running one of the other worlds?" Kurama asked.
"He doesn't want to. He's got incredible wads of power at his command, but he chooses not to use it. That choice drives the other gods, good and evil, totally bananas."
"How'd he get that strong?" Kuwabara asked. "He must have some incredible workout tapes."

"If you shut up, I'll tell you the story, okay?" Genkai paused. The room was dead silent. "Right. Well, kids, the Harlequin got his start just when Humanity did, some two million years ago when the apes were learning about walking upright and lower back pain. Life was pretty rotten back then, so the Harlequin gave the proto-humans the one thing that made it bearable: A sense of humor.

"I'm afraid he cheated there. He arranged it so that he didn't need the same kind of prayers and incense and temples that the other gods required; those kinds of things get boring after a while for most people. Instead, he settled for fun things. Jokes, pranks, and laughter are his prayers. Feasts, festivals, circuses, and carnivals are his temples. Clowns, jesters and fools are his priests, and his incense is the smell of cotton candy, popcorn, and all the other snacks associated with such things.

"Humans love to party, and have loved it ever since the very beginning. A god's strength lies in the amount of worship it receives, and the 'Quin gets billions of prayers and tons of homage every day."

"Wow." Yuusuke said, awed. "I bet the other Gods all wanted him to be their buddy."
"You don't know the half of it." Genkai replied. "The evil gods admired his knack for dark and destructive pranks, not to mention the punch that he packed in a fight. They offered him high standing among their ranks, but he told them to stick it and danced off to over sea some kid's birthday party.

"The good Gods admired him for the merriment and goodwill that he brought our world; plus they wanted to get a grip on all that power, of course. He thumbed his nose at them and ambled off to throw water balloons at the Prime Minister."
"And rub confetti into my hair." Muttered Hiei.
"I take it that you didn't read my message, either?"
"Genkai," Kurama said quietly. "Hiei can't read. He never had the leisure to learn."
Genkai stared at him for a moment, and then fined herself a slap on the forehead. "Duh! What a time to forget something like that!"
Hiei snickered and snuggled deeper into Kurama's front. "Update your scroll while you're at it." He said. "'S not accurate. Picture doesn't have a collar."

"Come again?" Genkai said, looking sharply at him.
"'Quin had a collar on. His picture doesn't."
"A collar."
"Yup, yup, a collar. Nice thick gold one with funny symbols on it. It flashed and he bent over and there were two of him and the second hit the first one in the nose andandffbttzng... Zzzzz."
Hiei snored when he was drunk, sometimes. It sounded like a cross between a cat's purr and a very small, very quiet cement mixer.

"Somebody's controlling him then." Yuusuke said. "That's scary."
"I should have realized it from the start." Genkai muttered. "We're going to have to catch him, you know, to get that collar off."
"How the hell are we going to do that?!" Kuwabara exploded. "He nearly took us apart!"
"Gang up on him." Kurama offered, gently scratching his buzzing friend behind the ears. "Did you notice how only went for us one at a time? Even someone with a mind like a broken mirror has trouble paying attention when there are four or five people coming at him at once."
"That's a good idea, but just how are we going to find that stripey maniac?" Yuusuke said. "We don't know just where he hangs out during the daytime."

"Carnival." Hiei murmured.
"Say that again?" Genkai said uneasily.
"Carnival. 'S a traveling party that's -don't stop scratching, Kurama- settled in th' Manga district for the past few days. After t'morrow night, 's gonna leave. 'S nice. 'S got all flashy lights 'n roller coasters 'n Ferris wheel 'n wild animals 'n weird tents 'n that thing that goes roundy-roundy-roundy-throw up."

"The Python." Kuwabara groaned. "I do not want to chase the Harlequin around on that. I feel sick just watching that thing."
"Or he roller coaster." Yuusuke quavered.
"The Fun House." Genkai said gloomily. "I've always hated those."
"The Hall f Mirrors." Kurama stated grimly.
"Th' -hic!- Tunnel of Love." Hiei said happily.
They all looked at him funny. Hiei went back to sleep.

"Actually," Genkai said thoughtfully, shaking off her earlier gloom. "It's not a bad idea at all. Carnivals are one of the Harlequin's favorite hangouts, so he'll be there. I know that he doesn't approve of being controlled by anybody -who does?- so he may well simply allow us to catch him. Then again, he might decide to give us a real run for our money. Either way, this has to be done, and as soon as possible."

"Not tonight." Kurama said, indicating Hiei. "Hiei's in no shape to go clown hunting right now."
"Good point." Genkai said, peering at the little fire demon, who was still shedding confetti. "I'll meet you at the carnival tomorrow at seven in the afternoon. It'll give us time to catch him napping if he feels nocturnal."
"And if he doesn't?" Asked Kuwabara.
"Then we get to chase him around on the Python. Good night, fellas."

To be continued....

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