Author's note: Well, I really, really was trying hard working on a Pandora Heart/Soul Eater crossover, but then this plot bunny bit me. It had rabies. D: So, uh, yeah. I estimate that Yu Yu Hakusho took place about fifteen years before Beelzebub does, making Yuusuke and company about thirty. (Well, Yuusuke, Keiko, Kuwabara, and Kurama's human body are about thirty. The demons, Botan, and Koenma are vastly older. But you get the picture.)

The staff of Ishiyama High was a dichotomy. On one hand, there were those who were easily intimidated by the hooligans who ran roughshod over authority. These teachers cowered in the shadow of their students, long beaten down from their lofty ideals into the cold gutters of reality. They cringed at raised voices, flinched from tightened fists, and lived in a perpetual agony of mental breakdown and ulcers. They would eventually spend their pension in a constant state of PTSD, holing up in their tiny apartments as hermits until the day they would die, alone and hidden within their fortress of pillows and blankets.

On the other hand was the staff that had the hard-won respect from their delinquent students – respect that came from being stronger, faster, and even more brutal than the hooligans who roamed the not-so-hallowed halls. It was a begrudging respect so easily lost that had to be defended every day through blood, sweat, and brightly-colored bruises.

The heads of the prefecture looked the other way when these teachers proved to be as bloodthirsty and violent as their students – after all, someone had to keep the delinquents in line. This school was all that stood between the forces from hell being unleashed upon the rest of the unsuspecting world. The heads of the prefecture figured that someone had to take one (or lots) for the team – whoever the team was. (It certainly wasn't the students. They weren't allowed to participate in district sports since the last one ended in a bloodbath.)

The teachers taught, the support staff attempted to run the school while making sure it didn't collapse overhead, and the students did their best to not pay any attention to the adults. It was unhappy compromise for everyone all around.

oOoOoOo

Hilda had been sensing another demon lurking outside the school buildings for some time. It was just the slightest sense – she would have thought it to have been nothing more than the passing scent of a demon that had come and gone days ago, but the scent was fresh and persistent.

While Oga was off doing what Oga did best during class hours (which, as far as Hilda could tell, didn't actively involve the process of learning), Hilda decided to investigate this lurking scent. Her nose led her to some scraggly-looking rose bushes that were doing their utmost to survive in the cruel, cold world that was the Ishiyama concrete campus. Hilda bent over and touched her fingertips against a young yellow bud. The demon energy slid across her fingertips like smooth water without even nipping at her, and her surprise was palpable at such ease.

But it wasn't the demon energy that made the hair on the back of her neck rise. Straightening quickly and turning around, one hand tightening upon her umbrella's handle, she faced the looming deadliness at her back – only to find an unassuming middle-aged man peering at her with gentle green eyes from beneath the brim of his straw hat. At least he seemed middle-aged. Old-young? It was hard for Hilda to estimate ages of humans.

The man leaned against the handle of his push-broom and regarded her with friendly amusement. "May I help you?" His voice was soft and androgynous, and his body language was open and friendly. There was warmth in his eyes that Hilda hadn't seen from anyone else – not even Takayuki Furuichi – in this entire school.

Everything about this man screamed danger to Hilda's senses. She felt dizzy from the incongruences. "I don't know. I was looking for someone."

"Perhaps I can be of assistance." His head tilted as he smiled in a helpful manner. "You appear to be new here. I'm sure the place is nothing like where you come from." Hilda startled, almost glancing at the roses at such an open statement, and then turned her body fully to face the man. She didn't dare leave herself vulnerable. She felt her heart pounding in her chest, as if it was trying to escape. "Is it the flowers?" he asked suddenly. He laughed and rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. "Sometimes, I don't even know why I try to grow anything around here. The students inevitably destroy everything, it seems."

Hilda slowly inched away from the roses, suddenly not wanting demon energy at her back, either. The man didn't seem to give her wariness any notice as he gazed upon the roses and mused. "But there's a spot of beauty in everyone's heart, even if it seems as stunted and as desperate as these poor bushes."

"The roses don't belong," Hilda blurted. She stilled when the man turned his full attention on her. His gaze was still warm and bright – like sunlight gleaming off a very sharp blade, she thought.

"Ah." The man brought his hands together and raised them as a fist to his lips, as if in thought. Then he smiled gently and opened his hands. "Perhaps you might find this better suited for a lady such as yourself." The flower bud in his hands was half-open and exquisitely shaped, as if it were created from white granite by a master sculptor. The petals were sharp and lined with teeth. He presented it to her.

Hilda felt a cold sweat break out on her back as she reluctantly accepted the tusp. The subtle scent of rotting flesh drifted from the flower that could only be found in Hell, and rarely at that. A flower that was only available to demons – and the only demonic thing she sensed from this man was the flower her gave her. A flower that had appeared like magic in his cupped hands. "Pretty on the outside, but evil on the inside?" she asked, feeling her temper flare. The hand gripping the umbrella's handle ached from the tension.

The man's smile never changed as he shook his head. "No. A predator dressed in her finest without apology or shame of her true nature."

She yanked the sword out of the umbrella and trained the sharp point towards his eye. He didn't even deign to give the sword any attention as his gaze turned back upon the roses. "They're suitable for Ishiyama," he said. "They aren't prize-winning and they lack grace, but they're tenacious, trying to grow in such a vicious, unwelcoming environment. And they're armed with thorns. For the right person who tends to them? They will flourish and become all that they were meant to be."

"Who are you? What are you?" Hilda demanded coldly. She could feel the sap from the tusp leaking through her other fist, clenched tightly against her side. The flower's scent of rotting flesh was much stronger now. All the demonic energy she felt came from external sources – this flower, the rose bushes – had been in contact with this human.

The man's arm was once again disarming, and he bowed respectfully. "I am Minamino Shuichi. I'm just the groundskeeper who does janitorial work on the side. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have other messes to attend." He clicked his tongue disapprovingly and moved away, pushing his broom before himself. "Another day, another student marks their territory."

Hilda waited until the man was out of sight before she sheathed her sword. Her hand was shaking, and she glared at it before swiping at the sweat that gathered at her brow. She tried to tell herself that the man's unflinching, unwavering attitude at the sight of her steel was because he worked at Ishiyama. He was probably threatened on an hourly basis by students even more intimidating than herself.

But she couldn't shake the feeling that whatever the man was used to facing down, it was far more dangerous than the students of Ishiyama…or even herself.

oOoOoOo

"What do you know about the gardener?" Hilda asked Oga as they left school, Baby Be'el clinging to Oga's shirt and Takayuki Furuichi following at their heel. Oga left his usual swath of damage behind.

"Who?" Oga asked.

"Redhead," Furuichi supplied. "The one who keeps thinking that our fellow delinquents might appreciate flowers."

Oga appeared to concentrate. "Who?" he asked again, before clubbing an attacker with his elbow.

Furuichi sighed. "The person you thought was a woman the first day of school, which made the school nurse laugh until he choked on his cigarette?"

"Oh. Oh yeah. What about him?" Oga asked Hilde.

"Does he…does he concern you in anyway?"

Oga raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? Like, how? Do you expect him to, what, start a fight with a rose ala Tuxedo Kamen or something? Man's a pansy." Hilda stopped and stared. Oga walked a few more steps before he realized that she was no longer keeping pace. He sighed and rolled his eyes at her surprise. "What? I bet my sister could put up a better fight he could."

"But you've never fought him or anything?"

"Why should I? He's never gotten in my way, and it would feel like kicking a dog." Oga thought a moment as he slugged someone in the diaphragm. "A really old, incontinent dog. With no teeth."

"Have you even heard of anyone picking a fight with him?"

Oga laughed as he kicked another person in the chin. "Do I look like I give a flying fuck about who beats up who at the school?"

Hilda looked at Furuichi for confirmation, and the other boy shrugged. "I could tell you which of the staff gets into fights with the students, and which of the staff you can bully into submission, but as far as Minamino Shuichi is concerned…" A strange look crossed his face. "Come to think about it, I haven't heard of anyone fighting him. Or even intimidating him. He's just… someone you leave alone, I guess. Live and let live. Which is kinda odd, now that I think about it, because he'd have to be, like, the only one in the entire school. Wow!"

Hilda shook her head in quiet amazement as a chill rushed up and down her spine. Of course no one would even think of picking a fight with the groundskeeper. Because if Ishiyama High was a henhouse, and it was filled to the brim with fighting cocks, then Minamino Shuichi was the great eagle owl – a true predator whose ever-patient shadow the nearsighted cocks mistook as that of a fat, complacent pigeon.