Title: Snuffles
Rating: PG
Pairing: Kurogane/Fai
Spoilers: Post-series; no explicit reference to series end.
Summary: In the next world they come to, they pick up an animal companion. Kurogane, however, is less than pleased with their new pet.
Author's Note: Written for the April Fools' challenge to completely reverse the meaning of a prompt. The prompt in this case was, "Fai finds a puppy."

"Well," Fai said with a brightness that seemed entirely out of place in their surroundings, "this looks like a nice place!"

Kurogane scowled at him for the inanity and even Syaoran sighed. Their latest jump had landed them in the middle of a pine woods, with tall, straight trunks shooting like sentinels up out of sight. Evening mist rose from the ground, cloaking the space under the trees in a foggy darkness even though some light still lingered in the sky visible through the trees. The whole forest breathed of damp, clinging mist and the faint smell of mold and rot rose from the carpet of needles underfoot.

But no matter how unfriendly the environment, Fai was determined to retain his cheer. The last world had been… unpleasant to say the least, and he considered just being out of cause for celebration. They all needed some time to relax and get their spirits up before they moved on, and Fai had an idea for how to do just that. He clapped his hands together, and beamed brightly at his companions. "I know! Let's have a campfire, with s'mores and ghost stories!"

"We don't have much choice about starting a fire," Kurogane growled. "Assuming we can even get one going in all this damp."

"Pine wood usually stays pretty dry, I think we can get a fire going," Syaoran said, picking up a snapped brittle twig. "I don't know about the other things, though."

"Ah, that's because you haven't been planning ahead, unlike me," Fai said airily, and turned towards the fourth member of their little band. "Mokona, the supplies if you please!"

"Okay!" Mokona chirped as she jumped up from her place on Syaoran's shoulder. Her mouth gaped unnaturally wide for a moment as the sound of rushing air filled the small cleaning; then she spat out a pair of packages wrapped in rustling plastic, bearing the logos of a grocery store from several worlds back.

Fai pulled one open, and grinned as he triumphantly displayed the package of fluffy white lumps that he'd stashed therein. "Ta-daa!" he exclaimed. "See, Mommy plans ahead for days like this! We can't miss the opportunity to have s'mores with our campfire, now can we?"

Syaoran grinned, and Kurogane rolled his eyes and snorted; but already they were beginning to relax, which had been Fai's aim all along. "Syaoran-kun and of course Kuro-chama are just so serious all the time," he scolded them lightly. "Someone has to look after them and make sure that we have fun once and a while, and if Mommy doesn't do it, then who will?"

"Mokona will!" the little creature cheered, bouncing on Fai's head, and he grinned.

"Yes, Mokona will too," he agreed. After all, if they weren't able to cherish the small moments and good things that Fate put in their path, wouldn't that waste the whole purpose of the journey?

Despite Kurogane's grumbling pessimism, they soon had a small fire started, which Kurogane carefully fed with increasing sizes of pine wood. The wet branches hissed and sputtered when exposed to the heat, and the clearing filled with the scent of pine smoke; before too long the smell of woodsmoke and the rosy light of the fire combined to make the setting as cheery as Fai could have wished.

As Kurogane and Syaoran worked with practiced efficiency to set up the camp, Fai took the bucket and set off to find water. Although he didn't have the affinity for water that the princess once had, he had a pretty good nose for the substance and a fair idea of where to find it, so this task often fell to him.

In most cases finding the nearest stream was just a matter of going downhill until he heard the familiar gurgling and picked his way over to find it. It was almost fully night by then, and Fai had to pick his way carefully around shadowy obstacles until he found a flat space to approach the stream. Chocolate and marshmallows tended to leave one feeling thirsty; he might need to come back for a second pail. He crouched on one knee to fill the bucket, when he heard a rustling sound from one of the nearby bushes across the stream.

Fai looked up, his body tensing in preparation for flight or fight, if necessary. He didn't think it was - much more likely to just be some woodland creature startled by his presence - but you didn't live this long without learning to be cautious.

More rustling stirred under the nearby bush, and then a shadow detached itself from the foliage and crept forward into the open space.

Fai blinked. Then blinked again and rubbed his eyes, trying to clear the odd blurriness that seemed to surround the little creature. The last of the daylight was almost gone, and it was hard to make out what -

He looked again, and the patch of shadow resolved itself. It was a puppy, cute and fluffy with rust-red markings on its floppy ears. Matching round red patches decorated his sides and his big, clumsy paws, and his tail was a tight little corkscrew that wagged hopefully as it saw him. The little animal looked up at him with big, sad, liquid eyes and whined pleadingly.

"Aw..." In spite of himself, a smile broke across his face as he leaned down towards the little pup, extending his hand. "Here, puppy, there's a good boy..."

The puppy hesitated a moment, then bounded forward eagerly and licked his hand. Fai laughed out loud at the ticklish sensation, and in response to the pup's pleading whines, gathered him in his arms and lifted him up.

It was hard to judge the animal's age - Fai had never had all that close contact with young dogs - but judging by the size of the paws relative to the rest of him, and the roundness of the rest of the body, he was very young still. Where could he have come from? Somewhat puzzled, Fai looked around in the brush where the puppy had emerged; but he saw no sign of a den, nor the tracks of any larger dog. Just pine needles and scrub brush, and scattered eggshells from some less lucky wild animal.

Perhaps some unkind soul had abandoned the poor beast out here. Fai shrugged his shoulders at the mystery, but the sudden jarring caused the puppy to yip nervously and squirm around, and Fai had to calm him down. "Shh, settle down, boy," he said soothingly. "I wonder where you came from? Perhaps we can find you a nice home. What should we call you in the meantime? Spot, maybe? Fido? Or perhaps Rover? Hmmm... So many possibilities, how can I decide?"

His original task to fetch water forgotten, Fai bounced happily back up the slope towards the campsite.

"Look, Kuro-tan, he followed me home! Can I keep him?" Fai announced blithely as he entered the circle of firelight. Kurogane was currently involved in setting out their iron camp stove, and did not even look up as he grunted in automatic annoyance. There was no sign of Syaoran, to Fai's disappointment; he wanted to show off his new Rover - or Fluffy, he still hadn't decided - and was sure that Kurogane would not properly appreciate him. "Where's Syaoran-kun?"

"Scouting," Kurogane answered briefly, and wiped his charcoal-coated hands on his trousers as he stood up and turned around. "He saw a hunting track leading over the ridge, and took the pork bun in case he finds WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?" This last came out in a high pitched yelp as Kurogane spotted him. He nearly fell backwards into the fire as he recoiled.

Okay, Fai had been hoping for a reaction, but that was a bit extreme. "It's a puppy, Kuro-tan. You know - a baby dog. What does it look like?"

Kurogane edged backwards around the fire, and pointed a shaking finger of accusation at the puppy in Fai's arms. "That's a - In what world is that a puppy?"

Fai sighed. It was going to be the pear/apple/nashi debate from Koryo all over again. "I don't know about Nihon, Kuro-puppy, but I can assure you that in my world, dogs look like this." He bent his head down and cooed at the puppy, who was cowering a bit under Kurogane's thunderous rage and looking up at him with big, scared eyes and anxiously knitted puppy-eyebrows. "There, there, Fluffy - I mean Lucky - old Kuro-meanie doesn't mean it. I promise I won't let him hurt you." He petted the puppy's head reassuringly, and it licked his hand eagerly.

"ME hurt IT? That's not exactly the issue, is it?" Kurogane demanded. "For all you know it's going to kill us in our sleep!"

"Oh please, is the big scary warrior afraid of a baby little puppy?" Fai scoffed. "I never would have pegged you as being scared of dogs, Kuro-wuss!"

"I am not a - WHAT THE HELL IS IT DOING!" Kurogane sprang forward, eyes widening and arms outstretched, as Fai felt a sudden sharp pain in his hand. "Look at it! It's drinking your goddamned BLOOD! Are the dogs in Celes all vampires, too?"

"It's just a little nip! Lucky - I mean, Bernie - he didn't mean it," Fai protested, pulling his hand clear of the slightly-too-eager baby teeth. "He's just hungry, poor little thing. Let's give him some nice soup, hmm?"

"Oh, no! If you feed it we'll never be rid of it," Kurogane objected, but Fai ignored him as he settled down next to the firepit with the wriggling ball of brown fur in his lap, and began spoon-feeding the meat broth to the baby. Kurogane stamped in a circle, glaring suspiciously at the puppy and muttering under his breath. "You're giving it our food now? What the hell are we supposed to eat?"

Kurogane really was being too mean tonight. No matter how accustomed Fai had become to the warrior's ways, he found himself a little hurt by Kurogane's insensitivity. "He hasn't got a mother and he's hungry and alone. We're keeping him here, at least overnight. If Syaoran doesn't find people who could take him in, then maybe he can come with us."

The thought appealed to him. Although he'd had Bernie - or maybe Rover - for less than an hour, he found himself strangely reluctant to part with him, and Kurogane's inexplicable antagonism only annoyed him more. What was Kurogane getting upset about? Sure, he had a tough and manly image to live up to, but didn't that involve defending and protecting cute, helpless furry things?

"Take him with us? Are you insane?" Kurogane demanded. "There's no way we can take a pet with us on our journey! For God's sake get rid of it! Put it back wherever the hell it came from!"

"No, I won't do that!" Fai said, growing increasingly annoyed at Kurogane's stringent rejection of his new friend. "If we can't take him with us, then maybe we can stay here."

Kurogane stared at him in disbelief. "You really have gone insane," he said. "You know we can't stay in one place for too long of a time. It was your decision to come along with Syaoran on his journey, wasn't it? To find a place where all of us could live together!"

Fai's resolve wavered for a moment, but he looked down into Rover's - or maybe Jack's - cute brown eyes, and a renewed surge of warmth and affection coursed through him. He couldn't possibly abandon this cute, helpless baby, now could he? He hugged the warm puppy protectively to his chest. "Well, you can go on with him, then," he snapped. "I'll just stay here with Jack. I mean Cuddles."

He sniffed and stalked past Kurogane to plop down on their combined bedroll. It was hard to remember exactly when they had fallen into the habit of sleeping together; even in situations where they lacked the privacy or the safety to do anything more, by automatic habit they always set up their bed together. Fai sat on their bed now, cuddling the puppy on his lap while he tried to wrap the bite mark one-handed. For some reason, even though they had only just arrived here, he felt sluggish and drowsy. It would be nice to cuddle in front of a fire and sleep for a while, with the warm, soft puppy in his arms, feeling its gentle breath on his chin. With Cuddles... no, with Snuffles. Yes, Snuffles, that was the best possible name.

He couldn't resist a wide yawn, and laid down on the blankets, Snuffles in his arms. "I'm going to bed, Kuro-meanie," he said. "It's been a long day and I'm tired."

"We just got here," Kurogane objected, then his expression turned suspicious. "Wait a minute, you're not taking THAT... to bed with you, are you?"

"Of course I am, he's warm." Fai flapped an irritable hand in Kurogane's direction, feeling an exhausting fatigue clouding his mind.

"Oh, no." Kurogane's expression hardened. "That's it, I'm putting my foot down. That THING is not going to share any kind of a bed with us!"

"Oh yes he will, Snuffles is sleeping with me," Fai snapped peevishly, too tired to want to argue.

"Uh uh. Absolutely not." Kurogane crossed his arms and glared. "It's either him or me, do you hear? If THAT THING is in our bed, I refuse to get in it!"

In response, Fai stretched out one long, limber leg and kicked at the paired blankets until Kurogane's side of the bedding had been tossed several yards across the clearing. Ignoring Kurogane's furious sputtering, he turned his back on his lover, cuddled the puppy close to his chest, and closed his eyes.

He drifted in a light doze, feigning a deeper sleep to try to stymie Kurogane from talking to him anymore. Truthfully he felt an odd fuzziness in his mind that prevented him from wanting to argue or even move around much more; the only thought that seemed appealing was cuddling more with his new pet.

He heard Kurogane muttering to himself as he stomped around the campfire, clanging against the iron stewpot with more force than necessary, and he felt a little guilty. Maybe it was a bit cruel to figuratively kick Kurogane out of his bed - they ALWAYS shared a bed together, it was just the way things were - but he couldn't help it. If Kurogane continued to be rude and mean in his rejection of Snuffles, then Fai would just have to take a stand. The argument from a few minutes ago had been bad enough; the last thing Fai wanted to do was escalate it to an actual physical fight… but he would, if he had to, to protect this baby.

He wasn't sure how long he had drifted in the half-doze before he noticed the sensation of a familiar aura approaching the campsite - Syaoran, his distinctive magic lighting up like a dim beacon on the landscape. He tried to rouse from his slumber, although exhaustion pulled him back down. Maybe Syaoran would take his side and be able to change Kurogane's mind; after all, how could the boy possibly resist something as cute as this puppy?

But as soon as Syaoran crossed into the firelight, Kurogane pounced on him and dragged him aside. "Keep your voice down," he hissed.

"Is Fai-san asleep already?" Syaoran asked in a hushed voice. If Fai really had been asleep, the whispered conversation wouldn't be enough to wake him. "He didn't seem that tired earlier..."

Mokona's distinctive, piping voice came next, although even she made an effort to moderate her volume. "Fai is sleepy-sleepy! What's that he's cuddling?"

"Is that a - what is that thing?" Syaoran's surprised voice asked sharply.

"Don't go near him, I don't want it to get to you too," Kurogane said in a fierce whisper. "It's brainwashing him or something, he's completely lost his mind over it, he keeps insisting that we take it along with us somehow -"

"You all don't need to whisper around me, I'm awake," Fai said, his voice cranky despite his best efforts. He sat up hugging Snuffles in his arms, and returned a defiant glare at the man and the boy who were both staring at him like he'd gone insane. "So, Syaoran-kun, did you manage to find a village after all?"

"Oh, yes, I did!" Syaoran wrenched his gaze away from Fai's puppy to look back towards the ridge rising in the darkness, waving his hand in its general direction. "Not a very big town, maybe a few hundred people. They weren't very friendly at first when I showed up - apparently no one in this area goes out into the woods after dark. I had to convince them that I wasn't a demon before they would let me get close enough to talk!"

Kurogane's head swiveled to stare intently into the darkness of the forest. "You're telling me these woods have demons?" he said, a new tension in his voice, and his hand gripped his sword hilt.

"Yes, the villagers told me all about them!" Syaoran said. "A lot of it is probably legend and superstition, you know; but from what they told me there are a lot of very dangerous creatures in these woods out here. I was going to suggest we should move down to the village where it's safer..."

The feral presence in the shadows of the woods sharpened until even Fai could detect its malevolent aura, a chaotic swirl of rage and hunger and… fear? He hugged Snuffles in his arms protectively, determined to keep the baby safe from any dangers. "I think it's a little late for that," he said with difficulty. "It knows we're here."

The beast - demon? - burst into the clearing with a howl; even once in the circle of firelight, it was still strangely hard to focus on the thing, hard to make out its exact form. It was the size of a large horse, topping even Kurogane in height and with a much larger bulk behind it. But the outline of the thing kept on shifting behind a blurry, dim veil of shadows that obscured its true form.

As they watched, the beast let out an earsplitting shriek that morphed into a feline yowl, and its form shifted into that of a large, predatory cat. Green eyes flashed and gleamed in the firelight, and deadly incisors the size of Fai's forearm gleamed from its snarl-bared mouth. After a moment, however, the animal seemed to lurch backwards, and the yowl turned into a guttural roar as it shifted into the shape of a huge grizzly bear, powerful paws poised to shatter and crush its prey.

"What the hell is this thing?" Kurogane yelled. He leaped forward, slashing with his sword, but the creature only snarled furious disgust at him as it snapped and lunged. The matted hair seemed to bleach into whiteness, and silver horns sprouted from the demon's head. With a start Fai recognized the distinctive monkey-like face and powerful squatting haunches of a yeti, an icebound monster native to his world. He'd never heard of them on any other world he'd come across, and how could such a cold-loving animal exist in this climate?

"It's a 'mind hunter'!" Syaoran said, his voice high-pitched with strain. "The people of this world told me about it! It uses mental powers to mask its true form, and it hunts by reading the minds of its prey and taking the appearance of whatever is most frightening to them!"

"Who cares how it hunts, the problem is how do I kill it?" Kurogane said in stressed exasperation. The sheer size and strength of the beast was a problem enough, but the psychic blurring of its form made it impossible to gauge the animal's true position, or to find vital weak points where he could strike. It took everything the warrior had just to fend the demon off.

Fai tried to summon a spell against it, working one-handed around the puppy in his arms. But he felt a terrible dragging sensation on his magic, and he realized that the creature had an innate resistance to magical attacks. What was more, he seemed able to gain a strange empathy with the creature; although it formed no words, he was able to get a glimpse into its mind. "Her kind hates fire," he realized, trying and failing again to summon up some sort of magical defense. "She shouldn't be attacking us, not when we have the fire going. What does she want?"

"Isn't it obvious? Give her back her baby!" Kurogane yelled at him.

Fai wheeled to stare at him incredulously. "What?"

In his arms, Snuffles began to struggle, making little excited, eager yelps. Everyone's attention went to the puppy, and before Fai's disbelieving eyes, the outline of the little canine shifted and blurred with that same confounding darkness. A few seconds later, what Fai was clutching protectively close was not a puppy at all. Instead he was holding an ugly, eyeless beast with a head that sloped down from its scaled, spiny back right into a vicious beak. Long, jointed black feelers - or maybe they were antenna - whipped about in an excited frenzy, and hard black feet ending in single, pointed claws tore impatiently at Fai's arms.

Stunned, he loosened his grip, and Snuffles wriggled out of his arms and landed with a thump on the pine needles. Using his antenna and the long, whipping, hairless tail, the little creature righted itself and then scuttled quickly across the intervening distance to the larger creature.

Almost instantly, the attacking demon lost interest in them, all its attention immediately focusing on the baby. Its form shimmered and blurred again, shrinking to a larger version of the same rest-and-black scaled monster as Snuffles. The full-grown creature had rows of interlocking teeth in its beak, Fai thought in a moment of dazed irrelevance, but otherwise they were almost identical. Now how had an animal evolved to have both teeth and a beak?

After a few moments of snuffling at the pup - former puppy - as if to make sure it was not harmed, the demon scooped up her baby in the long frontal antenna - or maybe they were tentacles - and faded in a patch of blurred darkness into the forest. The four travelers stared after them.

"So that wasn't a puppy at all!" Mokona stated, clinging to Fai's shoulder and worriedly inspecting the scratches and bites that 'Snuffles' had left on him. "It was a baby mind hunter, and it tricked Fai into picking it up! Maybe it thought Fai was its mommy?"

"Uhm, the villager was telling me, they hatch out of eggs in low damp places around here," Syaoran said, sounding almost apologetic for not knowing this ahead of time. "They're very dangerous because they can read your mind, and take on the form of whatever's the most frightening, or, or the most appealing. Um, that's why people around here don't travel after dark, and are warned not to go off the paths after, errrr, beautiful women that they see in the forest."

"Figures," Kurogane snorted in disgust. Once the demon and her baby had disappeared into the darkness of the forest, he finally relaxed and sheathed his sword. "Of course beautiful buxom women wouldn't work on you - instead it tried to look like something disgustingly cute and fluffy, is that right?"

"Hey!" Fai objected, shivering and brushing at his shirt and sleeves to try to get rid of the tiny, clinging barbed hairs that the monster had left behind. Now that the baby hunter was out of his grasp, his mind was quickly clearing of the illusions and compulsions he had felt to love and protect it. "It was only a baby hideous unnatural hell-beast, of course it would take on a baby form."

"Huh." Kurogane came over and took his hand, turning it over in the firelight to show the place where sharp fangs had pierced his skin. Without commenting, he tugged Fai over to the fire where he had boiled some water, and pushed him down so he could start cleaning out the bite wound. "Better clean that, god knows what sort of nasty stuff could get in it."

"Sorry about all the trouble," Fai murmured, feeling rather ashamed for having been so utterly taken in. Although he suspected if Kurogane or Syaoran had been the first ones to encounter the baby mind-hunter, they would have fared just as badly.

"Still, you do realize," Kurogane said after a few minutes, in a tone of unutterable smugness; "I was right and you were wrong. And you are never allowed to pick up stray pets again."

~end.

More author's notes:

Thank god, FFnet is working again! -_- For about two weeks in there, it refused to let me create new stories under the TRC category - just that category, no others. Hmph.

In case anyone was wondering, yes, the concept of a 'Mind Hunter' was based on World of Warcraft's 'Felhunter' or 'Fel hound,' a truly awful looking demon that warlocks can summon as pets. Google "felhunter" if you want to get an idea of what Fai's new pet really looked like, but it was definitely not cuddly.