Cobra Confessions

By Drizzle117

The stuffed cobra didn't look like much.

Huddling behind the large armchair in the place known all through Downtown City as the infamous Littlest Pet Shop, Pepper Clark spat her prize down in front of her and began to study it. It didn't even truly look like a real cobra, just some stuffed toy in the shape of the dreaded snake.

The skunk prodded at it with one grey paw, hoping it didn't make some sort of squeaking noise. Luckily, it didn't, and she sighed in relief. Safe.

The green toy was worn down from use, had been squeezed to the point where the stuffing was flat, and the colors were dull and lifeless. Why it even meant anything to Sunil, Pepper had no idea. All she knew was she was bored, wanted to prank someone, saw the cobra, and took it. End of story.

The skunk's rose colored eyes scanned the area in front of the couch, just to see if Sunil had noticed yet. He hadn't; he had been talking with Vinnie for the last couple of minutes and hadn't seemed to have seen Pepper walk off with his toy. The skunk grinned. This was going to be great.

She hadn't pulled a good joke in what seemed like forever. Last time she had tried doing something that she thought was funny, she had ended up making pretty much all of Littlest Pet Shop feel bad, and hadn't pulled a huge prank since then. But this—this was only the beginning of the return of Pepper Clark.

Pepper stood on the tip of her paws, peering from behind the couch to see what the others were doing—nothing yet. No one seemed to have noticed her absence.

Sliding back into a comfortable position, the grey and white skunk wrapped her large, bushy tail over her nose. Grinning, she laid in wait; the cobra tucked safely under one paw, for someone to realize what was missing.

Sunil Nevla wasn't having a very good day.

It had been three full years now. Two full years since that fateful day early on in his life, when the most horrid thing ever known to him had taken place. It was destined to be a terrible day—and boy was it ever.

First, Vinnie had lost Sunil's bag of treats (well, he claimed he had lost them, the blue banded mongoose personally believed that his delicacies were resting in Vinnie's stomach), and then, when Blythe had arrived with treats for the pets, the local shop just happened to be out of mongoose food, so he had to sit in the back and go hungry while everyone else ate as sloppily as pigs.

After that, Minka had "accidentally" painted his favorite magic hat red and yellow, and his wand pink. He couldn't go around being a magician with a pink wand! What magician in their right mind would use a pink wand?

He hadn't ever wanted to believe it, but now Sunil thought it must be true.

Every year, on this day, he was cursed.

There was only one thing that could calm him, ward the bad luck away like bug repellant. He always kept it in a special spot—inside the tire swing. Sunil just needed to place his paws on it and calm would flow through him. This day wouldn't be so bad after all.

But Vinnie had gotten in his way again (of course) and was now chatting with him, completely unaware of Sunil's anxious need to get to the swing.

"…and so I said to that other lizard, 'You think you can dance like that? No, this is how a real lizard dances…"

"Vinnie?" Sunil's Indian accent rolled the V off of his tongue as he tapped the lizard on the shoulder. "Vinnie, I really must get to the tire swing…there's something I need to get…"

"…and so I started doing some 360s, and they were so impressed I swear, their jaws dropped right out of their mouths!" Vinnie laughed. "Well, you know what I mean, anyway." As Sunil tried to walk around him, the lizard just kept on getting in his way, talking, talking, talking in that low tone of his…it was driving the mongoose mad…

"…and then they crowned me as the dancing king!" Vinnie took a deep breath, and Sunil narrowed his amber eyes. This was his chance! Darting past the green reptile, he made a flying leap for the tire swing and snatched it with the front of his claws, pulling himself up little by little. Almost there, Sunil, he chided himself on. Almost…there…

And then his heart stopped.

Well, it didn't actually stop, but he could have sworn that it skipped a beat. Sunil rapidly felt around inside the hollowed out swing again, just to make sure that he wasn't mistaken. A sinking feeling in his stomach told him he wasn't.

His stuffed cobra, his only lifeline on this accursed day, wasn't there.

Pepper snickered as a loud scream echoed throughout the whole pet shop. "WHERE IS IT?" Finally, the skunk was back in the mood of practical jokes—and this one didn't even involve props! This could be her new shtick! Taking things!

"Minka's paint-set," she whispered to herself, calmly stroking her fluffy tail with one paw while fingering the missing cobra with the other. "Vinnie's disco ball…Zoe's microphone…"

"VINNIE! Did YOU take it?"

"Sunil, I have no idea what you're talking abou—whoa, what're you think you're doing? No, you can't dig through my bed or my stuff! No, no, no, get away from my secret drawer! SUNIL!"

"I-it's not here. MINKA! You're on the tire swing a lot! WHERE IS IT?"

"Russell would be a bit harder…" Pepper murmured to herself, completely oblivious to the chatter going on outside of her hiding spot. "…maybe his book—the safety and fun one—ah, I'd never bothered to memorize the name…"

"Hey, Sunil! Like my new painting?"

"I KNOW YOU HAVE IT, MINKA. HAND IT OVER!"

"…Sunil? What's wrong with you…ah! No, get away from my paint-set! Get away, you'll mess up the colors! Please…please! What's gotten into you?"

"Penny Ling," Pepper murmured thoughtfully, twisting one end of her tail with her right paw while stroking the cobra with the other. "She has so many ribbons...but I think her favorite is the gold ones…maybe the purple one, though."

"Ah, so Minka doesn't have it…w-w-w-who ha-ha-has it-t-t?" And with a loud groan, sudden sobbing began to occur from outside of the chair. Finally Pepper's ears twitched slightly, and she got to her paws.

Who's crying?

Taking a few pawsteps out and peering around the corner, the skunk's tail bushed up in surprise as she realized that it was none other than Sunil. All of the other pets had left him sitting on the windowsill, sobbing into his paws hopelessly.

"Sunil?" she whispered tentatively. At first she thought he hadn't heard her, since he continued crying for a few more seconds, but then he rubbed the tears out of his eyes and turned to look at her with a horror-stricken look on his face.

"G-gone…she's g-gone…" he whispered in a hoarse tone.

In a few quick bounds the skunk leapt up beside the mongoose on the windowsill, the cobra still wrapped in her tail where Sunil couldn't see it. "Who's gone, Sunil?" Pepper asked cautiously. "Who's gone?"

"She's left me," the blue banded magician managed to choke out. "She took the others…she left me for dead…the only thing she left with me was i-i-it and now i-i-it is gone!" After this last statement he burst out crying again, and Pepper was finally able to make sense of it.

After all, pretty near the same thing had happened to her.

"Your mother," the skunk said flatly.

Sunil looked up from between his paws and stared at her, amber eyes wide. "How did you know that?" He then flinched and looked away. "Not that I'm confirming…or denying…anything…"

"Because my brothers and I were abandoned when I was one year old," Pepper replied matter-of-factly. "We were left by the road outside of Downtown City, in a cardboard box. Our mother just left us alone. My brothers were picked up quickly, and I don't know where they are. It took me longer, but eventually a human took me in too. She nurtured me and helped me recover, and after I was accustomed to my new life, she began going back to work and took me to Littlest Pet Shop for day camp." No tint of emotion crept into the skunk's voice as she said this – she just stared blankly down at the ground.

Sunil didn't quite know what to say. "I'm sorry," he finally mumbled. "Your mother…she didn't leave you with anything?"

"Not even a toy to cling on to when I was upset," Pepper answered.

Wiping one tear the size of a piece of kibble out of the corner of his eye, the mongoose sighed. "You could say my story is somewhat like that…I had a sister. Our mother raised us for two years, and gave us toys. My sister's was a large string-on-a-stick that she would chase for endless hours. Mine was my stuffed cobra."

Pepper felt the presence of that very cobra in her tail, and shuddered. Sunil didn't seem to notice—just kept on talking.

"My mother left us by the road one day. She didn't care what happened to us or where we went—but strangely enough she never took our toys from us. That cobra was my lifeline. I couldn't let go of it. My sister was convinced that we had to try to find her; she ran across the road and was killed by a speeding car. I was all alone. Eventually I wandered into Downtown City and got an owner, but…" Sunil shuddered. "Every year, every year on the exact day my mother abandoned us—I can feel a sense in my bones—the only thing that calms me down is my cobra." The mongoose magician looked down sadly at the floor of the pet shop and ran his finger along the edge of the windowsill. "But today it's gone."

The skunk didn't know what to say. Although, she reasoned, there was one thing that she had to do, and perhaps it would make up for the loss of words. Slowly Pepper uncurled her tail, took out the stuffed cobra, and handed it to Sunil. "No, it isn't, and it never was."

He grabbed it, amber eyes lighting up with joy. "You found it?" he chirped, snatching the cobra with amazed paws and rubbing the faded green material up against his cheek. Pepper sighed, looking down at the ground with sad rose-colored eyes.

"No," she admitted. "I was the one who took it."

Sunil stopped mid-rub and stared at her. "You took it?"

Embarrassment burned in Pepper's cheeks. "Yeah…I wanted it to be a new shtick, taking things…but now that I see how much this meant to you…I never knew." Her ears lowered. "I'm sorry, Sunil."

The mongoose magician didn't say anything for a long while—just continued staring down at the ground. For a few heartbeats, Pepper was afraid he wouldn't forgive her. She bit her lip, waiting, and sighed with relief when he finally looked up, a smile on his face.

"That's fine," he grinned. "I'm just glad you gave it back, and admitted it was you."

Before she knew what she was doing, the skunk grinned and hugged the mongoose. Pulling away, she smiled, feeling like she could do a million back flips—or maybe juggle anything and everything in the room.

"Thanks, Sunil," Pepper nodded and leapt off of the windowsill. He grinned back at her as she slowly padded away, towards the TV.

Zoe intercepted her. The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel was staring in amazement, and somewhat in confusion. Pepper's eyes narrowed. "What's up with you, Zo?"

The dog looked at the skunk, and then at Sunil, and then back to Pepper. "Did you just…did you just do what I think you did?" she sputtered in an amazed voice.

Pepper shrugged. "Just hearing the Cobra Confessions, nothing much." A sly smirk on her face, she pushed past Zoe and turned on the TV, as the dog stared after her with an awestruck look in her ice blue eyes.

"Well, how about that," Zoe murmured to herself. "How about that."

AN: I really like this one-shot. I got the idea after one day when I sketched Sunil and Pepper on the windowsill, Sunil looking nervous and clearly talking about something, and Pepper looking concerned while wrapping her tail around him. Sunil's stuffed cobra lay on the ground near them. That picture that I drew sparked my imagination—and Cobra Confessions was born.

I find it odd that someone would just be breeding mongooses and skunks (and come to think of it, pandas and monkeys too…) in a place like Downtown City, so I came up with my own ideas of Pepper and Sunil's backgrounds. I might write a one-shot about Sunil or Pepper's past life later.

Ah-hem, now I've written three Peppunil one-shots (the names are Dance like you Know you Can, For a Beautiful Lady, and this one, Cobra Confessions) and I still have about two more lined up! Someone just go ahead and give me the "Biggest Peppunil Shipper" award! XD

Next up from me, other than chapters of My Littlest Pet Shop: Escape from Equestria, you should be seeing some Vinnieling! I love that ship but haven't been able to write about it yet. ;)

Hope you have a wonderful day/afternoon/morning/night/whenever you read this!

~Driz