Warnings: Jack is a diva (but hey,that's hardly news). And… I'm not sure, maybe mentioned animal neglect/abuse? But not particularly… Little Pupper is just a little worse for wear in the beginning. And I'm throwing OOC in there too, because they're off arrangements and sane.

It looked like some sort of undead thing. No, that wasn't accurate. Damian could have literally broken into a pyramid, stolen a mummified animal, revived it with some creepy voodoo, and brought it back to the bey park and it would have looked better. It stared back at him with one dark, bulbous eye; the other was pale and glossed over. Jack instinctively backed away. "What is that?"

Damian cradled it, allowing the ragged, likely parasite-ridden animal to climb under his chin. "He's a puppy, Jack. I found him in a dumpster."

"And why," Jack started, trying to resist the urge to swat the potential threat to Damian's health away from him, "were you in a dumpster?"

"I wasn't in the dumpster until I heard him crying," Damian told him as if that were the most obvious thing in the world and scratched behind its ear.

Jack sighed and ran his hand through his hair. There was so much wrong with this situation. He had been gone for five minutes- five minutes! How had Damian managed to wander off, find a dumpster, and procure an animal that looked as if it was about to fall apart? "Right, how stupid of me. First of all, animals don't cry." Damian tried to say something, but he ignored it. "Second, please get that thing away from you before it gives you a disease."

Damian gave him a frustrated look before he shifted his hold on the dog so it was pressed against his torso. It was still closer that Jack would have liked, but at least it wasn't so near his face. "Look, at least give me a ride to the vet."

Jack crossed his arms. "I would sooner send Befall through my own kneecap than let that thing in our car."

"Jack, come on! He's hurt and it'll take me forever to walk there. We'll just drop him off so they can patch him up and you'll never have to see him again. I'll even clean the car once we get back if it makes you feel better. Please."

The 'please' was enough for him to make his decision, but he still pressed his lips into a firm scowl. "And you'll be on dishwashing duty for a week?"

"Deal," Damian agreed and practically ran to the car. Jack rolled his eyes and followed him.

"If that thing gets fleas in our car, I will murder you in your sleep."

Damian laughed and gently pushed the puppy away from his face. "You're a cuddly little buddy, aren't you?"

The only answer he got was the licking switching from his face to his fingers.

He pulled himself up so that he was sitting on the couch rather than being sprawled across it, and his new friend wobbled over and flopped onto his thigh. Damian smiled and scratched a patch of fur behind his ear.

He looked a lot better. His fur was clean, although there wasn't much of it. Chunks of it had fallen out on its own, and the vet had needed to shave more off, but it would grow back. His bad eye had been removed and they had amputated the lower part of one his front legs, but he was moving around okay and seemed happy. He leaned into the scratch, tongue rolling out of his mouth.

Damian cautiously picked him up and lifted him back up near his face. The puppy licked his nose once, tail wagging furiously, before he lifted his head and perked up his ears.

A moment later, Damian heard it, too. The car. Jack was back from his little excursion to the arts and crafts store. Damian glanced at the door that Jack would soon walk through, then back to the puppy, then the door again. He had been hoping for a little more time to figure out a way to explain things without getting his head ripped off.

Said puppy, oblivious to Damian's plight and jealous of the attention, pawed at Damian's face.

"Hey! Careful, you have sharp claws," he told him lightly. Damian set him on the floor and went outside. Hopefully the shopping had put Jack in an outrageously good mood and he would at least be able to explain what was going on.

Jack spun around when he heard the door, plastic bags swinging from both his arms. "Damian! Come and make yourself useful so I don't have to make two trips." He practically threw a bag at him and started babbling about what he had bought this time.

Damian pretended to listen, trying to figure out a way to ease into this conversation.

"What's on your shirt?"

He glanced down. The small bits of tan fur stuck out like a sore thumb against the black fabric. He rubbed the back of his neck. "Oh, yeah, about that…"

Jack's expression went from ecstatic to murderous in under a second. "You didn't."

Damian opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. It wasn't until Jack swung the door open and it hit the puppy that he found his voice. "Jack, be careful!" He gently scooped up the puppy. "He's still fragile from having operations done and-"

"What have you done?"

"It's not what it looks like."

"Oh, really? Well that's good, because it looks like you've brought that monstrosity back into our house!"

"Look," he rushed, "the vet can't keep him with them and the animal shelter is already overcrowded and he'd get put down really fast. It's just until either the shelter has more room or someone wants to adopt him from us, I swear-"

Jack shook his head with a patronizing chuckle. "Oh, Damian. Do you honestly think I'm going to believe that? No, this is what would happen: if that thing stayed here for so much as a week, you would get pathetically attached to it and wouldn't part with it even if we did find someone that wanted it, leaving us stuck with it forever." He looked at the puppy as if its very existence offended him. "So get it out."

"Jack-"

"No."

Damian looked at the puppy and scratched him behind the ear.

"Look at you. You're getting attached to it already."

"I know." His shoulders slumped. "Can't we at least give him a test run.? I'll take care of him."

"Putting off getting rid of it will only make things harder."

It didn't sound as harsh as Damian expected it to. He saw the window and decided to jump through it. "Just give him a chance. You might like him."

"I don't like animals, Damian," Jack sighed.

"One month, come on. Please."

Jack studied him, then the puppy, and crossed his arms. "One week."

"Two weeks."

Jack looked at the ceiling as if it had the answers to his problems. Based off of his expression, it either didn't, or gave him an answer he didn't like. "Fine. It can stay for two weeks. But don't expect any sympathy from me when you're sobbing your eyes out because your precious animal is gone."

A/N: Behold! I, the one with too many things to work on, got yet another idea that I couldn't resist. Dang me, this is getting ridiculous. In my defense, I'm not planning on this being very long. And I'm working on my other stuff... kinda. Slowly. Painfully slowly. I'm sorry. Maybe some day I'll manage to get back into the swing of a set writing schedule. Man, those were the days. I got so much done! Hahaha ha ha... ha. Yeah. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed, but even if you didn't, I still had fun writing it.

I don't own beyblade. If I did, there would be an outrageous amount of screen time for minor characters.