Disclaimer: If I owned this stuff, I would be writing comics and movies, not fanfic.
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It sat there. The thing was huge, black and white, its golden eyes turned to the young boy. Hellboy, a red demon and currently nearly three feet tall, hid behind his mentor, as he looked at the strange creature. Was it some strange kind of demon? A monster that had to be exterminated lest it should eat the world?
It was a cat.
Bruttenholm pushed the boy forward and smiled, crouching down between the odd pair. "Hellboy, meet Twinkies."
The demon looked at the cat dubiously. "Twinkies?"
It suddenly struck Bruttenholm. "No! You don't eat him, god forbid; it's his name, like your name is Hellboy."
Nodding, the red demon warily watched the cat, it licked its fangs. "It's gonna eat me!" Hellboy hid again behind his mentor, ignorant to the laughing soldiers who manned the Mexican base.
The older gentleman shook his head softly as he picked up Twinkies, the cat immediately began to purr.
"It's gonna explode!"
Bruttenholm shook his head, offering the cat to Hellboy. "No, she's just purring, it means that she's happy." The cat was shoved into the boy's arms. "And she's yours; you have to take good care of her."
Trembling, the demon put the cat down and screamed as Twinkie rubbed her apple head against his leg. "It's gonna – gonna – give me fleas!" The boy bolted as fast as his legs could carry both him and the stone weight on his arm.
The mentor looked at the cat and the cat looked back. "Do you think I've perhaps bit off more than I can chew?"
Very slowly, the cat nodded before turning to follow its current source of favourite warmth. The strange red creature was like a living blanket...
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"Dr Bruttenholm!"
The man in question rolled groggily on his bed and put on his glasses, the item causing the blur of red to focus into that of a terrified Hellboy. "Yes?" He smiled.
"Twinkie tried to smother me!"
"Smother?" The man frowned. "Where you drinking milk last night?"
The boy burned a deeper red than his natural skin tone. "You said growing boys need to drink lots of milk every night."
"Cats like milk too; she was just cuddling you, Hellboy, that's all."
The demon didn't look convinced. "That cat is gonna kill me!"
"No she's not, now, go back to bed." Bruttenholm watched as the demon did as he was told, tail dragging along behind him.
Hellboy paused at the exit. "If I'm dead tomorrow, don't say I didn't tell you."
"Bed!"
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The next day saw the small demon waking up to find that the cat hadn't killed him but was sitting on his chest just watching him.
"AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-" Hellboy paused for breath, "AAAHHHH!"
The cat cocked her head and meowed quite indignantly at being rudely screamed at. She tossed her long haired tail and moved off the best source of heat in the entire base rather sadly.
The demon watched the cat, noting that Twinkies seemed upset about something. He reached down with his stone hand – as the cat couldn't possibly bite it off – and gently petted it.
He was suddenly wearing the cat again.
"AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-"
"Hellboy!" Dr Bruttenholm ran in and looked at the scene in front of him. "I give up!" He told the sky as he moved over and removed the cat from the demon. "Better?"
"Much – I thought it was gonna-"
"Kill you, per chance?"
"How did you know?" Hellboy trotted off quite happily, leaving Bruttenholm holding the cat. Twinkie looked at him with a bored expression before wriggling out of his grasp and trotting off after the demon.
"I'd best warn him." The mentor sighed, following the cat.
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It was much later in the day and Hellboy had just finished his large lunch of pancakes, chocolate bars and milk. There had also been a display of vegetables which he had ignored. In horror, he noticed Bruttenholm indicate the vegetables.
Pretending not to notice, the demon bolted.
"Hellboy!" Now where had that little rogue gotten to? The mentor sighed and gave up after a few moments to speak with one of the higher officers whom he didn't like in the least. "Yes, sir?"
"I just want to know what this recent fuss about Hellboy and a cat is all about."
The man gulped. "I just wished to teach him responsibilities and also how to handle small, fluffy animals in such a way that he won't harm them."
"He's supposed to be the key to Armageddon and your teaching him how to safely cuddle fluffy kittens?!"
Bruttenholm narrowed his eyes behind their glasses. "Now see here, he cant help it that's he's some key to the end of the world, he's just a little kid who's a bit stronger than most with red skin, a tail and horns."
"And a stone arm."
"I forgot about that one." The mentor shook his head. "Look, why does this concern you anyway?"
The other man sighed, folding his arms across his barrel chest. "Hellboy is supposed to either work for us as a hunter of demons or to be exterminated, and as he's so busy running around in terror at a cat, I don't see much option for it all."
Underneath the table, Hellboys golden eyes had opened to the size of a small set of saucers. They were going to kill him? Because he feared the plot that cats would one day take over the world as they had in ancient Egyptian times?
"The cats not gonna kill me – you're gonna kill me!" Hellboy ran out from his cover and bolted as fast as he could out of the room.
"See what you did?" Bruttenholm sighed. "He's just a growing boy, give him time." He stood up. "I'd best go see to him."
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Hellboy had found his favourite spot in the entire encampment – under his bed. It was small, dark and no one ever seemed to look under it, always opting for any crack and crevice or nook and cranny.
There was scratching and a determined meow as Twinkie, who was a rather large cat, popped under the bed. She sat down and licked her paw, ears tossed back.
"You're not really gonna kill me, are you?" Hellboy enquired, carefully petting the cat.
Twinkie rolled over, purring happily as her tummy was tickled.
"You know, you're kinda cute." He grinned, pulling the cat onto his lap.
She just purred louder, the extra heat a nice addition to the tickling.
Laughing now, he cuddled the cat. "See, I'm not a scared of cats, lets go tell Broomy, yeah?"
The cat allowed itself to be picked up and carried through the corridors, all the while plotting on several schemes to steal the boy's milk that night.
Would the cute purr and wide eyes trick do the job?
And then again, world domination required a lot of scheming.
So many things, so little time.