Disclaimer – Theirs is theirs. Mine is mine. This is mine riffing off theirs.
A/N – This is essentially me taking a break in writing a much longer, more serious XS fic. Possibly finds its roots in my current diet, since fic-writing takes my mind off food. Not meant to be taken seriously at all.
Continuity – Anywhere, really.
Feedback – Yes please! Forget diamonds, reviews are a girl's best friend.
Dog Days
© Scribbler, July 2005
"There was a time when I could say this is the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me. I want that time back."
"Oh stop fussing," Kimiko said, tapping irritably at her PDA. "It's not like you're dead or anything."
"What world do you live in? I think this qualifies as 'anything'." Raimundo folded his arms. Or tried to. He didn't know quite where to put the claws so they wouldn't jab into his sides, and the excess body hair was just a pain. Master Fung had insisted he take his shirt off to be examined, so it was getting everywhere. Moulted fuzz sat around him like a blast radius.
"Truly, my friend, I am most sorry," Omi apologised for a billionth time. "If I had been faster - "
Raimundo let out a small growl that was much more suited to the term than usual.
Clay looked up from where he was mixing something red with something purple with a mortar and pestle. A cloud of suspicious looking smoke sat above him like one of those bad luck rain clouds you sometimes got in cartoons. Of course, in cartoons you had all your problems sorted within twenty-two minutes. This had been going on for near six hours now, with no sign of reprieve.
"At least you was able to knock that troll cattywumpus this way. Ain't no shame in that kinda right hook."
"Spare me the words of comfort and just find me a cure." Rai sniffed. His brain was awhirl. Something kept telling him to lick this, chase this, growl at that. The trees outside had taken on a disturbingly attractive quality, and he was on the verge of overload thanks to all the new input from his senses – not least of all his nose. Not only could he smell things so much better than ever before, but he actually knew what they were, as though the information had been in his brain all along, just waiting for him to find the right key. For example, Clay was currently mixing up a bowl of pulped feverfew, dogwood, some of those crystals the monks kept in a locked box in the storeroom, and… "Why are you pouring chocolate milk into that?"
Clay shrugged in that deliberate way he often did. It told Rai exactly nothing. "Master Fung told me to. Got the recipe right here." He waved a scrap of paper aloft. "He said there's some ingredient in each of these here things that's necessary to change you back. We could just use the exact ingredients, sure, but findin' 'em an' putting 'em all together'd take longer than waitin' for it to snow on the plains."
"I don't know whether to trust any magic potion that involves chocolate milk."
"It will make it taste better." Omi tried a smile.
"If it's anything like the last one, I won't be taking it orally."
Omi winced and slowly back out of the room. "I will … go and ensure Master Fung's search for an alternative antidote is progressing properly." He darted through the door.
"Yeah," Raimundo grumped. "You do that."
"You shouldn't be so mad at him."
He fixed Kimiko with one yellow eye. "And why the hell not? He is the reason I've traded my devilish good looks for fleas and a leash." This wasn't strictly true. His own misguided and overactive sense of heroism had helped.
"Puh-lease, you're still semi-human."
"Why am I the only one who sees the irony in that sentence?"
She just rolled her eyes and swept her stylus in a series of loops and jabs. The PDA beeped every so often, but each beep was followed by a deepening of her frown. Evidently her online search was going about as well as their trial-and-error potions.
Raimundo settled down for a good stint of professional wretchedness. Like all teenagers, he was well versed in the ways of dejection and woe-is-me. Unlike most teenagers, he had a unique reason for indulging in them. Nobody had even complimented his bravery in flinging himself at the troll that had broken into the Shen Gong Wu vault. That bag of tricks the thing had bought from a travelling sales-witch could have wreaked so much more damage if he hadn't wrested it away so quick – especially since it had already pinned Omi beneath one massive hand. But did he get a thank you? Did he get a 'Well done, Rai'? Of course not. He just got to sit on the floor and wait while they took their sweet time figuring out a way to fix him.
Or … not fix him. Because with the alterations to his body that was a whole other ballgame.
He scratched behind one pointed ear with his leg before he even realised what he was doing. "Aw, man. I was being sarcastic about the fleas. And there's no point in trying to hide that raw egg you're putting in Clay. Or the motor oil. I can smell them."
Sheepishly, Clay put the bowl of dubious, thick … it couldn't even be described as liquid, but he put it back on the table anyway. Some slopped onto the floor. Raimundo half expected it to burn a hole.
"It says here that lycanthrope is usually transferred by being bitten by another lycan," Kimiko announced like it would help.
"There wasn't much biting involved, as I recall. Quite a lot of jumping and kicking, and a whole bunch of yucky pink powder up my nose, and then a great deal of punching and stomping, but not all that much biting."
"I'm just saying, this might not be permanent. It doesn't sound like you're a proper lycan, just some hybrid spin-off thing."
"Because that makes me feel so much better about the situation. Clay, is that stuff done yet?"
"Almost." Clay eased a jug of blue-green fluid into his arms to drip into the bowl. He was being very, very careful, even for him. "Accordin' to what Master Fung done wrote me, we gotta let it stand for a while first."
"Great. Stupendous. For how long?"
He consulted the paper. "Three hours."
"What? I'll have been eaten to death by then! I'll – yow!" A mushy banana smacked Raimundo on the side of the head. He yelped and grabbed his ear.
"Baby," said Kimiko, retrieving another one from the bowl at her feet and unpeeling its slightly squashed shape. She'd read somewhere online that it was good to eat five portions of fruit a day, and had been forcing the boys to do likewise. Grapes, kiwi, apples, oranges, guava, mangos – she'd had it all sent to the temple via private courier. Master Fung, sensing the legendary determination within her scheme, and having the wisdom to recognise his students should be in perfect digestive health, had allowed her to proceed unopposed. "You've had fur before when you used the Monkey Staff."
"That's different. You put the staff down and the fur goes away. I can't get rid of this stuff. And it's driving. Me. Nuts." He started to gnaw at his lower arms to ease the itchiness. "Oh man, karma really bites."
"Excuse me?" said Clay.
"I think he means he's getting cosmic payback for, y'know, helping bring the world to its knees," Kimiko provided, biting into her banana and chewing. "You want one, Clay? Rai?"
"Can't. Got some of this stuff on my hands, an' I don't fancy findin' out what it tastes like."
"Rai?"
"I want meat."
"Fair enough." She went back to searching.
A long moment passed. Raimundo continued to scratch. Clay continued adding a variety of mismatching and unappetising ingredients into his mixture. It turned from yellow to green, to sapphire, to burnt umber, and finally settled on some olive-buttercup fusion the colour of cat vomit. Raimundo felt ill just looking at it.
"I don't want that stuff anywhere near me," he warned, backing away on his rear. He trapped his tail and winced, pulling it in front of him like a blanket over his lap. He'd ruined a good pair of cargo pants when that sprouted.
Clay studied a spoonful of gloop with a look of quiet uncertainty. "P'raps it looks better after the three hours are up…"
"Well I vote you take some first. If you keel over, then we'll know it's as bad as it looks."
"My friends!" Omi burst into the room, a dervish of delight, triumph and pistoning little legs. "I believe I may have the answer to your problem, Raimundo! Master Fung has concocted another formula, and it does not involve - "
"Omi look out!" Kimiko cried.
Too late. Omi, so intent on telling his good news, completely failed to check the floor for wayward bananas. The one Kimiko had thrown at Raimundo hurled itself at the soles of the little monk's shoes, splitting open and mashing its insidesinto a slippery paste. His feet skidded forward, while the rest of him continued at a more leisurely pace. Obviously, this discrepancy couldn't go on for long. Omi flew backwards andthe small phial in his hand took wing. It thudded against Raimundo's long nose, unstoppering and spraying him with a fine, glowing white dust.
Rai clapped both hand-paws over his snout before he could inhale or ingest any. He'd already had one bad experience breathing in strange magical things. His eyes watered, so he shut them.
Seconds passed. He could hear Omi scrabbling back to his feet. Clay's rhythmic mixing noises stopped, as did Kimiko's tapping. A heavy sort of silence filled the room.
"What?" he demanded, opening his eyes slowly.
Kimiko had a hand to her mouth. At first he thought she was stifling a gasp, but then he realised she was trying to stop herself from laughing. Clay pushed all the hair from his eyes to get a better look, while Omi's face was a study in horror and guilt.
"What?" Raimundo felt his face, but he wasn't human again, so that couldn't be it. He glared at Omi. "What did you do?"
"I am most sorry, my friend. You were meant to combine it with water and drink it, not - " Omi started, but Kimiko cut him off.
"You had brown fur before, right Rai?"
"Yeah. So?" Raimundo's eyes widened. He held out his arms. It was patchy, darkest in places where the dust had settled in the largest quantities, but his previously same-shade-as-his-hair brown fur was now a shocking neon pink.
He howled with rage and indignity.
Kimiko just grinned and ran to their sleeping quarters for her digital camera.
FINIS.
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