What? An update? Yes, 'tis true. I stopped procrastinating. Slightly cracky. I was in the mood for crack.


Performer

XX

Water gushed down his throat as Kurogane took long gulps. It would have been sake or red wine or some sort of alcoholic beverage but it was water that the troupe had in abundance and so it was water that he was downing at the speed of light.

Hands gripping the edge of the table at this feat of physical endurance, his chair slightly tilted on its back legs; he finally slammed the empty bottle onto the table, breathing a sigh of relief.

Fai, who had been watching with a mixture of amusement and concern, deemed it safe to lean closer across the space of the table.

"Well?" he asked cautiously.

Kurogane stared at him silently. They looked at each other intently. Without a word, they waited and wondered.

Then Kurogane opened his mouth to reply and a small hiccup broke free from his throat.

Fai sighed and smiled. Kurogane turned red. For some reason, it was extremely undesirable to be suffering from the hiccups. There was something strangely emasculating that he, the fearsome ninja that he was, should have the hiccups.

"Three litres. That's impressive, Kuro-pon!" Fai attempted to whistle and glanced at the other empty bottles littered haphazardly across the floor. His attempt to make light of the situation only earned him a disapproving glare from Kurogane.

"Shuddup!" he growled through gritted teeth, not willing to open his mouth all the way in case another embarrassing hiccup escaped. He felt his hiccups had brought along a headache. Or maybe that was just Fai.

"You know, there was a legend once. If you hiccup one hundred times in a row, you'll die!"

"I don't believe such stupid superstitions," he murmured.

"Some people say that kissing can help with the hiccups."

Kurogane emptied another small bottle in a single gulp and slammed it down on the table. "That's a lie! I've never heard of that!"

Fai shook his head. "In my country, it was a patented cure for hiccups!" he insisted, as though that alone could make Kurogane believe him.

"You're lying," he said bluntly.

"Well, water isn't helping you much, is it?"

Kurogane grumbled and stirred a spoonful of sugar into his glass. With a contorted expression, he took another long gulp.

"Try drinking it from the other end," Fai suggested. Watching Kurogane trying to drown himself internally was more absorbing than he had thought.

"You just want me to make a fool out of myself!" he scowled. Hiccups also provided a perfect excuse for his bad mood but Fai tolerated it all with a patient, and infuriatingly knowing, smile.

"Now, Kuro-chan, you can't perform with hiccups throwing off your aim, and I'm certainly not going to let you throw knives at me whilst you're like that so try it!" he urged.

Kurogane reluctantly obliged him. With much difficulty, he successfully managed to place his lips around the side of the bottle's rim. However, tipping it into his mouth was another matter. The bottle's contents spilt onto his top. His hiccups did not stop.

"Breathe into a brown paper bag for a whole minute!"

"Swallow whilst standing on your head!"

"Drink a glass of water with a knife in the middle!"

"How about - "

"Stop!" Kurogane finally thundered. His shirt was damp with spilt water and his hair was in a mess. "I'm getting a headache," he sighed, brushing his hair back into place.

"At least the cure for that is easy. Aspirin!" Fai piped cheerfully.

Kurogane glowered at him. "No, the cure for that is to remove myself as far away from you as possible."

"But how about…" Fai was cut short as the flap of the tent fluttered shut, "…being surprised."

XX

Having escaped the torture methods of a blond, mentally challenged wizard, Kurogane made himself scarce by disappearing into the storage tent to be alone with his hiccups. The tent the travelling troupe of performers had set up was adequately equipped with hoops, bags of animal feed, masks, braziers, boxes of fireworks and other things of whose use he had no idea.

The flap to the giant tent was pushed open. He readily turned around. If anyone asked, he was taking stock.

"K – Kurogane-san," Sakura slipped into the dimly lit tent. She paused by a particularly frightening clown mask before approaching him nervously.

Assuming that her nervousness was caused by all the clown related objects in the tent, he thought nothing off it when she stuttered.

"Ye - " he hiccuped. There was no stopping the damn things. "Yes?"

Sakura took a great interest in twiddling her thumbs, her gaze occaisonally rising from her hands to look him in the eye.

"K- Kurogane-san…um…err…well…Look, it's a three-headed Morgball coming to bite your head off, Kurogane-san!"

He blinked.

Sakura's index finger, valiantly thrust into the air when she had screamed, meekly recoiled. Her cheeks were coloured red with embarrassment.

He stared at the princess.

Sakura stared back, unsure of what she was supposed to do now.

Slowly, Kurogane turned his gaze towards the pile of props. "Hey," he said loudly, addressing the moth-eaten costumes and colourful brass rings. "Idiot…I know you're there."

There was a moment of hesitation before Fai reluctantly made his appearance, popping out from behind the mountain of props. He laughed weakly, a little disappointed that he had been caught out.

"Weren't you even a little bit surprised, Kuro-chi?"

The question was not deemed worthy enough for a straight answer. Instead, Kurogane muttered "Idiot," under his breath and proceeded to grumble about a hundred other unrelated issues.

"I'm sorry Kurogane-san, Fai-san said that it would help you," Sakura blushed. She had followed his script to no avail, though she was still left wondering what a Morgball was.

Fai nodded at her appreciatively. "It would, if it had worked. Don't you ever get scared or surprised Kuro-chan?"

"I do," he conceded, "I'm constantly being surprised by your stupidity."

Before Fai could make some quick remark or flail around melodramatically, gasping about what a cold, cruel father he was, Kurogane slunk away, leaving behind only a trail of hiccups in his wake.

XX

He covered his mouth, refusing to let himself be caught hiccuping again. However, no matter how hard he tried to keep them in, they always seemed to find some way of escaping.

"Kurogane-san, are you feeling better?" He barely caught sight of Syaoran befrore the boy decided to join him. The hiccups were the blame for everything, including his lack of awareness.

Syaoran seemed to have been looking expressively for him. He hoped that it was not one of the mage's insane schemes again.

Kurogane looked at him sourly and hiccuped.

Syaoran smiled weakly. "…Well, I was asked to give you this," the boy handed over a small square package wrapped tightly in yellow wrapping paper.

"What is it?" Kurogane eyed the yellow package suspiciously.

"From one of the other performers," Syaoran quickly replied. A little too quickly.

It stunk of scheming wizard.

Kurogane accepted the parcel, promptly dropping it on the floor as soon as he received it. With one last sceptical stare at the brightly wrapped gift, he stamped his foot through the middle of it.

"K – Kurogane-san!" Syaoran yelped.

The packaging ripped in two. A clown head sprang up and down on a broken coil, still laughing maniacally whilst its dismembered body rested amongst the cardboard and yellow wrapping.

Syaoran looked positively unnerved and stepped back a few paces from the doll.

Kurogane scowled at the clown's painted smile. "I'm going to kill that wizard!" he growled and skulked away, leaving Syaoran frozen in shock by the laughing clown.

XX

Fai paced around his room - once around the table, once around the bed - still deliberating how to cure Kurogane of his ailment. Since nothing else had worked, Fai was sure that scaring the living daylights out of the ninja was their only option left. If only Kurogane would have the decency to be scared.

"What would someone like Kuro-tan be afraid of?" he wondered aloud, hoping that part of the 'Cure Kuro-pon task force' would come up with a bright idea.

Sakura and Mokona glanced at each other before sinking even deeper into thought.

"Ghosts?" Mokona suggested.

"No," he waved a dismissive hand.

"Spiders?" Sakura put forth.

Fai waved the idea away. "Definitely not."

Mokona opened its mouth to make another suggestion when the flap of the tent was thrown open and the object of their troubles stormed in.

"Kuro-chan!" Fai leapt to his feet in surprise.

Kurogane took one look at Sakura and Mokona, sitting around the centre of the tent before pinning Fai under his gaze. Something was definitely strange. "What were you doing?" he asked suspiciously.

Fai's thoughts began racing madly. He could do it now, it was the perfect moment to suddenly surprise him, if only he knew what would work. A simple 'Boo!' would definitely fail. Kurogane hiccuped as he waited.

Unable to think of anything, Fai finally decided to abandon the 'scare' method and go with what he knew.

Grabbing Kurogane by the collar of his shirt before he could resist, Fai pinched and tugged him forward by the nose, pressing his lips against his. He felt Kurogane freeze with shock, his breath catching in his throat.

Fai was not sure how long they stayed like that. He imagined it was quite a while. After a delighted "Hyuuu!" from Mokona, he released his patient and Kurogane flopped onto the bed.

"See? I told you that kissing works!"

He beamed proudly. It was not the patented cure for hiccups for nothing.

"F – Fai-san! Kurogane-san's not breathing!"

Fai's head whipped round to where Sakura was shaking the ninja as hard as she could. Though he was certainly not dead, Kurogane was sufficiently 'out of it' at the moment, but Fai consoled himself at the thought that at least his hiccups were gone.