[Team Comedy] (Bodyswap) Mix and Matchmaker (2/2)

[mikkeneko]

Title: Mix and Matchmaker
Prompt: Bodyswap
Rating: Possibly R? Probably R.
Warnings: Lots of dirty talk and awful jokes in addition to sexual situations. Also some violence, but mostly of slapstick quality.
Author's notes: 16,000 words exactly! Aha!
There are two jokes at various parts of the fic lifted from 'Oglaf,' bonus smutty geek points to anyone who spots them. There are also some scenes that owe a lot to snopes.com, and others that borrowed from the speeches of prominent libertarians. I think that's all the credits; carry on.

Syaoran woke up back in his bedroom at the inn, feeling something unfairly like a hangover, but in his stomach. Groaning, he got to his tiny stubby paws and shuffled out of the room and down the stairs to the common room where his friends were gathered.

What he saw there - or rather, didn't see - made him stop in his tracks. Kurogane, Fai and Mokona were sitting around a card table, but there was no fourth figure to be seen. "Where's Sakura?" he cried out.

Fai and Kurogane looked up. "Hmmm?" Fai asked in mild surprise. "Oh, she's gone after the dragon."

"WHAT?!" Syaoran shrieked.

Kurogane nodded. "It's the only logical choice, really," he said knowingly. "She's the only one of us right now in a body that's suited for fighting."

Syaoran couldn't believe what his fuzzy white ears were telling him. "B-but she'll be killed!" he exclaimed. "Killed and - and then eaten!"

"Mokona certainly hopes so!" Mokona piped up. "The other way around would be much, much worse!"

Fai tsked disapprovingly at Mokona, then turned a beneficent smile on Syaoran. "I'm sure she'll be just fine," he said soothingly.

"How can she be FINE? She's fighting a DRAGON!" Syaoran shrieked. "Princess Sakura doesn't even know HOW to fight!"

"But the body she's in does," Kurogane argued. "It's all about the muscle memory. I told her, just draw the sword, and your reflexes'll dice that dragon before you can say quack!"

Syaoran's jaw dropped. "Are you serious?" he exclaimed. "We have to save her!"

"Now, Syaoran," Fai began chidingly. "Sakura-chan is a growing an independent young woman in a ninja's unfamiliar body. If you rush in to help her too quickly, she'll never be able to do things on her own, either."

"Take it from me, kid," Kurogane confided. "Interrupting a girl's first dragon slaying is a major faux pas. You don't want the princess to think you don't trust her, do you?"

"I can't believe you people," Syaoran cried. "If none of you are going to help her, I WILL!"

Recalling Mokona's unbelievably unhelpful advice, Syaoran managed to call on one of the pools of untapped space deep within his magical construct body until he located the one that held Souhi and Hien, then coughed it out. The edge of the hilt caught on the magical interdimensional portal halfway, reducing Syaoran to a fit of heaving coughs and gags that made his eyes water. He shuddered at the feeling of the large, heavy object inching slowly out of his mouth. This had to be the worst thing he'd ever felt; it was like giving birth, only backwards.

But he had a purpose to fulfill, and so he hung grimly on until the full length of the sword clattered to the pavement beside him. He picked it up in his tiny paws, staggering across the cobblestones as the counterweight of the long blade overbalanced him. At last he managed to steady his grip on the sword, resting the center of its balance on the fulcrum of his tiny white shoulder, and turned the hilt to face down the road.

"Sakura-hime! I'm coming!" he cried, and began to hop down the road on his tiny, tiny legs.

Kurogane and Fai watched him go. "Shouldn't we go after him, d'you think?" Kurogane said eventually.

"At the pace he's going?" Fai looked at him in surprise. "I should think we'd at least have time for lunch."

"You're probably right."

"And a nice long dessert after," Fai added.

Mokona cheered. "Yay! Cake!"

---

The sun had dipped several hours towards the horizon before Kurogane, Fai and Mokona, strolling at a leisurely pace, overtook Syaoran's toiling form on the road leading up the foothills. Ahead of them loomed a dark, foreboding mountain, and road dead-ended in the gaping maw of a dark cave before them, the inside of the cavern walls glowing with a faint orange light.

"About time you got here," Syaoran cried, still dragging the heavy sword along with both paws. "Sakura's been in there for hours! I'm sure she's been killed!"

"No, no, you got it all wrong," Kurogane assured him with enthusiasm. "The moment she faced that dragon with her sword in hand, my battle-hardened reflexes would take over and she would decapitate it in with one swing of her mighty thews!"

"You're raving," Syaoran groaned. "If anyone is decapitated in there it is definitely Sakura!"

Kurogane snorted in profound disagreement. "Dragon."

"Sakura!"

"Dragon!"

"Sakura!"

"Boys, boys," Fai soothed, interceding between them as he always did. "There's no need to fight over this."

Kurogane and Syaoran glowered at each over around Fai's legs. Fai added, "It's perfectly possible that they're both dead. Now, shall we go inside and have a look?"

The four travelers ventured into the cave, which turned out to be the entrance to a tunnel that sloped downwards into the mountain. The light grew as they descended, until they finally reached a blank wall at the bottom of the slope. The corridor made a sharp right further into the heart of the mountain, and the yellow light was coming from the room beyond. A deep, sonorous voice was speaking, and the echoes the voice made as it rolled and reverberated against the stone walls made it hard to pick out the words at first.

"...harmless enough at first," the voice was saying. "Mostly they just raised sheep and left me alone. But then there started being more and more of them, and the little cluster of houses down at the crossroads multiplied into a whole village. Then a town. Next thing I know there are representatives from the town council in my living room, telling me I'm fifteen years behind on paying my property taxes. Property taxes! Paid on the mountain I've been living in for centuries before their first misbegotten sheep wandered into this valley!"

"That does seem kind of unreasonable of them," Kurogane's deep voice came from the chamber beyond, sounding sympathetic. "I mean, you were here first."

"It's extortion," the large voice said passionately as the travelers rounded the last corner and stopped in their tracks, taking in the scene before them. "I ask no services of them, so what right have they to ask money of me? It's tyranny, that's what it is. If a dragon's personal property can be taken without hir consent by a so-called government, then all other rights are taken with it..."

Most of the cave beyond was filled up by a large, scaly body; looping and sinuous like a snake's, but with thick muscular legs emerging from the body near the head and halfway to the tail. A pair of large webbed wings were currently folded neatly against the dragon's body like a cape, and he (or she - it was impossible to tell the sex of a dragon without some very up-close-and-personal work that very few dedicated specialists had ever returned from alive) was holding a fine china tea cup in one delicately pincered claw.

Seated across the table from the dragon, and also holding a cup of tea, was Kurogane, or rather Sakura in Kurogane's body. She sat with her legs tucked up under her, sipping the tea and listening with great sympathy to the dragon's rant about tyranny, personal property, and thieving rogues disguising themselves with a thin cloak of legitimacy of self-declared authority.

Kurogane was the first to speak, sputtering in outrage. "What are you doing?" he near-shrieked at Sakura, who swiveled her head around to blink at him. "I told you to slay the dragon, not have tea with it!"

The dragon rotated its head around to glare disapprovingly down at the top of Kurogane's head. "Armed enforcers are the last gasp of a fascist government," it said, "enforcing with clubs and knives upon citizens they cannot intimidate those acts they cannot rationalize. Fuck the police."

"Oh, Ariel, it's all right," Sakura exclaimed, hurrying to introduce the newcomers to the lair's resident. "This is my friend, Kurogane. He's not a policeman."

"Damn right I'm not," Kurogane huffed. As though he would ever take such a common and low-life profession.

"He's just an assassin!" Sakura continued brightly. Syaoran groaned, burying his head in his tiny paws.

"Now, Kurogane, did you really expect your plan to work?" Fai said to the ninja, momentarily ignoring the dragon looming over them. "I was pretty sure something like this would happen. I mean, you had to know that any plan of action that required Sakura to so much as harm a fly would never happen."

"Then why didn't you say anything?" Kurogane raged.

Fai smiled at him, and a cold gleam flashed through Sakura's green eyes for a moment before vanishing. "Because, Kuro-sama, I've learned over our time traveling together that it's much easier to just wait for your plans to fail, than to waste time and breath arguing over them."

"But, what about the feather?" Syaoran exclaimed, hopping forward and craning his nonexistent neck to look around the cave.

The dragon snorted. "Feathers? What do I look like, a dinosaur?" it rumbled.

"No, no, I mean Sakura's feathers," Syaoran hurried to explain.

"What, you mean this human? He's not a dinosaur either."

"No - I mean -" Syaoran floundered. "We heard from some of the townspeople that you had a, uh, a wondrous hoard of treasure?"

From behind the dragon's shoulder, Sakura's face grew wide and alarmed, and she made an urgent negating gesture in Syaoran's direction. The dragon wasn't looking at her, though.

"Oh, you've heard about my collection?" the dragon boomed enthusiastically, wings fluttering with excitement as it rose from the tea-table. "Let me show you! I'm very proud!"

Sakura covered her face with her hands, hiding a faint moan. Apparently, she'd been through this routine once before. The dragon paid no heed, however, rising from the table and coiling its scaly body around as it began dragging out long shelves coated with twisted-looking metal contraptions.

"I have the most comprehensive collection of vintage kitchen appliances in twelve countries," the dragon boasted, picking one off the shelves at random and thrusting it in the travelers' directions. "There's this one, of course; a vintage early-model electronic hand mixer from the 1950s. Sixty years old and it still runs like new - none of this 'planned obsolescence' crap that you get these days.

"Let's see, ooh, I'm very proud of this one - a Great War-era dual-coil cantilever-action toaster oven! First model on the market ever to toast bread on both sides at once! Marked a new paradigm for toaster technology, a must-have for any serious kitchen appliance collector.

"Ah yes, this is one of my favorites - the Tyson Twenty-Nine, so named both for the year it was released and for the number of simultaneous functions it could perform, a record for any hand-held appliance ever. It slices, dices, carves, chops, shops, shanks, shaves, shuffles, sections, sculptures, sutures, snips, stabs, seasons, dilutes, permutes, boils, bakes, roasts, percolates, perpetuates, excavates, evacuates, exacerbates, nettles, piques, provokes, offends, and zests," the dragon rattled off in a single breath. "Of course, it couldn't do any of them well, but still worth having just for the lesson it presents on letting your marketing team write the engineering specs -"

"Excuse me... Sir," With some difficulty Syaoran broke into the running flow of sales pitch. "Er... I remember hearing that some of your amazing treasures... glow radiantly in the darkness with their own inner light?"

The dragon scratched its head with one delicate claw, looking perplexed. "Well, some of them do have light-up diodes," it admitted, "but I would hardly call them radiant, that sort of power-sucking ostentatiousness usually shows up on later models that I would hardly consider fit to add to my collection..."

"What about the, uh, the science oven?" Sakura broke in. "I, er, remember that that one had its own light?"

"Oh yes! Of course, the science oven!" the dragon said, delighted by the reminder. A rapid shuffling among the heavily-laden shelves produced a stubby, square box of dull gray metal. "One of the very first ever made, it came with a built-in light to warn the user when the device was in operation. Of course that's not its primary purpose, haha, but it is a good way for the user to avoid accidentally being bombarded with microwave radiation, which as everyone knows can cause sterility, and also voting straight party ticket."

"Perhaps you could demonstrate its operation?" Fai stepped in smoothly.

"Well, it's hardly complex to operate, but I suppose if you really want to see it..." The dragon frowned toothily down at the box, then used its needle-sharp claws to delicately push a button on the front panel. The box lit up and hummed, a bright light shining from the front glass panel as a tiny plate inside rotated. The dragon paused, head hanging arrested in the air as it stared at the light coming from the box. "So shiny..." it murmured.

"Quick," Sakura whispered to the other travelers. "Let's get out of here while they're distracted! I don't want to spend another three hours listening to them talk about the tyranny of public libraries as a vehicle for the government to keep the population brainwashed and compliant!"

They turned and hurried back up the corridor, while behind them the dragon pushed the button on the box over and over again, slit-pupils dilated wide as it drank in the golden light from the humming machine. "So... bright..." it mumbled dazedly. "So... shiny."

---

"Well, that was a massive waste of our time," Kurogane said as they descended the mountain path in the sinking sunlight.

Sakura disagreed. "We made a new friend," she said (being overgenerous with her definition of 'we' as usual) (and also her definition of 'friend.) "And that's always time well spent!"

"But we're no closer to finding your feather," Syaoran moaned from the cradle of Sakura's arms. Being carried by her did serve to reassure him that she had taken no harm from the dragon, so he had calmed down considerably. "And that was our only lead!"

"Not our only lead, Syaoran-kun," Fai disagreed. "While you and Kuro-drunk were smashing around in pubs starting fights, Sakura and I were gathering information in our own way."

"We went to a spa!" Sakura blurted, and then clapped her hand over her mouth.

Kurogane scoffed. "Why would you expect to hear any good local gossip in a spa?" he said. His expression turned deeply suspicious. "Wait, what do you mean by 'we' went to a spa?"

"And while we were there, we heard one of the local women talking about a string of mysterious illnesses that have gripped the town," Fai said loudly, overriding Kurogane's next questions. "It's very strange - apparently it only affects one person at a time, and as they drop into a coma, another one starts falling sick. That doesn't sound like a normal disease to me, does it?"

The travelers mulled it over. "Not really," Syaoran said at last, "but I don't see how it could be caused by the feather, either."

"Strong magic like the feather can cause all kinds of secondary effects," Mokona contributed helpfully, from where she was doing cartwheels by the side of the road.

"At any rate, it is a lead, and we should check it out," Fai said firmly.

Kurogane shrugged. "What the hell, why not," he said. "I'll try anything, as long as it gets me back into my proper body faster."

Fai couldn't help but agree, although he wasn't going to make Sakura cry by saying so out loud. This unexpected body-switching adventure hadn't been easy on any of them, and while he made a point of being easy and adaptable, the strain was beginning to wear on him.

What bothered him wasn't how much smaller and weaker this body was to his own, as so annoyed Kurogane. Nor how differently everyone reacted to him now, like Sakura. Nor being trapped in a miniaturized magical golem not even of remotely similar species or anatomy, with a sudden array of inexplicable powers he couldn't control, like Syaoran.

Well, okay, maybe this adventure had been a little harder on some of them than others.

Instead it was the increasing nagging feeling that he was doing Sakura a disservice by inhabiting her body like this. No matter what body he was in, Sakura was his little girl, and while he wasn't going to endanger her health or comfort by neglecting to properly maintain her body while she wasn't in it, he felt intensely uncomfortable doing so.

Normal bathroom and bathing tasks hadn't been too bad. To be quite frank, from a top-down view there was not really all that much of a difference from his own body (not that he ever intended to tell Sakura that, either.) As long as he didn't go looking, he wasn't in danger of seeing anything he shouldn't.

But then Kurogane had put on his little audio show from the bedroom next door and, well, that just stirred up all kinds of feelings that were intensely wrong for Fai to be having while in Sakura's body. Feelings that were warm and tingly in all the places he'd been trying not to think too hard about. And ever since then, every time Kurogane talked, in that special growly intonation of his (unmistakable, even in Fai's own voice,) they threatened to make a return.

This wasn't good at all. He had to think about something else. Fai cast his attention around for a distraction, and found one in Mokona, who was currently spinning around like a ballerina and squealing in happiness as she staggered around dizzily after...

Warm and tingly feelings again.

Damn. Syaoran was obviously out as a topic of distraction. Fai forced his attention to the surrounding scenery, instead. It was a lovely, sunny spring day. Sun shining through the trees, birds singing, bunnies fucking in the meadows; bright flowers, butterflies. All the things that innocent little girls like Sakura adored. Flowers, rainbows, butterflies, unicorns; especially pearly white unicorns with the big, strong horns, twisted in a spiral as they rose gracefully from the unicorn's forehead, so proud and hard...

Warm and tingly. Goddammit.

He kept forgetting that Sakura, for all her innocence, was still very much a teenager. Somebody desperately needed to teach the princess how to masturbate. Someone who was definitely not Fai.

Thankfully, they were almost back to the village by now, passing by the first outlying buildings. "But, even if the strange illness is connected to the feather somehow," Syaoran was saying in a frustrated tone of voice. "There are hundreds - even thousands - of people living in this town! How are we supposed to find the one person suffering from this mysterious disease - before it passes on?"

All at once, the door to the house they were passing banged open and a woman ran out, screaming and waving her hands. "Help! Someone help!" she cried, wringing her hands and tears streaking her face. "My son is sick! He's suffering from the horrible illness that is haunting our town! Every one of the symptoms is the same! Please, someone do something!"

The travelers looked at each other. "You have got to be kidding me," Kurogane exclaimed.

---

"My Takashi is in here," the woman, who had introduced herself as Mrs. Yamazaki, said as she ushered them into a quaintly appointed drawing-room overflowing with rugs, clocks, figurines, and all sorts of other things that would definitely get smashed during the inevitable upcoming fight scene. "Please help him, Doctors. I have faith in you!"

Her role as an expository transition device completed, Mrs. Yamazaki hurried out of the room, never to be seen again. The travelers were left blinking in mutual bemusement at a young boy with short black hair who was sitting on a short couch, a book in his hand and quilts bundled up around his pyjamas. His eyelids drooped heavily, as though he could barely keep them open, and his head threatened to nod forward onto his chest.

"Are you the doctors?" Yamazaki asked.

Fai looked around at the picture they painted: one hulking black-clad ninja (with flawlessly smooth skin and enameled nails,) one wizard surreptitiously trying and not very well succeeding at concealing a sword behind his back, one teenage boy doing pirouettes on the dining room table, one pink-eared muppet, and one practically prepubescent girl. "Yes," he said. "We're... doctors. Doctors, is exactly what we are."

Yamazaki did a slow blink, his eyes sweeping down and then up again. "Doctors of... what exactly?" he asked in tones of polite disbelief.

"Oh, you know, just general..." Fai flapped his hands vaguely. "Doctors of everything. We solve mysteries... go on adventures... get laid. You know, doctor stuff."

"I see," Yamazaki said. Then he suddenly smiled brightly, a wide, patently false smile, and that looked super creepy when someone else did it. "I want to be a doctor when I grow up, too!" he announced. "I'm already studying. I've read dozens and dozens of cases. Did you know that if you drink cold water right after a meal, you'll get cancer? That you can soothe bee stings by taping a copper penny to the welt? And that you can soothe jellyfish stings by peeing on them?"

"I don't think that's quite true..." Syaoran said uncertainly, but Yamazaki barrelled relentlessly over him.

"Did you know that if you sleep with an electric fan on, the fan blades will chop all the molecules of air apart and you'll suffocate to death? It's true, too! Did you ever hear about the case of the woman who went swimming and swallowed some of the lake water, and water, a dozen octopus eggs hatched inside her stomach?"

"Can that really happen?" Sakura gasped, shocked. "How terrible!"

"Oh yes! I know all sorts of interesting animal facts! Did you know that porcupines can throw their quills like darts to scare off enemies? And that chickens are so dumb that they'll look up during a rainstorm and drown?" Yamazaki rattled off cheerfully. "Did you know that lobsters mate for life, and will throw themselves into a pot of boiling water after their mate?"

"I kind of feel like we ought to be doing something here, don't you?" Fai asked Kurogane. "I mean, it seems like irresponsible parenting to just let strangers fill out childrens' head with tall tales like this."

"Well, what did you expect me to do about it?" Kurogane said irritably. "I can't exactly beat up a sick little kid, even if he is being an irritating little shit."

"Did you know that there's a kind of fish called the striped mittenfish which can change from male to female by turning its entire body inside out?" Yamazaki continued, a sadistic gleam in his eye. "Did you know that the only egg-laying mammal in the world is the platypus, and that the first platypus was born when an otter and a duck got fu -"

"ENOUGH!" Abruptly, a swirl of multicolored fairy lights fountained up from the loveseat, obscuring the form of the wisecracking teenager crumpling to the floor. A white light flared upwards and resolved into a flurry of feathers edging a pair of huge white wings mantling an ethereally beautiful humanoid figure. As the initial burst of light dimmed to a more manageable level, Fai was able to make out a flowing mane of white hair, a shimmering robe of heavenly cloth, and impossibly beautiful features set firmly into a permanent scowling bitchface.

"Who the hell are you, pretty boy?" Kurogane demanded.

"I AM YUE, AND I COMMANDETH THOU TO CEASE THINE JABBERING!" the angelic figure snapped, brandishing a flaming sword in Kurogane's direction. His legs and feet did not seem to be entirely there, just trailing off into an indistinct smudge where they seemed to be rooted in Yamazaki's body. His wings rustled dramatically above his head, the feather tips scraping against the ceiling... and there, standing out starkly against Yue's soft blue-white plumage, was the hard-edged familiar outline of one of Sakura's feathers.

"WHOA!" Syaoran yelled, as his eyes popped fully open for the first time. "It's Princess Sakura's feather! ...Holy crap, is that what feathers feel like to you? I... I've been violated! I don't think I'll ever feel clean again."

"Mokona likes it!" she chirped. "It feels warm and tingly, deeeeep inside!"

"I hath gone to great efforts to maketh sure not to permanently harm any of mine host bodies," Yue said, shooting a dark glare at the slumbering form of Yamazaki, "but thee makes me want to maketh an exception."

"What the hell is wrong with this guy's speech?" Kurogane said. "Is that a dialect, or a speech impediment, or what?"

"I don't quite know. I'm not sure some of those words are even real," Fai said thoughtfully. "Syaoran, are you sure that Mokona's translation spell is working correctly?"

"How would I even know? Besides, I'm finding it a little hard to focus right now," Syaoran snapped, "since I just got a magical champagne enema."

Sakura gasped and squeaked, turning red and covering her face with her hands. Mokona pouted grotesquely. "Wah! Syaoran-kun is so mean!"

Yue, meanwhile, had not let his audience's inattention dissuade him from his grand monologue. "Pritheest! For many years I hast lived in peace with my host body, Yukito Tsukishiro. But then this foul thing camest, I knoweth not from where," he said, indicating the out-of-place feather with a look of great distaste, "and stuck on mine body. Mine magical powers increased a hundredfold, but to mine great dismay I foundst that my host body couldeth not support such terrific power!

"I had to leavest that body lest I burn it to a husk, yet I canst not surviveth in this world on my own. I hadst to find a new host, only for the process to begineth anew! I amst driven from one harbor in this world to the next without rest, all thanks to this cursedest feather!" he finished, shouting the last few words in a dramatic declamation.

"Eth," he added a moment later, just in case he'd missed one.

"But, but, then this is great!" Sakura exclaimed, wringing her hands. "You don't want the feather, and we do! It belongs to me! Why not just give it to us?"

"Yeah, then you can get back to... doing whatever it is that you do... predating creepily on small children or whatever. And we can all get back in our own bodies and leave this world," Kurogane announced.

Yue turned a scorching scowl on him. Well, or maybe it was the flaming sword that was scorching. "Thieves! Vandals! Dost thee think so easily to rob mine of my power?" he shouted. He raised the flaming sword high, and swung it in a broad attack. "I SAY THOU NAUGHT, VILLAINST!"

Kurogane dodged the first attack without too much trouble, but the fight was on. Syaoran leaped at Yue from behind, tiny stubby legs flailing frantically in an attempt to approximate his usual devastating spin-kicks, but was batted away with a careless brush of Yue's wings. "Mokona, do something!" Syaoran cried. "We have to get that feather! You have my legs - use them to kick him!"

"No!" Mokona cried indignantly, huddling in a corner. "Mokona is a pacifist! Violence is never the answer."

Kurogane was still dodging and blocking Yue's enraged attacks, Souhi leaving a smoking trail through the air as it parried each blow. "It does raise a hell of a question, though!" he called out. "Princess! Get your butt in here and start a new front of attack."

"B-but -" Sakura stammered. "I don't want to hurt him! He didn't ask for my feather!"

"Well, too bad he doesn't feel the same way about us!" Kurogane shouted, using Fai's lightning-fast reflexes to dodge a flaming sword-stroke that would have split him down the middle.

"Look at it this way: we're doing him a favor," Fai said, calmly and persuasively. "If we can cut that feather off him, then he won't have to go around draining people into comas any more! We'll help him, help ourselves and save the town."

"Oh... that's a good point, I guess..." Sakura said, and she timidly moved to draw Hien and cautiously approach the enraged angel.

Despite her lukewarm acquiescence, however, it was obvious that Sakura didn't want to hurt her opponent; the first swing of her sword was lethargic at best, using only a fraction of Kurogane's formidable muscle-power. Even that might have done a fair amount of damage, though, had her aim not been so wildly off that it was obvious that she was consciously or unconsciously throwing her aim.

Yue's aura flared, the feather stuck in his pinions pulsed, and suddenly bright missiles of fire burst from his wings and exploded across the room. One of them just grazed Sakura's cheek, and she squeaked surprise as she ducked. "Sakura!" Syaoran cried in dismay, and he attempted to throw himself across the room to her aid.

As ridiculous as the sight of a two-pound furball attempted to protect a two-sixty-pound ninja would have been, it was cut off by a sweep of Yue's wings that batted Syaoran back across the room.

Fai dodged two incandescent feather-missiles that streaked across the living room, and considered. This was a disaster, and probably only going to get worse. Kurogane, in Fai's body, was able to hold Yue's attention and dodge his blows - but without access to either Fai's magic or his own, he wouldn't be able to deliver a finishing blow powerful enough to make a dent in such a magically powerful creature. Syaoran was helpless, and Mokona no use at all. In his current condition he was unlikely to be able to offer much help, either. If he'd been able to dodge in quickly and grab the feather from Yue's wings, that might have put an end to the fight - but Sakura simply didn't have the speed to pull that off. And Fai wasn't going to play chicken with Sakura's body.

"You know, this really isn't sustainable long-term," Fai said, casually dodging half of a flying flaming couch and drawing Yue's attention. "You're just going to have to keep going from one host body to another forever, and as you wear out all the humans in this town with magical potential, you'll have to jump faster and faster."

"I AMST AWARE OF THIS FACT, THANK THOU," Yue snarled, drawing back his burning sword for another lash.

"But there is another way... if you could move into a host body that was powerful enough," Fai offered suggestively. "Say, what about a body that had already absorbed the power of many of those feathers?"

Yue swept out a wave of fire that knocked Kurogane, Sakura and Syaoran all to the floor behind the couch, and turned to face Fai with a narrow-eyed scowl. Fai smiled innocently back, tapping on Sakura's chest. "This one," he clarified, in case he hadn't been obvious enough. "Me."

"Fai-san?" Sakura asked nervously.

"Mage, what are you doing?" Kurogane demanded, an edge to his voice that could be worry for Sakura's body (or could just be annoyance at having his only battle this entire story snatched out from under him."

"Forsooth..." Yue whispered, his slit-pupiled eyes going wide with comic surprise. "That body - what power is in it! At last, a vessel potent enough to matchest my own!" He reared up, wings flapping up a hurricane behind him that swept all of the kitschy crotcheted doilies into a windstorm. "Yes! At last I will find a safe haven, a body in which I can rest! Gimme, gimme!"

"Sakuraaaaa! Noooooo!" Syaoran wailed, losing control of his equilibrium at the sight of Sakura in danger. There was a wet thoop noise, as of the seal blowing out of an inner tube, and Syaoran suddenly puffed up to three times his size, becoming a perfect sphere with only tiny stubs of ears and paws hanging out. He hung in midair, bobbing and floating with the air currents of the room, and another swipe of Yue's wings sent him wailing and tumbling slowly towards the window.

"Ooh, that's a good one!" Mokona exclaimed from her corner. "Secret Technique #38: Super Floatation! That one is super useful for ocean worlds, and also waterpark vacations!"

Then, Fai felt Yue moving through him, passing through his body like a cold wind as he tried to flow into his new host.

Several things happened at once. There was a jolt that seemed to shake the universe, although none of the surviving knicknacks shifted on any of the shelves. Fai felt an unmoored, floating sensation, and he seemed to rise in the air and bob there for a moment like a helium balloon, seeing his body - or rather Sakura's body - from the outside. Yue and Sakura's outline seemed to coexist in the body for one incandescent moment - and then the feather, which had been stuck in the pinions of the wings on Yue's back, touched the surface of Sakura's chest. It flared with a brilliant light for a moment, then began to sink into the surface of her chest as though slipping below the surface of the water.

Then Fai felt something take hold of him, like he was on a boat that had just entered a strong current. There was a great rushing sensation, a whipping blur of vision flying past, and then another rock-grinding jolt as he came suddenly to rest -

In his own body. Fai stared at his hands, flexing in front of him in their familiar white sleeves, and then pumped his arms in a gesture of triumph as he grinned madly. "Yes! It worked!" he cried.

The world was still a little blurry around the edges as his soul settled back into its familiar cradle, but Fai could see the streaming river of magic that stretched from his body to Kurogane's, then to Mokona's, then Syaoran's, and finally to Sakura's body. Like a stack of colliding dominoes, each soul was bumped from its misplaced housing and flung helter-skelter through the air to crash back into their home vessel, dislodging the unlucky squatter there to continue on its route. One by one they all ended up sprawling on their asses on the living room rug, comically surprised expressions on their faces.

Last of all, a pinkish-tinted blur of light crashed into Sakura's chest, and the bright winged outline of Yue was shoved rudely into the ether. He hung there for a moment, looking surprised at his sudden discorporation - but the sharp-edged white glow was gone from his wings.

"Thank you, kind travelers," Yue whispered, his voice soft and pleasant now that the furious rage was gone from it. Slowly he began to dissolve, little wisps of him spiralling off into the ether until all that was left was a smiling face and a hypnotic voice. "Thee hath... freed me."

And with that he was gone, leaving behind one final whisper, "Est."

"Hoorah!" Syaoran - or rather, the being that was in Mokona's body, whom Fai strongly suspected of actually being Mokona this time - cried, bouncing forward into the ring. "Mokona is Mokona again! Mokona is back to being small, and cute, and fluffy, and not long or dangly or hairy at all!"

Mokona - or rather, Syaoran - was curled up in a corner against the wall, rocking slightly and whimpering. To Fai's ear, it sounded more like relief and joy than distress, so he decided not to interfere. "Oh, Xiao Xiao, I missed you so," he was crooning towards his own crotch. "I'll never take you for granted again. Ever."

"Finally!" Kurogane roared, flinging his cloak back over his shoulders as he flexed his arms and shoulders and grinned dangerous. "Thank fuck that's over and I'm back in my own what the fuck did you do to my legs?"

"But, what happened to Yue?" Sakura (and Fai knew for a sure it was really Sakura, since it certainly wasn't him,) wanted to know, looking worriedly at the patch of air where the angelic and highly ungrammatical being had disappeared.

"I'm sure he'll be fine, Sakura-chan," Fai told her bracingly. "He'll just have to find another host, the same as when he jumped between bodies earlier. But now, since his power level is back to normal, he can bond with a person without draining their energy or risking burning them out."

"Forget the bird," said Kurogane - oh, yes, wonderfully familiar Kurogane, with the growl back in his voice and the scowl back on his face that Fai always wanted to pinch off. "I'm more worried about us. Mokona! Can you get us out of this world?"

"Oh, yes!" Mokona said enthusiastically.

"Wait, Kuro-hurry, not so fast..." Fai sidled up to his ninja boyfriend, molding himself up against Kurogane's side. "Now that we're back in our proper bodies, what's the rush? Sakura-chan needs her rest, we still have lots of money to spend in this world, and we still have those rooms back in the inn." He leaned up to breathe directly in the shell of Kurogane's ear. "Those private rooms."

Kurogane's expression shifted, and Fai knew he was considering it. He grinned. It was so good to be in his own body again, and not be afflicted with guilt every time a dirty thought crossed his mind. It had been too long since he'd had a good orgasm... well, all right, technically for his body it had only been a few days, but he hadn't been in it at the time to enjoy it, so it didn't really count.

"Let's go take a nap," Fai wheedled, "and I can show you all the advantages to that nice spa trip your body took while you weren't in it." He ran his instep up along Kurogane's shin suggestively, and even through his trousers Kurogane could obviously feel the difference.

A wicked grin began to grow on his face, one that spelled trouble. "You know what," he said, "Forget the private room. This world has traumatized enough us already, I think it's time to return the favor."

"Seconded and adjourned!" Fai chirped, shooting his hand in the air. He looped his right arm through Kurogane's left, linking their hands, and began dragging his surly puppy off to explore new depths of public depravity. "See you later, Syaoran-kun! Take care of Sakuraaaaaa!"

They vanished out the front door, leaving Syaoran and Sakura alone to explain the wreckage of the sitting room and the unconscious Yamazaki to the homeowner.

Syaoran looked at his two remaining companions. "... So, let's forget this world ever happened and never mention it again?" he tried.

"No, we shouldn't!" Sakura protested vehemently. "Haven't we realized by now, the whole point of this journey is that all memories are precious? Even the ones that weren't entirely nice while they were happening? They still matter because we made them together; they help to bond us together. Without memories, what is the point of us even existing? These precious memories are what we'll look back on later and laugh, and say..."

At this point, Sakura's voice gave out as her eyes rolled back in her head, she toppled to the carpeted floor, and began snoring like a buzzsaw.

"Right," Syaoran said to the empty room.

And they never did.

---

~the end.

Thank you for reading! How did I do?

Please score my fic according to these guidelines:
1. How funny was this fic? (1-10)
2. How well did this fic handle the prompt? (1-10)
3. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? (1-10)

Remember that you must provide some form of identification (a link to a blog or profile on another site will suffice) for your vote to be counted!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Here's my link - hope this is what you need to count my votd:https://www.tumblr.com/blog/love-me-or-hate-me-january

This is the first time I've heard of these Olympics, but I'm so glad I did. Your story was hilarious and had me stifling my giggles while reading on the bus! My favorite scene was Kurogane's masturbating scene and how he imitated Fai, with the best part being Fai's response at hearing him! OK, on to the voting:

1. How funny was this fic? I think I was smiling, chuckling or laughing throughout the fic, except for the Dragon scene. While I wasn't expecting him to collect kitchen appliances (which IS strange for a dragon), I didn't find it overly funny. But I loved the teasing between Kurogane & Fai (always the best part of their relationship), as well as the bar scene (who would've thought Mokona would get "the Talk" rather than a punch in the face!) Overall - 9

2. How well did it handle the prompt? Loved the treatment of who got into whose body, and how they dealt with it. Thought Syaoran was a little out of character when he found out Sakura went after the dragon. He would be worried and definitely want to go after her, but I'm not sure he would voice it in exactly those phrases. Loved the treatment of Sakura however. She always gets played off as the innocent doll so it was nice to see her with more of a personality. Overall - 9

3. How much did you enjoy this fix? No need to elaborate, I give you a 10! I won't forget Kurogane talking about Fai's strawberry popsicle, or "Mokana doesn't like it!" Fantastic and thanks for sharing it!