I'm sure everyone's starting to get a little tired of the whole "Scorpion hates teddies" meme that's been going around, but I had this idea for a while and it would just not let me go.

Scorpion pretended to be friendly while his wife's mother visited. He couldn't stand the woman, but didn't dare say anything to his wife after a previous harmless (or so he thought) comment about her father had kicked him to the couch for two weeks. He just smiled and nodded while she was blabbing on about something or other that he wasn't really paying much attention to, when she dug through a bag she brought with her and pulled out a teddy bear. "Oh, I almost forgot! I got this for the baby!"

"Mom, you shouldn't have!" his wife smiled while she accepted the teddy bear.

"Squeeze it," her mother said once she was holding the bear.

She did as instructed and the bear started singing in a high pitched and childish tone, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!" She quickly realized the disaster that was about to unfold when she saw her husband glaring at it. "Oh mom…you really shouldn't have…" she added.

"Don't tell me what to do…" Scorpion growled at the bear as it continued singing.

Three weeks later and the damn thing still didn't run out of batteries. It had become their son's new favorite toy. At first Scorpion didn't mind it too much, since he needed his mother's help to get it to start singing anyway. But soon he had unfortunately learned how to make it sing on his own and then that became the only thing Scorpion would hear for the majority of the day. He felt kind of bad for avoiding his own son, but until that mother died, he spent most of his time as far away from there as possible. Sometimes however he couldn't avoid it.

After coming home from a particularly rough day of training an unusually dense new Shirai Ryu recruit, Scorpion scooped his son off the floor and sat down with him in his arms, just contentedly holding him and snuggling with him. He didn't notice him reach beside him for the bear until it already started singing. "Gee, thanks grandma," he grumbled the third or forth time his son squeezed the bear and started giggling while it sang to him.

Later that night at around one in the morning, he listened to it singing for about the tenth time from his son's room. Scorpion was just about ready to go in there and tear the thing's voice box out himself. "Leave the bear alone," his wife said sleepily while she tried to ignore it.

"But it's driving me insane!" he complained.

"It's lulling him to sleep. Leave the bear alone," she repeated.

"But can't I just…"

She sat up and glared at him darkly, the same deadly glare she used right before she usually won an argument, that one that said "I will end you…" and said in a low, angry tone, "Leave the bear alone, Hanzo."

He listened to the bear's cheerful singing in the other room contrasting with the mood in this one and quickly said, "I think I'll leave the bear alone."

"Good boy," she replied before rolling away from him and going back to bed.

He then waited silently until the bear became quiet, giving it a few more minutes to make sure his son was actually asleep before sneaking in there and carefully pulling it out from his son's grasp, taking a moment to stroke his head and admire how cute he was when he was sleeping. He carried it back to his room and almost tossed it on the floor when he remembered that the tiniest bit of pressure would make the fluffy demon start singing again and carefully set it down on the floor in the corner before covering it up with a blanket. Satisfied that he would not be hearing it anymore that night should his son wake up again, he got back in bed and snuggled up comfortably next to his wife.

A half hour later, his wife's fluffy, white cat walked into the room. Seeing the blanket he always slept on in the corner, he waltzed up to it and jumped right on it. Scorpion startled awake when the bear started singing, the cat giving him a confused look, almost asking where that sound was coming from.

"Hanzo!" his wife screamed. He quickly put his arms out in front of his face to prevent her from smothering him with a pillow. They heard the baby start crying in the other room, having been woken up by his mother's yelling.

On his way down to the couch, Scorpion made sure to unceremoniously hurl the stupid cat out the front door, silently hoping it got eaten by the neighbor's Akitas. He settled down and pulled the blanket up over his face, feeling too pissed off to even sleep while he listened to his son's crying dying down while his mother comforted him. After a few minutes it got silent and he started to drift off to sleep.

Then he heard the unmistakable sound of the teddy bear singing, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!"

"Dammit!" he grumbled to himself. Less than a minute later, the cat's weight on his legs as it started purring and fell asleep there reminded him that he forgot to close the kitchen window.

Walking in the front door the next afternoon, Scorpion heard the bear start singing after he accidentally stepped on it. "I'm going to dismember you and feed you to the tanuki that lives out by the creek…" he threatened it before kicking it and watching it hit the wall. If he wasn't mistaken, it almost looked sad as it lay on its head and stared back at him.

He heard unintelligible babbling and looked down to see his son crawling over to him and latching onto his foot. "Hi, sweetie!" he said cheerfully when his son smiled at him. He was about to pick him up when he noticed him looking over at the bear. "Oh no…please don't…" The baby started crawling over towards it. Panicking, Scorpion knelt down on the floor and grabbed a nearby plush bunny, waving it out in front of him enticingly. "Come get the bunny! Come get the bunny! Please get the bunny!" he begged. His son looked at it a moment, then turned back around and continued crawling for the bear. "Come on! If you don't squeeze the bear, daddy will get you a puppy! You like puppies, right?" He continued crawling, almost halfway there by now. "If you don't squeeze the bear, daddy will get you two puppies!" Still crawling, and still ignoring his daddy. "Hell, if you don't squeeze the bear, I promise not to talk to you anymore when you turn thirteen!" He watched his son pause and make a U-turn and come right back to him. Shocked, he silently watched him play quietly with the plush bunny. "Oh sure, that one you'll agree to!"

"What did you promise him this time?" he heard his wife shout from the kitchen.

"If you're hap…if you're hap…if you're…if you're happy and you know it…if you're hap…"

"Squeeze it again and I will make you eat it," Scorpion growled.

"What's the matter? Don't you like this song?" his friend asked before cutting it off mid-song and starting it over again.

Scorpion noticed it growing louder and turned his head to find it being held in his face. "Seriously Takeo, I will destroy you…"

"Why don't you like it?" Takeo asked. "I think it's kind of cute!"

Scorpion gave the bear a rough shove away from his face. "You don't have a kid who plays it fifty times a day!" When he squeezed it again, he snapped, "Do it again! I dare you!" After about 30 seconds of silence, he squeezed it again. "Okay, that's it! You're eating it!"

His wife was inside having tea with one of her girlfriends when they ran past the window five or six times, Takeo still squeezing the bear with manic glee. "So, how's the baby?" her friend asked.

"Which one?" she asked while they watched them run by again.

"Get over here!" Scorpion screamed from somewhere behind the house, punctuated by a loud crash.

"What happened to the bear?" Scorpion's wife asked darkly. She held up what remained of its head, missing an eye, dirt and stuffing falling from the plush onto the floor. The cat had dug it up in the backyard and brought it into the house earlier that morning.

"I snapped," he admitted.

"I can see that," she replied. "You do realize he's going to be up all night now, right?"

"I can live with that," he nodded.

She sighed, staring at the sad looking teddy bear head. "Did you really have to dismember it and bury each piece in a different location?"

"Yes. Just to make sure it was dead and no one would ever find all of it." To be honest, he couldn't even remember the act of murdering the teddy bear. All he could remember was hearing it go off for the eighty-millionth time, and then the rest was a blank. He woke up a few hours later covered in someone else's blood and with a dismembered teddy bear scattered on the floor around him. He panicked wondering where to hide the body and whose blood this was (so far no one was complaining, so it probably wasn't anyone he knew).

"You're on the night shift for the next month and a half," she said.

"Yay," he replied dryly.

Aside from putting him on baby duty every night, his wife had decided the couch was too comfortable and made him sleep outside for a few days. Luckily the neighbor's Akitas didn't seem to mind sharing their living space with him during the night. He just had to remember to be up and out of there before the neighbor woke up.

Scorpion froze in fear after stepping inside the front door. When there was silence, he remembered that the bear was dead and he didn't have to worry about stepping on it whenever he came into the house anymore. Sighing with relief, he shut the door behind him.

His mother-in-law seemed to have dropped in for a visit while he was outside. She was at the table having breakfast with his wife, talking about nothing in particular as usual. "Oh, Hanzo, I heard about what happened to the teddy bear," she said when she saw him standing in the doorway. "It's a shame the neighbor's dogs tore it apart and buried it."

"The neighbor's dogs…yeah, let's go with that," he nodded before sitting down with them and taking his son out of his wife's lap.

"So I brought you a little replacement!" she added before reaching into her bag. Scorpion froze when she pulled a stuffed dog out and handed it to the baby, who promptly squeezed it. It started barking Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. His son smiled and started giggling.

"Oh Hanzo, isn't that just adorable?" his wife asked, trying hard and failing to keep the nervous tone out of her voice.

Scorpion however didn't even bother to hide his displeasure this time. "Kill me now," he stated bluntly.