Title: Mix and Match

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.

Spoilers: None.

Author's notes: This fic was written for the 2014 Kurofai Olympics (which is still going on guys, right now!) Comedy vs Drama edition. Obviously, this was written for Team Comedy. If you enjoy this fic and would like to see more like it - or even if you didn't enjoy it and want to see more not like it - head on over to kurofai dot dreamwidth dot com and check out all the entries under the "2014 Olympics" tag.

All of the entries for both teams are in now, and we really need more readers and voters for the contest entries! Voting will be open until May 18th, and you can vote on all of the fics, not just one from each team. So if you've got some time in the next few weeks and would like to read some awesome Kurofai fics, go read and vote!

"Well," Fai said, "this is an interesting development."

Fai studied his hands with great bemusement. They were much smaller and slimmer than the hands he'd been used to, lacking in familiar callouses, and with the edges of the fingernails chewed nearly raw in a childish anxious habit. His voice reverberated weirdly in his chest, coming out much higher and than normal and with some very strange dimensions.

It wasn't that the voice was unfamiliar, oh no.

It just wasn't his.

Cinnamon-colored hair fell around the edges of Fai's vision, far darker and ruddier than his own hair color should be. By the time Fai lifted one knee and peeked down at his - her - legs, skinny and knob-kneed under the pale pink fabric of the short skirt she wore - the evidence was almost redundant. A mirror would have clinched it, of course, but really what would he do with one? Gape stupidly at his reflection and poke at his own face as though touching it would dispel the illusion?

But much of Fai's lifelong training as a mage revolved around the very simple maxim "Don't panic." (There was also something about tea and towels in the curriciulum, but "don't panic" was the important bit.) It sounded simple, but when the transposition of two simple characters in a rune-word could change a spell from "summon hot water for bath" to "summon raging hot water avatar from the elemental plane of steam," it was very vital to keep a calm and steady head in the face of even the most unlikely circumstance.

Fai looked up from his bemused contemplation of his newly-female appendages and took stock of their situation. They had landed somewhat ungracefully in a wide green meadow in what appeared to be spring. (Fai had learned to pick up on many subtle clues that could tell him what the season was, such as budding leaves on the trees, new flowers shyly opening their petals to the sun, and a pair of bunnies enthusiastically fucking in the grass nearby.) The plush grass had turned out to be a blessing, since all five of them were currently sprawled on their asses in it.

Although they had all gotten a great deal of practice in keeping their footing through these landings, the surprising weightlessness of his body - new body - had sent Fai tumbling. As he did a quick inventory of his traveling companions, he guessed from the struggling and flailing to find their balance, that they were all similarly afflicted.

Well, it made sense.

"So, it looks like I'm Sakura-chan right now," he said cheerfully, standing up and dusting off the pink skirt. "Now I'm just guessing here, but you would think this also means that Sakura-chan is in my body right now! Isn't that right?" he said, smiling in the direction of his own tall, thin, white-clad body that was just now getting to its feet.

And met him with a fierce, flat, blue-eyed glower. "Nice fucking try," Fai's voice snapped at him. He crossed his arms over his chest, wearing an expression of deepest exasperation that Fai had seen (and caused) so many times that it could not fail to be familiar.

Fai's eyes (well, Sakura's eyes) widened, and he covered his mouth with one hand. "Kuro-wan?" he squeaked. Oh, oh, this could be terrible. (Or terribly hilarious. Or both.) "Is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me," Kurogane-in-Fai's-body affirmed in a tone of deep disgust. "Just when I think this trip can't get any weirder, we go along and something like this happens. You'd think I'd know by now, never assume we've sunk so low we can't go lower."

"But if I'm in Sakura's body," Fai said, "and Kuro-jinx is in my body, then where is Sakura-chan?"

"Um," a small voice squeaked from not far away. The two of them turned around simultaneously, Fai-in-Sakura and Kurogane-in-Fai, to see the tall, dark-haired ninja slowly and sheepishly raise his hand in the air. "I... I'm not sure what happened... but I think I'm... in... Kurogane-san?"

Fai and Kurogane both stared. "Oh no," Kurogane-in-Fai said, voice rich with a kind of horrified disbelief.

Kurogane's face fell, a remorseful expression stealing over those stern features, and he ducked his head and rubbed his hands together while a sheepish blush spread over his cheeks. It was, bar none, the cutest damn expression that Fai had ever seen on Kurogane's face. "Sorry," Sakura-in-Kurogane mumbled.

"Oh yes," Fai-in-Sakura countered, barely able to counter the grin that spread over his face.

"I fucking hate magic!" Kurogane-in-Fai yelled at the sky.

Fai, meanwhile, was busy ticking off the changes on Sakura's fingers. "So I got moved into Sakura's body, Sakura got moved into Kuro-tantrum's body, and Kuro-tan got moved into mine," he mused. "So it seems we've all gone round-about. The only thing I don't understand is, why wasn't Syaoran-kun affected?"

"Really? That's the part of this you don't understand?" Kurogane-in-Fai demanded incredulously. "We've been dropped into a nightmare where I'm in completely the wrong body and your only question is why the kid got left out?"

"And don't forget about Moko-chan, too," Sakura-in-Kurogane pointed out helpfully. "After all, she's a person too."

Fai and Kurogane exchanged glances. "You don't suppose..." Kurogane began.

They looked over towards the last two members of their team: Syaoran, who had been holding Mokona in his arms during the transition. The little white critter was standing bolt upright in Syaoran's arms, rigid and trembling, her eyes big and round with horror.

"I don't understand what just happened," she gasped. "I..."

"Syaoran-kun?" Sakura-in-Kurogane asked in dismay. "Is that you? But if that is you, then where is..."

Syaoran's hand shot into the air.

"Mokona is Mokona!" he chirped in a high, almost falsetto voice. "Except, well, that right now Mokona is actually Syaoran! And Mokona is betting that Syaoran is actually Mokona! Unless there are two Mokonas right now for some reason, which would be okay? But Mokona will always be Mokona deep down where it counts, in the heart!"

Mokona (or rather, Syaoran-in-Mokona) let out a noise that was halfway between a moan and a shriek. "I'm a muppet!" he wailed. "How could this have happened?"

Mokona-in-Syaoran gave a loud, offended sniff. "Mokona thinks that is very rude of Syaoran," she declared. "Mokona is not a muppet, Mokona is very cute and agile and capable of all sorts of things. It's not any more fun being in the body of a big gangly monkey, you know!"

"Hey!" Syaoran-in-Mokona objected, momentarily distracted from his existential horror.

"Mokona is always very cute," Fai told her soothingly. "Big gangly monkey or no, Syaoran's body is not too hard on the eyes either, is it? Just ask Sakura-chan."

He'd said this mostly with the calculated aim of making Sakura-in-Kurogane blush again, and it worked like a charm; Kurogane's face nearly went purple with the force of it. "Oh, I definitely wouldn't be the one to say," she gasped out. "But, um, I think you look very... very nice, Moko-chan!"

"Enough of this," Kurogane-in-Fai snarled, striding over to glare at the unlikely pair. "The important question is how did this happen?"

"Hmph," Mokona sniffed again, then flopped down on the grass and put Syaoran's hands to his chin. "Well, Mokona isn't sure, since it's never actually happened before, but... you know, when we go in and out of a world, our souls get really loose, you know?"

Kurogane-in-Fai choked slightly, but didn't otherwise comment, which left Fai to pick up the thread. "...I don't think I do know, Mokona," he said after a pause. "Do you think you could explain that in slightly more, er, technical detail?"

Mokona pouted. "Mokona will try," she said in a voice that conveyed a deep skepticism for these 'gangly monkeys' ability to understand complicated interdimensional matter/spirit interactions. "It isn't easy to get from one world to the next, no matter how easy Mokona makes it look! Sometimes the entrance to a new world is really tight, and then Mokona has to work and work to make it open up, until finally we can just slide in there, but it's still a really tight fit, so you just have to push and push and push until it goes pop! And then we're inside."

It was almost interesting, Fai thought absently, to check to see who among his companions was and wasn't getting the nuances of Mokona's speech. Kurogane-in-Fai looked near apoplectic, while Syaoran-in-Mokona was going progressively more and more rigid in horror. Only Sakura-in-Kurogane looked on with an uncomprehendingly blank expression, which was probably just as well. "I... see," Fai choked out. "But I don't think I quite see what this has to do with us not being in our usual bodies this time around."

Mokona rolled Syaoran's eyes expressively. "Because we do it so many times, of course!" she exclaimed. "The more you travel between dimensions, the more elastic the connection between the soul and the body gets, because of all these tight spaces we have to squeeze into. So sometimes, if the fit is especially tight, and if our souls are still very loose from the last transfer, they just sort of get... squeezed out of our bodies!"

Everyone paused for a moment to contemplate this mental image. Sakura-in-Kurogane ventured, "Like toothpaste out of a tube?"

"Yes, exactly like that," Fai said hastily. "Toothpaste, yes, definitely not like anything else. Definitely not."

"Who cares how it happened?" Kurogane-in-Fai demanded (rather inconsistently, Fai thought, since barely eight paragraphs ago he'd been the one demanding answers.) "The important part is, how do we get back in our proper bodies?"

"Well, you see, right now the connections between our souls and our bodies are really stretched," Mokona explained with relish. "They're just absolutely tight. So if there could just be something to give them a push, a nice, big -"

"'Scuse me, but do you think we could get through this conversation without any more resorting to sex metaphors?" Kurogane-in-Fai interrupted.

Mokona-in-Syaoran looked deeply offended. "Mokona wasn't," she sniffed with injured dignity. "It's not Mokona's fault that everybody else has dirty minds."

"What metaphors?" Sakura-in-Kurogane asked blankly.

Fai interrupted before anybody could attempt to explain and make things worse. "So from what Mokona is saying, any kind of magical jolt ought to jar us loose and put us back in our own bodies," he said.

"Yes, Fai has it!" Mokona nodded enthusiastically, bobbling Syaoran's head like it was on a string.

Fai turned to Mokona. "A magical jolt like, say, traveling between worlds?"

Syaoran and Sakura immediately set up a clamor. "Oh, but we can't -" "But we haven't found a feather in this world yet!" Syaoran-in-Mokona wailed in protest.

"To hell with that!" Kurogane-in-Fai said callously. "I want to get back into my proper body right now. Pork bun, take us out of here."

"Mokona was going to say," Mokona-in-Syaoran said reproachfully. "Right now Mokona can't do it, because Mokona isn't Mokona! It would have to be Syaoran who does it."

Sakura widened Kurogane's eyes. "Syaoran-kun? Can you do it?" she said, torn between doubt and hope.

Syaoran looked deeply conflicted, at least as deeply conflicted as a mostly featureless white ball of fur could manage to look, but it was clear he had no power to resist Sakura's requests. "O-Okay," he stammered.

There was a pause.

"Um, Mokona?" Syaoran said nervously. "How do you make the magic circle come out, anyway?"

Mokona-in-Syaoran gave her old body a deeply pitying look. "It's really simple!" she exclaimed. "You just have to bunch yourself up, like this, ahhhhnnn, with blue energy. And then when the blue energy gets cloistered like oranges, you go - puuuuuu - and if you get it just in D minor minor, the magic circle appears! Easy."

"I am seriously perturbed that you thought that made any kind of sense at all," Kurogane-in-Fai said, staring at Mokona.

"I am seriously kind of perturbed that it did," Fai admitted. "Well? Syaoran-kun?"

Syaoran looked almost on the verge of tears, but at Sakura-in-Kurogane's earnest, shining-eyes look, he capitulated. "I'll try," he said.

The four travelers leaned in and stared at Syaoran, willing him to transport them away from this world. Sakura clasped Kurogane's hands under her chin, Kurogane crossed Fai's arms over his chest, and Fai held Sakura's breath. "You can do it!" Mokona cheered.

For a moment Mokona's body glowed a familiar gold, and all the travelers prepared to exclaim with joy.

"Ahhhhhhn - puuuuuuuu!" Syaoran shrieked aloud, and opened Mokona's mouth as a rush of color erupted from it. The four of them dodged every which way, arms up to shield their faces, as they were nearly buried in a sudden, pungent-smelling avalanche of novelty soaps.

Mokona shook Syaoran's head and tsked judgmentally. "Rookie mistake," she declared. "Too much oranges."

"I still say we should just leave!" Kurogane argued, even though he knew it was hopeless: he'd been outnumbered and outvoted. (He'd tried to argue that properly speaking, he ought to get two votes, one for Kuro and one for Little Kuro, but Fai had told him quite bluntly that by that logic, Sakura should get three.)

Fai shook his head, not bothering to look back at Kurogane as he led the way through the streets of the small town they'd come to. "We've been over this already, Kuro-juxtapose," he called back in Sakura's sweet, silvery tones. "Syaoran can't make the dimensional-travel magic work."

"I still say he gave up too soon," Kurogane grumbled. "I mean, how hard can it be?"

"Easy for Kurogane to say!" Mokona chirped. She was carrying her old body in the crook of one arm, an accustomed pose for the two of them; Syaoran was flat on his back and insensible after repeated failed attempts to call the correct magical circle had failed. (Though they had been treated to a sudden blast of blizzard weather in the middle of a spring afternoon, a stunning rendition of Pachelbel's Canon in D coming out of nowhere, and a small avalanche of expired batteries before he'd crapped out.)

A crash sounded from the street behind them, where Sakura had gotten Kurogane's cloak caught on a street vendor cart and pulled it over to the paving stones below. "Oh, I'm so sorry," Sakura apologized in Kurogane's voice.

"Well, if the alternative is staying stuck like this for the rest of our lives, I don't see how that's any better!" Kurogane yelled. "I want to go home! And in my body, not some secondhand piece of crap!"

"Now, now," Fai said, and the look he gave Kurogane out of the corner of his eye had a glint to it that made a cold sweat break out all over his back. "Be nice. There are other ways to produce a magical jolt of the kind we need - all we need is a large enough power source, and Mokona can do it even in Syaoran's body."

Another crash. "I'm sorry!" Sakura apologized again, and Kurogane felt a vein throb. He understood that she was in a body that was bigger and stronger than she was used to, but seriously, how clumsy could she be?

"A power source like Sakura's feather!" Mokona enthused. "So we just have to find the feather, and then we can get back in our bodies and go on to the next world all finished! Kill two birds with one stone, wheee!"

Kurogane sighed, but he had to admit that as tenuous as that plan sounded, he really didn't have anything better. Technically, the body he was in had just the sort of magical power they needed, but Kurogane had absolutely no idea how to use it and Fai, being his typical unhelpful self, had refused to give Kurogane even the most basic of pointers. Kurogane was impatient, but he'd spent enough time around the Tsukuyomi growing up that even he knew better than to experiment with power he didn't understand. One giant lake-troll rampaging through the O-Bon festival on a crazed binge for pickled squid had been plenty.

(When asked about it later, Tomoyo had protested that she'd had no visions of the festival at all, and had had no idea that that particular combination of songs and ritual chants on that particular night would summon the lake-troll. Personally, Kurogane suspected that she had seen it coming, but let it happen anyway because she thought it was funny.)

"Here we are," Fai said, stopping in front of a large, multi-story wooden building. The walls were thick white plaster between dark wooden beams running horizontally and vertically, defining the frame of the house. Each square panel was strapped crosswise by more dark wooden planks, and the second story loomed out slightly above the first, giving the impression that the building was being strapped tightly together to prevent it from oozing out at the seams.

"This is the inn that old guy recommended?" Kurogane asked skeptically. He supposed it didn't really matter what their lodging looked like as long as it kept the rain off their heads, but it just looked so... unbalanced.

"Apparently." Fai pushed open the door and went in, Kurogane and Mokona trailing behind.

Sakura brought up the rear, and the horrible crunch that sounded when she pulled the door shut attested that she'd just manage to rip the hinges out of the wood. "Oh, sorry!" she gasped. Kurogane rubbed his forehead and sighed. They'd better find that damn feather, fast.

The inside of the tavern was wide-open and poorly lit, and a man with a rag in his hand jumped up from where he had been wiping down the bar and hurried over to them. "Oh, guests, guests!" he exclaimed, beaming at Kurogane and Sakura. "Welcome! How can I help you?"

Normally, they let Syaoran handle most of the public interactions in a new place, his unthreatening appearance and earnest demeanor serving to put people at ease. Right now, though, Syaoran was still completely out of commission, so Fai stepped forward instead. "Hi, we'd like a place to stay for the night," he said, smiling brightly.

The innkeeper looked a little taken aback, and his gaze moved from one party member to the other hesitantly, as if wondering why none of the adult men were taking charge of this interaction. But Sakura in Kurogane's body hung back shyly, Kurogane himself was in no mood to talk to peons, and Mokona had apparently forgotten she was a human body right now; she was doing her best stiff-inanimate-doll impersonation that she always did when meeting strangers in a new world. On Syaoran's body, the effect was somewhere between hilarious and disturbingly mannequin-like.

"Er... sure, little lady," the innkeep said at last, returning his attention to Fai. "There's plenty of space. How many nights will you be staying?"

"We don't know yet how long our business in town will take," Fai said, still smiling his best public-company smile. "We'll take one room, or two depending. What are your rates?"

"Forty denar a night, but, uh," the innkeeper's expression suddenly shifted, looking half sly and half anxious. "How would you each like a room of your own? Each with its own attached bath? I can knock the price down to twenty-five per night if you want to spread out a little, have some privacy and space for yourself. I'm sure you don't all want to be crowded together for such a long time, and it really is a great deal!"

Fai raised his eyebrows. "Won't you want to save those rooms for other customers, though?" he said.

The innkeeper groaned wearily. "To tell you the truth, business has been abysmal lately," he confided. "With all the strange things happening in town, nobody wants to travel right now. Are you sure you don't want to take the four rooms? I'll throw in breakfast each morning for twenty-six!"

"Strange things happening?" Sakura cut in, sounding worried. "What strange things?"

The innkeep hesitated. "Nothing you need to concern yourself about, I'm sure," he said evasively. "Anyway, you don't want to travel right now, it's not safe to go through the mountain passes. You'll have plenty of time to finish your business!"

The travelers exchanged significant glances. Strange happenings in the town, and danger in the mountains, spelled one of Sakura's feathers to them. But they were all tired and shaken from the day's events, and it would take a little longer to get the townspeople to open up to them.

"Do you think we should?" Sakura asked, directing her question at Kurogane and Fai.

"It should be fine," Kurogane replied. They had plenty of local currency to start with; they had passed through a flea market on their way to the inn, and the novelty soaps had fetched a surprisingly hefty price. Unless they ended up stuck here for weeks on end, they were in no danger of running out of money. "Not like we need to save it for anything."

Fai nodded, and turned back to the innkeeper, who was looking more and more confused. "We'll take the four rooms," he announced.

The innkeeper showed them up the stairs to where their rooms would be - four in a row, along the end of the corridor - and then left them to themselves. They returned to the common room for a while to eat a late dinner and make plans, but all four of them were tired and distracted. They agreed to canvass the town the next day in search of rumors and leads for Sakura's feather; if nothing panned out there, they might have to venture out of the town in search of the disturbance the landlord had mentioned in the mountain. But Mokona seemed sure that she had gotten them in the right location the first time.

Now that the stranger was out of the room, Mokona had recovered her usual ebullient personality; the new difficulty was in convincing her, in Syaoran's body, to get down off the tables and to walk places rather than leaping and sprinting across the room as though Syaoran had accidentally sat on a hot coal.

Mokona sulked and pouted at these restrictions all throughout their planning session, and at last announced that she was going to bed and taken Syaoran off upstairs in a huff.

"Well," Sakura said with a sigh once Mokona was out of sight, "I guess I'd better go get ready for bed."

"Princess," Kurogane began, filled with misgivings but unable to just say nothing. "Are you sure you're going to, uh... be okay? With... the different body and everything?"

"Do you at least have an idea of what to, er, expect?" Fai chimed in seriously.

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Of course. I do have an older brother, remember?"

"Oh. Right," Kurogane said, although in all honestly he'd forgotten.

Sakura frowned, and the expression came closer to looking natural on Kurogane's face than anything else she'd shown so far. "It's not really fair, you know," she said petulantly. "Of all the memories I've lost and can't get back, and the one I do get back is of the one time Touya forgot to lock the bathroom door, and I walked in on him shaving... naked."

Kurogane blinked. "Wait, why would he have to be naked to shave?" he asked. "Shaving cream's not that messy, if you keep it where it's supposed to be on the face."

Sakura shuddered. "I didn't say he was shaving his face," she said.

Kurogane winced, his legs closing half-instinctively as her meaning sank in. "Ah," Fai said, sounding simultaneously enlightened and amused.

Sakura turned to mount the stairs to the bathroom. "He got an awful shock, with me barging in like that," she tossed over her shoulder. "Dad said that he was lucky the razor wasn't an inch to the right, or the royal dynasty would be ended before it even began."

She disappeared up the stairs, giggling as she went.

Giggling. In his voice. There was really no other way to describe that noise. It wasn't a chortle, or an evil chuckle, or a bone-chilling laugh. It was undeniably, unarguably, a girlish giggle. Kurogane covered his eyes, wishing he could just shut out the injustice of the world for five minutes.

"Oh," Fai said suddenly, jolting Kurogane out of his slump of despair. "Sakura-chan might be okay, but did any of us think to warn -"

Syaoran's voice suddenly shattered the calm atmosphere in an ear-piercing screech. "Mokona doesn't like it!"

Kurogane splashed water over his hands (well, Fai's hands) (fuck it, they were his hands right now, and if he kept on double-thinking the whole time he was going to go crazy) in his room's washbasin, preparing for sleep. It was a little weird to have a room to himself again; he'd been bunking with anywhere between one to five hundred other grown men (in various states of cleanliness) ever since this adventure had started. Weird to have a little privacy for a change, but definitely not unwelcome.

He glanced up at the mirror set above the washbasin, and his attention was caught by the reflection staring out of that mirror at him. Strange, for all he'd been walking around in Fai's body all afternoon, this was the first chance he'd had to really see it. It really drove the truth of his current situation home, to see Fai's reflection moving as he moved, breathing as he breathed, the expression on that familiar face shifting with his own thoughts.

Fai's face looked different without Fai in it; Kurogane had never realized just how much the force of his personality shone through his features even when he had that stupid blank smile stuck on. It was like seeing a whole new side of his lover, but even the slightly alien quality of seeing him reversed in a mirror did nothing but heighten the alluring beauty that Fai had used to make a fool of him in the first place. He still really had no idea how'd they'd ended up together in the first place. For ages Fai had driven him crazy and they'd fought like cats and dogs, and then one day it just seemed like he tripped over an ottoman and landed on Fai's cock, and it had been all downhill from there. Stupid sexy Fai.

Kurogane leaned forward over the washbasin, turning his head from side to side as he ran a finger over the cheekbones.

Stupidvery sexy Fai.

He'd always liked Fai's face best when he had a serious look instead of that stupid grin, anyway.

"Hello, I'm Fai and I'm a wanker," Kurogane said to the mirror, trying to imitate Fai's voice. It didn't come out sounding quite right - too deep, too rough. He pitched his voice higher, smoother, and tried again.

"Hi, I'm Fai Fluorite and I have raging commitment issues. Try to pin me down to so much as a breakfast date and I'll find some way to ssslither out of it." The word slither came out almost lovingly, his tongue wrapping caressingly around the l and r sounds. "Would you like to see just how well I can slither?"

The words sent a warm thrill down his chest, and Kurogane was struck by a wicked thought. He backed up a few paces, until he could see the entirety of Fai's top half in the washstand mirror instead of just his face, and began taking off Fai's shirt.

Kurogane took it slow, tilting slightly from side to side to watch the way the light and shadows slipped over Fai's shoulder, then his collarbone, then the hollows between his ribs as the fabric was slipped slowly down off his pectorals. He dragged the edge of his thumb across the pinkish skin of Fai's nipple, and caught his breath at the jolt of sensation that bolted through his chest. His own nipples had never been particularly sensitive, but he thought he could see now why Fai always liked having his played with.

If you'd asked Kurogane earlier today whether he could find any silver linings in this whole body-hopping fiasco, he would have called you insane. But this - this was fucking awesome. He got to watch Fai's sexy, sexy body and he got to feel the effects from it, at the same time. And best of all, Fai couldn't even say something stupid to ruin the moment.

"I'm a grown-ass man and I still think talking in baby talk in bed is funny," Kurogane muttered, then shook his head sharply and pushed his voice back into the Fai-register. Fai would never say something like 'grown-ass.' "Also, I just looooove rubber duckies in the bath, and I play with my food. Ooo, can't you just feel the maturity in the room?"

He rolled his shoulders and held his arms behind him, letting the shirt drop to the floor in a puddle. Staring thoughtfully at the bare chest and torso reflected in the mirror before him, Kurogane ran his hands over the stomach, tracing long delicate fingers over the defined muscles over the flanks and then skipping lightly over the hips. Catching his lip charmingly between his front teeth, Kurogane dove his hand down the front of Fai's pants and threaded his fingers through the soft curly hair there. A warm, tingling thrill followed the path of his palm, washing out across his groin and making his cock twitch, and Kurogane gasped softly.

Untying the laces of Fai's breeches with his left hand took more time than he would have liked; it's not that he wasn't familiar with getting into Fai's pants, but usually from the other direction. Once the waistband was loosened, giving him some room to work, he adjusted the warm shaft to bob freely in the air above the waistband and curled his hand about it, sending a frission of shock up his spine. Blue eyes gleamed at him from the reflection of the mirror, and a wicked smile curved across that face as Kurogane began to move his hand slowly up and down Fai's cock.

"My name is Fai, and I'm a super good magician, never mind that I never actually do any magic," Kurogane addressed the mirror, a trifle breathlessly. "My magic lives in another country, you wouldn't have met it."

The pants were getting annoying, even with the waistband open, so Kurogane paused a moment to wriggle them down off his hips. He slid his hands over the long, long legs as he went, barely feeling the soft prickle of Fai's leg hair against his palms, the hair invisible against his skin in this lighting. It was like a striptease, except even better because he couldn't have his hands smacked and be told not to touch. These were his hands and he could touch whatever he damn well pleased.

Now naked, Kurogane returned his attention to the mirror and to touching his throbbing cock. Much to Kurogane's annoyance, the size and positioning of the mirror meant that he could only see Fai's reflection from the waist up - if he stood on his tiptoes he could get a glimpse of fine pale hair and a flushed, dark red tip, but nothing more. But it also wasn't tall enough to capture Fai's full height if he put it on the floor, either.

After a moment's thought, Kurogane regretfully left off stroking his cock and reached over the washbasin, pulling the mirror off the hook with a quick yank. He stepped back and set the mirror on the floor, tilted it back and up for a few moments to get the angle just right, then walked over and sat on the bed. Now he could see Fai's body from head to toe, and when he leaned back on the mattress and spread his legs, he had a perfect view.

"My name is Fai and I like to cook, too bad the only thing I know how to make is desserts and other sweet crap," he told the reflection in the mirror. He reached down with soft hands and touched and rolled them between his fingers, loving the surge of heat that spread up his stomach when he pressed them. "Would you like to try my strawberry popsicle?"

Mockery aside, Fai's cock actually did look damn delicious right now, and Kurogane was only sorry he couldn't get down between those spread legs and start sucking on it. Almost as good as getting Fai to return the favor, always a double win in that it felt fantastic and got Fai to shut up. But that was just out of the question for tonight, so Kurogane settled for fisting his hand around his cock and pumping up and down. A moan started deep in his ribcage and vibrated up through his collar and throat, no matter how he tried to bite it back.

"Ooh, Kurogane, you have such strong hands," Kurogane panted. Even when imitating Fai, he absolutely refused to give in to his stupid nicknaming habit. "I want those hands all over me, and inside of me too. I want to ride you without a saddle, you studly stallion of Suwa you."

He spared one hand from his cock to run up and down Fai's torso, tweaking his nipples again and forcing another startled moan out of his throat. Damn, he was going to have to remember that for later.

His breath came in pants now, too hard and fast for him to make mirror-Fai deliver any more lines, even though he had a few more he kind of wanted to hear in Fai's voice about how big and stiff his sword was. Another time, maybe - he'd have this room to himself until they left this world and got back in their proper bodies.

For the first time since they'd arrived in this world, Kurogane kind of thought maybe he could wait a little longer for that to happen.

He felt his legs quiver and his balls tighten and draw up as orgasm approached, and he arched off the bed, hand moving faster as his breath harshened in his throat. Fai's reflection looked absolutely delicious, every inch tense and quivering, one hand holding him up against the bed as his hips thrust up into his hand. "Oh, yes, Kurogane, yes," Kurogane moaned in his best Fai-voice. "More, please, mooooooaaaarrgh!"

Kurogane came into his hand with a strangled groan, hips jerking and stuttering in a failing rhythm as hot cum spilled out over his hand. Once it was over, he slumped back against the bed, still watching his reflection with hooded sapphire-blue eyes. Thoughtfully he raised his jizz-covered hand and inspected it, wondering if Fai's come tasted any different to Fai's tongue than it did to his own.

He had one hand up to his mouth when a sudden thump against the wall by the head of the bed made him jump, and bite down nearly hard enough to draw blood. "I don't sound like that, asshole!" Sakura's voice shouted through the wall adjoining to the next room.

Apparently the rooms weren't quite as private and soundproof as the innkeeper had promised them.

Kurogane slammed his hand back against the wall, harder. "Go the fuck to sleep!" he bellowed, covering mortified embarrassment with anger.

"Good night, studly stallion of Suwa!" Syaoran's voice sang from the room on the other side of him. Kurogane sank down between the blankets and pulled the pillow over his face, wondering if it would be so kind as to crawl down his throat and strangle him while he slept.

Thankfully, Syaoran woke up the next morning in Mokona's body with no worse side-effects from the day's magical misadventures than a lingering grogginess and occasional bouts of confusion. Mokona herself did not help that last, as she continually tried to give Syaoran advice on using the 'secret techniques' that proved no help whatsoever.

After a quick breakfast, the five travelers ventured out of the inn to search through the town, talking to the townspeople and gathering clues as to the location of the feather. It was a task they had undertaken many, many times before, and despite the altered perspectives it was familiar to all of them.

Of course, that didn't mean there weren't still some complications.

"Princess, stop walking like that," Kurogane muttered, pitching his voice to reach Sakura's ears.

She looked around at him in confusion, her stride faltering. "Like what?" she asked, tiptoeing back towards the group.

"Like that!" Kurogane said in exasperation. "You're... mincing. Ninjas do not mince. Ninjas stride. No one's gonna take you seriously if you walk like that. "

"Oh - sorry," Sakura said, an embarrased blush darkening her cheeks. She took a long, clumsy step, obviously attempting a stride.

"And stop blushing at every little thing!" Kurogane snapped. "You're supposed to be a ferocious warrior not. Nothing fazes you, and sure as hell nothing embarrasses you. No blushing."

"Sorry," Sakura said again, ducking her head.

"And stop apologizing! Ninja's do not apol- what's that on your head?" Kurogane suddenly demanded, turning to face Sakura full-on.

"Oh, what's what on my head?" Sakura asked with patently false innocence, trying to turn her head to the side to evade Kurogane's gaze. "Is there something on my head?"

"That. On the side of your face. In your hair. In my hair," Kurogane said, jabbing a finger at the offending item. "What is that thing?"

"It's... a ribbon," Sakura said reluctantly.

"I can SEE that it's a ribbon, I'm not BLIND!" Kurogane roared.

"Then why did you have to ask what it was?" Fai interjected with artful innocence.

"I meant what is it doing in MY HAIR?" Kurogane roared. "I can't walk around with a damn piece of frilly pink satin on my head! Nobody is going to take me seriously! Take the damn thing out and BURN IT!"

Sakura burst into tears. "You're so cruel, Kurogane-san!" she sobbed, drawing weird looks from all nearby passersby. "You don't know how hard it is, being in such a strange body! All I wanted was to feel like myself again!"

"Leave Princess Sakura alone!" Syaoran cried, leaping out of Mokona's arms to interpose himself between Kurogane and Sakura. "How dare you make Sakura cry?"

Unfortunately, a lingering side effect of Syaoran's current condition was that in moments of distress, he tended to accidentally trigger Mokona's special magics. As Syaoran opened his mouth wide to voice further protest, it happened again.

The travelers stumbled and staggered for balance in the sudden gust of air that rushed out of Syaoran's mouth and buffeted them from all directions. It didn't just stop with them, either; cyclonic winds swirled outward and upward from the central point, assailing passersby with its tempestuous tantrum. One townswoman shrieked and clutched at her skirt as the sudden updraft exposed her (surprisingly excitingly knitted) underwear.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Sakura apologized to the woman profusely, and Kurogane growled like a boiling teakettle.

Fai sighed and rubbed at his forehead. Clearly, if they were going to get anything done today, they were going to have to split the party. Sakura and Kurogane needed to be separated before Kurogane exploded. Mokona and Syaoran needed to stay together, in the forlorn hopes that the magical creature would be able to help Syaoran control his wildly fluctuating powers. And seeing Sakura in such distress was only going to set Syaoran off more. That really only left one option.

"Come on, Sakura-chan," Fai told her, taking her gently by the black-clad arm. "I think it's best if we split up to cover more territory today."

A ninja wizard, a magical automaton plushie, and a soulless artificial construction of magic who would later turn out to be his own grandfather, none of whom were currently in possession of their own bodies or even technically their own species, walked into a bar...

(There's no punchline. The above completely accurate sentence is the joke.)

The atmosphere of the place was rough and rowdy, the lights dim on filthy floors and smoke-stained walls. Disreputable figures lurked at beer-stained tables, nursing their drinks and eyeing each other with sullen scowls, and if not for the annoying tendency of the bar's patrons to randomly break out into spontaneously choreographed song and dance, it would have been just like any other bar Kurogane had ever been to.

But no matter how weird, it was a place where men come to drink and, once drunk, to talk. There was no place quite so good for gathering local gossip as in a hot, fetid, overcrowded building full of drunks and brawlers.

Fai's smaller, skinnier body didn't loom quite so well as his own, so it was a little harder to clear space at the bar by his mere threatening presence; but a couple of well-applied sharp elbows and steel-capped toes managed to clear some space for himself and his companions. "I'll take three of whatever you've got," he called to the bartender, pushing across some local coin."

The bartender fetched a few mugs, although he sent a doubtful look at Mokona. "You sure you want a kid that young to be drinking?" he asked. "And your dog? Beer's not good for dogs."

"He's not a dog," Kurogane said with a snort, "and who said any of those three were for them? They're just for me to start on. The kids can have whatever they want too, I guess."

Since there was obviously no point in appealing to Kurogane's sense of responsibility, the barkeep poured the drinks and went off again with the money. Kurogane settled in to listen, somewhat annoyed that the legs of this body weren't quite long enough to reach the ground from the high bar stool.

Mokona had gone quiet again, arms held out stiff to the side, resembling either an unusually lifelike store mannequin or an extremely fresh and peppy zombie. Kurogane nudged her with an elbow. "Oi," he said. "You're human right now, remember? You don't have to pretend to be a doll. In fact, it's really really weird when you do."

Mokona jumped, eyes opening wide. "That's right!" she gasped. "Mokona is in a human body! Mokona wants to try to do human body things!"

Beside him, Kurogane heard Syaoran whimper. "Remember, we're here to get information, not fool around," he warned Mokona.

"Mokona will make some friends! Friends love to talk to each other!"

Kurogane glanced over the assemblage of drunken patrons with some doubt. "I dunno that you're going to have much luck with that," he said.

Mokona gave an exaggerated huff of offense. "You say that like Mokona doesn't know how to make friends," she complained. "Step one: be friendly and positive! People respond to a smile! Step two: Identify things that you have in common with your new friends and share in activities related to those interests! Every friendship is based on common grounds! Step three: Smile!"

"If you say so," Kurogane said, who'd never made any active effort to make friends in his life. "Knock yourself out."

"Yay!" Mokona cheered, and bounded away from the bar towards the rest of the taproom. She seemed to have forgotten once again that she was a normal human size, as she still preferred jumping from chair to tabletop to chair rather than actually walking on the floor. Another bound planted her firmly in the middle of a group of hairy men deeply involved in drinking and what looked like a dice game.

"Hiya!" Mokona greeted them all with a dazzling smile. "Did you know, I have hair on my underarms, my legs, and on the soft wiggly things on my crotch, too. It looks like you guys have lots of hair on your bodies, too! Can I see?"

The bar went abruptly silent, so that Kurogane could only hear the sound of Syaoran's horrified moan.

"Oh! And, and! This morning when I woke up, the squishy dangly bits were not squishy and dangly, but instead stiff and inconvenient! Does this ever happen to you, too? How do you deal with it?"

For a long moment, nobody spoke. Finally one man stood up from the bar: scarred, heavily tattooed, and with an eyepatch over the ruin of one eye, he loomed above Mokona like a wall.

"Son," he said, clapping one meaty hand on Mokona's shoulder. "It's past time you learnt something, though it oughtn't be on me to tell you this. There comes a time in your life when a boy must become a man..."

Kurogane relaxed, once it became apparent that Syaoran would not have to return to a body smashed into meat paste. And quickly shuddered away from that end of the bar, so that he didn't have to deal with the spectacle of the ugly old thug giving a boys-and-the-bees talk.

He collected a new mug from the barkeep, and retired to the corner of a nearby table where he could listen in on the conversation of a couple old geezers nearby. Geezers, in Kurogane's experience, were second to none for a source of gossip.

"I hear them at night, I'm telling you!" one older man, nose bulbous and prominent with veins, told his drinking companions in a vehement, hushed whisper. "Hear them in the hills to the south, howling and milling around. They're just waiting a chance, I tell you, a chance to come down and ambush all in our beds. We sit here, like sitting ducks, while they come closer... and closer... until one dark night they'll come down to suck our blood and devour us whole!"

"Excuse me, granddad," Kurogane broke in, joining the conversation. "What terrible beast are you referring to? Werewolves? Demons? Demon werewolves with laughably erroneous misinterpretations of how actual wolf pack social dynamics work? Perhaps a dragon?"

The old man and his drinking companions looked at Kurogane with surprise and faint condescension. "Eh, what are you, stupid?" the old man asked. "Everyone knows the dragon in the mountains to the north. I'm talking about tax collectors."

Kurogane frowned. "But there is a dragon to the north?" he said sharply.

"That's what I just said, isn't it? Everybody knows it's up there, sitting on a whole heap of gold and magical treasure, shining radiantly in the dark." He sighed deeply.

"Well, if everybody knows it's there, shouldn't someone do something about it?" Kurogane demanded.

The old man shrugged. "Well, sure, but have you ever tried to make a dragon fill out tax paperwork?"

"I meant doing something about it as in killing it," Kurogane growled.

"Oh... er... well of course," the old man said, stammering a bit and darting his gaze between several of his friends for support. "Of course, we could defeat that dragon in a heartbeat if we wanted to, couldn't we lads?"

"I could defeat that dragon," one of the local burlies sneered. "I don't even need a sword. I could choke it to death with my bare hands!"

"You think you'd even need your hands?" another challenged him. "I could kill the dragon with my hands tied behind my back! And with a blindfold over my eyes, I would kick it to death using only my ears to guide me!"

"Child's play!" a third scoffed. "I could defeat that dragon with both my arms and legs cut off, and with my eyes cut out, by biting the beast to death!"

"You're all pathetic!" the chief bully roared, raising his voice above the general hubbub. "Stand back and watch while I kill the dragon with both my arms and legs burnt off in a fire and all my teeth punched out, by beating it to death with the half-charred remains of my penis!"

The atmosphere was getting more and more rowdy as the debate heated up; Mokona dancing on tabletops in the background was not helping the general ambiance. Kurogane slid back carefully from the table, bringing Syaoran with him. "So, it looks like it's going to be up to us to kill that dragon," he muttered to Syaoran.

Syaoran looked up at him, ears twitching. "You think it has Sakura's feather?" he said.

Kurogane nodded. "Makes sense, doesn't it?" he asked. "The feathers are powerful, and dragons are attracted to shiny and valuable things. Besides, that old man said that the dragon's treasure 'glowed radiantly in the dark.' What does that sound like to you?"

"Sakura's feather!" Syaoran exclaimed with excitement. "But, how are we going to beat that dragon? I would help if I could, but I'm no use like this!"

Kurogane grimaced. "I feel you, kid," he said. He thought about it for a moment. "Well, the only thing I can see to do is that the princess will have to do it."

"What?" Syaoran cried out.

As he took a deep breath to voice his objections, it was as though a powerful engine had switched on, and air rushed past Kurogane into Syaoran's gaping maw. The force of the gale rattled the bar stools on their legs, and peanuts and small dishes were whipped away into the nothingness, along with a furry black toupee ripped from the head of one of the drunken bar residents.

"What the fuck?" the drunk screamed, his hands swiping clumsily at his head. He whirled around, bloodshot eyes glaring with the promise of murder.

"Ah! That's Secret Technique #96!" Mokona observed brightly from the background. "Medium Power Vacuum! That one's always a crowd pleaser."

Kurogane had a moment of real alarm as dishes, bar rags, the offending toupee, and the liquid remains of unconsumed drinks all flew past him into the vortex of Syaoran's mouth. Even the bar stool he was on rattled ominously as gravity fought the suction of vacuum. But then all at once there was a flup noise, like a clogged hose, as the dangerous suction ceased. Syaoran toppled over, limp and groaning faintly as the incautious overuse of power left him unconscious once more.

"My hair!" the drunk screeched, knuckles cracking as he flexed his hands. "Your rat-thing ate my hair!"

One of the other bar patrons, too far gone to have any respect for the hazards, hooted with laughter. "Maybe he thought it was another rat!" he called out.

The recently de-haired man whirled around with a howl and punched the would-be jester squarely in the face. One of his friends jumped to his defense with a shout, and within minutes the scene had devolved into a messy brawl.

"We've got what we came here," Kurogane muttered to Mokona, tucking the insensate Syaoran into a pocket. "Let's get out of here."

Before he could go anywhere, one of the singing drinkers from earlier stumbled and weaved across his path, waving his arms as he bawled out the chorus. Kurogane grabbed him by the back of the neck and ran him headfirst smack into the wall, leaving him to slide slowly down the wall to fold up on the floor. "And nobody wants to hear about your fucking dreams!"

Kurogane just hoped that wherever he was, Fai was having as much of a headache as he was.

~to be continued...