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Title: Cruel to be Kind Rating: G Characters: Baron, a tiny smattering of Haru, and all the main Cat Kingdom cats who go unnamed in this particular instance Ships: None Warnings: Bad things are said to have happened to some of the cats here (specifically, one has been cut in half and the other skinned) but it is not explicit and does not happen during the course of the story, and also runs on Fairy Tale Logic™, so being skinned is a bit more akin to stubbing one’s toe. But! It’s still mentioned, so please decide for yourself Summary: Clever and resourceful and more than a little cavalier toward the supernatural forces he’s so intrigued by, the hopeful hunter Baron von Gikkingen captures a real monster this time, to the ongoing skepticism of his dearest (and only) friend, and demands that it grant him a lofty wish in exchange for its freedom, as is only proper of such a meeting. He isn’t expecting the monster to have some demands of its own. Notes: When I saw this was one of the prompts that made it on the list for this year, I knew in my soul I’d probably have at least one thing to show for it. Fairy tales my beloved. I had originally planned for this to be about Natori and his sisters, and I honestly wouldn’t be able to tell you how it became This instead. Unfortunately it is unfinished for now, but I wanted to put it out there still for the event. Once it's finished completely, I'll post it to AO3. For now, I hope it's enjoyed in its incomplete state! Also, yes, I did eventually throw up my hands and settle on using the term 'lich' but I am almost certain it's not being used correctly. Don't come for me I have very little of worth in my pockets Also also big big thanks to some of my followers who chipped in with mundane but comical ways in which one could wind up cut in half

Baron von Gikkingen had never captured a real, bona fide monster before. He had tried, of course, time and time again— following the rumors, no matter how outlandish or fractured, and no matter how unreliable their sources, coming away from each nonevent with an ever-growing body of knowledge shaped by failure and an even greater need to prove himself quite unerringly clever, clever enough to catch his very own monster, and today that determination had finally seen results.

Of course, at the moment, the baron’s ‘real, bona fide’ monster was not particularly impressive nor imposing, and from the way his good friend Haru was eyeing the little thing lounging sedately, politely, within its cage with its tail lazily thrashing back and forth it must be clear to him that she was weighing her words, deliberating on the best way to approach the underwhelming optics of the situation.

“...It’s a cat,” she eventually observed, succinct and devastating.

“Yes,” Baron agreed, and quickly added, “But not just a cat,” before she could no doubt press on for further humiliation.

“It looks like just a cat,” she managed anyway.

“Let me finish.”

Haru said nothing more, but she did nod her head in his direction briefly in acknowledgement.

“This cat,” he said, gesturing to it quite grandly, “is a soul. Or rather— it harbors one within it, which does not belong to it. I discovered it wandering last night, and I knew I must have it. The creature to whom it belongs shall be wanting it back, I’m certain, and I will be quite willing to comply… for the price of its promised wish.”

There lit a flash of comprehension across Haru’s face. “Oh, I see. You think this cat is half of a lich.”

“I know this cat is half of a lich,” Baron corrected.

“Then you are foolishly bold, holding its soul for ransom like this. Or maybe just cruel.”

“It’s not cruel, and neither am I. I have a wonderful wish to request of it when it comes to retrieve its soul, and that will make of all of this a most exquisite outcome.”

By and by, Haru left him and returned home to her humble flat within the town center, and she did so remaining still unconvinced despite his best efforts. In rather sullen spirits now, and watching the sun sink behind the line of trees which surrounded his own property, he turned his attention then to the old cat, and finally for the first time addressed it directly since he had brought it into his home.

“There is no use in trying to dissuade me with your silence, for I am already quite assured of your true nature. If you can speak, you may, and in fact should, as I imagine you would like to argue your case. But first speak and inform me when I should be expecting your other half.”

One of its dark ears flattened lightly sideways, the old cat eyed him narrowly with seeming disdain, and finally opened its mouth to respond. “No, I'm afraid my body shall not be joining us any time soon. It will not come— neither to retrieve me nor to grant your wish— until you have satisfied its requirements for such a favor.”

“Requirements?!” Baron laughed in disbelief. “I possess the vessel of its very soul already! It’s your master that should be concerned with my requirements. If I had a mind to, I could put an unceremonious end to its very life here and now.”

“You don’t have a mind to, though.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. You are very learned, but you don’t know everything.” Then, with an impish smile so small it was very near unseeable, “I do. I know everything.”

The baron bristled a little. “Well— then give to me your requirements, and I will do what I must.” And I will show you you don’t, he thought crossly as well.

To that, the old cat appeared to think for a long moment, eventually standing on all fours and wandering to the edge of its oval cage, where it stood as like a man and grasped at the bars, staring up at him with its cool gaze unwavering.

“Three tasks over three nights to prove your worth, and it will give you what you ask of it once they are done.”

“Three is too many. I think it should be two.”

“Three is traditional.”

“One would be even better.”

“Three,” the old cat repeated patiently, almost kindly, “Or no wish at all.”

“Three it is then,” Baron agreed.

ooo

In the morning, the baron set out to the land directly across from his own, on the other side of the town center, where he expected to stumble across an ambitious fool and where she would be herding and shearing her hares. As told, she was there, albeit not quite in the stature he had assumed— a plump, short-legged cat with a clay-colored coat, uneasily wielding a pair of shears nearly as big as she was and futilely chasing after a hare whenever one had the misfortune to lope into her line of sight. Baron stood and watched for some time in silence, and it was after the sixth failure that she came to stand before him with a stormy countenance displayed upon her cherubic face, waiting for his inevitable assessment.

“Sensible folk would choose sheep to corral,” he began then, as he was only expected. “They do not run so fast as hares, and they quite appreciate to be herded, where hares view it as an odious infringement upon their persons.”

The fool scoffed, stabbing her shears into the dirt and resting her head upon their rounded, shiny handles. “I couldn’t catch a sheep! They are too big for a cat!”

“You can’t catch a hare, either,” Baron observed.

“I might.” She stamped her little back paw. “You can’t say definitively yet because I am still alive and have not stopped trying, just like the fool I am. I might yet catch one.”

“I suppose you might yet.”

“Besides that, you could not catch a hare either, I’d bet. They would outsmart you.”

The baron bristled. “Outsmart me? Definitely not! I was clever enough to ensnare a monster just two nights ago.”

“Was?”

“Give me those.” Baron reached for her oversized shears with a wounded sort of frustration. With her cat reflexes, she easily evaded him, leaving the scissors behind where he could swipe them, and from there she simply watched as he went to work.

She had thirteen hares in all— the baron had feverishly caught and shaved all but four of them by the time he decided to break, when the noontime sun was high and unobscured and hot. And at that time he found the little fool-cat lounging under a nearby tree with a bowl of dried sardines. Upon realizing she was being scrutinized, and not altogether kindly, she rolled a few times to push herself up into a seated position, stretching one hind leg some length behind her as she did for no evident gain.

“Well,” he started briskly, setting her shears down and patting his hands against the fabric of his vest. “Well, I believe I’ve made myself clear. Baron von Gikkingen is indeed clever enough not to be outsmarted by a hare.”

“Indeed,” the fool agreed, standing to greet him and accidentally knocking over her bowl in the process. “He was not outsmarted by a hare.”

Then, before he could respond to that, she took the shears back, stubbornly, broadly, and held their sharp edges up to her muzzle. “I don’t have much, but I’ll give you some of my whiskers— nine in all, just as many hares as you sheared for me. Too bad— it’d been thirteen if you did them all.”

And once more, before he could protest or question otherwise, she took the shears and snipped all nine of the whiskers, all from the same side, and then placed the nine of them into his hand.

The baron stared at them for a long, long moment, and then brought his gaze back to the little cat, the fool who was resembling her namesake more and more, and asked, “...What am I to do with these?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then what great advantage is afforded in taking them from you?”

“That you have them, and I don’t.”

“I see.”

“It’s very simple.”

“You certainly do believe so,” Baron agreed and then left.

He returned home just after noon to find his feline captive asleep in its cage, and discovered also that in his absence, it had somehow obtained a very small pair of glasses which even now in its slumber sat neatly balanced upon its nose.

Sharply rapping his knuckles against the solid top, enough so to startle the cat awake, much to his private amusement, he asked, “And where have you found those? You are only pretending to be caged?”

The old cat sighed in a contented way after a moment, yawned, and then sat up, gazing up at him over the rims of its glasses with its tail quite gently lashing behind it.

“I can scarcely see without them, and it is very disquieting. My master brought them to me, of course, while you were out.”

“You said it would not come to rescue you until I completed the tasks,” Baron remarked plaintively.

“It did not come to rescue me,” the cat said.

The baron thought about that. “...So it didn’t.” Then, unveiling the nine whiskers he had been so dubiously rewarded, “And these are all I have to show for assisting your little round fool.”

Here the cat inspected the wispy things, and eventually turned a distant, mild stare to his captor. “What sad fortune, to be given such an essential tool which you can not use. And the fool would have need of them most of all, as is befitting her nature.”

“Yes. Quite aptly named, then, isn’t she?”

Baron, clever as he was, learned as he was in the ways of the monsterfolk, and knowing better than to throw away anything he gained through his assigned drudgery, laid the whiskers upon the mantle and decided to call on dear Haru.

ooo

In the noontime of the second day, the baron traveled over the river to the east of his home, just to the opposite bank in all its pristine golden-green sheen, where he was immediately greeted by a friendly if harried cat the color of ash, clad in a shiny, red sash which was looped over his right shoulder and hugged his left side.

“Thank goodness you’re here!” He exclaimed. “I’ve been looking all over for my sweetie’s other half, and I haven’t been able to locate it anywhere!”

Baron hesitated, looking the little thing up and down a few times, and then remarked, “Well, I would then assume I’d be searching for you, my good man.”

“Not me, my halves remain connected, as you can see by looking at me.” Here, the bridegroom did a little spin to show just how unblemished he was. “Hurry, hasten, she is in the wildflowers yonder, and there’s no time to idle!”

The gentle bride-cat the baron was led to had a quite wan, chagrined look, although she welcomed her company as graciously as might be expected otherwise. More than graciously, in fact, as she had, indeed, been cut in half at her midsection, and laid upon the grass and buzzing bees with her paws folded politely and placidly upon her chest.

“And how did this happen?” Baron asked.

“Oh,” the bride-cat sighed. “I’m afraid it’s not a very exciting story. My dear groom and I decided to rearrange the sitting room a fortnight ago to liven things up a little.”

Here the groom interrupted with a tearful cry, “With my own two hands! I shall never forgive myself!”

“Yes, dear, you never will if you keep saying you won’t.”

“I know, I know,” the ashen groom moaned and then was silent again.

“This is his doing, then?”

“Yes, by misfortune alone, although as you see, he will try to tell you otherwise. I had wedged myself behind the loveseat which was parallel to the hutch behind it at the time— only halfway, to retrieve my wedding band.” Here she showed him the gold bangle which loosely encircled one of her wrists. “He didn’t realize I was back there, pushed the loveseat until it was flush with the hutch, and… well. You see what’s become of me now.”

The groom-cat let out another little sob but was otherwise quite obedient to his bride’s recommendation.

“And now you have mislaid the bottom half.”

“Yes.”

To that, Baron thought for a long moment with his chin cradled in his hand. “It is not at the scene of the cri— er, the scene of the incident anymore?”

“No.”

“Could it have walked away?”

“It could have,” the bride agreed. “I had tried tying it to me with my apron strings, but it is a wayward thing, I’m afraid.”

“I see.”

[ insert baron using his Smarts to lure the other half in. he then gives the bride-cat a ribbon to hold herself together which seems to work, and in thanks she gives him three of her own ribs ]

When Baron returned home, this time in the evening and feeling rather brazenly accomplished, he found that not only had the cat continued to wear its tidy little glasses, but it was now also clad in a full changshan, a little faded and worn but still the rich, dark color of plum skin.

This time he also saw the baron’s skeptical gaze, and, in no rush to explain himself but at least offering first, simply said, “I was cold.”

“Another thoughtful palliative from your master, I suppose.”

“Yes. It is kind to me. It does not wish for me to suffer.”

The baron hesitated but ultimately said nothing, choosing to walk past the little thing’s cage to the fireplace. He didn’t show the cat his innocuous reward this time.

“You aren’t just surreptitiously loaning me out as a knight-errant to your favorite bosom buddies, are you?” Baron asked instead as he laid the bride’s curved ivory-white ribs, three in all, beside the fool’s nine wispy whiskers on the mantle. There was a glibness to him. “I can’t help but to notice both tasks so far involved your fellow felines.”

The cat looked up from where he was pressed against the bars with what was still exposed of his grey fur poking through the gaps, moving on eventually to cleaning his face once he seemed satisfied with his coming response.

“You know I am neither fellow nor feline. You have said so yourself and more than once.”

“Fair, fair. But it does lead one to wonder, and I doubt I’m the only one.”

“Yes. I imagine your dear friend Haru has made the same observation.”

She had.

“She doesn’t believe you shall grant my wish.”

“I might not,” the cat agreed. “That is your responsibility to obtain.”

“Yes. And I suppose it’s quite generous of you, as well, to allow me such control over my fate.”

The cat laughed.

Some short while later, after a brittle silence which had stretched on into minutes, the cat spoke up again.

“And what is this wish you are so set upon, after all?” And when Baron hesitated, it added, “It need not remain a secret to preserve its chances of realization. Knowing what it is will have no bearing on its outcome. Only your tasks will decide that. I am curious. And being neither fellow nor feline, I can afford to be.”

Still uncertain, the baron explained, “It is not a wicked wish, but it is quite grand, and I fear it shall benefit no one else aside from me.”

The cat blinked slowly at him, just once. “We do not judge. Only your tasks will decide the ultimate fate of your wish.”

“Very well,” Baron eventually conceded. “I should like to wish to see the end of all things, and once it has all crumbled, I shall lie down with it in its own ruins and wither, and be at peace.”

“Exactly that?”

“Exactly that.”

The cat’s tail stilled. It looked out at the baron with a measureless amount of detached contemplation, and it was suddenly now that Baron found himself unanchored, lurching into weightless, trackless void, and understood intrinsically this was something unspeakably old.

“If you succeed, and wish only to see the end of all things, I do not know what benefit that will afford to you. But it is what you will receive.”

“I have completed two of three of your tasks. I will succeed.”

Again, the cat laughed good-naturedly, and settled back into a reclining loll with its fond gaze fixated upon him. “Yes, but two out of three is not three out of three.”

ooo

On the third day, the baron left his home at dusk and ventured into the forest surrounding the house. The night came on slowly, and he was unfamiliar with the woods, but still he continued on between dog and wolf with an obstinate kind of fearlessness, the kind only children usually know.

It wasn’t long before he was beset by a baleful call, a distant moan, and at this he finally hesitated.

“What manner of beast cries so ominously,” he said to himself, and, “That wretched cat has delivered me into the jaws of another fellow monster.”

But he had come so far already, and so he heartened his resolve and bade himself on, and in scarcely any time at all, he arrived to a stark clearing where a narrow brook ran through, the ground dark and nondescript and the water glassy and cold, and there he found a skinned cat lying in the middle of the path, just before the smooth pebbles of the shore.

The baron knelt down before it with a shake of his head in pity.

“Oh, it was only you making that call. Luckless thing. I can not give you a new skin, if that’s what you are going to request. And I certainly can’t reunite you with your original coat in any manner which will ease your suffering.”

“No,” complained the skinned cat, “The original skin was bad anyway. It was old. A new one might be just as old. Or worse, older! I have no need for any of them. Leave me be.”

Looking the little raw thing over from all angles, the baron said, “But you must be quite greatly pained.”

“Yes. But it’s not any of your business, I think.” The cat sniffed haughtily then, but still he did not rise from his petulant repose, as if a tremendous tantrum had fatigued him. “Leave me be. I don’t need anything from you. I’m doing just fine as I am.”

Baron stood, but his attention remained upon his companion. “Forgive me, but you don’t appear as such.”

“I am! You may even have my old skin! It is in the stream! Take it back to your damned village and leave me be.”

What fortune! Doubtless, the cat’s hide was sure to be significant to Baron’s captured monster, and he had scarcely to do any work in order to obtain it, a welcome blessing after chasing down nine hares and half a bride-cat. Yet it would be absurd to simply take it as is and walk away.

“Then how might I go about repaying you? I must in some way. It will not sit right with me otherwise.”

The cat looked at him quite crossly.

“You won’t if I have my say on it! I was born a king and given all I’d ever asked for and more, and I’ve not been satisfied once in my whole life. Do you really think you can compete with the riches of a king?”

“No. Perhaps not. But there must be something I can offer you which will see you gladden. I shall bet my life on it.”

“I do not want your life,” the cat eventually said. “If you are really so intent on this wager, then I will take only your other two prizes.”

“How did you know about them?”

“I know everything.”

Will Baron succeed in obtaining his weird little wish? Will he regret it if so? Why is this fic called 'cruel to be kind?' Find out some time within the next seven years! Hopefully! (Sorry. Other fandom interests kept stealing my attention. I would really like to finish this one though.)

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