Oh yeah, the cat demon was certain that he'd have this homework assignment in the bag.
Too bad that the lammit didn't want to cooperate with its daily doses of protection charm. It took it two days to learn his schedule and it would mysteriously be missing in the moments it took him to retrieve one of the charms. Maybe it hurt? No, that couldn't be right. Not that he would have been sympathetic if it did. No one really likes to take medicine, so he presumed that this was a similar situation.
When he did catch the lammit, which most often chose to try and wedge its way as far against the wall behind his dresser as it possibly could, it writhed and thrashed in his hand as he tried to follow the instructions Cricket had given them. Jack even Riyo had held still for him to do this, why couldn't the damned lammit do the same?
Several of the charms, he knew, weren't as well applied as they should have been... Oh well, what was the worst that could happen?
Deacon should have known better than to have such a thought.
-----
"C'mere you little rat!" Deacon spat, lying on his dorm room floor with his arm shoved underneath his dresser in an increasingly uncomfortable angle. "It's the last one for Jack's sake! Just let me get it over with, and you can go hop around like an idiot again and be happy."
Just as he thought he was about to grab hold of it, a blur of black fur darted out right past him and retreated toward the window. Which was closed.
"Yeah, you do that." Deacon muttered to himself, struggling to pull his arm free. Once he had, he stood and rotated his shoulder a bit. It was already sore, so he was all too eager to get this final dose - and the assignment - over with.
The lammit hurled itself in a flying leap toward the window it had viewed as the nearest escape route, crashing headfirst into the glass that it couldn't see. It fell back onto the floor, tumbled a short ways, before getting up and trying again.
Deacon was ready to let the poor thing bash itself stupid(er?) before he tried to stop it. Hey, the task at hand would be that much easier!
After no less than half a dozen attempts, the fluff ball belatedly decided that window escape was a no go and tried to make back for the shelter of the dresser.
"No you don't!" Deacon shouted, stomping his foot as it got close and startling it back on top of causing a considerable shudder around him that his downstairs neighbor probably didn't appreciate very much. He watched the lammit go racing over to his bed, bounding up onto it and burrowing into a blanket as if it were totally safe so long as Deacon couldn't see it.
Deacon laughed dryly, padding over to the bed. As he walked, he tore open the protection charm so that he had it ready at hand. He was so close to being finished with this little pest. So close... Just this last charm and he could give this wretched thing back to Nurse Cricket and be done with it.
He might have been outside of his natural form, but that didn't mean he couldn't still pounce. Swiftly, he jumped onto his bed and planted his free hand on the blanket, hearing a satisfying squeak of alarm from within his closing fingers. "Got'cha!"
Peeling back the edge of the blanket, the lammit's beady eyes looked up at Deacon in terror. The tabby practically slapped the charm onto the minipet's head and held it down with more force than was really needed. Even as the little b*****d wriggled, he kept it in place. Thirty seconds couldn't go by fast enough, though.
Once he drew back to see how well it had gone, he was pleased to see that that particular charm had been applied quite well. "Not a bad job, if I do say so myself." Deacon praised to himself, still holding the writhing lammit in his fist.
Until it bit him.
Bellowing out a curse, Deacon pulled his hand back with the creature still attached. With a flail of his wrist it went flying and went skittering under the dresser yet again.
"JACKDAMMIT!" Deacon reached for the nearest object which happened to be a rather non-hazardous box of tissues and chucked it at the dresser. Of course it didn't hit the lammit like he wished it would have, but there was still some satisfaction in throwing something at it.
Growling and hissing more strings of profanity, he retreated to the bathroom to clean the blood off of his hands and get a bandage. Stupid lammit. Stupid protection charms. Stupid homework assignment.
He was actually pretty startled by what he saw shuffling across the floor when he stepped back out...
"Oh... ********, that can't be right."
[Word Count: 897]
