\n Chapter 1: By CrownedClown13

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\n Chapter 2: By RuthofPern

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\n Chapter 3: By 3timer

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\n Chapter 4: By EGD_Pando

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\n Chapter 5: By masterwolf2

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\n Author's Note:  Hopefully I've put in enough hooks for future authors to do interesting things with them.  

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\n I've become quite invested in these characters over the past few days that they've been in my care. I definitely have ideas about how the story should progress! The biggest challenge for me in the future will be to sit on my hands and not say, "That's not how it's supposed to happen!"

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\n So without further ado... :-)

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\n ***

\n Cory looked up at Asher with an almost childlike sense of trust. His friend was here, and would never hurt him. Claudia was here too. She was a more volatile presence than Asher and was far less predictable, and even a little scary, but he felt that she was still on his side of the equation. They might not be friends yet, but at least they were all walking in the same direction. The female asked Asher a question that Cory couldn't quite hear, to which the answer was "Random Universal Soul perk, which you could do too if you tried hard enough."

\n It didn't make the slightest bit of sense. Cory felt as if he should understand, but this was all over his head. He felt muddle-headed, as if he had taken too much cold medicine before a test in school. He could understand all of the words, but the sentences they formed made no sense. "I should go and catch those two scouting us. It's starting to piss me off." Asher got up and walked out to the deck, and Cory followed him as far as the doorway, not wanting his new friend to leave. The weather outside was warm and pleasant, with a breeze rustling through the leaves of the nearby trees, but Cory had no desire to leave the safe confines of the house. "Outside" was where the Dangerous Things lived.

\n Asher turned and held out his paw, and Cory saw that his hand was consumed in a ball of purple fire! This alarmed him. He didn't know anything about the properties of purple fire, but he didn't want his friends to be burned. "Pull the alarm!" He shouted to Claudia.

\n "Fire!"

\n Cory shot upright, his head spinning with confusion. He'd lain down on the couch to sleep away his horrible hangover, but nightmares had slammed him back into the waking world. Where was he? This was not his apartment...

\n Corey's panicked yelp brought both Asher and Claudia running. Claudia reached him first, but only because she shunned the idea of circumnavigating the couch in favor of vaulting it. "Shhh..." she soothed, gently drawing the panting human to her chest. "It's okay, Cory. You're safe."

\n Cory clutched the tigress's warm, soft-furred arm in the desperate way a drowning man holds onto a life preserver. Cold sweat poured down his back, darkening the upholstery beneath him. "It was..." Cory gasped. "It was so bizarre." He suddenly pushed Claudia to arm's length, irrationally suspicious of her motives. "You... you and Asher were going to..."

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\n What? What was he going to say? That they were going to kidnap him through an interdimensional rift using a ball of purple fire? Or maybe he was going to warn them that their lives were in danger from a chubby black fox attached to a conjoined twin? Insanity. He relaxed marginally and rubbed his forehead with one hand, wanting to scrub away the headache that had bloomed there. "Oh, Jesus, that was weird."

\n Claudia looked back at her brother, her eyes flashing dangerously. "How much booze did you have to shove down his throat to get him here, anyway?"

\n "I only bought him one and he spilled half of that," the tiger protested. "He was drinking beer when I found him, and he was doing a mighty fine job of pounding them back all by himself."

\n Claudia turned back to Cory and gently pulled him back into her arms, rocking him back and forth like a scared cub. "It's okay, buddy. It was just a dream. Let it go," she purred, tucking his head under her soft chin, "let it go."

\n Asher sat on the couch at Cory's feet. He felt like he should be doing something. Specifically, he felt like he should be doing what Claudia was doing. He put a warm paw on the human's calf and gave it what he hoped was a comforting squeeze. The jealousy he felt at seeing Claudia hold Cory like that was unexpected. He was a mature, powerful tiger, and could walk into any bar in the land and ten minutes later, walk out with anyone he chose as a friend or a bedmate. Why did he suddenly feel so possessive of this unexceptional human? And with his sister, no less? Maybe, he rationalized, it was just sibling rivalry rearing its ugly head.

\n "Hey," Claudia's voice had lost its confrontational edge. "I'm sorry, Asher. What you tried to do for him was nice, and I shouldn't have called you an asshole."

\n Asher smiled quietly. "Actually, you didn't. I think the term you used was, 'idiot'. A little later you may have called me a bastard, but I'm not a hundred percent certain about that one."

\n "Oh. Right. Anyway," she continued," I know you were only trying to help him." She ran a hand over the human's soft hair, smoothing it down and helping to chase the nightmares away. "I just got a little carried away."

\n Cory knew he was bring treated like a little child, but he couldn't bring himself to protest. He'd felt bad thirty minutes ago when he'd lain down, but now he just plain felt like shit. He was dizzy and disoriented, and he felt feverishly hot. His gut was in knots, but contrary to what he might have expected, Claudia's gentle rocking seemed to be settling his stomach instead of upsetting it. Gradually relaxing, he allowed himself to be held close to her modest but still pleasantly soft bosom. As the voices above him continued their distant, fuzzy conversation, he discovered that she smelled faintly of lilacs.

\n The tigress continued her ministrations, her attention on Cory as she spoke to her brother. "Why are you always picking up strays?"

\n When the tiger gave no response, she looked up to find his emerald eyes staring pointedly at the person who had placed themselves underneath their houseguest. She turned her gaze down to the man in her lap, the man she was rocking to sleep and whose hair she was stroking. Sighing, she had to agree with Asher. "Yeah, I know. I'm a big softie, too."

\n She gave Cory's head a last gentle pat and slowly sat up, rotating the man back into an almost sitting position. "Come on," she encouraged her brother, hardening her voice as if she were really annoyed. "He's your friend, you need to be taking care of him." As she walked back into the kitchen, she kept up a running diatribe, her voice fading with the distance. "I don't have time to nursemaid ... sick animals you bring home ... things to do around this house ..."

\n Asher smiled at his sister's protests. She might put up a hard exterior facade to masquerade her bleeding heart, but he knew her too well to be fooled. He pulled the remote control off the coffee table and took Claudia's place on the couch next to his new friend. Next to Cory's sprawl there wasn't much room left on the couch, so Asher tossed an arm over the backrest to give them both a bit more room. The human still looked horrible. "You feeling okay there, champ?"

\n Cory tried to respond, but all that came out was a groan and an ominously damp-sounding belch. Asher reached for a small trash bin as a precaution but Cory waved him away. "It's okay, man." He made a sound that was an unhealthy cross between a sigh and a moan. "It's okay," he finished, weakly. Strength exhausted, he slid down the pillows, ending up with his face nestled against Ash's belly fur. Within seconds, his shallow breaths had deepened somewhat and were coming more regularly.

\n Asher laid one warm, weighty paw on Cory's back, feeling his new friend's chest expand and contract in time with his breathing. He resisted the urge to stroke the man's head like his sister had, but he couldn't resist moving a lock of unruly hair out of his handsome face with an extended foreclaw. With the remote, Asher slid the concealed vidscreen out of its hidey hole and fired up the entertainment system. He set the volume to 'low' so he wouldn't disturb Cory's already fitful sleep, and tuned in a sports channel.

\n Halfway through the rugby match he was watching, Melanie startled him back to awareness by batting his ears with her soft paws.

\n "Get down," he said sternly, putting her on the floor. "You're not supposed to be up here, anyway."

\n Two minutes later she was back on her perch, but this time she did more than bat his ears. This time, she gave the top of his head a rapid-fire thwacking that was impossible to ignore. "I don't want to play right now, Melanie," he said, trying to keep his voice low as he reached for her. To his utter astonishment, she backed away and hissed at him!

\n Now that she had his complete and undivided attention, she walked calmly back to Cory's side as if nothing had happened, then placed a soft paw on the man's chest and looked back at Ash expectantly. When he didn't react immediately, she cocked her head to one side and examined him with a look that called his intelligence into question.

\n Not taking his eyes off the cat, Ash dug his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed his sister's number. "Get in here, sis, and bring the medkit. We've got a problem."

\n Less than a minute later, Claudia had a pressure cuff around Cory's arm and a MedAlyzer strapped to his wrist. "I keep telling you to pay attention to the cat." The corners of her mouth turned down in self-disgust. "If this was a hangover it should be getting better by now, not worse." She looked up at Cory's face and handed Asher a dry hand towel. Her voice was a low rumble as she muttered to herself. "How could I have been so stupid?"

\n "What's wrong, sis?" Asher daubed the sweat that streamed off the human's face.

\n "I don't know, but-" the insistent beeping of the MedAlyzer cut her off.

\n "Shit." she examined the display built into the cuff. It wasn't one of the consumer-grade models that took your blood pressure and your temperature and then hinted at what might be wrong. This one was military-grade, designed for field-work, and not only told you what was wrong, but told you exactly how to fix it. Or at least, how to keep yourself alive until you could get to a medical facility. In Asher's line of work, it had come in handy a time or two.

\n She traced a curved, translucent claw along the display as she read aloud. "Inject two cc's of number twenty-three IM, then pour a packet of number fifteen into four ounces of liquid and consume over a period of ten minutes. Rerun diagnostic ten minutes after medication has been consumed."

\n Opening the accompanying medkit, she popped the lid on a white plastic syringe and pushed the needle through the fabric of Cory's pants into his thigh. As she injected the medication, she nodded to a water bottle sitting on the end table. "Drink that down to four ounces and pour that number fifteen stuff into it."

\n Cory hadn't made so much as a peep when the tigress jammed the needle into his leg, but when he felt Asher moving underneath him he groaned and blindly reached out to hold the tiger close. "It's okay, buddy," Asher said, finding Cory's hand and taking it in his own. "You'll be all right." Cory calmed somewhat at the firm squeeze Asher gave his hand, but didn't fully settle until the tiger was again sitting still underneath him.

\n Ash emptied the white powder contained in package fifteen into the bottle, put the cap back on and shook it vigorously. Once it had dissolved, he put the bottle to the man's lips. "Cory? Can you drink this?" Asher took the slight parting of his lips as a signal and began slowly feeding him the medicine.

\n In a matter of a few minutes the shot began taking effect, and Cory's ragged breathing began to even out. Claudia pushed a green button on the MedAlyzer's face and initiated another diagnostic.

\n Asher looked grim. "What the hell happened to him?"

\n "I don't know," Claudia admitted. "The cuff says it's some sort of toxin." She remembered finding the two earlier that day with Cory doubled over in the surf, vomiting, and moved over to examine the man's feet and legs.

\n "What are you looking for?" Ash asked his sister, who was apparently trying to peer up Cory's pants legs.

\n "I don't know..." she tried to pull Cory's pants cuff up over his calf, but it wasn't working very well. "I was thinking that maybe he got stung by a jellyfish, or something."

\n "Wouldn't he be screaming in pain, if it was something like that?"

\n "How the hell do I know," she shot her brother a glare. "I'm not a doctor. I just read what the med cuff says." She returned to her examination. "He might not feel just one or two stings, especially if he's busy barfing his guts up, but if he's allergic, he still might have a reaction." She gave up trying to preserve Cory's modesty. "This is stupid."

\n Claudia put Cory's legs back down on the couch, noticing that his pants were still slightly damp with sea water. Reaching up, she took hold of his belt and jerked the buckle loose. Ash opened his maw to protest, but snapped it shut. She was right, and he knew it. Modesty be damned, they needed to find out what had happened to him.

\n Ash tried to avert his gaze to spare his friend's pride, but he couldn't resist taking a peek at Cory's exposed legs. They were quite well developed, he noticed, suitably muscled to carry the few extra pounds the man was packing. The size of his calves explained why Claudia couldn't see past them. "I don't know," she said, doubtfully, "I don't see anything special, but," she passed a hand above the inside portion of his upper thigh, "he's got this rash here. Was it here last night?"

\n "I told you," Asher tried not to sound defensive, "we didn't do anything last night. He's not that way."

\n "Oh, yeah," Claudia sounded apologetic. "Sorry. I wasn't thinking."

\n The med cuff signaled the end of the diagnostic routine, and an embarrassed Claudia pounced on it. She consulted the display and sounded relieved "The medicines are working. It says..." She quirked her head and looked a second time at the words scrolling across the display.

\n She was silent for a long moment as she thought of everything Cory had done that morning. "Did the two of you eat the same thing this morning? Eggs, and that funky Irish bacon?"

\n "Yeah," Asher sounded worried. "Why? Was it food poisoning?"

\n "Not exactly." The tigress hated being evasive, but she didn't want to bias her brother's memories by planting too many suggestions. "Was there anyone bothering you last night, or acting weird?"

\n "His buddy was a real prick, but after Cory punched his lights out he spent most of the time lying on the floor under our feet." He strained his memory, trying to remember anything out of the ordinary. "The only other thing I can remember is some runty little dude who kept getting underfoot. Every time I turned around, I was running over him." He'd had a few drinks by the time he met Cory, and he'd been far from sober, but now that he was thinking about it, he remembered turning around and giving the thin, dark-haired man a hard stare after one particularly intimate bump from behind. He remembered a slender face with a prominent chin, and before the man could avert them, eyes that were a hypnotically icy blue.

\n "Was he ever near your drinks?"

\n Had the man bumped into him before Cory partially spilled their drinks, or after? In the commotion of grabbing bar napkins and daubing Cory's shirt, he couldn't remember. Hell, after it was all over with, they couldn't even tell whose drink was whose. "I don't know for sure," he admitted. "Maybe. Why do you ask?"

\n Claudia held up the med-cuff. "It says it's a plant-based alkaloid toxin." She tossed the device onto the couch and sighed, suddenly looking a decade older than her thirty-two years. "It's poison."

\n A glance at Cory's shirtless chest reminded her of what her brother had been telling her. "Where's his shirt?" she asked, hopefully.

\n Asher pointed to a crumpled mass of fabric tossed onto a nearby chair and grimaced. "It's over there, but don't think you're going to get a sample of the poison out of it. I washed it for him when we got home last night."

\n "Damn," Claudia said, disappointed. "You would pick now to start keeping up with your laundry."

\n "Why would anyone want to poison Cory?"

\n "It wasn't him they were after, stupid. It was you," she said. "When you got the drinks mixed up, he took yours by mistake."

\n "Oh." Asher didn't bother asking why anyone would try to poison him. A better question would have been, why hadn't anyone tried to poison him sooner? His business might make him a lot of money, but it also pissed off a number of very powerful people. So far he'd... they'd... been fairly lucky, but it looked like their luck had just run out. "So do we tell him?"

\n "Tell him?" Claudia stared at her brother. "Are you insane? We should take him out and dump him somewhere far away from here." She ignored the look Asher was giving her. "Do you think he saw how you got here last night?"

\n "We can't just dump him," the tiger argued, wanting to get up and pace off some of the nervous energy coursing through his body, but wanting even more strongly to stay where he was, with Cory's head and shoulders pillowed by his thighs. "Now that he's associated with us, he's a target too."

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\n "Shit, I didn't think of that." Claudia hissed out her frustration through clenched teeth. "God damn it."

\n "Besides," Asher continued, "I really like this one."

\n His sister's glare was icy. "He's not a pet, Asher, and this isn't a game. He's a living, breathing man, and he doesn't deserve to be dragged into this."

\n "Yeah, and the best way to keep him living and breathing is to keep him near us, right?" Asher looked down at Cory's sleeping form, and saw something very odd. "Looks like Melanie agrees with me." Normally all but unseen while strangers were in the house, Melanie was contentedly napping in the crook of Cory's arm. "And aren't you the one who keeps telling me to pay attention to the cat?"

\n Claudia closed her eyes and counted to ten, then did it again. After a third cycle, she opened eyes that were a match to Asher's and walked to the window. As much as she hated it when her baby brother was right, she couldn't deny that his analysis was correct. Right now, the two of them were Cory's best chance for survival.

\n She stood gazing out across the ocean, so still that if Asher hadn't known her better he would have thought she was daydreaming. He knew she was silently running all of the permutations of their situation though her mind, converting reality into a mental chess game that she played over and over again until she found a way for them to survive.

\n He remained where he was, silently giving in to his desire to stroke Cory's hair while he waited. She had all the facts, and nothing he said after this point would sway her decision anyway. If it meant giving up everything they had, if they had to uproot their lives again and change identities, even if it meant throwing Cory to the wolves to save themselves, that's precisely what she would do - and gladly - to keep him alive. It had been that way since the day they'd laid their parents to rest, and Asher was quite certain it would remain that way until he threw the last shovel of dirt onto her coffin.

\n When she turned around, she looked tired but strong. Although her eyes were twins to her brother's in color, something behind them made them infinitely harder. "You can tell him." She stared hard daggers at Asher, willing him to understand the implications of her concession. "But I sure as hell hope you know what you're doing. If Melanie's wrong, it might only put him in more danger."

\n "When has Melanie ever been wrong?" Asher asked, the hint of a smile playing at the corner of his blunt muzzle.

\n Claudia glared at the cat on her way back to the kitchen, but Melanie either didn't notice or didn't care. Her eyes were squeezed shut.

\n "Sis?"

\n She paused.

\n Asher's voice was small. "Will you stay with me until he wakes up?"

\n This was a surprise. Asher rarely asked her for anything. Wordlessly, she moved back to sit on the floor in front of where Cory and Asher were sitting. She was surprised again when Asher's fingers began to gently groom the short head fur behind her ears. He was nervous, and he had every right to be.

\n Claudia allowed herself to purr softly, Asher's reward for coming out of his shell even this tiny bit.  The rest of the world thought he was vivacious and outgoing, but they didn't see him when his walls were down like she did.  They didn't see the loneliness and despair that occasionally leaked through the cracks.  

\n But when he looked at this particular human, this "Cory," that some of his loneliness was pushed back a bit, displaced by the smallest sliver of hope.  For that and that alone, Claudia would defend this human to the death.  Or, if he hurt her brother, she would kill him with her bare hands.  She hoped it would never come to that.

\n An hour later, Cory groggily opened his eyes. They felt crusty and hot, but he managed to make them focus on the black and orange striped shapes in front of him. "Asher?"

\n "Yeah, it's me, buddy." Asher put a paw on Cory's chest and applied gentle pressure. "Stay still, okay?"

\n "Oh, wow," the human chuckled humorlessly, pulling an arm over his face to shield it from the light. "No problem. I feel like I've been run over by a truck." He gathered his thoughts. "What happened?"

\n "Cory?" This voice belonged to Claudia. "Are you feeling better?"

\n "Yeah, thanks," the human replied groggily, running his tongue around the Sahara Desert of his mouth. "What time is it?"

\n "It's almost three," Asher's voice answered him. "You slept most of the day away."

\n "Three? Shit, I've got to go pick up my kids..." Cory made a weak attempt to stand up, but was so drained that he nearly fell on his ass. He was taking a second stab at it when a gentle paw in the middle of his chest pushed him back down against the soft fur of the tiger.

\n "Hold on there, sport." Asher's voice commanded. "You're not well enough to be moving around. Besides," he said, shooting a look at his sister, "There's something about me and Claudia that you need to know..."

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\n Maser Ayell, it's up to you, now! :-)