Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans, all rights to the owners.

Nothing NSFW, but a tad steamy at the start here.

MARIA

"Maria." Ruban mumbles in embarrassment. Large, innocent, violet eyes stare up at me from a cute face with cheeks dusted red, which stands out all the more on his greyish skin.

It's no surprise he's so bashful. We're in my room in my tower, on my bed, while I sit on his waist and pin his arms over his head with one of my hands, so I think I can understand why he's a bit nervous and excited.

Me? I'm just excited. I unabashedly lick my lips while looking down at him, drawing my eyes very obviously over his body while my free hand shamelessly dances across his throat and chest, feeling everything it possibly can. Every delicate, delicious bit of skin…

"Maria…" He whines pleadingly, a bit louder than his earlier mumble, and squirms underneath me with a look starting to border on desperate.

I could hardly be cruel to my little demon, so I oblige what I know he wants. I lean down, unabashedly smushing my body against his as I do, and press my lips to his neck multiple times, just soft enough to not leave a mark, and make a slow trail up to his jaw while he shudders and twitches.

My lips must find somewhere sensitive (or maybe ticklish), because Ruban whimpers and twists his head and (in an instinctive, defensive reflex rather than any actual fear) tries to free his arms and push me off by arching his back… which has absolutely no effect, because I'm not exactly light and he's almost painfully weak. It's delightful to feel him pushing against me like this though.

"Trying to free yourself Ru?" I ask in a soft laugh. I ghost another kiss against that same sensitive spot under his jaw, and he shudders again. "Do you want me to stop?"

"Noo…" He mumbles. "Maria, please…!"

"Please…?" I prompt, and finally move so my mouth hovers over top of his. Our gazes lock, and an unabashed, triumphant, hungry grin crosses my face. "Ru~?"

"Please." He mumbles again, either not hearing me, not understanding, or just not being in the right mind to make a request. That's fine though, I'm getting a bit impatient myself, and I only asked to tease.

So finally, finally, I lean towards him while puckering my lips. He closes his eyes and angles his head up and-

-I wake up.

I wake up in my bed in the garage because the tower is ruined, with Ruban lying on the other side of the room, still completely comatose like he has been for the last few days and unable to be snuggled without me looking exceedingly creepy.

My hands clench on my mattress sheets and I growl in frustration. My faces scrape my lips and I need to make a conscious effort to retract them. Even my own dreams are taunting me. I forcibly uncurl my hands so I don't tear the sheets, at which point I throw the sheets aside and stalk angrily to the bathroom.

I've never had to take a cold shower for this particular reason before, and I'm not fucking happy about it.

THE AMAZING MUMBO

You know, I'm not stupid. I can see that Gordanian guard following me around. Almost all of us have a guard that tries to trail us, some with more success than others. No one has bothered to try and follow Kid Flash after the first day for obvious reasons, but everyone else is being blatantly tailed. That's why the others haven't been able to get in contact with the Yaemanese at all.

It's almost funny, honestly. They really think I can't get away from them if I want? I didn't get this old as a supervillain by being bad at getting away from people.

I've been biding my time, mostly. I've been trying to pick up on the guards' habits and certain spots around the palace that are good spots for a private conversation. They are precious few, but the guards never come into any of our rooms, so I can take advantage of that. In addition, there are a few high alcoves that a conversation could potentially be had inside if both parties could get themselves up there unnoticed, and there are enough backrooms that finding an unoccupied one shouldn't be too difficult.

Again, assuming both parties can get away from their guards. I can, but I don't know about the Yaemanese.

I've got to try though. The others are having no luck. I wasn't expecting me to be our best tool for the job, much less on my first Titan mission, but fate is funny like that.

I'll just have to put on a good show then, won't I? I will always strive to impress, or else my name isn't The Amazing Mumbo!

Erm, I will impress provided I can find the opportunity that is… and I don't really know what I'd say either. I'm honestly the worst person possible to coordinate an uprising against a tyrant. That was Rose's thing. I was just a particularly amazing messenger or a fabulous distraction most of the time.

My main target, naturally, is the princess. Her parents are much more heavily guarded than she, so there's a chance she can slip away unnoticed. Not to mention she makes full use of her position to wander the palace unchallenged rather than contenting herself with a few rooms and the training yard like her parents.

(To be fair though, it seems to me like her parents are making a concentrated effort to annoy the Emperor as much as possible and waste all his time. So far they've done little else but pester him to join them for various extremely bizarre activities, a disturbing number of which involve self-flagellation.)

Anyhow. The Princess. She's in front of me, in case it wasn't clear, and if I need to get her away from the guards for a moment the best place to start is probably to let her know I'm here. We're currently wandering around the back of the palace where the servants quarters are. There are far fewer servants here than usual due to the Emperor not wanting them around. Besides, they're mostly busy with the wedding preparations.

"Hello Princess!" I call out, picking up my pace and falling into step next to her. I don't want her to stop walking. If we stop, we can't slip away. "I don't believe we've been introduced before! I am the single best magician to ever grace Jump City! Former terror or jewelry shops and master of escape! The one, the only, The Amazing Mumbo!"

Even while walking, I give a sweeping bow, pulling my hat into the move as well.

"...hello." The Princess responds quietly. She blinks slowly, almost looking dazed as she speaks. "I am Princess Thaernun of the Yaemanese, as you are likely aware."

"Indeed I am!" I say. "A princess! A princess! Oh, how I hope I can entertain! I'm a performer you know, and my only wish is to put on a show!"

The Princess tilts her head. Confused, most likely.

"I can pull a rabbit from a hat, if that's your thing." I say, and raise my hat off my head to let one of the critters suddenly hop out onto the floor. "Or maybe you're partial to something more metal, a ring?"

I turn my hat upside down and reach in, and pull out a large metal ring.

"Not just any ring, hear my words." I practically sing as I swirl my wand in the middle of it. "For this fancy thing can summon some birds!"

It's a simple move to angle the ring in the proper direction so that the storm of illusory birds burst out behind us, right towards where our trailing guards would be.

"Not only that, the ring can grow!" I continue. I could keep quiet and just use the spell silently, now that the guards are distracted by the birds, but where's the fun in that? I'm a showwoman at heart! I pull the ring apart so it's the size of a large hula-hoop. I tap the outside of the ring with my wand, turning it into a short-range portal. "Link space, not time, so off we go!"

I pull the hoop down around us, pushing us head-first through the portal and dropping us into a back-room, a large storage closet actually, I'd explored before and knew was abandoned. It's actually locked from the outside at the moment. It's not a massive place, but at the same time, who is going to think to look for us in a closet locked from the outside?

"Ta-da~" I whisper while wiggling the fingers of my free hand and pocketing my wand. "Try to stay quiet. Who knows when someone will pass by the door."

"An interesting trick, Mage Jumbo." The Princess murmurs.

"Oh, just Mumbo will do. It's just a stage name anyhow." I say. "I'm hardly a mage, just a stage magician who found a genuinely magic hat." I tap the hat in question. "All the magic is here, Princess, I'm about as magic as an old sock."

"Mumbo then." The Princess nods. "My thanks for the… rescue, I suppose?"

"Close enough. The Titans and I have been trying to find a way to talk to you for days, Princess!" I cry, then remember I'm supposed to keep my voice down. I literally just told her to do that and here I am breaking my own rule. "Erm, sorry. Anyhow, we need to talk. I'm probably the worst person to talk with, but I'm the only one who's managed to nab you."

"The guards are annoyingly persistent, aren't they?" The Princess agrees. "No amount of embarrassment has managed to shake them yet, despite my best efforts. I could have tied them up I suppose, but I wouldn't want to anger my concerned Emperor."

The numerous chains on her body shift and slither as the mention of tying the guards, and I'm reminded for the moment that the Yaemanese are ferrokinetics.

"But that aside, you say you and your companions wished to speak with me?" The Princess hums. "Do you have a plan, or were you hoping to formulate one?"

"To make one, because the Tamaraneans have insufficient power on their own." I say. "Defeating the Emperor at some point, hopefully sooner than later, is a given, but that doesn't necessarily keep Tamaran out of the control of the next Gordanian warlord to inherit the empire."

"True words." The Princess nods. "The same can be said of the Yaemanese kingdom. For all our might, we are painfully few compared to Tamaran much less the Gordanians."

"You are?"

"The habitable area of our home planet is quite small." The Princess murmurs. "Our planet is tidally locked. Half of it lives in permanent darkness, where true monsters roam, and the area closest to the sun is a permanent desert. Only in the dim areas, where the sun is always low in the sky, does foodstuff grow, and that small ring must provide for the entire population. I know Tamaran is famously difficult to farm, but even badlands or mountains almost are better than a sheet of boiling sand thousands of kilometers across."

I won't pretend I know what 'tidally locked' means, but it doesn't sound good judging by her tone. "Right."

"You didn't understand that, did you?"

"I understood your planet is mostly desert and you don't have a lot of food."

The Princess pauses for a moment, her head tilting just a bit, and then she says. "Well, I suppose that's enough. Either way, do you really think the combined military of the Tamaranians and the Yaemanese would be enough to repel the Gordanians?"

My shoulders sag just a bit. "It's wishful thinking, isn't it?"

"Perhaps." The Princess hums. "But, frankly, we don't have much more to work with, unless you have another idea?"

"Lanterns?" I suggest.

The Princess shakes her head. "The Lanterns of 2828 are famously stretched thin, and the entire Lantern Corps cares little for the sector beyond that it houses the Psions. We'd be lucky to get the help of one local lantern, much less the Corps or the Guardians of the Universe."

"Hmm…" I tap my fingers on my chin. "I'm not knowledgeable in space stuff, so I really don't know what to say… I don't suppose the pink people with the tentacles are also under Gordanian rule, are they?"

"The… pink people?" The Princess blinks slowly.

"Yeah. The Titans know one, she's helping rebuild-" I realize that "rebuild the tower" means nothing to the Princess. "Erm, she's pink, like, entirely pink, has a bunch of tentacles for hair, doesn't speak very well…"

The Princess' eyes widen. "An Excellian?"

"Probably? I never asked what she was." I admit. "Oh, and she has some crazy charm powers. She emits spores that infect your brain or something."

"Definitely an Excelian." The Princess says. "I don't know for sure if they're under Gordanian rule, but it wouldn't surprise me. They've long been used as living emotion bombs against the Yaemanese during Gordanian raids, so I would not put it past the Gordanians to have captured the planet to secure a constant supply of them."

It's mildly uncomfortable to hear these Excelians referred to as if they're items and not people.

"That said, I'm not sure how helpful they would be. The Excelians are very behind the rest of the sector technologically, and there is no easy way to communicate with them." The Princess muses. "And I doubt the Excelians would trust us much, unless the girl you have back home happens to be a royal?"

"I'm fairly sure she's a lumberjack."

"So that's a 'no'." The Princess murmurs. "But, it is an idea, and the Excelians do have one of the sector's lanterns. Wouldn't that be something? The berserkers, the fanatics, and the living bombs banding together? All of the sector's outcasts on one side…"

I wouldn't know. Again, I don't know space stuff.

"I presume you and your companions are in a hurry to get something done, aren't you?" The Princess asks.

"Yes. Aren't you?"

"Well obviously, but it would be far easier to coordinate after me and Prince Starfire married… so I think I'm safe in assuming he really doesn't want this marriage to go through."

I grimace. I shouldn't be offending a princess, but she's totally right. "Uh, well…"

"I take no offence." The Princess says, apparently taking my hesitation for confirmation. "But do not raise your hopes too high. There is only so much that can be done in such a short time, unless you have a particularly brilliant plan."

"Right." I sigh. These things take time. I should know. Rose was working for months, almost a year, before she made her first grab for power in Jump. "Well, thank you for the private audience, your Highness. We should probably make ourselves seen again soon or the Emperor might make this an excuse to punish someone."

"Quite." The Princess says. I pull out my wand, but she puts her hand on mine and pushes the wand back into my pocket. "It's unnecessary. I've unlocked the door."

I blink in confusion for a moment as she nudges open the door that was locked from the outside. "How…?"

"Ferrokinesis." She says simply, a hint of smugness in her tone. "The lock is metal, after all."

Of course. "You'd make a fine magician with a trick like that!"

"You flatter me, Magician."

"No more than you deserve, your Highness." I say, and bow deeply while I step out of the. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I think we should part ways."

"Indeed." She inclines her own head, just a bit. "Another time then. And, if anyone asks, you were eager to give me a private showing of your magic tricks, seeing as we are fellow performers of a sort."

We are? Right, we are. She dances. "Of course! Of course! A private show, the most amazing show, one performer to another!"

A small smile graces her lips, the first I've seen so far. "Goodbye, Magican."

"I'll see you some other time, Princess!"

Maria misses her little demon, if that wasn't abundantly obvious already. The Amazing Mumbo is always a treat to write.

Origami Stars: Thank you! Honestly, I'm having an easier time with the Changeling subplot than the Tamaran one.

Azarath Cat: Who knows~?

iHateFridays: I'm happy you think so.