Author's note: Wow, the last chapter was freaky. Kinda rape-y in some spots. Anyhoo, here's the next chapter. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: I do not own Mozenrath, Genie, Eden, or Dhandi nor am I getting paid for it.
"You're pretty stupid to be sinking in the sand," a voice said, very curtly.
Dhandi opened her eyes, blinking. She was reclining against the slope of a dune, a curly-haired boy glaring at her.
"Even more so to be wandering around at night," he added.
Dhandi wiped the crust of sand from her eyes. "Did you save me?"
The boy sighed sharply. "Did I leave you to die in that quicksand?" Dhandi stared at the boy, embarrassed. Of course, he was right, but then again he didn't have a creepy man after him.
"Thank you," she said, standing up and brushing the sand off her pink and green assemble. She turned to crawl back up the dune.
"Oh," she quickly turned back to the boy, "how did you find me?"
"Well, your screaming was loud enough to wake the dead," he answered, crossing his arms, "among other things. That and those footprints were a dead give-away."
Sliding back down, Dhandi inspected him and his posture, circling where he stood. "You remind me of someone."
The boy looked intently at her from a corner of his dark eye, apprehensively. "Who?"
"Something about you," Dhandi scanned him from top to bottom and vice versa, "reminds me of...Aladdin."
The boy tried his best not to wrinkle his nose. "Who is he?"
"Oh, he's one of the nicest people I've ever met," she answered, a tone of admiration in her voice. "He used to be a street rat like me, but now he's like one of the most important people in Agrabah, one of its protectors."
"Oh," the boy replied blandly, "a hero then."
Dhandi nodded enthusiastically. "He married the Princess (she's very nice) a few weeks ago and Eden and I were invited, but...then I got sick with a sore throat. Eden stayed with me the whole time-"
"Eden?"
"Oh, she's my genie."
The boy's face lights up with interest. "Wow, where did you find her?"
Dhandi looked around. Grains of sand were scattered by the cool wind. She shivered as it blew through her hair.
"What is it?" the boy asked.
"N-Nothing," she replied. "It's just that guy that was chasing me...I'm just kinda wondering why he hasn't caught up by now."
"Don't worry, kid," a cool voice made Dhandi jump, "I'm here."
Dhandi turned, facing the pale man in black and blue standing behind. His arms were open, indicating friendliness though his predatory smile suggested the contrary. Her face bore the look of nerve, but anyone could plainly see that by the shivering of her legs, she was terrified.
"I can only assume that's him," the boy whispered to her as she back-stepped his way. She nodded, affirming.
"Oh, did you discover boys while I was gone?" he asked, mockingly as he took a step forward. "That is SO adorable."
Dhandi frowned, terror replaced with anger. The boy glanced at her, reassuringly.
"I don't like what you were doing," she yelled, confidence mingled in her words. The man smirked. "Who are you and why are you picking on me?"
"Now that would be telling, precious," he drawled, wagging his bony finger. His hand of bleached bone began to glow a dark blue, ablaze like a malignant fire.
"You like dancing, don't you? Dance for me."
Terror inherent in her eyes as a blast of that blue fire exploded in the sand inches in front of her, Dhandi stumbled backwards and clung against the boy's arm. Nearly knocked down, he looked at the girl, eyebrow cocked curiously.
"It's just a dream," she whispered, eyes still on the pale man's skeletal hand. "It isn't real."
"A dream is a wish your heart makes," the man said, aiming to shoot again. "And I AM very real. Now DANCE!"
The Citadel was very quiet that night, save for a few mamluks, confused and wandering aimlessly. Of course, their purpose had been to serve the master of the keep. Lord Mozenrath had not been about since that afternoon, when the bathroom had unexpectingly become an oven, so the undead servants just wandered, some bumping into walls and falling into pieces. They didn't even notice the two figures lurking about the roof.
Suddenly, the theme from "Mission: Impossible", a tune unheard of until five centuries later, blares as Genie, clad in a tight black shirt and leather pants, shimmied down a rope and landed in the center of the Great Hall. He scanned the room of any guards, meeting to welcome him. Finding none, he pulled out a black device, known as a walkie-talkie five centuries later, and a buzz emerged from it.
"This Blue Boy One to Lean Green One," he uttered into the buzzing walkie-talkie, "Dismounted in Brat Boy Central Hall. Requesting for contact, over."
"Contact granted, Blue Boy," Eden's voice buzzed out of the device. "Coming in for contact. Over."
Green smoke slinked out of the earpiece of the walkie-talkie and soon the familiar Djinn of the Bottle was standing next to Genie. Dressed in a tight leather jumpsuit a la "The Matrix", Eden wrapped her arms around Genie's neck and planted a kiss on his lips.
"How's that for contact?"
"Whoa," Genie said, imitating a surfer as Eden broke away from the embrace.
"Come on," Genie's beloved urged, as the djinns quickly slinked against the wall, "we gotta find out what Mozen-brat was up to."
"If he laid even a finger on her," Genie growled, "I'm gonna give him the Bob Barker treatment when I find him."
"Hey," Eden interjected, "we're not supposed say that or the FCC is gonna be all over us."
"Why not?" Genie then pulled out a script, titled "All of Me" written by Paul "P.S." Sullivan, and started flipping through. "This story has already had its rating changed and some of this stuff is kinda disturbing. Honestly, you can't get away with that on a kid's show-"
"Someone's coming," the green-skinned djinn hushed Genie. Footsteps were dragging down the hall. A mamluk soon appeared, arm limply dangling from its socket. It bumped abruptly into the grimy black wall, a blue urn with green swirls wobbling along with the force. It kept ramming into the wall five times or so before something pushed it aside and allowed it to go on its way down the hall.
"Where were they when they were handing out brains?" the urn wondered.
"Probably doing Mozy's laundry," the swirls answered. The urn and swirls separated and morphed back into a pair of genies. Eden looked at Genie, pointing to his beardless chin and realizing that it was on hers.
"You know," Genie tried to hold back snickering, but failed, "there's something sexy about a woman with facial hair." Rolling her eyes, Eden twitched her nose and a jar of warm wax and a strip of cloth appeared. She smeared the wax on her chin, plastered the strip on, and with great speed, ripped the beard off and plastered it back on Genie.
"Looks better on you," she said, pinching her blue beau's cheek, prompting a coy chuckle from him.
"Okay," Eden pulled out a roll of blue paper and spread it out, revealing it as a schematic of the Citadel, signed by a Paul Felix, "you take the library and I'll take the bathroom. I'll buzz you if I find anything interesting and you'll look through the books, see if there's something useful that might help us."
"Will do, Amazon-That-Is-My-Woman!" Genie saluted and, transforming into a rocket, shot through the halls, even leaving behind a trail of smoke. Smiling, Eden disappeared in a puff of green smoke, reappearing in the bathroom.
The state of the bathroom seemed like an episode of one of those...telly-vison shows about home renovation that Eden often watched inside of her bottle. The black tiles that adorned the walls and the floor were charred so badly their sheen was reduced to that of charcoal. When Eden set a foot down, ash went flying and revealed a distorted, twisted form of metal laid there, unrecognizable from its past appearance.
"Apparently, boy-wizard needs to fire his maid," the djinn said, placing a hand against the wall only to have it covered in black ash, "if he even bothered to have one in the first place. Well, time to get to work."
The djinn morphed into a crime scene investigator, complete with black pantsuit and pumps and armed with a magnifying glass, tweezers, and a pair of latex gloves. As Eden began picking through the piles of ash with her tweezers, one could hear the sound of aged British rock stars playing a riff of one of their top hits of 1978 in the background.
"Go ahead and run, kids!" the pale man shouted to Dhandi and her companion, mischievously as blue fire blasted from his hand, "it just makes it harder to aim, but, man, it's twice as fun!"
The man's fun had Dhandi and the boy ducking behind a sand dune. She peered over, ducking back down as a ball of fire barely grazed the top of her head.
"So," the boy turned Dhandi as she batted the singed strands of her hair, "any brilliant plans to get out of this one?"
"I don't know," she replied. "I don't usually have weird guys chasing after me with...fireballs of doom in my dreams."
"Well, what do you do when you have bad dreams?"
"Well, I did the 'counting to ten', but it didn't work. And I want to wake up, but I..."
"But what?" The boy glared at her, waiting for her answer.
"I-I just don't feel like waking up right now."
The boy sighed, exasperated. He rubbed his right temple with his hand, force behind his massages. Dhandi followed suit, though it was more of a light tapping.
Suddenly, her eyes widen and glistened, full of hope. "We could go somewhere else!"
The boy looked at Dhandi, as if her face was covered with scarab beetles. "Well, obviously! In fact, that's what we've been doing for the past couple of minutes!"
"No, to another dream or something!" Dhandi turned to the boy, hopeful. "All we have to do is find an exit and close it behind us, so he doesn't follow us."
"But where would there be a door? That guy is not gonna give us time to look."
"Th-then we'll form a distraction. We'll split up and keep him occupied while we search." Just then, the sand dune exploded, sand and kids flying from the force of the blast. Landing a few feet away, Dhandi and the boy scrambled to their feet, brushing off their bodies. The pale man climbing through the hole he made in the sand dune.
"Hi kids." His hand flamed. The children darted off in two different directions, Dhandi in the left, the boy in the right. The man rolled his eyes and promptly started shooting fireballs at Dhandi once more. She dove behind a palm tree. Her eyes followed the boy who had ducked behind a boulder. He peered from behind and darted back to the dune.
Why is he heading back? Dhandi wondered, leaping away as the palm splintered from fireball. A thought occurred to her. The hole! A way out!
Dhandi scrambled back on to her feet, the man approaching closer menacingly. However, she tripped upon the remains of the palm, falling flat on her face. The sound of feet, crunching upon sand, echoed in her ears as well as soft, malicious chuckling.
"This will only hurt for a moment, rabbit," the man said, insincerely. His hand rose to aim, a smile of menace appeared as his quarry slowly pushed herself up. Suddenly, Dhandi heard the sound of a fire blast, but...she was still there. Prompted by the sound of a body plopping down upon the sand, she looked up and found the man lying on his back, groaning as the ghostly aura of a spell rose like steam from a cup of coffee.
Her focus shifted to the boy, standing by the dune, hand raised and emitting the same aura that struck the pale man.
"H-how did you-" Dhandi sputtered, baffled, "uh, he-"
"He probably won't be out too long," the boy interrupted, hand reached out. "Come on!"
No sooner he said it, Dhandi ran to his side. The sounds of the man stirring quickened her pace. The pair stood at the hole, the boy reached towards it. The view of the dune behind it rippled like water.
"Think of a place where we can be safe," he instructed, "where he can't follow."
"I know one," Dhandi replied. The boy smiled slightly as he stuck his foot out.
"Hold on."
It felt like being squeezed through a straw as Dhandi and the boy took the plunge through the portal. Dhandi felt her body stretch and squashed as she clung to the boy.
They exited the portal with a pop, flying out of a barrel and into a pile of thick nets, resting on a pier, empty of people but abundant with ships and the day's catch.
"Are you okay?" Dhandi asked her companion sitting upside down.
"Nice," the boy groaned, sliding up the nets and pulling her up the right way. "We're at a pier, aren't we?"
Dhandi nodded, blood still rushing back down from her head. "I used to live near one in Para-Moor. Well, when I was awake."
"Obviously." The boy inspected a squirming fish with a reddish sore on its belly.
Suddenly, big burly hands grab the fish from his hand. The boy frowned, only to dodge another man dragging a net of very fragrant tuna. Soon scores of men invade the pier, babbling on about their catch and the ones that got away. The boy found his way back to Dhandi, smelling very much of tuna to his dismay. Dhandi took a whiff and covered her nose.
"What are you sniffing at?" the boy snapped.
"I'm sorry," Dhandi giggled, "but you kinda smell like my dad." The boy sniffed his hands and recoiled in disgust.
"Which one is he? We could probably smell him out."
"He's over there," Dhandi pointed out towards a man, broad in shoulders and gut sticking out. He was hauling a massive net, the squirming fish splashing ooze upon his graying brown beard. He chuckled heartily as he sees the lone girl, waving at him. He waved back, releasing the net some ways enough for a few bold fish to leap out and onto the wooden planks of the pier.
Dhandi laughed heartily, matching that of her father, as he scrambled to collect the escaped fish. The boy stared at the girl and at her father. Shrugging, he turned and began to walk away.
"Hey!" Dhandi grabbed on to his shoulder. "Why are you walking off?"
"You haven't forgotten that this crazy guy's still after you, have you?" the boy asked forcefully, jerking her hand off his shoulder.
Dhandi looked at him, stunned. "N-no, I haven't forgotten. In fact, I'm-I am scared that he would..."
"That he would hurt your dad."
Dhandi nodded. A pause occurred between the two.
"You have these powers, don't you?" she asked, breaking the silence.
"Yeah," the boy answered, crossing his arms smugly. "What about it?"
"I want to learn some stuff, to protect my dad and me from that weirdo."
The boy scratched his chin, contemplating. "It would be hard work. Keep in mind; nothing's worth anything unless you work for it."
"OH, THANK YOU!" Dhandi hugged the boy with great adoration and relish. However, the feeling wasn't mutual with the boy who pushed her off.
"You mind not doing that?" he hissed. "It's not like I'm gonna marry you or something."
Dhandi smiled sheepishly. "I never got your name. Please tell me."
The boy sighed. "It's Amir."
"Amir," she repeated. "Very regal."
Amir smirked. "More so than you know."