Previously:
"Faith… I like that name." said Aladdin with a smile. "Can I touch those soft things on your chest again, Faith?"
"You mean my boobs?" She asked, raising an eyebrow. "Nice try, kid, but I'm gonna have to say no."
"Aw, but I like boobs! I like them a lot~!" He said with a dreamy expression on his face as he followed her, starting to drool.
"Yeah, boobs are fun." Faith agreed as they walked off into the night together.
Chapter 5: His Name is Aladdin
'So, this is how it all ends…' Faith thought, dragging her tired feet through the hot desert sand, collapsing dramatically to the ground. 'Frying to death in the sun… without ever seeing Hope again…' It felt like they had been schlepping through this damn desert for an eternity without any food or water or shelter from the sweltering sun
"Ah… Faith-nee… I think I see something up ahead…" Aladdin said weakly, pointing a trembling finger at something a few yards in front of them. Faith made an effort to lift her head and squinted to focus her blurred vision. It looked like the ruins of some kind of building. But more importantly, there were people in it, and where there was people, there was water!
"We're saved!" she cried, pushing herself back onto her feet.
"Hur…ray…!" Aladdin cheered weakly as they used the last of their strength to drag themselves over to the ruins. "Oji-san… help us… we need water…" he cried, desperate for a drink.
Unfortunately these people were not friendly. The group of rough and dangerous men was actually a band of thieves, one that was famous among the locals for preying on the weak who traveled across the desert.
"You come to a den of thieves and ask them to help you?" their leader asked with a laugh. "Take everything they have and sell it. Although I don't think we'll get too much. It's just one little kid and a weak woman, though she is pretty fine…" he said with a lecherous grin as the thieves reached for them.
"D-Dammit!!" Faith cursed, gritting her teeth. "Give me a stick… and I'll show ya'll how weak I am…!!"
"GYAHAHAHA…!!!" the thieves continued to laugh even harder until Aladdin blew into his flute, and Ugo's huge arms came out. "GYAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!"
The thieves' screams echoed across the desert as Ugo proceeded to put the hurt on them.
"Food… give me food…" Aladdin groaned.
"Water…" Faith demanded sternly with a scary expression on her face as she grabbed the leader by the ankle when he tried to run away.
"Noooo! Don't eat me! Gyaaah!" the leader cried.
A few days later in the bustling Oasis city of Utan, Faith and Aladdin were looking a little bit better thanks the supplies they had 'borrowed' from the thieves, but both of them were such big eaters that they had once again run out of food by the time they reached the city. As they were walking around looking for something to eat, the wind lifted one of the flaps covering the back of a cart, giving them a glimpse of its cargo.
"Ooh~!" Faith exclaimed excitedly at the site of the fresh watermelons. "Look, Aladdin, let's get those!" she said, jumping into the cart to grab one without hesitation.
"Eh? Is it all right to just take them?" Aladdin asked. Over the past few days Faith had been teaching him all about the concepts of boundaries and personal belongings.
"Yeah, it's fine! I'll pay for them after we eat." She said carelessly, digging in. It felt good to be out of the sun with a ripe and juicy melon to munch on.
"Okay, then!" Aladdin said, diving in.
The two of them had nearly devoured their weight in melons when the someone else lifted the flap. It was two girls.
"Kyaaah!!" the Indian-looking one shrieked, flinching in shock at the sight of the ravaged melons and the abnormally large and engorged bellies of the culprits.
"Who—Who the hell are you!?" the one with blonde hair demanded, brandishing a sword at them while she stood protectively in front of the other girl.
"Hey, I'm Aladdin." Aladdin introduced himself pleasantly with a little wave.
"And I'm Faith." Faith added with a peace sign.
"We're travelers." They finished together.
"We were just having a meal of this sweeeet red fruit!" Aladdin continued with an innocent smile while Faith spat out the seeds from her melon.
"The hell you were, you sneak thieves!!" the blonde girl snapped angrily.
"Dude, chillax. We're not thieves. I've got your money right here." Faith told her, pulling a wad of twenties from her wallet.
"…" the two girls stared at her like they were worried for her sanity for a moment.
"The hell are we supposed to do with a bunch of useless paper!?" the blonde demanded incredulously.
"It's not useless, it's… Oh…" Faith said, deflating slightly as something finally clicked. That's right, she was in another world now. Of course they wouldn't accept American dollars… "Oops! Sorry, Aladdin, but it looks like I messed up."
"I'll say!!" The blonde snapped. "Those fruits are our precious merchandise!"
"… Precious…?" Aladdin asked, starting to feel bad. "Then we've done something bad, Faith-nee… W-What should we do…?"
"You'll work without pay for three days!!" The blonde roared furiously.
And so, that's how Aladdin and Faith ended up working for a caravan for a little while.
"Wow, there are so many things for sale…" Aladdin said as the four of them walked through the market streets carrying more products to sell. It turned out the blonde's name was Leila, and the Indian girl was called Sahsa.
"Yeah, it's like a bazaar." Said Faith.
"That's because it is a bazaar." Leila deadpanned.
"A bazaar?" Aladdin asked curiously.
"You really don't know about them?" she asked dubiously.
"You really shouldn't underestimate our ignorance." Faith quipped with a gleam in her eye.
"Right…" Leila responded, sweat-dropping. "Well, people gather around oases like this one so they'll have water, and a town gets made. Caravans like ours travel to those cities, and bazaars naturally form as a result."
"Ohh…" said Aladdin, impressed. "A journey… It sounds fun."
"Yeah…" Faith agreed with a wistful sigh. If her own trip had gone to plan, she'd be sipping virgin daiquiris poolside with her sister right now instead of lugging a bunch of heavy fruit around in the desert.
"It is fun." Said Sahsa. "But it's not all fun. There are a lot of bands of thieves in the desert…"
"Bands of thieves?" asked Aladdin.
"We've met some before, remember? Those are scary people who were hiding out in the desert…" Faith reminded him.
"Oh, right."
"That's right. Thieves are scary. They steal merchandise from passing caravans. And thieves live by selling that merchandise on the black market like that…" Sahsa continued to explain as they passed a shady back alley full of rough and suspicious-looking characters.
"Ohh…" said Aladdin.
'I guess somethings never change…' Faith thought wryly.
"Don't go 'ohh' to that." Leila told Aladdin. "How do you not know this?"
"What?" Aladdin and Faith asked when they realized Leila had been staring at them for awhile with a really distrustful look in her eyes.
"I don't trust you guys." Leila stated bluntly, placing herself protectively between them and Sahsa. "Don't do anything weird to Sahsa. I'll slap you!"
'Oh, I'm so scared.' Faith thought boredly while Aladdin flinched in shock and quaked with fear in his eyes, as if traumatized by the mere thought. Faith sweat-dropped. She didn't hit him that hard, did she?
"Sorry about that." Sahsa apologized to them, squatting down to give Aladdin a pat on the head. "Apparently, there is a thief who pretends to be dying in order to sneak into caravans… Leila's kind, so she's worried about caravan. Don't think badly of her."
"…" Leila crossed her arms and looked away.
"Onee-san, you have a scary face… but you care about your friends!" Aladdin praised(?) her with a smile.
"Well, thanks." Leila mumbled a bit tersely to cover her shyness.
"Hehe, you big softie~!" Faith teased with a knowing smirk.
"Quiet, you!" Leila snapped, blushing furiously. "Anyway, why did you guys head out into the desert in the first place?"
"I'm looking for my twin sister. We got separated." said Faith. "Speaking of which, you haven't seen anybody else walking around with this gorgeous face, have you?"
"Can't say I have." Leila deadpanned. As they reach the stand the caravan had set up to sell their goods at.
"Well, I'm searching for treasure, with my friend!" said Aladdin excitedly. The kid was practically sparkling. "Especially musical instruments and lamps made of metal…"
"Oh… does that count as treasure?" Leila asked, sweat-dropping. They sell that stuff everywhere… "Why are you looking for that stuff?"
"My friend is looking for something." Aladdin replied.
"Other than your sister?" she asked Faith.
"He's talking about a different friend." Faith clarified.
"Yeah. I want to find it and make him happy." Aladdin continued with a smile. "He's my precious friend, so if he's happy, then I'm happy! I'll introduce you to him! This… is my precious friend… Ugo-kun!" Aladdin said proudly, holding up his flute. Leila blinked.
"Isn't that a flute…?" she asked after a brief moment of awkward silence.
"It's not a flute, it's Ugo-kun. Right, Ugo-kun?" Aladdin asked the flute. Faith bit her lip to keep from smiling. She had a feeling she knew what was coming next, and she couldn't wait to see Leila's reaction. "Will you thank her for the fruit from this morning?" he asked Ugo. Aladdin took a deep breath and blew into the flute. Sure enough, the shocked expressions on the faces of Leila and the rest of the caravan when the Djinn's giant muscular blue arms emerged from the flute were positively priceless. Ugo's hands hovered in the air before Leila for only a short moment before quickly snatching the melons in her arms, and quickly retreated back inside the flute before anyone could stop him. Leila and the others just stood, completely shell-shocked and white as sheets.
"… Pfft!! Bwahahaha!!!" Faith erupted in a fit of laughter, unable to hold it in any longer.
"Hey, Ugo-kun!" Aladdin said nervously, wondering what had gotten into the Djinn. "Sorry, he's a little shy… especially around women…"
"G… GYAAAAAAH!!" Leila screamed suddenly, finally snapping out of her stupor. "Wh-Wh-What were those arms… or were they snakes!? There were two of them!?"
"No… It was Ugo-kun!" Aladdin said brightly.
"Nice one, Ugo-kun!" Faith said, giving the flute a thumbs up.
'This kid and this girl… aren't just some normal kid ignorant of the world and your average weirdo… They've tamed some strange monster that's in that flute!!' Leila thought, extremely freaked out and alarmed. 'Who are these people!?'
"Hey, look…" One thief said to another when they spotted the caravan's group. "That girl… is she…?"
"Ahh, I had to work so hard thanks to those suspicious guys…" Leila grumbled as she entered the tent everyone was sharing later that evening. "Well, it's for the caravan…" She kneeled down beside Sahsa's bed to make sure her friend was tucked in properly. "I won't let them try anything funny…" Leila froze when she lifted the blanket and saw that Aladdin had wrapped himself around the sleeping Sahsa with his face buried in between her boobs with her shirt open. In an instant Leila snatched the little pervert and threw him across the room.
WHAM!
Aladdin's face slammed into the floor of the tent so hard that it gave him a nose bleed.
"What are you doing…!!" he cried, trembling with tears in his eyes while he cradled his poor nose. This girl was even more violent than Faith!
"What were you doing!!" Leila retorted furiously. How dare he molest Sahsa in her sleep!
"Heh heh heh… She was warm, so I ended up sleeping next to her." Aladdin said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
"You call that sleeping next to her? I had to tear you off of her!! Why don't you sleep with your friend, over there?"
Aladdin glanced over at Faith, who was sprawled out on top of a blanket in a deep sleep with a little drool on the corner of her mouth. She must be dreaming about food again.
"No, I'd rather sleep with Sahsa." Answered Aladdin with a shake of his head. Sahsa was nice, and her boobs were bigger.
"No, you come sleep next to me then." Leila told him. "I'll keep an eye on you."
"No, I'll pass!" Aladdin said with a smile. "You've got all those muscles, and you look hard…" The next thing he knew, Leila had him by the cheeks. "Gyaaah!" he cried as she pinched them and stretched them to punish him.
"Never touch Sahsa again, okay!?" she whisper-yelled. "She's my 'precious friend'. She saved me when I was dying in the desert. She was so kind to me. And she's the first person I've been able to call my friend. That's why I want to protect her and the caravan and make them happy!" Leila finished determinedly.
"Oh… so that's it." said Aladdin.
"Hee-hee, thank you." Sahsa told her friend with a smile and a laugh. She had heard the whole thing.
"Oh, so you were awake? I feel so lame having said that…" Leila said, blushing heavily in embarrassment.
"I knew it without you saying it. You're so kind, Leila." Sahsa said brightly.
"N-No, I'm not!" Leila said bashfully as she rubbed the back of her neck. She looked pretty happy though.
"You have a strong sense of justice, and you care for your friends."
"That's not true…" Leila said shyly, blushing.
"No getting embarrassed. Since we're so close, I know everything about you!" Sahsa said with a grin. Leila's smile faltered slightly.
"…" She stared down at the floor of the tent, suddenly feeling uneasy. No, she didn't… because if she did know, then…
The next day the caravan was ready to move on.
"I was thinking we would take route three to the next city. What do you think, Leila?" asked the leader (who also happened to be Sahsa's father).
"No, I don't think we should take route three…" Leila answered seriously as she stared down at the map, furrowing her brow. "A band of thieves has their hideout on route three… or so I've heard. It would be safer to take a detour down route four."
"Father," said Sahsa, "if that's what Leila thinks…"
"Hmm." The leader said thoughtfully.
"Leila's opinion seems to hold a lot of weight, huh?" Faith commented while she was petting one of the camels with Aladdin.
"Leila knows the routes well and is always guiding us." Sahsa explained.
"Ohh… that's amazing…" Aladdin said with a smile.
"But taking route three would be much shorter…" another member of the caravan said.
"The thieves' hideout might not actually be there…" someone else suggested hopefully.
"No!!" Leila shouted anxiously.
"…!?" The others gasped, startled. "What is it, Leila…?"
"…" Leila clenched her fists. She couldn't let them go that way! Because, the third route was…
"Hey, Leila!" someone called out from the street.
"!" Leila gasped, turning pale when she saw who it was. "You…" She said shakily, breaking out into a nervous sweat. She looked like she had just seen a ghost.
"You're Leila, right?" one of the thieves who had spotted her the previous day asked with a grin.
"So, you survived." Remarked the second.
"You've grown up!" the first thief said with a laugh, patting her on the back.
"What band are you in now?"
"…?" Faith raised a dubious eyebrow at the scene before her. What was up with those guys? Couldn't they tell they were bother Leila. The normally spirited girl looked uncomfortable and awkward trapped between the two men.
"Who are those dirty guys…?" Aladdin asked, causing a nervous member of the caravan to cover his mouth.
"Shhh! These ill-bred men… they're thieves that were in the black market…" the caravan member warned him. "It looks like they know Leila…"
'Doesn't look like she wants to know them, though…' thought Faith.
"What's going on…?" The caravan leader asked the thieves.
"You don't know…? Really?" the thieves asked. Leila's eyes widened in fear of what they would say next. "She's a thief!"
"!?" Every in the caravan gasped, flinching in shock. Leila paled and broke out in a cold sweat, looking horrified. They knew…!!
"A while ago, she was part of our band of thieves. She would pretend to be dying and sneak into caravans. Then she'd pretend to lead the way and lead them straight to our hideout."
"…!" the caravan gasped. Then, the thief in the rumors… "That was you…!?" they asked Leila, horrified.
"….!" Leila clenched her fists, unable to look them in the eye.
"But just now they said 'a while ago'… Doesn't that mean she stopped?" Faith pointed out. Didn't anyone else think it was strange for these thieves to suddenly volunteer this kind of information? Why were they trying to make Leila look bad? As far as faith could tell they were just bullying her.
"… That's… That's right…" Leila said, clenching her fists tighter, trembling while she kept her head lowered. "It's true I used to do bad things… But once I made a 'friend' I changed… It wasn't an act anymore… I decided to live without telling lies…" The leader of the caravan raised his hand to stop her.
"Leila, we can't trust what you say." He told her with regret.
"…" Sahsa was staring at her friend in shock. Leila raised her head to look at her, but Sahsa turned away, unable to look her in the eyes. Leila's eyes widened in shock.
"If you're going to do that act, do it elsewhere. Never come near us again."
Leila just stood there, watching numbly as the caravan left without her. Faith frowned in disapproval. People were always so quick to believe the worst about someone.
"So she was tricking us into going down route four instead of route three… If we'd done as she said, we would've been caught by thieves."
"Let's use route three!"
"Hey…" Faith called out to Leila as she and Aladdin approached the ex-thief. "They're all going down route three."
"You have to… save your 'friends'…" Aladdin told her.
"… Friends, huh…?" Leila said dejectedly. "I was mistaken. I remember now. When they found out who I was, I would end my act of friendship. It happened so many times. Well, that girl was just another mark." She said carelessly as she got up and brushed herself off. "It's the same as all those other times…"
"…" Faith and Aladdin stared at her.
"Do you really mean that?" Aladdin asked.
"Yes, If I care too much, I can't do my job." Leila replied, stretching her arms out. "Ahh… I guess I'll go back to being a thief."
'What a terrible liar...' Faith thought, unconvinced.
"You'll die." Aladdin said, causing Leila to freeze in her tracks. "Having your friends lose their trust in you just once makes you so sad you want to die… and it's happened to you so many times… You'll die of sadness. Didn't you change? You decided to live… without telling lies!!" Leila looked back at them. Her face was flushed with frustration and tears were streaming heavily down her cheeks. Her lip trembled.
"It hurts so much!" She finally admitted out loud. "But it's too late to save them…!!" She cried, falling to her knees. "We can't catch with them…!"
"It's okay! Leave it to me!" Aladdin said. "I'll make sure we catch up with them, okay!?"
Meanwhile, on route three, the caravan soon found themselves surrounded by a large band of thieves.
"We have some marks, boss!" one of the thieves told their leering leader excitedly.
"What Leila said… was true…" The caravan leader said regretfully with fear in his eyes as he held onto his daughter.
'I'm sorry…! Leila…!!' Sahsa thought, trembling with tears in her eyes as the thieves moved in for the kill.
"Waiiiit!!!" Aladdin yelled.
"Tch, who's that!?" asked the leader of the band of thieves, annoyed as he looked up in the direction the interruption had come from.
"I won't let you hurt… this onee-san's precious 'friends'…!!!" Aladdin declared determinedly as the giant and extremely muscular blue body beneath his small head sprinted towards them with all his might. For a moment, all the thieves could do was stand their frozen in shock as they gaped at the impossible scene before them.
"HIGYAAAAAAAAAAH!!" They screamed when it finally sunk in that the strange thing was real and headed straight for them.
"Wh-What's with that kid…?" cried the thieves in alarm, totally freaking out.
"H-His body is huge… It's disturbing!!"
"No, look closer. That huge body's coming out of that golden flute!" said the boss.
"Wh-What is that, boss!?"
"It's a Djinn… That's a Djinn's flute!" the boss said, breaking out in a nervous sweat. He was right, of course. The blue body was Ugo, with Aladdin riding on his shoulders. Faith was holding onto Aladdin, and Leila was holding onto faith. The girls were holding on for dear life as they trailed out in the wind behind the Djinn's huge body like a human cape. "I'm sure you've at least heard of them. 'Djinns', the spirits that appear in all the legends!! Everyone knows the tradition of sealing them in metal objects… B-But I never thought that they were real…!!" As he spoke, Ugo was proceeding to put the hurt on his band of thieves following Aladdin's instructions. Just one punch from the Djinn was enough to send ten men flying. And, not one to be left, so was Faith. She had somehow gotten ahold of a stick and was beating the crap out of anyone stupid enough to try to attack her.
"Oh, yeah!! Come at me bro!!!" She shouted excitedly with a wicked grin.
"…!!" Leila gasped as she watched in amazement. 'Wooow!' she thought. 'I've never heard of just three people taking out a whole band of thieves… But they might be able to do it…!!' Aladdin smiled as he turned to look back at her, but his smile quickly fell when he saw what was happening.
"Aaah!" He cried, flinching in shock. "No, onee-san!!! Don't touch Ugo-kun!!!"
"Eh?" said Leila, taken aback. She looked over and realized she had accidently brushed against the Djinn's foot when he stopped next to her. Ugo suddenly turned bright red, broke out in a nervous sweat and collapsed the ground, stiff as a board, and disappearied in a puff of smoke back into the flute.
"The hell…!?" Faith shouted, flinching in shock when he almost landed on top of her.
"Oh, nooooo!!" Aladdin cried.
"Why!?" Leila yelled incredulously. What the hell just happened?
"Ugo-kun's shy… so if a girl touches him, he faints." Aladdin explained nervously. "Now he can't move!!"
"For real!?" Faith yelled incredulously. "Ya'll seriously need to get out more, 'cause this is getting ridiculous!!"
"Give back Ugo-kun's pure heart!!" Aladdin yelled at Leila, hitting her with his small fists.
"H-How is this my fault!?" Leila shouted, blushing furiously.
"Ha ha ha. It's over. Die you damn brats!" The boss said wickedly, signaling for his remaining men to attack.
"Shit!" Faith cursed.
"It's not over yet." Said Aladdin. "Ugo-kun's still strong even when he can't move!" With that Aladdin took a deep breath and blew extra hard into Ugo's flute before tossing it up high into the air.
"Ha ha ha. He threw away the flute now that it's of no use to him!" Laughed the boss. Faith noticed that a huge shadow suddenly formed over the group of thieves. Aladdin simply smiled and motioned for them to look up.
"?" The boss said curiously, looking up at the sky above. His eyes widened in shock at what he saw.
"WHAAAAA!!" Leila and the caravan members cried out in fear and amazement.
"Ohhh… Ahhh… Ohhh… AAAAAAAAH!!!" The boss and his thieves screamed, too petrified with fear to move as Ugo's giant body came crashing down on them in a massive body flop.
"Aladdin… That was genius!!" Faith praised the boy with a grin, giving him a thumbs up and a pat on the shoulder.
With the band of thieves defeated, Leila shared a very teary reunion with Sahsa and the caravan, and all was forgiven. They then gathered up the thieves loot and finished making their way to the next city, where they helped Aladdin look for more Djinn vessels, while Faith made a quick round to ask if anyone had seen her sister.
"Any luck?" Faith asked upon returning.
"Umm… It's not here…" Aladdin said a little disappointedly. "Did you find your sister?"
"Nope. But I'm sure she's out there somewhere." Faith said with a smile. " She'll be all right. Hope's tough."
The caravan then helped the two of them find a transport wagon so they could continue their search.
"Bye, everyone! It's been a real slice!" Faith called from the cart with a wave.
"See you, onee-san. If you find something with a Djinn living in it, be careful because Djinns can be cowards." Aladdin told Leila.
"Oh?" said Leila.
"Make sure not to scare them with that scary face of yours!!!" He called pleasantly as the cart started to roll away, smiling brightly while he waved goodbye. Leila responded by throwing a metal oil lamp after them.