Azkadelia and Lavender sat on chairs watching as DG struggled through the ancient dance of the Royal House, giggling like school girls as the dance practice had to be broken up once again due to DG's poor crushed toes.

DG grabbed her slipper clad foot and bounced up and down on her other one chanting "Ow" over and over again.

"Sorry princess." Cain said shifting from foot to foot trying to comfort the raven-haired girl as she bounced about on her non-swollen foot. Az laughed so hard she nearly fell out of her chair. Ahamo stood outside the ball room, wanting to comfort his daughter, but had been banished from the room after he managed to step on all ten of her toes at once and caused her to poke herself in the eye, and then fall on her face…

"Perhaps, it is time the Princess took a break… before she looses her use of her toes permanently." Lavender managed after she finally was able to stop laughing. Taking the offered opportunity, DG fled the room as fast as her hobble allowed.

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Gotta hide from evil parents forcing ridiculous dance on me! She chanted in her head as she quietly limped down into the basements where she could hide amongst the various bobbles and whatnot.

The Stairs were painful and slow, and more then once she panicked when she heard footsteps echo in the stairway. But she made her way to the underground rooms, were more often or not one could find Glitch studying something he had built years ago. Today was no exception, though he seemed to be sulking for some un-explainable reason.

Words, a phrase repeated in her brain as she took the stairs one at a time, clutching to the banister, Cain's words, whispered inappropriately close in her ear: "He's always wanted to dance, he told me once, but girls never ask him."

"Glitch! Can you help me? I can't walk too well right now!" She called down the few stairs left and into the gloomy basement. Moments later, covered in grease, and furiously scrubbing at his hands, the man came.

"Princess! Shouldn't you be learning how to dance upstairs, for the up coming ball?"

"Cain kept stepping on my toes because he would move too close to me." She wrinkled her nose at the thought of two bodies doing that much exertion and being that close to each other. Glitch frowned, and the look on his face made DG's stomach wiggle. "I think my toes are broken…"

"Wh-what? Your toes are broken?! Then what in the name of the O.Z. are you doing on stairs, let alone walking?" He wrapped an arm underneath hers and hoisted her off her bad foot. "Come on, we need to get you to a bench." DG was surprised at how strong the thin man was. She supposed it was from his years wandering around the O.Z. with only half a brain.

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His "office" was a dank, poorly lit, concrete box of some hundred feet squared. Here and there were some half finished, or half re-assembled contraptions of unimaginable purposes. A chemistry set bubbled and glowed from the light of various Bunsen-burners heating various substances of a whole array of colors.

"No wonder you're pale." DG murmured as she brushed a tuff of black hair out of her face.

"Hmm? What was that?" he pretended not to hear as he searched his desk for a particular gadget in a pile of gadgets. "AHA!" he pulled something that resembled a "Coldheat™" DG had seen back on earth in an infomercial, out of the pile; not paying attention to the bits of machinery that fell and broke on the floor.

"What are you going to do? Sauder my toes?"

"What ever gave you that idea princess?" he looked completely interested and confused at the same time. DG resisted the urge to hug him with that particularly endearing look on his face.

"Ah, back on earth, there was this thing called a Coldheat, where it heated the metal you wanted to melt, but became cool to touch when you lifted it from the metal… though I have no idea how it did that." Glitch looked interested as he pulled a short stool from out of somewhere in the gloom, and sat in front of her, pulling her injured foot into his lap.

"Really, sounds fascinating, I would love to go to earth one day and learn about their technologies." He pulled her shoe off very gently, and grabbed her ankle to keep her foot from moving too much.

"Maybe one day I'll take you there and show you around." She shifted, not entirely comfortable but not uncomfortable either.

He pointed the instrument at her bruised and swollen toes and a bluish light came out and illuminated her bones through her skin.

"Well princess, there are no broken bones, only one very slight crack on your little toe and mild to moderate bruising on most of them, except your toe right here." He indicated it with a skeleton-bared finger. "This one has severe bruising and will hurt like the dickens, but will heal in about a week or so." DG gapped.

"But the ball is tomorrow! And I have to dance that stupid royal-dance-thingy…"Glitch placed her foot on top of the stool he just vacated got up to search his desk again.

"Last week I smashed my fingers with a hammer on accident." DG winced. "The doctor gave me a jar of this ointment that numbed the pain and promoted healing while being used. Other wise I'd say stay off your foot for about three weeks, with your damage. There is no substitute for rest, but, he said, this would help since you can't stop using your hand for prolonged periods. I'd imagine it would work just fine for your foot." The man searched until he found something else he had been looking for quite some time.

"Oh, there you are!" Task completely forgotten, he took whatever he had in his hands over to the chemistry lab and began working on it. Smiling at her friend's antics DG cleared her throat gently.

"OH! Princess! What are you doing down here? Shouldn't you be upstairs practicing with Cain and your mother?"

"Glitch, you were looking for the ointment the doctor gave you last week." She reminded him gently.

"Oh, I forgot again didn't I?" He sounded rather upset with himself over it.

"Don't' worry about it."

"Okay." He smiled and went back to experimenting with his object.

"Glitch."

"Oh right, right… sorry… so dreadfully sorry." DG smiled at his back as he riffled through papers till he found the small jar.

"Here ya go princess!" He shifted back and for between doing it himself, and having her do it, before he handed over the jar. DG opened the pungent medicine and scooped a glob of the white cream out onto her injury. She could feel the blissfully numbing chill sooth her swollen digits.

"Much better." She sighed. Glitch stood there beaming at her, before he shook his head.

"Er, princess. Not to be rude or anything, but I gotta lot of things to do, and you're very distracting, I mean not that… I mean… I mean."

"I get it Glitch, you need to focus."

"Yeah." He said weakly. Slowly, she managed to get her shoe back on and started shuffling to the door.

"OH! PRINCESS!" he called after her, "Uhm, if you would like, I… happen to be very good at dancing… and… if you would like, I could try to teach you after dinner…"

"Ball room, third floor, after dinner, saayyyy… ten o'clock?"

"Ye-ah."

"It's a date." Glitch's stomach flipped about in his mid-section.

"Wear soft shoes, and a short skirted dress!" He called after her. She gave him a look and he stumbled over his words about it not being what it sounded like.

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DG stood in the ball room, in the moonlight, fiddling with the just above knee-length hem of her pale blue dress. Her shoes, she had looked for the softest shoes she could find in her possession, and had to settle on a pair of soft, silky red ballet-slippers and had spent the last ten minutes lacing them up to her knees. Her hair had been pulled into twin tails on either side of her head, and had been tied off with blue ribbons by Az, who had said she looked so cute Glitch might jump her. To which DG harrumphed and crossed her arms in a pout.

Out of the pit section, designed much like a theater so the musicians could be heard to the fullest effect, but not seen, came the exact melody she was expected to dance to. Turning to look at it she was mildly surprised to see the, oddly enough, incredibly athletic Glitch jump onto the lip of the pit, and swing his arms in a circle to try to regain balance. Fearing she might have to scrape her last-chance dance-instructor off of the instruments below she stepped forward to try and race to him and keep him from falling. But before the second step could come, he managed to right himself and walked off the edge, with a slow grace she never noticed before.

He seemed to dance as she stood there drinking in the rare, even for Glitch who was more inclined to be casual than most people the princess knew, sight of his outlandish clothes. A sleeveless black shirt clung to his surprising muscles, and a pair of very loose matching pants that seemed to barely be able to cling to his narrow hips. She also noticed, somewhat distantly, he was shoeless. His wild hair, no-longer parted by the cruel zipper, and now fully re-grown over the area where it the damned thing rested, seemed somehow to complete the look. DG took a small swallow and walked over to him, completely aware of her less than graceful sauntering.

"Ready to begin Princess?" He asked, more then obviously comfortable on the dance floor then he did back in his work-labs. Some small part of DG registered that the confidant and slightly cocky Ambrose was more dominant now than his goofy Glitch half.

Gently she extended her hand to fit it inside his outstretched one. and with an expected tug, they began.

Quickly the world around them blurred as she spun and stepped in time to the music. The pain in her toes completely forgotten as his arm wound around her waist drawing her near, her heart thudding from the exercise and something indefinable. He pushed her away spinning before he pulled her back. They were going much faster than her practices, as fast as the actual dance is supposed to be, maybe a little faster. Hand-in-hand they whirled around, their eyes never leaving each other. Instinctively their feet found the proper places to go as the music rose in volume, and suddenly the whirlwind became a fight for dominance. Feet stepped forward, pushing bodies back; back and forth they never lost each other as their arms wound around their partner. Their breath mingled from the exertion and their eyes remained locked, trying to read a million things, trying to say a million things their bodies seemed to know naturally. Finally the finale came and Glitch, holding DG's had pushed her out, spinning her along his arm to pull her back so she pressed her body against his, her other hand resting right over his heart. His arms wrapped intimately around her. Their chests heaved from the dance, their eyes wild with adrenalin.

"Bravo! Oh Bravo! I knew you could do it DG darling! Bravo!" Lavender clapped her hands, as both she and Az stood their in their night gowns watching to two. DG and Glitch sprung apart as if burned, both red-faced. Az smirked, at her little sister as she tried to regain her breathing.

"Oh shut up." She muttered as her sister escorted her back to her rooms, teasingly hinting at her trying to go to Glitch's. The two understood her hinting, but the Queen seemed to have missed it.

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Because I didn't say it last time. I don't own Tin Man.

And I will be going on a three week hiatus. Because next week I leave for a cruise, and the two weeks after that are major holidays.

Expect the next chapter-thing sometime early January.

I am open to suggestions for themes, cause damn this is harder then I thought it would be...