A/N: Thank you for all the kind comments! I really appreciate the extra-long reviews, even if their main purpose is for a contest! I mean, it benefits all, right? So what's the harm?

Anyways, I appreciate both compliments and criticism, (well of course we all love the compliments better). I'm sick of the weak Jala too, but that's the way lovesickness makes you. I am going to worm my way back into the kick-butt Jala somehow, even if it kills my writing! I hate the weak Jala too much. Shudder.

And I know this Author's Note is just too long, thank you. The Sultana is supposed to be a dull, flat person, but I do absolutely agree, to put it frankly, that my writing in her chapters suck. (I expect violent cheers from Haillie at this point.) I'm going to try my hardest to write better at that, honest, I will!

Thanks again. Huggle squish. (Don't ask). And I did consider that the Aladdin movies take place considerably before America was known to exist, (heck, they thought the world was flat!), but I've edited it. Since Agrabah is actually a magical city, I've decided that they don't venture into the "outside" world much anyways, so nobody pretty much knows about their existence.

Wow. That was a knock-yourself-out authors note in length.

-DewWater

Disclaimer: Sadly, I still do not happen to own Aladdin. And Haillie still has part of the fic in her hands.

Chapter 24

Rebellion

(Sultana You-Know-Who)

Books.

Mountains and piles and hills and stacks and great big mounds and dusty heaps of them.

They surrounded my bed, filled the many bookshelves, ravaged the table and made my pillow hard by sneaking under it when I least suspected it. Fiction books, history books, science pamphlets, last year's archive articles. I had them all right here in my suite.

I don't know when my love for books began. Perhaps when I was a tiny child, when the tall bookshelves of the royal library were always so mysterious to me because try as I might, I just could not reach the top. My father, (Allah rest his soul), used to pick me up under the arms so that I could marvel at the golden writing on the worn bindings.

Now, I had a whopping collection of over 1000 books, all somehow fitting into my room so that I still had place to, well, live. The better half were fiction novels, stories of jinn and robbers and foxy-witted tailors. I had loved Agrabah's fairy tales, as well as that of other nation's, most for as long as I could remember, so naturally they abounded in my vast collection.

The history books I was less fond of. Gore had never appealed to me very much, to the disappointment of Aladdin's Genie.

I had brought out my entire collection for a reason: to distract me. I now had three genies, some very insane politicians to keep in check, (I don't think that part had changed much in the past few months), and Jafar possibly plotting to overtake the throne. Again. Déjà vu, anyone?

I sighed and put my head in my hands ,fingering a strand of silvery-white that was growing from the temple. Was I really getting old so fast? Anxiously, I smoothed the tips of my fingers over my face for wrinkles. The only ones were in front of my ears, because when I was nervous, I wiggled them. It was an old habit, and an odd one in the least.

There was so much to be done, and yet I could not figure out what it was. How could I suppress Jafar? He was the Grand Vizier, and I could hardly have somebody tail him. Jafar had rather unpleasant ways of disposing unwanted attention.

I opened the door and walked out into a sunlight-gilded hallway, feeling the sudden urge for fresh air. On the balcony facing the western courtyard, I gazed out over my city, searching around in my mind desperately for a solution to the problems that we were facing now. More precisely, I was facing.

I was just about to turn back when a gloved, black hand clamped tightly over my mouth.

Needless to day, I tried to scream but found that I could not. My assailant, even now, had switched hands, and whipped me around. His brown face was masked, and the eyes were an odd shade of brilliant green, bright cat-yellow around the irises.

I must have looked very frightened, because he smirked under the mask and said in a drawling, slithering voice, "No need to be frightened, Highness." The voice was too mocking and dripping with sarcasm. "Your death would prove rather disappointing to me and my boss."

With that, he switched his right hand covering my mouth. I tried to scream before he pushed a white rag stained with something awful-smelling against my nose tightly, but my throat had closed up with terror. Where were my bodyguards? I glanced up at the roof. Of course. He'd come down from there. I had never thought of that.

There was some kind of drug in the rag, I realized sleepily.

Too late, the drug-induced stupor was clouding my mind. Images swam in a colorful haze before my eyes. Over the battlements of the castle, I was awake long enough to glimpse more black-masked people armed with weapons with many peasants with pitchforks. A siege, I thought drearily.

And then blackness closed in, first from the corners of my eyes, and then everywhere. I didn't remember anything more after that.

A/N: Dun dun dun dun!