Half an hour ago, Yuki had put his precious life in the hands of a flying rug. And with every step that he took, he was regretting it tangibly. He swore that his heartbeat would never be normal again. His nerves were shattered, and he was almost beyond the point of caring. It'd been a really bad day.

He'd been arrested, propositioned by a banana, dragged across a desert, tackled yet again by Ryuichi, shoved into a cave, attacked by a flying rug, and the worst of all, he had experienced...feelings. He sighed audibly, and moved to catch up with Ryuichi, who was now seated on top of the rug and screaming every time it accelerated.

He stumbled after the rug and Ryuichi and suddenly he found himself in a giant cavern. The splendor of the previous passages was forgotten. The place was trashed.

In the past it might have been splendid, but now the huge room was marred by the scars of explosions and cave ins. Yuki nervously glanced around the room, expecting to see some kind of dragon leap out at him. He was half counting on it, with the day he'd somehow lived through.

Ryuichi casually hopped off of the carpet, with the look of someone who did it every other minute. He then walked over to Yuki and stared at him carefully, right in the eye. Yuki noted that

he was standing on his tip toes to accomplish this impressive feat.

"Yuki. We need to talk about something. I was thinking about this a lot while the Rug Man and I were flying along…" started Ryuichi seriously.

"Rug man? Are you freaking kidding me? Jesus, Ryuichi, it's a piece of carpet!" said Yuki exasperatedly to Ryuichi. The carpet threw a rock at him in response.

"This is serious. And the carpet has feelings too."

"Apparently, if a stuffed rabbit –" replied Yuki sullenly. His head hurt from the well-aimed rock, and the last thing that he needed was a talk with Ryuichi.

"Leave Kuma out of this, you big mean-…no…no…I said that this was serious." Said Ryuichi, his eyes changing dramatically towards the second half of his speech. "Have a seat, esteemed friend."

"There is no seat, dumbass. And I'm not your friend."

"Of course you are, and our fellow traveler would be happy to be seat. He knows how important this is." Answered Ryuichi, acting like a prim and proper doctor. The expression on Yuki's face was truly a sight to behold.

Yuki reluctantly sat on the now low hovering carpet, and fixed his piercing gaze to Ryuichi.

"We have work to do, you idiot. We don't have time to talk about how you're in love with a rabbit."

"Aha! You've discovered a little bit about the topic of our meeting here today, Yuki-san. Love. What a word." Said Ryuichi, as he adjusted non-existent glasses.

"What the…We do NOT have time for this crap, and you have no business talking about things that you don't understand and I don't care about."

"I know plenty, and you do care. If you didn't, you wouldn't look so sad. And you wouldn't have reacted so violently earlier, when I tricked you about your Prince."

"He's not mine, and I forbid you to mention him again."

"You wish he was yours. Now that we've established this…" said Ryuichi quickly, overriding Yuki's stuttering protests, "we need to discuss the birds and the bees."

Yuki couldn't discern a response out of his befuddled mind. He couldn't believe what Ryuichi had just said to him. Pushing the recurring image of Shuichi's face out of his mind, Yuki paused to reflect on what Ryuichi had just said.

"The birds…and the bees?" asked Yuki, standing up in slight agitation. "Shut up, Ryuichi."

"Well, I guess that it would technically be the bees and the bees for you…but whatever." Said Ryuichi matter-of-factly, ignoring Yuki's anger.

"I am not talking to you anymore. Ever." Said Yuki rather quietly, as he walked away, towards the center of the room. The mention of Shuichi had shaken him, visibly. But the attempted sex talk by Ryuichi hadn't even registered.

"Yuki, we need to talk about this! Come back!" shouted Ryuichi, not realizing the mistake he had made in mentioning the Prince. "Yuki?"

Yuki didn't give Ryuichi the time of day as he continued to stoically ignore him. Ryuichi's tone quickly turned to a whine, and caused Yuki to stalk off even deeper into the cavern.

"YUKI!" screamed Ryuichi as loudly as he could. "TALK TO ME!"

As Yuki turned around to scream back at Ryuichi, rocks started to fall from the ceiling, one or two large ones landing dangerously close to Yuki.

"Yuki, Yuki, Yuki!" shrieked Ryuichi as he ran toward Yuki in a frantic. "I'm so sorry!"

"Get…away…from…me…" said Yuki menacingly. His death had almost occurred yet again because of his foolhardy companion.

Ryuichi's response was cut-off by the carpet flying in between the duo and gesturing wildly to the middle of the room. The falling rocks had triggered a response in the landscape. A large staircase had spiraled out of the cavern, and on top, a rectangular box was present.

Yuki glanced through the gloom and started to pick his way across the room. He had to step carefully, however, as the debris from the obvious destruction was widespread. If he hadn't of been Yuki Eiri, he might have been scared to be setting out into the room unaccompanied. Instead, he ordered Ryuichi and his inanimate friends to remain behind.

At the foot of the spiraling staircase, Yuki took a deep breath and stepped forward. Nothing obviously horrid befell him, and he continued on, secretly relieved. Near death experiences were really starting to get annoying.

Near the entrance, Ryuichi was restless. Yuki had gone up the stairs a little way, but Ryuichi was under orders to remain behind. He danced around in frustration. His short attention span did not allow him to sit still. Unless Tatsuha's hat was involved…but the playful guard was definitely not in the cave. Ryuichi groaned loudly and started to look around.

On a pillar to his left, something was shining. It was the most beautiful light that Ryuichi had ever seen. And within the heavenly glow, rested the most fascination thing that Ryuichi had ever laid eyes on…a yo-yo. Yuki had reached the halfway point of the stairs.

Ryuichi advanced on his quarry with a gleam in his eye. The carpet looked around anxiously, but by the time that he spotted Ryuichi, the thief was inches from the yo-yo. The rug flew faster than ever before, and seized Ryuichi by the seat of his pants and pulled with all of his might. Ryuichi yelled indignantly.

The noise caused Yuki to freeze on the stairs. He was a mere three steps from the odd rectangular object, but something was happening down in the cavern. And then he found Ryuichi with his piercing eyes. His assistant was holding on to a ledge with both hands, and being pulled backwards by the accursed rug. He had stuck his tongue out in an attempt to reach the object that was escaping his grasp by an astonishingly meager distance. Yuki turned away, trusting the rug to babysit.

He continued up the staircase and reached the box. In large case and bold letters several words were written. DANGER: EXPLOSIVE. GUN CASE. Yuki cocked his head to the side, and stared at the box. He ran his hand along the supposed front, and eventually his long fingers felt the outline of a handle. A lock was absent, and as he took another step towards the case, his foot found the remains of it. He took another deep breath and opened the door. He closed his eyes and waited for death to befall him. Below, the rug was losing his battle against Ryuichi.

The door opened to reveal the grandeur of dust and cobwebs. Yuki opened one eye and it suddenly glared around after taking in the contents of the case. He cautiously put his foot into the case and knocked around some of the rubble. A curiously shaped object lay underneath all of the dust. He picked it up with one hand and looked it over. It was filthy, and shaped like an L, with a curve underneath the corner. It was gold, underneath the grime, and had rubies and emeralds inset into the frame. As he moved to rub the grit off of the object, his attention was stolen away by a loud band. Ryuichi had reached his goal at long last, and was playing happily with the yo-yo. Within seconds, a loud roar erupted from the bowels of the cave. It was obviously angry.

Yuki took a few quick steps down the staircase, and the room started to quiver. The stairs vanished, turning into a makeshift slide. Yuki let loose a yell and slid down the slide, faster and faster, until he reached the bottom. The ceiling was spewing rocks and gigantic cracks in the ground had appeared. Steam rose in spirals out of them.

"What have you done, you, you fool!?" screamed Yuki as he ran towards the still smiling Ryuichi. Ryuichi, noticing the change in the room for the first time, burst into tears.

"I'm sorry, Yuki…"

"It's too late for that, get moving!" yelled Yuki over his shoulder as he ran for the entrance of the room.

When Yuki reached the entrance, however, it had become blocked by several rocks. Not two feet from him, a boulder three times his size fell, and shattered the doorway in its entirety. Yuki turned around and glanced around the room desperately. They were trapped. And then everything got worse. The steam had evolved into lava.

"Goodnight, Shuichi." said Hiroshi as he closed the door leading to Shuichi's room. Even though the boy had expressed no interest in him whatsoever, he couldn't help but to notice how amazing he looked in the moonlight flooding the hallways they had just traversed.

"Goodnight Hiro." answered Shuichi with some melancholy in his voice. Even though he was relieved about the Hiro situation, he couldn't help but to cry over what he had lost. He had never met, or lost, someone as amazing as Yuki.

The moonlight flooded the palace as Shuichi collapsed in another fit of tears and Hiroshi whistled as he walked back to his own room.

"It's taking them too long…I can't stand this…" muttered Tohma under the starry sky.

"Don't get your panties in such a bunch Tohma. They'll get you your damn lamp…" replied Caspian with his bird eyes closed as he lay on the feather boa spread out over the sand. He sighed and snuggled in deeper while he flipped over onto his back.

"Caspian!" shouted Tohma, flapping his arms wildly. "You're not allowed to be calm!"

"Whatever…" said the bird as he drifted back to sleep.

"Hey Caspo…my little birdface…" cooed Tohma softly, switching into his plotting mode.

"Bugger off. I am sleeping." returned the parrot with a touch of anger. His eyes remained closed.

"Why don't you flap your gorgeous self into that cave, eh?"

"I said NO Tohma. No, no, no, never!"

"Don't forget who feeds you…" hissed Tohma.

"Just stand still and wait for them. I'm sure they'll come back…" said Caspian soothingly. In his imaginative mind, he was seeing Tohma grabbing him by the tail feathers and throwing him into the empty darkness that was the cave. He shuddered and snuggled deeper into the boa.

"Fine, be that way…" replied Tohma bitterly. He sighed and mentally resigned himself to the waiting game. "Stupid, slow, sapphire…"

In his mind, Tohma turned over everything that had led up to this moment. He and Mika had been together in their secret way since before the death of the Sultan. He had been the Royal Vizier for five years, when the Sultan had remarried. The Prince had been seven.

Since the Sultan's death, the couple had talked of marriage, and then onto a family, and world domination of course, but an obstacle stood in their way. Shuichi had to be married off before the Sultana could sever her ties to the family, and take on a new name. Agrabahnian law had specified so years and years ago, and Mika did not have the power to alter it.

For the last six months, princes from far and wide had shown up at Mika's command, seeing as Shuichi was too stubborn to force out of the city to look for a princess. In tangent to this plot, Mika had come across the legend of the genie in her various studies. Tohma had confirmed it, and had spent years trying to find the location of the lamp. Finally, here he stood.

But, as he had recently discovered, he had been unable to enter it himself, or by using a petty thief. And now the fate of his future, and probably his head, was in the hands of a street rat. He sighed. Something was bound to go wrong…he could feel it.

"What'd we do, what'd we do, what'd we do YUKI!?" screamed Ryuichi frantically as he ran around the cavern. "There's red stuff!"

"That would be molten lava, you idiot, and how the hell am I supposed to know what to do?!" yelled Yuki back as he continued running in place, looking for some solution.

The room shook underneath their feet, and Yuki could feel himself stop breathing. He was going to die here.

"YUKI!" shrieked Ryuichi as the lava started to bubble up more rapidly. "YUKI!"

Hearing his name shouted in such a tone broke Yuki out of his reverie. He shook his head and looked over his shoulder at where Ryuichi was standing. Beyond his fellow thief, the large rock where he had found the surmised 'lamp' stood out clearly.

"Ryuichi! This way!" he shouted at Ryuichi before running for the mound.

Ryuichi didn't bother responding and seemed to morph into the super human that he could become at will. He veered left and grabbed Kumagoro and then proceeded to follow Yuki up to the mound. The lava was now beginning to cover the floor, and he had to jump and land precariously in some spots.

The duo reached the mound, and Yuki started to climb up the edge, avoiding the slick slide that he had nearly killed himself on earlier. Ryuichi, however, lacking this knowledge, ran straight up the slide and dropped Kuma in his struggle to hold himself up.

"KUMAGORO!" screamed Ryuichi as he made a desperate dive for the rabbit and missed hideously. "NOOOOOOOOO!"

The ocean of lava bubbled maniacally below them.

"It's been over three hours Caspian! I'm tired of waiting!" said Tohma exasperatedly. He was a very impatient vizier.

"I don't really care…" said the conure lazily as he pushed himself further into the boa.

"Well you should. Five more minutes and you're going in after them whether you want to or not." Said Tohma with a clear matter-of-fact air about him.

"What?! NO! I said I wasn't going in!" screamed Caspian as he pushed himself as far as he could into the lime green feathers. His tail was the only remaining sight to see.

"Four minutes, forty five seconds…" hissed Tohma softly as he eyed the maroon tail in his boa. Caspian uttered a few shrill parrot noises and squawked indignantly.

The stars above shone on brightly, and continued to illuminate the scene. Tohma abandoned counting the seconds until his threw his bird into the cave. He was getting a headache…he just so happened to be allergic to math.

He started pacing. Caspian made parrot noises every time that Tohma traversed the sand around the boa.

"Sooo...bored…" gasped Tohma as he walked around the cave entrance over, and over, and over again. "Casp…"

The only response was a mixture of unintelligible squeaks and mutterings.

Yuki swung down from the rock he was sitting on just in time to grab the falling rabbit, earning himself an impressive battle scar in the process. A bullet of lava had erupted from the sea below them and seared a white-hot gash into his wrist. He shuddered slightly and tossed the rabbit to Ryuichi.

"Here. Now get moving." Said Yuki with a pained voice.

Ryuichi again didn't respond. He snuggled Kuma into his shirt and started to scale the mound next to Yuki. They reached the top without too much incident, but the lava was rising up with them.

"Yuki…we're going to die, aren't we?" asked Ryuichi timidly, with a hint of seriousness.

"We are NOT going to die…" answered Yuki in a strained voice as he nursed the stinging wound on his wrist.

"Yuki…" said Ryuichi quietly. "I'm really sorry…"

For a reply, Yuki just looked at Ryuichi and smiled ever so slightly.

"I know everything was my fault…and I know I shouldn't have touched the ruby…" rambled Ryuichi, completely missing Yuki's small smile. "And I know I shouldn't have teased you about the Prince…"

"Stop."

"I'm sorry…" said Ryuichi again, in a dejected tone. Looking up, he saw Yuki's expression, the smile still lingering. "YUKI!"

Without any hesitation, Ryuichi threw his arms around Yuki's neck, almost knocking the pair off of their high perch. Above, the frantically searing carpet finally located the duo.

"Get off of me…" snarled Yuki menacingly, afraid to push Ryuichi for fear of tipping him into the lava that was getting closer by the second.

"But you smiled!" squealed Ryuichi, hugging Yuki tighter. "That means you love me!"

"I do NOT love you, and I swear I will throw you off of this rock if you don't let go of me!" screamed Yuki, now trying to pry Ryuichi off of his neck.

Ryuichi reluctantly released Yuki's neck and took a step away from him. There were tears in his eyes and he looked very upset. He slowly picked up Kumagoro and turned away from Yuki. Upon doing so, he spotted the rug circling lower and lower.

"Yuki! Look!" exclaimed Ryuichi, forgetting the exchange that had just taken place.

"I'm not speaking to you." Replied Yuki shortly, turning towards Ryuichi slowly, afraid of what he was apparently supposed to by looking at.

Yuki turned around and saw the carpet coming ever closer. Ryuichi was jumping up and down in excitement, completely oblivious to the lava that was only three feet away from swallowing the rock. The carpet came down to the level of the rock and Ryuichi climbed on and seated Kuma next to him.

"Come on, Yuki!" said Ryuichi hurriedly from atop the carpet.

Yuki approached the carpet with caution, still distrusting of the rug. He looked to the side, trying to think up another way to get to safety, but before he had a chance to do any deep contemplation, Ryuichi grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him halfway onto the carpet.

"Go Rug-Man!" he ordered, and finished dragging his unhappy cohort on top of the carpet.

The carpet accelerated from its position and started to gain altitude. After circling the cavern once, a way out was not apparent to any of those on the rug. The steam was becoming unbearable, and the lava had started to spurt higher than before. Through the haze, Yuki could see that the steam was leaving the cavern through a small opening. He gestured this to the carpet, and it took off toward the aperture.

"That's it. You're going in there." Said Tohma resolutely after finishing a pacing routine that had lasted for fifteen minutes. "Get going, bird."

For once, Caspian made no response as he was currently hiding behind a rock, having abandoned the feather boa in an attempt to hide. He crouched down into the sand and waited for Tohma to come back to his senses.

"Get out here, Caspian." Mandated Tohma as he grabbed the feather boa and started to shake it vigorously. "BIRD!"

Tohma spent the next ten minutes searching for the parrot, but had no luck. At the end of it, Tohma's hair was coated in sand, he had stubbed his toe tripping over a rock, had shredded half of his boa, and still had no sign of his bird.

"Dammit all…" said Tohma in a defeated voice. Suddenly, the cave began to shake and there was a loud cracking noise from within. He ran to the entrance and saw the two street rats speeding towards him on a piece of carpet. In the heat of the moment, Tohma's stress caught up to him and he burst into tears. His future was flying toward him on a rug.