"STOP IT!" Shuichi shrieked, the pain in his cheek blinding him. He could hear Mika laughing as she got closer, and in the distance, he could hear Yuki trying to fight off Tohma and Caspian. He could also hear some muffled footsteps, but he had no idea who they belonged to. He tried to open his eyes to see who else was nearing his personal hell, but before he could, Mika gasped and immediately stopped laughing.

"You leave him alone!" Hiro snarled at Mika, shoving her away from Shuichi. He'd only been home for a few days when he couldn't take it anymore. He missed Shuichi more than a blind man misses sight and he hated the thought of the one he cared about the most spending the remainder of his days with someone he couldn't stand. The pain from his pining for the pink-haired youth had driven him crazy, and he'd traveled as fast as humanly possible to return to him. He hadn't known what to expect upon his return, but the fiasco in front of him hadn't even made the top twenty possibilities list.

"Hiro?" Shuichi asked softly, afraid to hope. Even though he'd thought less about his friend, he still missed him terribly and it was a relief to hear his voice amidst the horror of what was happening.

"Give me a second here, man…" Hiro responded, his eyes never leaving Mika's face.

"Nakano, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Mika spat at Hiro, wishing that people would stop dropping in uninvited. They were ruining her evening.

"What I should have done a long time ago…" Hiro replied, cracking his knuckles and rushing Mika, pinning her against the wall. "You're a horrible woman! He deserves so much better than you for a mother!"

"You can't treat me like this! I'm the Sultana!"

"Not anymore!" Hiro responded, grabbing the discarded rope from the attempted Kuma burning and tying Mika up. He used one of the rope's ends to gag her, not wanting to hear anything else she ahd to say. He patted her lightly on the cheek and jogged over to Shuichi.

"HEY!" Tohma yelled, noticing that Shuichi's screams and Mika's cheers had quieted down. "GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF HER!"

Yuki took the opportunity that Hiro's interference had given him and took a flying tackled to Tohma, smashing into the ground with the vizier and Caspian underneath him. Now that Shuichi was safe from the horrible woman, he could concentrate on the task at hand. He wasn't ever going to be best friends with Hiro, but he was immensely grateful that he'd shown up when he had.

"I think I'm all you can handle right now! Pay attention!" Yuki told Tohma, slamming his head into the marble floor. Caspian flew off towards Hiro, Mika, and Shuichi, not wanting to turn into a parrot pancake.

"Really now?" Tohma asked, raising an eyebrow and making a shoving motion with his hands, catapulting Yuki backwards. "I think I can multi-task, you're not that much a challenge."

"I would be if you stopped using your damn card tricks!" Yuki yelled at Tohma, getting up slower than before. His repeated encounters with the hard marble floor were taking a toll on him.

"Card tricks?" Tohma asked, an edge to his voice. K stopped rolling around with his gun and looked over, noticing a change in the atmosphere. "Card tricks! I'll show you card tricks!"

"Oh please do." Yuki replied sarcastically, knowing from past experience that Tohma was most deadly when he was serious, not when he was hopping mad. K stood up and inched out of the way, not wanting to steal any of the spotlight. He was still terribly torn, and was feeling more than a little bit frazzled. He wandered around, looking for busy work, and stumbled across Tatsuha's limp donut form. Intrigued by the costume, he stooped down to make sure the guard captain was still breathing. "I'm so scared, I just don't know what to do with myself…"

"Tohma! Show him who's boss!" Caspian called out to Tohma, slightly embarrassed by his handler's behavior. He'd been occupying himself with keeping Hiro away from Shuichi and spinning the wheel that the Prince was tied to, but Tohma's idiocy required his immediate attention.

Tohma shook out his sleeves and summoned his boa, shaking it confrontationally at Yuki.

"Feathers?" Yuki asked, leaning back and crossing his arms. He knew that Tohma deteriorated fast once provoked, but this had to be some kind of record.

"TOHMA!" Caspian yelled, dodging Hiro's swipes and wondering if it was too late to switch sides.

"Not just feathers!" Tohma told Yuki, stepping forward and striking a pose that he felt was fierce.

"A cross-dressing vizier with feathers. So much better." Yuki responded, shaking his head and smiling at Tohma. "Yes, you in a fancy robe really is the most terrifying thing I could imagine…"

"You want to be terrified do you?" Tohma asked, snapping back into his capable mode. Now that he had some firepower behind his lunacy, it was easier to come back to the light once he'd fallen off the horse. He smiled and waved at Yuki, disappearing into a conjured cloud.

"If you come out more sparkly, we're through!" Caspian yelled at Tohma, biting at Hiro's hair to keep him busy.

"Oh don't worry…" Tohma reassured Caspian, clapping his hands and cackling. The cloud dissipated and Tohma reappeared in a different form.

"Oh Allah…" Caspian said, forgetting himself in the moment and allowing Hiro to land a blow.

Tohma had re-emerged as an oversized panda, complete with some bamboo.

"What? I thought the monochromatic look really worked for me…" Tohma muttered, swiping a paw at Yuki and shooting the bird a defiant look.

"TRY AGAIN!" Caspian screeched, a few feathers shaking loose.

"Fine…" Tohma replied, conjuring the clouds again.

"AND NO SNAKES!" Caspian chimed in, not wanting to face one of his greatest fears.

"But!" Tohma hissed, already half way towards the newly forbidden look. "Fine!"

Tohma clapped a few times and then the clouds darkened, turning a grayish black. The room got a lot hotter, and the clouds started to rise, obscuring most of the room. When they'd cleared enough to allow sight, Yuki yelled and jumped back, regretting his teasing.

Tohma had magicked himself into a gigantic red and black dragon, and he looked entirely too pleased with his handiwork for it to be safe for anyone in the vicinity.

"Terrified yet, street rat?" Tohma asked, his voice booming around the room. "I would be, I think I'm pretty fearsome."

"Gold star!" Caspian called out, fluttering through the smoke to admire Tohma's successful transformation. Hiro had found a stick among some of the wreckage in the room, and he was in no mood for splinters.

"Finally…" Hiro muttered, freeing Shuichi from the wheel and ripping off some of his sleeve to stem the bleeding from his friend's face. "You alright?"

"I will be…" Shuichi replied, looking up at Tohma and shuddering. He scanned the room for Yuki and started trying to figure out how to get him out alive. Nothing else mattered if he died, and he was determined to save his love.

"Don't even think about it Shuichi, you can't help him now." Hiro told Shuichi, grabbing his shoulders and looking him in the eye. "Please, don't."

"Yeah, not a good idea." Caspian interjected, having noticed Hiro's lack of beating stick. He swooped down on Shuichi's head and started pulling out his hair, dodging the blows from the bloody prince.

"Go help Eiri, I'll take care of the bird!" Shuichi said to Hiro, swatting at the conure and grabbing his tail. "GO!"

Hiro nodded and ran towards the dragon, thinking that he could at least provide enough of a distraction for Shuichi to escape with his life.

"It's go time bird." Shuichi told Caspian, yanking him off of his head and dangling him in front of his face.

"Bring it." Caspian replied, swinging forward and biting Shuichi's nose.

Shuichi flailed around for several seconds, smacking the bird, and himself, in a desperate attempt to remove the sharp beak from his facial feature. Once he resorted to ripping out Caspian's beloved tail feathers, the bird released him and Shuichi grabbed him with two hands, dancing in place and trying to quickly locate a suitable prison for the feathered fiend. He caught sight of the forgotten donut bucket and ran towards it, dumping its contents and shoving the raving raptor underneath it, successfully securing him.

"Victory!" Shuichi sang out, doing his own rendition of a hat dance around the bucket.

In the center of the room, Tohma was making the most of his new dragon abilities, and was keeping Hiro and Yuki on their toes with bursts of fire and tail sweeps.

"Not your fight!" Yuki yelled to Hiro, ducking just in time to avoid Tohma's spiked tail.

"Stop being so proud!" Hiro yelled back, rolling out of the way of Tohma's peppery breath.

"He's right you know." Tohma noted, nodding solemnly. He waited for his adversaries to stop moving, and then with speed he wasn't sure he had, he threw out his front claw and snared Yuki, pinning him against a pillar. "You should just leave now, we have some unfinished business here…"

"Damn…" Yuki cursed, kicking his feet to try to free himself as Tohma had his arms locked down.

"Eiri…" K muttered, finished with his Tatsuha inspection. He'd sustained a decent head injury, but apart from being out cold, he seemed alright. Now that he had nothing to distract himself with, he'd been forced to return to his dilemma. When he saw that Yuki really had no way to help himself, his stomach tied itself in knots, and he knew that he'd never be able to live with himself if he didn't do something. "HEY MASTER! LOOK! A SHINY!"

K snapped his fingers and made some fireworks appear, wondering if dragons' affinity for sparkly things would transfer over to Tohma. If not, the vizier was still very easily distracted, and that might give the other Prince time to help Yuki.

"Where?" Tohma asked instantly, perking up and relaxing his grip on Yuki. K snapped a few more times and the fireworks got bigger, dancing around the throne room.

"Right here!" K replied loudly, snapping some more and making an entire rack of multi-colored feather boas appears. "See?"

"Oh, I do, I do!" Tohma squealed, almost dropping Yuki. When he felt the street rat slipping, he shook his head and tore himself away from K's petty distractions, wanting to end the fight that had started so long ago.

K grunted in frustration and scratched at his forehead, trying to formulate a plan. Hiro was positioned below Yuki incase the latter fell, and Shuichi was sitting on the bucket that contained Caspian, trying to hold the screeching parrot in. Deciding that if he was going to save Yuki, he was going to go all out, he took a deep breath and snapped both hands.

The lights that were still lit in the room flickered ominously and K started rising up towards the ceiling on a tornado of blue and purple smoke, bouncing lightning bolts off of the walls. Tohma stopped blowing smoke rings at Yuki and looked over at the genie, a little afraid.

"Tohma!" K shouted, his voice echoing around the room. "Drop him!"

"You can't make me! I'm your master!" Tohma responded haughtily, squeezing Yuki in his claw, causing the street rat to scream in pain.

Down on the ground, Hiro looked at K in awe. He'd seen Tohma transform himself several times that evening, but none of them compared to what K was doing. Hiro could feel the power emanating from the genie, and he was suddenly very glad that K was trying to help them out.

"I'm warning you!" K growled, thunder claps driving his point across.

"No! I'm warning you!" Tohma said, slamming Yuki into the pillar, making him scream again. "I'm the one with the real power here!"

"No you're not!" Hiro yelled up to Tohma. Witnessing K's awesome ability had given him an idea, and he was praying to all the deities he could think for it to work. "K is!"

"Uh uh!" Tohma replied, throwing his dragon snout up in the air indignantly.

"You're nothing compared to him! You wouldn't even have your magic if it weren't for him!" Hiro continued, guessing where Tohma had found his sudden competence. He'd seemed pretty harmless when he'd seen him last, and him wishing for his magic was the only plausible explanation. Hiro crossed his fingers and hoped that his guess was right.

"You…I…wait…" Tohma said, furrowing his brow. He looked from Hiro to K and then down at himself and it hit him; Hiro was right. He'd never had real control over his powers, and the only reason that he'd accomplished anything that day was because of K. He had pulled off a successful heist when he and Caspian had stolen the lamp, but it had been a close call, and before that, he'd been the laughing stock of the broom closet. He clamped his jaw together and huffed, sending smoke curls out of his nostrils. He was about to slip back into despair when he remembered that he had one wish left. "GENIE!"

"What now?" K asked, raising his eyebrow at Tohma. He'd caught on to Hiro's plan and didn't want to let Tohma know anything was afoot. He had to act normal for this to work, and the way he saw it, it was the only way that they could beat the vizier. Behind Shuichi and Caspian, Mika had managed to remove her gag and was hopping forward, ready to make her escape if thing went bad for Tohma. When she heard him call on the genie, she froze, praying that he wasn't about to fall for Hiro's obvious trap.

"I want to be a genie too!" Tohma said, the enthusiasm in his voice rattling the room supports and showering everyone with dust from the shaky ceiling.

"TOHMA NO!" Mika yelled, realizing the implications of being a genie. "YOU MORON!"

Tohma dropped Yuki and spun around, taking out several columns with his tail. When he saw Mika's face, he froze, and panicked. He'd never seen Mika look like that, and he couldn't really place the expression. He racked his brain while K prepared the wish, wondering why he was stupid for wishing for ultimate power. He pondered it for a few more seconds, and then the obvious answer smacked him upside the brain; Mika wanted to be the genie.

"Wait! I wish for the Sultana to be a genie!" Tohma told K, clapping his claws together and shrinking back down to normal size.

"TOHMA!" Mika shrieked, glaring at Tohma and then running for the door. If the genie couldn't catch her, he couldn't perform the magic.

"Sounds good." K said, snapping both hands again and capturing Mika in a vortex. As long as Tohma used the wish on something, he was free to do as he pleased with the vizier.

"NOO!" Mika screamed, holding onto the door frame with a death grip. "NOOO!"

K shook his head and laughed, snapping again to help out his magic. It succeeded in ripping Mika from the door, and as she spun by, Shuichi jumped up from the bucket in shock. Sensing that his captor had let his guard down, Caspian crawled out from under the bucket and ran for all he was worth towards Tohma.

"TOHMA! YOU'RE DEAD!" Mika screeched as K's spell pulled her into her own lamp, feet first.

Tohma screamed like a schoolgirl and ran for it, recognizing Mika's angry face. Caspian grabbed his coattail with his beak and the duo skidded out of the room before anyone could think to stop them. K's spell concluded, and Mika's lamp fell to the ground, her furious screams still echoing around the room.

Dun dun dun! Plot twist! At least in my world. Hmm, you guys probably saw that coming, I'm not nearly as clever as I like to think I am. *sigh* Blame the bird, everything that goes wrong is automatically his fault anyway.

Well, we're nearing the end…maybe two more chapters…maybe one…maybe fifteen, Po only knows. I will go ahead and tell you not to expect an entirely traditional ending, I've mixed things up quite a bit…thus why you should not give me a whiteboard and a myriad of pretty markers to play with after one am.

Hope you had a few giggles,

Amaya

Special thanks to:

Jo, for listening to me complain about this scene from start to finish, and for offering help and edits, even though everyone knows it's impossible to help a lost cause.

Lynn, for being the real-life talking donut, and Caspian's fast friend.

Jacob, for brainstorming Tohma forms with me at odd hours of the morning, afternoon, and evening.