Slowly, I opened my eyes. I didn't want to get up. I mean, I'd been having such a nice nap. But the light above me was glaring down on me, and I could never sleep for long if the light was on. I was a bit shocked to see that I wasn't in my room. I tried to push myself up into a sitting position using my arms, but my right arm trembeled and I fell back to the bed with a soft thump.

"Oh, are you awake? How are you feeling?" I turned my head to see a young nurse walking up to me. Judging by the size and look of the room, I guessed I was in the school infirmary. Or whatever you want to call it. I took a quick look at my right forearm and saw that it was wrapped tightly in some guaze. I tried to think back to how I had hurt it.

That's right! I thought. That darn Azami scratched me! Where is she - I'm not sure if I want to ring her little neck or be impressed. Answering the nurse's question, I said, "I'm feeling fine, but I can't put any weight on my arm. Do you think I could leave soon?"

The nurse smiled. "I'm glad to hear you're feeling fine, and you can leave in just a minute. School just got out about ten minutes ago, so you'd been sleeping for a good couple of hours. You lost a good bit of blood, but it wasn't enough to make you pass out by itself. I thought that maybe you'd got excited or worried about something, and then that in addition to the loss of blood caused you to pass out. I understand you were about to high jump. I wonder if you were worried about that and you just got so worked up that you passed out?" suggested the nurse. Of course, I had been worked up by the whole X-egg thing, but I couldn't tell the nurse know that, so I just remained quiet. The nurse continued. "Anyway, those were some cuts. So incredibly tiny, but deep and long. Not to mention, the blood that was flowing out of the wound wouldn't coagulate."

"Coagu-what?" I asked.

"Coagulate." said the nurse. "It means the blood wouldn't scab up, which meant that more and more blood kept coming. Seeing as you don't have any records of that kind of problem on your medical file, did you perhaps get some sort of chemical in it? I'm really quite curious as to how you got that cut. Did you maybe brush up against a poisonous plant?"

She looked at me scrutinizingly as I replied. "Well... umm... I'm not really sure. I guess that's what happened. And I was kinda nervous about making the high-jump, too." If this nurse had gone to the trouble of thinking of ways to explain my cuts, who was I to tell her she was wrong? As I had said before, ordinary people come up with mundane answers to things they can't see or understand.

She seemed unconvinced, but said no more on the cause of the injury. She started on another topic. "I called your parents-"

"You WHAT?" I asked. I didn't want them knowing this - they would probably never let me out of their sight again.

"-but neither of them were home at the time, and the answering machine was full." finished the nurse, amused at my reaction. Some good luck, for once. I'm just glad they don't know.

The nurse gave me some guaze, with the instruction to re-wrap my injury if the wrapping on it now fell off. She also told me to come in as soon as I got to school the next morning, so that she could have another look at it. Until then, she wanted me to take it easy, not put any stress on my right arm, and to always have someone with me in case I passed out again.

"But who's supposed to be with me right now, if you're letting me leave?" I asked. She wasn't going to come with me, was she?

"Don't worry: just go out the door and I think you'll be in for quite the surprise." replied the nurse.

Curious as always, I wanted to see what the surprise was. Guaze in hand, I opened the door to see all of the guardians lounging about in the hallway. As soon as I opened the door, they got up from their previous positions and crowded around me.

"Are you all right?" asked Tadase.

"What really happened?" asked Pepe.

"Well, you certainly know how to keep standing 'til the end, I'll give you that!" Said Kukai, laughing.

The nurse, who had stepped into the hallway behind me, quieted them down. "I want you guys to make sure that someone is with Miyuki-san at all times, got it? And since I can't get a hold of her parents, maked sure she has an escort on the way back from school today and to school tomorrow, all right?" I rolled my eyes, thinking this was massively unnecessary, but everyone gave the affirmative before the nurse withdrew back into the room, closing the door behind her.

It was now that I saw Azami out of the corner of my eye, floating defiantly behind the rest of the guardians. She had a smile on her face - mixed partially with happiness to see me, and also with a cruel delight in her eyes at the amount of damage she had inflicted. As soon as everyone saw who I was looking at, they separated to create a pathway for the little dragon to float to me. She did so, not looking ashamed in the least. Everyone else remained quiet, tensely watching what I would do.

"You know," I said, purposefully imitating the quiet accusing demeanor my father had used on me the other night. "the nurse said my cut was kinda strange. Of course, she was amazed at how deep they were, but it was something more than that. She said that there was something in it - a venom, you might say - that kept the blood from scabbing up. That meant that I just kept on bleeding until I passed out. You wouldn't know something about this, would you?" Of course, the one difference between my father and myself is that while he had been serious, I was totally playing. I couldn't stay angry long at Azami for something like this. Not with that gleeful smile on her face. It also didn't help that I probably liked having the power to hurt just as much as she did, since she was more or less just an extension of me. My serious expression cracked as I finished my accusation, and I smiled.

This was the only confirmation Azami needed to see to know that she didn't need to worm her way out of punishment. She opened her wings and soared around my head a few times, flicking me in the forehead with her tail and saying "I didn't know about it until today! If I had, you know I would have bragged about it more."

I playfully tried to grab her, but she flew out of my reach, laughing. I chased her, ignoring protests from Tadase and Nadeshiko, both saying that I should take it easy. I ignored them, though realized it wasn't bad advice when my vision started blacking out after a less than a minute of running. I stopped moving, closed my eyes, and when I opened my eyes again, I was more or less back to normal.

"Yaya know what will make you feel better!" said Yaya after she had recovered. "COOKIES!" And so, the guardians made their way to the Royal Garden. Some of the people who were still hanging around the school watched us as we went. Apparently, the fact that I had passed out had already been told to the whole school, and rumors were already circling.

As we were dining on cookies and scones, I asked on a whim, "So why do people call you a prince, Tadase-kun?"

I looked over at Tadase, who was clenching his fists and looking down at the table. The little crown appeared on his head, and he jumped up, pointing at me accusingly.

"I am no prince. I am a king! Address your king correctly, commoner! You will all listen to me! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!" Tadase closed his eyes and laughed his evil, world-domination laugh. Azami started to fly from my shoulder to Tadase, but I caught her by the tail. She hung from my hand, arms crossed, not bothering to struggle.

"What was that for?" she asked. Tadase continued to laugh in the background.

"As much as I know you want to, no claws. Okay?" I said.

Azami grumbled a bit. "Fine. Just let me down!" Just as I let her down, Tadase's crown disappeared. He noticed what he was doing and sat down meekly.

"Sorry about that..." Tadase said, eyes averted downward. While the rest of us laugh, Kiseki went up to him.

"A king is never sorry! The commoners should beg your forgiveness for laughing at you!" said Kiseki. Sounds a bit like Azami. I thought. A dragon never does this. A king never does that. Maybe I'm more like Tadase than I realize.

As if sensing my thoughts, my chara floated up to my ear and whispered, "Do you remember those fiery accidents I was talking about? If you fall in love with Tadase, don't be surprised if you learn first-hand what those are like." Of course, the threat was said jokingly. If she killed me, then she would die, too. But I got the message. She didn't want Azami x Kiseki to happen. I could understand that.

* * *

To Azami's annoyance, it was Tadase that walked me home after all of us decided it was time to go home. We conversed normally for the first half of the walk home - we talked about our different teachers, the events of the day, etc. Kiseki and Azami, for their part, listened but did not talk. They were still pretty angry at each other. The tension between them was less pronounced when around all the other charas, but when they were the only two around, it practically made the air sizzle.

It was when we were about four blocks away from my house that I brought up the subject that had been on my mind the past day or so.

"Was it wrong for Azami to call Kiseki a kiddy-king yesterday?" Tadase covered up his flinch at the name better this time, but it was still noticeable.

"No, it was fine." Tadase replied, with Kiseki giving a quick shout of annoyance behind him. I sensed more than saw Azami stick her tongue out at Kiseki, taunting him.

"But..." Tadase trailed off.

"But what?" I asked.

A look of anger entered Tadase's eyes, though he kept the rest of his face composed. "That's what Tsukiyomi Ikuto, a traitor to the guardians, calls me. He does it to taunt me."

"Azami told me about Ikuto." I said as the chara in question chased Kiseki around, brandishing her dangerous claws. "She'd learned about him from the other charas. She said that he took something called the Dumpty Key, I guess. And that it was a pair with Amu's lock that she wears around her neck."

"Azami was right, then." Tadase replied. "The first king's chair of the guardians had left the Dumpty Key and Humpty Lock with the guardians. He had told us to simply keep the Dumpty Key, and to give the Humpty Lock to a person with three charas. That turned out to be Hinamori-san."

It was about at this point that we made it to my house. I thanked Tadase before heading inside. Both of our charas were fuming with anger - Kiseki was angry at Azami for chasing him around, and Azami was angry because Kiseki kept on calling her a commoner even when she was chasing him around. It was for this reason that neither sensed the chara on top of a nearby roof. A surprisingly cat-like chara. Nor did either Tadase or I notice the cat-like boy - complete with tail and ears - perched on the nearby roof as well.

The cat-chara chuckled. "That chara looks fun! She certainly knows how to deal with that annoying Kiseki, nya~!

"Yes... they do look like an interesting couple." answered the teen, who could be only one person:

Tsukiyomi Ikuto.

Wow, first my chapters keep getting longer, then they start getting shorter... oh well. I guess it just depends on my mood. I probably could've put this chapter and the last one together, but I like cliffies.

Thanks to Water Ichigo-chan for favoriting and reviewing! And yes, I know. Azami does rule. lol...

I've said it before and I'll say it again, but please review! Also, if you haven't figured it out yet, this will probably be a long fanfic. I don't know how long, cause I really don't know what's going to happen. Seriously, I don't. I'm simply going with the flow~ I've got got vague ideas of what will happen in the next couple days of the fanfic, as well as even vaguer ideas of what might happen farther on, but other than that, nothing. It's a lot more fun for me to write that way, so that even I don't know what will happen next.