Disclaimer: Not mine, no money, don't sue...

For further warnings, see part 1

Also: We do not own Grandia (though we wish we did!) I'd also like to thank Tolkien, Shakespeare and the creator

of Slayers for all their help! (figuratively) We do not own Slayers, Midsummer Night's Dream, or The Hobbit.

17. ~_~ YAMATO

This sucked. This really really sucked. If I thought being brought before the Icarian Ruler was nerve wracking, then THIS was down right terrifying.

Due to the Duke’s big-ass-mouth, every imp, dwarf, pixie, sprite, elf, nymph, gnome, etc.... they had seen us, and before Takeru could even pull an arrow out of his quiver to knock it, we had been seized and bound fast.

I was just a bit upset. Faeries scared me, I had encountered them before. I had hoped I’d never have to deal with them again. It was the time I first found out about magic sense. Because of the gift that my brother and I had been given, my life was saved that time. I was hoping it would help us this time, too.

At the present moment, though, I was ‘being tended to’ by several faerie hand-servants.

"Oh, he’ll make a GREAT wedding present for Titania-sama! Oh, look, green is JUST his color!" a pink one tinkered.

A pale blue one piped up, "Oh, yes, but this little one’s golden hair is MUCH better for her highness!" she gestured at my little brother.

Another three faeries were tending to Taichi’s hair, "What IS this? A cactus?"

A green spoke up, "No, I think it’s a bird’s nest!"

A yellow glowing pixie sighed, "I hope King Oberon doesn’t kill us for giving him this THING!"

But as I was saying, this terrified me. The pixies had covered my brother, the idiot and I with ribbons of various colors and sizes over our clothing. They tied bows over our chests and the base of our backs, encircled ribbons around our boots and hands, and created a sash about our necks. All in all, I felt like a gift-wrapped schoolgirl.

What scared me the most about the outfits was the way they had to use magically enchanted hair bows to tame Kamiya’s mane....

Even then, a good portion of the faerfolk stared at him in absolute dread and horror. A few of them even whimpered and fell to the ground, immobile.

I, on the other hand, fell to glaring at him. Very hard. Every so often my hands twitched. I could almost feel myself wringing his pencil thin neck that held his incredibly hollow head. But, no...Some dreams don’t come true, I guess...

I winced as a dark blue faery and a deep crimson one alighted on my shoulders, two others doing the same to my little bro. They avoided Kamiya at all costs.

"Alright, then, come on, move it," The blue one said.

The red one smiled cheerfully. "Yeah! On to the presence of King Oberon!!"

A yellow one spoke up from Takeru’s shoulder. "The King will be very pleased with us!"

The two circling ‘His Grace’ sweatdropped. "We’re dead, you know..."

The other sighed and nodded hopelessly. "Yea..."

Well...skipping a good many lamentations of those two faeries and exclamations of the others, we were finally led to stand in our...overly ornate outfits before who must’ve been King Oberon.

He was an impressive figure. He had cool gray eyes that seemed to pierce into your soul, chestnut hair curled about his face and ears (which were, the ears that is, quite long), tall (taller then Stupid and I, that’s for sure.) and obviously of great physical health.

Of course the image was ruined by the fact that he was totally and utterly wasted.

"Soo.." He started in an annoyingly Irish accent, slurring his words together, "Wha’ be these mortals that ye ‘ave brought ‘afore me?"

A few Faeries prodded us to kneel before the chestnut-haired Oberon. "They’re human slaves we’ve brought as a wedding gift to your Majesties!"

Suddenly a glittering white faery appeared. She (I think..) smiled delightedly. "Oh, how wonderful!" ‘She’ exclaimed.

Suddenly she blinked and flittered a few feet closer, then blanched. "But what, pray tell...is *that*..?!?" Here she trembled and pointed to Kamiya, who was looking off into space happily as he had been doing this entire ordeal. I was faintly surprised that Takeru had remained silent, but then...That might have been due to the large ribbon covering his mouth...

Back to the happenings on hand, the ‘Queen’, as I assumed she was, was still pointing to Kamiya, pure fear flashing across her hardly-discernable features.

"That’s a mortal, Your Majesty,." one of the Faeries said quietly.

I rolled my eyes, a ghoul more like.

"It resembles more of a demon..." She sniffed. (Perceptive isn’t she?) "Anyway," she turned up her nose and examined my brother and I. She seemed to come into clarity as she faced us. Titania had sharp beautiful features that seemed to shift and change. (Don’t ask me. I thought it was weird, too.) But her eyes remained constant, a fluid purple. Her body was draped with a filmy robe that dragged behind her and glinted in the lamplight. Ebony hair flowed down her back and hung in long strands into her face.

Looking me over with almond-shaped eyes, Titania smiled sweetly. "Well...Now this one is very exceptional. Quite lovely..." She reached out a long willowy hand for my prized hair. I flinched back slightly, avoiding her. I didn’t like *anyone* touching my hair.

Oberon laughed drunkenly at this. "You have too much of a love for mortals, My dear..."

She looked at him with disdain; "They are fascinating. If you would take to time to observe, you might agree."

"Well I don’t."

"Suit yourself."

They struck me as mismatch. I don’t think they’re relationship is going to last. Wait a minute! I shouldn’t be thinking about marital (in my opinion martial: word games are fun!) problems! I needed to be getting us out of this!

The entire time I was in the presence of the faerfolk my Magic sense was going through the roof. But here in the face of the King and Queen my system had to filter the information to keep from overwhelming me. In other words...they were very powerful. How I planned to get away was... beyond me at the moment.

Finished making her point to her new husband, Titania returned to examining her wedding gifts. (A.K.A. us) "Uh…He’s so close minded sometimes." She turned her gaze to Takeru and removed the ribbon from his mouth. "My, you’re a young one, I must say. How old are you, dear?"

Takeru just stared at her wide-eyed.

"Twelve." I supplied. My voice didn’t shake. Go me.

My page blinked once and threw me a confused glance but said nothing. He was older than that, I knew, but I had my reasons.

The fey woman blink, "My you ARE a young one. It’ll be a bit before you’ll be useful for anything other then a hand servant. But you do have promise…" She smiled and thanked the Faeries hovering on Takeru’s shoulders for their thoughtfulness. They smiled between each other; proud of the praise they had received.

Oberon snorted, fingering the cockleshells he had been presented with earlier, "Mortal’s are so short-lived anyway. Does it even make a difference?"

"Of course it makes a difference!" the queen huffed, "Humans have a peculiar maturing process. You can’t just mate with one at any age. It’s obscene."

Well. That clears up my use. Though I still wanted to know what they planned to do with the Duke. Surly he wouldn’t be used the same way. *That* also would be obscene. I dismissed the thought quickly. It was revolting.

Anyway, back to reality. Titania had moved on to me.

I stared up at the regal figure, not really enraptured by her beauty or stunned by her power, but more terrified of the look on her face. It reminded me of the look a hyena gives a sick wildebeest with two broken legs.

It was then that mouth suddenly moved without the aid of my own brain, "Hungry?"

Titania seemed taken aback that I had actually said THAT. I mirrored those thoughts.

"Well, well, at least this one talks," she spoke to the faeries who had become my ‘benefactors’.

The two beamed, "Well, you should have heard the words he was using earlier. He had a lot to say then," they stated as if it made me a better gift than anything else did.

I had another urge to suddenly spit out a sarcastic remark, but I know that speaking out of turn to faeries is bad. Very bad. Incredibly bad. PAINFULLY bad.

Titania smiled, "That’s very good, thank you, I’ll enjoy this gift," she paused (probably for dramatic effect, faeries do that, I’ve noticed) "I’ll enjoy it greatly."

Not wanting to stick around to learn all the ways she was going to enjoy me, I decided to plead my case. (Also, in case I needed to use the Duke as a bargaining chip, she shouldn’t have a chance to look too closely at him).

"Hold it."

All eyes turned to me.

"I’ve got a problem with this." I stated firmly. Good opening, Yamato, now what? Think, stupid… "You see," I continued, trying my best to keep my voice from cracking, "We had no intention of coming across your celebration. It was the Duke’s fault. So could you keep him and let me and my brother go?" I gushed that last part in my rush to get it all out before I lost my gall.

From beside me, my brother cheered quietly. On the other hand, the reactions I got from the faeries were just a bit different.

There was a collective gasp from the gathered faeries, shocked that I had spoken to the Queen directly.

Oberon just laughed.

And once again, it was Titania who scared me.

She leered at me, "I like you."

I blanched.

"You’ve got balls." She traveled downward as if to emphasize the point. "You have spunk, I hope you carry that on to other things."

I gulped, "That’s for me to know and you to find out. But would you PLEASE listen to me this time? We’re on a very important mission (sort of) to save a Duchy. Which, by the way, this Duke here owns, so keep him, he’s much more useful than Takeru or me," I spouted hopefully.

"Mortal problems are not our concern." Oberon snorted into his cup.

Titania shot him a look™. "Shut up, I like him, Oberon."

"Big deal, it’s just a MORTAL!" He shouted back.

Now *this* was good! I could use this.

"Don’t raise your voice to me!" Titania yelled.

"Oh HUSH, woman!" Oberon shot.

Then the insults began. About three faeries surrounded Takeru and covered his ears.

"You %^^^*#^*#%*!"

"%&#^&* you!"

"&*&((&((*&^&^#% ^&#^&^ and %^&# you %&%# so ^%&* ^%$##^ because %^%$% &^$^er!"

"#%^%^* my &#$&#!"

"Oh yeah, well ^&%*$&%^&^#"

"How rude!" Oberon finished.

"Oh, please, Oberon, are you gonna let a WENCH talk to you that way?" I coaxed slyly.

"NO WAY!" the proud king sputtered drunkenly, "You should learn your place, you worthless haughty bitch!"

"Titania, you’re the QUEEN of the faeries, do you DESERVE that?" I sympathized for my own benefit.

"That’s right!" she shouted, "I KNOW my place, in charge of things, you drunken vagrant!"

This was better than I thought! But suddenly my magic sensed went off. Uh oh, I may have started something a bit bigger than I counted on, for my sense was telling me that Titania and Oberon were suddenly getting charged.

Takeru kind of groaned from my side, I could tell he was getting a blast of this, too.

"Are you angry?" Duke Kamiya suddenly spoke, "If you’re busy, we can come back later at a better time?" he sincerely considered returning.

If I weren’t in pain, I would’ve hurt the idiot for speaking. (Which was the reason we were in this situation in the first place.)

In the midst of my struggle between magic pain and the desire to wipe Taichi from the face of the earth, I picked up another pinging. This one didn’t hurt, but it was also steadily getting stronger, reacting to Titania and Oberon’s now full-out faerie magic WAR (with a capital W-A-R). It felt like a dull pinging in my inner ear. Like there was a small bell going off in my head, drowning out most sound around me.

It took me a moment to figure out where it was coming from. I searched with my senses and pin pointed it to…my pocket.

My pocket? What was in my pocket that would set off my sense. It was strange. It felt different from faerie or mage magic, mage you can smell and faerie magic flows over your skin, I could hear it. What was…

The ORIHALCON!

I maneuvered my bound, ribbon covered hands over to my pockets and retrieved the statue.

Everything stopped. Again all eyes turned to me.

"He-he has an Orihalcon!" a random faerfolk cried from the crowd of on lookers.

"Careful, he might activate it!" yelled another.

I smiled slyly and held it out in front of me.

All of the faeries around me backed away. I grinned. I could use this!

I looked at the King and Queen.

Oberon appeared honestly frightened of the little statue. This was it!

I had power!

I had control!

I had *no* _clue_ how to use it!

"See, what did I tell you about his spunk?!?"

I blink once and looked at the shadow towering over me. The queen of course, she didn’t look at all intimidated…she was *beaming* at me!

I winced. Visibly. I pulled out my sword (Do not ask *how* I did it. I did. Accept the incredibly non-existent fact.), and sliced Takeru’s bonds. I threw the sword back into the sheath. (My own wrists still tied), and shoved him in front of me (also still holding out my protective ward).

"Ok. It was nice meeting all you, but we must *really* be going." The corner of my mouth twitched as I jabbed Takeru’s ribs. "Now we’re going." I barely managed to grit out.

All this time, Kamiya was _still_ staring blankly out into space. The imbecile. But I didn’t care, as Takeru and I were sprinting through the frightened mob, thankfully leaving the most of our troubles behind us. Kamiya included, of course. Takeru seemed just content to flee as well.

But just as we left sight of them, a stray Kamiya went flying into a nearby tree. "If you’re leaving, take THAT with you!!!!!!!"

I moaned, "Aw |= |_| ( K!"