A/N: My spacebar is being a jerkoff. It malfunctions. Send muffins; I'm hungry...

CHAPTER TWO

In which the plan is carried out

“You know, I have yet to hear about this ‘amazing’ plan,” Julian commented as the four continued walking. “And why are we walking, anyways? Aren’t we royalty? Don’t we have horses?”

“It’s good for you,” Kai replied, flicking his blonde hair out of his eyes. “You’re getting a bit plump.”

“A bit? Be honest, Kai. I’ve gotten quite plump. Almost to the point of being chubby,” Julian retorted, grinning.

“But you’re comfortable,” Squellys pointed out, poking the archer’s side and smirking as he squeaked. “I remember you being this chubby before and nothing bad came out of it.”

“Aside from Julian getting lazy and slacking off in his bow practice and then almost getting us all killed the last time we went on a quest because he couldn’t hit someone ten feet in front of him, which meant that Squellys blew up a tower even though he didn’t really need to, and then we all had to stop at the nearest village to get patched up, and then the people there decided that we were being snobby, stuck-up royals because Kai refused to eat anything that looked like what I cooked that one time, so then they decided to boot us out into the cold, and Julian and I were both drunk, and Kai was after a few of the male villagers who had been unfortunate enough to be outside the village gates at the time and trying to remove certain bits of anatomy, and we all had to walk for three solid days to get ourselves home, and by that time we were all tired and hungry and if I do recall, Squellys accidentally set fire to my hair,” Raven finally finished, sucking in a huge breath. “Julian, don’t you ever do that again.”

The short-haired blonde blinked a few times. “How on earth do you remember all that?” he asked, somewhat bewildered.

Raven immediately undid his cloak and then pulled up his shirt, revealing a small tattoo on his hip. It was, oddly enough, in the shape of a duck. “Because you convinced me to get my family crest tattooed onto my hip, that’s why. Not to mention I have a scar right here,” he continued, raising his shirt a bit more and showing the prince a scar that cut across his chest. “It’s not that difficult.”

Silence followed for perhaps a minute as the four continued walking, and then Squellys spoke up.

“Was that the quest when we were hired to find out what happened to the cattle in all of the villages below the southern border, or the one where we needed to help a mercenary group drive away those exotic dancers from Kawae using only crossbows loaded with oranges? I forget,” he asked, scratching his cheek.

“I think it was the time that we were supposed to escort that quack of a doctor to the Nidir Desert and he stole all of our money while we were sleeping,” Kai supplied, picking a peach off a nearby tree branch and taking a bite out of it.

“Really? I could have sworn that that happened when we were investigating the spontaneous flames that appeared on peasants’ heads whenever they said ‘twenty-one’,” Raven considered, pulling on his cloak.

“Oh, really?” Julian started laughing. “I thought that that happened while we were cleansing the state of all the black cats on Friday the Thirteenth, and then Squellys kept on having problems determining between black and gray.”

Kai nearly choked on his peach, and a bit of juice came out his nose as he burst out laughing. “I remember that!” he managed to say between fits of giggling. “That crazy cat lady ran us out of town! Julian didn’t stop reacting to the cat hair for weeks!”

“Don’t laugh at those of us who are allergic to fur,” the prince pouted. Kai sighed and slung an arm around Julian’s shoulder.

“We tease you because we love you,” he chuckled, kissing Julian’s cheek. The prince’s cheeks immediately flushed, but he sighed and stole Kai’s peach, taking a bite out of it.

“Well, what’s not to love?” he asked, grinning cockily. Squellys raised an eyebrow.

“Where shall we begin…?” he pondered aloud. “Let’s see, there’s your ego, which has inflated to the size of a small country…”

-()-

“…and last, but certainly not least, your fear of skirts,” Kai finished as he slapped down some coins for their rooms. “I will never understand why you don’t like women. In fact, that applies to all of you. You’re all crazy.”

Squellys made a face. “Then why do you hit on Julian like he’s the best thing since they invented pie?”

“Because he is the one and only exception to that rule, that’s why,” Kai explained. “Let’s dump our clothes in our rooms and hit a bar.”

As they left the inn, Julian had only one thing to say.

“I’m not sharing a room with Kai!”

-()-

An hour later, Raven was the only one moderately sober and was watching his friends with mild interest.

Squellys, for one, was talking with a few of the village girls on how to tell if a man was gay, namely using examples that revolved around himself and Julian. Kai was flirting mercilessly with the waitresses, and sadly enough was about halfway to getting one to come back to his room that night. And Julian was at a table, an arm slung around a young blonde girl who couldn’t have been older than fifteen and a brown-haired man who had to have been almost thirty.

The next morning, Raven decided, would be very interesting indeed.

-()-

Of course, it was.

The sound which originally woke the four up the next morning could have been described as hilarious, if not for the fact that both Squellys and Kai had hangovers. The sound, of course, had been a combination of Raven, Julian, and the brunet from the night before. All three had screamed bloody murder upon discovering that they were all in the same bed, although Julian didn’t seem quite as shocked as the other two.

Upon hearing the scream of bloody murder, Kai knocked down the door, sword drawn.

“Who’s trying to kill Julian and Raven!?” he immediately demanded, glaring at the poor brunet. “You are, aren’t you?” A rather maniacal grin spread over his face, and the duke’s eyes narrowed. “Hold still; I need to castrate you.”

Julian immediately jumped in between the two. “Oh, no you don’t! We didn’t do anything! We collapsed last night! I swear to god that we did!”

“Oh, really?” asked Kai, lowering his sword just slightly. “Prove it.”

“Don’t you think that if we’d done something, we’d be lacking something like, oh, I don’t know…clothes?” the prince asked. “And if we were dying, don’t you think that by now we’d be…y’know…dead?”

Kai sighed. “I suppose that you’re right…but if you and Raven aren’t downstairs for breakfast in five minutes, and if he,” the duke pointed at the brunet, who was attempting to hide behind the bedpost, “isn’t gone in five minutes, something will happen that many of us will regret.”

“Yes, sir,” Raven muttered, tossing a pillow at the blonde. Kai growled, and then pounced on the dark-haired man, drawing a yelp of discomfort.

“You shouldn’t throw things at people. It isn’t nice,” Kai said cheerily. Raven groaned and struggled. Sadly, the duke was heavier, and the lord found himself stuck.

“I win,” Kai said, settling against his friend. Julian just sighed and began leading the brunet outside.

-()-

“Do you think that either of them really know that we didn’t do much aside from kiss last night?” the brunet was asking shyly. Julian nodded.

“Yes. Raven is very convincing, and he was more sober than the rest of us. He’s our designated bailer-outer for when we get too drunk. He wouldn’t let us do anything even if we’d wanted to,” the prince explained.

“I see. Well…it was a pleasure meeting you…although I doubt I’ll see you again. You and your friends are too rowdy for my tastes.”

“Ah…I understand. Goodbye, then,” Julian whispered. Lightly, the brunet lifted his chin and kissed him softly.

“Goodbye,” he murmured.

And then he was walking away, and Julian was trudging back inside.

-()-

“You appear to have a broken heart.”

Squellys said this without a single thought and immediately drew Julian into his arms. The prince sighed and shrugged, nuzzling against the brunet.

“Why is it that every guy I meet is afraid of us?” he asked softly. Kai looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

“Julian. Think for a moment,” he sighed, tossing a pear at the blonde. Julian caught it and took a huge bite.

“Thinking makes my brain hurt,” he complained.

“It’s not my fault you got drunk last night,” Raven commented, sitting down and sliding a cup of coffee to the prince. “Drink.”

Julian sighed but obeyed, and Kai continued.

“Julian, Squellys has blown up water. He’s not what you’d call normal.”

The knight glared. “What about you? You go around castrating any male that isn’t us within a fifty-foot radius! If you hadn’t been drunk last night, all the men around here would be sobbing and missing bits and pieces of their anatomy!”

“You want the definition of drunk?” Julian asked, smiling slightly. “What about that time that Raven went streaking after his parent’s thirtieth anniversary?”

Raven’s left eye twitched slightly. “Julian, my parents are both forty-three. That was their thirtieth anniversary. They married when they were thirteen, because they started ‘experimenting’, and then they told the whole story in explicit detail to the whole party. Wouldn’t you get drunk?”

“Not at all.”

Kai laughed. “You’re talking to the kid with two moms, Raven. You can’t win.”

Squellys nodded. “He’s right, you know. Besides, don’t we have an Ultimate Plan to put into action today?”

“Right!” Julian grinned. “And because you are my best friends, you will tell me this plot to draw out he who has been kidnapping the princes, am I right?”

The other three all looked at him and smiled.

“You’ll find out.”

-()-

“Guys?! HELLO? This is not what I thought you had planned!!!”

Kai took a brief moment from laughing hysterically to shout at Julian.

“It’ll work! You know it will!” He snorted for a moment, and then regained his composure. “Now stop complaining!”

And then the duke collapsed beside Squellys again and began laughing just as hard as the other two.

You see, the unfortunate prince’s weakness was muffins. So Kai had bribed the cooks at the inn to give them enough muffins to keep Julian quiet for about half an hour.

While he was being tied up.

Oddly enough, this went unnoticed until his thirteenth muffin was finished and his hands were tied behind him. Needless to say it had not gone over well, and if it weren’t for Raven somehow managing a straight face, he wouldn’t have been tied up like he was now. Squellys had painted a large sign that said ‘UNATTENDED ROYALTY!!!’ in large, bold, size 200 letters, and Kai had sat there and laughed until he had to pee.

A/N: WHAT FATE AWAITS OUR PRINCE?! FIND OUT NEXT TIME WHEN:

"GUYS?! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?!"

"Follow the glitter."

"WHY?!"

"Muffins?! OH MY GOD, WHERE?!"

AND EVEN MORE!!!