Note: It's 3AM and I don't think I've had more than 4 hours of sleep since Saturday. Plus, I'm in the middle of a sugar/caffeine high: 3 Mountain Dews, 2 Hershey bars, and I'm not sure what that was that my friend made in Home Ec, but it was sugary.... You've been warned.

"Kahh ah ahv umm oop?"

"What?"

"Kahh ah ahv umm oop?"

"Cye, wait until I'm done taking your temperature, okay?"

"O-ay."

"Miaaaaaa!" another voice groaned.

"What is it, Rowen?" Mia asked, trying to stay patient.

"I'm dyin' here!" he exclaimed. Then he turned big, sad puppy eyes on her and, in a soft, innocent voice, said, "Can I have just one more pill, puh-LEASE??"

"Rowen, you've already had 5 this afternoon! Any more and you'll need your stomach pumped!"

"BEEP! BEEP!" the thermometer insisted. Cye sluggishly took the impatient plastic stick out of his mouth and handed it to Mia.

Mia read its face and frowned. 102.0, and they were out of Tylenol. The only medicine of any sort left was Rowen's prescriptioned painkillers for his little...accident.

Mia sighed. "Look guys, I'm going to have to go into the city. We're in desperate need of some more medicine for you guys."

"What about my soup?" Cye asked with bigger puppy eyes than Rowen's. Dalmation, in fact. Chicken Pox Dalmation, and it was pathetic. But it did keep Yuli away, who'd never had them.

"Huh?"

"My soup! That's what I was asking you for. I'm starving!"

Mia giggled nervously. "Uh, Cye....the guys had a Monopoly tournament last night, and, well..." "No! He didn't!" Cye nearly screeched.

"Kento lost and went on an even-larger-than-usual eating frenzy again?" Rowen asked, his face shen at the thought of those poor, defenseless parishables and the naive, innocent snacks... It was just too much.

Mia nodded sadly. "Not a morsel was spared."

Rowen bowed his head in respect for the passing of the many edibles. Cye looked ready to scream.

Hey! Cheer up! I'll go right now and get back as soon as I can with medicine and food, and I'll even bring you back some movies to watch, okay? Okay?"

"Okay," they consented half-heartedly.

"Great! Now what movies should I get?"

"Slasher flicks!"

"No way! I hate those!"

"Well, then what do you want?"

"Umm....what 'bout a romantic comedy?"

Rowen stared at Cye long and hard, and said, "Cye, buddy, you seriously frighten me."

"What?"

"Nothing, man."

"No, really. What?" "Oh, really!? Well, then..."

"No, I wanna know!"

"It's nothing. Nothin' at all. Except..."

"Except what?"

At that point, Mia knew it was pointless and left, praying that they wouldn't get into too much trouble. After all, the guys would be home from school in a couple hours. How much trouble could they get into?

Some time later, Cye groaned from the loveseat. Rowen groaned back from the couch, where he was precariously perched atop several dozen pillows that were supposed to make him "more comfortable."

"Rowen?"

"Yeah, Cye?"

"..."

"Cye?"

"Hm?"

"You were saying?"

"I didn't say anything."

"Yes, you did. I heard you!"

"Well maybe those voices in your head said something, but I didn't."

"Hey! I don't hear voices in my head! ...Anymore. And anyway, none of 'em ever had a British accent! Well, 'cept for Lizzy, but you are no Lizzy, tell you, me!"

Silence, except for an 80s sitcom on TV.

"Hey, Rowen?"

"Yeah, Cye?"

"..."

"Yes, Cye?" Rowen said through a clenched jaw.

"What?"

"You said my name."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did!"

"You're crazy!"

"N-I....you have no proof of that!" Rowen sniffled, about to cry.

"Aww, c'mon, don't cry."

"...*sniff*..."

Cye sighed. "Look, Ro, I'm sorry I said you were crazy. Will you try not to cry now?"

Rowen let out a last pitiful sniffle. "Maybe. What'll ya do for me?"

Cye racked his fever-fogged brain for something of value to Rowen. I know!

"I'll get some more of those pills for you?"

Rowen sat on the thought for a record total of 2.2 seconds. "Deal."

"Good."

Cye barely managed rto escape from the throes of his many blankets and got to his feet, where an oddly pleasant rush of dizziness greeted him.

"Hoo, boy," he slurred, intoxicated.

Rowen gave him a suspicous glare, but let him stumble off to retrieve the desired painkiller.

Somehow Cye managed to make it upstairs to the bathroom and over to the medicine cabinet. Mia wasn't kidding about needing more meds. Even through his blurred vision, Cye could only see two bottles in the cupboard. He squinted his sea-blue eyes until they were closed, but couldn't make out the labels. So, with a quick game of Eeny Meeny, chose a bottle, one which was clearly marked

Cye squinted at it some more, attempting to will the print into order. When it didn't seem to work, he shrugged, downed three of the oval pills and ambled back to the den, muttering, "rowen's not the only one with pain ta kill, ya know."

By the time Cye re-entered the den, a long, long time later, he was teetering drunkenly and giggling like a madman, a manic smile stretching his face from here to New Guinea.

Rowen just stared, trying to figure out what was wrong with him.

"Teehee. What are you - heehee - starin' at? Heehaw, ehehhehteetaw."

"I have no clue."

"Heh, that was funny!" Cye beamed. This was becoming scary very fast.

"Uh...huh. Um, Cye....whatcha doin'?"

"Nothin'."

"Oh, really?" Rowen asked doubtfully.

"Mm hmm."

"Somehow I find that hard to believe..." he muttered.

"Huh?"

"Uh, nothing. Nothing whatsoever."

Cye smiled wider, which Rowen wouldn't have thought possible. "Oh! Look what I brought you!" Cye hopped over to him, humming "Little Bunny Foo Foo."

Rowen just barely suppressed the urge to run away screaming bloody murder. Just barely.

Cye's hand shot into his face, giving him a close-up of the medicine bottle before he snatched it back, popped the cap off and poured out a few of the chalky-colored pills. "Here! Have these; they'll make you feel aaaaalll better!"

Rowen tried to shrink away, but Cye was an irresistible force of nature calling to him, and he gulped them simultaneously without a drop of gool ol' H2O.

~10 minutes later~

"Hey, Cye!" Rowen yelled, his smile lighting up half of the Eastern Hemisphere as he fidgeted agitatedly where he half sat, hald crouched on the tip of the couch.

"Yeeeeeeess?" Cye asked while jumping fiercely from chair to chair.

"D'ya wanna play a game?" he asked devillishly.

Cye never stopped his hopping frenzy. "What kind of game?"

"The fun kind." Cye gave him a curious look.

"The kind that involves sticky, grey tape, and lots of it."

Cye's jumping halted. They exchanged Cheshire cat grins that could've been seen from space.

~~~~~

"Hey, we're home!" Ryo called as he, Kento and Sage trudged into the house. Silence greeted them.

"Hey, gu-" Ryo stopped when he spotted a grey mass just beyond the entryway. The three teens got closer.

It was White Blaze, bundled up in duct tape which reached out in tendrils that sort of made the mystical tiger resemble....a spider. Only his nose and eyes were visible.

"Blaze! My baby! What'd they do to you??" Ryo screamed in agony. It was then that they noticed that not only was the animal dressed as a spider, but he was perched on a gigantic duct tape spider web that filled half of two walls of the den! Not only that, but all over the room were intricate grey webs and their sticky creators. In one, you could even find a spider wrapping its prey for dinner.

"Wha...wha...what happened???" Sage struggled, awestruck by the sight. Barely an inch of the room remained that wasn't covered in grey tape.

"HIIIIEEEEEE!!" two cheery voices called. The trio whipped around to witness perhaps the single most peculiar sight they had ever seen in their lives.

Rowen and Cye, aka the Taped Crusaders, stood near the doorway, still almost bursting with energy, both almost solid grey in appearance.

Cye had tapedover his clothes to make what must've been a wetsuit, complete with mask goggles that were slaughtered with with tape and left him blind, since they were on.

Rowen was another story. Under the rolls of tape, he wore his winter snow pants and a puffy winter jackets with thick gloves. A ports helmet of some sort was lost under layers of tape. He was an astronaut, presumably.

"What. Did. You. Do???" Ryo and Sage said in perfect unison.

"Wow. they even had the same tone and pitch," Cye marvelled.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY TIGER???" Ryo bellowed full blast.

The pair looked puzzled. "He was helping us with the game."

"What game?" Sage didn't want to know. Kento just stared, stunned.

"Well," Cye sang, hopping from foot to foot. "We were bored, so we decided to play a game."

"Yeah," Rowen backed. "First, we each dressed up as something cool, and I won because mine looks better," he beamed.

"No, you didn't!"

"Shut up, Cye," Rowen snapped, trying to not explode. Implode. Whatever. "Anyway, then - heehee - we decided to have a race."

"Yeah, to see how long it'd take us to make up an entire room for each one of us, Mia, Yuli, and the Warlords."

"What do you mean 'make up a room'!??" Ryo demanded.

"Silly," Cye taunted. "Like this." He gestured around them, spinning in place until he fell over.

"You mean...?"

"Yup. Dais."

"Well, actually," Cye popped back to his feet, talking so fast they could barely hear him. "We ended up with my room looking like the sea, with fish hanging from the ceiling and a humpback whale and a tidal wave almost swallowing everything, and Rowen's was all spacy, with galaxies and solar systems and stuff hanging like mobiles all over. Ryo, yours looks like it's on fire, with a big mushroom cloud in the middle, 'cuz ya like to explode. Sage's has three big lightning bolts from ceiling to floor and a bunch of combs and spray bottles and stuff, and it's in the bathroom 'cuz he lives in there, while Kento's is the gourmet channel in the kitchen."

"Then Mia's are mannequins of star wannabies and has-beens. Yuli's are models of Barney and Teletubbies and the Power Rangers, 'cuz they're all so damn annoying. Anubis's is all things that are red, like apples and Valentine cards, Sekhmet's is covered with different kinds of snakes, and's in the basement 'cuz that's where the creepy crawlies always are. Cale's has heads modeling new hairstyles in the other bathroom, 'cuz he needs to spend more quality time with a mirror, Kayura's is of celebrity bitches, and you've seen Dais's," Rowen finished.

Sage, Ryo, and Kento stood there, stunned into silence, until Kento asked, "How long did it take?"

Rowen looked thoughtful. "Maybe two hours."

Their chins fell to the floor.

"I thought you two weren't feeling good?" Sage inquired suspiciously.

Rowen fidgeted. "Well, we're better now!"

"But Ro, you slipped in the kitchen making your breakfast yesterday and cracked two ribs and got a second degree burn on the stove on your way down because you were late for school and in a hurry and didn't know that the floor was wet because Mia had just washed it!" Kento gushed in one breath. "And Cye's got the Chicken Pox!"

"Aww," Rowen brushed them off drunkenly, but still blushing brightly. "We're doin' fine. You guys worry too much."

The sound of the front door slamming shut made tghe Taped Crusaders' eyes go buggy.

"Actually, I'm still feeling pretty sick, I'd better go rest," Cye dashed out of the room.

"Yeah, uh, ditto," Rowen followed suit.

Kento started counting under his breath. "5....4....3....2....1...."

"ROWEN!!! CYE!!!!"

~to be continued~