Poppy O'Possum

After six uninterrupted minutes of summarizing episodes and pointing out recurring themes, Boris finally started winding down, having grown several inches during his speech.

“-So basically, Hambo’s character arc is about learning to dedicate his strength to those who can’t defend themselves, rather than those who already possess power, but simply don’t want to put their own lives on the line. He’s not very complex, but his earnest, unflinching nature makes him really easy to root for in extreme situations.” Boris scratched at his chin, looking rather self-satisfied with his in-depth analysis. Poppy knew it was the perfect time to strike, and looked away slightly, batting her eyes for effect.

“A brave, selfless knight who always stands up for the weak, huh?” she pondered in the most admiring tone she could put on. “I sure wish he was around for us right now.”

“Yeah, he’d be able to hel-” He stopped suddenly, his eyes narrowing in realization. “Waaaiiiit. Wait, hold on, yeah, I see what you’re doing here.”

“Oh?” Poppy said, making no effort to mask her intentions.

“You’re trying to implicitly compare me to one of my personal heroes so I’ll feel obligated to protect your friend in some attempt to live up to his example, aren’t you?” Boris’ body was steaming slightly as it grew now, his confidence returning to him.

“Is that what I’m doing?” She was actively goading him now.

[Image 1]

“Yeah? YEAH!? You think it’s that easy to play me, O’Possum? Like I’m just gonna drop everything else to emulate a cool cartoon character?! Well, girly, lemme tell you somethin’ right now!!”

[Image 2]

“YOU’RE GOD DAMN RIGHT.”

—

[Images 3+4]

Friedrich Zarigüeya blinked a few times, snapping back to lucidity as tranquilizers in his system wore off. The first thing that registered as his vision returned was the Canopy sea dragon’s piercing blue eyes peering back at him from within a large tank directly in front of him, and for a brief moment, he thought they might have been inside Kit’s lab. But everything else about his surroundings was unrecognizable, and the full direness of his situation quickly made itself apparent as he tried to bring his hand up to his throbbing head and couldn’t. He found himself strapped to a wheelchair, with a muzzle loosely fitted over his snout, his soul patch prosthesis stripped from his shoulder, and his short, prehensile tail taped firmly into place up the back of the seat. He was left with the ability to speak and little else, and even that was of questionable use as the foggy sensation in his head still slowly cleared away.

He managed a short series of inquisitive groans for a moment, but as cognizance returned to him, silenced himself again, realizing he needed to gather as much information about his surroundings as possible without alerting his captors. He could turn his head slightly, but the wheelchair’s wheels were locked, denying him the ability to rotate and look behind himself. It hardly mattered, anyway, the only useful source of light in the room were the tank lamps, casting a soft blue glow over him. There were tiny specks of lights dotting the walls beside the tank, marking various switches and inactive screens, none of them of any use to him. Above the tank was an alcove for handlers to dump in food, with a stairway leading up from the ground floor.

I was right, Friedrich thought, noticing a series of small hologramic cameras lined up along the glass pane of the tank, itself a perfect replica of the one back at the lab. They were using the dragon to hide the contents of the real tank after all, and as it locked eyes with him, he realized its odd behavior must have been the result of it watching and reacting to the people moving around in this room. It occurred to him, having spent weeks observing the lab in secret, that this plan required a staggering amount of foresight and effort, constructing an identical tank, setting up cameras, and syncing up the feeding times in this location with Kit’s activity within the lab, all just to throw off the trail if someone somehow managed to sneak a spy camera into the lab as he had. He didn’t know what was more unbelievable: that Chicadino was so paranoid that he would think to do all of this in advance, or that he himself was so paranoid that he managed to spot the one, single tiny flaw that went unaccounted for.

[Image 5]

He could take no satisfaction in having his theory validated, however, after having been ambushed and taken prisoner so casually. Friedrich couldn’t determine exactly how much time they had knocked him out for, but judging by the dull pain running along his back, it couldn’t have been more than a few hours since Valente had trapped him under his burning talons. He couldn’t recall the moment of being drugged, however, and could not know whether he’d been unconscious the whole time, or even continuously.

Had he already been “gleaned and cleaned,” as Chicadino had put it? By the sound of it, Friedrich theorized it was some process of magical interrogation and memory alteration, although it seemed unlikely that they would begin wiping a portion of his memory and not cover their tracks fully. Either they hadn’t yet started, or they simply couldn’t risk him knowing what information they wanted for even a moment more than necessary. In a rare glimmer of optimism for him, he chose to hope for the former, not wanting to consider what sort of dangerous secrets he was capable of betraying. Betraying…

Friedrich thought about his Queen, suddenly. One of the last things he could remember hearing was Chicadino, irritated about something. “That Darling picked an inconvenient time to start taking after her old man,” he’d said. Kit was rebelling against him, most likely at O’Possum’s behest. He’d doubted her intentions and she’d proven him wrong, and now he was useless to her in her time of need. Friedrich scowled, disappointed in himself.

“I have no right to call myself a Knight,” he admitted quietly to no one but a lobotomized dragon and the darkness around him, his only remaining peers.