The door to Darryl's room opened as he walked in bearing several dozen textbooks and the heavy press of school work on top of school work. He had an essay on the history of the early Roman Empire (as it pertained to dragons), a paper on the underpinning of motonic magical manipulations using a manifold equation (which every other dragon treated as if they had been using manifold equations since they had been born), and of course, five chapters of reading spread across books on combat, strategy, gold management, mining, and heraldic symbology.
That last one had been his fault. He had thought it was a music elective. How was he supposed to know that a class on Tinctures wasn't about those big drums?
And none of this had done anything to yank the
other
worries out of Darryl's head. For example, he still wasn't entirely sure what PE actually was if it wasn't physical education. And said PE teacher, Tazo, hated his guts. That wasn't fixed.
But then every worry and bit of stress on Darryl's shoulders fell away with a nearly audible
crash
as he stood in the doorway and looked down at his girlfriend. Sasha looked up at him, tugging the plastic zip cuffs tight - the plastic zip cuffs that had been slapped around Xia's wrists and ankles then lashed together with thick bands of leather and metal, making the silver dragonness look as if she had been trussed up by a Japanese rope bondage fetishist.
The tableaux held for a few long moments as Sasha looked up at Darryl and Darryl looked down at her.
"What?" Sasha asked, as if she didn't know why Darryl was giving her
that
look.
"The
fuck
is going on here!?" Darryl squeaked, grabbing and swinging the door shut.
"Well," Sasha said, standing up and brushing her hands along her hips. She was naked, also, which was becoming less of an odd thing for Darryl, considering how most of the dragons going to Prismatic High treated pants as things for
other
people to worry about. "I was recharging my mental energy, so I'd be ready to resist the sex appeal of the, uh, other dragons."
Darryl noticed that someone had tucked what appeared to be a rather large replica of his own dick in the corner of the room. It was still slick and moist. Sasha glared at him before he even opened his mouth to ask. He nodded, gesturing to indicate she should go on.
Sasha sighed, grabbing her shirt and tugging it on over her head. Her voice was muffled for the time it took the shirt to slip past her nose and chin and snap down to cover her. "Basically? Xia came in without knocking, despite me
locking
the door." She shook her head. "And she started putting two and two together. So I knocked her out."
"How?" Darryl asked.
"This!" Sasha held up a nasty looking collar. The edges had small vials that looked like they had been filled with liquid. Needles thrust in from the middle of the collar, and Darryl could see tiny, slightly charred electrodes. "Now, watch the prisoner, I need to reload it with horse tranquilizers."
Darryl scowled as Sasha turned away from him, grabbing up her backpack. Opening it up revealed a bunch of curious looking paraphernalia, including a pistol, a few hand grenades, a second collar, a clunky looking handheld computer, a laptop, and a wrist watch that Darryl was almost positive did far more than telling time. He shook his head. "Wait, wait, wait! Hold up!" he said, lifting his hands.
"Yes?" Sasha asked.
"We have a knocked out dragoness," Darryl said.
"Yes," Sasha said.
"In this room," Darryl said, pointing down at Xia.
"Seems to be." Sasha nodded.
"Who will immediately blab to people the instant she wakes up that you're a freaking
super
spy!" Darryl hissed.
"Firstly, thank you," Sasha said, smiling slightly. "Secondly, she's not going to tell anyone."
Darryl looked at her pistol.
"No!" Sasha said.
"Oh, fhew," Darryl breathed out. "I was worried for a second."
"No, no, I wouldn't waste one of my DKBs on a knocked out dragon," Sasha said, shaking her head. "That's what the eyeplugger is for." She reached into the detritus and pulled out something between a drill and a wine corker with a punching grip. She held up and grinned at Darryl.
"Not filling me with fucking confidence, Sasha!" Darryl said, grabbing the eyeplugger from her hand, jerking it away from her.
Sasha scowled. "Fine, we just need to, uh, sneak her into the forest, and have a skyhook pull her into a black box observation lab at Gitmo where-" She stopped at Darryl's look.
"You're just suggesting that because she slept with me, aren't you?" He asked.
"No!" Sasha said, scowling.
"For a superspy, you're sometimes a bad liar," Darryl said, crossing his arms over his chest. "No Gitmo! Xia's...nice. For a ditsy dragon adulteress."
"We're not married," Sasha muttered. But that was more for show, something to say as she glared down at Xia. She sighed. "Fine" She brushed her hands along her thighs, as if wiping away the dust of hard labor. "Fine, fine, what do we do then?"
"Uh..." Darryl rubbed the back of his neck, drawing an utter blank.
Xia groaned quietly. She started to squirm on the ground, her wings fluttering slightly against the restraints that Sasha had slapped on her. As her eyes shifted under her lids, Darryl looked at Sasha, who shrugged and said: "We could pretend it's part of the roleplay."
"No," Darryl said, shaking his head. "Lets tell her the truth."
"Ah, yes, what a
wonderful
idea," Sasha hissed.
Xia opened her eyes with a groan. "Ugggh..." she whispered, her voice sounding scratchy - as if she had spent her whole nap gargling rocks. She blinked her eyes so slowly that Darryl was worried she had started to fall back into unconsciousness again. Then she tested the restraints on her body, mumbled something unintelligible, and turned into a formless, jelly-like substance. She flowed through and around the restraints, then reformed into her humanoid dragon form and stood up, wobbling from side to side.
"Note to self..." Sasha whispered, looking chagrined.