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Floyd groaned to himself. He was over this. He couldn’t muster any interest in the shopping, especially when Azul was being a killjoy and acting extra fussy over no ‘extra expenses.’ Azul wasn’t here, so he couldn’t stop him or whine about it to his face, but Floyd didn’t think he was in the mood regardless, so there wasn’t a point.
This sucked.
There were a few items they had to get from Foothill Town from time to time on the few days Sam wasn’t on campus. The dude had several stores, so it made sense, but Floyd swore it meant that the Lounge ran out of miscellaneous stock at the worst times. Sometimes Floyd found stretching his legs in town a lot of fun, but today his turn fell on a bad day. He should have strong-armed Azul into switching, since Jade was off on a mountain, but he didn’t particularly feel like running the Lounge either.
Ugh, Floyd was already in town though. He didn’t want to be here, but going back seemed like a hassle too. It was one of his worst days, Floyd was aware, which irritated him further.
He sat down on a bench and threw his head back, staring up at the sky until something changed. At least he liked the weather today, otherwise Floyd would be even more annoyed. The people bustling past didn’t interest him either, nor did they bother him, so Floyd tuned them out. Floyd determined he would sit here and vegetate until something appeared to him or until he mustered the motivation to do Azul’s dumb errand. Whichever came first.
Time passed. Before Floyd’s mood changed, interference from the outside broke through, in the form of a sharp pain suddenly hitting his neck.
Floyd startled forward, yelping a bit but also instantly invested in whatever that was. He could go for a fight right now, he decided. Whatever or whoever hit his neck was due for a squeezing, because that hurt and he was already in a foul mood. He looked instinctively to the side, looking for his target, as he grabbed at his neck to soothe it.
An object met his fingers, and he yanked it out. It was… a dart? His thoughts stopped there, fuzziness more thorough than what he was used to, snuffing out his anger before taking out his body too. Before Floyd even knew what was happening, he stumbled to the ground and blacked out.
Floyd woke up face down on something cold. It felt nice, actually, in his confusion, until he realized he was strapped down. Then he was pissed off, even more so when he remembered that someone hit him with a fucking tranquilizer.
He arched his back and pushed, unable to maneuver his arms to get up but trying anyways; the straps dug into his fins harshly, also causing Floyd to realize he was in his true form, for some reason. “Oi! What’s the big idea?” he growled, switching to ice magic when brute strength failed him.
He didn’t know where he was. It was too bright, there was a metal table beneath him, and everything smelled strong and wrong. Floyd felt panic amidst the anger, because he had no idea what the hell was going on and he was trapped. He hated being trapped, more than anything else. Floyd hadn’t felt like this since he got trapped by those pirate ghosts as a kid, which absolutely did not make his opinion of the situation any higher.
“Hey! He’s already awake!” someone yelled.
“Fuck, he’s using magic. Get another tranq in this thing.”
Floyd couldn’t use much magic as well with his hands pinned, but he coated the straps in ice well enough as he willed them to snap. There were people here, moving around him and ignoring him and they were going to regret this as he tore them apart limb from limb.
He didn’t like this. He didn’t like this at all.
Some lady came at him with a syringe, from the corner of his eye. Floyd couldn’t see much with his head pressed against the table, but he cast Bind the Heart anyway. “Fuck off!”
The needle bent away from him, flying out of her hands. He needed out. He needed to leave, to move, to get away.
“Does he have a magestone?! Where?”
“Shit, he must have had one when we transformed him back.”
“I don’t care! Hurry up and keep him down before he breaks my equipment!”
Floyd grew more desperate the longer it took to get free. It didn’t work. His UM could only protect him from what he could see, and a needle plunged itself into his back in one of his many blind spots. It didn’t take long to start blacking out.
He had an odd relationship with his feelings most of the time, but usually he accepted them and didn’t try to fight it. Rarely, he drove himself to panic over how he felt, but there were exceptions.
Floyd hated being trapped, and he hated being terrified.
He woke up in a new strange place.
Floyd lashed out immediately this time, eager to escape and pay those fuckers back… until he realized he was surrounded by the Arcane Response Unit this time. Not even Floyd was stupid enough to go against them, and apparently, they saved his unconscious ass. His back also hurt. If he didn’t want the ARU’s doctors on him (he really didn’t), then he shouldn’t push it.
So he sat in a corner of the infirmary instead, in a shallow tray of water someone set up so he wouldn’t dry out. He wasn’t in the hospital because they didn’t know how to handle merfolk, much less one currently under the effects of a body changing potion. Floyd didn’t care either way. Numbness replaced the anger and he couldn’t do anything about it.
Stinging pain stretched down his back, even past all the painkillers they gave him. He wanted to scratch at it, but touching the stitches made it worse.
“Mr. Leech?” the mouse lady agent said, entering the room they promised to let him rest in. She was the one who told him what happened: that he had been abducted by poachers who sold rare specimens and parts on the black market. They probably were after his electric organ based on where they cut him open, which was highly coveted in some circles.
He wasn’t even a fucking electric eel.
The ARU had been on their tail before they took Floyd. He still got cut open, though, before they were arrested, or whatever. Then the ARU had to fix him, and not even healing magic could fully do the trick because the incision was so long. That was why he had stitches. Oh, and barring that one time he woke up, he has been out cold for over twenty-four hours.
Floyd hated it. It was bad enough that he got jumped, but it was even worse that he never was able to fight back. He wasn’t even aware of most of what happened. It was as if Floyd blinked and suddenly he lost two days and also got stabbed across the back.
The poachers ultimately didn’t take anything, but Floyd felt emptied out all the same.
“Is that enough water?” the agent asked. He would take issue with the way she treated him like he was fragile if she wasn’t kinda right about it. Nevertheless, she annoyed him the least, because she told him things, so Floyd would let it go.
“Yeah.” The water was fine. It covered his tail and came up to his hips, a few inches below the edge of his wound. If he wanted better coverage, he could lay on his stomach, but that was the absolute last thing Floyd wanted to do at the moment, so he would rather get dry elbows. It wasn’t like he needed water to breathe or anything.
Once Floyd mustered the energy, he would transform back, the ARU’s doctors and their dumb opinions be damned. He at least wanted to be able to move probably. He wanted to leave. Being stuck on the floor was better than being stuck to that table, but he was still stuck and he hated it.
“That’s good,” she said. And then, “Your brother is here. One of your classmates, too. I can send them in if you’re up for visitors.”
That finally sparked something inside of him. “Jade and Azul?” It couldn’t be anyone else, right?
She nodded.
“Yeah, lemme see them.” Floyd didn’t want to talk, or be fussed over, and he didn’t think he could convince himself to do anything, but Jade and Azul were the exceptions to this. It didn’t matter if he was falling apart at the seams with them.
Not long after, the mouse lady (he couldn’t spare the braincells to remember her name or give her a proper nickname) came back, this time with familiar voices.
“Thank you, Agent Gabor,” Azul said politely, anxiety just under the surface. Floyd didn’t bother to pay attention to her reply. The door closed as she left them alone, and despite the fact that he wanted Jade and Azul here, Floyd also decided at that exact moment that he didn’t want to see the look on their faces, at least not yet, so he closed his eyes and tilted his head back.
“You gave us quite the scare there, brother dear,” Jade said, having silently moved to his side and knelt down. There was an underlying shake to his voice that Jade rarely had. Floyd didn’t like it.
“Quite the scare indeed,” Azul muttered. There was no pointed comment about Floyd abandoning the errand, which meant that Azul really had been freaked out. Floyd would be disappointed in them for not playing the game right, but Floyd didn’t really have the energy either. Maybe it was the painkillers. Floyd didn’t like how he felt on drugs; it was too much like the lethargy of his bad days and bad moods. Although admittedly, Floyd didn’t think he wanted to feel the incision parallel to his spine in full force either, so he rolled with it.
“Floyd?” Jade spoke again, quieter. Right, Floyd hadn’t responded.
“Quit worrying,” Floyd groaned, cracking his eyes open. “I’m alive.”
It occurred to him that he almost wasn’t. Floyd wouldn’t even have gone down fighting, not really, because he was unconscious for so much of it. He never got to get a hit on the people who did it, either, and the dumb ARU beat him to it so now he never would. It was lame, and it bothered him in more ways than he could express.
…he would get a cool scar from it, but Floyd couldn’t fully enjoy that either.
“You look positively awful,” Azul returned honestly. “What on earth happened anyway? As cooperative as we were, the fine folk of this establishment weren’t keen on sharing.”
Floyd cracked a smile at that. Azul sounded so salty. “Couldn’t get the fancy magic police to do what you want?”
Azul huffed. “I didn’t want anything unreasonable, I would say.” Which was a ‘yes’ to the question. Floyd knew he dreamed of having big name people like ARU agents in his pocket, but also, unfortunately, Floyd was sorta the one who owed them, so that took a great deal of the fun out of it. At least they were the typical do-gooders in the sense that they would never make Floyd pay them back, which Floyd was more than fine with taking advantage of.
“Your question dodging has gotten better, Floyd,” Jade remarked with a fake smile. Oh, whoops, he made Jade mad.
Time to pass the blame, then, even though the inevitable concern would be such a hassle. Nobody gave Jade and his worrywart tendencies enough credit. But Floyd leaned forward anyway, grimacing when such a simple motion hurt. Ugh, not being able to move right was going to suck.
Floyd gestured to his back, to the right of his dorsal fin and down the length of it. “Got jumped,” he explained simply and sourly. “Fuckers thought I was an electric eel.”
The dawning horror on Jade’s and Azul’s faces, barely contained by their mastered poker faces, was not easy to see, even out of the corner of his eye. Floyd hadn’t seen the injury himself, only felt it, so he couldn’t even know what they were seeing. Being left out of that, too, when it was his body, literally added insult to injury, in Floyd’s opinion. So Floyd looked away, and Jade and Azul very smartly did not comment much further.
Well, except for the promise of revenge, which was a fantasy Floyd would love to indulge, except it being impossible soured that too.
“I see,” Jade said tightly and full of rage. “And the identity of these scoundrels?”
Floyd sighed, disappointed. “Already arrested.”
“...ah. How fortunate.” At least Jade was missing out on that too; it made Floyd feel better.
“Do you know when you’ll be discharged?” Azul asked. “As much as I am sure they took good care of you, I’m sure Night Raven will have just as good of accommodations.”
“I can leave as soon as I can get up,” Floyd grumbled. Officially, he doubted that was the case, but Floyd didn’t care about that.
“Ah, do you not yet have enough magic to transform back?” Jade surmised. The transformation potions let them switch back and forth pretty easily, but it still took some magic.
“Nah, I got magic. ‘M just… tired.” And, maybe, just a little bit worried about how the wound and the stitches and junk would transfer over. That was why the doctors said not to transform, and Floyd didn’t like being told what to do, but he didn’t like tearing his back open either.
This sucked.
“Perhaps I can talk with the doctors,” Azul said, all business and probably smart enough to know the dangers that Floyd didn’t want to talk about. “We can have something arranged. After all, this crime was committed against you in their jurisdiction; it is only fair that they do everything in their power to accommodate you to your wishes, having suffered this grievous injury.”
Oh, Azul was onto something. Leave it to him to find a way to make it sound like they actually owed them for all of this. Floyd grinned back, tired but finally enjoying something in the moment. “Yeah, you got a point there, Azul.”
“Then it’s settled then. We shall have to work something out,” Jade agreed, equally vicious beyond his remaining inability to separate himself from Floyd’s side. Not that Floyd particularly minded, since it meant he could use Jade as a pillow instead of the uncomfortable wall.
He had no doubt in his mind that those two would find a way to expedite this process. Floyd even felt like helping, provided he wasn’t too sleepy, because he wanted to be able to do something again.
…although he would also unrepentantly use this as an excuse to get out of some of the things he didn’t want to do. Floyd was still an opportunist, after all, and he had to find a way to use this ordeal to his advantage, somehow, or else it really might drive him crazy.