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"Nuh, Toroth, that's in 'merica. Here, we say 'nappy'," Paint said, casual as anything, like she hadn't just detonated a bomb in Toroth's brain.
Toroth froze mid-wiggle. The soggy, giggly wiggly situation had already been a surprise, but now? Now there was a word for it. A British word. And they were a dragon hatchling. In London. With a British bat friend.
That meant they had to commit.
"Bloody 'ell," Toroth announced to no one, voice dropping into something that sounded like a chimney sweep having a stroke, "me nappy's gone an' done a right pisser, innit?"
Paint blinked. Slowly. One ear twitched.
"...I just meant we call them nappies," Paint said. "You don't have to..."
"COR BLIMEY," Toroth continued, now fully committed to the bit, waddling in a dramatic circle because waddling was all they had right now, "soggy as a week-old crumpet down there, I am. That's a tragedy. That's a proper British tragedy, cheers."
"Toroth, that's not," Paint gasped between giggles.
"Yew got a soggy one too! Oi, um.. bollocks. We should fix this b'fore Zena sees an' um.. kicks the bucket? Or the bin. Or whatever you lot kick."
Paint put a tiny bat hand over their eyes. "We're not doing this the whole time -you're- soggy, are we?"
Toroth grinned, dragon fangs and all. "Oi yeah, no, yeah, we're doin' this 'til I'm dry, mate. Crivens. That's the law. Queen's law. Naw, naw, naw-- PRINCEX LAW!" and then they crossed their arms over their chest, trying to look as regal as a hatchling in a paper crown and droopy flower print nappy could.
/There is no such law/, Paint did not bother saying.
~
“I hope my sis doesn’t kick the bucket...or the bin...anythin’…” she did end up saying out loud to herself, taking in the whole situation.
Inside her head, Middy did nothing other than sit there with her mouth shut for once and looking as though she was desperately trying not to laugh.
“I think we gotta try an’ get all these na- diapers back off again,” Paint said, making sure not to sound British and set the hatchling off again.
“After all that bloody eff-ort?” Toroth responded in an accent that would make Dick Van Dyke blush. “That’s a big pile o’ wank, that is, mate!” “Nuhhh, don’t say that!” gasped the bat.
Internally, the dam broke for Middy and the little alien let out a noise that was somewhere between a kettle boiling and a zombie groaning.
“What if Zee hears you?!” “Then we’re gonna be stuck like two wankers in a lift, innit!”
Paint tugged her ears down anxiously. This was an absolute disaster. A proper British tragedy, even. In the past fifteen minutes, while Zena had left the two kids with YouTube playing on the TV, they had found a video entitled “TOO MANY DIAPERS CHALLENGE!!!” in which a pair of parents had seen how much padding they could fit on their cub and it had given them both the same idea at the same time.
The parents in the video had managed four. Somehow, by sheer luck (along with encouragement from Toroth and Middy), Paint had managed to fit a grand total of five on the hatchling and was preparing for a sixth when they had wet the bottom layer and thrown their plans into disarray.
She couldn’t tell what was worse; the thought of Zena walking in on Toroth swearing in British with a nappy as wide as their wingspan or having to hear the American dragon commit crimes against their accent.
The bat blinked, and as she did Middy switched in instead, expression changing from a disbelieving stare to a confident smirk. “I gotta plan ‘n’ it’s perfict.”
“You’re gonna get me roight outta this soggy nappy? Cor blimey,” chirped Toroth. “Yu got like four dry ones, yuh?” Middy asked.
"You betcha-” Toroth replied, slipping back into their native accent before catching themself and switching back to Turbo British. “...I mean, you’re bloody roight I do me old bollock!” “Then we just gotta get the wet one off ‘n’ then yu can just wear the rest!”
“...howzat gonna happen?” asked the hatchling Britishly. Middy gave a largely toothless grin and clapped her paws together, interlocking her fingers and cracking her knuckles. “We gotta take ‘em all off at once ‘n’ then yu step into the non-wet ones. Is SIMPLE!”
~
Toroth considered this with the solemn gravity of a philosopher who had just wet themselves in a foreign country.
"...all of 'em?" they asked, one talon tapping their chin. "At once?"
"At ONCE!" Middy confirmed, already vibrating with gremlin enthusiasm. "Is FASTER that way! You gotta go um..." she grabbed the air with both paws and mimed yanking something forward, "... WHOOOOSH, an' then you're FREE an' then you just—" she shoved her paws forward like she was pushing a giant invisible button, "—BWOOP, back in the dry ones! Easy peasy, squeezy... nappy-y?"
"That's not how nappies work," Paint's voice came out muffled from somewhere inside their own head, like a disappointed parent trapped in a closet.
"Shush, you," Middy said cheerfully. "I'm drivin' now." The bat's tail crinkle-wagged excitedly.
Toroth looked down at themself. Four nappies. Five if you counted the wet one, which they were trying not to. The whole construction had achieved a kind of structural absurdity—they could no longer see their own feet, and their waddle had evolved into something closer to a penguin with a back injury.
"...roight," Toroth said slowly. "So I just... hoik the whole kaboodle off in one go, yeah?"
"YEAH!"
"Toroth nodded and continued, "An' then I'm standin' there, bare-arsed, innit..."
"YEAH!"
"...roight, in front of God an' Zena an' all the Queen's horses an' all the King's men..."
"THEY'RE NOT GONNA SEE!" Middy waved her arms wildly. "We're FAST! We're like—like NINJAS! Nappy ninjas! NINJAS IN NAPPIES! "
Toroth blinked. "That's a different video, mate."
"IS NOT!"
"Is too. I saw the thumbnail. Purple background. Lots of shurikens."
Middy looked affronted and shot back with, "NUH-UH!"
"YUH-HUH!"
Paint, internally: I am going to simply pass away.
Middy paused, mouth open to retort, when a sound came from the hallway.
Footsteps.
Zena's footsteps.
The kind of unhurried, "I'm just going to check on the kids because the silence has gone on for too long" footsteps that every babysitter and older sibling in history has ever employed.
Toroth's eyes went wide as dinner plates.
Middy's ears shot straight up.
"QUICK," Middy hissed, "DO THE THING!"
Toroth tilted their head to the side, confused and hissed back, "WHAT THING?"
"THE NAPPY THING!"
"MIDDY YOU JUST, YOU SAID WHOOOOSH THAT'S NOT INSTRUCTIONS—"
The doorknob turned.
Toroth, in a moment of pure hatchling panic, grabbed the waistband of the outermost nappy with both hands, closed their eyes, and yanked upward and forward with every ounce of strength in their tiny dragon body.
There was a sound like twenty-three pieces of Velcro and adhesive tapes weeping in unison.
And then... impossibly, absurdly, miraculously... every single nappy on Toroth came off at once. They hung there for a moment, suspended in the air like a bizarre five-layer diaper accordion, before flopping limply to the floor in a heap of padding and resignation.
Toroth stood in the middle of the room, completely naked from the waist down, tail lashing nervously, still holding nothing but air where the waistband had been.
The door swung open.
Zena stepped inside.
She looked at Toroth.
She looked at the pile of nappies.
She looked at Paint... no, Middy, who was frozen mid-grin with both paws still in the air like she'd just been caught committing a crime against laundry.
"...I'm gonna be honest," Zena said slowly, "I don't even know what question to ask first."
Toroth, in a voice small and American and utterly defeated, whispered: "...cor blimey."
~
The hyena took the scene in silently. There was a lot to get to grips with – either her little sisters had put an entire package of diapers on Toroth and the dragon had ripped all of them off at once with the kind of strength that shouldn’t be possible for a three-year-old, or the two of them had been performing some kind of esoteric diaper ritual and been caught in the act.
Middy lowered her arms slowly and planted her hands firmly on her hips in the sassiest pose she could muster, the grin not leaving her face. “I bet yur wond’rin what happened here just now.” “I really am,” replied Zena in a deadpan tone of voice.
“Well...it all started when me ‘n’ Toroth here-” The alien nodded towards the naked hatchling, who gave Zena a little shy wave. The hyena fought the urge to return one back. “-saw this video on YouTube ‘bout wearin’ too many nappies at once.”
Her big sister’s eyebrows raised in disbelief slightly. “It’s true, I was watchin’ it too!” Toroth chimed in, slowly lowering their arms now that the initial wave of anxiety had passed. “Paint and Middy thought it’d be cool if we broke the record!” “Which was…”
The alien looked down at her closed paw for a moment, trying to figure out how many fingers made up four again. Paint switched back in, lifted their paw up to face Zena while trying to avoid eye contact with her, and spread her fingers out with her thumb tucked in. “Four,” she muttered, and dove back into their headspace to let Middy take the blame for this.
“You made Toroth wear four nappies at once?” said Zena, unable to believe what she was hearing. “Nah, five!” corrected the hatchling. The hyena’s gaze turned to face them instead of her sisters. “...so why aren’t they on you?” Toroth looked slightly bashful and grabbed their tail, wringing it gently as they looked up at her. “...’cuz I wet the bottom one an’ we hadta change ‘em.”
Zena stared off into the middle distance between the two toddlers for a moment, trying to put together everything that had happened. “So Middy put five nappies on you…” “PAINT put five nappies on ‘em!” squeaked Middy at full volume as Paint yelled at her to stop snitching on her mentally. “I cheered her on ‘n’ told Toroth to be a nappy ninja ‘n’-”
She once again mimed ripping a ludicrous amount of disposable underwear off at once and teleporting into the remaining dry ones ninja-style. “-WHOOOOSH ‘n’ BWOOP ‘n’ then yu hadta WALK IN ‘n’ SPOIL IT so now they’re all nakie ‘n’ stuff-”
The hyena put her paws on her temples, feeling the start of a headache rumbling into life from thinking too hard about the ridiculous situation she had walked back in on. “...Toroth, why didn’t you just...why did...why?”
~
Toroth considered the question with the kind of deep, philosophical weight that only a dragon hatchling thinking very seriously can muster.
"...'cause it was *fun*, innit," they said finally, as if that explained everything.
Zena stared at them.
Toroth stared back, still wagging their tail, completely unashamed.
"That's not..." Zena started, then stopped. Rubbed her temples harder. "That's not an *answer*."
"Feels like one," Toroth said, and then added, "Blimey!"
Middy, still beaming like she'd just won an award, nodded vigorously. Her own diaper—bright purple with little stars on it—crinkled audibly with the movement. "Yeah! Felt like one t'me too!"
"That's 'cause you're *both* gremlins," Zena muttered.
"FANK yu!" Middy said cheerfully.
"Wasn't a compliment."
"Took it as one, Zee!"
Zena took a slow, deliberate breath. The kind of breath people take right before they decide that actually, no, they're not going to unpack this. They're just going to put the box in the attic and pretend it doesn't exist. The looked at the pile of nappies on the floor. Five of them. One visibly damp. The rest suspiciously pristine. She looked at Toroth. Bare-scaled from the waist down. Tail still doing that guilty little wagging.
She looked at Middy. Paws on hips. Grin so wide it was practically a threat. Purple starry nappy on full display, completely unbothered.
"...so your *plan*," Zena said slowly, "was to take *all* the nappies off at once..."
"WHOOOOSH," Middy supplied.
"Right, WHOOOOSH," Zena conceded with the exhaustion of a woman who had just added a sound effect to her own sentence, "and then somehow *teleport* into the dry ones before anyone noticed."
"BWOOP," Middy confirmed, complete with hand gesture. Her diaper crinkled again.
"And *you*," Zena turned to Toroth, "just... went along with this. Teleportation. Mid-air diaper swap."
Toroth shrugged. "Sounded better than standin' there while Paint took 'em off one by one. That's *boring*, innit. That's *slow*. I'm a dragon of *action*, me."
"You're a dragon of *three*."
Toroth nodded and said "Same fing."
Zena opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
Middy, sensing weakness, pressed her advantage. "So TECHNICALLY," she said, drawing out the word like a used car salesman, "we didn't do ANYTHIN' wrong, 'cuz the PLAN was SOUND, the EXECUTION was FLAWLESS..."
Zena boggled. Recovered. Then said, "The execution left them nappy-less and on the floor, Middy."
"FLAWLESS up 'til yu walked in*," Middy amended, crossing her arms over her chest. The movement made her diaper *crinkle-crackle* loudly in the sudden silence. "Das' on *yu*. Das' *your* fault. Yu got BAD TIMIN'."
"*My* fault."
"YEP. Yu LEFT. Yu came back EARLY. Das' RUDE, Zee. Das'—*that's* a VIOLATION of—of *privacy* an'—an' *trust* an'—"
"You're one to talk about privacy," Zena said dryly, "considering you're standing there in a diaper *you* didn't put on yourself."
Middy paused. Looked down at her own padded bottom. Looked back up at Zena.
"...das' DIFFERENT," she announced.
"How?"
"'CUZ I *earned* this diaper. Through... through BEIN' CUTE an'—an' MAKIN' GOOD LIFE CHOICES—"
"You tried to teleport a naked dragon."
"A *good* nakie dragon! A *worthy* nakie dragon! Toroth BELIEVED in the VISION, Zee—"
"I really did," Toroth chimed in helpfully. "The vision was sound."
"The VISION was *unhinged*," Zena shot back.
"Unhinged *genius*," Middy corrected.
Zena pinched the bridge of her nose again. Then, very slowly, she looked down at her own hands. Then at the pile of nappies. Then at Toroth's bare bottom. Then at Middy's crinkling purple one.
"Why," she said, not really asking anymore, "is my life like this."
"Poor life choices," Middy offered.
"You're *two*."
"POOR. LIFE. CHOICES."
Toroth nodded sagely. "She's got a point, mate. You *did* agree to watch us."
"I agreed to watch *Paint*. Not..." she paused, gestured vaguely at everything, "... *this*."
Middy's grin softened, just a little. Something flickered behind her eyes, something that looked almost like guilt, except guilt was a foreign language she only spoke in tourist phrases.
"...Paint feels bad," she said quietly, shifting her weight from foot to foot. "She's... she's sorry. We got carried away. The video was RIGHT THERE 'n' Toroth said 'bet you can't do five' 'n' I said 'bet I CAN' 'n' Paint just... got dragged along."
"I was an *instigator*," Toroth said proudly. "A.. a diz-rupped-tor, even!" they added, having hear the word on the radio once.
Zena bit back a laugh and said, "You were a *bad influence*."
Toroth beamed. "Same fing, innit!"
Zena looked at the two of them. Bare dragon. Diapered bat. Both looking at her with varying degrees of unrepentant chaos and very small, very hidden flickers of *please don't be actually mad*.
She sighed. The sigh of hyenas who have seen too much and are too tired to scream.
"...okay," she said finally. "Okay. Here's what's happening."
Middy perked up. Toroth stopped waggingg their tail.
"You," Zena pointed at Toroth, "are getting a *new* nappy. Just *one*. A *normal* amount. Like a *normal* hatchling who does *not* try to break world records during naptime."
Toroth opened their mouth.
"*Don't* say 'cor blimey.'"
Toroth closed their mouth.
"You," Zena turned to the bat, "are gonna help me clean up this mess. And then *you're* gonna sit on the couch and watch something *educational*—like, *actually* educational, not 'how many nappies can you fit on a dragon' educational... until I decide you've learned your lesson."
Middy's ears drooped. "...how long is that gonna take?"
"I'll let you know when *I* know."
"...das' not a number."
"No," Zena agreed. "It's not."
She scooped Toroth up with one arm, the hatchling letting out an undignified "oof", and pointed at the nappy pile with the other.
"Grab those. We're putting them in the bin. And Toroth, if I hear *one more* British accent from you today, I'm stuffing you in a crate and mailing you back to America, one-way."
Toroth's eyes went wide. "You wouldn't."
"Try me."
"...das' *my* line," Middy muttered, scooping up the pile.
"And now it's *mine*," Zena said, already heading for the hallway. "Welcome to consequences."
Toroth, dangling from Zena's arm like a very small, very dragon-shaped bag of potatoes, looked back at their bat friend.
Toroth grinned. "...we'll get 'em next time," they whispered.
Middy, arms full of nappies, grinned.
"YEA we will."
"*Middy*."
"...yea we *will*," she whispered.