Hot and Tot looked around the corner, Tot standing on top of his twin brother.
“Are they there?” Hot whispered.
“You tell me, you’re looking too.”
“Then why are you standing on my back and looking with me!?”
Tot giggled and jumped off of his brother. They continued down around the corner and crept slowly and quietly towards the pillar they had chosen as their goal. They got halfway to it before they heard a chorus of four voices call out from above.
“AHA!”
“RUN!” The two brothers cried out to each other simultaneously as they broke out into a very un-sneaky sprint towards the pillar.
The two yellow goblin-like creatures named Hot and Tot closed the gap between themselves and their goal quickly, but to no avail. The sound of buzzing filled the air as four changelings swooped down from their positions on the ceiling and tackled their targets sideways, catching them before they reached the pillar and pinning them to the ground easily. The two smallest of Thaegan’s children found themselves at the mercy of their grinning captors.
There was a moment of silence…
“CHEATERS!!” the brothers cried out as they struggled to their feet, the changelings now getting off of them. “Cheaters!” they repeated in tandem, now with their arms free to point at them.
“Well you never said we couldn’t fly!” said one of the changelings. “Isn’t that right, Fraud?”
Another changeling answered, “Yup, yup, didn’t say Guile and us couldn’t fly!”
“I call a do-over!” Hot said, a heavy pout on his face.
“Me too, you didn’t say anything about flying!” his brother continued.
The group of changelings looked at each other. They were more than willing to go another round… but there was something else to take care of first…! The two that hadn’t yet spoken stepped forward. Hot and Tot looked even unhappier, knowing what was about to happen.
“Bam, are they forgetting about something?” one said to the other.
“I don’t know, Boozle, are they?”
“I think so. What do you guys, think?” Boozle said to Fraud and Guile, who replied by nodding.
“Boozle, what are they forgetting?”
“FINE!” Hot and Tot said loudly, having had enough of the teasing.
“Hey, no need to yell,” Fraud said, “you two were the ones who made this game up!”
“Hmph,” Hot said while Tot sighed and dragged his brother forward.
The game they had played was something that Hot and Tot played with their other brothers (and sister) anytime they all got together; it was called Sing or Spot. The premise of the game was similar to what we know as Hide and Seek in that one party searches for the other, but there were a limited number of preset hiding places at least a certain distance apart. Other than that, it was fairly standard: find and tag the hiders, if the hiders get to “home base” then they win. However… there was one more difference, concerning which party lost…
The twins stood in front of the winning party, looking down and certainly showing their displeasure at having lost the game. It’d been quite a while since this had happened… They looked back up and saw Bam and Boozle eagerly motion for them to proceed. Hot and Tot gave each other one last look of reluctance before raised their hands, rolled their eyes, and broke out into the song agreed to pre-game.
The two ended with a little pose accented by jazz hands and their audience went wild with laughter. They let them have their fun for a few moments before pulling them up from rolling on the ground. As they stood and stared eye-to-eye, they suddenly realized that they weren’t all that much different from them in height, able to look them in the eye without looking too far up or down (depending on exactly which changeling they were looking at). For some reason it made both parties a bit uncomfortable.
“So…” Tot began, completely forgetting about the rematch. “You guys wanna’ get together and sing again sometime?”
The group collectively remembered their spontaneous teamwork back when Ichabod and the Devourer were brawling.
“Sure!” Guile replied for his friends by nature of being the first to speak. “That’d be great.”
Hot said, “Heheh, you guys have got some good talent for singing.”
“Yeah,” Fraud said, “we practice. It’s too bad none of our other siblings seem to take as much of an interest in it…”
“Really?” Tot asked. “Just you four?”
“Just us four,” Boozle replied.
“We’ve never even had any prisoners that wanted to sing with us,” Bam finished for him.
The twins got an odd look on their faces. “Prisoners?” they asked together.
Bam shuffled a little bit uncomfortably. Maybe mentioning that wasn’t such a good idea…
Fraud had no problem discussing it, though. “Yeah, prisoners!” he continued. “Sometimes we take people we find wandering near the hive as prisoners, or when we invade kingdoms and stuff.”
Hot and Tot looked surprised… but not in a way suggesting they had a problem with such a thing.
“Really, you invade other countries?” Hot asked.
“As in, kingdoms are invaded by you guys?” Tot said.
Guile replied, “well… yeah, it’s kind of what we do.”
Hot and Tot grinned and high-fived. “You guys are AWESOME!” they said in tandem, and the four changelings smiled at the compliment.
There was a smashing sound through the wall and the floor shook. A familiar yelling echoed through said wall – Ichabod’s yelling. The group exchanged looks.
“Was that Ichabod I just heard?” Hot asked.
“I think-*smash*” Tot replied, his words cut off by another smash.
“You think what?” Hot said, looking to his brother.
“No, I think so, so…” Tot answered, not realizing that the smashing sound overrode his original sentence.
“…So what?”
“So what about what?”
“…What?”
"But I... I what?"
"You what? I meant so what, so what?"
The two continued in their normal storm of vocal confusion as the changelings spoke amongst each other.
“That’s the section the Queen ordered the Devourer to take down, isn’t it?” Fraud asked.
“Yeah, it is,” Guile answered.
Bam shivered. “The thing still gives me the creeps, what about you guys?”
“It’s not that bad, I mean he defended the hive didn’t he?” Boozle said.
“I mean yeah, but…” Bam replied, “…it’s just… it gives me the heebie-jeebies if you know what I mean.”
“You got that right,” Fraud added, “heebie-jeebies, creeps, willies, jitters…”
“I try to look past that, but I know what you mean,” Boozle admitted. “It’s just something about being near it you know?”
“Hey!” Guile called over to Hot and Tot, who had somehow degraded into a rolling fistfight. “You two want to follow us and see what’s going on with the Devourer and your brother?”
Hot and Tot looked at Guile for a moment and then twisted to look at each other. When they looked back, Hot unclenched his teeth from Tot’s arm and answered.
“Sure, I guess.”
With that, the group gathered themselves and went to check out what may have been another fight between Ichabod and the Devourer.