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It was a perfectly ordinary morning in Black Hat Manor.
And by that, I mean that the roar of the vaccuum cleaner was being drowned out by the screams of whatever poor hero was being fed to the garden of mutated carnivorous plants. Flug didn't care. He's had it drilled it into his mind to wear earplugs to breakfast for years now.
He tapped his pencil against his clipboard as he wandered the halls of the manor. The hair on the back of his neck was raised, but again, that was normal whenever Demencia was out and about. She'd slithered away after her breakfast, but he was sure she'd crawl out of the vents eventually; she always did when Black Hat called them for a mission.
Speaking of Black Hat, though - where was he?
Flug frowned. It wasn't like him to leave his employees alone for so long in the mornings. By now he'd usually have appeared in the lab in a veil of shadows or a colony of writhing centipedes, startling Flug into dropping something flammable. There wasn't a meeting planned today, and Flug's next project didn't have to be ready until a few days from now, but it was still unnerving to not have his eldritch boss checking in on him.
Well, Flug wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He'd already gotten through most of his chores - the robots were charged up, the acidic pits were bubbling, and the laundry was done - and the only thing left was to continue work on his latest invention. He rolled his shoulders and began walking to his lab.
When he got there, Flug tossed the clipboard haphazardly onto a table and sat down at his workbench. If all went well, he'd be able to get a sizable chunk of work done before he was needed for a meeting or a mission or something along those lines.
As luck would have it, though, he was barely able to get fifteen minutes of work done without an interruption.
"Whatcha doing?" came a chipper voice from straight above him.
With a strangled noise of surprise, Flug flailed backwards in his chair. It tipped over and its back smacked into the tile floor hard. Flug winced. "Hello, Demencia," he grumbled.
Demencia laughed, a tittering giggle, and clambered out of the vent and down the wall. Her prehensile hair wrapped around aFlug and set him upright. "Hey yourself," she said. Then, grinning wickedly, "You didn't answer my question."
"Well, I was trying to do my job," Flug said. "Unfortunately, a big green distraction showed up."
"Aww, that's too darn bad," Demencia crooned mockingly. Her attention rapidly turned to Flug's workbench. "Hey, what's this?" She picked up the device he'd been working on.
"Don't touch that!" Flug cried, snatching it out of her hands. He gently set it back on the table. "It's a very intricate little piece of machinery that a client is paying for, and if you were to damage it, Black Hat would be unfathomably angry!"
"Well, I don't know what 'un-fab-um-ab-lee' means, so it can't be too important. What's it do? I wanna see!" Demencia made another grab for the machine.
Flug stepped back and held it behind him with one arm while keeping Demencia away with the other. "Like I'd ever tell you! You'll just try and use it and end up breaking it!"
Suddenly, Demencia's face dropped from mischievous into terrified. Unfortunately for Flug, he didn't connect the dots on what that meant until he felt the machine get lifted from his hand. With a squeak of terror, he turned around to see none other than Black Hat standing there, the device held in one sharp-clawed hand, his singular eye looking at it with mild curiosity.
"Ah, Doctor," he greeted Flug, "I was just about to ask for a progress report. How is the freeze ray coming along?"
Flug snapped to attention at the question. "Um- i-it's going well, sir, although it's more of a freeze device than a freeze ray-"
"Well enough to provide a demonstration?"
"U-um-" Flug stammered out. "W-well, I'm finished with the temperature modifier, but the humidity generator isn't done, so it'd just make things colder instead of creating any ice, w-which is what it originally was planned to be used for, so…"
"So we can test what we have." Black hat ignored Flug's choked noise of protest and walked away to the testing chamber. "Come along. Let's see how it works, shall we, Doctor?"
It was at this point that Flug noticed something interesting about Black Hat. He was wearing a different outfit today. It looked like he had forgone his coat and, in place of his usual slacks, he now wore a pitch-black skirt that hung elegantly around his ankles.
Pause. Rewind. A skirt?
Noticing the distinct lack of terrified footsteps behind him, Black hat turned around, and- he was wearing heels too. What.
"Well?" he asked. "Are you coming, or do I have to drag you there?"
Now that Black Hat was standing at this distance, Flug realized something. It wasn't just his outfit that had changed. Black Hat's whole body was different. Not extremely so, mind you, but… it was noticeable. He was still tall and imposing, still with his signature hat and monocle and glowing sneer, but his proportions just seemed overall more… feminine. Whereas usually his frame would've been too boxy to properly fill out the skirt he was wearing, now, it hung perfectly in place on him. His shoulders looked a little slimmer, too.
"You… Um, you changed your look," Flug said in surprise. "N-not that it's a bad thing, or that I don't like it, it's just- Well, I don't mind at all, I guess I'm just a little surprised, or startled- well, not startled startled, but- I'mjustgoingtostoptalkingnow." He said the last part in a mumble.
Black Hat looked down at himself (herself?) as if he hadn't even noticed that he'd changed his wardrobe for the first time in ages. "Ah," he said, "have I never done this around you before?"
"N-no, sir," Flug said, although he wasn't entirely sure if sir was correct anymore. "Never."
Black Hat shrugged. "Well, I do this sometimes," he said nonchalantly. "When I feel like it. Now," he started walking to the testing chamber again, "are we going to test this device?"
Flug thought about it for a moment. He hadn't expected Black Hat - the picture of gentlemanly class - to ever "feel like" being more feminine, but… it wasn't really a problem, was it? If that was just something he did, then… well, who was Flug to say anything against it? Especially because this was Black Hat they were talking about, who could turn him inside out in every part of his body except for his eyes so he'd be forced to look at his own guts with nothing more than a flick of his wrist.
And besides all of that, Flug really wasn't one to talk. He'd known that he swung both ways for years now. If Black Hat was queer too (though he might not even call it that, he'd probably just think of it as his nature), that was just something they had in common.
"Ah- one more thing, Black Hat?" Flug called out hesitantly.
Black Hat heaved the deepest, heaviest sigh he had in a long time. "What is it?" he spat.
"Um, while you're… looking like this, should I still call you sir and he? Or would ma'am and she be better?"
Black Hat seemed to think on it for a moment. Then, a terrifying grin spread across his face. "Call me whatever you like," he said, "so long as you say it with respect and fear."
They then kept walking away, beckoning Flug to follow them.
Flug sighed. "I don't know what I expected." He started following Black Hat. "C'mon, Demencia, you wanted to see what it does, now's your chance-" It was at that point that Flug had realized that Demencia hadn't said a word for the whole exchange. "Demencia?" he asked, turning to look at her.
Demencia's face was flushed bright pink as she gave a thousand-yard stare at the wall. "Flug," she said quietly (quietly!! A miracle!!), "Is it, like… a thing if you like both girls and boys? Can you do that? Is that allowed?"
Flug almost laughed. "Of course it is," he said. "But even if it wasn't, you'd be doing it anyway, just to break the rules. Now c'mon. Let's not keep the boss waiting."