Snuggles the Symbiote

I walked slowly but confidently into Sauron's village. At first, nobody seemed to notice me, probably because there were some humans in the village, too, some of whom were wearing jungle-primitive type clothes... But there were no kids here. Probably just people not thinking.

But... I needed them to notice me for my flawless plan to work.

"There are a thousand ways that this plan could go horribly wrong."

I ignored Scream's unfounded criticism and turned to one of the villagers, a grey-scaled dino-woman with the head of a Dracorex dressed in a loincloth, a sports bra, and fluffy pink leg warmers. I thought that was weird, but I didn't really have room to criticize other people's fashion choices.

"Excuse me, Ms," I said in my most polite tone, "could you point me to whoever is in charge here."

It was only then that anyone realized that I wasn't supposed to be here.

The commotion was immediate with people running around back and forth, trying to figure out what to do with me while I just sort of stood there. Eventually, I ended up surrounded by pretty much the entire village in a circle around me.

Just before me, the circle opened, and then I was head to head with the scaley face of Sauron.

He looked down on me, contempt in his eyes. "Well, what do we have here?"

"I'm so sorry, your evilness, for intruding on your kingdom, but I am lost," I said in my most humble tone. In the corner of my eye, I could Taylor and Mommy sneaking into the main building while the whole village was focused on me. Good, now I just need to keep everyone's attention.

"That much is readily apparent," the pterosaur-man said, "but... Where did you come from?"

"I was in an airplane flying over the North Atlantic and it went down," I lied while avoiding eye contact and trying to sound sad. "A far as I know I'm the only one who..."

"You seriously expect me to... That is the most cliche..." Sauron blinked. "Did anyone else mysteriously end up here in the Savage Lands after crashing a vehicle nowhere near the Savage Land?"

"Ohh ooh ooh, Mr. Sauron, us, us," said a blue raptor man who... didn't sound all there. "My friend and I, we were in a canyon, and we'd just stolen a jeep from the other guys, and then we crashed the jeep, and then we were here. Go on, tell them," he said while turning to a lighter and paler blue raptor man who sighed in exasperation.

"Of all the people I could have gotten stranded with, it would have been you, wouldn't it have?"

"Yes."

"...A jeep?" Sauron asked incredulously.

"Yes."

"I am going to pretend I didn't hear that," Sauron while sounding absolutely baffled.

"In all fairness, Lord Sauron," the Dracorex in leg warmers said, "it is a known phenomenon that accidents even far away from the Savage Lands can result in people stranded here."

Without a word, Sauron turned to look back at me, meeting my eyes again. "Are you telling the truth?" The second he said it, I could feel his hypnotic powers crash against my mental defenses. But between the codices I took and the spell Doctor Strange worked I was more than tough enough to shrug it off.

"Yes." It was a good thing I was wearing a skirt. If I had pants they'd be on fire.

"And where did you get that outfit? I don't see a girl of... I'm guessing eight being able to bring down a beast to make a pelt skirt. And I've never quite seen an animal with that patterned fur in those colors..."

"I'm a mutant," a little bit of truth. Some members of the crowd shifted a little, started murmuring. "My power is conjuring different kinds of prefabricated clothing out of organic materials, but it has to be something appropriate to the area I'm in. So like, I can only make a kilt if I'm in Scotland. My old clothes got torn in the crash and this is what I got when I tried to make new ones," more lies. "And I can only make one outfit at a time. If I made a new one the one I'm wearing would disappear so..."

Sauron squinted. "That's an oddly specific and limited mutant power."

"Lots of mutants have oddly specific and limited powers," I said honestly.

"Be that as it may, I think that we are done here. You two," he said pointing to the two blue raptor guys. "Take her to the pen, we'll discuss what to do with her later."

Just as the not-so-smart one grabbed my arm, I spoke up. "Oh, I guess the great Sauron doesn't deserve my respect after all," I said loudly enough that there was no way he hadn't heard me.

He paused as he was walking away, and all sounds in the village stopped.

"Would you care to repeat that, little girl?" He said slowly.

"Well, it's just that I thought that Sauron, greatest of all evils, Sauron the unassailably wicked, was a proper supervillain," I said as innocently as I could manage.

"I am the greatest of all villains!" he shouted.

"Oh, no, you're a villain. Just not a super one," I countered.

"What's the difference, brat?"

"Style. Decorum. Presentation. There are rules, darn it," I said, "and you broke them. How dare you? I thought that Sauron was the greatest enemy of the X-Men, I wasn't expecting this amateur hour interrogation and then just being causally carted off."

"And you would have me do what instead?" I could practically taste his rage.

"You have to give me a sporting chance, it's what any real supervillain would do. A trap that I'm fully capable of escaping if I figure it out in time, a puzzle box I need to solve before sunrise to earn my freedom, hell, the least you could do is challenge me to a battle of wits."

"In what possible way could the 'wits' of a mere child be a challenge for the Genius of Sauron!?"

I scrunched up my like I was deep in concentration. "Well... If I were you, I'd challenge me to a game of riddles, and if I win you have two of your best warriors escort me to the Krakoan Flower Farm so I can use the gate there to get help, and if you win you get to absorb my yummy mutant energy."

"Fine!" Sauron exclaimed. "If you best Sauron the malevolent in a game of riddles, you may go free but should I be victorious your life is forfeit." Some of Sauron's followers suddenly seemed uncomfortable.

Regardless, Sauron had the Raptor Man who'd grabbed me let go of my arm and with a snap of his fingers a triceratops woman brought out two comfortable-looking chairs that seemed totally out of place in the Savage Lands.

"Why don't you go first, child?" Sauron said as he took a seat, his temper calmed, and a layer of fake politeness covering his ego.

I sat opposite him. "Okay then." I made a show of thinking on it for a minute. "It always runs and never walks, has a mouth but cannot talk."

Sauron rolled his eyes. "An old chestnut, the answer is 'a river.' Now can you tell me why the french only have a single egg at breakfast?"

"Because one egg is un oeuf," I answered back. "What's in seconds and centuries, but not in decades or days?"

Sauron paused for a moment. "The letter 'n.' you need it to spell the first two, but not the second pair." I nodded but he didn't give another riddle right away. After a thirty seconds, he finally began: "Never was yet to be still, never seen, nor ever will."

"The future," I said confidently. Sauron looked like he wanted to curse. "Brown on both head and tail, has no legs but can travel far?"

"A penny is made of copper, and thus brown. As a coin, it has both heads and tails but no 'legs' and can be carried quite far from where it was minted in its lifetime," Sauron answered. "Now... Alive without breath—"

"A fish!" I interrupted. I was expecting that he would use a riddle from The Hobbit at some point, being a huge Tolkien fanboy and all. It was why I suggested a game of riddles, but... Wait, I could use this. "Voiceless it cries," I began to recite. A riddle from the same source.

Taking my bait, he interrupted me, "the wind!" he shouted, and then went right into his next riddle. "Thirty white horses—"

"Chestnuts, chestnuts," I hissed in my best Gollum impression, "Teeth! Teeth, my preciousss," I finished the quote. I could see a shift in his body language. Sauron was getting caught up in the moment. "Now then, I have to ask you... What is in my pocket?"

Sauron was startled for a second, but then he smiled. "A golden ring. A golden ring that contains great power and great wickedness, though at this time you know not of it, and it will be decades before anyone thinks of it as anything more than a useful ring of invisibility. It is in fact the ring of my namesake, The One Ring that rules them all."

"Eehht!" I shouted, imitating a buzzer. "I might be small, I and might not be wearing shoes," I raised my foot and wiggled my toes for emphasis, "but that doesn't make me a hobbit. I'm giving you two more guesses though."

Sauron looked like he'd just eaten a whole bag of lemons. He glared at me but he was stuck. We had an accord, he couldn't go back on his word in front of his dozens of followers.

"It's a trick question," he said slowly after a few moments. "You don't have pockets."

I pinched part of my top and pulled, revealing a hidden pocket that I totally didn't have Mister Snuggles shapeshift into existence when I first asked the riddle. It wasn't cheating, extradimensional storage is a pocket, just not that pocket.

"I have pockets for days," I said with an arrogant smirk. "You're down to one guess."

I had Mister Snuggles count the seconds. It was a full five minutes before Sauron, looking as nervous as a Foghorn Leghorn talking to Colonel Sanders, finally guessed "Nothing," he said hesitantly. "You said you were in a plane crash, you're the only survivor, and you lost your clothes and had to make new ones. You wouldn't have anything to put in those pockets."

"And that's your third wrong answer," I said, "which means I win. And I am quite certain that Sauron the wicked, greatest of all supervillains, will be true to his word and magnanimous in his defeat?"

I didn't intend to break his spirit, but he looked broken. I'd tricked and outsmarted him and he knew it. "...I have to know. What... What was the answer? Please, tell me."

I reached a hand into the hidden pocket and from there accessed the pocket reality where Mister Snuggles kept the stuff I had him store for me and drew out my smartphone. "I managed to salvage this. There's no reception out here though. Now, are you gonna keep your word?"

The people around us, the dinosaur people and the ordinary humans both waited for their leader's response with intense curiosity. And yet, Sauron did not answer.

...I hoped that Mommy and Taylor would finish soon. I wasn't sure how much longer I could hold their attention after this.

Finally, after what felt like another five minutes, through a clenched beak, his tone dripping with resentment. "Yes. You are free to go child."

And it was then that the sound of a gunshot let out from the main building in the village, and my heart dropped into my stomach.