~*T*~
The girls had gotten bored by the time Malfoy and his guests finally headed to the dungeon, and were kicking their feet on their tree branch as they waited.
Taylor's swarm attacked as soon as the door at the top of the stairs closed, climbed in screaming mouths, down noses, filled lungs to the point of gasping, immobile panic.
A graboid knocked down Malfoy, separated him from his wand, and pulled him by his robe towards the tunnels.
Behind him the guests expired one by one, suffocated slowly.
~*i*~
A bakers dozen fireflies circled when Malfoy was dragged out, dirty, disheveled, his face and mouth full of dirt, his breath shallow and fast, one lung full of arthropods, the other with a few who'd gotten lost.
Taylor frowned, disappointed, then smiled. The graboid turned him over, and a small swarm of bugs climbed over his face to pick off all the loose dirt.
"Mr. Malfoy," Lisa said, grinning, "We have a mission for you, whether or not you chose to accept it."
"What?" he gasped, "Do you think I will talk?"
"No, Mr. Malfoy, I expect you to die," Amy said, dropping off the branch to the ground. She pressed a sandaled foot to his side, worked a toe through a tear in his robe. He screamed, convulsed, passed out from lack of oxygen.
"He's really resistant to pain," Lisa said, "I didn't get anything useful."
"Hmm," Amy ripped the hole in his robes bigger, then woke him up. He gasped, moaned, arching his back, clenching his thighs together.
"That's better," Lisa said, "A little pain, please. Perfect." She went quiet for a bit, "He's got something the Dark Lord left with him, something important," she smiled, "It's a soul jar, with another bit of Mr. Riddle's soul."
Malfoy lost bladder control.
"He thinks the Dark Lord will kill him for letting us find that out. In a way, he's right."
Tears have leaked down Malfoy's face, and his fingertips were bloody from digging into the rocky soil, but he kept scraping away at it.
"How to get it, that's the question. Graboids are conspicuous."
"Land crabs?" Taylor asked.
"Yeah, but there's got to be a more general purpose . . . " Amy trailed off a moment, "Invid."
Lisa and Taylor looked at each other, then smiled, "Paranoids."
Amy laughed out loud, stepping back from Malfoy, who collapsed, curling into a ball, wrapping his bloody hands around his knees.
"We need to recycle the graboids anyway," Amy said, waved one of them towards her.
Taylor walked it over to her. Amy quickly formed it an exoskeleton of thick chitin, colored a dull medium grey, humanoid, with two arms, two legs, hands with fingers. She pulled the living cells out and formed it into an amorphous blob of muscles, nerves, a decentralized brain, and attachments.
Taylor had it squirm back into its exoskeleton. It shook itself, waved its arms and legs, ran through something much like a tai chi routine to acclimate itself to its new shape, then it took off at an awkward run that smoothed as it dove into the tunnels and ran toward the Malfoy dungeons.
Lisa's directions opened the vault under the drawing room, and the paranoid ran back with the dark lord's treasure.
Amy, meanwhile, had her hands back on Malfoy.
"Whatcha doing?"
"You're gonna fill his chest with fireflies," Amy said, "So I thought it would be nice to have his dark mark catch fire, too."
"Oh, that'd be lovely."
Taylor brought up the other graboids, "What do you want to do with these?"
"Cowbells," Amy said, suiting action to words, and quickly changed the graboids into clouds of giant, high-explosive beetles.
"So, how are we going to use him?"
"I think the paranoid can puppet him to the Ministry of Magic," Amy said.
The paranoid bobbed it's torso, since it didn't have a mobile neck to its armor, then put both of its thumbs up.
"Go for it," Taylor told it.
It climbed out of its exoskeleton, and blobbed, like an amoeboid inch worm, over to Malfoy's curled, crying form.
Malfoy tried to scream as the paranoid climbed down his throat. He clutched at his throat, turned a little blue, then went limp. A few minutes later Malfoy started twitching, then wiggled a bit, then got to his feet. He made some strange noises, then words, "It's nice to be able to talk," the paranoid said softly.
Taylor landed the 13th firefly on the paranoid's abandoned exoskeleton.
The paranoid made Malfoy watch as Taylor lit the firefly. The chitin stunk as it burned, the thermite dripped though to the ground, and burned into it.
"Yeah, like that," Lisa told him.
The paranoid held Malfoy's mouth open while the other twelve fireflies climbed inside.
"You know the script?" Lisa asked.
"Yes," said the paranoid.
"This doesn't have to, shouldn't be, a suicide mission. Come back when you can," Amy told it.
It nodded Malfoy's head.
"If you can learn how to teleport you'll make it back quicker," Taylor said.
A big grin crossed Malfoy's face, and he vanished with a pop, reappearing a few feet away with another pop. He disappeared with another pop.
~*T*~
Note: Cowbells resemble Goliathus Orientalis in size, shape and markings, but are colored to camouflage with the local environment. They also have an explosive yield equivalent to 30 grams of RDX.
Invid are, of course, from Genesis Climber Mospeada, which was used for the third part of Robotech.
The paranoid is inspired by the Paranoids from "Gal Force: Eternal Story." There is a scene about 15 minutes in where several Paranoids change their skeletons.